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Title: Real Soldiers of Fortune

Author: Richard Harding Davis

Posting Date: February 22, 2009 [EBook #3029]
Last Updated: September 26, 2016

Language: English

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Produced by David Reed, and Ronald J. Wilson





REAL SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE


By Richard Harding Davis





MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY RONALD DOUGLAS MACIVER

ANY sunny afternoon, on Fifth Avenue, or at night in the _table d’hote_
restaurants of University Place, you may meet the soldier of fortune who
of all his brothers in arms now living is the most remarkable. You may
have noticed him; a stiffly erect, distinguished-looking man, with gray
hair, an imperial of the fashion of Louis Napoleon, fierce blue eyes,
and across his forehead a sabre cut.

This is Henry Ronald Douglas MacIver, for some time in India an ensign
in the Sepoy mutiny; in Italy, lieutenant under Garibaldi; in Spain,
captain under Don Carlos; in our Civil War, major in the Confederate
army; in Mexico, lieutenant-colonel under the Emperor Maximilian;
colonel under Napoleon III, inspector of cavalry for the Khedive of
Egypt, and chief of cavalry and general of brigade of the army of King
Milan of Servia. These are only a few of his military titles. In 1884
was published a book giving the story of his life up to that year. It
was called “Under Fourteen Flags.” If to-day General MacIver were to
reprint the book, it would be called “Under Eighteen Flags.”

MacIver was born on Christmas Day, 1841, at sea, a league off the shore
of Virginia. His mother was Miss Anna Douglas of that State; Ronald
MacIver, his father, was a Scot, a Rossshire gentleman, a younger son of
the chief of the Clan MacIver. Until he was ten years old young MacIver
played in Virginia at the home of his father. Then, in order that he
might be educated, he was shipped to Edinburgh to an uncle, General
Donald Graham. After five years his uncle obtained for him a commission
as ensign in the Honorable East India Company, and at sixteen, when
other boys are preparing for college, MacIver was in the Indian Mutiny,
fighting, not for a flag, nor a country, but as one fights a wild
animal, for his life. He was wounded in the arm, and, with a sword, cut
over the head. As a safeguard against the sun the boy had placed inside
his helmet a wet towel. This saved him to fight another day, but even
with that protection the sword sank through the helmet, the towel, and
into the skull. To-day you can see the scar. He was left in the road
for dead, and even after his wounds had healed, was six weeks in the
hospital.

This tough handling at the very start might have satisfied some men, but
in the very next war MacIver was a volunteer and wore the red shirt of
Garibaldi. He remained at the front throughout that campaign, and until
within a few years there has been no campaign of consequence in which he
has not taken part. He served in the Ten Years’ War in Cuba, in
Brazil, in Argentina, in Crete, in Greece, twice in Spain in Carlist
revolutions, in Bosnia, and for four years in our Civil War under
Generals Jackson and Stuart around Richmond. In this great war he was
four times wounded.

It was after the surrender of the Confederate army, that, with other
Southern officers, he served under Maximilian in Mexico; in Egypt, and
in France. Whenever in any part of the world there was fighting, or the
rumor of fighting, the procedure of the general invariably was the
same. He would order himself to instantly depart for the front, and on
arriving there would offer to organize a foreign legion. The command of
this organization always was given to him. But the foreign legion was
merely the entering wedge. He would soon show that he was fitted for
a better command than a band of undisciplined volunteers, and would
receive a commission in the regular army. In almost every command in
which he served that is the manner in which promotion came. Sometimes he
saw but little fighting, sometimes he should have died several deaths,
each of a nature more unpleasant than the others. For in war the obvious
danger of a bullet is but a three hundred to one shot, while in the pack
against the combatant the jokers are innumerable. And in the career of
the general the unforeseen adventures are the most interesting. A man
who in eighteen campaigns has played his part would seem to have
earned exemption from any other risks, but often it was outside the
battle-field that MacIver encountered the greatest danger. He fought
several duels, in two of which he killed his adversary; several attempts
were made to assassinate him, and while on his way to Mexico he was
captured by hostile Indians. On returning from an expedition in Cuba he
was cast adrift in an open boat and for days was without food.

Long before I met General MacIver I had read his book and had heard of
him from many men who had met him in many different lands while
engaged in as many different undertakings. Several of the older war
correspondents knew him intimately; Bennett Burleigh of the _Telegraph_
was his friend, and E. F. Knight of the _Times_ was one of those who
volunteered for a filibustering expedition which MacIver organized
against New Guinea. The late Colonel Ochiltree of Texas told me tales
of MacIver’s bravery, when as young men they were fellow officers in the
Southern army, and Stephen Bonsal had met him when MacIver was United
States Consul at Denia in Spain. When MacIver arrived at this post, the
ex-consul refused to vacate the Consulate, and MacIver wished to settle
the difficulty with duelling pistols. As Denia is a small place, the
inhabitants feared for their safety, and Bonsal, who was our _charge
d’affaires_ then, was sent from Madrid to adjust matters. Without
bloodshed he got rid of the ex-consul, and later MacIver so endeared
himself to the Denians that they begged the State Department to retain
him in that place for the remainder of his life.

Before General MacIver was appointed to a high position at the St. Louis
Fair, I saw much of him in New York. His room was in a side street in
an old-fashioned boarding-house, and overlooked his neighbor’s back yard
and a typical New York City sumac tree; but when the general talked one
forgot he was within a block of the Elevated, and roamed over all
the world. On his bed he would spread out wonderful parchments, with
strange, heathenish inscriptions, with great seals, with faded ribbons.
These were signed by Sultans, Secretaries of War, Emperors, filibusters.
They were military commissions, titles of nobility, brevets for
decorations, instructions and commands from superior officers.
Translated the phrases ran: “Imposing special confidence in,” “we
appoint,” or “create,” or “declare,” or “In recognition of services
rendered to our person,” or “country,” or “cause,” or “For bravery on
the field of battle we bestow the Cross----”

As must a soldier, the general travels “light,” and all his worldly
possessions were crowded ready for mobilization into a small compass. He
had his sword, his field blanket, his trunk, and the tin despatch
boxes that held his papers. From these, like a conjurer, he would draw
souvenirs of all the world. From the embrace of faded letters, he would
unfold old photographs, daguerrotypes, and miniatures of fair women and
adventurous men: women who now are queens in exile, men who, lifted on
waves of absinthe, still, across a _cafe_ table, tell how they will win
back a crown.

Once in a written document the general did me the honor to appoint me
his literary executor, but as he is young, and as healthy as myself, it
never may be my lot to perform such an unwelcome duty. And to-day all
one can write of him is what the world can read in “Under Fourteen
Flags,” and some of the “foot-notes to history” which I have copied
from his scrap-book. This scrap-book is a wonderful volume, but owing
to “political” and other reasons, for the present, of the many clippings
from newspapers it contains there are only a few I am at liberty to
print. And from them it is difficult to make a choice. To sketch in a
few thousand words a career that had developed under Eighteen Flags is
in its very wealth embarrassing.

Here is one story, as told by the scrap-book, of an expedition that
failed. That it failed was due to a British Cabinet Minister; for had
Lord Derby possessed the imagination of the Soldier of Fortune, his
Majesty’s dominions might now be the richer by many thousands of square
miles and many thousands of black subjects.

On October 29, 1883, the following appeared in the London _Standard_:
“The New Guinea Exploration and Colonization Company is already
chartered, and the first expedition expects to leave before Christmas.”
 “The prospectus states settlers intending to join the first party must
contribute one hundred pounds toward the company. This subscription will
include all expenses for passage money. Six months’ provisions will be
provided, together with tents and arms for protection. Each subscriber
of one hundred pounds is to obtain a certificate entitling him to one
thousand acres.”

The view of the colonization scheme taken by the _Times_ of London, of
the same date, is less complaisant. “The latest commercial sensation is
a proposed company for the seizure of New Guinea. Certain adventurous
gentlemen are looking out for one hundred others who have money and
a taste for buccaneering. When the company has been completed, its
share-holders are to place themselves under military regulations, sail
in a body for New Guinea, and without asking anybody’s leave, seize
upon the island and at once, in some unspecified way, proceed to realize
large profits. If the idea does not suggest comparisons with the large
designs of Sir Francis Drake, it is at least not unworthy of Captain
Kidd.”

When we remember the manner in which some of the colonies of Great
Britain were acquired, the _Times_ seems almost squeamish.

In a Melbourne paper, June, 1884, is the following paragraph:

“Toward the latter part of 1883 the Government of Queensland planted the
flag of Great Britain on the shores of New Guinea. When the news reached
England it created a sensation. The Earl of Derby, Secretary for the
Colonies, refused, however, to sanction the annexation of New
Guinea, and in so doing acted contrary to the sincere wish of every
right-thinking Anglo-Saxon under the Southern Cross.

“While the subsequent correspondence between the Home and Queensland
governments was going on, Brigadier-General H. R. MacIver originated and
organized the New Guinea Exploration and Colonization Company in London,
with a view to establishing settlements on the island. The company,
presided over by General Beresford of the British Army, and having
an eminently representative and influential board of directors, had a
capital of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and placed the
supreme command of the expedition in the hands of General MacIver.
Notwithstanding the character of the gentlemen composing the board of
directors, and the truly peaceful nature of the expedition, his Lordship
informed General MacIver that in the event of the latter’s attempting to
land on New Guinea, instructions would be sent to the officer in command
of her Majesty’s fleet in the Western Pacific to fire upon the company’s
vessel. This meant that the expedition would be dealt with as a
filibustering one.”

In _Judy_, September 21, 1887, appears:

“We all recollect the treatment received by Brigadier-General MacI. in
the action he took with respect to the annexation of New Guinea. The
General, who is a sort of Pizarro, with a dash of D’Artagnan, was
treated in a most scurvy manner by Lord Derby. Had MacIver not been
thwarted in his enterprise, the whole of New Guinea would now have been
under the British flag, and we should not be cheek-by-jowl with the
Germans, as we are in too many places.”

_Society_, September 3, 1887, says:

“The New Guinea expedition proved abortive, owing to the blundering
shortsightedness of the then Government, for which Lord Derby was
chiefly responsible, but what little foothold we possess in New Guinea,
is certainly due to General MacIver’s gallant effort.”

Copy of statement made by J. Rintoul Mitchell, June 2, 1887:

“About the latter end of the year 1883, when I was editor-in-chief of
the _Englishman_ in Calcutta, I was told by Captain de Deaux, assistant
secretary in the Foreign Office of the Indian Government, that he
had received a telegram from Lord Derby to the effect that if General
MacIver ventured to land upon the coast of New Guinea it would become
the duty of Lord Ripon, Viceroy, to use the naval forces at his command
for the purpose of deporting General MacI. Sir Aucland Calvin can
certify to this, as it was discussed in the Viceregal Council.”

Just after our Civil War MacIver was interested in another expedition
which also failed. Its members called themselves the Knights of Arabia,
and their object was to colonize an island much nearer to our shores
than New Guinea. MacIver, saying that his oath prevented, would never
tell me which island this was, but the reader can choose from
among Cuba, Haiti, and the Hawaiian group. To have taken Cuba, the
“colonizers” would have had to fight not only Spain, but the Cubans
themselves, on whose side they were soon fighting in the Ten Years’ War;
so Cuba may be eliminated. And as the expedition was to sail from the
Atlantic side, and not from San Francisco, the island would appear to be
the Black Republic. From the records of the times it would seem that the
greater number of the Knights of Arabia were veterans of the Confederate
army, and there is no question but that they intended to subjugate the
blacks of Haiti and form a republic for white men in which slavery would
be recognized. As one of the leaders of this filibustering expedition,
MacIver was arrested by General Phil Sheridan and for a short time cast
into jail.

This chafed the general’s spirit, but he argued philosophically that
imprisonment for filibustering, while irksome, brought with it
no reproach. And, indeed, sometimes the only difference between a
filibuster and a government lies in the fact that the government fights
the gun-boats of only the enemy while a filibuster must dodge the boats
of the enemy and those of his own countrymen. When the United States
went to war with Spain there were many men in jail as filibusters, for
doing that which at the time the country secretly approved, and later
imitated. And because they attempted exactly the same thing for which
Dr. Jameson was imprisoned in Holloway Jail, two hundred thousand of his
countrymen are now wearing medals.

The by-laws of the Knights of Arabia leave but little doubt as to its
object.

By-law No. II reads:

“We, as Knights of Arabia, pledge ourselves to aid, comfort, and protect
all Knights of Arabia, especially those who are wounded in obtaining our
grand object.

“III--Great care must be taken that no unbeliever or outsider shall gain
any insight into the mysteries or secrets of the Order.

“IV--The candidate will have to pay one hundred dollars cash to
the Captain of the Company, and the candidate will receive from the
Secretary a Knight of Arabia bond for one hundred dollars in gold, with
ten per cent interest, payable ninety days after the recognition of (The
Republic of----) by the United States, or any government.

“V--All Knights of Arabia will be entitled to one hundred acres of
land, location of said land to be drawn for by lottery. The products are
coffee, sugar, tobacco, and cotton.”

A local correspondent of the New York _Herald_ writes of the arrest of
MacIver as follows:

“When MacIver will be tried is at present unknown, as his case has
assumed a complicated aspect. He claims British protection as a subject
of her British Majesty, and the English Consul has forwarded a statement
of his case to Sir Frederick Bruce at Washington, accompanied by a copy
of the by-laws. General Sheridan also has forwarded a statement to
the Secretary of War, accompanied not only by the by-laws, but very
important documents, including letters from Jefferson Davis, Benjamin,
the Secretary of State of the Confederate States, and other personages
prominent in the Rebellion, showing that MacIver enjoyed the highest
confidence of the Confederacy.”

As to the last statement, an open letter I found in his scrap-book is an
excellent proof. It is as follows: “To officers and members of all camps
of United Confederate Veterans: It affords me the greatest pleasure to
say that the bearer of this letter, General Henry Ronald MacIver, was an
officer of great gallantry in the Confederate Army, serving on the staff
at various times of General Stonewall Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, and E.
Kirby Smith, and that his official record is one of which any man may be
proud.

“Respectfully, MARCUS J. WRIGHT, “_Agent for the Collection of
Confederate Records_.

“War Records office, War Department, Washington, July 8, 1895.”

At the close of the war duels between officers of the two armies were
not infrequent. In the scrap-book there is the account of one of these
affairs sent from Vicksburg to a Northern paper by a correspondent who
was an eye-witness of the event. It tells how Major MacIver, accompanied
by Major Gillespie, met, just outside of Vicksburg, Captain Tomlin of
Vermont, of the United States Artillery Volunteers. The duel was with
swords. MacIver ran Tomlin through the body. The correspondent writes:

“The Confederate officer wiped his sword on his handkerchief. In a few
seconds Captain Tomlin expired. One of Major MacIver’s seconds called to
him: ‘He is dead; you must go. These gentlemen will look after the body
of their friend.’ A negro boy brought up the horses, but before mounting
MacIver said to Captain Tomlin’s seconds: ‘My friends are in haste for
me to go. Is there anything I can do? I hope you consider that this
matter has been settled honorably?’

“There being no reply, the Confederates rode away.”

In a newspaper of to-day so matter-of-fact an acceptance of an event so
tragic would make strange reading.

From the South MacIver crossed through Texas to join the Royalist army
under the Emperor Maximilian. It was while making his way, with other
Confederate officers, from Galveston to El Paso, that MacIver was
captured by the Indians. He was not ill-treated by them, but for three
months was a prisoner, until one night, the Indians having camped near
the Rio Grande, he escaped into Mexico. There he offered his sword to
the Royalist commander, General Mejia, who placed him on his staff, and
showed him some few skirmishes. At Monterey MacIver saw big fighting,
and for his share in it received the title of Count, and the order of
Guadaloupe. In June, contrary to all rules of civilized war, Maximilian
was executed and the empire was at an end. MacIver escaped to the coast,
and from Tampico took a sailing vessel to Rio de Janeiro. Two months
later he was wearing the uniform of another emperor, Dom Pedro, and,
with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, was in command of the Foreign
Legion of the armies of Brazil and Argentina, which at that time as
allies were fighting against Paraguay.

MacIver soon recruited seven hundred men, but only half of these ever
reached the front. In Buenos Ayres cholera broke out and thirty thousand
people died, among the number about half the Legion. MacIver was among
those who suffered, and before he recovered was six weeks in hospital.
During that period, under a junior officer, the Foreign Legion was sent
to the front, where it was disbanded.

On his return to Glasgow, MacIver foregathered with an old friend,
Bennett Burleigh, whom he had known when Burleigh was a lieutenant
in the navy of the Confederate States. Although today known as a
distinguished war correspondent, in those days Burleigh was something of
a soldier of fortune himself, and was organizing an expedition to assist
the Cretan insurgents against the Turks. Between the two men it was
arranged that MacIver should precede the expedition to Crete and
prepare for its arrival. The Cretans received him gladly, and from the
provisional government he received a commission in which he was given
“full power to make war on land and sea against the enemies of Crete,
and particularly against the Sultan of Turkey and the Turkish forces,
and to burn, destroy, or capture any vessel bearing the Turkish flag.”

This permission to destroy the Turkish navy single-handed strikes one
as more than generous, for the Cretans had no navy, and before one could
begin the destruction of a Turkish gun-boat it was first necessary to
catch it and tie it to a wharf.

At the close of the Cretan insurrection MacIver crossed to Athens and
served against the brigands in Kisissia on the borders of Albania
and Thessaly as volunteer aide to Colonel Corroneus, who had been
commander-in-chief of the Cretans against the Turks. MacIver spent three
months potting at brigands, and for his services in the mountains was
recommended for the highest Greek decoration.

From Greece it was only a step to New York, and almost immediately
MacIver appears as one of the Goicouria-Christo expedition to Cuba,
of which Goicouria was commander-in-chief, and two famous American
officers, Brigadier-General Samuel C. Williams was a general and Colonel
Wright Schumburg was chief of staff.

In the scrap-book I find “General Order No. 11 of the Liberal Army of
the Republic of Cuba, issued at Cedar Keys, October 3, 1869.” In it
Colonel MacIver is spoken of as in charge of officers not attached to
any organized corps of the division. And again:

“General Order No. V, Expeditionary Division, Republic of Cuba, on board
_Lilian_,” announces that the place to which the expedition is bound has
been changed, and that General Wright Schumburg, who now is in command,
orders “all officers not otherwise commissioned to join Colonel
MacIver’s ‘Corps of Officers.’”

The _Lilian_ ran out of coal, and to obtain firewood put in at Cedar
Keys. For two weeks the patriots cut wood and drilled upon the beach,
when they were captured by a British gun-boat and taken to Nassau.
There they were set at liberty, but their arms, boat, and stores were
confiscated.

In a sailing vessel MacIver finally reached Cuba, and under Goicouria,
who had made a successful landing, saw some “help yourself” fighting.
Goicouria’s force was finally scattered, and MacIver escaped from the
Spanish soldiery only by putting to sea in an open boat, in which he
endeavored to make Jamaica.

On the third day out he was picked up by a steamer and again landed at
Nassau, from which place he returned to New York.

At that time in this city there was a very interesting man named
Thaddeus P. Mott, who had been an officer in our army and later
had entered the service of Ismail Pasha. By the Khedive he had
been appointed a general of division and had received permission to
reorganize the Egyptian army.

His object in coming to New York was to engage officers for that
service. He came at an opportune moment. At that time the city was
filled with men who, in the Rebellion, on one side or the other, had
held command, and many of these, unfitted by four years of soldiering
for any other calling, readily accepted the commissions which Mott had
authority to offer. New York was not large enough to keep MacIver and
Mott long apart, and they soon came to an understanding. The agreement
drawn up between them is a curious document. It is written in a neat
hand on sheets of foolscap tied together like a Commencement-day
address, with blue ribbon. In it MacIver agrees to serve as colonel of
cavalry in the service of the Khedive. With a few legal phrases omitted,
the document reads as follows:

“Agreement entered into this 24th day of March, 1870, between the
Government of his Royal Highness and the Khedive of Egypt, represented
by General Thaddeus P. Mott of the first part, and H. R. H. MacIver of
New York City.

“The party of the second part, being desirous of entering into the
service of party of the first part, in the military capacity of a
colonel of cavalry, promises to serve and obey party of the first part
faithfully and truly in his military capacity during the space of five
years from this date; that the party of the second part waives all
claims of protection usually afforded to Americans by consular and
diplomatic agents of the United States, and expressly obligates himself
to be subject to the orders of the party of the first part, and to make,
wage, and vigorously prosecute war against any and all the enemies of
party of the first part; that the party of the second part will not
under any event be governed, controlled by, or submit to, any order,
law, mandate, or proclamation issued by the Government of the United
States of America, forbidding party of the second part to serve party
of the first part to make war according to any of the provisions herein
contained, _it being, however, distinctly understood_ that nothing
herein contained shall be construed as obligating party of the second
part to bear arms or wage war against the United States of America.

“Party of the first part promises to furnish party of the second part
with horses, rations, and pay him for his services the same salary now
paid to colonels of cavalry in United States army, and will furnish him
quarters suitable to his rank in army. Also promises, in the case of
illness caused by climate, that said party may resign his office and
shall receive his expenses to America and two months’ pay; that he
receives one-fifth of his regular pay during his active service,
together with all expenses of every nature attending such enterprise.”

It also stipulates as to what sums shall be paid his family or children
in case of his death.

To this MacIver signs this oath:

“In the presence of the ever-living God, I swear that I will in all
things honestly, faithfully, and truly keep, observe, and perform the
obligations and promises above enumerated, and endeavor to conform to
the wishes and desires of the Government of his Royal Highness, the
Khedive of Egypt, in all things connected with the furtherance of his
prosperity, and the maintenance of his throne.”

On arriving at Cairo, MacIver was appointed inspector-general of
cavalry, and furnished with a uniform, of which this is a description:
“It consisted of a blue tunic with gold spangles, embroidered in gold
up the sleeves and front, neat-fitting red trousers, and high
patent-leather boots, while the inevitable fez completed the gay
costume.”

The climate of Cairo did not agree with MacIver, and, in spite of
his “gay costume,” after six months he left the Egyptian service. His
honorable discharge was signed by Stone Bey, who, in the favor of the
Khedive, had supplanted General Mott.

It is a curious fact that, in spite of his ill health, immediately after
leaving Cairo, MacIver was sufficiently recovered to at once plunge into
the Franco-Prussian War. At the battle of Orleans, while on the staff
of General Chanzy, he was wounded. In this war his rank was that of a
colonel of cavalry of the auxiliary army.

His next venture was in the Carlist uprising of 1873, when he formed a
Carlist League, and on several occasions acted as bearer of important
messages from the “King,” as Don Carlos was called, to the sympathizers
with his cause in France and England.

MacIver was promised, if he carried out successfully a certain mission
upon which he was sent, and if Don Carlos became king, that he would be
made a marquis. As Don Carlos is still a pretender, MacIver is still a
general. Although in disposing of his sword MacIver never allowed his
personal predilections to weigh with him, he always treated himself to a
hearty dislike of the Turks, and we next find him fighting against them
in Herzegovina with the Montenegrins. And when the Servians declared
war against the same people, MacIver returned to London to organize a
cavalry brigade to fight with the Servian army.

Of this brigade and of the rapid rise of MacIver to highest rank and
honors in Servia, the scrap-book is most eloquent. The cavalry brigade
was to be called the Knights of the Red Cross.

In a letter to the editor of the _Hour_, the general himself speaks of
it in the following terms:

“It may be interesting to many of your readers to learn that a select
corps of gentlemen is at present in course of organization under
the above title with the mission of proceeding to the Levant to
take measures in case of emergency for the defense of the Christian
population, and more especially of British subjects who are to a great
extent unprovided with adequate means of protection from the religious
furies of the Mussulmans. The lives of Christian women and children are
in hourly peril from fanatical hordes. The Knights will be carefully
chosen and kept within strict military control, and will be under
command of a practical soldier with large experience of the Eastern
countries. Templars and all other crusaders are invited to give aid and
sympathy.”

Apparently MacIver was not successful in enlisting many Knights, for
a war correspondent at the capital of Servia, waiting for the war to
begin, writes as follows:

“A Scotch soldier of fortune, Henry MacIver, a colonel by rank, has
arrived at Belgrade with a small contingent of military adventurers.
Five weeks ago I met him in Fleet Street, London, and had some talk
about his ‘expedition.’ He had received a commission from the Prince of
Servia to organize and command an independent cavalry brigade, and he
then was busily enrolling his volunteers into a body styled ‘The Knights
of the Red Cross.’ I am afraid some of his bold crusaders have earned
more distinction for their attacks on Fleet Street bars than they are
likely to earn on Servian battle-fields, but then I must not anticipate
history.”

Another paper tells that at the end of the first week of his service as
a Servian officer, MacIver had enlisted ninety men, but that they were
scattered about the town, many without shelter and rations:

“He assembled his men on the Rialto, and in spite of official
expostulation, the men were marched up to the Minister’s four
abreast--and they marched fairly well, making a good show. The War
Minister was taken by storm, and at once granted everything. It has
raised the English colonel’s popularity with his men to fever heat.”

This from the _Times_, London:

“Our Belgrade correspondent telegraphs last night:

“‘There is here at present a gentleman named MacIver. He came from
England to offer himself and his sword to the Servians. The Servian
Minister of War gave him a colonel’s commission. This morning I saw him
drilling about one hundred and fifty remarkably fine-looking fellows,
all clad in a good serviceable cavalry uniform, and he has horses.”’

Later we find that:

“Colonel MacIver’s Legion of Cavalry, organizing here, now numbers over
two hundred men.”

And again:

“Prince Nica, a Roumanian cousin of the Princess Natalie of Servia, has
joined Colonel MacIver’s cavalry corps.”

Later, in the _Court Journal_, October 28, 1876, we read:

“Colonel MacIver, who a few years ago was very well known in military
circles in Dublin, now is making his mark with the Servian army. In
the war against the Turks, he commands about one thousand Russo-Servian
cavalry.”

He was next to receive the following honors:

“Colonel MacIver has been appointed commander of the cavalry of the
Servian armies on the Morava and Timok, and has received the Cross of
the Takovo Order from General Tchemaieff for gallant conduct in the
field, and the gold medal for valor.”

Later we learn from the _Daily News_:

“Mr. Lewis Farley, Secretary of the ‘League in Aid of Christians of
Turkey,’ has received the following letter, dated Belgrade, October 10,
1876:

“‘DEAR SIR: In reference to the embroidered banner so kindly worked by
an English lady and forwarded by the League to Colonel MacIver, I have
great pleasure in conveying to you the following particulars. On Sunday
morning, the flag having been previously consecrated by the archbishop,
was conducted by a guard of honor to the palace, and Colonel MacIver,
in the presence of Prince Milan and a numerous suite, in the name and
on behalf of yourself and the fair donor, delivered it into the hands
of the Princess Natalie. The gallant Colonel wore upon this occasion his
full uniform as brigade commander and chief of cavalry of the Servian
army, and bore upon his breast the ‘Gold Cross of Takovo’ which he
received after the battles of the 28th and 30th of September, in
recognition of the heroism and bravery he displayed upon these eventful
days. The beauty of the decoration was enhanced by the circumstances
of its bestowal, for on the evening of the battle of the 30th, General
Tchernaieff approached Colonel MacIver, and, unclasping the cross from
his own breast, placed it upon that of the Colonel.

“‘(Signed.) HUGH JACKSON,

“‘_Member of Council of the League_.”

In Servia and in the Servian army MacIver reached what as yet is the
highest point of his career, and of his life the happiest period.

He was _general de brigade_, which is not what we know as a brigade
general, but is one who commands a division, a major-general. He was a
great favorite both at the palace and with the people, the pay was good,
fighting plentiful, and Belgrade gay and amusing. Of all the places
he has visited and the countries he has served, it is of this Balkan
kingdom that the general seems to speak most fondly and with the
greatest feeling. Of Queen Natalie he was and is a most loyal and
chivalric admirer, and was ever ready, when he found any one who did
not as greatly respect the lady, to offer him the choice of swords or
pistols. Even for Milan he finds an extenuating word.

After Servia the general raised more foreign legions, planned further
expeditions; in Central America reorganized the small armies of the
small republics, served as United States Consul, and offered his sword
to President McKinley for use against Spain. But with Servia the most
active portion of the life of the general ceased, and the rest has been
a repetition of what went before. At present his time is divided between
New York and Virginia, where he has been offered an executive position
in the approaching Jamestown Exposition. Both North and South he has
many friends, many admirers. But his life is, and, from the nature of
his profession, must always be, a lonely one.

While other men remain planted in one spot, gathering about them a home,
sons and daughters, an income for old age, MacIver is a rolling stone,
a piece of floating sea-weed; as the present King of England called him
fondly, “that vagabond soldier.”

To a man who has lived in the saddle and upon transports, “neighbor”
 conveys nothing, and even “comrade” too often means one who is no longer
living.

With the exception of the United States, of which he now is a
naturalized citizen, the general has fought for nearly every country in
the world, but if any of those for which he lost his health and blood,
and for which he risked his life, remembers him, it makes no sign. And
the general is too proud to ask to be remembered. To-day there is no
more interesting figure than this man who in years is still young enough
to lead an army corps, and who, for forty years, has been selling his
sword and risking his life for presidents, pretenders, charlatans, and
emperors.

He finds some mighty changes: Cuba, which he fought to free, is free;
men of the South, with whom for four years he fought shoulder to
shoulder, are now wearing the blue; the empire of Mexico, for which he
fought, is a republic; the empire of France, for which he fought, is a
republic; the empire of Brazil, for which he fought is a republic; the
dynasty in Servia, to which he owes his greatest honors, has been wiped
out by murder. From none of the eighteen countries he has served has he
a pension, berth, or billet, and at sixty he finds himself at home in
every land, but with a home in none.

Still he has his sword, his blanket, and in the event of war, to obtain
a commission he has only to open his tin boxes and show the commissions
already won. Indeed, any day, in a new uniform, and under the Nineteenth
Flag, the general may again be winning fresh victories and honors.

And so, this brief sketch of him is left unfinished. We will mark
it--_To be continued_.




BARON JAMES HARDEN-HICKEY

THIS is an attempt to tell the story of Baron Harden-Hickey, the Man Who
Made Himself King, the man who was born after his time.

If the reader, knowing something of the strange career of Harden-Hickey,
wonders why one writes of him appreciatively rather than in amusement,
he is asked not to judge Harden-Hickey as one judges a contemporary.

Harden-Hickey, in our day, was as incongruous a figure as was the
American at the Court of King Arthur; he was as unhappily out of the
picture as would be Cyrano de Bergerac on the floor of the Board
of Trade. Judged, as at the time he was judged, by writers of comic
paragraphs, by presidents of railroads, by amateur “statesmen” at
Washington, Harden-Hickey was a joke. To the vacant mind of the village
idiot, Rip Van Winkle returning to Falling Water also was a joke. The
people of our day had not the time to understand Harden-Hickey; they
thought him a charlatan, half a dangerous adventurer and half a fool;
and Harden-Hickey certainly did not under stand them. His last words,
addressed to his wife, showed this. They were: “I would rather die a
gentleman than live a blackguard like your father.”

As a matter of fact, his father-in-law, although living under the
disadvantage of being a Standard Oil magnate, neither was, nor is, a
blackguard, and his son-in-law had been treated by him generously
and with patience. But for the duellist and soldier of fortune it was
impossible to sympathize with a man who took no greater risk in life
than to ride on one of his own railroads, and of the views the two men
held of each other, that of John H. Flagler was probably the fairer and
the more kindly.

Harden-Hickey was one of the most picturesque, gallant, and pathetic
adventurers of our day; but Flagler also deserves our sympathy.

For an unimaginative and hard-working Standard Oil king to have a
D’Artagnan thrust upon him as a son-in-law must be trying.

James A. Harden-Hickey, James the First of Trinidad, Baron of the
Holy Roman Empire, was born on December 8, 1854. As to the date all
historians agree; as to where the important event took place they
differ. That he was born in France his friends are positive, but at the
time of his death in El Paso the San Francisco papers claimed him as a
native of California. All agree that his ancestors were Catholics and
Royalists who left Ireland with the Stuarts when they sought refuge in
France. The version which seems to be the most probable is that he was
born in San Francisco, where as one of the early settlers, his father,
E. C. Hickey, was well known, and that early in his life, in order to
educate him, the mother took him to Europe.

There he was educated at the Jesuit College at Namur, then at Leipsic,
and later entered the Military College of St. Cyr.

James the First was one of those boys who never had the misfortune to
grow up. To the moment of his death, in all he planned you can trace the
effects of his early teachings and environment; the influences of the
great Church that nursed him, and of the city of Paris, in which he
lived. Under the Second Empire, Paris was at her maddest, baddest, and
best. To-day under the republic, without a court, with a society kept in
funds by the self-expatriated wives and daughters of our business men,
she lacks the reasons for which Baron Haussmann bedecked her and made
her beautiful. The good Loubet, the worthy Fallieres, except that they
furnish the cartoonist with subjects for ridicule, do not add to the
gayety of Paris. But when Harden-Hickey was a boy, Paris was never so
carelessly gay, so brilliant, never so overcharged with life, color, and
adventure.

In those days “the Emperor sat in his box that night,” and in the box
opposite sat Cora Pearl; veterans of the campaign of Italy, of Mexico,
from the desert fights of Algiers, sipped sugar and water in front of
Tortoni’s, the Cafe Durand, the Cafe Riche; the sidewalks rang with
their sabres, the boulevards were filled with the colors of the gorgeous
uniforms; all night of each night the Place Vendome shone with the
carriage lamps of the visiting pashas from Egypt, of nabobs from
India, of _rastaquoueres_ from the sister empire of Brazil; the state
carriages, with the outriders and postilions in the green and gold of
the Empress, swept through the Champs Elysees, and at the Bal Bulier,
and at Mabile the students and “grisettes” introduced the cancan. The
men of those days were Hugo, Thiers, Dumas, Daudet, Alfred de Musset;
the magnificent blackguard, the Duc de Morny, and the great, simple
Canrobert, the captain of barricades, who became a marshal of France.

Over all was the mushroom Emperor, his anterooms crowded with the
titled charlatans of Europe, his court radiant with countesses created
overnight. And it was the Emperor, with his love of theatrical display,
of gorgeous ceremonies; with his restless reaching after military glory,
the weary, cynical adventurer, that the boy at St. Cyr took as his
model.

Royalist as was Harden-Hickey by birth and tradition, and Royalist as
he always remained, it was the court at the Tuileries that filled his
imagination. The Bourbons, whom he served, hoped some day for a court;
at the Tuileries there was a court, glittering before his physical eyes.
The Bourbons were pleasant old gentlemen, who later willingly supported
him, and for whom always he was equally willing to fight, either with
his sword or his pen. But to the last, in his mind, he carried pictures
of the Second Empire as he, as a boy, had known it.

Can you not imagine the future James the First, barelegged, in a
black-belted smock, halting with his nurse, or his priest, to gaze up in
awestruck delight at the great, red-breeched Zouaves lounging on guard
at the Tuileries?

“When I grow up,” said little James to himself, not knowing that he
never would grow up, “I shall have Zouaves for _my_ palace guard.”

And twenty years later, when he laid down the laws for his little
kingdom, you find that the officers of his court must wear the mustache,
“_a la_ Louis Napoleon,” and that the Zouave uniform will be worn by the
Palace Guards.

In 1883, while he still was at the War College, his father died, and
when he graduated, which he did with honors, he found himself his own
master. His assets were a small income, a perfect knowledge of the
French language, and the reputation of being one of the most expert
swordsman in Paris. He chose not to enter the army, and instead became
a journalist, novelist, duellist, an _habitue_ of the Latin Quarter and
the boulevards.

As a novelist the titles of his books suggest their quality. Among
them are: “Un Amour Vendeen,” “Lettres d’un Yankee,” “Un Amour dans
le Monde,” “Memoires d’un Gommeux,” “Merveilleuses Aventures de
Nabuchodonosor, Nosebreaker.”

Of the Catholic Church he wrote seriously, apparently with deep
conviction, with high enthusiasm. In her service as a defender of the
faith he issued essays, pamphlets, “broadsides.” The opponents of the
Church in Paris he attacked relentlessly.

As a reward for his championship he received the title of baron.

In 1878, while only twenty-four, he married the Countess de Saint-Pery,
by whom he had two children, a boy and a girl, and three years later
he started _Triboulet_. It was this paper that made him famous to “all
Paris.”

It was a Royalist sheet, subsidized by the Count de Chambord and
published in the interest of the Bourbons. Until 1888 Harden-Hickey was
its editor, and even by his enemies it must be said that he served his
employers with zeal. During the seven years in which the paper amused
Paris and annoyed the republican government, as its editor Harden-Hickey
was involved in forty-two lawsuits, for different editorial
indiscretions, fined three hundred thousand francs, and was a principal
in countless duels.

To his brother editors his standing interrogation was: “Would you prefer
to meet me upon the editorial page, or in the Bois de Boulogne?” Among
those who met him in the Bois were Aurelien Scholl, H. Lavenbryon, M.
Taine, M. de Cyon, Philippe Du Bois, Jean Moreas.

In 1888, either because, his patron the Count de Chambord having died,
there was no more money to pay the fines, or because the patience of
the government was exhausted, _Triboulet_ ceased to exist, and
Harden-Hickey, claiming the paper had been suppressed and he himself
exiled, crossed to London.

From there he embarked upon a voyage around the world, which lasted two
years, and in the course of which he discovered the island kingdom of
which he was to be the first and last king. Previous to his departure,
having been divorced from the Countess de Saint-Pery, he placed his boy
and girl in the care of a fellow-journalist and very dear friend, the
Count de la Boissiere, of whom later we shall hear more.

Harden-Hickey started around the world on the _Astoria_, a British
merchant vessel bound for India by way of Cape Horn, Captain Jackson
commanding.

When off the coast of Brazil the ship touched at the uninhabited island
of Trinidad. Historians of James the First say that it was through
stress of weather that the _Astoria_ was driven to seek refuge there,
but as, for six months of the year, to make a landing on the island is
almost impossible, and as at any time, under stress of weather, Trinidad
would be a place to avoid, it is more likely Jackson put in to replenish
his water-casks, or to obtain a supply of turtle meat.

Or it may have been that, having told Harden-Hickey of the derelict
island, the latter persuaded the captain to allow him to land and
explore it. Of this, at least, we are certain, a boat was sent ashore,
Harden-Hickey went ashore in it, and before he left the island, as a
piece of no man’s land, belonging to no country, he claimed it in his
own name, and upon the beach raised a flag of his own design.

The island of Trinidad claimed by Harden-Hickey must not be confused
with the larger Trinidad belonging to Great Britain and lying off
Venezuela.

The English Trinidad is a smiling, peaceful spot of great tropical
beauty; it is one of the fairest places in the West Indies. At every
hour of the year the harbor of Port of Spain holds open its arms to
vessels of every draught. A governor in a pith helmet, a cricket club, a
bishop in gaiters, and a botanical garden go to make it a prosperous
and contented colony. But the little derelict Trinidad, in latitude
20 degrees 30 minutes south, and longitude 29 degrees 22 minutes west,
seven hundred miles from the coast of Brazil, is but a spot upon the
ocean. On most maps it is not even a spot. Except by birds, turtles, and
hideous land-crabs, it is uninhabited; and against the advances of man
its shores are fortified with cruel ridges of coral, jagged limestone
rocks, and a tremendous towering surf which, even in a dead calm, beats
many feet high against the coast.

In 1698 Dr. Halley visited the island, and says he found nothing living
but doves and land-crabs. “Saw many green turtles in sea, but by reason
of the great surf, could catch none.”

After Halley’s visit, in 1700 the island was settled by a few Portuguese
from Brazil. The ruins of their stone huts are still in evidence. But
Amaro Delano, who called in 1803, makes no mention of the Portuguese;
and when, in 1822, Commodore Owen visited Trinidad, he found nothing
living there save cormorants, petrels, gannets, man-of-war birds, and
“turtles weighing from five hundred to seven hundred pounds.”

In 1889 E. F. Knight, who in the Japanese-Russian War represented the
London _Morning Post_, visited Trinidad in his yacht in search of buried
treasure.

Alexander Dalrymple, in his book entitled “Collection of Voages, chiefly
in the Southern Atlantick Ocean, 1775,” tells how, in 1700, he “took
possession of the island in his Majesty’s name as knowing it to be
granted by the King’s letter patent, leaving a Union Jack flying.”

So it appears that before Harden-Hickey seized the island it already had
been claimed by Great Britain, and later, on account of the Portuguese
settlement, by Brazil. The answer Harden-Hickey made to these claims
was that the English never settled in Trinidad, and that the Portuguese
abandoned it, and, therefore, their claims lapsed. In his “prospectus”
 of his island, Harden-Hickey himself describes it thus:

“Trinidad is about five miles long and three miles wide. In spite of
its rugged and uninviting appearance, the inland plateaus are rich with
luxuriant vegetation.

“Prominent among this is a peculiar species of bean, which is not only
edible, but extremely palatable. The surrounding seas swarm with fish,
which as yet are wholly unsuspicious of the hook. Dolphins, rock-cod,
pigfish, and blackfish may be caught as quickly as they can be hauled
out. I look to the sea birds and the turtles to afford our principal
source of revenue. Trinidad is the breeding-place of almost the entire
feathery population of the South Atlantic Ocean. The exportation of
guano alone should make my little country prosperous. Turtles visit the
island to deposit eggs, and at certain seasons the beach is literally
alive with them. The only drawback to my projected kingdom is the fact
that it has no good harbor and can be approached only when the sea is
calm.”

As a matter of fact sometimes months pass before it is possible to
effect a landing.

Another asset of the island held out by the prospectus was its great
store of buried treasure. Before Harden-Hickey seized the island, this
treasure had made it known. This is the legend. In 1821 a great store
of gold and silver plate plundered from Peruvian churches had been
concealed on the islands by pirates near Sugar Loaf Hill, on the shore
of what is known as the Southwest Bay. Much of this plate came from
the cathedral at Lima, having been carried from there during the war
of independence when the Spanish residents fled the country. In their
eagerness to escape they put to sea in any ship that offered, and these
unarmed and unseaworthy vessels fell an easy prey to pirates. One of
these pirates on his death-bed, in gratitude to his former captain, told
him the secret of the treasure. In 1892 this captain was still living,
in Newcastle, England, and although his story bears a family resemblance
to every other story of buried treasure, there were added to the tale of
the pirate some corroborative details. These, in twelve years, induced
five different expeditions to visit the island. The two most important
were that of E. F. Knight and one from the Tyne in the bark _Aurea_.

In his “Cruise of the _Alerte_,” Knight gives a full description of the
island, and of his attempt to find the treasure. In this, a landslide
having covered the place where it was buried, he was unsuccessful.

But Knight’s book is the only source of accurate information concerning
Trinidad, and in writing his prospectus it is evident that Harden-Hickey
was forced to borrow from it freely. Knight himself says that the most
minute and accurate description of Trinidad is to be found in the “Frank
Mildmay” of Captain Marryat. He found it so easy to identify each spot
mentioned in the novel that he believes the author of “Midshipman Easy”
 himself touched there.

After seizing Trinidad, Harden-Hickey rounded the Cape and made north to
Japan, China, and India. In India he became interested in Buddhism, and
remained for over a year questioning the priests of that religion and
studying its tenets and history.

On his return to Paris, in 1890, he met Miss Annie Harper Flagler,
daughter of John H. Flagler. A year later, on St. Patrick’s Day,
1891, at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, Miss Flagler became the
Baroness Harden-Hickey. The Rev. John Hall married them.

For the next two years Harden-Hickey lived in New York, but so quietly
that, except that he lived quietly, it is difficult to find out anything
concerning him. The man who, a few years before, had delighted Paris
with his daily feuilletons, with his duels, with his forty-two lawsuits,
who had been the master of revels in the Latin Quarter, in New York
lived almost as a recluse, writing a book on Buddhism. While he was in
New York I was a reporter on the _Evening Sun_, but I cannot recall ever
having read his name in the newspapers of that day, and I heard of him
only twice; once as giving an exhibition of his water-colors at the
American Art Galleries, and again as the author of a book I found in a
store in Twenty-second Street, just east of Broadway, then the home of
the Truth Seeker Publishing Company.

It was a grewsome compilation and had just appeared in print. It was
called “Euthanasia, or the Ethics of Suicide.” This book was an apology
or plea for self-destruction. In it the baron laid down those occasions
when he considered suicide pardonable, and when obligatory. To support
his arguments and to show that suicide was a noble act, he quoted Plato,
Cicero, Shakespeare, and even misquoted the Bible. He gave a list of
poisons, and the amount of each necessary to kill a human being. To show
how one can depart from life with the least pain, he illustrated the
text with most unpleasant pictures, drawn by himself.

The book showed how far Harden-Hickey had strayed from the teachings
of the Jesuit College at Namur, and of the Church that had made him
“noble.”

All of these two years had not been spent only in New York.
Harden-Hickey made excursions to California, to Mexico, and to Texas,
and in each of these places bought cattle ranches and mines. The money
to pay for these investments came from his father-in-law. But not
directly. Whenever he wanted money he asked his wife, or De la
Boissiere, who was a friend also of Flagler, to obtain it for him.

His attitude toward his father-in-law is difficult to explain. It is not
apparent that Flagler ever did anything which could justly offend him;
indeed, he always seems to have spoken of his son-in-law with tolerance,
and often with awe, as one would speak of a clever, wayward child. But
Harden-Hickey chose to regard Flagler as his enemy, as a sordid man
of business who could not understand the feelings and aspirations of a
genius and a gentleman.

Before Harden-Hickey married, the misunderstanding between his wife’s
father and himself began. Because he thought Harden-Hickey was marrying
his daughter for her money, Flagler opposed the union. Consequently,
Harden-Hickey married Miss Flagler without “settlements,” and for the
first few years supported her without aid from her father. But his
wife had been accustomed to a manner of living beyond the means of the
soldier of fortune, and soon his income, and then even his capital, was
exhausted. From her mother the baroness inherited a fortune. This was
in the hands of her father as executor. When his own money was gone,
Harden-Hickey endeavored to have the money belonging to his wife placed
to her credit, or to his. To this, it is said, Flagler, on the ground
that Harden-Hickey was not a man of business, while he was, objected,
and urged that he was, and that if it remained in his hands the money
would be better invested and better expended. It was the refusal of
Flagler to intrust Harden-Hickey with the care of his wife’s money that
caused the breach between them.

As I have said, you cannot judge Harden-Hickey as you would a
contemporary. With the people among whom he was thrown, his ideas were
entirely out of joint. He should have lived in the days of “The Three
Musketeers.” People who looked upon him as working for his own hand
entirely misunderstood him. He was absolutely honest, and as absolutely
without a sense of humor. To him, to pay taxes, to pay grocers’ bills,
to depend for protection upon a policeman, was intolerable. He lived
in a world of his own imagining. And one day, in order to make his
imaginings real, and to escape from his father-in-law’s unromantic world
of Standard Oil and Florida hotels, in a proclamation to the powers
he announced himself as King James the First of the Principality of
Trinidad.

The proclamation failed to create a world crisis. Several of the powers
recognized his principality and his title; but, as a rule, people
laughed, wondered, and forgot. That the daughter of John Flagler was
to rule the new principality gave it a “news interest,” and for a few
Sundays in the supplements she was hailed as the “American Queen.”

When upon the subject of the new kingdom Flagler himself was
interviewed, he showed an open mind.

“My son-in-law is a very determined man,” he said; “he will carry out
any scheme in which he is interested. Had he consulted me about this,
I would have been glad to have aided him with money or advice. My
son-in-law is an extremely well-read, refined, well-bred man. He does
not court publicity. While he was staying in my house he spent nearly
all the time in the library translating an Indian book on Buddhism. My
daughter has no ambition to be a queen or anything else than what she
is--an American girl. But my son-in-law means to carry on this Trinidad
scheme, and--he will.”

From his father-in-law, at least, Harden-Hickey could not complain that
he had met with lack of sympathy.

The rest of America was amused; and after less than nine days,
indifferent. But Harden-Hickey, though unobtrusively, none the less
earnestly continued to play the part of king. His friend De la Boissiere
he appointed his Minister of Foreign Affairs, and established in a
Chancellery at 217 West Thirty-sixth Street, New York, and from there
was issued a sort of circular, or prospectus, written by the king, and
signed by “Le Grand Chancelier, Secretaire d’Etat pour les Affaires
Etrangeres, M. le Comte de la Boissiere.”

The document, written in French, announced that the new state would
be governed by a military dictatorship, that the royal standard was a
yellow triangle on a red ground, and that the arms of the principality
were “d’Or chape de Gueules.” It pointed out naively that those who
first settled on the island would be naturally the oldest inhabitants,
and hence would form the aristocracy. But only those who at home enjoyed
social position and some private fortune would be admitted into this
select circle.

For itself the state reserved a monopoly of the guano, of the turtles,
and of the buried treasure. And both to discover the treasure and to
encourage settlers to dig and so cultivate the soil, a percentage of the
treasure was promised to the one who found it.

Any one purchasing ten $200 bonds was entitled to a free passage to the
island, and after a year, should he so desire it, a return trip. The
hard work was to be performed by Chinese coolies, the aristocracy
existing beautifully, and, according to the prospectus, to enjoy _“vie
d’un genre tout nouveau, et la recherche de sensations nouvelles.”_

To reward his subjects for prominence in literature, the arts, and the
sciences, his Majesty established an order of chivalry. The official
document creating this order reads:


“We, James, Prince of Trinidad, have resolved to commemorate our
accession to the throne of Trinidad by the institution of an Order of
Chivalry, destined to reward literature, industry, science, and the
human virtues, and by these presents have established and do institute,
with cross and crown, the Order of the Insignia of the Cross of
Trinidad, of which we and our heirs and successors shall be the
sovereigns.

“Given in our Chancellery the Eighth of the month of December, one
thousand eight hundred and ninety-three, and of our reign, the First
Year.

“JAMES.”

There were four grades: Chevalier, Commander, Grand Officer, and Grand
Cross; and the name of each member of the order was inscribed in
“The Book of Gold.” A pension of one thousand francs was given to a
Chevalier, of two thousand francs to a Commander, and of three thousand
francs to a Grand Officer. Those of the grade of Grand Cross were
content with a plaque of eight diamond-studded rays, with, in the
centre, set in red enamel, the arms of Trinidad. The ribbon was red and
yellow.

A rule of the order read: “The costume shall be identical with that of
the Chamberlains of the Court of Trinidad, save the buttons, which shall
bear the impress of the Crown of the Order.”

For himself, King James commissioned a firm of jewelers to construct a
royal crown. In design it was similar to the one which surmounted the
cross of Trinidad. It is shown in the photograph of the insignia. Also,
the king issued a set of postage-stamps on which was a picture of
the island. They were of various colors and denominations, and among
stamp-collectors enjoyed a certain sale.

To-day, as I found when I tried to procure one to use in this book, they
are worth many times their face value.

For some time the affairs of the new kingdom progressed favorably. In
San Francisco, King James, in person, engaged four hundred coolies and
fitted out a schooner which he sent to Trinidad, where it made regular
trips between his principality and Brazil; an agent was established
on the island, and the construction of docks, wharves, and houses
was begun, while at the chancellery in West Thirty-sixth Street, the
Minister of Foreign Affairs was ready to furnish would-be settlers with
information.

And then, out of a smiling sky, a sudden and unexpected blow was struck
at the independence of the little kingdom. It was a blow from which it
never recovered.

In July of 1895, while constructing a cable to Brazil, Great Britain
found the Island of Trinidad lying in the direct line she wished to
follow, and, as a cable station, seized it. Objection to this was made
by Brazil, and at Bahia a mob with stones pelted the sign of the English
Consul-General.

By right of Halley’s discovery, England claimed the island; as a
derelict from the main land, Brazil also claimed it. Between the rivals,
the world saw a chance for war, and the fact that the island really
belonged to our King James for a moment was forgotten.

But the Minister of Foreign Affairs was at his post. With promptitude
and vigor he acted. He addressed a circular note to all the powers of
Europe, and to our State Department a protest. It read as follows:


  “GRANDE CHANCELLERIE DE LA PRINCIPAUTE DE
  TRINIDAD,
  27 WEST THIRTY-SIXTH STREET,
  NEW YORK CITY, U. S. A.,

“NEW YORK, _July_ 30, 1895.

_“To His Excellency Mr. the Secretary of State of the Republic of the
United States of North America, Washington, D. C.:_

“EXCELLENCY.--I have the honor to recall to your memory:

“1. That in the course of the month of September, 1893, Baron
Harden-Hickey officially notified all the Powers of his taking
possession of the uninhabited island of Trinidad; and

“2. That in course of January, 1894, he renewed to all these Powers the
official notification of the said taking of possession, and informed
them at the same time that from that date the land would be known
as ‘Principality of Trinidad’; that he took the title of ‘Prince of
Trinidad,’ and would reign under the name of James I.

“In consequence of these official notifications several Powers have
recognized the new Principality and its Prince, and at all events none
thought it necessary at that epoch to raise objections or formulate
opposition.

“The press of the entire world has, on the other hand, often acquainted
readers with these facts, thus giving to them all possible publicity. In
consequence of the accomplishment of these various formalities, and
as the law of nations prescribes that ‘derelict’ territories belong to
whoever will take possession of them, and as the island of Trinidad,
which has been abandoned for years, certainly belongs to the aforesaid
category, his Serene Highness Prince James I was authorized to regard
his rights on the said island as perfectly valid and indisputable.

“Nevertheless, your Excellency knows that recently, in spite of all
the legitimate rights of my august sovereign, an English war-ship
has disembarked at Trinidad a detachment of armed troops and taken
possession of the island in the name of England.

“Following this assumption of territory, the Brazilian Government,
invoking a right of ancient Portuguese occupation (long ago outlawed),
has notified the English Government to surrender the island to Brazil.

“I beg of your Excellency to ask of the Government of the United
States of North America to recognize the Principality of Trinidad as
an independent State, and to come to an understanding with the other
American Powers in order to guarantee its neutrality.

“Thus the Government of the United States of North America will once
more accord its powerful assistance to the cause of right and of
justice, misunderstood by England and Brazil, put an end to a situation
which threatens to disturb the peace, re-establish concord between two
great States ready to appeal to arms, and affirm itself, moreover, as
the faithful interpreter of the Monroe Doctrine.

“In the expectation of your reply please accept, Excellency, the
expression of my elevated consideration.

“The Grand Chancellor, Secretary for Foreign Affairs,

“COMTE DE LA BOISSIERE.”

At that time Richard Olney was Secretary of State, and in his treatment
of the protest, and of the gentleman who wrote it, he fully upheld the
reputation he made while in office of lack of good manners. Saying he
was unable to read the handwriting in which the protest was written,
he disposed of it in a way that would suggest itself naturally to a
statesman and a gentleman. As a “crank” letter he turned it over to the
Washington correspondents. You can imagine what they did with it.

The day following the reporters in New York swept down upon the
chancellery and upon the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was the “silly
season” in August, there was no real news in town, and the troubles of
De la Boissiere were allowed much space.

They laughed at him and at his king, at his chancellery, at his broken
English, at his “grave and courtly manners,” even at his clothes. But in
spite of the ridicule, between the lines you could read that to the man
himself it all was terribly real.

I had first heard of the island of Trinidad from two men I knew
who spent three months on it searching for the treasure, and when
Harden-Hickey proclaimed himself lord of the island, through the papers
I had carefully followed his fortunes. So, partly out of curiosity and
partly out of sympathy, I called at the chancellery.

I found it in a brownstone house, in a dirty neighborhood just west of
Seventh Avenue, and of where now stands the York Hotel. Three weeks ago
I revisited it and found it unchanged. At the time of my first visit,
on the jamb of the front door was pasted a piece of paper on which
was written in the handwriting of De la Boissiere: “Chancellerie de la
Principaute de Trinidad.”

The chancellery was not exactly in its proper setting. On its door-step
children of the tenements were playing dolls with clothes-pins; in the
street a huckster in raucous tones was offering wilted cabbages to women
in wrappers leaning from the fire escapes; the smells and the heat of
New York in midsummer rose from the asphalt. It was a far cry to the
wave-swept island off the coast of Brazil.

De la Boissiere received me with distrust. The morning papers had made
him man-shy; but, after a few “Your Excellencies” and a respectful
inquiry regarding “His Royal Highness,” his confidence revived. In the
situation he saw nothing humorous, not even in an announcement on the
wall which read: “Sailings to Trinidad.” Of these there were _two_; on
March 1, and on October 1. On the table were many copies of the
royal proclamation, the postage-stamps of the new government, the
thousand-franc bonds, and, in pasteboard boxes, the gold and red
enamelled crosses of the Order of Trinidad.

He talked to me frankly and fondly of Prince James. Indeed, I never
met any man who knew Harden-Hickey well who did not speak of him with
aggressive loyalty. If at his eccentricities they smiled, it was with
the smile of affection. It was easy to see De la Boissiere regarded him
not only with the affection of a friend, but with the devotion of a
true subject. In his manner he himself was courteous, gentle, and so
distinguished that I felt as though I were enjoying, on intimate terms,
an audience with one of the prime-ministers of Europe.

And he, on his part, after the ridicule of the morning papers, to have
any one with outward seriousness accept his high office and his king,
was, I believe, not ungrateful.

I told him I wished to visit Trinidad, and in that I was quite serious.
The story of an island filled with buried treasure, and governed by a
king, whose native subjects were turtles and seagulls, promised to make
interesting writing.

The count was greatly pleased. I believe in me he saw his first
bona-fide settler, and when I rose to go he even lifted one of
the crosses of Trinidad and, before my envious eyes, regarded it
uncertainly.

Perhaps, had he known that of all decorations it was the one I
most desired; had I only then and there booked my passage, or sworn
allegiance to King James, who knows but that to-day I might be a
chevalier, with my name in the “Book of Gold”? But instead of bending
the knee, I reached for my hat; the count replaced the cross in its
pasteboard box, and for me the psychological moment had passed.

Others, more deserving of the honor, were more fortunate. Among my
fellow-reporters who, like myself, came to scoff, and remained to pray,
was Henri Pene du Bois, for some time, until his recent death, the
brilliant critic of art and music of the _American_. Then he was on
the _Times_, and Henry N. Cary, now of the _Morning Telegraph_, was his
managing editor.

When Du Bois reported to Cary on his assignment, he said: “There is
nothing funny in that story. It’s pathetic. Both those men are in
earnest. They are convinced they are being robbed of their rights. Their
only fault is that they have imagination, and that the rest of us lack
it. That’s the way it struck me, and that’s the way the story ought to
be written.”

“Write it that way,” said Cary.

So, of all the New York papers, the _Times_, for a brief period, became
the official organ of the Government of James the First, and in time
Cary and Du Bois were created Chevaliers of the Order of Trinidad, and
entitled to wear uniforms “Similar to those of the Chamberlains of the
Court, save that the buttons bear the impress of the Royal Crown.”

The attack made by Great Britain and Brazil upon the independence of the
principality, while it left Harden-Hickey in the position of a king in
exile, brought him at once another crown, which, by those who offered
it to him, was described as of incomparably greater value than that of
Trinidad.

In the first instance the man had sought the throne; in this case the
throne sought the man.

In 1893 in San Francisco, Ralston J. Markowe, a lawyer and a one-time
officer of artillery in the United States army, gained renown as one
of the Morrow filibustering expedition which attempted to overthrow the
Dole government in the Hawaiian Isles and restore to the throne Queen
Liliuokalani. In San Francisco Markowe was nicknamed the “Prince of
Honolulu,” as it was understood, should Liliuokalani regain her
crown, he would be rewarded with some high office. But in the star
of Liliuokalani, Markowe apparently lost faith, and thought he saw
in Harden-Hickey timber more suitable for king-making. Accordingly,
twenty-four days after the “protest” was sent to our State Department,
Markowe switched his allegiance to Harden-Hickey, and to him addressed
the following letter:

“SAN FRANCISCO, August 26, 1895.

BARON HARDEN-HICKEY, LOS ANGELES, CAL.:

“Monseigneur--Your favor of August 16 has been received.

“1. I am the duly authorized agent of the Royalist party in so far as
it is possible for any one to occupy that position under existing
circumstances. With the Queen in prison and absolutely cut off from
all communication with her friends, it is out of the question for me to
carry anything like formal credentials.

“2. Alienating any part of the territory cannot give rise to any
constitutional questions, for the reason that the constitutions, like
the land tenures, are in a state of such utter confusion that only a
strong hand can unravel them, and the restoration will result in the
establishment of a strong military government. If I go down with the
expedition I have organized I shall be in full control of the situation
and in a position to carry out all my contracts.

“3. It is the island of Kauai on which I propose to establish you as an
independent sovereign.

“4. My plan is to successively occupy all the islands, leaving the
capital to the last. When the others have fallen, the capital, being cut
off from all its resources, will be easily taken, and may very likely
fall without effort. I don’t expect in any case to have to fortify
myself or to take the defensive, or to have to issue a call to arms, as
I shall have an overwhelming force to join me at once, in addition to
those who go with me, who by themselves will be sufficient to carry
everything before them without active cooperation from the people there.

“5. The Government forces consist of about 160 men and boys, with very
imperfect military training, and of whom about forty are officers. They
are organized as infantry. There are also about 600 citizens enrolled
as a reserve guard, who may be called upon in case of an emergency,
and about 150 police. We can fully rely upon the assistance of all the
police and from one-quarter to one-half of the other troops. And of the
remainder many will under no circumstances engage in a sharp fight in
defense of the present government. There are now on the island plenty
of men and arms to accomplish our purpose, and if my expedition does
not get off very soon the people there will be organized to do the work
without other assistance from here than the direction of a few leaders,
of which they stand more in need than anything else.

“6. The tonnage of the vessel is 146. She at present has berth-room for
twenty men, but bunks can be arranged in the hold for 256 more, with
provision for ample ventilation. She has one complete set of sails and
two extra spars. The remaining information in regard to her I will have
to obtain and send you to-morrow. I think it must be clear to you that
the opportunity now offered you will be of incomparably greater value
at once than Trinidad would ever be. Still hoping that I may have an
interview with you at an early date, respectfully yours,

“RALSTON J. MARKOWE.”

What Harden-Hickey thought of this is not known, but as two weeks before
he received it he had written Markowe, asking him by what authority he
represented the Royalists of Honolulu, it seems evident that when the
crown of Hawaii was first proffered him he did not at once spurn it.

He now was in the peculiar position of being a deposed king of an island
in the South Atlantic, which had been taken from him, and king-elect of
an island in the Pacific, which was his if he could take it.

This was in August of 1895. For the two years following, Harden-Hickey
was a soldier of misfortunes. Having lost his island kingdom, he could
no longer occupy himself with plans for its improvement. It had been
his toy. They had taken it from him, and the loss and the ridicule which
followed hurt him bitterly.

And for the lands he really owned in Mexico and California, and which,
if he were to live in comfort, it was necessary he should sell, he
could find no purchaser; and, moreover, having quarrelled with his
father-in-law, he had cut off his former supply of money. The need of it
pinched him cruelly.

The advertised cause of this quarrel was sufficiently characteristic
to be the real one. Moved by the attack of Great Britain upon his
principality, Harden-Hickey decided upon reprisals. It must be
remembered that always he was more Irish than French. On paper
he organized an invasion of England from Ireland, the home of his
ancestors. It was because Flagler refused to give him money for this
adventure that he broke with him. His friends say this was the real
reason of the quarrel, which was a quarrel on the side of Harden-Hickey
alone.

And there were other, more intimate troubles. While not separated from
his wife, he now was seldom in her company. When the Baroness was in
Paris, Harden-Hickey was in San Francisco; when she returned to San
Francisco, he was in Mexico. The fault seems to have been his. He was
greatly admired by pretty women. His daughter by his first wife, now a
very beautiful girl of sixteen, spent much time with her stepmother;
and when not on his father’s ranch in Mexico, his son also, for months
together, was at her side. The husband approved of this, but he himself
saw his wife infrequently. Nevertheless, early in the spring of 1898,
the Baroness leased a house in Brockton Square, in Riverside, Cal.,
where it was understood by herself and by her friends her husband would
join her. At that time in Mexico he was trying to dispose of a large
tract of land. Had he been able to sell it, the money for a time would
have kept one even of his extravagances contentedly rich. At least,
he would have been independent of his wife and of her father. Up to
February of 1898 his obtaining this money seemed probable.

Early in that month the last prospective purchaser decided not to buy.

There is no doubt that had Harden-Hickey then turned to his
father-in-law, that gentleman, as he had done before, would have opened
an account for him.

But the Prince of Trinidad felt he could no longer beg, even for the
money belonging to his wife, from the man he had insulted. He could no
longer ask his wife to intercede for him. He was without money of his
own, with out the means of obtaining it; from his wife he had ceased to
expect even sympathy, and from the world he knew, the fact that he was
a self-made king caused him always to be pointed out with ridicule as a
charlatan, as a jest.

The soldier of varying fortunes, the duellist and dreamer, the devout
Catholic and devout Buddhist, saw the forty-third year of his life only
as the meeting-place of many fiascos.

His mind was tormented with imaginary wrongs, imaginary slights,
imaginary failures.

This young man, who could paint pictures, write books, organize colonies
oversea, and with a sword pick the buttons from a waistcoat, forgot the
twenty good years still before him; forgot that men loved him for the
mistakes he had made; that in parts of the great city of Paris his name
was still spoken fondly, still was famous and familiar.

In his book on the “Ethics of Suicide,” for certain hard places in life
he had laid down an inevitable rule of conduct.

As he saw it he had come to one of those hard places, and he would not
ask of others what he himself would not perform.

From Mexico he set out for California, but not to the house his wife had
prepared for him.

Instead, on February 9, 1898, at El Paso, he left the train and
registered at a hotel.

At 7.30 in the evening he went to his room, and when, on the following
morning, they kicked in the door, they found him stretched rigidly upon
the bed, like one lying in state, with, near his hand, a half-emptied
bottle of poison.

On a chair was pinned this letter to his wife:

“My DEAREST,--No news from you, although you have had plenty of time to
write. Harvey has written me that he has no one in view at present to
buy my land. Well, I shall have tasted the cup of bitterness to the very
dregs, but I do not complain. Good-by. I forgive you your conduct toward
me and trust you will be able to forgive yourself. I prefer to be a dead
gentleman to a living blackguard like your father.”


And when they searched his open trunk for something that might identify
the body on the bed, they found the crown of Trinidad.

You can imagine it: the mean hotel bedroom, the military figure with
its white face and mustache, “_a la_ Louis Napoleon,” at rest upon the
pillow, the startled drummers and chambermaids peering in from the hall,
and the landlord, or coroner, or doctor, with a bewildered countenance,
lifting to view the royal crown of gilt and velvet.

The other actors in this, as Harold Frederic called it, “Opera Bouffe
Monarchy,” are still living.

The Baroness Harden-Hickey makes her home in this country.

The Count de la Boissiere, ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, is still a
leader of the French colony in New York, and a prosperous commission
merchant with a suite of offices on Fifty-fourth Street. By the will of
Harden-Hickey he is executor of his estate, guardian of his children,
and what, for the purpose of this article, is of more importance, in
his hands lies the future of the kingdom of Trinidad. When Harden-Hickey
killed himself the title to the island was in dispute. Should young
Harden-Hickey wish to claim it, it still would be in dispute. Meanwhile,
by the will of the First James, De la Boissiere is appointed perpetual
regent, a sort of “receiver,” and executor of the principality.

To him has been left a royal decree signed and sealed, but blank. In the
will the power to fill in this blank with a statement showing the final
disposition of the island has been bestowed upon De la Boissiere.

So, some day, he may proclaim the accession of a new king, and give a
new lease of life to the kingdom of which Harden-Hickey dreamed.

But unless his son, or wife, or daughter should assert his or her
rights, which is not likely to happen, so ends the dynasty of James the
First of Trinidad, Baron of the Holy Roman Empire.

To the wise ones in America he was a fool, and they laughed at him; to
the wiser ones, he was a clever rascal who had evolved a new real-estate
scheme and was out to rob the people--and they respected him. To my
mind, of them all, Harden-Hickey was the wisest.

Granted one could be serious, what could be more delightful than to be
your own king on your own island?

The comic paragraphers, the business men of “hard, common sense,” the
captains of industry who laughed at him and his national resources
of buried treasure, turtles’ eggs, and guano, with his body-guard of
Zouaves and his Grand Cross of Trinidad, certainly possessed many things
that Harden-Hickey lacked. But they in turn lacked the things that made
him happy; the power to “make believe,” the love of romance, the touch
of adventure that plucked him by the sleeve.

When, as boys, we used to say: “Let’s pretend we’re pirates,” as a man,
Harden-Hickey begged: “Let’s pretend I’m a king.”

But the trouble was, the other boys had grown up and would not pretend.

For some reason his end always reminds me of the closing line of
Pinero’s play, when the adventuress, Mrs. Tanqueray, kills herself, and
her virtuous stepchild says: “If we had only been kinder!”




WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL

IN the strict sense of the phrase, a soldier of fortune is a man who for
pay, or for the love of adventure, fights under the flag of any country.

In the bigger sense he is the kind of man who in any walk of life makes
his own fortune, who, when he sees it coming, leaps to meet it, and
turns it to his advantage.

Than Winston Spencer Churchill to-day there are few young men--and he is
a very young man--who have met more varying fortunes, and none who has
more frequently bent them to his own advancement. To him it has been
indifferent whether, at the moment, the fortune seemed good or evil, in
the end always it was good.

As a boy officer, when other subalterns were playing polo, and at the
Gaiety Theatre attending night school, he ran away to Cuba and fought
with the Spaniards. For such a breach of military discipline, any other
officer would have been court-martialled. Even his friends feared that
by his foolishness his career in the army was at an end. Instead, his
escapade was made a question in the House of Commons, and the fact
brought him such publicity that the _Daily Graphic_ paid him handsomely
to write on the Cuban Revolution, and the Spanish Government rewarded
him with the Order of Military Merit.

At the very outbreak of the Boer war he was taken prisoner. It seemed
a climax of misfortune. With his brother officers he had hoped in that
campaign to acquit himself with credit, and that he should lie inactive
in Pretoria appeared a terrible calamity. To the others who, through
many heart-breaking months, suffered imprisonment, it continued to be
a calamity. But within six weeks of his capture Churchill escaped, and,
after many adventures, rejoined his own army to find that the calamity
had made him a hero.

When after the battle of Omdurman, in his book on “The River War,” he
attacked Lord Kitchener, those who did not like him, and they were many,
said: “That’s the end of Winston in the army. He’ll never get another
chance to criticise K. of K.”

But only two years later the chance came, when, no longer a subaltern,
but as a member of the House of Commons, he patronized Kitchener by
defending him from the attacks of others.

Later, when his assaults upon the leaders of his own party closed to
him, even in his own constituency, the Conservative debating clubs,
again his ill-wishers said: “This _is_ the end. He has ridiculed those
who sit in high places. He has offended his cousin and patron, the Duke
of Marlborough. Without political friends, without the influence and
money of the Marlborough family he is a political nonentity.” That was
eighteen months ago. To-day, at the age of thirty-two, he is one of the
leaders of the Government party, Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and
with the Liberals the most popular young man in public life.

Only last Christmas, at a banquet, Sir Edward Grey, the new Foreign
Secretary, said of him: “Mr. Winston Churchill has achieved distinction
in at least five different careers--as a soldier, a war correspondent,
a lecturer, an author, and last, but not least, as a politician. I
have understated it even now, for he has achieved two careers as a
politician--one on each side of the House. His first career on the
Government side was a really distinguished career. I trust the second
will be even more distinguished--and more prolonged. The remarkable
thing is that he has done all this when, unless appearances very much
belie him, he has not reached the age of sixty-four, which is the
minimum age at which the politician ceases to be young.”

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born thirty-two years ago, in
November, 1874. By birth he is half-American. His father was Lord
Randolph Churchill, and his mother was Jennie Jerome, of New York.
On the father’s side he is the grandchild of the seventh Duke of
Marlborough, on the distaff side, of Leonard Jerome.

To a student of heredity it would be interesting to try and discover
from which of these ancestors Churchill drew those qualities which in
him are most prominent, and which have led to his success.

What he owes to his father and mother it is difficult to overestimate,
almost as difficult as to overestimate what he has accomplished by his
own efforts.

He was not a child born a full-grown genius of commonplace parents.
Rather his fate threatened that he should always be known as the son
of his father. And certainly it was asking much of a boy that he should
live up to a father who was one of the most conspicuous, clever, and
erratic statesmen of the later Victorian era, and a mother who is as
brilliant as she is beautiful.

For at no time was the American wife content to be merely ornamental.
Throughout the political career of her husband she was his helpmate, and
as an officer of the Primrose League, as an editor of the _Anglo-Saxon
Review_, as, for many hot, weary months in Durban Harbor, the head
of the hospital ship _Maine_, she has shown an acute mind and real
executive power. At the polls many votes that would not respond to the
arguments of the husband, and later of the son, were gained over to the
cause by the charm and wit of the American woman.

In his earlier days, if one can have days any earlier than those he now
enjoys, Churchill was entirely influenced by two things: the tremendous
admiration he felt for his father, which filled him with ambition to
follow in his orbit, and the camaraderie of his mother, who treated him
less like a mother than a sister and companion.

Indeed, Churchill was always so precocious that I cannot recall the time
when he was young enough to be Lady Randolph’s son; certainly, I cannot
recall the time when she was old enough to be his mother.

When first I knew him he had passed through Harrow and Sandhurst and was
a second lieutenant in the Queen’s Own Hussars. He was just of age, but
appeared much younger.

He was below medium height, a slight, delicate-looking boy; although, as
a matter of fact, extremely strong, with blue eyes, many freckles, and
hair which threatened to be a decided red, but which now has lost its
fierceness. When he spoke it was with a lisp, which also has changed,
and which now appears to be merely an intentional hesitation.

His manner of speaking was nervous, eager, explosive. He used many
gestures, some of which were strongly reminiscent of his father, of
whom he, unlike most English lads, who shy at mentioning a distinguished
parent, constantly spoke.

He even copied his father in his little tricks of manner. Standing with
hands shoved under the frock-coat and one resting on each hip as though
squeezing in the waist line; when seated, resting the elbows on the arms
of the chair and nervously locking and unclasping fingers, are tricks
common to both.

He then had and still has a most embarrassing habit of asking many
questions; embarrassing, sometimes, because the questions are so frank,
and sometimes because they lay bare the wide expanse of one’s own
ignorance.

At that time, although in his twenty-first year, this lad twice had been
made a question in the House of Commons.

That in itself had rendered him conspicuous. When you consider out of
Great Britain’s four hundred million subjects how many live, die, and
are buried without at any age having drawn down upon themselves the
anger of the House of Commons, to have done so twice, before one has
passed his twenty-first year, seems to promise a lurid future.

The first time Churchill disturbed the august assemblage in which so
soon he was to become a leader was when he “ragged” a brother subaltern
named Bruce and cut up his saddle and accoutrements. The second time was
when he ran away to Cuba to fight with the Spaniards.

After this campaign, on the first night of his arrival in London, he
made his maiden speech. He delivered it in a place of less dignity
than the House of Commons, but one, throughout Great Britain and her
colonies, as widely known and as well supported. This was the Empire
Music Hall.

At the time Mrs. Ormiston Chant had raised objections to the presence in
the Music Hall of certain young women, and had threatened, unless they
ceased to frequent its promenade, to have the license of the Music Hall
revoked. As a compromise, the management ceased selling liquor, and
on the night Churchill visited the place the bar in the promenade was
barricaded with scantling and linen sheets. With the thirst of tropical
Cuba still upon him, Churchill asked for a drink, which was denied him,
and the crusade, which in his absence had been progressing fiercely,
was explained. Any one else would have taken no for his answer, and
have sought elsewhere for his drink. Not so Churchill. What he did is
interesting, because it was so extremely characteristic. Now he would
not do it; then he was twenty-one.

He scrambled to the velvet-covered top of the railing which divides
the auditorium from the promenade, and made a speech. It was a plea in
behalf of his “Sisters, the Ladies of the Empire Promenade.”

“Where,” he asked of the ladies themselves and of their escorts crowded
below him in the promenade, “does the Englishman in London always find a
welcome? Where does he first go when, battle-scarred and travel-worn,
he reaches home? Who is always there to greet him with a smile, and
join him in a drink? Who is ever faithful, ever true--the Ladies of the
Empire Promenade.”

The laughter and cheers that greeted this, and the tears of the ladies
themselves, naturally brought the performance on the stage to a stop,
and the vast audience turned in the seats and boxes.

They saw a little red-haired boy in evening clothes, balancing himself
on the rail of the balcony, and around him a great crowd, cheering,
shouting, and bidding him “Go on!”

Churchill turned with delight to the larger audience, and repeated his
appeal. The house shook with laughter and applause.

The commissionaires and police tried to reach him and a good-tempered
but very determined mob of well-dressed gentlemen and cheering girls
fought them back. In triumph Churchill ended his speech by begging his
hearers to give “fair play” to the women, and to follow him in a charge
upon the barricades.

The charge was instantly made, the barricades were torn down, and the
terrified management ordered that drink be served to its victorious
patrons.

Shortly after striking this blow for the liberty of others, Churchill
organized a dinner which illustrated the direction in which at that age
his mind was working, and showed that his ambition was already abnormal.
The dinner was given to those of his friends and acquaintances who “were
under twenty-one years of age, and who in twenty years would control the
destinies of the British Empire.”

As one over the age limit, or because he did not consider me an
empire-controlling force, on this great occasion, I was permitted to
be present. But except that the number of incipient empire-builders was
very great, that they were very happy, and that save the host himself
none of them took his idea seriously, I would not call it an evening of
historical interest. But the fact is interesting that of all the
boys present, as yet, the host seems to be the only one who to any
conspicuous extent is disturbing the destinies of Great Britain.
However, the others can reply that ten of the twenty years have not yet
passed.

When he was twenty-three Churchill obtained leave of absence from his
regiment, and as there was no other way open to him to see fighting, as
a correspondent he joined the Malakand Field Force in India.

It may be truthfully said that by his presence in that frontier war he
made it and himself famous. His book on that campaign is his best piece
of war reporting. To the civilian reader it has all the delight of one
of Kipling’s Indian stories, and to writers on military subjects it is
a model. But it is a model very few can follow, and which Churchill
himself was unable to follow, for the reason that only once is it given
a man to be twenty-three years of age.

The picturesque hand-to-hand fighting, the night attacks, the charges up
precipitous hills, the retreats made carrying the wounded under constant
fire, which he witnessed and in which he bore his part, he never
again can see with the same fresh and enthusiastic eyes. Then it was
absolutely new, and the charm of the book and the value of the book are
that with the intolerance of youth he attacks in the service evils that
older men prefer to let lie, and that with the ingenuousness of youth he
tells of things which to the veteran have become unimportant, or which
through usage he is no longer even able to see.

In his three later war books, the wonder of it, the horror of it, the
quick admiration for brave deeds and daring men, give place, in “The
River War,” to the critical point of view of the military expert, and
in his two books on the Boer war to the rapid impressions of the
journalist. In these latter books he tells you of battles he has seen,
in the first one he made you see them.

For his services with the Malakand Field Force he received the campaign
medal with clasp, and, “in despatches,” Brigadier-General Jeffreys
praises “the courage and resolution of Lieutenant W. L. S. Churchill,
Fourth Hussars, with the force as correspondent of the _Pioneer_.”

From the operations around Malakand, he at once joined Sir William
Lockhart as orderly officer, and with the Tirah Expedition went through
that campaign.

For this his Indian medal gained a second clasp.

This was in the early part of 1898. In spite of the time taken up as
an officer and as a correspondent, he finished his book on the Malakand
Expedition and then, as it was evident Kitchener would soon attack
Khartum, he jumped across to Egypt and again as a correspondent took
part in the advance upon that city.

Thus, in one year, he had seen service in three campaigns.

On the day of the battle his luck followed him. Kitchener had attached
him to the Twenty-first Lancers, and it will be remembered the event of
the battle was the charge made by that squadron. It was no canter, no
easy “pig-sticking”; it was a fight to get in and a fight to get out,
with frenzied followers of the Khalifa hanging to the bridle reins,
hacking at the horses’ hamstrings, and slashing and firing point-blank
at the troopers. Churchill was in that charge. He received the medal
with clasp.

Then he returned home and wrote “The River War.” This book is the last
word on the campaigns up the Nile. From the death of Gordon in Khartum
to the capture of the city by Kitchener, it tells the story of the many
gallant fights, the wearying failures, the many expeditions into the
hot, boundless desert, the long, slow progress toward the final winning
of the Sudan.

The book made a distinct sensation. It was a work that one would expect
from a lieutenant-general, when, after years of service in Egypt, he
laid down his sword to pen the story of his life’s work. From a Second
Lieutenant, who had been on the Nile hardly long enough to gain the
desert tan, it was a revelation. As a contribution to military history
it was so valuable that for the author it made many admirers, but on
account of his criticisms of his superior officers it gained him even
more enemies.

This is a specimen of the kind of thing that caused the retired army
officer to sit up and choke with apoplexy:

“General Kitchener, who never spares himself, cares little for others.
He treated all men like machines, from the private soldiers, whose
salutes he disdained, to the superior officers, whom he rigidly
controlled. The comrade who had served with him and under him for many
years, in peace and peril, was flung aside as soon as he ceased to be of
use. The wounded Egyptian and even the wounded British soldier did not
excite his interest.”

When in the service clubs they read that, the veterans asked each other
their favorite question of what is the army coming to, and to their
own satisfaction answered it by pointing out that when a lieutenant of
twenty-four can reprimand the commanding general the army is going to
the dogs.

To the newspapers, hundreds of them, over their own signatures, on
the service club stationery, wrote violent, furious letters, and the
newspapers themselves, besides the ordinary reviews, gave to the book
editorial praise and editorial condemnation.

Equally disgusted were the younger officers of the service. They
nicknamed his book “A Subaltern’s Advice to Generals,” and called
Churchill himself a “Medal Snatcher.” A medal snatcher is an officer
who, whenever there is a rumor of war, leaves his men to the care of
any one, and through influence in high places and for the sake of the
campaign medal has himself attached to the expeditionary force. But
Churchill never was a medal hunter. The routine of barrack life irked
him, and in foreign parts he served his country far better than by
remaining at home and inspecting awkward squads and attending guard
mount. Indeed, the War Office could cover with medals the man who wrote
“The Story of the Malakand Field Force” and “The River War” and still be
in his debt.

In October, 1898, a month after the battle of Omdurman, Churchill
made his debut as a political speaker at minor meetings in Dover and
Rotherhithe. History does not record that these first speeches set fire
to the Channel. During the winter he finished and published his “River
War,” and in the August of the following summer, 1899, at a by-election,
offered himself as Member of Parliament for Oldham.

In the _Daily Telegraph_ his letters from the three campaigns in India
and Egypt had made his name known, and there was a general desire to
hear him and to see him. In one who had attacked Kitchener of Khartum,
the men of Oldham expected to find a stalwart veteran, bearded, and with
a voice of command. When they were introduced to a small red-haired boy
with a lisp, they refused to take him seriously. In England youth is an
unpardonable thing. Lately, Curzon, Churchill, Edward Grey, Hugh Cecil,
and others have made it less reprehensible. But, in spite of a vigorous
campaign, in which Lady Randolph took an active part, Oldham decided
it was not ready to accept young Churchill for a member. Later he was
Oldham’s only claim to fame.

A week after he was defeated he sailed for South Africa, where war with
the Boers was imminent. He had resigned from his regiment and went south
as war correspondent for the _Morning Post_.

Later in the war he held a commission as Lieutenant in the South African
Light Horse, a regiment of irregular cavalry, and on the staffs
of different generals acted as galloper and aide-de-camp. To this
combination of duties, which was in direct violation of a rule of the
War Office, his brother officers and his fellow correspondents objected;
but, as in each of his other campaigns he had played this dual role, the
press censors considered it a traditional privilege, and winked at it.
As a matter of record, Churchill’s soldiering never seemed to interfere
with his writing, nor, in a fight, did his duty to his paper ever
prevent him from mixing in as a belligerent.

War was declared October 9th, and only a month later, while scouting in
the armored train along the railroad line between Pietermaritzburg and
Colenso, the cars were derailed and Churchill was taken prisoner.

The train was made up of three flat cars, two armored cars, and between
them the engine, with three cars coupled to the cow-catcher and two to
the tender.

On the outward trip the Boers did not show themselves, but as soon as
the English passed Frere station they rolled a rock on the track at a
point where it was hidden by a curve. On the return trip, as the English
approached this curve the Boers opened fire with artillery and pompoms.
The engineer, in his eagerness to escape, rounded the curve at full
speed, and, as the Boers had expected, hit the rock. The three forward
cars were derailed, and one of them was thrown across the track, thus
preventing the escape of the engine and the two rear cars. From these
Captain Haldane, who was in command, with a detachment of the Dublins,
kept up a steady fire on the enemy, while Churchill worked to clear the
track. To assist him he had a company of Natal volunteers, and those who
had not run away of the train hands and break-down crew.

“We were not long left in the comparative safety of a railroad
accident,” Churchill writes to his paper. “The Boers’ guns, swiftly
changing their position, reopened fire from a distance of thirteen
hundred yards before any one had got out of the stage of exclamations.
The tapping rifle-fire spread along the hills, until it encircled the
wreckage on three sides, and from some high ground on the opposite side
of the line a third field-gun came into action.”

For Boer marksmen with Mausers and pompoms, a wrecked railroad train
at thirteen hundred yards was as easy a bull’s-eye as the hands of the
first baseman to the pitcher, and while the engine butted and snorted
and the men with their bare bands tore at the massive beams of the
freight-car, the bullets and shells beat about them.

“I have had in the last four years many strange and varied experiences,”
 continues young Churchill, “but nothing was so thrilling as this; to
wait and struggle among these clanging, rending iron boxes, with the
repeated explosions of the shells, the noise of the projectiles striking
the cars, the hiss as they passed in the air, the grunting and puffing
of the engine--poor, tortured thing, hammered by at least a dozen
shells, any one of which, by penetrating the boiler, might have made an
end of all--the expectation of destruction as a matter of course, the
realization of powerlessness--all this for seventy minutes by the clock,
with only four inches of twisted iron between danger, captivity, and
shame on one side--and freedom on the other.”

The “protected” train had proved a deathtrap, and by the time the line
was clear every fourth man was killed or wounded. Only the engine,
with the more severely wounded heaped in the cab and clinging to its
cow-catcher and foot-rails, made good its escape. Among those left
behind, a Tommy, without authority, raised a handkerchief on his rifle,
and the Boers instantly ceased firing and came galloping forward to
accept surrender. There was a general stampede to escape. Seeing that
Lieutenant Franklin was gallantly trying to hold his men, Churchill,
who was safe on the engine, jumped from it and ran to his assistance. Of
what followed, this is his own account:

“Scarcely had the locomotive left me than I found myself alone in a
shallow cutting, and none of our soldiers, who had all surrendered,
to be seen. Then suddenly there appeared on the line at the end of the
cutting two men not in uniform. ‘Plate-layers,’ I said to myself, and
then, with a surge of realization, ‘Boers.’ My mind retains a momentary
impression of these tall figures, full of animated movement, clad in
dark flapping clothes, with slouch, storm-driven hats, posing their
rifles hardly a hundred yards away. I turned and ran between the
rails of the track, and the only thought I achieved was this: ‘Boer
marksmanship.’

“Two bullets passed, both within a foot, one on either side. I flung
myself against the banks of the cutting. But they gave no cover. Another
glance at the figures; one was now kneeling to aim. Again I darted
forward. Again two soft kisses sucked in the air, but nothing struck me.
I must get out of the cutting--that damnable corridor. I scrambled up
the bank. The earth sprang up beside me, and a bullet touched my hand,
but outside the cutting was a tiny depression. I crouched in this,
struggling to get my wind. On the other side of the railway a horseman
galloped up, shouting to me and waving his hand. He was scarcely forty
yards off. With a rifle I could have killed him easily. I knew nothing
of the white flag, and the bullets had made me savage. I reached down
for my Mauser pistol. I had left it in the cab of the engine. Between me
and the horseman there was a wire fence. Should I continue to fly?
The idea of another shot at such a short range decided me. Death stood
before me, grim and sullen; Death without his light-hearted companion,
Chance. So I held up my hand, and like Mr. Jorrock’s foxes, cried
‘Capivy!’ Then I was herded with the other prisoners in a miserable
group, and about the same time I noticed that my hand was bleeding, and
it began to pour with rain.

“Two days before I had written to an officer at home: ‘There has been a
great deal too much surrendering in this war, and I hope people who do
so will not be encouraged.’”

With other officers, Churchill was imprisoned in the State Model
Schools, situated in the heart of Pretoria. It was distinctly
characteristic that on the very day of his arrival he began to plan to
escape.

Toward this end his first step was to lose his campaign hat, which he
recognized was too obviously the hat of an English officer. The burgher
to whom he gave money to purchase him another innocently brought him a
Boer sombrero.

Before his chance to escape came a month elapsed, and the opportunity
that then offered was less an opportunity to escape than to get himself
shot.

The State Model Schools were surrounded by the children’s playgrounds,
penned in by a high wall, and at night, while they were used as a
prison, brilliantly lighted by electric lights. After many nights of
observation, Churchill discovered that while the sentries were pacing
their beats there was a moment when to them a certain portion of the
wall was in darkness. This was due to cross-shadows cast by the electric
lights. On the other side of this wall there was a private house set in
a garden filled with bushes. Beyond this was the open street.

To scale the wall was not difficult; the real danger lay in the fact
that at no time were the sentries farther away than fifteen yards, and
the chance of being shot by one or both of them was excellent. To a
brother officer Churchill confided his purpose, and together they agreed
that some night when the sentries had turned from the dark spot on the
wall they would scale it and drop among the bushes in the garden. After
they reached the garden, should they reach it alive, what they were to
do they did not know. How they were to proceed through the streets
and out of the city, how they were to pass unchallenged under its many
electric lights and before the illuminated shop windows, how to dodge
patrols, and how to find their way through two hundred and eighty
miles of a South African wilderness, through an utterly unfamiliar,
unfriendly, and sparsely settled country into Portuguese territory and
the coast, they left to chance. But with luck they hoped to cover the
distance in a fortnight, begging corn at the Kaffir kraals, sleeping by
day, and marching under cover of the darkness.

They agreed to make the attempt on the 11th of December, but on that
night the sentries did not move from the only part of the wall that was
in shadow. On the night following, at the last moment, something delayed
Churchill’s companion, and he essayed the adventure alone. He writes:

“Tuesday, the 12th! Anything was better than further suspense. Again
night came. Again the dinner bell sounded. Choosing my opportunity,
I strolled across the quadrangle and secreted myself in one of the
offices. Through a chink I watched the sentries. For half an hour they
remained stolid and obstructive. Then suddenly one turned and walked up
to his comrade and they began to talk. Their backs were turned.

“I darted out of my hiding-place and ran to the wall, seized the top with
my hands and drew myself up. Twice I let myself down again in sickly
hesitation, and then with a third resolve scrambled up. The top was
flat. Lying on it, I had one parting glimpse of the sentries, still
talking, still with their backs turned, but, I repeat, still fifteen
yards away. Then I lowered myself into the adjoining garden and crouched
among the shrubs. I was free. The first step had been taken, and it was
irrevocable.”

Churchill discovered that the house into the garden of which he had so
unceremoniously introduced himself was brilliantly lighted, and that the
owner was giving a party. At one time two of the guests walked into the
garden and stood, smoking and chatting, in the path within a few yards
of him.

Thinking his companion might yet join him, for an hour he crouched in
the bushes, until from the other side of the wall he heard the voices of
his friend and of another officer.

“It’s all up!” his friend whispered. Churchill coughed tentatively.
The two voices drew nearer. To confuse the sentries, should they be
listening, the one officer talked nonsense, laughed loudly, and quoted
Latin phrases, while the other, in a low and distinct voice, said:
“I cannot get out. The sentry suspects. It’s all up. Can you get back
again?”

To go back was impossible. Churchill now felt that in any case he was
sure to be recaptured, and decided he would, as he expresses it, at
least have a run for his money.

“I shall go on alone,” he whispered.

He heard the footsteps of his two friends move away from him across the
play yard. At the same moment he stepped boldly out into the garden and,
passing the open windows of the house, walked down the gravel path to
the street. Not five yards from the gate stood a sentry. Most of those
guarding the school-house knew him by sight, but Churchill did not turn
his head, and whether the sentry recognized him or not, he could not
tell.

For a hundred feet he walked as though on ice, inwardly shrinking as he
waited for the sharp challenge, and the rattle of the Mauser thrown to
the “Ready.” His nerves were leaping, his heart in his throat, his spine
of water. And then, as he continued to advance, and still no tumult
pursued him, he quickened his pace and turned into one of the main
streets of Pretoria. The sidewalks were crowded with burghers, but no
one noticed him. This was due probably to the fact that the Boers wore
no distinctive uniform, and that with them in their commandoes were many
English Colonials who wore khaki riding breeches, and many Americans,
French, Germans, and Russians, in every fashion of semi-uniform.

If observed, Churchill was mistaken for one of these, and the very
openness of his movements saved him from suspicion.

Straight through the town he walked until he reached the suburbs, the
open veldt, and a railroad track. As he had no map or compass he knew
this must be his only guide, but he knew also that two railroads left
Pretoria, the one along which he had been captured, to Pietermaritzburg,
and the other, the one leading to the coast and freedom. Which of the
two this one was he had no idea, but he took his chance, and a hundred
yards beyond a station waited for the first outgoing train. About
midnight, a freight stopped at the station, and after it had left it and
before it had again gathered headway, Churchill swung himself up upon
it, and stretched out upon a pile of coal. Throughout the night the
train continued steadily toward the east, and so told him that it was
the one he wanted, and that he was on his way to the neutral territory
of Portugal.

Fearing the daylight, just before the sun rose, as the train was pulling
up a steep grade, he leaped off into some bushes. All that day he lay
hidden, and the next night he walked. He made but little headway. As all
stations and bridges were guarded, he had to make long detours, and the
tropical moonlight prevented him from crossing in the open. In this way,
sleeping by day, walking by night, begging food from the Kaffirs, five
days passed.

Meanwhile, his absence had been at once discovered, and, by the
Boers, every effort was being made to retake him. Telegrams giving his
description were sent along both railways, three thousand photographs
of him were distributed, each car of every train was searched, and
in different parts of the Transvaal men who resembled him were being
arrested. It was said he had escaped dressed as a woman; in the uniform
of a Transvaal policeman whom he had bribed; that he had never left
Pretoria, and that in the disguise of a waiter he was concealed in the
house of a British sympathizer. On the strength of this rumor the houses
of all suspected persons were searched.

In the Volksstem it was pointed out as a significant fact that a week
before his escape Churchill had drawn from the library Mill’s “Essay on
Liberty.”

In England and over all British South Africa the escape created as much
interest as it did in Pretoria. Because the attempt showed pluck, and
because he had outwitted the enemy, Churchill for the time became a sort
of popular hero, and to his countrymen his escape gave as much pleasure
as it was a cause of chagrin to the Boers.

But as days passed and nothing was heard of him, it was feared he
had lost himself in the Machadodorp Mountains, or had succumbed
to starvation, or, in the jungle toward the coast, to fever, and
congratulations gave way to anxiety.

The anxiety was justified, for at this time Churchill was in a very bad
way. During the month in prison he had obtained but little exercise. The
lack of food and of water, the cold by night and the terrific heat by
day, the long stumbling marches in the darkness, the mental effect upon
an extremely nervous, high-strung organization of being hunted, and of
having to hide from his fellow men, had worn him down to a condition
almost of collapse.

Even though it were neutral soil, in so exhausted a state he dared not
venture into the swamps and waste places of the Portuguese territory;
and, sick at heart as well as sick in body, he saw no choice left him
save to give himself up.

But before doing so he carefully prepared a tale which, although most
improbable, he hoped might still conceal his identity and aid him to
escape by train across the border.

One night after days of wandering he found himself on the outskirts of
a little village near the boundary line of the Transvaal and Portuguese
territory. Utterly unable to proceed further, he crawled to the nearest
zinc-roofed shack, and, fully prepared to surrender, knocked at the
door. It was opened by a rough-looking, bearded giant, the first white
man to whom in many days Churchill had dared address himself.

To him, without hope, he feebly stammered forth the speech he had
rehearsed. The man listened with every outward mark of disbelief. At
Churchill himself he stared with open suspicion. Suddenly he seized the
boy by the shoulder, drew him inside the hut, and barred the door.

“You needn’t lie to me,” he said. “You are Winston Churchill, and I--am
the only Englishman in this village.”

The rest of the adventure was comparatively easy. The next night his
friend in need, an engineer named Howard, smuggled Churchill Into a
freight-car, and hid him under sacks of some soft merchandise.

At Komatie-Poort, the station on the border, for eighteen hours the car
in which Churchill lay concealed was left in the sun on a siding, and
before it again started it was searched, but the man who was conducting
the search lifted only the top layer of sacks, and a few minutes later
Churchill heard the hollow roar of the car as it passed over the bridge,
and knew that he was across the border.

Even then he took no chances, and for two days more lay hidden at the
bottom of the car.

When at last he arrived in Lorenzo Marques he at once sought out the
English Consul, who, after first mistaking him for a stoker from one of
the ships in the harbor, gave him a drink, a bath, and a dinner.

As good luck would have it, the _Induna_ was leaving that night for
Durban, and, escorted by a body-guard of English residents armed with
revolvers, and who were taking no chances of his recapture by the Boer
agents, he was placed safely on board. Two days later he arrived at
Durban, where he was received by the Mayor, the populace, and a brass
band playing: “Britons Never, Never, Never shall be Slaves!”

For the next month Churchill was bombarded by letters and telegrams
from every part of the globe, some invited him to command filibustering
expeditions, others sent him woollen comforters, some forwarded
photographs of himself to be signed, others photographs of themselves,
possibly to be admired, others sent poems, and some bottles of whiskey.

One admirer wrote: “My congratulations on your wonderful and glorious
deeds, which will send such a thrill of pride and enthusiasm through
Great Britain and the United States of America, that the Anglo-Saxon
race will be irresistible.”

Lest so large an order as making the Anglo-Saxon race irresistible might
turn the head of a subaltern, an antiseptic cablegram was also sent him,
from London, reading:

“Best friends here hope you won’t go making further ass of yourself.

“McNEILL.”

One day in camp we counted up the price per word of this cablegram, and
Churchill was delighted to find that it must have cost the man who sent
it five pounds.

On the day of his arrival in Durban, with the cheers still in the air,
Churchill took the first train to “the front,” then at Colenso. Another
man might have lingered. After a month’s imprisonment and the hardships
of the escape, he might have been excused for delaying twenty-four hours
to taste the sweets of popularity and the flesh-pots of the Queen Hotel.
But if the reader has followed this brief biography he will know that
to have done so would have been out of the part. This characteristic of
Churchill’s to get on to the next thing explains his success. He has no
time to waste on postmortems, he takes none to rest on his laurels.

As a war correspondent and officer he continued with Buller until the
relief of Ladysmith, and with Roberts until the fall of Pretoria. He
was in many actions, in all the big engagements, and came out of the war
with another medal and clasps for six battles.

On his return to London he spent the summer finishing his second book on
the war, and in October at the general election as a “khaki” candidate,
as those were called who favored the war, again stood for Oldham. This
time, with his war record to help him, he wrested from the Liberals one
of Oldham’s two seats. He had been defeated by thirteen hundred votes;
he was elected by a majority of two hundred and twenty-seven.

The few months that intervened between his election and the opening of
the new Parliament were snatched by Churchill for a lecturing tour at
home, and in the United States and Canada. His subject was the war and
his escape from Pretoria.

When he came to this country half of the people here were in sympathy
with the Boers, and did not care to listen to what they supposed would
be a strictly British version of the war. His manager, without asking
permission of those whose names he advertised, organized for Churchill’s
first appearance in various cities, different reception committees.

Some of those whose names, without their consent, were used for these
committees, wrote indignantly to the papers, saying that while for
Churchill, personally, they held every respect, they objected to being
used to advertise an anti-Boer demonstration.

While this was no fault of Churchill’s, who, until he reached this
country knew nothing of it, it was neither for him nor for the success
of his tour the best kind of advance work.

During the fighting to relieve Ladysmith, with General Buller’s force,
Churchill and I had again been together, and later when I joined the
Boer army, at the Zand River Battle, the army with which he was a
correspondent had chased the army with which I was a correspondent,
forty miles. I had been one of those who refused to act on his reception
committee, and he had come to this country with a commission from twenty
brother officers to shoot me on sight. But in his lecture he was using
the photographs I had taken of the scene of his escape, and which I had
sent him from Pretoria as a souvenir, and when he arrived I was at the
hotel to welcome him, and that same evening three hours after midnight
he came, in a blizzard, pounding at our door for food and drink. What is
a little thing like a war between friends?

During his “tour,” except of hotels, parlor-cars, and “Lyceums,” he saw
very little of this country or of its people, and they saw very little
of him. On the trip, which lasted about two months, he cleared ten
thousand dollars. This, to a young man almost entirely dependent for an
income upon his newspaper work and the sale of his books, nearly repaid
him for the two months of “one night stands.” On his return to London he
took his seat in the new Parliament.

It was a coincidence that he entered Parliament at the same age as
did his father. With two other members, one born six days earlier than
himself, he enjoyed the distinction of being among the three youngest
members of the new House.

The fact did not seem to appall him. In the House it is a tradition that
young and ambitious members sit “below” the gangway; the more modest
and less assured are content to place themselves “above” it, at a point
farthest removed from the leaders.

On the day he was sworn in there was much curiosity to see where
Churchill would elect to sit. In his own mind there was apparently no
doubt. After he had taken the oath, signed his name, and shaken the hand
of the Speaker, without hesitation he seated himself on the bench next
to the Ministry. Ten minutes later, so a newspaper of the day describes
it, he had cocked his hat over his eyes, shoved his hands into his
trousers pockets, and was lolling back eying the veterans of the House
with critical disapproval.

His maiden speech was delivered in May, 1901, in reply to David Lloyd
George, who had attacked the conduct of British soldiers in South
Africa. Churchill defended them, and in a manner that from all sides
gained him honest admiration. In the course of the debate he produced
and read a strangely apropos letter which, fifteen years before, had
been written by his father to Lord Salisbury. His adroit use of
this filled H. W. Massingham, the editor of the _Daily News_, with
enthusiasm. Nothing in parliamentary tactics, he declared, since Mr.
Gladstone died, had been so clever. He proclaimed that Churchill would
be Premier. John Dillon, the Nationalist leader, said he never before
had seen a young man, by means of his maiden effort, spring into the
front rank of parliamentary speakers. He promised that the Irish members
would ungrudgingly testify to his ability and honesty of purpose. Among
others to at once recognize the rising star was T. P. O’Connor, himself
for many years of the parliamentary firmament one of the brightest
stars. In _M. A. P._ he wrote: “I am inclined to think that the dash of
American blood which he has from his mother has been an improvement on
the original stock, and that Mr. Winston Churchill may turn out to be a
stronger and abler politician than his father.”

It was all a part of Churchill’s “luck” that when he entered Parliament
the subject in debate was the conduct of the war.

Even in those first days of his career in the House, in debates where
angels feared to tread, he did not hesitate to rush in, but this subject
was one on which he spoke with knowledge. Over the older men who were
forced to quote from hearsay or from what they had read, Churchill had
the tremendous advantage of being able to protest: “You only read of
that. I was there. I saw it.”

In the House he became at once one of the conspicuous and picturesque
figures, one dear to the heart of the caricaturist, and one from the
strangers’ gallery most frequently pointed out. He was called “the
spoiled child of the House,” and there were several distinguished
gentlemen who regretted they were forced to spare the rod. Broderick,
the Secretary for War, was one of these. Of him and of his recruits in
South Africa, Churchill spoke with the awful frankness of the _enfant
terrible_. And although he addressed them more with sorrow than with
anger, to Balfour and Chamberlain he daily administered advice and
reproof, while mere generals and field-marshals, like Kitchener and
Roberts, blushing under new titles, were held up for public reproof and
briefly but severely chastened. Nor, when he saw Lord Salisbury going
astray, did he hesitate in his duty to the country, but took the Prime
Minister by the hand and gently instructed him in the way he should go.

This did not tend to make him popular, but in spite of his unpopularity,
in his speeches against national extravagancies he made so good a fight
that he forced the Government, unwillingly, to appoint a committee to
investigate the need of economy. For a beginner this was a distinct
triumph.

With Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord Percy, Ian Malcolm, and other clever young
men, he formed inside the Conservative Party a little group that in its
obstructive and independent methods was not unlike the Fourth Party of
his father. From its leader and its filibustering, guerilla-like tactics
the men who composed it were nicknamed the “Hughligans.” The Hughligans
were the most active critics of the Ministry and of all in their own
party, and as members of the Free Food League they bitterly attacked
the fiscal proposals of Mr. Chamberlain. When Balfour made Chamberlain’s
fight for fair trade, or for what virtually was protection, a measure
of the Conservatives, the lines of party began to break, and men were no
longer Conservatives or Liberals, but Protectionists or Free Traders.

Against this Churchill daily protested, against Chamberlain, against his
plan, against that plan being adopted by the Tory Party. By tradition,
by inheritance, by instinct, Churchill was a Tory.

“I am a Tory,” he said, “and I have as much right in the party as has
anybody else, certainly as much as certain people from Birmingham. They
can’t turn us out, and we, the Tory Free Traders, have as much right
to dictate the policy of the Conservative Party as have any reactionary
Fair Traders.” In 1904 the Conservative Party already recognized
Churchill as one working outside the breastworks. Just before the Easter
vacation of that year, when he rose to speak a remarkable demonstration
was made against him by his Unionist colleagues, all of them rising and
leaving the House.

To the Liberals who remained to hear him he stated that if to his
constituents his opinions were obnoxious, he was ready to resign his
seat. It then was evident he would go over to the Liberal Party. Some
thought he foresaw which way the tidal wave was coming, and to being
slapped down on the beach and buried in the sand, he preferred to be
swept forward on its crest. Others believed he left the Conservatives
because he could not honestly stomach the taxed food offered by Mr.
Chamberlain.

In any event, if he were to be blamed for changing from one party to
the other, he was only following the distinguished example set him by
Gladstone, Disraeli, Harcourt, and his own father.

It was at the time of this change that he was called “the best hated
man in England,” but the Liberals welcomed him gladly, and the National
Liberal Club paid him the rare compliment of giving in his honor a
banquet. There were present two hundred members. Up to that time this
dinner was the most marked testimony to his importance in the political
world. It was about then, a year since, that he prophesied: “Within
nine months there will come such a tide and deluge as will sweep through
England and Scotland, and completely wash out and effect a much-needed
spring cleaning in Downing Street.”

When the deluge came, at Manchester, Mr. Balfour was defeated, and
Churchill was victorious, and when the new Government was formed the
tidal wave landed Churchill in the office of Under-Secretary for the
Colonies.

While this is being written the English papers say that within a
month he again will be promoted. For this young man of thirty the only
promotion remaining is a position in the Cabinet, in which august body
men of fifty are considered young.

His is a picturesque career. Of any man of his few years speaking our
language, his career is probably the most picturesque. And that he is
half an American gives all of us an excuse to pretend we share in his
successes.




CAPTAIN PHILO NORTON McGIFFIN

IN the Chinese-Japanese War the battle of the Yalu was the first battle
fought between warships of modern make, and, except on paper, neither
the men who made them nor the men who fought them knew what the ships
could do, or what they might not do. For years every naval power had
been building these new engines of war, and in the battle which was to
test them the whole world was interested. But in this battle Americans
had a special interest, a human, family interest, for the reason that
one of the Chinese squadron, which was matched against some of the same
vessels of Japan which lately swept those of Russia from the sea, was
commanded by a young graduate of the American Naval Academy. This young
man, who, at the time of the battle of the Yalu, was thirty-three years
old, was Captain Philo Norton McGiffin. So it appears that five years
before our fleet sailed to victory in Manila Bay another graduate of
Annapolis, and one twenty years younger than in 1898 was Admiral Dewey,
had commanded in action a modern battleship, which, in tonnage, in
armament, and in the number of the ships’ company, far outclassed
Dewey’s _Olympia_.

McGiffin, who was born on December 13, 1860, came of fighting stock.
Back in Scotland the family is descended from the Clan MacGregor and the
Clan MacAlpine.

“These are Clan-Alpine’s warriors true, And, Saxon--I am Roderick Dhu.”

McGiffin’s great-grandfather, born in Scotland, emigrated to this
country and settled in “Little Washington,” near Pittsburg, Pa. In the
Revolutionary War he was a soldier. Other relatives fought in the War of
1812, one of them holding a commission as major. McGiffin’s own father
was Colonel Norton McGiffin, who served in the Mexican War, and in
the Civil War was Lieutenant-Colonel of the Eighty-fifth Pennsylvania
Volunteers. So McGiffin inherited his love for arms.

In Washington he went to the high school and at the Washington Jefferson
College had passed through his freshman year. But the honors that might
accrue to him if he continued to live on in the quiet and pretty old
town of Washington did not tempt him. To escape into the world he
wrote his Congressman, begging him to obtain for him an appointment to
Annapolis. The Congressman liked the letter, and wrote Colonel McGiffin
to ask if the application of his son had his approval. Colonel McGiffin
was willing, and in 1877 his son received his commission as cadet
midshipman. I knew McGiffin only as a boy with whom in vacation time I
went coon hunting in the woods outside of Washington. For his age he was
a very tall boy, and in his midshipman undress uniform, to my youthful
eyes, appeared a most bold and adventurous spirit.

At Annapolis his record seems to show he was pretty much like other
boys. According to his classmates, with all of whom I find he was very
popular, he stood high in the practical studies, such as seamanship,
gunnery, navigation, and steam engineering, but in all else he was near
the foot of the class, and in whatever escapade was risky and reckless
he was always one of the leaders. To him discipline was extremely
irksome. He could maintain it among others, but when it applied to
himself it bored him. On the floor of the Academy building on which was
his room there was a pyramid of cannon balls--relics of the War of 1812.
They stood at the head of the stairs, and one warm night, when he could
not sleep, he decided that no one else should do so, and, one by one,
rolled the cannon balls down the stairs. They tore away the banisters
and bumped through the wooden steps and leaped off into the lower halls.
For any one who might think of ascending to discover the motive power
back of the bombardment they were extremely dangerous. But an officer
approached McGiffin in the rear, and, having been caught in the act, he
was sent to the prison ship. There he made good friends with his jailer,
an old man-of-warsman named “Mike.” He will be remembered by many naval
officers who as midshipmen served on the _Santee_. McGiffin so won
over Mike that when he left the ship he carried with him six charges of
gunpowder. These he loaded into the six big guns captured in the Mexican
War, which lay on the grass in the centre of the Academy grounds, and at
midnight on the eve of July 1st he fired a salute. It aroused the entire
garrison, and for a week the empty window frames kept the glaziers busy.

About 1878 or 1879 there was a famine in Ireland. The people of New York
City contributed provisions for the sufferers, and to carry the supplies
to Ireland the Government authorized the use of the old _Constellation_.
At the time the voyage was to begin each cadet was instructed to
consider himself as having been placed in command of the _Constellation_
and to write a report on the preparations made for the voyage, on the
loading of the vessel, and on the distribution of the stores. This
exercise was intended for the instruction of the cadets; first in the
matter of seamanship and navigation, and second in making official
reports. At that time it was a very difficult operation to get a gun out
of the port of a vessel where the gun was on a covered deck. To do this
the necessary tackles had to be rigged from the yard-arm and the yard
and mast properly braced and stayed, and then the lower block of the
tackle carried in through the gun port, which, of course, gave the fall
a very bad reeve. The first part of McGiffin’s report dealt with a new
method of dismounting the guns and carrying them through the gun ports,
and so admirable was his plan, so simple and ingenious, that it was
used whenever it became necessary to dismount a gun from one of the
old sailing ships. Having, however, offered this piece of good work,
McGiffin’s report proceeded to tell of the division of the ship into
compartments that were filled with a miscellaneous assortment of stores,
which included the old “fifteen puzzles,” at that particular time very
popular. The report terminated with a description of the joy of the
famished Irish as they received the puzzle-boxes. At another time the
cadets were required to write a report telling of the suppression of the
insurrection on the Isthmus of Panama. McGiffin won great praise for
the military arrangements and disposition of his men, but, in the same
report, he went on to describe how he armed them with a new gun known as
Baines’s Rhetoric and told of the havoc he wrought in the enemy’s
ranks when he fired these guns loaded with similes and metaphors and
hyperboles.

Of course, after each exhibition of this sort he was sent to the
_Santee_ and given an opportunity to meditate.

On another occasion, when one of the instructors lectured to the cadets,
he required them to submit a written statement embodying all that they
could recall of what had been said at the lecture. One of the rules
concerning this report provided that there should be no erasures or
interlineations, but that when mistakes were made the objectionable or
incorrect expressions should be included within parentheses; and that
the matter so enclosed within parentheses would not be considered a part
of the report. McGiffin wrote an excellent _resume_ of the lecture,
but he interspersed through it in parentheses such words as “applause,”
 “cheers,” “cat-calls,” and “groans,” and as these words were enclosed
within parentheses he insisted that they did not count, and made a very
fair plea that he ought not to be punished for words which slipped in
by mistake, and which he had officially obliterated by what he called
oblivion marks.

He was not always on mischief bent. On one occasion, when the house of a
professor caught fire, McGiffin ran into the flames and carried out two
children, for which act he was commended by the Secretary of the Navy.

It was an act of Congress that determined that the career of McGiffin
should be that of a soldier of fortune. This was a most unjust act,
which provided that only as many midshipmen should receive commissions
as on the warships there were actual vacancies. In those days, in 1884,
our navy was very small. To-day there is hardly a ship having her full
complement of officers, and the difficulty is not to get rid of those we
have educated, but to get officers to educate. To the many boys who, on
the promise that they would be officers of the navy, had worked for
four years at the Academy and served two years at sea, the act was most
unfair. Out of a class of about ninety, only the first twelve were given
commissions and the remaining eighty turned adrift upon the uncertain
seas of civil life. As a sop, each was given one thousand dollars.

McGiffin was not one of the chosen twelve. In the final examinations on
the list he was well toward the tail. But without having studied
many things, and without remembering the greater part of them, no
one graduates from Annapolis, even last on the list; and with his one
thousand dollars in cash, McGiffin had also this six years of education
at what was then the best naval college in the world. This was his only
asset--his education--and as in his own country it was impossible to
dispose of it, for possible purchasers he looked abroad.

At that time the Tong King war was on between France and China, and he
decided, before it grew rusty, to offer his knowledge to the followers
of the Yellow Dragon. In those days that was a hazard of new fortunes
that meant much more than it does now. To-day the East is as near as San
Francisco; the Japanese-Russian War, our occupation of the Philippines,
the part played by our troops in the Boxer trouble, have made the
affairs of China part of the daily reading of every one. Now, one can
step into a brass bed at Forty-second Street and in four days at the
Coast get into another brass bed, and in twelve more be spinning down
the Bund of Yokohama in a rickshaw. People go to Japan for the winter
months as they used to go to Cairo.

But in 1885 it was no such light undertaking, certainly not for a young
man who had been brought up in the quiet atmosphere of an inland
town, where generations of his family and other families had lived and
intermarried, content with their surroundings.

With very few of his thousand dollars left him, McGiffin arrived in
February, 1885, in San Francisco. From there his letters to his family
give one the picture of a healthy, warm-hearted youth, chiefly anxious
lest his mother and sister should “worry.” In our country nearly every
family knows that domestic tragedy when the son and heir “breaks home
ties,” and starts out to earn a living; and if all the world loves a
lover, it at least sympathizes with the boy who is “looking for a job.”
 The boy who is looking for the job may not think so, but each of those
who has passed through the same hard place gives him, if nothing else,
his good wishes. McGiffin’s letters at this period gain for him from
those who have had the privilege to read them the warmest good feeling.

They are filled with the same cheery optimism, the same slurring over
of his troubles, the same homely jokes, the same assurances that he is
feeling “bully,” and that it all will come out right, that every boy,
when he starts out in the world, sends back to his mother.

“I am in first-rate health and spirits, so I don’t want you to fuss
about me. I am big enough and ugly enough to scratch along somehow, and
I will not starve.”

To his mother he proudly sends his name written in Chinese characters,
as he had been taught to write it by the Chinese Consul-General in San
Francisco, and a pen-picture of two elephants. “I am going to bring you
home _two_ of these,” he writes, not knowing that in the strange and
wonderful country to which he is going elephants are as infrequent as
they are in Pittsburg.

He reached China in April, and from Nagasaki on his way to Shanghai
the steamer that carried him was chased by two French gunboats. But,
apparently much to his disappointment, she soon ran out of range of
their guns. Though he did not know it then, with the enemy he had
travelled so far to fight this was his first and last hostile meeting;
for already peace was in the air.

Of that and of how, in spite of peace, he obtained the “job” he wanted,
he must tell you himself in a letter home:

TIEN-TSIN, CHINA, April 13, 1885.

“MY DEAR MOTHER--I have not felt much in the humor for writing, for
I did not know what was going to happen. I spent a good deal of money
coming out, and when I got here, I knew, unless something turned up,
I was a gone coon. We got off Taku forts Sunday evening and the next
morning we went inside; the channel is very narrow and sown with
torpedoes. We struck one--an electric one--in coming up, but it didn’t
go off. We were until 10.30 P.M. in coming up to Tien-Tsin--thirty miles
in a straight line, but nearly seventy by the river, which is only about
one hundred feet wide--and we grounded ten times.

“Well--at last we moored and went ashore. Brace Girdle, an engineer, and
I went to the hotel, and the first thing we heard was--that _peace was
declared!_ I went back on board ship, and I didn’t sleep much--I never
was so blue in my life. I knew if they didn’t want me that I might as
well give up the ghost, for I could never get away from China. Well--I
worried around all night without sleep, and in the morning I felt as
if I had been drawn through a knot-hole. I must have lost ten pounds. I
went around about 10 A.M. and gave my letters to Pethick, an American
U. S. Vice-Consul and interpreter to Li Hung Chang. He said he would fix
them for me. Then I went back to the ship, and as our captain was going
up to see Li Hung Chang, I went along out of desperation. We got in,
and after a while were taken in through corridor after corridor of the
Viceroy’s palace until we got into the great Li, when we sat down and
had tea and tobacco and talked through an interpreter. When it came
my turn he asked: ‘Why did you come to China?’ I said: ‘To enter the
Chinese service for the war.’ ‘How do you expect to enter?’ ‘I expect
_you_ to give me a commission!’ ‘I have no place to offer you.’ ‘I think
you have--I have come all the way from America to get it.’ ‘What would
you like?’ ‘I would like to get the new torpedo-boat and go down the
Yang-tse-Kiang to the blockading squadron.’ ‘Will you do that?’ ‘Of
course.’

“He thought a little and said: ‘I will see what can be done. Will you
take $100 a month for a start?’ I said: ‘That depends.’ (Of course
I would take it.) Well, after parley, he said he would put me on the
flagship, and if I did well he would promote me. Then he looked at me
and said: ‘How old are you?’ When I told him I was twenty-four I thought
he would faint--for in China a man is a _boy_ until he is over thirty.
He said I would _never_ do--I was a child. I could not know anything at
all. I could not convince him, but at last he compromised--I was to pass
an examination at the Arsenal at the Naval College, in all branches,
and if they passed me I would have a show. So we parted. I reported for
examination next day, but was put off--same the next day. But to-day I
was told to come, and sat down to a stock of foolscap, and had a
pretty stiff exam. I am only just through. I had seamanship, gunnery,
navigation, nautical astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, conic
sections, curve tracing, differential and integral calculus. I had only
three questions out of five to answer in each branch, but in the first
three I answered all five. After that I only had time for three, but
at the end he said I need not finish, he was perfectly satisfied. I had
done remarkably well, and he would report to the Viceroy to-morrow. He
examined my first papers--seamanship--said I was _perfect_ in it, so I
will get _along_, you need not fear. I told the Consul--he was very well
pleased--he is a nice man.

“I feel pretty well now--have had dinner and am smoking a good Manila
cheroot. I wrote hard all day, wrote fifteen sheets of foolscap and made
about a dozen drawings--got pretty tired.

“I have had a hard scramble for the service and only got in by the
skin of my teeth. I guess I will go to bed--I will sleep well
to-night--Thursday.

“I did not hear from the Naval Secretary, Tuesday, so yesterday morning
I went up to the Admiralty and sent in my card. He came out and received
me very well--said I had passed a ‘very splendid examination’; had been
recommended very strongly to the Viceroy, who was very much pleased;
that the Director of the Naval College over at the Arsenal had wanted me
and would I go over at once? I _would_. It was about five miles. We (a
friend, who is a great rider here) went on steeplechase ponies--we were
ferried across the Pei Ho in a small scow and then had a long ride.
There _is_ a path--but Pritchard insisted on taking all the ditches,
and as my pony jumped like a cat, it wasn’t nice at first, but I didn’t
squeal and kept my seat and got the swing of it at last and rather liked
it. I think I will keep a horse here--you can hire one and a servant
together for $7 a month; that is $5.60 of our money, and pony and man
found in everything.

“Well--at last we got to the Arsenal--a place about four miles around,
fortified, where all sorts of arms--cartridges, shot and shell, engines,
and _everything_--are made. The Naval College is inside surrounded by
a moat and wall. I thought to myself, if the cadet here is like to the
thing I used to be at the U. S. N. A. _that_ won’t keep him in. I went
through a lot of yards till I was ushered into a room finished in black
ebony and was greeted very warmly by the Director. We took seats on a
raised platform--Chinese style and pretty soon an interpreter came, one
of the Chinese professors, who was educated abroad, and we talked and
drank tea. He said I had done well, that he had the authority of the
Viceroy to take me there as ‘Professor’ of seamanship and gunnery; in
addition I might be required to teach navigation or nautical astronomy,
or drill the cadets in infantry, artillery, and fencing. For this I was
to receive what would be in our money $1,800 per annum, as near as we
can compare it, paid in gold each month. Besides, I will have a house
furnished for my use, and it is their intention, as soon as I _show_
that I _know_ something, to considerably increase my pay. They asked
the Viceroy to give me 130 T per month (about $186) and house, but the
Viceroy said I was _but a boy_; that I had seen no years and had only
come here a week ago with no one to vouch for me, and that I might turn
out an impostor. But he would risk 100 T on me anyhow, and as soon as
I was reported favorably on by the college I would be raised--the
agreement is to be for three years. For a few months I am to command
a training ship--an ironclad that is in dry dock at present, until a
captain in the English Navy comes out, who has been sent for to command
her.

“_So Here I am_--twenty-four years old and captain of a man-of-war--a
better one than any in our own navy--only for a short time, of course,
but I would be a pretty long time before I would command one at home.
Well--I accepted and will enter on my duties in a week, as soon as my
house is put in order. I saw it--it has a long veranda, very broad; with
flower garden, apricot trees, etc., just covered with blossoms; a wide
hall on the front, a room about 18x15, with a 13-foot ceiling; then back
another rather larger, with a cupola skylight in the centre, where I
am going to put a shelf with flowers. The Government is to furnish the
house with bed, tables, chairs, sideboards, lounges, stove for kitchen.
I have grates (American) in the room, but I don’t need them. We have
snow, and a good deal of ice in winter, but the thermometer never gets
below zero. I have to supply my own crockery. I will have two servants
and cook; I will only get one and the cook first--they only cost $4
to $5.50 per month, and their board amounts to very little. I can get
along, don’t you think so? Now I want you to get Jim to pack up all
my professional works on gunnery, surveying, seamanship, mathematics,
astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, conic sections, calculus,
mechanics, and _every_ book of that description I own, including those
paperbound ‘Naval Institute’ papers, and put them in a box, together
with any photos, etc., you think I would like--I have none of you or Pa
or the family (including Carrie)--and send to me.

“I just got in in time--didn’t I? Another week would have been too late.
My funds were getting low; I would not have had _anything_ before long.
The U. S. Consul, General Bromley, is much pleased. The interpreter says
it was all in the way I did with the Viceroy in the interview.

“I will have a chance to go to Peking and later to a tiger hunt in
Mongolia, but for the present I am going to study, work, and _stroke_
these mandarins till I get a raise. I am the only instructor in both
seamanship and gunnery, and I must know _everything_, both practically
and theoretically. But it will be good for me and the only thing is,
that if I were put back into the Navy I would be in a dilemma. I think
I will get my ‘influence’ to work, and I want you people at home to
look out, and in case I _am_--if it were represented to the Sec. that
my position here was giving me an immense lot of practical knowledge
professionally--more than I could get on a ship at sea--I think he would
give me two years’ leave on half or quarter pay. Or, I would be willing
to do without pay--only to be kept on the register in my rank.

“I will write more about this. Love to all.”


It is characteristic of McGiffin that in the very same letter in which
he announces he has entered foreign service he plans to return to
that of his own country. This hope never left him. You find the same
homesickness for the quarterdeck of an American man-of-war all through
his later letters. At one time a bill to reinstate the midshipmen who
had been cheated of their commissions was introduced into Congress. Of
this McGiffin writes frequently as “our bill.” “It may pass,” he writes,
“but I am tired hoping. I have hoped so long. And if it should,” he adds
anxiously, “there may be a time limit set in which a man must rejoin, or
lose his chance, so do not fail to let me know as quickly as you can.”
 But the bill did not pass, and McGiffin never returned to the navy that
had cut him adrift. He settled down at Tien-Tsin and taught the young
cadets how to shoot. Almost all of those who in the Chinese-Japanese War
served as officers were his pupils. As the navy grew, he grew with
it, and his position increased in importance. More Mexican dollars per
month, more servants, larger houses, and buttons of various honorable
colors were given him, and, in return, he established for China a modern
naval college patterned after our own. In those days throughout China
and Japan you could find many of these foreign advisers. Now, in Japan,
the Hon. W. H. Dennison of the Foreign Office, one of our own people, is
the only foreigner with whom the Japanese have not parted, and in China
there are none. Of all of those who have gone none served his employers
more faithfully than did McGiffin. At a time when every official
robbed the people and the Government, and when “squeeze” or “graft”
 was recognized as a perquisite, McGiffin’s hands were clean. The shells
purchased for the Government by him were not loaded with black sand,
nor were the rifles fitted with barrels of iron pipe. Once a year he
celebrated the Thanksgiving Day of his own country by inviting to a
great dinner all the Chinese naval officers who had been at least in
part educated in America. It was a great occasion, and to enjoy
it officers used to come from as far as Port Arthur, Shanghai, and
Hong-Kong. So fully did some of them appreciate the efforts of their
host that previous to his annual dinner, for twenty-four hours, they
delicately starved themselves.

During ten years McGiffin served as naval constructor and professor
of gunnery and seamanship, and on board ships at sea gave practical
demonstrations in the handling of the new cruisers. In 1894 he applied
for leave, which was granted, but before he had sailed for home war with
Japan was declared and he withdrew his application. He was placed
as second in command on board the _Chen Yuen_, a seven-thousand-ton
battleship, a sister ship to the _Ting Yuen_, the flagship of Admiral
Ting Ju Chang. On the memorable 17th of September, 1894, the battle of
the Yalu was fought, and so badly were the Chinese vessels hammered that
the Chinese navy, for the time being, was wiped out of existence.

From the start the advantage was with the Japanese fleet. In heavy guns
the Chinese were the better armed, but in quick-firing guns the Japanese
were vastly superior, and while the Chinese battleships _Ting Yuen_ and
_Chen Yuen_, each of 7,430 tons, were superior to any of the Japanese
warships, the three largest of which were each of 4,277 tons, the gross
tonnage of the Japanese fleet was 36,000 to 21,000 of the Chinese.
During the progress of the battle the ships engaged on each side
numbered an even dozen, but at the very start, before a decisive shot
was fired by either contestant, the _Tsi Yuen_, 2,355 tons, and _Kwan
Chiae_, 1,300 tons, ran away, and before they had time to get into the
game the _Chao Yung_ and _Yang Wei_ were in flames and had fled to the
nearest land. So the battle was fought by eight Chinese ships against
twelve of the Japanese. Of the Chinese vessels, the flagship, commanded
by Admiral Ting, and her sister ship, which immediately after the
beginning of the fight was for four hours commanded by McGiffin, were
the two chief aggressors, and in consequence received the fire of the
entire Japanese squadron. Toward the end of the fight, which without
interruption lasted for five long hours, the Japanese did not even
consider the four smaller ships of the enemy, but, sailing around the
two ironclads in a circle, fired only at them. The Japanese themselves
testified that these two ships never lost their formation, and that
when her sister ironclad was closely pressed the _Chen Yuen_, by her
movements and gun practice, protected the _Ting Yuen_, and, in fact,
while she could not prevent the heavy loss the fleet encountered,
preserved it from annihilation. During the fight this ship was almost
continuously on fire, and was struck by every kind of projectile, from
the thirteen-inch Canet shells to a rifle bullet, four hundred times.
McGiffin himself was so badly wounded, so beaten about by concussions,
so burned, and so bruised by steel splinters, that his health and
eyesight were forever wrecked. But he brought the _Chen Yuen_ safely
into Port Arthur and the remnants of the fleet with her.

On account of his lack of health he resigned from the Chinese service
and returned to America. For two years he lived in New York City,
suffering in body without cessation the most exquisite torture. During
that time his letters to his family show only tremendous courage. On the
splintered, gaping deck of the _Chen Yuen_, with the fires below it,
and the shells bursting upon it, he had shown to his Chinese crew the
courage of the white man who knew he was responsible for them and for
the honor of their country. But far greater and more difficult was the
courage he showed while alone in the dark sick-room, and in the private
wards of the hospitals.

In the letters he dictates from there he still is concerned only lest
those at home shall “worry”; he reassures them with falsehoods, jokes
at their fears; of the people he can see from the window of the hospital
tells them foolish stories; for a little boy who has been kind he asks
them to send him his Chinese postage stamps; he plans a trip he will
take with them when he is stronger, knowing he never will be stronger.
The doctors had urged upon him a certain operation, and of it to a
friend he wrote: “I know that I will have to have a piece about three
inches square cut out of my skull, and this nerve cut off near the
middle of the brain, as well as my eye taken out (for a couple of hours
only, provided it is not mislaid, and can be found). Doctor ------ and
his crowd show a bad memory for failures. As a result of this operation
others have told me--I forget the percentage of deaths, which does not
matter, but--that a large percentage have become insane. And some lost
their sight.”

While threatened with insanity and complete blindness, and hourly from
his wounds suffering a pain drugs could not master, he dictated for the
_Century Magazine_ the only complete account of the battle of the Yalu.
In a letter to Mr. Richard Watson Gilder he writes: “...my eyes are
troubling me. I cannot see even what I am writing now, and am getting
the article under difficulties. I yet hope to place it in your hands by
the 21st, still, if my eyes grow worse------”

“Still, if my eyes grow worse------”

The unfinished sentence was grimly prophetic.

Unknown to his attendants at the hospital, among the papers in his
despatch-box he had secreted his service revolver. On the morning of the
11th of February, 1897, he asked for this box, and on some pretext sent
the nurse from the room. When the report of the pistol brought them
running to his bedside, they found the pain-driven body at peace, and
the tired eyes dark forever.

In the article in the _Century_ on the battle of the Yalu, he had said:

“Chief among those who have died for their country is Admiral Ting Ju
Chang, a gallant soldier and true gentleman. Betrayed by his countrymen,
fighting against odds, almost his last official act was to stipulate
for the lives of his officers and men. His own he scorned to save, well
knowing that his ungrateful country would prove less merciful than his
honorable foe. Bitter, indeed, must have been the reflections of the
old, wounded hero, in that midnight hour, as he drank the poisoned cup
that was to give him rest.”

And bitter indeed must have been the reflections of the young wounded
American, robbed, by the parsimony of his country, of the right he had
earned to serve it, and who was driven out to give his best years and
his life for a strange people under a strange flag.




GENERAL WILLIAM WALKER,

THE KING OF THE FILIBUSTERS

IT is safe to say that to members of the younger generation the name of
William Walker conveys absolutely nothing. To them, as a name, “William
Walker” awakens no pride of race or country. It certainly does not
suggest poetry and adventure. To obtain a place in even this group
of Soldiers of Fortune, William Walker, the most distinguished of all
American Soldiers of Fortune, the one who but for his own countrymen
would have single-handed attained the most far-reaching results, had to
wait his turn behind adventurers of other lands and boy officers of
his own. And yet had this man with the plain name, the name that
to-day means nothing, accomplished what he adventured, he would on this
continent have solved the problem of slavery, have established an empire
in Mexico and in Central America, and, incidentally, have brought us
into war with all of Europe. That is all he would have accomplished.

In the days of gold in San Francisco among the “Forty-niners” William
Walker was one of the most famous, most picturesque and popular figures.
Jack Oakhurst, gambler; Colonel Starbottle, duellist; Yuba Bill,
stage-coach driver, were his contemporaries. Bret Harte was one of his
keenest admirers, and in two of his stories, thinly disguised under a
more appealing name, Walker is the hero. When, later, Walker came to New
York City, in his honor Broadway from the Battery to Madison Square was
bedecked with flags and arches. “It was roses, roses all the way.” The
house-tops rocked and swayed.

In New Orleans, where in a box at the opera he made his first
appearance, for ten minutes the performance came to a pause, while the
audience stood to salute him.

This happened less than fifty years ago, and there are men who as boys
were out with “Walker of Nicaragua,” and who are still active in the
public life of San Francisco and New York.

Walker was born in 1824, in Nashville, Tenn. He was the oldest son of
a Scotch banker, a man of a deeply religious mind, and interested in
a business which certainly is removed, as far as possible, from
the profession of arms. Indeed, few men better than William Walker
illustrate the fact that great generals are born, not trained.
Everything in Walker’s birth, family tradition, and education pointed
to his becoming a member of one of the “learned” professions. It was
the wish of his father that he should be a minister of the Presbyterian
Church, and as a child he was trained with that end in view. He himself
preferred to study medicine, and after graduating at the University of
Tennessee, at Edinburgh he followed a course of lectures, and for two
years travelled in Europe, visiting many of the great hospitals.

Then having thoroughly equipped himself to practise as a physician,
after a brief return to his native city, and as short a stay in
Philadelphia, he took down his shingle forever, and proceeded to
New Orleans to study law. In two years he was admitted to the bar of
Louisiana. But because clients were few, or because the red tape of the
law chafed his spirit, within a year, as already he had abandoned
the Church and Medicine, he abandoned his law practice and became
an editorial writer on the New Orleans _Crescent_. A year later the
restlessness which had rebelled against the grave professions led him to
the gold fields of California, and San Francisco. There, in 1852, at
the age of only twenty-eight, as editor of the San Francisco _Herald_,
Walker began his real life which so soon was to end in both disaster and
glory.

Up to his twenty-eighth year, except in his restlessness, nothing in his
life foreshadowed what was to follow. Nothing pointed to him as a man
for whom thousands of other men, from every capital of the world, would
give up their lives.

Negatively, by abandoning three separate callings, and in making it
plain that a professional career did not appeal to him, Walker had
thrown a certain sidelight on his character; but actively he never had
given any hint that under the thoughtful brow of the young doctor and
lawyer there was a mind evolving schemes of empire, and an ambition
limited only by the two great oceans.

Walker’s first adventure was undoubtedly inspired by and in imitation
of one which at the time of his arrival in San Francisco had just been
brought to a disastrous end. This was the De Boulbon expedition into
Mexico. The Count Gaston Raoulx de Raousset-Boulbon was a young French
nobleman and Soldier of Fortune, a _chasseur d’Afrique_, a duellist,
journalist, dreamer, who came to California to dig gold. Baron
Harden-Hickey, who was born in San Francisco a few years after Boulbon
at the age of thirty was shot in Mexico, also was inspired to dreams of
conquest by this same gentleman adventurer.

Boulbon was a young man of large ideas. In the rapid growth of
California he saw a threat to Mexico and proposed to that government, as
a “buffer” state between the two republics, to form a French colony
in the Mexican State of Sonora. Sonora is that part of Mexico which
directly joins on the south with our State of Arizona. The President of
Mexico gave Boulbon permission to attempt this, and in 1852 he landed at
Guaymas in the Gulf of California with two hundred and sixty well-armed
Frenchmen. The ostensible excuse of Boulbon for thus invading foreign
soil was his contract with the President under which his “emigrants”
 were hired to protect other foreigners working in the “Restauradora”
 mines from the attacks of Apache Indians from our own Arizona. But there
is evidence that back of Boulbon was the French Government, and that
he was attempting, in his small way, what later was attempted by
Maximilian, backed by a French army corps and Louis Napoleon, to
establish in Mexico an empire under French protection. For both the
filibuster and the emperor the end was the same; to be shot by the
fusillade against a church wall.

In 1852, two years before Boulbon’s death, which was the finale to his
second filibustering expedition into Sonora, he wrote to a friend in
Paris: “Europeans are disturbed by the growth of the United States. And
rightly so. Unless she be dismembered; unless a powerful rival be built
up beside her (_i.e._, France in Mexico), America will become, through
her commerce, her trade, her population, her geographical position upon
two oceans, the inevitable mistress of the world. In ten years Europe
dare not fire a shot without her permission. As I write fifty Americans
prepare to sail for Mexico and go perhaps to victory. _Voila les
Etats-Unis_.”

These fifty Americans who, in the eyes of Boulbon, threatened the peace
of Europe, were led by the ex-doctor, ex-lawyer, ex-editor, William
Walker, _aged twenty-eight years_. Walker had attempted but had failed
to obtain from the Mexican Government such a contract as the one it had
granted De Boulbon. He accordingly sailed without it, announcing that,
whether the Mexican Government asked him to do so or not, he would see
that the women and children on the border of Mexico and Arizona were
protected from massacre by the Indians. It will be remembered that when
Dr. Jameson raided the Transvaal he also went to protect “women and
children” from massacre by the Boers. Walker’s explanation of his
expedition, in his own words, is as follows. He writes in the third
person: “What Walker saw and heard satisfied him that a comparatively
small body of Americans might gain a position on the Sonora frontier
and protect the families on the border from the Indians, and such an
act would be one of humanity whether or not sanctioned by the Mexican
Government. The condition of the upper part of Sonora was at that time,
and still is [he was writing eight years later, in 1860], a disgrace to
the civilization of the continent...and the people of the United States
were more immediately responsible before the world for the Apache
outrages. Northern Sonora was in fact, more under the dominion of the
Apaches than under the laws of Mexico, and the contributions of the
Indians were collected with greater regularity and certainty than the
dues of the tax-gatherers. The state of this region furnished the best
defence for any American aiming to settle there without the formal
consent of Mexico; and, although political changes would certainly have
followed the establishment of a colony, they might be justified by the
plea that any social organization, no matter how secured, is preferable
to that in which individuals and families are altogether at the mercy of
savages.”

While at the time of Jameson’s raid the women and children in danger of
massacre from the Boers were as many as there are snakes in Ireland, at
the time of Walker’s raid the women and children were in danger from the
Indians, who as enemies, as Walker soon discovered, were as cruel and as
greatly to be feared as he had described them.

But it was not to save women and children that Walker sought to conquer
the State of Sonora. At the time of his expedition the great question of
slavery was acute; and if in the States next to be admitted to the Union
slavery was to be prohibited, the time had come, so it seemed to
this statesman of twenty-eight years, when the South must extend her
boundaries, and for her slaves find an outlet in fresh territory.
Sonora already joined Arizona. By conquest her territory could easily
be extended to meet Texas. As a matter of fact, strategically the spot
selected by William Walker for the purpose for which he desired it was
almost perfect. Throughout his brief career one must remember that the
spring of all his acts was this dream of an empire where slavery would
be recognized. His mother was a slave-holder. In Tennessee he had been
born and bred surrounded by slaves. His youth and manhood had been spent
in Nashville and New Orleans. He believed as honestly, as fanatically
in the right to hold slaves as did his father in the faith of the
Covenanters. To-day one reads his arguments in favor of slavery with the
most curious interest. His appeal to the humanity of his reader, to his
heart, to his sense of justice, to his fear of God, and to his belief
in the Holy Bible not to abolish slavery, but to continue it, to this
generation is as amusing as the topsy-turvyisms of Gilbert or Shaw. But
to the young man himself slavery was a sacred institution, intended for
the betterment of mankind, a God-given benefit to the black man and a
God-given right of his white master.

White brothers in the South, with perhaps less exalted motives,
contributed funds to fit out Walker’s expedition, and in October, 1852,
with forty-five men, he landed at Cape St. Lucas, at the extreme point
of Lower California. Lower California, it must be remembered, in spite
of its name, is not a part of our California, but then was, and still
is, a part of Mexico. The fact that he was at last upon the soil of the
enemy caused Walker to throw off all pretence; and instead of hastening
to protect women and children, he sailed a few miles farther up the
coast to La Paz. With his forty-five followers he raided the town, made
the Governor a prisoner, and established a republic with himself as
President. In a proclamation he declared the people free of the tyranny
of Mexico. They had no desire to be free, but Walker was determined,
and, whether they liked it or not, they woke up to find themselves an
independent republic. A few weeks later, although he had not yet set
foot there, Walker annexed on paper the State of Sonora, and to both
States gave the name of the Republic of Sonora.

As soon as word of this reached San Francisco, his friends busied
themselves in his behalf, and the danger-loving and adventurous of
all lands were enlisted as “emigrants” and shipped to him in the bark
_Anita_.

Two months later, in November, 1852, three hundred of these joined
Walker. They were as desperate a band of scoundrels as ever robbed a
sluice, stoned a Chinaman, or shot a “Greaser.” When they found that to
command them there was only a boy, they plotted to blow up the
magazine in which the powder was stored, rob the camp, and march north,
supporting themselves by looting the ranches. Walker learned of their
plot, tried the ringleaders by court-martial, and shot them. With a
force as absolutely undisciplined as was his, the act required the most
complete personal courage. That was a quality the men with him could
fully appreciate. They saw they had as a leader one who could fight,
and one who would punish. The majority did not want a leader who would
punish so when Walker called upon those who would follow him to Sonora
to show their hands, only the original forty-five and about forty of
the later recruits remained with him. With less than one hundred men
he started to march up the Peninsula through Lower California, and so
around the Gulf to Sonora.

From the very start the filibusters were overwhelmed with disaster. The
Mexicans, with Indian allies, skulked on the flanks and rear. Men who
in the almost daily encounters were killed fell into the hands of the
Indians, and their bodies were mutilated. Stragglers and deserters were
run to earth and tortured. Those of the filibusters who were wounded
died from lack of medical care. The only instruments they possessed with
which to extract the arrow-heads were probes made from ramrods filed to
a point. Their only food was the cattle they killed on the march. The
army was barefoot, the Cabinet in rags, the President of Sonora wore one
boot and one shoe.

Unable to proceed farther, Walker fell back upon San Vincente, where he
had left the arms and ammunition of the deserters and a rear-guard of
eighteen men. He found not one of these to welcome him. A dozen had
deserted, and the Mexicans had surprised the rest, lassoing them and
torturing them until they died. Walker now had but thirty-five men. To
wait for further re-enforcements from San Francisco, even were he sure
that re-enforcements would come, was impossible. He determined by forced
marches to fight his way to the boundary line of California. Between him
and safety were the Mexican soldiers holding the passes, and the Indians
hiding on his flanks. When within three miles of the boundary line, at
San Diego, Colonel Melendrez, who commanded the Mexican forces, sent in
a flag of truce, and offered, if they would surrender, a safe-conduct to
all of the survivors of the expedition except the chief. But the men who
for one year had fought and starved for Walker, would not, within three
miles of home, abandon him.

Melendrez then begged the commander of the United States troops to order
Walker to surrender. Major McKinstry, who was in command of the United
States Army Post at San Diego, refused. For him to cross the line would
be a violation of neutral territory. On Mexican soil he would neither
embarrass the ex-President of Sonora nor aid him; but he saw to it that
if the filibusters reached American soil, no Mexican or Indian should
follow them.

Accordingly, on the imaginary boundary he drew up his troop, and like
an impartial umpire awaited the result. Hidden behind rocks and cactus,
across the hot, glaring plain, the filibusters could see the American
flag, and the gay, fluttering guidons of the cavalry. The sight gave
them heart for one last desperate spurt. Melendrez also appreciated
that for the final attack the moment had come. As he charged, Walker,
apparently routed, fled, but concealed in the rocks behind him he had
stationed a rear-guard of a dozen men. As Melendrez rode into this
ambush the dozen riflemen emptied as many saddles, and the Mexicans and
Indians stampeded. A half hour later, footsore and famished, the little
band that had set forth to found an empire of slaves, staggered across
the line and surrendered to the forces of the United States.

Of this expedition James Jeffrey Roche says, in his “Byways of War,”
 which is of all books published about Walker the most intensely and
fascinatingly interesting and complete: “Years afterward the peon
herdsman or prowling Cocupa Indian in the mountain by-paths stumbled
over the bleaching skeleton of some nameless one whose resting-place was
marked by no cross or cairn, but the Colts revolver resting beside
his bones spoke his country and his occupation--the only relic of the
would-be conquistadores of the nineteenth century.”

Under parole to report to General Wood, commanding the Department of the
Pacific, the filibusters were sent by sailing vessel to San Francisco,
where their leader was tried for violating the neutrality laws of the
United States, and acquitted.

Walker’s first expedition had ended in failure, but for him it had been
an opportunity of tremendous experience, as active service is the best
of all military academies, and for the kind of warfare he was to wage,
the best preparation. Nor was it inglorious, for his fellow survivors,
contrary to the usual practice, instead of in bar-rooms placing the
blame for failure upon their leader, stood ready to fight one and all
who doubted his ability or his courage. Later, after five years, many of
these same men, though ten to twenty years his senior, followed him to
death, and never questioned his judgment nor his right to command.

At this time in Nicaragua there was the usual revolution. On the
south the sister republic of Costa Rica was taking sides, on the north
Honduras was landing arms and men. There was no law, no government. A
dozen political parties, a dozen commanding generals, and not one strong
man.

In the editorial rooms of the San Francisco _Herald_, Walker, searching
the map for new worlds to conquer, rested his finger upon Nicaragua.

In its confusion of authority he saw an opportunity to make himself
a power, and in its tropical wealth and beauty, in the laziness and
incompetence of its inhabitants, he beheld a greater, fairer, more kind
Sonora. On the Pacific side from San Francisco he could re-enforce his
army with men and arms; on the Caribbean side from New Orleans he could,
when the moment arrived, people his empire with slaves.

The two parties at war in Nicaragua were the Legitimists and the
Democrats. Why they were at war it is not necessary to know. Probably
Walker did not know; it is not likely that they themselves knew. But
from the leader of the Democrats Walker obtained a contract to bring
to Nicaragua three hundred Americans, who were each to receive several
hundred acres of land, and who were described as “colonists liable to
military duty.” This contract Walker submitted to the Attorney-General
of the State and to General Wood, who once before had acquitted him of
filibustering; and neither of these Federal officers saw anything
which seemed to give them the right to interfere. But the rest of San
Francisco was less credulous, and the “colonists” who joined Walker
had a very distinct idea that they were not going to Nicaragua to plant
coffee or to pick bananas.

In May, 1855, just a year after Walker and his thirty-three followers
had surrendered to the United States troops at San Diego, with fifty new
recruits and seven veterans of the former expedition he sailed from
San Francisco in the brig _Vesta_, and in five weeks, after a weary and
stormy voyage, landed at Realejo. There he was met by representatives of
the Provisional Director of the Democrats, who received the Californians
warmly.

Walker was commissioned a colonel, Achilles Kewen, who had been fighting
under Lopez in Cuba, a lieutenant-colonel, and Timothy Crocker, who had
served under Walker in the Sonora expedition, a major. The corps
was organized as an independent command and was named “La Falange
Americana.” At this time the enemy held the route to the Caribbean, and
Walker’s first orders were to dislodge him.

Accordingly, a week after landing with his fifty-seven Americans and one
hundred and fifty native troops, Walker sailed in the _Vesta_ for Brito,
from which port he marched upon Rivas, a city of eleven thousand people
and garrisoned by some twelve hundred of the enemy.

The first fight ended in a complete and disastrous fiasco. The native
troops ran away, and the Americans surrounded by six hundred of the
Legitimists’ soldiers, after defending themselves for three hours behind
some adobe huts, charged the enemy and escaped into the jungle. Their
loss was heavy, and among the killed were the two men upon whom Walker
chiefly depended: Kewen and Crocker. The Legitimists placed the bodies
of the dead and wounded who were still living on a pile of logs and
burned them. After a painful night march, Walker, the next day, reached
San Juan on the coast, and, finding a Costa Rican schooner in port,
seized it for his use. At this moment, although Walker’s men were
defeated, bleeding, and in open flight, two “gringos” picked up on
the beach of San Juan, “the Texan Harry McLeod and the Irishman Peter
Burns,” asked to be permitted to join him.

“It was encouraging,” Walker writes, “for the soldiers to find that
some besides themselves did not regard their fortunes as altogether
desperate, and small as was this addition to their number it gave
increased moral as well as material strength to the command.”

Sometimes in reading history it would appear as though for success the
first requisite must be an utter lack of humor, and inability to look
upon what one is attempting except with absolute seriousness. With forty
men Walker was planning to conquer and rule Nicaragua, a country with a
population of two hundred and fifty thousand souls and as large as the
combined area of Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire,
and Connecticut. And yet, even seven years later, he records without
a smile that two beach-combers gave his army “moral and material
strength.” And it is most characteristic of the man that at the
moment he was rejoicing over this addition to his forces, to maintain
discipline two Americans who had set fire to the houses of the enemy
he ordered to be shot. A weaker man would have repudiated the two
Americans, who, in fact, were not members of the Phalanx, and trusted
that their crimes would not be charged against him. But the success of
Walker lay greatly in his stern discipline. He tried the men, and they
confessed to their guilt. One got away; and, as it might appear that
Walker had connived at his escape, to the second man was shown no
mercy. When one reads how severe was Walker in his punishments, and
how frequently the death penalty was invoked by him against his own
few followers, the wonder grows that these men, as independent and as
unaccustomed to restraint as were those who first joined him, submitted
to his leadership. One can explain it only by the personal quality of
Walker himself.

Among these reckless, fearless outlaws, who, despising their allies,
believed and proved that with his rifle one American could account for a
dozen Nicaraguans, Walker was the one man who did not boast or drink or
gamble, who did not even swear, who never looked at a woman, and who, in
money matters, was scrupulously honest and unself-seeking. In a fight,
his followers knew that for them he would risk being shot just as
unconcernedly as to maintain his authority he would shoot one of them.

Treachery, cowardice, looting, any indignity to women, he punished with
death; but to the wounded, either of his own or of the enemy’s forces,
he was as gentle as a nursing sister and the brave and able he rewarded
with instant promotion and higher pay. In no one trait was he a
demagogue. One can find no effort on his part to ingratiate himself with
his men. Among the officers of his staff there were no favorites. He
messed alone, and at all times kept to himself. He spoke little, and
then with utter lack of self-consciousness. In the face of injustice,
perjury, or physical danger, he was always calm, firm, dispassionate.
But it is said that on those infrequent occasions when his anger
asserted itself, the steady steel-gray eyes flashed so menacingly that
those who faced them would as soon look down the barrel of his Colt.

The impression one gets of him gathered from his recorded acts, from his
own writings, from the writings of those who fought with him, is of a
silent, student-like young man believing religiously in his “star of
destiny”; but, in all matters that did not concern himself, possessed of
a grim sense of fun. The sayings of his men that in his history of the
war he records, show a distinct appreciation of the Bret Harte school of
humor. As, for instance, when he tells how he wished to make one of them
a drummer boy and the Californian drawled: “No, thanks, colonel; I never
seen a picture of a battle yet that the first thing in it wasn’t a dead
drummer boy with a busted drum.”

In Walker the personal vanity which is so characteristic of the soldier
of fortune was utterly lacking. In a land where a captain bedecks
himself like a field-marshal, Walker wore his trousers stuffed in his
boots, a civilian’s blue frock-coat, and the slouch hat of the period,
with, for his only ornament, the red ribbon of the Democrats. The
authority he wielded did not depend upon braid or buttons, and only when
going into battle did he wear his sword. In appearance he was slightly
built, rather below the medium height, smooth shaven, and with deep-set
gray eyes. These eyes apparently, as they gave him his nickname, were
his most marked feature.

His followers called him, and later, when he was thirty-two years
old, he was known all over the United States as the “Gray-Eyed Man of
Destiny.”

From the first Walker recognized that in order to establish himself in
Nicaragua he must keep in touch with all possible recruits arriving from
San Francisco and New York, and that to do this he must hold the line
of transit from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific. At this time the sea
routes to the gold-fields were three: by sailing vessel around the Cape,
one over the Isthmus of Panama, and one, which was the shortest, across
Nicaragua. By a charter from the Government of Nicaragua, the right to
transport passengers across this isthmus was controlled by the Accessory
Transit Company, of which the first Cornelius Vanderbilt was president.
His company owned a line of ocean steamers both on the Pacific side
and on the Atlantic side. Passengers _en route_ from New York to the
gold-fields were landed by these latter steamers at Greytown on the west
coast of Nicaragua, and sent by boats of light draught up the San Juan
River to Lake Nicaragua. There they were met by larger lake steamers and
conveyed across the lake to Virgin Bay. From that point, in carriages
and on mule back, they were carried twelve miles overland to the port of
San Juan del Sud on the Pacific Coast, where they boarded the company’s
steamers to San Francisco.

During the year of Walker’s occupation the number of passengers crossing
Nicaragua was an average of about two thousand a month.

It was to control this route that immediately after his first defeat
Walker returned to San Juan del Sud, and in a smart skirmish defeated
the enemy and secured possession of Virgin Bay, the halting place for
the passengers going east or west. In this fight Walker was outnumbered
five to one, but his losses were only three natives killed and a few
Americans wounded. The Legitimists lost sixty killed and a hundred
wounded. This proportion of losses shows how fatally effective was the
rifle and revolver fire of the Californians. Indeed, so wonderful was it
that when some years ago I visited the towns and cities captured by the
filibusters, I found that the marksmanship of Walker’s Phalanx was still
a tradition. Indeed, thanks to the filibusters, to-day in any part of
Central America a man from the States, if in trouble, has only to show
his gun. No native will wait for him to fire it.

After the fight at Virgin Bay, Walker received from California fifty
recruits--a very welcome addition to his force, and as he now commanded
about one hundred and twenty Americans, three hundred Nicaraguans, under
a friendly native, General Valle, and two brass cannon, he decided to
again attack Rivas. Rivas is on the lake just above Virgin Bay; still
further up is Granada, which was the head-quarters of the Legitimists.

Fearing Walker’s attack upon Rivas, the Legitimist troops were hurried
south from Granada to that city, leaving Granada but slightly protected.

Through intercepted letters Walker learned of this and determined to
strike at Granada. By night, in one of the lake steamers, he skirted the
shore, and just before daybreak, with fires banked and all lights out,
drew up to a point near the city. The day previous the Legitimists had
gained a victory, and, as good luck or Walker’s “destiny” would have
it, the night before Granada had been celebrating the event. Much joyous
dancing and much drinking of aguardiente had buried the inhabitants in a
drugged slumber. The garrison slept, the sentries slept, the city slept.
But when the convent bells called for early mass, the air was shaken
with sharp reports that to the ears of the Legitimists were unfamiliar
and disquieting. They were not the loud explosions of their own muskets
nor of the smooth bores of the Democrats. The sounds were sharp and
cruel like the crack of a whip. The sentries flying from their posts
disclosed the terrifying truth. “The Filibusteros!” they cried.
Following them at a gallop came Walker and Valle and behind them the men
of the awful Phalanx, whom already the natives had learned to fear: the
bearded giants in red flannel shirts who at Rivas on foot had charged
the artillery with revolvers, who at Virgin Bay when wounded had drawn
from their boots glittering bowie knives and hurled them like arrows,
who at all times shot with the accuracy of the hawk falling upon a
squawking hen.

There was a brief terrified stand in the Plaza, and then a complete
rout. As was their custom, the native Democrats began at once to loot
the city. But Walker put his sword into the first one of these he met,
and ordered the Americans to arrest all others found stealing, and to
return the goods already stolen. Over a hundred political prisoners in
the cartel were released by Walker, and the ball and chain to which each
was fastened stricken off. More than two-thirds of them at once enlisted
under Walker’s banner.

He now was in a position to dictate to the enemy his own terms of peace,
but a fatal blunder on the part of Parker H. French, a lieutenant of
Walker’s, postponed peace for several weeks, and led to unfortunate
reprisals. French had made an unauthorized and unsuccessful assault
on San Carlos at the eastern end of the lake, and the Legitimists
retaliated at Virgin Bay by killing half a dozen peaceful passengers,
and at San Carlos by firing at a transit steamer. For this the excuse of
the Legitimists was, that now that Walker was using the lake steamers
as transports it was impossible for them to know whether the boats were
occupied by his men or neutral passengers. As he could not reach the
guilty ones, Walker held responsible for their acts their secretary
of state, who at the taking of Granada was among the prisoners. He was
tried by court-martial and shot, “a victim of the new interpretation of
the principles of constitutional government.” While this act of Walker’s
was certainly stretching the theory of responsibility to the breaking
point, its immediate effect was to bring about a hasty surrender and a
meeting between the generals of the two political parties. Thus, four
months after Walker and his fifty-seven followers landed in Nicaragua,
a suspension of hostilities was arranged, and the side for which the
Americans had fought was in power. Walker was made commander-in-chief
of an army of twelve hundred men with salary of six thousand dollars a
year. A man named Rivas was appointed temporary president.

To Walker this pause in the fight was most welcome. It gave him an
opportunity to enlist recruits and to organize his men for the better
accomplishment of what was the real object of his going to Nicaragua. He
now had under him a remarkable force, one of the most effective known
to military history. For although six months had not yet passed,
the organization he now commanded was as unlike the Phalanx of
the fifty-eight adventurers who were driven back at Rivas, as were
Falstaff’s followers from the regiment of picked men commanded by
Colonel Roosevelt. Instead of the undisciplined and lawless now being
in the majority, the ranks were filled with the pick of the California
mining camps, with veterans of the Mexican War, with young Southerners
of birth and spirit, and with soldiers of fortune from all of the great
armies of Europe.

In the Civil War, which so soon followed, and later in the service of
the Khedive of Egypt, were several of Walker’s officers, and for years
after his death there was no war in which one of the men trained by him
in the jungles of Nicaragua did not distinguish himself. In his memoirs,
the Englishman, General Charles Frederic Henningsen, writes that though
he had taken part in some of the greatest battles of the Civil War he
would pit a thousand men of Walker’s command against any five thousand
Confederate or Union soldiers. And General Henningsen was one who spoke
with authority. Before he joined Walker he had served in Spain under Don
Carlos, in Hungary under Kossuth, and in Bulgaria.

Of Walker’s men, a regiment of which he commanded, he writes: “I often
have seen them march with a broken or compound fractured arm in
splints, and using the other to fire the rifle or revolver. Those with a
fractured thigh or wounds which rendered them incapable of removal, shot
themselves. Such men do not turn up in the average of everyday life, nor
do I ever expect to see their like again. All military science failed
on a suddenly given field before such assailants, who came at a run
to close with their revolvers and who thought little of charging a gun
battery, pistol in hand.”

Another graduate of Walker’s army was Captain Fred Townsend Ward, a
native of Salem, Mass., who after the death of Walker organized and
led the ever victorious army that put down the Tai-Ping rebellion,
and performed the many feats of martial glory for which Chinese Gordon
received the credit. In Shanghai, to the memory of the filibuster, there
are to-day two temples in his honor.

Joaquin Miller, the poet, miner, and soldier, who but recently was a
picturesque figure on the hotel porch at Saratoga Springs, was one of
the young Californians who was “out with Walker,” and who later in
his career by his verse helped to preserve the name of his beloved
commander. I. C. Jamison, living to-day in Guthrie, Oklahoma, was a
captain under Walker. When war again came, as it did within four months,
these were the men who made Walker President of Nicaragua.

During the four months in all but title he had been president, and as
such he was recognized and feared. It was against him, not Rivas, that
in February, 1856, the neighboring republic of Costa Rica declared war.
For three months this war continued with varying fortunes until the
Costa Ricans were driven across the border.

In June of the same year Rivas called a general election for president,
announcing himself as the candidate of the Democrats. Two other
Democrats also presented themselves, Salazar and Ferrer. The
Legitimists, recognizing in their former enemy the real ruler of the
country, nominated Walker. By an overwhelming majority he was elected,
receiving 15,835 votes to 867 cast for Rivas. Salazar received 2,087;
Ferrer, 4,447.

Walker now was the legal as well as the actual ruler of the country,
and at no time in its history, as during Walker’s administration, was
Nicaragua governed so justly, so wisely, and so well. But in his success
the neighboring republics saw a menace to their own independence. To the
four other republics of Central America the five-pointed blood-red star
on the flag of the filibusters bore a sinister motto: “Five or None.”
 The meaning was only too unpleasantly obvious. At once, Costa Rica on
the south, and Guatemala, Salvador, and Honduras from the north, with
the malcontents of Nicaragua, declared war against the foreign invader.
Again Walker was in the field with opposed to him 21,000 of the allies.
The strength of his own force varied. On his election as president the
backbone of his army was a magnificently trained body of veterans to the
number of 2,000. This was later increased to 3,500, but it is doubtful
if at any one time it ever exceeded that number. His muster and hospital
rolls show that during his entire occupation of Nicaragua there were
enlisted, at one time or another, under his banner 10,000 men. While in
his service, of this number, by hostile shots or fever, 5,000 died.

To describe the battles with the allies would be interminable and
wearying. In every particular they are much alike: the long silent
night march, the rush at daybreak, the fight to gain strategic
positions either of the barracks, or of the Cathedral in the Plaza,
the hand-to-hand fighting from behind barricades and adobe walls. The
out-come of these fights sometimes varied, but the final result was
never in doubt, and had no outside influences intervened, in time each
republic in Central America would have come under the five-pointed star.

In Costa Rica there is a marble statue showing that republic represented
as a young woman with her foot upon the neck of Walker. Some night a
truth-loving American will place a can of dynamite at the foot of that
statue, and walk hurriedly away. Unaided, neither Costa Rica nor any
other Central American republic could have driven Walker from her soil.
His downfall came through his own people, and through an act of his
which provoked them.

When Walker was elected president he found that the Accessory Transit
Company had not lived up to the terms of its concession with the
Nicaraguan Government. His efforts to hold it to the terms of its
concession led to his overthrow. By its charter the Transit Company
agreed to pay to Nicaragua ten thousand dollars annually and ten per
cent. of the net profits; but the company, whose history the United
States Minister, Squire, characterized as “an infamous career of
deception and fraud,” manipulated its books in such a fashion as to
show that there never were any profits. Doubting this, Walker sent a
commission to New York to investigate. The commission discovered the
fraud and demanded in back payments two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars. When the company refused to pay this, as security for the
debt Walker seized its steamers, wharves, and storehouses, revoked its
charter, and gave a new charter to two of its directors, Morgan and
Garrison, who, in San Francisco, were working against Vanderbilt. In
doing this, while he was legally in the right, he committed a fatal
error. He had made a powerful enemy of Vanderbilt, and he had shut off
his only lines of communication with the United States. For, enraged
at the presumption of the filibuster president, Vanderbilt withdrew his
ocean steamers, thus leaving Walker without men or ammunition, and as
isolated as though upon a deserted island. He possessed Vanderbilt’s
boats upon the San Juan River and Nicaragua Lake, but they were of use
to him only locally.

His position was that of a man holding the centre span of a bridge of
which every span on either side of him has been destroyed.

Vanderbilt did not rest at withdrawing his steamers, but by supporting
the Costa Ricans with money and men, carried the war into Central
America. From Washington he fought Walker through Secretary of State
Marcy, who proved a willing tool.

Spencer and Webster, and the other soldiers of fortune employed by
Vanderbilt, closed the route on the Caribbean side, and the man-of-war
_St. Marys_, commanded by Captain Davis, was ordered to San Juan on the
Pacific side. The instructions given to Captain Davis were to aid the
allies in forcing Walker out of Nicaragua. Walker claims that these
orders were given to Marcy by Vanderbilt and by Marcy to Commodore
Mervin, who was Marcy’s personal friend and who issued them to Davis.
Davis claims that he acted only in the interest of humanity to save
Walker in spite of himself. In any event, the result was the same.
Walker, his force cut down by hostile shot and fever and desertion, took
refuge in Rivas, where he was besieged by the allied armies. There was
no bread in the city. The men were living on horse and mule meat. There
was no salt. The hospital was filled with wounded and those stricken
with fever.

Captain Davis, in the name of humanity, demanded Walker’s surrender to
the United States. Walker told him he would not surrender, but that
if the time came when he found he must fly, he would do so in his own
little schooner of war, the _Granada_, which constituted his entire
navy, and in her, as a free man, take his forces where he pleased. Then
Davis informed Walker that the force Walker had sent to recapture the
Greytown route had been defeated by the janizaries of Vanderbilt; that
the steamers from San Francisco, on which Walker now counted to bring
him re-enforcements, had also been taken off the line, and finally
that it was his “unalterable and deliberate intention” to seize the
_Granada_. On this point his orders left him no choice. The _Granada_
was the last means of transportation still left to Walker. He had hoped
to make a sortie and on board her to escape from the country. But with
his ship taken from him and no longer able to sustain the siege of
the allies, he surrendered to the forces of the United States. In the
agreement drawn up by him and Davis, Walker provided for the care, by
Davis, of the sick and wounded, for the protection after his departure
of the natives who had fought with him, and for the transportation of
himself and officers to the United States.

On his arrival in New York he received a welcome such as later was
extended to Kossuth, and, in our own day, to Admiral Dewey. The city
was decorated with flags and arches; and banquets, fetes, and public
meetings were everywhere held in his honor. Walker received these
demonstrations modestly, and on every public occasion announced his
determination to return to the country of which he was the president,
and from which by force he had been driven. At Washington, where he
went to present his claims, he received scant encouragement. His protest
against Captain Davis was referred to Congress, where it was allowed to
die.

Within a month Walker organized an expedition with which to regain his
rights in Nicaragua, and as, in his new constitution for that country,
he had annulled the old law abolishing slavery, among the slave-holders
of the South he found enough money and recruits to enable him to at once
leave the United States. With one hundred and fifty men he sailed from
New Orleans and landed at San del Norte on the Caribbean side. While he
formed a camp on the harbor of San Juan, one of his officers, with fifty
men, proceeded up the river and, capturing the town of Castillo Viejo
and four of the Transit steamers, was in a fair way to obtain possession
of the entire route. At this moment upon the scene arrived the United
States frigate _Wabash_ and Hiram Paulding, who landed a force of three
hundred and fifty blue-jackets with howitzers, and turned the guns of
his frigate upon the camp of the President of Nicaragua. Captain Engel,
who presented the terms of surrender to Walker, said to him: “General,
I am sorry to see you here. A man like you is worthy to command better
men.” To which Walker replied grimly: “If I had a third the number you
have brought against me, I would show you which of us two commands the
better men.”

For the third time in his history Walker surrendered to the armed forces
of his own country.

On his arrival in the United States, in fulfilment of his parole to
Paulding, Walker at once presented himself at Washington a prisoner
of war. But President Buchanan, although Paulding had acted exactly as
Davis had done, refused to support him, and in a message to Congress
declared that that officer had committed a grave error and established
an unsafe precedent.

On the strength of this Walker demanded of the United States Government
indemnity for his losses, and that it should furnish him and his
followers transportation even to the very camp from which its
representatives had torn him. This demand, as Walker foresaw, was not
considered seriously, and with a force of about one hundred men, among
whom were many of his veterans, he again set sail from New Orleans.
Owing to the fact that, to prevent his return, there now were on each
side of the Isthmus both American and British men-of-war, Walker, with
the idea of reaching Nicaragua by land, stopped off at Honduras. In his
war with the allies the Honduranians had been as savage in their attacks
upon his men as even the Costa Ricans, and finding his old enemies
now engaged in a local revolution, on landing, Walker declared for the
weaker side and captured the important seaport of Trujillo. He no sooner
had taken it than the British warship _Icarus_ anchored in the harbor,
and her commanding officer, Captain Salmon, notified Walker that the
British Government held a mortgage on the revenues of the port, and that
to protect the interests of his Government he intended to take the town.
Walker answered that he had made Trujillo a free port, and that Great
Britain’s claims no longer existed.

The British officer replied that if Walker surrendered himself and his
men he would carry them as prisoners to the United States, and that if
he did not, he would bombard the town. At this moment General Alvarez,
with seven hundred Honduranians, from the land side surrounded Trujillo,
and prepared to attack. Against such odds by sea and land Walker was
helpless, and he determined to fly. That night, with seventy men,
he left the town and proceeded down the coast toward Nicaragua. The
_Icarus_, having taken on board Alvarez, started in pursuit. The
President of Nicaragua was found in a little Indian fishing village, and
Salmon sent in his shore-boats and demanded his surrender. On leaving
Trujillo, Walker had been forced to abandon all his ammunition save
thirty rounds a man, and all of his food supplies excepting two barrels
of bread. On the coast of this continent there is no spot more unhealthy
than Honduras, and when the Englishmen entered the fishing village they
found Walker’s seventy men lying in the palm huts helpless with fever,
and with no stomach to fight British blue-jackets with whom they had no
quarrel. Walker inquired of Salmon if he were asking him to surrender to
the British or to the Honduranian forces, and twice Salmon assured him,
“distinctly and specifically,” that he was surrendering to the forces of
her Majesty. With this understanding Walker and his men laid down their
arms and were conveyed to the _Icarus_. But on arriving at Trujillo,
in spite of their protests and demands for trial by a British tribunal,
Salmon turned over his prisoners to the Honduranian general. What excuse
for this is now given by his descendants in the Salmon family I do not
know.

Probably it is a subject they avoid, and, in history, Salmon’s version
has never been given, which for him, perhaps, is an injustice. But the
fact remains that he turned over his white brothers to the mercies of
half-Indian, half-negro, savages, who were not allies of Great Britain,
and in whose quarrels she had no interest. And Salmon did this, knowing
there could be but one end. If he did not know it, his stupidity
equalled what now appears to be heartless indifference. So far as to
secure pardon for all except the leader and one faithful follower,
Colonel Rudler of the famous Phalanx, Salmon did use his authority, and
he offered, if Walker would ask as an American citizen, to intercede for
him. But Walker, with a distinct sense of loyalty to the country he had
conquered, and whose people had honored him with their votes, refused to
accept life from the country of his birth, the country that had injured
and repudiated him.

Even in his extremity, abandoned and alone on a strip of glaring coral
and noisome swamp land, surrounded only by his enemies, he remained true
to his ideal.

At thirty-seven life is very sweet, many things still seem possible, and
before him, could his life be spared, Walker beheld greater conquests,
more power, a new South controlling a Nicaragua canal, a network of
busy railroads, great squadrons of merchant vessels, himself emperor of
Central America. On the gunboat the gold-braided youth had but to raise
his hand, and Walker again would be a free man. But the gold-braided one
would render this service only on the condition that Walker would appeal
to him as an American; it was not enough that Walker was a human being.
The condition Walker could not grant.

“The President of Nicaragua,” he said, “is a citizen of Nicaragua.”

They led him out at sunrise to a level piece of sand along the beach,
and as the priest held the crucifix in front of him he spoke to his
executioners in Spanish, simply and gravely: “I die a Roman Catholic.
In making war upon you at the invitation of the people of Ruatan I
was wrong. Of your people I ask pardon. I accept my punishment with
resignation. I would like to think my death will be for the good of
society.”

From a distance of twenty feet three soldiers fired at him, but,
although each shot took effect, Walker was not dead. So, a sergeant
stooped, and with a pistol killed the man who would have made him one of
an empire of slaves.

Had Walker lived four years longer to exhibit upon the great board of
the Civil War his ability as a general, he would, I believe, to-day be
ranked as one of America’s greatest fighting men.

And because the people of his own day destroyed him is no reason that we
should withhold from this American, the greatest of all filibusters, the
recognition of his genius.




MAJOR BURNHAM, CHIEF OF SCOUTS

AMONG the Soldiers of Fortune whose stories have been told in this book
were men who are no longer living, men who, to the United States, are
strangers, and men who were of interest chiefly because in what they
attempted they failed.

The subject of this article is none of these. His adventures are as
remarkable as any that ever led a small boy to dig behind the barn for
buried treasure, or stalk Indians in the orchard. But entirely apart
from his adventures he obtains our interest because in what he has
attempted he has not failed, because he is one of our own people, one of
the earliest and best types of American, and because, so far from being
dead and buried, he is at this moment very much alive, and engaged in
Mexico in searching for a buried city. For exercise, he is alternately
chasing, or being chased by, Yaqui Indians.

In his home in Pasadena, Cal., where sometimes he rests quietly for
almost a week at a time, the neighbors know him as “Fred” Burnham. In
England the newspapers crowned him “The King of Scouts.” Later, when he
won an official title, they called him “Major Frederick Russell Burnham,
D. S. O.”

Some men are born scouts, others by training become scouts. From his
father Burnham inherited his instinct for wood-craft, and to this
instinct, which in him is as keen as in a wild deer or a mountain lion,
he has added, in the jungle and on the prairie and mountain ranges,
years of the hardest, most relentless schooling. In those years he has
trained himself to endure the most appalling fatigues, hunger, thirst,
and wounds; has subdued the brain to infinite patience, has learned to
force every nerve in his body to absolute obedience, to still even the
beating of his heart. Indeed, than Burnham no man of my acquaintance to
my knowledge has devoted himself to his life’s work more earnestly, more
honestly, and with such single-mindedness of purpose. To him scouting
is as exact a study as is the piano to Paderewski, with the result that
to-day what the Pole is to other pianists, the American is to all other
“trackers,” woodmen, and scouts. He reads “the face of Nature” as you
read your morning paper. To him a movement of his horse’s ears is as
plain a warning as the “Go SLOW” of an automobile sign; and he so saves
from ambush an entire troop. In the glitter of a piece of quartz in the
firelight he discovers King Solomon’s mines. Like the horned cattle, he
can tell by the smell of it in the air the near presence of water,
and where, glaring in the sun, you can see only a bare kopje, he
distinguishes the muzzle of a pompom, the crown of a Boer sombrero,
the levelled barrel of a Mauser. He is the Sherlock Holmes of all
out-of-doors.

Besides being a scout, he is soldier, hunter, mining expert, and
explorer. Within the last ten years the educated instinct that as a
younger man taught him to follow the trail of an Indian, or the “spoor”
 of the Kaffir and the trek wagon, now leads him as a mining expert to
the hiding-places of copper, silver, and gold, and, as he advises, great
and wealthy syndicates buy or refuse tracts of land in Africa and Mexico
as large as the State of New York. As an explorer in the last few years
in the course of his expeditions into undiscovered lands, he has added
to this little world many thousands of square miles.

Personally, Burnham is as unlike the scout of fiction, and of the Wild
West Show, as it is possible for a man to be. He possesses no flowing
locks, his talk is not of “greasers,” “grizzly b’ars,” or “pesky
redskins.” In fact, because he is more widely and more thoroughly
informed, he is much better educated than many who have passed through
one of the “Big Three” universities, and his English is as conventional
as though he had been brought up on the borders of Boston Common, rather
than on the borders of civilization.

In appearance he is slight, muscular, bronzed; with a finely formed
square jaw, and remarkable light blue eyes. These eyes apparently never
leave yours, but in reality they see everything behind you and about
you, above and below you. They tell of him that one day, while out with
a patrol on the veldt, he said he had lost the trail and, dismounting,
began moving about on his hands and knees, nosing the ground like a
bloodhound, and pointing out a trail that led back over the way the
force had just marched. When the commanding officer rode up, Burnham
said:

“Don’t raise your head, sit. On that kopje to the right there is a
commando of Boers.”

“When did you see them?” asked the officer.

“I see them now,” Burnham answered.

“But I thought you were looking for a lost trail?”

“That’s what the Boers on the kopje think,” said Burnham.

In his eyes, possibly, owing to the uses to which they have been
trained, the pupils, as in the eyes of animals that see in the dark,
are extremely small. Even in the photographs that accompany this article
this feature of his eyes is obvious, and that he can see in the dark
the Kaffirs of South Africa firmly believe. In manner he is quiet,
courteous, talking slowly but well, and, while without any of that
shyness that comes from self-consciousness, extremely modest. Indeed,
there could be no better proof of his modesty than the difficulties I
have encountered in gathering material for this article, which I have
been five years in collecting. And even now, as he reads it by his
camp-fire, I can see him squirm with embarrassment.

Burnham’s father was a pioneer missionary in a frontier hamlet called
Tivoli on the edge of the Indian reserve of Minnesota. He was a stern,
severely religious man, born in Kentucky, but educated in New York,
where he graduated from the Union Theological Seminary. He was
wonderfully skilled in wood-craft. Burnham’s mother was a Miss Rebecca
Russell of a well-known family in Iowa. She was a woman of great
courage, which, in those days on that skirmish line of civilization,
was a very necessary virtue; and she was possessed of a most gentle and
sweet disposition. That was her gift to her son Fred, who was born on
May 11, 1861.

His education as a child consisted in memorizing many verses of the
Bible, the “Three R’s,” and wood-craft. His childhood was strenuous. In
his mother’s arms he saw the burning of the town of New Ulm, which was
the funeral pyre for the women and children of that place when they were
massacred by Red Cloud and his braves.

On another occasion Fred’s mother fled for her life from the Indians,
carrying the boy with her. He was a husky lad, and knowing that if she
tried to carry him farther they both would be overtaken, she hid him
under a shock of corn. There, the next morning, the Indians having been
driven off, she found her son sleeping as soundly as a night watchman.
In these Indian wars, and the Civil War which followed, of the families
of Burnham and Russell, twenty-two of the men were killed. There is no
question that Burnham comes of fighting stock.

In 1870, when Fred was nine years old, his father moved to Los Angeles,
Cal., where two years later he died; and for a time for both mother and
boy there was poverty, hard and grinding. To relieve this young Burnham
acted as a mounted messenger. Often he was in the saddle from twelve to
fifteen hours, and even in a land where every one rode well, he gained
local fame as a hard rider. In a few years a kind uncle offered to Mrs.
Burnham and a younger brother a home in the East, but at the last moment
Fred refused to go with them, and chose to make his own way. He was then
thirteen years old, and he had determined to be a scout.

At that particular age many boys have set forth determined to be scouts,
and are generally brought home the next morning by a policeman. But
Burnham, having turned his back on the cities, did not repent. He
wandered over Mexico, Arizona, California. He met Indians, bandits,
prospectors, hunters of all kinds of big game; and finally a scout who,
under General Taylor, had served in the Mexican War. This man took a
liking to the boy; and his influence upon him was marked and for his
good. He was an educated man, and had carried into the wilderness a few
books. In the cabin of this man Burnham read “The Conquest of Mexico
and Peru” by Prescott, the lives of Hannibal and Cyrus the Great, of
Livingstone the explorer, which first set his thoughts toward Africa,
and many technical works on the strategy and tactics of war. He had no
experience of military operations on a large scale, but, with the aid of
the veteran of the Mexican War, with corn-cobs in the sand in front of
the cabin door, he constructed forts and made trenches, redoubts,
and traverses. In Burnham’s life this seems to have been a very happy
period. The big game he hunted and killed he sold for a few dollars to
the men of Nadean’s freight outfits, which in those days hauled bullion
from Cerro Gordo for the man who is now Senator Jones of Nevada.

At nineteen Burnham decided that there were things in this world he
should know that could not be gleaned from the earth, trees, and sky;
and with the few dollars he had saved he came East. The visit apparently
was not a success. The atmosphere of the town in which he went to school
was strictly Puritanical, and the townspeople much given to religious
discussion. The son of the pioneer missionary found himself unable to
subscribe to the formulas which to the others seemed so essential, and
he returned to the West with the most bitter feelings, which lasted
until he was twenty-one.

“It seems strange now,” he once said to me, “but in those times
religious questions were as much a part of our daily life as to-day are
automobiles, the Standard Oil, and the insurance scandals, and when I
went West I was in an unhappy, doubting frame of mind. The trouble was
I had no moral anchors; the old ones father had given me were gone, and
the time for acquiring new ones had not arrived.” This bitterness of
heart, or this disappointment, or whatever the state of mind was that
the dogmas of the New England town had inspired in the boy from the
prairie, made him reckless. For the life he was to lead this was not a
handicap. Even as a lad, in a land-grant war in California, he had been
under gunfire, and for the next fifteen years he led a life of danger
and of daring; and studied in a school of experience than which, for a
scout, if his life be spared, there can be none better. Burnham came
out of it a quiet, manly, gentleman. In those fifteen years he roved the
West from the Great Divide to Mexico. He fought the Apache Indians for
the possession of waterholes, he guarded bullion on stage-coaches, for
days rode in pursuit of Mexican bandits and American horse thieves,
took part in county-seat fights, in rustler wars, in cattle wars; he was
cowboy, miner, deputy-sheriff, and in time throughout the the name of
“Fred” Burnham became significant and familiar.

During this period Burnham was true to his boyhood ideal of becoming a
scout. It was not enough that by merely living the life around him he
was being educated for it. He daily practised and rehearsed those things
which some day might mean to himself and others the difference between
life and death. To improve his sense of smell he gave up smoking, of
which he was extremely fond, nor, for the same reason, does he to this
day use tobacco. He accustomed himself also to go with little sleep, and
to subsist on the least possible quantity of food. As a deputy-sheriff
this educated faculty of not requiring sleep aided him in many important
captures. Sometimes he would not strike the trail of the bandit or “bad
man” until the other had several days the start of him. But the end
was the same; for, while the murderer snatched a few hours’ rest by the
trail, Burnham, awake and in the saddle, would be closing up the miles
between them.

That he is a good marksman goes without telling. At the age of eight his
father gave him a rifle of his own, and at twelve, with either a “gun”
 or a Winchester, he was an expert. He taught himself to use a weapon
either in his left or right hand and to shoot, Indian fashion, hanging
by one leg from his pony and using it as a cover, and to turn in the
saddle and shoot behind him. I once asked him if he really could shoot
to the rear with a galloping horse under him and hit a man.

“Well,” he said, “maybe not to hit him, but I can come near enough to
him to make him decide my pony’s so much faster than his that it really
isn’t worth while to follow me.”

Besides perfecting himself in what he tolerantly calls “tricks” of
horsemanship and marksmanship, he studied the signs of the trail, forest
and prairie, as a sailing-master studies the waves and clouds. The
knowledge he gathers from inanimate objects and dumb animals seems
little less than miraculous. And when you ask him how he knows these
things he always gives you a reason founded on some fact or habit of
nature that shows him to be a naturalist, mineralogist, geologist, and
botanist, and not merely a seventh son of a seventh son.

In South Africa he would say to the officers: “There are a dozen Boers
five miles ahead of us riding Basuto ponies at a trot, and leading five
others. If we hurry we should be able to sight them in an hour.” At
first the officers would smile, but not after a half-hour’s gallop, when
they would see ahead of them a dozen Boers leading five ponies. In the
early days of Salem, Burnham would have been burned as a witch.

When twenty-three years of age he married Miss Blanche Blick, of Iowa.
They had known each other from childhood, and her brothers-in-law have
been Burnham’s aids and companions in every part of Africa and the West.
Neither at the time of their marriage nor since did Mrs. Burnham “lay
a hand on the bridle rein,” as is witnessed by the fact that for nine
years after his marriage Burnham continued his career as sheriff, scout,
mining prospector. And in 1893, when Burnham and his brother-in-law,
Ingram, started for South Africa, Mrs. Burnham went with them, and
in every part of South Africa shared her husband’s life of travel and
danger.

In making this move across the sea, Burnham’s original idea was to look
for gold in the territory owned by the German East African Company. But
as in Rhodesia the first Matabele uprising had broken out, he continued
on down the coast, and volunteered for that campaign. This was the real
beginning of his fortunes. The “war” was not unlike the Indian fighting
of his early days, and although the country was new to him, with
the kind of warfare then being waged between the Kaffirs under King
Lobengula and the white settlers of the British South Africa Company,
the chartered company of Cecil Rhodes, he was intimately familiar.

It does not take big men long to recognize other big men, and Burnham’s
remarkable work as a scout at once brought him to the notice of Rhodes
and Dr. Jameson, who was personally conducting the campaign. The war was
their own private war, and to them, at such a crisis in the history of
their settlement, a man like Burnham was invaluable.

The chief incident of this campaign, the fame of which rang over all
Great Britain and her colonies, was the gallant but hopeless stand made
by Major Alan Wilson and his patrol of thirty-four men. It was Burnham’s
attempt to save these men that made him known from Buluwayo to Cape
Town.

King Lobengula and his warriors were halted on one bank of the Shangani
River, and on the other Major Forbes, with a picked force of three
hundred men, was coming up in pursuit. Although at the moment he did
not know it, he also was being pursued by a force of Matabeles, who were
gradually surrounding him. At nightfall Major Wilson and a patrol of
twelve men, with Burnham and his brother-in-law, Ingram, acting as
scouts, were ordered to make a dash into the camp of Lobengula and, if
possible, in the confusion of their sudden attack, and under cover of a
terrific thunder-storm that was raging, bring him back a prisoner.

With the king in their hands the white men believed the rebellion would
collapse. To the number of three thousand the Matabeles were sleeping in
a succession of camps, through which the fourteen men rode at a gallop.
But in the darkness it was difficult to distinguish the trek wagon of
the king, and by the time they found his laager the Matabeles from the
other camps through which they had ridden had given the alarm. Through
the underbrush from every side the enemy, armed with assegai and
elephant guns, charged toward them and spread out to cut off their
retreat.

At a distance of about seven hundred yards from the camps there was
a giant ant-hill, and the patrol rode toward it. By the aid of the
lightning flashes they made their way through a dripping wood and over
soil which the rain had turned into thick black mud. When the party
drew rein at the ant-hill it was found that of the fourteen three were
missing. As the official scout of the patrol and the only one who could
see in the dark, Wilson ordered Burnham back to find them. Burnham said
he could do so only by feeling the hoof-prints in the mud and that he
would like some one with him to lead his pony. Wilson said he would lead
it. With his fingers Burnham followed the trail of the eleven horses to
where, at right angles, the hoof-prints of the three others separated
from it, and so came upon the three men. Still, with nothing but the mud
of the jungle to guide him, he brought them back to their comrades. It
was this feat that established his reputation among British, Boers, and
black men in South Africa.

Throughout the night the men of the patrol lay in the mud holding the
reins of their horses. In the jungle about them, they could hear the
enemy splashing through the mud, and the swishing sound of the branches
as they swept back into place. It was still raining. Just before
the dawn there came the sounds of voices and the welcome clatter of
accoutrements. The men of the patrol, believing the column had joined
them, sprang up rejoicing, but it was only a second patrol, under
Captain Borrow, who had been sent forward with twenty men as
re-enforcements. They had come in time to share in a glorious
immortality. No sooner had these men joined than the Kaffirs began the
attack; and the white men at once learned that they were trapped in a
complete circle of the enemy. Hidden by the trees, the Kaffirs fired
point-blank, and in a very little time half of Wilson’s force was
killed or wounded. As the horses were shot down the men used them for
breastworks. There was no other shelter. Wilson called Burnham to him
and told him he must try and get through the lines of the enemy to
Forbes.

“Tell him to come up at once,” he said; “we are nearly finished.” He
detailed a trooper named Gooding and Ingram to accompany Burnham.
“One of you may get through,” he said. Gooding was but lately out from
London, and knew nothing of scouting, so Burnham and Ingram warned him,
whether he saw the reason for it or not, to act exactly as they did.
The three men had barely left the others before the enemy sprang at them
with their spears. In five minutes they were being fired at from every
bush. Then followed a remarkable ride, in which Burnham called to his
aid all he had learned in thirty years of border warfare. As the enemy
rushed after them, the three doubled on their tracks, rode in triple
loops, hid in dongas to breathe their horses; and to scatter their
pursuers, separated, joined again, and again separated. The enemy
followed them to the very bank of the river, where, finding the “drift”
 covered with the swollen waters, they were forced to swim. They reached
the other bank only to find Forbes hotly engaged with another force of
the Matabeles.

“I have been sent for re-enforcements,” Burnham said to Forbes, “but I
believe we are the only survivors of that party.” Forbes himself was too
hard pressed to give help to Wilson, and Burnham, his errand over, took
his place in the column, and began firing upon the new enemy.

Six weeks later the bodies of Wilson’s patrol were found lying in a
circle. Each of them had been shot many times. A son of Lobengula, who
witnessed their extermination, and who in Buluwayo had often heard the
Englishmen sing their national anthem, told how the five men who were
the last to die stood up and, swinging their hats defiantly, sang “God
Save the Queen.” The incident will long be recorded in song and story;
and in London was reproduced in two theatres, in each of which the
man who played “Burnham, the American Scout,” as he rode off for
re-enforcements, was as loudly cheered by those in the audience as by
those on the stage.

Hensman, in his “History of Rhodesia,” says: “One hardly knows which to
most admire, the men who went on this dangerous errand, through brush
swarming with natives, or those who remained behind battling against
overwhelming odds.”

For his help in this war the Chartered Company presented Burnham with
the campaign medal, a gold watch engraved with words of appreciation;
and at the suggestion of Cecil Rhodes gave him, Ingram, and the Hon.
Maurice Clifford, jointly, a tract of land of three hundred square
acres.

After this campaign Burnham led an expedition of ten white men and
seventy Kaffirs north of the Zambesi River to explore Barotzeland
and other regions to the north of Mashonaland, and to establish the
boundaries of the concession given him, Ingram, and Clifford.

In order to protect Burnham on the march the Chartered Company signed
a treaty with the native king of the country through which he wished
to travel, by which the king gave him permission to pass freely and
guaranteed him against attack.

But Latea, the son of the king, refused to recognize the treaty and sent
his young men in great numbers to surround Burnham’s camp. Burnham had
been instructed to avoid a fight, and was torn between his desire to
obey the Chartered Company and to prevent a massacre. He decided to make
it a sacrifice either of himself or of Latea. As soon as night fell,
with only three companions and a missionary to act as a witness of what
occurred, he slipped through the lines of Latea’s men, and, kicking
down the fence around the prince’s hut, suddenly appeared before him and
covered him with his rifle.

“Is it peace or war?” Burnham asked. “I have the king your father’s
guarantee of protection, but your men surround us. I have told my people
if they hear shots to open fire. We may all be killed, but you will be
the first to die.”

The missionary also spoke urging Latea to abide by the treaty. Burnham
says the prince seemed much more impressed by the arguments of the
missionary than by the fact that he still was covered by Burnham’s
rifle. Whichever argument moved him, he called off his warriors. On
this expedition Burnham discovered the ruins of great granite structures
fifteen feet wide, and made entirely without mortar. They were of a
period dating before the Phoenicians. He also sought out the ruins
described to him by F. C. Selous, the famous hunter, and by Rider
Haggard as King Solomon’s Mines. Much to the delight of Mr. Haggard,
he brought back for him from the mines of his imagination real gold
ornaments and a real gold bar.

On this same expedition, which lasted five months, Burnham endured one
of the severest hardships of his life. Alone with ten Kaffir boys, he
started on a week’s journey across the dried-up basin of what once had
been a great lake. Water was carried in goat-skins on the heads of the
bearers. The boys, finding the bags an unwieldy burden, and believing,
with the happy optimism of their race, that Burnham’s warnings were
needless, and that at a stream they soon could refill the bags, emptied
the water on the ground.

The tortures that followed this wanton waste were terrible. Five of
the boys died, and after several days, when Burnham found water in
abundance, the tongues of the others were so swollen that their jaws
could not meet.

On this trip Burnham passed through a region ravaged by the “sleeping
sickness,” where his nostrils were never free from the stench of dead
bodies, where in some of the villages, as he expressed it, “the hyenas
were mangy with overeating, and the buzzards so gorged they could
not move out of our way.” From this expedition he brought back many
ornaments of gold manufactured before the Christian era, and made
several valuable maps of hitherto uncharted regions. It was in
recognition of the information gathered by him on this trip that he was
elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

He returned to Rhodesia in time to take part in the second Matabele
rebellion. This was in 1896. By now Burnham was a very prominent
member of the “vortrekers” and pioneers at Buluwayo, and Sir Frederick
Carrington, who was in command of the forces, attached him to his staff.
This second outbreak was a more serious uprising than the one of 1893,
and as it was evident the forces of the Chartered Company could not
handle it, imperial troops were sent to assist them. But with even their
aid the war dragged on until it threatened to last to the rainy season,
when the troops must have gone into winter quarters. Had they done so,
the cost of keeping them would have fallen on the Chartered Company,
already a sufferer in pocket from the ravages of the rinderpest and the
expenses of the investigation which followed the Jameson raid.

Accordingly, Carrington looked about for some measure by which he could
bring the war to an immediate end.

It was suggested to him by a young Colonial, named Armstrong, the
Commissioner of the district, that this could be done by destroying
the “god,” or high priest, Umlimo, who was the chief inspiration of the
rebellion.

This high priest had incited the rebels to a general massacre of women
and children, and had given them confidence by promising to strike the
white soldiers blind and to turn their bullets into water. Armstrong
had discovered the secret hiding-place of Umlimo, and Carrington ordered
Burnham to penetrate the enemy’s lines, find the god, capture him, and
if that were not possible to destroy him.

The adventure was a most desperate one. Umlimo was secreted in a cave
on the top of a huge kopje. At the base of this was a village where were
gathered two regiments, of a thousand men each, of his fighting men.

For miles around this village the country was patrolled by roving bands
of the enemy.

Against a white man reaching the cave and returning, the chances were a
hundred to one, and the difficulties of the journey are illustrated by
the fact that Burnham and Armstrong were unable to move faster than at
the rate of a mile an hour. In making the last mile they consumed three
hours. When they reached the base of the kopje in which Umlimo was
hiding, they concealed their ponies in a clump of bushes, and on hands
and knees began the ascent.

Directly below them lay the village, so close that they could smell the
odors of cooking from the huts, and hear, rising drowsily on the hot,
noonday air, voices of the warriors. For minutes at a time they lay as
motionless as the granite bowlders around or squirmed and crawled over
loose stones which a miss of hand or knee would have dislodged and sent
clattering into the village. After an hour of this tortuous climbing
the cave suddenly opened before them, and they beheld Umlimo.
Burnham recognized that to take him alive from his stronghold was an
impossibility, and that even they themselves would leave the place was
equally doubtful. So, obeying orders, he fired, killing the man who had
boasted he would turn the bullets of his enemies into water. The echo of
the shot aroused the village as would a stone hurled into an ant-heap.
In an instant the veldt below was black with running men, and as,
concealment being no longer possible, the white men rose to fly a great
shout of anger told them they were discovered. At the same moment two
women, returning from a stream where they had gone for water, saw the
ponies, and ran screaming to give the alarm. The race that followed
lasted two hours, for so quickly did the Kaffirs spread out on every
side that it was impossible for Burnham to gain ground in any one
direction, and he was forced to dodge, turn, and double. At one time
the white men were driven back to the very kopje from which the race had
started.

But in the end they evaded assegai and gunfire, and in safety reached
Buluwayo. This exploit was one of the chief factors in bringing the war
to a close. The Matabeles, finding their leader was only a mortal like
themselves, and so could not, as he had promised, bring miracles to
their aid, lost heart, and when Cecil Rhodes in person made overtures of
peace, his terms were accepted. During the hard days of the siege, when
rations were few and bad, Burnham’s little girl, who had been the first
white child born in Buluwayo, died of fever and lack of proper
food. This with other causes led him to leave Rhodesia and return to
California. It is possible he then thought he had forever turned
his back on South Africa, but, though he himself had departed, the
impression he had made there remained behind him.

Burnham did not rest long in California. In Alaska the hunt for gold had
just begun, and, the old restlessness seizing him, he left Pasadena and
her blue skies, tropical plants, and trolley-car strikes for the new raw
land of the Klondike. With Burnham it has always been the place that is
being made, not the place in being, that attracts. He has helped to make
straight the ways of several great communities--Arizona, California,
Rhodesia, Alaska, and Uganda. As he once said: “It is the constructive
side of frontier life that most appeals to me, the building up of a
country, where you see the persistent drive and force of the white man;
when the place is finally settled I don’t seem to enjoy it very long.”

In Alaska he did much prospecting, and, with a sled and only two dogs,
for twenty-four days made one long fight against snow and ice, covering
six hundred miles. In mining in Alaska he succeeded well, but against
the country he holds a constant grudge, because it kept him out of the
fight with Spain. When war was declared he was in the wilds and knew
nothing of it, and though on his return to civilization he telegraphed
Colonel Roosevelt volunteering for the Rough Riders, and at once started
south, by the time he had reached Seattle the war was over.

Several times has he spoken to me of how bitterly he regretted missing
this chance to officially fight for his country. That he had twice
served with English forces made him the more keen to show his loyalty to
his own people.

That he would have been given a commission in the Rough Riders seems
evident from the opinion President Roosevelt has publicly expressed of
him.

“I know Burnham,” the President wrote in 1901. “He is a scout and a
hunter of courage and ability, a man totally without fear, a sure shot,
and a fighter. He is the ideal scout, and when enlisted in the military
service of any country he is bound to be of the greatest benefit.”

The truth of this Burnham was soon to prove.

In 1899 he had returned to the Klondike, and in January of 1900 had been
six months in Skagway. In that same month Lord Roberts sailed for
Cape Town to take command of the army, and with him on his staff was
Burnham’s former commander, Sir Frederick, now Lord, Carrington. One
night as the ship was in the Bay of Biscay, Carrington was talking of
Burnham and giving instances of his marvellous powers as a “tracker.”

“He is the best scout we ever had in South Africa!” Carrington declared.

“Then why don’t we get him back there?” said Roberts.

What followed is well known.

From Gibraltar a cable was sent to Skagway, offering Burnham the
position, created especially for him, of chief of scouts of the British
army in the field.

Probably never before in the history of wars has one nation paid so
pleasant a tribute to the abilities of a man of another nation.

The sequel is interesting. The cablegram reached Skagway by the steamer
_City of Seattle_. The purser left it at the post-office, and until two
hours and a half before the steamer was listed to start on her return
trip, there it lay. Then Burnham, in asking for his mail, received it.
In two hours and a half he had his family, himself, and his belongings
on board the steamer, and had started on his half-around-the-world
journey from Alaska to Cape Town.

A Skagway paper of January 5, 1900, published the day after Burnham
sailed, throws a side light on his character. After telling of his hasty
departure the day before, and of the high compliment that had been paid
to “a prominent Skagwayan,” it adds: “Although Mr. Burnham has lived in
Skagway since last August, and has been North for many months, he has
said little of his past, and few have known that he is the man famous
over the world as ‘the American scout’ of the Matabele wars.”

Many a man who went to the Klondike did not, for reasons best known to
himself, talk about his past. But it is characteristic of Burnham that,
though he lived there two years, his associates did not know, until the
British Government snatched him from among them, that he had not always
been a prospector like themselves.

I was on the same ship that carried Burnham the latter half of his
journey, from Southampton to Cape Town, and every night for seventeen
nights was one of a group of men who shot questions at him. And it was
interesting to see a fellow-countryman one had heard praised so highly
so completely make good. It was not as though he had a credulous
audience of commercial tourists. Among the officers who each evening
gathered around him were Colonel Gallilet of the Egyptian cavalry,
Captain Frazer commanding the Scotch Gillies, Captain Mackie of Lord
Roberts’s staff, each of whom was later killed in action; Colonel Sir
Charles Hunter of the Royal Rifles, Major Bagot, Major Lord Dudley, and
Captain Lord Valentia. Each of these had either held command in border
fights in India or the Sudan or had hunted big game, and the questions
each asked were the outcome of his own experience and observation.

Not for a single evening could a faker have submitted to the midnight
examination through which they put Burnham and not have exposed his
ignorance. They wanted to know what difference there is in a column of
dust raised by cavalry and by trek wagons, how to tell whether a horse
that has passed was going at a trot or a gallop, the way to throw a
diamond hitch, how to make a fire without at the same time making a
target of yourself, how--why--what--and how?

And what made us most admire Burnham was that when he did not know he at
once said so.

Within two nights he had us so absolutely at his mercy that we would
have followed him anywhere; anything he chose to tell us, we would have
accepted. We were ready to believe in flying foxes, flying squirrels,
that wild turkeys dance quadrilles--even that you must never sleep in
the moonlight. Had he demanded: “Do you believe in vampires?” we would
have shouted “Yes.” To ask that a scout should on an ocean steamer prove
his ability was certainly placing him under a severe handicap.

As one of the British officers said: “It’s about as fair a game as
though we planted the captain of this ship in the Sahara Desert, and
told him to prove he could run a ten-thousand-ton liner.”

Burnham continued with Lord Roberts to the fall of Pretoria, when he was
invalided home.

During the advance north he was a hundred times inside the Boer laagers,
keeping Headquarters Staff daily informed of the enemy’s movements; was
twice captured and twice escaped.

He was first captured while trying to warn the British from the fatal
drift at Thaba’nchu. When reconnoitring alone in the morning mist he
came upon the Boers hiding on the banks of the river, toward which the
English were even then advancing. The Boers were moving all about him,
and cut him off from his own side. He had to choose between abandoning
the English to the trap or signalling to them, and so exposing himself
to capture. With the red kerchief the scouts carried for that purpose he
wigwagged to the approaching soldiers to turn back, that the enemy were
awaiting them. But the column, which was without an advance guard, paid
no attention to his signals and plodded steadily on into the ambush,
while Burnham was at once made prisoner. In the fight that followed he
pretended to receive a wound in the knee and bound it so elaborately
that not even a surgeon would have disturbed the carefully arranged
bandages. Limping heavily and groaning with pain, he was placed in
a trek wagon with the officers who really were wounded, and who, in
consequence, were not closely guarded. Burnham told them who he was and,
as he intended to escape, offered to take back to head-quarters their
names or any messages they might wish to send to their people. As
twenty yards behind the wagon in which they lay was a mounted guard, the
officers told him escape was impossible. He proved otherwise. The trek
wagon was drawn by sixteen oxen and driven by a Kaffir boy. Later in the
evening, but while it still was moonlight, the boy descended from his
seat and ran forward to belabor the first spans of oxen. This was the
opportunity for which Burnham had been waiting.

Slipping quickly over the driver’s seat, he dropped between the two
“wheelers” to the disselboom, or tongue, of the trek wagon. From this he
lowered himself and fell between the legs of the oxen on his back in the
road. In an instant the body of the wagon had passed over him, and while
the dust still hung above the trail he rolled rapidly over into the
ditch at the side of the road and lay motionless.

It was four days before he was able to re-enter the British lines,
during which time he had been lying in the open veldt, and had subsisted
on one biscuit and two handfuls of “mealies,” or what we call Indian
corn.

Another time when out scouting he and his Kaffir boy while on foot were
“jumped” by a Boer commando and forced to hide in two great ant-hills.
The Boers went into camp on every side of them, and for two days,
unknown to themselves, held Burnham a prisoner. Only at night did he and
the Cape boy dare to crawl out to breathe fresh air and to eat the food
tablets they carried in their pockets. On five occasions was Burnham
sent into the Boer lines with dynamite cartridges to blow up the
railroad over which the enemy was receiving supplies and ammunition. One
of these expeditions nearly ended his life.

On June 2, 1901, while trying by night to blow up the line between
Pretoria and Delagoa Bay, he was surrounded by a party of Boers and
could save himself only by instant flight. He threw himself Indian
fashion along the back of his pony, and had all but got away when a
bullet caught the horse and, without even faltering in its stride, it
crashed to the ground dead, crushing Burnham beneath it and knocking him
senseless. He continued unconscious for twenty-four hours, and when he
came to, both friends and foes had departed. Bent upon carrying out his
orders, although suffering the most acute agony, he crept back to the
railroad and destroyed it. Knowing the explosion would soon bring the
Boers, on his hands and knees he crept to an empty kraal, where for
two days and nights he lay insensible. At the end of that time he
appreciated that he was sinking and that unless he found aid he would
die.

Accordingly, still on his hands and knees, he set forth toward the sound
of distant firing. He was indifferent as to whether it came from the
enemy or his own people, but, as it chanced, he was picked up by a
patrol of General Dickson’s Brigade, who carried him to Pretoria. There
the surgeons discovered that in his fall he had torn apart the muscles
of the stomach and burst a blood-vessel. That his life was saved, so
they informed him, was due only to the fact that for three days he had
been without food. Had he attempted to digest the least particle of the
“staff of life” he would have surely died. His injuries were so serious
that he was ordered home.

On leaving the army he was given such hearty thanks and generous rewards
as no other American ever received from the British War Office. He was
promoted to the rank of major, presented with a large sum of money, and
from Lord Roberts received a personal letter of thanks and appreciation.

In part the Field-Marshal wrote: “I doubt if any other man in the force
could have successfully carried out the thrilling enterprises in which
from time to time you have been engaged, demanding as they did the
training of a lifetime, combined with exceptional courage, caution, and
powers of endurance.” On his arrival in England he was commanded to dine
with the Queen and spend the night at Osborne, and a few months later,
after her death, King Edward created him a member of the Distinguished
Service Order, and personally presented him with the South African
medal with five bars, and the cross of the D. S. O. While recovering
his health Burnham, with Mrs. Burnham, was “passed on” by friends he had
made in the army from country house to country house; he was made the
guest of honor at city banquets, with the Duke of Rutland rode after the
Belvoir hounds, and in Scotland made mild excursions after grouse. But
after six months of convalescence he was off again, this time to the
hinterland of Ashanti, on the west coast of Africa, where he went in the
interests of a syndicate to investigate a concession for working gold
mines.

With his brother-in-law, J. C. Blick, he marched and rowed twelve
hundred miles, and explored the Volta River, at that date so little
visited that in one day’s journey they counted eleven hippopotamuses. In
July, 1901, he returned from Ashanti, and a few months later an unknown
but enthusiastic admirer asked in the House of Commons if it were
true Major Burnham had applied for the post of Instructor of Scouts at
Aldershot. There is no such post, and Burnham had not applied for
any other post. To the Timer he wrote: “I never have thought myself
competent to teach Britons how to fight, or to act as an instructor
with officers who have fought in every corner of the world. The question
asked in Parliament was entirely without my knowledge, and I deeply
regret that it was asked.” A few months later, with Mrs. Burnham and his
younger son, Bruce, he journeyed to East Africa as director of the East
African Syndicate.

During his stay there the _African Review_ said of him: “Should East
Africa ever become a possession for England to be proud of, she will owe
much of her prosperity to the brave little band that has faced hardships
and dangers in discovering her hidden resources. Major Burnham has
chosen men from England, Ireland, the United States, and South Africa
for sterling qualities, and they have justified his choice. Not the
least like a hero is the retiring, diffident little major himself,
though a finer man for a friend or a better man to serve under would not
be found in the five continents.”

Burnham explored a tract of land larger than Germany, penetrating a
thousand miles through a country, never before visited by white men,
to the borders of the Congo Basin. With him he had twenty white men and
five hundred natives. The most interesting result of the expedition
was the discovery of a lake forty-nine miles square, composed almost
entirely of pure carbonate of soda, forming a snowlike crust so thick
that on it the men could cross the lake.

It is the largest, and when the railroad is built--the Uganda Railroad
is now only eighty-eight miles distant--it will be the most valuable
deposit of carbonate of soda ever found.

A year ago, in the interests of John Hays Hammond, the distinguished
mining engineer of South Africa and this country, Burnham went to
Sonora, Mexico, to find a buried city and to open up mines of copper and
silver.

Besides seeking for mines, Hammond and Burnham, with Gardner Williams,
another American who also made his fortune in South Africa, are working
together on a scheme to import to this country at their own expense many
species of South African deer.

The South African deer is a hardy animal and can live where the American
deer cannot, and the idea in importing him is to prevent big game in
this country from passing away. They have asked Congress to set aside
for these animals a portion of the forest reserve. Already Congress has
voted toward the plan $15,000, and President Roosevelt is one of its
most enthusiastic supporters.

We cannot leave Burnham in better hands than those of Hammond and
Gardner Williams. Than these three men the United States has not sent to
British Africa any Americans of whom she has better reason to be proud.
Such men abroad do for those at home untold good. They are the real
ambassadors of their country.

The last I learned of Burnham is told in the snapshot of him which
accompanies this article, and which shows him, barefoot, in the Yaqui
River, where he has gone, perhaps, to conceal his trail from the
Indians. It came a month ago in a letter which said briefly that when
the picture was snapped the expedition was “trying to cool off.” There
his narrative ended. Promising as it does adventures still to come, it
seems a good place in which to leave him.

Meanwhile, you may think of Mrs. Burnham after a year in Mexico keeping
the house open for her husband’s return to Pasadena, and of their first
son, Roderick, studying woodcraft with his father, forestry with Gifford
Pinchot, and playing right guard on the freshman team at the University
of California.

But Burnham himself we will leave “cooling off” in the Yaqui River,
maybe, with Indians hunting for him along the banks. And we need not
worry about him. We know they will not catch him.





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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Famous Affinities of History,  Vol 1-4,
Complete, by Lyndon Orr

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Famous Affinities of History,  Vol 1-4, Complete
       The Romance of Devotion

Author: Lyndon Orr

Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4693]
Posting Date: December 12, 2009

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMOUS AFFINITIES ***




Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team






FAMOUS AFFINITIES OF HISTORY

THE ROMANCE OF DEVOTION

Volumes 1-4, Complete


By Lyndon Orr



Contents

     THE STORY OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

     ABELARD AND HELOISE

     QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE EARL OF LEICESTER

     MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND LORD BOTHWELL

     QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN AND THE MARQUIS MONALDESCHI

     KING CHARLES II. AND NELL GWYN

     MAURICE OF SAXONY AND ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR

     THE STORY OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART

     THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCE POTEMKIN

     MARIE ANTOINETTE AND COUNT FERSEN

     THE STORY OF AARON BURR

     GEORGE IV. AND MRS. FITZHERBERT

     CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX

     NAPOLEON AND MARIE WALEWSKA

     THE STORY OF PAULINE BONAPARTE

     THE STORY OF THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE AND COUNT NEIPPERG

     THE WIVES OF GENERAL HOUSTON

     LOLA MONTEZ AND KING LUDWIG OF BAVARIA

     LEON GAMBETTA AND LEONIE LEON

     LADY BLESSINGTON AND COUNT D'ORSAY

     BYRON AND THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI

     THE STORY OF MME. DE STAEL

     THE STORY OF KARL MARX

     FERDINAND LASSALLE AND HELENE VON DONNIGES

     THE STORY OF RACHEL

     DEAN SWIFT AND THE TWO ESTHERS

     PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY AND MARY GODWIN

     THE STORY OF THE CARLYLES

     THE STORY OF THE HUGOS

     THE STORY OF GEORGE SAND

     THE MYSTERY OF CHARLES DICKENS

     HONORE DE BALZAC AND EVELINA HANSKA

     CHARLES READE AND LAURA SEYMOUR





THE STORY OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA


Of all love stories that are known to human history, the love story
of Antony and Cleopatra has been for nineteen centuries the most
remarkable. It has tasked the resources of the plastic and the graphic
arts. It has been made the theme of poets and of prose narrators. It has
appeared and reappeared in a thousand forms, and it appeals as much
to the imagination to-day as it did when Antony deserted his almost
victorious troops and hastened in a swift galley from Actium in pursuit
of Cleopatra.

The wonder of the story is explained by its extraordinary nature. Many
men in private life have lost fortune and fame for the love of woman.
Kings have incurred the odium of their people, and have cared nothing
for it in comparison with the joys of sense that come from the lingering
caresses and clinging kisses. Cold-blooded statesmen, such as Parnell,
have lost the leadership of their party and have gone down in history
with a clouded name because of the fascination exercised upon them by
some woman, often far from beautiful, and yet possessing the mysterious
power which makes the triumphs of statesmanship seem slight in
comparison with the swiftly flying hours of pleasure.

But in the case of Antony and Cleopatra alone do we find a man flinging
away not merely the triumphs of civic honors or the headship of a
state, but much more than these--the mastery of what was practically the
world--in answer to the promptings of a woman's will. Hence the story
of the Roman triumvir and the Egyptian queen is not like any other
story that has yet been told. The sacrifice involved in it was so
overwhelming, so instantaneous, and so complete as to set this narrative
above all others. Shakespeare's genius has touched it with the glory
of a great imagination. Dryden, using it in the finest of his plays,
expressed its nature in the title "All for Love."

The distinguished Italian historian, Signor Ferrero, the author of many
books, has tried hard to eliminate nearly all the romantic elements
from the tale, and to have us see in it not the triumph of love, but
the blindness of ambition. Under his handling it becomes almost a sordid
drama of man's pursuit of power and of woman's selfishness. Let us
review the story as it remains, even after we have taken full account
of Ferrero's criticism. Has the world for nineteen hundred years been
blinded by a show of sentiment? Has it so absolutely been misled by
those who lived and wrote in the days which followed closely on the
events that make up this extraordinary narrative?

In answering these questions we must consider, in the first place,
the scene, and, in the second place, the psychology of the two central
characters who for so long a time have been regarded as the very
embodiment of unchecked passion.

As to the scene, it must be remembered that the Egypt of those days
was not Egyptian as we understand the word, but rather Greek. Cleopatra
herself was of Greek descent. The kingdom of Egypt had been created by a
general of Alexander the Great after that splendid warrior's death.
Its capital, the most brilliant city of the Greco-Roman world, had been
founded by Alexander himself, who gave to it his name. With his
own hands he traced out the limits of the city and issued the most
peremptory orders that it should be made the metropolis of the entire
world. The orders of a king cannot give enduring greatness to a city;
but Alexander's keen eye and marvelous brain saw at once that the site
of Alexandria was such that a great commercial community planted there
would live and flourish throughout out succeeding ages. He was right;
for within a century this new capital of Egypt leaped to the forefront
among the exchanges of the world's commerce, while everything that art
could do was lavished on its embellishment.

Alexandria lay upon a projecting tongue of land so situated that the
whole trade of the Mediterranean centered there. Down the Nile there
floated to its gates the barbaric wealth of Africa. To it came the
treasures of the East, brought from afar by caravans--silks from China,
spices and pearls from India, and enormous masses of gold and silver
from lands scarcely known. In its harbor were the vessels of every
country, from Asia in the East to Spain and Gaul and even Britain in the
West.

When Cleopatra, a young girl of seventeen, succeeded to the throne of
Egypt the population of Alexandria amounted to a million souls. The
customs duties collected at the port would, in terms of modern money,
amount each year to more than thirty million dollars, even though the
imposts were not heavy. The people, who may be described as Greek at
the top and Oriental at the bottom, were boisterous and pleasure-loving,
devoted to splendid spectacles, with horse-racing, gambling, and
dissipation; yet at the same time they were an artistic people, loving
music passionately, and by no means idle, since one part of the city was
devoted to large and prosperous manufactories of linen, paper, glass,
and muslin.

To the outward eye Alexandria was extremely beautiful. Through its
entire length ran two great boulevards, shaded and diversified by
mighty trees and parterres of multicolored flowers, amid which fountains
plashed and costly marbles gleamed. One-fifth of the whole city was
known as the Royal Residence. In it were the palaces of the reigning
family, the great museum, and the famous library which the Arabs later
burned. There were parks and gardens brilliant with tropical foliage and
adorned with the masterpieces of Grecian sculpture, while sphinxes
and obelisks gave a suggestion of Oriental strangeness. As one looked
seaward his eye beheld over the blue water the snow-white rocks of the
sheltering island, Pharos, on which was reared a lighthouse four hundred
feet in height and justly numbered among the seven wonders of the world.
Altogether, Alexandria was a city of wealth, of beauty, of stirring
life, of excitement, and of pleasure. Ferrero has aptly likened it to
Paris--not so much the Paris of to-day as the Paris of forty years ago,
when the Second Empire flourished in all its splendor as the home of joy
and strange delights.

Over the country of which Alexandria was the capital Cleopatra came to
reign at seventeen. Following the odd custom which the Greek dynasty of
the Ptolemies had inherited from their Egyptian predecessors, she was
betrothed to her own brother. He, however, was a mere child of less than
twelve, and was under the control of evil counselors, who, in his name,
gained control of the capital and drove Cleopatra into exile. Until then
she had been a mere girl; but now the spirit of a woman who was wronged
blazed up in her and called out all her latent powers. Hastening to
Syria, she gathered about herself an army and led it against her foes.

But meanwhile Julius Caesar, the greatest man of ancient times, had
arrived at Alexandria backed by an army of his veterans. Against him
no resistance would avail. Then came a brief moment during which the
Egyptian king and the Egyptian queen each strove to win the favor of
the Roman imperator. The king and his advisers had many arts, and so had
Cleopatra. One thing, however, she possessed which struck the balance in
her favor, and this was a woman's fascination.

According to the story, Caesar was unwilling to receive her. There came
into his presence, as he sat in the palace, a group of slaves bearing
a long roll of matting, bound carefully and seeming to contain some
precious work of art. The slaves made signs that they were bearing a
gift to Caesar. The master of Egypt bade them unwrap the gift that he
might see it. They did so, and out of the wrapping came Cleopatra--a
radiant vision, appealing, irresistible. Next morning it became known
everywhere that Cleopatra had remained in Caesar's quarters through the
night and that her enemies were now his enemies. In desperation they
rushed upon his legions, casting aside all pretense of amity. There
ensued a fierce contest, but the revolt was quenched in blood.

This was a crucial moment in Cleopatra's life. She had sacrificed all
that a woman has to give; but she had not done so from any love of
pleasure or from wantonness. She was queen of Egypt, and she had
redeemed her kingdom and kept it by her sacrifice. One should not
condemn her too severely. In a sense, her act was one of heroism like
that of Judith in the tent of Holofernes. But beyond all question it
changed her character. It taught her the secret of her own great power.
Henceforth she was no longer a mere girl, nor a woman of the ordinary
type. Her contact with so great a mind as Caesar's quickened her
intellect. Her knowledge that, by the charms of sense, she had mastered
even him transformed her into a strange and wonderful creature. She
learned to study the weaknesses of men, to play on their emotions, to
appeal to every subtle taste and fancy. In her were blended mental power
and that illusive, indefinable gift which is called charm.

For Cleopatra was never beautiful. Signor Ferrero seems to think this
fact to be discovery of his own, but it was set down by Plutarch in a
very striking passage written less than a century after Cleopatra and
Antony died. We may quote here what the Greek historian said of her:

Her actual beauty was far from being so remarkable that none could be
compared with her, nor was it such that it would strike your fancy when
you saw her first. Yet the influence of her presence, if you lingered
near her, was irresistible. Her attractive personality, joined with the
charm of her conversation, and the individual touch that she gave to
everything she said or did, were utterly bewitching. It was delightful
merely to hear the music of her voice, with which, like an instrument of
many strings, she could pass from one language to another.

Caesar had left Cleopatra firmly seated on the throne of Egypt. For
six years she reigned with great intelligence, keeping order in her
dominions, and patronizing with discrimination both arts and letters.
But ere long the convulsions of the Roman state once more caused her
extreme anxiety. Caesar had been assassinated, and there ensued a
period of civil war. Out of it emerged two striking figures which were
absolutely contrasted in their character. One was Octavian, the adopted
son of Caesar, a man who, though still quite young and possessed of
great ability, was cunning, cold-blooded, and deceitful. The other
was Antony, a soldier by training, and with all a soldier's bluntness,
courage, and lawlessness.

The Roman world was divided for the time between these two men, Antony
receiving the government of the East, Octavian that of the West. In the
year which had preceded this division Cleopatra had wavered between the
two opposite factions at Rome. In so doing she had excited the suspicion
of Antony, and he now demanded of her an explanation.

One must have some conception of Antony himself in order to understand
the events that followed. He was essentially a soldier, of excellent
family, being related to Caesar himself. As a very young man he was
exceedingly handsome, and bad companions led him into the pursuit of
vicious pleasure. He had scarcely come of age when he found that he owed
the enormous sum of two hundred and fifty talents, equivalent to half a
million dollars in the money of to-day. But he was much more than a mere
man of pleasure, given over to drinking and to dissipation. Men might
tell of his escapades, as when he drove about the streets of Rome in a
common cab, dangling his legs out of the window while he shouted forth
drunken songs of revelry. This was not the whole of Antony. Joining the
Roman army in Syria, he showed himself to be a soldier of great personal
bravery, a clever strategist, and also humane and merciful in the hour
of victory.

Unlike most Romans, Antony wore a full beard. His forehead was large,
and his nose was of the distinctive Roman type. His look was so bold and
masculine that people likened him to Hercules. His democratic manners
endeared him to the army. He wore a plain tunic covered with a
large, coarse mantle, and carried a huge sword at his side, despising
ostentation. Even his faults and follies added to his popularity. He
would sit down at the common soldiers' mess and drink with them, telling
them stories and clapping them on the back. He spent money like water,
quickly recognizing any daring deed which his legionaries performed. In
this respect he was like Napoleon; and, like Napoleon, he had a vein of
florid eloquence which was criticized by literary men, but which went
straight to the heart of the private soldier. In a word, he was a
powerful, virile, passionate, able man, rough, as were nearly all his
countrymen, but strong and true.

It was to this general that Cleopatra was to answer, and with a firm
reliance on the charms which had subdued Antony's great commander,
Caesar, she set out in person for Cilicia, in Asia Minor, sailing up
the river Cydnus to the place where Antony was encamped with his army.
Making all allowance for the exaggeration of historians, there can be
no doubt that she appeared to him like some dreamy vision. Her barge was
gilded, and was wafted on its way by swelling sails of Tyrian purple.
The oars which smote the water were of shining silver. As she drew
near the Roman general's camp the languorous music of flutes and harps
breathed forth a strain of invitation.

Cleopatra herself lay upon a divan set upon the deck of the barge
beneath a canopy of woven gold. She was dressed to resemble Venus, while
girls about her personated nymphs and Graces. Delicate perfumes diffused
themselves from the vessel; and at last, as she drew near the shore, all
the people for miles about were gathered there, leaving Antony to sit
alone in the tribunal where he was dispensing justice.

Word was brought to him that Venus had come to feast with Bacchus.
Antony, though still suspicious of Cleopatra, sent her an invitation
to dine with him in state. With graceful tact she sent him a
counter-invitation, and he came. The magnificence of his reception
dazzled the man who had so long known only a soldier's fare, or at
most the crude entertainments which he had enjoyed in Rome. A marvelous
display of lights was made. Thousands upon thousands of candles shone
brilliantly, arranged in squares and circles; while the banquet itself
was one that symbolized the studied luxury of the East.

At this time Cleopatra was twenty-seven years of age--a period of life
which modern physiologists have called the crisis in a woman's growth.
She had never really loved before, since she had given herself to
Caesar, not because she cared for him, but to save her kingdom. She now
came into the presence of one whose manly beauty and strong passions
were matched by her own subtlety and appealing charm.

When Antony addressed her he felt himself a rustic in her presence.
Almost resentful, he betook himself to the coarse language of the camp.
Cleopatra, with marvelous adaptability, took her tone from his, and thus
in a moment put him at his ease. Ferrero, who takes a most unfavorable
view of her character and personality, nevertheless explains the secret
of her fascination:

Herself utterly cold and callous, insensitive by nature to the flame of
true devotion, Cleopatra was one of those women gifted with an unerring
instinct for all the various roads to men's affections. She could be the
shrinking, modest girl, too shy to reveal her half-unconscious emotions
of jealousy and depression and self-abandonment, or a woman carried away
by the sweep of a fiery and uncontrollable passion. She could tickle the
esthetic sensibilities of her victims by rich and gorgeous festivals,
by the fantastic adornment of her own person and her palace, or by
brilliant discussions on literature and art; she could conjure up all
their grossest instincts with the vilest obscenities of conversation,
with the free and easy jocularity of a woman of the camps.

These last words are far too strong, and they represent only Ferrero's
personal opinion; yet there is no doubt that she met every mood of
Antony's so that he became enthralled with her at once. No such woman as
this had ever cast her eyes on him before. He had a wife at home--a most
disreputable wife--so that he cared little for domestic ties. Later,
out of policy, he made another marriage with the sister of his rival,
Octavian, but this wife he never cared for. His heart and soul were
given up to Cleopatra, the woman who could be a comrade in the camp and
a fount of tenderness in their hours of dalliance, and who possessed the
keen intellect of a man joined to the arts and fascinations of a woman.

On her side she found in Antony an ardent lover, a man of vigorous
masculinity, and, moreover, a soldier whose armies might well sustain
her on the throne of Egypt. That there was calculation mingled with her
love, no one can doubt. That some calculation also entered into Antony's
affection is likewise certain. Yet this does not affect the truth that
each was wholly given to the other. Why should it have lessened her love
for him to feel that he could protect her and defend her? Why should it
have lessened his love for her to know that she was queen of the richest
country in the world--one that could supply his needs, sustain his
armies, and gild his triumphs with magnificence?

There are many instances in history of regnant queens who loved and yet
whose love was not dissociated from the policy of state. Such were Anne
of Austria, Elizabeth of England, and the unfortunate Mary Stuart. Such,
too, we cannot fail to think, was Cleopatra.

The two remained together for ten years. In this time Antony was
separated from her only during a campaign in the East. In Alexandria he
ceased to seem a Roman citizen and gave himself up wholly to the charms
of this enticing woman. Many stories are told of their good fellowship
and close intimacy. Plutarch quotes Plato as saying that there are four
kinds of flattery, but he adds that Cleopatra had a thousand. She was
the supreme mistress of the art of pleasing.

Whether Antony were serious or mirthful, she had at the instant some new
delight or some new charm to meet his wishes. At every turn she was with
him both day and night. With him she threw dice; with him she drank;
with him she hunted; and when he exercised himself in arms she was there
to admire and applaud.

At night the pair would disguise themselves as servants and wander about
the streets of Alexandria. In fact, more than once they were set upon in
the slums and treated roughly by the rabble who did not recognize them.
Cleopatra was always alluring, always tactful, often humorous, and full
of frolic.

Then came the shock of Antony's final breach with Octavian. Either
Antony or his rival must rule the world. Cleopatra's lover once more
became the Roman general, and with a great fleet proceeded to the coast
of Greece, where his enemy was encamped. Antony had raised a hundred and
twelve thousand troops and five hundred ships--a force far superior to
that commanded by Octavian. Cleopatra was there with sixty ships.

In the days that preceded the final battle much took place which still
remains obscure. It seems likely that Antony desired to become again
the Roman, while Cleopatra wished him to thrust Rome aside and return to
Egypt with her, to reign there as an independent king. To her Rome was
almost a barbarian city. In it she could not hold sway as she could
in her beautiful Alexandria, with its blue skies and velvet turf and
tropical flowers. At Rome Antony would be distracted by the cares of
state, and she would lose her lover. At Alexandria she would have him
for her very own.

The clash came when the hostile fleets met off the promontory of Actium.
At its crisis Cleopatra, prematurely concluding that the battle was
lost, of a sudden gave the signal for retreat and put out to sea with
her fleet. This was the crucial moment. Antony, mastered by his
love, forgot all else, and in a swift ship started in pursuit of her,
abandoning his fleet and army to win or lose as fortune might decide.
For him the world was nothing; the dark-browed Queen of Egypt, imperious
and yet caressing, was everything. Never was such a prize and never
were such great hopes thrown carelessly away. After waiting seven days
Antony's troops, still undefeated, finding that their commander would
not return to them, surrendered to Octavian, who thus became the master
of an empire.

Later his legions assaulted Alexandria, and there Antony was twice
defeated. At last Cleopatra saw her great mistake. She had made her
lover give up the hope of being Rome's dictator, but in so doing she had
also lost the chance of ruling with him tranquilly in Egypt. She shut
herself behind the barred doors of the royal sepulcher; and, lest she
should be molested there, she sent forth word that she had died. Her
proud spirit could not brook the thought that she might be seized and
carried as a prisoner to Rome. She was too much a queen in soul to
be led in triumph up the Sacred Way to the Capitol with golden chains
clanking on her slender wrists.

Antony, believing the report that she was dead, fell upon his sword; but
in his dying moments he was carried into the presence of the woman for
whom he had given all. With her arms about him, his spirit passed away;
and soon after she, too, met death, whether by a poisoned draught or by
the storied asp no one can say.

Cleopatra had lived the mistress of a splendid kingdom. She had
successively captivated two of the greatest men whom Rome had ever seen.
She died, like a queen, to escape disgrace. Whatever modern critics
may have to say concerning small details, this story still remains the
strangest love story of which the world has any record.





ABELARD AND HELOISE

Many a woman, amid the transports of passionate and languishing love,
has cried out in a sort of ecstasy:

"I love you as no woman ever loved a man before!"

When she says this she believes it. Her whole soul is aflame with the
ardor of emotion. It really seems to her that no one ever could have
loved so much as she.

This cry--spontaneous, untaught, sincere--has become almost one of those
conventionalities of amorous expression which belong to the vocabulary
of self-abandonment. Every woman who utters it, when torn by the almost
terrible extravagance of a great love, believes that no one before her
has ever said it, and that in her own case it is absolutely true.

Yet, how many women are really faithful to the end? Very many, indeed,
if circumstances admit of easy faithfulness. A high-souled, generous,
ardent nature will endure an infinity of disillusionment, of misfortune,
of neglect, and even of ill treatment. Even so, the flame, though it
may sink low, can be revived again to burn as brightly as before. But
in order that this may be so it is necessary that the object of such a
wonderful devotion be alive, that he be present and visible; or, if
he be absent, that there should still exist some hope of renewing the
exquisite intimacy of the past.

A man who is sincerely loved may be compelled to take long journeys
which will separate him for an indefinite time from the woman who
has given her heart to him, and she will still be constant. He may
be imprisoned, perhaps for life, yet there is always the hope of his
release or of his escape; and some women will be faithful to him and
will watch for his return. But, given a situation which absolutely bars
out hope, which sunders two souls in such a way that they can never be
united in this world, and there we have a test so terribly severe that
few even of the most loyal and intensely clinging lovers can endure it.

Not that such a situation would lead a woman to turn to any other man
than the one to whom she had given her very life; but we might expect
that at least her strong desire would cool and weaken. She might cherish
his memory among the precious souvenirs of her love life; but that she
should still pour out the same rapturous, unstinted passion as before
seems almost too much to believe. The annals of emotion record only one
such instance; and so this instance has become known to all, and has
been cherished for nearly a thousand years. It involves the story of a
woman who did love, perhaps, as no one ever loved before or since; for
she was subjected to this cruel test, and she met the test not alone
completely, but triumphantly and almost fiercely.

The story is, of course, the story of Abelard and Heloise. It has many
times been falsely told. Portions of it have been omitted, and other
portions of it have been garbled. A whole literature has grown up
around the subject. It may well be worth our while to clear away the
ambiguities and the doubtful points, and once more to tell it simply,
without bias, and with a strict adherence to what seems to be the truth
attested by authentic records.

There is one circumstance connected with the story which we must
specially note. The narrative does something more than set forth the one
quite unimpeachable instance of unconquered constancy. It shows how, in
the last analysis, that which touches the human heart has more vitality
and more enduring interest than what concerns the intellect or those
achievements of the human mind which are external to our emotional
nature.

Pierre Abelard was undoubtedly the boldest and most creative reasoner
of his time. As a wandering teacher he drew after him thousands of
enthusiastic students. He gave a strong impetus to learning. He was a
marvelous logician and an accomplished orator. Among his pupils were men
who afterward became prelates of the church and distinguished scholars.
In the Dark Age, when the dictates of reason were almost wholly
disregarded, he fought fearlessly for intellectual freedom. He was
practically the founder of the University of Paris, which in turn became
the mother of medieval and modern universities.

He was, therefore, a great and striking figure in the history of
civilization. Nevertheless he would to-day be remembered only by
scholars and students of the Middle Ages were it not for the fact that
he inspired the most enduring love that history records. If Heloise
had never loved him, and if their story had not been so tragic and so
poignant, he would be to-day only a name known to but a few. His final
resting-place, in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, in Paris, would not
be sought out by thousands every year and kept bright with flowers, the
gift of those who have themselves both loved and suffered.

Pierre Abelard--or, more fully, Pierre Abelard de Palais--was a native
of Brittany, born in the year 1079. His father was a knight, the lord of
the manor; but Abelard cared little for the life of a petty noble; and
so he gave up his seigniorial rights to his brothers and went forth to
become, first of all a student, and then a public lecturer and teacher.

His student days ended abruptly in Paris, where he had enrolled himself
as the pupil of a distinguished philosopher, Guillaume de Champeaux; but
one day Abelard engaged in a disputation with his master. His wonderful
combination of eloquence, logic, and originality utterly routed
Champeaux, who was thus humiliated in the presence of his disciples. He
was the first of many enemies that Abelard was destined to make in his
long and stormy career. From that moment the young Breton himself set
up as a teacher of philosophy, and the brilliancy of his discourses soon
drew to him throngs of students from all over Europe.

Before proceeding with the story of Abelard it is well to reconstruct,
however slightly, a picture of the times in which he lived. It was an
age when Western Europe was but partly civilized. Pedantry and learning
of the most minute sort existed side by side with the most violent
excesses of medieval barbarism. The Church had undertaken the gigantic
task of subduing and enlightening the semi-pagan peoples of France and
Germany and England.

When we look back at that period some will unjustly censure Rome for not
controlling more completely the savagery of the medievals. More fairly
should we wonder at the great measure of success which had already
been achieved. The leaven of a true Christianity was working in the
half-pagan populations. It had not yet completely reached the nobles and
the knights, or even all the ecclesiastics who served it and who were
consecrated to its mission. Thus, amid a sort of political chaos
were seen the glaring evils of feudalism. Kings and princes and their
followers lived the lives of swine. Private blood-feuds were regarded
lightly. There was as yet no single central power. Every man carried his
life in his hand, trusting to sword and dagger for protection.

The cities were still mere hamlets clustered around great castles or
fortified cathedrals. In Paris itself the network of dark lanes,
ill lighted and unguarded, was the scene of midnight murder and
assassination. In the winter-time wolves infested the town by night.
Men-at-arms, with torches and spears, often had to march out from their
barracks to assail the snarling, yelping packs of savage animals that
hunger drove from the surrounding forests.

Paris of the twelfth century was typical of France itself, which was
harried by human wolves intent on rapine and wanton plunder. There were
great schools of theology, but the students who attended them fought and
slashed one another. If a man's life was threatened he must protect it
by his own strength or by gathering about him a band of friends. No
one was safe. No one was tolerant. Very few were free from the grosser
vices. Even in some of the religious houses the brothers would meet
at night for unseemly revels, splashing the stone floors with wine and
shrieking in a delirium of drunkenness. The rules of the Church enjoined
temperance, continence, and celibacy; but the decrees of Leo IX. and
Nicholas II. and Alexander II. and Gregory were only partially observed.

In fact, Europe was in a state of chaos--political and moral and social.
Only very slowly was order emerging from sheer anarchy. We must remember
this when we recall some facts which meet us in the story of Abelard and
Heloise.

The jealousy of Champeaux drove Abelard for a time from Paris. He taught
and lectured at several other centers of learning, always admired, and
yet at the same time denounced by many for his advocacy of reason as
against blind faith. During the years of his wandering he came to have
a wide knowledge of the world and of human nature. If we try to imagine
him as he was in his thirty-fifth year we shall find in him a remarkable
combination of attractive qualities.

It must be remembered that though, in a sense, he was an ecclesiastic,
he had not yet been ordained to the priesthood, but was rather a
canon--a person who did not belong to any religious order, though he was
supposed to live according to a definite set of religious rules and as a
member of a religious community. Abelard, however, made rather light
of his churchly associations. He was at once an accomplished man of the
world and a profound scholar. There was nothing of the recluse about
him. He mingled with his fellow men, whom he dominated by the charm of
his personality. He was eloquent, ardent, and persuasive. He could turn
a delicate compliment as skilfully as he could elaborate a syllogism.
His rich voice had in it a seductive quality which was never without its
effect.

Handsome and well formed, he possessed as much vigor of body as of mind.
Nor were his accomplishments entirely those of the scholar. He wrote
dainty verses, which he also set to music, and which he sang himself
with a rare skill. Some have called him "the first of the troubadours,"
and many who cared nothing for his skill in logic admired him for
his gifts as a musician and a poet. Altogether, he was one to attract
attention wherever he went, for none could fail to recognize his power.

It was soon after his thirty-fifth year that he returned to Paris, where
he was welcomed by thousands. With much tact he reconciled himself to
his enemies, so that his life now seemed to be full of promise and of
sunshine.

It was at this time that he became acquainted with a very beautiful
young girl named Heloise. She was only eighteen years of age, yet
already she possessed not only beauty, but many accomplishments which
were then quite rare in women, since she both wrote and spoke a number
of languages, and, like Abelard, was a lover of music and poetry.
Heloise was the illegitimate daughter of a canon of patrician blood; so
that she is said to have been a worthy representative of the noble house
of the Montmorencys--famous throughout French history for chivalry and
charm.

Up to this time we do not know precisely what sort of life Abelard
had lived in private. His enemies declared that he had squandered his
substance in vicious ways. His friends denied this, and represented
him as strict and chaste. The truth probably lies between these two
assertions. He was naturally a pleasure-loving man of the world, who may
very possibly have relieved his severer studies by occasional revelry
and light love. It is not at all likely that he was addicted to gross
passions and low practices.

But such as he was, when he first saw Heloise he conceived for her
a violent attachment. Carefully guarded in the house of her uncle,
Fulbert, it was difficult at first for Abelard to meet her save in the
most casual way; yet every time that he heard her exquisite voice and
watched her graceful manners he became more and more infatuated. His
studies suddenly seemed tame and colorless beside the fierce scarlet
flame which blazed up in his heart.

Nevertheless, it was because of these studies and of his great
reputation as a scholar that he managed to obtain access to Heloise. He
flattered her uncle and made a chance proposal that he should himself
become an inmate of Fulbert's household in order that he might teach
this girl of so much promise. Such an offer coming from so brilliant a
man was joyfully accepted.

From that time Abelard could visit Heloise without restraint. He was
her teacher, and the two spent hours together, nominally in the study of
Greek and Hebrew; but doubtless very little was said between them
upon such unattractive subjects. On the contrary, with all his wide
experience of life, his eloquence, his perfect manners, and his
fascination, Abelard put forth his power to captivate the senses of
a girl still in her teens and quite ignorant of the world. As Remusat
says, he employed to win her the genius which had overwhelmed all the
great centers of learning in the Western world.

It was then that the pleasures of knowledge, the joys of thought, the
emotions of eloquence, were all called into play to charm and move and
plunge into a profound and strange intoxication this noble and tender
heart which had never known either love or sorrow.... One can imagine
that everything helped on the inevitable end. Their studies gave them
opportunities to see each other freely, and also permitted them to be
alone together. Then their books lay open between them; but either long
periods of silence stilled their reading, or else words of deepening
intimacy made them forget their studies altogether. The eyes of the two
lovers turned from the book to mingle their glances, and then to turn
away in a confusion that was conscious.

Hand would touch hand, apparently by accident; and when conversation
ceased, Abelard would often hear the long, quivering sigh which showed
the strange, half-frightened, and yet exquisite joy which Heloise
experienced.

It was not long before the girl's heart had been wholly won. Transported
by her emotion, she met the caresses of her lover with those as
unrestrained as his. Her very innocence deprived her of the protection
which older women would have had. All was given freely, and even
wildly, by Heloise; and all was taken by Abelard, who afterward himself
declared:

"The pleasure of teaching her to love surpassed the delightful fragrance
of all the perfumes in the world."

Yet these two could not always live in a paradise which was entirely
their own. The world of Paris took notice of their close association.
Some poems written to Heloise by Abelard, as if in letters of fire, were
found and shown to Fulbert, who, until this time, had suspected nothing.
Angrily he ordered Abelard to leave his house. He forbade his niece to
see her lover any more.

But the two could not be separated; and, indeed, there was good reason
why they should still cling together. Secretly Heloise left her uncle's
house and fled through the narrow lanes of Paris to the dwelling of
Abelard's sister, Denyse, where Abelard himself was living. There,
presently, the young girl gave birth to a son, who was named Astrolabe,
after an instrument used by astronomers, since both the father and
the mother felt that the offspring of so great a love should have no
ordinary name.

Fulbert was furious, and rightly so. His hospitality had been outraged
and his niece dishonored. He insisted that the pair should at once
be married. Here was revealed a certain weakness in the character of
Abelard. He consented to the marriage, but insisted that it should be
kept an utter secret.

Oddly enough, it was Heloise herself who objected to becoming the wife
of the man she loved. Unselfishness could go no farther. She saw that,
were he to marry her, his advancement in the Church would be almost
impossible; for, while the very minor clergy sometimes married in spite
of the papal bulls, matrimony was becoming a fatal bar to ecclesiastical
promotion. And so Heloise pleaded pitifully, both with her uncle and
with Abelard, that there should be no marriage. She would rather bear
all manner of disgrace than stand in the way of Abelard's advancement.

He has himself given some of the words in which she pleaded with him:

What glory shall I win from you, when I have made you quite inglorious
and have humbled both of us? What vengeance will the world inflict on
me if I deprive it of one so brilliant? What curses will follow such a
marriage? How outrageous would it be that you, whom nature created for
the universal good, should be devoted to one woman and plunged into such
disgrace? I loathe the thought of a marriage which would humiliate you.

Indeed, every possible effort which another woman in her place would
employ to make him marry her she used in order to dissuade him. Finally,
her sweet face streaming with tears, she uttered that tremendous
sentence which makes one really think that she loved him as no other
woman ever loved a man. She cried out, in an agony of self-sacrifice:

"I would rather be your mistress than the wife even of an emperor!"

Nevertheless, the two were married, and Abelard returned to his
lecture-room and to his studies. For months they met but seldom.
Meanwhile, however, the taunts and innuendos directed against Heloise
so irritated Fulbert that he broke his promise of secrecy, and told his
friends that Abelard and Heloise were man and wife. They went to Heloise
for confirmation. Once more she showed in an extraordinary way the depth
of her devotion.

"I am no wife," she said. "It is not true that Abelard has married me.
My uncle merely tells you this to save my reputation."

They asked her whether she would swear to this; and, without a moment's
hesitation, this pure and noble woman took an oath upon the Scriptures
that there had been no marriage.

Fulbert was enraged by this. He ill-treated Heloise, and, furthermore,
he forbade Abelard to visit her. The girl, therefore, again left her
uncle's house and betook herself to a convent just outside of Paris,
where she assumed the habit of a nun as a disguise. There Abelard
continued from time to time to meet her.

When Fulbert heard of this he put his own interpretation on it. He
believed that Abelard intended to ignore the marriage altogether, and
that possibly he might even marry some other woman. In any case, he now
hated Abelard with all his heart; and he resolved to take a fearful and
unnatural vengeance which would at once prevent his enemy from making
any other marriage, while at the same time it would debar him from
ecclesiastical preferment.

To carry out his plot Fulbert first bribed a man who was the
body-servant of Abelard, watching at the door of his room each night.
Then he hired the services of four ruffians. After Abelard had retired
and was deep in slumber the treacherous valet unbarred the door. The
hirelings of Fulbert entered and fell upon the sleeping man. Three of
them bound him fast, while the fourth, with a razor, inflicted on him
the most shameful mutilation that is possible. Then, extinguishing
the lights, the wretches slunk away and were lost in darkness, leaving
behind their victim bound to his couch, uttering cries of torment and
bathed in his own blood.

It is a shocking story, and yet it is intensely characteristic of the
lawless and barbarous era in which it happened. Early the next morning
the news flew rapidly through Paris. The city hummed like a bee-hive.
Citizens and students and ecclesiastics poured into the street and
surrounded the house of Abelard.

"Almost the entire city," says Fulques, as quoted by McCabe, "went
clamoring toward his house. Women wept as if each one had lost her
husband."

Unmanned though he was, Abelard still retained enough of the spirit of
his time to seek vengeance. He, in his turn, employed ruffians whom he
set upon the track of those who had assaulted him. The treacherous valet
and one of Fulbert's hirelings were run down, seized, and mutilated
precisely as Abelard had been; and their eyes were blinded. A third was
lodged in prison. Fulbert himself was accused before one of the Church
courts, which alone had power to punish an ecclesiastic, and all his
goods were confiscated.

But, meantime, how did it fare with Heloise? Her grief was greater than
his own, while her love and her devotion were absolutely undiminished.
But Abelard now showed a selfishness--and indeed, a meanness--far beyond
any that he had before exhibited. Heloise could no more be his wife.
He made it plain that he put no trust in her fidelity. He was unwilling
that she should live in the world while he could not; and so he told
her sternly that she must take the veil and bury herself for ever in a
nunnery.

The pain and shame which she experienced at this came wholly from the
fact that evidently Abelard did not trust her. Long afterward she wrote:

God knows I should not have hesitated, at your command, to precede or to
follow you to hell itself!

It was his distrust that cut her to the heart. Still, her love for him
was so intense that she obeyed his order. Soon after she took the vows;
and in the convent chapel, shaken with sobs, she knelt before the altar
and assumed the veil of a cloistered nun. Abelard himself put on the
black tunic of a Benedictine monk and entered the Abbey of St. Denis.

It is unnecessary here to follow out all the details of the lives of
Abelard and Heloise after this heart-rendering scene. Abelard
passed through many years of strife and disappointment, and even of
humiliation; for on one occasion, just as he had silenced Guillaume
de Champeaux, so he himself was silenced and put to rout by Bernard of
Clairvaux--"a frail, tense, absorbed, dominant little man, whose face
was white and worn with suffering," but in whose eyes there was a
light of supreme strength. Bernard represented pure faith, as Abelard
represented pure reason; and the two men met before a great council to
match their respective powers.

Bernard, with fiery eloquence, brought a charge of heresy against
Abelard in an oration which was like a charge of cavalry. When he had
concluded Abelard rose with an ashen face, stammered out a few words,
and sat down. He was condemned by the council, and his works were
ordered to be burned.

All his later life was one of misfortune, of humiliation, and even of
personal danger. The reckless monks whom he tried to rule rose fiercely
against him. His life was threatened. He betook himself to a desolate
and lonely place, where he built for himself a hut of reeds and rushes,
hoping to spend his final years in meditation. But there were many who
had not forgotten his ability as a teacher. These flocked by hundreds
to the desert place where he abode. His hut was surrounded by tents and
rude hovels, built by his scholars for their shelter.

Thus Abelard resumed his teaching, though in a very different frame of
mind. In time he built a structure of wood and stone, which he called
the Paraclete, some remains of which can still be seen.

All this time no word had passed between him and Heloise. But presently
Abelard wrote and gave to the world a curious and exceedingly frank
book, which he called The Story of My Misfortunes. A copy of it reached
the hands of Heloise, and she at once sent to Abelard the first of a
series of letters which have remained unique in the literature of love.

Ten years had passed, and yet the woman's heart was as faithful and as
full of yearning as on the day when the two had parted. It has been
said that the letters are not genuine, and they must be read with this
assertion in mind; yet it is difficult to believe that any one save
Heloise herself could have flung a human soul into such frankly
passionate utterances, or that any imitator could have done the work.

In her first letter, which was sent to Abelard written upon parchment,
she said:

At thy command I would change, not merely my costume, but my very soul,
so entirely art thou the sole possessor of my body and my spirit. Never,
God is my witness, never have I sought anything in thee but thyself;
I have sought thee, and not thy gifts. I have not looked to the
marriage-bond or dowry.

She begged him to write to her, and to lead her to God, as once he had
led her into the mysteries of pleasure. Abelard answered in a letter,
friendly to be sure, but formal--the letter of a priest to a cloistered
nun. The opening words of it are characteristic of the whole:

To Heloise, his sister in Christ, from Abelard, her brother in Him.

The letter was a long one, but throughout the whole of it the writer's
tone was cold and prudent. Its very coldness roused her soul to a
passionate revolt. Her second letter bursts forth in a sort of anguish:

How hast thou been able to frame such thoughts, dearest? How hast thou
found words to convey them? Oh, if I dared but call God cruel to me!
Oh, most wretched of all creatures that I am! So sweet did I find the
pleasures of our loving days that I cannot bring myself to reject
them or to banish them from my memory. Wheresoever I go, they thrust
themselves upon my vision, and rekindle the old desire.

But Abelard knew only too well that not in this life could there be
anything save spiritual love between himself and Heloise. He wrote to
her again and again, always in the same remote and unimpassioned way.
He tells her about the history of monasticism, and discusses with her
matters of theology and ethics; but he never writes one word to feed
the flame that is consuming her. The woman understood at last; and by
degrees her letters became as calm as his--suffused, however, with a
tenderness and feeling which showed that in her heart of hearts she was
still entirely given to him.

After some years Abelard left his dwelling at the Paraclete, and there
was founded there a religious house of which Heloise became the abbess.
All the world respected her for her sweetness, her wisdom, and the
purity of her character. She made friends as easily as Abelard made
enemies. Even Bernard, who had overthrown her husband, sought out
Heloise to ask for her advice and counsel.

Abelard died while on his way to Rome, whither he was journeying
in order to undergo a penalty; and his body was brought back to the
Paraclete, where it was entombed. Over it for twenty-two years Heloise
watched with tender care; and when she died, her body was laid beside
that of her lover.

To-day their bones are mingled as she would have desired them to be
mingled. The stones of their tomb in the great cemetery of Pere Lachaise
were brought from the ruins of the Paraclete, and above the sarcophagus
are two recumbent figures, the whole being the work of the artist
Alexandra Lenoir, who died in 1836. The figure representing Heloise
is not, however, an authentic likeness. The model for it was a lady
belonging to a noble family of France, and the figure itself was brought
to Pere Lachaise from the ancient College de Beauvais.

The letters of Heloise have been read and imitated throughout the whole
of the last nine centuries. Some have found in them the utterances of
a woman whose love of love was greater than her love of God and whose
intensity of passion nothing could subdue; and so these have condemned
her. But others, like Chateaubriand, have more truly seen in them a pure
and noble spirit to whom fate had been very cruel; and who was, after
all, writing to the man who had been her lawful husband.

Some of the most famous imitations of her letters are those in the
ancient poem entitled, "The Romance of the Rose," written by Jean de
Meung, in the thirteenth century; and in modern times her first letter
was paraphrased by Alexander Pope, and in French by Colardeau. There
exist in English half a dozen translations of them, with Abelard's
replies. It is interesting to remember that practically all the other
writings of Abelard remained unpublished and unedited until a very
recent period. He was a remarkable figure as a philosopher and scholar;
but the world cares for him only because he was loved by Heloise.





QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE EARL OF LEICESTER


History has many romantic stories to tell of the part which women
have played in determining the destinies of nations. Sometimes it is
a woman's beauty that causes the shifting of a province. Again it is
another woman's rich possessions that incite invasion and lead to bloody
wars. Marriages or dowries, or the refusal of marriages and the lack
of dowries, inheritance through an heiress, the failure of a male
succession--in these and in many other ways women have set their mark
indelibly upon the trend of history.

However, if we look over these different events we shall find that it
is not so much the mere longing for a woman--the desire to have her as a
queen--that has seriously affected the annals of any nation. Kings, like
ordinary men, have paid their suit and then have ridden away repulsed,
yet not seriously dejected. Most royal marriages are made either to
secure the succession to a throne by a legitimate line of heirs or else
to unite adjoining states and make a powerful kingdom out of two that
are less powerful. But, as a rule, kings have found greater delight in
some sheltered bower remote from courts than in the castled halls and
well-cared-for nooks where their own wives and children have been reared
with all the appurtenances of legitimacy.

There are not many stories that hang persistently about the love-making
of a single woman. In the case of one or another we may find an episode
or two--something dashing, something spirited or striking, something
brilliant and exhilarating, or something sad. But for a woman's whole
life to be spent in courtship that meant nothing and that was only a
clever aid to diplomacy--this is surely an unusual and really wonderful
thing.

It is the more unusual because the woman herself was not intended by
nature to be wasted upon the cold and cheerless sport of chancellors
and counselors and men who had no thought of her except to use her as
a pawn. She was hot-blooded, descended from a fiery race, and one whose
temper was quick to leap into the passion of a man.

In studying this phase of the long and interesting life of Elizabeth of
England we must notice several important facts. In the first place,
she gave herself, above all else, to the maintenance of England--not an
England that would be half Spanish or half French, or even partly Dutch
and Flemish, but the Merry England of tradition--the England that was
one and undivided, with its growing freedom of thought, its bows and
bills, its nut-brown ale, its sturdy yeomen, and its loyalty to crown
and Parliament. She once said, almost as in an agony:

"I love England more than anything!"

And one may really hold that this was true.

For England she schemed and planned. For England she gave up many of her
royal rights. For England she descended into depths of treachery. For
England she left herself on record as an arrant liar, false, perjured,
yet successful; and because of her success for England's sake her
countrymen will hold her in high remembrance, since her scheming and her
falsehood are the offenses that one pardons most readily in a woman.

In the second place, it must be remembered that Elizabeth's courtships
and pretended love-makings were almost always a part of her diplomacy.
When not a part of her diplomacy they were a mere appendage to her
vanity. To seem to be the flower of the English people, and to be
surrounded by the noblest, the bravest, and the most handsome cavaliers,
not only of her own kingdom, but of others--this was, indeed, a choice
morsel of which she was fond of tasting, even though it meant nothing
beyond the moment.

Finally, though at times she could be very cold, and though she made
herself still colder in order that she might play fast and loose with
foreign suitors who played fast and loose with her--the King of
Spain, the Duc d'Alencon, brother of the French king, with an Austrian
archduke, with a magnificent barbarian prince of Muscovy, with Eric of
Sweden, or any other Scandinavian suitor--she felt a woman's need for
some nearer and more tender association to which she might give freer
play and in which she might feel those deeper emotions without the
danger that arises when love is mingled with diplomacy.

Let us first consider a picture of the woman as she really was in order
that we may understand her triple nature--consummate mistress of every
art that statesmen know, and using at every moment her person as a lure;
a vain-glorious queen who seemed to be the prey of boundless vanity;
and, lastly, a woman who had all a woman's passion, and who could cast
suddenly aside the check and balance which restrained her before the
public gaze and could allow herself to give full play to the emotion
that she inherited from the king, her father, who was himself a marvel
of fire and impetuosity. That the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne
Boleyn should be a gentle, timid maiden would be to make heredity a
farce.

Elizabeth was about twenty-five years of age when she ascended the
throne of England. It is odd that the date of her birth cannot be given
with precision. The intrigues and disturbances of the English court,
and the fact that she was a princess, made her birth a matter of less
account than if there had been no male heir to the throne. At any rate,
when she ascended it, after the deaths of her brother, King Edward
VI., and her sister, Queen Mary, she was a woman well trained both in
intellect and in physical development.

Mr. Martin Hume, who loves to dwell upon the later years of Queen
Elizabeth, speaks rather bitterly of her as a "painted old harridan";
and such she may well have seemed when, at nearly seventy years of age,
she leered and grinned a sort of skeleton smile at the handsome young
courtiers who pretended to see in her the queen of beauty and to be
dying for love of her.

Yet, in her earlier years, when she was young and strong and impetuous,
she deserved far different words than these. The portrait of her by
Zucchero, which now hangs in Hampton Court, depicts her when she must
have been of more than middle age; and still the face is one of beauty,
though it be a strange and almost artificial beauty--one that draws,
attracts, and, perhaps, lures you on against your will.

It is interesting to compare this painting with the frank word-picture
of a certain German agent who was sent to England by his emperor, and
who seems to have been greatly fascinated by Queen Elizabeth. She was at
that time in the prime of her beauty and her power. Her complexion was
of that peculiar transparency which is seen only in the face of golden
blondes. Her figure was fine and graceful, and her wit an accomplishment
that would have made a woman of any rank or time remarkable. The German
envoy says:

She lives a life of such magnificence and feasting as can hardly be
imagined, and occupies a great portion of her time with balls, banquets,
hunting, and similar amusements, with the utmost possible display, but
nevertheless she insists upon far greater respect being shown her than
was exacted by Queen Mary. She summons Parliament, but lets them know
that her orders must be obeyed in any case.

If any one will look at the painting by Zucchero he will see how much is
made of Elizabeth's hands--a distinctive feature quite as noble with the
Tudors as is the "Hapsburg lip" among the descendants of the house of
Austria. These were ungloved, and were very long and white, and she
looked at them and played with them a great deal; and, indeed,
they justified the admiration with which they were regarded by her
flatterers.

Such was the personal appearance of Elizabeth. When a young girl, we
have still more favorable opinions of her that were written by those who
had occasion to be near her. Not only do they record swift glimpses of
her person, but sometimes in a word or two they give an insight into
certain traits of mind which came out prominently in her later years.

It may, perhaps, be well to view her as a woman before we regard her
more fully as a queen. It has been said that Elizabeth inherited many
of the traits of her father--the boldness of spirit, the rapidity of
decision, and, at the same time, the fox-like craft which often showed
itself when it was least expected.

Henry had also, as is well known, a love of the other sex, which has
made his reign memorable. And yet it must be noted that while he loved
much, it was not loose love. Many a king of England, from Henry II. to
Charles II., has offended far more than Henry VIII. Where Henry loved,
he married; and it was the unfortunate result of these royal marriages
that has made him seem unduly fond of women. If, however, we examine
each one of the separate espousals we shall find that he did not enter
into it lightly, and that he broke it off unwillingly. His ardent
temperament, therefore, was checked by a certain rational or
conventional propriety, so that he was by no means a loose liver, as
many would make him out to be.

We must remember this when we recall the charges that have been made
against Elizabeth, and the strange stories that were told of her
tricks--by no means seemly tricks--which she used to play with her
guardian, Lord Thomas Seymour. The antics she performed with him in her
dressing-room were made the subject of an official inquiry; yet it came
out that while Elizabeth was less than sixteen, and Lord Thomas was very
much her senior, his wife was with him on his visits to the chamber of
the princess.

Sir Robert Tyrwhitt and his wife were also sent to question her,
Tyrwhitt had a keen mind and one well trained to cope with any other's
wit in this sort of cross-examination. Elizabeth was only a girl of
fifteen, yet she was a match for the accomplished courtier in diplomacy
and quick retort. He was sent down to worm out of her everything that
she knew. Threats and flattery and forged letters and false confessions
were tried on her; but they were tried in vain. She would tell nothing
of importance. She denied everything. She sulked, she cried, she availed
herself of a woman's favorite defense in suddenly attacking those who
had attacked her. She brought counter charges against Tyrwhitt, and put
her enemies on their own defense. Not a compromising word could they
wring out of her.

She bitterly complained of the imprisonment of her governess, Mrs.
Ashley, and cried out:

"I have not so behaved that you need put more mistresses upon me!"

Altogether, she was too much for Sir Robert, and he was wise enough to
recognize her cleverness.

"She hath a very good wit," said he, shrewdly; "and nothing is to be
gotten of her except by great policy." And he added: "If I had to say
my fancy, I think it more meet that she should have two governesses than
one."

Mr. Hume notes the fact that after the two servants of the princess had
been examined and had told nothing very serious they found that they
had been wise in remaining friends of the royal girl. No sooner had
Elizabeth become queen than she knighted the man Parry and made him
treasurer of the household, while Mrs. Ashley, the governess, was
treated with great consideration. Thus, very naturally, Mr. Hume says:
"They had probably kept back far more than they told."

Even Tyrwhitt believed that there was a secret compact between them, for
he said, quaintly: "They all sing one song, and she hath set the note
for them."

Soon after this her brother Edward's death brought to the throne her
elder sister, Mary, who has harshly become known as Bloody Mary. During
this time Elizabeth put aside her boldness, and became apparently a shy
and simple-minded virgin. Surrounded on every side by those who sought
to trap her, there was nothing in her bearing to make her seem the head
of a party or the young chief of a faction. Nothing could exceed her in
meekness. She spoke of her sister in the humblest terms. She exhibited
no signs of the Tudor animation that was in reality so strong a part of
her character.

But, coming to the throne, she threw away her modesty and brawled and
rioted with very little self-restraint. The people as a whole found
little fault with her. She reminded them of her father, the bluff King
Hal; and even those who criticized her did so only partially. They
thought much better of her than they had of her saturnine sister, the
first Queen Mary.

The life of Elizabeth has been very oddly misunderstood, not so much for
the facts in it as for the manner in which these have been arranged and
the relation which they have to one another. We ought to recollect that
this woman did not live in a restricted sphere, that her life was not
a short one, and that it was crowded with incidents and full of vivid
color. Some think of her as living for a short period of time and speak
of the great historical characters who surrounded her as belonging to a
single epoch. To them she has one set of suitors all the time--the Duc
d'Alencon, the King of Denmark's brother, the Prince of Sweden, the
russian potentate, the archduke sending her sweet messages from
Austria, the melancholy King of Spain, together with a number of her
own brilliant Englishmen--Sir William Pickering, Sir Robert Dudley, Lord
Darnley, the Earl of Essex, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Walter Raleigh.

Of course, as a matter of fact, Elizabeth lived for nearly seventy
years--almost three-quarters of a century--and in that long time there
came and went both men and women, those whom she had used and cast
aside, with others whom she had also treated with gratitude, and who had
died gladly serving her. But through it all there was a continual change
in her environment, though not in her. The young soldier went to the
battle-field and died; the wise counselor gave her his advice, and
she either took it or cared nothing for it. She herself was a curious
blending of forwardness and folly, of wisdom and wantonness, of
frivolity and unbridled fancy. But through it all she loved her people,
even though she often cheated them and made them pay her taxes in the
harsh old way that prevailed before there was any right save the king's
will.

At the same time, this was only by fits and starts, and on the whole
she served them well. Therefore, to most of them she was always the good
Queen Bess. What mattered it to the ditcher and yeoman, far from the
court, that the queen was said to dance in her nightdress and to swear
like a trooper?

It was, indeed, largely from these rustic sources that such stories were
scattered throughout England. Peasants thought them picturesque. More
to the point with them were peace and prosperity throughout the country,
the fact that law was administered with honesty and justice, and that
England was safe from her deadly enemies--the swarthy Spaniards and the
scheming French.

But, as I said, we must remember always that the Elizabeth of one period
was not the Elizabeth of another, and that the England of one period
was not the England of another. As one thinks of it, there is something
wonderful in the almost star-like way in which this girl flitted
unharmed through a thousand perils. Her own countrymen were at first
divided against her; a score of greedy, avaricious suitors sought her
destruction, or at least her hand to lead her to destruction; all the
great powers of the Continent were either demanding an alliance with
England or threatening to dash England down amid their own dissensions.

What had this girl to play off against such dangers? Only an undaunted
spirit, a scheming mind that knew no scruples, and finally her own
person and the fact that she was a woman, and, therefore, might give
herself in marriage and become the mother of a race of kings.

It was this last weapon, the weapon of her sex, that proved, perhaps,
the most powerful of all. By promising a marriage or by denying it, or
by neither promising nor denying but withholding it, she gave forth a
thousand wily intimations which kept those who surrounded her at bay
until she had made still another deft and skilful combination, escaping
like some startled creature to a new place of safety.

In 1583, when she was fifty years of age, she had reached a point when
her courtships and her pretended love-making were no longer necessary.
She had played Sweden against Denmark, and France against Spain, and the
Austrian archduke against the others, and many suitors in her own land
against the different factions which they headed. She might have sat
herself down to rest; for she could feel that her wisdom had led her
up into a high place, whence she might look down in peace and with
assurance of the tranquillity that she had won. Not yet had the great
Armada rolled and thundered toward the English shores. But she was
certain that her land was secure, compact, and safe.

It remains to see what were those amatory relations which she may be
said to have sincerely held. She had played at love-making with foreign
princes, because it was wise and, for the moment, best. She had played
with Englishmen of rank who aspired to her hand, because in that way she
might conciliate, at one time her Catholic and at another her Protestant
subjects. But what of the real and inward feeling of her heart, when she
was not thinking of political problems or the necessities of state!

This is an interesting question. One may at least seek the answer,
hoping thereby to solve one of the most interesting phases of this
perplexing and most remarkable woman.

It must be remembered that it was not a question of whether Elizabeth
desired marriage. She may have done so as involving a brilliant stroke
of policy. In this sense she may have wished to marry one of the two
French princes who were among her suitors. But even here she hesitated,
and her Parliament disapproved; for by this time England had become
largely Protestant. Again, had she married a French prince and had
children, England might have become an appanage of France.

There is no particular evidence that she had any feeling at all for her
Flemish, Austrian, or Russian suitors, while the Swede's pretensions
were the laughing-stock of the English court. So we may set aside this
question of marriage as having nothing to do with her emotional life.
She did desire a son, as was shown by her passionate outcry when she
compared herself with Mary of Scotland.

"The Queen of Scots has a bonny son, while I am but a barren stock!"

She was too wise to wed a subject; though, had she married at all, her
choice would doubtless have been an Englishman. In this respect, as in
so many others, she was like her father, who chose his numerous wives,
with the exception of the first, from among the English ladies of
the court; just as the showy Edward IV. was happy in marrying "Dame
Elizabeth Woodville." But what a king may do is by no means so easy for
a queen; and a husband is almost certain to assume an authority which
makes him unpopular with the subjects of his wife.

Hence, as said above, we must consider not so much whom she would have
liked to marry, but rather to whom her love went out spontaneously, and
not as a part of that amatory play which amused her from the time when
she frisked with Seymour down to the very last days, when she could no
longer move about, but when she still dabbled her cheeks with rouge and
powder and set her skeleton face amid a forest of ruffs.

There were many whom she cared for after a fashion. She would not let
Sir Walter Raleigh visit her American colonies, because she could not
bear to have him so long away from her. She had great moments of passion
for the Earl of Essex, though in the end she signed his death-warrant
because he was as dominant in spirit as the queen herself.

Readers of Sir Walter Scott's wonderfully picturesque novel, Kenilworth,
will note how he throws the strongest light upon Elizabeth's affection
for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Scott's historical instinct is
united here with a vein of psychology which goes deeper than is usual
with him. We see Elizabeth trying hard to share her favor equally
between two nobles; but the Earl of Essex fails to please her because he
lacked those exquisite manners which made Leicester so great a favorite
with the fastidious queen.

Then, too, the story of Leicester's marriage with Amy Robsart is
something more than a myth, based upon an obscure legend and an ancient
ballad. The earl had had such a wife, and there were sinister stories
about the manner of her death. But it is Scott who invents the
villainous Varney and the bulldog Anthony Foster; just as he brought
the whole episode into the foreground and made it occur at a period much
later than was historically true. Still, Scott felt--and he was imbued
with the spirit and knowledge of that time--a strong conviction that
Elizabeth loved Leicester as she really loved no one else.

There is one interesting fact which goes far to convince us. Just as
her father was, in a way, polygamous, so Elizabeth was even more truly
polyandrous. It was inevitable that she should surround herself with
attractive men, whose love-locks she would caress and whose flatteries
she would greedily accept. To the outward eye there was very little
difference in her treatment of the handsome and daring nobles of her
court; yet a historian of her time makes one very shrewd remark when
he says: "To every one she gave some power at times--to all save
Leicester."

Cecil and Walsingham in counsel and Essex and Raleigh in the field might
have their own way at times, and even share the sovereign's power, but
to Leicester she intrusted no high commands and no important mission.
Why so? Simply because she loved him more than any of the rest; and,
knowing this, she knew that if besides her love she granted him any
measure of control or power, then she would be but half a queen and
would be led either to marry him or else to let him sway her as he
would.

For the reason given, one may say with confidence that, while
Elizabeth's light loves were fleeting, she gave a deep affection to
this handsome, bold, and brilliant Englishman and cherished him in a far
different way from any of the others. This was as near as she ever came
to marriage, and it was this love at least which makes Shakespeare's
famous line as false as it is beautiful, when he describes "the imperial
votaress" as passing by "in maiden meditation, fancy free."





MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND LORD BOTHWELL


Mary Stuart and Cleopatra are the two women who have most attracted the
fancy of poets, dramatists, novelists, and painters, from their own time
down to the present day.

In some respects there is a certain likeness in their careers. Each
was queen of a nation whose affairs were entangled with those of a much
greater one. Each sought for her own ideal of love until she found it.
Each won that love recklessly, almost madly. Each, in its attainment,
fell from power and fortune. Each died before her natural life was
ended. One caused the man she loved to cast away the sovereignty of
a mighty state. The other lost her own crown in order that she might
achieve the whole desire of her heart.

There is still another parallel which may be found. Each of these women
was reputed to be exquisitely beautiful; yet each fell short of beauty's
highest standards. They are alike remembered in song and story because
of qualities that are far more powerful than any physical charm can be.
They impressed the imagination of their own contemporaries just as they
had impressed the imagination of all succeeding ages, by reason of a
strange and irresistible fascination which no one could explain, but
which very few could experience and resist.

Mary Stuart was born six days before her father's death, and when the
kingdom which was her heritage seemed to be almost in its death-throes.
James V. of Scotland, half Stuart and half Tudor, was no ordinary
monarch. As a mere boy he had burst the bonds with which a regency had
bound him, and he had ruled the wild Scotland of the sixteenth century.
He was brave and crafty, keen in statesmanship, and dissolute in
pleasure.

His first wife had given him no heirs; so at her death he sought out
a princess whom he pursued all the more ardently because she was also
courted by the burly Henry VIII. of England. This girl was Marie of
Lorraine, daughter of the Duc de Guise. She was fit to be the mother of
a lion's brood, for she was above six feet in height and of proportions
so ample as to excite the admiration of the royal voluptuary who sat
upon the throne of England.

"I am big," said he, "and I want a wife who is as big as I am."

But James of Scotland wooed in person, and not by embassies, and he
triumphantly carried off his strapping princess. Henry of England gnawed
his beard in vain; and, though in time he found consolation in another
woman's arms, he viewed James not only as a public but as a private
enemy.

There was war between the two countries. First the Scots repelled an
English army; but soon they were themselves disgracefully defeated at
Solway Moss by a force much their inferior in numbers. The shame of it
broke King James's heart. As he was galloping from the battle-field the
news was brought him that his wife had given birth to a daughter.
He took little notice of the message; and in a few days he had died,
moaning with his last breath the mysterious words:

"It came with a lass--with a lass it will go!"

The child who was born at this ill-omened crisis was Mary Stuart, who
within a week became, in her own right, Queen of Scotland. Her mother
acted as regent of the kingdom. Henry of England demanded that the
infant girl should be betrothed to his young son, Prince Edward, who
afterward reigned as Edward VI., though he died while still a boy. The
proposal was rejected, and the war between England and Scotland went on
its bloody course; but meanwhile the little queen was sent to France,
her mother's home, so that she might be trained in accomplishments which
were rare in Scotland.

In France she grew up at the court of Catherine de' Medici, that
imperious intriguer whose splendid surroundings were tainted with the
corruption which she had brought from her native Italy. It was, indeed,
a singular training-school for a girl of Mary Stuart's character. She
saw about her a superficial chivalry and a most profound depravity.
Poets like Ronsard graced the life of the court with exquisite verse.
Troubadours and minstrels sang sweet music there. There were fetes and
tournaments and gallantry of bearing; yet, on the other hand, there was
every possible refinement and variety of vice. Men were slain before
the eyes of the queen herself. The talk of the court was of intrigue and
lust and evil things which often verged on crime. Catherine de' Medici
herself kept her nominal husband at arm's-length; and in order to
maintain her grasp on France she connived at the corruption of her own
children, three of whom were destined in their turn to sit upon the
throne.

Mary Stuart grew up in these surroundings until she was sixteen, eating
the fruit which gave a knowledge of both good and evil. Her intelligence
was very great. She quickly learned Italian, French, and Latin. She was
a daring horsewoman. She was a poet and an artist even in her teens. She
was also a keen judge of human motives, for those early years of hers
had forced her into a womanhood that was premature but wonderful. It had
been proposed that she should marry the eldest son of Catherine, so
that in time the kingdom of Scotland and that of France might be united,
while if Elizabeth of England were to die unmarried her realm also would
fall to this pair of children.

And so Mary, at sixteen, wedded the Dauphin Francis, who was a year her
junior. The prince was a wretched, whimpering little creature, with a
cankered body and a blighted soul. Marriage with such a husband seemed
absurd. It never was a marriage in reality. The sickly child would cry
all night, for he suffered from abscesses in his ears, and his manhood
had been prematurely taken from him. Nevertheless, within a twelvemonth
the French king died and Mary Stuart was Queen of France as well as of
Scotland, hampered only by her nominal obedience to the sick boy whom
she openly despised. At seventeen she showed herself a master spirit.
She held her own against the ambitious Catherine de' Medici, whom she
contemptuously nicknamed "the apothecary's daughter." For the brief
period of a year she was actually the ruler of France; but then her
husband died and she was left a widow, restless, ambitious, and yet no
longer having any of the power she loved.

Mary Stuart at this time had become a woman whose fascination was
exerted over all who knew her. She was very tall and very slim, with
chestnut hair, "like a flower of the heat, both lax and delicate." Her
skin was fair and pale, so clear and so transparent as to make the story
plausible that when she drank from a flask of wine, the red liquid could
be seen passing down her slender throat.

Yet with all this she was not fine in texture, but hardy as a man. She
could endure immense fatigue without yielding to it. Her supple form had
the strength of steel. There was a gleam in her hazel eyes that showed
her to be brimful of an almost fierce vitality. Young as she was,
she was the mistress of a thousand arts, and she exhaled a sort of
atmosphere that turned the heads of men. The Stuart blood made her
impatient of control, careless of state, and easy-mannered. The French
and the Tudor strain gave her vivacity. She could be submissive in
appearance while still persisting in her aims. She could be languorous
and seductive while cold within. Again, she could assume the haughtiness
which belonged to one who was twice a queen.

Two motives swayed her, and they fought together for supremacy. One was
the love of power, and the other was the love of love. The first was
natural to a girl who was a sovereign in her own right. The second was
inherited, and was then forced into a rank luxuriance by the sort
of life that she had seen about her. At eighteen she was a strangely
amorous creature, given to fondling and kissing every one about her,
with slight discrimination. From her sense of touch she received
emotions that were almost necessary to her existence. With her slender,
graceful hands she was always stroking the face of some favorite--it
might be only the face of a child, or it might be the face of some
courtier or poet, or one of the four Marys whose names are linked with
hers--Mary Livingstone, Mary Fleming, Mary Beaton, and Mary Seton, the
last of whom remained with her royal mistress until her death.

But one must not be too censorious in thinking of Mary Stuart. She was
surrounded everywhere by enemies. During her stay in France she was
hated by the faction of Catherine de' Medici. When she returned to
Scotland she was hated because of her religion by the Protestant lords.
Her every action was set forth in the worst possible light. The most
sinister meaning was given to everything she said or did. In truth, we
must reject almost all the stories which accuse her of anything more
than a certain levity of conduct.

She was not a woman to yield herself in love's last surrender unless her
intellect and heart alike had been made captive. She would listen to the
passionate outpourings of poets and courtiers, and she would plunge her
eyes into theirs, and let her hair just touch their faces, and give them
her white hands to kiss--but that was all. Even in this she was only
following the fashion of the court where she was bred, and she was
not unlike her royal relative, Elizabeth of England, who had the same
external amorousness coupled with the same internal self-control.

Mary Stuart's love life makes a piteous story, for it is the life of one
who was ever seeking--seeking for the man to whom she could look up, who
could be strong and brave and ardent like herself, and at the same time
be more powerful and more steadfast even than she herself in mind and
thought. Whatever may be said of her, and howsoever the facts may be
colored by partisans, this royal girl, stung though she was by passion
and goaded by desire, cared nothing for any man who could not match her
in body and mind and spirit all at once.

It was in her early widowhood that she first met the man, and when their
union came it brought ruin on them both. In France there came to her
one day one of her own subjects, the Earl of Bothwell. He was but a few
years older than she, and in his presence for the first time she
felt, in her own despite, that profoundly moving, indescribable, and
never-to-be-forgotten thrill which shakes a woman to the very center of
her being, since it is the recognition of a complete affinity.

Lord Bothwell, like Queen Mary, has been terribly maligned. Unlike her,
he has found only a few defenders. Maurice Hewlett has drawn a picture
of him more favorable than many, and yet it is a picture that repels.
Bothwell, says he, was of a type esteemed by those who pronounce vice
to be their virtue. He was "a galliard, flushed with rich blood,
broad-shouldered, square-jawed, with a laugh so happy and so prompt that
the world, rejoicing to hear it, thought all must be well wherever
he might be. He wore brave clothes, sat a brave horse, and kept brave
company bravely. His high color, while it betokened high feeding, got
him the credit of good health. His little eyes twinkled so merrily that
you did not see they were like a pig's, sly and greedy at once, and
bloodshot. His tawny beard concealed a jaw underhung, a chin jutting and
dangerous. His mouth had a cruel twist; but his laughing hid that too.
The bridge of his nose had been broken; few observed it, or guessed
at the brawl which must have given it to him. Frankness was his great
charm, careless ease in high places."

And so, when Mary Stuart first met him in her eighteenth year, Lord
Bothwell made her think as she had never thought of any other man, and
as she was not to think of any other man again. She grew to look eagerly
for the frank mockery "in those twinkling eyes, in that quick mouth";
and to wonder whether it was with him always--asleep, at prayers,
fighting, furious, or in love.

Something more, however, must be said of Bothwell. He was undoubtedly a
roisterer, but he was very much a man. He made easy love to women. His
sword leaped quickly from its sheath. He could fight, and he could also
think. He was no brawling ruffian, no ordinary rake. Remembering what
Scotland was in those days, Bothwell might well seem in reality a
princely figure. He knew Italian; he was at home in French; he could
write fluent Latin. He was a collector of books and a reader of them
also. He was perhaps the only Scottish noble of his time who had a
book-plate of his own. Here is something more than a mere reveler. Here
is a man of varied accomplishments and of a complex character.

Though he stayed but a short time near the queen in France, he kindled
her imagination, so that when she seriously thought of men she thought
of Bothwell. And yet all the time she was fondling the young pages in
her retinue and kissing her maids of honor with her scarlet lips, and
lying on their knees, while poets like Ronsard and Chastelard wrote
ardent love sonnets to her and sighed and pined for something more than
the privilege of kissing her two dainty hands.

In 1561, less than a year after her widowhood, Mary set sail for
Scotland, never to return. The great high-decked ships which escorted
her sailed into the harbor of Leith, and she pressed on to Edinburgh. A
depressing change indeed from the sunny terraces and fields of France!
In her own realm were fog and rain and only a hut to shelter her upon
her landing. When she reached her capital there were few welcoming
cheers; but as she rode over the cobblestones to Holyrood, the squalid
wynds vomited forth great mobs of hard-featured, grim-visaged men and
women who stared with curiosity and a half-contempt at the girl queen
and her retinue of foreigners.

The Scots were Protestants of the most dour sort, and they distrusted
their new ruler because of her religion and because she loved to
surround herself with dainty things and bright colors and exotic
elegance. They feared lest she should try to repeal the law of
Scotland's Parliament which had made the country Protestant.

The very indifference of her subjects stirred up the nobler part of
Mary's nature. For a time she was indeed a queen. She governed wisely.
She respected the religious rights of her Protestant subjects. She
strove to bring order out of the chaos into which her country had
fallen. And she met with some success. The time came when her people
cheered her as she rode among them. Her subtle fascination was her
greatest source of strength. Even John Knox, that iron-visaged,
stentorian preacher, fell for a time under the charm of her presence.
She met him frankly and pleaded with him as a woman, instead of
commanding him as a queen. The surly ranter became softened for a time,
and, though he spoke of her to others as "Honeypot," he ruled his tongue
in public. She had offers of marriage from Austrian and Spanish princes.
The new King of France, her brother-in-law, would perhaps have wedded
her. It mattered little to Mary that Elizabeth of England was hostile.
She felt that she was strong enough to hold her own and govern Scotland.

But who could govern a country such as Scotland was? It was a land of
broils and feuds, of clan enmities and fierce vendettas. Its nobles were
half barbarous, and they fought and slashed at one another with drawn
dirks almost in the presence of the queen herself. No matter whom she
favored, there rose up a swarm of enemies. Here was a Corsica of the
north, more savage and untamed than even the other Corsica.

In her perplexity Mary felt a woman's need of some man on whom she
would have the right to lean, and whom she could make king consort.
She thought that she had found him in the person of her cousin, Lord
Darnley, a Catholic, and by his upbringing half an Englishman. Darnley
came to Scotland, and for the moment Mary fancied that she had forgotten
Bothwell. Here again she was in love with love, and she idealized the
man who came to give it to her. Darnley seemed, indeed, well worthy to
be loved, for he was tall and handsome, appearing well on horseback and
having some of the accomplishments which Mary valued.

It was a hasty wooing, and the queen herself was first of all the wooer.
Her quick imagination saw in Darnley traits and gifts of which he really
had no share. Therefore, the marriage was soon concluded, and Scotland
had two sovereigns, King Henry and Queen Mary. So sure was Mary of her
indifference to Bothwell that she urged the earl to marry, and he did
marry a girl of the great house of Gordon.

Mary's self-suggested love for Darnley was extinguished almost on
her wedding-night. The man was a drunkard who came into her presence
befuddled and almost bestial. He had no brains. His vanity was enormous.
He loved no one but himself, and least of all this queen, whom he
regarded as having thrown herself at his empty head.

The first-fruits of the marriage were uprisings among the Protestant
lords. Mary then showed herself a heroic queen. At the head of a
motley band of soldiery who came at her call--half-clad, uncouth, and
savage--she rode into the west, sleeping at night upon the bare ground,
sharing the camp food, dressed in plain tartan, but swift and fierce
as any eagle. Her spirit ran like fire through the veins of those who
followed her. She crushed the insurrection, scattered its leaders, and
returned in triumph to her capital.

Now she was really queen, but here came in the other motive which was
interwoven in her character. She had shown herself a man in courage.
Should she not have the pleasures of a woman? To her court in Holyrood
came Bothwell once again, and this time Mary knew that he was all the
world to her. Darnley had shrunk from the hardships of battle. He was
steeped in low intrigues. He roused the constant irritation of the queen
by his folly and utter lack of sense and decency. Mary felt she owed him
nothing, but she forgot that she owed much to herself.

Her old amorous ways came back to her, and she relapsed into the joys of
sense. The scandal-mongers of the capital saw a lover in every man
with whom she talked. She did, in fact, set convention at defiance. She
dressed in men's clothing. She showed what the unemotional Scots thought
to be unseemly levity. The French poet, Chastelard, misled by her
external signs of favor, believed himself to be her choice. At the end
of one mad revel he was found secreted beneath her bed, and was driven
out by force. A second time he ventured to secrete himself within the
covers of the bed. Then he was dragged forth, imprisoned, and condemned
to death. He met his fate without a murmur, save at the last when he
stood upon the scaffold and, gazing toward the palace, cried in French:

"Oh, cruel queen! I die for you!"

Another favorite, the Italian, David Rizzio, or Riccio, in like manner
wrote love verses to the queen, and she replied to them in kind; but
there is no evidence that she valued him save for his ability, which
was very great. She made him her foreign secretary, and the man whom he
supplanted worked on the jealousy of Darnley; so that one night, while
Mary and Rizzio were at dinner in a small private chamber, Darnley and
the others broke in upon her. Darnley held her by the waist while Rizzio
was stabbed before her eyes with a cruelty the greater because the queen
was soon to become a mother.

From that moment she hated Darnley as one would hate a snake. She
tolerated him only that he might acknowledge her child as his son. This
child was the future James VI. of Scotland and James I. of England. It
is recorded of him that never throughout his life could he bear to look
upon drawn steel.

After this Mary summoned Bothwell again and again. It was revealed to
her as in a blaze of light that, after all, he was the one and only
man who could be everything to her. His frankness, his cynicism, his
mockery, his carelessness, his courage, and the power of his mind
matched her moods completely. She threw away all semblance of
concealment. She ignored the fact that he had married at her wish. She
was queen. She desired him. She must have him at any cost.

"Though I lose Scotland and England both," she cried in a passion of
abandonment, "I shall have him for my own!"

Bothwell, in his turn, was nothing loath, and they leaped at each other
like two flames.

It was then that Mary wrote those letters which were afterward
discovered in a casket and which were used against her when she was on
trial for her life. These so-called Casket Letters, though we have
not now the originals, are among the most extraordinary letters ever
written. All shame, all hesitation, all innocence, are flung away in
them. The writer is so fired with passion that each sentence is like
a cry to a lover in the dark. As De Peyster says: "In them the animal
instincts override and spur and lash the pen." Mary was committing to
paper the frenzied madness of a woman consumed to her very marrow by the
scorching blaze of unendurable desire.

Events moved quickly. Darnley, convalescent from an attack of smallpox,
was mysteriously destroyed by an explosion of gunpowder. Bothwell was
divorced from his young wife on curious grounds. A dispensation allowed
Mary to wed a Protestant, and she married Bothwell three months after
Darnley's death.

Here one sees the consummation of what had begun many years before
in France. From the moment that she and Bothwell met, their union was
inevitable. Seas could not sunder them. Other loves and other fancies
were as nothing to them. Even the bonds of marriage were burst asunder
so that these two fiery, panting souls could meet.

It was the irony of fate that when they had so met it was only to be
parted. Mary's subjects, outraged by her conduct, rose against her. As
she passed through the streets of Edinburgh the women hurled after
her indecent names. Great banners were raised with execrable daubs
representing the murdered Darnley. The short and dreadful monosyllable
which is familiar to us in the pages of the Bible was hurled after her
wherever she went.

With Bothwell by her side she led a wild and ragged horde of followers
against the rebellious nobles, whose forces met her at Carberry Hill.
Her motley followers melted away, and Mary surrendered to the hostile
chieftains, who took her to the castle at Lochleven. There she became
the mother of twins--a fact that is seldom mentioned by historians.
These children were the fruit of her union with Bothwell. From this time
forth she cared but little for herself, and she signed, without great
reluctance, a document by which she abdicated in favor of her infant
son.

Even in this place of imprisonment, however, her fascination had power
to charm. Among those who guarded her, two of the Douglas family--George
Douglas and William Douglas--for love of her, effected her escape. The
first attempt failed. Mary, disguised as a laundress, was betrayed by
the delicacy of her hands. But a second attempt was successful. The
queen passed through a postern gate and made her way to the lake, where
George Douglas met her with a boat. Crossing the lake, fifty horsemen
under Lord Claude Hamilton gave her their escort and bore her away in
safety.

But Mary was sick of Scotland, for Bothwell could not be there. She
had tasted all the bitterness of life, and for a few months all the
sweetness; but she would have no more of this rough and barbarous
country. Of her own free will she crossed the Solway into England, to
find herself at once a prisoner.

Never again did she set eyes on Bothwell. After the battle of Carberry
Hill he escaped to the north, gathered some ships together, and preyed
upon English merchantmen, very much as a pirate might have done. Ere
long, however, when he had learned of Mary's fate, he set sail for
Norway. King Frederick of Denmark made him a prisoner of state. He was
not confined within prison walls, however, but was allowed to hunt and
ride in the vicinity of Malmo Castle and of Dragsholm. It is probably in
Malmo Castle that he died. In 1858 a coffin which was thought to be
the coffin of the earl was opened, and a Danish artist sketched the
head--which corresponds quite well with the other portraits of the
ill-fated Scottish noble.

It is a sad story. Had Mary been less ambitious when she first met
Bothwell, or had he been a little bolder, they might have reigned
together and lived out their lives in the plenitude of that great love
which held them both in thrall. But a queen is not as other women; and
she found too late that the teaching of her heart was, after all, the
truest teaching. She went to her death as Bothwell went to his, alone,
in a strange, unfriendly land.

Yet, even this, perhaps, was better so. It has at least touched both
their lives with pathos and has made the name of Mary Stuart one to be
remembered throughout all the ages.





QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN AND THE MARQUIS MONALDESCHI


Sweden to-day is one of the peaceful kingdoms of the world, whose people
are prosperous, well governed, and somewhat apart from the clash and
turmoil of other states and nations. Even the secession of Norway, a few
years ago, was accomplished without bloodshed, and now the two kingdoms
exist side by side as free from strife as they are with Denmark, which
once domineered and tyrannized over both.

It is difficult to believe that long ago, in the Middle Ages, the cities
of southern Sweden were among the great commercial centers of the world.
Stockholm and Lund ranked with London and Paris. They absorbed the
commerce of the northern seas, and were the admiration of thousands
of travelers and merchants who passed through them and trafficked with
them.

Much nearer to our own time, Sweden was the great military power of
northern Europe. The ambassadors of the Swedish kings were received with
the utmost deference in every court. Her soldiers won great battles
and ended mighty wars. The England of Cromwell and Charles II. was
unimportant and isolated in comparison with this northern kingdom, which
could pour forth armies of gigantic blond warriors, headed by generals
astute as well as brave.

It was no small matter, then, in 1626, that the loyal Swedes were hoping
that their queen would give birth to a male heir to succeed his splendid
father, Gustavus Adolphus, ranked by military historians as one of the
six great generals whom the world had so far produced. The queen, a
German princess of Brandenburg, had already borne two daughters, who
died in infancy. The expectation was wide-spread and intense that she
should now become the mother of a son; and the king himself was no less
anxious.

When the event occurred, the child was seen to be completely covered
with hair, and for this reason the attendants at first believed that it
was the desired boy. When their mistake was discovered they were afraid
to tell the king, who was waiting in his study for the announcement
to be made. At last, when no one else would go to him, his sister, the
Princess Caroline, volunteered to break the news.

Gustavus was in truth a chivalrous, high-bred monarch. Though he must
have been disappointed at the advent of a daughter, he showed no sign
of dissatisfaction or even of surprise; but, rising, he embraced his
sister, saying:

"Let us thank God. I hope this girl will be as good as a boy to me. May
God preserve her now that He has sent her!"

It is customary at almost all courts to pay less attention to the birth
of a princess than to that of a prince; but Gustavus displayed his
chivalry toward this little daughter, whom he named Christina. He
ordered that the full royal salute should be fired in every fortress of
his kingdom and that displays of fireworks, balls of honor, and court
functions should take place; "for," as he said, "this is the heir to my
throne." And so from the first he took his child under his own keeping
and treated her as if she were a much-loved son as well as a successor.

He joked about her looks when she was born, when she was mistaken for a
boy.

"She will be clever," he said, "for she has taken us all in!"

The Swedish people were as delighted with their little princess as were
the people of Holland when the present Queen Wilhelmina was born, to
carry on the succession of the House of Orange. On one occasion the king
and the small Christina, who were inseparable companions, happened
to approach a fortress where they expected to spend the night. The
commander of the castle was bound to fire a royal salute of fifty cannon
in honor of his sovereign; yet he dreaded the effect upon the princess
of such a roaring and bellowing of artillery. He therefore sent a
swift horseman to meet the royal party at a distance and explain his
perplexity. Should he fire these guns or not? Would the king give an
order?

Gustavus thought for a moment, and then replied:

"My daughter is the daughter of a soldier, and she must learn to lead a
soldier's life. Let the guns be fired!"

The procession moved on. Presently fire spurted from the embrasures of
the fort, and its batteries thundered in one great roar. The king looked
down at Christina. Her face was aglow with pleasure and excitement; she
clapped her hands and laughed, and cried out:

"More bang! More! More! More!"

This is only one of a score of stories that were circulated about the
princess, and the Swedes were more and more delighted with the girl who
was to be their queen.

Somewhat curiously, Christina's mother, Queen Maria, cared little for
the child, and, in fact, came at last to detest her almost as much as
the king loved her. It is hard to explain this dislike. Perhaps she had
a morbid desire for a son and begrudged the honors given to a daughter.
Perhaps she was a little jealous of her own child, who took so much of
the king's attention. Afterward, in writing of her mother, Christina
excuses her, and says quite frankly:

She could not bear to see me, because I was a girl, and an ugly girl at
that. And she was right enough, for I was as tawny as a little Turk.

This candid description of herself is hardly just. Christina was never
beautiful, and she had a harsh voice. She was apt to be overbearing
even as a little girl. Yet she was a most interesting child, with an
expressive face, large eyes, an aquiline nose, and the blond hair of her
people. There was nothing in this to account for her mother's intense
dislike for her.

It was currently reported at the time that attempts were made to maim
or seriously injure the little princess. By what was made to seem an
accident, she would be dropped upon the floor, and heavy articles of
furniture would somehow manage to strike her. More than once a great
beam fell mysteriously close to her, either in the palace or while she
was passing through the streets. None of these things did her serious
harm, however. Most of them she luckily escaped; but when she had grown
to be a woman one of her shoulders was permanently higher than the
other.

"I suppose," said Christina, "that I could be straightened if I would
let the surgeons attend to it; but it isn't worth while to take the
trouble."

When Christina was four, Sweden became involved in the great war
that had been raging for a dozen years between the Protestant and the
Catholic states of Germany. Gradually the neighboring powers had been
drawn into the struggle, either to serve their own ends or to support
the faith to which they adhered. Gustavus Adolphus took up the sword
with mixed motives, for he was full of enthusiasm for the imperiled
cause of the Reformation, and at the same time he deemed it a favorable
opportunity to assert his control over the shores of the Baltic.

The warrior king summoned his army and prepared to invade Germany.
Before departing he took his little daughter by the hand and led her
among the assembled nobles and councilors of state. To them he intrusted
the princess, making them kneel and vow that they would regard her as
his heir, and, if aught should happen to him, as his successor. Amid the
clashing of swords and the clang of armor this vow was taken, and the
king went forth to war.

He met the ablest generals of his enemies, and the fortunes of battle
swayed hither and thither; but the climax came when his soldiers
encountered those of Wallenstein--that strange, overbearing, arrogant,
mysterious creature whom many regarded with a sort of awe. The clash
came at Lutzen, in Saxony. The Swedish king fought long and hard, and so
did his mighty opponent; but at last, in the very midst of a tremendous
onset that swept all before him, Gustavus received a mortal wound and
died, even while Wallenstein was fleeing from the field of battle.

The battle of Lutzen made Christina Queen of Sweden at the age of six.
Of course, she could not yet be crowned, but a council of able ministers
continued the policy of the late king and taught the young queen her
first lessons in statecraft. Her intellect soon showed itself as more
than that of a child. She understood all that was taking place, and all
that was planned and arranged. Her tact was unusual. Her discretion was
admired by every one; and after a while she had the advice and training
of the great Swedish chancellor, Oxenstierna, whose wisdom she shared to
a remarkable degree.

Before she was sixteen she had so approved herself to her counselors,
and especially to the people at large, that there was a wide-spread
clamor that she should take the throne and govern in her own person. To
this she gave no heed, but said:

"I am not yet ready."

All this time she bore herself like a king. There was nothing distinctly
feminine about her. She took but slight interest in her appearance.
She wore sword and armor in the presence of her troops, and often she
dressed entirely in men's clothes. She would take long, lonely gallops
through the forests, brooding over problems of state and feeling no
fatigue or fear. And indeed why should she fear, who was beloved by all
her subjects?

When her eighteenth year arrived, the demand for her coronation was
impossible to resist. All Sweden wished to see a ruling queen, who might
marry and have children to succeed her through the royal line of her
great father. Christina consented to be crowned, but she absolutely
refused all thought of marriage. She had more suitors from all parts of
Europe than even Elizabeth of England; but, unlike Elizabeth, she
did not dally with them, give them false hopes, or use them for the
political advantage of her kingdom.

At that time Sweden was stronger than England, and was so situated as to
be independent of alliances. So Christina said, in her harsh, peremptory
voice:

"I shall never marry; and why should you speak of my having children! I
am just as likely to give birth to a Nero as to an Augustus."

Having assumed the throne, she ruled with a strictness of government
such as Sweden had not known before. She took the reins of state into
her own hands and carried out a foreign policy of her own, over the
heads of her ministers, and even against the wishes of her people. The
fighting upon the Continent had dragged out to a weary length, but the
Swedes, on the whole, had scored a marked advantage. For this reason the
war was popular, and every one wished it to go on; but Christina, of
her own will, decided that it must stop, that mere glory was not to be
considered against material advantages. Sweden had had enough of glory;
she must now look to her enrichment and prosperity through the channels
of peace.

Therefore, in 1648, against Oxenstierna, against her generals, and
against her people, she exercised her royal power and brought the Thirty
Years' War to an end by the so-called Peace of Westphalia. At this time
she was twenty-two, and by her personal influence she had ended one of
the greatest struggles of history. Nor had she done it to her country's
loss. Denmark yielded up rich provinces, while Germany was compelled to
grant Sweden membership in the German diet.

Then came a period of immense prosperity through commerce, through
economies in government, through the improvement of agriculture and the
opening of mines. This girl queen, without intrigue, without descending
from her native nobility to peep and whisper with shady diplomats,
showed herself in reality a great monarch, a true Semiramis of the
north, more worthy of respect and reverence than Elizabeth of England.
She was highly trained in many arts. She was fond of study, spoke
Latin fluently, and could argue with Salmasius, Descartes, and other
accomplished scholars without showing any inferiority to them.

She gathered at her court distinguished persons from all countries. She
repelled those who sought her hand, and she was pure and truthful and
worthy of all men's admiration. Had she died at this time history would
rank her with the greatest of women sovereigns. Naude, the librarian of
Cardinal Mazarin, wrote of her to the scientist Gassendi in these words:

To say truth, I am sometimes afraid lest the common saying should be
verified in her, that short is the life and rare the old age of those
who surpass the common limits. Do not imagine that she is learned only
in books, for she is equally so in painting, architecture, sculpture,
medals, antiquities, and all curiosities. There is not a cunning workman
in these arts but she has him fetched. There are as good workers in
wax and in enamel, engravers, singers, players, dancers here as will be
found anywhere.

She has a gallery of statues, bronze and marble, medals of gold,
silver, and bronze, pieces of ivory, amber, coral, worked crystal, steel
mirrors, clocks and tables, bas-reliefs and other things of the kind;
richer I have never seen even in Italy; finally, a great quantity of
pictures. In short, her mind is open to all impressions.

But after she began to make her court a sort of home for art and
letters it ceased to be the sort of court that Sweden was prepared for.
Christina's subjects were still rude and lacking in accomplishments;
therefore she had to summon men of genius from other countries,
especially from France and Italy. Many of these were illustrious artists
or scholars, but among them were also some who used their mental gifts
for harm.

Among these latter was a French physician named Bourdelot--a man of keen
intellect, of winning manners, and of a profound cynicism, which was
not apparent on the surface, but the effect of which last lasting. To
Bourdelot we must chiefly ascribe the mysterious change which gradually
came over Queen Christina. With his associates he taught her a distaste
for the simple and healthy life that she had been accustomed to lead.
She ceased to think of the welfare of the state and began to look down
with scorn upon her unsophisticated Swedes. Foreign luxury displayed
itself at Stockholm, and her palaces overflowed with beautiful things.

By subtle means Bourdelot undermined her principles. Having been
a Stoic, she now became an Epicurean. She was by nature devoid of
sentiment. She would not spend her time in the niceties of love-making,
as did Elizabeth; but beneath the surface she had a sort of tigerish,
passionate nature, which would break forth at intervals, and which
demanded satisfaction from a series of favorites. It is probable that
Bourdelot was her first lover, but there were many others whose names
are recorded in the annals of the time.

When she threw aside her virtue Christina ceased to care about
appearances. She squandered her revenues upon her favorites. What she
retained of her former self was a carelessness that braved the opinion
of her subjects. She dressed almost without thought, and it is said that
she combed her hair not more than twice a month. She caroused with male
companions to the scandal of her people, and she swore like a trooper
when displeased.

Christina's philosophy of life appears to have been compounded of an
almost brutal licentiousness, a strong love of power, and a strange,
freakish longing for something new. Her political ambitions were checked
by the rising discontent of her people, who began to look down upon her
and to feel ashamed of her shame. Knowing herself as she did, she did
not care to marry.

Yet Sweden must have an heir. Therefore she chose out her cousin
Charles, declared that he was to be her successor, and finally caused
him to be proclaimed as such before the assembled estates of the realm.
She even had him crowned; and finally, in her twenty-eighth year, she
abdicated altogether and prepared to leave Sweden. When asked whither
she would go, she replied in a Latin quotation:

"The Fates will show the way."

In her act of abdication she reserved to herself the revenues of some
of the richest provinces in Sweden and absolute power over such of her
subjects as should accompany her. They were to be her subjects until the
end.

The Swedes remembered that Christina was the daughter of their greatest
king, and that, apart from personal scandals, she had ruled them well;
and so they let her go regretfully and accepted her cousin as their
king. Christina, on her side, went joyfully and in the spirit of a grand
adventuress. With a numerous suite she entered Germany, and then stayed
for a year at Brussels, where she renounced Lutheranism. After this she
traveled slowly into Italy, where she entered Borne on horseback,
and was received by the Pope, Alexander VII., who lodged her in a
magnificent palace, accepted her conversion, and baptized her, giving
her a new name, Alexandra.

In Rome she was a brilliant but erratic personage, living sumptuously,
even though her revenues from Sweden came in slowly, partly because the
Swedes disliked her change of religion. She was surrounded by men of
letters, with whom she amused herself, and she took to herself a lover,
the Marquis Monaldeschi. She thought that at last she had really found
her true affinity, while Monaldeschi believed that he could count on the
queen's fidelity.

He was in attendance upon her daily, and they were almost inseparable.
He swore allegiance to her and thereby made himself one of the subjects
over whom she had absolute power. For a time he was the master of those
intense emotions which, in her, alternated with moods of coldness and
even cruelty.

Monaldeschi was a handsome Italian, who bore himself with a fine air of
breeding. He understood the art of charming, but he did not know that
beyond a certain time no one could hold the affections of Christina.

However, after she had quarreled with various cardinals and decided to
leave Rome for a while, Monaldeschi accompanied her to France, where
she had an immense vogue at the court of Louis XIV. She attracted wide
attention because of her eccentricity and utter lack of manners. It
gave her the greatest delight to criticize the ladies of the French
court--their looks, their gowns, and their jewels. They, in return,
would speak of Christina's deformed shoulder and skinny frame; but the
king was very gracious to her and invited her to his hunting-palace at
Fontainebleau.

While she had been winning triumphs of sarcasm the infatuated
Monaldeschi had gradually come to suspect, and then to know, that his
royal mistress was no longer true to him. He had been supplanted in her
favor by another Italian, one Sentanelli, who was the captain of her
guard.

Monaldeschi took a tortuous and roundabout revenge. He did not let the
queen know of his discovery; nor did he, like a man, send a challenge
to Sentanelli. Instead he began by betraying her secrets to Oliver
Cromwell, with whom she had tried to establish a correspondence. Again,
imitating the hand and seal of Sentanelli, he set in circulation a
series of the most scandalous and insulting letters about Christina. By
this treacherous trick he hoped to end the relations between his rival
and the queen; but when the letters were carried to Christina she
instantly recognized their true source. She saw that she was betrayed
by her former favorite and that he had taken a revenge which might
seriously compromise her.

This led to a tragedy, of which the facts were long obscure. They were
carefully recorded, however, by the queen's household chaplain, Father
Le Bel; and there is also a narrative written by one Marco Antonio
Conti, which confirms the story. Both were published privately in 1865,
with notes by Louis Lacour.

The narration of the priest is dreadful in its simplicity and minuteness
of detail. It may be summed up briefly here, because it is the testimony
of an eye-witness who knew Christina.

Christina, with the marquis and a large retinue, was at Fontainebleau in
November, 1657. A little after midnight, when all was still, the priest,
Father Le Bel, was aroused and ordered to go at once to the Galerie des
Cerfs, or Hall of Stags, in another part of the palace. When he asked
why, he was told:

"It is by the order of her majesty the Swedish queen."

The priest, wondering, hurried on his garments. On reaching the gloomy
hall he saw the Marquis Monaldeschi, evidently in great agitation, and
at the end of the corridor the queen in somber robes. Beside the
queen, as if awaiting orders, stood three figures, who could with some
difficulty be made out as three soldiers of her guard.

The queen motioned to Father Le Bel and asked him for a packet which she
had given him for safe-keeping some little time before. He gave it to
her, and she opened it. In it were letters and other documents, which,
with a steely glance, she displayed to Monaldeschi. He was confused by
the sight of them and by the incisive words in which Christina showed
how he had both insulted her and had tried to shift the blame upon
Sentanelli.

Monaldeschi broke down completely. He fell at the queen's feet and wept
piteously, begging for pardon, only to be met by the cold answer:

"You are my subject and a traitor to me. Marquis, you must prepare to
die!"

Then she turned away and left the hall, in spite of the cries of
Monaldeschi, to whom she merely added the advice that he should make his
peace with God by confessing to Father Le Bel.

After she had gone the marquis fell into a torrent of self-exculpation
and cried for mercy. The three armed men drew near and urged him to
confess for the good of his soul. They seemed to have no malice against
him, but to feel that they must obey the orders given them. At the
frantic urging of the marquis their leader even went to the queen to ask
whether she would relent; but he returned shaking his head, and said:

"Marquis, you must die."

Father Le Bel undertook a like mission, but returned with the message
that there was no hope. So the marquis made his confession in French
and Latin, but even then he hoped; for he did not wait to receive
absolution, but begged still further for delay or pardon.

Then the three armed men approached, having drawn their swords. The
absolution was pronounced; and, following it, one of the guards slashed
the marquis across the forehead. He stumbled and fell forward, making
signs as if to ask that he might have his throat cut. But his throat
was partly protected by a coat of mail, so that three or four strokes
delivered there had slight effect. Finally, however, a long, narrow
sword was thrust into his side, after which the marquis made no sound.

Father Le Bel at once left the Galerie des Cerfs and went into the
queen's apartment, with the smell of blood in his nostrils. He found her
calm and ready to justify herself. Was she not still queen over all who
had voluntarily become members of her suite? This had been agreed to in
her act of abdication. Wherever she set her foot, there, over her own,
she was still a monarch, with full power to punish traitors at her will.
This power she had exercised, and with justice. What mattered it that
she was in France? She was queen as truly as Louis XIV. was king.

The story was not long in getting out, but the truth was not wholly
known until a much later day. It was said that Sentanelli had slapped
the marquis in a fit of jealousy, though some added that it was done
with the connivance of the queen. King Louis, the incarnation of
absolutism, knew the truth, but he was slow to act. He sympathized with
the theory of Christina's sovereignty. It was only after a time that
word was sent to Christina that she must leave Fontainebleau. She took
no notice of the order until it suited her convenience, and then she
went forth with all the honors of a reigning monarch.

This was the most striking episode in all the strange story of her
private life. When her cousin Charles, whom she had made king, died
without an heir she sought to recover her crown; but the estates of the
realm refused her claim, reduced her income, and imposed restraints upon
her power. She then sought the vacant throne of Poland; but the Polish
nobles, who desired a weak ruler for their own purposes, made another
choice. So at last she returned to Rome, where the Pope received her
with a splendid procession and granted her twelve thousand crowns a year
to make up for her lessened Swedish revenue.

From this time she lived a life which she made interesting by her
patronage of learning and exciting by her rather unseemly quarrels with
cardinals and even with the Pope. Her armed retinue marched through the
streets with drawn swords and gave open protection to criminals who had
taken refuge with her. She dared to criticize the pontiff, who merely
smiled and said:

"She is a woman!"

On the whole, the end of her life was pleasant. She was much admired for
her sagacity in politics. Her words were listened to at every court in
Europe. She annotated the classics, she made beautiful collections, and
she was regarded as a privileged person whose acts no one took amiss.
She died at fifty-three, and was buried in St. Peter's.

She was bred a man, she was almost a son to her great father; and yet,
instead of the sonorous epitaph that is inscribed beside her tomb,
perhaps a truer one would be the words of the vexed Pope:

"E DONNA!"





KING CHARLES II. AND NELL GWYN


One might classify the kings of England in many ways. John was
undoubtedly the most unpopular. The impetuous yet far-seeing Henry
II., with the other two great warriors, Edward I. and Edward III.,
and William of Orange, did most for the foundation and development of
England's constitutional law. Some monarchs, such as Edward II. and the
womanish Henry VI., have been contemptible. Hard-working, useful kings
have been Henry VII., the Georges, William IV., and especially the last
Edward.

If we consider those monarchs who have in some curious way touched the
popular fancy without reference to their virtues we must go back to
Richard of the Lion Heart, who saw but little of England, yet was the
best essentially English king, and to Henry V., gallant soldier and
conqueror of France. Even Henry VIII. had a warm place in the affection
of his countrymen, few of whom saw him near at hand, but most of whom
made him a sort of regal incarnation of John Bull--wrestling and tilting
and boxing, eating great joints of beef, and staying his thirst with
flagons of ale--a big, healthy, masterful animal, in fact, who gratified
the national love of splendor and stood up manfully in his struggle with
the Pope.

But if you look for something more than ordinary popularity--something
that belongs to sentiment and makes men willing to become martyrs for
a royal cause--we must find these among the Stuart kings. It is odd,
indeed, that even at this day there are Englishmen and Englishwomen who
believe their lawful sovereign to be a minor Bavarian princess in whose
veins there runs the Stuart blood. Prayers are said for her at English
shrines, and toasts are drunk to her in rare old wine.

Of course, to-day this cult of the Stuarts is nothing but a fad. No
one ever expects to see a Stuart on the English throne. But it is
significant of the deep strain of romance which the six Stuarts who
reigned in England have implanted in the English heart. The old Jacobite
ballads still have power to thrill. Queen Victoria herself used to have
the pipers file out before her at Balmoral to the "skirling" of "Bonnie
Dundee," "Over the Water to Charlie," and "Wha'll Be King but Charlie!"
It is a sentiment that has never died. Her late majesty used to say that
when she heard these tunes she became for the moment a Jacobite; just
as the Empress Eugenie at the height of her power used pertly to remark
that she herself was the only Legitimist left in France.

It may be suggested that the Stuarts are still loved by many Englishmen
because they were unfortunate; yet this is hardly true, after all. Many
of them were fortunate enough. The first of them, King James, an absurd
creature, speaking broad Scotch, timid, foolishly fond of favorites, and
having none of the dignity of a monarch, lived out a lengthy reign. The
two royal women of the family--Anne and Mary--had no misfortunes of a
public nature. Charles II. reigned for more than a quarter of a century,
lapped in every kind of luxury, and died a king.

The first Charles was beheaded and afterward styled a "saint"; yet the
majority of the English people were against his arrogance, or else he
would have won his great struggle against Parliament. The second James
was not popular at all. Nevertheless, no sooner had he been expelled,
and been succeeded by a Dutchman gnawing asparagus and reeking of
cheeses, than there was already a Stuart legend. Even had there been
no pretenders to carry on the cult, the Stuarts would still have passed
into history as much loved by the people.

It only shows how very little in former days the people expected of
a regnant king. Many monarchs have had just a few popular traits, and
these have stood out brilliantly against the darkness of the background.

No one could have cared greatly for the first James, but Charles I. was
indeed a kingly personage when viewed afar. He was handsome, as a
man, fully equaling the French princess who became his wife. He had no
personal vices. He was brave, and good to look upon, and had a kingly
mien. Hence, although he sought to make his rule over England a tyranny,
there were many fine old cavaliers to ride afield for him when he raised
his standard, and who, when he died, mourned for him as a "martyr."

Many hardships they underwent while Cromwell ruled with his iron hand;
and when that iron hand was relaxed in death, and poor, feeble Richard
Cromwell slunk away to his country-seat, what wonder is it that young
Charles came back to England and caracoled through the streets of London
with a smile for every one and a happy laugh upon his lips? What wonder
is it that the cannon in the Tower thundered a loud welcome, and that
all over England, at one season or another, maypoles rose and Christmas
fires blazed? For Englishmen at heart are not only monarchists, but they
are lovers of good cheer and merrymaking and all sorts of mirth.

Charles II. might well at first have seemed a worthier and wiser
successor to his splendid father. As a child, even, he had shown himself
to be no faint-hearted creature. When the great Civil War broke out he
had joined his father's army. It met with disaster at Edgehill, and
was finally shattered by the crushing defeat of Naseby, which afterward
inspired Macaulay's most stirring ballad.

Charles was then only a child of twelve, and so his followers did wisely
in hurrying him out of England, through the Scilly isles and Jersey to
his mother's place of exile. Of course, a child so very young could be
of no value as a leader, though his presence might prove an inspiration.

In 1648, however, when he was eighteen years of age, he gathered a fleet
of eighteen ships and cruised along the English coast, taking prizes,
which he carried to the Dutch ports. When he was at Holland's
capital, during his father's trial, he wrote many messages to the
Parliamentarians, and even sent them a blank charter, which they might
fill in with any stipulations they desired if only they would save and
restore their king.

When the head of Charles rolled from the velvet-covered block his son
showed himself to be no loiterer or lover of an easy life. He hastened
to Scotland, skilfully escaping an English force, and was proclaimed as
king and crowned at Scone, in 1651. With ten thousand men he dashed into
England, where he knew there were many who would rally at his call. But
it was then that Cromwell put forth his supreme military genius and with
his Ironsides crushed the royal troops at Worcester.

Charles knew that for the present all was lost. He showed courage and
address in covering the flight of his beaten soldiers; but he soon
afterward went to France, remaining there and in the Netherlands for
eight years as a pensioner of Louis XIV. He knew that time would fight
for him far more surely than infantry and horse. England had not been
called "Merry England" for nothing; and Cromwell's tyranny was likely to
be far more resented than the heavy hand of one who was born a king.
So Charles at Paris and Liege, though he had little money at the time,
managed to maintain a royal court, such as it was.

Here there came out another side of his nature. As a child he had
borne hardship and privation and had seen the red blood flow upon
the battlefield. Now, as it were, he allowed a certain sensuous,
pleasure-loving ease to envelop him. The red blood should become the
rich red burgundy; the sound of trumpets and kettledrums should give way
to the melody of lutes and viols. He would be a king of pleasure if he
were to be king at all. And therefore his court, even in exile, was a
court of gallantry and ease. The Pope refused to lend him money, and the
King of France would not increase his pension, but there were many who
foresaw that Charles would not long remain in exile; and so they gave
him what he wanted and waited until he could give them what they would
ask for in their turn.

Charles at this time was not handsome, like his father. His complexion
was swarthy, his figure by no means imposing, though always graceful.
When he chose he could bear himself with all the dignity of a monarch.
He had a singularly pleasant manner, and a word from him could win over
the harshest opponent.

The old cavaliers who accompanied their master in exile were like
Napoleon's veterans in Elba. With their tall, powerful forms they
stalked about the courtyards, sniffing their disapproval at these
foreign ways and longing grimly for the time when they could once more
smell the pungent powder of the battle-field. But, as Charles had hoped,
the change was coming. Not merely were his own subjects beginning
to long for him and to pray in secret for the king, but continental
monarchs who maintained spies in England began to know of this. To them
Charles was no longer a penniless exile. He was a king who before long
would take possession of his kingdom.

A very wise woman--the Queen Regent of Portugal--was the first to act on
this information. Portugal was then very far from being a petty state.
It had wealth at home and rich colonies abroad, while its flag was seen
on every sea. The queen regent, being at odds with Spain, and wishing to
secure an ally against that power, made overtures to Charles, asking him
whether a match might not be made between him and the Princess Catharine
of Braganza. It was not merely her daughter's hand that she offered,
but a splendid dowry. She would pay Charles a million pounds in gold and
cede to England two valuable ports.

The match was not yet made, but by 1659 it had been arranged. The
Spaniards were furious, for Charles's cause began to appear successful.

She was a quaint and rather piteous little figure, she who was destined
to be the wife of the Merry Monarch. Catharine was dark, petite, and by
no means beautiful; yet she had a very sweet expression and a heart of
utter innocence. She had been wholly convent-bred. She knew nothing of
the world. She was told that in marriage she must obey in all things,
and that the chief duty of a wife was to make her husband happy.

Poor child! It was a too gracious preparation for a very graceless
husband. Charles, in exile, had already made more than one discreditable
connection and he was already the father of more than one growing son.

First of all, he had been smitten by the bold ways of one Lucy Walters.
Her impudence amused the exiled monarch. She was not particularly
beautiful, and when she spoke as others did she was rather tiresome; but
her pertness and the inexperience of the king when he went into exile
made her seem attractive. She bore him a son, in the person of that
brilliant adventurer whom Charles afterward created Duke of Monmouth.
Many persons believe that Charles had married Lucy Walters, just as
George IV. may have married Mrs. Fitzherbert; yet there is not the
slightest proof of it, and it must be classed with popular legends.

There was also one Catherine Peg, or Kep, whose son was afterward
made Earl of Plymouth. It must be confessed that in his attachments
to English women Charles showed little care for rank or station. Lucy
Walters and Catherine Peg were very illiterate creatures.

In a way it was precisely this sort of preference that made Charles
so popular among the people. He seemed to make rank of no account, but
would chat in the most familiar and friendly way with any one whom he
happened to meet. His easy, democratic manner, coupled with the grace
and prestige of royalty, made friends for him all over England. The
treasury might be nearly bankrupt; the navy might be routed by the
Dutch; the king himself might be too much given to dissipation; but his
people forgave him all, because everybody knew that Charles would clap
an honest citizen on the back and joke with all who came to see him feed
the swans in Regent's Park.

The popular name for him was "Rowley," or "Old Rowley"--a nickname
of mysterious origin, though it is said to have been given him from a
fancied resemblance to a famous hunter in his stables. Perhaps it is the
very final test of popularity that a ruler should have a nickname known
to every one.

Cromwell's death roused all England to a frenzy of king-worship. The
Roundhead, General Monk, and his soldiers proclaimed Charles King of
England and escorted him to London in splendid state. That was a day
when national feeling reached a point such as never has been before or
since. Oughtred, the famous mathematician, died of joy when the royal
emblems were restored. Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, died, it is
said, of laughter at the people's wild delight--a truly Rabelaisian end.

There was the king once more; and England, breaking through its long
period of Puritanism, laughed and danced with more vivacity than ever
the French had shown. All the pipers and the players and panderers to
vice, the mountebanks, the sensual men, and the lawless women poured
into the presence of the king, who had been too long deprived of the
pleasure that his nature craved. Parliament voted seventy thousand
pounds for a memorial to Charles's father, but the irresponsible king
spent the whole sum on the women who surrounded him. His severest
counselor, Lord Clarendon, sent him a remonstrance.

"How can I build such a memorial," asked Charles, "when I don't know
where my father's remains are buried!"

He took money from the King of France to make war against the Dutch,
who had befriended him. It was the French king, too, who sent him that
insidious, subtle daughter of Brittany, Louise de Keroualle--Duchess
of Portsmouth--a diplomat in petticoats, who won the king's wayward
affections, and spied on what he did and said, and faithfully reported
all of it to Paris. She became the mother of the Duke of Lenox, and
she was feared and hated by the English more than any other of his
mistresses. They called her "Madam Carwell," and they seemed to have an
instinct that she was no mere plaything of his idle hours, but was like
some strange exotic serpent, whose poison might in the end sting the
honor of England.

There is a pitiful little episode in the marriage of Charles with his
Portuguese bride, Catharine of Braganza. The royal girl came to him
fresh from the cloisters of her convent. There was something about her
grace and innocence that touched the dissolute monarch, who was by no
means without a heart. For a time he treated her with great respect,
and she was happy. At last she began to notice about her strange
faces--faces that were evil, wanton, or overbold. The court became more
and more a seat of reckless revelry.

Finally Catharine was told that the Duchess of Cleveland--that splendid
termagant, Barbara Villiers--had been appointed lady of the bedchamber.
She was told at the same time who this vixen was--that she was no fit
attendant for a virtuous woman, and that her three sons, the Dukes of
Southampton, Grafton, and Northumberland, were also the sons of Charles.

Fluttered and frightened and dismayed, the queen hastened to her husband
and begged him not to put this slight upon her. A year or two before,
she had never dreamed that life contained such things as these; but now
it seemed to contain nothing else. Charles spoke sternly to her until
she burst into tears, and then he petted her and told her that her
duty as a queen compelled her to submit to many things which a lady in
private life need not endure.

After a long and poignant struggle with her own emotions the little
Portuguese yielded to the wishes of her lord. She never again reproached
him. She even spoke with kindness to his favorites and made him feel
that she studied his happiness alone. Her gentleness affected him so
that he always spoke to her with courtesy and real friendship. When the
Protestant mobs sought to drive her out of England he showed his
courage and manliness by standing by her and refusing to allow her to be
molested.

Indeed, had Charles been always at his best he would have had a very
different name in history. He could be in every sense a king. He had a
keen knowledge of human nature. Though he governed England very badly,
he never governed it so badly as to lose his popularity.

The epigram of Rochester, written at the king's own request, was
singularly true of Charles. No man relied upon his word, yet men loved
him. He never said anything that was foolish, and he very seldom did
anything that was wise; yet his easy manners and gracious ways endeared
him to those who met him.

One can find no better picture of his court than that which Sir Walter
Scott has drawn so vividly in Peveril of the Peak; or, if one wishes
first-hand evidence, it can be found in the diaries of Evelyn and of
Samuel Pepys. In them we find the rakes and dicers, full of strange
oaths, deep drunkards, vile women and still viler men, all striving for
the royal favor and offering the filthiest lures, amid routs and balls
and noisy entertainments, of which it is recorded that more than once
some woman gave birth to a child among the crowd of dancers.

No wonder that the little Portuguese queen kept to herself and did not
let herself be drawn into this swirling, roaring, roistering saturnalia.
She had less influence even than Moll Davis, whom Charles picked out
of a coffee-house, and far less than "Madam Carwell," to whom it is
reported that a great English nobleman once presented pearls to the
value of eight thousand pounds in order to secure her influence in a
single stroke of political business.

Of all the women who surrounded Charles there was only one who cared
anything for him or for England. The rest were all either selfish or
treacherous or base. This one exception has been so greatly written of,
both in fiction and in history, as to make it seem almost unnecessary to
add another word; yet it may well be worth while to separate the fiction
from the fact and to see how much of the legend of Eleanor Gwyn is true.

The fanciful story of her birthplace is most surely quite unfounded. She
was not the daughter of a Welsh officer, but of two petty hucksters who
had their booth in the lowest precincts of London. In those days the
Strand was partly open country, and as it neared the city it showed the
mansions of the gentry set in their green-walled parks. At one end of
the Strand, however, was Drury Lane, then the haunt of criminals and
every kind of wretch, while nearer still was the notorious Coal Yard,
where no citizen dared go unarmed.

Within this dreadful place children were kidnapped and trained to
various forms of vice. It was a school for murderers and robbers and
prostitutes; and every night when the torches flared it vomited forth
its deadly spawn. Here was the earliest home of Eleanor Gwyn, and out of
this den of iniquity she came at night to sell oranges at the entrance
to the theaters. She was stage-struck, and endeavored to get even a
minor part in a play; but Betterton, the famous actor, thrust her aside
when she ventured to apply to him.

It must be said that in everything that was external, except her beauty,
she fell short of a fastidious taste. She was intensely ignorant even
for that time. She spoke in a broad Cockney dialect. She had lived the
life of the Coal Yard, and, like Zola's Nana, she could never remember
the time when she had known the meaning of chastity.

Nell Gwyn was, in fact, a product of the vilest slums of London; and
precisely because she was this we must set her down as intrinsically a
good woman--one of the truest, frankest, and most right-minded of
whom the history of such women has anything to tell. All that external
circumstances could do to push her down into the mire was done; yet she
was not pushed down, but emerged as one of those rare souls who have in
their natures an uncontaminated spring of goodness and honesty. Unlike
Barbara Villiers or Lucy Walters or Louise de Keroualle, she was neither
a harpy nor a foe to England.

Charles is said first to have met her when he, incognito, with another
friend, was making the rounds of the theaters at night. The king spied
her glowing, nut-brown face in one of the boxes, and, forgetting his
incognito, went up and joined her. She was with her protector of the
time, Lord Buckhurst, who, of course, recognized his majesty.

Presently the whole party went out to a neighboring coffee-house, where
they drank and ate together. When it came time to pay the reckoning the
king found that he had no money, nor had his friend. Lord Buckhurst,
therefore, paid the bill, while Mistress Nell jeered at the other two,
saying that this was the most poverty-stricken party that she had ever
met.

Charles did not lose sight of her. Her frankness and honest manner
pleased him. There came a time when she was known to be a mistress
of the king, and she bore a son, who was ennobled as the Duke of St.
Albans, but who did not live to middle age. Nell Gwyn was much with
Charles; and after his tempestuous scenes with Barbara Villiers, and the
feeling of dishonor which the Duchess of Portsmouth made him experience,
the girl's good English bluntness was a pleasure far more rare than
sentiment.

Somehow, just as the people had come to mistrust "Madam Carwell," so
they came to like Nell Gwyn. She saw enough of Charles, and she liked
him well enough, to wish that he might do his duty by his people; and
she alone had the boldness to speak out what she thought. One day she
found him lolling in an arm-chair and complaining that the people were
not satisfied.

"You can very easily satisfy them," said Nell Gwyn. "Dismiss your women
and attend to the proper business of a king."

Again, her heart was touched at the misfortunes of the old soldiers who
had fought for Charles and for his father during the Civil War, and who
were now neglected, while the treasury was emptied for French favorites,
and while the policy of England itself was bought and sold in France.
Many and many a time, when other women of her kind used their lures
to get jewels or titles or estates or actual heaps of money, Nell Gwyn
besought the king to aid these needy veterans. Because of her efforts
Chelsea Hospital was founded. Such money as she had she shared with the
poor and with those who had fought for her royal lover.

As I have said, she is a historical type of the woman who loses her
physical purity, yet who retains a sense of honor and of honesty
which nothing can take from her. There are not many such examples, and
therefore this one is worth remembering.

Of anecdotes concerning her there are many, but not often has their real
import been detected. If she could twine her arms about the monarch's
neck and transport him in a delirium of passion, this was only part of
what she did. She tried to keep him right and true and worthy of
his rank; and after he had ceased to care much for her as a lover he
remembered that she had been faithful in many other things.

Then there came the death-bed scene, when Charles, in his inimitable
manner, apologized to those about him because he was so long in dying.
A far sincerer sentence was that which came from his heart, as he cried
out, in the very pangs of death:

"Do not let poor Nelly starve!"





MAURICE OF SAXONY AND ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR


It is an old saying that to every womanly woman self-sacrifice is almost
a necessity of her nature. To make herself of small account as compared
with the one she loves; to give freely of herself, even though she may
receive nothing in return; to suffer, and yet to feel an inner poignant
joy in all this suffering--here is a most wonderful trait of womanhood.
Perhaps it is akin to the maternal instinct; for to the mother, after
she has felt the throb of a new life within her, there is no sacrifice
so great and no anguish so keen that she will not welcome it as the
outward sign and evidence of her illimitable love.

In most women this spirit of self-sacrifice is checked and kept within
ordinary bounds by the circumstances of their lives. In many small
things they do yield and they do suffer; yet it is not in yielding and
in suffering that they find their deepest joy.

There are some, however, who seem to have been born with an abnormal
capacity for enduring hardship and mental anguish; so that by a sort
of contradiction they find their happiness in sorrow. Such women are
endowed with a remarkable degree of sensibility. They feel intensely. In
moments of grief and disappointment, and even of despair, there steals
over them a sort of melancholy pleasure. It is as if they loved dim
lights and mournful music and scenes full of sad suggestion.

If everything goes well with them, they are unwilling to believe that
such good fortune will last. If anything goes wrong with them, they are
sure that this is only the beginning of something even worse. The music
of their lives is written in a minor key.

Now, for such women as these, the world at large has very little
charity. It speaks slightingly of them as "agonizers." It believes that
they are "fond of making scenes." It regards as an affectation something
that is really instinctive and inevitable. Unless such women are
beautiful and young and charming they are treated badly; and this is
often true in spite of all their natural attractiveness, for they seem
to court ill usage as if they were saying frankly:

"Come, take us! We will give you everything and ask for nothing. We do
not expect true and enduring love. Do not be constant or generous or
even kind. We know that we shall suffer. But, none the less, in our
sorrow there will be sweetness, and even in our abasement we shall feel
a sort of triumph."

In history there is one woman who stands out conspicuously as a type
of her melancholy sisterhood, one whose life was full of disappointment
even when she was most successful, and of indignity even when she was
most sought after and admired. This woman was Adrienne Lecouvreur,
famous in the annals of the stage, and still more famous in the annals
of unrequited--or, at any rate, unhappy--love.

Her story is linked with that of a man no less remarkable than herself,
a hero of chivalry, a marvel of courage, of fascination, and of
irresponsibility.

Adrienne Lecouvreur--her name was originally Couvreur--was born toward
the end of the seventeenth century in the little French village of
Damery, not far from Rheims, where her aunt was a laundress and her
father a hatter in a small way. Of her mother, who died in childbirth,
we know nothing; but her father was a man of gloomy and ungovernable
temper, breaking out into violent fits of passion, in one of which, long
afterward, he died, raving and yelling like a maniac.

Adrienne was brought up at the wash-tub, and became accustomed to a
wandering life, in which she went from one town to another. What she had
inherited from her mother is, of course, not known; but she had all her
father's strangely pessimistic temper, softened only by the fact
that she was a girl. From her earliest years she was unhappy; yet her
unhappiness was largely of her own choosing. Other girls of her own
station met life cheerfully, worked away from dawn till dusk, and then
had their moments of amusement, and even jollity, with their companions,
after the fashion of all children. But Adrienne Lecouvreur was unhappy
because she chose to be. It was not the wash-tub that made her so,
for she had been born to it; nor was it the half-mad outbreaks of her
father, because to her, at least, he was not unkind. Her discontent
sprang from her excessive sensibility.

Indeed, for a peasant child she had reason to think herself far more
fortunate than her associates. Her intelligence was great. Ambition was
awakened in her before she was ten years of age, when she began to
learn and to recite poems--learning them, as has been said, "between the
wash-tub and the ironing-board," and reciting them to the admiration of
older and wiser people than she. Even at ten she was a very beautiful
child, with great lambent eyes, an exquisite complexion, and a lovely
form, while she had the further gift of a voice that thrilled the
listener and, when she chose, brought tears to every eye. She
was, indeed, a natural elocutionist, knowing by instinct all those
modulations of tone and varied cadences which go to the hearer's heart.

It was very like Adrienne Lecouvreur to memorize only such poems as were
mournful, just as in after life she could win success upon the stage
only in tragic parts. She would repeat with a sort of ecstasy the
pathetic poems that were then admired; and she was soon able to give up
her menial work, because many people asked her to their houses so that
they could listen to the divinely beautiful voice charged with the
emotion which was always at her command.

When she was thirteen her father moved to Paris, where she was placed at
school--a very humble school in a very humble quarter of the city.
Yet even there her genius showed itself at that early age. A number
of children and young people, probably influenced by Adrienne, formed
themselves into a theatrical company from the pure love of acting.
A friendly grocer let them have an empty store-room for their
performances, and in this store-room Adrienne Lecouvreur first acted in
a tragedy by Corneille, assuming the part of leading woman.

Her genius for the stage was like the genius of Napoleon for war. She
had had no teaching. She had never been inside of any theater; and yet
she delivered the magnificent lines with all the power and fire and
effectiveness of a most accomplished actress. People thronged to see her
and to feel the tempest of emotion which shook her as she sustained her
part, which for the moment was as real to her as life itself.

At first only the people of the neighborhood knew anything about these
amateur performances; but presently a lady of rank, one Mme. du Gue,
came out of curiosity and was fascinated by the little actress. Mme. du
Gue offered the spacious courtyard of her own house, and fitted it with
some of the appurtenances of a theater. From that moment the fame of
Adrienne spread throughout all Paris. The courtyard was crowded by
gentlemen and ladies, by people of distinction from the court, and at
last even by actors and actresses from the Comedie Franchise.

It is, in fact, a remarkable tribute to Adrienne that in her thirteenth
year she excited so much jealousy among the actors of the Comedie that
they evoked the law against her. Theaters required a royal license,
and of course poor little Adrienne's company had none. Hence legal
proceedings were begun, and the most famous actresses in Paris talked
of having these clever children imprisoned! Upon this the company sought
the precincts of the Temple, where no legal warrant could be served
without the express order of the king himself.

There for a time the performances still went on. Finally, as the other
children were not geniuses, but merely boys and girls in search of fun,
the little company broke up. Its success, however, had determined for
ever the career of Adrienne. With her beautiful face, her lithe and
exquisite figure, her golden voice, and her instinctive art, it was
plain enough that her future lay upon the stage; and so at fourteen
or fifteen she began where most actresses leave off--accomplished and
attractive, and having had a practical training in her profession.

Diderot, in that same century, observed that the truest actor is one who
does not feel his part at all, but produces his effects by intellectual
effort and intelligent observation. Behind the figure on the stage, torn
with passion or rollicking with mirth, there must always be the cool
and unemotional mind which directs and governs and controls. This same
theory was both held and practised by the late Benoit Constant Coquelin.
To some extent it was the theory of Garrick and Fechter and Edwin Booth;
though it was rejected by the two Keans, and by Edwin Forrest, who
entered so throughly into the character which he assumed, and who let
loose such tremendous bursts of passion that other actors dreaded to
support him on the stage in such parts as Spartacus and Metamora.

It is needless to say that a girl like Adrienne Lecouvreur flung herself
with all the intensity of her nature into every role she played. This
was the greatest secret of her success; for, with her, nature rose
superior to art. On the other hand, it fixed her dramatic limitations,
for it barred her out of comedy. Her melancholy, morbid disposition was
in the fullest sympathy with tragic heroines; but she failed when she
tried to represent the lighter moods and the merry moments of those who
welcome mirth. She could counterfeit despair, and unforced tears would
fill her eyes; but she could not laugh and romp and simulate a gaiety
that was never hers.

Adrienne would have been delighted to act at one of the theaters in
Paris; but they were closed to her through jealousy. She went into the
provinces, in the eastern part of France, and for ten years she was a
leading lady there in many companies and in many towns. As she blossomed
into womanhood there came into her life the love which was to be at once
a source of the most profound interest and of the most intense agony.

It is odd that all her professional success never gave her any
happiness. The life of the actress who traveled from town to town, the
crude and coarse experiences which she had to undergo, the disorder and
the unsettled mode of living, all produced in her a profound disgust.
She was of too exquisite a fiber to live in such a way, especially in a
century when the refinements of existence were for the very few.

She speaks herself of "obligatory amusements, the insistence of men, and
of love affairs." Yet how could such a woman as Adrienne Lecouvreur keep
herself from love affairs? The motion of the stage and its mimic griefs
satisfied her only while she was actually upon the boards. Love offered
her an emotional excitement that endured and that was always changing.
It was "the profoundest instinct of her being"; and she once wrote:
"What could one do in the world without loving?"

Still, through these ten years she seems to have loved only that she
might be unhappy. There was a strange twist in her mind. Men who were
honorable and who loved her with sincerity she treated very badly. Men
who were indifferent or ungrateful or actually base she seemed to choose
by a sort of perverse instinct. Perhaps the explanation of it is that
during those ten years, though she had many lovers, she never really
loved. She sought excitement, passion, and after that the mournfulness
which comes when passion dies. Thus, one man after another came into her
life--some of them promising marriage--and she bore two children, whose
fathers were unknown, or at least uncertain. But, after all, one can
scarcely pity her, since she had not yet in reality known that great
passion which comes but once in life. So far she had learned only a sort
of feeble cynicism, which she expressed in letters and in such sayings
as these:

"There are sweet errors which I would not venture to commit again. My
experiences, all too sad, have served to illumine my reason."

"I am utterly weary of love and prodigiously tempted to have no more of
it for the rest of my life; because, after all, I don't wish either to
die or to go mad."

Yet she also said: "I know too well that no one dies of grief."

She had had, indeed, some very unfortunate experiences. Men of rank had
loved her and had then cast her off. An actor, one Clavel, would
have married her, but she would not accept his offer. A magistrate in
Strasburg promised marriage; and then, when she was about to accept him,
he wrote to her that he was going to yield to the wishes of his family
and make a more advantageous alliance. And so she was alternately
caressed and repulsed--a mere plaything; and yet this was probably all
that she really needed at the time--something to stir her, something to
make her mournful or indignant or ashamed.

It was inevitable that at last Adrienne Lecouvreur should appear in
Paris. She had won such renown throughout the provinces that even
those who were intensely jealous of her were obliged to give her due
consideration. In 1717, when she was in her twenty-fifth year, she
became a member of the Comedie Franchise. There she made an immediate
and most brilliant impression. She easily took the leading place. She
was one of the glories of Paris, for she became the fashion outside the
theater. For the first time the great classic plays were given, not
in the monotonous singsong which had become a sort of theatrical
convention, but with all the fire and naturalness of life.

Being the fashion, Mlle. Lecouvreur elevated the social rank of actors
and of actresses. Her salon was thronged by men and women of rank.
Voltaire wrote poems in her honor. To be invited to her dinners was
almost like receiving a decoration from the king. She ought to have been
happy, for she had reached the summit of her profession and something
more.

Yet still she was unhappy. In all her letters one finds a plaintive
tone, a little moaning sound that shows how slightly her nature had been
changed. No longer, however, did she throw herself away upon dullards or
brutes. An English peer--Lord Peterborough--not realizing that she was
different from other actresses of that loose-lived age, said to her
coarsely at his first introduction:

"Come now! Show me lots of wit and lots of love."

The remark was characteristic of the time. Yet Adrienne had learned
at least one thing, and that was the discontent which came from light
affairs. She had thrown herself away too often. If she could not love
with her entire being, if she could not give all that was in her to be
given, whether of her heart or mind or soul, then she would love no more
at all.

At this time there came to Paris a man remarkable in his own century,
and one who afterward became almost a hero of romance. This was Maurice,
Comte de Saxe, as the French called him, his German name and title being
Moritz, Graf von Sachsen, while we usually term him, in English, Marshal
Saxe. Maurice de Saxe was now, in 1721, entering his twenty-fifth year.
Already, though so young, his career had been a strange one; and it was
destined to be still more remarkable. He was the natural son of Duke
Augustus II. of Saxony, who later became King of Poland, and who is
known in history as Augustus the Strong.

Augustus was a giant in stature and in strength, handsome, daring,
unscrupulous, and yet extremely fascinating. His life was one of revelry
and fighting and display. When in his cups he would often call for a
horseshoe and twist it into a knot with his powerful fingers. Many were
his mistresses; but the one for whom he cared the most was a beautiful
and high-spirited Swedish girl of rank, Aurora von Konigsmarck. She was
descended from a rough old field-marshal who in the Thirty Years'
War had slashed and sacked and pillaged and plundered to his heart's
content. From him Aurora von Konigsmarck seemed to have inherited a high
spirit and a sort of lawlessness which charmed the stalwart Augustus of
Poland.

Their son, Maurice de Saxe, inherited everything that was good in his
parents, and a great deal that was less commendable. As a mere child
of twelve he had insisted on joining the army of Prince Eugene, and
had seen rough service in a very strenuous campaign. Two years later he
showed such daring on the battle-field that Prince Eugene summoned him
and paid him a compliment under the form of a rebuke.

"Young man," he said, "you must not mistake mere recklessness for
valor."

Before he was twenty he had attained the stature and strength of his
royal father; and, to prove it, he in his turn called for a horseshoe,
which he twisted and broke in his fingers. He fought on the side of the
Russians and Poles, and again against the Turks, everywhere displaying
high courage and also genius as a commander; for he never lost his
self-possession amid the very blackest danger, but possessed, as Carlyle
says, "vigilance, foresight, and sagacious precaution."

Exceedingly handsome, Maurice was a master of all the arts that pleased,
with just a touch of roughness, which seemed not unfitting in so gallant
a soldier. His troops adored him and would follow wherever he might
choose to lead them; for he exercised over these rude men a magnetic
power resembling that of Napoleon in after years. In private life he was
a hard drinker and fond of every form of pleasure. Having no fortune of
his own, a marriage was arranged for him with the Countess von Loben,
who was immensely wealthy; but in three years he had squandered all
her money upon his pleasures, and had, moreover, got himself heavily in
debt.

It was at this time that he first came to Paris to study military
tactics. He had fought hard against the French in the wars that were now
ended; but his chivalrous bearing, his handsome person, and his reckless
joviality made him at once a universal favorite in Paris. To the
perfumed courtiers, with their laces and lovelocks and mincing ways,
Maurice de Saxe came as a sort of knight of old--jovial, daring,
pleasure-loving. Even his broken French was held to be quite charming;
and to see him break a horseshoe with his fingers threw every one into
raptures.

No wonder, then, that he was welcomed in the very highest circles.
Almost at once he attracted the notice of the Princesse de Conti, a
beautiful woman of the blood royal. Of her it has been said that she was
"the personification of a kiss, the incarnation of an embrace, the ideal
of a dream of love." Her chestnut hair was tinted with little gleams of
gold. Her eyes were violet black. Her complexion was dazzling. But by
the king's orders she had been forced to marry a hunchback--a man whose
very limbs were so weakened by disease and evil living that they would
often fail to support him, and he would fall to the ground, a writhing,
screaming mass of ill-looking flesh.

It is not surprising that his lovely wife should have shuddered much at
his abuse of her and still more at his grotesque endearments. When her
eyes fell on Maurice de Saxe she saw in him one who could free her from
her bondage. By a skilful trick he led the Prince de Conti to invade the
sleeping-room of the princess, with servants, declaring that she was
not alone. The charge proved quite untrue, and so she left her husband,
having won the sympathy of her own world, which held that she had been
insulted. But it was not she who was destined to win and hold the love
of Maurice de Saxe.

Not long after his appearance in the French capital he was invited to
dine with the "Queen of Paris," Adrienne Lecouvreur. Saxe had seen her
on the stage. He knew her previous history. He knew that she was very
much of a soiled dove; but when he met her these two natures, so utterly
dissimilar, leaped together, as it were, through the indescribable
attraction of opposites. He was big and powerful; she was small and
fragile. He was merry, and full of quips and jests; she was reserved and
melancholy. Each felt in the other a need supplied.

At one of their earliest meetings the climax came. Saxe was not the
man to hesitate; while she already, in her thoughts, had made a full
surrender. In one great sweep he gathered her into his arms. It appeared
to her as if no man had ever laid his hand upon her until that moment.
She cried out:

"Now, for the first time in my life, I seem to live!"

It was, indeed, the very first love which in her checkered career was
really worthy of the name. She had supposed that all such things were
passed and gone, that her heart was closed for ever, that she was
invulnerable; and yet here she found herself clinging about the neck
of this impetuous soldier and showing him all the shy fondness and
the unselfish devotion of a young girl. From this instant Adrienne
Lecouvreur never loved another man and never even looked at any other
man with the slightest interest. For nine long years the two were bound
together, though there were strange events to ruffle the surface of
their love.

Maurice de Saxe had been sired by a king. He had the lofty ambition to
be a king himself, and he felt the stirrings of that genius which in
after years was to make him a great soldier, and to win the brilliant
victory of Fontenoy, which to this very day the French are never tired
of recalling. Already Louis XV. had made him a marshal of France; and a
certain restlessness came over him. He loved Adrienne; yet he felt that
to remain in the enjoyment of her witcheries ought not to be the whole
of a man's career.

Then the Grand Duchy of Courland--at that time a vassal state of Poland,
now part of Russia--sought a ruler. Maurice de Saxe was eager to secure
its throne, which would make him at least semi-royal and the chief of
a principality. He hastened thither and found that money was needed to
carry out his plans. The widow of the late duke--the Grand Duchess Anna,
niece of Peter the Great, and later Empress of Russia--as soon as she
had met this dazzling genius, offered to help him to acquire the duchy
if he would only marry her. He did not utterly refuse. Still another
woman of high rank, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, Peter the
Great's daughter, made him very much the same proposal.

Both of these imperial women might well have attracted a man like
Maurice de Saxe, had he been wholly fancy-free, for the second of them
inherited the high spirit and the genius of the great Peter, while the
first was a pleasure-seeking princess, resembling some of those Roman
empresses who loved to stoop that they might conquer. She is described
as indolent and sensual, and she once declared that the chief good in
the world was love. Yet, though she neglected affairs of state and gave
them over to favorites, she won and kept the affections of her people.
She was unquestionably endowed with the magnetic gift of winning hearts.

Adrienne, who was left behind in Paris, knew very little of what was
going on. Only two things were absolutely clear to her. One was that if
her lover secured the duchy he must be parted from her. The other was
that without money his ambition must be thwarted, and that he would then
return to her. Here was a test to try the soul of any woman. It proved
the height and the depth of her devotion. Come what might, Maurice
should be Duke of Courland, even though she lost him. She gathered
together her whole fortune, sold every jewel that she possessed, and
sent her lover the sum of nearly a million francs.

This incident shows how absolutely she was his. But in fact, because
of various intrigues, he failed of election to the ducal throne of
Courland, and he returned to Adrienne with all her money spent, and
without even the grace, at first, to show his gratitude. He stormed and
raged over his ill luck. She merely soothed and petted him, though she
had heard that he had thought of marrying another woman to secure
the dukedom. In one of her letters she bursts out with the pitiful
exclamation:

I am distracted with rage and anguish. Is it not natural to cry out
against such treachery? This man surely ought to know me--he ought to
love me. Oh, my God! What are we--what ARE we?

But still she could not give him up, nor could he give her up, though
there were frightful scenes between them--times when he cruelly
reproached her and when her native melancholy deepened into outbursts
of despair. Finally there occurred an incident which is more or
less obscure in parts. The Duchesse de Bouillon, a great lady of the
court--facile, feline, licentious, and eager for delights--resolved that
she would win the love of Maurice de Saxe. She set herself to win it
openly and without any sense of shame. Maurice himself at times, when
the tears of Adrienne proved wearisome, flirted with the duchess.

Yet, even so, Adrienne held the first place in his heart, and her rival
knew it. Therefore she resolved to humiliate Adrienne, and to do so in
the place where the actress had always reigned supreme. There was to be
a gala performance of Racine's great tragedy, "Phedre," with Adrienne,
of course, in the title-role. The Duchesse de Bouillon sent a large
number of her lackeys with orders to hiss and jeer, and, if possible,
to break off the play. Malignantly delighted with her plan, the duchess
arrayed herself in jewels and took her seat in a conspicuous stage-box,
where she could watch the coming storm and gloat over the discomfiture
of her rival.

When the curtain rose, and when Adrienne appeared as Phedre, an uproar
began. It was clear to the great actress that a plot had been devised
against her. In an instant her whole soul was afire. The queen-like
majesty of her bearing compelled silence throughout the house. Even the
hired lackeys were overawed by it. Then Adrienne moved swiftly across
the stage and fronted her enemy, speaking into her very face the three
insulting lines which came to her at that moment of the play:

    I am not of those women void of shame,
    Who, savoring in crime the joys of peace,
    Harden their faces till they cannot blush!

The whole house rose and burst forth into tremendous applause. Adrienne
had won, for the woman who had tried to shame her rose in trepidation
and hurried from the theater.

But the end was not yet. Those were evil times, when dark deeds were
committed by the great almost with impunity. Secret poisoning was a
common trade. To remove a rival was as usual a thing in the eighteenth
century as to snub a rival is usual in the twentieth.

Not long afterward, on the night of March 15, 1730, Adrienne Lecouvreur
was acting in one of Voltaire's plays with all her power and instinctive
art when suddenly she was seized with the most frightful pains. Her
anguish was obvious to every one who saw her, and yet she had the
courage to go through her part. Then she fainted and was carried home.

Four days later she died, and her death was no less dramatic than her
life had been. Her lover and two friends of his were with her, and also
a Jesuit priest. He declined to administer extreme unction unless she
would declare that she repented of her theatrical career. She stubbornly
refused, since she believed that to be the greatest actress of her time
was not a sin. Yet still the priest insisted.

Then came the final moment.

"Weary and revolting against this death, this destiny, she stretched her
arms with one of the old lovely gestures toward a bust which stood near
by and cried--her last cry of passion:

"'There is my world, my hope--yes, and my God!'"

The bust was one of Maurice de Saxe.





THE STORY OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART


The royal families of Europe are widely known, yet not all of them are
equally renowned. Thus, the house of Romanoff, although comparatively
young, stands out to the mind with a sort of barbaric power, more
vividly than the Austrian house of Hapsburg, which is the oldest
reigning family in Europe, tracing its beginnings backward until
they are lost in the Dark Ages. The Hohenzollerns of Prussia are
comparatively modern, so far as concerns their royalty. The offshoots of
the Bourbons carry on a very proud tradition in the person of the King
of Spain, although France, which has been ruled by so many members of
the family, will probably never again behold a Bourbon king. The deposed
Braganzas bear a name which is ancient, but which has a somewhat tinsel
sound.

The Bonapartes, of course, are merely parvenus, and they have had the
good taste to pretend to no antiquity of birth. The first Napoleon,
dining at a table full of monarchs, when he heard one of them
deferentially alluding to the Bonaparte family as being very old and
noble, exclaimed:

"Pish! My nobility dates from the day of Marengo!"

And the third Napoleon, in announcing his coming marriage with Mlle. de
Montijo, used the very word "parvenu" in speaking of himself and of his
family. His frankness won the hearts of the French people and helped to
reconcile them to a marriage in which the bride was barely noble.

In English history there are two great names to conjure by, at least
to the imaginative. One is Plantagenet, which seems to contain within
itself the very essence of all that is patrician, magnificent, and
royal. It calls to memory at once the lion-hearted Richard, whose short
reign was replete with romance in England and France and Austria and the
Holy Land.

But perhaps a name of greater influence is that which links the royal
family of Britain today with the traditions of the past, and which
summons up legend and story and great deeds of history. This is the name
of Stuart, about which a whole volume might be written to recall its
suggestions and its reminiscences.

The first Stuart (then Stewart) of whom anything is known got his name
from the title of "Steward of Scotland," which remained in the family
for generations, until the sixth of the line, by marriage with Princess
Marjory Bruce, acquired the Scottish crown. That was in the early years
of the fourteenth century; and finally, after the death of Elizabeth
of England, her rival's son, James VI. of Scotland and I. of England,
united under one crown two kingdoms that had so long been at almost
constant war.

It is almost characteristic of the Scot that, having small territory,
little wealth, and a seat among his peers that is almost ostentatiously
humble, he should bit by bit absorb the possessions of all the rest and
become their master. Surely, the proud Tudors, whose line ended with
Elizabeth, must have despised the "Stewards," whose kingdom was small
and bleak and cold, and who could not control their own vassals.

One can imagine also, with Sir Walter Scott, the haughty nobles of the
English court sneering covertly at the awkward, shambling James, pedant
and bookworm. Nevertheless, his diplomacy was almost as good as that of
Elizabeth herself; and, though he did some foolish things, he was very
far from being a fool.

In his appearance James was not unlike Abraham Lincoln--an unkingly
figure; and yet, like Lincoln, when occasion required it he could rise
to the dignity which makes one feel the presence of a king. He was the
only Stuart who lacked anything in form or feature or external grace.
His son, Charles I., was perhaps one of the worst rulers that England
has ever had; yet his uprightness of life, his melancholy yet handsome
face, his graceful bearing, and the strong religious element in his
character, together with the fact that he was put to death after being
treacherously surrendered to his enemies--all these have combined to
make almost a saint of him. There are Englishmen to-day who speak of him
as "the martyr king," and who, on certain days of the year, say prayers
that beg the Lord's forgiveness because of Charles's execution.

The members of the so-called League of the White Rose, founded to
perpetuate English allegiance to the direct line of Stuarts, do many
things that are quite absurd. They refuse to pray for the present King
of England and profess to think that the Princess Mary of Bavaria is the
true ruler of Great Britain. All this represents that trace of sentiment
which lingers among the English to-day. They feel that the Stuarts were
the last kings of England to rule by the grace of God rather than by the
grace of Parliament. As a matter of fact, the present reigning family
in England is glad to derive its ancient strain of royal blood through a
Stuart--descended on the distaff side from James I., and winding its way
through Hanover.

This sentiment for the Stuarts is a thing entirely apart from reason and
belongs to the realm of poetry and romance; yet so strong is it that
it has shown itself in the most inconsistent fashion. For instance, Sir
Walter Scott was a devoted adherent of the house of Hanover. When George
IV. visited Edinburgh, Scott was completely carried away by his loyal
enthusiasm. He could not see that the man before him was a drunkard and
braggart. He viewed him as an incarnation of all the noble traits that
ought to hedge about a king. He snatched up a wine-glass from which
George had just been drinking and carried it away to be an object of
reverence for ever after. Nevertheless, in his heart, and often in his
speech, Scott seemed to be a high Tory, and even a Jacobite.

There are precedents for this. The Empress Eugenie used often to say
with a laugh that she was the only true royalist at the imperial court
of France. That was well enough for her in her days of flightiness and
frivolity. No one, however, accused Queen Victoria of being frivolous,
and she was not supposed to have a strong sense of humor. None the less,
after listening to the skirling of the bagpipes and to the romantic
ballads which were sung in Scotland she is said to have remarked with a
sort of sigh:

"Whenever I hear those ballads I feel that England belongs really to the
Stuarts!"

Before Queen Victoria was born, when all the sons of George III. were
childless, the Duke of Kent was urged to marry, so that he might have a
family to continue the succession. In resenting the suggestion he said
many things, and among them this was the most striking:

"Why don't you call the Stuarts back to England? They couldn't possibly
make a worse mess of it than our fellows have!"

But he yielded to persuasion and married. From this marriage came
Victoria, who had the sacred drop of Stuart blood which gave England
to the Hanoverians; and she was to redeem the blunders and tyrannies of
both houses.

The fascination of the Stuarts, which has been carried overseas to
America and the British dominions, probably began with the striking
history of Mary Queen of Scots. Her brilliancy and boldness and beauty,
and especially the pathos of her end, have made us see only her intense
womanliness, which in her own day was the first thing that any one
observed in her. So, too, with Charles I., romantic figure and knightly
gentleman. One regrets his death upon the scaffold, even though his
execution was necessary to the growth of freedom.

Many people are no less fascinated by Charles II., that very different
type, with his gaiety, his good-fellowship, and his easy-going ways. It
is not surprising that his people, most of whom never saw him, were very
fond of him, and did not know that he was selfish, a loose liver, and
almost a vassal of the king of France.

So it is not strange that the Stuarts, with all their arts and graces,
were very hard to displace. James II., with the aid of the French,
fought hard before the British troops in Ireland broke the backs of
both his armies and sent him into exile. Again in 1715--an episode
perpetuated in Thackeray's dramatic story of Henry Esmond--came the son
of James to take advantage of the vacancy caused by the death of Queen
Anne. But it is perhaps to this claimant's son, the last of the militant
Stuarts, that more chivalrous feeling has been given than to any other.

To his followers he was the Young Chevalier, the true Prince of Wales;
to his enemies, the Whigs and the Hanoverians, he was "the Pretender."
One of the most romantic chapters of history is the one which tells
of that last brilliant dash which he made upon the coast of Scotland,
landing with but a few attendants and rejecting the support of a French
army.

"It is not with foreigners," he said, "but with my own loyal subjects,
that I wish to regain the kingdom for my father."

It was a daring deed, and the spectacular side of it has been often
commemorated, especially in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley. There we see
the gallant prince moving through a sort of military panorama. Most of
the British troops were absent in Flanders, and the few regiments that
could be mustered to meet him were appalled by the ferocity and reckless
courage of the Highlanders, who leaped down like wildcats from their
hills and flung themselves with dirk and sword upon the British cannon.

We see Sir John Cope retiring at Falkirk, and the astonishing victory of
Prestonpans, where disciplined British troops fled in dismay through the
morning mist, leaving artillery and supplies behind them. It is Scott
again who shows us the prince, master of Edinburgh for a time, while the
white rose of Stuart royalty held once more the ancient keep above the
Scottish capital. Then we see the Chevalier pressing southward into
England, where he hoped to raise an English army to support his own.
But his Highlanders cared nothing for England, and the English--even the
Catholic gentry--would not rise to support his cause.

Personally, he had every gift that could win allegiance. Handsome,
high-tempered, and brave, he could also control his fiery spirit and
listen to advice, however unpalatable it might be.

The time was favorable. The British troops had been defeated on the
Continent by Marshal Saxe, of whom I have already written, and by
Marshal d'Estrees. George II. was a king whom few respected. He could
scarcely speak anything but German. He grossly ill-treated his wife. It
is said that on one occasion, in a fit of temper, he actually kicked the
prime minister. Not many felt any personal loyalty to him, and he spent
most of his time away from England in his other domain of Hanover.

But precisely here was a reason why Englishmen were willing to put up
with him. As between him and the brilliant Stuart there would have been
no hesitation had the choice been merely one of men; but it was believed
that the return of the Stuarts meant the return of something like
absolute government, of taxation without sanction of law, and of
religious persecution. Under the Hanoverian George the English people
had begun to exercise a considerable measure of self-government. Sharp
opposition in Parliament compelled him time and again to yield; and when
he was in Hanover the English were left to work out the problem of free
government.

Hence, although Prince Charles Edward fascinated all who met him, and
although a small army was raised for his support, still the unromantic,
common-sense Englishmen felt that things were better than in the days
gone by, and most of them refused to take up arms for the cause which
sentimentally they favored. Therefore, although the Chevalier stirred
all England and sent a thrill through the officers of state in London,
his soldiers gradually deserted, and the Scots insisted on returning
to their own country. Although the Stuart troops reached a point as far
south as Derby, they were soon pushed backward into Scotland, pursued by
an army of about nine thousand men under the Duke of Cumberland, son of
George II.

Cumberland was no soldier; he had been soundly beaten by the French
on the famous field of Fontenoy. Yet he had firmness and a sort of
overmastering brutality, which, with disciplined troops and abundant
artillery, were sufficient to win a victory over the untrained
Highlanders.

When the battle came five thousand of these mountaineers went roaring
along the English lines, with the Chevalier himself at their head. For
a moment there was surprise. The Duke of Cumberland had been drinking
so heavily that he could give no verbal orders. One of his officers,
however, is said to have come to him in his tent, where he was trying to
play cards.

"What disposition shall we make of the prisoners?" asked the officer.

The duke tried to reply, but his utterance was very thick.

"No quarter!" he was believed to say.

The officer objected and begged that such an order as that should
be given in writing. The duke rolled over and seized a sheaf of
playing-cards. Pulling one out, he scrawled the necessary order, and
that was taken to the commanders in the field.

The Highlanders could not stand the cannon fire, and the English won.
Then the fury of the common soldiery broke loose upon the country.

There was a reign of fantastic and fiendish brutality. One provost
of the town was violently kicked for a mild remonstrance about the
destruction of the Episcopalian meeting-house; another was condemned
to clean out dirty stables. Men and women were whipped and tortured on
slight suspicion or to extract information. Cumberland frankly professed
his contempt and hatred of the people among whom he found himself, but
he savagely punished robberies committed by private soldiers for their
own profit.

"Mild measures will not do," he wrote to Newcastle.

When leaving the North in July, he said:

"All the good we have done is but a little blood-letting, which has only
weakened the madness, but not at all cured it; and I tremble to fear
that this vile spot may still be the ruin of this island and of our
family."

Such was the famous battle of Culloden, fought in 1746, and putting a
final end to the hopes of all the Stuarts. As to Cumberland's order for
"No quarter," if any apology can be made for such brutality, it must be
found in the fact that the Highland chiefs had on their side agreed to
spare no captured enemy.

The battle has also left a name commonly given to the nine of diamonds,
which is called "the curse of Scotland," because it is said that on that
card Cumberland wrote his bloodthirsty order.

Such, in brief, was the story of Prince Charlie's gallant attempt to
restore the kingdom of his ancestors. Even when defeated, he would not
at once leave Scotland. A French squadron appeared off the coast near
Edinburgh. It had been sent to bring him troops and a large supply
of money, but he turned his back upon it and made his way into the
Highlands on foot, closely pursued by English soldiers and Lowland
spies.

This part of his career is in reality the most romantic of all. He was
hunted closely, almost as by hounds. For weeks he had only such sleep
as he could snatch during short periods of safety, and there were times
when his pursuers came within an inch of capturing him. But never in his
life were his spirits so high.

It was a sort of life that he had never seen before, climbing the mighty
rocks, and listening to the thunder of the cataracts, among which he
often slept, with only one faithful follower to guard him. The story
of his escape is almost incredible, but he laughed and drank and rolled
upon the grass when he was free from care. He hobnobbed with the most
suspicious-looking caterans, with whom he drank the smoky brew of the
North, and lived as he might on fish and onions and bacon and wild fowl,
with an appetite such as he had never known at the luxurious court of
Versailles or St.-Germain.

After the battle of Culloden the prince would have been captured had not
a Scottish girl named Flora Macdonald met him, caused him to be dressed
in the clothes of her waiting-maid, and thus got him off to the Isle of
Skye.

There for a time it was impossible to follow him; and there the two
lived almost alone together. Such a proximity could not fail to stir the
romantic feeling of one who was both a youth and a prince. On the other
hand, no thought of love-making seems to have entered Flora's mind.
If, however, we read Campbell's narrative very closely we can see that
Prince Charles made every advance consistent with a delicate remembrance
of her sex and services.

It seems to have been his thought that if she cared for him, then the
two might well love; and he gave her every chance to show him favor. The
youth of twenty-five and the girl of twenty-four roamed together in the
long, tufted grass or lay in the sunshine and looked out over the sea.
The prince would rest his head in her lap, and she would tumble his
golden hair with her slender fingers and sometimes clip off tresses
which she preserved to give to friends of hers as love-locks. But to
the last he was either too high or too low for her, according to her own
modest thought. He was a royal prince, the heir to a throne, or else he
was a boy with whom she might play quite fancy-free. A lover he could
not be--so pure and beautiful was her thought of him.

These were perhaps the most delightful days of all his life, as they
were a beautiful memory in hers. In time he returned to France and
resumed his place amid the intrigues that surrounded that other Stuart
prince who styled himself James III., and still kept up the appearance
of a king in exile. As he watched the artifice and the plotting of
these make-believe courtiers he may well have thought of his innocent
companion of the Highland wilds.

As for Flora, she was arrested and imprisoned for five months on English
vessels of war. After her release she was married, in 1750; and she and
her husband sailed for the American colonies just before the Revolution.
In that war Macdonald became a British officer and served against his
adopted countrymen. Perhaps because of this reason Flora returned alone
to Scotland, where she died at the age of sixty-eight.

The royal prince who would have given her his easy love lived a life of
far less dignity in the years that followed his return to France. There
was no more hope of recovering the English throne. For him there were
left only the idle and licentious diversions of such a court as that in
which his father lived.

At the death of James III., even this court was disintegrated, and
Prince Charles led a roving life under the title of Earl of Albany. In
his wanderings he met Louise Marie, the daughter of a German prince,
Gustavus Adolphus of Stolberg. She was only nineteen years of age when
she first felt the fascination that he still possessed; but it was an
unhappy marriage for the girl when she discovered that her husband was a
confirmed drunkard.

Not long after, in fact, she found her life with him so utterly
intolerable that she persuaded the Pope to allow her a formal
separation. The pontiff intrusted her to her husband's brother, Cardinal
York, who placed her in a convent and presently removed her to his own
residence in Rome.

Here begins another romance. She was often visited by Vittorio Alfieri,
the great Italian poet and dramatist. Alfieri was a man of wealth. In
early years he divided his time into alternate periods during which
he either studied hard in civil and canonical law, or was a constant
attendant upon the race-course, or rushed aimlessly all over Europe
without any object except to wear out the post-horses which he used in
relays over hundreds of miles of road. His life, indeed, was eccentric
almost to insanity; but when he had met the beautiful and lonely
Countess of Albany there came over him a striking change. She influenced
him for all that was good, and he used to say that he owed her all that
was best in his dramatic works.

Sixteen years after her marriage her royal husband died, a worn-out,
bloated wreck of one who had been as a youth a model of knightliness and
manhood. During his final years he had fallen to utter destitution, and
there was either a touch of half contempt or a feeling of remote kinship
in the act of George III., who bestowed upon the prince an annual
pension of four thousand pounds. It showed most plainly that England was
now consolidated under Hanoverian rule.

When Cardinal York died, in 1807, there was no Stuart left in the male
line; and the countess was the last to bear the royal Scottish name of
Albany.

After the prince's death his widow is said to have been married to
Alfieri, and for the rest of her life she lived in Florence, though
Alfieri died nearly twenty-one years before her.

Here we have seen a part of the romance which attaches itself to the
name of Stuart--in the chivalrous young prince, leading his Highlanders
against the bayonets of the British, lolling idly among the Hebrides,
or fallen, at the last, to be a drunkard and the husband of an unwilling
consort, who in her turn loved a famous poet. But it is this Stuart,
after all, of whom we think when we hear the bagpipes skirling "Over the
Water to Charlie" or "Wha'll be King but Charlie?"

END OF VOLUME ONE





THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCE POTEMKIN


It has often been said that the greatest Frenchman who ever lived was
in reality an Italian. It might with equal truth be asserted that the
greatest Russian woman who ever lived was in reality a German. But the
Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Catharine II. resemble each other in
something else. Napoleon, though Italian in blood and lineage, made
himself so French in sympathy and understanding as to be able to play
upon the imagination of all France as a great musician plays upon a
splendid instrument, with absolute sureness of touch and an ability
to extract from it every one of its varied harmonies. So the Empress
Catharine of Russia--perhaps the greatest woman who ever ruled a
nation--though born of German parents, became Russian to the core and
made herself the embodiment of Russian feeling and Russian aspiration.

At the middle of the eighteenth century Russia was governed by the
Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great. In her own time, and for
a long while afterward, her real capacity was obscured by her apparent
indolence, her fondness for display, and her seeming vacillation; but
now a very high place is accorded her in the history of Russian rulers.
She softened the brutality that had reigned supreme in Russia. She
patronized the arts. Her armies twice defeated Frederick the Great and
raided his capital, Berlin. Had Elizabeth lived, she would probably have
crushed him.

In her early years this imperial woman had been betrothed to Louis XV.
of France, but the match was broken off. Subsequently she entered into
a morganatic marriage and bore a son who, of course, could not be her
heir. In 1742, therefore, she looked about for a suitable successor, and
chose her nephew, Prince Peter of Holstein-Gottorp.

Peter, then a mere youth of seventeen, was delighted with so splendid a
future, and came at once to St. Petersburg. The empress next sought
for a girl who might marry the young prince and thus become the
future Czarina. She thought first of Frederick the Great's sister; but
Frederick shrank from this alliance, though it would have been of much
advantage to him. He loved his sister--indeed, she was one of the few
persons for whom he ever really cared. So he declined the offer and
suggested instead the young Princess Sophia of the tiny duchy of
Anhalt-Zerbst.

The reason for Frederick's refusal was his knowledge of the
semi-barbarous conditions that prevailed at the Russian court.

The Russian capital, at that time, was a bizarre, half-civilized,
half-oriental place, where, among the very highest-born, a thin veneer
of French elegance covered every form of brutality and savagery and
lust. It is not surprising, therefore, that Frederick the Great was
unwilling to have his sister plunged into such a life.

But when the Empress Elizabeth asked the Princess Sophia of
Anhalt-Zerbst to marry the heir to the Russian throne the young girl
willingly accepted, the more so as her mother practically commanded it.
This mother of hers was a grim, harsh German woman who had reared her
daughter in the strictest fashion, depriving her of all pleasure with a
truly puritanical severity. In the case of a different sort of girl this
training would have crushed her spirit; but the Princess Sophia,
though gentle and refined in manner, had a power of endurance which was
toughened and strengthened by the discipline she underwent.

And so in 1744, when she was but sixteen years of age, she was taken by
her mother to St. Petersburg. There she renounced the Lutheran faith and
was received into the Greek Church, changing her name to Catharine. Soon
after, with great magnificence, she was married to Prince Peter, and
from that moment began a career which was to make her the most powerful
woman in the world.

At this time a lady of the Russian court wrote down a description of
Catharine's appearance. She was fair-haired, with dark-blue eyes; and
her face, though never beautiful, was made piquant and striking by the
fact that her brows were very dark in contrast with her golden hair. Her
complexion was not clear, yet her look was a very pleasing one. She had
a certain diffidence of manner at first; but later she bore herself with
such instinctive dignity as to make her seem majestic, though in fact
she was beneath the middle size. At the time of her marriage her figure
was slight and graceful; only in after years did she become stout.
Altogether, she came to St. Petersburg an attractive, pure-minded German
maiden, with a character well disciplined, and possessing reserves of
power which had not yet been drawn upon.

Frederick the Great's forebodings, which had led him to withhold
his sister's hand, were almost immediately justified in the case of
Catharine. Her Russian husband revealed to her a mode of life which must
have tried her very soul. This youth was only seventeen--a mere boy
in age, and yet a full-grown man in the rank luxuriance of his vices.
Moreover, he had eccentricities which sometimes verged upon insanity.
Too young to be admitted to the councils of his imperial aunt, he
occupied his time in ways that were either ridiculous or vile.

Next to the sleeping-room of his wife he kept a set of kennels, with
a number of dogs, which he spent hours in drilling as if they had been
soldiers. He had a troop of rats which he also drilled. It was his
delight to summon a court martial of his dogs to try the rats for
various military offenses, and then to have the culprits executed,
leaving their bleeding carcasses upon the floor. At any hour of the day
or night Catharine, hidden in her chamber, could hear the yapping of
the curs, the squeak of rats, and the word of command given by her
half-idiot husband.

When wearied of this diversion Peter would summon a troop of favorites,
both men and women, and with them he would drink deep of beer and
vodka, since from his early childhood he had been both a drunkard and a
debauchee. The whoops and howls and vile songs of his creatures could
be heard by Catharine; and sometimes he would stagger into her rooms,
accompanied by his drunken minions. With a sort of psychopathic
perversity he would insist on giving Catharine the most minute and
repulsive narratives of his amours, until she shrank from him with
horror at his depravity and came to loathe the sight of his bloated
face, with its little, twinkling, porcine eyes, his upturned nose
and distended nostrils, and his loose-hung, lascivious mouth. She was
scarcely less repelled when a wholly different mood would seize upon him
and he would declare himself her slave, attending her at court functions
in the garb of a servant and professing an unbounded devotion for his
bride.

Catharine's early training and her womanly nature led her for a long
time to submit to the caprices of her husband. In his saner moments she
would plead with him and strive to interest him in something better
than his dogs and rats and venal mistresses; but Peter was incorrigible.
Though he had moments of sense and even of good feeling, these never
lasted, and after them he would plunge headlong into the most frantic
excesses that his half-crazed imagination could devise.

It is not strange that in course of time Catharine's strong good sense
showed her that she could do nothing with this creature. She therefore
gradually became estranged from him and set herself to the task of doing
those things which Peter was incapable of carrying out.

She saw that ever since the first awakening of Russia under Peter the
Great none of its rulers had been genuinely Russian, but had tried to
force upon the Russian people various forms of western civilization
which were alien to the national spirit. Peter the Great had striven
to make his people Dutch. Elizabeth had tried to make them French.
Catharine, with a sure instinct, resolved that they should remain
Russian, borrowing what they needed from other peoples, but stirred
always by the Slavic spirit and swayed by a patriotism that was their
own. To this end she set herself to become Russian. She acquired the
Russian language patiently and accurately. She adopted the Russian
costume, appearing, except on state occasions, in a simple gown of
green, covering her fair hair, however, with a cap powdered with
diamonds. Furthermore, she made friends of such native Russians as were
gifted with talent, winning their favor, and, through them, the favor of
the common people.

It would have been strange, however, had Catharine, the woman,
escaped the tainting influences that surrounded her on every side. The
infidelities of Peter gradually made her feel that she owed him nothing
as his wife. Among the nobles there were men whose force of character
and of mind attracted her inevitably. Chastity was a thing of which the
average Russian had no conception; and therefore it is not strange that
Catharine, with her intense and sensitive nature, should have turned to
some of these for the love which she had sought in vain from the half
imbecile to whom she had been married.

Much has been written of this side of her earlier and later life; yet,
though it is impossible to deny that she had favorites, one should judge
very gently the conduct of a girl so young and thrust into a life whence
all the virtues seemed to be excluded. She bore several children before
her thirtieth year, and it is very certain that a grave doubt exists as
to their paternity. Among the nobles of the court were two whose courage
and virility specially attracted her. The one with whom her name has
been most often coupled was Gregory Orloff. He and his brother, Alexis
Orloff, were Russians of the older type--powerful in frame, suave in
manner except when roused, yet with a tigerish ferocity slumbering
underneath. Their power fascinated Catharine, and it was currently
declared that Gregory Orloff was her lover.

When she was in her thirty-second year her husband was proclaimed Czar,
after the death of the Empress Elizabeth. At first in some ways his
elevation seemed to sober him; but this period of sanity, like those
which had come to him before, lasted only a few weeks. Historians have
given him much credit for two great reforms that are connected with his
name; and yet the manner in which they were actually brought about is
rather ludicrous. He had shut himself up with his favorite revelers, and
had remained for several days drinking and carousing until he scarcely
knew enough to speak. At this moment a young officer named Gudovitch,
who was really loyal to the newly created Czar, burst into the
banquet-hall, booted and spurred and his eyes aflame with indignation.
Standing before Peter, his voice rang out with the tone of a battle
trumpet, so that the sounds of revelry were hushed.

"Peter Feodorovitch," he cried, "do you prefer these swine to those who
really wish to serve you? Is it in this way that you imitate the glories
of your ancestor, that illustrious Peter whom you have sworn to take
as your model? It will not be long before your people's love will be
changed to hatred. Rise up, my Czar! Shake off this lethargy and sloth.
Prove that you are worthy of the faith which I and others have given you
so loyally!"

With these words Gudovitch thrust into Peter's trembling hand two
proclamations, one abolishing the secret bureau of police, which had
become an instrument of tyrannous oppression, and the other restoring to
the nobility many rights of which they had been deprived.

The earnestness and intensity of Gudovitch temporarily cleared the brain
of the drunken Czar. He seized the papers, and, without reading them,
hastened at once to his great council, where he declared that they
expressed his wishes. Great was the rejoicing in St. Petersburg, and
great was the praise bestowed on Peter; yet, in fact, he had acted only
as any drunkard might act under the compulsion of a stronger will than
his.

As before, his brief period of good sense was succeeded by another of
the wildest folly. It was not merely that he reversed the wise policy of
his aunt, but that he reverted to his early fondness for everything that
was German. His bodyguard was made up of German troops--thus exciting
the jealousy of the Russian soldiers. He introduced German fashions. He
boasted that his father had been an officer in the Prussian army. His
crazy admiration for Frederick the Great reached the utmost verge of
sycophancy.

As to Catharine, he turned on her with something like ferocity. He
declared in public that his eldest son, the Czarevitch Paul, was
really fathered by Catharine's lovers. At a state banquet he turned
to Catharine and hurled at her a name which no woman could possibly
forgive--and least of all a woman such as Catharine, with her high
spirit and imperial pride. He thrust his mistresses upon her; and
at last he ordered her, with her own hand, to decorate the Countess
Vorontzoff, who was known to be his maitresse en titre.

It was not these gross insults, however, so much as a concern for her
personal safety that led Catharine to take measures for her own defense.
She was accustomed to Peter's ordinary eccentricities. On the ground
of his unfaithfulness to her she now had hardly any right to make
complaint. But she might reasonably fear lest he was becoming mad. If he
questioned the paternity of their eldest son he might take measures to
imprison Catharine or even to destroy her. Therefore she conferred with
the Orloffs and other gentlemen, and their conference rapidly developed
into a conspiracy.

The soldiery, as a whole, was loyal to the empress. It hated Peter's
Holstein guards. What she planned was probably the deposition of Peter.
She would have liked to place him under guard in some distant palace.
But while the matter was still under discussion she was awakened early
one morning by Alexis Orloff. He grasped her arm with scant ceremony.

"We must act at once," said he. "We have been betrayed!"

Catharine was not a woman to waste time. She went immediately to the
barracks in St. Petersburg, mounted upon a charger, and, calling out
the Russian guards, appealed to them for their support. To a man they
clashed their weapons and roared forth a thunderous cheer. Immediately
afterward the priests anointed her as regent in the name of her son; but
as she left the church she was saluted by the people, as well as by the
soldiers, as empress in her own right.

It was a bold stroke, and it succeeded down to the last detail. The
wretched Peter, who was drilling his German guards at a distance from
the capital, heard of the revolt, found that his sailors at Kronstadt
would not acknowledge him, and then finally submitted. He was taken to
Ropsha and confined within a single room. To him came the Orloffs, quite
of their own accord. Gregory Orloff endeavored to force a corrosive
poison into Peter's mouth. Peter, who was powerful of build and now
quite desperate, hurled himself upon his enemies. Alexis Orloff seized
him by the throat with a tremendous clutch and strangled him till the
blood gushed from his ears. In a few moments the unfortunate man was
dead.

Catharine was shocked by the intelligence, but she had no choice save
to accept the result of excessive zeal. She issued a note to the foreign
ambassadors informing them that Peter had died of a violent colic. When
his body was laid out for burial the extravasated blood is said to have
oozed out even through his hands, staining the gloves that had been
placed upon them. No one believed the story of the colic; and some six
years later Alexis Orloff told the truth with the utmost composure. The
whole incident was characteristically Russian.

It is not within the limits of our space to describe the reign of
Catharine the Great--the exploits of her armies, the acuteness of her
statecraft, the vast additions which she made to the Russian Empire, and
the impulse which she gave to science and art and literature. Yet these
things ought to be remembered first of all when one thinks of the woman
whom Voltaire once styled "the Semiramis of the North." Because she was
so powerful, because no one could gainsay her, she led in private a
life which has been almost more exploited than her great imperial
achievements. And yet, though she had lovers whose names have been
carefully recorded, even she fulfilled the law of womanhood--which is to
love deeply and intensely only once.

One should not place all her lovers in the same category. As a girl, and
when repelled by the imbecility of Peter, she gave herself to Gregory
Orloff. She admired his strength, his daring, and his unscrupulousness.
But to a woman of her fine intelligence he came to seem almost more
brute than man. She could not turn to him for any of those delicate
attentions which a woman loves so much, nor for that larger sympathy
which wins the heart as well as captivates the senses. A writer of the
time has said that Orloff would hasten with equal readiness from the
arms of Catharine to the embraces of any flat-nosed Finn or filthy
Calmuck or to the lowest creature whom he might encounter in the
streets.

It happened that at the time of Catharine's appeal to the imperial
guards there came to her notice another man who--as he proved in a
trifling and yet most significant manner--had those traits which Orloff
lacked. Catharine had mounted, man--fashion, a cavalry horse, and, with
a helmet on her head, had reined up her steed before the barracks. At
that moment One of the minor nobles, who was also favorable to her,
observed that her helmet had no plume. In a moment his horse was at her
side. Bowing low over his saddle, he took his own plume from his helmet
and fastened it to hers. This man was Prince Gregory Potemkin, and this
slight act gives a clue to the influence which he afterward exercised
over his imperial mistress!

When Catharine grew weary of the Orloffs, and when she had enriched them
with lands and treasures, she turned to Potemkin; and from then until
the day of his death he was more to her than any other man had ever
been. With others she might flirt and might go even further than
flirtation; but she allowed no other favorite to share her confidence,
to give advice, or to direct her policies.

To other men she made munificent gifts, either because they pleased her
for the moment or because they served her on one occasion or another;
but to Potemkin she opened wide the whole treasury of her vast realm.
There was no limit to what she would do for him. When he first knew
her he was a man of very moderate fortune. Within two years after their
intimate acquaintance had begun she had given him nine million rubles,
while afterward he accepted almost limitless estates in Poland and in
every province of Greater Russia.

He was a man of sumptuous tastes, and yet he cared but little for mere
wealth. What he had, he used to please or gratify or surprise the
woman whom he loved. He built himself a great palace in St. Petersburg,
usually known as the Taurian Palace, and there he gave the most
sumptuous entertainments, reversing the story of Antony and Cleopatra.

In a superb library there stood one case containing volumes bound with
unusual richness. When the empress, attracted by the bindings, drew
forth a book she found to her surprise that its pages were English
bank-notes. The pages of another proved to be Dutch bank-notes, and, of
another, notes on the Bank of Venice. Of the remaining volumes some were
of solid gold, while others had pages of fine leather in which were set
emeralds and rubies and diamonds and other gems. The story reads like a
bit of fiction from the Arabian Nights. Yet, after all, this was only a
small affair compared with other undertakings with which Potemkin sought
to please her.

Thus, after Taurida and the Crimea had been added to the empire
by Potemkin's agency, Catharine set out with him to view her new
possessions. A great fleet of magnificently decorated galleys bore her
down the river Dnieper. The country through which she passed had been
a year before an unoccupied waste. Now, by Potemkin's extraordinary
efforts, the empress found it dotted thick with towns and cities which
had been erected for the occasion, filled with a busy population which
swarmed along the riverside to greet the sovereign with applause. It
was only a chain of fantom towns and cities, made of painted wood and
canvas; but while Catharine was there they were very real, seeming
to have solid buildings, magnificent arches, bustling industries, and
beautiful stretches of fertile country. No human being ever wrought on
so great a scale so marvelous a miracle of stage-management.

Potemkin was, in fact, the one man who could appeal with unfailing
success to so versatile and powerful a spirit as Catharine's. He was
handsome of person, graceful of manner, and with an intellect which
matched her own. He never tried to force her inclination, and, on the
other hand, he never strove to thwart it. To him, as to no other man,
she could turn at any moment and feel that, no matter what her mood, he
could understand her fully. And this, according to Balzac, is the thing
that woman yearns for most--a kindred spirit that can understand without
the slightest need of explanation.

Thus it was that Gregory Potemkin held a place in the soul of this great
woman such as no one else attained. He might be absent, heading armies
or ruling provinces, and on his return he would be greeted with even
greater fondness than before. And it was this rather than his victories
over Turk and other oriental enemies that made Catharine trust him
absolutely.

When he died, he died as the supreme master of her foreign policy and at
a time when her word was powerful throughout all Europe. Death came upon
him after he had fought against it with singular tenacity of purpose.
Catharine had given him a magnificent triumph, and he had entertained
her in his Taurian Palace with a splendor such as even Russia had never
known before. Then he fell ill, though with high spirit he would not
yield to illness. He ate rich meats and drank rich wines and bore
himself as gallantly as ever. Yet all at once death came upon him while
he was traveling in the south of Russia. His carriage was stopped, a
rug was spread beneath a tree by the roadside, and there he died, in the
country which he had added to the realms of Russia.

The great empress who loved him mourned him deeply during the five years
of life that still remained to her. The names of other men for whom she
had imagined that she cared were nothing to her. But this one man lived
in her heart in death as he had done in life.

Many have written of Catharine as a great ruler, a wise diplomat, a
creature of heroic mold. Others have depicted her as a royal wanton and
have gathered together a mass of vicious tales, the gossip of the palace
kitchens, of the clubs, and of the barrack-rooms. But perhaps one finds
the chief interest of her story to lie in this--that besides being
empress and diplomat and a lover of pleasure she was, beyond all else,
at heart a woman.





MARIE ANTOINETTE AND COUNT FERSEN


The English-speaking world long ago accepted a conventional view of
Marie Antoinette. The eloquence of Edmund Burke in one brilliant passage
has fixed, probably for all time, an enduring picture of this unhappy
queen.

When we speak or think of her we speak and think first of all of a
dazzling and beautiful woman surrounded by the chivalry of France and
gleaming like a star in the most splendid court of Europe. And then
there comes to us the reverse of the picture. We see her despised,
insulted, and made the butt of brutal men and still more fiendish women;
until at last the hideous tumbrel conveys her to the guillotine, where
her head is severed from her body and her corpse is cast down into a
bloody pool.

In these two pictures our emotions are played upon in turn--admiration,
reverence, devotion, and then pity, indignation, and the shudderings of
horror.

Probably in our own country and in England this will remain the historic
Marie Antoinette. Whatever the impartial historian may write, he can
never induce the people at large to understand that this queen was far
from queenly, that the popular idea of her is almost wholly false, and
that both in her domestic life and as the greatest lady in France she
did much to bring on the terrors of that revolution which swept her to
the guillotine.

In the first place, it is mere fiction that represents Maria Antoinette
as having been physically beautiful. The painters and engravers have so
idealized her face as in most cases to have produced a purely imaginary
portrait.

She was born in Vienna, in 1755, the daughter of the Emperor Francis
and of that warrior-queen, Maria Theresa. She was a very German-looking
child. Lady Jackson describes her as having a long, thin face, small,
pig-like eyes, a pinched-up mouth, with the heavy Hapsburg lip, and
with a somewhat misshapen form, so that for years she had to be bandaged
tightly to give her a more natural figure.

At fourteen, when she was betrothed to the heir to the French throne,
she was a dumpy, mean-looking little creature, with no distinction
whatever, and with only her bright golden hair to make amends for her
many blemishes. At fifteen she was married and joined the Dauphin in
French territory.

We must recall for a moment the conditions which prevailed in France.
King Louis XV. was nearing his end. He was a man of the most shameless
life; yet he had concealed or gilded his infamies by an external dignity
and magnificence which, were very pleasing to his people. The French,
liked to think that their king was the most splendid monarch and the
greatest gentleman in Europe. The courtiers about him might be vile
beneath the surface, yet they were compelled to deport themselves with
the form and the etiquette that had become traditional in France. They
might be panders, or stock-jobbers, or sellers of political offices;
yet they must none the less have wit and grace and outward nobility of
manner.

There was also a tradition regarding the French queen. However loose
in character the other women of the court might be, she alone, like
Caesar's wife, must remain above suspicion. She must be purer than the
pure. No breath, of scandal must reach her or be directed against her.

In this way the French court, even under so dissolute a monarch as Louis
XV., maintained its hold upon the loyalty of the people. Crowds came
every morning to view the king in his bed before he arose; the same
crowds watched him as he was dressed by the gentlemen of the bedchamber,
and as he breakfasted and went through all the functions which are
usually private. The King of France must be a great actor. He must
appear to his people as in reality a king-stately, dignified, and beyond
all other human beings in his remarkable presence.

When the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette came to the French court King
Louis XV. kept up in the case the same semblance of austerity. He
forbade these children to have their sleeping-apartments together. He
tried to teach them that if they were to govern as well as to reign they
must conform to the rigid etiquette of Paris and Versailles.

It proved a difficult task, however. The little German princess had no
natural dignity, though she came from a court where the very strictest
imperial discipline prevailed. Marie Antoinette found that she could
have her own way in many things, and she chose to enjoy life without
regard to ceremony. Her escapades at first would have been thought mild
enough had she not been a "daughter of France"; but they served to shock
the old French king, and likewise, perhaps even more, her own imperial
mother, Maria Theresa.

When a report of the young girl's conduct was brought to her the empress
was at first mute with indignation. Then she cried out:

"Can this girl be a child of mine? She surely must be a changeling!"

The Austrian ambassador to France was instructed to warn the Dauphiness
to be more discreet.

"Tell her," said Maria Theresa, "that she will lose her throne, and even
her life, unless she shows more prudence."

But advice and remonstrance were of no avail. Perhaps they might have
been had her husband possessed a stronger character; but the young Louis
was little more fitted to be a king than was his wife to be a queen.
Dull of perception and indifferent to affairs of state, he had only two
interests that absorbed him. One was the love of hunting, and the other
was his desire to shut himself up in a sort of blacksmith shop, where he
could hammer away at the anvil, blow the bellows, and manufacture small
trifles of mechanical inventions. From this smudgy den he would emerge,
sooty and greasy, an object of distaste to his frivolous princess, with
her foamy laces and perfumes and pervasive daintiness.

It was hinted in many quarters, and it has been many times repeated,
that Louis was lacking in virility. Certainly he had no interest in the
society of women and was wholly continent. But this charge of physical
incapacity seems to have had no real foundation. It had been made
against some of his predecessors. It was afterward hurled at Napoleon
the Great, and also Napoleon the Little. In France, unless a royal
personage was openly licentious, he was almost sure to be jeered at by
the people as a weakling.

And so poor Louis XVI., as he came to be, was treated with a mixture
of pity and contempt because he loved to hammer and mend locks in his
smithy or shoot game when he might have been caressing ladies who would
have been proud to have him choose them out.

On the other hand, because of this opinion regarding Louis, people
were the more suspicious of Marie Antoinette. Some of them, in coarse
language, criticized her assumed infidelities; others, with a polite
sneer, affected to defend her. But the result of it all was dangerous to
both, especially as France was already verging toward the deluge which
Louis XV. had cynically predicted would follow after him.

In fact, the end came sooner than any one had guessed. Louis XV., who
had become hopelessly and helplessly infatuated with the low-born Jeanne
du Barry, was stricken down with smallpox of the most virulent type. For
many days he lay in his gorgeous bed. Courtiers crowded his sick-room
and the adjacent hall, longing for the moment when the breath would
leave his body. He had lived an evil life, and he was to die a loathsome
death; yet he had borne himself before men as a stately monarch. Though
his people had suffered in a thousand ways from his misgovernment, he
was still Louis the Well Beloved, and they blamed his ministers of state
for all the shocking wrongs that France had felt.

The abler men, and some of the leaders of the people, however, looked
forward to the accession of Louis XVI. He at least was frugal in his
habits and almost plebeian in his tastes, and seemed to be one who would
reduce the enormous taxes that had been levied upon France.

The moment came when the Well Beloved died. His death-room was fetid
with disease, and even the long corridors of the palace reeked with
infection, while the motley mob of men and women, clad in silks and
satins and glittering with jewels, hurried from the spot to pay their
homage to the new Louis, who was spoken of as "the Desired." The body of
the late monarch was hastily thrown into a mass of quick-lime, and was
driven away in a humble wagon, without guards and with no salute,
save from a single veteran, who remembered the glories of Fontenoy and
discharged his musket as the royal corpse was carried through the palace
gates.

This was a critical moment in the history of France; but we have
to consider it only as a critical moment in the history of Marie
Antoinette. She was now queen. She had it in her power to restore to
the French court its old-time grandeur, and, so far as the queen was
concerned, its purity. Above all, being a foreigner, she should have
kept herself free from reproach and above every shadow of suspicion.

But here again the indifference of the king undoubtedly played a strange
part in her life. Had he borne himself as her lord and master she might
have respected him. Had he shown her the affection of a husband she
might have loved him. But he was neither imposing, nor, on the other
hand, was he alluring. She wrote very frankly about him in a letter to
the Count Orsini:

My tastes are not the same as those of the king, who cares only for
hunting and blacksmith work. You will admit that I should not show to
advantage in a forge. I could not appear there as Vulcan, and the part
of Venus might displease him even more than my tastes.

Thus on the one side is a woman in the first bloom of youth, ardent,
eager--and neglected. On the other side is her husband, whose
sluggishness may be judged by quoting from a diary which he kept during
the month in which he was married. Here is a part of it:

Sunday, 13--Left Versailles. Supper and slept at Compignee, at the house
of M. de Saint-Florentin.

Monday, 14--Interview with Mme. la Dauphine.

Tuesday, 15--Supped at La Muette. Slept at Versailles.

Wednesday, 16--My marriage. Apartment in the gallery. Royal banquet in
the Salle d'Opera.

Thursday, 17--Opera of "Perseus."

Friday, 18--Stag-hunt. Met at La Belle Image. Took one.

Saturday, 19--Dress-ball in the Salle d'Opera. Fireworks.

Thursday, 31--I had an indigestion.

What might have been expected from a young girl placed as this queen was
placed? She was indeed an earlier Eugenie. The first was of royal
blood, the second was almost a plebeian; but each was headstrong,
pleasure-loving, and with no real domestic ties. As Mr. Kipling
expresses it--

    The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady
    Are sisters under their skins;

and so the Austrian woman of 1776 and the Spanish woman of 1856 found
amusement in very similar ways. They plunged into a sea of strange
frivolity, such as one finds to-day at the centers of high fashion.
Marie Antoinette bedecked herself with eccentric garments. On her head
she wore a hat styled a "what-is-it," towering many feet in height and
flaunting parti-colored plumes. Worse than all this, she refused to wear
corsets, and at some great functions she would appear in what looked
exactly like a bedroom gown.

She would even neglect the ordinary niceties of life. Her hands were not
well cared for. It was very difficult for the ladies in attendance
to persuade her to brush her teeth with regularity. Again, she would
persist in wearing her frilled and lace-trimmed petticoats long after
their dainty edges had been smirched and blackened.

Yet these things might have been counteracted had she gone no further.
Unfortunately, she did go further. She loved to dress at night like
a shop-girl and venture out into the world of Paris, where she was
frequently followed and recognized. Think of it--the Queen of France,
elbowed in dense crowds and seeking to attract the attention of common
soldiers!

Of course, almost every one put the worst construction upon this,
and after a time upon everything she did. When she took a fancy for
constructing labyrinths and secret passages in the palace, all Paris
vowed that she was planning means by which her various lovers might
enter without observation. The hidden printing-presses of Paris swarmed
with gross lampoons about this reckless girl; and, although there
was little truth in what they said, there was enough to cloud her
reputation. When she fell ill with the measles she was attended in her
sick-chamber by four gentlemen of the court. The king was forbidden to
enter lest he might catch the childish disorder.

The apathy of the king, indeed, drove her into many a folly. After four
years of marriage, as Mrs. Mayne records, he had only reached the point
of giving her a chilly kiss. The fact that she had no children became
a serious matter. Her brother, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, when he
visited Paris, ventured to speak to the king upon the subject. Even
the Austrian ambassador had thrown out hints that the house of Bourbon
needed direct heirs. Louis grunted and said little, but he must have
known how good was the advice.

It was at about this time when there came to the French court a young
Swede named Axel de Fersen, who bore the title of count, but who was
received less for his rank than for his winning manner, his knightly
bearing, and his handsome, sympathetic face. Romantic in spirit, he
threw himself at once into a silent inner worship of Marie Antoinette,
who had for him a singular attraction. Wherever he could meet her they
met. To her growing cynicism this breath of pure yet ardent affection
was very grateful. It came as something fresh and sweet into the
feverish life she led.

Other men had had the audacity to woo her--among them Duc de Lauzun,
whose complicity in the famous affair of the diamond necklace afterward
cast her, though innocent, into ruin; the Duc de Biron; and the Baron
de Besenval, who had obtained much influence over her, which he used for
the most evil purposes. Besenval tainted her mind by persuading her to
read indecent books, in the hope that at last she would become his prey.

But none of these men ever meant to Marie Antoinette what Fersen meant.
Though less than twenty years of age, he maintained the reserve of a
great gentleman, and never forced himself upon her notice. Yet their
first acquaintance had occurred in such a way as to give to it a touch
of intimacy. He had gone to a masked ball, and there had chosen for his
partner a lady whose face was quite concealed. Something drew the two
together. The gaiety of the woman and the chivalry of the man blended
most harmoniously. It was only afterward that he discovered that his
chance partner was the first lady in France. She kept his memory in her
mind; for some time later, when he was at a royal drawing-room and she
heard his voice, she exclaimed:

"Ah, an old acquaintance!"

From this time Fersen was among those who were most intimately favored
by the queen. He had the privilege of attending her private receptions
at the palace of the Trianon, and was a conspicuous figure at the feasts
given in the queen's honor by the Princess de Lamballe, a beautiful girl
whose head was destined afterward to be severed from her body and borne
upon a bloody pike through the streets of Paris. But as yet the deluge
had not arrived and the great and noble still danced upon the brink of a
volcano.

Fersen grew more and more infatuated, nor could he quite conceal his
feelings. The queen, in her turn, was neither frightened nor indignant.
His passion, so profound and yet so respectful, deeply moved her. Then
came a time when the truth was made clear to both of them. Fersen was
near her while she was singing to the harpsichord, and "she was betrayed
by her own music into an avowal which song made easy." She forgot that
she was Queen of France. She only felt that her womanhood had been
starved and slighted, and that here was a noble-minded lover of whom she
could be proud.

Some time after this announcement was officially made of the approaching
accouchement of the queen. It was impossible that malicious tongues
should be silent. The king's brother, the Comte de Provence, who hated
the queen, just as the Bonapartes afterward hated Josephine, did his
best to besmirch her reputation. He had, indeed, the extraordinary
insolence to do so at a time when one would suppose that the vilest
of men would remain silent. The child proved to be a princess, and she
afterward received the title of Duchesse d'Angouleme. The King of Spain
asked to be her godfather at the christening, which was to be held in
the cathedral of Notre Dame. The Spanish king was not present in person,
but asked the Comte de Provence to act as his proxy.

On the appointed day the royal party proceeded to the cathedral, and the
Comte de Provence presented the little child at the baptismal font. The
grand almoner, who presided, asked;

"What name shall be given to this child?"

The Comte de Provence answered in a sneering tone:

"Oh, we don't begin with that. The first thing to find out is who the
father and the mother are!"

These words, spoken at such a place and such a time, and with a strongly
sardonic ring, set all Paris gossiping. It was a thinly veiled innuendo
that the father of the child was not the King of France. Those about the
court immediately began to look at Fersen with significant smiles. The
queen would gladly have kept him near her; but Fersen cared even more
for her good name than for his love of her. It would have been so
easy to remain in the full enjoyment of his conquest; but he was too
chivalrous for that, or, rather, he knew that the various ambassadors
in Paris had told their respective governments of the rising scandal.
In fact, the following secret despatch was sent to the King of Sweden by
his envoy:

I must confide to your majesty that the young Count Fersen has been so
well received by the queen that various persons have taken it amiss. I
own that I am sure that she has a liking for him. I have seen proofs of
it too certain to be doubted. During the last few days the queen has not
taken her eyes off him, and as she gazed they were full of tears. I beg
your majesty to keep their secret to yourself.

The queen wept because Fersen had resolved to leave her lest she should
be exposed to further gossip. If he left her without any apparent
reason, the gossip would only be the more intense. Therefore he decided
to join the French troops who were going to America to fight under
Lafayette. A brilliant but dissolute duchess taunted him when the news
became known.

"How is this?" said she. "Do you forsake your conquest?"

But, "lying like a gentleman," Fersen answered, quietly:

"Had I made a conquest I should not forsake it. I go away free, and,
unfortunately, without leaving any regret."

Nothing could have been more chivalrous than the pains which Fersen took
to shield the reputation of the queen. He even allowed it to be supposed
that he was planning a marriage with a rich young Swedish woman who
had been naturalized in England. As a matter of fact, he departed for
America, and not very long afterward the young woman in question married
an Englishman.

Fersen served in America for a time, returning, however, at the end of
three years. He was one of the original Cincinnati, being admitted
to the order by Washington himself. When he returned to France he was
received with high honors and was made colonel of the royal Swedish
regiment.

The dangers threatening Louis and his court, which were now gigantic and
appalling, forbade him to forsake the queen. By her side he did what
he could to check the revolution; and, failing this, he helped her to
maintain an imperial dignity of manner which she might otherwise have
lacked. He faced the bellowing mob which surrounded the Tuileries.
Lafayette tried to make the National Guard obey his orders, but he was
jeered at for his pains. Violent epithets were hurled at the king. The
least insulting name which they could give him was "a fat pig." As for
the queen, the most filthy phrases were showered upon her by the men,
and even more so by the women, who swarmed out of the slums and sought
her life.

At last, in 1791, it was decided that the king and the queen and their
children, of whom they now had three, should endeavor to escape from
Paris. Fersen planned their flight, but it proved to be a failure. Every
one remembers how they were discovered and halted at Varennes. The royal
party was escorted back to Paris by the mob, which chanted with insolent
additions:

"We've brought back the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy!
Now we shall have bread!"

Against the savage fury which soon animated the French a foreigner like
Fersen could do very little; but he seems to have endeavored, night and
day, to serve the woman whom he loved. His efforts have been described
by Grandat; but they were of no avail. The king and queen were
practically made prisoners. Their eldest son died. They went through
horrors that were stimulated by the wretch Hebert, at the head of his
so-called Madmen (Enrages). The king was executed in January, 1792. The
queen dragged out a brief existence in a prison where she was for ever
under the eyes of human brutes, who guarded her and watched her and
jeered at her at times when even men would be sensitive. Then, at last,
she mounted the scaffold, and her head, with its shining hair, fell into
the bloody basket.

Marie Antoinette shows many contradictions in her character. As a young
girl she was petulant and silly and almost unseemly in her actions. As
a queen, with waning power, she took on a dignity which recalled the
dignity of her imperial mother. At first a flirt, she fell deeply in
love when she met a man who was worthy of that love. She lived for most
part like a mere cocotte. She died every inch a queen.

One finds a curious resemblance between the fate of Marie Antoinette and
that of her gallant lover, who outlived her for nearly twenty years. She
died amid the shrieks and execrations of a maddened populace in Paris;
he was practically torn in pieces by a mob in the streets of Stockholm.
The day of his death was the anniversary of the flight to Varennes. To
the last moment of his existence he remained faithful to the memory of
the royal woman who had given herself so utterly to him.





THE STORY OF AARON BURR


There will come a time when the name of Aaron Burr will be cleared from
the prejudice which now surrounds it, when he will stand in the public
estimation side by side with Alexander Hamilton, whom he shot in a duel
in 1804, but whom in many respects he curiously resembled. When the
white light of history shall have searched them both they will appear as
two remarkable men, each having his own undoubted faults and at the same
time his equally undoubted virtues.

Burr and Hamilton were born within a year of each other--Burr being
a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, and Alexander Hamilton being the
illegitimate son of a Scottish merchant in the West Indies. Each of them
was short in stature, keen of intellect, of great physical endurance,
courage, and impressive personality. Each as a young man served on
the staff of Washington during the Revolutionary War, and each of them
quarreled with him, though in a different way.

On one occasion Burr was quite unjustly suspected by Washington of
looking over the latter's shoulder while he was writing. "Washington
leaped to his feet with the exclamation:

"How dare you, Colonel Burr?"

Burr's eyes flashed fire at the question, and he retorted, haughtily:

"Colonel Burr DARE do anything."

This, however, was the end of their altercation The cause of Hamilton's
difference with his chief is not known, but it was a much more serious
quarrel; so that the young officer left his staff position in a fury and
took no part in the war until the end, when he was present at the battle
of Yorktown.

Burr, on the other hand, helped Montgomery to storm the heights of
Quebec, and nearly reached the upper citadel when his commander was
shot dead and the Americans retreated. In all this confusion Burr showed
himself a man of mettle. The slain Montgomery was six feet high, but
Burr carried his body away with wonderful strength amid a shower of
musket-balls and grape-shot.

Hamilton had no belief in the American Constitution, which he called "a
shattered, feeble thing." He could never obtain an elective office,
and he would have preferred to see the United States transformed into
a kingdom. Washington's magnanimity and clear-sightedness made Hamilton
Secretary of the Treasury. Burr, on the other hand, continued his
military service until the war was ended, routing the enemy at
Hackensack, enduring the horrors of Valley Forge, commanding a brigade
at the battle of Monmouth, and heading the defense of the city of New
Haven. He was also attorney-general of New York, was elected to the
United States Senate, was tied with Jefferson for the Presidency, and
then became Vice-President.

Both Hamilton and Burr were effective speakers; but, while Hamilton was
wordy and diffuse, Burr spoke always to the point, with clear and cogent
reasoning. Both were lavish spenders of money, and both were engaged
in duels before the fatal one in which Hamilton fell. Both believed in
dueling as the only way of settling an affair of honor. Neither of them
was averse to love affairs, though it may be said that Hamilton sought
women, while Burr was rather sought by women. When Secretary of the
Treasury, Hamilton was obliged to confess an adulterous amour in order
to save himself from the charge of corrupt practices in public office.
So long as Burr's wife lived he was a devoted, faithful husband to
her. Hamilton was obliged to confess his illicit acts while his wife,
formerly Miss Elizabeth Schuyler, was living. She spent her later years
in buying and destroying the compromising documents which her husband
had published for his countrymen to read.

The most extraordinary thing about Aaron Burr was the magnetic quality
that was felt by every one who approached him. The roots of this
penetrated down into a deep vitality. He was always young, always alert,
polished in manner, courageous with that sort of courage which does not
even recognize the presence of danger, charming in conversation, and
able to adapt it to men or women of any age whatever. His hair was still
dark in his eightieth year. His step was still elastic, his motions were
still as spontaneous and energetic, as those of a youth.

So it was that every one who knew him experienced his fascination. The
rough troops whom he led through the Canadian swamps felt the iron hand
of his discipline; yet they were devoted to him, since he shared all
their toils, faced all their dangers, and ate with them the scraps of
hide which they gnawed to keep the breath of life in their shrunken
bodies.

Burr's discipline was indeed very strict, so that at first raw recruits
rebelled against it. On one occasion the men of an untrained company
resented it so bitterly that they decided to shoot Colonel Burr as he
paraded them for roll-call that evening. Burr somehow got word of it and
contrived to have all the cartridges drawn from their muskets. When the
time for the roll-call came one of the malcontents leaped from the front
line and leveled his weapon at Burr.

"Now is the time, boys!" he shouted.

Like lightning Burr's sword flashed from its scabbard with such a
vigorous stroke as to cut the man's arm completely off and partly to
cleave the musket.

"Take your place in the ranks," said Burr.

The mutineer obeyed, dripping with blood. A month later every man
in that company was devoted to his commander. They had learned that
discipline was the surest source of safety.

But with this high spirit and readiness to fight Burr had a most
pleasing way of meeting every one who came to him. When he was arrested
in the Western forests, charged with high treason, the sound of his
voice won from jury after jury verdicts of acquittal. Often the sheriffs
would not arrest him. One grand jury not merely exonerated him from all
public misdemeanors, but brought in a strong presentment against the
officers of the government for molesting him.

It was the same everywhere. Burr made friends and devoted allies among
all sorts of men. During his stay in France, England, Germany, and
Sweden he interested such men as Charles Lamb, Jeremy Bentham, Sir
Walter Scott, Goethe, and Heeren. They found his mind able to meet
with theirs on equal terms. Burr, indeed, had graduated as a youth
with honors from Princeton, and had continued his studies there after
graduation, which was then a most unusual thing to do. But, of course,
he learned most from his contact with men and women of the world.

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, in The Minister's Wooing, has given what is
probably an exact likeness of Aaron Burr, with his brilliant gifts and
some of his defects. It is strong testimony to the character of Burr
that Mrs. Stowe set out to paint him as a villain; but before she had
written long she felt his fascination and made her readers, in their
own despite, admirers of this remarkable man. There are many parallels,
indeed, between him and Napoleon--in the quickness of his intellect, the
ready use of his resources, and his power over men, while he was more
than Napoleon in his delightful gift of conversation and the easy play
of his cultured mind.

Those who are full of charm are willing also to be charmed. All his life
Burr was abstemious in food and drink. His tastes were most refined. It
is difficult to believe that such a man could have been an unmitigated
profligate.

In his twentieth year there seems to have begun the first of the
romances that run through the story of his long career. Perhaps one
ought not to call it the first romance, for at eighteen, while he was
studying law at Litchfield, a girl, whose name has been suppressed, made
an open avowal of love for him. Almost at the same time an heiress with
a large fortune would have married him had he been willing to accept her
hand. But at this period he was only a boy and did not take such things
seriously.

Two years later, after Burr had seen hard service at Quebec and on
Manhattan Island, his name was associated with that of a very beautiful
girl named Margaret Moncrieffe. She was the daughter of a British major,
but in some way she had been captured while within the American lines.
Her captivity was regarded as little more than a joke; but while she was
thus a prisoner she saw a great deal of Burr. For several months they
were comrades, after which General Putnam sent her with his compliments
to her father.

Margaret Moncrieffe had a most emotional nature. There can be no doubt
that she deeply loved the handsome young American officer, whom she
never saw again. It is doubtful how far their intimacy was carried.
Later she married a Mr. Coghlan. After reaching middle life she wrote
of Burr in a way which shows that neither years nor the obligations of
marriage could make her forget that young soldier, whom she speaks of
as "the conqueror of her soul." In the rather florid style of those days
the once youthful Margaret Moncrieffe expresses herself as follows:

Oh, may these pages one day meet the eye of him who subdued my virgin
heart, whom the immutable, unerring laws of nature had pointed out for
my husband, but whose sacred decree the barbarous customs of society
fatally violated!

Commenting on this paragraph, Mr. H. C. Merwin justly remarks that,
whatever may have been Burr's conduct toward Margaret Moncrieffe, the
lady herself, who was the person chiefly concerned, had no complaint
to make of it. It certainly was no very serious affair, since in the
following year Burr met a lady who, while she lived, was the only woman
for whom he ever really cared.

This was Theodosia Prevost, the wife of a major in the British army.
Burr met her first in 1777, while she was living with her sister in
Westchester County. Burr's command was fifteen miles across the river,
but distance and danger made no difference to him. He used to mount a
swift horse, inspect his sentinels and outposts, and then gallop to the
Hudson, where a barge rowed by six soldiers awaited him. The barge was
well supplied with buffalo-skins, upon which the horse was thrown with
his legs bound, and then half an hour's rowing brought them to the
other side. There Burr resumed his horse, galloped to the house of Mrs.
Prevost, and, after spending a few hours with her, returned in the same
way.

Mrs. Prevost was by no means beautiful, but she had an attractiveness
of her own. She was well educated and possessed charming manners, with
a disposition both gentle and affectionate. Her husband died soon after
the beginning of the war, and then Burr married her. No more ideal
family life could be conceived than his, and the letters which passed
between the two are full of adoration. Thus she wrote to him:

Tell me, why do I grow every day more tenacious of your regard? Is it
because each revolving day proves you more deserving?

And thus Burr answered her:

Continue to multiply your letters to me. They are all my solace. The
last six are constantly within my reach. I read them once a day at
least. Write me all that I have asked, and a hundred things which I have
not.

When it is remembered that these letters were written after nine years
of marriage it is hard to believe all the evil things that have been
said of Burr.

His wife died in 1794, and he then gave a double affection to his
daughter Theodosia, whose beauty and accomplishments were known
throughout the country. Burr took the greatest pains in her education,
and believed that she should be trained, as he had been, to be brave,
industrious, and patient. He himself, who has been described as a
voluptuary, delighted in the endurance of cold and heat and of severe
labor.

After his death one of his younger admirers was asked what Burr had done
for him. The reply was characteristic.

"He made me iron," was the answer.

No father ever gave more attention to his daughter's welfare. As to
Theodosia's studies he was very strict, making her read Greek and Latin
every day, with drawing and music and history, in addition to French.
Not long before her marriage to Joseph Allston, of South Carolina, Burr
wrote to her:

I really think, my dear Theo, that you will be very soon beyond all
verbal criticism, and that my whole attention will be presently directed
to the improvement of your style.

Theodosia Burr married into a family of good old English stock, where
riches were abundant, and high character was regarded as the best of
all possessions. Every one has heard of the mysterious tragedy which is
associated with her history. In 1812, when her husband had been elected
Governor of his state, her only child--a sturdy boy of eleven--died, and
Theodosia's health was shattered by her sorrow. In the same year Burr
returned from a sojourn in Europe, and his loving daughter embarked from
Charleston on a schooner, the Patriot, to meet her father in New
York. When Burr arrived he was met by a letter which told him that his
grandson was dead and that Theodosia was coming to him.

Weeks sped by, and no news was heard of the ill-fated Patriot. At last
it became evident that she must have gone down or in some other way have
been lost. Burr and Governor Allston wrote to each other letter after
letter, of which each one seems to surpass the agony of the other. At
last all hope was given up. Governor Allston died soon after of a broken
heart; but Burr, as became a Stoic, acted otherwise.

He concealed everything that reminded him of Theodosia. He never spoke
of his lost daughter. His grief was too deep-seated and too terrible for
speech. Only once did he ever allude to her, and this was in a letter
written to an afflicted friend, which contained the words:

Ever since the event which separated me from mankind I have been able
neither to give nor to receive consolation.

In time the crew of a pirate vessel was captured and sentenced to be
hanged. One of the men, who seemed to be less brutal than the rest,
told how, in 1812, they had captured a schooner, and, after their usual
practice, had compelled the passengers to walk the plank. All hesitated
and showed cowardice, except only one--a beautiful woman whose eyes were
as bright and whose bearing was as unconcerned as if she were safe on
shore. She quickly led the way, and, mounting the plank with a certain
scorn of death, said to the others:

"Come, I will show you how to die."

It has always been supposed that this intrepid girl may have been
Theodosia Allston. If so, she only acted as her father would have done
and in strict accordance with his teachings.

This resolute courage, this stern joy in danger, this perfect
equanimity, made Burr especially attractive to women, who love courage,
the more so when it is coupled with gentleness and generosity.

Perhaps no man in our country has been so vehemently accused regarding
his relations with the other sex. The most improbable stories were told
about him, even by his friends. As to his enemies, they took boundless
pains to paint him in the blackest colors. According to them, no woman
was safe from his intrigues. He was a perfect devil in leading them
astray and then casting them aside.

Thus one Matthew L. Davis, in whom Burr had confided as a friend, wrote
of him long afterward a most unjust account--unjust because we have
proofs that it was false in the intensity of its abuse. Davis wrote:

It is truly surprising how any individual could become so eminent as a
soldier, as a statesman, and as a professional man who devoted so much
time to the other sex as was devoted by Colonel Burr. For more than
half a century of his life they seemed to absorb his whole thought.
His intrigues were without number; the sacred bonds of friendship were
unhesitatingly violated when they operated as barriers to the indulgence
of his passions. In this particular Burr appears to have been unfeeling
and heartless.

It is impossible to believe that the Spartan Burr, whose life was one of
incessant labor and whose kindliness toward every one was so well known,
should have deserved a commentary like this. The charge of immorality
is so easily made and so difficult of disproof that it has been flung
promiscuously at all the great men of history, including, in our own
country, Washington and Jefferson as well as Burr. In England, when
Gladstone was more than seventy years of age, he once stopped to ask a
question of a woman in the street. Within twenty-four hours the London
clubs were humming with a sort of demoniac glee over the story that
this aged and austere old gentleman was not above seeking common street
amours.

And so with Aaron Burr to a great extent. That he was a man of strict
morality it would be absurd to maintain. That he was a reckless and
licentious profligate would be almost equally untrue. Mr. H. O. Merwin
has very truly said:

Part of Burr's reputation for profligacy was due, no doubt, to that
vanity respecting women of which Davis himself speaks. He never refused
to accept the parentage of a child.

"Why do you allow this woman to saddle you with her child when you KNOW
you are not the father of it?" said a friend to him a few months before
his death.

"Sir," he replied, "when a lady does me the honor to name me the father
of her child I trust I shall always be too gallant to show myself
ungrateful for the favor."

There are two curious legends relating to Aaron Burr. They serve to show
that his reputation became such that he could not enjoy the society of a
woman without having her regarded as his mistress.

When he was United States Senator from New York he lived in Philadelphia
at the lodging-house of a Mrs. Payne, whose daughter, Dorothy Todd, was
the very youthful widow of an officer. This young woman was rather
free in her manners, and Burr was very responsive in his. At the time,
however, nothing was thought of it; but presently Burr brought to the
house the serious and somewhat pedantic James Madison and introduced him
to the hoyden.

Madison was then forty-seven years of age, a stranger to society, but
gradually rising to a prominent position in politics--"the great little
Madison," as Burr rather lightly called him. Before very long he had
proposed marriage to the young widow. She hesitated, and some one
referred the matter to President Washington. The Father of his Country
answered in what was perhaps the only opinion that he ever gave on the
subject of matrimony. It is worth preserving because it shows that he
had a sense of humor:

For my own part, I never did nor do I believe I ever shall give advice
to a woman who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage... A woman very
rarely asks an opinion or seeks advice on such an occasion till her
mind is wholly made up, and then it is with the hope and expectation
of obtaining a sanction, and not that she means to be governed by your
disapproval.

Afterward when Dolly Madison with, her yellow turban and kittenish ways
was making a sensation in Washington society some one recalled her old
association with Burr. At once the story sprang to light that Burr had
been her lover and that he had brought about the match with Madison as
an easy way of getting rid of her.

There is another curious story which makes Martin Van Buren, eighth
President of the United States, to have been the illegitimate son of
Aaron Burr. There is no earthly reason for believing this, except that
Burr sometimes stopped overnight at the tavern in Kinderhook which was
kept by Van Buren's putative father, and that Van Buren in later life
showed an astuteness equal to that of Aaron Burr himself, so that he was
called by his opponents "the fox of Kinderhook." But, as Van Buren was
born in December of the same year (1782) in which Burr was married to
Theodosia Prevost, the story is utterly improbable when we remember,
as we must, the ardent affection which Burr showed his wife, not only
before their marriage, but afterward until her death.

Putting aside these purely spurious instances, as well as others cited
by Mr. Parton, the fact remains that Aaron Burr, like Daniel Webster,
found a great attraction in the society of women; that he could please
them and fascinate them to an extraordinary degree; and that during
his later life he must be held quite culpable in this respect. His
love-making was ardent and rapid, as we shall afterward see in the case
of his second marriage.

Many other stories are told of him. For instance, it is said that he
once took a stage-coach from Jersey City to Philadelphia. The only other
occupant was a woman of high standing and one whose family deeply hated
Aaron Burr. Nevertheless, so the story goes, before they had reached
Newark she was absolutely swayed by his charm of manner; and when the
coach made its last stop before Philadelphia she voluntarily became his
mistress.

It must also be said that, unlike those of Webster and Hamilton, his
intrigues were never carried on with women of the lower sort. This may
be held by some to deepen the charge against him; but more truly does it
exonerate him, since it really means that in many cases these women
of the world threw themselves at him and sought him as a lover, when
otherwise he might never have thought of them.

That he was not heartless and indifferent to those who had loved him
may be shown by the great care which he took to protect their names and
reputations. Thus, on the day before his duel with Hamilton, he made a
will in which he constituted his son-in-law as his executor. At the same
time he wrote a sealed letter to Governor Allston in which he said:

If you can pardon and indulge a folly, I would suggest that Mme. ----,
too well known under the name of Leonora, has claims on my recollection.
She is now with her husband at Santiago, in Cuba.

Another fact has been turned to his discredit. From many women, in the
course of his long life, he had received a great quantity of letters
written by aristocratic hands on scented paper, and these letters he had
never burned. Here again, perhaps, was shown the vanity of the man
who loved love for its own sake. He kept all these papers in a huge
iron-clamped chest, and he instructed Theodosia in case he should die to
burn every letter which might injure any one.

After Theodosia's death Burr gave the same instructions to Matthew L.
Davis, who did, indeed, burn them, though he made their existence a
means of blackening the character of Burr. He should have destroyed them
unopened, and should never have mentioned them in his memoirs of the man
who trusted him as a friend.

Such was Aaron Burr throughout a life which lasted for eighty years. His
last romance, at the age of seventy-eight, is worth narrating because it
has often been misunderstood.

Mme. Jumel was a Rhode Island girl who at seventeen years of age eloped
with an English officer, Colonel Peter Croix. Her first husband
died while she was still quite young, and she then married a French
wine-merchant, Stephen Jumel, some twenty years her senior, but a man of
much vigor and intelligence. M. Jumel made a considerable fortune in New
York, owning a small merchant fleet; and after Napoleon's downfall he
and his wife went to Paris, where she made a great impression in the
salons by her vivacity and wit and by her lavish expenditures.

Losing, however, part of what she and her husband possessed, Mme. Jumel
returned to New York, bringing with her a great amount of furniture and
paintings, with which she decorated the historic house still standing
in the upper part of Manhattan Island--a mansion held by her in her own
right. She managed her estate with much ability; and in 1828 M. Jumel
returned to live with her in what was in those days a splendid villa.

Four years later, however, M. Jumel suffered an accident from which he
died in a few days, leaving his wife still an attractive woman and not
very much past her prime. Soon after she had occasion to seek for legal
advice, and for this purpose visited the law-office of Aaron Burr.
She had known him a good many years before; and, though he was now
seventy-eight years of age, there was no perceptible change in him. He
was still courtly in manner, tactful, and deferential, while physically
he was straight, active, and vigorous.

A little later she invited him to a formal banquet, where he displayed
all his charms and shone to great advantage. When he was about to lead
her in to dinner, he said:

"I give my hand, madam; my heart has long been yours."

These attentions he followed up with several other visits, and
finally proposed that she should marry him. Much fluttered and no less
flattered, she uttered a sort of "No" which was not likely to discourage
a man like Aaron Burr.

"I shall come to you before very long," he said, "accompanied by a
clergyman; and then you will give me your hand because I want it."

This rapid sort of wooing was pleasantly embarrassing. The lady rather
liked it; and so, on an afternoon when the sun was shining and the
leaves were rustling in the breeze, Burr drove up to Mme. Jumel's
mansion accompanied by Dr. Bogart--the very clergyman who had married
him to his first wife fifty years before.

Mme. Jumel was now seriously disturbed, but her refusal was not a strong
one. There were reasons why she should accept the offer. The great
house was lonely. The management of her estate required a man's advice.
Moreover, she was under the spell of Burr's fascination. Therefore she
arrayed herself in one of her most magnificent Paris gowns; the members
of her household and eight servants were called in and the ceremony
was duly performed by Dr. Bogart. A banquet followed. A dozen cobwebbed
bottles of wine were brought up from the cellar, and the marriage feast
went on merrily until after midnight.

This marriage was a singular one from many points of view. It was
strange that a man of seventy-eight should take by storm the affections
of a woman so much younger than he--a woman of wealth and knowledge of
the world. In the second place, it is odd that there was still another
woman--a mere girl--who was so infatuated with Burr that when she was
told of his marriage it nearly broke her heart. Finally, in the early
part of that same year he had been accused of being the father of a
new-born child, and in spite of his age every one believed the charge to
be true. Here is a case that it would be hard to parallel.

The happiness of the newly married pair did not, however, last very
long. They made a wedding journey into Connecticut, of which state
Burr's nephew was then Governor, and there Burr saw a monster bridge
over the Connecticut River, in which his wife had shares, though they
brought her little income. He suggested that she should transfer the
investment, which, after all, was not a very large one, and place it in
a venture in Texas which looked promising. The speculation turned out to
be a loss, however, and this made Mrs. Burr extremely angry, the more
so as she had reason to think that her ever-youthful husband had been
engaged in flirting with the country girls near the Jumel mansion.

She was a woman of high spirit and had at times a violent temper. One
day the post-master at what was then the village of Harlem was surprised
to see Mrs. Burr drive up before the post-office in an open carriage.
He came out to ask what she desired, and was surprised to find her in a
violent temper and with an enormous horse-pistol on each cushion at her
side.

"What do you wish, madam?" said he, rather mildly.

"What do I wish?" she cried. "Let me get at that villain Aaron Burr!"

Presently Burr seems to have succeeded in pacifying her; but in the end
they separated, though she afterward always spoke most kindly of him.
When he died, only about a year later, she is said to have burst into
a flood of tears--another tribute to the fascination which Aaron Burr
exercised through all his checkered life.

It is difficult to come to any fixed opinion regarding the moral
character of Aaron Burr. As a soldier he was brave to the point of
recklessness. As a political leader he was almost the equal of Jefferson
and quite superior to Hamilton. As a man of the world he was highly
accomplished, polished in manner, charming in conversation. He made
friends easily, and he forgave his enemies with a broadmindedness that
is unusual.

On the other hand, in his political career there was a touch of
insincerity, and it can scarcely be denied that he used his charm too
often to the injury of those women who could not resist his insinuating
ways and the caressing notes of his rich voice. But as a husband, in his
youth, he was devoted, affectionate, and loyal; while as a father he was
little less than worshiped by the daughter whom he reared so carefully.

One of his biographers very truly says that no such wretch as Burr has
been declared to be could have won and held the love of such a wife and
such a daughter as Burr had.

When all the other witnesses have been heard, let the two Theodosias
be summoned, and especially that daughter who showed toward him an
affectionate veneration unsurpassed by any recorded in history or
romance. Such an advocate as Theodosia the younger must avail in some
degree, even though the culprit were brought before the bar of Heaven
itself.





GEORGE IV. AND MRS. FITZHERBERT


In the last decade of the eighteenth century England was perhaps the
most brilliant nation of the world. Other countries had been humbled
by the splendid armies of France and were destined to be still further
humbled by the emperor who came from Corsica. France had begun to
seize the scepter of power; yet to this picture there was another
side--fearful want and grievous poverty and the horrors of the
Revolution. Russia was too far away, and was still considered too
barbarous, for a brilliant court to flourish there. Prussia had the
prestige that Frederick the Great won for her, but she was still a
comparatively small state. Italy was in a condition of political chaos;
the banks of the Rhine were running blood where the Austrian armies
faced the gallant Frenchmen under the leadership of Moreau. But England,
in spite of the loss of her American colonies, was rich and prosperous,
and her invincible fleets were extending her empire over the seven seas.

At no time in modern England has the court at London seen so much real
splendor or such fine manners. The royalist emigres who fled from France
brought with them names and pedigrees that were older than the Crusades,
and many of them were received with the frankest, freest English
hospitality. If here and there some marquis or baron of ancient blood
was perforce content to teach music to the daughters of tradesmen in
suburban schools, nevertheless they were better off than they had
been in France, harried by the savage gaze-hounds of the guillotine.
Afterward, in the days of the Restoration, when they came back to
their estates, they had probably learned more than one lesson from the
bouledogues of Merry England, who had little tact, perhaps, but who were
at any rate kindly and willing to share their goods with pinched and
poverty-stricken foreigners.

The court, then, as has been said, was brilliant with notables from
Continental countries, and with the historic wealth of the peerage of
England. Only one cloud overspread it; and that was the mental condition
of the king. We have become accustomed to think of George III as a dull
creature, almost always hovering on the verge of that insanity which
finally swept him into a dark obscurity; but Thackeray's picture of him
is absurdly untrue to the actual facts. George III. was by no means a
dullard, nor was he a sort of beefy country squire who roved about the
palace gardens with his unattractive spouse.

Obstinate enough he was, and ready for a combat with the rulers of the
Continent or with his self-willed sons; but he was a man of brains and
power, and Lord Rosebery has rightly described him as the most striking
constitutional figure of his time. Had he retained his reason, and
had his erratic and self-seeking son not succeeded him during his own
lifetime, Great Britain might very possibly have entered upon other ways
than those which opened to her after the downfall of Napoleon.

The real center of fashionable England, however, was not George III.,
but rather his son, subsequently George IV., who was made Prince of
Wales three days after his birth, and who became prince regent during
the insanity of the king. He was the leader of the social world, the
fit companion of Beau Brummel and of a choice circle of rakes and
fox-hunters who drank pottle-deep. Some called him "the first gentleman
of Europe." Others, who knew him better, described him as one who
never kept his word to man or woman and who lacked the most elementary
virtues.

Yet it was his good luck during the first years of his regency to be
popular as few English kings have ever been. To his people he typified
old England against revolutionary France; and his youth and gaiety made
many like him. He drank and gambled; he kept packs of hounds and strings
of horses; he ran deeply into debt that he might patronize the sports
of that uproarious day. He was a gallant "Corinthian," a haunter of dens
where there were prize-fights and cock-fights, and there was hardly a
doubtful resort in London where his face was not familiar.

He was much given to gallantry--not so much, as it seemed, for
wantonness, but from sheer love of mirth and chivalry. For a time, with
his chosen friends, such as Fox and Sheridan, he ventured into reckless
intrigues that recalled the amours of his predecessor, Charles II. He
had by no means the wit and courage of Charles; and, indeed, the house
of Hanover lacked the outward show of chivalry which made the Stuarts
shine with external splendor. But he was good-looking and stalwart, and
when he had half a dozen robust comrades by his side he could assume
a very manly appearance. Such was George IV. in his regency and in
his prime. He made that period famous for its card-playing, its deep
drinking, and for the dissolute conduct of its courtiers and noblemen no
less than for the gallantry of its soldiers and its momentous victories
on sea and land. It came, however, to be seen that his true achievements
were in reality only escapades, that his wit was only folly, and his
so-called "sensibility" was but sham. He invented buckles, striped
waistcoats, and flamboyant collars, but he knew nothing of the
principles of kingship or the laws by which a state is governed.

The fact that he had promiscuous affairs with women appealed at first
to the popular sense of the romantic. It was not long, however, before
these episodes were trampled down into the mire of vulgar scandal.

One of the first of them began when he sent a letter, signed "Florizel,"
to a young actress, "Perdita" Robinson. Mrs. Robinson, whose maiden
name was Mary Darby, and who was the original of famous portraits
by Gainsborough and Reynolds, was a woman of beauty, talent, and
temperament. George, wishing in every way to be "romantic," insisted
upon clandestine meetings on the Thames at Kew, with all the stage
trappings of the popular novels--cloaks, veils, faces hidden, and armed
watchers to warn her of approaching danger. Poor Perdita took this
nonsense so seriously that she gave up her natural vocation for the
stage, and forsook her husband, believing that the prince would never
weary of her.

He did weary of her very soon, and, with the brutality of a man of such
a type, turned her away with the promise of some money; after which he
cut her in the Park and refused to speak to her again. As for the money,
he may have meant to pay it, but Perdita had a long struggle before she
succeeded in getting it. It may be assumed that the prince had to borrow
it and that this obligation formed part of the debts which Parliament
paid for him.

It is not necessary to number the other women whose heads he turned.
They are too many for remembrance here, and they have no special
significance, save one who, as is generally believed, became his wife so
far as the church could make her so. An act of 1772 had made it
illegal for any member of the English royal family to marry without the
permission of the king. A marriage contracted without the king's consent
might be lawful in the eyes of the church, but the children born of it
could not inherit any claim to the throne.

It may be remarked here that this withholding of permission was strictly
enforced. Thus William IV., who succeeded George IV., was married,
before his accession to the throne, to Mrs. Jordan (Dorothy Bland).
Afterward he lawfully married a woman of royal birth who was known as
Queen Adelaide.

There is an interesting story which tells how Queen Victoria came to
be born because her father, the Duke of Kent, was practically forced
to give up a morganatic union which he greatly preferred to a marriage
arranged for him by Parliament. Except the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke
of Kent was the only royal duke who was likely to have children in the
regular line. The only daughter of George IV. had died in childhood.
The Duke of Cumberland was for various reasons ineligible; the Duke of
Clarence, later King William IV., was almost too old; and therefore, to
insure the succession, the Duke of Kent was begged to marry a young and
attractive woman, a princess of the house of Saxe-Coburg, who was ready
for the honor. It was greatly to the Duke's credit that he showed deep
and sincere feeling in this matter. As he said himself in effect:

"This French lady has stood by me in hard times and in good times,
too--why should I cast her off? She has been more than a wife to me. And
what do I care for your plans in Parliament? Send over for one of the
Stuarts--they are better men than the last lot of our fellows that you
have had!"

In the end, however, he was wearied out and was persuaded to marry, but
he insisted that a generous sum should be settled on the lady who had
been so long his true companion, and to whom, no doubt, he gave many a
wistful thought in his new but unfamiliar quarters in Kensington Palace,
which was assigned as his residence.

Again, the second Duke of Cambridge, who died only a few years ago,
greatly desired to marry a lady who was not of royal rank, though of
fine breeding and of good birth. He besought his young cousin, as
head of the family, to grant him this privilege of marriage; but Queen
Victoria stubbornly refused. The duke was married according to the rites
of the church, but he could not make his wife a duchess. The queen never
quite forgave him for his partial defiance of her wishes, though the
duke's wife--she was usually spoken of as Mrs. FitzGeorge--was received
almost everywhere, and two of her sons hold high rank in the British
army and navy, respectively.

The one real love story in the life of George IV. is that which tells of
his marriage with a lady who might well have been the wife of any king.
This was Maria Anne Smythe, better known as Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was
six years older than the young prince when she first met him in company
with a body of gentlemen and ladies in 1784.

Maria Fitzherbert's face was one which always displayed its best
advantages. Her eyes were peculiarly languishing, and, as she had
already been twice a widow, and was six years his senior, she had the
advantage over a less experienced lover. Likewise, she was a Catholic,
and so by another act of Parliament any marriage with her would be
illegal. Yet just because of all these different objections the prince
was doubly drawn to her, and was willing to sacrifice even the throne if
he could but win her.

His father, the king, called him into the royal presence and said:

"George, it is time that you should settle down and insure the
succession to the throne."

"Sir," replied the prince, "I prefer to resign the succession and let my
brother have it, and that I should live as a private English gentleman."

Mrs. Fitzherbert was not the sort of woman to give herself up readily to
a morganatic connection. Moreover, she soon came to love Prince George
too well to entangle him in a doubtful alliance with one of another
faith than his. Not long after he first met her the prince, who was
always given to private theatricals, sent messengers riding in hot haste
to her house to tell her that he had stabbed himself, that he begged
to see her, and that unless she came he would repeat the act. The lady
yielded, and hurried to Carlton House, the prince's residence; but she
was prudent enough to take with her the Duchess of Devonshire, who was a
reigning beauty of the court.

The scene which followed was theatrical rather than impressive.--The
prince was found in his sleeping-chamber, pale and with his ruffles
blood-stained. He played the part of a youthful and love-stricken wooer,
vowing that he would marry the woman of his heart or stab himself
again. In the presence of his messengers, who, with the duchess,
were witnesses, he formally took the lady as his wife, while Lady
Devonshire's wedding-ring sealed the troth. The prince also acknowledged
it in a document.

Mrs. Fitzherbert was, in fact, a woman of sound sense. Shortly after
this scene of melodramatic intensity her wits came back to her, and she
recognized that she had merely gone through a meaningless farce. So
she sent back the prince's document and the ring and hastened to
the Continent, where he could not reach her, although his detectives
followed her steps for a year.

At the last she yielded, however, and came home to marry the prince
in such fashion as she could--a marriage of love, and surely one of
morality, though not of parliamentary law. The ceremony was performed
"in her own drawing-room in her house in London, in the presence of the
officiating Protestant clergyman and two of her own nearest relatives."

Such is the serious statement of Lord Stourton, who was Mrs.
Fitzherbert's cousin and confidant. The truth of it was never denied,
and Mrs. Fitzherbert was always treated with respect, and even regarded
as a person of great distinction. Nevertheless, on more than one
occasion the prince had his friends in Parliament deny the marriage in
order that his debts might be paid and new allowances issued to him by
the Treasury.

George certainly felt himself a husband. Like any other married prince,
he set himself to build a palace for his country home. While in search
of some suitable spot he chanced to visit the "pretty fishing-village"
of Brighton to see his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. Doubtless he found
it an attractive place, yet this may have been not so much because
of its view of the sea as for the reason that Mrs. Fitzherbert had
previously lived there.

However, in 1784 the prince sent down his chief cook to make
arrangements for the next royal visit. The cook engaged a house on the
spot where the Pavilion now stands, and from that time Brighton began to
be an extremely fashionable place. The court doctors, giving advice that
was agreeable, recommended their royal patient to take sea-bathing at
Brighton. At once the place sprang into popularity.

At first the gentry were crowded into lodging-houses and the
accommodations were primitive to a degree. But soon handsome villas
arose on every side; hotels appeared; places of amusement were opened.
The prince himself began to build a tasteless but showy structure,
partly Chinese and partly Indian in style, on the fashionable promenade
of the Steyne.

During his life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at Brighton the prince held what
was practically a court. Hundreds of the aristocracy came down from
London and made their temporary dwellings there; while thousands who
were by no means of the court made the place what is now popularly
called "London by the Sea." There were the Duc de Chartres, of France;
statesmen and rakes, like Fox, Sheridan, and the Earl of Barrymore; a
very beautiful woman, named Mrs. Couch, a favorite singer at the opera,
to whom the prince gave at one time jewels worth ten thousand pounds;
and a sister of the Earl of Barrymore, who was as notorious as her
brother. She often took the president's chair at a club which George's
friends had organized and which she had christened the Hell Fire Club.

Such persons were not the only visitors at Brighton. Men of much more
serious demeanor came down to visit the prince and brought with them
quieter society. Nevertheless, for a considerable time the place was
most noted for its wild scenes of revelry, into which George frequently
entered, though his home life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at the Pavilion was
a decorous one.

No one felt any doubt as to the marriage of the two persons, who seemed
so much like a prince and a princess. Some of the people of the place
addressed Mrs. Fitzherbert as "Mrs. Prince." The old king and his wife,
however, much deplored their son's relation with her. This was partly
due to the fact that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Catholic and that she had
received a number of French nuns who had been driven out of France at
the time of the Revolution. But no less displeasure was caused by the
prince's racing and dicing, which swelled his debts to almost a million
pounds, so that Parliament and, indeed, the sober part of England were
set against him.

Of course, his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert had no legal status; nor is
there any reason for believing that she ever became a mother. She had
no children by her former two husbands, and Lord Stourton testified
positively that she never had either son or daughter by Prince George.
Nevertheless, more than one American claimant has risen to advance
some utterly visionary claim to the English throne by reason of alleged
descent from Prince George and Mrs. Fitzherbert.

Neither William IV. nor Queen Victoria ever spent much time at Brighton.
In King William's case it was explained that the dampness of the
Pavilion did not suit him; and as to Queen Victoria, it was said that
she disliked the fact that buildings had been erected so as to cut
off the view of the sea. It is quite likely, however, that the queen
objected to the associations of the place, and did not care to be
reminded of the time when her uncle had lived there so long in a
morganatic state of marriage.

At length the time came when the king, Parliament, and the people at
large insisted that the Prince of Wales should make a legal marriage,
and a wife was selected for him in the person of Caroline, daughter of
the Duke of Brunswick. This marriage took place exactly ten years after
his wedding with the beautiful and gentle-mannered Mrs. Fitzherbert.
With the latter he had known many days and hours of happiness. With
Princess Caroline he had no happiness at all.

Prince George met her at the pier to greet her. It is said that as he
took her hand he kissed her, and then, suddenly recoiling, he whispered
to one of his friends:

"For God's sake, George, give me a glass of brandy!"

Such an utterance was more brutal and barbaric than anything his bride
could have conceived of, though it is probable, fortunately, that she
did not understand him by reason of her ignorance of English.

We need not go through the unhappy story of this unsympathetic,
neglected, rebellious wife. Her life with the prince soon became one
of open warfare; but instead of leaving England she remained to set the
kingdom in an uproar. As soon as his father died and he became king,
George sued her for divorce. Half the people sided with the queen,
while the rest regarded her as a vulgar creature who made love to her
attendants and brought dishonor on the English throne. It was a sorry,
sordid contrast between the young Prince George who had posed as a sort
of cavalier and this now furious gray old man wrangling with his furious
German wife.

Well might he look back to the time when he met Perdita in the moonlight
on the Thames, or when he played the part of Florizel, or, better still,
when he enjoyed the sincere and disinterested love of the gentle woman
who was his wife in all but legal status. Caroline of Brunswick was
thrust away from the king's coronation. She took a house within sight of
Westminster Abbey, so that she might make hag-like screeches to the
mob and to the king as he passed by. Presently, in August, 1821, only
a month after the coronation, she died, and her body was taken back to
Brunswick for burial.

George himself reigned for nine years longer. When he died in 1830 his
executor was the Duke of Wellington. The duke, in examining the late
king's private papers, found that he had kept with the greatest care
every letter written to him by his morganatic wife. During his last
illness she had sent him an affectionate missive which it is said George
"read eagerly." Mrs. Fitzherbert wished the duke to give up her letters;
but he would do so only in return for those which he had written to her.

It was finally decided that it would be best to burn both his and hers.
This work was carried out in Mrs. Fitzherbert's own house by the lady,
the duke, and the Earl of Albemarle.

Of George it may be said that he has left as memories behind him only
three things that will be remembered. The first is the Pavilion at
Brighton, with its absurdly oriental decorations, its minarets and
flimsy towers. The second is the buckle which he invented and which
Thackeray has immortalized with his biting satire. The last is the story
of his marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, and of the influence exercised
upon him by the affection of a good woman.





CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX


Perhaps some readers will consider this story inconsistent with those
that have preceded it. Yet, as it is little known to most readers and as
it is perhaps unique in the history of romantic love, I cannot forbear
relating it; for I believe that it is full of curious interest and
pathetic power.

All those who have written of the French Revolution have paused in
their chronicle of blood and flame to tell the episode of the peasant
Royalist, Charlotte Corday; but in telling it they have often omitted
the one part of the story that is personal and not political. The
tragic record of this French girl and her self-sacrifice has been told a
thousand times by writers in many languages; yet almost all of them have
neglected the brief romance which followed her daring deed and which was
consummated after her death upon the guillotine. It is worth our while
to speak first of Charlotte herself and of the man she slew, and then
to tell that other tale which ought always to be entwined with her great
deed of daring.

Charlotte Corday--Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armand--was a native of
Normandy, and was descended, as her name implies, from noble ancestors.
Her forefathers, indeed, had been statesmen, civil rulers, and soldiers,
and among them was numbered the famous poet Corneille, whom the French
rank with Shakespeare. But a century or more of vicissitudes had reduced
her branch of the family almost to the position of peasants--a fact
which partly justifies the name that some give her when they call her
"the Jeanne d'Arc of the Revolution."

She did not, however, spend her girlish years amid the fields and woods
tending her sheep, as did the other Jeanne d'Arc; but she was placed
in charge of the sisters in a convent, and from them she received such
education as she had. She was a lonely child, and her thoughts turned
inward, brooding over many things.

After she had left the convent she was sent to live with an aunt. Here
she devoted herself to reading over and over the few books which
the house contained. These consisted largely of the deistic writers,
especially Voltaire, and to some extent they destroyed her convent
faith, though it is not likely that she understood them very fully.

More to her taste was a copy of Plutarch's Lives. These famous stories
fascinated her. They told her of battle and siege, of intrigue and
heroism, and of that romantic love of country which led men to throw
away their lives for the sake of a whole people. Brutus and Regulus were
her heroes. To die for the many seemed to her the most glorious end that
any one could seek. When she thought of it she thrilled with a sort
of ecstasy, and longed with all the passion of her nature that such a
glorious fate might be her own.

Charlotte had nearly come to womanhood at the time when the French
Revolution first broke out. Royalist though she had been in her
sympathies, she felt the justice of the people's cause. She had seen the
suffering of the peasantry, the brutality of the tax-gatherers, and all
the oppression of the old regime. But what she hoped for was a
democracy of order and equality and peace. Could the king reign as a
constitutional monarch rather than as a despot, this was all for which
she cared.

In Normandy, where she lived, were many of those moderate republicans
known as Girondists, who felt as she did and who hoped for the same
peaceful end to the great outbreak. On the other hand, in Paris, the
party of the Mountain, as it was called, ruled with a savage violence
that soon was to culminate in the Reign of Terror. Already the
guillotine ran red with noble blood. Already the king had bowed his head
to the fatal knife. Already the threat had gone forth that a mere breath
of suspicion or a pointed finger might be enough to lead men and women
to a gory death.

In her quiet home near Caen Charlotte Corday heard as from afar the
story of this dreadful saturnalia of assassination which was making
Paris a city of bloody mist. Men and women of the Girondist party came
to tell her of the hideous deeds that were perpetrated there. All these
horrors gradually wove themselves in the young girl's imagination around
the sinister and repulsive figure of Jean Paul Marat. She knew nothing
of his associates, Danton and Robespierre. It was in Marat alone that
she saw the monster who sent innocent thousands to their graves, and who
reveled like some arch-fiend in murder and gruesome death.

In his earlier years Marat had been a very different figure--an
accomplished physician, the friend of nobles, a man of science and
original thought, so that he was nearly elected to the Academy of
Sciences. His studies in electricity gained for him the admiration
of Benjamin Franklin and the praise of Goethe. But when he turned to
politics he left all this career behind him. He plunged into the very
mire of red republicanism, and even there he was for a time so much
hated that he sought refuge in London to save his life.

On his return he was hunted by his enemies, so that his only place
of refuge was in the sewers and drains of Paris. A woman, one Simonne
Evrard, helped him to escape his pursuers. In the sewers, however,
he contracted a dreadful skin-disease from which he never afterward
recovered, and which was extremely painful as well as shocking to
behold.

It is small wonder that the stories about Marat circulated through the
provinces made him seem more a devil than a man. His vindictiveness
against the Girondists brought all of this straight home to Charlotte
Corday and led her to dream of acting the part of Brutus, so that she
might free her country from this hideous tyrant.

In January, 1793, King Louis XVI. met his death upon the scaffold; and
the queen was thrust into a foul prison. This was a signal for activity
among the Girondists in Normandy, and especially at Caen, where
Charlotte was present at their meetings and heard their fervid oratory.
There was a plot to march on Paris, yet in some instinctive way she felt
that such a scheme must fail. It was then that she definitely formed
the plan of going herself, alone, to the French capital to seek out the
hideous Marat and to kill him with her own hands.

To this end she made application for a passport allowing her to
visit Paris. This passport still exists, and it gives us an official
description of the girl. It reads:

Allow citizen Marie Corday to pass. She is twenty-four years of age,
five feet and one inch in height, hair and eyebrows chestnut color, eyes
gray, forehead high, mouth medium size, chin dimpled, and an oval face.

Apart from this verbal description we have two portraits painted while
she was in prison. Both of them make the description of the passport
seem faint and pale. The real Charlotte had a wealth of chestnut hair
which fell about her face and neck in glorious abundance. Her great
gray eyes spoke eloquently of truth and courage. Her mouth was firm yet
winsome, and her form combined both strength and grace. Such is the girl
who, on reaching Paris, wrote to Marat in these words:

Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your native place
doubtless makes you wish to learn the events which have occurred in that
part of the republic. I shall call at your residence in about an hour.
Be so good as to receive me and give me a brief interview. I will put
you in such condition as to render great service to France.

This letter failed to gain her admission, and so did another which she
wrote soon after. The fact is that Marat was grievously ill. His disease
had reached a point where the pain could be assuaged only by hot water;
and he spent the greater part of his time wrapped in a blanket and lying
in a large tub.

A third time, however, the persistent girl called at his house and
insisted that she must see him, saying that she was herself in danger
from the enemies of the Republic. Through an open door Marat heard her
mellow voice and gave orders that she should be admitted.

As she entered she gazed for a moment upon the lank figure rolling in
the tub, the rat-like face, and the shifting eyes. Then she approached
him, concealing in the bosom of her dress a long carving-knife which she
had purchased for two francs. In answer to Marat's questioning look she
told him that there was much excitement at Caen and that the Girondists
were plotting there.

To this Marat answered, in his harsh voice:

"All these men you mention shall be guillotined in the next few days!"

As he spoke Charlotte flashed out the terrible knife and with all her
strength she plunged it into his left side, where it pierced a lung and
a portion of his heart.

Marat, with the blood gushing from his mouth, cried out:

"Help, darling!"

His cry was meant for one of the two women in the house. Both heard it,
for they were in the next room; and both of them rushed in and succeeded
in pinioning Charlotte Corday, who, indeed, made only a slight effort to
escape. Troops were summoned, she was taken to the Prison de l'Abbaye,
and soon after she was arraigned before the revolutionary tribunal.

Placed in the dock, she glanced about her with an air of pride, as
of one who gloried in the act which she had just performed. A written
charge was read. She was asked what she had to say. Lifting her head
with a look of infinite satisfaction, she answered in a ringing voice:

"Nothing--except that I succeeded!"

A lawyer was assigned for her defense. He pleaded for her earnestly,
declaring that she must he regarded as insane; but those clear, calm
eyes and that gentle face made her sanity a matter of little doubt.
She showed her quick wit in the answers which she gave to the rough
prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, who tried to make her confess that she
had accomplices.

"Who prompted you to do this deed?" roared Tinville.

"I needed no prompting. My own heart was sufficient."

"In what, then, had Marat wronged you?"

"He was a savage beast who was going to destroy the remains of France in
the fires of civil war."

"But whom did you expect to benefit?" insinuated the prosecutor.

"I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand."

"What? Did you imagine that you had murdered all the Marats?"

"No, but, this one being dead, the rest will perhaps take warning."

Thus her directness baffled all the efforts of the prosecution to trap
her into betraying any of her friends. The court, however, sentenced her
to death. She was then immured in the Conciergerie.

This dramatic court scene was the beginning of that strange, brief
romance to which one can scarcely find a parallel. At the time there
lived in Paris a young German named Adam Lux. The continual talk about
Charlotte Corday had filled him with curiosity regarding this young girl
who had been so daring and so patriotic. She was denounced on every hand
as a murderess with the face of a Medusa and the muscles of a Vulcan.
Street songs about her were dinned into the ears of Adam Lux.

As a student of human nature he was anxious to see this terrible
creature. He forced his way to the front of the crowded benches in the
court-room and took his stand behind a young artist who was finishing a
beautiful sketch. From that moment until the end of the trial the
eyes of Adam Lux were fastened on the prisoner. What a contrast to the
picture he had imagined!

A mass of regal chestnut hair crowned with the white cap of a Norman
peasant girl; gray eyes, very sad and serious, but looking serenely
forth from under long, dark lashes; lips slightly curved with an
expression of quiet humor; a face the color of the sun and wind, a
bust indicative of perfect health, the chin of a Caesar, and the whole
expression one of almost divine self-sacrifice. Such were the features
that the painter was swiftly putting upon his canvas; but behind them
Adam Lux discerned the soul for which he gladly sacrificed both his
liberty and his life.

He forgot his surroundings and seemed to see only that beautiful, pure
face and to hear only the exquisite cadences of the wonderful voice.
When Charlotte was led forth by a file of soldiers Adam staggered from
the scene and made his way as best he might to his lodgings. There he
lay prostrate, his whole soul filled with the love of her who had in an
instant won the adoration of his heart.

Once, and only once again, when the last scene opened on the tragedy,
did he behold the heroine of his dreams.

On the 17th of July Charlotte Corday was taken from her prison to the
gloomy guillotine. It was toward evening, and nature had given a setting
fit for such an end. Blue-black thunder-clouds rolled in huge masses
across the sky until their base appeared to rest on the very summit of
the guillotine. Distant thunder rolled and grumbled beyond the river.
Great drops of rain fell upon the soldiers' drums. Young, beautiful,
unconscious of any wrong, Charlotte Corday stood beneath the shadow of
the knife.

At the supreme moment a sudden ray from the setting sun broke through
the cloud-wrack and fell upon her slender figure until she glowed in the
eyes of the startled spectators like a statue cut in burnished bronze.
Thus illumined, as it were, by a light from heaven itself, she
bowed herself beneath the knife and paid the penalty of a noble, if
misdirected, impulse. As the blade fell her lips quivered with her last
and only plea:

"My duty is enough--the rest is nothing!"

Adam Lux rushed from the scene a man transformed. He bore graven upon
his heart neither the mob of tossing red caps nor the glare of the
sunset nor the blood-stained guillotine, but that last look from
those brilliant eyes. The sight almost deprived him of his reason. The
self-sacrifice of the only woman he had ever loved, even though she had
never so much as seen him, impelled him with a sort of fury to his own
destruction.

He wrote a bitter denunciation of the judges, of the officers, and
of all who had been followers of Marat. This document he printed,
and scattered copies of it through every quarter in Paris. The last
sentences are as follows:

The guillotine is no longer a disgrace. It has become a sacred altar,
from which every taint has been removed by the innocent blood shed
there on the 17th of July. Forgive me, my divine Charlotte, if I find
it impossible at the last moment to show the courage and the gentleness
that were yours! I glory because you are superior to me, for it is
right that she who is adored should be higher and more glorious than her
adorer!

This pamphlet, spread broadcast among the people, was soon reported to
the leaders of the rabble. Adam Lux was arrested for treason against
the Republic; but even these men had no desire to make a martyr of this
hot-headed youth. They would stop his mouth without taking his life.
Therefore he was tried and speedily found guilty, but an offer was
made him that he might have passports that would allow him to return to
Germany if only he would sign a retraction of his printed words.

Little did the judges understand the fiery heart of the man they had
to deal with. To die on the same scaffold as the woman whom he had
idealized was to him the crowning triumph of his romantic love. He gave
a prompt and insolent refusal to their offer. He swore that if released
he would denounce his darling's murderers with a still greater passion.

In anger the tribunal sentenced him to death. Only then he smiled and
thanked his judges courteously, and soon after went blithely to the
guillotine like a bridegroom to his marriage feast.

Adam Lux! Spirit courtship had been carried on silently all through that
terrible cross-examination of Charlotte Corday. His heart was betrothed
to hers in that single gleam of the setting sun when she bowed beneath
the knife. One may believe that these two souls were finally united
when the same knife fell sullenly upon his neck and when his life-blood
sprinkled the altar that was still stained with hers.





NAPOLEON AND MARIE WALEWSKA


There are four women who may be said to have deeply influenced the life
of Napoleon. These four are the only ones who need to be taken into
account by the student of his imperial career. The great emperor was
susceptible to feminine charms at all times; but just as it used to be
said of him that "his smile never rose above his eyes," so it might as
truly be said that in most instances the throbbing of his heart did not
affect his actions.

Women to him were the creatures of the moment, although he might seem to
care for them and to show his affection in extravagant ways, as in his
affair with Mlle. Georges, the beautiful but rather tiresome actress.
As for Mme. de Stael, she bored him to distraction by her assumption
of wisdom. That was not the kind of woman that Napoleon cared for. He
preferred that a woman should be womanly, and not a sort of owl to sit
and talk with him about the theory of government.

When it came to married women they interested him only because of
the children they might bear to grow up as recruits for his insatiate
armies. At the public balls given at the Tuileries he would walk about
the gorgeous drawing-rooms, and when a lady was presented to him he
would snap out, sharply:

"How many children have you?"

If she were able to answer that she had several the emperor would look
pleased and would pay her some compliment; but if she said that she had
none he would turn upon her sharply and say:

"Then go home and have some!"

Of the four women who influenced his life, first must come Josephine,
because she secured him his earliest chance of advancement. She met him
through Barras, with whom she was said to be rather intimate. The young
soldier was fascinated by her--the more because she was older than he
and possessed all the practised arts of the creole and the woman of the
world. When she married him she brought him as her dowry the command of
the army of Italy, where in a few months he made the tri-color, borne by
ragged troops, triumphant over the splendidly equipped hosts of Austria.

She was his first love, and his knowledge of her perfidy gave him the
greatest shock and horror of his whole life; yet she might have held him
to the end if she had borne an heir to the imperial throne. It was her
failure to do so that led Napoleon to divorce Josephine and marry the
thick-lipped Marie Louise of Austria. There were times later when he
showed signs of regret and said:

"I have had no luck since I gave up Josephine!"

Marie Louise was of importance for a time--the short time when she
entertained her husband and delighted him by giving birth to the little
King of Rome. Yet in the end she was but an episode; fleeing from her
husband in his misfortune, becoming the mistress of Count Neipperg, and
letting her son--l'Aiglon--die in a land that was far from France.

Napoleon's sister, Pauline Bonaparte, was the third woman who comes to
mind when we contemplate the great Corsican's career. She, too, is an
episode. During the period of his ascendancy she plagued him with her
wanton ways, her sauciness and trickery. It was amusing to throw him
into one of his violent rages; but Pauline was true at heart, and when
her great brother was sent to Elba she followed him devotedly and gave
him all her store of jewels, including the famous Borghese diamonds,
perhaps the most superb of all gems known to the western world. She
would gladly have followed him, also, to St. Helena had she been
permitted. Remaining behind, she did everything possible in conspiring
to secure his freedom.

But, after all, Pauline and Marie Louise count for comparatively little.
Josephine's fate was interwoven with Napoleon's; and, with his Corsican
superstition, he often said so. The fourth woman, of whom I am writing
here, may be said to have almost equaled Josephine in her influence on
the emperor as well as in the pathos of her life-story.

On New-Year's Day of 1807 Napoleon, who was then almost Emperor of
Europe, passed through the little town of Bronia, in Poland. Riding with
his cavalry to Warsaw, the ancient capital of the Polish kingdom, he
seemed a very demigod of battle.

True, he had had to abandon his long-cherished design of invading and
overrunning England, and Nelson had shattered his fleets and practically
driven his flag from the sea; but the naval disaster of Trafalgar had
speedily been followed by the triumph of Austerlitz, the greatest and
most brilliant of all Napoleon's victories, which left Austria and
Russia humbled to the very ground before him.

Then Prussia had dared to defy the over-bearing conqueror and had put
into the field against him her armies trained by Frederick the Great;
but these he had shattered almost at a stroke, winning in one day the
decisive battles of Jena and Auerstadt. He had stabled his horses in
the royal palace of the Hohenzollerns and had pursued the remnant of the
Prussian forces to the Russian border.

As he marched into the Polish provinces the people swarmed by thousands
to meet him and hail him as their country's savior. They believed down
to the very last that Bonaparte would make the Poles once more a free
and independent nation and rescue them from the tyranny of Russia.

Napoleon played upon this feeling in every manner known to his artful
mind. He used it to alarm the Czar. He used it to intimidate the Emperor
of Austria; but more especially did he use it among the Poles themselves
to win for his armies thousands upon thousands of gallant soldiers, who
believed that in fighting for Napoleon they were fighting for the final
independence of their native land.

Therefore, with the intensity of patriotism which is a passion among the
Poles, every man and every woman gazed at Napoleon with something like
adoration; for was not he the mighty warrior who had in his gift what
all desired? Soldiers of every rank swarmed to his standards. Princes
and nobles flocked about him. Those who stayed at home repeated
wonderful stories of his victories and prayed for him and fed the flame
which spread through all the country. It was felt that no sacrifice was
too great to win his favor; that to him, as to a deity, everything that
he desired should be yielded up, since he was to restore the liberty of
Poland.

And hence, when the carriage of the emperor dashed into Bronia,
surrounded by Polish lancers and French cuirassiers, the enormous crowd
surged forward and blocked the way so that their hero could not pass
because of their cheers and cries and supplications.

In the midst of it all there came a voice of peculiar sweetness from the
thickest portion of the crowd.

"Please let me pass!" said the voice. "Let me see him, if only for a
moment!"

The populace rolled backward, and through the lane which they made a
beautiful girl with dark blue eyes that flamed and streaming hair that
had become loosened about her radiant face was confronting the emperor.
Carried away by her enthusiasm, she cried:

"Thrice welcome to Poland! We can do or say nothing to express our joy
in the country which you will surely deliver from its tyrant."

The emperor bowed and, with a smile, handed a great bouquet of roses to
the girl, for her beauty and her enthusiasm had made a deep impression
on him.

"Take it," said he, "as a proof of my admiration. I trust that I may
have the pleasure of meeting you at Warsaw and of hearing your thanks
from those beautiful lips."

In a moment more the trumpets rang out shrilly, the horsemen closed up
beside the imperial carriage, and it rolled away amid the tumultuous
shouting of the populace.

The girl who had so attracted Napoleon's attention was Marie Walewska,
descended from an ancient though impoverished family in Poland. When she
was only fifteen she was courted by one of the wealthiest men in Poland,
the Count Walewska. He was three or four times her age, yet her dark
blue eyes, her massive golden hair, and the exquisite grace of her
figure led him to plead that she might become his wife. She had accepted
him, but the marriage was that of a mere child, and her interest still
centered upon her country and took the form of patriotism rather than
that of wifehood and maternity.

It was for this reason that the young Countess had visited Bronia. She
was now eighteen years of age and still had the sort of romantic feeling
which led her to think that she would keep in some secret hiding-place
the bouquet which the greatest man alive had given her.

But Napoleon was not the sort of man to forget anything that had given
him either pleasure or the reverse. He who, at the height of his cares,
could recall instantly how many cannon were in each seaport of France
and could make out an accurate list of all his military stores; he who
could call by name every soldier in his guard, with a full remembrance
of the battles each man had fought in and the honors that he had won--he
was not likely to forget so lovely a face as the one which had gleamed
with peculiar radiance through the crowd at Bronia.

On reaching Warsaw he asked one or two well-informed persons about
this beautiful stranger. Only a few hours had passed before Prince
Poniatowski, accompanied by other nobles, called upon her at her home.

"I am directed, madam," said he, "by order of the Emperor of France,
to bid you to be present at a ball that is to be given in his honor
to-morrow evening."

Mme. Walewska was startled, and her face grew hot with blushes. Did the
emperor remember her escapade at Bronia? If so, how had he discovered
her? Why should he seek her out and do her such an honor?

"That, madam, is his imperial majesty's affair," Poniatowski told her.
"I merely obey his instructions and ask your presence at the ball.
Perhaps Heaven has marked you out to be the means of saving our unhappy
country."

In this way, by playing on her patriotism, Poniatowski almost persuaded
her, and yet something held her back. She trembled, though she was
greatly fascinated; and finally she refused to go.

Scarcely had the envoy left her, however, when a great company of nobles
entered in groups and begged her to humor the emperor. Finally her own
husband joined in their entreaties and actually commanded her to go; so
at last she was compelled to yield.

It was by no means the frank and radiant girl who was now preparing
again to meet the emperor. She knew not why, and yet her heart was full
of trepidation and nervous fright, the cause of which she could not
guess, yet which made her task a severe ordeal. She dressed herself in
white satin, with no adornment save a wreath of foliage in her hair.

As she entered the ballroom she was welcomed by hundreds whom she had
never seen before, but who were of the highest nobility of Poland.
Murmurs of admiration followed her, and finally Poniatowski came to her
and complimented her, besides bringing her a message that the emperor
desired her to dance with him.

"I am very sorry," she said, with a quiver of the lips, "but I really
cannot dance. Be kind enough to ask the emperor to excuse me."

But at that very moment she felt some strange magnetic influence; and
without looking up she could feel that Napoleon himself was standing by
her as she sat with blanched face and downcast eyes, not daring to look
up at him.

"White upon white is a mistake, madam," said the emperor, in his
gentlest tones. Then, stooping low, he whispered, "I had expected a far
different reception."

She neither smiled nor met his eyes. He stood there for a moment and
then passed on, leaving her to return to her home with a heavy heart.
The young countess felt that she had acted wrongly, and yet there was an
instinct--an instinct that she could not conquer.

In the gray of the morning, while she was still tossing feverishly, her
maid knocked at the door and brought her a hastily scribbled note. It
ran as follows:

I saw none but you, I admired none but you; I desire only you. Answer at
once, and calm the impatient ardor of--N.

These passionate words burned from her eyes the veil that had hidden
the truth from her. What before had been mere blind instinct became an
actual verity. Why had she at first rushed forth into the very streets
to hail the possible deliverer of her country, and then why had she
shrunk from him when he sought to honor her! It was all clear enough
now. This bedside missive meant that he had intended her dishonor and
that he had looked upon her simply as a possible mistress.

At once she crushed the note angrily in her hand.

"There is no answer at all," said she, bursting into bitter tears at the
very thought that he should dare to treat her in this way.

But on the following morning when she awoke her maid was standing beside
her with a second letter from Napoleon. She refused to open it and
placed it in a packet with the first letter, and ordered that both of
them should be returned to the emperor.

She shrank from speaking to her husband of what had happened, and there
was no one else in whom she dared confide. All through that day there
came hundreds of visitors, either of princely rank or men who had won
fame by their gallantry and courage. They all begged to see her, but to
them all she sent one answer--that she was ill and could see no one.

After a time her husband burst into her room, and insisted that she
should see them.

"Why," exclaimed he, "you are insulting the greatest men and the
noblest women of Poland! More than that, there are some of the most
distinguished Frenchmen sitting at your doorstep, as it were. There
is Duroc, grand marshal of France, and in refusing to see him you are
insulting the great emperor on whom depends everything that our country
longs for. Napoleon has invited you to a state dinner and you have given
him no answer whatever. I order you to rise at once and receive these
ladies and gentlemen who have done you so much honor!"

She could not refuse. Presently she appeared in her drawing-room, where
she was at once surrounded by an immense throng of her own countrymen
and countrywomen, who made no pretense of misunderstanding the
situation. To them, what was one woman's honor when compared with
the freedom and independence of their nation? She was overwhelmed by
arguments and entreaties. She was even accused of being disloyal to the
cause of Poland if she refused her consent.

One of the strangest documents of that period was a letter sent to her
and signed by the noblest men in Poland. It contained a powerful appeal
to her patriotism. One remarkable passage even quotes the Bible to point
out her line of duty. A portion of this letter ran as follows:

Did Esther, think you, give herself to Ahasuerus out of the fulness of
her love for him? So great was the terror with which he inspired her
that she fainted at the sight of him. We may therefore conclude that
affection had but little to do with her resolve. She sacrificed her own
inclinations to the salvation of her country, and that salvation it was
her glory to achieve. May we be enabled to say the same of you, to your
glory and our own happiness!

After this letter came others from Napoleon himself, full of the
most humble pleading. It was not wholly distasteful thus to have the
conqueror of the world seek her out and offer her his adoration any
more than it was distasteful to think that the revival of her own nation
depended on her single will. M. Frederic Masson, whose minute studies
regarding everything relating to Napoleon have won him a seat in the
French Academy, writes of Marie Walewska at this time: Every force
was now brought into play against her. Her country, her friends, her
religion, the Old and the New Testaments, all urged her to yield; they
all combined for the ruin of a simple and inexperienced girl of eighteen
who had no parents, whose husband even thrust her into temptation, and
whose friends thought that her downfall would be her glory.

Amid all these powerful influences she consented to attend the dinner.
To her gratification Napoleon treated her with distant courtesy, and, in
fact, with a certain coldness.

"I heard that Mme. Walewska was indisposed. I trust that she has
recovered," was all the greeting that he gave her when they met.

Every one else with whom she spoke overwhelmed her with flattery and
with continued urging; but the emperor himself for a time acted as if
she had displeased him. This was consummate art; for as soon as she was
relieved of her fears she began to regret that she had thrown her power
away.

During the dinner she let her eyes wander to those of the emperor almost
in supplication. He, the subtlest of men, knew that he had won. His
marvelous eyes met hers and drew her attention to him as by an electric
current; and when the ladies left the great dining-room Napoleon sought
her out and whispered in her ear a few words of ardent love.

It was too little to alarm her seriously now. It was enough to make
her feel that magnetism which Napoleon knew so well how to evoke and
exercise. Again every one crowded about her with congratulations. Some
said:

"He never even saw any of US. His eyes were all for YOU! They flashed
fire as he looked at you."

"You have conquered his heart," others said, "and you can do what you
like with him. The salvation of Poland is in your hands."

The company broke up at an early hour, but Mme. Walewska was asked to
remain. When she was alone General Duroc--one of the emperor's favorite
officers and most trusted lieutenants--entered and placed a letter from
Napoleon in her lap. He tried to tell her as tactfully as possible how
much harm she was doing by refusing the imperial request. She was deeply
affected, and presently, when Duroc left her, she opened the letter
which he had given her and read it. It was worded thus:

There are times when all splendors become oppressive, as I feel but too
deeply at the present moment. How can I satisfy the desires of a heart
that yearns to cast itself at your feet, when its impulses are checked
at every point by considerations of the highest moment? Oh, if you
would, you alone might overcome the obstacles that keep us apart. MY
FRIEND DUROC WILL MAKE ALL EASY FOR YOU. Oh, come, come! Your every wish
shall be gratified! Your country will be dearer to me when you take pity
on my poor heart. N.

Every chance of escape seemed to be closed. She had Napoleon's own word
that he would free Poland in return for her self-sacrifice. Moreover,
her powers of resistance had been so weakened that, like many women, she
temporized. She decided that she would meet the emperor alone. She would
tell him that she did not love him, and yet would plead with him to save
her beloved country.

As she sat there every tick of the clock stirred her to a new
excitement. At last there came a knock upon the door, a cloak was thrown
about her from behind, a heavy veil was drooped about her golden hair,
and she was led, by whom she knew not, to the street, where a finely
appointed carriage was waiting for her.

No sooner had she entered it than she was driven rapidly through the
darkness to the beautifully carved entrance of a palace. Half led, half
carried, she was taken up the steps to a door which was eagerly opened
by some one within. There were warmth and light and color and the scent
of flowers as she was placed in a comfortable arm-chair. Her wrappings
were taken from her, the door was closed behind her; and then, as
she looked up, she found herself in the presence of Napoleon, who was
kneeling at her feet and uttering soothing words.

Wisely, the emperor used no violence. He merely argued with her; he told
her over and over his love for her; and finally he declared that for her
sake he would make Poland once again a strong and splendid kingdom.

Several hours passed. In the early morning, before daylight, there came
a knock at the door.

"Already?" said Napoleon. "Well, my plaintive dove, go home and rest.
You must not fear the eagle. In time you will come to love him, and in
all things you shall command him."

Then he led her to the door, but said that he would not open it unless
she promised to see him the next day--a promise which she gave the more
readily because he had treated her with such respect.

On the following morning her faithful maid came to her bedside with
a cluster of beautiful violets, a letter, and several daintily made
morocco cases. When these were opened there leaped out strings and
necklaces of exquisite diamonds, blazing in the morning sunlight. Mme.
Walewska seized the jewels and flung them across the room with an order
that they should be taken back at once to the imperial giver; but
the letter, which was in the same romantic strain as the others, she
retained.

On that same evening there was another dinner, given to the emperor by
the nobles, and Marie Walewska attended it, but of course without the
diamonds, which she had returned. Nor did she wear the flowers which had
accompanied the diamonds.

When Napoleon met her he frowned upon her and made her tremble with the
cold glances that shot from his eyes of steel. He scarcely spoke to her
throughout the meal, but those who sat beside her were earnest in their
pleading.

Again she waited until the guests had gone away, and with a lighter
heart, since she felt that she had nothing to fear. But when she met
Napoleon in his private cabinet, alone, his mood was very different from
that which he had shown before. Instead of gentleness and consideration
he was the Napoleon of camps, and not of courts. He greeted her bruskly.

"I scarcely expected to see you again," said he. "Why did you refuse
my diamonds and my flowers? Why did you avoid my eyes at dinner? Your
coldness is an insult which I shall not brook." Then he raised his voice
to that rasping, almost blood-curdling tone which even his hardiest
soldiers dreaded: "I will have you know that I mean to conquer you. You
SHALL--yes, I repeat it, you SHALL love me! I have restored the name of
your country. It owes its very existence to me."

Then he resorted to a trick which he had played years before in dealing
with the Austrians at Campo Formio.

"See this watch which I am holding in my hand. Just as I dash it to
fragments before you, so will I shatter Poland if you drive me to
desperation by rejecting my heart and refusing me your own."

As he spoke he hurled the watch against the opposite wall with terrific
force, dashing it to pieces. In terror, Mme. Walewska fainted. When she
resumed consciousness there was Napoleon wiping away her tears with the
tenderness of a woman and with words of self-reproach.

The long siege was over. Napoleon had conquered, and this girl of
eighteen gave herself up to his caresses and endearments, thinking that,
after all, her love of country was more than her own honor.

Her husband, as a matter of form, put her away from him, though at heart
he approved what she had done, while the Polish people regarded her as
nothing less than a national heroine. To them she was no minister to the
vices of an emperor, but rather one who would make him love Poland for
her sake and restore its greatness.

So far as concerned his love for her, it was, indeed, almost idolatry.
He honored her in every way and spent all the time at his disposal
in her company. But his promise to restore Poland he never kept, and
gradually she found that he had never meant to keep it.

"I love your country," he would say, "and I am willing to aid in the
attempt to uphold its rights, but my first duty is to France. I cannot
shed French blood in a foreign cause."

By this time, however, Marie Walewska had learned to love Napoleon for
his own sake. She could not resist his ardor, which matched the ardor
of the Poles themselves. Moreover, it flattered her to see the greatest
soldier in the world a suppliant for her smiles.

For some years she was Napoleon's close companion, spending long hours
with him and finally accompanying him to Paris. She was the mother of
Napoleon's only son who lived to manhood. This son, who bore the name of
Alexandre Florian de Walewski, was born in Poland in 1810, and later
was created a count and duke of the second French Empire. It may be said
parenthetically that he was a man of great ability. Living down to 1868,
he was made much of by Napoleon III., who placed him in high offices
of state, which he filled with distinction. In contrast with the Duc
de Morny, who was Napoleon's illegitimate half-brother, Alexandre de
Walewski stood out in brilliant contrast. He would have nothing to do
with stock-jobbing and unseemly speculation.

"I may be poor," he said--though he was not poor--"but at least I
remember the glory of my father and what is due to his great name."

As for Mme. Walewska, she was loyal to the emperor, and lacked the greed
of many women whom he had made his favorites. Even at Elba, when he
was in exile and disgrace, she visited him that she might endeavor to
console him. She was his counselor and friend as well as his earnestly
loved mate. When she died in Paris in 1817, while the dethroned emperor
was a prisoner at St. Helena, the word "Napoleon" was the last upon her
lips.





THE STORY OF PAULINE BONAPARTE


It was said of Napoleon long ago that he could govern emperors and
kings, but that not even he could rule his relatives. He himself once
declared:

"My family have done me far more harm than I have been able to do them
good."

It would be an interesting historical study to determine just how far
the great soldier's family aided in his downfall by their selfishness,
their jealousy, their meanness, and their ingratitude.

There is something piquant in thinking of Napoleon as a domestic sort of
person. Indeed, it is rather difficult to do so. When we speak his name
we think of the stern warrior hurling his armies up bloody slopes and on
to bloody victory. He is the man whose steely eyes made his haughtiest
marshals tremble, or else the wise, far-seeing statesman and lawgiver;
but decidedly he is not a household model. We read of his sharp speech
to women, of his outrageous manners at the dinner-table, and of the
thousand and one details which Mme. de Remusat has chronicled--and
perhaps in part invented, for there has always existed the suspicion
that her animus was that of a woman who had herself sought the imperial
favor and had failed to win it.

But, in fact, all these stories relate to the Napoleon of courts and
palaces, and not to the Napoleon of home. In his private life this great
man was not merely affectionate and indulgent, but he even showed a
certain weakness where his relatives were concerned, so that he let them
prey upon him almost without end.

He had a great deal of the Italian largeness and lavishness of character
with his family. When a petty officer he nearly starved himself in
order to give his younger brother, Louis, a military education. He was
devotedly fond of children, and they were fond of him, as many anecdotes
attest. His passionate love for Josephine before he learned of her
infidelity is almost painful to read of; and even afterward, when he had
been disillusioned, and when she was paying Fouche a thousand francs
a day to spy upon Napoleon's every action, he still treated her with
friendliness and allowed her extravagance to embarrass him.

He made his eldest brother, Joseph, King of Spain, and Spain proved
almost as deadly to him as did Russia. He made his youngest brother,
Jerome, King of Westphalia, and Jerome turned the palace into a pigsty
and brought discredit on the very name of Bonaparte. His brother Louis,
for whom he had starved himself, he placed upon the throne of Holland,
and Louis promptly devoted himself to his own interests, conniving
at many things which were inimical to France. He was planning high
advancement for his brother Lucien, and Lucien suddenly married a
disreputable actress and fled with her to England, where he was received
with pleasure by the most persistent of all Napoleon's enemies.

So much for his brothers--incompetent, ungrateful, or openly his foes.
But his three sisters were no less remarkable in the relations which
they bore to him. They have been styled "the three crowned courtesans,"
and they have been condemned together as being utterly void of principle
and monsters of ingratitude.

Much of this censure was well deserved by all of them--by Caroline and
Elise and Pauline. But when we look at the facts impartially we shall
find something which makes Pauline stand out alone as infinitely
superior to her sisters. Of all the Bonapartes she was the only one who
showed fidelity and gratitude to the great emperor, her brother. Even
Mme. Mere, Napoleon's mother, who beyond all question transmitted to him
his great mental and physical power, did nothing for him. At the height
of his splendor she hoarded sous and francs and grumblingly remarked:

"All this is for a time. It isn't going to last!"

Pauline, however, was in one respect different from all her kindred.
Napoleon made Elise a princess in her own right and gave her the Grand
Duchy of Tuscany. He married Caroline to Marshal Murat, and they
became respectively King and Queen of Naples. For Pauline he did very
little--less, in fact, than for any other member of his family--and yet
she alone stood by him to the end.

This feather-headed, languishing, beautiful, distracting morsel of
frivolity, who had the manners of a kitten and the morals of a cat,
nevertheless was not wholly unworthy to be Napoleon's sister. One has to
tell many hard things of her; and yet one almost pardons her because
of her underlying devotion to the man who made the name of Bonaparte
illustrious for ever. Caroline, Queen of Naples, urged her husband to
turn against his former chief. Elise, sour and greedy, threw in
her fortunes with the Murats. Pauline, as we shall see, had the one
redeeming trait of gratitude.

To those who knew her she was from girlhood an incarnation of what
used to be called "femininity." We have to-day another and a higher
definition of womanhood, but to her contemporaries, and to many modern
writers, she has seemed to be first of all woman--"woman to the tips of
her rosy finger-nails," says Levy. Those who saw her were distracted
by her loveliness. They say that no one can form any idea of her beauty
from her pictures. "A veritable masterpiece of creation," she had been
called. Frederic Masson declares:

She was so much more the typical woman that with her the defects common
to women reached their highest development, while her beauty attained a
perfection which may justly be called unique.

No one speaks of Pauline Bonaparte's character or of her intellect, but
wholly of her loveliness and charm, and, it must be added, of her utter
lack of anything like a moral sense.

Even as a child of thirteen, when the Bonapartes left Corsica and took
up their abode in Marseilles, she attracted universal attention by her
wonderful eyes, her grace, and also by the utter lack of decorum which
she showed. The Bonaparte girls at this time lived almost on charity.
The future emperor was then a captain of artillery and could give them
but little out of his scanty pay.

Pauline--or, as they called her in those days, Paulette--wore unbecoming
hats and shabby gowns, and shoes that were full of holes. None the
less, she was sought out by several men of note, among them Freron, a
commissioner of the Convention. He visited Pauline so often as to cause
unfavorable comment; but he was in love with her, and she fell in love
with him to the extent of her capacity. She used to write him love
letters in Italian, which were certainly not lacking in ardor. Here is
the end of one of them:

I love you always and most passionately. I love you for ever, my
beautiful idol, my heart, my appealing lover. I love you, love you, love
you, the most loved of lovers, and I swear never to love any one else!

This was interesting in view of the fact that soon afterward she fell in
love with Junot, who became a famous marshal. But her love affairs never
gave her any serious trouble; and the three sisters, who now began to
feel the influence of Napoleon's rise to power, enjoyed themselves as
they had never done before. At Antibes they had a beautiful villa, and
later a mansion at Milan.

By this time Napoleon had routed the Austrians in Italy, and all France
was ringing with his name. What was Pauline like in her maidenhood?
Arnault says:

She was an extraordinary combination of perfect physical beauty and the
strangest moral laxity. She was as pretty as you please, but utterly
unreasonable. She had no more manners than a school-girl--talking
incoherently, giggling at everything and nothing, and mimicking the most
serious persons of rank.

General de Ricard, who knew her then, tells in his monograph of the
private theatricals in which Pauline took part, and of the sport which
they had behind the scenes. He says:

The Bonaparte girls used literally to dress us. They pulled our ears and
slapped us, but they always kissed and made up later. We used to stay in
the girls' room all the time when they were dressing.

Napoleon was anxious to see his sisters in some way settled. He proposed
to General Marmont to marry Pauline. The girl was then only seventeen,
and one might have had some faith in her character. But Marmont was
shrewd and knew her far too well. The words in which he declined the
honor are interesting:

"I know that she is charming and exquisitely beautiful; yet I have
dreams of domestic happiness, of fidelity, and of virtue. Such dreams
are seldom realized, I know. Still, in the hope of winning them--"

And then he paused, coughed, and completed what he had to say in a sort
of mumble, but his meaning was wholly clear. He would not accept the
offer of Pauline in marriage, even though she was the sister of his
mighty chief.

Then Napoleon turned to General Leclerc, with whom Pauline had for
some time flirted, as she had flirted with almost all the officers of
Napoleon's staff. Leclerc was only twenty-six. He was rich and of good
manners, but rather serious and in poor health. This was not precisely
the sort of husband for Pauline, if we look at it in the conventional
way; but it served Napoleon's purpose and did not in the least interfere
with his sister's intrigues.

Poor Leclerc, who really loved Pauline, grew thin, and graver still
in manner. He was sent to Spain and Portugal, and finally was made
commander-in-chief of the French expedition to Haiti, where the famous
black rebel, Toussaint l'Ouverture, was heading an uprising of the
negroes.

Napoleon ordered Pauline to accompany her husband. Pauline flatly
refused, although she made this an occasion for ordering "mountains of
pretty clothes and pyramids of hats." But still she refused to go on
board the flag-ship. Leclerc expostulated and pleaded, but the lovely
witch laughed in his face and still persisted that she would never go.

Word was brought to Napoleon. He made short work of her resistance.

"Bring a litter," he said, with one of his steely glances. "Order
six grenadiers to thrust her into it, and see that she goes on board
forthwith."

And so, screeching like an angry cat, she was carried on board, and set
sail with her husband and one of her former lovers. She found Haiti and
Santo Domingo more agreeable than she had supposed. She was there a
sort of queen who could do as she pleased and have her orders implicitly
obeyed. Her dissipation was something frightful. Her folly and her
vanity were beyond belief.

But at the end of two years both she and her husband fell ill. He was
stricken down by the yellow fever, which was decimating the French
army. Pauline was suffering from the results of her life in a tropical
climate. Leclerc died, the expedition was abandoned, and Pauline
brought the general's body back to France. When he was buried she, still
recovering from her fever, had him interred in a costly coffin and paid
him the tribute of cutting off her beautiful hair and burying it with
him.

"What a touching tribute to her dead husband!" said some one to
Napoleon.

The emperor smiled cynically as he remarked:

"H'm! Of course she knows that her hair is bound to fall out after her
fever, and that it will come in longer and thicker for being cropped."

Napoleon, in fact, though he loved Pauline better than his other
sisters--or perhaps because he loved her better--was very strict
with her. He obliged her to wear mourning, and to observe some of the
proprieties; but it was hard to keep her within bounds.

Presently it became noised about that Prince Camillo Borghese was
exceedingly intimate with her. The prince was an excellent specimen of
the fashionable Italian. He was immensely rich. His palace at Rome was
crammed with pictures, statues, and every sort of artistic treasure.
He was the owner, moreover, of the famous Borghese jewels, the finest
collection of diamonds in the world.

Napoleon rather sternly insisted upon her marrying Borghese.
Fortunately, the prince was very willing to be connected with Napoleon;
while Pauline was delighted at the idea of having diamonds that would
eclipse all the gems which Josephine possessed; for, like all of the
Bonapartes, she detested her brother's wife. So she would be married and
show her diamonds to Josephine. It was a bit of feminine malice which
she could not resist.

The marriage took place very quietly at Joseph Bonaparte's house,
because of the absence of Napoleon; but the newly made princess was
invited to visit Josephine at the palace of Saint-Cloud. Here was to be
the triumph of her life. She spent many days in planning a toilet that
should be absolutely crushing to Josephine. Whatever she wore must be a
background for the famous diamonds. Finally she decided on green velvet.

When the day came Pauline stood before a mirror and gazed at herself
with diamonds glistening in her hair, shimmering around her neck, and
fastened so thickly on her green velvet gown as to remind one of a
moving jewel-casket. She actually shed tears for joy. Then she entered
her carriage and drove out to Saint-Cloud.

But the Creole Josephine, though no longer young, was a woman of great
subtlety as well as charm. Stories had been told to her of the green
velvet, and therefore she had her drawing-room redecorated in the most
uncompromising blue. It killed the green velvet completely. As for the
diamonds, she met that maneuver by wearing not a single gem of any kind.
Her dress was an Indian muslin with a broad hem of gold.

Her exquisite simplicity, coupled with her dignity of bearing, made
the Princess Pauline, with her shower of diamonds, and her green velvet
displayed against the blue, seem absolutely vulgar. Josephine was most
generous in her admiration of the Borghese gems, and she kissed Pauline
on parting. The victory was hers.

There is another story of a defeat which Pauline met from another lady,
one Mme. de Coutades. This was at a magnificent ball given to the most
fashionable world of Paris. Pauline decided upon going, and intended,
in her own phrase, to blot out every woman there. She kept the secret of
her toilet absolutely, and she entered the ballroom at the psychological
moment, when all the guests had just assembled.

She appeared; and at sight of her the music stopped, silence fell upon
the assemblage, and a sort of quiver went through every one. Her costume
was of the finest muslin bordered with golden palm-leaves. Four bands,
spotted like a leopard's skin, were wound about her head, while these in
turn were supported by little clusters of golden grapes. She had copied
the head-dress of a Bacchante in the Louvre. All over her person were
cameos, and just beneath her breasts she wore a golden band held in
place by an engraved gem. Her beautiful wrists, arms, and hands were
bare. She had, in fact, blotted out her rivals.

Nevertheless, Mme. de Coutades took her revenge. She went up to Pauline,
who was lying on a divan to set off her loveliness, and began gazing at
the princess through a double eye-glass. Pauline felt flattered for a
moment, and then became uneasy. The lady who was looking at her said to
a companion, in a tone of compassion:

"What a pity! She really would be lovely if it weren't for THAT!"

"For what?" returned her escort.

"Why, are you blind? It's so remarkable that you SURELY must see it."

Pauline was beginning to lose her self-composure. She flushed and looked
wildly about, wondering what was meant. Then she heard Mme. Coutades
say:

"Why, her ears. If I had such ears as those I would cut them off!"

Pauline gave one great gasp and fainted dead away. As a matter of fact,
her ears were not so bad. They were simply very flat and colorless,
forming a contrast with the rosy tints of her face. But from that moment
no one could see anything but these ears; and thereafter the princess
wore her hair low enough to cover them.

This may be seen in the statue of her by Canova. It was considered a
very daring thing for her to pose for him in the nude, for only a bit of
drapery is thrown over her lower limbs. Yet it is true that this
statue is absolutely classical in its conception and execution, and its
interest is heightened by the fact that its model was what she afterward
styled herself, with true Napoleonic pride--"a sister of Bonaparte."

Pauline detested Josephine and was pleased when Napoleon divorced her;
but she also disliked the Austrian archduchess, Marie Louise, who was
Josephine's successor. On one occasion, at a great court function, she
got behind the empress and ran out her tongue at her, in full view of
all the nobles and distinguished persons present. Napoleon's eagle eye
flashed upon Pauline and blazed like fire upon ice. She actually took to
her heels, rushed out of the ball, and never visited the court again.

It would require much time to tell of her other eccentricities, of her
intrigues, which were innumerable, of her quarrel with her husband, and
of the minor breaches of decorum with which she startled Paris. One of
these was her choice of a huge negro to bathe her every morning. When
some one ventured to protest, she answered, naively:

"What! Do you call that thing a MAN?"

And she compromised by compelling her black servitor to go out and
marry some one at once, so that he might continue his ministrations with
propriety!

To her Napoleon showed himself far more severe than with either Caroline
or Elise. He gave her a marriage dowry of half a million francs when she
became the Princess Borghese, but after that he was continually checking
her extravagances. Yet in 1814, when the downfall came and Napoleon was
sent into exile at Elba, Pauline was the only one of all his relatives
to visit him and spend her time with him. His wife fell away and went
back to her Austrian relatives. Of all the Bonapartes only Pauline and
Mme. Mere remained faithful to the emperor.

Even then Napoleon refused to pay a bill of hers for sixty-two
francs, while he allowed her only two hundred and forty francs for the
maintenance of her horses. But she, with a generosity of which one would
have thought her quite incapable, gave to her brother a great part of
her fortune. When he escaped from Elba and began the campaign of 1815
she presented him with all the Borghese diamonds. In fact, he had them
with him in his carriage at Waterloo, where they were captured by the
English. Contrast this with the meanness and ingratitude of her sisters
and her brothers, and one may well believe that she was sincerely proud
of what it meant to be la soeur de Bonaparte.

When he was sent to St. Helena she was ill in bed and could not
accompany him. Nevertheless, she tried to sell all her trinkets, of
which she was so proud, in order that she might give him help. When
he died she received the news with bitter tears "on hearing all the
particulars of that long agony."

As for herself, she did not long survive. At the age of forty-four her
last moments came. Knowing that she was to die, she sent for Prince
Borghese and sought a reconciliation. But, after all, she died as she
had lived--"the queen of trinkets" (la reine des colifichets). She asked
the servant to bring a mirror. She gazed into it with her dying eyes;
and then, as she sank back, it was with a smile of deep content.

"I am not afraid to die," she said. "I am still beautiful!"





THE STORY OF THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE AND COUNT NEIPPERG


There is one famous woman whom history condemns while at the same time
it partly hides the facts which might mitigate the harshness of the
judgment that is passed upon her. This woman is Marie Louise, Empress
of France, consort of the great Napoleon, and archduchess of imperial
Austria. When the most brilliant figure in all history, after his
overthrow in 1814, was in tawdry exile on the petty island of Elba,
the empress was already about to become a mother; and the father of her
unborn child was not Napoleon, but another man. This is almost all that
is usually remembered of her--that she was unfaithful to Napoleon, that
she abandoned him in the hour of his defeat, and that she gave herself
with readiness to one inferior in rank, yet with whom she lived for
years, and to whom she bore what a French writer styled "a brood of
bastards."

Naturally enough, the Austrian and German historians do not have much
to say of Marie Louise, because in her own disgrace she also brought
disgrace upon the proudest reigning family in Europe. Naturally, also,
French writers, even those who are hostile to Napoleon, do not care
to dwell upon the story; since France itself was humiliated when its
greatest genius and most splendid soldier was deceived by his Austrian
wife. Therefore there are still many who know little beyond the bare
fact that the Empress Marie Louise threw away her pride as a princess,
her reputation as a wife, and her honor as a woman. Her figure seems to
crouch in a sort of murky byway, and those who pass over the highroad of
history ignore it with averted eyes.

In reality the story of Napoleon and Marie Louise and of the Count von
Neipperg is one which, when you search it to the very core, leads you
straight to a sex problem of a very curious nature. Nowhere else does
it occur in the relations of the great personages of history; but in
literature Balzac, that master of psychology, has touched upon the theme
in the early chapters of his famous novel called "A Woman of Thirty."

As to the Napoleonic story, let us first recall the facts of the
case, giving them in such order that their full significance may be
understood.

In 1809 Napoleon, then at the plenitude of his power, shook himself free
from the clinging clasp of Josephine and procured the annulment of his
marriage to her. He really owed her nothing. Before he knew her she had
been the mistress of another. In the first years of their life together
she had been notoriously unfaithful to him. He had held to her from
habit which was in part a superstition; but the remembrance of the wrong
which she had done him made her faded charms at times almost repulsive.
And then Josephine had never borne him any children; and without a
son to perpetuate his dynasty, the gigantic achievements which he
had wrought seemed futile in his eyes, and likely to crumble into
nothingness when he should die.

No sooner had the marriage been annulled than his titanic ambition
leaped, as it always did, to a tremendous pinnacle. He would wed. He
would have children. But he would wed no petty princess. This man who in
his early youth had felt honored by a marriage with the almost declassee
widow of a creole planter now stretched out his hand that he might take
to himself a woman not merely royal but imperial.

At first he sought the sister of the Czar of Russia; but Alexander
entertained a profound distrust of the French emperor, and managed to
evade the tentative demand. There was, however, a reigning family far
more ancient than the Romanoffs--a family which had held the imperial
dignity for nearly six centuries--the oldest and the noblest blood in
Europe. This was the Austrian house of Hapsburg. Its head, the Emperor
Francis, had thirteen children, of whom the eldest, the Archduchess
Marie Louise, was then in her nineteenth year.

Napoleon had resented the rebuff which the Czar had given him. He
turned, therefore, the more eagerly to the other project. Yet there were
many reasons why an Austrian marriage might be dangerous, or, at any
rate, ill-omened. Only sixteen years before, an Austrian arch-duchess,
Marie Antionette, married to the ruler of France, had met her death
upon the scaffold, hated and cursed by the French people, who had always
blamed "the Austrian" for the evil days which had ended in the flames
of revolution. Again, the father of the girl to whom Napoleon's fancy
turned had been the bitter enemy of the new regime in France. His troops
had been beaten by the French in five wars and had been crushed at
Austerlitz and at Wagram. Bonaparte had twice entered Vienna at the head
of a conquering army, and thrice he had slept in the imperial palace
at Schonbrunn, while Francis was fleeing through the dark, a beaten
fugitive pursued by the swift squadrons of French cavalry.

The feeling of Francis of Austria was not merely that of the vanquished
toward the victor. It was a deep hatred almost religious in its fervor.
He was the head and front of the old-time feudalism of birth and blood;
Napoleon was the incarnation of the modern spirit which demolished
thrones and set an iron heel upon crowned heads, giving the sacred
titles of king and prince to soldiers who, even in palaces, still showed
the swaggering brutality of the camp and the stable whence they sprang.
Yet, just because an alliance with the Austrian house seemed in so many
ways impossible, the thought of it inflamed the ardor of Napoleon all
the more.

"Impossible?" he had once said, contemptuously. "The word 'impossible'
is not French."

The Austrian alliance, unnatural though it seemed, was certainly quite
possible. In the year 1809 Napoleon had finished his fifth war with
Austria by the terrific battle of Wagram, which brought the empire of
the Hapsburgs to the very dust. The conqueror's rude hand had stripped
from Francis province after province. He had even let fall hints that
the Hapsburgs might be dethroned and that Austria might disappear from
the map of Europe, to be divided between himself and the Russian Czar,
who was still his ally. It was at this psychological moment that the
Czar wounded Napoleon's pride by refusing to give the hand of his sister
Anne.

The subtle diplomats of Vienna immediately saw their chance.
Prince Metternich, with the caution of one who enters the cage of a
man-eating-tiger, suggested that the Austrian archduchess would be a
fitting bride for the French conqueror. The notion soothed the wounded
vanity of Napoleon. From that moment events moved swiftly; and before
long it was understood that there was to be a new empress in France, and
that she was to be none other than the daughter of the man who had been
Napoleon's most persistent foe upon the Continent. The girl was to be
given--sacrificed, if you like--to appease an imperial adventurer. After
such a marriage, Austria would be safe from spoliation. The reigning
dynasty would remain firmly seated upon its historic throne.

But how about the girl herself? She had always heard Napoleon spoken of
as a sort of ogre--a man of low ancestry, a brutal and faithless enemy
of her people. She knew that this bold, rough-spoken soldier less than a
year before had added insult to the injury which he had inflicted on
her father. In public proclamations he had called the Emperor Francis a
coward and a liar. Up to the latter part of the year Napoleon was to
her imagination a blood-stained, sordid, and yet all-powerful monster,
outside the pale of human liking and respect. What must have been her
thoughts when her father first told her with averted face that she was
to become the bride of such a being?

Marie Louise had been brought up, as all German girls of rank were then
brought up, in quiet simplicity and utter innocence. In person she was
a tall blonde, with a wealth of light brown hair tumbling about a face
which might be called attractive because it was so youthful and so
gentle, but in which only poets and courtiers could see beauty. Her
complexion was rosy, with that peculiar tinge which means that in the
course of time it will become red and mottled. Her blue eyes were clear
and childish. Her figure was good, though already too full for a girl
who was younger than her years.

She had a large and generous mouth with full lips, the lower one
being the true "Hapsburg lip," slightly pendulous--a feature which has
remained for generation after generation as a sure sign of Hapsburg
blood. One sees it in the present emperor of Austria, in the late Queen
Regent of Spain, and in the present King of Spain, Alfonso. All the
artists who made miniatures or paintings of Marie Louise softened down
this racial mark so that no likeness of her shows it as it really was.
But take her all in all, she was a simple, childlike, German madchen
who knew nothing of the outside world except what she had heard from her
discreet and watchful governess, and what had been told her of Napoleon
by her uncles, the archdukes whom he had beaten down in battle.

When she learned that she was to be given to the French emperor her
girlish soul experienced a shudder; but her father told her how vital
was this union to her country and to him. With a sort of piteous dread
she questioned the archdukes who had called Napoleon an ogre.

"Oh, that was when Napoleon was an enemy," they replied. "Now he is our
friend."

Marie Louise listened to all this, and, like the obedient German girl
she was, yielded her own will.

Events moved with a rush, for Napoleon was not the man to dally.
Josephine had retired to her residence at Malmaison, and Paris was
already astir with preparations for the new empress who was to assure
the continuation of the Napoleonic glory by giving children to her
husband. Napoleon had said to his ambassador with his usual bluntness:

"This is the first and most important thing--she must have children."

To the girl whom he was to marry he sent the following letter--an odd
letter, combining the formality of a negotiator with the veiled ardor of
a lover:

MY COUSIN: The brilliant qualities which adorn your person have inspired
in me a desire to serve you and to pay you homage. In making my request
to the emperor, your father, and praying him to intrust to me the
happiness of your imperial highness, may I hope that you will understand
the sentiments which lead me to this act? May I flatter myself that it
will not be decided solely by the duty of parental obedience? However
slightly the feelings of your imperial highness may incline to me, I
wish to cultivate them with so great care, and to endeavor so constantly
to please you in everything, that I flatter myself that some day I shall
prove attractive to you. This is the end at which I desire to arrive,
and for which I pray your highness to be favorable to me.

Immediately everything was done to dazzle the imagination of the girl.
She had dressed always in the simplicity of the school-room. Her only
ornaments had been a few colored stones which she sometimes wore as a
necklace or a bracelet. Now the resources of all France were drawn upon.
Precious laces foamed about her. Cascades of diamonds flashed before her
eyes. The costliest and most exquisite creations of the Parisian shops
were spread around her to make up a trousseau fit for the princess who
was soon to become the bride of the man who had mastered continental
Europe.

The archives of Vienna were ransacked for musty documents which would
show exactly what had been done for other Austrian princesses who had
married rulers of France. Everything was duplicated down to the last
detail. Ladies-in-waiting thronged about the young archduchess; and
presently there came to her Queen Caroline of Naples, Napoleon's sister,
of whom Napoleon himself once said: "She is the only man among my
sisters, as Joseph is the only woman among my brothers." Caroline, by
virtue of her rank as queen, could have free access to her husband's
future bride. Also, there came presently Napoleon's famous marshal,
Berthier, Prince of Neuchatel, the chief of the Old Guard, who had just
been created Prince of Wagram--a title which, very naturally, he did not
use in Austria. He was to act as proxy for Napoleon in the preliminary
marriage service at Vienna.

All was excitement. Vienna had never been so gay. Money was lavished
under the direction of Caroline and Berthier. There were illuminations
and balls. The young girl found herself the center of the world's
interest; and the excitement made her dizzy. She could not but be
flattered, and yet there were many hours when her heart misgave her.
More than once she was found in tears. Her father, an affectionate
though narrow soul, spent an entire day with her consoling and
reassuring her. One thought she always kept in mind--what she had said
to Metternich at the very first: "I want only what my duty bids me
want." At last came the official marriage, by proxy, in the presence of
a splendid gathering. The various documents were signed, the dowry was
arranged for. Gifts were scattered right and left. At the opera
there were gala performances. Then Marie Louise bade her father a sad
farewell. Almost suffocated by sobs and with her eyes streaming with
tears, she was led between two hedges of bayonets to her carriage, while
cannon thundered and all the church-bells of Vienna rang a joyful peal.

She set out for France accompanied by a long train of carriages filled
with noblemen and noblewomen, with ladies-in-waiting and scores of
attendant menials. The young bride--the wife of a man whom she had never
seen--was almost dead with excitement and fatigue. At a station in the
outskirts of Vienna she scribbled a few lines to her father, which are a
commentary upon her state of mind:

I think of you always, and I always shall. God has given me power to
endure this final shock, and in Him alone I have put all my trust. He
will help me and give me courage, and I shall find support in doing my
duty toward you, since it is all for you that I have sacrificed myself.

There is something piteous in this little note of a frightened girl
going to encounter she knew not what, and clinging almost frantically
to the one thought--that whatever might befall her, she was doing as her
father wished.

One need not recount the long and tedious journey of many days over
wretched roads, in carriages that jolted and lurched and swayed. She was
surrounded by unfamiliar faces and was compelled to meet at every town
the chief men of the place, all of whom paid her honor, but stared at
her with irrepressible curiosity. Day after day she went on and on. Each
morning a courier on a foaming horse presented her with a great cluster
of fresh flowers and a few lines scrawled by the unknown husband who was
to meet her at her journey's end.

There lay the point upon which her wandering thoughts were focused--the
journey's end! The man whose strange, mysterious power had forced her
from her school-room, had driven her through a nightmare of strange
happenings, and who was waiting for her somewhere to take her to
himself, to master her as he had mastered generals and armies!

What was marriage? What did it mean? What experience still lay before
her! These were the questions which she must have asked herself
throughout that long, exhausting journey. When she thought of the past
she was homesick. When she thought of the immediate future she was
fearful with a shuddering fear.

At last she reached the frontier of France, and her carriage passed into
a sort of triple structure, the first pavilion of which was Austrian,
while the middle pavilion was neutral, and the farther one was French.
Here she was received by those who were afterward to surround her--the
representatives of the Napoleonic court. They were not all plebeians and
children of the Revolution, ex-stable boys, ex-laundresses. By this time
Napoleon had gathered around himself some of the noblest families of
France, who had rallied to the empire. The assemblage was a brilliant
one. There were Montmorencys and Beaumonts and Audenardes in abundance.
But to Marie Louise, as to her Austrian attendants, they were all alike.
They were French, they were strangers, and she shrank from them.

Yet here her Austrians must leave her. All who had accompanied her thus
far were now turned back. Napoleon had been insistent on this point.
Even her governess, who had been with her since her childhood, was not
allowed to cross the French frontier. So fixed was Napoleon's purpose
to have nothing Austrian about her, that even her pet dog, to which
she clung as a girl would cling, was taken from her. Thereafter she was
surrounded only by French faces, by French guards, and was greeted only
by salvos of French artillery.

In the mean time what was Napoleon doing at Paris. Since the annulment
of his marriage with Josephine he had gone into a sort of retirement.
Matters of state, war, internal reforms, no longer interested him; but
that restless brain could not sink into repose. Inflamed with the ardor
of a new passion, that passion was all the greater because he had
never yet set eyes upon its object. Marriage with an imperial princess
flattered his ambition. The youth and innocence of the bride stirred his
whole being with a thrill of novelty. The painted charms of Josephine,
the mercenary favors of actresses, the calculated ecstasies of the women
of the court who gave themselves to him from vanity, had long since
palled upon him. Therefore the impatience with which he awaited the
coming of Marie Louise became every day more tense.

For a time he amused himself with planning down to the very last details
the demonstrations that were to be given in her honor. He organized
them as minutely as he had ever organized a conquering army. He showed
himself as wonderful in these petty things as he had in those great
strategic combinations which had baffled the ablest generals of
Europe. But after all had been arranged--even to the illuminations, the
cheering, the salutes, and the etiquette of the court--he fell into a
fever of impatience which gave him sleepless nights and frantic days. He
paced up and down the Tuileries, almost beside himself. He hurried off
courier after courier with orders that the postilions should lash their
horses to bring the hour of meeting nearer still. He scribbled love
letters. He gazed continually on the diamond-studded portrait of the
woman who was hurrying toward him.

At last as the time approached he entered a swift traveling-carriage and
hastened to Compiegne, about fifty miles from Paris, where it had been
arranged that he should meet his consort and whence he was to escort her
to the capital, so that they might be married in the great gallery
of the Louvre. At Compiegne the chancellerie had been set apart for
Napoleon's convenience, while the chateau had been assigned to Marie
Louise and her attendants. When Napoleon's carriage dashed into the
place, drawn by horses that had traveled at a gallop, the emperor could
not restrain himself. It was raining torrents and night was coming
on, yet, none the less, he shouted for fresh horses and pushed on to
Soissons, where the new empress was to stop and dine. When he reached
there and she had not arrived, new relays of horses were demanded, and
he hurried off once more into the dark.

At the little village of Courcelles he met the courier who was riding in
advance of the empress's cortege.

"She will be here in a few moments!" cried Napoleon; and he leaped from
his carriage into the highway.

The rain descended harder than ever, and he took refuge in the arched
doorway of the village church, his boots already bemired, his great coat
reeking with the downpour. As he crouched before the church he heard the
sound of carriages; and before long there came toiling through the
mud the one in which was seated the girl for whom he had so long been
waiting. It was stopped at an order given by an officer. Within it,
half-fainting with fatigue and fear, Marie Louise sat in the dark,
alone.

Here, if ever, was the chance for Napoleon to win his bride. Could he
have restrained himself, could he have shown the delicate consideration
which was demanded of him, could he have remembered at least that he was
an emperor and that the girl--timid and shuddering--was a princess, her
future story might have been far different. But long ago he had ceased
to think of anything except his own desires.

He approached the carriage. An obsequious chamberlain drew aside the
leathern covering and opened the door, exclaiming as he did so, "The
emperor!" And then there leaped in the rain-soaked, mud-bespattered
being whose excesses had always been as unbridled as his genius. The
door was closed, the leathern curtain again drawn, and the horses set
out at a gallop for Soissons. Within, the shrinking bride was at the
mercy of pure animal passion, feeling upon her hot face a torrent of
rough kisses, and yielding herself in terror to the caresses of wanton
hands.

At Soissons Napoleon allowed no halt, but the carriage plunged on, still
in the rain, to Compiegne. There all the arrangements made with so much
care were thrust aside. Though the actual marriage had not yet taken
place, Napoleon claimed all the rights which afterward were given in the
ceremonial at Paris. He took the girl to the chancellerie, and not to
the chateau. In an anteroom dinner was served with haste to the imperial
pair and Queen Caroline. Then the latter was dismissed with little
ceremony, the lights were extinguished, and this daughter of a line of
emperors was left to the tender mercies of one who always had about him
something of the common soldier--the man who lives for loot and lust....
At eleven the next morning she was unable to rise and was served in bed
by the ladies of her household.

These facts, repellent as they are, must be remembered when we call
to mind what happened in the next five years. The horror of that night
could not be obliterated by splendid ceremonies, by studious attention,
or by all the pomp and gaiety of the court. Napoleon was then
forty-one--practically the same age as his new wife's father, the
Austrian emperor; Marie Louise was barely nineteen and younger than her
years. Her master must have seemed to be the brutal ogre whom her uncles
had described.

Installed in the Tuileries, she taught herself compliance. On their
marriage night Napoleon had asked her briefly: "What did your parents
tell you?" And she had answered, meekly: "To be yours altogether and to
obey you in everything." But, though she gave compliance, and though her
freshness seemed enchanting to Napoleon, there was something concealed
within her thoughts to which he could not penetrate. He gaily said to a
member of the court:

"Marry a German, my dear fellow. They are the best women in the
world--gentle, good, artless, and as fresh as roses."

Yet, at the same time, Napoleon felt a deep anxiety lest in her very
heart of hearts this German girl might either fear or hate him secretly.
Somewhat later Prince Metternich came from the Austrian court to Paris.

"I give you leave," said Napoleon, "to have a private interview with the
empress. Let her tell you what she likes, and I shall ask no questions.
Even should I do so, I now forbid your answering me."

Metternich was closeted with the empress for a long while. When he
returned to the ante-room he found Napoleon fidgeting about, his eyes a
pair of interrogation-points.

"I am sure," he said, "that the empress told you that I was kind to
her?"

Metternich bowed and made no answer.

"Well," said Napoleon, somewhat impatiently, "at least I am sure that
she is happy. Tell me, did she not say so?"

The Austrian diplomat remained unsmiling.

"Your majesty himself has forbidden me to answer," he returned with
another bow.

We may fairly draw the inference that Marie Louise, though she adapted
herself to her surroundings, was never really happy. Napoleon became
infatuated with her. He surrounded her with every possible mark of
honor. He abandoned public business to walk or drive with her. But the
memory of his own brutality must have vaguely haunted him throughout it
all. He was jealous of her as he had never been jealous of the fickle
Josephine. Constant has recorded that the greatest precautions were
taken to prevent any person whatsoever, and especially any man, from
approaching the empress save in the presence of witnesses.

Napoleon himself underwent a complete change of habits and demeanor.
Where he had been rough and coarse he became attentive and refined. His
shabby uniforms were all discarded, and he spent hours in trying on new
costumes. He even attempted to learn to waltz, but this he gave up in
despair. Whereas before he ate hastily and at irregular intervals,
he now sat at dinner with unusual patience, and the court took on a
character which it had never had. Never before had he sacrificed either
his public duty or his private pleasure for any woman. Even in the first
ardor of his marriage with Josephine, when he used to pour out his heart
to her in letters from Italian battle-fields, he did so only after he
had made the disposition of his troops and had planned his movements
for the following day. Now, however, he was not merely devoted, but
uxorious; and in 1811, after the birth of the little King of Rome, he
ceased to be the earlier Napoleon altogether. He had founded a dynasty.
He was the head of a reigning house. He forgot the principles of the
Revolution, and he ruled, as he thought, like other monarchs, by the
grace of God.

As for Marie Louise, she played her part extremely well. Somewhat
haughty and unapproachable to others, she nevertheless studied
Napoleon's every wish. She seemed even to be loving; but one can
scarcely doubt that her obedience sprang ultimately from fear and
that her devotion was the devotion of a dog which has been beaten into
subjection.

Her vanity was flattered in many ways, and most of all by her
appointment as regent of the empire during Napoleon's absence in the
disastrous Russian campaign which began in 1812. It was in June of that
year that the French emperor held court at Dresden, where he played,
as was said, to "a parterre of kings." This was the climax of his
magnificence, for there were gathered all the sovereigns and princes who
were his allies and who furnished the levies that swelled his Grand Army
to six hundred thousand men. Here Marie Louise, like her husband, felt
to the full the intoxication of supreme power. By a sinister coincidence
it was here that she first met the other man, then unnoticed and little
heeded, who was to cast upon her a fascination which in the end proved
irresistible.

This man was Adam Albrecht, Count von Neipperg. There is something
mysterious about his early years, and something baleful about his silent
warfare with Napoleon. As a very young soldier he had been an Austrian
officer in 1793. His command served in Belgium; and there, in a
skirmish, he was overpowered by the French in superior numbers, but
resisted desperately. In the melee a saber slashed him across the right
side of his face, and he was made prisoner. The wound deprived him of
his right eye, so that for the rest of his life he was compelled to wear
a black bandage to conceal the mutilation.

From that moment he conceived an undying hatred of the French, serving
against them in the Tyrol and in Italy. He always claimed that had the
Archduke Charles followed his advice, the Austrians would have forced
Napoleon's army to capitulate at Marengo, thus bringing early eclipse
to the rising star of Bonaparte. However this may be, Napoleon's success
enraged Neipperg and made his hatred almost the hatred of a fiend.

Hitherto he had detested the French as a nation. Afterward he
concentrated his malignity upon the person of Napoleon. In every way he
tried to cross the path of that great soldier, and, though Neipperg was
comparatively an unknown man, his indomitable purpose and his continued
intrigues at last attracted the notice of the emperor; for in 1808
Napoleon wrote this significant sentence:

The Count von Neipperg is openly known to have been the enemy of the
French.

Little did the great conqueror dream how deadly was the blow which this
Austrian count was destined finally to deal him!

Neipperg, though his title was not a high one, belonged to the old
nobility of Austria. He had proved his bravery in war and as a duelist,
and he was a diplomat as well as a soldier. Despite his mutilation, he
was a handsome and accomplished courtier, a man of wide experience, and
one who bore himself in a manner which suggested the spirit of romance.
According to Masson, he was an Austrian Don Juan, and had won the hearts
of many women. At thirty he had formed a connection with an Italian
woman named Teresa Pola, whom he had carried away from her husband. She
had borne him five children; and in 1813 he had married her in order
that these children might be made legitimate.

In his own sphere the activity of Neipperg was almost as remarkable as
Napoleon's in a greater one. Apart from his exploits on the field of
battle he had been attached to the Austrian embassy in Paris, and,
strangely enough, had been decorated by Napoleon himself with, the
golden eagle of the Legion of Honor. Four months later we find him
minister of Austria at the court of Sweden, where he helped to lay the
train of intrigue which was to detach Bernadotte from Napoleon's cause.
In 1812, as has just been said, he was with Marie Louise for a short
time at Dresden, hovering about her, already forming schemes. Two years
after this he overthrew Murat at Naples; and then hurried on post-haste
to urge Prince Eugene to abandon Bonaparte.

When the great struggle of 1814 neared its close, and Napoleon, fighting
with his back to the wall, was about to succumb to the united armies of
Europe, it was evident that the Austrian emperor would soon be able to
separate his daughter from her husband. In fact, when Napoleon was sent
to Elba, Marie Louise returned to Vienna. The cynical Austrian diplomats
resolved that she should never again meet her imperial husband. She was
made Duchess of Parma in Italy, and set out for her new possessions; and
the man with the black band across his sightless eye was chosen to be
her escort and companion.

When Neipperg received this commission he was with Teresa Pola at Milan.
A strange smile flitted across his face; and presently he remarked, with
cynical frankness:

"Before six months I shall be her lover, and, later on, her husband."

He took up his post as chief escort of Marie Louise, and they journeyed
slowly to Munich and Baden and Geneva, loitering on the way. Amid the
great events which were shaking Europe this couple attracted slight
attention. Napoleon, in Elba, longed for his wife and for his little
son, the King of Rome. He sent countless messages and many couriers; but
every message was intercepted, and no courier reached his destination.
Meanwhile Marie Louise was lingering agreeably in Switzerland. She was
happy to have escaped from the whirlpool of politics and war. Amid the
romantic scenery through which she passed Neipperg was always by her
side, attentive, devoted, trying in everything to please her. With him
she passed delightful evenings. He sang to her in his rich barytone
songs of love. He seemed romantic with a touch of mystery, a gallant
soldier whose soul was also touched by sentiment.

One would have said that Marie Louise, the daughter of an imperial
line, would have been proof against the fascinations of a person so far
inferior to herself in rank, and who, beside the great emperor, was less
than nothing. Even granting that she had never really loved Napoleon,
she might still have preferred to maintain her dignity, to share his
fate, and to go down in history as the empress of the greatest man whom
modern times have known.

But Marie Louise was, after all, a woman, and she followed the guidance
of her heart. To her Napoleon was still the man who had met her amid the
rain-storm at Courcelles, and had from the first moment when he touched
her violated all the instincts of a virgin. Later he had in his way
tried to make amends; but the horror of that first night had never
wholly left her memory. Napoleon had unrolled before her the drama of
sensuality, but her heart had not been given to him. She had been his
empress. In a sense it might be more true to say that she had been
his mistress. But she had never been duly wooed and won and made his
wife--an experience which is the right of every woman. And so this
Neipperg, with his deferential manners, his soothing voice, his magnetic
touch, his ardor, and his devotion, appeased that craving which the
master of a hundred legions could not satisfy.

In less than the six months of which Neipperg had spoken the
psychological moment had arrived. In the dim twilight she listened to
his words of love; and then, drawn by that irresistible power which
masters pride and woman's will, she sank into her lover's arms, yielding
to his caresses, and knowing that she would be parted from him no more
except by death.

From that moment he was bound to her by the closest ties and lived with
her at the petty court of Parma. His prediction came true to the very
letter. Teresa Pola died, and then Napoleon died, and after this Marie
Louise and Neipperg were united in a morganatic marriage. Three children
were born to them before his death in 1829.

It is interesting to note how much of an impression was made upon her by
the final exile of her imperial husband to St. Helena. When the news was
brought her she observed, casually:

"Thanks. By the way, I should like to ride this morning to Markenstein.
Do you think the weather is good enough to risk it?"

Napoleon, on his side, passed through agonies of doubt and longing when
no letters came to him from Marie Louise. She was constantly in his
thoughts during his exile at St. Helena. "When his faithful friend and
constant companion at St. Helena, the Count Las Casas, was ordered by
Sir Hudson Lowe to depart from St. Helena, Napoleon wrote to him:

"Should you see, some day, my wife and son, embrace them. For two years
I have, neither directly nor indirectly, heard from them. There has been
on this island for six months a German botanist, who has seen them
in the garden of Schoenbrunn a few months before his departure.
The barbarians (meaning the English authorities at St. Helena) have
carefully prevented him from coming to give me any news respecting
them."

At last the truth was told him, and he received it with that high
magnanimity, or it may be fatalism, which at times he was capable of
showing. Never in all his days of exile did he say one word against her.
Possibly in searching his own soul he found excuses such as we may find.
In his will he spoke of her with great affection, and shortly before his
death he said to his physician, Antommarchi:

"After my death, I desire that you will take my heart, put it in the
spirits of wine, and that you carry it to Parma to my dear Marie Louise.
You will please tell her that I tenderly loved her--that I never ceased
to love her. You will relate to her all that you have seen, and every
particular respecting my situation and death."

The story of Marie Louise is pathetic, almost tragic. There is the taint
of grossness about it; and yet, after all, there is a lesson in it--the
lesson that true love cannot be forced or summoned at command, that it
is destroyed before its birth by outrage, and that it goes out only when
evoked by sympathy, by tenderness, and by devotion.


END OF VOLUME TWO





THE WIVES OF GENERAL HOUSTON


Sixty or seventy years ago it was considered a great joke to chalk up
on any man's house-door, or on his trunk at a coaching-station, the
conspicuous letters "G. T. T." The laugh went round, and every one
who saw the inscription chuckled and said: "They've got it on you, old
hoss!" The three letters meant "gone to Texas"; and for any man to go to
Texas in those days meant his moral, mental, and financial dilapidation.
Either he had plunged into bankruptcy and wished to begin life over
again in a new world, or the sheriff had a warrant for his arrest.

The very task of reaching Texas was a fearful one. Rivers that overran
their banks, fever-stricken lowlands where gaunt faces peered out from
moldering cabins, bottomless swamps where the mud oozed greasily and
where the alligator could be seen slowly moving his repulsive form--all
this stretched on for hundreds of miles to horrify and sicken the
emigrants who came toiling on foot or struggling upon emaciated horses.
Other daring pioneers came by boat, running all manner of risks upon the
swollen rivers. Still others descended from the mountains of Tennessee
and passed through a more open country and with a greater certainty of
self-protection, because they were trained from childhood to wield the
rifle and the long sheath-knife.

It is odd enough to read, in the chronicles of those days, that amid all
this suffering and squalor there was drawn a strict line between "the
quality" and those who had no claim to be patricians. "The quality" was
made up of such emigrants as came from the more civilized East, or
who had slaves, or who dragged with them some rickety vehicle with
carriage-horses--however gaunt the animals might be. All others--those
who had no slaves or horses, and no traditions of the older states--were
classed as "poor whites"; and they accepted their mediocrity without a
murmur.

Because he was born in Lexington, Virginia, and moved thence with his
family to Tennessee, young Sam Houston--a truly eponymous American
hero--was numbered with "the quality" when, after long wandering, he
reached his boyhood home. His further claim to distinction as a boy came
from the fact that he could read and write, and was even familiar with
some of the classics in translation.

When less than eighteen years of age he had reached a height of
more than six feet. He was skilful with the rifle, a remarkable
rough-and-tumble fighter, and as quick with his long knife as any
Indian. This made him a notable figure--the more so as he never abused
his strength and courage. He was never known as anything but "Sam." In
his own sphere he passed for a gentleman and a scholar, thanks to his
Virginian birth and to the fact that he could repeat a great part of
Pope's translation of the "Iliad."

His learning led him to teach school a few months in the year to the
children of the white settlers. Indeed, Houston was so much taken with
the pursuit of scholarship that he made up his mind to learn Greek and
Latin. Naturally, this seemed mere foolishness to his mother, his six
strapping brothers, and his three stalwart sisters, who cared little
for study. So sharp was the difference between Sam and the rest of the
family that he gave up his yearning after the classics and went to the
other extreme by leaving home and plunging into the heart of the forest
beyond sight of any white man or woman or any thought of Hellas and
ancient Rome.

Here in the dimly lighted glades he was most happy. The Indians admired
him for his woodcraft and for the skill with which he chased the wild
game amid the forests. From his copy of the "Iliad" he would read to
them the thoughts of the world's greatest poet.

It is told that nearly forty years after, when Houston had long led a
different life and had made his home in Washington, a deputation of more
than forty untamed Indians from Texas arrived there under the charge of
several army officers. They chanced to meet Sam Houston.

One and all ran to him, clasped him in their brawny arms, hugged him
like bears to their naked breasts, and called him "father." Beneath the
copper skin and thick paint the blood rushed, and their faces changed,
and the lips of many a warrior trembled, although the Indian may not
weep.

In the gigantic form of Houston, on whose ample brow the beneficent
love of a father was struggling with the sternness of the patriarch and
warrior, we saw civilization awing the savage at his feet. We needed no
interpreter to tell us that this impressive supremacy was gained in the
forest.

His family had been at first alarmed by his stay among the Indians;
but when after a time he returned for a new outfit they saw that he was
entirely safe and left him to wander among the red men. Later he came
forth and resumed the pursuits of civilization. He took up his studies;
he learned the rudiments of law and entered upon its active practice.
When barely thirty-six he had won every office that was open to him,
ending with his election to the Governorship of Tennessee in 1827.

Then came a strange episode which changed the whole course of his life.
Until then the love of woman had never stirred his veins. His physical
activities in the forests, his unique intimacy with Indian life, had
kept him away from the social intercourse of towns and cities. In
Nashville Houston came to know for the first time the fascination of
feminine society. As a lawyer, a politician, and the holder of important
offices he could not keep aloof from that gentler and more winning
influence which had hitherto been unknown to him.

In 1828 Governor Houston was obliged to visit different portions of
the state, stopping, as was the custom, to visit at the homes of "the
quality," and to be introduced to wives and daughters as well as to
their sportsman sons. On one of his official journeys he met Miss Eliza
Allen, a daughter of one of the "influential families" of Sumner County,
on the northern border of Tennessee. He found her responsive, charming,
and greatly to be admired. She was a slender type of Southern beauty,
well calculated to gain the affection of a lover, and especially of
one whose associations had been chiefly with the women of frontier
communities.

To meet a girl who had refined tastes and wide reading, and who was at
the same time graceful and full of humor, must have come as a pleasant
experience to Houston. He and Miss Allen saw much of each other, and few
of their friends were surprised when the word went forth that they were
engaged to be married.

The marriage occurred in January, 1829. They were surrounded with
friends of all classes and ranks, for Houston was the associate of
Jackson and was immensely popular in his own state. He seemed to have
before him a brilliant career. He had won a lovely bride to make a home
for him; so that no man seemed to have more attractive prospects. What
was there which at this time interposed in some malignant way to blight
his future?

It was a little more than a month after his marriage when he met a
friend, and, taking him out into a strip of quiet woodland, said to him:

"I have something to tell you, but you must not ask me anything about
it. My wife and I will separate before long. She will return to her
father's, while I must make my way alone."

Houston's friend seized him by the arm and gazed at him with horror.

"Governor," said he, "you're going to ruin your whole life! What reason
have you for treating this young lady in such a way? What has she done
that you should leave her? Or what have you done that she should leave
you? Every one will fall away from you."

Houston grimly replied:

"I have no explanation to give you. My wife has none to give you. She
will not complain of me, nor shall I complain of her. It is no
one's business in the world except our own. Any interference will be
impertinent, and I shall punish it with my own hand."

"But," said his friend, "think of it. The people at large will not allow
such action. They will believe that you, who have been their idol, have
descended to insult a woman. Your political career is ended. It will not
be safe for you to walk the streets!"

"What difference does it make to me?" said Houston, gloomily. "What must
be, must be. I tell you, as a friend, in advance, so that you may be
prepared; but the parting will take place very soon."

Little was heard for another month or two, and then came the
announcement that the Governor's wife had left him and had returned to
her parents' home. The news flew like wildfire, and was the theme
of every tongue. Friends of Mrs. Houston begged her to tell them the
meaning of the whole affair. Adherents of Houston, on the other hand,
set afloat stories of his wife's coldness and of her peevishness. The
state was divided into factions; and what really concerned a very few
was, as usual, made everybody's business.

There were times when, if Houston had appeared near the dwelling of his
former wife, he would have been lynched or riddled with bullets. Again,
there were enemies and slanderers of his who, had they shown themselves
in Nashville, would have been torn to pieces by men who hailed Houston
as a hero and who believed that he could not possibly have done wrong.

However his friends might rage, and however her people might wonder and
seek to pry into the secret, no satisfaction was given on either side.
The abandoned wife never uttered a word of explanation. Houston was
equally reticent and self-controlled. In later years he sometimes drank
deeply and was loose-tongued; but never, even in his cups, could he be
persuaded to say a single word about his wife.

The whole thing is a mystery and cannot be solved by any evidence that
we have. Almost every one who has written of it seems to have indulged
in mere guesswork. One popular theory is that Miss Allen was in love
with some one else; that her parents forced her into a brilliant
marriage with Houston, which, however, she could not afterward endure;
and that Houston, learning the facts, left her because he knew that her
heart was not really his.

But the evidence is all against this. Had it been so she would surely
have secured a divorce and would then have married the man whom she
truly loved. As a matter of fact, although she did divorce Houston, it
was only after several years, and the man whom she subsequently married
was not acquainted with her at the time of the separation.

Another theory suggests that Houston was harsh in his treatment of his
wife, and offended her by his untaught manners and extreme self-conceit.
But it is not likely that she objected to his manners, since she had
become familiar with them before she gave him her hand; and as to his
conceit, there is no evidence that it was as yet unduly developed. After
his Texan campaign he sometimes showed a rather lofty idea of his own
achievements; but he does not seem to have done so in these early days.

Some have ascribed the separation to his passion for drink; but here
again we must discriminate. Later in life he became very fond of spirits
and drank whisky with the Indians, but during his earlier years he
was most abstemious. It scarcely seems possible that his wife left him
because he was intemperate.

If one wishes to construct a reasonable hypothesis on a subject where
the facts are either wanting or conflicting, it is not impossible to
suggest a solution of this puzzle about Houston. Although his abandoned
wife never spoke of him and shut her lips tightly when she was
questioned about him, Houston, on his part, was not so taciturn. He
never consciously gave any direct clue to his matrimonial mystery; but
he never forgot this girl who was his bride and whom he seems always
to have loved. In what he said he never ceased to let a vein of
self-reproach run through his words.

I should choose this one paragraph as the most significant. It was
written immediately after they had parted:

Eliza stands acquitted by me. I have received her as a virtuous, chaste
wife, and as such I pray God I may ever regard her, and I trust I ever
shall. She was cold to me, and I thought she did not love me.

And again he said to an old and valued friend at about the same time:

"I can make no explanation. I exonerate the lady fully and do not
justify myself."

Miss Allen seems to have been a woman of the sensitive American type
which was so common in the early and the middle part of the last
century. Mrs. Trollope has described it for us with very little
exaggeration. Dickens has drawn it with a touch of malice, and yet not
without truth. Miss Martineau described it during her visit to
this country, and her account quite coincides with those of her two
contemporaries.

Indeed, American women of that time unconsciously described themselves
in a thousand different ways. They were, after all, only a less striking
type of the sentimental Englishwomen who read L. E. L. and the earlier
novels of Bulwer-Lytton. On both sides of the Atlantic there was a reign
of sentiment and a prevalence of what was then called "delicacy." It was
a die-away, unwholesome attitude toward life and was morbid to the last
degree.

In circles where these ideas prevailed, to eat a hearty dinner was
considered unwomanly. To talk of anything except some gilded "annual,"
or "book of beauty," or the gossip of the neighborhood was wholly to be
condemned. The typical girl of such a community was thin and slender and
given to a mild starvation, though she might eat quantities of jam and
pickles and saleratus biscuit. She had the strangest views of life and
an almost unnatural shrinking from any usual converse with men.

Houston, on his side, was a thoroughly natural and healthful man, having
lived an outdoor life, hunting and camping in the forest and displaying
the unaffected manner of the pioneer. Having lived the solitary life of
the woods, it was a strange thing for him to meet a girl who had been
bred in an entirely different way, who had learned a thousand little
reservations and dainty graces, and whose very breath was coyness and
reserve. Their mating was the mating of the man of the forest with the
woman of the sheltered life.

Houston assumed everything; his bride shrank from everything. There was
a mutual shock amounting almost to repulsion. She, on her side, probably
thought she had found in him only the brute which lurks in man. He, on
the other, repelled and checked, at once grasped the belief that his
wife cared nothing for him because she would not meet his ardors
with like ardors of her own. It is the mistake that has been made by
thousands of men and women at the beginning of their married lives--the
mistake on one side of too great sensitiveness, and on the other side of
too great warmth of passion.

This episode may seem trivial, and yet it is one that explains many
things in human life. So far as concerns Houston it has a direct bearing
on the history of our country. A proud man, he could not endure the
slights and gossip of his associates. He resigned the governorship of
Tennessee, and left by night, in such a way as to surround his departure
with mystery.

There had come over him the old longing for Indian life; and when he was
next visible he was in the land of the Cherokees, who had long before
adopted him as a son. He was clad in buckskin and armed with knife
and rifle, and served under the old chief Oolooteka. He was a gallant
defender of the Indians.

When he found how some of the Indian agents had abused his adopted
brothers he went to Washington to protest, still wearing his frontier
garb. One William Stansberry, a Congressman from Ohio, insulted Houston,
who leaped upon him like a panther, dragged him about the Hall of
Representatives, and beat him within an inch of his life. He was
arrested, imprisoned, and fined; but his old friend, President Jackson,
remitted his imprisonment and gruffly advised him not to pay the fine.

Returning to his Indians, he made his way to a new field which promised
much adventure. This was Texas, of whose condition in those early
days something has already been said. Houston found a rough American
settlement, composed of scattered villages extending along the disputed
frontier of Mexico. Already, in the true Anglo-Saxon spirit, the
settlers had formed a rudimentary state, and as they increased and
multiplied they framed a simple code of laws.

Then, quite naturally, there came a clash between them and the Mexicans.
The Texans, headed by Moses Austin, had set up a republic and asked
for admission to the United States. Mexico regarded them as rebels and
despised them because they made no military display and had no very
accurate military drill. They were dressed in buckskin and ragged
clothing; but their knives were very bright and their rifles carried
surely. Furthermore, they laughed at odds, and if only a dozen of them
were gathered together they would "take on" almost any number of Mexican
regulars.

In February, 1836, the acute and able Mexican, Santa Anna, led across
the Rio Grande a force of several thousand Mexicans showily uniformed
and completely armed. Every one remembers how they fell upon the little
garrison at the Alamo, now within the city limits of San Antonio, but
then an isolated mission building surrounded by a thick adobe wall. The
Americans numbered less than three hundred men.

A sharp attack was made with these overwhelming odds. The Americans
drove the assailants back with their rifle fire, but they had nothing to
oppose to the Mexican artillery. The contest continued for several days,
and finally the Mexicans breached the wall and fell upon the garrison,
who were now reduced by more than half. There was an hour of blood, and
every one of the Alamo's defenders, including the wounded, was put to
death. The only survivors of the slaughter were two negro slaves, a
woman, and a baby girl.

When the news of this bloody affair reached Houston he leaped forth to
the combat like a lion. He was made commander-in-chief of the scanty
Texan forces. He managed to rally about seven hundred men, and set out
against Santa Anna with little in the way of equipment, and with
nothing but the flame of frenzy to stimulate his followers. By march and
countermarch the hostile forces came face to face near the shore of San
Jacinto Bay, not far from the present city of Houston. Slowly they moved
upon each other, when Houston halted, and his sharpshooters raked the
Mexican battle-line with terrible effect. Then Houston uttered the cry:

"Remember the Alamo!"

With deadly swiftness he led his men in a charge upon Santa Anna's
lines. The Mexicans were scattered as by a mighty wind, their commander
was taken prisoner, and Mexico was forced to give its recognition to
Texas as a free republic, of which General Houston became the first
president.

This was the climax of Houston's life, but the end of it leaves us with
something still to say. Long after his marriage with Miss Allen he took
an Indian girl to wife and lived with her quite happily. She was a very
beautiful woman, a half-breed, with the English name of Tyania Rodgers.
Very little, however, is known of her life with Houston. Later still--in
1840--he married a lady from Marion, Alabama, named Margaret Moffette
Lea. He was then in his forty-seventh year, while she was only
twenty-one; but again, as with his Indian wife, he knew nothing but
domestic tranquillity. These later experiences go far to prove the
truth of what has already been given as the probable cause of his first
mysterious failure to make a woman happy.

After Texas entered the Union, in 1845, Houston was elected to the
United States Senate, in which he served for thirteen years. In 1852,
1856, and 1860, as a Southerner who opposed any movement looking toward
secession, he was regarded as a possible presidential candidate; but his
career was now almost over, and in 1863, while the Civil War--which he
had striven to prevent--was at its height, he died.





LOLA MONTEZ AND KING LUDWIG OF BAVARIA


Lola Montez! The name suggests dark eyes and abundant hair, lithe limbs
and a sinuous body, with twining hands and great eyes that gleam with
a sort of ebon splendor. One thinks of Spanish beauty as one hears the
name; and in truth Lola Montez justified the mental picture.

She was not altogether Spanish, yet the other elements that entered into
her mercurial nature heightened and vivified her Castilian traits.
Her mother was a Spaniard--partly Moorish, however. Her father was an
Irishman. There you have it--the dreamy romance of Spain, the exotic
touch of the Orient, and the daring, unreasoning vivacity of the Celt.

This woman during the forty-three years of her life had adventures
innumerable, was widely known in Europe and America, and actually lost
one king his throne. Her maiden name was Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna
Gilbert. Her father was a British officer, the son of an Irish knight,
Sir Edward Gilbert. Her mother had been a danseuse named Lola Oliver.
"Lola" is a diminutive of Dolores, and as "Lola" she became known to the
world.

She lived at one time or another in nearly all the countries of Europe,
and likewise in India, America, and Australia. It would be impossible
to set down here all the sensations that she achieved. Let us select the
climax of her career and show how she overturned a kingdom, passing but
lightly over her early and her later years.

She was born in Limerick in 1818, but her father's parents cast off
their son and his young wife, the Spanish dancer. They went to India,
and in 1825 the father died, leaving his young widow without a
rupee; but she was quickly married again, this time to an officer of
importance.

The former danseuse became a very conventional person, a fit match for
her highly conventional husband; but the small daughter did not take
kindly to the proprieties of life. The Hindu servants taught her more
things than she should have known; and at one time her stepfather found
her performing the danse du ventre. It was the Moorish strain inherited
from her mother.

She was sent back to Europe, however, and had a sort of education in
Scotland and England, and finally in Paris, where she was detected in
an incipient flirtation with her music-master. There were other persons
hanging about her from her fifteenth year, at which time her
stepfather, in India, had arranged a marriage between her and a rich but
uninteresting old judge. One of her numerous admirers told her this.

"What on earth am I to do?" asked little Lola, most naively.

"Why, marry me," said the artful adviser, who was Captain Thomas James;
and so the very next day they fled to Dublin and were speedily married
at Meath.

Lola's husband was violently in love with her, but, unfortunately,
others were no less susceptible to her charms. She was presented at
the vice-regal court, and everybody there became her victim. Even the
viceroy, Lord Normanby, was greatly taken with her. This nobleman's
position was such that Captain James could not object to his attentions,
though they made the husband angry to a degree. The viceroy would draw
her into alcoves and engage her in flattering conversation, while poor
James could only gnaw his nails and let green-eyed jealousy prey upon
his heart. His only recourse was to take her into the country, where she
speedily became bored; and boredom is the death of love.

Later she went with Captain James to India. She endured a campaign in
Afghanistan, in which she thoroughly enjoyed herself because of the
attentions of the officers. On her return to London in 1842, one Captain
Lennox was a fellow passenger; and their association resulted in an
action for divorce, by which she was freed from her husband, and yet by
a technicality was not able to marry Lennox, whose family in any case
would probably have prevented the wedding.

Mrs. Mayne says, in writing on this point:

Even Lola never quite succeeded in being allowed to commit bigamy
unmolested, though in later years she did commit it and took refuge in
Spain to escape punishment.

The same writer has given a vivid picture of what happened soon after
the divorce. Lola tried to forget her past and to create a new and
brighter future. Here is the narrative:

Her Majesty's Theater was crowded on the night of June 10,1843. A new
Spanish dancer was announced--"Dona Lola Montez." It was her debut, and
Lumley, the manager, had been puffing her beforehand, as he alone knew
how. To Lord Ranelagh, the leader of the dilettante group of fashionable
young men, he had whispered, mysteriously:

"I have a surprise in store. You shall see."

So Ranelagh and a party of his friends filled the omnibus boxes,
those tribunes at the side of the stage whence success or failure was
pronounced. Things had been done with Lumley's consummate art; the
packed house was murmurous with excitement. She was a raving beauty,
said report--and then, those intoxicating Spanish dances! Taglioni,
Cerito, Fanny Elssler, all were to be eclipsed.

Ranelagh's glasses were steadily leveled on the stage from the
moment her entrance was imminent. She came on. There was a murmur of
admiration--but Ranelagh made no sign. And then she began to dance.
A sense of disappointment, perhaps? But she was very lovely, very
graceful, "like a flower swept by the wind, she floated round the
stage"--not a dancer, but, by George, a beauty! And still Ranelagh made
no sign.

Yet, no. What low, sibilant sound is that? And then what confused, angry
words from the tribunal? He turns to his friends, his eyes ablaze with
anger, opera-glass in hand. And now again the terrible "Hiss-s-s!" taken
up by the other box, and the words repeated loudly and more angrily
even than before--the historic words which sealed Lola's doom at Her
Majesty's Theater: "WHY, IT'S BETTY JAMES!"

She was, indeed, Betty James, and London would not accept her as Lola
Montez. She left England and appeared upon the Continent as a beautiful
virago, making a sensation--as the French would say, a succes de
scandale--by boxing the ears of people who offended her, and even on one
occasion horsewhipping a policeman who was in attendance on the King of
Prussia. In Paris she tried once more to be a dancer, but Paris would
not have her. She betook herself to Dresden and Warsaw, where she
sought to attract attention by her eccentricities, making mouths at the
spectators, flinging her garters in their faces, and one time removing
her skirts and still more necessary garments, whereupon her manager
broke off his engagement with her.

An English writer who heard a great deal of her and who saw her often
about this time writes that there was nothing wonderful about her except
"her beauty and her impudence." She had no talent nor any of the graces
which make women attractive; yet many men of talent raved about her. The
clever young journalist, Dujarrier, who assisted Emile Girardin, was her
lover in Paris. He was killed in a duel and left Lola twenty thousand
francs and some securities, so that she no longer had to sing in the
streets as she did in Warsaw.

She now betook herself to Munich, the capital of Bavaria. That country
was then governed by Ludwig I., a king as eccentric as Lola herself. He
was a curious compound of kindliness, ideality, and peculiar ways. For
instance, he would never use a carriage even on state occasions. He
prowled around the streets, knocking off the hats of those whom he
chanced to meet. Like his unfortunate descendant, Ludwig II., he
wrote poetry, and he had a picture-gallery devoted to portraits of the
beautiful women whom he had met.

He dressed like an English fox-hunter, with a most extraordinary hat,
and what was odd and peculiar in others pleased him because he was odd
and peculiar himself. Therefore when Lola made her first appearance at
the Court Theater he was enchanted with her. He summoned her at once to
the palace, and within five days he presented her to the court, saying
as he did so:

"Meine Herren, I present you to my best friend."

In less than a month this curious monarch had given Lola the title of
Countess of Landsfeld. A handsome house was built for her, and a pension
of twenty thousand florins was granted her. This was in 1847. With the
people of Munich she was unpopular. They did not mind the eccentricities
of the king, since these amused them and did the country no perceptible
harm; but they were enraged by this beautiful woman, who had no softness
such as a woman ought to have. Her swearing, her readiness to box the
ears of every one whom she disliked, the huge bulldog which accompanied
her everywhere--all these things were beyond endurance.

She was discourteous to the queen, besides meddling with the politics of
the kingdom. Either of these things would have been sufficient to
make her hated. Together, they were more than the city of Munich could
endure. Finally the countess tried to establish a new corps in the
university. This was the last touch of all. A student who ventured to
wear her colors was beaten and arrested. Lola came to his aid with all
her wonted boldness; but the city was in commotion.

Daggers were drawn; Lola was hustled and insulted. The foolish king
rushed out to protect her; and on his arm she was led in safety to the
palace. As she entered the gates she turned and fired a pistol into the
mob. No one was hurt, but a great rage took possession of the people.
The king issued a decree closing the university for a year. By this
time, however, Munich was in possession of a mob, and the Bavarians
demanded that she should leave the country.

Ludwig faced the chamber of peers, where the demand of the populace was
placed before him.

"I would rather lose my crown!" he replied.

The lords of Bavaria regarded him with grim silence; and in their eyes
he read the determination of his people. On the following day a royal
decree revoked Lola's rights as a subject of Bavaria, and still another
decree ordered her to be expelled. The mob yelled with joy and burned
her house. Poor Ludwig watched the tumult by the light of the leaping
flames.

He was still in love with her and tried to keep her in the kingdom; but
the result was that Ludwig himself was forced to abdicate. He had given
his throne for the light love of this beautiful but half-crazy woman.
She would have no more to do with him; and as for him, he had to give
place to his son Maximilian. Ludwig had lost a kingdom merely because
this strange, outrageous creature had piqued him and made him think that
she was unique among women.

The rest of her career was adventurous. In England she contracted a
bigamous marriage with a youthful officer, and within two weeks they
fled to Spain for safety from the law. Her husband was drowned, and she
made still another marriage. She visited Australia, and at Melbourne she
had a fight with a strapping woman, who clawed her face until Lola
fell fainting to the ground. It is a squalid record of horse-whippings,
face-scratchings--in short, a rowdy life.

Her end was like that of Becky Sharp. In America she delivered lectures
which were written for her by a clergyman and which dealt with the art
of beauty. She had a temporary success; but soon she became quite
poor, and took to piety, professing to be a sort of piteous, penitent
Magdalen. In this role she made effective use of her beautiful dark
hair, her pallor, and her wonderful eyes. But the violence of her
disposition had wrecked her physically; and she died of paralysis in
Astoria, on Long Island, in 1861. Upon her grave in Greenwood Cemetery,
Brooklyn, there is a tablet to her memory, bearing the inscription:
"Mrs. Eliza Gilbert, born 1818, died 1861."

What can one say of a woman such as this? She had no morals, and her
manners were outrageous. The love she felt was the love of a she-wolf.
Fourteen biographies of her have been written, besides her own
autobiography, which was called The Story of a Penitent, and which tells
less about her than any of the other books. Her beauty was undeniable.
Her courage was the blended courage of the Celt, the Spaniard, and the
Moor. Yet all that one can say of her was said by the elder Dumas when
he declared that she was born to be the evil genius of every one who
cared for her. Her greatest fame comes from the fact that in less than
three years she overturned a kingdom and lost a king his throne.





LEON GAMBETTA AND LEONIE LEON


The present French Republic has endured for over forty years. Within
that time it has produced just one man of extraordinary power and parts.
This was Leon Gambetta. Other men as remarkable as he were conspicuous
in French political life during the first few years of the republic;
but they belonged to an earlier generation, while Gambetta leaped
into prominence only when the empire fell, crashing down in ruin and
disaster.

It is still too early to form an accurate estimate of him as a
statesman. His friends praise him extravagantly. His enemies still
revile him bitterly. The period of his political career lasted for
little more than a decade, yet in that time it may be said that he
lived almost a life of fifty years. Only a short time ago did the French
government cause his body to be placed within the great Pantheon, which
contains memorials of the heroes and heroines of France. But, though
we may not fairly judge of his political motives, we can readily
reconstruct a picture of him as a man, and in doing so recall his
one romance, which many will remember after they have forgotten his
oratorical triumphs and his statecraft.

Leon Gambetta was the true type of the southern Frenchman--what his
countrymen call a meridional. The Frenchman of the south is different
from the Frenchman of the north, for the latter has in his veins a
touch of the viking blood, so that he is very apt to be fair-haired and
blue-eyed, temperate in speech, and self-controlled. He is different,
again, from the Frenchman of central France, who is almost purely
Celtic. The meridional has a marked vein of the Italian in him, derived
from the conquerors of ancient Gaul. He is impulsive, ardent, fiery in
speech, hot-tempered, and vivacious to an extraordinary degree.

Gambetta, who was born at Cahors, was French only on his mother's side,
since his father was of Italian birth. It is said also that somewhere in
his ancestry there was a touch of the Oriental. At any rate, he was one
of the most southern of the sons of southern France, and he showed
the precocious maturity which belongs to a certain type of Italian.
At twenty-one he had already been admitted to the French bar, and
had drifted to Paris, where his audacity, his pushing nature, and his
red-hot un-restraint of speech gave him a certain notoriety from the
very first.

It was toward the end of the reign of Napoleon III. that Gambetta saw
his opportunity. The emperor, weakened by disease and yielding to a sort
of feeble idealism, gave to France a greater freedom of speech than it
had enjoyed while he was more virile. This relaxation of control
merely gave to his opponents more courage to attack him and his empire.
Demagogues harangued the crowds in words which would once have led to
their imprisonment. In the National Assembly the opposition did all
within its power to hamper and defeat the policy of the government.

In short, republicanism began to rise in an ominous and threatening way;
and at the head of republicanism in Paris stood forth Gambetta, with his
impassioned eloquence, his stinging phrases, and his youthful boldness.
He became the idol of that part of Paris known as Belleville, where
artisans and laborers united with the rabble of the streets in hating
the empire and in crying out for a republic.

Gambetta was precisely the man to voice the feelings of these people.
Whatever polish he acquired in after years was then quite lacking; and
the crudity of his manners actually helped him with the men whom he
harangued. A recent book by M. Francis Laur, an ardent admirer of
Gambetta, gives a picture of the man which may be nearly true of him in
his later life, but which is certainly too flattering when applied to
Gambetta in 1868, at the age of thirty.

How do we see Gambetta as he was at thirty? A man of powerful frame and
of intense vitality, with thick, clustering hair, which he shook as
a lion shakes its mane; olive-skinned, with eyes that darted fire, a
resonant, sonorous voice, and a personal magnetism which was instantly
felt by all who met him or who heard him speak. His manners were not
refined. He was fond of oil and garlic. His gestures were often more
frantic than impressive, so that his enemies called him "the furious
fool." He had a trick of spitting while he spoke. He was by no means
the sort of man whose habits had been formed in drawing-rooms or among
people of good breeding. Yet his oratory was, of its kind, superb.

In 1869 Gambetta was elected by the Red Republicans to the Corps
Legislatif. From the very first his vehemence and fire gained him a
ready hearing. The chamber itself was arranged like a great theater, the
members occupying the floor and the public the galleries. Each orator
in addressing the house mounted a sort of rostrum and from it faced the
whole assemblage, not noticing, as with us, the presiding officer
at all. The very nature of this arrangement stimulated parliamentary
speaking into eloquence and flamboyant oratory.

After Gambetta had spoken a few times he noticed in the gallery a tall,
graceful woman, dressed in some neutral color and wearing long black
gloves, which accentuated the beauty of her hands and arms. No one in
the whole assembly paid such close attention to the orator as did this
woman, whom he had never seen before and who appeared to be entirely
alone.

When it came to him to speak on another day he saw sitting in the
same place the same stately and yet lithe and sinuous figure. This was
repeated again and again, until at last whenever he came to a peculiarly
fervid burst of oratory he turned to this woman's face and saw it
lighted up by the same enthusiasm which was stirring him.

Finally, in the early part of 1870, there came a day when Gambetta
surpassed himself in eloquence. His theme was the grandeur of republican
government. Never in his life had he spoken so boldly as then, or with
such fervor. The ministers of the emperor shrank back in dismay as this
big-voiced, strong-limbed man hurled forth sentence after sentence like
successive peals of irresistible artillery.

As Gambetta rolled forth his sentences, superb in their rhetoric and all
ablaze with that sort of intense feeling which masters an orator in the
moment of his triumph, the face of the lady in the gallery responded to
him with wonderful appreciation. She was no longer calm, unmoved, and
almost severe. She flushed, and her eyes as they met his seemed to
sparkle with living fire. When he finished and descended from the
rostrum he looked at her, and their eyes cried out as significantly as
if the two had spoken to each other.

Then Gambetta did what a person of finer breeding would not have done.
He hastily scribbled a note, sealed it, and called to his side one of
the official pages. In the presence of the great assemblage, where he
was for the moment the center of attention, he pointed to the lady in
the gallery and ordered the page to take the note to her.

One may excuse this only on the ground that he was completely carried
away by his emotion, so that to him there was no one present save this
enigmatically fascinating woman and himself. But the lady on her side
was wiser; or perhaps a slight delay gave her time to recover her
discretion. When Gambetta's note was brought to her she took it quietly
and tore it into little pieces without reading it; and then, rising, she
glided through the crowd and disappeared.

Gambetta in his excitement had acted as if she were a mere adventuress.
With perfect dignity she had shown him that she was a woman who retained
her self-respect.

Immediately upon the heels of this curious incident came the outbreak of
the war with Germany. In the war the empire was shattered at Sedan. The
republic was proclaimed in Paris. The French capital was besieged by
a vast German army. Gambetta was made minister of the interior, and
remained for a while in Paris even after it had been blockaded. But his
fiery spirit chafed under such conditions. He longed to go forth into
the south of France and arouse his countrymen with a cry to arms against
the invaders.

Escaping in a balloon, he safely reached the city of Tours; and there he
established what was practically a dictatorship. He flung himself with
tremendous energy into the task of organizing armies, of equipping them,
and of directing their movements for the relief of Paris. He did, in
fact, accomplish wonders. He kept the spirit of the nation still
alive. Three new armies were launched against the Germans. Gambetta was
everywhere and took part in everything that was done. His inexperience
in military affairs, coupled with his impatience of advice, led him
to make serious mistakes. Nevertheless, one of his armies practically
defeated the Germans at Orleans; and could he have had his own way, even
the fall of Paris would not have ended the war.

"Never," said Gambetta, "shall I consent to peace so long as France
still has two hundred thousand men under arms and more than a thousand
cannon to direct against the enemy!"

But he was overruled by other and less fiery statesmen. Peace was made,
and Gambetta retired for a moment into private life. If he had not
succeeded in expelling the German hosts he had, at any rate, made
Bismarck hate him, and he had saved the honor of France.

It was while the National Assembly at Versailles was debating the terms
of peace with Germany that Gambetta once more delivered a noble and
patriotic speech. As he concluded he felt a strange magnetic attraction;
and, sweeping the audience with a glance, he saw before him, not very
far away, the same woman with the long black gloves, having about
her still an air of mystery, but again meeting his eyes with her own,
suffused with feeling.

Gambetta hurried to an anteroom and hastily scribbled the following
note:

At last I see you once more. Is it really you?

The scrawl was taken to her by a discreet official, and this time she
received the letter, pressed it to her heart, and then slipped it into
the bodice of her gown. But this time, as before, she left without
making a reply.

It was an encouragement, yet it gave no opening to Gambetta--for she
returned to the National Assembly no more. But now his heart was full of
hope, for he was convinced with a very deep conviction that somewhere,
soon, and in some way he would meet this woman, who had become to him
one of the intense realities of his life. He did not know her name. They
had never exchanged a word. Yet he was sure that time would bring them
close together.

His intuition was unerring. What we call chance often seems to know
what it is doing. Within a year after the occurrence that has just been
narrated an old friend of Gambetta's met with an accident which confined
him to his house. The statesman strolled to his friend's residence. The
accident was a trifling one, and the mistress of the house was holding
a sort of informal reception, answering questions that were asked her by
the numerous acquaintances who called.

As Gambetta was speaking, of a sudden he saw before him, at the
extremity of the room, the lady of his dreams, the sphinx of his waking
hours, the woman who four years earlier had torn up the note which he
addressed to her, but who more recently had kept his written words. Both
of them were deeply agitated, yet both of them carried off the situation
without betraying themselves to others, Gambetta approached, and they
exchanged a few casual commonplaces. But now, close together, eye and
voice spoke of what was in their hearts.

Presently the lady took her leave. Gambetta followed closely. In the
street he turned to her and said in pleading tones:

"Why did you destroy my letter? You knew I loved you, and yet all these
years you have kept away from me in silence."

Then the girl--for she was little more than a girl--hesitated for a
moment. As he looked upon her face he saw that her eyes were full of
tears. At last she spoke with emotion:

"You cannot love me, for I am unworthy of you. Do not urge me. Do not
make promises. Let us say good-by. At least I must first tell you of my
story, for I am one of those women whom no one ever marries."

Gambetta brushed aside her pleadings. He begged that he might see her
soon. Little by little she consented; but she would not see him at her
house. She knew that his enemies were many and that everything he did
would be used against him. In the end she agreed to meet him in the park
at Versailles, near the Petit Trianon, at eight o'clock in the morning.

When she had made this promise he left her. Already a new inspiration
had come to him, and he felt that with this woman by his side he could
accomplish anything.

At the appointed hour, in the silence of the park and amid the sunshine
of the beautiful morning, the two met once again. Gambetta seized her
hands with eagerness and cried out in an exultant tone:

"At last! At last! At last!"

But the woman's eyes were heavy with sorrow, and upon her face there was
a settled melancholy. She trembled at his touch and almost shrank from
him. Here was seen the impetuosity of the meridional. He had first
spoken to this woman only two days before. He knew nothing of her
station, of her surroundings, of her character. He did not even know her
name. Yet one thing he knew absolutely--that she was made for him and
that he must have her for his own. He spoke at once of marriage; but at
this she drew away from him still farther.

"No," she said. "I told you that you must not speak to me until you have
heard my story."

He led her to a great stone bench near by; and, passing his arm about
her waist, he drew her head down to his shoulder as he said:

"Well, tell me. I will listen."

Then this girl of twenty-four, with perfect frankness, because she was
absolutely loyal, told him why she felt that they must never see each
other any more-much less marry and be happy. She was the daughter of a
colonel in the French army. The sudden death of her father had left her
penniless and alone. Coming to Paris at the age of eighteen, she had
given lessons in the household of a high officer of the empire. This man
had been attracted by her beauty, and had seduced her.

Later she had secured the means of living modestly, realizing more
deeply each month how dreadful had been her fate and how she had been
cut off from the lot of other girls. She felt that her life must be a
perpetual penance for what had befallen her through her ignorance and
inexperience. She told Gambetta that her name was Leonie Leon. As is the
custom of Frenchwomen who live alone, she styled herself madame. It is
doubtful whether the name by which she passed was that which had been
given to her at baptism; but, if so, her true name has never been
disclosed.

When she had told the whole of her sad story to Gambetta he made nothing
of it. She said to him again:

"You cannot love me. I should only dim your fame. You can have nothing
in common with a dishonored, ruined girl. That is what I came here to
explain to you. Let us part, and let us for all time forget each other."

But Gambetta took no heed of what she said. Now that he had found
her, he would not consent to lose her. He seized her slender hands and
covered them with kisses. Again he urged that she should marry him.

Her answer was a curious one. She was a devoted Catholic and would not
regard any marriage as valid save a religious marriage. On the other
hand, Gambetta, though not absolutely irreligious, was leading the
opposition to the Catholic party in France. The Church to him was not so
much a religious body as a political one, and to it he was unalterably
opposed. Personally, he would have no objections to being married by a
priest; but as a leader of the anti-clerical party he felt that he must
not recognize the Church's claim in any way. A religious marriage would
destroy his influence with his followers and might even imperil the
future of the republic.

They pleaded long and earnestly both then and afterward. He urged a
civil marriage, but she declared that only a marriage according to the
rites of the Church could ever purify her past and give her back her
self-respect. In this she was absolutely stubborn, yet she did not urge
upon Gambetta that he should destroy his influence by marrying her in
church.

Through all this interplay of argument and pleading and emotion the
two grew every moment more hopelessly in love. Then the woman, with a
woman's curious subtlety and indirectness, reached a somewhat singular
conclusion. She would hear nothing of a civil marriage, because a civil
marriage was no marriage in the eyes of Pope and prelate. On the other
hand, she did not wish Gambetta to mar his political career by going
through a religious ceremony. She had heard from a priest that the
Church recognized two forms of betrothal. The usual one looked to a
marriage in the future and gave no marriage privileges until after the
formal ceremony. But there was another kind of betrothal known to the
theologians as sponsalia de praesente. According to this, if there were
an actual betrothal, the pair might have the privileges and rights of
marriage immediately, if only they sincerely meant to be married in the
future.

The eager mind of Leonie Leon caught at this bit of ecclesiastical law
and used it with great ingenuity.

"Let us," she said, "be formally betrothed by the interchange of a
ring, and let us promise each other to marry in the future. After such
a betrothal as this we shall be the same as married; for we shall be
acting according to the laws of the Church."

Gambetta gladly gave his promise. A betrothal ring was purchased; and
then, her conscience being appeased, she gave herself completely to her
lover. Gambetta was sincere. He said to her:

"If the time should ever come when I shall lose my political station,
when I am beaten in the struggle, when I am deserted and alone, will you
not then marry me when I ask you?"

And Leonie, with her arms about his neck, promised that she would. Yet
neither of them specified what sort of marriage this should be, nor did
it seem at the moment as if the question could arise.

For Gambetta was very powerful. He led his party to success in the
election of 1877. Again and again his triumphant oratory mastered the
National Assembly of France. In 1879 he was chosen to be president
of the Chamber of Deputies. He towered far above the president of the
republic--Jules Grevy, that hard-headed, close-fisted old peasant--and
his star had reached its zenith.

All this time he and Leonie Leon maintained their intimacy, though it
was carefully concealed save from a very few. She lived in a plain but
pretty house on the Avenue Perrichont in the quiet quarter of Auteuil;
but Gambetta never came there. Where and when they met was a secret
guarded very carefully by the few who were his close associates. But
meet they did continually, and their affection grew stronger every year.
Leonie thrilled at the victories of the man she loved; and he found joy
in the hours that he spent with her.

Gambetta's need of rest was very great, for he worked at the highest
tension, like an engine which is using every pound of steam. Bismarck,
whose spies kept him well informed of everything that was happening in
Paris, and who had no liking for Gambetta, since the latter always spoke
of him as "the Ogre," once said to a Frenchman named Cheberry:

"He is the only one among you who thinks of revenge, and who is any sort
of a menace to Germany. But, fortunately, he won't last much longer. I
am not speaking thoughtlessly. I know from secret reports what sort of
a life your great man leads, and I know his habits. Why, his life is
a life of continual overwork. He rests neither night nor day. All
politicians who have led the same life have died young. To be able
to serve one's country for a long time a statesman must marry an ugly
woman, have children like the rest of the world, and a country place
or a house to one's self like any common peasant, where he can go and
rest."

The Iron Chancellor chuckled as he said this, and he was right. And yet
Gambetta's end came not so much through overwork as by an accident.

It may be that the ambition of Mme. Leon stimulated him beyond his
powers. However this may be, early in 1882, when he was defeated in
Parliament on a question which he considered vital, he immediately
resigned and turned his back on public life. His fickle friends soon
deserted him. His enemies jeered and hooted the mention of his name.

He had reached the time which with a sort of prophetic instinct he had
foreseen nearly ten years before. So he turned to the woman who had
been faithful and loving to him; and he turned to her with a feeling of
infinite peace.

"You promised me," he said, "that if ever I was defeated and alone you
would marry me. The time is now."

Then this man, who had exercised the powers of a dictator, who had
levied armies and shaken governments, and through whose hands there had
passed thousands of millions of francs, sought for a country home. He
found for sale a small estate which had once belonged to Balzac, and
which is known as Les Jardies. It was in wretched repair; yet the small
sum which it cost Gambetta--twelve thousand francs--was practically all
that he possessed. Worn and weary as he was, it seemed to him a haven of
delightful peace; for here he might live in the quiet country with the
still beautiful woman who was soon to become his wife.

It is not known what form of marriage they at last agreed upon. She may
have consented to a civil ceremony; or he, being now out of public life,
may have felt that he could be married by the Church. The day for their
wedding had been set, and Gambetta was already at Les Jardies. But there
came a rumor that he had been shot. Still further tidings bore the news
that he was dying. Paris, fond as it was of scandals, immediately spread
the tale that he had been shot by a jealous woman.

The truth is quite the contrary. Gambetta, in arranging his effects in
his new home, took it upon himself to clean a pair of dueling-pistols;
for every French politician of importance must fight duels, and Gambetta
had already done so. Unfortunately, one cartridge remained unnoticed in
the pistol which Gambetta cleaned. As he held the pistol-barrel against
the soft part of his hand the cartridge exploded, and the ball passed
through the base of the thumb with a rending, spluttering noise.

The wound was not in itself serious, but now the prophecy of Bismarck
was fulfilled. Gambetta had exhausted his vitality; a fever set in, and
before long he died of internal ulceration.

This was the end of a great career and of a great romance of love.
Leonie Leon was half distraught at the death of the lover who was so
soon to be her husband. She wandered for hours in the forest until she
reached a convent, where she was received. Afterward she came to Paris
and hid herself away in a garret of the slums. All the light of her life
had gone out. She wished that she had died with him whose glory had been
her life. Friends of Gambetta, however, discovered her and cared for her
until her death, long afterward, in 1906.

She lived upon the memories of the past, of the swift love that had come
at first sight, but which had lasted unbrokenly; which had given her the
pride of conquest, and which had brought her lover both happiness and
inspiration and a refining touch which had smoothed away his roughness
and made him fit to stand in palaces with dignity and distinction.

As for him, he left a few lines which have been carefully preserved, and
which sum up his thought of her. They read:

To the light of my soul; to the star, of my life--Leonie Leon. For ever!
For ever!





LADY BLESSINGTON AND COUNT D'ORSAY


Often there has arisen some man who, either by his natural gifts or
by his impudence or by the combination of both, has made himself a
recognized leader in the English fashionable world. One of the first of
these men was Richard Nash, usually known as "Beau Nash," who flourished
in the eighteenth century. Nash was a man of doubtful origin; nor was
he attractive in his looks, for he was a huge, clumsy creature with
features that were both irregular and harsh. Nevertheless, for nearly
fifty years Beau Nash was an arbiter of fashion. Goldsmith, who wrote
his life, declared that his supremacy was due to his pleasing manners,
"his assiduity, flattery, fine clothes, and as much wit as the ladies
had whom he addressed." He converted the town of Bath from a rude little
hamlet into an English Newport, of which he was the social autocrat. He
actually drew up a set of written rules which some of the best-born and
best-bred people follow slavishly.

Even better known to us is George Bryan Brummel, commonly called "Beau
Brummel," who by his friendship with George IV.--then Prince Regent--was
an oracle at court on everything that related to dress and etiquette and
the proper mode of living. His memory has been kept alive most of all by
Richard Mansfield's famous impersonation of him. The play is based upon
the actual facts; for after Brummel had lost the royal favor he died an
insane pauper in the French town of Caen. He, too, had a distinguished
biographer, since Bulwer-Lytton's novel Pelham is really the narrative
of Brummel's curious career.

Long after Brummel, Lord Banelagh led the gilded youth of London, and
it was at this time that the notorious Lola Montez made her first
appearance in the British capital.

These three men--Nash, Brummel, and Ranelagh--had the advantage of
being Englishmen, and, therefore, of not incurring the old-time English
suspicion of foreigners. A much higher type of social arbiter was a
Frenchman who for twenty years during the early part of Queen Victoria's
reign gave law to the great world of fashion, besides exercising a
definite influence upon English art and literature.

This was Count Albert Guillaume d'Orsay, the son of one of Napoleon's
generals, and descended by a morganatic marriage from the King of
Wurttemburg. The old general, his father, was a man of high courage,
impressive appearance, and keen intellect, all of which qualities he
transmitted to his son. The young Count d'Orsay, when he came of age,
found the Napoleonic era ended and France governed by Louis XVIII. The
king gave Count d'Orsay a commission in the army in a regiment stationed
at Valence in the southeastern part of France. He had already visited
England and learned the English language, and he had made some
distinguished friends there, among whom were Lord Byron and Thomas
Moore.

On his return to France he began his garrison life at Valence, where he
showed some of the finer qualities of his character. It is not merely
that he was handsome and accomplished and that he had the gift of
winning the affections of those about him. Unlike Nash and Brummel,
he was a gentleman in every sense, and his courtesy was of the highest
kind. At the balls given by his regiment, although he was more courted
than any other officer, he always sought out the plainest girls and
showed them the most flattering attentions. No "wallflowers" were left
neglected when D'Orsay was present.

It is strange how completely human beings are in the hands of fate. Here
was a young French officer quartered in a provincial town in the valley
of the Rhone. Who would have supposed that he was destined to become
not only a Londoner, but a favorite at the British court, a model of
fashion, a dictator of etiquette, widely known for his accomplishments,
the patron of literary men and of distinguished artists? But all these
things were to come to pass by a mere accident of fortune.

During his firsts visit to London, which has already been mentioned,
Count d'Orsay was invited once or twice to receptions given by the Earl
and Countess of Blessington, where he was well received, though this was
only an incident of his English sojourn. Before the story proceeds
any further it is necessary to give an account of the Earl and of Lady
Blessington, since both of their careers had been, to say the least,
unusual.

Lord Blessington was an Irish peer for whom an ancient title had been
revived. He was remotely descended from the Stuarts of Scotland, and
therefore had royal blood to boast of. He had been well educated, and in
many ways was a man of pleasing manner. On the other hand, he had early
inherited a very large property which yielded him an income of about
thirty thousand pounds a year. He had estates in Ireland, and he owned
nearly the whole of a fashionable street in London, with the buildings
erected on it.

This fortune and the absence of any one who could control him had made
him wilful and extravagant and had wrought in him a curious love of
personal display. Even as a child he would clamor to be dressed in the
most gorgeous uniforms; and when he got possession of his property his
love of display became almost a monomania. He built a theater as an
adjunct to his country house in Ireland and imported players from London
and elsewhere to act in it. He loved to mingle with the mummers, to try
on their various costumes, and to parade up and down, now as an oriental
prince and now as a Roman emperor.

In London he hung about the green-rooms, and was a well-known figure
wherever actors or actresses were collected. Such was his love of the
stage that he sought to marry into the profession and set his heart on a
girl named Mary Campbell Browne, who was very beautiful to look at, but
who was not conspicuous either for her mind or for her morals. When Lord
Blessington proposed marriage to her she was obliged to tell him that
she already had one husband still alive, but she was perfectly willing
to live with him and dispense with the marriage ceremony. So for several
years she did live with him and bore him two children.

It speaks well for the earl that when the inconvenient husband died a
marriage at once took place and Mrs. Browne became a countess. Then,
after other children had been born, the lady died, leaving the earl a
widower at about the age of forty. The only legitimate son born of this
marriage followed his mother to the grave; and so for the third time the
earldom of Blessington seemed likely to become extinct. The death of
his wife, however, gave the earl a special opportunity to display his
extravagant tastes. He spent more than four thousand pounds on the
funeral ceremonies, importing from France a huge black velvet catafalque
which had shortly before been used at the public funeral of Napoleon's
marshal, Duroc, while the house blazed with enormous wax tapers and
glittered with cloth of gold.

Lord Blessington soon plunged again into the busy life of London. Having
now no heir, there was no restraint on his expenditures, and he borrowed
large sums of money in order to buy additional estates and houses and to
experience the exquisite joy of spending lavishly. At this time he had
his lands in Ireland, a town house in St. James's Square, another in
Seymour Place, and still another which was afterward to become famous as
Gore House, in Kensington.

Some years before he had met in Ireland a lady called Mrs. Maurice
Farmer; and it happened that she now came to London. The earlier story
of her still young life must here be told, because her name afterward
became famous, and because the tale illustrates wonderfully well the
raw, crude, lawless period of the Regency, when England was fighting
her long war with Napoleon, when the Prince Regent was imitating all
the vices of the old French kings, when prize-fighting, deep drinking,
dueling, and dicing were practised without restraint in all the large
cities and towns of the United Kingdom. It was, as Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle has said, "an age of folly and of heroism"; for, while it produced
some of the greatest black-guards known to history, it produced also
such men as Wellington and Nelson, the two Pitts, Sheridan, Byron,
Shelley, and Sir Walter Scott.

Mrs. Maurice Farmer was the daughter of a small Irish landowner named
Robert Power--himself the incarnation of all the vices of the time.
There was little law in Ireland, not even that which comes from public
opinion; and Robert Power rode hard to hounds, gambled recklessly,
and assembled in his house all sorts of reprobates, with whom he held
frightful orgies that lasted from sunset until dawn. His wife and his
young daughters viewed him with terror, and the life they led was a
perpetual nightmare because of the bestial carousings in which their
father engaged, wasting his money and mortgaging his estates until the
end of his wild career was in plain sight.

There happened to be stationed at Clonmel a regiment of infantry in
which there served a captain named Maurice St. Leger Farmer. He was a
man of some means, but eccentric to a degree. His temper was so utterly
uncontrolled that even his fellow officers could scarcely live with
him, and he was given to strange caprices. It happened that at a ball in
Clonmel he met the young daughter of Robert Power, then a mere child of
fourteen years. Captain Farmer was seized with an infatuation for the
girl, and he went almost at once to her father, asking for her hand in
marriage and proposing to settle a sum of money upon her if she married
him.

The hard-riding squireen jumped at the offer. His own estate was being
stripped bare. Here was a chance to provide for one of his daughters,
or, rather, to get rid of her, and he agreed that she should be married
out of hand. Going home, he roughly informed the girl that she was to
be the wife of Captain Farmer. He so bullied his wife that she was
compelled to join him in this command.

What was poor little Margaret Power to do? She was only a child. She
knew nothing of the world. She was accustomed to obey her father as she
would have obeyed some evil genius who had her in his power. There were
tears and lamentations. She was frightened half to death; yet for her
there was no help. Therefore, while not yet fifteen her marriage took
place, and she was the unhappy slave of a half-crazy tyrant. She had
then no beauty whatsoever. She was wholly undeveloped--thin and pale,
and with rough hair that fell over her frightened eyes; yet Farmer
wanted her, and he settled his money on her, just as he would have spent
the same amount to gratify any other sudden whim.

The life she led with him for a few months showed him to be more of
a devil than a man. He took a peculiar delight in terrifying her, in
subjecting her to every sort of outrage; nor did he refrain even from
beating her with his fists. The girl could stand a great deal, but this
was too much. She returned to her father's house, where she was received
with the bitterest reproaches, but where, at least, she was safe from
harm, since her possession of a dowry made her a person of some small
importance.

Not long afterward Captain Farmer fell into a dispute with his
colonel, Lord Caledon, and in the course of it he drew his sword on
his commanding officer. The court-martial which was convened to try him
would probably have had him shot were it not for the very general belief
that he was insane. So he was simply cashiered and obliged to leave the
service and betake himself elsewhere. Thus the girl whom, he had married
was quite free--free to leave her wretched home and even to leave
Ireland.

She did leave Ireland and establish herself in London, where she had
some acquaintances, among them the Earl of Blessington. As already said,
he had met her in Ireland while she was living with her husband; and now
from time to time he saw her in a friendly way. After the death of his
wife he became infatuated with Margaret Farmer. She was a good deal
alone, and his attentions gave her entertainment. Her past experience
led her to have no real belief in love. She had become, however, in a
small way interested in literature and art, with an eager ambition to be
known as a writer. As it happened, Captain Farmer, whose name she bore,
had died some months before Lord Blessington had decided to make a new
marriage. The earl proposed to Margaret Farmer, and the two were married
by special license.

The Countess of Blessington--to give the lady her new title--was now
twenty-eight years of age and had developed into a woman of great
beauty. She was noted for the peculiarly vivacious and radiant
expression which was always on her face. She had a kind of vivid
loveliness accompanied by grace, simplicity, and a form of exquisite
proportions. The ugly duckling had become a swan, for now there was no
trace of her former plainness to be seen.

Not yet in her life had love come to her. Her first husband had been
thrust upon her and had treated her outrageously. Her second husband was
much older than she; and, though she was not without a certain kindly
feeling for one who had been kind to her, she married him, first of all,
for his title and position.

Having been reared in poverty, she had no conception of the value of
money; and, though the earl was remarkably extravagant, the new countess
was even more so. One after another their London houses were opened
and decorated with the utmost lavishness. They gave innumerable
entertainments, not only to the nobility and to men of rank,
but--because this was Lady Blessington's peculiar fad--to artists and
actors and writers of all degrees. The American, N. P. Willis, in his
Pencilings by the Way, has given an interesting sketch of the countess
and her surroundings, while the younger Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) has
depicted D'Orsay as Count Mirabel in Henrietta Temple. Willis says:

In a long library, lined alternately with splendidly bound books and
mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room opening upon
Hyde Park, I found Lady Blessington alone. The picture, to my eye, as
the door opened, was a very lovely one--a woman of remarkable beauty,
half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent
lamp suspended from the center of the arched ceiling. Sofas, couches,
ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through
the room; enameled tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in
every corner, and a delicate white hand in relief on the back of a book,
to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of diamond rings.

All this "crowded sumptuousness" was due to the taste of Lady
Blessington. Amid it she received royal dukes, statesmen such as
Palmerston, Canning, Castlereagh, Russell, and Brougham, actors such
as Kemble and Matthews, artists such as Lawrence and Wilkie, and men of
letters such as Moore, Bulwer-Lytton, and the two Disraelis. To maintain
this sort of life Lord Blessington raised large amounts of money,
totaling about half a million pounds sterling, by mortgaging his
different estates and giving his promissory notes to money-lenders. Of
course, he did not spend this vast sum immediately. He might have lived
in comparative luxury upon his income; but he was a restless, eager,
improvident nobleman, and his extravagances were prompted by the urgings
of his wife.

In all this display, which Lady Blessington both stimulated and shared,
there is to be found a psychological basis. She was now verging upon the
thirties--a time which is a very critical period in a woman's emotional
life, if she has not already given herself over to love and been loved
in return. During Lady Blessington's earlier years she had suffered in
many ways, and it is probable that no thought of love had entered her
mind. She was only too glad if she could escape from the harshness
of her father and the cruelty of her first husband. Then came her
development into a beautiful woman, content for the time to be
languorously stagnant and to enjoy the rest and peace which had come to
her.

When she married Lord Blessington her love life had not yet commenced;
and, in fact, there could be no love life in such a marriage--a marriage
with a man much older than herself, scatter-brained, showy, and having
no intellectual gifts. So for a time she sought satisfaction in social
triumphs, in capturing political and literary lions in order to exhibit
them in her salon, and in spending money right and left with a lavish
hand. But, after all, in a woman of her temperament none of these things
could satisfy her inner longings. Beautiful, full of Celtic vivacity,
imaginative and eager, such a nature as hers would in the end be starved
unless her heart should be deeply touched and unless all her pent-up
emotion could give itself up entirely in the great surrender.

After a few years of London she grew restless and dissatisfied. Her
surroundings wearied her. There was a call within her for something more
than she had yet experienced. The earl, her husband, was by nature no
less restless; and so, without knowing the reason--which, indeed, she
herself did not understand--he readily assented to a journey on the
Continent.

As they traveled southward they reached at length the town of Valence,
where Count d'Orsay was still quartered with his regiment. A vague,
indefinable feeling of attraction swept over this woman, who was now a
woman of the world and yet quite inexperienced in affairs relating to
the heart. The mere sound of the French officer's voice, the mere sight
of his face, the mere knowledge of his presence, stirred her as nothing
had ever stirred her until that time. Yet neither he nor she appears to
have been conscious at once of the secret of their liking. It was enough
that they were soothed and satisfied with each other's company.

Oddly enough, the Earl of Blessington became as devoted to D'Orsay as
did his wife. The two urged the count to secure a leave of absence and
to accompany them to Italy. This he was easily persuaded to do; and the
three passed weeks and months of a languorous and alluring intercourse
among the lakes and the seductive influence of romantic Italy. Just
what passed between Count d'Orsay and Margaret Blessington at this time
cannot be known, for the secret of it has perished with them; but it
is certain that before very long they came to know that each was
indispensable to the other.

The situation was complicated by the Earl of Blessington, who, entirely
unsuspicious, proposed that the Count should marry Lady Harriet
Gardiner, his eldest legitimate daughter by his first wife. He pressed
the match upon the embarrassed D'Orsay, and offered to settle the sum
of forty thousand pounds upon the bride. The girl was less than fifteen
years of age. She had no gifts either of beauty or of intelligence; and,
in addition, D'Orsay was now deeply in love with her stepmother.

On the other hand, his position with the Blessingtons was daily growing
more difficult. People had begun to talk of the almost open relations
between Count d'Orsay and Lady Blessington. Lord Byron, in a letter
written to the countess, spoke to her openly and in a playful way
of "YOUR D'Orsay." The manners and morals of the time were decidedly
irregular; yet sooner or later the earl was sure to gain some hint of
what every one was saying. Therefore, much against his real desire, yet
in order to shelter his relations with Lady Blessington, D'Orsay agreed
to the marriage with Lady Harriet, who was only fifteen years of age.

This made the intimacy between D'Orsay and the Blessingtons appear to be
not unusual; but, as a matter of fact, the marriage was no marriage.
The unattractive girl who had become a bride merely to hide the
indiscretions of her stepmother was left entirely to herself; while the
whole family, returning to London, made their home together in Seymour
Place.

Could D'Orsay have foreseen the future he would never have done what
must always seem an act so utterly unworthy of him. For within two years
Lord Blessington fell ill and died. Had not D'Orsay been married he
would now have been free to marry Lady Blessington. As it was, he was
bound fast to her stepdaughter; and since at that time there was no
divorce court in England, and since he had no reason for seeking
a divorce, he was obliged to live on through many years in a most
ambiguous situation. He did, however, separate himself from his childish
bride; and, having done so, he openly took up his residence with Lady
Blessington at Gore House. By this time, however, the companionship of
the two had received a sort of general sanction, and in that easy-going
age most people took it as a matter of course.

The two were now quite free to live precisely as they would. Lady
Blessington became extravagantly happy, and Count d'Orsay was accepted
in London as an oracle of fashion. Every one was eager to visit Gore
House, and there they received all the notable men of the time. The
improvidence of Lady Blessington, however, was in no respect diminished.
She lived upon her jointure, recklessly spending capital as well as
interest, and gathering under her roof a rare museum of artistic
works, from jewels and curios up to magnificent pictures and beautiful
statuary.

D'Orsay had sufficient self-respect not to live upon the money that had
come to Lady Blessington from her husband. He was a skilful painter, and
he practised his art in a professional way. His portrait of the Duke of
Wellington was preferred by that famous soldier to any other that had
been made of him. The Iron Duke was, in fact, a frequent visitor at Gore
House, and he had a very high opinion of Count d'Orsay. Lady Blessington
herself engaged in writing novels of "high life," some of which were
very popular in their day. But of all that she wrote there remains only
one book which is of permanent value--her Conversations with Lord Byron,
a very valuable contribution to our knowledge of the brilliant poet.

But a nemesis was destined to overtake the pair. Money flowed through
Lady Blessington's hands like water, and she could never be brought to
understand that what she had might not last for ever. Finally, it
was all gone, yet her extravagance continued. Debts were heaped up
mountain-high. She signed notes of hand without even reading them. She
incurred obligations of every sort without a moment's hesitation.

For a long time her creditors held aloof, not believing that her
resources were in reality exhausted; but in the end there came a crash
as sudden as it was ruinous. As if moved by a single impulse, those to
whom she owed money took out judgments against her and descended
upon Gore House in a swarm. This was in the spring of 1849, when Lady
Blessington was in her sixtieth year and D'Orsay fifty-one.

It is a curious coincidence that her earliest novel had portrayed the
wreck of a great establishment such as her own. Of the scene in Gore
House Mr. Madden, Lady Blessington's literary biographer, has written:

Numerous creditors, bill-discounters, money-lenders, jewelers,
lace-venders, tax-collectors, gas-company agents, all persons having
claims to urge pressed them at this period simultaneously. An execution
for a debt of four thousand pounds was at length put in by a house
largely engaged in the silk, lace, India-shawl, and fancy-jewelry
business.

This sum of four thousand pounds was only a nominal claim, but it opened
the flood-gates for all of Lady Blessington's creditors. Mr. Madden
writes still further:

On the 10th of May, 1849, I visited Gore House for the last time. The
auction was going on. There was a large assemblage of people of fashion.
Every room was thronged; the well-known library-salon, in which the
conversaziones took place, was crowded, but not with guests. The
arm-chair in which the lady of the mansion was wont to sit was occupied
by a stout, coarse gentleman of the Jewish persuasion, busily engaged
in examining a marble hand extended on a book, the fingers of which
were modeled from a cast of those of the absent mistress of the
establishment. People, as they passed through the room, poked the
furniture, pulled about the precious objects of art and ornaments of
various kinds that lay on the table; and some made jests and ribald
jokes on the scene they witnessed.

At this compulsory sale things went for less than half their value.
Pictures by Lawrence and Landseer, a library consisting of thousands
of volumes, vases of exquisite workmanship, chandeliers of ormolu, and
precious porcelains--all were knocked down relentlessly at farcical
prices. Lady Blessington reserved nothing for herself. She knew that
the hour had struck, and very soon she was on her way to Paris, whither
Count d'Orsay had already gone, having been threatened with arrest by a
boot-maker to whom he owed five hundred pounds.

D'Orsay very naturally went to Paris, for, like his father, he had
always been an ardent Bonapartist, and now Prince Louis Bonaparte had
been chosen president of the Second French Republic. During the prince's
long period of exile he had been the guest of Count d'Orsay, who had
helped him both with money and with influence. D'Orsay now expected
some return for his former generosity. It came, but it came too late. In
1852, shortly after Prince Louis assumed the title of emperor, the count
was appointed director of fine arts; but when the news was brought to
him he was already dying. Lady Blessington died soon after coming to
Paris, before the end of the year 1849.

Comment upon this tangled story is scarcely needed. Yet one may quote
some sayings from a sort of diary which Lady Blessington called her
"Night Book." They seem to show that her supreme happiness lasted only
for a little while, and that deep down in her heart she had condemned
herself.

A woman's head is always influenced by her heart; but a man's heart is
always influenced by his head.

The separation of friends by death is less terrible than the divorce of
two hearts that have loved, but have ceased to sympathize, while memory
still recalls what they once were to each other.

People are seldom tired of the world until the world is tired of them.

A woman should not paint sentiment until she has ceased to inspire it.

It is less difficult for a woman to obtain celebrity by her genius than
to be pardoned for it.

Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our
buried hopes.





BYRON AND THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI


In 1812, when he was in his twenty-fourth year, Lord Byron was more
talked of than any other man in London. He was in the first flush of his
brilliant career, having published the early cantos of "Childe Harold."
Moreover, he was a peer of the realm, handsome, ardent, and possessing a
personal fascination which few men and still fewer women could resist.

Byron's childhood had been one to excite in him strong feelings of
revolt, and he had inherited a profligate and passionate nature. His
father was a gambler and a spendthrift. His mother was eccentric to a
degree. Byron himself, throughout his boyish years, had been morbidly
sensitive because of a physical deformity--a lame, misshapen foot.
This and the strange treatment which his mother accorded him left him
headstrong, wilful, almost from the first an enemy to whatever was
established and conventional.

As a boy, he was remarkable for the sentimental attachments which he
formed. At eight years of age he was violently in love with a young girl
named Mary Duff. At ten his cousin, Margaret Parker, excited in him a
strange, un-childish passion. At fifteen came one of the greatest
crises of his life, when he became enamored of Mary Chaworth, whose
grand-father had been killed in a duel by Byron's great-uncle. Young as
he was, he would have married her immediately; but Miss Chaworth was
two years older than he, and absolutely refused to take seriously the
devotion of a school-boy.

Byron felt the disappointment keenly; and after a short stay at
Cambridge, he left England, visited Portugal and Spain, and traveled
eastward as far as Greece and Turkey. At Athens he wrote the pretty
little poem to the "maid of Athens"--Miss Theresa Macri, daughter of
the British vice-consul. He returned to London to become at one leap the
most admired poet of the day and the greatest social favorite. He was
possessed of striking personal beauty. Sir Walter Scott said of him:
"His countenance was a thing to dream of." His glorious eyes, his
mobile, eloquent face, fascinated all; and he was, besides, a genius of
the first rank.

With these endowments, he plunged into the social whirlpool, denying
himself nothing, and receiving everything-adulation, friendship, and
unstinted love. Darkly mysterious stories of his adventures in the East
made many think that he was the hero of some of his own poems, such
as "The Giaour" and "The Corsair." A German wrote of him that "he was
positively besieged by women." From the humblest maid-servants up to
ladies of high rank, he had only to throw his handkerchief to make
a conquest. Some women did not even wait for the handkerchief to be
thrown. No wonder that he was sated with so much adoration and that he
wrote of women:

I regard them as very pretty but inferior creatures. I look on them as
grown-up children; but, like a foolish mother, I am constantly the slave
of one of them. Give a woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and she
will be content.

The liaison which attracted the most attention at this time was that
between Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron has been greatly blamed for
his share in it; but there is much to be said on the other side. Lady
Caroline was happily married to the Right Hon. William Lamb, afterward
Lord Melbourne, and destined to be the first prime minister of Queen
Victoria. He was an easy-going, genial man of the world who placed too
much confidence in the honor of his wife. She, on the other hand, was
a sentimental fool, always restless, always in search of some new
excitement. She thought herself a poet, and scribbled verses, which
her friends politely admired, and from which they escaped as soon as
possible. When she first met Byron, she cried out: "That pale face is my
fate!" And she afterward added: "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know!"

It was not long before the intimacy of the two came very near the point
of open scandal; but Byron was the wooed and not the wooer. This woman,
older than he, flung herself directly at his head. Naturally enough,
it was not very long before she bored him thoroughly. Her romantic
impetuosity became tiresome, and very soon she fell to talking always
of herself, thrusting her poems upon him, and growing vexed and peevish
when he would not praise them. As was well said, "he grew moody and she
fretful when their mutual egotisms jarred."

In a burst of resentment she left him, but when she returned, she was
worse than ever. She insisted on seeing him. On one occasion she made
her way into his rooms disguised as a boy. At another time, when she
thought he had slighted her, she tried to stab herself with a pair of
scissors. Still later, she offered her favors to any one who would kill
him. Byron himself wrote of her:

You can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things that she has said
and done.

Her story has been utilized by Mrs. Humphry Ward in her novel, "The
Marriage of William Ashe."

Perhaps this trying experience led Byron to end his life of dissipation.
At any rate, in 1813, he proposed marriage to Miss Anne Millbanke,
who at first refused him; but he persisted, and in 1815 the two were
married. Byron seems to have had a premonition that he was making a
terrible mistake. During the wedding ceremony he trembled like a leaf,
and made the wrong responses to the clergyman. After the wedding was
over, in handing his bride into the carriage which awaited them, he said
to her:

"Miss Millbanke, are you ready?"

It was a strange blunder for a bridegroom, and one which many regarded
at the time as ominous for the future. In truth, no two persons could
have been more thoroughly mismated--Byron, the human volcano, and his
wife, a prim, narrow-minded, and peevish woman. Their incompatibility
was evident enough from the very first, so that when they returned from
their wedding-journey, and some one asked Byron about his honeymoon, he
answered:

"Call it rather a treacle moon!"

It is hardly necessary here to tell over the story of their domestic
troubles. Only five weeks after their daughter's birth, they parted.
Lady Byron declared that her husband was insane; while after trying many
times to win from her something more than a tepid affection, he gave up
the task in a sort of despairing anger. It should be mentioned here, for
the benefit of those who recall the hideous charges made many decades
afterward by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe on the authority of Lady Byron,
that the latter remained on terms of friendly intimacy with Augusta
Leigh, Lord Byron's sister, and that even on her death-bed she sent an
amicable message to Mrs. Leigh.

Byron, however, stung by the bitter attacks that were made upon him,
left England, and after traveling down the Rhine through Switzerland,
he took up his abode in Venice. His joy at leaving England and ridding
himself of the annoyances which had clustered thick about him, he
expressed in these lines:

    Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
    And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
    That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!

Meanwhile he enjoyed himself in reckless fashion. Money poured in upon
him from his English publisher. For two cantos of "Childe Harold" and
"Manfred," Murray paid him twenty thousand dollars. For the fourth
canto, Byron demanded and received more than twelve thousand dollars.
In Italy he lived on friendly terms with Shelley and Thomas Moore; but
eventually he parted from them both, for he was about to enter upon a
new phase of his curious career.

He was no longer the Byron of 1815. Four years of high living and much
brandy-and-water had robbed his features of their refinement. His look
was no longer spiritual. He was beginning to grow stout. Yet the change
had not been altogether unfortunate. He had lost something of his wild
impetuosity, and his sense of humor had developed. In his thirtieth
year, in fact, he had at last become a man.

It was soon after this that he met a woman who was to be to him for
the rest of his life what a well-known writer has called "a star on the
stormy horizon of the poet." This woman was Teresa, Countess Guiccioli,
whom he first came to know in Venice. She was then only nineteen years
of age, and she was married to a man who was more than forty years her
senior. Unlike the typical Italian woman, she was blonde, with dreamy
eyes and an abundance of golden hair, and her manner was at once modest
and graceful. She had known Byron but a very short time when she found
herself thrilling with a passion of which until then she had never
dreamed. It was written of her:

She had thought of love but as an amusement; yet she now became its
slave.

To this love Byron gave an immediate response, and from that time until
his death he cared for no other woman. The two were absolutely mated.
Nevertheless, there were difficulties which might have been expected.
Count Guiccioli, while he seemed to admire Byron, watched him with
Italian subtlety. The English poet and the Italian countess met
frequently. When Byron was prostrated by an attack of fever, the
countess remained beside him, and he was just recovering when Count
Guiccioli appeared upon the scene and carried off his wife. Byron was in
despair. He exchanged the most ardent letters with the countess, yet he
dreaded assassins whom he believed to have been hired by her husband.
Whenever he rode out, he went armed with sword and pistols.

Amid all this storm and stress, Byron's literary activity was
remarkable. He wrote some of his most famous poems at this time, and he
hoped for the day when he and the woman whom he loved might be united
once for all. This came about in the end through the persistence of the
pair. The Countess Guiccioli openly took up her abode with him, not to
be separated until the poet sailed for Greece to aid the Greeks in
their struggle for independence. This was in 1822, when Byron was in his
thirty-fifth year. He never returned to Italy, but died in the historic
land for which he gave his life as truly as if he had fallen upon the
field of battle.

Teresa Guiccioli had been, in all but name, his wife for just three
years. Much, has been said in condemnation of this love-affair; but in
many ways it is less censurable than almost anything in his career. It
was an instance of genuine love, a love which purified and exalted this
man of dark and moody moments. It saved him from those fitful passions
and orgies of self-indulgence which had exhausted him. It proved to be
an inspiration which at last led him to die for a cause approved by all
the world.

As for the woman, what shall we say of her? She came to him unspotted by
the world. A demand for divorce which her husband made was rejected.
A pontifical brief pronounced a formal separation between the two. The
countess gladly left behind "her palaces, her equipages, society, and
riches, for the love of the poet who had won her heart."

Unlike the other women who had cared for him, she was unselfish in
her devotion. She thought more of his fame than did he himself. Emilio
Castelar has written:

She restored him and elevated him. She drew him from the mire and set
the crown of purity upon his brow. Then, when she had recovered this
great heart, instead of keeping it as her own possession, she gave it to
humanity.

For twenty-seven years after Byron's death, she remained, as it were,
widowed and alone. Then, in her old age, she married the Marquis de
Boissy; but the marriage was purely one of convenience. Her heart was
always Byron's, whom she defended with vivacity. In 1868, she published
her memoirs of the poet, filled with interesting and affecting
recollections. She died as late as 1873.

Some time between the year 1866 and that of her death, she is said to
have visited Newstead Abbey, which had once been Byron's home. She was
very old, a widow, and alone; but her affection for the poet-lover of
her youth was still as strong as ever.

Byron's life was short, if measured by years only. Measured by
achievement, it was filled to the very full. His genius blazes like
a meteor in the records of English poetry; and some of that splendor
gleams about the lovely woman who turned him away from vice and folly
and made him worthy of his historic ancestry, of his country, and of
himself.





THE STORY OF MME. DE STAEL


Each century, or sometimes each generation, is distinguished by some
especial interest among those who are given to fancies--not to call them
fads. Thus, at the present time, the cultivated few are taken up with
what they choose to term the "new thought," or the "new criticism," or,
on the other hand, with socialistic theories and projects. Thirty years
ago, when Oscar Wilde was regarded seriously by some people, there were
many who made a cult of estheticism. It was just as interesting when
their leader--

    Walked down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily
               In his medieval hand,

or when Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan guyed him as
Bunthorne in "Patience."

When Charles Kingsley was a great expounder of British common sense,
"muscular Christianity" was a phrase which was taken up by many
followers. A little earlier, Puseyism and a primitive form of socialism
were in vogue with the intellectuals. There are just as many different
fashions in thought as in garments, and they come and go without any
particular reason. To-day, they are discussed and practised everywhere.
To-morrow, they are almost forgotten in the rapid pursuit of something
new.

Forty years before the French Revolution burst forth with all its
thunderings, France and Germany were affected by what was generally
styled "sensibility." Sensibility was the sister of sentimentality and
the half-sister of sentiment. Sentiment is a fine thing in itself. It is
consistent with strength and humor and manliness; but sentimentality and
sensibility are poor cheeping creatures that run scuttering along the
ground, quivering and whimpering and asking for perpetual sympathy,
which they do not at all deserve.

No one need be ashamed of sentiment. It simply gives temper to the
blade, and mellowness to the intellect. Sensibility, on the other hand,
is full of shivers and shakes and falsetto notes and squeaks. It is, in
fact, all humbug, just as sentiment is often all truth.

Therefore, to find an interesting phase of human folly, we may look back
to the years which lie between 1756 and 1793 as the era of sensibility.
The great prophets of this false god, or goddess, were Rousseau in
France and Goethe with Schiller in Germany, together with a host of
midgets who shook and shivered in imitation of their masters. It is not
for us to catalogue these persons. Some of them were great figures
in literature and philosophy, and strong enough to shake aside the
silliness of sensibility; but others, while they professed to be great
as writers or philosophers, are now remembered only because their
devotion to sensibility made them conspicuous in their own time. They
dabbled in one thing and another; they "cribbed" from every popular
writer of the day. The only thing that actually belonged to them was a
high degree of sensibility.

And what, one may ask, was this precious thing--this sensibility?

It was really a sort of St. Vitus's dance of the mind, and almost of
the body. When two persons, in any way interested in each other, were
brought into the same room, one of them appeared to be seized with
a rotary movement. The voice rose to a higher pitch than usual, and
assumed a tremolo. Then, if the other person was also endowed with
sensibility, he or she would rotate and quake in somewhat the same
manner. Their cups of tea would be considerably agitated. They would
move about in as unnatural a manner as possible; and when they left the
room, they would do so with gaspings and much waste of breath.

This was not an exhibition of love--or, at least, not necessarily
so. You might exhibit sensibility before a famous poet, or a gallant
soldier, or a celebrated traveler--or, for that matter, before a
remarkable buffoon, like Cagliostro, or a freak, like Kaspar Hauser.

It is plain enough that sensibility was entirely an abnormal thing, and
denoted an abnormal state of mind. Only among people like the Germans
and French of that period, who were forbidden to take part in public
affairs, could it have flourished so long, and have put forth such
rank and fetid outgrowths. From it sprang the "elective affinities" of
Goethe, and the loose morality of the French royalists, which rushed
on into the roaring sea of infidelity, blasphemy, and anarchy of the
Revolution.

Of all the historic figures of that time, there is just one which
to-day stands forth as representing sensibility. In her own time she
was thought to be something of a philosopher, and something more of a
novelist. She consorted with all the clever men and women of her age.
But now she holds a minute niche in history because of the fact that
Napoleon stooped to hate her, and because she personifies sensibility.

Criticism has stripped from her the rags and tatters of the philosophy
which was not her own. It is seen that she was indebted to the brains of
others for such imaginative bits of fiction as she put forth in Delphine
and Corinne; but as the exponent of sensibility she remains unique. This
woman was Anne Louise Germaine Necker, usually known as Mme. de Stael.

There was much about Mile. Necker's parentage that made her interesting.
Her father was the Genevese banker and minister of Louis XVI, who failed
wretchedly in his attempts to save the finances of France. Her mother,
Suzanne Curchod, as a young girl, had won the love of the famous English
historian, Edward Gibbon. She had first refused him, and then almost
frantically tried to get him back; but by this time Gibbon was more
comfortable in single life and less infatuated with Mlle. Curchod, who
presently married Jacques Necker.

M. Necker's money made his daughter a very celebrated "catch." Her
mother brought her to Paris when the French capital was brilliant beyond
description, and yet was tottering to its fall. The rumblings of the
Revolution could be heard by almost every ear; and yet society and the
court, refusing to listen, plunged into the wildest revelry under the
leadership of the giddy Marie Antoinette.

It was here that the young girl was initiated into the most elegant
forms of luxury, and met the cleverest men of that time--Voltaire,
Rousseau, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Volney. She set herself to be the
most accomplished woman of her day, not merely in belles lettres, but in
the natural and political sciences. Thus, when her father was drawing
up his monograph on the French finances, Germaine labored hard over
a supplementary report, studying documents, records, and the most
complicated statistics, so that she might obtain a mastery of the
subject.

"I mean to know everything that anybody knows," she said, with an
arrogance which was rather admired in so young a woman.

But, unfortunately, her mind was not great enough to fulfil her
aspiration. The most she ever achieved was a fair knowledge of many
things--a knowledge which seemed surprising to the average man, but
which was superficial enough to the accomplished specialist.

In her twentieth year (1786) it was thought best that she should marry.
Her revels, as well as her hard studies, had told upon her health, and
her mother believed that she could not be at once a blue-stocking and a
woman of the world.

There was something very odd about the relation that existed between the
young girl and this mother of hers. In the Swiss province where they had
both been born, the mother had been considered rather bold and forward.
Her penchant for Gibbon was only one of a number of adventures that
have been told about her. She was by no means coy with the gallants of
Geneva. Yet, after her marriage, and when she came to Paris, she seemed
to be transformed into a sort of Swiss Puritan.

As such, she undertook her daughter's bringing up, and was extremely
careful about everything that Germaine did and about the company she
kept. On the other hand, the daughter, who in the city of Calvin had
been rather dull and quiet in her ways, launched out into a gaiety such
as she had never known in Switzerland. Mother and daughter, in fact,
changed parts. The country beauty of Geneva became the prude of Paris,
while the quiet, unemotional young Genevese became the light of all the
Parisian salons, whether social or intellectual.

The mother was a very beautiful woman. The daughter, who was to become
so famous, is best described by those two very uncomplimentary English
words, "dumpy" and "frumpy." She had bulging eyes--which are not
emphasized in the flattering portrait by Gerard--and her hair was
unbecomingly dressed. There are reasons for thinking that Germaine
bitterly hated her mother, and was intensely jealous of her charm
of person. It may be also that Mme. Necker envied the daughter's
cleverness, even though that cleverness was little more, in the end,
than the borrowing of brilliant things from other persons. At any rate,
the two never cared for each other, and Germaine gave to her father the
affection which her mother neither received nor sought.

It was perhaps to tame the daughter's exuberance that a marriage was
arranged for Mlle. Necker with the Baron de Stael-Holstein, who then
represented the court of Sweden at Paris. Many eyebrows were lifted when
this match was announced. Baron de Stael had no personal charm, nor any
reputation for wit. His standing in the diplomatic corps was not very
high. His favorite occupations were playing cards and drinking enormous
quantities of punch. Could he be considered a match for the extremely
clever Mlle. Necker, whose father had an enormous fortune, and who
was herself considered a gem of wit and mental power, ready to discuss
political economy, or the romantic movement of socialism, or platonic
love?

Many differed about this. Mlle. Necker was, to be sure, rich and clever;
but the Baron de Stael was of an old family, and had a title. Moreover,
his easy-going ways--even his punch-drinking and his card-playing--made
him a desirable husband at that time of French social history, when the
aristocracy wished to act exactly as it pleased, with wanton license,
and when an embassy was a very convenient place into which an indiscreet
ambassadress might retire when the mob grew dangerous. For Paris was now
approaching the time of revolution, and all "aristocrats" were more or
less in danger.

At first Mme. de Stael rather sympathized with the outbreak of the
people; but later their excesses drove her back into sympathy with
the royalists. It was then that she became indiscreet and abused the
privilege of the embassy in giving shelter to her friends. She was
obliged to make a sudden flight across the frontier, whence she did
not return until Napoleon loomed up, a political giant on the
horizon--victorious general, consul, and emperor.

Mme. de Stael's relations with Napoleon have, as I remarked above, been
among her few titles to serious remembrance. The Corsican eagle and the
dumpy little Genevese make, indeed, a peculiar pair; and for this reason
writers have enhanced the oddities of the picture.

"Napoleon," says one, "did not wish any one to be near him who was as
clever as himself."

"No," adds another, "Mme. de Stael made a dead set at Napoleon, because
she wished to conquer and achieve the admiration of everybody, even of
the greatest man who ever lived."

"Napoleon found her to be a good deal of a nuisance," observes a third.
"She knew too much, and was always trying to force her knowledge upon
others."

The legend has sprung up that Mme. de Stael was too wise and witty to
be acceptable to Napoleon; and many women repeated with unction that the
conqueror of Europe was no match for this frowsy little woman. It is,
perhaps, worth while to look into the facts, and to decide whether
Napoleon was really of so petty a nature as to feel himself inferior to
this rather comic creature, even though at the time many people thought
her a remarkable genius.

In the first place, knowing Napoleon, as we have come to know him
through the pages of Mme. de Remusat, Frederic Masson, and others, we
can readily imagine the impatience with which the great soldier would
sit at dinner, hastening to finish his meal, crowding the whole ceremony
into twenty minutes, gulping a glass or two of wine and a cup of coffee,
and then being interrupted by a fussy little female who wanted to
talk about the ethics of history, or the possibility of a new form of
government. Napoleon, himself, was making history, and writing it in
fire and flame; and as for governments, he invented governments all over
Europe as suited his imperial will. What patience could he have with
one whom an English writer has rather unkindly described as "an ugly
coquette, an old woman who made a ridiculous marriage, a blue-stocking,
who spent much of her time in pestering men of genius, and drawing from
them sarcastic comment behind their backs?"

Napoleon was not the sort of a man to be routed in discussion, but
he was most decidedly the sort of man to be bored and irritated by
pedantry. Consequently, he found Mme. de Stael a good deal of a nuisance
in the salons of Paris and its vicinity. He cared not the least for her
epigrams. She might go somewhere else and write all the epigrams she
pleased. When he banished her, in 1803, she merely crossed the Rhine
into Germany, and established herself at Weimar.

The emperor received her son, Auguste de Stael-Holstein, with much good
humor, though he refused the boy's appeal on behalf of his mother.

"My dear baron," said Napoleon, "if your mother were to be in Paris
for two months, I should really be obliged to lock her up in one of the
castles, which would be most unpleasant treatment for me to show a lady.
No, let her go anywhere else and we can get along perfectly. All Europe
is open to her--Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg; and if she wishes to write
libels on me, England is a convenient and inexpensive place. Only Paris
is just a little too near!"

Thus the emperor gibed the boy--he was only fifteen or sixteen--and made
fun of the exiled blue-stocking; but there was not a sign of malice in
what he said, nor, indeed, of any serious feeling at all. The
legend about Napoleon and Mme. de Stael must, therefore, go into the
waste-basket, except in so far as it is true that she succeeded in
boring him.

For the rest, she was an earlier George Sand--unattractive in person,
yet able to attract; loving love for love's sake, though seldom
receiving it in return; throwing herself at the head of every
distinguished man, and generally finding that he regarded her overtures
with mockery. To enumerate the men for whom she professed to care would
be tedious, since the record of her passions has no reality about it,
save, perhaps, with two exceptions.

She did care deeply and sincerely for Henri Benjamin Constant, the
brilliant politician and novelist. He was one of her coterie in Paris,
and their common political sentiments formed a bond of friendship
between them. Constant was banished by Napoleon in 1802, and when Mme.
de Stael followed him into exile a year later he joined her in Germany.

The story of their relations was told by Constant in Adolphe, while Mme.
de Stael based Delphine on her experiences with him. It seems that he
was puzzled by her ardor; she was infatuated by his genius. Together
they went through all the phases of the tender passion; and yet, at
intervals, they would tire of each other and separate for a while, and
she would amuse herself with other men. At last she really believed that
her love for him was entirely worn out.

"I always loved my lovers more than they loved me," she said once, and
it was true.

Yet, on the other hand, she was frankly false to all of them, and hence
arose these intervals. In one of them she fell in with a young Italian
named Rocca, and by way of a change she not only amused herself with
him, but even married him. At this time--1811--she was forty-five, while
Rocca was only twenty-three--a young soldier who had fought in Spain,
and who made eager love to the she-philosopher when he was invalided at
Geneva.

The marriage was made on terms imposed by the middle-aged woman who
became his bride. In the first place, it was to be kept secret; and
second, she would not take her husband's name, but he must pass himself
off as her lover, even though she bore him children. The reason she gave
for this extraordinary exhibition of her vanity was that a change of
name on her part would put everybody out.

"In fact," she said, "if Mme. de Stael were to change her name, it would
unsettle the heads of all Europe!"

And so she married Rocca, who was faithful to her to the end, though she
grew extremely plain and querulous, while he became deaf and soon lost
his former charm. Her life was the life of a woman who had, in her own
phrase, "attempted everything"; and yet she had accomplished nothing
that would last. She was loved by a man of genius, but he did not love
her to the end. She was loved by a man of action, and she tired of him
very soon. She had a wonderful reputation for her knowledge of history
and philosophy, and yet what she knew of those subjects is now seen to
be merely the scraps and borrowings of others.

Something she did when she introduced the romantic literature into
France; and there are passages from her writings which seem worthy of
preservation. For instance, we may quote her outburst with regard to
unhappy marriages. "It was the subject," says Mr. Gribble, "on which she
had begun to think before she was married, and which continued to haunt
her long after she was left a widow; though one suspects that the word
'marriage' became a form of speech employed to describe her relations,
not with her husband, but with her lovers." The passage to which I refer
is as follows:

In an unhappy marriage, there is a violence of distress surpassing all
other sufferings in the world. A woman's whole soul depends upon the
conjugal tie. To struggle against fate alone, to journey to the grave
without a friend to support you or to regret you, is an isolation of
which the deserts of Arabia give but a faint and feeble idea. When
all the treasure of your youth has been given in vain, when you can no
longer hope that the reflection of these first rays will shine upon the
end of your life, when there is nothing in the dusk to remind you of
the dawn, and when the twilight is pale and colorless as a livid specter
that precedes the night, your heart revolts, and you feel that you have
been robbed of the gifts of God upon earth.

Equally striking is another prose passage of hers, which seems less the
careful thought of a philosopher than the screeching of a termagant. It
is odd that the first two sentences recall two famous lines of Byron:

    Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
    'Tis woman's whole existence.

The passage by Mme. de Stael is longer and less piquant:

Love is woman's whole existence. It is only an episode in the lives
of men. Reputation, honor, esteem, everything depends upon how a woman
conducts herself in this regard; whereas, according to the rules of
an unjust world, the laws of morality itself are suspended in men's
relations with women. They may pass as good men, though they have caused
women the most terrible suffering which it is in the power of one human
being to inflict upon another. They may be regarded as loyal, though
they have betrayed them. They may have received from a woman marks of
a devotion which would so link two friends, two fellow soldiers, that
either would feel dishonored if he forgot them, and they may consider
themselves free of all obligations by attributing the services to
love--as if this additional gift of love detracted from the value of the
rest!

One cannot help noticing how lacking in neatness of expression is this
woman who wrote so much. It is because she wrote so much that she wrote
in such a muffled manner. It is because she thought so much that her
reflections were either not her own, or were never clear. It is because
she loved so much, and had so many lovers--Benjamin Constant; Vincenzo
Monti, the Italian poet; M. de Narbonne, and others, as well as young
Rocca--that she found both love and lovers tedious.

She talked so much that her conversation was almost always mere personal
opinion. Thus she told Goethe that he never was really brilliant until
after he had got through a bottle of champagne. Schiller said that to
talk with her was to have a "rough time," and that after she left him,
he always felt like a man who was just getting over a serious illness.
She never had time to do anything very well.

There is an interesting glimpse of her in the recollections of Dr.
Bollmann, at the period when Mme. de Stael was in her prime. The worthy
doctor set her down as a genius--an extraordinary, eccentric woman in
all that she did. She slept but a few hours out of the twenty-four, and
was uninterruptedly and fearfully busy all the rest of the time. While
her hair was being dressed, and even while she breakfasted, she used to
keep on writing, nor did she ever rest sufficiently to examine what she
had written.

Such then was Mme. de Stael, a type of the time in which she lived, so
far as concerns her worship of sensibility--of sensibility, and not
of love; for love is too great to be so scattered and made a thing to
prattle of, to cheapen, and thus destroy. So we find at the last that
Germaine de Stael, though she was much read and much feted and much
followed, came finally to that last halting-place where confessedly
she was merely an old woman, eccentric, and unattractive. She sued her
former lovers for the money she had lent them, she scolded and found
fault--as perhaps befits her age.

But such is the natural end of sensibility, and of the woman who
typifies it for succeeding generations.





THE STORY OF KARL MARX


Some time ago I entered a fairly large library--one of more than two
hundred thousand volumes--to seek the little brochure on Karl Marx
written by his old friend and genial comrade Wilhelm Liebknecht. It was
in the card catalogue. As I made a note of its number, my friend the
librarian came up to me, and I asked him whether it was not strange
that a man like Marx should have so many books devoted to him, for I had
roughly reckoned the number at several hundred.

"Not at all," said he; "and we have here only a feeble nucleus of the
Marx literature--just enough, in fact, to give you a glimpse of what
that literature really is. These are merely the books written by Marx
himself, and the translations of them, with a few expository monographs.
Anything like a real Marx collection would take up a special room in
this library, and would have to have its own separate catalogue. You
see that even these two or three hundred books contain large volumes
of small pamphlets in many languages--German, English, French, Italian,
Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Swedish, Hungarian, Spanish; and here," he
concluded, pointing to a recently numbered card, "is one in Japanese."

My curiosity was sufficiently excited to look into the matter somewhat
further. I visited another library, which was appreciably larger, and
whose managers were evidently less guided by their prejudices. Here were
several thousand books on Marx, and I spent the best part of the day in
looking them over.

What struck me as most singular was the fact that there was scarcely
a volume about Marx himself. Practically all the books dealt with his
theory of capital and his other socialistic views. The man himself, his
personality, and the facts of his life were dismissed in the most meager
fashion, while his economic theories were discussed with something
that verged upon fury. Even such standard works as those of Mehring and
Spargo, which profess to be partly biographical, sum up the personal
side of Marx in a few pages. In fact, in the latter's preface he seems
conscious of this defect, and says:

Whether socialism proves, in the long span of centuries, to be good or
evil, a blessing to men or a curse, Karl Marx must always be an object
of interest as one of the great world-figures of immortal memory. As
the years go by, thoughtful men and women will find the same interest in
studying the life and work of Marx that they do in studying the life
and work of Cromwell, of Wesley, or of Darwin, to name three immortal
world-figures of vastly divergent types.

Singularly little is known of Karl Marx, even by his most ardent
followers. They know his work, having studied his Das Kapital with the
devotion and earnestness with which an older generation of Christians
studied the Bible, but they are very generally unacquainted with the
man himself. Although more than twenty-six years have elapsed since the
death of Marx, there is no adequate biography of him in any language.

Doubtless some better-equipped German writer, such as Franz Mehring or
Eduard Bernstein, will some day give us the adequate and full biography
for which the world now waits.

Here is an admission that there exists no adequate biography of Karl
Marx, and here is also an intimation that simply as a man, and not
merely as a great firebrand of socialism, Marx is well worth studying.
And so it has occurred to me to give in these pages one episode of his
career that seems to me quite curious, together with some significant
touches concerning the man as apart from the socialist. Let the
thousands of volumes already in existence suffice for the latter. The
motto of this paper is not the Vergilian "Arms and the man I sing,"
but simply "The man I sing"--and the woman. Karl Marx was born nearly
ninety-four years ago--May 5, 1818--in the city which the French call
Treves and the Germans Trier, among the vine-clad hills of the Moselle.
Today, the town is commonplace enough when you pass through it, but when
you look into its history, and seek out that history's evidences, you
will find that it was not always a rather sleepy little place. It was
one of the chosen abodes of the Emperors of the West, after Rome
began to be governed by Gauls and Spaniards, rather than by Romans and
Italians. The traveler often pauses there to see the Porta Nigra, that
immense gate once strongly fortified, and he will doubtless visit also
what is left of the fine baths and amphitheater.

Treves, therefore, has a right to be termed imperial, and it was
the birthplace of one whose sway over the minds of men has been both
imperial and imperious.

Karl Marx was one of those whose intellectual achievements were so great
as to dwarf his individuality and his private life. What he taught
with almost terrific vigor made his very presence in the Continental
monarchies a source of eminent danger. He was driven from country to
country. Kings and emperors were leagued together against him. Soldiers
were called forth, and blood was shed because of him. But, little by
little, his teaching seems to have leavened the thought of the whole
civilized world, so that to-day thousands who barely know his name are
deeply affected by his ideas, and believe that the state should control
and manage everything for the good of all.

Marx seems to have inherited little from either of his parents. His
father, Heinrich Marx, was a provincial Jewish lawyer who had adopted
Christianity, probably because it was expedient, and because it enabled
him to hold local offices and gain some social consequence. He had
changed his name from Mordecai to Marx.

The elder Marx was very shrewd and tactful, and achieved a fair position
among the professional men and small officials in the city of Treves.
He had seen the horrors of the French Revolution, and was philosopher
enough to understand the meaning of that mighty upheaval, and of the
Napoleonic era which followed.

Napoleon, indeed, had done much to relieve his race from petty
oppression. France made the Jews in every respect the equals of the
Gentiles. One of its ablest marshals--Massena--was a Jew, and therefore,
when the imperial eagle was at the zenith of its flight, the Jews in
every city and town of Europe were enthusiastic admirers of Napoleon,
some even calling him the Messiah.

Karl Marx's mother, it is certain, endowed him with none of his gifts.
She was a Netherlandish Jewess of the strictly domestic and conservative
type, fond of her children and her home, and detesting any talk that
looked to revolutionary ideas or to a change in the social order. She
became a Christian with her husband, but the word meant little to her.
It was sufficient that she believed in God; and for this she was teased
by some of her skeptical friends. Replying to them, she uttered the only
epigram that has ever been ascribed to her.

"Yes," she said, "I believe in God, not for God's sake, but for my own."

She was so little affected by change of scene that to the day of her
death she never mastered German, but spoke almost wholly in her native
Dutch. Had we time, we might dwell upon the unhappy paradox of her life.
In her son Karl she found an especial joy, as did her husband. Had the
father lived beyond Karl's early youth, he would doubtless have been
greatly pained by the radicalism of his gifted son, as well as by his
personal privations. But the mother lived until 1863, while Karl was
everywhere stirring the fires of revolution, driven from land to land,
both feared and persecuted, and often half famished. As Mr. Spargo says:

It was the irony of life that the son, who kindled a mighty hope in the
hearts of unnumbered thousands of his fellow human beings, a hope that
is today inspiring millions of those who speak his name with reverence
and love, should be able to do that only by destroying his mother's hope
and happiness in her son, and that every step he took should fill her
heart with a great agony.

When young Marx grew out of boyhood into youth, he was attractive to all
those who met him. Tall, lithe, and graceful, he was so extremely dark
that his intimates called him "der neger"--"the negro." His loosely
tossing hair gave to him a still more exotic appearance; but his eyes
were true and frank, his nose denoted strength and character, and his
mouth was full of kindliness in its expression. His lineaments were not
those of the Jewish type.

Very late in life--he died in 1883--his hair and beard turned white,
but to the last his great mustache was drawn like a bar across his
face, remaining still as black as ink, and making his appearance very
striking. He was full of fun and gaiety. As was only natural, there soon
came into his life some one who learned to love him, and to whom, in his
turn, he gave a deep and unbroken affection.

There had come to Treves--which passed from France to Prussia with
the downfall of Napoleon--a Prussian nobleman, the Baron Ludwig von
Westphalen, holding the official title of "national adviser." The baron
was of Scottish extraction on his mother's side, being connected with
the ducal family of Argyll. He was a man of genuine rank, and might have
shown all the arrogance and superciliousness of the average Prussian
official; but when he became associated with Heinrich Marx he evinced
none of that condescending manner. The two men became firm friends, and
the baron treated the provincial lawyer as an equal.

The two families were on friendly terms. Von Westphalen's infant
daughter, who had the formidable name of Johanna Bertha Julie Jenny von
Westphalen, but who was usually spoken of as Jenny, became, in time, an
intimate of Sophie Marx. She was four years older than Karl, but the two
grew up together--he a high-spirited, manly boy, and she a lovely and
romantic girl.

The baron treated Karl as if the lad were a child of his own. He
influenced him to love romantic literature and poetry by interpreting
to him the great masterpieces, from Homer and Shakespeare to Goethe and
Lessing. He made a special study of Dante, whose mysticism appealed to
his somewhat dreamy nature, and to the religious instinct that always
lived in him, in spite of his dislike for creeds and churches.

The lore that he imbibed in early childhood stood Karl in good stead
when he began his school life, and his preparation for the university.
He had an absolute genius for study, and was no less fond of the sports
and games of his companions, so that he seemed to be marked out for
success. At sixteen years of age he showed a precocious ability for
planning and carrying out his work with thoroughness. His mind was
evidently a creative mind, one that was able to think out difficult
problems without fatigue. His taste was shown in his fondness for the
classics, in studying which he noted subtle distinctions of meaning
that usually escape even the mature scholar. Penetration, thoroughness,
creativeness, and a capacity for labor were the boy's chief
characteristics.

With such gifts, and such a nature, he left home for the university of
Bonn. Here he disappointed all his friends. His studies were neglected;
he was morose, restless, and dissatisfied. He fell into a number of
scrapes, and ran into debt through sundry small extravagances. All the
reports that reached his home were most unsatisfactory. What had come
over the boy who had worked so hard in the gymnasium at Treves?

The simple fact was that he had became love-sick. His separation from
Jenny von Westphalen had made him conscious of a feeling which he had
long entertained without knowing it. They had been close companions. He
had looked into her beautiful face and seen the luminous response of her
lovely eyes, but its meaning had not flashed upon his mind. He was not
old enough to have a great consuming passion, he was merely conscious of
her charm. As he could see her every day, he did not realize how much he
wanted her, and how much a separation from her would mean.

As "absence makes the heart grow fonder," so it may suddenly draw aside
the veil behind which the truth is hidden. At Bonn young Marx felt as
if a blaze of light had flashed before him; and from that moment
his studies, his companions, and the ambitions that he had hitherto
cherished all seemed flat and stale. At night and in the daytime there
was just one thing which filled his mind and heart--the beautiful vision
of Jenny von Westphalen.

Meanwhile his family, and especially his father, had become anxious at
the reports which reached them. Karl was sent for, and his stay at Bonn
was ended.

Now that he was once more in the presence of the girl who charmed him
so, he recovered all his old-time spirits. He wooed her ardently, and
though she was more coy, now that she saw his passion, she did not
discourage him, but merely prolonged the ecstasy of this wonderful
love-making. As he pressed her more and more, and no one guessed the
story, there came a time when she was urged to let herself become
engaged to him.

Here was seen the difference in their ages--a difference that had an
effect upon their future. It means much that a girl should be four years
older than the man who seeks her hand. She is four years wiser; and a
girl of twenty is, in fact, a match for a youth of twenty-five. Brought
up as she had been, in an aristocratic home, with the blood of two noble
families in her veins, and being wont to hear the easy and somewhat
cynical talk of worldly people, she knew better than poor Karl the
un-wisdom of what she was about to do.

She was noble, the daughter of one high official and the sister of
another. Those whom she knew were persons of rank and station. On the
other hand, young Marx, though he had accepted Christianity, was the son
of a provincial Jewish lawyer, with no fortune, and with a bad record at
the university. When she thought of all these things, she may well have
hesitated; but the earnest pleading and intense ardor of Karl Marx
broke down all barriers between them, and they became engaged, without
informing Jenny's father of their compact. Then they parted for a while,
and Karl returned to his home, filled with romantic thoughts.

He was also full of ambition and of desire for achievement. He had won
the loveliest girl in Treves, and now he must go forth into the world
and conquer it for her sake. He begged his father to send him to
Berlin, and showed how much more advantageous was that new and splendid
university, where Hegel's fame was still in the ascendent.

In answer to his father's questions, the younger Marx replied:

"I have something to tell you that will explain all; but first you must
give me your word that you will tell no one."

"I trust you wholly," said the father. "I will not reveal what you may
say to me."

"Well," returned the son, "I am engaged to marry Jenny von Westphalen.
She wishes it kept a secret from her father, but I am at liberty to tell
you of it."

The elder Marx was at once shocked and seriously disturbed. Baron
von Westphalen was his old and intimate friend. No thought of romance
between their children had ever come into his mind. It seemed disloyal
to keep the verlobung of Karl and Jenny a secret; for should it be
revealed, what would the baron think of Marx? Their disparity of rank
and fortune would make the whole affair stand out as something wrong and
underhand.

The father endeavored to make his son see all this. He begged him to go
and tell the baron, but young Marx was not to be persuaded.

"Send me to Berlin," he said, "and we shall again be separated; but I
shall work and make a name for myself, so that when I return neither
Jenny nor her father will have occasion to be disturbed by our
engagement."

With these words he half satisfied his father, and before long he was
sent to Berlin, where he fell manfully upon his studies. His father
had insisted that he should study law; but his own tastes were for
philosophy and history. He attended lectures in jurisprudence "as a
necessary evil," but he read omnivorously in subjects that were nearer
to his heart. The result was that his official record was not much
better than it had been at Bonn.

The same sort of restlessness, too, took possession of him when he
found that Jenny would not answer his letters. No matter how eagerly and
tenderly he wrote to her, there came no reply. Even the most passionate
pleadings left her silent and unresponsive. Karl could not complain, for
she had warned him that she would not write to him. She felt that their
engagement, being secret, was anomalous, and that until her family knew
of it she was not free to act as she might wish.

Here again was seen the wisdom of her maturer years; but Karl could not
be equally reasonable. He showered her with letters, which still she
would not answer. He wrote to his father in words of fire. At last,
driven to despair, he said that he was going to write to the Baron von
Westphalen, reveal the secret, and ask for the baron's fatherly consent.

It seemed a reckless thing to do, and yet it turned out to be the
wisest. The baron knew that such an engagement meant a social sacrifice,
and that, apart from the matter of rank, young Marx was without any
fortune to give the girl the luxuries to which she had been accustomed.
Other and more eligible suitors were always within view. But here Jenny
herself spoke out more strongly than she had ever done to Karl. She
was willing to accept him with what he was able to give her. She cared
nothing for any other man, and she begged her father to make both of
them completely happy.

Thus it seemed that all was well, yet for some reason or other
Jenny would not write to Karl, and once more he was almost driven to
distraction. He wrote bitter letters to his father, who tried to comfort
him. The baron himself sent messages of friendly advice, but what young
man in his teens was ever reasonable? So violent was Karl that at last
his father wrote to him:

I am disgusted with your letters. Their unreasonable tone is loathsome
to me. I should never had expected it of you. Haven't you been lucky
from your cradle up?

Finally Karl received one letter from his betrothed--a letter that
transfused him with ecstatic joy for about a day, and then sent him
back to his old unrest. This, however, may be taken as a part of Marx's
curious nature, which was never satisfied, but was always reaching after
something which could not be had.

He fell to writing poetry, of which he sent three volumes to
Jenny--which must have been rather trying to her, since the verse was
very poor. He studied the higher mathematics, English and Italian,
some Latin, and a miscellaneous collection of works on history and
literature. But poetry almost turned his mind. In later years he wrote:

Everything was centered on poetry, as if I were bewitched by some
uncanny power.

Luckily, he was wise enough, after a time, to recognize how halting
were his poems when compared with those of the great masters; and so he
resumed his restless, desultory work. He still sent his father letters
that were like wild cries. They evoked, in reply, a very natural burst
of anger:

Complete disorder, silly wandering through all branches of science,
silly brooding at the burning oil-lamp! In your wildness you see with
four eyes--a horrible setback and disregard for everything decent. And
in the pursuit of this senseless and purposeless learning you think
to raise the fruits which are to unite you with your beloved one! What
harvest do you expect to gather from them which will enable you to
fulfil your duty toward her?

Writing to him again, his father speaks of something that Karl had
written as "a mad composition, which denotes clearly how you waste your
ability and spend nights in order to create such monstrosities." The
young man was even forbidden to return home for the Easter holidays.
This meant giving up the sight of Jenny, whom he had not seen for a
whole year. But fortune arranged it otherwise; for not many weeks later
death removed the parent who had loved him and whom he had loved, though
neither of them could understand the other. The father represented the
old order of things; the son was born to discontent and to look forward
to a new heaven and a new earth.

Returning to Berlin, Karl resumed his studies; but as before, they
were very desultory in their character, and began to run upon social
questions, which were indeed setting Germany into a ferment. He took his
degree, and thought of becoming an instructor at the university of Jena;
but his radicalism prevented this, and he became the editor of a liberal
newspaper, which soon, however, became so very radical as to lead to his
withdrawal.

It now seemed best that Marx should seek other fields of activity. To
remain in Germany was dangerous to himself and discreditable to Jenny's
relatives, with their status as Prussian officials. In the summer of
1843, he went forth into the world--at last an "international." Jenny,
who had grown to believe in him as against her own family, asked for
nothing better than to wander with him, if only they might be married.
And they were married in this same summer, and spent a short honeymoon
at Bingen on the Rhine--made famous by Mrs. Norton's poem. It was the
brief glimpse of sunshine that was to precede year after year of anxiety
and want.

Leaving Germany, Marx and Jenny went to Paris, where he became known to
some of the intellectual lights of the French capital, such as Bakunin,
the great Russian anarchist, Proudhon, Cabet, and Saint-Simon. Most
important of all was his intimacy with the poet Heine, that marvelous
creature whose fascination took on a thousand forms, and whom no one
could approach without feeling his strange allurement.

Since Goethe's death, down to the present time, there has been no figure
in German literature comparable to Heine. His prose was exquisite. His
poetry ran through the whole gamut of humanity and of the sensations
that come to us from the outer world. In his poems are sweet melodies
and passionate cries of revolt, stirring ballads of the sea and tender
love-songs--strange as these last seem when coming from this cynic.

For cynic he was, deep down in his heart, though his face, when in
repose, was like the conventional pictures of Christ. His fascinations
destroyed the peace of many a woman; and it was only after many years of
self-indulgence that he married the faithful Mathilde Mirat in what
he termed a "conscience marriage." Soon after he went to his
"mattress-grave," as he called it, a hopeless paralytic.

To Heine came Marx and his beautiful bride. One may speculate as to
Jenny's estimate of her husband. Since his boyhood, she had not seen him
very much. At that time he was a merry, light-hearted youth, a jovial
comrade, and one of whom any girl would be proud. But since his long
stay in Berlin, and his absorption in the theories of men like Engels
and Bauer, he had become a very different sort of man, at least to her.

Groping, lost in brown studies, dreamy, at times morose, he was by no
means a sympathetic and congenial husband for a high-bred, spirited
girl, such as Jenny von Westphalen. His natural drift was toward a
beer-garden, a group of frowsy followers, the reek of vile tobacco, and
the smell of sour beer. One cannot but think that his beautiful wife
must have been repelled by this, though with her constant nature she
still loved him.

In Heinrich Heine she found a spirit that seemed akin to hers. Mr.
Spargo says--and in what he says one must read a great deal between the
lines:

The admiration of Jenny Marx for the poet was even more ardent than
that of her husband. He fascinated her because, as she said, he was "so
modern," while Heine was drawn to her because she was "so sympathetic."

It must be that Heine held the heart of this beautiful woman in his
hand. He knew so well the art of fascination; he knew just how to supply
the void which Marx had left. The two were indeed affinities in heart
and soul; yet for once the cynical poet stayed his hand, and said no
word that would have been disloyal to his friend. Jenny loved him with a
love that might have blazed into a lasting flame; but fortunately there
appeared a special providence to save her from herself. The French
government, at the request of the King of Prussia, banished Marx from
its dominions; and from that day until he had become an old man he was
a wanderer and an exile, with few friends and little money, sustained by
nothing but Jenny's fidelity and by his infinite faith in a cause that
crushed him to the earth.

There is a curious parallel between the life of Marx and that of Richard
Wagner down to the time when the latter discovered a royal patron.
Both of them were hounded from country to country; both of them
worked laboriously for so scanty a living as to verge, at times, upon
starvation. Both of them were victims to a cause in which they earnestly
believed--an economic cause in the one case, an artistic cause in
the other. Wagner's triumph came before his death, and the world has
accepted his theory of the music-drama. The cause of Marx is far greater
and more tremendous, because it strikes at the base of human life and
social well-being.

The clash between Wagner and his critics was a matter of poetry and
dramatic music. It was not vital to the human race. The cause of Marx
is one that is only now beginning to be understood and recognized by
millions of men and women in all the countries of the earth. In
his lifetime he issued a manifesto that has become a classic among
economists. He organized the great International Association of Workmen,
which set all Europe in a blaze and extended even to America. His great
book, "Capital"--Das Kapital--which was not completed until the last
years of his life, is read to-day by thousands as an almost sacred work.

Like Wagner and his Minna, the wife of Marx's youth clung to him through
his utmost vicissitudes, denying herself the necessities of life so that
he might not starve. In London, where he spent his latest days, he was
secure from danger, yet still a sort of persecution seemed to follow
him. For some time, nothing that he wrote could find a printer. Wherever
he went, people looked at him askance. He and his six children lived
upon the sum of five dollars a week, which was paid him by the New York
Tribune, through the influence of the late Charles A. Dana. When his
last child was born, and the mother's life was in serious danger, Marx
complained that there was no cradle for the baby, and a little later
that there was no coffin for its burial.

Marx had ceased to believe in marriage, despised the church, and cared
nothing for government. Yet, unlike Wagner, he was true to the woman who
had given up so much for him. He never sank to an artistic degeneracy.
Though he rejected creeds, he was nevertheless a man of genuine
religious feeling. Though he believed all present government to be an
evil, he hoped to make it better, or rather he hoped to substitute for
it a system by which all men might get an equal share of what it is
right and just for them to have.

Such was Marx, and thus he lived and died. His wife, who had long been
cut off from her relatives, died about a year before him. When she was
buried, he stumbled and fell into her grave, and from that time until
his own death he had no further interest in life.

He had been faithful to a woman and to a cause. That cause was so
tremendous as to overwhelm him. In sixty years only the first great
stirrings of it could be felt. Its teachings may end in nothing, but
only a century or more of effort and of earnest striving can make it
plain whether Karl Marx was a world-mover or a martyr to a cause that
was destined to be lost.





FERDINAND LASSALLE AND HELENE VON DONNIGES


The middle part of the nineteenth century is a period which has become
more or less obscure to most Americans and Englishmen. At one end the
thunderous campaigns of Napoleon are dying away. In the latter part
of the century we remember the gorgeousness of the Tuileries, the four
years' strife of our own Civil War, and then the golden drift of peace
with which the century ended. Between these two extremes there is a
stretch of history which seems to lack interest for the average student
of to-day.

In America, that was a period when we took little interest in the
movement of affairs on the continent of Europe. It would not be easy,
for instance, to imagine an American of 1840 cogitating on problems of
socialism, or trying to invent some new form of arbeiterverein. General
Choke was still swindling English emigrants. The Young Columbian was
still darting out from behind a table to declare how thoroughly he
defied the British lion. But neither of these patriots, any more than
their English compeers, was seriously disturbed about the interests of
the rest of the world. The Englishman was contentedly singing "God Save
the Queen!" The American, was apostrophizing the bird of freedom
with the floridity of rhetoric that reached its climax in the "Pogram
Defiance." What the Dutchies and Frenchies were doing was little more to
an Englishman than to an American.

Continental Europe was a mystery to English-speaking people. Those who
traveled abroad took their own servants with them, spoke only English,
and went through the whole European maze with absolute indifference. To
them the socialist, who had scarcely received a name, was an imaginary
being. If he existed, he was only a sort of offspring of the Napoleonic
wars--a creature who had not yet fitted into the ordinary course of
things. He was an anomaly, a person who howled in beer-houses, and who
would presently be regulated, either by the statesmen or by the police.

When our old friend, Mark Tapley, was making with his master a homeward
voyage to Britain, what did he know or even care about the politics of
France, or Germany, or Austria, or Russia? Not the slightest, you may be
sure. Mark and his master represented the complete indifference of the
Englishman or American--not necessarily a well-bred indifference, but
an indifference that was insular on the one hand and republican on
the other. If either of them had heard of a gentleman who pillaged an
unmarried lady's luggage in order to secure a valuable paper for another
lady, who was married, they would both have looked severely at this
abnormal person, and the American would doubtless have added a remark
which had something to do with the matchless purity of Columbia's
daughters.

If, again, they had been told that Ferdinand Lassalle had joined in the
great movement initiated by Karl Marx, it is absolutely certain that
neither the Englishman nor the American could have given you the
slightest notion as to who these individuals were. Thrones might
be tottering all over Europe; the red flag might wave in a score of
cities--what would all this signify, so long as Britannia ruled the
waves, while Columbia's feathered emblem shrieked defiance three
thousand miles away?

And yet few more momentous events have happened in a century than the
union which led one man to give his eloquence to the social cause, and
the other to suffer for that cause until his death. Marx had the higher
thought, but his disciple Lassalle had the more attractive way of
presenting it. It is odd that Marx, today, should lie in a squalid
cemetery, while the whole western world echoes with his praises,
and that Lassalle--brilliant, clear-sighted, and remarkable for his
penetrating genius--should have lived in luxury, but should now know
nothing but oblivion, even among those who shouted at his eloquence and
ran beside him in the glory of his triumph.

Ferdinand Lassalle was a native of Breslau, the son of a wealthy
Jewish silk-merchant. Heymann Lassal--for thus the father spelled his
name--stroked his hands at young Ferdinand's cleverness, but he meant it
to be a commercial cleverness. He gave the boy a thorough education at
the University of Breslau, and later at Berlin. He was an affectionate
parent, and at the same time tyrannical to a degree.

It was the old story where the father wishes to direct every step that
his son takes, and where the son, bursting out into youthful manhood,
feels that he has the right to freedom. The father thinks how he has
toiled for the son; the son thinks that if this toil were given for
love, it should not be turned into a fetter and restraint. Young
Lassalle, instead of becoming a clever silk-merchant, insisted on a
university career, where he studied earnestly, and was admitted to the
most cultured circles.

Though his birth was Jewish, he encountered little prejudice against his
race. Napoleon had changed the old anti-Semitic feeling of fifty years
before to a liberalism that was just beginning to be strongly felt in
Germany, as it had already been in France. This was true in general, but
especially true of Lassalle, whose features were not of a Semitic type,
who made friends with every one, and who was a favorite in many salons.
His portraits make him seem a high-bred and high-spirited Prussian,
with an intellectual and clean-cut forehead; a face that has a sense of
humor, and yet one capable of swift and cogent thought.

No man of ordinary talents could have won the admiration of so many
compeers. It is not likely that such a keen and cynical observer as
Heinrich Heine would have written as he did concerning Lassalle, had not
the latter been a brilliant and magnetic youth. Heine wrote to Varnhagen
von Ense, the German historian:

My friend, Herr Lassalle, who brings you this letter, is a young man of
remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough erudition, with
the widest learning, with the greatest penetration that I have ever
known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he combines an energy of
will and a capacity for action which astonish me. In no one have I found
united so much enthusiasm and practical intelligence.

No better proof of Lassalle's enthusiasm can be found than a few lines
from his own writings:

I love Heine. He is my second self. What audacity! What overpowering
eloquence! He knows how to whisper like a zephyr when it kisses
rose-blooms, how to breathe like fire when it rages and destroys; he
calls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then all that is
fiercest and most daring. He has the sweep of the whole lyre!

Lassalle's sympathy with Heine was like his sympathy with every one
whom he knew. This was often misunderstood. It was misunderstood in his
relations with women, and especially in the celebrated affair of the
Countess von Hatzfeldt, which began in the year 1846--that is to say, in
the twenty-first year of Lassalle's age.

In truth, there was no real scandal in the matter, for the countess was
twice the age of Lassalle. It was precisely because he was so young that
he let his eagerness to defend a woman in distress make him forget
the ordinary usage of society, and expose himself to mean and unworthy
criticism which lasted all his life. It began by his introduction to
the Countess von Hatzfeldt, a lady who was grossly ill-treated by her
husband. She had suffered insult and imprisonment in the family castles;
the count had deprived her of medicine when she was ill, and had
forcibly taken away her children. Besides this, he was infatuated
with another woman, a baroness, and wasted his substance upon her even
contrary to the law which protected his children's rights.

The countess had a son named Paul, of whom Lassalle was extremely fond.
There came to the boy a letter from the Count von Hatzfeldt ordering him
to leave his mother. The countess at once sent for Lassalle, who brought
with him two wealthy and influential friends--one of them a judge of a
high Prussian court--and together they read the letter which Paul had
just received. They were deeply moved by the despair of the countess,
and by the cruelty of her dissolute husband in seeking to separate the
mother from her son.

In his chivalrous ardor Lassalle swore to help the countess, and
promised that he would carry on the struggle with her husband to the
bitter end. He took his two friends with him to Berlin, and then to
Dusseldorf, for they discovered that the Count von Hatzfeldt was not far
away. He was, in fact, at Aix-la-Chapelle with the baroness.

Lassalle, who had the scent of a greyhound, pried about until he
discovered that the count had given his mistress a legal document,
assigning to her a valuable piece of property which, in the ordinary
course of law, should be entailed on the boy, Paul. The countess at
once hastened to the place, broke into her husband's room, and secured a
promise that the deed would be destroyed.

No sooner, however, had she left him than he returned to the baroness,
and presently it was learned that the woman had set out for Cologne.

Lassalle and his two friends followed, to ascertain whether the document
had really been destroyed. The three reached a hotel at Cologne, where
the baroness had just arrived. Her luggage, in fact, was being carried
upstairs. One of Lassalle's friends opened a trunk, and, finding a
casket there, slipped it out to his companion, the judge.

Unfortunately, the latter had no means of hiding it, and when the
baroness's servant shouted for help, the casket was found in the
possession of the judge, who could give no plausible account of it. He
was, therefore, arrested, as were the other two. There was no evidence
against Lassalle; but his friends fared badly at the trial, one of them
being imprisoned for a year and the other for five years.

From this time Lassalle, with an almost quixotic devotion, gave himself
up to fighting the Countess von Hatzfeldt's battle against her husband
in the law-courts. The ablest advocates were pitted against him. The
most eloquent legal orators thundered at him and at his client, but he
met them all with a skill, an audacity, and a brilliant wit that won for
him verdict after verdict. The case went from the lower to the higher
tribunals, until, after nine years, it reached the last court of appeal,
where Lassalle wrested from his opponents a magnificently conclusive
victory--one that made the children of the countess absolutely safe.
It was a battle fought with the determination of a soldier, with the
gallantry of a knight errant, and the intellectual acumen of a learned
lawyer.

It is not surprising that many refuse to believe that Lassalle's feeling
toward the Countess von Hatzfeldt was a disinterested one. A scandalous
pamphlet, which was published in French, German, and Russian, and
written by one who styled herself "Sophie Solutzeff," did much to spread
the evil report concerning Lassalle. But the very openness and frankness
of the service which he did for the countess ought to make it clear that
his was the devotion of a youth drawn by an impulse into a strife where
there was nothing for him to gain, but everything to lose. He denounced
the brutality of her husband, but her letters to him always addressed
him as "my dear child." In writing to her he confides small love-secrets
and ephemeral flirtations--which he would scarcely have done, had the
countess viewed him with the eye of passion.

Lassalle was undoubtedly a man of impressionable heart, and had many
affairs such as Heine had; but they were not deep or lasting. That he
should have made a favorable impression on the women whom he met is
not surprising, because of his social standing, his chivalry, his
fine manners, and his handsome face. Mr. Clement Shorter has quoted an
official document which describes him as he was in his earlier years:

Ferdinand Lassalle, aged twenty-three, a civilian born at Breslau and
dwelling recently at Berlin. He stands five feet six inches in height,
has brown, curly hair, open forehead, brown eyebrows, dark blue eyes,
well proportioned nose and mouth, and rounded chin.

We ought not to be surprised, then, if he was a favorite in
drawing-rooms; if both men and women admired him; if Alexander von
Humboldt cried out with enthusiasm that he was a wunderkind, and if
there were more than Sophie Solutzeff to be jealous. But the rather
ungrateful remark of the Countess von Hatzfeldt certainly does not
represent him as he really was.

"You are without reason and judgment where women are concerned," she
snarled at him; but the sneer only shows that the woman who uttered it
was neither in love with him nor grateful to him.

In this paper we are not discussing Lassalle as a public agitator or
as a Socialist, but simply in his relations with the two women who most
seriously affected his life. The first was the Countess von Hatzfeldt,
who, as we have seen, occupied--or rather wasted--nine of the best years
of his life. Then came that profound and thrilling passion which ended
the career of a man who at thirty-nine had only just begun to be famous.

Lassalle had joined his intellectual forces with those of Heine and
Marx. He had obtained so great an influence over the masses of the
people as to alarm many a monarch, and at the same time to attract many
a statesman. Prince Bismarck, for example, cared nothing for Lassalle's
championship of popular rights, but sought his aid on finding that he
was an earnest advocate of German unity.

Furthermore, he was very far from resembling what in those early days
was regarded as the typical picture of a Socialist. There was nothing
frowzy about him; in his appearance he was elegance itself; his manners
were those of a prince, and his clothing was of the best. Seeing him in
a drawing-room, no one would mistake him for anything but a gentleman
and a man of parts. Hence it is not surprising that his second love was
one of the nobility, although her own people hated Lassalle as a bearer
of the red flag.

This girl was Helene von Donniges, the daughter of a Bavarian
diplomat. As a child she had traveled much, especially in Italy and in
Switzerland. She was very precocious, and lived her own life without
asking the direction of any one. At twelve years of age she had been
betrothed to an Italian of forty; but this dark and pedantic person
always displeased her, and soon afterward, when she met a young
Wallachian nobleman, one Yanko Racowitza, she was ready at once to
dismiss her Italian lover. Racowitza--young, a student, far from home,
and lacking friends--appealed at once to the girl's sympathy.

At that very time, in Berlin, where Helene was visiting her grandmother,
she was asked by a Prussian baron:

"Do you know Ferdinand Lassalle?"

The question came to her with a peculiar shock. She had never heard the
name, and yet the sound of it gave her a strange emotion. Baron Korff,
who perhaps took liberties because she was so young, went on to say:

"My dear lady, have you really never seen Lassalle? Why, you and he were
meant for each other!"

She felt ashamed to ask about him, but shortly after a gentleman who
knew her said:

"It is evident that you have a surprising degree of intellectual kinship
with Ferdinand Lassalle."

This so excited her curiosity that she asked her grandmother:

"Who is this person of whom they talk so much--this Ferdinand Lassalle?"

"Do not speak of him," replied her grandmother. "He is a shameless
demagogue!"

A little questioning brought to Helene all sorts of stories about
Lassalle--the Countess von Hatzfeldt, the stolen casket, the mysterious
pamphlet, the long battle in the courts--all of which excited her still
more. A friend offered to introduce her to the "shameless demagogue."
This introduction happened at a party, and it must have been an
extraordinary meeting. Seldom, it seemed, was there a better instance
of love at first sight, or of the true affinity of which Baron Korff
had spoken. In the midst of the public gathering they almost rushed into
each other's arms; they talked the free talk of acknowledged lovers; and
when she left, he called her love-names as he offered her his arm.

"Somehow it did not appear at all remarkable," she afterward declared.
"We seemed to be perfectly fitted to each other."

Nevertheless, nine months passed before they met again at a soiree. At
this time Lassaller gazing upon her, said:

"What would you do if I were sentenced to death?"

"I should wait until your head was severed," was her answer, "in order
that you might look upon your beloved to the last, and then--I should
take poison!"

Her answer delighted him, but he said that there was no danger. He
was greeted on every hand with great consideration; and it seemed not
unlikely that, in recognition of his influence with the people, he might
rise to some high position. The King of Prussia sympathized with him.
Heine called him the Messiah of the nineteenth century. When he passed
from city to city, the whole population turned out to do him honor.
Houses were wreathed; flowers were thrown in masses upon him, while the
streets were spanned with triumphal arches.

Worn out with the work and excitement attending the birth of the
Deutscher Arbeiterverein, or workmen's union, which he founded in 1863,
Lassalle fled for a time to Switzerland for rest. Helene heard of his
whereabouts, and hurried to him, with several friends. They met again
on July 25,1864, and discussed long and intensely the possibilities of
their marriage and the opposition of her parents, who would never permit
her to marry a man who was at once a Socialist and a Jew.

Then comes a pitiful story of the strife between Lassalle and the
Donniges family. Helene's father and mother indulged in vulgar words;
they spoke of Lassalle with contempt; they recalled all the scandals
that had been current ten years before, and forbade Helene ever to
mention the man's name again.

The next scene in the drama took place in Geneva, where the family
of Herr von Donniges had arrived, and where Helene's sister had been
betrothed to Count von Keyserling--a match which filled her mother with
intense joy. Her momentary friendliness tempted Helene to speak of her
unalterable love for Lassalle. Scarcely had the words been spoken when
her father and mother burst into abuse and denounced Lassalle as well as
herself.

She sent word of this to Lassalle, who was in a hotel near by. Scarcely
had he received her letter, when Helene herself appeared upon the scene,
and with all the intensity of which she was possessed, she begged him
to take her wherever he chose. She would go with him to France, to
Italy--to the ends of the earth!

What a situation, and yet how simple a one for a man of spirit! It is
strange to have to record that to Lassalle it seemed most difficult. He
felt that he or she, or both of them, had been compromised. Had she a
lady with her? Did she know any one in the neighborhood?

What an extraordinary answer! If she were compromised, all the more
ought he to have taken her in his arms and married her at once, instead
of quibbling and showing himself a prig.

Presently, her maid came in to tell them that a carriage was ready to
take them to the station, whence a train would start for Paris in a
quarter of an hour. Helene begged him with a feeling that was beginning
to be one of shame. Lassalle repelled her in words that were to stamp
him with a peculiar kind of cowardice.

Why should he have stopped to think of anything except the beautiful
woman who was at his feet, and to whom he had pledged his love? What did
he care for the petty diplomat who was her father, or the vulgar-tongued
woman who was her mother? He should have hurried her and the maid into
the train for Paris, and have forgotten everything in the world but his
Helene, glorious among women, who had left everything for him.

What was the sudden failure, the curious weakness, the paltriness of
spirit that came at the supreme moment into the heart of this hitherto
strong man? Here was the girl whom he loved, driven from her parents,
putting aside all question of appearances, and clinging to him with a
wild and glorious desire to give herself to him and to be all his own!
That was a thing worthy of a true woman. And he? He shrinks from her
and cowers and acts like a simpleton. His courage seems to have dribbled
through his finger-tips; he is no longer a man--he is a thing.

Out of all the multitude of Lassalle's former admirers, there is
scarcely one who has ventured to defend him, much less to laud him; and
when they have done so, their voices have had a sound of mockery that
dies away in their own throats.

Helene, on her side, had compromised herself, and even from the
view-point of her parents it was obvious that she ought to be married
immediately. Her father, however, confined her to her room until it
was understood that Lassalle had left Geneva. Then her family's
supplications, the statement that her sister's marriage and even her
father's position were in danger, led her to say that she would give up
Lassalle.

It mattered very little, in one way, for whatever he might have done,
Lassalle had killed, or at least had chilled, her love. His failure at
the moment of her great self-sacrifice had shown him to her as he really
was--no bold and gallant spirit, but a cringing, spiritless self-seeker.
She wrote him a formal letter to the effect that she had become
reconciled to her "betrothed bridegroom"; and they never met again.

Too late, Lassalle gave himself up to a great regret. He went about
trying to explain his action to his friends, but he could say nothing
that would ease his feeling and reinstate him in the eyes of the
romantic girl. In a frenzy, he sought out the Wallachian student, Yanko
von Racowitza, and challenged him to a mortal duel. He also challenged
Helene's father. Years before, he had on principle declined to fight a
duel; but now he went raving about as if he sought the death of every
one who knew him.

The duel was fought on August 28, 1864. There was some trouble about
pistols, and also about seconds; but finally the combatants left a
small hotel in a village near Geneva, and reached the dueling-grounds.
Lassalle was almost joyous in his manner. His old confidence had come
back to him; he meant to kill his man.

They took their stations high up among the hills. A few spectators saw
their figures outlined against the sky. The command to fire rang out,
and from both pistols gushed the flame and smoke.

A moment later, Lassalle was seen to sway and fall. A chance shot,
glancing from a wall, had struck him to the ground. He suffered
terribly, and nothing but opium in great doses could relieve his pain.
His wound was mortal, and three days later he died.

Long after, Helene admitted that she still loved Lassalle, and believed
that he would win the duel; but after the tragedy, the tenderness and
patience of Racowitza won her heart. She married him, but within a
year he died of consumption. Helene, being disowned by her relations,
prepared herself for the stage. She married a third husband named
Shevitch, who was then living in the United States, but who has since
made his home in Russia.

Let us say nothing of Lassalle's political career. Except for his work
as one of the early leaders of the liberal movement in Germany, it has
perished, and his name has been almost forgotten. As a lover, his story
stands out forever as a warning to the timid and the recreant. Let men
do what they will; but there is just one thing which no man is permitted
to do with safety in the sight of woman--and that is to play the craven.





THE STORY OF RACHEL


Outside of the English-speaking peoples the nineteenth century witnessed
the rise and triumphant progress of three great tragic actresses. The
first two of these--Rachel Felix and Sarah Bernhardt--were of Jewish
extraction; the third, Eleanor Duse, is Italian. All of them made their
way from pauperism to fame; but perhaps the rise of Rachel was the most
striking.

In the winter of 1821 a wretched peddler named Abraham--or Jacob--Felix
sought shelter at a dilapidated inn at Mumpf, a village in Switzerland,
not far from Basel. It was at the close of a stormy day, and his small
family had been toiling through the snow and sleet. The inn was the
lowest sort of hovel, and yet its proprietor felt that it was too good
for these vagabonds. He consented to receive them only when he learned
that the peddler's wife was to be delivered of a child. That very night
she became the mother of a girl, who was at first called Elise. So
unimportant was the advent of this little waif into the world that the
burgomaster of Mumpf thought it necessary to make an entry only of the
fact that a peddler's wife had given birth to a female child. There was
no mention of family or religion, nor was the record anything more than
a memorandum.

Under such circumstances was born a child who was destined to excite the
wonder of European courts--to startle and thrill and utterly amaze great
audiences by her dramatic genius. But for ten years the family--which
grew until it consisted of one son and five daughters--kept on its
wanderings through Switzerland and Germany. Finally, they settled
down in Lyons, where the mother opened a little shop for the sale of
second-hand clothing. The husband gave lessons in German whenever he
could find a pupil. The eldest daughter went about the cafes in the
evening, singing the songs that were then popular, while her small
sister, Rachel, collected coppers from those who had coppers to spare.

Although the family was barely able to sustain existence, the father and
mother were by no means as ignorant as their squalor would imply. The
peddler Felix had studied Hebrew theology in the hope of becoming a
rabbi. Failing this, he was always much interested in declamation,
public reading, and the recitation of poetry. He was, in his way, no
mean critic of actors and actresses. Long before she was ten years of
age little Rachel--who had changed her name from Elise--could render
with much feeling and neatness of eloquence bits from the best-known
French plays of the classic stage.

The children's mother, on her side, was sharp and practical to a high
degree. She saved and scrimped all through her period of adversity.
Later she was the banker of her family, and would never lend any of her
children a sou except on excellent security. However, this was all to
happen in after years.

When the child who was destined to be famous had reached her tenth
year she and her sisters made their way to Paris. For four years the
second-hand clothing-shop was continued; the father still taught German;
and the elder sister, Sarah, who had a golden voice, made the rounds of
the cafes in the lowest quarters of the capital, while Rachel passed the
wooden plate for coppers.

One evening in the year 1834 a gentleman named Morin, having been taken
out of his usual course by a matter of business, entered a BRASSERIE
for a cup of coffee. There he noted two girls, one of them singing with
remarkable sweetness, and the other silently following with the wooden
plate. M. Morin called to him the girl who sang and asked her why she
did not make her voice more profitable than by haunting the cafes at
night, where she was sure to meet with insults of the grossest kind.

"Why," said Sarah, "I haven't anybody to advise me what to do."

M. Morin gave her his address and said that he would arrange to have her
meet a friend who would be of great service to her. On the following
day he sent the two girls to a M. Choron, who was the head of the
Conservatory of Sacred Music. Choron had Sarah sing, and instantly
admitted her as a pupil, which meant that she would soon be enrolled
among the regular choristers. The beauty of her voice made a deep
impression on him.

Then he happened to notice the puny, meager child who was standing near
her sister. Turning to her, he said:

"And what can you do, little one?"

"I can recite poetry," was the reply.

"Oh, can you?" said he. "Please let me hear you."

Rachel readily consented. She had a peculiarly harsh, grating voice, so
that any but a very competent judge would have turned her away. But M.
Choron, whose experience was great, noted the correctness of her accent
and the feeling which made itself felt in every line. He accepted her as
well as her sister, but urged her to study elocution rather than music.

She must, indeed, have had an extraordinary power even at the age
of fourteen, since not merely her voice but her whole appearance was
against her. She was dressed in a short calico frock of a pattern
in which red was spotted with white. Her shoes were of coarse black
leather. Her hair was parted at the back of her head and hung down her
shoulders in two braids, framing the long, childish, and yet gnome-like
face, which was unusual in its gravity.

At first she was little thought of; but there came a time when she
astonished both her teachers and her companions by a recital which she
gave in public. The part was the narrative of Salema in the "Abufar"
of Ducis. It describes the agony of a mother who gives birth to a child
while dying of thirst amid the desert sands. Mme. de Barviera has left a
description of this recital, which it is worth while to quote:

While uttering the thrilling tale the thin face seemed to lengthen with
horror, the small, deep-set black eyes dilated with a fixed stare as
though she witnessed the harrowing scene; and the deep, guttural tones,
despite a slight Jewish accent, awoke a nameless terror in every one who
listened, carrying him through the imaginary woe with a strange feeling
of reality, not to be shaken, off as long as the sounds lasted.

Even yet, however, the time had not come for any conspicuous success.
The girl was still so puny in form, so monkey-like in face, and so
gratingly unpleasant in her tones that it needed time for her to attain
her full growth and to smooth away some of the discords in her peculiar
voice.

Three years later she appeared at the Gymnase in a regular debut; yet
even then only the experienced few appreciated her greatness. Among
these, however, were the well-known critic Jules Janin, the poet and
novelist Gauthier, and the actress Mlle. Mars. They saw that this lean,
raucous gutter-girl had within her gifts which would increase until she
would be first of all actresses on the French stage. Janin wrote some
lines which explain the secret of her greatness:

All the talent in the world, especially when continually applied to
the same dramatic works, will not satisfy continually the hearer. What
pleases in a great actor, as in all arts that appeal to the imagination,
is the unforeseen. When I am utterly ignorant of what is to happen,
when I do not know, when you yourself do not know what will be your
next gesture, your next look, what passion will possess your heart, what
outcry will burst from your terror-stricken soul, then, indeed, I am
willing to see you daily, for each day you will be new to me. To-day I
may blame, to-morrow praise. Yesterday you were all-powerful; to-morrow,
perhaps, you may hardly win from me a word of admiration. So much the
better, then, if you draw from me unexpected tears, if in my heart you
strike an unknown fiber; but tell me not of hearing night after night
great artists who every time present the exact counterpart of what they
were on the preceding one.

It was at the Theatre Francais that she won her final acceptance as the
greatest of all tragedians of her time. This was in her appearance in
Corneille's famous play of "Horace." She had now, in 1838, blazed forth
with a power that shook her no, less than it stirred the emotions and
the passions of her hearers. The princes of the royal blood came in
succession to see her. King Louis Philippe himself was at last tempted
by curiosity to be present. Gifts of money and jewels were showered on
her, and through sheer natural genius rather than through artifice she
was able to master a great audience and bend it to her will.

She had no easy life, this girl of eighteen years, for other actresses
carped at her, and she had had but little training. The sordid ways of
her old father excited a bitterness which was vented on the daughter.
She was still under age, and therefore was treated as a gold-mine by her
exacting parents. At the most she could play but twice a week. Her form
was frail and reed-like. She was threatened with a complaint of the
lungs; yet all this served to excite rather than to diminish public
interest in her. The newspapers published daily bulletins of her health,
and her door was besieged by anxious callers who wished to know her
condition. As for the greed of her parents, every one said she was
not to blame for that. And so she passed from poverty to riches, from
squalor to something like splendor, and from obscurity to fame.

Much has been written about her that is quite incorrect. She has been
credited with virtues which she never possessed; and, indeed, it may be
said with only too much truth that she possessed no virtues whatsoever.
On the stage while the inspiration lasted she was magnificent. Off
the stage she was sly, treacherous, capricious, greedy, ungrateful,
ignorant, and unchaste. With such an ancestry as she had, with such an
early childhood as had been hers, what else could one expect from her?

She and her old mother wrangled over money like two pickpockets. Some of
her best friends she treated shamefully. Her avarice was without bounds.
Some one said that it was not really avarice, but only a reaction from
generosity; but this seems an exceedingly subtle theory. It is possible
to give illustrations of it, however. She did, indeed, make many
presents with a lavish hand; yet, having made a present, she could
not rest until she got it back. The fact was so well known that her
associates took it for granted. The younger Dumas once received a
ring from her. Immediately he bowed low and returned it to her finger,
saying:

"Permit me, mademoiselle, to present it to you in my turn so as to save
you the embarrassment of asking for it."

Mr. Vandam relates among other anecdotes about her that one evening she
dined at the house of Comte Duchatel. The table was loaded with the
most magnificent flowers; but Rachel's keen eyes presently spied out the
great silver centerpiece. Immediately she began to admire the latter;
and the count, fascinated by her manners, said that he would be glad to
present it to her. She accepted it at once, but was rather fearful
lest he should change his mind. She had come to dinner in a cab, and
mentioned the fact. The count offered to send her home in his carriage.

"Yes, that will do admirably," said she. "There will be no danger of my
being robbed of your present, which I had better take with me."

"With pleasure, mademoiselle," replied the count. "But you will send me
back my carriage, won't you?"

Rachel had a curious way of asking every one she met for presents and
knickknacks, whether they were valuable or not. She knew how to make
them valuable.

Once in a studio she noticed a guitar hanging on the wall. She begged
for it very earnestly. As it was an old and almost worthless instrument,
it was given her. A little later it was reported that the dilapidated
guitar had been purchased by a well-known gentleman for a thousand
francs. The explanation soon followed. Rachel had declared that it was
the very guitar with which she used to earn her living as a child in the
streets of Paris. As a memento its value sprang from twenty francs to a
thousand.

It has always been a mystery what Rachel did with the great sums of
money which she made in various ways. She never was well dressed; and as
for her costumes on the stage, they were furnished by the theater. When
her effects were sold at public auction after her death her furniture
was worse than commonplace, and her pictures and ornaments were
worthless, except such as had been given her. She must have made
millions of francs, and yet she had very little to leave behind her.

Some say that her brother Raphael, who acted as her personal manager,
was a spendthrift; but if so, there are many reasons for thinking that
it was not his sister's money that he spent. Others say that Rachel
gambled in stocks, but there is no evidence of it. The only thing that
is certain is the fact that she was almost always in want of money. Her
mother, in all probability, managed to get hold of most of her earnings.

Much may have been lost through her caprices. One instance may be cited.
She had received an offer of three hundred thousand francs to act at St.
Petersburg, and was on her way there when she passed through Potsdam,
near Berlin. The King of Prussia was entertaining the Russian Czar. An
invitation was sent to her in the shape of a royal command to appear
before these monarchs and their guests. For some reason or other Rachel
absolutely refused. She would listen to no arguments. She would go on to
St. Petersburg without delay.

"But," it was said to her, "if you refuse to appear before the Czar at
Potsdam all the theaters in St. Petersburg will be closed against you,
because you will have insulted the emperor. In this way you will be
out the expenses of your journey and also the three hundred thousand
francs."

Rachel remained stubborn as before; but in about half an hour she
suddenly declared that she would recite before the two monarchs, which
she subsequently did, to the satisfaction of everybody. Some one said to
her not long after:

"I knew that you would do it. You weren't going to give up the three
hundred thousand francs and all your travelling expenses."

"You are quite wrong," returned Rachel, "though of course you will not
believe me. I did not care at all about the money and was going back to
France. It was something that I heard which made me change my mind. Do
you want to know what it was? Well, after all the arguments were over
some one informed me that the Czar Nicholas was the handsomest man
in Europe; and so I made up my mind that I would stay in Potsdam long
enough to see him."

This brings us to one phase of Rachel's nature which is rather sinister.
She was absolutely hard. She seemed to have no emotions except those
which she exhibited on the stage or the impish perversity which
irritated so many of those about her. She was in reality a product of
the gutter, able to assume a demure and modest air, but within coarse,
vulgar, and careless of decency. Yet the words of Jules Janin, which
have been quoted above, explain how she could be personally very
fascinating.

In all Rachel's career one can detect just a single strand of real
romance. It is one that makes us sorry for her, because it tells us that
her love was given where it never could be openly requited.

During the reign of Louis Philippe the Comte Alexandre Walewski held
many posts in the government. He was a son of the great Napoleon. His
mother was that Polish countess who had accepted Napoleon's love because
she hoped that he might set Poland free at her desire. But Napoleon was
never swerved from his well-calculated plans by the wish of any woman,
and after a time the Countess Walewska came to love him for himself. It
was she to whom he confided secrets which he would not reveal to his own
brothers. It was she who followed him to Elba in disguise. It was her
son who was Napoleon's son, and who afterward, under the Second Empire,
was made minister of fine arts, minister of foreign affairs, and,
finally, an imperial duke. Unlike the third Napoleon's natural
half-brother, the Duc de Moray, Walewski was a gentleman of honor and
fine feeling. He never used his relationship to secure advantages for
himself. He tried to live in a manner worthy of the great warrior who
was his father.

As minister of fine arts he had much to do with the subsidized theaters;
and in time he came to know Rachel. He was the son of one of the
greatest men who ever lived. She was the child of roving peddlers whose
early training had been in the slums of cities and amid the smoke of
bar-rooms and cafes. She was tainted in a thousand ways, while he was a
man of breeding and right principle. She was a wandering actress; he was
a great minister of state. What could there be between these two?

George Sand gave the explanation in an epigram which, like most
epigrams, is only partly true. She said:

"The count's company must prove very restful to Rachel."

What she meant was, of course, that Walewski's breeding, his dignity
and uprightness, might be regarded only as a temporary repose for the
impish, harsh-voiced, infinitely clever actress. Of course, it was all
this, but we should not take it in a mocking sense. Rachel looked up out
of her depths and gave her heart to this high-minded nobleman. He looked
down and lifted her, as it were, so that she could forget for the time
all the baseness and the brutality that she had known, that she might
put aside her forced vivacity and the self that was not in reality her
own.

It is pitiful to think of these two, separated by a great abyss which
could not be passed except at times and hours when each was free. But
theirs was, none the less, a meeting of two souls, strangely different
in many ways, and yet appealing to each other with a sincerity and truth
which neither could show elsewhere.

The end of poor Rachel was one of disappointment. Tempted by the fact
that Jenny Lind had made nearly two million francs by her visit to the
United States, Rachel followed her, but with slight success, as was to
be expected. Music is enjoyed by human beings everywhere, while French
classical plays, even though acted by a genius like Rachel, could be
rightly understood only by a French-speaking people. Thus it came about
that her visit to America was only moderately successful.

She returned to France, where the rising fame of Adelaide Ristori was
very bitter to Rachel, who had passed the zenith of her power. She went
to Egypt, but received no benefit, and in 1858 she died near Cannes. The
man who loved her, and whom she had loved in turn, heard of her death
with great emotion. He himself lived ten years longer, and died a little
while before the fall of the Second Empire.


END OF VOLUME THREE





DEAN SWIFT AND THE TWO ESTHERS


The story of Jonathan Swift and of the two women who gave their lives
for love of him is familiar to every student of English literature.
Swift himself, both in letters and in politics, stands out a conspicuous
figure in the reigns of King William III and Queen Anne. By writing
Gulliver's Travels he made himself immortal. The external facts of his
singular relations with two charming women are sufficiently well known;
but a definite explanation of these facts has never yet been given.
Swift held his tongue with a repellent taciturnity. No one ever dared
to question him. Whether the true solution belongs to the sphere of
psychology or of physiology is a question that remains unanswered.

But, as the case is one of the most puzzling in the annals of love, it
may be well to set forth the circumstances very briefly, to weigh the
theories that have already been advanced, and to suggest another.

Jonathan Swift was of Yorkshire stock, though he happened to be born in
Dublin, and thus is often spoken of as "the great Irish satirist," or
"the Irish dean." It was, in truth, his fate to spend much of his life
in Ireland, and to die there, near the cathedral where his remains now
rest; but in truth he hated Ireland and everything connected with it,
just as he hated Scotland and everything that was Scottish. He was an
Englishman to the core.

High-stomached, proud, obstinate, and over-mastering, independence was
the dream of his life. He would accept no favors, lest he should put
himself under obligation; and although he could give generously, and
even lavishly, he lived for the most part a miser's life, hoarding every
penny and halfpenny that he could. Whatever one may think of him, there
is no doubt that he was a very manly man. Too many of his portraits give
the impression of a sour, supercilious pedant; but the finest of them
all--that by Jervas--shows him as he must have been at his very prime,
with a face that was almost handsome, and a look of attractive humor
which strengthens rather than lessens the power of his brows and of the
large, lambent eyes beneath them.

At fifteen he entered Trinity College, in Dublin, where he read widely
but studied little, so that his degree was finally granted him only as
a special favor. At twenty-one he first visited England, and became
secretary to Sir William Temple, at Moor Park. Temple, after a
distinguished career in diplomacy, had retired to his fine country
estate in Surrey. He is remembered now for several things--for having
entertained Peter the Great of Russia; for having, while young, won
the affections of Dorothy Osborne, whose letters to him are charming in
their grace and archness; for having been the patron of Jonathan Swift;
and for fathering the young girl named Esther Johnson, a waif, born out
of wedlock, to whom Temple gave a place in his household.

When Swift first met her, Esther Johnson was only eight years old; and
part of his duties at Moor Park consisted in giving her what was then
an unusual education for a girl. She was, however, still a child, and
nothing serious could have passed between the raw youth and this little
girl who learned the lessons that he imposed upon her.

Such acquaintance as they had was rudely broken off. Temple, a man of
high position, treated Swift with an urbane condescension which drove
the young man's independent soul into a frenzy. He returned to Ireland,
where he was ordained a clergyman, and received a small parish at
Kilroot, near Belfast.

It was here that the love-note was first seriously heard in the
discordant music of Swift's career. A college friend of his named Waring
had a sister who was about the age of Swift, and whom he met quite
frequently at Kilroot. Not very much is known of this episode, but
there is evidence that Swift fell in love with the girl, whom he rather
romantically called "Varina."

This cannot be called a serious love-affair. Swift was lonely, and Jane
Waring was probably the only girl of refinement who lived near Kilroot.
Furthermore, she had inherited a small fortune, while Swift was
miserably poor, and had nothing to offer except the shadowy prospect of
future advancement in England. He was definitely refused by her; and it
was this, perhaps, that led him to resolve on going back to England and
making his peace with Sir William Temple.

On leaving, Swift wrote a passionate letter to Miss Waring--the only
true love-letter that remains to us of their correspondence. He protests
that he does not want Varina's fortune, and that he will wait until
he is in a position to marry her on equal terms. There is a smoldering
flame of jealousy running through the letter. Swift charges her with
being cold, affected, and willing to flirt with persons who are quite
beneath her.

Varina played no important part in Swift's larger life thereafter; but
something must be said of this affair in order to show, first of all,
that Swift's love for her was due only to proximity, and that when he
ceased to feel it he could be not only hard, but harsh. His fiery spirit
must have made a deep impression on Miss Waring; for though she at the
time refused him, she afterward remembered him, and tried to renew their
old relations. Indeed, no sooner had Swift been made rector of a larger
parish, than Varina let him know that she had changed her mind, and was
ready to marry him; but by this time Swift had lost all interest in her.
He wrote an answer which even his truest admirers have called brutal.

"Yes," he said in substance, "I will marry you, though you have treated
me vilely, and though you are living in a sort of social sink. I am
still poor, though you probably think otherwise. However, I will marry
you on certain conditions. First, you must be educated, so that you
can entertain me. Next, you must put up with all my whims and likes and
dislikes. Then you must live wherever I please. On these terms I will
take you, without reference to your looks or to your income. As to the
first, cleanliness is all that I require; as to the second, I only ask
that it be enough."

Such a letter as this was like a blow from a bludgeon. The insolence,
the contempt, and the hardness of it were such as no self-respecting
woman could endure. It put an end to their acquaintance, as Swift
undoubtedly intended it should do. He would have been less censurable
had he struck Varina with his fist or kicked her.

The true reason for Swift's utter change of heart is found, no doubt, in
the beginning of what was destined to be his long intimacy with Esther
Johnson. When Swift left Sir William Temple's in a huff, Esther had been
a mere schoolgirl. Now, on his return, she was fifteen years of age, and
seemed older. She had blossomed out into a very comely girl, vivacious,
clever, and physically well developed, with dark hair, sparkling eyes,
and features that were unusually regular and lovely.

For three years the two were close friends and intimate associates,
though it cannot be said that Swift ever made open love to her. To the
outward eye they were no more than fellow workers. Yet love does not
need the spoken word and the formal declaration to give it life and make
it deep and strong. Esther Johnson, to whom Swift gave the pet name of
"Stella," grew into the existence of this fiery, hold, and independent
genius. All that he did she knew. She was his confidante. As to his
writings, his hopes, and his enmities, she was the mistress of all his
secrets. For her, at last, no other man existed.

On Sir William Temple's death, Esther John son came into a small
fortune, though she now lost her home at Moor Park. Swift returned to
Ireland, and soon afterward he invited Stella to join him there.

Swift was now thirty-four years of age, and Stella a very attractive
girl of twenty. One might have expected that the two would marry, and
yet they did not do so. Every precaution was taken to avoid anything
like scandal. Stella was accompanied by a friend--a widow named Mrs.
Dingley--without whose presence, or that of some third person, Swift
never saw Esther Johnson. When Swift was absent, how ever, the two
ladies occupied his apartments; and Stella became more than ever
essential to his happiness.

When they were separated for any length of time Swift wrote to Stella
in a sort of baby-talk, which they called "the little language." It was
made up of curious abbreviations and childish words, growing more and
more complicated as the years went on. It is interesting to think of
this stern and often savage genius, who loved to hate, and whose hate
was almost less terrible than his love, babbling and prattling in little
half caressing sentences, as a mother might babble over her first child.
Pedantic writers have professed to find in Swift's use of this "little
language" the coming shadow of that insanity which struck him down in
his old age.

As it is, these letters are among the curiosities of amatory
correspondence. When Swift writes "oo" for "you," and "deelest" for
"dearest," and "vely" for "very," there is no need of an interpreter;
but "rettle" for "let ter," "dallars" for "girls," and "givar" for
"devil," are at first rather difficult to guess. Then there is a system
of abbreviating. "Md" means "my dear," "Ppt" means "poppet," and "Pdfr,"
with which Swift sometimes signed his epistles, "poor, dear, foolish
rogue."

The letters reveal how very closely the two were bound together, yet
still there was no talk of marriage. On one occasion, after they had
been together for three years in Ireland, Stella might have married
another man. This was a friend of Swift's, one Dr. Tisdall, who made
energetic love to the sweet-faced English girl. Tisdall accused Swift of
poisoning Stella's mind against him. Swift replied that such was not
the case. He said that no feelings of his own would ever lead him to
influence the girl if she preferred another.

It is quite sure, then, that Stella clung wholly to Swift, and cared
nothing for the proffered love of any other man. Thus through the years
the relations of the two remained unchanged, until in 1710 Swift
left Ireland and appeared as a very brilliant figure in the London
drawing-rooms of the great Tory leaders of the day.

He was now a man of mark, because of his ability as a controversialist.
He had learned the manners of the world, and he carried him self with an
air of power which impressed all those who met him. Among these persons
was a Miss Hester--or Esther--Vanhomrigh, the daughter of a rather
wealthy widow who was living in London at that time. Miss Vanhomrigh--a
name which she and her mother pronounced "Vanmeury"--was then seventeen
years of age, or twelve years younger than the patient Stella.

Esther Johnson, through her long acquaintance with Swift, and from
his confidence in her, had come to treat him almost as an intellectual
equal. She knew all his moods, some of which were very difficult, and
she bore them all; though when he was most tyrannous she became only
passive, waiting, with a woman's wisdom, for the tempest to blow over.

Miss Vanhomrigh, on the other hand, was one of those girls who, though
they have high spirit, take an almost voluptuous delight in yielding to
a spirit that is stronger still. This beautiful creature felt a positive
fascination in Swift's presence and his imperious manner. When his eyes
flashed, and his voice thundered out words of anger, she looked at him
with adoration, and bowed in a sort of ecstasy before him. If he chose
to accost a great lady with "Well, madam, are you as ill-natured and
disagreeable as when I met you last?" Esther Vanhomrigh thrilled at the
insolent audacity of the man. Her evident fondness for him exercised a
seductive influence over Swift.

As the two were thrown more and more together, the girl lost all her
self-control. Swift did not in any sense make love to her, though he
gave her the somewhat fanciful name of "Vanessa"; but she, driven on by
a high-strung, unbridled temperament, made open love to him. When he was
about to return to Ireland, there came one startling moment when Vanessa
flung herself into the arms of Swift, and amazed him by pouring out a
torrent of passionate endearments.

Swift seems to have been surprised. He did what he could to quiet her.
He told her that they were too unequal in years and fortune for anything
but friendship, and he offered to give her as much friendship as she
desired.

Doubtless he thought that, after returning to Ireland, he would not see
Vanessa any more. In this, however, he was mistaken. An ardent girl,
with a fortune of her own, was not to be kept from the man whom
absence only made her love the more. In addition, Swift carried on his
correspondence with her, which served to fan the flame and to increase
the sway that Swift had already acquired.

Vanessa wrote, and with every letter she burned and pined. Swift
replied, and each reply enhanced her yearning for him. Ere long,
Vanessa's mother died, and Vanessa herself hastened to Ireland and took
up her residence near Dublin. There, for years, was enacted this tragic
comedy--Esther Johnson was near Swift, and had all his confidence;
Esther Vanhomrigh was kept apart from him, while still receiving
missives from him, and, later, even visits.

It was at this time, after he had become dean of St. Patrick's
Cathedral, in Dublin, that Swift was married to Esther Johnson--for it
seems probable that the ceremony took place, though it was nothing more
than a form. They still saw each other only in the presence of a third
person. Nevertheless, some knowledge of their close relationship leaked
out. Stella had been jealous of her rival during the years that Swift
spent in London. Vanessa was now told that Swift was married to the
other woman, or that she was his mistress. Writhing with jealousy, she
wrote directly to Stella, and asked whether she was Dean Swift's wife.
In answer Stella replied that she was, and then she sent Vanessa's
letter to Swift himself.

All the fury of his nature was roused in him; and he was a man who could
be very terrible when angry. He might have remembered the intense love
which Vanessa bore for him, the humility with which she had accepted his
conditions, and, finally, the loneliness of this girl.

But Swift was utterly unsparing. No gleam of pity entered his heart as
he leaped upon a horse and galloped out to Marley Abbey, where she was
living--"his prominent eyes arched by jet-black brows and glaring with
the green fury of a cat's." Reaching the house, he dashed into it, with
something awful in his looks, made his way to Vanessa, threw her letter
down upon the table and, after giving her one frightful glare, turned on
his heel, and in a moment more was galloping back to Dublin.

The girl fell to the floor in an agony of terror and remorse. She was
taken to her room, and only three weeks afterward was carried forth,
having died literally of a broken heart.

Five years later, Stella also died, withering away a sacrifice to
what the world has called Swift's cruel heartlessness and egotism. His
greatest public triumphs came to him in his final years of melancholy
isolation; but in spite of the applause that greeted The Drapier Letters
and Gulliver's Travels, he brooded morbidly over his past life. At last
his powerful mind gave way, so that he died a victim to senile dementia.
By his directions his body was interred in the same coffin with
Stella's, in the cathedral of which he had been dean.

Such is the story of Dean Swift, and it has always suggested several
curious questions. Why, if he loved Stella, did he not marry her long
before? Why, when he married her, did he treat her still as if she were
not his wife? Why did he allow Vanessa's love to run like a scarlet
thread across the fabric of the other affection, which must have been so
strong?

Many answers have been given to these questions. That which was
formulated by Sir Walter Scott is a simple one, and has been generally
accepted. Scott believed that Swift was physically incapacitated for
marriage, and that he needed feminine sympathy, which he took where he
could get it, without feeling bound to give anything in return.

If Scott's explanation be the true one, it still leaves Swift exposed to
ignominy as a monster of ingratitude. Therefore, many of his biographers
have sought other explanations. No one can palliate his conduct toward
Vanessa; but Sir Leslie Stephen makes a plea for him with reference
to Stella. Sir Leslie points out that until Swift became dean of St.
Patrick's his income was far too small to marry on, and that after his
brilliant but disappointing three years in London, when his prospects of
advancement were ruined, he felt himself a broken man.

Furthermore, his health was always precarious, since he suffered from a
distressing illness which attacked him at intervals, rendering him both
deaf and giddy. The disease is now known as Meniere's disease, from its
classification by the French physician, Meniere, in 1861. Swift felt
that he lived in constant danger of some sudden stroke that would
deprive him either of life or reason; and his ultimate insanity makes it
appear that his forebodings were not wholly futile. Therefore, though he
married Stella, he kept the marriage secret, thus leaving her free, in
case of his demise, to marry as a maiden, and not to be regarded as a
widow.

Sir Leslie offers the further plea that, after all, Stella's life was
what she chose to make it. She enjoyed Swift's friendship, which she
preferred to the love of any other man.

Another view is that of Dr. Richard Garnett, who has discussed the
question with some subtlety. "Swift," says Dr. Garnett, "was by nature
devoid of passion. He was fully capable of friendship, but not of love.
The spiritual realm, whether of divine or earthly things, was a region
closed to him, where he never set foot." On the side of friendship
he must greatly have preferred Stella to Vanessa, and yet the latter
assailed him on his weakest side--on the side of his love of imperious
domination.

Vanessa hugged the fetters to which Stella merely submitted. Flattered
to excess by her surrender, yet conscious of his obligations and his
real preference, he could neither discard the one beauty nor desert the
other.

Therefore, he temporized with both of them, and when the choice was
forced upon him he madly struck down the woman for whom he cared the
less.

One may accept Dr. Garnett's theory with a somewhat altered conclusion.
It is not true, as a matter of recorded fact, that Swift was incapable
of passion, for when a boy at college he was sought out by various young
women, and he sought them out in turn. His fiery letter to Miss Waring
points to the same conclusion. When Esther Johnson began to love him he
was heart-free, yet unable, because of his straitened means, to marry.
But Esther Johnson always appealed more to his reason, his friendship,
and his comfort, than to his love, using the word in its material,
physical sense. This love was stirred in him by Vanessa. Yet when he
met Vanessa he had already gone too far with Esther Johnson to break the
bond which had so long united them, nor could he think of a life without
her, for she was to him his other self.

At the same time, his more romantic association with Vanessa roused
those instincts which he had scarcely known himself to be possessed of.
His position was, therefore, most embarrassing. He hoped to end it when
he left London and returned to Ireland; but fate was unkind to him in
this, because Vanessa followed him. He lacked the will to be frank
with her, and thus he stood a wretched, halting victim of his own dual
nature.

He was a clergyman, and at heart religious. He had also a sense of
honor, and both of these traits compelled him to remain true to Esther
Johnson. The terrible outbreak which brought about Vanessa's death was
probably the wild frenzy of a tortured soul. It recalls the picture of
some fierce animal brought at last to bay, and venting its own anguish
upon any object that is within reach of its fangs and claws.

No matter how the story may be told, it makes one shiver, for it is a
tragedy in which the three participants all meet their doom--one crushed
by a lightning-bolt of unreasoning anger, the other wasting away through
hope deferred; while the man whom the world will always hold responsible
was himself destined to end his years blind and sleepless, bequeathing
his fortune to a madhouse, and saying, with his last muttered breath:

"I am a fool!"





PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY AND MARY GODWIN


A great deal has been said and written in favor of early marriage; and,
in a general way, early marriage may be an admirable thing. Young men
and young women who have no special gift of imagination, and who have
practically reached their full mental development at twenty-one or
twenty-two--or earlier, even in their teens--may marry safely; because
they are already what they will be. They are not going to experience any
growth upward and outward. Passing years simply bring them more closely
together, until they have settled down into a sort of domestic unity,
by which they think alike, act alike, and even gradually come to look
alike.

But early wedlock spells tragedy to the man or the woman of genius. In
their teens they have only begun to grow. What they will be ten years
hence, no one can prophesy. Therefore, to mate so early in life is
to insure almost certain storm and stress, and, in the end, domestic
wreckage.

As a rule, it is the man, and not the woman, who makes the false step;
because it is the man who elects to marry when he is still very young.
If he choose some ill-fitting, commonplace, and unresponsive nature to
match his own, it is he who is bound in the course of time to learn his
great mistake. When the splendid eagle shall have got his growth,
and shall begin to soar up into the vault of heaven, the poor little
barn-yard fowl that he once believed to be his equal seems very far away
in everything. He discovers that she is quite unable to follow him in
his towering flights.

The story of Percy Bysshe Shelley is a singular one. The circumstances
of his early marriage were strange. The breaking of his marriage-bond
was also strange. Shelley himself was an extraordinary creature. He was
blamed a great deal in his lifetime for what he did, and since then some
have echoed the reproach. Yet it would seem as if, at the very beginning
of his life, he was put into a false position against his will. Because
of this he was misunderstood until the end of his brief and brilliant
and erratic career.

SHELLEY AND MARY GODWIN

In 1792 the French Revolution burst into flame, the mob of Paris stormed
the Tuileries, the King of France was cast into a dungeon to await his
execution, and the wild sons of anarchy flung their gauntlet of defiance
into the face of Europe. In this tremendous year was born young Shelley;
and perhaps his nature represented the spirit of the time.

Certainly, neither from his father nor from his mother did he derive
that perpetual unrest and that frantic fondness for revolt which
blazed out in the poet when he was still a boy. His father, Mr. Timothy
Shelley, was a very usual, thick-headed, unromantic English squire. His
mother--a woman of much beauty, but of no exceptional traits--was the
daughter of another squire, and at the time of her marriage was simply
one of ten thousand fresh-faced, pleasant-spoken English country girls.
If we look for a strain of the romantic in Shelley's ancestry, we
shall have to find it in the person of his grandfather, who was a very
remarkable and powerful character.

This person, Bysshe Shelley by name, had in his youth been associated
with some mystery. He was not born in England, but in America--and
in those days the name "America" meant almost anything indefinite and
peculiar. However this might be, Bysshe Shelley, though a scion of
a good old English family, had wandered in strange lands, and it was
whispered that he had seen strange sights and done strange things.
According to one legend, he had been married in America, though no one
knew whether his wife was white or black, or how he had got rid of her.

He might have remained in America all his life, had not a small
inheritance fallen to his share. This brought him back to England, and
he soon found that England was in reality the place to make his fortune.
He was a man of magnificent physique. His rovings had given him ease
and grace, and the power which comes from a wide experience of life. He
could be extremely pleasing when he chose; and he soon won his way into
the good graces of a rich heiress, whom he married.

With her wealth he became an important personage, and consorted with
gentlemen and statesmen of influence, attaching himself particularly to
the Duke of Northumberland, by whose influence he was made a baronet.
When his rich wife died, Shelley married a still richer bride; and so
this man, who started out as a mere adventurer without a shilling to his
name, died in 1813, leaving more than a million dollars in cash, with
lands whose rent-roll yielded a hundred thousand dollars every year.

If any touch of the romantic which we find in Shelley is a matter
of heredity, we must trace it to this able, daring, restless, and
magnificent old grandfather, who was the beau ideal of an English
squire--the sort of squire who had added foreign graces to native
sturdiness. But young Shelley, the future poet, seemed scarcely to be
English at all. As a young boy he cared nothing for athletic sports.
He was given to much reading. He thought a good deal about abstractions
with which most schoolboys never concern themselves at all.

Consequently, both in private schools and afterward at Eton, he became
a sort of rebel against authority. He resisted the fagging-system. He
spoke contemptuously of physical prowess. He disliked anything that he
was obliged to do, and he rushed eagerly into whatever was forbidden.

Finally, when he was sent to University College, Oxford, he broke
all bounds. At a time when Tory England was aghast over the French
Revolution and its results, Shelley talked of liberty and equality on
all occasions. He made friends with an uncouth but able fellow student,
who bore the remarkable name of Thomas Jefferson Hogg--a name that seems
rampant with republicanism--and very soon he got himself expelled from
the university for publishing a little tract of an infidel character
called "A Defense of Atheism."

His expulsion for such a cause naturally shocked his father. It probably
disturbed Shelley himself; but, after all, it gave him some satisfaction
to be a martyr for the cause of free speech. He went to London with his
friend Hogg, and took lodgings there. He read omnivorously--Hogg says
as much as sixteen hours a day. He would walk through the most crowded
streets poring over a volume, while holding another under one arm.

His mind was full of fancies. He had begun what was afterward called
"his passion for reforming everything." He despised most of the laws of
England. He thought its Parliament ridiculous. He hated its religion. He
was particularly opposed to marriage. This last fact gives some point to
the circumstances which almost immediately confronted him.

Shelley was now about nineteen years old--an age at which most English
boys are emerging from the public schools, and are still in the
hobbledehoy stage of their formation. In a way, he was quite far from
boyish; yet in his knowledge of life he was little more than a mere
child. He knew nothing thoroughly--much less the ways of men and women.
He had no visible means of existence except a small allowance from
his father. His four sisters, who were at a boarding-school on Clapham
Common, used to save their pin-money and send it to their gifted brother
so that he might not actually starve. These sisters he used to call
upon from time to time, and through them he made the acquaintance of a
sixteen-year-old girl named Harriet Westbrook.

Harriet Westbrook was the daughter of a black-visaged keeper of a
coffee-house in Mount Street, called "Jew Westbrook," partly because of
his complexion, and partly because of his ability to retain what he
had made. He was, indeed, fairly well off, and had sent his younger
daughter, Harriet, to the school where Shelley's sisters studied.

Harriet Westbrook seems to have been a most precocious person. Any girl
of sixteen is, of course, a great deal older and more mature than a
youth of nineteen. In the present instance Harriet might have been
Shelley's senior by five years. There is no doubt that she fell in love
with him; but, having done so, she by no means acted in the shy and
timid way that would have been most natural to a very young girl in her
first love-affair. Having decided that she wanted him, she made up her
mind to get Mm at any cost, and her audacity was equaled only by his
simplicity. She was rather attractive in appearance, with abundant hair,
a plump figure, and a pink-and-white complexion. This description makes
of her a rather doll-like girl; but doll-like girls are just the sort to
attract an inexperienced young man who has yet to learn that beauty and
charm are quite distinct from prettiness, and infinitely superior to it.

In addition to her prettiness, Harriet Westbrook had a vivacious manner
and talked quite pleasingly. She was likewise not a bad listener;
and she would listen by the hour to Shelley in his rhapsodies about
chemistry, poetry, the failure of Christianity, the national debt, and
human liberty, all of which he jumbled up without much knowledge, but in
a lyric strain of impassioned eagerness which would probably have made
the multiplication-table thrilling.

For Shelley himself was a creature of extraordinary fascination, both
then and afterward. There are no likenesses of him that do him justice,
because they cannot convey that singular appeal which the man himself
made to almost every one who met him.

The eminent painter, Mulready, once said that Shelley was too beautiful
for portraiture; and yet the descriptions of him hardly seem to bear
this out. He was quite tall and slender, but he stooped so much as
to make him appear undersized. His head was very small-quite
disproportionately so; but this was counteracted to the eye by his
long and tumbled hair which, when excited, he would rub and twist in a
thousand different directions until it was actually bushy. His eyes and
mouth were his best features. The former were of a deep violet blue, and
when Shelley felt deeply moved they seemed luminous with a wonderful
and almost unearthly light. His mouth was finely chiseled, and might be
regarded as representing perfection.

One great defect he had, and this might well have overbalanced his
attractive face. The defect in question was his voice. One would have
expected to hear from him melodious sounds, and vocal tones both rich
and penetrating; but, as a matter of fact, his voice was shrill at the
very best, and became actually discordant and peacock-like in moments of
emotion.

Such, then, was Shelley, star-eyed, with the delicate complexion of a
girl, wonderfully mobile in his features, yet speaking in a voice high
pitched and almost raucous. For the rest, he arrayed himself with care
and in expensive clothing, even though he took no thought of neatness,
so that his garments were almost always rumpled and wrinkled from his
frequent writhings on couches and on the floor. Shelley had a strange
and almost primitive habit of rolling on the earth, and another of
thrusting his tousled head close up to the hottest fire in the house,
or of lying in the glaring sun when out of doors. It is related that he
composed one of his finest poems--"The Cenci"--in Italy, while stretched
out with face upturned to an almost tropical sun.

But such as he was, and though he was not yet famous, Harriet Westbrook,
the rosy-faced schoolgirl, fell in love with him, and rather plainly
let him know that she had done so. There are a thousand ways in which
a woman can convey this information without doing anything un-maidenly;
and of all these little arts Miss Westbrook was instinctively a
mistress.

She played upon Shelley's feelings by telling him that her father was
cruel to her, and that he contemplated actions still more cruel. There
is something absurdly comical about the grievance which she brought to
Shelley; but it is much more comical to note the tremendous seriousness
with which he took it. He wrote to his friend Hogg:

Her father has persecuted her in a most horrible way, by endeavoring
to compel her to go to school. She asked my advice; resistance was the
answer. At the same time I essayed to mollify Mr. Westbrook, in vain! I
advised her to resist. She wrote to say that resistance was useless, but
that she would fly with me and throw herself on my protection.

Some letters that have recently come to light show that there was a
dramatic scene between Harriet Westbrook and Shelley--a scene in the
course of which she threw her arms about his neck and wept upon his
shoulder. Here was a curious situation. Shelley was not at all in love
with her. He had explicitly declared this only a short time before. Yet
here was a pretty girl about to suffer the "horrible persecution" of
being sent to school, and finding no alternative save to "throw herself
on his protection"--in other words, to let him treat her as he would,
and to become his mistress.

The absurdity of the situation makes one smile. Common sense should have
led some one to box Harriet's ears and send her off to school without a
moment's hesitation; while as for Shelley, he should have been told how
ludicrous was the whole affair. But he was only nineteen, and she was
only sixteen, and the crisis seemed portentous. Nothing could be more
flattering to a young man's vanity than to have this girl cast herself
upon him for protection. It did not really matter that he had not
loved her hitherto, and that he was already half engaged to another
Harriet--his cousin, Miss Grove. He could not stop and reason with
himself. He must like a true knight rescue lovely girlhood from the
horrors of a school!

It is not unlikely that this whole affair was partly managed or
manipulated by the girl's father. Jew Westbrook knew that Shelley was
related to rich and titled people, and that he was certain, if he lived,
to become Sir Percy, and to be the heir of his grandfather's estates.
Hence it may be that Harriet's queer conduct was not wholly of her own
prompting.

In any case, however, it proved to be successful. Shelley's ardent and
impulsive nature could not bear to see a girl in tears and appealing
for his help. Hence, though in his heart she was very little to him, his
romantic nature gave up for her sake the affection that he had felt for
his cousin, his own disbelief in marriage, and finally the common sense
which ought to have told him not to marry any one on two hundred pounds
a year.

So the pair set off for Edinburgh by stagecoach. It was a weary and most
uncomfortable journey. When they reached the Scottish capital, they
were married by the Scottish law. Their money was all gone; but their
landlord, with a jovial sympathy for romance, let them have a room, and
treated them to a rather promiscuous wedding-banquet, in which every one
in the house participated.

Such is the story of Shelley's marriage, contracted at nineteen with a
girl of sixteen who most certainly lured him on against his own better
judgment and in the absence of any actual love.

The girl whom he had taken to himself was a well-meaning little thing.
She tried for a time to meet her husband's moods and to be a real
companion to him. But what could one expect from such a union? Shelley's
father withdrew the income which he had previously given. Jew Westbrook
refused to contribute anything, hoping, probably, that this course would
bring the Shelleys to the rescue. But as it was, the young pair drifted
about from place to place, getting very precarious supplies, running
deeper into debt each day, and finding less and less to admire in each
other.

Shelley took to laudanum. Harriet dropped her abstruse studies, which
she had taken up to please her husband, but which could only puzzle her
small brain. She soon developed some of the unpleasant traits of the
class to which she belonged. In this her sister Eliza--a hard and
grasping middle-aged woman--had her share. She set Harriet against her
husband, and made life less endurable for both. She was so much older
than the pair that she came in and ruled their household like a typical
stepmother.

A child was born, and Shelley very generously went through a second
form of marriage, so as to comply with the English law; but by this
time there was little hope of righting things again. Shelley was much
offended because Harriet would not nurse the child. He believed her hard
because she saw without emotion an operation performed upon the infant.

Finally, when Shelley at last came into a considerable sum of money,
Harriet and Eliza made no pretense of caring for anything except the
spending of it in "bonnet-shops" and on carriages and display. In
time--that is to say, in three years after their marriage--Harriet
left her husband and went to London and to Bath, prompted by her elder
sister.

This proved to be the end of an unfortunate marriage. Word was brought
to Shelley that his wife was no longer faithful to him. He, on his
side, had carried on a semi-sentimental platonic correspondence with a
schoolmistress, one Miss Hitchener. But until now his life had been
one great mistake--a life of restlessness, of unsatisfied longing, of a
desire that had no name. Then came the perhaps inevitable meeting with
the one whom he should have met before.

Shelley had taken a great interest in William Godwin, the writer and
radical philosopher. Godwin's household was a strange one. There was
Fanny Imlay, a child born out of wedlock, the offspring of Gilbert
Imlay, an American merchant, and of Mary Wollstonecraft, whom Godwin had
subsequently married. There was also a singularly striking girl who
then styled herself Mary Jane Clairmont, and who was afterward known
as Claire Clairmont, she and her brother being the early children of
Godwin's second wife.

One day in 1814, Shelley called on Godwin, and found there a beautiful
young girl in her seventeenth year, "with shapely golden head, a
face very pale and pure, a great forehead, earnest hazel eyes, and an
expression at once of sensibility and firmness about her delicately
curved lips." This was Mary Godwin--one who had inherited her mother's
power of mind and likewise her grace and sweetness.

From the very moment of their meeting Shelley and this girl were fated
to be joined together, and both of them were well aware of it. Each felt
the other's presence exert a magnetic thrill. Each listened eagerly
to what the other said. Each thought of nothing, and each cared for
nothing, in the other's absence. It was a great compelling elemental
force which drove the two together and bound them fast. Beside this
marvelous experience, how pale and pitiful and paltry seemed the
affectations of Harriet Westbrook!

In little more than a month from the time of their first meeting,
Shelley and Mary Godwin and Miss Clairmont left Godwin's house at four
o 'clock in the morning, and hurried across the Channel to Calais. They
wandered almost like vagabonds across France, eating black bread and
the coarsest fare, walking on the highways when they could not afford to
ride, and putting up with every possible inconvenience. Yet it is worth
noting that neither then nor at any other time did either Shelley or
Mary regret what they had done. To the very end of the poet's brief
career they were inseparable.

Later he was able to pension Harriet, who, being of a morbid
disposition, ended her life by drowning--not, it may be said, because
of grief for Shelley. It has been told that Fanny Imlay, Mary's sister,
likewise committed suicide because Shelley did not care for her, but
this has also been disproved. There was really nothing to mar the inner
happiness of the poet and the woman who, at the very end, became his
wife. Living, as they did, in Italy and Switzerland, they saw much of
their own countrymen, such as Landor and Leigh Hunt and Byron, to whose
fascinations poor Miss Clairmont yielded, and became the mother of the
little girl Allegra.

But there could have been no truer union than this of Shelley's with
the woman whom nature had intended for him. It was in his love-life, far
more than in his poetry, that he attained completeness. When he died
by drowning, in 1822, and his body was burned in the presence of Lord
Byron, he was truly mourned by the one whom he had only lately made his
wife. As a poet he never reached the same perfection; for his genius was
fitful and uncertain, rare in its flights, and mingled always with that
which disappoints.

As the lover and husband of Mary Godwin, there was nothing left to wish.
In his verse, however, the truest word concerning him will always be
that exquisite sentence of Matthew Arnold:

"A beautiful and ineffectual angel beating his luminous wings against
the void in vain."





THE STORY OF THE CARLYLES


To most persons, Tennyson was a remote and romantic figure. His homes in
the Isle of Wight and at Aldworth had a dignified seclusion about them
which was very appropriate to so great a poet, and invested him with a
certain awe through which the multitude rarely penetrated. As a matter
of fact, however, he was an excellent companion, a ready talker, and
gifted with so much wit that it is a pity that more of his sayings have
not been preserved to us.

One of the best known is that which was drawn from him after he and a
number of friends had been spending an hour in company with Mr. and Mrs.
Carlyle. The two Carlyles were unfortunately at their worst, and gave a
superb specimen of domestic "nagging." Each caught up whatever the other
said, and either turned it into ridicule, or tried to make the author of
it an object of contempt.

This was, of course, exceedingly uncomfortable for such strangers as
were present, and it certainly gave no pleasure to their friends. On
leaving the house, some one said to Tennyson:

"Isn't it a pity that such a couple ever married?"

"No, no," said Tennyson, with a sort of smile under his rough beard.
"It's much better that two people should be made unhappy than four."

The world has pretty nearly come around to the verdict of the poet
laureate. It is not probable that Thomas Carlyle would have made any
woman happy as his wife, or that Jane Baillie Welsh would have made any
man happy as her husband.

This sort of speculation would never have occurred had not Mr. Froude,
in the early eighties, given his story about the Carlyles to the world.
Carlyle went to his grave, an old man, highly honored, and with no
trail of gossip behind him. His wife had died some sixteen years before,
leaving a brilliant memory. The books of Mr. Froude seemed for a moment
to have desecrated the grave, and to have shed a sudden and sinister
light upon those who could not make the least defense for themselves.

For a moment, Carlyle seemed to have been a monster of harshness,
cruelty, and almost brutish feeling. On the other side, his wife took
on the color of an evil-speaking, evil-thinking shrew, who tormented the
life of her husband, and allowed herself to be possessed by some demon
of unrest and discontent, such as few women of her station are ever
known to suffer from.

Nor was it merely that the two were apparently ill-mated and unhappy
with each other. There were hints and innuendos which looked toward some
hidden cause for this unhappiness, and which aroused the curiosity of
every one. That they might be clearer, Froude afterward wrote a book,
bringing out more plainly--indeed, too plainly--his explanation of the
Carlyle family skeleton. A multitude of documents then came from every
quarter, and from almost every one who had known either of the Carlyles.
Perhaps the result to-day has been more injurious to Froude than to the
two Carlyles.

Many persons unjustly speak of Froude as having violated the confidence
of his friends in publishing the letters of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. They
take no heed of the fact that in doing this he was obeying Carlyle's
express wishes, left behind in writing, and often urged on Froude while
Carlyle was still alive. Whether or not Froude ought to have accepted
such a trust, one may perhaps hesitate to decide. That he did so is
probably because he felt that if he refused, Carlyle might commit the
same duty to another, who would discharge it with less delicacy and less
discretion.

As it is, the blame, if it rests upon any one, should rest upon Carlyle.
He collected the letters. He wrote the lines which burn and scorch with
self-reproach. It is he who pressed upon the reluctant Froude the duty
of printing and publishing a series of documents which, for the most
part, should never have been published at all, and which have done equal
harm to Carlyle, to his wife, and to Froude himself.

Now that everything has been written that is likely to be written by
those claiming to possess personal knowledge of the subject, let us
take up the volumes, and likewise the scattered fragments, and seek to
penetrate the mystery of the most ill-assorted couple known to modern
literature.

It is not necessary to bring to light, and in regular order, the
external history of Thomas Carlyle, or of Jane Baillie Welsh, who
married him. There is an extraordinary amount of rather fanciful gossip
about this marriage, and about the three persons who had to do with it.

Take first the principal figure, Thomas Carlyle. His life until that
time had been a good deal more than the life of an ordinary country-man.
Many persons represent him as a peasant; but he was descended from the
ancient lords of a Scottish manor. There was something in his eye, and
in the dominance of his nature, that made his lordly nature felt. Mr.
Froude notes that Carlyle's hand was very small and unusually well
shaped. Nor had his earliest appearance as a young man been commonplace,
in spite of the fact that his parents were illiterate, so that his
mother learned to read only after her sons had gone away to Edinburgh,
in order that she might be able to enjoy their letters.

At that time in Scotland, as in Puritan New England, in each family the
son who had the most notable "pairts" was sent to the university that
he might become a clergyman. If there were a second son, he became an
advocate or a doctor of medicine, while the sons of less distinction
seldom went beyond the parish school, but settled down as farmers,
horse-dealers, or whatever might happen to come their way.

In the case of Thomas Carlyle, nature marked him out for something
brilliant, whatever that might be. His quick sensibility, the way in
which he acquired every sort of learning, his command of logic, and,
withal, his swift, unerring gift of language, made it certain from the
very first that he must be sent to the university as soon as he had
finished school, and could afford to go.

At Edinburgh, where he matriculated in his fourteenth year, he
astonished every one by the enormous extent of his reading, and by
the firm hold he kept upon it. One hesitates to credit these so-called
reminiscences which tell how he absorbed mountains of Greek and immense
quantities of political economy and history and sociology and various
forms of metaphysics, as every Scotsman is bound to do. That he read all
night is a common story told of many a Scottish lad at college. We may
believe, however, that Carlyle studied and read as most of his fellow
students did, but far beyond them, in extent.

When he had completed about half of his divinity course, he assured
himself that he was not intended for the life of a clergyman. One who
reads his mocking sayings, or what seemed to be a clever string of jeers
directed against religion, might well think that Carlyle was throughout
his life an atheist, or an agnostic. He confessed to Irving that he did
not believe in the Christian religion, and it was vain to hope that he
ever would so believe.

Moreover, Carlyle had done something which was unusual at that time.
He had taught in several local schools; but presently he came back to
Edinburgh and openly made literature his profession. It was a daring
thing to do; but Carlyle had unbounded confidence in himself--the
confidence of a giant, striding forth into a forest, certain that he can
make his way by sheer strength through the tangled meshes and the
knotty branches that he knows will meet him and try to beat him back.
Furthermore, he knew how to live on very little; he was unmarried; and
he felt a certain ardor which beseemed his age and gifts.

Through the kindness of friends, he received some commissions to write
in various books of reference; and in 1824, when he was twenty-nine
years of age, he published a translation of Legendre's Geometry. In the
same year he published, in the London Magazine, his Life of Schiller,
and also his translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. This successful
attack upon the London periodicals and reviews led to a certain
complication with the other two characters in this story. It takes us to
Jane Welsh, and also to Edward Irving.

Irving was three years older than Carlyle. The two men were friends, and
both of them had been teaching in country schools, where both of them
had come to know Miss Welsh. Irving's seniority gave him a certain
prestige with the younger men, and naturally with Miss Welsh. He had
won honors at the university, and now, as assistant to the famous Dr.
Chalmers, he carried his silk robes in the jaunty fashion of one who has
just ceased to be an undergraduate. While studying, he met Miss Welsh at
Haddington, and there became her private instructor.

This girl was regarded in her native town as something of a personage.
To read what has been written of her, one might suppose that she was
almost a miracle of birth and breeding, and of intellect as well. As a
matter of fact, in the little town of Haddington she was simply prima
inter pares. Her father was the local doctor, and while she had a
comfortable home, and doubtless a chaise at her disposal, she was
very far from the "opulence" which Carlyle, looking up at her from his
lowlier surroundings, was accustomed to ascribe to her. She was, no
doubt, a very clever girl; and, judging from the portraits taken of her
at about this time, she was an exceedingly pretty one, with beautiful
eyes and an abundance of dark glossy hair.

Even then, however, Miss Welsh had traits which might have made it
certain that she would be much more agreeable as a friend than as a
wife. She had become an intellectuelle quite prematurely--at an age, in
fact, when she might better have been thinking of other things than the
inwardness of her soul, or the folly of religious belief.

Even as a young girl, she was beset by a desire to criticize and to
ridicule almost everything and every one that she encountered. It was
only when she met with something that she could not understand, or
some one who could do what she could not, that she became comparatively
humble. Unconsciously, her chief ambition was to be herself
distinguished, and to marry some one who could be more distinguished
still.

When she first met Edward Irving, she looked up to him as her superior
in many ways. He was a striking figure in her small world. He was known
in Edinburgh as likely to be a man of mark; and, of course, he had had
a careful training in many subjects of which she, as yet, knew very
little. Therefore, insensibly, she fell into a sort of admiration
for Irving--an admiration which might have been transmuted into love.
Irving, on his side, was taken by the young girl's beauty, her vivacity,
and the keenness of her intellect. That he did not at once become her
suitor is probably due to the fact that he had already engaged himself
to a Miss Martin, of whom not much is known.

It was about this time, however, that Carlyle became acquainted with
Miss Welsh. His abundant knowledge, his original and striking manner of
commenting on it, his almost gigantic intellectual power, came to her
as a revelation. Her studies with Irving were now interwoven with her
admiration for Carlyle.

Since Irving was a clergyman, and Miss Welsh had not the slightest
belief in any form of theology, there was comparatively little that
they had in common. On the other hand, when she saw the profundities of
Carlyle, she at once half feared, and was half fascinated. Let her speak
to him on any subject, and he would at once thunder forth some striking
truth, or it might be some puzzling paradox; but what he said could
never fail to interest her and to make her think. He had, too, an
infinite sense of humor, often whimsical and shot through with sarcasm.

It is no wonder that Miss Welsh was more and more infatuated with the
nature of Carlyle. If it was her conscious wish to marry a man whom she
could reverence as a master, where should she find him--in Irving or in
Carlyle?

Irving was a dreamer, a man who, she came to see, was thoroughly
one-sided, and whose interests lay in a different sphere from hers.
Carlyle, on the other hand, had already reached out beyond the little
Scottish capital, and had made his mark in the great world of London,
where men like De Quincey and Jeffrey thought it worth their while to
run a tilt with him. Then, too, there was the fascination of his talk,
in which Jane Welsh found a perpetual source of interest:

The English have never had an artist, except in poetry; no musician; no
painter. Purcell and Hogarth are not exceptions, or only such as confirm
the rule.

Is the true Scotchman the peasant and yeoman--chiefly the former?

Every living man is a visible mystery; he walks between two eternities
and two infinitudes. Were we not blind as molea we should value
our humanity at infinity, and our rank, influence and so forth--the
trappings of our humanity--at nothing. Say I am a man, and you say all.
Whether king or tinker is a mere appendix.

Understanding is to reason as the talent of a beaver--which can build
houses, and uses its tail for a trowel--to the genius of a prophet and
poet. Reason is all but extinct in this age; it can never be altogether
extinguished.

The devil has his elect.

Is anything more wonderful than another, if you consider it maturely?
I have seen no men rise from the dead; I have seen some thousands rise
from nothing. I have not force to fly into the sun, but I have force to
lift my hand, which is equally strange.

Is not every thought properly an inspiration? Or how is one thing more
inspired than another?

Examine by logic the import of thy life, and of all lives. What is it?
A making of meal into manure, and of manure into meal. To the cui bono
there is no answer from logic.

In many ways Jane Welsh found the difference of range between Carlyle
and Irving. At one time, she asked Irving about some German works, and
he was obliged to send her to Carlyle to solve her difficulties. Carlyle
knew German almost as well as if he had been born in Dresden; and
the full and almost overflowing way in which he answered her gave her
another impression of his potency. Thus she weighed the two men who
might become her lovers, and little by little she came to think of
Irving as partly shallow and partly narrow-minded, while Carlyle loomed
up more of a giant than before.

It is not probable that she was a woman who could love profoundly.
She thought too much about herself. She was too critical. She had too
intense an ambition for "showing off." I can imagine that in the end
she made her choice quite coolly. She was flattered by Carlyle's strong
preference for her. She was perhaps repelled by Irving's engagement to
another woman; yet at the time few persons thought that she had chosen
well.

Irving had now gone to London, and had become the pastor of the
Caledonian chapel in Hatton Garden. Within a year, by the extraordinary
power of his eloquence, which, was in a style peculiar to himself, he
had transformed an obscure little chapel into one which was crowded
by the rich and fashionable. His congregation built for him a handsome
edifice on Regent Square, and he became the leader of a new cult, which
looked to a second personal advent of Christ. He cared nothing for
the charges of heresy which were brought against him; and when he was
deposed his congregation followed him, and developed a new Christian
order, known as Irvingism.

Jane Welsh, in her musings, might rightfully have compared the two men
and the future which each could give her. Did she marry Irving, she was
certain of a life of ease in London, and an association with men and
women of fashion and celebrity, among whom she could show herself to be
the gifted woman that she was. Did she marry Carlyle, she must go with
him to a desolate, wind-beaten cottage, far away from any of the things
she cared for, working almost as a housemaid, having no company save
that of her husband, who was already a dyspeptic, and who was wont to
speak of feeling as if a rat were tearing out his stomach.

Who would have said that in going with Carlyle she had made the better
choice? Any one would have said it who knew the three--Irving, Carlyle,
and Jane Welsh.

She had the penetration to be certain that whatever Irving might possess
at present, it would be nothing in comparison to what Carlyle would have
in the coming future. She understood the limitations of Irving, but to
her keen mind the genius of Carlyle was unlimited; and she foresaw that,
after he had toiled and striven, he would come into his great reward,
which she would share. Irving might be the leader of a petty sect,
but Carlyle would be a man whose name must become known throughout the
world.

And so, in 1826, she had made her choice, and had become the bride of
the rough-spoken, domineering Scotsman who had to face the world with
nothing but his creative brain and his stubborn independence. She had
put aside all immediate thought of London and its lures; she was going
to cast in her lot with Carlyle's, largely as a matter of calculation,
and believing that she had made the better choice.

She was twenty-six and Carlyle was thirty-two when, after a brief
residence in Edinburgh, they went down to Craigenputtock. Froude has
described this place as the dreariest spot in the British dominions:

The nearest cottage is more than a mile from it; the elevation, seven
hundred feet above the sea, stunts the trees and limits the garden
produce; the house is gaunt and hungry-looking. It stands, with the
scanty fields attached, as an island in a sea of morass. The landscape
is unredeemed by grace or grandeur--mere undulating hills of grass and
heather, with peat bogs in the hollows between them.

Froude's grim description has been questioned by some; yet the actual
pictures that have been drawn of the place in later years make it
look bare, desolate, and uninviting. Mrs. Carlyle, who owned it as an
inheritance from her father, saw the place for the first time in March,
1828. She settled there in May; but May, in the Scottish hills, is
almost as repellent as winter. She herself shrank from the adventure
which she had proposed. It was her husband's notion, and her own, that
they should live there in practical solitude. He was to think and write,
and make for himself a beginning of real fame; while she was to hover
over him and watch his minor comforts.

It seemed to many of their friends that the project was quixotic to a
degree. Mrs. Carlyle delicate health, her weak chest, and the beginning
of a nervous disorder, made them think that she was unfit to dwell in
so wild and bleak a solitude. They felt, too, that Carlyle was too
much absorbed with his own thought to be trusted with the charge of a
high-spirited woman.

However, the decision had been made, and the newly married couple went
to Craigenputtock, with wagons that carried their household goods and
those of Carlyle's brother, Alexander, who lived in a cottage near by.
These were the two redeeming features of their lonely home--the presence
of Alexander Carlyle, and the fact that, although they had no servants
in the ordinary sense, there were several farmhands and a dairy-maid.

Before long there came a period of trouble, which is easily explained
by what has been already said. Carlyle, thinking and writing some of
the most beautiful things that he ever thought or wrote, could not make
allowance for his wife's high spirit and physical weakness. She, on her
side--nervous, fitful, and hard to please--thought herself a slave,
the servant of a harsh and brutal master. She screamed at him when her
nerves were too unstrung; and then, with a natural reaction, she called
herself "a devil who could never be good enough for him." But most of
her letters were harsh and filled with bitterness, and, no doubt, his
conduct to her was at times no better than her own.

But it was at Craigenputtock that he really did lay fast and firm the
road to fame. His wife's sharp tongue, and the gnawings of his own
dyspepsia, were lived down with true Scottish grimness. It was here that
he wrote some of his most penetrating and sympathetic essays, which were
published by the leading reviews of England and Scotland. Here, too, he
began to teach his countrymen the value of German literature.

The most remarkable of his productions was that strange work entitled
Sartor Resartus (1834), an extraordinary mixture of the sublime and the
grotesque. The book quivers and shakes with tragic pathos, with inward
agonies, with solemn aspirations, and with riotous humor.

In 1834, after six years at Craigenputtock, the Carlyles moved to
London, and took up their home in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, a far from
fashionable retreat, but one in which the comforts of life could be more
readily secured. It was there that Thomas Carlyle wrote what must
seem to us the most vivid of all his books, the History of the French
Revolution. For this he had read and thought for many years; parts of
it he had written in essays, and parts of it he had jotted down in
journals. But now it came forth, as some one has said, "a truth clad in
hell-fire," swirling amid clouds and flames and mist, a most wonderful
picture of the accumulated social and political falsehoods which
preceded the revolution, and which were swept away by a nemesis that was
the righteous judgment of God.

Carlyle never wrote so great a book as this. He had reached his middle
style, having passed the clarity of his early writings, and not having
yet reached the thunderous, strange-mouthed German expletives which
marred his later work. In the French Revolution he bursts forth, here
and there, into furious Gallic oaths and Gargantuan epithets; yet this
apocalypse of France seems more true than his hero-worshiping of old
Frederick of Prussia, or even of English Cromwell.

All these days Thomas Carlyle lived a life which was partly one
of seclusion and partly one of pleasure. At all times he and his
dark-haired wife had their own sets, and mingled with their own friends.
Jane had no means of discovering just whether she would have been
happier with Irving; for Irving died while she was still digging
potatoes and complaining of her lot at Craigenputtock.

However this may be, the Carlyles, man and wife, lived an existence that
was full of unhappiness and rancor. Jane Carlyle became an invalid, and
sought to allay her nervous sufferings with strong tea and tobacco and
morphin. When a nervous woman takes to morphin, it almost always means
that she becomes intensely jealous; and so it was with Jane Carlyle.

A shivering, palpitating, fiercely loyal bit of humanity, she took it
into her head that her husband was infatuated with Lady Ashburton, or
that Lady Ashburton was infatuated with him. She took to spying on them,
and at times, when her nerves were all a jangle, she would lie back
in her armchair and yell with paroxysms of anger. On the other hand,
Carlyle, eager to enjoy the world, sought relief from his household
cares, and sometimes stole away after a fashion that was hardly
guileless. He would leave false addresses at his house, and would dine
at other places than he had announced.

In 1866 Jane Carlyle suddenly died; and somehow, then, the conscience
of Thomas Carlyle became convinced that he had wronged the woman whom he
had really loved. His last fifteen years were spent in wretchedness and
despair. He felt that he had committed the unpardonable sin. He recalled
with anguish every moment of their early life at Craigenputtock--how she
had toiled for him, and waited upon him, and made herself a slave;
and how, later, she had given herself up entirely to him, while he had
thoughtlessly received the sacrifice, and trampled on it as on a bed of
flowers.

Of course, in all this he was intensely morbid, and the diary which he
wrote was no more sane and wholesome than the screamings with which his
wife had horrified her friends. But when he had grown to be a very old
man, he came to feel that this was all a sort of penance, and that the
selfishness of his past must be expiated in the future. Therefore, he
gave his diary to his friend, the historian, Froude, and urged him to
publish the letters and memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Mr. Froude,
with an eye to the reading world, readily did so, furnishing them with
abundant footnotes, which made Carlyle appear to the world as more or
less of a monster.

First, there was set forth the almost continual unhappiness of the pair.
In the second place, by hint, by innuendo, and sometimes by explicit
statement, there were given reasons to show why Carlyle made his wife
unhappy. Of course, his gnawing dyspepsia, which she strove with all her
might to drive away, was one of the first and greatest causes. But again
another cause of discontent was stated in the implication that Carlyle,
in his bursts of temper, actually abused his wife. In one passage there
is a hint that certain blue marks upon her arm were bruises, the result
of blows.

Most remarkable of all these accusations is that which has to do with
the relations of Carlyle and Lady Ashburton. There is no doubt that Jane
Carlyle disliked this brilliant woman, and came to have dark suspicions
concerning her. At first, it was only a sort of social jealousy. Lady
Ashburton was quite as clever a talker as Mrs. Carlyle, and she had a
prestige which brought her more admiration.

Then, by degrees, as Jane Carlyle's mind began to wane, she transferred
her jealousy to her husband himself. She hated to be out-shone, and
now, in some misguided fashion, it came into her head that Carlyle had
surrendered to Lady Ashburton his own attention to his wife, and had
fallen in love with her brilliant rival.

On one occasion, she declared that Lady Ashburton had thrown herself at
Carlyle's feet, but that Carlyle had acted like a man of honor, while
Lord Ashburton, knowing all the facts, had passed them over, and had
retained his friendship with Carlyle.

Now, when Froude came to write My Relations with Carlyle, there were
those who were very eager to furnish him with every sort of gossip.
The greatest source of scandal upon which he drew was a woman named
Geraldine Jewsbury, a curious neurotic creature, who had seen much of
the late Mrs. Carlyle, but who had an almost morbid love of offensive
tattle. Froude describes himself as a witness for six years, at Cheyne
Row, "of the enactment of a tragedy as stern and real as the story of
Oedipus." According to his own account:

I stood by, consenting to the slow martyrdom of a woman whom I have
described as bright and sparkling and tender, and I uttered no word
of remonstrance. I saw her involved in a perpetual blizzard, and did
nothing to shelter her.

But it is not upon his own observations that Froude relies for his most
sinister evidence against his friend. To him comes Miss Jewsbury with
a lengthy tale to tell. It is well to know what Mrs. Carlyle thought of
this lady. She wrote:

It is her besetting sin, and her trade of novelist has aggravated
it--the desire of feeling and producing violent emotions.... Geraldine
has one besetting weakness; she is never happy unless she has a grande
passion on hand.

There were strange manifestations on the part of Miss Jewsbury toward
Mrs. Carlyle. At one time, when Mrs. Carlyle had shown some preference
for another woman, it led to a wild outburst of what Miss Jewsbury
herself called "tiger jealousy." There are many other instances of
violent emotions in her letters to Mrs. Carlyle. They are often highly
charged and erotic. It is unusual for a woman of thirty-two to write to
a woman friend, who is forty-three years of age, in these words, which
Miss Jewsbury used in writing to Mrs. Carlyle:

You are never out of my thoughts one hour together. I think of you much
more than if you were my lover. I cannot express my feelings, even to
you--vague, undefined yearnings to be yours in some way.

Mrs. Carlyle was accustomed, in private, to speak of Miss Jewsbury as
"Miss Gooseberry," while Carlyle himself said that she was simply "a
flimsy tatter of a creature." But it is on the testimony of this
one woman, who was so morbid and excitable, that the most serious
accusations against Carlyle rest. She knew that Froude was writing a
volume about Mrs. Carlyle, and she rushed to him, eager to furnish any
narratives, however strange, improbable, or salacious they might be.

Thus she is the sponsor of the Ashburton story, in which there is
nothing whatsoever. Some of the letters which Lady Ashburton wrote
Carlyle have been destroyed, but not before her husband had perused
them. Another set of letters had never been read by Lord Ashburton at
all, and they are still preserved--friendly, harmless, usual letters.
Lord Ashburton always invited Carlyle to his house, and there is no
reason to think that the Scottish philosopher wronged him.

There is much more to be said about the charge that Mrs. Carlyle
suffered from personal abuse; yet when we examine the facts, the
evidence resolves itself into practically nothing. That, in his
self-absorption, he allowed her to Sending Completed Page, Please
Wait... overflowed toward a man who must have been a manly, loving
lover. She calls him by the name by which he called her--a homely
Scottish name.

GOODY, GOODY, DEAR GOODY:

You said you would weary, and I do hope in my heart you are wearying. It
will be so sweet to make it all up to you in kisses when I return. You
will take me and hear all my bits of experiences, and your heart will
beat when you find how I have longed to return to you. Darling, dearest,
loveliest, the Lord bless you! I think of you every hour, every moment.
I love you and admire you, like--like anything. Oh, if I was there,
I could put my arms so close about your neck, and hush you into the
softest sleep you have had since I went away. Good night. Dream of me. I
am ever YOUR OWN GOODY.

It seems most fitting to remember Thomas Carlyle as a man of strength,
of honor, and of intellect; and his wife as one who was sorely tried,
but who came out of her suffering into the arms of death, purified and
calm and worthy to be remembered by her husband's side.





THE STORY OF THE HUGOS


Victor Hugo, after all criticisms have been made, stands as a literary
colossus. He had imaginative power which makes his finest passages
fairly crash upon the reader's brain like blasting thunderbolts. His
novels, even when translated, are read and reread by people of every
degree of education. There is something vast, something almost Titanic,
about the grandeur and gorgeousness of his fancy. His prose resembles
the sonorous blare of an immense military band. Readers of English care
less for his poetry; yet in his verse one can find another phase of his
intellect. He could write charmingly, in exquisite cadences, poems
for lovers and for little children. His gifts were varied, and he knew
thoroughly the life and thought of his own countrymen; and, therefore,
in his later days he was almost deified by them.

At the same time, there were defects in his intellect and character
which are perceptible in what he wrote, as well as in what he did. He
had the Gallic wit in great measure, but he was absolutely devoid of any
sense of humor. This is why, in both his prose and his poetry, his most
tremendous pages often come perilously near to bombast; and this is why,
again, as a man, his vanity was almost as great as his genius. He had
good reason to be vain, and yet, if he had possessed a gleam of humor,
he would never have allowed his egoism to make him arrogant. As it was,
he felt himself exalted above other mortals. Whatever he did or said or
wrote was right because he did it or said it or wrote it.

This often showed itself in rather whimsical ways. Thus, after he had
published the first edition of his novel, The Man Who Laughs, an English
gentleman called upon him, and, after some courteous compliments,
suggested that in subsequent editions the name of an English peer who
figures in the book should be changed from Tom Jim-Jack.

"For," said the Englishman, "Tom Jim-Jack is a name that could not
possibly belong to an English noble, or, indeed, to any Englishman. The
presence of it in your powerful story makes it seem to English readers a
little grotesque."

Victor Hugo drew himself up with an air of high disdain.

"Who are you?" asked he.

"I am an Englishman," was the answer, "and naturally I know what names
are possible in English."

Hugo drew himself up still higher, and on his face there was a smile of
utter contempt.

"Yes," said he. "You are an Englishman; but I--I am Victor Hugo."

In another book Hugo had spoken of the Scottish bagpipes as "bugpipes."
This gave some offense to his Scottish admirers. A great many persons
told him that the word was "bagpipes," and not "bugpipes." But he
replied with irritable obstinacy:

"I am Victor Hugo; and if I choose to write it 'bugpipes,' it IS
'bugpipes.' It is anything that I prefer to make it. It is so, because I
call it so!"

So, Victor Hugo became a violent republican, because he did not wish
France to be an empire or a kingdom, in which an emperor or a king
would be his superior in rank. He always spoke of Napoleon III as "M.
Bonaparte." He refused to call upon the gentle-mannered Emperor of
Brazil, because he was an emperor; although Dom Pedro expressed an
earnest desire to meet the poet.

When the German army was besieging Paris, Hugo proposed to fight a duel
with the King of Prussia, and to have the result of it settle the war;
"for," said he, "the King of Prussia is a great king, but I am Victor
Hugo, the great poet. We are, therefore, equal."

In spite, however, of his ardent republicanism, he was very fond of
speaking of his own noble descent. Again and again he styled himself "a
peer of France;" and he and his family made frequent allusions to the
knights and bishops and counselors of state with whom he claimed an
ancestral relation. This was more than inconsistent. It was somewhat
ludicrous; because Victor Hugo's ancestry was by no means noble. The
Hugos of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were not in any
way related to the poet's family, which was eminently honest and
respectable, but by no means one of distinction. His grandfather was
a carpenter. One of his aunts was the wife of a baker, another of a
barber, while the third earned her living as a provincial dressmaker.

If the poet had been less vain and more sincerely democratic, he would
have been proud to think that he sprang from good, sound, sturdy
stock, and would have laughed at titles. As it was, he jeered at
all pretensions of rank in other men, while he claimed for himself
distinctions that were not really his. His father was a soldier who rose
from the ranks until, under Napoleon, he reached the grade of general.
His mother was the daughter of a ship owner in Nantes.

Victor Hugo was born in February, 1802, during the Napoleonic wars, and
his early years were spent among the camps and within the sound of the
cannon-thunder. It was fitting that he should have been born and reared
in an age of upheaval, revolt, and battle. He was essentially the
laureate of revolt; and in some of his novels--as in Ninety-Three--the
drum and the trumpet roll and ring through every chapter.

The present paper has, of course, nothing to do with Hugo's public life;
yet it is necessary to remember the complicated nature of the man--all
his power, all his sweetness of disposition, and likewise all his vanity
and his eccentricities. We must remember, also, that he was French, so
that his story may be interpreted in the light of the French character.

At the age of fifteen he was domiciled in Paris, and though still a
schoolboy and destined for the study of law, he dreamed only of poetry
and of literature. He received honorable mention from the French
Academy in 1817, and in the following year took prizes in a poetical
competition. At seventeen he began the publication of a literary
journal, which survived until 1821. His astonishing energy became
evident in the many publications which he put forth in these boyish
days. He began to become known. Although poetry, then as now, was not
very profitable even when it was admired, one of his slender volumes
brought him the sum of seven hundred francs, which seemed to him
not only a fortune in itself, but the forerunner of still greater
prosperity.

It was at this time, while still only twenty years of age, that he met
a young girl of eighteen with whom he fell rather tempestuously in love.
Her name was Adele Foucher, and she was the daughter of a clerk in the
War Office. When one is very young and also a poet, it takes very little
to feed the flame of passion. Victor Hugo was often a guest at the
apartments of M. Foucher, where he was received by that gentleman
and his family. French etiquette, of course, forbade any direct
communication between the visitor and Adele. She was still a very young
girl, and was supposed to take no share in the conversation. Therefore,
while the others talked, she sat demurely by the fireside and sewed.

Her dark eyes and abundant hair, her grace of manner, and the picture
which she made as the firelight played about her, kindled a flame in the
susceptible heart of Victor Hugo. Though he could not speak to her,
he at least could look at her; and, before long, his share in the
conversation was very slight. This was set down, at first, to his
absent-mindedness; but looks can be as eloquent as spoken words. Mme.
Foucher, with a woman's keen intelligence, noted the adoring gaze of
Victor Hugo as he silently watched her daughter. The young Adele herself
was no less intuitive than her mother. It was very well understood,
in the course of a few months, that Victor Hugo was in love with Adele
Foucher.

Her father and mother took counsel about the matter, and Hugo himself,
in a burst of lyrical eloquence, confessed that he adored Adele and
wished to marry her. Her parents naturally objected. The girl was but
a child. She had no dowry, nor had Victor Hugo any settled income. They
were not to think of marriage. But when did a common-sense decision,
such as this, ever separate a man and a woman who have felt the
thrill of first love! Victor Hugo was insistent. With his supreme
self-confidence, he declared that he was bound to be successful, and
that in a very short time he would be illustrious. Adele, on her side,
created "an atmosphere" at home by weeping frequently, and by going
about with hollow eyes and wistful looks.

The Foucher family removed from Paris to a country town. Victor Hugo
immediately followed them. Fortunately for him, his poems had attracted
the attention of Louis XVIII, who was flattered by some of the verses.
He sent Hugo five hundred francs for an ode, and soon afterward settled
upon him a pension of a thousand francs. Here at least was an income--a
very small one, to be sure, but still an income. Perhaps Adele's father
was impressed not so much by the actual money as by the evidence of the
royal favor. At any rate, he withdrew his opposition, and the two young
people were married in October, 1822--both of them being under age,
unformed, and immature.

Their story is another warning against too early marriage. It is true
that they lived together until Mme. Hugo's death--a married life of
forty-six years--yet their story presents phases which would have made
this impossible had they not been French.

For a time, Hugo devoted all his energies to work. The record of his
steady upward progress is a part of the history of literature, and need
not be repeated here. The poet and his wife were soon able to leave the
latter's family abode, and to set up their own household god in a home
which was their own. Around them there were gathered, in a sort of
salon, all the best-known writers of the day--dramatists, critics,
poets, and romancers. The Hugos knew everybody.

Unfortunately, one of their visitors cast into their new life a drop of
corroding bitterness. This intruder was Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve,
a man two years younger than Victor Hugo, and one who blended learning,
imagination, and a gift of critical analysis. Sainte-Beuve is to-day
best remembered as a critic, and he was perhaps the greatest critic ever
known in France. But in 1830 he was a slender, insinuating youth who
cultivated a gift for sensuous and somewhat morbid poetry.

He had won Victor Hugo's friendship by writing an enthusiastic notice of
Hugo's dramatic works. Hugo, in turn, styled Sainte-Beuve "an eagle,"
"a blazing star," and paid him other compliments no less gorgeous and
Hugoesque. But in truth, if Sainte-Beuve frequented the Hugo salon, it
was less because of his admiration for the poet than from his desire to
win the love of the poet's wife.

It is quite impossible to say how far he attracted the serious attention
of Adele Hugo. Sainte-Beuve represents a curious type, which is far more
common in France and Italy than in the countries of the north. Human
nature is not very different in cultivated circles anywhere. Man loves,
and seeks to win the object of his love; or, as the old English proverb
has it:

    It's a man's part to try,
    And a woman's to deny.

But only in the Latin countries do men who have tried make their
attempts public, and seek to produce an impression that they have been
successful, and that the woman has not denied. This sort of man, in
English-speaking lands, is set down simply as a cad, and is excluded
from people's houses; but in some other countries the thing is regarded
with a certain amount of toleration. We see it in the two books written
respectively by Alfred de Musset and George Sand. We have seen it still
later in our own times, in that strange and half-repulsive story in
which the Italian novelist and poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, under a very
thin disguise, revealed his relations with the famous actress, Eleanora
Duse. Anglo-Saxons thrust such books aside with a feeling of disgust for
the man who could so betray a sacred confidence and perhaps exaggerate
a simple indiscretion into actual guilt. But it is not so in France and
Italy. And this is precisely what Sainte-Beuve attempted.

Dr. George McLean Harper, in his lately published study of Sainte-Beuve,
has summed the matter up admirably, in speaking of The Book of Love:

He had the vein of emotional self-disclosure, the vein of romantic or
sentimental confession. This last was not a rich lode, and so he was at
pains to charge it secretly with ore which he exhumed gloatingly, but
which was really base metal. The impulse that led him along this false
route was partly ambition, partly sensuality. Many a worse man would
have been restrained by self-respect and good taste. And no man with a
sense of honor would have permitted The Book of Love to see the light--a
small collection of verses recording his passion for Mme. Hugo, and
designed to implicate her.

He left two hundred and five printed copies of this book to be
distributed after his death. A virulent enemy of Sainte-Beuve was not
too expressive when he declared that its purpose was "to leave on the
life of this woman the gleaming and slimy trace which the passage of a
snail leaves on a rose." Abominable in either case, whether or not the
implication was unfounded, Sainte-Beuve's numerous innuendoes in regard
to Mme. Hugo are an indelible stain on his memory, and his infamy not
only cost him his most precious friendships, but crippled him in every
high endeavor.

How monstrous was this violation of both friendship and love may be seen
in the following quotation from his writings:

In that inevitable hour, when the gloomy tempest and the jealous gulf
shall roll over our heads, a sealed bottle, belched forth from the
abyss, will render immortal our two names, their close alliance, and our
double memory aspiring after union.

Whether or not Mme. Hugo's relations with Sainte-Beuve justified the
latter even in thinking such thoughts as these, one need not inquire too
minutely. Evidently, though, Victor Hugo could no longer be the friend
of the man who almost openly boasted that he had dishonored him. There
exist some sharp letters which passed between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve.
Their intimacy was ended.

But there was something more serious than this. Sainte-Beuve had in fact
succeeded in leaving a taint upon the name of Victor Hugo's wife. That
Hugo did not repudiate her makes it fairly plain that she was innocent;
yet a high-spirited, sensitive soul like Hugo's could never forget that
in the world's eye she was compromised. The two still lived together
as before; but now the poet felt himself released from the strict
obligations of the marriage-bond.

It may perhaps be doubted whether he would in any case have remained
faithful all his life. He was, as Mr. H.W. Wack well says, "a man of
powerful sensations, physically as well as mentally. Hugo pursued every
opportunity for new work, new sensations, fresh emotion. He desired to
absorb as much on life's eager forward way as his great nature craved.
His range in all things--mental, physical, and spiritual--was so far
beyond the ordinary that the gage of average cannot be applied to him.
The cavil of the moralist did not disturb him."

Hence, it is not improbable that Victor Hugo might have broken through
the bonds of marital fidelity, even had Sainte-Beuve never written his
abnormal poems; but certainly these poems hastened a result which may or
may not have been otherwise inevitable. Hugo no longer turned wholly
to the dark-haired, dark-eyed Adele as summing up for him the whole of
womanhood. A veil was drawn, as it were, from before his eyes, and he
looked on other women and found them beautiful.

It was in 1833, soon after Hugo's play "Lucrece Borgia" had been
accepted for production, that a lady called one morning at Hugo's house
in the Place Royale. She was then between twenty and thirty years of
age, slight of figure, winsome in her bearing, and one who knew the arts
which appeal to men. For she was no inexperienced ingenue. The name upon
her visiting-card was "Mme. Drouet"; and by this name she had been known
in Paris as a clever and somewhat gifted actress. Theophile Gautier,
whose cult was the worship of physical beauty, wrote in almost lyric
prose of her seductive charm.

At nineteen, after she had been cast upon the world, dowered with that
terrible combination, poverty and beauty, she had lived openly with a
sculptor named Pradier. This has a certain importance in the history
of French art. Pradier had received a commission to execute a statue
representing Strasburg--the statue which stands to-day in the Place
de la Concorde, and which patriotic Frenchmen and Frenchwomen drape in
mourning and half bury in immortelles, in memory of that city of Alsace
which so long was French, but which to-day is German--one of Germany's
great prizes taken in the war of 1870.

Five years before her meeting with Hugo, Pradier had rather brutally
severed his connection with her, and she had accepted the protection
of a Russian nobleman. At this time she was known by her real
name--Julienne Josephine Gauvin; but having gone upon the stage, she
assumed the appellation by which she was thereafter known, that of
Juliette Drouet.

Her visit to Hugo was for the purpose of asking him to secure for her
a part in his forth-coming play. The dramatist was willing, but
unfortunately all the major characters had been provided for, and he
was able to offer her only the minor one of the Princesse Negroni. The
charming deference with which she accepted the offered part attracted
Hugo's attention. Such amiability is very rare in actresses who have had
engagements at the best theaters. He resolved to see her again; and he
did so, time after time, until he was thoroughly captivated by her.

She knew her value, and as yet was by no means infatuated with him.
At first he was to her simply a means of getting on in her
profession--simply another influential acquaintance. Yet she brought to
bear upon him the arts at her command, her beauty and her sympathy, and,
last of all, her passionate abandonment.

Hugo was overwhelmed by her. He found that she was in debt, and
he managed to see that her debts were paid. He secured her other
engagements at the theater, though she was less successful as an actress
after she knew him. There came, for a time, a short break in their
relations; for, partly out of need, she returned to her Russian
nobleman, or at least admitted him to a menage a trois. Hugo underwent
for a second time a great disillusionment. Nevertheless, he was not too
proud to return to her and to beg her not to be unfaithful any more.
Touched by his tears, and perhaps foreseeing his future fame, she gave
her promise, and she kept it until her death, nearly half a century
later.

Perhaps because she had deceived him once, Hugo never completely lost
his prudence in his association with her. He was by no means lavish with
money, and he installed her in a rather simple apartment only a short
distance from his own home. He gave her an allowance that was relatively
small, though later he provided for her amply in his will. But it was
to her that he brought all his confidences, to her he entrusted all his
interests. She became to him, thenceforth, much more than she appeared
to the world at large; for she was his friend, and, as he said, his
inspiration.

The fact of their intimate connection became gradually known through
Paris. It was known even to Mme. Hugo; but she, remembering the affair
of Sainte-Beuve, or knowing how difficult it is to check the will of a
man like Hugo, made no sign, and even received Juliette Drouet in her
own house and visited her in turn. When the poet's sons grew up to
manhood, they, too, spent many hours with their father in the little
salon of the former actress. It was a strange and, to an Anglo-Saxon
mind, an almost impossible position; yet France forgives much to genius,
and in time no one thought of commenting on Hugo's manner of life.

In 1851, when Napoleon III seized upon the government, and when Hugo was
in danger of arrest, she assisted him to escape in disguise, and with a
forged passport, across the Belgian frontier. During his long exile
in Guernsey she lived in the same close relationship to him and to his
family. Mme. Hugo died in 1868, having known for thirty-three years that
she was only second in her husband's thoughts. Was she doing penance, or
was she merely accepting the inevitable? In any case, her position was
most pathetic, though she uttered no complaint.

A very curious and poignant picture of her just before her death has
been given by the pen of a visitor in Guernsey. He had met Hugo and his
sons; he had seen the great novelist eating enormous slices of roast
beef and drinking great goblets of red wine at dinner, and he had
also watched him early each morning, divested of all his clothing and
splashing about in a bath-tub on the top of his house, in view of
all the town. One evening he called and found only Mme. Hugo. She was
reclining on a couch, and was evidently suffering great pain. Surprised,
he asked where were her husband and her sons.

"Oh," she replied, "they've all gone to Mme. Drouet's to spend the
evening and enjoy themselves. Go also; you'll not find it amusing here."

One ponders over this sad scene with conflicting thoughts. Was there
really any truth in the story at which Sainte-Beuve more than hinted?
If so, Adele Hugo was more than punished. The other woman had sinned far
more; and yet she had never been Hugo's wife; and hence perhaps it
was right that she should suffer less. Suffer she did; for after her
devotion to Hugo had become sincere and deep, he betrayed her confidence
by an intrigue with a girl who is spoken of as "Claire." The knowledge
of it caused her infinite anguish, but it all came to an end; and she
lived past her eightieth year, long after the death of Mme. Hugo. She
died only a short time before the poet himself was laid to rest in Paris
with magnificent obsequies which an emperor might have envied. In her
old age, Juliette Drouet became very white and very wan; yet she never
quite lost the charm with which, as a girl, she had won the heart of
Hugo.

The story has many aspects. One may see in it a retribution, or one may
see in it only the cruelty of life. Perhaps it is best regarded simply
as a chapter in the strange life-histories of men of genius.





THE STORY OF GEORGE SAND


To the student of feminine psychology there is no more curious and
complex problem than the one that meets us in the life of the gifted
French writer best known to the world as George Sand.

To analyze this woman simply as a writer would in itself be a long,
difficult task. She wrote voluminously, with a fluid rather than a
fluent pen. She scandalized her contemporaries by her theories, and by
the way in which she applied them in her novels. Her fiction made her,
in the history of French literature, second only to Victor Hugo.
She might even challenge Hugo, because where he depicts strange and
monstrous figures, exaggerated beyond the limits of actual life, George
Sand portrays living men and women, whose instincts and desires she
understands, and whom she makes us see precisely as if we were admitted
to their intimacy.

But George Sand puzzles us most by peculiarities which it is difficult
for us to reconcile. She seemed to have no sense of chastity whatever;
yet, on the other hand, she was not grossly sensual. She possessed the
maternal instinct to a high degree, and liked better to be a mother
than a mistress to the men whose love she sought. For she did seek men's
love, frankly and shamelessly, only to tire of it. In many cases she
seems to have been swayed by vanity, and by a love of conquest, rather
than by passion. She had also a spiritual, imaginative side to her
nature, and she could be a far better comrade than anything more
intimate.

The name given to this strange genius at birth was Amantine Lucile
Aurore Dupin. The circumstances of her ancestry and birth were quite
unusual. Her father was a lieutenant in the French army. His grandmother
had been the natural daughter of Marshal Saxe, who was himself the
illegitimate son of Augustus the Strong of Poland and of the bewitching
Countess of Konigsmarck. This was a curious pedigree. It meant strength
of character, eroticism, stubbornness, imagination, courage, and
recklessness.

Her father complicated the matter by marrying suddenly a Parisian of the
lower classes, a bird-fancier named Sophie Delaborde. His daughter,
who was born in 1804, used afterward to boast that on one side she was
sprung from kings and nobles, while on the other she was a daughter
of the people, able, therefore, to understand the sentiments of the
aristocracy and of the children of the soil, or even of the gutter.

She was fond of telling, also, of the omen which attended on her birth.
Her father and mother were at a country dance in the house of a fellow
officer of Dupin's. Suddenly Mme. Dupin left the room. Nothing was
thought of this, and the dance went on. In less than an hour, Dupin was
called aside and told that his wife had just given birth to a child. It
was the child's aunt who brought the news, with the joyous comment:

"She will be lucky, for she was born among the roses and to the sound of
music."

This was at the time of the Napoleonic wars. Lieutenant Dupin was on the
staff of Prince Murat, and little Aurore, as she was called, at the age
of three accompanied the army, as did her mother. The child was
adopted by one of those hard-fighting, veteran regiments. The rough old
sergeants nursed her and petted her. Even the prince took notice of her;
and to please him she wore the green uniform of a hussar.

But all this soon passed, and she was presently sent to live with
her grandmother at the estate now intimately associated with her
name--Nohant, in the valley of the Indre, in the midst of a rich
country, a love for which she then drank in so deeply that nothing in
her later life could lessen it. She was always the friend of the peasant
and of the country-folk in general.

At Nohant she was given over to her grand-mother, to be reared in a
strangely desultory sort of fashion, doing and reading and studying
those things which could best develop her native gifts. Her father had
great influence over her, teaching her a thousand things without seeming
to teach her anything. Of him George Sand herself has written:

Character is a matter of heredity. If any one desires to know me, he
must know my father.

Her father, however, was killed by a fall from a horse; and then the
child grew up almost without any formal education. A tutor, who also
managed the estate; believed with Rousseau that the young should be
reared according to their own preferences. Therefore, Aurore read poems
and childish stories; she gained a smattering of Latin, and she was
devoted to music and the elements of natural science. For the rest of
the time she rambled with the country children, learned their games, and
became a sort of leader in everything they did.

Her only sorrow was the fact that her mother was excluded from Nohant.
The aristocratic old grandmother would not allow under her roof her
son's low-born wife; but she was devoted to her little grandchild. The
girl showed a wonderful degree of sensibility.

This life was adapted to her nature. She fed her imagination in a
perfectly healthy fashion; and, living so much out of doors, she
acquired that sound physique which she retained all through her life.

When she was thirteen, her grandmother sent the girl to a convent school
in Paris. One might suppose that the sudden change from the open woods
and fields to the primness of a religious home would have been a great
shock to her, and that with her disposition she might have broken
out into wild ways that would have shocked the nuns. But, here, as
elsewhere, she showed her wonderful adaptability. It even seemed as
if she were likely to become what the French call a devote. She gave
herself up to mythical thoughts, and expressed a desire of taking the
veil. Her confessor, however, was a keen student of human nature, and
he perceived that she was too young to decide upon the renunciation of
earthly things. Moreover, her grandmother, who had no intention that
Aurore should become a nun, hastened to Paris and carried her back to
Nohant.

The girl was now sixteen, and her complicated nature began to
make itself apparent. There was no one to control her, because her
grandmother was confined to her own room. And so Aurore Dupin, now in
superb health, rushed into every sort of diversion with all the zest of
youth. She read voraciously--religion, poetry, philosophy. She was an
excellent musician, playing the piano and the harp. Once, in a spirit of
unconscious egotism, she wrote to her confessor:

Do you think that my philosophical studies are compatible with Christian
humility?

The shrewd ecclesiastic answered, with a touch of wholesome irony:

I doubt, my daughter, whether your philosophical studies are profound
enough to warrant intellectual pride.

This stung the girl, and led her to think a little less of her own
abilities; but perhaps it made her books distasteful to her. For a while
she seems to have almost forgotten her sex. She began to dress as a boy,
and took to smoking large quantities of tobacco. Her natural brother,
who was an officer in the army, came down to Nohant and taught her to
ride--to ride like a boy, seated astride. She went about without any
chaperon, and flirted with the young men of the neighborhood. The prim
manners of the place made her subject to a certain amount of scandal,
and the village priest chided her in language that was far from tactful.
In return she refused any longer to attend his church.

Thus she was living when her grandmother died, in 1821, leaving to
Aurore her entire fortune of five hundred thousand francs. As the girl
was still but seventeen, she was placed under the guardianship of the
nearest relative on her father's side--a gentleman of rank. When the
will was read, Aurore's mother made a violent protest, and caused a most
unpleasant scene.

"I am the natural guardian of my child," she cried. "No one can take
away my rights!"

The young girl well understood that this was really the parting of the
ways. If she turned toward her uncle, she would be forever classed
among the aristocracy. If she chose her mother, who, though married, was
essentially a grisette, then she must live with grisettes, and find her
friends among the friends who visited her mother. She could not belong
to both worlds. She must decide once for all whether she would be a
woman of rank or a woman entirely separated from the circle that had
been her father's.

One must respect the girl for making the choice she did. Understanding
the situation absolutely, she chose her mother; and perhaps one would
not have had her do otherwise. Yet in the long run it was bound to be a
mistake. Aurore was clever, refined, well read, and had had the training
of a fashionable convent school. The mother was ignorant and coarse, as
was inevitable, with one who before her marriage had been half shop-girl
and half courtesan. The two could not live long together, and hence it
was not unnatural that Aurore Dupin should marry, to enter upon a new
career.

Her fortune was a fairly large one for the times, and yet not large
enough to attract men who were quite her equals. Presently, however, it
brought to her a sort of country squire, named Casimir Dudevant. He was
the illegitimate son of the Baron Dudevant. He had been in the army,
and had studied law; but he possessed no intellectual tastes. He was
outwardly eligible; but he was of a coarse type--a man who, with passing
years, would be likely to take to drink and vicious amusements, and in
serious life cared only for his cattle, his horses, and his hunting. He
had, however, a sort of jollity about him which appealed to this girl of
eighteen; and so a marriage was arranged. Aurore Dupin became his wife
in 1822, and he secured the control of her fortune.

The first few years after her marriage were not unhappy. She had a son,
Maurice Dudevant, and a daughter, Solange, and she loved them both. But
it was impossible that she should continue vegetating mentally upon
a farm with a husband who was a fool, a drunkard, and a miser. He
deteriorated; his wife grew more and more clever. Dudevant resented
this. It made him uncomfortable. Other persons spoke of her talk as
brilliant. He bluntly told her that it was silly, and that she must stop
it. When she did not stop it, he boxed her ears. This caused a breach
between the pair which was never healed. Dudevant drank more and more
heavily, and jeered at his wife because she was "always looking for noon
at fourteen o'clock." He had always flirted with the country girls; but
now he openly consorted with his wife's chambermaid.

Mme. Dudevant, on her side, would have nothing more to do with this
rustic rake. She formed what she called a platonic friendship--and it
was really so--with a certain M. de Seze, who was advocate-general at
Bordeaux. With him this clever woman could talk without being called
silly, and he took sincere pleasure in her company. He might, in fact,
have gone much further, had not both of them been in an impossible
situation.

Aurore Dudevant really believed that she was swayed by a pure and mystic
passion. De Seze, on the other hand, believed this mystic passion to
be genuine love. Coming to visit her at Nohant, he was revolted by the
clownish husband with whom she lived. It gave him an esthetic shock to
see that she had borne children to this boor. Therefore he shrank back
from her, and in time their relation faded into nothingness.

It happened, soon after, that she found a packet in her husband's desk,
marked "Not to be opened until after my death." She wrote of this in her
correspondence:

I had not the patience to wait till widowhood. No one can be sure of
surviving anybody. I assumed that my husband had died, and I was very
glad to learn what he thought of me while he was alive. Since the
package was addressed to me, it was not dishonorable for me to open it.

And so she opened it. It proved to be his will, but containing, as a
preamble, his curses on her, expressions of contempt, and all the vulgar
outpouring of an evil temper and angry passion. She went to her husband
as he was opening a bottle, and flung the document upon the table.
He cowered at her glance, at her firmness, and at her cold hatred. He
grumbled and argued and entreated; but all that his wife would say in
answer was:

"I must have an allowance. I am going to Paris, and my children are to
remain here."

At last he yielded, and she went at once to Paris, taking her daughter
with her, and having the promise of fifteen hundred francs a year out of
the half-million that was hers by right.

In Paris she developed into a thorough-paced Bohemian. She tried to make
a living in sundry hopeless ways, and at last she took to literature.
She was living in a garret, with little to eat, and sometimes without
a fire in winter. She had some friends who helped her as well as they
could, but though she was attached to the Figaro, her earnings for the
first month amounted to only fifteen francs.

Nevertheless, she would not despair. The editors and publishers might
turn the cold shoulder to her, but she would not give up her ambitions.
She went down into the Latin Quarter, and there shook off the
proprieties of life. She assumed the garb of a man, and with her quick
perception she came to know the left bank of the Seine just as she had
known the country-side at Nohant or the little world at her convent
school. She never expected again to see any woman of her own rank in
life. Her mother's influence became strong in her. She wrote:

The proprieties are the guiding principle of people without soul and
virtue. The good opinion of the world is a prostitute who gives herself
to the highest bidder.

She still pursued her trade of journalism, calling herself a "newspaper
mechanic," sitting all day in the office of the Figaro and writing
whatever was demanded, while at night she would prowl in the streets
haunting the cafes, continuing to dress like a man, drinking sour wine,
and smoking cheap cigars.

One of her companions in this sort of hand-to-mouth journalism was a
young student and writer named Jules Sandeau, a man seven years younger
than his comrade. He was at that time as indigent as she, and their
hardships, shared in common, brought them very close together. He was
clever, boyish, and sensitive, and it was not long before he had fallen
at her feet and kissed her knees, begging that she would requite the
love he felt for her. According to herself, she resisted him for six
months, and then at last she yielded. The two made their home together,
and for a while were wonderfully happy. Their work and their diversions
they enjoyed in common, and now for the first time she experienced
emotions which in all probability she had never known before.

Probably not very much importance is to be given to the earlier
flirtations of George Sand, though she herself never tried to stop the
mouth of scandal. Even before she left her husband, she was credited
with having four lovers; but all she said, when the report was brought
to her, was this: "Four lovers are none too many for one with such
lively passions as mine."

This very frankness makes it likely that she enjoyed shocking her prim
neighbors at Nohant. But if she only played at love-making then, she now
gave herself up to it with entire abandonment, intoxicated, fascinated,
satisfied. She herself wrote:

How I wish I could impart to you this sense of the intensity and
joyousness of life that I have in my veins. To live! How sweet it
is, and how good, in spite of annoyances, husbands, debts, relations,
scandal-mongers, sufferings, and irritations! To live! It is
intoxicating! To love, and to be loved! It is happiness! It is heaven!

In collaboration with Jules Sandeau, she wrote a novel called Rose
et Blanche. The two lovers were uncertain what name to place upon the
title-page, but finally they hit upon the pseudonym of Jules Sand. The
book succeeded; but thereafter each of them wrote separately, Jules
Sandeau using his own name, and Mme. Dudevant styling herself George
Sand, a name by which she was to be illustrious ever after.

As a novelist, she had found her real vocation. She was not yet well
known, but she was on the verge of fame. As soon as she had written
Indiana and Valentine, George Sand had secured a place in the world of
letters. The magazine which still exists as the Revue des Deux Mondes
gave her a retaining fee of four thousand francs a year, and many other
publications begged her to write serial stories for them.

The vein which ran through all her stories was new and piquant. As was
said of her:

In George Sand, whenever a lady wishes to change her lover, God is
always there to make the transfer easy.

In other words, she preached free love in the name of religion. This was
not a new doctrine with her. After the first break with her husband, she
had made up her mind about certain matters, and wrote:

One is no more justified in claiming the ownership of a soul than in
claiming the ownership of a slave.

According to her, the ties between a man and a woman are sacred only
when they are sanctified by love; and she distinguished between love and
passion in this epigram:

Love seeks to give, while passion seeks to take.

At this time, George Sand was in her twenty-seventh year. She was
not beautiful, though there was something about her which attracted
observation. Of middle height, she was fairly slender. Her eyes were
somewhat projecting, and her mouth was almost sullen when in repose. Her
manners were peculiar, combining boldness with timidity. Her address was
almost as familiar as a man's, so that it was easy to be acquainted with
her; yet a certain haughtiness and a touch of aristocratic pride made it
plain that she had drawn a line which none must pass without her
wish. When she was deeply stirred, however, she burst forth into an
extraordinary vivacity, showing a nature richly endowed and eager to
yield its treasures.

The existence which she now led was a curious one. She still visited her
husband at Nohant, so that she might see her son, and sometimes, when
M. Dudevant came to town, he called upon her in the apartments which she
shared with Jules Sandeau. He had accepted the situation, and with his
crudeness and lack of feeling he seemed to think it, if not natural,
at least diverting. At any rate, so long as he could retain her
half-million francs, he was not the man to make trouble about his former
wife's arrangements.

Meanwhile, there began to be perceptible the very slightest rift within
the lute of her romance. Was her love for Sandeau really love, or was
it only passion? In his absence, at any rate, the old obsession still
continued. Here we see, first of all, intense pleasure shading off into
a sort of maternal fondness. She sends Sandeau adoring letters. She is
afraid that his delicate appetite is not properly satisfied.

Yet, again, there are times when she feels that he is irritating and
ill. Those who knew them said that her nature was too passionate and
her love was too exacting for him. One of her letters seems to make
this plain. She writes that she feels uneasy, and even frightfully
remorseful, at seeing Sandeau "pine away." She knows, she avows, that
she is killing him, that her caresses are a poison, and her love a
consuming fire.

It is an appalling thought, and Jules will not understand it. He laughs
at it; and when, in the midst of his transports of delight, the idea
comes to me and makes my blood run cold, he tells me that here is the
death that he would like to die. At such moments he promises whatever I
make him promise.

This letter throws a clear light upon the nature of George Sand's
temperament. It will be found all through her career, not only that
she sought to inspire passion, but that she strove to gratify it after
fashions of her own. One little passage from a description of her
written by the younger Dumas will perhaps make this phase of her
character more intelligible, without going further than is strictly
necessary:

Mme. Sand has little hands without any bones, soft and plump. She is
by destiny a woman of excessive curiosity, always disappointed, always
deceived in her incessant investigation, but she is not fundamentally
ardent. In vain would she like to be so, but she does not find it
possible. Her physical nature utterly refuses.

The reader will find in all that has now been said the true explanation
of George Sand. Abounding with life, but incapable of long stretches of
ardent love, she became a woman who sought conquests everywhere without
giving in return more than her temperament made it possible for her to
do. She loved Sandeau as much as she ever loved any man; and yet she
left him with a sense that she had never become wholly his. Perhaps
this is the reason why their romance came to an end abruptly, and not
altogether fittingly.

She had been spending a short time at Nohant, and came to Paris without
announcement. She intended to surprise her lover, and she surely did so.
She found him in the apartment that had been theirs, with his arms about
an attractive laundry-girl. Thus closed what was probably the only true
romance in the life of George Sand. Afterward she had many lovers, but
to no one did she so nearly become a true mate.

As it was, she ended her association with Sandeau, and each pursued a
separate path to fame. Sandeau afterward became a well-known novelist
and dramatist. He was, in fact, the first writer of fiction who was
admitted to the French Academy. The woman to whom he had been unfaithful
became greater still, because her fame was not only national, but
cosmopolitan.

For a time after her deception by Sandeau, she felt absolutely devoid
of all emotions. She shunned men, and sought the friendship of Marie
Dorval, a clever actress who was destined afterward to break the heart
of Alfred de Vigny. The two went down into the country; and there George
Sand wrote hour after hour, sitting by her fireside, and showing herself
a tender mother to her little daughter Solange.

This life lasted for a while, but it was not the sort of life that
would now content her. She had many visitors from Paris, among them
Sainte-Beuve, the critic, who brought with him Prosper Merimee, then
unknown, but later famous as master of revels to the third Napoleon and
as the author of Carmen. Merimee had a certain fascination of manner,
and the predatory instincts of George Sand were again aroused. One day,
when she felt bored and desperate, Merimee paid his court to her,
and she listened to him. This is one of the most remarkable of her
intimacies, since it began, continued, and ended all in the space of a
single week. When Merimee left Nohant, he was destined never again to
see George Sand, except long afterward at a dinner-party, where the two
stared at each other sharply, but did not speak. This affair, however,
made it plain that she could not long remain at Nohant, and that she
pined for Paris.

Returning thither, she is said to have set her cap at Victor Hugo,
who was, however, too much in love with himself to care for any one,
especially a woman who was his literary rival. She is said for a time to
have been allied with Gustave Planche, a dramatic critic; but she
always denied this, and her denial may be taken as quite truthful. Soon,
however, she was to begin an episode which has been more famous than any
other in her curious history, for she met Alfred de Musset, then a youth
of twenty-three, but already well known for his poems and his plays.

Musset was of noble birth. He would probably have been better for a
plebeian strain, since there was in him a touch of the degenerate.
His mother's father had published a humanitarian poem on cats. His
great-uncle had written a peculiar novel. Young Alfred was nervous,
delicate, slightly epileptic, and it is certain that he was given to
dissipation, which so far had affected his health only by making
him hysterical. He was an exceedingly handsome youth, with exquisite
manners, "dreamy rather than dazzling eyes, dilated nostrils, and
vermilion lips half opened." Such was he when George Sand, then seven
years his senior, met him.

There is something which, to the Anglo-Saxon mind, seems far more absurd
than pathetic about the events which presently took place. A woman like
George Sand at thirty was practically twice the age of this nervous boy
of twenty-three, who had as yet seen little of the world. At first she
seemed to realize the fact herself; but her vanity led her to begin an
intrigue, which must have been almost wholly without excitement on her
part, but which to him, for a time, was everything in the world.

Experimenting, as usual, after the fashion described by Dumas, she went
with De Musset for a "honeymoon" to Fontainebleau. But they could not
stay there forever, and presently they decided upon a journey to Italy.
Before they went, however, they thought it necessary to get formal
permission from Alfred's mother!

Naturally enough, Mme. de Musset refused consent. She had read George
Sand's romances, and had asked scornfully:

"Has the woman never in her life met a gentleman?"

She accepted the relations between them, but that she should be asked
to sanction this sort of affair was rather too much, even for a French
mother who has become accustomed to many strange things. Then there was
a curious happening. At nine o'clock at night, George Sand took a cab
and drove to the house of Mme. de Musset, to whom she sent up a message
that a lady wished to see her. Mme. de Musset came down, and, finding a
woman alone in a carriage, she entered it. Then George Sand burst forth
in a torrent of sentimental eloquence. She overpowered her lover's
mother, promised to take great care of the delicate youth, and finally
drove away to meet Alfred at the coach-yard.

They started off in the mist, their coach being the thirteenth to
leave the yard; but the two lovers were in a merry mood, and enjoyed
themselves all the way from Paris to Marseilles. By steamer they went
to Leghorn; and finally, in January, 1834, they took an apartment in a
hotel at Venice. What had happened that their arrival in Venice should
be the beginning of a quarrel, no one knows. George Sand has told the
story, and Paul de Musset--Alfred's brother--has told the story, but
each of them has doubtless omitted a large part of the truth.

It is likely that on their long journey each had learned too much of
the other. Thus, Paul de Musset says that George Sand made herself
outrageous by her conversation, telling every one of her mother's
adventures in the army of Italy, including her relations with the
general-in-chief. She also declared that she herself was born within
a month of her parents' wedding-day. Very likely she did say all these
things, whether they were true or not. She had set herself to wage war
against conventional society, and she did everything to shock it.

On the other hand, Alfred de Musset fell ill after having lost ten
thousand francs in a gambling-house. George Sand was not fond of persons
who were ill. She herself was working like a horse, writing from eight
to thirteen hours a day. When Musset collapsed she sent for a handsome
young Italian doctor named Pagello, with whom she had struck up a casual
acquaintance. He finally cured Musset, but he also cured George Sand of
any love for Musset.

Before long she and Pagello were on their way back to Paris, leaving the
poor, fevered, whimpering poet to bite his nails and think unutterable
things. But he ought to have known George Sand. After that, everybody
knew her. They knew just how much she cared when she professed to care,
and when she acted as she acted with Pagello no earlier lover had any
one but himself to blame.

Only sentimentalists can take this story seriously. To them it has a
sort of morbid interest. They like to picture Musset raving and shouting
in his delirium, and then, to read how George Sand sat on Pagello's
knees, kissing him and drinking out of the same cup. But to the healthy
mind the whole story is repulsive--from George Sand's appeal to Mme.
de Musset down to the very end, when Pagello came to Paris, where his
broken French excited a polite ridicule.

There was a touch of genuine sentiment about the affair with
Jules Sandeau; but after that, one can only see in George Sand a
half-libidinous grisette, such as her mother was before her, with a
perfect willingness to experiment in every form of lawless love. As for
Musset, whose heart she was supposed to have broken, within a year he
was dangling after the famous singer, Mme. Malibran, and writing poems
to her which advertised their intrigue.

After this episode with Pagello, it cannot be said that the life of
George Sand was edifying in any respect, because no one can assume that
she was sincere. She had loved Jules Sandeau as much as she could love
any one, but all the rest of her intrigues and affinities were in the
nature of experiments. She even took back Alfred de Musset, although
they could never again regard each other without suspicion. George Sand
cut off all her hair and gave it to Musset, so eager was she to keep
him as a matter of conquest; but he was tired of her, and even this
theatrical trick was of no avail.

She proceeded to other less known and less humiliating adventures. She
tried to fascinate the artist Delacroix. She set her cap at Franz Liszt,
who rather astonished her by saying that only God was worthy to be
loved. She expressed a yearning for the affections of the elder Dumas;
but that good-natured giant laughed at her, and in fact gave her some
sound advice, and let her smoke unsentimentally in his study. She was
a good deal taken with a noisy demagogue named Michel, a lawyer at
Bourges, who on one occasion shut her up in her room and harangued her
on sociology until she was as weary of his talk as of his wooden shoes,
his shapeless greatcoat, his spectacles, and his skull-cap, Balzac felt
her fascination, but cared nothing for her, since his love was given to
Mme. Hanska.

In the meanwhile, she was paying visits to her husband at Nohant, where
she wrangled with him over money matters, and where he would once have
shot her had the guests present not interfered. She secured her dowry
by litigation, so that she was well off, even without her literary
earnings. These were by no means so large as one would think from her
popularity and from the number of books she wrote. It is estimated that
her whole gains amounted to about a million francs, extending over a
period of forty-five years. It is just half the amount that Trollope
earned in about the same period, and justifies his remark--"adequate,
but not splendid."

One of those brief and strange intimacies that marked the career of
George Sand came about in a curious way. Octave Feuillet, a man of
aristocratic birth, had set himself to write novels which portrayed
the cynicism and hardness of the upper classes in France. One of these
novels, Sibylle, excited the anger of George Sand. She had not known
Feuillet before; yet now she sought him out, at first in order to berate
him for his book, but in the end to add him to her variegated string of
lovers.

It has been said of Feuillet that he was a sort of "domesticated
Musset." At any rate, he was far less sensitive than Musset, and George
Sand was about seventeen years his senior. They parted after a short
time, she going her way as a writer of novels that were very different
from her earlier ones, while Feuillet grew more and more cynical and
even stern, as he lashed the abnormal, neuropathic men and women about
him.

The last great emotional crisis in George Sand's life was that which
centers around her relations with Frederic Chopin. Chopin was the
greatest genius who ever loved her. It is rather odd that he loved her.
She had known him for two years, and had not seriously thought of him,
though there is a story that when she first met him she kissed him
before he had even been presented to her. She waited two years, and in
those two years she had three lovers. Then at last she once more met
Chopin, when he was in a state of melancholy, because a Polish girl had
proved unfaithful to him.

It was the psychological moment; for this other woman, who was a
devourer of hearts, found him at a piano, improvising a lamentation.
George Sand stood beside him, listening. When he finished and looked up
at her, their eyes met. She bent down without a word and kissed him on
the lips.

What was she like when he saw her then? Grenier has described her in
these words:

She was short and stout, but her face attracted all my attention, the
eyes especially. They were wonderful eyes--a little too close together,
it may be, large, with full eyelids, and black, very black, but by no
means lustrous; they reminded me of unpolished marble, or rather of
velvet, and this gave a strange, dull, even cold expression to her
countenance. Her fine eyebrows and these great placid eyes gave her an
air of strength and dignity which was not borne out by the lower part of
her face. Her nose was rather thick and not over shapely. Her mouth was
also rather coarse, and her chin small. She spoke with great simplicity,
and her manners were very quiet.

Such as she was, she attached herself to Chopin for eight years. At
first they traveled together very quietly to Majorca; and there, just as
Musset had fallen ill at Venice, Chopin became feverish and an invalid.
"Chopin coughs most gracefully," George Sand wrote of him, and again:

Chopin is the most inconstant of men. There is nothing permanent about
him but his cough.

It is not surprising if her nerves sometimes gave way. Acting as sick
nurse, writing herself with rheumatic fingers, robbed by every one about
her, and viewed with suspicion by the peasants because she did not go
to church, she may be perhaps excused for her sharp words when, in fact,
her deeds were kind.

Afterward, with Chopin, she returned to Paris, and the two lived openly
together for seven years longer. An immense literature has grown around
the subject of their relations. To this literature George Sand herself
contributed very largely. Chopin never wrote a word; but what he failed
to do, his friends and pupils did unsparingly.

Probably the truth is somewhat as one might expect. During the first
period of fascination, George Sand was to Chopin what she had been to
Sandeau and to Musset; and with her strange and subtle ways, she had
undermined his health. But afterward that sort of love died out, and was
succeeded by something like friendship. At any rate, this woman showed,
as she had shown to others, a vast maternal kindness. She writes to him
finally as "your old woman," and she does wonders in the way of nursing
and care.

But in 1847 came a break between the two. Whatever the mystery of it may
be, it turns upon what Chopin said of Sand:

"I have never cursed any one, but now I am so weary of life that I am
near cursing her. Yet she suffers, too, and more, because she grows
older as she grows more wicked."

In 1848, Chopin gave his last concert in Paris, and in 1849 he died.
According to some, he was the victim of a Messalina. According to
others, it was only "Messalina" that had kept him alive so long.

However, with his death came a change in the nature of George Sand.
Emotionally, she was an extinct volcano. Intellectually, she was at
her very best. She no longer tore passions into tatters, but wrote
naturally, simply, stories of country life and tales for children.
In one of her books she has given an enduring picture of the
Franco-Prussian War. There are many rather pleasant descriptions of her
then, living at Nohant, where she made a curious figure, bustling about
in ill-fitting costumes, and smoking interminable cigarettes.

She had lived much, and she had drunk deep of life, when she died in
1876. One might believe her to have been only a woman of perpetual
liaisons. Externally she was this, and yet what did Balzac, that great
master of human psychology, write of her in the intimacy of a private
correspondence?

She is a female bachelor. She is an artist. She is generous. She is
devoted. She is chaste. Her dominant characteristics are those of a man,
and therefore, she is not to be regarded as a woman. She is an excellent
mother, adored by her children. Morally, she is like a lad of twenty;
for in her heart of hearts, she is more than chaste--she is a prude. It
is only in externals that she comports herself as a Bohemian. All her
follies are titles to glory in the eyes of those whose souls are noble.

A curious verdict this! Her love-life seems almost that of neither man
nor woman, but of an animal. Yet whether she was in reality responsible
for what she did, when we consider her strange heredity, her wretched
marriage, the disillusions of her early life--who shall sit in judgment
on her, since who knows all?





THE MYSTERY OF CHARLES DICKENS


Perhaps no public man in the English-speaking world, in the last
century, was so widely and intimately known as Charles Dickens. From
his eighteenth year, when he won his first success in journalism, down
through his series of brilliant triumphs in fiction, he was more and
more a conspicuous figure, living in the blaze of an intense publicity.
He met every one and knew every one, and was the companion of every
kind of man and woman. He loved to frequent the "caves of harmony" which
Thackeray has immortalized, and he was a member of all the best Bohemian
clubs of London. Actors, authors, good fellows generally, were his
intimate friends, and his acquaintance extended far beyond into the
homes of merchants and lawyers and the mansions of the proudest nobles.
Indeed, he seemed to be almost a universal friend.

One remembers, for instance, how he was called in to arbitrate between
Thackeray and George Augustus Sala, who had quarreled. One remembers how
Lord Byron's daughter, Lady Lovelace, when upon her sick-bed, used to
send for Dickens because there was something in his genial, sympathetic
manner that soothed her. Crushing pieces of ice between her teeth in
agony, she would speak to him and he would answer her in his rich, manly
tones until she was comforted and felt able to endure more hours of pain
without complaint.

Dickens was a jovial soul. His books fairly steam with Christmas cheer
and hot punch and the savor of plum puddings, very much as do his
letters to his intimate friends. Everybody knew Dickens. He could
not dine in public without attracting attention. When he left the
dining-room, his admirers would descend upon his table and carry off
egg-shells, orange-peels, and other things that remained behind, so that
they might have memorials of this much-loved writer. Those who knew him
only by sight would often stop him in the streets and ask the
privilege of shaking hands with him; so different was he from--let us
say--Tennyson, who was as great an Englishman in his way as Dickens, but
who kept himself aloof and saw few strangers.

It is hard to associate anything like mystery with Dickens, though
he was fond of mystery as an intellectual diversion, and his last
unfinished novel was The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Moreover, no one
admired more than he those complex plots which Wilkie Collins used
to weave under the influence of laudanum. But as for his own life, it
seemed so normal, so free from anything approaching mystery, that we can
scarcely believe it to have been tinged with darker colors than those
which appeared upon the surface.

A part of this mystery is plain enough. The other part is still
obscure--or of such a character that one does not care to bring it
wholly to the light. It had to do with his various relations with women.

The world at large thinks that it knows this chapter in the life of
Dickens, and that it refers wholly to his unfortunate disagreement with
his wife. To be sure, this is a chapter that is writ large in all of his
biographies, and yet it is nowhere correctly told. His chosen biographer
was John Forster, whose Life of Charles Dickens, in three volumes,
must remain a standard work; but even Forster--we may assume through
tact--has not set down all that he could, although he gives a clue.

As is well known, Dickens married Miss Catherine Hogarth when he
was only twenty-four. He had just published his Sketches by Boz, the
copyright of which he sold for one hundred pounds, and was beginning the
Pickwick Papers. About this time his publisher brought N. P. Willis
down to Furnival's Inn to see the man whom Willis called "a young
paragraphist for the Morning Chronicle." Willis thus sketches Dickens
and his surroundings:

In the most crowded part of Holborn, within a door or two of the Bull
and Mouth Inn, we pulled up at the entrance of a large building used
for lawyers' chambers. I followed by a long flight of stairs to an upper
story, and was ushered into an uncarpeted and bleak-looking room, with
a deal table, two or three chairs and a few books, a small boy and Mr.
Dickens for the contents.

I was only struck at first with one thing--and I made a memorandum of
it that evening as the strongest instance I had seen of English
obsequiousness to employers--the degree to which the poor author was
overpowered with the honor of his publisher's visit! I remember saying
to myself, as I sat down on a rickety chair:

"My good fellow, if you were in America with that fine face and
your ready quill, you would have no need to be condescended to by a
publisher."

Dickens was dressed very much as he has since described Dick Swiveller,
minus the swell look. His hair was cropped close to his head, his
clothes scant, though jauntily cut, and, after changing a ragged
office-coat for a shabby blue, he stood by the door, collarless and
buttoned up, the very personification of a close sailer to the wind.

Before this interview with Willis, which Dickens always repudiated, he
had become something of a celebrity among the newspaper men with whom he
worked as a stenographer. As every one knows, he had had a hard time in
his early years, working in a blacking-shop, and feeling too keenly the
ignominious position of which a less sensitive boy would probably have
thought nothing. Then he became a shorthand reporter, and was busy at
his work, so that he had little time for amusements.

It has been generally supposed that no love-affair entered his life
until he met Catherine Hogarth, whom he married soon after making her
acquaintance. People who are eager at ferreting out unimportant facts
about important men had unanimously come to the conclusion that up to
the age of twenty Dickens was entirely fancy-free. It was left to an
American to disclose the fact that this was not the case, but that even
in his teens he had been captivated by a girl of about his own age.

Inasmuch as the only reproach that was ever made against Dickens was
based upon his love-affairs, let us go back and trace them from this
early one to the very last, which must yet for some years, at least,
remain a mystery.

Everything that is known about his first affair is contained in a book
very beautifully printed, but inaccessible to most readers. Some years
ago Mr. William K. Bixby, of St. Louis, found in London a collector of
curios. This man had in his stock a number of letters which had passed
between a Miss Maria Beadnell and Charles Dickens when the two were
about nineteen and a second package of letters representing a later
acquaintance, about 1855, at which time Miss Beadnell had been married
for a long time to a Mr. Henry Louis Winter, of 12 Artillery Place,
London.

The copyright laws of Great Britain would not allow Mr. Bixby to publish
the letters in that country, and he did not care to give them to the
public here. Therefore, he presented them to the Bibliophile Society,
with the understanding that four hundred and ninety-three copies, with
the Bibliophile book-plate, were to be printed and distributed among
the members of the society. A few additional copies were struck off,
but these did not bear the Bibliophile book-plate. Only two copies are
available for other readers, and to peruse these it is necessary to
visit the Congressional Library in Washington, where they were placed on
July 24, 1908.

These letters form two series--the first written to Miss Beadnell in
or about 1829, and the second written to Mrs. Winter, formerly Miss
Beadnell, in 1855.

The book also contains an introduction by Henry H. Harper, who sets
forth some theories which the facts, in my opinion, do not support;
and there are a number of interesting portraits, especially one of Miss
Beadnell in 1829--a lovely girl with dark curls. Another shows her in
1855, when she writes of herself as "old and fat"--thereby doing herself
a great deal of injustice; for although she had lost her youthful
beauty, she was a very presentable woman of middle age, but one who
would not be particularly noticed in any company.

Summing up briefly these different letters, it may be said that in
the first set Dickens wrote to the lady ardently, but by no means
passionately. From what he says it is plain enough that she did not
respond to his feeling, and that presently she left London and went to
Paris, for her family was well-to-do, while Dickens was living from hand
to mouth.

In the second set of letters, written long afterward, Mrs. Winter seems
to have "set her cap" at the now famous author; but at that time he was
courted by every one, and had long ago forgotten the lady who had so
easily dismissed him in his younger days. In 1855, Mrs. Winter seems to
have reproached him for not having been more constant in the past; but
he replied:

You answered me coldly and reproachfully, and so I went my way.

Mr. Harper, in his introduction, tries very hard to prove that in
writing David Copperfield Dickens drew the character of Dora from Miss
Beadnell. It is a dangerous thing to say from whom any character in
a novel is drawn. An author takes whatever suits his purpose in
circumstance and fancy, and blends them all into one consistent whole,
which is not to be identified with any individual. There is little
reason to think that the most intimate friends of Dickens and of his
family were mistaken through all the years when they were certain that
the boy husband and the girl wife of David Copperfield were suggested by
any one save Dickens himself and Catherine Hogarth.

Why should he have gone back to a mere passing fancy, to a girl who
did not care for him, and who had no influence on his life, instead
of picturing, as David's first wife, one whom he deeply loved, whom he
married, who was the mother of his children, and who made a great part
of his career, even that part which was inwardly half tragic and wholly
mournful?

Miss Beadnell may have been the original of Flora in Little Dorrit,
though even this is doubtful. The character was at the time ascribed
to a Miss Anna Maria Leigh, whom Dickens sometimes flirted with and
sometimes caricatured.

When Dickens came to know George Hogarth, who was one of his
colleagues on the staff of the Morning Chronicle, he met Hogarth's
daughters--Catherine, Georgina, and Mary--and at once fell ardently in
love with Catherine, the eldest and prettiest of the three. He himself
was almost girlish, with his fair complexion and light, wavy hair, so
that the famous sketch by Maclise has a remarkable charm; yet nobody
could really say with truth that any one of the three girls was
beautiful. Georgina Hogarth, however, was sweet-tempered and of a
motherly disposition. It may be that in a fashion she loved Dickens
all her life, as she remained with him after he parted from her sister,
taking the utmost care of his children, and looking out with unselfish
fidelity for his many needs.

It was Mary, however, the youngest of the Hogarths, who lived with the
Dickenses during the first twelvemonth of their married life. To Dickens
she was like a favorite sister, and when she died very suddenly, in her
eighteenth year, her loss was a great shock to him.

It was believed for a long time--in fact, until their separation--that
Dickens and his wife were extremely happy in their home life. His
writings glorified all that was domestic, and paid many tender tributes
to the joys of family affection. When the separation came the whole
world was shocked. And yet rather early in Dickens's married life there
was more or less infelicity. In his Retrospections of an Active Life,
Mr. John Bigelow writes a few sentences which are interesting for their
frankness, and which give us certain hints:

Mrs. Dickens was not a handsome woman, though stout, hearty, and
matronly; there was something a little doubtful about her eye, and
I thought her endowed with a temper that might be very violent when
roused, though not easily rousable. Mrs. Caulfield told me that a
Miss Teman--I think that is the name--was the source of the difficulty
between Mrs. Dickens and her husband. She played in private theatricals
with Dickens, and he sent her a portrait in a brooch, which met with
an accident requiring it to be sent to the jeweler's to be mended. The
jeweler, noticing Mr. Dickens's initials, sent it to his house. Mrs.
Dickens's sister, who had always been in love with him and was jealous
of Miss Teman, told Mrs. Dickens of the brooch, and she mounted her
husband with comb and brush. This, no doubt, was Mrs. Dickens's version,
in the main.

A few evenings later I saw Miss Teman at the Haymarket Theatre, playing
with Buckstone and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews. She seemed rather a
small cause for such a serious result--passably pretty, and not much of
an actress.

Here in one passage we have an intimation that Mrs. Dickens had a
temper that was easily roused, that Dickens himself was interested in
an actress, and that Miss Hogarth "had always been in love with him, and
was jealous of Miss Teman."

Some years before this time, however, there had been growing in the mind
of Dickens a certain formless discontent--something to which he could
not give a name, yet which, cast over him the shadow of disappointment.
He expressed the same feeling in David Copperfield, when he spoke of
David's life with Dora. It seemed to come from the fact that he had
grown to be a man, while his wife had still remained a child.

A passage or two may be quoted from the novel, so that we may set them
beside passages in Dickens's own life, which we know to have referred to
his own wife, and not to any such nebulous person as Mrs. Winter.

The shadow I have mentioned that was not to be between us any more,
but was to rest wholly on my heart--how did that fall? The old unhappy
feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were changed at all;
but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me like a strain of
sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wife dearly; but
the happiness I had vaguely anticipated, once, was not the happiness I
enjoyed, AND THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMETHING WANTING.

What I missed I still regarded as something that had been a dream of
my youthful fancy; that was incapable of realization; that I was now
discovering to be so, with some natural pain, as all men did. But that
it would have been better for me if my wife could have helped me more,
and shared the many thoughts in which I had no partner, and that this
might have been I knew.

What I am describing slumbered and half awoke and slept again in the
innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidence of it to me; I knew
of no influence it had in anything I said or did. I bore the weight of
all our little cares and all my projects.

"There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and
purpose." These words I remembered. I had endeavored to adapt Dora to
myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adapt myself
to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bear on my own
shoulders what I must, and be still happy.

Thus wrote Dickens in his fictitious character, and of his fictitious
wife. Let us see how he wrote and how he acted in his own person, and of
his real wife.

As early as 1856, he showed a curious and restless activity, as of one
who was trying to rid himself of unpleasant thoughts. Mr. Forster
says that he began to feel a strain upon his invention, a certain
disquietude, and a necessity for jotting down memoranda in note-books,
so as to assist his memory and his imagination. He began to long
for solitude. He would take long, aimless rambles into the country,
returning at no particular time or season. He once wrote to Forster:

I have had dreadful thoughts of getting away somewhere altogether by
myself. If I could have managed it, I think I might have gone to the
Pyrenees for six months. I have visions of living for half a year or so
in all sorts of inaccessible places, and of opening a new book therein.
A floating idea of going up above the snow-line, and living in some
astonishing convent, hovers over me.

What do these cryptic utterances mean? At first, both in his novel and
in his letters, they are obscure; but before long, in each, they become
very definite. In 1856, we find these sentences among his letters:

The old days--the old days! Shall I ever, I wonder, get the frame of
mind back as it used to be then? Something of it, perhaps, but never
quite as it used to be.

I find that the skeleton in my domestic closet is becoming a pretty big
one.

His next letter draws the veil and shows plainly what he means:

Poor Catherine and I are not made for each other, and there is no help
for it. It is not only that she makes me uneasy and unhappy, but that
I make her so, too--and much more so. We are strangely ill-assorted for
the bond that exists between us.

Then he goes on to say that she would have been a thousand times happier
if she had been married to another man. He speaks of "incompatibility,"
and a "difference of temperaments." In fact, it is the same old story
with which we have become so familiar, and which is both as old as the
hills and as new as this morning's newspaper.

Naturally, also, things grow worse, rather than better. Dickens comes to
speak half jocularly of "the plunge," and calculates as to what effect
it will have on his public readings. He kept back the announcement of
"the plunge" until after he had given several readings; then, on April
29, 1858, Mrs. Dickens left his home. His eldest son went to live with
the mother, but the rest of the children remained with their father,
while his daughter Mary nominally presided over the house. In the
background, however, Georgina Hogarth, who seemed all through her life
to have cared for Dickens more than for her sister, remained as a sort
of guide and guardian for his children.

This arrangement was a private matter, and should not have been brought
to public attention; but it was impossible to suppress all gossip about
so prominent a man. Much of the gossip was exaggerated; and when it came
to the notice of Dickens it stung him so severely as to lead him into
issuing a public justification of his course. He published a
statement in Household Words, which led to many other letters in other
periodicals, and finally a long one from him, which was printed in the
New York Tribune, addressed to his friend Mr. Arthur Smith.

Dickens afterward declared that he had written this letter as a strictly
personal and private one, in order to correct false rumors and scandals.
Mr. Smith naturally thought that the statement was intended for
publication, but Dickens always spoke of it as "the violated letter."

By his allusions to a difference of temperament and to incompatibility,
Dickens no doubt meant that his wife had ceased to be to him the same
companion that she had been in days gone by. As in so many cases, she
had not changed, while he had. He had grown out of the sphere in which
he had been born, "associated with blacking-boys and quilt-printers,"
and had become one of the great men of his time, whose genius was
universally admired.

Mr. Bigelow saw Mrs. Dickens as she really was--a commonplace woman
endowed with the temper of a vixen, and disposed to outbursts of actual
violence when her jealousy was roused.

It was impossible that the two could have remained together, when in
intellect and sympathy they were so far apart. There is nothing strange
about their separation, except the exceedingly bad taste with which
Dickens made it a public affair. It is safe to assume that he felt the
need of a different mate; and that he found one is evident enough from
the hints and bits of innuendo that are found in the writings of his
contemporaries.

He became a pleasure-lover; but more than that, he needed one who could
understand his moods and match them, one who could please his tastes,
and one who could give him that admiration which he felt to be his due;
for he was always anxious to be praised, and his letters are full of
anecdotes relating to his love of praise.

One does not wish to follow out these clues too closely. It is certain
that neither Miss Beadnell as a girl nor Mrs. Winter as a matron made
any serious appeal to him. The actresses who have been often mentioned
in connection with his name were, for the most part, mere passing
favorites. The woman who in life was Dora made him feel the same
incompleteness that he has described in his best-known book. The
companion to whom he clung in his later years was neither a light-minded
creature like Miss Beadnell, nor an undeveloped, high-tempered woman
like the one he married, nor a mere domestic, friendly creature like
Georgina Hogarth.

Ought we to venture upon a quest which shall solve this mystery in the
life of Charles Dickens! In his last will and testament, drawn up and
signed by him about a year before his death, the first paragraph reads
as follows:

I, Charles Dickens, of Gadshill Place, Higham, in the county of Kent,
hereby revoke all my former wills and codicils and declare this to be my
last will and testament. I give the sum of one thousand pounds, free
of legacy duty, to Miss Ellen Lawless Ternan, late of Houghton Place,
Ampthill Square, in the county of Middlesex.

In connection with this, read Mr. John Bigelow's careless jottings made
some fifteen years before. Remember the Miss "Teman," about whose name
he was not quite certain; the Hogarth sisters' dislike of her; and the
mysterious figure in the background of the novelist's later life. Then
consider the first bequest in his will, which leaves a substantial
sum to one who was neither a relative nor a subordinate, but--may we
assume--more than an ordinary friend?





HONORE DE BALZAC AND EVELINA HANSKA


I remember once, when editing an elaborate work on literature, that the
publisher called me into his private office. After the door was closed,
he spoke in tones of suppressed emotion.

"Why is it," said he, "that you have such a lack of proportion? In the
selection you have made I find that only two pages are given to George
P. Morris, while you haven't given E. P. Roe any space at all! Yet, look
here--you've blocked out fifty pages for Balzac, who was nothing but an
immoral Frenchman!"

I adjusted this difficulty, somehow or other--I do not just remember
how--and began to think that, after all, this publisher's view of things
was probably that of the English and American public. It is strange that
so many biographies and so many appreciations of the greatest novelist
who ever lived should still have left him, in the eyes of the reading
public, little more than "an immoral Frenchman."

"In Balzac," said Taine, "there was a money-broker, an archeologist, an
architect, an upholsterer, a tailor, an old-clothes dealer, a journeyman
apprentice, a physician, and a notary." Balzac was also a mystic, a
supernaturalist, and, above all, a consummate artist. No one who is all
these things in high measure, and who has raised himself by his genius
above his countrymen, deserves the censure of my former publisher.

Still less is Balzac to be dismissed as "immoral," for his life was one
of singular self-sacrifice in spite of much temptation. His face was
strongly sensual, his look and bearing denoted almost savage power; he
led a free life in a country which allowed much freedom; and yet
his story is almost mystic in its fineness of thought, and in its
detachment, which was often that of another world.

Balzac was born in 1799, at Tours, with all the traits of the people
of his native province--fond of eating and drinking, and with plenty of
humor. His father was fairly well off. Of four children, our Balzac was
the eldest. The third was his sister Laure, who throughout his life was
the most intimate friend he had, and to whom we owe his rescue from much
scandalous and untrue gossip. From her we learn that their father was a
combination of Montaigne, Rabelais, and "Uncle Toby."

Young Balzac went to a clerical school at seven, and stayed there for
seven years. Then he was brought home, apparently much prostrated,
although the good fathers could find nothing physically amiss with him,
and nothing in his studies to account for his agitation. No one ever did
discover just what was the matter, for he seemed well enough in the
next few years, basking on the riverside, watching the activities of
his native town, and thoroughly studying the rustic types that he was
afterward to make familiar to the world. In fact, in Louis Lambert he
has set before us a picture of his own boyish life, very much as Dickens
did of his in David Copperfield.

For some reason, when these years were over, the boy began to have what
is so often known as "a call"--a sort of instinct that he was to attain
renown. Unfortunately it happened that about this time (1814) he and his
parents removed to Paris, which was his home by choice, until his death
in 1850. He studied here under famous teachers, and gave three years
to the pursuit of law, of which he was very fond as literary material,
though he refused to practise.

This was the more grievous, since a great part of the family property
had been lost. The Balzacs were afflicted by actual poverty, and Honore
endeavored, with his pen, to beat the wolf back from the door. He earned
a little money with pamphlets and occasional stories, but his thirst
for fame was far from satisfied. He was sure that he was called to
literature, and yet he was not sure that he had the power to succeed. In
one of his letters to his sister, he wrote:

I am young and hungry, and there is nothing on my plate. Oh, Laure,
Laure, my two boundless desires, my only ones--to be famous, and to be
loved--they ever be satisfied?

For the next ten years he was learning his trade, and the artistic use
of the fiction writer's tools. What is more to the point, is the fact
that he began to dream of a series of great novels, which should give
a true and panoramic picture of the whole of human life. This was the
first intimation of his "Human Comedy," which was so daringly undertaken
and so nearly completed in his after years. In his early days of
obscurity, he said to his readers:

Note well the characters that I introduce, since you will have to follow
their fortunes through thirty novels that are to come.

Here we see how little he had been daunted by ill success, and how his
prodigious imagination had not been overcome by sorrow and evil fortune.
Meantime, writing almost savagely, and with a feeling combined of
ambition and despair, he had begun, very slowly indeed, to create a
public. These ten years, however, had loaded him with debts; and his
struggle to keep himself afloat only plunged him deeper in the mire.
His thirty unsigned novels began to pay him a few hundred francs, not
in cash, but in promissory notes; so that he had to go still deeper into
debt.

In 1827 he was toiling on his first successful novel, and indeed one of
the best historic novels in French literature--The Chouans. He speaks of
his labor as "done with a tired brain and an anxious mind," and of the
eight or ten business letters that he had to write each day before he
could begin his literary work.

"Postage and an omnibus are extravagances that I cannot allow myself,"
he writes. "I stay at home so as not to wear out my clothes. Is that
clear to you?"

At the end of the next year, though he was already popular as a
novelist, and much sought out by people of distinction, he was at the
very climax of his poverty. He had written thirty-five books, and was in
debt to the amount of a hundred and twenty-four thousand francs. He was
saved from bankruptcy only by the aid of Mme. de Berny, a woman of high
character, and one whose moral influence was very strong with Balzac
until her early death.

The relation between these two has a sweetness and a purity which are
seldom found. Mme. de Berny gave Balzac money as she would have given it
to a son, and thereby she saved a great soul for literature. But there
was no sickly sentiment between them, and Balzac regarded her with a
noble love which he has expressed in the character of Mme. Firmiani.

It was immediately after she had lightened his burdens that the real
Balzac comes before us in certain stories which have no equal, and
which are among the most famous that he ever wrote. What could be more
wonderful than his El Verdugo, which gives us a brief horror while
compelling our admiration? What, outside of Balzac himself, could be
more terrible than Gobseck, a frightful study of avarice, containing
a deathbed scene which surpasses in dreadfulness almost anything in
literature? Add to these A Passion in the Desert, The Girl with the
Golden Eyes, The Droll Stories, The Red Inn, and The Magic Skin, and you
have a cluster of masterpieces not to be surpassed.

In the year 1829, when he was just beginning to attain a slight success,
Balzac received a long letter written in a woman's hand. As he read
it, there came to him something very like an inspiration, so full of
understanding were the written words, so full of appreciation and of
sympathy with the best that he had done. This anonymous note pointed out
here and there such defects as are apt to become chronic with a
young author. Balzac was greatly stirred by its keen and sympathetic
criticism. No one before had read his soul so clearly. No one--not even
his devoted sister, Laure de Surville--had judged his work so wisely,
had come so closely to his deepest feeling.

He read the letter over and over, and presently another came, full of
critical appreciation, and of wholesome, tonic, frank, friendly words
of cheer. It was very largely the effect of these letters that roused
Balzac's full powers and made him sure of winning the two great objects
of his first ambition--love and fame--the ideals of the chivalrous,
romantic Frenchman from Caesar's time down to the present day.

Other letters followed, and after a while their authorship was made
known to Balzac. He learned that they had been written by a young Polish
lady, Mme. Evelina Hanska, the wife of a Polish count, whose health was
feeble, and who spent much time in Switzerland because the climate there
agreed with him.

He met her first at Neuchatel, and found her all that he had imagined.
It is said that she had no sooner raised her face, and looked him
fully in the eyes, than she fell fainting to the floor, overcome by
her emotion. Balzac himself was deeply moved. From that day until their
final meeting he wrote to her daily.

The woman who had become his second soul was not beautiful.
Nevertheless, her face was intensely spiritual, and there was a mystic
quality about it which made a strong appeal to Balzac's innermost
nature. Those who saw him in Paris knocking about the streets at night
with his boon companions, hobnobbing with the elder Dumas, or rejecting
the frank advances of George Sand, would never have dreamed of this
mysticism.

Balzac was heavy and broad of figure. His face was suggestive only of
what was sensuous and sensual. At the same time, those few who looked
into his heart and mind found there many a sign of the fine inner strain
which purified the grosser elements of his nature. He who wrote the
roaring Rabelaisian Contes Drolatiques was likewise the author of
Seraphita.

This mysticism showed itself in many things that Balzac did. One little
incident will perhaps be sufficiently characteristic of many others. He
had a belief that names had a sort of esoteric appropriateness. So, in
selecting them for his novels, he gathered them with infinite pains from
many sources, and then weighed them anxiously in the balance. A writer
on the subject of names and their significance has given the following
account of this trait:

The great novelist once spent an entire day tramping about in the
remotest quarters of Paris in search of a fitting name for a character
just conceived by him. Every sign-board, every door-plate, every affiche
upon the walls, was scrutinized. Thousands of names were considered
and rejected, and it was only after his companion, utterly worn out by
fatigue, had flatly refused to drag his weary limbs through more than
one additional street, that Balzac suddenly saw upon a sign the name
"Marcas," and gave a shout of joy at having finally secured what he was
seeking.

Marcas it was, from that moment; and Balzac gradually evolved a
Christian name for him. First he considered what initial was most
appropriate; and then, having decided upon Z, he went on to expand this
into Zepherin, explaining minutely just why the whole name Zepherin
Marcas, was the only possible one for the character in the novel.

In many ways Balzac and Evelina Hanska were mated by nature. Whether
they were fully mated the facts of their lives must demonstrate. For the
present, the novelist plunged into a whirl of literary labor, toiling as
few ever toiled--constructing several novels at the same time, visiting
all the haunts of the French capital, so that he might observe and
understand every type of human being, and then hurling himself like a
giant at his work.

He had a curious practise of reading proofs. These would come to him in
enormous sheets, printed on special paper, and with wide margins for his
corrections. An immense table stood in the midst of his study, and upon
the top he would spread out the proofs as if they were vast maps. Then,
removing most of his outer garments, he would lie, face down, upon the
proof-sheets, with a gigantic pencil, such as Bismarck subsequently used
to wield. Thus disposed, he would go over the proofs.

Hardly anything that he had written seemed to suit him when he saw it
in print. He changed and kept changing, obliterating what he disliked,
writing in new sentences, revising others, and adding whole pages in the
margins, until perhaps he had practically made a new book. This process
was repeated several times; and how expensive it was may be judged from
the fact that his bill for "author's proof corrections" was sometimes
more than the publishers had agreed to pay him for the completed volume.

Sometimes, again, he would begin writing in the afternoon, and continue
until dawn. Then, weary, aching in every bone, and with throbbing head,
he would rise and turn to fall upon his couch after his eighteen hours
of steady toil. But the memory of Evelina Hanska always came to him;
and with half-numbed fingers he would seize his pen, and forget his
weariness in the pleasure of writing to the dark-eyed woman who drew him
to her like a magnet.

These are very curious letters that Balzac wrote to Mme. Hanska. He
literally told her everything about himself. Not only were there long
passages instinct with tenderness, and with his love for her; but he
also gave her the most minute account of everything that occurred, and
that might interest her. Thus he detailed at length his mode of living,
the clothes he wore, the people whom he met, his trouble with his
creditors, the accounts of his income and outgo. One might think that
this was egotism on his part; but it was more than that. It was a strong
belief that everything which concerned him must concern her; and he
begged her in turn to write as freely and as fully.

Mme. Hanska was not the only woman who became his friend and comrade,
and to whom he often wrote. He made many acquaintances in the
fashionable world through the good offices of the Duchesse de Castries.
By her favor, he studied with his microscopic gaze the beau monde of
Louis Philippe's rather unimpressive court.

In a dozen books he scourged the court of the citizen king--its
pretensions, its commonness, and its assemblage of nouveaux riches. Yet
in it he found many friends--Victor Hugo, the Girardins--and among them
women who were of the world. George Sand he knew very well, and she made
ardent love to him; but he laughed her off very much as the elder Dumas
did.

Then there was the pretty, dainty Mme. Carraud, who read and revised his
manuscripts, and who perhaps took a more intimate interest in him than
did the other ladies whom he came to know so well. Besides Mme. Hanska,
he had another correspondent who signed herself "Louise," but who never
let him know her name, though she wrote him many piquant, sunny letters,
which he so sadly needed.

For though Honore de Balzac was now one of the most famous writers of
his time, his home was still a den of suffering. His debts kept pressing
on him, loading him down, and almost quenching hope. He acted toward his
creditors like a man of honor, and his physical strength was still
that of a giant. To Mme. Carraud he once wrote the half pathetic, half
humorous plaint:

Poor pen! It must be diamond, not because one would wish to wear it, but
because it has had so much use!

And again:

Here I am, owing a hundred thousand francs. And I am forty!

Balzac and Mme. Hanska met many times after that first eventful episode
at Neuchatel. It was at this time that he gave utterance to the poignant
cry:

Love for me is life, and to-day I feel it more than ever!

In like manner he wrote, on leaving her, that famous epigram:

It is only the last love of a woman that can satisfy the first love of a
man.

In 1842 Mme. Hanska's husband died. Balzac naturally expected that an
immediate marriage with the countess would take place; but the woman
who had loved him mystically for twelve years, and with a touch of the
physical for nine, suddenly draws back. She will not promise anything.
She talks of delays, owing to the legal arrangements for her children.
She seems almost a prude. An American critic has contrasted her attitude
with his:

Every one knows how utterly and absolutely Balzac devoted to this one
woman all his genius, his aspiration, the thought of his every moment;
how every day, after he had labored like a slave for eighteen hours, he
would take his pen and pour out to her the most intimate details of his
daily life; how at her call he would leave everything and rush across
the continent to Poland or to Italy, being radiantly happy if he could
but see her face and be for a few days by her side. The very thought of
meeting her thrilled him to the very depths of his nature, and made him,
for weeks and even months beforehand, restless, uneasy, and agitated,
with an almost painful happiness.

It is the most startling proof of his immense vitality, both physical
and mental, that so tremendous an emotional strain could be endured
by him for years without exhausting his fecundity or blighting his
creativeness.

With Balzac, however, it was the period of his most brilliant work;
and this was true in spite of the anguish of long separations, and the
complaints excited by what appears to be caprice or boldness or a faint
indifference. Even in Balzac one notices toward the last a certain sense
of strain underlying what he wrote, a certain lack of elasticity and
facility, if of nothing more; yet on the whole it is likely that without
this friendship Balzac would have been less great than he actually
became, as it is certain that had it been broken off he would have
ceased to write or to care for anything whatever in the world.

And yet, when they were free to marry, Mme. Hanska shrank away. Not
until 1846, four years after her husband's death, did she finally give
her promise to the eager Balzac. Then, in the overflow of his happiness,
his creative genius blazed up into a most wonderful flame; but he soon
discovered that the promise was not to be at once fulfilled. The shock
impaired that marvelous vitality which had carried him through debt, and
want, and endless labor.

It was at this moment, by the irony of fate, that his country hailed him
as one of the greatest of its men of genius. A golden stream poured
into his lap. His debts were not all extinguished, but his income was so
large that they burdened him no longer.

But his one long dream was the only thing for which he cared; and though
in an exoteric sense this dream came true, its truth was but a mockery.
Evelina Hanska summoned him to Poland, and Balzac went to her at once.
There was another long delay, and for more than a year he lived as a
guest in the countess's mansion at Wierzchownia; but finally, in March,
1850, the two were married. A few weeks later they came back to France
together, and occupied the little country house, Les Jardies, in which,
some decades later, occurred Gambetta's mysterious death.

What is the secret of this strange love, which in the woman seems to be
not precisely love, but something else? Balzac was always eager for her
presence. She, on the other hand, seems to have been mentally more at
ease when he was absent. Perhaps the explanation, if we may venture upon
one, is based upon a well-known physiological fact.

Love in its completeness is made up of two great elements--first, the
element that is wholly spiritual, that is capable of sympathy, and
tenderness, and deep emotion. The other element is the physical,
the source of passion, of creative energy, and of the truly virile
qualities, whether it be in man or woman. Now, let either of these
elements be lacking, and love itself cannot fully and utterly exist.
The spiritual nature in one may find its mate in the spiritual nature
of another; and the physical nature of one may find its mate in the
physical nature of another. But into unions such as these, love does not
enter in its completeness. If there is any element lacking in either
of those who think that they can mate, their mating will be a sad and
pitiful failure.

It is evident enough that Mme. Hanska was almost wholly spiritual, and
her long years of waiting had made her understand the difference between
Balzac and herself. Therefore, she shrank from his proximity, and from
his physical contact, and it was perhaps better for them both that their
union was so quickly broken off by death; for the great novelist died of
heart disease only five months after the marriage.

If we wish to understand the mystery of Balzac's life--or, more truly,
the mystery of the life of the woman whom he married--take up and read
once more the pages of Seraphita, one of his poorest novels and yet a
singularly illuminating story, shedding light upon a secret of the soul.





CHARLES READE AND LAURA SEYMOUR


The instances of distinguished men, or of notable women, who have broken
through convention in order to find a fitting mate, are very numerous. A
few of these instances may, perhaps, represent what is usually called
a Platonic union. But the evidence is always doubtful. The world is not
possessed of abundant charity, nor does human experience lead one to
believe that intimate relations between a man and a woman are compatible
with Platonic friendship.

Perhaps no case is more puzzling than that which is found in the
life-history of Charles Reade and Laura Seymour.

Charles Reade belongs to that brilliant group of English writers and
artists which included Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton, Wilkie Collins, Tom
Taylor, George Eliot, Swinburne, Sir Walter Besant, Maclise, and Goldwin
Smith. In my opinion, he ranks next to Dickens in originality and power.
His books are little read to-day; yet he gave to the English stage the
comedy "Masks and Faces," which is now as much a classic as Goldsmith's
"She Stoops to Conquer" or Sheridan's "School for Scandal." His power as
a novelist was marvelous. Who can forget the madhouse episodes in Hard
Cash, or the great trial scene in Griffith Gaunt, or that wonderful
picture, in The Cloister and the Hearth, of Germany and Rome at the end
of the Middle Ages? Here genius has touched the dead past and made it
glow again with an intense reality.

He was the son of a country gentleman, the lord of a manor which had
been held by his family before the Wars of the Boses. His ancestors had
been noted for their services in warfare, in Parliament, and upon the
bench. Reade, therefore, was in feeling very much of an aristocrat.
Sometimes he pushed his ancestral pride to a whimsical excess, very much
as did his own creation, Squire Raby, in Put Yourself in His Place.

At the same time he might very well have been called a Tory democrat.
His grandfather had married the daughter of a village blacksmith, and
Reade was quite as proud of this as he was of the fact that another
ancestor had been lord chief justice of England. From the sturdy
strain which came to him from the blacksmith he, perhaps, derived
that sledge-hammer power with which he wrote many of his most famous
chapters, and which he used in newspaper controversies with his
critics. From his legal ancestors there may have come to him the love
of litigation, which kept him often in hot water. From those who had
figured in the life of royal courts, he inherited a romantic nature,
a love of art, and a very delicate perception of the niceties of
cultivated usage. Such was Charles Reade--keen observer, scholar,
Bohemian--a man who could be both rough and tender, and whose boisterous
ways never concealed his warm heart.

Reade's school-days were Spartan in their severity. A teacher with
the appropriate name of Slatter set him hard tasks and caned him
unmercifully for every shortcoming. A weaker nature would have been
crushed. Reade's was toughened, and he learned to resist pain and to
resent wrong, so that hatred of injustice has been called his dominating
trait.

In preparing himself for college he was singularly fortunate in his
tutors. One of them was Samuel Wilberforce, afterward Bishop of Oxford,
nicknamed, from his suavity of manner, "Soapy Sam"; and afterward, when
Reade was studying law, his instructor was Samuel Warren, the author
of that once famous novel, Ten Thousand a Year, and the creator of
"Tittlebat Titmouse."

For his college at Oxford, Reade selected one of the most beautiful
and ancient--Magdalen--which he entered, securing what is known as a
demyship. Reade won his demyship by an extraordinary accident. Always an
original youth, his reading was varied and valuable; but in his studies
he had never tried to be minutely accurate in small matters. At that
time every candidate was supposed to be able to repeat, by heart, the
"Thirty-Nine Articles." Reade had no taste for memorizing; and out of
the whole thirty-nine he had learned but three. His general examination
was good, though not brilliant. When he came to be questioned orally,
the examiner, by a chance that would not occur once in a million times,
asked the candidate to repeat these very articles. Reade rattled them
off with the greatest glibness, and produced so favorable an impression
that he was let go without any further questioning.

It must be added that his English essay was original, and this also
helped him; but had it not been for the other great piece of luck he
would, in Oxford phrase, have been "completely gulfed." As it was,
however, he was placed as highly as the young men who were afterward
known as Cardinal Newman and Sir Robert Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke).

At the age of twenty-one, Reade obtained a fellowship, which entitled
him to an income so long as he remained unmarried. It is necessary to
consider the significance of this when we look at his subsequent career.
The fellowship at Magdalen was worth, at the outset, about twelve
hundred dollars annually, and it gave him possession of a suite of rooms
free of any charge. He likewise secured a Vinerian fellowship in law, to
which was attached an income of four hundred dollars. As time went
on, the value of the first fellowship increased until it was worth
twenty-five hundred dollars. Therefore, as with many Oxford men of
his time, Charles Reade, who had no other fortune, was placed in this
position--if he refrained from marrying, he had a home and a moderate
income for life, without any duties whatsoever. If he married, he must
give up his income and his comfortable apartments, and go out into the
world and struggle for existence.

There was the further temptation that the possession of his fellowship
did not even necessitate his living at Oxford. He might spend his time
in London, or even outside of England, knowing that his chambers at
Magdalen were kept in order for him, as a resting-place to which he
might return whenever he chose.

Reade remained a while at Oxford, studying books and men--especially the
latter. He was a great favorite with the undergraduates, though less so
with the dons. He loved the boat-races on the river; he was a prodigious
cricket-player, and one of the best bowlers of his time. He utterly
refused to put on any of the academic dignity which his associates
affected. He wore loud clothes. His flaring scarfs were viewed as being
almost scandalous, very much as Longfellow's parti-colored waistcoats
were regarded when he first came to Harvard as a professor.

Charles Reade pushed originality to eccentricity. He had a passion for
violins, and ran himself into debt because he bought so many and such
good ones. Once, when visiting his father's house at Ipsden, he shocked
the punctilious old gentleman by dancing on the dining-table to the
accompaniment of a fiddle, which he scraped delightedly. Dancing,
indeed, was another of his diversions, and, in spite of the fact that he
was a fellow of Magdalen and a D.C.L. of Oxford, he was always ready to
caper and to display the new steps.

In the course of time, he went up to London; and at once plunged into
the seething tide of the metropolis. He made friends far and wide, and
in every class and station--among authors and politicians, bishops and
bargees, artists and musicians. Charles Reade learned much from all of
them, and all of them were fond of him.

But it was the theater that interested him most. Nothing else seemed to
him quite so fine as to be a successful writer for the stage. He viewed
the drama with all the reverence of an ancient Greek. On his tombstone
he caused himself to be described as "Dramatist, novelist, journalist."

"Dramatist" he put first of all, even after long experience had shown
him that his greatest power lay in writing novels. But in this early
period he still hoped for fame upon the stage.

It was not a fortunate moment for dramatic writers. Plays were bought
outright by the managers, who were afraid to risk any considerable sum,
and were very shy about risking anything at all. The system had not yet
been established according to which an author receives a share of the
money taken at the box-office. Consequently, Reade had little or no
financial success. He adapted several pieces from the French, for which
he was paid a few bank-notes. "Masks and Faces" got a hearing, and drew
large audiences, but Reade had sold it for a paltry sum; and he shared
the honors of its authorship with Tom Taylor, who was then much better
known.

Such was the situation. Reade was personally liked, but his plays were
almost all rejected. He lived somewhat extravagantly and ran into debt,
though not very deeply. He had a play entitled "Christie Johnstone,"
which he believed to be a great one, though no manager would venture
to produce it. Reade, brooding, grew thin and melancholy. Finally, he
decided that he would go to a leading actress at one of the principal
theaters and try to interest her in his rejected play. The actress he
had in mind was Laura Seymour, then appearing at the Haymarket under the
management of Buckstone; and this visit proved to be the turning-point
in Reade's whole life.

Laura Seymour was the daughter of a surgeon at Bath--a man in large
practise and with a good income, every penny of which he spent. His
family lived in lavish style; but one morning, after he had sat up all
night playing cards, his little daughter found him in the dining-room,
stone dead. After his funeral it appeared that he had left no provision
for his family. A friend of his--a Jewish gentleman of Portuguese
extraction--showed much kindness to the children, settling their affairs
and leaving them with some money in the bank; but, of course, something
must be done.

The two daughters removed to London, and at a very early age Laura had
made for herself a place in the dramatic world, taking small parts at
first, but rising so rapidly that in her fifteenth year she was cast
for the part of Juliet. As an actress she led a life of strange
vicissitudes. At one time she would be pinched by poverty, and at
another time she would be well supplied with money, which slipped
through her fingers like water. She was a true Bohemian, a
happy-go-lucky type of the actors of her time.

From all accounts, she was never very beautiful; but she had an instinct
for strange, yet effective, costumes, which attracted much attention.
She has been described as "a fluttering, buoyant, gorgeous little
butterfly." Many were drawn to her. She was careless of what she did,
and her name was not untouched with scandal. But she lived through it
all, and emerged a clever, sympathetic woman of wide experience, both on
the stage and off it.

One of her admirers--an elderly gentleman named Seymour--came to her one
day when she was in much need of money, and told her that he had just
deposited a thousand pounds to her credit at the bank. Having said
this, he left the room precipitately. It was the beginning of a sort of
courtship; and after a while she married him. Her feeling toward him was
one of gratitude. There was no sentiment about it; but she made him a
good wife, and gave no further cause for gossip.

Such was the woman whom Charles Reade now approached with the request
that she would let him read to her a portion of his play. He had seen
her act, and he honestly believed her to be a dramatic genius of the
first order. Few others shared this belief; but she was generally
thought of as a competent, though by no means brilliant, actress. Reade
admired her extremely, so that at the very thought of speaking with her
his emotions almost choked him.

In answer to a note, she sent word that he might call at her house. He
was at this time (1849) in his thirty-eighth year. The lady was a little
older, and had lost something of her youthful charm; yet, when Reade was
ushered into her drawing-room, she seemed to him the most graceful and
accomplished woman whom he had ever met.

She took his measure, or she thought she took it, at a glance. Here was
one of those would-be playwrights who live only to torment managers
and actresses. His face was thin, from which she inferred that he was
probably half starved. His bashfulness led her to suppose that he was
an inexperienced youth. Little did she imagine that he was the son of a
landed proprietor, a fellow of one of Oxford's noblest colleges, and one
with friends far higher in the world than herself. Though she thought so
little of him, and quite expected to be bored, she settled herself in a
soft armchair to listen. The unsuccessful playwright read to her a scene
or two from his still unfinished drama. She heard him patiently, noting
the cultivated accent of his voice, which proved to her that he was at
least a gentleman. When he had finished, she said:

"Yes, that's good! The plot is excellent." Then she laughed a sort of
stage laugh, and remarked lightly: "Why don't you turn it into a novel?"

Reade was stung to the quick. Nothing that she could have said would
have hurt him more. Novels he despised; and here was this woman, the
queen of the English stage, as he regarded her, laughing at his drama
and telling him to make a novel of it. He rose and bowed.

"I am trespassing on your time," he said; and, after barely touching the
fingers of her outstretched hand, he left the room abruptly.

The woman knew men very well, though she scarcely knew Charles Reade.
Something in his melancholy and something in his manner stirred her
heart. It was not a heart that responded to emotions readily, but it was
a very good-natured heart. Her explanation of Reade's appearance led
her to think that he was very poor. If she had not much tact, she had
an abundant store of sympathy; and so she sat down and wrote a very
blundering but kindly letter, in which she enclosed a five-pound note.

Reade subsequently described his feelings on receiving this letter with
its bank-note. He said:

"I, who had been vice-president of Magdalen--I, who flattered myself I
was coming to the fore as a dramatist--to have a five-pound note flung
at my head, like a ticket for soup to a pauper, or a bone to a dog, and
by an actress, too! Yet she said my reading was admirable; and, after
all, there is much virtue in a five-pound note. Anyhow, it showed the
writer had a good heart."

The more he thought of her and of the incident, the more comforted he
was. He called on her the next day without making an appointment; and
when she received him, he had the five-pound note fluttering in his
hand.

She started to speak, but he interrupted her.

"No," he said, "that is not what I wanted from you. I wanted sympathy,
and you have unintentionally supplied it."

Then this man, whom she had regarded as half starved, presented her with
an enormous bunch of hothouse grapes, and the two sat down and ate
them together, thus beginning a friendship which ended only with Laura
Seymour's death.

Oddly enough, Mrs. Seymour's suggestion that Reade should make a story
of his play was a suggestion which he actually followed. It was to her
guidance and sympathy that the world owes the great novels which he
afterward composed. If he succeeded on the stage at all, it was not
merely in "Masks and Faces," but in his powerful dramatization of Zola's
novel, L'Assommoir, under the title "Drink," in which the late
Charles Warner thrilled and horrified great audiences all over the
English-speaking world. Had Reade never known Laura Seymour, he might
never have written so strong a drama.

The mystery of Reade's relations with this woman can never be definitely
cleared up. Her husband, Mr. Seymour, died not long after she and Reade
became acquainted. Then Reade and several friends, both men and women,
took a house together; and Laura Seymour, now a clever manager
and amiable hostess, looked after all the practical affairs of the
establishment. One by one, the others fell away, through death or by
removal, until at last these two were left alone. Then Reade, unable
to give up the companionship which meant so much to him, vowed that she
must still remain and care for him. He leased a house in Sloane Street,
which he has himself described in his novel A Terrible Temptation. It is
the chapter wherein Reade also draws his own portrait in the character
of Francis Bolfe:

The room was rather long, low, and nondescript; scarlet flock paper;
curtains and sofas, green Utrecht velvet; woodwork and pillars,
white and gold; two windows looking on the street; at the other end
folding-doors, with scarcely any woodwork, all plate glass, but partly
hidden by heavy curtains of the same color and material as the others.

At last a bell rang; the maid came in and invited Lady Bassett to follow
her. She opened the glass folding-doors and took them into a small
conservatory, walled like a grotto, with ferns sprouting out of rocky
fissures, and spars sparkling, water dripping. Then she opened two more
glass folding-doors, and ushered them into an empty room, the like
of which Lady Bassett had never seen; it was large in itself, and
multiplied tenfold by great mirrors from floor to ceiling, with no
frames but a narrow oak beading; opposite her, on entering, was a bay
window, all plate glass, the central panes of which opened, like doors,
upon a pretty little garden that glowed with color, and was backed by
fine trees belonging to the nation; for this garden ran up to the wall
of Hyde Park.

The numerous and large mirrors all down to the ground laid hold of the
garden and the flowers, and by double and treble reflection filled the
room with delightful nooks of verdure and color.

Here are the words in which Reade describes himself as he looked when
between fifty and sixty years of age:

He looked neither like a poet nor a drudge, but a great fat country
farmer. He was rather tall, very portly, smallish head, commonplace
features, mild brown eye not very bright, short beard, and wore a suit
of tweed all one color.

Such was the house and such was the man over both of which Laura
Seymour held sway until her death in 1879. What must be thought of their
relations? She herself once said to Mr. John Coleman:

"As for our positions--his and mine--we are partners, nothing more. He
has his bank-account, and I have mine. He is master of his fellowship
and his rooms at Oxford, and I am mistress of this house, but not his
mistress! Oh, dear, no!"

At another time, long after Mr. Seymour's death, she said to an intimate
friend:

"I hope Mr. Reade will never ask me to marry him, for I should certainly
refuse the offer."

There was no reason why he should not have made this offer, because his
Oxford fellowship ceased to be important to him after he had won fame as
a novelist. Publishers paid him large sums for everything he wrote. His
debts were all paid off, and his income was assured. Yet he never spoke
of marriage, and he always introduced his friend as "the lady who keeps
my house for me."

As such, he invited his friends to meet her, and as such, she even
accompanied him to Oxford. There was no concealment, and apparently
there was nothing to conceal. Their manner toward each other was that of
congenial friends. Mrs. Seymour, in fact, might well have been described
as "a good fellow." Sometimes she referred to him as "the doctor," and
sometimes by the nickname "Charlie." He, on his side, often spoke of her
by her last name as "Seymour," precisely as if she had been a man. One
of his relatives rather acutely remarked about her that she was not a
woman of sentiment at all, but had a genius for friendship; and that she
probably could not have really loved any man at all.

This is, perhaps, the explanation of their intimacy. If so, it is a very
remarkable instance of Platonic friendship. It is certain that, after
she met Reade, Mrs. Seymour never cared for any other man. It is no less
certain that he never cared for any other woman. When she died, five
years before his death, his life became a burden to him. It was then
that he used to speak of her as "my lost darling" and "my dove."
He directed that they should be buried side by side in Willesden
churchyard. Over the monument which commemorates them both, he caused
to be inscribed, in addition to an epitaph for himself, the following
tribute to his friend. One should read it and accept the touching words
as answering every question that may be asked:

Here lies the great heart of Laura Seymour, a brilliant artist, a humble
Christian, a charitable woman, a loving daughter, sister, and friend,
who lived for others from her childhood. Tenderly pitiful to all God's
creatures--even to some that are frequently destroyed or neglected--she
wiped away the tears from many faces, helping the poor with her savings
and the sorrowful with her earnest pity. When the eye saw her it blessed
her, for her face was sunshine, her voice was melody, and her heart was
sympathy.

This grave was made for her and for himself by Charles Reade, whose wise
counselor, loyal ally, and bosom friend she was for twenty-four years,
and who mourns her all his days.


END OF VOLUME FOUR






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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Kepler, by Walter W. Bryant

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Title: Kepler

Author: Walter W. Bryant

Release Date: May 21, 2004 [EBook #12406]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KEPLER ***




Produced by Clare Boothby, Ben Beasley and PG Distributed Proofreaders




[Illustration: KEPLER]




Pioneers of Progress

Men of Science
Edited by S. Chapman, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S.



KEPLER

by
WALTER W. BRYANT
of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich

1920




CONTENTS.


I. Astronomy Before Kepler

II. Early Life of Kepler

III. Tycho Brahe

IV. Kepler Joins Tycho

V. Kepler's Laws

VI. Closing Years

Appendix I.--List of Dates

Appendix II.--Bibliography

Glossary




CHAPTER I.

ASTRONOMY BEFORE KEPLER.


In order to emphasise the importance of the reforms introduced into
astronomy by Kepler, it will be well to sketch briefly the history of
the theories which he had to overthrow. In very early times it must have
been realised that the sun and moon were continually changing their
places among the stars. The day, the month, and the year were obvious
divisions of time, and longer periods were suggested by the tabulation
of eclipses. We can imagine the respect accorded to the Chaldaean sages
who first discovered that eclipses could be predicted, and how the
philosophers of Mesopotamia must have sought eagerly for evidence of
fresh periodic laws. Certain of the stars, which appeared to wander, and
were hence called planets, provided an extended field for these
speculations. Among the Chaldaeans and Babylonians the knowledge
gradually acquired was probably confined to the priests and utilised
mainly for astrological prediction or the fixing of religious
observances. Such speculations as were current among them, and also
among the Egyptians and others who came to share their knowledge, were
almost entirely devoted to mythology, assigning fanciful terrestrial
origins to constellations, with occasional controversies as to how the
earth is supported in space. The Greeks, too, had an elaborate mythology
largely adapted from their neighbours, but they were not satisfied with
this, and made persistent attempts to reduce the apparent motions of
celestial objects to geometrical laws. Some of the Pythagoreans, if not
Pythagoras himself, held that the earth is a sphere, and that the
apparent daily revolution of the sun and stars is really due to a motion
of the earth, though at first this motion of the earth was not supposed
to be one of rotation about an axis. These notions, and also that the
planets on the whole move round from west to east with reference to the
stars, were made known to a larger circle through the writings of Plato.
To Plato moreover is attributed the challenge to astronomers to
represent all the motions of the heavenly bodies by uniformly described
circles, a challenge generally held responsible for a vast amount of
wasted effort, and the postponement, for many centuries, of real
progress. Eudoxus of Cnidus, endeavouring to account for the fact that
the planets, during every apparent revolution round the earth, come to
rest twice, and in the shorter interval between these "stationary
points," move in the opposite direction, found that he could represent
the phenomena fairly well by a system of concentric spheres, each
rotating with its own velocity, and carrying its own particular planet
round its own equator, the outermost sphere carrying the fixed stars. It
was necessary to assume that the axes about which the various spheres
revolved should have circular motions also, and gradually an increased
number of spheres was evolved, the total number required by Aristotle
reaching fifty-five. It may be regarded as counting in Aristotle's
favour that he did consider the earth to be a sphere and not a flat
disc, but he seems to have thought that the mathematical spheres of
Eudoxus had a real solid existence, and that not only meteors, shooting
stars and aurora, but also comets and the milky way belong to the
atmosphere. His really great service to science in collating and
criticising all that was known of natural science would have been
greater if so much of the discussion had not been on the exact meaning
of words used to describe phenomena, instead of on the facts and causes
of the phenomena themselves.

Aristarchus of Samos seems to have been the first to suggest that the
planets revolved not about the earth but about the sun, but the idea
seemed so improbable that it was hardly noticed, especially as
Aristarchus himself did not expand it into a treatise.

About this time the necessity for more accurate places of the sun and
moon, and the liberality of the Ptolemys who ruled Egypt, combined to
provide regular observations at Alexandria, so that, when Hipparchus
came upon the scene, there was a considerable amount of material for him
to use. His discoveries marked a great advance in the science of
astronomy. He noted the irregular motion of the sun, and, to explain it,
assumed that it revolved uniformly not exactly about the earth but
about a point some distance away, called the "excentric".[1] The line
joining the centre of the earth to the excentric passes through the
apses of the sun's orbit, where its distance from the earth is greatest
and least. The same result he could obtain by assuming that the sun
moved round a small circle, whose centre described a larger circle about
the earth; this larger circle carrying the other was called the
"deferent": so that the actual motion of the sun was in an epicycle. Of
the two methods of expression Hipparchus ultimately preferred the
second. He applied the same process to the moon but found that he could
depend upon its being right only at new and full moon. The irregularity
at first and third quarters he left to be investigated by his
successors. He also considered the planetary observations at his
disposal insufficient and so gave up the attempt at a complete planetary
theory. He made improved determinations of some of the elements of the
motions of the sun and moon, and discovered the Precession of the
Equinoxes, from the Alexandrian observations which showed that each year
as the sun came to cross the equator at the vernal equinox it did so at
a point about fifty seconds of arc earlier on the ecliptic, thus
producing in 150 years an unmistakable change of a couple of degrees, or
four times the sun's diameter. He also invented trigonometry. His star
catalogue was due to the appearance of a new star which caused him to
search for possible previous similar phenomena, and also to prepare for
checking future ones. No advance was made in theoretical astronomy for
260 years, the interval between Hipparchus and Ptolemy of Alexandria.
Ptolemy accepted the spherical form of the earth but denied its rotation
or any other movement. He made no advance on Hipparchus in regard to the
sun, though the lapse of time had largely increased the errors of the
elements adopted by the latter. In the case of the moon, however,
Ptolemy traced the variable inequality noticed sometimes by Hipparchus
at first and last quarter, which vanished when the moon was in apogee or
perigee. This he called the evection, and introduced another epicycle
to represent it. In his planetary theory he found that the places given
by his adopted excentric did not fit, being one way at apogee and the
other at perigee; so that the centre of distance must be nearer the
earth. He found it best to assume the centre of distance half-way
between the centre of the earth and the excentric, thus "bisecting the
excentricity". Even this did not fit in the case of Mercury, and in
general the agreement between theory and observation was spoilt by the
necessity of making all the orbital planes pass through the centre of
the earth, instead of the sun, thus making a good accordance practically
impossible.

[Footnote 1: See Glossary for this and other technical terms.]

After Ptolemy's time very little was heard for many centuries of any
fresh planetary theory, though advances in some points of detail were
made, notably by some of the Arab philosophers, who obtained improved
values for some of the elements by using better instruments. From time
to time various modifications of Ptolemy's theory were suggested, but
none of any real value. The Moors in Spain did their share of the work
carried on by their Eastern co-religionists, and the first independent
star catalogue since the time of Hipparchus was made by another
Oriental, Tamerlane's grandson, Ulugh Begh, who built a fine observatory
at Samarcand in the fifteenth century. In Spain the work was not
monopolised by the Moors, for in the thirteenth century Alphonso of
Castile, with the assistance of Jewish and Christian computers, compiled
the Alphonsine tables, completed in 1252, in which year he ascended the
throne as Alphonso X. They were long circulated in MS. and were first
printed in 1483, not long before the end of the period of stagnation.

Copernicus was born in 1473 at Thorn in Polish Prussia. In the course of
his studies at Cracow and at several Italian universities, he learnt all
that was known of the Ptolemaic astronomy and determined to reform it.
His maternal uncle, the Bishop of Ermland, having provided him with a
lay canonry in the Cathedral of Frauenburg, he had leisure to devote
himself to Science. Reviewing the suggestions of the ancient Greeks, he
was struck by the simplification that would be introduced by reviving
the idea that the annual motion should be attributed to the earth itself
instead of having a separate annual epicycle for each planet and for the
sun. Of the seventy odd circles or epicycles required by the latest form
of the Ptolemaic system, Copernicus succeeded in dispensing with rather
more than half, but he still required thirty-four, which was the exact
number assumed before the time of Aristotle. His considerations were
almost entirely mathematical, his only invasion into physics being in
defence of the "moving earth" against the stock objection that if the
earth moved, loose objects would fly off, and towers fall. He did not
break sufficiently away from the old tradition of uniform circular
motion. Ptolemy's efforts at exactness were baulked, as we have seen, by
the supposed necessity of all the orbit planes passing through the
earth, and if Copernicus had simply transferred this responsibility to
the sun he would have done better. But he would not sacrifice the old
fetish, and so, the orbit of the earth being clearly not circular with
respect to the sun, he made all his planetary planes pass through the
centre of the earth's orbit, instead of through the sun, thus
handicapping himself in the same way though not in the same degree as
Ptolemy. His thirty-four circles or epicycles comprised four for the
earth, three for the moon, seven for Mercury (on account of his highly
eccentric orbit) and five each for the other planets.

It is rather an exaggeration to call the present accepted system the
Copernican system, as it is really due to Kepler, half a century after
the death of Copernicus, but much credit is due to the latter for his
successful attempt to provide a real alternative for the Ptolemaic
system, instead of tinkering with it. The old geocentric system once
shaken, the way was gradually smoothed for the heliocentric system,
which Copernicus, still hampered by tradition, did not quite reach. He
was hardly a practical astronomer in the observational sense. His first
recorded observation, of an occultation of Aldebaran, was made in 1497,
and he is not known to have made as many as fifty astronomical
observations, while, of the few he did make and use, at least one was
more than half a degree in error, which would have been intolerable to
such an observer as Hipparchus. Copernicus in fact seems to have
considered accurate observations unattainable with the instruments at
hand. He refused to give any opinion on the projected reform of the
calendar, on the ground that the motions of the sun and moon were not
known with sufficient accuracy. It is possible that with better data he
might have made much more progress. He was in no hurry to publish
anything, perhaps on account of possible opposition. Certainly Luther,
with his obstinate conviction of the verbal accuracy of the Scriptures,
rejected as mere folly the idea of a moving earth, and Melanchthon
thought such opinions should be prohibited, but Rheticus, a professor at
the Protestant University of Wittenberg and an enthusiastic pupil of
Copernicus, urged publication, and undertook to see the work through the
press. This, however, he was unable to complete and another Lutheran,
Osiander, to whom he entrusted it, wrote a preface, with the apparent
intention of disarming opposition, in which he stated that the
principles laid down were only abstract hypotheses convenient for
purposes of calculation. This unauthorised interpolation may have had
its share in postponing the prohibition of the book by the Church of
Rome.

According to Copernicus the earth is only a planet like the others, and
not even the biggest one, while the sun is the most important body in
the system, and the stars probably too far away for any motion of the
earth to affect their apparent places. The earth in fact is very small
in comparison with the distance of the stars, as evidenced by the fact
that an observer anywhere on the earth appears to be in the middle of
the universe. He shows that the revolution of the earth will account for
the seasons, and for the stationary points and retrograde motions of the
planets. He corrects definitely the order of the planets outwards from
the sun, a matter which had been in dispute. A notable defect is due to
the idea that a body can only revolve about another body or a point, as
if rigidly connected with it, so that, in order to keep the earth's axis
in a constant direction in space, he has to invent a third motion. His
discussion of precession, which he rightly attributes to a slow motion
of the earth's axis, is marred by the idea that the precession is
variable. With all its defects, partly due to reliance on bad
observations, the work showed a great advance in the interpretation of
the motions of the planets; and his determinations of the periods both
in relation to the earth and to the stars were adopted by Reinhold,
Professor of Astronomy at Wittenberg, for the new Prutenic or Prussian
Tables, which were to supersede the obsolete Alphonsine Tables of the
thirteenth century.

In comparison with the question of the motion of the earth, no other
astronomical detail of the time seems to be of much consequence. Comets,
such as from time to time appeared, bright enough for naked eye
observation, were still regarded as atmospheric phenomena, and their
principal interest, as well as that of eclipses and planetary
conjunctions, was in relation to astrology. Reform, however, was
obviously in the air. The doctrine of Copernicus was destined very soon
to divide others besides the Lutheran leaders. The leaven of inquiry was
working, and not long after the death of Copernicus real advances were
to come, first in the accuracy of observations, and, as a necessary
result of these, in the planetary theory itself.






CHAPTER II.

EARLY LIFE OF KEPLER.


On 21st December, 1571, at Weil in the Duchy of Wurtemberg, was born a
weak and sickly seven-months' child, to whom his parents Henry and
Catherine Kepler gave the name of John. Henry Kepler was a petty officer
in the service of the reigning Duke, and in 1576 joined the army serving
in the Netherlands. His wife followed him, leaving her young son in his
grandfather's care at Leonberg, where he barely recovered from a severe
attack of smallpox. It was from this place that John derived the
Latinised name of Leonmontanus, in accordance with the common practice
of the time, but he was not known by it to any great extent. He was sent
to school in 1577, but in the following year his father returned to
Germany, almost ruined by the absconding of an acquaintance for whom he
had become surety. Henry Kepler was obliged to sell his house and most
of his belongings, and to keep a tavern at Elmendingen, withdrawing his
son from school to help him with the rough work. In 1583 young Kepler
was sent to the school at Elmendingen, and in 1584 had another narrow
escape from death by a violent illness. In 1586 he was sent, at the
charges of the Duke, to the monastic school of Maulbronn; from whence,
in accordance with the school regulations, he passed at the end of his
first year the examination for the bachelor's degree at Tübingen,
returning for two more years as a "veteran" to Maulbronn before being
admitted as a resident student at Tübingen. The three years thus spent
at Maulbronn were marked by recurrences of several of the diseases from
which he had suffered in childhood, and also by family troubles at his
home. His father went away after a quarrel with his wife Catherine, and
died abroad. Catherine herself, who seems to have been of a very
unamiable disposition, next quarrelled with her own relatives. It is not
surprising therefore that Kepler after taking his M.A. degree in August,
1591, coming out second in the examination lists, was ready to accept
the first appointment offered him, even if it should involve leaving
home. This happened to be the lectureship in astronomy at Gratz, the
chief town in Styria. Kepler's knowledge of astronomy was limited to the
compulsory school course, nor had he as yet any particular leaning
towards the science; the post, moreover, was a meagre and unimportant
one. On the other hand he had frequently expressed disgust at the way in
which one after another of his companions had refused "foreign"
appointments which had been arranged for them under the Duke's scheme of
education. His tutors also strongly urged him to accept the lectureship,
and he had not the usual reluctance to leave home. He therefore
proceeded to Gratz, protesting that he did not thereby forfeit his claim
to a more promising opening, when such should appear. His astronomical
tutor, Maestlin, encouraged him to devote himself to his newly adopted
science, and the first result of this advice appeared before very long
in Kepler's "Mysterium Cosmographicum". The bent of his mind was towards
philosophical speculation, to which he had been attracted in his
youthful studies of Scaliger's "Exoteric Exercises". He says he devoted
much time "to the examination of the nature of heaven, of souls, of
genii, of the elements, of the essence of fire, of the cause of
fountains, the ebb and flow of the tides, the shape of the continents
and inland seas, and things of this sort". Following his tutor in his
admiration for the Copernican theory, he wrote an essay on the primary
motion, attributing it to the rotation of the earth, and this not for
the mathematical reasons brought forward by Copernicus, but, as he
himself says, on physical or metaphysical grounds. In 1595, having more
leisure from lectures, he turned his speculative mind to the number,
size, and motion of the planetary orbits. He first tried simple
numerical relations, but none of them appeared to be twice, thrice, or
four times as great as another, although he felt convinced that there
was some relation between the motions and the distances, seeing that
when a gap appeared in one series, there was a corresponding gap in the
other. These gaps he attempted to fill by hypothetical planets between
Mars and Jupiter, and between Mercury and Venus, but this method also
failed to provide the regular proportion which he sought, besides being
open to the objection that on the same principle there might be many
more equally invisible planets at either end of the series. He was
nevertheless unwilling to adopt the opinion of Rheticus that the number
six was sacred, maintaining that the "sacredness" of the number was of
much more recent date than the creation of the worlds, and could not
therefore account for it. He next tried an ingenious idea, comparing the
perpendiculars from different points of a quadrant of a circle on a
tangent at its extremity. The greatest of these, the tangent, not being
cut by the quadrant, he called the line of the sun, and associated with
infinite force. The shortest, being the point at the other end of the
quadrant, thus corresponded to the fixed stars or zero force;
intermediate ones were to be found proportional to the "forces" of the
six planets. After a great amount of unfinished trial calculations,
which took nearly a whole summer, he convinced himself that success did
not lie that way. In July, 1595, while lecturing on the great planetary
conjunctions, he drew quasi-triangles in a circular zodiac showing the
slow progression of these points of conjunction at intervals of just
over 240° or eight signs. The successive chords marked out a smaller
circle to which they were tangents, about half the diameter of the
zodiacal circle as drawn, and Kepler at once saw a similarity to the
orbits of Saturn and Jupiter, the radius of the inscribed circle of an
equilateral triangle being half that of the circumscribed circle. His
natural sequence of ideas impelled him to try a square, in the hope that
the circumscribed and inscribed circles might give him a similar
"analogy" for the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. He next tried a pentagon
and so on, but he soon noted that he would never reach the sun that way,
nor would he find any such limitation as six, the number of "possibles"
being obviously infinite. The actual planets moreover were not even six
but only five, so far as he knew, so he next pondered the question of
what sort of things these could be of which only five different figures
were possible and suddenly thought of the five regular solids.[2] He
immediately pounced upon this idea and ultimately evolved the following
scheme. "The earth is the sphere, the measure of all; round it describe
a dodecahedron; the sphere including this will be Mars. Round Mars
describe a tetrahedron; the sphere including this will be Jupiter.
Describe a cube round Jupiter; the sphere including this will be Saturn.
Now, inscribe in the earth an icosahedron, the sphere inscribed in it
will be Venus: inscribe an octahedron in Venus: the circle inscribed in
it will be Mercury." With this result Kepler was inordinately pleased,
and regretted not a moment of the time spent in obtaining it, though to
us this "Mysterium Cosmographicum" can only appear useless, even without
the more recent additions to the known planets. He admitted that a
certain thickness must be assigned to the intervening spheres to cover
the greatest and least distances of the several planets from the sun,
but even then some of the numbers obtained are not a very close fit for
the corresponding planetary orbits. Kepler's own suggested explanation
of the discordances was that they must be due to erroneous measures of
the planetary distances, and this, in those days of crude and infrequent
observations, could not easily be disproved. He next thought of a
variety of reasons why the five regular solids should occur in precisely
the order given and in no other, diverging from this into a subtle and
not very intelligible process of reasoning to account for the division
of the zodiac into 360°. The next subject was more important, and dealt
with the relation between the distances of the planets and their times
of revolution round the sun. It was obvious that the period was not
simply proportional to the distance, as the outer planets were all too
slow for this, and he concluded "either that the moving intelligences of
the planets are weakest in those that are farthest from the sun, or that
there is one moving intelligence in the sun, the common centre, forcing
them all round, but those most violently which are nearest, and that it
languishes in some sort and grows weaker at the most distant, because of
the remoteness and the attenuation of the virtue". This is not so near a
guess at the theory of gravitation as might be supposed, for Kepler
imagined that a repulsive force was necessary to account for the planets
being sometimes further from the sun, and so laid aside the idea of a
constant attractive force. He made several other attempts to find a law
connecting the distances and periods of the planets, but without success
at that time, and only desisted when by unconsciously arguing in a
circle he appeared to get the same result from two totally different
hypotheses. He sent copies of his book to several leading astronomers,
of whom Galileo praised his ingenuity and good faith, while Tycho Brahe
was evidently much struck with the work and advised him to adapt
something similar to the Tychonic system instead of the Copernican. He
also intimated that his Uraniborg observations would provide more
accurate determinations of the planetary orbits, and thus made Kepler
eager to visit him, a project which as we shall see was more than
fulfilled. Another copy of the book Kepler sent to Reymers the Imperial
astronomer with a most fulsome letter, which Tycho, who asserted that
Reymers had simply plagiarised his work, very strongly resented, thus
drawing from Kepler a long letter of apology. About the same time Kepler
had married a lady already twice widowed, and become involved in
difficulties with her relatives on financial grounds, and with the
Styrian authorities in connection with the religious disputes then
coming to a head. On account of these latter he thought it expedient,
the year after his marriage, to withdraw to Hungary, from whence he sent
short treatises to Tübingen, "On the magnet" (following the ideas of
Gilbert of Colchester), "On the cause of the obliquity of the ecliptic"
and "On the Divine wisdom as shown in the Creation". His next important
step makes it desirable to devote a chapter to a short notice of Tycho
Brahe.

[Footnote 2: Since the sum of the plane angles at a corner of a regular
solid must be less than four right angles, it is easily seen that few
regular solids are possible. Hexagonal faces are clearly impossible, or
any polygonal faces with more than five sides. The possible forms are
the dodecahedron with twelve pentagonal faces, three meeting at each
corner; the cube, six square faces, three meeting at each corner; and
three figures with triangular faces, the tetrahedron of four faces,
three meeting at each corner; the octahedron of eight faces, four
meeting at each corner; and the icosahedron of twenty faces, five
meeting at each corner.]






CHAPTER III.

TYCHO BRAHE.



The age following that of Copernicus produced three outstanding figures
associated with the science of astronomy, then reaching the close of
what Professor Forbes so aptly styles the geometrical period. These
three Sir David Brewster has termed "Martyrs of Science"; Galileo, the
great Italian philosopher, has his own place among the "Pioneers of
Science"; and invaluable though Tycho Brahe's work was, the latter can
hardly be claimed as a pioneer in the same sense as the other two.
Nevertheless, Kepler, the third member of the trio, could not have made
his most valuable discoveries without Tycho's observations.

Of noble family, born a twin on 14th December, 1546, at Knudstrup in
Scania (the southernmost part of Sweden, then forming part of the
kingdom of Denmark), Tycho was kidnapped a year later by a childless
uncle. This uncle brought him up as his own son, provided him at the age
of seven with a tutor, and sent him in 1559 to the University of
Copenhagen, to study for a political career by taking courses in
rhetoric and philosophy. On 21st August, 1560, however, a solar eclipse
took place, total in Portugal, and therefore of small proportions in
Denmark, and Tycho's keen interest was awakened, not so much by the
phenomenon, as by the fact that it had occurred according to prediction.
Soon afterwards he purchased an edition of Ptolemy in order to read up
the subject of astronomy, to which, and to mathematics, he devoted most
of the remainder of his three years' course at Copenhagen. His uncle
next sent him to Leipzig to study law, but he managed to continue his
astronomical researches. He obtained the Alphonsine and the new Prutenic
Tables, but soon found that the latter, though more accurate than the
former, failed to represent the true positions of the planets, and
grasped the fact that continuous observation was essential in order to
determine the true motions. He began by observing a conjunction of
Jupiter and Saturn in August, 1563, and found the Prutenic Tables
several days in error, and the Alphonsine a whole month. He provided
himself with a cross-staff for determining the angular distance between
stars or other objects, and, finding the divisions of the scale
inaccurate, constructed a table of corrections, an improvement that
seems to have been a decided innovation, the previous practice having
been to use the best available instrument and ignore its errors. About
this time war broke out between Denmark and Sweden, and Tycho returned
to his uncle, who was vice-admiral and attached to the king's suite. The
uncle died in the following month, and early in the next year Tycho went
abroad again, this time to Wittenberg. After five months, however, an
outbreak of plague drove him away, and he matriculated at Rostock, where
he found little astronomy but a good deal of astrology. While there he
fought a duel in the dark and lost part of his nose, which he replaced
by a composition of gold and silver. He carried on regular observations
with his cross-staff and persevered with his astronomical studies in
spite of the objections and want of sympathy of his fellow-countrymen.
The King of Denmark, however, having a higher opinion of the value of
science, promised Tycho the first canonry that should fall vacant in the
cathedral chapter of Roskilde, so that he might be assured of an income
while devoting himself to financially unproductive work. In 1568 Tycho
left Rostock, and matriculated at Basle, but soon moved on to Augsburg,
where he found more enthusiasm for astronomy, and induced one of his new
friends to order the construction of a large 19-foot quadrant of heavy
oak beams. This was the first of the series of great instruments
associated with Tycho's name, and it remained in use for five years,
being destroyed by a great storm in 1574. Tycho meanwhile had left
Augsburg in 1570 and returned to live with his father, now governor of
Helsingborg Castle, until the latter's death in the following year.
Tycho then joined his mother's brother, Steen Bille, the only one of his
relatives who showed any sympathy with his desire for a scientific
career.

On 11th November, 1572, Tycho noticed an unfamiliar bright star in the
constellation of Cassiopeia, and continued to observe it with a sextant.
It was a very brilliant object, equal to Venus at its brightest for the
rest of November, not falling below the first magnitude for another four
months, and remaining visible for more than a year afterwards. Tycho
wrote a little book on the new star, maintaining that it had practically
no parallax, and therefore could not be, as some supposed, a comet.
Deeming authorship beneath the dignity of a noble he was very reluctant
to publish, but he was convinced of the importance of increasing the
number and accuracy of observations, though he was by no means free from
all the erroneous ideas of his time. The little book contained a certain
amount of astrology, but Tycho evidently did not regard this as of very
great importance. He adopted the view that the very rarity of the
phenomenon of a new star must prevent the formulation and adoption of
definite rules for determining its significance. We gather from lectures
which he was persuaded to deliver at the University of Copenhagen that,
though in agreement with the accepted canons of astrology as to the
influence of planetary conjunctions and such phenomena on the course of
human events, he did not consider the fate predicted by anyone's
horoscope to be unavoidable, but thought the great value of astrology
lay in the warnings derived from such computations, which should enable
the believer to avoid threatened calamities. In 1575 he left Denmark
once more and made his way to Cassel, where he found a kindred spirit in
the studious Landgrave, William IV. of Hesse, whose astronomical
pursuits had been interrupted by his accession to the government of
Hesse, in 1567. Tycho observed with him for some time, the two forming a
firm friendship, and then visited successively Frankfort, Basle, and
Venice, returning by way of Augsburg, Ratisbon, and Saalfeld to
Wittenberg; on the way he acquired various astronomical manuscripts,
made friends among practical astronomers, and examined new instruments.
He seemed to have considered the advantages of the several places thus
visited and decided on Basle, but on his return to Denmark to fetch his
family with the object of transferring them to Basle, he found that his
friend the Landgrave had written to King Frederick on his behalf,
urging him to provide the means to enable Tycho to pursue his
astronomical work, promising that not only should credit result for the
king and for Denmark but that science itself would be greatly advanced.
The ultimate result of this letter was that after refusing various
offers, Tycho accepted from the king a grant of the small island of
Hveen, in the Sound, with a guaranteed income, in addition to a large
sum from the treasury for building an observatory on the island, far
removed from the distractions of court life. Here Tycho built his
celebrated observatory of Uraniborg and began observations in December,
1576, using the large instruments then found necessary in order to
attain the accuracy of observation which within the next half-century
was to be so greatly facilitated by the invention of the telescope. Here
also he built several smaller observing rooms, so that his pupils should
be able to observe independently. For more than twenty years he
continued his observations at Uraniborg, surrounded by his family, and
attracting numerous pupils. His constant aim was to accumulate a large
store of observations of a high order of accuracy, and thus to provide
data for the complete reform of astronomy. As we have seen, few of the
Danish nobles had any sympathy with Tycho's pursuits, and most of them
strongly resented the continual expense borne by the King's treasury.
Tycho moreover was so absorbed in his scientific pursuits that he would
not take the trouble to be a good landlord, nor to carry out all the
duties laid upon him in return for certain of his grants of income. His
buildings included a chemical laboratory, and he was in the habit of
making up elixirs for various medical purposes; these were quite
popular, particularly as he made no charge for them. He seems to have
been something of a homoeopathist, for he recommends sulphur to cure
infectious diseases "brought on by the sulphurous vapours of the Aurora
Borealis"!

King Frederick, in consideration of various grants to Tycho, relied
upon his assistance in scientific matters, and especially in
astrological calculations; such as the horoscope of the heir apparent,
Prince Christian, born in 1577, which has been preserved among Tycho's
writings. There is, however, no known copy in existence of any of the
series of annual almanacs with predictions which he prepared for the
King. In November, 1577, appeared a bright comet, which Tycho carefully
observed with his sextant, proving that it had no perceptible parallax,
and must therefore be further off than the moon. He thus definitely
overthrew the common belief in the atmospheric origin of comets, which
he had himself hitherto shared. With increasing accuracy he observed
several other comets, notably one in 1585, when he had a full equipment
of instruments and a large staff of assistants. The year 1588, which saw
the death of his royal benefactor, saw also the publication of a volume
of Tycho's great work "Introduction to the New Astronomy". The first
volume, devoted to the new star of 1572, was not ready, because the
reduction of the observations involved so much research to correct the
star places for refraction, precession, etc.; it was not completed in
fact until Tycho's death, but the second volume, dealing with the comet
of 1577, was printed at Uraniborg and some copies were issued in 1588.
Besides the comet observations it included an account of Tycho's system
of the world. He would not accept the Copernican system, as he
considered the earth too heavy and sluggish to move, and also that the
authority of Scripture was against such an hypothesis. He therefore
assumed that the other planets revolved about the sun, while the sun,
moon, and stars revolved about the earth as a centre. Geometrically this
is much the same as the Copernican system, but physically it involves
the grotesque demand that the whole system of stars revolves round our
insignificant little earth every twenty-four hours. Since his previous
small book on the comet, Tycho had evidently considered more fully its
possible astrological significance, for he foretold a religious war,
giving the date of its commencement, and also the rising of a great
Protestant champion. These predictions were apparently fulfilled almost
to the letter by the great religious wars that broke out towards the end
of the sixteenth century, and in the person of Gustavus Adolphus.

King Frederick's death did not at first affect Tycho's position, for the
new king, Christian, was only eleven years old, and for some years the
council of regents included two of his supporters. After their deaths,
however, his emoluments began to be cut down on the plea of economy, and
as he took very little trouble to carry out any other than scientific
duties it was easy enough for his enemies to find fault. One after
another source of income was cut off, but he persevered with his
scientific work, including a catalogue of stars. He had obtained plenty
of good observations of 777 stars, but thought his catalogue should
contain 1000 stars, so he hastily observed as many more as he could up
to the time of his leaving Hveen, though even then he had not completed
his programme. About the time that King Christian reached the age of
eighteen, Tycho began to look about for a new patron, and to consider
the prospects offered by transferring himself with his instruments and
activities to the patronage of the Emperor Rudolph II. In 1597, when
even his pension from the Royal treasury was cut off, he hurriedly
packed up his instruments and library, and after a few weeks' sojourn at
Copenhagen, proceeded to Rostock, in Mecklenburg, whence he sent an
appeal to King Christian. It is possible that had he done this before
leaving Hveen it might have had more effect, but it can be readily seen
from the tone of the king's unfavourable reply that his departure was
regarded as an aggravation of previous shortcomings. Driven from Rostock
by the plague, Tycho settled temporarily at Wandsbeck, in Holstein, but
towards the end of 1598 set out to meet the Emperor at Prague. Once
more plague intervened and he spent some time at Dresden, afterwards
going to Wittenberg for the winter. He ultimately reached Prague in
June, 1599. Rudolph granted him a salary of at least 3000 florins,
promising also to settle on him the first hereditary estate that should
lapse to the Crown. He offered, moreover, the choice between three
castles outside Prague, of which Tycho chose Benatek. There he set about
altering the buildings in readiness for his instruments, for which he
sent to Uraniborg. Before they reached him, after many vexatious delays,
he had given up waiting for the funds promised for his building
expenses, and removed from Benatek to Prague. It was during this
interval that after considerable negotiation, Kepler, who had been in
correspondence with Tycho, consented to join him as an assistant.
Another assistant, Longomontanus, who had been with Tycho at Uraniborg,
was finding difficulty with the long series of Mars observations, and it
was arranged that he should transfer his energies to the lunar
observations, leaving those of Mars for Kepler. Before very much could
be done with them, however, Tycho died at the end of October, 1601. He
may have regretted the peaceful island of Hveen, considering the
troubles in which Bohemia was rapidly becoming involved, but there is
little doubt that had it not been for his self-imposed exile, his
observations would not have come into Kepler's hands, and their great
value might have been lost. In any case it was at Uraniborg that the
mass of observations was produced upon which the fame of Tycho Brahe
rests. His own discoveries, though in themselves the most important made
in astronomy for many centuries, are far less valuable than those for
which his observations furnished the material. He discovered the third
and fourth inequalities of the moon in longitude, called respectively
the variation and the annual equation, also the variability of the
motion of the moon's nodes and the inclination of its orbit to the
ecliptic. He obtained an improved value of the constant of precession,
and did good service by rejecting the idea that it was variable, an idea
which, under the name of trepidation, had for many centuries been
accepted. He discovered the effect of refraction, though only
approximately its amount, and determined improved values of many other
astronomical constants, but singularly enough made no determination of
the distance of the sun, adopting instead the ancient and erroneous
value given by Hipparchus.

His magnificent Observatory of Uraniborg, the finest building for
astronomical purposes that the world had hitherto seen, was allowed to
fall into decay, and scarcely more than mere indications of the site may
now be seen.






CHAPTER IV.

KEPLER JOINS TYCHO.


The association of Kepler with Tycho was one of the most important
landmarks in the history of astronomy. The younger man hoped, by the aid
of Tycho's planetary observations, to obtain better support for some of
his fanciful speculative theories, while the latter, who had certainly
not gained in prestige by leaving Denmark, was in great need of a
competent staff of assistants. Of the two it would almost seem that
Tycho thought himself the greater gainer, for in spite of his reputation
for brusqueness and want of consideration, he not only made light of
Kepler's apology in the matter of Reymers, but treated him with uniform
kindness in the face of great rudeness and ingratitude. He begged him to
come "as a welcome friend," though Kepler, very touchy on the subject of
his own astronomical powers, was afraid he might be regarded as simply a
subordinate assistant. An arrangement had been suggested by which Kepler
should obtain two years' leave of absence from Gratz on full pay, which,
because of the higher cost of living in Prague, should be supplemented
by the Emperor; but before this could be concluded, Kepler threw up his
professorship, and thinking he had thereby also lost the chance of going
to Prague, applied to Maestlin and others of his Tübingen friends to
make interest for him with the Duke of Wurtemberg and secure the
professorship of medicine. Tycho, however, still urged him to come to
Prague, promising to do his utmost to secure for him a permanent
appointment, or in any event to see that he was not the loser by coming.
Kepler was delayed by illness on the way, but ultimately reached Prague,
accompanied by his wife, and for some time lived entirely at Tycho's
expense, writing by way of return essays against Reymers and another
man, who had claimed the credit of the Tychonic system. This Kepler
could do with a clear conscience, as it was only a question of priority
and did not involve any support of the system, which he deemed far
inferior to that of Copernicus. The following year saw friction between
the two astronomers, and we learn from Kepler's abject letter of apology
that he was entirely in the wrong. It was about money matters, which in
one way or another embittered the rest of Kepler's life, and it arose
during his absence from Prague. On his return in September, 1601, Tycho
presented him to the Emperor, who gave him the title of Imperial
Mathematician, on condition of assisting Tycho in his calculations, the
very thing Kepler was most anxious to be allowed to do: for nowhere else
in the world was there such a collection of good observations sufficient
for his purpose of reforming the whole theory of astronomy. The
Emperor's interest was still mainly with astrology, but he liked to
think that his name would be handed down to posterity in connection
with the new Planetary Tables in the same way as that of Alphonso of
Castile, and he made liberal promises to pay the expenses. Tycho's other
principal assistant, Longomontanus, did not stay long after giving up
the Mars observations to Kepler, but instead of working at the new lunar
theory, suddenly left to take up a professorship of astronomy in his
native Denmark. Very shortly afterwards Tycho himself died of acute
distemper; Kepler began to prepare the mass of manuscripts for
publication, but, as everything was claimed by the Brahe family, he was
not allowed to finish the work. He succeeded to Tycho's post of
principal mathematician to the Emperor, at a reduced official salary,
which owing to the emptiness of the Imperial treasury was almost always
in arrear. In order to meet his expenses he had recourse to the casting
of nativities, for which he gained considerable reputation and received
very good pay. He worked by the conventional rules of astrology, and was
quite prepared to take fees for so doing, although he had very little
faith in them, preferring his own fanciful ideas.

In 1604 the constellation of Cassiopeia was once more temporarily
enriched by the appearance of a new star, said by some to be brighter
than Tycho's nova, and by others to be twice as bright as Jupiter.
Kepler at once wrote a short account of it, from which may be gathered
some idea of his attitude towards astrology. Contrasting the two novae,
he says: "Yonder one chose for its appearance a time no way remarkable,
and came into the world quite unexpectedly, like an enemy storming a
town and breaking into the market-place before the citizens are aware of
his approach; but ours has come exactly in the year of which astrologers
have written so much about the fiery trigon that happens in it; just in
the month in which (according to Cyprian), Mars comes up to a very
perfect conjunction with the other two superior planets; just in the day
when Mars has joined Jupiter, and just in the region where this
conjunction has taken place. Therefore the apparition of this star is
not like a secret hostile irruption, as was that one of 1572, but the
spectacle of a public triumph, or the entry of a mighty potentate; when
the couriers ride in some time before to prepare his lodgings, and the
crowd of young urchins begin to think the time over long to wait, then
roll in, one after another, the ammunition and money, and baggage
waggons, and presently the trampling of horse and the rush of people
from every side to the streets and windows; and when the crowd have
gazed with their jaws all agape at the troops of knights; then at last
the trumpeters and archers and lackeys so distinguish the person of the
monarch, that there is no occasion to point him out, but every one cries
of his own accord--'Here we have him'. What it may portend is hard to
determine, and this much only is certain, that it comes to tell mankind
either nothing at all or high and mighty news, quite beyond human sense
and understanding. It will have an important influence on political and
social relations; not indeed by its own nature, but as it were
accidentally through the disposition of mankind. First, it portends to
the booksellers great disturbances and tolerable gains; for almost every
_Theologus_, _Philosophicus_, _Medicus_, and _Mathematicus_, or whoever
else, having no laborious occupation entrusted to him, seeks his
pleasure _in studiis_, will make particular remarks upon it, and will
wish to bring these remarks to the light. Just so will others, learned
and unlearned, wish to know its meaning, and they will buy the authors
who profess to tell them. I mention these things merely by way of
example, because although thus much can be easily predicted without
great skill, yet may it happen just as easily, and in the same manner,
that the vulgar, or whoever else is of easy faith, or, it may be, crazy,
may wish to exalt himself into a great prophet; or it may even happen
that some powerful lord, who has good foundation and beginning of great
dignities, will be cheered on by this phenomenon to venture on some new
scheme, just as if God had set up this star in the darkness merely to
enlighten them." He made no secret of his views on conventional
astrology, as to which he claimed to speak with the authority of one
fully conversant with its principles, but he nevertheless expressed his
sincere conviction that the conjunctions and aspects of the planets
certainly did affect things on the earth, maintaining that he was driven
to this belief against his will by "most unfailing experiences".

Meanwhile the projected Rudolphine Tables were continually delayed by
the want of money. Kepler's nominal salary should have been ample for
his expenses, increased though they were by his growing family, but in
the depleted state of the treasury there were many who objected to any
payment for such "unpractical" purposes. This particular attitude has
not been confined to any special epoch or country, but the obvious
result in Kepler's case was to compel him to apply himself to less
expensive matters than the Planetary Tables, and among these must be
included not only the horoscopes or nativities, which owing to his
reputation were always in demand, but also other writings which probably
did not pay so well. In 1604 he published "A Supplement to Vitellion,"
containing the earliest known reasonable theory of optics, and
especially of dioptrics or vision through lenses. He compared the
mechanism of the eye with that of Porta's "Camera Obscura," but made no
attempt to explain how the image formed on the retina is understood by
the brain. He went carefully into the question of refraction, the
importance of which Tycho had been the first astronomer to recognise,
though he only applied it at low altitudes, and had not arrived at a
true theory or accurate values. Kepler wasted a good deal of time and
ingenuity on trial theories. He would invariably start with some
hypothesis, and work out the effect. He would then test it by
experiment, and when it failed would at once recognise that his
hypothesis was _a priori_ bound to fail. He rarely seems to have noticed
the fatal objections in time to save himself trouble. He would then at
once start again on a new hypothesis, equally gratuitous and equally
unfounded. It never seems to have occurred to him that there might be a
better way of approaching a problem. Among the lines he followed in this
particular investigation were, first, that refraction depends only on
the angle of incidence, which, he says, cannot be correct as it would
thus be the same for all refracting substances; next, that it depended
also on the density of the medium. This was a good shot, but he
unfortunately assumed that all rays passing into a denser medium would
apparently penetrate it to a depth depending only on the medium, which
means that there is a constant ratio between the tangents, instead of
the sines, of the inclination of the incident and refracted rays to the
normal. Experiment proved that this gave too high values for refraction
near the vertical compared with those near the horizon, so Kepler "went
off at a tangent" and tried a totally new set of ideas, which all
reduced to the absurdity of a refraction which vanished at the horizon.
These were followed by another set, involving either a constant amount
of refraction or one becoming infinite. He then came to the conclusion
that these geometrical methods must fail because the refracted image is
not real, and determined to try by analogy only, comparing the equally
unreal image formed by a mirror with that formed by refraction in water.
He noticed how the bottom of a vessel containing water appears to rise
more and more away from the vertical, and at once jumped to the analogy
of a concave mirror, which magnifies the image, while a convex mirror
was likened to a rarer medium. This line of attack also failed him, as
did various attempts to find relations between his measurements of
refraction and conic sections, and he broke off suddenly with a diatribe
against Tycho's critics, whom he likened to blind men disputing about
colours. Not many years later Snell discovered the true law of
refraction, but Kepler's contribution to the subject, though he failed
to discover the actual law, includes several of the adopted "by-laws".
He noted that atmospheric refraction would alter with the height of the
atmosphere and with temperature, and also recognised the fact that
rainbow colours depend on the angle of refraction, whether seen in the
rainbow itself, or in dew, glass, water, or any similar medium. He thus
came near to anticipating Newton. Before leaving the subject of Kepler's
optics it will be well to recall that a few years later after hearing of
Galileo's telescope, Kepler suggested that for astronomical purposes two
convex lenses should be used, so that there should be a real image where
measuring wires could be placed for reference. He did not carry out the
idea himself, and it was left to the Englishman Gascoigne to produce the
first instrument on this "Keplerian" principle, universally known as the
Astronomical Telescope.

In 1606 came a second treatise on the new star, discussing various
theories to account for its appearance, and refusing to accept the
notion that it was a "fortuitous concourse of atoms". This was followed
in 1607 by a treatise on comets, suggested by the comet appearing that
year, known as Halley's comet after its next return. He regarded comets
as "planets" moving in straight lines, never having examined sufficient
observations of any comet to convince himself that their paths are
curved. If he had not assumed that they were external to the system and
so could not be expected to return, he might have anticipated Halley's
discovery. Another suggestive remark of his was to the effect that the
planets must be self-luminous, as otherwise Mercury and Venus, at any
rate, ought to show phases. This was put to the test not long afterwards
by means of Galileo's telescope.

In 1607 Kepler rushed into print with an alleged observation of Mercury
crossing the sun, but after Galileo's discovery of sun-spots, Kepler at
once cheerfully retracted his observation of "Mercury," and so far was
he from being annoyed or bigoted in his views, that he warmly adopted
Galileo's side, in contrast to most of those whose opinions were liable
to be overthrown by the new discoveries. Maestlin and others of Kepler's
friends took the opposite view.






CHAPTER V.

KEPLER'S LAWS.


When Gilbert of Colchester, in his "New Philosophy," founded on his
researches in magnetism, was dealing with tides, he did not suggest that
the moon attracted the water, but that "subterranean spirits and
humours, rising in sympathy with the moon, cause the sea also to rise
and flow to the shores and up rivers". It appears that an idea,
presented in some such way as this, was more readily received than a
plain statement. This so-called philosophical method was, in fact, very
generally applied, and Kepler, who shared Galileo's admiration for
Gilbert's work, adopted it in his own attempt to extend the idea of
magnetic attraction to the planets. The general idea of "gravity"
opposed the hypothesis of the rotation of the earth on the ground that
loose objects would fly off: moreover, the latest refinements of the old
system of planetary motions necessitated their orbits being described
about a mere empty point. Kepler very strongly combated these notions,
pointing out the absurdity of the conclusions to which they tended, and
proceeded in set terms to describe his own theory.

"Every corporeal substance, so far forth as it is corporeal, has a
natural fitness for resting in every place where it may be situated by
itself beyond the sphere of influence of a body cognate with it. Gravity
is a mutual affection between cognate bodies towards union or
conjunction (similar in kind to the magnetic virtue), so that the earth
attracts a stone much rather than the stone seeks the earth. Heavy
bodies (if we begin by assuming the earth to be in the centre of the
world) are not carried to the centre of the world in its quality of
centre of the world, but as to the centre of a cognate round body,
namely, the earth; so that wheresoever the earth may be placed, or
whithersoever it may be carried by its animal faculty, heavy bodies will
always be carried towards it. If the earth were not round, heavy bodies
would not tend from every side in a straight line towards the centre of
the earth, but to different points from different sides. If two stones
were placed in any part of the world near each other, and beyond the
sphere of influence of a third cognate body, these stones, like two
magnetic needles, would come together in the intermediate point, each
approaching the other by a space proportional to the comparative mass of
the other. If the moon and earth were not retained in their orbits by
their animal force or some other equivalent, the earth would mount to
the moon by a fifty-fourth part of their distance, and the moon fall
towards the earth through the other fifty-three parts, and they would
there meet, assuming, however, that the substance of both is of the same
density. If the earth should cease to attract its waters to itself all
the waters of the sea would he raised and would flow to the body of the
moon. The sphere of the attractive virtue which is in the moon extends
as far as the earth, and entices up the waters; but as the moon flies
rapidly across the zenith, and the waters cannot follow so quickly, a
flow of the ocean is occasioned in the torrid zone towards the westward.
If the attractive virtue of the moon extends as far as the earth, it
follows with greater reason that the attractive virtue of the earth
extends as far as the moon and much farther; and, in short, nothing
which consists of earthly substance anyhow constituted although thrown
up to any height, can ever escape the powerful operation of this
attractive virtue. Nothing which consists of corporeal matter is
absolutely light, but that is comparatively lighter which is rarer,
either by its own nature, or by accidental heat. And it is not to be
thought that light bodies are escaping to the surface of the universe
while they are carried upwards, or that they are not attracted by the
earth. They are attracted, but in a less degree, and so are driven
outwards by the heavy bodies; which being done, they stop, and are kept
by the earth in their own place. But although the attractive virtue of
the earth extends upwards, as has been said, so very far, yet if any
stone should be at a distance great enough to become sensible compared
with the earth's diameter, it is true that on the motion of the earth
such a stone would not follow altogether; its own force of resistance
would be combined with the attractive force of the earth, and thus it
would extricate itself in some degree from the motion of the earth." The
above passage from the Introduction to Kepler's "Commentaries on the
Motion of Mars," always regarded as his most valuable work, must have
been known to Newton, so that no such incident as the fall of an apple
was required to provide a necessary and sufficient explanation of the
genesis of his Theory of Universal Gravitation. Kepler's glimpse at such
a theory could have been no more than a glimpse, for he went no further
with it. This seems a pity, as it is far less fanciful than many of his
ideas, though not free from the "virtues" and "animal faculties," that
correspond to Gilbert's "spirits and humours". We must, however, proceed
to the subject of Mars, which was, as before noted, the first important
investigation entrusted to Kepler on his arrival at Prague.

The time taken from one opposition of Mars to the next is decidedly
unequal at different parts of his orbit, so that many oppositions must
be used to determine the mean motion. The ancients had noticed that what
was called the "second inequality," due as we now know to the orbital
motion of the earth, only vanished when earth, sun, and planet were in
line, i.e. at the planet's opposition; therefore they used oppositions
to determine the mean motion, but deemed it necessary to apply a
correction to the true opposition to reduce to mean opposition, thus
sacrificing part of the advantage of using oppositions. Tycho and
Longomontanus had followed this method in their calculations from
Tycho's twenty years' observations. Their aim was to find a position of
the "equant," such that these observations would show a constant angular
motion about it; and that the computed positions would agree in latitude
and longitude with the actual observed positions. When Kepler arrived he
was told that their longitudes agreed within a couple of minutes of arc,
but that something was wrong with the latitudes. He found, however, that
even in longitude their positions showed discordances ten times as great
as they admitted, and so, to clear the ground of assumptions as far as
possible, he determined to use true oppositions. To this Tycho objected,
and Kepler had great difficulty in convincing him that the new move
would be any improvement, but undertook to prove to him by actual
examples that a false position of the orbit could by adjusting the
equant be made to fit the longitudes within five minutes of arc, while
giving quite erroneous values of the latitudes and second inequalities.
To avoid the possibility of further objection he carried out this
demonstration separately for each of the systems of Ptolemy, Copernicus,
and Tycho. For the new method he noticed that great accuracy was
required in the reduction of the observed places of Mars to the
ecliptic, and for this purpose the value obtained for the parallax by
Tycho's assistants fell far short of the requisite accuracy. Kepler
therefore was obliged to recompute the parallax from the original
observations, as also the position of the line of nodes and the
inclination of the orbit. The last he found to be constant, thus
corroborating his theory that the plane of the orbit passed through the
sun. He repeated his calculations no fewer than seventy times (and that
before the invention of logarithms), and at length adopted values for
the mean longitude and longitude of aphelion. He found no discordance
greater than two minutes of arc in Tycho's observed longitudes in
opposition, but the latitudes, and also longitudes in other parts of the
orbit were much more discordant, and he found to his chagrin that four
years' work was practically wasted. Before making a fresh start he
looked for some simplification of the labour; and determined to adopt
Ptolemy's assumption known as the principle of the bisection of the
excentricity. Hitherto, since Ptolemy had given no reason for this
assumption, Kepler had preferred not to make it, only taking for granted
that the centre was at some point on the line called the excentricity
(see Figs. 1, 2).

A marked improvement in residuals was the result of this step, proving,
so far, the correctness of Ptolemy's principle, but there still remained
discordances amounting to eight minutes of arc. Copernicus, who had no
idea of the accuracy obtainable in observations, would probably have
regarded such an agreement as remarkably good; but Kepler refused to
admit the possibility of an error of eight minutes in any of Tycho's
observations. He thereupon vowed to construct from these eight minutes a
new planetary theory that should account for them all. His repeated
failures had by this time convinced him that no uniformly described
circle could possibly represent the motion of Mars. Either the orbit
could not be circular, or else the angular velocity could not be
constant about any point whatever. He determined to attack the "second
inequality," i.e. the optical illusion caused by the earth's annual
motion, but first revived an old idea of his own that for the sake of
uniformity the sun, or as he preferred to regard it, the earth, should
have an equant as well as the planets. From the irregularities of the
solar motion he soon found that this was the case, and that the motion
was uniform about a point on the line from the sun to the centre of the
earth's orbit, such that the centre bisected the distance from the sun
to the "Equant"; this fully supported Ptolemy's principle. Clearly then
the earth's linear velocity could not be constant, and Kepler was
encouraged to revive another of his speculations as to a force which was
weaker at greater distances. He found the velocity greater at the nearer
apse, so that the time over an equal arc at either apse was proportional
to the distance. He conjectured that this might prove to be true for
arcs at all parts of the orbit, and to test this he divided the orbit
into 360 equal parts, and calculated the distances to the points of
division. Archimedes had obtained an approximation to the area of a
circle by dividing it radially into a very large number of triangles,
and Kepler had this device in mind. He found that the sums of successive
distances from his 360 points were approximately proportional to the
times from point to point, and was thus enabled to represent much more
accurately the annual motion of the earth which produced the second
inequality of Mars, to whose motion he now returned. Three points are
sufficient to define a circle, so he took three observed positions of
Mars and found a circle; he then took three other positions, but
obtained a different circle, and a third set gave yet another. It thus
began to appear that the orbit could not be a circle. He next tried to
divide into 360 equal parts, as he had in the case of the earth, but the
sums of distances failed to fit the times, and he realised that the sums
of distances were not a good measure of the area of successive
triangles. He noted, however, that the errors at the apses were now
smaller than with a central circular orbit, and of the opposite sign, so
he determined to try whether an oval orbit would fit better, following a
suggestion made by Purbach in the case of Mercury, whose orbit is even
more eccentric than that of Mars, though observations were too scanty to
form the foundation of any theory. Kepler gave his fancy play in the
choice of an oval, greater at one end than the other, endeavouring to
satisfy some ideas about epicyclic motion, but could not find a
satisfactory curve. He then had the fortunate idea of trying an ellipse
with the same axis as his tentative oval. Mars now appeared too slow at
the apses instead of too quick, so obviously some intermediate ellipse
must be sought between the trial ellipse and the circle on the same
axis. At this point the "long arm of coincidence" came into play.
Half-way between the apses lay the mean distance, and at this position
the error was half the distance between the ellipse and the circle,
amounting to .00429 of a radius. With these figures in his mind, Kepler
looked up the greatest optical inequality of Mars, the angle between the
straight lines from Mars to the Sun and to the centre of the circle.[3]
The secant of this angle was 1.00429, so that he noted that an ellipse
reduced from the circle in the ratio of 1.00429 to 1 would fit the
motion of Mars at the mean distance as well as the apses.

[Footnote 3: This is clearly a maximum at AMC in Fig. 2, when its
tangent AC/CM = the eccentricity.]

It is often said that a coincidence like this only happens to somebody
who "deserves his luck," but this simply means that recognition is
essential to the coincidence. In the same way the appearance of one of a
large number of people mentioned is hailed as a case of the old adage
"Talk of the devil, etc.," ignoring all the people who failed to appear.
No one, however, will consider Kepler unduly favoured. His genius, in
his case certainly "an infinite capacity for taking pains," enabled him
out of his medley of hypotheses, mainly unsound, by dint of enormous
labour and patience, to arrive thus at the first two of the laws which
established his title of "Legislator of the Heavens".

FIGURES EXPLANATORY OF KEPLER'S THEORY OF THE MOTION OF MARS.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

    _______
   /       \
  /         \
 |           |
 |___________|
Q|  E  C  A  |P
 |           |
  \         /
   \_______/

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

    ___M___
   /___|\__\
  //  N|\\ \\
 |/    | \\ \|
 |_____|__\\_|
Q| E   C   A |P
 |\    |    /|
  \\___|___//
   \___|___/

[Transcriber's Note: Approximate renditions of these figures are
provided. Fig. 1 is a circle. Fig. 2 is a circle which contains an
ellipse, tangent to the circle at Q and P. Line segments from M (on the
circle) and N (on the ellipse) meet at point A.]

FIG. 1.--In Ptolemy's excentric theory, A may be taken to represent the
earth, C the centre of a planet's orbit, and E the equant, P (perigee)
and Q (apogee) being the apses of the orbit. Ptolemy's idea was that
uniform motion in a circle must be provided, and since the motion was
not uniform about the earth, A could not coincide with C; and since the
motion still failed to be uniform about A or C, some point E must be
found about which the motion should be uniform.

FIG. 2.--This is not drawn to scale, but is intended to illustrate
Kepler's modification of Ptolemy's excentric. Kepler found velocities at
P and Q proportional not to AP and AQ but to AQ and AP, or to EP and EQ
if EC = CA (bisection of the excentricity). The velocity at M was wrong,
and AM appeared too great. Kepler's first ellipse had M moved too near
C. The distance AC is much exaggerated in the figure, as also is MN.
AN = CP, the radius of the circle. MN should be .00429 of the radius,
and MC/NC should be 1.00429. The velocity at N appeared to be
proportional to EN ( = AN). Kepler concluded that Mars moved round PNQ,
so that the area described about A (the sun) was equal in equal times, A
being the focus of the ellipse PNQ. The angular velocity is not quite
constant about E, the equant or empty focus, but the difference could
hardly have been detected in Kepler's time.

Kepler's improved determination of the earth's orbit was obtained by
plotting the different positions of the earth corresponding to
successive rotations of Mars, i.e. intervals of 687 days. At each of
these the date of the year would give the angle MSE (Mars-Sun-Earth),
and Tycho's observation the angle MES. So the triangle could be solved
except for scale, and the ratio of SE to SM would give the distance of
Mars from the sun in terms of that of the earth. Measuring from a fixed
position of Mars (e.g. perihelion), this gave the variation of SE,
showing the earth's inequality. Measuring from a fixed position of the
earth, it would give similarly a series of positions of Mars, which,
though lying not far from the circle whose diameter was the axis of
Mars' orbit, joining perihelion and aphelion, always fell inside the
circle except at those two points. It was a long time before it dawned
upon Kepler that the simplest figure falling within the circle except at
the two extremities of the diameter, was an ellipse, and it is not clear
why his first attempt with an ellipse should have been just as much too
narrow as the circle was too wide. The fact remains that he recognised
suddenly that halving this error was tantamount to reducing the circle
to the ellipse whose eccentricity was that of the old theory, i.e. that
in which the sun would be in one focus and the equant in the other.

Having now fitted the ends of both major and minor axes of the ellipse,
he leaped to the conclusion that the orbit would fit everywhere.

The practical effect of his clearing of the "second inequality" was to
refer the orbit of Mars directly to the sun, and he found that the area
between successive distances of Mars from the sun (instead of the sum of
the distances) was strictly proportional to the time taken, in short,
equal areas were described in equal times (2nd Law) when referred to the
sun in the focus of the ellipse (1st Law).

He announced that (1) The planet describes an ellipse, the sun being in
one focus; and (2) The straight line joining the planet to the sun
sweeps out equal areas in any two equal intervals of time. These are
Kepler's first and second Laws though not discovered in that order, and
it was at once clear that Ptolemy's "bisection of the excentricity"
simply amounted to the fact that the centre of an ellipse bisects the
distance between the foci, the sun being in one focus and the angular
velocity being uniform about the empty focus. For so many centuries had
the fetish of circular motion postponed discovery. It was natural that
Kepler should assume that his laws would apply equally to all the
planets, but the proof of this, as well as the reason underlying the
laws, was only given by Newton, who approached the subject from a
totally different standpoint.

This commentary on Mars was published in 1609, the year of the invention
of the telescope, and Kepler petitioned the Emperor for further funds to
enable him to complete the study of the other planets, but once more
there was delay; in 1612 Rudolph died, and his brother Matthias who
succeeded him, cared very little for astronomy or even astrology, though
Kepler was reappointed to his post of Imperial Mathematician. He left
Prague to take up a permanent professorship at the University of Linz.
His own account of the circumstances is gloomy enough. He says, "In the
first place I could get no money from the Court, and my wife, who had
for a long time been suffering from low spirits and despondency, was
taken violently ill towards the end of 1610, with the Hungarian fever,
epilepsy and phrenitis. She was scarcely convalescent when all my three
children were at once attacked with smallpox. Leopold with his army
occupied the town beyond the river just as I lost the dearest of my
sons, him whose nativity you will find in my book on the new star. The
town on this side of the river where I lived was harassed by the
Bohemian troops, whose new levies were insubordinate and insolent; to
complete the whole, the Austrian army brought the plague with them into
the city. I went into Austria and endeavoured to procure the situation
which I now hold. Returning in June, I found my wife in a decline from
her grief at the death of her son, and on the eve of an infectious
fever, and I lost her also within eleven days of my return. Then came
fresh annoyance, of course, and her fortune was to be divided with my
step-sisters. The Emperor Rudolph would not agree to my departure; vain
hopes were given me of being paid from Saxony; my time and money were
wasted together, till on the death of the Emperor in 1612, I was named
again by his successor, and suffered to depart to Linz."

Being thus left a widower with a ten-year-old daughter Susanna, and a
boy Louis of half her age, he looked for a second wife to take charge of
them. He has given an account of eleven ladies whose suitability he
considered. The first, an intimate friend of his first wife, ultimately
declined; one was too old, another an invalid, another too proud of her
birth and quarterings, another could do nothing useful, and so on.
Number eight kept him guessing for three months, until he tired of her
constant indecision, and confided his disappointment to number nine, who
was not impressed. Number ten, introduced by a friend, Kepler found
exceedingly ugly and enormously fat, and number eleven apparently too
young. Kepler then reconsidered one of the earlier ones, disregarding
the advice of his friends who objected to her lowly station. She was the
orphan daughter of a cabinetmaker, educated for twelve years by favour
of the Lady of Stahrenburg, and Kepler writes of her: "Her person and
manners are suitable to mine; no pride, no extravagance; she can bear to
work; she has a tolerable knowledge of how to manage a family;
middle-aged and of a disposition and capability to acquire what she
still wants".

Wine from the Austrian vineyards was plentiful and cheap at the time of
the marriage, and Kepler bought a few casks for his household. When the
seller came to ascertain the quantity, Kepler noticed that no proper
allowance was made for the bulging parts, and the upshot of his
objections was that he wrote a book on a new method of gauging--one of
the earliest specimens of modern analysis, extending the properties of
plane figures to segments of cones and cylinders as being "incorporated
circles". He was summoned before the Diet at Ratisbon to give his
opinion on the Gregorian Reform of the Calendar, and soon afterwards was
excommunicated, having fallen foul of the Roman Catholic party at Linz
just as he had previously at Gratz, the reason apparently being that he
desired to think for himself. Meanwhile his salary was not paid any more
regularly than before, and he was forced to supplement it by publishing
what he called a "vile prophesying almanac which is scarcely more
respectable than begging unless it be because it saves the Emperor's
credit, who abandons me entirely, and with all his frequent and recent
orders in council, would suffer me to perish with hunger".

In 1617 he was invited to Italy to succeed Magini as Professor of
Mathematics at Bologna. Galileo urged him to accept the post, but he
excused himself on the ground that he was a German and brought up among
Germans with such liberty of speech as he thought might get him into
trouble in Italy. In 1619 Matthias died and was succeeded by Ferdinand
III, who again retained Kepler in his post. In the same year Kepler
reprinted his "Mysterium Cosmographicum," and also published his
"Harmonics" in five books dedicated to James I of England. "The first
geometrical, on the origin and demonstration of the laws of the figures
which produce harmonious proportions; the second, architectonical, on
figurate geometry and the congruence of plane and solid regular figures;
the third, properly Harmonic, on the derivation of musical proportions
from figures, and on the nature and distinction of things relating to
song, in opposition to the old theories; the fourth, metaphysical,
psychological, and astrological, on the mental essence of Harmonics, and
of their kinds in the world, especially on the harmony of rays emanating
on the earth from the heavenly bodies, and on their effect in nature and
on the sublunary and human soul; the fifth, astronomical and
metaphysical, on the very exquisite Harmonics of the celestial motions
and the origin of the excentricities in harmonious proportions." The
extravagance of his fancies does not appear until the fourth book, in
which he reiterates the statement that he was forced to adopt his
astrological opinions from direct and positive observation. He despises
"The common herd of prophesiers who describe the operations of the stars
as if they were a sort of deities, the lords of heaven and earth, and
producing everything at their pleasure. They never trouble themselves to
consider what means the stars have of working any effects among us on
the earth whilst they remain in the sky and send down nothing to us
which is obvious to the senses, except rays of light." His own notion is
"Like one who listens to a sweet melodious song, and by the gladness of
his countenance, by his voice, and by the beating of his hand or foot
attuned to the music, gives token that he perceives and approves the
harmony: just so does sublunary nature, with the notable and evident
emotion of the bowels of the earth, bear like witness to the same
feelings, especially at those times when the rays of the planets form
harmonious configurations on the earth," and again "The earth is not an
animal like a dog, ready at every nod; but more like a bull or an
elephant, slow to become angry, and so much the more furious when
incensed." He seems to have believed the earth to be actually a living
animal, as witness the following: "If anyone who has climbed the peaks
of the highest mountains, throw a stone down their very deep clefts, a
sound is heard from them; or if he throw it into one of the mountain
lakes, which beyond doubt are bottomless, a storm will immediately
arise, just as when you thrust a straw into the ear or nose of a
ticklish animal, it shakes its head, or runs shudderingly away. What so
like breathing, especially of those fish who draw water into their
mouths and spout it out again through their gills, as that wonderful
tide! For although it is so regulated according to the course of the
moon, that, in the preface to my 'Commentaries on Mars,' I have
mentioned it as probable that the waters are attracted by the moon, as
iron by the loadstone, yet if anyone uphold that the earth regulates its
breathing according to the motion of the sun and moon, as animals have
daily and nightly alternations of sleep and waking, I shall not think
his philosophy unworthy of being listened to; especially if any flexible
parts should be discovered in the depths of the earth, to supply the
functions of lungs or gills."

In the same book Kepler enlarges again on his views in reference to the
basis of astrology as concerned with nativities and the importance of
planetary conjunctions. He gives particulars of his own nativity.
"Jupiter nearest the nonagesimal had passed by four degrees the trine of
Saturn; the Sun and Venus in conjunction were moving from the latter
towards the former, nearly in sextiles with both: they were also
removing from quadratures with Mars, to which Mercury was closely
approaching: the moon drew near to the trine of the same planet, close
to the Bull's Eye even in latitude. The 25th degree of Gemini was
rising, and the 22nd of Aquarius culminating. That there was this triple
configuration on that day--namely the sextile of Saturn and the Sun,
the sextile of Mars and Jupiter, and the quadrature of Mercury and Mars,
is proved by the change of weather; for after a frost of some days, that
very day became warmer, there was a thaw and a fall of rain." This
alleged "proof" is interesting as it relies on the same principle which
was held to justify the correction of an uncertain birth-time, by
reference to illnesses, etc., met with later. Kepler however goes on to
say, "If I am to speak of the results of my studies, what, I pray, can I
find in the sky, even remotely alluding to it? The learned confess that
several not despicable branches of philosophy have been newly extricated
or amended or brought to perfection by me: but here my constellations
were, not Mercury from the East in the angle of the seventh, and in
quadratures with Mars, but Copernicus, but Tycho Brahe, without whose
books of observations everything now set by me in the clearest light
must have remained buried in darkness; not Saturn predominating Mercury,
but my lords the Emperors Rudolph and Matthias, not Capricorn the house
of Saturn but Upper Austria, the house of the Emperor, and the ready and
unexampled bounty of his nobles to my petition. Here is that corner, not
the western one of the horoscope, but on the earth whither, by
permission of my Imperial master, I have betaken myself from a too
uneasy Court; and whence, during these years of my life, which now tends
towards its setting, emanate these Harmonics and the other matters on
which I am engaged."

The fifth book contains a great deal of nonsense about the harmony of
the spheres; the notes contributed by the several planets are gravely
set down, that of Mercury having the greatest resemblance to a melody,
though perhaps more reminiscent of a bugle-call. Yet the book is not all
worthless for it includes Kepler's Third Law, which he had diligently
sought for years. In his own words, "The proportion existing between the
periodic times of any two planets is exactly the sesquiplicate
proportion of the mean distances of the orbits," or as generally given,
"the squares of the periodic times are proportional to the cubes of the
mean distances." Kepler was evidently transported with delight and
wrote, "What I prophesied two and twenty years ago, as soon as I
discovered the five solids among the heavenly orbits,--what I firmly
believed long before I had seen Ptolemy's 'Harmonics'--what I had
promised my friends in the title of this book, which I named before I
was sure of my discovery,--what sixteen years ago I urged as a thing to
be sought,--that for which I joined Tycho Brahe, for which I settled in
Prague, for which I have devoted the best part of my life to
astronomical computations, at length I have brought to light, and have
recognised its truth beyond my most sanguine expectations. Great as is
the absolute nature of Harmonics, with all its details as set forth in
my third book, it is all found among the celestial motions, not indeed
in the manner which I imagined (that is not the least part of my
delight), but in another very different, and yet most perfect and
excellent. It is now eighteen months since I got the first glimpse of
light, three months since the dawn, very few days since the unveiled
sun, most admirable to gaze on, burst out upon me. Nothing holds me; I
will indulge in my sacred fury; I will triumph over mankind by the
honest confession that I have stolen the golden vases of the Egyptians
to build up a tabernacle for my God far away from the confines of Egypt.
If you forgive me, I rejoice, if you are angry, I can bear it; the die
is cast, the book is written; to be read either now or by posterity, I
care not which; it may well wait a century for a reader, as God has
waited six thousand years for an observer." He gives the date 15th May,
1618, for the completion of his discovery. In his "Epitome of the
Copernican Astronomy," he gives his own idea as to the reason for this
Third Law. "Four causes concur for lengthening the periodic time. First,
the length of the path; secondly, the weight or quantity of matter to be
carried; thirdly, the degree of strength of the moving virtue; fourthly,
the bulk or space into which is spread out the matter to be moved. The
orbital paths of the planets are in the simple ratio of the distances;
the weights or quantities of matter in different planets are in the
subduplicate ratio of the same distances, as has been already proved; so
that with every increase of distance a planet has more matter and
therefore is moved more slowly, and accumulates more time in its
revolution, requiring already, as it did, more time by reason of the
length of the way. The third and fourth causes compensate each other in
a comparison of different planets; the simple and subduplicate
proportion compound the sesquiplicate proportion, which therefore is the
ratio of the periodic times." The only part of this "explanation" that
is true is that the paths are in the simple ratio of the distances, the
"proof" so confidently claimed being of the circular kind commonly known
as "begging the question". It was reserved for Newton to establish the
Laws of Motion, to find the law of force that would constrain a planet
to obey Kepler's first and second Laws, and to prove that it must
therefore also obey the third.






CHAPTER VI.

CLOSING YEARS.


Soon after its publication Kepler's "Epitome" was placed along with the
book of Copernicus, on the list of books prohibited by the Congregation
of the Index at Rome, and he feared that this might prevent the
publication or sale of his books in Austria also, but was told that
though Galileo's violence was getting him into trouble, there would be
no difficulty in obtaining permission for learned men to read any
prohibited books, and that he (Kepler) need fear nothing so long as he
remained quiet.

In his various works on Comets, he adhered to the opinion that they
travelled in straight lines with varying velocity. He suggested that
comets come from the remotest parts of ether, as whales and monsters
from the depth of the sea, and that perhaps they are something of the
nature of silkworms, and are wasted and consumed in spinning their own
tails. Napier's invention of logarithms at once attracted Kepler's
attention. He must have regretted that the discovery was not made early
enough to save him a vast amount of labour in computations, but he
managed to find time to compute some logarithm tables for himself,
though he does not seem to have understood quite what Napier had done,
and though with his usual honesty he gave full credit to the Scottish
baron for his invention.

Though Eugenists may find a difficulty in reconciling Napier's
brilliancy with the extreme youth of his parents, they may at any rate
attribute Kepler's occasional fits of bad temper to heredity. His
cantankerous mother, Catherine Kepler, had for some years been carrying
on an action for slander against a woman who had accused her of
administering a poisonous potion. Dame Kepler employed a young advocate
who for reasons of his own "nursed" the case so long that after five
years had elapsed without any conclusion being reached another judge was
appointed, who had himself suffered from the caustic tongue of the
prosecutrix, and so was already prejudiced against her. The defendant,
knowing this, turned the tables on her opponent by bringing an
accusation of witchcraft against her, and Catherine Kepler was
imprisoned and condemned to the torture in July, 1620. Kepler, hearing
of the sentence, hurried back from Linz, and succeeded in stopping the
completion of the sentence, securing his mother's release the following
year, as it was made clear that the only support for the case against
her was her own intemperate language. Kepler returned to Linz, and his
mother at once brought another action for costs and damages against her
late opponent, but died before the case could be tried.

A few months before this Sir Henry Wotton, English Ambassador to Venice,
visited Kepler, and finding him as usual, almost penniless, urged him to
go to England, promising him a warm welcome there. Kepler, however,
would not at that time leave Germany, giving several reasons, one of
which was that he dreaded the confinement of an island. Later on he
expressed his willingness to go as soon as his Rudolphine Tables were
published, and lecture on them, even in England, if he could not do it
in Germany, and if a good enough salary were forthcoming.

In 1624 he went to Vienna, and managed to extract from the Treasury 6000
florins on account of expenses connected with the Tables, but, instead
of a further grant, was given letters to the States of Swabia, which
owed money to the Imperial treasury. Some of this he succeeded in
collecting, but the Tables were still further delayed by the religious
disturbances then becoming violent. The Jesuits contrived to have
Kepler's library sealed up, and, but for the Imperial protection, would
have imprisoned him also; moreover the peasants revolted and blockaded
Linz. In 1627, however, the long promised Tables, the first to discard
the conventional circular motion, were at last published at Ulm in four
parts. Two of these parts consisted of subsidiary Tables, of logarithms
and other computing devices, another contained Tables of the elements of
the sun, moon, and planets, and the fourth gave the places of a thousand
stars as determined by Tycho, with Tycho's refraction Tables, which had
the peculiarity of using different values for the refraction of the sun,
moon, and stars. From a map prefixed to some copies of the Tables, we
may infer that Kepler was one of the first, if not actually the first,
to suggest the method of determining differences of longitude by
occultations of stars at the moon's limb. In an Appendix, he showed how
his Tables could be used by astrologers for their predictions, saying
"Astronomy is the daughter of Astrology, and this modern Astrology again
is the daughter of Astronomy, bearing something of the lineaments of her
grandmother; and, as I have already said, this foolish daughter,
Astrology, supports her wise but needy mother, Astronomy, from the
profits of a profession not generally considered creditable". There is
no doubt that Kepler strongly resented having to depend so much for his
income on such methods which he certainly did not consider creditable.

It was probably Galileo whose praise of the new Tables induced the Grand
Duke of Tuscany to send Kepler a gold chain soon after their
publication, and we may perhaps regard it as a mark of favour from the
Emperor Ferdinand that he permitted Kepler to attach himself to the
great Wallenstein, now Duke of Friedland, and a firm believer in
Astrology. The Duke was a better paymaster than either of the three
successive Emperors. He furnished Kepler with an assistant and a
printing press; and obtained for him the Professorship of Astronomy at
the University of Rostock in Mecklenburg. Apparently, however, the
Emperor could not induce Wallenstein to take over the responsibility of
the 8000 crowns, still owing from the Imperial treasury on account of
the Rudolphine Tables. Kepler made a last attempt to secure payment at
Ratisbon, but his journey thither brought disappointment and fatigue and
left him in such a condition that he rapidly succumbed to an attack of
fever, dying in November, 1630, in his fifty-ninth year. His body was
buried at Ratisbon, but the tombstone was destroyed during the war then
raging. His daughter, Susanna, the wife of Jacob Bartsch, a physician
who had helped Kepler with his Ephemeris, lost her husband soon after
her father's death, and succeeded in obtaining part of Kepler's arrears
of salary by threatening to keep Tycho's manuscripts, but her
stepmother was left almost penniless with five young children. For their
benefit Louis Kepler printed a "Dream of Lunar Astronomy," which first
his father and then his brother-in-law had been preparing for
publication at the time of their respective deaths. It is a curious
mixture of saga and fairy tale with a little science in the way of
astronomy studied from the moon, and cast in the form of a dream to
overcome the practical difficulties of the hypothesis of visiting the
moon. Other writings in large numbers were left unpublished. No attempt
at a complete edition of Kepler's works was made for a long time. One
was projected in 1714 by his biographer, Hantsch, but all that appeared
was one volume of letters. After various learned bodies had declined to
move in the matter the manuscripts were purchased for the Imperial
Russian library. An edition was at length brought out at Frankfort by C.
Frisch, in eight volumes, appearing at intervals from 1858-1870.

Kepler's fame does not rest upon his voluminous works. With his peculiar
method of approaching problems there was bound to be an inordinate
amount of chaff mixed with the grain, and he used no winnowing machine.
His simplicity and transparent honesty induced him to include
everything, in fact he seemed to glory in the number of false trails he
laboriously followed. He was one who might be expected to find the
proverbial "needle in a haystack," but unfortunately the needle was not
always there. Delambre says, "Ardent, restless, burning to distinguish
himself by his discoveries he attempted everything, and having once
obtained a glimpse of one, no labour was too hard for him in following
or verifying it. All his attempts had not the same success, and in fact
that was impossible. Those which have failed seem to us only fanciful;
those which have been more fortunate appear sublime. When in search of
that which really existed, he has sometimes found it; when he devoted
himself to the pursuit of a chimera, he could not but fail, but even
then he unfolded the same qualities, and that obstinate perseverance
that must triumph over all difficulties but those which are
insurmountable." Berry, in his "Short History of Astronomy," says "as
one reads chapter after chapter without a lucid, still less a correct
idea, it is impossible to refrain from regrets that the intelligence of
Kepler should have been so wasted, and it is difficult not to suspect at
times that some of the valuable results which lie embedded in this great
mass of tedious speculation were arrived at by a mere accident. On the
other hand it must not be forgotten that such accidents have a habit of
happening only to great men, and that if Kepler loved to give reins to
his imagination he was equally impressed with the necessity of
scrupulously comparing speculative results with observed facts, and of
surrendering without demur the most beloved of his fancies if it was
unable to stand this test. If Kepler had burnt three-quarters of what he
printed, we should in all probability have formed a higher opinion of
his intellectual grasp and sobriety of judgment, but we should have lost
to a great extent the impression of extraordinary enthusiasm and
industry, and of almost unequalled intellectual honesty which we now get
from a study of his works."

Professor Forbes is more enthusiastic. In his "History of Astronomy," he
refers to Kepler as "the man whose place, as is generally agreed, would
have been the most difficult to fill among all those who have
contributed to the advance of astronomical knowledge," and again _à
propos_ of Kepler's great book, "it must be obvious that he had at that
time some inkling of the meaning of his laws--universal gravitation.
From that moment the idea of universal gravitation was in the air, and
hints and guesses were thrown out by many; and in time the law of
gravitation would doubtless have been discovered, though probably not by
the work of one man, even if Newton had not lived. But, if Kepler had
not lived, who else could have discovered his Laws?"







APPENDIX I.

LIST OF DATES.


Johann Kepler, born 1571; school at Maulbronn, 1586; University of
Tübingen, 1589; M.A. of Tübingen, 1591; Professor at Gratz, 1594;
"Prodromus," with "Mysterium Cosmographicum," published 1596; first
marriage, 1597; joins Tycho Brahe at Prague, 1600; death of Tycho, 1601;
Kepler's optics, 1603; Nova, 1604; on Comets, 1607; Commentary on Mars,
including First and Second Laws, 1609; Professor at Linz, 1612; second
marriage, 1613; Third Law discovered, 1618; Epitome of Copernican
Astronomy, 1618-1621; Rudolphine Tables published, 1627; died, 1630.






APPENDIX II.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.


For a full account of the various systems of Kepler and his predecessors
the reader cannot do better than consult the "History of the Planetary
Systems, from Thales to Kepler," by Dr. J.L.E. Dreyer (Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1906). The same author's "Tycho Brahe" gives a wealth of detail
about that "Phoenix of Astronomers," as Kepler styles him. A great
proportion of the literature relating to Kepler is German, but he has
his place in the histories of astronomy, from Delambre and the more
modern R. Wolfs "Geschichte" to those of A. Berry, "History of
Astronomy" (University Extension Manuals, Murray, 1898), and Professor
G. Forbes, "History of Astronomy" (History of Science Series, Watts,
1909).






GLOSSARY.


Apogee: The point in the orbit of a celestial body when it is furthest
    from the earth.

Apse: An extremity of the major axis of the orbit of a body; a body is
    at its greatest and least distances from the body about which it
    revolves, when at one or other apse.

Conjunction: When a plane containing the earth's axis and passing
    through the centre of the sun also passes through that of the moon
    or a planet, at the same side of the earth, the moon or planet is in
    conjunction, or if on opposite sides of the earth, the moon or
    planet is in opposition. Mercury and Venus cannot be in opposition,
    but are in inferior or superior conjunction according as they are
    nearer or further than the sun.

Deferent: In the epicyclic theory, uneven motion is represented by
    motion round a circle whose centre travels round another circle, the
    latter is called the deferent.

Ecliptic: The plane of the earth's orbital motion about the sun, which
    cuts the heavens in a great circle. It is so called because
    obviously eclipses can only occur when the moon is also
    approximately in this plane, besides being in conjunction or
    opposition with the sun.

Epicycle: A point moving on the circumference of a circle whose centre
    describes another circle, traces an epicycle with reference to the
    centre of the second circle.

Equant: In Ptolemy's excentric theory, when a planet is describing a
    circle about a centre which is not the earth, in order to satisfy
    the convention that the motion must be uniform, a point was found
    about which the motion was apparently uniform,[4] and this point was
    called the equant.

[Footnote 4: I.e. the _angular_ motion about the equant was uniform.]

Equinox: When the sun is in the plane of the earth's equator the lengths
    of day and night are equal. This happens twice a year, and the times
    when the sun passes the equator are called the vernal or spring
    equinox and the autumnal equinox respectively.

Evection: The second inequality of the moon, which vanishes at new and
    full moon and is a maximum at first and last quarter.

Excentric: As an alternative to epicycles, planets whose motion round
    the earth was not uniform could be represented as moving round a
    point some distance from the earth called the excentric.

Geocentric: Referred to the centre of the earth; e.g. Ptolemy's theory.

Heliocentric: Referred to the centre of the sun; e.g. the theory
    commonly called Copernican.

Inequality: The difference between the actual position of a planet and
    its theoretical position on the hypothesis of uniform circular
    motion.

Node: The points where the orbit of the moon or a planet intersect the
    plane of the ecliptic. The ascending node is the one when the planet
    is moving northwards, and the line of intersection of the orbital
    plane with the ecliptic is the line of nodes.

Occultation: Usually means when a planet or star is hidden by the moon,
    but it also includes "occultation" of a star by a planet or of a
    satellite by a planet or of one planet by another.

Opposition v. Conjunction.

Parallax: The error introduced by observing from some point other than
    that required in theory, e.g. in geocentric places because the
    observations are made from the surface of the earth instead of the
    centre, or in heliocentric places because observations are made from
    the earth and not from the sun.

Perigee: The point in the orbit of a celestial body when it is nearest
    to the earth.

Precession: Owing to the slow motion of the earth's pole around the pole
    of the ecliptic, the equator cuts the ecliptic a little earlier
    every year, so that the equinox each year slightly precedes, with
    reference to the stars, that of the previous year.













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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln
by Francis Fisher Browne

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
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Title: The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln
       A Narrative And Descriptive Biography With Pen-Pictures And Personal
       Recollections By Those Who Knew Him
       

Author: Francis Fisher Browne

Release Date: November 10, 2004 [EBook #14004]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF LINCOLN ***




Produced by Audrey Longhurst and the PG Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.







        _"How beautiful to see
    Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed.
    Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;
    One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,
         Not lured by any cheat of birth,
         But by his clear-grained human worth,
    And brave old wisdom of sincerity!
         They knew that outward grace is dust;
         They could not choose but trust
    In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,
         And supple-tempered will
    That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.
    His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind,
    Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
    A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;
    Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
    Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,
    Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars_.


         _"Great captains, with their guns and drums,
         Disturb our judgment for the hour,
         But at last silence comes;
    These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
         Our children shall behold his fame,
    The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
    Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
    New birth of our new soil, the first American."_

         JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.




[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN FROM AN UNPUBLISHED ORIGINAL DRAWING BY
JOHN NELSON MARBLE]




                THE EVERY-DAY LIFE OF
                   ABRAHAM LINCOLN

             A NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE
             BIOGRAPHY WITH PEN-PICTURES
             AND PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
               BY THOSE WHO KNEW HIM

                        BY
               FRANCIS FISHER BROWNE

  _Compiler of "Golden Poems," "Bugle Echoes, Pose of
  the Civil War," "Laurel-Crowned Verse," etc._

NEW AND THOROUGHLY REVISED EDITION, FROM NEW PLATES, WITH
       AN ENTIRELY NEW PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN, FROM A
             CHARCOAL STUDY BY J.K. MARBLE


                     CHICAGO
              BROWNE & HOWELL COMPANY
                       1913




FRANCIS FISHER BROWNE

_1843-1913_

The present revision of "The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln" was the
last literary labor of its author. He had long wished to undertake the
work, and had talked much of it for several years past. But favorable
arrangements for the book's republication were not completed until about
a year ago. Then, though by no means recovered from an attack of
pneumonia late in the previous winter, he took up the task of revision
and recasting with something of his old-time energy. It was a far
heavier task than he had anticipated, but he gave it practically his
undivided attention until within three or four weeks of his death. Only
when the last pages of manuscript had been despatched to the printer did
he yield to the overwhelming physical suffering that had been upon him
for a long time past. His death occurred at Santa Barbara, California,
on May 11.

Francis Fisher Browne was born at South Halifax, Vermont, on December 1,
1843. His parentage, on both sides, was of the purest New England stock.
Early in his childhood, the family moved to Western Massachusetts, where
the boy went to school and learned the printing trade in his father's
newspaper office at Chicopee. As a lad of eighteen, he left the high
school in answer to the government's call for volunteers, serving for a
year with the 46th Massachusetts Regiment in North Carolina and with the
Army of the Potomac. When the regiment was discharged, in 1863, he
decided to take up the study of law. Removing to Rochester, N.Y., he
entered a law office in that city; and a year or two later began a brief
course in the law department of the University of Michigan. He was
unable to continue in college, however, and returned to Rochester to
follow his trade.

Immediately after his marriage, in 1867, he came to Chicago, with the
definite intention of engaging in literary work. Here he became
associated with "The Western Monthly," which, with the fuller
establishment of his control, he rechristened "The Lakeside Monthly."
The best writers throughout the West were gradually enlisted as
contributors; and it was not long before the magazine was generally
recognized as the most creditable and promising periodical west of the
Atlantic seaboard. But along with this increasing prestige came a series
of extraneous setbacks and calamities, culminating in a complete
physical breakdown of its editor and owner, which made the magazine's
suspension imperative.

[Illustration: FRANCIS F. BROWNE]

The six years immediately following, from 1874 to 1880, were largely
spent in a search for health. During part of this time, however, Mr.
Browne acted as literary editor of "The Alliance," and as special
editorial writer for some of the leading Chicago newspapers. But his
mind was preoccupied with plans for a new periodical--this time a
journal of literary criticism, modeled somewhat after such English
publications as "The Athenæum" and "The Academy." In the furtherance of
this bold conception he was able to interest the publishing firm of
Jansen, McClurg & Co.; and under their imprint, in May, 1880, appeared
the first issue of THE DIAL, "a monthly review and index of current
literature." At about the same time he became literary adviser to the
publishing department of the house, and for twelve years thereafter
toiled unremittingly at his double task-work. In 1892, negotiations were
completed whereby he acquired Messrs. McClurg & Co.'s interest in the
periodical. It was enlarged in scope, and made a semi-monthly; and from
that time until his death it appeared uninterruptedly under his guidance
and his control.

Besides his writings in THE DIAL and other periodicals, Mr. Browne is
the author of a small volume of poems, "Volunteer Grain" (1895). He also
compiled and edited several anthologies,--"Bugle Echoes," a collection
of Civil War poems (1886); "Golden Poems by British and American
Authors" (1881); "The Golden Treasury of Poetry and Prose" (1883); and
seven volumes of "Laurel-Crowned Verse" (1891-2). He was one of the
small group of men who, in 1874, founded the Chicago Literary Club; and
for a number of years past he has been an honorary member of that
organization, as well as of the Caxton Club (Chicago) and the Twilight
Club (Pasadena, Cal.). During the summer of 1893 he served as Chairman
of the Committee on the Congress of Authors of the World's Congress
Auxiliary of the Columbian Exposition.

THE PUBLISHERS




PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The original edition of this book was published about twenty years after
Lincoln's death at the close of the Civil War. At that time many of the
men who had taken a prominent part in the affairs, military and civil,
of that heroic period, many who had known Lincoln and had come in
personal contact with him during the war or in his earlier years, were
still living. It was a vivid conception of the value of the personal
recollections of these men, gathered and recorded before it was too
late, that led to the preparation of this book. It was intended to be,
and in effect it was, largely an anecdotal Life of Lincoln built of
material gathered from men still living who had known him personally.
The task was begun none too soon. Of the hundreds who responded to the
requests for contributions of their memories of Lincoln there were few
whose lives extended very far into the second quarter-century after his
death, and few indeed survive after the lapse of nearly fifty
years,--though in several instances the author has been so fortunate as
to get valuable material directly from persons still living (1913). Of
the more than five hundred friends and contemporaries of Lincoln to whom
credit for material is given in the original edition, scarcely a dozen
are living at the date of this second edition. Therefore, the value of
these reminiscences increases with time. They were gathered largely at
first hand. They can never be replaced, nor can they ever be very much
extended.

This book brings Lincoln the man, not Lincoln the tradition, very near
to us. Browning asked, "And did you once see Shelley plain? And did he
stop and speak to you?" The men whose narratives make up a large part of
this book all saw Lincoln plain, and here tell us what he spoke to them,
and how he looked and seemed while saying it. The great events of
Lincoln's life, and impressions of his character, are given in the
actual words of those who knew him--his friends, neighbors, and daily
associates--rather than condensed and remolded into other form. While
these utterances are in some cases rude and unstudied, they have often a
power of delineation and a graphic force that more than compensate for
any lack of literary quality.

In a work prepared on such a plan as this, some repetitions are
unavoidable; nor are they undesirable. An event or incident narrated by
different observers is thereby brought out with greater fulness of
detail; and phases of Lincoln's many-sided character are revealed more
clearly by the varied impressions of numerous witnesses whose accounts
thus correct or verify each other. Some inconsistencies and
contradictions are inevitable,--but these relate usually to minor
matters, seldom or never to the great essentials of Lincoln's life and
personality. The author's desire is to present material from which the
reader may form an opinion of Lincoln, rather than to present opinions
and judgments of his own.

Lincoln literature has increased amazingly in the past twenty-five
years. Mention of the principal biographies in existence at the time of
the original edition was included in the Preface. Since then there have
appeared, among the more formal biographies, the comprehensive and
authoritative work by Nicolay and Hay, the subsequent work by Miss Ida
Tarbell, and that by Herndon and Weik, besides many more or less
fragmentary publications. Some additions, but not many, have been made
to the present edition from these sources. The recently-published Diary
of Gideon Welles, one of the most valuable commentaries on the Civil War
period now available, has provided some material of exceptional interest
concerning Lincoln's relations with the members of his Cabinet.

In re-writing the present work, it has been compressed into about
two-thirds of its former compass, to render it more popular both in form
and in price, and to give it in some places a greater measure of
coherency and continuity as an outline narrative of the Civil War. But
its chief appeal to the interest of its readers will remain
substantially what it was in the beginning, as set forth in its title,
"The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Those Who Knew Him."

F.F.B.
SANTA BARBARA, CAL., _April, 1913._




PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

This book aims to give a view, clearer and more complete than has been
given before, of the personality of Abraham Lincoln. A life so full of
incident and a character so many-sided as his can be understood only
with the lapse of time. A sense of the exhaustless interest of that life
and character, and the inadequacy of the ordinarily constructed
biography to portray his many-sidedness, suggested the preparation of a
work upon the novel plan here represented. Begun several years ago, the
undertaking proved of such magnitude that its completion has been
delayed beyond the anticipated time. The extensive correspondence, the
exploration of available sources of information in the books, pamphlets,
magazines, and newspapers of a quarter of a century, and in the scraps
and papers of historical collections, became an almost interminable
task. The examination and sifting of this mass of material, its
verification amidst often conflicting testimony, and its final molding
into shape, involved time and labor that can be estimated only by those
who have had similar experience.

To the many who have kindly furnished original contributions, to others
who have aided the work by valuable suggestions and information, to
earlier biographies of Lincoln--those of Raymond, Holland, Barrett,
Lamon, Carpenter, and (the best and latest of all) that of Hon. I.N.
Arnold--hearty acknowledgment is made. Much that was offered could not
be used. In the choice of material, from whatever source, the purpose
has been to avoid mere opinions and eulogies of Lincoln and to give
abundantly those actual experiences, incidents, anecdotes, and
reminiscences which reveal the phases of his unique and striking
personality.

It scarcely need be pointed out that this work does not attempt to give
a connected history of the Civil War, but only to sketch briefly those
episodes with which Lincoln is personally identified and of which some
knowledge is essential to an understanding of his acts and character.
Others are brought into prominence only as they are associated with the
chief actor in the great drama. Many of them are disappearing,--fading
into the smoky and lurid background. But that colossal central figure,
playing one of the grandest roles ever set upon the stage of human life,
becomes more impressive as the scenes recede.

F.F.B.
CHICAGO, _October, 1886._




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

     Ancestry--The Lincolns in Kentucky--Death of Lincoln's
     Grandfather--Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks--Mordecai
     Lincoln--Birth of Abraham Lincoln--Removal to Indiana--Early
     Years--Dennis Hanks--Lincoln's Boyhood--Death of Nancy Hanks--Early
     School Days--Lincoln's First Dollar--Presentiments of Future
     Greatness--Down the Mississippi--Removal to Illinois--Lincoln's
     Father--Lincoln the Storekeeper--First Official Act--Lincoln's
     Short Sketch of His Own Life


CHAPTER II

     A Turn in Affairs--The Black Hawk War--A Remarkable Military
     Manoeuvre--Lincoln Protects an Indian--Lincoln and
     Stuart--Lincoln's Military Record--Nominated for the
     Legislature--Lincoln a Merchant--Postmaster at New Salem--Lincoln
     Studies Law--Elected to the Legislature--Personal
     Characteristics--Lincoln's Love for Anne Rutledge--Close of
     Lincoln's Youth


CHAPTER III

     Lincoln's Beginning as a Lawyer--His Early Taste for
     Politics--Lincoln and the Lightning-Rod Man--Not an
     Aristocrat--Reply to Dr. Early--A Manly Letter--Again in the
     Illinois Legislature--The "Long Nine"--Lincoln on His Way to the
     Capital--His Ambition in 1836--First Meeting with Douglas--Removal
     of the Illinois Capital--One of Lincoln's Early
     Speeches--Pro-Slavery Sentiment in Illinois--Lincoln's Opposition
     to Slavery--Contest with General Ewing--Lincoln Lays out a
     Town--The Title "Honest Abe"


CHAPTER IV

     Lincoln's Removal to Springfield--A Lawyer without Clients or
     Money--Early Discouragements--Proposes to become a
     Carpenter--"Stuart & Lincoln, Attorneys at Law"--"Riding the
     Circuit"--Incidents of a Trip Round the Circuit--Pen Pictures of
     Lincoln--Humane Traits--Kindness to Animals--Defending Fugitive
     Slaves--Incidents in Lincoln's Life as a Lawyer--His Fondness for
     Jokes and Stories


CHAPTER V

     Lincoln in the Legislature--Eight Consecutive Years of Service--His
     Influence in the House--Leader of the Whig Party in Illinois--Takes
     a Hand in National Politics--Presidential Election in 1840--A "Log
     Cabin" Reminiscence--Some Memorable Political Encounters--A Tilt
     with Douglas--Lincoln Facing a Mob--His Physical Courage--Lincoln
     as Duellist--The Affair with General Shields--An Eye-Witness'
     Account of the Duel--Courtship and Marriage


CHAPTER VI

     Lincoln in National Politics--His Congressional
     Aspirations--Law-Partnership of Lincoln and Herndon--The
     Presidential Campaign of 1844--Visit to Henry Clay--Lincoln Elected
     to Congress--Congressional Reputation--Acquaintance with
     Distinguished Men--First Speech in Congress--"Getting the Hang" of
     the House--Lincoln's Course on the Mexican War--Notable Speech in
     Congress--Ridicule of General Cass--Bill for the Abolition of
     Slavery--Delegate to the Whig National Convention of 1848--Stumping
     the Country for Taylor--Advice to Young Politicians--"Old Abe"--A
     Political Disappointment--Lincoln's Appearance as an Officer Seeker
     in Washington--"A Divinity that Shapes Our Ends"


CHAPTER VII

     Lincoln again in Springfield--Back to the Circuit--His Personal
     Manners and Appearance--Glimpses of Home-Life--His Family--His
     Absent-Mindedness--A Painful Subject--Lincoln a Man of
     Sorrows--Familiar Appearance on the Streets of Springfield--Scenes
     in the Law-Office--Forebodings of a "Great of Miserable End"--An
     Evening Whit Lincoln in Chicago--Lincoln's Tenderness to His
     Relatives--Death of His Father--A Sensible Adviser--Care of His
     Step-Mother--Tribute From Her


CHAPTER VIII

     Lincoln as a Lawyer--His Appearance in Court--Reminiscences of a
     Law-Student in Lincoln's Office--An "Office Copy" of Byron--Novel
     Way of Keeping Partnership Accounts--Charges for Legal
     Services--Trial of Bill Armstrong--Lincoln before a Jury--Kindness
     toward Unfortunate Clients--Refusing to Defend Guilty
     Men--Courtroom Anecdotes--Anecdotes of Lincoln at the Bar--Some
     Striking Opinions of Lincoln as a Lawyer


CHAPTER IX

     Lincoln and Slavery--The Issue Becoming More Sharply
     Defined--Resistance to the Spread of Slavery--Views Expressed by
     Lincoln in 1850--His Mind Made Up--Lincoln as a Party Leader--The
     Kansas Struggle--Crossing Swords with Douglas--A Notable Speech by
     Lincoln--Advice to Kansas Belligerents--Honor in Politics--Anecdote
     of Lincoln and Yates--Contest for the U.S. Senate in
     1855--Lincoln's Defeat--Sketched by Members of the Legislature


CHAPTER X

     Birth of the Republican Party--Lincoln One of Its Fathers--Takes
     His Stand with the Abolitionists--The Bloomington
     Convention--Lincoln's Great Anti-Slavery Speech--A Ratification
     Meeting of Three--The First National Republican
     Convention--Lincoln's Name Presented for the
     Vice-Presidency--Nomination of Fremont and Dayton--Lincoln in the
     Campaign of 1856--His Appearance and Influence on the
     Stump--Regarded as a Dangerous Man--His Views on the Politics of
     the Future--First Visit to Cincinnati--Meeting with Edwin M.
     Stanton--Stanton's First Impressions of Lincoln--Regards Him as a
     "Giraffe"--A Visit to Cincinnati


CHAPTER XI

     The Great Lincoln-Douglas Debate--Rivals for the U.S.
     Senate--Lincoln's "House-Divided-against-Itself" Speech--An
     Inspired Oration--Alarming His Friends--Challenges Douglas to a
     Joint Discussion--The Champions Contrasted--Their Opinions of Each
     Other--Lincoln and Douglas on the Stump--Slavery the Leading
     Issue--Scenes and Anecdotes of the Great Debate--Pen-Picture of
     Lincoln on the Stump--Humors of the Campaign--Some Sharp
     Rejoinders--Words of Soberness--Close of the Conflict


CHAPTER XII

     A Year of Waiting and Trial--Again Defeated for the
     Senate--Depression and Neglect--Lincoln Enlarging His
     Boundaries--On the Stump in Ohio--A Speech to Kentuckians--Second
     Visit to Cincinnati--A Short Trip to Kansas--Lincoln in New York
     City--The Famous Cooper Institute Speech--A Strong and Favorable
     Impression--Visits New England--Secret of Lincoln's Success as an
     Orator--Back to Springfield--Disposing of a Campaign
     Slander--Lincoln's Account of His Visit to a Five Points Sunday
     School


CHAPTER XIII

     Looking towards the Presidency--The Illinois Republican Convention
     of 1860--A "Send-Off" for Lincoln--The National Republican
     Convention at Chicago--Contract of the Leading Candidates--Lincoln
     Nominated--Scenes at the Convention--Sketches by
     Eye-Witnesses--Lincoln Hearing the News--The Scene at
     Springfield--A Visit to Lincoln at His Home--Recollections of a
     Distinguished Sculptor--Receiving the Committee of the
     Convention--Nomination of Douglas--Campaign of 1860--Various
     Campaign Reminiscences--Lincoln and the Tall Southerner--The Vote
     of the Springfield Clergy--A Graceful Letter to the Poet
     Bryant--"Looking up Hard Spots"


CHAPTER XIV

     Lincoln Chosen President--The Election of 1860--The Waiting-Time at
     Springfield--A Deluge of Visitors--Various Impressions of the
     President-Elect--Some Queer Callers--Looking over the Situation
     with Friends--Talks about the Cabinet--Thurlow Weed's Visit to
     Springfield--The Serious Aspect of National Affairs--The South in
     Rebellion--Treason at the National Capital--Lincoln's Farewell
     Visit to His Mother--The Old Sign, "Lincoln & Herndon"--The Last
     Day at Springfield--Farewell Speech to Friends and Neighbors--Off
     for the Capital--The Journey to Washington--Receptions and Speeches
     along the Route--At Cincinnati: A Hitherto Unpublished Speech by
     Lincoln--At Cleveland: Personal Descriptions of Mr. and Mrs.
     Lincoln--At New York City: Impressions of the New President--Perils
     of the Journey--The Baltimore Plot--Change of Route--Arrival at the
     Capital


CHAPTER XV

     Lincoln at the Helm--First Days in Washington--Meeting Public--Men
     and Discussing Public Affairs--The Inauguration--The Inaugural
     Address--A New Era Begun--Lincoln in the White House--The First
     Cabinet--The President and the Office-Seekers--Southern Prejudice
     against Lincoln--Ominous Portents, but Lincoln not Dismayed--The
     President's Reception Room--Varied Impressions of the New
     President--Guarding the White House


CHAPTER XVI

     Civil War--Uprising of the Nation--The President's First Call for
     Troops--Response of the Loyal North--The Riots in
     Baltimore--Loyalty of Stephen A. Douglas--Douglas's Death--Blockade
     of Southern Ports--Additional War Measures--Lincoln Defines the
     Policy of the Government--His Conciliatory Course--His Desire to
     Save Kentucky--The President's First Message to Congress--Gathering
     of Troops in Washington--Reviews and Parades--Disaster at Bull
     Run--The President Visits the Army--Good Advice to an Angry
     Officer--A Peculiar Cabinet Meeting--Dark Days for Lincoln--A
     "Black Mood" in the White House--Lincoln's Unfaltering
     Courage--Relief in Story-Telling--A Pretty Good Land
     Title--"Measuring up" with Charles Sumner--General Scott "Unable as
     a Politician"--A Good Drawing-Plaster--The New York Millionaires
     who Wanted a Gunboat--A Good Bridge-Builder--A Sick Lot of
     Office-Seekers


CHAPTER XVII

     Lincoln's Wise Statesmanship--The Mason and Slidell
     Affair--Complications with England--Lincoln's "Little Story" on the
     Trent Affair--Building of the "Monitor"--Lincoln's Part in the
     Enterprise--The President's First Annual Message--Discussion of the
     Labor Question--A President's Reception in War Time--A Great
     Affliction--Death in the White House--Chapters from the Secret
     Service--A Morning Call on the President--Goldwin Smith's
     Impressions of Lincoln--Other Notable Tributes


CHAPTER XVIII

     Lincoln and His Cabinet--An Odd Assortment of
     Officials--Misconceptions of Rights and Duties--Frictions and
     Misunderstandings--The Early Cabinet Meetings--Informal
     Conversational Affairs--Queer Attitude toward the War--Regarded as
     a Political Affair--Proximity to Washington a Hindrance to Military
     Success--Disturbances in the Cabinet--A Senate Committee Demands
     Seward's Removal from the Cabinet--Lincoln's Mastery of the
     Situation--Harmony Restored--Stanton becomes War Secretary--Sketch
     of a Remarkable Man--Next to Lincoln, the Master-Mind of the
     Cabinet--Lincoln the Dominant Power


CHAPTER XIX

     Lincoln's Personal Attention to the Military Problems of the
     War--Efforts to Push forward the War--Disheartening
     Delays--Lincoln's Worry and Perplexity Brightening Prospects--Union
     Victories in North Carolina and Tennessee--Proclamation by the
     President--Lincoln Wants to See for Himself--Visits Fortress
     Monroe--Witnesses an Attack on the Rebel Ram "Merrimac"--The
     Capture of Norfolk--Lincoln's Account of the Affair--Letter to
     McClellan--Lincoln and the Union Soldiers--His Tender Solicitude
     for the Boys in Blue--Soldiers Always Welcome at the White
     House--Pardoning Condemned Soldiers--Letter to a Bereaved
     Mother--The Case of Cyrus Pringle--Lincoln's Love of Soldiers'
     Humor--Visiting the Soldiers in Trenches and Hospitals--Lincoln at
     "The Soldiers' Rest"


CHAPTER XX

     Lincoln and McClellan--The Peninsular Campaign of 1862--Impatience
     with McClellan's Delay--Lincoln Defends McClellan from Unjust
     Criticism--Some Harrowing Experiences--McClellan Recalled from the
     Peninsula--His Troops Given to General Pope--Pope's Defeat at
     Manassas--A Critical Situation--McClellan again in Command--Lincoln
     Takes the Responsibility--McClellan's Account of His
     Reinstatement--The Battle of Antietam--The President
     Vindicated--Again Dissatisfied with McClellan--Visits the Army in
     the Field--The President in the Saddle--Correspondence between
     Lincoln and McClellan--McClellan's Final Removal--Lincoln's
     Summing-Up of McClellan--McClellan's "Body-Guard"


CHAPTER XXI

     Lincoln and Slavery--Plan for Gradual Emancipation--Anti-Slavery
     Legislation in 1862--Pressure Brought to Bear on the
     Executive--The Delegation of Quakers--A Visit from Chicago
     Clergymen--Interview between Lincoln and Channing--Lincoln and
     Horace Greeley--The President's Answer to "The Prayer of Twenty
     Millions of People"--Conference between Lincoln and
     Greeley--Emancipation Resolved on--The Preliminary
     Proclamation--Lincoln's Account of It--Preparing for the Final
     Act--The Emancipation Proclamation--Particulars of the Great
     Document--Fate of the Original Draft--Lincoln's Outline of His
     Course and Views Regarding Slavery


CHAPTER XXII

     President and People--Society at the White House in
     1862-3--The President's Informal Receptions--A Variety of
     Callers--Characteristic Traits of Lincoln--His Ability to Say
     _No_ when Necessary--Would not Countenance Injustice--Good
     Sense and Tact in Settling Quarrels--His Shrewd Knowledge of
     Men--Getting Rid of Bores--Loyalty to His Friends--Views of
     His Own Position--"Attorney for the People"--Desire that They
     Should Understand Him--His Practical Kindness--A Badly Scared
     Petitioner--Telling a Story to Relieve Bad News--A Breaking
     Heart beneath the Smiles--His Deeply Religious Nature--The
     Changes Wrought by Grief


     CHAPTER XXIII

     Lincoln's Home-Life in the White House--Comfort in the
     Companionship of his Youngest Son--"Little Tad" the Bright Spot in
     the White House--The President and His Little Boy Reviewing the
     Army of the Potomac--Various Phases of Lincoln's Character--His
     Literary Tastes--Fondness for Poetry and Music--His Remarkable
     Memory--Not a Latin Scholar--Never Read a Novel--Solace in
     Theatrical Representation--Anecdotes of Booth and
     McCullough--Methods of Literary Work--Lincoln as an Orator--Caution
     in Impromptu Speeches--His Literary Style--Management of His
     Private Correspondence--Knowledge of Woodcraft--Trees and Human
     Character--Exchanging Views with Professor Agassiz--Magnanimity
     toward Opponents--Righteous Indignation--Lincoln's Religious Nature


CHAPTER XXIV

     Trials of the Administration in 1863--Hostility to War
     Measures--Lack of Confidence at the North--Opposition in
     Congress--How Lincoln Felt about the "Fire in the Rear"--Criticisms
     from Various Quarters--Visit of "the Boston Set"--The Government on
     a Tight-Rope--The Enlistment of Colored Troops--Interview between
     Lincoln and Frederick Douglass--Reverses in the Field--Changes of
     Military Leaders--From Burnside to Hooker--Lincoln's First Meeting
     with "Fighting Joe"--The President's Solicitude--His Warning Letter
     to Hooker--His Visit to the Rappahannock--Hooker's Self-Confidence
     the "Worst Thing about Him"--The Defeat at Chancellorsville--The
     Failure of Our Generals--"Wanted, a Man"


CHAPTER XXV

     The Battle-Summer of 1863--A Turn of the Tide--Lee's Invasion of
     Pennsylvania--A Threatening Crisis--Change of Union
     Commanders--Meade Succeeds Hooker--The Battle of
     Gettysburg--Lincoln's Anxiety during the Fight--The Retreat of
     Lee--Union Victories in the Southwest--The Capture of
     Vicksburg--Lincoln's Thanks to Grant--Returning
     Cheerfulness--Congratulations to the Country--Improved State of
     Feeling at the North--State Elections of 1863--The Administration
     Sustained--Dedication of the National Cemetery at
     Gettysburg--Lincoln's Address--Scenes and Incidents at the
     Dedication--Meeting with Old John Burns--Edward Everett's
     Impressions of Lincoln


CHAPTER XXVI

     Lincoln and Grant--Their Personal Relations--Grant's Success at
     Chattanooga--Appointed Lieutenant-General--Grant's First Visit to
     Washington--His Meeting with Lincoln--Lincoln's First Impressions
     of Grant--The First "General" Lincoln had Found--"That Presidential
     Grub"--True Version of the Whiskey Anecdote--Lincoln Tells Grant
     the Story of Sykes's Dog--"We'd Better Let Mr. Grant Have His Own
     Way"--Grant's Estimate of Lincoln


CHAPTER XXVII

     Lincoln's Second Presidential Term--His Attitude toward it--Rival
     Candidates for the Nomination--Chase's Achillean Wrath--Harmony
     Restored--The Baltimore Convention--Decision "not to Swap Horses
     while Crossing a Stream"--The Summer of 1864--Washington again
     Threatened--Lincoln under Fire--Unpopular Measures--The President's
     Perplexities and Trials--The Famous Letter "To Whom It May
     Concern"--Little Expectation of Re-election--Dangers of
     Assassination--A Thrilling Experience--Lincoln's Forced
     Serenity--"The Saddest Man in the World"--A Break in the
     Clouds--Lincoln Vindicated by Re-election--Cheered and
     Reassured--More Trouble with Chase--Lincoln's Final Disposal of
     Him--The President's Fourth Annual Message--His Position toward the
     Rebellion and Slavery Reaffirmed--Colored Folks' Reception at the
     White House--Passage of the Amendment Prohibiting Slavery--Lincoln
     and the Southern Peace Commissioners--The Meeting in Hampton
     Roads--Lincoln's Impression of A.H. Stephens--The Second
     Inauguration--Second Inaugural Address--"With Malice toward None,
     with Charity for All"--An Auspicious Omen


CHAPTER XXVIII

     Close of the Civil War--Last Acts in the Great Tragedy--Lincoln
     at the Front--A Memorable Meeting--Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and
     Porter--Life on Shipboard--Visit to Petersburg--Lincoln and the
     Prisoners--Lincoln in Richmond--The Negroes Welcoming Their
     "Great Messiah"--A Warm Reception--Lee's Surrender--Lincoln
     Receives the News--Universal Rejoicing--Lincoln's Last Speech to
     the Public--His Feelings and Intentions toward the South--His
     Desire for Reconciliation


CHAPTER XXIX

     The Last of Earth--Events of the Last Day of Lincoln's Life--The
     Last Cabinet Meeting--The Last Drive with Mrs. Lincoln--Incidents
     of the Afternoon--Riddance to Jacob Thompson--A Final Act of
     Pardon--The Fatal Evening--The Visit to the Theatre--The Assassin's
     Shot--A Scene of Horror--Particulars of the Crime--The Dying
     President--A Nation's Grief--Funeral Obsequies--The Return to
     Illinois--At Rest in Oak Ridge Cemetery


INDEX




ILLUSTRATIONS

Abraham Lincoln
  _From an Original Drawing by J.N. Marble, never before published_

Francis F. Browne

Abraham Lincoln




[Illustration: A. Lincoln]




THE EVERY-DAY LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN




CHAPTER I


     Ancestry--The Lincolns in Kentucky--Death of Lincoln's
     Grandfather--Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks--Mordecai
     Lincoln--Birth of Abraham Lincoln--Removal to Indiana--Early
     Years--Dennis Hanks--Lincoln's Boyhood--Death of Nancy Hanks--Early
     School Days--Lincoln's First Dollar--Presentiments of Future
     Greatness--Down the Mississippi--Removal to Illinois--Lincoln's
     Father--Lincoln the Storekeeper--First Official Act--Lincoln's
     Short Sketch of His Own Life.

The year 1809--that year which gave William E. Gladstone to England--was
in our country the birth-year of him who wears the most distinguished
name that has yet been written on the pages of American history--ABRAHAM
LINCOLN. In a rude cabin in a clearing, in the wilds of that section
which was once the hunting-ground and later the battle-field of the
Cherokees and other war-like tribes, and which the Indians themselves
had named Kentucky because it was "dark and bloody ground," the great
War President of the United States, after whose name History has written
the word "Emancipator," first saw the light. Born and nurtured in
penury, inured to hardship, coarse food, and scanty clothing,--the story
of his youth is full of pathos. Small wonder that when asked in his
later years to tell something of his early life, he replied by quoting a
line from Gray's Elegy:

     "The short and simple annals of the poor."

Lincoln's ancestry has been traced with tolerable certainty through five
generations to Samuel Lincoln of Norfolk County, England. Not many
years after the landing of the "Mayflower" at Plymouth--perhaps in the
year 1638--Samuel Lincoln's son Mordecai had emigrated to Hingham,
Massachusetts. Perhaps because he was a Quaker, a then persecuted sect,
he did not remain long at Hingham, but came westward as far as Berks
County, Pennsylvania. His son, John Lincoln, went southward from
Pennsylvania and settled in Rockingham County, Virginia. Later, in 1782,
while the last events of the American Revolution were in progress,
Abraham Lincoln, son of John and grandfather of President Lincoln, moved
into Kentucky and took up a tract of government land in Mercer County.
In the Field Book of Daniel Boone, the Kentucky pioneer, (now in
possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society), appears the following
note of purchase:

     "Abraham Lincoln enters five hundred acres of land on a Treasury
     warrant on the south side of Licking Creek or River, in Kentucky."

At this time Kentucky was included within the limits and jurisdiction of
Virginia. In 1775 Daniel Boone had built a fort at Boonesborough, on the
Kentucky river, and it was not far from this site that Abraham Lincoln,
President Lincoln's grandfather, located his claim and put up a rude log
hut for the shelter of his family. The pioneers of Kentucky cleared
small spaces and erected their humble dwellings. They had to contend not
only with the wild forces of nature, and to defend themselves from the
beasts of the forest,--more to be feared than either were the hostile
Indians. The settlers were filled with terror of these stealthy foes. At
home and abroad they kept their guns ready for instant use both night
and day. Many a hard battle was fought between the Indian and the
pioneer. Many an unguarded woodsman was shot down without warning while
busy about his necessary work. Among these was Abraham Lincoln. The
story of his death is related by Mr. I.N. Arnold. "Thomas Lincoln was
with his father in the field when the savages suddenly fell upon them.
Mordecai and Josiah, his elder brothers, were near by in the forest.
Mordecai, startled by a shot, saw his father fall, and running to the
cabin seized the loaded rifle, rushed to one of the loop-holes cut
through the logs of the cabin, and saw the Indian who had fired. He had
just caught the boy, Thomas, and was running toward the forest. Pointing
the rifle through the logs and aiming at a medal on the breast of the
Indian, Mordecai fired. The Indian fell, and springing to his feet the
boy ran to the open arms of his mother at the cabin door. Meanwhile
Josiah, who had run to the fort for aid, returned with a party of
settlers. The bodies of Abraham Lincoln and the Indian who had been
killed were brought in. From this time forth Mordecai Lincoln was the
mortal enemy of the Indian, and it is said that he sacrificed many in
revenge for the murder of his father."

In the presence of such dangers Thomas Lincoln spent his boyhood. He was
born in 1778, and could not have been much more than four years old on
that fatal day when in one swift moment his father lay dead beside him
and vengeance had been exacted by his resolute boy brother. It was such
experiences as these that made of the pioneers the sturdy men they were.
They acquired habits of heroism. Their sinews became wiry; their nerves
turned to steel. Their senses became sharpened. They grew alert, steady,
prompt and deft in every emergency.

Of Mordecai Lincoln, the boy who had exhibited such coolness and daring
on the day of his father's death, many stories are told after he reached
manhood. "He was naturally a man of considerable genius," says one who
knew him. "He was a man of great drollery. It would almost make you
laugh to look at him. I never saw but one other man who excited in me
the same disposition to laugh, and that was Artemus Ward. Abe Lincoln
had a very high opinion of his uncle, and on one occasion remarked that
Uncle Mord had run off with all the talents of the family."

Thomas Lincoln was twenty-eight years old before he sought a wife. His
choice fell upon a young woman of twenty-three whose name was Nancy
Hanks. Like her husband, she was of English descent. Like his, her
parents had followed in the path of emigration from Virginia to
Kentucky. The couple were married by the Rev. Jesse Head, a Methodist
minister located at Springfield, Washington County, Kentucky. They lived
for a time in Elizabethtown, but after the birth of their first child,
Sarah, they removed to Rock Spring farm, on Nolin Creek, in Hardin
(afterward LaRue) County. In this desolate spot, a strange and unlikely
place for the birth of one destined to play so memorable a part in the
history of the world, on the twelfth day of February, 1809, Abraham
Lincoln the President was born.

Of all the gross injustice ever done to the memory of woman, that which
has been accorded to Nancy Hanks is the greatest. The story which cast a
shadow upon her parentage, and on that of her illustrious son as well,
should be sternly relegated to the oblivion whence it came. Mr. Henry
Watterson, in his brilliant address on Lincoln, refers to him as "that
strange, incomparable man, _of whose parentage we neither know nor
care_." In some localities, particularly in Kentucky and South Carolina,
the rumor is definite and persistent that the President was not the son
of Thomas Lincoln, the illiterate and thriftless, but of one Colonel
Hardin for whom Hardin County was named; that Nancy Hanks was herself
the victim of unlegalized motherhood, the natural daughter of an
aristocratic, wealthy, and well-educated Virginia planter, and that this
accounted for many of her son's characteristics. The story has long
since been disproved. Efforts to verify it brought forth the fact that
it sprang into being in the early days of the Civil War and was
evidently a fabrication born of the bitter spirit of the hour.

It was not from his father, however, that Lincoln inherited any of his
remarkable traits. The dark coarse hair, the gray eyes, sallow
complexion, and brawny strength, which were his, constituted his sole
inheritance on the paternal side. But Nancy Hanks was gentle and
refined, and would have adorned any station in life. She was beautiful
in youth, with dark hair, regular features, and soft sparkling hazel
eyes. She was unusually intelligent, and read all the books she could
obtain. Says Mr. Arnold: "She was a woman of deep religious feeling, of
the most exemplary character, and most tenderly and affectionately
devoted to her family. Her home indicated a love of beauty exceptional
in the wild settlement in which she lived, and judging from her early
death it is probable that she was of a physique less hardy than that of
those among whom she lived. Hers was a strong, self-reliant spirit,
which commanded the love and respect of the rugged people among whom she
dwelt."

The tender and reverent spirit of Abraham Lincoln, and the pensive
melancholy of his disposition, he no doubt inherited from his mother.
Amid the toil and struggle of her busy life she found time not only to
teach him to read and write but to impress upon him ineffaceably that
love of truth and justice, that perfect integrity and reverence for God,
for which he was noted all his life. Lincoln always looked upon his
mother with unspeakable affection, and never ceased to cherish the
memory of her life and teaching.

A spirit of restlessness, a love of adventure, a longing for new scenes,
and possibly the hope of improving his condition, led Thomas Lincoln to
abandon the Rock Spring farm, in the fall of 1816, and begin life over
again in the wilds of southern Indiana. The way thither lay through
unbroken country and was beset with difficulties. Often the travellers
were obliged to cut their road as they went. With the resolution of
pioneers, however, they began the journey. At the end of several days
they had gone but eighteen miles. Abraham Lincoln was then but seven
years old, but was already accustomed to the use of axe and gun. He lent
a willing hand, and bore his share in the labor and fatigue connected
with the difficult journey. In after years he said that he had never
passed through a more trying experience than when he went from
Thompson's Ferry to Spencer County, Indiana. On arriving, a shanty for
immediate use was hastily erected. Three sides were enclosed, the fourth
remaining open. This served as a home for several months, when a more
comfortable cabin was built. On the eighteenth of October, 1817, Thomas
Lincoln entered a quarter-section of government land eighteen miles
north of the Ohio river and about a mile and a half from the present
village of Gentryville. About a year later they were followed by the
family of Thomas and Betsy Sparrow, relatives of Mrs. Lincoln and
old-time neighbors on the Rock Spring farm in Kentucky. Dennis Hanks, a
member of the Sparrow household and cousin of Abraham Lincoln, came
also. He has furnished some recollections of the President's boyhood
which are well worth recording. "Uncle Dennis," as he was familiarly
called, was himself a striking character, a man of original manners and
racy conversation. A sketch of him as he appeared to an observer in his
later days is thus given: "Uncle Dennis is a typical Kentuckian, born in
Hardin County in 1799. His face is sun-bronzed and ploughed with the
furrows of time, but he has a resolute mouth, a firm grip of the jaws,
and a broad forehead above a pair of piercing eyes. The eyes seem out of
place in the weary, faded face, but they glow and flash like two diamond
sparks set in ridges of dull gold. The face is a serious one, but the
play of light in the eyes, unquenchable by time, betrays a nature of
sunshine and elate with life. A glance at the profile shows a face
strikingly Lincoln-like,--prominent cheek bones, temple, nose, and chin;
but best of all is that twinkling drollery in the eye that flashed in
the White House during the dark days of the Civil War."

Uncle Dennis's recollections go back to the birth of Abraham Lincoln. To
use his own words: "I rikkilect I run all the way, over two miles, to
see Nancy Hanks's boy baby. Her name was Nancy Hanks before she married
Thomas Lincoln. 'Twas common for connections to gather in them days to
see new babies. I held the wee one a minute. I was ten years old, and it
tickled me to hold the pulpy, red little Lincoln. The family moved to
Indiana," he went on, "when Abe was about nine. Mr. Lincoln moved first,
and built a camp of brush in Spencer County. We came a year later, and
he had then a cabin. So he gave us the shanty. Abe killed a turkey the
day we got there, and couldn't get through tellin' about it. The name
was pronounced Linkhorn by the folks then. We was all uneducated. After
a spell we learnt better. I was the only boy in the place all them
years, and Abe and me was always together."

Dennis Hanks claims to have taught his young cousin to read, write, and
cipher. "He knew his letters pretty wellish, but no more. His mother had
taught him. If ever there was a good woman on earth, she was one,--a
true Christian of the Baptist church. But she died soon after we
arrived, and Abe was left without a teacher. His father couldn't read a
word. The boy had only about one quarter of schooling, hardly that. I
then set in to help him. I didn't know much, but I did the best I could.
Sometimes he would write with a piece of charcoal or the p'int of a
burnt stick on the fence or floor. We got a little paper at the country
town, and I made some ink out of blackberry briar-root and a little
copperas in it. It was black, but the copperas ate the paper after a
while. I made Abe's first pen out of a turkey-buzzard feather. We had no
geese them days. After he learned to write his name he was scrawlin' it
everywhere. Sometimes he would write it in the white sand down by the
crick bank and leave it there till the waves would blot it out. He
didn't take to books in the beginnin'. We had to hire him at first, but
after he got a taste on't it was the old story--we had to pull the sow's
ears to get her to the trough, and then pull her tail to get her away.
He read a great deal, and had a wonderful memory--wonderful. Never
forgot anything."

Lincoln's first reading book was Webster's Speller. "When I got him
through that," said Uncle Dennis, "I had only a copy of the Indiana
Statutes. Then Abe got hold of a book. I can't rikkilect the name. It
told a yarn about a feller, a nigger or suthin', that sailed a flatboat
up to a rock, and the rock was magnetized and drawed all the nails out,
and he got a duckin' or drowned or suthin',--I forget now. [It was the
"Arabian Nights."] Abe would lay on the floor with a chair under his
head and laugh over them stories by the hour. I told him they was likely
lies from beginnin' to end, but he learned to read right well in them. I
borrowed for him the Life of Washington and the Speeches of Henry Clay.
They had a powerful influence on him. He told me afterwards in the White
House he wanted to live like Washington. His speeches show it, too. But
the other book did the most amazin' work. Abe was a Democrat, like his
father and all of us, when he began to read it. When he closed it he was
a Whig, heart and soul, and he went on step by step till he became
leader of the Republicans."

These reminiscences of Dennis Hanks give the clearest and undoubtedly
the most accurate glimpse of Lincoln's youth. He says further, referring
to the boy's unusual physical strength: "My, how he would chop! His axe
would flash and bite into a sugar-tree or sycamore, and down it would
come. If you heard him fellin' trees in a clearin' you would say there
was three men at work, the way the trees fell. Abe was never sassy or
quarrelsome. I've seen him walk into a crowd of sawin' rowdies and tell
some droll yarn and bust them all up. It was the same after he got to be
a lawyer. All eyes was on him whenever he riz. There was _suthin'
peculiarsome_ about him. I moved from Indiana to Illinois when Abe did.
I bought a little improvement near him, six miles from Decatur. Here the
famous rails were split that were carried round in the campaign. They
were called _his_ rails, but you never can tell. I split some of 'em. He
was a master hand at maulin' rails. I heard him say in a speech once,
'If I didn't make these I made many just as good.' Then the crowd
yelled."

One of his playmates has furnished much that is of interest in regard to
the reputation which Lincoln left behind him in the neighborhood where
he passed his boyhood and much of his youth. This witness says:
"Whenever the court was in session he was a frequent attendant. John A.
Breckenridge was the foremost lawyer in the community, and was famed as
an advocate in criminal cases. Lincoln was sure to be present when he
spoke. Doing the chores in the morning, he would walk to Booneville, the
county seat of Warwick County, seventeen miles away, then home in time
to do the chores at night, repeating this day after day. The lawyer soon
came to know him. Years afterwards, when Lincoln was President, a
venerable gentleman one day entered his office in the White House, and
standing before him said: 'Mr. President, you don't know me.' Mr.
Lincoln eyed him sharply for a moment, and then quickly replied with a
smile, 'Yes I do. You are John A. Breckenridge. I used to walk
thirty-four miles a day to hear you plead law in Booneville, and
listening to your speeches at the bar first inspired me with the
determination to be a lawyer.'"

Lincoln's love for his gentle mother, and his grief over her untimely
death, is a touching story. Attacked by a fatal disease, the life of
Nancy Hanks wasted slowly away. Day after day her son sat by her bed
reading to her such portions of the Bible as she desired to hear. At
intervals she talked to him, urging him to walk in the paths of honor,
goodness, and truth. At last she found rest, and her son gave way to
grief that could not be controlled. In an opening in the timber, a short
distance from the cabin, sympathizing friends and neighbors laid her
body away and offered sincere prayers above her grave. The simple
service did not seem to the son adequate tribute to the memory of the
beloved mother whose loss he so sorely felt, but no minister could be
procured at the time to preach a funeral sermon. In the spring, however,
Abraham Lincoln, then a lad of ten, wrote to Elder Elkin, who had lived
near them in Kentucky, begging that he would come and preach a sermon
above his mother's grave, and adding that by granting this request he
would confer a lasting favor upon his father, his sister, and himself.
Although it involved a journey of more than a hundred miles on
horseback, the good man cheerfully complied. Once more the neighbors and
friends gathered about the grave of Nancy Hanks, and her son found
comfort in their sympathy and their presence. The spot where Lincoln's
mother lies is now enclosed within a high iron fence. At the head of the
grave a white stone, simple, unaffected, and in keeping with the
surroundings, has been placed. It bears the following inscription:

    NANCY HANKS LINCOLN,
    MOTHER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN,
    DIED OCTOBER 5, A.D. 1818.
    AGED THIRTY-FIVE YEARS.
    _Erected by a friend of her martyred son_.

Lincoln always held the memory of his mother in the deepest reverence
and affection. Says Dr. J.G. Holland: "Long after her sensitive heart
and weary hands had crumbled into dust, and had climbed to life again in
forest flowers, he said to a friend, with tears in his eyes, 'All that I
am or ever hope to be I owe to my sainted mother.'"

The vacant place of wife and mother was sadly felt in the Lincoln cabin,
but before the year 1819 had closed it was filled by a woman who nobly
performed the duties of her trying position. Thomas Lincoln had known
Mrs. Sarah Johnston when both were young and living in Elizabethtown,
Kentucky. They had married in the same year; and now, being alike
bereaved, he persuaded her to unite their broken households into one.

By this union, a son and two daughters, John, Sarah, and Matilda, were
added to the Lincoln family. All dwelt together in perfect harmony, the
mother showing no difference in the treatment of her own children and
the two now committed to her charge. She exhibited a special fondness
for the little Abraham, whose precocious talents and enduring qualities
she was quick to apprehend. Though he never forgot the "angel mother"
sleeping on the forest-covered hill-top, the boy rewarded with a
profound and lasting affection the devoted care of her who proved a
faithful friend and helper during the rest of his childhood and youth.
In her later life the step-mother spoke of him always with the tenderest
feeling. On one occasion she said: "He never gave me a cross word or
look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I
requested of him."

The child had enjoyed a little irregular schooling while living in
Kentucky, getting what instruction was possible of one Zachariah Birney,
a Catholic, who taught for a time close by his father's house. He also
attended, as convenience permitted, a school kept by Caleb Hazel, nearly
four miles away, walking the distance back and forth with his sister.
Soon after coming under the care of his step-mother, the lad was
afforded some similar opportunities for learning. His first master in
Indiana was Azel Dorsey. The sort of education dispensed by him, and the
circumstances under which it was given, are described by Mr. Ward H.
Lamon, at one time Lincoln's law-partner at Springfield, Illinois. "Azel
Dorsey presided in a small house near the Little Pigeon Creek
meeting-house, a mile and a half from the Lincoln cabin. It was built of
unhewn logs, and had holes for windows, in which greased paper served
for glass. The roof was just high enough for a man to stand erect. Here
the boy was taught reading, writing, and ciphering. They spelt in
classes, and 'trapped' up and down. These juvenile contests were very
exciting to the participants, and it is said by the survivors that Abe
was even then the equal, if not the superior, of any scholar in his
class. The next teacher was Andrew Crawford. Mrs. Gentry says he began
teaching in the neighborhood in the winter of 1822-3. Crawford 'kept
school' in the same little school-house which had been the scene of
Dorsey's labors, and the windows were still adorned with the greased
leaves of old copybooks that had come down from Dorsey's time. Abe was
now in his fifteenth year, and began to exhibit symptoms of gallantry
toward the other sex. He was growing at a tremendous rate, and two years
later attained his full height of six feet and four inches. He wore low
shoes, buckskin breeches, linsey-woolsey shirt, and a cap made of the
skin of a 'possum or a coon. The breeches clung close to his thighs and
legs, and failed by a large space to meet the tops of his shoes. He
would always come to school thus, good-humoredly and laughing. He was
always in good health, never sick, had an excellent constitution and
took care of it."

Crawford taught "manners"--a feature of backwoods education to which
Dorsey had not aspired. Crawford had doubtless introduced it as a
refinement which would put to shame the humble efforts of his
predecessor. One of the scholars was required to retire, and then to
re-enter the room as a polite gentleman is supposed to enter a
drawing-room. He was received at the door by another scholar and
conducted from bench to bench until he had been introduced to all the
young ladies and gentlemen in the room. Lincoln went through the ordeal
countless times. If he took a serious view of the performance it must
have put him to exquisite torture, for he was conscious that he was not
a perfect type of manly beauty. If, however, it struck him as at all
funny, it must have filled him with unspeakable mirth to be thus gravely
led about, angular and gawky, under the eyes of the precise Crawford, to
be introduced to the boys and girls of his acquaintance.

While in Crawford's school the lad wrote his first compositions. The
exercise was not required by the teacher, but, as Nat Grigsby has said,
"he took it up on his own account." At first he wrote only short
sentences against cruelty to animals, but at last came forward with a
regular composition on the subject. He was annoyed and pained by the
conduct of the boys who were in the habit of catching terrapins and
putting coals of fire on their backs. "He would chide us," says Grigsby,
"tell us it was wrong, and would write against it."

One who has had the privilege of looking over some of the boyish
possessions of Lincoln says: "Among the most touching relics which I saw
was an old copy-book in which, at the age of fourteen, Lincoln had
taught himself to write and cipher. Scratched in his boyish hand on the
first page were these lines:

    _Abraham Lincoln
    his hand and pen.
    he will be good but
    god knows When_"

The boy's thirst for learning was not to be satisfied with the meagre
knowledge furnished in the miserable schools he was able to attend at
long intervals. His step-mother says: "He read diligently. He read
everything he could lay his hands on, and when he came across a passage
that struck him he would write it down on boards, if he had no paper,
and keep it until he had got paper. Then he would copy it, look at it,
commit it to memory, and repeat it. He kept a scrap-book into which he
copied everything which particularly pleased him." Mr. Arnold further
states: "There were no libraries and but few books in the back
settlements in which Lincoln lived. If by chance he heard of a book that
he had not read he would walk miles to borrow it. Among other volumes
borrowed from Crawford was Weems's Life of Washington. He read it with
great earnestness. He took it to bed with him in the loft and read till
his 'nubbin' of candle burned out. Then he placed the book between the
logs of the cabin, that it might be near as soon as it was light enough
in the morning to read. In the night a heavy rain came up and he awoke
to find his book wet through and through. Drying it as well as he could,
he went to Crawford and told him of the mishap. As he had no money to
pay for the injured book, he offered to work out the value of it.
Crawford fixed the price at three days' work, and the future President
pulled corn for three days, thus becoming owner of the coveted volume."
In addition to this, he was fortunate enough to get hold of Æsop's
Fables, Pilgrim's Progress, and the lives of Benjamin Franklin and Henry
Clay. He made these books his own by conning them over and over, copying
the more impressive portions until they were firmly fixed in his memory.
Commenting upon the value of this sort of mental training, Dr. Holland
wisely remarks: "Those who have witnessed the dissipating effect of many
books upon the minds of modern children do not find it hard to believe
that Abraham Lincoln's poverty of books was the wealth of his life. The
few he had did much to perfect the teaching which his mother had begun,
and to form a character which for quaint simplicity, earnestness,
truthfulness, and purity, has never been surpassed among the historic
personages of the world."

It may well have been that Lincoln's lack of books and the means of
learning threw him upon his own resources and led him into those modes
of thought, of quaint and apt  and logical reasoning, so
peculiar to him. At any rate, it is certain that books can no more make
a character like Lincoln than they can make a poet like Shakespeare.

    "By books may Learning sometimes befall,
    But Wisdom never by books at all,"--

a saying peculiarly true of a man such as Lincoln.

A testimonial to the influence of this early reading upon his childish
mind was given by Lincoln himself many years afterwards. While on his
way to Washington to assume the duties of the Presidency he passed
through Trenton, New Jersey, and in a speech made in the Senate Chamber
at that place he said: "May I be pardoned if, upon this occasion, I
mention that away back in my childhood, in the earliest days of my being
able to read, I got hold of a small book--such a one as few of the
younger members have seen, Weems's Life of Washington. I remember all
the accounts there given of the battle-fields and struggles for the
liberties of the country; and none fixed themselves upon my imagination
so deeply as the struggle here at Trenton. The crossing of the river,
the contest with the Hessians, the great hardships endured at that time,
all fixed themselves in my memory more than any single Revolutionary
event; and you all know, for you have all been boys, how these early
impressions last longer than any others. I recollect thinking then, boy
even though I was, that there must have been something more than common
that these men struggled for. I am exceedingly anxious that that thing
which they struggled for, that something even more than National
Independence, that something that held out a great promise to all the
people of the world for all time to come, I am exceedingly anxious that
this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people, shall be
perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle
was made."

Another incident in regard to the ruined volume which Lincoln had
borrowed from Crawford is related by Mr. Lamon. "For a long time," he
says, "there was one person in the neighborhood for whom Lincoln felt a
decided dislike, and that was Josiah Crawford, who had made him pull
fodder for three days to pay for Weems's Washington. On that score he
was hurt and mad, and declared he would have revenge. But being a poor
boy, a fact of which Crawford had already taken shameful advantage when
he extorted three days' labor, Abe was glad to get work anywhere, and
frequently hired out to his old adversary. His first business in
Crawford's employ was daubing the cabin, which was built of unhewn logs
with the bark on. In the loft of this house, thus finished by his own
hands, he slept for many weeks at a time. He spent his evenings as he
did at home,--writing on wooden shovels or boards with 'a coal, or keel,
from the branch.' This family was rich in the possession of several
books, which Abe read through time and again, according to his usual
custom. One of the books was the 'Kentucky Preceptor,' from which Mrs.
Crawford insists that he 'learned his school orations, speeches, and
pieces to write.' She tells us also that 'Abe was a sensitive lad, never
coming where he was not wanted'; that he always lifted his hat, and
bowed, when he made his appearance; and that 'he was tender and kind,'
like his sister, who was at the same time her maid-of-all-work. His pay
was twenty-five cents a day; 'and when he missed time, he would not
charge for it.' This latter remark of Mrs. Crawford reveals the fact
that her husband was in the habit of docking Abe on his miserable wages
whenever he happened to lose a few minutes from steady work. The time
came, however, when Lincoln got his revenge for all this petty
brutality. Crawford was as ugly as he was surly. His nose was a
monstrosity--long and crooked, with a huge mis-shapen stub at the end,
surmounted by a host of pimples, and the whole as blue as the usual
state of Mr. Crawford's spirits. Upon this member Abe levelled his
attacks, in rhyme, song, and chronicle; and though he could not reduce
the nose he gave it a fame as wide as to the Wabash and the Ohio. It is
not improbable that he learned the art of making the doggerel rhymes in
which he celebrated Crawford's nose from the study of Crawford's own
'Kentucky Preceptor.'"

Lincoln's sister Sarah was warmly attached to him, but was taken from
his companionship at an early age. It is said that her face somewhat
resembled his, that in repose it had the gravity which they both
inherited from their mother, but it was capable of being lighted almost
into beauty by one of her brother's ridiculous stories or sallies of
humor. She was a modest, plain, industrious girl, and was remembered
kindly by all who knew her. She was married to Aaron Grigsby at
eighteen, and died a year later. Like her brother, she occasionally
worked at the houses of the neighbors. She lies buried, not with her
mother, but in the yard of the old Pigeon Creek meeting-house.

A story which belongs to this period was told by Lincoln himself to Mr.
Seward and a few friends one evening in the Executive Mansion at
Washington. The President said: "Seward, you never heard, did you, how I
earned my first dollar?" "No," rejoined Mr. Seward. "Well," continued
Mr. Lincoln, "I belonged, you know, to what they call down South the
'scrubs.' We had succeeded in raising, chiefly by my labor, sufficient
produce, as I thought, to justify me in taking it down the river to
sell. After much persuasion, I got the consent of mother to go, and
constructed a little flatboat, large enough to take a barrel or two of
things that we had gathered, with myself and the bundle, down to the
Southern market. A steamer was coming down the river. We have, you know,
no wharves on the Western streams; and the custom was, if passengers
were at any of the landings, for them to go out in a boat, the steamer
stopping and taking them on board. I was contemplating my new flatboat,
and wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any way,
when two men came down to the shore in carriages with trunks. Looking at
the different boats, they singled out mine and asked, 'Who owns this?' I
answered somewhat modestly, 'I do.' 'Will you take us and our trunks to
the steamer?' asked one of them. 'Certainly,' said I. I was glad to have
the chance of earning something. I supposed that each of them would give
me two or three bits. The trunks were put on my flatboat, the passengers
seated themselves on the trunks, and I sculled them out to the steamer.
They got on board, and I lifted up their heavy trunks and put them on
the deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out
to them that they had forgotten to pay me. Each man took from his pocket
a silver half-dollar and threw it into the bottom of my boat. I could
scarcely believe my eyes. Gentlemen, you may think it a little thing,
and in these days it seems to me a trifle; but it was a great event in
my life. I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar
in less than a day,--that by honest work I had earned a dollar. The
world seemed wider and fairer to me. I was a more hopeful and confident
being from that time."

Notwithstanding the limitations of every kind which hemmed in the life
of young Lincoln, he had an instinctive feeling, born perhaps of his
eager ambition, that he should one day attain an exalted position. The
first betrayal of this premonition is thus related by Mr. Arnold:

"Lincoln attended court at Booneville, to witness a murder trial, at
which one of the Breckenridges from Kentucky made a very eloquent speech
for the defense. The boy was carried away with admiration, and was so
enthusiastic that, although a perfect stranger, he could not resist
expressing his admiration to Breckenridge. He wanted to be a lawyer. He
went home, dreamed of courts, and got up mock trials, at which he would
defend imaginary prisoners. Several of his companions at this period of
his life, as well as those who knew him after he went to Illinois,
declare that he was often heard to say, not in joke, but seriously, as
if he were deeply impressed rather than elated with the idea: 'I shall
some day be President of the United States.' It is stated by many of
Lincoln's old friends that he often said while still an obscure man,
'Some day I shall be President.' He undoubtedly had for years some
presentiment of this."

At seventeen Lincoln wrote a clear, neat, legible hand, was quick at
figures and able to solve easily any arithmetical problem not going
beyond the "Rule of Three." Mr. Arnold, noting these facts, says: "I
have in my possession a few pages from his manuscript 'Book of Examples
in Arithmetic' One of these is dated March 1, 1826, and headed
'Discount,' and then follows, in his careful handwriting: 'A definition
of Discount,' 'Rules for its computation,' 'Proofs and Various
Examples,' worked out in figures, etc.; then 'Interest on money' is
treated in the same way, all in his own handwriting. I doubt whether it
would be easy to find among scholars of our common or high schools, or
any school of boys of the age of seventeen, a better written specimen of
this sort of work, or a better knowledge of figures than is indicated by
this book of Lincoln's, written at the age of seventeen."

In March, 1828, Lincoln went to work for old Mr. Gentry, the founder of
Gentryville. "Early the next month the old gentleman furnished his son
Allen with a boat and a cargo of bacon and other produce with which he
was to go to New Orleans unless the stock should be sooner disposed of.
Abe, having been found faithful and efficient, was employed to accompany
the young man. He was paid eight dollars per month, and ate and slept on
board." The entire business of the trip was placed in Abraham's hands.
The fact tells its own story touching the young man's reputation for
capacity and integrity. He had never made the trip, knew nothing of the
journey, was unaccustomed to business transactions, had never been much
upon the river, but his tact and ability and honesty were so far trusted
that the trader was willing to risk the cargo in his care. The delight
with which the youth swung loose from the shore upon his clumsy craft,
with the prospect of a ride of eighteen hundred miles before him, and a
vision of the great world of which he had read and thought so much, may
be imagined. At this time he had become a very tall and powerful young
man. He had reached the height of six feet and four inches, a length of
trunk and limb remarkable even among the tall race of pioneers to which
he belonged.

Just before the river expedition, Lincoln had walked with a young girl
down to the river to show her his flatboat. She relates a circumstance
of the evening which is full of significance. "We were sitting on the
banks of the Ohio, or rather on the boat he had made. I said to Abe that
the sun was going down. He said to me, 'That's not so; it don't really
go down; it seems so. The earth turns from west to east and the
revolution of the earth carries us under; we do the sinking, as you call
it. The sun, as to us, is comparatively still; the sun's sinking is only
an appearance.' I replied, 'Abe, what a fool you are!' I know now that I
was the fool, not Lincoln. I am now thoroughly satisfied that he knew
the general laws of astronomy and the movements of the heavenly bodies.
He was better read then than the world knows or is likely to know
exactly. No man could talk to me as he did that night unless he had
known something of geography as well as astronomy. He often commented or
talked to me about what he had read,--seemed to read it out of the book
as he went along. He was the learned boy among us unlearned folks. He
took great pains to explain; could do it so simply. He was diffident,
too."

But another change was about to come into the life of Abraham Lincoln.
In 1830 his father set forth once more on the trail of the emigrant. He
had become dissatisfied with his location in southern Indiana, and
hearing favorable reports of the prairie lands of Illinois hoped for
better fortunes there. He parted with his farm and prepared for the
journey to Macon County, Illinois. Abraham visited the neighbors and
bade them goodbye; but on the morning selected for their departure, when
it came time to start, he was missing. He was found weeping at his
mother's grave, whither he had gone as soon as it was light. The thought
of leaving her behind filled him with unspeakable anguish. The household
goods were loaded, the oxen yoked, the family got into the covered
wagon, and Lincoln took his place by the oxen to drive. One of the
neighbors has said of this incident: "Well do I remember the day the
Lincolns left for Illinois. Little did I think that I was looking at a
boy who would one day be President of the United States!"

An interesting personal sketch of Thomas Lincoln is given by Mr. George
B. Balch, who was for many years a resident of Lerna, Coles County,
Illinois. Among other things he says: "Thomas Lincoln, father of the
great President, was called Uncle Tommy by his friends and Old Tom
Lincoln by other people. His property consisted of an old horse, a pair
of oxen and a few sheep--seven or eight head. My father bought two of
the sheep, they being the first we owned after settling in Illinois.
Thomas Lincoln was a large, bulky man, six feet tall and weighing about
two hundred pounds. He was large-boned, coarse-featured, had a large
blunt nose, florid complexion, light sandy hair and whiskers. He was
slow in speech and slow in gait. His whole appearance denoted a man of
small intellect and less ambition. It is generally supposed that he was
a farmer; and such he was, if one who tilled so little land by such
primitive modes could be so called. He never planted more than a few
acres, and instead of gathering and hauling his crop in a wagon he
usually carried it in baskets or large trays. He was uneducated,
illiterate, content with living from hand to mouth. His death occurred
on the fifteenth day of January, 1851. He was buried in a neighboring
country graveyard, about a mile north of Janesville, Coles County. There
was nothing to mark the place of his burial until February, 1861, when
Abraham Lincoln paid a last visit to his grave just before he left
Springfield for Washington. On a piece of oak board he cut the letters
T.L. and placed it at the head of the grave. It was carried away by some
relic-hunter, and the place remained as before, with nothing to mark it,
until the spring of 1876. Then the writer, fearing that the grave of
Lincoln's father would become entirely unknown, succeeded in awakening
public opinion on the subject. Soon afterward a marble shaft twelve feet
high was erected, bearing on its western face this inscription:

    THOMAS LINCOLN
    FATHER OF
    THE MARTYRED PRESIDENT.
    BORN
    JAN. 6th, 1778
    DIED
    JAN. 15th, 1851.
    LINCOLN.

"And now," concluded Mr. Balch, "I have given all that can be known of
Thomas Lincoln. I have written impartially and with a strict regard to
facts which can be substantiated by many of the old settlers in this
county. Thomas Lincoln was a harmless and honest man. Beyond this, one
will search in vain for any ancestral clue to the greatness of Abraham
Lincoln."

After reaching the new home in Illinois, young Lincoln worked with his
father until things were in shape for comfortable living. He helped to
build the log cabin, break up the new land and fence it in, splitting
the rails with his own hands. It was these very rails over which so much
sentiment was expended years afterward at an important epoch in
Lincoln's political career. During the sitting of the State Convention
at Decatur, a banner attached to two of these rails and bearing an
appropriate inscription was brought into the assemblage and formally
presented to that body amid a scene of unparalleled enthusiasm. After
that they were in demand in every State of the Union in which free labor
was honored. They were borne in processions by the people, and hailed by
hundreds of thousands as a symbol of triumph and a glorious vindication
of freedom and of the right and dignity of labor. These, however, were
not the first rails made by Lincoln. He was a practiced hand at the
business. As a memento of his pioneer accomplishment he preserved in
later years a cane made from a rail which he had split on his father's
farm.

The next important record of Lincoln's career connects him with Mr.
Denton Offutt. The circumstances which brought him into this relation
are thus narrated by Mr. J.H. Barrett: "While there was snow on the
ground, at the close of the year 1830, or early in 1831, a man came to
that part of Macon County where young Lincoln was living, in pursuit of
hands to aid him in a flatboat voyage down the Mississippi. The fact was
known that the youth had once made such a trip, and his services were
sought for this occasion. As one who had his own subsistence to earn,
with no capital but his hands, he accepted the proposition made him.
Perhaps there was something of his inherited and acquired fondness for
exciting adventure impelling him to this decision. With him were also
employed his former fellow-laborer, John Hanks, and a son of his
step-mother named John Johnston. In the spring of 1831 Lincoln set out
to fulfil his engagement. The floods had so swollen the streams that the
Sangamon country was a vast sea before him. His first entrance into that
county was over these wide-spread waters in a canoe. The time had come
to join his employer on his journey to New Orleans, but the latter had
been disappointed by another person on whom he relied to furnish him a
boat on the Illinois river. Accordingly all hands set to work, and
themselves built a boat on that river, for their purposes. This done,
they set out on their long trip, making a successful voyage to New
Orleans and back."

Mr. Herndon says: "Mr. Lincoln came into Sangamon County down the North
Fork of the Sangamon river, in a frail canoe, in the spring of 1831. I
can see from where I write the identical place where he cut the timbers
for his flatboat, which he built at a little village called Sangamon
Town, seven miles northwest of Springfield. Here he had it loaded with
corn, wheat, bacon, and other provisions destined for New Orleans, at
which place he landed in the month of May, 1831. He returned home in
June of that year, and finally settled in another little village called
New Salem, on the high bluffs of the Sangamon river, then in Sangamon
County and now in Menard County, and about twenty miles northwest of
Springfield."

The practical and ingenious character of Lincoln's mind is shown in the
act that several years after his river experience he invented and
patented a device for overcoming some of the difficulties in the
navigation of western rivers with which this trip had made him
familiar. The following interesting account of this invention is given:

"Occupying an ordinary and commonplace position in one of the show-cases
in the large hall of the Patent Office is one little model which in ages
to come will be prized as one of the most curious and most sacred relics
in that vast museum of unique and priceless things. This is a plain and
simple model of a steamboat roughly fashioned in wood by the hand of
Abraham Lincoln. It bears date 1849, when the inventor was known simply
as a successful lawyer and rising politician of Central Illinois.
Neither his practice nor his politics took up so much of his time as to
prevent him from giving some attention to contrivances which he hoped
might be of benefit to the world and of profit to himself. The design of
this invention is suggestive of one phase of Abraham Lincoln's early
life, when he went up and down the Mississippi as a flatboatman and
became familiar with some of the dangers and inconveniences attending
the navigation of the western rivers. It is an attempt to make it an
easy matter to transport vessels over shoals and snags and 'sawyers.'
The main idea is that of an apparatus resembling a noiseless bellows
placed on each side of the hull of the craft just below the water line
and worked by an odd but not complicated system of ropes, valves, and
pulleys. When the keel of the vessel grates against the sand or
obstruction these bellows are to be filled with air, and thus buoyed up
the ship is expected to float lightly and gayly over the shoal which
would otherwise have proved a serious interruption to her voyage. The
model, which is about eighteen or twenty inches long and has the
appearance of having been whittled with a knife out of a shingle and a
cigar-box, is built without any elaboration or ornament or any extra
apparatus beyond that necessary to show the operation of buoying the
steamer over the obstructions. It is carved as one might imagine a
retired railsplitter would whittle, strongly but not smoothly, and
evidently made with a view solely to convey to the minds of the patent
authorities, by the simplest possible means, an idea of the purpose and
plan of the invention. The label on the steamer's deck informs us that
the patent was obtained; but we do not learn that the navigation of the
western rivers was revolutionized by this quaint conception. The modest
little model has reposed here for many years, and the inventor has found
it his task to guide the ship of state over shoals more perilous and
obstructions more obstinate than any prophet dreamed of when Abraham
Lincoln wrote his bold autograph across the prow of his miniature
steamer."

At the conclusion of his trip to New Orleans, Lincoln's employer, Mr.
Offutt, entered into mercantile trade at New Salem, a settlement on the
Sangamon river, in Menard County, two miles from Petersburg, the county
seat. He opened a store of the class usually to be found in such small
towns, and also set up a flouring-mill. In the late expedition down the
Mississippi Mr. Offutt had learned Lincoln's valuable qualities, and was
anxious to secure his help in his new enterprise. Says Mr. Barrett: "For
want of other immediate employment, and in the same spirit which had
heretofore actuated him, Abraham Lincoln entered upon the duties of a
clerk, having an eye to both branches of his employer's business. This
connection continued for nearly a year, all duties of his position being
faithfully performed." It was to this year's humble but honorable
service of young Lincoln that Mr. Douglas tauntingly alluded in one of
his speeches during the canvass of 1858 as 'keeping a groggery.'

While engaged in the duties of Offutt's store Lincoln began the study of
English grammar. There was not a text-book to be obtained in the
neighborhood; but hearing that there was a copy of Kirkham's Grammar in
the possession of a person seven or eight miles distant he walked to
his house and succeeded in borrowing it. L.M. Green, a lawyer of
Petersburg, in Menard County, says that every time he visited New Salem
at this period Lincoln took him out upon a hill and asked him to explain
some point in Kirkham that had given him trouble. After having mastered
the book he remarked to a friend that if that was what they called a
science he thought he could "subdue another." Mr. Green says that
Lincoln's talk at this time showed that he was beginning to think of a
great life and a great destiny. Lincoln said to him on one occasion that
all his family seemed to have good sense but somehow none had ever
become distinguished. He thought perhaps he might become so. He had
talked, he said, with men who had the reputation of being great men, but
he could not see that they differed much from others. During this year
he was also much engaged with debating clubs, often walking six or seven
miles to attend them. One of these clubs held its meetings at an old
store-house in New Salem, and the first speech young Lincoln ever made
was made there. He used to call the exercising "practicing polemics." As
these clubs were composed principally of men of no education whatever,
some of their "polemics" are remembered as the most laughable of farces.
Lincoln's favorite newspaper at this time was the "Louisville Journal."
He received it regularly by mail, and paid for it during a number of
years when he had not money enough to dress decently. He liked its
politics, and was particularly delighted with its wit and humor, of
which he had the keenest appreciation.

At this era Lincoln was as famous for his skill in athletic sports as he
was for his love of books. Mr. Offutt, who had a strong regard for him,
according to Mr. Arnold, "often declared that his clerk, or salesman,
knew more than any man in the United States, and that he could out-run,
whip, or throw any man in the county. These boasts came to the ears of
the 'Clary Grove Boys,' a set of rude, roystering, good-natured
fellows, who lived in and around Clary's Grove, a settlement near New
Salem. Their leader was Jack Armstrong, a great square-built fellow,
strong as an ox, who was believed by his followers to be able to whip
any man on the Sangamon river. The issue was thus made between Lincoln
and Armstrong as to which was the better man, and although Lincoln tried
to avoid such contests, nothing but an actual trial of strength would
satisfy their partisans. They met and wrestled for some time without any
decided advantage on either side. Finally Armstrong resorted to some
foul play, which roused Lincoln's indignation. Putting forth his whole
strength, he seized the great bully by the neck and holding him at arm's
length shook him like a boy. The Clary Grove Boys were ready to pitch in
on behalf of their champion; and as they were the greater part of the
lookers-on, a general onslaught upon Lincoln seemed imminent. Lincoln
backed up against Offutt's store and calmly awaited the attack; but his
coolness and courage made such an impression upon Armstrong that he
stepped forward, grasped Lincoln's hand and shook it heartily, saying:
'Boys, Abe Lincoln is the best fellow that ever broke into this
settlement. He shall be one of us.' From that day forth Armstrong was
Lincoln's friend and most willing servitor. His hand, his table, his
purse, his vote, and that of the Clary Grove Boys as well, belonged to
Lincoln. The latter's popularity among them was unbounded. They saw that
he would play fair. He could stop a fight and quell a disturbance among
these rude neighbors when all others failed."

Under whatever circumstances Lincoln was forced into a fight, the end
could be confidently predicted. He was sure to thrash his opponent and
gain the latter's friendship afterwards by a generous use of victory.
Innumerable instances could be cited in proof of this statement. It is
related that "One day while showing goods to two or three women in
Offutt's store, a bully came in and began to talk in an offensive
manner, using much profanity and evidently wishing to provoke a quarrel.
Lincoln leaned over the counter and begged him, as ladies were present,
not to indulge in such talk. The bully retorted that the opportunity had
come for which he had long sought, and he would like to see the man who
could hinder him from saying anything he might choose to say. Lincoln,
still cool, told him that if he would wait until the ladies retired he
would hear what he had to say and give him any satisfaction he desired.
As soon as the women were gone the man became furious. Lincoln heard his
boasts and his abuse for a time, and finding that he was not to be put
off without a fight, said, 'Well, if you must be whipped, I suppose I
may as well whip you as any other man.' This was just what the bully had
been seeking, he said; so out of doors they went. Lincoln made short
work of him. He threw him upon the ground, and held him there as if he
had been a child, and gathering some 'smart-weed' which grew upon the
spot he rubbed it into his face and eyes until the fellow bellowed with
pain. Lincoln did all this without a particle of anger, and when the job
was finished went immediately for water, washed his victim's face and
did everything he could to alleviate his distress. The upshot of the
matter was that the man became his life-long friend and was a better man
from that day."

The chief repute of a sturdy frontiersman is built upon his deeds of
prowess, and the fame of the great, rough, strong-limbed, kind-hearted
Titan was spread over all the country around. Says Mr. Lamon: "On one
occasion while he was clerking for Offutt a stranger came into the store
and soon disclosed the fact that his name was Smoot. Abe was behind the
counter at the moment, but hearing the name he sprang over and
introduced himself. Abe had often heard of Smoot and Smoot had often
heard of Abe. They had been as anxious to meet as ever two celebrities
were, but hitherto they had never been able to manage it. 'Smoot,' said
Lincoln, after a steady survey of his person, 'I am very much
disappointed in you; I expected to see an old Probst of a fellow.'
(Probst, it appears, was the most hideous specimen of humanity in all
that country). 'Yes,' replied Smoot, 'and I am equally disappointed, for
I expected to see a good-looking man when I saw you.' A few neat
compliments like the foregoing laid the foundation of a lasting intimacy
between the two men, and in his present distress Lincoln knew no one who
would be more likely than Smoot to respond favorably to an application
for money." After he was elected to the Legislature, says Mr. Smoot, "he
came to my house one day in company with Hugh Armstrong. Says he,
'Smoot, did you vote for me?' I told him I did. 'Well,' says he, 'you
must loan me money to buy suitable clothing, for I want to make a decent
appearance in the Legislature.' I then loaned him two hundred dollars,
which he returned to me according to promise."

Lincoln's old friend W.G. Greene relates that while he was a student at
the Illinois College at Jacksonville he became acquainted with Richard
Yates, then also a student. One summer while Yates was his guest during
the vacation, Greene took him up to Salem and made him acquainted with
Lincoln. They found the latter flat on his back on a cellar door reading
a newspaper. Greene introduced the two, and thus began the acquaintance
between the future War-Governor of Illinois and the future President.

Lincoln was from boyhood an adept at expedients for avoiding any
unpleasant predicament, and one of his modes of getting rid of
troublesome friends, as well as troublesome enemies, was by telling a
story. He began these tactics early in life, and he grew to be
wonderfully adept in them. If a man broached a subject which he did not
wish to discuss, he told a story which changed the direction of the
conversation. If he was called upon to answer a question, he answered it
by telling a story. He had a story for everything; something had
occurred at some place where he used to live that illustrated every
possible phase of every possible subject with which he might have
connection. He acquired the habit of story-telling naturally, as we
learn from the following statement: "At home, with his step-mother and
the children, he was the most agreeable fellow in the world. He was
always ready to do everything for everybody. When he was not doing some
special act of kindness, he told stories or 'cracked jokes.' He was as
full of his yarns in Indiana as ever he was in Illinois. Dennis Hanks
was a clever hand at the same business, and so was old Tom Lincoln." It
was while Lincoln was salesman for Offutt that he acquired the
_sobriquet_ of "Honest Abe." Says Mr. Arnold: "Of many incidents
illustrating his integrity, one or two may be mentioned. One evening he
found his cash overran a little, and he discovered that in making change
for his last customer, an old woman who had come in a little before
sundown, he had made a mistake, not having given her quite enough.
Although the amount was small, a few cents, he took the money,
immediately walked to her house, and corrected the error. At another
time, on his arrival at the store in the morning, he found on the scales
a weight which he remembered having used just before closing, but which
was not the one he had intended to use. He had sold a parcel of tea, and
in the hurry had placed the wrong weight on the scales, so that the
purchaser had a few ounces less of tea than had been paid for. He
immediately sent the quantity required to make up the deficiency. These
and many similar incidents are told regarding his scrupulous honesty in
the most trifling matters. It was for such things as these that people
gave him the name which clung to him as long as he lived."

It was in the summer of 1831 that Abraham Lincoln performed his first
official act. Minter Graham, the school-teacher, tells the story. "On
the day of the election, in the month of August, Abe was seen loitering
about the polling place. It was but a few days after his arrival in New
Salem. They were 'short of a clerk' at the polls; and, after casting
about in vain for some one competent to fill the office, it occurred to
one of the judges that perhaps the tall stranger possessed the needful
qualifications. He thereupon accosted him, and asked if he could write.
He replied, 'Yes, a little.' 'Will you act as clerk of the election
to-day?' said the judge. 'I will try,' returned Abe, 'and do the best I
can, if you so request.'" He did try accordingly, and, in the language
of the schoolmaster, "performed the duties with great facility,
firmness, honesty, and impartiality. I clerked with him," says Mr.
Graham, "on the same day and at the same polls. The election books are
now in the city of Springfield, where they can be seen and inspected any
day."

That the foregoing anecdotes bearing on the early life of Abraham
Lincoln are approximately correct is borne out by Lincoln himself. At
the urgent request of Hon. Jesse W. Fell, of Bloomington, Illinois,
Lincoln wrote a sketch of himself to be used during the campaign of
1860. In a note which accompanied the sketch he said: "Herewith is a
little sketch, as you requested. There is not much to it, for the
reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me. If anything be made out
of it I wish it to be modest and not to go beyond the material." The
letter is as follows:

     I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents
     were both born in Virginia, of undistinguishable families--second
     families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth
     year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside
     in Adams, and others in Macon Counties, Illinois. My paternal
     grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County,
     Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or '2, where, a year or two
     later, he was killed by Indians, not in battle, but by stealth,
     when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors,
     who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania.
     An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same
     name, ended in nothing more than a similarity of Christian names in
     both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and
     the like.

     My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age,
     and he grew up literally without education. He removed from
     Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year.
     We reached our new home about the time the State came into the
     Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals
     still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so
     called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond
     'readin', writin' and cipherin'' to the Rule of Three. If a
     straggler, supposed to understand Latin, happened to sojourn in the
     neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely
     nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of
     age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and
     cipher to the Rule of Three, but that was all. I have not been to
     school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of
     education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of
     necessity.

     I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two.
     At twenty-one I came to Illinois, and passed the first year in
     Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon,
     now in Menard County, where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in
     a store. Then came the Black Hawk War, and I was elected a Captain
     of Volunteers--a success which gave me more pleasure than any I
     have had since. I went through the campaign, was elated, ran for
     the Legislature the same year (1832), and was beaten--the only time
     I have ever been beaten by the people. The next, and three
     succeeding biennial elections, I was elected to the Legislature. I
     was not a candidate afterwards. During this legislative period I
     had studied law, and removed to Springfield to practice it. In
     1846 I was once elected to the Lower House of Congress, but was not
     a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive,
     practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in
     politics, and generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making
     active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics, when the
     repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have
     done since then is pretty well known.

     If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be
     said, I am in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh,
     weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark
     complexion, with coarse black hair, and gray eyes. No other marks
     or brands recollected.

     Yours very truly,
     A. LINCOLN.




CHAPTER II


     A Turn in Affairs--The Black Hawk War--A Remarkable Military
     Manoeuvre--Lincoln Protects an Indian--Lincoln and
     Stuart--Lincoln's Military Record--Nominated for the
     Legislature--Lincoln a Merchant--Postmaster at New Salem--Lincoln
     Studies Law--Elected to the Legislature--Personal
     Characteristics--Lincoln's Love for Anne Rutledge--Close of
     Lincoln's Youth.

The spring of 1832 brought a new turn in Lincoln's career. The year had
been one of great advancement in many respects. He had made new and
valuable acquaintances, read many books, mastered the grammar of his own
tongue, won a multitude of friends. Those who could appreciate
intelligence and character respected him, and those whose highest ideas
of a man related to his physical prowess were devoted to him. Everyone
trusted him. He was judge, arbitrator, referee, authority in all
disputes, games, and matches whether of man-flesh or horse-flesh. He was
the peacemaker in all quarrels. He was everybody's friend--the
best-natured, most sensible, best-informed, most modest, unassuming,
kindest, gentlest, roughest, strongest, best young fellow in all New
Salem or the region about. But Mr. Offutt's trading enterprises ended
disastrously in the year 1832. The store was closed, the mill was shut
down, and Lincoln was out of business.

At the very moment, however, that he found himself adrift Illinois was
filled with excitement over the Black Hawk War. The centre of alarm was
in the Rock Valley, in the northern part of the State, which had been
formerly the home of the Sac tribe of Indians. Discontented with their
life on the reservation west of the Mississippi, to which they had been
removed, the Sacs, with several other tribes, resolved to recover their
old hunting-grounds. The warlike chief, Black Hawk, was at the head of
the revolt, and his march toward the Rock river was signalized by a
number of massacres. Governor Reynolds of Illinois issued a proclamation
calling for volunteers to aid the regular troops in the emergency.
Lincoln was one of the first to answer the call, the brave "Clary Grove
Boys" also coming promptly to the rescue. "The volunteers gathered,"
writes Mr. Arnold, "at Rushville, in Schuyler County, at which place
they were to be organized, and elected officers. Lincoln was a candidate
for the place of captain, and in opposition to him was one William
Kirkpatrick. The mode of election was novel. By agreement, each
candidate walked off to some distance and took position by himself. The
men were then to form, and those who voted for Kirkpatrick were to range
on a line with their candidate. When the lines were formed, Lincoln's
was three times as long as that of Kirkpatrick, and so Lincoln was
declared elected. Speaking of this affair when President, he said that
he was more gratified with this his first success than with any other
election of his life. Neither Lincoln nor his company was in any
engagement during the campaign, but there was plenty of hardships and
fatigue, and some incidents occurred to illustrate his courage and power
over men."

Many years afterward--in fact, while Lincoln was President--he referred
to those early scenes in a way that illustrates his wonderful memory and
his power of recalling the minutest incidents of his past life. Meeting
an old Illinois friend, he naturally fell to talking of Illinois, and
related several stories of his early life in that region. Particularly
he remembered his share in the Black Hawk War. He referred to his part
of the campaign lightly, and said that he saw but very little fighting.
But he remembered coming on a camp of white scouts one morning just as
the sun was rising. The Indians had surprised the camp and killed and
scalped every man. "I remember just how those men looked," said Lincoln,
"as we rode up the little hill where their camp was. The red light of
the morning sun was streaming upon them as they lay, heads toward us, on
the ground, and every man had a round red spot on the top of his head,
about as big as a dollar, where the redskins had taken his scalp. It was
frightful, but it was grotesque, and the red sunlight seemed to paint
everything all over." Lincoln paused as if recalling the vivid picture,
and added, somewhat irrelevantly, "I remember that one man had buckskin
breeches on."

Lincoln also told a good story of his first experience in drilling raw
troops during the Black Hawk War. He was crossing a field with a front
of twenty men when he came to a gate through which it was necessary to
pass. In describing the incident he said: "I could not, for the life of
me, remember the proper word of command for getting my company
_endwise_, so that it could pass through the gate. So, as we came near
the gate, I shouted, 'Halt! this company is dismissed for two minutes,
when it will fall in again on the other side of the gate.'" The
manoeuvre was successfully executed.

During this campaign an incident occurred which well serves to show
Lincoln's keen sense of justice, his great common sense, and his
resoluteness when aroused. One day there came to the camp an old Indian,
footsore and hungry. He was provided with a letter of safe-conduct from
General Cass; but there was a feeling of great irritation against the
Indians, and the men objected strongly to receiving him. They pronounced
him a spy and his passport a forgery, and were rushing upon the
defenseless Indian to kill him, when the tall figure of their captain,
Lincoln, suddenly appeared between them and their victim. His men had
never seen him so aroused, and they cowed before him. "Men," said he,
"this must not be done! He must not be killed by us!" His voice and
manner produced an effect on the mob. They paused, listened, fell back,
and sullenly obeyed him, although there were still some murmurs of
disappointed rage. At length one man, probably thinking he spoke for the
crowd, cried out: "This is cowardly on your part, Lincoln!" Lincoln only
gazed with contempt on the men who would have murdered one unarmed
Indian but who quailed before his single hand. "If any man thinks I am a
coward," said he, "let him test it." "Lincoln," was the reply, "you are
larger and heavier than any of us." "That you can guard against,"
responded the captain. "Choose your weapons!" The insubordination ended,
and the word "coward" was never associated with Lincoln's name again. He
afterward said that at this time he felt that his life and character
were both at stake, and would probably have been lost had he not at the
supreme moment forgotten the officer and asserted the man. His men could
hardly have been called soldiers. They were merely armed citizens, with
a military organization in name only. Had he ordered them under arrest
he would have created a serious mutiny; and to have them tried and
punished would have been impossible.

It was while Lincoln was a militia captain that he made the acquaintance
of a man who was destined to have an important influence on his life.
This was Major John T. Stuart, afterwards his law-partner. Stuart was
already a lawyer by profession. During the Black Hawk War he commanded
one of the Sangamon County companies, and was soon afterward elected
major of a spy battalion formed from some of these companies. He had the
best of opportunities at this time to observe the merits of Captain
Lincoln, and testifies that the latter was exceedingly popular among the
soldiers on account of his excellent care of the men in his command, his
never-failing good nature, and his ability to tell more stories and
better ones than any man in the service. He was popular also among these
hardy men on account of his great physical strength. For several years
after the Black Hawk War Lincoln retained his military title and was
usually addressed as "Captain Lincoln." But this in time was
discontinued. Stuart's title of "Major," on the contrary, adhered to him
through life. He was best known as "Major Stuart" down to the time of
his death, which occurred early in the winter of 1886.

The time for which Captain Lincoln's company enlisted soon ran by, but
the trouble with the Indians not being ended Governor Reynolds called
for a second body of volunteers. Lincoln again responded, and was
enrolled as a private in the independent company commanded by Elijah
Iles of Springfield. A note of this occurrence, made in 1868 by Captain
Iles, contains the following statement: "The term of Governor Reynolds's
first call being about to expire, he made a second call, and the first
levy was disbanded. I was elected a captain of one of the companies. We
were mustered into service on the 29th of May, 1832, at the mouth of Fox
river, now Ottawa, by Lieutenant Robert Anderson, Assistant Inspector
General in the United States Army."

One day during the Black Hawk War there were in the camp on Rock river
four men afterward famed in the history of the country. It was while
Lincoln was a member of the company under command of Captain Iles. These
men were Lieutenant Colonel Zachary Taylor, Lieutenant Jefferson Davis,
Lieutenant Robert Anderson, and Private Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln and
Anderson did not meet again until 1861, after the latter had evacuated
Fort Sumter. Major Anderson then visited Washington and called at the
White House to pay his respects to the President. After having expressed
his thanks to Anderson for his conduct in South Carolina, Lincoln said,
"Major, do you remember ever meeting me before?" "No, Mr. President, I
do not remember having had the pleasure before," said Anderson. "Well,"
said Lincoln, "my memory is better than yours. You mustered me into the
service of the United States in 1832 at Dixon's Ferry, during the Black
Hawk War."

Lincoln displayed the same courage and fidelity in performing the duties
of a soldier that had marked his conduct in all other relations of life.
Father Dixon, the guide who was attached to Captain Iles's company of
mounted rangers, remarks that in their marches when scouts were sent
forward to examine thickets and ravines in which it was thought the
enemy might be lurking it often became necessary for many of the men to
dismount and attend to their riding gear. Whenever Lincoln was detailed
for such service, however, his saddle was always in order.

During the contest between General Lewis Cass and General Zachary Taylor
for the Presidency, in the year 1848, Lincoln made a speech in Congress
in which he referred to his services in the Black Hawk War with
characteristic humor:

"By the way, Mr. Speaker," he said, "did you know that I am a military
hero? Yes, sir. In the days of the Black Hawk War I fought, bled, and
came away. Speaking of General Cass's career reminds me of my own. I was
not at Stillman's defeat, but I was about as near it as Cass was to
Hull's surrender, and, like him, I saw the place very soon afterwards.
It is quite certain that I did not break my sword, for I had none to
break. But I bent my musket pretty badly on one occasion. If Cass broke
his sword the idea is that he broke it in desperation. I bent my musket
by accident. If General Cass went ahead of me in picking whortleberries,
I guess I surpassed him in charges upon the wild onions. If he saw any
live fighting Indians, it is more than I did, but I had a good many
bloody struggles with the mosquitos, and although I never fainted from
loss of blood I can truly say that I was often very hungry. Mr. Speaker,
if I should ever conclude to doff whatever our Democratic friends may
suppose there is in me of black-cockade Federalism, and thereupon they
shall take me up as their candidate for the Presidency, I protest they
shall not make fun of me as they have of General Cass by attempting to
write me into a military hero."

Lincoln's popularity among his comrades in the field was so great that
at the close of his military service, which had lasted three months, he
was nominated as a candidate for the State Legislature. "His first
appearance on the stump in the course of the canvass was at Pappsville,
about eleven miles west of Springfield, upon the occasion of a public
sale. The sale over, speech-making was about to begin, when Lincoln
observed some strong symptoms of inattention in his audience which had
taken that particular moment to engage in a a general fight. Lincoln saw
that one of his friends was suffering more than he liked, and stepping
into the crowd he shouldered them sternly away from his man until he met
a fellow who refused to fall back. Him he seized by the nape of the neck
and the seat of his breeches, and tossed him 'ten or twelve feet
easily.' After this episode--as characteristic of him as of the
times--he mounted the platform and delivered with awkward modesty the
following speech: 'Gentlemen and Fellow-Citizens, I presume you all know
who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my
friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short
and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank.
I am in favor of the internal-improvement system and a high protective
tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected I
shall be thankful. If not, it will be all the same.'"

Lincoln's friend, Mr. A.Y. Ellis, who was with him during a part of
this campaign, says: "He wore a mixed-jeans coat, claw-hammer style,
short in the sleeves and bobtail,--in fact, it was so short in the tail
that he could not sit down on it,--flax and tow linen pantaloons, and a
straw hat. I think he wore a vest, but I do not remember how it looked.
He wore pot-metal boots. I went with him on one of his electioneering
trips to Island Grove, and he made a speech which pleased his party
friends very well, although some of the Jackson men tried to make sport
of it. He told several good anecdotes in the speech, and applied them
very well, I thought."

The election took place in August, and although Lincoln was defeated he
received two hundred and seventy-seven out of the two hundred and
eighty-four votes cast in his precincts. He was so little known outside
of New Salem that the chances of election were hopelessly against him,
yet the extraordinary evidence of favor shown by the vote of his
fellow-townsmen was a flattering success in the midst of defeat. His
failure to be elected, however, left him once more without occupation.
He was without means, and felt the necessity of undertaking some
business that would provide him an income, however small. It seems that
at this time he considered seriously learning the blacksmith's trade,
but while entertaining the idea an event occurred which opened the way
in another direction. The particulars of this event are given by Mr.
W.G. Greene. "A man named Reuben Radford," says Mr. Greene, "was the
keeper of a small store in the village of New Salem. A friend told him
to look out for the 'Clary Grove boys' or they would smash him up. He
said he was not afraid. He was a great big fellow. But his friend said,
'They don't come alone. If one can't whip you, two or three can, and
they'll do it.' One day he left his store in charge of his brother, with
injunctions that if the 'Clary Grove boys' came he must not let them
have more than two drinks apiece. All the stores in those days kept
liquor to sell and had a corner for drinking. The store was nicely
fitted up, and had many things in glass jars nicely labelled. The 'Clary
Grove boys' came, and took two drinks each. The clerk refused them any
more as politely as he could. Then they went behind the counter and
helped themselves. They got roaring drunk and went to work smashing
everything in the store. The fragments on the floor were an inch deep.
They left and went off on their horses whooping and yelling. Coming
across some herds of cattle, they took the bells from their necks,
fastened them to the tails of the leaders, and chased them over the
country yelling like mad. Radford heard them, and, mounting his horse,
rode in hot haste to the store. I had been sent that morning with grist
to the mill, and had to pass the store. I saw Radford ride up, his horse
a lather of foam. He dismounted, and looked in upon the wreck through
the open door He was aghast at the sight, and said, 'I'll sell out this
thing to the first man that comes along.' I rode up and said, 'I'll give
you four hundred dollars for it.' 'Done!' said he. 'But,' I said, 'I
have no money. I must have time.' 'How much?' 'Six months.' 'Agreed.' He
drew up a note for four hundred dollars at six months, and I signed it.
I began to think I was stuck. Then the boys came in, and among them was
Lincoln. 'Cheer up, Billy,' he said. 'It's a good thing. We'll take an
inventory.' 'No more inventories for me,' said I, not knowing what he
meant. He explained that we should take an account of stock to see how
much was left. We found that it amounted to about twelve hundred
dollars. Lincoln and Berry consulted over it, and offered me two hundred
and fifty dollars for my bargain. I accepted, stipulating that they
should assume my notes. Berry was a wild fellow--a gambler. He had a
fine horse, with a splendid saddle and bridle. He turned over the horse
as part pay. Lincoln let Berry run the store, and it soon ran out. I
had to pay the note. Lincoln said he would pay it some day and did, with
interest." This ended Lincoln's brief career as a country merchant.

Many of the anecdotes in the foregoing pages touch upon Lincoln's
ambition to fit himself for a public speaker. Even at this early day the
settlers in New Salem were infected with the general desire to join in
the march toward intellectual improvement. To aid in this object, they
had established a club entitled the New Salem Literary Society. Before
this association, the studious Lincoln was invited to speak. Mr. R.B.
Rutledge, the brother of Anne Rutledge, says of the event: "About the
year 1832 or 1833, Mr. Lincoln made his first effort at public speaking.
A debating club, of which James Rutledge was president, was organized
and held regular meetings. As Lincoln arose to speak, his tall form
towered above the little assembly. Both hands were thrust down deep in
the pockets of his pantaloons. A perceptible smile at once lit up the
faces of the audience, for all anticipated the relation of some humorous
story. But he opened up the discussion in splendid style, to the
infinite astonishment of his friends. As he warmed with his subject, his
hands would forsake his pockets and enforce his ideas by awkward
gestures, but would very soon seek their easy resting-places. He pursued
the question with reason and argument so pithy and forcible that all
were amazed. The president, after the meeting, remarked to his wife that
there was more in Abe's head than wit and fun; that he was already a
fine speaker; that all he lacked was culture to enable him to reach the
high destiny which he knew was in store for him."

On the 7th of May, 1833, Lincoln was appointed postmaster at New Salem
by President Jackson. The duties of the position were light, there being
only a weekly mail, and the remuneration was correspondingly small.
"The office was too insignificant to be considered politically, and it
was given to the young man because everybody liked him, and because he
was the only man willing to take it who could make out the returns. He
was exceedingly pleased with the appointment, because it gave him a
chance to read every newspaper that was taken in the vicinity. He had
never been able to get half the newspapers he wanted, and the office
gave him the prospect of a constant feast. Not wishing to be tied to the
office, as it yielded him no revenue that would reward him for the
confinement, he made a post-office of his hat. Whenever he went out, the
letters were placed in his hat. When an anxious looker for a letter met
the postmaster he found also the post-office, and the public official,
taking off his hat, looked over and delivered the mail wherever the
public might find him. He kept the office until it was discontinued, or
was removed to Petersburg."

A small balance due the government remained in the hands of Lincoln at
the discontinuance of the office. Time passed on, and he had removed to
Springfield and was practicing law, having his place of business in Dr.
Henry's office. Meanwhile his struggle with poverty was unabated, and he
had often been obliged to borrow money from his friends to purchase the
barest necessities. It was at this juncture that the agent of the United
States called for a settlement of his post-office accounts. The
interview took place in the presence of Dr. Henry who thus describes it:
"I did not believe he had the money on hand to meet the draft, and I was
about to call him aside and loan him the money, when he asked the agent
to be seated a moment. He went over to his trunk at his boarding-house
and returned with an old blue sock with a quantity of silver and copper
coin tied up in it. Untying the sock, he poured the contents on the
table and proceeded to count the coin, which consisted of such silver
and copper pieces as the country people were then in the habit of using
in paying postage. On counting it up, there was found the exact amount
of the draft to a cent, and in the identical coin which had been
received. He never, under any circumstances, used trust funds."

When Lincoln was about twenty-three years of age, some time in 1832, he
began studying law, using an old copy of Blackstone's Commentaries which
he had bought at auction in Springfield. This work was soon mastered,
and then the young man looked about him for more. His friend of the
Black Hawk War, Major John T. Stuart, had a considerable law library for
those days, and to him Lincoln applied in his extremity. The library was
placed at his disposal, and thenceforth he was engrossed in the
acquisition of its contents. But the books were in Springfield, where
their owner resided; and New Salem was some fourteen miles distant. This
proved no obstacle in the way of Lincoln, who made nothing of the walk
back and forth in the pursuit of his purpose. Mr. Stuart's partner, Mr.
H.C. Dummer, who took note of the youth in his frequent visits to the
office, describes him as "an uncouth looking lad, who did not say much,
but what he did say he said straight and sharp." "He used to read law,"
says Henry McHenry, "barefooted, seated in the shade of a tree just
opposite Berry's grocery, and would grind around with the shade,
occasionally varying his attitude by lying flat on his back and putting
his feet up the tree," a situation which might have been unfavorable to
mental application in the case of a man with shorter extremities. "The
first time I ever saw Abe with a law-book in his hand," says Squire
Godbey, "he was sitting astride Jake Bates's woodpile in New Salem. Says
I, 'Abe, what are you studying?' 'Law,' says Abe. 'Good God Almighty!'
responded I." It was too much for Godbey; he could not suppress the
exclamation of surprise at seeing such a figure acquiring learning in
such an odd situation. Mr. Arnold states that Lincoln made a practice
of reading in his walks between Springfield and New Salem; and so
intense was his application and so absorbed was he in his study that he
would pass his best friends without observing them, and some people said
that Lincoln was going crazy with hard study.

He soon began to make a practical application of his legal knowledge. He
bought an old form-book and began to draw up contracts, deeds, leases,
mortgages, and all sorts of legal instruments for his neighbors. He also
began to exercise his forensic ability in trying small cases before
justices of the peace and juries, and soon acquired a local reputation
as a speaker, which gave him considerable practice. But he was able in
this way to earn scarcely money enough for his maintenance. To add to
his means, he took up the study of surveying, and soon became, like
Washington, a skilful and accurate surveyor. John Calhoun, an
intelligent and courteous gentleman, was at that time surveyor of the
county of Sangamon. He became interested in Lincoln and appointed him
his deputy. His work was so accurate and the settlers had such
confidence in him that he was much sought after to survey, fix, and mark
the boundaries of farms, and to plot and lay off the town of Petersburg.
His accuracy must have been attained with some difficulty, for when he
began to survey his chain was a grape-vine. He did not speculate in the
land he surveyed. Had he done so the rapid advance in the value of real
estate would have made it easy for him to make good investments. But he
was not in the least like one of his own appointees when President,--a
surveyor-general of a Western territory, who bought up much of the best
land, and to whom the President said, "I am told, sir, you are _monarch
of all you survey_."

The nomination of Lincoln for the State Legislature on his return from
the Black Hawk War was premature. The people of New Salem voted for him
almost to a man, but his acquaintance had not then extended into the
surrounding district far enough to insure his election. In the campaign
of 1834 the choice of a candidate again fell upon him, and this time
there was a prospect of success. Lincoln entered into the contest with
earnestness, and used every legitimate means to secure a victory. Mr.
Herndon relates the following incident of this campaign: "Lincoln came
to my house, near Island Grove, during harvest. There were some thirty
men in the field. He had his dinner, and then went out into the field
where the men were at work. I introduced him, and the boys said they
would not vote for a man unless he could 'make a hand.' 'Well, boys,' he
said, 'if that is all that is needed I am sure of your votes.' He took
hold of the cradle and led the way all around with perfect ease. The
boys were satisfied. I don't think he lost a vote in that crowd. The
next day there was speaking at Berlin. He went from my house with Dr.
Barnett, who had asked me who this man Lincoln was. I told him he was a
candidate for the Legislature. He laughed and said, 'Can't the party
raise better material than that?' I said, 'Go to-morrow and hear him
before you pass judgment.' When he came back I said, 'Doctor, what have
you to say now?' 'Why, sir,' he said, 'he is a perfect _take-in_. He
knows more than all the rest of them put together.'"

The result of the election was that Lincoln was chosen to represent the
Sangamon district. When the Legislature convened at the opening session,
he was in his place in the lower house; but he bore himself quietly in
his new position. He had much to learn in his novel situation as one of
the lawmakers of the State, and as a co-worker with an assembly
comprising the most talented and prominent men gathered from all parts
of Illinois. He was keenly watchful of the proceedings of the House,
weighing every measure with scrutinizing sagacity, but except in the
announcement of his vote his voice was seldom heard. At the previous
session, Mr. G.S. Hubbard, afterwards a well-known citizen of Chicago,
had exerted himself to procure the passage of an act for the
construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. His effort was
defeated; but he continued, as a lobbyist, to push the measure during
several winters, until it was finally adopted. Lincoln lent him
efficient aid in the accomplishment of his object. "Indeed," remarks Mr.
Hubbard, "I very much doubt if the bill could have passed as easily as
it did without his valuable help." "We were thrown much together,"
continues Mr. Hubbard, "our intimacy increasing. I never had a friend to
whom I was more warmly attached. His character was almost faultless;
possessing a warm and generous heart, genial, affable, honest, courteous
to his opponents, persevering, industrious in research, never losing
sight of the principal point under discussion, aptly illustrating by his
stories which were always brought into good effect. He was free from
political trickery or denunciation of the personal character of his
opponents. In debate he was firm and collected. 'With malice toward
none, with charity for all,' he won the confidence of the public, even
his political opponents."

Of all the stories of Lincoln's boyhood and youth, the most profoundly
touching is that of his love for Anne Rutledge. The existence of this
romance was brief, but it is believed by many that it was the memory of
it which threw over Lincoln that indescribable melancholy which seemed
to shadow his whole life. The Rutledges from whom Anne was descended
were an eminent family of the Carolinas. She was about nineteen years
old when Lincoln knew her first. It was shortly after the Black Hawk
War. She was a winsome girl, with fair hair and blue eyes, and Lincoln's
heart was captivated by her sweet face and gentle manners. So attractive
a girl was not, of course, without suitors, and Anne had been wooed by
one James McNeill, a young man who had come to New Salem soon after the
founding of the town. He had been more than ordinarily successful, and
had bought a large farm a few miles north of the village. He was
unmarried--at least he so represented himself--and paid devoted
attention to Anne. They were engaged, although both had acquiesced in
the wishes of Anne's parents that they should not be married until she
was older.

About this time Lincoln appeared in New Salem and went to board at the
Rutledge tavern. Here he saw Anne, and was much in her company. During
the next year McNeill became restless and discontented. He said it was
because he wanted to see his people. So he decided to go East on a
visit. He sold out his interests in New Salem--an act not at all
necessary if he were going only on a visit, and which in the light of
after events had much significance--telling Anne that it was his hope to
bring his father and mother back with him and establish them upon his
farm. "This done," he said, "we will be married." He then set out on his
journey.

It was late in the summer before Anne heard from him. He explained that
he had been taken ill with chills and fever on the way, and had been
long delayed in getting home. But the long wait had been a great strain
upon Anne. Lincoln, meanwhile, had become the postmaster in New Salem,
and it was to him that Anne came to inquire for letters. He watched her
anxiety with sympathy, and in a way became her confidant. His tender
heart, which never could resist suffering, was deeply touched at sight
of her distress. Finally McNeill's letters ceased altogether; and then
Anne confided to Lincoln something which McNeill had told her before he
left, and which until now she had kept secret,--namely, that his name
was not McNeill but McNamar. He had explained to her that he had made
this change because his father had failed in business and that as his
oldest son it was his duty to retrieve the family fortunes. So he had
changed his name, and come West, hoping to return in a few years to his
family a rich man. All this Anne had believed, and had not repeated
until now.

All New Salem joined in declaring McNamar an impostor and his story a
fabrication. "Who knew how many wives he had?" they said. With one
accord Anne's friends denounced him; and although his story turned out
afterward to be not altogether false, it is small wonder that Anne
herself at last came to believe that either he was dead or had ceased to
love her.

While matters were in this state, Lincoln ventured to show his love for
Anne. It was a long time before she would listen; but, convinced at last
that her former lover had deserted her, she promised, in the spring of
1835, to become his wife. But Lincoln had nothing on which to support a
family,--in fact, could hardly support himself. Besides, Anne was
anxious to go to school another year. So it was decided that she should
spend the winter in an academy in Jacksonville, while Lincoln devoted
himself to the study of the law. Then, when she should return from
school, he would be a member of the bar and they could be married.

A happy spring and summer followed. All their friends took an interest
in the lovers, and their prospects seemed bright. But Anne's health
began to fail. She could not rid herself of her haunting memories. There
was a possibility that she had wronged McNamar. What if he should love
her still, and should return and find her wedded to another? Had she
wronged both men? In her thoughts was perpetual conflict. The old love
still persisted. Her conscience troubled her. She doubted, and was
morbidly melancholy. All this wore upon her; she fell ill. At last her
condition became grave, then hopeless. Lincoln was sent for. Anne's last
hour was passed alone with him. She died at sunset, August 25, 1835. An
old neighbor who saw Lincoln just after his parting with the dying girl
says: "There were signs of the most terrible distress in his face. His
grief became frantic. He lost all self-control, even the consciousness
of his own identity; and his closest friends in New Salem pronounced him
insane, crazy, mad. They watched him with especial vigilance on dark and
stormy days. At such times he raved piteously, often saying, 'I can
never be reconciled to having the snow fall and the rain beat upon her
grave.'" His old friend, Bowlin Greene, alone seemed possessed of the
power to quiet him. He took him to his own home and kept him for several
weeks, an object of undisguised solicitude. At last it seemed safe to
permit him to return to his old haunts. Greene urged him to go back to
the law; and he did so, but he was never the same man again. He was
thin, haggard, and careworn. He was as one who had been at the brink of
the grave. A long time afterward, when the grass had for nearly thirty
years grown over the grave of Anne Rutledge, Lincoln was one day
introduced to a man named Rutledge in the White House. He looked at him
a moment, then grasped his hand and said with deep feeling: "I love the
name of Rutledge to this day. Anne was a lovely girl. She was natural,
well-educated. She would have made a good, loving wife. I did honestly
and truly love her, and I think often, often of her now." Mr. Herndon
has said that the love and the death of this young girl shattered
Lincoln's purposes and tendencies. "He threw off his infinite sorrow
only by leaping wildly into the political arena. He needed whip and spur
to save him from despair."

The period of Abraham Lincoln's boyhood and youth had closed when he
stood by the grave of Anne Rutledge. He had long been a man in stature.
He was now a man in years; yet the rough path he had been forced to
travel had made his progress toward maturity painfully slow. In spite
of his low birth, of his dire poverty, of the rudeness and illiteracy of
his associates, of the absence of refinement in his surroundings, of his
scanty means of education, of his homely figure and awkward manners, of
his coarse fare and shabby dress, he dared to believe there was an
exalted career in store for him. He hewed out the foundations for it
with indomitable spirit. It was to be grounded on manly virtues. It
seems as though the boy felt the consecration of a high destiny from the
very dawn of his intelligence, and it set him apart, secure amid the
temptations and safe from the vices that corrupt many men. In the rough
garb of the backwoodsman he preserved the instincts of a gentleman. He
was the companion of bullies and boors. He shared their work and their
sports, but he never stooped to their vulgarity. He very seldom drank
with them, and they never heard him speak an oath. He could throw the
stoutest in a wrestling match, and was ready, when brought to it, to
whip any insolent braggart who made cruel use of his strength. He never
flinched from hardship or danger, yet his heart was as soft and tender
as a woman's. The great gentle giant had a feeling of sympathy for every
living creature. He was not ashamed to rock a cradle, or to carry a pail
of water or an armful of wood to spare a tired woman's arms. Though
destitute of worldly goods, he was rich in friends. All the people of
his acquaintance knew they could count on his doing the right thing
always, so far as he was able. Hence they trusted and loved him; and the
title of "Honest Abe," which he bore through life, was a seal of
knighthood rarer and prouder than any king or queen could confer with
the sword. Abraham Lincoln was one of nature's noblemen. He showed
himself a hero in every circumstance of his boyhood and youth. The
elements of greatness were visible even then. The boy who was true to
duty, patient in privation, modest in merit, kind to every form of
distress, determined to rise by wresting opportunities from the
grudging hand of fate, was sure to make a man distinguished among his
fellows,--a man noted among the great men of the world, as the boy had
been among his neighbors in the wilds of Spencer County and New Salem.

The site of the town where Lincoln spent the last three years of the
period covered in this portion of his biography is now a desolate waste.
A gentleman who visited the spot during the summer of 1885 thus
describes the mournful scene: "From the hill where I sit, under the
shade of three trees whose branches make one, I look out over the
Sangamon river and its banks covered apparently with primeval forests.
Around are fields overgrown with weeds and stunted oaks. It was a town
of ten or twelve years only. It began in 1824 and ended in 1836. Yet in
that time it had a history which the world will not let die as long as
it venerates the memory of the noble liberator and martyr President,
Abraham Lincoln."




CHAPTER III


     Lincoln's Beginning as a Lawyer--His Early Taste for
     Politics--Lincoln and the Lightning-Rod Man--Not an
     Aristocrat--Reply to Dr. Early--A Manly Letter--Again in the
     Illinois Legislature--The "Long Nine"--Lincoln on His Way to the
     Capital--His Ambition in 1836--First Meeting with Douglas--Removal
     of the Illinois Capital--One of Lincoln's Early
     Speeches--Pro-Slavery Sentiment in Illinois--Lincoln's Opposition
     to Slavery--Contest with General Ewing--Lincoln Lays out a
     Town--The Title "Honest Abe."

Abraham Lincoln's career as a lawyer covered a period of a quarter of a
century, beginning about 1834 or '35, and ending with his election to
the Presidency, in November, 1860. When he began his professional life
he was an obscure and unpromising youth of twenty-five, with but little
learning and fewer accomplishments, and without advantages of social
influence or wealthy friends. Step by step, with patient industry and
unflinching determination, he climbed the ladder of professional
advancement until he stood among the foremost lawyers of the West. He
had, indeed, won a national reputation; and when he laid aside his law
books, a mature man of fifty, it was to enter upon the great honors and
responsibilities of the Presidency of the American Republic.

Lincoln was devoted to his profession, and his success in it was earned
by hard and constant application. But his natural taste for politics led
him to take a full share in the activities of political life. He had
already served a term in the Illinois Legislature (1834-35), and so well
satisfied were his constituents that they renominated him for the
succeeding term. In the canvass which followed he distinguished himself
as a stump-speaker; showing, by his tact and ability, by the skill and
ingenuity with which he met his opponents in debate, by his shrewdness
in attack and readiness in retort, how much he had profited by the
training of the previous years.

An incident illustrating his ready wit and his keen insight into human
nature occurred early in this campaign, at Springfield, where a public
discussion was held between the opposing candidates. An interesting
version of this incident is given by Mr. Arnold: "There lived at this
time in the most pretentious house in Springfield a prominent citizen
named George Forquer. He had been long in public life, had been a
leading Whig--the party to which Lincoln belonged--but had lately gone
over to the Democrats, and had received from the Democratic
administration an appointment to the lucrative post of Register of the
Land Office at Springfield. Upon his handsome new house he had lately
placed a lightning-rod, the first one ever put up in Sangamon County. As
Lincoln was riding into town with his friends, they passed the fine
house of Forquer, and observed the novelty of the lightning-rod,
discussing the manner in which it protected the house from being struck
by lightning. In this discussion there were seven Whig and seven
Democratic candidates for the lower branch of the Legislature; and after
several had spoken it fell to Lincoln to close the arguments. This he
did with great ability. Forquer, though not a candidate, then asked to
be heard for the Democrats in reply to Lincoln. He was a good speaker
and well-known throughout the county. His special task that day was to
attack and ridicule the young man from Salem. Turning to Lincoln, who
stood within a few feet of him, he said: 'This young man must be taken
down, and I am truly sorry that the task devolves upon me.' He then
proceeded, in a very overbearing way, and with an assumption of great
superiority, to attack Lincoln and his speech. Lincoln stood calm, but
his flashing eye and pale cheek showed his indignation. As soon as
Forquer had closed he took the stand and first answered his opponent's
arguments fully and triumphantly. So impressive were his words and
manner that a hearer believes that he can remember to this day, and
repeat, some of the expressions. Among other things, he said: 'The
gentleman commenced his speech by saying that this _young_ man--alluding
to me--must be taken down. I am not so young in years as I am in the
tricks and trades of a politician; but,' said he, pointing to Forquer,
'live long or die young, I would rather die now, than, like the
gentleman, change my politics for a three thousand dollar office, and
then feel obliged to erect a lightning-rod over my house to protect a
guilty conscience from the vengeance of an offended God!'"

"It is difficult to-day," says Mr. Arnold, "to appreciate the effect on
the old settlers, of this figure. This lightning-rod was the first which
most of those present had ever seen. They had slept all their lives in
their cabins in conscious security. Here was a man who seemed, to these
simple-minded people, to be afraid to sleep in his own house without
special and extraordinary protection from Almighty God. These old
settlers thought nothing but the consciousness of guilt, the stings of a
guilty conscience, could account for such timidity. Forquer and his
lightning-rod were talked over in every settlement from Sangamon to the
Illinois and the Wabash. Whenever he rose to speak thereafter, they
said, 'There is the man who dare not sleep in his own house without a
lightning-rod to keep off the vengeance of the Almighty.'"

Another amusing incident of the same campaign, and one which illustrates
Lincoln's love of a practical joke, is given as follows: "Among the
Democrats stumping the county at this time was one Dick Taylor, a most
pompous person, who was always arrayed in the richest attire--ruffled
shirts, seals, etc., besides a rich embroidered vest. Notwithstanding
this array, he made great pretentions of being one of the 'hard-handed
yeomanry,' and ridiculed with much sarcasm the 'rag barons' and
'manufacturing lords' of the Whig party. One day, when he was
particularly aggravating in a speech of this kind, Lincoln decided on a
little sport, and sidling up to Taylor suddenly threw open the latter's
coat, showing to the astonished spectators a glittering mass of ruffled
shirt, gold watch, and glittering jewels. The crowd shouted
uproariously. Lincoln said: 'While he [Colonel Taylor] was making these
charges against the Whigs over the country, riding in fine carriages,
wearing ruffled shirts, kid gloves, massive gold watch-chains with large
gold seals, and flourishing a heavy gold-headed cane, I was a poor boy,
hired on a flatboat at eight dollars a month, and had only one pair of
breeches to my name, and they were buckskin,--and if you know the nature
of buckskin, when wet and dried by the sun it will shrink,--and mine
kept shrinking until they left several inches of my legs bare between
the tops of my socks and the lower part of my breeches. Whilst I was
growing taller, they were becoming shorter and so much tighter that they
left a blue streak around my legs that can be seen to this day. If you
call this aristocracy, I plead guilty to the charge.'"

"The Saturday evening preceding the election," says Mr. Lamon, "the
candidates were addressing the people in the Court House at Springfield.
Dr. Early, one of the candidates on the Democratic side, made some
charge which Mr. N.W. Edwards, one of the candidates on the Whig side,
deemed untrue. Edwards climbed on a table, so as to be seen by Early and
by everyone in the house, and at the top of his voice told Early that
the charge was false. The excitement that followed was intense--so much
so that fighting men thought a duel must settle the difficulty. Lincoln,
by the programme, followed Early. He took up the subject in dispute and
handled it fairly and with such ability that everyone was astonished
and pleased. So that difficulty ended there. Then for the first time,
aroused by the excitement of the occasion, he spoke in that tenor
intonation of voice that ultimately settled down into that clear, shrill
monotone style that afterwards characterized his public speaking, and
enabled his audience, however large, to hear distinctly the lowest sound
of his voice." Mr. Arnold says that Lincoln's reply to Dr. Early was
"often spoken of as exhibiting wonderful ability, and a crushing power
of sarcasm and ridicule. When he began he was embarrassed, spoke slowly
and with some hesitation and difficulty. But becoming excited by his
subject, he forgot himself entirely, and went on with argument and wit,
anecdote and ridicule, until his opponent was completely crushed. Old
settlers of Sangamon County who heard this reply speak of his personal
transformation as wonderful. When Lincoln began, they say, he seemed
awkward, homely, unprepossessing. As he went on, and became excited, his
figure rose to its full height and became commanding and majestic. His
plain face was illuminated and glowed with expression. His dreamy eye
flashed with inspiration, and his whole person, his voice, his gestures,
were full of the magnetism of powerful feeling, of conscious strength
and true eloquence."

The inflexible honesty and fine sense of honor which lay at the
foundation of Lincoln's character are nobly exhibited in the following
letter to a former friend but now political opponent, Col. Robert Allen:

     DEAR COLONEL:--I am told that during my absence last week, you
     passed through this place, and stated publicly that you were in
     possession of a fact or facts which, if known to the public, would
     entirely destroy the prospects of N.W. Edwards and myself at the
     ensuing election, but that through favor to us you would forbear to
     divulge them. No one has needed favors more than I, and generally
     few have been less unwilling to accept them; but in this case
     favor to me would be injustice to the public, and therefore I must
     beg your pardon for declining it. That I once had the confidence of
     the people of Sangamon County is sufficiently evident; and if I
     have since done anything, either by design or misadventure, which
     if known would subject me to a forfeiture of that confidence, he
     who knows of that thing and conceals it is a traitor to his
     country's interest.

     I find myself wholly unable to form any conjecture of what fact or
     facts, real or supposed, you spoke. But my opinion of your veracity
     will not permit me for a moment to doubt that you at least believed
     what you said. I am flattered with the personal regard you
     manifested for me; but I do hope that on more mature reflection you
     will view the public interest as a paramount consideration, and
     therefore determine to let the worst come.

     I assure you that the candid statement of facts on your part,
     however low it may sink me, shall never break the ties of personal
     friendship between us.

     I wish an answer to this, and you are at liberty to publish both if
     you choose.

     Very respectfully,
     A. LINCOLN.

     COL. ROBERT ALLEN.

The campaign resulted in Lincoln's election to the Legislature of 1836.
The nine delegates from Sangamon County happened to be men of remarkable
stature, each one measuring six feet or more in height; and very
naturally they were nicknamed the "Long Nine." Lincoln overtopped all
the rest, and as a consequence was called "the Sangamon Chief." The
State capital was then at Vandalia; and Lincoln's journey there from
Springfield was made mainly on foot. As he was trudging along the muddy
road, he fell in with Judge John Dean Caton, one of the early lawyers of
Illinois, afterwards Chief Justice of the State, who became an intimate
friend of Lincoln. Judge Caton gives an interesting account of their
first meeting, which occurred at this time. "I first met Mr. Lincoln,"
says Judge Caton, "about the last of November, 1835, when on my way to
Vandalia to join the Supreme Court, which met there the first Monday in
December, at the same time as the meeting of the Legislature. There were
a great many people and all sorts of vehicles on the road from
Springfield to Vandalia. The roads were very bad, and most of the
passengers got out and walked a considerable portion of the distance. It
seemed almost like the movement of a little army. While walking thus
along the side of the road I met Mr. Lincoln for the first time, and in
the course of a two days' journey we became quite well acquainted. If he
had been admitted to the bar at that time, he had not become known as a
lawyer out of his own immediate circuit. He was going to Vandalia as a
member of the Legislature. He was one of the 'Long Nine,' as it was
called, from Sangamon County, who by their successful manoeuvring and
united efforts succeeded in getting the seat of government moved from
Vandalia to Springfield. During my stay of a few weeks in Vandalia I
frequently met Mr. Lincoln. He was a very pleasant companion; but as we
walked along the road on the occasion referred to, talking about
indifferent subjects, nothing impressed me with any idea of his future
greatness."

When Lincoln took his seat in the first session of the new Legislature
at Vandalia, his mind was full of new projects. His real public service
was now about to begin, and having spent his time in the previous
Legislature mainly as an observer and listener he was determined during
this session to identify himself conspicuously with the "liberal"
progressive legislation, dreaming of a fame far different from that he
actually obtained as an anti-slavery leader. As he remarked to his
friend Speed, he hoped to obtain the great distinction of being called
"the De Witt Clinton of Illinois."

It was at a special session of this Legislature that Lincoln first saw
Stephen A. Douglas, his great political antagonist of the future, whom
he describes as "the _least_ man" he ever saw. Douglas had come into the
State from Vermont only the previous year, and having studied law for
several months considered himself eminently qualified to be State's
attorney for the district in which he lived. General Linder says of the
two men at this time: "I here had an opportunity, better than any I had
previously possessed, of measuring the intellectual stature of Abraham
Lincoln. He was then about twenty-seven years old--my own age. Douglas
was four years our junior; consequently he could not have been over
twenty-three years old. Yet he was a very ready and expert debater, even
at that early period of his life. He and Lincoln were very frequently
pitted against each other, being of different politics. They both
commanded marked attention and respect."

A notable measure effected by the "Long Nine" during this session of the
Legislature was the removal of the State Capital from Vandalia to
Springfield. It was accomplished by dint of shrewd and persistent
management, in which Lincoln was a leading spirit. Mr. Robert L. Wilson,
one of his colleagues, says: "When our bill to all appearance was dead
beyond resuscitation, and our friends could see no hope, Lincoln never
for a moment despaired. Collecting his colleagues in his room for
consultation, his practical common-sense, his thorough knowledge of
human nature, made him an overmatch for his compeers, and for any man I
have ever known."

Lincoln's reputation as an orator was gradually extending beyond the
circle of his friends and constituents. He was gaining notice as a ready
and forcible speaker, with shrewd and sensible ideas which he expressed
with striking originality and independence. He was invited to address
the Young Men's Lyceum at Springfield, January 27, 1837, and read a
carefully prepared paper on "The Perpetuation of Our Political
Institutions," which was afterwards published in the Springfield
"Weekly Journal." The address was crude and strained in style, but the
feeling pervading it was fervent and honest, and its patriotic sentiment
and sound reflection made it effective for the occasion. A few
paragraphs culled from this paper, some of them containing remarkable
prophetic passages, afford a clue to the stage of intellectual
development which Lincoln had reached at the age of twenty-seven, and an
interesting contrast with the terser style of his later years.

     In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the
     American people, find our account running under date of the
     nineteenth century of the Christian era. We find ourselves in the
     peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards
     extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.
     We find ourselves under the government of a system of political
     institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and
     religious liberty than any of which the history of former times
     tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves
     the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not
     in the acquisition or establishment of them; they are a legacy
     bequeathed us by a once hardy, brave and patriotic, but now
     lamented and departed race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and
     nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and, through
     themselves, us, of this goodly land, and to uprear upon its hills
     and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis
     ours only to transmit these--the former unprofaned by the foot of
     an invader, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by
     usurpation--to the latest generation that fate shall permit the
     world to know. This task, gratitude to our fathers, justice to
     ourselves, duty to posterity, all imperatively require us
     faithfully to perform.

     How, then, shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the
     approach of danger? Shall we expect some transatlantic military
     giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the
     armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure
     of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a
     Bonaparte for a commander, could not, by force, take a drink from
     the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a
     thousand years! At what point, then, is the approach of danger to
     be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, _it must spring up
     amongst ourselves_. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be
     our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation
     of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. I
     hope I am not over-wary; but, if I am not, there is even now
     something of ill-omen amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard
     for law which pervades the country, the growing disposition to
     substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober
     judgment of the courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the
     executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful
     in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to
     our feelings to admit it, it would be a violation of truth and an
     insult to our intelligence to deny. Accounts of outrages committed
     by mobs form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded
     the country from New England to Louisiana; they are neither
     peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning sun of
     the latter. They are not the creature of climate; neither are they
     confined to the slaveholding or non-slaveholding States. Alike they
     spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves and
     the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever
     their course may be, it is common to the whole country. Here, then,
     is one point at which danger may be expected. The question recurs,
     How shall we fortify against it? The answer is simple. Let every
     American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his
     posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate
     in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to
     tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of
     'seventy-six' did to the support of the Declaration of
     Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and the Laws
     let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred
     honor; let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample
     on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and
     his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by
     every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap.
     Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges. Let it
     be written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs. Let it be
     preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and
     enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the
     political religion of the nation.

During the years of Lincoln's service in the Illinois Legislature the
Democratic party was strongly dominant throughout the State. The feeling
on the subject of slavery was decidedly in sympathy with the South. A
large percentage of the settlers in the southern and middle portions of
Illinois were from States in which slave labor was maintained; and
although the determination not to permit the institution to obtain a
foothold in the new commonwealth was general, the people were opposed to
any action which should affect its condition where it was already
established. During the sessions of 1836-7 resolutions of an extreme
pro-slavery character were carried through the Legislature by the
Democratic party, aiming to prevent the Abolitionists from obtaining a
foothold in the State. Lincoln could not conscientiously support the
resolutions, nor hold his peace concerning them. He did not shrink from
the issue, but at the hazard of losing his political popularity and the
gratifying prospects that were opening before him he drew up a protest
against the pro-slavery enactment and had it entered upon the Journal of
the House. The state of public opinion in Illinois at that time may be
judged by the fact that of the hundred Representatives in the House
_only one_ had the courage to sign the protest with him. Lincoln's
protest was as follows:

     _March 3, 1837_.

     The following protest, presented to the House, was read and ordered
     to be spread on the journals, to wit:

     Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both
     branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the
     undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same.

     They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both
     injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of abolition
     doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.

     They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power,
     under the Constitution, to interfere with the institution of
     slavery in the different States.

     They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power,
     under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of
     Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised, unless at
     the request of the people of the District.

     The difference between these opinions and those contained in the
     said resolutions, is their reason for entering this protest.

     (Signed)
     DAN STONE,
     A. LINCOLN,
     _Representatives from the County of Sangamon._

The great financial panic which swept over the country in 1837 rendered
expedient an extra session of the Legislature, which was called together
in July. General Lee D. Ewing had been elected to this session from
Fayette County for the express purpose of repealing the law removing the
capital from Vandalia to Springfield. "General Ewing was," says Mr.
Linder, "a man of considerable notoriety, popularity, and talents. He
had been a member of Congress from Illinois, and had filled various
State offices in his time. He was a man of elegant manners, great
personal courage, and would grace either the _salons_ of fashion or the
Senate chamber at Washington. The Legislature opened its special session
(I was there as a spectator), and General Ewing sounded the tocsin of
war. He said that 'the arrogance of Springfield, its presumption in
claiming the seat of government, was not to be endured; that the law had
been passed by chicanery and trickery; that the Springfield delegation
had sold out to the internal improvement men, and had promised their
support to every measure that would gain them a vote to the law removing
the seat of government.' He said many other things, cutting and
sarcastic. Lincoln was chosen by his colleagues to reply to Ewing; and
I want to say here that this was the first time that I began to conceive
a very high opinion of the talents and personal courage of Abraham
Lincoln. He retorted upon Ewing with great severity, denouncing his
insinuations imputing corruption to him and his colleagues, and paying
back with usury all that Ewing had said, when everybody thought and
believed that he was digging his own grave; for it was known that Ewing
would not quietly pocket any insinuations that would degrade him
personally. I recollect his reply to Lincoln well. After addressing the
Speaker, he turned to the Sangamon delegation, who all sat in the same
portion of the house, and said: 'Gentlemen, have you no other champion
than this coarse and vulgar fellow to bring into the lists against me?
Do you suppose that I will condescend to break a lance with your low and
obscure colleague?' We were all very much alarmed for fear there would
be a personal conflict between Ewing and Lincoln. It was confidently
believed that a challenge must pass between them; but friends on both
sides took the matter in hand, and it was settled without anything
serious growing out of it."

When the legislative session ended, in February, 1837, Lincoln returned
to a job of surveying which he had begun a year before at Petersburg,
near his old home at Salem. He spent a month or two at Petersburg,
completing the surveying and planning of the town. That his work was
well and satisfactorily done is attested by many--among them by Mr. John
Bennett, who lived in Petersburg at the time. "My earliest acquaintance
with Lincoln," says Mr. Bennett, "began on his return from Vandalia,
where he had spent the winter as a member of the Legislature from
Sangamon County. Lincoln spent most of the month of March in Petersburg,
finishing up the survey and planning of the town he had commenced the
year before. I was a great deal in his company, and formed a high
estimate of his worth and social qualities, which was strengthened by
many years of subsequent social intercourse and business transactions,
finding him always strictly honest. In fact, he was now generally spoken
of in this region as 'Honest Abe.' After Menard County was formed out of
a portion of Sangamon County, and the county seat established at
Petersburg, Mr. Lincoln was a regular attendant at the courts. I was
then keeping a hotel, and he was one of my regular customers. Here he
met many of his old cronies of his early days at Salem, and they spent
the most of the nights in telling stories or spinning long yarns, of
which Mr. Lincoln was particularly fond."




CHAPTER IV


     Lincoln's Removal to Springfield--A Lawyer without Clients or
     Money--Early Discouragements--Proposes to Become a
     Carpenter--"Stuart & Lincoln, Attorneys at Law"--"Riding the
     Circuit"--Incidents of a Trip Round the Circuit--Pen Pictures of
     Lincoln--Humane Traits--Kindness to Animals--Defending Fugitive
     Slaves--Incidents in Lincoln's Life as a Lawyer--His Fondness for
     Jokes and Stories.

Lincoln's removal from New Salem to Springfield, where his more active
life as a lawyer began, occurred in April, 1837, soon after the
completion of his survey work at Petersburg. The event was closely
connected with the removal of the State capital from Vandalia to
Springfield, the law for which was passed at the legislative session of
1836-7. As has been stated, Lincoln was a member of that Legislature and
was active in procuring the passage of the bill. The citizens of
Springfield were very desirous of the removal of the capital to their
town, and many of them were present at the session when the measure was
up for discussion. They had thus become acquainted with Lincoln; they
were favorably impressed as to his abilities and character, and pleased
with his efforts in the matter in which they were so greatly interested.
Through their influence and encouragement he chose Springfield as his
future home.

Lincoln's first interview, after his arrival in Springfield, was with
Mr. Joshua F. Speed, with whom he already had a slight acquaintance, and
who details the circumstances of their meeting. "He had ridden into
town," says Mr. Speed, "on a borrowed horse, with no earthly property
save a pair of saddle-bags containing a few clothes. I was a merchant at
Springfield, and kept a large country store, embracing dry goods,
groceries, hardware, books, medicines, bed-clothes, mattresses,--in
fact, everything that country people needed. Lincoln came into the store
with his saddle-bags on his arm, and said he wanted to buy the fixings
for a single bed. The mattresses, blankets, sheets, coverlid, and
pillow, according to the figures made by me, would cost seventeen
dollars. He said that was perhaps cheap enough, but small as the sum was
he was unable to pay it. But if I would credit him till Christmas and
his experiment as a lawyer was a success, he would pay then; adding, in
the saddest tone, 'If I fail in this, I do not know that I can ever pay
you.' As I looked up at him I thought then, and think now, that I never
saw a sadder face. I said to him, 'You seem to be so much pained at
contracting so small a debt, I think I can suggest a plan by which you
can avoid the debt and at the same time attain your end. I have a large
room with a double bed up-stairs which you are very welcome to share
with me.' 'Where is your room?' said he. 'Up-stairs,' said I, pointing
to a pair of winding stairs which led from the store to my room. He took
his saddle-bags on his arm, went up-stairs, set them down on the floor,
and came down with the most changed countenance. Beaming with pleasure,
he exclaimed, 'Well, Speed, I'm moved!' Lincoln was then twenty-eight
years old. He was a lawyer without a client, with no money, all his
earthly wealth consisting of the clothes he wore and the contents of his
saddle-bags."

Lincoln shared the same room with Mr. Speed during his early residence
in Springfield, taking his meals with his companion at the house of Mr.
William Butler, with whom he boarded for five years. His professional
advancement at first was slow, and he had periods of great
discouragement. An old settler of Illinois, named Page Eaton, says: "I
knew Lincoln when he first came to Springfield. He was an awkward but
hard-working young man. Everybody said he would never make a good
lawyer because he was too honest. He came to my shop one day, after he
had been here five or six months, and said he had a notion to quit
studying law and learn carpentering. He thought there was more need of
carpenters out here than lawyers." Soon after Lincoln's settlement in
Springfield, he formed a law partnership with Major John T. Stuart, whom
he had known for some years and who already had a good position at the
bar. This partnership began, according to the statement of Major Stuart,
on April 27, 1837. It continued just four years, when it was dissolved,
and Lincoln and Judge Stephen T. Logan became partners. This latter
partnership continued about two years, when, on September 20, 1843, the
firm of Lincoln & Herndon was formed, and it continued to the time of
Lincoln's death.

When Lincoln began to practice law, it was the custom in Illinois to
"ride the circuit," a proceeding of which the older communities of the
East know nothing. The State of Illinois, for instance, is divided into
a number of districts, each composed of a number of counties, of which a
single judge, appointed or elected as the case may be, for that purpose,
makes the circuit, holding courts at each county seat. Railroads being
scarce, the earlier circuit judges made their trips from county to
county on horseback or in a gig; and the prominent lawyers living within
the limits of the circuit made the tour of the circuit with the judge.
It is said that when Lincoln first began to "ride the circuit" he was
too poor to own a horse or vehicle, and was compelled to borrow from his
friends. But in due time he became the proprietor of a horse, which he
fed and groomed himself, and to which he was very much attached. On this
animal he would set out from home, to be gone for weeks together, with
no baggage but a pair of saddle-bags containing a change of linen, and
an old cotton umbrella to shelter him from sun or rain. When he got a
little more of this world's goods he set up a one-horse buggy, a very
sorry and shabby-looking affair which he generally used when the weather
promised to be bad. The other lawyers were always glad to see him, and
landlords hailed his coming with pleasure; but he was one of those
gentle, uncomplaining men whom they would put off with indifferent
accommodations. It was a significant remark of a lawyer who was
thoroughly acquainted with his habits and disposition that "Lincoln was
never seated next the landlord at a crowded table, and never got a
chicken-liver or the best cut from the roast." Lincoln once remarked to
Mr. Gillespie that he never felt his own unworthiness so much as when in
the presence of a hotel clerk or waiter. If rooms were scarce, and one,
two, three, or four gentlemen were required to lodge together in order
to accommodate some surly man who "stood upon his rights," Lincoln was
sure to be one of the unfortunates. Yet he loved the life of the
circuit, and never went home without reluctance.

In describing the many experiences of the lawyers who travelled the
circuits at this period, Mr. Arnold says: "The State was settled with a
hardy, fearless, honest, but very litigious population. The court-house
was sometimes framed and boarded, but more frequently it was built of
logs. The judge sat upon a raised platform behind a rough board,
sometimes covered with green baize, for a table on which to write his
notes. A small table stood on the floor in front for the clerk. In the
center of the room was another larger table around which in rude chairs
the lawyers were grouped, too often with their feet on top of it. Rough
benches were placed there for the jury, the parties to the suit,
witnesses and bystanders. The court-rooms were nearly always crowded for
here were rehearsed and acted the dramas, the tragedies, and the
comedies of real life. The court-house has always been a very attractive
place to the people of the frontier. It supplied the place of theatres,
lecture and concert rooms, and other places of interest and amusement in
the older settlements and towns. The leading lawyers and judges were the
star actors, and had each his partisans. Hence crowds attended the
courts to see the judges, to hear the lawyers contend, with argument and
law and wit, for success, victory, and fame. The merits and ability of
the leading advocates, their success or discomfiture in examining or
cross-examining a witness, the ability of this or that one to obtain a
verdict, were canvassed at every cabin-raising, bee, or horse-race, and
at every log-house and school in the county. Thus the lawyers were
stimulated to the utmost exertion of their powers, not only by
controversy and desire of success, but by the consciousness that their
efforts were watched with eagerness by friends, clients, partisans, or
rivals. From one to another of these rude court-houses the gentlemen of
the bar passed, following the judge around his circuits from county to
county, travelling generally on horseback, with saddle-bags, brushes, an
extra shirt or two, and perhaps two or three law books. Sometimes two or
three lawyers would unite and travel in a buggy, and the poorer and
younger ones not seldom walked. But a horse was not an unusual fee, and
in those days when horse thieves as clients were but too common, it was
not long before a young man of ability found himself well mounted.

"There was very great freedom in social intercourse. Manners were rude,
but genial, kind, and friendly. Each was always ready to assist his
fellows, and selfishness was not tolerated. The relations between the
bench and bar were familiar, free and easy. Flashes of wit and humor and
repartee were constantly exchanged. Such was the life upon which Lincoln
now entered; and there gathered with him around those pine tables of the
frontier court-house a very remarkable combination of men, men who
would have been leaders of the bar at Boston or New York, Philadelphia
or Washington; men who would have made their mark in Westminster Hall,
or upon any English circuit. At the capital were John T. Stuart, Stephen
T. Logan, Edward D. Baker, Ninian W. Edwards, Josiah Lamborn, and many
others. Among the leading lawyers from other parts of the State who
practiced in the Supreme and Federal Courts at the capital were Stephen
A. Douglas; Lyman Trumbull, for many years chairman of the judiciary
committee of the United States Senate; O.H. Browning, Senator and member
of the Cabinet at Washington; William H. Bissell, Member of Congress,
and Governor of the State; David Davis, justice of the Supreme Court,
Senator and Vice-President of the United States; Justin Butterfield of
Chicago, and many others almost or quite equally distinguished. This
'circuit riding' involved all sorts of adventures. Hard fare at
miserable country taverns, sleeping on the floor, and fording streams,
were every-day occurrences. All such occurrences were met with good
humor and often turned into sources of frolic and fun. In fording
swollen streams, Lincoln was frequently sent forward as a scout or
pioneer. His extremely long legs enabled him, by taking off his boots
and stockings, and by rolling up or otherwise disposing of his trousers,
to test the depth of the stream, find the most shallow water, and thus
to pilot the party through the current without wetting his garments."

A gentleman who lived in one of the judicial circuits of Illinois in
which Lincoln had an extensive though not very lucrative practice gives
some graphic and interesting reminiscences. "The terms of the court were
held quarterly and usually lasted about two weeks. They were always
seasons of great importance and much gayety in the little town that had
the honor of being the county seat. Distinguished members of the bar
from surrounding and even from distant counties, ex-judges and
ex-Members of Congress, attended and were personally and many of them
popularly known to almost every adult, male and female, of the limited
population. They came in by stages and on horseback. Among them the one
whose arrival was looked forward to with the most pleasurable
anticipations, and whose possible absence--although he almost never was
absent--was feared with the liveliest emotions of anxiety, was 'Uncle
Abe,' as he was lovingly called by us all. Sometimes he might happen to
be a day or two late. Then, as the Bloomington stage came in at sundown,
the bench and bar, jurors and citizens, would gather in crowds at the
hotel where he always put up, to give him a welcome if, happily, he
should arrive, and to experience the keenest feelings of disappointment
if he should not. If he arrived, as he alighted and stretched out both
his long arms to shake hands with those nearest to him and with those
who approached, his homely face handsome in its broad and sunshiny
smile, his voice touching in its kindly and cheerful accents, everyone
in his presence felt lighter in heart and more joyous. He brought light
with him. He loved his fellow-men with all the strength of his great
nature, and those who came in contact with him could not help
reciprocating the love."

Another old friend describes Lincoln as being at this time "very plain
in his costume, as well as rather uncourtly in his address and general
appearance. His clothing was of home Kentucky jean, and the first
impression made by his tall, lank figure upon those who saw him was not
specially prepossessing. He had not outgrown his hard backwoods
experience, and showed no inclination to disguise or to cast behind him
the honest and manly though unpolished characteristics of his earlier
days. Never was a man further removed from all snobbish affectation. As
little was there, also, of the demagogue art of assuming an uncouthness
or rusticity of manner and outward habit with the mistaken notion of
thus securing particular favor as 'one of the masses.' He chose to
appear then, as in all his later life, precisely what he was. His
deportment was unassuming, though without any awkwardness of reserve."

Mr. Crane, an old settler of Tazewell County, says he used to see
Lincoln when passing through Washington, in that county, on his way to
attend court at Metamora; and he remembers him as "dressed in a homespun
coat that came below his knees and was out at both elbows."

Lincoln's tenderness of heart was displayed in his treatment of animals,
toward which he was often performing unusual acts of kindness. On one
occasion, as Mr. Speed relates, Lincoln and the other members of the
Springfield bar had been attending court at Christiansburg, and Mr.
Speed was riding with them toward Springfield. There was quite a party
of these lawyers, riding two by two along a country lane. Lincoln and
John J. Hardin brought up the rear of the cavalcade. "We had passed
through a thicket of wild plum and crab-apple trees," says Mr. Speed,
"and stopped to water our horses. Hardin came up alone. 'Where is
Lincoln?' we inquired. 'Oh,' replied he, 'when I saw him last he had
caught two young birds which the wind had blown out of their nests, and
he was hunting the nest to put them back.' In a short time Lincoln came
up, having found the nest and placed the young birds in it. The party
laughed at him; but he said, 'I could not have slept if I had not
restored those little birds to their mother.'"

Again, as Dr. Holland narrates, "Lincoln was one day riding by a deep
slough or pit in which, to his exceeding pain, he saw a pig struggling,
and with such faint efforts that it was evident that he could not
extricate himself. Lincoln looked at the pig and the mud that enveloped
him, and then looked ruefully at some new clothes in which he had but a
short time before enveloped himself. Deciding against the claims of the
pig he rode on; but he could not get rid of the vision of the poor
brute, and at last, after riding two miles, he turned back, determined
to rescue the animal at the expense of his new clothes. Arrived at the
spot, he tied his horse, and coolly went to work to build of old rails a
passage to the bottom of the hole. Descending on these rails, he seized
the pig and dragged him out, but not without serious damage to the
clothes he wore. Washing his hands in the nearest brook and wiping them
on the grass, he mounted his gig and rode along. He then fell to
examining the motive that sent him back to the release of the pig. At
the first thought it seemed to be pure benevolence; but at length he
came to the conclusion that it was selfishness, for he certainly went to
the pig's relief in order (as he said to the friend to whom he related
the incident) to 'take a pain out of his own mind.'"

Instances showing the integrity, candor, unselfishness, and humanity of
Lincoln's conduct in his law practice could be multiplied indefinitely.
The following are given by Dr. Holland: "The lawyers of Springfield,
particularly those who had political aspirations, were afraid to
undertake the defense of anyone who had been engaged in helping off
fugitives slaves. It was a very unpopular business in those days and in
that locality; and few felt that they could afford to engage in it. One
who needed such aid went to Edward D. Baker, and was refused, distinctly
and frankly on the ground that as a political man he could not afford
it. The man applied to an ardent anti-slavery friend for advice. He
spoke of Mr. Lincoln, and said, 'He's not afraid of an unpopular case.
When I go for a lawyer to defend an arrested fugitive slave, other
lawyers will refuse me. But if Mr. Lincoln is at home he will always
take my case.'"

An old woman of seventy-five years, the widow of a revolutionary
pensioner, came tottering into his law office one day, and told him that
a certain pension agent had charged her the exorbitant fee of two
hundred dollars for collecting her pension. Lincoln was satisfied by
her representations that she had been swindled, and finding that she was
not a resident of the town, and that she was poor, gave her money, and
set about the work of procuring restitution. He immediately entered suit
against the agent to recover a portion of his ill-gotten money. This
suit was one of the most remarkable that Lincoln ever conducted. The day
before the case came up he asked his partner, Mr. Herndon, to get him a
"Life of Washington," and he spent the whole afternoon reading it. His
speech to the jury was long remembered. The whole court-room was in
tears as he closed with these words: "Gentlemen of the jury. Time rolls
by. The heroes of '76 have passed away. They are encamped on the other
shore. This soldier has gone to his rest, and now, crippled, blinded,
and broken, his widow comes to you and to me, gentlemen of the jury, to
right her wrongs. She was not always as you see her now. Once her step
was elastic. Her face was fair. Her voice was as sweet as any that rang
in the mountains of old Virginia. Now she is old. She is poor and
defenceless. Out here on the prairies of Illinois, hundreds of miles
from the scenes of her childhood, she appeals to you and to me who enjoy
the privileges achieved for us by the patriots of the Revolution for our
sympathetic aid and manly protection. I have but one question to ask
you, gentlemen of the jury. Shall we befriend her?" During the speech
the defendant sat huddled up in the court-room, writhing under the lash
of Lincoln's tongue. The jury returned a verdict for every cent that
Lincoln had asked. He became the old lady's surety for costs, paid her
hotel bill and sent her home rejoicing. He made no charges for his own
or his partner's services. A few days afterwards Mr. Herndon picked up a
little scrap of paper in the office. He looked at it a moment, and burst
into a roar of laughter. It was Lincoln's notes for the argument of this
case. They were unique:--"No contract--Not professional
services--Unreasonable charges--Money retained by Deft not given by
Pl'ff.--Revolutionary War--Describe Valley Forge--Ice--Soldiers'
bleeding feet--Pl'ff's husband--Soldiers leaving home for the
army--_Skin Def't_--Close."

In his Autobiography, Joseph Jefferson tells how he visited Springfield
with a theatrical company in the early days (1839) and planned to open a
theatrical season in that godly town. But "a religious revival was in
progress, and the fathers of the church not only launched forth against
us in their sermons, but got the city to pass a new law enjoining a
heavy license against our 'unholy' calling. I forget the amount, but it
was large enough to be prohibitory." The company had begun the building
of a new theatre; and naturally the situation was perplexing. In the
midst of their trouble, says Mr. Jefferson, "a young lawyer called on
the Managers. He had heard of the injustice, and offered, if they would
place the matter in his hands, to have the license taken off,--declaring
that he only wanted to see fair play, and he would accept no fee whether
he failed or succeeded. The case was brought up before the council. The
young lawyer began his harangue. He handled the subject with tact,
skill, and humor, tracing the history of the drama from the time when
Thespis acted in a cart, to the stage of to-day. He illustrated his
speech with a number of anecdotes, and kept the council in a roar of
laughter. His good humor prevailed, and the exorbitant tax was taken
off. This young lawyer was very popular in Springfield, and was honored
and beloved by all who knew him; and after the time of which I write he
held rather an important position in the Government of the United
States. He now lies buried in Springfield, under a monument
commemorating his greatness and his virtues,--and his name was Abraham
Lincoln."

Judge Gillespie tells a good story, to the effect that Lincoln and
General U.P. Linder were once defending a man who was being tried on a
criminal charge before Judge David Davis, who said at dinner-time that
the case must be disposed of that night. Lincoln suggested that the best
thing they could do would be to run Benedict, the prosecuting attorney,
as far into the night as possible, in hopes that he might, in his rage,
commit some indiscretion that would help their case. Lincoln began, but
to save his life he could not speak one hour, and the laboring oar fell
into Linder's hands. "But," said Lincoln, "he was equal to the occasion.
He spoke most interestingly three mortal hours, about everything in the
world. He discussed Benedict from head to foot, and put in about
three-quarters of an hour on the subject of Benedict's whiskers."
Lincoln said he never envied a man so much as he did Linder on that
occasion. He thought he was inimitable in his capacity to talk
interestingly about everything and nothing, by the hour.

But if Lincoln had not General Linder's art of "talking against time,"
his wit often suggested some readier method of gaining advantage in a
case. On one occasion, a suit was on trial in the Circuit Court of
Sangamon County, in which Lincoln was attorney for the plaintiff, and
Mr. James C. Conkling, then a young man just entering practice, was
attorney for the defendant. It was a jury trial, and Lincoln waived the
opening argument to the jury, leaving Mr. Conkling to sum up his case
for the defense. The latter spoke at considerable length, in a
sophomoric style, laboring under the impression that unless he made an
extraordinary exertion to influence the jury he would be quite eclipsed
by Lincoln in his closing speech. But he was completely taken back by
the unlooked-for light manner in which Lincoln treated the case in his
closing. Lincoln proceeded to reply but, in doing so he talked on
without making the slightest reference to the case on hearing or to the
argument of Mr. Conkling. His summing-up to the jury was to the
following effect: "Gentlemen of the jury: In early days there lived in
this vicinity, over on the Sangamon river, an old Indian of the Kickapoo
tribe by the name of Johnnie Kongapod. He had been taken in charge by
some good missionaries, converted to Christianity, and educated to such
extent that he could read and write. He took a great fancy to poetry and
became somewhat of a poet himself. His desire was that after his death
there should be placed at the head of his grave an epitaph, which he
prepared himself, in rhyme, in the following words:

     "'Here lies poor Johnnie Kongapod;
       Have mercy on him, gracious God,
       As he would do if he were God
       And you were Johnnie Kongapod.'"

Of course all this had no reference to the case, nor did Lincoln intend
it should have any. It was merely his way of ridiculing the eloquence of
his opponent. The verdict of the jury was for the plaintiff, as Lincoln
expected it would be; and this was the reason of his treating the case
as he did.

A story somewhat similar to the above was told by the late Judge John
Pearson shortly before his death. In the February term, 1850, of the
Circuit Court of Vermilion County, Illinois, a case was being tried in
which a young lady had brought suit for $10,000 against a recreant lover
who had married another girl. The amount sued for was thought to be an
enormous sum in those days, and the ablest talent to be found was
brought into requisition by both sides. Richard Thompson and Daniel W.
Voorhees were associated with O.L. Davis for the fair plaintiff. H.W.
Beckwith, Ward Lamon, and Abraham Lincoln were for the defendant. The
little town of Danville was crowded with people from far and near who
had come to hear the big speeches. The evidence brought out in the
trial was in every way against the defendant, and the sympathy of the
public was, naturally enough, with the young lady plaintiff. Lincoln and
his associate counsel plainly saw the hopelessness of their cause; and
they wisely concluded to let their side of the case stand upon its
merits, without even a plea of extenuating circumstances. Voorhees was
young, ambitious, and anxious to display his oratory. He arranged with
his colleagues at the beginning that he should make a speech, and he
spent several hours in his room at the hotel in the preparation of an
oratorical avalanche. It became generally known that Dan was going to
out-do himself, and the expectation of the community was at its highest
tension. The little old court-house was crowded. The ladies were out in
full force. Voorhees came in a little late, glowing with the excitement
of the occasion. It had been arranged that Davis was to open, Lincoln
was to follow, and Voorhees should come next. Mr. Davis made a clear
statement of the case, recited the character of the evidence, and closed
with a plain logical argument. Then Lincoln arose, and stood in silence
for a moment, looking at the jury. He deliberately re-arranged some of
the books and papers on the table before him, as though "making a good
ready," as he used to say, and began in a spirited but deliberate way:
"Your Honor, the evidence in this case is all in, and doubtless all
concerned comprehend its fullest import without the aid of further
argument. Therefore we will rest our case here." This move, of course,
cut off all future discussion. Voorhees, with his load of pyrotechnics
was shut out. An ominous silence followed Lincoln's remark; then
Voorhees arose, white with rage, and entered a protest against the
tactics of the defense. All the others were disappointed, but amused,
and the only consolation that Voorhees got out of this affair was a
verdict for the full amount claimed by his client. But he never forgave
Lincoln for thus "nipping" his great speech "in the bud."

Mr. Wickizer gives a story which illustrates the off-hand readiness of
Lincoln's wit. "In the court at Bloomington Mr. Lincoln was engaged in a
case of no great importance; but the attorney on the other side, Mr. S.,
a young lawyer of fine abilities, was always very sensitive about being
beaten, and in this case he manifested unusual zeal and interest. The
case lasted until late at night, when it was finally submitted to the
jury. Mr. S. spent a sleepless night in anxiety, and early next morning
learned, to his great chagrin, that he had lost the case. Mr. Lincoln
met him at the court-house and asked him what had become of his case.
With lugubrious countenance and melancholy tone, Mr. S. said, 'It's gone
to hell!' 'Oh, well!' replied Lincoln, 'Never mind,--you can try it
again there!'"

Lincoln was always ready to join in a laugh at his own expense, and used
to tell the following story with intense enjoyment: "In the days when I
used to be 'on the circuit' I was accosted in the cars by a stranger who
said, 'Excuse me, sir, but I have an article in my possession which
belongs to you.' 'How is that?' I asked, considerably astonished. The
stranger took a jack-knife from his pocket. 'This knife,' said he, 'was
placed in my hands some years ago with the injunction that I was to keep
it until I found a man uglier than myself. I have carried it from that
time to this. Allow me to say, sir, that I think you are fairly entitled
to the property.'"

Mr. Gillespie says of Lincoln's passion for story-telling: "As a boon
companion, Lincoln, although he never drank liquor or used tobacco in
any form, was without a rival. No one would ever think of 'putting in'
when he was talking. He could illustrate any subject, it seemed to me,
with an appropriate and amusing anecdote. He did not tell stories merely
for the sake of telling them, but rather by way of illustration of
something that had happened or been said. There seemed to be no end to
his fund of stories." Mr. Lamon states: "Lincoln frequently said that he
lived by his humor and would have died without it. His manner of telling
a story was irresistibly comical, the fun of it dancing in his eyes and
playing over every feature. His face changed in an instant; the hard
lines faded out of it, and the mirth seemed to diffuse itself all over
him like a spontaneous tickle. You could see it coming long before he
opened his mouth, and he began to enjoy the 'point' before his eager
auditors could catch the faintest glimpse of it. Telling and hearing
ridiculous stories was one of his ruling passions." A good illustration
of this fondness for story-telling is given by Judge Sibley, of Quincy,
Illinois, who knew Lincoln when practicing law at Springfield. One day a
party of lawyers were sitting in the law library of the court-house at
Springfield, awaiting the opening of court, and telling stories to fill
the time. Judge Breese of the Supreme bench--one of the most
distinguished of American jurists, and a man of great personal
dignity--passed through the room where the lawyers were sitting, on his
way to open court. Lincoln, seeing him, called out in his hearty way,
"Hold on, Breese! Don't open court yet! Here's Bob Blackwell just going
to tell a new story!" The judge passed on without replying, evidently
regarding it as beneath the dignity of the Supreme Court to delay
proceedings for the sake of a story.




CHAPTER V


     Lincoln in the Legislature--Eight Consecutive Years of Service--His
     Influence in the House--Leader of the Whig Party in Illinois--Takes
     a Hand in National Politics--Presidential Election in 1840--A "Log
     Cabin" Reminiscence--Some Memorable Political Encounters--A Tilt
     with Douglas--Lincoln Facing a Mob--His Physical Courage--Lincoln
     as a Duellist--The Affair with General Shields--An Eye-Witness'
     Account of the Duel--Courtship and Marriage.

In 1838 Lincoln was for a third time a candidate for the State
Legislature. Mr. Wilson, one of his colleagues from Sangamon County,
states that a question of the division of the county was one of the
local issues. "Mr. Lincoln and myself," says Mr. Wilson, "among others
residing in the portion of the county which sought to be organized into
a new county, opposed the division; and it became necessary that I
should make a special canvass through the northwest part of the county,
then known as Sand Ridge. I made the canvass. Mr. Lincoln accompanied
me, and being personally acquainted with everyone we called at nearly
every house. At that time it was the universal custom to keep some
whiskey in the house for private use and to treat friends. The subject
was always mentioned as a matter of politeness, but with the usual
remark to Mr. Lincoln, 'We know you never drink, but maybe your friend
would like to take a little.' I never saw Mr. Lincoln drink. He often
told me he never drank; had no desire for drink, nor for the
companionship of drinking men."

The result of this canvass was that Lincoln was elected to the
Legislature for the session of 1838-39. The next year he was elected
for the session of 1840-41. This ended his legislative service, which
comprised eight consecutive years, from 1834 to 1841. In these later
sessions he was as active and prominent in the House as he had been in
the earlier times when a member from New Salem.

Lincoln's faculty for getting the better of an adversary by an apt
illustration or anecdote was seldom better shown than by an incident
which occurred during his last term in the Legislature. Hon. James C.
Conkling has given the following graphic description of the scene: "A
gentleman who had formerly been Attorney-General of the State was also a
member. Presuming upon his age, experience, and former official
position, he thought it incumbent upon himself to oppose Lincoln, who
was then one of the acknowledged leaders of his party. He at length
attracted the attention of Lincoln, who replied to his remarks, telling
one of his humorous anecdotes and making a personal application to his
opponent which placed the latter in such a ridiculous attitude that it
convulsed the whole House. All business was suspended. In vain the
Speaker rapped with his gavel. Members of all parties, without
distinction, were compelled to laugh. They not only laughed, they
screamed and yelled; they thumped upon the floor with their canes; they
clapped their hands and threw up their hats; they shouted and twisted
themselves into all sorts of contortions, until their sides ached and
the tears rolled down their cheeks. One paroxysm passed away, but was
speedily succeeded by another, and again they laughed and screamed and
yelled. Another lull occurred, and still another paroxysm, until they
seemed to be perfectly exhausted. The ambition of Lincoln's opponent was
abundantly gratified, and for the remainder of the session he lapsed
into profound obscurity."

In June, 1842, ex-President Van Buren was journeying through Illinois
with a company of friends. When near Springfield they were delayed by
bad roads, and were compelled to spend the night at Rochester, some
miles out. The accommodations at this place were very poor, and a few of
the ex-President's Springfield friends proposed to go out to meet him
and try to aid in entertaining him. Knowing Lincoln's ability as a
talker and story-teller, they begged him to go with them and aid in
making their guest at the country inn pass the evening as pleasantly as
possible. Lincoln, with his usual good nature, went with them, and
entertained the party for hours with graphic descriptions of Western
life, anecdotes and witty stories. Judge Peck, who was of the party, and
a warm friend of the ex-President, says that Lincoln was at his best.
There was a constant succession of brilliant anecdotes and funny
stories, accompanied by loud laughter in which Van Buren took his full
share. "He also," says the Judge, "gave us incidents and anecdotes of
Elisha Williams, and other leading members of the New York bar, going
back to the days of Hamilton and Burr. Altogether there was a right
merry time. Mr. Van Buren said the only drawback upon his enjoyment was
that his sides were sore from laughing at Lincoln's stories for a week
thereafter."

Lincoln's eight years of legislative service had given him considerable
reputation in politics, and he had become the acknowledged leader of the
Whig party in Illinois. In the exciting Presidential campaign of 1840,
known as the "Log Cabin" campaign, he took a very active part. He had
been nominated as Presidential Elector on the Harrison ticket, and
stumped a large portion of the State. A peculiarly interesting
reminiscence of Lincoln's appearance on one occasion during the "Log
Cabin" campaign is furnished by Mr. G.W. Harris, who says: "In the fall
of the year 1840 there came into the log school-house in a village in
Southern Illinois where I, a lad, was a pupil, a tall, awkward,
plain-looking young man dressed in a full suit of 'blue jean.'
Approaching the master, he gave his name, and, apologizing for the
intrusion, said, 'I am told you have a copy of Byron's works. I would
like to borrow it for a few hours.' The book was produced and loaned to
him. With his thanks and a 'Good-day' to the teacher, and a smile such
as I have never seen on any other man's face and a look that took in all
of us lads and lassies, the stranger passed out of the room. This was
during a Presidential canvass. Isaac Walker, candidate for Democratic
Elector, and Abraham Lincoln, candidate for Whig Elector, were by
appointment to discuss political matters in the afternoon of that day. I
asked for and got a half-holiday. I had given no thought to the matter
until the appearance of Lincoln (for he it was) in the school-room. But,
something in the man had aroused, not only in me but in others of the
scholars, a strong desire to see him again and to hear him speak. Isaac
Walker in his younger days had been a resident of the village. Lincoln
was aware of this, and shrewdly suspected that Walker in his remarks
would allude to the circumstance; so, having the opening speech, he
determined to 'take the wind out of his sails.' He did so--how
effectually, it is hardly necessary for me to say. He had borrowed
Byron's works to read the opening lines of 'Lara':

    "He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord,
    The long self-exiled chieftain, is restored.
    There be bright faces in the busy hall,
    Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall;

           *       *       *       *       *

    "He comes at last in sudden loneliness,
    And whence they know not, why they need not guess;
    They more might marvel, when the greeting's o'er,
    Not that he came, but came not long before."

During this period Lincoln continued to enjoy the hospitality of Mr.
Speed at Springfield. "After he made his home with me," says Mr. Speed,
"on every winter's night at my store, by a big wood fire, no matter how
inclement the weather, eight or ten choice spirits assembled, without
distinction of party. It was a sort of social club without organization.
They came there because they were sure to find Lincoln. His habit was to
engage in conversation upon any and all subjects except politics. But
one evening a political argument sprang up between Lincoln and Douglas,
which for a time ran high. Douglas sprang to his feet and said:
'Gentlemen, this is no place to talk politics; we will discuss the
questions publicly with you.'" A few days later the Whigs held a meeting
and challenged the Democrats to a joint debate. The challenge was
accepted. Douglas, Lamborn, Calhoun, and Jesse Thomas were deputed by
the Democrats to meet Logan, Baker, Browning, and Lincoln on the part of
the Whigs. The intellectual encounter between these noted champions is
still described by those who witnessed it as "the great debate." It took
place in the Second Presbyterian church at Springfield, and lasted eight
nights, each speaker occupying a night in turn. Mr. Speed speaks thus of
Lincoln's effort: "Lincoln delivered his speech without manuscript or
notes. He had a wonderful faculty in that way. He might be writing an
important document, be interrupted in the midst of a sentence, turn his
attention to other matters entirely foreign to the subject on which he
was engaged, and then take up his pen and begin where he left off
without reading the previous part of the sentence. He could grasp,
exhaust, and quit any subject with more facility than any man I have
ever seen or heard of." The subjoined paragraphs from the speech above
referred to show the impassioned feeling which Lincoln poured forth that
night. Those familiar with his admirable style in his later years would
scarcely recognize him in these florid and rather over-weighted periods:

     Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose
     hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was
     the last to desert, but that I never deserted her. I know that the
     great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil
     spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political
     corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with
     frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land,
     bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing;
     while on its bosom are riding, like demons on the waves of hell,
     the imps of the Evil Spirit, and fiendishly torturing and taunting
     all those who dare resist its destroying course with the
     hopelessness of their effort; and knowing this, I cannot deny that
     all may be swept away. Broken by it, I too may be; bow to it, I
     never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought
     not to deter us from the support of a cause which we deem to be
     just. It shall not deter me. If I ever feel the soul within me
     elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its
     Almighty architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my
     country deserted by all the world beside, and I, standing up boldly
     and alone, hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. And here,
     without contemplating consequences, before high Heaven and in the
     face of the whole world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just
     cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my
     love. And who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt the
     oath I take? Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may
     succeed. But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so. We shall have
     the proud consolation of saying to our conscience and to the
     departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved by
     our judgments and adored by our hearts in disaster, in chains, in
     torture, and in death, we never failed in defending.

In this canvass Lincoln came again into collision with Douglas, the
adversary whom he had met two years before and with whom he was to
sustain an almost life-long political conflict. He also had occasion to
show his courage and presence of mind in rescuing from a mob his
distinguished friend, Col. E.D. Baker, afterwards a Senator of the
United States. "Baker was speaking in a large room," says Mr. Arnold,
"rented and used for the court sessions, and Lincoln's office was in an
apartment over the court-room, communicating with it by a trap-door.
Lincoln was in his office listening to Baker through the open trap-door,
when Baker, becoming excited, abused the Democrats, many of whom were
present. A cry was raised, 'Pull him off the stand!' The instant Lincoln
heard the cry, knowing a general fight was imminent, his athletic form
was seen descending from above through the opening of the trap-door,
and, springing to the side of Baker, and waving his hand for silence, he
said with dignity: 'Gentlemen, let us not disgrace the age and country
in which we live. This is a land where freedom of speech is guaranteed.
Baker has a right to speak. I am here to protect him, and no man shall
take him from this stand if I can prevent it.' Quiet was restored, and
Baker finished his speech without further interruption."

A similar occurrence, happening about the same period, is detailed by
General Linder: "On a later occasion, when Colonel Baker and myself were
both battling together in the Whig cause, at a convention held in
Springfield, I made a speech at the State House, which I think now,
looking back at it from this point, was the very best I ever made in my
life. While I was addressing the vast assembly some ruffian in the
galleries flung at me a gross personal insult accompanied with a threat.
Lincoln and Colonel Baker, who were both present and were warm personal
and political friends of mine, anticipating that I might be attacked
when I left the State House, came upon the stand a little while before I
concluded my speech and took their station on each side of me. When I
was through, and after my audience had greeted me with three hearty
cheers, each took one of my arms, and Lincoln said to me: 'Linder, Baker
and I are apprehensive that you may be attacked by some of those
ruffians who insulted you from the galleries, and we have come up to
escort you to your hotel. We both think we can do a little fighting, so
we want you to walk between us until we get you to your hotel. Your
quarrel is our quarrel and that of the great Whig party of this nation.
Your speech upon this occasion is the greatest that has been made by any
of us, for which we wish to honor and defend you.' This I consider no
ordinary compliment, coming from Lincoln, for he was no flatterer nor
disposed to bestow praise where it was undeserved. Colonel Baker
heartily concurred in all he said, and between those two glorious men I
left the stand and we marched out of the State House through our
friends, who trooped after us evidently anticipating what Lincoln and
Baker had suggested to me, accompanying us to my hotel."

That Lincoln had an abundance of physical courage, and was well able to
defend himself when necessity demanded, is clear from the incidents just
given. Mr. Herndon, his intimate friend, adds his testimony on this
point. As Lincoln was grand in his good nature, says Mr. Herndon, so he
was grand in his rage. "Once I saw him incensed at a judge for giving an
unfair decision. It was a terrible spectacle. At another time I saw two
men come to blows in his presence. He picked them up separately and
tossed them apart like a couple of kittens. He was the strongest man I
ever knew, and has been known to lift a man of his own weight and throw
him over a worm fence. Once in Springfield the Irish voters meditated
taking possession of the polls. News came down the street that they
would permit nobody to vote but those of their own party. Mr. Lincoln
seized an axe-handle from a hardware store and went alone to open a way
to the ballot-box. His appearance intimidated them, and we had neither
threats nor collisions all that day."

An unsuspected side of Lincoln's character was shown, at this period of
his life, in the affair with General Shields. With all his gentleness
and his scrupulous regard for the rights of others, Lincoln was not one
to submit to being bullied; while his physical courage had been proved
in many a rough--and--tumble encounter, often against heavy odds, with
the rude and boisterous spirits of his time. These encounters were
usually with nature's weapons; but in the Shields affair--duel, it was
sometimes called--he showed that he would not shrink from the use of
more deadly weapons if forced to do so. In judging this phase of his
character, account must be taken of his Kentucky birth and origin, and
of the customs and standards of his time. James Shields (afterwards a
distinguished Union General and U.S. Senator) was at this time (1842)
living at Springfield, holding the office of State Auditor. He is
described as "a gallant, hot-headed bachelor, from Tyrone County,
Ireland." He was something of a beau in society, and was the subject of
some satirical articles which, in a spirit of fun, Miss Mary Todd
(afterwards Mrs. Lincoln) had written and published in a local journal.
Shields was furious, and, demanding the name of the writer, Lincoln sent
him word that he would assume full responsibility in the matter. A
challenge to a duel followed, which Lincoln accepted and named
broadswords as the weapons. General Linder states that Lincoln said to
him that he did not want to kill Shields, and felt sure he could disarm
him if they fought with broadswords, while he felt sure Shields would
kill him if pistols were the weapons. It seems that Lincoln actually
took lessons in broadsword exercise from a Major Duncan; and at the
appointed time all parties proceeded to the chosen field, near Alton.
But friends appeared on the scene while the preliminaries were being
arranged, and succeeded in effecting a reconciliation. Major Lucas, of
Springfield, who was on the field, stated that he "had no doubt Lincoln
meant to fight. Lincoln was no coward, and he would unquestionably have
held his own against his antagonist, for he was a powerful man and well
skilled in the use of the broadsword. Lincoln said to me, after the
affair was all over, 'I could have split him in two.'" But there can be
little doubt that he was well pleased that the affair proved a
bloodless one.

The mention of Miss Mary Todd, in the preceding paragraph, brings us to
Lincoln's marriage with that lady, which occurred in 1842, he being then
in his thirty--fourth year. Miss Todd was the daughter of the Hon.
Robert T. Todd, of Lexington, Kentucky. She came to Springfield in 1839,
to live with her sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards. "She was young," says
Mr. Lamon, "just twenty-one,--her family was of the best and her
connections in Illinois among the most refined and distinguished people.
Her mother having died when she was a little girl, she had been educated
under the care of a French lady. She was gifted with rare talents, had a
keen sense of the ridiculous, a ready insight into the weaknesses of
individual character, and a most fiery and ungovernable temper. Her
tongue and her pen were equally sharp. Highbred, proud, brilliant,
witty, and with a will that bent every one else to her purpose, she took
Lincoln captive. He was a rising politician, fresh from the people, and
possessed of great power among them. Miss Todd was of aristocratic and
distinguished family, able to lead through the awful portals of 'good
society' whomsoever they chose to countenance. It was thought that a
union between them could not fail of numerous benefits to both parties.
Mr. Edwards thought so; Mrs. Edwards thought so; and it was not long
before Mary Todd herself thought so. She was very ambitious, and even
before she left Kentucky announced her belief that she was destined to
be the wife of some future President. For a while she was courted by
Douglas as well as by Lincoln. Being asked which of them she intended to
have, she answered, 'The one that has the best chance of being
President.' She decided in favor of Lincoln; and in the opinion of some
of her husband's friends she aided to no small extent in the fulfilment
of the prophecy which the bestowal of her hand implied." Mrs. Edwards,
Miss Todd's sister, has related that "Lincoln was charmed with Mary's
wit and fascinated with her quick sagacity, her will, her nature and
culture. I have happened in the room," she says, "where they were
sitting, often and often, and Mary led the conversation. Lincoln would
listen, and gaze on her as if drawn by some superior power--irresistibly
so. He listened, but seldom said a word."

Preparations were made for the marriage between Lincoln and Miss Todd.
But they were interrupted by a painful occurrence--a sudden breaking out
of a fit of melancholy, or temporary insanity, such as had afflicted
Lincoln on a former occasion. This event has been made the subject of no
little gossip, into which it is not now necessary or desirable to go,
further than to mention that at about this time Lincoln seems to have
formed a strong attachment for Miss Matilda Edwards, a sister of Ninian
W. Edwards; and that the engagement with Miss Todd was for a time broken
off. In consequence of these complications, Lincoln's health was
seriously affected. He suffered from melancholy, which was so profound
that "his friends were alarmed for his life." His intimate companion,
Mr. Speed, endeavored to rescue him from the terrible depression, urging
that he would die unless he rallied. Lincoln replied, "I am not afraid
to die, and would be more than willing. But I have an irrepressible
desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better
for my having been in it."

Mr. Herndon gives as his opinion that Lincoln's insanity grew out of a
most extraordinary complication of feelings--aversion to the marriage
proposed, a counter--attachment to Miss Edwards, and a revival of his
tenderness for the memory of Anne Rutledge. At all events, his
derangement was nearly if not quite complete. "We had to remove razors
from his room," says Mr. Speed, "take away all knives, and other
dangerous things. It was terrible." Mr. Speed determined to do for him
what Bowlin Greene had done on a similar occasion at New Salem. Having
sold out his store on the first of January,

1841, he took Lincoln with him to his home in Kentucky and kept him
there during most of the summer and fall, or until he seemed
sufficiently restored to be given his liberty again, when he was brought
back to Springfield. His health was soon regained, and on the 4th of
November, 1842, the marriage between him and Miss Todd was celebrated
according to the rites of the Episcopal Church. After the marriage
Lincoln secured pleasant rooms for himself and wife at the Globe Tavern,
at a cost of four dollars a week. In 1844 he purchased of the Rev.
Nathan Dressar the plain dwelling which was his home for the ensuing
seventeen years, and which he left in 1861 to enter the White House.




CHAPTER VI


     Lincoln in National Politics--His Congressional
     Aspirations--Law-Partnership of Lincoln and Herndon--The
     Presidential Campaign of 1844--Visit to Henry Clay--Lincoln Elected
     to Congress--Congressional Reputation--Acquaintance with
     Distinguished Men--First Speech in Congress--"Getting the Hang" of
     the House--Lincoln's Course on the Mexican War--Notable Speech in
     Congress--Ridicule of General Cass--Bill for the Abolition of
     Slavery--Delegate to the Whig National Convention of 1848--Stumping
     the Country for Taylor--Advice to Young Politicians--"Old Abe"--A
     Political Disappointment--Lincoln's Appearance as an Office Seeker
     in Washington--"A Divinity that Shapes our Ends."

In the spring of 1843 Lincoln was among the nominees proposed to
represent the Sangamon district in Congress; but Col. Edward D. Baker
carried the delegation, and was elected. In writing to his friend Speed,
Lincoln treated the circumstance with his usual humor. "We had," he
says, "a meeting of the Whigs of the county here last Monday to appoint
delegates to a district convention. Baker beat me, and got the
delegation instructed to go for him. The meeting, in spite of my attempt
to decline it, appointed me one of the delegates; so that in getting
Baker the nomination I shall be 'fixed' a good deal like a fellow who is
made groomsman to the man who 'cut him out' and is marrying his own
girl."

On the 20th of September, 1843, the partnership between Lincoln and
Judge Logan was dissolved; and the same day a new association was formed
with William H. Herndon, a relative of one of Lincoln's former friends
of Clary Grove. It is said that in spite of their close friendship Mr.
Herndon could not understand it when Lincoln one day plunged up the
office stairs and said, "Herndon, should you like to be my partner?"
"Don't laugh at me, Mr. Lincoln," was the response. Persistent
repetition of the question could hardly gain a hearing; but at last Mr.
Herndon said: "Mr. Lincoln, you know I am too young, and I have no
standing and no money; but if you are in earnest, there is nothing in
this world that would make me so happy." Nothing more was said till the
papers were brought to Herndon to sign. The partnership of "Lincoln &
Herndon" was a happy one, and continued until Lincoln became President,
a period of nearly eighteen years.

The life of Henry Clay, which Lincoln read in his boyhood, had filled
him with enthusiasm for the great Whig leader; and when the latter was
nominated for the Presidency, in 1844, there was no more earnest
adherent of his cause than the "Sangamon Chief," as Lincoln was now
called. Lincoln canvassed Illinois and a part of Indiana during the
campaign, meeting the chief Democratic speakers, and especially Douglas,
in debate. Lincoln had not at this time heard the "silvery-tongued
orator" of Kentucky; but two years later the opportunity was afforded
and eagerly embraced. It is possible, as Dr. Holland remarks, that he
"needed the influence of this visit to restore a healthy tone to his
feelings, and to teach him that the person whom his imagination had
transformed into a demigod was only a man, possessing the full measure
of weaknesses common to men. In 1846 Lincoln learned that Clay was to
deliver a speech at Lexington, Kentucky, in favor of gradual
emancipation. This event seemed to give him an excuse for breaking away
from his business and satisfying his desire to look his demigod in the
face and hear the music of his eloquence. He accordingly went to
Lexington, and arrived there in time to attend the meeting. On returning
to his home from this visit he did not attempt to disguise his
disappointment. Clay's speech was written and read; it lacked entirely
the fire and eloquence which Lincoln had anticipated. At the close of
the meeting Lincoln secured an introduction to the great orator and as
Clay knew what a friend Lincoln had been to him, he invited his admirer
and partisan to Ashland. No invitation could have delighted Lincoln
more. But the result of his private intercourse with Clay was no more
satisfactory than that which followed the speech. Those who have known
both men will not wonder at this; for two men could hardly be more
unlike in their motives and manners than the two thus brought together.
One was a proud man; the other was a humble man. One was princely in his
bearing; the other was lowly. One was distant and dignified; the other
was as simple and approachable as a child. One received the deference of
men as his due; the other received it with an uncomfortable sense of his
unworthiness. A friend of Lincoln, who had a long conversation with him
after his return from Ashland, found that his old enthusiasm was gone.
Lincoln said that though Clay was polished in his manners, and very
hospitable, he betrayed a consciousness of superiority that none could
mistake."

For two years after the Presidential contest between Clay and Polk,
Lincoln devoted himself assiduously to his law practice. But in 1846 he
was again active in politics, this time striving for a seat in the
National Congress. His chief opponent among the Whig candidates was his
old friend John J. Hardin, who soon withdrew from the contest, leaving
Mr. Lincoln alone in the field. The candidate on the Democratic ticket
was Peter Cartwright, the famous Methodist preacher. It was supposed
from his great popularity as a pulpit orator that Mr. Cartwright would
run far ahead of his ticket. Instead of this, Lincoln received a
majority of 1,511 in his district, which in 1844 had given Clay a
majority of only 914 and in 1848 had allowed the Whig candidate for
Congress to be defeated by 106 votes.

Lincoln took his seat in the Thirtieth Congress in December, 1847, the
only Whig member from Illinois. Among the notable members of this
Congress were ex-president John Quincy Adams; Andrew Johnson, elected
Vice-President with Lincoln on his second election; A.H. Stephens,
afterwards Vice-President of the Confederacy; Toombs, Rhett, Cobb, and
others who afterwards became leaders of the Rebellion. In the Senate
were Daniel Webster, Simon Cameron, Lewis Cass, Mason, Hunter, John C.
Calhoun, and Jefferson Davis.

Lincoln entered Congress as the Illinois leader of the Whig party. He
was reputed to be an able and effective speaker. In speaking of the
impression he made upon his associates, the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop
says: "I recall vividly the impressions I then formed both of his
ability and amiability. We were old Whigs together, and agreed entirely
upon all questions of public interest. I could not always concur in the
policy of the party which made him President, but I never lost my
personal regard for him. For shrewdness, sagacity, and keen practical
sense, he has had no superior in our day or generation."

Alexander H. Stephens, writing seventeen years after Lincoln's death,
recalled their service together in Congress. "I knew Mr. Lincoln well
and intimately," said Mr. Stephens. "We both were ardent supporters of
General Taylor for President in 1848. Lincoln, Toombs, Preston, myself,
and others, formed the first Congressional Taylor Club, known as 'The
Young Indians,' and organized the Taylor movement which resulted in his
nomination. Mr. Lincoln was careless as to his manners and awkward in
his speech, but possessed a strong, clear, vigorous mind. He always
attracted and riveted the attention of the House when he spoke. His
manner of speech as well as of thought was original. He had no model. He
was a man of strong convictions, and what Carlyle would have called an
_earnest_ man. He abounded in anecdote. He illustrated everything he
was talking about by an anecdote, always exceedingly apt and pointed;
and socially he always kept his company in a roar of laughter."

Alluding to his first speech in Congress--on some post-office question
of no special interest--Lincoln wrote to his friend Herndon that his
principal object was to "get the hang of the House"; adding that he
"found speaking here and elsewhere about the same thing. I was about as
badly scared as when I spoke in court, but no more so."

Lincoln's mental power, as well as his self-confidence, developed
rapidly under the responsibilities of his new position. During his term
of service in the House he was zealous in the performance of his duties,
alert to seize every opportunity to strike a blow for his party and
acquit himself to the satisfaction of his constituents. In January,
1848, he made a telling speech in support of the "Spot Resolutions," in
which his antagonism to the course of the Administration in regard to
the war on Mexico was uncompromisingly announced. These resolutions were
offered for the purpose of getting from President Polk a statement of
facts regarding the beginning of the war. In this speech Lincoln warned
the President not to try to "escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze
upon the exceeding brightness of military glory--that attractive rainbow
that rises in showers of blood, that serpent's eye that charms but to
destroy." In writing, a few days after the delivery of this speech, to
Mr. Herndon, Lincoln said: "I will stake my life that if you had been in
my place you would have voted just as I did. Would you have voted what
you felt and knew to be a lie? I know you would not. Would you have gone
out of the House--skulked the vote? I expect not. If you had skulked one
vote you would have had to skulk many more before the end of the
session. Richardson's resolutions, introduced before I made any move or
gave any vote upon the subject, make a direct question of the justice
of the war; so no man can be silent if he would. You are compelled to
speak; and your only alternative is to tell the _truth_ or tell a _lie_.
I cannot doubt which you would do."

Lincoln's position on the Mexican War has been generally approved by the
moral sense of the country; but it gave his political enemies an
opportunity, which they were not slow to improve, for trying to make
political capital out of it and using it to create a prejudice against
him. Douglas in particular never missed an opportunity of referring to
it. In the great joint debate in 1858 he spoke of Lincoln's having
"distinguished himself in Congress by his opposition to the Mexican War,
taking the side of the common enemy against his own country." No better
refutation of these oft-repeated charges could be made than that given
by Lincoln himself on this occasion. "The Judge charges me," he said,
"with having, while in Congress, opposed our soldiers who were fighting
in the Mexican War. I will tell you what he can prove by referring to
the record. You remember I was an old Whig; and whenever the Democratic
party tried to get me to vote that _the war had been righteously begun_
by the President, I would not do it. But whenever they asked for any
money or land-warrants, or anything to pay the soldiers, I gave _the
same vote that Judge Douglas did_. Such is the truth, and the Judge has
a right to make all he can out of it."

The most ambitious utterance of Lincoln during this term in Congress was
that of July 27, 1848, when he took for his subject the very
comprehensive one of "The Presidency and General Politics." It was a
piece of sound and forcible argumentation, relieved by strong and
effective imagery and quiet humor. A considerable portion of it was
occupied with an exposure of the weaknesses of General Cass, the
Presidential candidate opposed to General Taylor. Lincoln ridiculed Cass
with all the wit at his command. An extract from this speech has
already been quoted in this work, in the account of Lincoln in the Black
Hawk War. Another passage, equally telling, relates to the vacillating
action of General Cass on the Wilmot Proviso. After citing a number of
facts in reference to the case, Lincoln says: "These extracts show that
in 1846 General Cass was for the Proviso _at once_; that in March, 1847,
he was still for it, _but not just then_; and that in December, 1847, he
was _against it_ altogether. This is a true index to the whole man. When
the question was raised, in 1846, he was in a blustering hurry to take
ground for it. He sought to be in advance, and to avoid the
uninteresting position of a mere follower. But soon he began to see
glimpses of the great Democratic ox-gad waving in his face, and to hear
indistinctly a voice saying, 'Back! Back, sir! Back a little!' He shakes
his head and bats his eyes and blunders back to his position of March,
1847. But still the gad waves, and the voice grows more distinct and
sharper still, 'Back, sir! Back, I say! Further back!' And back he goes
to the position of December, 1847, at which the gad is still and the
voice soothingly says, 'So! Stand still at that!'"

Again, after extended comment on the extra charges of General Cass upon
the Treasury for military services, he continued in a still more
sarcastic vein: "But I have introduced General Cass's accounts here
chiefly to show the wonderful physical capacities of the man. They show
that he not only did the labor of several men _at the same time_, but
that he often did it _at several places_ many hundred miles apart _at
the same time_. And at eating, too, his capacities are shown to be quite
as wonderful. From October, 1821, to May, 1822, he ate ten rations a day
in Michigan, ten rations a day here in Washington, and near five
dollars' worth a day besides, partly on the road between the two places.
And then there is an important discovery in his example--the art of
being paid for what one eats, instead of having to pay for it.
Hereafter if any nice young man shall owe a bill which he cannot pay in
any other way he can just board it out. Mr. Speaker, we have all heard
of the animal standing in doubt between two stacks of hay and starving
to death. The like of that would never happen to General Cass. Place the
stacks a thousand miles apart, he would stand stock-still midway between
them and eat them _both at once;_ and the green grass along the line
would be apt to suffer some, too, at the same time. By all means make
him President, gentlemen. He will feed you bounteously--if--if--there is
any left after he shall have helped himself."

Lincoln's most important act in the Congress of 1848-9 was the
introduction of a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia. But the state of feeling on the subject of
emancipation was so feverish at the time that the bill could not even be
got before the House.

The Whig National Convention met at Philadelphia the first of June, to
nominate a candidate for the Presidency. Lincoln attended the Convention
as a delegate from Illinois. During the campaign of 1848 he labored
earnestly for the election of General Taylor. This campaign made him
known more generally throughout the country, as he spoke in New York and
New England as well as in Illinois and the West.

While in Washington, Lincoln kept up a free correspondence with his
friend and law-partner Herndon, which affords many interesting glimpses
of his thoughts and views. In one of these letters, endeavoring to
incite Herndon to political ambition, he wrote: "Nothing could afford me
more satisfaction than to learn that you and others of my young friends
at home were doing battle in the contest, endearing themselves to the
people and taking a stand far above any I have ever been able to reach
in their admiration. I cannot conceive that other old men feel
differently. Of course, I cannot demonstrate what I say; but I was young
once, and I am sure I was never ungenerously thrust back. The way for a
young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never
suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to assure you
that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation.
There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and
they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its
true channel, to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about and see if
this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall
into it. Now, in what I have said I am sure you will suspect nothing but
sincere friendship. I would save you from a fatal error. You have been a
laborious, studious young man. You are far better informed on almost all
subjects than I have ever been. You cannot fail in any laudable object
unless you allow your mind to be improperly directed. I have some the
advantage of you in the world's experience, merely by being older; and
it is this that induces me to offer you this advice."

It will be observed that, in this letter Lincoln speaks of himself as an
"old man." This had been a habit with him for years; and yet at this
date he was under thirty-nine. He was already beginning to be known as
"Old Abe." Hon. E.B. Washburne states that he remembers hearing him thus
called, in Chicago, in July, 1847. "One afternoon," says Mr. Washburne,
"several of us sat on the sidewalk under the balcony in front of the
Sherman House, and among the number was the accomplished scholar and
unrivalled orator, Lisle Smith, who suddenly interrupted the
conversation by exclaiming, 'There is Lincoln on the other side of the
street! _Just look at old Abe!_' And from that time we all called him
'Old Abe.' No one who saw him can forget his personal appearance at that
time. Tall, angular, and awkward, he had on a short-waisted, thin,
swallow-tail coat, a short vest of the same material, thin pantaloons
scarcely coming down to his ankles, a straw hat, and a pair of brogans,
with woollen socks."

During the summer following the expiration of Lincoln's term in Congress
(March 4, 1849) he made a strong effort to secure the position of
Commissioner of the General Land Office, but without success. The place
was given to Justin Butterfield of Chicago. It was a severe
disappointment to Lincoln. Major Wilcox, who at the period referred to
lived in McDonough County, Illinois, and in early days was a Whig
politician, visited Washington to aid Lincoln in seeking this
appointment, and has furnished a graphic account of the circumstances
and of Lincoln's appearance at the national capital in the novel
capacity of an office-seeker. Major Wilcox says that in June, 1849, he
went to Washington and had an interview with the newly-inaugurated
President, General Taylor, regarding Lincoln's appointment to the
desired office. The interview was but partially satisfactory, the
President remarking that he was favorable to Lincoln, but that Mr.
Butterfield was very strongly urged for the place and the chances of
appointment were in his favor. Lincoln had arranged to be in Washington
at a time specified, after Major Wilcox should have had opportunity to
look the ground over. Major Wilcox says that he went to the railroad
depot to meet Lincoln at the train. It was in the afternoon, towards
night. The day had been quite warm, and the road was dry and dusty. He
found Lincoln just emerging from the depot. He had on a thin suit of
summer clothes, his coat being a linen duster, much soiled. His whole
appearance was decidedly shabby. He carried in his hand an old-fashioned
carpet-sack, which added to the oddity of his appearance. Major Wilcox
says if it had been anybody else he would have been rather shy of being
seen in his company, because of the awkward and unseemly appearance he
presented. Lincoln immediately began to talk about his chances for the
appointment; whereupon Major Wilcox related to him everything that had
transpired, and what President Taylor had said to him. They proceeded at
once to Major Wilcox's room, where they sat down to look over the
situation. Lincoln took from his pocket a paper he had prepared in the
case, which comprised eleven reasons why he should be appointed
Commissioner of the General Land Office. Amongst other things Lincoln
presented the fact that he had been a member of Congress from Illinois
two years; that his location was in the West, where the government lands
were; that he was a native of the West, and had been reared under
Western influences. He gave reasons why the appointment should be given
to Illinois, and particularly to the southern part of the State. Major
Wilcox says that he was forcibly struck by the clear, convincing, and
methodical statement of Lincoln as contained in these eleven reasons why
he should have the appointment. But it was given to Mr. Butterfield.

After Lincoln became President, a Member of Congress asked him for an
appointment in the army in behalf of a son of the same Justin
Butterfield. When the application was presented, the President paused,
and after a moment's silence, said: "Mr. Justin Butterfield once
obtained an appointment I very much wanted, in which my friends believed
I could have been useful, and to which they thought I was fairly
entitled. I hardly ever felt so bad at any failure in my life. But I am
glad of an opportunity of doing a service to his son." And he made an
order for his commission. In lieu of the desired office, General Taylor
offered Lincoln the post of Governor, and afterwards of Secretary, of
Oregon Territory; but these offers he declined. In after years a friend
remarked to him, alluding to the event: "How fortunate that you
declined! If you had gone to Oregon you might have come back as
Senator, but you would never have been President." "Yes, you are
probably right," said Lincoln; and then, with a musing, dreamy look, he
added: "I have all my life been a fatalist. What is to be, will be; or,
rather, I have found all my life, as Hamlet says,--

    'There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
    Rough-hew them how we will.'"




CHAPTER VII


     Lincoln again in Springfield--Back to the Circuit--His Personal
     Manners and Appearance--Glimpses of Home-Life--His Family--His
     Absent-Mindedness--A Painful Subject--Lincoln a Man of
     Sorrows--Familiar Appearance on the Streets of Springfield--Scenes
     in the Law-Office--Forebodings of a "Great or Miserable End "--An
     Evening with Lincoln in Chicago--Lincoln's Tenderness to His
     Relatives--Death of His Father--A Sensible Adviser--Care of His
     Step-Mother--Tribute from Her.

Retiring, somewhat reluctantly, from Washington life, which he seems to
have liked very much, Lincoln returned to Springfield in 1849 and
resumed the practice of the law. He declined an advantageous offer of a
law-partnership at Chicago, made him by Judge Goodrich, giving as a
reason that if he went to Chicago he would have to sit down and study
hard, and this would kill him; that he would rather go around the
circuit in the country than to sit down and die in a big city. So he
settled down once more in the rather uneventful and fairly prosperous
life of a country lawyer.

A gentleman who knew Lincoln intimately in Springfield, in his maturity,
has given the following capital description of him. "He stands six feet
four inches high in his stockings. His frame is not muscular, but gaunt
and wiry; his arms are long, but not disproportionately so for a person
of his height; his lower limbs are not disproportioned to his body. In
walking, his gait, though firm, is never brisk. He steps slowly and
deliberately, almost always with his head inclined forward and his hands
clasped behind his back. In matters of dress he is by no means precise.
Always clean, he is never fashionable; he is careless, but not slovenly.
In manner he is remarkably cordial and at the same time simple. His
politeness is always sincere but never elaborate and oppressive. A warm
shake of the hand and a warmer smile of recognition are his methods of
greeting his friends. At rest, his features, though those of a man of
mark, are not such as belong to a handsome man; but when his fine dark
gray eyes are lighted up by any emotion, and his features begin their
play, he would be chosen from among a crowd as one who had in him not
only the kindly sentiments which women love but the heavier metal of
which full-grown men and Presidents are made. His hair is black, and,
though thin, is wiry. His head sits well on his shoulders, but beyond
that it defies description. It nearer resembles that of Clay than that
of Webster; but it is unlike either. It is very large, and
phrenologically well proportioned, betokening power in all its
developments. A slightly Roman nose, a wide-cut mouth, and a dark
complexion, with the appearance of having been weather-beaten, complete
the description."

Of Lincoln's life at this period, another writer says: "He lived simply,
comfortably, and respectably, with neither expensive tastes nor habits.
His wants were few and simple. He occupied a small unostentatious house
in Springfield, and was in the habit of entertaining, in a very simple
way, his friends and his brethren of the bar during the terms of the
court and the sessions of the Legislature. Mrs. Lincoln often
entertained small numbers of friends at dinner and somewhat larger
numbers at evening parties. In his modest and simple home everything was
orderly and refined, and there was always, on the part of both Mr. and
Mrs. Lincoln, a cordial and hearty Western welcome which put every guest
at ease. Yet it was the wit and humor, anecdote, and unrivalled
conversation of the host which formed the chief attraction and made a
dinner at Lincoln's cottage an event to be remembered. Lincoln's income
from his profession was now from $2,000 to $3,000 per annum. His
property consisted of his house and lot in Springfield, a lot in the
town of Lincoln which had been given to him, and 160 acres of wild land
in Iowa which he had received for his services in the Black Hawk War. He
owned a few law and miscellaneous books. All his property may have been
of the value of $10,000 or $12,000."

Lincoln was at this time the father of two sons: Robert Todd, born on
the 1st day of August, 1843; and Edward Baker, born on the 10th of
March, 1846. In a letter to his friend Speed, dated October 22 of the
latter year, Lincoln writes: "We have another boy, born the 10th of
March. He is very much such a child as Bob was at his age, rather of a
_longer_ order. Bob is 'short and low,' and I expect he always will be.
He talks very plainly, almost as plainly as anybody. He is quite smart
enough. I sometimes fear he is one of the little _rare-ripe_ sort that
are smarter at about five than ever after. He has a great deal of that
sort of mischief that is the offspring of much animal spirits. Since I
began this letter a messenger came to tell me Bob was lost; but by the
time I reached the house his mother had found him and had him whipped.
By now, very likely, he is run away again."

December 21, 1850, a third son, William Wallace, was born to him; and on
April 4, 1853, a fourth and last child, named Thomas.

"A young man bred in Springfield," says Dr. Holland, "speaks of a vision
of Lincoln, as he appeared in those days, that has clung to his memory
very vividly. The young man's way to school led by the lawyer's door. On
almost any fair summer morning he would find Lincoln on the sidewalk in
front of his house, drawing a child backward and forward in a little
gig. Without hat or coat, wearing a pair of rough shoes, his hands
behind him holding to the tongue of the gig, and his tall form bent
forward to accommodate himself to the service, he paced up and down the
walk forgetful of everything around him and intent only on some subject
that absorbed his mind. The young man says he remembers wondering in his
boyish way how so rough and plain a man should happen to live in so
respectable a house. The habit of mental absorption, or
'absent-mindedness' as it is called, was common with him always, but
particularly during the formative periods of his life. The New Salem
people, it will be remembered, thought him crazy because he passed his
best friends in the street without seeing them. At the table, in his own
family, he often sat down without knowing or realizing where he was, and
ate his food mechanically. When he 'came to himself' it was a trick with
him to break the silence by the quotation of some verse of poetry from a
favorite author. It relieved the awkwardness of the situation, served as
a 'blind' to the thoughts which had possessed him, and started
conversation in a channel that led as far as possible from the subject
that he had set aside."

Mr. Lamon has written with great freedom of the sorrow that brooded over
Lincoln's home. Some knowledge of the blight which this cast upon his
life is necessary for a right interpretation of the gloomy moods that
constantly oppressed him and left their indelible impress on his face
and character. Mr. Lamon states unreservedly that Lincoln's marriage was
an unhappy one. The circumstances preceding his union with Miss Todd
have been related. Mr. Lamon says: "He was conscientious and honorable
and just. There was but one way of repairing the injury he had done Miss
Todd, and he adopted it. They were married; but they understood each
other, and suffered the inevitable consequences. Such troubles seldom
fail to find a tongue; and it is not strange that in this case neighbors
and friends, and ultimately the whole country, came to know the state of
things in that house. Lincoln scarcely attempted to conceal it. He
talked of it with little or no reserve to his wife's relatives, as well
as to his own friends. Yet the gentleness and patience with which he
bore this affliction from day to day and from year to year was enough to
move the shade of Socrates. It touched his acquaintances deeply, and
they gave it the widest publicity." Mrs. Colonel Chapman, daughter of
Dennis Hanks and a relative of Lincoln, made him a long visit previous
to her marriage. "You ask me," says she, "how Mr. Lincoln acted at home.
I can say, and that truly, he was all that a husband, father, and
neighbor should be, kind and affectionate to his wife and child ('Bob'
being the only one they had when I was with them), and very pleasant to
all around him. Never did I hear him utter an unkind word."

It seems impossible to arrive at all the causes of Lincoln's melancholy
disposition. He was, according to his most intimate friends, totally
unlike other people,--was, in fact, "a mystery." But whatever the
history or the cause,--whether physical reasons, the absence of domestic
concord, a series of painful recollections of his mother, of early
sorrows and hardships, of Anne Rutledge and fruitless hopes, or all
these combined,--Lincoln was a terribly sad and gloomy man. "I do not
think that he knew what happiness was for twenty years," says Mr.
Herndon. "'_Terrible_' is the word which all his friends used to
describe him in the black mood. 'It was terrible! It was terrible!' said
one to another." Judge Davis believes that Lincoln's hilarity was mainly
simulated, and that "his stories and jokes were intended to whistle off
sadness." "The groundwork of his social nature was sad," says Judge
Scott. "But for the fact that he studiously cultivated the humorous, it
would have been very sad indeed. His mirth always seemed to me to be put
on; like a plant produced in a hot-bed, it had an unnatural and
luxuriant growth." Mr. Herndon, Lincoln's law-partner and most intimate
friend, describes him at this period as a "thin, tall, wiry, sinewy,
grizzly, raw-boned man, looking 'woe-struck.' His countenance was
haggard and careworn, exhibiting all the marks of deep and protracted
suffering. Every feature of the man--the hollow eyes, with the dark
rings beneath; the long, sallow, cadaverous face intersected by those
peculiar deep lines; his whole air; his walk; his long silent reveries,
broken at long intervals by sudden and startling exclamations, as if to
confound an observer who might suspect the nature of his
thoughts,--showed he was a man of sorrows, not sorrows of to-day or
yesterday, but long-treasured and deep, bearing with him a continual
sense of weariness and pain. He was a plain, homely, sad, weary-looking
man, to whom one's heart warmed involuntarily because he seemed at once
miserable and kind."

Mr. Page Eaton, an old resident of Springfield, says: "Lincoln always
did his own marketing, even after he was elected President and before
he went to Washington. I used to see him at the butcher's or baker's
every morning, with his basket on his arm. He was kind and sociable,
and would always speak to everyone. He was so kind, so childlike, that
I don't believe there was one in the city who didn't love him as a
father or brother." "On a winter's morning," says Mr. Lamon, "he could
be seen wending his way to the market, with a basket on his arm and at
his side a little boy whose small feet rattled and pattered over the
ice-bound pavement, attempting to make up by the number of his short
steps for the long strides of his father. The little fellow jerked at
the bony hand which held his, and prattled and questioned, begged and
grew petulant, in a vain effort to make his father talk to him. But
the latter was probably unconscious of the other's existence, and
stalked on, absorbed in his own reflections. He wore on such occasions
an old gray shawl, rolled into a coil and wrapped like a rope around
his neck. The rest of his clothes were in keeping. 'He did not walk
cunningly--Indian-like--but cautiously and firmly.' His tread was even
and strong. He was a little pigeon-toed; and this, with another
peculiarity, made his walk very singular. He set his whole foot flat
on the ground, and in turn lifted it all at once--not resting
momentarily upon the toe as the foot rose nor upon the heel as it
fell. He never wore his shoes out at the heel and the toe, as most men
do, more than at the middle. Yet his gait was not altogether awkward,
and there was manifest physical power in his step. As he moved along
thus, silent and abstracted, his thoughts dimly reflected in his sharp
face, men turned to look after him as an object of sympathy as well as
curiosity. His melancholy, in the words of Mr. Herndon, '_dripped from
him_ as he walked.' If, however, he met a friend in the street, and
was roused by a hearty 'Good-morning, Lincoln!' he would grasp the
friend's hand with one or both of his own, and with his usual
expression of 'Howdy! howdy!' would detain him to hear a story;
something reminded him of it; it happened in Indiana, and it must be
told, for it was wonderfully pertinent. It was not at home that he
most enjoyed seeing company. He preferred to meet his friends
abroad,--on a street-corner, in an office, at the court-house, or
sitting on nail-kegs in a country store." Mrs. Lincoln experienced
great difficulty in securing the punctual attendance of her husband at
the family meals. Dr. Bateman has repeatedly seen two of the boys
pulling with all their might at his coat-tails, and a third pushing in
front, while _paterfamilias_ stood upon the street cordially shaking
the hand of an old acquaintance.

After his breakfast-hour, says Mr. Lamon, he would appear at his office
and go about the labors of the day with all his might, displaying
prodigious industry and capacity for continuous application, although he
never was a fast worker. Sometimes it happened that he came without his
breakfast; and then he would have in his hands a piece of cheese or
bologna sausage, and a few crackers, bought by the way. At such times he
did not speak to his partner, or his friends if any happened to be
present; the tears perhaps struggling into his eyes, while his pride was
struggling to keep them back. Mr. Herndon knew the whole story at a
glance. There was no speech between them, but neither wished the
visitors at the office to witness the scene. So Lincoln retired to the
back office while Mr. Herndon locked the front one and walked away with
the key in his pocket. In an hour or more the latter would return and
perhaps find Lincoln calm and collected. Otherwise he went out again and
waited until he was so. Then the office was opened and everything went
on as usual.

"His mind was filled with gloomy forebodings and strong apprehensions of
impending evil, mingled with extravagant visions of personal grandeur
and power. He never doubted for a moment that he was formed for some
'great or miserable end.' He talked about it frequently and sometimes
calmly. Mr. Herndon remembers many of these conversations in their
office at Springfield and in their rides around the circuit. Lincoln
said the impression had grown in him all his life; but Mr. Herndon
thinks it was about 1840 that it took the character of a 'religious
conviction.' He had then suffered much, and considering his
opportunities he had achieved great things. He was already a leader
among men, and a most brilliant career had been promised him by the
prophetic enthusiasm of many friends. Thus encouraged and stimulated,
and feeling himself growing gradually stronger and stronger in the
estimation of 'the plain people' whose voice was more potent than all
the Warwicks, his ambition painted the rainbow of glory in the sky,
while his morbid melancholy supplied the clouds that were to overcast
and obliterate it with the wrath and ruin of the tempest. To him it was
fate, and there was no escape or defense. The presentiment never
deserted him. It was as clear, as perfect, as certain as any image
conveyed by the senses. He had now entertained it so long that it was as
much a part of his nature as the consciousness of identity. All doubts
had faded away, and he submitted humbly to a power which he could
neither comprehend nor resist. He was to fall,--fall from a lofty place
and in the performance of a great work."

On one occasion Lincoln visited Chicago as counsel in a case in the
U.S. District Court. The Hon. N.B. Judd, an intimate friend, was also
engaged upon the case, and took Mr. Lincoln home with him as a guest.
The following account of this visit is given by Mrs. Judd in Oldroyd's
Memorial Album: "Mr. Judd had invited Mr. Lincoln to spend the evening
at our pleasant home on the shore of Lake Michigan. After tea, and until
quite late, we sat on the broad piazza, looking out upon as lovely a
scene as that which has made the Bay of Naples so celebrated. A number
of vessels were availing themselves of a fine breeze to leave the
harbor, and the lake was studded with many a white sail. I remember that
a flock of sea-gulls were flying along the beach, dipping their beaks
and white-lined wings in the foam that capped the short waves as they
fell upon the shore. Whilst we sat there the great white moon appeared
on the rim of the eastern horizon and slowly crept above the water,
throwing a perfect flood of silver light upon the dancing waves. The
stars shone with the soft light of a midsummer night, and the breaking
of the low waves upon the shore added the charm of pleasant sound to the
beauty of the night. Mr. Lincoln, whose home was far inland from the
great lakes, seemed greatly impressed with the wondrous beauty of the
scene, and carried by its impressiveness away from all thought of jars
and turmoil of earth. In that mild, pleasant voice, attuned to harmony
with his surroundings, as was his wont when his soul was stirred by
aught that was lovely or beautiful, Mr. Lincoln began to speak of the
mystery which for ages enshrouded and shut out those distant worlds
above us from our own; of the poetry and beauty which was seen and felt
by seers of old when they contemplated Orion and Arcturus as they
wheeled, seemingly around the earth, in their nightly course; of the
discoveries since the invention of the telescope, which had thrown a
flood of light and knowledge on what before was incomprehensible and
mysterious; of the wonderful computations of scientists who had measured
the miles of seemingly endless space which separated the planets in our
solar system from our central sun, and our sun from other suns. He
speculated on the possibilities of knowledge which an increased power of
the lens would give in the years to come. When the night air became too
chilling to remain longer on the piazza we went into the parlor. Seated
on the sofa, his long limbs stretching across the carpet and his arms
folded behind him, Mr. Lincoln went on to speak of other discoveries, of
the inventions which had been made during the long cycles of time lying
between the present and those early days when the sons of Adam began to
make use of material things about them and invent instruments of various
kinds in brass and gold and silver. He gave us a short but succinct
account of all the inventions referred to in the Old Testament, from the
time when Adam walked in the garden of Eden until the Bible record
ended, 600 B.C. I said, 'Mr. Lincoln, I did not know you were such a
Bible student.' He replied: 'I must be honest, Mrs. Judd, and tell you
just how I come to know so much about these early inventions.' He then
went on to say that in discussing with some friend the relative age of
the discovery and use of the precious metals he went to the Bible to
satisfy himself and became so interested in his researches that he made
memoranda of the different discoveries and inventions. Soon after, he
was invited to lecture before some literary society, I think in
Bloomington. The interest he had felt in the study convinced him that
the subject would interest others, and he therefore prepared and
delivered his lecture on The Age of Different Inventions. 'Of course,'
he added, 'I could not after that forget the order or time of such
discoveries and inventions.'"

In all the years that had passed since Lincoln left his father's humble
house, he had preserved an affectionate interest in the welfare of its
various members. He paid them visits whenever he could find opportunity,
and never failed to extend his aid and sympathy whenever needed. He had
risen to success in his profession, was widely known throughout his
section, and though still a poor man he had good prospects and
considerable influence. Yet he ever retained a considerate regard and
remembrance for the poor and obscure relatives he had left plodding in
the humble ways of life. He never assumed the slightest superiority to
them. Whenever, upon his circuit, he found time, he always visited them.
Countless times he was known to leave his companions at the village
hotel after a hard day's work in the court-room and spend the evening
with these old friends and companions of his humbler days. On one
occasion, when urged not to go, he replied, "Why, Aunt's heart would be
broken if I should leave town without calling upon her,"--yet he was
obliged to walk several miles to make the call. As his fortunes improved
he often sent money and presents to his father and step-mother, bought
land for them, and tried in every way to make them comfortable and
happy. The father was gratified at these marks of affection, and felt
great pride in the rising prosperity of his son. Mr. Herndon says that
"for years Lincoln supported or helped to support his aged father and
mother. It is to his honor that he dearly loved his step-mother, and it
is equally true that she idolized her step-son. He purchased a piece of
property in Coles County as a home for his father and mother, and had
it deeded in trust for their use and benefit."

In 1851 Lincoln's father died, at the age of seventy-three. The
following letter, written a few days before this event, reveals the
affectionate solicitude of the son:

     Springfield, Jan. 12,1851.

     DEAR BROTHER:--On the day before yesterday I received a letter from
     Harriet, written at Greenup. She says she has just returned from
     your house, and that father is very low and will hardly recover.
     She also says that you have written me two letters, and that,
     although you do not expect me to come now, you wonder that I do not
     write. I received both your letters; and although I have not
     answered them, it is not because I have forgotten them, or not been
     interested about them, but because it appeared to me I could write
     nothing which could do any good. You already know I desire that
     neither father nor mother shall be in want of any comfort, either
     in health or sickness, while they live; and I feel sure you have
     not failed to use my name, if necessary, to procure a doctor or
     anything else for father in his present sickness. My business is
     such that I could hardly leave home now, if it were not, as it is,
     that my wife is sick a-bed. I sincerely hope father may yet recover
     his health; but, at all events, tell him to remember to call upon
     and confide in our great and good and merciful Maker, who will not
     turn away from him in any extremity. He notes the fall of a
     sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads; and He will not forget
     the dying man who puts his trust in Him. Say to him, that if we
     could meet now it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful
     than pleasant; but that if it be his lot to go now he will soon
     have a joyous meeting with loved ones gone before, and where the
     rest of us, through the help of God, hope ere long to join them.

     Write me again when you receive this.

     Affectionately,
     A. LINCOLN.

The step-brother, John Johnston, to whom the foregoing letter is
addressed, was the cause of considerable anxiety to Lincoln. It was with
him that their parents resided, and frequent were his appeals to
Lincoln to extricate him from some pecuniary strait into which he had
fallen through his confirmed thriftlessness and improvidence. "John
Johnston," Mr. Herndon says, "was an indolent and shiftless man, one who
was 'born tired.' Yet he was clever, generous and hospitable." The
following document affords a hint of Lincoln's kindly patience as well
as of his capacity for sound practical advice when it was much needed:

     DEAR JOHNSTON:--Your request for eighty dollars I do not think it
     best to comply with now. At the various times when I have helped
     you a little you have said to me, 'We can get along very well now';
     but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again.
     Now, this can only happen by some defect in your conduct. What that
     defect is, I think I know. You are not lazy, and still you are an
     idler. I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have done a good whole
     day's work in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work,
     and still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to
     you that you could get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting
     time is the whole difficulty; and it is vastly important to you,
     and still more so to your children, that you should break the
     habit. It is more important to them, because they have longer to
     live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it
     easier than they can get out after they are in. You are now in need
     of some money; and what I propose is that you shall go to work,
     'tooth and nail,' for somebody who will give you money for it. Let
     father and your boys take charge of things at home, prepare for a
     crop, and make the crop, and you go to work for the best
     money-wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get;
     and, to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you,
     that, for every dollar you will, between this and the first of next
     May, get for your own labor, either in money or as your own
     indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar. By this, if
     you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten
     more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In this I do not
     mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead-mines, or the
     gold-mines in California; but I mean for you to go at it, for the
     best wages you can get, close to home, in Coles County. Now, if you
     will do this you will soon be out of debt, and, what is better, you
     will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again.
     But if I should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be
     in just as deep as ever. You say you would almost give your place
     in heaven for $70 or $80. Then you value your place in heaven very
     cheap; for I am sure you can, with the offer I make, get the
     seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months' work. You say,
     if I will furnish you the money, you will deed me the land, and if
     you don't pay the money back, you will deliver possession.
     Nonsense! If you can't now live with the land, how will you then
     live without it? You have always been kind to me, and I do not mean
     to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my
     advice, you will find it worth more than eighty times eighty
     dollars to you.

     Affectionately your brother,
     A. LINCOLN.

In other letters he wrote even more sharply to his thriftless
step-brother.

     Shelbyville, Nov. 4, 1851

     DEAR BROTHER:--When I came into Charleston, day before yesterday, I
     learned that you are anxious to sell the land where you live, and
     move to Missouri. I have been thinking of this ever since, and
     cannot but think such a notion is utterly foolish. What can you do
     in Missouri better than here? Is the land any richer? Can you
     there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats without
     work? Will any body there, any more than here, do your work for
     you? If you intend to go to work, there is no better place than
     right where you are; if you do not intend to go to work, you can
     not get along anywhere. Squirming and crawling about from place to
     place can do no good. You have raised no crop this year; and what
     you really want is to sell the land, get the money and spend it.
     Part with the land you have, and, my life upon it, you will never
     after own a spot big enough to bury you in. Half of what you will
     get for the land you will spend in moving to Missouri, and the
     other half you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of
     land will be bought. Now, I feel it is my duty to have no hand in
     such a piece of foolery. I feel that it is so even on your own
     account, and particularly on mother's account. The eastern forty
     acres I intend to keep for mother while she lives; if you will not
     cultivate it, it will rent for enough to support her; at least, it
     will rent for something. Her dower in the other two forties she can
     let you have, and no thanks to me. Now, do not misunderstand this
     letter. I do not write it in any unkindness. I write it in order,
     if possible, to get you to face the truth, which truth is, you are
     destitute because you have idled away all your time. Your thousand
     pretences for not getting along better are all nonsense. They
     deceive nobody but yourself. _Go to work_ is the only cure for your
     case.

     Sincerely yours,
     A. LINCOLN.

In still another letter he reveals his tender solicitude for his
step-mother, as well as his care for his step-brother's unfortunate
children.

     Shelbyville, Nov. 9, 1851

     DEAR BROTHER:--When I wrote you before, I had not received your
     letter. I still think as I did; but if the land can be sold so that
     I get $300 to put at interest for mother, I will not object, if she
     does not. But before I will make a deed, the money must be had, or
     secured beyond all doubt, at ten per cent. As to Abram, I do not
     want him on my own account; but I understand he wants to live with
     me, so that he can go to school, and get a fair start in the world,
     which I very much wish him to have. When I reach home, if I can
     make it convenient I will take him, provided there is no mistake
     between us as to the object and terms of my taking him.

     In haste, as ever,
     A. LINCOLN.

In speaking of Lincoln's regard for his step-mother, it is interesting
also to learn her opinion of him. A gentleman visiting the old lady
after her son's death says: "She is eighty-four years old, and quite
feeble. She is a plain, unsophisticated old lady, with a frank, open
countenance, a warm heart full of kindness toward others, and in many
respects very much like the President. Abraham was evidently her idol;
she speaks of him still as her 'good boy,' and with much feeling said,
'He was always a good boy, and willing to do just what I wanted. He and
his step-brother never quarrelled but once, and that, you know, is a
great deal for step-brothers. I didn't want him elected President. I
knowed they would kill him.'" She died in April, 1869, and was buried by
the side of her husband, Thomas Lincoln.




CHAPTER VIII


     Lincoln as a Lawyer--His Appearance in Court--Reminiscences of a
     Law-Student in Lincoln's Office--An "Office Copy" of Byron--Novel
     way of Keeping Partnership Accounts--Charges for Legal
     Services--Trial of Bill Armstrong--Lincoln before a Jury--Kindness
     toward Unfortunate Clients--Refusing to Defend Guilty
     Men--Courtroom Anecdotes--Anecdotes of Lincoln at the Bar--Some
     Striking Opinions of Lincoln as a Lawyer.

The ten years following the close of Lincoln's Congressional service, in
1849, were given to the uninterrupted practice of the law, to which he
devoted himself laboriously and successfully, though not with great
pecuniary gains. His legal fees were regarded by his brethren at the bar
as "ridiculously small." His practice had extended to the Supreme Court
of his State and to the United States District and Circuit Courts, and
he was occasionally retained for cases in other States. With greater
love of money and less sympathy for his fellows, he might have acquired
a fortune in his profession.

Lincoln never speculated. Apparently he had no great desire to acquire
wealth. He had many opportunities in the days of the State's early
growth to make good and safe investments, but he never took advantage of
them. Many of his fellow lawyers were becoming wealthy, but Lincoln
still rode the circuit wearing the familiar gray shawl about his
shoulders, carrying a carpet-bag filled with papers and a change of
underclothing, and a faded, green cotton umbrella with "A. Lincoln" in
large white muslin letters on the inside. The knob was gone from the
handle of the umbrella and a piece of twine kept it from falling open. A
young lawyer who saw him for the first time thus--one who grew to love
him and who afterwards gave his life for the Union--in relating the
circumstance a long time afterward, exclaimed: "He was the _ungodliest_
figure I ever saw."

An interesting and vivid description of Lincoln's personal appearance
and manner in the trial of a case is furnished by one who was a witness
of the scenes which he so admirably describes. The writer says: "While
living in Danville, Illinois, in 1854, I saw Abraham Lincoln for the
first time. The occasion of his visit was as prosecutor of a slander
suit brought by Dr. Fithian against a wealthy farmer whose wife died
under the doctor's hands. The defense was represented by Edward A.
Hannegan, of Indiana, ex-United States Senator and afterward Minister to
Berlin, an able and eloquent man; and O.B. Ficklin, who, after Douglas
and Lincoln, was considered the best lawyer in Illinois. Lincoln had all
he could do to maintain himself against his two formidable adversaries,
but he was equal to the occasion. The trial lasted three or four days,
the examination of witnesses consuming most of the time. In this part of
the work Lincoln displayed remarkable tact. He did not badger the
witnesses, or attempt to confuse them. His questions were plain and
practical, and elicited answers that had a direct bearing upon the case.
He did nothing for effect, and made no attempt to dazzle the jury or
captivate the audience. When he arose to speak he was confronted by an
audience that was too numerous for all to find seats in the court-room.
He was attired in a fine broadcloth suit, silk hat, and polished boots.
His neck was encircled by an old-fashioned silk choker. He perspired
freely, and used a red silk handkerchief to remove the perspiration. His
clothes fitted him, and he was as genteel-looking as any man in the
audience. The slouchy appearance which he is said to have presented on
other occasions was conspicuously absent here. As he stood before the
vast audience, towering above every person around him, he was the centre
of attraction. I can never forget how he looked, as he cast his eyes
over the crowd before beginning his argument. His face was long and
sallow; high cheek bones; large, deep-set eyes, of a grayish-brown
color, shaded by heavy eyebrows; high but not broad forehead; large,
well-formed head, covered with an abundance of coarse black hair, worn
rather long, through which he frequently passed his fingers; arms and
legs of unusual length; head inclined slightly forward, which made him
appear stoop-shouldered. His features betrayed neither excitement nor
anxiety. They were calm and fixed. In short, his appearance was that of
a man who felt the responsibility of his position and was determined to
acquit himself to the best of his ability. I do not remember the points
of his speech; but his manner was so peculiar, so different from that of
other orators whom I have heard, that I can never forget it. He spoke
for almost two hours, entirely without notes and with an eloquence that
I have never heard surpassed. He was all life, all motion; every muscle
and fibre of his body seemed brought into requisition. His voice was
clear, distinct, and well modulated. Every word was clean-cut and
exactly suited to its place. At times he would stoop over until his
hands almost swept the floor. Then he would straighten himself up, fold
his arms across his breast, and take a few steps forward or back. This
movement completed, he would fling his arms above his head, or thrust
them beneath his coat-tails, elevating or depressing his voice to suit
the attitude assumed and the sentiment expressed. Arms and legs were
continually in motion. It seemed impossible for him to stand still. In
the midst of the most impassioned or pathetic portions of his speech, he
would extend his long arms toward the judge or jury, and shake his bony
fingers with an effect that is indescribable. He held his audience to
the last; and when he sat down there was a murmur of applause which the
judge with difficulty prevented from swelling to a roar. The argument
must have been as able as the manner of the speaker was attractive, for
the verdict was in favor of his client.

"When he had retired to his hotel after the trial, and while conversing
with a number of gentlemen who had called to pay their respects to him,
Lincoln was informed that an old colored woman, who had known him years
before in Kentucky, wished to see him. She was too feeble to come to
him, and desired him to go to her. Ascertaining where she lived, Lincoln
started at once, accompanied by a boy who acted as pilot. He found the
woman in a wretched hovel in the outskirts of the town, sick and
destitute. He remembered her very well, as she had belonged to the owner
of the farm upon which Lincoln was born. He gave her money to supply her
immediate wants, promised her that he would see she did not suffer for
the necessaries of life, and when he returned to town hunted up a
physician and engaged him to give the old woman all the medical
attention that her case demanded."

Mr. G.W. Harris, whose first meeting with Lincoln in a log school-house
has been previously described in these pages, subsequently became a
clerk in Lincoln's law-office at Springfield, and furnishes some
excellent reminiscences of that interesting period. "A crack-brained
attorney who lived in Springfield, supported mainly by the other lawyers
of the place, became indebted, in the sum of two dollars and fifty
cents, to a wealthy citizen of the county, a recent comer. The creditor,
failing after repeated efforts to collect the amount due him, came to
Mr. Lincoln and asked him to bring suit. Lincoln explained the man's
condition and circumstances, and advised his client to let the matter
rest; but the creditor's temper was up, and he insisted on having suit
brought. Again Lincoln urged him to let the matter drop, adding, 'You
can make nothing out of him, and it will cost you a good deal more than
the debt to bring suit.' The creditor was still determined to have his
way, and threatened to seek some other attorney who would be more
willing to take charge of the matter than Lincoln appeared to be.
Lincoln then said, 'Well, if you are determined that suit shall be
brought, I will bring it; but my charge will be ten dollars.' The money
was paid him, and peremptory orders were given that the suit be brought
that day. After the client's departure, Lincoln went out of the office,
returning in about an hour with an amused look on his face. I asked what
pleased him, and he replied, 'I brought suit against ----, and then
hunted him up, told him what I had done, handed him half of the ten
dollars, and we went over to the squire's office. He confessed judgment
and paid the bill.' Lincoln added that he didn't see any other way to
make things satisfactory for his client as well as the rest of the
parties.

"Mr. Lincoln had a heart that was more a woman's than a man's--filled to
overflowing with sympathy for those in trouble, and ever ready to
relieve them by any means in his power. He was ever thoughtful of
others' comforts, even to the forgetting of himself. In those early days
his face wore a sad look when at rest--a look that made you feel that
you would like to take from him a part of his burden. One who knew him
then and had known his career since would be inclined to think that he
already felt premonitions of the heavy burdens that his broad shoulders
were to bear, and the sorrows that his kind heart would have to endure.

"Mr. Lincoln was fond of playing chess and checkers, and usually acted
cautiously upon the defensive until the game had reached a stage where
aggressive movements were clearly justified. He was also somewhat fond
of ten-pins, and occasionally indulged in a game. Whatever may have been
his tastes in his younger days, at this period of his life he took no
interest in fishing-rod or gun. He was indifferent to dress, careless
almost to a fault of his personal appearance. The same indifference
extended to money. So long as his wants were supplied--and they were few
and simple--he seemed to have no further use for money, except in the
giving or the lending of it, with no expectation or desire for its
return, to those whom he thought needed it more than he. Debt he
abhorred, and under no circumstances would he incur it. He was
abstemious in every respect. I have heard him say that he did not know
the taste of liquor. At the table he preferred plain food, and a very
little satisfied him.

"Under no circumstances would he, as an attorney, take a case he knew to
be wrong. Every possible means was used to get at the truth before he
would undertake a case. More cases, by his advice, were settled without
trial than he carried into the courts; and that, too, without charge.
When on one occasion I suggested that he ought to make a charge in such
cases, he laughingly answered, 'They wouldn't want to pay me; they don't
think I have earned a fee unless I take the case into court and make a
speech or two.' When trivial cases were brought to him, such as would
most probably be carried no farther than a magistrate's office, and he
could not induce a settlement without trial, he would generally refer
them to some young attorney, for whom he would speak a good word at the
same time. He was ever kind and courteous to these young beginners when
he was the opposing counsel. He had a happy knack of setting them at
their ease and encouraging them. In consequence he was the favorite of
all who came in contact with him. When his heart was in a case he was a
powerful advocate. I have heard more than one attorney say that it was
little use to expect a favorable verdict in any case where Lincoln was
opposing counsel, as his simple statements of the facts had more weight
with the jury than those of the witnesses.

"As a student (if such a term could be applied to Mr. Lincoln) one who
did not know him might have called him indolent. He would pick up a book
and run rapidly over the pages, pausing here and there. At the end of an
hour--never, as I remember, more than two or three hours--he would close
the book, stretch himself out on the office lounge, and with hands under
his head and eyes shut he would digest the mental food he had just
taken.

"In the spring of 1846, war between the United States and Mexico broke
out. Mr. Lincoln was opposed to the war. He looked upon it as
unnecessary and unjust. Volunteers were called for. John J. Hardin, who
lost his life in that war, and Edward D. Baker, who was killed at Ball's
Bluff during our Civil War--both Whigs--were engaged in raising
regiments. Meetings were held and speeches made. At one of them, after
Baker and others had spoken, Lincoln, who was in the audience, was
called for, and the call was repeated until at last he ascended the
platform. He thanked the audience for the compliment paid him in the
wish they had expressed to hear him talk, and said he would gladly make
them a speech if he had anything to say. But he was not going into the
war; and as he was not going himself, he did not feel like telling
others to go. He would simply leave it to each individual to do as he
thought his duty called for. After a few more remarks, and a story 'with
a nib to it,' he bowed himself off the platform.

"About a year after this, Mr. Lincoln was seeking to be nominated as a
candidate for Congress. Finding the writing of letters (at his
dictation) to influential men in the different counties and even
precincts of the district somewhat burdensome, I suggested printing
circulars. He objected, on the ground that a printed letter would not
have the same effect that a written one would; the latter had the
appearance of personality, it was more flattering to the receiver, and
would more certainly gain his assistance, or at least his good-will. In
discussing the probabilities of his nomination, I remarked that there
was so much unfairness, if not downright trickery, used that it appeared
to me almost useless to seek a nomination without resort to similar
means. His reply was: 'I want to be nominated; I would like to go to
Congress; but if I cannot do so by fair means, I prefer to stay at
home.' He was nominated, and in the following fall was elected by a
majority over three times as large as the district had ever before
given.

"Mr. Lincoln, like many others in their callow days, scribbled verses;
and so far as I was capable of judging, their quality was above the
average. It was accidentally that I learned this. In arranging the books
and papers in the office, I found two or three quires of letter-paper
stitched together in book form, nearly filled with poetical effusions in
Mr. Lincoln's handwriting, and evidently original. I looked through them
somewhat hurriedly, and when Lincoln came in I showed him the
manuscript, asking him if it was his. His response was, 'Where did you
find it?' and rolling it up, he put it in his coat-tail pocket; and I
saw it no more. Afterwards, in speaking of the matter to Mr. Lincoln's
partner, he said, 'I believe he has at times scribbled some verses; but
he is, I think, somewhat unwilling to have it known.'"

Lincoln's love of poetry is further shown by the following incident,
related by a gentleman who visited the old law-office of Lincoln &
Herndon, at Springfield. He says: "I took up carelessly, as I stood
thinking, a handsome octavo volume lying on the office table. It opened
so persistently at one place, as I handled it, that I looked to see what
it was, and found that somebody had thoroughly thumbed the pages of 'Don
Juan.' I knew Mr. Herndon was not a man to dwell on it, and it darted
through my mind that perhaps it had been a favorite with Lincoln. 'Did
Mr. Lincoln ever read this book?' I said, hurriedly. 'That book!' said
Herndon, looking up from his writing and taking it out of my hand. 'Oh,
yes; he read it often. It is the office copy.'" Lincoln was so fond of
the book that he kept it ready to his hand.

Mr. John T. Stuart, Lincoln's first law-partner, says of him that his
accounts were correctly kept, but in a manner peculiar to himself. Soon
after their law-partnership was formed, Mr. Stuart was elected to
Congress, thereafter spending much of his time in Washington. Lincoln
conducted the business of the firm in his absence. When Mr. Stuart
reached home, at the close of the first session of Congress, Lincoln
proceeded to give him an account of the earnings of the office during
his absence. The charges for fees and entry of receipts of money were
not in an account book, but stowed away in a drawer in Lincoln's desk,
among the papers in each case. He proceeded to lay the papers before Mr.
Stuart, taking up each case by itself. The account would run in this
way:

  Fees charged in this case................$
  Amount collected.........................$
  Stuart's half............................$

The half that belonged to Mr. Stuart would invariably accompany the
papers in the case. Lincoln had the reputation of being very moderate in
his charges. He was never grasping, and seemed incapable of believing
that his services could be worth much to anyone.

One of the most famous cases in which Lincoln engaged was that of
William D. Armstrong, son of Jack and Hannah Armstrong of New Salem, the
child whom Lincoln had rocked in the cradle while Mrs. Armstrong
attended to other household duties. Jack Armstrong, it will be
remembered, was an early friend of Lincoln's, whom he had beaten in a
wrestling-match on his first arrival in New Salem. He and his wife had
from that time treated the youth with the utmost kindness, giving him a
home when he was out of work, and showing him every kindness it was in
their power to offer. Lincoln never forgot his debt of gratitude to
them; and when Hannah, now a widow, wrote to him of the peril her boy
was in, and besought him to help them in their extremity, he replied
promptly that he would do what he could. The circumstances were these:
"In the summer of 1857, at a camp-meeting in Mason County, one Metzgar
was most brutally murdered. The affray took place about half a mile from
the place of worship, near some wagons loaded with liquor and
provisions. Two men, James H. Norris and William D. Armstrong, were
indicted for the crime. Norris was tried in Mason County, convicted of
manslaughter, and sentenced to the penitentiary for a term of eight
years. The popular feeling being very high against Armstrong in Mason
County, he took a change of venue to Cass County, and was there tried
(at Beardstown) in the spring of 1858. Hitherto Armstrong had had the
services of two able counsellors; but now their efforts were
supplemented by those of a most determined and zealous volunteer. The
case was so clear against the accused that defense seemed almost
useless. The strongest evidence was that of a man who swore that at
eleven o'clock at night he saw Armstrong strike the deceased on the
head; that the moon was shining brightly, and was nearly full; and that
its position in the sky was just about that of the sun at ten o'clock in
the morning, and by it he saw Armstrong give the mortal blow." This was
fatal, unless the effect could be broken by contradiction or
impeachment. Lincoln quietly looked up an almanac, and found that at the
time this witness declared the moon to have been shining with full light
there was no moon at all. Lincoln made the closing argument. "At first,"
says Mr. Walker, one of the counsel associated with him, "he spoke very
slowly and carefully, reviewing the testimony and pointing out its
contradictions, discrepancies and impossibilities. When he had thus
prepared the way, he called for an almanac, and showed that at the hour
at which the principal witness swore he had seen, by the light of the
full moon, the mortal blow given, _there was no moon_. The last fifteen
minutes of his speech were as eloquent as I ever heard; and such were
the power and earnestness with which he spoke to that jury, that all sat
as if entranced, and, when he was through, found relief in a gush of
tears." Said one of the prosecutors: "He took the jury by storm. There
were tears in Mr. Lincoln's eyes while he spoke, but they were genuine.
His sympathies were fully enlisted in favor of the young man, and his
terrible sincerity could not help but arouse the same passion in the
jury. I have said a hundred times that it was Lincoln's speech that
saved that man from the gallows." "Armstrong was not cleared by any want
of testimony against him, but by the irresistible appeal of Mr. Lincoln
in his favor," says Mr. Shaw, one of the associates in the prosecution.
His mother, who sat near during Lincoln's appeal, says: "He told the
stories about our first acquaintance, and what I did for him and how I
did it. Lincoln said to me, 'Hannah, your son will be cleared before
sundown.' He and the other lawyers addressed the jury, and closed the
case. I went down to Thompson's pasture. Stator came to me and told me
that my son was cleared and a free man. I went up to the court-house;
the jury shook hands with me, so did the court, so did Lincoln. We were
all affected, and tears were in Lincoln's eyes. He then remarked to me,
'Hannah, what did I tell you? I pray to God that William may be a good
boy hereafter; that this lesson may prove in the end a good lesson to
him and to all.' After the trial was over, Lincoln came down to where I
was in Beardstown. I asked him what he charged me; told him I was poor.
He said, 'Why, Hannah, I shan't charge you a cent--never. Anything I can
do for you I will do willingly and without charges.' He wrote to me
about some land which some men were trying to get from me, and said,
'Hannah, they can't get your land. Let them try it in the Circuit Court,
and then you appeal it. Bring it to the Supreme Court, and Herndon and I
will attend to it for nothing.'"

Lincoln regarded himself not only as the legal adviser of unfortunate
people, but as their friend and protector; and he would never press them
for pay for his services. A client named Cogdal was unfortunate in
business, and gave Lincoln a note in payment of legal fees. Soon
afterwards he met with an accident by which he lost a hand. Meeting
Lincoln some time after, on the steps of the State House, the kind
lawyer asked him how he was getting along. "Badly enough," replied Mr.
Cogdal. "I am both broken up in business and crippled." Then he added,
"I have been thinking about that note of yours." Lincoln, who had
probably known all about Mr. Cogdal's troubles, and had prepared himself
for the meeting, took out his pocket-book, and saying, with a laugh,
"Well you needn't think any more about it," handed him the note. Mr.
Cogdal protesting, Lincoln said, "Even if you had the money, I would not
take it," and hurried away.

Mr. G.L. Austin thus describes an incident of Lincoln's career at the
bar: "Mr. Lincoln was once associated with Mr. Leonard Swett in
defending a man accused of murder. He listened to the testimony which
witness after witness gave against his client, until his honest heart
could stand it no longer; then, turning to his associate, he said:
'Swett, the man is guilty; you defend him; I can't.' Swett did defend
him, and the man was acquitted. When proffered his share of the large
fee, Lincoln most emphatically declined it, on the ground that 'all of
it belonged to Mr. Swett, whose ardor and eloquence saved a guilty man
from justice.'"

At a term of court in Logan County, a man named Hoblit had brought suit
against a man named Farmer. The suit had been appealed from a justice of
the peace, and Lincoln knew nothing of it until he was retained by
Hoblit to try the case in the Circuit Court. G.A. Gridley, then of
Bloomington, appeared for the defendant. Judge Treat, afterwards on the
United States bench, was the presiding judge at the trial. Lincoln's
client went upon the witness stand and testified to the account he had
against the defendant, gave the amount due after allowing all credits
and set-offs, and swore positively that it had not been paid. The
attorney for the defendant simply produced a receipt in full, signed by
Hoblit prior to the beginning of the case. Hoblit had to admit the
signing of the receipt, but told Lincoln he "supposed the cuss had lost
it." Lincoln at once arose and left the court-room. The Judge told the
parties to proceed with the case; and Lincoln not appearing, Judge Treat
directed a bailiff to go to the hotel and call him. The bailiff ran
across the street to the hotel, and found Lincoln sitting in the office
with his feet on the stove, apparently in a deep study, when he
interrupted him with: "Mr. Lincoln, the Judge wants you." "Oh, does he?"
replied Lincoln. "Well, you go back and tell the Judge I cannot come.
Tell him I have to _wash my hands_." The bailiff returned with the
message, and Lincoln's client suffered a non-suit. It was Lincoln's way
of saying he wanted nothing more to do with such a case.

Lincoln would never advise clients into unwise or unjust lawsuits. He
would always sacrifice his own interests, and refuse a retainer, rather
than be a party to a case which did not command the approval of his
sense of justice. He was once waited upon by a lady who held a
real-estate claim which she desired to have him prosecute, putting into
his hands, with the necessary papers, a check for two hundred and fifty
dollars as a retaining fee. Lincoln said he would look the case over,
and asked her to call again the next day. Upon presenting herself, he
told her that he had gone through the papers very carefully, and was
obliged to tell her frankly that there was "not a peg" to hang her claim
upon, and he could not conscientiously advise her to bring an action.
The lady was satisfied, and, thanking him, rose to go. "Wait," said
Lincoln, fumbling in his vest pocket; "here is the check you left with
me." "But, Mr. Lincoln," returned the lady, "I think you have earned
that." "No, no," he responded, handing it back to her; "that would not
be right. I can't take pay for doing my duty." To a would-be client who
had carefully stated his case, to which Lincoln had listened with the
closest attention, he said: "Yes, there is no reasonable doubt that I
can gain your case for you. I can set a whole neighborhood at
loggerheads; I can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless
children, and thereby get for you six hundred dollars, which rightfully
belongs, it appears to me, as much to the woman and her children as it
does to you. You must remember that some things that are _legally_ right
are not _morally_ right. I shall not take your case, but will give you a
little advice, for which I will charge you nothing. You seem to be a
sprightly, energetic man. I would advise you to try your hand at _making
six hundred dollars some other way_."

Senator McDonald states that he saw a jury trial in Illinois, at which
Lincoln defended an old man charged with assault and battery. No blood
had been spilled, but there was malice in the prosecution, and the chief
witness was eager to make the most of it. On cross-examination, Lincoln
"gave him rope" and drew him out; asked him how long the fight lasted
and how much ground it covered. The witness thought the fight must have
lasted half an hour and covered an acre of ground. Lincoln called his
attention to the fact that nobody was hurt, and then with an inimitable
air asked him if he didn't think it was "a mighty small crop for an acre
of ground." The jury rejected the prosecution's claim.

Many of the stories told of Lincoln at the bar are extremely
ridiculous, and represent him in anything but a dignified light. But
they are a part of the character of the man, and should be given
wherever there is reason to suppose they are genuine. Besides, they are
usually full of a humor that is irresistible. Such an incident is given
by the Hon. Lawrence Weldon, Lincoln's old friend and legal associate in
Illinois. "I can see him now," says Judge Weldon, "through the decaying
memories of thirty years, standing in the corner of the old court-room,
and as I approached him with a paper I did not understand, he said:
'Wait until I fix this plug for my _gallus_, and I will pitch into that
like a dog at a root.' While speaking, he was busily engaged in trying
to connect his suspender with his trousers by making a 'plug' perform
the function of a button. Lincoln liked old-fashioned words, and never
failed to use them if they could be sustained as proper. He was probably
accustomed to say 'gallows,' and he never adopted the modern word
'suspender.'"

On a certain occasion Lincoln appeared at the trial of a case in which
his friend Judge Logan was his opponent. It was a suit between two
farmers who had had a disagreement over a horse-trade. On the day of the
trial, Mr. Logan, having bought a new shirt, open in the back, with a
huge standing collar, dressed himself in extreme haste, and put on the
shirt with the _bosom at the back_, a linen coat concealing the blunder.
He dazed the jury with his knowledge of "horse points"; and as the day
was sultry, took off his coat and "summed" up in his shirt-sleeves.
Lincoln, sitting behind him, took in the situation, and when his turn
came he remarked to the jury: "Gentlemen, Mr. Logan has been trying for
over an hour to make you believe he knows more about a horse than these
honest old farmers who are witnesses. He has quoted largely from his
'horse doctor,' and now, gentlemen, I submit to you," (here he lifted
Logan out of his chair, and turned him with his back to the jury and
the crowd, at the same time flapping up the enormous standing collar)
"what dependence can you place in his horse knowledge, when he _has not
sense enough to put on his shirt_?" Roars of laughter greeted this
exposition, and the verdict was given to Lincoln.

The preceding incident leads to another, in which Lincoln himself
figures as a horse-trader. The scene is a very humorous one; and, as
usual in an encounter of wit, Lincoln came out ahead. He and a certain
Judge once got to bantering each other about trading horses; and it was
agreed that the next morning at nine o'clock they should make a trade,
the horses to be unseen up to that hour,--and no backing out, under a
forfeit of twenty-five dollars. At the hour appointed the Judge came up,
leading the sorriest looking specimen of a nag ever seen in those parts.
In a few minutes Lincoln was seen approaching with a _wooden saw-horse_
upon his shoulders. Great were the shouts and the laughter of the crowd;
and these increased, when Lincoln, surveying the Judge's animal, set
down his saw-horse, and exclaimed: "Well, Judge, this is the first time
I ever _got the worst of it_ in a horse-trade!"

There has been much discussion as to Lincoln's rank and ability as a
lawyer. Opinion among his contemporaries seems to have been somewhat
divided. Mr. Herndon felt warranted in saying that he was at the same
time a very great and a very insignificant lawyer. His mind was logical
and direct. Generalities and platitudes had no charm for him. He had the
ability to seize the strong points of a case and present them with
clearness and compactness. His power of comparison was great. He rarely
failed in a legal discussion to use this mode of reasoning. Yet he knew
practically nothing of the rules of evidence, of pleading, of practice,
as laid down in the text-books, and seemed to care little about them.
Sometimes he lost cases of the plainest justice which the most
inexperienced lawyer could have won. He looked upon two things as
essential to his success in a case. One was time; he was slow in
reasoning and slow in speech. The other was confidence that the cause he
represented was just. "If either of these were lacking," said Mr.
Herndon, "Lincoln was the weakest man at the bar. When it fell to him to
address the jury he often relied absolutely on the inspiration of the
moment,--but he seldom failed to carry his point."

Among the great number of opinions of Lincoln's rank as a lawyer,
expressed by his professional brethren, a few may properly be given in
closing this chapter, which is devoted chiefly to Mr. Lincoln's
professional career. First we may quote the brief but emphatic words of
the distinguished jurist, Judge Sidney Breese, Chief Justice of
Illinois, who said: "For my single self, I have for a quarter of a
century regarded Mr. Lincoln as the finest lawyer I ever knew, and of a
professional bearing so high-toned and honorable, as justly, and without
derogating from the claims of others, entitling him to be presented to
the profession as a model well worthy of the closest imitation."

Another distinguished Chief Justice, Hon. John Dean Caton; says: "In
1840 or 1841, I met Mr. Lincoln, and was for the first time associated
with him in a professional way. We attended the Circuit Court at
Pontiac, Judge Treat presiding, where we were both engaged in the
defense of a man by the name of Lavinia. That was the first and only
time I was associated with him at the bar. He practiced in a circuit
that was beyond the one in which I practiced, and consequently we were
not brought together much in the practice of the law. He stood well at
the bar from the beginning. I was a younger man, but an older lawyer. He
was not admitted to the bar till after I was. I was not closely
connected with him. Indeed, I did not meet him often, professionally,
until I went on the bench in 1842; and he was then in full practice
before the Supreme Court, and continued to practice there regularly at
every term until he was elected President. Mr. Lincoln understood the
relations of things, and hence his deductions were rarely wrong from any
given state of facts. So he applied the principles of law to the
transactions of men with great clearness and precision. He was a close
reasoner. He reasoned by analogy, and enforced his views by apt
illustration. His mode of speaking was generally of a plain and
unimpassioned character, and yet he was the author of some of the most
beautiful and eloquent passages in our language, which, if collected,
would form a valuable contribution to American literature. The most
punctilious honor ever marked his professional and private life."

The Hon. Thomas Drummond, for many years Judge of the United States
District Court at Chicago, said: "It is not necessary to claim for Mr.
Lincoln attributes or qualities which he did not possess. He had enough
to entitle him to the love and respect and esteem of all who knew him.
He was not skilled in the learning of the schools, and his knowledge of
the law was acquired almost entirely by his own unaided study and by the
practice of his profession. Nature gave him great clearness and
acuteness of intellect and a vast fund of common-sense; and as a
consequence of these he had much sagacity in judging of the motives and
springs of human conduct. With a voice by no means pleasing, and,
indeed, when excited, in its shrill tones sometimes almost disagreeable;
without any of the personal graces of the orator; without much in the
outward man indicating superiority of intellect; without great quickness
of perception,--still, his mind was so vigorous, his comprehension so
exact and clear, and his judgments so sure, that he easily mastered the
intricacies of his profession, and became one of the ablest reasoners
and most impressive speakers at our bar. With a probity of character
known to all, with an intuitive insight into the human heart, with a
clearness of statement which was itself an argument, with an uncommon
power and facility of illustration, often, it is true, of a plain and
homely kind, and with that sincerity and earnestness of manner to carry
conviction, he was perhaps one of the most successful jury lawyers we
have ever had in the State. He always tried a case fairly and honestly.
He never intentionally misrepresented the testimony of a witness or the
arguments of an opponent. He met both squarely, and, if he could not
explain the one or answer the other, substantially admitted it. He never
misstated the law according to his own intelligent view of it. Such was
the transparent candor and integrity of his nature that he could not
well or strongly argue a side or a cause that he thought wrong. Of
course, he felt it his duty to say what could be said, and to leave the
decision to others; but there could be seen in such cases the inward
struggle in his own mind. In trying a cause he might occasionally dwell
too long or give too much importance to an inconsiderable point; but
this was the exception, and generally he went straight to the citadel of
a cause or a question, and struck home there, knowing if that were won
the outwork would necessarily fall. He could hardly be called very
learned in his profession, and yet he rarely tried a cause without fully
understanding the law applicable to it. I have no hesitation in saying
he was one of the ablest lawyers I have ever known. If he was forcible
before the jury he was equally so with the court. He detected with
unerring sagacity the marked points of his opponents' arguments, and
pressed his own views with overwhelming force. His efforts were quite
unequal, and it may have been that he would not on some occasions strike
one as at all remarkable; but let him be thoroughly aroused, let him
feel that he was right and that some great principle was involved in his
case, and he would come out with an earnestness of conviction, a power
of argument, and a wealth of illustration, that I have never seen
surpassed.... Simple in his habits, without pretensions of any kind, and
distrustful of himself, he was willing to yield precedence and place to
others, when he ought to have claimed them for himself. He rarely, if
ever, sought office except at the urgent solicitations of his friends.
In substantiation of this, I may be permitted to relate an incident
which now occurs to me. Prior to his nomination for the Presidency, and,
indeed, when his name was first mentioned in connection with that high
office, I broached the subject upon the occasion of meeting him here.
His response was, 'I hope they will select some abler man than myself.'"

Mr. C.S. Parks, a lawyer associated with Lincoln for some years,
furnishes the following testimony concerning his more prominent
qualities: "I have often said that for a man who was for a quarter of a
century both a lawyer and a politician he was the most _honest_ man I
ever knew. He was not only morally honest, but intellectually so. He
could not reason falsely; if he attempted it, he failed. In politics he
would never try to mislead. At the bar, when he thought he was wrong, he
was the weakest lawyer I ever saw."

Hon. David Davis, afterwards Associate Justice U.S. Supreme Court and
U.S. Senator, presided over the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Illinois
during the remaining years of Lincoln's practice at the bar. He was
united to Lincoln in close bonds of friendship, and year after year
travelled with him over the circuit, put up with him at the same hotels,
and often occupied the same room with him. "This simple life," says
Judge Davis, "Mr. Lincoln loved, preferring it to the practice of the
law in the city. In all the elements that constitute the great lawyer,
he had few equals. He seized the strong points of a cause, and presented
them with clearness and great compactness. He read law-books but
little, except when the cause in hand made it necessary; yet he was
unusually self-reliant, depending on his own resources, and rarely
consulting his brother lawyers either on the management of his case or
the legal questions involved. He was the fairest and most accommodating
of practitioners, granting all favors which he could do consistently
with his duty to his client, and rarely availing himself of an unwary
oversight of his adversary. He hated wrong and oppression everywhere,
and many a man, whose fraudulent conduct was undergoing review in a
court of justice, has withered under his terrific indignation and
rebuke."

Mr. Speed says: "As a lawyer, after his first year he was acknowledged
to be among the best in the State. His analytical powers were
marvellous. He always resolved every question into its primary elements,
and gave up every point on his own side that did not seem to be
invulnerable. One would think, to hear him present his case in the
court, he was giving his case away. He would concede point after point
to his adversary. But he always reserved a point upon which he claimed a
decision in his favor, and his concessions magnified the strength of his
claim. He rarely failed in gaining his cases in court."

The special characteristics of Lincoln's practice at the bar are thus
ably summed up: "He did not make a specialty of criminal cases, but was
engaged frequently in them. He could not be called a great lawyer,
measured by the extent of his acquirement of legal knowledge; he was not
an encyclopædia of cases; but in the clear perception of legal
principles, with natural capacity to apply them, he had great ability.
He was not a case lawyer, but a lawyer who dealt in the deep philosophy
of the law. He always knew the cases which might be quoted as absolute
authority, but beyond that he contented himself in the application and
discussion of general principles. In the trial of a case he moved
cautiously. He never examined or cross-examined a witness to the
detriment of his side. If the witness told the truth, he was safe from
his attacks; but woe betide the unlucky and dishonest individual who
suppressed the truth or colored it against Mr. Lincoln's side. His
speeches to the jury were very effective specimens of forensic oratory.
He talked the vocabulary of the people, and the jury understood every
point he made and every thought he uttered. I never saw him when I
thought he was trying to make an effort for the sake of mere display;
but his imagination was simple and pure in the richest gems of true
eloquence. He constructed short sentences of small words, and never
wearied the minds of the jury by mazes of elaboration."




CHAPTER IX


     Lincoln and Slavery--The Issue Becoming More Sharply
     Defined--Resistance to the Spread of Slavery--Views Expressed by
     Lincoln in 1850--His Mind Made Up--Lincoln as a Party Leader--The
     Kansas Struggle--Crossing Swords with Douglas--A Notable Speech by
     Lincoln--Advice to Kansas Belligerents--Honor in Politics--Anecdote
     of Lincoln and Yates--Contest for the U.S. Senate in
     1855--Lincoln's Defeat--Sketched by Members of the Legislature.

At the death of Henry Clay, in June, 1852, Lincoln was invited to
deliver a eulogy on Clay's life and character before the citizens of
Springfield. He complied with the request on the 16th of July. The same
season he made a speech before the Scott Club of Springfield, in reply
to the addresses with which Douglas had opened his extended campaign of
that summer, at Richmond, Virginia. Except on these two occasions,
Lincoln took but little part in politics until the passage of the
Nebraska Bill by Congress in 1854. The enactment of this measure
impelled him to take a firmer stand upon the question of slavery than he
had yet assumed. He had been opposed to the institution on grounds of
sentiment since his boyhood; now he determined to fight it from
principle. Mr. Herndon states that Lincoln really became an anti-slavery
man in 1831, during his visit to New Orleans, where he was deeply
affected by the horrors of the traffic in human beings. On one occasion
he saw a slave, a beautiful mulatto girl, sold at auction. She was felt
over, pinched, and trotted around to show bidders she was sound. Lincoln
walked away from the scene with a feeling of deep abhorrence. He said to
John Hanks, "_If I ever get a chance to hit that institution, John, I'll
hit it hard_!" Again, in the summer of 1841, he was painfully impressed
by a scene witnessed during his journey home from Kentucky, described in
a letter written at the time to the sister of his friend Speed, in which
he says: "A fine example was presented on board the boat for
contemplating the effect of conditions upon human happiness. A man had
purchased twelve negroes in different parts of Kentucky, and was taking
them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six together; a
small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each, and this was
fastened to the main chain by a shorter one, at a convenient distance
from the others, so that the negroes were strung together like so many
fish upon a trot-line. In this condition they were being separated
forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers
and mothers, brothers and sisters, and many of them from their wives and
children, and going into perpetual slavery."

Judge Gillespie records a conversation which he had with Lincoln in 1850
on the slavery question, remarking by way of introduction that the
subject of slavery was the only one on which he (Lincoln) was apt to
become excited. "I recollect meeting him once at Shelbyville," says
Judge Gillespie, "when he remarked that something must be done or
slavery would overrun the whole country. He said there were about six
hundred thousand non-slaveholding whites in Kentucky to about
thirty-three thousand slaveholders; that in the convention then recently
held it was expected that the delegates would represent these classes
about in proportion to their respective numbers; but when the convention
assembled, there was not a single representative of the non-slaveholding
class; everyone was in the interest of the slaveholders; 'and,' said he,
'the thing is spreading like wildfire over the country. In a few years
we will be ready to accept the institution in Illinois, and the whole
country will adopt it.' I asked him to what he attributed the change
that was going on in public opinion. He said he had recently put that
question to a Kentuckian, who answered by saying, 'You might have any
amount of land, money in your pocket, or bank-stock, and while
travelling around nobody would be any wiser; but if you had a darkey
trudging at your heels, everybody would see him and know that you owned
a slave. It is the most ostentatious way of displaying property in the
world; if a young man goes courting, the only inquiry is as to how many
negroes he owns.' The love for slave property was swallowing up every
other mercenary possession. Its ownership not only betokened the
possession of wealth, but indicated the gentleman of leisure who scorned
labor. These things Mr. Lincoln regarded as highly pernicious to the
thoughtless and giddy young men who were too much inclined to look upon
work as vulgar and ungentlemanly. He was much excited, and said with
great earnestness that this spirit ought to be met, and if possible
checked; that slavery was a great and crying injustice, an enormous
national crime, and we could not expect to escape punishment for it. I
asked him how he would proceed in his efforts to check the spread of
slavery. He confessed he did not see his way clearly; but I think he
made up his mind that from that time he would oppose slavery actively. I
know that Lincoln always contended that no man had any right, other than
what mere brute force gave him, to hold a slave. He used to say it was
singular that the courts would hold that a man never lost his right to
property that had been stolen from him, but that he instantly _lost his
right to himself_ if he was stolen. Lincoln always contended that the
cheapest way of getting rid of slavery was for the nation to buy the
slaves and set them free."

While in Congress, Lincoln had declared himself plainly as opposed to
slavery; and in public speeches not less than private conversations he
had not hesitated to express his convictions on the subject. In 1850 he
said to Major Stuart: "The time will soon come when we must all be
Democrats or Abolitionists. When that time comes, _my mind is made up_.
The slavery question cannot be compromised." The hour had now struck in
which Lincoln was to espouse with his whole heart and soul that cause
for which finally he was to lay down his life. In the language of Mr.
Arnold, "He had bided his time. He had waited until the harvest was
ripe. With unerring sagacity he realized that the triumph of freedom was
at hand. He entered upon the conflict with the deepest conviction that
the perpetuity of the Republic required the extinction of slavery. So,
adopting as his motto, 'A house divided against itself cannot stand,' he
girded himself for the contest. The years from 1854 to 1860 were on his
part years of constant, active, and unwearied effort. His position in
the State of Illinois was central and commanding. He was now to become
the recognized leader of the anti-slavery party in the Northwest, and in
all the Valley of the Mississippi. Lincoln was a practical statesman,
never attempting the impossible, but seeking to do the best thing
practicable under existing circumstances. He knew that prohibition in
the territories would result in no more slave states and no slave
territory. And now, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise shattered
all parties into fragments, he came forward to build up the Free Soil
party and threw into the conflict all his strength and vigor. The
conviction of his duty was deep and sincere. Hence he pleaded the cause
of liberty with an energy, ability, and power which rapidly gained for
him a national reputation. Conscious of the greatness of his cause,
inspired by a genuine love of liberty, animated and made strong by the
moral sublimity of the conflict, he solemnly announced his determination
to speak for freedom and against slavery until--in his own
words--wherever the Federal Government has power, 'the sun shall shine,
the rain shall fall, and the wind shall blow upon no man who goes forth
to unrequited toil.'"

The absorbing political topic in 1855 was the contest in Kansas, which
proved the battle-ground for the struggle over the introduction of
slavery into the territories north of the line established by the
"Missouri Compromise." Lincoln's views on the subject are defined in a
notable letter to his friend Joshua Speed, a resident of Kentucky. The
following passages show, in Lincoln's own words, where he stood on the
slavery question at this memorable epoch:

     SPRINGFIELD, AUGUST 24, 1855.

     Dear Speed:--You know what a poor correspondent I am. Ever since I
     received your very agreeable letter of the twenty-second of May, I
     have been intending to write you in answer to it. You suggest that
     in political action now, you and I would differ. You know I dislike
     slavery, and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it. So far,
     there is no cause of difference. But you say that sooner than yield
     your legal right to the slave, especially at the bidding of those
     who are not themselves interested, you would see the Union
     dissolved. I am not aware that any one is bidding you yield that
     right--very certainly I am not. I leave the matter entirely to
     yourself. I also acknowledge your rights and my obligations under
     the Constitution, in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see
     the poor creatures hunted down, and caught, and carried back to
     their stripes and unrequited toil; but I bite my lip and keep
     quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip on a
     steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well
     do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, there were on
     board ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That
     sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it
     every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave border. It is not
     fair for you to assume that I have no interest in a thing which
     has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable.
     You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the
     people of the North do crucify their feelings in order to maintain
     their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union.

     I do oppose the extension of slavery, because my judgment and
     feelings so prompt me; and I am under no obligations to the
     contrary. If for this you and I must differ, differ we must. You
     say, if you were President you would send an army and hang the
     leaders of the Missouri outrages upon the Kansas elections; still,
     if Kansas fairly votes herself a slave State, she must be admitted,
     or the Union must be dissolved. But how if she votes herself a
     slave State unfairly--that is, by the very means for which you
     would hang men? Must she still be admitted, or the Union dissolved?
     That will be the phase of the question when it first becomes a
     practical one. In your assumption that there may be a fair decision
     of the slavery question in Kansas, I plainly see you and I would
     differ about the Nebraska law. I look upon that enactment not as a
     law but a violence from the beginning. It was conceived in
     violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is
     being executed in violence. I say it was conceived in violence,
     because the destruction of the Missouri Compromise under the
     Constitution was nothing less than violence. It was passed in
     violence, because it could not have passed at all but for the votes
     of many members in violent disregard of the known will of their
     constituents. It is maintained in violence, because the elections
     since clearly demand its repeal; and the demand is openly
     disregarded. That Kansas will form a slave constitution, and with
     it will ask to be admitted into the Union, I take to be already a
     settled question, and so settled by the very means you so pointedly
     condemn. By every principle of law ever held by any court, North or
     South, every negro taken to Kansas is free; yet in utter disregard
     of this--in the spirit of violence merely--that beautiful
     Legislature gravely passes a law to hang any man who shall venture
     to inform a negro of his legal rights. This is the substance and
     real object of the law. If, like Haman, they should hang upon the
     gallows of their own building, I shall not be among the mourners
     for their fate. In my humble sphere I shall advocate the
     restoration of the Missouri Compromise so long as Kansas remains a
     Territory; and, when, by all these foul means, it seeks to come
     into the Union as a slave State, I shall oppose it.... You inquire
     where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a Whig;
     but others say there are no Whigs, and that I am an Abolitionist.
     When I was in Washington I voted for the Wilmot Proviso as good as
     forty times, and I never heard of any attempt to unwhig me for
     that. I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery. I am
     not a Know-Nothing--that is certain. How could I be? How can anyone
     who abhors the oppression of the negroes be in favor of degrading
     classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me
     to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that 'all men
     are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created
     equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will
     read, 'all men are created equals, except negroes and foreigners
     and Catholics.' When it comes to that, I should prefer emigrating
     to some other country where they make no pretense of loving
     liberty--to Russia for instance, where despotism can be taken pure,
     and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

     Your friend forever,
     A. LINCOLN.

Lincoln was soon accorded an opportunity to cross swords again with his
former political antagonist, Douglas, who had lately come from his place
in the Senate Chamber at Washington, where he had carried the obnoxious
Nebraska Bill against the utmost efforts of Chase, Seward, Sumner, and
others, to defeat it. As Mr. Arnold narrates the incident,--"When, late
in September, 1854, Douglas returned to Illinois he was received with a
storm of indignation which would have crushed a man of less power and
will. A bold and courageous leader, conscious of his personal power over
his party, he bravely met the storm and sought to allay it. In October,
1854, the State Fair being then in session at Springfield, with a great
crowd of people in attendance from all parts of the State, Douglas went
there and made an elaborate and able speech in defense of the repeal of
the Missouri Compromise. Lincoln was called upon by the opponents of
this repeal to reply, and he did so with a power which he never
surpassed and had never before equalled. All other issues which had
divided the people were as chaff, and were scattered to the winds by the
intense agitation which arose on the question of extending slavery, not
merely into free territory, but into territory which had been declared
free by solemn compact. Lincoln's speech occupied more than three hours
in delivery, and during all that time he held the vast crowd in the
deepest attention."

Mr. Herndon said of this event: "This anti-Nebraska speech of Mr.
Lincoln was the profoundest that he made in his whole life. He felt
burning upon his soul the truths which he uttered, and all present
felt that he was true to his own soul. His feelings once or twice came
near stifling utterance. He quivered with emotion. He attacked the
Nebraska Bill with such warmth and energy that all felt that a man of
strength was its enemy, and that he intended to blast it, if he could,
by strong and manly efforts. He was most successful, and the house
approved his triumph by loud and continued huzzas, while women waved
their white handkerchiefs in token of heartfelt assent. Douglas felt
the sting, and he frequently interrupted Mr. Lincoln; his friends felt
that he was crushed by the powerful argument of his opponent. The
Nebraska Bill was shivered, and, like a tree of the forest, was torn
and rent asunder by hot bolts of truth. At the conclusion of this
speech, every man, woman, and child felt that it was unanswerable." In
speaking of the same occasion, Mr. Lamon says: "Many fine speeches
were made upon the one absorbing topic; but it is no shame to any one
of these orators that their really impressive speeches were but
slightly appreciated or long remembered beside Mr. Lincoln's splendid
and enduring performance,--enduring in the memory of his auditors,
although preserved upon no written or printed page."

A few days after this encounter, Douglas spoke in Peoria, and was
followed by Lincoln with the same crushing arguments that had served him
at the State Fair, and with the same triumphant effect. His Peoria
speech was written out by him and published after its delivery. A few
specimens will show its style and argumentative power.

     Argue as you will, and as long as you will, this is the naked front
     and aspect of the measure; and in this aspect it could not but
     produce agitation. Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's
     nature; opposition to it, in his love of justice. These principles
     are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so
     fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks, throes, and
     convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri
     Compromise; repeal all compromises; repeal the Declaration of
     Independence; repeal all past history,--you still cannot repeal
     human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that
     slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart,
     his mouth will continue to speak.... When Mr. Pettit, in connection
     with his support of the Nebraska Bill, called the Declaration of
     Independence 'a self-evident lie,' he only did what consistency and
     candor require all other Nebraska men to do. Of the forty-odd
     Nebraska Senators who sat present and heard him, no one rebuked
     him.... If this had been said among Marion's men, Southerners
     though they were, what would have become of the man who said it? If
     this had been said to the men who captured Andre, the man who said
     it would probably have been hung sooner than Andre was. If it had
     been said in old Independence Hall seventy-eight years ago, the
     very doorkeeper would have throttled the man, and thrust him into
     the street.... Thus we see the plain, unmistakable spirit of that
     early age towards slavery was hostility to the principle, and
     toleration only by necessity. But now it is to be transformed into
     a 'sacred right.' Nebraska brings it forth, places it on the high
     road to extension and perpetuity, and with a pat on its back says
     to it: 'Go, and God speed you.' Henceforth it is to be the chief
     jewel of the nation, the very figurehead of the ship of state.
     Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have
     been giving the old for the new faith. Nearly eighty years ago we
     began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from
     that beginning we have run down to that other declaration, 'that
     for _some_ men to enslave others is a sacred right of
     self-government.' ... In our greedy chase to make profit of the
     negro, let us beware lest we cancel and tear to pieces even the
     white man's charter of freedom.... If all earthly power were given
     me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My
     first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to
     Liberia--to their own native land. But, if they were all landed
     there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and
     there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough to carry
     them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and
     keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this
     betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery at
     any rate; yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce
     people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and
     socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and,
     if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white
     people will not. A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded,
     cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot then make them equals. It
     does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be
     adopted; but, for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to
     judge our brethren of the South.

     Our Republican robe is soiled--trailed in the dust. Let us repurify
     it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood,
     of the Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of 'moral
     right,' back upon its existing legal rights and its arguments of
     'necessity.' Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it,
     and there let it rest in peace. Let us re-adopt the Declaration of
     Independence, and with it the practices and policy which harmonize
     with it. Let North and South--let all Americans--let all lovers of
     liberty everywhere--join in the great and good work. If we do
     this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we shall have so
     saved it as to make and to keep it forever worthy of the saving. We
     shall have so saved it that the succeeding millions of free and
     happy people, the world over, shall rise up and call us blessed to
     the latest generations.

It was in one of these speeches that Lincoln's power of repartee was
admirably illustrated by a most laughable retort made by him to Douglas.
Mr. Ralph E. Hoyt, who was present, says: "In the course of his speech,
Mr. Douglas had said, 'The Whigs are all dead.' For some time before
speaking, Lincoln sat on the platform with only his homely face visible
to the audience above the high desk before him. On being introduced, he
arose from his chair and proceeded to straighten himself up. For a few
seconds I wondered when and where his head would cease its ascent; but
at last it did stop, and 'Honest Old Abe' stood before us. He commenced,
'Fellow-citizens: My friend, Mr. Douglas, made the startling
announcement to-day that the Whigs are all dead. If this be so,
fellow-citizens, you will now experience the novelty of hearing a speech
from a dead man; and I suppose you might properly say, in the language
of the old hymn:

    "Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound!"'

This set the audience fairly wild with delight, and at once brought them
into full confidence with the speaker."

Hating slavery though he did, Lincoln was steadily opposed to all forms
of unlawful or violent opposition to it. At about the time of which we
are speaking a party of Abolitionists in Illinois had become so excited
over the Kansas struggle that they were determined to go to the aid of
the Free-State men in that territory. As soon as Lincoln learned of this
project, he opposed it strongly. When they spoke to him of "Liberty,
Justice, and God's higher law," he replied in this temperate and
judicious strain:

Friends, you are in the minority--in a sad minority; and you can't hope
to succeed, reasoning from all human experience. You would rebel against
the Government, and redden your hands in the blood of your countrymen.
If you have the majority, as some of you say you have, you can succeed
with the ballot, throwing away the bullet. You can peaceably, then,
redeem the Government and preserve the liberties of mankind, through
your votes and voice and moral influence. _Let there be peace_. In a
democracy, where the majority rule by the ballot through the forms of
law, these physical rebellions and bloody resistances are radically
wrong, unconstitutional, and are treason. Better bear the ills you have
than fly to those you know not of. Our own Declaration of Independence
says that governments long established should not be resisted for
trivial causes. Revolutionize through the ballot-box, and restore the
Government once more to the affection and hearts of men, by making it
express, as it was intended to do, the highest spirit of justice and
liberty. Your attempt, if there be such, to resist the laws of Kansas by
force, will be criminal and wicked; and all your feeble attempts will be
follies, and end in bringing sorrow on your heads, and ruin the cause
you would freely die to preserve.

No doubt was felt of Lincoln's sympathies; indeed, he is known to have
contributed money to the Free-State cause. But it is noticeable that in
this exciting episode he showed the same coolness, wisdom, moderation,
love of law and order that so strongly characterized his conduct in the
stormier period of the Civil War, and without which it is doubtful if he
would have been able to save the nation.

Some interesting recollections of the events of this stirring period,
and of Lincoln's part in them, are given by Mr. Paul Selby, for a long
time editor of the "State Journal" at Springfield, and one of
Lincoln's old-time friends and political associates. "While Abraham
Lincoln had the reputation of being inspired by an almost unbounded
ambition," says Mr. Selby, "it was of that generous quality which
characterized his other attributes, and often led him voluntarily to
restrain its gratification in deference to the conflicting aspirations
of his friends. All remember his magnanimity towards Col. Edward D.
Baker, when the latter was elected to Congress from the Springfield
District in 1844, and the frankness with which he informed Baker of
his own desire to be a candidate in 1846--when for the only time in
his life, he was elected to that body. In 1852, Richard Yates of
Jacksonville, then recognized as one of the rising young orators and
statesmen of the West, was elected to Congress for the second time
from the Springfield District. It was during the term following this
election that the Kansas-Nebraska issue was precipitated upon the
country by Senator Douglas, in the introduction of his bill for the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Yates, in obedience to his
impulses, which were always on the side of freedom, took strong ground
against the measure--notwithstanding the fact that a majority of his
constituents, though originally Whigs, were strongly conservative, as
was generally the case with people who were largely of Kentucky and
Tennessee origin. In 1854 the Whig party, which had been divided on
the Kansas-Nebraska question, began to manifest symptoms of
disintegration; while the Republican party, though not yet known by
that name, began to take form. At this time I was publishing a paper
at Jacksonville, Yates's home; and although from the date of my
connection with it, in 1852, it had not been a political paper, the
introduction of a new issue soon led me to take decided ground on the
side of free territory. Lincoln at once sprang into prominence as one
of the boldest, most vigorous and eloquent opponents of Mr. Douglas's
measure, which was construed as a scheme to secure the admission of
slavery into all the new territories of the United States. At that
time Lincoln's election to a seat in Congress would probably have been
very grateful to his ambition, as well as acceptable in a pecuniary
point of view; and his prominence and ability had already attracted
the eyes of the whole State toward him in a special degree. Having
occasion to visit Springfield one day while the subject of the
selection of a candidate was under consideration among the opponents
of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, I encountered Mr. Lincoln on the street.
As we walked along, the subject of the choice of a candidate for
Congress to succeed Yates came up, when I stated that many of the
old-line Whigs and anti-Nebraska men in the western part of the
district were looking to him as an available leader. While he seemed
gratified by the compliment, he said: 'No; Yates has been a true and
faithful Representative, and should be returned.' Yates was
renominated; and although he ran ahead of his ticket, yet so far had
the disorganization of the Whig party then progressed, and so strong a
foothold had the pro-slavery sentiment obtained in the district, that
he was defeated by Major Thomas L. Harris, of Petersburg, whom he had
defeated when he first entered the field as a candidate four years
before. While it is scarcely probable that Lincoln, if he had been a
candidate, could have changed the result, yet the prize was one which
he would then have considered worth contending for; and if the
nomination could have been tendered him without doing injustice to his
friend, he would undoubtedly have accepted it gladly and thrown all
the earnestness and ability which he possessed into the contest. This
instance only illustrates a feature of his character which has so
often been recognized and commented upon--his generosity toward those
among his political friends who might be regarded as occupying the
position of rivals."

In 1854, during Lincoln's absence from Springfield, he was nominated as
a candidate for the State Legislature. It was in one of Lincoln's
periods of profound depression, and it was with the greatest difficulty
that he could be persuaded to accept the nomination. "I went to see
him," says one of his close political friends, Mr. William Jayne, "in
order to get his consent to run. This was at his house. He was then the
saddest man I ever saw--the gloomiest. He walked up and down the floor,
almost crying; and to all my persuasions to let his name stand in the
paper, he said, 'No, I can't. You don't know all. I say you don't begin
to know one-half; and that's enough.'" His name, however, was allowed to
stand, and he was elected by about 600 majority. But Lincoln was then
extremely desirous of succeeding General James Shields, whose term in
the United States Senate was to expire the following March. The Senate
Chamber had long been the goal of his ambition. He summed up his
feelings in a letter to Hon. N.B. Judd, some years after, saying, "I
would rather have a full term in the United States Senate than the
Presidency." He therefore resigned his seat in the Legislature--the fact
that a majority in both houses was opposed to the Nebraska Bill allowing
him to do so without injury to his party--and became a candidate for the
Senate. But the act was futile. When the Legislature met, in February,
1855, to make choice of a Senator, a clique of anti-Nebraska Democrats
held out so firmly against the nomination of Lincoln that there was
danger of the Whigs leaving their candidate altogether. In this dilemma
Lincoln was consulted. Mr. Lamon thus describes the incident: "Lincoln
said, unhesitatingly, 'You ought to drop me and go for Trumbull; that is
the only way you can defeat Matteson.' Judge Logan came up about that
time, and insisted on running Lincoln still; but the latter said, 'If
you do, you will lose both Trumbull and myself; and I think the cause in
this case is to be preferred to men.' We adopted his suggestion, and
took up Trumbull and elected him, although it grieved us to the heart to
give up Lincoln." Mr. Parks, a member of the Legislature at this time,
and one of Lincoln's intimate friends, said: "Mr. Lincoln was very much
disappointed, for I think it was the height of his ambition to get into
the United States Senate. Yet he manifested no bitterness toward Mr.
Judd or the other anti-Nebraska Democrats by whom politically he was
beaten, but evidently thought their motives were right. He told me
several times afterwards that the election of Trumbull was the best
thing that could have happened."

Hon. Elijah M. Haines, ex-Speaker of the Illinois Legislature, a
resident of the State for over half a century, and one of Lincoln's
early friends, was a member of the Legislature during the Senatorial
struggle just referred to. His familiarity with all its incidents lends
value to his distinct and vivid recollections. "Abraham Lincoln had been
elected a member of the House on the Fusion ticket, with Judge Stephen
T. Logan, for the district composed of Sangamon County," writes Mr.
Haines. "But it being settled that the Fusion party--which was an
anti-Douglas combination, including Whigs, Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings,
etc.--would have a majority of the two houses on ballot, Mr. Lincoln was
induced to become a candidate for United States Senator, for the support
of that party. He therefore did not qualify as a member. Although Mr.
Lincoln never acquired the reputation of being an office-seeker, yet it
happened frequently that his name would be mentioned in connection with
some important position. He became quite early in life one of the
prominent leaders of the Whig party of the State, and for a long time,
in connection with a few devoted associates, led the forlorn hope of
that party. During a period of about twenty years there was seldom more
than one Whig member in the Illinois delegation of Congressmen. The
Sangamon district, in which Mr. Lincoln lived, was always sure to elect
a Whig member when the party was united; but it contained quite a number
of aspiring Whig orators, and there was a kind of understanding between
them that no one who attained the position of Representative in Congress
should hold it longer than one term; that he would then give way for the
next favorite. Mr. Lincoln had held the position once, and its return to
him was far in the future. The Fusion triumph in the Legislature was
considered by the Whig element as a success, in which they acknowledged
great obligation to Mr. Lincoln. That element in the Fusion party
therefore urged his claims as the successor of General Shields. His old
associate and tried friend in the Whig cause, Judge Logan, became the
champion of his interests in the House of Representatives. I was present
and saw something of Mr. Lincoln during the early part of the session,
before the vote for Senator was taken. He was around among the members
much of the time. His manner was agreeable and unassuming; he was not
forward in pressing his case upon the attention of members, yet before
the interview would come to a close some allusion to the Senatorship
would generally occur, when he would respond in some such way as this:
'Gentlemen, that is rather a delicate subject for me to talk upon; but I
must confess that I would be glad of your support for the office, if you
shall conclude that I am the proper person for it.' When he had
finished, he would generally take occasion to withdraw before any
discussion on the subject arose. When the election of Senator occurred,
in February, Lincoln received 45 votes--the highest number of any of
the candidates, and within six votes of enough to secure his election.
This was on the first ballot, after which Lincoln's votes declined.
After the ninth ballot, Mr. Lincoln stepped forward--or, as Mr. Richmond
expresses it, _leaned_ forward from his position in the lobby--and
requested the committee to withdraw his name. On the tenth ballot Judge
Trumbull received fifty-one votes and was declared elected." Thus were
Lincoln's political ambitions again frustrated. But their realization
was only delayed for the far grander triumph that was so soon to come,
although no man then foresaw its coming.




CHAPTER X


     Birth of the Republican Party--Lincoln One of Its Fathers--Takes
     His Stand with the Abolitionists--The Bloomington
     Convention--Lincoln's Great Anti-Slavery Speech--A Ratification
     Meeting of Three--The First National Republican
     Convention--Lincoln's Name Presented for the
     Vice-Presidency--Nomination of Fremont and Dayton--Lincoln in the
     Campaign of 1856--His Appearance and Influence on the
     Stump--Regarded as a Dangerous Man--His Views on the Politics of
     the Future--First Visit to Cincinnati--Meeting with Edwin M.
     Stanton--Stanton's First Impressions of Lincoln--Regards Him as a
     "Giraffe"--A Visit to Cincinnati.

The year 1856 saw the dissolution of the old Whig party. It had become
too narrow and restricted to answer the needs of the hour. A new
platform was demanded, one that would admit the great principles and
issues growing out of the slavery agitation. A convention of the Whig
leaders throughout the country met at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the
22d of February of that year, to consider the necessity of a new
organization. A little later, Mr. Herndon, in the office of Lincoln,
prepared a call for a convention at Bloomington, Illinois, "summoning
together all those who wished to see the government conducted on the
principles of Washington and Jefferson." This call was signed by the
most prominent Abolitionists of Illinois, with the name of A. LINCOLN at
the head. The morning after its publication, Major Stuart entered Mr.
Herndon's office in a state of extreme excitement, and, as the latter
relates, demanded: "'Sir, did Mr. Lincoln sign that Abolition call which
is published this morning?' I answered, 'Mr. Lincoln did not sign that
call.' 'Did Lincoln authorize you to sign it?' 'No, he never authorized
me to sign it.' 'Then do you know that you have ruined Mr. Lincoln?' 'I
did not know that I had ruined Mr. Lincoln; did not intend to do so;
thought he was a made man by it; that the time had come when
conservatism was a crime and a blunder.' 'You, then, take the
responsibility of your acts, do you?' 'I do, most emphatically.'
However, I instantly sat down and wrote to Mr. Lincoln, who was then in
Pekin or Tremont--possibly at court. He received my letter, and
instantly replied, either by letter or telegraph--most likely by
letter--that he adopted _in toto_ what I had done, and promised to meet
the radicals--Lovejoy and such like men--among us." Mr. Herndon adds:
"Never did a man change as Lincoln did from that hour. No sooner had he
planted himself right on the slavery question than his whole soul seemed
burning. _He blossomed right out._ Then, too, other spiritual things
grew more real to him."

Mr. Herndon had been an Abolitionist from birth. It was an inheritance
with him; but Lincoln's conversion was a gradual process, stimulated and
confirmed by the influence of his companion. "From 1854 to 1860," says
Mr. Herndon, "I kept putting into Lincoln's hands the speeches and
sermons of Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and Henry Ward Beecher. I
took 'The Anti-Slavery Standard' for years before 1856, 'The Chicago
Tribune,' and 'The New York Tribune'; kept them in my office, kept them
purposely on my table, and would read to Lincoln the good, sharp, solid
things, well put. Lincoln was a natural anti-slavery man, as I think,
and yet he needed watching,--needed hope, faith, energy; and I think I
_warmed him_."

It is stated that "when Herndon was very young--probably before Mr.
Lincoln made his first protest in the Legislature of the State in behalf
of liberty--Lincoln once said to him: 'I cannot see what makes your
convictions so decided as regards the future of slavery. What tells you
the thing must be rooted out?' 'I feel it in my bones,' was Herndon's
emphatic answer. 'This continent is not broad enough to endure the
contest between freedom and slavery!' It was almost in these very words
that Lincoln afterwards opened the great contest with Douglas. From this
time forward he submitted all public questions to what he called 'the
test of Bill Herndon's _bone philosophy_'; and their arguments were
close and protracted."

Lincoln's attitude on slavery aroused formidable opposition among his
friends, and even in his own family. Mrs. Lincoln was decidedly
pro-slavery in her views. Once while riding with a friend she said: "If
my husband dies, his spirit will never find me residing outside the
limits of a slave State." But opposition, whether from without or
within, could never swerve him from a course to which conscience and
reason clearly impelled him. Long before Mr. Herndon published the call
for the Bloomington convention, he had said to a deputation of men from
Chicago, in answer to the inquiry whether Lincoln could be trusted for
freedom: "Can you trust yourselves? If you can, you can trust Lincoln
forever."

The convention met at Bloomington, May 29, 1856. One of its chief
incidents was a speech by Lincoln. This speech was one of the great
efforts of his life, and had a powerful influence on the convention.
"Never," says one of the delegates, "was an audience more completely
electrified by human eloquence. Again and again his hearers sprang to
their feet, and by long continued cheers expressed how deeply the
speaker had aroused them." "It was there," says Mr. Herndon in one of
his lectures, "that Lincoln was baptized and joined our church. He made
a speech to us. I have heard or read all of Mr. Lincoln's great
speeches; and I give it as my opinion that the Bloomington speech was
the grand effort of his life. Heretofore, and up to this moment, he had
simply argued the slavery question on grounds of policy,--on what are
called the _statesman's_ grounds,--never reaching the question of the
radical and eternal right. Now he was newly baptized and freshly born;
he had the fervor of a new convert; the smothered flame broke out;
enthusiasm unusual to him blazed up; his eyes were aglow with
inspiration; he felt a new and more vital justice; his heart was alive
to the right; his sympathies burst forth; and he stood before the throne
of the eternal Right, in presence of his God, and then and there
unburdened his penitential and fired soul. This speech was fresh, new,
genuine, odd, original; filled with fervor not unmixed with a divine
enthusiasm; his head breathing out through his tender heart its truths,
its sense of right, and its feeling of the good and for the good. This
speech was full of fire and energy and force; it was logic; it was
pathos; it was enthusiasm; it was justice, equity, truth, right, and
good, set ablaze by the divine fires of a soul maddened by wrong; it was
hard, heavy, knotty, gnarly, edged, and heated. I attempted for about
fifteen minutes, as was usual with me then, to take notes; but at the
end of that time I threw pen and paper to the dogs, and lived only in
the inspiration of the hour. If Mr. Lincoln was six feet four inches
high usually, _at Bloomington he was seven feet_, and inspired at that.
From that day to the day of his death, he stood firm on the right. He
felt his great cross, had his great idea, nursed it, kept it, taught it
to others, and in his fidelity bore witness of it to his death, and
finally sealed it with his precious blood."

The committee on resolutions at the convention found themselves, after
hours of discussion, unable to agree; and at last they sent for Lincoln.
He suggested that all could unite on the principles of the Declaration
of Independence and hostility to the extension of slavery. "Let us,"
said he, "in building our new party make our cornerstone the
Declaration of Independence; let us build on this rock, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against us." The problem was mastered, and the
convention adopted the following:

     _Resolved_, That we hold, in accordance with the opinions and
     practices of all the great statesmen of all parties for the first
     sixty years of the administration of the government, that under the
     Constitution Congress possesses full power to prohibit slavery in
     the territories; and that while we will maintain all constitutional
     rights of the South, we also hold that justice, humanity, the
     principles of freedom, as expressed in our Declaration of
     Independence and our National Constitution, and the purity and
     perpetuity of our government, require that that power should be
     exerted to prevent the extension of slavery into territories
     heretofore free.

The Bloomington convention concluded its work by choosing delegates to
the National Republican convention to be held at Philadelphia the
following month, for the nomination of candidates for the Presidency and
Vice-presidency of the United States. And thus was organized the
Republican party in Illinois, which revolutionized the politics of the
State and elected Lincoln to the Presidency.

The people of Bloomington seem to have had but little sympathy with this
convention. A few days later, Herndon and Lincoln tried to hold a
ratification meeting; but only three persons were present--Lincoln,
Herndon, and John Pain. "When Lincoln came into the court-room where the
meeting was to be held," says Herndon, "there was an expression of
sadness and amusement on his face. He walked to the stand, mounted it in
a kind of mockery--mirth and sadness all combined--and said, 'Gentlemen,
this meeting is larger than I thought it would be. I knew that Herndon
and myself would come, but I did not know that anyone else would be
here; and yet another has come--you, John Pain. These are sad times,
and seem out of joint. All seems dead; but the age is not yet dead; it
liveth as sure as our Maker liveth. Under all this seeming want of life
and motion, the world does move nevertheless. Be hopeful. And now let us
adjourn and appeal to the people.'"

The National convention of the Republican party met at Philadelphia in
June, 1856, and adopted a declaration of principles substantially based
upon those of the Bloomington convention. John C. Fremont was nominated
as candidate for President. Among the names presented for Vice-president
was that of Abraham Lincoln, who received 110 votes. William L. Dayton
received 259 votes and was unanimously declared the nominee. Fremont and
Dayton thus became the standard-bearers of the new national party. When
the news reached Lincoln, in Illinois, that he had received 110 votes as
nominee for the Vice-presidency, he could not at first believe that he
was the man voted for, and said, "No, it could not be; it must have been
the great Lincoln of Massachusetts!" He was then in one of his
melancholy moods, full of depression and despondency.

In the stirring presidential campaign of 1856, Lincoln was particularly
active, and rendered most efficient service to the Republican party. He
spoke constantly, discussing the great question of "slavery in the
territories" in a manner at once original and masterly. A graphic
picture of one of these campaign gatherings is furnished by Hon. William
Bross, afterwards Lieutenant-Governor of Illinois. "I first met Mr.
Lincoln, to know him," says Governor Bross, "at Vandalia, the old
capital of the State, in October, 1856. There was to be a political
meeting in front of the old State House, in the center of the square, at
2 o'clock. Soon after that hour the sonorous voice of Dr. Curdy rang
through the town: 'O, yes! O, yes! All ye who want to hear public
speaking, draw near!' The crowd at once began to gather from all sides
of the square. The Doctor then introduced the first speaker, and he
proceeded to make the best presentation he could of the principles of
the newly-formed Republican party, and the reasons why Fremont, 'the
gallant pathfinder of the West,' should be elected President. About the
time the first speaker closed his remarks, Hon. Ebenezer Peck and
Abraham Lincoln arrived and took the stand; and both made able and
effective speeches. After that, Lincoln and I frequently met during the
canvass, and often afterwards I spoke with him from the same platform.
The probable result of an election was often canvassed, and a noticeable
fact was that in most cases he would mark the probable result below
rather than above the actual majority."

Some lively reminiscences of Lincoln's appearance and efforts in this
campaign are given by Mr. Noah Brooks, the well-known journalist and
author, who at that time lived in Northern Illinois and attended many of
the great Republican mass-meetings. "At one of these great assemblies in
Ogle County," says Mr. Brooks, "to which the country people came on
horseback, in farm wagons, or afoot, from far and near, there were
several speakers of local celebrity. Dr. Egan of Chicago, famous for his
racy stories, was one; and Joe Knox of Bureau County, a stump speaker of
renown, was another attraction. Several other orators were 'on the
bills' for this long-advertised 'Fremont and Dayton rally,' among them
being a Springfield lawyer who had won some reputation as a close
reasoner, and a capital speaker on the stump. This was Abraham Lincoln,
popularly known as 'Honest Abe Lincoln.' In those days he was not so
famous in our part of the State as the two speakers whom I have named.
Possibly he was not so popular among the masses of the people; but his
ready wit, his unfailing good humor, and the candor which gave him his
character for honesty, won for him the admiration and respect of all
who heard him. I remember once meeting a choleric old Democrat striding
away from an open-air meeting where Lincoln was speaking, striking the
earth with his cane as he stumped along, and exclaiming, 'He's a
dangerous man, sir! A d----d dangerous man! He makes you _believe_ what
he says, in spite of yourself!' It was Lincoln's manner. He admitted
away his whole case apparently--and yet, as his political opponents
complained, he usually carried conviction with him. As he reasoned with
his audience, he bent his long form over the railing of the platform,
stooping lower and lower as he pursued his argument, until, having
reached his point, he clinched it, usually with a question, and then
suddenly sprang upright, reminding one of the springing open of a
jack-knife blade. At the Ogle County meeting to which I refer, Lincoln
led off, the raciest speakers being reserved for the latter part of the
political entertainment. I am bound to say that Lincoln did not awaken
the boisterous applause which some of those who followed him did, but
his speech made a more lasting impression. It was talked about for weeks
afterward in the neighborhood, and it probably changed many votes; for
that was the time when Free-soil votes were being made in Northern
Illinois."

Mr. Brooks had made Lincoln's acquaintance early in the day referred to;
and after Lincoln had spoken, and while some of the other orators were
entertaining the audience, the two drew a little off from the crowd and
fell into a discussion over the political situation and prospects. "We
crawled under the pendulous branches of a tree," says Mr. Brooks, "and
Lincoln, lying flat on the ground, with his chin in his hands, talked
on, rather gloomily as to the present but absolutely confident as to the
future. I was dismayed to find that he did not believe it possible that
Fremont could be elected. As if half pitying my youthful ignorance, but
admiring my enthusiasm, he said, 'Don't be discouraged if we don't
carry the day this year. We can't do it, that's certain. We can't carry
Pennsylvania; those old Whigs down there are too strong for us. But we
shall sooner or later elect our President. I feel confident of that.'
'Do you think we shall elect a Free-soil President in 1860?' I asked.
'Well, I don't know. Everything depends on the course of the Democracy.
There's a big anti-slavery element in the Democratic party, and if we
could get hold of that we might possibly elect our man in 1860. But it's
doubtful, very doubtful. Perhaps we shall be able to fetch it by 1864;
perhaps not. As I said before, the Free-soil party is bound to win in
the long run. It may not be in my day; but it will be in yours, I do
really believe.'" The defeat of Fremont soon verified Lincoln's
prediction on that score.

A peculiarly interesting episode of Lincoln's life belongs to this
period, though unrelated to political events. This was the meeting, in a
professional way, with Edwin M. Stanton, at that time a prominent lawyer
of Pittsburgh, afterwards the great War Secretary of President Lincoln's
cabinet. The circumstances were briefly these: Among Lincoln's law cases
was one connected with the patent of the McCormick Reaper; and in the
summer of 1857 he visited Cincinnati to argue the case before Judge
McLean of the United States Circuit Court. It was a case of great
importance, involving the foundation patent of the machine which was
destined to revolutionize the harvesting of grain. Reverdy Johnson was
on one side of the case, and E.M. Stanton and George Harding on the
other. It became necessary, in addition, to have a lawyer who was a
resident of Illinois; and inquiry was made of Hon. E.B. Washburne, then
in Congress, as to whether he knew a suitable man. The latter replied
that "there was a man named Lincoln at Springfield, who had considerable
reputation in the State." Lincoln was retained in the case, and came on
to Cincinnati with a brief. Stanton and Harding saw in their associate
counsel "a tall, dark, uncouth man, who did not strike them as of any
account, and, indeed, they gave him hardly any chance." An interesting
account of this visit, and of various incidents connected with it, has
been prepared by the Hon. W.M. Dickson of Cincinnati. "Mr. Lincoln came
to the city," says Mr. Dickson, "a few days before the argument took
place, and remained during his stay at the house of a friend. The case
was one of large importance pecuniarily, and in the law questions
involved. Reverdy Johnson represented the plaintiff. Mr. Lincoln had
prepared himself with the greatest care; his ambition was to speak in
the case, and to measure swords with the renowned lawyer from Baltimore.
It was understood between his client and himself, before his coming,
that Mr. Harding of Philadelphia was to be associated with him in the
case, and was to make the 'mechanical argument.' Mr. Lincoln was a
little surprised and annoyed after reaching Cincinnati, to learn that
his client had also associated with him Mr. Edwin M. Stanton, of
Pittsburgh, and a lawyer of our own bar; the reason assigned being that
the importance of the case required a man of the experience and power of
Mr. Stanton to meet Mr. Johnson. The reasons given did not remove the
slight conveyed in the employment, without consultation with Lincoln, of
this additional counsel. He keenly felt it, but acquiesced. The trial of
the case came on; the counsel for defense met each morning for
consultation. On one of these occasions one of the counsel moved that
only two of them should speak in the case. This motion was also
acquiesced in. It had always been understood that Mr. Harding was to
speak to explain the mechanism of the reapers. So this motion excluded
either Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Stanton. By the custom of the bar, as between
counsel of equal standing and in the absence of any action of the
client, the original counsel speaks. By this rule Mr. Lincoln had
precedence. Mr. Stanton suggested to Mr. Lincoln to make the speech. Mr.
Lincoln answered, 'No; you speak,' Mr. Stanton replied, 'I will,' and
taking up his hat, said he would go and make preparation. Mr. Lincoln
acquiesced in this, but was deeply grieved and mortified; he took but
little more interest in the case, though remaining until the conclusion
of the trial. He seemed to be greatly depressed, and gave evidence of
that tendency to melancholy which so marked his character. His parting
on leaving the city cannot be forgotten. Cordially shaking the hand of
his hostess, he said: 'You have made my stay here most agreeable, and I
am a thousand times obliged to you; but as for repeating my visit, I
must say to you I never expect to be in Cincinnati again. I have nothing
against the city, but things have so happened here as to make it
undesirable for me ever to return.' Thus untowardly met for the first
time, Lincoln and Stanton. Little did either then suspect that they were
to meet again on a larger theatre, to become the chief actors in a great
historical epoch."

If Lincoln was "surprised and annoyed" at the treatment he received from
Stanton, the latter was no less surprised, and a good deal more
disgusted, on seeing Lincoln and learning of his connection with the
case. He made no secret of his contempt for the "long, lank creature
from Illinois," as he afterwards described him, "wearing a dirty linen
duster for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splotched
wide stains that resembled a dirty map of the continent." He blurted out
his wrath and indignation to his associate counsel, declaring that if
"that giraffe" was permitted to appear in the case he would throw up his
brief and leave it. Lincoln keenly felt the affront, but his great
nature forgave it so entirely that, recognizing the singular abilities
of Stanton beneath his brusque exterior, he afterwards, for the public
good, appointed him to a seat in his cabinet.

Lincoln, says Mr. Dickson, "remained in Cincinnati about a week, moving
freely about. Yet not twenty men in the city knew him personally, or
knew he was here; not a hundred would have known who he was had his name
been given to them. He came with the fond hope of making fame in a
forensic contest with Reverdy Johnson. He was pushed aside, humiliated
and mortified. He attached to the innocent city the displeasure that
filled his bosom, and shook its dust from his feet."

In his Autobiography, Moncure D. Conway records a glimpse of Lincoln
during his Cincinnati visit that seems worth transcribing. "One warm
evening in 1859, passing through the market-place in Cincinnati, I found
there a crowd listening to a political speech in the open air. The
speaker stood on the balcony of a small brick house, some lamps
assisting the moonlight. Something about the speaker, and some words
that reached me, led me to press nearer. I asked the speaker's name, and
learned that it was Abraham Lincoln. Browning's description of the
German professor, 'Three parts sublime to one grotesque,' was applicable
to this man. The face had a battered and bronzed look, without being
hard. His nose was prominent, and buttressed a strong and high forehead.
His eyes were high-vaulted, and had an expression of sadness; his mouth
and chin were too close together, the cheeks hollow. On the whole,
Lincoln's appearance was not attractive until one heard his voice, which
possessed variety of expression, earnestness, and shrewdness in every
tone. The charm of his manner was that he had no manner; he was simple,
direct, humorous. He pleasantly repeated a mannerism of his
opponent,--'This is what Douglas calls his '_gur-reat per-rinciple.'_
But the next words I remember were these: '_Slavery is wrong_.'"




CHAPTER XI


     The Great Lincoln-Douglas Debate--Rivals for the U.S.
     Senate--Lincoln's "House-Divided-against-Itself" Speech--An
     Inspired Oration--Alarming His Friends--Challenges Douglas to a
     Joint Discussion--The Champions Contrasted--Their Opinions of Each
     Other--Lincoln and Douglas on the Stump--Slavery the Leading
     Issue--Scenes and Anecdotes of the Great Debate--Pen-Picture of
     Lincoln on the Stump--Humors of the Campaign--Some Sharp
     Rejoinders--Words of Soberness--Close of the Conflict.

The year 1858 is memorable alike in the career of Lincoln and in the
political history of the country. It was distinguished by the joint
discussions between the two great political leaders of Illinois, which
rank among the ablest forensic debates that have taken place since the
foundation of the republic. The occasion was one to call out the
greatest powers of the two remarkable men who there contested for
political supremacy. It was not alone that Lincoln and Douglas were
opposing candidates for a high office--that of Senator of the United
States: they were the champions and spokesmen of their parties at a
critical period when great issues were to be discussed and great
movements outlined and directed. It was naturally expected that the
winner in the contest would become the political leader of his State.
Little was it imagined that the loser would become the leader and savior
of the Nation.

On the 21st of April the Democratic convention of Illinois met at
Springfield and announced Stephen A. Douglas, then United States
Senator, as its choice for another term. June 16 the Republican
convention met at the same place and declared unanimously that "Abraham
Lincoln is our first and only choice for United States Senator to fill
the vacancy about to be created by the expiration of Mr. Douglas's term
of office." For a number of days previous to the meeting of the
Republican convention Lincoln had been engaged in preparing a speech for
the occasion. It was composed after his usual method--the separate
thoughts jotted down as they came to him, on scraps of paper at hand at
the moment, and these notes were arranged in order and elaborated into a
finished essay, copied on large sheets of paper in a plain and legible
handwriting. This was the speech which afterwards came to be so
celebrated as the "house-divided-against-itself" speech. Lincoln was
gravely conscious of its unusual importance, and gave great care and
deliberation to its composition. The evening of June 16--the day of his
nomination by the convention--Lincoln went to his office, accompanied by
his friend Herndon, and having locked the door proceeded to read his
speech. Slowly and distinctly he read the first paragraph, and then
turned to Herndon with, "What do you think of that?" Mr. Herndon was
startled at its boldness. "I think," said he, "it is all true. But is it
entirely politic to read or speak it as it is written?" "That makes no
difference," said Lincoln. "That expression is a truth of all human
experience,--'a house divided against itself cannot stand.' The
proposition is indisputably true, and has been true for more than six
thousand years; I want to use some universally known figure, expressed
in simple language, that may strike home to the minds of men in order to
rouse them to the peril of the times." Mr. Herndon was convinced by
Lincoln's language, and advised him to deliver the speech just as it was
written. Lincoln was satisfied, but thought it would be prudent to
consult a few other friends in the matter, and about a dozen were called
in. "After seating them at the round table," says John Armstrong, one of
the number, "he read that clause or section of his speech which reads,
'a house divided against itself cannot stand,' etc. He read it slowly
and cautiously, so as to let each man fully understand it. After he had
finished the reading, he asked the opinions of his friends as to the
wisdom or policy of it. Every man among them condemned the speech in
substance and spirit, especially that section quoted above, as unwise
and impolitic if not untrue. They unanimously declared that the whole
speech was too far in advance of the times. Herndon sat still while they
were giving their respective opinions of its unwisdom and impolicy; then
he sprang to his feet and said, 'Lincoln, deliver it _just as it reads_.
If it is in advance of the times, let us lift the people to its level.
The speech is true, wise, and politic, and will succeed now or in the
future. Nay, it will aid you, if it will not make you President of the
United States.' Mr. Lincoln sat still a moment, then rose from his
chair, walked backwards and forwards in the hall, stopped, and said:
'Friends, I have thought about this matter a great deal, have weighed
the questions from all corners, and am thoroughly convinced the time has
come when this speech should be uttered; and if it be that I must go
down because of it, then let me go down linked to truth--die in the
advocacy of what is right and just. This nation cannot live on
injustice; "a house divided against itself cannot stand," I say again
and again.' This was spoken with emotion--the effects of his love of
truth, and sorrow from the disagreement of his friends."

On the next evening the speech was delivered to an immense audience in
the hall of the House of Representatives at Springfield. "The hall and
lobbies and galleries were even more densely crowded and packed than at
any time during the day," says the official report; and as Lincoln
"approached the speaker's stand, he was greeted with shouts and hurrahs,
and prolonged cheers." The prophetic sentences which dropped first from
the lips of the speaker were freighted with a solemn import which even
he could scarcely have divined in full. The seers of old were not more
inspired than he who now, out of the irresistible conviction of his
heart, said to his surprised and unbelieving listeners:

     If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we
     could then better judge what to do and how to do it. We are now far
     on in the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed
     object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery
     agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has
     not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion it
     will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.
     'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this
     Government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I
     do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house
     to fall--but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will
     become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of
     slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where
     the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of
     ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it
     shall become alike lawful in all the States--old as well as
     new--North as well as South.

Mr. Jeriah Bonham, an old citizen of Illinois, relates that he was
present as a delegate at the Springfield convention and heard the famous
speech of Lincoln. According to Mr. Bonham, "The speech was prepared
with unusual care, every paragraph and sentence carefully weighed. The
firm bedrock of principles, the issues of the campaign on which he
proposed to stand and fight his battles, were all well considered, and
his arguments were incontrovertible. In that memorable speech culminated
all the grand thoughts he had ever uttered, embodying divinity,
statesmanship, law, and morals, and even fraught with prophecy. As he
advanced in this argument he towered to his full height, forgetting
himself entirely as he grew warm in his work. Men and women who heard
that speech well remember the wonderful transformation wrought in
Lincoln's appearance. The plain, homely man towered up majestically; his
face lit as with angelic light; the long, bent, angular figure, like the
strong oak of the forest, stood erect, and his eyes flashed with the
fire of inspiration."

The party that had nominated Lincoln for the Senate was not prepared to
endorse his restriction of the coming struggle to the single issue of
the slavery question. His friends dreaded the result of his
uncompromising frankness, while politicians quite generally condemned
it. Even so stanch a friend as Leonard Swett, whose devotion to Lincoln
never wavered throughout his whole career, shared these apprehensions.
Says Mr. Swett: "The first ten lines of that speech defeated him. The
sentiment of the 'house divided against itself' seemed wholly
inappropriate. It was a speech made at the commencement of a campaign,
and apparently made for the campaign. Viewing it in this light alone,
nothing could have been more unfortunate or inappropriate. It was saying
the wrong thing first; yet he felt that it was an abstract truth, and
that standing by the speech would ultimately find him in the right
place. I was inclined at the time to believe these words were hastily
and inconsiderately uttered; but subsequent facts have convinced me they
were deliberate and had been well matured."

A few days after the delivery of this speech, a gentleman named Dr. Long
called on Lincoln and gave him a foretaste of the remarks he was to hear
during the next few months. "Well, Lincoln," said he, "that foolish
speech of yours will kill you--will defeat you in this contest, and
probably for all offices for all time to come. I am sorry, sorry, very
sorry. I wish it was wiped out of existence. Don't you wish so too?"
Laying down the pen with which he had been writing, and slowly raising
his head and adjusting his spectacles, Lincoln replied: "Well, Doctor,
if I had to draw a pen across and erase my whole life from existence,
and I had one poor gift or choice left as to what I should save from the
wreck, _I should choose that speech_, and leave it to the world
unerased."

The Senatorial campaign was now well begun. Douglas opened it by a
speech at Chicago on the 9th of July. Lincoln was present, and on the
next evening spoke in reply from the same place--the balcony of the
Tremont House. A week later Douglas spoke at Bloomington, with Lincoln
again in the audience. The notion of a joint discussion seems to have
originated with Lincoln, who on the 24th of July addressed a note to
Douglas as follows:

     HON. S.A. DOUGLAS--My Dear Sir:--Will it be agreeable to you to
     make an arrangement for you and myself to divide time, and
     address the same audiences during the present canvass? Mr. Judd,
     who will hand you this, is authorized to receive your answer,
     and, if agreeable to you, to enter into the terms of such
     arrangement. Your obedient servant, A. LINCOLN.

The result of this proposal was an agreement that there should be a
joint discussion between the two candidates in each of the seven
Congressional districts in which they had not both already been heard.
Places were named and dates fixed extending to the middle of October. It
was agreed that the opening speech on each occasion should occupy one
hour; the reply, one hour and a half; the close, half an hour; and that
Mr. Douglas should have the first and last voice in four of the seven
meetings.

The champions who were thus to enter the lists in a decisive trial of
forensic strength and skill are forcibly contrasted by Mr. Speed, who
says: "They were the respective leaders of their parties in the State.
They were as opposite in character as they were unlike in their persons.
Lincoln was long and ungainly; Douglas was short and compact. Douglas,
in all elections, was the moving spirit and manager. He was content
with nothing short of a blind submission to himself. He could not
tolerate opposition to his will within his party organization. He held
the reins and controlled the movements of the Democratic chariot. With a
large State majority, with many able and ambitious men in it, he stepped
to the front in his youth and held his place till his death. Lincoln, on
the other hand, shrank from any controversy with his friends. His party
being in a minority in the State, he was forced to the front because his
friends thought he was the only man with whom they could win. In a
canvass his friends had to do all the management. He knew nothing of how
to reach the people except by addressing their reason. If the situation
had been reversed--Lincoln representing the majority and Douglas the
minority--I think it most likely Lincoln would never have had the place.
He had no heart for a fight with friends."

The Hon. James G. Blaine has given a masterly description and analysis
of the comparative powers of the two illustrious debaters. Douglas, says
Mr. Blaine, "was everywhere known as a debater of singular skill. His
mind was fertile in resources. He was a master of logic. No man
perceived more quickly than he the strength or the weakness of an
argument, and no one excelled him in the use of sophistry and fallacy.
Where he could not elucidate a point to his own advantage, he would
fatally becloud it for his opponent. In that peculiar style of debate
which in intensity resembles a physical combat, he had no equal. He
spoke with extraordinary readiness. There was no halting in his phrase.
He used good English, terse, vigorous, pointed. He disregarded the
adornments of rhetoric--rarely used a simile. He was utterly destitute
of humor, and had slight appreciation of wit. He never cited historical
precedents except from the domain of American politics. Inside that
field his knowledge was comprehensive, minute, critical; beyond it his
learning was limited. He was not a reader. His recreations were not in
literature. In the whole range of his voluminous speaking, it would be
difficult to find either a line of poetry or a classical allusion. But
he was by nature an orator, and by long practice a debater. He could
lead a crowd almost irresistibly to his own conclusions. He could, if he
wished, incite a mob to desperate deeds. He was, in short, an able,
audacious, almost unconquerable opponent in public discussion. It would
have been impossible to find any man of the same type able to meet him
before the people of Illinois. Whoever attempted it would probably have
been destroyed in the first encounter. But the man who was chosen to
meet him, who challenged him to the combat, was radically different in
every phase of character. Scarcely could two men be more unlike in
mental and moral constitution than Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A.
Douglas. Lincoln was calm and philosophic. He loved the truth for the
truth's sake. He would not argue from a false premise, or be deceived
himself or deceive others by a false conclusion. He had pondered deeply
on the issues which aroused him to action. He had given anxious thought
to the problems of free government, and to the destiny of the Republic.
He had marked out a path of duty for himself, and he walked it
fearlessly. His mental processes were slower but more profound than
those of Douglas. He did not seek to say merely the thing which was best
for that day's debate, but the thing which would stand the test of time
and square itself with eternal justice. He wished nothing to appear
white unless it was white. His logic was severe and faultless. He did
not resort to fallacy, and could detect it in his opponent and expose it
with merciless directness. He had an abounding sense of humor, and
always employed it in illustration of his argument--but never for the
mere sake of provoking merriment. In this respect he had the wonderful
aptness of Franklin. He often taught a great truth with the felicitous
brevity of an Aesop fable. His words did not flow in an impetuous
torrent, as did those of Douglas; but they were always well chosen,
deliberate and conclusive."

Mr. Arnold, in the course of an extended comparison, says: "At the time
of these discussions, both Lincoln and Douglas were in the full maturity
of their powers. Douglas was forty-five and Lincoln forty-nine years of
age. Physically and mentally, they were as unlike as possible. Douglas
was short, not much more than five feet high, with a large head, massive
brain, broad shoulders, a wide, deep chest, and features strongly
marked. He impressed every one, at first sight, as a strong, sturdy,
resolute, fearless man. Lincoln's herculean stature has already been
described. A stranger who listened to him for five minutes would say:
'This is a kind, genial, sincere, genuine man; a man you can trust,
plain, straightforward, honest, and true.' If this stranger were to hear
him make a speech, he would be impressed with his clear good sense, by
his wit and humor, by his general intelligence, and by the simple,
homely, but pure and accurate language he used. In his long residence at
Washington, Douglas had acquired the bearing and manners of a gentleman
and a man of the world. But he was always a fascinating and attractive
man, and always and everywhere personally popular. He had been for years
carefully and thoroughly trained on the stump, in Congress, and in the
Senate, to meet in debate the ablest speakers in the State and Nation.
For years he had been accustomed to meet on the floor of the Capitol the
leaders of the old Whig and Free-soil parties. Among them were Webster
and Seward, Fessenden and Crittenden, Chase, Trumbull, Hale and others
of nearly equal eminence; and his enthusiastic friends insisted that
never, either in single conflict or when receiving the assault of the
senatorial leaders of a whole party, had he been discomfited. His style
was bold, vigorous, and aggressive; at times even defiant. He was ready,
fluent, fertile in resources, familiar with national and party history,
severe in denunciation, and he handled with skill nearly all the weapons
of debate. His iron will and restless energy, together with great
personal magnetism, made him the idol of his friends and party. His
long, brilliant, and almost universally successful career, gave him
perfect confidence in himself, and at times he was arrogant and
overbearing.... Lincoln also was a thoroughly trained speaker. He had
met successfully, year after year, at the bar and on the stump, the
ablest men of Illinois and the Northwest, including Lamborn, Stephen T.
Logan, John Calhoun, and many others. He had contended, in generous
emulation, with Hardin, Baker, Logan, and Browning; and had very often
met Douglas, a conflict with whom he always courted rather than shunned.
His speeches, as we read them to-day, show a more familiar knowledge of
the slavery question than those of any other statesman of our country.
This is especially true of the Peoria speech and the Cooper Institute
speech. Lincoln was powerful in argument, always seizing the strong
points, and demonstrating his propositions with a clearness and logic
approaching the certainty of mathematics. He had, in wit and humor, a
great advantage over Douglas. Then he had the better temper; he was
always good humored, while Douglas, when hard pressed, was sometimes
irritable. Douglas perhaps carried away the more popular applause;
Lincoln made the deeper and more lasting impression. Douglas did not
disdain an immediate _ad captandum_ triumph; while Lincoln aimed at
permanent conviction. Sometimes, when Lincoln's friends urged him to
raise a storm of applause, which he could always do by his happy
illustrations and amusing stories, he refused, saying, 'The occasion is
too serious; the issues are too grave. I do not seek applause, or to
amuse the people, but to _convince_ them.' It was observed in the
canvass that while Douglas was greeted with the loudest cheers, when
Lincoln closed the people seemed serious and thoughtful, and could be
heard all through the crowd, gravely and anxiously discussing the
subjects on which he had been speaking."

Soon after the arrangements for the debate had been made, Senator
Douglas visited Alton, Illinois. A delegation of prominent Democrats
there paid their respects to him, and during the conversation one of
them congratulated Douglas on the easy task he would have in defeating
Lincoln; at the same time expressing surprise at the champion whom he
had selected. Douglas replied: "Gentlemen, you do not know Mr. Lincoln.
I have known him long and well, and I know that I shall have anything
but an easy task. I assure you I _would rather meet any other man in the
country than Abraham Lincoln."_ This was Douglas's mature opinion of
the man of whom, years before, he had said, in his characteristic way:
"Of all the d----d Whig rascals about Springfield, Abe Lincoln is the
ablest and honestest." On another occasion, Douglas said: "I have known
Lincoln for nearly twenty-five years. There were many points of sympathy
between us when we first got acquainted. We were both comparatively
boys, and both struggling with poverty in a strange land. I was a
school-teacher in the town of Winchester, and he a flourishing
grocery-keeper in the town of Salem. He was more successful in his
occupation than I was in mine, and hence more fortunate in the world's
goods. Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who perform with admirable
skill everything they undertake. I made as good a school-teacher as I
could, and when a cabinet-maker I made as good bedsteads and tables as I
could--although my old boss says that I succeeded better with _bureaus_
and _secretaries_ than with anything else. But I believe that Lincoln
was always more successful in business than I, for his business enabled
him to get into the Legislature. I met him there, however, and had a
sympathy with him because of the up-hill struggle we both had had in
life. He was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now. He could
beat any of the boys in wrestling or running a foot-race, in pitching
quoits or pitching a copper; and the dignity and impartiality with which
he presided at a horse-race or fist-fight excited the admiration and won
the praise of everybody that was present. I sympathized with him because
he was struggling with difficulties, and so was I. Mr. Lincoln served
with me in the Legislature of 1836; then we both retired, and he
subsided, or became submerged, and was lost sight of as a public man for
some years. In 1846, when Wilmot introduced his celebrated proviso, and
the Abolition tornado swept over the country, Lincoln again turned up as
a Member of Congress from the Sangamon district. I was then in the
Senate of the United States, and was glad to welcome my old friend."

Lincoln, in a speech delivered two years before the joint debate, had
spoken thus of Senator Douglas: "Twenty-two years ago, Judge Douglas and
I first became acquainted; we were both young then--he a trifle younger
than I. Even then, we were both ambitious--I perhaps quite as much as
he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure--a flat failure;
with him, it has been one of splendid success. His name fills the
nation, and is not unknown even in foreign lands. I affect no contempt
for the high eminence he has reached; so reached that the oppressed of
my species might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather
stand on that eminence than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a
monarch's brow."

A few days before the first discussion was to take place, Lincoln, who
had become conscious that some of his party friends distrusted his
ability to meet successfully a man who, as the Democrats declared and
believed, had never had his equal on the stump, met an old friend from
Vermilion County, and, shaking hands, inquired the news. His friend
replied, "All looks well; our friends are wide awake, but they are
looking forward with some anxiety to these approaching joint discussions
with Douglas." A shade passed over Lincoln's face, a sad expression came
and instantly passed, and then a blaze of light flashed from his eyes,
and with his lips compressed and in a manner peculiar to him, half
serious and half jocular, he said: "My friend, sit down a minute, and I
will tell you a story. You and I, as we have travelled the circuit
together attending court, have often seen two men about to fight. One of
them, the big or the little giant, as the case may be, is noisy and
boastful; he jumps high in the air, strikes his feet together, smites
his fists, brags about what he is going to do, and tries hard to
'_skeer_' the other man. The other man says not a word; his arms are at
his side, his fists are clenched, his teeth set, his head settled firmly
on his shoulders; he saves his breath and strength for the struggle.
_This man will whip,_ as sure as the fight comes off. Good-bye, and
remember what I say."

The spirit and purpose with which Lincoln went into the contest are
shown also in the following words: "I shall not ask any favors at all.
Judge Douglas asks me if I wish to push this matter to the point of
personal difficulty. I tell him, _No!_ He did not make a mistake, in one
of his early speeches, when he called me an 'amiable' man, though
perhaps he did when he called me an 'intelligent' man. I again tell him,
_No!_ I very much prefer, when this canvass shall be over, however it
may result, that we at least part without any bitter recollections of
personal difficulties."

The speeches in these joint discussions were entirely extemporaneous in
form, yet they were reported and printed in all the prominent papers in
the West, and found eager readers throughout the country. The voice and
manner, which add so much to the effect of a speaker, could not be
reproduced on the printed page; nor could full justice be done, in a
hasty transcript, to the force and fitness of the language employed.
Still, the impressions of those who heard them at the time, as well as
later and cooler analyses of them, have agreed in pronouncing these
debates among the most able and interesting on record. The scenes
connected with the different meetings were intensely exciting. Vast
throngs were invariably in attendance, while a whole nation was watching
the result. "At Freeport," says an observer, "Mr. Douglas appeared in an
elegant barouche drawn by four white horses, and was received with great
applause. But when Mr. Lincoln came up, in a 'prairie schooner,'--an
old-fashioned canvas-covered pioneer wagon,--the enthusiasm of the vast
throng was unbounded."

At Charleston Lincoln opened and closed the day's debate. It was the
fourth discussion, and there was no more doubt of his ability to sustain
the conflict. According to Mr. Arnold, "Douglas's reply to Lincoln was
mainly a defense. Lincoln's close was intensely interesting and
dramatic. His logic and arguments were crushing, and Douglas's evasions
were exposed with a power and clearness that left him utterly
discomfited. Republicans saw it. Democrats realized it, and a sort of
panic seized them, and ran through the crowd of upturned faces. Douglas
realized his defeat, and, as Lincoln's blows fell fast and heavy, he
lost his temper. He could not keep his seat; he rose and walked rapidly
up and down the platform, behind Lincoln, holding his watch in his hand,
and obviously impatient for the call of _'time.'_ A spectator says: 'He
was greatly agitated, his long grizzled hair waving in the wind, like
the shaggy locks of an enraged lion.' It was while Douglas was thus
exhibiting to the crowd his eager desire to stop Lincoln, that the
latter, holding the audience entranced by his eloquence, was striking
his heaviest blows. The instant the secondhand of his watch reached the
point at which Lincoln's time was up, Douglas, holding up the watch,
called out: 'Sit down, Lincoln, sit down! Your time is up!' Turning to
Douglas, Lincoln said calmly: 'I will. I _will_ quit. I believe my time
_is_ up.' 'Yes,' said a voice from the platform, 'Douglas has had
enough; it is time you let up on him.'"

The institution of slavery was, of course, the topic around which
circled all the arguments in these joint discussions. It was the great
topic of the hour--the important point of division between the
Republican and Democratic parties. Lincoln's exposition of the subject
was profound and masterly. At the meeting in Quincy the issue was
defined and the argument driven home with unsparing logic and
directness. In closing the debate, he said:

     I wish to return to Judge Douglas my profound thanks for his
     public annunciation here to-day, to be put on record, that his
     system of policy in regard to the institution of slavery
     contemplates that it shall last _forever_. We are getting a
     little nearer the true issue of this controversy, and I am
     profoundly grateful for this one sentence. Judge Douglas asks
     you, 'Why cannot the institution of slavery, or, rather, why
     cannot the nation, part slave and part free, continue as our
     fathers made it forever?' In the first place, I insist that our
     fathers _did not_ make this nation half slave and half free, or
     part slave and part free. I insist that they found the
     institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so,
     but they left it so, because they knew of no way to get rid of it
     at that time. When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a
     matter of choice, the fathers of the Government made this nation
     part slave and part free, he assumes what is historically a
     _falsehood_. More than that; when the fathers of the Government
     cut off the source of slavery by the abolition of the
     slave-trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from the new
     Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed
     it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was
     in the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge Douglas asks
     me why it cannot continue as our fathers made it, I ask him why
     he and his friends could not let it remain as our friends made
     it? It is precisely all I ask of him in relation to the
     institution of slavery, that it shall be placed upon the basis
     that our fathers placed it upon. Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina,
     once said, and truly said, that when this Government was
     established, no one expected the institution of slavery to last
     until this day; and that the men who formed this Government were
     wiser and better than the men of these days; but the men of these
     days had experience which the fathers had not, and that
     experience had taught them the invention of the cotton-gin, and
     this had made the perpetuation of the institution of slavery a
     necessity in this country. Judge Douglas could not let it stand
     upon the basis on which our fathers placed it, but removed it,
     and put it upon the cotton-gin basis. It is a question,
     therefore, for him and his friends to answer--why they could not
     let it remain where the fathers of the Government originally
     placed it.

In these debates Lincoln often seemed like one transfigured--carried
away by his own eloquence and the force of his conviction. He said to a
friend during the canvass: "Sometimes, in the excitement of speaking, I
seem to see the end of slavery. I feel that the time is soon coming when
the sun shall shine, the rain shall fall, on no man who shall go forth
to unrequited toil.... How this will come, when it will come, by whom it
will come, I cannot tell;--but that time will surely come." Again, at
the first encounter at Alton, he uttered these pregnant sentences:

     On this subject of treating slavery as a wrong, and limiting its
     spread, let me say a word. Has anything ever threatened the
     existence of this Union save and except this very institution of
     slavery? What is it that we hold most dear among us? Our own
     liberty and prosperity. What has ever threatened our liberty and
     prosperity, save and except this institution of slavery? If this
     is true, how do you propose to improve the condition of things by
     enlarging slavery?--by spreading it out and making it bigger? You
     may have a wen or cancer upon your person, and not be able to cut
     it out lest you bleed, to death; but surely it is no way to cure
     it to ingraft it and spread it over your whole body--that is no
     proper way of treating what you regard a wrong. This peaceful way
     of dealing with it as a wrong--restricting the spread of it, and
     not allowing it to go into new countries where it has not already
     existed--that is the peaceful way, the old-fashioned way, the way
     in which the fathers themselves set us the example. Is slavery
     wrong? That is the real issue. That is the issue that will
     continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas
     and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between
     these two principles--right and wrong--throughout the world. They
     are two principles that have stood face to face from the
     beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is
     the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of
     kings. It is the same principle, in whatever shape it develops
     itself. It is the same spirit that says: 'You work, and toil, and
     earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes,
     whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people
     of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from
     one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is
     the same tyrannical principle.

On still another occasion he used these unmistakable words:

     My declarations upon this subject of negro slavery may be
     misrepresented, but cannot be misunderstood. I have said that I
     do not understand the Declaration to mean that all men were
     created equal in all respects. They are not our equal in color.
     But I suppose that it does mean to declare that all men are
     created equal in some respects; they are equal in their right to
     'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' Certainly the
     negro is not our equal in color, perhaps not in many other
     respects; still, _in the right to put into his mouth the bread
     that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other
     man, white or black_.

It is not in the scope of this narrative to print extended quotations
from the speeches made in this memorable contest, but rather to give
such reminiscences and anecdotes, and description by eye-witnesses, as
will best serve to bring the scenes and actors vividly to mind.
Fortunately, many such records are still in existence, and from them
some most entertaining personal accounts have been obtained. Among these
is an impressive pen-picture of Lincoln on the stump, as admirably
sketched by the Rev. Dr. George C. Noyes, of Chicago. "Mr. Lincoln in
repose," says Dr. Noyes, "was a very different man in personal
appearance from Mr. Lincoln on the platform or on the stump, when his
whole nature was roused by his masterful interest in the subject of his
discourse. In the former case he was, as has often been described, a man
of awkward and ungainly appearance and exceedingly homely countenance.
In the latter case, he was a man of magnificent presence and remarkably
impressive manner. The writer retains to this day a very vivid
impression of his appearance in both these characters, and both on the
same day. It was in Jacksonville, in the summer of 1858, and during the
great contest with Douglas, when the prize contended for was a seat in
the United States Senate. The day was warm; the streets were dusty, and
filled with great crowds of people. When Lincoln arrived on the train
from Springfield, he was met by an immense procession of people on
horseback, in carriages, in wagons and vehicles of every description,
and on foot, who escorted him through the principal streets to his
hotel. The enthusiasm of the multitude was great; but Lincoln's
extremely homely face wore an expression of sadness. He rode in a
carriage near the head of the procession, looking dust-begrimed and worn
and weary; and though he frequently lifted his hat in recognition of the
cheers of the crowds lining the streets, I saw no smile on his face, and
he seemed to take no pleasure in the demonstrations of enthusiasm which
his presence called forth. His clothes were very ill-fitting, and his
long arms and hands protruded far through his coat sleeves, giving him a
peculiarly uncouth appearance. Though I had often seen him before, and
had heard him in court--always with delight in his clearness and cogency
of statement, his illuminating humor, and his conspicuous fairness and
candor--yet I had never before seen him when he appeared so homely; and
I thought him about the ugliest man I had ever seen. There was nothing
in his looks or manner that was prepossessing. Such he appeared as he
rode in the procession on the forenoon of that warm summer day. His
appearance was not different in the afternoon of that day, when, in the
public square, he first stood before the great multitude who had
assembled there to hear him. His powers were aroused gradually as he
went on with his speech. There was much play of humor. 'Judge Douglas
has,' he said, 'one great advantage of me in this contest. When he
stands before his admiring friends, who gather in great numbers to hear
him, they can easily see, with half an eye, all kinds of _fat offices_
sprouting out of his fat and jocund face, and, indeed, from every part
of his plump and well-rounded body. His appearance is therefore
irresistibly attractive. His friends expect him to be President, and
they expect their reward. But when I stand before the people, not the
sharpest vision is able to detect in my lean and lank person, or in my
sunken and hollow cheeks, _the faintest sign or promise_ of an office. I
am not a candidate for the Presidency, and hence there is no beauty in
me that men should desire me.' The crowd was convulsed with laughter at
this sally. As the speech went on, the speaker, though often impressing
his points with apposite and laughter-provoking stories, grew more and
more earnest. He showed that the government was founded in the interest
of freedom, not slavery. He traced the steady aggressions of the slave
power step by step, until he came to declare and to dwell upon the fact
of the irrepressible conflict between the two. Then, as he went on to
show, with wonderful eloquence of speech and of manner, that the country
must and would ultimately become, not all slave, but all free, he was
transfigured before his audience. His homely countenance fairly glowed
with the splendor of his prophetic speech; and his body, no longer
awkward and ungainly, but mastered and swayed by his thought, became an
obedient and graceful instrument of eloquent expression. The whole man
seemed to speak. He seemed like some grand Hebrew prophet, whose face
was glorified by the bright visions of a better day which he saw and
declared. His eloquence was not merely that of clear and luminous
statement, felicitous illustration, or excited yet restrained feeling;
it was the eloquence also of _thought_. With something of the
imaginative, he united rare dialectic power. He felt the truth before he
expounded it; but when once it was felt by him, then his logical power
came into remarkably effective play. Step by step he led his hearers
onward, till at last he placed them on the summit whence they could see
all the landscape of his subject in harmonious and connected order. Of
these two contrasted pictures of Lincoln, it is only the last which
shows him as he was in his real and essential greatness. And not this
fully; for it was in his character that he was greatest. He was not
merely a thinker, but a thinker for man, directing his thought to the
ends of justice, freedom, and humanity. If he desired and sought high
position, it was only that he might thus better serve the cause of
freedom to which he was devoted. From the time when he withdrew, in a
spirit of magnanimity that was never appreciated, in favor of a rival
candidate for the United States Senate, it was evident that the _cause_
was more to him than any personal advantage or advancement."

Another graphic description of Lincoln's appearance and manner on the
stump is given by Mr. Jeriah Bonham, whose account of the famous
"house-divided-against-itself" speech has already found a place in this
narrative. "When Mr. Lincoln took the stand," says Mr. Bonham, "he did
not, on rising, show his full height, but stood in a stooping posture,
his long-tailed coat hanging loosely around his body, and descending
over an ill-fitting pair of pantaloons that covered his not very
symmetrical legs. He began his speech in a rather diffident manner,
seeming for awhile at a loss for words; his voice was irregular, even a
little tremulous, as he began his argument. As he proceeded he seemed to
gain more confidence, his form straightened up, his face brightened, his
language became free and animated. Soon he had drawn the attention of
the crowd by two or three well-told stories that illustrated his
argument; and then he became eloquent, carrying his audience at will, as
tumultuous applause greeted every telling point he made."

Mrs. John A. Logan, in her "Recollections of a Soldier's Wife," says: "I
always like to think of Mr. Lincoln as he was when I saw him with the
eyes of an opponent. His awkwardness has not been exaggerated, but it
gave no effect of self-consciousness. There was something about his
ungainliness and his homely face which would have made anyone who simply
passed him in the street remember him. His very awkwardness was an asset
in public life, in that it attracted attention to him. Douglas, on the
other hand, won by the magnetism of his personality. Lincoln did not
_seem_ to have any magnetism, though of course he actually did have the
rarest and most precious kind. Give Mr. Lincoln five minutes and Mr.
Douglas five minutes before an audience which knew neither, and Mr.
Douglas would make the greater impression. But give them each an hour,
and the contrary would be true."

In the party that attended Lincoln in the Senatorial campaign was the
Hon. Andrew Shuman, afterwards Lieutenant-Governor of Illinois and one
of the veteran journalists of Chicago. Mr. Shuman was detailed to report
the joint debates for his paper; and he accompanied Lincoln through
nearly all of the campaign, travelling with him by night--sometimes
occupying the same room, and when in crowded quarters the same bed. He
thus saw much of Lincoln, and had the best of opportunities for studying
his character; not only hearing all his public speeches, but having long
conversations with him in private, and listening to the stories,
anecdotes, and gay or grave discourse by which the journeys and the
frequent "waits" were enlivened. The group consisted of several
gentlemen, including Norman B. Judd of Chicago, afterwards a member of
Congress; Robert R. Hitt, who was Lincoln's shorthand reporter,
afterwards member of Congress from Illinois; Mr. Villard, later the
President of the Northern Pacific Railroad, then a newspaper
correspondent; Mr. Shuman; and, at various times, other politicians and
journalists. Of this party Lincoln was always the leading spirit in
conversation. He would tell stories himself, and draw out stories from
others; and his laugh, though not the loudest, was always the heartiest.
Then he would pass to soberer themes, and discuss them with a tinge of
that melancholy which, however he might be surrounded, never seemed far
distant from him. At night, stopping at the country tavern or at some
friend's house, the evenings would be spent in discussion and
story-telling, or perhaps in a humorous review of the events of the
day; and after retiring, Lincoln would entertain his companion, often
far into the night, discoursing on many varied subjects,--politics,
literature, views of human life and character, or the prominent men and
measures then before the country.

One day, according to Governor Shuman, Lincoln had been announced to
speak in a town in the extreme southern part of Illinois, in the very
heart of "Egypt," where there was a strong pro-slavery sentiment; and
it was feared there might be trouble, as Lincoln's anti-slavery
tendencies were well known. To make matters worse, a party of
Kentuckians and Missourians had come over to attend the meeting, and
it was noised about that they would not allow Lincoln to speak. He
heard of it, and both he and his friends were somewhat apprehensive of
trouble. The place of the meeting was a grove in the edge of the town,
the speakers occupying an improvised stand. The gathering was a large
one, and it had every appearance of a Southern crowd. It was customary
in those times for the men in that section of the country to carry
pistols and ugly-looking knives strapped to their persons, on public
occasions. It was a semi-barbarous community, and their hatred of the
Abolitionists, as they called all anti-slavery men, was as intense as
was their love of bad whiskey. Lincoln privately told his friends, who
in that locality were very few in number, that "if only they will give
me a fair chance to say a few opening words, I'll fix them all right."
Before mounting the speaker's stand he was introduced to many of the
crowd, and shook their hands in the usual Western way. Getting a small
company of the rough-looking fellows around him, he opened on them.
"Fellow-citizens of Southern Illinois--fellow-citizens of the State of
Kentucky--fellow-citizens of Missouri," he said, in a tone more of
conversation than of oratory, looking them straight in the eye, "I am
told that there are some of you here present who would like to make
trouble for me. I don't understand why they should. I am a plain,
common man, like the rest of you; and why should not I have as good a
right to speak my sentiments as the rest of you? Why, good friends, I
am one of you; I am not an interloper here! I was born in Kentucky,
raised in Illinois, just like the most of you, and worked my way right
along by hard scratching. I know the people of Kentucky, and I know
the people of Southern Illinois, and I think I know the Missourians. I
am one of them, and therefore ought to know them, and they ought to
know me better, and if they did know me better they would know that I
am not disposed to make them trouble; then why should they, or any one
of them, want to make trouble for me? Don't do any such foolish thing,
fellow-citizens. Let us be friends, and treat each other like friends.
I am one of the humblest and most peaceable men in the world--would
wrong no man, would interfere with no man's rights; and all I ask is
that, having something to say, you will give me a decent hearing. And,
being Illinoisans, Kentuckians, and Missourians--brave and gallant
people--I feel sure that you will do that. And now let us reason
together, like the honest fellows we are." Having uttered these words,
his face the very picture of good-nature and his voice full of
sympathetic earnestness, he mounted the speaker's stand and proceeded
to make one of the most impressive speeches against the further
extension of slavery that he ever made in his life. He was listened to
attentively; was applauded when he indulged in flashes of humor, and
once or twice his eloquent passages were lustily cheered. His little
opening remarks had calmed the threatening storm, had conquered his
enemies, and he had smooth sailing. From that day to the time of his
death, Abraham Lincoln held a warm place in the respect of very many
of those rough and rude "Egyptians," and he had no warmer supporters
for the Presidency, or while he was President, than they were.

Mr. Leonard Volk, the sculptor who afterwards made an excellent bust of
Lincoln, says: "My first meeting with Abraham Lincoln was in 1858, when
the celebrated Senatorial contest opened between him and Stephen A.
Douglas. I was invited by the latter to accompany him and his party by a
special train to Springfield, to which train was attached a platform-car
having on board a cannon, which made considerable noise on the journey.
At Bloomington we all stopped over night, as Douglas had a speech to
make there in the evening. The party went to the Landon House--the only
hotel, I believe, in the place at that time. While we were sitting in
the hotel office after supper, Mr. Lincoln entered, carrying an old
carpet-bag in his hand, and wearing a weather-beaten silk hat--too
large, apparently, for his head--a long, loosely-fitting frock-coat of
black alpaca, and vest and trousers of the same material. He walked up
to the counter, and, saluting the clerk pleasantly, passed the bag over
to him, and inquired if he was too late for supper. The clerk replied
that supper was over, but perhaps enough could be 'scraped up' for him.
'All right,' said Mr. Lincoln; 'I don't want much.' Meanwhile, he said,
he would wash the dust off. He was certainly very dusty; it was the
month of June, and quite warm. While he was so engaged, several old
friends, who had learned of his arrival, rushed in to see him, some of
them shouting, 'How are you, Old Abe?' Mr. Lincoln grasped them by the
hand in his cordial manner, with the broadest and pleasantest smile on
his rugged face. This was the first good view I had of the 'coming man.'
The next day we all stopped at the town of Lincoln, where short speeches
were made by the contestants, and dinner was served at the hotel; after
which, as Mr. Lincoln came out on the plank-walk in front, I was
formally presented to him. He saluted me with his natural cordiality,
grasping my hand in both his large hands with a vice-like grip, and
looking down into my face with his beaming, dark, full eyes, said: 'How
do you do? I am glad to meet you. I have read of you in the papers. You
are making a statue of Judge Douglas for Governor Matteson's new house.'
'Yes, sir,' I answered; 'and sometime when you are in Chicago, and can
spare the time, I would like to have you sit to me for a bust.' 'Yes, I
will, Mr. Volk; I shall be glad to, the first opportunity I have.' All
were soon on board the long train, crowded with people, going to hear
the speeches at Springfield. The train stopped on the track, near
Edward's Grove, in the northern outskirts of the town, where staging was
erected and a vast crowd waited under the shade of the trees. On leaving
the train, most of the passengers climbed over the fences and crossed
the stubble-field, taking a short-cut to the grove,--among them Mr.
Lincoln, who stalked forward alone, taking immense strides, the
before-mentioned carpet-bag and an umbrella in his hands, and his coat
skirts flying in the breeze. I managed to keep pretty close in the rear
of the tall, gaunt figure, with the head craned forward, apparently much
over the balance, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, that was moving
something like a hurricane across that rough stubble-field."

The contest between Lincoln and Douglas seemed to be, as expressed by
Dr. Newton Bateman, "one between sharpness and greatness." Lincoln
seemed to Dr. Bateman, "a man strongly possessed by a belief to which he
was earnestly striving to win the people over; while the aim of Mr.
Douglas seemed rather to be simply to defeat Mr. Lincoln." Yet, although
Lincoln was usually earnest and considerate of his opponent, he could,
when occasion required, bring his powers of humor and sarcasm into play
in a very effective manner. A few pointed illustrations may be given. In
his speech at Galesburg, Douglas sneeringly informed the citizens that
"Honest Abe" had been a liquor-seller. Lincoln met this with the candid
admission that once in early life he had, under the pressure of poverty,
accepted and for a few months held a position in a store where it was
necessary for him to retail liquor. "But the difference between Judge
Douglas and myself is just this," he added, "that while I was _behind_
the bar, he was _in front_ of it."

At the close of the joint discussion at Alton, Douglas led off with a
speech an hour long, in which he showed no little irritability. The
campaign was evidently wearing on him. Lincoln, on the contrary, was in
capital spirits. "He sat taking in the speech of Douglas with seeming
immobility," says Mr. Jeriah Bonham, who was present, "and when it was
ended, he rose to reply. As in the opening of all his speeches, he spoke
slowly, did not rise to his full height, leaning forward in a stooping
posture at first, his person showing all the angularities of limb and
face. For the first five or ten minutes he was both awkward and
diffident, as in almost monotonous tones he began to untangle the meshes
of Douglas's sophistry. Proceeding, he gained confidence gradually; his
voice rang out strong and clear; his tall form towered to its full
height; his face grew radiant with impassioned feeling, as he poured
forth an outburst of crushing argument and inspiring eloquence. The
people became wild with enthusiasm, but his voice rang loud above their
cheers. Frequently in his speech he would turn toward Douglas, and say
with emphasis, 'You _know_ these things are so, Mr. Douglas!' or 'You
know these things are _not_ so, Mr. Douglas!' At one time he bent his
long body over his adversary, pouring in his arguments so sharply, that
Douglas, chafing under the attack, rose to explain; but Lincoln would
not allow it. 'Sit down, Mr. Douglas!' said he peremptorily. 'I did not
interrupt you, and you shall not interrupt me. You will have
opportunity to reply to me--if you can--in your closing speech.'"

A good story is told of the occasion on which Lincoln and Douglas spoke
in Chicago. A well-known citizen who on account of his age was known
familiarly as "Father Brewster"--a man of standing, and a member of the
Board of Education--was one of the listeners on the platform. Lincoln
admired the old gentleman very much, and the admiration was mutual. They
sat together while Douglas made the opening speech. He spoke for more
than an hour, and never more brilliantly. When Lincoln's turn came he
could see that Father Brewster was exceedingly anxious as to the
outcome. Lincoln arose, let out all the joints in his long body, slowly
removed his overcoat and laid it across Mr. Brewster's knees. "Father
Brewster," he said, "will you hold my overcoat _while I stone Stephen?_"
Everybody shouted and cheered, and even Douglas joined in the laugh at
his own expense.

Beneath the humors and excitements of the campaign, the prevailing tone
of Lincoln's thought was deeply serious and reflective. Toward the
close, when indications pointed to his defeat for the Senate, he seemed
somewhat depressed, and occasionally his old habitual melancholy would
steal over him and impart to his words a touching pathos. On such an
occasion, in one of the smaller cities of Illinois, Douglas, having the
first speech, made an unusually brilliant effort. He carried the crowd
with him; and when Lincoln rose to reply, it was evident that he felt
his disadvantage--felt, too, that do what he would final defeat was
probable. He made a good speech, but not one of his best. Concluding his
argument, he stopped and stood silent for a moment, looking around upon
the throng of half-indifferent, half-friendly faces before him, with
those deep-sunken weary eyes that always seemed full of unshed tears.
Folding his hands, as if they too were tired of the hopeless fight, he
said, in his peculiar monotone: "My friends, it makes little
difference, very little difference, whether Judge Douglas or myself is
elected to the United States Senate; but the great issue which we have
submitted to you to-day is far above and beyond any personal interests
or the political fortunes of any man. And, my friends, that issue will
live and breathe and burn when the poor, feeble, stammering tongues of
Judge Douglas and myself are silent in the grave." The crowd swayed as
if smitten by a mighty wind. The simple words, and the manner in which
they were spoken, touched every heart to the core.

Lincoln spoke in all about fifty times during the campaign. At its
close, says Mr. Arnold, "both Douglas and Lincoln visited Chicago.
Douglas was so hoarse that he could hardly articulate, and it was
painful to hear him attempt to speak. Lincoln's voice was clear and
vigorous, and he really seemed in better tone than usual. His dark
complexion was bronzed by the prairie sun and winds; his eye was clear,
his step firm, and he looked like a trained athlete, ready to enter,
rather than one who had closed, a conflict."

Of the speeches in this campaign, Mr. Henry J. Raymond, the
distinguished journalist, pronounced the following well-considered
opinion: "While Douglas fully sustained his previous reputation, and
justified the estimate his friends had placed upon his abilities, he
labored under the comparative disadvantage of being much better known to
the country at large than was his antagonist. During his long public
career, people had become partially accustomed to his manner of
presenting arguments and enforcing them. The novelty and freshness of
Lincoln's addresses, on the other hand, the homeliness and force of his
illustrations, their wonderful pertinence, his exhaustless humor, his
confidence in his own resources, engendered by his firm belief in the
justice of the cause he so ably advocated, never once rising, however,
to the point of arrogance or superciliousness, fastened upon him the
eyes of the people everywhere, friends and opponents alike. It was not
strange that more than once, during the course of the unparalleled
excitement which marked this canvass, Douglas should have been thrown
off his guard by the singular self-possession displayed by his
antagonist, and by the imperturbable firmness with which he maintained
and defended a position once taken. The unassuming confidence which
marked Lincoln's conduct was early imparted to his supporters, and each
succeeding encounter added largely to the number of his friends, until
they began to indulge the hope that a triumph might be secured in spite
of the adverse circumstances under which the struggle was commenced."

Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield (Mass.) "Republican," said that
Lincoln "handled Douglas as he would an eel--by main strength.
Sometimes, perhaps, he handled him so strongly that he _slipped through
his fingers_."

"In this canvass," says Mr. Lamon, "Mr. Lincoln earned a reputation as a
popular debater second to that of no man in America--certainly not
second to that of his famous antagonist. He kept his temper; he was not
prone to personalities; he was fair, frank, and manly; and, if the
contest had shown nothing else, it would have shown at least that 'Old
Abe' could behave like a gentleman under very trying circumstances. His
marked success in these discussions was probably no surprise to the
people of the Springfield district, who knew him as well as they did Mr.
Douglas, or even better. But in the greater part of the State, and
throughout the Union, the series of brilliant victories successively won
by an obscure man over an orator of such wide experience and renown was
received with exclamations of astonishment alike by listeners and
readers."

Caleb Cushing, the distinguished Massachusetts lawyer, was one of those
acute minds whose attention was attracted to Lincoln by his debates
with Douglas. Mr. Cushing said that these debates showed Lincoln to be
the superior of Douglas "in every vital element of power"; and added
that "the world does not yet know how much of a man Lincoln really is."
It was soon to know him much more clearly. In less than two years after
the great debate this lately obscure Illinois lawyer was elected
President of the United States.




CHAPTER XII


     A Year of Waiting and Trial--Again Defeated for the
     Senate--Depression and Neglect--Lincoln Enlarging His
     Boundaries--On the Stump in Ohio--A Speech to Kentuckians--Second
     Visit to Cincinnati--A Short Trip to Kansas--Lincoln in New York
     City--The Famous Cooper Institute Speech--A Strong and Favorable
     Impression--Visits New England--Secret of Lincoln's Success as an
     Orator--Back to Springfield--Disposing of a Campaign
     Slander--Lincoln's Account of His Visit to a Five Points Sunday
     School.

On the 2d of November, 1858, the State election was held in Illinois.
The chief significance of this election was due to the fact that the
Legislature then chosen would decide whether Douglas or Lincoln should
be sent to the Senate at Washington. The result showed that Lincoln had,
by his hard efforts, won a victory for his cause and for his party, but
not for himself. The Republican State ticket was elected by a majority
of about 4,000 votes; but in the Legislature a number of members held
over from the election of two years before, and the Republican gains,
though considerable, were not quite sufficient to overcome this adverse
element. When the Legislature met, Douglas was re-elected to the Senate
by a small majority. It is said that Lincoln was deeply grieved by his
defeat. When some one inquired of him how he felt over the result, he
answered that he felt "like the boy that stubbed his toe,--'it hurt too
bad to laugh, and he was too big to cry!'"

A few days after his return to Springfield, there was pressed on the
attention of the defeated candidate a matter which must have been
peculiarly unwelcome at the time, but which was accepted with habitual
fortitude. What this matter was is revealed in the following letter:

     SPRINGFIELD, NOV. 16, 1858.

     HON. N.B. JUDD--_My Dear Sir_:--Yours of the 15th is just received.
     I wrote you the same day. As to the pecuniary matter, I am willing
     to pay according to my ability, but I am the poorest hand living to
     get others to pay. I have been on expense so long, without earning
     anything, that I am absolutely without money now for even household
     expenses. Still, if you can put in two hundred and fifty dollars
     for me towards discharging the debt of the committee, I will allow
     it when you and I settle the private matter between us. This, with
     what I have already paid with an outstanding note of mine, will
     exceed my subscription of five hundred dollars. This, too, is
     exclusive of my ordinary expenses during the campaign, all of
     which, being added to my loss of time and business, bears pretty
     heavily upon one no better off than I am. But as I had the post of
     honor, it is not for me to be over-nice.

     You are feeling badly. _And this, too, shall pass away;_ never
     fear.

     Yours as ever,
     A. LINCOLN.

Hon. E.M. Haines, who was a member of the Legislature of 1858-9, and a
supporter of Lincoln for the Senate, states that Lincoln seemed greatly
depressed by his defeat, and that his friends were also somewhat
disheartened regarding his future prospects, and neglected him to some
extent. "Some time after the Senatorial election," says Mr. Haines,
"Governor Bissell gave a reception at his house, which I attended with
my wife. After we had paid our respects to the Governor and Mrs.
Bissell, we passed on to an adjoining room, where there was quite a
throng of people engaged in conversation. Mr. Lincoln was standing near
the centre of the room, entirely alone, with his usual sad countenance,
and apparently unnoticed by anyone. I said to my wife, 'Here is Mr.
Lincoln; he looks as if he had lost all his friends; come and have an
introduction to him, and cheer him up.' Mr. Lincoln received us very
cordially, and we entered into a general conversation, apparently
unnoticed, and attracting no attention from others as they passed and
repassed around us. Dancing was going on in the adjacent rooms, and Mr.
Lincoln invited my wife to join him in the dancing, which she did, and
he apparently took much pleasure in the recreation. My wife afterwards
related to me much that Mr. Lincoln said in their conversation during
the evening. His despondency became much dispelled after they became
engaged in conversation; indeed, she said that he seemed to be putting
forth an effort to get out of the gloomy condition which had come upon
him from the result of his Senatorial canvass. He had occasion during
their conversation to refer to his age, remarking incidentally that he
was almost fifty years old; whereupon, as if suddenly reflecting that
his age was a good part of a man's life, and as if unwilling to
relinquish his hold upon the future, he suddenly braced himself up, and
said, 'But, Mrs. Haines, I feel that I am good for another fifty years
yet.'"

During the winter following the Senatorial debate Lincoln was occupied
with his private affairs. The love of public speaking had become so
strong with him that he prepared a lecture and delivered it to the
public at several places during the winter. It was somewhat humorous in
character, but was not much of a success, and he soon declined further
invitations to deliver it. To one correspondent he wrote, in March,
1859: "Your note, inviting me to deliver a lecture in Galesburg, is
received. I regret to say that I cannot do so now. I must stick to the
courts for awhile. I read a sort of a lecture to three different
audiences during the last month and this; but I did so under
circumstances which made it a waste of time, of no value whatever."

The following autumn (1859) Senator Douglas visited Ohio and made
speeches for the Democratic party there. From the Republican ranks there
arose a cry for Lincoln, whose superiority to Douglas in the great
debate of the preceding year was still fresh in the public mind. He
promptly answered it, and spoke in that State with marked effect. At
Cincinnati he addressed himself especially to Kentuckians, and said, in
a strain which is now seen to be prophetic:

     I should not wonder if there were some Kentuckians in this
     audience; we are close to Kentucky; but whether that be so or not,
     we are on elevated ground, and by speaking distinctly I should not
     wonder if some of the Kentuckians would hear me on the other side
     of the river. For that purpose I propose to address a portion of
     what I have to say to the Kentuckians. I say, then, in the first
     place, to the Kentuckians, that I am what they call, as I
     understand it, a 'Black Republican.' I think slavery is wrong,
     morally and politically. I desire that it should be no further
     spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should
     gradually terminate in the whole Union. While I say this for
     myself, I say to you Kentuckians, that I understand you differ
     radically with me upon this proposition; that you believe slavery
     is a good thing; that slavery is right; that it ought to be
     extended and perpetuated in this Union. Now, there being this broad
     difference between us, I do not pretend, in addressing myself to
     you Kentuckians, to attempt proselyting you; that would be a vain
     effort. I will tell you, so far as I am authorized to speak for the
     opposition, what we mean to do with you. We mean to treat you, as
     nearly as we possibly can, as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison
     treated you. We mean to leave you alone, and in no way to interfere
     with your institution; to abide by all and every compromise of the
     Constitution, and, in a word, coming back to the original
     proposition, to treat you, so far as degenerated men (if we have
     degenerated) may, according to the examples of those noble
     fathers--Washington, Jefferson and Madison. We mean to remember
     that you are as good as we; that there is no difference between
     us, other than the difference of circumstances. We mean to
     recognize and bear in mind always, that you have as good hearts in
     your bosoms as other people, or as we claim to have, and treat you
     accordingly. We mean to marry your girls, when we have a
     chance--the white ones, I mean--and I have the honor to inform you
     that I once did have a chance in that way. I have told you what we
     mean to do. I want to know now what _you_ mean to do. I often hear
     it intimated that you mean to divide the Union whenever a
     Republican, or anything like it, is elected President of the United
     States. [A voice--'That is so.'] 'That is so,' one of them says; I
     wonder if he is a Kentuckian? [A voice--'He is a Douglas man.']
     Well, then, I want to know what you are going to do with your half
     of it? Are you going to split the Ohio down through, and push your
     half off a piece? Or are you going to keep it right alongside of us
     outrageous fellows? Or are you going to build up a wall some way
     between your country and ours, by which that movable property of
     yours can't come over here any more, to the danger of your losing
     it? Do you think you can better yourselves on that subject by
     leaving us here under no obligation whatever to return those
     specimens of your movable property that come hither? You have
     divided the Union because we would not do right with you, as you
     think, upon that subject; when we cease to be under obligations to
     do anything for you, how much better off do you think you will be?
     Will you make war upon us and kill us all? Why, gentlemen, I think
     you are as gallant and as brave men as live; that you can fight as
     bravely in a good cause, man for man, as any other people living;
     that you have shown yourselves capable of this upon various
     occasions; but man for man, you are not better than we are, and
     there are not so many of you as there are of us. You will never
     make much of a hand at whipping us. If we were fewer in numbers
     than you, I think that you could whip us; if we were equal, it
     would likely be a drawn battle; but being inferior in numbers, you
     will make nothing by attempting to master us.

The Hon. W.M. Dickson, whose interesting account of Lincoln's first
visit to Cincinnati and the disappointments attending it has already
been given in this narrative, says of this second visit as contrasted
with the obscurity of the first: "Lincoln returned to the city with a
fame wide as the continent, with the laurels of the Douglas contest on
his brow, and the Presidency almost in his grasp. He returned, greeted
with the thunder of cannon, the strains of martial music, and the joyous
plaudits of thousands of citizens thronging the streets. He addressed a
vast concourse on Fifth Street Market; was entertained in princely style
at the Burnet House; and there received with courtesy the foremost
citizens, come to greet this Western rising star."

In December of the same year Lincoln visited Kansas and addressed the
people of that troubled State upon the political questions then before
the country. At Leavenworth, Atchison, Elwood, and other places, he was
met by large gatherings of eager listeners who were charmed and
convinced by his fresh and reassuring utterances. His journeys were
complete ovations, and he returned to Illinois leaving a host of new
friends behind him. As several of Lincoln's biographers make no
reference to his Kansas visit, and the entire matter seems more or less
obscured, the following letter, lately written by Mr. Harry W. Stewart,
of Carlsbad, New Mexico, is of much interest: "I have recently seen a
reference to Lincoln's visit to Kansas as if the fact were not clearly
established. In this connection I may offer a personal recollection of
my father, James G. Stewart, who was a physician practicing in the
little town of Elwood, Kansas, from 1856 to 1860. He said that both
Lincoln and Seward came out and spoke in St. Joseph, Mo., just across
the river from Elwood. On each occasion a large following of 'free
state' men went over to St. Jo to hear the speech and incidentally to
support the speaker in case of violence, which had been freely
predicted. According to this reminiscence, Lincoln crossed the Missouri
into Kansas, my father having the honor of taking him in a buggy to a
small town fourteen miles distant from Elwood in Doniphan County. They
drove out to Troy, where Mr. Lincoln made a speech. From here I think he
went on to Lawrence and other places before returning to St. Joseph, but
have no account of his movements beyond Troy. I think it was in the year
1858 and must have been in the summer time, for the party took Mr.
Lincoln over the Missouri on a ferry. It did not make trips oftener than
about once in two hours. When Lincoln came to the bank on the Missouri
side the boat had just gone. There was no waiting-room or benches to sit
on and some of the party were inclined to think they were in hard luck.
When Lincoln found out how it was, he said: 'It's all right. We'll sit
right down on the sand and wait for the boat.' Then they all sat down on
the ground and listened to genuine Lincoln stories till the time was up.
My father often spoke with delight of this incident. I have looked in
vain in Lincoln histories for a more definite account of this Kansas
trip. Of the actual fact there can be no doubt."

Lincoln's fame, as we have seen, had now extended to the East, where he
seems to have been looked upon as a rising man and an interesting figure
in national politics. Invitations to visit the East now began to reach
him. In the following February (1860) he went to Brooklyn, for the
purpose of delivering a lecture in Mr. Beecher's church. The invitation
had given him much pleasure, and he prepared himself thoroughly; indeed,
it is said that no effort of his life cost him so much labor as this. In
the Plymouth congregation of Brooklyn there was an association of young
men which was successful in getting an annual course of six lectures of
the highest order. This association discerned in Lincoln a man worthy of
a place in its course, and invited him to give such a lecture.
Meanwhile, some prominent Republican politicians of New York had heard
of him as a possible candidate for the Presidency, and desired him to
make a speech in that city in order to determine whether he would be the
man to present to the Republican National convention in case Mr. Seward
could not be nominated. Lincoln informed these gentlemen of his Brooklyn
engagement, but said he would speak in New York if the Brooklyn club
gave its consent. That club agreed to this arrangement; and thus it was
decided that Lincoln's speech should be delivered in New York City,
instead of Brooklyn, as had been first intended. Mr. R.C. McCormick, who
was a member of the committee in charge of the arrangements, says: "When
Mr. Lincoln came to New York City, there was some confusion in the
arrangements. He had at first been invited to appear in Brooklyn, but
upon deliberation his friends thought it best that he should be heard in
New York. Reaching the Astor House on Saturday, February 25, he was
surprised to find by announcement in the public prints that he was to
speak at the Cooper Institute. He said he must review his address if it
was to be delivered in New York. What he had prepared for Mr. Beecher's
church-folks might not be altogether appropriate to a miscellaneous
political audience. Saturday was spent in a review of the speech, and on
Sunday morning he went to Plymouth church, where apparently he greatly
enjoyed the service. On Monday morning I waited upon him with several
members of the Young Men's Republican Union, into whose hands the
preparations for the meeting at the Cooper Institute had fallen. We
found him in a suit of black, much wrinkled from its careless packing in
a small valise. He received us cordially, apologizing for the awkward
and uncomfortable appearance he made in his new suit, and expressing
himself surprised at being in New York. His form and manner were indeed
very odd, and we thought him the most unprepossessing public man we had
ever met. I spoke to him of the manuscript of his forthcoming address,
and suggested to him that it should be given to the press at his
earliest convenience, in order that it might be published in full on the
morning following its delivery. He appeared in much doubt as to whether
any of the papers would care to print it; and it was only when I
accompanied a reporter to his room and made a request for it, that he
began to think his words might be of interest to the metropolitan
public. He seemed wholly ignorant of the custom of supplying slips to
the different journals from the office first putting the addresses in
type, and was charmingly innocent of the machinery so generally used,
even by some of our most popular orators, to give success and _éclat_ to
their public efforts. The address was written upon blue foolscap paper,
all in his own hand, and with few interlineations. I was bold enough to
read portions of it, and had no doubt that its delivery would create a
marked sensation throughout the country. Lincoln referred frequently to
Douglas, but always in a generous and kindly manner. It was difficult to
regard them as antagonists. Many stories of the famous Illinois debates
were told us, and in a very short time his frank and sparkling
conversation won our hearts and made his plain face pleasant to us all.
During the day it was suggested that he should be taken up Broadway and
shown the city, of which he knew but little--stating, I think, that he
had been here but once before. At one place he met an Illinois
acquaintance of former years, to whom he said, in his dry, good-natured
way: 'Well, B., how have you fared since you left Illinois?' To which B.
replied, 'I have made a hundred thousand dollars, and lost all. How is
it with you, Mr. Lincoln?' 'Oh, very well,' said Lincoln. 'I have the
cottage at Springfield, and about eight thousand dollars in money. If
they make me Vice-president with Seward, as some say they will, I hope I
shall be able to increase it to twenty thousand; and that is as much as
any man ought to want.' We visited a photographic establishment upon
the corner of Broadway and Bleeker streets, where he sat for his
picture, the first taken in New York. At the gallery he met and was
introduced to Hon. George Bancroft, and had a brief conversation with
that gentleman, who welcomed him to New York. The contrast in the
appearance of the men was most striking; the one courtly and precise in
his every word and gesture, with the air of a trans-Atlantic statesman;
the other bluff and awkward, his very utterance an apology for his
ignorance of metropolitan manners and customs. 'I am on my way to
Massachusetts,' he said to Mr. Bancroft, 'where I have a son at school,
who, if report be true, already knows much more than his father.'"

On the evening of February 27 a large and brilliant audience gathered at
Cooper Institute, to hear the famous Western orator. The scene was one
never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it. Upon the platform sat
many of the prominent men of the Republican party, and in the body of
the hall were many ladies. The meeting was presided over by the
distinguished citizen and poet William Cullen Bryant, of whom Mr.
Lincoln afterward said, "It was worth a journey to the East merely to
see such a man." The orator of the evening was introduced by Mr. Bryant
with some very complimentary allusions, especially to his controversy
with Douglas. "When Mr. Lincoln came on the platform and was introduced
by Mr. Bryant," says one who was present, "he seemed a giant in contrast
with him. His first sentence was delivered in a peculiarly high-keyed
voice, and disappointed us. In a short time the sharp points of his
address began to come, and he had not been speaking for half an hour
before his audience seemed wild with enthusiasm." Another account says:
"His manner was, to a New York audience, a very strange one, but it was
captivating. He held the vast meeting spell-bound, and as one by one
his oddly expressed but trenchant and convincing arguments confirmed the
soundness of his political conclusions, the house broke out in wild and
prolonged enthusiasm. I think I never saw an audience more thoroughly
carried away by an orator." This speech was full of trenchant passages,
which called forth tumultuous applause. The following is a specimen:

     I defy anyone to show that any living man in the whole world ever
     did, prior to the beginning of the present century (and I might
     almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present
     century), declare that, in his understanding, any proper division
     of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution,
     forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the Federal
     territories. To those who now so declare, I give not only our
     fathers who framed the government under which we live, but with
     them all other living men within the century in which it was
     framed, among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find
     the evidence of a single man agreeing with them.

Referring to the South, and the growing political discontent in that
quarter, he said:

     Let all who believe that our fathers understood this question just
     as well as, and even better than, we do now, speak as they spoke
     and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask--all
     Republicans desire--in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked
     it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but
     to be tolerated and protected only because, and so far as, its
     actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a
     necessity. Let all the guarantees those fathers gave it be not
     grudgingly but fully and fairly maintained.

His counsel to the young Republican party was timely and full of wisdom.

     A few words now to Republicans: It is exceedingly desirable that
     all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in
     harmony one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it
     so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion
     and ill-temper. Even though the Southern people will not so much as
     listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to
     them, if in our deliberate view of our duty we possibly can.

The address closed with the following impressive words:

     Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone
     where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from
     its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will
     prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and
     to overrun us here in these free States? If our sense of duty
     forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and
     effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical
     contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and
     belabored--contrivances such as groping for some middle ground
     between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who
     should be neither a living man nor a dead man,--such as a policy of
     'don't care' on a question about which all true men do care,--such
     as Union appeals, beseeching true Union men to yield to
     Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling not the
     sinners but the righteous to repentance,--such as invocations of
     Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said and undo
     what Washington did. Neither let us be slandered from our duty by
     false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of
     destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us
     have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us to the
     end dare to do our duty as we understand it.

The Cooper Institute speech made a profound impression upon the public.
All who saw and heard Lincoln on that occasion felt the influence of his
strange but powerful personality; and acute minds recognized in the
unsophisticated Western lawyer a new force in American politics. This
speech made Lincoln known throughout the country, and undoubtedly did
more than anything else to secure him the nomination for the Presidency.
Aside from its extensive publication in the newspapers, various editions
of it appeared in pamphlet form, one of the best of which was issued by
Messrs. C.C. Nott and Cephas Brainard, who appended to their edition an
estimate of the speech that is well worth reprinting here: "No one who
has not actually attempted to verify its details can understand the
patient research and historical labor which it embodies. The history of
our earlier politics is scattered through numerous journals, statutes,
pamphlets, and letters; and these are defective in completeness and
accuracy of statement, and in indexes and tables of contents. Neither
can any one who has not travelled over this precise ground appreciate
the accuracy of every trivial detail, or the self-denying impartiality
with which Mr. Lincoln has turned from the testimony of 'the fathers' on
the general question of slavery to present the single question which he
discusses. From the first line to the last, from his premises to his
conclusion, he travels with a swift, unerring directness which no
logician ever excelled,--an argument complete and full, without the
affectation of learning, and without the stiffness which usually
accompanies dates and details. A single easy, simple sentence of plain
Anglo-Saxon words contains a chapter of history that, in some instances,
has taken days of labor to verify, and must have cost the author months
of investigation to acquire; and though the public should justly
estimate the labor bestowed on the facts which are stated, they cannot
estimate the greater labor involved on those which are omitted--how many
pages have been read--how many works examined--what numerous statutes,
resolutions, speeches, letters, and biographies have been looked
through. Commencing with this address as a political pamphlet, the
reader will leave it as an historical work--brief, complete, profound,
impartial, truthful,--which will survive the time and the occasion that
called it forth, and be esteemed hereafter no less for its intrinsic
worth than for its unpretending modesty."

Lincoln's oldest son, Robert, was at this time a student in Harvard
University, and, chiefly to visit him, Lincoln made a brief trip to New
England. While there he spoke at Concord and Manchester in New
Hampshire; at Woonsocket in Rhode Island; and at Hartford, New Haven,
Norwich, Meriden, and Bridgeport in Connecticut. These speeches were
heard with delight by large audiences, and received hearty praise from
the press. At Manchester, "The Mirror," a neutral paper, published the
following remarks on Lincoln's style of oratory: "He spoke an hour and a
half, with great fairness, great apparent candor, and with wonderful
interest. He did not abuse the South, the administration, or the
Democrats, nor indulge in any personalities, with the exception of a few
hits at 'Douglas's notions.' He is far from prepossessing in personal
appearance, and his voice is disagreeable; and yet he wins attention and
good-will from the start. He indulges in no flowers of rhetoric, no
eloquent passages. He is not a wit, a humorist, or a clown; yet so fine
a vein of pleasantry and good-nature pervades what he says, gliding over
a deep current of poetical arguments, that he keeps his hearers in a
smiling mood, ready to swallow all he says. His sense of the ludicrous
is very keen; and an exhibition of that is the clincher of all his
arguments--not the ludicrous acts of persons, but ludicrous ideas. For
the first half-hour his opponents would agree with every word he
uttered; and from that point he began to lead them off little by little,
until it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold."

The Rev. John. P. Gulliver, of Norwich, Connecticut, has given a most
interesting reminiscence of Lincoln's speech in that city while on his
tour through New England. On the morning following the speech he met
Lincoln on a railroad train, and entered into conversation with him. In
speaking of his speech, Mr. Gulliver remarked to Lincoln that he thought
it the most remarkable one he ever heard. "Are you sincere in what you
say?" inquired Lincoln. "I mean every word of it," replied the minister;
"indeed, I learned more of the art of public speaking last evening than
I could from a whole course of lectures on rhetoric." Then Lincoln
informed him of a "most extraordinary circumstance" that had occurred at
New Haven a few days previous. A professor of rhetoric in Yale College,
he had been told, came to hear him, took notes of his speech, and gave a
lecture on it to his class the following day, and, not satisfied with
that, followed him to Meriden the next evening and heard him again for
the same purpose. All this seemed to Lincoln to be "very extraordinary."
He had been sufficiently astonished by his success in the West, but he
had no expectation of any marked success in the East, particularly among
literary and learned men. "Now," said Lincoln, "I should like very much
to know what it is in my speech which you thought so remarkable, and
which interested my friend the professor so much." Mr. Gulliver's answer
was: "The clearness of your statements, the unanswerable style of your
reasoning, and especially your illustrations, which were romance and
pathos and fun and logic all welded together." After Mr. Gulliver had
fully satisfied his curiosity by a further exposition of the
politician's peculiar power, Lincoln said: "I am much obliged to you for
this. I have been wishing for a long time to find someone who would make
this analysis for me. It throws light on a subject which has been dark
to me. I can understand very readily how such a power as you have
ascribed to me will account for the effect which seems to be produced
by my speeches. I hope you have not been too flattering in your
estimate. Certainly I have had a most wonderful success for a man of my
limited education." Mr. Gulliver then inquired into the processes by
which he had acquired his education, and was rewarded with many
interesting details. When they were about to part, the minister said:
"Mr. Lincoln, may I say one thing to you before we separate?"
"Certainly; anything you please," was the response. "You have just
spoken," said Mr. Gulliver, "of the tendency of political life in
Washington to debase the moral convictions of our representatives there,
by the admixture of considerations of mere political expediency. You
have become, by the controversy with Mr. Douglas, one of our leaders in
this great struggle with slavery, which is undoubtedly the struggle of
the nation and the age. What I would like to say is this, and I say it
with a full heart: Be true to your principles, and we will be true to
you, and God will be true to us all." Mr. Lincoln, touched by the
earnestness of his interlocutor, took his hand in both his own, and,
with his face full of sympathetic light, exclaimed: "I say _amen_ to
that! _amen to that_!"

After the New England tour, Lincoln returned to his home in Springfield.
As often happens, those least appreciative of his success were his own
neighbors; and certain reflections gained vogue concerning his motives
in visiting the East. It was charged that he had been mercenary; that
his political speeches had been paid for. Something of this sort having
been brought to Lincoln's notice, he disposed of the matter in the
following manly and characteristic letter:

     C.F. McNEILL, ESQ.--_Dear Sir:_--Reaching home yesterday, I found
     yours of the 23d March, enclosing a slip from the 'Middleport
     Press.' It is not true that I ever charged anything for a political
     speech in my life; but this much is true: Last October I was
     requested by letter to deliver some sort of speech in Mr. Beecher's
     church in Brooklyn, $200 being offered in the first letter. I wrote
     that I could do it in February, provided they would take a
     political speech if I could find time to get up no other. They
     agreed; and subsequently I informed them the speech would have to
     be a political one. When I reached New York, I learned for the
     first time that the place was changed to Cooper Institute. I made
     the speech, and left for New England, where I have a son at school,
     neither asking for pay nor having any offered me. Three days after,
     a check for $200 was sent me, and I took it, and did not know it
     was wrong. My understanding now is--though I knew nothing of it at
     the time--that they did charge for admittance at the Cooper
     Institute, and that they took in more than twice $200. I have made
     this explanation to you as a friend; but I wish no explanation made
     to our enemies. What they want is a squabble and a fuss; and that
     they can have if we explain; and they cannot have it if we don't.
     When I returned through New York from New England, I was told by
     the gentleman who sent me the check that a drunken vagabond in the
     club, having learned something about the $200, made the exhibition
     out of which the 'Herald' manufactured the article quoted by the
     'Press' of your town. My judgment is, and therefore my request is,
     that you give no denial, and no explanations.

     Thanking you for your kind interest in the matter, I remain,

     Yours truly, A. LINCOLN.

It appears that on the Sunday which Lincoln spent in New York City he
visited a Sunday School in the notorious region called Five Points, and
there made a short address to the scholars. After his return to
Springfield, one of his neighbors, hearing of this, thought it would be
a good subject for bantering Lincoln about, and accordingly visited him
for that purpose. This neighbor was generally known as "Jim," just as
Lincoln was called "Abe." The following account of his visit, furnished
by Mr. Edward Eggleston, shows that he did not derive as much fun from
the "bantering" as he had expected: "He started for 'Old Abe's' office;
but bursting open the door impulsively, found a stranger in conversation
with Mr. Lincoln. He turned to retrace his steps, when Lincoln called
out, 'Jim! What do you want?' 'Nothing.' 'Yes, you do; come back.' After
some entreaty 'Jim' approached Mr. Lincoln, and remarked, with a twinkle
in his eye, 'Well, Abe, I see you have been making a speech to Sunday
School children. What's the matter?' 'Sit down, Jim, and I'll tell you
all about it.' And with that Lincoln put his feet on the stove, and
began: 'When Sunday morning came, I didn't know exactly what to do. Mr.
Washburne asked me where I was going. I told him I had nowhere to go;
and he proposed to take me down to the Five Points Sunday School, to
show me something worth seeing. I was very much interested by what I
saw. Presently, Mr. Pease came up and spoke to Mr. Washburne, who
introduced me. Mr. Pease wanted us to speak. Washburne spoke, and then I
was urged to speak. I told them I did not know anything about talking to
Sunday Schools, but Mr. Pease said many of the children were friendless
and homeless, and that a few words would do them good. Washburne said I
must talk. And so I rose to speak; but I tell you, Jim, I didn't know
what to say. I remembered that Mr. Pease said they were homeless and
friendless, and I thought of the time when I had been pinched by
terrible poverty. And so I told them that I had been poor; that I
remembered when my toes stuck out through my broken shoes in winter;
when my arms were out at the elbows; when I shivered with the cold. And
I told them there was only one rule; that was, always do the very best
you can. I told them that I had always tried to do the very best I
could; and that, if they would follow that rule, they would get along
somehow. That was about what I said. And when I got through, Mr. Pease
said it was just the thing they needed. And when the school was
dismissed, all the teachers came up and shook hands with me, and thanked
me; although I did not know that I had been saying anything of any
account. But the next morning I saw my remarks noticed in the papers.'
Just here Mr. Lincoln put his hand in his pocket, and remarked that he
had never heard anything that touched him as had the songs which those
children sang. With that he drew forth a little book, saying that they
had given him one of the books from which they sang. He began to read a
piece with all the earnestness of his great, earnest soul. In the middle
of the second verse his friend 'Jim' felt a choking in his throat and a
tickling in his nose. At the beginning of the third verse he saw that
the stranger was weeping, and his own tears fell fast. Turning toward
Lincoln, who was reading straight on, he saw the great blinding tears in
his eyes, so that he could not possibly see the pages. He was repeating
that little song from memory. How often he had read it, or how long its
sweet and simple accents continued to reverberate through his soul, no
one can know."




CHAPTER XIII


     Looking Towards the Presidency--The Illinois Republican Convention
     of 1860--A "Send-Off" for Lincoln--The National Republican
     Convention at Chicago--Contract of the Leading Candidates--Lincoln
     Nominated--Scenes at the Convention--Sketches by
     Eye-Witnesses--Lincoln Hearing the News--The Scene at
     Springfield--A Visit to Lincoln at His Home--Recollections of a
     Distinguished Sculptor--Receiving the Committee of the
     Convention--Nomination of Douglas--Campaign of 1860--Various
     Campaign Reminiscences--Lincoln and the Tall Southerner--The Vote
     of the Springfield Clergy--A Graceful Letter to the Poet
     Bryant--"Looking up Hard Spots."

In the latter part of the year 1859, after Lincoln had gained
considerable national prominence through events already briefly
narrated, some of his friends began to consider the expediency of
bringing him forward as a candidate for the Presidency in 1860. The
young Republican party had thus far been in the minority, and the
necessity was generally felt of nominating a man who would not render
himself objectionable by advocating extreme or unpopular measures. The
subject was mentioned to Lincoln, but he seems not to have taken it very
seriously. He said that there were distinguished men in the party who
were more worthy of the nomination, and whose public services entitled
them to it. Toward spring in 1860 Lincoln consented to a conference on
the subject with some of his more intimate friends. The meeting took
place in a committee-room in the State House. Mr. Bushnell, Mr. Hatch
(then Secretary of State), Mr. Judd (Chairman of the Republican State
Central Committee), Mr. Peck, and Mr. Grimshaw were present. They were
unanimous in opinion as to the expediency and propriety of making
Lincoln a candidate. But he was still reluctant; he doubted that he
could get the nomination even if he wished it, and asked until the next
morning to consider the matter. The next day he authorized his friends
to work for him, if they so desired, as a candidate for the Presidency,
at the National Republican convention to be held in May at Chicago.

It is evident that while Lincoln had no serious expectation of receiving
the nomination, yet having consented to become a candidate he was by no
means indifferent on the subject. The following confidential letter to
his friend N.B. Judd shows his feelings at this time.

     SPRINGFIELD, ILL., FEBRUARY 9, 1860.

     HON. N.B. JUDD--_Dear Sir_:--I am not in a position where it would
     hurt much for me not to be nominated on the national ticket; but I
     am where it would hurt some for me not to get the Illinois
     delegates. What I expected when I wrote the letter to Messrs. Dole
     and others is now happening. Your discomfited assailants are more
     bitter against me, and they will, for revenge upon me, lay to the
     Bates egg in the South and the Seward egg in the North, and go far
     towards squeezing me out in the middle with nothing. Can you not
     help me a little in this matter in your end of the vineyard? (I
     mean this to be private.)

     Yours as ever, A. LINCOLN.

It would seem that the original intention of Lincoln's friends had been
to bring him out as a candidate for the Vice-Presidency. Hon. E.M.
Haines states that as early as the spring of 1859, before the
adjournment of the Legislature of which he was a member, some of the
Republican members discussed the feasibility of urging Lincoln's name
for the Vice-Presidency. Lincoln appears not to have taken very strongly
to the suggestion. "I recollect," says Mr. Haines, "that one day Mr.
Lincoln came to my desk in the House of Representatives, to make some
inquiry regarding another member; and during the conversation, referring
to his growing reputation, I remarked to him that I did not know that
we would be able to make him President, but perhaps we could do the next
best thing, and make him Vice-President. He brightened up somewhat, and
answered by a story which I do not clearly recall, but the application
of which was that he scarcely considered himself a big enough man for
President, while the Vice-Presidency was scarcely big enough office for
one who had aspired to a seat in the Senate of the United States."

On the 9th and 10th of May, 1860, the Republicans of Illinois met in
convention at Decatur. Lincoln was present, although he is said to have
been there as a mere spectator. It was, Mr. Lamon tells us, "A very
large and spirited body, comprising the most brilliant as well as the
shrewdest men in the party. It was evident that something of more than
usual importance was expected to transpire. A few moments after the
convention organized, 'Old Abe' was seen squatting, or sitting on his
heels, just within the door of the convention building. Governor Oglesby
rose and said, amid increasing silence, 'I am informed that a
distinguished citizen of Illinois, and one whom Illinois will ever
delight to honor, is present; and I wish to move that this body invite
him to a seat on the stand.' Here the Governor paused, as if to work
curiosity up to the highest point; then he shouted the magic name,
'_Abraham Lincoln_!' A roar of applause shook every board and joist of
the building. The motion was seconded and passed. A rush was made for
the hero, who still sat on his heels. He was seized and jerked to his
feet. An effort was made to 'jam him through the crowd' to his place of
honor on the stage; but the crowd was too dense. Then he was
'boosted'--lifted up bodily--and lay for a few seconds sprawling and
kicking upon the heads and shoulders of the great throng. In this manner
he was gradually pushed toward the stand, and finally reached it,
doubtless to his great relief, 'in the arms of some half-dozen
gentlemen,' who set him down in full view of his clamorous admirers.
'The cheering was like the roar of the sea. Hats were thrown up by the
Chicago delegation, as if hats were no longer useful.' Mr. Lincoln rose,
bowed, smiled, blushed, and thanked the assembly as well as he could in
the midst of such a tumult. A gentleman who saw it all says, 'I then
thought him one of the most diffident and worst-plagued men I ever saw.'
At another stage of the proceedings, Governor Oglesby rose again with
another provoking and mysterious speech. 'There was,' he said, 'an old
Democrat outside who had something he wished to present to the
convention.' 'Receive it!' 'Receive it!' cried some. 'What is it?' 'What
is it?' yelled some of the lower Egyptians, who seemed to have an idea
that the 'old Democrat' might want to blow them up with an infernal
machine. The door opened; and a fine, robust old fellow, with an open
countenance and bronzed cheeks, marched into the midst of the
assemblage, bearing on his shoulder 'two small triangular heart rails,'
surmounted by a banner with this inscription: '_Two rails from a lot
made by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks, in the Sangamon Bottom, in the
year 1830_.' The sturdy rail-bearer was old John Hanks himself, enjoying
the great field-day of his life. He was met with wild and tumultuous
cheers, prolonged through several minutes; and it was observed that the
Chicago and Central-Illinois men sent up the loudest and longest
cheering. The scene was tempestuous and bewildering. But it ended at
last; and now the whole body, those in the secret and those out of it,
clamored for a speech from Mr. Lincoln, who in the meantime 'blushed,'
but seemed to shake with inward laughter. In response to the repeated
calls he rose and said: 'Gentlemen, I suppose you want to know something
about those things' (pointing to old John and the rails). 'Well, the
truth is, John Hanks and I did make rails in the Sangamon Bottom. I
don't know whether we made those rails or not; the fact is, I don't
think they are a credit to the makers' (laughing as he spoke). 'But I do
know this: I made rails then, and I think I could make better ones than
these now.' By this time the innocent Egyptians began to open their
eyes; they saw plainly enough the admirable Presidential scheme unfolded
to their view. The result of it all was a resolution declaring that
'Abraham Lincoln is the first choice of the Republican party of Illinois
for the Presidency, and instructing the delegates to the Chicago
convention to use all honorable means to secure his nomination, and to
cast the vote of the State as a unit for him.'"

On the 16th of May, 1860, the National Republican convention met at
Chicago. An immense building called "The Wigwam," erected for the
occasion, was filled with an excited throng numbering fully twelve
thousand. After the usual preliminaries the convention settled down to
the serious work of nominating a candidate for the Presidency. From the
outset the contest was clearly between Abraham Lincoln of Illinois and
William H. Seward of New York. On the first ballot, Seward's vote of
173-1/2 was followed by Lincoln with 102--the latter having more than
double the vote of his next competitor, Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania
(51 votes), who was followed by Salmon P. Chase of Ohio (49 votes) and
Edward Bates of Missouri (48 votes). A contrast between these two
remarkable men, Seward and Lincoln, now political antagonists but soon
to be intimately associated at the head of the Government--one as
President and the other as his prime minister--is most interesting and
instructive. Seward was a trained statesman and experienced politician
of ripe culture and great sagacity, the acknowledged leader of the
Republican party, New York's ex-Governor and now its most distinguished
Senator. His position and career were therefore far more conspicuous
than those of Lincoln. His supporters in the convention were
well-organized, bold, confident, and expected that he would be nominated
by acclamation. Lincoln, on the other hand, was still essentially a
country lawyer, who had come into prominence mainly as the competitor of
Senator Douglas in Illinois in 1858. With all his native strength of
mind and force of character, he was, compared with the polished Seward,
a rude backwoodsman, unskilled in handling the reins of government,
unfamiliar with the wiles of statecraft, and unused to the company of
diplomats and social leaders. His political reputation, and his support
in the convention, were chiefly Western. Yet his Cooper Institute
speech, delivered three months before the convention met, had done much
for him in the East; and the homely title of "Honest Old Abe" had
extended throughout the free States. Unlike Seward, he had no political
enemies, and was the second choice of most of the delegates whose first
choice was some other candidate.

In political management and strategy the Western men at the convention
soon showed that they were at best a match for those from the East. Soon
after the opening of the convention, Lincoln's friends saw that there
was an organized body of men in the crowd who cheered vociferously
whenever Seward's name was mentioned. "At a meeting of the Illinois
delegation at the Tremont House," says Mr. Arnold, "on the evening of
the first day, at which Judd, Davis, Cook and others were present, it
was decided that on the second day Illinois and the West should be
heard. There was then living in Chicago a man whose voice could drown
the roar of Lake Michigan in its wildest fury; nay, it was said that his
shout could be heard on a calm day across that lake. Cook of Ottawa knew
another man living on the Illinois river, a Dr. Ames, who had never
found his equal in his ability to shout and hurrah. He was, however, a
Democrat. Cook telegraphed to him to come to Chicago by the first
train. These two men with stentorian voices met some of the Illinois
delegation at the Tremont House, and were instructed to organize each a
body of men to cheer and shout, which they speedily did, out of the
crowds which were in attendance from the Northwest. They were placed on
opposite sides of the Wigwam, and instructed that when they saw Cook
take out his white handkerchief they were to cheer and not to cease
until he returned it to his pocket. Cook was conspicuous on the
platform, and at the first utterance of the name of Lincoln,
simultaneously with the wave of Cook's handkerchief, there went up such
a cheer, such a shout as had never before been heard, and which startled
the friends of Seward as the cry of 'Marmion' on Flodden Field 'startled
the Scottish foe.' The New Yorkers tried to follow when the name of
Seward was spoken, but, beaten at their own game, their voices were
drowned by the cheers for Lincoln. This was kept up until Lincoln was
nominated, amidst a storm of applause probably never before equalled at
a political convention."

The result on the first ballot, with Seward leading Lincoln by 71-1/2
votes, has already been given. On the second ballot Seward gained 11
votes, giving him 184-1/2; while Lincoln made the astonishing gain of 78
votes, giving him a total of 181 and reducing Seward's lead of 71-1/2
votes to 3-1/2 votes. There was no longer doubt of the result. The third
ballot came, and Lincoln, passing Seward who had fallen off 3-1/2 votes
from the previous ballot, ran rapidly up to 231-1/2 votes--233 being the
number required to nominate. Lincoln now lacked but a vote and a half to
make him the nominee. At this juncture, the chairman of the Ohio
delegation rose and changed four votes from Chase to Lincoln, giving him
the nomination. The Wigwam was shaken to its foundation by the roaring
cheers. The multitude in the streets answered the multitude within, and
in a moment more all the volunteer artillery of Chicago joined in the
grand acclamation. After a time the business of the convention
proceeded, amid great excitement. All the votes that had heretofore been
cast against Lincoln were cast for him before this ballot concluded. The
convention completed its work by the nomination of Hannibal Hamlin of
Maine for Vice-President.

Mr. F.B. Carpenter, who was present at Lincoln's nomination, furnishes a
graphic sketch of this dramatic episode. "The scene surpassed
description. Men had been stationed upon the roof of the Wigwam to
communicate the result of the different ballots to the thousands
outside, far outnumbering the packed crowd inside. To these men one of
the secretaries shouted: 'Fire the salute! Lincoln is nominated!' Then,
as the cheering inside died away, the roar began on the outside, and
swelled up from the excited masses like the noise of many waters. This
the insiders heard, and to it they replied. Thus deep called to deep
with such a frenzy of sympathetic enthusiasm that even the thundering
salute of cannon was unheard by many on the platform. When the
excitement had partly subsided, Mr. Evarts of New York arose, and in
appropriate words expressed his grief that Seward had not been
nominated. He then moved that the nomination of Abraham Lincoln be made
unanimous. Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts and Hon. Carl Schurz
of Wisconsin seconded the motion, and it was carried. Then the
enthusiasm of the multitude burst out anew. A large banner, prepared by
the Pennsylvania delegation, was conspicuously displayed, bearing the
inscription, 'Pennsylvania good for twenty thousand majority for the
people's candidate, Abe Lincoln.' Delegates tore up the sticks and
boards bearing the names of their several States, and waved them aloft
over their heads. A brawny man jumped upon the platform, and pulling
his coat-sleeves up to his elbows, shouted: 'I can't stop! Three times
three more cheers for our next President, Abe Lincoln!' A full-length
portrait of the candidate was produced upon the platform. Mr. Greeley
telegraphed to the N.Y. Tribune: 'There was never another such scene in
America.' Chicago went wild. One hundred guns were fired from the top of
the Tremont House. At night the city was in a blaze of glory. Bonfires,
processions, torchlights, fire-works, illuminations and salutes, 'filled
the air with noise and the eye with beauty.' 'Honest Old Abe' was the
utterance of every man in the streets. The Illinois delegation before it
separated 'resolved' that the millennium had come."

Governor Andrew, who was destined to have highly important and intimate
relations with Lincoln during the Civil War, records his first
impressions of him in a few vivid sentences. "Beyond the experiences of
the journey from Boston to Chicago," says Andrew's biographer, "beyond
even the strain and excitement of those hours in caucus and convention,
was the impression made on him by Lincoln as he saw him for the first
time." Andrew was one of the committee of delegates who went to
Springfield to notify Lincoln of his nomination at Chicago. He and the
other delegates, he says, "saw in a flash that here was a man who was
master of himself. For the first time they understood that he whom they
had supposed to be little more than a loquacious and clever State
politician, had force, insight, conscience; that their misgivings were
vain.... My eyes were never visited with the vision of a human face in
which more transparent honesty and more benignant kindness were combined
with more of the intellect and firmness which belong to masculine
humanity. I would trust my case with the honesty and intellect and heart
and brain of Abraham Lincoln as a lawyer; and I would trust my country's
cause in the care of Abraham Lincoln as its chief magistrate, while the
wind blows and the water runs."

Dr. J.G. Holland gives a vivid picture of Lincoln's reception of the
exciting news. "In the little city of Springfield," says Dr. Holland,
"in the heart of Illinois, two hundred miles from where these exciting
events were in progress, sat Abraham Lincoln, in constant telegraphic
communication with his friends in Chicago. He was apprised of the
results of every ballot, and with some of his friends sat in the
'Journal' office receiving and commenting upon the dispatches. It was
one of the decisive moments of his life--a moment on which hung his fate
as a public man, his place in history. He fully appreciated the
momentous results of the convention to himself and the nation, and
foresaw the nature of the great struggle which his nomination and
election would inaugurate. At last, in the midst of intense excitement,
a messenger from the telegraph office entered with the decisive dispatch
in his hand. Without handing it to anyone, he took his way solemnly to
the side of Mr. Lincoln, and said: 'The convention has made a
nomination, and Mr. Seward is--the second man on the list.' Then he
jumped upon the editorial table and shouted, 'Gentlemen, I propose three
cheers for Abraham Lincoln, the next President of the United States!'
and the call was boisterously responded to. He then handed the dispatch
to Mr. Lincoln, who read it in silence, and then aloud. After exchanging
greetings and receiving congratulations from those around him, he strove
to get out of the crowd, and as he moved off he remarked to those near
him: 'Well, there is a little woman who will be interested in this news,
and I will go home and tell her,' and he hurried on, with the crowd
following and cheering."

As soon as the news spread about Springfield a salute of a hundred guns
was fired, and during the afternoon Lincoln's friends and neighbors
thronged his house to tender their congratulations and express their
joy. "In the evening," says one narrator, "the State House was thrown
open and a most enthusiastic meeting held by the Republicans. At the
close they marched in a body to the Lincoln mansion and called for the
nominee. Mr. Lincoln appeared, and after a brief, modest, and hearty
speech, invited as many as could get into the house to enter; the crowd
responding that after the fourth of March they would give him a larger
house. The people did not retire until a late hour, and then moved off
reluctantly, leaving the excited household to their rest."

Among the more significant and intimate of the personal reminiscences of
Lincoln are those by Mr. Leonard W. Volk, the distinguished sculptor
already mentioned in these pages. Mr. Volk arrived in Springfield on the
day of Lincoln's nomination, and had some unusually interesting
conversation with him. He had already, only a month before, made the
life-mask of Lincoln that became so well and favorably known. It is one
of the last representations showing him without a beard. The
circumstances and incidents attending the taking of this life-mask, as
narrated by Mr. Volk, are well worth reproducing here. "One morning in
April, 1860," says Mr. Volk, "I noticed in the paper that Abraham
Lincoln was in Chicago,--retained as one of the counsel in a 'Sand-bar'
trial in which the Michigan Central Railroad was either plaintiff or
defendant. I at once decided to remind him of his promise to sit to me,
made two years before. I found him in the United States District Court
room, his feet on the edge of the table, and his long dark hair standing
out at every imaginable angle. He was surrounded by a group of lawyers,
such as James F. Joy, Isaac N. Arnold, Thomas Hoyne, and others. Mr.
Arnold obtained his attention in my behalf, when he instantly arose and
met me outside the rail, recognizing me at once with his usual grip of
both hands. He remembered his promise, and said, in answer to my
question, that he expected to be detained by the case for a week. He
added: 'I shall be glad to give you the sittings. When shall I come, and
how long will you need me each time?' Just after breakfast every morning
would, he said, suit him the best, and he could remain till court opened
at ten o'clock. I answered that I would be ready for him the next
morning (Thursday). 'Very well, Mr. Volk, I will be there, and I'll go
to a barber and have my hair cut before I come.' I requested him not to
let the barber cut it too short, and said I would rather he would leave
it as it was; but to this he would not consent.... He was on hand
promptly at the time appointed; indeed, he never failed to be on time.
My studio was in the fifth story. There were no elevators in those days,
and I soon learned to distinguish his step on the stairs, and am sure he
frequently came up two, if not three, steps at a stride. When he sat
down the first time in that hard, wooden, low-armed chair which I still
possess, and which has been occupied by Douglas, Seward, and Generals
Grant and Dix, he said, 'Mr. Volk, I have never sat before to sculptor
or painter--only for daguerreotypes and photographs. What shall I do?' I
told him I would only take the measurements of his head and shoulders
that time, and that the next morning I would make a cast of his face,
which would save him a number of sittings. He stood up against the wall,
and I made a mark above his head, and then measured up to it from the
floor and said: 'You are just twelve inches taller than Judge Douglas;
that is, just six feet four inches.'

"Before commencing the cast next morning, and knowing Mr. Lincoln's
fondness for a story, I told him one in order to remove what I thought
an apprehensive expression--as though he feared the operation might be
dangerous. He sat naturally in the chair when I made the cast, and saw
every move I made in a mirror opposite, as I put the plaster on without
interference with his eyesight or his free breathing through the
nostrils. It was about an hour before the mould was ready to be removed,
and being all in one piece, with both ears perfectly taken, it clung
pretty hard, as the cheek-bones were higher than the jaws at the lobe of
the ear. He bent his head low, and worked the cast off without breaking
or injury; it hurt a little, as a few hairs of the tender temples pulled
out with the plaster and made his eyes water.

"He entered my studio on Sunday morning, remarking that a friend at the
hotel (Tremont House) had invited him to go to church, 'but,' said Mr.
Lincoln, 'I thought I'd rather come and sit for the bust. The fact is,'
he continued, 'I don't like to hear cut-and-dried sermons. No--when I
hear a man preach, I like to see him act as _if he were fighting bees_!'
And he extended his long arms, at the same time suiting the action to
the words. He gave me on this day a long sitting of more than four
hours, and when it was concluded we went to our family apartment to look
at a collection of photographs which I had made in 1855-6-7 in Rome and
Florence. While sitting in the rocking-chair, he took my little son on
his lap and spoke kindly to him, asking his name, age, etc. I held the
photographs up and explained them to him; but I noticed a growing
weariness, and his eyelids closed occasionally as if he were sleepy, or
were thinking of something besides Grecian and Roman statuary and
architecture. Finally he said, 'These things must be very interesting to
you, Mr. Volk; but the truth is, I don't know much of history, and all I
do know of it I have learned from law books.'

"The sittings were continued daily till the Thursday following; and
during their continuance he would talk almost unceasingly, telling some
of the funniest and most laughable of stories, but he talked little of
politics or religion during these sittings. He said, 'I am bored nearly
every time I sit down to a public dining-table by some one pitching into
me on politics.' Many people, presumably political aspirants with an eye
to future prospects, besieged my door for interviews, but I made it a
rule to keep it locked, and I think Mr. Lincoln appreciated the
precaution. On our last sitting I noticed that Mr. Lincoln was in
something of a hurry. I had finished the head, but desired to represent
his breast and brawny shoulders as nature presented them; so he stripped
off his coat, waistcoat, shirt, cravat, and collar, threw them on a
chair, pulled his undershirt down a short distance, tying the sleeves
behind him, and stood up without a murmur for an hour or so. I then said
I had done, and was a thousand times obliged to him for his promptness
and patience, and offered to assist him to re-dress, but he said, 'No, I
can do it better alone.' I kept at my work without looking toward him,
wishing to catch the form as accurately as possible while it was fresh
in my memory. He left hurriedly, saying he had an engagement, and with a
cordial 'Good-bye! I will see you again soon,' passed out. A few minutes
after, I recognized his steps rapidly returning. The door opened and in
he came, exclaiming, 'Hello, Mr. Volk! I got down on the sidewalk, and
found I had forgotten to put on my undershirt, and thought it wouldn't
do to go through the streets this way.' Sure enough, there were the
sleeves of that garment dangling below the skirts of his broadcloth
frock-coat! I went at once to his assistance, and helped to undress and
re-dress him all right, and out he went with a hearty laugh at the
absurdity of the thing."

Returning to the visit with Lincoln at Springfield on the day of his
nomination, Mr. Volk says. "The afternoon was lovely--bright and sunny,
neither too warm nor too cool; the grass, trees, and the hosts of
blooming roses, so profuse in Springfield, appeared to be vying with
the ringing bells and waving flags. I went straight to Mr. Lincoln's
unpretentious little two-story house. He saw me from his door or window
coming down the street, and as I entered the gate he was on the platform
in front of the door, and quite alone. His face looked radiant. I
exclaimed: 'I am the first man from Chicago, I believe, who has the
honor of congratulating you on your nomination for President.' Then
those two great hands took both of mine with a grasp never to be
forgotten. And while shaking them, I said: 'Now that you will doubtless
be the next President of the United States, I want to make a statue of
you, and shall do my best to do you justice.' Said he, 'I don't doubt
it, for I have come to the conclusion that you are an honest man,' and
with that greeting I thought my hands were in a fair way of being
crushed. I was invited into the parlor, and soon Mrs. Lincoln entered,
holding a rose-bouquet in her hand, which she presented to me after the
introduction; and in return I gave her a cabinet-size bust of her
husband, which I had modelled from the large one, and happened to have
with me. Before leaving the house it was arranged that Mr. Lincoln would
give Saturday forenoon to obtaining full-length photographs to serve me
for the proposed statue. On Saturday evening, the committee appointed by
the convention to notify Mr. Lincoln formally of his nomination, headed
by Mr. Ashmun of Massachusetts, reached Springfield by special train,
bearing a large number of people, two or three hundred of whom carried
rails on their shoulders, marching in military style from the train to
the old State House Hall of Representatives, where they stacked them
like muskets. The evening was beautiful and clear, and the entire
population was astir. The bells pealed, flags waved, and cannon
thundered forth the triumphant nomination of Springfield's distinguished
citizen. The bonfires blazed brightly, and especially in front of that
prim-looking white house on Eighth street. The committee and the vast
crowd following it passed in at the front door, and made their exit
through the kitchen door in the rear, Mr. Lincoln giving them all a
hearty shake of the hand as they passed him in the parlor. By
appointment, I was to cast Mr. Lincoln's hands on the Sunday following
this memorable Saturday, at nine A.M. I found him ready, but he looked
more grave and serious than he had appeared on the previous days. I
wished him to hold something in his right hand, and he looked for a
piece of pasteboard, but could find none. I told him a round stick would
do as well as anything. Thereupon he went to the wood-shed, and I heard
the saw go, and he soon returned to the dining-room (where I did the
work), whittling off the end of a piece of broom-handle. I remarked to
him that he need not whittle off the edges. 'Oh, well,' said he, 'I
thought I would like to have it nice.' When I had successfully cast the
mould of the right hand, I began the left, pausing a few moments to hear
Mr. Lincoln tell me about a scar on the thumb. 'You have heard that they
call me a rail-splitter, and you saw them carrying rails in the
procession Saturday evening; well, it is true that I did split rails,
and one day, while I was sharpening a wedge on a log, the axe glanced
and nearly took my thumb off, and there is the scar, you see.' The right
hand appeared swollen as compared with the left, on account of excessive
hand-shaking the evening before; this difference is distinctly shown in
the cast. That Sunday evening I returned to Chicago with the moulds of
his hands, three photographic negatives of him, the identical black
alpaca campaign suit of 1858, and a pair of Lynn newly-made pegged
boots. The clothes were all burned up in the great Chicago fire. The
casts of the face and hands I saved by taking them with me to Rome, and
they have crossed the sea four times. The last time I saw Mr. Lincoln
was in January, 1861, at his house in Springfield. His little parlor
was full of friends and politicians. He introduced me to them all, and
remarked to me aside that since he had sat to me for his bust, eight or
nine months before, he had lost forty pounds in weight. This was easily
perceptible, for the lines of his jaws were very sharply defined through
the short beard which he was allowing to grow. Then he turned to the
company and explained in a general way that I had made a bust of him
before his nomination, and that he was then giving daily sittings to
another sculptor; that he had sat to him for a week or more, but could
not see the likeness, though he might yet bring it out. 'But,' continued
Mr. Lincoln, 'in two or three days after Mr. Volk began my bust, there
was the animal himself!' And this was about the last, if not the last,
remark I ever heard him utter, except the good-bye and his good wishes
for my success."

Saturday, May 19, the committee of the Chicago convention arrived at
Springfield to notify Mr. Lincoln of his nomination. The Hon. George
Ashmun, as chairman of the committee, delivered the formal address, to
which Lincoln listened with dignity, but with an air of profound
sadness, as though the trials in store for him had already "cast their
shadows before." In response to the address, Lincoln said:

     MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE:--I tender to you and
     through you to the Republican National convention, and all the
     people represented in it, my profoundest thanks for the high honor
     done me, which you now formally announce. Deeply and even painfully
     sensible of the great responsibility which is inseparable from this
     high honor--a responsibility which I could almost wish had fallen
     upon some one of the far more eminent men and experienced statesmen
     whose distinguished names were before the convention--I shall, by
     your leave, consider more fully the resolutions of the convention,
     denominated the platform, and, without unnecessary and
     unreasonable delay, respond to you, Mr. Chairman, in writing, not
     doubting that the platform will be found satisfactory, and the
     nomination gratefully accepted. And now I will not longer defer the
     pleasure of taking you, and each of you, by the hand.

A letter was then handed Lincoln containing the official notice,
accompanied by the resolutions of the convention. To this letter he
replied, a few days later, as follows:

     SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, MAY 23, 1860.

     SIR--I accept the nomination tendered to me by the convention over
     which you presided, of which I am formally apprised in a letter of
     yourself and others acting as a Committee of the Convention for
     that purpose. The declaration of principles and sentiments which
     accompanies your letter meets my approval, and it shall be my care
     not to violate it, or disregard it in any part. Imploring the
     assistance of Divine Providence, and with due regard to the views
     and feelings of all who were represented in the convention, to the
     rights of all the States and Territories and people of the nation,
     to the inviolability of the Constitution, and the perpetual union,
     harmony and prosperity of all, I am most happy to co-operate for
     the practical success of the principles declared by the convention.

In June Mr. Douglas was nominated for the Presidency by the Democratic
convention, which met at Baltimore on the 18th. Mr. Douglas made a
personal canvass, speaking in most of the states, North and South, and
exerting all the powers of which he was master to win success. The
campaign, as Mr. Arnold states, "has had no parallel. The enthusiasm of
the people was like a great conflagration, like a prairie fire before a
wild tornado. A little more than twenty years had passed since Owen
Lovejoy, brother of Elijah Lovejoy, on the bank of the Mississippi,
kneeling on the turf not then green over the grave of the brother who
had been killed for his fidelity to freedom, had sworn eternal war
against slavery. From that time on, he and his associate Abolitionists
had gone forth preaching their crusade against oppression, with hearts
of fire and tongues of lightning; and now the consummation was to be
realized of a President elected on the distinct ground of opposition to
the extension of slavery. For years the hatred of that institution had
been growing and gathering force. Whittier, Bryant, Lowell, Longfellow,
and others, had written the lyrics of liberty; the graphic pen of Mrs.
Stowe, in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' had painted the cruelties of the overseer
and the slaveholder; but the acts of slaveholders themselves did more to
promote the growth of anti-slavery than all other causes. The
persecutions of Abolitionists in the South; the harshness and cruelty
attending the execution of the fugitive laws; the brutality of Brooks in
knocking down, on the floor of the Senate, Charles Sumner, for words
spoken in debate: these and many other outrages had fired the hearts of
the people of the free States against this barbarous institution.
Beecher, Phillips, Channing, Sumner, and Seward, with their eloquence;
Chase with his logic; Lincoln, with his appeals to the principles of the
Declaration of Independence, and to the opinions of the founders of the
republic, his clear statements, his apt illustrations, and, above all,
his wise moderation,--all had swelled the voice of the people, which
found expression through the ballot-box, and which declared that slavery
should go no further."

Among the various reminiscences of the memorable Presidential campaign
of 1860, some of peculiar interest are furnished by Dr. Newton Bateman,
President of Knox College, Illinois. Dr. Bateman had known Lincoln since
1842; and from the year 1858, when Dr. Bateman was elected State
Superintendent of Public Instruction in Illinois, to the close of
Lincoln's residence in Springfield in 1861, they saw each other daily.
The testimony of so intimate an acquaintance, and one so well qualified
to judge the character and abilities of men, is of unusual value; and it
is worth noting that Dr. Bateman remarks that, while he was always an
admirer of Lincoln, yet the greatness of the man grew upon him as the
years pass by. In his professional and public work, says Dr. Bateman,
Lincoln not only proved himself equal to every emergency and to every
successive task, but made, from the outset, the impression upon the mind
of those who knew him of being in possession of great reserve force.
Perhaps the secret of this lies in part in the fact that he was
accustomed to ponder deeply upon the ultimate principles of government
and society, and strove to base his discussions upon the firm ground of
ethical truth. Says Dr. Bateman, "He was the saddest man I ever knew."
It was a necessity of his nature to be much alone; and he said that all
his serious work--by which he meant the process of getting down to the
bed-rock of first principles--must be done in solitude. Upon one
occasion he called Dr. Bateman to him, and spent more than two hours in
earnest conversation upon the most serious themes. At the close, Dr.
Bateman said: "I did not know, Mr. Lincoln, that it was your habit to
think so deeply upon this class of subjects." "Didn't you?" said Mr.
Lincoln. "I can almost say that I think of _nothing else_."

One day there entered Lincoln's room a tall Southerner, a Colonel
Somebody from Mississippi, whose eye's hard glitter spoke supercilious
distrust and whose stiff bearing betokened suppressed hostility. It was
beautiful, says Dr. Bateman, to see the cold flash of the Southerner's
dark eye yield to a warmer glow, and the haughty constraint melt into
frank good-nature, under the influence of Lincoln's words of simple
earnestness and unaffected cordiality. They got so far in half an hour
that Lincoln could say, in his hearty way: "Colonel, how tall are you?"
"Well, taller than you, Mr. Lincoln," replied the Mississippian. "You
are mistaken there," retorted Lincoln. "Dr. Bateman, will you measure
us?" "You will have to permit me to stand on a chair for that,"
responded the Doctor. So a big book was adjusted above the head of each,
and pencil marks made at the respective points of contact with the white
wall. Lincoln's altitude, as thus indicated, was a quarter inch above
that of the Colonel. "I knew it," said Lincoln. "They raise tall men
down in Mississippi, but you go home and tell your folks that _Old Abe
tops you a little_." The Colonel went away much mollified and impressed.
"My God!" said he to Dr. Bateman, as he went out. "There's going to be
war; but could my people know what I have learned within the last hour,
there need be no war."

During the Presidential campaign, the vote of the city of Springfield
was canvassed house by house. There were at that time twenty-three
clergymen residing in the city (not all pastors). All but three of these
signified their intention to vote _against_ Lincoln. This fact seemed to
grieve him somewhat. Soon after, in conversing upon the subject with Dr.
Bateman, he said, as if thinking aloud: "These gentlemen know that Judge
Douglas does not care a cent whether slavery in the territories is voted
up or voted down, for he has repeatedly told them so. They know that I
_do_ care." Then, drawing from a breast pocket a well-thumbed copy of
the New Testament, he added, after a pause, tapping upon the book with
his bony finger: "I do not so understand this book."

The poet Bryant was conspicuous among the prominent Eastern men who
favored Lincoln's nomination for the Presidency in 1860. He had
introduced Lincoln to the people of New York at the Cooper Institute
meeting of the previous winter, and was a firm believer in the Western
politician. After the convention Mr. Bryant wrote Lincoln a most
friendly and timely letter, full of good feeling and of wise advice.
Especially did he warn Lincoln to be cautious in committing himself to
any specific policy, or making pledges or engagements of any kind. Mr.
Bryant's letter contained much political wisdom, and was written in that
scholarly style for which he was distinguished. But it could not surpass
the simple dignity and grace of Lincoln's reply:

     SPRINGFIELD, ILL., JUNE 28, 1860.

     Please accept my thanks for the honor done me by your kind letter
     of the 16th. I appreciate the danger against which you would guard
     me; nor am I wanting in the _purpose_ to avoid it. I thank you for
     the additional strength your words give me to maintain that
     purpose.

     Your friend and servant, A. LINCOLN.

Mr. A.J. Grover relates that about this time he met Lincoln, and had a
memorable conversation with him on the Fugitive Slave Law. Lincoln
detested this law, but argued that until it was declared
unconstitutional it must be obeyed. This was a short time after the
rescue of a fugitive slave at Ottawa, Illinois, by John Hossack, James
Stout, Major Campbell, and others, after Judge John D. Caton, acting as
United States Commissioner, had given his decision remanding him to the
custody of his alleged owner; and the rescuers were either in prison or
out on bail, awaiting their trials. Says Mr. Grover: "When Mr. Lincoln
had finished his argument I said, 'Constitutional or not, I will never
obey the Fugitive Slave Law. I would have done as Hossack and Stout and
Campbell did at Ottawa. I will never catch and return slaves in
obedience to any law or constitution. I do not believe a man's liberty
can be taken from him constitutionally without a trial by jury. I
believe the law to be not only unconstitutional, but most inhuman.'
'Oh,' said Mr. Lincoln, and I shall never forget his earnestness as he
emphasized it by striking his hand on his knee, 'it is ungodly! it is
ungodly! no doubt it is ungodly! but it is the law of the land, and we
must obey it as we find it.' I said: 'Mr. Lincoln, how often have you
sworn to support the Constitution? We propose to elect you President.
How would you look taking an oath to support what you declare is an
ungodly Constitution, and asking God to help you?' He felt the force of
the question, and, inclining his head forward and running his fingers
through his hair several times, seemed lost in reflection; then he
placed his hand upon my knee and said, very earnestly: 'Grover, it's no
use to be always _looking up these hard spots_!'" In the terrible years
then almost upon him, Lincoln found many such "hard spots" without
taking the trouble to look them up.




CHAPTER XIV


     Lincoln Chosen President--The Election of 1860--The Waiting-time at
     Springfield--A Deluge of Visitors--Various Impressions of the
     President-elect--Some Queer Callers--Looking over the Situation
     with Friends--Talks about the Cabinet--Thurlow Weed's Visit to
     Springfield--The Serious Aspect of National Affairs--The South in
     Rebellion--Treason at the National Capital--Lincoln's Farewell
     Visit to his Mother--The Old Sign, "Lincoln & Herndon"--The Last
     Day at Springfield--Farewell Speech to Friends and Neighbors--Off
     for the Capital--The Journey to Washington--Receptions and Speeches
     along the Route--At Cincinnati: A Hitherto Unpublished Speech by
     Lincoln--At Cleveland: Personal Descriptions of Mr. and Mrs.
     Lincoln--At New York City: Impressions of the New President--Perils
     of the Journey--The Baltimore Plot--Change of Route--Arrival at the
     Capital.

The Presidential campaign of 1860, with its excitements and struggles,
its "Wide-awake" clubs and boisterous enthusiasm throughout the North,
and its bitter and threatening character throughout the South, was at
last ended; and on the 6th of November Abraham Lincoln was elected
President of the United States.[A] His cause had been aided not a little
by an unexpected division in the Democratic party. Douglas had been
nominated for the Presidency by this party in its convention at
Baltimore on the 18th of June; but he was bitterly opposed by the
extreme slavery element of the Democracy, and this faction held a
convention of its own at Baltimore ten days later and nominated for
President John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky. There was still another
party, though a very minor one, in the field--the "Constitutional Union
Party," based chiefly on a desire to avoid the issue of slavery in
national politics--which on the 9th of May had nominated John Bell of
Tennessee as its candidate for the Presidency, with Edward Everett of
Massachusetts for the Vice-Presidency. There were thus four tickets in
the field--the Republican, including if not representing the
anti-slavery element in the North; the Democratic, which was pro-slavery
in its tendencies but had so far failed to satisfy the Southern
wing--now grown alarmed and restless at the growth and tendencies of the
Republican party--that this element nominated as a third ticket an
out-and-out pro-slavery candidate; and (fourth) a "Constitutional Union"
ticket, representing a well-meant but fatuous desire to keep slavery out
of national politics altogether.

This eventful contest was therefore determined largely on sectional
lines, with slavery as the great underlying issue. Lincoln's
gratification at his election was not untempered with disappointments.
While he had a substantial majority of the electoral vote (180 to 123),
the popular vote was toward a million (930,170), more against him than
for him. Fifteen States gave him no electoral vote, and in nine States'
he received not a single popular vote. The slave States--"the Solid
South"--were squarely against him. Lincoln saw the significance of this,
and it filled him with regret and apprehension. But he faced the future
without dismay, and with a calm resolve to do his duty. With all his
hatred of slavery, loyalty to the Constitution had always been paramount
in his mind; and those who knew him best never doubted that it would
continue so.

Lincoln took no active part in the campaign, preferring to remain
quietly at his home in Springfield. Scarcely was the election decided
than he was beset with visitors from all parts of the country, who came
to gratify curiosity or solicit personal favors of the incoming
President. The throng became at last so great, and interfered so much
with the comfort of Lincoln's home, that the Executive Chamber in the
State House was set apart as his reception room. Here he met all who
chose to come--"the millionaire and the menial, the priest and the
politician, men, women, and children, old friends and new friends, those
who called for love and those who sought for office. From morning until
night this was his occupation; and he performed it with conscientious
care and the most unwearying patience." The situation at the Lincoln
home at this time, and the spirit prevailing there, is well depicted by
one of these callers, Mr. R.C. McCormick, whose interesting account of
his meeting with Lincoln in New York City has already been quoted in
these pages. "In January, 1861," says Mr. McCormick, "at the instance of
various friends in New York who wished a position in the Cabinet for a
prominent Kentuckian, I went to Springfield armed with documents for his
consideration. I remained there a week or more, and was at the Lincoln
cottage daily. Of the numerous formal and informal interviews that I
witnessed, I remember all with the sincerest pleasure. I never found the
man upon whom rested the great responsibilities of the nation impatient
or ill-humored. The plainest and most tedious visitors were made welcome
and happy in his presence; the poor commanded as much of his time as the
rich. His recognition of old friends and companions in frontier life,
whom many elevated as he had been would have found it convenient to
forget, was especially hearty. His correspondence was already immense,
and the town was alive with cabinet-makers and office-seekers; but he
met all with a calm temper." Mr. Don Piatt relates that he had met
Lincoln during the Presidential campaign, and had been invited to visit
Springfield. He did so, and was asked to supper at the Lincoln house.
"It was a plain, comfortable structure," says Mr. Piatt, "and the supper
was mainly of cake, pies, and chickens, the last evidently killed in the
morning, to be eaten that evening. After the supper we sat far into the
night, talking over the situation. Mr. Lincoln was the homeliest man I
ever saw. His body seemed to me a huge skeleton in clothes. Tall as he
was, his hands and feet looked out of proportion, so long and clumsy
were they. Every movement was awkward in the extreme. He sat with one
leg thrown over the other, and the pendent foot swung almost to the
floor. And all the while two little boys, his sons, clambered over those
legs, patted his cheeks, pulled his nose, and poked their fingers in his
eyes, without reprimand. He had a face that defied artistic skill to
soften or idealize. It was capable of few expressions, but those were
extremely striking. When in repose, his face was dull, heavy, and
repellent. It brightened like a lit lantern when animated. His dull eyes
would fairly sparkle with fun, or express as kindly a look as I ever
saw, when moved by some matter of human interest."

Hon. George W. Julian, of Indiana, was another visitor to the Lincoln
home in January. He says: "I had a curiosity to see the famous
'rail-splitter,' as he was then familiarly called, and as a member-elect
of the Thirty-seventh Congress I desired to form some acquaintance with
the man who was to play so conspicuous a part in the impending national
crisis. On meeting him I found him far better looking than the campaign
pictures had represented him. His face, when lighted up in conversation,
was not unhandsome, and the kindly and winning tones of his voice
pleaded for him like the smile that played about his rugged features.
He was full of anecdote and humor, and readily found his way to the
hearts of those who enjoyed a welcome to his fireside. His face,
however, was sometimes marked by that touching expression of sadness
which became so noticeable in the years following. On the subject of
slavery I was gratified to find him less reserved and more emphatic than
I had expected. I was much pleased with our first Republican Executive,
and I returned home more fully inspired than ever with the purpose to
sustain him to the utmost in facing the duties of his great office."

The wide range of these callers and their diverse errands are
illustrated by examples furnished by Mr. Lamon. Two tall, ungainly
fellows,--"Suckers," as they were called,--entered Lincoln's room one
day while he was engaged in conversation with a friend. They lingered
bashfully near the door, and Lincoln, noticing their embarrassment, rose
and said good-naturedly, "How do you do, my good fellows? What can I do
for you? Will you sit down?" The spokesman of the pair, the shorter of
the two, declined to sit, and explained the object of the call. He had
had a talk about the relative height of Lincoln and his companion, and
had asserted his belief that they were of exactly the same height. He
had come in to verify his judgment. Lincoln smiled, then got his cane,
and placing the end of it upon the wall said, "Here, young man, come
under here!" The young man came under the cane, as Lincoln held it, and
when it was perfectly adjusted to his height Lincoln said, "Now come out
and hold up the cane." This he did, while Lincoln stepped under. Rubbing
his head back and forth to see that it worked easily under the
measurement, he stepped out, and declared that the young man had guessed
with remarkable accuracy--that he and the tall fellow were exactly of
the same height. Then he shook hands with them and sent them on their
way. The next caller was a very different person--an old and modestly
dressed woman who tried to explain that she knew Lincoln. As he did not
at first recognize her, she tried to recall to his memory certain
incidents connected with his rides upon the circuit--especially his
dining at her house upon the road at different times. Then he remembered
her and her home. Having fixed her own place in his recollection, she
tried to recall to him a certain scanty dinner of bread and milk that he
once ate at her house. He could not remember it--on the contrary, he
only remembered that he had always fared well at her house. "Well," said
she, "one day you came along after we had got through dinner, and we had
eaten up everything, and I could give you nothing but a bowl of bread
and milk; you ate it, and when you got up you said it was _good enough
for the President of the United States_." The good woman, remembering
the remark, had come in from the country, making a journey of eight or
ten miles, to relate to Lincoln this incident, which in her mind had
doubtless taken the form of prophecy. Lincoln placed her at her ease,
chatted with her of old times, and dismissed her in the most happy and
complacent frame of mind.

Among the judicious friends of Lincoln who gave him timely counsel at
this important epoch of his life was Judge John D. Caton, who, though a
Democrat, was a far-sighted man who saw plainly the tendency of
political affairs and was anxious for the preservation of the Union. "I
met Lincoln in Springfield," writes Judge Caton, "and we had a
conference in the law-library. I told him it was plain that he had a war
on his hands; that there was a determination on the part of the South to
secede from the Union, and that there would be throughout the North an
equal determination to maintain the Union. I advised him to avoid
bringing on the war by precipitate action, but let the Southerners begin
it; to forbear as long as forbearance could be tolerated, in order to
unite the North the more effectually to support his hands in the
struggle that was certain to come; that by such a course the great body
of the people of the North, of all parties, would come to his support.
Mr. Lincoln listened intently, and replied that he foresaw that the
struggle was inevitable, but that it would be his desire and effort to
unite the people in support of the Government and for the maintenance of
the Union; that he was aware that no single party could sustain him
successfully, and that he must rely upon the great masses of the people
of all parties, and he would try to pursue such a course as would secure
their support. The interview continued perhaps an hour."

Judge David Davis, a most intimate and confidential friend of Lincoln,
states that the latter was firmly determined to appoint "Democrats and
Republicans alike to office." Mr. Lamon corroborates the statement,
pointedly remarking: "He felt that his strength lay in conciliation at
the outset; that was his ruling conviction during all those months of
preparation for the great task before him. It showed itself not only in
the appointments which he sought to make but in those which he did make.
Harboring no jealousies, entertaining no fears concerning his personal
interests in the future, he called around him the most powerful of his
late rivals--Seward, Chase, Bates--and unhesitatingly gave into their
hands powers which most Presidents would have shrunk from committing to
their equals, and much more to their superiors, in the conduct of public
affairs." In a noted instance where the most powerful influence was
brought to bear upon Lincoln to induce him to make what he regarded as
an unworthy appointment, he exclaimed: "All that I am in the world--the
Presidency and all else--I owe to the opinion of me which the people
express when they call me 'Honest Old Abe.' Now, what would they think
of their _honest_ Abe if he should make such an appointment as the one
proposed?"

Hon. Leonard Swett, who knew Lincoln from 1848 to the time of his death,
and had "traveled the circuit" with him in Illinois, relates that soon
after the election he and Judge Davis advised Lincoln to consult Thurlow
Weed regarding the formation of the Cabinet and on political affairs
generally. "Mr. Lincoln asked me," says Mr. Swett, "to write Mr. Weed
and invite him to a conference at Lincoln's house in Springfield. I did
so, and the result was that Judge Davis, Thurlow Weed, and myself spent
a whole day with him in discussing the men and measures of his
administration. At that meeting, which took place in less than a month
after Lincoln's election, or early in December, 1860, Lincoln became
convinced that war was imminent between the North and the South. Mr.
Weed was a very astute man, and had a wonderful knowledge of what was
going on. He told Lincoln of preparations being made in the Southern
States that could mean nothing less than war. It was a serious time with
all of us, of course, but Lincoln took it with the imperturbability that
always distinguished him."

The account given by Thurlow Weed, the veteran New York editor and
journalist, of his visit to Lincoln on this occasion is of peculiar
interest. Mr. Weed remained in Springfield two or three days in close
consultation with the President-elect, the formation of the new Cabinet
being the subject principally discussed. After expressing gratification
at his election, and an apprehension of the dangers which threatened the
incoming administration, says Mr. Weed, in his autobiography, "Mr.
Lincoln remarked, smiling, that he supposed I had had some experience in
cabinet-making; that he had job on hand, and as he had never learned
that trade he was disposed to avail himself of the suggestions of
friends. The question thus opened became the subject of conversation, at
intervals, during that and the following day. I say at intervals,
because many hours were consumed in talking of the public men connected
with former administrations, interspersed, illustrated, and seasoned
pleasantly with Mr. Lincoln's stories, anecdotes, etc. And here I feel
called upon to vindicate Mr. Lincoln, as far as my opportunities and
observation go, from the frequent imputation of telling indelicate and
ribald stories. I saw much of him during his whole Presidential term,
with familiar friends and alone, when he talked without restraint; but I
_never heard him use a profane or indecent word, or tell a story that
might not be repeated in the presence of ladies_."

"Mr. Lincoln observed," continues Mr. Weed, "that the making of a
Cabinet, now that he had it to do, was by no means as easy as he had
supposed; that he had, even before the result of the election was known,
assuming the probability of success, fixed upon the two leading members
of his Cabinet, but that in looking about for suitable men to fill the
other departments he had been much embarrassed, partly from his want of
acquaintance with the prominent men of the day, and partly because he
believed that while the population of the country had immensely
increased _really great men were scarcer than they used to be_.... As
the conversation progressed, Lincoln remarked that he intended to invite
Governor Seward to take the State Department and Governor Chase the
Treasury Department, remarking that aside from their long experience in
public affairs and their eminent fitness they were prominently before
the people and the convention as competitors for the Presidency, each
having higher claims than his own for the place which he was to occupy.
On naming Hon. Gideon Welles as the man he thought of as the
representative of New England in the Cabinet, I remarked that I thought
he could find several New England gentlemen whose selection for a place
in his Cabinet would be more acceptable to the people of New England.
'But,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'we must remember that the Republican party is
constituted of two elements, and that we must have men of Democratic as
well as of Whig antecedents in the Cabinet.' ... In the course of our
conversations Mr. Lincoln remarked that it was particularly pleasant to
him to reflect that he was coming into office unembarrassed by promises.
He owed, he supposed, his exemption from importunities to the
circumstance that his name as a candidate was but a short time before
the people, and that only a few sanguine friends anticipated the
possibility of his nomination. 'I have not,' said he, 'promised an
office to any man, nor have I, but in a single instance, mentally
committed myself to an appointment.'"

"In this way two days passed very pleasantly," says Mr. Weed, "the
conversation being alternately earnest and playful. I wish it were
possible to give, in Mr. Lincoln's amusing but quaint manner, the many
stories, anecdotes, and witticisms with which he interlarded and
enlivened what with almost any of his predecessors in the high office of
President would have been a grave, dry consultation. The great merit of
Mr. Lincoln's stories, like Captain Bunsby's opinion, 'lays in the
application on it.' They always and exactly suited the occasion and the
object, and none to which I ever listened seemed far-fetched or
pointless. I will attempt to repeat one of them. If I have an especial
fondness for any particular luxury, it manifests itself in a remarkable
way when properly made December sausages are placed before me. While at
breakfast, Judge Davis, noticing that, after having been bountifully
served with sausage, like Oliver Twist I wanted some more, said, 'You
seem fond of our Illinois sausages.' To which I responded affirmatively,
adding that I thought the article might be relied on where pork was
cheaper than dogs. 'That,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'reminds me of what
occurred down at Joliet, where a popular grocer supplied all the
villagers with sausages. One Saturday evening, when his grocery was
filled with customers for whom he and his boys were busily engaged in
weighing sausages, a neighbor with whom he had had a violent quarrel
that day, came into the grocery and made his way up to the counter
holding by the tail two enormous dead cats which he deliberately threw
on to the counter, saying, 'This makes seven to-day. I'll call around
Monday and get my money for them.'"

       *       *       *       *       *

During the months intervening between his election and his departure for
Washington, Lincoln maintained a keen though quiet watchfulness of the
threatening aspect of affairs at the national capital and throughout the
South. He was careful not to commit himself by needless utterances as to
his future policy; but in all his demeanor, as a friend said, he
displayed the firmness and determination, without the temper, of
Jackson. In December following his election he wrote the following
letters to his intimate friend, Hon. E.B. Washburne, then a member of
Congress from Illinois:

     SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Dec. 13, 1860.

     HON. E.B. WASHBURNE--_My Dear Sir_: Your long letter received.
     Prevent, as far as possible, any of our friends from demoralizing
     themselves and our cause by entertaining propositions for
     compromise of any sort on the slavery extension. There is no
     possible compromise upon it but which puts us under again, and
     leaves us all our work to do over again. Whether it be a Missouri
     line, or Eli Thayer's Popular Sovereignty, it is all the same. Let
     either be done, and immediately filibustering and extending slavery
     recommences. On that point hold firm, as with a chain of steel.

     Yours as ever, A. LINCOLN.


     SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Dec. 21, 1860.

     HON. E.B. WASHBURNE--_My Dear Sir_: Last night I received your
     letter giving an account of your interview with General Scott, and
     for which I thank you. Please present my respects to the General,
     and tell him confidentially that I shall be obliged to him to be as
     well prepared as he can to either _hold_ or retake the forts, as
     the case may require, at and after the inauguration.

     Yours as ever, A. LINCOLN.

The Southern States, led on by South Carolina, which formally severed
its connection with the Union November 17, 1860 (only eleven days after
Lincoln's election), were preparing to dissolve their alliance with the
Free States. Mississippi passed the ordinance of secession January 9,
1861; Florida followed on the 10th; Alabama on the 11th; Georgia on the
19th; Louisiana on the 25th; and Texas on the 1st day of February. The
plans of the seceders went on, unmolested by the Buchanan
administration. Southerners in the Cabinet and in Congress conspired to
deplete the resources of the Government, leaving it helpless to contest
the assumptions of the revolted States. The treasury was deliberately
bankrupted; the ships of the navy were banished to distant ports; the
Northern arsenals were rifled to furnish arms for the seceded States;
the United States forts and armaments on the Southern coast were
delivered into the hands of the enemy, with the exception of Fort
Sumter, which was gallantly held by Major Robert Anderson. While this
system of bold and unscrupulous treachery was carried on by men in the
highest places of trust, the chief executive of the nation remained a
passive spectator. The South was in open rebellion, and the North was
powerless to interfere. The weeks prior to the inauguration of the new
administration dragged slowly along, each day adding fresh cause for
anxiety and alarm.

Amidst these portentous scenes Lincoln, watching them from a distance,
maintained his calm and vigilant attitude. No one knew better than he
the significance of these ominous events that were taking place at the
nation's capital and in the disaffected States; but there was nothing he
could do about them. His time for action had not yet come. He said
little, but enough to show unmistakably what he thought of the situation
and what course he had resolved upon to meet it. As early as December
17, 1860--a little more than a month after his election--in writing to
Thurlow Weed, he said: "_My opinion is that no State can in any way get
out of the Union without the consent of the other States_; and that _it
is the duty of the President to run the machine as it is_." He had been
made the pilot of the ship of State, and his duty and purpose were to
save the vessel.[B] Upon this mighty task were concentrated all the
powers of his intellect and will; and through all the desperate voyage
that followed he never wavered or faltered in his course, from the time
of his supreme resolve, made in the quiet of his country home, to the
hour when

     "From fearful trip the victor ship came in with object won"--

but with her more than heroic but now victorious Captain "fallen cold
and dead" upon her deck.

As the winter wore away, and the time for Lincoln's inauguration as
President drew near, he began making preparation for leaving the
familiar scenes where his life had thus far been spent. Early in
February he made a parting visit to his relatives in Coles County, to
whom in this hour of grave trial and anxiety his heart turned with fresh
yearning. He spent a night at Charleston, where his cousin Dennis Hanks,
and Mrs. Colonel Chapman, a daughter of Dennis, resided. We are told
that "the people crowded by hundreds to see him; and he was serenaded by
'both the string and brass bands of the town, but declined making a
speech." The following morning he passed on to Farmington, to the home
of his beloved step-mother, who was living with her daughter, Mrs.
Moore. Mr. Lamon relates that "the meeting between him and the old lady
was of a most affectionate and tender character. She fondled him as her
own 'Abe,' and he her as his own mother. Then Lincoln and Colonel
Chapman drove to the house of John Hall, who lived on the old 'Lincoln
farm' where Abe split the celebrated rails and fenced in the little
clearing in 1830. Thence they went to the spot where Lincoln's father
was buried. The grave was unmarked and utterly neglected. Lincoln said
he wanted to 'have it enclosed, and a suitable tombstone erected,'" and
gave the necessary instructions for this purpose. "We then returned,"
says Colonel Chapman, "to Farmington, where we found a large crowd of
citizens--nearly all old acquaintances--waiting to see him. His
reception was very enthusiastic, and seemed to gratify him very much.
After taking dinner at his stepsister's (Mrs. Moore's), he returned to
Charleston. Our conversation during the trip was mostly concerning
family affairs. On the way down to Farmington Mr. Lincoln spoke to me of
his step-mother in the most affectionate manner; said she had been his
best friend, and that no son could love a mother more than he loved her.
He also told me of the condition of his father's family at the time he
married his step-mother, and of the change she made in the family, and
of the encouragement he had received from her.... He spoke of his
father, and related some amusing incidents of the bull-dog's biting the
old man on his return from New Orleans; of the old man's escape, when a
boy, from an Indian who was shot by his uncle Mordecai, etc. He spoke of
his uncle Mordecai as being a man of very great natural gifts. At
Charleston we found the house crowded by people wishing to see him. The
crowd finally became so great that it was decided to hold a public
reception at the Town Hall that evening at seven o'clock; until then
Lincoln wished to be left with relatives and friends. At the Town Hall
large numbers of people from the town and surrounding country,
irrespective of party, called to see him. His reception by his old
acquaintances was very gratifying to him."

A characteristic anecdote showing Lincoln's friendship and love of old
associations is told among those relating to his last days at
Springfield. When he was about to leave for Washington he went to the
dingy little law office, sat down on the couch, and said to his
law-partner, Herndon, "Billy, you and I have been together nearly twenty
years, and have never 'passed a word.' Will you let my name stay on the
old sign till I come back from Washington?" The tears started to Mr.
Herndon's eyes. He put out his hand. "Mr. Lincoln," said he, "I will
never have any other partner while you live"; and to the day of the
assassination all the doings of the firm were in the name of "Lincoln &
Herndon."

Governor Bross, of Illinois, relates that he was with Lincoln at
Springfield on the day before he left for Washington. "We were walking
slowly to his home from some place where we had met, and the condition
and prospects of the country, and his vast responsibility in assuming
the position of President, were the subjects of his thoughts. These were
discussed with a breadth and anxiety full of that pathos peculiar to Mr.
Lincoln in his thoughtful moods. He seemed to have a thorough prescience
of the dangers through which his administration was to pass. No
President, he said, had ever had before him such vast and far-reaching
responsibilities. He regarded war--long, bitter, and dreadful--as almost
sure to come. He distinctly and reverently placed his hopes for the
result in the strength and guidance of Him on whom Washington relied in
the darkest hours of the Revolution. He would take the place to which
Providence and his countrymen had called him, and do the best he could
for the integrity and the welfare of the Republic. For himself, he
scarcely expected ever to see Illinois again."

On the morning of the 11th of February, 1861, Lincoln left his home in
Springfield for the scene where he was to spend the most anxious,
toilsome, and painful years of his life. An elaborate programme had been
prepared for his journey to Washington, which was to conduct him through
the principal cities of Indiana, Ohio, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and consume much of the time intervening
before the 4th of March. Special trains, preceded by pilot-engines,
were prepared for his accommodation. He was accompanied at his departure
by his wife and three sons, and a party of friends, including Governor
Yates, ex-Governor Moore, Dr. W.M. Wallace (his brother-in-law), N.B.
Judd, O.H. Browning, Ward H. Lamon, David Davis, Col. E.E. Ellsworth,
and John M. Hay and J.G. Nicolay, the two latter to be his private
secretaries. Mr. Lamon thus graphically describes the incidents of his
leave-taking: "It was a gloomy day; heavy clouds floated overhead, and a
cold rain was falling. Long before eight o'clock a great mass of people
had collected at the railway station. At precisely five minutes before
eight, Mr. Lincoln, preceded by Mr. Wood, emerged from a private room in
the depot building, and passed slowly to the car, the people falling
back respectfully on either side, and as many as possible shaking his
hands. Having reached the train, he ascended the rear platform, and,
facing about to the throng which had closed around him, drew himself up
to his full height, removed his hat, and stood for several seconds in
profound silence. His eye roved sadly over that sea of upturned faces,
as if seeking to read in them the sympathy and friendship which he never
needed more than then. There was an unusual quiver in his lip, and a
still more unusual tear on his shriveled cheek. His solemn manner, his
long silence, were as full of melancholy eloquence as any words he could
have uttered. What did he think of? Of the mighty changes which had
lifted him from the lowest to the highest estate on earth? Of the weary
road which had brought him to this lofty summit? Of his poor mother
lying beneath the tangled underbrush in a distant forest? Of that other
grave in the quiet Concord cemetery? Whatever the character of his
thoughts, it is evident that they were retrospective and sad. To those
who were anxiously waiting to catch his words it seemed long until he
had mastered his feelings sufficiently to speak. At length he began, in
a husky voice, and slowly and impressively delivered his farewell to his
neighbors. Imitating his example, many in the crowd stood with heads
uncovered in the fast-falling rain." Abraham Lincoln spoke none but true
and sincere words, and none more true and heartfelt ever fell from his
lips than these, so laden with pathos, with humility, with a craving for
the sympathy of his friends and the people, and for help above and
beyond all earthly power and love.

     _My Friends_:--No one not in my position can realize the sadness I
     feel at this parting. To this people I owe all that I am. Here I
     have lived more than a quarter of a century. Here my children were
     born, and here one of them lies buried. I know not how soon I shall
     see you again. I go to assume a task more difficult than that which
     has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. He
     never would have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence,
     upon which he at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed
     without the same Divine blessing which sustained him; and on the
     same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support. And I hope
     you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that Divine
     assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but with which success
     is certain. Again I bid you an affectionate farewell.

The route chosen for the journey to Washington, as has been stated, was
a circuitous one. It seems to have been Lincoln's desire to meet
personally the people of the great Northern States upon whose devotion
and loyalty he prophetically felt he must depend for the salvation of
the Republic. Everywhere he met the warmest and most generous greetings
from the throngs assembled at the railway stations in the various cities
through which he passed. At Indianapolis, where the first important halt
was made, cannon announced the arrival of the party, and a royal welcome
was accorded the distinguished traveler. In this, as in the other cities
at which he stopped, Lincoln made a brief address to the people. His
remarks were well considered and temperate; his manner was serious, his
expressions thoughtful and full of feeling. He entreated the people to
be calm and patient; to stand by the principles of liberty inwrought
into the fabric of the Constitution; to have faith in the strength and
reality of the Government, and faith in his purpose to discharge his
duties honestly and impartially. He referred continually to his trust in
the Almighty Ruler of the Universe to guide the nation safely out of its
present peril and perplexity. "I judge," he said at Columbus, "that all
we want is time and patience, and a reliance in that God who has never
forsaken His people." Again, he said: "Let the people on both sides keep
their self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due
time, so will this; and this great nation shall continue to prosper as
heretofore." Alluding more definitely to his purposes for the future, he
declared: "I shall do all that may be in my power to promote a peaceful
settlement of all our difficulties. The man does not live who is more
devoted to peace than I am--none who would do more to preserve it. _But
it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly_."

At the conclusion of Lincoln's speech at Columbus, a tremendous crowd
surged forward to shake his hand. Says Dr. Holland: "Every man in the
crowd was anxious to wrench the hand of Abraham Lincoln. He finally gave
both hands to the work, with great good nature. To quote one of the
reports of the occasion: 'People plunged at his arms with frantic
enthusiasm, and all the infinite variety of shakes, from the wild and
irrepressible pump-handle movement to the dead grip, was executed upon
the devoted _dexter_ and _sinister_ of the President. Some glanced at
his face as they grasped his hand; others invoked the blessings of
heaven upon him; others affectionately gave him their last gasping
assurance of devotion; others, bewildered and furious, with hats crushed
over their eyes, seized his hands in a convulsive grasp, and passed on
as if they had not the remotest idea who, what, or where they were.' The
President at last escaped, and took refuge in the Governor's residence,
although he held a levee at the State House in the evening, where in a
more quiet way he met many prominent citizens."

At Cincinnati, where Lincoln had had so distasteful an experience a few
years before, a magnificent ovation greeted him. The scene is described
by one who witnessed it--Hon. William Henry Smith, at that time a
resident of Cincinnati. "It was on the 13th of February that Mr. Lincoln
reached the Queen City. The day was mild for mid-winter, but the sky was
overcast with clouds, emblematic of the gloom that filled the hearts of
the unnumbered thousands who thronged the streets and covered the
house-tops. Lincoln rode in an open carriage, standing erect with
uncovered head, and steadying himself by holding on to a board fastened
to the front part of the vehicle. A more uncomfortable ride than this,
over the bouldered streets of Cincinnati, cannot well be imagined.
Perhaps a journey over the broken roads of Eastern Russia, in a
tarantass, would secure to the traveler as great a degree of discomfort.
Mr. Lincoln bore it with characteristic patience. His face was very sad,
but he seemed to take a deep interest in everything. It was not without
due consideration that the President-elect touched on the border of a
slave State on his way to the capital. In his speech in reply to the
Mayor of Cincinnati, recognizing the fact that among his auditors were
thousands of Kentuckians, he addressed them directly, calling them
'Friends,' 'Brethren.' He reminded them that when speaking in Fifth
Street Market square in 1859 he had promised that when the Republicans
came into power they would treat the Southern or slave-holding people as
Washington, Jefferson, and Madison treated them; that they would
interfere with their institutions in no way, but abide by all and every
compromise of the Constitution, and 'recognize and bear in mind always
that you have as good hearts in your bosoms as other people, or as we
claim to have, and treat you accordingly.' Then, to emphasize this, he
said--in a passage omitted by Mr. Raymond and all other biographers of
Lincoln--

     And now, fellow-citizens of Ohio, have you who agree in political
     sentiment with him who now addresses you ever entertained other
     sentiments towards our brethren of Kentucky than those I have
     expressed to you? [_Loud and repeated cries of 'No!' 'No!'_] If
     not, then why shall we not, as heretofore, be recognized and
     acknowledged as brethren again, living in peace and harmony, one
     with another? [_Cries of 'We will!'_] I take your response as the
     most reliable evidence that it may be so, along with other
     evidence, trusting to the good sense of the American people, on all
     sides of all rivers in America, under the Providence of God, who
     has never deserted us, that we shall again be brethren, forgetting
     all parties--ignoring all parties.

"This statesmanlike expression of conservative opinion," continues Mr.
Smith, "alarmed some of the Republicans, who feared that the new
President might sell out his party; and steps were taken, later in the
day, to remind him of certain principles deemed fundamental by those who
had been attracted to the party of Freedom. The sequel will show how
this was done, and how successfully Mr. Lincoln met the unexpected
attack. In the evening I called, with other citizens, at Mr. Lincoln's
rooms at the Burnet House to pay my respects. Mr. Lincoln had put off
the melancholy mood that appeared to control him during the day, and was
entertaining those present with genial, even lively, conversation. The
pleasant entertainment was interrupted by the announcement that a
delegation of German workingmen were about to serenade Mr. Lincoln.
Proceeding to the balcony, there were seen the faces of nearly two
thousand of the substantial German citizens who had voted for Mr.
Lincoln because they believed him to be a stout champion of free labor
and free homesteads. The remarks of their spokesman, Frederick
Oberkleine, set forth in clear terms what they expected. He said:

     We, the German free workingmen of Cincinnati, avail ourselves of
     this opportunity to assure you, our chosen Chief Magistrate, of our
     sincere and heartfelt regard. You earned our votes as the champion
     of Free Labor and Free Homesteads. Our vanquished opponents have,
     in recent times, made frequent use of the terms "Workingmen" and
     "Workingmen's Meetings," in order to create an impression that the
     mass of workingmen were _in favor of compromises between the
     interests of free labor and slave labor, by which the victory just
     won would be turned into a defeat_. This is a despicable device of
     dishonest men. _We spurn such compromises. We firmly adhere to the
     principles which directed our votes in your favor. We trust that
     you, the self-reliant because self-made man, will uphold the
     Constitution and the laws against secret treachery and avowed
     treason_. If to this end you should be in need of men, the German
     free workingmen, with others, will rise as one man at your call,
     ready to risk their lives in the effort to maintain the victory
     already won by freedom over slavery.

"This was bringing the rugged issue boldly to the front, and challenging
the President-elect to meet the issue or risk the loss of the support of
an important section of his own party. Oberkleine spoke with great
effect, but the remarks were hardly his own. Some abler man had put into
his mouth these significant words. Mr. Lincoln replied, very
deliberately, but without hesitation, as follows:

     MR. CHAIRMAN:--I thank you, and those you represent, for the
     compliment paid me by the tender of this address. In so far as
     there is an allusion to our present national difficulty, and the
     suggestion of the views of the gentlemen who present this address,
     I beg you will excuse me from entering particularly upon it. I deem
     it due to myself and the whole country, in the present
     extraordinary condition of the country and of public opinion, that
     I should wait and see the last development of public opinion before
     I give my views or express myself at the time of the inauguration.
     I hope at that time to be false to nothing you have been taught to
     expect of me. [_Cheers_.]

     I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, and with the address of your
     constituents, in the declaration that workingmen are the basis of
     all governments. That remark is due to them more than to any other
     class, for the reason that there are more of them than of any other
     class. And as your address is presented to me not only on behalf of
     workingmen, but especially of Germans, I may say a word as to
     classes. I hold that the value of life is to improve one's
     condition. Whatever is calculated to advance the condition of the
     honest, struggling laboring man, so far as my judgment will enable
     me to judge of a correct thing, I am for that thing.

     An allusion has been made to the Homestead Law. I think it worthy
     of consideration, and that the wild lands of the country should be
     distributed so that every man should have the means and opportunity
     of benefiting his condition. [_Cheers_.] I have said that I do not
     desire to enter into details, nor will I.

     In regard to Germans and foreigners, I esteem foreigners no better
     than other people--nor any worse. [_Laughter and cheers_.] They are
     all of the great family of men, and if there is one shackle upon
     any of them it would be far better to lift the load from them than
     to pile additional loads upon them. [_Cheers_.] And inasmuch as the
     continent of America is comparatively a new country, and the other
     countries of the world are old countries, there is more room here,
     comparatively speaking, than there is elsewhere; and if they can
     better their condition by leaving their old homes, there is nothing
     in my heart to forbid them coming, and I bid them all God speed.
     [_Cheers_.] Again, gentlemen, thanking you for your address, I bid
     you good night.

"If anyone," says Mr. Smith, "had expected to trap Mr. Lincoln into
imprudent utterances, or the indulgence of the rhetoric of a demagogue,
this admirable reply showed how completely they were disappointed. The
preservation of this speech is due to my accidental presence. The
visitation of the Germans was not on the programme, and none of the
representatives of the press charged with the duty of reporting the
events of the day were present. Observing this, I took short-hand notes
on the envelope of an old letter loaned me for the occasion, and
afterwards wrote them out. The words of Mr. Lincoln, exactly as spoken,
are given above."

At Cleveland the party remained over for a day, and Lincoln was greeted
with the usual friendly enthusiasm. An immense crowd met him at the
depot, and he was escorted to the Weddell House, where a reception was
given him in the evening. Hon. A.G. Riddle, then a resident of
Cleveland, and a newly elected member of the Congress which was to share
with Lincoln the burdens and responsibilities of the Civil War, was
present on that occasion, and furnishes the following interesting
personal recollections of it: "I saw Abraham Lincoln for the first time,
at the Weddell House that evening. He stood on the landing-place at the
top of a broad stairway, and the crowd approached him from below. This
gave him an exaggerated advantage of his six feet four inches of length.
The shapelessness of the lathy form, the shock of coarse black hair
surmounting the large head, the retreating forehead--these were not
apparent where we stood. My heart sprang up to him--the coming man. Of
the thousand times I afterward saw him, the first view remains the most
distinct impression; and never again to me was he more imposing. As we
approached, someone whispered of me to him; he took my hand in both his
for an instant, and we wheeled into the already crowded rooms. His
manner was strongly Western; his speech and pronunciation Southwestern.
Wholly without self-consciousness with men, he was constrained and ill
at ease when surrounded, as he several times was, by fashionably dressed
ladies. One incident of the evening I particularly recall. Ab McElrath
was in the crowd--a handsome giant, an Apollo in youth, of about Mr.
Lincoln's height. What brought it about, I do not know; but I saw them
standing back to back, in a contest of altitude--Mr. Lincoln and Ab
McElrath--the President-elect, the chosen, the nation's leader in the
thick-coming darkness, and the tavern-keeper and fox-hunter. The crowd
applauded.

"Mr. Lincoln presented me to the gentlemen of his party--Mr. Browning,
Mr. Judd, and Mr. Lamon, I remember, as I later became very well
acquainted with them; also the rough-looking Colonel Sumner of the army.
Mr. Lincoln invited me to accompany him for at least a day on his
eastward journey. I joined him the next morning at the station. The
vivacity of the night before had utterly vanished, and the rudely
sculptured cliffy face struck me as one of the saddest I had ever seen.
The eyes especially had a depth of melancholy which I had never seen in
human eyes before. Some things he wished to know from me, especially
regarding Mr. Chase, whom, among others, he had called to Springfield.
He asked me no direct questions, but I very soon found myself speaking
freely to him, and was able to explain some not well-known features of
Ohio politics--and much to his satisfaction, as he let me see. There was
then some talk of Mr. Seward, and more of Senator Cameron. All three had
been his rivals at Chicago, and were, as I then thought, in his mind as
possible Cabinet ministers; although no word was said by him of such an
idea in reference to either. Presently he conducted me to Mrs. Lincoln,
whom I had not before seen. Presenting me, he returned to the gentlemen
of the party, and I saw little more of him except once when he returned
to us, before I left the train. Mrs. Lincoln impressed me very
favorably, as a woman of spirit, intelligence, and decided opinions,
which she put very clearly. Our conversation was mainly of her husband.
I remarked that all the likenesses I had ever seen of him did him
injustice. This evidently pleased her. I suggested that a full beard
from the under lip down (his face was shaven) would relieve and help him
very much. This interested her, and we discussed it and the character
of his face quite fully. The impression I then formed of this most
unfortunate lady was only deepened by the pleasant acquaintance she
permitted, down to the time of the national calamity, which unsettled
her mind as I always thought."

Of the New York City visit, an excellent account is given by the
distinguished preacher and writer, Dr. S. Irenæus Prime. "The country
was at that moment," says Dr. Prime, "in the first throes of the great
rebellion. Millions of hearts were beating anxiously in view of the
advent to power of this untried man. Had he been called of God to the
throne of power at such a time as this, to be the leader and deliverer
of the people? As the carriage in which he sat passed slowly by me on
the Fifth avenue, he was looking weary, sad, feeble, and faint. My
disappointment was excessive; so great, indeed, as to be almost
overwhelming. He did not look to me to be the man for the hour. The next
day I was with him and others in the Governor's room in the City Hall,
when the Mayor of the city made an official address. Mr. Lincoln's reply
was so modest, firm, patriotic, and pertinent, that my fears of the day
before began to subside, and I saw in this new man a promise of great
things to come. It was not boldness or dash, or high-sounding pledges;
nor did he while in office, with the mighty armies of a roused nation at
his command, ever assume to be more than he promised in that little
upper chamber in New York, on his journey to the seat of Government, to
take the helm of the ship of state then tossing in the storm."

Before the end of the journey, strong fears prevailed in the minds of
Lincoln's friends that an attempt would be made to assassinate him
before he should reach Washington. Every precaution was taken to thwart
such endeavor; although Lincoln himself was disturbed by no thought of
danger. He had done, he contemplated doing, no wrong, no injustice to
any citizen of the United States; why then should there be a desire to
strike him down? Thus he reasoned; and he was free from any dread of
personal peril. But the officials of the railroads over which he was to
pass, and his friends in Washington, felt that there was cause for
apprehension. It was believed by them that a plot existed for making
away with Lincoln while passing through Baltimore, a city in the heart
of a slave State, and rife with the spirit of rebellion. Detectives had
been employed to discover the facts in the matter, and their reports
served to confirm the most alarming conjectures. A messenger was
despatched from Washington to intercept the Presidential party and warn
Lincoln of the impending danger. Dr. Holland states that "the detective
and Mr. Lincoln reached Philadelphia nearly at the same time, and there
the former submitted to a few of the President's friends the information
he had secured. An interview between Mr. Lincoln and the detective was
immediately arranged, and took place in the apartments of the former at
the Continental Hotel. Mr. Lincoln, having heard the officer's statement
in detail, then informed him that he had promised to raise the American
flag on Independence Hall the following morning--the anniversary of
Washington's birthday--and that he had accepted an invitation to a
reception by the Pennsylvania Legislature in the afternoon of the same
day. 'Both of these engagements I will keep,' said Mr. Lincoln, '_if it
costs me my life_.' For the rest, he authorized the detective to make
such arrangements as he thought proper for his safe conduct to
Washington."

In the meantime, according to Dr. Holland, General Scott and Senator
Seward, both of whom were in Washington, learned from independent
sources that Lincoln's life was in danger, and concurred in sending Mr.
Frederick W. Seward to Philadelphia to urge upon him the necessity of
proceeding immediately to Washington in a quiet way. The messenger
arrived late on Thursday night, after Lincoln had retired, and requested
an audience. Lincoln's fears had already been aroused, and he was
cautious, of course, in the matter of receiving a stranger. But
satisfied that the messenger was indeed the son of Mr. Seward, he
received him. Nothing needed to be done except to inform him of the plan
entered into with the detective, by which the President was to arrive in
Washington early on Saturday morning, in advance of his family and
party.

On the morning of the 22d, Lincoln, as he had promised, attended the
flag-raising at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the historic building
in which had been adopted the Declaration of Independence. The occasion
was a memorable one, and Lincoln's address eloquent and impressive. "All
the political sentiments I entertain," said he, "have been drawn from
the sentiments which were given to the world from this hall." He spoke
calmly but firmly of his resolve to stand by the principles of the
immortal Declaration and of the Constitution of his country; and, as
though conscious of the dangers of his position, he added solemnly: "I
have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, _and, if it be the
pleasure of Almighty God, to die by_."

From Philadelphia Lincoln went immediately to Harrisburg, and attended
the reception given him by the Pennsylvania Legislature, in the
afternoon of the same day. Then, leaving his hotel in the evening,
attended only by Mr. Lamon and the detective (Mr. Allan Pinkerton), he
was driven to the depot, where he took the regular train for Washington.
The train passed through Baltimore in the night, and early the next
morning (February 23) reached the capital. Mr. Washburne, who had been
notified to be at the depot on the arrival of the train, says: "I
planted myself behind one of the great pillars in the old Washington and
Baltimore depot, where I could see and not be observed. Presently, the
train came rumbling in on time. When it came to a stop I watched with
fear and trembling to see the passengers descend. I saw every car
emptied, and there was no Mr. Lincoln. I was well-nigh in despair, and
when about to leave I saw three persons slowly emerge from the last
sleeping-car. I could not mistake the long, lank form of Mr. Lincoln,
and my heart bounded with joy and gratitude. He had on a soft
low-crowned hat, a muffler around his neck, and a short overcoat. Anyone
who knew him at that time could not have failed to recognize him at
once; but I must confess he looked more like a well-to-do farmer from
one of the back towns of Jo Daviess County, coming to Washington to see
the city, take out his land warrant and get the patent for his farm,
than the President of the United States. The only persons that
accompanied Mr. Lincoln were Pinkerton, the well-known detective, and
Ward H. Lamon. When they were fairly on the platform, and a short
distance from the car, I stepped forward and accosted the President:
'How are you, Lincoln?' At this unexpected and rather familiar
salutation the gentlemen were apparently somewhat startled; but Mr.
Lincoln, who had recognized me, relieved them at once by remarking in
his peculiar voice: 'This is only Washburne!' Then we all exchanged
congratulations, and walked out to the front of the depot, where I had a
carriage in waiting. Entering the carriage (all four of us), we drove
rapidly to Willard's Hotel, entering on Fourteenth Street, before it was
fairly daylight."

General Stone, who was in command at Washington at that time, states
that both General Scott and himself "considered it almost a certainty
that Mr. Lincoln could not pass through Baltimore alive on the day
fixed," and adds: "I recommended that Mr. Lincoln should be officially
warned; and suggested that it would be best that he should take the
train that evening from Philadelphia, and so reach Washington early the
next day. General Scott directed me to see Mr. Seward, to whom he wrote
a few lines, which he handed me. I did not succeed in finding Mr. Seward
until past noon. I handed him the General's note. He listened
attentively to what I said, and asked me to write down my information
and suggestions. Then, taking the paper I had written, he hastily left.
The note I wrote was what Mr. Frederick Seward carried to Mr. Lincoln in
Philadelphia. Mr. Lincoln has stated that it was _this note_ which
induced him to change his journey as he did. _The stories of disguises
are all nonsense_. Mr. Lincoln merely took the sleeping-car in the night
train."

There is little doubt that the fears of Lincoln's friends regarding his
passage through Baltimore were well grounded; and that but for the
timely warnings and precautions the assassination of April, 1865, might
have taken place in February of 1861.




CHAPTER XV


     Lincoln at the Helm--First Days in Washington--Meeting Public Men
     and Discussing Public Affairs--The Inauguration--The Inaugural
     Address--A New Era Begun--Lincoln in the White House--The First
     Cabinet--The President and the Office-seekers--Southern Prejudice
     against Lincoln--Ominous Portents, but Lincoln not Dismayed--The
     President's Reception Room--Varied Impressions of the New
     President--Guarding the White House.

The week following Lincoln's arrival in Washington, and preceding his
inauguration, was for him one of incessant activity. From almost the
first moment he was engrossed either in preparations for his
inauguration and the official responsibilities which would immediately
follow that event, or in receiving the distinguished callers who
hastened to meet him and in discussing with them the grave aspects of
political affairs. Without rest or opportunity to survey the field that
lay before him, or any preparations save such as the resources of his
own strong character might afford him, he was plunged instantly into the
great political maelstrom in which he was to remain for four long years,
and whose wild vortex might well have bewildered an eye less sure, a
will less resolute, and a brain less cool than his. As Emerson put it,
"The new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado."

"Mr. Lincoln's headquarters," says Congressman Riddle of Ohio, "were at
Willard's Hotel; and the few days before the inauguration were given up
to a continuous reception in the broad corridor of the second floor,
near the stairway. I remember a notable morning when the majestic
General Scott, in full dress, sword, plumes, and bullion, came to pay
his respects to the incoming President. The scene was impressive. By the
unknown law that ruled his spirits, Mr. Lincoln was at his best,
complete master of himself and of all who came within the magic of his
presence. Never was he happier, speaking most of the time, flashing with
anecdote and story. That time now seems as remote as things of a hundred
years ago. The war antiquated all that went before it. The Washington,
the men, the spirit of that now ancient time, have faded past all power
to recall and reproduce them. The real Washington was as essentially
Southern as Richmond or Baltimore. 'Lincoln and his vandals,' fresh from
the North and West, were thronging the wide, squat, unattractive city,
from which the bolder and braver rebel element had not yet departed."

Dr. George B. Loring, of Massachusetts, who was one of the first to meet
Lincoln after his arrival in Washington, says: "I saw him on his
arrival, and when he made his first appearance in a public place. I was
standing in the upper hall of Willard's Hotel, conversing with a friend
and listening to the confused talk of the crowded drawing-room
adjoining. As we stood there, a tall and awkward form appeared above the
stairs, especially conspicuous, as it came into view, for a new and
stylish hat. It was evidently President Lincoln, whom neither of us had
seen before. As soon as his presence was known, the hall was thronged
from the drawing-rooms. He seemed somewhat startled by the crowd, did
not remove his hat, wended his way somewhat rapidly and with mere
passing recognition, and took shelter in his room. When the crowd had
dispersed, my friend and myself--although we had opposed his
election--called upon him to pay our respects. He received us with great
cordiality, spoke freely of the difficulties by which he was surrounded,
and referred with evident satisfaction to the support he had received
in Massachusetts. 'I like your man Banks,' said he, 'and have tried to
find a place for him in my Cabinet; but I am afraid I shall not quite
fetch it.' He bore the marks of anxiety in his countenance, which, in
its expression of patience, determination, resolve, and deep innate
modesty, was extremely touching."

Before leaving Springfield Lincoln had prepared his inaugural message
with great care, and placed it in a "gripsack" for transportation to
Washington. An odd incident, by which the message came near being lost
on the journey, was afterwards related by Lincoln to a friend. When the
party reached Harrisburg Lincoln asked his son Robert where the message
was, and was taken aback by his son's confession that in the excitement
caused by the enthusiastic reception he believed he had let a waiter
have the gripsack. Lincoln, in narrating the incident, said: "My heart
went up into my mouth, and I started downstairs, where I was told that
if a waiter had taken the gripsack I should probably find it in the
baggage-room. Going there, I saw a large pile of gripsacks and other
baggage, and thought that I discovered mine. My key fitted it, but on
opening there was nothing inside but a few paper collars and a flask of
whisky. A few moments afterward I came across my own gripsack, with the
document in it all right."

The fourth of March soon came, and with it the impressive ceremonies of
Lincoln's inauguration as President. A good description of the scene is
given by Dr. J.G. Holland. "The morning broke beautifully clear, and it
found General Scott and the Washington police in readiness. In the
hearts of the surging crowds there was anxiety; but outside all looked
as usual on such occasions, with the exception of an extraordinary
display of soldiers. The public buildings, the schools, and most of the
places of business, were closed during the day, and the stars and
stripes were floating from every flag-staff. There was a great desire to
hear Lincoln's inaugural; and at an early hour Pennsylvania Avenue was
full of people wending their way to the east front of the Capitol where
it was to be delivered. As the Presidential party reached the platform
erected for the ceremonies, Senator Baker of Oregon, one of Lincoln's
old friends and political rivals in Illinois, introduced him to the
assembly. There was not a very hearty welcome given to the President as
he stepped forward to read his inaugural. The reading was listened to
with profound attention, those passages which contained any allusion to
the Union being vociferously cheered. None listened more carefully than
Mr. Buchanan and Judge Taney, the latter of whom, with noticeable
agitation, administered the oath of office to Mr. Lincoln when his
address was ended."

Another eye-witness has described the dramatic scene, and the principal
actors in it, in the following graphic paragraphs: "Near noon I found
myself a member of the motley crowd gathered around the side entrance to
Willard's Hotel. Soon an open barouche drove up, and the only occupant
stepped out. A large, heavy, awkward-moving man, far advanced in years,
short and thin gray hair, full face plentifully seamed and wrinkled,
head curiously inclined to the left shoulder, a low-crowned,
broad-brimmed silk hat, an immense white cravat like a poultice
thrusting the old-fashioned standing collar up to the ears, dressed in
black throughout, with swallow-tail coat not of the newest style. It was
President Buchanan, calling to take his successor to the Capitol. In a
few minutes he reappeared, with Mr. Lincoln on his arm; the two took
seats side by side, and the carriage rolled away, followed by a rather
disorderly and certainly not very imposing procession. I had ample time
to walk to the Capitol, and no difficulty in securing a place where
everything could be seen and heard to the best advantage. The attendance
at the inauguration was, they told me, unusually small; many being kept
away by anticipated disturbance, as it had been rumored--not without
good grounds--that General Scott himself was fearful of an outbreak, and
had made all possible military preparations to meet the emergency. A
square platform had been built out from the steps to the eastern
portico, with benches for distinguished spectators on three sides.
Senator Douglas, the only one I recognized, sat at the extreme end of
the seat on the right of the narrow passage leading from the steps.
There was no delay, and the gaunt form of the President-elect was soon
visible, slowly making his way to the front. To me, at least, he was
completely metamorphosed--partly by his own fault, and partly through
the efforts of injudicious friends and ambitious tailors. He was raising
(to gratify a very young lady, it is said) a crop of whiskers, of the
blacking-brush variety, coarse, stiff, and ungraceful; and in so doing
spoiled, or at least seriously impaired, a face which, though never
handsome, had in its original state a peculiar power and pathos. On the
present occasion the whiskers were reinforced by brand-new clothes from
top to toe; black dress coat instead of the usual frock; black cloth or
satin vest, black pantaloons, and a glossy hat evidently just out of the
box. To cap the climax of novelty, he carried a huge ebony cane, with a
gold head the size of an egg. In these, to him, strange habiliments, he
looked so miserably uncomfortable that I could not help pitying him.
Reaching the platform, his discomfort was visibly increased by not
knowing what to do with hat and cane; and so he stood there, the target
for ten thousand eyes, holding his cane in one hand and his hat in the
other, the picture of helpless embarrassment. After some hesitation, he
pushed the cane into a corner of the railing, but could not find a place
for the hat, except on the floor, where I could see he did not like to
risk it. Douglas, who fully took in the situation, came to the rescue of
his old friend and rival, and held the precious hat until the owner
needed it again; a service which, if predicted two years before, would
probably have astonished him. The oath of office was administered by
Chief Justice Taney, whose black robes, attenuated figure, and
cadaverous countenance reminded me of a galvanized corpse. Then the
President came forward and read his inaugural address in a clear and
distinct voice. It was attentively listened to by all; but the closest
listener was Douglas, who leaned forward as if to catch every word,
nodding his head emphatically at those passages which most pleased him.
I must not forget to mention the presence of a Mephistopheles in the
person of Senator Wigfall of Texas, who stood with folded arms leaning
against the doorway of the Capitol, looking down upon the crowd and the
ceremony with a contemptuous air which sufficiently indicated his
opinion of the whole performance. To him, the Southern Confederacy was
already an accomplished fact."

"Under the shadow of the great Eastern portico of the Capitol," says
General John A. Logan, "with the retiring President and Cabinet, the
Supreme Court Justices, the Foreign Diplomatic Corps, and hundreds of
Senators, Representatives, and other distinguished persons filling the
great platform on either side and behind them, Abraham Lincoln stood
bareheaded before full thirty thousand people, upon whose uplifted faces
the unveiled glory of the mild Spring sun now shone--stood reverently
before that far greater and mightier Presence termed by himself, 'My
rightful masters, the American people'--and pleaded in a manly,
earnest, and affectionate strain with 'such as were dissatisfied' to
listen to the 'better angels' of their nature. 'Temperate, reasonable,
kindly persuasive'--it seems strange that Lincoln's inaugural address
did not disarm at least the personal resentment of the South toward him,
and sufficiently strengthen Union-loving people there against the
red-hot Secessionists, to put the 'brakes' down on rebellion."

The address was devoted almost exclusively to the great absorbing topic
of the hour--the attempt of the Southern States to withdraw from the
Union and erect an independent republic. The calm, firm, moderate,
judicious spirit which pervaded Lincoln's address is apparent in the
following quotations, which contain its most significant and memorable
passages:

     _Fellow-Citizens of the United States_:--In compliance with a
     custom as old as the Government itself, I appear before you to
     address you briefly, and to take in your presence the oath
     prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by
     the President "before he enters on the execution of his office."
     ... Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern
     States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration their
     property and their peace and personal security are to be
     endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such
     apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has
     all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is
     found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses
     you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that
     "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
     institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I
     have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do
     so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge
     that I had made this and many similar declarations, and have never
     recanted them.... I now reiterate these sentiments; and, in doing
     so, I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive
     evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property,
     peace, and security of no section are to be in anywise endangered
     by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the
     protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws,
     can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States, when
     lawfully demanded, for whatever cause--as cheerfully to one section
     as to another.... I hold that, in contemplation of universal law,
     and of the Constitution, _the Union of these States is perpetual_.
     Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of
     all National Governments. It is safe to assert that no Government
     proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own
     termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our
     National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever.... I
     therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws,
     the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability I shall take
     care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that
     the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.
     Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall
     perform it, so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the
     American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or, in some
     authoritative manner, direct the contrary. I trust this will not be
     regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union
     that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself. In doing
     this, there need be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be
     none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power
     confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the
     property and places belonging to the Government, and to collect the
     duties and imposts; but beyond what may be but necessary for these
     objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or
     among the people anywhere.... Physically speaking, we cannot
     separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other,
     nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may
     be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of
     each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this.
     They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either
     amicable or hostile, must continue between them. It is impossible,
     then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more
     satisfactory after separation than before. Can aliens make treaties
     easier than friends can make law? Can treaties be more faithfully
     enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go
     to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both
     sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old
     questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.... This
     country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit
     it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they
     can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their
     revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be
     ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are
     desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make
     no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful
     authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in
     either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I
     should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a
     fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it.... The
     Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and
     they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation
     of the States. The people themselves can do this also, if they
     choose; but the Executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His
     duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his
     hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor....
     By the frame of the Government under which we live, the same people
     have wisely given their public servants but little power for
     mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of
     that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the
     people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any
     extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the
     Government in the short space of four years.

     My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole
     subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be
     an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you
     would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by
     taking time; but no good can be frustrated by it. Such of you as
     are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired,
     and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it;
     while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it
     would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are
     dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no
     single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence,
     patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never
     yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in
     the best way, all our present difficulty.

     In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine,
     is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail
     you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the
     aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the
     Government; while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve,
     protect, and defend" it.

     I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
     enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our
     bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from
     every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and
     hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of
     the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the
     better angels of our nature.

At the close of the address, which was delivered with the utmost
earnestness and solemnity, Lincoln, "with reverent look and impressive
emphasis, repeated the oath to preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution of his country. Douglas, who knew the conspirators and
their plots, with patriotic magnanimity then grasped the hand of the
President, gracefully extended his congratulations, and the assurance
that in the dark future he would stand by him, and give to him his
utmost aid in upholding the Constitution and enforcing the laws of his
country."

"At the inauguration," says Congressman Riddle, "I stood within a yard
of Mr. Lincoln when he pronounced his famous address. How full of life
and power it then was, with the unction of his utterance! Surely, we
thought, the South, which rejected the concessions of Congress, would
accept him. How dry and quaint, yet ingenious, much of that inaugural
appears to me now, when the life and soul seem to have gone out of it! A
sad thing--a spectre of the day--will forever haunt my memory: Poor old
President Buchanan, short, stout, pale, white-haired, yet bearing
himself resolutely throughout, linked by the arm to the new President,
into whom from himself was passing the qualifying unction of the
Constitution, jostled hither and thither, as already out of men's sight,
yet bravely maintaining the shadow of dignity and place. How glad he
must have been to take leave of his successor at the White House when
all was ended!"

The formalities of the inauguration concluded, Lincoln passed back
through the Senate Chamber, and, again escorted by Mr. Buchanan, was
conducted to the White House, where the cares and anxieties of his
position immediately descended upon him. "Strange indeed," says General
Logan, "must have been the thoughts that crowded through the brain and
oppressed the heart of Abraham Lincoln that night--his first at the
White House. The City of Washington swarmed with rebels and rebel
sympathizers, and all the departments of Government were honeycombed
with treason and shadowed with treachery and espionage. Every step
proposed or contemplated by the Government would be known to the
so-called Government of the Confederate States almost as soon as thought
of. All means to thwart and delay the carrying out of the Government's
purposes that the excuses of routine and red tape admitted of would be
used by the traitors within the camp to aid the traitors without. No one
knew all this better than Mr. Lincoln. With no army, no navy, not even a
revenue cutter left--with forts and arsenals, ammunition and arms, in
possession of the South, with no money in the National Treasury, and the
National credit blasted--the position must, even to his hopeful nature,
have seemed desperate. Yet even in this awful hour, he was sustained by
confidence in the good effects of his conciliatory message to the South,
and by his trust in the patriotism of the people and the Providence of
God."

Mr. Welles, the incoming Secretary of the Navy, in writing of the period
immediately following the inauguration, says: "A strange state of things
existed at that time in Washington. The atmosphere was thick with
treason. Party spirit and old party differences prevailed amidst the
accumulating dangers. Secession was considered by most persons as a
political party question, not as rebellion. Democrats to a large extent
sympathized with the Rebels more than with the Administration. The
Republicans, on the other hand, were scarcely less partisan and
unreasonable ... clamorous for the removal of all Democrats,
indiscriminately, from office."

The President's first official act was the announcement of his Cabinet,
which was composed of the following persons: William H. Seward,
Secretary of State; Simon Cameron, Secretary of War; Salmon P. Chase,
Secretary of the Treasury; Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy; Caleb
B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior; Montgomery Blair, Postmaster
General; and Edward Bates, Attorney General. Lincoln had selected these
counselors with grave deliberation. In reply to the remonstrances urged,
on political grounds, against the appointment of one or two of them, he
had said: "The times are too grave and perilous for ambitious schemes
and personal rivalries. I need the aid of all of these men. They enjoy
the confidence of their several States and sections, and they will
strengthen the administration." On another occasion he remarked: "It
will require the utmost skill, influence, and sagacity of all of us, to
save the country; let us forget ourselves, and join hands like brothers
to save the Republic. If we succeed, there will be glory enough for
all."

Speculations have been almost endless as to how the Cabinet came to be
made up as it was. But the truth is, according to Secretary Welles, that
it was practically made up in Springfield almost as soon as Lincoln
found himself elected. In Lincoln's own words, as given by Mr. Welles:
"On the day of the Presidential election the operator of the telegraph
in Springfield placed his instrument at my disposal. I was there without
leaving, after the returns began to come in, until we had enough to
satisfy us how the election had gone. This was about two in the morning
of Wednesday. I went home, but not to get much sleep; for I then felt,
as I never had before, the responsibility that was upon me. I began at
once to feel that I needed support,--others to share with me the burden.
This was on Wednesday morning, and before the sun went down I had made
up my Cabinet. It was almost the same that I finally appointed."

The only two members of the Cabinet who served from the beginning to the
end of Lincoln's administration were Welles and Seward. Stanton was not
appointed until January 13, 1862, succeeding Simon Cameron. Chase left
the Treasury Department to become Chief Justice, and was succeeded in
the Treasury Department by ex-Governor Fessenden of Vermont, who in his
turn was succeeded by Hugh McCulloch. The Attorney General's chair was
filled successively by Bates and Speed. Caleb B. Smith was the first
Secretary of the Interior, succeeded (January 1, 1863) by John P. Usher.
The first Postmaster General was Montgomery Blair, who was followed
(September 4, 1864) by ex-Governor Dennison of Ohio. The appointment
that gave the greatest surprise of any in the Cabinet was that of
Stanton as Secretary of War. Stanton had been in Buchanan's cabinet as
Attorney General. He had been outspoken, almost brutal, in his scornful
hostility to Lincoln, and the appointment by him was as great a surprise
to Stanton as his acceptance of it was to everyone. When asked, somewhat
incredulously, what he would do as War Secretary Stanton replied, "_I
will make Abe Lincoln President of the United States_." Of the character
of this remarkable man, Mr. Alonzo Rothschild, in his interesting study
of the relations between Lincoln and Stanton ("Lincoln, Master of Men,"
p. 229), says: "Intense earnestness marked Stanton's every act. So
sharply were all his faculties focused upon the purpose of the hour
that he is to be classed among the one-idea men of history. Whatever
came between him and his goal encountered an iron will.... Quick to
penetrate through the husks of fraud into the very nubbin of things, he
was even more swiftly moved by relentless wrath to insist upon exposure
and punishment. The brief career [as Attorney General] in Buchanan's
cabinet had been long enough to demonstrate his almost savage hostility
toward official dishonesty, as well as his moral courage to grapple with
treason in high places. Above all, he evinced a loyalty to the Union
that rose above the party creed of a lifetime--that might demand of him
any sacrifice however great."

The first weeks of President Lincoln's residence in the Executive
Mansion were occupied with the arduous work of selecting loyal and
capable men for responsible positions in the Government service. The
departments at Washington were filled with disloyal men, who used the
means and influence pertaining to their places to aid the rebellious
States. It was of vital importance that these faithless officials should
be removed at the earliest moment, and their positions filled with men
of tried integrity. Lincoln desired to appoint for this purpose stanch,
competent, and trustworthy citizens, regardless of party distinctions.
But the labor involved in this duty was enormous and exhausting. There
was a multitude of vacant places, there were difficult questions to be
considered in a majority of cases, and there was a host of applicants
and their friends to be satisfied. Mr. Charles A. Dana relates a
circumstance which hints at the troubles encountered by Lincoln in this
province of his Presidential duties. "The first time I saw Mr. Lincoln,"
says Mr. Dana, "was shortly after his inauguration. He had appointed Mr.
Seward to be his Secretary of State; and some of the Republican leaders
of New York, who had been instrumental in preventing Mr. Seward's
nomination to the Presidency and in securing that of Mr. Lincoln, had
begun to fear that they would be left out in the cold in the
distribution of the offices. Accordingly several of them determined to
go to Washington, and I was asked to go with them. We all went up to the
White House together, except Mr. Stanton, who stayed away because he was
himself an applicant for office. Mr. Lincoln received us in the large
room upstairs in the east wing of the White House, where the President
had his working office, and stood up while General Wadsworth, who was
our principal spokesman, stated what was desired. After the interview
was begun, a big Indianian, who was a messenger in attendance in the
White House, came into the room and said to the President, 'She wants
you.' 'Yes, yes,' said Mr. Lincoln, without stirring. Soon afterward the
messenger returned again, exclaiming, 'I say she wants you.' The
President was evidently annoyed, but instead of going out after the
messenger he remarked to us: 'One side shall not gobble up everything.
Make out a list of the places and men you want, and I will endeavor to
apply the rule of give and take.' General Wadsworth answered: 'Our party
will not be able to remain in Washington, but we will leave such a list
with Mr. Carroll, and whatever he agrees to will be agreeable to us.'
Mr. Lincoln continued, 'Let Mr. Carroll come in to-morrow, and we will
see what can be done.'"

Lincoln was regarded with violent animosity by all who were in sympathy
with the peculiar prejudices of the slave States. The inhabitants of the
District of Columbia looked upon him with especial dislike. He was to
them an odious embodiment of the abhorred principles of Abolitionism. As
an illustration of this bitter feeling, Mr. Arnold narrates the
following anecdote: "A distinguished South Carolina lady--one of the
Howards--the widow of a Northern scholar, called upon him out of
curiosity. She was very proud and aristocratic, and was curious to see a
man who had been represented to her as a monster, a mixture of the ape
and the tiger. She was shown into the room where were Mr. Lincoln and
Senators Seward, Hale, Chase, and other prominent members of Congress.
As Mr. Seward, whom she knew, presented her to the President, she hissed
in his ear: 'I am a South Carolinian.' Instantly reading her character,
he turned and addressed her with the greatest courtesy, and dignified
and gentlemanly politeness. After listening a few moments, astonished to
find him so different from what he had been described to her, she said:
'Why, Mr. Lincoln, you look, act, and speak like a kind, good-hearted,
generous man.' 'And did you expect to meet a savage?' said he.
'Certainly I did, or even something worse,' replied she. 'I am glad I
have met you,' she continued, 'and now the best way to preserve peace is
for you to go to Charleston and show the people what you are, and tell
them you have no intention of injuring them.' Returning home, she found
a party of Secessionists, and on entering the room she exclaimed, 'I
have seen him! I have seen him!' 'Who?' they inquired. 'That terrible
monster, Lincoln, and I found him a gentleman, and I am going to his
first levee after his inauguration.' At his first reception, this tall
daughter of South Carolina, dressing herself in black velvet, with two
long white plumes in her hair, repaired to the White House. She was
nearly six feet high, with black eyes and black hair, and in her velvet
and white feathers she was a striking and majestic figure. As she
approached the President he recognized her immediately. 'Here I am
again,' said she, 'that South Carolinian.' 'I am glad to see you,'
replied he, 'and to assure you that the first object of my heart is to
preserve peace, and I wish that not only you but every son and daughter
of South Carolina were here, that I might tell them so.' Mr. Cameron,
Secretary of War, came up, and after some remarks he said, 'South
Carolina [which had already seceded] is the prodigal son.' 'Ah, Mr.
Secretary,' said she, 'if South Carolina is the prodigal son, Uncle Sam,
our father, ought to divide the inheritance, and let her go; but they
say you are going to make war upon us; is it so?' 'Oh, come back,' said
Lincoln, 'tell South Carolina to come back now, and we will kill the
fatted calf.'"

The impression which Lincoln made on those who met him at the outset of
his career as President, and their varied comments and descriptions, are
matters of peculiar interest. At first, many people did not understand
him--hardly knew what to make of a personality so unlike any they had
ever seen in high places before. But he soon began to show those
qualities of calm self-reliance, quickness to grasp the essential
factors of a situation and readiness to meet it, courage, patience,
firmness, breadth of view and kindliness, practical tact and wisdom,
which were a surprise to all who knew him, and are now seen to be but a
rapid and logical unfolding, under the stimulus of his enormous
responsibilities, of his great natural powers. The test had come, the
crisis was upon him; and he met them marvelously well.

General W.T. Sherman contributes an interesting reminiscence at this
point. "One day," says General Sherman, "my brother, Senator Sherman,
took me with him to see Mr. Lincoln. We found the room full of people.
Mr. Lincoln sat at the end of a table, talking with three or four
gentlemen, who soon left. John walked up, shook hands, and took a chair
near him, holding in his hand some papers referring to minor
appointments in the State of Ohio, which formed the subject of
conversation. Mr. Lincoln took the papers, said he would refer them to
the proper heads of departments, and would be glad to make the
appointments asked for, if not already promised. John then turned to me,
and said, 'Mr. President, this is my brother, Colonel Sherman, who is
just up from Louisiana; he may give you some information you want.'
'Ah!' said Mr. Lincoln, 'how are they getting along down there?' I said,
'They think they are getting along swimmingly--they are preparing for
war.' 'Oh, well!' said he, '_I guess we'll manage to keep house_.' I was
silenced, said no more to him, and we soon left. I was sadly
disappointed, and remember that I broke out on John, cursing the
politicians generally, saying, 'You have got things in a ---- of a fix,
and you may get them out as best you can,' adding that the country was
sleeping on a volcano that might burst forth at any minute, but that I
was going to St. Louis to take care of my family, and would have no more
to do with it. John begged me to be more patient, but I said I would
not; that I had no time to wait, that I was off for St. Louis; and off I
went."

The apartment which Lincoln used as an office in which to transact daily
business and to receive informal visits was on the second floor of the
White House. Its simple equipments are thus described by Mr. Arnold: "It
was about twenty-five by forty feet in size. In the centre, on the west,
was a large white marble fireplace, with big old-fashioned brass
andirons, and a large and high brass fender. A wood fire was burning in
cool weather. The large windows opened on the beautiful lawn to the
south, with a view of the unfinished Washington Monument, the
Smithsonian Institution, the Potomac, Alexandria, and on down the river
toward Mt. Vernon. Across the Potomac were Arlington Heights and
Arlington House, late the residence of Robert E. Lee. On the hills
around, during nearly all Lincoln's administration, were the white tents
of soldiers, field fortifications and camps, and in every direction
could be seen the brilliant colors of the national flag. The furniture
of this room consisted of a large oak table covered with cloth,
extending north and south; and it was around this table that the Cabinet
sat when it held its meetings. Near the end of the table, and between
the windows, was another table, on the west side of which the President
sat in a large armchair, and at this table he wrote. A tall desk with
pigeon-holes for papers stood against the south wall. The only books
usually found in this room were the Bible, the United States Statutes,
and a copy of Shakespeare. There were a few chairs and two plain
hair-covered sofas. There were two or three map frames, from which hung
military maps on which the position and movements of the armies were
traced. On the mantel was an old and discolored engraving of General
Jackson and a later photograph of John Bright. Doors opened into this
room from the room of the Secretary, and from the outside hall running
east and west across the House. A bell cord within reach of his hand
extended to the Secretary's office. A messenger who stood at the door
opening from the hall took in the cards and names of visitors. Here, in
this plain room, Lincoln spent most of his time while President. Here he
received everyone, from the Chief Justice and Lieutenant-General to the
private soldier and humblest citizen. Custom had fixed certain rules of
precedence, and the order in which officials should be received. Members
of the Cabinet and the high officers of the army and navy were
generally promptly admitted. Senators and members of Congress were
received in the order of their arrival. Sometimes there would be a crowd
of them waiting their turn. While thus waiting, the loud ringing laugh
of Mr. Lincoln would be heard by the waiting and impatient crowd. Here,
day after day, often from early morning to late at night, Lincoln sat,
listened, talked, and decided. He was patient, just, considerate, and
hopeful. The people came to him as to a father. He saw everyone, and
many wasted his precious time. Governors, Senators, Congressmen,
officers, clergymen, bankers, merchants--all classes approached him with
familiarity. This incessant labor, the study of the great problems he
had to decide, the worry of constant importunity, the quarrels of
officers of the army, the care, anxiety, and responsibility of his
position, wore upon his vigorous frame."

Mr. Ben. Perley Poore states that "the White House, while Mr. Lincoln
occupied it, was a fertile field for news, which he was always ready to
give those correspondents in whom he had confidence; but the
surveillance of the press--first by Secretary Seward, and then by
Secretary Stanton--was as annoying as it was inefficient.... Often when
Mr. Lincoln was engaged, correspondents would send in their cards,
bearing requests for some desired item of news or for the verification
of some rumor. He would either come out and give the coveted
information, or he would write it on the back of the card and send it to
the owner. He wrote a legible hand, slowly and laboriously perfecting
his sentences before he placed them on paper. The long epistles that he
wrote to his generals he copied himself, not wishing anyone else to see
them, and these copies were kept in pigeon-holes for reference.... Mr.
Lincoln used to wear at the White House in the morning, and after
dinner, a long-skirted faded dressing-gown, belted around his waist, and
slippers. His favorite attitude when listening--and he was a good
listener--was to lean forward, and clasp his left knee with both hands,
as if fondling it, and his face would then wear a sad and wearied look.
But when the time came for him to give an opinion on what he had heard,
or to tell a story which something 'reminded him of,' his face would
lighten up with its homely, rugged smile, and he would run his fingers
through his bristly black hair, which would stand out in every direction
like that of an electric experiment doll."

John G. Nicolay, afterward Lincoln's private secretary, says: "The
people beheld in the new President a man six feet four inches in height,
a stature which of itself would be hailed in any assemblage as one of
the outward signs of leadership; joined to this was a spare but muscular
frame, and large strongly-marked features corresponding to his unusual
stature. Quiet in demeanor but erect in bearing, his face even in repose
was not unattractive; and when lit up by his open, genial smile, or
illuminated in the utterance of a strong or stirring thought, his
countenance was positively handsome. His voice, pitched in rather a high
key, but of great clearness and penetration, made his public remarks
audible to a wide circle of listeners."

Henry Champion Deming says of Lincoln's appearance at this time:
"Conceive a tall and giant figure, more than six feet in height, not
only unencumbered with superfluous flesh, but reduced to the minimum
working standard of cord and sinew and muscle, strong and indurated by
exposure and toil, with legs and arms long and attenuated, but not
disproportionately to the long and attenuated trunk; in posture and
carriage not ungraceful, but with the grace of unstudied and careless
ease rather than of cultivated airs and high-bred pretensions. His dress
is uniformly of black throughout, and would attract but little attention
in a well-dressed circle, if it hung less loosely upon him, and if the
ample white shirt collar were not turned over his cravat in Western
style. The face that surmounts this figure is half Roman and half
Indian, bronzed by climate, furrowed by life struggles, seamed with
humor; the head is massive and covered with dark, thick, and
unmanageable hair; the brow is wide and well developed, the nose large
and fleshy, the lips full, cheeks thin and drawn down in strong, corded
lines, which, but for the wiry whiskers, would disclose the machinery
which moves the broad jaw. The eyes are dark gray, sunk in deep sockets,
but bright, soft and beautiful in expression, sometimes lost and half
abstracted, as if their glance was reversed and turned inward, or as if
the soul which lighted them was far away. The teeth are white and
regular, and it is only when a smile, radiant, captivating, and winning
as was ever given to mortal, transfigures the plain countenance, that
you begin to realize that it is not impossible for artists to admire and
women to love it."

Mr. John Bigelow, who was appointed consul to Paris in 1861, and was
afterwards minister to France, describes in his "Retrospections of an
Active Life" his first visit to Lincoln and the impressions gained by
him at that early period in Lincoln's official career. "The day
following my arrival in Washington Preston King, Senator from New York,
invited me to go with him to be presented to President Lincoln, an
invitation which of course I embraced with alacrity; for as yet I had
not met him, and knew him only by his famous senatorial campaign against
Douglas in Illinois and the masterly address which he delivered at the
Cooper Institute shortly before his nomination in New York.... The new
President received us in his private room at an early hour of the
morning; another gentleman was with him at the time, a member of the
Senate, I believe. We were with him from a half to three-quarters of an
hour. The conversation, in which I took little or no part, turned upon
the operations in the field. I observed no sign of weakness in anything
the President said; neither did I hear anything that particularly
impressed me, which, under the circumstances, was not surprising. What
did impress me, however, was what I can only describe as a certain lack
of sovereignty. He seemed to me, nor was it in the least strange that he
did, like a man utterly unconscious of the space which the President of
the United States occupied that day in the history of the human race,
and of the vast power for the exercise of which he had become personally
responsible. This impression was strengthened by Mr. Lincoln's modest
habit of disclaiming knowledge of affairs and familiarity with duties,
and frequent avowals of ignorance, which, even where it exists, it is as
well for a captain as far as possible to conceal from the public. The
authority of an executive officer largely consists in what his
constituents think it is. Up to that time Mr. Lincoln had had few
opportunities of showing the nation the qualities which won all hearts
and made him one of the most conspicuous and enduring historic
characters of the century."

Some uncommonly vivid "first impressions" of Lincoln are given in the
Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who early in February of 1862 made a
visit to Washington for the purpose of delivering a lecture before the
Smithsonian Institution--a lecture which Lincoln is said to have
attended. A day or two afterwards Emerson was taken by Senator Sumner of
Massachusetts to call at the White House. "The President impressed me,"
says Emerson, "more favorably than I had hoped. A frank, sincere,
well-meaning man, with a lawyer's habit of mind, good clear statement of
his facts; correct enough, not vulgar, as described, but with a sort of
boyish cheerfulness, or that kind of sincerity and jolly good meaning
that our class-meetings on Commencement Days show, in telling our old
stories over. When he has made his remark he looks up at you with great
satisfaction, and shows all his white teeth, and laughs.... When I was
introduced to him he said, 'Oh, Mr. Emerson, I once heard you say in a
lecture that a Kentuckian seems to say by his air and manners, "Here am
I; if you don't like me, the worse for you."'" (The point of this of
course is that Lincoln was himself a Kentuckian.) A day or two later
Emerson again called on the President, this time in the company of
Secretary Seward. It being Sunday evening, Seward asked the President if
he had been to church, to which the latter answered that he had
not--that he had been reading, for the first time, Senator Sumner's
speech in the Senate on the Trent affair. This was followed by some
general conversation on the Trent affair, in which the President
expressed his gratification at the friendly attitude taken in the matter
by France and Spain.

Private Secretary Hay thus writes of Lincoln's character and
disposition: "All agree that the most marked characteristic of Mr.
Lincoln's manners was his simplicity and artlessness; this immediately
impressed itself upon the observation of those who met him for the first
time, and each successive interview deepened the impression. People
seemed delighted to find in the ruler of the nation freedom from
pomposity and affectation, mingled with a certain simple dignity which
never forsook him. Though oppressed with the weight of responsibility
resting upon him as President of the United States, he shrank from
assuming any of the honors, or even the titles, of the position. After
years of intimate acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln, the writer cannot now
recall a single instance in which he spoke of himself as President, or
used that title for himself except when acting in an official capacity.
He always spoke of his position and office vaguely, as, 'this place,'
'here,' or other modest phrase. Once, speaking of the room in the
Capitol used by the Presidents of the United States during the close of
a session of Congress, he said, 'That room, you know, that they
call'--dropping his voice and hesitating--'the President's room.' To an
intimate friend who addressed him always by his own proper title, he
said, 'Now call me Lincoln, and I'll promise not to tell of the breach
of etiquette--if _you_, won't--and I shall have a resting-spell from
"Mister President."' With all his simplicity and unacquaintance with
courtly manners, his native dignity never forsook him in the presence of
critical polished strangers; but mixed with his angularities and
_bonhomie_ was something which spoke the fine fiber of the man; and
while his sovereign disregard of courtly conventionalities was somewhat
ludicrous, his native sweetness and straightforwardness of manner served
to disarm criticism and impress the visitor that he was before a man
pure, self-poised, collected, and strong in unconscious strength. Of
him, an accomplished foreigner, whose knowledge of the courts was more
perfect than that of the English language, said, 'He seems to me one
grand _gentilhomme_ in disguise.'" Mr. Hay adds that Lincoln's
simplicity of manner "was marked in his total lack of consideration of
what was due his exalted station. He had an almost morbid dread of what
he called 'a scene'--that is, a demonstration of applause, such as
always greeted his appearance in public. The first sign of a cheer
sobered him; he appeared sad and oppressed, suspended conversation, and
looked out into vacancy; and when it was over, resumed the conversation
just where it was interrupted, with an obvious feeling of relief....
Speaking of an early acquaintance who was an applicant for an office
which he thought him hardly qualified to fill, the President said,
'Well, now, I never thought M---- had any more than average ability,
when we were young men together; really I did not.' [A pause.] 'But,
then, I suppose he thought just the same about me; he had reason to,
and--here I am!'"

General Carl Schurz says: "In the White House, as in his simple home in
Springfield, Mr. Lincoln was the same plain, unaffected, unpretentious
citizen. He won the admiration and affection of even the most
punctilious of the foreign diplomats by the tenderness of his nature and
the touching simplicity of his demeanor.... He was, in mind and heart,
the very highest type of development of a plain man. He was a born
leader of men, and the qualities that made him a leader were of the
plain, common-sense type.... Lincoln had one great advantage over all
the chief statesmen of his day. He had a thorough knowledge of the plain
people. He knew their habits, their modes of thought, their unfailing
sense of justice and right. He relied upon the popular feeling, in great
measure, for his guidance."

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe said of the qualities which Lincoln exhibited
in the White House: "Lincoln is a strong man, but his strength is of a
peculiar kind; it is not aggressive so much as passive; and among
passive things, it is like the strength not so much of a stone buttress
as of a wire cable. It is strength swaying to every influence, yielding
on this side and on that, to popular needs, yet tenaciously and
inflexibly bound to carry its great end.... Slow and careful in coming
to resolutions, willing to talk with every person who has anything to
show on any side of a disputed subject, long in weighing and pondering,
attached to constitutional limits and time-honored landmarks, Lincoln
certainly was the _safest_ leader a nation could have at a time when the
_habeas corpus_ must be suspended and all the constitutional and minor
rights of citizens be thrown into the hands of their military leader. A
reckless, bold, theorizing, dashing man of genius might have wrecked our
Constitution and ended us in a splendid military despotism."

The fear lest the virulent enemies of the administration should attempt
to assassinate Lincoln was so wide-spread that military measures were
enforced to protect him from secret assault. General Charles P. Stone,
to whom the duty was entrusted of establishing the necessary
precautions, has furnished a brief report on the subject. "From the
first," says General Stone, "I took, under the orders of the
General-in-chief, especial care in guarding the Executive
Mansion--without, however, doing it so ostentatiously as to attract
public attention. It was not considered advisable that it should appear
that the President of the United States was, for his personal safety,
obliged to surround himself by armed guards. Mr. Lincoln was not
consulted in the matter. But Captain Todd, formerly an officer of the
regular army, who was, I believe, the brother-in-law of Mr. Lincoln, was
then residing in the Presidential Mansion, and with him I was daily and
nightly in communication, in order that in case of danger one person in
the President's household should know where to find the main body of the
guard, to the officer commanding which Captain Todd was each night
introduced. Double sentries were placed in the shrubbery all around the
mansion, and the main body of the guard was posted in a vacant
basement-room, from which a staircase led to the upper floors. A person
entering by the main gate and walking up to the front door of the
Executive Mansion during the night could see no sign of a guard; but
from the moment anyone entered the grounds by any entrance, he was under
the view of at least two riflemen standing silent in the shrubbery, and
any suspicious movement on his part would have caused his immediate
arrest; while inside, the call of Captain Todd would have been promptly
answered by armed men. The precautions were taken before Fort Sumter was
fired on, as well as afterward. One night near midnight," continues
General Stone, "I entered the grounds for the purpose of inspecting the
guard, and was surprised to see a bright light in the East room. As I
entered the basement I heard a loud noise, as of many voices talking
loudly, mingled with the ringing of arms, coming from the great
reception room. On questioning the commander of the guard, I learned
that many gentlemen had entered the house at a late hour, but they had
come in boldly; no objection had been made from within, but on the
contrary Captain Todd had told him all was right. I ascended the
interior staircase and entered the East room, where I found more than
fifty men, among whom were Hon. Cassius M. Clay and General Lane. All
were armed with muskets, which they were generally examining, and it was
the ringing of many rammers in the musket barrels which had caused the
noise I had heard. Mr. Clay informed me that he and a large number of
political friends, _deeming it very improper that the President's person
should in such times be unguarded_, had formed a voluntary guard which
would remain there every night and see to it that Mr. Lincoln was well
protected. I applauded the good spirit exhibited, but did not, however,
cease the posting of the outside guards, nor the nightly inspections
myself as before, until the time came when others than myself became
responsible for the safety of the President."

It is stated that Lincoln "had an almost morbid dislike to an escort, or
guard, and daily exposed himself to the deadly aim of an assassin." To
the remonstrances of friends, who feared his constant exposure to
danger, he had but one answer: "If they kill me, the next man will be
just as bad for them; and in a country like this, where our habits are
simple, and must be, assassination is always possible, and will come if
they are determined upon it." A cavalry guard was once placed at the
gates of the White House for a while, and Lincoln said that he "worried
until he got rid of it." He once remarked to Colonel Halpine: "It would
never do for a President to have guards with drawn sabers at his door,
as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be,
an emperor." While the President's family were at their summer-house,
near Washington, he rode into town of a morning, or out at night,
attended by a mounted escort; but if he returned to town for a while
after dark, he rode in unguarded, and often alone, in his open carriage.
On more than one occasion, the same writer tells us, he "has gone
through the streets of Washington at a late hour of the night with the
President, without escort, or even the company of a servant, walking all
the way, going and returning. Considering the many open and secret
threats to take his life, it is not surprising that Lincoln had many
thoughts about his coming to a sudden and violent end. He once said that
he felt the force of the expression, 'To take one's life in his hand';
but that he would not like to face death suddenly. He said that he
thought himself a great coward physically, and was sure that he would
make a poor soldier, for unless there was something inspiriting in the
excitement of a battle he was sure that he would drop his gun and run at
the first symptom of danger. That was said sportively, and he added,
'Moral cowardice is something which I think I never had.'"




CHAPTER XVI


     Civil War--Uprising of the Nation--The President's First Call for
     Troops--Response of the Loyal North--The Riots in
     Baltimore--Loyalty of Stephen A. Douglas--Douglas's Death--Blockade
     of Southern Ports--Additional War Measures--Lincoln Defines the
     Policy of the Government--His Conciliatory Course--His Desire to
     Save Kentucky--The President's First Message to Congress--Gathering
     of Troops in Washington--Reviews and Parades--Disaster at Bull
     Run--The President Visits the Army--Good Advice to an Angry
     Officer--A Peculiar Cabinet Meeting--Dark Days for Lincoln--A
     "Black Mood" in the White House--Lincoln's Unfaltering
     Courage--Relief in Story-telling--A Pretty Good Land
     Title--"Measuring up" with Charles Sumner--General Scott "Unable as
     a Politician"--A Good Drawing-plaster--The New York Millionaires
     who Wanted a Gunboat--A Good Bridge-builder--A Sick Lot of
     Office-seekers.

The Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter--a United States fort situated
at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, South Carolina--April 12, 1861, was
the signal that civil war had actually begun. Lincoln had thus far
maintained a conciliatory policy toward the States in rebellion, hoping
to the last that good sense and reason prevailing over rash and violent
impulses would induce them to resume their allegiance to the Government.
Their resort to arms and capture of forts and property of the United
States decided the course of the administration; and on the 15th of
April--forty-two days after his accession to the Presidency--Lincoln
issued a proclamation asking for the immediate enlistment of 75,000
volunteers,[C] and summoning Congress to convene in an extra session on
the 4th of July. The call was sent forth in the following form:

     PROCLAMATION.

     _By the President of the United States_.

     WHEREAS, the laws of the United States have been for some time past
     and now are opposed and the execution thereof obstructed in the
     States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi,
     Louisiana and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed
     by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers
     vested in the marshals by law; now, therefore, I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
     President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested
     by the Constitution and the laws, have thought fit to call forth,
     and hereby do call forth, the militia of the several States of the
     Union, to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, in order
     to suppress said combinations and to cause the laws to be duly
     executed.

     The details of this object will be immediately communicated to the
     State authorities through the War Department. I appeal to all loyal
     citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the
     honor, the integrity and existence of our National Union, and the
     perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already
     long enough endured. I deem it proper to say that the first service
     assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to
     repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized
     from the Union; and in every event the utmost care will be
     observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any
     devastation, any destruction of, or interference with, property, or
     any disturbance of peaceful citizens of any part of the country;
     and I hereby command the persons composing the combinations
     aforesaid to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective
     abodes, within twenty days from this date.

     Deeming that the present condition of public affairs presents an
     extraordinary occasion, I do hereby, in virtue of the power in me
     vested by the Constitution, convene both Houses of Congress. The
     Senators and Representatives are, therefore, summoned to assemble
     at their respective chambers, at twelve o'clock, noon, on Thursday,
     the fourth day of July next, then and there to consider and
     determine such measures as, in their wisdom, the public safety and
     interest may seem to demand.

     In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
     of the United States to be affixed.

     Done at the City of Washington, this fifteenth day of April, in the
     year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and of
     the independence of the United States the eighty-fifth.

     _By the President_, ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
     WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

The issue of this proclamation created the wildest enthusiasm throughout
the North. Scarcely a voice was raised against it, as it was seen to be
a measure of absolute necessity and of self-defense on the part of the
Government. "Every Northern State," says Mr. Henry I. Raymond,
"responded promptly to the President's demand, and from private persons,
as well as by the Legislatures, men, arms, and money were offered in
unstinted profusion, and with the most zealous alacrity, in support of
the Government. Massachusetts was first in the field, and on the first
day after the issue of the proclamation her Sixth regiment, completely
equipped, started from Boston for the national capital. Two more
regiments were also made ready, and took their departure within
forty-eight hours."

The Sixth Massachusetts regiment was attacked on its way to Washington,
on the 19th of April, by a mob in Baltimore, carrying a Confederate
flag, and several of its members were killed or severely wounded.
"This," continues Mr. Raymond, "inflamed to a still higher point the
excitement which already pervaded the country. The whole Northern
section of the Union felt outraged that troops should be assailed and
murdered on their way to protect the capital of the nation. In Maryland,
where the secession party was strong, there was also great excitement,
and the Governor of the State and the Mayor of Baltimore united in
urging, for prudential reasons, that no more troops should be brought
through that city." In answer to the remonstrances of Governor Hicks and
a committee from Maryland, who presented their petition in person,
Lincoln, intent on avoiding every cause of offense, and with a
forbearance that now seems incredible, replied: "Troops must be brought
here; but I make no point of bringing them through Baltimore. Without
any military knowledge myself, of course I must leave details to General
Scott. He hastily said this morning, in the presence of these gentlemen,
'March them around Baltimore, and not through it.' I sincerely hope the
General, on fuller reflection, will consider this practical and proper,
and that you will not object to it. By this, a collision of the people
of Baltimore with the troops will be avoided, unless they go out of
their way to seek it. I hope you will exert your influence to prevent
this. Now and ever, I shall do all in my power for peace, consistently
with the maintenance of the Government."

One of the most encouraging incidents of this opening chapter of the war
was the announcement that Stephen A. Douglas, the great leader of the
Democracy and the life-long political opponent of Lincoln, had declared
his purpose to stand by the Government. The effect of this action, at
this crisis, was most salutary; it ranged the Northern Democrats with
the defenders of the Union, and gave Lincoln a united North as the act
of no other individual could have done. From that time until his death
Douglas never faltered in his loyalty, and stood by the Government with
a zeal and patriotism which were above all lower considerations of
person or of party. On Sunday, the 14th of April, when Washington was
thrilling with excitement over the fall of Fort Sumter, Douglas called
on the President and after a brief conversation authorized a statement
to be telegraphed throughout the country that he was "fully prepared to
sustain the President in the exercise of all his Constitutional
functions, to preserve the Union, maintain the Government, and defend
the Federal capital. A firm policy and prompt action were necessary. The
capital was in danger, and must be defended at all hazards, and at any
expense of men and money." Faithful to his pledge, Douglas immediately
set out upon a tour through the Northwest, to strengthen, by his words
and presence, the spirit of loyalty among the people. He made a series
of eloquent speeches on his journey to Chicago, where he arrived worn
and spent with the fatigue and excitement of his undertaking. It was the
last and noblest service of his life. Illness ensued, and after a few
weeks of suffering he passed away, June 3, at the age of forty-eight.
His death was an irreparable loss, mourned by the President and the
nation.

The President's call for troops was succeeded on the 19th of April by a
proclamation declaring a blockade of Southern ports. The text of this
document is historically important, as definitely formulating the
attitude and policy of the Government.

     _Whereas_, An insurrection against the Government of the United
     States has broken out in the States of South Carolina, Georgia,
     Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and the laws
     of the United States for the collection of the revenue cannot be
     efficiently executed therein, conformably to that provision of the
     Constitution which requires duties to be uniform throughout the
     United States:

     _And whereas_, A combination of persons, engaged in such
     insurrection, have threatened to grant pretended letters of marque
     to authorize the bearers thereof to commit assaults on the lives,
     vessels, and property of good citizens of the country lawfully
     engaged in commerce on the high seas, and in waters of the United
     States:

     _And whereas_, An Executive Proclamation has already been issued,
     requiring the persons engaged in these disorderly proceedings to
     desist therefrom, calling out a militia force for the purpose of
     repressing the same, and convening Congress in extraordinary
     session to deliberate and determine thereon:

     Now, therefore, I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States,
     with a view to the same purposes before mentioned, and to the
     protection of the public peace, and the lives and property of quiet
     and orderly citizens pursuing their lawful occupations, until
     Congress shall have assembled and deliberated on the said unlawful
     proceedings, or until the same shall have ceased, have further
     deemed it advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within
     the States aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws of the United
     States, and of the laws of nations in such cases provided. For this
     purpose a competent force will be posted so as to prevent entrance
     and exit of vessels from the ports aforesaid. If, therefore, with a
     view to violate such blockade, a vessel shall approach or shall
     attempt to leave any of the said ports, she shall be duly warned by
     the commander of one of the blockading vessels, who shall indorse
     on her register the fact and date of such warning; and if the same
     vessel shall again attempt to enter or leave the blockaded port,
     she will be captured and sent to the nearest convenient port, for
     such proceedings against her and her cargo, as prize, as may be
     deemed advisable.

     And I hereby proclaim and declare, that if any person, under the
     pretended authority of said States, or under any other pretense,
     shall molest a vessel of the United States, or the persons or cargo
     on board of her, such person will be held amenable to the laws of
     the United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy.

     _By the President_, ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
     WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.
     WASHINGTON, April 19, 1861.

On the 27th of April the President issued a proclamation by which the
blockade of Southern ports was extended to the ports of North Carolina
and Virginia. And on the 16th of May, by another proclamation, the
President directed the commander of the United States forces in Florida
to "permit no person to exercise any office or authority upon the
islands of Key West, Tortugas, and Santa Rosa, which may be inconsistent
with the laws and Constitution of the United States; authorizing him, at
the same time, if he shall find it necessary, to suspend the writ of
_habeas corpus_, and to remove from the vicinity of the United States
fortresses all dangerous and suspected persons."

The Virginia Convention which passed the ordinance of secession (April
17) having appointed a committee to wait upon the President and
"respectfully ask him to communicate to this Convention the policy which
the Federal Executive intends to pursue in regard to the Confederate
States," Lincoln in reply thus clearly outlined the policy and purposes
of the Government:

     In answer I have to say, that having at the beginning of my
     official term expressed my intended policy as plainly as I was
     able, it is with deep regret and mortification I now learn there is
     great and injurious uncertainty in the public mind as to what that
     policy is and what course I intend to pursue. Not having as yet
     seen occasion to change, it is now my purpose to pursue the course
     marked out in the Inaugural Address. I commend a careful
     consideration of the whole document as the best expression I can
     give to my purposes. As I then and therein said, I now repeat: "The
     power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess
     property and places belonging to the Government, and to collect the
     duties and imposts; but beyond what is necessary for these objects
     there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the
     people anywhere." By the words "property and places belonging to
     the Government," I chiefly allude to the military posts and
     property which were in possession of the Government when it came
     into my hands. But if, as now appears to be true, in pursuit of a
     purpose to drive the United States authority from these places, an
     unprovoked assault has been made upon Fort Sumter, I shall hold
     myself at liberty to repossess, if I can, like places which had
     been seized before the Government was devolved upon me; and in any
     event I shall, to the best of my ability, repel force by force. In
     case it proves true that Fort Sumter has been assaulted, as is
     reported, I shall, perhaps, cause the United States mails to be
     withdrawn from all the States which claim to have seceded,
     believing that the commencement of actual war against the
     Government justifies and possibly demands it. I scarcely need to
     say that I consider the military posts and property situated within
     the States which claim to have seceded, as yet belonging to the
     Government of the United States as much as they did before the
     supposed secession. Whatever else I may do for the purpose, I shall
     not attempt to collect the duties and imposts by any armed invasion
     of any part of the country; not meaning by this, however, that I
     may not land a force deemed necessary to relieve a fort upon the
     border of the country. From the fact that I have quoted a part of
     the Inaugural Address, it must not be inferred that I repudiate any
     other part, the whole of which I reaffirm, except so far as what I
     now say of the mails may be regarded as a modification.

     ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

In the early period of Lincoln's administration he was hopeful that many
serious phases of the threatened trouble might be averted, and that the
better judgment of the citizens of the South might prevail. "For more
than a month after his inauguration," says Secretary Welles, "President
Lincoln indulged the hope, I may say felt a strong confidence, that
Virginia would not secede but would adhere to the Union.... That there
should be no cause of offense, no step that would precipitate or justify
secession, he enjoined forbearance from all unnecessary exercise of
political party authority." But he was very decided and determined as to
what his duty was and what his action would be if the secessionists and
disunionists pressed their case. He said: "The disunionists did not want
me to take the oath of office. I have taken it, and I intend to
administer the office for the benefit of the people, in accordance with
the Constitution and the law." He was especially anxious that Kentucky
should not be plunged into a rebellious war, as he saw that this State
would be of the utmost importance to the Union cause. Soon after the
bombardment of Fort Sumter a conference was held between the President
and a number of prominent Kentuckians then in Washington, at which
Lincoln expressed himself in the most earnest words. Kentucky, he
declared, "must not be precipitated into secession. She is the key to
the situation. With her faithful to the Union, the discord in the other
States will come to an end. She is now in the hands of those who do not
represent the people. The sentiment of her State officials must be
counteracted. We must arouse the young men of the State to action for
the Union. We must know what men in Kentucky have the confidence of the
people, and who can be relied on for good judgment, that they may be
brought to the support of the Government at once." He paid a high
tribute to the patriotism of the Southern men who had stood up against
secession. "But," said he, "they are, as a rule, beyond the meridian of
life, and their counsel and example do not operate quickly, if at all,
on the excitable nature of young men who become inflamed by the
preparations for war, and who in such a war as this will be, if it goes
on, are apt to go in on the side that gives the first opportunity. The
young men must not be permitted to drift away from us. I know that the
men who voted against me in Kentucky will not permit this Government to
be swept away by any such issue as that framed by the disunionists."

As Mr. Markland, a prominent Kentuckian, relates, in his reminiscences
of the period: "Immediately a campaign for the Union was begun in
Kentucky. The State could not be dragooned into open secession,
therefore the neutrality policy was adopted. That policy was more
rigidly observed by Mr. Lincoln than it was by his opponents, but he was
not misled by it. Judge Joseph Holt made eloquent appeals for the Union
through the columns of the press and from the forum, as did the Speeds,
the Goodloes, and many others of prominence. Rousseau, Jacobs,
Poundbaker, and others, stood guard in the Legislature, and by their
eloquence stayed the tide of disunion there. The labors of Judge Holt,
the Speeds, the Goodloes, Cassius M. Clay, and their followers, had
brought forth fruit for the Union. The patriotic men in the Legislature
had done their work well. The men in the camps on the north side of the
Ohio river moved over into Kentucky, and the invasion of Confederates
which was to sweep Kentucky into secession was at an end. Kentucky was
saved to the Union by the wise counsel and pacific policy of Abraham
Lincoln."

A special session of Congress convened on the 4th of July, in obedience
to the summons of the President in his proclamation of April 15. The
following day the message of the Executive rehearsed to the joint Houses
the circumstances which had rendered their assembling necessary. It
portrayed in clear and succinct words the situation of affairs, the
aggressive acts of the States aiming to disrupt the Federal Union, and
the measures adopted by the administration to frustrate their attempts.
The assailants of the Government, said the President, "have forced upon
the country the distinct issue, 'immediate dissolution or blood.' And
this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It
presents to the whole family of man the question whether a
constitutional Republic or Democracy--a Government of the people by the
same people--can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against
its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented
individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to
organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this
case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily, without any pretense,
break up their Government, and thus practically put an end to free
government upon the earth. It forces us to ask, 'Is there, in all
Republics, this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a Government, of
necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too
weak to maintain its own existence?'" The message requested of Congress
"the legal means for making this contest a short and decisive one; that
you place at the control of the Government, for the work, at least four
hundred thousand men and $400,000,000. That number of men is about
one-tenth of those of proper ages within the regions where, apparently,
all are willing to engage; and the sum is less than a twenty-third part
of the money value owned by the men who seem ready to devote the whole.
A debt of $600,000,000 now is a less sum per head than was the debt of
our Revolution when we came out of that struggle; and the money value in
the country now bears even a greater proportion to what it was then than
does the population. Surely each man has as strong a motive now to
preserve our liberties as each had then to establish them." The message
dwelt upon the encouraging facts "that the free institutions we enjoy
have developed the powers and improved the condition of our whole people
beyond any example in the world. Of this we now have a striking and an
impressive illustration. So large an army as the Government has now on
foot was never before known without a soldier in it but had taken his
place there of his own free choice. But more than this; there are many
single regiments whose members, one and another, possess full practical
knowledge of all the arts, sciences, professions, and whatever else,
whether useful or elegant, is known in the world; and there is scarcely
one from which there could not be selected a President, a Cabinet, a
Congress, and perhaps a Court, abundantly competent to administer the
Government itself." Finally, and eloquently, the message demonstrated
the significance of the war in its effect upon the liberties and
prayers of all mankind. This message again illustrates Lincoln's
singular power of stating clearly and convincingly the nature and
exigencies of the struggle for the Preservation of the Union. Said he:

     This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it
     is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance
     of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of
     men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the
     paths of laudable pursuits for all; to afford all an unfettered
     start and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial
     and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading
     object of the Government for whose existence we contend. I am most
     happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate
     this. It is worthy of note that while, in this the Government's
     hour of trial, large numbers of those in the army and navy who have
     been favored with the offices have resigned and proved false to the
     hand which had pampered them, not one common soldier or common
     sailor is known to have deserted his flag. Great honor is due to
     those officers who remained true, despite the example of their
     treacherous associates; but the greatest honor, and most important
     fact of all, is the unanimous firmness of the common soldiers and
     common sailors. To the last man, so far as known, they have
     successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose
     commands but an hour before they obeyed as absolute law. This is
     the patriotic instinct of plain people. They understand, without an
     argument, that destroying the Government which was made by
     Washington means no good to them. Our popular Government has often
     been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already
     settled--the successful establishing and the successful
     administering of it. One still remains--its successful maintenance
     against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now
     for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly
     carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are
     the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when
     ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no
     successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful
     appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such
     will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot
     take by an election, neither can they take by a war; teaching all
     the folly of being the beginners of a war.

Through the early summer of 1861 Washington was alive with preparations
for a military movement against the enemy in Virginia. Troops from the
North were constantly arriving, and as rapidly as possible were assigned
to different organizations and drilled in the art of war. "Few
comparatively know or can appreciate the actual condition of things and
the state of feeling of the members of the Administration in those
days," says Secretary Welles. "Nearly sixty years of peace had unfitted
us for any war; but the most terrible of all wars, a civil war, was upon
us, and it had to be met. Congress had adjourned without making any
provision for the storm, though aware it was at hand and soon to burst
upon the country. A new Administration, its members scarcely acquainted
with each other, and differing essentially in the past, was compelled to
act, promptly and decisively." The burden upon the President began to
grow tremendous; but he did not shrink or falter.

    Upon his back a more than Atlas-load,
      The burden of the Commonwealth, was laid;
    He stooped, and rose up to it, though the road
      Shot suddenly downwards, not a whit dismayed.

He labored incessantly in urging forward the preparations for the great
struggle which, however he might regret it, he now saw was inevitable.
He was in daily conference with the officers of the army and of the War
Department, and was present at innumerable reviews and parades of the
soldiers. The 4th of July was memorable for a grand review of all the
New York troops in and about the city. It was a brilliant and impressive
scene. Says a spectator, Hon. A.G. Riddle: "As they swept
past--twenty-five thousand boys in blue--their muskets flashing, bands
playing, and banners waving, I stood near a distinguished group
surrounding the President, and noted his countenance as he turned to the
massive moving column. All about him were excited, confident, exultant.
He stood silent, pale, profoundly sad, as though his prophetic soul saw
what was to follow. He seemed to be gazing beyond the splendid pageant
before him, upon things hidden from other eyes. Was there presaged to
him a vision of that grander review of our victorious armies at the
close of the war, which he was not to see?"

A few days later, all the troops in Washington crossed the Long Bridge
and marched, gallant and exultant, straight toward the enemy in
Virginia. The advance of our army resulted, on the 21st of July, in the
shameful disaster at Bull Run. The North was filled with surprise and
dismay, and even the stoutest hearts were burdened with anxiety for the
future. Lincoln at first shared somewhat in the general depression, but
his elastic spirits quickly rallied from the shock. Three or four days
after the battle, some gentlemen who had been on the field called upon
him. He inquired very minutely regarding all the circumstances of the
affair, and after listening with the utmost attention, said, with a
touch of humor: "So it's your notion that we _whipped the rebels_, and
then _ran away from them_!" Not long after this, the President made a
personal visit to the army in Virginia. General Sherman, at that time
connected with the Army of the Potomac, says: "I was near the
river-bank, looking at a block-house which had been built for the
defense of the aqueduct, when I saw a carriage coming by the road that
crossed the Potomac river at Georgetown by a ferry. I thought I
recognized in the carriage the person of President Lincoln. I hurried
across a bend, so as to stand by the roadside as the carriage passed. I
was in uniform, with a sword on, and was recognized by Mr. Lincoln and
Mr. Seward, who rode side by side in an open hack. I inquired if they
were going to my camp, and Mr. Lincoln said: 'Yes; we heard that you had
got over the big scare, and we thought we would come over and see the
boys.' The roads had been much changed and were rough. I asked if I
might give directions to his coachman; he promptly invited me to jump
in, and to tell the coachman which way to drive. Intending to begin on
the right and follow round to the left, I turned the driver into a
side-road which led up a very steep hill, and, seeing a soldier, called
to him and sent him up hurriedly to announce to the Colonel whose camp
we were approaching that the President was coming. As we slowly ascended
the hill, I discovered that Mr. Lincoln was full of feeling, and wanted
to encourage our men. I asked if he intended to speak to them, and he
said he would like to. I asked him then to please discourage all
cheering, noise, or any sort of confusion; that we had had enough of it
before Bull Run to ruin any set of men, and that what we needed were
cool, thoughtful, hard-fighting soldiers--no more hurrahing, no more
humbug. He took my remarks in the most perfect good-nature. Before we
had reached the first camp, I heard the drum beating the 'assembly,' saw
the men running for their tents, and in a few minutes the regiment was
in line, arms presented, and then brought to an 'order' and 'parade
rest.' Mr. Lincoln stood up in the carriage, and made one of the
neatest, best, and most feeling addresses I ever listened to, referring
to our late disaster at Bull Run, the high duties that still devolved on
us, and the brighter days yet to come. At one or two points the soldiers
began to cheer, but he promptly checked them, saying: 'Don't cheer,
boys. I confess I rather like it myself, but Colonel Sherman here says
that it is not military; and I guess we had better defer to his
opinion.' In winding up, he explained that, as President, he was
commander-in-chief; that he was resolved that the soldiers should have
everything that the law allowed; and he called on one and all to appeal
to him personally in case they were wronged. The effect of this speech
was excellent. We passed along in the same manner to all the camps of my
brigade; and Mr. Lincoln complimented me highly for the order,
cleanliness, and discipline that he observed. Indeed, he and Mr. Seward
both assured me that it was the first bright moment that they had
experienced since the battle."

"In the crowd at Fort Corcoran," continues General Sherman, "I saw an
officer with whom I had had a little difficulty that morning. His face
was pale and his lips were compressed. I foresaw a scene, but sat on the
front seat of the carriage as quiet as a lamb. This officer forced his
way through the crowd to the carriage, and said: 'Mr. President, I have
a cause of grievance. This morning I went to speak to Colonel Sherman,
and he threatened to shoot me.' Mr. Lincoln, who was still standing,
said, 'Threatened to _shoot you_?' 'Yes, sir, he threatened to shoot
me.' Mr. Lincoln looked at him, then at me; and stooping his tall, spare
form toward the officer, said to him in a loud stage-whisper, easily
heard for some yards around: 'Well, if I were you, and he threatened to
shoot, _I would not trust him_, for _I believe he would do it_.' The
officer turned about and disappeared, and the men laughed at him. Soon
the carriage drove on, and as we descended the hill I explained the
facts to the President, who answered, 'Of course I didn't know anything
about it, but I thought you knew your own business best.' I thanked him
for his confidence, and assured him that what he had done would go far
to enable me to maintain good discipline; and it did."

The days following the Bull Run disaster were full of depression and
discouragement, but Lincoln bore up bravely. He began to feel the
terrible realities of his position, and saw himself brought face to face
with the most awful responsibilities that ever rested upon human
shoulders. A disrupted Union, the downfall of the great American
Republic, so long predicted by envious critics of our institutions,
seemed about to be accomplished. At the best, the Union could be saved
only by the shedding of seas of priceless blood and the expenditure of
untold treasures. And _he_ must act, control, choose, and direct the
measures of the Government and the movements of its vast armies. And
what if all should fail? What if the resources of the Government should
prove inadequate, and its enemies too powerful to be subdued by force?
No wonder he was appalled and well-nigh overwhelmed by the dark prospect
before him.

Rev. Robert Collyer tells of seeing Lincoln in the summer of 1861, on
the steps of the White House, "answering very simply and kindly to the
marks of respect some soldiers had come to pay him, who stood in deep
ranks on the grass, that had been top-dressed with compost enough to
cover the whole District of Columbia, as the chairman of the committee
that had to pass the account told me. And once, curiously, I saw _only
his feet_. It was soon after the battle of Bull Run, when some say that
_we_ ran, and some say that _they_ ran. And all was quiet on the
Potomac; but the nation was stamping and champing the bit. And passing
the White House one day, I saw three pairs of feet on the sill of an
open window; and pausing for a moment, a good-natured fellow said,
'_That's the Cabinet a sittin_', and _them big feet's old Abe's.'_ So,
lecturing in Boston not long after, I said, like a fool as I was,
'That's about all they are good for in Washington, to point their feet
out o' window and talk, but go nowhere and do nothing.' When, indeed,
the good President's heart was even then breaking with anxiety and
trouble."

"One day," says Mr. A.G. Riddle, "I called at the White House to present
a distinguished stranger, who had important matters to bring to Mr.
Lincoln's notice. It was evening--cold, rainy, and cheerless. The
Executive Mansion was gloomy and silent. At Mr. Lincoln's door we were
told by the attendant to enter. We found the room quite dark, and
seemingly vacant. I advanced a step or two, to determine if anyone were
present, and was arrested by a strange apparition, at first not
distinguishable: the long, seemingly lifeless, limbs of a man, as if
thrown upon a chair and left to sprawl in unseemly disorder. A step
further, and the fallen head disclosed the features of the President. I
turned back; a word from my companion reached the drooping figure, and a
sepulchral voice bade us advance. We came upon a man, in some respects
the most remarkable of any time, in the hour of his prostration and
weakness--in the depths of that depression to which his inherited
melancholy at times reduced him, now perhaps coming to overwhelm him as
he thought of the calamities of his country."

An old and intimate friend from Springfield, who visited Lincoln at this
period, found the door of his office in the White House locked; but
going through a private room and a side entrance, he found the President
lying on a sofa, evidently greatly disturbed and much excited,
manifestly displeased with the outlook. Jumping up from his reclining
position, he advanced, saying: "You know better than any man living that
from my boyhood up my ambition was to be President. I am President of
one part of this divided country at least; but look at me! I wish I had
never been born! I've a white elephant on my hands, one hard to manage.
With a fire in my front and rear, having to contend with the jealousies
of the military commanders, and not receiving that cordial co-operation
and support from Congress that could reasonably be expected, with an
active and formidable enemy in the field threatening the very life-blood
of the Government, my position is anything but a bed of roses."

But in the darkest hours of the nation's peril, Lincoln never wavered in
his purpose. Anxious and careworn, his heart bleeding with grief for the
losses of our brave soldiers, and harassed by the grave duties
constantly demanding his attention, he had but one purpose,--to go on
unfalteringly and unhesitatingly in his course until the supremacy of
the Government was restored in every portion of its territory. He wrote
in a private letter: "I expect to maintain this contest until
successful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or
Congress or the country forsake me."

Besides his invincible will and courage, Lincoln had one important
resource in his dark hours, an ever-ready relief for his overcharged
emotions. Byron said that he sometimes laughed in order that he might
not weep. Lincoln's life-long solace was his love of story-telling. Hon.
Hugh McCulloch, afterward Secretary of the Treasury, relates that about
a week after the battle of Bull Run he called at the White House, in
company with a few friends, and was amazed when, referring to something
which had been said by one of the company about the battle that was so
disastrous to the Union forces, the President remarked, in his usual
quiet manner, "That reminds me of a story," which he told in a manner so
humorous as almost to lead his listeners to believe that he was free
from care and apprehension. Mr. McCulloch could not then understand how
the President could feel like telling a story, when Washington was in
danger of being captured and the whole North was dismayed. He learned
his mistake afterwards, however, and perceived that his estimate of
Lincoln before his election was well grounded, and that he possessed
even higher qualities than he had been given credit for; that he was "a
man of sound judgment, great singleness and tenacity of purpose, and
extraordinary sagacity; that story-telling was to him a safety-valve,
and that he indulged in it, not only for the pleasure it afforded him,
but for a temporary relief from oppressing cares." It is related that on
the morning after the battle at Fredericksburg, Hon. I.N. Arnold, then a
member of Congress from Illinois, called on the President, and to his
amazement found him engaged in reading "Artemus Ward." Making no
reference to that which occupied the universal thought, he asked Mr.
Arnold to sit down while he read to him Artemus' description of his
visit to the Shakers. Shocked at this proposition, Mr. Arnold said: "Mr.
President, is it possible that with the whole land bowed in sorrow and
covered with a pall in the presence of yesterday's fearful reverse, you
can indulge in such levity?" Throwing down the book, with the tears
streaming down his cheeks and his huge frame quivering with emotion,
Lincoln answered: "Mr. Arnold, if I could not get momentary respite from
the crushing burden I am constantly carrying, my heart would break!"

Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "His broad good humor, running easily into
jocular talk, in which he delighted, and in which he excelled, was a
rich gift to this wise man. It enabled him to keep his secret, to meet
every kind of man, and every rank in society; to take off the edge of
the severest decisions, to mask his own purpose and sound his companion,
and to catch, with true instinct, the temper of every company he
addressed. And, more than all, it is to a man of severe labor, in
anxious and exhausting crises, the natural restorative, good as sleep,
and is the protection of the overdriven brain against rancor and
insanity."

Even amidst the stern realities of war, Lincoln was keenly appreciative
of anything that disclosed the comic or grotesque side of men or
happenings,--largely, doubtless, for the relief afforded him. At the
beginning of Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania, in June, 1863, when the
Union forces under Colonel Milroy were driven out of Harper's Ferry by
the Confederates, great consternation and alarm were caused by reports
that the Army of the Potomac had been routed and was retreating before
Lee, who was pressing forward toward Harrisburg, the capital of
Pennsylvania. Mr. Welles records in his Diary (June 17, 1863) that he
was at the War Department with the President and Secretary Stanton, when
"a messenger came in from General Schenck, declaring that the
stragglers and baggage-trains of Milroy had run away in affright, and
squads of them on different parallel roads had alarmed each other, and
each fled in terror with all speed to Harrisburg. This alone was
asserted to be the basis of the great panic which had alarmed
Pennsylvania and the country. The President," continues Mr. Welles, "was
in excellent humor. He said this flight would be a capital joke for
Orpheus C. Kerr[D] to get hold of. He could give scope to his
imagination over the terror of broken squads of panic-stricken
teamsters, frightened at each other and alarming all Pennsylvania.
General Meigs, who was present, inquired with great simplicity who this
person (Orpheus C. Kerr) was. 'Why,' said the President, 'have you not
read those papers? They are in two volumes; anyone who has not read them
is a heathen.' He said he had enjoyed them greatly--except when they
attempted to play their wit on him, which did not strike him as very
successful, but rather disgusted him. 'Now, the hits that are given to
you, Mr. Welles, or to Chase,' he said, 'I can enjoy; but I daresay they
may have disgusted you while I was laughing at them. So _vice versa_ as
regards myself.'"

Hon. Lawrence Weldon relates that on one occasion he called upon the
President to inquire as to the probable outcome of a conflict between
the civil and military authorities for the possession of a quantity of
cotton in a certain insurrectionary district. As soon as the inquiry had
been made, Lincoln's face began lighting up, and he said: "What has
become of our old friend Bob Lewis, of DeWitt County? Do you remember a
story that Bob used to tell us about his going to Missouri to look up
some Mormon lands that belonged to his father? You know that when
Robert became of age he found among the papers of his father a number of
warrants and patents for lands in Northeast Missouri, and he concluded
the best thing he could do was to go to Missouri and investigate the
condition of things. It being before the days of railroads, he started
on horseback, with a pair of old-fashioned saddlebags. When he arrived
where he supposed his land was situated, he stopped, hitched his horse,
and went into a cabin standing close by the roadside. He found the
proprietor, a lean, lank, leathery looking man, engaged in the pioneer
business of making bullets preparatory to a hunt. On entering, Mr. Lewis
observed a rifle suspended in a couple of buck-horns above the fire. He
said to the man, 'I am looking up some lands that I think belong to my
father,' and inquired of the man in what section he lived. Without
having ascertained the section, Mr. Lewis proceeded to exhibit his title
papers in evidence, and, having established a good title, as he thought,
said to the man, 'Now, that is my title. What is yours?' The pioneer,
who had by this time become somewhat interested in the proceedings,
pointed his long finger toward the rifle. Said he, 'Young man, do you
see that gun?' Mr. Lewis frankly admitted that he did. 'Well,' said he,
'that is my title, and if you don't get out of here pretty d----d quick
you will feel the force of it.' Mr. Lewis very hurriedly put his title
papers in his saddlebags, mounted his pony and galloped down the road,
and, as Bob says, the old pioneer snapped his gun twice at him before he
could turn the corner. Lewis said that he had never been back to disturb
that man's title since. 'Now,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'the military
authorities have the same title against the civil authorities that
closed out Bob's Mormon title in Missouri.'" Judge Weldon says that
after this anecdote he understood what would be the policy of the
Government in the matter referred to as well as though a proclamation
had been issued.

The tedium of meetings of the Cabinet was often relieved, and
troublesome matters before it were illuminated, by some apt and pithy
story. Secretary Welles tells of such an occasion when "Seward was
embarrassed about the Dominican [_sic_] question. To move either way
threatened difficulty. On one side was Spain, on the other side the
negro. The President remarked that the dilemma reminded him of the
interview between two negroes, one of whom was a preacher endeavoring to
admonish and enlighten the other. 'There are,' said Josh the preacher,
'two roads for you, Joe. Be careful which you take. One ob dem leads
straight to hell, de odder go right to damnation.' Joe opened his eyes
under the impressive eloquence and visions of an awful future, and
exclaimed, 'Josh, take which road you please; I go troo de wood.' 'I am
not disposed to take any new trouble,' said the President, 'just at this
time, and shall neither go for Spain nor the negro in this matter, but
shall take to the woods.'"

It is related that Charles Sumner, who was a very tall man, and proud of
his height, once worried the President about some perplexing matter,
when Lincoln sought to change the subject by abruptly challenging his
visitor to measure backs. "Sumner," said Mr. Lincoln, "declined to stand
up with me, back to back, to see which was the tallest man, and made a
fine speech about this being the time for uniting our fronts against the
enemy, and not our backs. But I guess he was afraid to measure, though
he is a good piece of a man. I have never had much to do with Bishops
where I live, but, do you know, Sumner is _my idea of a Bishop_."

A good story of President Lincoln and General Scott is reported by
Major-General Keyes, who at the beginning of the war was on the staff of
General Scott, then commander-in-chief of the armies of the United
States. "I was sent," says General Keyes, "by my chief to the President
with a message that referred to a military subject, and that led to a
discussion. Finding that Mr. Lincoln's observations were beginning to
tangle my arguments, I said, 'That is the opinion of General Scott, and
you know, Mr. President, he is a very able military man.' 'Well,' said
the President, 'if he is as _able_ a military man as he is _unable_ as a
politician, I give up.' This was said with an expression of the eye,
which he turned on me, that was peculiar to him, and which signified a
great deal. The astounding force of Mr. Lincoln's observation was not at
all diminished by the fact that I had long suspected that my chief
lacked something which is necessary to make a successful politician."

Among the numerous delegations which thronged Washington in the early
part of the war was one from New York, which urged very strenuously the
sending of a fleet to the southern cities--Charleston, Mobile, and
Savannah--with the object of drawing off the rebel army from Washington.
Lincoln said the object reminded him of the case of a girl in New Salem,
who was greatly troubled with a "singing" in her head. Various remedies
were suggested by the neighbors, but nothing seemed to afford any
relief. At last a man came along--"a common-sense sort of man," said he,
inclining his head towards his callers pleasantly,--"who was asked to
prescribe for the difficulty. After due inquiry and examination, he said
the cure was very simple. 'What is it?' was the question. 'Make a
plaster of _psalm-tunes_, and apply to her feet, and draw the singing
_down_,' was the rejoinder." Still better was his reply to another
delegation of New York millionaires who waited upon him in 1862, after
the appearance of the rebel ram "Merrimac," and represented to him that
they were very uneasy about the unprotected situation of their city,
which was exposed to attack and bombardment by rebel rams; and they
requested him to detail a gun-boat to defend the city. The gentlemen
were fifty in number, very dignified and respectable in appearance, and
stated that they represented in their own right $100,000,000. Lincoln
did not wish to offend these gentlemen, and yet he intended to give them
a little lesson. He listened with great attention, and seemed to be much
impressed by their presence and their statements. Then he replied, very
deliberately: "Gentlemen, I am by the Constitution commander-in-chief of
the army and navy of the United States; and, as a matter of law, can
order anything done that is practicable to be done. But, as a matter of
fact, I am not in command of the gun-boats or ships of war; as a matter
of fact, I do not know exactly where they are, but presume they are
actively engaged. It is impossible for me, in the present condition of
things, to furnish you a gun-boat. The credit of the Government is at a
very low ebb; greenbacks are not worth more than forty or fifty cents on
the dollar; and in this condition of things, if I was worth half as much
as you, gentlemen, are represented to be, and as badly scared as you
seem to be, I _would build a gun-boat and give it to the Government._" A
gentleman who accompanied the delegation says he never saw one hundred
millions sink to such insignificant proportions, as the committee
recrossed the threshold of the White House, sadder but wiser men.

"Mr. Lincoln had his joke and his 'little story' over the disruption of
the Democracy. He once knew, he said, a sound churchman, of the name of
Brown, who was the member of a very sober and pious committee, having
in charge the erection of a bridge over a dangerous and rapid river.
Several architects had failed, and at last Brown said he had a friend
named Jones who had built several bridges, and could undoubtedly build
that one. So Mr. Jones was called in. 'Can you build this bridge?'
inquired the committee. 'Yes,' replied Jones, 'or any other. I could
build a bridge to h--l, if necessary.' The committee were shocked, and
Brown felt called upon to defend his friend. 'I know Jones so well,'
said he, 'and he is so honest a man, and so good an architect, that if
he states soberly and positively that he can build a bridge to ... to
... the infernal regions, why, I believe it; but I feel bound to say
that I have my doubts about the abutment on the other side.' 'So,' said
Mr. Lincoln, 'when politicians told me that the Northern and Southern
wings of the Democracy could be harmonized, why, I believed them, of
course; but I always had my _doubts about the abutment on the other
side._'"

A delegation once called on Lincoln to ask the appointment of a
gentleman as commissioner to the Sandwich Islands. They presented their
case as earnestly as possible, and, besides his fitness for the place,
they urged that he was in bad health and a residence in that balmy
climate would be of great benefit to him. The President closed the
interview with the good-humored remark: "Gentlemen, I am sorry to say
that there are eight other applicants for that place, and they are _all
sicker than your man._"




CHAPTER XVII


     Lincoln's Wise Statesmanship--The Mason and Slidell
     Affair--Complications with England--Lincoln's "Little Story" on the
     Trent Affair--Building of the "Monitor"--Lincoln's Part in the
     Enterprise--The President's First Annual Message--Discussion of the
     Labor Question--A President's Reception in War Time--A Great
     Affliction--Death in the White House--Chapters from the Secret
     Service--A Morning Call on the President--Goldwin Smith's
     Impressions of Lincoln--Other Notable Tributes.

In November of 1861 occurred one of the most important and perilous
episodes of the war; one whose full significance was not understood,
except by a few cool heads, until long afterwards. Two influential
Southern politicians, Mason and Slidell, had been sent by the
Confederate Government as Commissioners to Great Britain and France, to
try to secure the recognition of the Confederacy; and while on board the
British steamer "Trent" they were taken prisoners by the U.S. steamer
"San Jacinto," and were brought to Washington. Great Britain loudly
protested against what she regarded as an unwarrantable seizure of
passengers under the British flag, and for a time excitement ran high
and war with England seemed almost inevitable. Fortunately for our
country, the controversy was amicably settled by the surrender of the
prisoners, without any sacrifice of the dignity of the Government of the
United States. As stated by "Hosea Biglow,"--

    We gave the critters back, John,
      Cos Abraham thought 't was right;
    It wa'nt your bullyin' clack, John,
      Provokin' us to fight.

The statesmanship displayed by our Government throughout this difficult
affair was of the highest order. Credit for it has been given to Mr.
Seward, the Secretary of State, by whom the correspondence and
negotiations were conducted. Few men could have managed these details
better; yet the course that was so happily determined on was undoubtedly
due to the good sense and shrewd wisdom of the President. He not only
dictated the policy to be followed by Mr. Seward in his despatches to
the American Minister in London, but the more important documents were
revised and materially altered by Lincoln's own hand. His management of
the Trent affair alone, it has been said, would suffice to establish his
reputation as the ablest diplomatist of the war. Coming, as it did, at a
time when Lincoln was overwhelmed with the burden of home affairs, it
showed the surprising resources of his character. The readiness and
ability with which he met this perilous emergency, in a field in which
he had had absolutely no experience or preparation, was equaled only by
his cool courage and self-reliance in following a course radically
opposed to the prevailing public sentiment, to the views of Congress,
and to the advice of his own Cabinet. The Secretary of the Navy had
hastened to approve officially the act of Captain Wilkes, commander of
the "San Jacinto," and Secretary Stanton "cheered and applauded" it.
Even Mr. Seward, cautious and conservative diplomat as he was, at-first
"opposed any concession or surrender of the prisoners." But Lincoln said
significantly, "_One war at a time_." Events have long since afforded
the most ample vindication of his course in this important matter. He
avoided a foreign war, while at the same time, by committing Great
Britain to the doctrine of "peace between neutrals," gained a
substantial diplomatic victory over that government.

An excellent account of the circumstances of the Trent affair is given
by Benson J. Lossing, the author and historian, who was in Washington
when the events occurred. "The act of Captain Wilkes," says Mr. Lossing,
"was universally applauded by all loyal Americans, and the land was
filled with rejoicings because two of the most mischievous men among the
enemies of the Government were in custody. For the moment, men did not
stop to consider the law or the expediency involved in the act. Public
honors were tendered to Captain Wilkes, and resolutions of thanks were
passed by public bodies. The Secretary of the Navy wrote him a
congratulatory letter on the 'great public services' he had rendered in
'capturing the rebel emissaries, Mason and Slidell,' and assured him
that his conduct had 'the emphatic approval of the department.' The
House of Representatives tendered him their thanks for the service he
had done. But there was one thoughtful man in the nation, in whom was
vested the tremendous executive power of the Republic at that time, and
whose vision was constantly endeavoring to explore the mysteries of the
near future, who held calmer and wiser thoughts than most men at that
critical moment, because his feelings were kept in subjection to his
judgment by a sense of heavy responsibility. That man was Abraham
Lincoln. The writer was in the office of the Secretary of War when the
telegraphic despatch announcing the capture of Mason and Slidell was
brought in and read. He can never forget the scene that ensued. Led by
Secretary Stanton, who was followed by Governor Andrew of Massachusetts
and others who were present, cheer after cheer was heartily given by the
company. A little later, the writer was favored with a brief interview
with the President, when the clear judgment of that far-seeing and
sagacious statesman uttered through his lips the words which formed the
suggestion of, and the keynote to, the judicious action of the Secretary
of State afterwards. 'I fear the traitors will prove to be white
elephants,' said Mr. Lincoln. 'We must stick to American principles
concerning the rights of neutrals,' he continued. 'We fought Great
Britain for insisting, by theory and practise, on the right to do just
what Captain Wilkes has just done. If Great Britain shall now protest
against the act, and demand their release, we must give them up,
apologize for the act as a violation of our own doctrines, and thus
_forever bind her over to keep the peace in relation to neutrals_, and
so acknowledge that she has been wrong for sixty years.' Great Britain
did protest and make the demand, and at the same time made preparations
for war against the United States. On the same day that Lord John
Russell sent the protest and demand to Lord Lyons, the British Minister
at Washington, Secretary Seward forwarded a despatch to Minister Adams
in London, informing him that this Government disclaimed the act of
Captain Wilkes, and giving assurance that it was ready to make a
satisfactory arrangement of all difficulties arising out of the
unauthorized act. These despatches passed each other in mid-ocean. The
Government, in opposition to popular sentiment, decided at once to
restore Mason and Slidell to the protection of the British flag. It was
soon afterwards done, war between the two nations was averted, and, in
the language of President Lincoln, the British Government was 'forever
bound to keep the peace in relation to neutrals.' The wise statesmanship
exhibited at that critical time was originated by Abraham Lincoln."

Lincoln once confessed that the Trent affair, occurring as it did at a
very critical period of the war, had given him great uneasiness. When
asked whether it was not a great trial to surrender the two captured
Commissioners, he said: "Yes, that was a pretty bitter pill to swallow,
but I contented myself with believing that England's triumph in the
matter would be short-lived, and that after ending our war successfully
we could if we wished call England to account for the embarrassments she
had inflicted upon us. I felt a good deal like the sick man in Illinois
who was told he probably hadn't many days longer to live, and that he
ought to make peace with any enemies he might have. He said the man he
hated worst of all was a fellow named Brown, in the next village, and he
guessed he had better begin on him. So Brown was sent for, and when he
came the sick man began to say, in a voice as meek as Moses', that he
wanted to die at peace with all his fellow-creatures, and hoped he and
Brown could now shake hands and bury all their enmity. The scene was
becoming altogether too pathetic for Brown, who had to get out his
handkerchief and wipe the gathering tears from his eyes. It wasn't long
before he melted and gave his hand to his neighbor, and they had a
regular love-feast. After a parting that would have softened the heart
of a grindstone, Brown had about reached the room door, when the sick
man rose up on his elbow and said, 'But, see here, Brown, if I _should_
happen to get well, mind _that old grudge stands_!' So I thought if this
nation should happen to get well, we might want that old grudge against
England to stand."

Other controversies with England arose during the progress of the
war--over the fitting out of Confederate cruisers at English ports to
prey upon the commerce of the United States, over captured mails,
etc.--in which all of Lincoln's sagacity and patience were needed to
avert an open rupture with the British government. That the strain was
severe and the danger great is made clear by an entry in Mr. Welles's
Diary, in which he says: "We are in no condition for a foreign war. Torn
by dissensions, an exhausting civil war on our hands, we have a gloomy
prospect, but a righteous cause that will ultimately succeed. God alone
knows through what trials, darkness, and suffering we are to pass."
Again, in dealing with the French invasion of Mexico, Lincoln--as Mr.
John Bigelow (then minister to France) puts it--"wisely limited himself
to a firm repetition of the views and principles held by the United
States in relation to foreign invasion," and thereby gained a diplomatic
victory. How well "the old grudge against England" stood is shown by the
substantial damages obtained from her, some years after the war, on the
claims against the Alabama and other privateers, the foundations of
which had been wisely laid by President Lincoln.

In the autumn of 1861 was originated the plan of a new naval vessel,
which became the "Monitor"--the forerunner of the modern iron-clad, and
the formidable little craft that beat back the "Merrimac" ram at Hampton
Roads, March 9, 1862, saved the Federal Navy, and revolutionized naval
architecture. The interesting story of the project, and of Lincoln's
relation to it, is thus told: "The invention belongs to Captain John
Ericsson, a man of marvelous ability and most fertile brain; but the
creation of the 'Monitor' belongs to two distinguished iron-masters of
the State of New York, viz.: the Hon. John F. Winslow and his partner in
business, the Hon. John A. Griswold. These two gentlemen were in
Washington in the autumn of 1861, for the adjustment of some claims
against the Government for iron plating furnished by them for the
war-ship 'Galena.' There, through Mr. C.S. Bushnell, the agent of
Captain Ericsson, they learned that the plans and specifications for a
naval machine, or a floating iron battery, presented by Captain
Ericsson, found no favor with the special board appointed by Congress in
1861 to examine and report upon the subject of iron-clad ships of war.
Ericsson and his agent, Mr. Bushnell, were thoroughly disheartened and
demoralized at this failure to interest the Government in their plans.
The papers were placed in the hands of Messrs. Winslow and Griswold,
with the earnest request that they would examine them, and, if they
thought well of them, use their influence with the Government for their
favorable consideration. Mr. Winslow carefully read the papers and
became satisfied that Ericsson's plan was both feasible and desirable.
After conference with his friend and partner, Mr. Griswold, it was
determined to take the whole matter to President Lincoln. Accordingly,
an interview was arranged with Mr. Lincoln, to whom the plans of Captain
Ericsson were presented, with all the unction and enthusiasm of an
honest and mastering conviction, by Mr. Winslow and Mr. Griswold, who
had now become thoroughly interested in the undertaking. The President
listened with attention and growing interest. When they were done, Mr.
Lincoln said, 'Gentlemen, why do you bring this matter to me? Why not
take it to the Department having these things in charge?' 'It has been
taken already to the Department, and there met with a repulse, and we
come now to you with it, Mr. President, to secure your influence. We are
here not simply as business men, but as lovers of our country, and we
believe most thoroughly that here is something upon which we can enter
that will be of vast benefit to the Republic,' was the answer. Mr.
Lincoln was roused by the terrible earnestness of Mr. Winslow and his
friend Griswold, and said, in his inimitable manner, 'Well, I don't know
much about ships, though I once contrived a canal-boat--the model of
which is down in the Patent Office--the great merit of which was that it
could run where there was no water. But I think there is something in
this plan of Ericsson's. I'll tell you what I will do. I will meet you
to-morrow at ten o'clock, at the office of Commodore Smith, and we will
talk it all over.' The next morning the meeting took place according to
the appointment. Mr. Lincoln was present. The Secretary of the Navy,
with many of the influential men of the Navy Department, also were
there. The office where they met was rude in its belongings. Mr. Lincoln
sat upon a rough box. Mr. Winslow, without any knowledge of naval
affairs other than that which general reading would give, entered upon
his task with considerable trepidation, but his whole heart was in it,
and his showing was so earnest, practical, and patriotic, that a
profound impression was made. 'Well,' said Mr. Lincoln, after Mr.
Winslow had finished, 'well, Commodore Smith, what do you think of it?'
The Commodore made some general and non-committal reply, whereupon the
President, rising from the box, added, 'Well, I think there is something
in it. Good morning, gentlemen,' and went out. From this interview grew
a Government contract with Messrs. Winslow and Griswold for the
construction of the 'Monitor,' the vessel to be placed in the hands of
the Government within a hundred days at a cost of $275,000. The work was
pushed with all diligence till the 30th of January, 1862, when the ship
was launched at Greenpoint, one hundred and one days from the execution
of the contract, thus making the work probably the most expeditious of
any recorded in the annals of mechanical engineering."

At the assembling of Congress in December, 1861, Lincoln presented his
first Annual Message. Among its most noteworthy passages was that which
touched upon the relations between labor and capital--a subject so
prominent in our later day. It was alluded to in its connection with the
evident tendency of the Southern Confederacy to discriminate in its
legislation in favor of the moneyed class and against the laboring
people. On this point the President said:

     In my present position, I could scarcely be justified were I to
     omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning
     despotism. It is not needed nor fitting here, that a general
     argument should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there
     is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most
     others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place
     _capital_ on an equal footing with, if not above, _labor_, in the
     structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only
     in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody
     else, owning capital, somehow, by the use of it, induces him to
     labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that
     capital shall _hire_ laborers, and thus induce them to work by
     their own consent, or _buy_ them, and drive them to it without
     their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded
     that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves.
     And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is
     fixed in that condition for life. Now, there is no such relation
     between capital and labor as assumed; nor is there any such thing
     as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired
     laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from
     them are groundless. Labor is prior to and independent of capital.
     Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if
     labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and
     deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights,
     which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it
     denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation
     between labor and capital, producing mutual benefits. The error is
     in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that
     relation. A few men own capital, and those few avoid labor
     themselves, and, with their capital, hire or buy another few to
     labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class--neither
     work for others, nor have others working for them. In most of the
     Southern States, a majority of the whole people of all colors are
     neither slaves nor masters; while in the North, a large majority
     are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their families--wives,
     sons, and daughters--work for themselves, on their farms, in their
     houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves,
     and asking no favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hired
     laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a
     considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with
     capital--that is, they labor with their own hands, and also buy or
     hire others to labor for them; but this is only a mixed, not a
     distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence
     of this mixed class. Again, as has already been said, there is not,
     of necessity, any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed
     to that condition for life. Many independent men everywhere in
     these States, a few years back in their lives, were hired laborers.
     The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages
     awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for
     himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at
     length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and
     generous and prosperous system, which opens the way to all, gives
     hope to all, and consequent energy and progress and improvement of
     condition to all. No men living are more worthy to be trusted than
     those who toil up from poverty--none less inclined to take, or
     touch, aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware
     of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and
     which, if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of
     advancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and
     burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost.

     The struggle _of_ to-day is not altogether _for_ to-day--it is for
     a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence, all the more
     firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events
     have devolved upon us.

The reception given at the White House on New Year's day, 1862, was a
brilliant and memorable affair. It was attended by distinguished army
officers, prominent men from civil life, and the leading ladies of
Washington society. "Army uniforms preponderated over black dress coats,
and the young Germans of Blenker's division were gorgeously arrayed in
tunics embroidered with gold on the collars and cuffs, sword-belts of
gold lace, high boots, and jingling spurs." It was such a scene as that
before the battle of Waterloo, when the

    ... capital had gathered then
    Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
    The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
    A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
    Music arose, with its voluptuous swell,
    Soft eyes looked love to eyes that spake again,
    And all went merry as a marriage bell.

How many of these brave men were destined never to see another New
Year's day; and how many of those soft eyes would soon be dimmed with
tears! Something of this feeling must have come over the sad soul of
Lincoln. An eye-witness says that he "looked careworn and thoughtful, if
not anxious; yet he had a pleasant word for all."

Early in 1862 an event occurred which added to the sorrow that seemed
to enshroud the life of Lincoln, and afforded a glimpse into the depths
of his tender and sorrowful nature. It was the death of his son Willie,
a bright and promising boy, to whom his father was devotedly attached.
"This," says Dr. J.G. Holland, "was a new burden; and the visitation
which, in his firm faith in Providence, he regarded as providential, was
also inexplicable. Why should he, with so many burdens upon him, and
with such necessity for solace in his home and his affections, be
brought into so tender a trial? It was to him a trial of faith, indeed.
A Christian lady of Massachusetts, who was officiating as nurse in one
of the hospitals, came in to attend the sick children. She reports that
Mr. Lincoln watched with her about the bedside of the sick ones, and
that he often walked the room, saying sadly: 'This is the hardest trial
of my life. Why is it? Why is it?' In the course of conversations with
her, he questioned her concerning her situation. She told him she was a
widow, and that her husband and two children were in heaven; and added
that she saw the hand of God in it all, and that she had never loved Him
so much before as she had since her affliction. 'How is that brought
about?' inquired Mr. Lincoln. 'Simply by trusting in God, and feeling
that He does all things well,' she replied. 'Did you submit fully under
the first loss?' he asked. 'No,' she answered, 'not wholly; but as blow
came upon blow, and all were taken, I could and did submit, and was very
happy.' He responded, 'I am glad to hear you say that. Your experience
will help me to bear my afflictions.' On being assured that many
Christians were praying for him on the morning of the funeral, he wiped
away the tears that sprang in his eyes, and said, 'I am glad to hear
that. I want them to pray for me. I need their prayers.' As he was
going out to the burial, the good lady expressed her sympathy with him.
He thanked her gently, and said, 'I will try to go to God with my
sorrows.' A few days afterward she asked him if he could trust God. He
replied, 'I think I can. I will try. I wish I had that childlike faith
you speak of, and I trust He will give it to me.' And then he spoke of
his mother, whom so many years before he had committed to the dust among
the wilds of Indiana. In this hour of his great trial, the memory of her
who had held him upon her bosom and soothed his childish griefs came
back to him with tenderest recollections. 'I remember her prayers,' said
he, 'and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my
life.'"

An interesting passage in the secret history of the war at this period
is narrated by one of the chief actors, Mr. A.M. Ross, a distinguished
ornithologist of Canada, whose contribution embodies also so many
interesting details of Lincoln's daily life that it seems worth giving
rather fully. A few months after the inauguration of President Lincoln,
Mr. Ross received a letter from the Hon. Charles Sumner, requesting him
to come to Washington at his earliest convenience. "The day after my
arrival in Washington," says Mr. Ross, "I was introduced to the
President. Mr. Lincoln received me very cordially, and invited me to
dine with him. After dinner he led me to a window, distant from the rest
of the party, and said: 'Mr. Sumner sent for you at my request; we need
a confidential person in Canada to look after our interests, and keep us
posted as to the schemes of the Confederates in Canada. You have been
strongly recommended to me for the position. Your mission shall be as
confidential as you please; no one here but your friend Mr. Sumner and
myself shall have any knowledge of your position. Think it over
tonight, and if you can accept the mission come up and see me at nine
o'clock tomorrow morning.' When I took my leave of him, he said, 'I hope
you will decide to serve us.' The position thus offered was one not
suited to my tastes, but, as Mr. Lincoln appeared very desirous that I
should accept it, I concluded to lay aside my prejudices and accept the
responsibilities of the mission. I was also persuaded to this conclusion
by the wishes of my friend, Mr. Sumner.

"At nine o'clock next morning, I waited upon the President, and
announced my decision. He grasped my hand in a hearty manner, and said:
'Thank you, thank you; I am glad of it. You must help us to circumvent
the machinations of the rebel agents in Canada. There is no doubt they
will use your country as a communicating link with Europe, and also with
their friends in New York. It is quite possible, also, that they may
make Canada a base from which to harass and annoy our people along the
frontier.'

"After a lengthy conversation relative to private matters connected with
my mission, I rose to leave, when he said, 'I will walk down to
Willard's with you; the hotel is on my way to the Capitol, where I have
an engagement at noon.' Before we reached the hotel a man came up to the
President and thrust a letter into his hand, at the same time applying
for some office in Wisconsin. I saw that the President was offended at
the rudeness, for he passed the letter back without looking at it,
saying, 'No, sir! I am not going to open shop here.' This was said in a
most emphatic manner, but accompanied by a comical gesture which caused
the rejected applicant to smile. As we continued our walk, the President
spoke of the annoyances incident to his position, saying: 'These
office-seekers are a curse to the country; no sooner was my election
certain, than I became the prey of hundreds of hungry, persistent
applicants for office, whose highest ambition is to feed at the
Government crib.' When he bade me good-bye, he said, 'Let me hear from
you once a week at least.' As he turned to leave me, a young army
officer stopped him and made some request, to which the President
replied with a good deal of humor, 'No, I can't do that; I must not
interfere; they would scratch my eyes out if I did. You must go to the
proper department.'

"Some time later," says Mr. Ross, "I again visited Washington. On my
arrival there (about midnight) I went direct to the Executive Mansion,
and sent my card to the President, who had retired. In a few minutes the
porter returned and requested me to accompany him to the President's
office, where Mr. Lincoln would shortly join me. The room into which I
was ushered was the same in which I had spent several hours with the
President on the occasion of my first interview with him. Scattered
about the floor and lying open on the table were several military maps
and documents, indicating recent use. In a few minutes the President
came in and welcomed me in a most friendly manner; I expressed my regret
at disturbing him at such an hour. He replied in a good-humored manner,
saying, 'No, no! You did right; you may waken me up whenever you please.
I have slept with one eye open ever since I came to Washington; I never
close both, except when an office-seeker is looking for me.' I then laid
before the President the 'rebel mail.' He carefully examined the address
of each letter, making occasional remarks. At length he found one
addressed to Franklin Pierce, ex-President of the United States, then
residing in New Hampshire; and another to ex-Attorney-General Cushing, a
resident of Massachusetts. He appeared much surprised, and remarked
with a sigh, but without the slightest tone of asperity, 'I will have
these letters enclosed in official envelopes, and sent to these
parties.' When he had finished examining the addresses, he tied up all
those addressed to private individuals, saying, 'I won't bother with
them; but these look like official letters; I guess I'll go through them
now.' He then opened them, and read their contents, slowly and
carefully. While he was thus occupied, I had an excellent opportunity of
studying this extraordinary man. A marked change had taken place in his
countenance since my first interview with him. He looked much older, and
bore traces of having passed through months of painful anxiety and
trouble. There was a sad and serious look in his eyes that spoke louder
than words of the disappointments, trials, and discouragements he had
encountered since the war began. The wrinkles about the eyes and
forehead were deeper; the lips were firmer, but indicative of kindness
and forbearance. The great struggle had brought out the hidden riches of
his noble nature, and developed virtues and capacities which surprised
his oldest and most intimate friends. He was simple, but astute; he
possessed the rare faculty of seeing things just as they are. He was a
just, charitable, and honest man.

"When Mr. Lincoln finished reading the letters, I rose to go, saying
that I would go to Willard's, and have a rest. 'No, no,' said the
President, 'it is now three o'clock; you shall stay with me while you
are in town; I'll find you a bed'; and leading the way, he took me into
a bedroom, saying, 'Take a good sleep; you shall not be disturbed.'
Bidding me 'good night,' he left the room to go back and pore over the
rebel letters until daylight, as he afterwards told me. I did not awaken
from my sleep until eleven o'clock in the forenoon, soon after which Mr.
Lincoln came into my room, and laughingly said, 'When you are ready,
I'll pilot you down to breakfast,' which he did. Seating himself at the
table near me, he expressed his fears that trouble was brewing on the
New Brunswick border; he said he had gathered further information on
that point from the correspondence, which convinced him that such was
the case. He was here interrupted by a servant, who handed him a card,
upon reading which he arose, saying, 'The Secretary of War has received
important tidings; I must leave you for the present; come to my room
after breakfast and we'll talk over this New Brunswick affair."

"On entering his room again, I found him busily engaged in writing, at
the same time repeating in a low voice the words of a poem which I
remembered reading many years before. When he stopped writing I asked
him who was the author of that poem. He replied, 'I do not know. I have
written the verses down from memory, at the request of a lady who is
much pleased with them.' He passed the sheet, on which he had written
the verses, to me, saying, 'Have you ever read them?' I replied that I
had, many years previously, and that I should be pleased to have a copy
of them in his handwriting, when he had time and an inclination for such
work. He said, 'Well, you may keep that copy, if you wish.'"

Hon. William D. Kelly, a Member of Congress from Pennsylvania, relates
that during the time of McClellan's Peninsular campaign he called at the
White House one morning, and while waiting to see the President, Senator
Wilson of Massachusetts entered the chamber, having with him four
distinguished-looking Englishmen. The President, says Mr. Kelly, "had
evidently had an early appointment, and had not completed his toilet. He
was in slippers, and his pantaloons, when he crossed one knee over the
other, disclosed the fact that he wore heavy blue woollen stockings. It
was an agreeable surprise to learn that the chief of the visiting party
was Professor Goldwin Smith of Canada, one of the firmest of our British
friends. As the President rose to greet them, he was the very
impersonation of easy dignity, notwithstanding the negligence of his
costume. With a tact that never deserted him, he opened the conversation
with an inquiry as to the health of his friend John Bright, whom he said
he regarded as a friend of our country and of freedom everywhere. The
visitors having been seated, the magnitude of recent battles was
referred to by Professor Smith as preliminary to the question whether
the enormous losses which were so frequently occurring would not so
reduce the industrial resources of the North as to affect seriously the
prosperity of individual citizens and consequently the revenue of the
country. He justified the question by proceeding to recite the number of
killed, wounded, and missing, reported after some of the great battles
recently fought. There were two of Mr. Lincoln's official friends who
lived in dread of his little stories. Neither of them was gifted with
humor, and both could understand his propositions, which were always
distinct and clean cut, without such familiar illustrations as those in
which he so often indulged; and they were chagrined whenever they were
compelled to hear him resort to his stories in the presence of
distinguished strangers. They were Senator Wilson of Massachusetts and
Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War; and, as Professor Smith closed his
arithmetical statement, the time came for the Massachusetts Senator to
bite his lips, for the President, crossing his legs in such a manner as
to show that his blue stockings were long as well as thick, said that,
in settling such matters as that, we must resort to 'darkey arithmetic.'
'To darkey arithmetic!' exclaimed the dignified representative of the
learning and higher thought of Great Britain and her American Dominion.
'I did not know, Mr. President, that you have two systems of arithmetic'
'Oh, yes,' said the President; 'I will illustrate that point by a little
story. Two young contrabands, as we have learned to call them, were
seated together, when one said to the other, "Jim, do you know
'rithmetic?" Jim answered, "No; what is 'rithmetic?" "Well," said the
other, "it's when you add up things. When you have one and one, and you
put dem togedder, dey makes two. And when you subtracts things, when if
you have two things and you takes one away, only one remains." "Is dat
'rithmetic?" "Yah." "Well, 'tain't true, den. It's no good!" Here a
dispute arose, when Jim said, "Now, you 'spose three pigeons sit on that
fence, and somebody shoot one of dem; do t'other two stay dar? I guess
not! dey flies away quickern odder feller falls." And, Professor,
trifling as the story seems, it illustrates the arithmetic you must use
in estimating the actual losses resulting from our great battles. The
statements you have referred to give the killed, wounded, and missing at
the first roll-call after the battle, which always exhibits a greatly
exaggerated total, especially in the column of missing.'"

Mr. Goldwin Smith, the gentleman referred to in the foregoing anecdote,
has summarized his impressions of Lincoln in the following paragraph:
"Such a person as Abraham Lincoln is quite unknown to our official
circles or to those of Continental nations. Indeed, I think his place in
history will be unique. He has not been trained to diplomacy or
administrative affairs, and is in all respects one of the people. But
how wonderfully he is endowed and equipped for the performance of the
duties of the chief executive officer of the United States at this time!
The precision and minuteness of his information on all questions to
which we referred was a succession of surprises to me."

Still terser, but hardly less expressive, is Emerson's characterization
of Lincoln as one who had been "permitted to do more for America than
any other American man."

A striking passage by Mr. Norman Hapgood should have place among these
tributes. "Lincoln had no artificial aids. He merely proved the weapon
of finest temper in the fire in which he was tested. In the struggle for
survival in a national upheaval, he not only proved the living power of
integrity and elasticity, but he easily combined with his feats of
strength and shrewdness some of the highest flights of taste. As we look
back across the changes of his life,--see him passing over the high
places and the low, and across the long stretches of the prairie;
spending years in the Socratic arguments of the tavern, and anon holding
the rudder of state in grim silence; choosing jests which have the
freshness of earth, and principles of eternal right; judging potentates
and laborers in the clear light of nature, and at ease with both; alone
by virtue of a large and melancholy soul, at home with every man by
virtue of love and faith,--this figure takes its place high in our minds
and hearts, not solely through the natural right of strength and
success, but also because his strength is ours, and the success won by
him rested on the fundamental purity and health of the popular will of
which he was the leader and the servant. Abraham Lincoln was in a deep
and lasting sense the first American."

Mr. John Bigelow, already quoted in these pages, summarized Lincoln's
character and achievements in a passage of singular eloquence and force.
"Lincoln's greatness must be sought for in the constituents of his moral
nature. He was so modest by nature that he was perfectly content to
walk behind any man who wished to walk before him. I do not know that
history has made a record of the attainment of any corresponding
eminence by any other man who so habitually, so constitutionally, did to
others as he would have them do to him. Without any pretensions to
religious excellence, from the time he first was brought under the
observation of the nation he seemed, like Milton, to have walked 'as
ever in his great Taskmaster's eye.' St. Paul hardly endured more
indignities and buffetings without complaint. He was not a learned man.
He was not even one who would deserve to be called in our day an
educated man--knew little rather than much of what the world is proud
of. He had never been out of the United States, or seen much of the
portion of them lying east of the Alleghany Mountains. But the spiritual
side of his nature was so highly organized that it rendered superfluous
much of the experience which to most men is indispensable--the choicest
prerogative of genius. It lifted him unconsciously above the world,
above most of the men who surrounded him, and gave him a wisdom in
emergencies which is bestowed only on those who love their fellow-man as
themselves.... In the ordinary sense of the word, Mr. Lincoln was not a
statesman. Had he come to power when Van Buren did, or when Cleveland
did, he would probably have left Washington at the close of his term as
obscure as either of them. The issues presented to the people of the
United States at the Presidential election of 1860 were to a larger
extent moral questions, humanly speaking, than were those presented at
any other Presidential election. They were: first, the right of the
majority to rule; second, the right of eight millions, more or less, of
our fellow-beings to their freedom; and, third, the institutions and
traditions which Washington planted and Jefferson watered, with the
sacrifices necessary for their preservation. These questions
subordinated all other political issues, and appealed more directly and
forcibly to the moral sentiments of this nation than any issues they had
ever before been called to settle either at the ballot-box or by force
of arms. A President was needed at Washington to represent these moral
forces. Such a President was providentially found in Lincoln ... a
President who walked by faith and not by sight; who did not rely upon
his own compass, but followed a cloud by day and a fire by night, which
he had learned to trust implicitly."

A very graphic summing-up of Lincoln in person and character is that of
Mr. John G. Nicolay, one of his private secretaries, who knew him
intimately and understood him well. "President Lincoln was of unusual
stature, six feet four inches, and of spare but muscular build," says
Mr. Nicolay. "He had been in youth remarkably strong and skilful in the
athletic games of the frontier, where, however, his popularity and
recognized impartiality oftener made him an umpire than a champion. He
had regular and prepossessing features, dark complexion, broad, high
forehead, prominent cheek bones, gray, deep-set eyes, and bushy, black
hair, turning to gray at the time of his death. Abstemious in his
habits, he possessed great physical endurance. He was almost as
tender-hearted as a woman. 'I have not willingly planted a thorn in any
man's bosom,' he was able to say. His patience was inexhaustible. He had
naturally a most cheerful and sunny temper, was highly social and
sympathetic, loved pleasant conversation, wit, anecdote, and laughter.
Beneath this, however, ran an undercurrent of sadness; he was
occasionally subject to hours of deep silence and introspection that
approached a condition of trance. In manner he was simple, direct, void
of the least affectation, and entirely free from awkwardness, oddity,
or eccentricity. His mental qualities were a quick analytic perception,
strong logical powers, a tenacious memory, a liberal estimate and
tolerance of the opinions of others, ready intuition of human nature;
and perhaps his most valuable faculty was rare ability to divest himself
of all feeling or passion in weighing motives of persons or problems of
state. His speech and diction were plain, terse, forcible. Relating
anecdotes with appreciating humor and fascinating dramatic skill, he
used them freely and effectively in conversation and argument. He loved
manliness, truth, and justice. He despised all trickery and selfish
greed. In arguments at the bar he was so fair to his opponent that he
frequently appeared to concede away his client's case. He was ever ready
to take blame on himself and bestow praise on others. 'I claim not to
have controlled events,' he said, 'but confess plainly that events have
controlled me.' The Declaration of Independence was his political chart
and inspiration. He acknowledged a universal equality of human rights.
'Certainly the negro is not our equal in color,' he said, 'perhaps not
in many other respects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the
bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other
man, white or black.' He had unchanging faith in self-government. 'The
people,' he said, 'are the rightful masters of both congresses and
courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who
pervert the Constitution.' Yielding and accommodating in non-essentials,
he was inflexibly firm in a principle or position deliberately taken.
'Let us have faith that right makes might,' he said, 'and in that faith
let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.' ..."




CHAPTER XVIII


     Lincoln and his Cabinet--An Odd Assortment of
     Officials--Misconceptions of Rights and Duties--Frictions and
     Misunderstandings--The Early Cabinet Meetings--Informal
     Conversational Affairs--Queer Attitude toward the War--Regarded as
     a Political Affair--Proximity to Washington a Hindrance to Military
     Success--Disturbances in the Cabinet--A Senate Committee Demands
     Seward's Removal from the Cabinet--Lincoln's Mastery of the
     Situation--Harmony Restored--Stanton becomes War Secretary--Sketch
     of a Remarkable Man--Next to Lincoln, the Master-mind of the
     Cabinet--Lincoln the Dominant Power.

President Lincoln's Cabinet, while containing men of marked ability and
fitness for their positions, was in some respects about as ill-assorted
and heterogeneous a body of men as were ever called to serve together as
ministers and advisers of a great government. Its selection was a
surprise to the country. Mr. John Bigelow said it "had the appearance of
being selected from a grab-bag." "Not one of the members," continues Mr.
Bigelow, "was a personal or much of a political friend of Mr. Lincoln;
not one of them had ever had any experience or training in any executive
office, except Welles of Connecticut, if he could be claimed as an
exception because of having served three years in a bureau of the Navy
in Washington. Of military administration, still less of actual war, no
member knew anything by experience. The heads of the two most important
departments, the Secretaries of State and the Treasury, were both
disappointed candidates for the chair occupied by Mr. Lincoln. It was
nothing less than Providential that the President was so happily
constituted as neither to share nor to provoke any of the jealousies or
envies of either of them, and by his absolute freedom from every selfish
impulse gradually compelled them all to look up to him as the one person
in whose singleness of eye they could all and always confide. Not
immediately, but in the course of two or three years, they got into the
habit of turning to him like quarrelling children to their mother to
settle all the questions that temporarily divided them."

These Cabinet ministers were a devoted and patriotic body of men, but
their misconceptions of their respective rights and duties were at first
grotesque. Mr. Seward, a man of far greater administrative experience
than Lincoln, assumed that he, rather than the President, was to be the
master mind of the new administration. "Premier" he at first called
himself. Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, thought the Navy should be a
sort of adjunct to the War Department--an error of which Secretary
Welles of the Navy Department speedily relieved him. These two men were
altogether too unlike to get on well together. The cold and somewhat
stately Welles was repelled by Stanton's impulsiveness and violence,
while Stanton was exasperated by Welles's calmness and lack of
excitability. "Lincoln's ministers had no idea that he towered above
them," says Mr. John T. Morse, Jr., "and no one of them was at all
overawed by him in those days. Presiding over them at the Cabinet,
casually meeting them, chatting with them or lounging as was his habit
in Stanton's room, Lincoln seemed only officially superior to them. One
of them had expected to be President, and another meant to be; a third
dared to be insolent and unruly; it seemed to be only by a chance of
politics that these men stood to him as junior partners to a senior, or
like a board of directors to the president of a corporation."

The unfriendly feeling existing between members of the Cabinet comes
out in many entries in Welles's Diary. "Pressing, assuming, violent,
impatient, intriguing, harsh, and arbitrary," are examples of the terms
in which Stanton is spoken of by Welles His contempt for the Committee
on the Conduct of the War is expressed in no less stinging words. The
members of this committee "are most of them narrow and prejudiced
partisans, mischievous busybodies, and a discredit to Congress. Mean and
contemptible partisanship colors all their acts." It is amusing to note
that while Secretary Welles was thus outspoken in his criticisms of
others, he himself did not escape calumny. One critic (Thurlow Weed,
who, it may be remembered, had objected to Welles's appointment to a
Cabinet position when Lincoln suggested it to him in their consultation
at Springfield before the inauguration) declared that "It is worse than
a fault, it is a crime, to keep that old imbecile at the head of the
Navy Department." And another critic expressed the uncomplimentary
opinion that "If Lincoln would send old Welles back to Hartford, it
would be better for the Navy and for the country."

The accounts of the earliest Cabinet meetings, as given by Secretary
Welles, who was nearly always present, are full of interest. "Cabinet
meetings, which at that exciting period should have been daily, were
infrequent, irregular, and without system," says Mr. Welles. "The
Secretary of State notified his associates when the President desired a
meeting of the heads of Departments. It seemed unadvisable to the
Premier--as he liked to be called and considered--that the members
should meet often, and they did not. Consequently there was very little
concerted action. At the earlier meetings there was little or no
formality; the Cabinet meetings were a sort of privy council or
gathering of equals, much like a Senatorial caucus, where there was no
recognized leader and the Secretary of State put himself in advance of
the President. No seats were assigned or regularly taken. The Secretary
of State was invariably present some little time before the Cabinet
assembled, and from his former position as the chief executive of the
largest State in the Union as well as from his recent place as a
Senator, and from his admitted experience and familiarity with affairs,
assumed, and was allowed, as was proper, to take the lead in
consultations and also to give tone and direction to the manner and mode
of proceedings. The President, if he did not actually wish, readily
acquiesced in, this. Mr. Lincoln, having never had experience in
administering the Government, State or National, deferred to the
suggestions and course of those who had. Mr. Seward was not slow in
taking upon himself to prescribe action and to do most of the talking,
without much regard to the modest chief, but often to the disgust of his
associates, particularly Mr. Bates, who was himself always courteous and
respectful, and to the annoyance of Mr. Chase, who had had, like Mr.
Seward, experience as a chief magistrate. Discussions were desultory and
without order or system; but in the summing-up and conclusions the
President, who was a patient listener and learner, concentrated results,
and often determined questions adverse to the Secretary of State,
regarding him and his opinions, as he did those of his other advisers,
for what they were worth and generally no more."

It was perhaps natural, in a country so long free from wars as ours had
been, that the Civil War should be regarded as a sort of political
affair to be directed from Washington rather than by commanders in the
field. For the first year or so the feeling was quite general that
military affairs should be directed by Congress, acting through its
Committee on the Conduct of the War, and by the Secretary of War, who
complained bitterly that he was not allowed to assume control of
military movements and that his plans were thwarted by McClellan (whom
he especially hated). The President himself did not escape this
condemnation. The feeling at this time is expressed in a sentence in
Stanton's complaint, reflected through Chase, that "the President takes
counsel of none but army officers in army matters." Chase declared to
Welles, according to the latter, that the Treasury as well as other
departments "ought to be informed of the particulars of every movement."
The generals engaged in planning the campaigns and fighting the battles
of the war, and their commander-in-chief the President, could hardly
fail to find their task an uphill one when ideas so naïve and fatuous as
these prevailed. It is no wonder that General Grant recorded in his
Memoirs the opinion that the great difficulty with the Army of the
Potomac during the first year of the war was its proximity to
Washington; that the conditions made success practically impossible; and
that neither he, nor General Sherman, nor any officer known to him,
could have succeeded in General McClellan's place, under the conditions
that then existed. Gradually, and by slow and often painful experience,
a clearer conception of the meaning and methods of war prevailed. In
this, as in so many things, Lincoln's insight was first and surest. By
patience, tact, shrewdness, firmness, and diplomatic skill, he held the
Cabinet together and stimulated its members to their best efforts for
the common cause.

But the personal frictions and dissensions in the Cabinet, and the more
or less meddlesome attitude of leaders in the Senate and the House, at
times sorely tried the strength and patience of the harassed President,
compelling him to act the part of peacemaker, and sometimes of judge and
arbiter as well. At one time Secretary Stanton threatened to resign; and
Chase declared that in that case he should go with him. Stanton and
Welles were in frequent antagonism, Welles stating in his Diary that
Stanton assumed, or tried to assume, that the Navy should be subject to
the direction of the War Department. Seward was "meddlesome" toward
other departments; "runs to the President two or three times a day;
wants to be Premier," etc., says Welles. "Between Seward and Chase there
was perpetual rivalry and mutual but courtly distrust; they entered the
Cabinet as rivals, and in cold courtesy so continued." The most serious
of these Cabinet embroglios occurred late in December of 1862, while
Lincoln was well-nigh overwhelmed by Burnside's dreadful repulse at
Fredericksburg. The gist of the affair, as given by Mr. Welles, is that
the opposition to Seward in the Senate grew to such a point that a
committee was appointed to wait on the President and request Seward's
removal from the office of Secretary of State. The President, Mr. Welles
tells us, was "shocked and grieved" at this demonstration. He asked all
the members of his Cabinet to meet the Senate committee with him. All
the members of the Cabinet were present except Seward, who had already
sent the President his resignation. The meeting was attended also by
Senators Collamer, Fessenden, Harris, Trumbull, Grimes, Howard, Sumner,
and Pomeroy. The President, says Mr. Welles, opened the subject for
which the meeting was called, taking a conciliatory tone toward the
Senators, and requesting from each in turn an expression of opinion as
to the wisdom of dropping Seward from the Cabinet. Most of them were
strongly of the opinion that Seward ought to go. The President presented
his own views, which were, in effect, that it would be a mistake to let
Seward leave the Cabinet at that particular time. "He managed his own
case," says Mr. Welles, "speaking freely, and showing great tact,
shrewdness, and ability." The meeting continued until nearly midnight,
and the matter was left still in the President's hands. The next morning
Mr. Welles called early at the White House and found Lincoln practically
decided not to accept Seward's resignation, saying that it would never
do to take the course prescribed by the Senators; that "the Government
would cave in; it could not stand--would not hold water; the bottom
would be out," etc. He requested Welles to go at once to Seward and ask
him not to press his resignation. Lincoln's intuitional mind seemed at
once to connect Secretary Chase with the attack on Seward. Before Welles
left the room, the President rang a bell and directed that a message be
sent to Chase requesting him to come at once to the White House. When
Welles returned from his interview with Seward, who readily promised to
withdraw his resignation at the President's request, he found both Chase
and Seward waiting for the President. The latter soon came in, and his
first words were to ask Welles if he "had seen the man," to which Welles
answered that he had, and that he assented to what had been asked of
him. The dramatic scene that followed is thus described by Mr. Welles in
his Diary: "The President turned to Chase and said, 'I sent for you, for
this matter is giving me great trouble.' Chase said he had been
painfully affected by the meeting last evening, which was a total
surprise to him; and, after some not very explicit remarks as to how he
was affected, informed the President he had prepared his resignation of
the office of Secretary of the Treasury. 'Where is it?' said the
President quickly, his eye lighting up in a moment. 'I brought it with
me,' said Chase, taking the paper from his pocket; 'I wrote it this
morning.' 'Let me have it,' said the President, reaching his long arm
and fingers toward Chase, who held on, seemingly reluctant to part with
the letter, which was sealed, and which he apparently hesitated to
surrender. Something further he wished to say; but the President was
eager and did not perceive it, and took and hastily opened the letter.
'This,' said he, looking toward me with a triumphant air, 'cuts the
Gordian Knot. I can now dispose of this subject without difficulty, I
see my way clear.' Chase sat by Stanton, fronting the fire; the
President beside the fire, his face toward them, Stanton nearest him. I
was on the sofa, near the east window. 'Mr. President,' said Stanton,
with solemnity, 'I informed you day before yesterday that I was ready to
tender you my resignation. I wish you, sir, to consider my resignation
at this time in your possession.' 'You may go to your department,' said
the President; 'I don't want yours. This,' holding out Chase's letter,
'is all I want; this relieves me; my way is clear; the trouble is ended.
I will detain neither of you longer.' We all rose to leave," concludes
Mr. Welles. "Chase and myself came downstairs together. He was moody and
taciturn. Someone stopped him on the lower stairs, and I passed on."

A few days later, the President requested both Seward and Chase to
withdraw their resignations and resume their duties. This was done, and
the trouble was ended for the time. Both Secretaries had got their
lessons, and profited by them. By the exercise of tact and patience,
with firmness and decision when required, the President had let it be
known that he was the head and chief of the Administration.

Next to the President, it was not Secretary Seward, the "Premier" as he
wished to be regarded, but the War Secretary, Stanton, who was the
master-mind of the Cabinet. He was the incarnation of energy, the
embodiment of patriotic zeal. With all his faults of temper and
disposition, he was a man of singular fitness for the responsible
position he occupied, and his services to the Government can hardly be
overestimated. He had been a Democrat, a member of Buchanan's Cabinet,
and was, says Dr. Holland, "the first one in that Cabinet to protest
against the downright treason into which it was drifting. He was a man
of indomitable energy, devoted loyalty, and thorough honesty.
Contractors could not manipulate him, traitors could not deceive him.
Impulsive, perhaps, but true; wilful, it is possible, but placable;
impatient, but persistent and efficient,--he became at once one of the
most marked and important of the members of the Cabinet." Lincoln and
Stanton together were emphatically "a strong team."

Stanton was not a member of Lincoln's first Cabinet, but came into it at
the beginning of 1862, in place of Simon Cameron, who had just been
appointed Minister to Russia. A very interesting account of Cameron's
personal relations with Lincoln, the causes that led to his retirement
from the Cabinet, and the appointment of Stanton in his place, is given
by Cameron himself. He had been the choice of the Pennsylvania
delegation for President, at the Chicago Convention in 1860, and it was
largely due to him that Lincoln received the nomination. "After the
election," said Mr. Cameron, "I made a trip to the West at Mr. Lincoln's
request. He had, by letter, tendered me the position of either Secretary
of War or Secretary of the Treasury; but when I went to see him he said
that he had concluded to make Mr. Seward Secretary of State, and he
wanted to give a place to Mr. Chase. 'Salmon P. Chase,' said he, 'is a
very ambitious man.' 'Very well,' said I, 'then the War Department is
the place for him. We are going to have an armed conflict over your
election, and the place for an ambitious man is in the War Department.
There he will have lots of room to make a reputation.' These thoughts of
mine, that we were to have war, disturbed Mr. Lincoln very much, and he
seemed to think I was entirely too certain about it. Finally, when he
came to make up his Cabinet, doubtless remembering what I had said about
the War Department, he appointed me Secretary of War."

"There has been," continues Mr. Cameron, "a great deal of misstatement
as to Mr. Stanton's appointment as my successor. Stanton had been my
attorney from the time I went into the War Department until he took my
place as Secretary. I had hardly made a move in which the legality of
any question could arise. I had taken his advice. I believed in the
vigorous prosecution of the war from the start, while Mr. Seward
believed in dallying and compromising, and Mr. Chase was constantly
agitated about the expenditure of money; therefore it was that I was
careful to have the advice of an able lawyer. When the question of
changing me from the War Department to the Russian mission came up, Mr.
Lincoln said to me, 'Whom shall I appoint in your place?' My prompt
response was, 'Edwin M. Stanton.' 'But,' said he, 'I had thought of
giving it to Holt.' 'Mr. Lincoln,' said I, 'if I am to retire in the
present situation of affairs, it seems but proper that a friend of mine,
or at least a man not unfriendly to me, should be appointed in my place.
If you give Mr. Stanton the position, you will not only accomplish this
object but will please the State of Pennsylvania and also get an
excellent officer.' 'Very well,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'you go and see him,
and if he will accept the place he shall have it.' I left the White
House and started to find Stanton, passing through the Treasury
Department on my way. As I passed Mr. Chase's office, I stepped in and
told him what had occurred between the President and myself. He said,
'Let's send for Stanton; bring him here and talk it over.' 'Very well,'
said I, and a messenger was at once sent. Stanton came immediately, and
I told him of the conference between the President and myself. He agreed
to accept. We walked to the White House, and the matter was settled.

"One of the troubles in the Cabinet which brought about this change was
that I had recommended in my annual report, in the fall of 1861, that
the negroes should be enlisted as soldiers after they left their
masters. This advanced step was regarded by most of the Cabinet with
alarm. Mr. Lincoln thought it would frighten the border States out of
the Union, and Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase thought it would never do at
all."

Just before the retirement of Mr. Cameron, a number of influential
Senators waited upon the President and represented to him that inasmuch
as the Cabinet had not been chosen with reference to the war and had
more or less lost the confidence of the country, and since the President
had decided to select a new war minister, they thought the occasion was
opportune to change the whole seven Cabinet ministers. They therefore
earnestly advised him to make a clean sweep, select seven new men, and
so restore the waning confidence of the country. The President listened
with patient courtesy, and when the Senators had concluded, he said,
with a characteristic gleam of humor in his eye: "Gentlemen, your
request for a change of the whole Cabinet because I have made one
change, reminds me of a story I once heard in Illinois of a farmer who
was much troubled by skunks. They annoyed his household at night, and
his wife insisted that he should take measures to get rid of them. One
moonlight night he loaded his old shot-gun and stationed himself in the
yard to watch for the intruders, his wife remaining in the house
anxiously awaiting the result. After some time she heard the shotgun go
off, and in a few minutes the farmer entered the house. 'What luck had
you?' said she. 'I hid myself behind the woodpile,' said the old man,
'with the shot-gun pointed toward the hen-roost, and before long there
appeared, not one skunk, but _seven_. I took aim, blazed away, and
killed one--and he raised such a fearful smell I concluded it was best
to let the other six alone.'" The Senators retired, and nothing more was
heard from them about Cabinet reconstruction.

Of the character and abilities of Secretary Stanton, and the relations
between him and the President, General Grant has admirably said: "I had
the fullest support of the President and Secretary of War. No General
could want better backing; for the President was a man of great wisdom
and moderation, the Secretary a man of enormous character and will. Very
often where Lincoln would want to say _Yes_, his Secretary would make
him say _No_; and more frequently, when the Secretary was driving on in
a violent course, the President would check him. United, Lincoln and
Stanton made about as perfect a combination as I believe could, by any
possibility, govern a great nation in time of war.... The two men were
the very opposite of each other in almost every particular, except that
each possessed great ability. Mr. Lincoln gained influence over men by
making them feel that it was a pleasure to serve them. He preferred
yielding his own wish to gratify others, rather than to insist upon
having his own way. It distressed him to disappoint others. In matters
of public duty, however, he had what he wished, but in the least
offensive way. Mr. Stanton never questioned his own authority to
command, unless resisted. He cared nothing for the feeling of others."
In a further comparison of the two men, General Grant said: "Lincoln was
not timid, and he was willing to trust his generals in making and
executing plans. The Secretary [Stanton] was very timid, and it was
impossible for him to avoid interfering with the armies covering the
capital when it was sought to defend it by an offensive movement against
the army guarding the Confederate capital. He could see our weakness,
but he could not see that the enemy was in danger. The enemy would not
have been in danger if Mr. Stanton had been in the field."

With all his force of character, and his overbearing disposition,
Stanton did not undertake to rule the President--though this has
sometimes been asserted. He would frequently overawe and browbeat
others, but he was never imperious in dealing with Lincoln. Mr. Watson,
for some time Assistant Secretary of War, and Mr. Whiting, Solicitor of
the War Department, with many others in a position to know, have borne
positive testimony to this fact. Hon. George W. Julian, a member of the
House Committee on the Conduct of the War, says: "On the 24th of March,
1862, Secretary Stanton sent for the Committee for the purpose of having
a confidential conference as to military affairs. Stanton was thoroughly
discouraged. He told us the President had gone back to his first love,
General McClellan, and that it was needless for him or for us to labor
with him." This language clearly shows that Lincoln, not Stanton, was
the dominant mind.

Wherever it was possible, Lincoln gave Stanton his own way, and did not
oppose him. But there were occasions when, in a phrase used by Lincoln
long before, it was "necessary to _put the foot down firmly_." Such an
occasion is described by General J.B. Fry, Provost Marshal of the United
States during the war. An enlistment agent had applied to the President
to have certain credits of troops made to his county, and the President
promised him it should be done. The agent then went to Secretary
Stanton, who flatly refused to allow the credits as described. The agent
returned to the President, who reiterated the order, but again without
effect. Lincoln then went in person to Stanton's office. General Fry was
called in by Stanton to state the facts in the case. After he concluded,
Stanton remarked that Lincoln must see, in view of such facts, that his
order could not be executed. What followed is thus related by General
Fry: "Lincoln sat upon a sofa, with his legs crossed, and did not say a
word until the Secretary's last remark. Then he said, in a somewhat
positive tone, 'Mr. Secretary, I reckon you'll have to execute the
order.' Stanton replied, with asperity, 'Mr. President, I cannot do it.
The order is an improper one, and I cannot execute it.' Lincoln fixed
his eye upon Stanton, and in a firm voice and with an accent that
clearly showed his determination, he said, 'Mr. Secretary, _it will have
to be done_.' Stanton then realized that he was overmatched. He had made
a square issue with the President, and had been defeated. Upon an
intimation from him, I withdrew, and did not witness his surrender. A
few minutes after I reached my office I received instructions from the
Secretary to carry out the President's order."

Vice-President Wheeler relates a characteristic incident illustrating
the relations between Lincoln and Stanton. The President had promised
Mr. Wheeler an appointment for an old friend as army paymaster, stating
that the Secretary of War would instruct the gentleman to report for
duty. Hearing nothing further from the matter, Mr. Wheeler at length
called upon the Secretary and reminded him of the appointment. Mr.
Stanton denied all knowledge of the matter, but stated, in his brusque
manner, that the name would be sent in, with hundreds of others, to the
Senate for its consideration. Mr. Wheeler argued that his friend had
been appointed by the Commander-in-chief of the Army, and that it was
unjust to ask him to wait for the tardy action of the Senate upon the
nomination, and that he was entitled to be mustered in at once. But all
in vain; the only reply that could be got from the iron Secretary was,
"You have my answer; no argument." Mr. Wheeler went to the chief clerk
of the department, and asked for the President's letter directing the
appointment. Receiving it, he proceeded to the White House, although it
was after executive hours. "I can see Mr. Lincoln now," says Mr.
Wheeler, "as he looked when I entered the room. He wore a long calico
dressing-gown, reaching to his heels; his feet were encased in a pair of
old-fashioned leathern slippers, such as we used to find in the old-time
country hotels, and which had evidently seen much service in
Springfield. Above these appeared the home-made blue woollen stockings
which he wore at all seasons of the year. He was sitting in a splint
rocking-chair, with his legs elevated and stretched across his office
table. He greeted me warmly. Apologizing for my intrusion at that
unofficial hour, I told him I had called simply to ascertain which was
the paramount power in the Government, he or the Secretary of War.
Letting down his legs and straightening himself up in his chair, he
answered, 'Well, it is generally supposed _I am_. What's the matter?' I
then briefly recalled the facts attending Sabin's appointment, when,
without comment, he said, 'Give me my letter.' Then, taking his pen, he
indorsed upon it:

     Let the within named J.A. Sabin be mustered AT ONCE. It is due to
     him and to Mr. W., under the circumstances.

     A. LINCOLN."

Armed with this peremptory order, Mr. Wheeler called on Stanton the next
morning. The Secretary was furious. He charged Mr. Wheeler with
interfering with his prerogatives. Mr. Wheeler remarked that he would
call the next morning for the order to muster in. He called accordingly,
and, handing him the order, in a rage, Stanton said, "I hope I shall
never hear of this matter again."

It is related by Hon. George W. Julian, already quoted, that on a
certain occasion a committee of Western men, headed by Mr. Lovejoy,
procured from the President an important order looking to the exchange
and transfer of Eastern and Western soldiers, with a view to more
effective work. "Repairing to the office of the Secretary, Mr. Lovejoy
explained the scheme, as he had before done to the President, but was
met with a flat refusal. 'But we have the President's order, sir,' said
Lovejoy. 'Did Lincoln give you an order of that kind?' said Stanton. 'He
did, sir.' 'Then he is a d----d fool,' said the irate Secretary. 'Do you
mean to say the President is a d----d fool?' asked Lovejoy, in
amazement. 'Yes, sir, if he gave you such an order as that.' The
bewildered Illinoisan betook himself at once to the President, and
related the result of his conference. 'Did Stanton say I was a d----d
fool?' asked Lincoln, at the close of the recital. 'He did, sir, and
repeated it.' After a moment's pause, and looking up, the President
said, 'If Stanton said I was a d----d fool, then _I must be one_, for he
is nearly always right, and generally says what he means. _I will step
over and see him_.'" The two men met, and the matter was easily
adjusted. It was this rare combination of good-humor and firmness with
an understanding of the other's trials and appreciation of his good
qualities, that reduced the friction of official life and enabled
Lincoln and Stanton to work together, in the main harmoniously and
efficiently, in their great task of prosecuting the war and maintaining
the integrity of the Union.




CHAPTER XIX

     Lincoln's Personal Attention to the Military Problems of the
     War--Efforts to Push forward the War--Disheartening
     Delays--Lincoln's Worry and Perplexity--Brightening
     Prospects--Union Victories in North Carolina and
     Tennessee--Proclamation by the President--Lincoln Wants to See for
     Himself--Visits Fortress Monroe--Witnesses an Attack on the Rebel
     Ram "Merrimac"--The Capture of Norfolk--Lincoln's Account of the
     Affair--Letter to McClellan--Lincoln and the Union Soldiers--His
     Tender Solicitude for the Boys in Blue--Soldiers Always Welcome at
     the White House--Pardoning Condemned Soldiers--Letter to a Bereaved
     Mother--The Case of Cyrus Pringle--Lincoln's Love of Soldiers'
     Humor--Visiting the Soldiers in Trenches and Hospitals--Lincoln at
     "The Soldiers' Rest."

Early in 1862 Lincoln began giving more of his personal attention to
military affairs. He was dissatisfied with the slow movements and small
achievements of our armies, and sought to infuse new zeal and energy
into the Union commanders. He also began a careful study of the great
military problems pressing for solution; and he seemed resolved to
assume the full responsibilities of his position, not only as the civil
head of the Government but as the commander-in-chief of the armies and
navies of the United States. In this he was influenced by no desire for
personal control of the commanders in the field or interference with
their plans; he always preferred to leave them the fullest liberty of
action. But he felt that the situation demanded a single head, ready and
able to take full responsibility for the most important steps; and, true
to himself and his habits of a lifetime, he neither sought
responsibility nor flinched from it.

The leading officers of the Union army were mostly young and
inexperienced men, and none of them had as yet demonstrated the capacity
of a great commander. At best it was a process of experiment, to see
what generals and what strategic movements were most likely to succeed.
In order to be able to judge correctly of measures and men, Lincoln
undertook to familiarize himself with the practical details of military
affairs and operations. Here was developed a new and unsuspected phase
of his character. The plain country lawyer, unversed in the art of war,
was suddenly transformed into the great civil ruler and military
chieftain. "He was already," says Mr. A.G. Riddle, "one of the wariest,
coolest, and most skilful managers of men. _A born strategist_, he was
now rapidly mastering the great outline ideas of the art of war." "The
elements of selfishness and ferocity which are not unusual with
first-class military chiefs," said General Keyes, a prominent officer of
the Union army, "were wholly foreign to Lincoln's nature. Nevertheless,
_there was not one of his most trusted warlike counselors in the
beginning of the war who equaled him in military sagacity_." His
reliance, in the new duties and perils that confronted him, was upon his
simple common-sense, his native power of judgment and discernment.
"Military science," says a distinguished officer, "is common-sense
applied to the affairs of war." While Lincoln made no claim to technical
knowledge in this sphere, and preferred to leave details to his
subordinates, he yet developed an insight into military problems and an
understanding of practical operations in the field which enabled him not
only to approve or disapprove judiciously, but to direct and plan. A
striking confirmation of this is given by Mr. J.M. Winchell, who thus
relates what happened in a personal interview with the President:

     "I was accompanied by one of Mr. Lincoln's personal friends; and
     when we entered the well-known reception-room, a very tall, lanky
     man came quickly forward to meet us. His manner seemed to me the
     perfection of courtesy. I was struck with the simplicity, kindness,
     and dignity of his deportment, so different from the clownish
     manners with which it was then customary to invest him. His face
     was a pleasant surprise, formed as my expectations had been from
     the poor photographs then in vogue, and the general belief in his
     ugliness. I remember thinking how much better-looking he was than I
     had anticipated, and wondering that anyone should consider him
     ugly. His expression was grave and care-worn, but still enlivened
     with a cheerfulness that gave me instant hope. After a brief
     interchange of commonplaces, he entered on a description of the
     situation, giving the numbers of the contending armies, their
     movements, and the general strategical purposes which should govern
     them both. Taking from the wall a large map of the United States,
     and laying it on the table, he pointed out with his long finger the
     geographical features of the vicinity, clearly describing the
     various movements so far as known, reasoning rigidly from step to
     step, and creating a chain of probabilities too strong for serious
     dispute. His apparent knowledge of military science, and his
     familiarity with the special features of the present campaign, were
     surprising in a man who had been all his life a civilian, engrossed
     with politics and the practise of the law, and whose attention must
     necessarily be so much occupied with the perplexing detail of
     duties incident to his position. It was clear that he made the
     various campaigns of the war a subject of profound and intelligent
     study, forming opinions thereon as positive and clear as those he
     held in regard to civil affairs."

Toward the end of January, 1862, Lincoln sought to overcome the inertia
that seemed settling upon the Union forces by issuing the "President's
General Order, No. I," directing that, on the 22d day of February
following, "a general movement of the land and naval forces of the
United States" be made against the insurgent forces, and giving warning
that "the heads of departments, and especially the Secretaries of War
and of the Navy, with all their subordinates, and the General-in-Chief,
with all other commanders and subordinates of land and naval forces,
will severally be held to their strict and full responsibilities for
prompt execution of this order." This order, while it doubtless served
to infuse activity into commanders and officials, did not result in any
substantial successes to our arms. The President, worn by his ceaseless
activities and anxieties, seems to have been momentarily disheartened at
the situation. Admiral Dahlgren, who was in command of the Washington
navy-yard in 1862, narrates that one day, at this period, "the President
drove down to see the hundred-and-fifty-pounder cannon fired. For the
first time I heard the President speak of the bare possibility of our
being two nations--as if alluding to a previous suggestion. He could not
see how the two could exist so near each other. He was evidently much
worried at our lack of military success, and remarked that '_no one
seemed ready_.'"

It is difficult to portray the worry and perplexity that beset Lincoln's
life, and the incessant demands upon his attention, in his efforts to
familiarize himself, as he felt compelled to do, with the practical
operations of the war. Admiral Dahlgren, who saw him almost daily,
relates that one morning the President sent for him, and said, "Well,
Captain, here's a letter about some new powder." He read the letter and
showed the sample of powder,--adding that he had burned some of it and
it did not seem a good article; there was too much residuum. "Now I'll
show you," said he. So he got a small sheet of paper and placed some of
the powder on it, then went to the fire, and with the tongs picked up a
coal, which he blew, with his spectacles still on his nose; then he
clapped the coal to the powder, and after the explosion, remarked:
"There is too much left there." There is something almost grotesque, but
touching and pathetic as well, in this picture of the President of the
United States, with all his enormous cares and responsibilities, engaged
in so petty a matter as testing a sample of powder. And yet so great was
his anxiety for the success of the armies and navies under his control
that he wished to become personally satisfied as to every detail. He did
not wish our armies or our war-vessels to lose battles on account of bad
powder. "At another time," Admiral Dahlgren has related, "the President
sent for me regarding some new invention. After the agent of the
inventor left, the President began on army matters. 'Now,' said he, 'I
am to have a sweat of five or six days'" (alluding to an impending
battle, for the result of which he was very anxious). Again: "The
President sent for me. Some man in trouble about arms; President holding
a breech-loader in his hand. He asked me about the iron-clads, and
Charleston." And again: "Went to the Department and found the President
there. He looks thin, and is very nervous. Said they were doing nothing
at Charleston, only asking for one iron-clad after another. The canal at
Vicksburg was of no account, and he wondered how any sensible man could
favor it. He feared the favorable state of public expectation would pass
away before anything was done. Then he leveled a couple of jokes at the
doings at Vicksburg and Charleston." No wonder the sympathetic
Dahlgren, witnessing the sufferings of the tortured President, should
exclaim: "_Poor gentleman_! How thin and wasted he is!"

The gloomy outlook in the Spring of 1862 was relieved by the substantial
victories of General Burnside in North Carolina and of General Grant in
Tennessee. The President was cheered and elated by these successes. It
is related that General Burnside, visiting Washington at this time,
called on the President, and that "the meeting was a grand spectacle.
The two stalwart men rushed into each other's arms, and warmly clasped
each other for some minutes. When General Burnside was about to leave,
the President inquired, 'Is there anything, my dear General, that I can
do for you?' 'Yes! yes!' was the quick reply, 'and I am glad you asked
me that question. My three brigadiers, you know; everything depended on
them, and they did their duty grandly!--Oh, Mr. President, we owe so
much to them! I should so much like, when I go back, to take them their
promotions.' 'It shall be done!' was Lincoln's hearty response, and on
the instant the promotions were ordered, and General Burnside had the
pleasure of taking back with him to Foster, Reno, and Parke their
commissions as Major-Generals."

Our brightening prospects impelled the President to issue, on the 10th
of April, the following proclamation, breathing his deeply religious
spirit:

     It has pleased Almighty God to vouchsafe signal victories to the
     land and naval forces engaged in suppressing an internal rebellion,
     and at the same time to avert from our country the dangers of
     foreign intervention and invasion. It is therefore recommended to
     the people of the United States that at their next weekly
     assemblages in their accustomed places of public worship which
     shall occur after the notice of this Proclamation shall have been
     received, they especially acknowledge and render thanks to our
     Heavenly Father for these inestimable blessings; that they then and
     there implore spiritual consolation in behalf of all those who have
     been brought into affliction by the casualties and calamities of
     sedition and civil war; and that they reverently invoke the Divine
     guidance for our national counsels, to the end that they may
     speedily result in the restoration of peace, harmony, and unity
     throughout our borders, and hasten the establishment of fraternal
     relations among all the countries of the earth.

     ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Early in May the President determined on a personal visit to Fortress
Monroe, in order to learn what he could from his own observation of
affairs in that region. The trip was a welcome respite from the cares
and burdens of official life, and he gave himself up, as far as he
could, to its enjoyment. The Secretary of War (Stanton) and the
Secretary of the Treasury (Chase) accompanied the President. A most
interesting account of the expedition is given by General Viele, who was
a member of the party and thus had an opportunity to observe Lincoln
closely. "When on the afternoon of May 4," says General Viele, "I was
requested by the Secretary of War to meet him within an hour at the
navy-yard, with the somewhat mysterious caution to speak to no one of my
movements, I had no conception whatever of the purpose or intention of
the meeting. It was quite dark when I arrived there simultaneously with
the Secretary, who led the way to the wharf on the Potomac, to which a
steamer was moored that proved to be a revenue cutter, the 'Miami.' We
went on board and proceeded at once to the cabin, where to my surprise I
found the President and Mr. Chase, who had preceded us. The vessel
immediately got under way and steamed down the Potomac.... After supper
the table was cleared, and the remainder of the evening was spent in a
general review of the situation, which lasted long into the night. The
positions of the different armies in the field, the last reports from
their several commanders, the probabilities and possibilities as they
appeared to each member of the group, together with many other topics,
relevant and irrelevant, were discussed, interspersed with the usual
number of anecdotes from the never-failing supply with which the
President's mind was stored. It was a most interesting study to see
these men relieved for the moment from the surroundings of their onerous
official duties. The President, of course, was the centre of the
group--kind, genial, thoughtful, tender-hearted, magnanimous Abraham
Lincoln! It was difficult to know him without knowing him intimately,
for he was as guileless and single-hearted as a child; and no man ever
knew him intimately who did not recognize and admire his great
abilities, both natural and acquired, his large-heartedness and
sincerity of purpose.... He would sit for hours during the trip,
repeating passages of Shakespeare's plays, page after page of Browning,
and whole cantos of Byron. His inexhaustible stock of anecdotes gave to
superficial minds the impression that he was not a thoughtful and
reflecting man; whereas the fact was directly the reverse. These
anecdotes formed no more a part of Mr. Lincoln's mind than a smile forms
a part of the face. They came unbidden, and, like a forced smile, were
often employed to conceal a depth of anxiety in his own heart, and to
dissipate the care that weighed upon the minds of his associates. Both
Mr. Chase and Mr. Stanton were under great depression of spirits when we
started, and Mr. Chase remarked with a good deal of seriousness that he
had forgotten to write a very important letter before leaving. It was
too late to remedy the omission, and Mr. Lincoln at once drove the
thought of it from his mind by telling him that a man was sometimes
lucky in forgetting to write a letter, for he seldom knew what it
contained until it appeared again some day to confront him with an
indiscreet word or expression; and then he told a humorous story of a
sad catastrophe that happened in a family, which was ascribed to
something that came in a letter--a catastrophe so far beyond the region
of possibility that it set us all laughing, and Mr. Chase lost his
anxious look. That reminded Mr. Stanton of the dilemma he had been
placed in, just before leaving, by the receipt of a telegram from
General Mitchell, who was in Northern Alabama. The telegram was
indistinct, and could not be clearly understood; there was no time for
further explanation, and yet an immediate answer was required; so the
Secretary took the chances and answered back, 'All right; go ahead.'
'Now, Mr. President,' said he, 'if I have made a mistake, I must
countermand my instructions.' 'I suppose you meant,' said Mr. Lincoln,
'that it was all right if it was good for him, and all wrong if it was
not. That reminds me,' said he, 'of a story about a horse that was sold
at the cross-roads near where I once lived. The horse was supposed to be
fast, and quite a number of people were present at the time appointed
for the sale. A small boy was employed to ride the horse backward and
forward to exhibit his points. One of the would-be buyers followed the
boy down the road and asked him confidentially if the horse had a
splint. 'Well, mister,' said the boy, 'if it's good for him he's got it,
but if it isn't good for him he hasn't.' 'And that's the position,' said
the President, 'you seem to have left General Mitchell in. Well,
Stanton, I guess he'll come out right; but at any rate you can't help
him now.' ... Mr. Lincoln always had a pleasant word to say the last
thing at night and the first thing in the morning. He was always the
first one to awake, although not the first to rise. The day-time was
spent principally upon the quarter-deck, and the President entertained
us with numerous anecdotes and incidents of his life, of the most
interesting character. Few were aware of the physical strength possessed
by Mr. Lincoln. In muscular power he was one in a thousand. One morning,
while we were sitting on deck, he saw an axe in a socket on the
bulwarks, and taking it up, he held it at arm's length at the extremity
of the helve with his thumb and forefinger, continuing to hold it there
for a number of minutes. The most powerful sailors on board tried in
vain to imitate him. Mr. Lincoln said he could do this when he was
eighteen years of age, and had never seen a day since that time when he
could not.[E]

"It was late in the evening," continues General Viele, "when we arrived
at Fortress Monroe.... Answering the hail of the guard-boats, we made a
landing, and the Secretary of War immediately despatched a messenger for
General Wool, the commander of the fort; on whose arrival it was
decided to consult at once with Admiral Goldsborough, the commander of
the fleet, whose flag-ship, the 'Minnesota,' a superb model of naval
architecture, lay a short distance off the shore. The result of this
conference was a plan to get up an engagement the next day between the
'Merrimac' and the 'Monitor,' so that during the fight the 'Vanderbilt,'
which had been immensely strengthened for the purpose, might put on all
steam and run her down. Accordingly, the next morning, the President and
party went over to the Rip Raps to see the naval combat. The 'Merrimac'
moved out of the mouth of the Elizabeth river, quietly and steadily,
just as she had come out only a few weeks before when she had sunk the
'Congress' and the 'Cumberland.' She wore an air of defiance and
determination even at that distance. The 'Monitor' moved up and waited
for her. All the other vessels got out of the way to give the
'Vanderbilt' and the 'Minnesota' room to bear down upon the rebel terror
as soon as she should clear the coast line. It was a calm Sabbath
morning, and the air was still and tranquil. Suddenly the stillness was
broken by the cannon from the vessels and the great guns from the Rip
Raps, that filled the air with sulphurous smoke and a terrific noise
that reverberated from the fortress and the opposite shore like thunder.
The firing was maintained for several hours, but all to no purpose; the
'Merrimac' moved sullenly back to her position. It was determined that
night that on the following day vigorous offensive operations should be
undertaken. The whole available naval force was to bombard Sewall's
Point, and under cover of the bombardment the available troops from
Fortress Monroe were to be landed at that point and move on Norfolk.
Accordingly, the next morning a tremendous cannonading of Sewall's
Point took place. The wooden sheds at that place were set on fire and
the battery was silenced. The 'Merrimac,' coated with mail and lying low
in the water, looked on but took no part. Night came on, and the
cannonading ceased. It was so evident that the 'Merrimac' intended to
act only on the defensive, and that as long as she remained where she
was no troops could be landed in that vicinity, that they were ordered
to disembark. That night the President, with the Secretary of War and
the Secretary of the Treasury, went over on the 'Miami' to the Virginia
shore, and by the light of the moon landed on the beach and walked up
and down a considerable distance to assure himself that there could be
no mistake in the matter. How little the Confederacy dreamed what a
visitor it had that night to the 'sacred soil.'"

The following morning an advance was made upon Norfolk by the route
proposed by General Viele. The attempt was successful, and before night
our forces were in control of the captured city. Some time after
midnight, as General Viele records, "with a shock that shook the city,
and with an ominous sound that could not be mistaken, the magazine of
the 'Merrimac' was exploded, the vessel having been cut off from
supplies and deserted by the crew; and thus this most formidable engine
of destruction, that had so long been a terror, not only to Hampton
Roads, but to the Atlantic coast, went to her doom, a tragic and
glorious _finale_ to the trip of the 'Miami.'"

Secretary Chase had accompanied the expedition against Norfolk,
returning to Fortress Monroe with General Wool immediately after the
surrender of the city. The scene which ensued on the announcement of the
good tidings they brought back to the anxious parties awaiting news of
them was thus described by the President himself: "Chase and Stanton had
accompanied me to Fortress Monroe. While we were there, an expedition
was fitted out for an attack on Norfolk. Chase and General Wool
disappeared about the time we began to look for tidings of the result,
and after vainly waiting their return till late in the evening, Stanton
and I concluded to retire. My room was on the second floor of the
Commandant's house, and Stanton's was below. The night was very
warm,--the moon shining brightly,--and, too restless to sleep, I sat for
some time by the table, reading. Suddenly hearing footsteps, I looked
out of the window, and saw two persons approaching, whom I knew by their
relative size to be the missing men. They came into the passage, and I
heard them rap at Stanton's door and tell him to get up and come
upstairs. A moment afterward they entered my room. 'No time for
ceremony, Mr. President,' said General Wool; 'Norfolk is ours!' Stanton
here burst in, just out of bed, clad in a long night-gown which nearly
swept the floor, his ear catching, as he crossed the threshold, Wool's
last words. Perfectly overjoyed, he rushed at the General, whom he
hugged most affectionately, fairly lifting him from the floor in his
delight. The scene altogether must have been a comical one, though at
the time we were all too greatly excited to take much note of mere
appearances."

Lincoln's general grasp of military strategy, and his keen understanding
of the specific problems confronting the Army of the Potomac in the
critical autumn of 1862, are well indicated in the following
communication to General McClellan:

     EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
     October 13, 1862

     MY DEAR SIR:--You remember my speaking to you of what I called your
     over-cautiousness. Are you not over-cautious when you assume that
     you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing? Should you not
     claim to be at least his equal in prowess, and act upon the claim?

     As I understand, you telegraphed General Halleck that you cannot
     subsist your army at Winchester unless the railroad from Harper's
     Ferry to that point be put in working order. But the enemy does now
     subsist his army at Winchester, at a distance nearly twice as great
     from railroad transportation as you would have to do, without the
     railroad last named. He now wagons from Culpepper Court-House,
     which is just about twice as far as you would have to do from
     Harper's Ferry. He is certainly not more than half as well provided
     with wagons as you are. I certainly should be pleased for you to
     have the advantage of the railroad from Harper's Ferry to
     Winchester; but it wastes all the remainder of autumn to give it to
     you, and, in fact, ignores the question of _time_, which cannot and
     must not be ignored.

     Again, one of the standard maxims of war, as you know, is, "to
     operate upon the enemy's communications as much as possible,
     without exposing your own." You seem to act as if this applies
     _against_ you, but cannot apply in your _favor_. Change positions
     with the enemy, and think you not he would break your communication
     with Richmond within the next twenty-four hours? You dread his
     going into Pennsylvania. But if he does so in full force, he gives
     up his communications to you absolutely, and you have nothing to do
     but to follow and ruin him; if he does so with less than full
     force, fall upon and beat what is left behind all the easier.
     Exclusive of the water line, you are now nearer Richmond than the
     enemy is, by the route that you _can_ and he _must_ take. Why can
     you not reach there before him, unless you admit that he is more
     than your equal on the march? His route is the _arc_ of a circle,
     while yours is the _chord_. The roads are as good on yours as on
     his.

     You know I desired, but did not order, you to cross the Potomac
     below instead of above the Shenandoah and Blue Ridge. My idea was,
     that this would at once menace the enemy's communications, which I
     would seize if he would permit. If he should move northward, I
     would follow him closely, holding his communications. If he should
     prevent our seizing his communications, and move toward Richmond, I
     would press closely to him, fight him if a favorable opportunity
     should present, and at least try to beat him to Richmond on the
     inside track. I say "try," for if we never try, we shall never
     succeed. If he make a stand at Winchester, moving neither north nor
     south, I would fight him there, on the idea that if we cannot beat
     him when he bears the wastage of coming to us, we never can when we
     bear the wastage of going to him. This proposition is a simple
     truth, and is too important to be lost sight of for a moment. In
     coming to us, he tenders us an advantage which we should not waive.
     We should not so operate as to merely drive him away. As we must
     beat him somewhere, or fail finally, we can do it, if at all,
     easier near to us than far away. If we cannot beat the enemy where
     he now is, we never can, he again being within the intrenchments of
     Richmond. Recurring to the idea of going to Richmond on the inside
     track, the facility of supplying from the side away from the enemy
     is remarkable, as it were, by the different spokes of a wheel,
     extending from the hub toward the rim, and this whether you move
     directly by the chord, or on the inside arc, hugging the Blue Ridge
     more closely. The chord-line, as you see, carries you by Aldie,
     Haymarket, and Fredericksburg, and you see how turnpikes,
     railroads, and finally the Potomac by Aquia Creek, meet you at all
     points from Washington. The same, only the lines lengthened a
     little, if you press closer to the Blue Ridge part of the way. The
     gaps through the Blue Ridge I understand to be about the following
     distances from Harper's Ferry, to wit: Vestal's, five miles;
     Gregory's, thirteen; Snicker's, eighteen; Ashby's, twenty-eight;
     Manassas, thirty-eight; Chester, forty-five; and Thornton's,
     fifty-three. I should think it preferable to take the route nearest
     the enemy, disabling him to make an important move without your
     knowledge, and compelling him to keep his forces together for dread
     of you. The gaps would enable you to attack if you should wish. For
     a great part of the way you would be practically between the enemy
     and both Washington and Richmond, enabling us to spare you the
     greatest number of troops from here. When, at length, running to
     Richmond ahead of him enables him to move this way, if he does so,
     turn and attack him in the rear. But I think he should be engaged
     long before such point is reached. It is all easy if our troops
     march as well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say they cannot do
     it. This letter is in no sense an order.

     Yours truly, A. LINCOLN.
     MAJOR-GENERAL MCCLELLAN.

Throughout the entire war President Lincoln was always keenly solicitous
for the welfare of the Union soldiers. He knew that upon them everything
depended; and he felt bound to them not only by official relations, but
by the tenderer ties of human interest and love. In all his
proclamations and public utterances he gave the fullest credit to the
brave men in the field, and claimed for them the country's thanks and
gratitude. His sympathy for the soldiers was as tender as that of a
woman, and his tears were ever ready to start at the mention of their
hardships, their bravery, their sufferings and losses. Nothing that he
could do was left undone to minister to their comfort in field or camp
or hospital. His most exacting cares were never permitted to divert his
thoughts from them, and his anxious and tender sympathy included all
whom they held dear. Said Mr. Riddle, in a speech in Congress in 1863:
"Let not the distant mother, who has given up a loved one to fearful
death, think that the President does not sympathize with her sorrow, and
would not have been glad--oh, how glad--to so shape events as to spare
the sacrifices. And let not fathers and mothers and wives anywhere think
that as he sees the long blue regiments of brave ones marching away,
stepping to the drum-beat, he does not contemplate them and feel his
responsibility as he thinks how many of them shall go to nameless
graves, unmarked save by the down-looking eyes of God's pitying angels."
The feeling of the soldiers toward Lincoln was one of filial respect and
love. He was not only the President, the commander-in-chief of all the
armies and navies of the United States, but their good "Father Abraham,"
who loved every man, even the humblest, that wore the Union blue.

Of Lincoln's personal relations with the soldiers, enough interesting
anecdotes could be collected to fill a volume. He saw much of them in
Washington, as they marched through that city on their way to the front,
or returned on furlough or discharge, or filled the overcrowded
hospitals of the capital. Often they called upon him, singly or with
companions; and he always had for them a word, however brief, of
sympathy and cheer. He was always glad to see them at the White House.
They were the one class of visitors who seldom came to ask for favors,
and never to pester him with advice. It was a real treat for the harried
President to escape from the politicians and have a quiet talk with a
private soldier. Among the innumerable petitioners for executive
clemency or favor, none were so graciously received as those who
appeared in behalf of soldiers. It was half a victory to say that the
person for whom the favor was desired was a member of the Union army.

As he wrote the pardon of a young soldier, sentenced to be shot for
sleeping while on sentinel duty, the President remarked to a friend
standing by: "I could not think of going into eternity with the blood of
that poor young man on my hands. It is not to be wondered at that a boy
raised on a farm, probably in the habit of going to bed at dark, should,
when required to watch, fall asleep; and I cannot consent that he be
shot for such an act." The youth thus reprieved was afterwards found
among the slain on the field of Fredericksburg, with a photograph of
Lincoln, on which he had written, "God bless President Lincoln," worn
next his heart.

Rev. Newman Hall, of London, has repeated in a sermon an anecdote told
him by a Union general. "The first week of my command," said the
officer, "there were twenty-four deserters sentenced by court martial to
be shot, and the warrants for their execution were sent to the President
to be signed. He refused. I went to Washington and had an interview. I
said: 'Mr. President, unless these men are made an example of, the army
itself is in danger. Mercy to the few is cruelty to the many.' He
replied: 'Mr. General, there are already too many weeping widows in the
United States. For God's sake, don't ask me to add to the number, for _I
won't do it_.'"

It came to the knowledge of Lincoln that a widow living in Boston--a
Mrs. Bixby--had lost five sons in the service of their country. Without
delay he addressed to the bereaved mother the following touching note:

     I have been shown on the file of the War Department a statement of
     the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of
     five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel
     how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should
     attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming;
     but I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may
     be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray
     that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your
     bereavements, and leave only the cherished memory of the loved and
     lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so
     costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

     Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
     A. LINCOLN.

A case of unusual interest is that of Cyrus Pringle, a Vermont Quaker
who was drafted into the military service in 1863, and refused to serve
on the ground that his religion and his conscience would not permit him
to bear arms. His story, as recorded in his diary, was given to the
world after his death ("Atlantic Monthly," February, 1913). In spite of
his protests, Pringle was taken South and forced to wear a uniform and
carry a gun, though he refused to use it or even to clean it. His
obstinacy, as it was supposed to be, caused him much suffering,
sometimes even physical punishment, all of which he bore patiently,
believing that if he was steadfast in his faith relief would somehow
come. It did come, but not until--after five months of hardship and
distress of mind and body--his case, with that of other Quakers, finally
reached the President. "I want you to go and tell Stanton," said Lincoln
to the gentleman who had presented the case to him, "that it is my wish
that all those young men be sent home at once." The gentleman went to
Stanton with the message, but Stanton was unwilling to obey it. While
they were arguing the matter, the President entered the room. "_It is my
urgent wish_," said he. Stanton yielded, and the unfortunate Quakers
were given permission to return to their homes--none too soon to save
the life of Pringle, who records in his diary: "Upon my arrival in New
York I was seized with delirium, from which I only recovered after many
weeks, through the mercy and favor of Him who in all this trial had been
our guide and strength and comfort."

Anything that savored of the wit and humor of the soldiers was
especially relished by Lincoln. Any incident that showed that "the boys"
were mirthful and jolly amidst their privations seemed to commend itself
to him. There was a story of a soldier in the Army of the Potomac,
carried to the rear of battle with both legs shot off, who, seeing a
pie-woman hovering about, asked, "Say, old lady, are them pies _sewed_
or _pegged_?" And there was another one of a soldier at the battle of
Chancellorsville, whose regiment, waiting to be called into the fight,
was taking coffee. The hero of the story put to his lips a crockery mug
which he had carried, with infinite care, through several campaigns. A
stray bullet, just missing the coffee-drinker's head, dashed the mug
into fragments and left only its handle on his finger. Turning his head
in that direction, the soldier angrily growled, "Johnny, you can't do
that again!" Lincoln, relating these two stories together, said, "It
seems as if neither death nor danger could quench the grim humor of the
American soldier."

A juvenile "brigadier" from New York, with a small detachment of
cavalry, having imprudently gone within the rebel lines near Fairfax
Court House, was captured by "guerillas." Upon the fact being reported
to Lincoln, he said that he was very sorry to lose the horses. "What do
you mean?" inquired his informant. "Why," rejoined the President, "I can
make a 'brigadier' any day; but those horses cost the government a
hundred and twenty-five dollars a head!"

Lincoln was especially fond of a joke at the expense of some high
military or civil dignitary. He was intensely amused by a story told by
Secretary Stanton, of a trip made by him and General Foster up the
Broad river in North Carolina, in a tug-boat, when, reaching our
outposts on the river bank, a Federal picket yelled out, "Who have you
got on board that tug?" The severe and dignified answer was, "The
Secretary of War and Major-General Foster." Instantly the picket roared
back: "We've got Major-Generals enough up here--_why don't you bring us
up some hardtack?_"

On one occasion, when the enemy were threatening the defenses of
Washington, the President made a personal visit to the men in the
trenches, for the purpose, as he stated, of "encouraging the boys." He
walked about among them, telling them to hold their ground and he would
soon give them reinforcements. His presence had a most inspiring effect,
and the trenches were held by a few hundred soldiers of the Invalid
Corps until the promised help came and the enemy withdrew.

On a visit to City Point, Lincoln called upon the head surgeon at that
place and said he wished to visit all the hospitals under his charge.
The surgeon asked if he knew what he was undertaking; there were five or
six thousand soldiers at that place, and it would be quite a tax upon
his strength to visit all the wards. Lincoln answered, with a smile,
that he guessed he was equal to the task; at any rate he would try, and
go as far as he could; he should never, probably, see the boys again,
and he wanted them to know that he appreciated what they had done for
their country. Finding it useless to try to dissuade him, the surgeon
began his rounds with the President, who walked from bed to bed,
extending his hand and saying a few words of sympathy to some, making
kind inquiries of others, and welcomed by all with the heartiest
cordiality. After some hours the tour of the various hospitals was made,
and Lincoln returned with the surgeon to his office. They had scarcely
entered, however, when a messenger came saying that one ward had been
overlooked, and "the boys" wanted to see the President. The surgeon, who
was thoroughly tired, and knew Lincoln must be, tried to dissuade him
from going; but the good man said he must go back; "the boys" would be
so disappointed. So he went with the messenger, accompanied by the
surgeon, shook hands with the gratified soldiers, and then returned to
the office. The surgeon expressed the fear that the President's arm
would be lamed with so much hand-shaking, saying that it certainly must
ache. Lincoln smiled, and saying something about his "strong muscles,"
stepped out at the open door, took up a very large heavy axe which lay
there by a log of wood, and chopped vigorously for a few moments,
sending the chips flying in all directions; and then, pausing, he
extended his right arm to its full length, holding the axe out
horizontally, without its even quivering as he held it. Strong men who
looked on--men accustomed to manual labor--could not hold the axe in
that position for a moment.

In summer Lincoln's favorite home was at "The Soldiers' Rest," a place a
few miles out of Washington, on the Maryland side, where old and
disabled soldiers of the regular army found a refuge. It was a lovely
spot, situated on a beautifully wooded hill, reached by a winding road,
shaded by thick-set branches. On his way there he often passed long
lines of ambulances, laden with the suffering victims of a recent
battle. A friend who met him on such an occasion, says: "When I met the
President, his attitude and expression spoke the deepest sadness. He
paused, and, pointing his hand-towards the wounded men, he said: 'Look
yonder at those poor fellows. I cannot bear it! This suffering, this
loss of life, is dreadful!' Recalling a letter he had written years
before to a suffering friend whose grief he had sought to console, I
reminded him of the incident, and asked him: 'Do you remember writing to
your sorrowing friend these words: "And this too shall pass away. Never
fear. Victory will come."' 'Yes,' replied he, '_victory will come, but
it comes slowly_.'"




CHAPTER XX


     Lincoln and McClellan--The Peninsular Campaign of 1862--Impatience
     with McClellan's Delay--Lincoln Defends McClellan from Unjust
     Criticism--Some Harrowing Experiences--McClellan Recalled from the
     Peninsula--His Troops Given to General Pope--Pope's Defeat at
     Manassas--A Critical Situation--McClellan again in Command--Lincoln
     Takes the Responsibility--McClellan's Account of his
     Reinstatement--The Battle of Antietam--The President
     Vindicated--Again Dissatisfied with McClellan--Visits the Army in
     the Field--The President in the Saddle--Correspondence between
     Lincoln and McClellan--McClellan's Final Removal--Lincoln's
     Summing-up of McClellan--McClellan's "Body-guard."

President Lincoln's relations with no other person have been so much
discussed as those with General McClellan. Volumes have been written on
this subject; many heated and intemperate words have been uttered and
wrong conclusions reached. Whatever defects may have marked McClellan's
qualities as a soldier, he must remain historically one of the most
conspicuous figures of the war. He organized the largest and most
important of the Union armies, and was its first commander in the field.
He was one of the two out of the five commanders of the Army of the
Potomac, before Grant, who led that army to victory; the other three
having led it only to disastrous defeat. Great things were expected of
him; and when he failed to realize the extravagant expectations of those
who thought the war should be ended within a year, he received equally
extravagant condemnation. It is noticeable that this condemnation came
chiefly from civilians--from politicians, from Congress, from the press:
not the best judges of military affairs. His own army--the men who were
with him on the battlefield and risked their lives and their cause under
his leadership--never lost faith in him. Of all the commanders of the
Army of the Potomac, he was the one most believed in by his troops. Even
after his removal, at a grand review of the army by the President, after
the battle of Fredericksburg, it was not for the new commander,
Burnside, but the old commander, McClellan, that the troops gave their
heartiest cheers. It is worth remembering also that the war was not
ended until two and a half years after McClellan's retirement, and until
trial after trial had been made and failure after failure had been met
in the effort to find a successful leader for our armies. The initial
task of organization, of creating a great army in the field, fell upon
him--a task so well performed that General Meade, his first efficient
successor, said, "Had there been no McClellan there could have been no
Grant, for the army [organization] made no essential improvements under
any of his successors." And Grant, the last and finally victorious of
these successors--who was at one time criticized as being "as great a
discouragement as McClellan"--recorded in his Memoirs the conviction
(already quoted in these pages) that the conditions under which
McClellan worked were fatal to success, and that he himself could not
have succeeded in his place under those conditions.

It is not in the province of the present narrative to enter into a
consideration of the merits or demerits of McClellan as a soldier, but
to treat of his personal relations with President Lincoln. Between the
two men, notwithstanding many sharp differences of opinion and of
policy, there seems to have been a feeling of warm personal friendship
and sincere respect. Now that both have passed beyond the reach of
earthly praise or blame, we may well honor their memory and credit each
with having done the best he could to serve his country.

McClellan was appointed to the command of the Union armies upon the
retirement of the veteran General Scott, in November of 1861. He had
been but a captain in the regular army, but his high reputation and
brilliant soldierly qualities had led to his being sent abroad to study
the organization and movements of European armies; and this brought him
into prominence as a military man. It was soon after McClellan took
command that President Lincoln began giving close personal attention to
the direction of military affairs. He formed a plan of operations
against the Confederate army defending Richmond, which differed entirely
from the plan proposed by McClellan. The President's plan was, in
effect, to repeat the Bull Run expedition by moving against the enemy in
Virginia at or hear Manassas. McClellan preferred a transference of the
army to the region of the lower Chesapeake, thence moving up the
Peninsula by the shortest land route to Richmond. (This was a movement,
it may be remarked, which was finally carried out before Richmond fell
in 1865.) The President discussed the relative merits of the two plans
in the following frank and explicit letter to McClellan:

     EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D.C.,
     February 3, 1862.

     MAJOR-GENERAL MCCLELLAN.

     MY DEAR SIR: You and I have distinct and different plans for a
     movement of the Army of the Potomac; yours to be done by the
     Chesapeake, up the Rappahannock to Urbana, and across to the
     terminus of the railroad on the York river; mine to move directly
     to a point on the railroad southwest of Manassas. If you will give
     me satisfactory answers to the following questions, I shall gladly
     yield my plan to yours:

     1st. Does your plan involve a greatly larger expenditure of _time_
     and _money_ than mine?

     2d. Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan than mine?

     3d. Wherein is a victory _more valuable_ by your plan than mine?

     4th. In fact, would it not be _less_ valuable in this, that it
     would break no great line of the enemy's communication, while mine
     would?

     5th. In case of a disaster, would not a retreat be more difficult
     by your plan than mine?

     Yours truly, ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

To this communication McClellan made an elaborate reply, discussing the
situation very fully, and answering the inquiries apparently to the
satisfaction of the President, who consented to the plan submitted by
McClellan and concurred in by a council of his division commanders, by
which the base of the Army of the Potomac should be transferred from
Washington to the lower Chesapeake. Yet Lincoln must have had misgivings
in the matter, for some weeks later he wrote to McClellan: "You will do
me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in
search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only
shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty; that we would find the same
enemy, and the same or equal intrenchments, at either place."

After the transfer of the Army of the Potomac to the Peninsula there was
great impatience at the delays in the expected advance on Richmond. The
President shared this impatience, and his despatches to McClellan took
an urgent and imperative though always friendly tone. April 9 he wrote:
"Your despatches, complaining that you are not properly sustained, while
they do not offend me, do pain me very much. I suppose the whole force
which has gone forward for you is with you by this time. And, if so, I
think it is the precise time for you to _strike a blow_. By delay, the
enemy will relatively gain upon you--that is, he will gain faster by
fortifications and reinforcements than you can by reinforcements alone.
And once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you
_strike a blow_.... I beg to assure you that I have never written to you
or spoken to you in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a
fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as, in my most anxious judgment, I
consistently can. But you _must act_."

While Lincoln was thus imperative toward McClellan, he would not permit
him to be unjustly criticized. Considerable ill-feeling having been
developed between McClellan and Secretary Stanton, which was made worse
by certain meddlesome persons in Washington, the President took
occasion, at a public meeting, to express his views in these frank and
manly words: "There has been a very wide-spread attempt to have a
quarrel between General McClellan and the Secretary of War. Now, I
occupy a position that enables me to observe that these two gentlemen
are not nearly so deep in the quarrel as some pretending to be their
friends. General McClellan's attitude is such that, in the very
selfishness of his nature, he cannot but wish to be successful, as I
hope he will be; and the Secretary of War is in precisely the same
situation. If the military commanders in the field cannot be successful,
not only the Secretary of War but myself, for the time being the master
of them both, cannot but be failures. I know General McClellan wishes to
be successful, and I know he does not wish it any more than the
Secretary of War wishes it for him, and both of them together no more
than I wish it. Sometimes we have a dispute about how many men General
McClellan has had, and those who would disparage him say he has had a
very large number, and those who would disparage the Secretary of War
insist that General McClellan has had a very small number. The basis for
this is, there is always a wide difference, and on this occasion perhaps
a wider one than usual, between the grand total on McClellan's rolls and
the men actually fit for duty; and those who would disparage him talk of
the grand total on paper, and those who would disparage the Secretary of
War talk of those at present fit for duty. General McClellan has
sometimes asked for things that the Secretary of War did not give him.
General McClellan is not to blame for asking what he wanted and needed,
and the Secretary of War is not to blame for not giving when he had none
to give."

The summer of 1862 was a sad one for the country, and peculiarly sad for
Lincoln. The Army of the Potomac fought battle after battle, often with
temporary successes, but without apparent substantial results; while
many thousands of our brave soldiers perished on the field, or filled
the hospitals from the fever-swamps of the Chickahominy. The terrible
realities of that dreadful summer, and their strain on Lincoln, are well
shown in the following incident: Colonel Scott, of a New Hampshire
regiment, had been ill, and his wife nursed him in the hospital. After
his convalescence, he received leave of absence, and started for home;
but by a steamboat collision in Hampton Roads, his noble wife was
drowned. Colonel Scott reached Washington, and learning, a few days
later, of the recovery of his wife's body, he requested permission of
the Secretary of War to return for it. A great battle was imminent, and
the request was denied. Colonel Scott thereupon sought the President. It
was Saturday evening; and Lincoln, worn with the cares and anxieties of
the week, sat alone in his room, coat thrown off, and seemingly lost in
thought, perhaps pondering the issue of the coming battle. Silently he
listened to Colonel Scott's sad story; then, with an unusual irritation,
which was probably a part of his excessive weariness, he exclaimed: "Am
I to have no rest? Is there no hour or spot when or where I may escape
these constant calls? Why do you follow me here with such business as
this? Why do you not go to the War-office, where they have charge of all
this matter of papers and transportation?" Colonel Scott told of Mr.
Stanton's refusal; and the President continued: "Then probably you ought
not to go down the river. Mr. Stanton knows all about the necessities of
the hour; he knows what rules are necessary, and rules are made to be
enforced. It would be wrong for me to override his rules and decisions
in cases of this kind; it might work disaster to important movements.
And then, you ought to remember that I have other duties to attend
to--heaven knows, enough for one man!--and I can give no thought to
questions of this kind. Why do you come here to appeal to my humanity?
Don't you know that we are in the midst of war? That suffering and death
press upon all of us? That works of humanity and affection, which we
would cheerfully perform in days of peace, are all trampled upon and
outlawed by war? That there is no room left for them? There is but one
duty now--_to fight_. The only call of humanity now is to conquer peace
through unrelenting warfare. War, and war alone, is the duty of all of
us. Your wife might have trusted you to the care which the Government
has provided for its sick soldiers. At any rate, you must not vex me
with your family troubles. Why, every family in the land is crushed with
sorrow; but they must not each come to me for help. I have all the
burden I can carry. Go to the War Department. Your business belongs
there. If they cannot help you, then bear your burden, as we all must,
until this war is over. Everything must yield to the paramount duty of
finishing the war." Colonel Scott withdrew, crushed and overwhelmed. The
next morning, as he sat in his hotel pondering upon his troubles, he
heard a rap at his door, and opening it found to his surprise the
President standing before him. Grasping his hands impulsively and
sympathetically, Lincoln broke out: "My dear Colonel, I was a brute last
night. I have no excuse for my conduct. Indeed, I was weary to the last
extent; but I had no right to treat a man with rudeness who had offered
his life for his country, much more a man who came to me in great
affliction. I have had a regretful night, and come now to beg your
forgiveness." He added that he had just seen Secretary Stanton, and all
the details were arranged for sending the Colonel down the Potomac and
recovering the body; then, taking him in his carriage, he drove to the
steamer's wharf, where, again pressing his hand, he wished him God-speed
on his sad errand.

Such were Lincoln's harrowing experiences; and thus did his noble and
sympathetic nature assert itself over his momentary weakness and
depression.

In August of 1862 General McClellan was ordered to withdraw his army
from the Peninsula. "With a heavy heart," says McClellan, "I
relinquished the position gained at the cost of so much time and blood."
Without being removed from his command, his troops were taken away from
him and sent to join General Pope, who had been placed in command of a
considerable force in Virginia, for the purpose of trying the
President's favorite plan of an advance on Richmond by way of Manassas.
Either from a confusion of orders or a lack of zeal in executing them,
the Union forces failed to co-operate; and Pope's expected victory
(Manassas, August 30) proved a disastrous and humiliating defeat. His
army was beaten and driven back on Washington in a rout little less
disgraceful than that of Bull Run a year before. This battle came to be
known as the "Second Bull Run."

Thus the autumn of 1862 set in amidst gloom, disorder, and dismay. Our
armies in and around the national capital were on the defensive; while
the victorious Lee, following up his successes at Manassas, was invading
Maryland and threatening Washington and the North. The President was
anxious; the Cabinet and Congress were alarmed. The troops had lost
confidence in General Pope, and there was practically no one in chief
command. The situation was most critical; but Lincoln faced it, as he
always did, unflinchingly. He took what he felt to be the wisest and at
the same time the most unpopular step possible under the circumstances:
he placed McClellan in command of all the troops in and around
Washington. It was a bold act, and required no ordinary amount of moral
courage and self-reliance. Outside the army, it was about the most
unpopular thing that could have been done. McClellan was disliked by all
the members of the Cabinet and prominent officials, and with especial
bitterness by Secretary Stanton. Secretary Welles speaks, in his Diary,
of "Stanton's implacable hostility to McClellan," and records his belief
that "Stanton is determined to destroy McClellan." Welles relates that
on the very day of Pope's defeat at Manassas, Secretary Stanton,
accompanied by Secretary Chase, called on him and asked him to join in
signing a communication to the President demanding McClellan's immediate
dismissal from command of the Army of the Potomac, saying all the
members of the Cabinet would sign it. The document was in Stanton's
handwriting. Welles, though far from friendly toward McClellan, refused
to sign the paper, and the matter was dropped. Welles adds the comment,
"There was a fixed determination to remove, and, if possible, to
disgrace, McClellan."

When it was rumored in Washington that McClellan was to be reinstated,
everyone was thunderstruck. A Cabinet meeting was held on the second day
of September, at which the President, without asking anyone's opinion,
announced that he had reinstated McClellan. Regret and surprise were
openly expressed. Mr. Stanton, with some excitement, remarked that no
such order had issued from the War Department. The President then said,
with great calmness, "No, Mr. Secretary, _the order was mine, and I will
be responsible for it to the country_." He added, by way of explanation,
that, with a retreating and demoralized army tumbling in upon the
capital, and alarm and panic in the community, something had to be done,
and as there did not appear to be anyone else to do it he took the
responsibility on himself. He remarked that McClellan had the confidence
of the troops beyond any other officer, and could, under the
circumstances, more speedily and effectually reorganize them and put
them in fighting trim than any other general. "This is what is now
wanted most," said he, "and these were my reasons for placing McClellan
in command."

Perhaps at no other crisis of the war did Lincoln's strength of
character and power of making quick and important decisions in the face
of general opposition, come out more clearly than on this occasion.
Secretary Welles, who was present at the dramatic and stormy Cabinet
meeting referred to, says: "In stating what he had done, the President
was deliberate, but firm and decisive. His language and manner were kind
and affectionate, especially toward two of the members, who were greatly
disturbed; but every person present felt that he was truly the chief,
and every one knew his decision was as fixed and unalterable as if
given out with the imperious command and determined will of Andrew
Jackson. A long discussion followed, closing with acquiescence in the
decision of the President. In this instance the President, unaided by
others, put forth with firmness and determination the executive
will--the _one-man_ power--against the temporary general sense of the
community, as well as of his Cabinet, two of whom, it has been generally
supposed, had with him an influence almost as great as the Secretary of
State. They had been ready to make issue and resign their places unless
McClellan was dismissed; but knowing their opposition, and in spite of
it and of the general dissatisfaction in the community, the President
had in that perilous moment exalted him to new and important trusts."

It appears from the statement of General McClellan, made shortly before
his death, that on the morning of his reinstatement (before the Cabinet
meeting just described) the President visited him at his headquarters,
near Washington, to ask if he would again assume command. "While at
breakfast, at an early hour," says McClellan, "I received a call from
the President, accompanied by General Halleck. The President informed me
that Colonel Kelton had returned and represented the condition of
affairs as much worse than I had stated to Halleck on the previous day;
that there were 30,000 stragglers on the roads; that the army was
entirely defeated and falling back to Washington in confusion. He then
said that he regarded Washington as lost, and asked me if I would, under
the circumstances, consent to accept command of all the forces. Without
a moment's hesitation, and without making any conditions whatever, I at
once said that I would accept the command, and would stake my life that
I would save the city. Both the President and Halleck again asserted
their belief that it was impossible to save the city, and I repeated my
firm conviction that I could and would save it. They then left, the
President verbally placing me in entire command of the city and of the
troops falling back upon it from the front."

The result of the reappointment of McClellan soon vindicated the wisdom
of the step. He possessed the confidence of the army beyond any other
general at that time, and was able to inspire it with renewed hope and
courage. Leaving Washington on the 7th of September, in command of
Pope's beaten and disintegrated forces which he had to reorganize on the
march, he within two weeks met the flushed and lately victorious troops
of Lee and Jackson and fought the bloody but successful battle of
Antietam (September 17, 1862), which compelled Lee to retreat to the
southern side of the Potomac, and relieved Washington of any immediate
danger.

After the Antietam campaign, the Army of the Potomac rested awhile from
its exhausting and disorganizing labors. Supplies and reinforcements
were necessary before resuming active operations. This delay gave rise
to no little dissatisfaction in Washington, where a clamor arose that
McClellan should have followed up his successes at Antietam by
immediately pursuing Lee into Virginia. In this dissatisfaction the
President shared to some extent. He made a personal visit to the army
for the purpose of satisfying himself of its condition. Of this occasion
McClellan says: "On the first day of October, his Excellency the
President honored the Army of the Potomac with a visit, and remained
several days, during which he went through the different encampments,
reviewed the troops, and went over the battle-field of South Mountain
and Antietam. I had the opportunity, during this visit, to describe to
him the operations of the army since it left Washington, and gave him
my reasons for not following the enemy after he recrossed the Potomac."

Before the grand review that was to be made by the President, some of
McClellan's staff, knowing that the General was a man of great endurance
and expertness in the saddle, laughed at the idea of Lincoln's
attempting to keep up with him in the severe ordeal of "riding down the
lines." "They rather hinted," says a narrator, "that the General would
move somewhat rapidly, to test Mr. Lincoln's capacity as a rider. There
were those on the field, however, who had seen Mr. Lincoln in the saddle
in Illinois; and they were confident of his staying powers. A splendid
black horse, very spirited, was selected for the President to ride. When
the time came, Mr. Lincoln walked up to the animal, and the instant he
seized the bridle to mount, it was evident to horsemen that he 'knew his
business.' He had the animal in hand at once. No sooner was he in the
saddle than the coal-black steed began to prance and whirl and dance as
if he was proud of his burden. But the President sat as unconcerned and
fixed to the saddle as if he and the horse were one. The test of
endurance soon came. McClellan, with his magnificent staff, approached
the President, who joined them, and away they dashed to a distant part
of the field. The artillery began to thunder, the drums beat, and the
bands struck up 'Hail to the Chief,' while the troops cheered. Mr.
Lincoln, holding the bridle-rein in one hand, lifted his tall hat from
his head, and much of the time held it in the other hand. Grandly did
Lincoln receive the salute, appearing as little disturbed by the dashing
movements of the proud-spirited animal as if he had passed through such
an ordeal with the same creature many times before. Next came a further
test of endurance--a long dash over very rough untraveled ground, with
here and there a ditch or a hole to be jumped or a siding to be passed.
But Mr. Lincoln kept well up to McClellan, who made good time. Finally,
the 'riding down the lines' was performed, amidst the flaunting of
standards, the beating of drums, the loud cheering of the men and rapid
discharges of artillery, startling even the best-trained horses. Lincoln
sat easily to the end, when he wheeled his horse into position to
witness the vast columns march in review. McClellan was surprised at so
remarkable a display of horsemanship. Mr. Lincoln was a great lover of
the horse, and a skilled rider. His awkwardness of form did not show in
the saddle. He always looked well when mounted."

After the President's return to Washington he began urging McClellan to
resume active operations; desiring him to "cross the Potomac, and give
battle to the enemy or drive him south." On the 13th of October he
addressed to him the long letter quoted at the end of the preceding
chapter. Subsequent communications from the President to McClellan
showed more and more impatience. On the 25th he telegraphed: "I have
just read your despatch about sore-tongue and fatigued horses. Will you
pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the
battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?" And the next day, after
receiving McClellan's answer to his inquiry, he responded: "Most
certainly I intend no injustice to anyone, and if I have done any I
deeply regret it. To be told, after more than five weeks' total inaction
of the army, and during which period we had sent to that army every
fresh horse we possibly could, amounting in the whole to 7,918, that the
cavalry horses were too much fatigued to move, presented a very
cheerless, almost hopeless, prospect for the future, and it may have
forced something of impatience into my despatches. If not recruited and
rested then, when could they ever be? _I suppose the river is rising,
and I am glad to believe you, are crossing._" But McClellan did not
cross; his preparations for a new campaign were not yet complete; and
the President, at last losing patience, removed him from command, and
put Burnside in his place, November 5, 1862. And a disastrous step this
proved to be. Burnside was under peremptory orders from Washington to
move immediately against the Confederate forces. The result was the
ill-advised attack upon Fredericksburg (December 12, 1862) and
Burnside's bloody repulse. The movement was made against the judgment of
the army officers then, and has been generally condemned by military
critics since. Secretary Welles thus guardedly commented upon it in his
Diary: "It appears to me a mistake to fight the enemy in so strong a
position. They have selected their own ground, and we meet them there."
But it was McClellan's unwillingness to do the very thing that Burnside
is censured for having done, and that proved so overwhelming a disaster,
that was the occasion for McClellan's removal.

A good illustration of Lincoln's disappointed, perhaps unreasonable,
state of mind before McClellan's removal is furnished by Hon. O.M.
Hatch, a former Secretary of State of Illinois and an old friend of
Lincoln's. Mr. Hatch relates that a short time before McClellan's
removal from command he went with President Lincoln to visit the army,
still near Antietam. They reached Antietam late in the afternoon of a
very hot day, and were assigned a special tent for their occupancy
during the night. "Early next morning," says Mr. Hatch, "I was awakened
by Mr. Lincoln. It was very early--daylight was just lighting the
east--the soldiers were all asleep in their tents. Scarce a sound could
be heard except the notes of early birds, and the farm-yard voices from
distant farms. Lincoln said to me, 'Come, Hatch, I want you to take a
walk with me.' His tone was serious and impressive. I arose without a
word, and as soon as we were dressed we left the tent together. He led
me about the camp, and then we walked upon the surrounding hills
overlooking the great city of white tents and sleeping soldiers. Very
little was spoken between us, beyond a few words as to the pleasantness
of the morning or similar casual observations. Lincoln seemed to be
peculiarly serious, and his quiet, abstract way affected me also. It did
not seem a time to speak. We walked slowly and quietly, meeting here and
there a guard, our thoughts leading us to reflect on that wonderful
situation. A nation in peril--the whole world looking at America--a
million men in arms--the whole machinery of war engaged throughout the
country, while I stood by that kind-hearted, simple-minded man who might
be regarded as the Director-General, looking at the beautiful sunrise
and the magnificent scene before us. Nothing was to be said, nothing
needed to be said. Finally, reaching a commanding point where almost
that entire camp could be seen--the men were just beginning their
morning duties, and evidences of life and activity were becoming
apparent--we involuntarily stopped. The President, waving his hand
towards the scene before us, and leaning towards me, said in an almost
whispering voice: 'Hatch--Hatch, what is all this?' 'Why, Mr. Lincoln,'
said I, 'this is the Army of the Potomac' He hesitated a moment, and
then, straightening up, said in a louder tone: 'No, Hatch, no. This is
_General McClellan's body-guard_.' Nothing more was said. We walked to
our tent, and the subject was not alluded to again."




CHAPTER XXI


     Lincoln and Slavery--Plan for Gradual Emancipation--Anti-slavery
     Legislation in 1862--Pressure Brought to Bear on the Executive--The
     Delegation of Quakers--A Visit from Chicago Clergymen--Interview
     between Lincoln and Channing--Lincoln and Horace Greeley--The
     President's Answer to "The Prayer of Twenty Millions of
     People"--Conference between Lincoln and Greeley--Emancipation
     Resolved on--The Preliminary Proclamation--Lincoln's Account of
     It--Preparing for the Final Act--The Emancipation
     Proclamation--Particulars of the Great Document--Fate of the
     Original Draft--Lincoln's Outline of his Course and Views regarding
     Slavery.

The emancipation of slaves in America--the crowning act of Lincoln's
eventful career and the one with which his fame is most indissolubly
linked--is a subject of supreme interest in a study of his life and
character. For this great act all his previous life and training had
been but a preparation. From the first awakening of his convictions of
the moral wrong of human slavery, through all his public and private
utterances, may be traced one logical and consistent development of the
principles which at last found sublime expression in the Proclamation of
Emancipation. In this, as always, he was true to his own inner
promptings. He would not be hurried or worried or badgered into
premature and impracticable measures. He bided his time; and when that
time came the deed was done, unalterably and irrevocably: approved by
the logic of events, and by the enlightened conscience of the world.

The final Emancipation Proclamation was issued on the first day of
January, 1863. The various official measures that preceded it may be
briefly sketched, together with closely related incidents. As early as
the autumn of 1861 the problem of the relation of the war to slavery was
brought forcibly to the President's attention by the action of General
J.C. Frémont, the Union commander in Missouri, who issued an order
declaring the slaves of rebels in his department free. The order was
premature and unauthorized, and the President promptly annulled it.
General Frémont was thus, in a sense, the pioneer in military
emancipation; and he lived to see the policy proposed by him carried
into practical operation by all our armies. Lincoln afterwards said: "I
have great respect for General Frémont and his abilities, but the fact
is that the pioneer in any movement is not generally the best man to
carry that movement to a successful issue. It was so in old times; Moses
began the emancipation of the Jews, but didn't take Israel to the
Promised Land after all. He had to make way for Joshua to complete the
work. It looks as if the first reformer of a thing has to meet such a
hard opposition and gets so battered and bespattered that afterward when
people find they have to accept his reform they will accept it more
easily from another man."

Lincoln at first favored a policy of gradual emancipation. In a special
message to Congress, on the 6th of March, 1862, he proposed such a plan
for the abolition of slavery. "In my judgment," he remarked, "gradual,
and not sudden, emancipation is better for all." He suggested to
Congress the adoption of a joint resolution declaring "that the United
States ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt a gradual
abolition of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid to compensate
for the inconvenience, public and private, produced by such change of
system." In conclusion he urged: "In full view of my great
responsibility to my God and to my country, I earnestly beg the
attention of Congress and the people to this subject."

On the 16th of April of this year, Congress passed a bill abolishing
slavery in the District of Columbia--a measure for which Lincoln had
himself introduced a bill while a member of Congress. In confirming the
act as President, he remarked privately: "Little did I dream in 1849,
when as a member of Congress I proposed to abolish slavery at this
capital, and could scarcely get a hearing for the proposition, that it
would be so soon accomplished."

Emancipation measures moved rapidly in 1862. On June 19 Congress enacted
a measure prohibiting slavery forever in all present and future
territories of the United States. July 17 a law was passed authorizing
the employment of negroes as soldiers, and conferring freedom on all who
should render military service, and on the families of all such as
belonged to disloyal owners. Two days later, in a conference appointed
by him at the Executive Mansion, the President submitted to the members
of Congress from the Border States a written appeal, in which he said:

     Believing that you, in the border States, hold more power for good
     than any other equal number of members, I feel it a duty which I
     cannot justifiably waive, to make this appeal to you.... I intend
     no reproach or complaint when I assure you that, in my opinion, if
     you all had voted for the resolution in the gradual emancipation
     message of last March, the war would now be substantially ended.
     And the plan therein proposed is yet one of the most potent and
     swift means of ending it. Let the States which are in rebellion see
     definitely and certainly that in no event will the States you
     represent ever join their proposed confederacy, and they cannot
     much longer maintain the contest.... If the war continues long, as
     it must if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in
     your States will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion, by
     the mere incidents of the war. It will be gone, and you will have
     nothing valuable in lieu of it. Much of its value is gone already.
     How much better for you and for your people to take the step which
     at once shortens the war and secures substantial compensation for
     that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event! How much
     better to thus save the money which else we sink forever in the
     war! How much better to do it while we can, lest the war ere long
     render us pecuniarily unable to do it! How much better for you as
     seller, and the nation as buyer, to sell out and buy out that
     without which the war could never have been, than to sink both the
     thing to be sold and the price of it in cutting one another's
     throats!... I do not speak of emancipation _at once_, but of a
     _decision_ to emancipate _gradually_.... Upon these considerations
     I have again begged your attention to the message of March last.
     Before leaving the capital, consider and discuss it among
     yourselves. You are patriots and statesmen, and as such I pray you
     consider this proposition, and at the least commend it to the
     consideration of your States and people. As you would perpetuate
     popular government for the best people in the world, I beseech you
     that you do in nowise omit this. Our common country is in great
     peril, demanding the loftiest views and boldest action to bring a
     speedy relief. Once relieved, its form of government is saved to
     the world, its beloved history and cherished memories are
     vindicated, and its happy future fully assured and rendered
     inconceivably grand. To you, more than any others, the privilege is
     given to assure that happiness and swell that grandeur, and to link
     your own names therewith forever.

In an interview with Mr. Lovejoy and Mr. Arnold, of Illinois, the day
following this conference, Lincoln exclaimed: "Oh, how I wish the
border States would accept my proposition! Then you, Lovejoy, and you,
Arnold, and all of us, would not have lived in vain! The labor of your
life, Lovejoy, would be crowned with success. You would live to see the
end of slavery."

The first occasion on which the President definitely discussed
emancipation plans with members of his Cabinet, according to Secretary
Welles, was on the 13th of July, 1862. On that day, says Mr. Welles,
"President Lincoln invited me to accompany him in his carriage to the
funeral of an infant child of Mr. Stanton. Secretary Seward and Mrs.
Frederick Seward were also in the carriage. Mr. Stanton occupied at that
time for a summer residence the house of a naval officer, some two or
three miles west or northwest of Georgetown. It was on this occasion and
on this ride that he first mentioned to Mr. Seward and myself the
subject of emancipating the slaves by proclamation in case the Rebels
did not cease to persist in their war on the Government and the Union,
of which he saw no evidence. He dwelt earnestly on the gravity,
importance, and delicacy of the movement; said he had given it much
thought, and had about come to the conclusion that it was a military
necessity absolutely essential for the salvation of the Union; that we
must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued, etc.... This was, the
President said, the first occasion when he had mentioned the subject to
anyone, and wished us to frankly state how the proposition struck us.
Mr. Seward said the subject involved consequences so vast and momentous
that he should wish to bestow on it mature reflection before giving a
decisive answer; but his present opinion inclined to the measure as
justifiable, and perhaps he might say expedient and necessary. These
were also my views. Two or three times on that ride the subject, which
was of course an absorbing one for each and all, was adverted to; and
before separating, the President desired us to give the question special
and deliberate attention, for he was earnest in the conviction that
something must be done. It was a new departure for the President, for
until this time, in all our previous interviews, whenever the question
of emancipation or the mitigation of slavery had been in any way alluded
to, he had been prompt and emphatic in denouncing any interference by
the General Government with the subject. This was, I think, the
sentiment of every member of the Cabinet, all of whom, including the
President, considered it a local, domestic question, appertaining to the
States respectively, who had never parted with their authority over it.
But the reverses before Richmond, and the formidable power and
dimensions of the insurrection, which extended through all the Slave
States, and had combined most of them in a confederacy to destroy the
Union, impelled the Administration to adopt extraordinary measures to
preserve the national existence. The slaves, if not armed and
disciplined, were in the service of those who were, not only as field
laborers and producers, but thousands of them were in attendance upon
the armies in the field, employed as waiters and teamsters, and the
fortifications and intrenchments were constructed by them."

It has been shown again and again, by the words of Lincoln and by the
testimony of his friends, that he heartily detested the practice of
slavery, and would joyfully have set every bondman free. Before his
nomination for the Presidency--indeed, from the very beginning of his
public life--he had repeatedly put himself on record as opposed to
slavery, but perhaps nowhere more tersely and unequivocally than in
these words: "There is no reason in the world why the negro is not
entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of
Independence--the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
_I hold that he is as much entitled to them as the white man._" But his
respect for the laws of the land deterred him from measures that might
seem of doubtful constitutionality, and he waited patiently until the
right hour had struck before he issued the edict of emancipation so
eagerly demanded by a large class of earnest and loyal people at the
North. Many of these people, misunderstanding his views and intentions,
were very impatient; and their criticisms and expostulations were a
constant burden to the sorely tried Executive.

In June of this year (1862) the President was waited on by a deputation
of Quakers, or Friends, fifteen or twenty in number, who had been
charged by the Yearly Meeting of their association to present a "minute"
to the President on the subject of slavery and the duty of immediate
emancipation. The visit of these excellent people was not altogether
timely. Bad news had been received from McClellan's army on the
Peninsula, and Lincoln was harassed with cares and anxieties. But he
gave the deputation a cordial though brief greeting, as he announced
that he was ready to hear from the Friends. In the reading of the
minute, it appeared that the document took occasion to remind the
President that, years before, he had said, "I believe that this
Government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free," and from
this was implied a suggestion of his failure to perform his duty as he
had then seen it. Lincoln was decidedly displeased with this criticism;
and after the document had been read to the close, he received it from
the speaker, then drawing himself up, he said, with unusual severity of
manner: "It is true that on the 17th of June, 1858, I said, 'I believe
that this Government cannot permanently endure half slave and half
free,' but I said it in connection with other things from which it
should not have been separated in an address discussing moral
obligations; for this is a case in which the repetition of half a truth,
in connection with the remarks just read, produces the effect of a whole
falsehood. What I did say was, 'If we could first know where we are, and
whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do
it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with
the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to the slavery
agitation. Under the operation of that policy this agitation has not
only not ceased but has constantly augmented. In my opinion it will not
cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house
divided against itself cannot stand." I believe that this Government
cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. I do not expect the
Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--but I do
expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or
all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further
spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the
belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates
will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the
States, old as well as new, North as well as South.' Take this statement
as a whole, and it does not furnish a text for the homily to which this
audience has listened."

As Lincoln concluded, he was turning away, when another member of the
delegation, a woman, requested permission to detain him with a few
words. Somewhat impatiently he said, "I will hear the Friend." Her
remarks were a plea for the emancipation of the slaves, urging that he
was the appointed minister of the Lord to do the work, and enforcing her
argument by many Scriptural citations. At the close he asked, "Has the
Friend finished?" and receiving an affirmative answer, he said: "I have
neither time nor disposition to enter into discussion with the Friend,
and end this occasion by suggesting for her consideration the question
whether, if it be true that the Lord has appointed me to do the work she
has indicated, it is not probable that He would have communicated
knowledge of the fact to me as well as to her?"

Something like the same views were expressed by Lincoln, on another
occasion, when, in response to a memorial presented by a delegation
representing most of the religious organizations of Chicago, he said,
respectfully but pointedly: "I am approached with the most opposite
opinions and advice, and by religious men who are certain they represent
the Divine Will.... I hope it will not be irreverent in me to say that
if it be probable that God would reveal His will to others, on a point
so closely connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal
it directly to me.... If I can learn His will, I will do it. These,
however, are not the days of miracles, and I suppose I am not to expect
a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case,
and learn what appears to be wise and right.... Do not misunderstand me
because I have mentioned these objections. They indicate the
difficulties which have thus far prevented my action in some such way as
you desire. I have not decided against a proclamation of emancipation,
but hold the matter in advisement. The subject is in my mind by day and
by night. Whatever shall appear to be God's will, I will do."

About this period the President had a very interesting conversation with
Rev. William Henry Channing, in which the question of emancipation was
frankly discussed. Mr. M.D. Conway, who was present at the interview,
says: "Mr. Channing having begun by expressing his belief that the
opportunity of the nation to rid itself of slavery had arrived, Mr.
Lincoln asked how he thought they might avail themselves of it. Channing
suggested emancipation, with compensation for the slaves. The President
said he had for years been in favor of that plan. When the President
turned to me, I asked whether we might not look to him as the coming
deliverer of the nation from its one great evil? What would not that man
achieve for mankind who should free America from slavery? He said,
'Perhaps we may be better able to do something in that direction after a
while than we are now.' I said: 'Mr. President, do you believe the
masses of the American people would hail you as their deliverer if, at
the end of this war, the Union should be surviving and slavery still in
it?' 'Yes, if they were to see that slavery was on the down hill.' I
ventured to say: 'Our fathers compromised with slavery because they
thought it on the down hill; hence war to-day.' The President said: 'I
think the country grows in this direction daily, and I am not without
hope that something of the desire of you and your friends may be
accomplished. When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, _I trust I
shall be willing to do my duty, though it costs my life_. And,
gentlemen, lives will be lost.' These last words were said with a smile,
yet with a sad and weary tone. During the conversation Mr. Lincoln
recurred several times to Channing's suggestion of pecuniary
compensation for emancipated slaves, and professed profound sympathy
with the Southerners who, by no fault of their own, had become socially
and commercially bound up with their peculiar institution. Being a
Virginian myself, with many dear relatives and beloved companions of my
youth in the Confederate ranks, I responded warmly to his kindly
sentiments toward the South, albeit feeling more angry than he seemed
to be against the institution preying upon the land like a ghoul. I
forget whether it was on this occasion or on a subsequent one when I was
present that he said, in parting: 'We shall need all the anti-slavery
feeling in the country, and more; you can go home and try to bring the
people to your views; and you may say anything you like about me, if
that will help. Don't spare me!' This was said with some laughter, but
still in earnest."

One of the severest opponents of President Lincoln's policy regarding
slavery was Horace Greeley. He criticized Lincoln freely in the New York
"Tribune," of which he was editor, and said many harsh and bitter things
of the administration. Lincoln took the abuse good-naturedly, saying on
one occasion: "It reminds me of the big fellow whose little wife was
wont to beat him over the head without resistance. When remonstrated
with, the man said, 'Let her alone. It don't hurt me, and it does her a
power of good.'"

In August, 1862, Mr. Greeley published a letter in the New York
"Tribune," headed "The prayer of twenty millions of people," in which he
urged the President, with extreme emphasis, to delay the act of
emancipation no longer. Lincoln answered the vehement entreaty in the
following calm, firm, and explicit words:

     EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
     Friday, Aug. 22, 1862.

     HON. HORACE GREELEY.

     DEAR SIR: I have just read yours of the 19th instant, addressed to
     myself, through the New York Tribune.

     If there be in it any statements or assumptions of fact, which I
     may know to be erroneous, I do not now and here controvert them. If
     there be any inferences which I believe to be falsely drawn, I do
     not now and here argue against them. If there be perceptible in it
     an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it, in deference to an
     old friend whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

     As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing," as you say, I have not
     meant to leave anyone in doubt. I would save the Union. I would
     save it in the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the
     national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will
     be--the Union as it was. If there be those who would not save the
     Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not
     agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union
     unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree
     with them. _My paramount object is to save the Union, and not
     either to save or destroy slavery._ If I could save the Union
     without freeing any slave, I would do it. And if I could save it by
     freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could save it by
     freeing some, and leaving others alone, I would do that.

     What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I
     believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear
     because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall
     do less whenever I believe what I am doing hurts the cause; and
     shall do more whenever I believe doing more will help the cause. I
     shall try to correct errors, when shown to be errors; and I shall
     adopt new views, so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

     I have here stated my purpose, according to my view of official
     duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal
     wish that all men everywhere could be free.

     Yours,
     A. Lincoln.

Mr. Greeley being dissatisfied with Lincoln's explanation, and the
"Tribune" still teeming with complaints and criticisms of the
administration, Lincoln requested Mr. Greeley to come to Washington and
make known in person his complaints, to the end that they might be
obviated if possible. The editor of the "Tribune" came. Lincoln said:
"You complain of me. What have I done, or omitted to do, which has
provoked the hostility of the 'Tribune'?" The reply was, "You should
issue a proclamation abolishing slavery." Lincoln answered: "Suppose I
do that. There are now twenty thousand of our muskets on the shoulders
of Kentuckians, who are bravely fighting our battles. Every one of them
will be thrown down or carried over to the rebels." The reply was: "Let
them do it. The cause of the Union will be stronger if Kentucky should
secede with the rest than it is now." Lincoln answered, "Oh, I can't
think that."

It is evident that these solicitations and counsellings from outside
persons were unnecessary and idle. Lincoln's far-seeing and practical
mind had already grasped, more surely than had his would-be advisers,
the ultimate wisdom and justice of the emancipation of the slaves. But
he was resolved to do nothing rashly. He would wait till the time was
ripe, and then abolish slavery on grounds that would be approved
throughout the world: he would destroy slavery as a necessary step to
the preservation of the Union. In the first year of the war he had said
to a Southern Unionist, who warned him against meddling with slavery,
"_You must not expect me to give up this Government without playing my
last card._" This "last card" was undoubtedly the freeing of the slaves;
and when the time came, Lincoln played it unhesitatingly and
triumphantly. How strong a card it was may be judged by a statement made
in Congress by Mr. Ashmore, a Representative from South Carolina, who
said shortly before the war: "The South can sustain more men in the
field than the North can. _Her four millions of slaves alone will enable
her to support an army of half a million._" This view makes the issue
plain. If the South could maintain armies in the field supported, or
partly supported, by slave labor, it was as much the right and the duty
of the Government to destroy that support as to destroy an establishment
for the manufacture of arms or munitions of war for the Southern armies.
The logic of events had demonstrated the necessity and justice of the
measure, and Lincoln now had with him a Cabinet practically united in
its favor. The case was well stated by Secretary Welles--perhaps the
most cool-headed and conservative member of Lincoln's Cabinet--at a
Cabinet meeting held six or eight weeks after the Emancipation measure
had been brought forward by the President. Mr. Welles, as he relates in
his Diary, pointed out "the strong exercise of power" involved in the
proposal, and denied the power of the Executive to take such a step
under ordinary conditions. "But," said Mr. Welles, "the Rebels
themselves had invoked war on the subject of slavery, had appealed to
arms, and must abide the consequences." Mr. Welles admitted that it was
"an extreme exercise of war powers" which he believed justifiable "under
the circumstances, and in view of the condition of the country and the
magnitude of the contest. The slaves were now an element of strength to
the Rebels--were laborers, producers, and army attendants; they were
considered as _property_ by the Rebels, and _if property_ they were
subject to confiscation; if not property, but _persons_ residing in the
insurrectionary region, we should invite them as well as the whites to
unite with us in putting down the Rebellion." This view was in the main
concurred in by the Cabinet members present, and greatly heartened the
President in his course. On the 22d of September, 1862, he issued what
is known as the "Preliminary Proclamation." The text of this momentous
document is as follows:

     I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and
     Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim
     and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be
     prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the
     constitutional relations between the United States and each of the
     States and the people thereof, in which States that relation is or
     may be suspended or disturbed.

     That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress, to again
     recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary
     aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all slave States, so
     called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the
     United States, and which States may then have voluntarily adopted,
     or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual
     abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; and that the
     effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent,
     upon this continent or elsewhere, with the previously obtained
     consent of the governments existing there, will be continued.

     That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one
     thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves
     within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof
     shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be
     then, thenceforward, and forever FREE; and the Executive government
     of the United States, including the military and naval authority
     thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons,
     and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them,
     in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

     That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by
     proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in
     which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion
     against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the
     people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in
     the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at
     elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State
     shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong
     countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such
     State, and the people thereof, are not in rebellion against the
     United States.

     That attention is hereby called to an act of Congress entitled "An
     act to make an additional article of war," approved March 13, 1862,
     and which act is in the words and figures following:

     _Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
     United States of America in Congress assembled_, That hereafter the
     following shall be promulgated as an additional article of war, for
     the government of the army of the United States, and shall be
     obeyed and observed as such.

     ARTICLE.--All officers or persons in the military or naval service
     of the United States are prohibited from employing any of the
     forces under their respective commands for the purpose of returning
     fugitives from service or labor who may have escaped from any
     persons to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due, and any
     officer who shall be found guilty by a court-martial of violating
     this article shall be dismissed from the service.

     SEC. 2. _And be it further enacted_, That this act shall take
     effect from and after its passage.

Also to the ninth and tenth sections of an act entitled "An act to
suppress insurrection, to punish treason and rebellion, to seize and
confiscate property of rebels, and for other purposes," approved July
17, 1862, and which sections are in the words and figures following:

     SEC. 9. _And be it further enacted_, That all slaves of persons who
     shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of
     the United States or who shall in any way give aid or comfort
     thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the
     lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons or
     deserted by them, and coming under the control of the government of
     the United States; and all slaves of such persons found _on_ [or]
     being within any place occupied by rebel forces, and afterwards
     occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed
     captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and
     not again held as slaves.

     SEC. 10. _And be it further enacted_, That no slave, escaping into
     any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, from any other
     State, shall be delivered up, or in any way impeded or hindered of
     his liberty, except for crime, or some offense against the laws,
     unless the person claiming said fugitive shall first make oath that
     the person to whom the labor or service of such fugitive is alleged
     to be due is his lawful owner, and has not borne arms against the
     United States in the present rebellion, nor in any way given aid
     and comfort thereto; and no person engaged in the military or naval
     service of the United States shall, under any pretense whatever,
     assume to decide on the validity of the claim of any person to the
     service or labor of any other person, or surrender up any such
     person to the claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the
     service.

     And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons engaged in the
     military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey,
     and enforce, within their respective spheres of service, the act
     and sections above recited.

     And the Executive will in due time recommend that all the citizens
     of the United States who shall have remained loyal thereto
     throughout the rebellion, shall (upon the restoration of the
     constitutional relation between the United States and their
     respective States and people, if that relation shall have been
     suspended or disturbed) be compensated for all losses by acts of
     the United States, including the loss of slaves.

     In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the
     seal of the United States to be affixed.

     Done at the city of Washington, this twenty-second day of
     September, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and
     sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the
     eighty-seventh.

     _By the President_: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

     WILLIAM H. SEWARD, _Secretary of State_.

Lincoln's own account of this proclamation, and of the steps that led
to it, is given as reported by Mr. F.B. Carpenter. "It had," said
Lincoln, "got to be midsummer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to
worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan
of operations we had been pursuing; that we must change our tactics and
play our last card, or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption
of the emancipation policy; and, without consultation with, or the
knowledge of, the Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the
proclamation, and, after much anxious thought, called a Cabinet meeting
upon the subject. This was the last of July, or the first part of the
month of August, 1862. This Cabinet meeting took place, I think, upon a
Saturday. All were present excepting Mr. Blair, the Postmaster general,
who was absent at the opening of the discussion, but came in
subsequently. I said to the Cabinet that I had resolved upon this step,
and had called them together, not to ask their advice, but to lay the
subject-matter of a proclamation before them; suggestions as to which
would be in order, after they had heard it read. Mr. Lovejoy was in
error when he informed you that it excited no comment, excepting on the
part of Secretary Seward. Various suggestions were offered. Secretary
Chase wished the language stronger in reference to the arming of the
blacks. Mr. Blair, after he came in, deprecated the policy, on the
ground that it would cost the administration the fall elections.
Nothing, however, was offered that I had not already fully anticipated
and settled in my own mind, until Secretary Seward spoke. He said in
substance: 'Mr. President, I approve of the proclamation, but I question
the expediency of its issue at this juncture. The depression of the
public mind, consequent upon our repeated reverses, is so great that I
fear the effect of so important a step. It may be viewed as the last
measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help; the government
stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia stretching
forth her hands to the government.' 'His idea,' said the President, 'was
that it would be considered our last _shriek_ on the retreat.' (This was
his precise expression.) 'Now,' continued Mr. Seward, 'while I approve
the measure, I suggest, sir, that you postpone its issue until you can
give it to the country supported by military success, instead of issuing
it, as would be the case now, upon the greatest disasters of the war!'"
Lincoln continued: "The wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State
struck me with very great force. It was an aspect of the case that, in
all my thought upon the subject, I had entirely overlooked. The result
was that I put the draft of the proclamation aside, waiting for a
victory. From time to time I added or changed a line, touching it up
here and there, anxiously waiting the progress of events. Well, the next
news we had was of Pope's disaster at Bull Run. Things looked darker
than ever. Finally, came the week of the battle of Antietam. I
determined to wait no longer.[F] The news came, I think, on Wednesday,
that the advantage was on our side. I was then staying at the Soldiers'
Home (three miles out of Washington). Here I finished writing the second
draft of the preliminary proclamation; came up on Saturday; called the
Cabinet together to hear it; and it was published the following Monday."

Another interesting incident occurred at this Cabinet meeting in
connection with Secretary Seward. The President had written the
important part of the proclamation in these words: "That on the first
day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated
part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against
the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever FREE; and
the Executive Government of the United States, including the military
and naval authority thereof, will _recognize_ the freedom of such
persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of
them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom." "When I
finished reading this paragraph," remarked Lincoln, "Mr. Seward stopped
me, and said, 'I think, Mr. President, that you should insert after the
word "_recognize_" "_and maintain_."' I replied that I had already fully
considered the import of that expression in this connection, but I had
not introduced it, because it was not my way to promise what I was not
entirely _sure_ that I could perform, and I was not prepared to say that
I thought we were exactly able to maintain this. But Seward insisted
that we ought to take this ground, and the words finally went in."

The special Cabinet meeting to which Lincoln here refers was one of
uncommon interest even in that day of heroic things. An account of it is
given by Secretary Welles, who was present. "At the Cabinet meeting of
September 22," says Mr. Welles in his Diary, "the special subject was
the Proclamation for emancipating the slaves after a certain date, in
States that shall then be in rebellion. For several weeks the subject
has been suspended, but the President says never lost sight of. In
taking up the Proclamation, the President stated that the question was
finally decided, the act and the consequences were his, but that he
felt it due to us to make us acquainted with the fact and to invite
criticism on the paper which he had prepared. There were, he had found,
not unexpectedly, some differences in the Cabinet, but he had, after
ascertaining in his own way the views of each and all, individually and
collectively, formed his own conclusions and made his own decisions. In
the course of the discussion on this paper, which was long, earnest,
and, on the general principle involved, harmonious, he remarked that he
had made a vow, a covenant, that if God gave us the victory in the
approaching battle, he would consider it an indication of Divine will,
and that it was his duty to move forward in the cause of emancipation.
It might be thought strange, he said, that he had in this way submitted
the disposal of important matters when the way was not clear to his mind
what he should do. God had decided his questions in favor of the slaves.
He was satisfied it was right; and he was confirmed and strengthened in
his action by the vow and the results. His mind was fixed, his decision
made, but he wished his paper announcing his course to be as correct in
terms as it could be made without any change in his determination. He
read the document. One or two unimportant amendments suggested by Seward
were approved. It was then handed to the Secretary of State to publish
to-morrow."

The discussion of Emancipation brought up at once the problem of what
should be done with the freed negroes. The very next day after the
preliminary proclamation was issued (September 23, 1862), the President
presented the matter to the assembled Cabinet. Deportation was
considered, and some of those present urged that this should be
compulsory. The President, however, would not consider this; the
emigration of the negroes, he said, must be voluntary, and without
expense to themselves. It was proposed to deport the freedmen to Costa
Rica, where a large tract of land (known as the Chiriqui Grant) had been
obtained from the government of Central America. Lincoln favored this in
a general way. He "thought it essential to provide an asylum for a race
which we had emancipated but which could never be recognized or admitted
to be our equals," says Mr. Welles. But there was some doubt as to the
validity of the title to the Costa Rica lands, and the matter was
dropped.

In his second annual message to Congress, transmitted to that body in
December, 1862, Lincoln touched, in conclusion, upon the great subject
of Emancipation, in these words of deep import:

     I do not forget the gravity which should characterize a paper
     addressed to the Congress of the nation by the Chief Magistrate of
     the nation. Nor do I forget that some of you are my seniors, nor
     that many of you have more experience than I in the conduct of
     public affairs. Yet I trust that in view of the great
     responsibility resting upon me, you will perceive no want of
     respect to yourselves in any undue earnestness I may seem to
     display.... The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the
     stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we
     must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think
     anew and act anew.

     Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and
     this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No
     personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another
     of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in
     honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the
     Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to
     save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We--even
     we here--hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving
     freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike
     in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or
     meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed,
     this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just--a
     way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God
     must forever bless.

An immense concourse attended the reception at the White House on the
first day of 1863, and the President stood for several hours shaking
hands with the endless train of men and women who pressed forward to
greet him. The exhausting ceremonial being ended, the proclamation which
finally and forever abrogated the institution of slavery in the United
States was handed to him for his signature. "Mr. Seward," remarked the
President, "I have been shaking hands all day, and my right hand is
almost paralyzed. If my name ever gets into history, it will be for this
act, and my whole soul is in it. If my hand trembles when I sign the
proclamation, those who examine the document hereafter will say I
hesitated." Then, resting his arm a moment, he turned to the table, took
up the pen, and slowly and firmly wrote, ABRAHAM LINCOLN. He smiled as,
handing the paper to Mr. Seward, he said, "That will do." A few hours
after, he remarked: "The signature looks a little tremulous, for my hand
was tired; but my resolution was firm. I told them in September that if
they did not return to their allegiance I would strike at this pillar of
their strength. And now the promise shall be kept, and not one word of
it will I ever recall."

The text of the great Emancipation Proclamation is as follows:

     Whereas, on the 22d day of September, in the year of our Lord one
     thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by
     the President of the United States, containing, among other things,
     the following, to-wit:

        That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord
        one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons
        held as slaves within any States or designated part of a
        State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion
        against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward
        and forever free; and the Executive Government of the
        United States, including the military and naval authority
        thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such
        persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such
        persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for
        their actual freedom.

        That the Executive will, on the first day of January
        aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and
        parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof
        respectively shall then be in rebellion against the
        United States; and the fact that any State, or the people
        thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented
        in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen
        thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified
        voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in
        the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed
        conclusive evidence that such State, and the people
        thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United
        States.

     Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United
     States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief
     of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed
     rebellion against the authority and Government of the United
     States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing
     said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of
     our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in
     accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the
     full period of one hundred days, from the day first above
     mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States
     wherein the people thereof respectively are this day in
     rebellion against the United States, the following, to-wit:
     Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard,
     Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James,
     Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, Ste. Marie, St.
     Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans),
     Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North
     Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties
     designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley,
     Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and
     Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and
     which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if
     this proclamation were not issued.

     And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do
     order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said
     designated States and parts of States are and henceforward shall
     be FREE; and that the Executive Government of the United States,
     including the military and naval authorities thereof, will
     recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

     And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to
     abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and
     I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor
     faithfully for reasonable wages.

     And I further declare and make known that such persons, of
     suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of
     the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and
     other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

     And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice,
     warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke
     the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of
     Almighty God.

     In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my name, and caused the
     seal of the United States to be affixed.

     Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in
     the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three,
     and of the independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

     _By the President_: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

     WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

It is stated that Lincoln gave the most earnest study to the composition
of the Emancipation Proclamation. He realized, as he afterwards said,
that the proclamation was the central act of his administration and the
great event of the nineteenth century. When the document was completed a
printed copy of it was placed in the hands of each member of the
Cabinet, and criticisms and suggestions were invited. Mr. Chase
remarked: "This paper is of the utmost importance, greater than any
state paper ever made by this Government. A paper of so much importance,
and involving the liberties of so many people, ought, I think, to make
some reference to Deity. I do not observe anything of the kind in it."
Lincoln said: "No, I overlooked it. Some reference to Deity must be
inserted. Mr. Chase, won't you make a draft of what you think ought to
be inserted?" Mr. Chase promised to do so, and at the next meeting
presented the following: "And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an
act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity,
I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of
Almighty God." When Lincoln read the paragraph, Mr. Chase said: "You may
not approve it, but I thought this, or something like it, would be
appropriate." Lincoln replied: "I do approve it; it cannot be bettered,
and I will adopt it in the very words you have written."

To a large concourse of people who, two days after the proclamation was
issued, assembled before the White House, with music, the President
said: "What I did, I did after a very full deliberation, and under a
heavy and solemn sense of responsibility. I can only trust in God I have
made no mistake." That he realized to the full the gravity of the step
before taking it is shown again in an incident related by Hon. John
Covode, who, calling on the President a few days before the issue of the
final proclamation, found him walking his room in considerable
agitation. Reference being made to the forthcoming proclamation, Lincoln
said with great earnestness: "I have studied that matter well; my mind
is made up--it _must be done_. I am driven to it. There is to me no
other way out of our troubles. But although my duty is plain, it is in
some respects painful, and I trust the people will understand that I act
not in anger but in expectation of a greater good."

Mr. Ben. Perley Poore makes the interesting statement that "Mr. Lincoln
carefully put away the pen which he had used in signing the document,
for Mr. Sumner, who had promised it to his friend, George Livermore, of
Cambridge, the author of an interesting work on slavery. It was a steel
pen with a wooden handle, the end of which had been gnawed by Mr.
Lincoln--a habit that he had when composing anything that required
thought."

In response to a request of the ladies in charge of the Northwestern
Fair for the Sanitary Commission, which was held in Chicago in the
autumn of 1863, Lincoln conveyed to them the original draft of the
proclamation; saying, in his note of presentation, "I had some desire to
retain the paper; but if it shall contribute to the relief or comfort of
the soldiers, that will be better." The document was purchased at the
Fair by Mr. Thomas B. Bryan, and given by him to the Chicago Historical
Society. It perished in the great fire of October, 1871.

More than a year after the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation,
Lincoln, in writing to a prominent Kentucky Unionist, gave a synopsis of
his views and course regarding slavery, which is so clear in statement,
and so forceful and convincing in logic, that a place must be given it
in this chapter.

     I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is
     wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel; and yet
     I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an
     unrestricted, right to act officially upon this judgment and
     feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my
     ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
     United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath.
     Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and
     break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in
     ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to
     practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral
     question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times and in
     many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official
     act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on
     slavery. I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the
     Constitution to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of
     preserving, by every indispensable means, that Government--that
     Nation of which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it
     possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution? By
     general law, life _and_ limb must be protected; yet often a limb
     must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given
     to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional,
     might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation
     of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right
     or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel
     that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the
     Constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should
     permit the wreck of government, country, and constitution,
     altogether. When, early in the war, General Frémont attempted
     military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think
     it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, General
     Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks,
     I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable
     necessity. When, still later, General Hunter attempted military
     emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the
     indispensable necessity had come. When, in March and May and July,
     1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the border States to
     favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable
     necessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would
     come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the
     proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the
     alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it the
     Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I
     chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than
     loss; but of this I was not entirely confident. More than a year of
     trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our
     home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, no loss
     by it anyhow or anywhere. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite
     a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These
     are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no
     cavilling. We have the men; and as we could not have had them
     without the measure.

     And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test
     himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the
     rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking
     three hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and
     placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns.
     If he cannot face his case so stated, it is only because he cannot
     face the truth.

     I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have
     controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled
     me. Now, at the end of three years' struggle, the nation's
     condition is not what either party or any man devised or expected.
     God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God
     now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of
     the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our
     complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new
     causes to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.

     Yours truly,
     A. LINCOLN




CHAPTER XXII


     President and People--Society at the White House in 1862-3--The
     President's Informal Receptions--A Variety of
     Callers--Characteristic Traits of Lincoln--His Ability to Say _No_
     when Necessary--Would not Countenance Injustice--Good Sense and
     Tact in Settling Quarrels--His Shrewd Knowledge of Men--Getting Rid
     of Bores--Loyalty to his Friends--Views of his Own
     Position--"Attorney for the People"--Desire that they Should
     Understand him--His Practical Kindness--A Badly Scared
     Petitioner--Telling a Story to Relieve Bad News--A Breaking Heart
     beneath the Smiles--His Deeply Religious Nature--The Changes
     Wrought by Grief.

In a work which is not intended to cover fully the events of a great
historic period, but rather to trace out the life of a single individual
connected with that period, much must be included which, although not
possessing special historical significance, cannot be overlooked in a
personal study of the subject of the biography. Lincoln's life as
President was by no means made up of Cabinet meetings, official messages
and proclamations, or reviews of armies; interspersed with these
conspicuous acts was a multitude of less heroic but scarcely less
interesting details, with incidents and experiences humorous or sad, but
all, even the most trivial, being expressions of the life and character
of the man whom we are seeking to portray.

"Society," as now understood at the national capital, had but little
existence during the war. At the White House there were the usual
President's receptions, which were quite public in character and were
largely attended. Aside from these democratic gatherings there was
little enough of gaiety. The feeling that prevailed is shown by an
incident that occurred during the winter of 1862-3, when a good deal of
clamor was raised over a party given by Mrs. Lincoln, at which, it was
asserted, dancing was indulged in; and Mrs. Lincoln was severely
censured for what was regarded as inexcusable frivolity. Hon. A.G.
Riddle, who was present on the occasion referred to, states positively
that there was no dancing; the party was a quiet one, intended only to
relieve the rather dull and formal receptions. But the President was
pained by the rumors that "fashionable balls" were permitted at the
White House in war-time; and the party was not repeated.

It was the custom of President Lincoln to open, twice a week, the doors
of his office in the Executive Mansion for the admission of all visitors
who might wish to speak with him. These brief interviews, quite devoid
of ceremony, seemed to reveal the man in his true character, and to set
forth the salient traits that fitted him for his great position, and
endeared him so greatly to the popular heart. They showed how easily
accessible he was to all classes of citizens, how readily he could adapt
himself to people of any station or degree, how deep and true were his
human sympathies, how quickly and keenly he could discriminate
character, and how heartily he detested meanness and all unworthy acts
and appliances to compass a selfish or sordid end. On these occasions,
as may well be imagined, many curious incidents occurred. Lincoln was
usually clad "in a black broadcloth suit, nothing in his dress
betokening disregard of conventionality, save perhaps his neat cloth
slippers, which were doubtless worn for comfort. He was seated beside a
plain cloth-covered table, in a commodious arm-chair." As each visitor
approached the President he was greeted with an encouraging nod and
smile, and a few moments were cordially given him in which to state the
object of the visit; the President listening with the most respectful
and patient attention, and deciding each case with tact, sympathy, and
good humor. "His _Yes_," says Mr. Riddle, "was most gracious and
satisfactory; his _No_, when reached, was often spoken by the
petitioner, and left only a soothed disappointment. He saw the point of
a case unerringly. He had a confidence in the homely views and speech of
the common people, with whom his heart and sympathies ever were."

At these informal meetings with people who usually wanted some favor
from him, no case was too trivial to receive his attention. Taking
advantage of the opportunity, there came one day, says Mr. C. Van
Santvoord, "a sturdy, honest-looking German soldier, minus a leg, who
hobbled up to the President on crutches. In consideration of his
disabled condition, he wanted some situation about Washington, the
duties of which he might be able to discharge; and he had come to the
President, hoping that he would provide the desired situation for him.
On being interrogated as to how he had lost his leg, he answered that it
was the effect of a wound received in battle, mentioning the time and
the place. 'Let me look at your papers,' said Mr. Lincoln. The man
replied that he had none, and that he supposed his word would be
sufficient. 'What!' exclaimed the President, 'no papers, no credentials,
nothing to show how you lost your leg! How am I to know that you did not
lose it by a trap after getting into somebody's orchard?' This was
spoken with a droll expression which amused the bystanders, all except
the applicant, who with a very solemn visage earnestly protested the
truth of his statement, muttering something about the reasons for not
being able to produce his papers. 'Well, well,' said the President, 'it
is a little risky for an army man to be wandering around without papers
to show where he belongs and what he is, but I will see what can be
done for you.' And taking a blank card from a little pile of similar
blanks on the table, he wrote some lines upon it, addressed it, and
handing it to the man bade him deliver it to a certain quartermaster,
who would attend to his case."

The President could, however, be emphatic and even severe when necessary
on such occasions. One day, we are told, "he was approached by a man
apparently sixty years of age, with dress and manner which showed that
he was acquainted with the usages of good society, whose whole exterior,
indeed, would have favorably impressed people who form opinions from
appearances. The object of his visit was to solicit aid in some
commission project, for the success of which Mr. Lincoln's favor was
regarded as essential. The President heard him patiently, but demurred
against being connected with or countenancing the affair, suggesting
mildly that the applicant would better set up an office of the kind
described, and run it in his own way and at his own risk. The man
pleaded his advanced years and obscurity as a reason for not attempting
this, but said if the President would only let him use his name to
advertise and recommend the enterprise, he would then, he thought, need
nothing more. At this the eyes of the President flashed with sudden
indignation, and his whole aspect and manner underwent a portentous
change. 'No!' he broke forth, with startling vehemence, springing from
his seat under the impulse of his emotion. 'No! I'll have nothing to do
with this business, nor with any man who comes to me with such degrading
propositions. What! Do you take the President of the United States to be
a commission broker? You have come to the wrong place; and for you and
every one who comes for such purposes, there is the door!' The man's
face blanched as he cowered and slunk away confounded, without uttering
a word. The President's wrath subsided as speedily as it had risen."

Another example of Lincoln's power to dispose summarily of people who
tried his patience too far is given by Secretary Welles, who records
that a Mrs. White--a sister or half-sister of Mrs. Lincoln--made herself
so obnoxious as a Southern sympathizer in Washington in 1864, that the
President sent her word that "if she did not leave forthwith she might
expect to find herself within twenty-four hours in the Old Capitol
Prison."

With all his kindness and desire to do what was asked of him, Lincoln
could not be persuaded to consent to anything which he felt to be
distinctly wrong, regardless of any unfavorable consequences which his
refusal might bring upon himself. When the members of Congress from
Minnesota, late in 1862, called on him in a body to urge him to order
the execution of three hundred Indian prisoners, captured in their State
and charged with great atrocities, he positively refused, although
realizing that it might cost him the support of those members of the
House, which he greatly needed at that time.

"The President is always disposed to mitigate punishments and grant
favors," says a member of his Cabinet. "As a matter of duty and
friendship, I one day mentioned to him the case of Laura Jones, a young
lady residing in Richmond and there engaged to be married, who came up
three years ago to attend her sick mother and had been unable to pass
through the lines and return. A touching appeal was made by the poor
girl, who truly says her youth is passing. The President at once said he
would give her a pass. I told him her sympathies were with the
secessionists. But he said he would let her go; the war had depopulated
the country and prevented marriages enough, and if he could do a
kindness of this sort he would do it."

Another applicant for a pass through the lines was less fortunate than
the one just noted. One day, in the spring of 1862, a gentleman from
some Northern city entered Lincoln's private office, and earnestly
requested a pass to Richmond. "A pass to Richmond!" exclaimed the
President. "Why, my dear sir, if I should give you one it would do you
no good. You may think it very strange, but there's a lot of fellows
between here and Richmond who either can't read or are prejudiced
against every man who totes a pass from me. I have given McClellan and
more than two hundred thousand others passes to Richmond, _and not a
single one of 'em has got there yet!_"

Lincoln sometimes had a very effective way of dealing with men who asked
troublesome or improper questions. A visitor once asked him how many men
the rebels had in the field. The President replied, very seriously,
"_Twelve hundred thousand_, according to the best authority." The
interrogator blanched in the face, and ejaculated, "Good heavens!" "Yes,
sir, twelve hundred thousand--no doubt of it. You see, all of our
generals, when they get whipped, say the enemy outnumbered them from
three or five to one, and I must believe them. We have four hundred
thousand men in the field, and three times four makes twelve. Don't you
see it?"

Among the many illustrations of the sturdy sense and firmness of
Lincoln's character, the following should be recorded: During the early
part of 1863 the Union men in Missouri were divided into two factions,
which waged a bitter controversy with each other. General Curtis,
commander of the military district comprising Missouri, Kansas, and
Arkansas, was at the head of one faction, while Governor Gamble led the
other. Their differences were a source of great embarrassment to the
Government at Washington, and of harm to the Union cause. The President
was in constant receipt of remonstrances and protests from the
contesting parties, to one of which he made the following curt reply:

     Your despatch of to-day is just received. It is very painful to me
     that you, in Missouri cannot, or will not, settle your factional
     quarrel among yourselves. I have been tormented with it beyond
     endurance, for months, by both sides. Neither side pays the least
     respect to my appeals to reason. I am now compelled to take hold of
     the case.

     A. LINCOLN.

The President promptly followed up this warning by removing General
Curtis, and appointing in his place General Schofield, to whom he soon
after addressed the following letter:

     EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
     May 27, 1863.

     GENERAL J.M. SCHOFIELD.

     DEAR SIR: Having removed General Curtis and assigned you to the
     command of the Department of the Missouri, I think it may be of
     some advantage to me to state to you why I did it. I did not remove
     General Curtis because of my full conviction that he had done wrong
     by commission or omission. I did it because of a conviction in my
     mind that the Union men of Missouri, constituting, when united, a
     vast majority of the people, have entered into a pestilent,
     factious quarrel among themselves; General Curtis, perhaps not of
     choice, being the head of one faction, and Governor Gamble that of
     the other. After months of labor to reconcile the difficulty, it
     seemed to grow worse and worse, until I felt it my duty to break it
     up somehow, and as I could not remove Governor Gamble, I had to
     remove General Curtis. Now that you are in the position, I wish you
     to undo nothing merely because General Curtis or Governor Gamble
     did it, but to exercise your own judgment, and do right for the
     public interest. Let your military measures be strong enough to
     repel the invaders and keep the peace, and not so strong as to
     unnecessarily harass and persecute the people. It is a difficult
     _rôle_, and so much greater will be the honor if you perform it
     well. If both factions, or neither, shall abuse you, you will
     probably be about right. Beware of being assailed by one and
     praised by the other.

     Yours truly, A. LINCOLN.

Firm and unyielding as he was when necessity compelled him to be,
Lincoln was by nature a peace-maker, and was ever anxious that personal
differences be adjusted happily. In his efforts to this end he never
failed to show tact and shrewdness, and would if necessary sacrifice his
own preferences in the interests of peace and harmony. A characteristic
instance of the exercise of these traits occurred in connection with the
Missouri troubles just referred to. General Schofield's course in
command of his department proved satisfactory, and he had been nominated
for a Major-General's commission. He was, however, a somewhat
conservative man, and in spite of his efforts to carry out the
President's injunctions of impartiality, he had given offense to certain
Missouri radicals, who now opposed his promotion, and were able to exert
sufficient influence in the Senate to prevent the confirmation of his
appointment as a Major-General. The Missouri delegation appealed to the
more radical Senators, and the nomination was "hung up" for about six
weeks. Lincoln was very desirous that it should be confirmed, and the
Missouri Congressmen were equally bent on its defeat. In this dilemma,
Lincoln sent for Senator Zack Chandler of Michigan, and proposed a
compromise. "General Rosecrans," said he, "has a great many friends; he
fought the battle of Stone River and won a brilliant victory, and his
advocates begin to grumble about his treatment. Now, I will tell you
what I have been thinking about. If you will confirm Schofield in the
Senate, I will remove him from the command in Missouri and send him down
to Sherman. That will satisfy the radicals. Then I will send Rosecrans
to Missouri, and that will please the latter's friends. In this way the
whole thing can be harmonized." As soon as the Senate grasped the plan
of the President there was no longer any opposition to the confirmation
of Schofield. He was sent to join Sherman in the South, Rosecrans was
appointed to the command in Missouri, and everything worked harmoniously
and pleasantly as the President had predicted and desired.

Secretary Welles remarks that "the President was a much more shrewd and
accurate observer of the characteristics of men--better and more
correctly formed an estimate of their power and capabilities--than the
Secretary of State or most others. Those in the public service he
closely scanned, but was deliberate in forming a conclusion adverse to
any one he had appointed. In giving or withdrawing confidence he was
discriminating and just in his final decision, careful never to wound
unnecessarily the sensibilities of any of their infirmities, always
ready to praise, but nevertheless firm and resolute in discharging the
to him always painful duty of censure, reproof, or dismissal." As an
instance of this sure judgment of the abilities and characters of men,
Mr. Welles gives an anecdote relating to the naval movement under
Admiral Du Pont, against Charleston, S.C. "One day," says Mr. Welles,
"the President said to me that he had but slight expectation that we
should have any great success from Du Pont. 'He, as well as McClellan,'
said Mr. Lincoln, 'hesitates--has _the slows_. McClellan always wanted
more regiments; Du Pont is everlastingly asking for more
gun-boats--more iron-clads. He will do nothing with any. He has
intelligence and system and will maintain a good blockade. You did well
in selecting him for that command, but he will never take Sumter or get
to Charleston. He is no Farragut, though unquestionably a good routine
officer, who obeys orders and in a general way carries out his
instructions.'" The outcome of events proved the soundness of Lincoln's
judgment.

Loyalty to his friends was always a strong trait of Lincoln's character.
It was put to the proof daily during his life in Washington. Mr. Gurdon
S. Hubbard, in a brief but interesting memorial, relates one or two
interviews held with the President, in which the simplicity of his
character and his fidelity to old friendships appear very conspicuously.
Mr. Hubbard's acquaintance with Lincoln was of long standing. "I called
on him in Washington the year of his inauguration," says Mr. Hubbard,
"and was alone with him for an hour or more. I found him greatly
changed, his countenance bearing an expression of great mental anxiety.
The whole topic of our conversation was the war, which affected him
deeply.... Two years after, I again visited Washington, and went to the
White House to pay my respects, in company with my friend Thomas L.
Forrest. It was Saturday; and, as usual, about six o'clock the band from
the navy-yard appeared and began to play. The President, with
Adjutant-General Thomas, was seated on the balcony. The crowd was great,
marching compactly past the President, the men raising their hats in
salutation. As my friend and myself passed he said to me, 'The President
seems to notice you--turn toward him.' 'No,' I said, 'I don't care to be
recognized.' At that instant Mr. Lincoln started from his seat,
advancing quickly to the iron railing, and leaning over, beckoning with
his long arm, called: 'Hubbard! Hubbard! come here!' I left the ranks
and ascended the stone steps to the gate of the balcony, which was
locked, General Thomas saying, 'Wait a moment, I will get the key.'
'Never mind, General,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'Hubbard is used to jumping--he
can scale that fence.' I climbed over, and for about an hour we
conversed and watched the large crowd, the rebel flag being in sight on
Arlington Heights. This was the last time I ever saw his face in life."

It was noted by those about Lincoln during his residence at the White
House that he usually avoided speaking of himself as President or making
any reference to the office which he held. He used some such roundabout
phrase as "since I came into this place," instead of saying "since I
became President." The war he usually spoke of as "this great trouble,"
and he almost never alluded to the enemy as "Confederates" or "the
Confederate Government." He had an unconquerable reluctance to appear to
lead public opinion, and often spoke of himself as the "attorney for the
people." Once, however, when a Senator was urging on him a certain
course which the President was not disposed to pursue, the Senator said,
"You say you are the people's attorney. Now, you will admit that this
course would be most popular." "But I am not going to let my client
manage the case against my judgment," Lincoln replied quickly. "As long
as I am attorney for the people I shall manage the case to the best of
my ability. They will have a chance to put me out by and by if my
management is not satisfactory."

The President was so tormented by visitors seeking interviews for every
sort of frivolous and impertinent matter, that he resorted sometimes, in
desperation, to curious and effective inventions to rid himself of the
intolerable nuisance. At one time, when he was importuned by some
influential people to interfere to prevent the punishment of certain
persons convicted of fraudulent dealings with the government--a class of
cases too common at that time--the President wrote Secretary Welles that
he desired to see the records of the case before it was disposed of.
Upon Mr. Welles calling upon him with the desired information, the
President said, as if by way of apology, "There was no way to get rid of
the crowd that was upon me but by sending you a note." On another
occasion, when he had been quite ill, and therefore less inclined than
usual to listen to these bores, one of them had just seated himself for
a long visit, when the President's physician happened to enter the room,
and Lincoln said, holding out his hands, "Doctor, what are these
blotches?" "That's varioloid, or mild small-pox," said the doctor.
"They're all over me. It is contagious, I believe," said Lincoln. "Very
contagious, indeed!" replied the doctor. "Well, I can't stop, Mr.
Lincoln; I just called to see how you were," said the visitor. "Oh,
don't be in a hurry, sir!" placidly remarked the Executive. "Thank you,
sir; I'll call again," replied the visitor, executing a masterly retreat
from the White House. "Some people," said the President, looking after
him, "said they could not take very well to my proclamation; but now, I
am happy to say, I have _something that everybody can take_."

Among the innumerable nuisances and "cranks" who called on Lincoln at
the White House, were the many who sought to win his favor by claiming
to have been the first to suggest his nomination as President. One of
these claimants, who was the editor of a weekly paper published in a
little village in Missouri, called one day, and was admitted to
Lincoln's presence. He at once began explaining that he was the man who
first suggested Lincoln's name for the Presidency, and pulling from his
pocket an old, worn, defaced copy of his paper, exhibited to the
President an item on the subject. "Do you really think," said Lincoln,
"that announcement was the occasion of my nomination?" "Certainly," said
the editor, "the suggestion was so opportune that it was at once taken
up by other papers, and the result was your nomination and election."
"Ah, well," said Lincoln, with a sigh, and assuming a rather gloomy
countenance, "I am glad to see you and to know this; but you will have
to excuse me, I am just going to the War Department to see Mr. Stanton."
"Well," said the editor, "I will walk over with you." The President,
with that apt good nature so characteristic of him, took up his hat and
said, "Come along." When they reached the door of the Secretary's
office, Mr. Lincoln turned to his companion and said, "I shall have to
see Mr. Stanton alone, and you must excuse me," and taking him by the
hand he continued, "Good-bye. I hope you will feel perfectly easy about
having nominated me; don't be troubled about it; _I forgive you_."

A gentleman who, after the dreadful disaster at Fredericksburg, called
at the White House with news direct from the front, says that Lincoln
appeared so overwhelmed with grief that he was led to remark, "I
heartily wish I might be a welcome messenger of good news instead,--that
I could tell you how to conquer or get rid of these rebellious States."
Looking up quickly, with a marked change of expression, Lincoln said:
"That reminds me of two boys in Illinois who took a short cut across an
orchard, and did not become aware of the presence of a vicious dog until
it was too late to reach either fence. One was spry enough to escape the
attack by climbing a tree; but the other started around the tree, with
the dog in hot pursuit, until by making smaller circles than it was
possible for his pursuer to make, he gained sufficiently to grasp the
dog's tail, and held with desperate grip until nearly exhausted, when he
hailed his companion and called to him to come down. 'What for?' said
the boy. 'I want you to help me let this dog go.' If I could only let
them go!" said the President, in conclusion; "but that is the trouble. I
am compelled to hold on to them and make them stay."

In speaking of Lincoln's fortitude under his trials and sufferings, Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote: "Although we believe he has never made any
religious profession, we see evidence that in passing through this
dreadful national crisis he has been forced by the very anguish of the
struggle to look upward, where any rational creature must look for
support. No man has suffered more and deeper, albeit with a dry, weary,
patient pain, that seemed to some like insensibility. 'Whichever way it
ends,' he said to the writer, 'I have the impression that I sha'n't last
long after it's over.' After the dreadful repulse of Fredericksburg, his
heavy eyes and worn and weary air told how our reverses wore upon him;
and yet there was a never-failing fund of patience at bottom that
sometimes rose to the surface in some droll, quaint saying or story,
that forced a laugh even from himself."

The care and sorrow which Lincoln was called upon to endure in the
responsibilities of his high position graved their melancholy marks on
each feature of his face. He was a changed man. A pathetic picture of
his appearance at this time is given by his old friend, Noah Brooks,
whose description of him as he appeared in 1856, on the stump in Ogle
County, has already been given a place in these pages. "I did not see
Lincoln again," says Mr. Brooks, "until 1862, when I went to Washington
as a newspaper correspondent from California. When Lincoln was on the
stump in 1856, his face, though naturally sallow, had a rosy flush. His
eyes were full and bright, and he was in the fulness of health and
vigor. I shall never forget the shock which the sight of him gave me six
years later in 1862, I took it for granted that he had forgotten the
young man whom he had met five or six times during the Frémont and
Dayton Campaign. He was now President, and was, like Brutus, 'vexed with
many cares.' The change which a few years had made was simply appalling.
His whiskers had grown and had given additional cadaverousness to his
face as it appeared to me. The light seemed to have gone out of his
eyes, which were sunken far under his enormous brows. But there was over
his whole face an expression of sadness, and a far-away look in the
eyes, which were utterly unlike the Lincoln of other days. I was
intensely disappointed. I confess that I was so pained that I could
almost have shed tears."




CHAPTER XXIII


     Lincoln's Home-life in the White House--Comfort in the
     Companionship of his Youngest Son--"Little Tad" the Bright Spot in
     the White House--The President and his Little Boy Reviewing the
     Army of the Potomac--Various Phases of Lincoln's Character--His
     Literary Tastes--Fondness for Poetry and Music--His Remarkable
     Memory--Not a Latin Scholar--Never Read a Novel--Solace in
     Theatrical Representation--Anecdotes of Booth and
     McCullough--Methods of Literary Work--Lincoln as an Orator--Caution
     in Impromptu Speeches--His Literary Style--Management of his
     Private Correspondence--Knowledge of Woodcraft--Trees and Human
     Character--Exchanging Views with Professor Agassiz--Magnanimity
     toward Opponents--Righteous Indignation--Lincoln's Religious
     Nature.

Of the two sons left to Lincoln after the death of Willie in 1862,
Robert, the older, was a student in Harvard College until appointed to
service on the staff of General Grant; and "Little Tad," or Thomas, the
youngest, was the only one remaining in the White House during the last
hard years. He was ten years old in 1863, a bright and lovable child,
with whom his father was associated in constant and affectionate
companionship. The boy was much with him in his walks and journeys about
Washington, and even in his visits to the army in the field. The father
would often gain a brief respite from his heavy cares by sharing in the
sports and frolics of the light-hearted boy, who was a general favorite
at the White House, where he was free to go and come at will. No matter
who was with the President, or how intently he might be absorbed, little
Tad was always welcome. "It was an impressive and affecting sight," says
Mr. Carpenter, an inmate of the White House for several months, "to see
the burdened President lost for the time being in the affectionate
parent, as he would take the little fellow in his arms upon the
withdrawal of visitors, and caress him with all the fondness of a mother
for the babe upon her bosom." Hon. W.D. Kelley, a member of Congress at
that time, says: "I think no father ever loved his children more fondly
than he. The President never seemed grander in my sight than when,
stealing upon him in the evening, I would find him with a book open
before him, with little Tad beside him. There were, of course, a great
many curious books sent to him, and it seemed to be one of the special
delights of his life to open those books at a time when his boy could
stand beside him, and they could talk as he turned over the pages, the
father thus giving to the son a portion of that care and attention of
which he was ordinarily deprived by the heavy duties pressing upon him."
Tad lived to be eighteen years old, dying in Chicago in 1871. It was
well said of him that he "gave to the sad and solemn White House the
only comic relief it knew."

When President Lincoln visited General Hooker's headquarters with the
Army of the Potomac, just before the battle of Chancellorsville, little
Tad went with him, and rode with his father and General Hooker through
the grand reviews that were held. "Over hill and dale," says a member of
the Presidential party, "dashed the brilliant cavalcade of the
General-in-Chief, surrounded by a company of officers in gay attire and
sparkling with gold lace, the party being escorted by the Philadelphia
Lancers, a showy troop of soldiers. In the midst, or at the head, rose
and fell, as the horses galloped afar, the form of Lincoln, conspicuous
by his height and his tall black hat. And ever on the flanks of the
hurrying column flew, like a flag or banneret, Tad's little gray
riding-cloak. The soldiers soon learned of Tad's presence in the army,
and wherever he went on horseback he easily divided the honors with his
father. The men cheered and shouted and waved their hats when they saw
the dear face and tall figure of the good President, then the
best-beloved man in the world; but to these men of war, far away from
home and children, the sight of that fresh-faced and laughing boy seemed
an inspiration. They cheered like mad."

There were various phases of Lincoln's character, as manifested during
his life in the White House, that afford material for an interesting
study. It has been said of him that he lacked imagination. This was
certainly not one of the faculties of his mind which had been largely
cultivated. He relied more upon the exercise of reason and logic, in all
his intellectual processes, than upon fancy or imagination. Still, there
are often striking figures of speech to be met with in his writings, and
he had a great fondness for poetry and music. He had studied Shakespeare
diligently in his youth, and portions of the plays he repeated with
singular accuracy. He had a special liking for the minor poems of Thomas
Hood and of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Dr. Holmes, writing in July, 1885,
says that of all the tributes received by him, the one of which he was
most proud was from "good Abraham Lincoln," who had a great liking for
the poem of "The Last Leaf," and "repeated it from memory to Governor
Andrew, as the Governor himself told me." Mr. Arnold says: "He had a
great love for poetry and eloquence, and his taste and judgment were
excellent. Next to Shakespeare among the poets, his favorite was Burns.
There was a lecture of his upon Burns full of favorite quotations and
sound criticisms." His musical tastes, says Mr. Brooks, who knew him
well, "were simple and uncultivated, his choice being old airs, songs,
and ballads, among which the plaintive Scotch songs were best liked.
'Annie Laurie,' 'Mary of Argyle,' and especially 'Auld Robin Gray,'
never lost their charm for him; and all songs which had for their theme
the rapid flight of time, decay, the recollections of early days, were
sure to make a deep impression. The song which he liked best, above all
others, was one called 'Twenty Years Ago'--a simple air, the words to
which are supposed to be uttered by a man who revisits the playground of
his youth. I remember that one night at the White House, when a few
ladies were with the family, singing at the piano-forte, he asked for a
little song in which the writer describes his sensations when revisiting
the scenes of his boyhood, dwelling mournfully on the vanished joys and
the delightful associations of forty years ago. It is not likely that
there was much in Lincoln's lost youth that he would wish to recall; but
there was a certain melancholy and half-morbid strain in that song which
struck a responsive chord in his heart. The lines sank into his memory,
and I remember that he quoted them, as if to himself, long afterward."

Lincoln's memory was extraordinarily retentive, and he seemed, without
conscious effort, to have stored in his mind almost every whimsical or
ludicrous narrative which he had read or heard. "On several occasions,"
says Mr. Brooks, "I have held in my hand a printed slip while he was
repeating its contents to somebody else, and the precision with which he
delivered every word was marvellous." He was fond of the writings of
"Orpheus C. Kerr" and "Petroleum V. Nasby," who were famous humorists at
the time of the Civil War; and he amused himself and others in the
darkest hours by quoting passages from these now forgotten authors.
Nasby's letter from "Wingert's Corners, Ohio," on the threatening
prospects of a migration of the negroes from the South, and the
President's "evident intenshun of colonizin' on 'em in the North," he
especially relished. After rehearsing a portion of this letter to his
guests at the Soldiers' Home one evening, a sedate New England gentleman
expressed surprise that he could find time for memorizing such things.
"Oh," said Lincoln, "I don't. If I like a thing, it _just sticks_ after
once reading it or hearing it." He once recited a long and doleful
ballad, something like "Vilikins and his Dinah," the production of a
rural Kentucky bard, and when he had finished he added with a laugh, "I
don't believe I have thought of that before for forty years." Mr. Arnold
testifies that "although his reading was not extensive, yet his memory
was so retentive and so ready that in history, poetry, and in general
literature, few if any marked any deficiency. As an illustration of the
powers of his memory, may be related the following: A gentleman called
at the White House one day, and introduced to him two officers serving
in the army, one a Swede and the other a Norwegian. Immediately he
repeated, to their delight, a poem of some eight or ten verses
descriptive of Scandinavian scenery, and an old Norse legend. He said he
had read the poem in a newspaper some years before, and liked it, but it
had passed out of his memory until their visit had recalled it. The two
books which he read most were the Bible and Shakespeare. With these he
was perfectly familiar. From the Bible, as has before been stated, he
quoted frequently, and he read it daily, while Shakespeare was his
constant companion. He took a copy with him almost always when
travelling, and read it at leisure moments."

Lincoln was never ashamed to confess the deficiencies in his early
education. A distinguished party, comprising George Thompson, the
English anti-slavery orator, Rev. John Pierpont, Oliver Johnson, and
Hon. Lewis Clephane, once called upon him, and during the conversation
Mr. Pierpont turned to Mr. Thompson and repeated a Latin quotation from
the classics. Mr. Lincoln, leaning forward in his chair, looked from one
to the other inquiringly, and then remarked, with a smile, "_Which_, I
suppose you are both aware, _I_ do not understand."

While Edwin Forrest was playing an engagement at Ford's Theatre, Mr.
Carpenter spoke to the President one day of the actor's fine
interpretation of the character of Richelieu, and advised him to witness
the performance. "Who wrote the play?" asked the President of Mr.
Carpenter. "Bulwer," was the reply. "Ah!" he rejoined; "well, I knew
Bulwer wrote novels, but I did not know he was a play-writer also. It
may seem somewhat strange to say," he continued, "but _I never read an
entire novel in my life_. I once commenced 'Ivanhoe,' but never finished
it."

Among the few diversions which Lincoln allowed himself in Washington was
an occasional visit to the theater to witness a representation of some
good play by a favorite actor. He felt the necessity of some relaxation
from the terrible strain of anxiety and care; and while seated behind
the screen in a box at the theatre he was secure from the everlasting
importunities of politicians and office-seekers. He could forget himself
and his problems while watching the scenes on the mimic stage before
him. He enjoyed the renditions of Booth with great zest; yet after
witnessing "The Merchant of Venice" he remarked on the way home: "It was
a good performance, but I had a thousand times rather read it at home,
if it were not for Booth's playing. A farce or a comedy is best
_played_; a tragedy is best _read_ at home." He was much pleased one
night with Mr. McCullough's delineation of the character of "Edgar,"
which the actor played in support of Edwin Forrest's "Lear." He wished
to convey his approval to the young actor, and asked Mr. Brooks, his
companion at the moment, with characteristic simplicity, "Do you suppose
he would come to the box if we sent word?" Mr. McCullough was summoned,
and, standing at the door of the box in his stage attire, received the
thanks of the President, accompanied with words of discriminating praise
for the excellence of his delineation.

With his keen sense of humor, Lincoln appreciated to the utmost the
inimitable presentation of "Falstaff" by a well-known actor of the time.
His desire to accord praise wherever it was merited led him to express
his admiration in a note to the actor. An interchange of slight
civilities followed, ending at last in a singular situation. Entering
the President's office late one evening, Mr. Brooks noticed the actor
sitting in the waiting-room. Lincoln inquired anxiously if there were
anyone outside. On being told, he said, half sadly, almost desperately,
"Oh, I can't see him; I can't see him! I was in hopes he had gone away."
Then he added, "Now, this illustrates the difficulty of having pleasant
friends in this place. You know I liked him as an actor, and that I
wrote to tell him so. He sent me a book, and there I thought the matter
would end. He is a master of his place in the profession, I suppose, and
well fixed in it. But just because we had a little friendly
correspondence, such as any two men might have, he wants something. What
do you suppose he wants?" I could not guess, and Lincoln added, "Well,
he wants to be consul at London. Oh, dear!"

Lincoln was not a ready writer, and when preparing documents or speeches
of special importance he altered and elaborated his sentences with
patient care. His public utterances were so widely reported and so
mercilessly discussed that he acquired caution in expressing himself
without due preparation. It is stated, on what seems sufficient
authority, that his Gettysburg speech, brief and simple as it is, was
rewritten many times before it finally met his approval. He began also
to be guarded in responding to demands for impromptu speeches, which
were constantly being called for. Mr. Brooks relates that "once, being
notified that he was to be serenaded, just after some notable military
or political event, he asked me to come to dinner, 'so as to be on hand
and see the fun afterward,' as he said. He excused himself as soon as we
had dined, and while the bands were playing, the crowds cheering and the
rockets bursting outside the house, he made his reappearance in the
parlor with a roll of manuscript in his hand. Perhaps noticing a look of
surprise on my face, he said, 'I know what you are thinking about. You
think it mighty queer that an old stump-speaker like myself should not
be able to address a crowd like this outside without a written speech.
But you must remember that in a certain way I am talking to the country,
and I have to be mighty careful. Now, the last time I made an off-hand
speech, in answer to a serenade, I used the phrase, as applied to the
rebels, "turned tail and ran." Some very nice Boston folks, I am grieved
to hear, were very much outraged by that phrase, which they thought
improper. So I resolved to make no more impromptu speeches if I could
help it.'"

In all Lincoln's writings, even his most important state papers, his
chief desire was to make himself clearly understood by the common
reader. He had a great aversion to what he called "machine writing," and
used the fewest words possible to express his meaning. He never
hesitated to employ a homely expression when it suited his purpose. In
his first message the phrase "sugar-coated" occurred; and when it was
printed, Mr. Defrees, the Public Printer, being on familiar terms with
the President, ventured an objection to the phrase--suggesting that
Lincoln was not now preparing a campaign document or delivering a stump
speech in Illinois, but constructing an important state paper that would
go down historically to all coming time; and that therefore he did not
consider the phrase "sugar-coated" as entirely a becoming and dignified
one. "Well, Defrees," replied Lincoln, good-naturedly, "if you think the
time will ever come when the people will not understand what
'sugar-coated' means, I'll alter it; otherwise, I think I'll let it go."

On the same subject, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe says: "Our own
politicians were somewhat shocked with his state papers at first. 'Why
not let _us_ make them a little more conventional, and file them to a
classical pattern?' 'No,' was his reply, 'I shall write them myself.
_The people will understand them_.' 'But this or that form of expression
is not elegant, not classical.' '_The people will understand it_,' has
been his invariable reply. And whatever may be said of his state papers
as compared with the classic standards, it has been a fact that they
have always been wonderfully well understood by the people, and that
since the time of Washington the state papers of no President have more
controlled the popular mind. One reason for this is that they have been
informal and undiplomatic. They have more resembled a father's talk to
his children than a state paper. They have had that relish and smack of
the soil that appeal to the simple human heart and head, which is a
greater power in writing than the most artful devices of rhetoric.
Lincoln might well say with the apostle, 'But though I be rude in
speech, yet not in knowledge, but we have been thoroughly _made manifest
among you_ in all things.' His rejection of what is called 'fine
writing' was as deliberate as St. Paul's, and for the same
reason--because he felt that he was speaking on a subject which must be
made clear to the lowest intellect, though it should fail to captivate
the highest. But we say of Lincoln's writing, that for all true manly
purposes there are passages in his state papers that could not be better
put; they are absolutely perfect. They are brief, condensed, intense,
and with a power of insight and expression which make them worthy to be
inscribed in letters of gold."

Hon. William J. Bryan, certainly a competent judge of oratory, says of
Lincoln as an orator: "Brevity is the soul of wit, and a part of
Lincoln's reputation for wit lies in his ability to condense a great
deal into a few words. He was epigrammatic. His Gettysburg speech is the
world's model in eloquence, elegance, and condensation. He was apt in
illustration--no one more so. A simple story or simile drawn from
every-day life flashed before his hearers the argument that he wanted to
present. He made frequent use of Bible language, and of illustrations
drawn from Holy Writ. It is said that when he was preparing his
Springfield speech of 1858 he spent hours in trying to find language
that would express the central idea--that a republic could not
permanently endure part free and part slave. Finally a Bible passage
flashed through his mind, and he exclaimed, 'I have found it--_a house
divided against itself cannot stand_.' Probably no other Bible passage
ever exerted as much influence as this one in the settlement of a great
controversy."

Lincoln was a tireless worker, and delegated no duties to others which
he could perform himself. His health seemed to bear the strain of his
terrible burdens wonderfully well. There are but few references anywhere
to his being incapacitated by illness. One such reference occurs in
Welles's Diary, dated March 14, 1865: "The President was somewhat
indisposed, but not seriously ill. The members [of the Cabinet] met in
his bedroom." His correspondence was extensive and burdensome, and as a
rule he wrote his most important letters with his own hand, frequently
going to the trouble of taking copies, which were filed with careful
order in a cabinet, the interior of which was divided into pigeon-holes.
These pigeon-holes, as Mr. Brooks tells us, "were lettered in
alphabetical order, but a few were devoted to individuals. Horace
Greeley had a pigeon-hole by himself; so did each of several generals
who wrote often to him. One compartment, labelled 'W. & W.,' excited
much curiosity, but I never asked what it meant, and one night, being
sent to the cabinet for a letter which the President wanted, he said, 'I
see you looking at my "W. & W." Can you guess what that stands for?' Of
course it was useless to guess. 'Well,' said he, with a roguish twinkle
of the eye, 'that's Weed and Wood--Thurlow and Fernandy.' Then he added,
with an indescribable chuckle, 'That's a pair of 'em.' When asked why he
did not have a letter-book and copying-press, he said, 'A letter-book
might be easily stolen and carried off, but that stock of filed letters
would be a _back-load_.'"

A lady who once rode with Lincoln, in the Presidential carriage, to the
Soldiers' Home, gives some interesting details concerning his knowledge
of woodcraft. "Around the 'Home,'" says this lady, "grows every variety
of tree, particularly of the evergreen class. Their branches brushed
into the carriage as we passed along, and left with us that pleasant
woodsy smell belonging to fresh leaves. One of the ladies, catching a
bit of green from one of these intruding branches, said it was cedar,
and another thought it spruce. 'Let me discourse on a theme I
understand,' said the President. 'I know all about trees, by right of
being a backwoodsman. I'll show you the difference between spruce,
pine, and cedar, and this shred of green, which is neither one nor the
other, but a kind of illegitimate cypress.' He then proceeded to gather
specimens of each, and explain the distinctive formation of foliage
belonging to every species. 'Trees,' he said, 'are as deceptive in their
likeness to one another as are certain classes of men, amongst whom none
but a physiognomist's eye can detect dissimilar moral features until
events have developed them. Do you know it would be a good thing if in
all the schools proposed and carried out by the improvement of modern
thinkers, we could have _a school of events_?' 'A school of events?'
repeated the lady addressed. 'Yes,' he continued, 'since it is only by
that active development that character and ability can be tested.
Understand me, I now mean men, not trees; _they_ can be tried, and an
analysis of their strength obtained less expensive to life and human
interests than man's. What I say now is a mere whim, you know; but when
I speak of a school of events, I mean one in which, before entering real
life, students might pass through the mimic vicissitudes and situations
that are necessary to bring out their powers and mark the calibre to
which they are assigned. Thus, one could select from the graduates an
invincible soldier, equal to any position, with no such word as fail; a
martyr to right, ready to give up life in the cause; a politician too
cunning to be outwitted; and so on. These things have all to be tried,
and their sometime failure creates confusion as well as disappointment.
There is no more dangerous or expensive analysis than that which
consists of _trying a man_.'"

Among Lincoln's callers one Sunday evening, was the distinguished
scientist Louis Agassiz. The two men were somewhat alike in their
simple, shy, and unpretending nature, and at first felt their way with
each other like two bashful schoolboys. Lincoln began conversation by
saying to Agassiz, "I never knew how to pronounce your name properly;
won't you give me a little lesson at that, please?" Then he asked if the
name were of French or Swiss derivation, to which the Professor replied
that it was partly of each. That led to a discussion of different
languages, the President speaking several words in different languages
which had the same root as similar words in our own tongue; then he
illustrated that by one or two anecdotes. But he soon returned to his
gentle cross-examination of Agassiz, and found out how the Professor
studied, how he composed, and how he delivered his lectures; how he
found different tastes in his audiences in different portions of the
country. When afterwards asked why he put such questions to his learned
visitor, he said, "Why, what we got from him isn't printed in the books;
the other things are." But Lincoln did not do all the questioning. In
his turn, Agassiz asked Lincoln if he had ever engaged in lecturing.
Lincoln gave the outline of a lecture, which he had partly written years
before, to show the origin of inventions and prove that there is nothing
new under the sun. "I think I can show," said he, "at least, in a
fanciful way, that all the modern inventions were known centuries ago."
Agassiz begged that Lincoln would finish the lecture sometime. Lincoln
replied that he had the manuscript somewhere in his papers, "and," said
he, "when I get out of this place, I'll finish it up, perhaps."

So great was Lincoln's magnanimity, and so keen his sense of justice,
that he never allowed personal considerations to influence his official
acts. It is probably true that it was easy for him to forgive an injury;
but he was incapable of using his position as President to gratify his
private resentments. It was once represented to him that a recent
appointee to an important office had been bitterly opposed to him
politically. "I suppose," said he, "the Judge did behave pretty ugly;
but that wouldn't make him any less fit for this place, and I have a
Scriptural authority for appointing him. You recollect that while the
Lord on Mount Sinai was getting out a commission for Aaron, that same
Aaron was at the foot of the mountain making a false god, a golden calf,
for the people to worship; yet Aaron got his commission, you know." At
another time, when remonstrated with upon the appointment to place of
one of his former opponents, he said: "Nobody will deny that he is a
first-rate man for the place, and I am bound to see that his opposition
to me personally shall not interfere with my giving the people a good
officer." And on another similar occasion, when remonstrated with by
members of his Cabinet, he said: "Oh, I can't afford to punish every
person who has seen fit to oppose my election. We want a competent man
in this office, and I know of no one who could perform the duties better
than the one proposed."

With all his self-abnegation, Lincoln could be stern when the occasion
warranted it. As an illustration the following incident is related: An
officer who had been cashiered from the service, forced himself several
times into Lincoln's presence, to plead for a reversal of his sentence.
Each time he read a long argument attempting to prove that he had
received unjust treatment. The President listened to him patiently; but
the facts, on their most favorable showing, did not seem to him to
sanction his interference. In the last interview, the man became angry,
and turning abruptly said: "Well, Mr. President, I see you are
determined not to do me justice!" This was too much, even for the
long-suffering Lincoln. Manifesting, however, no more feeling than that
indicated by a slight compression of the lips, he quietly arose, laid
down a package of papers he held in his hands, and then, suddenly
seizing the disgraced officer by the coat collar, he marched him
forcibly to the door, saying, as he ejected him into the passage, "Sir,
I give you fair warning never to show yourself in this room again. I can
bear censure, but not insult!" In a whining tone the man begged for his
papers, which he had dropped. "Begone, sir," said the President, "your
papers will be sent to you. I wish never to see your face again!"

Much has been said about Lincoln's views on religion. Like many other
great men, he was not what might technically be called a Christian. He
was a religious man in spirit and by nature; yet he never joined a
church. Mrs. Lincoln says that he had no religious faith, in the usual
acceptation of the word, but that religion was a sort of poetry in his
nature. "Twice during his life," she said, "he seemed especially to
think about it. Once was when our boy Willie died. Once--and this time
he thought of it more deeply--was when he went to Gettysburg." But
whatever his inner thoughts may have been, no man on earth had a firmer
faith in Providence than Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps he did not himself
know just where he stood. He believed in God--in immortality. He did not
believe in eternal punishment, but was confident of rest and peace after
this life was over. He may not have felt certain of the divine origin of
all parts of the Bible, but he valued its precepts, and his whole life
gave evidence of faith in a higher power than that of man. Mr. Nicolay,
his secretary, testifies that "his nature was deeply religious, but he
belonged to no denomination; he had faith in the eternal justice and
boundless mercy of Providence, and made the Golden Rule of Christ his
practical creed." And Dr. Phillips Brooks, in an eloquent and expressive
passage, calls him "Shepherd of the people--that old name that the best
rulers ever craved. What ruler ever won it like this President of ours?
He fed us faithfully and truly. He fed us with counsel when we were in
doubt, with inspiration when we sometimes faltered, with caution when we
would be rash, with calm, clear, trustful cheerfulness through many an
hour when our hearts were dark. He fed hungry souls all over the country
with sympathy and consolation. He spread before the whole land feasts of
great duty and devotion and patriotism on which the land grew strong. He
fed us with solemn, solid truths. He taught us the sacredness of
government, the wickedness of treason. He made our souls glad and
vigorous with the love of Liberty that was in his. He showed us how to
love truth, and yet be charitable; how to hate wrong and all oppression,
and yet not treasure one personal injury or insult. He fed all his
people, from the highest to the lowest, from the most privileged down to
the most enslaved. 'He fed them with a faithful and true heart.'"




CHAPTER XXIV


     Trials of the Administration in 1863--Hostility to War
     Measures--Lack of Confidence at the North--Opposition in
     Congress--How Lincoln felt about the "Fire in the Rear"--Criticisms
     from Various Quarters--Visit of "the Boston Set"--The Government on
     a Tight-rope--The Enlistment of Colored Troops--Interview between
     Lincoln and Frederick Douglass--Reverses in the Field--Changes of
     Military Leaders--From Burnside to Hooker--Lincoln's First Meeting
     with "Fighting Joe"--The President's Solicitude--His Warning Letter
     to Hooker--His Visit to the Rappahannock--Hooker's Self-confidence
     the "Worst Thing about Him"--The Defeat at Chancellorsville--The
     Failure of our Generals--"Wanted, a Man."

It is impossible, without a close study of the inner history of the war
and of the acts of the administration, to conceive of the harassing and
baffling difficulties which beset President Lincoln's course in every
direction, and of the jealous, narrow, and bitter opposition which his
more important measures provoked. As the struggle advanced he found in
his front a solid and defiant South, behind him a divided and
distrustful North. What might be called the party of action and of
extreme measures developed a sharp hostility to the President. He would
not go fast enough to suit them; they thought him disposed to
compromise. They began by criticizing his policy, and his methods of
prosecuting the war; from this they passed rapidly to a criticism of the
President himself. In the affectionate admiration felt for him now,
people have forgotten how weak and poor and craven they found him then.
So far had this disapproval and hostility gone, that early in 1863 we
find Mr. Greeley searching everywhere for a fitting successor to Lincoln
for the Presidency at the next term. There were but few men in high
official station in Washington who at that time unqualifiedly sustained
him. In the House of Representatives there were but two members who
could make themselves heard, who stood actively by him. This matter,
long since forgotten, must be recalled to show clearly the President's
straits, and his action and bearing amidst his difficulties. It should
be remembered that party lines, which disappeared at the beginning of
the war, were again clearly drawn; and the Democratic wing of Congress,
under the leadership of Vallandigham of Ohio, actively opposed many of
the necessary measures for the prosecution of the war. The cry had
already been raised in Congress, "The South cannot be subjugated"; and
every fresh disaster to the national arms was hailed as proof of the
assertion.

The effect of this abuse and opposition was exceedingly painful to
Lincoln. He said: "I have been caused more anxiety, I have _passed more
sleepless nights_, on account of the temper and attitude of the
Democratic party in the North regarding the suppression of the rebellion
than by the rebels in the South. I have always had faith that our armies
would ultimately and completely triumph; but these enemies in the North
cause me a great deal of anxiety and apprehension. Can it be that there
are opposing opinions in the North as to the necessity of putting down
this rebellion? How can men hesitate a moment as to the duty of the
Government to restore its authority in every part of the country? It is
incomprehensible to me that men living in their quiet homes under the
protection of laws, in possession of their property, can sympathize with
and give aid and comfort to those who are doing their utmost to
overthrow that Government which makes life and everything they possess
valuable."

In January, 1863, a party of distinguished gentlemen from Boston
visited the national capital, in order to confer with the President on
the workings of the emancipation policy. They made the visit chiefly at
the suggestion of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who during all the trying years
of the war never lost faith in Lincoln's honesty and sense of justice.
Secretary Stanton made no secret of his opposition to these gentlemen,
who were spoken of rather slightingly as "that Boston set." The "Boston
set" were uncompromising abolitionists, and nothing would satisfy them
but immediate and aggressive measures for enforcing the policy of
emancipation. As it was the President's instinct to feel his way slowly
in pushing on the great measures necessary to the safe guidance of the
nation in its perilous crisis, they were naturally dissatisfied with his
conservative methods and tendencies. The visitors--including Senator
Wilson, Wendell Phillips, Francis W. Bird, Elizur Wright, J.H.
Stephenson, George L. Stearns, Oakes Ames, and Moncure D. Conway--called
on the President one Sunday evening, at the White House. "The President
met us," says Mr. Conway, "laughing like a boy, saying that in the
morning one of his children had come to inform him that the cat had
kittens, and now another had just announced that the dog had puppies,
and the White House was in a decidedly sensational state. Some of our
party looked a little glum at this hilarity; but it was pathetic to see
the change in the President's face when he presently resumed his burden
of care. We were introduced by Senator Wilson, who began to speak of us
severally, when Mr. Lincoln said he knew perfectly who we were, and
requested us to be seated. Nothing could be more gracious than his
manner, or more simple. The conversation was introduced by Wendell
Phillips, who, with all his courtesy, expressed our gratitude and joy
at the Proclamation of Emancipation, and asked how it seemed to be
working. The President said that he had not expected much from it at
first, and consequently had not been disappointed; he had hoped, and
still hoped, that something would come of it after awhile. Phillips then
alluded to the deadly hostility which the proclamation had naturally
excited in pro-slavery quarters, and gently hinted that the Northern
people, now generally anti-slavery, were not satisfied that it was being
honestly carried out by all of the nation's agents and Generals in the
South. 'My own impression, Mr. Phillips,' said the President, 'is that
the masses of the country generally are dissatisfied chiefly at our lack
of military successes. Defeat and failure in the field make everything
seem wrong.' His face was now clouded, and his next words were somewhat
bitter. 'Most of us here present,' he said, 'have been nearly all our
lives working in minorities, and many have got into a habit of being
dissatisfied.' Several of those present having deprecated this, the
President said, 'At any rate, it has been very rare that an opportunity
of "running" this administration has been lost.' To this Mr. Phillips
answered, in his sweetest voice: 'If we see this administration
earnestly working to free the country from slavery and its rebellion, we
will show you how we can "run" it into another four years of power.' The
President's good humor was restored by this, and he said: 'Oh, Mr.
Phillips, I have ceased to have any personal feeling or expectation in
that matter--I do not say I never had any--so abused and borne upon as I
have been.' ... On taking our leave we expressed to the President our
thanks for his kindly reception, and for his attention to statements of
which some were naturally not welcome. The President bowed graciously at
this, and, after saying he was happy to have met gentlemen known to him
by distinguished services, if not personally, and glad to listen to
their views, added, 'I must bear this load which the country has
intrusted to me as well as I can, and do the best I can with it.'"

To another self-constituted delegation--this time from the West--who
called at the White House one day, excited and troubled about some of
the commissions or omissions of the administration, the President, after
hearing them patiently, replied: "Gentlemen, suppose all the property
you were worth was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin
to carry across the Niagara river on a rope; would you shake the cable,
or keep shouting out to him, 'Blondin, stand up a little
straighter!--Blondin, stoop a little more--go a little faster--lean a
little more to the north--lean a little more to the south'? No! you
would hold your breath as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off
until he was safe over. The Government is carrying an immense weight.
Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the very best they
can. Don't badger them. Keep silence, and we'll get you safe across."

In 1863 the Government, following logically the policy of the
Emancipation act, began the experiment of introducing colored soldiers
into our armies. This caused not only intense anger at the South, but
much doubt and dissatisfaction at the North. To discuss some of the
practical and difficult questions growing out of this measure, Frederick
Douglass, the most distinguished representative of the race which
America had so long held in chains, was presented to the President. The
account of the conference, given by Douglass, is singularly interesting.
He says: "I was never more quickly or more completely put at ease in the
presence of a great man than in that of Abraham Lincoln. He was seated,
when I entered, in a low arm-chair, with his feet extended on the
floor, surrounded by a large number of documents and several busy
secretaries. The room bore the marks of business, and the persons in it,
the President included, appeared to be much overworked and tired. Long
lines of care were already deeply written on Mr. Lincoln's brow, and his
strong face, full of earnestness, lighted up as soon as my name was
mentioned. As I approached and was introduced to him, he arose and
extended his hand, and bade me welcome. I at once felt myself in the
presence of an honest man--one whom I could love, honor, and trust,
without reserve or doubt. Proceeding to tell him who I was and what I
was doing, he promptly but kindly stopped me, saying: 'I know who you
are, Mr. Douglass; Mr. Seward has told me all about you. Sit down; I am
glad to see you.' I urged, among other things, the necessity of granting
the colored soldiers equal pay and promotion with white soldiers, and
retaliation for colored prisoners killed by the enemy. Mr. Lincoln
admitted the justice of my demand for equal pay and promotion of colored
soldiers, but on the matter of retaliation he differed from me entirely.
I shall never forget the benignant expression of his face, the tearful
look of his eye, and the quiver in his voice, when he deprecated a
resort to retaliatory measures. 'Once begun,' said he, 'I do not know
where such a measure would stop.' He said he could not take men out and
kill them in cold blood for what was done by others. If he could get
hold of the persons who were guilty of killing the colored prisoners in
cold blood, the case would be different; but he could not kill the
innocent for the guilty. Afterwards we discussed the means most
desirable to be employed outside the army to induce the slaves in the
rebel States to come within the Federal lines. The increasing opposition
to the war in the North, and the mad cry against it because it was
being made an abolition war, alarmed Mr. Lincoln, and made him
apprehensive that a peace might be forced upon him which would leave
still in slavery all who had not come within our lines. What he wanted
was to make his proclamation as effective as possible in the event of
such a peace. He said, in a regretful tone, 'The slaves are not coming
into our lines as rapidly and numerously as I had hoped.' I replied that
the slaveholders knew how to keep such things from their slaves, and
probably very few knew of his proclamation. 'Well,' he said, 'I want you
to set about devising some means of making them acquainted with it, and
for bringing them into our lines.' What he said showed a deeper moral
conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything
spoken or written by him. I listened with the deepest interest and
profoundest satisfaction, and, at his suggestion, agreed to undertake
the organizing of a band of scouts, composed of colored men, whose
business should be, somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to
go into the rebel States beyond the lines of our armies, carry the news
of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries."

Frederick Douglass once remarked that Lincoln was one of the few white
men he ever passed an hour with who failed to remind him in some way,
before the interview terminated, that he was a negro. "He always
impressed me as a strong, earnest man, having no time or disposition to
trifle; grappling with all his might the work he had in hand. The
expression of his face was a blending of suffering with patience and
fortitude. Men called him homely, and homely he was; but it was
manifestly a human homeliness. His eyes had in them the tenderness of
motherhood, and his mouth and other features the highest perfection of a
genuine manhood."

As though the political difficulties that beset President Lincoln in
the first half of 1863 were not discouragement enough, they were
attended by disheartening reverses to our arms. It will be remembered
that on the removal of General McClellan from command of the Army of the
Potomac, in November, 1862, General Burnside succeeded him. The change
proved an unfortunate one. General Burnside was an earnest and gallant
soldier, but was not equal to the vast responsibilities of his new
position. It is said, to his credit, that he was three times offered the
command of the Army of the Potomac, and three times he declined. Finally
it was pressed upon him by positive orders, and he could no longer,
without insubordination, refuse it. In addressing General Halleck, after
his appointment, he said: "Had I been asked to take it, I should have
declined; but being ordered, I cheerfully obey." After his fearful
defeat at Fredericksburg (December 13, 1862), he said: "_The fault was
mine_. The entire responsibility of failure must rest on my shoulders."
By his manly and courageous bearing, and the strong sincerity of his
character, he retained the respect and sympathy of the President and of
the country. He immediately retired from command of the Army of the
Potomac, which, under his brief leadership, had fought the most bloody
and disastrous battle in its history.

General Joseph Hooker, the fourth commander of the heroic but
unfortunate Army of the Potomac, was appointed to that position by
President Lincoln in January, 1863. The two men had met briefly early in
the war, when Hooker, then living in California, hastened to Washington
to offer his services to the Government; but for some reason General
Scott disliked him, and his offer was not accepted. After some months,
Hooker, giving up the idea of getting a command, decided to return to
California; but before leaving he called to pay his respects to the
President. He was introduced as "Captain Hooker." The President, being
pressed for time, was about to dismiss him with a few civil phrases;
when, to his surprise, Hooker began the following speech: "Mr.
President, my friend makes a mistake. I am not 'Captain Hooker,' but was
once 'Lieutenant-Colonel Hooker' of the regular army. I was lately a
farmer in California. Since the rebellion broke out I have been trying
to get into the service; but I find I am not wanted. I am about to
return home; but before going, I was anxious to pay my respects to you,
and to express my wishes for your personal welfare and success in
quelling this rebellion. And I want to say one word more. I was at Bull
Run the other day, Mr. President, and it is no vanity in me to say _am a
d----d sight better general than you had on that field_." This was said,
not in the tone of a braggart, but of a man who knew what he was talking
about; and, as the President afterward said, he appeared at that moment
as if perfectly able to make good his words. Lincoln seized his hand,
making him sit down, and began an extended chat. The result was that
Hooker did not return to California, but in a few weeks _Captain_ Hooker
was _Brigadier-General_ Hooker. He served with distinction under
McClellan in the Peninsular campaign and at Antietam, and commanded the
right wing of the army at Fredericksburg. He had come to be known as
"Fighting Joe Hooker," and was generally regarded as one of the most
vigorous and efficient Generals of the Union army.

Such was the man who, in one of the darkest hours of the Union cause,
was selected to lead once more the Army of the Potomac against the
enemy. This army, since its defeat at Fredericksburg, had remained
disorganized and ineffective. Its new commander, unlike his predecessor
Burnside, was full of confidence. The President, made cautious by
experience, deemed it his duty to accompany the appointment by some
timely words of warning; and accordingly he addressed to General Hooker
the following frank, manly, and judicious letter.

     EXECUTIVE MANSION WASHINGTON, D.C.
     January 26, 1863.

     MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER.

     GENERAL:--I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac.
     Of course, I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient
     reasons; and yet I think it best for you to know that there are
     some things in regard to which I am not satisfied with you. I
     believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which of course I
     like. I also believe that you do not mix politics with your
     profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in
     yourself, which is a valuable if not indispensable quality. You are
     ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than
     harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the
     army you have taken counsel with your ambition, and thwarted him as
     much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country
     and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have
     heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that
     both the army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course, it
     was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the
     command. Only those generals who gain success can be dictators.
     What I now ask from you is military success, and I will risk the
     dictatorship. The Government will support you to the utmost of its
     ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will
     do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have
     aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander and
     withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall
     assist you, as far as I can, to pull it down. Neither you nor
     Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an
     army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now, beware of
     rashness. _Beware of rashness_; but with energy and sleepless
     vigilance, go forward and give us victories.

     Yours very truly,
     A. LINCOLN.

In all Lincoln's writings there are few things finer than this letter.
In its candor and friendliness, its simplicity and deep wisdom, and its
clearness of expression, it is almost perfect; and the President's deep
solicitude for the safety of the army and anxiety for its success give a
pathetic touch to the closing sentences. This solicitude found partial
relief in a personal inspection of the Army of the Potomac, which was
made in April, just before the battle of Chancellorsville, and occupied
five or six days. The President was accompanied by Attorney-General
Bates, Mrs. Lincoln, his son Tad, and Mr. Noah P. Brooks. The first
night out was spent on the little steamer which conveyed the party to
their destination. After all had retired to rest except the anxious
President and one or two others, Lincoln gave utterance to his
deep-seated apprehensions in the whispered query to his friend, "How
many of our monitors will you wager are at the bottom of Charleston
Harbor?" "I essayed," writes Mr. Brooks, "to give a cheerful view of the
Charleston situation. But he would not be encouraged. He then went on to
say that he did not believe that an attack by water on Charleston could
ever possibly succeed. He talked a long time about his 'notions,' as he
called them; and at General Halleck's headquarters next day, the first
inquiries were for 'rebel papers,' which were usually brought in from
the picket lines. These he examined with great anxiety, hoping that he
might find an item of news from Charleston. One day, having looked all
over a Richmond paper several times without finding a paragraph which he
had been told was in it, he was mightily pleased to have it pointed out
to him, and said, 'It is plain that newspapers are made for newspaper
men; being only a layman, it was impossible for me to find that.'"

The out-door life, the constant riding, and the respite from the
monstrous burdens at the capital, appeared to afford mental and physical
benefit to the worn President. But in answer to a remark expressing this
conviction, he replied sadly, "I don't know about 'the rest' as you call
it. I suppose it is good for the body. But the tired part of me is
_inside_ and out of reach." "He rode a great deal," says Mr. Brooks,
"while with the army, always preferring the saddle to the elegant
ambulance which had been provided for him. He sat his horse well, but he
rode hard, and during his stay I think he regularly used up at least one
horse each day. Little Tad invariably followed in his father's train;
and, mounted on a smaller horse, accompanied by an orderly, the
youngster was a conspicuous figure, as his gray cloak flew in the wind
while we hung on the flanks of Hooker and his generals."

General Hooker was now planning his great movement against Richmond, and
talked freely of the matter with the President, In the course of a
conversation, Lincoln casually remarked, "If you get to Richmond,
General." But Hooker interrupted him with--"Excuse me, Mr. President,
but there is no 'if' in the case. _I am going straight to Richmond, if I
live_!" Later in the day, Lincoln, privately referring to this
self-confidence of the General, said to Mr. Brooks, rather mournfully,
"It is about the worst thing I have seen since I have been down here."
In further illustration of Hooker's confidence in himself, Mr. Brooks
says: "One night, Hooker and I being alone in his hut, the General
standing with his back to the fireplace, alert, handsome, full of
courage and confidence, said laughingly, 'The President says you know
about that letter he wrote me on taking command.' I acknowledged that
the President had read it to me. The General seemed to think that the
advice was well-meant, but unnecessary. Then he added, with that
charming assurance which became him so well, 'After I have been to
Richmond, I am going to have that letter printed.'" But all that came of
Hooker's confidence, after three months of elaborate preparation, was a
grand forward movement into Virginia and another bloody and humiliating
defeat for the heroic but unfortunate army under his command.

The first of May, 1863, the Army of the Potomac under Hooker met the
Army of Northern Virginia under Lee and Jackson, near Chancellorsville,
Virginia. It was here that Jackson executed his brilliant and successful
flank movement around the Union right, ensuring a victory for his side
but losing his own life. After a contest of several days, involving the
fruitless sacrifice of thousands of gallant soldiers, Hooker's army fell
back and recrossed the Rappahannock.[G]

The news of this fresh disaster was an almost stunning shock to
President Lincoln. During the progress of the battle he was under a
cruel strain of anxiety and suspense. Secretary Welles, who was with
him a part of the time, says: "He had a feverish eagerness for facts;
was constantly up and down, for nothing reliable came from the front."
Mr. Noah Brooks relates that in company with an old friend of Lincoln's
he was waiting in one of the family rooms of the White House. "A door
opened and Lincoln appeared, holding an open telegram in his hand. The
sight of his face and figure was frightful. He seemed stricken with
death. Almost tottering to a chair, he sat down; and then I mechanically
noticed that his face was of the same color as the wall behind him--not
pale, not even sallow, but gray, like ashes. Extending the despatch to
me, he said, with a hollow, far-off voice, 'Read it--news from the
army.' The telegram was from General Butterfield, I think, then chief of
staff to Hooker. It was very brief, simply saying that the Army of the
Potomac had 'safely recrossed the Rappahannock,' and was now at its old
position on the north bank of that stream. The President's friend, Dr.
Henry, an old man and somewhat impressionable, burst into tears,--not so
much, probably, at the news as on account of its effect upon Lincoln.
The President regarded the old man for an instant with dry eyes, and
said, '_What will the country say? Oh, what will the country say_?' He
seemed hungry for consolation and cheer, and sat a little while talking
about the failure. Yet it did not seem that he was disappointed so much
for himself, but that he thought the country would be."

Lincoln's anxiety regarding the effect at the North of these repeated
reverses was not without sufficient cause. Aside from those who were
positively opposed to the war, the loyal people were wearying of the
useless slaughter, the unavailing struggles, of the gallant soldiers.
The growing distrust of the capacity of their military leaders was also
keenly felt. The feeling of that time is so well expressed in a stirring
poem entitled "Wanted, a Man," written by Mr. E.C. Stedman, that it is
given place here. It has an additional personal interest connected with
President Lincoln in the fact that he was so impressed with the piece
that he read it aloud to his assembled Cabinet.

    Back from the trebly crimsoned field
      Terrible words are thunder-tost;
    Full of the wrath that will not yield,
      Full of revenge for battles lost!
      Hark to their echo, as it crost
    The Capital, making faces wan:
      End this murderous holocaust;
    Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

    Give us a man of God's own mould,
      Born to marshal his fellow-men;
    One whose fame is not bought and sold
      At the stroke of a politician's pen;
      Give us the man of thousands ten,
    Fit to do as well as to plan;
      Give us a rallying-cry, and then,
    Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

    No leader to shirk the boasting foe,
      And to march and countermarch our brave
    Till they fall like ghosts in the marshes low,
      And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave;
      Nor another, whose fatal banners wave
    Aye in Disaster's shameful van;
      Nor another, to bluster, and lie, and rave,--
    Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

    Hearts are mourning in the North,
      While the sister rivers seek the main,
    Red with our life-blood flowing forth--
      Who shall gather it up again?
    Though we march to the battle-plain
    Firmly as when the strife began,
      Shall all our offerings be in vain?--
    Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

    Is there never one in all the land,
      One on whose might the Cause may lean?
    Are all the common ones so grand,
      And all the titled ones so mean?
      What if your failure may have been
    In trying to make good bread from bran,
      From worthless metal a weapon keen?--
    Abraham Lincoln, find us a MAN!

    O, we will follow him to the death,
      Where the foeman's fiercest columns are!
    O, we will use our latest breath,
      Cheering for every sacred star!
      His to marshal us high and far;
    Ours to battle, as patriots can
      When a Hero leads the Holy War!--
    Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!




CHAPTER XXV


     The Battle-summer of 1863--A Turn of the Tide--Lee's Invasion of
     Pennsylvania--A Threatening Crisis--Change of Union
     Commanders--Meade succeeds Hooker--The Battle of
     Gettysburg--Lincoln's Anxiety during the Fight--The Retreat of
     Lee--Union Victories in the Southwest--The Capture of
     Vicksburg--Lincoln's Thanks to Grant--Returning
     Cheerfulness--Congratulations to the Country--Improved State of
     Peeling at the North--State Elections of 1863--The Administration
     Sustained--Dedication of the National Cemetery at
     Gettysburg--Lincoln's Address--Scenes and Incidents at the
     Dedication--Meeting with Old John Burns--Edward Everett's
     Impressions of Lincoln.

Midsummer of 1863 brought a turn in the tide of military affairs. It
came none too soon for the safety of the nation. The repeated reverses
to the Union arms ending with the shocking disasters at Fredericksburg
and Chancellorsville--although slightly relieved by the costly success
of Stone River--had seemed to throw the chances of war in favor of the
South; and the Union cause was at the crisis of its fate. But now
fortune smiled upon the North, and its lost hope and lost ground were
regained at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. These great battles are justly
regarded as marking the turning-point of the war. It was yet far from
finished; there remained nearly two years of desperate fighting, with
heroic struggles and terrible sacrifice of life, before the end should
come. But from this time the character of the struggle seemed to change.
The armies of the South fought, not less desperately, but more on the
defensive; and their final overthrow was in all human probability
chiefly a question of time.

Emboldened by his success at Chancellorsville in May, General Lee again
assumed the offensive, and recrossed the Potomac river into Maryland.
Late in June he invaded Pennsylvania, and occupied a position
threatening Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. The situation was
most critical. If Lee could once more beat the Army of the Potomac, as
he had done so many times, these three great cities, and even New York,
might be at his mercy. The feeling in Washington is reflected in entries
made at the time in Mr. Welles's Diary. "Something of a panic pervades
the city," says Mr. Welles. "Singular rumors reach us of Rebel advances
into Maryland. It is said they have reached Hagerstown, and some of them
have penetrated as far as Chambersburg in Pennsylvania.... The city is
full of strange, wild rumors of Rebel raids in the vicinity and of
trains seized in sight of the Capital. The War Department is wholly
unprepared for an irruption here, and J.E.B. Stuart might have dashed
into the city to-day [June 28] with impunity.... I have a panic
telegraph from Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, who is excitable and
easily alarmed, entreating that guns and gunners may be sent from the
Navy Yard at Philadelphia to Harrisburg without delay.... I went again,
at a late hour, to the War Department, but could get no facts or
intelligence from the Secretary. All was vague, opaque, thick darkness.
I really think Stanton is no better posted than myself, and from what
Stanton says am afraid Hooker does not comprehend Lee's intentions nor
know how to counteract them. It looks to me as if Lee was putting forth
his whole energy and force in one great and desperate struggle which
shall be decisive."

Following Lee, the Army of the Potomac, under General Hooker, also
recrossed the Potomac, and pursued the enemy by a somewhat parallel
route, but keeping carefully between him and Washington. The occasion
was one calling for the best resources of a great military commander;
and General Hooker, realizing his unfitness for the responsibility,
asked to be relieved of the command. Thus was thrown upon the President
the hazardous necessity of changing commanders upon the very eve of a
great battle. It was a terrible emergency. Even the stout-hearted
Stanton was appalled. He afterward stated that when he received the
despatch from Hooker, asking to be relieved, his heart sank within him,
and he was more depressed than at any other moment of the war. "I could
not say," said Mr. Stanton, "that any other officer knew General
Hooker's plans, or the position even of the various divisions of the
army. I sent for the President to come at once to the War Office. It was
in the evening, but the President soon appeared. I handed him the
despatch. As he read it his face became like lead, and I said, 'What
shall be done?' He replied instantly, '_Accept his resignation._'"

Immediately an order was sent to Major-General George G. Meade, one of
the most efficient of the corps commanders of the Army of the Potomac,
appointing him to the chief command. Meade was a quiet, unassuming man,
very unlike Hooker. Three days after assuming command, he led his army
against the Southern host at Gettysburg, where, after a most bloody and
memorable battle of three days' duration (July 1, 2, and 3, 1863), was
won the first decisive victory in the history of the gallant Army of the
Potomac. Lee retired, with disastrous losses, across the Potomac to
Virginia; and Washington and the North breathed free again.

Senator Chandler of Michigan, speaking of the terrible strain on Lincoln
during the progress of the battle of Gettysburg, said: "I shall never
forget the painful anxiety of those few days when the fate of the nation
seemed to hang in the balance; nor the restless solicitude of Mr.
Lincoln, as he paced up and down the room, reading despatches,
soliloquizing, and often stopping to trace the position of the
contending armies on the map which hung on the wall; nor the relief we
all felt when the fact was established that victory, though gained at
such fearful cost, was indeed on the side of the Union."

Amidst the murk and gloom of those dark days in Washington, when the
suspense was breathless and the heart of the nation responded in muffled
beats to the dull booming of the cannon of Meade and Lee at Gettysburg,
an episode occurred, with Lincoln as the central figure, which reveals
perhaps more poignantly than any other in his whole career the depths of
feeling in that tender and reverential soul. On Sunday evening, July
4,--the fourth day of that terrible battle, with nothing definite yet
known of the result,--the President drove out in a carriage, in company
with two daughters of Secretary Stanton, to the line of defenses near
Arlington. It was toward sundown; and a brigade of troops were forming
in position for an evening parade or review. The commander of the
brigade, General Tannatt, recognizing the President and his party, rode
up to the carriage and invited them to witness the parade. The President
assented. His face was drawn and haggard in its expression of anxiety
and sorrow. As it was Sunday evening, some of the regimental bands
played familiar religious pieces. The President, hearing them, inquired
of General Tannatt if any of his bands could play "Lead Kindly Light."
Then in a low voice and with touching accents he repeated, as if to
himself, the familiar lines--never more expressive or appropriate than
now,--

    Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom,
        Lead thou me on.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see

    The distant scene,--one step enough for me.

As the sweet strains of the familiar hymn floated on the evening air,
Lincoln's sad face became sadder still, and tears were seen coursing
down his cheeks. What emotions were his, who can tell, as he thought of
that great battle-field not far away, its issues yet unknown, its ground
still covered with dead and wounded soldiers whose heroic deeds--to use
his noble words spoken a few months later on that historic field--"have
consecrated it far above our power to add or detract."

General Tannatt, who knew Lincoln well and had spoken with him many
times, never saw him again; and his view of that tragic, tear-wet face
remains to him a vivid and precious memory.[H]

While the eyes of the nation were fastened upon the great drama being
enacted near the capital, events scarcely less momentous were occurring
in the Southwest. The campaign against Vicksburg, the great Confederate
stronghold on the Mississippi river, had been in active progress, under
the personal command of General Grant, for several months. The
importance of this strategic point was fully understood by the enemy,
and it was defended most stubbornly. At first Grant's plans proved
unsuccessful; the cutting of canals and opening of bayous failed--as
President Lincoln had expected and predicted. But these failures only
served to develop the unsuspected energy of Grant's character and the
extent of his military resources. He boldly changed his entire plan of
operations, abandoned his line of communication, removed his army to a
point _below_ Vicksburg and attacked the city in the rear. With dogged
persistence he pressed forward, gaining point by point, beating off
General Johnston's forces on one side and driving Pemberton before him
into Vicksburg; until finally, by the aid of Admiral Porter's gunboats
on the Mississippi, he had entirely invested the city. Gradually and
persistently his lines closed in, pushed forward by assault and siege;
until Vicksburg accepted its doom, and on the 4th of July, 1863,--the
day of Lee's retreat from Gettysburg,--the city and garrison surrendered
to the victorious Grant.

Lincoln's exuberant joy over the capture of Vicksburg is revealed in an
entry made at the time in Mr. Welles's Diary. "I was handed a despatch
from Admiral Porter, communicating the fall of Vicksburg on the Fourth
of July," says Mr. Welles. "I immediately returned to the Executive
Mansion. The President was detailing certain points relative to Grant's
movements on the map to Chase and two or three others, when I gave him
the tidings. Putting down the map he rose at once, said he would drop
these topics, and added, 'I myself will telegraph this news to General
Meade.' He seized his hat, but suddenly stopped, his countenance beaming
with joy; he caught my hand, and throwing his arm around me, exclaimed,
'What can we do for the Secretary of the Navy for this glorious
intelligence? He is always giving us good news. I cannot, in words, tell
you my joy over this result. It is great, Mr. Welles, it is great!' ...
We walked the lawn together. 'This,' said he, 'will relieve Banks. It
will inspire me.'"

The Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg caused great rejoicing
at the North, and gave added zest to the celebration of the national
patriotic holiday. President Lincoln, mindful of the "almost
inestimable services," as he termed them, of General Grant, and as it
was his wont to do in such circumstances, made haste to acknowledge his
own and the country's indebtedness to the man who had accomplished a
great deed. He addressed to the conqueror of Vicksburg the following
letter:

     EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D.C.
     July 13, 1863.

     MAJOR-GENERAL GRANT.

     MY DEAR GENERAL:--I do not remember that you and I ever met
     personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the
     almost inestimable services you have done the country. I write to
     say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of
     Vicksburg, I thought you should do what you finally did--march the
     troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and
     thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope
     that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and
     the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port Gibson,
     Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river,
     and join General Banks, and when you turned northward, east of the
     Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the
     personal acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong.

     Yours truly, A. LINCOLN.

An officer who was the first from Grant's army to reach Washington after
the surrender of Vicksburg, has recorded the circumstances of his
interview with the President. "Mr. Lincoln received me very cordially,"
says this officer, "and drawing a chair near to himself and motioning me
to be seated said, 'Now I want to hear all about Vicksburg.' I gave him
all the information I could, though he appeared to be remarkably well
posted himself. He put to me a great many questions in detail touching
the siege, the losses, the morale of the army, its sanitary condition,
the hospital service, and General Grant. Said he: 'I guess I was right
in standing by Grant, although there was great pressure made after
Pittsburg Landing to have him removed. I thought I saw enough in Grant
to convince me that he was one on whom the country could depend. That
'unconditional surrender' message to Buckner at Donelson suited me. It
indicated the spirit of the man."

It is interesting to note that before the capture of Vicksburg the
protracted campaign had occasioned no little dissatisfaction with
General Grant; the President had been importuned to remove him, and had
much formidable opposition to encounter in his determination to stand by
him. Only a few days before the capitulation of the beleaguered city,
Senator Wade of Ohio--"Bluff Ben Wade," as he was termed--called upon
the President and urged Grant's dismissal; to which Lincoln
good-naturedly replied, "Senator, that reminds me of a story." "Yes,
yes," rejoined Wade petulantly, "that is the way it is with you, sir,
all _story--story_! You are the father of every military blunder that
has been made during the war. You are on your road to h--l, sir, with
this Government, and you are not a mile off this minute." Lincoln calmly
retorted, "Senator, that is just about the distance from here to the
Capitol, is it not?" The exasperated Wade grabbed his hat and rushed
angrily from the White House.

It is not pleasant to record that the cordial and generous
congratulations to Grant for his achievements at Vicksburg were in
marked contrast to the rather grudging recognition of Meade's much more
important and hard-won victory at Gettysburg. In the latter case the
despatches from Washington took the form not so much of acknowledgments
of what had been done as of complaints at what had not been done. It is
hard to believe that the President dictated, or even authorized, the
ill-timed and peevish despatch sent to General Meade[I] by the
inopportune Halleck, a few days after the battle of Gettysburg, in which
the victor on that desperate field is officially informed that "the
escape of Lee's army has created great dissatisfaction in the mind of
the President, and it will require an active and energetic pursuit to
remove the impression that it has not been sufficiently active before."
To this extraordinary message Meade at once made a simple and manly
rejoinder in which he said: "Having performed my duty conscientiously
and to the best of my ability, the censure of the President, as conveyed
in your despatch, is in my judgment so undeserved that I feel compelled
most respectfully to ask to be immediately relieved from the command of
this army." Halleck replied, rather ineptly, that his despatch had not
been intended as a censure, but as a "stimulus," and was not regarded as
a sufficient cause for Meade's request to be relieved. When one thinks
of the ill-fortunes of the Army of the Potomac under previous
commanders, and of the unlikelihood of finding a successor to Meade as
capable as he had shown himself to be, one shudders at the chances of
what might have happened had another change of leaders been forced upon
that long-suffering and now victorious army. General Meade did not press
his resignation after Halleck's conciliatory telegrams, and remained in
immediate command of the Army of the Potomac until the close of the
war--Grant's accession to the chief command of all the armies having
marked the end of the well-meant but often ill-advised and troublesome
interference with military affairs from Washington.

Mr. Isaac R. Pennypacker, in his Life of General Meade, speaks of
Halleck and other prominent officials in Washington in these terms:
"Possessing much of the skill of the lawyer and disputant, Halleck was
without military ability. The Secretary of War, like many other men who
exercise vast power, was not great enough to refrain from the use of his
authority in matters where his knowledge and experience did not qualify
him to form the soundest views. Acting with these military authorities
were men like Wade and Chandler, whose patriotism was of the exuberant
kind, whose judgment in military affairs was without value, but whose
personal energy impelled them to have a controlling hand, if possible,
in the conduct of the war."

Lincoln's dissatisfaction with General Meade after the battle of
Gettysburg was due, as we now see, to his elation over the splendid
victory for the Union, his intense desire for further and overwhelming
successes, and his failure (a quite natural one) to realize that what
might seem desirable and feasible viewed from Washington might look very
different to the practical and experienced men actually on the ground
and familiar as he could not be with all the factors in the
situation.[J] "He thought," wrote General Halleck in an explanatory
letter sent to Meade two weeks after his despatch of censure, "that
Lee's defeat was so certain that he felt no little impatience at his
unexpected escape." Among military authorities, such a retreat as that
of Lee after Gettysburg is hardly regarded as an "escape." If it were,
then great must be the fault of Lee as a general in allowing the
defeated armies of Burnside and Hooker to "escape" after the battles of
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, where their repulse was much worse
than was Lee's at Gettysburg. That Lincoln's first feelings of
disappointment and dissatisfaction with General Meade were greatly
modified with fuller knowledge of the actual situation after the battle
of Gettysburg is shown by a remark made by him to Senator Cameron,
referring to Meade: "Why should we censure a man who has done so much
for his country because he did not do a little more?" And if any debt
of recognition or of gratitude yet remained due from him, it was more
than paid a few months later in the unsurpassed tribute at Gettysburg to
"the brave men, living and dead," who gained the victory on that
hallowed field.

The improved condition of public affairs, and the increasing
cheerfulness of the President, after the victories at Gettysburg and
Vicksburg, are exhibited in a letter written by him a few weeks later to
friends at Springfield, Illinois, who had urgently invited him to attend
"a mass-meeting of Unconditional Union men" at his old home. In this
letter he took occasion to declare his sentiments on various questions
paramount at the time. Among these was the subject of a compromise with
the South, against which he argued with great force and feeling. Again,
he defended the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure to which many Union
men were still unreconciled. He referred also to the arming of the
negroes as a just and wise expedient; finally concluding with these
expressive and felicitous words:

     The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to
     the sea. Thanks to the great Northwest for it; nor yet wholly to
     them. Three hundred miles up they met New England, Empire,
     Keystone, and Jersey, hewing their way right and left. The sunny
     South, too, in more colors than one, also lent a helping hand. On
     the spot, their part of the history was jotted down in black and
     white. The job was a great national one, and let none be slighted
     who bore an honorable part in it. And while those who have cleared
     the great river may well be proud, even that is not all. It is hard
     to say that anything has been more bravely and well done than at
     Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and on many fields of less
     note. Nor must Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgotten. At all the
     watery margins they have been present, not only on the deep sea,
     the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy
     bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp they have been and
     made their tracks. Thanks to all. For the great Republic--for the
     principle it lives by and keeps alive--for man's vast
     future--thanks to all. Peace does not appear so distant as it did.
     I hope it will come soon and come to stay; and so come as to be
     worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved
     that among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the
     ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure
     to lose their case and pay the cost. And there will be some black
     men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clinched teeth,
     and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind
     on to this great consummation; while I fear there will be some
     white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful
     speech they have striven to hinder it. Still, let us not be
     over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let
     us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in
     His own good time, will give us the rightful result.

In a public proclamation, issued October 3, the President gives more
formal expression to his satisfaction and gratitude, and calls upon the
loyal people of the Union to unite in a day of thanksgiving for the
improved prospects of the country.

     The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the
     blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these
     bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to
     forget the source from which they come, others have been added
     which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to
     penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible
     to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a
     civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes
     seemed to invite and provoke the aggressions of foreign states,
     peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been
     maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony
     has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military
     conflict, while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the
     advancing armies and navies of the Union. The needful diversion of
     wealth and strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the
     national defense has not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the
     ship. The axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the
     mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have
     yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has
     steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in
     the camp, the siege, and the battle-field; and the country,
     rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is
     permitted to expect a continuance of years with large increase of
     freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand
     worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the
     Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins,
     hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and
     proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully
     acknowledged, as with one heart and voice, by the whole American
     people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of
     the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are
     sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last
     Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and prayer to
     our beneficent Father, who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend
     to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him
     for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with
     humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience,
     commend to His tender care all those who have become widows,
     orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in
     which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the
     interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the
     nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the
     divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony,
     tranquility, and union.

The brightening prospects of the Union cause quickly produced a better
state of feeling at the North. In the fall elections of 1863, every
State except New Jersey gave solid majorities on the Republican side,
thus strengthening the administration and giving the President welcome
assurances of popular approval. He had awaited with special anxiety the
returns from Ohio, where the contest was fraught with peculiar
significance. The Democrats had chosen for their candidate the notorious
peace-at-any-price Vallandigham, against whom the Republicans had placed
John Brough of Cleveland. On the night of the election, about ten
o'clock, a message clicked on the wires in the telegraph office of the
latter city, saying, "Where is John Brough? A. Lincoln." Brough was at
hand, and directly the electric voice inquired, "Brough, about what is
your majority now?" Brough replied, "Over 30,000." Lincoln requested
Brough to remain at the office during the night. A little past midnight
the question came again from Lincoln, "Brough, what is your majority by
this time?" Brough replied, "Over 50,000." And the question was thus
repeated and answered several times, with rapidly increasing majorities,
till five o'clock in the morning, when the question came again, "Brough,
what is your majority now?" The latter was able to respond, "Over
100,000." As soon as the words could be flashed back over the wire,
there came: "_Glory to God in the highest. Ohio has saved the Nation. A.
Lincoln_."

The day after the election in Ohio (October 14, 1863) Lincoln said to
Secretary Welles that he had felt more anxiety in regard to the results
than he had in 1860 when he was chosen President. He could not have
believed four years ago, he said, that one genuine American would or
could be induced to vote for such a man as Vallandigham. Yet he had been
made the candidate of a large party, and received a vote that is a
discredit to the country. Mr. Welles adds: "The President showed a good
deal of emotion as he dwelt on this subject."

After the battle of Gettysburg, a portion of the ground on which the
engagement was fought was purchased by the State of Pennsylvania for a
burial-place for the Union soldiers who were slain in that bloody
encounter. The tract included seventeen and a half acres adjoining the
town cemetery. It was planned to consecrate the ground with imposing
ceremonies, in which the President, accompanied by his Cabinet and a
large body of the military, was invited to assist. The day appointed was
the 19th of November; and the chief orator selected was Massachusetts'
eloquent son, Hon. Edward Everett. Following him it was expected that
the President would add some testimonials in honor of the dead.

Lincoln and Everett were representatives of two contrasting phases of
American civilization: the one, an outgrowth of the rough pioneer life
of the West; the other, the product of the highest culture of the East.
They had met for the first time on this memorable day. Everett's oration
was a finished literary production. Smooth, euphonious, and elegant, it
was delivered with the silvery tones and the graceful gestures of a
trained and consummate speaker. When he had finished, and the applause
that greeted him had died away, the multitude called vociferously for an
address from Lincoln. With an unconscious air, the President came
forward at the call, put his spectacles on his nose, and read, in a
quiet voice which gradually warmed with feeling, while his careworn face
became radiant with the light of genuine emotion, the following brief
address:

     Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
     continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
     proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a
     great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
     conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
     battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
     that field as a final resting-place of those who here gave their
     lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
     proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot
     dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The
     brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated
     it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will
     little note nor long remember what we _say_ here, but it can never
     forget what they _did_ here. It is for us, the living, rather, to
     be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here
     have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here
     dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these
     honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
     they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly
     resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this
     nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that
     government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
     perish from the earth.

The simple and sublime words of this short address shook the hearts of
the listeners, and before the first sentence was ended they were under
the spell of a mighty magician. They stood hushed, awed, and melted, as
the speaker enforced the solemn lesson of the hour, and brought home to
them, in plain unvarnished terms, the duty which remained for them to
do--to finish the work which the dead around them had given their lives
to carry on. It was one of the briefest of the many speeches with which
Lincoln had swayed the impulses and opinions of crowds of his
fellow-men, but it is the one which will be remembered above all others
as hallowed by the truest and loftiest inspiration. As the final
sentence ended, amid the tears and sobs and cheers of the excited
throng, the President turned to Mr. Everett, and, grasping his hand,
exclaimed with sincerity, "I congratulate you on your success." Mr.
Everett responded in the fervor of his emotion, "Ah, Mr. President, how
gladly would I exchange all my hundred pages to have been the author of
your twenty lines!"

Of all Lincoln's public utterances, this is unquestionably the most
remarkable. The oration, brief and unpretending as it is, will remain a
classic of the English language. "The Westminster Review," one of the
foremost of the great English quarterlies, said of it: "It has but one
equal, in that pronounced upon those who fell in the first year of the
Peloponnesian War; and in one respect it is superior to that great
speech. It is not only more natural, fuller of feeling, more touching
and pathetic, but we know with absolute certainty that _it was really
delivered_. Nature here takes precedence of art--even though it be the
art of Thucydides."

"An illustration of the difference between oratory and inspiration" is
Mr. John Bigelow's happy characterization of the Gettysburg address. "It
was," he adds, "one of the most momentous incidents in the history of
the Civil War. It may be doubted whether anything had then, or has
since, been said of that national strife conceived upon a higher and
wiser spiritual plane.... It is perhaps, on the whole, the most enduring
bit of eloquence that has ever been uttered on this continent; and yet
one finds in it none of the tricks of the forum or the stage, nor any
trace of the learning of the scholar, nor the need of it."

Major Harry T. Lee, who was himself a participant in the battle of
Gettysburg and occupied a seat on the platform at the dedication, says
that the people listened with marked attention through the two hours of
Everett's noble and scholarly oration; but that when Lincoln came
forward, and in a voice burdened with emotion uttered his simple and
touching eulogy on "the brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,"
there was scarcely a dry eye in the whole vast audience.

Mr. John Russell Young, afterwards U.S. Minister to China, was present
at the Gettysburg dedication, and says: "I sat behind Mr. Lincoln while
Mr. Everett delivered his oration. I remember the great orator had a way
of raising and dropping his handkerchief as he spoke. He spoke for two
hours, and was very impressive, with his white hair and venerable
figure. He was a great orator, but it was like a bit of Greek
sculpture--beautiful, but cold as ice. It was perfect art, but without
feeling. The art and beauty of it captured your imagination and
judgment. Mr. Everett went over the campaign with resonant, clear,
splendid rhetoric. There was not a word or a sentence or a thought that
could be corrected. You felt that every gesture had been carefully
studied out beforehand. It was like a great actor playing a great
part.... Mr. Lincoln rose, walked to the edge of the platform, took out
his glasses, and put them on. He was awkward. He bowed to the assemblage
in his homely manner, and took out of his coat pocket a page of
foolscap. In front of Mr. Lincoln was a photographer with his camera,
endeavoring to take a picture of the scene. We all supposed that Mr.
Lincoln would make rather a long speech--a half-hour at least. He took
the single sheet of foolscap, held it almost to his nose, and in his
high tenor voice, without the least attempt at effect, delivered that
most extraordinary address which belongs to the classics of literature.
The photographer was bustling about, preparing to take the President's
picture while he was speaking, but Mr. Lincoln finished before the
photographer was ready."

It is stated that when President Lincoln reached the town of Gettysburg,
on his way to attend the exercises at the cemetery, he inquired for "Old
John Burns," the hero of the battle of Gettysburg, who left his farm and
fought with the Union soldiers upon that bloody field. The veteran was
sent for; and on his arrival the President showed him marked attention,
taking him by the arm and walking with him in the procession through the
streets to the cemetery.

Edward Everett, who was associated with Lincoln during these two or
three days, says of the impression the President made on him: "I
recognized in the President a full measure of the qualities which
entitle him to the personal respect of the people. On the only social
occasion on which I ever had the honor to be in his company, viz., the
Commemoration at Gettysburg, he sat at the table of my friend David
Willis, by the side of several distinguished persons, foreigners and
Americans; and in gentlemanly appearance, manners, and conversation, he
was the peer of any man at the table."




CHAPTER XXVI


     Lincoln and Grant--Their Personal Relations--Grant's Successes at
     Chattanooga--Appointed Lieutenant-general--Grant's First Visit to
     Washington--His Meeting with Lincoln--Lincoln's First Impressions
     of Grant--The First "General" Lincoln Had Found--"That Presidential
     Grub"--True Version of the Whiskey Anecdote--Lincoln Tells Grant
     the Story of Sykes's Dog--"We'd Better Let Mr. Grant Have his Own
     Way"--Grant's Estimate of Lincoln.

From the hour of Grant's triumph at Vicksburg to the close of the war,
Lincoln never withdrew his confidence from the quiet, persistent,
unpretending man who led our armies slowly but surely along the path of
victory. As soon as the campaign at Vicksburg was over, Grant's sphere
of operations was enlarged by his appointment to the command of the
military division of the Mississippi. In November following he fought
the famous battles of Chattanooga, including Lookout Mountain and
Missionary Ridge; and, aided by his efficient corps commanders, Sherman,
Thomas, and Hooker, gained a succession of brilliant victories for the
Union cause. The wisdom of Grant's policy of concentration and "fighting
it out" had now become apparent.

President Lincoln had watched closely the progress of these events, and
had come to recognize in Grant the master spirit of the war, on the
Northern side. Accordingly he determined to give him general command of
all the Union armies. In December, 1863, a bill was introduced in the
Senate by Hon. E.B. Washburne, of Illinois, and passed both houses of
Congress, creating the rank of Lieutenant-General in the army.
President Lincoln approved the act, and immediately nominated Grant for
the position. The nomination was confirmed; and on the 17th of March,
1864, Grant issued his first order as Lieutenant-General, assuming
command of the armies of the United States, and announcing that his
headquarters would be in the field and until further orders with the
Army of the Potomac. Of this army he shrewdly remarked that it seemed to
him it "had never fought its battles _through_." He proposed, first of
all, to teach that army "not to be afraid of Lee." "I had known him
personally," said Grant, "and _knew that he was mortal_." With
characteristic energy he formed a simple but comprehensive plan of
operations both East and West; sending Sherman on his great march to
Atlanta and the sea, while he, with the Army of the Potomac, pushed
straight for Richmond. These operations were vigorously urged, and when
they were ended the war was ended. It was but little more than a year
from the date of Grant's commission as Lieutenant-General till he
received Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

Immediately upon Grant's appointment as Lieutenant-General, he was
summoned to Washington. It was his first visit to the capital since the
war began, and he was a stranger to nearly everyone from the President
down. He arrived in the city on the 8th of March (1864), taking quarters
at Willard's Hotel, where, when he went in to dinner, none knew "the
quiet, rather stumpy-looking man, who came in leading a little boy--the
boy who had ridden by his father's side through all the campaign of
Vicksburg." But soon it was whispered about who was in the room, and
there was a loud call for three cheers for Ulysses S. Grant, which were
given with a will. In the evening General Grant attended a reception at
the White House, passing in with the throng alone and unannounced. The
quick eye of the President discovered the identity of the modest
soldier, and he was most heartily welcomed. "As soon as it was known
that he was present, the pressure of the crowd to see the hero of
Vicksburg was so great that he was forced to shelter himself behind a
sofa. So irrepressible was the desire to see him that Secretary Seward
finally induced him to mount a sofa, that this curiosity might be
gratified. When parting from the President, he said, 'This has been
rather the warmest campaign I have witnessed during the war.'" A graphic
account of this interesting event is given by Secretary Welles, who
records in his Diary (March 9, 1864): "Went last evening to the
Presidential reception. Quite a gathering; very many that are not
usually seen at receptions were attracted thither, I presume, from the
fact that General Grant was expected to be there. He came about
half-past nine. I was near the centre of the reception-room, when a stir
and buzz attracted attention, and it was whispered that General Grant
had arrived. The room was not full, the crowd having passed through to
the East Room. I saw some men in uniform standing at the entrance, and
one of them, a short, brown, dark-haired man, was talking with the
President. There was hesitation, a degree of awkwardness, in the
General. Soon word was passed around--'Mr. Seward, General Grant is
here,' and Seward, who was just behind me, hurried and took the General
by the hand and led him to Mrs. Lincoln, near whom I was standing. The
crowd gathered around the circle rapidly, and it being intimated that it
would be necessary the throng should pass on, Seward took the General's
arm and went with him to the East Room. There was clapping of hands in
the next room as he passed through, and all in the East Room joined in
it as he entered."

The next day at noon the General waited on the President to receive his
commission. The interview took place in the Cabinet room. There were
present, besides the members of the Cabinet, General Halleck, a member
of Congress, two of General Grant's staff-officers, his eldest son,
Frederick D. Grant, and the President's private secretary. The ceremony
was simple, the President saying, as he proffered the papers: "The
nation's appreciation of what you have done, and its reliance upon you
for what remains to be done in the existing great struggle, are now
presented with this commission, constituting you Lieutenant-General in
the Army of the United States. With this high honor devolves upon you
also a corresponding responsibility. As the country herein trusts you,
so, under God, it will sustain you. I scarcely need to add that with
what I here speak for the nation goes my own hearty personal
concurrence." The General responded briefly, promising to "accept the
commission with gratitude for the high honor conferred. With the aid of
the noble armies that have fought on so many fields for our common
country, it will be my earnest endeavor not to disappoint your
expectations. I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now
devolving on me, and I know that if they are met it will be due to those
armies, and above all to the favor of that Providence which leads both
nations and men."

Before assuming personal command of the Army of the Potomac, as he had
determined to do, General Grant found it necessary to return once more
to the West. In his parting interview with Lincoln, he was urged to
remain to dinner the next day and meet a brilliant party whom the lady
of the White House had invited to do him special honor. The General
answered, apologetically: "Mrs. Lincoln must excuse me. I must be in
Tennessee at a given time." "But we can't excuse you," said the
President. "Mrs. Lincoln's dinner without you would be Hamlet with
Hamlet left out." "I appreciate the honor Mrs. Lincoln would do me,"
said the General, "but time is very important now. I ought to be at the
front, and a dinner to me means a million dollars a day lost to the
country." Lincoln was pleased with this answer, and said cheerfully,
"Well, we'll have the dinner without you."

After Lincoln's first meeting with General Grant he was asked regarding
his personal impressions of the new commander. He replied, "Well, I
hardly know what to think of him. He's the quietest little fellow you
ever saw. He makes the least fuss of any man I ever knew. I believe on
several occasions he has been in this room a minute or so before I knew
he was here. It's about so all around. The only evidence you have that
he's in any particular place is that he makes things move." To a
subsequent inquiry as to his estimate of Grant's military capacities,
Lincoln responded, with emphasis: "Grant is the first General I've had.
_He's a General_." "How do you mean, Mr. Lincoln?" his visitor asked.
"Well, I'll tell you what I mean," replied Lincoln. "You know how it's
been with all the rest. As soon as I put a man in command of the army,
he'd come to me with the plan of a campaign, and about as much as to
say: 'Now I don't believe I can do it, but if you say so I'll try it
on,' and so put the responsibility of success or failure on me. They all
wanted _me_ to be the General. Now, it isn't so with Grant. He hasn't
told me what his plans are. I don't know and I don't want to know. I am
glad to find a man who can go ahead without me. When any of the rest set
out on a campaign they'd look over matters and pick out some one thing
they were short of and they knew I couldn't give them, and tell me they
couldn't hope to win unless they had it--and it was most generally
cavalry. Now when Grant took hold I was waiting to see what his pet
impossibility would be, and I reckoned it would be cavalry, of course,
for we hadn't horses enough to mount what men we had. There were fifteen
thousand men, or thereabouts, up near Harper's Ferry, and no horses to
put them on. Well, the other day Grant sent to me about these very men,
just as I expected; but what he wanted to know was whether he could make
infantry of 'em or disband 'em. He doesn't ask impossibilities of me,
and he's the first General I've had that didn't." On another occasion
Lincoln said of Grant: "The great thing about him is his cool
persistency of purpose. He is not easily excited, and he has the grip of
a bulldog. _When he once gets his teeth in, nothing can shake him off_."

The President's satisfaction with the new commander was speedily
communicated to him in a characteristically frank manner, in a letter
dated April 30, 1864.

     LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:--

     Not expecting to see you before the Spring campaign opens, I wish
     to express in this way my entire satisfaction with what you have
     done up to this time, so far as I understand it. The particulars of
     your plan I neither know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and
     self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any
     restraints or constraints upon you. While I am very anxious that
     any great disaster or capture of our men in great numbers shall be
     avoided, I know that these points are less likely to escape your
     attention than they would be mine. If there be anything wanting
     which is in my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And
     now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you.

     Yours very truly, A. LINCOLN.

General Grant himself wrote, on this point: "In my first interview with
Mr. Lincoln alone, he stated to me that he had never professed to be a
military man, or to know how campaigns should be conducted, and never
wanted to interfere in them; but that procrastination on the part of
commanders, and the pressure of the people at the North and Congress,
_which was always with him_, forced him into issuing his series of
'Military Orders'--one, two, three, etc. He did not know but they were
all wrong, and did know that some of them were. All he wanted or had
ever wanted was someone who would take the responsibility and act, and
call on him for all the assistance needed, pledging himself to use all
the power of the government in rendering such assistance.... The
President told me he did not want to know what I proposed to do. But he
submitted a plan of campaign of his own which he wanted me to hear and
then do as I pleased about. He brought out a map of Virginia on which he
had evidently marked every position occupied by the Federal and
Confederate armies up to that time. He pointed out on the map two
streams which empty into the Potomac, and suggested that the army might
be moved on boats and landed between the mouths of these streams. We
would then have the Potomac to bring our supplies, and the tributaries
would protect our flanks while we moved out. I listened respectfully,
but did not suggest that the same streams would protect Lee's flanks
while he was shutting us up."

General Horace Porter, for some time Grant's chief of staff, says: "The
nearest Mr. Lincoln ever came to giving General Grant an order for the
movement of troops was during Early's raid upon Washington. On July 10,
1864, he telegraphed a long despatch from Washington, which contained
the following language: 'What I think is that you should provide to
retain your hold where you are, certainly, and bring the rest with you
personally, and make a vigorous effort to defeat the enemy's force in
this vicinity. I think there is really a fair chance to do this, if the
movement is prompt. This is what I think--given upon your
suggestion,--and is not an order.' Grant replied that on reflection he
thought it would have a bad effect for him to leave City Point, then his
headquarters, in front of Richmond and Petersburg; and the President was
satisfied with the dispositions which Grant made for the repulse of
Early without taking command against him in person."

A curious incident revealing the intense interest with which Lincoln
watched the career of Grant is related by Mr. J. Russell Jones, an old
and trusted friend of the President, who joined the army at Vicksburg in
time to witness its final triumph. Soon after Mr. Jones's return to
Chicago, the President summoned him to Washington. With eager haste,
after the first salutations were over, Lincoln declared the object for
which he had secured the interview: "'I have sent for you, Mr. Jones, to
know if that man Grant wants to be President.' Mr. Jones, although
somewhat astonished at the question and the circumstances under which it
was asked, replied at once, 'No, Mr. President.' 'Are you sure?' queried
the latter. 'Yes,' said Mr. Jones, 'perfectly sure. I have just come
from Vicksburg. I have seen General Grant frequently, and talked fully
and freely with him about that and every other question; and I know he
has no political aspirations whatever, and certainly none for the
Presidency. His only desire is to see you re-elected and to do what he
can under your orders to put down the rebellion and restore peace to the
country.' 'Ah, Mr. Jones,' said Lincoln, 'you have lifted a great weight
off my mind, and done me an immense amount of good; for I tell you, my
friend, no man knows how deeply that Presidential grub gnaws till he has
had it himself.'" We cannot believe that Lincoln cherished any feeling
of jealousy of the rising commander, or desired to interfere with
whatever political ambition he might nourish. It was rather his desire
to be assured of the single-hearted purpose of a military leader whom he
had trusted and to whom he wished to confide still more important
services in the conduct of the war.

It may be remembered that early in the war an anecdote went the rounds
of the press to the effect that, in reply to a complaint that Grant had
been guilty of drunkenness in the campaigns in the West, Lincoln
remarked that he would "like to find out what kind of liquor Grant
drank," so that he might "send some of it to the other Generals." The
true version of that characteristic anecdote is this, as given by the
late Judge T. Lyle Dickey, who was a Judge of the Illinois Supreme Court
at the time of his death, and at the time of Grant's famous Vicksburg
campaign was on the General's staff as chief of cavalry. Judge (then
Colonel) Dickey had been sent to Washington with private despatches for
the President and the Secretary of War. Lincoln and Dickey had been
intimate friends for years, and during the latter's visit to the former
on that occasion, Dickey remarked, "I hear that some one has been trying
to poison you against Grant by reporting that he gets drunk. I wish to
assure you, Mr. President, that there is not a scintilla of truth in the
report." "Oh, Colonel," replied the President, "we get all sorts of
reports here, but I'll say this to you: that if those accusing General
Grant of getting drunk will tell me _where he gets his whiskey_, I will
get a lot of it and send it around to some of the other Generals, who
are badly in need of something of the kind."

After Lincoln and General Grant had become personally intimate, they had
many enjoyable conversations and exchanges of anecdotes. Lincoln
especially enjoyed telling the General of the various persons who had
come to him with complaints and criticisms about the Vicksburg campaign.
"After the place had actually surrendered," said the President, "I
thought it was about time to shut down on this sort of thing. So one
day, when a delegation came to see me, and had spent half an hour trying
to show me the fatal mistake you had made in paroling Pemberton's army,
and insisting that the rebels would violate their paroles and in less
than a month confront you again in the ranks and have to be whipped all
over again, I thought I could get rid of them best by telling them a
story about Sykes's dog. 'Have you ever heard about Sykes's yellow dog?'
said I to the spokesman of the delegation. He said he hadn't. 'Well, I
must tell you about him,' said I. 'Sykes had a yellow dog he set great
store by, but there were a lot of small boys around the village, and
that's always a bad thing for dogs, you know. These boys didn't share
Sykes's views, and they were not disposed to let the dog have a fair
show. Even Sykes had to admit that the dog was getting unpopular; in
fact, it was soon seen that a prejudice was growing up against that dog
that threatened to wreck all his future prospects in life. The boys,
after meditating how they could get the best of him, finally fixed up a
cartridge with a long fuse, put the cartridge in a piece of meat,
dropped the meat in the road in front of Sykes's door, and then perched
themselves on a fence a good distance off with the end of the fuse in
their hands. Then they whistled for the dog. When he came out he scented
the bait, and bolted the meat, cartridge and all. The boys touched off
the fuse with a cigar, and in about a second a report came from that dog
that sounded like a small clap of thunder. Sykes came bouncing out of
the house, and yelled: "What's up! Anything busted?" There was no
reply, except a snicker from the small boys roosting on the fence; but
as Sykes looked up he saw the whole air filled with pieces of yellow
dog. He picked up the biggest piece he could find--a portion of the
back, with a part of the tail still hanging to it, and, after turning it
around and looking it all over, he said, "Well, I guess he'll never be
much account again--_as a dog_." And I guess Pemberton's forces will
never be much account again--_as an army._' The delegation began looking
around for their hats before I had quite got to the end of the story,
and I was never bothered any more about superseding the commander of the
Army of the Tennessee."

When General Grant was ready to begin active operations with the Army of
the Potomac, he sent forward all available men from Washington.
Secretary Stanton, anxious about the safety of the city, said to Grant
one day: "General, I suppose you have left us enough men to strongly
garrison the forts?" "No, I can't do that," was Grant's quiet answer.
"Why not? Why not?" repeated the Secretary nervously. "Because I have
already sent the men to the front." Said the Secretary, still more
nervously: "That won't do. It's contrary to my plans. I cannot allow it.
I will order the men back." To this Grant returned with quiet
determination: "I shall need the men there, and you cannot order them
back." "Why not? Why not?" cried the Secretary. "I believe that I rank
the Secretary in this matter," remarked Grant. "Very well, we will see
the President about that," responded the Secretary sharply. "I will have
to take you to the President." "That is right. The President ranks us
both." So they went to the President; and the Secretary, turning to
General Grant, said, "Now, General, state your case." But the General
calmly replied, "I have no case to state. I am satisfied as it is."
This threw the burden of statement on Secretary Stanton, and was
excellent strategy. Meanwhile, General Grant had the men. When the
Secretary had concluded, Lincoln crossed his legs, rested his elbow on
his knee, and said in his quaint way and with a twinkle in his eye:
"Now, Mr. Secretary, you know we have been trying to manage this army
for nearly three years, and you know we haven't done much with it. We
sent over the mountains and brought Mr. Grant, as Mrs. Grant calls him,
to manage it for us; and now I guess we'd better let Mr. Grant _have his
own way_." And Mr. Grant had it.

The favorable opinion which Lincoln held of Grant was strongly
reciprocated. A short time before the former's death, Grant said: "I
regard Lincoln as one of the greatest of men. He is unquestionably the
greatest man I have ever encountered. The more I see of him and exchange
views with him, the more he impresses me. I admire his courage, and
respect the firmness he always displays. Many think from the gentleness
of his character that he has a yielding nature; but while he has the
courage to change his mind when convinced that he is wrong, he has all
the tenacity of purpose which could be desired in a great statesman. His
quickness of perception often astonishes me. Long before the statement
of a complicated question is finished, his mind will grasp the main
points, and he will seem to comprehend the whole subject better than the
person who is stating it. He will take rank in history alongside of
Washington."




CHAPTER XXVII


     Lincoln's Second Presidential Term--His Attitude toward it--Rival
     Candidates for the Nomination--Chase's Achillean Wrath--Harmony
     Restored--The Baltimore Convention--Decision "not to Swap Horses
     while Crossing a Stream"--The Summer of 1864--Washington again
     Threatened--Lincoln under Fire--Unpopular Measures--The President's
     Perplexities and Trials--The Famous Letter "To Whom It May
     Concern"--Little Expectation of Re-election--Dangers of
     Assassination--"A Thrilling Experience"--Lincoln's Forced
     Serenity--"The Saddest Man in the World"--A Break in the
     Clouds--Lincoln Vindicated by Re-election--Cheered and
     Reassured--More Trouble with Chase--Lincoln's Final Disposal of
     him--The President's Fourth Annual Message--His Position toward the
     Rebellion and Slavery Reaffirmed--Colored Folks' Reception at the
     White House--Passage of the Amendment Prohibiting Slavery--Lincoln
     and the Southern Peace Commissioners--The Meeting in Hampton
     Roads--Lincoln's Impression of A H. Stephens--The Second
     Inauguration--Second Inaugural Address--"With Malice toward None,
     with Charity for All"--An Auspicious Omen.

The year 1864 witnessed another Presidential election, and one which
was attended by the most novel and extraordinary circumstances. It was
held while a considerable portion of the people were engaged in armed
rebellion against the authority of the National Government; and it was
not participated in by the voters of several entire States. Aside from
these unique features, it marked a most critical epoch in the history
of the country, and in that of Abraham Lincoln as well. The policy and
acts of the administration, even the question of the further
prosecution of the war, were to be submitted to the sovereign tribunal
of the people; and with their verdict would be recorded also the
popular measure of approval or disapproval of President Lincoln. Those
who knew him best during his first official term pronounce him
singularly free from plans and calculations regarding his own
political future. He was too absorbed in public cares and duties, too
nearly crushed by the great burdens resting upon him, to give thought
or attention to questions of personal ambition. It had never been his
aim, during his Presidential life, to look far ahead. He was content
to deal wisely and soberly with important questions as they arose from
day to day and hour to hour; to adapt himself and his actions to the
exigencies of the present, and in that way to earn security for the
future. He himself said, using a forcible and apt illustration
borrowed from his early life: "The pilots on our Western rivers steer
from _point to point_, as they call it--setting the course of the boat
no farther than they can see; and that is all I propose to do in the
great problems that are set before me."

Such a policy as that outlined by Lincoln, embraced in his homely and
characteristic phrase of "pegging away," caused him to be greatly
misunderstood and even distrusted in some quarters. As the time for the
new election drew near, there was very pronounced dissatisfaction with
him, particularly in New England. It was said of him, among other
things, that he "lacked the essential qualities of a leader." Mr. Henry
Greenleaf Pearson, the biographer of Governor Andrew of Massachusetts,
illuminates this point in a few instructive sentences. "To comprehend
this objection, which to us seems so astonishingly wide of the mark,"
says Mr. Pearson, "we must realize that whenever a New Englander of that
generation uttered the word 'leader' his mind's eye was filled with the
image of Daniel Webster. Even those who called the fallen statesman
'Ichabod' could not forget his commanding presence, his lofty tone about
affairs of state, his sonorous professions of an ideal, his whole _ex
cathedra_ attitude. All these characteristics supplied the aristocratic
connotation of the word 'leader.' Of the broad democratic meaning of the
term, the world had as yet received no demonstration. That Lincoln was
in very truth the 'new birth of a new soil,' Lowell, with the advantage
of literary detachment, was one of the first to discover and proclaim,
both in his political essays and in the splendid stanzas of the
'Commemoration Ode.'"

While Lincoln seemingly gave little heed to the question of a second
Presidential term, it must not be inferred that he was indifferent
regarding it. His nature was one of those strong ones which, though
desiring approbation, are yet able to live without it. His whole life
had been a schooling in self-reliance and independence, and the last
three years especially had rendered him an adept in that stern
philosophy. But he was thoroughly human, and deep down in his nature was
a craving for human sympathy and support. Knowing that he had done his
best and was entitled to the full approval of his countrymen, he no
doubt felt that it would be a pleasant thing to receive that approval by
being called to serve them for another term. To one friend he remarked,
using his old figure of "the people's attorney," "If the people think I
have managed their case for them well enough to trust me to _carry it up
to the next term_, I am sure I shall be glad to take it." He evidently
dreaded the rebuke that would be implied in a failure to be renominated;
yet it seemed unbecoming to him, in the critical condition of the
country, to make any personal effort to that end. To these
considerations were added his extreme weariness and longing for release
from his oppressive burdens. He was also, as Mr. Welles records in his
Diary, "greatly importuned and pressed by cunning intrigues."

From these various complications, Lincoln's embarrassment and
perplexity as the time for holding the Republican Convention drew near
were extreme. A journalistic friend (Mr. J.M. Winchell), who had a
lengthy conversation with him on the subject, gives what is no doubt a
correct idea of his state of mind at that period. "Mr. Lincoln received
me," says Mr. Winchell, "kindly and courteously; but his manner was
quite changed. It was not now the country about which his anxiety
prevailed, but himself. There was an embarrassment about him which he
could not quite conceal. I thought it proper to state in the outset that
I wished simply to know whatever he was free to tell me in regard to his
own willingness or unwillingness to accept a renomination. The reply was
a monologue of an hour's duration, and one that wholly absorbed me, as
it seemed to absorb himself. He remained seated nearly all the time. He
was restless, often changing position, and occasionally, in some intense
moment, wheeling his body around in his chair and throwing a leg over
the arm. This was the only grotesque thing I recollect about him; his
voice and manner were very earnest, and he uttered no jokes and told no
anecdotes. He began by saying that as yet he was not a candidate for
renomination. He distinctly denied that he was a party to any effort to
that end, notwithstanding I knew that there were movements in his favor
in all parts of the Northern States. These movements were, of course,
without his prompting, as he positively assured me that with one or two
exceptions he had scarcely conversed on the subject with his most
intimate friends. He was not quite sure whether he desired a
renomination. Such had been the responsibility of the office--so
oppressive had he found its cares, so terrible its perplexities--that he
felt as though the moment when he could relinquish the burden and
retire to private life would be the sweetest he could possibly
experience. But, he said, he would not deny that a re-election would
also have its gratification to his feelings. He did not seek it, nor
would he do so; he did not desire it for any ambitious or selfish
purpose; but after the crisis the country was passing through under his
Presidency, and the efforts he had made conscientiously to discharge the
duties imposed upon him, it would be a very sweet satisfaction to him to
know that he had secured the approval of his fellow citizens and earned
the highest testimonial of confidence they could bestow. This was the
gist of the hour's monologue; and I believe he spoke sincerely. His
voice, his manner, gave his modest and sensible words a power of
conviction. He seldom looked me in the face while he was talking; he
seemed almost to be gazing into the future. I am sure it was not a
pleasant thing for him to seem to be speaking in his own behalf. For
himself, he affirmed that he should make no promises of office to anyone
as an inducement for support. If nominated and elected, he should be
grateful to his friends; but the interests of the country must always be
first considered."

The principal candidates talked of as successors to Lincoln were
Secretary Chase, General Frémont, and General Grant. Of the latter,
Lincoln said, with characteristic frankness and generosity: "If he could
be more useful as President in putting down the rebellion, I would be
content. He is pledged to our policy of emancipation and the employment
of negro soldiers; and if this policy is carried out, it will not make
much difference who is President." But General Grant's good sense
prevailed over his injudicious advisers, and he promptly refused to
allow his name to be presented to the convention.

The most formidable candidate for the Republican nomination was
Secretary Chase. The relations between him and the President had not
latterly been very harmonious; and the breach was greatly widened by a
bitter personal assault on Mr. Chase by General F.P. Blair, a newly
elected Congressman from Missouri, made on the floor of the House, about
the middle of April, under circumstances which led Mr. Chase to believe
that the President inspired, or at least approved, the attack. Mr. Chase
was very angry, and an open rupture between his friends and those of the
President was narrowly averted. Mr. Riddle, Congressman from Mr. Chase's
State (Ohio), relates that on the evening after General Blair's
offensive speech he was to accompany Mr. Chase on a visit to Baltimore.
"I was shown," says Mr. Riddle, "to the Secretary's private car, where I
found him alone and in a frenzy of rage. A copy of Blair's speech had
been shown him at the station, and I was the sole witness of his
Achillean wrath. He threatened to leave the train at once and send the
President his resignation; but was persuaded to go on to Baltimore. He
wished to forward his resignation from there, but concluded to withhold
it till his return to Washington the next day. At Baltimore," continues
Mr. Riddle, "I excused myself, and took the return train for Washington.
I did not overestimate the danger to the Union cause. It would be a
fatal error to defeat Mr. Lincoln at the Baltimore Convention; yet how
could he succeed, with the angry resignation of Mr. Chase, and the
defection of his friends--the powerful and aggressive radicals? Reaching
Washington, I went to the White House direct. I knew the President could
not have been a party to Blair's assault, and I wanted his personal
assurances to communicate to Mr. Chase at the earliest moment. I was
accompanied by Judge Spaulding, an eminent member of the House, fully
sharing Mr. Chase's confidence, and somewhat cool toward the President.
We found Mr. Lincoln drawn up behind his table, with papers before him,
quite grim, evidently prepared for the battle which he supposed awaited
him. Without taking a seat, hat in hand, I stated frankly, not without
emotion, the condition of affairs,--the public danger, my entire
confidence in him, my sole purpose there, the reason of Judge
Spaulding's presence, and that we were there in no way as
representatives of Mr. Chase. Mr. Lincoln was visibly affected. The
tones of confidence, sympathy, personal regard, were strangers to him at
that time. Softening, almost melting, he came round to us, shook our
hands again and again, returned to his place, and standing there, took
up and opened out, from their remote origin, the whole web of matters
connected with the present complication. He spoke an hour--calm, clear,
direct, simple. He reprehended Blair severely, and stated that he had no
knowledge of his speech until after Blair left Washington. We were
permitted to communicate this to Mr. Chase. He was satisfied with the
President's explanation, and at the Baltimore Convention my large
acquaintance enabled me to open the way for Governor Dennison of Ohio to
become its presiding officer. All recognized the good effect of the
organization of that body by the friends of Mr. Chase."

The National Republican Convention which met at Baltimore on the 8th of
June adopted resolutions heartily approving the course of the
administration and especially the policy of emancipation, and completed
its good work by nominating Abraham Lincoln as its candidate for
President for another term. Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, was nominated
for Vice-President. That Lincoln was gratified at this proof of
confidence and esteem there can be no doubt. In his acceptance of the
nomination, he said, with the most delicate modesty: "I view this call
to a second term as in no wise more flattering to myself than as an
expression of the public judgment that I may better finish a difficult
work than could one less severely schooled to the task." And with
characteristic humor, he thanked a visiting delegation for their good
opinion of him, saying, "I have not permitted myself to conclude that I
am the best man in the country; but I am reminded of the old Dutch
farmer who remarked to a companion that _it was not best to swap horses
while crossing a stream_."

In July, 1864, great excitement and alarm were occasioned in
Washington by a body of Confederate cavalry under General Early, who
actually attacked the fortifications of the city, cut off its railroad
communication with the North, and ravaged the country about with fire
and sword. For several days skirmishing was going on between the
raiders and the troops in our fortifications. The fact that the
President himself was under fire from the enemy on this occasion gave
the episode a decided thrill of realism. He, with other government
officials--largely, no doubt, from motives of curiosity--visited the
scene of the disturbance and witnessed the miniature but sometimes
spirited engagements. Among these visitors was Secretary Welles, who
thus records his experiences (Diary, July 12, 1864): "Rode out today
to Fort Stevens. Looking out over the valley below, where the
continual popping of pickets was going on, I saw a line of our men
lying close near the bottom of the valley. Senator Wade came up beside
me. We went into the Fort, where we found the President, who was
sitting in the shade, his back against the parapet toward the
enemy.... As the firing from the Fort ceased, our men ran to the
charge and the Rebels fled. We could see them running across the
fields, seeking the woods on the brow of the opposite hills. Below,
we could see here and there some of our own men bearing away their
wounded comrades. Occasionally a bullet from some long-range rifle
passed over our heads. It was an interesting and exciting spectacle."
Another account says: "President Lincoln visited the lines in person,
and refused to retire, although urged to do so. He exposed himself
freely at Fort Stevens, and a surgeon standing alongside of him was
wounded by a ball which struck a gun and glanced." A gentleman named
Neill, who lived in the country, about twelve miles from the city,
gives a vivid conception of the imminence of the danger. "After
breakfast, on Tuesday, July 12," says Mr. Neill, "I went as usual in a
railway car to the city, and before noon my house was surrounded by
General Bradley Johnson's insurgent cavalry, who had made an attempt
to capture the New York express train, and had robbed the country
store near by of its contents. The presence of the cavalry stopped all
travel by railroad; and Senator Ramsey of Minnesota, who happened to
be in Washington, could find no way to the North except by descending
the Potomac to its mouth and then ascending Chesapeake Bay to
Baltimore. While the cavalry was in the fields around my home, the
enemy's infantry was marching toward the capital by what was called
the Seventh Street road, and they set fire to the residence of Hon.
Montgomery Blair, who had been Postmaster-General. As I sat in my room
at the President's, the smoke of the burning mansion was visible; but
business was transacted with as much quietness as if the foe were
hundreds of miles distant. Mr. Fox, the assistant Secretary of the
Navy, had in a private note informed the President that if there
should be a necessity for him to leave the city he would find a
steamer in readiness at the wharf at the foot of Sixth Street. About
one o'clock in the afternoon of each day of the skirmishing, the
President would enter his carriage, and drive to the forts, in the
suburbs, and watch the soldiers repulse the invaders." For several
days Washington was in great danger of capture. Nearly all the forces
had been sent forward to reinforce Grant, and the city was
comparatively defenseless. But its slender garrison, mostly raw
recruits, held out gallantly under the encouragement of the President,
until Grant sent a column to attack Early, who promptly withdrew, and
the crisis was over. This was the last time the enemy threatened the
national capital. From that time he had enough to do to defend
Richmond.

Lincoln labored under deep depression during the summer of 1864. The
Army of the Potomac achieved apparently very little in return for its
enormous expenditure of blood and treasure. Until the victories of
Farragut in Mobile Bay, late in August, and Sherman at Atlanta a few
days later, the gloom was unrelieved. The people were restless and
impatient, and vented their displeasure upon the administration, holding
it responsible for all reverses and disappointments, and giving grudging
praise for success at any point. The popular displeasure was increased
by the President's call for 500,000 additional troops, made July 18,--a
measure which some of his strongest friends deprecated, as likely to
jeopardize his re-election in November. "It is not a personal question
at all," said Lincoln. "It matters not what becomes of _me. We must have
the men_. If I go down, I intend to go like the Cumberland, with my
colors flying." To the question, When is the war to end? he said,
"Surely I feel as deep an interest in this question as any other can;
but I do not wish to name a day, a month, or a year, when it is to end.
We accepted this war _for an object_--a worthy object; and the war will
end _when that object is attained_. Under God, I hope it _never will
end until that time_."

The President's mind seemed constantly weighted with anxiety as to the
movements and fortunes of our armies in the field. He could not sleep at
night under this crushing load. Secretary Welles's Diary gives frequent
instances of this. Once, after an engagement between the Western armies,
the President, says Mr. Welles, "came to me with the latest news. He was
feeling badly. Tells me a despatch was sent to him at the Soldiers' Home
last night shortly after he got asleep, and so disturbed him that he had
no more rest, but arose and came to the city and passed the remainder of
the night awake and watchful." At another time, after a desperate battle
between Grant and Lee, Mr. Welles says: "The President came into my room
about one P.M. and told me he _had slept none last night._ He lay down
for a short time on the sofa in my room, and detailed all the news he
had gathered."

Ex-Governor Bross of Illinois furnishes an account of an interview with
Lincoln during this dark period: "The last time I saw Mr. Lincoln, till,
as a pallbearer, I accompanied his remains to their last resting-place,
was in the early part of August, 1864. It was directly after the
frightful disaster at Petersburg, and I was on my way to the front, to
recover, if possible, the body of my brother, Colonel John A. Bross, who
fell there at the head of his regiment. I found the President with a
large pile of documents before him. He laid down his pen and gave me a
cordial but rather melancholy welcome, asking anxiously for news from
the West. Neither of us could shut our eyes to the gloom which hung over
the entire country. The terrible losses of the Wilderness, and the awful
disaster at Petersburg, weighed heavily upon our spirits. To a question,
I answered that the people expected a still more vigorous prosecution
of the war; more troops and needful appliances would, if called for, be
forthcoming. 'I will tell you what the people want,' said the President,
'they want, and must have, _success_. But whether that come or not, I
shall stay _right here_ and do my duty. Here I shall be; and they may
come and hang me on that tree' (pointing out of the window to one),
'but, God helping me, I shall never desert my post.' This was said in a
way that assured me that these were the sentiments of his inmost soul."

The President, about this time, was greatly worried by Horace Greeley
and others, who importuned him to receive negotiations for peace from
the Confederate authorities. He at length said to Mr. Greeley, "I not
only intend a sincere effort for peace, but you shall be a personal
witness that it is made." On the same day that the call for additional
troops was made, the President issued, through Mr. Greeley, the famous
letter, "To Whom It May Concern," promising safe conduct to any person
or persons authorized to present "any proposition which embraces the
restoration of peace, the _integrity of the whole Union_, and the
_abandonment of slavery_." Nothing came of the proposed negotiations,
except to stop for a time the mischievous fault-finding; which was, of
course, the result aimed at by Lincoln. The act was severely condemned
by many Republicans; but Lincoln only said, "It is hardly fair for them
to say the letter amounts to _nothing_. It will shut up Greeley, and
satisfy the people who are clamoring for peace. That's _something_,
anyhow!"

So much blame was heaped upon the Government, and so great was the
dissatisfaction at the North, that Lincoln looked upon the election of
his competitor, General McClellan, and his own retirement, as not
improbable. An incident in evidence of his discouragement is related by
Secretary Welles. Entering the Executive office one day, Mr. Welles was
asked to write his name across the back of a sealed paper which the
President handed him. The names of several other members of the Cabinet
were already on the paper, with the dates of signature. After the
election, Lincoln opened the document in the presence of his Cabinet and
read to them its contents, as follows:

     EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
     August 23, 1864.

     This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable
     that this administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my
     duty to co-operate with the President-elect so as to save the Union
     between the election and the inauguration.

     A. LINCOLN.

By this careful prevision had Lincoln pledged himself to give to his
successor that unselfish and patriotic assistance of which he himself
had stood so sorely in need.

As the desperation of the South and the opposition to Lincoln at the
North increased, fears were entertained by his friends that an attempt
might be made upon his life. Lincoln himself paid but little heed to
these forebodings of evil. He said, philosophically: "I long ago made up
my mind that if anybody wants to kill me, he will do it. If I wore a
shirt of mail and kept myself surrounded by a bodyguard, it would be all
the same. There are a thousand ways of getting at a man if it is desired
that he should be killed. Besides, in this case, it seems to me, the man
who would succeed me would be just as objectionable to my enemies--if I
have any." One dark night, as he was going out with a friend, he took
along a heavy cane, remarking good-humoredly that "mother" (Mrs.
Lincoln) had "got a notion into her head that I shall be assassinated,
and to please her I take a cane when I go over to the War Department at
nights--when I don't forget it."

It is probable that the attempts upon the life of President Lincoln were
more numerous than is generally known. An incident of a very thrilling
character, which might easily have involved a shocking tragedy, is
related by Mr. John W. Nichols, who from the summer of 1862 until 1865
was one of the President's body-guard. "One night, about the middle of
August, 1864," says Mr. Nichols, "I was doing sentinel duty at the large
gate through which entrance was had to the grounds of the Soldiers'
Home, near Washington, where Mr. Lincoln spent much time in summer.
About eleven o'clock I heard a rifle-shot in the direction of the city,
and shortly afterwards I heard approaching hoof-beats. In two or three
minutes a horse came dashing up, and I recognized the belated President.
The horse he rode was a very spirited one, and was Mr. Lincoln's
favorite saddle-horse. As horse and rider approached the gate, I noticed
that the President was bareheaded. As soon as I had assisted him in
checking his steed, the President said to me: 'He came pretty near
getting away with me, didn't he? He got the bit in his teeth before I
could draw the rein.' I then asked him where his hat was; and he replied
that somebody had fired a gun off down at the foot of the hill, and that
his horse had become scared and had jerked his hat off. I led the animal
to the Executive Cottage, and the President dismounted and entered.
Thinking the affair rather strange, a corporal and myself started off to
investigate. When we reached the place whence the sound of the shot had
come--a point where the driveway intersects, with the main road--we
found the President's hat. It was a plain silk hat, and upon examination
we discovered a _bullet-hole_ through the crown. We searched the
locality thoroughly, but without avail. Next day I gave Mr. Lincoln his
hat, and called his attention to the bullet-hole. He made some humorous
remark, to the effect that it was made by some foolish marksman and was
not intended for him; but added that he wished nothing said about the
matter. We all felt confident it was an attempt to kill the President,
and after that he never rode alone."

Amidst his terrible trials, Lincoln often exhibited a forced and
sorrowful serenity, which many mistook for apathy. Even his oldest and
best friends were sometimes deceived in this way. Hon. Leonard Swett
relates a touching instance: "In the summer of 1864, when Grant was
pounding his way toward Richmond in those terrible battles of the
Wilderness, myself and wife were in Washington trying to do what little
two persons could do toward alleviating the sufferings of the maimed and
dying in the vast hospitals of that city. We tried to be thorough and
systematic. We took the first man we came to, brought him delicacies,
wrote letters to his friends, or did for him whatever else he most
needed; then the next man, and so on. Day after day cars and ambulances
were coming in, laden with untold sorrows for thousands of homes. After
weeks of this kind of experience my feelings became so wrought up that I
said to myself: The country cannot long endure this sacrifice. In mercy,
both to North and South, every man capable of bearing arms must be
hurried forward to Grant to end this, fearful slaughter at the earliest
possible moment. I went to President Lincoln at the White House, and
poured myself out to him. He was sitting by an open window; and as I
paused, a bird lit upon a branch just outside and was twittering and
singing most joyously. Mr. Lincoln, imitating the bird, said: '_Tweet,
tweet, tweet_; isn't he singing sweetly?' I felt as if my legs had been
cut from under me. I rose, took my hat, and said, 'I see the country is
safer than I thought.' As I moved toward the door, Mr. Lincoln called
out, in his hearty, familiar way, 'Here, Swett, come back and sit down.'
Then he went on: 'It is impossible for a man in my position not to have
thought of all those things. Weeks ago every man capable of bearing arms
was ordered to the front, and everything you have suggested has been
done.'"

The burdens borne by Lincoln seemed never to tell so seriously on his
strength and vitality as in this terrible battle-summer of 1864. For him
there had been no respite, no holiday. Others left the heat and dust of
Washington for rest and recuperation; but he remained at his post. The
demands upon him were incessant; one anxiety and excitement followed
another, and under the relentless strain even his sturdy strength began
to give way. "I sometimes fancy," said he, with pathetic good-humor,
"that every one of the numerous grist ground through here daily, from a
Senator seeking a war with France down to a poor woman after a place in
the Treasury Department, darted at me with thumb and finger, picked out
_their especial piece of my vitality_, and carried it off. When I get
through with such a day's work there is only one word which can express
my condition, and that is _flabbiness_." Once Mr. Brooks "found him
sitting in his chair so collapsed and weary that he did not look up or
speak when I addressed him. He put out his hand, mechanically, as if to
shake hands, when I told him I had come at his bidding. Presently he
roused a little, and remarked that he had had '_a mighty hard day_.'"
Mr. Riddle, who saw him at this period, after some months' absence, says
he was shocked, on gaining admission to the President, "by his
appearance--that of a _baited, cornered man_, always on the defense
against attacks that he could not openly meet and defy or punish." Mr.
Carpenter, an inmate of the White House, says: "Absorbed in his papers,
he would become unconscious of my presence, while I intently studied
every line and shade of expression in that furrowed face. There were
days when I could scarcely look into it without crying. During the first
week of the battles of the Wilderness he scarcely slept at all. Passing
through the main hall of the domestic apartment on one of these days, I
met him, clad in a long morning wrapper, pacing back and forth a narrow
passage leading to one of the windows, his hands behind him, great black
rings under his eyes, his head bent forward upon his breast,--altogether
such a picture of the effects of sorrow, care, and anxiety as would have
melted the hearts of the worst of his adversaries, who so mistakenly
applied to him the epithets of tyrant and usurper."

Mr. Edward Dicey, the English historian, says: "Never in my knowledge
have I seen a sadder face than that of the late President during the
time his features were familiar to me. It is so easy to be wise after
the event; but it seems to me now that one ought somehow to have
foreseen that the stamp of a sad end was impressed by nature on that
rugged, haggard face. The exceeding sadness of the eyes and their
strange sweetness were the one redeeming feature in a face of unusual
plainness, and there was about them that odd, weird look, which some
eyes possess, of seeming to see more than the outer objects of the world
around."

Lincoln's family and friends strove to beguile him of his melancholy.
They took him to places of amusement; they walked and drove with him in
the pleasantest scenes about the capital; and above all, they talked
with him of times past, seeking to divert his mind from its present
distress by reviving memories of more joyous days. His old friends were,
as Mr. Arnold states, "shocked with the change in his appearance. They
had known him at his home, and at the courts in Illinois, with a frame
of iron and nerves of steel; as a man who hardly knew what illness was,
ever genial and sparkling with frolic and fun, nearly always cheery and
bright. Now they saw the wrinkles on his face and forehead deepen into
furrows; the laugh of old days was less frequent, and it did not seem to
come from the heart. Anxiety, responsibility, care, thought, disasters,
defeats, the injustice of friends, wore upon his giant frame, and his
nerves of steel became at times irritable. He said one day, with a
pathos which language cannot describe, 'I feel as though I shall _never
be glad again_.'"

Hon. Schuyler Colfax repeats a similarly pathetic expression which fell
from the lips of the afflicted President. "One morning," says Mr.
Colfax, "calling upon him on business, I found him looking more than
usually pale and careworn, and inquired the reason. He replied with the
bad news he had received at a late hour the previous night, which had
not yet been communicated to the press, adding that he had not closed
his eyes or breakfasted; and, with an expression I shall never forget,
he exclaimed, 'How willingly would I exchange places today with the
soldier who sleeps on the ground in the Army of the Potomac!'"

A lady who saw Lincoln in the summer of 1864 for the first time, and who
had expected to see "a very homely man," says: "I was totally unprepared
for the impression instantly made upon me. So bowed and sorrow-laden was
his whole person, expressing such weariness of mind and body, as he
dropped himself heavily from step to step down to the ground. But his
face!--oh, the pathos of it!--haggard, drawn into fixed lines of
unutterable sadness, with a look of loneliness, as of a soul whose depth
of sorrow and bitterness no human sympathy could ever reach. I was so
penetrated with the anguish and settled grief in every feature, that I
gazed at him through tears, and felt I had stepped upon the threshold of
a sanctuary too sacred for human feet. The impression I carried away was
that I had seen, not so much the President of the United States, as _the
saddest man in the world_."

The changes in Lincoln's appearance were noted in the subdued, refined,
purified expression of his face, as of one struggling almost against
hope, but still patiently enduring. Mr. Brooks says, "I have known
impressionable women, touched by his sad face and his gentle bearing, to
go away in tears." Another observer, Rev. C.B. Crane, wrote at the time:
"The President looks thin and careworn. His form is bowed as by a
crushing load; his flesh is wasted as by incessant solicitude; and his
face is thin and furrowed and pale, as though it had become
spiritualized by the vicarious pain which he endured in bearing on
himself all the calamities of his country." Truly it might be said of
him, in the words of Matthew Arnold:

    With aching hands and bleeding feet
      We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
    We bear the burden and the heat
      Of the long day, and wish 't were done.
    Not till the hours of light return
      All we have built do we discern.

In the tragic experiences of Lincoln in these dark days, the outlook was
less gloomy than it had seemed to his tortured soul. He was even then,
as Mr. John Bigelow puts it, "making for himself a larger place in
history than he had any idea of." He "builded better than he knew"; and
the "hours of light" were soon to come when he would know what he had
built and see the signs that promised better things. The Presidential
election of 1864 demonstrated the abiding confidence of the people in
him and his administration. Every loyal State but three--New Jersey,
Delaware, and Kentucky--gave him its electoral vote; and his popular
majority over McClellan, the Democratic candidate, was upwards of
400,000. Lincoln was cheered but not exultant at the news. Late in the
evening of election day (November 8, 1864) he said, in response to
public congratulations: "I am thankful to God for this approval of the
people. But while deeply grateful for this mark of their confidence in
me, if I know my own heart my gratitude is free from any taint of
personal triumph. It is not in my nature to triumph over anyone; but I
give thanks to Almighty God for this evidence of the people's resolution
to stand by free government and the rights of humanity."

While the election returns were coming in, early in the evening, Lincoln
was at the War Department with a little group assembled to hear them
read. How different the scene from that in the quiet country town where
he had waited for the returns on a similar occasion four years before!
Then all was peace--the lull before the storm. Now the storm had broken,
and its greatest fury was raging about that patient and devoted man who
waited to hear the decision of the nation's supreme tribunal--the voice
of the people whose decree would settle the fate of himself and of the
country. Mr. Charles A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, who was in the
group, gives this description of the scene: "General Eckert was coming
in continually with telegrams containing election returns. Mr. Stanton
would read them, and the President would look at them and comment upon
them. Presently there came a lull in the returns, and Mr. Lincoln called
me up to a place by his side. 'Dana,' said he, 'have you ever read any
of the writings of Petroleum V. Nasby?' 'No, sir,' I said, 'I have only
looked at some of them, and they seemed to me funny.' 'Well,' said he,
'let me read you a specimen,' and pulling out a thin yellow-covered
pamphlet from his breast pocket he began to read aloud. Mr. Stanton
viewed this proceeding with great impatience, as I could see; but Mr.
Lincoln paid no attention to that. He would read a page or a story,
pause to con a new election telegram, and then open the book again and
go ahead with a new passage. Finally Mr. Chase came in; and presently
Mr. Whitelaw Reid, and then the reading was interrupted. Mr. Stanton
went to the door and beckoned me into the next room. I shall never
forget his indignation at what seemed to him disgusting nonsense."

The morning following the election one of his private secretaries, Mr.
Neill, coming to the Executive office earlier than usual, found Lincoln
at his table engaged in his regular routine of official work. "Entering
the room," says Mr. Neill, "I took a seat by his side, extended my hand,
and congratulated him upon the vote, for the country's sake and for his
own sake. Turning away from the papers which had been occupying his
attention, he spoke kindly of his competitor, the calm, prudent General,
and great organizer."

The importance of Lincoln's re-election, to the country and to himself,
is forcibly stated by General Grant and Secretary Seward. The former
telegraphed from City Point, the day following: "The victory is worth
more to the country than a battle won." And the same evening, at a
public gathering held to celebrate the event, Mr. Seward said: "The
election has placed our President beyond the pale of human envy or human
harm, as he is above the pale of human ambition. Henceforth all men will
come to see him as we have seen him--a true, loyal, patient, patriotic,
and benevolent man. Having no longer any motive to malign or injure him,
detraction will cease, and Abraham Lincoln will take his place with
Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and Adams and Jackson--among the
benefactors of the country and of the human race."

Lincoln evidently felt greatly reassured by the result of what had
seemed to him a very doubtful contest; but with the return of
cheerfulness came also the dread of continuing his official labors. He
began to long and plan for that happy period at the end of the second
term when he should be free from public burdens. "Mrs. Lincoln desired
to go to Europe for a long tour of pleasure," says Mr. Brooks. "The
President was disposed to gratify her wish; but he fixed his eyes on
California as a place of permanent residence. He had heard so much of
the delightful climate and the abundant natural productions of
California that he had become possessed of a strong desire to visit the
State and remain there if he were satisfied with the results of his
observations. 'When we leave this place,' he said, one day, 'we shall
have enough, I think, to take care of us old people. The boys must look
out for themselves. I guess mother will be satisfied with six months or
so in Europe. After that I should really like to go to California and
take a look at the Pacific coast.'"

After the Baltimore Convention, Mr. Chase proposed to resign his
position as Secretary of the Treasury, but he was persuaded by
influential friends of himself and Lincoln to reconsider his
determination. Chief among these friends was Hon. John Brough, the
sturdy "War Governor" of Ohio. Later in the summer of 1864 the relations
between the President and Secretary Chase again became inharmonious; the
latter determined a second time to resign, and communicated that fact
in a confidential letter to Governor Brough. Hon. Wm. Henry Smith, at
that time Ohio's Secretary of State, and intimately acquainted with the
circumstances as they occurred, says: "Mr. Brough went directly to
Washington to bring about another reconciliation. After talking the
matter over with Mr. Chase and Mr. Stanton, he called on the President
and urged a settlement that would retain the services of Mr. Chase in
the Treasury Department. Mr. Lincoln was very kind, and admitted the
force of all that was urged; but finally said, with a quiet but
impressive firmness, 'Brough, I think you had better _give up the job_
this time.' And thereupon he gave reasons why it was unwise for Mr.
Chase to continue longer in the Cabinet."

In the autumn, the Chief-Justiceship became vacant by the death of Judge
R.B. Taney (October 11, 1864), and the friends of Mr. Chase, who was
then in retirement, desired his elevation to that honorable seat.
Congressman Riddle, who was designated to present the matter to the
President, says: "After hearing what I had to say, Mr. Lincoln asked,
'Will this content Mr. Chase?' 'It is said that those bitten of the
Presidency die of it,' I replied. His smile showed he would not take
that answer. I added: 'Mr. Chase is conscious of ability to serve the
country as President. We should expect the greatest from him.' 'He would
not disappoint you, were it in his reach. But I should be sorry to see a
Chief-Justice anxious to _swap_ for it.' I said then what I had already
said to Mr. Chase: that I would rather be the Chief Justice than the
President. I urged that the purity and elevation of Mr. Chase's
character guaranteed the dignity of the station from all compromise;
that momentous questions must arise, involving recent exercises of
power, without precedents to guide the court; that the honor of the
Government would be safe in the hands of Mr. Chase. 'Would you _pack_
the Supreme Court?' he asked, a little sharply. 'Would you have a Judge
with no preconceived notions of law?' was my response. 'True, true,' was
his laughing reply; 'how could I find anyone, fit for the place, who has
not some definite notions on all questions likely to arise?'"

The proposed appointment of Mr. Chase as Chief-Justice was severely
criticized by certain friends of Lincoln, who believed Mr. Chase was
personally hostile to the President, and could not understand the
latter's magnanimity in thus ignoring personal considerations. When told
of these criticisms, Lincoln said: "My friends all over the country are
trying to put up the bars between me and Governor Chase. I have a vast
number of messages and letters from men who think they are my friends,
imploring and warning me not to appoint him. Now I know more about
Governor Chase's hostility to me than any of these men can tell me; but
_I am going to nominate him_." Which he did, and Chase became
Chief-Justice in December, 1864.

The withdrawal of Secretary Chase from the Cabinet was soon followed by
that of Postmaster-General Blair, who was succeeded by ex-Governor
Dennison of Ohio. Blair received, says Mr. Welles in his Diary, a letter
from the President, which, though friendly in tone, informed him that
the time had arrived when it seemed best that he should retire, and
requesting his resignation, which was promptly given. Mr. Welles says
that the President subsequently informed him that "Mr. Chase had many
friends who felt wounded that he should have left the Cabinet, and left
alone. The friends of Blair had been his assailants, and the President
thought that if he also left the Cabinet Chase and his friends would be
satisfied and the administration would be relieved of irritating
bickerings. The relations of Blair with Stanton also were such that it
was difficult for the two to remain." A little later came the
resignation of Attorney-General Bates, which, says Mr. Welles, "has
initiated more intrigues. A host of candidates are thrust
forward--Evarts, Holt, Gushing, Whiting, and the Lord knows who, are all
candidates." This gives but a faint idea of the embarrassments and
dissensions among Lincoln's friends and official advisers, and of the
ceaseless efforts and infinite tact that were needed to maintain a
decent degree of harmony among them.

Early in December the President submitted to Congress his fourth annual
message--a brief and businesslike statement of the prospects and
purposes of the Government. Its first sentence is: "The most remarkable
feature in the military operations of the year is General Sherman's
attempted march of three hundred miles directly through the insurgent
region." Then follows a reference to the important movements that had
occurred during the year, "to the effect of moulding society for
durability in the Union." The document closes with the following
explicit statement: "In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance
to the national authority, on the part of the insurgents, as the only
indispensable condition to ending the war on the part of the Government,
I _retract nothing_ heretofore said as to slavery. If the people should,
by whatever mode or means, make it an executive duty to re-enslave such
persons, _another, and not I_, must be their instrument to perform it.
In stating a single condition of peace, I mean simply to say that the
war will cease on the part of the Government whenever it shall have
ceased on the part of those who began it."

New Year's day, 1865, was marked by a memorable incident. Among the
crowds gathered in the White House grounds stood groups of colored
people, watching with eager eyes the tide of people flowing in at the
open door to exchange salutations with the President. It was a privilege
heretofore reserved for the white race; but now, as the line of visitors
thinned, showing that the reception was nearly over, the boldest of the
colored men drew near the door with faltering step. Some were in
conventional attire, others in fantastic dress, and others again in
laborers' garb. The novel procession moved into the vestibule and on
into the room where the President was holding the republican court.
Timid and doubting, though determined, they ventured where their
oppressed and down-trodden race had never appeared before, and with the
keen, anxious, inquiring look on their dark faces, seemed like a herd of
wild creatures from the woods, in a strange and dangerous place. The
reception had been unusually well attended, and the President was nearly
overcome with weariness; but when he saw the dusky faces of his unwonted
visitors, he rallied from his fatigue and gave them a hearty welcome.
They were wild with joy. Thronging about him, they pressed and kissed
his hand, laughing and weeping at once, and exclaiming, "God bless Massa
Linkum!" It was a scene not easy to forget: the thanks and adoration of
a race paid to their deliverer.

Ever since issuing the Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln had earnestly
desired that that measure should be perfected by a Constitutional
amendment forever prohibiting slavery in the territory of the United
States. He had discussed the matter fully with his friends in Congress,
and repeatedly urged them to press it to an issue. Just before the
Baltimore Convention, he urged Senator Morgan of New York, chairman of
the National Republican Committee, to have the proposed amendment made
the "key-note of the speeches and the key-note of the platform."
Congressman Rollins of Missouri relates that the President said to him,
"The passage of the amendment will _clinch the whole matter_." The
subject was already definitely before Congress. In December, 1863, joint
resolutions for this great end had been introduced in the House by Hon.
James M. Ashley of Ohio, and in the Senate by Hon. Charles Sumner of
Massachusetts and Hon. J.B. Henderson of Missouri. Senator Trumbull of
the Judiciary Committee, to whom the Senate resolutions were referred,
reported a substitute for the amendment, which, in April, 1864, passed
the Senate by a vote of thirty-eight to six; but reaching the House,
June 15, it failed to get the necessary two-thirds vote and was
defeated. At the next session of Congress the resolutions were again
presented to the House, and after a protracted debate were passed
(January 13, 1865) by a vote of one hundred and nineteen to fifty-six.
Illinois was the first State to ratify the amendment; and others
promptly followed. Lincoln was grateful and delighted. He remarked,
"This ends the job"; adding, "I feel proud that Illinois is a little
ahead."

Overtures having been made, through General Grant, for a meeting between
the President and certain "peace commissioners" representing the
belligerents, Lincoln, anxious that nothing should be left undone that
might evidence his desire to bring the war to a close, consented to the
interview. On the morning of February 2, 1865, he left Washington, quite
privately, in order to accomplish his mission without awakening the
gossip and criticism which publicity would excite. At Fortress Monroe he
was joined by Secretary Seward, who seems to have been the only member
of the Cabinet who knew of the President's intention to meet the
Southern Commissioners. Lincoln took the full responsibility, as he
often did when dealing with risky or unpopular measures. "None of the
Cabinet were advised of this move, and without exception I think it
struck them unfavorably that the Chief Magistrate should have gone on
such a mission," is the comment of Secretary Welles,--although he adds,
"The discussion will be likely to tend to peace."

The next morning (February 3) the President and Mr. Seward received the
Southern Commissioners--Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell--on board the U.S.
steam transport "River Queen" in Hampton Roads. The conference, says
Mr. Seward, "was altogether informal. There was no attendance of
secretaries, clerks, or other witnesses. Nothing was written or read.
The conversation, although earnest and free, was calm and courteous and
kind on both sides. The Richmond party approached the subject rather
indirectly, and at no time did they either make categorical demands or
tender formal stipulations or absolute refusals. Nevertheless, during
the conference, which lasted four hours, the several points at issue
between the Government and the insurgents were distinctly raised and
discussed, fully, intelligently, and in an amicable spirit."

The meeting was fruitless. The commissioners asked, as a preliminary
step, the recognition of Jefferson Davis as President of the Southern
Confederacy. Lincoln declined, stating that "the only ground on which he
could rest the justice of the war--either with his own people or with
foreign powers--was that it was not a war of conquest, for the States
had never been separated from the Union. Consequently he could not
recognize another government inside of the one of which he alone was
President, nor admit the separate independence of States that were yet a
part of the Union. 'That,' said he, 'would be doing what you have so
long asked Europe to do in vain, and be resigning the only thing the
armies of the Union have been fighting for.' Mr. Hunter, one of the
commissioners, made a long reply to this, insisting that the recognition
of Davis's power to make a treaty was the first and indispensable step
to peace, and referred to the correspondence between King Charles I. and
his Parliament as a trustworthy precedent of a constitutional ruler
treating with rebels. Lincoln's face then wore that indescribable
expression which generally preceded his hardest hits, as he remarked:
'Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is
posted in such things, and I don't pretend to be. My only distinct
recollection of the matter is that _Charles lost his head_.'"

Alexander H. Stephens, one of the commissioners at the meeting on
board the "River Queen," and the Vice-President of the waning
Confederacy, was a very small man physically, with a complexion so
yellow as to suggest an ear of ripe corn. Lincoln gave the following
humorous account of the meeting with him: "Mr. Stephens had on an
overcoat about three sizes too big for him, with an old-fashioned high
collar. The cabin soon began to get pretty warm, and after a while he
stood up and pulled off his big coat. He slipped it off just about as
you would husk an ear of corn. I couldn't help thinking, as I looked
first at the overcoat and then at the man, 'Well, that's the _biggest
shuck_ and the _smallest nubbin_ I ever laid eyes on.'"

So strongly were Lincoln's hopes fixed on finding some possible basis
for a peaceful restoration of the Union that a few days after his return
from his meeting with the Southern Peace Commissioners he presented to
the Cabinet (February 5, 1865) a scheme for paying to the Southern
States a partial compensation for the loss of their slaves, provided
they would at once discontinue armed resistance to the Federal
Government. It was, says Mr. Welles, who was present at the meeting
referred to, as "a proposition for paying the expenses of the war for
two hundred days, or four hundred millions of dollars, to the rebellious
States, to be for the extinguishment of slavery. The scheme did not meet
with favor, and was dropped." But it showed, adds Mr. Welles, "the
earnest desire of the President to conciliate and effect peace."

The evening of March 3, 1865, the President had remained with his
Cabinet at the Capitol until a late hour, finishing the business
pertaining to the last acts of the old Congress. His face had the
ineffaceable care-worn look, yet his manner was cheerful, and he
appeared to be occupied with the work of the moment, to the exclusion of
all thoughts of the future or of the great event of the morrow.

Rain prevailed during the morning of inauguration day, but before noon
it had ceased falling. The new Senate, convened for a special session,
was organized, and Andrew Johnson was sworn in its presence into the
office of Vice-President. Shortly after twelve o'clock, Lincoln entered
the chamber and joined the august procession, which then moved to the
eastern portico. As Lincoln stepped forward to take the oath of office,
a flood of sunlight suddenly burst from the clouds, illuminating his
face and form as he bowed to the acclamations of the people. Speaking of
this incident next day, he said, "Did you notice that sunburst? It made
my heart jump." Cheers and shouts rent the air as the President prepared
to speak his inaugural. He raised his arm, and the crowd hushed to catch
his opening words. He paused, as though thronging memories impeded
utterance; then, in a voice clear and strong, but touched with pathos,
he read that eloquent and imperishable composition, the Second Inaugural
Address.

     _Fellow-Countrymen:_ At this second appearing to take the oath of
     the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended
     address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in
     detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now,
     at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations
     have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the
     great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the
     energies of the Nation, little that is new could be presented. The
     progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as
     well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust,
     reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for
     the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

     On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all thoughts
     were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it,
     all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being
     delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union
     without war, insurgent agents were in the city, seeking to destroy
     it with war,--seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide the effects
     by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would
     make war rather than let the Nation survive, and the other would
     accept war rather than let it perish; and the war came. One-eighth
     of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed
     generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it.
     These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew
     that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen,
     perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the
     insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the Government
     claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial
     enlargement of it.

     Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration
     which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause
     of the conflict might cease when, or even before the conflict
     itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a
     result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible,
     and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the
     other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just
     God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other
     men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The
     prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been
     answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the
     world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come,
     but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall
     suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses, which, in
     the Providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
     through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He
     gives to North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those
     by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure
     from those Divine attributes which the believers in a living God
     always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray,
     that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God
     wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's
     two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and
     until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by
     another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago,
     so still it must be said: "The judgments of the Lord are true and
     righteous altogether."

     With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
     right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish
     the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him
     who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and for his
     orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting
     peace among ourselves and with all nations.

This address was probably, next to the Gettysburg oration, Lincoln's
most eloquent and touching public appeal. Gladstone of England said of
it: "I am taken captive by so striking an utterance as this. I see in
it the effect of sharp trial, when rightly borne, to raise men to a
higher level of thought and action. It is by cruel suffering that
nations are sometimes born to a better life. So it is with individual
men. Lincoln's words show that upon him anxiety and sorrow have wrought
their true effect."

As the procession moved from the Capitol to the White House, at the
close of the inaugural ceremonies, a bright star was visible in the
heavens. The crowds gazing upon the unwonted phenomenon noted it as an
auspicious omen, like the baptism of sunshine which had seemed to
consecrate the President anew to his exalted office.




CHAPTER XXVIII


     Close of the Civil War--Last Acts in the Great Tragedy--Lincoln at
     the Front--A Memorable Meeting--Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and
     Porter--Life on Shipboard--Visit to Petersburg--Lincoln and the
     Prisoners--Lincoln in Richmond--The Negroes Welcoming their "Great
     Messiah"--A Warm Reception--Lee's Surrender--Lincoln Receives the
     News--Universal Rejoicing--Lincoln's Last Speech to the Public--His
     Peelings and Intentions toward the South--His Desire for
     Reconciliation.

Great events crowded upon each other in the last few weeks of the Civil
War; and we must pass rapidly over them, giving special prominence only
to those with which President Lincoln was personally connected. The Army
of the Potomac under Grant, which for nearly a year had been incessantly
engaged with the army of General Lee, had forced the latter, fighting
desperately at every step, back through the Wilderness, into the
defenses about Richmond; and Lee's early surrender or retreat southward
seemed the only remaining alternatives. But the latter course,
disastrous as it would have been for the Confederacy, was rendered
impracticable by the comprehensive plan of operations that had been
adopted a year before. Interposed between Richmond and the South was now
the powerful army of General Sherman. This daring and self-reliant
officer, after his brilliant triumph at Atlanta the previous fall, had
pushed on to Savannah and captured that city also; then turning his
veteran columns northward, he had swept like a dread meteor through
South Carolina, destroying the proud city of Charleston, and then
Columbia, the State capital. General Johnston, with a strong force,
vainly tried to stay his progress through North Carolina; but after a
desperate though unsuccessful battle at Bentonville (March 20, 1865),
the opposition gave way, and the Union troops occupied Goldsboro, an
important point a hundred miles south of Richmond, commanding the
Southern railway communications of the Confederate capital. The
situation was singularly dramatic and impressive. In this narrow theatre
of war were now being rendered, with all the leading actors on the
stage, the closing scenes of that great and bloody tragedy. Grant on the
north and Sherman on the south were grinding Lee and Johnston between
them like upper and nether millstones.

The last days of March brought unmistakable signs of the speedy
breaking-up of the rebellion. Lincoln, filled with anticipation not
unmixed with anxiety, wished to be at the front. "When we came to the
end of the War and the breaking-up of things," says General Grant, "one
of Lincoln's friends said to me, 'I think Lincoln would like to come
down and spend a few days at City Point, but he is afraid if he does
come it might look like interfering with the movements of the army, and
after all that has been said about other Generals he hesitates.' I was
told that if Lincoln had a hint from me that he would be welcome he
would come by the first boat. Of course I sent word that the President
could do me no greater honor than to come down and be my guest. He came
down, and we spent several days riding around the lines. He was a fine
horseman. He talked, and talked, and talked; he seemed to enjoy it, and
said, 'How grateful I feel to be with the boys and see what is being
done at Richmond!' He never asked a question about the movements. He
would say, 'Tell me what has been done; not what is to be done.' He
would sit for hours tilted back in his chair, with his hand shading his
eyes, watching the movements of the men with the greatest interest."
Another account says: "Lincoln made many visits with Grant to the lines
around Richmond and Petersburg. On such occasions he usually rode one of
the General's fine bay horses, called 'Cincinnati.' He was a good
horseman, and made his way through swamps and over corduroy roads as
well as the best trooper in the command. The soldiers invariably
recognized him, and greeted him, wherever he appeared amongst them, with
cheers that were no lip service, but came from the depth of their
hearts. He always had a pleasant salute or a friendly word for the men
in the ranks."

Aside from the President's desire to be at the front at this critical
time, he had an almost feverish anxiety to escape from the petty
concerns and details of official life in Washington. In Welles's Diary
is this entry (March 23, 1865): "The President has gone to the front,
partly to get rid of the throng [office-seekers, politicians, etc.] that
is pressing on him. The more he yields, the greater the pressure. It has
now become such that he is compelled to flee. There is no doubt he is
much worn down. Besides, he wishes the war terminated, and, to this end,
that severe terms shall not be exacted of the Rebels."

Much of the time during the President's visit to the army he had his
quarters on the steamer "River Queen," lying in the James river at City
Point. It was the same vessel on which he had received the Southern
peace commissioners a month before, and the one on which he had made the
journey from Washington. On the 27th of March a memorable interview
occurred in the cabin of this vessel, between President Lincoln,
Generals Grant and Sherman, and Admiral Porter. General Sherman thus
describes the interview: "I left Goldsboro on the 25th of March and
reached City Point on the afternoon of the 27th. I found General Grant
and staff occupying a neat set of log huts, on a bluff overlooking the
James river. The General's family was with him. We had quite a long and
friendly talk, when Grant remarked that the President was near by in a
steamer lying at the dock, and he proposed that we should call at once.
We did so, and found Mr. Lincoln on board the 'River Queen.' We had met
in the early part of the war; he recognized me, and received me with a
warmth of manner and expression that was most grateful. We sat some time
in the after-cabin, and Mr. Lincoln made many inquiries about the events
which attended the march from Savannah to Goldsboro, and seemed to enjoy
the humorous stories about 'our bummers,' of which he had heard much.
When in lively conversation his face brightened wonderfully, but if the
conversation flagged it assumed a sad and sorrowful expression. General
Grant and I explained to him that my next move from Goldsboro would
bring my army, increased to 80,000 men by Schofield's and Terry's
reinforcements, in close communication with Grant's army then investing
Lee and Richmond; and that unless Lee could effect his escape and make
junction with Johnston in North Carolina, he would soon be shut up in
Richmond with no possibility of supplies, and would have to surrender.
Mr. Lincoln was extremely interested in this view of the case, and we
explained that Lee's only chance was to escape, join Johnston, and,
being then between me in North Carolina and Grant in Virginia, he could
choose which to fight. Mr. Lincoln seemed impressed with this; but
General Grant explained that at the very moment of our conversation
General Sheridan was pressing his cavalry across James River from the
north to the south, that with this cavalry he would so extend his left
below Petersburg as to meet the South Shore Road, and that if Lee should
'let go' his fortified lines he (Grant) would follow him so close that
he could not possibly fall on me alone in North Carolina. I in like
manner expressed the fullest confidence that my army in North Carolina
was willing to cope with Lee and Johnston combined, till Grant could
come up. But we both agreed that one more bloody battle was likely to
occur before the close of the war. Mr. Lincoln repeatedly inquired as to
General Schofield's ability to maintain his position in my absence, and
seemed anxious that I should return to North Carolina. More than once he
exclaimed, 'Must more blood be shed? Cannot this last bloody battle be
avoided?' We explained that we had to presume that General Lee was a
real general; that he must see that Johnston alone was no barrier to my
progress, and that if my army of 80,000 veterans should reach Burksville
he was lost in Richmond; and that we were forced to believe he would not
await that inevitable conclusion, but would make one more desperate
effort."

General Sherman adds this personal tribute to Lincoln to the account of
the interview on board the "River Queen": "When I left Mr. Lincoln I was
more than ever impressed by his kindly nature, his deep and earnest
sympathy with the afflictions of the whole people, resulting from the
war, and by the march of hostile armies through the South. I felt that
his earnest desire was to end the war speedily, without more bloodshed
or devastation, and to restore all the men of both sections to their
homes. In the language of his second inaugural address, he seemed to
have 'charity for all, malice toward none,' and above all an absolute
faith in the courage, manliness, and integrity of the armies in the
field. When at rest or listening, his legs and arms seemed to hang
almost lifeless, and his face was careworn and haggard; but the moment
he began to talk his face lightened up, his tall form, as it were,
unfolded, and he was the very impersonation of good humor and
fellowship. The last words I recall as addressed to me were that he
would feel better when I was back at Goldsboro. We parted at the gangway
of the 'River Queen,' about noon of March 28, and I never saw him again.
Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of
greatness, combined with goodness, than any other."

A few days after the interview described by General Sherman, the
President changed his quarters to the cabin of the "Malvern," Admiral
Porter's flagship. The Admiral says: "The 'Malvern' was a small vessel
with poor accommodations, and not at all fitted to receive high
personages. She was a captured blockade-runner, and had been given to me
as a flag-ship. I offered the President my bed, but he positively
declined it, and elected to sleep in a small state-room outside of the
cabin occupied by my secretary. It was the smallest kind of a room, six
feet long by four and a half feet wide--a small kind of a room for the
President of the United States to be domiciled in; but Mr. Lincoln
seemed pleased with it. When he came to breakfast the next morning, I
inquired how he had slept: 'I slept well,' he answered, 'but you can't
put a long sword into a short scabbard. I was _too long_ for that
berth.' Then I remembered he was over six feet four inches, while the
berth was only six feet. That day, while we were out of the ship, all
the carpenters were put to work; the state-room was taken down and
increased in size to eight feet by six and a half feet. The mattress was
widened to suit a berth of four feet width, and the entire state-room
remodelled. Nothing was said to the President about the change in his
quarters when he went to bed; but next morning he came out smiling, and
said: 'A miracle happened last night; I shrank six inches in length and
about a foot sideways. I got somebody else's big pillow, and slept in a
better bed than I did on the "River Queen."' He enjoyed it greatly; but
I do think if I had given him two fence-rails to sleep on he would not
have found fault. That was Abraham Lincoln in all things relating to his
own comfort. He would never permit people to put themselves out for him
under any circumstances."

On the 2d of April the stronghold of Petersburg fell into the hands of
the Union troops. Lincoln, accompanied by Admiral Porter, visited the
city. They joined General Grant, and sat with him for nearly two hours
upon the porch of a comfortable little house with a small yard in front.
Crowds of citizens soon gathered at the fence to gaze upon these
remarkable men of whom they had heard so much. The President's heart was
filled with joy, for he felt that this was "the beginning of the end."
Admiral Porter says: "Several regiments passed us _en route_, and they
all seemed to recognize the President at once. 'Three cheers for Uncle
Abe!' passed along among them, and the cheers were given with a vim
which showed the estimation in which he was held by the soldiers. That
evening," continues Admiral Porter, "the sailors and marines were sent
out to guard and escort in some prisoners, who were placed on board a
large transport lying in the stream. There were about a thousand
prisoners, more or less. The President expressed a desire to go on
shore. I ordered the barge and went with him. We had to pass the
transport with the prisoners. They all rushed to the side with eager
curiosity. All wanted to see the Northern President. They were perfectly
content. Every man had a chunk of meat and a piece of bread in his hand,
and was doing his best to dispose of it. 'That's Old Abe,' said one, in
a low voice. 'Give the old fellow three cheers,' said another; while a
third called out, Hello, Abe, your bread and meat's better than
pop-corn!' It was all good-natured, and not meant in unkindness. I could
see no difference between them and our own men, except that they were
ragged and attenuated for want of wholesome food. They were as happy a
set of men as ever I saw. They could see their homes looming up before
them in the distance, and knew that the war was over. 'They will never
shoulder a musket again in anger,' said the President, 'and if Grant is
wise he will leave them their guns to shoot crows with. It would do no
harm.'"

The next day (April 3) the Union advance, under General Weitzel, reached
and occupied Richmond. Lee was in retreat, with Grant in close pursuit.
When the news of the downfall of the Confederate capital reached Lincoln
on board the "Malvern," he exclaimed fervently: "Thank God that I have
lived to see this! It seems to me I have been dreaming a horrid dream
for four years, and now the nightmare is gone. _I want to see
Richmond._"

The vessel started up the river, but found it extremely difficult to
proceed, as the channel was filled with torpedoes and obstructions, and
they were obliged to wait until a passage could be cleared. Admiral
Porter thus describes what followed: "When the channel was reported
clear of torpedoes (a large number of which were taken up), I proceeded
up to Richmond in the 'Malvern,' with President Lincoln. Every vessel
that got through the obstructions wished to be the first one up, and
pushed ahead with all steam; but they grounded, one after another, the
'Malvern' passing them all, until she also took the ground. Not to be
delayed, I took the President in my barge, and with a tug ahead with a
file of marines on board we continued on up to the city. There was a
large bridge across the James about a mile below the landing, and under
this a party in a small steamer were caught and held by the current,
with no prospect of release without assistance. I ordered the tug to
cast off and help them, leaving us in the barge to go on alone. Here we
were in a solitary boat, after having set out with a number of vessels
flying flags at every masthead, hoping to enter the conquered capital in
a manner befitting the rank of the President of the United States, with
a further intention of firing a national salute in honor of the happy
result. Mr. Lincoln was cheerful, and had his 'little story' ready for
the occasion. 'Admiral, this brings to my mind a fellow who once came to
me to ask for an appointment as minister abroad. Finding he could not
get that, he came down to some more modest position. Finally he asked to
be made a tide-waiter. When he saw he could not get that, he asked me
for _an old pair of trousers._ It is sometimes well to be _humble_.'

"I had never been to Richmond before by that route," continues Admiral
Porter, "and did not know where the landing was; neither did the
cockswain nor any of the barge's crew. We pulled on, hoping to see
someone of whom we could inquire, but no one was in sight. The street
along the river-front was as deserted as if this had been a city of the
dead. The troops had been in possession some hours, but not a soldier
was to be seen. The current was now rushing past us over and among
rocks, on one of which we finally stuck; but I backed out and pointed
for the nearest landing. There was a small house on this landing, and
behind it were some twelve negroes digging with spades. The leader of
them was an old man sixty years of age. He raised himself to an upright
position as we landed, and put his hands up to his eyes. Then he
dropped his spade and sprang forward. 'Bress de Lord,' he said, 'dere is
_de great Messiah_! I knowed him as soon as I seed him. He's bin in my
heart fo' long yeahs, an' he's cum at las' to free his chillun from deir
bondage! Glory, Hallelujah!' And he fell upon his knees before the
President and kissed his feet. The others followed his example, and in a
minute Mr. Lincoln was surrounded by these people, who had treasured up
the recollection of him caught from a photograph, and had looked up to
him for four years as the one who was to lead them out of captivity. It
was a touching sight--that aged negro kneeling at the feet of the tall,
gaunt-looking man who seemed in himself to be bearing all the grief of
the nation, and whose sad face seemed to say, 'I suffer for you all, but
will do all I can to help you.' Mr. Lincoln looked down on the poor
creatures at his feet. He was much embarrassed at his position. 'Don't
kneel to me,' he said, 'that is not right. You must kneel to God only,
and thank Him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy. I am but God's
humble instrument; but you may rest assured that as long as I live no
one shall put a shackle on your limbs, and you shall have all the rights
which God has given to every other free citizen of this Republic.' It was
a minute or two before I could get the negroes to rise and leave the
President. The scene was so touching that I hated to disturb it, yet we
could not stay there all day; we had to move on; so I requested the
patriarch to withdraw from about the President with his companions, and
let us pass on. 'Yes, Mars,' said the old man, 'but after bein' so many
yeahs in de desert widout water, it's mighty pleasant to be lookin' at
las' on our spring of life. 'Scuse us, sir; we means no disrepec' to
Mars Lincoln; we means all love and gratitude.' And then, joining hands
together in a ring, the negroes sang a hymn, with the melodious and
touching voices possessed only by the negroes of the South. The
President and all of us listened respectfully while the hymn was being
sung. Four minutes at most had passed away since we first landed at a
point where, as far as the eye could reach, the streets were entirely
deserted; but now what a different scene appeared as that hymn went
forth from the negroes' lips! The streets seemed to be suddenly alive
with the colored race. They seemed to spring from the earth. They came
tumbling and shouting, from over the hills and from the water-side,
where no one was seen as we had passed. The crowd immediately became
very oppressive. We needed our marines to keep them off. I ordered
twelve of the boat's crew to fix bayonets to their rifles and surround
the President, all of which was quickly done; but the crowd poured in so
fearfully that I thought we all stood a chance of being crushed to
death. At length the President spoke. He could not move for the mass of
people--he had to do something. 'My poor friends,' he said, 'you are
free--free as air. You can cast off the name of slave and trample upon
it; it will come to you no more. Liberty is your birthright. God gave it
to you as He gave it to others, and it is a sin that you have been
deprived of it for so many years. But you must try to deserve this
priceless boon. Let the world see that you merit it, and are able to
maintain it by your good works. Don't let your joy carry you into
excesses. Learn the laws and obey them; obey God's commandments and
thank Him for giving you liberty, for to Him you owe all things. There,
now, let me pass on; I have but little time to spare. I want to see the
capital, and must return at once to Washington to secure to you that
liberty which you seem to prize so highly.' The crowd shouted and
screeched as if they would split the firmament, though while the
President was speaking you might have heard a pin drop."

Presently the little party was able to move on. "It never struck me,"
says Admiral Porter, "there was anyone in that multitude who would
injure Mr. Lincoln; it seemed to me that he had an army of supporters
there who could and would defend him against all the world. Our progress
was very slow; we did not move a mile an hour, and the crowd was still
increasing. It was a warm day, and the streets were dusty, owing to the
immense gathering which covered every part of them, kicking up the dirt.
The atmosphere was suffocating; but Mr. Lincoln could be seen plainly by
every man, woman, and child, towering head and shoulders above that
crowd; he overtopped every man there. He carried his hat in his hand,
fanning his face, from which the perspiration was pouring. He looked as
if he would have given his Presidency for a glass of water--I would have
given my commission for half that.

"Now came another phase in the procession. As we entered the city every
window flew up, from ground to roof, and every one was filled with
eager, peering faces, which turned one to another, and seemed to ask,
'Is this large man, with soft eyes, and kind, benevolent face, the one
who has been held up to us as the incarnation of wickedness, the
destroyer of the South?' There was nothing like taunt or defiance in the
faces of those who were gazing from the windows or craning their necks
from the sidewalks to catch a view of the President. The look of every
one was that of eager curiosity--nothing more. In a short time we
reached the mansion of Mr. Davis, President of the Confederacy, occupied
after the evacuation as the headquarters of General Weitzel and Shepley.
There was great cheering going on. Hundreds of civilians--I don't know
who they were--assembled at the front of the house to welcome Mr.
Lincoln. General Shepley made a speech and gave us a lunch, after which
we entered a carriage and visited the State House--the late seat of the
Confederate Congress. It was in dreadful disorder, betokening a sudden
and unexpected flight; members' tables were upset, bales of Confederate
scrip were lying about the floor, and many official documents of some
value were scattered about.

"After this inspection I urged the President to go on board the
'Malvern.' I began to feel more heavily the responsibility resting upon
me through the care of his person. The evening was approaching, and we
were in a carriage open on all sides. He was glad to go; he was tired
out, and wanted the quiet of the flag-ship. I was oppressed with
uneasiness until we got on board and stood on the deck with the
President safe; then there was not a happier man anywhere than myself."

On Sunday, April 9, the President returned to Washington; and there he
heard the thrilling news that Lee, with his whole army, had that day
surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. Lincoln's first visit, after
reaching the capital, was to the house of Secretary Seward, who had met
with a severe accident during his absence, and was a prisoner in a sick
room. Lincoln's heart was full of joy, and he entered immediately upon
an account of his visit to Richmond and the glorious successes of the
Union army; "throwing himself," as Mr. Carpenter says, "in his almost
boyish exultation, at full length across the bed, supporting his head
upon one hand, and in this manner reciting the story of the collapse of
the Rebellion. Concluding, he lifted himself up and said, 'And now for a
day of Thanksgiving!'"

In Washington, as in every city and town in the loyal States, there was
the wildest enthusiasm over the good news from the army. Flags were
flying everywhere, cannon were sounding, business was suspended, and the
people gave themselves up to the impulses of joy and thanksgiving.
Monday afternoon the workmen of the navy-yard marched to the White
House, joining the thousands already there, and with bands playing and a
tumult of rejoicing, called persistently for the President. After some
delay Lincoln appeared at the window above the main entrance, and was
greeted with loud and prolonged cheers and demonstrations of love and
respect. He declined to make a formal speech, saying to the excited
throng beneath:

     I am very greatly rejoiced that an occasion has occurred so
     pleasurable that the people can't restrain themselves. I suppose
     that arrangements are being made for some sort of formal
     demonstration, perhaps this evening or to-morrow night. If there
     should be such a demonstration, I, of course, shall have to respond
     to it, and I shall have nothing to say if I dribble it out before.
     I see you have a band. I propose now closing up by requesting you
     to play a certain air or tune. I have always thought "Dixie" one of
     the best tunes I ever heard. I have heard that our adversaries over
     the way have attempted to appropriate it as a national air. I
     insisted yesterday that we had fairly captured it. I presented the
     question to the Attorney-General, and he gave his opinion that it
     is our lawful prize. I ask the band to give us a good turn upon it.

The band did give "a good turn" not only to "Dixie," but to the
whimsical tune of "Yankee Doodle," after which Lincoln proposed three
cheers for General Grant and all under his command; and then "three more
cheers for our gallant navy," at the close of which he bowed and retired
amid the inspiring strains of "Hail Columbia" discoursed with vigor by
the patriotic musicians.

As additional despatches were received from the army, the joyful
excitement in Washington increased. Tuesday evening, April 11, the
President's mansion, the Executive Departments, and many of the business
places and private residences, were illuminated, bonfires were kindled,
and fireworks sent off, in celebration of the great event which stirred
the hearts of the people. A vast mass of citizens crowded about the
White House, as Lincoln appeared at the historic East window and made
his last speech to the American public. It was a somewhat lengthy
address, and had been prepared and written out for the occasion. "We
meet this evening, not in sorrow but in gladness of heart," began the
President. "No part of the honor or praise is mine. To General Grant,
his skilful officers and brave men, all belongs." Mr. Brooks, who was in
the White House during the delivery of this address, gives the following
glimpses behind the scenes: "As Lincoln spoke, the multitude was as
silent as if the court-yard had been deserted. Then, as his speech was
written on loose sheets, and the candles placed for him were too low, he
took a light in his hand and went on with his reading. Soon coming to
the end of a page, he found some difficulty in handling the manuscript
and holding the candlestick. A friend who stood behind the drapery of
the window reached out and took the candle, and held it until the end of
the speech, and the President let the loose pages fall on the floor, one
by one, as fast as he was through with them. Presently Tad, having
refreshed himself at the dinner-table, came back in search of amusement.
He gathered up the scattered sheets of the President's speech, and then
amused himself by chasing the leaves as they fluttered from the
speaker's hand. Growing impatient at his father's delay to drop another
page, Tad whispered, 'Come, give me another!' The President made a queer
motion with his foot toward the boy, but otherwise showed no sign that
he had other thoughts than those which he was dropping to the listeners
beneath. Without was a vast sea of upturned faces, each eye fixed on the
form of the President. Around the tall white pillars of the portico
flowed an undulating surface of human beings, stirred by emotion and
lighted with the fantastic colors of fireworks. At the window, his face
irradiated with patriotic joy, was the much-beloved Lincoln, reading the
speech that was to be his last to the people. Behind him crept back and
forth, on his hands and knees, the boy of the White House, gathering up
his father's carefully written pages, and occasionally lifting up his
eager face waiting for more. It was before and behind the scenes.
Sometimes I wonder, when I recall that night, how much of a father's
love and thought of his boy might have been mingled in Lincoln's last
speech to the eager multitude."

The President's speech on this occasion was largely devoted to the
impending problem of Reconstruction in the South. The problem was
complex and difficult, with no recognized principles or precedent for
guidance. Said Lincoln: "Unlike the case of a war between independent
nations, there is no authorized organization for us to treat with. No
one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We
simply must begin with and mould from disorganized and discordant
elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment, that we, the loyal
people, differ amongst ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of
reconstruction. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring
the proper practical relations between these States and the Union." The
problem thus touched upon was one that had long occupied the thoughts
of Lincoln, especially since the downfall of the Confederacy had been
imminent. His practical and far-seeing mind was already addressing
itself to the new issues, duties, and responsibilities, which he saw
opening before him, and which he well knew would demand all of his
wisdom, firmness, and political sagacity. As was to be expected, a great
diversity of views prevailed. A powerful faction in Congress,
sympathized with by some members of the Cabinet, was for "making treason
odious" and dealing with the insurgent States as conquered provinces
that had forfeited all rights once held under the Constitution and were
entitled only to such treatment as the Government chose to give them.
Lincoln's ideas were very different. His mind was occupied with
formulating a policy having for its object the welfare of the Southern
people and the restoration of the rebellious States to the Union. His
broad and statesmanlike views were outlined, the day after the public
address just referred to, in discussing Secretary Welles's plans for
convening the legislature of Virginia. Says Mr. Welles in his Diary:
"His idea was that the members of the legislature, comprising the
prominent and influential men of their respective counties, had better
come together and undo their own work. Civil government must be
reestablished, he said, as soon as possible; there must be courts, and
law and order, or society would be broken up, the disbanded armies would
turn into robber bands and guerillas, which we must strive to prevent.
These were the reasons why he wished prominent Virginians who had the
confidence of the people to come together and turn themselves and their
neighbors into good Union men." Lincoln had no thought of leaving any of
these questions to the military authorities. In March he had directed a
despatch from Stanton to Grant, saying: "The President wishes you to
have no conference with General Lee, unless it be for the capitulation
of his army, or on some other minor and purely military matter. He
instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon
any political question. Such questions the President _holds in his own
hands_, and will submit them to no military conferences or conventions."
During his meeting with Grant at Petersburg the President revealed to
the General many of his plans for the rehabilitation of the South, and
it could easily be seen that a spirit of magnanimity was uppermost in
his heart. And at the conference with Grant, Sherman, and Porter, on
board the "River Queen," the same subject was broached. "Though I cannot
attempt to recall the words spoken by any one of the persons present on
that occasion," says General Sherman, "I know we talked generally about
what was to be done when Lee's and Johnston's armies were beaten and
dispersed. On this point Mr. Lincoln was very full. He said that he had
long thought of it, that he hoped this end could be reached without more
bloodshed, but in any event he wanted us to get the men of the Southern
armies disarmed and back to their homes; that he contemplated no
revenge, no harsh measures, but quite the contrary, and that their
suffering and hardships during the war would make them the more
submissive to law." Says Hon. George Bancroft: "It was the nature of Mr.
Lincoln to forgive. When hostilities ceased he who had always sent forth
the flag with every one of its stars in the field was eager to receive
back his returning countrymen."

One of the last stories of personal interviews with President Lincoln
relates to his feeling of clemency for the men lately in rebellion. It
is told by Senator Henderson of Missouri. "About the middle of March,
1865," says Senator Henderson, "I went to the White House to ask the
President to pardon a number of men who had been languishing in Missouri
prisons for various offenses, all political. Some of them had been my
schoolmates, and their mothers and sisters and sweethearts had persisted
in appeals that I should use my influence for their release. Since it
was evident to me that the Confederacy was in its last throes, I felt
that the pardon of most of these prisoners would do more good than harm.
I had separated them, according to the gravity of their offenses, into
three classes; and handing the first list to him, I said, 'Mr.
President, the session of the Senate is closed, and I am about to start
for home. The war is virtually over. Grant is pretty certain to get Lee
and his army, and Sherman is plainly able to take care of Johnston. In
my opinion the best way to prevent guerilla warfare at the end of
organized resistance will be to show clemency to these Southern
sympathizers.' Lincoln shook his head and said, 'Henderson, I am deeply
indebted to you, and I want to show it; but don't ask me at this time to
pardon rebels. I can't do it. People are continually blaming me for
being too lenient. Don't encourage such fellows by inducing me to turn
loose a lot of men who perhaps ought to be hanged.' I answered, 'Mr.
President, these prisoners and their friends tell me that for them the
war is over; and it will surely have a good influence now to let them
go.' He replied, 'Henderson, my conscience tells me that I must not do
it.' But I persisted. 'Mr. President, you _should_ do it. It is
necessary for good feeling in Missouri that these people be released.'
'If I sign this list as a whole, will you be responsible for the future
good behavior of these men?' he asked. 'Yes,' I replied, 'I will.' 'Then
I'll take the risk.' He wrote the word _Pardoned_, signed the order of
release, and returned the paper to me. 'Thank you, Mr. President,' I
said, 'but that is not all. I have another list.' 'You're not going to
make me let loose another lot!' he exclaimed. 'Yes,' I answered, 'and my
argument is the same as before. The guilt of these men is doubtful.
Mercy must be the policy of peace.' With the only words approaching
profanity that I ever heard him utter, he exclaimed, '_I'll be durned if
I don't sign it!_ Now, Henderson,' he said, as he handed me the list,
'remember that you are responsible to me for these men, and if they
don't behave '_I'll put you in prison for their sins._'"

Lincoln's whole feeling toward the vanquished Southern people was one of
peace and magnanimity. While many were clamoring for the execution of
the Southern leaders, and especially Jefferson Davis, Lincoln said, only
a day or two before his death: "This talk about Mr. Davis wearies me. I
hope he will mount a fleet horse, reach the shores of the Gulf of
Mexico, and ride _so far into its waters_ that we shall never see him
again." And then he told a pat story--perhaps his last--of a boy in
Springfield, "who saved up his money and bought a 'coon,' which, after
the novelty wore off, became a great nuisance. He was one day leading
him through the streets, and had his hands full to keep clear of the
little vixen, who had torn his clothes half off him. At length he sat
down on the curb-stone, completely fagged out. A man passing was stopped
by the lad's disconsolate appearance, and asked the matter. 'Oh,' was
the only reply, 'this coon is such a _trouble_ to me!' 'Why don't you
get rid of him, then?' said the gentleman. '_Hush_!' said the boy,
'don't you see he is gnawing his rope off? I am going to let him do it,
and then I will go home and tell the folks _that he got away from me_.'"

At the last Cabinet meeting ever attended by Lincoln, held in the
morning of the day on which he was shot, the subject of Reconstruction
was again uppermost, and various plans were presented and discussed.
Secretary Stanton brought forward a plan or ordinance which he said he
had prepared with much care and after a great deal of reflection. It was
arranged that a copy of this should be furnished to each member of the
Cabinet, for criticism and suggestion. "In the meantime," says Secretary
Welles, "we were requested by the President to deliberate and carefully
consider the proposition. He remarked that this was _the great question_
now before us, and _we must soon begin to act_." What that action would
have been had Lincoln lived--what wrong and misery would have been
spared to the South and shame and dishonor to the North--no one can
doubt who comprehends the fibre of that kindly, just, and indomitable
soul.




CHAPTER XXIX


     The Last of Earth--Events of the Last Day of Lincoln's Life--The
     Last Cabinet Meeting--The Last Drive with Mrs. Lincoln--Incidents
     of the Afternoon--Riddance to Jacob Thompson--A Final Act of
     Pardon--The Fatal Evening--The Visit to the Theatre--The Assassin's
     Shot--A Scene of Horror--Particulars of the Crime--The Dying
     President--A Nation's Grief--Funeral Obsequies--The Return to
     Illinois--At Rest in Oak Ridge Cemetery.

It is something to be ever gratefully remembered, that the last day of
Lincoln's life was filled with sunshine. His cares and burdens slipped
from him like a garment, and his spirit was filled with a blessed and
benignant peace.

On the morning of that fatal Friday, the 14th day of April, the
President had a long conversation at breakfast with his son Robert, then
a member of Grant's staff, who had just arrived from the front with
additional particulars of Lee's surrender, of which event he had been a
witness. The President listened with close attention to the interesting
recital; then, taking up a portrait of General Lee, which his son had
brought him, he placed it on the table before him, where he scanned it
long and thoughtfully. Presently he said: "It is a good face. It is the
face of a noble, brave man. I am glad that the war is over at last."
Looking upon Robert, he continued: "Well, my son, you have returned
safely from the front. The war is now closed, and we will soon live in
peace with the brave men who have been fighting against us. I trust that
the era of good feeling has returned, and that henceforth we shall live
in harmony together."

After breakfast the President received Speaker Colfax, spending an hour
or more in discussing his plans regarding the adjustment of matters in
the South. This was followed by an interview with Hon. John P. Hale, the
newly appointed Minister to Spain, and by calls of congratulation from
members of Congress and old friends from Illinois. Afterwards he took a
short drive with General Grant, who had just come to the city to consult
regarding the disbandment of the army and the parole of prisoners. The
people were wild with enthusiasm, and wherever the President and General
Grant appeared they were greeted with cheers, the clapping of hands,
waving of handkerchiefs, and every possible demonstration of delight.

At the Cabinet meeting held at noon the President was accompanied by
General Grant. The meeting is thus described by one who was present,
Secretary Welles: "Congratulations were interchanged, and earnest
inquiry was made whether any information had been received from General
Sherman. General Grant, who was invited to remain, said he was expecting
hourly to hear from Sherman, and had a good deal of anxiety on the
subject. The President remarked that the news would come soon and come
favorably, he had no doubt, for he had last night his usual dream which
had preceded nearly every important event of the war. I inquired the
particulars of this remarkable dream. He said it was in my
department--it related to the water; that he seemed to be in a singular
and indescribable vessel, but always the same, and that he was moving
with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore; that he had had
this singular dream preceding the firing on Sumter, the battles of Bull
Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Stone River, Vicksburg, Wilmington, etc.
General Grant remarked, with some emphasis and asperity, that Stone
River was no victory--that a few such victories would have ruined the
country, and he knew of no important results from it. The President said
that perhaps he should not altogether agree with him, but whatever might
be the facts his singular dream preceded that fight. Victory did not
always follow his dream, but the event and results were important. He
had no doubt that a battle had taken place or was about being fought,
'and Johnston will be beaten, for I had this strange dream again last
night. It must relate to Sherman; my thoughts are in that direction, and
_I know of no other very important event which is likely just now to
occur_.'" "Great events," adds Mr. Welles in his Diary, "did indeed
follow; for within a few hours the good and gentle as well as truly
great man who narrated his dream closed forever his earthly career."

After the Cabinet meeting the President took a drive with Mrs. Lincoln,
expressing a wish that no one should accompany them. His heart was
filled with a solemn joy, which awoke memories of the past to mingle
with hopes for the future; and in this subdued moment he desired to be
alone with the one who stood nearest to him in human relationship. In
the course of their talk together, he said: "Mary, we have had a hard
time of it since we came to Washington; but the war is over, and with
God's blessing we may hope for four years of peace and happiness, and
then we will go back to Illinois and pass the rest of our lives in
quiet." He spoke, says Mr. Arnold, "of his old Springfield home; and
recollections of his early days, his little brown cottage, the law
office, the court room, the green bag for his briefs and law papers, his
adventures when riding the circuit, came thronging back to him. The
tension under which he had for so long been kept was removed, and he was
like a boy out of school. 'We have laid by,' said he to his wife, 'some
money, and during this term we will try and save up more, but shall not
have enough to support us. We will go back to Illinois, and I will open
a law office at Springfield or Chicago, and practise law, and at least
do enough to help give us a livelihood.' Such were the dreams, the
day-dreams of Lincoln, on the last day of his earthly life."

Mr. Neill, the President's private secretary, states that between three
and four o'clock of this day he had occasion to seek the President to
procure his signature to a paper. "I found," says Mr. Neill, "that he
had retired to the private parlor of the house for lunch. While I was
looking over the papers on his table, to see if I could find the desired
commission, he came back, eating an apple. I told him what I was looking
for, and as I talked he placed his hand upon the bell-pull. I said: 'For
whom are you going to ring?' Placing his hand upon my coat, he spoke but
two words: 'Andrew Johnson.' 'Then,' I said, 'I will come in again.' As
I was leaving the room, the Vice-President had been ushered in, and the
President advanced and took him by the hand."

Charles A. Dana, the Assistant Secretary of War, says that his last
recollections of President Lincoln are indelibly associated with the
seditious Jacob Thompson. "Late in the afternoon," says Mr. Dana, "a
despatch was received at the War Department from the provost marshal of
Portland, Maine, saying that he had received information that Jacob
Thompson would arrive in Portland during that night, in order to take
there the Canadian steamer which was to sail for Liverpool. On reading
this despatch to Mr. Stanton, the latter said, 'Order him to be
arrested--but no; you had better take it over to the President.' I found
Mr. Lincoln in the inner room of his business office at the White House,
with his coat off, washing his hands preparatory to a drive. 'Hello,'
said he, 'what is it?' Listening to the despatch, he asked, 'What does
Stanton say?' 'He thinks he ought to be arrested,' I replied. 'Well,' he
continued, drawling his words, 'I rather guess not. When you have an
elephant on your hands, and he wants to run away, better let him run.'"

During the afternoon the President signed a pardon for a soldier
sentenced to be shot for desertion; remarking, as he did so, "Well, I
think the boy can do us more good above ground than under ground." He
also approved an application for the discharge, on taking the oath of
allegiance, of a Southern prisoner, on whose petition he wrote, "_Let it
be done_." This act of mercy was his last official order.

It had been decided early in the day that the President and Mrs. Lincoln
would attend Ford's Theatre in the evening, to witness the play of "The
American Cousin." Lincoln had invited General Grant to accompany his
party to the theatre, saying that the people would expect to see him and
should not be disappointed. But the General had declined, as Mrs. Grant
was anxious to start that afternoon to visit their children, who were at
school in Burlington, New Jersey.

As the hour approached for leaving for the theatre, the President was
engaged in a conversation with two friends--Speaker Colfax and Hon.
George Ashmun of Massachusetts. The business on which they had met not
being concluded, the President gave Mr. Ashmun a card on which he had
written these words: "Allow Mr. Ashmun and friend to come in at 9 A.M.
to-morrow--A. Lincoln." He then turned to Mr. Colfax, saying, "You are
going with Mrs. Lincoln and me to the theatre, I hope." Mr. Colfax
pleaded other engagements, when Lincoln remarked: "Mr. Sumner has the
gavel of the Confederate Congress, which he got at Richmond to hand to
the Secretary of War. But I insisted then that he must give it to you;
and you tell him for me to hand it over." He then rose, but seemed
reluctant to go, expressing a half-determination to delay a while
longer. It was undoubtedly to avoid disappointing the audience, to whom
his presence had been promised, that he went to the play-house that
night. At the door he stopped and said to Speaker Colfax, who was about
to leave for the Pacific coast, "Colfax, do not forget to tell the
people in the mining regions, as you pass through, what I told you this
morning about the development when peace comes. I will telegraph you at
San Francisco."

It was nine o'clock when the Presidential party reached the theatre. The
place was crowded; "many ladies in rich and gay costumes, officers in
their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young folks, the usual
clusters of gaslights, the usual magnetism of so many people, cheerful,
with perfumes, music of violins and flutes--and over all, and saturating
all, that vast, vague wonder, Victory, the Nation's victory, the triumph
of the Union, filling the air, the thought, the sense, with exhilaration
more than all perfumes." As the President entered he was greeted with
tremendous cheers, to which he responded with genial courtesy. The box
reserved for him, at the right of the stage, a little above the floor,
was draped and festooned with flags. As the party were seated, the
daughter of Senator Harris of New York occupied the corner nearest the
stage; next her was Mrs. Lincoln; and behind them sat the President and
Major Rathbone, the former being nearest the door.

    In his quiet chair he sate,
      Pure of malice or guile,
    Stainless of fear or hate;
      And there played a pleasant smile
    On the rough and careworn face,--
      For his heart was all the while
    On means of mercy and grace.

    The brave old flag drooped o'er him,--
      A fold in the hard hand lay;
      He looked perchance on the play,--
    But the scene was a shadow before him,
      For his thoughts were far away.

It was half-past ten o'clock, and the audience was absorbed in the
progress of the play, when suddenly a pistol shot, loud and sharp, rang
through the theatre. All eyes were instantly directed toward the
President's box, whence the report proceeded. A moment later, the figure
of a man, holding a smoking pistol in one hand and a dagger in the
other, appeared at the front of the President's box, and sprang to the
stage, some eight or ten feet below, shouting as he did so, "_Sic semper
tyrannis!_" He fell as he struck the stage; but quickly recovering
himself, sprang through the side-wings and escaped from the theatre by a
rear door.

At the moment of the assassination a single actor, Mr. Hawk, was on the
stage. In his account of the tragical event he says: "When I heard the
shot fired, I turned, looked up at the President's box, heard the man
exclaim, '_Sic semper tyrannis_!' saw him jump from the box, seize the
flag on the staff, and drop to the stage. He slipped when he struck the
stage, but got upon his feet in a moment, brandished a large knife,
crying, 'The South shall be free,' turned his face in the direction
where I stood, and I recognized him as John Wilkes Booth. He ran towards
me, and I, seeing the knife, thought I was the one he was after, and ran
off the stage and up a flight of stairs. He made his escape out of a
door directly in the rear of the theatre, mounted a horse, and rode off.
The above all occurred in the space of a quarter of a minute, and at the
time I did not know the President was shot."

Scarcely had the horror-stricken audience witnessed the leap and flight
of the asassin when a woman's shriek pierced through the theatre,
recalling all eyes to the President's box. The scene that ensued is
described with singular vividness by the poet Walt Whitman, who was
present: "A moment's hush--a scream--the cry of murder--Mrs. Lincoln
leaning out of the box, with ashy cheeks and lips, with involuntary cry,
pointing to the retreating figure, '_He has killed the President!_' And
still a moment's strange, incredulous suspense--and then the
deluge!--then that mixture of horror, noises, uncertainty--(the sound,
somewhere back, of a horse's hoofs clattering with speed)--the people
burst through chairs and railing, and break them up--that noise adds to
the queerness of the scene--there is inextricable confusion and
terror--women faint--feeble persons fall and are trampled on--many cries
of agony are heard--the broad stage suddenly fills to suffocation with a
dense and motley crowd, like some horrible carnival--the audience rush
generally upon it--at least the strong men do--the actors and actresses
are there in their play costumes and painted faces, with mortal fright
showing through the rouge--some trembling, some in tears--the screams
and calls, confused talk--redoubled, trebled--two or three manage to
pass up water from the stage to the President's box--others try to
clamber up. Amidst all this, a party of soldiers, two hundred or more,
hearing what is done, suddenly appear; they storm the house, inflamed
with fury, literally charging the audience with fixed bayonets, muskets,
and pistols, shouting, 'Clear out! clear out!'.... And in the midst of
that pandemonium of senseless haste--the infuriated soldiers, the
audience, the stage, its actors and actresses, its paints and spangles
and gaslights,--the life blood from those veins, the best and sweetest
of the land, drips slowly down, and death's ooze already begins its
little bubbles on the lips."

It appears that Booth, the assassin, had long been plotting the murder
of the President, and was awaiting a favorable moment for its execution.
He had visited the theatre at half-past eleven on the morning of the
14th, and learned that a box had been taken for the President that
evening. He engaged a fleet horse for a saddle-ride in the afternoon,
and left it at a convenient place. In the evening he rode to the
theatre, and, leaving the animal in charge of an accomplice, entered the
house. Making his way to the door of the President's box, and taking a
small Derringer pistol in one hand and a double-edged dagger in the
other, he thrust his arm into the entrance, where the President, sitting
in an arm-chair, presented to his view the back and side of his head. A
flash, a sharp report, a puff of smoke, and the fatal bullet had entered
the President's brain.

Major Rathbone, who occupied a seat in the President's box, testifies
that he was sitting with his back toward the door, when he heard the
discharge of a pistol behind him, and looking around saw through the
smoke a man between the door and the President. Major Rathbone instantly
sprang toward him and seized him; the man wrested himself from his
grasp, and made a violent thrust at the Major's breast with a large
knife. The Major parried the blow by striking it up, and received a
wound in his left arm. The man rushed to the front of the box, and the
Major endeavored to seize him again, but only caught his clothes as he
was leaping over the railing of the box. Major Rathbone then turned to
the President. His position was not changed; his head was slightly bent
forward, and his eyes were closed.

As soon as the surgeons who had been summoned completed their hasty
examination, the unconscious form of the President was borne from the
theatre to a house across the street, and laid upon his death-bed.
Around him were gathered Surgeon-General Barnes, Vice-President Johnson,
Senator Sumner, Secretaries Stanton and Welles, Generals Halleck and
Meigs, Attorney-General Speed, Postmaster-General Dennison, Mr.
McCulloch, Speaker Colfax, and other intimate friends who had been
hastily summoned. Mrs. Lincoln sat in an adjoining room, prostrate and
overwhelmed, with her son Robert. The examination of the surgeons had
left no room for hope. The watchers remained through the night by the
bedside of the stricken man, who showed no signs of consciousness; and a
little after seven o'clock in the morning--Saturday the 15th of
April--he breathed his last.

A vivid account of the death-bed scene, together with particulars of the
attacks upon Secretary Seward and his son Frederick a half-hour later
than the attack upon the President, is furnished in the contemporaneous
record of Secretary Welles, a singularly cool observer and clear
narrator. "I had retired to bed about half-past ten on the evening of
the 14th of April," writes Mr. Welles, "and was just getting asleep when
Mrs. Welles, my wife, said some one was at our door.... I arose at once
and raised a window, when my messenger, James Smith, called to me that
Mr. Lincoln, the President, had been shot; and said Secretary Seward and
his son, Assistant Secretary Frederick Seward, were assassinated.... I
immediately dressed myself, and, against the earnest remonstrance and
appeals of my wife, went directly to Mr. Seward's, whose residence was
on the east side of the square, mine being on the north.... Entering the
house, I found the lower hall and office full of persons, and among them
most of the foreign legations, all anxiously inquiring what truth there
was in the horrible rumors afloat.... At the head of the first stairs I
met the elder Mrs. Seward, who was scarcely able to speak, but desired
me to proceed up to Mr. Seward's room.... As I entered, I met Miss Fanny
Seward, with whom I exchanged a single word, and proceeded to the foot
of the bed. Dr. Verdi, and, I think, two others, were there. The bed was
saturated with blood. The Secretary was lying on his back, the upper
part of his head covered by a cloth, which extended down over his eyes.
His mouth was open, the lower jaw dropping down. I exchanged a few
whispered words with Dr. Verdi. Secretary Stanton, who came after but
almost simultaneously with me, made inquiries in a louder tone till
admonished by a word from one of the physicians. We almost immediately
withdrew and went into the adjoining front room, where lay Frederick
Seward. His eyes were open, but he did not move them, nor a limb, nor
did he speak. Doctor White, who was in attendance, told me he was
unconscious and more dangerously injured than his father.... As we
descended the stairs, I asked Stanton what he had heard in regard to the
President that was reliable. He said the President was shot at Ford's
Theatre, that he had seen a man who was present and witnessed the
occurrence. I said I would go immediately to the White House. Stanton
told me the President was not there but was at the theatre. 'Then,' said
I, 'let us go immediately there.' ... The President had been carried
across the street from the theatre, to the house of a Mr. Peterson. We
entered by ascending a flight of steps above the basement and passing
through a long hall to the rear, where the President lay extended on a
bed, breathing heavily. Several surgeons were present, at least six, I
should think more. Among them I was glad to observe Dr. Hall, who,
however, soon left. I inquired of Dr. H., as I entered, the true
condition of the President. He replied the President was dead to all
intents, although he might live three hours or perhaps longer.... The
giant sufferer lay extended diagonally across the bed, which was not
long enough for him. He had been stripped of his clothes. His large
arms, which were occasionally exposed, were of a size which one would
scarce have expected from his spare appearance. His slow, full
respiration lifted the clothes with each breath that he took. His
features were calm and striking. I had never seen them appear to better
advantage than for the first hour, perhaps, that I was there. After
that, his right eye began to swell and that part of his face became
discolored ... Senator Sumner was there, I think, when I entered. If
not, he came in soon after, as did Speaker Colfax, Mr. Secretary
McCulloch, and the other members of the Cabinet, with the exception of
Mr. Seward. A double guard was stationed at the door and on the
sidewalk, to repress the crowd, which was of course highly excited and
anxious. The room was small and overcrowded. The surgeons and members of
the Cabinet were as many as should have been in the room, but there were
many more, and the hall and other rooms in the front or main house were
full. One of these rooms was occupied by Mrs. Lincoln and her
attendants, with Miss Harris. Mrs. Dixon and Mrs. Kinney came to her
about twelve o'clock. About once an hour Mrs. Lincoln would repair to
the bedside of her dying husband and with lamentations and tears remain
until overcome by emotion.... A door which opened upon a porch or
gallery, and also the windows, were kept open for fresh air. The night
was dark, cloudy, and damp, and about six it began to rain. I remained
in the room until then without sitting or leaving it, when, there being
a vacant chair which some one left at the foot of the bed, I occupied it
for nearly two hours, listening to the heavy groans, and witnessing the
wasting life of the good and great man who was expiring before me.... A
little before seven in the morning I re-entered the room where the dying
President was rapidly drawing near the closing moments. His wife soon
after made her last visit to him. The death-struggle had begun. Robert,
his son, stood with several others at the head of the bed. The
respiration of the President became suspended at intervals, and at last
entirely ceased at twenty-two minutes past seven o'clock."

The news of the President's assassination flashed rapidly over the
country, everywhere causing the greatest consternation and grief. The
revulsion from the joy which had filled all loyal hearts at the
prospects of peace was sudden and profound. All business ceased, and
gave way to mourning and lamentation. The flags, so lately unfurled in
exultation, were now dropped at half-mast, and emblems of sorrow were
hung from every door and window. Men walked with a dejected air. They
gathered together in groups in the street, and spoke of the murder of
the President as of a personal calamity. The nation's heart was smitten
sorely, and signs of woe were in every face and movement.

A scene which transpired in Philadelphia, the morning after the murder,
reflects the picture presented in every city and town in the United
States. "We had taken our seats," says the delineator, "in the early car
to ride down town, men and boys going to work. The morning papers had
come up from town as usual, and the men unrolled them to read as the car
started. The eye fell on the black border and ominous column-lines.
Before we could speak, a good Quaker at the head of the car broke out in
horror: 'My God! What's this? _Lincoln is assassinated._' The driver
stopped the car, and came in to hear the awful tidings. There stood the
car, mid-street, as the heavy news was read in the gray dawn of that
ill-fated day. Men bowed their faces in their hands, and on the
straw-covered floor hot tears fell fast. Silently the driver took the
bells from his horses, and we started like a hearse cityward. What a
changed city since the day before! Then all was joy over the end of the
war; now we were plunged in a deeper gulf of woe. The sun rose on a city
smitten and weeping. All traffic stood still; the icy hand of death lay
flat on the heart of commerce, and it gave not a throb. Men stood by
their open stores saying, with hands on each other's shoulders, 'Our
President is dead.' Over and over, in a dazed way, they said the fateful
syllables, as if the bullet that tore through the weary brain at
Washington had palsied the nation. The mute news-boy on the corner said
never a word as he handed to the speechless buyers the damp sheets from
the press; only he brushed, with unwashed hand, the tears from his dirty
cheeks. Groups stood listening on the pavement with faces to the earth,
while one, in choking voice, read the telegrams; then with a look they
departed in unworded woe, each cursing bitterly in his breast the 'deep
damnation of his taking off.' Mill operatives, clerks, workers, school
children, all came home, the faltering voice of the teacher telling the
wondering children to 'go home, there will be no school to-day.' The
housewife looked up amazed to see husband and children coming home so
soon. The father's face frightened her and she cried, 'What is wrong,
husband?' He could not speak the news, but the wee girl with the
school-books said, 'Mamma, they've killed the President.' Ere noon every
house wore crape; it was as if there lay a dead son in every home. For
hours a sad group hung around the bulletins, hoping against hope; then,
when the last hope died, turned sullenly homeward, saying, 'When all was
won, and all was done, then to strike him down!' The flags in the harbor
fell to half-mast; the streets were rivers of inky streamers; from
door-knobs floated crape; and even the unbelled car-horses seemed to
draw the black-robed cars more quietly than before."

On Saturday the remains were borne to the White House, where they were
embalmed and placed on a grand catafalque in the East Room. Little "Tad"
was overcome with grief. All day Saturday he was inconsolable, but on
Sunday morning the sun rose bright and beautiful and into his childish
heart came the thought that all was well with his father. He said to a
gentleman who called upon Mrs. Lincoln, "Do you think, sir, that my
father has gone to heaven?" "I have not a doubt of it," was the reply.
"Then," said the little fellow in broken voice, "I am glad he has gone
there, for he was never happy after he came here. This was not a good
place for him!" Tuesday the White House was thrown open to admit friends
who desired to look upon the still form as it lay in death. Wednesday,
the 19th, the funeral services took place. Mrs. Lincoln was too ill to
be present; but her two sons sat near the coffin in the East Room. Next
in order were ranged Andrew Johnson (now President) and the members of
the Cabinet, and after them the foreign representatives, the chief men
of the nation, and a large body of mourning citizens. The services were
conducted jointly by the Rev. Dr. Hall, Bishop Simpson, Dr. Gray, and
the Rev. Dr. Gurley, the latter delivering the discourse. At two o'clock
the funeral cortege started for the Capitol, where the remains were to
lie in state until the following morning. The procession was long and
imposing. "There were no truer mourners," says Secretary Welles, "than
the poor colored people who crowded the streets, joined the procession,
and exhibited their woe, bewailing the loss of him whom they regarded as
a benefactor and father. Women as well as men, with their little
children, thronged the streets, sorrow and trouble and distress depicted
on their countenances and in their bearing. The vacant holiday
expression had given way to real grief." The body was borne into the
rotunda, amidst funeral dirges and military salutes; and the religious
exercises of the occasion were concluded. A guard was stationed near the
coffin, and the public were again admitted to take their farewell of the
dead. While these obsequies were being performed at Washington, similar
ceremonies were observed in every part of the country. It had been
decided to convey the remains of Lincoln to the home which he left four
years before with such solemn and affectionate words of parting. The
funeral train left Washington on the 21st. Its passage through the
principal Eastern States and cities of the Union was a most mournful and
impressive spectacle. The heavily craped train, its sombre engine
swathed in black, moved through the land like an eclipse. At every point
vast crowds assembled to gain a tearful glimpse as it sped past.

    Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
    Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the
      violets peep'd from the ground, spotting the
      gray debris,
    Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes,
       passing the endless grass,
    Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from
      its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,
    Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the
      orchards,
    Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
    Night and day journeys a coffin.

    Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
    Through day and night with the great cloud darkening
      the land,
    With the pomp of the inloop'd flags, with the cities
      draped in black,
    With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil'd
      women standing,
    With processions long and winding and the flambeaus
      of the night,
    With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of
      faces and the unbared heads,
    With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the
      sombre faces,
    With dirges through the night, with the thousand
      voices rising strong and solemn,
    With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour'd
      around the coffin,
    The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs--
    With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang.

At the principal cities delays were made to enable the people to pay
their tribute of respect to the remains of their beloved President.
Through Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, the train passed to New
York City, where a magnificent funeral was held; thence along the shore
of the Hudson river to Albany, thence westward through the principal
cities of New York, Ohio, and Northern Indiana, the cortege wended its
solemn way, reaching, on the 1st of May, the city of Chicago. Here very
extensive preparations for funeral obsequies had been made by the
thousands who had known him in his life, and other thousands who had
learned to love him and now mourned his death.

On the 3d of May the funeral train reached Springfield, where old
friends and neighbors tenderly received the dust of their beloved dead.
Funeral services were held, and for twenty-four hours the catafalque
remained in the hall of the House, where thousands of tear-dimmed eyes
gazed for the last time upon the familiar face. Then, on the morning of
the 4th of May, a sorrowing procession escorted the remains to the
beautiful grounds of Oak Ridge Cemetery, to rest at last from the care
and tumult of a troubled life. To this hallowed spot have come the
gray-haired soldiers of that stormy war, reverently to salute their
great commander's tomb. Here shall long be paid the loving homage of the
dusky race that he redeemed. And pilgrims from every land, who value
human worth and human liberty, bring here their tributes of respect. And
here, while the Government that he saved endures, shall throng his
patriot countrymen, not idly to lament his loss, but to resolve _that
from this honored dead they take increased devotion to that cause for
which he gave the last full measure of devotion; that the dead shall not
have died in vain; that the nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth_.




NOTES

[A] The popular vote was as follows: Lincoln, 1,857,610; Douglas,
1,291,574; Breckenridge, 850,082; Bell, 646,124. Of the electoral
votes, Lincoln had 180; Breckenridge, 72; Bell, 39; and Douglas,
12.

[B] On the very day of Lincoln's arrival in Washington, he said to
some prominent men who had called upon him at his hotel, "As the
country has placed me at the helm of the ship, I'll try to steer
her through."

[C] This first call for troops was supplemented a month later (May
16) by a call for 42,034 volunteers for three years, for 22,114
officers and men for the regular army, and 18,000 seamen for the
navy.

[D] Orpheus C. Kerr (_Office Seeker_) was the pseudonymn of Robert
H. Newell, a popular humorist of the war period, who dealt
particularly with the comic aspects of Washington and army life.

[E] Lincoln never lost his interest in exhibitions of physical
strength, and involuntarily he always compared its possessor with
himself. On one occasion--it was in 1859--he was asked to make an
address at the State Fair of Wisconsin, which was held at
Milwaukee. Among the attractions was a "strong man" who went
through the usual performance of tossing iron balls and letting
them roll back down his arms, lifting heavy weights, etc.
Apparently Lincoln had never seen such a combination of strength
and agility before. He was greatly interested. Every now and then
he gave vent to the ejaculation, "By George! By George!" After the
speech was over, Governor Hoyt introduced him to the athlete; and
as Lincoln stood looking down at him from his great height,
evidently pondering that one so small could be so strong, he
suddenly gave utterance to one of his quaint speeches. "Why," he
said, "I could lick salt off the top of your hat!"

[F] Hon. George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts stated Lincoln said to
him personally: "When Lee came over the river, I made a resolution
that if McClellan drove him back I would send the proclamation
after him. The battle of Antietam was fought Wednesday, and until
Saturday I could not find out whether we had gained a victory or
lost a battle. It was then too late to issue the proclamation that
day; and the fact is, I fixed it up a little on Sunday, and Monday
I let them have it."

[G] The cause of General Hooker's seeming stupefaction at the
critical point of the Chancellorsville battle has been much
discussed but never satisfactorily explained. It has been thought
that he was disabled by the shock of a cannon-ball striking a post
or pillar of the house where he had his headquarters. An
interesting entry in Welles's Diary, made soon after the battle,
reflects somewhat the feeling at the time. "Sumner expresses an
absolute want of confidence in Hooker; says he knows him to be a
blasphemous wretch; that after crossing the Rappahannock and
reaching Centreville, Hooker exultingly exclaimed, 'The enemy are
in my power, and God Almighty cannot deprive me of them.' I have
heard before of this, but not so direct and positive. The sudden
paralysis that followed, when the army in the midst of a successful
career was suddenly checked and commenced its retreat, has never
been explained. Whiskey is said by Sumner to have done the work.
The President said that if Hooker had been killed by the shot which
knocked over the pillar that stunned him, we should have been
successful."

[H] General T.R. Tannatt, a graduate of West Point in 1858, is now
(1913) an active and honored citizen of Spokane, Washington.

[I] The criticism of Meade for not attacking Lee before he
recrossed the Potomac is based on the assumption that the attack
must be successful. On this point Meade's words to Halleck, written
in reply to the latter's conciliatory letter of July 28, can hardly
be ignored. "Had I attacked Lee the day I proposed to do so, and in
the ignorance that then existed of his position, I have every
reason to believe the attack would have been unsuccessful, and
would have resulted disastrously. This opinion is founded on the
judgment of a number of distinguished officers after inspecting
Lee's vacated works and position. Among these officers I could name
Generals Sedgwick, Wright, Slocum, Hays, Sykes, and others." In
other words the attack which Meade has been so severely blamed for
not making might have ended in reversing the results at Gettysburg,
losing all we had gained at such terrible cost, placed Washington
and other Northern cities in far more deadly peril, and changing
the whole subsequent issues of the war.

[J] A curious revelation of the estimate of General Halleck held by
at least one member of the Cabinet, and of the relations between
Halleck and the President, is found in Welles's Diary in the record
of a rather free conversation with the President during the anxious
period about the time of the battle of Gettysburg. Says Mr. Welles:
"I stated I had observed the inertness if not the incapacity of the
General-in-Chief, and had hoped that he [the President], who had
better and more correct views, would issue peremptory orders. The
President immediately softened his tone, and said, 'Halleck knows
better than I what to do. He is a military man, has had a military
education. I brought him here to give me military advice. His views
and mine are widely different. It is better that I, who am not a
military man, should defer to him, rather than he to me.' This,"
continues Mr. Welles, "is the President's error. His own
convictions and conclusions are infinitely superior to Halleck's;
even in military operations, more sensible and more correct
always.... Halleck has no activity; never exhibits sagacity or
foresight." And in another place in the same Diary we are given
this singular picture by a Cabinet minister of the man who was at
that moment the General-in-Chief of the Union armies and the
military adviser of the President: "Halleck sits and smokes, and
swears, and scratches his arm, but exhibits little military
capacity or intelligence; is obfuscated, muddy, uncertain, stupid
as to what is doing or to be done."




INDEX


_[The abbreviation "L.," as used in this index, refers in every case to
the subject of this biography_.]

Abolitionists,
  Bloomington convention, 165-169;
  crusade against slavery, 244-245;
  "Boston set" visits L., 482-484

Adams, Charles Francis, 343

Adams, John Quincy, 100, 549

Agassiz, Louis, visits L., 475-476

Alabama, secedes, 261

Allen, Robert, L's letter to, 59

Ames, Dr., 232

Ames, Oakes, 482

Anderson, Robert,
  meetings with L., 39-40;
  holds Fort Sumter, 262

Andrew, John A.,
  mentioned, 234, 342, 466;
  impression of L., 235

Anecdotes of L.,
  Aaron's commission from the Lord, 477;
  Abolitionist call for a convention, 165-166;
  About his wealth, 216;
  Actor who wanted consulship, 470;
  Anderson and L's good memory, 39-40;
  Anxiety during summer of 1864, 542-546;
  Artemus Ward, reading of, 332-333;
  Attorney for the people, 459;
  Authenticity of, 32;
  Baker rescued from opponents, 91;
  "Biggest shuck and smallest nubbin," 556;
  Birds restored to nest, 76;
  Black Hawk War, 37, 38, 40;
  Bob Lewis and the Mormon lands, 334-335;
  Booth's acting, 469;
  Bores, getting rid of, 460;
  Breach of promise suit, 81-82;
  Bread and butter dinner, 255;
  Bullet-hole through L's hat, 541-542;
  Burnside's brigadiers, promoted, 385;
  Butterfield's son, appointment, 107;
  "Cabinet a-sittin'," 330;
  Call for additional troops "not a personal question," 537;
  Cashiered officer, censured, 477-478;
  Challenge to work in field for votes, 48;
  "Charles I. lost his head," 556;
  Chase's appointment as chief-justice, 550-551;
  Client's fee divided with defendant, 128-129;
  Cogdal note returned by L., 136;
  Confederate soldiers greeting at Petersburg, 567-568;
  Congress, first speech in, 101;
  Credits of troops, Stanton overmatched, 376;
  Coward, "If any man calls me coward let him test it," 38;
  Darkey arithmetic, 357-358;
  Dennis Hanks' recollections, 6-9;
  Douglas reproved, 203;
  Dreams significant, 583-584;
  DuPont's slowness, 457-458;
  Earning the first dollar, 17-18;
  Editor who nominated L., 460-461;
  Election clerk, first official act, 32;
  Five Points Sunday School visit, 225-226;
  Forced serenity deceptive, 542;
  Free-soil party, prediction, 172-174;
  Gavel of Confederate congress, 586-587;
  Gettysburg battle, L's anxiety during, 499-500;
  "Give and take" rule for office-seekers, 295-296;
  Government on a tight rope, 484;
  Grant accused of drunkenness, 524;
  Grant invited to dinner, 520-521;
  Grant's ability to manage the army, 526-527;
  Grant's political aspirations, 523;
  Greeley's criticism, 429;
  Gunboat advice to New Yorkers, 338;
  Herndon's convictions on slavery, 166-167;
  Hooker's appointment, 487-488;
  Hooker's self-confidence, 491-492;
  Horsemanship tested by McClellan, 415-416;
  Horses captured by guerillas, 399;
  Horse-trading, 140;
  Ignorance of Latin admitted, 468-469;
  Impromptu speeches written, 471;
  Inaugural message, loss of, 283;
  Indian protected by L., 37;
  Jack-knife given him because of ugliness, 83;
  Jacob Thompson, proposed arrest, 585-586;
  Jefferson Davis and the troublesome coon story, 580;
  Johnnie Kongapod, 81;
  Joseph Jefferson and his players, 79;
  Kerr's papers enjoyed, 334;
  Kindness to birds, 76;
  Kindness to old colored woman, 128;
  Kindness to old John Burns, 515;
  Last drive with wife, 584-585;
  Law cases refused on moral grounds, 137-138;
  Lawsuits, gaining advantage in, 80-82;
  Lee, attitude of L. toward, 582;
  Lightning rod and Forquer, 56-57;
  Logan and his shirt, 139-140;
  "Long sword in a short scabbard," 566-567;
  Loyalty to old friends, Hubbard, 458-459;
  McClellan's body-guard, 417-418;
  McClellan's fatigued horses, 416;
  McClellan's pass to Richmond, 454;
  McCormick reaper case, 173-175;
  McCullough thanked by L., 469-470;
  Major-generals and hard tack, 400;
  Manners, first lesson, 13;
  Measuring backs with Sumner, 336;
  Measuring height with Ab McElrath, 274-275;
  Measuring height with a Southerner, 247;
  Measuring height with a young "Sucker," 254;
  Meeting with Smoot, 29-30;
  Mrs. White, southern sympathizer, 453;
  "Monarch of all you survey," 47;
  Name refused for commercial use, 452;
  Negroes at White House reception, 552-553;
  Negroes welcome their "Great Messiah," 569-571;
  Noisy and boastful fighter, 189;
  Office-seeker from Wisconsin repulsed, 353;
  Office-seeker, unfit, 307;
  Old sign, "Lincoln and Herndon," 264-265;
  Old woman and the bread and milk, 255;
  One-legged soldier, lack of credentials, 451-452;
  Oratorical success discussed with Gulliver, 222-223;
  Pardon for deserters, 397;
  Pardon for young soldier, 396-397;
  Pardoning prisoners of war, 578-580;
  Pass given Laura Jones, Southerner, 453;
  Paymaster, appointment, 377-378;
  Philadelphia receives news of L's death, 594-596;
  Pig rescued from a pit, 76-77;
  Pigeon holes versus letter files, 474;
  Powder sample, testing, 383-384;
  Quaker demand for emancipation, 425-427;
  Quakers sent home, 398;
  Rail making, 230-231;
  Reading Nasby during election returns, 548;
  Rebel mail examined, 354-355;
  Rebels number twelve hundred thousand, 454;
  Revolutionary War defended, 77-78;
  Sandwich  Islands, commissioner, applicants, 339;
  School of events, suggestion, 475;
  Scott's request concerning wife's body, 408-410;
  Scott "unable as a politician," 337;
  Sherman and the officer, 328-329;
  Sherman after Bull Run, 327-329;
  Sherman's visit from Louisiana, 299;
  Sitting for life-mask, 237-243;
  Skunks, shooting, 373-374;
  Slave girl sold, 147;
  Slavery speech criticised by Long, 181-182;
  Soldiers' humor, 399, 400;
  "Something everybody can take," 460;
  South Carolina lady's visit, 297-298;
  Stanton calls L. a d----d fool, 378;
  "Stoning Stephen," 204;
  Storekeeper in New Salem, 43;
  Strength, physical, 92-93;
  Stump speech, first appearance, 41;
  Sun doesn't set, 20;
  Swapping horses mid stream, 535;
  Sykes's yellow dog 525-526;
  Tad and the scattered pages of L's speech, 575-576;
  Tad's grief over death of father, 596;
  "Taking the wind out of his sails," 88;
  Talking against time, 80;
  Taylor's fine clothes, 57-58;
  Thrashing a bully, 28-29;
  "To whom it may concern," 539;
  Trousers requested by office-seeker,569;
  Trust in God, 351-352;
  Use of old-fashioned words, 139;
  Used on adversaries, 86;
  Verses written from memory, 356;
  Vicksburg, joy of L., 501;
  Wade's effort to remove Grant, 503;
  Weem's life of Washington, 15;
  Whigs all dead, 157;
  Wood-craft knowledge, 474-475;
  Wrestling match with Jack Armstrong, 28

Antietam, battle of, 414, 437;
  L's dream, 583

Appomattox, Lee's surrender at, 573

Armstrong, Hannah, 133-135

Armstrong, Hugh, 30

Armstrong, Jack, trial of strength, 28;
early friend, 133

Armstrong, John, quoted, 178

Armstrong, William D., defended by L.,
133-135

Arnold, Isaac N., quoted, 3, 14, 19, 31, 56,
59, 72, 150, 153, 185, 190, 205, 232, 244,
297-298, 299-301, 332-333, 422-423,
466-467, 468, 545, 584-585;
  interview with L., 422-423;
  mentioned, 237

Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 546

Ashley, Hon. James M., constitutional
amendment introduced by, 554

Ashmore, Congressman, of South Carolina,
quoted, 431

Ashmun, George, mentioned, 241-243, 586

Austin, G.L., quoted, 136


Baker, Edward D., mentioned, 74, 186;
  refuses to defend slaves, 77;
  Whig debater, 89;
  personal and political friend of L., 91;
  elected congressman, 97;
  killed at Balls' Bluff, 131;
  magnanimity of L. towards, 159;
  introduced L. at inauguration, 284

Balch, George B., quoted, 21-23

Baltimore, republican convention at, 1864, 534

Bancroft, George, contrasted with L., 217;
  quoted, 578

Banks, Nathaniel P., 501

Barnes, Surgeon-General, 591

Barrett, J.H., quoted, 23-24, 26

Bateman, Newton, quoted, 202-203, 245-247

Bates, Edward, candidate for president,231;
  made attorney general, 293, 294;
  characterized, 366;
  visits army with L., 490;
  resignation, 552

Beckwith, H.W., 81

Beecher, Henry Ward, abolition sermons read by L., 166;
  invites L. to speak in his church, 214;
  eloquent abolitionist, 245

Bell, John, nominated for president, 251

Bennett, John, impressions of L., 67-68

Bible, L's knowledge of, 118;
  L. quotes from, 473;
  L's opinion of, 478

Bigelow, John, quoted, 303-304, 345, 359-361, 363-364, 513, 514, 546-547

Bird, Francis, W., 482

Birney, Zachariah, L's school-master, 11

Bissell, William H., mentioned, 74-209

Bixby, Mrs., 397-398

Black Hawk War, L's military experience in, 35-40

Blaine, James G., compares Lincoln and Douglas, 183-185

Blair, F.P., attacks Chase, 533;
  reprehended by L., 534

Blair, Montgomery, made postmaster general, 293-294;
  arming of negroes deprecated by, 436;
  residence fired, 536;
  resignation, 551

Bloomington Convention, 165-169

Bonham, Jeriah, quoted, 180, 197, 203

Boone, Daniel, 2

Booneville, Ind., L. attends court, 9, 19

Booth, Edwin, L's enjoyment of his acting, 469

Booth, John Wilkes, assassination of L., 588-590

Boston delegation, conference with L., 482

Boutwell, George S., quoted, 437

Bowles, Samuel, quoted, 206

Brainard and Knott, quoted, 220

Breckenridge, John A., early influence on L., 9, 19

Breckenridge, John C, nominated for president, 250

Breese, Sidney, dignity, 84;
  quoted, 141

Brewster, Father, 204

Bright, John, 357

Brooklyn, L's lecture trip, 214-215

Brooks, Senator, knocks down Sumner, 245;
  quoted, 192

Brooks, Noah P., 470;
  quoted, 171-173, 462-463, 466-467, 471, 474, 490, 491-492, 493, 543, 546;
  describes L's last speech, 575-576

Brooks, Phillips, quoted, 478-479

Bross, John A., 538

Bross, William, first meeting with L., 170;
  interview with L., 265, 538-539

Brough, John, victorious governor of Ohio, 510;
  effort to reconcile L. and Chase, 549

Brown, John, 485

Browne, Francis Fisher, biographical sketch, v-vii

Browning, O.H., mentioned, 74-186;
  Whig debater, 89;
  inaugural party, member of, 266, 275

Browning Robert, L's fondness for his poetry, 387

Bryan, Thomas B., purchases MS. of emancipation proclamation, 445

Bryan, William J., on L. as an orator, 473

Bryant, William Cullen,
  presided over Cooper Institute meeting, 217;
  abolitionist, 245;
  favored L. for presidency, 247-248

Buchanan, James,
  mentioned, 294, 295;
  treachery during his administration, 261-262;
  escorts L. to Capitol, 284-286;
  characterized, 291;
  escorts L. to White House, 292

Bull Run, battle of,
  depression after, 326-437;
  L's dream, 583,
  second battle, 411

Bulwer-Lytton, mentioned, 469

Burns, John, 515

Burns, Robert, L's fondness for his poetry, 466

Burnside, Ambrose E.,
  Fredericksburg repulse, 368,487,488;
  victories in N.C., 385;
  unpopularity, 404;
  replaces McClellan, 417;
  L's opinion of, 487

Bushnell, C.S., agent for Ericsson, 345, 346

Butler, William, L. boards with, in Springfield, 70

Butterfield, Daniel, 493

Butterfield, Justin,
  mentioned, 74;
  appointed commissioner of land office, 106;
  son of, desires appointment, 107

Byron, Lord,
  L's fondness for his poetry, 132;
  quoted, 350


Cabinet,
  L's political rivals chosen, 256;
  L's non-partisan ideas, 256, 259;
  makeup discussed with Weed, 257-259;
  with Riddle, 275;
  Banks considered, 283;
  final appointments and how decided, 293;
  changes during administration, 294;
  meetings enlivened by stories, 336;
  L's relations with, 363;
  misconceptions of rights and duties, 364;
  unfriendly feeling between members, 365;
  earliest meetings informal, 365-366;
  attitude toward the war, 366-367;
  personal dissensions, 367-370;
  Seward's removal demanded, 368;
  Chase and Seward resignations, 368-370;
  Stanton the master-mind, 370-371;
  Cameron's relations with L., 371-373;
  Stanton succeeds Cameron, 372-373;
  Senators advise reconstruction of, 373-374;
  Stanton's relations with L., 374-379;
  opposes L's reinstatement of McClellan, 412-413;
  attitude toward emancipation, 432;
  preliminary proclamation discussed, L's own account, 436-438;
  second draft discussed, 437-439, 444;
  disposal of freedmen discussed, 439-440;
  Chase finally disposed of, 549-550;
  Blair succeeded by Dennison, 551;
  Bates resigns, 552;
  ignored by L., 555;
  last meeting attended by L., 580-581, 583-584

Calhoun, John C,
  mentioned, 186;
  appoints L. deputy surveyor, 47;
  democratic debater, 89;
  congressman, 100

California, L.'s desire to live in, 549

Cameron, Simon,
  mentioned, 506;
  congressman, 100;
  presidential candidate, 231;
  cabinet possibility, 275;
  secretary of war, 293, 294, 298;
  retirement from the cabinet, 371-373;
  advocates arming the blacks, 447

Campbell, Major, rescues fugitive slaves, 248

Campbell, John A., Southern peace commissioner, 555

Canada, rebel agents in, 352-353

Capital and labor. _See_ Labor and capital

Carpenter, Francis B.,
  mentioned, 469;
  quoted, 234, 436-437, 464-465, 544, 573

Cartwright, Peter, 99

Cass, Lewis, mentioned, 100;
  ridiculed by L., 102-104

Caton, John Dean,
  first meeting with L., 60-61;
  opinion of L. as lawyer, 141-142;
  fugitive slave decision, 248;
  advice on war policy, 255-256

Chancellorsville, battle of, 492-494, 496-497, 506

Chandler, Zack,
  aids L. in Schofield matter, 456;
  quoted, 498-499;
  lack of military judgment, 505

Channing, William Henry,
  abolitionist, 245;
  conversation with L. on slavery, 427-428

Chapman, Colonel, quoted, 263-264

Chapman, Mrs., 263;
  quoted, 113

Charleston, L's opinion of situation, 490-491

Chase, Salmon P.,
  mentioned, 185, 501, 548;
  opposes Nebraska bill, 153;
  presidential candidate, 231-233, 532;
  logic of, 245;
  cabinet possibility, 258-275, 371;
  secretary of the treasury, 293, 294, 297;
  rivalry with Seward, 366-370;
  upholds Stanton, 368;
  resignation and withdrawal, 369-370;
  consulted about Stanton, 373;
  opposes negro enlistment, 373;
  visits Fortress Monroe with L., 386-392;
  opinion of emancipation proclamation, 436;
  contribution to emancipation proclamation, 444;
  rupture with Lincoln, 532-534;
  second resignation offered, 549;
  accepted, 550;
  appointed Chief Justice, 550-551;
  quoted, 367

Chattanooga, Grant's success, 516

Chicago,
  L. visits N.B. Judd, 117-118;
  national republican convention, 231-237;
  memorial on emancipation, 427;
  Northwestern fair, 445;
  funeral services for L., 598

Chicago Historical Society, owned emancipation proclamation MS., 445

Cincinnati,
  L's first visit, 173-176;
  L's second visit, 213;
  visits on inaugural journey, 270-273;

City Point, visited by L., 562-566

Civil War,
  L's peace pleas before war, extract, 158, 270;
  L. foresees coming struggle, 255-256;
  L. promises to promote peace, 268;
  workingmen offer support for freedom, 271-273;
  L's reluctance to express opinion, 272-273;
  L's peace plea in inaugural speech, 287-291;
  Washington swarms with rebels, 292;
  desperate condition of treasury, 292;
  secession a political issue, 292-293
  Stanton's loyalty to Union, 295;
  faithless officials in departments, 295;
  L's conquest of a South Carolinian, 297-298
  Louisiana's war preparations, 299;
  Sumter attack, 312;
  call for volunteers, 312-314;
  Massachusetts first in field, 314;
  Baltimore attack, 315;
  Douglas stands by government, 315-316;
  Washington thrills over Sumter, 316;
  blockade of Southern ports, proclamation, 318
  Key West, Tortugas, and Santa Rosa proclamation, 318;
  Virginia asks expression of federal policy, 318;
  L's reply, 319-320;
  L's hope for Union, 320;
  L's desire to retain Kentucky, 320-321;
  Kentucky saved to Union, 321-322;
  special session of Congress, 322;
  L's appeal for funds and men, 323-325;
  preparations, 325-326;
  review of N.Y. troops, 326;
  Bull Run, 326;
  L. visits army in Virginia, 327-329;
  L's anxiety after Bull Run, 329-331;
  Harper's Ferry, 333-334;
  fleet urged to draw rebels from Washington, 337;
  L. refuses gun-boat to New Yorkers, 338;
  Trent affair, Mason and Slidell, 340-345;
  English neutrality established, 343;
  English controversies, 344-345
  Ericsson's "Monitor,", 345-347;
  Ross's mission to Canada; 352-355;
  L's reply on number of losses, 357-358;
  friction concerning direction, 366-368;
  negro enlistment, recommended, 373;
  Sabin's appointment, 377-378
  inertia of proceedings, 380-381;
  L. develops military sagacity, 381-385;
  brightening prospects, proclamation, 385-386;
  L. visits Fortress Monroe, 386-392;
  Merrimac and Monitor, 390-391;
  Norfolk captured, 390-391;
  L's letter to McClellan on over-cautiousness, 392-395
  L's sympathy for soldiers, 395-402;
  visits hospitals, 400-401;
  L's letter to McClellan concerning route to Richmond, 405-407;
  impatience over approach to Richmond, 406-408;
  strain of summer of 1862, 408;
  refusal of leave for Scott, 408-410;
  McClellan's army ordered withdrawn, 410;
  Pope's defeat at Manassas, 410-411;
  McClellan's reinstatement, 411-413;
  Washington peril, 413;
  Antietam victory, 414;
  L. visits Army of Potomac, 414-416;
  Fredericksburg attacked, 417;
  L's dissatisfaction with McClellan, 418;
  Missouri factional quarrels, 454-457;
  L's dissatisfaction with DuPont, 457-458;
  Fredericksburg, L's grief over, 461-462;
  L's visit to army before Chancellorsville, 465-466;
  L's method criticised, 480-484, 485;
  negro enlistment, 484-486;
  retaliation opposed by L., 485;
  Fredericksburg defeat, 487, 488;
  Hooker succeeds Burnside, 487-490;
  naval operations, 490;
  Chancellorsville defeat, 492-494;
  defeat, dissatisfaction of North, 493-494;
  turning-point of war, 496;
  Pennsylvania invaded, 497;
  Northern fear of Lee, 497;
  Hooker succeeded by Meade, 497-498;
  Gettysburg, 498-499;
  Vicksburg campaign, 500-503;
  L's joy over victory, 501;
  Wade urges Grant's dismissal, 503;
  Gettysburg victory, 503-504;
  Washington criticisms, 505;
  Meade's leadership, 504-507;
  Chancellorsville defeat, 506;
  Fredericksburg defeat, 506;
  L. against compromise, 507;
  brightening prospects after elections, 510;
  L's confidence in Grant, 516, 520-521;
  Grant's victories after Vicksburg, 516;
  his plans, 516-517;
  Grant's commission received, 519;
  L's plan of campaign for Grant, 522;
  Early's raid, L's plan against, 522;
  Grant's reply, 523;
  Vicksburg, criticisms of campaign, anecdote, 525-526;
  Grant and Stanton clash, 526-527;
  Early's attack on Washington, 525-537;
  call for additional troops, July 18, 1864, 537;
  gloomy prospects, 537-539, 542-546;
  Wilderness and Petersburg losses, 538-539;
  peace negotiations, "To whom it may concern,", 539;
  effect of L's re-election, 548;
  Sherman's march to the sea, 552;
  L's conditions for peace, 552;
  peace negotiations with Southern commissioners, 554-557;
  Lee's last efforts, 561-562;
  closing events, 562;
  L. visits army, 562-573;
  fall of Petersburg, 567;
  fall of Richmond, 568;
  Lee's surrender, 573;
  end of war, 573-576;
  pardoning prisoners, 578-580.
  _See also_ Emancipation; Secession

Clary Grove boys,
  attack on L., 27-28;
  volunteers in Black Hawk War, 36;
  smash store in New Salem, 42-43

Clay, Cassius M., 309-322

Clay, Henry,
  influence of speeches on L., 8;
  L's admiration and disillusion, 98-99;
  gradual emancipation speech, 98;
  L's eulogy of, 147

Clephane, Lewis, 468-469

Cleveland, Grover, 360

Cleveland, Ohio, visit on inaugural journey, 274-275

Clinton, DeWitt, 61

Cobb, Howell, distinguished in civil war, 100

Cogdal's note, 136

Colfax, Schuyler,
  interview with L., 545, 583, 586-587;
  L.'s death-bed, 591, 593

Collamer, Jacob, 368

Collyer, Robert, quoted, 329

Columbus, Ohio, welcome on inaugural journey, 268-269

Confederate States,
  considered a fact by Wigfall, 286;
  knowledge of Union moves, 292;
  Trent affair, 340-345;
  favored capital, 348;
  Canadian machinations, 352-353

Congress,
  special session, July 4,1861, 322;
  emancipation measures, 421

Conkling, James C., 80;
  quoted, 86

Constitution, slavery amendment, 553-554

Constitutional Union Party, 251

Conway, Moncure D.,
  impression of L., 176;
  interview with L., 482-484;
  quoted, 427-429

Cook, Mr., of Illinois, 232, 233

Cooper Institute speech, 215-221, 223-224, 232

Costa Rica, asylum for freedom, 440

Covode, John, 445

Crane, C.B., quoted, 546

Crawford, Andrew, L's schoolmaster, 12

Crawford, Josiah, incident of the ruined book, 14-16

Crawford, Mrs. Josiah, quoted, 16

Crittenden, John J., 185

Curdy, Dr., 170

Curtin, Andrew G., 497

Curtis-Gamble controversy, 454-456

Cushing, Caleb, 354;
  candidate for attorney general, 552;
  quoted, 207


Dahlgren, John A., quoted, 383, 384, 385

Dana, Charles A., quoted, 295, 547-548, 585-586

Davis, David,
  mentioned, 74;
  quoted, 113, 144-145, 256;
  advised L. on cabinet; 257;
  member of inaugural party, 266

Davis, Jefferson,
  in Black Hawk War, 39;
  in senate, 100;
  recognition asked by Southern commissioners, 555-556;
  mansion occupied by Weitzel, 572
  L's clemency toward, 580

Davis, O.L., 81

Dayton, William L., vice-presidential nominee, 170

Defrees, public printer, objects to L's colloquialisms, 471-472

Deming, Henry Champion, quoted, 302-303

Democratic Party,
  dominates Illinois, 65;
  pro-slavery tendencies, 251;
  rebel sympathisers, 292;
  opposes congressional war measures, 481

Dennison, William,
  postmaster general, 294;
  presides over Baltimore convention, 534;
  replaces Blair, 551;
  at L's death-bed, 591

Dicey, Edward, quoted, 544

Dickey, T. Lyle, quoted, 524

Dickson, W.M., quoted, 174, 176, 213

District of Columbia, slavery abolished, 421

Dixon, Father, quoted, 40

Dominican question, Seward's embarrassment, 336

Dorsey, Azel, L's schoolmaster, 12

Douglas, Stephen A.,
  mentioned, 74, 285;
  groggery taunt about L., 26;
  L's first impression of, 62, 188;
  debates with L., 89-90, 153-154, 177, 182-207;
  courts Mary Todd, 94;
  Mexican War, blames L. for opposition, 102;
  opens campaign, 1852, 147;
  defends Missouri compromise, 154-155, 157, 159;
  claims Whigs are dead, 157;
  senatorial nomination, 177;
  oratory compared with L., 182-207;
  debater and orator, 183-184, 186, 190, 205;
  appearance and characteristics, 185-186, 188-189, 190-191;
  quoted, 187-188;
  senator in 1846, 188;
  magnetism, 197;
  re-elected senator in 1858, 208;
  speeches in Ohio in 1859, 211;
  L's attitude toward, 216;
  democratic nominee for president, 244;
  magnanimity, 291;
  sustains the government, 315-316;
  death, 316

Douglass, Frederick,
  conference with L., 484-486;
  impression of L., 486

Dresser, Rev. Nathan, residence of, in Springfield, purchased by L., 96

Drummond, Thomas, quoted, 142-144

Dummer, H.C., quoted, 46

Duncan, Major, teaches L. use of broadsword, 93

DuPont, Admiral, characterized by L., 457-458


Early, Dr., L's reply to, 58-59

Early, Jubal A., raid on Washington, 522, 535

Eaton, Page, quoted, 70, 114

Eckert, General, 547

Edwards, Matilda, admired by L., 95

Edwards, Ninian W.,
  mentioned, 74;
  candidate for legislature, 58

Edwards, Mrs. Ninian W., sister of Mary Todd, 94

Egan, Dr., of Chicago, 171

Eggleston, Edward, quoted, 225

Elkin, Elder, funeral services for Nancy Hanks, 10

Ellis, A.Y., quoted, 42

Ellsworth, E.E., member of inaugural party, 266

Emancipation,
  discussion of measures, 419-448;
  Frémont's proclamation, 420;
  gradual, advocated, 420-423;
  first discussed by L. with cabinet members, 423-424;
  military, authorized, 421;
  Quaker delegation demands, 425-427;
  Chicago clergymen demand, 427;
  Lincoln and Channing interview, 427;
  Lincoln and Greeley, 429-431;
  Greeley's "Prayer of twenty millions," and L's reply, 429-430;
  compensation suggested, 428, 433, 447;
  deportation suggested, 439-440;
  L's message to congress, 1862, 440-441;
  "Boston set" discussed with L., 482-484;
  defended by L., 507

Emancipation proclamation,
  issued, 419;
  official measures preceding, 419-422;
  preliminary text, 432-435;
  L's own account of, 436-438, 444-445;
  Seward's view of, 436-437;
  Welles's account, 438-439;
  text, 441-443;
  signed, 441;
  pen used, 445

Emerson, Ralph Waldo,
  quoted, 304-305;
  belief in L., 482

England,
  neutrality established, 343;
  controversies with, 344-345

Ericsson, John, inventor of "Monitor," 345-346

Evarts, Mr., of N.Y., grieved over Seward's defeat, 234

Everett, Edward,
  nominated for vice-president, 251;
  appreciation of L's Gettysburg address, 513;
  impression of L., 515

Ewing, Lee D., opposed to change in Illinois State capital, 66


Farragut, David G., 537;
  compared with DuPont, 458

Fell, Jesse W., 32

Fessenden, William P., 185, 368;
  secretary of the treasury, 294

Ficklin, O.B., 126

Fithian, Dr., 126

Flatboat, constructed by L., 17-18

Florida, secedes, 261

Ford's Theatre, scene of assassination, 586-591

Forquer, George, lightning rod anecdote, 57

Forrest, Edwin, 469

Forrest, Thomas L., 458

Fort Sumter,
  held by Anderson, 262;
  attack, 312, 316;
  L's dream, 583;

Fortress Monroe, L. visits, 386-392;

Foster, Major-General, 385, 400

Fox, G.V., assistant secretary of the navy, 536

Franklin, Benjamin, L. ranked with, 549

Fredericksburg,
  repulse at, 368;
  attacked, 417;
  L's grief over, 461-462;
  defeat, 487, 488, 506;

Free-Soil Party, 150, 172, 173

Free-state cause, L. sympathises with, 158

Freedmen. _See_ Negroes

Frémont, John C.,
  nominated for president, 170;
  defeated, 173
  pioneer emancipator, 420, 447;
  presidential possibility in, 1864, 532

Fry, J.B., quoted, 376

Fugitive Slave Law,
  detested by L., 248-249;
  text, 434-435

Fusion Party, L. candidate of, for senator, 162


Gamble, Governor, Curtis-Gamble faction, 454-456

Gentry, Allen, 19-20

Gentry, Mrs. Allen, quoted, 12

Georgia, seceded, 261

Germans in Cincinnati, welcome L., 271-272

Gettysburg,
  mentioned, 478, 496;
  victory, 498-499, 503-504;
  L's feeling during battle, 499-500;
  victory cheers L., 507;
  battle-field purchase and dedication, 511-515;
  L's dream, 583

Gettysburg Address,
  rewritten many times, 471;
  world's model, 473;
  text, 512-515

Gillespie, Joseph,
  quoted, 80, 83;
  conversation with L. on slavery, 148-149

Grant, Frederick D., 519

Grant, Ulysses S.,
  mentioned, 403, 464, 542;
  opinion of McClellan's difficulties, 367, 404;
  victories in Tenn., 385;
  Vicksburg campaign, 500-502;
  L's letter on Vicksburg, 502;
  L's dissatisfaction before Vicksburg, 503;
  commands military division of Miss., 516;
  rank of Lieut.-General created for, 516;
  assumes command of army, 517;
  summoned to Washington, 517;
  at White House reception, 517-518;
  receives commission from L., 519;
  refusal to dine at White House, 519-520;
  L's impressions of personality and military capacities, 510-521;
  L.'s letter of commendation, 521;
  interview with L. on military matters, Grant's own account, 521-522;
  L's suggestion about Early's repulse, 522;
  Grant's reply, 523;
  L. seeks to know his political aspirations, 523;
  true version of whiskey anecdote, 524;
  L. tells story of Sykes's dog, 525-526;
  dispute with Stanton, 526;
  upheld by president, 526-527;
  presidential possibility, 532;
  attacks Early, 537;
  telegram to L. on re-election, 548;
  peace overture made through, 554;
  forces Lee to Richmond, 561-562;
  visited by L. at City Point, 562-563;
  interview with L. at City Point, 563-566;
  L's visit at Petersburg, 567-568;
  Lee's surrender, 573;
  praised by L., 574, 575;
  instructions for conference with Lee, 577-578;
  denies Stone River victory, 583;
  drives with L. and attends last cabinet meeting, 583;
  declines invitation to theater, 586

Grant, Mrs. Ulysses S., 527

Gray, Dr., officiated at L's funeral, 597

Great Britain. _See_ England

Gladstone, William Ewart, opinion of second inaugural address, 559-560

Globe Tavern, Springfield, Ill., L's first home after marriage, 96

Godbey, Squire, quoted, 46

Goldsborough, Lewis M., 390

Goodrich, Judge, L. declines partnership, 109

Greeley, Horace,
  opposes L's policy in N.Y. "Tribune," 429-431;
  publishes "The prayer of twenty millions," 429;
  L's reply, 429-430;
  conference with L., 430-431;
  L.'s "pigeonhole" for, 474;
  seeks successor to L., 480;
  peace importunities and L's famous reply, 539;

Green, L.M., quoted, 27

Greene, Bowlin, friend of L., 52

Greene, W.G., 30

Gridley, G.A., 137

Grigsby, Aaron, 17

Grigsby, Nat, quoted, 13

Griswold, John A., builder of "Monitor," 345-347

Grimes, James W., 368

Grover, A.J., quoted, 248-249

Gulliver, John P., estimate of L's speeches, 221-223

Gurley, Rev. Dr., officiated at L's funeral, 597


Haines, Elijah M., quoted, 162-164; 209, 228-229

Hale, John P.,
  mentioned, 185, 297;
  calls on L., 583

Hall, Doctor, attends L., 593

Hall, John, 263

Hall, Newman,
  quoted, 397;
  officiated at L's funeral, 596

Halleck, Henry W.,
  mentioned, 393, 413, 487, 490, 519;
  telegrams to Meade, 504-505;
  military ability, 505-506;
  at L's death-bed, 591

Halpine, Colonel, 310

Hamlin, Hannibal, nominated for vice-president, 234

Hampton Roads, meeting of peace commissioners, 555-557

Hanks, Dennis,
  recollections of L's boyhood, 6-9;
  story-telling ability, 31;
  L. visits, 263

Hanks, John,
  L's fellow-laborer, 24;
  bears campaign banner, 230

Hanks, Nancy. _See_ Lincoln; Nancy Hanks

Hannegan, Edward A., 126

Hapgood, Norman, quoted, 359

Hardin, Colonel, 4

Hardin, John J.,
  mentioned, 186;
  congressional candidate, 99;
  killed in Mexican War, 131

Harding, George, attorney in McCormick Reaper case, 173-174

Harper's Ferry, Union forces driven out, 333-334

Harris, G.W., quoted, 87-88, 128

Harris, Ira, 368;
  daughter, 587, 593

Harris, Thomas L., 160

Harrisburg, L's visit on inaugural journey, 278

Hatch, O.M.,
  mentioned, 227;
  quoted, 417-418

Hawk, Mr., actor, describes assassination, 588

Hay, John M.,
  private secretary, 266;
  quoted, 305-307

Hayes, General, 504

Hazel, Caleb, L's schoolmaster, 11

Henderson, J.B.,
  constitutional amendment introduced by, 554;
  interviews L. about pardons, 578-580

Henry, Dr., 493

Herndon, William H.,
  law partnership with L., 71, 97-98;
  letter of advice from L., 104-105;
  quoted, 24-26, 48, 92, 95, 113, 114, 115, 116, 121, 132,
      140, 154, 165, 166, 167-168, 178;
  sympathy for L., 116;
  abolitionist efforts, 165-169;
  "Lincoln and Herndon" law sign, 264

Hitt, Robert R., 198

Holland, Josiah G., quoted, 11, 14-15, 76-77, 98, 111, 236,
    268-269, 277-278, 283-284, 351, 371

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, L's fondness for his poetry, 466

Holt, Joseph,
  appeals for Union, 321, 322;
  possibility as secretary of war, 372;
  candidate for attorney general, 552

Homestead law, opinion of L. on, 273

Hood, Thomas, L's fondness for his poetry, 466

Hooker, Joseph, 463;
  visited by L. before Chancellorsville, 465;
  interview with L. and promotion, 487-488;
  "Fighting Joe Hooker," 488;
  L's letter to, 489-490;
  Hooker's comment, 492;
  accused of drunkenness, 492;
  Sumner's opinion of, 492;
  self-confidence, 491-492;
  unequal to responsibility, 497;
  asked to be relieved, 498;
  aids Grant in victories, 516

Hossack, John, 248

"House-Divided-Against-Itself" speech, quoted, 180, 426, 473

Howard, Senator, 368

Hoyne, Thomas, 237

Hoyt, Governor, 389

Hubbard, Gurdon S.,
  quoted, 49;
  works for Illinois and Michigan Canal, 49;
  interview with L., 458-459

Hunter, David, attempts military emancipation, 447

Hunter, Robert M.T., Southern peace commissioner, 555-556


Iles, Elijah, service in Black Hawk War, 39

Illinois,
  Lincoln family settles in, 21;
  slavery sentiment, 65-66;
  first to ratify 13th amendment, 554

Illinois and Michigan Canal, favored by Lincoln, 49

Indiana, early home of Lincoln, 6

Indianapolis, speech, on inaugural journey, 268

Indians,
  hostile in Kentucky, 2;
  execution refused by L., 453

Invention,
  L's interest in history of, 118-119;
  navigation device, 24-26


Jackson, Andrew, L. compared with, 413, 549

Jackson, Thomas Jonathan (Stonewall), 414;
  death, 492

Jayne, William, quoted, 161

Jefferson, Joseph, quoted, 79

Jefferson, Thomas, 360;
  L. ranked with, 549

Johnson, Andrew,
  mentioned, 100, 585;
  nominated for vice-president, 534;
  sworn in, 557;
  at L's death-bed, 591;
  at funeral, 596

Johnson, Bradley, Confederate general,
    raid of country around Washington, 536

Johnson, Oliver, visit to L., 468-469

Johnson, Reverdy, attorney in McCormick case, 173, 174, 176

Johnston, Albert Sidney, at Vicksburg, 501

Johnston, Joseph E.,
  mentioned, 578;
  Sherman defeats, 561-562;
  plan to force surrender, 564-565;
  L's dream, 584

Johnston, John,
  step-brother of L., 24;
  indolent and shiftless nature, 121;
  L's letters to, 120-123

Jones, J. Russell, L. consults about Grant, 523

Jones, Laura, L's leniency to, 453

Joy, James F., 237

Judd, Norman B.,
  L. visits, 117-118;
  member of inaugural party, 266, 275;
  mentioned, 161, 162, 189, 227, 232

Judd, Mrs. Norman B., quoted, 117-118

Julian, George W., quoted, 253-254, 375, 378


Kansas, L's visit to, 213-214

Kansas-Nebraska Bill, controversy, 147, 152-155, 159-161

Kelly, William D., quoted, 356-358, 465

Kelton, Colonel, 413

Kentucky,
  Lincoln family in, 2;
  plea for neutrality, 270;
  importance of neutrality, 320-322;
  concessions made to, 431

"Kerr, Orpheus C," (Robert Henry Newell), 334, footnote;
  L's great fondness for his writings, 334, 467

Keyes, General, quoted, 381

King, Preston, 303

Kirkpatrick, William, 36

Know-Nothing-Party, 153

Knox, Joe, 171


Labor and capital discussed by Lincoln, 348-350

Laboring-men, L's speech to Cincinnati Germans, 272-273

Lamborn, Josiah, 74, 89, 186

Lamon, Ward H.,
  mentioned, 81;
  member of inaugural party, 266, 275, 278;
  quoted, 12, 16, 29-30, 58, 84, 112, 114, 115, 154,
      161, 229, 254-255, 256, 263, 266, 267

Lane, General, 309

Lectures. _See_ Speeches and Lectures

Lee, Harry T., impression of Gettysburg address, 514

Lee, Robert E.,
  mentioned, 300, 437, 499, 517;
  Pennsylvania invasion, 333, 497;
  Manassas successes, 411, 414;
  Antietam defeat, 414;
  Chancellorsville victory, 492;
  Gettysburg defeat, 498, 501;
  Appomattox surrender, 517, 573;
  Richmond, retreat to, 568;
  Union plans for capture, 564-565;
  Richmond, retreat from, 568;
  Grant ordered not to confer with, 577-578;
  L's comment on portrait, 582

Letters and telegrams,
  acceptance of presidential nomination, 244;
  correspondence burdensome, 474;
  written by hand, 474;
  to Bryant concerning party pledges, 248;
  to Mrs. Bixby on loss of sons, 397-398;
  to Curtis on factional quarrels, 455;
  to Douglas, invitation to debate, 182;
  telegram to Grant during Early's raid, 522-523;
  to Grant after Vicksburg, 502;
  to Grant, expressing satisfaction, 521;
  to Greeley on emancipation, 429-430;
  to Herndon, giving advice, 104-105;
  to Hooker, on latter's appointment, 489-490;
  to Judd about campaign contribution, 209;
  to Judd regarding the presidency, 228;
  to Kentucky unionist on slavery, 446-448;
  to McClellan on over-cautiousness, 392-395;
  to McClellan concerning route to Richmond, 405-407;
  to McNeill relating to fees for speeches, 223-224;
  to Schofield, advice on factional quarrels, 455-456;
  to Speed on slavery, 151-153;
  to Speed's sister on slavery, 148;
  to Springfield friends after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, 507-508;
  to step-brother on death of father, 120-123;
  to Washburne, about forts, 261;
  to Washburne, against compromises, 260-261;
  to Weed on secession, 262;
  "To whom it may concern," safe conduct for peace envoys, 539

Lewis, Robert, 334

Lincoln, Abraham, grandfather of L.,
  settles in Kentucky, 2;
  death, 3

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM
  CHARACTERISTICS,
    inherited, 5, 11;
    in boyhood and youth, 9, 16, 20, 35, 49, 53, 75-77;
    handwriting, 19;
    elements of greatness, 53;
    claims to be a fatalist, 108;
    absent-mindedness, 112, 114;
    debt abhorred, 130;
    as a lawyer, 142-146, 235;
    as a public speaker, 171-172, 183-188, 194-197, 204-206;
    master of himself, 235;
    compared with Jackson, 260;
    attitude toward public visitors, 301-302;
    lack of sovereignty, 304;
    simplicity of manner, 305-306;
    qualities of a leader, 307-308;
    morbid dislike of guard, 310-311;
    forbearance, 315, 320;
    precision and minuteness of information, 358;
    living power of integrity and elasticity, 359;
    greatness in moral strength, 359-361;
    summed up by Nicolay, 361-362;
    peace-maker, 364, 456;
    wisdom and moderation, 374;
    guileless and single-hearted, 387;
    power to make quick and important decisions, 412;
    will compared to Andrew Jackson, 413;
    easily accessible to visitors, 450;
    no case too trivial, 451;
    ability to say no, 451,452;
    diplomacy in Schofield-Rosecrans episode, 456-457;
    loyalty to friends, 458;
    fortitude, 462;
    imagination versus reason, 466;
    tireless worker, 473;
    magnanimity toward opponents, 476-477;
    stern when necessary, 477-478;
    candor and friendliness in criticism, 489-490;
    willingness to admit errors, 502;
    quickness of perception, 527;
    tenacity, 527;
    Sherman's tribute, 565-566;
    unselfishness, 566-567;
    magnanimity toward southern leaders, 580;
    clemency in granting pardons,  586

    _Ambitions_,
      presentiment of future greatness, 18-19, 27, 53;
      desire to be the "DeWitt Clinton of Illinois," 61;
      encouraged by friends, 116;
      generous quality of, 159;
      senatorial, 161-164;
      presidential, 331;
      not concerned over political future, 529-532
    _Appearance_,
      at fifteen, 12;
      at nineteen, 20;
      in 1832, 42;
      in 1847, 105-106;
      in 1849, 109-110, 111;
      "man of sorrows," 113-114;
      singular walk, 114-115;
      on the circuit, 125-127;
      face transformed in speaking, 181;
      in repose and on the stump, 194-195;
      in 1858, 201, 205;
      in 1860, 215;
      height, 247;
      as President-elect, 253-254, 274-275, 279;
      arrival at Washington, 282;
      inauguration, 285-286;
      in his reception room, 302-303;
      changed by anxiety, 355;
      Nicolay's description, 361;
      face a surprise to Winchell, 382;
      unconventional dress, 356-357, 377, 450;
      changed by grief, 462-463;
      Frederick Douglass' impressions, 484, 485, 486;
      saddest man in the world, 543-546
    _Courage_,
      fighting qualities, 27-29;
      encounter with a bully, 29;
      in Black Hawk War, 38-40;
      rescues Baker from a fight, 91-92;
      duel with Shields, 93;
      under discouragements, 292, 331;
      did not fear attempt upon his life, 540-542
    _Honesty_,
      at nineteen, 20;
      as a salesman, 31;
      "Honest Abe," 31, 53, 68, 171;
      trust funds never used, 46;
      in voting, 101-102;
      as a lawyer, 130, 138, 143;
      refused to defend the guilty, 136-137;
      intellectual and moral, 144
    _Horsemanship_, 415-416, 491, 562, 563
    _Justice_,
      anecdote of Black Hawk War, 38;
      refusal to countenance injustice, 130-131, 453;
      sense of, 476-478;
      injustice to Gen. Meade, 503-506;
    _Literary methods_ and _style_,
      early example, 63-65;
      example from Douglas debates, 89-90;
      methods, 470-471;
      style, 471-473
    _Kindness_ and _sympathy_, 16;
      to animals, 13, 76;
      everybody's friend, 35
      in his home, 113
      regard for old friends and relatives, 119, 121-123;
      to old colored woman, 128;
      to young attorneys, 130;
      for Col. Scott, 410
      for soldiers, 395-397, 400-401, 499-500;
      embarrassing results of friendliness, 470
   _Melancholy_ and _sadness_,
      caused by love of Anne Rutledge, 49;
      temporary attack, 95-96;
      causes, 112-113;
      struggles with, 115-117;
      depression in 1854, 161;
      evidence of, 170, 175, 198, 246, 361;
      over defeat for senate, 204;
      on inaugural journey, 266-267;
      after Bull Run, 330-331;
      over war victims, 401-402, 500;
      engraved on features, 462-463;
      summer of 1864, 537-538, 542-546;
      Matthew Arnold's poem, 546
    _Memory_,
      for faces and names, 9, 39, 40;
      for events, 36;
      retentive, 467, 468
    _Military sagacity_, 380-386, 390-395, 405-407, 411-414,
        416-417, 502, 506
    _Modesty_,
      unassuming manner in politics, 163;
      about printing speeches, 216;
      in regard to presidential nomination, 227-228;
      as president, 304, 306, 307, 459;
      natural, 360;
      about second nomination, 535;
      on news of second election, 547
    _Popularity_,
      as a young man, 28-29, 75;
      in New Salem, 35, 53;
      in Black Hawk War, 39, 41;
      universal favorite, 130;
      in Kansas, 213, 214;
      at Republican convention in 1860, 229-230;
      among old friends and relatives, 263-264;
      Confederate soldiers' greeting at Petersburg, 567-568
    _Physical strength_,
      in boyhood, 9;
      incidents showing, 91-93, 389, 401
    _Religious nature_,
      knowledge of the Bible, 118-119;
      shown in letter to step-brother, 120;
      reliance on Divine help, 265, 267, 268;
      influence of son's death, 351-352;
      spirituality highly organized, 360, 361, 362;
      religious spirit, 385-386;
      shown in fortitude, 462;
      quotes the Bible, 473;
      his views on, 478-479;
      not a church member, 478;
      shown in second inaugural address, 557-559
    _Tact_, 357;
      in official relations, 368-370, 378;
      anecdotes illustrating, 451-457
    _Temperance_,
      reply to Douglas's taunt, 83, 85, 130, 203;
    _Voice_,
      magnetism of, 59;
      not pleasing, 142, 221;
      clear and vigorous, 205;
      high but clear, 302, 515
    _Wit_ and _humor_,
      power of satire, 17;
      examples of, 56-57;
      love of practical joke, 57;
      no end to his fund of, 84;
      used against adversaries, 87, 139-140, 202-204;
      chief attraction at dinners, 110;
      cultivated, 113;
      stories not always dignified, 139;
      repartee, 157;
      advantage of L. over Douglas, 86, 195;
      indelicacy charge refuted, 258;
      safety-valve of L., 332-333;
      enjoyment of "Orpheus C. Kerr," 334;
      at cabinet meetings, 336;
      soldiers' humor appreciated by L., 399-400;
      humorists liked by L., 467-468
  PRIVATE LIFE:
    ancestry, 1-5;
    L's own account, 32-33;
    birth, 1,4;
    illegitimate parentage legend, 4;
    Lincoln family in Kentucky, 4;
    removal to Indiana, 5-6;
    in Indiana, 6-19;
    reminiscences by Dennis Hanks, 7-9;
    death of his mother, 10;
    love for his mother, 5, 10, 21;
    tribute to her influence, 11;
    his father remarries, 11;
    affection for step-mother, 11, 119, 123, 124, 263;
    moves to Macon Co., Ill., 21, 33;
    his father's possessions, 21;
    death of father, 22;
    L. helps build log cabin, 23;
    splitting rails, 23;
    flatboat voyages down the Mississippi, 23-24;
    settles in New Salem, 24-26, 33;
    patent for navigation device, 24-26;
    athletic skill, 27-29;
    first meeting with Smoot, 29;
    meets Governor Yates, 30;
    love of story-telling, 30-31;
    home life, 31, 113, 115;
    autobiography, 32-34;
    struggle with poverty, 45, 47, 69-71, 209, 225;
    love for Anne Rutledge, 49-52;
    close of his boyhood and youth, 52-54;
    New Salem a desolate waste, 54;
    moves to Springfield, 33, 69-70;
    struggles of a young lawyer, 69-84;
    meeting with Speed, 69;
    shares his home, 70, 88;
    in state politics, 85-96;
    Mary Todd's satirical article, 93;
    love affairs with Matilda Edwards and Mary Todd, 94-95;
    derangement, 95;
    goes to Kentucky with Speed, 96;
    marriage to Mary Todd, 95, 96;
    lives at Globe Tavern, 96;
    purchases Dressar home, 96;
    enters national politics, 97-108;
    back in Springfield, 109;
    simplicity of home life in Springfield, 110;
    income from law practice, 110;
    property owned, 111;
    his children, 111-112;
    L. as husband and father, 113;
    marriage unhappy, 112-117;
    did his own marketing, 114;
    visits Chicago, 117;
    regard for relatives, 119;
    purchases home for father, 119
    letters to step-brother, 120-123;
    idol of his step-mother, 123-124;
    wealth, not desired by L., 125;
    L. as a lawyer, 125-146;
    careless about money, 130;
    keeping partnership accounts, 133;
    anecdote about his wealth, 216;
    summer home during presidency, 401;
    home life in White House, 464-465;
    desire to live in California, 549;
    plans for retirement, 584-585.
    _Education_,
      early education, 7-9, 11-19;
      early schools attended, 11-13;
      his copy book inscription, 13;
      first efforts in composition, 13;
      mental training from reading, 14;
      scrap-book kept in youth, 14;
      handwriting at seventeen, 19;
      book of arithmetic examples, 19
      knowledge of astronomy and geology, 20-21;
      study of grammar, 26-27;
      L.'s own account, 33;
      knowledge of drama, 79;
      L. as a student, 130-131;
      musical taste, 466-467;
      unashamed of early deficiencies, 468-469
    _Books_ and _reading_,
      influence of first books, 8, 14-16;
      his own testimony, 15;
      the ruined volume, 14, 16;
      method of reading, 131;
      wrote verses, 132;
      books in White House office, 300;
      love for Shakespeare, Browning, and Byron, 387;
      memory for poetry, 356;
      poets best loved, 466-467;
      humorists liked, 467;
      best-loved books, 468;
      novel reading, 469
    _Employments_,
      first work, 16;
      first dollar earned, 17-18;
      flatboat constructed for commercial enterprise, 17-18;
      his first employer, 19-20;
      first flatboat journey to New Orleans, 195;
      second flatboat journey to New Orleans, 23-34;
      clerk at New Salem, 26-34;
      Offutt's store closed, 35;
      brief career as country merchant, 42-44;
      blacksmith trade considered, 42;
      surveys and plans Petersburg, 47, 67;
      notion to become a carpenter, 71
    _Law career_,
      early interest in law, 9, 19;
      study and practice, 33-43;
      begins study of, 46-47;
      begins practice, 47;
      period covered, 55;
      reverence for law, 64;
      in Springfield, 69;
      without plans or money, 60-70;
      asking credit, 70;
      partnership with Stuart and Logan, 71;
      with Herndon, 71;
      riding the circuit, 71-84;
      borrows, then owns a horse, 71;
      welcome by other lawyers, 72;
      humility, 72;
      court scene, 72-73;
      freedom in social intercourse, 73;
      leading lawyers of the day, 73-74;
      adventures and hardships, 74;
      popularity and appearance, 75-76;
      not afraid of unpopular cases, 77;
      wins case of widow of revolutionary pensioner, 77-79;
      wins case for Jefferson, 79;
      ridiculing the eloquence of opponent, 80-81;
      breach of promise suit, 81-82;
      ready wit, 83-84;
      dissolved partnership with Logan, 97;
      partnership with Herndon, 97-98;
      declined partnership with Goodrich, 109;
      resumes practice in 1849, 109, 125-146;
      legal fee ridiculously small, 125;
      appearance in court, 125-128;
      defending a colored woman, 128;
      dividing fee with defendant, 128-129;
      refused to take unjust cases, 130-131;
      keeping accounts, 1133;
      fees moderate, 133;
      defends son of Jack Armstrong, 133-136;
      would not press for pay, 135-136;
      refused to defend guilty, 136-137;
      would never advise unwise suits, 137-138;
      returns fee, 138;
      anecdotes of L. at the bar, 138-140;
      his rank as a lawyer, 140-146;
      special characteristics, 145
    _Recreations_,
      games, 129;
      dancing, 210;
      theatre, 469-470;
      fondness for walking, 46
  PUBLIC LIFE,
    _Nicknames_,
      "Railsplitter," 9, 23, 230-231;
      "Uncle Abe," 75;
      "Old Abe," 105;
      "Honest Abe," 31, 53, 68, 171
    _Oratory_,
      first efforts, 27;
      reputation, 62;
      spoke without manuscript, 89;
      manner of speaking described, 100, 127, 172;
      used old-fashioned words, 139, 146;
      jury speeches, 146;
      eloquence of Bloomington speech, 167-168;
      compared with Douglas, 89, 177, 182-207;
      Cooper Institute speech, 217-221;
      New England tour, 221-223;
      W.J. Bryan's opinion, 473;
      Gettysburg address, 512-515;
      eloquence of second inaugural, 557-559
    _Public questions_, L's views on:
      Mexican war, 101-102, 131;
      Missouri compromise, 150-160;
      Kansas-Nebraska bill, 152-155;
      secession views, 262, 287-291, 320-321;
      labor and capital, 348-350;
      emancipation, 447, 482-484;
      reconstruction policy, 576-581
    _Slavery_,
      L. opposes pro-slavery enactment in Illinois, 65-66;
      attitude shown in Douglas debates, 89-90, 191-194; 205;
      sale of slave girl, 147-148;
      early views, 148-149;
      opposed slavery in Congress and in speeches, 149-151;
      views in letters to Speed, 151-153;
      argues eternal right at Bloomington Convention, 167-168;
      resolution adopted, 169;
      "House divided against itself," 177-182;
      Cincinnati speech, 211-212;
      L.'s policy, 419-446;
      Channing interview, 427;
      Chicago clergymen's delegation, 427;
      Greeley and L., 429-431;
      L's own account, 446-448;
      4th annual message, 552
    _Early political career_,
      change in views, 8;
      made election clerk, 32;
      appointed postmaster at Salem, 44;
      made deputy surveyor, 47;
      natural taste for politics, 55;
      candidate for presidential elector, 87;
      Whig leader, 87;
      canvassed Illinois in Clay-Polk campaign, 99;
      leader of Whigs in Congress, 100;
      Whig delegate to National Convention, 104;
      seeks appointment as land commissioner, 106-107;
      little interested in politics until 1854, 147;
      building up the Free Soil party, 150;
      admits being a Whig, 153, 157;
      generosity toward rivals, 160;
      considered for vice president, 170, 228-229;
      activity in Frémont campaign, 170-173;
      no political enemies, 232;
      bored with talk on politics, 240
    _Illinois legislature_,
      defeat and election, 33;
      first candidacy unsuccessful, 41-42, 47;
      campaign of 1834, and election, 48;
      aids canal bill, 49;
      reputation in, 49;
      renominated, 1836, 55;
      campaign methods, 56-60;
      lightning rod anecdote, 56-57;
      not an aristocrat, 57-58;
      reply to Early, 58-59;
      letter to Allen, 59-60;
      election, 60;
      journey to capital, 60;
      meets Judge Caton, 61;
      first meeting with Douglas, 61-62;
      removal of Illinois Capitol, 62;
      an early speech, 62-65;
      opposes pro-slavery enactment, 65-66;
      contest with Ewing, 66-67;
      campaign of 1838 and election, 85;
      end of legislative service, 86;
      election and resignation, 1864, 160-161;
      senatorial contest, 161-161
    _Black Hawk War_,
      candidate for captain, 36;
      memories of L., 36-37;
      first experience drilling troops, 37;
      rescues an Indian, 37-38;
      meeting with Stuart, 38-39;
      L. re-enlists, 39;
      recollects Major Anderson after 29 years, 39;
      courage as a soldier, 40;
      his own account of his service, 40-41;
      popularity with comrades, 41
    _Congress_,
      aspirations, 97;
      elected to lower house, 1846, 34, 99-100, 159;
      Whig leader, 100;
      reputation in, 100;
      first speech, 101;
      Mexican War attitude, 101-102;
      notable speech and ridicule of Gen. Cass, 102-104;
      bill for abolition of slavery, 104;
      campaign methods, 131-132;
      senatorial contest, 1855, 161-163;
      defeated, 164;
      senatorial contest with Douglas, 1858, 177-207;
      defeated, 208;
      depression of L. over, 208-209
    _Presidency_,
      presentiment of L. concerning, 18-19;
      modest over proposed nomination, 144;
      almost in his grasp, 213;
      Cooper Institute speech aids toward, 220, 232;
      suggested as a candidate, 227-228;
      nomination, 231-237;
      sittings for life mask, 237-243;
      cast of hands, 242;
      notified of nomination, 243-244;
      opposition of Springfield clergymen, 247;
      election, 1860, 250-251;
      non-partisan appointments, 256-257;
      unembarrassed by promises, 259, 260;
      preparation for inauguration, 263;
      journey to Washington, 265-280;
      stories of disguises, 280;
      week preceding inauguration, 281-283;
      ceremonies described, 283-292;
      oath administered, 284, 291;
      first night at the White House, 292;
      cabinet appointments, 293;
      cabinet changes, 294;
      difficulties selecting loyal and capable men, 295;
      impression on people, 298-310;
      modest as president, 306-307;
      fears for attempted assassination, 308-310;
      L's dislike for guard, 311;
      Civil War begun, 312;
      first call for troops, 312-314;
      creates excitement, 314;
      Boston riots, 315;
      loyalty of Douglas, 315-316;
      proclamation of blockade of Southern ports, 316-318;
      blockade extended, 318;
      Virginia convention waits on L., 318;
      L's war policy outlined, 319-320;
      L's conciliatory course, 320-321;
      tries to save Kentucky, 321-322;
      special session of Congress, 322;
      L's first message, 322-325;
      difficulties of a new administration, 325-326;
      Bull Run disaster, 326;
      visits the army in Virginia, 327;
      depression following Bull Run, 329-331;
      unfaltering courage, 331;
      relief in story-telling, 332-333;
      depression relieved by humor, 333-336;
      measuring up with Sumner, 336;
      diplomacy in Mason and Slidell affair, 340-344;
      in French invasion of Mexico, 345;
      building the "Monitor," 346-347;
      first annual message, 347-350;
      reception at White House, 350;
      illness and death at the White House, 351-352;
      secret service incidents, 352-353;
      annoyed by office-seekers, 353;
      Mr. Ross at the White House, 353-356;
      William Kelley at the White House, 356;
      Goldwin Smith's impressions, 356-359;
      tributes from Hapgood, Bigelow, and Nicolay, 359-362;
      cabinet relations, 363-379;
      with Stanton, 364-379;
      with Seward, 366-371;
      Cameron and Stanton, 371-373;
      L. considers McClellan over-cautious, 392-395;
      L. visits hospitals, 400-401;
      differences of opinion with McClellan, 404;
      letter to him about campaign, 405-406;
      urges action, 406-407;
      L's defence of him, 407;
      L. recalls him, 410;
      reinstates him, 411-412;
      McClellan's own account, 413;
      correspondence, 416-417;
      L's summing up of McClellan, 417-418;
      signs emancipation proclamation, 441;
      his life as president, 449;
      society at the White House, 449-450;
      public receptions, 450;
      tact with favor seekers and bores, 451-453;
      sense of justice, 453;
      answering improper questions, 454;
      settles the Curtis-Gamble dispute, 454-457;
      appoints Schofield, 455-457;
      views of his own position, 459;
      dealing with cranks, 459-461;
      Fredericksburg disaster, 461-461;
      responsibility of his position, 462-463;
      home life in the White House, 464-465;
      visits Army of the Potomac, 465-466;
      tireless worker, 473;
      health, 473-474;
      his letter file, 474;
      Agassiz and L., 475-476;
      his official acts not influenced by personal consideration, 476-477;
      criticism of the administration, 480-481;
      war policy opposed by Greeley, 480;
      by high official, 481;
      Democrats of the North, 481;
      Boston abolitionists, 482-484;
      effect of abuse, 481;
      Western delegation, 484;
      personal responsibility for policy, 484;
      interview with Douglas on enlisting colored soldiers, 484-486;
      McClellan's removal, 487;
      relations with Burnside, 487;
      with Hooker, 487-490;
      candor and friendliness with officers, 489-490;
      visits army of the Potomac, 490-492;
      his view of Charleston attack, 490;
      effect of Chancellorsville on L. 492-493;
      reads Stedman's poem to cabinet, 494-495;
      the tide turns, 495;
      Lee invades Pennsylvania, 497;
      Hooker proves unfit, 497-498;
      Meade appointed, 498;
      L's feelings during Gettysburg battle, 498-500;
      joy over Vicksburg, 501-503;
      praise of Grant, 502;
      criticism of Meade for Lee's escape, 503-504;
      Meade asks to be relieved, 504;
      criticism answered, 504;
      resignation not insisted upon, 505;
      L's opinion modified, 506-507;
      improved conditions, 507;
      defence of emancipation proclamation, 507-508;
      Thanksgiving proclamation, 508-510;
      fall election, 1863, 510;
      L. upheld, 511;
      his own comment, 511;
      Gettysburg dedication, 512-515;
      relations with Grant, 516-527;
      appoints Grant Lieut-General, 516;
      summons him to Washington, 517;
      Grant receives commission, 517-519;
      first meeting with Grant, 520;
      L's letter of satisfaction, 521;
      military orders issued by L., 522;
      interested in Grant's career, 523;
      interest in Grant's political aspirations, 523;
      Grant-Stanton episode, 526-527;
      Grant's opinion of Lincoln, 527;
      campaign of 1864, 528-535;
      L's attitude toward a second term, 528-532;
      New England's attitude toward the administration, 529;
      relations with Chase, 532-534, 549-550;
      candidates of 1864, 532-533;
      L's nomination, 1864, 534;
      acceptance speech, 535;
      Early's raid, 532-537;
      call for more troops, 537;
      war policy criticized, 537;
      depression of L., 538-539;
      campaign of 1864, 539-540;
      McClellan a candidate, 539;
      L's secret pledge to support successor, 540;
      attempt on life, 540-541;
      effect of burdens and anxiety during war, 542-546;
      election of 1864, victory, 546-549;
      Grant's telegram, 548;
      Seward's tribute, 548-549;
      Chase's resignation, 549-550;
      other cabinet changes, 550-552;
      fourth annual message, 552;
      colored people at White House reception, 552-553;
      negotiates with Southern peace commissioners, 554-556;
      assumes responsibility for unpopular measures, 554-555;
      scheme for compensation emancipation, 556-557;
      second inauguration, 557-560;
      close of the war, 561-563;
      escapes office-seekers, 563;
      with Grant, Sherman, and Porter at City Point, 562-566;
      on the River Queen, 563-566;
      concern about Schofield, 565;
      on the Malvern 566-567;
      at Petersburg, 567-568;
      at Richmond, 568-573;
      news of Richmond's fall, 568;
      visit to Richmond, 569;
      welcomed by the negroes, 571;
      Southerners' reception, 572;
      joy over Lee's surrender, 573;
      scene at Capitol, 574-575;
      L.'s speech to the multitude, 576;
      reconstruction views, 576-581;
      instructions to Grant on final conference with Lee, 577-578;
      feeling toward the South, 577-580;
      pardoning confederates, 579-580;
      the last day: talk with Robert, 582;
      receives visitors, 583;
      last cabinet meeting, 583-584;
      significant dreams, 583-584;
      drive with Mrs. Lincoln, 584-585;
      last official acts, 585-587;
      reaches theatre, 587;
      the shot fired, 588;
      Booth's escape, 588-589;
      Walt Whitman's description, 589;
      Booth's plan, 590;
      Rathbone's account, 590;
      death-bed, 591;
      Welles's account, 591-594;
      a nation's grief, 594-599;
      funeral ceremonies at the White House, 596;
      lying in state at Capitol, 597;
      funeral train to Springfield, 597-598;
      interment, 599

Lincoln, Edward Baker, L's son, birth, 111

Lincoln, John, L's great-grandfather, 2

Lincoln, John, L's half-brother, 11

Lincoln, Josiah, L's uncle, 3

Lincoln, Mary Todd, L's wife,
  published satirical articles about James Shields, 93;
  ambitions, 94;
  characteristics, 94;
  engagement to L. broken, 95;
  marriage, 94, 96;
  hospitality, 110;
  pro-slavery views, 167;
  meeting with Volk, 241;
  on inaugural journey, 266;
  opinion of Riddle on, 275-276;
  censured for frivolity, 450;
  defines L's religion, 478;
  visits Army of Potomac, 490;
  receives Grant, 518-520;
  fears of L's assassination, 540;
  desired to visit Europe, 549;
  last drive with L., 584-585;
  plans to visit theatre, 586;
  at theatre, 587;
  shock at assassination, 589;
  prostrated by L's death, 591;
  at L's death-bed, 593;
  unable to attend obsequies, 596

Lincoln, Matilda, L's half-sister, 11

Lincoln, Mordecai, son of Samuel Lincoln, 2

Lincoln, Mordecai, L's uncle,
  adventure with Indians, 3;
  character, 3-4;
  L's characterization of, 5;
  opinion of L. about, 264

Lincoln, Nancy Hanks, L's mother,
  marriage, 4;
  slurs upon her name, 4-5;
  character and appearance, 5;
  Dennis Hanks's opinion of, 7;
  death and funeral, 10;
  epitaph, 10;
  love of L. for, 10, 21;
  influence on L., 10-11;
  tribute of L. to, 11, 352

Lincoln, Robert Todd, L's son,
  birth, 111;
  student at Harvard, 221;
  gripsack anecdote, 283;
  student and soldier, 464;
  interview with L. about war, 582;
  with his mother after assassination, 591;
  at L's death-bed, 594

Lincoln, Samuel, L's English forbear, 1

Lincoln, Sarah, L's half-sister, 11;
  death, 17

Lincoln, Sarah, L's sister, birth, 4

Lincoln, Sarah Johnston, L's step-mother,
  marries Thomas Lincoln, 11;
  mutual fondness of L. and, 11, 119, 123-124, 263;
  quoted, 14;
  death, 124;
  visit of L. before inauguration, 263

Lincoln, Thomas, L's father,
  birth, 3;
  rescue from Indians, 3;
  marriage to Nancy Hanks, 4;
  moves to Rock Spring farm, 4;
  moves to Indiana, 5-6;
  second marriage, 11;
  moves to Illinois, 21;
  nicknames, 21;
  character-sketch, 21-23;
  death, 22, 120;
  epitaph, 22;
  story-telling ability, 31;
  death 120;
  solicitude for, 120-121;
  L. visits grave, 263

Lincoln, Thomas, L's son,
  birth, 111;
  "Little Tad," 464;
  companion of father, 464-466, 490, 491;
  death, 465;
  loved by soldiers, 465-466;
  anecdote of L's last speech, 575-576;
  grief over death of father, 596

Lincoln, William Wallace, L's son,
  birth, 111;
  death, 351, 464;
  influence of death on L., 478

Lincoln-Douglas Debates,
  comparative powers of speakers, 89, 177, 182-207.
  Extracts, Springfield, 89-90;
  Peoria, 155-157;
  Quincy and Alton, 191-194; 205

Linder, General,
  quoted, 62, 66, 91;
  talks against time, 80

Livermore, George, given proclamation pen, 445

Logan, John A., quoted, 286, 292

Logan, Mrs. John A., quoted, 197

Logan, Stephen T.,
  mentioned, 74, 186;
  law partner of L., 71;
  Whig debater, 89;
  partnership dissolved, 97;
  anecdote of shirt, 139;
  favors L. for legislature, 161;
  elected to legislature, 162;
  L's champion in legislature, 163

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, abolitionist, 345

Long, Dr., quoted, 181

"Long Nine," delegates to senate convention, 1836, 60, 62

Lookout Mountain, Grant's success, 516

Loring, George B., quoted, 282-283

Lossing, Benson J., quoted, 342-343

Louisiana, seceded, 261

Louisville "Journal," L's liking for, 27

Lovejoy, Elijah, 244

Lovejoy, Owen,
  abolitionist, 244;
  mentioned, 378, 422, 423, 436

Lowell, James Russell,
  abolitionist, 245;
  quoted, 340

Lucas, Major, quoted, 93

Lyons, Lord, 343


McClellan, George B.,
  mentioned, 356, 375, 488;
  Stanton's hostility, 367, 407, 411;
  difficulties with Army of Potomac, 367;
  letter from L. on over-cautiousness, 392-395;
  as a soldier, 403-404;
  Meade and Grant quoted, 404;
  L's personal regard for, 404;
  appointed general of Union armies, 405;
  L.'s letter about plan of campaign, 405-406;
  urging action, 406-407;
  L. defends, 407;
  recalled from Peninsula; succeeded by Pope, 410;
  reinstated, 411-412;
  own account, 413;
  Antietam victory, 414;
  inaction after Antietam criticized, 414;
  quoted on L's visit to army, 414-415;
  correspondence with L., 416;
  replaced by Burnside, 417;
  L's opinion, 417-418, 457-458;
  bad news from the Peninsula, 425;
  fails to reach Richmond, 454;
  removal from Army of the Potomac, 487;
  L's presidential competitor, 539;
  defeated for presidency, 547

McCormick, R.C., quoted, 215, 252

McCormick reaper case, in 1857, 173-176

McCulloch, Hugh,
  quoted, 332;
  secretary of the treasury, 294;
  at L's death-bed, 591-593

McCullough, John Edward, summoned to meet L., 469-470

McDonald, Senator, 138

McHenry, Henry, quoted, 46

McNeill, James, (McNamar), Anne Rutledge's suitor, 49-50

Macon County, Ill., Lincoln family settle in, 21

Manassas defeat, 410-411

Markland, Mr., quoted, 321-322

Mason, Senator, 100

Mason and Slidell affair, 340-344

Massachusetts, first to put regiment in the field in Civil War, 314

Meade, George G.,
  mentioned, 499, 501;
  opinion of McClellan, 404;
  succeeds Hooker, 498;
  criticized for Lee's escape, 503-504;
  asks to be relieved, 504;
  answers criticism, 504;
  does not press resignation, 505;
  L.'s opinion modified, 506-507

Meigs, Montgomery C., 334;
  at L's death-bed, 591

"Merrimac,"
  frightens New Yorkers, 338;
  Hampton Roads defeat, 345;
  engagement with "Monitor," 390-391

Messages and proclamations,
  inaugural message, loss feared, 283;
  colloquialisms in, 471-473

Messages and proclamations, quotations,
  inaugural address, 287-291;
  volunteers called for, 313-314;
  blockade of southern ports, 317-318;
  Key West, Tortugas, and Santa Rosa, concerning authority, 318;
  Virginia convention, response to, 319-320;
  to congress, July 4, 1861, 322-325;
  first annual message, 348-350;
  President's general order, No. 1, Feb. 22, 1862, 383;
  thanksgiving proclamation, April 10, 1862, 385-386;
  emancipation, appeal to border states, 421-422;
  final proclamation, 433-435, 438, 441-444;
  second annual message, 440-441;
  Thanksgiving, 1863, 508-510;
  fourth annual message, 552;
  inaugural address, second, 557-559;
  Gladstone's tribute, 559-560.
  _See also_ Speeches and Lectures

Metzgar murder case, 134

Mexican War, attitude of L. toward, 101-102, 131

Mexico, French invasion, 345

"Miami," Federal steamboat, 386, 391

Milroy, R.H., 333, 334

Milwaukee, speech of L. at State Fair, 389

Minnesota, asks execution of Indians, 453

Minter, Graham, L's schoolmaster, quoted, 32

"Mirror," The Manchester (N.H.), quoted, 221

Missionary Ridge, Grant's success, 516

Mississippi, seceded, 261

Missouri Compromise, views of L. and Douglas, 150-160

Missouri, factional quarrels, 454-457

Mitchell, General, telegram from, 388, 389

"Monitor,"
  engagement with "Merrimac," 390-391;
  origin of, 345-347

Moore, Ex-governor, 266

Moore, Mrs., step-sister, 263, 264

Morgan, Edwin D., 533

Morse, John T., quoted, 364


"Nasby, Petroleum V." (David Ross Locke), read by L., 467-468, 548

Nebraska Bill. _See_ Kansas-Nebraska Bill

Negroes,
  enlistment in army, 373, 484-486;
  justified by L., 507;
  New Year's reception, 552-553;
  grief over death of L., 597.
  _See also_ Emancipation; Slavery

Neill, Secretary to L., quoted, 536-537, 585

New Brunswick affair, 356

New England,
  dissatisfaction with L., 529,
  speeches and visit of L., 221-223

New Salem, Ill.,
  L. settles at, 24;
  L. appointed postmaster, 44;
  speech of L. before literary society, 44;
  now a desolate waste, 54

New Year's presidential reception,
  in 1862, 350;
  in 1863, 441;
  in 1865, 552-553

New York City,
  visit of L. in 1860, 215-221, 225-226;
  on inaugural journey, 276;
  funeral ceremonies, 598

New York "Tribune." _See_ Greeley, Horace

New York troops, reviewed July 4, 1861, 326

Newpapers,
  L's favorite newspaper, 27;
  surveillance, 301

Nichols, John W., quoted, 541-542

Nicolay, John G.,
  L's private secretary, 266;
  quoted, 302, 361-362, 478

Norfolk captured, 391-392

Norris, James H., 134

Nott and Brainard, quoted, 220

Noyes, George C., quoted, 194


Oberkleine, Frederick,
  address to L. at Cincinnati, 271-272;
  L's reply, 272-273

Office-seekers,
  patience of L. toward, 252;
  demands of, 296;
  annoy L., 353-354;
  actor who wanted consulship, 470

Offutt, Denton, 26;
  relations with L., 23-24; 26,
  quoted, 27;
  store closed in 1832, 35

Oglesby, Richard J., quoted, 229, 230

Oregon, federal office offered L., 107


Pain, John, 169

Parke, John G., 385

Parker, Theodore, abolitionist, 166

Parks, C.S., quoted, 144, 162

Pearson, John, quoted, 81

Pearson, Henry Greenleaf, quoted, 529-530

Peck, Ebenezer,
  mentioned, 171, 227;
  quoted, 87

Pemberton, J.C., 501, 525, 526

Pennsylvania, invaded by Lee, 497

Pennypacker, Isaac R., quoted, 505

Petersburg, Ill., surveyed and planned by L., 67

Petersburg, Va., victory, and visit by L., 567

Philadelphia,
  visited on inaugural journey, 277-278;
  receives news of L's death, 594-596

Phillips, Wendell,
  abolitionist, 166, 245;
  interview with L., 482-484

Piatt, Don, quoted, 252-253

Pierce, Franklin, 354

Pierpont, John, visits L., 468-469

Pinkerton, Allan, 179

Polk, James K., campaign, 98-99

Pomeroy, Senator, 368

Poore, Benjamin Perley, quoted, 301-302, 445

Pope, John,
  defeat at Manassas, 410-411;
  succeeded by McClellan, 411, 414;
  Bull Run disaster, 437

Porter, D.D.,
  aids Grant, 501;
  interview with L. at City Point, 563-566, 578;
  L's visit to the Malvern, 566-567;
  visits Petersburg with L., 567-568;
  described visit to Richmond with L., 568-573;
  interview with L. at City Point, 578;
  quoted, 522-523

Prime, Irenæus, quoted, 276

Pringle, Cyrus, the case of, 398-399

Proclamations. _See_ Messages and Proclamations


Quakers,
  L's ancestry, 2;
  war scruples, 398-399;
  demand emancipation, 425-427


Rail-splitting episode, 23

Ramsey, Senator, 536

Rathbone, Major,
  at Ford's Theatre, 587;
  struggles with Booth, 590-591

Raymond, Henry J., quoted, 205, 314-315

Rebellion, War of. _See_ Civil War

Reconstruction,
  L.'s speech on, quoted, 575-576;
  policy of L., 576-581

Reid, Whitelaw, 548

Reno, Jesse L., 385

Republican party,
  birth of, 159;
  organized in Illinois, 169;
  national convention in 1856, 170;
  asked L. to speak in Ohio, 211;
  advice of L. to, 219;
  Illinois convention of 1860, 229;
  national convention, 1860, 231-237;
  growth and tendencies, 251;
  fears for L's loyalty, 271;
  partisan and unreasonable, 293;
  office-seekers, 296;
  elections of 1863, 510-511;
  national convention of 1864, 534

Reynolds, John, call for volunteers, 36, 39

Rhett, Robert B., 100

Richardson, William A., resolution supported by L., 101

Richmond,
  plans to capture, 405-407;
  fall of, 568;
  visited by L., 568-573

Riddle, A.G.
  part in Lincoln-Chase affair, 533-534;
  urges Chase's appointment as chief justice, 550-551;
  quoted, 274, 276, 281, 291, 381, 395-396, 450, 451, 543-544

Rock Valley, 35

Rollins, James S., quoted, 554

Rosecrans, W.S., sent to Missouri, 456-457

Ross, A.M., quoted, 352-356

Rothschild, Alonzo, quoted, 294-295

Rousseau, Kentucky legislator, 321

Russell, Lord John, protest of, in Trent affair, 343

Rutledge, Anne, L's love-affair with, 49-52


Schenck, Robert C., 333

Schofield, J.M.,
  mentioned, 564, 565;
  replaces Curtis, L's letter of appointment, 455-457;
  joins Sherman, 457;
  L's concern about ability, 565

Scott, Colonel, refused leave on death of wife, 408-410

Scott, Winfield,
  L's order to hold or retake forts, 261;
  warns L. of danger, 278;
  pays respects to L., 281-282;
  lacking as politician, 337;
  dislike of Hooker, 487

Schurz, Carl,
  seconded L's nomination, 234;
  quoted, 307

Secession,
  states that withdrew, 261;
  attitude of L. toward, 262, 287-291, 320-321;
  not considered rebellion, 292

Sedgwick, John, view of Meade's failure to attack Lee, 504

Selby, Paul, quoted, 158-160

Seward, Fanny, 592

Seward, Frederick W.,
  warns L. of danger, 278, 280;
  attacked and wounded, 591-592

Seward, Mrs. Frederick W., 423

Seward, William H.,
  mentioned, 17, 185, 296, 297, 305, 343, 441, 485, 593;
  opposes Nebraska bill, 153;
  doubt of his nomination, 215;
  statesmanship, 231;
  candidate for president, 231-234;
  eloquence of, 245;
  cabinet possibility, 258, 275;
  sends warning to L., 278;
  appointment as secretary of state, 293, 294, 295;
  press refused information, 301;
  diplomacy, credited to, 341;
  "Premier," self-styled, 364;
  arrogance, 366-368;
  rivalry with Chase, 366-370;
  resignation, 368;
  senate, opposition of, 368;
  L's objection to his resignation, 369;
  opposes negro enlistment, 373;
  emancipation views, 423;
  preliminary proclamation views, 436-437, 438;
  with Grant at White House reception, 518;
  tribute to L. on his re-election, 548-549;
  with L. meets peace commission, 554-557;
  L's visit, after Richmond, 573;
  attacked and wounded, 591-592

Seward, Mrs. William H., 592

Shakespeare, L's fondness for his works, 387, 466

Shepley, General, receives L. at Richmond, 572-573

Sherman, John, introduces brother to L., 298-299

Sherman, William T.,
  mentioned, 367, 457, 516, 579;
  quoted, 298-299;
  march to the sea, 517;
  L's opinion, 552;
  at Atlanta, 537;
  victories after Atlanta, 561-562;
  interview with L. at City Point, 563-566, 578;
  tribute to L., 565-566;
  anxiety of L. and Grant, 583, 584

Shields, James,
  ridiculed by Mary Todd, 93;
  duel with L., 93;
  L. wishes to succeed in congress, 161, 163

Shuman, Andrew,
  reports Lincoln-Douglas debates, 198;
  quoted, 199

Sibley, Judge, quoted, 84

Simpson, Bishop, officiates at L's funeral, 596

Slavery,
  protest against pro-slavery act in Illinois, 65;
  L's defense of fugitive slaves, 77;
  Independence Hall flag-raising, 278;
  L. introduces bill against, 104;
  L's growing opposition to, 147-153;
  L's attitude in letter to Speed, 151-153;
  Peoria speech, extract, 155-157;
  L's growing opposition to, 166-169, 178-182;
  knowledge of L. regarding, 186;
  Cincinnati speech, 211-212;
  Cooper Institute speech, 218-220;
  L's hatred for, growing, 245;
  fugitive slave law, 248-249, 434-435;
  political issue, 251;
  attitude of L. toward, 254;
  L. opposes compromises, 261;
  legislation against, 1862, 421;
  L's own account of his views, 446-448;
  L's attitude in fourth annual message, 552;
  constitutional amendment, 553-554.
  _See also_ Emancipation

Slocum, Henry W., 504

Smith, Caleb B.,
  secretary of the interior, 293, 294;
  non-committal on Ericsson's invention, 347

Smith, Goldwin,
  visits L., 357-358;
  quoted, 358-359

Smith, James, 591

Smith, William Henry, quoted, 269-273, 550

Smoot, Coleman, friendship with L., 29-30

"Soldiers' Rest," Lincoln's summer home during presidency, 401

South Carolina, seceded, 261

Southern Confederacy. _See_ Confederate states

Sparrow, Thomas and Betsy, 6

Spaulding, Judge, 533, 534

Speeches and lectures,
  in congress in 1848, 40;
  candidate for member of legislature, 41;
  to New Salem literary society, 44;
  stump-speaking, 55;
  on "Spot Resolutions," 101;
  on the presidency and general politics, 102;
  age of different inventions, 119;
  to Scott club of Springfield, 147;
  eulogy on death of Clay, 147;
  Bloomington convention, 167-168;
  "House-divided-against-itself," 178-182, 473;
  lectures in winter of 1859, 210;
  political speeches in Ohio, 211;
  political speeches in Kansas, 213;
  invitation to lecture in Beecher's church, 214;
  Cooper Institute speech, 215-221, 223-224;
  in New England, 221-223;
  accusation of fees received for speeches, 223-224;
  Five Points Sunday School, N.Y., talk, 225-226;
  inaugural journey, 268-276;
  Wisconsin state fair, 389

Speeches and lectures, quotations,
  influence of Weem's life of Washington, 15;
  Perpetuation of our political institutions, 63-65;
  Peace plea, 158;
  Bloomington ratification meeting, 169-170;
  "House-divided-against-itself," 180, 426, 473;
  Appeal for a hearing in southern Illinois, 199-200;
  Cincinnati, 1859, 211;
  Cooper Institute speech, 218-219;
  Presidential nomination, response, 243;
  Springfield farewell, 267;
  Cincinnati in 1861, 270;
  Cincinnati, reply to Oberkleine, 272-273;
  Philadelphia, on inaugural journey, 278;
  after Bull Run, 328;
  Slavery, 426;
  Emancipation proclamation, speech following, 444-445;
  Gettysburg address,
    text, 512,
    comments, 512-515;
  Grant's commission, presentation of, 519;
  Richmond, to negroes, 571;
  Close of war, 574;
  Reconstruction, last speech, 575-576.
  _See also_
    Lincoln-Douglas debates;
    Messages and proclamations

Speed, Joshua F.,
  mentioned, 294, 322;
  first interview with L., 69-70;
  L's home with, 88;
  intimate friend of L., 95-96;
  opinion of L's ability as a lawyer, 145-146;
  L's letter to sister of Speed, quoted, 148;
  L's letter to, on slavery, 151;
  compares L. and Douglas, 182-183;
  appointed attorney general, 294;
  at L's death-bed, 591

"Spot Resolutions," speech, 101

Springfield, Ill.,
  L. moves to, 60;
  agitation over removal of capital, 62, 66;
  removal accomplished, 69;
  L. returns to, 109;
  L's departure, Feb. 11, 1861, 265-266;
  recollections of L. about, 584;
  funeral ceremonies for L., 599

Stanton, Edwin M.,
  mentioned, 356, 357, 399, 461, 497;
  professional meeting with L., 173-176;
  contempt for L., 175;
  appointed secretary of war, 294;
  member of Buchanan's cabinet, 294, 295;
  applicant for office, 296;
  press refused information, 301;
  Mason and Slidell capture approved, 341;
  impulsiveness and violence, 364;
  antagonism to Welles, 364, 368;
  relations with L., 364-379;
  resignation threatened, 368;
  resignation withdrawn, 370;
  master-mind of cabinet, 370-371;
  replaces Cameron in cabinet, 371;
  Cameron's own account, 372-373;
  Fortress Monroe, visit to, 386-392;
  hostility to McClellan, 407, 411-412;
  refuses Col. Scott leave of absence, 408-410;
  death of his child, 423;
  opposes the "Boston set," 482;
  discouraged at Hooker's resignation, 498;
  dispute with Grant, 526-527;
  irritated by L's humor, 548;
  relations with Blair, 552;
  dispatch to Grant, 577;
  reconstruction plan proposed, 581;
  at L's death-bed, 591, 593;
  at Seward's bedside, 592

Steamboat Invention, L's, 24-26

Stearns, George L., 482

Stedman, E.C., quoted, 494-495

Stephens, Alexander H.,
  mentioned, 100;
  opinion of L. as a speaker, 100-101;
  Southern peace commissioner, 555;
  L's description of, 556

Stephenson, J.H., 482

Stewart, Harry W., quoted, 213

Stewart, James G., recollection of L's visit to Kansas, 213

Stone, Charles P., quoted, 280, 308-310

Stone River,
  costly success, 496;
  L's dream, 583;
  Grant denies victory, 583

Stories told by L.,
  Bob Lewis and the Mormon lands, 334-335;
  Big fellow beaten by little wife, 429;
  Boy and the troublesome coon, 580;
  Darkey arithmetic, 357-358;
  Horse sold at cross-roads, 388;
  Johnnie Kongapod, 81;
  Jones and his bridge to the infernal regions, 338-339;
  Letting the dog go, 461-462;
  Plaster of psalm-tunes, 337;
  Sausages and cats, 260;
  Shooting skunks, 373-374;
  Sick man of Illinois and his grudge, 344;
  Swapping horses in mid-stream, 535;
  Sykes's yellow dog, 525-526;
  Taking to the woods, 336

Story-telling,
  used on troublesome visitors, 30-31;
  fondness of L. for, 68, 84, 101, 198;
  L. entertains Van Buren, 87;
  indelicacy charge refuted, 258;
  application of stories, 259;
  safety-valve of L., 332-333, 387;
  chagrins friends, 357;
  relieves bad news by, 461

Stowe, Harriet Beecher,
  "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 245;
  quoted, 307-308, 462, 472-473

Stuart, J.E.B., 150, 165, 497

Stuart, John T.,
  mentioned, 74;
  L's first acquaintance with, 38;
  law partner of L., 71;
  on L's method of accounting, 133

Sumner, Charles,
  mentioned, 304, 305, 352, 368, 445, 586;
  opposes Nebraska Bill, 153;
  eloquence of, 245;
  assault upon, 245;
  member of inaugural party, 275;
  declined to measure backs with L., 336;
  lacks confidence in Hooker, 492;
  introduces constitutional amendment, 554;
  at L's death-bed, 591

Sumter. _See_ Fort Sumter

Swett, Leonard,
  associate of L. in law case, 136;
  quoted, 181, 257, 542-543

Sykes, George, 504


Taney, R.B.,
  administered oath of office to L., 284, 286;
  death, 550

Tannatt, T.R., 499, 500

Taylor Club, "the young Indians," 100

Taylor, Richard (Dick), L's discomfiture of, 57-58

Taylor, Zachary,
  Black Hawk War, 39;
  presidency supported by L. and Stephens, 100

Terry, Alfred H., 564

Texas, seceded, 261

Thirteenth Amendment passed, 553-554

Thomas, Jesse, 89

Thomas, George H., 459, 516

Thompson George, 468-469

Thompson, Jacob, 585-586

Thompson, Richard, 81

Todd, Captain, guards L. at White House, 308-309

Todd, Mary. _See_ Lincoln, Mary Todd

Todd, Robert S., 94

Toombs, Robert, 100

Treat, Judge, 137, 141

Trent Affair,
  friendly attitude of France and Spain, 305;
  L's diplomacy in, 340-344

Trumbull, Lyman,
  mentioned, 74; 185, 368;
  elected senator, 161, 162, 164;
  substitute amendment introduced by 554


Usher, John D.,
  appointed secretary of the interior, 294


Vallandigham, Clement L.,
  opposes war policy, 481;
  candidate for governor of Ohio, 510;
  L's opinion of, 511

Van Buren, Martin,
  mentioned, 360;
  entertained by L's stories, 87

Vandalia, Ill., proposed change of state capital, 62, 66

Van Santvoord, C., quoted, 451-452

Verdi, Dr., 592

Vicksburg,
  mentioned, 516, 517, 518, 524;
  turning-point in war, 496;
  campaign, 500-503;
  L's joy over victory, 501, 507;
  L. meets criticism with anecdote, 525;
  L's dream, 583

Viele, General, describes visit to Fortress Monroe, 386-391

Virginia Convention, asks expression of Federal policy, 318

Volk, Leonard W.,
  impressions of L., 201-202;
  makes cast of L., 237-243

Voorhees, Daniel W., 81


Wade, Benjamin,
  mentioned, 535;
  urges Grant's dismissal, 503;
  lack of military judgment, 505

Wadsworth, James S., 296

Walker, Isaac, recollections of L., 88

Washburne, E.B.,
  mentioned 225;
  L's letters to, against compromise, 260-261;
  giving orders for Scott, 261;
  quoted, 105, 173, 279;
  bill creating rank of lieutenant-general, 516

Washington, D.C.,
  L. reluctant to leave in 1849, 109;
  L's arrival, Feb. 23, 1861, 279-280;
  inaugural week, 281-290;
  rebels and rebel sympathizers in, 292;
  defenses visited by L., 400;
  regarded as lost, 413;
  relieved, 414;
  society in 1862-1863, 449-450;
  Early's attack, 533, 537;
  enthusiasm over Lee's surrender, 574-575

Washington, George,
  mentioned, 360;
  influence of Weem's life of W. on L., 8, 15;
  life read by L. as case preparation, 78;
  L. ranked with, 527, 549

Watson, assistant secretary of state, 375

Watterson, Henry, quoted 4

Webster, Daniel,
  mentioned, 100, 185;
  considered a leader, 529-530

Weed, Thurlow,
  mentioned, 474;
  quoted, 257-260;
  discusses cabinet appointments, 257-259;
  L's letter to, Dec. 17, 1860, extract, 262;
  objects to Welles, 365

Weitzel, Godfrey,
  occupies Richmond, 568;
  headquarters in Richmond, 572

Weldon, Lawrence, quoted, 139, 334

Welles, Gideon,
  mentioned, 347, 460, 511;
  cabinet possibility, 259;
  appointed secretary of the navy, 293;
  approves Mason and Slidell capture, 341;
  calmness of, 364;
  antagonism to Stanton, 364, 368;
  at L's death-bed, 591-594;
  quoted, 292-293, 320, 325, 333, 345, 365-366, 367,
      368-369, 411-412, 412-413, 417, 423-424, 432, 438,
      439, 440, 457-458, 473-474, 492, 493, 497, 501, 506,
      511, 531, 535, 538, 540, 551-552, 555, 556-557, 563,
      577, 581, 583-584, 591-594, 597

Welles, Mrs. Gideon, mentioned, 591

"Westminster Review," on Gettysburg address, 513

Wheeler, William A., quoted, 376-378

Whig Party,
  L. a delegate to presidential convention, 104;
  L. believes he is a Whig, 153, 157;
  symptoms of disintegration, 159;
  L. a leader, 162-163;
  dissolution, 165

White, Dr., 592

White, Mrs., 453

White House,
  L.'s first night at, 292,
  L's family life, 464-465;
  office of L. described, 299-300;
  official precedence, 300-301;
  New Year's receptions, 350, 441;
  society in 1862-63, 449-450;
  L's informal receptions, 450-451;
  freedom of access, 459-461;
  Grant's ovation at reception, 517-518;
  reception, 1865, negroes attend, 552-553

Whiting,
  solicitor of war department, 375;
  candidate for attorney general, 522

Whitman, Walt, quoted, 263, 589-590, 597-598

Whittier, John Greenleaf, abolitionist, 245

"Wide-awake" clubs, 250

Wigfall, Senator, 286

Wilcox, Major, quoted, 106

Willard's Hotel, Washington, headquarters of L., 281, 282

Willis, David, 515

Wilmington, L's dream, 583

Wilmot Proviso, L. votes for, 153

Wilkes, Charles, 341, 342

Wilson, Robert L., quoted, 62, 85

Wilson, Henry, 357, 482

Winchell, J.M.,
  quoted, 382;
  interview with L., 531

Winslow, John F., builder of "Monitor," 345-347

Winthrop, Robert C., quoted, 100

Wisconsin State Fair, addressed by L. in 1859, 389

Wood, Fernando, 474

Wool, John E., 392

Workingmen, L's speech to, 272-273

Wright, Elizur, 492

Wright, Horatio, 504

Writings.
  _See_ Letters and telegrams;
  Messages and proclamations;
  Speeches and lectures


Yates, Richard,
  mentioned, 266;
  beginning of friendship with L., 30;
  opposes Missouri Compromise, 159;
  election to Congress, 150

"Young Indians," Taylor club, 100

Young, John Russell, quoted, 514

Young Men's Lyceum, address of L. quoted, 62










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Title: Beowulf
       An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem, Translated From The Heyne-Socin
       Text by Lesslie Hall

Author:  

Release Date: July 19, 2005 [EBook #16328]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEOWULF ***




Produced by David Starner, Dainis Millers and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net







BEOWULF
AN ANGLO-SAXON EPIC POEM

_TRANSLATED FROM THE HEYNE-SOCIN TEXT_

BY

JNO: LESSLIE HALL, Ph. D. (J.H.U.)

Professor of English and History in The College of William and Mary


D.C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1892, by

JNO: LESSLIE HALL,

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.


TO

My Wife

[v]




CONTENTS.


                                                               PAGE

      Preface                                                   vii

      Bibliography of Translations                               xi

      Glossary of Proper Names                                 xiii

      List of Words and Phrases not in General Use            xviii

      The Life and Death of Scyld (I.)                            1

      Scyld's Successors
                                 } (II.)                          3
      Hrothgar's Great Mead-Hall

      Grendel, the Murderer (III.)                                5

      Beowulf Goes to Hrothgar's Assistance (IV.)                 8

      The Geats Reach Heorot (V.)                                10

      Beowulf Introduces Himself at the Palace (VI.)             12

      Hrothgar and Beowulf (VII.)                                14

      Hrothgar and Beowulf (continued) (VIII.)                   17

      Unferth Taunts Beowulf (IX.)                               19

      Beowulf Silences Unferth
                               } (X.)                            21
      Glee is High

      All Sleep save One (XI.)                                   24

      Grendel and Beowulf (XII.)                                 26

      Grendel is Vanquished (XIII.)                              28

      Rejoicing of the Danes (XIV.)                              30

      Hrothgar's Gratitude (XV.)                                 33

      Hrothgar Lavishes Gifts upon his Deliverer (XVI.)          35

      Banquet (continued)
                                       } (XVII.)                 37
      The Scop's Song of Finn and Hnæf

      The Finn Episode (continued)
                                   } (XVIII.)                    39
      The Banquet Continues

      Beowulf Receives Further Honor (XIX.)                      41

      The Mother of Grendel (XX.)                                44

      Hrothgar's Account of the Monsters (XXI.)                  46

      Beowulf Seeks Grendel's Mother (XXII.)                     48

      Beowulf's Fight with Grendel's Mother (XXIII.)             51

      Beowulf is Double-Conqueror (XXIV.)                        53

[vi]  Beowulf Brings his Trophies
                                  } (XXV.)                       57
      Hrothgar's Gratitude

      Hrothgar Moralizes
                         } (XXVI.)                               60
      Rest after Labor

      Sorrow at Parting (XXVII.)                                 62

      The Homeward Journey
                           } (XXVIII.)                           64
      The Two Queens

      Beowulf and Higelac (XXIX.)                                67

      Beowulf Narrates his Adventures to Higelac (XXX.)          69

      Gift-Giving is Mutual (XXXI.)                              73

      The Hoard and the Dragon (XXXII.)                          75

      Brave Though Aged
                        } (XXXIII.)                              78
      Reminiscences

      Beowulf Seeks the Dragon
                               } (XXXIV.)                        81
      Beowulf's Reminiscences

      Reminiscences (continued)
                                } (XXXV.)                        83
      Beowulf's Last Battle

      Wiglaf the Trusty
                                                  } (XXXVI.)     88
      Beowulf is Deserted by Friends and by Sword

      The Fatal Struggle
                             } (XXXVII.)                         91
      Beowulf's Last Moments

      Wiglaf Plunders the Dragon's Den
                                       } (XXXVIII.)              93
      Beowulf's Death

      The Dead Foes
                             } (XXXIX.)                          95
      Wiglaf's Bitter Taunts

      The Messenger of Death (XL.)                               97

      The Messenger's Retrospect (XLI.)                          99

      Wiglaf's Sad Story
                            } (XLII.)                           103
      The Hoard Carried Off

      The Burning of Beowulf (XLIII.)                           106

      Addenda                                                   109

[vii]




PREFACE.


The present work is a modest effort to reproduce approximately, in modern
measures, the venerable epic, Beowulf. _Approximately_, I repeat; for a
very close reproduction of Anglo-Saxon verse would, to a large extent, be
prose to a modern ear.

The Heyne-Socin text and glossary have been closely followed. Occasionally
a deviation has been made, but always for what seemed good and sufficient
reason. The translator does not aim to be an editor. Once in a while,
however, he has added a conjecture of his own to the emendations quoted
from the criticisms of other students of the poem.

This work is addressed to two classes of readers. From both of these alike
the translator begs sympathy and co-operation. The Anglo-Saxon scholar he
hopes to please by adhering faithfully to the original. The student of
English literature he aims to interest by giving him, in modern garb, the
most ancient epic of our race. This is a bold and venturesome undertaking;
and yet there must be some students of the Teutonic past willing to follow
even a daring guide, if they may read in modern phrases of the sorrows of
Hrothgar, of the prowess of Beowulf, and of the feelings that stirred the
hearts of our forefathers in their primeval homes.

In order to please the larger class of readers, a regular cadence has been
used, a measure which, while retaining the essential characteristics of
the original, permits the reader to see ahead of him in reading.

Perhaps every Anglo-Saxon scholar has his own theory as to how Beowulf
should be translated. Some have given us prose versions of what we believe
to be a great poem. Is it any reflection on our honored Kemble and Arnold
to say that their translations fail to show a layman that Beowulf is
justly called our first _epic_? Of those translators who have used verse,
several have written from what would seem a mistaken point of view. Is it
proper, for instance, that the grave and solemn speeches of Beowulf and
Hrothgar be put in ballad measures, tripping lightly and airily along? Or,
again, is it fitting that the rough martial music of Anglo-Saxon verse be
interpreted to us in the smooth measures of modern blank verse? Do we hear
what has been beautifully called "the clanging tread of a warrior in
mail"?

[viii]

Of all English translations of Beowulf, that of Professor Garnett alone
gives any adequate idea of the chief characteristics of this great
Teutonic epic.

The measure used in the present translation is believed to be as near a
reproduction of the original as modern English affords. The cadences
closely resemble those used by Browning in some of his most striking
poems. The four stresses of the Anglo-Saxon verse are retained, and as
much thesis and anacrusis is allowed as is consistent with a regular
cadence. Alliteration has been used to a large extent; but it was thought
that modern ears would hardly tolerate it on every line. End-rhyme has
been used occasionally; internal rhyme, sporadically. Both have some
warrant in Anglo-Saxon poetry. (For end-rhyme, see 1_53, 1_54; for
internal rhyme, 2_21, 6_40.)

What Gummere[1] calls the "rime-giver" has been studiously kept; _viz._,
the first accented syllable in the second half-verse always carries the
alliteration; and the last accented syllable alliterates only
sporadically. Alternate alliteration is occasionally used as in the
original. (See 7_61, 8_5.)

No two accented syllables have been brought together, except occasionally
after a cæsural pause. (See 2_19 and 12_1.) Or, scientifically speaking,
Sievers's C type has been avoided as not consonant with the plan of
translation. Several of his types, however, constantly occur; _e.g._ A and
a variant (/ x | / x) (/ x x | / x); B and a variant (x / | x / ) (x x / |
x / ); a variant of D (/ x | / x x); E (/ x x | / ). Anacrusis gives
further variety to the types used in the translation.

The parallelisms of the original have been faithfully preserved. (_E.g._,
1_16 and 1_17: "Lord" and "Wielder of Glory"; 1_30, 1_31, 1_32; 2_12 and
2_13; 2_27 and 2_28; 3_5 and 3_6.) Occasionally, some loss has been
sustained; but, on the other hand, a gain has here and there been made.

The effort has been made to give a decided flavor of archaism to the
translation. All words not in keeping with the spirit of the poem have
been avoided. Again, though many archaic words have been used, there are
none, it is believed, which are not found in standard modern poetry.

[ix]

With these preliminary remarks, it will not be amiss to give an outline of
the story of the poem.


_THE STORY._

_Hrothgar, king of the Danes, or Scyldings, builds a great mead-hall, or
palace, in which he hopes to feast his liegemen and to give them presents.
The joy of king and retainers is, however, of short duration. Grendel, the
monster, is seized with hateful jealousy. He cannot brook the sounds of
joyance that reach him down in his fen-dwelling near the hall. Oft and
anon he goes to the joyous building, bent on direful mischief. Thane after
thane is ruthlessly carried off and devoured, while no one is found strong
enough and bold enough to cope with the monster. For twelve years he
persecutes Hrothgar and his vassals._

_Over sea, a day's voyage off, Beowulf, of the Geats, nephew of Higelac,
king of the Geats, hears of Grendel's doings and of Hrothgar's misery. He
resolves to crush the fell monster and relieve the aged king. With
fourteen chosen companions, he sets sail for Dane-land. Reaching that
country, he soon persuades Hrothgar of his ability to help him. The hours
that elapse before night are spent in beer-drinking and conversation. When
Hrothgar's bedtime comes he leaves the hall in charge of Beowulf, telling
him that never before has he given to another the absolute wardship of his
palace. All retire to rest, Beowulf, as it were, sleeping upon his arms._

_Grendel comes, the great march-stepper, bearing God's anger. He seizes
and kills one of the sleeping warriors. Then he advances towards Beowulf.
A fierce and desperate hand-to-hand struggle ensues. No arms are used,
both combatants trusting to strength and hand-grip. Beowulf tears
Grendel's shoulder from its socket, and the monster retreats to his den,
howling and yelling with agony and fury. The wound is fatal._

_The next morning, at early dawn, warriors in numbers flock to the hall
Heorot, to hear the news. Joy is boundless. Glee runs high. Hrothgar and
his retainers are lavish of gratitude and of gifts._

_Grendel's mother, however, comes the next night to avenge his death. She
is furious and raging. While Beowulf is sleeping in a room somewhat apart
[x] from the quarters of the other warriors, she seizes one of Hrothgar's
favorite counsellors, and carries him off and devours him. Beowulf is
called. Determined to leave Heorot entirely purified, he arms himself, and
goes down to look for the female monster. After traveling through the
waters many hours, he meets her near the sea-bottom. She drags him to her
den. There he sees Grendel lying dead. After a desperate and almost fatal
struggle with the woman, he slays her, and swims upward in triumph, taking
with him Grendel's head._

_Joy is renewed at Heorot. Congratulations crowd upon the victor. Hrothgar
literally pours treasures into the lap of Beowulf; and it is agreed among
the vassals of the king that Beowulf will be their next liegelord._

_Beowulf leaves Dane-land. Hrothgar weeps and laments at his departure._

_When the hero arrives in his own land, Higelac treats him as a
distinguished guest. He is the hero of the hour._

_Beowulf subsequently becomes king of his own people, the Geats. After he
has been ruling for fifty years, his own neighborhood is wofully harried
by a fire-spewing dragon. Beowulf determines to kill him. In the ensuing
struggle both Beowulf and the dragon are slain. The grief of the Geats is
inexpressible. They determine, however, to leave nothing undone to honor
the memory of their lord. A great funeral-pyre is built, and his body is
burnt. Then a memorial-barrow is made, visible from a great distance, that
sailors afar may be constantly reminded of the prowess of the national
hero of Geatland._

_The poem closes with a glowing tribute to his bravery, his gentleness,
his goodness of heart, and his generosity._

       *       *       *       *       *

It is the devout desire of this translator to hasten the day when the
story of Beowulf shall be as familiar to English-speaking peoples as that
of the Iliad. Beowulf is our first great epic. It is an epitomized history
of the life of the Teutonic races. It brings vividly before us our
forefathers of pre-Alfredian eras, in their love of war, of sea, and of
adventure.

My special thanks are due to Professors Francis A. March and James A.
Harrison, for advice, sympathy, and assistance.

                                                        J.L. HALL.

[xi]




ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES.


B. = Bugge. C. = Cosijn. Gr. = Grein. Grdvtg. = Grundtvig. H. = Heyne. H.
and S. = Harrison and Sharp. H.-So. = Heyne-Socin. K.= Kemble. Kl. =
Kluge. M.= Müllenhoff. R. = Rieger. S. = Sievers. Sw. = Sweet. t.B. = ten
Brink. Th. = Thorpe. W. = Wülcker.

       *       *       *       *       *




BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TRANSLATIONS.


~Arnold, Thomas.~--Beowulf. A heroic poem of the eighth century. London,
1876. With English translation. Prose.

~Botkine, L.~--Beowulf. Epopée Anglo-Saxonne. Havre, 1877. First French
translation. Passages occasionally omitted.

~Conybeare, J.J.~--Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry. London, 1826. Full
Latin translation, and some passages translated into English blank-verse.

~Ettmuller, L.~--Beowulf, stabreimend übersetzt. Zürich, 1840.

~Garnett, J.M.~--Beowulf: an Anglo-Saxon Poem, and the Fight at Finnsburg.
Boston, 1882. An accurate line-for-line translation, using alliteration
occasionally, and sometimes assuming a metrical cadence.

~Grein, C.W.M.~--Dichtungen der Angelsachsen, stabreimend übersetzt. 2
Bde. Göttingen, 1857-59.

~Grion, Giusto.~--Beovulf, poema epico anglo-sassone del VII. secolo,
tradotto e illustrato. Lucca, 1883. First Italian translation.

~Grundtvig, N.F.S.~--Bjowulfs Drape. Copenhagen, 1820.

~Heyne, M.~--A translation in iambic measures. Paderborn, 1863.

~Kemble, J.M.~--The Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, the Traveller's Song,
and the Battle of Finnsburg. London, 1833. The second edition contains a
prose translation of Beowulf.

~Leo, H.~--Ueber Beowulf. Halle, 1839. Translations of extracts.

[xii]

~Lumsden, H.W.~--Beowulf, translated into modern rhymes. London, 1881.
Ballad measures. Passages occasionally omitted.

~Sandras, G.S.~--De carminibus Cædmoni adjudicatis. Paris, 1859. An
extract from Beowulf, with Latin translation.

~Schaldmose, F.~--Beowulf og Scopes Widsith, to Angelsaxiske Digte.
Copenhagen, 1847.

~Simrock, K.~--Beowulf. Uebersetzt und erläutert. Stuttgart und Augsburg,
1859. Alliterative measures.

~Thorkelin, G.J.~--De Danorum rebus gestis secul. III. et IV. poema
Danicum dialecto Anglosaxonica. Havniæ, 1815. Latin translation.

~Thorpe, B.~--The Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, the Scôp or Gleeman's
Tale, and the Fight at Finnsburg. Oxford, 1855. English translation in
short lines, generally containing two stresses.

~Wackerbarth, A.D.~--Beowulf, translated into English verse. London, 1849.

~Wickberg, R.~--Beowulf, en fornengelsk hjeltedikt, öfersatt. Westervik.
First Swedish translation.

~von Wolzogen, H.~--Beowulf, in alliterative measures. Leipzig.

~Zinsser, G.~--Der Kampf Beowulfs mit Grendel. Jahresbericht of the
Realschule at Forbach, 1881.

[xiii]




GLOSSARY OF PROPER NAMES.

       *       *       *       *       *

[The figures refer to the divisions of the poem in which the respective
names occur. The large figures refer to fitts, the small, to lines in the
fitts.]

       *       *       *       *       *

~Ælfhere~.--A kinsman of Wiglaf.--36_3.

~Æschere~.--Confidential friend of King Hrothgar. Elder brother of
Yrmenlaf. Killed by Grendel.--21_3; 30_89.

~Beanstan~.--Father of Breca.--9_26.

~Beowulf~.--Son of Scyld, the founder of the dynasty of Scyldings. Father
of Healfdene, and grandfather of Hrothgar.--1_18; 2_1.

~Beowulf~.--The hero of the poem. Sprung from the stock of Geats, son of
Ecgtheow. Brought up by his maternal grandfather Hrethel, and figuring in
manhood as a devoted liegeman of his uncle Higelac. A hero from his youth.
Has the strength of thirty men. Engages in a swimming-match with Breca.
Goes to the help of Hrothgar against the monster Grendel. Vanquishes
Grendel and his mother. Afterwards becomes king of the Geats. Late in life
attempts to kill a fire-spewing dragon, and is slain. Is buried with great
honors. His memorial mound.--6_26; 7_2; 7_9; 9_3; 9_8; 12_28; 12_43; 23_1,
etc.

~Breca~.--Beowulf's opponent in the famous swimming-match.--9_8; 9_19;
9_21; 9_22.

~Brondings~.--A people ruled by Breca.--9_23.

~Brosinga mene~.--A famous collar once owned by the Brosings.--19_7.

~Cain~.--Progenitor of Grendel and other monsters.--2_56; 20_11.

~Dæghrefn~.--A warrior of the Hugs, killed by Beowulf.--35_40.

~Danes~.--Subjects of Scyld and his descendants, and hence often called
Scyldings. Other names for them are Victory-Scyldings, Honor-Scyldings,
Armor-Danes, Bright-Danes, East-Danes, West-Danes, North-Danes,
South-Danes, Ingwins, Hrethmen.--1_1; 2_1; 3_2; 5_14; 7_1, etc.

~Ecglaf~.--Father of Unferth, who taunts Beowulf.--9_1.

~Ecgtheow~.--Father of Beowulf, the hero of the poem. A widely-known
Wægmunding warrior. Marries Hrethel's daughter. After slaying Heatholaf, a
Wylfing, he flees his country.--7_3; 5_6; 8_4.

~Ecgwela~.--A king of the Danes before Scyld.--25_60.

[xiv]

~Elan~.--Sister of Hrothgar, and probably wife of Ongentheow, king of the
Swedes.--2_10.

~Eagle Cape~.--A promontory in Geat-land, under which took place Beowulf's
last encounter.--41_87.

~Eadgils~.--Son of Ohthere and brother of Eanmund.--34_2.

~Eanmund~.--Son of Ohthere and brother of Eadgils. The reference to these
brothers is vague, and variously understood. Heyne supposes as follows:
Raising a revolt against their father, they are obliged to leave Sweden.
They go to the land of the Geats; with what intention, is not known, but
probably to conquer and plunder. The Geatish king, Heardred, is slain by
one of the brothers, probably Eanmund.--36_10; 31_54 to 31_60; 33_66 to
34_6.

~Eofor~.--A Geatish hero who slays Ongentheow in war, and is rewarded by
Hygelac with the hand of his only daughter.--41_18; 41_48.

~Eormenric~.--A Gothic king, from whom Hama took away the famous Brosinga
mene.--19_9.

~Eomær~.--Son of Offa and Thrytho, king and queen of the Angles.--28_69.

~Finn~.--King of the North-Frisians and the Jutes. Marries Hildeburg. At
his court takes place the horrible slaughter in which the Danish general,
Hnæf, fell. Later on, Finn himself is slain by Danish warriors.--17_18;
17_30; 17_44; 18_4; 18_23.

~Fin-land~.--The country to which Beowulf was driven by the currents in
his swimming-match.--10_22.

~Fitela~.--Son and nephew of King Sigemund, whose praises are sung in
XIV.--14_42; 14_53.

~Folcwalda~.--Father of Finn.--17_38.

~Franks~.--Introduced occasionally in referring to the death of
Higelac.--19_19; 40_21; 40_24.

~Frisians~.--A part of them are ruled by Finn. Some of them were engaged
in the struggle in which Higelac was slain.--17_20; 17_42; 17_52; 40_21.

~Freaware~.--Daughter of King Hrothgar. Married to Ingeld, a Heathobard
prince.--29_60; 30_32.

~Froda~.--King of the Heathobards, and father of Ingeld.--29_62.

~Garmund~.--Father of Offa.--28_71.

~Geats, Geatmen~.--The race to which the hero of the poem belongs. Also
called Weder-Geats, or Weders, War-Geats, Sea-Geats. They are ruled by
Hrethel, Hæthcyn, Higelac, and Beowulf.--4_7; 7_4; 10_45; 11_8; 27_14;
28_8.

~Gepids~.--Named in connection with the Danes and Swedes.--35_34.

~Grendel~.--A monster of the race of Cain. Dwells in the fens and moors.
Is furiously envious when he hears sounds of joy in Hrothgar's palace.
Causes the king untold agony for years. Is finally conquered by Beowulf,
and dies of his wound. His hand and arm are hung up in Hrothgar's hall
Heorot. His head is cut off by Beowulf when he goes down to fight with
Grendel's mother.--2_50; 3_1; 3_13; 8_19; 11_17; 12_2; 13_27; 15_3.

~Guthlaf~.--A Dane of Hnæf's party.--18_24.

~Half-Danes~.--Branch of the Danes to which Hnæf belonged.--17_19.

[xv]

~Halga~.--Surnamed the Good. Younger brother of Hrothgar.--2_9.

~Hama~.--Takes the Brosinga mene from Eormenric.--19_7.

~Hæreth~.--Father of Higelac's queen, Hygd.--28_39; 29_18.

~Hæthcyn~.--Son of Hrethel and brother of Higelac. Kills his brother
Herebeald accidentally. Is slain at Ravenswood, fighting against
Ongentheow.--34_43; 35_23; 40_32.

~Helmings~.--The race to which Queen Wealhtheow belonged.--10_63.

~Heming~.--A kinsman of Garmund, perhaps nephew.--28_54; 28_70.

~Hengest~.--A Danish leader. Takes command on the fall of Hnæf.--17_33;
17_41.

~Herebeald~.--Eldest son of Hrethel, the Geatish king, and brother of
Higelac. Killed by his younger brother Hæthcyn.--34_43; 34_47.

~Heremod~.--A Danish king of a dynasty before the Scylding line. Was a
source of great sorrow to his people.--14_64; 25_59.

~Hereric~.--Referred to as uncle of Heardred, but otherwise
unknown.--31_60.

~Hetwars~.--Another name for the Franks.--33_51.

~Healfdene~.--Grandson of Scyld and father of Hrothgar. Ruled the Danes
long and well.--2_5; 4_1; 8_14.

~Heardred~.--Son of Higelac and Hygd, king and queen of the Geats.
Succeeds his father, with Beowulf as regent. Is slain by the sons of
Ohthere.--31_56; 33_63; 33_75.

~Heathobards~.--Race of Lombards, of which Froda is king. After Froda
falls in battle with the Danes, Ingeld, his son, marries Hrothgar's
daughter, Freaware, in order to heal the feud.--30_1; 30_6.

~Heatholaf~.--A Wylfing warrior slain by Beowulf's father.--8_5.

~Heathoremes~.--The people on whose shores Breca is cast by the waves
during his contest with Beowulf.--9_21.

~Heorogar~.--Elder brother of Hrothgar, and surnamed 'Weoroda Ræswa,'
Prince of the Troopers.--2_9; 8_12.

~Hereward~.--Son of the above.--31_17.

~Heort~, ~Heorot~.--The great mead-hall which King Hrothgar builds. It is
invaded by Grendel for twelve years. Finally cleansed by Beowulf, the
Geat. It is called Heort on account of the hart-antlers which decorate
it.--2_25; 3_32; 3_52.

~Hildeburg~.--Wife of Finn, daughter of Hoce, and related to
Hnæf,--probably his sister.--17_21; 18_34.

~Hnæf~.--Leader of a branch of the Danes called Half-Danes. Killed in the
struggle at Finn's castle.--17_19; 17_61.

~Hondscio~.--One of Beowulf's companions. Killed by Grendel just before
Beowulf grappled with that monster.--30_43.

~Hoce~.--Father of Hildeburg and probably of Hnæf.--17_26.

~Hrethel~.--King of the Geats, father of Higelac, and grandfather of
Beowulf.--7_4; 34_39.

~Hrethla~.--Once used for Hrethel.--7_82.

~Hrethmen~.--Another name for the Danes.--7_73.

~Hrethric~.--Son of Hrothgar.--18_65; 27_19.

[xvi]

~Hreosna-beorh~.--A promontory in Geat-land, near which Ohthere's sons
made plundering raids.--35_18.

~Hrothgar~.--The Danish king who built the hall Heort, but was long unable
to enjoy it on account of Grendel's persecutions. Marries Wealhtheow, a
Helming lady. Has two sons and a daughter. Is a typical Teutonic king,
lavish of gifts. A devoted liegelord, as his lamentations over slain
liegemen prove. Also very appreciative of kindness, as is shown by his
loving gratitude to Beowulf.--2_9; 2_12; 4_1; 8_10; 15_1; etc., etc.

~Hrothmund~.--Son of Hrothgar.--18_65.

~Hrothulf~.--Probably a son of Halga, younger brother of Hrothgar.
Certainly on terms of close intimacy in Hrothgar's palace.--16_26; 18_57.

~Hrunting~.--Unferth's sword, lent to Beowulf.--22_71; 25_9.

~Hugs~.--A race in alliance with the Franks and Frisians at the time of
Higelac's fall.--35_41.

~Hun~.--A Frisian warrior, probably general of the Hetwars. Gives Hengest
a beautiful sword.--18_19.

~Hunferth~.--Sometimes used for Unferth.

~Hygelac~, ~Higelac~.--King of the Geats, uncle and liegelord of Beowulf,
the hero of the poem.--His second wife is the lovely Hygd, daughter of
Hæreth. The son of their union is Heardred. Is slain in a war with the
Hugs, Franks, and Frisians combined. Beowulf is regent, and afterwards
king of the Geats.--4_6; 5_4; 28_34; 29_9; 29_21; 31_56.

~Hygd~.--Wife of Higelac, and daughter of Hæreth. There are some
indications that she married Beowulf after she became a widow.--28_37.

~Ingeld~.--Son of the Heathobard king, Froda. Marries Hrothgar's daughter,
Freaware, in order to reconcile the two peoples.--29_62; 30_32.

~Ingwins~.--Another name for the Danes.--16_52; 20_69.

~Jutes~.--Name sometimes applied to Finn's people.--17_22; 17_38; 18_17.

~Lafing~.--Name of a famous sword presented to Hengest by Hun.--18_19.

~Merewing~.--A Frankish king, probably engaged in the war in which Higelac
was slain.--40_29.

~Nægling~.--Beowulf's sword.--36_76.

~Offa~.--King of the Angles, and son of Garmund. Marries the terrible
Thrytho who is so strongly contrasted with Hygd.--28_59; 28_66.

~Ohthere~.--Son of Ongentheow, king of the Swedes. He is father of Eanmund
and Eadgils.--40_35; 40_39.

~Onela~.--Brother of Ohthere.--36_15; 40_39.

~Ongentheow~.--King of Sweden, of the Scylfing dynasty. Married, perhaps,
Elan, daughter of Healfdene.--35_26; 41_16.

~Oslaf~.--A Dane of Hnæf's party.--18_24.

~Ravenswood~.--The forest near which Hæthcyn was slain.--40_31; 40_41.

~Scefing~.--Applied (1_4) to Scyld, and meaning 'son of Scef.'

[xvii]

~Scyld~.--Founder of the dynasty to which Hrothgar, his father, and
grandfather belonged. He dies, and his body is put on a vessel, and set
adrift. He goes from Daneland just as he had come to it--in a bark.--1_4;
1_19; 1_27.

~Scyldings~.--The descendants of Scyld. They are also called
Honor-Scyldings, Victory-Scyldings, War-Scyldings, etc. (See 'Danes,'
above.)--2_1; 7_1; 8_1.

~Scylfings~.--A Swedish royal line to which Wiglaf belonged.--36_2.

~Sigemund~.--Son of Wæls, and uncle and father of Fitela. His struggle
with a dragon is related in connection with Beowulf's deeds of
prowess.--14_38; 14_47.

~Swerting~.--Grandfather of Higelac, and father of Hrethel.--19_11.

~Swedes~.--People of Sweden, ruled by the Scylfings.--35_13.

~Thrytho~.--Wife of Offa, king of the Angles. Known for her fierce and
unwomanly disposition. She is introduced as a contrast to the gentle Hygd,
queen of Higelac.--28_42; 28_56.

~Unferth~.--Son of Ecglaf, and seemingly a confidential courtier of
Hrothgar. Taunts Beowulf for having taken part in the swimming-match.
Lends Beowulf his sword when he goes to look for Grendel's mother. In the
MS. sometimes written _Hunferth_. 9_1; 18_41.

~Wæls~.--Father of Sigemund.--14_60.

~Wægmunding~.--A name occasionally applied to Wiglaf and Beowulf, and
perhaps derived from a common ancestor, Wægmund.--36_6; 38_61.

~Weders~.--Another name for Geats or Wedergeats.

~Wayland~.--A fabulous smith mentioned in this poem and in other old
Teutonic literature.--7_83.

~Wendels~.--The people of Wulfgar, Hrothgar's messenger and retainer.
(Perhaps = Vandals.)--6_30.

~Wealhtheow~.--Wife of Hrothgar. Her queenly courtesy is well shown in the
poem.--10_55.

~Weohstan~, or ~Wihstan~.--A Wægmunding, and father of Wiglaf.--36_1.

~Whale's Ness~.--A prominent promontory, on which Beowulf's mound was
built.--38_52; 42_76.

~Wiglaf~.--Son of Wihstan, and related to Beowulf. He remains faithful to
Beowulf in the fatal struggle with the fire-drake. Would rather die than
leave his lord in his dire emergency.--36_1; 36_3; 36_28.

~Wonred~.--Father of Wulf and Eofor.--41_20; 41_26.

~Wulf~.--Son of Wonred. Engaged in the battle between Higelac's and
Ongentheow's forces, and had a hand-to-hand fight with Ongentheow himself.
Ongentheow disables him, and is thereupon slain by Eofor.--41_19; 41_29.

~Wulfgar~.--Lord of the Wendels, and retainer of Hrothgar.--6_18; 6_30.

~Wylfings~.--A people to whom belonged Heatholaf, who was slain by
Ecgtheow.--8_6; 8_16.

~Yrmenlaf~.--Younger brother of Æschere, the hero whose death grieved
Hrothgar so deeply.--21_4.

[xviii]




LIST OF WORDS AND PHRASES NOT IN GENERAL USE.


ATHELING.--Prince, nobleman.

BAIRN.--Son, child.

BARROW.--Mound, rounded hill, funeral-mound.

BATTLE-SARK.--Armor.

BEAKER.--Cup, drinking-vessel.

BEGEAR.--Prepare.

BIGHT.--Bay, sea.

BILL.--Sword.

BOSS.--Ornamental projection.

BRACTEATE.--A round ornament on a necklace.

BRAND.--Sword.

BURN.--Stream.

BURNIE.--Armor.

CARLE.--Man, hero.

EARL.--Nobleman, any brave man.

EKE.--Also.

EMPRISE.--Enterprise, undertaking.

ERST.--Formerly.

ERST-WORTHY.--Worthy for a long time past.

FAIN.--Glad.

FERRY.--Bear, carry.

FEY.--Fated, doomed.

FLOAT.--Vessel, ship.

FOIN.--To lunge (Shaks.).

GLORY OF KINGS.--God.

GREWSOME.--Cruel, fierce.

HEFT.--Handle, hilt; used by synecdoche for 'sword.'

HELM.--Helmet, protector.

HENCHMAN.--Retainer, vassal.

HIGHT.--Am (was) named.

HOLM.--Ocean, curved surface of the sea.

HIMSEEMED.--(It) seemed to him.

LIEF.--Dear, valued.

MERE.--Sea; in compounds, 'mere-ways,' 'mere-currents,' etc.

MICKLE.--Much.

NATHLESS.--Nevertheless.

NAZE.--Edge (nose).

NESS.--Edge.

NICKER.--Sea-beast.

QUIT, QUITE.--Requite.

RATHE.--Quickly.

REAVE.--Bereave, deprive.

SAIL-ROAD.--Sea.

SETTLE.--Seat, bench.

SKINKER.--One who pours.

SOOTHLY.--Truly.

SWINGE.--Stroke, blow.

TARGE, TARGET.--Shield.

THROUGHLY.--Thoroughly.

TOLD.--Counted.

UNCANNY.--Ill-featured, grizzly.

UNNETHE.--Difficult.

WAR-SPEED.--Success in war.

WEB.--Tapestry (that which is 'woven').

WEEDED.--Clad (cf. widow's weeds).

WEEN.--Suppose, imagine.

WEIRD.--Fate, Providence.

WHILOM.--At times, formerly, often.

WIELDER.--Ruler. Often used of God; also in compounds, as 'Wielder of
Glory,' 'Wielder of Worship.'

WIGHT.--Creature.

WOLD.--Plane, extended surface.

WOT.--Knows.

YOUNKER.--Youth.

[1]




BEOWULF.




I.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SCYLD.


{The famous race of Spear-Danes.}

          Lo! the Spear-Danes' glory through splendid achievements
          The folk-kings' former fame we have heard of,
          How princes displayed then their prowess-in-battle.

{Scyld, their mighty king, in honor of whom they are often called
Scyldings. He is the great-grandfather of Hrothgar, so prominent in the
poem.}

          Oft Scyld the Scefing from scathers in numbers
        5 From many a people their mead-benches tore.
          Since first he found him friendless and wretched,
          The earl had had terror: comfort he got for it,
          Waxed 'neath the welkin, world-honor gained,
          Till all his neighbors o'er sea were compelled to
       10 Bow to his bidding and bring him their tribute:
          An excellent atheling! After was borne him

{A son is born to him, who receives the name of Beowulf--a name afterwards
made so famous by the hero of the poem.}

          A son and heir, young in his dwelling,
          Whom God-Father sent to solace the people.
          He had marked the misery malice had caused them,
       15 [1]That reaved of their rulers they wretched had erstwhile[2]
          Long been afflicted. The Lord, in requital,
          Wielder of Glory, with world-honor blessed him.
          Famed was Beowulf, far spread the glory
          Of Scyld's great son in the lands of the Danemen.

[2]

{The ideal Teutonic king lavishes gifts on his vassals.}

       20 So the carle that is young, by kindnesses rendered
          The friends of his father, with fees in abundance
          Must be able to earn that when age approacheth
          Eager companions aid him requitingly,
          When war assaults him serve him as liegemen:
       25 By praise-worthy actions must honor be got
          'Mong all of the races. At the hour that was fated

{Scyld dies at the hour appointed by Fate.}

          Scyld then departed to the All-Father's keeping
          Warlike to wend him; away then they bare him
          To the flood of the current, his fond-loving comrades,
       30 As himself he had bidden, while the friend of the Scyldings
          Word-sway wielded, and the well-lovèd land-prince
          Long did rule them.[3] The ring-stemmèd vessel,
          Bark of the atheling, lay there at anchor,
          Icy in glimmer and eager for sailing;

{By his own request, his body is laid on a vessel and wafted seaward.}

       35 The belovèd leader laid they down there,
          Giver of rings, on the breast of the vessel,
          The famed by the mainmast. A many of jewels,
          Of fretted embossings, from far-lands brought over,
          Was placed near at hand then; and heard I not ever
       40 That a folk ever furnished a float more superbly
          With weapons of warfare, weeds for the battle,
          Bills and burnies; on his bosom sparkled
          Many a jewel that with him must travel
          On the flush of the flood afar on the current.
       45 And favors no fewer they furnished him soothly,
          Excellent folk-gems, than others had given him

{He leaves Daneland on the breast of a bark.}

          Who when first he was born outward did send him
          Lone on the main, the merest of infants:
          And a gold-fashioned standard they stretched under heaven
[3]    50 High o'er his head, let the holm-currents bear him,
          Seaward consigned him: sad was their spirit,
          Their mood very mournful. Men are not able

{No one knows whither the boat drifted.}

          Soothly to tell us, they in halls who reside,[4]
          Heroes under heaven, to what haven he hied.

    [1] For the 'Þæt' of verse 15, Sievers suggests 'Þá' (= which). If
    this be accepted, the sentence 'He had ... afflicted' will read: _He_
    (_i.e._ God) _had perceived the malice-caused sorrow which they,
    lordless, had formerly long endured_.

    [2] For 'aldor-léase' (15) Gr. suggested 'aldor-ceare': _He perceived
    their distress, that they formerly had suffered life-sorrow a long
    while_.

    [3] A very difficult passage. 'Áhte' (31) has no object. H. supplies
    'geweald' from the context; and our translation is based upon this
    assumption, though it is far from satisfactory. Kl. suggests
    'lændagas' for 'lange': _And the beloved land-prince enjoyed (had) his
    transitory days (i.e. lived)_. B. suggests a dislocation; but this is
    a dangerous doctrine, pushed rather far by that eminent scholar.

    [4] The reading of the H.-So. text has been quite closely followed;
    but some eminent scholars read 'séle-rædenne' for 'sele-rædende.' If
    that be adopted, the passage will read: _Men cannot tell us, indeed,
    the order of Fate, etc._ 'Sele-rædende' has two things to support it:
    (1) v. 1347; (2) it affords a parallel to 'men' in v. 50.




II.

SCYLD'S SUCCESSORS.--HROTHGAR'S GREAT MEAD-HALL.


{Beowulf succeeds his father Scyld}

          In the boroughs then Beowulf, bairn of the Scyldings,
          Belovèd land-prince, for long-lasting season
          Was famed mid the folk (his father departed,
          The prince from his dwelling), till afterward sprang
        5 Great-minded Healfdene; the Danes in his lifetime
          He graciously governed, grim-mooded, agèd.

{Healfdene's birth.}

          Four bairns of his body born in succession
          Woke in the world, war-troopers' leader
          Heorogar, Hrothgar, and Halga the good;
       10 Heard I that Elan was Ongentheow's consort,

{He has three sons--one of them, Hrothgar--and a daughter named Elan.
Hrothgar becomes a mighty king.}

          The well-beloved bedmate of the War-Scylfing leader.
          Then glory in battle to Hrothgar was given,
          Waxing of war-fame, that willingly kinsmen
          Obeyed his bidding, till the boys grew to manhood,
       15 A numerous band.  It burned in his spirit
          To urge his folk to found a great building,
          A mead-hall grander than men of the era

{He is eager to build a great hall in which he may feast his retainers}

          Ever had heard of, and in it to share
          With young and old all of the blessings
       20 The Lord had allowed him, save life and retainers.
          Then the work I find afar was assigned
[4]       To many races in middle-earth's regions,
          To adorn the great folk-hall. In due time it happened
          Early 'mong men, that 'twas finished entirely,
       25 The greatest of hall-buildings; Heorot he named it

{The hall is completed, and is called Heort, or Heorot.}

          Who wide-reaching word-sway wielded 'mong earlmen.
          His promise he brake not, rings he lavished,
          Treasure at banquet. Towered the hall up
          High and horn-crested, huge between antlers:
       30 It battle-waves bided, the blasting fire-demon;
          Ere long then from hottest hatred must sword-wrath
          Arise for a woman's husband and father.
          Then the mighty war-spirit[1] endured for a season,

{The Monster Grendel is madly envious of the Danemen's joy.}

          Bore it bitterly, he who bided in darkness,
       35 That light-hearted laughter loud in the building
          Greeted him daily; there was dulcet harp-music,
          Clear song of the singer. He said that was able

{[The course of the story is interrupted by a short reference to some old
account of the creation.]}

          To tell from of old earthmen's beginnings,
          That Father Almighty earth had created,
       40 The winsome wold that the water encircleth,
          Set exultingly the sun's and the moon's beams
          To lavish their lustre on land-folk and races,
          And earth He embellished in all her regions
          With limbs and leaves; life He bestowed too
       45 On all the kindreds that live under heaven.

{The glee of the warriors is overcast by a horrible dread.}

          So blessed with abundance, brimming with joyance,
          The warriors abided, till a certain one gan to
          Dog them with deeds of direfullest malice,
          A foe in the hall-building: this horrible stranger[2]
       50 Was Grendel entitled, the march-stepper famous
          Who[3] dwelt in the moor-fens, the marsh and the fastness;
          The wan-mooded being abode for a season
[5]       In the land of the giants, when the Lord and Creator
          Had banned him and branded. For that bitter murder,
       55 The killing of Abel, all-ruling Father

{Cain is referred to as a progenitor of Grendel, and of monsters in
general.}

          The kindred of Cain crushed with His vengeance;
          In the feud He rejoiced not, but far away drove him
          From kindred and kind, that crime to atone for,
          Meter of Justice. Thence ill-favored creatures,
       60 Elves and giants, monsters of ocean,
          Came into being, and the giants that longtime
          Grappled with God; He gave them requital.

    [1] R. and t. B. prefer 'ellor-gæst' to 'ellen-gæst' (86): _Then the
    stranger from afar endured, etc._

    [2] Some authorities would translate '_demon_' instead of
    '_stranger_.'

    [3] Some authorities arrange differently, and render: _Who dwelt in
    the moor-fens, the marsh and the fastness, the land of the
    giant-race._




III.

GRENDEL THE MURDERER.


{Grendel attacks the sleeping heroes}

          When the sun was sunken, he set out to visit
          The lofty hall-building, how the Ring-Danes had used it
          For beds and benches when the banquet was over.
          Then he found there reposing many a noble
        5 Asleep after supper; sorrow the heroes,[1]
          Misery knew not. The monster of evil
          Greedy and cruel tarried but little,

{He drags off thirty of them, and devours them}

          Fell and frantic, and forced from their slumbers
          Thirty of thanemen; thence he departed
       10 Leaping and laughing, his lair to return to,
          With surfeit of slaughter sallying homeward.
          In the dusk of the dawning, as the day was just breaking,
          Was Grendel's prowess revealed to the warriors:

{A cry of agony goes up, when Grendel's horrible deed is fully realized.}

          Then, his meal-taking finished, a moan was uplifted,
       15 Morning-cry mighty. The man-ruler famous,
          The long-worthy atheling, sat very woful,
          Suffered great sorrow, sighed for his liegemen,
[6]       When they had seen the track of the hateful pursuer,
          The spirit accursèd: too crushing that sorrow,

{The monster returns the next night.}

       20 Too loathsome and lasting. Not longer he tarried,
          But one night after continued his slaughter
          Shameless and shocking, shrinking but little
          From malice and murder; they mastered him fully.
          He was easy to find then who otherwhere looked for
       25 A pleasanter place of repose in the lodges,
          A bed in the bowers. Then was brought to his notice
          Told him truly by token apparent
          The hall-thane's hatred: he held himself after
          Further and faster who the foeman did baffle.
       30 [2]So ruled he and strongly strove against justice
          Lone against all men, till empty uptowered

{King Hrothgar's agony and suspense last twelve years.}

          The choicest of houses. Long was the season:
          Twelve-winters' time torture suffered
          The friend of the Scyldings, every affliction,
       35 Endless agony; hence it after[3] became
          Certainly known to the children of men
          Sadly in measures, that long against Hrothgar
          Grendel struggled:--his grudges he cherished,
          Murderous malice, many a winter,
       40 Strife unremitting, and peacefully wished he
          [4]Life-woe to lift from no liegeman at all of
          The men of the Dane-folk, for money to settle,
          No counsellor needed count for a moment
[7]       On handsome amends at the hands of the murderer;

{Grendel is unremitting in his persecutions.}

       45 The monster of evil fiercely did harass,
          The ill-planning death-shade, both elder and younger,
          Trapping and tricking them. He trod every night then
          The mist-covered moor-fens; men do not know where
          Witches and wizards wander and ramble.
       50 So the foe of mankind many of evils
          Grievous injuries, often accomplished,
          Horrible hermit; Heort he frequented,
          Gem-bedecked palace, when night-shades had fallen

{God is against the monster.}

          (Since God did oppose him, not the throne could he touch,[5]
       55 The light-flashing jewel, love of Him knew not).
          'Twas a fearful affliction to the friend of the Scyldings

{The king and his council deliberate in vain.}

          Soul-crushing sorrow. Not seldom in private
          Sat the king in his council; conference held they
          What the braves should determine 'gainst terrors unlooked for.

{They invoke the aid of their gods.}

       60 At the shrines of their idols often they promised
          Gifts and offerings, earnestly prayed they
          The devil from hell would help them to lighten
          Their people's oppression. Such practice they used then,
          Hope of the heathen; hell they remembered
       65 In innermost spirit, God they knew not,

{The true God they do not know.}

          Judge of their actions, All-wielding Ruler,
          No praise could they give the Guardian of Heaven,
          The Wielder of Glory. Woe will be his who
          Through furious hatred his spirit shall drive to
       70 The clutch of the fire, no comfort shall look for,
          Wax no wiser; well for the man who,
          Living his life-days, his Lord may face
          And find defence in his Father's embrace!

    [1] The translation is based on 'weras,' adopted by H.-So.--K. and Th.
    read 'wera' and, arranging differently, render 119(2)-120: _They knew
    not sorrow, the wretchedness of man, aught of misfortune_.--For
    'unhælo' (120) R. suggests 'unfælo': _The uncanny creature, greedy and
    cruel, etc_.

    [2] S. rearranges and translates: _So he ruled and struggled unjustly,
    one against all, till the noblest of buildings stood useless (it was a
    long while) twelve years' time: the friend of the Scyldings suffered
    distress, every woe, great sorrows, etc_.

    [3] For 'syððan,' B. suggests 'sárcwidum': _Hence in mournful words it
    became well known, etc_. Various other words beginning with 's' have
    been conjectured.

    [4] The H.-So. glossary is very inconsistent in referring to this
    passage.--'Sibbe' (154), which H.-So. regards as an instr., B. takes
    as accus., obj. of 'wolde.' Putting a comma after Deniga, he renders:
    _He did not desire peace with any of the Danes, nor did he wish to
    remove their life-woe, nor to settle for money_.

    [5] Of this difficult passage the following interpretations among
    others are given: (1) Though Grendel has frequented Heorot as a demon,
    he could not become ruler of the Danes, on account of his hostility to
    God. (2) Hrothgar was much grieved that Grendel had not appeared
    before his throne to receive presents. (3) He was not permitted to
    devastate the hall, on account of the Creator; _i.e._ God wished to
    make his visit fatal to him.--Ne ... wisse (169) W. renders: _Nor had
    he any desire to do so_; 'his' being obj. gen. = danach.

[8]




IV.

BEOWULF GOES TO HROTHGAR'S ASSISTANCE.


{Hrothgar sees no way of escape from the persecutions of Grendel.}

          So Healfdene's kinsman constantly mused on
          His long-lasting sorrow; the battle-thane clever
          Was not anywise able evils to 'scape from:
          Too crushing the sorrow that came to the people,
        5 Loathsome and lasting the life-grinding torture,

{Beowulf, the Geat, hero of the poem, hears of Hrothgar's sorrow, and
resolves to go to his assistance.}

          Greatest of night-woes. So Higelac's liegeman,
          Good amid Geatmen, of Grendel's achievements
          Heard in his home:[1] of heroes then living
          He was stoutest and strongest, sturdy and noble.
       10 He bade them prepare him a bark that was trusty;
          He said he the war-king would seek o'er the ocean,
          The folk-leader noble, since he needed retainers.
          For the perilous project prudent companions
          Chided him little, though loving him dearly;
       15 They egged the brave atheling, augured him glory.

{With fourteen carefully chosen companions, he sets out for Dane-land.}

          The excellent knight from the folk of the Geatmen
          Had liegemen selected, likest to prove them
          Trustworthy warriors; with fourteen companions
          The vessel he looked for; a liegeman then showed them,
       20 A sea-crafty man, the bounds of the country.
          Fast the days fleeted; the float was a-water,
          The craft by the cliff. Clomb to the prow then
          Well-equipped warriors: the wave-currents twisted
          The sea on the sand; soldiers then carried
       25 On the breast of the vessel bright-shining jewels,
          Handsome war-armor; heroes outshoved then,
          Warmen the wood-ship, on its wished-for adventure.

[9]

{The vessel sails like a bird}

          The foamy-necked floater fanned by the breeze,
          Likest a bird, glided the waters,

{In twenty four hours they reach the shores of Hrothgar's dominions}

       30 Till twenty and four hours thereafter
          The twist-stemmed vessel had traveled such distance
          That the sailing-men saw the sloping embankments,
          The sea cliffs gleaming, precipitous mountains,
          Nesses enormous: they were nearing the limits
       35 At the end of the ocean.[2] Up thence quickly
          The men of the Weders clomb to the mainland,
          Fastened their vessel (battle weeds rattled,
          War burnies clattered), the Wielder they thanked
          That the ways o'er the waters had waxen so gentle.

{They are hailed by the Danish coast guard}

       40 Then well from the cliff edge the guard of the Scyldings
          Who the sea-cliffs should see to, saw o'er the gangway
          Brave ones bearing beauteous targets,
          Armor all ready, anxiously thought he,
          Musing and wondering what men were approaching.
       45 High on his horse then Hrothgar's retainer
          Turned him to coastward, mightily brandished
          His lance in his hands, questioned with boldness.

{His challenge}

          "Who are ye men here, mail-covered warriors
          Clad in your corslets, come thus a-driving
       50 A high riding ship o'er the shoals of the waters,
          [3]And hither 'neath helmets have hied o'er the ocean?
[10]      I have been strand-guard, standing as warden,
          Lest enemies ever anywise ravage
          Danish dominions with army of war-ships.
       55 More boldly never have warriors ventured
          Hither to come; of kinsmen's approval,
          Word-leave of warriors, I ween that ye surely

{He is struck by Beowulf's appearance.}

          Nothing have known. Never a greater one
          Of earls o'er the earth have _I_ had a sight of
       60 Than is one of your number, a hero in armor;
          No low-ranking fellow[4] adorned with his weapons,
          But launching them little, unless looks are deceiving,
          And striking appearance. Ere ye pass on your journey
          As treacherous spies to the land of the Scyldings
       65 And farther fare, I fully must know now
          What race ye belong to. Ye far-away dwellers,
          Sea-faring sailors, my simple opinion
          Hear ye and hearken: haste is most fitting
          Plainly to tell me what place ye are come from."

    [1] 'From hám' (194) is much disputed. One rendering is: _Beowulf,
    being away from home, heard of Hrothgar's troubles, etc_. Another,
    that adopted by S. and endorsed in the H.-So. notes, is: _B. heard
    from his neighborhood (neighbors),_ i.e. _in his home, etc_. A third
    is: _B., being at home, heard this as occurring away from home_. The
    H.-So. glossary and notes conflict.

    [2] 'Eoletes' (224) is marked with a (?) by H.-So.; our rendering
    simply follows his conjecture.--Other conjectures as to 'eolet' are:
    (1) _voyage_, (2) _toil_, _labor_, (3) _hasty journey_.

    [3] The lacuna of the MS at this point has been supplied by various
    conjectures. The reading adopted by H.-So. has been rendered in the
    above translation. W., like H.-So., makes 'ic' the beginning of a new
    sentence, but, for 'helmas bæron,' he reads 'hringed stefnan.' This
    has the advantage of giving a parallel to 'brontne ceol' instead of a
    kenning for 'go.'--B puts the (?) after 'holmas', and begins a new
    sentence at the middle of the line. Translate: _What warriors are ye,
    clad in armor, who have thus come bringing the foaming vessel over the
    water way, hither over the seas? For some time on the wall I have been
    coast guard, etc_. S. endorses most of what B. says, but leaves out
    'on the wall' in the last sentence. If W.'s 'hringed stefnan' be
    accepted, change line 51 above to, _A ring-stemmed vessel hither
    o'ersea_.

    [4] 'Seld-guma' (249) is variously rendered: (1) _housecarle_; (2)
    _home-stayer_; (3) _common man_. Dr. H. Wood suggests _a man-at-arms
    in another's house_.




V.

THE GEATS REACH HEOROT.


{Beowulf courteously replies.}

          The chief of the strangers rendered him answer,
          War-troopers' leader, and word-treasure opened:

{We are Geats.}

          "We are sprung from the lineage of the people of Geatland,
          And Higelac's hearth-friends. To heroes unnumbered

{My father Ecgtheow was well-known in his day.}

        5 My father was known, a noble head-warrior
          Ecgtheow titled; many a winter
          He lived with the people, ere he passed on his journey,
          Old from his dwelling; each of the counsellors
          Widely mid world-folk well remembers him.

{Our intentions towards King Hrothgar are of the kindest.}

       10 We, kindly of spirit, the lord of thy people,
          The son of King Healfdene, have come here to visit,
[11]      Folk-troop's defender: be free in thy counsels!
          To the noble one bear we a weighty commission,
          The helm of the Danemen; we shall hide, I ween,

{Is it true that a monster is slaying Danish heroes?}

       15 Naught of our message. Thou know'st if it happen,
          As we soothly heard say, that some savage despoiler,
          Some hidden pursuer, on nights that are murky
          By deeds very direful 'mid the Danemen exhibits
          Hatred unheard of, horrid destruction
       20 And the falling of dead. From feelings least selfish

{I can help your king to free himself from this horrible creature.}

          I am able to render counsel to Hrothgar,
          How he, wise and worthy, may worst the destroyer,
          If the anguish of sorrow should ever be lessened,[1]
          Comfort come to him, and care-waves grow cooler,
       25 Or ever hereafter he agony suffer
          And troublous distress, while towereth upward
          The handsomest of houses high on the summit."

{The coast-guard reminds Beowulf that it is easier to say than to do.}

          Bestriding his stallion, the strand-watchman answered,
          The doughty retainer: "The difference surely
       30 'Twixt words and works, the warlike shield-bearer
          Who judgeth wisely well shall determine.
          This band, I hear, beareth no malice

{I am satisfied of your good intentions, and shall lead you to the
palace.}

          To the prince of the Scyldings. Pass ye then onward
          With weapons and armor. I shall lead you in person;
       35 To my war-trusty vassals command I shall issue
          To keep from all injury your excellent vessel,

{Your boat shall be well cared for during your stay here.}

          Your fresh-tarred craft, 'gainst every opposer
          Close by the sea-shore, till the curved-neckèd bark shall
          Waft back again the well-beloved hero
       40 O'er the way of the water to Weder dominions.

{He again compliments Beowulf.}

          To warrior so great 'twill be granted sure
          In the storm of strife to stand secure."
          Onward they fared then (the vessel lay quiet,
          The broad-bosomed bark was bound by its cable,
[12]   45 Firmly at anchor); the boar-signs glistened[2]
          Bright on the visors vivid with gilding,
          Blaze-hardened, brilliant; the boar acted warden.
          The heroes hastened, hurried the liegemen,

{The land is perhaps rolling.}

          Descended together, till they saw the great palace,
       50 The well-fashioned wassail-hall wondrous and gleaming:

{Heorot flashes on their view.}

          'Mid world-folk and kindreds that was widest reputed
          Of halls under heaven which the hero abode in;
          Its lustre enlightened lands without number.
          Then the battle-brave hero showed them the glittering
       55 Court of the bold ones, that they easily thither
          Might fare on their journey; the aforementioned warrior
          Turning his courser, quoth as he left them:

{The coast-guard, having discharged his duty, bids them God-speed.}

          "'Tis time I were faring; Father Almighty
          Grant you His grace, and give you to journey
       60 Safe on your mission! To the sea I will get me
          'Gainst hostile warriors as warden to stand."

    [1] 'Edwendan' (280) B. takes to be the subs. 'edwenden' (cf. 1775);
    and 'bisigu' he takes as gen. sing., limiting 'edwenden': _If
    reparation for sorrows is ever to come_. This is supported by t.B.

    [2] Combining the emendations of B. and t.B., we may read: _The
    boar-images glistened ... brilliant, protected the life of the
    war-mooded man_. They read 'ferh-wearde' (305) and 'gúðmódgum men'
    (306).




VI.

BEOWULF INTRODUCES HIMSELF AT THE PALACE.


          The highway glistened with many-hued pebble,
          A by-path led the liegemen together.
          [1]Firm and hand-locked the war-burnie glistened,
          The ring-sword radiant rang 'mid the armor
        5 As the party was approaching the palace together

{They set their arms and armor against the wall.}

          In warlike equipments. 'Gainst the wall of the building
          Their wide-fashioned war-shields they weary did set then,
[13]      Battle-shields sturdy; benchward they turned then;
          Their battle-sarks rattled, the gear of the heroes;
       10 The lances stood up then, all in a cluster,
          The arms of the seamen, ashen-shafts mounted
          With edges of iron: the armor-clad troopers

{A Danish hero asks them whence and why they are come.}

          Were decked with weapons. Then a proud-mooded hero
          Asked of the champions questions of lineage:
       15 "From what borders bear ye your battle-shields plated,
          Gilded and gleaming, your gray-colored burnies,
          Helmets with visors and heap of war-lances?--
          To Hrothgar the king I am servant and liegeman.
          'Mong folk from far-lands found I have never

{He expresses no little admiration for the strangers.}

       20 Men so many of mien more courageous.
          I ween that from valor, nowise as outlaws,
          But from greatness of soul ye sought for King Hrothgar."

{Beowulf replies.}

          Then the strength-famous earlman answer rendered,
          The proud-mooded Wederchief replied to his question,

{We are Higelac's table-companions, and bear an important commission to
your prince.}

       25 Hardy 'neath helmet: "Higelac's mates are we;
          Beowulf hight I. To the bairn of Healfdene,
          The famous folk-leader, I freely will tell
          To thy prince my commission, if pleasantly hearing
          He'll grant we may greet him so gracious to all men."
       30 Wulfgar replied then (he was prince of the Wendels,
          His boldness of spirit was known unto many,
          His prowess and prudence): "The prince of the Scyldings,

{Wulfgar, the thane, says that he will go and ask Hrothgar whether he will
see the strangers.}

          The friend-lord of Danemen, I will ask of thy journey,
          The giver of rings, as thou urgest me do it,
       35 The folk-chief famous, and inform thee early
          What answer the good one mindeth to render me."
          He turned then hurriedly where Hrothgar was sitting,
          [2]Old and hoary, his earlmen attending him;
          The strength-famous went till he stood at the shoulder
       40 Of the lord of the Danemen, of courteous thanemen
          The custom he minded. Wulfgar addressed then
          His friendly liegelord: "Folk of the Geatmen

[14]

{He thereupon urges his liegelord to receive the visitors courteously.}

          O'er the way of the waters are wafted hither,
          Faring from far-lands: the foremost in rank
       45 The battle-champions Beowulf title.
          They make this petition: with thee, O my chieftain,
          To be granted a conference; O gracious King Hrothgar,
          Friendly answer refuse not to give them!

{Hrothgar, too, is struck with Beowulf's appearance.}

          In war-trappings weeded worthy they seem
       50 Of earls to be honored; sure the atheling is doughty
          Who headed the heroes hitherward coming."

    [1] Instead of the punctuation given by H.-So, S. proposed to insert a
    comma after 'scír' (322), and to take 'hring-íren' as meaning
    'ring-mail' and as parallel with 'gúð-byrne.' The passage would then
    read: _The firm and hand-locked war-burnie shone, bright ring-mail,
    rang 'mid the armor, etc_.

    [2] Gr. and others translate 'unhár' by 'bald'; _old and bald_.




VII.

HROTHGAR AND BEOWULF.


{Hrothgar remembers Beowulf as a youth, and also remembers his father.}

          Hrothgar answered, helm of the Scyldings:
          "I remember this man as the merest of striplings.
          His father long dead now was Ecgtheow titled,
          Him Hrethel the Geatman granted at home his
        5 One only daughter; his battle-brave son
          Is come but now, sought a trustworthy friend.
          Seafaring sailors asserted it then,

{Beowulf is reported to have the strength of thirty men.}

          Who valuable gift-gems of the Geatmen[1] carried
          As peace-offering thither, that he thirty men's grapple
       10 Has in his hand, the hero-in-battle.

{God hath sent him to our rescue.}

          The holy Creator usward sent him,
          To West-Dane warriors, I ween, for to render
          'Gainst Grendel's grimness gracious assistance:
          I shall give to the good one gift-gems for courage.
       15 Hasten to bid them hither to speed them,[2]
          To see assembled this circle of kinsmen;
          Tell them expressly they're welcome in sooth to
          The men of the Danes." To the door of the building

[15]

{Wulfgar invites the strangers in.}

          Wulfgar went then, this word-message shouted:
       20 "My victorious liegelord bade me to tell you,
          The East-Danes' atheling, that your origin knows he,
          And o'er wave-billows wafted ye welcome are hither,
          Valiant of spirit. Ye straightway may enter
          Clad in corslets, cased in your helmets,
       25 To see King Hrothgar. Here let your battle-boards,
          Wood-spears and war-shafts, await your conferring."
          The mighty one rose then, with many a liegeman,
          An excellent thane-group; some there did await them,
          And as bid of the brave one the battle-gear guarded.
       30 Together they hied them, while the hero did guide them,
          'Neath Heorot's roof; the high-minded went then
          Sturdy 'neath helmet till he stood in the building.
          Beowulf spake (his burnie did glisten,
          His armor seamed over by the art of the craftsman):

{Beowulf salutes Hrothgar, and then proceeds to boast of his youthful
achievements.}

       35 "Hail thou, Hrothgar! I am Higelac's kinsman
          And vassal forsooth; many a wonder
          I dared as a stripling. The doings of Grendel,
          In far-off fatherland I fully did know of:
          Sea-farers tell us, this hall-building standeth,
       40 Excellent edifice, empty and useless
          To all the earlmen after evenlight's glimmer
          'Neath heaven's bright hues hath hidden its glory.
          This my earls then urged me, the most excellent of them,
          Carles very clever, to come and assist thee,
       45 Folk-leader Hrothgar; fully they knew of

{His fight with the nickers.}

          The strength of my body. Themselves they beheld me
          When I came from the contest, when covered with gore
          Foes I escaped from, where five[3] I had bound,
[16]      The giant-race wasted, in the waters destroying
       50 The nickers by night, bore numberless sorrows,
          The Weders avenged (woes had they suffered)
          Enemies ravaged; alone now with Grendel

{He intends to fight Grendel unaided.}

          I shall manage the matter, with the monster of evil,
          The giant, decide it. Thee I would therefore
       55 Beg of thy bounty, Bright-Danish chieftain,
          Lord of the Scyldings, this single petition:
          Not to refuse me, defender of warriors,
          Friend-lord of folks, so far have I sought thee,
          That _I_ may unaided, my earlmen assisting me,
       60 This brave-mooded war-band, purify Heorot.
          I have heard on inquiry, the horrible creature

{Since the monster uses no weapons,}

          From veriest rashness recks not for weapons;
          I this do scorn then, so be Higelac gracious,
          My liegelord belovèd, lenient of spirit,
       65 To bear a blade or a broad-fashioned target,
          A shield to the onset; only with hand-grip

{I, too, shall disdain to use any.}

          The foe I must grapple, fight for my life then,
          Foeman with foeman; he fain must rely on
          The doom of the Lord whom death layeth hold of.

{Should he crush me, he will eat my companions as he has eaten thy
thanes.}

       70 I ween he will wish, if he win in the struggle,
          To eat in the war-hall earls of the Geat-folk,
          Boldly to swallow[4] them, as of yore he did often
          The best of the Hrethmen! Thou needest not trouble
          A head-watch to give me;[5] he will have me dripping

[17]

{In case of my defeat, thou wilt not have the trouble of burying me.}

       75 And dreary with gore, if death overtake me,[6]
          Will bear me off bleeding, biting and mouthing me,
          The hermit will eat me, heedless of pity,
          Marking the moor-fens; no more wilt thou need then

{Should I fall, send my armor to my lord, King Higelac.}

          Find me my food.[7] If I fall in the battle,
       80 Send to Higelac the armor that serveth
          To shield my bosom, the best of equipments,
          Richest of ring-mails; 'tis the relic of Hrethla,

{Weird is supreme}

          The work of Wayland. Goes Weird as she must go!"

    [1] Some render 'gif-sceattas' by 'tribute.'--'Géata' B. and Th.
    emended to 'Géatum.' If this be accepted, change '_of_ the Geatmen' to
    '_to_ the Geatmen.'

    [2] If t.B.'s emendation of vv. 386, 387 be accepted, the two lines,
    'Hasten ... kinsmen' will read: _Hasten thou, bid the throng of
    kinsmen go into the hall together_.

    [3] For 420 (_b_) and 421 (_a_), B. suggests: Þær ic (on) fífelgeban
    ýðde eotena cyn = _where I in the ocean destroyed the
    eoten-race_.--t.B. accepts B.'s "brilliant" 'fífelgeban,' omits 'on,'
    emends 'cyn' to 'hám,' arranging: Þær ic fífelgeban ýðde, eotena hám =
    _where I desolated the ocean, the home of the eotens_.--This would be
    better but for changing 'cyn' to 'hám.'--I suggest: Þær ic fífelgeband
    (cf. nhd. Bande) ýðde, eotena cyn = _where I conquered the monster
    band, the race of the eotens_. This makes no change except to read
    '_fífel_' for '_fífe_.'

    [4] 'Unforhte' (444) is much disputed.--H.-So. wavers between adj. and
    adv. Gr. and B. take it as an adv. modifying _etan: Will eat the Geats
    fearlessly_.--Kl. considers this reading absurd, and proposes
    'anforhte' = timid.--Understanding 'unforhte' as an adj. has this
    advantage, viz. that it gives a parallel to 'Geátena leóde': but to
    take it as an adv. is more natural. Furthermore, to call the Geats
    'brave' might, at this point, seem like an implied thrust at the
    Danes, so long helpless; while to call his own men 'timid' would be
    befouling his own nest.

    [5] For 'head-watch,' cf. H.-So. notes and cf. v. 2910.--Th.
    translates: _Thou wilt not need my head to hide_ (i.e., thou wilt have
    no occasion to bury me, as Grendel will devour me whole).--Simrock
    imagines a kind of dead-watch.--Dr. H. Wood suggests: _Thou wilt not
    have to bury so much as my head_ (for Grendel will be a thorough
    undertaker),--grim humor.

    [6] S. proposes a colon after 'nimeð' (l. 447). This would make no
    essential change in the translation.

    [7] Owing to the vagueness of 'feorme' (451), this passage is
    variously translated. In our translation, H.-So.'s glossary has been
    quite closely followed. This agrees substantially with B.'s
    translation (P. and B. XII. 87). R. translates: _Thou needst not take
    care longer as to the consumption of my dead body._ 'Líc' is also a
    crux here, as it may mean living body or dead body.




VIII.

HROTHGAR AND BEOWULF.--_Continued_.


{Hrothgar responds.}

          Hrothgar discoursed, helm of the Scyldings:
          "To defend our folk and to furnish assistance,[1]
          Thou soughtest us hither, good friend Beowulf.

{Reminiscences of Beowulf's father, Ecgtheow.}

          The fiercest of feuds thy father engaged in,
        5 Heatholaf killed he in hand-to-hand conflict
          'Mid Wilfingish warriors; then the Wederish people
          For fear of a feud were forced to disown him.
          Thence flying he fled to the folk of the South-Danes,
[18]      The race of the Scyldings, o'er the roll of the waters;
       10 I had lately begun then to govern the Danemen,
          The hoard-seat of heroes held in my youth,
          Rich in its jewels: dead was Heregar,
          My kinsman and elder had earth-joys forsaken,
          Healfdene his bairn. He was better than I am!
       15 That feud thereafter for a fee I compounded;
          O'er the weltering waters to the Wilfings I sent
          Ornaments old; oaths did he swear me.

{Hrothgar recounts to Beowulf the horrors of Grendel's persecutions.}

          It pains me in spirit to any to tell it,
          What grief in Heorot Grendel hath caused me,
       20 What horror unlooked-for, by hatred unceasing.
          Waned is my war-band, wasted my hall-troop;
          Weird hath offcast them to the clutches of Grendel.
          God can easily hinder the scather
          From deeds so direful. Oft drunken with beer

{My thanes have made many boasts, but have not executed them.}

       25 O'er the ale-vessel promised warriors in armor
          They would willingly wait on the wassailing-benches
          A grapple with Grendel, with grimmest of edges.
          Then this mead-hall at morning with murder was reeking,
          The building was bloody at breaking of daylight,
       30 The bench-deals all flooded, dripping and bloodied,
          The folk-hall was gory: I had fewer retainers,
          Dear-beloved warriors, whom death had laid hold of.

{Sit down to the feast, and give us comfort.}

          Sit at the feast now, thy intents unto heroes,[2]
          Thy victor-fame show, as thy spirit doth urge thee!"

{A bench is made ready for Beowulf and his party.}

       35 For the men of the Geats then together assembled,
          In the beer-hall blithesome a bench was made ready;
          There warlike in spirit they went to be seated,
          Proud and exultant. A liegeman did service,
[19]      Who a beaker embellished bore with decorum,

{The gleeman sings}

       40 And gleaming-drink poured. The gleeman sang whilom

{The heroes all rejoice together.}

          Hearty in Heorot; there was heroes' rejoicing,
          A numerous war-band of Weders and Danemen.

    [1] B. and S. reject the reading given in H.-So., and suggested by
    Grtvg. B. suggests for 457-458:

               wáere-ryhtum Þú, wine mín Béowulf,
               and for ár-stafum úsic sóhtest.

    This means: _From the obligations of clientage, my friend Beowulf, and
    for assistance thou hast sought us_.--This gives coherence to
    Hrothgar's opening remarks in VIII., and also introduces a new motive
    for Beowulf's coming to Hrothgar's aid.

    [2] _Sit now at the feast, and disclose thy purposes to the victorious
    heroes, as thy spirit urges_.--Kl. reaches the above translation by
    erasing the comma after 'meoto' and reading 'sige-hrèðsecgum.'--There
    are other and bolder emendations and suggestions. Of these the boldest
    is to regard 'meoto' as a verb (imperative), and read 'on sæl': _Think
    upon gayety, etc_.--All the renderings are unsatisfactory, the one
    given in our translation involving a zeugma.




IX.

UNFERTH TAUNTS BEOWULF.


{Unferth, a thane of Hrothgar, is jealous of Beowulf, and undertakes to
twit him.}

          Unferth spoke up, Ecglaf his son,
          Who sat at the feet of the lord of the Scyldings,
          Opened the jousting (the journey[1] of Beowulf,
          Sea-farer doughty, gave sorrow to Unferth
        5 And greatest chagrin, too, for granted he never
          That any man else on earth should attain to,
          Gain under heaven, more glory than he):

{Did you take part in a swimming-match with Breca?}

          "Art thou that Beowulf with Breca did struggle,
          On the wide sea-currents at swimming contended,
       10 Where to humor your pride the ocean ye tried,

{'Twas mere folly that actuated you both to risk your lives on the ocean.}

          From vainest vaunting adventured your bodies
          In care of the waters? And no one was able
          Nor lief nor loth one, in the least to dissuade you
          Your difficult voyage; then ye ventured a-swimming,
       15 Where your arms outstretching the streams ye did cover,
          The mere-ways measured, mixing and stirring them,
          Glided the ocean; angry the waves were,
          With the weltering of winter. In the water's possession,
          Ye toiled for a seven-night; he at swimming outdid thee,
       20 In strength excelled thee. Then early at morning
          On the Heathoremes' shore the holm-currents tossed him,
          Sought he thenceward the home of his fathers,
          Beloved of his liegemen, the land of the Brondings,
          The peace-castle pleasant, where a people he wielded,
[20]   25 Had borough and jewels. The pledge that he made thee

{Breca outdid you entirely.}

          The son of Beanstan hath soothly accomplished.
          Then I ween thou wilt find thee less fortunate issue,

{Much more will Grendel outdo you, if you vie with him in prowess.}

          Though ever triumphant in onset of battle,
          A grim grappling, if Grendel thou darest
       30 For the space of a night near-by to wait for!"

{Beowulf retaliates.}

          Beowulf answered, offspring of Ecgtheow:
          "My good friend Unferth, sure freely and wildly,

{O friend Unferth, you are fuddled with beer, and cannot talk coherently.}

          Thou fuddled with beer of Breca hast spoken,
          Hast told of his journey! A fact I allege it,
       35 That greater strength in the waters I had then,
          Ills in the ocean, than any man else had.
          We made agreement as the merest of striplings
          Promised each other (both of us then were

{We simply kept an engagement made in early life.}

          Younkers in years) that we yet would adventure
       40 Out on the ocean; it all we accomplished.
          While swimming the sea-floods, sword-blade unscabbarded
          Boldly we brandished, our bodies expected
          To shield from the sharks. He sure was unable

{He _could_ not excel me, and I _would_ not excel him.}

          To swim on the waters further than I could,
       45 More swift on the waves, nor _would_ I from him go.
          Then we two companions stayed in the ocean

{After five days the currents separated us.}

          Five nights together, till the currents did part us,
          The weltering waters, weathers the bleakest,
          And nethermost night, and the north-wind whistled
       50 Fierce in our faces; fell were the billows.
          The mere fishes' mood was mightily ruffled:
          And there against foemen my firm-knotted corslet,
          Hand-jointed, hardy, help did afford me;
          My battle-sark braided, brilliantly gilded,

{A horrible sea-beast attacked me, but I slew him.}

       55 Lay on my bosom. To the bottom then dragged me,
          A hateful fiend-scather, seized me and held me,
          Grim in his grapple: 'twas granted me, nathless,
          To pierce the monster with the point of my weapon,
          My obedient blade; battle offcarried
       60 The mighty mere-creature by means of my hand-blow.

    [1] It has been plausibly suggested that 'síð' (in 501 and in 353)
    means 'arrival.' If so, translate the bracket: _(the arrival of
    Beowulf, the brave seafarer, was a source of great chagrin to Unferth,
    etc.)_.

[21]




X.

BEOWULF SILENCES UNFERTH.--GLEE IS HIGH.


          "So ill-meaning enemies often did cause me
          Sorrow the sorest. I served them, in quittance,

{My dear sword always served me faithfully.}

          With my dear-lovèd sword, as in sooth it was fitting;
          They missed the pleasure of feasting abundantly,
        5 Ill-doers evil, of eating my body,
          Of surrounding the banquet deep in the ocean;
          But wounded with edges early at morning
          They were stretched a-high on the strand of the ocean,

{I put a stop to the outrages of the sea-monsters.}

          Put to sleep with the sword, that sea-going travelers
       10 No longer thereafter were hindered from sailing
          The foam-dashing currents. Came a light from the east,
          God's beautiful beacon; the billows subsided,
          That well I could see the nesses projecting,

{Fortune helps the brave earl.}

          The blustering crags. Weird often saveth
       15 The undoomed hero if doughty his valor!
          But me did it fortune[1] to fell with my weapon
          Nine of the nickers. Of night-struggle harder
          'Neath dome of the heaven heard I but rarely,
          Nor of wight more woful in the waves of the ocean;
       20 Yet I 'scaped with my life the grip of the monsters,

{After that escape I drifted to Finland.}

          Weary from travel. Then the waters bare me
          To the land of the Finns, the flood with the current,

{I have never heard of your doing any such bold deeds.}

          The weltering waves. Not a word hath been told me
          Of deeds so daring done by thee, Unferth,
       25 And of sword-terror none; never hath Breca
          At the play of the battle, nor either of you two,
          Feat so fearless performèd with weapons
          Glinting and gleaming . . . . . . . . . . . .
[22]      . . . . . . . . . . . . I utter no boasting;

{You are a slayer of brothers, and will suffer damnation, wise as you may
be.}

       30 Though with cold-blooded cruelty thou killedst thy brothers,
          Thy nearest of kin; thou needs must in hell get
          Direful damnation, though doughty thy wisdom.
          I tell thee in earnest, offspring of Ecglaf,
          Never had Grendel such numberless horrors,
       35 The direful demon, done to thy liegelord,
          Harrying in Heorot, if thy heart were as sturdy,

{Had your acts been as brave as your words, Grendel had not ravaged your
land so long.}

          Thy mood as ferocious as thou dost describe them.
          He hath found out fully that the fierce-burning hatred,
          The edge-battle eager, of all of your kindred,
       40 Of the Victory-Scyldings, need little dismay him:
          Oaths he exacteth, not any he spares

{The monster is not afraid of the Danes,}

          Of the folk of the Danemen, but fighteth with pleasure,
          Killeth and feasteth, no contest expecteth

{but he will soon learn to dread the Geats.}

          From Spear-Danish people. But the prowess and valor
       45 Of the earls of the Geatmen early shall venture
          To give him a grapple. He shall go who is able
          Bravely to banquet, when the bright-light of morning

{On the second day, any warrior may go unmolested to the mead-banquet.}

          Which the second day bringeth, the sun in its ether-robes,
          O'er children of men shines from the southward!"
       50 Then the gray-haired, war-famed giver of treasure

{Hrothgar's spirits are revived.}

          Was blithesome and joyous, the Bright-Danish ruler
          Expected assistance; the people's protector

{The old king trusts Beowulf. The heroes are joyful.}

          Heard from Beowulf his bold resolution.
          There was laughter of heroes; loud was the clatter,
       55 The words were winsome. Wealhtheow advanced then,

{Queen Wealhtheow plays the hostess.}

          Consort of Hrothgar, of courtesy mindful,
          Gold-decked saluted the men in the building,
          And the freeborn woman the beaker presented

{She offers the cup to her husband first.}

          To the lord of the kingdom, first of the East-Danes,
       60 Bade him be blithesome when beer was a-flowing,
          Lief to his liegemen; he lustily tasted
          Of banquet and beaker, battle-famed ruler.
          The Helmingish lady then graciously circled
          'Mid all the liegemen lesser and greater:

[23]

{She gives presents to the heroes.}

       65 Treasure-cups tendered, till time was afforded
          That the decorous-mooded, diademed folk-queen

{Then she offers the cup to Beowulf, thanking God that aid has come.}

          Might bear to Beowulf the bumper o'errunning;
          She greeted the Geat-prince, God she did thank,
          Most wise in her words, that her wish was accomplished,
       70 That in any of earlmen she ever should look for
          Solace in sorrow. He accepted the beaker,
          Battle-bold warrior, at Wealhtheow's giving,

{Beowulf states to the queen the object of his visit.}

          Then equipped for combat quoth he in measures,
          Beowulf spake, offspring of Ecgtheow:
       75 "I purposed in spirit when I mounted the ocean,

{I determined to do or die.}

          When I boarded my boat with a band of my liegemen,
          I would work to the fullest the will of your people
          Or in foe's-clutches fastened fall in the battle.
          Deeds I shall do of daring and prowess,
       80 Or the last of my life-days live in this mead-hall."
          These words to the lady were welcome and pleasing,
          The boast of the Geatman; with gold trappings broidered
          Went the freeborn folk-queen her fond-lord to sit by.

{Glee is high.}

          Then again as of yore was heard in the building
       85 Courtly discussion, conquerors' shouting,
          Heroes were happy, till Healfdene's son would
          Go to his slumber to seek for refreshing;
          For the horrid hell-monster in the hall-building knew he
          A fight was determined,[2] since the light of the sun they
       90 No longer could see, and lowering darkness
          O'er all had descended, and dark under heaven
          Shadowy shapes came shying around them.

{Hrothgar retires, leaving Beowulf in charge of the hall.}

          The liegemen all rose then. One saluted the other,
          Hrothgar Beowulf, in rhythmical measures,
       95 Wishing him well, and, the wassail-hall giving
          To his care and keeping, quoth he departing:
[24]      "Not to any one else have I ever entrusted,
          But thee and thee only, the hall of the Danemen,
          Since high I could heave my hand and my buckler.
      100 Take thou in charge now the noblest of houses;
          Be mindful of honor, exhibiting prowess,
          Watch 'gainst the foeman! Thou shalt want no enjoyments,
          Survive thou safely adventure so glorious!"

    [1] The repetition of 'hwæðere' (574 and 578) is regarded by some
    scholars as a defect. B. suggests 'swá Þær' for the first: _So there
    it befell me, etc._ Another suggestion is to change the second
    'hwæðere' into 'swá Þær': _So there I escaped with my life, etc._

    [2] Kl. suggests a period after 'determined.' This would give the
    passage as follows: _Since they no longer could see the light of the
    sun, and lowering darkness was down over all, dire under the heavens
    shadowy beings came going around them_.




XI.

ALL SLEEP SAVE ONE.


{Hrothgar retires.}

          Then Hrothgar departed, his earl-throng attending him,
          Folk-lord of Scyldings, forth from the building;
          The war-chieftain wished then Wealhtheow to look for,
          The queen for a bedmate. To keep away Grendel

{God has provided a watch for the hall.}

        5 The Glory of Kings had given a hall-watch,
          As men heard recounted: for the king of the Danemen
          He did special service, gave the giant a watcher:
          And the prince of the Geatmen implicitly trusted

{Beowulf is self-confident}

          His warlike strength and the Wielder's protection.

{He prepares for rest.}

       10 His armor of iron off him he did then,
          His helmet from his head, to his henchman committed
          His chased-handled chain-sword, choicest of weapons,
          And bade him bide with his battle-equipments.
          The good one then uttered words of defiance,
       15 Beowulf Geatman, ere his bed he upmounted:

{Beowulf boasts of his ability to cope with Grendel.}

          "I hold me no meaner in matters of prowess,
          In warlike achievements, than Grendel does himself;
          Hence I seek not with sword-edge to sooth him to slumber,
          Of life to bereave him, though well I am able.

{We will fight with nature's weapons only.}

       20 No battle-skill[1] has he, that blows he should strike me,
          To shatter my shield, though sure he is mighty
[25]      In strife and destruction; but struggling by night we
          Shall do without edges, dare he to look for
          Weaponless warfare, and wise-mooded Father
       25 The glory apportion, God ever-holy,

{God may decide who shall conquer}

          On which hand soever to him seemeth proper."
          Then the brave-mooded hero bent to his slumber,
          The pillow received the cheek of the noble;

{The Geatish warriors lie down.}

          And many a martial mere-thane attending
       30 Sank to his slumber. Seemed it unlikely

{They thought it very unlikely that they should ever see their homes
again.}

          That ever thereafter any should hope to
          Be happy at home, hero-friends visit
          Or the lordly troop-castle where he lived from his childhood;
          They had heard how slaughter had snatched from the wine-hall,
       35 Had recently ravished, of the race of the Scyldings

{But God raised up a deliverer.}

          Too many by far. But the Lord to them granted
          The weaving of war-speed, to Wederish heroes
          Aid and comfort, that every opponent
          By one man's war-might they worsted and vanquished,

{God rules the world.}

       40 By the might of himself; the truth is established
          That God Almighty hath governed for ages
          Kindreds and nations. A night very lurid

{Grendel comes to Heorot.}

          The trav'ler-at-twilight came tramping and striding.
          The warriors were sleeping who should watch the horned-building,

{Only one warrior is awake.}

       45 One only excepted. 'Mid earthmen 'twas 'stablished,
          Th' implacable foeman was powerless to hurl them
          To the land of shadows, if the Lord were unwilling;
          But serving as warder, in terror to foemen,
          He angrily bided the issue of battle.[2]

    [1] Gr. understood 'gódra' as meaning 'advantages in battle.' This
    rendering H.-So. rejects. The latter takes the passage as meaning that
    Grendel, though mighty and formidable, has no skill in the art of war.

    [2] B. in his masterly articles on Beowulf (P. and B. XII.) rejects
    the division usually made at this point, 'Þá.' (711), usually rendered
    'then,' he translates 'when,' and connects its clause with the
    foregoing sentence. These changes he makes to reduce the number of
    'cóm's' as principal verbs. (Cf. 703, 711, 721.) With all deference to
    this acute scholar, I must say that it seems to me that the poet is
    exhausting his resources to bring out clearly the supreme event on
    which the whole subsequent action turns. First, he (Grendel) came _in
    the wan night_; second, he came _from the moor_; third, he came _to
    the hall_. Time, place from which, place to which, are all given.

[26]




XII.

GRENDEL AND BEOWULF.


{Grendel comes from the fens.}

          'Neath the cloudy cliffs came from the moor then
          Grendel going, God's anger bare he.
          The monster intended some one of earthmen
          In the hall-building grand to entrap and make way with:

{He goes towards the joyous building.}

        5 He went under welkin where well he knew of
          The wine-joyous building, brilliant with plating,
          Gold-hall of earthmen. Not the earliest occasion

{This was not his first visit there.}

          He the home and manor of Hrothgar had sought:
          Ne'er found he in life-days later nor earlier
       10 Hardier hero, hall-thanes[1] more sturdy!
          Then came to the building the warrior marching,

{His horrid fingers tear the door open.}

          Bereft of his joyance. The door quickly opened
          On fire-hinges fastened, when his fingers had touched it;
          The fell one had flung then--his fury so bitter--
       15 Open the entrance. Early thereafter
          The foeman trod the shining hall-pavement,

{He strides furiously into the hall.}

          Strode he angrily; from the eyes of him glimmered
          A lustre unlovely likest to fire.
          He beheld in the hall the heroes in numbers,
       20 A circle of kinsmen sleeping together,

{He exults over his supposed prey.}

          A throng of thanemen: then his thoughts were exultant,
          He minded to sunder from each of the thanemen
          The life from his body, horrible demon,
          Ere morning came, since fate had allowed him

{Fate has decreed that he shall devour no more heroes. Beowulf suffers
from suspense.}

       25 The prospect of plenty. Providence willed not
          To permit him any more of men under heaven
          To eat in the night-time. Higelac's kinsman
          Great sorrow endured how the dire-mooded creature
[27]      In unlooked-for assaults were likely to bear him.
       30 No thought had the monster of deferring the matter,

{Grendel immediately seizes a sleeping warrior, and devours him.}

          But on earliest occasion he quickly laid hold of
          A soldier asleep, suddenly tore him,
          Bit his bone-prison, the blood drank in currents,
          Swallowed in mouthfuls: he soon had the dead man's
       35 Feet and hands, too, eaten entirely.
          Nearer he strode then, the stout-hearted warrior

{Beowulf and Grendel grapple.}

          Snatched as he slumbered, seizing with hand-grip,
          Forward the foeman foined with his hand;
          Caught he quickly the cunning deviser,
       40 On his elbow he rested. This early discovered
          The master of malice, that in middle-earth's regions,
          'Neath the whole of the heavens, no hand-grapple greater

{The monster is amazed at Beowulf's strength.}

          In any man else had he ever encountered:
          Fearful in spirit, faint-mooded waxed he,
       45 Not off could betake him; death he was pondering,

{He is anxious to flee.}

          Would fly to his covert, seek the devils' assembly:
          His calling no more was the same he had followed
          Long in his lifetime. The liege-kinsman worthy

{Beowulf recalls his boast of the evening, and determines to fulfil it.}

          Of Higelac minded his speech of the evening,
       50 Stood he up straight and stoutly did seize him.
          His fingers crackled; the giant was outward,
          The earl stepped farther. The famous one minded
          To flee away farther, if he found an occasion,
          And off and away, avoiding delay,
       55 To fly to the fen-moors; he fully was ware of
          The strength of his grapple in the grip of the foeman.

{'Twas a luckless day for Grendel.}

          'Twas an ill-taken journey that the injury-bringing,
          Harrying harmer to Heorot wandered:

{The hall groans.}

          The palace re-echoed; to all of the Danemen,
       60 Dwellers in castles, to each of the bold ones,
          Earlmen, was terror. Angry they both were,
          Archwarders raging.[2] Rattled the building;
[28]      'Twas a marvellous wonder that the wine-hall withstood then
          The bold-in-battle, bent not to earthward,
       65 Excellent earth-hall; but within and without it
          Was fastened so firmly in fetters of iron,
          By the art of the armorer. Off from the sill there
          Bent mead-benches many, as men have informed me,
          Adorned with gold-work, where the grim ones did struggle.
       70 The Scylding wise men weened ne'er before
          That by might and main-strength a man under heaven
          Might break it in pieces, bone-decked, resplendent,
          Crush it by cunning, unless clutch of the fire
          In smoke should consume it. The sound mounted upward

{Grendel's cries terrify the Danes.}

       75 Novel enough; on the North Danes fastened
          A terror of anguish, on all of the men there
          Who heard from the wall the weeping and plaining,
          The song of defeat from the foeman of heaven,
          Heard him hymns of horror howl, and his sorrow
       80 Hell-bound bewailing. He held him too firmly
          Who was strongest of main-strength of men of that era.

    [1] B. and t.B. emend so as to make lines 9 and 10 read: _Never in his
    life, earlier or later, had he, the hell-thane, found a braver
    hero_.--They argue that Beowulf's companions had done nothing to merit
    such encomiums as the usual readings allow them.

    [2] For 'réðe rén-weardas' (771), t.B. suggests 'réðe, rénhearde.'
    Translate: _They were both angry, raging and mighty_.




XIII.

GRENDEL IS VANQUISHED.


{Beowulf has no idea of letting Grendel live.}

          For no cause whatever would the earlmen's defender
          Leave in life-joys the loathsome newcomer,
          He deemed his existence utterly useless
          To men under heaven. Many a noble
        5 Of Beowulf brandished his battle-sword old,
          Would guard the life of his lord and protector,
          The far-famous chieftain, if able to do so;
          While waging the warfare, this wist they but little,
          Brave battle-thanes, while his body intending

{No weapon would harm Grendel; he bore a charmed life.}

       10 To slit into slivers, and seeking his spirit:
          That the relentless foeman nor finest of weapons
          Of all on the earth, nor any of war-bills
[29]      Was willing to injure; but weapons of victory
          Swords and suchlike he had sworn to dispense with.
       15 His death at that time must prove to be wretched,
          And the far-away spirit widely should journey
          Into enemies' power. This plainly he saw then
          Who with mirth[1] of mood malice no little
          Had wrought in the past on the race of the earthmen
       20 (To God he was hostile), that his body would fail him,
          But Higelac's hardy henchman and kinsman
          Held him by the hand; hateful to other

{Grendel is sorely wounded.}

          Was each one if living. A body-wound suffered
          The direful demon, damage incurable

{His body bursts.}

       25 Was seen on his shoulder, his sinews were shivered,
          His body did burst. To Beowulf was given
          Glory in battle; Grendel from thenceward
          Must flee and hide him in the fen-cliffs and marshes,
          Sick unto death, his dwelling must look for
       30 Unwinsome and woful; he wist the more fully

{The monster flees away to hide in the moors.}

          The end of his earthly existence was nearing,
          His life-days' limits. At last for the Danemen,
          When the slaughter was over, their wish was accomplished.
          The comer-from-far-land had cleansed then of evil,
       35 Wise and valiant, the war-hall of Hrothgar,
          Saved it from violence. He joyed in the night-work,
          In repute for prowess; the prince of the Geatmen
          For the East-Danish people his boast had accomplished,
          Bettered their burdensome bale-sorrows fully,
       40 The craft-begot evil they erstwhile had suffered
          And were forced to endure from crushing oppression,
          Their manifold misery. 'Twas a manifest token,

{Beowulf suspends Grendel's hand and arm in Heorot.}

          When the hero-in-battle the hand suspended,
          The arm and the shoulder (there was all of the claw
       45 Of Grendel together) 'neath great-stretching hall-roof.

    [1] It has been proposed to translate 'myrðe' by _with sorrow_; but
    there seems no authority for such a rendering. To the present
    translator, the phrase 'módes myrðe' seems a mere padding for
    _gladly_; i.e., _he who gladly harassed mankind_.

[30]




XIV.

REJOICING OF THE DANES.


{At early dawn, warriors from far and near come together to hear of the
night's adventures.}

          In the mist of the morning many a warrior
          Stood round the gift-hall, as the story is told me:
          Folk-princes fared then from far and from near
          Through long-stretching journeys to look at the wonder,
        5 The footprints of the foeman. Few of the warriors

{Few warriors lamented Grendel's destruction.}

          Who gazed on the foot-tracks of the inglorious creature
          His parting from life pained very deeply,
          How, weary in spirit, off from those regions
          In combats conquered he carried his traces,
       10 Fated and flying, to the flood of the nickers.

{Grendel's blood dyes the waters.}

          There in bloody billows bubbled the currents,
          The angry eddy was everywhere mingled
          And seething with gore, welling with sword-blood;[1]
          He death-doomed had hid him, when reaved of his joyance
       15 He laid down his life in the lair he had fled to,
          His heathenish spirit, where hell did receive him.
          Thence the friends from of old backward turned them,
          And many a younker from merry adventure,
          Striding their stallions, stout from the seaward,
       20 Heroes on horses. There were heard very often

{Beowulf is the hero of the hour.}

          Beowulf's praises; many often asserted
          That neither south nor north, in the circuit of waters,

{He is regarded as a probable successor to Hrothgar.}

          O'er outstretching earth-plain, none other was better
          'Mid bearers of war-shields, more worthy to govern,
       25 'Neath the arch of the ether. Not any, however,
          'Gainst the friend-lord muttered, mocking-words uttered

{But no word is uttered to derogate from the old king}

          Of Hrothgar the gracious (a good king he).
          Oft the famed ones permitted their fallow-skinned horses
[31]      To run in rivalry, racing and chasing,
       30 Where the fieldways appeared to them fair and inviting,
          Known for their excellence; oft a thane of the folk-lord,[2]

{The gleeman sings the deeds of heroes.}

          [3]A man of celebrity, mindful of rhythms,
          Who ancient traditions treasured in memory,
          New word-groups found properly bound:
       35 The bard after 'gan then Beowulf's venture

{He sings in alliterative measures of Beowulf's prowess.}

          Wisely to tell of, and words that were clever
          To utter skilfully, earnestly speaking,
          Everything told he that he heard as to Sigmund's

{Also of Sigemund, who has slain a great fire-dragon.}

          Mighty achievements, many things hidden,
       40 The strife of the Wælsing, the wide-going ventures
          The children of men knew of but little,
          The feud and the fury, but Fitela with him,
          When suchlike matters he minded to speak of,
          Uncle to nephew, as in every contention
       45 Each to other was ever devoted:
          A numerous host of the race of the scathers
          They had slain with the sword-edge. To Sigmund accrued then
          No little of glory, when his life-days were over,
          Since he sturdy in struggle had destroyed the great dragon,
       50 The hoard-treasure's keeper; 'neath the hoar-grayish stone he,
          The son of the atheling, unaided adventured
          The perilous project; not present was Fitela,
          Yet the fortune befell him of forcing his weapon
          Through the marvellous dragon, that it stood in the wall,
       55 Well-honored weapon; the worm was slaughtered.
          The great one had gained then by his glorious achievement
          To reap from the ring-hoard richest enjoyment,
[32]      As best it did please him: his vessel he loaded,
          Shining ornaments on the ship's bosom carried,
       60 Kinsman of Wæls: the drake in heat melted.

{Sigemund was widely famed.}

          He was farthest famed of fugitive pilgrims,
          Mid wide-scattered world-folk, for works of great prowess,
          War-troopers' shelter: hence waxed he in honor.[4]

{Heremod, an unfortunate Danish king, is introduced by way of contrast.}

          Afterward Heremod's hero-strength failed him,
       65 His vigor and valor. 'Mid venomous haters
          To the hands of foemen he was foully delivered,
          Offdriven early. Agony-billows

{Unlike Sigemund and Beowulf, Heremod was a burden to his people.}

          Oppressed him too long, to his people he became then,
          To all the athelings, an ever-great burden;
       70 And the daring one's journey in days of yore
          Many wise men were wont to deplore,
          Such as hoped he would bring them help in their sorrow,
          That the son of their ruler should rise into power,
          Holding the headship held by his fathers,
       75 Should govern the people, the gold-hoard and borough,
          The kingdom of heroes, the realm of the Scyldings.

{Beowulf is an honor to his race.}

          He to all men became then far more beloved,
          Higelac's kinsman, to kindreds and races,
          To his friends much dearer; him malice assaulted.--

{The story is resumed.}

       80 Oft running and racing on roadsters they measured
          The dun-colored highways. Then the light of the morning
          Was hurried and hastened. Went henchmen in numbers
          To the beautiful building, bold ones in spirit,
          To look at the wonder; the liegelord himself then
       85 From his wife-bower wending, warden of treasures,
          Glorious trod with troopers unnumbered,
          Famed for his virtues, and with him the queen-wife
          Measured the mead-ways, with maidens attending.

    [1] S. emends, suggesting 'déop' for 'déog,' and removing semicolon
    after 'wéol.' The two half-lines 'welling ... hid him' would then
    read: _The bloody deep welled with sword-gore_. B. accepts 'déop' for
    'déog,' but reads 'déað-fæges': _The deep boiled with the sword-gore
    of the death-doomed one_.

    [2] Another and quite different rendering of this passage is as
    follows: _Oft a liegeman of the king, a fame-covered man mindful of
    songs, who very many ancient traditions remembered (he found other
    word-groups accurately bound together) began afterward to tell of
    Beowulf's adventure, skilfully to narrate it, etc_.

    [3] Might 'guma gilp-hladen' mean 'a man laden with boasts of the
    deeds of others'?

    [4] t.B. accepts B.'s 'hé þæs áron þáh' as given by H.-So., but puts a
    comma after 'þáh,' and takes 'siððan' as introducing a dependent
    clause: _He throve in honor since Heremod's strength ... had
    decreased_.

[33]




XV.

HROTHGAR'S GRATITUDE.


          Hrothgar discoursed (to the hall-building went he,
          He stood by the pillar,[1] saw the steep-rising hall-roof
          Gleaming with gold-gems, and Grendel his hand there):

{Hrothgar gives thanks for the overthrow of the monster.}

          "For the sight we behold now, thanks to the Wielder
        5 Early be offered! Much evil I bided,
          Snaring from Grendel:[2] God can e'er 'complish
          Wonder on wonder, Wielder of Glory!

{I had given up all hope, when this brave liegeman came to our aid.}

          But lately I reckoned ne'er under heaven
          Comfort to gain me for any of sorrows,
       10 While the handsomest of houses horrid with bloodstain
          Gory uptowered; grief had offfrightened[3]
          Each of the wise ones who weened not that ever
          The folk-troop's defences 'gainst foes they should strengthen,
          'Gainst sprites and monsters. Through the might of the Wielder
       15 A doughty retainer hath a deed now accomplished
          Which erstwhile we all with our excellent wisdom

{If his mother yet liveth, well may she thank God for this son.}

          Failed to perform. May affirm very truly
          What woman soever in all of the nations
          Gave birth to the child, if yet she surviveth,
       20 That the long-ruling Lord was lavish to herward
          In the birth of the bairn. Now, Beowulf dear,

{Hereafter, Beowulf, thou shalt be my son.}

          Most excellent hero, I'll love thee in spirit
          As bairn of my body; bear well henceforward
          The relationship new. No lack shall befall thee
       25 Of earth-joys any I ever can give thee.
          Full often for lesser service I've given
[34]      Hero less hardy hoard-treasure precious,

{Thou hast won immortal distinction.}

          To a weaker in war-strife. By works of distinction
          Thou hast gained for thyself now that thy glory shall flourish
       30 Forever and ever. The All-Ruler quite thee
          With good from His hand as He hitherto did thee!"

{Beowulf replies: I was most happy to render thee this service.}

          Beowulf answered, Ecgtheow's offspring:
          "That labor of glory most gladly achieved we,
          The combat accomplished, unquailing we ventured
       35 The enemy's grapple; I would grant it much rather
          Thou wert able to look at the creature in person,
          Faint unto falling, the foe in his trappings!
          On murder-bed quickly I minded to bind him,
          With firm-holding fetters, that forced by my grapple
       40 Low he should lie in life-and-death struggle
          'Less his body escape; I was wholly unable,

{I could not keep the monster from escaping, as God did not will that I
should.}

          Since God did not will it, to keep him from going,
          Not held him that firmly, hated opposer;
          Too swift was the foeman. Yet safety regarding
       45 He suffered his hand behind him to linger,
          His arm and shoulder, to act as watcher;

{He left his hand and arm behind.}

          No shadow of solace the woe-begone creature
          Found him there nathless: the hated destroyer
          Liveth no longer, lashed for his evils,
       50 But sorrow hath seized him, in snare-meshes hath him
          Close in its clutches, keepeth him writhing
          In baleful bonds: there banished for evil
          The man shall wait for the mighty tribunal,

{God will give him his deserts.}

          How the God of glory shall give him his earnings."
       55 Then the soldier kept silent, son of old Ecglaf,

{Unferth has nothing more to say, for Beowulf's actions speak louder than
words.}

          From boasting and bragging of battle-achievements,
          Since the princes beheld there the hand that depended
          'Neath the lofty hall-timbers by the might of the nobleman,
          Each one before him, the enemy's fingers;
       60 Each finger-nail strong steel most resembled,
          The heathen one's hand-spur, the hero-in-battle's
          Claw most uncanny; quoth they agreeing,

[35]

{No sword will harm the monster.}

          That not any excellent edges of brave ones
          Was willing to touch him, the terrible creature's
       65 Battle-hand bloody to bear away from him.

    [1] B. and t.B. read 'staþole,' and translate _stood on the floor_.

    [2] For 'snaring from Grendel,' 'sorrows at Grendel's hands' has been
    suggested. This gives a parallel to 'láðes.' 'Grynna' may well be gen.
    pl. of 'gyrn,' by a scribal slip.

    [3] The H.-So punctuation has been followed; but B. has been followed
    in understanding 'gehwylcne' as object of 'wíd-scofen (hæfde).' Gr.
    construes 'wéa' as nom abs.




XVI.

HROTHGAR LAVISHES GIFTS UPON HIS DELIVERER.


{Heorot is adorned with hands.}

          Then straight was ordered that Heorot inside[1]
          With hands be embellished: a host of them gathered,
          Of men and women, who the wassailing-building
          The guest-hall begeared. Gold-flashing sparkled
        5 Webs on the walls then, of wonders a many
          To each of the heroes that look on such objects.

{The hall is defaced, however.}

          The beautiful building was broken to pieces
          Which all within with irons was fastened,
          Its hinges torn off: only the roof was
       10 Whole and uninjured when the horrible creature
          Outlawed for evil off had betaken him,
          Hopeless of living. 'Tis hard to avoid it

{[A vague passage of five verses.]}

          (Whoever will do it!); but he doubtless must come to[2]
          The place awaiting, as Wyrd hath appointed,
       15 Soul-bearers, earth-dwellers, earls under heaven,
          Where bound on its bed his body shall slumber

{Hrothgar goes to the banquet.}

          When feasting is finished. Full was the time then
          That the son of Healfdene went to the building;
[36]      The excellent atheling would eat of the banquet.
       20 Ne'er heard I that people with hero-band larger
          Bare them better tow'rds their bracelet-bestower.
          The laden-with-glory stooped to the bench then
          (Their kinsmen-companions in plenty were joyful,
          Many a cupful quaffing complaisantly),
       25 Doughty of spirit in the high-tow'ring palace,

{Hrothgar's nephew, Hrothulf, is present.}

          Hrothgar and Hrothulf. Heorot then inside
          Was filled with friendly ones; falsehood and treachery
          The Folk-Scyldings now nowise did practise.

{Hrothgar lavishes gifts upon Beowulf.}

          Then the offspring of Healfdene offered to Beowulf
       30 A golden standard, as reward for the victory,
          A banner embossed, burnie and helmet;
          Many men saw then a song-famous weapon
          Borne 'fore the hero. Beowulf drank of
          The cup in the building; that treasure-bestowing
       35 He needed not blush for in battle-men's presence.

{Four handsomer gifts were never presented.}

          Ne'er heard I that many men on the ale-bench
          In friendlier fashion to their fellows presented
          Four bright jewels with gold-work embellished.
          'Round the roof of the helmet a head-guarder outside
       40 Braided with wires, with bosses was furnished,
          That swords-for-the-battle fight-hardened might fail
          Boldly to harm him, when the hero proceeded

{Hrothgar commands that eight finely caparisoned steeds be brought to
Beowulf.}

          Forth against foemen. The defender of earls then
          Commanded that eight steeds with bridles
       45 Gold-plated, gleaming, be guided to hallward,
          Inside the building; on one of them stood then
          An art-broidered saddle embellished with jewels;
          'Twas the sovereign's seat, when the son of King Healfdene
          Was pleased to take part in the play of the edges;
       50 The famous one's valor ne'er failed at the front when
          Slain ones were bowing. And to Beowulf granted
          The prince of the Ingwins, power over both,
          O'er war-steeds and weapons; bade him well to enjoy them.
          In so manly a manner the mighty-famed chieftain,
[37]   55 Hoard-ward of heroes, with horses and jewels
          War-storms requited, that none e'er condemneth
          Who willeth to tell truth with full justice.

    [1] Kl. suggests 'hroden' for 'háten,' and renders: _Then quickly was
    Heorot adorned within, with hands bedecked_.--B. suggests 'gefrætwon'
    instead of 'gefrætwod,' and renders: _Then was it commanded to adorn
    Heorot within quickly with hands_.--The former has the advantage of
    affording a parallel to 'gefrætwod': both have the disadvantage of
    altering the text.

    [2] The passage 1005-1009 seems to be hopeless. One difficult point is
    to find a subject for 'gesacan.' Some say 'he'; others supply 'each,'
    _i.e., every soul-bearer ... must gain the inevitable place_. The
    genitives in this case are partitive.--If 'he' be subj., the genitives
    are dependent on 'gearwe' (= prepared).--The 'he' itself is disputed,
    some referring it to Grendel; but B. takes it as involved in the
    parenthesis.




XVII.

BANQUET (_continued_).--THE SCOP'S SONG OF FINN AND HNÆF.


{Each of Beowulf's companions receives a costly gift.}

          And the atheling of earlmen to each of the heroes
          Who the ways of the waters went with Beowulf,
          A costly gift-token gave on the mead-bench,
          Offered an heirloom, and ordered that that man

{The warrior killed by Grendel is to be paid for in gold.}

        5 With gold should be paid for, whom Grendel had erstwhile
          Wickedly slaughtered, as he more of them had done
          Had far-seeing God and the mood of the hero
          The fate not averted: the Father then governed
          All of the earth-dwellers, as He ever is doing;
       10 Hence insight for all men is everywhere fittest,
          Forethought of spirit! much he shall suffer
          Of lief and of loathsome who long in this present
          Useth the world in this woful existence.
          There was music and merriment mingling together

{Hrothgar's scop recalls events in the reign of his lord's father.}

       15 Touching Healfdene's leader; the joy-wood was fingered,
          Measures recited, when the singer of Hrothgar
          On mead-bench should mention the merry hall-joyance
          Of the kinsmen of Finn, when onset surprised them:

{Hnæf, the Danish general, is treacherously attacked while staying at
Finn's castle.}

          "The Half-Danish hero, Hnæf of the Scyldings,
       20 On the field of the Frisians was fated to perish.
          Sure Hildeburg needed not mention approving
          The faith of the Jutemen: though blameless entirely,

{Queen Hildeburg is not only wife of Finn, but a kinswoman of the murdered
Hnæf.}

          When shields were shivered she was shorn of her darlings,
          Of bairns and brothers: they bent to their fate
       25 With war-spear wounded; woe was that woman.
          Not causeless lamented the daughter of Hoce
          The decree of the Wielder when morning-light came and
          She was able 'neath heaven to behold the destruction
[38]      Of brothers and bairns, where the brightest of earth-joys

{Finn's force is almost exterminated.}

       30 She had hitherto had: all the henchmen of Finn
          War had offtaken, save a handful remaining,
          That he nowise was able to offer resistance[1]

{Hengest succeeds Hnæf as Danish general.}

          To the onset of Hengest in the parley of battle,
          Nor the wretched remnant to rescue in war from
       35 The earl of the atheling; but they offered conditions,

{Compact between the Frisians and the Danes.}

          Another great building to fully make ready,
          A hall and a high-seat, that half they might rule with
          The sons of the Jutemen, and that Folcwalda's son would
          Day after day the Danemen honor
       40 When gifts were giving, and grant of his ring-store
          To Hengest's earl-troop ever so freely,
          Of his gold-plated jewels, as he encouraged the Frisians

{Equality of gifts agreed on.}

          On the bench of the beer-hall. On both sides they swore then
          A fast-binding compact; Finn unto Hengest
       45 With no thought of revoking vowed then most solemnly
          The woe-begone remnant well to take charge of,
          His Witan advising; the agreement should no one
          By words or works weaken and shatter,
          By artifice ever injure its value,
       50 Though reaved of their ruler their ring-giver's slayer
          They followed as vassals, Fate so requiring:

{No one shall refer to old grudges.}

          Then if one of the Frisians the quarrel should speak of
          In tones that were taunting, terrible edges
          Should cut in requital. Accomplished the oath was,
       55 And treasure of gold from the hoard was uplifted.

{Danish warriors are burned on a funeral-pyre.}

          The best of the Scylding braves was then fully
          Prepared for the pile; at the pyre was seen clearly
          The blood-gory burnie, the boar with his gilding,
          The iron-hard swine, athelings many
       60 Fatally wounded; no few had been slaughtered.
          Hildeburg bade then, at the burning of Hnæf,

[39]

{Queen Hildeburg has her son burnt along with Hnæf.}

          The bairn of her bosom to bear to the fire,
          That his body be burned and borne to the pyre.
          The woe-stricken woman wept on his shoulder,[2]
       65 In measures lamented; upmounted the hero.[3]
          The greatest of dead-fires curled to the welkin,
          On the hill's-front crackled; heads were a-melting,
          Wound-doors bursting, while the blood was a-coursing
          From body-bite fierce. The fire devoured them,
       70 Greediest of spirits, whom war had offcarried
          From both of the peoples; their bravest were fallen.

    [1] For 1084, R. suggests 'wiht Hengeste wið gefeohtan.'--K. suggests
    'wið Hengeste wiht gefeohtan.' Neither emendation would make any
    essential change in the translation.

    [2] The separation of adjective and noun by a phrase (cf. v. 1118)
    being very unusual, some scholars have put 'earme on eaxle' with the
    foregoing lines, inserting a semicolon after 'eaxle.' In this case 'on
    eaxe' (_i.e._, on the ashes, cinders) is sometimes read, and this
    affords a parallel to 'on bæl.' Let us hope that a satisfactory
    rendering shall yet be reached without resorting to any tampering with
    the text, such as Lichtenheld proposed: 'earme ides on eaxle
    gnornode.'

    [3] For 'gúð-rinc,' 'gúð-réc,' _battle-smoke_, has been suggested.




XVIII.

THE FINN EPISODE (_continued_).--THE BANQUET CONTINUES.


{The survivors go to Friesland, the home of Finn.}

          "Then the warriors departed to go to their dwellings,
          Reaved of their friends, Friesland to visit,
          Their homes and high-city. Hengest continued

{Hengest remains there all winter, unable to get away.}

          Biding with Finn the blood-tainted winter,
        5 Wholly unsundered;[1] of fatherland thought he
          Though unable to drive the ring-stemmèd vessel
[40]      O'er the ways of the waters; the wave-deeps were tossing,
          Fought with the wind; winter in ice-bonds
          Closed up the currents, till there came to the dwelling
       10 A year in its course, as yet it revolveth,
          If season propitious one alway regardeth,
          World-cheering weathers. Then winter was gone,
          Earth's bosom was lovely; the exile would get him,

{He devises schemes of vengeance.}

          The guest from the palace; on grewsomest vengeance
       15 He brooded more eager than on oversea journeys,
          Whe'r onset-of-anger he were able to 'complish,
          The bairns of the Jutemen therein to remember.
          Nowise refused he the duties of liegeman
          When Hun of the Frisians the battle-sword Láfing,
       20 Fairest of falchions, friendly did give him:
          Its edges were famous in folk-talk of Jutland.
          And savage sword-fury seized in its clutches
          Bold-mooded Finn where he bode in his palace,

{Guthlaf and Oslaf revenge Hnæf's slaughter.}

          When the grewsome grapple Guthlaf and Oslaf
       25 Had mournfully mentioned, the mere-journey over,
          For sorrows half-blamed him; the flickering spirit
          Could not bide in his bosom. Then the building was covered[2]

{Finn is slain.}

          With corpses of foemen, and Finn too was slaughtered,
          The king with his comrades, and the queen made a prisoner.

{The jewels of Finn, and his queen are carried away by the Danes.}

       30 The troops of the Scyldings bore to their vessels
          All that the land-king had in his palace,
          Such trinkets and treasures they took as, on searching,
          At Finn's they could find. They ferried to Daneland
          The excellent woman on oversea journey,

{The lay is concluded, and the main story is resumed.}

       35 Led her to their land-folk." The lay was concluded,
          The gleeman's recital. Shouts again rose then,
          Bench-glee resounded, bearers then offered

{Skinkers carry round the beaker.}

          Wine from wonder-vats. Wealhtheo advanced then
          Going 'neath gold-crown, where the good ones were seated

[41]

{Queen Wealhtheow greets Hrothgar, as he sits beside Hrothulf, his
nephew.}

       40 Uncle and nephew; their peace was yet mutual,
          True each to the other. And Unferth the spokesman
          Sat at the feet of the lord of the Scyldings:
          Each trusted his spirit that his mood was courageous,
          Though at fight he had failed in faith to his kinsmen.
       45 Said the queen of the Scyldings: "My lord and protector,
          Treasure-bestower, take thou this beaker;
          Joyance attend thee, gold-friend of heroes,

{Be generous to the Geats.}

          And greet thou the Geatmen with gracious responses!
          So ought one to do. Be kind to the Geatmen,
       50 In gifts not niggardly; anear and afar now
          Peace thou enjoyest. Report hath informed me
          Thou'lt have for a bairn the battle-brave hero.
          Now is Heorot cleansèd, ring-palace gleaming;

{Have as much joy as possible in thy hall, once more purified.}

          Give while thou mayest many rewards,
       55 And bequeath to thy kinsmen kingdom and people,
          On wending thy way to the Wielder's splendor.
          I know good Hrothulf, that the noble young troopers

{I know that Hrothulf will prove faithful if he survive thee.}

          He'll care for and honor, lord of the Scyldings,
          If earth-joys thou endest earlier than he doth;
       60 I reckon that recompense he'll render with kindness
          Our offspring and issue, if that all he remember,
          What favors of yore, when he yet was an infant,
          We awarded to him for his worship and pleasure."
          Then she turned by the bench where her sons were carousing,
       65 Hrethric and Hrothmund, and the heroes' offspring,

{Beowulf is sitting by the two royal sons.}

          The war-youth together; there the good one was sitting
          'Twixt the brothers twain, Beowulf Geatman.

    [1] For 1130 (1) R. and Gr. suggest 'elne unflitme' as 1098 (1) reads.
    The latter verse is undisputed; and, for the former, 'elne' would be
    as possible as 'ealles,' and 'unflitme' is well supported. Accepting
    'elne unflitme' for both, I would suggest '_very peaceably_' for both
    places: (1) _Finn to Hengest very peaceably vowed with oaths_, etc.
    (2) _Hengest then still the slaughter-stained winter remained there
    with Finn very peaceably_. The two passages become thus correlatives,
    the second a sequel of the first. 'Elne,' in the sense of very
    (swíðe), needs no argument; and 'unflitme' (from 'flítan') can, it
    seems to me, be more plausibly rendered 'peaceful,' 'peaceable,' than
    'contestable,' or 'conquerable.'

    [2] Some scholars have proposed 'roden'; the line would then read:
    _Then the building was reddened, etc._, instead of 'covered.' The 'h'
    may have been carried over from the three alliterating 'h's.'




XIX.

BEOWULF RECEIVES FURTHER HONOR.


{More gifts are offered Beowulf.}

          A beaker was borne him, and bidding to quaff it
          Graciously given, and gold that was twisted
          Pleasantly proffered, a pair of arm-jewels,
[42]      Rings and corslet, of collars the greatest
        5 I've heard of 'neath heaven. Of heroes not any
          More splendid from jewels have I heard 'neath the welkin,

{A famous necklace is referred to, in comparison with the gems presented
to Beowulf.}

          Since Hama off bore the Brosingmen's necklace,
          The bracteates and jewels, from the bright-shining city,[1]
          Eormenric's cunning craftiness fled from,
       10 Chose gain everlasting. Geatish Higelac,
          Grandson of Swerting, last had this jewel
          When tramping 'neath banner the treasure he guarded,
          The field-spoil defended; Fate offcarried him
          When for deeds of daring he endured tribulation,
       15 Hate from the Frisians; the ornaments bare he
          O'er the cup of the currents, costly gem-treasures,
          Mighty folk-leader, he fell 'neath his target;
          The[2] corpse of the king then came into charge of
          The race of the Frankmen, the mail-shirt and collar:
       20 Warmen less noble plundered the fallen,
          When the fight was finished; the folk of the Geatmen
          The field of the dead held in possession.
          The choicest of mead-halls with cheering resounded.
          Wealhtheo discoursed, the war-troop addressed she:

{Queen Wealhtheow magnifies Beowulf's achievements.}

       25 "This collar enjoy thou, Beowulf worthy,
          Young man, in safety, and use thou this armor,
          Gems of the people, and prosper thou fully,
          Show thyself sturdy and be to these liegemen
          Mild with instruction! I'll mind thy requital.
       30 Thou hast brought it to pass that far and near
          Forever and ever earthmen shall honor thee,
          Even so widely as ocean surroundeth
          The blustering bluffs. Be, while thou livest,
[43]      A wealth-blessèd atheling. I wish thee most truly

{May gifts never fail thee.}

       35 Jewels and treasure. Be kind to my son, thou
          Living in joyance! Here each of the nobles
          Is true unto other, gentle in spirit,
          Loyal to leader. The liegemen are peaceful,
          The war-troops ready: well-drunken heroes,[3]
       40 Do as I bid ye." Then she went to the settle.
          There was choicest of banquets, wine drank the heroes:

{They little know of the sorrow in store for them.}

          Weird they knew not, destiny cruel,
          As to many an earlman early it happened,
          When evening had come and Hrothgar had parted
       45 Off to his manor, the mighty to slumber.
          Warriors unnumbered warded the building
          As erst they did often: the ale-settle bared they,
          'Twas covered all over with beds and pillows.

{A doomed thane is there with them.}

          Doomed unto death, down to his slumber
       50 Bowed then a beer-thane. Their battle-shields placed they,
          Bright-shining targets, up by their heads then;
          O'er the atheling on ale-bench 'twas easy to see there
          Battle-high helmet, burnie of ring-mail,

{They were always ready for battle.}

          And mighty war-spear. 'Twas the wont of that people
       55 To constantly keep them equipped for the battle,[4]
          At home or marching--in either condition--
          At seasons just such as necessity ordered
          As best for their ruler; that people was worthy.

    [1] C. suggests a semicolon after 'city,' with 'he' as supplied
    subject of 'fled' and 'chose.'

    [2] For 'feorh' S. suggests 'feoh': 'corpse' in the translation would
    then be changed to '_possessions_,' '_belongings_.' This is a better
    reading than one joining, in such intimate syntactical relations,
    things so unlike as 'corpse' and 'jewels.'

    [3] S. suggests '_wine-joyous heroes_,' '_warriors elated with wine_.'

    [4] I believe this translation brings out the meaning of the poet,
    without departing seriously from the H.-So. text. 'Oft' frequently
    means 'constantly,' 'continually,' not always 'often.'--Why 'an (on)
    wíg gearwe' should be written 'ánwíg-gearwe' (= ready for single
    combat), I cannot see. 'Gearwe' occurs quite frequently with 'on'; cf.
    B. 1110 (_ready for the pyre_), El. 222 (_ready for the glad
    journey_). Moreover, what has the idea of single combat to do with B.
    1247 ff.? The poet is giving an inventory of the arms and armor which
    they lay aside on retiring, and he closes his narration by saying that
    they were _always prepared for battle both at home and on the march_.

[44]




XX.

THE MOTHER OF GRENDEL.


          They sank then to slumber. With sorrow one paid for
          His evening repose, as often betid them
          While Grendel was holding[1] the gold-bedecked palace,
          Ill-deeds performing, till his end overtook him,
        5 Death for his sins. 'Twas seen very clearly,

{Grendel's mother is known to be thirsting for revenge.}

          Known unto earth-folk, that still an avenger
          Outlived the loathed one, long since the sorrow
          Caused by the struggle; the mother of Grendel,
          Devil-shaped woman, her woe ever minded,
       10 Who was held to inhabit the horrible waters,

{[Grendel's progenitor, Cain, is again referred to.]}

          The cold-flowing currents, after Cain had become a
          Slayer-with-edges to his one only brother,
          The son of his sire; he set out then banished,
          Marked as a murderer, man-joys avoiding,
       15 Lived in the desert. Thence demons unnumbered

{The poet again magnifies Beowulf's valor.}

          Fate-sent awoke; one of them Grendel,
          Sword-cursèd, hateful, who at Heorot met with
          A man that was watching, waiting the struggle,
          Where a horrid one held him with hand-grapple sturdy;
       20 Nathless he minded the might of his body,
          The glorious gift God had allowed him,
          And folk-ruling Father's favor relied on,
          His help and His comfort: so he conquered the foeman,
          The hell-spirit humbled: he unhappy departed then,
       25 Reaved of his joyance, journeying to death-haunts,
          Foeman of man. His mother moreover

{Grendel's mother comes to avenge her son.}

          Eager and gloomy was anxious to go on
          Her mournful mission, mindful of vengeance
          For the death of her son. She came then to Heorot
[45]   30 Where the Armor-Dane earlmen all through the building
          Were lying in slumber. Soon there became then
          Return[2] to the nobles, when the mother of Grendel
          Entered the folk-hall; the fear was less grievous
          By even so much as the vigor of maidens,
       35 War-strength of women, by warrior is reckoned,
          When well-carved weapon, worked with the hammer,
          Blade very bloody, brave with its edges,
          Strikes down the boar-sign that stands on the helmet.
          Then the hard-edgèd weapon was heaved in the building,[3]
       40 The brand o'er the benches, broad-lindens many
          Hand-fast were lifted; for helmet he recked not,
          For armor-net broad, whom terror laid hold of.
          She went then hastily, outward would get her
          Her life for to save, when some one did spy her;

{She seizes a favorite liegemen of Hrothgar's.}

       45 Soon she had grappled one of the athelings
          Fast and firmly, when fenward she hied her;
          That one to Hrothgar was liefest of heroes
          In rank of retainer where waters encircle,
          A mighty shield-warrior, whom she murdered at slumber,
       50 A broadly-famed battle-knight. Beowulf was absent,

{Beowulf was asleep in another part of the palace.}

          But another apartment was erstwhile devoted
          To the glory-decked Geatman when gold was distributed.
          There was hubbub in Heorot. The hand that was famous
          She grasped in its gore;[4] grief was renewed then
[46]   55 In homes and houses: 'twas no happy arrangement
          In both of the quarters to barter and purchase
          With lives of their friends. Then the well-agèd ruler,
          The gray-headed war-thane, was woful in spirit,
          When his long-trusted liegeman lifeless he knew of,

{Beowulf is sent for.}

       60 His dearest one gone. Quick from a room was
          Beowulf brought, brave and triumphant.
          As day was dawning in the dusk of the morning,

{He comes at Hrothgar's summons.}

          Went then that earlman, champion noble,
          Came with comrades, where the clever one bided
       65 Whether God all gracious would grant him a respite
          After the woe he had suffered. The war-worthy hero
          With a troop of retainers trod then the pavement
          (The hall-building groaned), till he greeted the wise one,

{Beowulf inquires how Hrothgar had enjoyed his night's rest.}

          The earl of the Ingwins;[5] asked if the night had
       70 Fully refreshed him, as fain he would have it.

    [1] Several eminent authorities either read or emend the MS. so as to
    make this verse read, _While Grendel was wasting the gold-bedecked
    palace_. So 20_15 below: _ravaged the desert_.

    [2] For 'sóna' (1281), t.B. suggests 'sára,' limiting 'edhwyrft.' Read
    then: _Return of sorrows to the nobles, etc_. This emendation supplies
    the syntactical gap after 'edhwyrft.'

    [3] Some authorities follow Grein's lexicon in treating 'heard ecg' as
    an adj. limiting 'sweord': H.-So. renders it as a subst. (So v. 1491.)
    The sense of the translation would be the same.

    [4] B. suggests 'under hróf genam' (v. 1303). This emendation, as well
    as an emendation with (?) to v. 739, he offers, because 'under'
    baffles him in both passages. All we need is to take 'under' in its
    secondary meaning of 'in,' which, though not given by Grein, occurs in
    the literature. Cf. Chron. 876 (March's A.-S. Gram. § 355) and Oro.
    Amaz. I. 10, where 'under' = _in the midst of_. Cf. modern Eng. 'in
    such circumstances,' which interchanges in good usage with 'under such
    circumstances.'

    [5] For 'néod-laðu' (1321) C. suggests 'néad-láðum,' and translates:
    _asked whether the night had been pleasant to him after
    crushing-hostility_.




XXI.

HROTHGAR'S ACCOUNT OF THE MONSTERS.


{Hrothgar laments the death of Æschere, his shoulder-companion.}

          Hrothgar rejoined, helm of the Scyldings:
          "Ask not of joyance! Grief is renewed to
          The folk of the Danemen. Dead is Æschere,
          Yrmenlaf's brother, older than he,
        5 My true-hearted counsellor, trusty adviser,
          Shoulder-companion, when fighting in battle
          Our heads we protected, when troopers were clashing,

{He was my ideal hero.}

          And heroes were dashing; such an earl should be ever,
          An erst-worthy atheling, as Æschere proved him.
       10 The flickering death-spirit became in Heorot
          His hand-to-hand murderer; I can not tell whither
          The cruel one turned in the carcass exulting,

[47]

{This horrible creature came to avenge Grendel's death.}

          By cramming discovered.[1] The quarrel she wreaked then,
          That last night igone Grendel thou killedst
       15 In grewsomest manner, with grim-holding clutches,
          Since too long he had lessened my liege-troop and wasted
          My folk-men so foully. He fell in the battle
          With forfeit of life, and another has followed,
          A mighty crime-worker, her kinsman avenging,
       20 And henceforth hath 'stablished her hatred unyielding,[2]
          As it well may appear to many a liegeman,
          Who mourneth in spirit the treasure-bestower,
          Her heavy heart-sorrow; the hand is now lifeless
          Which[3] availed you in every wish that you cherished.

{I have heard my vassals speak of these two uncanny monsters who lived in
the moors.}

       25 Land-people heard I, liegemen, this saying,
          Dwellers in halls, they had seen very often
          A pair of such mighty march-striding creatures,
          Far-dwelling spirits, holding the moorlands:
          One of them wore, as well they might notice,
       30 The image of woman, the other one wretched
          In guise of a man wandered in exile,
          Except he was huger than any of earthmen;
          Earth-dwelling people entitled him Grendel
          In days of yore: they know not their father,
       35 Whe'r ill-going spirits any were borne him

{The inhabit the most desolate and horrible places.}

          Ever before. They guard the wolf-coverts,
          Lands inaccessible, wind-beaten nesses,
          Fearfullest fen-deeps, where a flood from the mountains
          'Neath mists of the nesses netherward rattles,
       40 The stream under earth: not far is it henceward
          Measured by mile-lengths that the mere-water standeth,
          Which forests hang over, with frost-whiting covered,[4]
[48]      A firm-rooted forest, the floods overshadow.
          There ever at night one an ill-meaning portent
       45 A fire-flood may see; 'mong children of men
          None liveth so wise that wot of the bottom;
          Though harassed by hounds the heath-stepper seek for,

{Even the hounded deer will not seek refuge in these uncanny regions.}

          Fly to the forest, firm-antlered he-deer,
          Spurred from afar, his spirit he yieldeth,
       50 His life on the shore, ere in he will venture
          To cover his head. Uncanny the place is:
          Thence upward ascendeth the surging of waters,
          Wan to the welkin, when the wind is stirring
          The weathers unpleasing, till the air groweth gloomy,

{To thee only can I look for assistance.}

       55 And the heavens lower. Now is help to be gotten
          From thee and thee only! The abode thou know'st not,
          The dangerous place where thou'rt able to meet with
          The sin-laden hero: seek if thou darest!
          For the feud I will fully fee thee with money,
       60 With old-time treasure, as erstwhile I did thee,
          With well-twisted jewels, if away thou shalt get thee."

    [1] For 'gefrægnod' (1334), K. and t.B. suggest 'gefægnod,' rendering
    '_rejoicing in her fill_.' This gives a parallel to 'æse wlanc'
    (1333).

    [2] The line 'And ... yielding,' B. renders: _And she has performed a
    deed of blood-vengeance whose effect is far-reaching_.

    [3] 'Sé Þe' (1345) is an instance of masc. rel. with fem. antecedent.
    So v. 1888, where 'sé Þe' refers to 'yldo.'

    [4] For 'hrímge' in the H.-So. edition, Gr. and others read 'hrínde'
    (=hrínende), and translate: _which rustling forests overhang_.




XXII.

BEOWULF SEEKS GRENDEL'S MOTHER.


          Beowulf answered, Ecgtheow's son:

{Beowulf exhorts the old king to arouse himself for action.}

          "Grieve not, O wise one! for each it is better,
          His friend to avenge than with vehemence wail him;
          Each of us must the end-day abide of
        5 His earthly existence; who is able accomplish
          Glory ere death! To battle-thane noble
          Lifeless lying, 'tis at last most fitting.
          Arise, O king, quick let us hasten
          To look at the footprint of the kinsman of Grendel!
       10 I promise thee this now: to his place he'll escape not,
          To embrace of the earth, nor to mountainous forest,
          Nor to depths of the ocean, wherever he wanders.
[49]      Practice thou now patient endurance
          Of each of thy sorrows, as I hope for thee soothly!"

{Hrothgar rouses himself. His horse is brought.}

       15 Then up sprang the old one, the All-Wielder thanked he,
          Ruler Almighty, that the man had outspoken.
          Then for Hrothgar a war-horse was decked with a bridle,
          Curly-maned courser. The clever folk-leader

{They start on the track of the female monster.}

          Stately proceeded: stepped then an earl-troop
       20 Of linden-wood bearers. Her footprints were seen then
          Widely in wood-paths, her way o'er the bottoms,
          Where she faraway fared o'er fen-country murky,
          Bore away breathless the best of retainers
          Who pondered with Hrothgar the welfare of country.
       25 The son of the athelings then went o'er the stony,
          Declivitous cliffs, the close-covered passes,
          Narrow passages, paths unfrequented,
          Nesses abrupt, nicker-haunts many;
          One of a few of wise-mooded heroes,
       30 He onward advanced to view the surroundings,
          Till he found unawares woods of the mountain
          O'er hoar-stones hanging, holt-wood unjoyful;
          The water stood under, welling and gory.
          'Twas irksome in spirit to all of the Danemen,
       35 Friends of the Scyldings, to many a liegeman

{The sight of Æschere's head causes them great sorrow.}

          Sad to be suffered, a sorrow unlittle
          To each of the earlmen, when to Æschere's head they
          Came on the cliff. The current was seething
          With blood and with gore (the troopers gazed on it).
       40 The horn anon sang the battle-song ready.
          The troop were all seated; they saw 'long the water then

{The water is filled with serpents and sea-dragons.}

          Many a serpent, mere-dragons wondrous
          Trying the waters, nickers a-lying
          On the cliffs of the nesses, which at noonday full often
       45 Go on the sea-deeps their sorrowful journey,
          Wild-beasts and wormkind; away then they hastened

{One of them is killed by Beowulf.}

          Hot-mooded, hateful, they heard the great clamor,
          The war-trumpet winding. One did the Geat-prince
[50]      Sunder from earth-joys, with arrow from bowstring,
       50 From his sea-struggle tore him, that the trusty war-missile

{The dead beast is a poor swimmer}

          Pierced to his vitals; he proved in the currents
          Less doughty at swimming whom death had offcarried.
          Soon in the waters the wonderful swimmer
          Was straitened most sorely with sword-pointed boar-spears,
       55 Pressed in the battle and pulled to the cliff-edge;
          The liegemen then looked on the loath-fashioned stranger.

{Beowulf prepares for a struggle with the monster.}

          Beowulf donned then his battle-equipments,
          Cared little for life; inlaid and most ample,
          The hand-woven corslet which could cover his body,
       60 Must the wave-deeps explore, that war might be powerless
          To harm the great hero, and the hating one's grasp might
          Not peril his safety; his head was protected
          By the light-flashing helmet that should mix with the bottoms,
          Trying the eddies, treasure-emblazoned,
       65 Encircled with jewels, as in seasons long past
          The weapon-smith worked it, wondrously made it,
          With swine-bodies fashioned it, that thenceforward no longer
          Brand might bite it, and battle-sword hurt it.
          And that was not least of helpers in prowess

{He has Unferth's sword in his hand.}

       70 That Hrothgar's spokesman had lent him when straitened;
          And the hilted hand-sword was Hrunting entitled,
          Old and most excellent 'mong all of the treasures;
          Its blade was of iron, blotted with poison,
          Hardened with gore; it failed not in battle
       75 Any hero under heaven in hand who it brandished,
          Who ventured to take the terrible journeys,
          The battle-field sought; not the earliest occasion
          That deeds of daring 'twas destined to 'complish.

{Unferth has little use for swords.}

          Ecglaf's kinsman minded not soothly,
       80 Exulting in strength, what erst he had spoken
          Drunken with wine, when the weapon he lent to
          A sword-hero bolder; himself did not venture
          'Neath the strife of the currents his life to endanger,
[51]      To fame-deeds perform; there he forfeited glory,
       85 Repute for his strength. Not so with the other
          When he clad in his corslet had equipped him for battle.




XXIII.

BEOWULF'S FIGHT WITH GRENDEL'S MOTHER.


{Beowulf makes a parting speech to Hrothgar.}

          Beowulf spake, Ecgtheow's son:
          "Recall now, oh, famous kinsman of Healfdene,
          Prince very prudent, now to part I am ready,
          Gold-friend of earlmen, what erst we agreed on,

{If I fail, act as a kind liegelord to my thanes,}

        5 Should I lay down my life in lending thee assistance,
          When my earth-joys were over, thou wouldst evermore serve me
          In stead of a father; my faithful thanemen,
          My trusty retainers, protect thou and care for,
          Fall I in battle: and, Hrothgar belovèd,

{and send Higelac the jewels thou hast given me}

       10 Send unto Higelac the high-valued jewels
          Thou to me hast allotted. The lord of the Geatmen
          May perceive from the gold, the Hrethling may see it

{I should like my king to know how generous a lord I found thee to be.}

          When he looks on the jewels, that a gem-giver found I
          Good over-measure, enjoyed him while able.
       15 And the ancient heirloom Unferth permit thou,
          The famed one to have, the heavy-sword splendid[1]
          The hard-edgèd weapon; with Hrunting to aid me,
          I shall gain me glory, or grim-death shall take me."

{Beowulf is eager for the fray.}

          The atheling of Geatmen uttered these words and
       20 Heroic did hasten, not any rejoinder
          Was willing to wait for; the wave-current swallowed

{He is a whole day reaching the bottom of the sea.}

          The doughty-in-battle. Then a day's-length elapsed ere
          He was able to see the sea at its bottom.
          Early she found then who fifty of winters
       25 The course of the currents kept in her fury,
          Grisly and greedy, that the grim one's dominion

[52]

{Grendel's mother knows that some one has reached her domains.}

          Some one of men from above was exploring.
          Forth did she grab them, grappled the warrior
          With horrible clutches; yet no sooner she injured
       30 His body unscathèd: the burnie out-guarded,
          That she proved but powerless to pierce through the armor,
          The limb-mail locked, with loath-grabbing fingers.
          The sea-wolf bare then, when bottomward came she,

{She grabs him, and bears him to her den.}

          The ring-prince homeward, that he after was powerless
       35 (He had daring to do it) to deal with his weapons,
          But many a mere-beast tormented him swimming,

{Sea-monsters bite and strike him.}

          Flood-beasts no few with fierce-biting tusks did
          Break through his burnie, the brave one pursued they.
          The earl then discovered he was down in some cavern
       40 Where no water whatever anywise harmed him,
          And the clutch of the current could come not anear him,
          Since the roofed-hall prevented; brightness a-gleaming
          Fire-light he saw, flashing resplendent.
          The good one saw then the sea-bottom's monster,

{Beowulf attacks the mother of Grendel.}

       45 The mighty mere-woman; he made a great onset
          With weapon-of-battle, his hand not desisted
          From striking, that war-blade struck on her head then
          A battle-song greedy. The stranger perceived then

{The sword will not bite.}

          The sword would not bite, her life would not injure,
       50 But the falchion failed the folk-prince when straitened:
          Erst had it often onsets encountered,
          Oft cloven the helmet, the fated one's armor:
          'Twas the first time that ever the excellent jewel
          Had failed of its fame. Firm-mooded after,
       55 Not heedless of valor, but mindful of glory,
          Was Higelac's kinsman; the hero-chief angry
          Cast then his carved-sword covered with jewels
          That it lay on the earth, hard and steel-pointed;

{The hero throws down all weapons, and again trusts to his hand-grip.}

          He hoped in his strength, his hand-grapple sturdy.
       60 So any must act whenever he thinketh
          To gain him in battle glory unending,
          And is reckless of living. The lord of the War-Geats
[53]      (He shrank not from battle) seized by the shoulder[2]
          The mother of Grendel; then mighty in struggle
       65 Swung he his enemy, since his anger was kindled,
          That she fell to the floor. With furious grapple

{Beowulf falls.}

          She gave him requital[3] early thereafter,
          And stretched out to grab him; the strongest of warriors
          Faint-mooded stumbled, till he fell in his traces,

{The monster sits on him with drawn sword.}

       70 Foot-going champion. Then she sat on the hall-guest
          And wielded her war-knife wide-bladed, flashing,
          For her son would take vengeance, her one only bairn.

{His armor saves his life.}

          His breast-armor woven bode on his shoulder;
          It guarded his life, the entrance defended
       75 'Gainst sword-point and edges. Ecgtheow's son there
          Had fatally journeyed, champion of Geatmen,
          In the arms of the ocean, had the armor not given,
          Close-woven corslet, comfort and succor,

{God arranged for his escape.}

          And had God most holy not awarded the victory,
       80 All-knowing Lord; easily did heaven's
          Ruler most righteous arrange it with justice;[4]
          Uprose he erect ready for battle.

    [1] Kl. emends 'wæl-sweord.' The half-line would then read, '_the
    battle-sword splendid_.'--For 'heard-ecg' in next half-verse, see note
    to 20_39 above.

    [2] Sw., R., and t.B. suggest 'feaxe' for 'eaxle' (1538) and render:
    _Seized by the hair_.

    [3] If 'hand-léan' be accepted (as the MS. has it), the line will
    read: _She hand-reward gave him early thereafter_.

    [4] Sw. and S. change H.-So.'s semicolon (v. 1557) to a comma, and
    translate: _The Ruler of Heaven arranged it in justice easily, after
    he arose again_.




XXIV.

BEOWULF IS DOUBLE-CONQUEROR.


{Beowulf grasps a giant-sword,}

          Then he saw mid the war-gems a weapon of victory,
          An ancient giant-sword, of edges a-doughty,
          Glory of warriors: of weapons 'twas choicest,
          Only 'twas larger than any man else was
[54]    5 Able to bear to the battle-encounter,
          The good and splendid work of the giants.
          He grasped then the sword-hilt, knight of the Scyldings,
          Bold and battle-grim, brandished his ring-sword,
          Hopeless of living, hotly he smote her,
       10 That the fiend-woman's neck firmly it grappled,

{and fells the female monster.}

          Broke through her bone-joints, the bill fully pierced her
          Fate-cursèd body, she fell to the ground then:
          The hand-sword was bloody, the hero exulted.
          The brand was brilliant, brightly it glimmered,
       15 Just as from heaven gemlike shineth
          The torch of the firmament. He glanced 'long the building,
          And turned by the wall then, Higelac's vassal
          Raging and wrathful raised his battle-sword
          Strong by the handle. The edge was not useless
       20 To the hero-in-battle, but he speedily wished to
          Give Grendel requital for the many assaults he
          Had worked on the West-Danes not once, but often,
          When he slew in slumber the subjects of Hrothgar,
          Swallowed down fifteen sleeping retainers
       25 Of the folk of the Danemen, and fully as many
          Carried away, a horrible prey.
          He gave him requital, grim-raging champion,

{Beowulf sees the body of Grendel, and cuts off his head.}

          When he saw on his rest-place weary of conflict
          Grendel lying, of life-joys bereavèd,
       30 As the battle at Heorot erstwhile had scathed him;
          His body far bounded, a blow when he suffered,
          Death having seized him, sword-smiting heavy,
          And he cut off his head then. Early this noticed
          The clever carles who as comrades of Hrothgar

{The waters are gory.}

       35 Gazed on the sea-deeps, that the surging wave-currents
          Were mightily mingled, the mere-flood was gory:
          Of the good one the gray-haired together held converse,

{Beowulf is given up for dead.}

          The hoary of head, that they hoped not to see again
          The atheling ever, that exulting in victory
       40 He'd return there to visit the distinguished folk-ruler:
[55]      Then many concluded the mere-wolf had killed him.[1]
          The ninth hour came then. From the ness-edge departed
          The bold-mooded Scyldings; the gold-friend of heroes
          Homeward betook him. The strangers sat down then
       45 Soul-sick, sorrowful, the sea-waves regarding:
          They wished and yet weened not their well-loved friend-lord

{The giant-sword melts.}

          To see any more. The sword-blade began then,
          The blood having touched it, contracting and shriveling
          With battle-icicles; 'twas a wonderful marvel
       50 That it melted entirely, likest to ice when
          The Father unbindeth the bond of the frost and
          Unwindeth the wave-bands, He who wieldeth dominion
          Of times and of tides: a truth-firm Creator.
          Nor took he of jewels more in the dwelling,
       55 Lord of the Weders, though they lay all around him,
          Than the head and the handle handsome with jewels;
[56]      The brand early melted, burnt was the weapon:[2]
          So hot was the blood, the strange-spirit poisonous

{The hero swims back to the realms of day.}

          That in it did perish. He early swam off then
       60 Who had bided in combat the carnage of haters,
          Went up through the ocean; the eddies were cleansèd,
          The spacious expanses, when the spirit from farland
          His life put aside and this short-lived existence.
          The seamen's defender came swimming to land then
       65 Doughty of spirit, rejoiced in his sea-gift,
          The bulky burden which he bore in his keeping.
          The excellent vassals advanced then to meet him,
          To God they were grateful, were glad in their chieftain,
          That to see him safe and sound was granted them.
       70 From the high-minded hero, then, helmet and burnie
          Were speedily loosened: the ocean was putrid,
          The water 'neath welkin weltered with gore.
          Forth did they fare, then, their footsteps retracing,
          Merry and mirthful, measured the earth-way,
       75 The highway familiar: men very daring[3]
          Bare then the head from the sea-cliff, burdening
          Each of the earlmen, excellent-valiant.

{It takes four men to carry Grendel's head on a spear.}

          Four of them had to carry with labor
          The head of Grendel to the high towering gold-hall
       80 Upstuck on the spear, till fourteen most-valiant
          And battle-brave Geatmen came there going
          Straight to the palace: the prince of the people
          Measured the mead-ways, their mood-brave companion.
          The atheling of earlmen entered the building,
       85 Deed-valiant man, adorned with distinction,
          Doughty shield-warrior, to address King Hrothgar:
[57]      Then hung by the hair, the head of Grendel
          Was borne to the building, where beer-thanes were drinking,
          Loth before earlmen and eke 'fore the lady:
       90 The warriors beheld then a wonderful sight.

    [1] 'Þæs monige gewearð' (1599) and 'hafað þæs geworden' (2027).--In a
    paper published some years ago in one of the Johns Hopkins University
    circulars, I tried to throw upon these two long-doubtful passages some
    light derived from a study of like passages in Alfred's prose.--The
    impersonal verb 'geweorðan,' with an accus. of the person, and a
    þæt-clause is used several times with the meaning 'agree.' See Orosius
    (Sweet's ed.) 178_7; 204_34; 208_28; 210_15; 280_20. In the two
    Beowulf passages, the þæt-clause is anticipated by 'þæs,' which is
    clearly a gen. of the thing agreed on.

    The first passage (v. 1599 (b)-1600) I translate literally: _Then many
    agreed upon this (namely), that the sea-wolf had killed him_.

    The second passage (v. 2025 (b)-2027): _She is promised ...; to this
    the friend of the Scyldings has agreed, etc_. By emending 'is' instead
    of 'wæs' (2025), the tenses will be brought into perfect harmony.

    In v. 1997 ff. this same idiom occurs, and was noticed in B.'s great
    article on Beowulf, which appeared about the time I published my
    reading of 1599 and 2027. Translate 1997 then: _Wouldst let the
    South-Danes themselves decide about their struggle with Grendel_. Here
    'Súð-Dene' is accus. of person, and 'gúðe' is gen. of thing agreed on.

    With such collateral support as that afforded by B. (P. and B. XII.
    97), I have no hesitation in departing from H.-So., my usual guide.

    The idiom above treated runs through A.-S., Old Saxon, and other
    Teutonic languages, and should be noticed in the lexicons.

    [2] 'Bróden-mæl' is regarded by most scholars as meaning a damaskeened
    sword. Translate: _The damaskeened sword burned up_. Cf. 25_16 and
    note.

    [3] 'Cyning-balde' (1635) is the much-disputed reading of K. and Th.
    To render this, "_nobly bold_," "_excellently bold_," have been
    suggested. B. would read 'cyning-holde' (cf. 290), and render: _Men
    well-disposed towards the king carried the head, etc._ 'Cynebealde,'
    says t.B., endorsing Gr.




XXV.

BEOWULF BRINGS HIS TROPHIES.--HROTHGAR'S GRATITUDE.


{Beowulf relates his last exploit.}

          Beowulf spake, offspring of Ecgtheow:
          "Lo! we blithely have brought thee, bairn of Healfdene,
          Prince of the Scyldings, these presents from ocean
          Which thine eye looketh on, for an emblem of glory.
        5 I came off alive from this, narrowly 'scaping:
          In war 'neath the water the work with great pains I
          Performed, and the fight had been finished quite nearly,
          Had God not defended me. I failed in the battle
          Aught to accomplish, aided by Hrunting,
       10 Though that weapon was worthy, but the Wielder of earth-folk

{God was fighting with me.}

          Gave me willingly to see on the wall a
          Heavy old hand-sword hanging in splendor
          (He guided most often the lorn and the friendless),
          That I swung as a weapon. The wards of the house then
       15 I killed in the conflict (when occasion was given me).
          Then the battle-sword burned, the brand that was lifted,[1]
          As the blood-current sprang, hottest of war-sweats;
          Seizing the hilt, from my foes I offbore it;
          I avenged as I ought to their acts of malignity,
       20 The murder of Danemen. I then make thee this promise,

{Heorot is freed from monsters.}

          Thou'lt be able in Heorot careless to slumber
          With thy throng of heroes and the thanes of thy people
          Every and each, of greater and lesser,
          And thou needest not fear for them from the selfsame direction
       25 As thou formerly fearedst, oh, folk-lord of Scyldings,
[58]     End-day for earlmen." To the age-hoary man then,

{The famous sword is presented to Hrothgar.}

          The gray-haired chieftain, the gold-fashioned sword-hilt,
          Old-work of giants, was thereupon given;
          Since the fall of the fiends, it fell to the keeping
       30 Of the wielder of Danemen, the wonder-smith's labor,
          And the bad-mooded being abandoned this world then,
          Opponent of God, victim of murder,
          And also his mother; it went to the keeping
          Of the best of the world-kings, where waters encircle,
       35 Who the scot divided in Scylding dominion.

{Hrothgar looks closely at the old sword.}

          Hrothgar discoursed, the hilt he regarded,
          The ancient heirloom where an old-time contention's
          Beginning was graven: the gurgling currents,
          The flood slew thereafter the race of the giants,
       40 They had proved themselves daring: that people was loth to

{It had belonged to a race hateful to God.}

          The Lord everlasting, through lash of the billows
          The Father gave them final requital.
          So in letters of rune on the clasp of the handle
          Gleaming and golden, 'twas graven exactly,
       45 Set forth and said, whom that sword had been made for,
          Finest of irons, who first it was wrought for,
          Wreathed at its handle and gleaming with serpents.
          The wise one then said (silent they all were)

{Hrothgar praises Beowulf.}

          Son of old Healfdene: "He may say unrefuted
       50 Who performs 'mid the folk-men fairness and truth
          (The hoary old ruler remembers the past),
          That better by birth is this bairn of the nobles!
          Thy fame is extended through far-away countries,
          Good friend Beowulf, o'er all of the races,
       55 Thou holdest all firmly, hero-like strength with
          Prudence of spirit. I'll prove myself grateful
          As before we agreed on; thou granted for long shalt
          Become a great comfort to kinsmen and comrades,

{Heremod's career is again contrasted with Beowulf's.}

          A help unto heroes. Heremod became not
       60 Such to the Scyldings, successors of Ecgwela;
          He grew not to please them, but grievous destruction,
[59]      And diresome death-woes to Danemen attracted;
          He slew in anger his table-companions,
          Trustworthy counsellors, till he turned off lonely
       65 From world-joys away, wide-famous ruler:
          Though high-ruling heaven in hero-strength raised him,
          In might exalted him, o'er men of all nations
          Made him supreme, yet a murderous spirit
          Grew in his bosom: he gave then no ring-gems

{A wretched failure of a king, to give no jewels to his retainers.}

       70 To the Danes after custom; endured he unjoyful
          Standing the straits from strife that was raging,
          Longsome folk-sorrow. Learn then from this,
          Lay hold of virtue! Though laden with winters,
          I have sung thee these measures. 'Tis a marvel to tell it,

{Hrothgar moralizes.}

       75 How all-ruling God from greatness of spirit
          Giveth wisdom to children of men,
          Manor and earlship: all things He ruleth.
          He often permitteth the mood-thought of man of
          The illustrious lineage to lean to possessions,
       80 Allows him earthly delights at his manor,
          A high-burg of heroes to hold in his keeping,
          Maketh portions of earth-folk hear him,
          And a wide-reaching kingdom so that, wisdom failing him,
          He himself is unable to reckon its boundaries;
       85 He liveth in luxury, little debars him,
          Nor sickness nor age, no treachery-sorrow
          Becloudeth his spirit, conflict nowhere,
          No sword-hate, appeareth, but all of the world doth
          Wend as he wisheth; the worse he knoweth not,
       90 Till arrant arrogance inward pervading,
          Waxeth and springeth, when the warder is sleeping,
          The guard of the soul: with sorrows encompassed,
          Too sound is his slumber, the slayer is near him,
          Who with bow and arrow aimeth in malice.

[60]

    [1] Or rather, perhaps, '_the inlaid, or damaskeened weapon_.' Cf.
    24_57 and note.




XXVI.

HROTHGAR MORALIZES.--REST AFTER LABOR.


{A wounded spirit.}

          "Then bruised in his bosom he with bitter-toothed missile
          Is hurt 'neath his helmet: from harmful pollution
          He is powerless to shield him by the wonderful mandates
          Of the loath-cursèd spirit; what too long he hath holden
        5 Him seemeth too small, savage he hoardeth,
          Nor boastfully giveth gold-plated rings,[1]
          The fate of the future flouts and forgetteth
          Since God had erst given him greatness no little,
          Wielder of Glory. His end-day anear,
       10 It afterward happens that the bodily-dwelling
          Fleetingly fadeth, falls into ruins;
          Another lays hold who doleth the ornaments,
          The nobleman's jewels, nothing lamenting,
          Heedeth no terror. Oh, Beowulf dear,
       15 Best of the heroes, from bale-strife defend thee,
          And choose thee the better, counsels eternal;

{Be not over proud: life is fleeting, and its strength soon wasteth away.}

          Beware of arrogance, world-famous champion!
          But a little-while lasts thy life-vigor's fulness;
          'Twill after hap early, that illness or sword-edge
       20 Shall part thee from strength, or the grasp of the fire,
          Or the wave of the current, or clutch of the edges,
          Or flight of the war-spear, or age with its horrors,
          Or thine eyes' bright flashing shall fade into darkness:
          'Twill happen full early, excellent hero,

{Hrothgar gives an account of his reign.}

       25 That death shall subdue thee. So the Danes a half-century
          I held under heaven, helped them in struggles
          'Gainst many a race in middle-earth's regions,
          With ash-wood and edges, that enemies none
          On earth molested me. Lo! offsetting change, now,

[61]

{Sorrow after joy.}

       30 Came to my manor, grief after joyance,
          When Grendel became my constant visitor,
          Inveterate hater: I from that malice
          Continually travailed with trouble no little.
          Thanks be to God that I gained in my lifetime,
       35 To the Lord everlasting, to look on the gory
          Head with mine eyes, after long-lasting sorrow!
          Go to the bench now, battle-adornèd
          Joy in the feasting: of jewels in common
          We'll meet with many when morning appeareth."
       40 The Geatman was gladsome, ganged he immediately
          To go to the bench, as the clever one bade him.
          Then again as before were the famous-for-prowess,
          Hall-inhabiters, handsomely banqueted,
          Feasted anew. The night-veil fell then
       45 Dark o'er the warriors. The courtiers rose then;
          The gray-haired was anxious to go to his slumbers,
          The hoary old Scylding. Hankered the Geatman,

{Beowulf is fagged, and seeks rest.}

          The champion doughty, greatly, to rest him:
          An earlman early outward did lead him,
       50 Fagged from his faring, from far-country springing,
          Who for etiquette's sake all of a liegeman's
          Needs regarded, such as seamen at that time
          Were bounden to feel. The big-hearted rested;
          The building uptowered, spacious and gilded,
       55 The guest within slumbered, till the sable-clad raven
          Blithely foreboded the beacon of heaven.
          Then the bright-shining sun o'er the bottoms came going;[2]
          The warriors hastened, the heads of the peoples
          Were ready to go again to their peoples,

{The Geats prepare to leave Dane-land.}

       60 The high-mooded farer would faraway thenceward
          Look for his vessel. The valiant one bade then,[3]

[62]

{Unferth asks Beowulf to accept his sword as a gift. Beowulf thanks him.}

          Offspring of Ecglaf, off to bear Hrunting,
          To take his weapon, his well-beloved iron;
          He him thanked for the gift, saying good he accounted
       65 The war-friend and mighty, nor chid he with words then
          The blade of the brand: 'twas a brave-mooded hero.
          When the warriors were ready, arrayed in their trappings,
          The atheling dear to the Danemen advanced then
          On to the dais, where the other was sitting,
       70 Grim-mooded hero, greeted King Hrothgar.

    [1] K. says '_proudly giveth_.'--Gr. says, '_And gives no gold-plated
    rings, in order to incite the recipient to boastfulness_.'--B.
    suggests 'gyld' for 'gylp,' and renders: _And gives no beaten rings
    for reward_.

    [2] If S.'s emendation be accepted, v. 57 will read: _Then came the
    light, going bright after darkness: the warriors, etc_.

    [3] As the passage stands in H.-So., Unferth presents Beowulf with the
    sword Hrunting, and B. thanks him for the gift. If, however, the
    suggestions of Grdtvg. and M. be accepted, the passage will read:
    _Then the brave one (_i.e._ Beowulf) commanded that Hrunting be borne
    to the son of Ecglaf (Unferth), bade him take his sword, his dear
    weapon; he (B.) thanked him (U.) for the loan, etc_.




XXVII.

SORROW AT PARTING.


{Beowulf's farewell.}

          Beowulf spake, Ecgtheow's offspring:
          "We men of the water wish to declare now
          Fared from far-lands, we're firmly determined
          To seek King Higelac. Here have we fitly
        5 Been welcomed and feasted, as heart would desire it;
          Good was the greeting. If greater affection
          I am anywise able ever on earth to
          Gain at thy hands, ruler of heroes,
          Than yet I have done, I shall quickly be ready

{I shall be ever ready to aid thee.}

       10 For combat and conflict. O'er the course of the waters
          Learn I that neighbors alarm thee with terror,
          As haters did whilom, I hither will bring thee
          For help unto heroes henchmen by thousands.

{My liegelord will encourage me in aiding thee.}

          I know as to Higelac, the lord of the Geatmen,
       15 Though young in years, he yet will permit me,
          By words and by works, ward of the people,
          Fully to furnish thee forces and bear thee
          My lance to relieve thee, if liegemen shall fail thee,
          And help of my hand-strength; if Hrethric be treating,
[63]   20 Bairn of the king, at the court of the Geatmen,
          He thereat may find him friends in abundance:
          Faraway countries he were better to seek for
          Who trusts in himself." Hrothgar discoursed then,
          Making rejoinder: "These words thou hast uttered
       25 All-knowing God hath given thy spirit!

{O Beowulf, thou art wise beyond thy years.}

          Ne'er heard I an earlman thus early in life
          More clever in speaking: thou'rt cautious of spirit,
          Mighty of muscle, in mouth-answers prudent.
          I count on the hope that, happen it ever
       30 That missile shall rob thee of Hrethel's descendant,
          Edge-horrid battle, and illness or weapon
          Deprive thee of prince, of people's protector,

{Should Higelac die, the Geats could find no better successor than thou
wouldst make.}

          And life thou yet holdest, the Sea-Geats will never
          Find a more fitting folk-lord to choose them,
       35 Gem-ward of heroes, than _thou_ mightest prove thee,
          If the kingdom of kinsmen thou carest to govern.
          Thy mood-spirit likes me the longer the better,
          Beowulf dear: thou hast brought it to pass that
          To both these peoples peace shall be common,

{Thou hast healed the ancient breach between our races.}

       40 To Geat-folk and Danemen, the strife be suspended,
          The secret assailings they suffered in yore-days;
          And also that jewels be shared while I govern
          The wide-stretching kingdom, and that many shall visit
          Others o'er the ocean with excellent gift-gems:
       45 The ring-adorned bark shall bring o'er the currents
          Presents and love-gifts. This people I know
          Tow'rd foeman and friend firmly established,[1]
          After ancient etiquette everywise blameless."
          Then the warden of earlmen gave him still farther,

{Parting gifts}

       50 Kinsman of Healfdene, a dozen of jewels,
          Bade him safely seek with the presents
          His well-beloved people, early returning.

[64]

{Hrothgar kisses Beowulf, and weeps.}

          Then the noble-born king kissed the distinguished,
          Dear-lovèd liegeman, the Dane-prince saluted him,
       55 And claspèd his neck; tears from him fell,
          From the gray-headed man: he two things expected,
          Agèd and reverend, but rather the second,
          [2]That bold in council they'd meet thereafter.
          The man was so dear that he failed to suppress the
       60 Emotions that moved him, but in mood-fetters fastened

{The old king is deeply grieved to part with his benefactor.}

          The long-famous hero longeth in secret
          Deep in his spirit for the dear-beloved man
          Though not a blood-kinsman. Beowulf thenceward,
          Gold-splendid warrior, walked o'er the meadows
       65 Exulting in treasure: the sea-going vessel
          Riding at anchor awaited its owner.
          As they pressed on their way then, the present of Hrothgar

{Giving liberally is the true proof of kingship.}

          Was frequently referred to: a folk-king indeed that
          Everyway blameless, till age did debar him
       70 The joys of his might, which hath many oft injured.

    [1] For 'geworhte,' the crux of this passage, B. proposes 'geþóhte,'
    rendering: _I know this people with firm thought every way blameless
    towards foe and friends_.

    [2] S. and B. emend so as to negative the verb 'meet.' "Why should
    Hrothgar weep if he expects to meet Beowulf again?" both these
    scholars ask. But the weeping is mentioned before the 'expectations':
    the tears may have been due to many emotions, especially gratitude,
    struggling for expression.




XXVIII.

THE HOMEWARD JOURNEY.--THE TWO QUEENS.


          Then the band of very valiant retainers
          Came to the current; they were clad all in armor,

{The coast-guard again.}

          In link-woven burnies. The land-warder noticed
          The return of the earlmen, as he erstwhile had seen them;
        5 Nowise with insult he greeted the strangers
          From the naze of the cliff, but rode on to meet them;
          Said the bright-armored visitors[1] vesselward traveled
[65]      Welcome to Weders. The wide-bosomed craft then
          Lay on the sand, laden with armor,
       10 With horses and jewels, the ring-stemmèd sailer:
          The mast uptowered o'er the treasure of Hrothgar.

{Beowulf gives the guard a handsome sword.}

          To the boat-ward a gold-bound brand he presented,
          That he was afterwards honored on the ale-bench more highly
          As the heirloom's owner. [2]Set he out on his vessel,
       15 To drive on the deep, Dane-country left he.
          Along by the mast then a sea-garment fluttered,
          A rope-fastened sail. The sea-boat resounded,
          The wind o'er the waters the wave-floater nowise
          Kept from its journey; the sea-goer traveled,
       20 The foamy-necked floated forth o'er the currents,
          The well-fashioned vessel o'er the ways of the ocean,

{The Geats see their own land again.}

          Till they came within sight of the cliffs of the Geatmen,
          The well-known headlands. The wave-goer hastened
          Driven by breezes, stood on the shore.

{The port-warden is anxiously looking for them.}

       25 Prompt at the ocean, the port-ward was ready,
          Who long in the past outlooked in the distance,[3]
          At water's-edge waiting well-lovèd heroes;
          He bound to the bank then the broad-bosomed vessel
          Fast in its fetters, lest the force of the waters
       30 Should be able to injure the ocean-wood winsome.
          Bade he up then take the treasure of princes,
          Plate-gold and fretwork; not far was it thence
          To go off in search of the giver of jewels:
[66]      Hrethel's son Higelac at home there remaineth,[4]
       35 Himself with his comrades close to the sea-coast.
          The building was splendid, the king heroic,
          Great in his hall, Hygd very young was,

{Hygd, the noble queen of Higelac, lavish of gifts.}

          Fine-mooded, clever, though few were the winters
          That the daughter of Hæreth had dwelt in the borough;
       40 But she nowise was cringing nor niggard of presents,
          Of ornaments rare, to the race of the Geatmen.

{Offa's consort, Thrytho, is contrasted with Hygd.}

          Thrytho nursed anger, excellent[5] folk-queen,
          Hot-burning hatred: no hero whatever
          'Mong household companions, her husband excepted

{She is a terror to all save her husband.}

       45 Dared to adventure to look at the woman
          With eyes in the daytime;[6] but he knew that death-chains
          Hand-wreathed were wrought him: early thereafter,
          When the hand-strife was over, edges were ready,
          That fierce-raging sword-point had to force a decision,
       50 Murder-bale show. Such no womanly custom
          For a lady to practise, though lovely her person,
          That a weaver-of-peace, on pretence of anger
          A belovèd liegeman of life should deprive.
          Soothly this hindered Heming's kinsman;
       55 Other ale-drinking earlmen asserted
          That fearful folk-sorrows fewer she wrought them,
          Treacherous doings, since first she was given
          Adorned with gold to the war-hero youthful,
          For her origin honored, when Offa's great palace
       60 O'er the fallow flood by her father's instructions
          She sought on her journey, where she afterwards fully,
          Famed for her virtue, her fate on the king's-seat
[67]      Enjoyed in her lifetime, love did she hold with
          The ruler of heroes, the best, it is told me,
       65 Of all of the earthmen that oceans encompass,
          Of earl-kindreds endless; hence Offa was famous
          Far and widely, by gifts and by battles,
          Spear-valiant hero; the home of his fathers
          He governed with wisdom, whence Eomær did issue
       70 For help unto heroes, Heming's kinsman,
          Grandson of Garmund, great in encounters.

    [1] For 'scawan' (1896), 'scaðan' has been proposed. Accepting this,
    we may render: _He said the bright-armored warriors were going to
    their vessel, welcome, etc_. (Cf. 1804.)

    [2] R. suggests, 'Gewát him on naca,' and renders: _The vessel set
    out, to drive on the sea, the Dane-country left_. 'On' bears the
    alliteration; cf. 'on hafu' (2524). This has some advantages over the
    H.-So. reading; viz. (1) It adds nothing to the text; (2) it makes
    'naca' the subject, and thus brings the passage into keeping with the
    context, where the poet has exhausted his vocabulary in detailing the
    actions of the vessel.--B.'s emendation (cf. P. and B. XII. 97) is
    violent.

    [3] B. translates: _Who for a long time, ready at the coast, had
    looked out into the distance eagerly for the dear men_. This changes
    the syntax of 'léofra manna.'

    [4] For 'wunað' (v. 1924) several eminent critics suggest 'wunade'
    (=remained). This makes the passage much clearer.

    [5] Why should such a woman be described as an 'excellent' queen? C.
    suggests 'frécnu' = dangerous, bold.

    [6] For 'an dæges' various readings have been offered. If 'and-éges'
    be accepted, the sentence will read: _No hero ... dared look upon her,
    eye to eye_. If 'án-dæges' be adopted, translate: _Dared look upon her
    the whole day_.




XXIX.

BEOWULF AND HIGELAC.


          Then the brave one departed, his band along with him,

{Beowulf and his party seek Higelac.}

          Seeking the sea-shore, the sea-marches treading,
          The wide-stretching shores. The world-candle glimmered,
          The sun from the southward; they proceeded then onward,
        5 Early arriving where they heard that the troop-lord,
          Ongentheow's slayer, excellent, youthful
          Folk-prince and warrior was distributing jewels,
          Close in his castle. The coming of Beowulf
          Was announced in a message quickly to Higelac,
       10 That the folk-troop's defender forth to the palace
          The linden-companion alive was advancing,
          Secure from the combat courtward a-going.
          The building was early inward made ready
          For the foot-going guests as the good one had ordered.

{Beowulf sits by his liegelord.}

       15 He sat by the man then who had lived through the struggle,
          Kinsman by kinsman, when the king of the people
          Had in lordly language saluted the dear one,

{Queen Hygd receives the heroes.}

          In words that were formal. The daughter of Hæreth
          Coursed through the building, carrying mead-cups:[1]
[68]   20 She loved the retainers, tendered the beakers
          To the high-minded Geatmen. Higelac 'gan then

{Higelac is greatly interested in Beowulf's adventures.}

          Pleasantly plying his companion with questions
          In the high-towering palace. A curious interest
          Tormented his spirit, what meaning to see in
       25 The Sea-Geats' adventures: "Beowulf worthy,

{Give an account of thy adventures, Beowulf dear.}

          How throve your journeying, when thou thoughtest suddenly
          Far o'er the salt-streams to seek an encounter,
          A battle at Heorot? Hast bettered for Hrothgar,
          The famous folk-leader, his far-published sorrows
       30 Any at all? In agony-billows

{My suspense has been great.}

          I mused upon torture, distrusted the journey
          Of the belovèd liegeman; I long time did pray thee
          By no means to seek out the murderous spirit,
          To suffer the South-Danes themselves to decide on[2]
       35 Grappling with Grendel. To God I am thankful
          To be suffered to see thee safe from thy journey."

{Beowulf narrates his adventures.}

          Beowulf answered, bairn of old Ecgtheow:
          "'Tis hidden by no means, Higelac chieftain,
          From many of men, the meeting so famous,
       40 What mournful moments of me and of Grendel
          Were passed in the place where he pressing affliction
          On the Victory-Scyldings scathefully brought,
          Anguish forever; that all I avengèd,
          So that any under heaven of the kinsmen of Grendel

{Grendel's kindred have no cause to boast.}

       45 Needeth not boast of that cry-in-the-morning,
          Who longest liveth of the loth-going kindred,[3]
          Encompassed by moorland. I came in my journey
          To the royal ring-hall, Hrothgar to greet there:

{Hrothgar received me very cordially.}

          Soon did the famous scion of Healfdene,
       50 When he understood fully the spirit that led me,
          Assign me a seat with the son of his bosom.
[69]      The troop was in joyance; mead-glee greater
          'Neath arch of the ether not ever beheld I

{The queen also showed up no little honor.}

          'Mid hall-building holders. The highly-famed queen,
       55 Peace-tie of peoples, oft passed through the building,
          Cheered the young troopers; she oft tendered a hero
          A beautiful ring-band, ere she went to her sitting.

{Hrothgar's lovely daughter.}

          Oft the daughter of Hrothgar in view of the courtiers
          To the earls at the end the ale-vessel carried,
       60 Whom Freaware I heard then hall-sitters title,
          When nail-adorned jewels she gave to the heroes:

{She is betrothed to Ingeld, in order to unite the Danes and Heathobards.}

          Gold-bedecked, youthful, to the glad son of Froda
          Her faith has been plighted; the friend of the Scyldings,
          The guard of the kingdom, hath given his sanction,[4]
       65 And counts it a vantage, for a part of the quarrels,
          A portion of hatred, to pay with the woman.
          [5]Somewhere not rarely, when the ruler has fallen,
          The life-taking lance relaxeth its fury
          For a brief breathing-spell, though the bride be charming!

    [1] 'Meodu-scencum' (1981) some would render '_with mead-pourers_.'
    Translate then: _The daughter of Hæreth went through the building
    accompanied by mead-pourers_.

    [2] See my note to 1599, supra, and B. in P. and B. XII. 97.

    [3] For 'fenne,' supplied by Grdtvg., B. suggests 'fácne' (cf. Jul.
    350). Accepting this, translate: _Who longest lives of the hated race,
    steeped in treachery_.

    [4] See note to v. 1599 above.

    [5] This is perhaps the least understood sentence in the poem, almost
    every word being open to dispute. (1) The 'nó' of our text is an
    emendation, and is rejected by many scholars. (2) 'Seldan' is by some
    taken as an adv. (= _seldom_), and by others as a noun (= _page_,
    _companion_). (3) 'Léod-hryre,' some render '_fall of the people_';
    others, '_fall of the prince_.' (4) 'Búgeð,' most scholars regard as
    the intrans. verb meaning '_bend_,' '_rest_'; but one great scholar has
    translated it '_shall kill_.' (5) 'Hwær,' Very recently, has been
    attacked, 'wære' being suggested. (6) As a corollary to the above, the
    same critic proposes to drop 'oft' out of the text.--t.B. suggests: Oft
    seldan wære after léodhryre: lýtle hwíle bongár búgeð, þéah séo brýd
    duge = _often has a treaty been (thus) struck, after a prince had
    fallen: (but only) a short time is the spear (then) wont to rest,
    however excellent the bride may be_.




XXX.

BEOWULF NARRATES HIS ADVENTURES TO HIGELAC.


          "It well may discomfit the prince of the Heathobards
          And each of the thanemen of earls that attend him,
[70]      When he goes to the building escorting the woman,
          That a noble-born Daneman the knights should be feasting:
        5 There gleam on his person the leavings of elders
          Hard and ring-bright, Heathobards' treasure,
          While they wielded their arms, till they misled to the battle
          Their own dear lives and belovèd companions.
          He saith at the banquet who the collar beholdeth,
       10 An ancient ash-warrior who earlmen's destruction
          Clearly recalleth (cruel his spirit),
          Sadly beginneth sounding the youthful
          Thane-champion's spirit through the thoughts of his bosom,
          War-grief to waken, and this word-answer speaketh:

{Ingeld is stirred up to break the truce.}

       15 'Art thou able, my friend, to know when thou seest it
          The brand which thy father bare to the conflict
          In his latest adventure, 'neath visor of helmet,
          The dearly-loved iron, where Danemen did slay him,
          And brave-mooded Scyldings, on the fall of the heroes,
       20 (When vengeance was sleeping) the slaughter-place wielded?
          E'en now some man of the murderer's progeny
          Exulting in ornaments enters the building,
          Boasts of his blood-shedding, offbeareth the jewel
          Which thou shouldst wholly hold in possession!'
       25 So he urgeth and mindeth on every occasion
          With woe-bringing words, till waxeth the season
          When the woman's thane for the works of his father,
          The bill having bitten, blood-gory sleepeth,
          Fated to perish; the other one thenceward
       30 'Scapeth alive, the land knoweth thoroughly.[1]
          Then the oaths of the earlmen on each side are broken,
          When rancors unresting are raging in Ingeld
          And his wife-love waxeth less warm after sorrow.
          So the Heathobards' favor not faithful I reckon,
       35 Their part in the treaty not true to the Danemen,
          Their friendship not fast. I further shall tell thee

[71]

{Having made these preliminary statements, I will now tell thee of
Grendel, the monster.}

          More about Grendel, that thou fully mayst hear,
          Ornament-giver, what afterward came from
          The hand-rush of heroes. When heaven's bright jewel
       40 O'er earthfields had glided, the stranger came raging,
          The horrible night-fiend, us for to visit,
          Where wholly unharmed the hall we were guarding.

{Hondscio fell first}

          To Hondscio happened a hopeless contention,
          Death to the doomed one, dead he fell foremost,
       45 Girded war-champion; to him Grendel became then,
          To the vassal distinguished, a tooth-weaponed murderer,
          The well-beloved henchman's body all swallowed.
          Not the earlier off empty of hand did
          The bloody-toothed murderer, mindful of evils,
       50 Wish to escape from the gold-giver's palace,
          But sturdy of strength he strove to outdo me,
          Hand-ready grappled. A glove was suspended
          Spacious and wondrous, in art-fetters fastened,
          Which was fashioned entirely by touch of the craftman
       55 From the dragon's skin by the devil's devices:
          He down in its depths would do me unsadly
          One among many, deed-doer raging,
          Though sinless he saw me; not so could it happen
          When I in my anger upright did stand.
       60 'Tis too long to recount how requital I furnished
          For every evil to the earlmen's destroyer;

{I reflected honor upon my people.}

          'Twas there, my prince, that I proudly distinguished
          Thy land with my labors. He left and retreated,
          He lived his life a little while longer:
       65 Yet his right-hand guarded his footstep in Heorot,
          And sad-mooded thence to the sea-bottom fell he,
          Mournful in mind. For the might-rush of battle

{King Hrothgar lavished gifts upon me.}

          The friend of the Scyldings, with gold that was plated,
          With ornaments many, much requited me,
       70 When daylight had dawned, and down to the banquet
          We had sat us together. There was chanting and joyance:
          The age-stricken Scylding asked many questions
[72]      And of old-times related; oft light-ringing harp-strings,
          Joy-telling wood, were touched by the brave one;
       75 Now he uttered measures, mourning and truthful,
          Then the large-hearted land-king a legend of wonder
          Truthfully told us. Now troubled with years

{The old king is sad over the loss of his youthful vigor.}

          The age-hoary warrior afterward began to
          Mourn for the might that marked him in youth-days;
       80 His breast within boiled, when burdened with winters
          Much he remembered. From morning till night then
          We joyed us therein as etiquette suffered,
          Till the second night season came unto earth-folk.
          Then early thereafter, the mother of Grendel

{Grendel's mother.}

       85 Was ready for vengeance, wretched she journeyed;
          Her son had death ravished, the wrath of the Geatmen.
          The horrible woman avengèd her offspring,
          And with mighty mainstrength murdered a hero.

{Æschere falls a prey to her vengeance.}

          There the spirit of Æschere, agèd adviser,
       90 Was ready to vanish; nor when morn had lightened
          Were they anywise suffered to consume him with fire,
          Folk of the Danemen, the death-weakened hero,
          Nor the belovèd liegeman to lay on the pyre;

{She suffered not his body to be burned, but ate it.}

          She the corpse had offcarried in the clutch of the foeman[2]
       95 'Neath mountain-brook's flood. To Hrothgar 'twas saddest
          Of pains that ever had preyed on the chieftain;
          By the life of thee the land-prince then me[3]
          Besought very sadly, in sea-currents' eddies
          To display my prowess, to peril my safety,
      100 Might-deeds accomplish; much did he promise.

{I sought the creature in her den,}

          I found then the famous flood-current's cruel,
          Horrible depth-warder. A while unto us two
[73]      Hand was in common; the currents were seething
          With gore that was clotted, and Grendel's fierce mother's

{and hewed her head off.}

      105 Head I offhacked in the hall at the bottom
          With huge-reaching sword-edge, hardly I wrested
          My life from her clutches; not doomed was I then,

{Jewels were freely bestowed upon me.}

          But the warden of earlmen afterward gave me
          Jewels in quantity, kinsman of Healfdene.

    [1] For 'lifigende' (2063), a mere conjecture, 'wígende' has been
    suggested. The line would then read: _Escapeth by fighting, knows the
    land thoroughly_.

    [2] For 'fæðmum,' Gr.'s conjecture, B. proposes 'færunga.' These three
    half-verses would then read: _She bore off the corpse of her foe
    suddenly under the mountain-torrent_.

    [3] The phrase 'þíne lýfe' (2132) was long rendered '_with thy
    (presupposed) permission_.' The verse would read: _The land-prince
    then sadly besought me, with thy (presupposed) permission, etc_.




XXXI.

GIFT-GIVING IS MUTUAL.


          "So the belovèd land-prince lived in decorum;
          I had missed no rewards, no meeds of my prowess,
          But he gave me jewels, regarding my wishes,
          Healfdene his bairn; I'll bring them to thee, then,

{All my gifts I lay at thy feet.}

        5 Atheling of earlmen, offer them gladly.
          And still unto thee is all my affection:[1]
          But few of my folk-kin find I surviving
          But thee, dear Higelac!" Bade he in then to carry[2]
          The boar-image, banner, battle-high helmet,
       10 Iron-gray armor, the excellent weapon,

{This armor I have belonged of yore to Heregar.}

          In song-measures said: "This suit-for-the-battle
          Hrothgar presented me, bade me expressly,
          Wise-mooded atheling, thereafter to tell thee[3]
          The whole of its history, said King Heregar owned it,
       15 Dane-prince for long: yet he wished not to give then
[74]      The mail to his son, though dearly he loved him,
          Hereward the hardy. Hold all in joyance!"
          I heard that there followed hard on the jewels
          Two braces of stallions of striking resemblance,
       20 Dappled and yellow; he granted him usance
          Of horses and treasures. So a kinsman should bear him,
          No web of treachery weave for another,
          Nor by cunning craftiness cause the destruction

{Higelac loves his nephew Beowulf.}

          Of trusty companion. Most precious to Higelac,
       25 The bold one in battle, was the bairn of his sister,
          And each unto other mindful of favors.

{Beowulf gives Hygd the necklace that Wealhtheow had given him.}

          I am told that to Hygd he proffered the necklace,
          Wonder-gem rare that Wealhtheow gave him,
          The troop-leader's daughter, a trio of horses
       30 Slender and saddle-bright; soon did the jewel
          Embellish her bosom, when the beer-feast was over.
          So Ecgtheow's bairn brave did prove him,

{Beowulf is famous.}

          War-famous man, by deeds that were valiant,
          He lived in honor, belovèd companions
       35 Slew not carousing; his mood was not cruel,
          But by hand-strength hugest of heroes then living
          The brave one retained the bountiful gift that
          The Lord had allowed him. Long was he wretched,
          So that sons of the Geatmen accounted him worthless,
       40 And the lord of the liegemen loth was to do him
          Mickle of honor, when mead-cups were passing;
          They fully believed him idle and sluggish,

{He is requited for the slights suffered in earlier days.}

          An indolent atheling: to the honor-blest man there
          Came requital for the cuts he had suffered.
       45 The folk-troop's defender bade fetch to the building
          The heirloom of Hrethel, embellished with gold,

{Higelac overwhelms the conqueror with gifts.}

          So the brave one enjoined it; there was jewel no richer
          In the form of a weapon 'mong Geats of that era;
          In Beowulf's keeping he placed it and gave him
       50 Seven of thousands, manor and lordship.
          Common to both was land 'mong the people,
[75]      Estate and inherited rights and possessions,
          To the second one specially spacious dominions,
          To the one who was better. It afterward happened
       55 In days that followed, befell the battle-thanes,

{After Heardred's death, Beowulf becomes king.}

          After Higelac's death, and when Heardred was murdered
          With weapons of warfare 'neath well-covered targets,
          When valiant battlemen in victor-band sought him,
          War-Scylfing heroes harassed the nephew
       60 Of Hereric in battle. To Beowulf's keeping
          Turned there in time extensive dominions:

{He rules the Geats fifty years.}

          He fittingly ruled them a fifty of winters
          (He a man-ruler wise was, manor-ward old) till
          A certain one 'gan, on gloom-darkening nights, a

{The fire-drake.}

       65 Dragon, to govern, who guarded a treasure,
          A high-rising stone-cliff, on heath that was grayish:
          A path 'neath it lay, unknown unto mortals.
          Some one of earthmen entered the mountain,
          The heathenish hoard laid hold of with ardor;
       70 *       *       *       *       *       *       *
          *       *       *       *       *       *       *
          *       *       *       *       *       *       *
          *       *       *       *       *       *       *
          *       *       *       *       *       *       *

    [1] This verse B. renders, '_Now serve I again thee alone as my
    gracious king_.'

    [2] For 'eafor' (2153), Kl. suggests 'ealdor.' Translate then: _Bade
    the prince then to bear in the banner, battle-high helmet, etc_. On
    the other hand, W. takes 'eaforhéafodsegn' as a compound, meaning
    'helmet': _He bade them bear in the helmet, battle-high helm, gray
    armor, etc_.

    [3] The H.-So. rendering (ærest = _history, origin_; 'eft' for 'est'),
    though liable to objection, is perhaps the best offered. 'That I
    should very early tell thee of his favor, kindness' sounds well; but
    'his' is badly placed to limit 'ést.'--Perhaps, 'eft' with verbs of
    saying may have the force of Lat. prefix 're,' and the H.-So. reading
    mean, 'that I should its origin rehearse to thee.'




XXXII.

THE HOARD AND THE DRAGON.


          *       *       *       *       *       *       *
          He sought of himself who sorely did harm him,
          But, for need very pressing, the servant of one of
          The sons of the heroes hate-blows evaded,
        5 Seeking for shelter and the sin-driven warrior
          Took refuge within there. He early looked in it,
          *       *       *       *       *       *       *
          *       *       *       *       *       *       *
[76]      *  *  *  *  *  * when the onset surprised him,

{The hoard.}

       10 He a gem-vessel saw there: many of suchlike
          Ancient ornaments in the earth-cave were lying,
          As in days of yore some one of men of
          Illustrious lineage, as a legacy monstrous,
          There had secreted them, careful and thoughtful,
       15 Dear-valued jewels. Death had offsnatched them,
          In the days of the past, and the one man moreover
          Of the flower of the folk who fared there the longest,
          Was fain to defer it, friend-mourning warder,
          A little longer to be left in enjoyment
       20 Of long-lasting treasure.[1] A barrow all-ready
          Stood on the plain the stream-currents nigh to,
          New by the ness-edge, unnethe of approaching:
          The keeper of rings carried within a
          [2]Ponderous deal of the treasure of nobles,
       25 Of gold that was beaten, briefly he spake then:[3]

{The ring-giver bewails the loss of retainers.}

          "Hold thou, O Earth, now heroes no more may,
          The earnings of earlmen. Lo! erst in thy bosom
          Worthy men won them; war-death hath ravished,
          Perilous life-bale, all my warriors,
       30 Liegemen belovèd, who this life have forsaken,
          Who hall-pleasures saw. No sword-bearer have I,
          And no one to burnish the gold-plated vessel,
          The high-valued beaker: my heroes are vanished.
          The hardy helmet behung with gilding
       35 Shall be reaved of its riches: the ring-cleansers slumber
          Who were charged to have ready visors-for-battle,
          And the burnie that bided in battle-encounter
[77]      O'er breaking of war-shields the bite of the edges
          Moulds with the hero. The ring-twisted armor,
       40 Its lord being lifeless, no longer may journey
          Hanging by heroes; harp-joy is vanished,
          The rapture of glee-wood, no excellent falcon
          Swoops through the building, no swift-footed charger
          Grindeth the gravel. A grievous destruction
       45 No few of the world-folk widely hath scattered!"
          So, woful of spirit one after all
          Lamented mournfully, moaning in sadness
          By day and by night, till death with its billows

{The fire-dragon}

          Dashed on his spirit. Then the ancient dusk-scather
       50 Found the great treasure standing all open,
          He who flaming and fiery flies to the barrows,
          Naked war-dragon, nightly escapeth
          Encompassed with fire; men under heaven
          Widely beheld him. 'Tis said that he looks for[4]
       55 The hoard in the earth, where old he is guarding
          The heathenish treasure; he'll be nowise the better.

{The dragon meets his match.}

          So three-hundred winters the waster of peoples
          Held upon earth that excellent hoard-hall,
          Till the forementioned earlman angered him bitterly:
       60 The beat-plated beaker he bare to his chieftain
          And fullest remission for all his remissness
          Begged of his liegelord. Then the hoard[5] was discovered,
          The treasure was taken, his petition was granted

{The hero plunders the dragon's den}

          The lorn-mooded liegeman. His lord regarded
       65 The old-work of earth-folk--'twas the earliest occasion.
          When the dragon awoke, the strife was renewed there;
          He snuffed 'long the stone then, stout-hearted found he
[78]      The footprint of foeman; too far had he gone
          With cunning craftiness close to the head of
       70 The fire-spewing dragon. So undoomed he may 'scape from
          Anguish and exile with ease who possesseth
          The favor of Heaven. The hoard-warden eagerly
          Searched o'er the ground then, would meet with the person
          That caused him sorrow while in slumber reclining:
       75 Gleaming and wild he oft went round the cavern,
          All of it outward; not any of earthmen
          Was seen in that desert.[6] Yet he joyed in the battle,
          Rejoiced in the conflict: oft he turned to the barrow,
          Sought for the gem-cup;[7] this he soon perceived then

{The dragon perceives that some one has disturbed his treasure.}

       80 That some man or other had discovered the gold,
          The famous folk-treasure. Not fain did the hoard-ward
          Wait until evening; then the ward of the barrow
          Was angry in spirit, the loathèd one wished to
          Pay for the dear-valued drink-cup with fire.
       85 Then the day was done as the dragon would have it,
          He no longer would wait on the wall, but departed

{The dragon is infuriated.}

          Fire-impelled, flaming. Fearful the start was
          To earls in the land, as it early thereafter
          To their giver-of-gold was grievously ended.

    [1] For 'long-gestréona,' B. suggests 'láengestréona,' and renders,
    _Of fleeting treasures_. S. accepts H.'s 'long-gestréona,' but
    renders, _The treasure long in accumulating_.

    [2] For 'hard-fyrdne' (2246), B. first suggested 'hard-fyndne,'
    rendering: _A heap of treasures ... so great that its equal would be
    hard to find_. The same scholar suggests later 'hord-wynne dæl' = _A
    deal of treasure-joy_.

    [3] Some read 'fec-word' (2247), and render: _Banning words uttered_.

    [4] An earlier reading of H.'s gave the following meaning to this
    passage: _He is said to inhabit a mound under the earth, where he,
    etc._ The translation in the text is more authentic.

    [5] The repetition of 'hord' in this passage has led some scholars to
    suggest new readings to avoid the second 'hord.' This, however, is not
    under the main stress, and, it seems to me, might easily be accepted.

    [6] The reading of H.-So. is well defended in the notes to that
    volume. B. emends and renders: _Nor was there any man in that desert
    who rejoiced in conflict, in battle-work._ That is, the hoard-ward
    could not find any one who had disturbed his slumbers, for no warrior
    was there, t.B.'s emendation would give substantially the same
    translation.

    [7] 'Sinc-fæt' (2301): this word both here and in v. 2232, t.B.
    renders 'treasure.'




XXXIII.

BRAVE THOUGH AGED.--REMINISCENCES.


{The dragon spits fire.}

          The stranger began then to vomit forth fire,
          To burn the great manor; the blaze then glimmered
          For anguish to earlmen, not anything living
[79]      Was the hateful air-goer willing to leave there.
        5 The war of the worm widely was noticed,
          The feud of the foeman afar and anear,
          How the enemy injured the earls of the Geatmen,
          Harried with hatred: back he hied to the treasure,
          To the well-hidden cavern ere the coming of daylight.
       10 He had circled with fire the folk of those regions,
          With brand and burning; in the barrow he trusted,
          In the wall and his war-might: the weening deceived him.

{Beowulf hears of the havoc wrought by the dragon.}

          Then straight was the horror to Beowulf published,
          Early forsooth, that his own native homestead,[1]
       15 The best of buildings, was burning and melting,
          Gift-seat of Geatmen. 'Twas a grief to the spirit
          Of the good-mooded hero, the greatest of sorrows:

{He fears that Heaven is punishing him for some crime.}

          The wise one weened then that wielding his kingdom
          'Gainst the ancient commandments, he had bitterly angered
       20 The Lord everlasting: with lorn meditations
          His bosom welled inward, as was nowise his custom.
          The fire-spewing dragon fully had wasted
          The fastness of warriors, the water-land outward,
          The manor with fire. The folk-ruling hero,
       25 Prince of the Weders, was planning to wreak him.
          The warmen's defender bade them to make him,
          Earlmen's atheling, an excellent war-shield

{He orders an iron shield to be made from him, wood is useless.}

          Wholly of iron: fully he knew then
          That wood from the forest was helpless to aid him,
       30 Shield against fire. The long-worthy ruler
          Must live the last of his limited earth-days,
          Of life in the world and the worm along with him,
          Though he long had been holding hoard-wealth in plenty.

{He determines to fight alone.}

          Then the ring-prince disdained to seek with a war-band,
       35 With army extensive, the air-going ranger;
          He felt no fear of the foeman's assaults and
          He counted for little the might of the dragon,
[80]      His power and prowess: for previously dared he

{Beowulf's early triumphs referred to}

          A heap of hostility, hazarded dangers,
       40 War-thane, when Hrothgar's palace he cleansèd,
          Conquering combatant, clutched in the battle
          The kinsmen of Grendel, of kindred detested.[2]

{Higelac's death recalled.}

          'Twas of hand-fights not least where Higelac was slaughtered,
          When the king of the Geatmen with clashings of battle,
       45 Friend-lord of folks in Frisian dominions,
          Offspring of Hrethrel perished through sword-drink,
          With battle-swords beaten; thence Beowulf came then
          On self-help relying, swam through the waters;
          He bare on his arm, lone-going, thirty
       50 Outfits of armor, when the ocean he mounted.
          The Hetwars by no means had need to be boastful
          Of their fighting afoot, who forward to meet him
          Carried their war-shields: not many returned from
          The brave-mooded battle-knight back to their homesteads.
       55 Ecgtheow's bairn o'er the bight-courses swam then,
          Lone-goer lorn to his land-folk returning,
          Where Hygd to him tendered treasure and kingdom,

{Heardred's lack of capacity to rule.}

          Rings and dominion: her son she not trusted,
          To be able to keep the kingdom devised him
       60 'Gainst alien races, on the death of King Higelac.

{Beowulf's tact and delicacy recalled.}

          Yet the sad ones succeeded not in persuading the atheling
          In any way ever, to act as a suzerain
          To Heardred, or promise to govern the kingdom;
          Yet with friendly counsel in the folk he sustained him,
       65 Gracious, with honor, till he grew to be older,

{Reference is here made to a visit which Beowulf receives from Eanmund and
Eadgils, why they come is not known.}

          Wielded the Weders. Wide-fleeing outlaws,
          Ohthere's sons, sought him o'er the waters:
          They had stirred a revolt 'gainst the helm of the Scylfings,
          The best of the sea-kings, who in Swedish dominions
       70 Distributed treasure, distinguished folk-leader.
[81]      'Twas the end of his earth-days; injury fatal[3]
          By swing of the sword he received as a greeting,
          Offspring of Higelac; Ongentheow's bairn
          Later departed to visit his homestead,
       75 When Heardred was dead; let Beowulf rule them,
          Govern the Geatmen: good was that folk-king.

    [1] 'Hám' (2326), the suggestion of B. is accepted by t.B. and other
    scholars.

    [2] For 'láðan cynnes' (2355), t.B. suggests 'láðan cynne,' apposition
    to 'mægum.' From syntactical and other considerations, this is a most
    excellent emendation.

    [3] Gr. read 'on feorme' (2386), rendering: _He there at the banquet a
    fatal wound received by blows of the sword._




XXXIV.

BEOWULF SEEKS THE DRAGON.--BEOWULF'S REMINISCENCES.


          He planned requital for the folk-leader's ruin
          In days thereafter, to Eadgils the wretched
          Becoming an enemy. Ohthere's son then
          Went with a war-troop o'er the wide-stretching currents
        5 With warriors and weapons: with woe-journeys cold he
          After avenged him, the king's life he took.

{Beowulf has been preserved through many perils.}

          So he came off uninjured from all of his battles,
          Perilous fights, offspring of Ecgtheow,
          From his deeds of daring, till that day most momentous
       10 When he fate-driven fared to fight with the dragon.

{With eleven comrades, he seeks the dragon.}

          With eleven companions the prince of the Geatmen
          Went lowering with fury to look at the fire-drake:
          Inquiring he'd found how the feud had arisen,
          Hate to his heroes; the highly-famed gem-vessel
       15 Was brought to his keeping through the hand of th' informer.

{A guide leads the way, but}

          That in the throng was thirteenth of heroes,
          That caused the beginning of conflict so bitter,
          Captive and wretched, must sad-mooded thenceward

{very reluctantly.}

          Point out the place: he passed then unwillingly
       20 To the spot where he knew of the notable cavern,
          The cave under earth, not far from the ocean,
          The anger of eddies, which inward was full of
          Jewels and wires: a warden uncanny,
[82]      Warrior weaponed, wardered the treasure,
       25 Old under earth; no easy possession
          For any of earth-folk access to get to.
          Then the battle-brave atheling sat on the naze-edge,
          While the gold-friend of Geatmen gracious saluted
          His fireside-companions: woe was his spirit,
       30 Death-boding, wav'ring; Weird very near him,
          Who must seize the old hero, his soul-treasure look for,
          Dragging aloof his life from his body:
          Not flesh-hidden long was the folk-leader's spirit.
          Beowulf spake, Ecgtheow's son:

{Beowulf's retrospect.}

       35 "I survived in my youth-days many a conflict,
          Hours of onset: that all I remember.
          I was seven-winters old when the jewel-prince took me,
          High-lord of heroes, at the hands of my father,
          Hrethel the hero-king had me in keeping,

{Hrethel took me when I was seven.}

       40 Gave me treasure and feasting, our kinship remembered;
          Not ever was I _any_ less dear to him

{He treated me as a son.}

          Knight in the boroughs, than the bairns of his household,
          Herebald and Hæthcyn and Higelac mine.
          To the eldest unjustly by acts of a kinsman
       45 Was murder-bed strewn, since him Hæthcyn from horn-bow

{One of the brothers accidentally kills another.}

          His sheltering chieftain shot with an arrow,
          Erred in his aim and injured his kinsman,
          One brother the other, with blood-sprinkled spear:

{No fee could compound for such a calamity.}

          'Twas a feeless fight, finished in malice,
       50 Sad to his spirit; the folk-prince however
          Had to part from existence with vengeance untaken.

{[A parallel case is supposed.]}

          So to hoar-headed hero 'tis heavily crushing[1]
[83]      To live to see his son as he rideth
          Young on the gallows: then measures he chanteth,
       55 A song of sorrow, when his son is hanging
          For the raven's delight, and aged and hoary
          He is unable to offer any assistance.
          Every morning his offspring's departure
          Is constant recalled: he cares not to wait for
       60 The birth of an heir in his borough-enclosures,
          Since that one through death-pain the deeds hath experienced.
          He heart-grieved beholds in the house of his son the
          Wine-building wasted, the wind-lodging places
          Reaved of their roaring; the riders are sleeping,
       65 The knights in the grave; there's no sound of the harp-wood,
          Joy in the yards, as of yore were familiar.

    [1] 'Gomelum ceorle' (2445).--H. takes these words as referring to
    Hrethel; but the translator here departs from his editor by
    understanding the poet to refer to a hypothetical old man, introduced
    as an illustration of a father's sorrow.

    Hrethrel had certainly never seen a son of his ride on the gallows to
    feed the crows.

    The passage beginning 'swá bið géomorlic' seems to be an effort to
    reach a full simile, 'as ... so.' 'As it is mournful for an old man,
    etc. ... so the defence of the Weders (2463) bore heart-sorrow, etc.'
    The verses 2451 to 2463-1/2 would be parenthetical, the poet's feelings
    being so strong as to interrupt the simile. The punctuation of the
    fourth edition would be better--a comma after 'galgan' (2447). The
    translation may be indicated as follows: _(Just) as it is sad for an
    old man to see his son ride young on the gallows when he himself is
    uttering mournful measures, a sorrowful song, while his son hangs for a
    comfort to the raven, and he, old and infirm, cannot render him any
    kelp--(he is constantly reminded, etc., 2451-2463)--so the defence of
    the Weders, etc._




XXXV.

REMINISCENCES (_continued_).--BEOWULF'S LAST BATTLE.


          "He seeks then his chamber, singeth a woe-song
          One for the other; all too extensive
          Seemed homesteads and plains. So the helm of the Weders

{Hrethel grieves for Herebald.}

          Mindful of Herebald heart-sorrow carried,
        5 Stirred with emotion, nowise was able
          To wreak his ruin on the ruthless destroyer:
          He was unable to follow the warrior with hatred,
          With deeds that were direful, though dear he not held him.
[84]      Then pressed by the pang this pain occasioned him,
       10 He gave up glee, God-light elected;
          He left to his sons, as the man that is rich does,
          His land and fortress, when from life he departed.

{Strife between Swedes and Geats.}

          Then was crime and hostility 'twixt Swedes and Geatmen,
          O'er wide-stretching water warring was mutual,
       15 Burdensome hatred, when Hrethel had perished,
          And Ongentheow's offspring were active and valiant,
          Wished not to hold to peace oversea, but
          Round Hreosna-beorh often accomplished
          Cruelest massacre. This my kinsman avengèd,
       20 The feud and fury, as 'tis found on inquiry,
          Though one of them paid it with forfeit of life-joys,

{Hæthcyn's fall at Ravenswood.}

          With price that was hard: the struggle became then
          Fatal to Hæthcyn, lord of the Geatmen.
          Then I heard that at morning one brother the other
       25 With edges of irons egged on to murder,
          Where Ongentheow maketh onset on Eofor:
          The helmet crashed, the hoary-haired Scylfing
          Sword-smitten fell, his hand then remembered
          Feud-hate sufficient, refused not the death-blow.

{I requited him for the jewels he gave me.}

       30 The gems that he gave me, with jewel-bright sword I
          'Quited in contest, as occasion was offered:
          Land he allowed me, life-joy at homestead,
          Manor to live on. Little he needed
          From Gepids or Danes or in Sweden to look for
       35 Trooper less true, with treasure to buy him;
          'Mong foot-soldiers ever in front I would hie me,
          Alone in the vanguard, and evermore gladly
          Warfare shall wage, while this weapon endureth
          That late and early often did serve me

{Beowulf refers to his having slain Dæghrefn.}

       40 When I proved before heroes the slayer of Dæghrefn,
          Knight of the Hugmen: he by no means was suffered
          To the king of the Frisians to carry the jewels,
          The breast-decoration; but the banner-possessor
          Bowed in the battle, brave-mooded atheling.
[85]   45 No weapon was slayer, but war-grapple broke then
          The surge of his spirit, his body destroying.
          Now shall weapon's edge make war for the treasure,
          And hand and firm-sword." Beowulf spake then,
          Boast-words uttered--the latest occasion:

{He boasts of his youthful prowess, and declares himself still fearless.}

       50 "I braved in my youth-days battles unnumbered;
          Still am I willing the struggle to look for,
          Fame-deeds perform, folk-warden prudent,
          If the hateful despoiler forth from his cavern
          Seeketh me out!" Each of the heroes,
       55 Helm-bearers sturdy, he thereupon greeted

{His last salutations.}

          Belovèd co-liegemen--his last salutation:
          "No brand would I bear, no blade for the dragon,
          Wist I a way my word-boast to 'complish[1]
          Else with the monster, as with Grendel I did it;
       60 But fire in the battle hot I expect there,
          Furious flame-burning: so I fixed on my body
          Target and war-mail. The ward of the barrow[2]
          I'll not flee from a foot-length, the foeman uncanny.
          At the wall 'twill befall us as Fate decreeth,

{Let Fate decide between us.}

       65 Each one's Creator. I am eager in spirit,
          With the wingèd war-hero to away with all boasting.
          Bide on the barrow with burnies protected,

{Wait ye here till the battle is over.}

          Earls in armor, which of _us_ two may better
          Bear his disaster, when the battle is over.
       70 'Tis no matter of yours, and man cannot do it,
          But me and me only, to measure his strength with
          The monster of malice, might-deeds to 'complish.
          I with prowess shall gain the gold, or the battle,
[86]      Direful death-woe will drag off your ruler!"
       75 The mighty champion rose by his shield then,
          Brave under helmet, in battle-mail went he
          'Neath steep-rising stone-cliffs, the strength he relied on
          Of one man alone: no work for a coward.
          Then he saw by the wall who a great many battles
       80 Had lived through, most worthy, when foot-troops collided,

{The place of strife is described.}

          Stone-arches standing, stout-hearted champion,
          Saw a brook from the barrow bubbling out thenceward:
          The flood of the fountain was fuming with war-flame:
          Not nigh to the hoard, for season the briefest
       85 Could he brave, without burning, the abyss that was yawning,
          The drake was so fiery. The prince of the Weders
          Caused then that words came from his bosom,
          So fierce was his fury; the firm-hearted shouted:
          His battle-clear voice came in resounding
       90 'Neath the gray-colored stone. Stirred was his hatred,

{Beowulf calls out under the stone arches.}

          The hoard-ward distinguished the speech of a man;
          Time was no longer to look out for friendship.
          The breath of the monster issued forth first,
          Vapory war-sweat, out of the stone-cave:

{The terrible encounter.}

       95 The earth re-echoed. The earl 'neath the barrow
          Lifted his shield, lord of the Geatmen,
          Tow'rd the terrible stranger: the ring-twisted creature's
          Heart was then ready to seek for a struggle.

{Beowulf brandishes his sword,}

          The excellent battle-king first brandished his weapon,
      100 The ancient heirloom, of edges unblunted,[3]
          To the death-planners twain was terror from other.

{and stands against his shield.}

          The lord of the troopers intrepidly stood then
          'Gainst his high-rising shield, when the dragon coiled him

{The dragon coils himself.}

          Quickly together: in corslet he bided.
[87]  105 He went then in blazes, bended and striding,
          Hasting him forward. His life and body
          The targe well protected, for time-period shorter
          Than wish demanded for the well-renowned leader,
          Where he then for the first day was forced to be victor,
      110 Famous in battle, as Fate had not willed it.
          The lord of the Geatmen uplifted his hand then,
          Smiting the fire-drake with sword that was precious,
          That bright on the bone the blade-edge did weaken,
          Bit more feebly than his folk-leader needed,
      115 Burdened with bale-griefs. Then the barrow-protector,

{The dragon rages}

          When the sword-blow had fallen, was fierce in his spirit,
          Flinging his fires, flamings of battle
          Gleamed then afar: the gold-friend of Weders

{Beowulf's sword fails him.}

          Boasted no conquests, his battle-sword failed him
      120 Naked in conflict, as by no means it ought to,
          Long-trusty weapon. 'Twas no slight undertaking
          That Ecgtheow's famous offspring would leave
          The drake-cavern's bottom; he must live in some region
          Other than this, by the will of the dragon,
      125 As each one of earthmen existence must forfeit.
          'Twas early thereafter the excellent warriors

{The combat is renewed.}

          Met with each other. Anew and afresh
          The hoard-ward took heart (gasps heaved then his bosom):

{The great hero is reduced to extremities.}

          Sorrow he suffered encircled with fire
      130 Who the people erst governed. His companions by no means
          Were banded about him, bairns of the princes,

{His comrades flee!}

          With valorous spirit, but they sped to the forest,
          Seeking for safety. The soul-deeps of one were

{Blood is thicker than water.}

          Ruffled by care: kin-love can never
      135 Aught in him waver who well doth consider.

[88]

    [1] The clause 2520(2)-2522(1), rendered by 'Wist I ... monster,' Gr.,
    followed by S., translates substantially as follows: _If I knew how
    else I might combat the boastful defiance of the monster_.--The
    translation turns upon 'wiðgrípan,' a word not understood.

    [2] B. emends and translates: _I will not flee the space of a foot
    from the guard of the barrow, but there shall be to us a fight at the
    wall, as fate decrees, each one's Creator._

    [3] The translation of this passage is based on 'unsláw' (2565),
    accepted by H.-So., in lieu of the long-standing 'ungléaw.' The former
    is taken as an adj. limiting 'sweord'; the latter as an adj. c.
    'gúð-cyning': _The good war-king, rash with edges, brandished his
    sword, his old relic._ The latter gives a more rhetorical Anglo-Saxon
    (poetical) sentence.




XXXVI.

WIGLAF THE TRUSTY.--BEOWULF IS DESERTED BY FRIENDS AND BY SWORD.


{Wiglaf remains true--the ideal Teutonic liegeman.}

          The son of Weohstan was Wiglaf entitled,
          Shield-warrior precious, prince of the Scylfings,
          Ælfhere's kinsman: he saw his dear liegelord
          Enduring the heat 'neath helmet and visor.
        5 Then he minded the holding that erst he had given him,

{Wiglaf recalls Beowulf's generosity.}

          The Wægmunding warriors' wealth-blessèd homestead,
          Each of the folk-rights his father had wielded;
          He was hot for the battle, his hand seized the target,
          The yellow-bark shield, he unsheathed his old weapon,
       10 Which was known among earthmen as the relic of Eanmund,
          Ohthere's offspring, whom, exiled and friendless,
          Weohstan did slay with sword-edge in battle,
          And carried his kinsman the clear-shining helmet,
          The ring-made burnie, the old giant-weapon
       15 That Onela gave him, his boon-fellow's armor,
          Ready war-trappings: he the feud did not mention,
          Though he'd fatally smitten the son of his brother.
          Many a half-year held he the treasures,
          The bill and the burnie, till his bairn became able,
       20 Like his father before him, fame-deeds to 'complish;
          Then he gave him 'mong Geatmen a goodly array of
          Weeds for his warfare; he went from life then
          Old on his journey. 'Twas the earliest time then

{This is Wiglaf's first battle as liegeman of Beowulf.}

          That the youthful champion might charge in the battle
       25 Aiding his liegelord; his spirit was dauntless.
          Nor did kinsman's bequest quail at the battle:
          This the dragon discovered on their coming together.
          Wiglaf uttered many a right-saying,
          Said to his fellows, sad was his spirit:

{Wiglaf appeals to the pride of the cowards.}

       30 "I remember the time when, tasting the mead-cup,
          We promised in the hall the lord of us all
[89]      Who gave us these ring-treasures, that this battle-equipment,
          Swords and helmets, we'd certainly quite him,
          Should need of such aid ever befall him:

{How we have forfeited our liegelord's confidence!}

       35 In the war-band he chose us for this journey spontaneously,
          Stirred us to glory and gave me these jewels,
          Since he held and esteemed us trust-worthy spearmen,
          Hardy helm-bearers, though this hero-achievement
          Our lord intended alone to accomplish,
       40 Ward of his people, for most of achievements,
          Doings audacious, he did among earth-folk.

{Our lord is in sore need of us.}

          The day is now come when the ruler of earthmen
          Needeth the vigor of valiant heroes:
          Let us wend us towards him, the war-prince to succor,
       45 While the heat yet rageth, horrible fire-fight.

{I would rather die than go home with out my suzerain.}

          God wot in me, 'tis mickle the liefer
          The blaze should embrace my body and eat it
          With my treasure-bestower. Meseemeth not proper
          To bear our battle-shields back to our country,
       50 'Less first we are able to fell and destroy the
          Long-hating foeman, to defend the life of

{Surely he does not deserve to die alone.}

          The prince of the Weders. Well do I know 'tisn't
          Earned by his exploits, he only of Geatmen
          Sorrow should suffer, sink in the battle:
       55 Brand and helmet to us both shall be common,
          [1]Shield-cover, burnie." Through the bale-smoke he stalked then,
          Went under helmet to the help of his chieftain,

{Wiglaf reminds Beowulf of his youthful boasts.}

          Briefly discoursing: "Beowulf dear,
          Perform thou all fully, as thou formerly saidst,
       60 In thy youthful years, that while yet thou livedst
[90]      Thou wouldst let thine honor not ever be lessened.
          Thy life thou shalt save, mighty in actions,
          Atheling undaunted, with all of thy vigor;

{The monster advances on them.}

          I'll give thee assistance." The dragon came raging,
       65 Wild-mooded stranger, when these words had been uttered
          ('Twas the second occasion), seeking his enemies,
          Men that were hated, with hot-gleaming fire-waves;
          With blaze-billows burned the board to its edges:
          The fight-armor failed then to furnish assistance
       70 To the youthful spear-hero: but the young-agèd stripling
          Quickly advanced 'neath his kinsman's war-target,
          Since his own had been ground in the grip of the fire.

{Beowulf strikes at the dragon.}

          Then the warrior-king was careful of glory,
          He soundly smote with sword-for-the-battle,
       75 That it stood in the head by hatred driven;
          Nægling was shivered, the old and iron-made

{His sword fails him.}

          Brand of Beowulf in battle deceived him.
          'Twas denied him that edges of irons were able
          To help in the battle; the hand was too mighty
       80 [2]Which every weapon, as I heard on inquiry,
          Outstruck in its stroke, when to struggle he carried
          The wonderful war-sword: it waxed him no better.

{The dragon advances on Beowulf again.}

          Then the people-despoiler--third of his onsets--
          Fierce-raging fire-drake, of feud-hate was mindful,
       85 Charged on the strong one, when chance was afforded,
          Heated and war-grim, seized on his neck
          With teeth that were bitter; he bloody did wax with
          Soul-gore seething; sword-blood in waves boiled.

    [1] The passage '_Brand ... burnie_,' is much disputed. In the first
    place, some eminent critics assume a gap of at least two
    half-verses.--'Úrum' (2660), being a peculiar form, has been much
    discussed. 'Byrdu-scrúd' is also a crux. B. suggests 'býwdu-scrúd' =
    _splendid vestments_. Nor is 'bám' accepted by all, 'béon' being
    suggested. Whatever the individual words, the passage must mean, "_I
    intend to share with him my equipments of defence_."

    [2] B. would render: _Which, as I heard, excelled in stroke every
    sword that he carried to the strife, even the strongest (sword)._ For
    'Þonne' he reads 'Þone,' rel. pr.

[91]




XXXVII.

THE FATAL STRUGGLE.--BEOWULF'S LAST MOMENTS.


{Wiglaf defends Beowulf.}

          Then I heard that at need of the king of the people
          The upstanding earlman exhibited prowess,
          Vigor and courage, as suited his nature;
          [1]He his head did not guard, but the high-minded liegeman's
        5 Hand was consumed, when he succored his kinsman,
          So he struck the strife-bringing strange-comer lower,
          Earl-thane in armor, that _in_ went the weapon
          Gleaming and plated, that 'gan then the fire[2]

{Beowulf draws his knife,}

          Later to lessen. The liegelord himself then
       10 Retained his consciousness, brandished his war-knife,
          Battle-sharp, bitter, that he bare on his armor:

{and cuts the dragon.}

          The Weder-lord cut the worm in the middle.
          They had felled the enemy (life drove out then[3]
          Puissant prowess), the pair had destroyed him,
       15 Land-chiefs related: so a liegeman should prove him,
          A thaneman when needed. To the prince 'twas the last of
          His era of conquest by his own great achievements,

[92]

{Beowulf's wound swells and burns.}

          The latest of world-deeds. The wound then began
          Which the earth-dwelling dragon erstwhile had wrought him
       20 To burn and to swell. He soon then discovered
          That bitterest bale-woe in his bosom was raging,
          Poison within. The atheling advanced then,

{He sits down exhausted.}

          That along by the wall, he prudent of spirit
          Might sit on a settle; he saw the giant-work,
       25 How arches of stone strengthened with pillars
          The earth-hall eternal inward supported.
          Then the long-worthy liegeman laved with his hand the

{Wiglaf bathes his lord's head.}

          Far-famous chieftain, gory from sword-edge,
          Refreshing the face of his friend-lord and ruler,
       30 Sated with battle, unbinding his helmet.
          Beowulf answered, of his injury spake he,
          His wound that was fatal (he was fully aware
          He had lived his allotted life-days enjoying
          The pleasures of earth; then past was entirely
       35 His measure of days, death very near):

{Beowulf regrets that he has no son.}

          "My son I would give now my battle-equipments,
          Had any of heirs been after me granted,
          Along of my body. This people I governed
          Fifty of winters: no king 'mong my neighbors
       40 Dared to encounter me with comrades-in-battle,
          Try me with terror. The time to me ordered
          I bided at home, mine own kept fitly,
          Sought me no snares, swore me not many

{I can rejoice in a well-spent life.}

          Oaths in injustice. Joy over all this
       45 I'm able to have, though ill with my death-wounds;
          Hence the Ruler of Earthmen need not charge me
          With the killing of kinsmen, when cometh my life out
          Forth from my body. Fare thou with haste now

{Bring me the hoard, Wiglaf, that my dying eyes may be refreshed by a
sight of it.}

          To behold the hoard 'neath the hoar-grayish stone,
       50 Well-lovèd Wiglaf, now the worm is a-lying,
          Sore-wounded sleepeth, disseized of his treasure.
          Go thou in haste that treasures of old I,
          Gold-wealth may gaze on, together see lying
[93]      The ether-bright jewels, be easier able,
       55 Having the heap of hoard-gems, to yield my
          Life and the land-folk whom long I have governed."

    [1] B. renders: _He_ (_W_.) did not regard his (_the dragon's_) _head_
    (since Beowulf had struck it without effect), _but struck the dragon a
    little lower down.--_One crux is to find out _whose head_ is meant;
    another is to bring out the antithesis between 'head' and 'hand.'

    [2] 'Þæt þæt fýr' (2702), S. emends to 'þá þæt fýr' = _when the fire
    began to grow less intense afterward_. This emendation relieves the
    passage of a plethora of conjunctive _þæt_'s.

    [3] For 'gefyldan' (2707), S. proposes 'gefylde.' The passage would
    read: _He felled the foe (life drove out strength), and they then both
    had destroyed him, chieftains related_. This gives Beowulf the credit
    of having felled the dragon; then they combine to annihilate him.--For
    'ellen' (2707), Kl. suggests 'e(a)llne.'--The reading '_life drove out
    strength_' is very unsatisfactory and very peculiar. I would suggest
    as follows: Adopt S.'s emendation, remove H.'s parenthesis, read
    'ferh-ellen wræc,' and translate: _He felled the foe, drove out his
    life-strength_ (that is, made him _hors de combat_), _and then they
    both, etc_.




XXXVIII.

WIGLAF PLUNDERS THE DRAGON'S DEN.--BEOWULF'S DEATH.


{Wiglaf fulfils his lord's behest.}

          Then heard I that Wihstan's son very quickly,
          These words being uttered, heeded his liegelord
          Wounded and war-sick, went in his armor,
          His well-woven ring-mail, 'neath the roof of the barrow.
        5 Then the trusty retainer treasure-gems many

{The dragon's den.}

          Victorious saw, when the seat he came near to,
          Gold-treasure sparkling spread on the bottom,
          Wonder on the wall, and the worm-creature's cavern,
          The ancient dawn-flier's, vessels a-standing,
       10 Cups of the ancients of cleansers bereavèd,
          Robbed of their ornaments: there were helmets in numbers,
          Old and rust-eaten, arm-bracelets many,
          Artfully woven. Wealth can easily,
          Gold on the sea-bottom, turn into vanity[1]
       15 Each one of earthmen, arm him who pleaseth!
          And he saw there lying an all-golden banner
          High o'er the hoard, of hand-wonders greatest,
          Linkèd with lacets: a light from it sparkled,
          That the floor of the cavern he was able to look on,

{The dragon is not there.}

       20 To examine the jewels. Sight of the dragon
[94]      Not any was offered, but edge offcarried him.

{Wiglaf bears the hoard away.}

          Then I heard that the hero the hoard-treasure plundered,
          The giant-work ancient reaved in the cavern,
          Bare on his bosom the beakers and platters,
       25 As himself would fain have it, and took off the standard,
          The brightest of beacons;[2] the bill had erst injured
          (Its edge was of iron), the old-ruler's weapon,
          Him who long had watched as ward of the jewels,
          Who fire-terror carried hot for the treasure,
       30 Rolling in battle, in middlemost darkness,
          Till murdered he perished. The messenger hastened,
          Not loth to return, hurried by jewels:
          Curiosity urged him if, excellent-mooded,
          Alive he should find the lord of the Weders
       35 Mortally wounded, at the place where he left him.
          'Mid the jewels he found then the famous old chieftain,
          His liegelord belovèd, at his life's-end gory:
          He thereupon 'gan to lave him with water,
          Till the point of his word piercèd his breast-hoard.
       40 Beowulf spake (the gold-gems he noticed),

{Beowulf is rejoiced to see the jewels.}

          The old one in sorrow: "For the jewels I look on
          Thanks do I utter for all to the Ruler,
          Wielder of Worship, with words of devotion,
          The Lord everlasting, that He let me such treasures
       45 Gain for my people ere death overtook me.
          Since I've bartered the agèd life to me granted
          For treasure of jewels, attend ye henceforward

{He desires to be held in memory by his people.}

          The wants of the war-thanes; I can wait here no longer.
          The battle-famed bid ye to build them a grave-hill,
       50 Bright when I'm burned, at the brim-current's limit;
          As a memory-mark to the men I have governed,
[95]      Aloft it shall tower on Whale's-Ness uprising,
          That earls of the ocean hereafter may call it
          Beowulf's barrow, those who barks ever-dashing
       55 From a distance shall drive o'er the darkness of waters."

{The hero's last gift}

          The bold-mooded troop-lord took from his neck then
          The ring that was golden, gave to his liegeman,
          The youthful war-hero, his gold-flashing helmet,
          His collar and war-mail, bade him well to enjoy them:

{and last words.}

       60 "Thou art latest left of the line of our kindred,
          Of Wægmunding people: Weird hath offcarried
          All of my kinsmen to the Creator's glory,
          Earls in their vigor: I shall after them fare."
          'Twas the aged liegelord's last-spoken word in
       65 His musings of spirit, ere he mounted the fire,
          The battle-waves burning: from his bosom departed
          His soul to seek the sainted ones' glory.

    [1] The word 'oferhígian' (2767) being vague and little understood,
    two quite distinct translations of this passage have arisen. One takes
    'oferhígian' as meaning 'to exceed,' and, inserting 'hord' after
    'gehwone,' renders: _The treasure may easily, the gold in the ground,
    exceed in value every hoard of man, hide it who will._ The other takes
    'oferhígian' as meaning 'to render arrogant,' and, giving the sentence
    a moralizing tone, renders substantially as in the body of this work.
    (Cf. 28_13 et seq.)

    [2] The passage beginning here is very much disputed. 'The bill of the
    old lord' is by some regarded as Beowulf's sword; by others, as that
    of the ancient possessor of the hoard. 'Ær gescód' (2778), translated
    in this work as verb and adverb, is by some regarded as a compound
    participial adj. = _sheathed in brass_.




XXXIX.

THE DEAD FOES.--WIGLAF'S BITTER TAUNTS.


{Wiglaf is sorely grieved to see his lord look so un-warlike.}

          It had wofully chanced then the youthful retainer
          To behold on earth the most ardent-belovèd
          At his life-days' limit, lying there helpless.
          The slayer too lay there, of life all bereavèd,
        5 Horrible earth-drake, harassed with sorrow:

{The dragon has plundered his last hoard.}

          The round-twisted monster was permitted no longer
          To govern the ring-hoards, but edges of war-swords
          Mightily seized him, battle-sharp, sturdy
          Leavings of hammers, that still from his wounds
       10 The flier-from-farland fell to the earth
          Hard by his hoard-house, hopped he at midnight
          Not e'er through the air, nor exulting in jewels
          Suffered them to see him: but he sank then to earthward
          Through the hero-chief's handwork. I heard sure it throve then

[96]

{Few warriors dared to face the monster.}

       15 But few in the land of liegemen of valor,
          Though of every achievement bold he had proved him,
          To run 'gainst the breath of the venomous scather,
          Or the hall of the treasure to trouble with hand-blows,
          If he watching had found the ward of the hoard-hall
       20 On the barrow abiding. Beowulf's part of
          The treasure of jewels was paid for with death;
          Each of the twain had attained to the end of
          Life so unlasting. Not long was the time till

{The cowardly thanes come out of the thicket.}

          The tardy-at-battle returned from the thicket,
       25 The timid truce-breakers ten all together,
          Who durst not before play with the lances
          In the prince of the people's pressing emergency;

{They are ashamed of their desertion.}

          But blushing with shame, with shields they betook them,
          With arms and armor where the old one was lying:
       30 They gazed upon Wiglaf. He was sitting exhausted,
          Foot-going fighter, not far from the shoulders
          Of the lord of the people, would rouse him with water;
          No whit did it help him; though he hoped for it keenly,
          He was able on earth not at all in the leader
       35 Life to retain, and nowise to alter
          The will of the Wielder; the World-Ruler's power[1]
          Would govern the actions of each one of heroes,

{Wiglaf is ready to excoriate them.}

          As yet He is doing. From the young one forthwith then
          Could grim-worded greeting be got for him quickly
       40 Whose courage had failed him. Wiglaf discoursed then,
          Weohstan his son, sad-mooded hero,

{He begins to taunt them.}

          Looked on the hated: "He who soothness will utter
          Can say that the liegelord who gave you the jewels,
          The ornament-armor wherein ye are standing,
       45 When on ale-bench often he offered to hall-men
          Helmet and burnie, the prince to his liegemen,
          As best upon earth he was able to find him,--

[97]

{Surely our lord wasted his armor on poltroons.}

          That he wildly wasted his war-gear undoubtedly
          When battle o'ertook him.[2] The troop-king no need had
       50 To glory in comrades; yet God permitted him,

{He, however, got along without you}

          Victory-Wielder, with weapon unaided
          Himself to avenge, when vigor was needed.
          I life-protection but little was able
          To give him in battle, and I 'gan, notwithstanding,

{With some aid, I could have saved our liegelord}

       55 Helping my kinsman (my strength overtaxing):
          He waxed the weaker when with weapon I smote on
          My mortal opponent, the fire less strongly
          Flamed from his bosom. Too few of protectors
          Came round the king at the critical moment.

{Gift-giving is over with your people: the ring-lord is dead.}

       60 Now must ornament-taking and weapon-bestowing,
          Home-joyance all, cease for your kindred,
          Food for the people; each of your warriors
          Must needs be bereavèd of rights that he holdeth
          In landed possessions, when faraway nobles
       65 Shall learn of your leaving your lord so basely,

{What is life without honor?}

          The dastardly deed. Death is more pleasant
          To every earlman than infamous life is!"

    [1] For 'dædum rædan' (2859) B. suggests 'déað árædan,' and renders:
    _The might (or judgment) of God would determine death for every man,
    as he still does._

    [2] Some critics, H. himself in earlier editions, put the clause,
    'When ... him' (A.-S. 'þá ... beget') with the following sentence;
    that is, they make it dependent upon 'þorfte' (2875) instead of upon
    'forwurpe' (2873).




XL.

THE MESSENGER OF DEATH.


{Wiglaf sends the news of Beowulf's death to liegemen near by.}

          Then he charged that the battle be announced at the hedge
          Up o'er the cliff-edge, where the earl-troopers bided
          The whole of the morning, mood-wretched sat them,
          Bearers of battle-shields, both things expecting,
        5 The end of his lifetime and the coming again of
          The liegelord belovèd. Little reserved he
          Of news that was known, who the ness-cliff did travel,
          But he truly discoursed to all that could hear him:

[98]

{The messenger speaks.}

          "Now the free-giving friend-lord of the folk of the Weders,
       10 The folk-prince of Geatmen, is fast in his death-bed,
          By the deeds of the dragon in death-bed abideth;
          Along with him lieth his life-taking foeman
          Slain with knife-wounds: he was wholly unable
          To injure at all the ill-planning monster

{Wiglaf sits by our dead lord.}

       15 With bite of his sword-edge. Wiglaf is sitting,
          Offspring of Wihstan, up over Beowulf,
          Earl o'er another whose end-day hath reached him,
          Head-watch holdeth o'er heroes unliving,[1]

{Our lord's death will lead to attacks from our old foes.}

          For friend and for foeman. The folk now expecteth
       20 A season of strife when the death of the folk-king
          To Frankmen and Frisians in far-lands is published.
          The war-hatred waxed warm 'gainst the Hugmen,

{Higelac's death recalled.}

          When Higelac came with an army of vessels
          Faring to Friesland, where the Frankmen in battle
       25 Humbled him and bravely with overmight 'complished
          That the mail-clad warrior must sink in the battle,
          Fell 'mid his folk-troop: no fret-gems presented
          The atheling to earlmen; aye was denied us
          Merewing's mercy. The men of the Swedelands
       30 For truce or for truth trust I but little;
          But widely 'twas known that near Ravenswood Ongentheow

{Hæthcyn's fall referred to.}

          Sundered Hæthcyn the Hrethling from life-joys,
          When for pride overweening the War-Scylfings first did
          Seek the Geatmen with savage intentions.
       35 Early did Ohthere's age-laden father,
          Old and terrible, give blow in requital,
          Killing the sea-king, the queen-mother rescued,
          The old one his consort deprived of her gold,
          Onela's mother and Ohthere's also,
[99]   40 And then followed the feud-nursing foemen till hardly,
          Reaved of their ruler, they Ravenswood entered.
          Then with vast-numbered forces he assaulted the remnant,
          Weary with wounds, woe often promised
          The livelong night to the sad-hearted war-troop:
       45 Said he at morning would kill them with edges of weapons,
          Some on the gallows for glee to the fowls.
          Aid came after to the anxious-in-spirit
          At dawn of the day, after Higelac's bugle
          And trumpet-sound heard they, when the good one proceeded
       50 And faring followed the flower of the troopers.

    [1] 'Hige-méðum' (2910) is glossed by H. as dat. plu. (= for the
    dead). S. proposes 'hige-méðe,' nom. sing. limiting Wigláf; i.e. _W.,
    mood-weary, holds head-watch o'er friend and foe_.--B. suggests taking
    the word as dat. inst. plu. of an abstract noun in -'u.' The
    translation would be substantially the same as S.'s.




XLI.

THE MESSENGER'S RETROSPECT.


{The messenger continues, and refers to the feuds of Swedes and Geats.}

          "The blood-stainèd trace of Swedes and Geatmen,
          The death-rush of warmen, widely was noticed,
          How the folks with each other feud did awaken.
          The worthy one went then[1] with well-beloved comrades,
        5 Old and dejected to go to the fastness,
          Ongentheo earl upward then turned him;
          Of Higelac's battle he'd heard on inquiry,
          The exultant one's prowess, despaired of resistance,
          With earls of the ocean to be able to struggle,
       10 'Gainst sea-going sailors to save the hoard-treasure,
          His wife and his children; he fled after thenceward
          Old 'neath the earth-wall. Then was offered pursuance
          To the braves of the Swedemen, the banner[2] to Higelac.
[100]     They fared then forth o'er the field-of-protection,
       15 When the Hrethling heroes hedgeward had thronged them.
          Then with edges of irons was Ongentheow driven,
          The gray-haired to tarry, that the troop-ruler had to
          Suffer the power solely of Eofor:

{Wulf wounds Ongentheow.}

          Wulf then wildly with weapon assaulted him,
       20 Wonred his son, that for swinge of the edges
          The blood from his body burst out in currents,
          Forth 'neath his hair. He feared not however,
          Gray-headed Scylfing, but speedily quited

{Ongentheow gives a stout blow in return.}

          The wasting wound-stroke with worse exchange,
       25 When the king of the thane-troop thither did turn him:
          The wise-mooded son of Wonred was powerless
          To give a return-blow to the age-hoary man,
          But his head-shielding helmet first hewed he to pieces,
          That flecked with gore perforce he did totter,
       30 Fell to the earth; not fey was he yet then,
          But up did he spring though an edge-wound had reached him.

{Eofor smites Ongentheow fiercely.}

          Then Higelac's vassal, valiant and dauntless,
          When his brother lay dead, made his broad-bladed weapon,
          Giant-sword ancient, defence of the giants,
       35 Bound o'er the shield-wall; the folk-prince succumbed then,

{Ongentheow is slain.}

          Shepherd of people, was pierced to the vitals.
          There were many attendants who bound up his kinsman,
          Carried him quickly when occasion was granted
          That the place of the slain they were suffered to manage.
       40 This pending, one hero plundered the other,
          His armor of iron from Ongentheow ravished,
          His hard-sword hilted and helmet together;

{Eofor takes the old king's war-gear to Higelac.}

          The old one's equipments he carried to Higelac.
          He the jewels received, and rewards 'mid the troopers
       45 Graciously promised, and so did accomplish:
          The king of the Weders requited the war-rush,
          Hrethel's descendant, when home he repaired him,

{Higelac rewards the brothers.}

          To Eofor and Wulf with wide-lavished treasures,
          To each of them granted a hundred of thousands
[101]  50 In land and rings wrought out of wire:

{His gifts were beyond cavil.}

          None upon mid-earth needed to twit him[3]
          With the gifts he gave them, when glory they conquered;

{To Eofor he also gives his only daughter in marriage.}

          And to Eofor then gave he his one only daughter,
          The honor of home, as an earnest of favor.
       55 That's the feud and hatred--as ween I 'twill happen--
          The anger of earthmen, that earls of the Swedemen
          Will visit on us, when they hear that our leader
          Lifeless is lying, he who longtime protected
          His hoard and kingdom 'gainst hating assailers,
       60 Who on the fall of the heroes defended of yore
          The deed-mighty Scyldings,[4] did for the troopers
          What best did avail them, and further moreover

{It is time for us to pay the last marks of respect to our lord.}

          Hero-deeds 'complished. Now is haste most fitting,
          That the lord of liegemen we look upon yonder,
       65 And _that_ one carry on journey to death-pyre
          Who ring-presents gave us. Not aught of it all
          Shall melt with the brave one--there's a mass of bright jewels,
          Gold beyond measure, grewsomely purchased
          And ending it all ornament-rings too
       70 Bought with his life; these fire shall devour,
          Flame shall cover, no earlman shall wear
          A jewel-memento, nor beautiful virgin
          Have on her neck rings to adorn her,
          But wretched in spirit bereavèd of gold-gems
       75 She shall oft with others be exiled and banished,
          Since the leader of liegemen hath laughter forsaken,
[102]     Mirth and merriment. Hence many a war-spear
          Cold from the morning shall be clutched in the fingers,
          Heaved in the hand, no harp-music's sound shall
       80 Waken the warriors, but the wan-coated raven
          Fain over fey ones freely shall gabble,
          Shall say to the eagle how he sped in the eating,
          When, the wolf his companion, he plundered the slain."
          So the high-minded hero was rehearsing these stories
       85 Loathsome to hear; he lied as to few of

{The warriors go sadly to look at Beowulf's lifeless body.}

          Weirds and of words. All the war-troop arose then,
          'Neath the Eagle's Cape sadly betook them,
          Weeping and woful, the wonder to look at.
          They saw on the sand then soulless a-lying,
       90 His slaughter-bed holding, him who rings had given them
          In days that were done; then the death-bringing moment
          Was come to the good one, that the king very warlike,
          Wielder of Weders, with wonder-death perished.
          First they beheld there a creature more wondrous,

{They also see the dragon.}

       95 The worm on the field, in front of them lying,
          The foeman before them: the fire-spewing dragon,
          Ghostly and grisly guest in his terrors,
          Was scorched in the fire; as he lay there he measured
          Fifty of feet; came forth in the night-time[5]
      100 To rejoice in the air, thereafter departing
          To visit his den; he in death was then fastened,
          He would joy in no other earth-hollowed caverns.
          There stood round about him beakers and vessels,
          Dishes were lying and dear-valued weapons,
      105 With iron-rust eaten, as in earth's mighty bosom
          A thousand of winters there they had rested:

{The hoard was under a magic spell.}

          That mighty bequest then with magic was guarded,
          Gold of the ancients, that earlman not any
          The ring-hall could touch, save Ruling-God only,
[103] 110 Sooth-king of Vict'ries gave whom He wished to

{God alone could give access to it.}

          [6](He is earth-folk's protector) to open the treasure,
          E'en to such among mortals as seemed to Him proper.

    [1] For 'góda,' which seems a surprising epithet for a Geat to apply
    to the "terrible" Ongentheow, B. suggests 'gomela.' The passage would
    then stand: '_The old one went then,' etc._

    [2] For 'segn Higeláce,' K., Th., and B. propose 'segn Higeláces,'
    meaning: _Higelac's banner followed the Swedes (in pursuit)._--S.
    suggests 'sæcc Higeláces,' and renders: _Higelac's pursuit._--The
    H.-So. reading, as translated in our text, means that the banner of
    the enemy was captured and brought to Higelac as a trophy.

    [3] The rendering given in this translation represents the king as
    being generous beyond the possibility of reproach; but some
    authorities construe 'him' (2996) as plu., and understand the passage
    to mean that no one reproached the two brothers with having received
    more reward than they were entitled to.

    [4] The name 'Scyldingas' here (3006) has caused much discussion, and
    given rise to several theories, the most important of which are as
    follows: (1) After the downfall of Hrothgar's family, Beowulf was king
    of the Danes, or Scyldings. (2) For 'Scyldingas' read
    'Scylfingas'--that is, after killing Eadgils, the Scylfing prince,
    Beowulf conquered his land, and held it in subjection. (3) M.
    considers 3006 a thoughtless repetition of 2053. (Cf. H.-So.)

    [5] B. takes 'nihtes' and 'hwílum' (3045) as separate adverbial cases,
    and renders: _Joy in the air had he of yore by night, etc_. He thinks
    that the idea of vanished time ought to be expressed.

    [6] The parenthesis is by some emended so as to read: (1) (_He_ (i.e.
    _God_) _is the hope of men_); (2) (_he is the hope of heroes_). Gr.'s
    reading has no parenthesis, but says: ... _could touch, unless God
    himself, true king of victories, gave to whom he would to open the
    treasure, the secret place of enchanters, etc_. The last is rejected
    on many grounds.




XLII.

WIGLAF'S SAD STORY.--THE HOARD CARRIED OFF.


          Then 'twas seen that the journey prospered him little
          Who wrongly within had the ornaments hidden[1]
          Down 'neath the wall. The warden erst slaughtered
          Some few of the folk-troop: the feud then thereafter
        5 Was hotly avengèd. 'Tis a wonder where,[2]
          When the strength-famous trooper has attained to the end of
          Life-days allotted, then no longer the man may
          Remain with his kinsmen where mead-cups are flowing.
          So to Beowulf happened when the ward of the barrow,
       10 Assaults, he sought for: himself had no knowledge
          How his leaving this life was likely to happen.
          So to doomsday, famous folk-leaders down did
          Call it with curses--who 'complished it there--
[104]     That that man should be ever of ill-deeds convicted,
       15 Confined in foul-places, fastened in hell-bonds,
          Punished with plagues, who this place should e'er ravage.[3]
          He cared not for gold: rather the Wielder's
          Favor preferred he first to get sight of.[4]

{Wiglaf addresses his comrades.}

          Wiglaf discoursed then, Wihstan his son:
       20 "Oft many an earlman on one man's account must
          Sorrow endure, as to us it hath happened.
          The liegelord belovèd we could little prevail on,
          Kingdom's keeper, counsel to follow,
          Not to go to the guardian of the gold-hoard, but let him
       25 Lie where he long was, live in his dwelling
          Till the end of the world. Met we a destiny
          Hard to endure: the hoard has been looked at,
          Been gained very grimly; too grievous the fate that[5]
          The prince of the people pricked to come thither.
       30 _I_ was therein and all of it looked at,
          The building's equipments, since access was given me,
          Not kindly at all entrance permitted

{He tells them of Beowulf's last moments.}

          Within under earth-wall. Hastily seized I
          And held in my hands a huge-weighing burden
       35 Of hoard-treasures costly, hither out bare them
          To my liegelord belovèd: life was yet in him,
          And consciousness also; the old one discoursed then
          Much and mournfully, commanded to greet you,

{Beowulf's dying request.}

          Bade that remembering the deeds of your friend-lord
       40 Ye build on the fire-hill of corpses a lofty
          Burial-barrow, broad and far-famous,
          As 'mid world-dwelling warriors he was widely most honored
          While he reveled in riches. Let us rouse us and hasten
[105]     Again to see and seek for the treasure,
       45 The wonder 'neath wall. The way I will show you,
          That close ye may look at ring-gems sufficient
          And gold in abundance. Let the bier with promptness
          Fully be fashioned, when forth we shall come,
          And lift we our lord, then, where long he shall tarry,
       50 Well-beloved warrior, 'neath the Wielder's protection."

{Wiglaf charges them to build a funeral-pyre.}

          Then the son of Wihstan bade orders be given,
          Mood-valiant man, to many of heroes,
          Holders of homesteads, that they hither from far,
          [6]Leaders of liegemen, should look for the good one
       55 With wood for his pyre: "The flame shall now swallow
          (The wan fire shall wax[7]) the warriors' leader
          Who the rain of the iron often abided,
          When, sturdily hurled, the storm of the arrows
          Leapt o'er linden-wall, the lance rendered service,
       60 Furnished with feathers followed the arrow."
          Now the wise-mooded son of Wihstan did summon
          The best of the braves from the band of the ruler

{He takes seven thanes, and enters the den.}

          Seven together; 'neath the enemy's roof he
          Went with the seven; one of the heroes
       65 Who fared at the front, a fire-blazing torch-light
          Bare in his hand. No lot then decided
          Who that hoard should havoc, when hero-earls saw it
          Lying in the cavern uncared-for entirely,
          Rusting to ruin: they rued then but little
       70 That they hastily hence hauled out the treasure,

{They push the dragon over the wall.}

          The dear-valued jewels; the dragon eke pushed they,
          The worm o'er the wall, let the wave-currents take him,
[106]     The waters enwind the ward of the treasures.

{The hoard is laid on a wain.}

          There wounden gold on a wain was uploaded,
       75 A mass unmeasured, the men-leader off then,
          The hero hoary, to Whale's-Ness was carried.

    [1] For 'gehýdde,' B. suggests 'gehýðde': the passage would stand as
    above except the change of 'hidden' (v. 2) to 'plundered.' The
    reference, however, would be to the thief, not to the dragon.

    [2] The passage 'Wundur ... búan' (3063-3066), M. took to be a
    question asking whether it was strange that a man should die when his
    appointed time had come.--B. sees a corruption, and makes emendations
    introducing the idea that a brave man should not die from sickness or
    from old age, but should find death in the performance of some deed of
    daring.--S. sees an indirect question introduced by 'hwár' and
    dependent upon 'wundur': _A secret is it when the hero is to die,
    etc_.--Why may the two clauses not be parallel, and the whole passage
    an Old English cry of '_How wonderful is death!'?_--S.'s is the best
    yet offered, if 'wundor' means 'mystery.'

    [3] For 'strude' in H.-So., S. suggests 'stride.' This would require
    'ravage' (v. 16) to be changed to 'tread.'

    [4] 'He cared ... sight of' (17, 18), S. emends so as to read as
    follows: _He (Beowulf) had not before seen the favor of the avaricious
    possessor._

    [5] B. renders: _That which drew the king thither_ (i.e. _the
    treasure_) _was granted us, but in such a way that it overcomes us._

    [6] 'Folc-ágende' (3114) B. takes as dat. sing. with 'gódum,' and
    refers it to Beowulf; that is, _Should bring fire-wood to the place
    where the good folk-ruler lay_.

    [7] C. proposes to take 'weaxan' = L. 'vescor,' and translate
    _devour_. This gives a parallel to 'fretan' above. The parenthesis
    would be discarded and the passage read: _Now shall the fire consume,
    the wan-flame devour, the prince of warriors, etc_.




XLIII.

THE BURNING OF BEOWULF.


{Beowulf's pyre.}

          The folk of the Geatmen got him then ready
          A pile on the earth strong for the burning,
          Behung with helmets, hero-knights' targets,
          And bright-shining burnies, as he begged they should have them;
        5 Then wailing war-heroes their world-famous chieftain,
          Their liegelord beloved, laid in the middle.

{The funeral-flame.}

          Soldiers began then to make on the barrow
          The largest of dead-fires: dark o'er the vapor
          The smoke-cloud ascended, the sad-roaring fire,
       10 Mingled with weeping (the wind-roar subsided)
          Till the building of bone it had broken to pieces,
          Hot in the heart. Heavy in spirit
          They mood-sad lamented the men-leader's ruin;
          And mournful measures the much-grieving widow
       15 *       *       *       *       *       *       *
          *       *       *       *       *       *       *
          *       *       *       *       *       *       *
          *       *       *       *       *       *       *
          *       *       *       *       *       *       *
       20 *       *       *       *       *       *       *

{The Weders carry out their lord's last request.}

          The men of the Weders made accordingly
          A hill on the height, high and extensive,
          Of sea-going sailors to be seen from a distance,
          And the brave one's beacon built where the fire was,
       25 In ten-days' space, with a wall surrounded it,
          As wisest of world-folk could most worthily plan it.
          They placed in the barrow rings and jewels,

[107]

{Rings and gems are laid in the barrow.}

          All such ornaments as erst in the treasure
          War-mooded men had won in possession:
       30 The earnings of earlmen to earth they entrusted,
          The gold to the dust, where yet it remaineth
          As useless to mortals as in foregoing eras.
          'Round the dead-mound rode then the doughty-in-battle,
          Bairns of all twelve of the chiefs of the people,

{They mourn for their lord, and sing his praises.}

       35 More would they mourn, lament for their ruler,
          Speak in measure, mention him with pleasure,
          Weighed his worth, and his warlike achievements
          Mightily commended, as 'tis meet one praise his
          Liegelord in words and love him in spirit,
       40 When forth from his body he fares to destruction.
          So lamented mourning the men of the Geats,
          Fond-loving vassals, the fall of their lord,

{An ideal king.}

          Said he was kindest of kings under heaven,
          Gentlest of men, most winning of manner,
       45 Friendliest to folk-troops and fondest of honor.

[109]




ADDENDA.


Several discrepancies and other oversights have been noticed in the H.-So.
glossary. Of these a good part were avoided by Harrison and Sharp, the
American editors of Beowulf, in their last edition, 1888. The rest will, I
hope, be noticed in their fourth edition. As, however, this book may fall
into the hands of some who have no copy of the American edition, it seems
best to notice all the principal oversights of the German editors.

~From hám~ (194).--Notes and glossary conflict; the latter not having been
altered to suit the conclusions accepted in the former.

~Þær gelýfan sceal dryhtnes dóme~ (440).--Under 'dóm' H. says 'the might
of the Lord'; while under 'gelýfan' he says 'the judgment of the Lord.'

~Eal bencþelu~ (486).--Under 'benc-þelu' H. says _nom. plu._; while under
'eal' he says _nom. sing._

~Heatho-ræmas~ (519).--Under 'ætberan' H. translates 'to the Heathoremes';
while under 'Heatho-ræmas' he says 'Heathoræmas reaches Breca in the
swimming-match with Beowulf.' Harrison and Sharp (3d edition, 1888) avoid
the discrepancy.

~Fáh féond-scaða~ (554).--Under 'féond-scaða' H. says 'a gleaming
sea-monster'; under 'fáh' he says 'hostile.'

~Onfeng hraðe inwit-þancum~ (749).--Under 'onfón' H. says 'he _received_
the maliciously-disposed one'; under 'inwit-þanc' he says 'he _grasped_,'
etc.

~Níð-wundor séon~ (1366).--Under 'níð-wundor' H. calls this word itself
_nom. sing._; under 'séon' he translates it as accus. sing., understanding
'man' as subject of 'séon.' H. and S. (3d edition) make the correction.

~Forgeaf hilde-bille~ (1521).--H., under the second word, calls it instr.
dat.; while under 'forgifan' he makes it the dat. of indir. obj. H. and S.
(3d edition) make the change.

~Brád~ and ~brún-ecg~ (1547).--Under 'brád' H. says 'das breite Hüftmesser
mit bronzener Klinge'; under 'brún-ecg' he says 'ihr breites Hüftmesser
mit blitzender Klinge.'

[110]

~Yðelíce~ (1557).--Under this word H. makes it modify 'ástód.' If this be
right, the punctuation of the fifth edition is wrong. See H. and S.,
appendix.

~Sélran gesóhte~ (1840).--Under 'sél' and 'gesécan' H. calls these two
words accus. plu.; but this is clearly an error, as both are nom. plu.,
pred. nom. H. and S. correct under 'sél.'

~Wið sylfne~ (1978).--Under 'wið' and 'gesittan' H. says 'wið = near, by';
under 'self' he says 'opposite.'

~þéow~ (2225) is omitted from the glossary.

~For duguðum~ (2502).--Under 'duguð' H. translates this phrase, 'in
Tüchtigkeit'; under 'for,' by 'vor der edlen Kriegerschaar.'

~þær~ (2574).--Under 'wealdan' H. translates _þær_ by 'wo'; under 'mótan,'
by 'da.' H. and S. suggest 'if' in both passages.

~Wunde~ (2726).--Under 'wund' H. says 'dative,' and under 'wæl-bléate' he
says 'accus.' It is without doubt accus., parallel with 'benne.'

~Strengum gebæded~ (3118).--Under 'strengo' H. says 'Strengum' = mit
Macht; under 'gebæded' he translates 'von den Sehnen.' H. and S. correct
this discrepancy by rejecting the second reading.

~Bronda be láfe~ (3162).--A recent emendation. The fourth edition had
'bronda betost.' In the fifth edition the editor neglects to change the
glossary to suit the new emendation. See 'bewyrcan.'





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Title: A Doll's House

Author: Henrik Ibsen

Posting Date: December 13, 2008 [EBook #2542]
Release Date: March, 2001

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DOLL'S HOUSE ***




Produced by Martin Adamson





A DOLL'S HOUSE

by Henrik Ibsen




DRAMATIS PERSONAE

     Torvald Helmer.
     Nora, his wife.
     Doctor Rank.
     Mrs. Linde.
     Nils Krogstad.
     Helmer's three young children.
     Anne, their nurse.
     A Housemaid.
     A Porter.
     (The action takes place in Helmer's house.)

     A DOLL'S HOUSE




ACT I

(SCENE.--A room furnished comfortably and tastefully, but not
extravagantly. At the back, a door to the right leads to the
entrance-hall, another to the left leads to Helmer's study. Between the
doors stands a piano. In the middle of the left-hand wall is a door, and
beyond it a window. Near the window are a round table, arm-chairs and
a small sofa. In the right-hand wall, at the farther end, another door;
and on the same side, nearer the footlights, a stove, two easy chairs
and a rocking-chair; between the stove and the door, a small table.
Engravings on the walls; a cabinet with china and other small objects;
a small book-case with well-bound books. The floors are carpeted, and a
fire burns in the stove. It is winter.

A bell rings in the hall; shortly afterwards the door is heard to open.
Enter NORA, humming a tune and in high spirits. She is in outdoor dress
and carries a number of parcels; these she lays on the table to the
right. She leaves the outer door open after her, and through it is seen
a PORTER who is carrying a Christmas Tree and a basket, which he gives
to the MAID who has opened the door.)

Nora. Hide the Christmas Tree carefully, Helen. Be sure the children
do not see it until this evening, when it is dressed. (To the PORTER,
taking out her purse.) How much?

Porter. Sixpence.

Nora. There is a shilling. No, keep the change. (The PORTER thanks her,
and goes out. NORA shuts the door. She is laughing to herself, as she
takes off her hat and coat. She takes a packet of macaroons from her
pocket and eats one or two; then goes cautiously to her husband's door
and listens.) Yes, he is in. (Still humming, she goes to the table on
the right.)

Helmer (calls out from his room). Is that my little lark twittering out
there?

Nora (busy opening some of the parcels). Yes, it is!

Helmer. Is it my little squirrel bustling about?

Nora. Yes!

Helmer. When did my squirrel come home?

Nora. Just now. (Puts the bag of macaroons into her pocket and wipes her
mouth.) Come in here, Torvald, and see what I have bought.

Helmer. Don't disturb me. (A little later, he opens the door and looks
into the room, pen in hand.) Bought, did you say? All these things? Has
my little spendthrift been wasting money again?

Nora. Yes but, Torvald, this year we really can let ourselves go
a little. This is the first Christmas that we have not needed to
economise.

Helmer. Still, you know, we can't spend money recklessly. Nora. Yes,
Torvald, we may be a wee bit more reckless now, mayn't we? Just a tiny
wee bit! You are going to have a big salary and earn lots and lots of
money.

Helmer. Yes, after the New Year; but then it will be a whole quarter
before the salary is due.

Nora. Pooh! we can borrow until then.

Helmer. Nora! (Goes up to her and takes her playfully by the ear.) The
same little featherhead! Suppose, now, that I borrowed fifty pounds
today, and you spent it all in the Christmas week, and then on New
Year's Eve a slate fell on my head and killed me, and--Nora (putting her
hands over his mouth). Oh! don't say such horrid things.

Helmer. Still, suppose that happened,--what then?

Nora. If that were to happen, I don't suppose I should care whether I
owed money or not.

Helmer. Yes, but what about the people who had lent it?

Nora. They? Who would bother about them? I should not know who they
were.

Helmer. That is like a woman! But seriously, Nora, you know what I think
about that. No debt, no borrowing. There can be no freedom or beauty
about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt. We two have kept
bravely on the straight road so far, and we will go on the same way for
the short time longer that there need be any struggle.

Nora (moving towards the stove). As you please, Torvald.

Helmer (following her). Come, come, my little skylark must not droop her
wings. What is this! Is my little squirrel out of temper? (Taking out
his purse.) Nora, what do you think I have got here?

Nora (turning round quickly). Money!

Helmer. There you are. (Gives her some money.) Do you think I don't know
what a lot is wanted for housekeeping at Christmas-time?

Nora (counting). Ten shillings--a pound--two pounds! Thank you, thank
you, Torvald; that will keep me going for a long time.

Helmer. Indeed it must.

Nora. Yes, yes, it will. But come here and let me show you what I have
bought. And all so cheap! Look, here is a new suit for Ivar, and
a sword; and a horse and a trumpet for Bob; and a doll and dolly's
bedstead for Emmy,--they are very plain, but anyway she will soon break
them in pieces. And here are dress-lengths and handkerchiefs for the
maids; old Anne ought really to have something better.

Helmer. And what is in this parcel?

Nora (crying out). No, no! you mustn't see that until this evening.

Helmer. Very well. But now tell me, you extravagant little person, what
would you like for yourself?

Nora. For myself? Oh, I am sure I don't want anything.

Helmer. Yes, but you must. Tell me something reasonable that you would
particularly like to have.

Nora. No, I really can't think of anything--unless, Torvald--

Helmer. Well?

Nora (playing with his coat buttons, and without raising her eyes to
his). If you really want to give me something, you might--you might--

Helmer. Well, out with it!

Nora (speaking quickly). You might give me money, Torvald. Only just as
much as you can afford; and then one of these days I will buy something
with it.

Helmer. But, Nora--

Nora. Oh, do! dear Torvald; please, please do! Then I will wrap it up in
beautiful gilt paper and hang it on the Christmas Tree. Wouldn't that be
fun?

Helmer. What are little people called that are always wasting money?

Nora. Spendthrifts--I know. Let us do as you suggest, Torvald, and then
I shall have time to think what I am most in want of. That is a very
sensible plan, isn't it?

Helmer (smiling). Indeed it is--that is to say, if you were really to
save out of the money I give you, and then really buy something for
yourself. But if you spend it all on the housekeeping and any number of
unnecessary things, then I merely have to pay up again.

Nora. Oh but, Torvald--

Helmer. You can't deny it, my dear little Nora. (Puts his arm round
her waist.) It's a sweet little spendthrift, but she uses up a deal of
money. One would hardly believe how expensive such little persons are!

Nora. It's a shame to say that. I do really save all I can.

Helmer (laughing). That's very true,--all you can. But you can't save
anything!

Nora (smiling quietly and happily). You haven't any idea how many
expenses we skylarks and squirrels have, Torvald.

Helmer. You are an odd little soul. Very like your father. You always
find some new way of wheedling money out of me, and, as soon as you
have got it, it seems to melt in your hands. You never know where it
has gone. Still, one must take you as you are. It is in the blood; for
indeed it is true that you can inherit these things, Nora.

Nora. Ah, I wish I had inherited many of papa's qualities.

Helmer. And I would not wish you to be anything but just what you are,
my sweet little skylark. But, do you know, it strikes me that you are
looking rather--what shall I say--rather uneasy today?

Nora. Do I?

Helmer. You do, really. Look straight at me.

Nora (looks at him). Well?

Helmer (wagging his finger at her). Hasn't Miss Sweet Tooth been
breaking rules in town today?

Nora. No; what makes you think that?

Helmer. Hasn't she paid a visit to the confectioner's?

Nora. No, I assure you, Torvald--

Helmer. Not been nibbling sweets?

Nora. No, certainly not.

Helmer. Not even taken a bite at a macaroon or two?

Nora. No, Torvald, I assure you really--

Helmer. There, there, of course I was only joking.

Nora (going to the table on the right). I should not think of going
against your wishes.

Helmer. No, I am sure of that; besides, you gave me your word-- (Going
up to her.) Keep your little Christmas secrets to yourself, my darling.
They will all be revealed tonight when the Christmas Tree is lit, no
doubt.

Nora. Did you remember to invite Doctor Rank?

Helmer. No. But there is no need; as a matter of course he will come to
dinner with us. However, I will ask him when he comes in this morning.
I have ordered some good wine. Nora, you can't think how I am looking
forward to this evening.

Nora. So am I! And how the children will enjoy themselves, Torvald!

Helmer. It is splendid to feel that one has a perfectly safe
appointment, and a big enough income. It's delightful to think of, isn't
it?

Nora. It's wonderful!

Helmer. Do you remember last Christmas? For a full three weeks
beforehand you shut yourself up every evening until long after midnight,
making ornaments for the Christmas Tree, and all the other fine things
that were to be a surprise to us. It was the dullest three weeks I ever
spent!

Nora. I didn't find it dull.

Helmer (smiling). But there was precious little result, Nora.

Nora. Oh, you shouldn't tease me about that again. How could I help the
cat's going in and tearing everything to pieces?

Helmer. Of course you couldn't, poor little girl. You had the best of
intentions to please us all, and that's the main thing. But it is a good
thing that our hard times are over.

Nora. Yes, it is really wonderful.

Helmer. This time I needn't sit here and be dull all alone, and you
needn't ruin your dear eyes and your pretty little hands--

Nora (clapping her hands). No, Torvald, I needn't any longer, need I!
It's wonderfully lovely to hear you say so! (Taking his arm.) Now I will
tell you how I have been thinking we ought to arrange things, Torvald.
As soon as Christmas is over--(A bell rings in the hall.) There's the
bell. (She tidies the room a little.) There's some one at the door. What
a nuisance!

Helmer. If it is a caller, remember I am not at home.

Maid (in the doorway). A lady to see you, ma'am,--a stranger.

Nora. Ask her to come in.

Maid (to HELMER). The doctor came at the same time, sir.

Helmer. Did he go straight into my room?

Maid. Yes, sir.

(HELMER goes into his room. The MAID ushers in Mrs. LINDE, who is in
travelling dress, and shuts the door.) Mrs. Linde (in a dejected and
timid voice). How do you do, Nora?

Nora (doubtfully). How do you do--Mrs. Linde. You don't recognise me, I
suppose.

Nora. No, I don't know--yes, to be sure, I seem to--(Suddenly.) Yes!
Christine! Is it really you?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, it is I.

Nora. Christine! To think of my not recognising you! And yet how could
I--(In a gentle voice.) How you have altered, Christine!

Mrs. Linde. Yes, I have indeed. In nine, ten long years--

Nora. Is it so long since we met? I suppose it is. The last eight years
have been a happy time for me, I can tell you. And so now you have come
into the town, and have taken this long journey in winter--that was
plucky of you.

Mrs. Linde. I arrived by steamer this morning.

Nora. To have some fun at Christmas-time, of course. How delightful! We
will have such fun together! But take off your things. You are not cold,
I hope. (Helps her.) Now we will sit down by the stove, and be cosy.
No, take this armchair; I will sit here in the rocking-chair. (Takes
her hands.) Now you look like your old self again; it was only the first
moment--You are a little paler, Christine, and perhaps a little thinner.

Mrs. Linde. And much, much older, Nora.

Nora. Perhaps a little older; very, very little; certainly not much.
(Stops suddenly and speaks seriously.) What a thoughtless creature I am,
chattering away like this. My poor, dear Christine, do forgive me.

Mrs. Linde. What do you mean, Nora?

Nora (gently). Poor Christine, you are a widow.

Mrs. Linde. Yes; it is three years ago now.

Nora. Yes, I knew; I saw it in the papers. I assure you, Christine, I
meant ever so often to write to you at the time, but I always put it off
and something always prevented me.

Mrs. Linde. I quite understand, dear.

Nora. It was very bad of me, Christine. Poor thing, how you must have
suffered. And he left you nothing?

Mrs. Linde. No.

Nora. And no children?

Mrs. Linde. No.

Nora. Nothing at all, then.

Mrs. Linde. Not even any sorrow or grief to live upon.

Nora (looking incredulously at her). But, Christine, is that possible?

Mrs. Linde (smiles sadly and strokes her hair). It sometimes happens,
Nora.

Nora. So you are quite alone. How dreadfully sad that must be. I have
three lovely children. You can't see them just now, for they are out
with their nurse. But now you must tell me all about it.

Mrs. Linde. No, no; I want to hear about you.

Nora. No, you must begin. I mustn't be selfish today; today I must only
think of your affairs. But there is one thing I must tell you. Do you
know we have just had a great piece of good luck?

Mrs. Linde. No, what is it?

Nora. Just fancy, my husband has been made manager of the Bank!

Mrs. Linde. Your husband? What good luck!

Nora. Yes, tremendous! A barrister's profession is such an uncertain
thing, especially if he won't undertake unsavoury cases; and naturally
Torvald has never been willing to do that, and I quite agree with him.
You may imagine how pleased we are! He is to take up his work in the
Bank at the New Year, and then he will have a big salary and lots of
commissions. For the future we can live quite differently--we can do
just as we like. I feel so relieved and so happy, Christine! It will be
splendid to have heaps of money and not need to have any anxiety, won't
it?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, anyhow I think it would be delightful to have what one
needs.

Nora. No, not only what one needs, but heaps and heaps of money.

Mrs. Linde (smiling). Nora, Nora, haven't you learned sense yet? In our
schooldays you were a great spendthrift.

Nora (laughing). Yes, that is what Torvald says now. (Wags her finger at
her.) But "Nora, Nora" is not so silly as you think. We have not been in
a position for me to waste money. We have both had to work.

Mrs. Linde. You too?

Nora. Yes; odds and ends, needlework, crotchet-work, embroidery, and
that kind of thing. (Dropping her voice.) And other things as well. You
know Torvald left his office when we were married? There was no prospect
of promotion there, and he had to try and earn more than before. But
during the first year he over-worked himself dreadfully. You see, he had
to make money every way he could, and he worked early and late; but he
couldn't stand it, and fell dreadfully ill, and the doctors said it was
necessary for him to go south.

Mrs. Linde. You spent a whole year in Italy, didn't you?

Nora. Yes. It was no easy matter to get away, I can tell you. It
was just after Ivar was born; but naturally we had to go. It was a
wonderfully beautiful journey, and it saved Torvald's life. But it cost
a tremendous lot of money, Christine.

Mrs. Linde. So I should think.

Nora. It cost about two hundred and fifty pounds. That's a lot, isn't
it?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, and in emergencies like that it is lucky to have the
money.

Nora. I ought to tell you that we had it from papa.

Mrs. Linde. Oh, I see. It was just about that time that he died, wasn't
it?

Nora. Yes; and, just think of it, I couldn't go and nurse him. I was
expecting little Ivar's birth every day and I had my poor sick Torvald
to look after. My dear, kind father--I never saw him again, Christine.
That was the saddest time I have known since our marriage.

Mrs. Linde. I know how fond you were of him. And then you went off to
Italy?

Nora. Yes; you see we had money then, and the doctors insisted on our
going, so we started a month later.

Mrs. Linde. And your husband came back quite well?

Nora. As sound as a bell!

Mrs. Linde. But--the doctor?

Nora. What doctor?

Mrs. Linde. I thought your maid said the gentleman who arrived here just
as I did, was the doctor?

Nora. Yes, that was Doctor Rank, but he doesn't come here
professionally. He is our greatest friend, and comes in at least once
every day. No, Torvald has not had an hour's illness since then, and our
children are strong and healthy and so am I. (Jumps up and claps her
hands.) Christine! Christine! it's good to be alive and happy!--But how
horrid of me; I am talking of nothing but my own affairs. (Sits on a
stool near her, and rests her arms on her knees.) You mustn't be angry
with me. Tell me, is it really true that you did not love your husband?
Why did you marry him?

Mrs. Linde. My mother was alive then, and was bedridden and helpless,
and I had to provide for my two younger brothers; so I did not think I
was justified in refusing his offer.

Nora. No, perhaps you were quite right. He was rich at that time, then?

Mrs. Linde. I believe he was quite well off. But his business was a
precarious one; and, when he died, it all went to pieces and there was
nothing left.

Nora. And then?--

Mrs. Linde. Well, I had to turn my hand to anything I could find--first
a small shop, then a small school, and so on. The last three years have
seemed like one long working-day, with no rest. Now it is at an end,
Nora. My poor mother needs me no more, for she is gone; and the boys
do not need me either; they have got situations and can shift for
themselves.

Nora. What a relief you must feel if--

Mrs. Linde. No, indeed; I only feel my life unspeakably empty. No one to
live for anymore. (Gets up restlessly.) That was why I could not stand
the life in my little backwater any longer. I hope it may be easier here
to find something which will busy me and occupy my thoughts. If only I
could have the good luck to get some regular work--office work of some
kind--

Nora. But, Christine, that is so frightfully tiring, and you look tired
out now. You had far better go away to some watering-place.

Mrs. Linde (walking to the window). I have no father to give me money
for a journey, Nora.

Nora (rising). Oh, don't be angry with me!

Mrs. Linde (going up to her). It is you that must not be angry with me,
dear. The worst of a position like mine is that it makes one so bitter.
No one to work for, and yet obliged to be always on the lookout for
chances. One must live, and so one becomes selfish. When you told me of
the happy turn your fortunes have taken--you will hardly believe it--I
was delighted not so much on your account as on my own.

Nora. How do you mean?--Oh, I understand. You mean that perhaps Torvald
could get you something to do.

Mrs. Linde. Yes, that was what I was thinking of.

Nora. He must, Christine. Just leave it to me; I will broach the subject
very cleverly--I will think of something that will please him very much.
It will make me so happy to be of some use to you.

Mrs. Linde. How kind you are, Nora, to be so anxious to help me! It is
doubly kind in you, for you know so little of the burdens and troubles
of life.

Nora. I--? I know so little of them?

Mrs. Linde (smiling). My dear! Small household cares and that sort of
thing!--You are a child, Nora.

Nora (tosses her head and crosses the stage). You ought not to be so
superior.

Mrs. Linde. No?

Nora. You are just like the others. They all think that I am incapable
of anything really serious--

Mrs. Linde. Come, come--

Nora.--that I have gone through nothing in this world of cares.

Mrs. Linde. But, my dear Nora, you have just told me all your troubles.

Nora. Pooh!--those were trifles. (Lowering her voice.) I have not told
you the important thing.

Mrs. Linde. The important thing? What do you mean?

Nora. You look down upon me altogether, Christine--but you ought not to.
You are proud, aren't you, of having worked so hard and so long for your
mother?

Mrs. Linde. Indeed, I don't look down on anyone. But it is true that I
am both proud and glad to think that I was privileged to make the end of
my mother's life almost free from care.

Nora. And you are proud to think of what you have done for your
brothers?

Mrs. Linde. I think I have the right to be.

Nora. I think so, too. But now, listen to this; I too have something to
be proud and glad of.

Mrs. Linde. I have no doubt you have. But what do you refer to?

Nora. Speak low. Suppose Torvald were to hear! He mustn't on any
account--no one in the world must know, Christine, except you.

Mrs. Linde. But what is it?

Nora. Come here. (Pulls her down on the sofa beside her.) Now I will
show you that I too have something to be proud and glad of. It was I who
saved Torvald's life.

Mrs. Linde. "Saved"? How?

Nora. I told you about our trip to Italy. Torvald would never have
recovered if he had not gone there--

Mrs. Linde. Yes, but your father gave you the necessary funds.

Nora (smiling). Yes, that is what Torvald and all the others think,
but--

Mrs. Linde. But--

Nora. Papa didn't give us a shilling. It was I who procured the money.

Mrs. Linde. You? All that large sum?

Nora. Two hundred and fifty pounds. What do you think of that?

Mrs. Linde. But, Nora, how could you possibly do it? Did you win a prize
in the Lottery?

Nora (contemptuously). In the Lottery? There would have been no credit
in that.

Mrs. Linde. But where did you get it from, then? Nora (humming and
smiling with an air of mystery). Hm, hm! Aha!

Mrs. Linde. Because you couldn't have borrowed it.

Nora. Couldn't I? Why not?

Mrs. Linde. No, a wife cannot borrow without her husband's consent.

Nora (tossing her head). Oh, if it is a wife who has any head for
business--a wife who has the wit to be a little bit clever--

Mrs. Linde. I don't understand it at all, Nora.

Nora. There is no need you should. I never said I had borrowed the
money. I may have got it some other way. (Lies back on the sofa.)
Perhaps I got it from some other admirer. When anyone is as attractive
as I am--

Mrs. Linde. You are a mad creature.

Nora. Now, you know you're full of curiosity, Christine.

Mrs. Linde. Listen to me, Nora dear. Haven't you been a little bit
imprudent?

Nora (sits up straight). Is it imprudent to save your husband's life?

Mrs. Linde. It seems to me imprudent, without his knowledge, to--

Nora. But it was absolutely necessary that he should not know! My
goodness, can't you understand that? It was necessary he should have no
idea what a dangerous condition he was in. It was to me that the doctors
came and said that his life was in danger, and that the only thing to
save him was to live in the south. Do you suppose I didn't try, first of
all, to get what I wanted as if it were for myself? I told him how much
I should love to travel abroad like other young wives; I tried tears and
entreaties with him; I told him that he ought to remember the condition
I was in, and that he ought to be kind and indulgent to me; I even
hinted that he might raise a loan. That nearly made him angry,
Christine. He said I was thoughtless, and that it was his duty as my
husband not to indulge me in my whims and caprices--as I believe he
called them. Very well, I thought, you must be saved--and that was how I
came to devise a way out of the difficulty--

Mrs. Linde. And did your husband never get to know from your father that
the money had not come from him?

Nora. No, never. Papa died just at that time. I had meant to let him
into the secret and beg him never to reveal it. But he was so ill
then--alas, there never was any need to tell him.

Mrs. Linde. And since then have you never told your secret to your
husband?

Nora. Good Heavens, no! How could you think so? A man who has such
strong opinions about these things! And besides, how painful and
humiliating it would be for Torvald, with his manly independence, to
know that he owed me anything! It would upset our mutual relations
altogether; our beautiful happy home would no longer be what it is now.

Mrs. Linde. Do you mean never to tell him about it?

Nora (meditatively, and with a half smile). Yes--someday, perhaps, after
many years, when I am no longer as nice-looking as I am now. Don't laugh
at me! I mean, of course, when Torvald is no longer as devoted to me as
he is now; when my dancing and dressing-up and reciting have palled on
him; then it may be a good thing to have something in reserve--(Breaking
off.) What nonsense! That time will never come. Now, what do you think
of my great secret, Christine? Do you still think I am of no use? I can
tell you, too, that this affair has caused me a lot of worry. It has
been by no means easy for me to meet my engagements punctually. I may
tell you that there is something that is called, in business, quarterly
interest, and another thing called payment in installments, and it is
always so dreadfully difficult to manage them. I have had to save a
little here and there, where I could, you understand. I have not been
able to put aside much from my housekeeping money, for Torvald must have
a good table. I couldn't let my children be shabbily dressed; I have
felt obliged to use up all he gave me for them, the sweet little
darlings!

Mrs. Linde. So it has all had to come out of your own necessaries of
life, poor Nora?

Nora. Of course. Besides, I was the one responsible for it. Whenever
Torvald has given me money for new dresses and such things, I have
never spent more than half of it; I have always bought the simplest
and cheapest things. Thank Heaven, any clothes look well on me, and
so Torvald has never noticed it. But it was often very hard on me,
Christine--because it is delightful to be really well dressed, isn't it?

Mrs. Linde. Quite so.

Nora. Well, then I have found other ways of earning money. Last winter
I was lucky enough to get a lot of copying to do; so I locked myself up
and sat writing every evening until quite late at night. Many a time I
was desperately tired; but all the same it was a tremendous pleasure to
sit there working and earning money. It was like being a man.

Mrs. Linde. How much have you been able to pay off in that way?

Nora. I can't tell you exactly. You see, it is very difficult to keep an
account of a business matter of that kind. I only know that I have paid
every penny that I could scrape together. Many a time I was at my wits'
end. (Smiles.) Then I used to sit here and imagine that a rich old
gentleman had fallen in love with me--

Mrs. Linde. What! Who was it?

Nora. Be quiet!--that he had died; and that when his will was opened
it contained, written in big letters, the instruction: "The lovely Mrs.
Nora Helmer is to have all I possess paid over to her at once in cash."

Mrs. Linde. But, my dear Nora--who could the man be?

Nora. Good gracious, can't you understand? There was no old gentleman at
all; it was only something that I used to sit here and imagine, when I
couldn't think of any way of procuring money. But it's all the same now;
the tiresome old person can stay where he is, as far as I am concerned;
I don't care about him or his will either, for I am free from care now.
(Jumps up.) My goodness, it's delightful to think of, Christine! Free
from care! To be able to be free from care, quite free from care; to be
able to play and romp with the children; to be able to keep the house
beautifully and have everything just as Torvald likes it! And, think of
it, soon the spring will come and the big blue sky! Perhaps we shall be
able to take a little trip--perhaps I shall see the sea again! Oh, it's
a wonderful thing to be alive and be happy. (A bell is heard in the
hall.)

Mrs. Linde (rising). There is the bell; perhaps I had better go.

Nora. No, don't go; no one will come in here; it is sure to be for
Torvald.

Servant (at the hall door). Excuse me, ma'am--there is a gentleman to
see the master, and as the doctor is with him--

Nora. Who is it?

Krogstad (at the door). It is I, Mrs. Helmer. (Mrs. LINDE starts,
trembles, and turns to the window.)

Nora (takes a step towards him, and speaks in a strained, low voice).
You? What is it? What do you want to see my husband about?

Krogstad. Bank business--in a way. I have a small post in the Bank, and
I hear your husband is to be our chief now--

Nora. Then it is--

Krogstad. Nothing but dry business matters, Mrs. Helmer; absolutely
nothing else.

Nora. Be so good as to go into the study, then. (She bows indifferently
to him and shuts the door into the hall; then comes back and makes up
the fire in the stove.)

Mrs. Linde. Nora--who was that man?

Nora. A lawyer, of the name of Krogstad.

Mrs. Linde. Then it really was he.

Nora. Do you know the man?

Mrs. Linde. I used to--many years ago. At one time he was a solicitor's
clerk in our town.

Nora. Yes, he was.

Mrs. Linde. He is greatly altered.

Nora. He made a very unhappy marriage.

Mrs. Linde. He is a widower now, isn't he?

Nora. With several children. There now, it is burning up. (Shuts the
door of the stove and moves the rocking-chair aside.)

Mrs. Linde. They say he carries on various kinds of business.

Nora. Really! Perhaps he does; I don't know anything about it. But don't
let us think of business; it is so tiresome.

Doctor Rank (comes out of HELMER'S study. Before he shuts the door he
calls to him). No, my dear fellow, I won't disturb you; I would rather
go in to your wife for a little while. (Shuts the door and sees Mrs.
LINDE.) I beg your pardon; I am afraid I am disturbing you too.

Nora. No, not at all. (Introducing him). Doctor Rank, Mrs. Linde.

Rank. I have often heard Mrs. Linde's name mentioned here. I think I
passed you on the stairs when I arrived, Mrs. Linde?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, I go up very slowly; I can't manage stairs well.

Rank. Ah! some slight internal weakness?

Mrs. Linde. No, the fact is I have been overworking myself.

Rank. Nothing more than that? Then I suppose you have come to town to
amuse yourself with our entertainments?

Mrs. Linde. I have come to look for work.

Rank. Is that a good cure for overwork?

Mrs. Linde. One must live, Doctor Rank.

Rank. Yes, the general opinion seems to be that it is necessary.

Nora. Look here, Doctor Rank--you know you want to live.

Rank. Certainly. However wretched I may feel, I want to prolong the
agony as long as possible. All my patients are like that. And so are
those who are morally diseased; one of them, and a bad case too, is at
this very moment with Helmer--

Mrs. Linde (sadly). Ah!

Nora. Whom do you mean?

Rank. A lawyer of the name of Krogstad, a fellow you don't know at all.
He suffers from a diseased moral character, Mrs. Helmer; but even he
began talking of its being highly important that he should live.

Nora. Did he? What did he want to speak to Torvald about?

Rank. I have no idea; I only heard that it was something about the Bank.

Nora. I didn't know this--what's his name--Krogstad had anything to do
with the Bank.

Rank. Yes, he has some sort of appointment there. (To Mrs. LINDE.) I
don't know whether you find also in your part of the world that there
are certain people who go zealously snuffing about to smell out moral
corruption, and, as soon as they have found some, put the person
concerned into some lucrative position where they can keep their eye on
him. Healthy natures are left out in the cold.

Mrs. Linde. Still I think the sick are those who most need taking care
of.

Rank (shrugging his shoulders). Yes, there you are. That is the
sentiment that is turning Society into a sick-house.

(NORA, who has been absorbed in her thoughts, breaks out into smothered
laughter and claps her hands.)

Rank. Why do you laugh at that? Have you any notion what Society really
is?

Nora. What do I care about tiresome Society? I am laughing at something
quite different, something extremely amusing. Tell me, Doctor Rank, are
all the people who are employed in the Bank dependent on Torvald now?

Rank. Is that what you find so extremely amusing?

Nora (smiling and humming). That's my affair! (Walking about the room.)
It's perfectly glorious to think that we have--that Torvald has so much
power over so many people. (Takes the packet from her pocket.) Doctor
Rank, what do you say to a macaroon?

Rank. What, macaroons? I thought they were forbidden here.

Nora. Yes, but these are some Christine gave me.

Mrs. Linde. What! I?--

Nora. Oh, well, don't be alarmed! You couldn't know that Torvald had
forbidden them. I must tell you that he is afraid they will spoil my
teeth. But, bah!--once in a way--That's so, isn't it, Doctor Rank? By
your leave! (Puts a macaroon into his mouth.) You must have one too,
Christine. And I shall have one, just a little one--or at most two.
(Walking about.) I am tremendously happy. There is just one thing in the
world now that I should dearly love to do.

Rank. Well, what is that?

Nora. It's something I should dearly love to say, if Torvald could hear
me.

Rank. Well, why can't you say it?

Nora. No, I daren't; it's so shocking.

Mrs. Linde. Shocking?

Rank. Well, I should not advise you to say it. Still, with us you might.
What is it you would so much like to say if Torvald could hear you?

Nora. I should just love to say--Well, I'm damned!

Rank. Are you mad?

Mrs. Linde. Nora, dear--!

Rank. Say it, here he is!

Nora (hiding the packet). Hush! Hush! Hush! (HELMER comes out of his
room, with his coat over his arm and his hat in his hand.)

Nora. Well, Torvald dear, have you got rid of him?

Helmer. Yes, he has just gone.

Nora. Let me introduce you--this is Christine, who has come to town.

Helmer. Christine--? Excuse me, but I don't know--

Nora. Mrs. Linde, dear; Christine Linde.

Helmer. Of course. A school friend of my wife's, I presume?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, we have known each other since then.

Nora. And just think, she has taken a long journey in order to see you.

Helmer. What do you mean? Mrs. Linde. No, really, I--

Nora. Christine is tremendously clever at book-keeping, and she is
frightfully anxious to work under some clever man, so as to perfect
herself--

Helmer. Very sensible, Mrs. Linde.

Nora. And when she heard you had been appointed manager of the Bank--the
news was telegraphed, you know--she travelled here as quick as
she could. Torvald, I am sure you will be able to do something for
Christine, for my sake, won't you?

Helmer. Well, it is not altogether impossible. I presume you are a
widow, Mrs. Linde?

Mrs. Linde. Yes.

Helmer. And have had some experience of book-keeping?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, a fair amount.

Helmer. Ah! well, it's very likely I may be able to find something for
you--

Nora (clapping her hands). What did I tell you? What did I tell you?

Helmer. You have just come at a fortunate moment, Mrs. Linde.

Mrs. Linde. How am I to thank you?

Helmer. There is no need. (Puts on his coat.) But today you must excuse
me--

Rank. Wait a minute; I will come with you. (Brings his fur coat from the
hall and warms it at the fire.)

Nora. Don't be long away, Torvald dear.

Helmer. About an hour, not more.

Nora. Are you going too, Christine?

Mrs. Linde (putting on her cloak). Yes, I must go and look for a room.

Helmer. Oh, well then, we can walk down the street together.

Nora (helping her). What a pity it is we are so short of space here; I
am afraid it is impossible for us--

Mrs. Linde. Please don't think of it! Goodbye, Nora dear, and many
thanks.

Nora. Goodbye for the present. Of course you will come back this
evening. And you too, Dr. Rank. What do you say? If you are well enough?
Oh, you must be! Wrap yourself up well. (They go to the door all talking
together. Children's voices are heard on the staircase.)

Nora. There they are! There they are! (She runs to open the door. The
NURSE comes in with the children.) Come in! Come in! (Stoops and kisses
them.) Oh, you sweet blessings! Look at them, Christine! Aren't they
darlings?

Rank. Don't let us stand here in the draught.

Helmer. Come along, Mrs. Linde; the place will only be bearable for a
mother now!

(RANK, HELMER, and Mrs. LINDE go downstairs. The NURSE comes forward
with the children; NORA shuts the hall door.)

Nora. How fresh and well you look! Such red cheeks like apples and
roses. (The children all talk at once while she speaks to them.) Have
you had great fun? That's splendid! What, you pulled both Emmy and Bob
along on the sledge?--both at once?--that was good. You are a clever
boy, Ivar. Let me take her for a little, Anne. My sweet little baby
doll! (Takes the baby from the MAID and dances it up and down.) Yes,
yes, mother will dance with Bob too. What! Have you been snowballing? I
wish I had been there too! No, no, I will take their things off, Anne;
please let me do it, it is such fun. Go in now, you look half frozen.
There is some hot coffee for you on the stove.

(The NURSE goes into the room on the left. NORA takes off the children's
things and throws them about, while they all talk to her at once.)

Nora. Really! Did a big dog run after you? But it didn't bite you? No,
dogs don't bite nice little dolly children. You mustn't look at the
parcels, Ivar. What are they? Ah, I daresay you would like to know. No,
no--it's something nasty! Come, let us have a game! What shall we play
at? Hide and Seek? Yes, we'll play Hide and Seek. Bob shall hide first.
Must I hide? Very well, I'll hide first. (She and the children laugh
and shout, and romp in and out of the room; at last NORA hides under the
table, the children rush in and out for her, but do not see her; they
hear her smothered laughter, run to the table, lift up the cloth
and find her. Shouts of laughter. She crawls forward and pretends to
frighten them. Fresh laughter. Meanwhile there has been a knock at the
hall door, but none of them has noticed it. The door is half opened, and
KROGSTAD appears, he waits a little; the game goes on.)

Krogstad. Excuse me, Mrs. Helmer.

Nora (with a stifled cry, turns round and gets up on to her knees). Ah!
what do you want?

Krogstad. Excuse me, the outer door was ajar; I suppose someone forgot
to shut it.

Nora (rising). My husband is out, Mr. Krogstad.

Krogstad. I know that.

Nora. What do you want here, then?

Krogstad. A word with you.

Nora. With me?--(To the children, gently.) Go in to nurse. What? No,
the strange man won't do mother any harm. When he has gone we will have
another game. (She takes the children into the room on the left, and
shuts the door after them.) You want to speak to me?

Krogstad. Yes, I do.

Nora. Today? It is not the first of the month yet.

Krogstad. No, it is Christmas Eve, and it will depend on yourself what
sort of a Christmas you will spend.

Nora. What do you mean? Today it is absolutely impossible for me--

Krogstad. We won't talk about that until later on. This is something
different. I presume you can give me a moment?

Nora. Yes--yes, I can--although--

Krogstad. Good. I was in Olsen's Restaurant and saw your husband going
down the street--

Nora. Yes?

Krogstad. With a lady.

Nora. What then?

Krogstad. May I make so bold as to ask if it was a Mrs. Linde?

Nora. It was.

Krogstad. Just arrived in town?

Nora. Yes, today.

Krogstad. She is a great friend of yours, isn't she?

Nora. She is. But I don't see--

Krogstad. I knew her too, once upon a time.

Nora. I am aware of that.

Krogstad. Are you? So you know all about it; I thought as much. Then I
can ask you, without beating about the bush--is Mrs. Linde to have an
appointment in the Bank?

Nora. What right have you to question me, Mr. Krogstad?--You, one of
my husband's subordinates! But since you ask, you shall know. Yes, Mrs.
Linde is to have an appointment. And it was I who pleaded her cause, Mr.
Krogstad, let me tell you that.

Krogstad. I was right in what I thought, then.

Nora (walking up and down the stage). Sometimes one has a tiny little
bit of influence, I should hope. Because one is a woman, it does not
necessarily follow that--. When anyone is in a subordinate position,
Mr. Krogstad, they should really be careful to avoid offending anyone
who--who--

Krogstad. Who has influence?

Nora. Exactly.

Krogstad (changing his tone). Mrs. Helmer, you will be so good as to use
your influence on my behalf.

Nora. What? What do you mean?

Krogstad. You will be so kind as to see that I am allowed to keep my
subordinate position in the Bank.

Nora. What do you mean by that? Who proposes to take your post away from
you?

Krogstad. Oh, there is no necessity to keep up the pretence of
ignorance. I can quite understand that your friend is not very anxious
to expose herself to the chance of rubbing shoulders with me; and I
quite understand, too, whom I have to thank for being turned off.

Nora. But I assure you--

Krogstad. Very likely; but, to come to the point, the time has come when
I should advise you to use your influence to prevent that.

Nora. But, Mr. Krogstad, I have no influence.

Krogstad. Haven't you? I thought you said yourself just now--

Nora. Naturally I did not mean you to put that construction on it. I!
What should make you think I have any influence of that kind with my
husband?

Krogstad. Oh, I have known your husband from our student days. I don't
suppose he is any more unassailable than other husbands.

Nora. If you speak slightingly of my husband, I shall turn you out of
the house.

Krogstad. You are bold, Mrs. Helmer.

Nora. I am not afraid of you any longer. As soon as the New Year comes,
I shall in a very short time be free of the whole thing.

Krogstad (controlling himself). Listen to me, Mrs. Helmer. If necessary,
I am prepared to fight for my small post in the Bank as if I were
fighting for my life.

Nora. So it seems.

Krogstad. It is not only for the sake of the money; indeed, that weighs
least with me in the matter. There is another reason--well, I may as
well tell you. My position is this. I daresay you know, like everybody
else, that once, many years ago, I was guilty of an indiscretion.

Nora. I think I have heard something of the kind.

Krogstad. The matter never came into court; but every way seemed to be
closed to me after that. So I took to the business that you know of. I
had to do something; and, honestly, I don't think I've been one of the
worst. But now I must cut myself free from all that. My sons are growing
up; for their sake I must try and win back as much respect as I can in
the town. This post in the Bank was like the first step up for me--and
now your husband is going to kick me downstairs again into the mud.

Nora. But you must believe me, Mr. Krogstad; it is not in my power to
help you at all.

Krogstad. Then it is because you haven't the will; but I have means to
compel you.

Nora. You don't mean that you will tell my husband that I owe you money?

Krogstad. Hm!--suppose I were to tell him?

Nora. It would be perfectly infamous of you. (Sobbing.) To think of his
learning my secret, which has been my joy and pride, in such an ugly,
clumsy way--that he should learn it from you! And it would put me in a
horribly disagreeable position--

Krogstad. Only disagreeable?

Nora (impetuously). Well, do it, then!--and it will be the worse for
you. My husband will see for himself what a blackguard you are, and you
certainly won't keep your post then.

Krogstad. I asked you if it was only a disagreeable scene at home that
you were afraid of?

Nora. If my husband does get to know of it, of course he will at once
pay you what is still owing, and we shall have nothing more to do with
you.

Krogstad (coming a step nearer). Listen to me, Mrs. Helmer. Either you
have a very bad memory or you know very little of business. I shall be
obliged to remind you of a few details.

Nora. What do you mean?

Krogstad. When your husband was ill, you came to me to borrow two
hundred and fifty pounds.

Nora. I didn't know anyone else to go to.

Krogstad. I promised to get you that amount--

Nora. Yes, and you did so.

Krogstad. I promised to get you that amount, on certain conditions.
Your mind was so taken up with your husband's illness, and you were so
anxious to get the money for your journey, that you seem to have paid
no attention to the conditions of our bargain. Therefore it will not be
amiss if I remind you of them. Now, I promised to get the money on the
security of a bond which I drew up.

Nora. Yes, and which I signed.

Krogstad. Good. But below your signature there were a few lines
constituting your father a surety for the money; those lines your father
should have signed.

Nora. Should? He did sign them.

Krogstad. I had left the date blank; that is to say, your father should
himself have inserted the date on which he signed the paper. Do you
remember that?

Nora. Yes, I think I remember--

Krogstad. Then I gave you the bond to send by post to your father. Is
that not so?

Nora. Yes.

Krogstad. And you naturally did so at once, because five or six days
afterwards you brought me the bond with your father's signature. And
then I gave you the money.

Nora. Well, haven't I been paying it off regularly?

Krogstad. Fairly so, yes. But--to come back to the matter in hand--that
must have been a very trying time for you, Mrs. Helmer?

Nora. It was, indeed.

Krogstad. Your father was very ill, wasn't he?

Nora. He was very near his end.

Krogstad. And died soon afterwards?

Nora. Yes.

Krogstad. Tell me, Mrs. Helmer, can you by any chance remember what day
your father died?--on what day of the month, I mean.

Nora. Papa died on the 29th of September.

Krogstad. That is correct; I have ascertained it for myself. And, as
that is so, there is a discrepancy (taking a paper from his pocket)
which I cannot account for.

Nora. What discrepancy? I don't know--

Krogstad. The discrepancy consists, Mrs. Helmer, in the fact that your
father signed this bond three days after his death.

Nora. What do you mean? I don't understand--

Krogstad. Your father died on the 29th of September. But, look here;
your father has dated his signature the 2nd of October. It is a
discrepancy, isn't it? (NORA is silent.) Can you explain it to me? (NORA
is still silent.) It is a remarkable thing, too, that the words "2nd
of October," as well as the year, are not written in your father's
handwriting but in one that I think I know. Well, of course it can be
explained; your father may have forgotten to date his signature, and
someone else may have dated it haphazard before they knew of his death.
There is no harm in that. It all depends on the signature of the name;
and that is genuine, I suppose, Mrs. Helmer? It was your father himself
who signed his name here?

Nora (after a short pause, throws her head up and looks defiantly at
him). No, it was not. It was I that wrote papa's name.

Krogstad. Are you aware that is a dangerous confession?

Nora. In what way? You shall have your money soon.

Krogstad. Let me ask you a question; why did you not send the paper to
your father?

Nora. It was impossible; papa was so ill. If I had asked him for his
signature, I should have had to tell him what the money was to be
used for; and when he was so ill himself I couldn't tell him that my
husband's life was in danger--it was impossible.

Krogstad. It would have been better for you if you had given up your
trip abroad.

Nora. No, that was impossible. That trip was to save my husband's life;
I couldn't give that up.

Krogstad. But did it never occur to you that you were committing a fraud
on me?

Nora. I couldn't take that into account; I didn't trouble myself about
you at all. I couldn't bear you, because you put so many heartless
difficulties in my way, although you knew what a dangerous condition my
husband was in.

Krogstad. Mrs. Helmer, you evidently do not realise clearly what it is
that you have been guilty of. But I can assure you that my one false
step, which lost me all my reputation, was nothing more or nothing worse
than what you have done.

Nora. You? Do you ask me to believe that you were brave enough to run a
risk to save your wife's life?

Krogstad. The law cares nothing about motives.

Nora. Then it must be a very foolish law.

Krogstad. Foolish or not, it is the law by which you will be judged, if
I produce this paper in court.

Nora. I don't believe it. Is a daughter not to be allowed to spare her
dying father anxiety and care? Is a wife not to be allowed to save her
husband's life? I don't know much about law; but I am certain that there
must be laws permitting such things as that. Have you no knowledge of
such laws--you who are a lawyer? You must be a very poor lawyer, Mr.
Krogstad.

Krogstad. Maybe. But matters of business--such business as you and I
have had together--do you think I don't understand that? Very well. Do
as you please. But let me tell you this--if I lose my position a second
time, you shall lose yours with me. (He bows, and goes out through the
hall.)

Nora (appears buried in thought for a short time, then tosses her head).
Nonsense! Trying to frighten me like that!--I am not so silly as he
thinks. (Begins to busy herself putting the children's things in order.)
And yet--? No, it's impossible! I did it for love's sake.

The Children (in the doorway on the left). Mother, the stranger man has
gone out through the gate.

Nora. Yes, dears, I know. But, don't tell anyone about the stranger man.
Do you hear? Not even papa.

Children. No, mother; but will you come and play again?

Nora. No, no,--not now.

Children. But, mother, you promised us.

Nora. Yes, but I can't now. Run away in; I have such a lot to do. Run
away in, my sweet little darlings. (She gets them into the room by
degrees and shuts the door on them; then sits down on the sofa, takes
up a piece of needlework and sews a few stitches, but soon stops.) No!
(Throws down the work, gets up, goes to the hall door and calls out.)
Helen! bring the Tree in. (Goes to the table on the left, opens a
drawer, and stops again.) No, no! it is quite impossible!

Maid (coming in with the Tree). Where shall I put it, ma'am?

Nora. Here, in the middle of the floor.

Maid. Shall I get you anything else?

Nora. No, thank you. I have all I want. [Exit MAID.]

Nora (begins dressing the tree). A candle here-and flowers here--The
horrible man! It's all nonsense--there's nothing wrong. The tree
shall be splendid! I will do everything I can think of to please you,
Torvald!--I will sing for you, dance for you--(HELMER comes in with some
papers under his arm.) Oh! are you back already?

Helmer. Yes. Has anyone been here?

Nora. Here? No.

Helmer. That is strange. I saw Krogstad going out of the gate.

Nora. Did you? Oh yes, I forgot, Krogstad was here for a moment.

Helmer. Nora, I can see from your manner that he has been here begging
you to say a good word for him.

Nora. Yes.

Helmer. And you were to appear to do it of your own accord; you were to
conceal from me the fact of his having been here; didn't he beg that of
you too?

Nora. Yes, Torvald, but--

Helmer. Nora, Nora, and you would be a party to that sort of thing? To
have any talk with a man like that, and give him any sort of promise?
And to tell me a lie into the bargain?

Nora. A lie--?

Helmer. Didn't you tell me no one had been here? (Shakes his finger at
her.) My little songbird must never do that again. A songbird must have
a clean beak to chirp with--no false notes! (Puts his arm round her
waist.) That is so, isn't it? Yes, I am sure it is. (Lets her go.) We
will say no more about it. (Sits down by the stove.) How warm and snug
it is here! (Turns over his papers.)

Nora (after a short pause, during which she busies herself with the
Christmas Tree.) Torvald!

Helmer. Yes.

Nora. I am looking forward tremendously to the fancy-dress ball at the
Stenborgs' the day after tomorrow.

Helmer. And I am tremendously curious to see what you are going to
surprise me with.

Nora. It was very silly of me to want to do that.

Helmer. What do you mean?

Nora. I can't hit upon anything that will do; everything I think of
seems so silly and insignificant.

Helmer. Does my little Nora acknowledge that at last?

Nora (standing behind his chair with her arms on the back of it). Are
you very busy, Torvald?

Helmer. Well--

Nora. What are all those papers?

Helmer. Bank business.

Nora. Already?

Helmer. I have got authority from the retiring manager to undertake the
necessary changes in the staff and in the rearrangement of the work; and
I must make use of the Christmas week for that, so as to have everything
in order for the new year.

Nora. Then that was why this poor Krogstad--

Helmer. Hm!

Nora (leans against the back of his chair and strokes his hair). If you
hadn't been so busy I should have asked you a tremendously big favour,
Torvald.

Helmer. What is that? Tell me.

Nora. There is no one has such good taste as you. And I do so want to
look nice at the fancy-dress ball. Torvald, couldn't you take me in hand
and decide what I shall go as, and what sort of a dress I shall wear?

Helmer. Aha! so my obstinate little woman is obliged to get someone to
come to her rescue?

Nora. Yes, Torvald, I can't get along a bit without your help.

Helmer. Very well, I will think it over, we shall manage to hit upon
something.

Nora. That is nice of you. (Goes to the Christmas Tree. A short pause.)
How pretty the red flowers look--. But, tell me, was it really something
very bad that this Krogstad was guilty of?

Helmer. He forged someone's name. Have you any idea what that means?

Nora. Isn't it possible that he was driven to do it by necessity?

Helmer. Yes; or, as in so many cases, by imprudence. I am not so
heartless as to condemn a man altogether because of a single false step
of that kind.

Nora. No, you wouldn't, would you, Torvald?

Helmer. Many a man has been able to retrieve his character, if he has
openly confessed his fault and taken his punishment.

Nora. Punishment--?

Helmer. But Krogstad did nothing of that sort; he got himself out of it
by a cunning trick, and that is why he has gone under altogether.

Nora. But do you think it would--?

Helmer. Just think how a guilty man like that has to lie and play the
hypocrite with every one, how he has to wear a mask in the presence of
those near and dear to him, even before his own wife and children. And
about the children--that is the most terrible part of it all, Nora.

Nora. How?

Helmer. Because such an atmosphere of lies infects and poisons the whole
life of a home. Each breath the children take in such a house is full of
the germs of evil.

Nora (coming nearer him). Are you sure of that?

Helmer. My dear, I have often seen it in the course of my life as a
lawyer. Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has had a
deceitful mother.

Nora. Why do you only say--mother?

Helmer. It seems most commonly to be the mother's influence, though
naturally a bad father's would have the same result. Every lawyer
is familiar with the fact. This Krogstad, now, has been persistently
poisoning his own children with lies and dissimulation; that is why I
say he has lost all moral character. (Holds out his hands to her.) That
is why my sweet little Nora must promise me not to plead his cause. Give
me your hand on it. Come, come, what is this? Give me your hand. There
now, that's settled. I assure you it would be quite impossible for me to
work with him; I literally feel physically ill when I am in the company
of such people.

Nora (takes her hand out of his and goes to the opposite side of the
Christmas Tree). How hot it is in here; and I have such a lot to do.

Helmer (getting up and putting his papers in order). Yes, and I must
try and read through some of these before dinner; and I must think about
your costume, too. And it is just possible I may have something ready
in gold paper to hang up on the Tree. (Puts his hand on her head.) My
precious little singing-bird! (He goes into his room and shuts the door
after him.)

Nora (after a pause, whispers). No, no--it isn't true. It's impossible;
it must be impossible.

(The NURSE opens the door on the left.)

Nurse. The little ones are begging so hard to be allowed to come in to
mamma.

Nora. No, no, no! Don't let them come in to me! You stay with them,
Anne.

Nurse. Very well, ma'am. (Shuts the door.)

Nora (pale with terror). Deprave my little children? Poison my home? (A
short pause. Then she tosses her head.) It's not true. It can't possibly
be true.




ACT II

(THE SAME SCENE.--THE Christmas Tree is in the corner by the piano,
stripped of its ornaments and with burnt-down candle-ends on its
dishevelled branches. NORA'S cloak and hat are lying on the sofa. She
is alone in the room, walking about uneasily. She stops by the sofa and
takes up her cloak.)

Nora (drops her cloak). Someone is coming now! (Goes to the door and
listens.) No--it is no one. Of course, no one will come today, Christmas
Day--nor tomorrow either. But, perhaps--(opens the door and looks out).
No, nothing in the letterbox; it is quite empty. (Comes forward.)
What rubbish! of course he can't be in earnest about it. Such a thing
couldn't happen; it is impossible--I have three little children.

(Enter the NURSE from the room on the left, carrying a big cardboard
box.)

Nurse. At last I have found the box with the fancy dress.

Nora. Thanks; put it on the table.

Nurse (doing so). But it is very much in want of mending.

Nora. I should like to tear it into a hundred thousand pieces.

Nurse. What an idea! It can easily be put in order--just a little
patience.

Nora. Yes, I will go and get Mrs. Linde to come and help me with it.

Nurse. What, out again? In this horrible weather? You will catch cold,
ma'am, and make yourself ill.

Nora. Well, worse than that might happen. How are the children?

Nurse. The poor little souls are playing with their Christmas presents,
but--

Nora. Do they ask much for me?

Nurse. You see, they are so accustomed to have their mamma with them.

Nora. Yes, but, nurse, I shall not be able to be so much with them now
as I was before.

Nurse. Oh well, young children easily get accustomed to anything.

Nora. Do you think so? Do you think they would forget their mother if
she went away altogether?

Nurse. Good heavens!--went away altogether?

Nora. Nurse, I want you to tell me something I have often wondered
about--how could you have the heart to put your own child out among
strangers?

Nurse. I was obliged to, if I wanted to be little Nora's nurse.

Nora. Yes, but how could you be willing to do it?

Nurse. What, when I was going to get such a good place by it? A poor
girl who has got into trouble should be glad to. Besides, that wicked
man didn't do a single thing for me.

Nora. But I suppose your daughter has quite forgotten you.

Nurse. No, indeed she hasn't. She wrote to me when she was confirmed,
and when she was married.

Nora (putting her arms round her neck). Dear old Anne, you were a good
mother to me when I was little.

Nurse. Little Nora, poor dear, had no other mother but me.

Nora. And if my little ones had no other mother, I am sure you
would--What nonsense I am talking! (Opens the box.) Go in to them.
Now I must--. You will see tomorrow how charming I shall look.

Nurse. I am sure there will be no one at the ball so charming as you,
ma'am. (Goes into the room on the left.)

Nora (begins to unpack the box, but soon pushes it away from her). If
only I dared go out. If only no one would come. If only I could be sure
nothing would happen here in the meantime. Stuff and nonsense! No one
will come. Only I mustn't think about it. I will brush my muff. What
lovely, lovely gloves! Out of my thoughts, out of my thoughts! One,
two, three, four, five, six-- (Screams.) Ah! there is someone coming--.
(Makes a movement towards the door, but stands irresolute.)

(Enter MRS. LINDE from the hall, where she has taken off her cloak and
hat.)

Nora. Oh, it's you, Christine. There is no one else out there, is there?
How good of you to come!

Mrs. Linde. I heard you were up asking for me.

Nora. Yes, I was passing by. As a matter of fact, it is something
you could help me with. Let us sit down here on the sofa. Look here.
Tomorrow evening there is to be a fancy-dress ball at the Stenborgs',
who live above us; and Torvald wants me to go as a Neapolitan
fisher-girl, and dance the Tarantella that I learned at Capri.

Mrs. Linde. I see; you are going to keep up the character.

Nora. Yes, Torvald wants me to. Look, here is the dress; Torvald had it
made for me there, but now it is all so torn, and I haven't any idea--

Mrs. Linde. We will easily put that right. It is only some of the
trimming come unsewn here and there. Needle and thread? Now then, that's
all we want.

Nora. It is nice of you.

Mrs. Linde (sewing). So you are going to be dressed up tomorrow Nora.
I will tell you what--I shall come in for a moment and see you in
your fine feathers. But I have completely forgotten to thank you for a
delightful evening yesterday.

Nora (gets up, and crosses the stage). Well, I don't think yesterday was
as pleasant as usual. You ought to have come to town a little earlier,
Christine. Certainly Torvald does understand how to make a house dainty
and attractive.

Mrs. Linde. And so do you, it seems to me; you are not your father's
daughter for nothing. But tell me, is Doctor Rank always as depressed as
he was yesterday?

Nora. No; yesterday it was very noticeable. I must tell you that he
suffers from a very dangerous disease. He has consumption of the spine,
poor creature. His father was a horrible man who committed all sorts
of excesses; and that is why his son was sickly from childhood, do you
understand?

Mrs. Linde (dropping her sewing). But, my dearest Nora, how do you know
anything about such things?

Nora (walking about). Pooh! When you have three children, you get visits
now and then from--from married women, who know something of medical
matters, and they talk about one thing and another.

Mrs. Linde (goes on sewing. A short silence). Does Doctor Rank come here
everyday?

Nora. Everyday regularly. He is Torvald's most intimate friend, and a
great friend of mine too. He is just like one of the family.

Mrs. Linde. But tell me this--is he perfectly sincere? I mean, isn't he
the kind of man that is very anxious to make himself agreeable?

Nora. Not in the least. What makes you think that?

Mrs. Linde. When you introduced him to me yesterday, he declared he had
often heard my name mentioned in this house; but afterwards I noticed
that your husband hadn't the slightest idea who I was. So how could
Doctor Rank--?

Nora. That is quite right, Christine. Torvald is so absurdly fond of me
that he wants me absolutely to himself, as he says. At first he used
to seem almost jealous if I mentioned any of the dear folk at home, so
naturally I gave up doing so. But I often talk about such things with
Doctor Rank, because he likes hearing about them.

Mrs. Linde. Listen to me, Nora. You are still very like a child in many
things, and I am older than you in many ways and have a little more
experience. Let me tell you this--you ought to make an end of it with
Doctor Rank.

Nora. What ought I to make an end of?

Mrs. Linde. Of two things, I think. Yesterday you talked some nonsense
about a rich admirer who was to leave you money--

Nora. An admirer who doesn't exist, unfortunately! But what then?

Mrs. Linde. Is Doctor Rank a man of means?

Nora. Yes, he is.

Mrs. Linde. And has no one to provide for?

Nora. No, no one; but--

Mrs. Linde. And comes here everyday?

Nora. Yes, I told you so.

Mrs. Linde. But how can this well-bred man be so tactless?

Nora. I don't understand you at all.

Mrs. Linde. Don't prevaricate, Nora. Do you suppose I don't guess who
lent you the two hundred and fifty pounds?

Nora. Are you out of your senses? How can you think of such a thing! A
friend of ours, who comes here everyday! Do you realise what a horribly
painful position that would be?

Mrs. Linde. Then it really isn't he?

Nora. No, certainly not. It would never have entered into my head for
a moment. Besides, he had no money to lend then; he came into his money
afterwards.

Mrs. Linde. Well, I think that was lucky for you, my dear Nora.

Nora. No, it would never have come into my head to ask Doctor Rank.
Although I am quite sure that if I had asked him--

Mrs. Linde. But of course you won't.

Nora. Of course not. I have no reason to think it could possibly be
necessary. But I am quite sure that if I told Doctor Rank--

Mrs. Linde. Behind your husband's back?

Nora. I must make an end of it with the other one, and that will be
behind his back too. I must make an end of it with him.

Mrs. Linde. Yes, that is what I told you yesterday, but--

Nora (walking up and down). A man can put a thing like that straight
much easier than a woman--

Mrs. Linde. One's husband, yes.

Nora. Nonsense! (Standing still.) When you pay off a debt you get your
bond back, don't you?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, as a matter of course.

Nora. And can tear it into a hundred thousand pieces, and burn it
up--the nasty dirty paper!

Mrs. Linde (looks hard at her, lays down her sewing and gets up slowly).
Nora, you are concealing something from me.

Nora. Do I look as if I were?

Mrs. Linde. Something has happened to you since yesterday morning. Nora,
what is it?

Nora (going nearer to her). Christine! (Listens.) Hush! there's Torvald
come home. Do you mind going in to the children for the present? Torvald
can't bear to see dressmaking going on. Let Anne help you.

Mrs. Linde (gathering some of the things together). Certainly--but I am
not going away from here until we have had it out with one another. (She
goes into the room on the left, as HELMER comes in from the hall.)

Nora (going up to HELMER). I have wanted you so much, Torvald dear.

Helmer. Was that the dressmaker?

Nora. No, it was Christine; she is helping me to put my dress in order.
You will see I shall look quite smart.

Helmer. Wasn't that a happy thought of mine, now?

Nora. Splendid! But don't you think it is nice of me, too, to do as you
wish?

Helmer. Nice?--because you do as your husband wishes? Well, well, you
little rogue, I am sure you did not mean it in that way. But I am
not going to disturb you; you will want to be trying on your dress, I
expect.

Nora. I suppose you are going to work.

Helmer. Yes. (Shows her a bundle of papers.) Look at that. I have just
been into the bank. (Turns to go into his room.)

Nora. Torvald.

Helmer. Yes.

Nora. If your little squirrel were to ask you for something very, very
prettily--?

Helmer. What then?

Nora. Would you do it?

Helmer. I should like to hear what it is, first.

Nora. Your squirrel would run about and do all her tricks if you would
be nice, and do what she wants.

Helmer. Speak plainly.

Nora. Your skylark would chirp about in every room, with her song rising
and falling--

Helmer. Well, my skylark does that anyhow.

Nora. I would play the fairy and dance for you in the moonlight,
Torvald.

Helmer. Nora--you surely don't mean that request you made to me this
morning?

Nora (going near him). Yes, Torvald, I beg you so earnestly--

Helmer. Have you really the courage to open up that question again?

Nora. Yes, dear, you must do as I ask; you must let Krogstad keep his
post in the bank.

Helmer. My dear Nora, it is his post that I have arranged Mrs. Linde
shall have.

Nora. Yes, you have been awfully kind about that; but you could just as
well dismiss some other clerk instead of Krogstad.

Helmer. This is simply incredible obstinacy! Because you chose to give
him a thoughtless promise that you would speak for him, I am expected
to--

Nora. That isn't the reason, Torvald. It is for your own sake. This
fellow writes in the most scurrilous newspapers; you have told me so
yourself. He can do you an unspeakable amount of harm. I am frightened
to death of him--

Helmer. Ah, I understand; it is recollections of the past that scare
you.

Nora. What do you mean?

Helmer. Naturally you are thinking of your father.

Nora. Yes--yes, of course. Just recall to your mind what these malicious
creatures wrote in the papers about papa, and how horribly they
slandered him. I believe they would have procured his dismissal if the
Department had not sent you over to inquire into it, and if you had not
been so kindly disposed and helpful to him.

Helmer. My little Nora, there is an important difference between your
father and me. Your father's reputation as a public official was not
above suspicion. Mine is, and I hope it will continue to be so, as long
as I hold my office.

Nora. You never can tell what mischief these men may contrive. We ought
to be so well off, so snug and happy here in our peaceful home, and have
no cares--you and I and the children, Torvald! That is why I beg you so
earnestly--

Helmer. And it is just by interceding for him that you make it
impossible for me to keep him. It is already known at the Bank that I
mean to dismiss Krogstad. Is it to get about now that the new manager
has changed his mind at his wife's bidding--

Nora. And what if it did?

Helmer. Of course!--if only this obstinate little person can get her
way! Do you suppose I am going to make myself ridiculous before my whole
staff, to let people think that I am a man to be swayed by all sorts of
outside influence? I should very soon feel the consequences of it, I can
tell you! And besides, there is one thing that makes it quite impossible
for me to have Krogstad in the Bank as long as I am manager.

Nora. Whatever is that?

Helmer. His moral failings I might perhaps have overlooked, if
necessary--

Nora. Yes, you could--couldn't you?

Helmer. And I hear he is a good worker, too. But I knew him when we
were boys. It was one of those rash friendships that so often prove an
incubus in afterlife. I may as well tell you plainly, we were once on
very intimate terms with one another. But this tactless fellow lays no
restraint on himself when other people are present. On the contrary,
he thinks it gives him the right to adopt a familiar tone with me, and
every minute it is "I say, Helmer, old fellow!" and that sort of thing.
I assure you it is extremely painful for me. He would make my position
in the Bank intolerable.

Nora. Torvald, I don't believe you mean that.

Helmer. Don't you? Why not?

Nora. Because it is such a narrow-minded way of looking at things.

Helmer. What are you saying? Narrow-minded? Do you think I am
narrow-minded?

Nora. No, just the opposite, dear--and it is exactly for that reason.

Helmer. It's the same thing. You say my point of view is narrow-minded,
so I must be so too. Narrow-minded! Very well--I must put an end to
this. (Goes to the hall door and calls.) Helen!

Nora. What are you going to do?

Helmer (looking among his papers). Settle it. (Enter MAID.) Look here;
take this letter and go downstairs with it at once. Find a messenger and
tell him to deliver it, and be quick. The address is on it, and here is
the money.

Maid. Very well, sir. (Exit with the letter.)

Helmer (putting his papers together). Now then, little Miss Obstinate.

Nora (breathlessly). Torvald--what was that letter?

Helmer. Krogstad's dismissal.

Nora. Call her back, Torvald! There is still time. Oh Torvald, call her
back! Do it for my sake--for your own sake--for the children's sake! Do
you hear me, Torvald? Call her back! You don't know what that letter can
bring upon us.

Helmer. It's too late.

Nora. Yes, it's too late.

Helmer. My dear Nora, I can forgive the anxiety you are in, although
really it is an insult to me. It is, indeed. Isn't it an insult to think
that I should be afraid of a starving quill-driver's vengeance? But I
forgive you nevertheless, because it is such eloquent witness to your
great love for me. (Takes her in his arms.) And that is as it should be,
my own darling Nora. Come what will, you may be sure I shall have both
courage and strength if they be needed. You will see I am man enough to
take everything upon myself.

Nora (in a horror-stricken voice). What do you mean by that?

Helmer. Everything, I say--

Nora (recovering herself). You will never have to do that.

Helmer. That's right. Well, we will share it, Nora, as man and wife
should. That is how it shall be. (Caressing her.) Are you content now?
There! There!--not these frightened dove's eyes! The whole thing is only
the wildest fancy!--Now, you must go and play through the Tarantella and
practise with your tambourine. I shall go into the inner office and shut
the door, and I shall hear nothing; you can make as much noise as you
please. (Turns back at the door.) And when Rank comes, tell him where he
will find me. (Nods to her, takes his papers and goes into his room, and
shuts the door after him.)

Nora (bewildered with anxiety, stands as if rooted to the spot, and
whispers). He was capable of doing it. He will do it. He will do it in
spite of everything.--No, not that! Never, never! Anything rather than
that! Oh, for some help, some way out of it! (The door-bell rings.)
Doctor Rank! Anything rather than that--anything, whatever it is! (She
puts her hands over her face, pulls herself together, goes to the door
and opens it. RANK is standing without, hanging up his coat. During the
following dialogue it begins to grow dark.)

Nora. Good day, Doctor Rank. I knew your ring. But you mustn't go in to
Torvald now; I think he is busy with something.

Rank. And you?

Nora (brings him in and shuts the door after him). Oh, you know very
well I always have time for you.

Rank. Thank you. I shall make use of as much of it as I can.

Nora. What do you mean by that? As much of it as you can?

Rank. Well, does that alarm you?

Nora. It was such a strange way of putting it. Is anything likely to
happen?

Rank. Nothing but what I have long been prepared for. But I certainly
didn't expect it to happen so soon.

Nora (gripping him by the arm). What have you found out? Doctor Rank,
you must tell me.

Rank (sitting down by the stove). It is all up with me. And it can't be
helped.

Nora (with a sigh of relief). Is it about yourself?

Rank. Who else? It is no use lying to one's self. I am the most wretched
of all my patients, Mrs. Helmer. Lately I have been taking stock of my
internal economy. Bankrupt! Probably within a month I shall lie rotting
in the churchyard.

Nora. What an ugly thing to say!

Rank. The thing itself is cursedly ugly, and the worst of it is that I
shall have to face so much more that is ugly before that. I shall only
make one more examination of myself; when I have done that, I shall know
pretty certainly when it will be that the horrors of dissolution will
begin. There is something I want to tell you. Helmer's refined nature
gives him an unconquerable disgust at everything that is ugly; I won't
have him in my sick-room.

Nora. Oh, but, Doctor Rank--

Rank. I won't have him there. Not on any account. I bar my door to him.
As soon as I am quite certain that the worst has come, I shall send
you my card with a black cross on it, and then you will know that the
loathsome end has begun.

Nora. You are quite absurd today. And I wanted you so much to be in a
really good humour.

Rank. With death stalking beside me?--To have to pay this penalty for
another man's sin? Is there any justice in that? And in every single
family, in one way or another, some such inexorable retribution is being
exacted--

Nora (putting her hands over her ears). Rubbish! Do talk of something
cheerful.

Rank. Oh, it's a mere laughing matter, the whole thing. My poor innocent
spine has to suffer for my father's youthful amusements.

Nora (sitting at the table on the left). I suppose you mean that he was
too partial to asparagus and pate de foie gras, don't you?

Rank. Yes, and to truffles.

Nora. Truffles, yes. And oysters too, I suppose?

Rank. Oysters, of course, that goes without saying.

Nora. And heaps of port and champagne. It is sad that all these nice
things should take their revenge on our bones.

Rank. Especially that they should revenge themselves on the unlucky
bones of those who have not had the satisfaction of enjoying them.

Nora. Yes, that's the saddest part of it all.

Rank (with a searching look at her). Hm!--

Nora (after a short pause). Why did you smile?

Rank. No, it was you that laughed.

Nora. No, it was you that smiled, Doctor Rank!

Rank (rising). You are a greater rascal than I thought.

Nora. I am in a silly mood today.

Rank. So it seems.

Nora (putting her hands on his shoulders). Dear, dear Doctor Rank, death
mustn't take you away from Torvald and me.

Rank. It is a loss you would easily recover from. Those who are gone are
soon forgotten.

Nora (looking at him anxiously). Do you believe that?

Rank. People form new ties, and then--

Nora. Who will form new ties?

Rank. Both you and Helmer, when I am gone. You yourself are already on
the high road to it, I think. What did that Mrs. Linde want here last
night?

Nora. Oho!--you don't mean to say you are jealous of poor Christine?

Rank. Yes, I am. She will be my successor in this house. When I am done
for, this woman will--

Nora. Hush! don't speak so loud. She is in that room.

Rank. Today again. There, you see.

Nora. She has only come to sew my dress for me. Bless my soul, how
unreasonable you are! (Sits down on the sofa.) Be nice now, Doctor Rank,
and tomorrow you will see how beautifully I shall dance, and you can
imagine I am doing it all for you--and for Torvald too, of course.
(Takes various things out of the box.) Doctor Rank, come and sit down
here, and I will show you something.

Rank (sitting down). What is it?

Nora. Just look at those!

Rank. Silk stockings.

Nora. Flesh-coloured. Aren't they lovely? It is so dark here now, but
tomorrow--. No, no, no! you must only look at the feet. Oh well, you may
have leave to look at the legs too.

Rank. Hm!--Nora. Why are you looking so critical? Don't you think they
will fit me?

Rank. I have no means of forming an opinion about that.

Nora (looks at him for a moment). For shame! (Hits him lightly on the
ear with the stockings.) That's to punish you. (Folds them up again.)

Rank. And what other nice things am I to be allowed to see?

Nora. Not a single thing more, for being so naughty. (She looks among
the things, humming to herself.)

Rank (after a short silence). When I am sitting here, talking to you as
intimately as this, I cannot imagine for a moment what would have become
of me if I had never come into this house.

Nora (smiling). I believe you do feel thoroughly at home with us.

Rank (in a lower voice, looking straight in front of him). And to be
obliged to leave it all--

Nora. Nonsense, you are not going to leave it.

Rank (as before). And not be able to leave behind one the slightest
token of one's gratitude, scarcely even a fleeting regret--nothing but
an empty place which the first comer can fill as well as any other.

Nora. And if I asked you now for a--? No!

Rank. For what?

Nora. For a big proof of your friendship--

Rank. Yes, yes!

Nora. I mean a tremendously big favour--

Rank. Would you really make me so happy for once?

Nora. Ah, but you don't know what it is yet.

Rank. No--but tell me.

Nora. I really can't, Doctor Rank. It is something out of all reason; it
means advice, and help, and a favour--

Rank. The bigger a thing it is the better. I can't conceive what it is
you mean. Do tell me. Haven't I your confidence?

Nora. More than anyone else. I know you are my truest and best friend,
and so I will tell you what it is. Well, Doctor Rank, it is something
you must help me to prevent. You know how devotedly, how inexpressibly
deeply Torvald loves me; he would never for a moment hesitate to give
his life for me.

Rank (leaning towards her). Nora--do you think he is the only one--?

Nora (with a slight start). The only one--?

Rank. The only one who would gladly give his life for your sake.

Nora (sadly). Is that it?

Rank. I was determined you should know it before I went away, and there
will never be a better opportunity than this. Now you know it, Nora. And
now you know, too, that you can trust me as you would trust no one else.

Nora (rises, deliberately and quietly). Let me pass.

Rank (makes room for her to pass him, but sits still). Nora!

Nora (at the hall door). Helen, bring in the lamp. (Goes over to the
stove.) Dear Doctor Rank, that was really horrid of you.

Rank. To have loved you as much as anyone else does? Was that horrid?

Nora. No, but to go and tell me so. There was really no need--

Rank. What do you mean? Did you know--? (MAID enters with lamp, puts it
down on the table, and goes out.) Nora--Mrs. Helmer--tell me, had you
any idea of this?

Nora. Oh, how do I know whether I had or whether I hadn't? I really
can't tell you--To think you could be so clumsy, Doctor Rank! We were
getting on so nicely.

Rank. Well, at all events you know now that you can command me, body and
soul. So won't you speak out?

Nora (looking at him). After what happened?

Rank. I beg you to let me know what it is.

Nora. I can't tell you anything now.

Rank. Yes, yes. You mustn't punish me in that way. Let me have
permission to do for you whatever a man may do.

Nora. You can do nothing for me now. Besides, I really don't need any
help at all. You will find that the whole thing is merely fancy on my
part. It really is so--of course it is! (Sits down in the rocking-chair,
and looks at him with a smile.) You are a nice sort of man, Doctor
Rank!--don't you feel ashamed of yourself, now the lamp has come?

Rank. Not a bit. But perhaps I had better go--for ever?

Nora. No, indeed, you shall not. Of course you must come here just as
before. You know very well Torvald can't do without you.

Rank. Yes, but you?

Nora. Oh, I am always tremendously pleased when you come.

Rank. It is just that, that put me on the wrong track. You are a riddle
to me. I have often thought that you would almost as soon be in my
company as in Helmer's.

Nora. Yes--you see there are some people one loves best, and others whom
one would almost always rather have as companions.

Rank. Yes, there is something in that.

Nora. When I was at home, of course I loved papa best. But I always
thought it tremendous fun if I could steal down into the maids' room,
because they never moralised at all, and talked to each other about such
entertaining things.

Rank. I see--it is their place I have taken.

Nora (jumping up and going to him). Oh, dear, nice Doctor Rank, I never
meant that at all. But surely you can understand that being with Torvald
is a little like being with papa--(Enter MAID from the hall.)

Maid. If you please, ma'am. (Whispers and hands her a card.)

Nora (glancing at the card). Oh! (Puts it in her pocket.)

Rank. Is there anything wrong?

Nora. No, no, not in the least. It is only something--it is my new
dress--

Rank. What? Your dress is lying there.

Nora. Oh, yes, that one; but this is another. I ordered it. Torvald
mustn't know about it--

Rank. Oho! Then that was the great secret.

Nora. Of course. Just go in to him; he is sitting in the inner room.
Keep him as long as--

Rank. Make your mind easy; I won't let him escape.

(Goes into HELMER'S room.)

Nora (to the MAID). And he is standing waiting in the kitchen?

Maid. Yes; he came up the back stairs.

Nora. But didn't you tell him no one was in?

Maid. Yes, but it was no good.

Nora. He won't go away?

Maid. No; he says he won't until he has seen you, ma'am.

Nora. Well, let him come in--but quietly. Helen, you mustn't say
anything about it to anyone. It is a surprise for my husband.

Maid. Yes, ma'am, I quite understand. (Exit.)

Nora. This dreadful thing is going to happen! It will happen in spite of
me! No, no, no, it can't happen--it shan't happen! (She bolts the door
of HELMER'S room. The MAID opens the hall door for KROGSTAD and shuts it
after him. He is wearing a fur coat, high boots and a fur cap.)

Nora (advancing towards him). Speak low--my husband is at home.

Krogstad. No matter about that.

Nora. What do you want of me?

Krogstad. An explanation of something.

Nora. Make haste then. What is it?

Krogstad. You know, I suppose, that I have got my dismissal.

Nora. I couldn't prevent it, Mr. Krogstad. I fought as hard as I could
on your side, but it was no good.

Krogstad. Does your husband love you so little, then? He knows what I
can expose you to, and yet he ventures--

Nora. How can you suppose that he has any knowledge of the sort?

Krogstad. I didn't suppose so at all. It would not be the least like our
dear Torvald Helmer to show so much courage--

Nora. Mr. Krogstad, a little respect for my husband, please.

Krogstad. Certainly--all the respect he deserves. But since you have
kept the matter so carefully to yourself, I make bold to suppose that
you have a little clearer idea, than you had yesterday, of what it
actually is that you have done?

Nora. More than you could ever teach me.

Krogstad. Yes, such a bad lawyer as I am.

Nora. What is it you want of me?

Krogstad. Only to see how you were, Mrs. Helmer. I have been thinking
about you all day long. A mere cashier, a quill-driver, a--well, a man
like me--even he has a little of what is called feeling, you know.

Nora. Show it, then; think of my little children.

Krogstad. Have you and your husband thought of mine? But never mind
about that. I only wanted to tell you that you need not take this matter
too seriously. In the first place there will be no accusation made on my
part.

Nora. No, of course not; I was sure of that.

Krogstad. The whole thing can be arranged amicably; there is no reason
why anyone should know anything about it. It will remain a secret
between us three.

Nora. My husband must never get to know anything about it.

Krogstad. How will you be able to prevent it? Am I to understand that
you can pay the balance that is owing?

Nora. No, not just at present.

Krogstad. Or perhaps that you have some expedient for raising the money
soon?

Nora. No expedient that I mean to make use of.

Krogstad. Well, in any case, it would have been of no use to you now. If
you stood there with ever so much money in your hand, I would never part
with your bond.

Nora. Tell me what purpose you mean to put it to.

Krogstad. I shall only preserve it--keep it in my possession. No one who
is not concerned in the matter shall have the slightest hint of it. So
that if the thought of it has driven you to any desperate resolution--

Nora. It has.

Krogstad. If you had it in your mind to run away from your home--

Nora. I had.

Krogstad. Or even something worse--

Nora. How could you know that?

Krogstad. Give up the idea.

Nora. How did you know I had thought of that?

Krogstad. Most of us think of that at first. I did, too--but I hadn't
the courage.

Nora (faintly). No more had I.

Krogstad (in a tone of relief). No, that's it, isn't it--you hadn't the
courage either?

Nora. No, I haven't--I haven't.

Krogstad. Besides, it would have been a great piece of folly. Once the
first storm at home is over--. I have a letter for your husband in my
pocket.

Nora. Telling him everything?

Krogstad. In as lenient a manner as I possibly could.

Nora (quickly). He mustn't get the letter. Tear it up. I will find some
means of getting money.

Krogstad. Excuse me, Mrs. Helmer, but I think I told you just now--

Nora. I am not speaking of what I owe you. Tell me what sum you are
asking my husband for, and I will get the money.

Krogstad. I am not asking your husband for a penny.

Nora. What do you want, then?

Krogstad. I will tell you. I want to rehabilitate myself, Mrs. Helmer; I
want to get on; and in that your husband must help me. For the last year
and a half I have not had a hand in anything dishonourable, amid all
that time I have been struggling in most restricted circumstances. I was
content to work my way up step by step. Now I am turned out, and I am
not going to be satisfied with merely being taken into favour again.
I want to get on, I tell you. I want to get into the Bank again, in a
higher position. Your husband must make a place for me--

Nora. That he will never do!

Krogstad. He will; I know him; he dare not protest. And as soon as I am
in there again with him, then you will see! Within a year I shall be the
manager's right hand. It will be Nils Krogstad and not Torvald Helmer
who manages the Bank.

Nora. That's a thing you will never see!

Krogstad. Do you mean that you will--?

Nora. I have courage enough for it now.

Krogstad. Oh, you can't frighten me. A fine, spoilt lady like you--

Nora. You will see, you will see.

Krogstad. Under the ice, perhaps? Down into the cold, coal-black water?
And then, in the spring, to float up to the surface, all horrible and
unrecognisable, with your hair fallen out--

Nora. You can't frighten me.

Krogstad. Nor you me. People don't do such things, Mrs. Helmer. Besides,
what use would it be? I should have him completely in my power all the
same.

Nora. Afterwards? When I am no longer--

Krogstad. Have you forgotten that it is I who have the keeping of your
reputation? (NORA stands speechlessly looking at him.) Well, now, I have
warned you. Do not do anything foolish. When Helmer has had my letter,
I shall expect a message from him. And be sure you remember that it is
your husband himself who has forced me into such ways as this again. I
will never forgive him for that. Goodbye, Mrs. Helmer. (Exit through the
hall.)

Nora (goes to the hall door, opens it slightly and listens.) He is
going. He is not putting the letter in the box. Oh no, no! that's
impossible! (Opens the door by degrees.) What is that? He is standing
outside. He is not going downstairs. Is he hesitating? Can he--? (A
letter drops into the box; then KROGSTAD'S footsteps are heard, until
they die away as he goes downstairs. NORA utters a stifled cry, and runs
across the room to the table by the sofa. A short pause.)

Nora. In the letter-box. (Steals across to the hall door.) There it
lies--Torvald, Torvald, there is no hope for us now!

(Mrs. LINDE comes in from the room on the left, carrying the dress.)

Mrs. Linde. There, I can't see anything more to mend now. Would you like
to try it on--?

Nora (in a hoarse whisper). Christine, come here.

Mrs. Linde (throwing the dress down on the sofa). What is the matter
with you? You look so agitated!

Nora. Come here. Do you see that letter? There, look--you can see it
through the glass in the letter-box.

Mrs. Linde. Yes, I see it.

Nora. That letter is from Krogstad.

Mrs. Linde. Nora--it was Krogstad who lent you the money!

Nora. Yes, and now Torvald will know all about it.

Mrs. Linde. Believe me, Nora, that's the best thing for both of you.

Nora. You don't know all. I forged a name.

Mrs. Linde. Good heavens--!

Nora. I only want to say this to you, Christine--you must be my witness.

Mrs. Linde. Your witness? What do you mean? What am I to--?

Nora. If I should go out of my mind--and it might easily happen--

Mrs. Linde. Nora!

Nora. Or if anything else should happen to me--anything, for instance,
that might prevent my being here--

Mrs. Linde. Nora! Nora! you are quite out of your mind.

Nora. And if it should happen that there were some one who wanted to
take all the responsibility, all the blame, you understand--

Mrs. Linde. Yes, yes--but how can you suppose--?

Nora. Then you must be my witness, that it is not true, Christine. I am
not out of my mind at all; I am in my right senses now, and I tell you
no one else has known anything about it; I, and I alone, did the whole
thing. Remember that.

Mrs. Linde. I will, indeed. But I don't understand all this.

Nora. How should you understand it? A wonderful thing is going to
happen!

Mrs. Linde. A wonderful thing?

Nora. Yes, a wonderful thing!--But it is so terrible, Christine; it
mustn't happen, not for all the world.

Mrs. Linde. I will go at once and see Krogstad.

Nora. Don't go to him; he will do you some harm.

Mrs. Linde. There was a time when he would gladly do anything for my
sake.

Nora. He?

Mrs. Linde. Where does he live?

Nora. How should I know--? Yes (feeling in her pocket), here is his
card. But the letter, the letter--!

Helmer (calls from his room, knocking at the door). Nora! Nora (cries
out anxiously). Oh, what's that? What do you want?

Helmer. Don't be so frightened. We are not coming in; you have locked
the door. Are you trying on your dress?

Nora. Yes, that's it. I look so nice, Torvald.

Mrs. Linde (who has read the card). I see he lives at the corner here.

Nora. Yes, but it's no use. It is hopeless. The letter is lying there in
the box.

Mrs. Linde. And your husband keeps the key?

Nora. Yes, always.

Mrs. Linde. Krogstad must ask for his letter back unread, he must find
some pretence--

Nora. But it is just at this time that Torvald generally--

Mrs. Linde. You must delay him. Go in to him in the meantime. I will
come back as soon as I can. (She goes out hurriedly through the hall
door.)

Nora (goes to HELMER'S door, opens it and peeps in). Torvald!

Helmer (from the inner room). Well? May I venture at last to come into
my own room again? Come along, Rank, now you will see-- (Halting in the
doorway.) But what is this?

Nora. What is what, dear?

Helmer. Rank led me to expect a splendid transformation.

Rank (in the doorway). I understood so, but evidently I was mistaken.

Nora. Yes, nobody is to have the chance of admiring me in my dress until
tomorrow.

Helmer. But, my dear Nora, you look so worn out. Have you been
practising too much?

Nora. No, I have not practised at all.

Helmer. But you will need to--

Nora. Yes, indeed I shall, Torvald. But I can't get on a bit without you
to help me; I have absolutely forgotten the whole thing.

Helmer. Oh, we will soon work it up again.

Nora. Yes, help me, Torvald. Promise that you will! I am so nervous
about it--all the people--. You must give yourself up to me entirely
this evening. Not the tiniest bit of business--you mustn't even take a
pen in your hand. Will you promise, Torvald dear?

Helmer. I promise. This evening I will be wholly and absolutely at your
service, you helpless little mortal. Ah, by the way, first of all I will
just--(Goes towards the hall door.)

Nora. What are you going to do there?

Helmer. Only see if any letters have come.

Nora. No, no! don't do that, Torvald!

Helmer. Why not?

Nora. Torvald, please don't. There is nothing there.

Helmer. Well, let me look. (Turns to go to the letter-box. NORA, at
the piano, plays the first bars of the Tarantella. HELMER stops in the
doorway.) Aha!

Nora. I can't dance tomorrow if I don't practise with you.

Helmer (going up to her). Are you really so afraid of it, dear?

Nora. Yes, so dreadfully afraid of it. Let me practise at once; there
is time now, before we go to dinner. Sit down and play for me, Torvald
dear; criticise me, and correct me as you play.

Helmer. With great pleasure, if you wish me to. (Sits down at the
piano.)

Nora (takes out of the box a tambourine and a long variegated shawl. She
hastily drapes the shawl round her. Then she springs to the front of the
stage and calls out). Now play for me! I am going to dance!

(HELMER plays and NORA dances. RANK stands by the piano behind HELMER,
and looks on.)

Helmer (as he plays). Slower, slower!

Nora. I can't do it any other way.

Helmer. Not so violently, Nora!

Nora. This is the way.

Helmer (stops playing). No, no--that is not a bit right.

Nora (laughing and swinging the tambourine). Didn't I tell you so?

Rank. Let me play for her.

Helmer (getting up). Yes, do. I can correct her better then.

(RANK sits down at the piano and plays. NORA dances more and more
wildly. HELMER has taken up a position beside the stove, and during her
dance gives her frequent instructions. She does not seem to hear him;
her hair comes down and falls over her shoulders; she pays no attention
to it, but goes on dancing. Enter Mrs. LINDE.)

Mrs. Linde (standing as if spell-bound in the doorway). Oh!--

Nora (as she dances). Such fun, Christine!

Helmer. My dear darling Nora, you are dancing as if your life depended
on it.

Nora. So it does.

Helmer. Stop, Rank; this is sheer madness. Stop, I tell you! (RANK stops
playing, and NORA suddenly stands still. HELMER goes up to her.) I could
never have believed it. You have forgotten everything I taught you.

Nora (throwing away the tambourine). There, you see.

Helmer. You will want a lot of coaching.

Nora. Yes, you see how much I need it. You must coach me up to the last
minute. Promise me that, Torvald!

Helmer. You can depend on me.

Nora. You must not think of anything but me, either today or tomorrow;
you mustn't open a single letter--not even open the letter-box--

Helmer. Ah, you are still afraid of that fellow--

Nora. Yes, indeed I am.

Helmer. Nora, I can tell from your looks that there is a letter from him
lying there.

Nora. I don't know; I think there is; but you must not read anything
of that kind now. Nothing horrid must come between us until this is all
over.

Rank (whispers to HELMER). You mustn't contradict her.

Helmer (taking her in his arms). The child shall have her way. But
tomorrow night, after you have danced--

Nora. Then you will be free. (The MAID appears in the doorway to the
right.)

Maid. Dinner is served, ma'am.

Nora. We will have champagne, Helen.

Maid. Very good, ma'am. [Exit.

Helmer. Hullo!--are we going to have a banquet?

Nora. Yes, a champagne banquet until the small hours. (Calls out.) And a
few macaroons, Helen--lots, just for once!

Helmer. Come, come, don't be so wild and nervous. Be my own little
skylark, as you used.

Nora. Yes, dear, I will. But go in now and you too, Doctor Rank.
Christine, you must help me to do up my hair.

Rank (whispers to HELMER as they go out). I suppose there is
nothing--she is not expecting anything?

Helmer. Far from it, my dear fellow; it is simply nothing more than this
childish nervousness I was telling you of. (They go into the right-hand
room.)

Nora. Well!

Mrs. Linde. Gone out of town.

Nora. I could tell from your face.

Mrs. Linde. He is coming home tomorrow evening. I wrote a note for him.

Nora. You should have let it alone; you must prevent nothing. After all,
it is splendid to be waiting for a wonderful thing to happen.

Mrs. Linde. What is it that you are waiting for?

Nora. Oh, you wouldn't understand. Go in to them, I will come in a
moment. (Mrs. LINDE goes into the dining-room. NORA stands still for a
little while, as if to compose herself. Then she looks at her watch.)
Five o'clock. Seven hours until midnight; and then four-and-twenty hours
until the next midnight. Then the Tarantella will be over. Twenty-four
and seven? Thirty-one hours to live.

Helmer (from the doorway on the right). Where's my little skylark?

Nora (going to him with her arms outstretched). Here she is!




ACT III

(THE SAME SCENE.--The table has been placed in the middle of the stage,
with chairs around it. A lamp is burning on the table. The door into the
hall stands open. Dance music is heard in the room above. Mrs. LINDE is
sitting at the table idly turning over the leaves of a book; she tries
to read, but does not seem able to collect her thoughts. Every now and
then she listens intently for a sound at the outer door.)

Mrs. Linde (looking at her watch). Not yet--and the time is nearly up.
If only he does not--. (Listens again.) Ah, there he is. (Goes into the
hall and opens the outer door carefully. Light footsteps are heard on
the stairs. She whispers.) Come in. There is no one here.

Krogstad (in the doorway). I found a note from you at home. What does
this mean?

Mrs. Linde. It is absolutely necessary that I should have a talk with
you.

Krogstad. Really? And is it absolutely necessary that it should be here?

Mrs. Linde. It is impossible where I live; there is no private entrance
to my rooms. Come in; we are quite alone. The maid is asleep, and the
Helmers are at the dance upstairs.

Krogstad (coming into the room). Are the Helmers really at a dance
tonight?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, why not?

Krogstad. Certainly--why not?

Mrs. Linde. Now, Nils, let us have a talk.

Krogstad. Can we two have anything to talk about?

Mrs. Linde. We have a great deal to talk about.

Krogstad. I shouldn't have thought so.

Mrs. Linde. No, you have never properly understood me.

Krogstad. Was there anything else to understand except what was obvious
to all the world--a heartless woman jilts a man when a more lucrative
chance turns up?

Mrs. Linde. Do you believe I am as absolutely heartless as all that? And
do you believe that I did it with a light heart?

Krogstad. Didn't you?

Mrs. Linde. Nils, did you really think that?

Krogstad. If it were as you say, why did you write to me as you did at
the time?

Mrs. Linde. I could do nothing else. As I had to break with you, it was
my duty also to put an end to all that you felt for me.

Krogstad (wringing his hands). So that was it. And all this--only for
the sake of money!

Mrs. Linde. You must not forget that I had a helpless mother and two
little brothers. We couldn't wait for you, Nils; your prospects seemed
hopeless then.

Krogstad. That may be so, but you had no right to throw me over for
anyone else's sake.

Mrs. Linde. Indeed I don't know. Many a time did I ask myself if I had
the right to do it.

Krogstad (more gently). When I lost you, it was as if all the solid
ground went from under my feet. Look at me now--I am a shipwrecked man
clinging to a bit of wreckage.

Mrs. Linde. But help may be near.

Krogstad. It was near; but then you came and stood in my way.

Mrs. Linde. Unintentionally, Nils. It was only today that I learned it
was your place I was going to take in the Bank.

Krogstad. I believe you, if you say so. But now that you know it, are
you not going to give it up to me?

Mrs. Linde. No, because that would not benefit you in the least.

Krogstad. Oh, benefit, benefit--I would have done it whether or no.

Mrs. Linde. I have learned to act prudently. Life, and hard, bitter
necessity have taught me that.

Krogstad. And life has taught me not to believe in fine speeches.

Mrs. Linde. Then life has taught you something very reasonable. But
deeds you must believe in?

Krogstad. What do you mean by that?

Mrs. Linde. You said you were like a shipwrecked man clinging to some
wreckage.

Krogstad. I had good reason to say so.

Mrs. Linde. Well, I am like a shipwrecked woman clinging to some
wreckage--no one to mourn for, no one to care for.

Krogstad. It was your own choice.

Mrs. Linde. There was no other choice--then.

Krogstad. Well, what now?

Mrs. Linde. Nils, how would it be if we two shipwrecked people could
join forces?

Krogstad. What are you saying?

Mrs. Linde. Two on the same piece of wreckage would stand a better
chance than each on their own.

Krogstad. Christine I...

Mrs. Linde. What do you suppose brought me to town?

Krogstad. Do you mean that you gave me a thought?

Mrs. Linde. I could not endure life without work. All my life, as long
as I can remember, I have worked, and it has been my greatest and
only pleasure. But now I am quite alone in the world--my life is so
dreadfully empty and I feel so forsaken. There is not the least pleasure
in working for one's self. Nils, give me someone and something to work
for.

Krogstad. I don't trust that. It is nothing but a woman's overstrained
sense of generosity that prompts you to make such an offer of yourself.

Mrs. Linde. Have you ever noticed anything of the sort in me?

Krogstad. Could you really do it? Tell me--do you know all about my past
life?

Mrs. Linde. Yes.

Krogstad. And do you know what they think of me here?

Mrs. Linde. You seemed to me to imply that with me you might have been
quite another man.

Krogstad. I am certain of it.

Mrs. Linde. Is it too late now?

Krogstad. Christine, are you saying this deliberately? Yes, I am sure
you are. I see it in your face. Have you really the courage, then--?

Mrs. Linde. I want to be a mother to someone, and your children need
a mother. We two need each other. Nils, I have faith in your real
character--I can dare anything together with you.

Krogstad (grasps her hands). Thanks, thanks, Christine! Now I shall find
a way to clear myself in the eyes of the world. Ah, but I forgot--

Mrs. Linde (listening). Hush! The Tarantella! Go, go!

Krogstad. Why? What is it?

Mrs. Linde. Do you hear them up there? When that is over, we may expect
them back.

Krogstad. Yes, yes--I will go. But it is all no use. Of course you are
not aware what steps I have taken in the matter of the Helmers.

Mrs. Linde. Yes, I know all about that.

Krogstad. And in spite of that have you the courage to--?

Mrs. Linde. I understand very well to what lengths a man like you might
be driven by despair.

Krogstad. If I could only undo what I have done!

Mrs. Linde. You cannot. Your letter is lying in the letter-box now.

Krogstad. Are you sure of that?

Mrs. Linde. Quite sure, but--

Krogstad (with a searching look at her). Is that what it all
means?--that you want to save your friend at any cost? Tell me frankly.
Is that it?

Mrs. Linde. Nils, a woman who has once sold herself for another's sake,
doesn't do it a second time.

Krogstad. I will ask for my letter back.

Mrs. Linde. No, no.

Krogstad. Yes, of course I will. I will wait here until Helmer comes; I
will tell him he must give me my letter back--that it only concerns my
dismissal--that he is not to read it--

Mrs. Linde. No, Nils, you must not recall your letter.

Krogstad. But, tell me, wasn't it for that very purpose that you asked
me to meet you here?

Mrs. Linde. In my first moment of fright, it was. But twenty-four hours
have elapsed since then, and in that time I have witnessed incredible
things in this house. Helmer must know all about it. This unhappy secret
must be disclosed; they must have a complete understanding between them,
which is impossible with all this concealment and falsehood going on.

Krogstad. Very well, if you will take the responsibility. But there is
one thing I can do in any case, and I shall do it at once.

Mrs. Linde (listening). You must be quick and go! The dance is over; we
are not safe a moment longer.

Krogstad. I will wait for you below.

Mrs. Linde. Yes, do. You must see me back to my door...

Krogstad. I have never had such an amazing piece of good fortune in my
life! (Goes out through the outer door. The door between the room and
the hall remains open.)

Mrs. Linde (tidying up the room and laying her hat and cloak ready).
What a difference! what a difference! Someone to work for and live
for--a home to bring comfort into. That I will do, indeed. I wish they
would be quick and come--(Listens.) Ah, there they are now. I must put
on my things. (Takes up her hat and cloak. HELMER'S and NORA'S voices
are heard outside; a key is turned, and HELMER brings NORA almost by
force into the hall. She is in an Italian costume with a large black
shawl around her; he is in evening dress, and a black domino which is
flying open.)

Nora (hanging back in the doorway, and struggling with him). No, no,
no!--don't take me in. I want to go upstairs again; I don't want to
leave so early.

Helmer. But, my dearest Nora--

Nora. Please, Torvald dear--please, please--only an hour more.

Helmer. Not a single minute, my sweet Nora. You know that was our
agreement. Come along into the room; you are catching cold standing
there. (He brings her gently into the room, in spite of her resistance.)

Mrs. Linde. Good evening.

Nora. Christine!

Helmer. You here, so late, Mrs. Linde?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, you must excuse me; I was so anxious to see Nora in her
dress.

Nora. Have you been sitting here waiting for me?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, unfortunately I came too late, you had already gone
upstairs; and I thought I couldn't go away again without having seen
you.

Helmer (taking off NORA'S shawl). Yes, take a good look at her. I think
she is worth looking at. Isn't she charming, Mrs. Linde?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, indeed she is.

Helmer. Doesn't she look remarkably pretty? Everyone thought so at the
dance. But she is terribly self-willed, this sweet little person. What
are we to do with her? You will hardly believe that I had almost to
bring her away by force.

Nora. Torvald, you will repent not having let me stay, even if it were
only for half an hour.

Helmer. Listen to her, Mrs. Linde! She had danced her Tarantella, and
it had been a tremendous success, as it deserved--although possibly the
performance was a trifle too realistic--a little more so, I mean, than
was strictly compatible with the limitations of art. But never mind
about that! The chief thing is, she had made a success--she had made
a tremendous success. Do you think I was going to let her remain there
after that, and spoil the effect? No, indeed! I took my charming little
Capri maiden--my capricious little Capri maiden, I should say--on my
arm; took one quick turn round the room; a curtsey on either side, and,
as they say in novels, the beautiful apparition disappeared. An exit
ought always to be effective, Mrs. Linde; but that is what I cannot make
Nora understand. Pooh! this room is hot. (Throws his domino on a chair,
and opens the door of his room.) Hullo! it's all dark in here. Oh, of
course--excuse me--. (He goes in, and lights some candles.)

Nora (in a hurried and breathless whisper). Well?

Mrs. Linde (in a low voice). I have had a talk with him.

Nora. Yes, and--

Mrs. Linde. Nora, you must tell your husband all about it.

Nora (in an expressionless voice). I knew it.

Mrs. Linde. You have nothing to be afraid of as far as Krogstad is
concerned; but you must tell him.

Nora. I won't tell him.

Mrs. Linde. Then the letter will.

Nora. Thank you, Christine. Now I know what I must do. Hush--!

Helmer (coming in again). Well, Mrs. Linde, have you admired her?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, and now I will say goodnight.

Helmer. What, already? Is this yours, this knitting?

Mrs. Linde (taking it). Yes, thank you, I had very nearly forgotten it.

Helmer. So you knit?

Mrs. Linde. Of course.

Helmer. Do you know, you ought to embroider.

Mrs. Linde. Really? Why?

Helmer. Yes, it's far more becoming. Let me show you. You hold
the embroidery thus in your left hand, and use the needle with the
right--like this--with a long, easy sweep. Do you see?

Mrs. Linde. Yes, perhaps--

Helmer. But in the case of knitting--that can never be anything but
ungraceful; look here--the arms close together, the knitting-needles
going up and down--it has a sort of Chinese effect--. That was really
excellent champagne they gave us.

Mrs. Linde. Well,--goodnight, Nora, and don't be self-willed any more.

Helmer. That's right, Mrs. Linde.

Mrs. Linde. Goodnight, Mr. Helmer.

Helmer (accompanying her to the door). Goodnight, goodnight. I hope you
will get home all right. I should be very happy to--but you haven't any
great distance to go. Goodnight, goodnight. (She goes out; he shuts the
door after her, and comes in again.) Ah!--at last we have got rid of
her. She is a frightful bore, that woman.

Nora. Aren't you very tired, Torvald?

Helmer. No, not in the least.

Nora. Nor sleepy?

Helmer. Not a bit. On the contrary, I feel extraordinarily lively. And
you?--you really look both tired and sleepy.

Nora. Yes, I am very tired. I want to go to sleep at once.

Helmer. There, you see it was quite right of me not to let you stay
there any longer.

Nora. Everything you do is quite right, Torvald.

Helmer (kissing her on the forehead). Now my little skylark is speaking
reasonably. Did you notice what good spirits Rank was in this evening?

Nora. Really? Was he? I didn't speak to him at all.

Helmer. And I very little, but I have not for a long time seen him in
such good form. (Looks for a while at her and then goes nearer to her.)
It is delightful to be at home by ourselves again, to be all alone with
you--you fascinating, charming little darling!

Nora. Don't look at me like that, Torvald.

Helmer. Why shouldn't I look at my dearest treasure?--at all the beauty
that is mine, all my very own?

Nora (going to the other side of the table). You mustn't say things like
that to me tonight.

Helmer (following her). You have still got the Tarantella in your blood,
I see. And it makes you more captivating than ever. Listen--the guests
are beginning to go now. (In a lower voice.) Nora--soon the whole house
will be quiet.

Nora. Yes, I hope so.

Helmer. Yes, my own darling Nora. Do you know, when I am out at a party
with you like this, why I speak so little to you, keep away from you,
and only send a stolen glance in your direction now and then?--do you
know why I do that? It is because I make believe to myself that we are
secretly in love, and you are my secretly promised bride, and that no
one suspects there is anything between us.

Nora. Yes, yes--I know very well your thoughts are with me all the time.

Helmer. And when we are leaving, and I am putting the shawl over your
beautiful young shoulders--on your lovely neck--then I imagine that you
are my young bride and that we have just come from the wedding, and I am
bringing you for the first time into our home--to be alone with you for
the first time--quite alone with my shy little darling! All this evening
I have longed for nothing but you. When I watched the seductive figures
of the Tarantella, my blood was on fire; I could endure it no longer,
and that was why I brought you down so early--

Nora. Go away, Torvald! You must let me go. I won't--

Helmer. What's that? You're joking, my little Nora! You won't--you
won't? Am I not your husband--? (A knock is heard at the outer door.)

Nora (starting). Did you hear--?

Helmer (going into the hall). Who is it?

Rank (outside). It is I. May I come in for a moment?

Helmer (in a fretful whisper). Oh, what does he want now? (Aloud.) Wait
a minute! (Unlocks the door.) Come, that's kind of you not to pass by
our door.

Rank. I thought I heard your voice, and felt as if I should like to look
in. (With a swift glance round.) Ah, yes!--these dear familiar rooms.
You are very happy and cosy in here, you two.

Helmer. It seems to me that you looked after yourself pretty well
upstairs too.

Rank. Excellently. Why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't one enjoy everything
in this world?--at any rate as much as one can, and as long as one can.
The wine was capital--

Helmer. Especially the champagne.

Rank. So you noticed that too? It is almost incredible how much I
managed to put away!

Nora. Torvald drank a great deal of champagne tonight too.

Rank. Did he?

Nora. Yes, and he is always in such good spirits afterwards.

Rank. Well, why should one not enjoy a merry evening after a well-spent
day?

Helmer. Well spent? I am afraid I can't take credit for that.

Rank (clapping him on the back). But I can, you know!

Nora. Doctor Rank, you must have been occupied with some scientific
investigation today.

Rank. Exactly.

Helmer. Just listen!--little Nora talking about scientific
investigations!

Nora. And may I congratulate you on the result?

Rank. Indeed you may.

Nora. Was it favourable, then?

Rank. The best possible, for both doctor and patient--certainty.

Nora (quickly and searchingly). Certainty?

Rank. Absolute certainty. So wasn't I entitled to make a merry evening
of it after that?

Nora. Yes, you certainly were, Doctor Rank. Helmer. I think so too, so
long as you don't have to pay for it in the morning.

Rank. Oh well, one can't have anything in this life without paying for
it.

Nora. Doctor Rank--are you fond of fancy-dress balls?

Rank. Yes, if there is a fine lot of pretty costumes.

Nora. Tell me--what shall we two wear at the next?

Helmer. Little featherbrain!--are you thinking of the next already?

Rank. We two? Yes, I can tell you. You shall go as a good fairy--

Helmer. Yes, but what do you suggest as an appropriate costume for that?

Rank. Let your wife go dressed just as she is in everyday life.

Helmer. That was really very prettily turned. But can't you tell us what
you will be?

Rank. Yes, my dear friend, I have quite made up my mind about that.

Helmer. Well?

Rank. At the next fancy-dress ball I shall be invisible.

Helmer. That's a good joke!

Rank. There is a big black hat--have you never heard of hats that make
you invisible? If you put one on, no one can see you.

Helmer (suppressing a smile). Yes, you are quite right.

Rank. But I am clean forgetting what I came for. Helmer, give me a
cigar--one of the dark Havanas.

Helmer. With the greatest pleasure. (Offers him his case.)

Rank (takes a cigar and cuts off the end). Thanks.

Nora (striking a match). Let me give you a light.

Rank. Thank you. (She holds the match for him to light his cigar.) And
now goodbye!

Helmer. Goodbye, goodbye, dear old man!

Nora. Sleep well, Doctor Rank.

Rank. Thank you for that wish.

Nora. Wish me the same.

Rank. You? Well, if you want me to sleep well! And thanks for the light.
(He nods to them both and goes out.)

Helmer (in a subdued voice). He has drunk more than he ought.

Nora (absently). Maybe. (HELMER takes a bunch of keys out of his pocket
and goes into the hall.) Torvald! what are you going to do there?

Helmer. Emptying the letter-box; it is quite full; there will be no room
to put the newspaper in tomorrow morning.

Nora. Are you going to work tonight?

Helmer. You know quite well I'm not. What is this? Someone has been at
the lock.

Nora. At the lock--?

Helmer. Yes, someone has. What can it mean? I should never have thought
the maid--. Here is a broken hairpin. Nora, it is one of yours.

Nora (quickly). Then it must have been the children--

Helmer. Then you must get them out of those ways. There, at last I have
got it open. (Takes out the contents of the letter-box, and calls to the
kitchen.) Helen!--Helen, put out the light over the front door. (Goes
back into the room and shuts the door into the hall. He holds out his
hand full of letters.) Look at that--look what a heap of them there
are. (Turning them over.) What on earth is that?

Nora (at the window). The letter--No! Torvald, no!

Helmer. Two cards--of Rank's.

Nora. Of Doctor Rank's?

Helmer (looking at them). Doctor Rank. They were on the top. He must
have put them in when he went out.

Nora. Is there anything written on them?

Helmer. There is a black cross over the name. Look there--what an
uncomfortable idea! It looks as if he were announcing his own death.

Nora. It is just what he is doing.

Helmer. What? Do you know anything about it? Has he said anything to
you?

Nora. Yes. He told me that when the cards came it would be his
leave-taking from us. He means to shut himself up and die.

Helmer. My poor old friend! Certainly I knew we should not have him very
long with us. But so soon! And so he hides himself away like a wounded
animal.

Nora. If it has to happen, it is best it should be without a word--don't
you think so, Torvald?

Helmer (walking up and down). He had so grown into our lives. I can't
think of him as having gone out of them. He, with his sufferings and his
loneliness, was like a cloudy background to our sunlit happiness. Well,
perhaps it is best so. For him, anyway. (Standing still.) And perhaps
for us too, Nora. We two are thrown quite upon each other now. (Puts his
arms round her.) My darling wife, I don't feel as if I could hold you
tight enough. Do you know, Nora, I have often wished that you might be
threatened by some great danger, so that I might risk my life's blood,
and everything, for your sake.

Nora (disengages herself, and says firmly and decidedly). Now you must
read your letters, Torvald.

Helmer. No, no; not tonight. I want to be with you, my darling wife.

Nora. With the thought of your friend's death--

Helmer. You are right, it has affected us both. Something ugly has come
between us--the thought of the horrors of death. We must try and rid our
minds of that. Until then--we will each go to our own room.

Nora (hanging on his neck). Goodnight, Torvald--Goodnight!

Helmer (kissing her on the forehead). Goodnight, my little singing-bird.
Sleep sound, Nora. Now I will read my letters through. (He takes his
letters and goes into his room, shutting the door after him.)

Nora (gropes distractedly about, seizes HELMER'S domino, throws it round
her, while she says in quick, hoarse, spasmodic whispers). Never to see
him again. Never! Never! (Puts her shawl over her head.) Never to see
my children again either--never again. Never! Never!--Ah! the icy, black
water--the unfathomable depths--If only it were over! He has got it
now--now he is reading it. Goodbye, Torvald and my children! (She is
about to rush out through the hall, when HELMER opens his door hurriedly
and stands with an open letter in his hand.)

Helmer. Nora!

Nora. Ah!--

Helmer. What is this? Do you know what is in this letter?

Nora. Yes, I know. Let me go! Let me get out!

Helmer (holding her back). Where are you going?

Nora (trying to get free). You shan't save me, Torvald!

Helmer (reeling). True? Is this true, that I read here? Horrible! No,
no--it is impossible that it can be true.

Nora. It is true. I have loved you above everything else in the world.

Helmer. Oh, don't let us have any silly excuses.

Nora (taking a step towards him). Torvald--!

Helmer. Miserable creature--what have you done?

Nora. Let me go. You shall not suffer for my sake. You shall not take it
upon yourself.

Helmer. No tragic airs, please. (Locks the hall door.) Here you shall
stay and give me an explanation. Do you understand what you have done?
Answer me! Do you understand what you have done?

Nora (looks steadily at him and says with a growing look of coldness in
her face). Yes, now I am beginning to understand thoroughly.

Helmer (walking about the room). What a horrible awakening! All these
eight years--she who was my joy and pride--a hypocrite, a liar--worse,
worse--a criminal! The unutterable ugliness of it all!--For shame! For
shame! (NORA is silent and looks steadily at him. He stops in front of
her.) I ought to have suspected that something of the sort would happen.
I ought to have foreseen it. All your father's want of principle--be
silent!--all your father's want of principle has come out in you. No
religion, no morality, no sense of duty--. How I am punished for having
winked at what he did! I did it for your sake, and this is how you repay
me.

Nora. Yes, that's just it.

Helmer. Now you have destroyed all my happiness. You have ruined all my
future. It is horrible to think of! I am in the power of an unscrupulous
man; he can do what he likes with me, ask anything he likes of me, give
me any orders he pleases--I dare not refuse. And I must sink to such
miserable depths because of a thoughtless woman!

Nora. When I am out of the way, you will be free.

Helmer. No fine speeches, please. Your father had always plenty of those
ready, too. What good would it be to me if you were out of the way, as
you say? Not the slightest. He can make the affair known everywhere; and
if he does, I may be falsely suspected of having been a party to your
criminal action. Very likely people will think I was behind it all--that
it was I who prompted you! And I have to thank you for all this--you
whom I have cherished during the whole of our married life. Do you
understand now what it is you have done for me?

Nora (coldly and quietly). Yes.

Helmer. It is so incredible that I can't take it in. But we must come to
some understanding. Take off that shawl. Take it off, I tell you. I must
try and appease him some way or another. The matter must be hushed up at
any cost. And as for you and me, it must appear as if everything between
us were just as before--but naturally only in the eyes of the world. You
will still remain in my house, that is a matter of course. But I shall
not allow you to bring up the children; I dare not trust them to you.
To think that I should be obliged to say so to one whom I have loved
so dearly, and whom I still--. No, that is all over. From this moment
happiness is not the question; all that concerns us is to save the
remains, the fragments, the appearance--

(A ring is heard at the front-door bell.)

Helmer (with a start). What is that? So late! Can the worst--? Can he--?
Hide yourself, Nora. Say you are ill.

(NORA stands motionless. HELMER goes and unlocks the hall door.)

Maid (half-dressed, comes to the door). A letter for the mistress.

Helmer. Give it to me. (Takes the letter, and shuts the door.) Yes, it
is from him. You shall not have it; I will read it myself.

Nora. Yes, read it.

Helmer (standing by the lamp). I scarcely have the courage to do it. It
may mean ruin for both of us. No, I must know. (Tears open the letter,
runs his eye over a few lines, looks at a paper enclosed, and gives a
shout of joy.) Nora! (She looks at him questioningly.) Nora!--No, I must
read it once again--. Yes, it is true! I am saved! Nora, I am saved!

Nora. And I?

Helmer. You too, of course; we are both saved, both you and I. Look, he
sends you your bond back. He says he regrets and repents--that a happy
change in his life--never mind what he says! We are saved, Nora! No one
can do anything to you. Oh, Nora, Nora!--no, first I must destroy these
hateful things. Let me see--. (Takes a look at the bond.) No, no, I
won't look at it. The whole thing shall be nothing but a bad dream to
me. (Tears up the bond and both letters, throws them all into the stove,
and watches them burn.) There--now it doesn't exist any longer. He says
that since Christmas Eve you--. These must have been three dreadful days
for you, Nora.

Nora. I have fought a hard fight these three days.

Helmer. And suffered agonies, and seen no way out but--. No, we won't
call any of the horrors to mind. We will only shout with joy, and keep
saying, "It's all over! It's all over!" Listen to me, Nora. You don't
seem to realise that it is all over. What is this?--such a cold, set
face! My poor little Nora, I quite understand; you don't feel as if you
could believe that I have forgiven you. But it is true, Nora, I swear
it; I have forgiven you everything. I know that what you did, you did
out of love for me.

Nora. That is true.

Helmer. You have loved me as a wife ought to love her husband. Only you
had not sufficient knowledge to judge of the means you used. But do you
suppose you are any the less dear to me, because you don't understand
how to act on your own responsibility? No, no; only lean on me; I
will advise you and direct you. I should not be a man if this womanly
helplessness did not just give you a double attractiveness in my eyes.
You must not think anymore about the hard things I said in my first
moment of consternation, when I thought everything was going to
overwhelm me. I have forgiven you, Nora; I swear to you I have forgiven
you.

Nora. Thank you for your forgiveness. (She goes out through the door to
the right.)

Helmer. No, don't go--. (Looks in.) What are you doing in there?

Nora (from within). Taking off my fancy dress.

Helmer (standing at the open door). Yes, do. Try and calm yourself,
and make your mind easy again, my frightened little singing-bird. Be at
rest, and feel secure; I have broad wings to shelter you under. (Walks
up and down by the door.) How warm and cosy our home is, Nora. Here is
shelter for you; here I will protect you like a hunted dove that I
have saved from a hawk's claws; I will bring peace to your poor beating
heart. It will come, little by little, Nora, believe me. Tomorrow
morning you will look upon it all quite differently; soon everything
will be just as it was before. Very soon you won't need me to assure you
that I have forgiven you; you will yourself feel the certainty that I
have done so. Can you suppose I should ever think of such a thing as
repudiating you, or even reproaching you? You have no idea what a true
man's heart is like, Nora. There is something so indescribably sweet
and satisfying, to a man, in the knowledge that he has forgiven his
wife--forgiven her freely, and with all his heart. It seems as if that
had made her, as it were, doubly his own; he has given her a new life,
so to speak; and she has in a way become both wife and child to him. So
you shall be for me after this, my little scared, helpless darling. Have
no anxiety about anything, Nora; only be frank and open with me, and I
will serve as will and conscience both to you--. What is this? Not gone
to bed? Have you changed your things?

Nora (in everyday dress). Yes, Torvald, I have changed my things now.

Helmer. But what for?--so late as this.

Nora. I shall not sleep tonight.

Helmer. But, my dear Nora--

Nora (looking at her watch). It is not so very late. Sit down here,
Torvald. You and I have much to say to one another. (She sits down at
one side of the table.)

Helmer. Nora--what is this?--this cold, set face?

Nora. Sit down. It will take some time; I have a lot to talk over with
you.

Helmer (sits down at the opposite side of the table). You alarm me,
Nora!--and I don't understand you.

Nora. No, that is just it. You don't understand me, and I have never
understood you either--before tonight. No, you mustn't interrupt me.
You must simply listen to what I say. Torvald, this is a settling of
accounts.

Helmer. What do you mean by that?

Nora (after a short silence). Isn't there one thing that strikes you as
strange in our sitting here like this?

Helmer. What is that?

Nora. We have been married now eight years. Does it not occur to you
that this is the first time we two, you and I, husband and wife, have
had a serious conversation?

Helmer. What do you mean by serious?

Nora. In all these eight years--longer than that--from the very
beginning of our acquaintance, we have never exchanged a word on any
serious subject.

Helmer. Was it likely that I would be continually and forever telling
you about worries that you could not help me to bear?

Nora. I am not speaking about business matters. I say that we have never
sat down in earnest together to try and get at the bottom of anything.

Helmer. But, dearest Nora, would it have been any good to you?

Nora. That is just it; you have never understood me. I have been greatly
wronged, Torvald--first by papa and then by you.

Helmer. What! By us two--by us two, who have loved you better than
anyone else in the world?

Nora (shaking her head). You have never loved me. You have only thought
it pleasant to be in love with me.

Helmer. Nora, what do I hear you saying?

Nora. It is perfectly true, Torvald. When I was at home with papa, he
told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions;
and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not
have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just
as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you--

Helmer. What sort of an expression is that to use about our marriage?

Nora (undisturbed). I mean that I was simply transferred from papa's
hands into yours. You arranged everything according to your own taste,
and so I got the same tastes as you--or else I pretended to, I am really
not quite sure which--I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other.
When I look back on it, it seems to me as if I had been living here like
a poor woman--just from hand to mouth. I have existed merely to perform
tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and papa have
committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made
nothing of my life.

Helmer. How unreasonable and how ungrateful you are, Nora! Have you not
been happy here?

Nora. No, I have never been happy. I thought I was, but it has never
really been so.

Helmer. Not--not happy!

Nora. No, only merry. And you have always been so kind to me. But our
home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just
as at home I was papa's doll-child; and here the children have been
my dolls. I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they
thought it great fun when I played with them. That is what our marriage
has been, Torvald.

Helmer. There is some truth in what you say--exaggerated and strained as
your view of it is. But for the future it shall be different. Playtime
shall be over, and lesson-time shall begin.

Nora. Whose lessons? Mine, or the children's?

Helmer. Both yours and the children's, my darling Nora.

Nora. Alas, Torvald, you are not the man to educate me into being a
proper wife for you.

Helmer. And you can say that!

Nora. And I--how am I fitted to bring up the children?

Helmer. Nora!

Nora. Didn't you say so yourself a little while ago--that you dare not
trust me to bring them up?

Helmer. In a moment of anger! Why do you pay any heed to that?

Nora. Indeed, you were perfectly right. I am not fit for the task.
There is another task I must undertake first. I must try and educate
myself--you are not the man to help me in that. I must do that for
myself. And that is why I am going to leave you now.

Helmer (springing up). What do you say?

Nora. I must stand quite alone, if I am to understand myself and
everything about me. It is for that reason that I cannot remain with you
any longer.

Helmer. Nora, Nora!

Nora. I am going away from here now, at once. I am sure Christine will
take me in for the night--

Helmer. You are out of your mind! I won't allow it! I forbid you!

Nora. It is no use forbidding me anything any longer. I will take with
me what belongs to myself. I will take nothing from you, either now or
later.

Helmer. What sort of madness is this!

Nora. Tomorrow I shall go home--I mean, to my old home. It will be
easiest for me to find something to do there.

Helmer. You blind, foolish woman!

Nora. I must try and get some sense, Torvald.

Helmer. To desert your home, your husband and your children! And you
don't consider what people will say!

Nora. I cannot consider that at all. I only know that it is necessary
for me.

Helmer. It's shocking. This is how you would neglect your most sacred
duties.

Nora. What do you consider my most sacred duties?

Helmer. Do I need to tell you that? Are they not your duties to your
husband and your children?

Nora. I have other duties just as sacred.

Helmer. That you have not. What duties could those be?

Nora. Duties to myself.

Helmer. Before all else, you are a wife and a mother.

Nora. I don't believe that any longer. I believe that before all else I
am a reasonable human being, just as you are--or, at all events, that
I must try and become one. I know quite well, Torvald, that most people
would think you right, and that views of that kind are to be found in
books; but I can no longer content myself with what most people say, or
with what is found in books. I must think over things for myself and get
to understand them.

Helmer. Can you not understand your place in your own home? Have you not
a reliable guide in such matters as that?--have you no religion?

Nora. I am afraid, Torvald, I do not exactly know what religion is.

Helmer. What are you saying?

Nora. I know nothing but what the clergyman said, when I went to be
confirmed. He told us that religion was this, and that, and the other.
When I am away from all this, and am alone, I will look into that matter
too. I will see if what the clergyman said is true, or at all events if
it is true for me.

Helmer. This is unheard of in a girl of your age! But if religion cannot
lead you aright, let me try and awaken your conscience. I suppose you
have some moral sense? Or--answer me--am I to think you have none?

Nora. I assure you, Torvald, that is not an easy question to answer. I
really don't know. The thing perplexes me altogether. I only know that
you and I look at it in quite a different light. I am learning, too,
that the law is quite another thing from what I supposed; but I find it
impossible to convince myself that the law is right. According to it
a woman has no right to spare her old dying father, or to save her
husband's life. I can't believe that.

Helmer. You talk like a child. You don't understand the conditions of
the world in which you live.

Nora. No, I don't. But now I am going to try. I am going to see if I can
make out who is right, the world or I.

Helmer. You are ill, Nora; you are delirious; I almost think you are out
of your mind.

Nora. I have never felt my mind so clear and certain as tonight.

Helmer. And is it with a clear and certain mind that you forsake your
husband and your children?

Nora. Yes, it is.

Helmer. Then there is only one possible explanation.

Nora. What is that?

Helmer. You do not love me anymore.

Nora. No, that is just it.

Helmer. Nora!--and you can say that?

Nora. It gives me great pain, Torvald, for you have always been so kind
to me, but I cannot help it. I do not love you any more.

Helmer (regaining his composure). Is that a clear and certain conviction
too?

Nora. Yes, absolutely clear and certain. That is the reason why I will
not stay here any longer.

Helmer. And can you tell me what I have done to forfeit your love?

Nora. Yes, indeed I can. It was tonight, when the wonderful thing did
not happen; then I saw you were not the man I had thought you were.

Helmer. Explain yourself better. I don't understand you.

Nora. I have waited so patiently for eight years; for, goodness knows,
I knew very well that wonderful things don't happen every day. Then this
horrible misfortune came upon me; and then I felt quite certain that the
wonderful thing was going to happen at last. When Krogstad's letter was
lying out there, never for a moment did I imagine that you would consent
to accept this man's conditions. I was so absolutely certain that you
would say to him: Publish the thing to the whole world. And when that
was done--

Helmer. Yes, what then?--when I had exposed my wife to shame and
disgrace?

Nora. When that was done, I was so absolutely certain, you would come
forward and take everything upon yourself, and say: I am the guilty one.

Helmer. Nora--!

Nora. You mean that I would never have accepted such a sacrifice on your
part? No, of course not. But what would my assurances have been worth
against yours? That was the wonderful thing which I hoped for and
feared; and it was to prevent that, that I wanted to kill myself.

Helmer. I would gladly work night and day for you, Nora--bear sorrow and
want for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honour for the one he
loves.

Nora. It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.

Helmer. Oh, you think and talk like a heedless child.

Nora. Maybe. But you neither think nor talk like the man I could bind
myself to. As soon as your fear was over--and it was not fear for what
threatened me, but for what might happen to you--when the whole thing
was past, as far as you were concerned it was exactly as if nothing at
all had happened. Exactly as before, I was your little skylark, your
doll, which you would in future treat with doubly gentle care, because
it was so brittle and fragile. (Getting up.) Torvald--it was then
it dawned upon me that for eight years I had been living here with a
strange man, and had borne him three children--. Oh, I can't bear to
think of it! I could tear myself into little bits!

Helmer (sadly). I see, I see. An abyss has opened between us--there is
no denying it. But, Nora, would it not be possible to fill it up?

Nora. As I am now, I am no wife for you.

Helmer. I have it in me to become a different man.

Nora. Perhaps--if your doll is taken away from you.

Helmer. But to part!--to part from you! No, no, Nora, I can't understand
that idea.

Nora (going out to the right). That makes it all the more certain that
it must be done. (She comes back with her cloak and hat and a small bag
which she puts on a chair by the table.)

Helmer. Nora, Nora, not now! Wait until tomorrow.

Nora (putting on her cloak). I cannot spend the night in a strange man's
room.

Helmer. But can't we live here like brother and sister--?

Nora (putting on her hat). You know very well that would not last long.
(Puts the shawl round her.) Goodbye, Torvald. I won't see the little
ones. I know they are in better hands than mine. As I am now, I can be
of no use to them.

Helmer. But some day, Nora--some day?

Nora. How can I tell? I have no idea what is going to become of me.

Helmer. But you are my wife, whatever becomes of you.

Nora. Listen, Torvald. I have heard that when a wife deserts her
husband's house, as I am doing now, he is legally freed from all
obligations towards her. In any case, I set you free from all your
obligations. You are not to feel yourself bound in the slightest way,
any more than I shall. There must be perfect freedom on both sides. See,
here is your ring back. Give me mine.

Helmer. That too?

Nora. That too.

Helmer. Here it is.

Nora. That's right. Now it is all over. I have put the keys here.
The maids know all about everything in the house--better than I do.
Tomorrow, after I have left her, Christine will come here and pack up my
own things that I brought with me from home. I will have them sent after
me.

Helmer. All over! All over!--Nora, shall you never think of me again?

Nora. I know I shall often think of you, the children, and this house.

Helmer. May I write to you, Nora?

Nora. No--never. You must not do that.

Helmer. But at least let me send you--

Nora. Nothing--nothing--

Helmer. Let me help you if you are in want.

Nora. No. I can receive nothing from a stranger.

Helmer. Nora--can I never be anything more than a stranger to you?

Nora (taking her bag). Ah, Torvald, the most wonderful thing of all
would have to happen.

Helmer. Tell me what that would be!

Nora. Both you and I would have to be so changed that--. Oh, Torvald, I
don't believe any longer in wonderful things happening.

Helmer. But I will believe in it. Tell me! So changed that--?

Nora. That our life together would be a real wedlock. Goodbye. (She goes
out through the hall.)

Helmer (sinks down on a chair at the door and buries his face in his
hands). Nora! Nora! (Looks round, and rises.) Empty. She is gone. (A
hope flashes across his mind.) The most wonderful thing of all--?

(The sound of a door shutting is heard from below.)





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The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift

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Title: A Modest Proposal
       For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland,
       from being a burden on their parents or country, and for
       making them beneficial to the publick - 1729

Author: Jonathan Swift

Posting Date: July 27, 2008 [EBook #1080]
Release Date: October 1997

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MODEST PROPOSAL ***




Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer





A MODEST PROPOSAL

For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a
burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to
the publick.

by Dr. Jonathan Swift


1729



It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town,
or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and
cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three,
four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for
an alms. These mothers instead of being able to work for their honest
livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg
sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn
thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight
for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious number of
children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers,
and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of
the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever
could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children
sound and useful members of the common-wealth, would deserve so well of
the publick, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the
children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater extent, and shall
take in the whole number of infants at a certain age, who are born of
parents in effect as little able to support them, as those who demand
our charity in the streets.

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years, upon this
important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of
our projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their
computation. It is true, a child just dropt from its dam, may be
supported by her milk, for a solar year, with little other nourishment:
at most not above the value of two shillings, which the mother may
certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of
begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for
them in such a manner, as, instead of being a charge upon their parents,
or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives,
they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding, and partly to
the cloathing of many thousands.

There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will
prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of
women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us,
sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expence
than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and
inhuman breast.

The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million
and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand
couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty
thousand couple, who are able to maintain their own children, (although
I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of
the kingdom) but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and
seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand, for those
women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within
the year. There only remain an hundred and twenty thousand children of
poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, How this number
shall be reared, and provided for? which, as I have already said, under
the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the
methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft
or agriculture; they neither build houses, (I mean in the country) nor
cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing
till they arrive at six years old; except where they are of towardly
parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier;
during which time they can however be properly looked upon only as
probationers: As I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the
county of Cavan, who protested to me, that he never knew above one or
two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so
renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art.

I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years
old, is no saleable commodity, and even when they come to this age, they
will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half a crown
at most, on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the
parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriments and rags having been at
least four times that value.

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will
not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in
London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a
most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted,
baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a
fricasie, or a ragoust.

I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration, that of the
hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand
may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males;
which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine, and my
reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a
circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore, one male will
be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand
may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and
fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them
suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat
for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for
friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will
make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will
be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12
pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, encreaseth to 28
pounds.

I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for
landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem
to have the best title to the children.

Infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful
in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave
author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolifick dyet,
there are more children born in Roman Catholick countries about nine
months after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because
the number of Popish infants, is at least three to one in this kingdom,
and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening
the number of Papists among us.

I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which
list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers)
to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no
gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good
fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent
nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend, or his
own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good
landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have eight
shillings neat profit, and be fit for work till she produces another
child.

Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may
flea the carcass; the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make
admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.

As to our City of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose, in
the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not
be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and
dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.

A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues
I highly esteem, was lately pleased, in discoursing on this matter, to
offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said, that many gentlemen of this
kingdom, having of late destroyed their deer, he conceived that the
want of venison might be well supply'd by the bodies of young lads and
maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age, nor under twelve; so great
a number of both sexes in every country being now ready to starve for
want of work and service: And these to be disposed of by their parents
if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due
deference to so excellent a friend, and so deserving a patriot, I
cannot be altogether in his sentiments; for as to the males, my American
acquaintance assured me from frequent experience, that their flesh was
generally tough and lean, like that of our school-boys, by continual
exercise, and their taste disagreeable, and to fatten them would not
answer the charge. Then as to the females, it would, I think, with
humble submission, be a loss to the publick, because they soon would
become breeders themselves: And besides, it is not improbable that some
scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice, (although
indeed very unjustly) as a little bordering upon cruelty, which, I
confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection against any
project, how well soever intended.

But in order to justify my friend, he confessed, that this expedient
was put into his head by the famous Salmanaazor, a native of the island
Formosa, who came from thence to London, above twenty years ago, and in
conversation told my friend, that in his country, when any young person
happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to persons
of quality, as a prime dainty; and that, in his time, the body of a
plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison the
Emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty's prime minister of state, and
other great mandarins of the court in joints from the gibbet, at four
hundred crowns. Neither indeed can I deny, that if the same use were
made of several plump young girls in this town, who without one single
groat to their fortunes, cannot stir abroad without a chair, and appear
at a play-house and assemblies in foreign fineries which they never will
pay for; the kingdom would not be the worse.

Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast
number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed; and I have
been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken, to ease
the nation of so grievous an incumbrance. But I am not in the least pain
upon that matter, because it is very well known, that they are every day
dying, and rotting, by cold and famine, and filth, and vermin, as fast
as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young labourers, they
are now in almost as hopeful a condition. They cannot get work, and
consequently pine away from want of nourishment, to a degree, that if
at any time they are accidentally hired to common labour, they have not
strength to perform it, and thus the country and themselves are happily
delivered from the evils to come.

I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. I
think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and
many, as well as of the highest importance.

For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the
number of Papists, with whom we are yearly over-run, being the principal
breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies, and who
stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the
Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good
Protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country, than stay at
home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate.

Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own,
which by law may be made liable to a distress, and help to pay their
landlord's rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money a
thing unknown.

Thirdly, Whereas the maintainance of an hundred thousand children,
from two years old, and upwards, cannot be computed at less than
ten shillings a piece per annum, the nation's stock will be thereby
encreased fifty thousand pounds per annum, besides the profit of a
new dish, introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the
kingdom, who have any refinement in taste. And the money will circulate
among our selves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and
manufacture.

Fourthly, The constant breeders, besides the gain of eight shillings
sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the
charge of maintaining them after the first year.

Fifthly, This food would likewise bring great custom to taverns,
where the vintners will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best
receipts for dressing it to perfection; and consequently have their
houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen, who justly value themselves
upon their knowledge in good eating; and a skilful cook, who understands
how to oblige his guests, will contrive to make it as expensive as they
please.

Sixthly, This would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise
nations have either encouraged by rewards, or enforced by laws and
penalties. It would encrease the care and tenderness of mothers towards
their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the
poor babes, provided in some sort by the publick, to their annual profit
instead of expence. We should soon see an honest emulation among the
married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the
market. Men would become as fond of their wives, during the time of
their pregnancy, as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in
calf, or sow when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick
them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage.

Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition
of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barrel'd beef: the
propagation of swine's flesh, and improvement in the art of making good
bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs,
too frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or
magnificence to a well grown, fat yearly child, which roasted whole will
make a considerable figure at a Lord Mayor's feast, or any other publick
entertainment. But this, and many others, I omit, being studious of
brevity.

Supposing that one thousand families in this city, would be constant
customers for infants flesh, besides others who might have it at merry
meetings, particularly at weddings and christenings, I compute that
Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses; and the
rest of the kingdom (where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper)
the remaining eighty thousand.

I can think of no one objection, that will possibly be raised against
this proposal, unless it should be urged, that the number of people will
be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I freely own, and 'twas
indeed one principal design in offering it to the world. I desire the
reader will observe, that I calculate my remedy for this one individual
Kingdom of Ireland, and for no other that ever was, is, or, I think,
ever can be upon Earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of other
expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using
neither cloaths, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our
own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and
instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of
pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein
of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our
country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants
of Topinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any
longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment
their city was taken: Of being a little cautious not to sell our country
and consciences for nothing: Of teaching landlords to have at least one
degree of mercy towards their tenants. Lastly, of putting a spirit of
honesty, industry, and skill into our shop-keepers, who, if a resolution
could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite
to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure, and the goodness,
nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing,
though often and earnestly invited to it.

Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like
expedients, 'till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will
ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.

But, as to my self, having been wearied out for many years with offering
vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of
success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly
new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expence and little
trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger
in disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear
exportation, and flesh being of too tender a consistence, to admit a
long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country, which
would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.

After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion, as to reject
any offer, proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent,
cheap, easy, and effectual. But before something of that kind shall be
advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire
the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points.
First, As things now stand, how they will be able to find food and
raiment for a hundred thousand useless mouths and backs. And secondly,
There being a round million of creatures in humane figure throughout
this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock, would
leave them in debt two million of pounds sterling, adding those who are
beggars by profession, to the bulk of farmers, cottagers and labourers,
with their wives and children, who are beggars in effect; I desire
those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold
to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these
mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness
to have been sold for food at a year old, in the manner I prescribe, and
thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes, as they have
since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of
paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with
neither house nor cloaths to cover them from the inclemencies of the
weather, and the most inevitable prospect of intailing the like, or
greater miseries, upon their breed for ever.

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least
personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having
no other motive than the publick good of my country, by advancing
our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some
pleasure to the rich. I have no children, by which I can propose to
get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past
child-bearing.





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Project Gutenberg's The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
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with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.orgTitle: The Yellow Wallpaper

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THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman



It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure
ancestral halls for the summer.

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and
reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too
much of fate!

Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long
untenanted?

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an
intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things
not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living
soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my
mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.

You see, he does not believe I am sick!

And what can one do?

If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends
and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but
temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what
is one to do?

My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the
same thing.

So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and
journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work”
until I am well again.

Personally, I disagree with their ideas.

Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change,
would do me good.

But what is one to do?

I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good
deal—having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy
opposition.

I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more
society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is
to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.

So I will let it alone and talk about the house.

The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the
road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English
places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that
lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.

There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden—large and
shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered
arbors with seats under them.

There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.

There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and
co-heirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years.

That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid; but I don’t care—there is
something strange about the house—I can feel it.

I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was
a draught, and shut the window.

I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I’m sure I never used to be
so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.

But John says if I feel so I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take
pains to control myself,—before him, at least,—and that makes
me very tired.

I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the
piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned
chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.

He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near
room for him if he took another.

He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special
direction.

I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care
from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.

He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest
and all the air I could get. “Your exercise depends on your strength, my
dear,” said he, “and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you
can absorb all the time.” So we took the nursery, at the top of the house.

It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all
ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then
playground
and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little
children, and there are rings and things in the walls.

The paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it. It is stripped
off—the paper—in great patches all around the head of my bed,
about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the
room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.

One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to
constantly irritate, and provoke study, and when you follow the lame,
uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge
off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions.

The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow,
strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in
others.

No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live
in this room long.

There comes John, and I must put this away,—he hates to have me
write a word.

We have been here two weeks, and I haven’t felt like writing before, since
that first day.

I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is
nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength.

John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious.

I am glad my case is not serious!

But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing.

John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason
to suffer, and that satisfies him.

Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do my duty
in any way!

I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here
I am a comparative burden already!

Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able—to
dress and entertain, and order things.

It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby!

And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.

I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about
this wallpaper!

At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was
letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous
patient than to give way to such fancies.

He said that after the wallpaper was changed it would be the heavy
bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of
the stairs, and so on.

“You know the place is doing you good,” he said, “and really, dear, I
don’t care to renovate the house just for a three months’ rental.”

“Then do let us go downstairs,” I said, “there are such pretty rooms
there.”

Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said
he would go down cellar if I wished, and have it whitewashed into
the bargain.

But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things.

It is as airy and comfortable a room as any one need wish, and, of course,
I
would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim.

I’m really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper.

Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deep-shaded
arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees.

Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf
belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down
there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these
numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to
fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of
story-making a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner
of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to
check the tendency. So I try.

I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it
would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.

But I find I get pretty tired when I try.

It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my
work. When I get really well John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia
down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fire-works in my
pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now.

I wish I could get well faster.

But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what
a vicious influence it had!

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and
two bulbous eyes stare at you upside-down.

I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the
everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd,
unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breadths
didn’t match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little
higher than the other.

I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all
know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get
more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than
most children could find in a toy-store.

I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big old bureau used to
have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend.

I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could
always hop into that chair and be safe.

The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we
had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a
playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! I never
saw such ravages as the children have made here.

The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh
closer than a brother—they must have had perseverance as well as
hatred.

Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself
is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed, which is all we found
in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars.

But I don’t mind it a bit—only the paper.

There comes John’s sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of
me! I must not let her find me writing.

She is a perfect, and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better
profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me
sick!

But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from these
windows.

There is one that commands the road, a lovely, shaded, winding road, and
one
that just looks off over the country. A lovely country, too, full of great
elms and velvet meadows.

This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a
particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights,
and not clearly then.

But in the places where it isn’t faded, and where the sun is just so, I
can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk
about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.

There’s sister on the stairs!

Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are gone and I am tired out.
John thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we just had
mother and Nellie and the children down for a week.

Of course I didn’t do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now.

But it tired me all the same.

John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in
the fall.

But I don’t want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands
once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!

Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.

I don’t feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything,
and I’m getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

Of course I don’t when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.

And I am alone a good deal just now. John is kept in town very often by
serious cases, and Jennie is good and lets me alone when I want her to.

So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the
porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal.

I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps
because of the wallpaper.

It dwells in my mind so!

I lie here on this great immovable bed—it is nailed down, I believe—and
follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I
assure you. I start, we’ll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over
there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth
time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a
conclusion.

I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not
arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or
symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.

It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise.

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and
flourishes—a kind of “debased Romanesque” with delirium
tremens—go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling
outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of
wallowing seaweeds in full chase.

The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I
exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that
direction.

They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds
wonderfully to the confusion.

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when
the cross-lights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can
almost
fancy radiation after all,—the interminable grotesques seem to form
around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal
distraction.

It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap, I guess.

I don’t know why I should write this.

I don’t want to.

I don’t feel able.

And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and
think in some way—it is such a relief!

But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.

Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much.

John says I musn’t lose my strength, and has me take cod-liver oil and
lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.

Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to
have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him
how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.

But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there;
and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying
before I had finished.

It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this
nervous weakness, I suppose.

And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and
laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.

He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must
take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.

He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will
and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me.

There’s one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have to
occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper.

If we had not used it that blessed child would have! What a fortunate
escape! Why, I wouldn’t have a child of mine, an impressionable little
thing, live in such a room for worlds.

I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here after
all. I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see.

Of course I never mention it to them any more,—I am too wise,—but
I keep watch of it all the same.

There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.

Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.

It is always the same shape, only very numerous.

And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that
pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I
wish John would take me away from here!

It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and
because he loves me so.

But I tried it last night.

It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around, just as the sun does.

I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by
one window or another.

John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the
moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till I felt creepy.

The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted
to get out.

I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move, and when I
came back John was awake.

“What is it, little girl?” he said. “Don’t go walking
about like that—you’ll get cold.”

I though it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was not
gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away.

“Why darling!” said he, “our lease will be up in three
weeks, and I can’t see how to leave before.

“The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just
now. Of course if you were in any danger I could and would, but you
really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor,
dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is
better. I feel really much easier about you.”

“I don’t weigh a bit more,” said I, “nor as much; and
my appetite may be better in the evening, when you are here, but it is
worse
in the morning when you are away.”

“Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug; “she shall be as sick as
she pleases! But now let’s improve the shining hours by going to sleep,
and talk about it in the morning!”

“And you won’t go away?” I asked gloomily.

“Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will take a
nice little trip of a few days while Jennie is getting the house ready.
Really, dear, you are better!”

“Better in body perhaps”—I began, and stopped short, for he sat up
straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could
not say another word.

“My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s
sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let
that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating,
to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not
trust me as a physician when I tell you so?”

So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep before
long. He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn’t,—I lay there for hours
trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really
did move together or separately.

On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a
defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.

The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating
enough, but the pattern is torturing.

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in
following, it turns a back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in
the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.

The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If
you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of
toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions,—why, that
is something like it.

That is, sometimes!

There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to
notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes.

When the sun shoots in through the east window—I always watch for
that first long, straight ray—it changes so quickly that I never can
quite believe it.

That is why I watch it always.

By moonlight—the moon shines in all night when there is a moon—I
wouldn’t know it was the same paper.

At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and
worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean,
and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.

I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed
behind,—that dim sub-pattern,—but now I am quite sure it is a woman.

By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps
her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.

I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all
I can.

Indeed, he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each
meal.

It is a very bad habit, I am convinced, for, you see, I don’t sleep.

And that cultivates deceit, for I don’t tell them I’m
awake,—oh, no!

The fact is, I am getting a little afraid of John.

He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look.

It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, that
perhaps it is the paper!

I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the
room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I’ve caught him several
times looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand
on it once.

She didn’t know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very
quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she was doing
with the paper she turned around as if she had been caught stealing,
and looked quite angry—asked me why I should frighten her so!

Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had
found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John’s, and she wished we
would be more careful!

Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and
I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!

Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have
something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat
better, and am more quiet than I was.

John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day,
and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wallpaper.

I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was
because of the wallpaper—he would make fun of me. He might even
want to take me away.

I don’t want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a week more,
and I think that will be enough.

I’m feeling ever so much better! I don’t sleep much at night, for it is so
interesting to watch developments; but I sleep a good deal in the daytime.

In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing.

There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of yellow all
over it. I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously.

It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the
yellow things I ever saw—not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old
foul, bad yellow things.

But there is something else about that paper—the smell! I noticed it
the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not
bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are
open or not, the smell is here.

It creeps all over the house.

I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in
the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.

It gets into my hair.

Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it—there
is that smell!

Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to
find what it smelled like.

It is not bad—at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest,
most enduring odor I ever met.

In this damp weather it is awful. I wake up in the night and find it
hanging over me.

It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the
house—to
reach the smell.

But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is
the color of the paper! A yellow smell.

There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A
streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture,
except the bed, a long, straight, even smooch, as if it had been rubbed
over and over.

I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Round
and round and round—round and round and round—it makes me
dizzy!

I really have discovered something at last.

Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally
found out.

The front pattern does move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes
it!

Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only
one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.

Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots
she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard.

And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb
through that pattern—it strangles so; I think that is why it has so
many heads.

They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them
upside-down, and makes their eyes white!

If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad.

I think that woman gets out in the daytime!

And I’ll tell you why—privately—I’ve seen her!

I can see her out of every one of my windows!

It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women
do not creep by daylight.

I see her on that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in
those
dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden.

I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a
carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.

I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping
by daylight!

I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can’t do it at night,
for I know John would suspect something at once.

And John is so queer now, that I don’t want to irritate him. I wish he
would take another room! Besides, I don’t want anybody to get that woman
out at night but myself.

I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.

But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time.

And though I always see her she may be able to creep faster than I can
turn!

I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as
fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.

If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to
try it, little by little.

I have found out another funny thing, but I shan’t tell it this time! It
does not do to trust people too much.

There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is
beginning to notice. I don’t like the look in his eyes.

And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me. She
had a very good report to give.

She said I slept a good deal in the daytime.

John knows I don’t sleep very well at night, for all I’m so quiet!

He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving
and kind.

As if I couldn’t see through him!

Still, I don’t wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three
months.

It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are secretly
affected by it.

Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is enough. John is to stay in town
over night, and won’t be out until this evening.

Jennie wanted to sleep with me—the sly thing! but I told her I
should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone.

That was clever, for really I wasn’t alone a bit! As soon as it was
moonlight, and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got
up and ran to help her.

I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had
peeled off yards of that paper.

A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.

And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me I
declared I would finish it to-day!

We go away to-morrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to
leave things as they were before.

Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I did
it out of pure spite at the vicious thing.

She laughed and said she wouldn’t mind doing it herself, but I must not
get tired.

How she betrayed herself that time!

But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me—not alive!

She tried to get me out of the room—it was too patent! But I said it
was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie down
again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even for dinner—I
would call when I woke.

So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone,
and there is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down, with the
canvas mattress we found on it.

We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and take the boat home to-morrow.

I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.

How those children did tear about here!

This bedstead is fairly gnawed!

But I must get to work.

I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path.

I don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to have anybody come in, till
John comes.

I want to astonish him.

I’ve got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does
get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!

But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!

This bed will not move!

I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I
bit off a little piece at one corner—but it hurt my teeth.

Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It
sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads
and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!

I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the
window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to
try.

Besides I wouldn’t do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step
like that is improper and might be misconstrued.

I don’t like to look out of the windows even—there are so many of
those creeping women, and they creep so fast.

I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did?

But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope—you don’t get
me out in the road there!

I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night,
and that is hard!

It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I
please!

I don’t want to go outside. I won’t, even if Jennie asks me to.

For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green
instead of yellow.

But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in
that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.

Why, there’s John at the door!

It is no use, young man, you can’t open it!

How he does call and pound!

Now he’s crying for an axe.

It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!

“John dear!” said I in the gentlest voice, “the key is down by the front
steps, under a plantain leaf!”

That silenced him for a few moments.

Then he said—very quietly indeed, “Open the door, my darling!”

“I can’t,” said I. “The key is down by the front door under a plantain
leaf!”

And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said
it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it, of course, and came
in. He stopped short by the door.

“What is the matter?” he cried. “For God’s sake, what are you doing!”

I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder.

“I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane!
And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”

Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path
by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!




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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete by
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use
it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #74]
Last Updated: February 23, 2018

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM SAWYER ***

Produced by David Widger





THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER

By Mark Twain

(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)




CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. Y-o-u-u Tom-Aunt Polly Decides Upon her Duty--Tom Practices
Music--The Challenge--A Private Entrance

CHAPTER II. Strong Temptations--Strategic Movements--The Innocents
Beguiled

CHAPTER III. Tom as a General--Triumph and Reward--Dismal
Felicity--Commission and Omission

CHAPTER IV. Mental Acrobatics--Attending Sunday--School--The
Superintendent--“Showing off”--Tom Lionized

CHAPTER V. A Useful Minister--In Church--The Climax

CHAPTER VI. Self-Examination--Dentistry--The Midnight Charm--Witches and
Devils--Cautious Approaches--Happy Hours

CHAPTER VII. A Treaty Entered Into--Early Lessons--A Mistake Made

CHAPTER VIII. Tom Decides on his Course--Old Scenes Re-enacted

CHAPTER IX. A Solemn Situation--Grave Subjects Introduced--Injun Joe
Explains

CHAPTER X. The Solemn Oath--Terror Brings Repentance--Mental Punishment

CHAPTER XI. Muff Potter Comes Himself--Tom's Conscience at Work

CHAPTER XII. Tom Shows his Generosity--Aunt Polly Weakens

CHAPTER XIII. The Young Pirates--Going to the Rendezvous--The Camp--Fire
Talk

CHAPTER XIV. Camp-Life--A Sensation--Tom Steals Away from Camp

CHAPTER XV. Tom Reconnoiters--Learns the Situation--Reports at Camp

CHAPTER XVI. A Day's Amusements--Tom Reveals a Secret--The Pirates take a
Lesson--A Night Surprise--An Indian War

CHAPTER XVII. Memories of the Lost Heroes--The Point in Tom's Secret

CHAPTER XVIII. Tom's Feelings Investigated--Wonderful Dream--Becky
Thatcher Overshadowed--Tom Becomes Jealous--Black Revenge

CHAPTER XIX. Tom Tells the Truth

CHAPTER XX. Becky in a Dilemma--Tom's Nobility Asserts Itself

CHAPTER XXI. Youthful Eloquence--Compositions by the Young Ladies--A
Lengthy Vision--The Boy's Vengeance Satisfied

CHAPTER XXII. Tom's Confidence Betrayed--Expects Signal Punishment

CHAPTER XXIII. Old Muff's Friends--Muff Potter in Court--Muff Potter
Saved

CHAPTER XXIV. Tom as the Village Hero--Days of Splendor and Nights of
Horror--Pursuit of Injun Joe

CHAPTER XXV. About Kings and Diamonds--Search for the Treasure--Dead
People and Ghosts

CHAPTER XXVI. The Haunted House--Sleepy Ghosts--A Box of Gold--Bitter Luck

CHAPTER XXVII. Doubts to be Settled--The Young Detectives

CHAPTER XXVIII. An Attempt at No. Two--Huck Mounts Guard

CHAPTER XXIX. The Pic-nic--Huck on Injun Joe's Track--The “Revenge”
 Job--Aid for the Widow

CHAPTER XXX. The Welchman Reports--Huck Under Fire--The Story Circulated
--A New Sensation--Hope Giving Way to Despair

CHAPTER XXXI. An Exploring Expedition--Trouble Commences--Lost in the
Cave--Total Darkness--Found but not Saved

CHAPTER XXXII. Tom tells the Story of their Escape--Tom's Enemy in Safe
Quarters

CHAPTER XXXIII. The Fate of Injun Joe--Huck and Tom Compare Notes
--An Expedition to the Cave--Protection Against Ghosts--“An Awful Snug
Place”--A Reception at the Widow Douglas's

CHAPTER XXXIV. Springing a Secret--Mr. Jones' Surprise a Failure

CHAPTER XXXV. A New Order of Things--Poor Huck--New Adventures Planned




ILLUSTRATIONS

Tom Sawyer

Tom at Home

Aunt Polly Beguiled

A Good Opportunity

Who's Afraid

Late Home

Jim

'Tendin' to Business

Ain't that Work?

Cat and Toys

Amusement

Becky Thatcher

Paying Off

After the Battle

“Showing Off”

Not Amiss

Mary

Tom Contemplating

Dampened Ardor

Youth

Boyhood

Using the “Barlow”

The Church

Necessities

Tom as a Sunday-School Hero    

The Prize

At Church

The Model Boy

The Church Choir

A Side Show

Result of Playing in Church

The Pinch-Bug

Sid

Dentistry

Huckleberry Finn

Mother Hopkins

Result of Tom's Truthfulness

Tom as an Artist

Interrupted Courtship

The Master

Vain Pleading

Tail Piece

The Grave in the Woods

Tom Meditates

Robin Hood and his Foe

Death of Robin Hood

Midnight

Tom's Mode of Egress

Tom's Effort at Prayer

Muff Potter Outwitted

The Graveyard

Forewarnings

Disturbing Muff's Sleep

Tom's Talk with his Aunt

Muff Potter

A Suspicious Incident

Injun Joe's two Victims

In the Coils

Peter

Aunt Polly seeks Information

A General Good Time

Demoralized

Joe Harper

On Board Their First Prize

The Pirates Ashore

Wild Life

The Pirate's Bath

The Pleasant Stroll

The Search for the Drowned

The Mysterious Writing

River View

What Tom Saw

Tom Swims the River

Taking Lessons

The Pirates' Egg Market

Tom Looking for Joe's Knife    

The Thunder Storm

Terrible Slaughter

The Mourner

Tom's Proudest Moment

Amy Lawrence

Tom tries to Remember

The Hero

A Flirtation

Becky Retaliates

A Sudden Frost

Counter-irritation

Aunt Polly

Tom justified

The Discovery

Caught in the Act

Tom Astonishes the School

Literature

Tom Declaims

Examination Evening

On Exhibition

Prize Authors

The Master's Dilemma

The School House

The Cadet

Happy for Two Days

Enjoying the Vacation

The Stolen Melons

The Judge

Visiting the Prisoner

Tom Swears

The Court Room

The Detective

Tom Dreams

The Treasure

The Private Conference

A King; Poor Fellow!

Business

The Ha'nted House

Injun Joe

The Greatest and Best

Hidden Treasures Unearthed

The Boy's Salvation

Room No. 2

The Next Day's Conference

Treasures

Uncle Jake

Buck at Home

The Haunted Room

“Run for Your Life”

McDougal's Cave

Inside the Cave

Huck on Duty

A Rousing Act

Tail Piece

The Welchman

Result of a Sneeze

Cornered

Alarming Discoveries

Tom and Becky stir up the Town

Tom's Marks

Huck Questions the Widow

Vampires

Wonders of the Cave

Attacked by Natives

Despair

The Wedding Cake

A New Terror

Daylight

“Turn Out” to Receive Tom and Becky

The Escape from the Cave

Fate of the Ragged Man

The Treasures Found

Caught at Last

Drop after Drop

Having a Good Time

A Business Trip

“Got it at Last!”

Tail Piece

Widow Douglas

Tom Backs his Statement

Tail Piece

Huck Transformed

Comfortable Once More

High up in Society

Contentment




PREFACE

Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two
were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates
of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an
individual--he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom
I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and
slaves in the West at the period of this story--that is to say, thirty or
forty years ago.

Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and
girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account,
for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what
they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked,
and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.

THE AUTHOR.

HARTFORD, 1876.




CHAPTER I

“TOM!”

No answer.

“TOM!”

No answer.

“What's gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!”

No answer.

The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the
room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or
never looked _through_ them for so small a thing as a boy; they were
her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for “style,” not
service--she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well.
She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but
still loud enough for the furniture to hear:

“Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll--”

She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching
under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the
punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.

“I never did see the beat of that boy!”

She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the
tomato vines and “jimpson” weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So
she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and shouted:

“Y-o-u-u TOM!”

There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize
a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.

“There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in
there?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What _is_ that
truck?”

“I don't know, aunt.”

“Well, I know. It's jam--that's what it is. Forty times I've said if you
didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch.”

The switch hovered in the air--the peril was desperate--

“My! Look behind you, aunt!”

The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger.
The lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and
disappeared over it.

His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle
laugh.

“Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks
enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old
fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks,
as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days,
and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how long
he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he can make
out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and
I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's
the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child,
as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both,
I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own
dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him,
somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and
every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. Well-a-well, man that is
born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture
says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hookey this evening, * and [*
Southwestern for “afternoon”] I'll just be obleeged to make him work,
tomorrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work Saturdays,
when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he
hates anything else, and I've _got_ to do some of my duty by him, or
I'll be the ruination of the child.”

Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. He got back home
barely in season to help Jim, the small colored boy, saw next-day's wood
and split the kindlings before supper--at least he was there in time
to tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did three-fourths of the work.
Tom's younger brother (or rather half-brother) Sid was already through
with his part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a quiet boy,
and had no adventurous, trouble-some ways.

While Tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity
offered, Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and
very deep--for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like
many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she
was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she
loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low
cunning. Said she:

“Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?”

“Yes'm.”

“Powerful warm, warn't it?”

“Yes'm.”

“Didn't you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?”

A bit of a scare shot through Tom--a touch of uncomfortable suspicion. He
searched Aunt Polly's face, but it told him nothing. So he said:

“No'm--well, not very much.”

The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom's shirt, and said:

“But you ain't too warm now, though.” And it flattered her to reflect
that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing
that that was what she had in her mind. But in spite of her, Tom knew
where the wind lay, now. So he forestalled what might be the next move:

“Some of us pumped on our heads--mine's damp yet. See?”

Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of
circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. Then she had a new
inspiration:

“Tom, you didn't have to undo your shirt collar where I sewed it, to
pump on your head, did you? Unbutton your jacket!”

The trouble vanished out of Tom's face. He opened his jacket. His shirt
collar was securely sewed.

“Bother! Well, go 'long with you. I'd made sure you'd played hookey
and been a-swimming. But I forgive ye, Tom. I reckon you're a kind of a
singed cat, as the saying is--better'n you look. _This_ time.”

She was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that Tom
had stumbled into obedient conduct for once.

But Sidney said:

“Well, now, if I didn't think you sewed his collar with white thread,
but it's black.”

“Why, I did sew it with white! Tom!”

But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out at the door he said:

“Siddy, I'll lick you for that.”

In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into
the lapels of his jacket, and had thread bound about them--one needle
carried white thread and the other black. He said:

“She'd never noticed if it hadn't been for Sid. Confound it! sometimes
she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to
gee-miny she'd stick to one or t'other--I can't keep the run of 'em. But
I bet you I'll lam Sid for that. I'll learn him!”

He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well
though--and loathed him.

Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not
because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a
man's are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore
them down and drove them out of his mind for the time--just as men's
misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new
interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired
from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it un-disturbed. It
consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble,
produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short
intervals in the midst of the music--the reader probably remembers how to
do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him
the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of
harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer
feels who has discovered a new planet--no doubt, as far as strong, deep,
unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the
astronomer.

The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet. Presently Tom
checked his whistle. A stranger was before him--a boy a shade larger
than himself. A new-comer of any age or either sex was an im-pressive
curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg. This boy
was well dressed, too--well dressed on a week-day. This was simply as
astounding. His cap was a dainty thing, his close-buttoned blue cloth
roundabout was new and natty, and so were his pantaloons. He had shoes
on--and it was only Friday. He even wore a necktie, a bright bit of
ribbon. He had a citified air about him that ate into Tom's vitals. The
more Tom stared at the splendid marvel, the higher he turned up his nose
at his finery and the shabbier and shabbier his own outfit seemed to
him to grow. Neither boy spoke. If one moved, the other moved--but only
sidewise, in a circle; they kept face to face and eye to eye all the
time. Finally Tom said:

“I can lick you!”

“I'd like to see you try it.”

“Well, I can do it.”

“No you can't, either.”

“Yes I can.”

“No you can't.”

“I can.”

“You can't.”

“Can!”

“Can't!”

An uncomfortable pause. Then Tom said:

“What's your name?”

“'Tisn't any of your business, maybe.”

“Well I 'low I'll _make_ it my business.”

“Well why don't you?”

“If you say much, I will.”

“Much--much--_much_. There now.”

“Oh, you think you're mighty smart, _don't_ you? I could lick you with
one hand tied behind me, if I wanted to.”

“Well why don't you _do_ it? You _say_ you can do it.”

“Well I _will_, if you fool with me.”

“Oh yes--I've seen whole families in the same fix.”

“Smarty! You think you're _some_, now, _don't_ you? Oh, what a hat!”

“You can lump that hat if you don't like it. I dare you to knock it
off--and anybody that'll take a dare will suck eggs.”

“You're a liar!”

“You're another.”

“You're a fighting liar and dasn't take it up.”

“Aw--take a walk!”

“Say--if you give me much more of your sass I'll take and bounce a rock
off'n your head.”

“Oh, of _course_ you will.”

“Well I _will_.”

“Well why don't you _do_ it then? What do you keep _saying_ you will
for? Why don't you _do_ it? It's because you're afraid.”

“I _ain't_ afraid.”

“You are.”

“I ain't.”

“You are.”

Another pause, and more eying and sidling around each other. Presently
they were shoulder to shoulder. Tom said:

“Get away from here!”

“Go away yourself!”

“I won't.”

“I won't either.”

So they stood, each with a foot placed at an angle as a brace, and both
shoving with might and main, and glowering at each other with hate. But
neither could get an advantage. After struggling till both were hot and
flushed, each relaxed his strain with watchful caution, and Tom said:

“You're a coward and a pup. I'll tell my big brother on you, and he can
thrash you with his little finger, and I'll make him do it, too.”

“What do I care for your big brother? I've got a brother that's bigger
than he is--and what's more, he can throw him over that fence, too.”
 [Both brothers were imaginary.]

“That's a lie.”

“_Your_ saying so don't make it so.”

Tom drew a line in the dust with his big toe, and said:

“I dare you to step over that, and I'll lick you till you can't stand
up. Anybody that'll take a dare will steal sheep.”

The new boy stepped over promptly, and said:

“Now you said you'd do it, now let's see you do it.”

“Don't you crowd me now; you better look out.”

“Well, you _said_ you'd do it--why don't you do it?”

“By jingo! for two cents I _will_ do it.”

The new boy took two broad coppers out of his pocket and held them out
with derision. Tom struck them to the ground. In an instant both boys
were rolling and tumbling in the dirt, gripped together like cats; and
for the space of a minute they tugged and tore at each other's hair and
clothes, punched and scratched each other's nose, and covered themselves
with dust and glory. Presently the confusion took form, and through the
fog of battle Tom appeared, seated astride the new boy, and pounding him
with his fists. “Holler 'nuff!” said he.

The boy only struggled to free himself. He was crying--mainly from rage.

“Holler 'nuff!”--and the pounding went on.

At last the stranger got out a smothered “'Nuff!” and Tom let him up and
said:

“Now that'll learn you. Better look out who you're fooling with next
time.”

The new boy went off brushing the dust from his clothes, sobbing,
snuffling, and occasionally looking back and shaking his head and
threatening what he would do to Tom the “next time he caught him out.”
 To which Tom responded with jeers, and started off in high feather, and
as soon as his back was turned the new boy snatched up a stone, threw it
and hit him between the shoulders and then turned tail and ran like
an antelope. Tom chased the traitor home, and thus found out where he
lived. He then held a position at the gate for some time, daring the
enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made faces at him through the
window and declined. At last the enemy's mother appeared, and called Tom
a bad, vicious, vulgar child, and ordered him away. So he went away; but
he said he “'lowed” to “lay” for that boy.

He got home pretty late that night, and when he climbed cautiously in
at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt; and
when she saw the state his clothes were in her resolution to turn his
Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine in its
firmness.




CHAPTER II

SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and
fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if
the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in
every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom
and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond
the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far
enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a
long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and
a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board
fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a
burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost
plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant
whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed
fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at
the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from
the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes, before, but
now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at
the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there
waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, fighting,
skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only a hundred
and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of water under an
hour--and even then somebody generally had to go after him. Tom said:

“Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some.”

Jim shook his head and said:

“Can't, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an' git dis water
an' not stop foolin' roun' wid anybody. She say she spec' Mars Tom gwine
to ax me to whitewash, an' so she tole me go 'long an' 'tend to my own
business--she 'lowed _she'd_ 'tend to de whitewashin'.”

“Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That's the way she always talks.
Gimme the bucket--I won't be gone only a a minute. _She_ won't ever
know.”

“Oh, I dasn't, Mars Tom. Ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n me.
'Deed she would.”

“_She_! She never licks anybody--whacks 'em over the head with her
thimble--and who cares for that, I'd like to know. She talks awful, but
talk don't hurt--anyways it don't if she don't cry. Jim, I'll give you a
marvel. I'll give you a white alley!”

Jim began to waver.

“White alley, Jim! And it's a bully taw.”

“My! Dat's a mighty gay marvel, I tell you! But Mars Tom I's powerful
'fraid ole missis--”

“And besides, if you will I'll show you my sore toe.”

Jim was only human--this attraction was too much for him. He put down
his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing
interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he
was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was
whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with
a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye.

But Tom's energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had
planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys
would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and
they would make a world of fun of him for having to work--the very
thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and
examined it--bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange
of _work_, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour
of pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and
gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark and hopeless
moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a great,
magnificent inspiration.

He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in
sight presently--the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been
dreading. Ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jump--proof enough that his
heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and
giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned
ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As
he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned
far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp
and circumstance--for he was personating the Big Missouri, and considered
himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and captain and
engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own
hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:

“Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!” The headway ran almost out, and he
drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.

“Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!” His arms straightened and stiffened
down his sides.

“Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow!
Chow!” His right hand, mean-time, describing stately circles--for it was
representing a forty-foot wheel.

“Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!”
 The left hand began to describe circles.

“Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on
the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow! Ting-a-ling-ling!
Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line! _lively_ now! Come--out with
your spring-line--what're you about there! Take a turn round that stump
with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now--let her go! Done with
the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! SH'T! S'H'T! SH'T!” (trying the
gauge-cocks).

Tom went on whitewashing--paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared
a moment and then said: “_Hi-Yi! You're_ up a stump, ain't you!”

No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then
he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as
before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the
apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:

“Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?”

Tom wheeled suddenly and said:

“Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing.”

“Say--I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of
course you'd druther _work_--wouldn't you? Course you would!”

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:

“What do you call work?”

“Why, ain't _that_ work?”

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom
Sawyer.”

“Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you _like_ it?”

The brush continued to move.

“Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a
chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple.
Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth--stepped back to note the
effect--added a touch here and there--criticised the effect again--Ben
watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more
absorbed. Presently he said:

“Say, Tom, let _me_ whitewash a little.”

Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:

“No--no--I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's awful
particular about this fence--right here on the street, you know--but if it
was the back fence I wouldn't mind and _she_ wouldn't. Yes, she's awful
particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful; I reckon
there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it
the way it's got to be done.”

“No--is that so? Oh come, now--lemme just try. Only just a little--I'd let
_you_, if you was me, Tom.”

“Ben, I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly--well, Jim wanted to do
it, but she wouldn't let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let
Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this fence
and anything was to happen to it--”

“Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say--I'll give you
the core of my apple.”

“Well, here--No, Ben, now don't. I'm afeard--”

“I'll give you _all_ of it!”

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his
heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the
sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by,
dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more
innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every
little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time
Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for
a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in
for a dead rat and a string to swing it with--and so on, and so on, hour
after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a
poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in
wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part
of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool
cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a
glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles,
six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a
dog-collar--but no dog--the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel,
and a dilapidated old window sash.

He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while--plenty of company--and
the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out of
whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He
had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it--namely,
that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary
to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and
wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have
comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is _obliged_ to do,
and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And
this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or
performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing
Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England
who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a
daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable
money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn
it into work and then they would resign.

The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place
in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to
report.




CHAPTER III

TOM presented himself before Aunt Polly, who was sitting by an
open window in a pleasant rearward apartment, which was bedroom,
breakfast-room, dining-room, and library, combined. The balmy summer
air, the restful quiet, the odor of the flowers, and the drowsing
murmur of the bees had had their effect, and she was nodding over her
knitting--for she had no company but the cat, and it was asleep in her
lap. Her spectacles were propped up on her gray head for safety. She had
thought that of course Tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered at
seeing him place himself in her power again in this intrepid way. He
said: “Mayn't I go and play now, aunt?”

“What, a'ready? How much have you done?”

“It's all done, aunt.”

“Tom, don't lie to me--I can't bear it.”

“I ain't, aunt; it _is_ all done.”

Aunt Polly placed small trust in such evidence. She went out to see for
herself; and she would have been content to find twenty per cent. of
Tom's statement true. When she found the entire fence white-washed, and
not only whitewashed but elaborately coated and recoated, and even a
streak added to the ground, her astonishment was almost unspeakable. She
said:

“Well, I never! There's no getting round it, you can work when you're a
mind to, Tom.” And then she diluted the compliment by adding, “But it's
powerful seldom you're a mind to, I'm bound to say. Well, go 'long and
play; but mind you get back some time in a week, or I'll tan you.”

She was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took
him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to him,
along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a treat
took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort.
And while she closed with a happy Scriptural flourish, he “hooked” a
doughnut.

Then he skipped out, and saw Sid just starting up the outside stairway
that led to the back rooms on the second floor. Clods were handy and
the air was full of them in a twinkling. They raged around Sid like a
hail-storm; and before Aunt Polly could collect her surprised faculties
and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect,
and Tom was over the fence and gone. There was a gate, but as a general
thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it. His soul was at
peace, now that he had settled with Sid for calling attention to his
black thread and getting him into trouble.

Tom skirted the block, and came round into a muddy alley that led by the
back of his aunt's cow-stable. He presently got safely beyond the reach
of capture and punishment, and hastened toward the public square of the
village, where two “military” companies of boys had met for conflict,
according to previous appointment. Tom was General of one of these
armies, Joe Harper (a bosom friend) General of the other. These two
great commanders did not condescend to fight in person--that being better
suited to the still smaller fry--but sat together on an eminence
and conducted the field operations by orders delivered through
aides-de-camp. Tom's army won a great victory, after a long and
hard-fought battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged,
the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the
necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and
marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone.

As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new
girl in the garden--a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow
hair plaited into two long-tails, white summer frock and embroidered
pan-talettes. The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. A
certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a
memory of herself behind. He had thought he loved her to distraction;
he had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold it was only a poor
little evanescent partiality. He had been months winning her; she had
confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest
boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time
she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is
done.

He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she had
discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present, and
began to “show off” in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to win
her admiration. He kept up this grotesque foolishness for some time;
but by-and-by, while he was in the midst of some dangerous gymnastic
performances, he glanced aside and saw that the little girl was wending
her way toward the house. Tom came up to the fence and leaned on it,
grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet awhile longer. She halted a
moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. Tom heaved a great
sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. But his face lit up,
right away, for she tossed a pansy over the fence a moment before she
disappeared.

The boy ran around and stopped within a foot or two of the flower, and
then shaded his eyes with his hand and began to look down street as
if he had discovered something of interest going on in that direction.
Presently he picked up a straw and began trying to balance it on his
nose, with his head tilted far back; and as he moved from side to side,
in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy; finally his
bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped
away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner. But only for a
minute--only while he could button the flower inside his jacket, next
his heart--or next his stomach, possibly, for he was not much posted in
anatomy, and not hypercritical, anyway.

He returned, now, and hung about the fence till nightfall, “showing
off,” as before; but the girl never exhibited herself again, though Tom
comforted himself a little with the hope that she had been near some
window, meantime, and been aware of his attentions. Finally he strode
home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions.

All through supper his spirits were so high that his aunt wondered “what
had got into the child.” He took a good scolding about clodding Sid, and
did not seem to mind it in the least. He tried to steal sugar under his
aunt's very nose, and got his knuckles rapped for it. He said:

“Aunt, you don't whack Sid when he takes it.”

“Well, Sid don't torment a body the way you do. You'd be always into
that sugar if I warn't watching you.”

Presently she stepped into the kitchen, and Sid, happy in his immunity,
reached for the sugar-bowl--a sort of glorying over Tom which was
wellnigh unbearable. But Sid's fingers slipped and the bowl dropped and
broke. Tom was in ecstasies. In such ecstasies that he even controlled
his tongue and was silent. He said to himself that he would not speak a
word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly still till she
asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and there would be
nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model “catch it.” He was
so brimful of exultation that he could hardly hold himself when the old
lady came back and stood above the wreck discharging lightnings of wrath
from over her spectacles. He said to himself, “Now it's coming!” And the
next instant he was sprawling on the floor! The potent palm was uplifted
to strike again when Tom cried out:

“Hold on, now, what 'er you belting _me_ for?--Sid broke it!”

Aunt Polly paused, perplexed, and Tom looked for healing pity. But when
she got her tongue again, she only said:

“Umf! Well, you didn't get a lick amiss, I reckon. You been into some
other audacious mischief when I wasn't around, like enough.”

Then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something
kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a
confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that.
So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart.
Tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes. He knew that in her heart
his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the
consciousness of it. He would hang out no signals, he would take notice
of none. He knew that a yearning glance fell upon him, now and then,
through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it. He pictured
himself lying sick unto death and his aunt bending over him beseeching
one little forgiving word, but he would turn his face to the wall, and
die with that word unsaid. Ah, how would she feel then? And he pictured
himself brought home from the river, dead, with his curls all wet, and
his sore heart at rest. How she would throw herself upon him, and how
her tears would fall like rain, and her lips pray God to give her back
her boy and she would never, never abuse him any more! But he would
lie there cold and white and make no sign--a poor little sufferer, whose
griefs were at an end. He so worked upon his feelings with the pathos of
these dreams, that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to choke;
and his eyes swam in a blur of water, which overflowed when he winked,
and ran down and trickled from the end of his nose. And such a luxury to
him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bear to have any
worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it; it was too
sacred for such contact; and so, presently, when his cousin Mary danced
in, all alive with the joy of seeing home again after an age-long visit
of one week to the country, he got up and moved in clouds and darkness
out at one door as she brought song and sunshine in at the other.

He wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought desolate
places that were in harmony with his spirit. A log raft in the river
invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and contemplated
the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while, that he could
only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without undergoing the
uncomfortable routine devised by nature. Then he thought of his flower.
He got it out, rumpled and wilted, and it mightily increased his dismal
felicity. He wondered if she would pity him if she knew? Would she
cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms around his neck and
comfort him? Or would she turn coldly away like all the hollow world?
This picture brought such an agony of pleasurable suffering that he
worked it over and over again in his mind and set it up in new and
varied lights, till he wore it threadbare. At last he rose up sighing
and departed in the darkness.

About half-past nine or ten o'clock he came along the deserted street to
where the Adored Unknown lived; he paused a moment; no sound fell upon
his listening ear; a candle was casting a dull glow upon the curtain
of a second-story window. Was the sacred presence there? He climbed the
fence, threaded his stealthy way through the plants, till he stood under
that window; he looked up at it long, and with emotion; then he laid him
down on the ground under it, disposing himself upon his back, with his
hands clasped upon his breast and holding his poor wilted flower.
And thus he would die--out in the cold world, with no shelter over his
homeless head, no friendly hand to wipe the death-damps from his brow,
no loving face to bend pityingly over him when the great agony came. And
thus _she_ would see him when she looked out upon the glad morning, and
oh! would she drop one little tear upon his poor, lifeless form, would
she heave one little sigh to see a bright young life so rudely blighted,
so untimely cut down?

The window went up, a maid-servant's discordant voice profaned the holy
calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains!

The strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort. There was a whiz
as of a missile in the air, mingled with the murmur of a curse, a sound
as of shivering glass followed, and a small, vague form went over the
fence and shot away in the gloom.

Not long after, as Tom, all undressed for bed, was surveying his
drenched garments by the light of a tallow dip, Sid woke up; but if he
had any dim idea of making any “references to allusions,” he thought
better of it and held his peace, for there was danger in Tom's eye.

Tom turned in without the added vexation of prayers, and Sid made mental
note of the omission.




CHAPTER IV

THE sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful
village like a benediction. Breakfast over, Aunt Polly had family
worship: it began with a prayer built from the ground up of solid
courses of Scriptural quotations, welded together with a thin mortar of
originality; and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter of
the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai.

Then Tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to “get
his verses.” Sid had learned his lesson days before. Tom bent all his
energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of the
Sermon on the Mount, because he could find no verses that were shorter.
At the end of half an hour Tom had a vague general idea of his lesson,
but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field of human
thought, and his hands were busy with distracting recreations. Mary took
his book to hear him recite, and he tried to find his way through the
fog:

“Blessed are the--a--a--”

“Poor”--

“Yes--poor; blessed are the poor--a--a--”

“In spirit--”

“In spirit; blessed are the poor in spirit, for they--they--”

“_Theirs_--”

“For _theirs_. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they--they--”

“Sh--”

“For they--a--”

“S, H, A--”

“For they S, H--Oh, I don't know what it is!”

“_Shall_!”

“Oh, _shall_! for they shall--for they shall--a--a--shall mourn--a--a--blessed
are they that shall--they that--a--they that shall mourn, for they
shall--a--shall _what_? Why don't you tell me, Mary?--what do you want to
be so mean for?”

“Oh, Tom, you poor thick-headed thing, I'm not teasing you. I wouldn't
do that. You must go and learn it again. Don't you be discouraged, Tom,
you'll manage it--and if you do, I'll give you something ever so nice.
There, now, that's a good boy.”

“All right! What is it, Mary, tell me what it is.”

“Never you mind, Tom. You know if I say it's nice, it is nice.”

“You bet you that's so, Mary. All right, I'll tackle it again.”

And he did “tackle it again”--and under the double pressure of curiosity
and prospective gain he did it with such spirit that he accomplished a
shining success. Mary gave him a brand-new “Barlow” knife worth twelve
and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that swept his system
shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would not cut anything,
but it was a “sure-enough” Barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur
in that--though where the Western boys ever got the idea that such a
weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its injury is an imposing
mystery and will always remain so, perhaps. Tom contrived to scarify the
cupboard with it, and was arranging to begin on the bureau, when he was
called off to dress for Sunday-school.

Mary gave him a tin basin of water and a piece of soap, and he went
outside the door and set the basin on a little bench there; then he
dipped the soap in the water and laid it down; turned up his sleeves;
poured out the water on the ground, gently, and then entered the kitchen
and began to wipe his face diligently on the towel behind the door. But
Mary removed the towel and said:

“Now ain't you ashamed, Tom. You mustn't be so bad. Water won't hurt
you.”

Tom was a trifle disconcerted. The basin was refilled, and this time he
stood over it a little while, gathering resolution; took in a big breath
and began. When he entered the kitchen presently, with both eyes shut
and groping for the towel with his hands, an honorable testimony of
suds and water was dripping from his face. But when he emerged from
the towel, he was not yet satisfactory, for the clean territory stopped
short at his chin and his jaws, like a mask; below and beyond this line
there was a dark expanse of unirrigated soil that spread downward in
front and backward around his neck. Mary took him in hand, and when she
was done with him he was a man and a brother, without distinction of
color, and his saturated hair was neatly brushed, and its short curls
wrought into a dainty and symmetrical general effect. [He privately
smoothed out the curls, with labor and difficulty, and plastered his
hair close down to his head; for he held curls to be effeminate, and his
own filled his life with bitterness.] Then Mary got out a suit of his
clothing that had been used only on Sundays during two years--they were
simply called his “other clothes”--and so by that we know the size of his
wardrobe. The girl “put him to rights” after he had dressed himself;
she buttoned his neat roundabout up to his chin, turned his vast shirt
collar down over his shoulders, brushed him off and crowned him with
his speckled straw hat. He now looked exceedingly improved and
uncomfortable. He was fully as uncomfortable as he looked; for there
was a restraint about whole clothes and cleanliness that galled him. He
hoped that Mary would forget his shoes, but the hope was blighted; she
coated them thoroughly with tallow, as was the custom, and brought
them out. He lost his temper and said he was always being made to do
everything he didn't want to do. But Mary said, persuasively:

“Please, Tom--that's a good boy.”

So he got into the shoes snarling. Mary was soon ready, and the three
children set out for Sunday-school--a place that Tom hated with his whole
heart; but Sid and Mary were fond of it.

Sabbath-school hours were from nine to half-past ten; and then church
service. Two of the children always remained for the sermon voluntarily,
and the other always remained too--for stronger reasons. The church's
high-backed, uncushioned pews would seat about three hundred persons;
the edifice was but a small, plain affair, with a sort of pine board
tree-box on top of it for a steeple. At the door Tom dropped back a step
and accosted a Sunday-dressed comrade:

“Say, Billy, got a yaller ticket?”

“Yes.”

“What'll you take for her?”

“What'll you give?”

“Piece of lickrish and a fish-hook.”

“Less see 'em.”

Tom exhibited. They were satisfactory, and the property changed hands.
Then Tom traded a couple of white alleys for three red tickets, and some
small trifle or other for a couple of blue ones. He waylaid other
boys as they came, and went on buying tickets of various colors ten
or fifteen minutes longer. He entered the church, now, with a swarm
of clean and noisy boys and girls, proceeded to his seat and started
a quarrel with the first boy that came handy. The teacher, a grave,
elderly man, interfered; then turned his back a moment and Tom pulled a
boy's hair in the next bench, and was absorbed in his book when the boy
turned around; stuck a pin in another boy, presently, in order to hear
him say “Ouch!” and got a new reprimand from his teacher. Tom's whole
class were of a pattern--restless, noisy, and troublesome. When they came
to recite their lessons, not one of them knew his verses perfectly, but
had to be prompted all along. However, they worried through, and each
got his reward--in small blue tickets, each with a passage of Scripture
on it; each blue ticket was pay for two verses of the recitation. Ten
blue tickets equalled a red one, and could be exchanged for it; ten red
tickets equalled a yellow one; for ten yellow tickets the superintendent
gave a very plainly bound Bible (worth forty cents in those easy
times) to the pupil. How many of my readers would have the industry and
application to memorize two thousand verses, even for a Dore Bible? And
yet Mary had acquired two Bibles in this way--it was the patient work of
two years--and a boy of German parentage had won four or five. He once
recited three thousand verses without stopping; but the strain upon his
mental faculties was too great, and he was little better than an idiot
from that day forth--a grievous misfortune for the school, for on great
occasions, before company, the superintendent (as Tom expressed it)
had always made this boy come out and “spread himself.” Only the older
pupils managed to keep their tickets and stick to their tedious work
long enough to get a Bible, and so the delivery of one of these prizes
was a rare and noteworthy circumstance; the successful pupil was so
great and conspicuous for that day that on the spot every scholar's
heart was fired with a fresh ambition that often lasted a couple
of weeks. It is possible that Tom's mental stomach had never really
hungered for one of those prizes, but unquestionably his entire being
had for many a day longed for the glory and the eclat that came with it.

In due course the superintendent stood up in front of the pulpit, with
a closed hymn-book in his hand and his forefinger inserted between its
leaves, and commanded attention. When a Sunday-school superintendent
makes his customary little speech, a hymn-book in the hand is as
necessary as is the inevitable sheet of music in the hand of a singer
who stands forward on the platform and sings a solo at a concert--though
why, is a mystery: for neither the hymn-book nor the sheet of music
is ever referred to by the sufferer. This superintendent was a slim
creature of thirty-five, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair; he
wore a stiff standing-collar whose upper edge almost reached his ears
and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his mouth--a
fence that compelled a straight lookout ahead, and a turning of the
whole body when a side view was required; his chin was propped on a
spreading cravat which was as broad and as long as a bank-note, and had
fringed ends; his boot toes were turned sharply up, in the fashion
of the day, like sleigh-runners--an effect patiently and laboriously
produced by the young men by sitting with their toes pressed against a
wall for hours together. Mr. Walters was very earnest of mien, and very
sincere and honest at heart; and he held sacred things and places
in such reverence, and so separated them from worldly matters, that
unconsciously to himself his Sunday-school voice had acquired a peculiar
intonation which was wholly absent on week-days. He began after this
fashion:

“Now, children, I want you all to sit up just as straight and pretty as
you can and give me all your attention for a minute or two. There--that
is it. That is the way good little boys and girls should do. I see one
little girl who is looking out of the window--I am afraid she thinks I
am out there somewhere--perhaps up in one of the trees making a speech
to the little birds. [Applausive titter.] I want to tell you how good it
makes me feel to see so many bright, clean little faces assembled in a
place like this, learning to do right and be good.” And so forth and so
on. It is not necessary to set down the rest of the oration. It was of a
pattern which does not vary, and so it is familiar to us all.

The latter third of the speech was marred by the resumption of fights
and other recreations among certain of the bad boys, and by fidgetings
and whisperings that extended far and wide, washing even to the bases of
isolated and incorruptible rocks like Sid and Mary. But now every sound
ceased suddenly, with the subsidence of Mr. Walters' voice, and the
conclusion of the speech was received with a burst of silent gratitude.

A good part of the whispering had been occasioned by an event which was
more or less rare--the entrance of visitors: lawyer Thatcher, accompanied
by a very feeble and aged man; a fine, portly, middle-aged gentleman
with iron-gray hair; and a dignified lady who was doubtless the latter's
wife. The lady was leading a child. Tom had been restless and full of
chafings and repinings; conscience-smitten, too--he could not meet Amy
Lawrence's eye, he could not brook her loving gaze. But when he saw this
small newcomer his soul was all ablaze with bliss in a moment. The next
moment he was “showing off” with all his might--cuffing boys, pulling
hair, making faces--in a word, using every art that seemed likely to
fascinate a girl and win her applause. His exaltation had but one
alloy--the memory of his humiliation in this angel's garden--and that
record in sand was fast washing out, under the waves of happiness that
were sweeping over it now.

The visitors were given the highest seat of honor, and as soon as Mr.
Walters' speech was finished, he introduced them to the school. The
middle-aged man turned out to be a prodigious personage--no less a one
than the county judge--altogether the most august creation these children
had ever looked upon--and they wondered what kind of material he was made
of--and they half wanted to hear him roar, and were half afraid he might,
too. He was from Constantinople, twelve miles away--so he had travelled,
and seen the world--these very eyes had looked upon the county
court-house--which was said to have a tin roof. The awe which these
reflections inspired was attested by the impressive silence and the
ranks of staring eyes. This was the great Judge Thatcher, brother of
their own lawyer. Jeff Thatcher immediately went forward, to be familiar
with the great man and be envied by the school. It would have been music
to his soul to hear the whisperings:

“Look at him, Jim! He's a going up there. Say--look! he's a going to
shake hands with him--he _is_ shaking hands with him! By jings, don't you
wish you was Jeff?”

Mr. Walters fell to “showing off,” with all sorts of official bustlings
and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments, discharging
directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a target. The
librarian “showed off”--running hither and thither with his arms full of
books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that insect authority
delights in. The young lady teachers “showed off”--bending sweetly over
pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting pretty warning fingers
at bad little boys and patting good ones lovingly. The young gentlemen
teachers “showed off” with small scoldings and other little displays of
authority and fine attention to discipline--and most of the teachers, of
both sexes, found business up at the library, by the pulpit; and it was
business that frequently had to be done over again two or three times
(with much seeming vexation). The little girls “showed off” in various
ways, and the little boys “showed off” with such diligence that the air
was thick with paper wads and the murmur of scufflings. And above it
all the great man sat and beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all
the house, and warmed himself in the sun of his own grandeur--for he was
“showing off,” too.

There was only one thing wanting to make Mr. Walters' ecstasy complete,
and that was a chance to deliver a Bible-prize and exhibit a prodigy.
Several pupils had a few yellow tickets, but none had enough--he had been
around among the star pupils inquiring. He would have given worlds, now,
to have that German lad back again with a sound mind.

And now at this moment, when hope was dead, Tom Sawyer came forward with
nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue ones, and demanded
a Bible. This was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Walters was not
expecting an application from this source for the next ten years. But
there was no getting around it--here were the certified checks, and they
were good for their face. Tom was therefore elevated to a place with
the Judge and the other elect, and the great news was announced from
headquarters. It was the most stunning surprise of the decade, and
so profound was the sensation that it lifted the new hero up to the
judicial one's altitude, and the school had two marvels to gaze upon
in place of one. The boys were all eaten up with envy--but those that
suffered the bitterest pangs were those who perceived too late that they
themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by trading tickets to
Tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling whitewashing privileges.
These despised themselves, as being the dupes of a wily fraud, a
guileful snake in the grass.

The prize was delivered to Tom with as much effusion as the
superintendent could pump up under the circumstances; but it lacked
somewhat of the true gush, for the poor fellow's instinct taught him
that there was a mystery here that could not well bear the light,
perhaps; it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two
thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom on his premises--a dozen would
strain his capacity, without a doubt.

Amy Lawrence was proud and glad, and she tried to make Tom see it in
her face--but he wouldn't look. She wondered; then she was just a grain
troubled; next a dim suspicion came and went--came again; she watched;
a furtive glance told her worlds--and then her heart broke, and she was
jealous, and angry, and the tears came and she hated everybody. Tom most
of all (she thought).

Tom was introduced to the Judge; but his tongue was tied, his breath
would hardly come, his heart quaked--partly because of the awful
greatness of the man, but mainly because he was her parent. He would
have liked to fall down and worship him, if it were in the dark. The
Judge put his hand on Tom's head and called him a fine little man, and
asked him what his name was. The boy stammered, gasped, and got it out:

“Tom.”

“Oh, no, not Tom--it is--”

“Thomas.”

“Ah, that's it. I thought there was more to it, maybe. That's very well.
But you've another one I daresay, and you'll tell it to me, won't you?”

“Tell the gentleman your other name, Thomas,” said Walters, “and say
sir. You mustn't forget your manners.”

“Thomas Sawyer--sir.”

“That's it! That's a good boy. Fine boy. Fine, manly little fellow. Two
thousand verses is a great many--very, very great many. And you never can
be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for knowledge is worth
more than anything there is in the world; it's what makes great men
and good men; you'll be a great man and a good man yourself, some
day, Thomas, and then you'll look back and say, It's all owing to the
precious Sunday-school privileges of my boyhood--it's all owing to
my dear teachers that taught me to learn--it's all owing to the good
superintendent, who encouraged me, and watched over me, and gave me a
beautiful Bible--a splendid elegant Bible--to keep and have it all for my
own, always--it's all owing to right bringing up! That is what you will
say, Thomas--and you wouldn't take any money for those two thousand
verses--no indeed you wouldn't. And now you wouldn't mind telling me and
this lady some of the things you've learned--no, I know you wouldn't--for
we are proud of little boys that learn. Now, no doubt you know the names
of all the twelve disciples. Won't you tell us the names of the first
two that were appointed?”

Tom was tugging at a button-hole and looking sheepish. He blushed,
now, and his eyes fell. Mr. Walters' heart sank within him. He said
to himself, it is not possible that the boy can answer the simplest
question--why _did_ the Judge ask him? Yet he felt obliged to speak up
and say:

“Answer the gentleman, Thomas--don't be afraid.”

Tom still hung fire.

“Now I know you'll tell me,” said the lady. “The names of the first two
disciples were--”

“_David And Goliah!_”

Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene.




CHAPTER V

ABOUT half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to ring,
and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon. The
Sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house and
occupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision. Aunt
Polly came, and Tom and Sid and Mary sat with her--Tom being placed next
the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open window
and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible. The crowd filed up
the aisles: the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better days;
the mayor and his wife--for they had a mayor there, among other
unnecessaries; the justice of the peace; the widow Douglass, fair,
smart, and forty, a generous, good-hearted soul and well-to-do, her hill
mansion the only palace in the town, and the most hospitable and much
the most lavish in the matter of festivities that St. Petersburg could
boast; the bent and venerable Major and Mrs. Ward; lawyer Riverson, the
new notable from a distance; next the belle of the village, followed by
a troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked young heart-breakers; then all
the young clerks in town in a body--for they had stood in the vestibule
sucking their cane-heads, a circling wall of oiled and simpering
admirers, till the last girl had run their gantlet; and last of all came
the Model Boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedful care of his mother as
if she were cut glass. He always brought his mother to church, and was
the pride of all the matrons. The boys all hated him, he was so
good. And besides, he had been “thrown up to them” so much. His
white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as usual on
Sundays--accidentally. Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked upon boys
who had as snobs.

The congregation being fully assembled, now, the bell rang once more,
to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the
church which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of the
choir in the gallery. The choir always tittered and whispered all
through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred,
but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago,
and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in
some foreign country.

The minister gave out the hymn, and read it through with a relish, in a
peculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country. His
voice began on a medium key and climbed steadily up till it reached a
certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost word
and then plunged down as if from a spring-board:

Shall I be car-ri-ed toe the skies, on flow'ry _beds_ of ease,

Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro' _blood_-y seas?

He was regarded as a wonderful reader. At church “sociables” he was
always called upon to read poetry; and when he was through, the ladies
would lift up their hands and let them fall helplessly in their laps,
and “wall” their eyes, and shake their heads, as much as to say, “Words
cannot express it; it is too beautiful, TOO beautiful for this mortal
earth.”

After the hymn had been sung, the Rev. Mr. Sprague turned himself into
a bulletin-board, and read off “notices” of meetings and societies and
things till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of
doom--a queer custom which is still kept up in America, even in cities,
away here in this age of abundant newspapers. Often, the less there is
to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and went
into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the
church; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself;
for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the United
States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for the
President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossed
by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of
European monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light
and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear
withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with
a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace
and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a
grateful harvest of good. Amen.

There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat down.
The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer, he
only endured it--if he even did that much. He was restive all through it;
he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously--for he was not
listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the clergyman's regular
route over it--and when a little trifle of new matter was interlarded,
his ear detected it and his whole nature resented it; he considered
additions unfair, and scoundrelly. In the midst of the prayer a fly had
lit on the back of the pew in front of him and tortured his spirit by
calmly rubbing its hands together, embracing its head with its arms, and
polishing it so vigorously that it seemed to almost part company with
the body, and the slender thread of a neck was exposed to view; scraping
its wings with its hind legs and smoothing them to its body as if they
had been coat-tails; going through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if
it knew it was perfectly safe. As indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom's
hands itched to grab for it they did not dare--he believed his soul would
be instantly destroyed if he did such a thing while the prayer was going
on. But with the closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal
forward; and the instant the “Amen” was out the fly was a prisoner of
war. His aunt detected the act and made him let it go.

The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an
argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod--and
yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and
thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly
worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he
always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything
else about the discourse. However, this time he was really interested
for a little while. The minister made a grand and moving picture of the
assembling together of the world's hosts at the millennium when the lion
and the lamb should lie down together and a little child should lead
them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of the great spectacle
were lost upon the boy; he only thought of the conspicuousness of the
principal character before the on-looking nations; his face lit with the
thought, and he said to himself that he wished he could be that child,
if it was a tame lion.

Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed.
Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was
a large black beetle with formidable jaws--a “pinchbug,” he called it. It
was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to
take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle went
floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went
into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless legs,
unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was safe out
of his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon found relief in
the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle dog came
idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the
quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle; the
drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize; walked around
it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again; grew
bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a gingerly
snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another; began to enjoy
the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle between his paws,
and continued his experiments; grew weary at last, and then indifferent
and absent-minded. His head nodded, and little by little his chin
descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. There was a sharp yelp,
a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of yards
away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring spectators
shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind fans and
hand-kerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog looked foolish,
and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart, too, and a
craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a wary attack on
it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with his
fore-paws within an inch of the creature, making even closer snatches at
it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his ears flapped again. But
he grew tired once more, after a while; tried to amuse himself with a
fly but found no relief; followed an ant around, with his nose close
to the floor, and quickly wearied of that; yawned, sighed, forgot the
beetle entirely, and sat down on it. Then there was a wild yelp of agony
and the poodle went sailing up the aisle; the yelps continued, and so
did the dog; he crossed the house in front of the altar; he flew
down the other aisle; he crossed before the doors; he clamored up the
home-stretch; his anguish grew with his progress, till presently he was
but a woolly comet moving in its orbit with the gleam and the speed of
light. At last the frantic sufferer sheered from its course, and sprang
into its master's lap; he flung it out of the window, and the voice of
distress quickly thinned away and died in the distance.

By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with
suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill.
The discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all
possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest
sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of
unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson
had said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to the whole
congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction pronounced.

Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was
some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of variety
in it. He had but one marring thought; he was willing that the dog
should play with his pinchbug, but he did not think it was upright in
him to carry it off.




CHAPTER VI

MONDAY morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found
him so--because it began another week's slow suffering in school. He
generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening holiday,
it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much more odious.

Tom lay thinking. Presently it occurred to him that he wished he was
sick; then he could stay home from school. Here was a vague possibility.
He canvassed his system. No ailment was found, and he investigated
again. This time he thought he could detect colicky symptoms, and he
began to encourage them with considerable hope. But they soon grew
feeble, and presently died wholly away. He reflected further. Suddenly
he discovered something. One of his upper front teeth was loose. This
was lucky; he was about to begin to groan, as a “starter,” as he
called it, when it occurred to him that if he came into court with that
argument, his aunt would pull it out, and that would hurt. So he thought
he would hold the tooth in reserve for the present, and seek further.
Nothing offered for some little time, and then he remembered hearing
the doctor tell about a certain thing that laid up a patient for two or
three weeks and threatened to make him lose a finger. So the boy eagerly
drew his sore toe from under the sheet and held it up for inspection.
But now he did not know the necessary symptoms. However, it seemed
well worth while to chance it, so he fell to groaning with considerable
spirit.

But Sid slept on unconscious.

Tom groaned louder, and fancied that he began to feel pain in the toe.

No result from Sid.

Tom was panting with his exertions by this time. He took a rest and then
swelled himself up and fetched a succession of admirable groans.

Sid snored on.

Tom was aggravated. He said, “Sid, Sid!” and shook him. This course
worked well, and Tom began to groan again. Sid yawned, stretched, then
brought himself up on his elbow with a snort, and began to stare at Tom.
Tom went on groaning. Sid said:

“Tom! Say, Tom!” [No response.] “Here, Tom! TOM! What is the matter,
Tom?” And he shook him and looked in his face anxiously.

Tom moaned out:

“Oh, don't, Sid. Don't joggle me.”

“Why, what's the matter, Tom? I must call auntie.”

“No--never mind. It'll be over by and by, maybe. Don't call anybody.”

“But I must! _Don't_ groan so, Tom, it's awful. How long you been this
way?”

“Hours. Ouch! Oh, don't stir so, Sid, you'll kill me.”

“Tom, why didn't you wake me sooner? Oh, Tom, _don't!_ It makes my flesh
crawl to hear you. Tom, what is the matter?”

“I forgive you everything, Sid. [Groan.] Everything you've ever done to
me. When I'm gone--”

“Oh, Tom, you ain't dying, are you? Don't, Tom--oh, don't. Maybe--”

“I forgive everybody, Sid. [Groan.] Tell 'em so, Sid. And Sid, you give
my window-sash and my cat with one eye to that new girl that's come to
town, and tell her--”

But Sid had snatched his clothes and gone. Tom was suffering in reality,
now, so handsomely was his imagination working, and so his groans had
gathered quite a genuine tone.

Sid flew downstairs and said:

“Oh, Aunt Polly, come! Tom's dying!”

“Dying!”

“Yes'm. Don't wait--come quick!”

“Rubbage! I don't believe it!”

But she fled upstairs, nevertheless, with Sid and Mary at her heels.
And her face grew white, too, and her lip trembled. When she reached the
bedside she gasped out:

“You, Tom! Tom, what's the matter with you?”

“Oh, auntie, I'm--”

“What's the matter with you--what is the matter with you, child?”

“Oh, auntie, my sore toe's mortified!”

The old lady sank down into a chair and laughed a little, then cried a
little, then did both together. This restored her and she said:

“Tom, what a turn you did give me. Now you shut up that nonsense and
climb out of this.”

The groans ceased and the pain vanished from the toe. The boy felt a
little foolish, and he said:

“Aunt Polly, it _seemed_ mortified, and it hurt so I never minded my
tooth at all.”

“Your tooth, indeed! What's the matter with your tooth?”

“One of them's loose, and it aches perfectly awful.”

“There, there, now, don't begin that groaning again. Open your mouth.
Well--your tooth _is_ loose, but you're not going to die about that.
Mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen.”

Tom said:

“Oh, please, auntie, don't pull it out. It don't hurt any more. I wish
I may never stir if it does. Please don't, auntie. I don't want to stay
home from school.”

“Oh, you don't, don't you? So all this row was because you thought you'd
get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? Tom, Tom, I love you so,
and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart with your
outrageousness.” By this time the dental instruments were ready. The old
lady made one end of the silk thread fast to Tom's tooth with a loop
and tied the other to the bedpost. Then she seized the chunk of fire and
suddenly thrust it almost into the boy's face. The tooth hung dangling
by the bedpost, now.

But all trials bring their compensations. As Tom wended to school after
breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in his
upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and admirable
way. He gathered quite a following of lads interested in the exhibition;
and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of fascination and
homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly without an adherent,
and shorn of his glory. His heart was heavy, and he said with a disdain
which he did not feel that it wasn't anything to spit like Tom Sawyer;
but another boy said, “Sour grapes!” and he wandered away a dismantled
hero.

Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry
Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and
dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless
and vulgar and bad--and because all their children admired him so, and
delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like
him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied
Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders
not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance.
Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown
men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat
was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat,
when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons
far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of
the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs dragged
in the dirt when not rolled up.

Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps
in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to
school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could
go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it
suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he
pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring
and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor
put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything
that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every harassed,
hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg.

Tom hailed the romantic outcast:

“Hello, Huckleberry!”

“Hello yourself, and see how you like it.”

“What's that you got?”

“Dead cat.”

“Lemme see him, Huck. My, he's pretty stiff. Where'd you get him?”

“Bought him off'n a boy.”

“What did you give?”

“I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughter-house.”

“Where'd you get the blue ticket?”

“Bought it off'n Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick.”

“Say--what is dead cats good for, Huck?”

“Good for? Cure warts with.”

“No! Is that so? I know something that's better.”

“I bet you don't. What is it?”

“Why, spunk-water.”

“Spunk-water! I wouldn't give a dern for spunk-water.”

“You wouldn't, wouldn't you? D'you ever try it?”

“No, I hain't. But Bob Tanner did.”

“Who told you so!”

“Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and Johnny
told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and the
nigger told me. There now!”

“Well, what of it? They'll all lie. Leastways all but the nigger. I
don't know _him_. But I never see a nigger that _wouldn't_ lie. Shucks!
Now you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck.”

“Why, he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the rain-water
was.”

“In the daytime?”

“Certainly.”

“With his face to the stump?”

“Yes. Least I reckon so.”

“Did he say anything?”

“I don't reckon he did. I don't know.”

“Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame fool
way as that! Why, that ain't a-going to do any good. You got to go all
by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a
spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the stump
and jam your hand in and say:

'Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts, Spunk-water, spunk-water,
swaller these warts,'

and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then
turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody.
Because if you speak the charm's busted.”

“Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain't the way Bob Tanner
done.”

“No, sir, you can bet he didn't, becuz he's the wartiest boy in this
town; and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to work
spunk-water. I've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way,
Huck. I play with frogs so much that I've always got considerable many
warts. Sometimes I take 'em off with a bean.”

“Yes, bean's good. I've done that.”

“Have you? What's your way?”

“You take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some blood,
and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and dig
a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the crossroads in the dark of the
moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. You see that piece
that's got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to
fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the
wart, and pretty soon off she comes.”

“Yes, that's it, Huck--that's it; though when you're burying it if you
say 'Down bean; off wart; come no more to bother me!' it's better.
That's the way Joe Harper does, and he's been nearly to Coonville and
most everywheres. But say--how do you cure 'em with dead cats?”

“Why, you take your cat and go and get in the grave-yard 'long about
midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried; and when it's
midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see
'em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em talk;
and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat after 'em
and say, 'Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I'm
done with ye!' That'll fetch _any_ wart.”

“Sounds right. D'you ever try it, Huck?”

“No, but old Mother Hopkins told me.”

“Well, I reckon it's so, then. Becuz they say she's a witch.”

“Say! Why, Tom, I _know_ she is. She witched pap. Pap says so his own
self. He come along one day, and he see she was a-witching him, so he
took up a rock, and if she hadn't dodged, he'd a got her. Well, that
very night he rolled off'n a shed wher' he was a layin drunk, and broke
his arm.”

“Why, that's awful. How did he know she was a-witching him?”

“Lord, pap can tell, easy. Pap says when they keep looking at you right
stiddy, they're a-witching you. Specially if they mumble. Becuz when
they mumble they're saying the Lord's Prayer backards.”

“Say, Hucky, when you going to try the cat?”

“To-night. I reckon they'll come after old Hoss Williams to-night.”

“But they buried him Saturday. Didn't they get him Saturday night?”

“Why, how you talk! How could their charms work till midnight?--and
_then_ it's Sunday. Devils don't slosh around much of a Sunday, I don't
reckon.”

“I never thought of that. That's so. Lemme go with you?”

“Of course--if you ain't afeard.”

“Afeard! 'Tain't likely. Will you meow?”

“Yes--and you meow back, if you get a chance. Last time, you kep' me
a-meowing around till old Hays went to throwing rocks at me and says
'Dern that cat!' and so I hove a brick through his window--but don't you
tell.”

“I won't. I couldn't meow that night, becuz auntie was watching me, but
I'll meow this time. Say--what's that?”

“Nothing but a tick.”

“Where'd you get him?”

“Out in the woods.”

“What'll you take for him?”

“I don't know. I don't want to sell him.”

“All right. It's a mighty small tick, anyway.”

“Oh, anybody can run a tick down that don't belong to them. I'm
satisfied with it. It's a good enough tick for me.”

“Sho, there's ticks a plenty. I could have a thousand of 'em if I wanted
to.”

“Well, why don't you? Becuz you know mighty well you can't. This is a
pretty early tick, I reckon. It's the first one I've seen this year.”

“Say, Huck--I'll give you my tooth for him.”

“Less see it.”

Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed
it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said:

“Is it genuwyne?”

Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy.

“Well, all right,” said Huckleberry, “it's a trade.”

Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the
pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than
before.

When Tom reached the little isolated frame school-house, he strode in
briskly, with the manner of one who had come with all honest speed. He
hung his hat on a peg and flung himself into his seat with business-like
alacrity. The master, throned on high in his great splint-bottom
arm-chair, was dozing, lulled by the drowsy hum of study. The
interruption roused him.

“Thomas Sawyer!”

Tom knew that when his name was pronounced in full, it meant trouble.

“Sir!”

“Come up here. Now, sir, why are you late again, as usual?”

Tom was about to take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of
yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric
sympathy of love; and by that form was _the only vacant place_ on the
girls' side of the school-house. He instantly said:

“_I stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn!_”

The master's pulse stood still, and he stared helplessly. The buzz of
study ceased. The pupils wondered if this foolhardy boy had lost his
mind. The master said:

“You--you did what?”

“Stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn.”

There was no mistaking the words.

“Thomas Sawyer, this is the most astounding confession I have ever
listened to. No mere ferule will answer for this offence. Take off your
jacket.”

The master's arm performed until it was tired and the stock of switches
notably diminished. Then the order followed:

“Now, sir, go and sit with the girls! And let this be a warning to you.”

The titter that rippled around the room appeared to abash the boy, but
in reality that result was caused rather more by his worshipful awe
of his unknown idol and the dread pleasure that lay in his high good
fortune. He sat down upon the end of the pine bench and the girl hitched
herself away from him with a toss of her head. Nudges and winks and
whispers traversed the room, but Tom sat still, with his arms upon the
long, low desk before him, and seemed to study his book.

By and by attention ceased from him, and the accustomed school murmur
rose upon the dull air once more. Presently the boy began to steal
furtive glances at the girl. She observed it, “made a mouth” at him
and gave him the back of her head for the space of a minute. When she
cautiously faced around again, a peach lay before her. She thrust it
away. Tom gently put it back. She thrust it away again, but with less
animosity. Tom patiently returned it to its place. Then she let it
remain. Tom scrawled on his slate, “Please take it--I got more.” The
girl glanced at the words, but made no sign. Now the boy began to draw
something on the slate, hiding his work with his left hand. For a time
the girl refused to notice; but her human curiosity presently began
to manifest itself by hardly perceptible signs. The boy worked on,
apparently unconscious. The girl made a sort of non-committal attempt
to see, but the boy did not betray that he was aware of it. At last she
gave in and hesitatingly whispered:

“Let me see it.”

Tom partly uncovered a dismal caricature of a house with two gable ends
to it and a corkscrew of smoke issuing from the chimney. Then the girl's
interest began to fasten itself upon the work and she forgot everything
else. When it was finished, she gazed a moment, then whispered:

“It's nice--make a man.”

The artist erected a man in the front yard, that resembled a derrick. He
could have stepped over the house; but the girl was not hypercritical;
she was satisfied with the monster, and whispered:

“It's a beautiful man--now make me coming along.”

Tom drew an hour-glass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and armed
the spreading fingers with a portentous fan. The girl said:

“It's ever so nice--I wish I could draw.”

“It's easy,” whispered Tom, “I'll learn you.”

“Oh, will you? When?”

“At noon. Do you go home to dinner?”

“I'll stay if you will.”

“Good--that's a whack. What's your name?”

“Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer.”

“That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me
Tom, will you?”

“Yes.”

Now Tom began to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from
the girl. But she was not backward this time. She begged to see. Tom
said:

“Oh, it ain't anything.”

“Yes it is.”

“No it ain't. You don't want to see.”

“Yes I do, indeed I do. Please let me.”

“You'll tell.”

“No I won't--deed and deed and double deed won't.”

“You won't tell anybody at all? Ever, as long as you live?”

“No, I won't ever tell _any_body. Now let me.”

“Oh, _you_ don't want to see!”

“Now that you treat me so, I _will_ see.” And she put her small hand
upon his and a little scuffle ensued, Tom pretending to resist in
earnest but letting his hand slip by degrees till these words were
revealed: “_I love you_.”

“Oh, you bad thing!” And she hit his hand a smart rap, but reddened and
looked pleased, nevertheless.

Just at this juncture the boy felt a slow, fateful grip closing on his
ear, and a steady lifting impulse. In that wise he was borne across the
house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles
from the whole school. Then the master stood over him during a few awful
moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a word. But
although Tom's ear tingled, his heart was jubilant.

As the school quieted down Tom made an honest effort to study, but
the turmoil within him was too great. In turn he took his place in the
reading class and made a botch of it; then in the geography class and
turned lakes into mountains, mountains into rivers, and rivers into
continents, till chaos was come again; then in the spelling class, and
got “turned down,” by a succession of mere baby words, till he brought
up at the foot and yielded up the pewter medal which he had worn with
ostentation for months.




CHAPTER VII

THE harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas
wandered. So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It seemed
to him that the noon recess would never come. The air was utterly dead.
There was not a breath stirring. It was the sleepiest of sleepy days.
The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying scholars soothed
the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees. Away off in the
flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green sides through a
shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of distance; a few birds
floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other living thing was visible
but some cows, and they were asleep. Tom's heart ached to be free, or
else to have something of interest to do to pass the dreary time.
His hand wandered into his pocket and his face lit up with a glow of
gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively
the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on
the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that
amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when
he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned him aside with a pin and
made him take a new direction.

Tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and
now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in
an instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn
friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a
pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner.
The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were
interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit
of the tick. So he put Joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the
middle of it from top to bottom.

“Now,” said he, “as long as he is on your side you can stir him up and
I'll let him alone; but if you let him get away and get on my side,
you're to leave him alone as long as I can keep him from crossing over.”

“All right, go ahead; start him up.”

The tick escaped from Tom, presently, and crossed the equator. Joe
harassed him awhile, and then he got away and crossed back again. This
change of base occurred often. While one boy was worrying the tick with
absorbing interest, the other would look on with interest as strong, the
two heads bowed together over the slate, and the two souls dead to all
things else. At last luck seemed to settle and abide with Joe. The
tick tried this, that, and the other course, and got as excited and as
anxious as the boys themselves, but time and again just as he would
have victory in his very grasp, so to speak, and Tom's fingers would
be twitching to begin, Joe's pin would deftly head him off, and keep
possession. At last Tom could stand it no longer. The temptation was too
strong. So he reached out and lent a hand with his pin. Joe was angry in
a moment. Said he:

“Tom, you let him alone.”

“I only just want to stir him up a little, Joe.”

“No, sir, it ain't fair; you just let him alone.”

“Blame it, I ain't going to stir him much.”

“Let him alone, I tell you.”

“I won't!”

“You shall--he's on my side of the line.”

“Look here, Joe Harper, whose is that tick?”

“I don't care whose tick he is--he's on my side of the line, and you
sha'n't touch him.”

“Well, I'll just bet I will, though. He's my tick and I'll do what I
blame please with him, or die!”

A tremendous whack came down on Tom's shoulders, and its duplicate on
Joe's; and for the space of two minutes the dust continued to fly from
the two jackets and the whole school to enjoy it. The boys had been
too absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school awhile
before when the master came tiptoeing down the room and stood over them.
He had contemplated a good part of the performance before he contributed
his bit of variety to it.

When school broke up at noon, Tom flew to Becky Thatcher, and whispered
in her ear:

“Put on your bonnet and let on you're going home; and when you get to
the corner, give the rest of 'em the slip, and turn down through the
lane and come back. I'll go the other way and come it over 'em the same
way.”

So the one went off with one group of scholars, and the other with
another. In a little while the two met at the bottom of the lane, and
when they reached the school they had it all to themselves. Then they
sat together, with a slate before them, and Tom gave Becky the pencil
and held her hand in his, guiding it, and so created another surprising
house. When the interest in art began to wane, the two fell to talking.
Tom was swimming in bliss. He said:

“Do you love rats?”

“No! I hate them!”

“Well, I do, too--_live_ ones. But I mean dead ones, to swing round your
head with a string.”

“No, I don't care for rats much, anyway. What I like is chewing-gum.”

“Oh, I should say so! I wish I had some now.”

“Do you? I've got some. I'll let you chew it awhile, but you must give
it back to me.”

That was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their legs
against the bench in excess of contentment.

“Was you ever at a circus?” said Tom.

“Yes, and my pa's going to take me again some time, if I'm good.”

“I been to the circus three or four times--lots of times. Church ain't
shucks to a circus. There's things going on at a circus all the time.
I'm going to be a clown in a circus when I grow up.”

“Oh, are you! That will be nice. They're so lovely, all spotted up.”

“Yes, that's so. And they get slathers of money--most a dollar a day, Ben
Rogers says. Say, Becky, was you ever engaged?”

“What's that?”

“Why, engaged to be married.”

“No.”

“Would you like to?”

“I reckon so. I don't know. What is it like?”

“Like? Why it ain't like anything. You only just tell a boy you won't
ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that's
all. Anybody can do it.”

“Kiss? What do you kiss for?”

“Why, that, you know, is to--well, they always do that.”

“Everybody?”

“Why, yes, everybody that's in love with each other. Do you remember
what I wrote on the slate?”

“Ye--yes.”

“What was it?”

“I sha'n't tell you.”

“Shall I tell _you_?”

“Ye--yes--but some other time.”

“No, now.”

“No, not now--to-morrow.”

“Oh, no, _now_. Please, Becky--I'll whisper it, I'll whisper it ever so
easy.”

Becky hesitating, Tom took silence for consent, and passed his arm about
her waist and whispered the tale ever so softly, with his mouth close to
her ear. And then he added:

“Now you whisper it to me--just the same.”

She resisted, for a while, and then said:

“You turn your face away so you can't see, and then I will. But you
mustn't ever tell anybody--_will_ you, Tom? Now you won't, _will_ you?”

“No, indeed, indeed I won't. Now, Becky.”

He turned his face away. She bent timidly around till her breath stirred
his curls and whispered, “I--love--you!”

Then she sprang away and ran around and around the desks and benches,
with Tom after her, and took refuge in a corner at last, with her little
white apron to her face. Tom clasped her about her neck and pleaded:

“Now, Becky, it's all done--all over but the kiss. Don't you be afraid
of that--it ain't anything at all. Please, Becky.” And he tugged at her
apron and the hands.

By and by she gave up, and let her hands drop; her face, all glowing
with the struggle, came up and submitted. Tom kissed the red lips and
said:

“Now it's all done, Becky. And always after this, you know, you ain't
ever to love anybody but me, and you ain't ever to marry anybody but me,
ever never and forever. Will you?”

“No, I'll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I'll never marry anybody
but you--and you ain't to ever marry anybody but me, either.”

“Certainly. Of course. That's _part_ of it. And always coming to school
or when we're going home, you're to walk with me, when there ain't
anybody looking--and you choose me and I choose you at parties, because
that's the way you do when you're engaged.”

“It's so nice. I never heard of it before.”

“Oh, it's ever so gay! Why, me and Amy Lawrence--”

The big eyes told Tom his blunder and he stopped, confused.

“Oh, Tom! Then I ain't the first you've ever been engaged to!”

The child began to cry. Tom said:

“Oh, don't cry, Becky, I don't care for her any more.”

“Yes, you do, Tom--you know you do.”

Tom tried to put his arm about her neck, but she pushed him away and
turned her face to the wall, and went on crying. Tom tried again, with
soothing words in his mouth, and was repulsed again. Then his pride was
up, and he strode away and went outside. He stood about, restless and
uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door, every now and then, hoping
she would repent and come to find him. But she did not. Then he began
to feel badly and fear that he was in the wrong. It was a hard struggle
with him to make new advances, now, but he nerved himself to it and
entered. She was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing, with
her face to the wall. Tom's heart smote him. He went to her and stood a
moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed. Then he said hesitatingly:

“Becky, I--I don't care for anybody but you.”

No reply--but sobs.

“Becky”--pleadingly. “Becky, won't you say something?”

More sobs.

Tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an andiron,
and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said:

“Please, Becky, won't you take it?”

She struck it to the floor. Then Tom marched out of the house and over
the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. Presently
Becky began to suspect. She ran to the door; he was not in sight; she
flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. Then she called:

“Tom! Come back, Tom!”

She listened intently, but there was no answer. She had no companions
but silence and loneliness. So she sat down to cry again and upbraid
herself; and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she
had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross
of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers about
her to exchange sorrows with.




CHAPTER VIII

TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the
track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He crossed
a small “branch” two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile
superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour later
he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff
Hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the
valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to
the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak.
There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even
stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken
by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a wood-pecker, and
this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the
more profound. The boy's soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings
were in happy accord with his surroundings. He sat long with his elbows
on his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. It seemed to him
that life was but a trouble, at best, and he more than half envied Jimmy
Hodges, so lately released; it must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie
and slumber and dream forever and ever, with the wind whispering through
the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave, and
nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more. If he only had a
clean Sunday-school record he could be willing to go, and be done with
it all. Now as to this girl. What had he done? Nothing. He had meant
the best in the world, and been treated like a dog--like a very dog. She
would be sorry some day--maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only
die _temporarily_!

But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained
shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into
the concerns of this life again. What if he turned his back, now, and
disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away--ever so far away, into
unknown countries beyond the seas--and never came back any more! How
would she feel then! The idea of being a clown recurred to him now, only
to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and jokes and spotted tights
were an offense, when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was
exalted into the vague august realm of the romantic. No, he would be
a soldier, and return after long years, all war-worn and illustrious.
No--better still, he would join the Indians, and hunt buffaloes and go on
the warpath in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the
Far West, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with
feathers, hideous with paint, and prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy
summer morning, with a blood-curdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs
of all his companions with unappeasable envy. But no, there was
something gaudier even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it!
_now_ his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable
splendor. How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder!
How gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low,
black-hulled racer, the Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying
at the fore! And at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear
at the old village and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten, in
his black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson
sash, his belt bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass
at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled,
with the skull and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy
the whisperings, “It's Tom Sawyer the Pirate!--the Black Avenger of the
Spanish Main!”

Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from
home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore
he must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources together.
He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under one end of
it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded hollow. He
put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively:

“What hasn't come here, come! What's here, stay here!”

Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it
up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides
were of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom's astonishment was bound-less!
He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:

“Well, that beats anything!”

Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The
truth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and
all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you buried
a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a
fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just
used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered
themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they had been
separated. But now, this thing had actually and unquestionably failed.
Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. He had
many a time heard of this thing succeeding but never of its failing
before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several times
before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places afterward. He
puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided that some witch
had interfered and broken the charm. He thought he would satisfy himself
on that point; so he searched around till he found a small sandy spot
with a little funnel-shaped depression in it. He laid himself down and
put his mouth close to this depression and called--

“Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! Doodle-bug,
doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!”

The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a
second and then darted under again in a fright.

“He dasn't tell! So it _was_ a witch that done it. I just knowed it.”

He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he
gave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have
the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a
patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to his
treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing
when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his
pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying:

“Brother, go find your brother!”

He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must
have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The last
repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each
other.

Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green
aisles of the forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned
a suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log,
disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin trumpet, and
in a moment had seized these things and bounded away, barelegged,
with fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew an
answering blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way
and that. He said cautiously--to an imaginary company:

“Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow.”

Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom.
Tom called:

“Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?”

“Guy of Guisborne wants no man's pass. Who art thou that--that--”

“Dares to hold such language,” said Tom, prompting--for they talked “by
the book,” from memory.

“Who art thou that dares to hold such language?”

“I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcase soon shall know.”

“Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I dispute
with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!”

They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground,
struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful
combat, “two up and two down.” Presently Tom said:

“Now, if you've got the hang, go it lively!”

So they “went it lively,” panting and perspiring with the work. By and
by Tom shouted:

“Fall! fall! Why don't you fall?”

“I sha'n't! Why don't you fall yourself? You're getting the worst of
it.”

“Why, that ain't anything. I can't fall; that ain't the way it is in the
book. The book says, 'Then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor Guy
of Guisborne.' You're to turn around and let me hit you in the back.”

There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received the
whack and fell.

“Now,” said Joe, getting up, “you got to let me kill _you_. That's
fair.”

“Why, I can't do that, it ain't in the book.”

“Well, it's blamed mean--that's all.”

“Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller's son, and lam
me with a quarter-staff; or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and you be
Robin Hood a little while and kill me.”

This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then
Tom became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to
bleed his strength away through his neglected wound. And at last Joe,
representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged him sadly forth,
gave his bow into his feeble hands, and Tom said, “Where this arrow
falls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree.” Then he
shot the arrow and fell back and would have died, but he lit on a nettle
and sprang up too gaily for a corpse.

The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off
grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern
civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss.
They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than
President of the United States forever.




CHAPTER IX

AT half-past nine, that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed, as usual.
They said their prayers, and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and
waited, in restless impatience. When it seemed to him that it must be
nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! This was despair. He
would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was
afraid he might wake Sid. So he lay still, and stared up into the dark.
Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness, little,
scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The ticking
of the clock began to bring itself into notice. Old beams began to crack
mysteriously. The stairs creaked faintly. Evidently spirits were abroad.
A measured, muffled snore issued from Aunt Polly's chamber. And now the
tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could locate,
began. Next the ghastly ticking of a death-watch in the wall at the
bed's head made Tom shudder--it meant that somebody's days were numbered.
Then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air, and was answered
by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. Tom was in an agony. At last
he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity begun; he began to
doze, in spite of himself; the clock chimed eleven, but he did not hear
it. And then there came, mingling with his half-formed dreams, a most
melancholy caterwauling. The raising of a neighboring window disturbed
him. A cry of “Scat! you devil!” and the crash of an empty bottle
against the back of his aunt's woodshed brought him wide awake, and a
single minute later he was dressed and out of the window and creeping
along the roof of the “ell” on all fours. He “meow'd” with caution once
or twice, as he went; then jumped to the roof of the woodshed and thence
to the ground. Huckleberry Finn was there, with his dead cat. The boys
moved off and disappeared in the gloom. At the end of half an hour they
were wading through the tall grass of the graveyard.

It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned Western kind. It was on a hill,
about a mile and a half from the village. It had a crazy board fence
around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of the
time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the
whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a
tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over
the graves, leaning for support and finding none. “Sacred to the memory
of” So-and-So had been painted on them once, but it could no longer have
been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light.

A faint wind moaned through the trees, and Tom feared it might be the
spirits of the dead, complaining at being disturbed. The boys talked
little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the
pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. They found the
sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the
protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet of
the grave.

Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. The hooting of
a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness. Tom's
reflections grew oppressive. He must force some talk. So he said in a
whisper:

“Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?”

Huckleberry whispered:

“I wisht I knowed. It's awful solemn like, _ain't_ it?”

“I bet it is.”

There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter
inwardly. Then Tom whispered:

“Say, Hucky--do you reckon Hoss Williams hears us talking?”

“O' course he does. Least his sperrit does.”

Tom, after a pause:

“I wish I'd said Mister Williams. But I never meant any harm. Everybody
calls him Hoss.”

“A body can't be too partic'lar how they talk 'bout these-yer dead
people, Tom.”

This was a damper, and conversation died again.

Presently Tom seized his comrade's arm and said:

“Sh!”

“What is it, Tom?” And the two clung together with beating hearts.

“Sh! There 'tis again! Didn't you hear it?”

“I--”

“There! Now you hear it.”

“Lord, Tom, they're coming! They're coming, sure. What'll we do?”

“I dono. Think they'll see us?”

“Oh, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wisht I hadn't
come.”

“Oh, don't be afeard. I don't believe they'll bother us. We ain't doing
any harm. If we keep perfectly still, maybe they won't notice us at
all.”

“I'll try to, Tom, but, Lord, I'm all of a shiver.”

“Listen!”

The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. A muffled
sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard.

“Look! See there!” whispered Tom. “What is it?”

“It's devil-fire. Oh, Tom, this is awful.”

Some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an
old-fashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable
little spangles of light. Presently Huckleberry whispered with a
shudder:

“It's the devils sure enough. Three of 'em! Lordy, Tom, we're goners!
Can you pray?”

“I'll try, but don't you be afeard. They ain't going to hurt us. 'Now I
lay me down to sleep, I--'”

“Sh!”

“What is it, Huck?”

“They're _humans_! One of 'em is, anyway. One of 'em's old Muff Potter's
voice.”

“No--'tain't so, is it?”

“I bet I know it. Don't you stir nor budge. He ain't sharp enough to
notice us. Drunk, the same as usual, likely--blamed old rip!”

“All right, I'll keep still. Now they're stuck. Can't find it. Here they
come again. Now they're hot. Cold again. Hot again. Red hot! They're
p'inted right, this time. Say, Huck, I know another o' them voices; it's
Injun Joe.”

“That's so--that murderin' half-breed! I'd druther they was devils a dern
sight. What kin they be up to?”

The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the
grave and stood within a few feet of the boys' hiding-place.

“Here it is,” said the third voice; and the owner of it held the lantern
up and revealed the face of young Doctor Robinson.

Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a couple
of shovels on it. They cast down their load and began to open the grave.
The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came and sat
down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so close the
boys could have touched him.

“Hurry, men!” he said, in a low voice; “the moon might come out at any
moment.”

They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no
noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of
mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon
the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two
the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with
their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The
moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face.
The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a
blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large
spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said:

“Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with
another five, or here she stays.”

“That's the talk!” said Injun Joe.

“Look here, what does this mean?” said the doctor. “You required your
pay in advance, and I've paid you.”

“Yes, and you done more than that,” said Injun Joe, approaching the
doctor, who was now standing. “Five years ago you drove me away from
your father's kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to
eat, and you said I warn't there for any good; and when I swore I'd get
even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for
a vagrant. Did you think I'd forget? The Injun blood ain't in me for
nothing. And now I've _got_ you, and you got to _settle_, you know!”

He was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this time.
The doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the ground.
Potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed:

“Here, now, don't you hit my pard!” and the next moment he had grappled
with the doctor and the two were struggling with might and main,
trampling the grass and tearing the ground with their heels. Injun Joe
sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched up Potter's
knife, and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and round about
the combatants, seeking an opportunity. All at once the doctor flung
himself free, seized the heavy headboard of Williams' grave and felled
Potter to the earth with it--and in the same instant the half-breed saw
his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the young man's breast. He
reeled and fell partly upon Potter, flooding him with his blood, and in
the same moment the clouds blotted out the dreadful spectacle and the
two frightened boys went speeding away in the dark.

Presently, when the moon emerged again, Injun Joe was standing over the
two forms, contemplating them. The doctor murmured inarticulately, gave
a long gasp or two and was still. The half-breed muttered:

“_That_ score is settled--damn you.”

Then he robbed the body. After which he put the fatal knife in Potter's
open right hand, and sat down on the dismantled coffin. Three--four--five
minutes passed, and then Potter began to stir and moan. His hand closed
upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it fall, with a
shudder. Then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and gazed at it, and
then around him, confusedly. His eyes met Joe's.

“Lord, how is this, Joe?” he said.

“It's a dirty business,” said Joe, without moving.

“What did you do it for?”

“I! I never done it!”

“Look here! That kind of talk won't wash.”

Potter trembled and grew white.

“I thought I'd got sober. I'd no business to drink to-night. But it's
in my head yet--worse'n when we started here. I'm all in a muddle;
can't recollect anything of it, hardly. Tell me, Joe--_honest_, now,
old feller--did I do it? Joe, I never meant to--'pon my soul and honor, I
never meant to, Joe. Tell me how it was, Joe. Oh, it's awful--and him so
young and promising.”

“Why, you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard
and you fell flat; and then up you come, all reeling and staggering
like, and snatched the knife and jammed it into him, just as he fetched
you another awful clip--and here you've laid, as dead as a wedge til
now.”

“Oh, I didn't know what I was a-doing. I wish I may die this minute if I
did. It was all on account of the whiskey and the excitement, I reckon.
I never used a weepon in my life before, Joe. I've fought, but never
with weepons. They'll all say that. Joe, don't tell! Say you won't tell,
Joe--that's a good feller. I always liked you, Joe, and stood up for you,
too. Don't you remember? You _won't_ tell, _will_ you, Joe?” And the
poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid murderer, and
clasped his appealing hands.

“No, you've always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I
won't go back on you. There, now, that's as fair as a man can say.”

“Oh, Joe, you're an angel. I'll bless you for this the longest day I
live.” And Potter began to cry.

“Come, now, that's enough of that. This ain't any time for blubbering.
You be off yonder way and I'll go this. Move, now, and don't leave any
tracks behind you.”

Potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. The half-breed
stood looking after him. He muttered:

“If he's as much stunned with the lick and fuddled with the rum as he
had the look of being, he won't think of the knife till he's gone so
far he'll be afraid to come back after it to such a place by
himself--chicken-heart!”

Two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the
lidless coffin, and the open grave were under no inspection but the
moon's. The stillness was complete again, too.




CHAPTER X

THE two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with
horror. They glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time,
apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. Every stump
that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them
catch their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay
near the village, the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed to give
wings to their feet.

“If we can only get to the old tannery before we break down!” whispered
Tom, in short catches between breaths. “I can't stand it much longer.”

Huckleberry's hard pantings were his only reply, and the boys fixed
their eyes on the goal of their hopes and bent to their work to win it.
They gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to breast, they burst
through the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the sheltering
shadows beyond. By and by their pulses slowed down, and Tom whispered:

“Huckleberry, what do you reckon'll come of this?”

“If Doctor Robinson dies, I reckon hanging'll come of it.”

“Do you though?”

“Why, I _know_ it, Tom.”

Tom thought a while, then he said:

“Who'll tell? We?”

“What are you talking about? S'pose something happened and Injun Joe
_didn't_ hang? Why, he'd kill us some time or other, just as dead sure
as we're a laying here.”

“That's just what I was thinking to myself, Huck.”

“If anybody tells, let Muff Potter do it, if he's fool enough. He's
generally drunk enough.”

Tom said nothing--went on thinking. Presently he whispered:

“Huck, Muff Potter don't know it. How can he tell?”

“What's the reason he don't know it?”

“Because he'd just got that whack when Injun Joe done it. D'you reckon
he could see anything? D'you reckon he knowed anything?”

“By hokey, that's so, Tom!”

“And besides, look-a-here--maybe that whack done for _him_!”

“No, 'taint likely, Tom. He had liquor in him; I could see that; and
besides, he always has. Well, when pap's full, you might take and belt
him over the head with a church and you couldn't phase him. He says so,
his own self. So it's the same with Muff Potter, of course. But if a man
was dead sober, I reckon maybe that whack might fetch him; I dono.”

After another reflective silence, Tom said:

“Hucky, you sure you can keep mum?”

“Tom, we _got_ to keep mum. You know that. That Injun devil wouldn't
make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak
'bout this and they didn't hang him. Now, look-a-here, Tom, less take
and swear to one another--that's what we got to do--swear to keep mum.”

“I'm agreed. It's the best thing. Would you just hold hands and swear
that we--”

“Oh no, that wouldn't do for this. That's good enough for little
rubbishy common things--specially with gals, cuz _they_ go back on you
anyway, and blab if they get in a huff--but there orter be writing 'bout
a big thing like this. And blood.”

Tom's whole being applauded this idea. It was deep, and dark, and awful;
the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping with it.
He picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moon-light, took a
little fragment of “red keel” out of his pocket, got the moon on
his work, and painfully scrawled these lines, emphasizing each slow
down-stroke by clamping his tongue between his teeth, and letting up the
pressure on the up-strokes. [See next page.]

“Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer swears they will keep mum about This and They
wish They may Drop down dead in Their Tracks if They ever Tell and Rot.”

Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom's facility in writing, and
the sublimity of his language. He at once took a pin from his lapel and
was going to prick his flesh, but Tom said:

“Hold on! Don't do that. A pin's brass. It might have verdigrease on
it.”

“What's verdigrease?”

“It's p'ison. That's what it is. You just swaller some of it once--you'll
see.”

So Tom unwound the thread from one of his needles, and each boy pricked
the ball of his thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood. In time, after
many squeezes, Tom managed to sign his initials, using the ball of his
little finger for a pen. Then he showed Huckleberry how to make an H and
an F, and the oath was complete. They buried the shingle close to the
wall, with some dismal ceremonies and incantations, and the fetters
that bound their tongues were considered to be locked and the key thrown
away.

A figure crept stealthily through a break in the other end of the ruined
building, now, but they did not notice it.

“Tom,” whispered Huckleberry, “does this keep us from _ever_
telling--_always_?”

“Of course it does. It don't make any difference _what_ happens, we got
to keep mum. We'd drop down dead--don't _you_ know that?”

“Yes, I reckon that's so.”

They continued to whisper for some little time. Presently a dog set up
a long, lugubrious howl just outside--within ten feet of them. The boys
clasped each other suddenly, in an agony of fright.

“Which of us does he mean?” gasped Huckleberry.

“I dono--peep through the crack. Quick!”

“No, _you_, Tom!”

“I can't--I can't _do_ it, Huck!”

“Please, Tom. There 'tis again!”

“Oh, lordy, I'm thankful!” whispered Tom. “I know his voice. It's Bull
Harbison.” *

[* If Mr. Harbison owned a slave named Bull, Tom would have spoken of
him as “Harbison's Bull,” but a son or a dog of that name was “Bull
Harbison.”]

“Oh, that's good--I tell you, Tom, I was most scared to death; I'd a bet
anything it was a _stray_ dog.”

The dog howled again. The boys' hearts sank once more.

“Oh, my! that ain't no Bull Harbison!” whispered Huckleberry. “_Do_,
Tom!”

Tom, quaking with fear, yielded, and put his eye to the crack. His
whisper was hardly audible when he said:

“Oh, Huck, _its a stray dog_!”

“Quick, Tom, quick! Who does he mean?”

“Huck, he must mean us both--we're right together.”

“Oh, Tom, I reckon we're goners. I reckon there ain't no mistake 'bout
where _I'll_ go to. I been so wicked.”

“Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hookey and doing everything a
feller's told _not_ to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I'd a
tried--but no, I wouldn't, of course. But if ever I get off this time,
I lay I'll just _waller_ in Sunday-schools!” And Tom began to snuffle a
little.

“_You_ bad!” and Huckleberry began to snuffle too. “Consound it, Tom
Sawyer, you're just old pie, 'long-side o' what I am. Oh, _lordy_,
lordy, lordy, I wisht I only had half your chance.”

Tom choked off and whispered:

“Look, Hucky, look! He's got his _back_ to us!”

Hucky looked, with joy in his heart.

“Well, he has, by jingoes! Did he before?”

“Yes, he did. But I, like a fool, never thought. Oh, this is bully, you
know. _Now_ who can he mean?”

The howling stopped. Tom pricked up his ears.

“Sh! What's that?” he whispered.

“Sounds like--like hogs grunting. No--it's somebody snoring, Tom.”

“That _is_ it! Where 'bouts is it, Huck?”

“I bleeve it's down at 'tother end. Sounds so, anyway. Pap used to sleep
there, sometimes, 'long with the hogs, but laws bless you, he just lifts
things when _he_ snores. Besides, I reckon he ain't ever coming back to
this town any more.”

The spirit of adventure rose in the boys' souls once more.

“Hucky, do you das't to go if I lead?”

“I don't like to, much. Tom, s'pose it's Injun Joe!”

Tom quailed. But presently the temptation rose up strong again and the
boys agreed to try, with the understanding that they would take to their
heels if the snoring stopped. So they went tiptoeing stealthily down,
the one behind the other. When they had got to within five steps of the
snorer, Tom stepped on a stick, and it broke with a sharp snap. The man
moaned, writhed a little, and his face came into the moonlight. It was
Muff Potter. The boys' hearts had stood still, and their hopes too,
when the man moved, but their fears passed away now. They tip-toed out,
through the broken weather-boarding, and stopped at a little distance
to exchange a parting word. That long, lugubrious howl rose on the night
air again! They turned and saw the strange dog standing within a few
feet of where Potter was lying, and _facing_ Potter, with his nose
pointing heavenward.

“Oh, geeminy, it's _him_!” exclaimed both boys, in a breath.

“Say, Tom--they say a stray dog come howling around Johnny Miller's
house, 'bout midnight, as much as two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill come
in and lit on the banisters and sung, the very same evening; and there
ain't anybody dead there yet.”

“Well, I know that. And suppose there ain't. Didn't Gracie Miller fall
in the kitchen fire and burn herself terrible the very next Saturday?”

“Yes, but she ain't _dead_. And what's more, she's getting better, too.”

“All right, you wait and see. She's a goner, just as dead sure as Muff
Potter's a goner. That's what the niggers say, and they know all about
these kind of things, Huck.”

Then they separated, cogitating. When Tom crept in at his bedroom window
the night was almost spent. He undressed with excessive caution, and
fell asleep congratulating himself that nobody knew of his escapade. He
was not aware that the gently-snoring Sid was awake, and had been so for
an hour.

When Tom awoke, Sid was dressed and gone. There was a late look in the
light, a late sense in the atmosphere. He was startled. Why had he not
been called--persecuted till he was up, as usual? The thought filled
him with bodings. Within five minutes he was dressed and down-stairs,
feeling sore and drowsy. The family were still at table, but they had
finished breakfast. There was no voice of rebuke; but there were averted
eyes; there was a silence and an air of solemnity that struck a chill
to the culprit's heart. He sat down and tried to seem gay, but it
was up-hill work; it roused no smile, no response, and he lapsed into
silence and let his heart sink down to the depths.

After breakfast his aunt took him aside, and Tom almost brightened in
the hope that he was going to be flogged; but it was not so. His aunt
wept over him and asked him how he could go and break her old heart so;
and finally told him to go on, and ruin himself and bring her gray hairs
with sorrow to the grave, for it was no use for her to try any more.
This was worse than a thousand whippings, and Tom's heart was sorer now
than his body. He cried, he pleaded for forgiveness, promised to reform
over and over again, and then received his dismissal, feeling that
he had won but an imperfect forgiveness and established but a feeble
confidence.

He left the presence too miserable to even feel revengeful toward
Sid; and so the latter's prompt retreat through the back gate was
unnecessary. He moped to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging,
along with Joe Harper, for playing hookey the day before, with the
air of one whose heart was busy with heavier woes and wholly dead to
trifles. Then he betook himself to his seat, rested his elbows on his
desk and his jaws in his hands, and stared at the wall with the stony
stare of suffering that has reached the limit and can no further go.
His elbow was pressing against some hard substance. After a long time
he slowly and sadly changed his position, and took up this object with
a sigh. It was in a paper. He unrolled it. A long, lingering, colossal
sigh followed, and his heart broke. It was his brass andiron knob!

This final feather broke the camel's back.




CHAPTER XI

CLOSE upon the hour of noon the whole village was suddenly electrified
with the ghastly news. No need of the as yet un-dreamed-of telegraph;
the tale flew from man to man, from group to group, from house to house,
with little less than telegraphic speed. Of course the schoolmaster gave
holi-day for that afternoon; the town would have thought strangely of
him if he had not.

A gory knife had been found close to the murdered man, and it had been
recognized by somebody as belonging to Muff Potter--so the story ran. And
it was said that a belated citizen had come upon Potter washing himself
in the “branch” about one or two o'clock in the morning, and that Potter
had at once sneaked off--suspicious circumstances, especially the washing
which was not a habit with Potter. It was also said that the town had
been ransacked for this “murderer” (the public are not slow in the
matter of sifting evidence and arriving at a verdict), but that he
could not be found. Horsemen had departed down all the roads in every
direction, and the Sheriff “was confident” that he would be captured
before night.

All the town was drifting toward the graveyard. Tom's heartbreak
vanished and he joined the procession, not because he would not
a thousand times rather go anywhere else, but because an awful,
unaccountable fascination drew him on. Arrived at the dreadful place, he
wormed his small body through the crowd and saw the dismal spectacle.
It seemed to him an age since he was there before. Somebody pinched
his arm. He turned, and his eyes met Huckleberry's. Then both looked
elsewhere at once, and wondered if anybody had noticed anything in their
mutual glance. But everybody was talking, and intent upon the grisly
spectacle before them.

“Poor fellow!” “Poor young fellow!” “This ought to be a lesson to grave
robbers!” “Muff Potter'll hang for this if they catch him!” This was the
drift of remark; and the minister said, “It was a judgment; His hand is
here.”

Now Tom shivered from head to heel; for his eye fell upon the stolid
face of Injun Joe. At this moment the crowd began to sway and struggle,
and voices shouted, “It's him! it's him! he's coming himself!”

“Who? Who?” from twenty voices.

“Muff Potter!”

“Hallo, he's stopped!--Look out, he's turning! Don't let him get away!”

People in the branches of the trees over Tom's head said he wasn't
trying to get away--he only looked doubtful and perplexed.

“Infernal impudence!” said a bystander; “wanted to come and take a quiet
look at his work, I reckon--didn't expect any company.”

The crowd fell apart, now, and the Sheriff came through, ostentatiously
leading Potter by the arm. The poor fellow's face was haggard, and
his eyes showed the fear that was upon him. When he stood before the
murdered man, he shook as with a palsy, and he put his face in his hands
and burst into tears.

“I didn't do it, friends,” he sobbed; “'pon my word and honor I never
done it.”

“Who's accused you?” shouted a voice.

This shot seemed to carry home. Potter lifted his face and looked around
him with a pathetic hopelessness in his eyes. He saw Injun Joe, and
exclaimed:

“Oh, Injun Joe, you promised me you'd never--”

“Is that your knife?” and it was thrust before him by the Sheriff.

Potter would have fallen if they had not caught him and eased him to the
ground. Then he said:

“Something told me 't if I didn't come back and get--” He shuddered; then
waved his nerveless hand with a vanquished gesture and said, “Tell 'em,
Joe, tell 'em--it ain't any use any more.”

Then Huckleberry and Tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the
stony-hearted liar reel off his serene statement, they expecting every
moment that the clear sky would deliver God's lightnings upon his head,
and wondering to see how long the stroke was delayed. And when he had
finished and still stood alive and whole, their wavering impulse to
break their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner's life faded and
vanished away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan and
it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that.

“Why didn't you leave? What did you want to come here for?” somebody
said.

“I couldn't help it--I couldn't help it,” Potter moaned. “I wanted to
run away, but I couldn't seem to come anywhere but here.” And he fell to
sobbing again.

Injun Joe repeated his statement, just as calmly, a few minutes
afterward on the inquest, under oath; and the boys, seeing that the
lightnings were still withheld, were confirmed in their belief that
Joe had sold himself to the devil. He was now become, to them, the most
balefully interesting object they had ever looked upon, and they could
not take their fascinated eyes from his face.

They inwardly resolved to watch him nights, when opportunity should
offer, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his dread master.

Injun Joe helped to raise the body of the murdered man and put it in
a wagon for removal; and it was whispered through the shuddering
crowd that the wound bled a little! The boys thought that this happy
circumstance would turn suspicion in the right direction; but they were
disappointed, for more than one villager remarked:

“It was within three feet of Muff Potter when it done it.”

Tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience disturbed his sleep for as
much as a week after this; and at breakfast one morning Sid said:

“Tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me
awake half the time.”

Tom blanched and dropped his eyes.

“It's a bad sign,” said Aunt Polly, gravely. “What you got on your mind,
Tom?”

“Nothing. Nothing 't I know of.” But the boy's hand shook so that he
spilled his coffee.

“And you do talk such stuff,” Sid said. “Last night you said, 'It's
blood, it's blood, that's what it is!' You said that over and over.
And you said, 'Don't torment me so--I'll tell!' Tell _what_? What is it
you'll tell?”

Everything was swimming before Tom. There is no telling what might have
happened, now, but luckily the concern passed out of Aunt Polly's face
and she came to Tom's relief without knowing it. She said:

“Sho! It's that dreadful murder. I dream about it most every night
myself. Sometimes I dream it's me that done it.”

Mary said she had been affected much the same way. Sid seemed satisfied.
Tom got out of the presence as quick as he plausibly could, and after
that he complained of toothache for a week, and tied up his jaws every
night. He never knew that Sid lay nightly watching, and frequently
slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow listening a good
while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage back to its place
again. Tom's distress of mind wore off gradually and the toothache grew
irksome and was discarded. If Sid really managed to make anything out of
Tom's disjointed mutterings, he kept it to himself.

It seemed to Tom that his schoolmates never would get done holding
inquests on dead cats, and thus keeping his trouble present to his mind.
Sid noticed that Tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries,
though it had been his habit to take the lead in all new enterprises;
he noticed, too, that Tom never acted as a witness--and that was strange;
and Sid did not overlook the fact that Tom even showed a marked aversion
to these inquests, and always avoided them when he could. Sid marvelled,
but said nothing. However, even inquests went out of vogue at last, and
ceased to torture Tom's conscience.

Every day or two, during this time of sorrow, Tom watched his
opportunity and went to the little grated jail-window and smuggled such
small comforts through to the “murderer” as he could get hold of. The
jail was a trifling little brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge
of the village, and no guards were afforded for it; indeed, it
was seldom occupied. These offerings greatly helped to ease Tom's
conscience.

The villagers had a strong desire to tar-and-feather Injun Joe and ride
him on a rail, for body-snatching, but so formidable was his character
that nobody could be found who was willing to take the lead in the
matter, so it was dropped. He had been careful to begin both of his
inquest-statements with the fight, without confessing the grave-robbery
that preceded it; therefore it was deemed wisest not to try the case in
the courts at present.




CHAPTER XII

ONE of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from its secret
troubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest
itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom had
struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to “whistle her down the
wind,” but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's
house, nights, and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she
should die! There was distraction in the thought. He no longer took an
interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there
was nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat;
there was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to
try all manner of remedies on him. She was one of those people who
are infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of
producing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in
these things. When something fresh in this line came out she was in a
fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing,
but on anybody else that came handy. She was a subscriber for all the
“Health” periodicals and phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance
they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils. All the “rot” they
contained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up,
and what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and
what frame of mind to keep one's self in, and what sort of clothing
to wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her
health-journals of the current month customarily upset everything they
had recommended the month before. She was as simple-hearted and honest
as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered
together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed
with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with
“hell following after.” But she never suspected that she was not an
angel of healing and the balm of Gilead in disguise, to the suffering
neighbors.

The water treatment was new, now, and Tom's low condition was a windfall
to her. She had him out at daylight every morning, stood him up in the
wood-shed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water; then she scrubbed
him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to; then she
rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets till she
sweated his soul clean and “the yellow stains of it came through his
pores”--as Tom said.

Yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and
pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and
plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to assist the
water with a slim oatmeal diet and blister-plasters. She calculated his
capacity as she would a jug's, and filled him up every day with quack
cure-alls.

Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase
filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must
be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first
time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with
gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water
treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer.
She gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the
result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again;
for the “indifference” was broken up. The boy could not have shown a
wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.

Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be
romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have
too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he
thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit upon that of
professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he
became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and
quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings
to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle
clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it
did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in
the sitting-room floor with it.

One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow
cat came along, purring, eyeing the teaspoon avariciously, and begging
for a taste. Tom said:

“Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter.”

But Peter signified that he did want it.

“You better make sure.”

Peter was sure.

“Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't
anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't
blame anybody but your own self.”

Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down
the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then
delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging
against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next
he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment,
with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his
unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again
spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time
to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah,
and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots
with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over
her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter.

“Tom, what on earth ails that cat?”

“I don't know, aunt,” gasped the boy.

“Why, I never see anything like it. What did make him act so?”

“Deed I don't know, Aunt Polly; cats always act so when they're having a
good time.”

“They do, do they?” There was something in the tone that made Tom
apprehensive.

“Yes'm. That is, I believe they do.”

“You _do_?”

“Yes'm.”

The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized
by anxiety. Too late he divined her “drift.” The handle of the telltale
tea-spoon was visible under the bed-valance. Aunt Polly took it, held it
up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the usual
handle--his ear--and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.

“Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?”

“I done it out of pity for him--because he hadn't any aunt.”

“Hadn't any aunt!--you numskull. What has that got to do with it?”

“Heaps. Because if he'd had one she'd a burnt him out herself! She'd a
roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a
human!”

Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. This was putting the thing in
a new light; what was cruelty to a cat _might_ be cruelty to a boy, too.
She began to soften; she felt sorry. Her eyes watered a little, and she
put her hand on Tom's head and said gently:

“I was meaning for the best, Tom. And, Tom, it _did_ do you good.”

Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping
through his gravity.

“I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter. It
done _him_ good, too. I never see him get around so since--”

“Oh, go 'long with you, Tom, before you aggravate me again. And you try
and see if you can't be a good boy, for once, and you needn't take any
more medicine.”

Tom reached school ahead of time. It was noticed that this strange thing
had been occurring every day latterly. And now, as usual of late,
he hung about the gate of the schoolyard instead of playing with his
comrades. He was sick, he said, and he looked it. He tried to seem to
be looking everywhere but whither he really was looking--down the road.
Presently Jeff Thatcher hove in sight, and Tom's face lighted; he gazed
a moment, and then turned sorrowfully away. When Jeff arrived, Tom
accosted him; and “led up” warily to opportunities for remark about
Becky, but the giddy lad never could see the bait. Tom watched and
watched, hoping whenever a frisking frock came in sight, and hating the
owner of it as soon as he saw she was not the right one. At last frocks
ceased to appear, and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps; he entered
the empty schoolhouse and sat down to suffer. Then one more frock passed
in at the gate, and Tom's heart gave a great bound. The next instant he
was out, and “going on” like an Indian; yelling, laughing, chasing boys,
jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb, throwing handsprings,
standing on his head--doing all the heroic things he could conceive of,
and keeping a furtive eye out, all the while, to see if Becky Thatcher
was noticing. But she seemed to be unconscious of it all; she never
looked. Could it be possible that she was not aware that he was there?
He carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity; came war-whooping
around, snatched a boy's cap, hurled it to the roof of the schoolhouse,
broke through a group of boys, tumbling them in every direction, and
fell sprawling, himself, under Becky's nose, almost upsetting her--and
she turned, with her nose in the air, and he heard her say: “Mf! some
people think they're mighty smart--always showing off!”

Tom's cheeks burned. He gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed and
crestfallen.




CHAPTER XIII

TOM'S mind was made up now. He was gloomy and desperate. He was a
forsaken, friendless boy, he said; nobody loved him; when they found out
what they had driven him to, perhaps they would be sorry; he had tried
to do right and get along, but they would not let him; since nothing
would do them but to be rid of him, let it be so; and let them blame
_him_ for the consequences--why shouldn't they? What right had the
friendless to complain? Yes, they had forced him to it at last: he would
lead a life of crime. There was no choice.

By this time he was far down Meadow Lane, and the bell for school to
“take up” tinkled faintly upon his ear. He sobbed, now, to think he
should never, never hear that old familiar sound any more--it was very
hard, but it was forced on him; since he was driven out into the cold
world, he must submit--but he forgave them. Then the sobs came thick and
fast.

Just at this point he met his soul's sworn comrade, Joe
Harper--hard-eyed, and with evidently a great and dismal purpose in his
heart. Plainly here were “two souls with but a single thought.” Tom,
wiping his eyes with his sleeve, began to blubber out something about
a resolution to escape from hard usage and lack of sympathy at home by
roaming abroad into the great world never to return; and ended by hoping
that Joe would not forget him.

But it transpired that this was a request which Joe had just been going
to make of Tom, and had come to hunt him up for that purpose. His mother
had whipped him for drinking some cream which he had never tasted and
knew nothing about; it was plain that she was tired of him and wished
him to go; if she felt that way, there was nothing for him to do but
succumb; he hoped she would be happy, and never regret having driven her
poor boy out into the unfeeling world to suffer and die.

As the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a new compact to stand
by each other and be brothers and never separate till death relieved
them of their troubles. Then they began to lay their plans. Joe was for
being a hermit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and dying,
some time, of cold and want and grief; but after listening to Tom, he
conceded that there were some conspicuous advantages about a life of
crime, and so he consented to be a pirate.

Three miles below St. Petersburg, at a point where the Mississippi River
was a trifle over a mile wide, there was a long, narrow, wooded island,
with a shallow bar at the head of it, and this offered well as a
rendezvous. It was not inhabited; it lay far over toward the further
shore, abreast a dense and almost wholly unpeopled forest. So Jackson's
Island was chosen. Who were to be the subjects of their piracies was a
matter that did not occur to them. Then they hunted up Huckleberry Finn,
and he joined them promptly, for all careers were one to him; he was
indifferent. They presently separated to meet at a lonely spot on the
river-bank two miles above the village at the favorite hour--which was
midnight. There was a small log raft there which they meant to capture.
Each would bring hooks and lines, and such provision as he could steal
in the most dark and mysterious way--as became outlaws. And before the
afternoon was done, they had all managed to enjoy the sweet glory of
spreading the fact that pretty soon the town would “hear something.” All
who got this vague hint were cautioned to “be mum and wait.”

About midnight Tom arrived with a boiled ham and a few trifles,
and stopped in a dense undergrowth on a small bluff overlooking the
meeting-place. It was starlight, and very still. The mighty river lay
like an ocean at rest. Tom listened a moment, but no sound disturbed the
quiet. Then he gave a low, distinct whistle. It was answered from under
the bluff. Tom whistled twice more; these signals were answered in the
same way. Then a guarded voice said:

“Who goes there?”

“Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main. Name your names.”

“Huck Finn the Red-Handed, and Joe Harper the Terror of the Seas.” Tom
had furnished these titles, from his favorite literature.

“'Tis well. Give the countersign.”

Two hoarse whispers delivered the same awful word simultaneously to the
brooding night:

“_Blood_!”

Then Tom tumbled his ham over the bluff and let himself down after it,
tearing both skin and clothes to some extent in the effort. There was
an easy, comfortable path along the shore under the bluff, but it lacked
the advantages of difficulty and danger so valued by a pirate.

The Terror of the Seas had brought a side of bacon, and had about worn
himself out with getting it there. Finn the Red-Handed had stolen a
skillet and a quantity of half-cured leaf tobacco, and had also brought
a few corn-cobs to make pipes with. But none of the pirates smoked or
“chewed” but himself. The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main said it
would never do to start without some fire. That was a wise thought;
matches were hardly known there in that day. They saw a fire smouldering
upon a great raft a hundred yards above, and they went stealthily
thither and helped themselves to a chunk. They made an imposing
adventure of it, saying, “Hist!” every now and then, and suddenly
halting with finger on lip; moving with hands on imaginary dagger-hilts;
and giving orders in dismal whispers that if “the foe” stirred, to “let
him have it to the hilt,” because “dead men tell no tales.” They knew
well enough that the raftsmen were all down at the village laying
in stores or having a spree, but still that was no excuse for their
conducting this thing in an unpiratical way.

They shoved off, presently, Tom in command, Huck at the after oar and
Joe at the forward. Tom stood amidships, gloomy-browed, and with folded
arms, and gave his orders in a low, stern whisper:

“Luff, and bring her to the wind!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“Steady, steady-y-y-y!”

“Steady it is, sir!”

“Let her go off a point!”

“Point it is, sir!”

As the boys steadily and monotonously drove the raft toward mid-stream
it was no doubt understood that these orders were given only for
“style,” and were not intended to mean anything in particular.

“What sail's she carrying?”

“Courses, tops'ls, and flying-jib, sir.”

“Send the r'yals up! Lay out aloft, there, half a dozen of
ye--foretopmaststuns'l! Lively, now!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“Shake out that maintogalans'l! Sheets and braces! _now_ my hearties!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“Hellum-a-lee--hard a port! Stand by to meet her when she comes! Port,
port! _Now_, men! With a will! Stead-y-y-y!”

“Steady it is, sir!”

The raft drew beyond the middle of the river; the boys pointed her head
right, and then lay on their oars. The river was not high, so there was
not more than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was said during
the next three-quarters of an hour. Now the raft was passing before
the distant town. Two or three glimmering lights showed where it lay,
peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of star-gemmed water,
unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening. The Black
Avenger stood still with folded arms, “looking his last” upon the scene
of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing “she” could see
him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with dauntless
heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips. It was but
a small strain on his imagination to remove Jackson's Island beyond
eye-shot of the village, and so he “looked his last” with a broken and
satisfied heart. The other pirates were looking their last, too; and
they all looked so long that they came near letting the current drift
them out of the range of the island. But they discovered the danger in
time, and made shift to avert it. About two o'clock in the morning the
raft grounded on the bar two hundred yards above the head of the island,
and they waded back and forth until they had landed their freight. Part
of the little raft's belongings consisted of an old sail, and this they
spread over a nook in the bushes for a tent to shelter their provisions;
but they themselves would sleep in the open air in good weather, as
became outlaws.

They built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty steps
within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some bacon in
the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn “pone” stock
they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild,
free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island,
far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would return to
civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw its ruddy
glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest temple, and upon the
varnished foliage and festooning vines.

When the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance
of corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass,
filled with contentment. They could have found a cooler place, but
they would not deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting
campfire.

“_Ain't_ it gay?” said Joe.

“It's _nuts_!” said Tom. “What would the boys say if they could see us?”

“Say? Well, they'd just die to be here--hey, Hucky!”

“I reckon so,” said Huckleberry; “anyways, I'm suited. I don't want
nothing better'n this. I don't ever get enough to eat, gen'ally--and here
they can't come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so.”

“It's just the life for me,” said Tom. “You don't have to get up,
mornings, and you don't have to go to school, and wash, and all that
blame foolishness. You see a pirate don't have to do _anything_, Joe,
when he's ashore, but a hermit _he_ has to be praying considerable, and
then he don't have any fun, anyway, all by himself that way.”

“Oh yes, that's so,” said Joe, “but I hadn't thought much about it, you
know. I'd a good deal rather be a pirate, now that I've tried it.”

“You see,” said Tom, “people don't go much on hermits, nowadays, like
they used to in old times, but a pirate's always respected. And
a hermit's got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put
sackcloth and ashes on his head, and stand out in the rain, and--”

“What does he put sackcloth and ashes on his head for?” inquired Huck.

“I dono. But they've _got_ to do it. Hermits always do. You'd have to do
that if you was a hermit.”

“Dern'd if I would,” said Huck.

“Well, what would you do?”

“I dono. But I wouldn't do that.”

“Why, Huck, you'd _have_ to. How'd you get around it?”

“Why, I just wouldn't stand it. I'd run away.”

“Run away! Well, you _would_ be a nice old slouch of a hermit. You'd be
a disgrace.”

The Red-Handed made no response, being better employed. He had finished
gouging out a cob, and now he fitted a weed stem to it, loaded it with
tobacco, and was pressing a coal to the charge and blowing a cloud of
fragrant smoke--he was in the full bloom of luxurious contentment. The
other pirates envied him this majestic vice, and secretly resolved to
acquire it shortly. Presently Huck said:

“What does pirates have to do?”

Tom said:

“Oh, they have just a bully time--take ships and burn them, and get the
money and bury it in awful places in their island where there's ghosts
and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships--make 'em walk a
plank.”

“And they carry the women to the island,” said Joe; “they don't kill the
women.”

“No,” assented Tom, “they don't kill the women--they're too noble. And
the women's always beautiful, too.

“And don't they wear the bulliest clothes! Oh no! All gold and silver
and di'monds,” said Joe, with enthusiasm.

“Who?” said Huck.

“Why, the pirates.”

Huck scanned his own clothing forlornly.

“I reckon I ain't dressed fitten for a pirate,” said he, with a
regretful pathos in his voice; “but I ain't got none but these.”

But the other boys told him the fine clothes would come fast enough,
after they should have begun their adventures. They made him understand
that his poor rags would do to begin with, though it was customary for
wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe.

Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began to steal upon the
eyelids of the little waifs. The pipe dropped from the fingers of the
Red-Handed, and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the weary.
The Terror of the Seas and the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main had
more difficulty in getting to sleep. They said their prayers inwardly,
and lying down, since there was nobody there with authority to make them
kneel and recite aloud; in truth, they had a mind not to say them at
all, but they were afraid to proceed to such lengths as that, lest they
might call down a sudden and special thunderbolt from heaven. Then at
once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge of sleep--but an
intruder came, now, that would not “down.” It was conscience. They began
to feel a vague fear that they had been doing wrong to run away; and
next they thought of the stolen meat, and then the real torture came.
They tried to argue it away by reminding conscience that they had
purloined sweetmeats and apples scores of times; but conscience was not
to be appeased by such thin plausibilities; it seemed to them, in the
end, that there was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking
sweetmeats was only “hooking,” while taking bacon and hams and such
valuables was plain simple stealing--and there was a command against that
in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in
the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the
crime of stealing. Then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously
inconsistent pirates fell peacefully to sleep.




CHAPTER XIV

WHEN Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and
rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the cool
gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the
deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not
a sound obtruded upon great Nature's meditation. Beaded dewdrops stood
upon the leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the fire,
and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe and Huck
still slept.

Now, far away in the woods a bird called; another answered; presently
the hammering of a woodpecker was heard. Gradually the cool dim gray
of the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life
manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going
to work unfolded itself to the musing boy. A little green worm came
crawling over a dewy leaf, lifting two-thirds of his body into the air
from time to time and “sniffing around,” then proceeding again--for he
was measuring, Tom said; and when the worm approached him, of its own
accord, he sat as still as a stone, with his hopes rising and falling,
by turns, as the creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to
go elsewhere; and when at last it considered a painful moment with its
curved body in the air and then came decisively down upon Tom's leg and
began a journey over him, his whole heart was glad--for that meant that
he was going to have a new suit of clothes--without the shadow of a
doubt a gaudy piratical uniform. Now a procession of ants appeared,
from nowhere in particular, and went about their labors; one struggled
manfully by with a dead spider five times as big as itself in its arms,
and lugged it straight up a tree-trunk. A brown spotted lady-bug climbed
the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and
said, “Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your
children's alone,” and she took wing and went off to see about it--which
did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was
credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity
more than once. A tumblebug came next, heaving sturdily at its ball, and
Tom touched the creature, to see it shut its legs against its body
and pretend to be dead. The birds were fairly rioting by this time. A
catbird, the Northern mocker, lit in a tree over Tom's head, and trilled
out her imitations of her neighbors in a rapture of enjoyment; then
a shrill jay swept down, a flash of blue flame, and stopped on a twig
almost within the boy's reach, cocked his head to one side and eyed the
strangers with a consuming curiosity; a gray squirrel and a big fellow
of the “fox” kind came skurrying along, sitting up at intervals to
inspect and chatter at the boys, for the wild things had probably never
seen a human being before and scarcely knew whether to be afraid or not.
All Nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long lances of sunlight
pierced down through the dense foliage far and near, and a few
butterflies came fluttering upon the scene.

Tom stirred up the other pirates and they all clattered away with
a shout, and in a minute or two were stripped and chasing after and
tumbling over each other in the shallow limpid water of the white
sandbar. They felt no longing for the little village sleeping in the
distance beyond the majestic waste of water. A vagrant current or a
slight rise in the river had carried off their raft, but this only
gratified them, since its going was something like burning the bridge
between them and civilization.

They came back to camp wonderfully refreshed, glad-hearted, and
ravenous; and they soon had the camp-fire blazing up again. Huck found a
spring of clear cold water close by, and the boys made cups of broad oak
or hickory leaves, and felt that water, sweetened with such a wildwood
charm as that, would be a good enough substitute for coffee. While Joe
was slicing bacon for breakfast, Tom and Huck asked him to hold on a
minute; they stepped to a promising nook in the river-bank and threw in
their lines; almost immediately they had reward. Joe had not had time
to get impatient before they were back again with some handsome bass,
a couple of sun-perch and a small catfish--provisions enough for quite a
family. They fried the fish with the bacon, and were astonished; for
no fish had ever seemed so delicious before. They did not know that the
quicker a fresh-water fish is on the fire after he is caught the better
he is; and they reflected little upon what a sauce open-air sleeping,
open-air exercise, bathing, and a large ingredient of hunger make, too.

They lay around in the shade, after breakfast, while Huck had a smoke,
and then went off through the woods on an exploring expedition. They
tramped gayly along, over decaying logs, through tangled underbrush,
among solemn monarchs of the forest, hung from their crowns to the
ground with a drooping regalia of grape-vines. Now and then they came
upon snug nooks carpeted with grass and jeweled with flowers.

They found plenty of things to be delighted with, but nothing to be
astonished at. They discovered that the island was about three miles
long and a quarter of a mile wide, and that the shore it lay closest to
was only separated from it by a narrow channel hardly two hundred yards
wide. They took a swim about every hour, so it was close upon the middle
of the afternoon when they got back to camp. They were too hungry to
stop to fish, but they fared sumptuously upon cold ham, and then threw
themselves down in the shade to talk. But the talk soon began to drag,
and then died. The stillness, the solemnity that brooded in the woods,
and the sense of loneliness, began to tell upon the spirits of the boys.
They fell to thinking. A sort of undefined longing crept upon them. This
took dim shape, presently--it was budding homesickness. Even Finn the
Red-Handed was dreaming of his doorsteps and empty hogsheads. But they
were all ashamed of their weakness, and none was brave enough to speak
his thought.

For some time, now, the boys had been dully conscious of a peculiar
sound in the distance, just as one sometimes is of the ticking of a
clock which he takes no distinct note of. But now this mysterious sound
became more pronounced, and forced a recognition. The boys started,
glanced at each other, and then each assumed a listening attitude. There
was a long silence, profound and unbroken; then a deep, sullen boom came
floating down out of the distance.

“What is it!” exclaimed Joe, under his breath.

“I wonder,” said Tom in a whisper.

“'Tain't thunder,” said Huckleberry, in an awed tone, “becuz thunder--”

“Hark!” said Tom. “Listen--don't talk.”

They waited a time that seemed an age, and then the same muffled boom
troubled the solemn hush.

“Let's go and see.”

They sprang to their feet and hurried to the shore toward the town. They
parted the bushes on the bank and peered out over the water. The little
steam ferry-boat was about a mile below the village, drifting with the
current. Her broad deck seemed crowded with people. There were a great
many skiffs rowing about or floating with the stream in the neighborhood
of the ferryboat, but the boys could not determine what the men in
them were doing. Presently a great jet of white smoke burst from the
ferryboat's side, and as it expanded and rose in a lazy cloud, that same
dull throb of sound was borne to the listeners again.

“I know now!” exclaimed Tom; “somebody's drownded!”

“That's it!” said Huck; “they done that last summer, when Bill Turner
got drownded; they shoot a cannon over the water, and that makes
him come up to the top. Yes, and they take loaves of bread and put
quicksilver in 'em and set 'em afloat, and wherever there's anybody
that's drownded, they'll float right there and stop.”

“Yes, I've heard about that,” said Joe. “I wonder what makes the bread
do that.”

“Oh, it ain't the bread, so much,” said Tom; “I reckon it's mostly what
they _say_ over it before they start it out.”

“But they don't say anything over it,” said Huck. “I've seen 'em and
they don't.”

“Well, that's funny,” said Tom. “But maybe they say it to themselves. Of
_course_ they do. Anybody might know that.”

The other boys agreed that there was reason in what Tom said, because
an ignorant lump of bread, uninstructed by an incantation, could not
be expected to act very intelligently when set upon an errand of such
gravity.

“By jings, I wish I was over there, now,” said Joe.

“I do too” said Huck “I'd give heaps to know who it is.”

The boys still listened and watched. Presently a revealing thought
flashed through Tom's mind, and he exclaimed:

“Boys, I know who's drownded--it's us!”

They felt like heroes in an instant. Here was a gorgeous triumph; they
were missed; they were mourned; hearts were breaking on their account;
tears were being shed; accusing memories of unkindness to these poor
lost lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being
indulged; and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole town,
and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety was
concerned. This was fine. It was worth while to be a pirate, after all.

As twilight drew on, the ferryboat went back to her accustomed business
and the skiffs disappeared. The pirates returned to camp. They were
jubilant with vanity over their new grandeur and the illustrious trouble
they were making. They caught fish, cooked supper and ate it, and then
fell to guessing at what the village was thinking and saying about them;
and the pictures they drew of the public distress on their account were
gratifying to look upon--from their point of view. But when the shadows
of night closed them in, they gradually ceased to talk, and sat gazing
into the fire, with their minds evidently wandering elsewhere. The
excitement was gone, now, and Tom and Joe could not keep back thoughts
of certain persons at home who were not enjoying this fine frolic as
much as they were. Misgivings came; they grew troubled and unhappy; a
sigh or two escaped, unawares. By and by Joe timidly ventured upon a
roundabout “feeler” as to how the others might look upon a return to
civilization--not right now, but--

Tom withered him with derision! Huck, being uncommitted as yet, joined
in with Tom, and the waverer quickly “explained,” and was glad to get
out of the scrape with as little taint of chicken-hearted home-sickness
clinging to his garments as he could. Mutiny was effectually laid to
rest for the moment.

As the night deepened, Huck began to nod, and presently to snore.
Joe followed next. Tom lay upon his elbow motionless, for some time,
watching the two intently. At last he got up cautiously, on his knees,
and went searching among the grass and the flickering reflections flung
by the campfire. He picked up and inspected several large semi-cylinders
of the thin white bark of a sycamore, and finally chose two which seemed
to suit him. Then he knelt by the fire and painfully wrote something
upon each of these with his “red keel”; one he rolled up and put in his
jacket pocket, and the other he put in Joe's hat and removed it to a
little distance from the owner. And he also put into the hat certain
schoolboy treasures of almost inestimable value--among them a lump of
chalk, an India-rubber ball, three fishhooks, and one of that kind
of marbles known as a “sure 'nough crystal.” Then he tiptoed his way
cautiously among the trees till he felt that he was out of hearing, and
straightway broke into a keen run in the direction of the sandbar.




CHAPTER XV

A few minutes later Tom was in the shoal water of the bar, wading toward
the Illinois shore. Before the depth reached his middle he was halfway
over; the current would permit no more wading, now, so he struck out
confidently to swim the remaining hundred yards. He swam quartering
upstream, but still was swept downward rather faster than he had
expected. However, he reached the shore finally, and drifted along till
he found a low place and drew himself out. He put his hand on his jacket
pocket, found his piece of bark safe, and then struck through the woods,
following the shore, with streaming garments. Shortly before ten
o'clock he came out into an open place opposite the village, and saw the
ferryboat lying in the shadow of the trees and the high bank. Everything
was quiet under the blinking stars. He crept down the bank, watching
with all his eyes, slipped into the water, swam three or four strokes
and climbed into the skiff that did “yawl” duty at the boat's stern. He
laid himself down under the thwarts and waited, panting.

Presently the cracked bell tapped and a voice gave the order to “cast
off.” A minute or two later the skiff's head was standing high up,
against the boat's swell, and the voyage was begun. Tom felt happy in
his success, for he knew it was the boat's last trip for the night. At
the end of a long twelve or fifteen minutes the wheels stopped, and
Tom slipped overboard and swam ashore in the dusk, landing fifty yards
downstream, out of danger of possible stragglers.

He flew along unfrequented alleys, and shortly found himself at his
aunt's back fence. He climbed over, approached the “ell,” and looked
in at the sitting-room window, for a light was burning there. There
sat Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, and Joe Harper's mother, grouped together,
talking. They were by the bed, and the bed was between them and the
door. Tom went to the door and began to softly lift the latch; then
he pressed gently and the door yielded a crack; he continued pushing
cautiously, and quaking every time it creaked, till he judged he might
squeeze through on his knees; so he put his head through and began,
warily.

“What makes the candle blow so?” said Aunt Polly. Tom hurried up. “Why,
that door's open, I believe. Why, of course it is. No end of strange
things now. Go 'long and shut it, Sid.”

Tom disappeared under the bed just in time. He lay and “breathed”
 himself for a time, and then crept to where he could almost touch his
aunt's foot.

“But as I was saying,” said Aunt Polly, “he warn't _bad_, so to say--only
misch_ee_vous. Only just giddy, and harum-scarum, you know. He warn't
any more responsible than a colt. _He_ never meant any harm, and he was
the best-hearted boy that ever was”--and she began to cry.

“It was just so with my Joe--always full of his devilment, and up to
every kind of mischief, but he was just as unselfish and kind as he
could be--and laws bless me, to think I went and whipped him for taking
that cream, never once recollecting that I throwed it out myself because
it was sour, and I never to see him again in this world, never, never,
never, poor abused boy!” And Mrs. Harper sobbed as if her heart would
break.

“I hope Tom's better off where he is,” said Sid, “but if he'd been
better in some ways--”

“_Sid!_” Tom felt the glare of the old lady's eye, though he could not
see it. “Not a word against my Tom, now that he's gone! God'll take care
of _him_--never you trouble _your_self, sir! Oh, Mrs. Harper, I don't
know how to give him up! I don't know how to give him up! He was such a
comfort to me, although he tormented my old heart out of me, 'most.”

“The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away--Blessed be the name of
the Lord! But it's so hard--Oh, it's so hard! Only last Saturday my Joe
busted a firecracker right under my nose and I knocked him sprawling.
Little did I know then, how soon--Oh, if it was to do over again I'd hug
him and bless him for it.”

“Yes, yes, yes, I know just how you feel, Mrs. Harper, I know just
exactly how you feel. No longer ago than yesterday noon, my Tom took
and filled the cat full of Pain-killer, and I did think the cretur would
tear the house down. And God forgive me, I cracked Tom's head with my
thimble, poor boy, poor dead boy. But he's out of all his troubles now.
And the last words I ever heard him say was to reproach--”

But this memory was too much for the old lady, and she broke entirely
down. Tom was snuffling, now, himself--and more in pity of himself than
anybody else. He could hear Mary crying, and putting in a kindly word
for him from time to time. He began to have a nobler opinion of himself
than ever before. Still, he was sufficiently touched by his aunt's grief
to long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm her with joy--and
the theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to his
nature, too, but he resisted and lay still.

He went on listening, and gathered by odds and ends that it was
conjectured at first that the boys had got drowned while taking a swim;
then the small raft had been missed; next, certain boys said the missing
lads had promised that the village should “hear something” soon; the
wise-heads had “put this and that together” and decided that the lads
had gone off on that raft and would turn up at the next town below,
presently; but toward noon the raft had been found, lodged against the
Missouri shore some five or six miles below the village--and then hope
perished; they must be drowned, else hunger would have driven them home
by nightfall if not sooner. It was believed that the search for the
bodies had been a fruitless effort merely because the drowning must
have occurred in mid-channel, since the boys, being good swimmers, would
otherwise have escaped to shore. This was Wednesday night. If the bodies
continued missing until Sunday, all hope would be given over, and the
funerals would be preached on that morning. Tom shuddered.

Mrs. Harper gave a sobbing goodnight and turned to go. Then with a
mutual impulse the two bereaved women flung themselves into each other's
arms and had a good, consoling cry, and then parted. Aunt Polly was
tender far beyond her wont, in her goodnight to Sid and Mary. Sid
snuffled a bit and Mary went off crying with all her heart.

Aunt Polly knelt down and prayed for Tom so touchingly, so appealingly,
and with such measureless love in her words and her old trembling voice,
that he was weltering in tears again, long before she was through.

He had to keep still long after she went to bed, for she kept making
broken-hearted ejaculations from time to time, tossing unrestfully, and
turning over. But at last she was still, only moaning a little in her
sleep. Now the boy stole out, rose gradually by the bedside, shaded the
candle-light with his hand, and stood regarding her. His heart was full
of pity for her. He took out his sycamore scroll and placed it by the
candle. But something occurred to him, and he lingered considering.
His face lighted with a happy solution of his thought; he put the bark
hastily in his pocket. Then he bent over and kissed the faded lips, and
straightway made his stealthy exit, latching the door behind him.

He threaded his way back to the ferry landing, found nobody at large
there, and walked boldly on board the boat, for he knew she was
tenantless except that there was a watchman, who always turned in and
slept like a graven image. He untied the skiff at the stern, slipped
into it, and was soon rowing cautiously upstream. When he had pulled a
mile above the village, he started quartering across and bent himself
stoutly to his work. He hit the landing on the other side neatly, for
this was a familiar bit of work to him. He was moved to capture
the skiff, arguing that it might be considered a ship and therefore
legitimate prey for a pirate, but he knew a thorough search would be
made for it and that might end in revelations. So he stepped ashore and
entered the woods.

He sat down and took a long rest, torturing himself meanwhile to keep
awake, and then started warily down the home-stretch. The night was far
spent. It was broad daylight before he found himself fairly abreast the
island bar. He rested again until the sun was well up and gilding the
great river with its splendor, and then he plunged into the stream. A
little later he paused, dripping, upon the threshold of the camp, and
heard Joe say:

“No, Tom's true-blue, Huck, and he'll come back. He won't desert. He
knows that would be a disgrace to a pirate, and Tom's too proud for that
sort of thing. He's up to something or other. Now I wonder what?”

“Well, the things is ours, anyway, ain't they?”

“Pretty near, but not yet, Huck. The writing says they are if he ain't
back here to breakfast.”

“Which he is!” exclaimed Tom, with fine dramatic effect, stepping
grandly into camp.

A sumptuous breakfast of bacon and fish was shortly provided, and as the
boys set to work upon it, Tom recounted (and adorned) his adventures.
They were a vain and boastful company of heroes when the tale was done.
Then Tom hid himself away in a shady nook to sleep till noon, and the
other pirates got ready to fish and explore.




CHAPTER XVI

AFTER dinner all the gang turned out to hunt for turtle eggs on the bar.
They went about poking sticks into the sand, and when they found a soft
place they went down on their knees and dug with their hands. Sometimes
they would take fifty or sixty eggs out of one hole. They were perfectly
round white things a trifle smaller than an English walnut. They had a
famous fried-egg feast that night, and another on Friday morning.

After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and
chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until
they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal
water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their
legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun.
And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each
other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with
averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and
struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all
went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing,
sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time.

When they were well exhausted, they would run out and sprawl on the dry,
hot sand, and lie there and cover themselves up with it, and by and by
break for the water again and go through the original performance once
more. Finally it occurred to them that their naked skin represented
flesh-colored “tights” very fairly; so they drew a ring in the sand and
had a circus--with three clowns in it, for none would yield this proudest
post to his neighbor.

Next they got their marbles and played “knucks” and “ringtaw” and
“keeps” till that amusement grew stale. Then Joe and Huck had another
swim, but Tom would not venture, because he found that in kicking off
his trousers he had kicked his string of rattlesnake rattles off his
ankle, and he wondered how he had escaped cramp so long without the
protection of this mysterious charm. He did not venture again until he
had found it, and by that time the other boys were tired and ready to
rest. They gradually wandered apart, dropped into the “dumps,” and
fell to gazing longingly across the wide river to where the village lay
drowsing in the sun. Tom found himself writing “BECKY” in the sand with
his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his
weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it. He
erased it once more and then took himself out of temptation by driving
the other boys together and joining them.

But Joe's spirits had gone down almost beyond resurrection. He was so
homesick that he could hardly endure the misery of it. The tears lay
very near the surface. Huck was melancholy, too. Tom was downhearted,
but tried hard not to show it. He had a secret which he was not ready
to tell, yet, but if this mutinous depression was not broken up soon, he
would have to bring it out. He said, with a great show of cheerfulness:

“I bet there's been pirates on this island before, boys. We'll explore
it again. They've hid treasures here somewhere. How'd you feel to light
on a rotten chest full of gold and silver--hey?”

But it roused only faint enthusiasm, which faded out, with no reply.
Tom tried one or two other seductions; but they failed, too. It was
discouraging work. Joe sat poking up the sand with a stick and looking
very gloomy. Finally he said:

“Oh, boys, let's give it up. I want to go home. It's so lonesome.”

“Oh no, Joe, you'll feel better by and by,” said Tom. “Just think of the
fishing that's here.”

“I don't care for fishing. I want to go home.”

“But, Joe, there ain't such another swimming-place anywhere.”

“Swimming's no good. I don't seem to care for it, somehow, when there
ain't anybody to say I sha'n't go in. I mean to go home.”

“Oh, shucks! Baby! You want to see your mother, I reckon.”

“Yes, I _do_ want to see my mother--and you would, too, if you had one. I
ain't any more baby than you are.” And Joe snuffled a little.

“Well, we'll let the crybaby go home to his mother, won't we, Huck? Poor
thing--does it want to see its mother? And so it shall. You like it here,
don't you, Huck? We'll stay, won't we?”

Huck said, “Y-e-s”--without any heart in it.

“I'll never speak to you again as long as I live,” said Joe, rising.
“There now!” And he moved moodily away and began to dress himself.

“Who cares!” said Tom. “Nobody wants you to. Go 'long home and get
laughed at. Oh, you're a nice pirate. Huck and me ain't crybabies. We'll
stay, won't we, Huck? Let him go if he wants to. I reckon we can get
along without him, per'aps.”

But Tom was uneasy, nevertheless, and was alarmed to see Joe go sullenly
on with his dressing. And then it was discomforting to see Huck eying
Joe's preparations so wistfully, and keeping up such an ominous silence.
Presently, without a parting word, Joe began to wade off toward the
Illinois shore. Tom's heart began to sink. He glanced at Huck. Huck
could not bear the look, and dropped his eyes. Then he said:

“I want to go, too, Tom. It was getting so lonesome anyway, and now
it'll be worse. Let's us go, too, Tom.”

“I won't! You can all go, if you want to. I mean to stay.”

“Tom, I better go.”

“Well, go 'long--who's hendering you.”

Huck began to pick up his scattered clothes. He said:

“Tom, I wisht you'd come, too. Now you think it over. We'll wait for you
when we get to shore.”

“Well, you'll wait a blame long time, that's all.”

Huck started sorrowfully away, and Tom stood looking after him, with a
strong desire tugging at his heart to yield his pride and go along
too. He hoped the boys would stop, but they still waded slowly on. It
suddenly dawned on Tom that it was become very lonely and still. He made
one final struggle with his pride, and then darted after his comrades,
yelling:

“Wait! Wait! I want to tell you something!”

They presently stopped and turned around. When he got to where they
were, he began unfolding his secret, and they listened moodily till
at last they saw the “point” he was driving at, and then they set up a
warwhoop of applause and said it was “splendid!” and said if he had
told them at first, they wouldn't have started away. He made a plausible
excuse; but his real reason had been the fear that not even the secret
would keep them with him any very great length of time, and so he had
meant to hold it in reserve as a last seduction.

The lads came gayly back and went at their sports again with a will,
chattering all the time about Tom's stupendous plan and admiring the
genius of it. After a dainty egg and fish dinner, Tom said he wanted to
learn to smoke, now. Joe caught at the idea and said he would like to
try, too. So Huck made pipes and filled them. These novices had never
smoked anything before but cigars made of grapevine, and they “bit” the
tongue, and were not considered manly anyway.

Now they stretched themselves out on their elbows and began to puff,
charily, and with slender confidence. The smoke had an unpleasant taste,
and they gagged a little, but Tom said:

“Why, it's just as easy! If I'd a knowed this was all, I'd a learnt long
ago.”

“So would I,” said Joe. “It's just nothing.”

“Why, many a time I've looked at people smoking, and thought well I wish
I could do that; but I never thought I could,” said Tom.

“That's just the way with me, hain't it, Huck? You've heard me talk just
that way--haven't you, Huck? I'll leave it to Huck if I haven't.”

“Yes--heaps of times,” said Huck.

“Well, I have too,” said Tom; “oh, hundreds of times. Once down by the
slaughter-house. Don't you remember, Huck? Bob Tanner was there, and
Johnny Miller, and Jeff Thatcher, when I said it. Don't you remember,
Huck, 'bout me saying that?”

“Yes, that's so,” said Huck. “That was the day after I lost a white
alley. No, 'twas the day before.”

“There--I told you so,” said Tom. “Huck recollects it.”

“I bleeve I could smoke this pipe all day,” said Joe. “I don't feel
sick.”

“Neither do I,” said Tom. “I could smoke it all day. But I bet you Jeff
Thatcher couldn't.”

“Jeff Thatcher! Why, he'd keel over just with two draws. Just let him
try it once. _He'd_ see!”

“I bet he would. And Johnny Miller--I wish could see Johnny Miller tackle
it once.”

“Oh, don't I!” said Joe. “Why, I bet you Johnny Miller couldn't any more
do this than nothing. Just one little snifter would fetch _him_.”

“'Deed it would, Joe. Say--I wish the boys could see us now.”

“So do I.”

“Say--boys, don't say anything about it, and some time when they're
around, I'll come up to you and say, 'Joe, got a pipe? I want a smoke.'
And you'll say, kind of careless like, as if it warn't anything, you'll
say, 'Yes, I got my _old_ pipe, and another one, but my tobacker ain't
very good.' And I'll say, 'Oh, that's all right, if it's _strong_
enough.' And then you'll out with the pipes, and we'll light up just as
ca'm, and then just see 'em look!”

“By jings, that'll be gay, Tom! I wish it was _now_!”

“So do I! And when we tell 'em we learned when we was off pirating,
won't they wish they'd been along?”

“Oh, I reckon not! I'll just _bet_ they will!”

So the talk ran on. But presently it began to flag a trifle, and
grow disjointed. The silences widened; the expectoration marvellously
increased. Every pore inside the boys' cheeks became a spouting
fountain; they could scarcely bail out the cellars under their tongues
fast enough to prevent an inundation; little overflowings down their
throats occurred in spite of all they could do, and sudden retchings
followed every time. Both boys were looking very pale and miserable,
now. Joe's pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers. Tom's followed. Both
fountains were going furiously and both pumps bailing with might and
main. Joe said feebly:

“I've lost my knife. I reckon I better go and find it.”

Tom said, with quivering lips and halting utterance:

“I'll help you. You go over that way and I'll hunt around by the spring.
No, you needn't come, Huck--we can find it.”

So Huck sat down again, and waited an hour. Then he found it lonesome,
and went to find his comrades. They were wide apart in the woods, both
very pale, both fast asleep. But something informed him that if they had
had any trouble they had got rid of it.

They were not talkative at supper that night. They had a humble look,
and when Huck prepared his pipe after the meal and was going to prepare
theirs, they said no, they were not feeling very well--something they ate
at dinner had disagreed with them.

About midnight Joe awoke, and called the boys. There was a brooding
oppressiveness in the air that seemed to bode something. The boys
huddled themselves together and sought the friendly companionship of
the fire, though the dull dead heat of the breathless atmosphere was
stifling. They sat still, intent and waiting. The solemn hush continued.
Beyond the light of the fire everything was swallowed up in the
blackness of darkness. Presently there came a quivering glow that
vaguely revealed the foliage for a moment and then vanished. By and by
another came, a little stronger. Then another. Then a faint moan came
sighing through the branches of the forest and the boys felt a fleeting
breath upon their cheeks, and shuddered with the fancy that the Spirit
of the Night had gone by. There was a pause. Now a weird flash turned
night into day and showed every little grassblade, separate and
distinct, that grew about their feet. And it showed three white,
startled faces, too. A deep peal of thunder went rolling and tumbling
down the heavens and lost itself in sullen rumblings in the distance. A
sweep of chilly air passed by, rustling all the leaves and snowing the
flaky ashes broadcast about the fire. Another fierce glare lit up the
forest and an instant crash followed that seemed to rend the treetops
right over the boys' heads. They clung together in terror, in the thick
gloom that followed. A few big raindrops fell pattering upon the leaves.

“Quick! boys, go for the tent!” exclaimed Tom.

They sprang away, stumbling over roots and among vines in the dark, no
two plunging in the same direction. A furious blast roared through
the trees, making everything sing as it went. One blinding flash after
another came, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. And now a drenching
rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets along the
ground. The boys cried out to each other, but the roaring wind and the
booming thunderblasts drowned their voices utterly. However, one by one
they straggled in at last and took shelter under the tent, cold, scared,
and streaming with water; but to have company in misery seemed something
to be grateful for. They could not talk, the old sail flapped so
furiously, even if the other noises would have allowed them. The tempest
rose higher and higher, and presently the sail tore loose from its
fastenings and went winging away on the blast. The boys seized each
others' hands and fled, with many tumblings and bruises, to the shelter
of a great oak that stood upon the riverbank. Now the battle was at its
highest. Under the ceaseless conflagration of lightning that flamed
in the skies, everything below stood out in cleancut and shadowless
distinctness: the bending trees, the billowy river, white with foam, the
driving spray of spumeflakes, the dim outlines of the high bluffs on
the other side, glimpsed through the drifting cloudrack and the slanting
veil of rain. Every little while some giant tree yielded the fight
and fell crashing through the younger growth; and the unflagging
thunderpeals came now in ear-splitting explosive bursts, keen and sharp,
and unspeakably appalling. The storm culminated in one matchless effort
that seemed likely to tear the island to pieces, burn it up, drown it to
the treetops, blow it away, and deafen every creature in it, all at one
and the same moment. It was a wild night for homeless young heads to be
out in.

But at last the battle was done, and the forces retired with weaker and
weaker threatenings and grumblings, and peace resumed her sway. The
boys went back to camp, a good deal awed; but they found there was still
something to be thankful for, because the great sycamore, the shelter
of their beds, was a ruin, now, blasted by the lightnings, and they were
not under it when the catastrophe happened.

Everything in camp was drenched, the campfire as well; for they were but
heedless lads, like their generation, and had made no provision against
rain. Here was matter for dismay, for they were soaked through and
chilled. They were eloquent in their distress; but they presently
discovered that the fire had eaten so far up under the great log it had
been built against (where it curved upward and separated itself from
the ground), that a handbreadth or so of it had escaped wetting; so they
patiently wrought until, with shreds and bark gathered from the under
sides of sheltered logs, they coaxed the fire to burn again. Then they
piled on great dead boughs till they had a roaring furnace, and were
gladhearted once more. They dried their boiled ham and had a feast,
and after that they sat by the fire and expanded and glorified their
midnight adventure until morning, for there was not a dry spot to sleep
on, anywhere around.

As the sun began to steal in upon the boys, drowsiness came over
them, and they went out on the sandbar and lay down to sleep. They got
scorched out by and by, and drearily set about getting breakfast. After
the meal they felt rusty, and stiff-jointed, and a little homesick once
more. Tom saw the signs, and fell to cheering up the pirates as well as
he could. But they cared nothing for marbles, or circus, or swimming, or
anything. He reminded them of the imposing secret, and raised a ray of
cheer. While it lasted, he got them interested in a new device. This was
to knock off being pirates, for a while, and be Indians for a change.
They were attracted by this idea; so it was not long before they were
stripped, and striped from head to heel with black mud, like so many
zebras--all of them chiefs, of course--and then they went tearing through
the woods to attack an English settlement.

By and by they separated into three hostile tribes, and darted upon each
other from ambush with dreadful warwhoops, and killed and scalped each
other by thousands. It was a gory day. Consequently it was an extremely
satisfactory one.

They assembled in camp toward suppertime, hungry and happy; but now
a difficulty arose--hostile Indians could not break the bread of
hospitality together without first making peace, and this was a simple
impossibility without smoking a pipe of peace. There was no other
process that ever they had heard of. Two of the savages almost wished
they had remained pirates. However, there was no other way; so with such
show of cheerfulness as they could muster they called for the pipe and
took their whiff as it passed, in due form.

And behold, they were glad they had gone into savagery, for they had
gained something; they found that they could now smoke a little without
having to go and hunt for a lost knife; they did not get sick enough to
be seriously uncomfortable. They were not likely to fool away this high
promise for lack of effort. No, they practised cautiously, after supper,
with right fair success, and so they spent a jubilant evening. They were
prouder and happier in their new acquirement than they would have been
in the scalping and skinning of the Six Nations. We will leave them to
smoke and chatter and brag, since we have no further use for them at
present.




CHAPTER XVII

BUT there was no hilarity in the little town that same tranquil Saturday
afternoon. The Harpers, and Aunt Polly's family, were being put into
mourning, with great grief and many tears. An unusual quiet possessed
the village, although it was ordinarily quiet enough, in all conscience.
The villagers conducted their concerns with an absent air, and talked
little; but they sighed often. The Saturday holiday seemed a burden to
the children. They had no heart in their sports, and gradually gave them
up.

In the afternoon Becky Thatcher found herself moping about the deserted
schoolhouse yard, and feeling very melancholy. But she found nothing
there to comfort her. She soliloquized:

“Oh, if I only had a brass andiron-knob again! But I haven't got
anything now to remember him by.” And she choked back a little sob.

Presently she stopped, and said to herself:

“It was right here. Oh, if it was to do over again, I wouldn't say
that--I wouldn't say it for the whole world. But he's gone now; I'll
never, never, never see him any more.”

This thought broke her down, and she wandered away, with tears rolling
down her cheeks. Then quite a group of boys and girls--playmates of Tom's
and Joe's--came by, and stood looking over the paling fence and talking
in reverent tones of how Tom did so-and-so the last time they saw
him, and how Joe said this and that small trifle (pregnant with awful
prophecy, as they could easily see now!)--and each speaker pointed out
the exact spot where the lost lads stood at the time, and then added
something like “and I was a-standing just so--just as I am now, and as if
you was him--I was as close as that--and he smiled, just this way--and then
something seemed to go all over me, like--awful, you know--and I never
thought what it meant, of course, but I can see now!”

Then there was a dispute about who saw the dead boys last in life, and
many claimed that dismal distinction, and offered evidences, more or
less tampered with by the witness; and when it was ultimately decided
who _did_ see the departed last, and exchanged the last words with them,
the lucky parties took upon themselves a sort of sacred importance,
and were gaped at and envied by all the rest. One poor chap, who had
no other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest pride in the
remembrance:

“Well, Tom Sawyer he licked me once.”

But that bid for glory was a failure. Most of the boys could say that,
and so that cheapened the distinction too much. The group loitered away,
still recalling memories of the lost heroes, in awed voices.

When the Sunday-school hour was finished, the next morning, the bell
began to toll, instead of ringing in the usual way. It was a very still
Sabbath, and the mournful sound seemed in keeping with the musing hush
that lay upon nature. The villagers began to gather, loitering a moment
in the vestibule to converse in whispers about the sad event. But there
was no whispering in the house; only the funereal rustling of dresses
as the women gathered to their seats disturbed the silence there. None
could remember when the little church had been so full before. There
was finally a waiting pause, an expectant dumbness, and then Aunt Polly
entered, followed by Sid and Mary, and they by the Harper family, all in
deep black, and the whole congregation, the old minister as well, rose
reverently and stood until the mourners were seated in the front pew.
There was another communing silence, broken at intervals by muffled
sobs, and then the minister spread his hands abroad and prayed. A moving
hymn was sung, and the text followed: “I am the Resurrection and the
Life.”

As the service proceeded, the clergyman drew such pictures of the
graces, the winning ways, and the rare promise of the lost lads that
every soul there, thinking he recognized these pictures, felt a pang
in remembering that he had persistently blinded himself to them always
before, and had as persistently seen only faults and flaws in the poor
boys. The minister related many a touching incident in the lives of the
departed, too, which illustrated their sweet, generous natures, and the
people could easily see, now, how noble and beautiful those episodes
were, and remembered with grief that at the time they occurred they had
seemed rank rascalities, well deserving of the cowhide. The congregation
became more and more moved, as the pathetic tale went on, till at last
the whole company broke down and joined the weeping mourners in a chorus
of anguished sobs, the preacher himself giving way to his feelings, and
crying in the pulpit.

There was a rustle in the gallery, which nobody noticed; a moment later
the church door creaked; the minister raised his streaming eyes above
his handkerchief, and stood transfixed! First one and then another pair
of eyes followed the minister's, and then almost with one impulse the
congregation rose and stared while the three dead boys came marching up
the aisle, Tom in the lead, Joe next, and Huck, a ruin of drooping rags,
sneaking sheepishly in the rear! They had been hid in the unused gallery
listening to their own funeral sermon!

Aunt Polly, Mary, and the Harpers threw themselves upon their restored
ones, smothered them with kisses and poured out thanksgivings, while
poor Huck stood abashed and uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what
to do or where to hide from so many unwelcoming eyes. He wavered, and
started to slink away, but Tom seized him and said:

“Aunt Polly, it ain't fair. Somebody's got to be glad to see Huck.”

“And so they shall. I'm glad to see him, poor motherless thing!” And
the loving attentions Aunt Polly lavished upon him were the one thing
capable of making him more uncomfortable than he was before.

Suddenly the minister shouted at the top of his voice: “Praise God from
whom all blessings flow--_sing_!--and put your hearts in it!”

And they did. Old Hundred swelled up with a triumphant burst, and
while it shook the rafters Tom Sawyer the Pirate looked around upon the
envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was the
proudest moment of his life.

As the “sold” congregation trooped out they said they would almost be
willing to be made ridiculous again to hear Old Hundred sung like that
once more.

Tom got more cuffs and kisses that day--according to Aunt Polly's varying
moods--than he had earned before in a year; and he hardly knew which
expressed the most gratefulness to God and affection for himself.




CHAPTER XVIII

THAT was Tom's great secret--the scheme to return home with his brother
pirates and attend their own funerals. They had paddled over to the
Missouri shore on a log, at dusk on Saturday, landing five or six miles
below the village; they had slept in the woods at the edge of the town
till nearly daylight, and had then crept through back lanes and alleys
and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church among a chaos of
invalided benches.

At breakfast, Monday morning, Aunt Polly and Mary were very loving to
Tom, and very attentive to his wants. There was an unusual amount of
talk. In the course of it Aunt Polly said:

“Well, I don't say it wasn't a fine joke, Tom, to keep everybody
suffering 'most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity you
could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. If you could come over
on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give me a
hint some way that you warn't dead, but only run off.”

“Yes, you could have done that, Tom,” said Mary; “and I believe you
would if you had thought of it.”

“Would you, Tom?” said Aunt Polly, her face lighting wistfully. “Say,
now, would you, if you'd thought of it?”

“I--well, I don't know. 'Twould 'a' spoiled everything.”

“Tom, I hoped you loved me that much,” said Aunt Polly, with a grieved
tone that discomforted the boy. “It would have been something if you'd
cared enough to _think_ of it, even if you didn't _do_ it.”

“Now, auntie, that ain't any harm,” pleaded Mary; “it's only Tom's giddy
way--he is always in such a rush that he never thinks of anything.”

“More's the pity. Sid would have thought. And Sid would have come and
_done_ it, too. Tom, you'll look back, some day, when it's too late,
and wish you'd cared a little more for me when it would have cost you so
little.”

“Now, auntie, you know I do care for you,” said Tom.

“I'd know it better if you acted more like it.”

“I wish now I'd thought,” said Tom, with a repentant tone; “but I dreamt
about you, anyway. That's something, ain't it?”

“It ain't much--a cat does that much--but it's better than nothing. What
did you dream?”

“Why, Wednesday night I dreamt that you was sitting over there by the
bed, and Sid was sitting by the woodbox, and Mary next to him.”

“Well, so we did. So we always do. I'm glad your dreams could take even
that much trouble about us.”

“And I dreamt that Joe Harper's mother was here.”

“Why, she was here! Did you dream any more?”

“Oh, lots. But it's so dim, now.”

“Well, try to recollect--can't you?”

“Somehow it seems to me that the wind--the wind blowed the--the--”

“Try harder, Tom! The wind did blow something. Come!”

Tom pressed his fingers on his forehead an anxious minute, and then
said:

“I've got it now! I've got it now! It blowed the candle!”

“Mercy on us! Go on, Tom--go on!”

“And it seems to me that you said, 'Why, I believe that that door--'”

“Go _on_, Tom!”

“Just let me study a moment--just a moment. Oh, yes--you said you believed
the door was open.”

“As I'm sitting here, I did! Didn't I, Mary! Go on!”

“And then--and then--well I won't be certain, but it seems like as if you
made Sid go and--and--”

“Well? Well? What did I make him do, Tom? What did I make him do?”

“You made him--you--Oh, you made him shut it.”

“Well, for the land's sake! I never heard the beat of that in all my
days! Don't tell _me_ there ain't anything in dreams, any more. Sereny
Harper shall know of this before I'm an hour older. I'd like to see her
get around _this_ with her rubbage 'bout superstition. Go on, Tom!”

“Oh, it's all getting just as bright as day, now. Next you said I warn't
_bad_, only mischeevous and harum-scarum, and not any more responsible
than--than--I think it was a colt, or something.”

“And so it was! Well, goodness gracious! Go on, Tom!”

“And then you began to cry.”

“So I did. So I did. Not the first time, neither. And then--”

“Then Mrs. Harper she began to cry, and said Joe was just the same, and
she wished she hadn't whipped him for taking cream when she'd throwed it
out her own self--”

“Tom! The sperrit was upon you! You was a prophesying--that's what you
was doing! Land alive, go on, Tom!”

“Then Sid he said--he said--”

“I don't think I said anything,” said Sid.

“Yes you did, Sid,” said Mary.

“Shut your heads and let Tom go on! What did he say, Tom?”

“He said--I _think_ he said he hoped I was better off where I was gone
to, but if I'd been better sometimes--”

“_There_, d'you hear that! It was his very words!”

“And you shut him up sharp.”

“I lay I did! There must 'a' been an angel there. There _was_ an angel
there, somewheres!”

“And Mrs. Harper told about Joe scaring her with a firecracker, and you
told about Peter and the Pain-killer--”

“Just as true as I live!”

“And then there was a whole lot of talk 'bout dragging the river for us,
and 'bout having the funeral Sunday, and then you and old Miss Harper
hugged and cried, and she went.”

“It happened just so! It happened just so, as sure as I'm a-sitting in
these very tracks. Tom, you couldn't told it more like if you'd 'a' seen
it! And then what? Go on, Tom!”

“Then I thought you prayed for me--and I could see you and hear every
word you said. And you went to bed, and I was so sorry that I took and
wrote on a piece of sycamore bark, 'We ain't dead--we are only off being
pirates,' and put it on the table by the candle; and then you looked
so good, laying there asleep, that I thought I went and leaned over and
kissed you on the lips.”

“Did you, Tom, _did_ you! I just forgive you everything for that!” And
she seized the boy in a crushing embrace that made him feel like the
guiltiest of villains.

“It was very kind, even though it was only a--dream,” Sid soliloquized
just audibly.

“Shut up, Sid! A body does just the same in a dream as he'd do if he was
awake. Here's a big Milum apple I've been saving for you, Tom, if you
was ever found again--now go 'long to school. I'm thankful to the good
God and Father of us all I've got you back, that's long-suffering and
merciful to them that believe on Him and keep His word, though goodness
knows I'm unworthy of it, but if only the worthy ones got His blessings
and had His hand to help them over the rough places, there's few enough
would smile here or ever enter into His rest when the long night comes.
Go 'long Sid, Mary, Tom--take yourselves off--you've hendered me long
enough.”

The children left for school, and the old lady to call on Mrs. Harper
and vanquish her realism with Tom's marvellous dream. Sid had better
judgment than to utter the thought that was in his mind as he left the
house. It was this: “Pretty thin--as long a dream as that, without any
mistakes in it!”

What a hero Tom was become, now! He did not go skipping and prancing,
but moved with a dignified swagger as became a pirate who felt that the
public eye was on him. And indeed it was; he tried not to seem to see
the looks or hear the remarks as he passed along, but they were food and
drink to him. Smaller boys than himself flocked at his heels, as proud
to be seen with him, and tolerated by him, as if he had been the drummer
at the head of a procession or the elephant leading a menagerie into
town. Boys of his own size pretended not to know he had been away at
all; but they were consuming with envy, nevertheless. They would have
given anything to have that swarthy sun-tanned skin of his, and his
glittering notoriety; and Tom would not have parted with either for a
circus.

At school the children made so much of him and of Joe, and delivered
such eloquent admiration from their eyes, that the two heroes were
not long in becoming insufferably “stuck-up.” They began to tell their
adventures to hungry listeners--but they only began; it was not a
thing likely to have an end, with imaginations like theirs to furnish
material. And finally, when they got out their pipes and went serenely
puffing around, the very summit of glory was reached.

Tom decided that he could be independent of Becky Thatcher now. Glory
was sufficient. He would live for glory. Now that he was distinguished,
maybe she would be wanting to “make up.” Well, let her--she should see
that he could be as indifferent as some other people. Presently she
arrived. Tom pretended not to see her. He moved away and joined a group
of boys and girls and began to talk. Soon he observed that she was
tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and dancing eyes,
pretending to be busy chasing schoolmates, and screaming with laughter
when she made a capture; but he noticed that she always made her
captures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a conscious eye
in his direction at such times, too. It gratified all the vicious vanity
that was in him; and so, instead of winning him, it only “set him up”
 the more and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that he
knew she was about. Presently she gave over skylarking, and moved
irresolutely about, sighing once or twice and glancing furtively and
wistfully toward Tom. Then she observed that now Tom was talking more
particularly to Amy Lawrence than to any one else. She felt a sharp pang
and grew disturbed and uneasy at once. She tried to go away, but her
feet were treacherous, and carried her to the group instead. She said to
a girl almost at Tom's elbow--with sham vivacity:

“Why, Mary Austin! you bad girl, why didn't you come to Sunday-school?”

“I did come--didn't you see me?”

“Why, no! Did you? Where did you sit?”

“I was in Miss Peters' class, where I always go. I saw _you_.”

“Did you? Why, it's funny I didn't see you. I wanted to tell you about
the picnic.”

“Oh, that's jolly. Who's going to give it?”

“My ma's going to let me have one.”

“Oh, goody; I hope she'll let _me_ come.”

“Well, she will. The picnic's for me. She'll let anybody come that I
want, and I want you.”

“That's ever so nice. When is it going to be?”

“By and by. Maybe about vacation.”

“Oh, won't it be fun! You going to have all the girls and boys?”

“Yes, every one that's friends to me--or wants to be”; and she glanced
ever so furtively at Tom, but he talked right along to Amy Lawrence
about the terrible storm on the island, and how the lightning tore the
great sycamore tree “all to flinders” while he was “standing within
three feet of it.”

“Oh, may I come?” said Grace Miller.

“Yes.”

“And me?” said Sally Rogers.

“Yes.”

“And me, too?” said Susy Harper. “And Joe?”

“Yes.”

And so on, with clapping of joyful hands till all the group had begged
for invitations but Tom and Amy. Then Tom turned coolly away, still
talking, and took Amy with him. Becky's lips trembled and the tears
came to her eyes; she hid these signs with a forced gayety and went on
chattering, but the life had gone out of the picnic, now, and out of
everything else; she got away as soon as she could and hid herself and
had what her sex call “a good cry.” Then she sat moody, with wounded
pride, till the bell rang. She roused up, now, with a vindictive cast
in her eye, and gave her plaited tails a shake and said she knew what
_she'd_ do.

At recess Tom continued his flirtation with Amy with jubilant
self-satisfaction. And he kept drifting about to find Becky and lacerate
her with the performance. At last he spied her, but there was a sudden
falling of his mercury. She was sitting cosily on a little bench behind
the schoolhouse looking at a picture-book with Alfred Temple--and so
absorbed were they, and their heads so close together over the book,
that they did not seem to be conscious of anything in the world besides.
Jealousy ran red-hot through Tom's veins. He began to hate himself for
throwing away the chance Becky had offered for a reconciliation. He
called himself a fool, and all the hard names he could think of. He
wanted to cry with vexation. Amy chatted happily along, as they walked,
for her heart was singing, but Tom's tongue had lost its function. He
did not hear what Amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly
he could only stammer an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced
as otherwise. He kept drifting to the rear of the schoolhouse, again and
again, to sear his eyeballs with the hateful spectacle there. He could
not help it. And it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that
Becky Thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the
living. But she did see, nevertheless; and she knew she was winning her
fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered.

Amy's happy prattle became intolerable. Tom hinted at things he had
to attend to; things that must be done; and time was fleeting. But in
vain--the girl chirped on. Tom thought, “Oh, hang her, ain't I ever going
to get rid of her?” At last he must be attending to those things--and she
said artlessly that she would be “around” when school let out. And he
hastened away, hating her for it.

“Any other boy!” Tom thought, grating his teeth. “Any boy in the whole
town but that Saint Louis smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is
aristocracy! Oh, all right, I licked you the first day you ever saw this
town, mister, and I'll lick you again! You just wait till I catch you
out! I'll just take and--”

And he went through the motions of thrashing an imaginary boy--pummelling
the air, and kicking and gouging. “Oh, you do, do you? You holler
'nough, do you? Now, then, let that learn you!” And so the imaginary
flogging was finished to his satisfaction.

Tom fled home at noon. His conscience could not endure any more of Amy's
grateful happiness, and his jealousy could bear no more of the other
distress. Becky resumed her picture inspections with Alfred, but as the
minutes dragged along and no Tom came to suffer, her triumph began to
cloud and she lost interest; gravity and absentmindedness followed,
and then melancholy; two or three times she pricked up her ear at
a footstep, but it was a false hope; no Tom came. At last she grew
entirely miserable and wished she hadn't carried it so far. When
poor Alfred, seeing that he was losing her, he did not know how, kept
exclaiming: “Oh, here's a jolly one! look at this!” she lost patience at
last, and said, “Oh, don't bother me! I don't care for them!” and burst
into tears, and got up and walked away.

Alfred dropped alongside and was going to try to comfort her, but she
said:

“Go away and leave me alone, can't you! I hate you!”

So the boy halted, wondering what he could have done--for she had said
she would look at pictures all through the nooning--and she walked on,
crying. Then Alfred went musing into the deserted schoolhouse. He was
humiliated and angry. He easily guessed his way to the truth--the girl
had simply made a convenience of him to vent her spite upon Tom Sawyer.
He was far from hating Tom the less when this thought occurred to him.
He wished there was some way to get that boy into trouble without much
risk to himself. Tom's spelling-book fell under his eye. Here was his
opportunity. He gratefully opened to the lesson for the afternoon and
poured ink upon the page.

Becky, glancing in at a window behind him at the moment, saw the act,
and moved on, without discovering herself. She started homeward, now,
intending to find Tom and tell him; Tom would be thankful and their
troubles would be healed. Before she was half way home, however, she
had changed her mind. The thought of Tom's treatment of her when she was
talking about her picnic came scorching back and filled her with shame.
She resolved to let him get whipped on the damaged spelling-book's
account, and to hate him forever, into the bargain.




CHAPTER XIX

TOM arrived at home in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt said
to him showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an unpromising
market:

“Tom, I've a notion to skin you alive!”

“Auntie, what have I done?”

“Well, you've done enough. Here I go over to Sereny Harper, like an old
softy, expecting I'm going to make her believe all that rubbage about
that dream, when lo and behold you she'd found out from Joe that you was
over here and heard all the talk we had that night. Tom, I don't know
what is to become of a boy that will act like that. It makes me feel so
bad to think you could let me go to Sereny Harper and make such a fool
of myself and never say a word.”

This was a new aspect of the thing. His smartness of the morning had
seemed to Tom a good joke before, and very ingenious. It merely looked
mean and shabby now. He hung his head and could not think of anything to
say for a moment. Then he said:

“Auntie, I wish I hadn't done it--but I didn't think.”

“Oh, child, you never think. You never think of anything but your
own selfishness. You could think to come all the way over here from
Jackson's Island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could
think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn't ever think
to pity us and save us from sorrow.”

“Auntie, I know now it was mean, but I didn't mean to be mean. I didn't,
honest. And besides, I didn't come over here to laugh at you that
night.”

“What did you come for, then?”

“It was to tell you not to be uneasy about us, because we hadn't got
drownded.”

“Tom, Tom, I would be the thankfullest soul in this world if I could
believe you ever had as good a thought as that, but you know you never
did--and I know it, Tom.”

“Indeed and 'deed I did, auntie--I wish I may never stir if I didn't.”

“Oh, Tom, don't lie--don't do it. It only makes things a hundred times
worse.”

“It ain't a lie, auntie; it's the truth. I wanted to keep you from
grieving--that was all that made me come.”

“I'd give the whole world to believe that--it would cover up a power
of sins, Tom. I'd 'most be glad you'd run off and acted so bad. But it
ain't reasonable; because, why didn't you tell me, child?”

“Why, you see, when you got to talking about the funeral, I just got all
full of the idea of our coming and hiding in the church, and I couldn't
somehow bear to spoil it. So I just put the bark back in my pocket and
kept mum.”

“What bark?”

“The bark I had wrote on to tell you we'd gone pirating. I wish, now,
you'd waked up when I kissed you--I do, honest.”

The hard lines in his aunt's face relaxed and a sudden tenderness dawned
in her eyes.

“_Did_ you kiss me, Tom?”

“Why, yes, I did.”

“Are you sure you did, Tom?”

“Why, yes, I did, auntie--certain sure.”

“What did you kiss me for, Tom?”

“Because I loved you so, and you laid there moaning and I was so sorry.”

The words sounded like truth. The old lady could not hide a tremor in
her voice when she said:

“Kiss me again, Tom!--and be off with you to school, now, and don't
bother me any more.”

The moment he was gone, she ran to a closet and got out the ruin of a
jacket which Tom had gone pirating in. Then she stopped, with it in her
hand, and said to herself:

“No, I don't dare. Poor boy, I reckon he's lied about it--but it's a
blessed, blessed lie, there's such a comfort come from it. I hope
the Lord--I _know_ the Lord will forgive him, because it was such
good-heartedness in him to tell it. But I don't want to find out it's a
lie. I won't look.”

She put the jacket away, and stood by musing a minute. Twice she put out
her hand to take the garment again, and twice she refrained. Once more
she ventured, and this time she fortified herself with the thought:
“It's a good lie--it's a good lie--I won't let it grieve me.” So she
sought the jacket pocket. A moment later she was reading Tom's piece of
bark through flowing tears and saying: “I could forgive the boy, now, if
he'd committed a million sins!”




CHAPTER XX

THERE was something about Aunt Polly's manner, when she kissed Tom, that
swept away his low spirits and made him lighthearted and happy again. He
started to school and had the luck of coming upon Becky Thatcher at the
head of Meadow Lane. His mood always determined his manner. Without a
moment's hesitation he ran to her and said:

“I acted mighty mean today, Becky, and I'm so sorry. I won't ever, ever
do that way again, as long as ever I live--please make up, won't you?”

The girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the face:

“I'll thank you to keep yourself _to_ yourself, Mr. Thomas Sawyer. I'll
never speak to you again.”

She tossed her head and passed on. Tom was so stunned that he had not
even presence of mind enough to say “Who cares, Miss Smarty?” until the
right time to say it had gone by. So he said nothing. But he was in a
fine rage, nevertheless. He moped into the schoolyard wishing she were
a boy, and imagining how he would trounce her if she were. He presently
encountered her and delivered a stinging remark as he passed. She hurled
one in return, and the angry breach was complete. It seemed to Becky, in
her hot resentment, that she could hardly wait for school to “take in,”
 she was so impatient to see Tom flogged for the injured spelling-book.
If she had had any lingering notion of exposing Alfred Temple, Tom's
offensive fling had driven it entirely away.

Poor girl, she did not know how fast she was nearing trouble herself.
The master, Mr. Dobbins, had reached middle age with an unsatisfied
ambition. The darling of his desires was, to be a doctor, but
poverty had decreed that he should be nothing higher than a village
schoolmaster. Every day he took a mysterious book out of his desk and
absorbed himself in it at times when no classes were reciting. He kept
that book under lock and key. There was not an urchin in school but was
perishing to have a glimpse of it, but the chance never came. Every boy
and girl had a theory about the nature of that book; but no two theories
were alike, and there was no way of getting at the facts in the case.
Now, as Becky was passing by the desk, which stood near the door, she
noticed that the key was in the lock! It was a precious moment. She
glanced around; found herself alone, and the next instant she had the
book in her hands. The titlepage--Professor Somebody's _Anatomy_--carried
no information to her mind; so she began to turn the leaves. She came at
once upon a handsomely engraved and colored frontispiece--a human figure,
stark naked. At that moment a shadow fell on the page and Tom Sawyer
stepped in at the door and caught a glimpse of the picture. Becky
snatched at the book to close it, and had the hard luck to tear the
pictured page half down the middle. She thrust the volume into the desk,
turned the key, and burst out crying with shame and vexation.

“Tom Sawyer, you are just as mean as you can be, to sneak up on a person
and look at what they're looking at.”

“How could I know you was looking at anything?”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Sawyer; you know you're
going to tell on me, and oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! I'll be
whipped, and I never was whipped in school.”

Then she stamped her little foot and said:

“_Be_ so mean if you want to! I know something that's going to happen.
You just wait and you'll see! Hateful, hateful, hateful!”--and she flung
out of the house with a new explosion of crying.

Tom stood still, rather flustered by this onslaught. Presently he said
to himself:

“What a curious kind of a fool a girl is! Never been licked in
school! Shucks! What's a licking! That's just like a girl--they're so
thin-skinned and chicken-hearted. Well, of course I ain't going to tell
old Dobbins on this little fool, because there's other ways of getting
even on her, that ain't so mean; but what of it? Old Dobbins will ask
who it was tore his book. Nobody'll answer. Then he'll do just the way
he always does--ask first one and then t'other, and when he comes to the
right girl he'll know it, without any telling. Girls' faces always tell
on them. They ain't got any backbone. She'll get licked. Well, it's a
kind of a tight place for Becky Thatcher, because there ain't any way
out of it.” Tom conned the thing a moment longer, and then added: “All
right, though; she'd like to see me in just such a fix--let her sweat it
out!”

Tom joined the mob of skylarking scholars outside. In a few moments the
master arrived and school “took in.” Tom did not feel a strong interest
in his studies. Every time he stole a glance at the girls' side of the
room Becky's face troubled him. Considering all things, he did not want
to pity her, and yet it was all he could do to help it. He could get
up no exultation that was really worthy the name. Presently the
spelling-book discovery was made, and Tom's mind was entirely full
of his own matters for a while after that. Becky roused up from her
lethargy of distress and showed good interest in the proceedings. She
did not expect that Tom could get out of his trouble by denying that he
spilt the ink on the book himself; and she was right. The denial only
seemed to make the thing worse for Tom. Becky supposed she would be glad
of that, and she tried to believe she was glad of it, but she found she
was not certain. When the worst came to the worst, she had an impulse
to get up and tell on Alfred Temple, but she made an effort and forced
herself to keep still--because, said she to herself, “he'll tell about me
tearing the picture sure. I wouldn't say a word, not to save his life!”

Tom took his whipping and went back to his seat not at all
broken-hearted, for he thought it was possible that he had unknowingly
upset the ink on the spelling-book himself, in some skylarking bout--he
had denied it for form's sake and because it was custom, and had stuck
to the denial from principle.

A whole hour drifted by, the master sat nodding in his throne, the air
was drowsy with the hum of study. By and by, Mr. Dobbins straightened
himself up, yawned, then unlocked his desk, and reached for his book,
but seemed undecided whether to take it out or leave it. Most of the
pupils glanced up languidly, but there were two among them that watched
his movements with intent eyes. Mr. Dobbins fingered his book absently
for a while, then took it out and settled himself in his chair to read!
Tom shot a glance at Becky. He had seen a hunted and helpless rabbit
look as she did, with a gun levelled at its head. Instantly he forgot
his quarrel with her. Quick--something must be done! done in a flash,
too! But the very imminence of the emergency paralyzed his invention.
Good!--he had an inspiration! He would run and snatch the book, spring
through the door and fly. But his resolution shook for one little
instant, and the chance was lost--the master opened the volume. If Tom
only had the wasted opportunity back again! Too late. There was no help
for Becky now, he said. The next moment the master faced the school.
Every eye sank under his gaze. There was that in it which smote even
the innocent with fear. There was silence while one might count ten--the
master was gathering his wrath. Then he spoke: “Who tore this book?”

There was not a sound. One could have heard a pin drop. The stillness
continued; the master searched face after face for signs of guilt.

“Benjamin Rogers, did you tear this book?”

A denial. Another pause.

“Joseph Harper, did you?”

Another denial. Tom's uneasiness grew more and more intense under the
slow torture of these proceedings. The master scanned the ranks of
boys--considered a while, then turned to the girls:

“Amy Lawrence?”

A shake of the head.

“Gracie Miller?”

The same sign.

“Susan Harper, did you do this?”

Another negative. The next girl was Becky Thatcher. Tom was trembling
from head to foot with excitement and a sense of the hopelessness of the
situation.

“Rebecca Thatcher” [Tom glanced at her face--it was white with
terror]--“did you tear--no, look me in the face” [her hands rose in
appeal]--“did you tear this book?”

A thought shot like lightning through Tom's brain. He sprang to his feet
and shouted--“I done it!”

The school stared in perplexity at this incredible folly. Tom stood a
moment, to gather his dismembered faculties; and when he stepped forward
to go to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the adoration that
shone upon him out of poor Becky's eyes seemed pay enough for a hundred
floggings. Inspired by the splendor of his own act, he took without
an outcry the most merciless flaying that even Mr. Dobbins had ever
administered; and also received with indifference the added cruelty of a
command to remain two hours after school should be dismissed--for he
knew who would wait for him outside till his captivity was done, and not
count the tedious time as loss, either.

Tom went to bed that night planning vengeance against Alfred Temple; for
with shame and repentance Becky had told him all, not forgetting her own
treachery; but even the longing for vengeance had to give way, soon, to
pleasanter musings, and he fell asleep at last with Becky's latest words
lingering dreamily in his ear--

“Tom, how _could_ you be so noble!”




CHAPTER XXI

VACATION was approaching. The schoolmaster, always severe, grew severer
and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to make a good
showing on “Examination” day. His rod and his ferule were seldom idle
now--at least among the smaller pupils. Only the biggest boys, and young
ladies of eighteen and twenty, escaped lashing. Mr. Dobbins' lashings
were very vigorous ones, too; for although he carried, under his wig, a
perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only reached middle age, and there
was no sign of feebleness in his muscle. As the great day approached,
all the tyranny that was in him came to the surface; he seemed to take a
vindictive pleasure in punishing the least shortcomings. The consequence
was, that the smaller boys spent their days in terror and suffering and
their nights in plotting revenge. They threw away no opportunity to do
the master a mischief. But he kept ahead all the time. The retribution
that followed every vengeful success was so sweeping and majestic that
the boys always retired from the field badly worsted. At last they
conspired together and hit upon a plan that promised a dazzling victory.
They swore in the signpainter's boy, told him the scheme, and asked his
help. He had his own reasons for being delighted, for the master boarded
in his father's family and had given the boy ample cause to hate him.
The master's wife would go on a visit to the country in a few days, and
there would be nothing to interfere with the plan; the master always
prepared himself for great occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and
the signpainter's boy said that when the dominie had reached the proper
condition on Examination Evening he would “manage the thing” while he
napped in his chair; then he would have him awakened at the right time
and hurried away to school.

In the fulness of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight in
the evening the schoolhouse was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with
wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. The master sat throned in
his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard behind him.
He was looking tolerably mellow. Three rows of benches on each side and
six rows in front of him were occupied by the dignitaries of the town
and by the parents of the pupils. To his left, back of the rows of
citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were seated the
scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows of
small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort;
rows of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in
lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their
grandmothers' ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and
the flowers in their hair. All the rest of the house was filled with
non-participating scholars.

The exercises began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly recited,
“You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage,”
 etc.--accompanying himself with the painfully exact and spasmodic
gestures which a machine might have used--supposing the machine to be a
trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though cruelly scared,
and got a fine round of applause when he made his manufactured bow and
retired.

A little shamefaced girl lisped, “Mary had a little lamb,” etc.,
performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and
sat down flushed and happy.

Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into
the unquenchable and indestructible “Give me liberty or give me death”
 speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the
middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked under
him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the
house but he had the house's silence, too, which was even worse than
its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom
struggled awhile and then retired, utterly defeated. There was a weak
attempt at applause, but it died early.

“The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck” followed; also “The Assyrian Came
Down,” and other declamatory gems. Then there were reading exercises,
and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The
prime feature of the evening was in order, now--original “compositions”
 by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of the
platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript (tied with dainty
ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored attention to “expression”
 and punctuation. The themes were the same that had been illuminated upon
similar occasions by their mothers before them, their grandmothers,
and doubtless all their ancestors in the female line clear back to the
Crusades. “Friendship” was one; “Memories of Other Days”; “Religion in
History”; “Dream Land”; “The Advantages of Culture”; “Forms of Political
Government Compared and Contrasted”; “Melancholy”; “Filial Love”; “Heart
Longings,” etc., etc.

A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted
melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of “fine language”;
another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words
and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that
conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable
sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one
of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brainracking effort was
made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious
mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring insincerity of
these sermons was not sufficient to compass the banishment of the
fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient today; it never will
be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps. There is no school in
all our land where the young ladies do not feel obliged to close their
compositions with a sermon; and you will find that the sermon of the
most frivolous and the least religious girl in the school is always
the longest and the most relentlessly pious. But enough of this. Homely
truth is unpalatable.

Let us return to the “Examination.” The first composition that was read
was one entitled “Is this, then, Life?” Perhaps the reader can endure an
extract from it:

“In the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does the
youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity!
Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the
voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng, 'the
observed of all observers.' Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes,
is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is brightest,
her step is lightest in the gay assembly.

“In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome hour
arrives for her entrance into the Elysian world, of which she has
had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to her
enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming than the last. But
after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is
vanity, the flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates harshly
upon her ear; the ballroom has lost its charms; and with wasted health
and imbittered heart, she turns away with the conviction that earthly
pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!”

And so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from time to
time during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations of “How
sweet!” “How eloquent!” “So true!” etc., and after the thing had closed
with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the applause was enthusiastic.

Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the “interesting”
 paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a “poem.” Two
stanzas of it will do:

“A MISSOURI MAIDEN'S FAREWELL TO ALABAMA

“Alabama, goodbye! I love thee well! But yet for a while do I leave thee
now! Sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell, And burning
recollections throng my brow! For I have wandered through thy flowery
woods; Have roamed and read near Tallapoosa's stream; Have listened to
Tallassee's warring floods, And wooed on Coosa's side Aurora's beam.

“Yet shame I not to bear an o'erfull heart, Nor blush to turn behind
my tearful eyes; 'Tis from no stranger land I now must part, 'Tis to no
strangers left I yield these sighs. Welcome and home were mine within
this State, Whose vales I leave--whose spires fade fast from me And cold
must be mine eyes, and heart, and tete, When, dear Alabama! they turn
cold on thee!” There were very few there who knew what “tete” meant, but
the poem was very satisfactory, nevertheless.

Next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young lady,
who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and began
to read in a measured, solemn tone:

“A VISION

“Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the throne on high not a single
star quivered; but the deep intonations of the heavy thunder constantly
vibrated upon the ear; whilst the terrific lightning revelled in angry
mood through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming to scorn the power
exerted over its terror by the illustrious Franklin! Even the boisterous
winds unanimously came forth from their mystic homes, and blustered
about as if to enhance by their aid the wildness of the scene.

“At such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human sympathy my very spirit
sighed; but instead thereof,

“'My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter and guide--My joy in
grief, my second bliss in joy,' came to my side. She moved like one of
those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks of fancy's Eden by
the romantic and young, a queen of beauty unadorned save by her own
transcendent loveliness. So soft was her step, it failed to make even a
sound, and but for the magical thrill imparted by her genial touch,
as other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided away
unperceived--unsought. A strange sadness rested upon her features, like
icy tears upon the robe of December, as she pointed to the contending
elements without, and bade me contemplate the two beings presented.”

This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with a
sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took
the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest
effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the prize
to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it was by
far the most “eloquent” thing he had ever listened to, and that Daniel
Webster himself might well be proud of it.

It may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in which
the word “beauteous” was over-fondled, and human experience referred to
as “life's page,” was up to the usual average.

Now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his chair
aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a map of
America on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class upon. But he
made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered titter
rippled over the house. He knew what the matter was, and set himself to
right it. He sponged out lines and remade them; but he only distorted
them more than ever, and the tittering was more pronounced. He threw his
entire attention upon his work, now, as if determined not to be put down
by the mirth. He felt that all eyes were fastened upon him; he imagined
he was succeeding, and yet the tittering continued; it even manifestly
increased. And well it might. There was a garret above, pierced with
a scuttle over his head; and down through this scuttle came a cat,
suspended around the haunches by a string; she had a rag tied about
her head and jaws to keep her from mewing; as she slowly descended she
curved upward and clawed at the string, she swung downward and clawed
at the intangible air. The tittering rose higher and higher--the cat was
within six inches of the absorbed teacher's head--down, down, a little
lower, and she grabbed his wig with her desperate claws, clung to it,
and was snatched up into the garret in an instant with her trophy still
in her possession! And how the light did blaze abroad from the master's
bald pate--for the signpainter's boy had _gilded_ it!

That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come.

NOTE:--The pretended “compositions” quoted in this chapter are taken
without alteration from a volume entitled “Prose and Poetry, by a
Western Lady”--but they are exactly and precisely after the schoolgirl
pattern, and hence are much happier than any mere imitations could be.




CHAPTER XXII

TOM joined the new order of Cadets of Temperance, being attracted by the
showy character of their “regalia.” He promised to abstain from smoking,
chewing, and profanity as long as he remained a member. Now he found out
a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way
in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. Tom soon
found himself tormented with a desire to drink and swear; the desire
grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a chance to display
himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing from the order. Fourth
of July was coming; but he soon gave that up--gave it up before he had
worn his shackles over forty-eight hours--and fixed his hopes upon old
Judge Frazer, justice of the peace, who was apparently on his deathbed
and would have a big public funeral, since he was so high an official.
During three days Tom was deeply concerned about the Judge's condition
and hungry for news of it. Sometimes his hopes ran high--so high that
he would venture to get out his regalia and practise before the
looking-glass. But the Judge had a most discouraging way of fluctuating.
At last he was pronounced upon the mend--and then convalescent. Tom was
disgusted; and felt a sense of injury, too. He handed in his resignation
at once--and that night the Judge suffered a relapse and died. Tom
resolved that he would never trust a man like that again.

The funeral was a fine thing. The Cadets paraded in a style calculated
to kill the late member with envy. Tom was a free boy again,
however--there was something in that. He could drink and swear, now--but
found to his surprise that he did not want to. The simple fact that he
could, took the desire away, and the charm of it.

Tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was beginning
to hang a little heavily on his hands.

He attempted a diary--but nothing happened during three days, and so he
abandoned it.

The first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a
sensation. Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of performers and were happy
for two days.

Even the Glorious Fourth was in some sense a failure, for it rained
hard, there was no procession in consequence, and the greatest man
in the world (as Tom supposed), Mr. Benton, an actual United States
Senator, proved an overwhelming disappointment--for he was not
twenty-five feet high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood of it.

A circus came. The boys played circus for three days afterward in tents
made of rag carpeting--admission, three pins for boys, two for girls--and
then circusing was abandoned.

A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came--and went again and left the village
duller and drearier than ever.

There were some boys-and-girls' parties, but they were so few and so
delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the harder.

Becky Thatcher was gone to her Constantinople home to stay with her
parents during vacation--so there was no bright side to life anywhere.

The dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. It was a very
cancer for permanency and pain.

Then came the measles.

During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its
happenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he got
upon his feet at last and moved feebly downtown, a melancholy change had
come over everything and every creature. There had been a “revival,” and
everybody had “got religion,” not only the adults, but even the boys and
girls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for the sight of one blessed
sinful face, but disappointment crossed him everywhere. He found Joe
Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly away from the depressing
spectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found him visiting the poor with a
basket of tracts. He hunted up Jim Hollis, who called his attention to
the precious blessing of his late measles as a warning. Every boy
he encountered added another ton to his depression; and when, in
desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of Huckleberry Finn
and was received with a Scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he
crept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all the town was lost,
forever and forever.

And that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain, awful
claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. He covered his head
with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for his doom; for
he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was about him.
He believed he had taxed the forbearance of the powers above to the
extremity of endurance and that this was the result. It might have
seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a
battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the
getting up such an expensive thunderstorm as this to knock the turf from
under an insect like himself.

By and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing its
object. The boy's first impulse was to be grateful, and reform. His
second was to wait--for there might not be any more storms.

The next day the doctors were back; Tom had relapsed. The three weeks he
spent on his back this time seemed an entire age. When he got abroad
at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how
lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was. He drifted
listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis acting as judge in a
juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her
victim, a bird. He found Joe Harper and Huck Finn up an alley eating a
stolen melon. Poor lads! they--like Tom--had suffered a relapse.




CHAPTER XXIII

AT last the sleepy atmosphere was stirred--and vigorously: the murder
trial came on in the court. It became the absorbing topic of village
talk immediately. Tom could not get away from it. Every reference to
the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his troubled conscience
and fears almost persuaded him that these remarks were put forth in
his hearing as “feelers”; he did not see how he could be suspected of
knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be comfortable
in the midst of this gossip. It kept him in a cold shiver all the time.
He took Huck to a lonely place to have a talk with him. It would be some
relief to unseal his tongue for a little while; to divide his burden of
distress with another sufferer. Moreover, he wanted to assure himself
that Huck had remained discreet.

“Huck, have you ever told anybody about--that?”

“'Bout what?”

“You know what.”

“Oh--'course I haven't.”

“Never a word?”

“Never a solitary word, so help me. What makes you ask?”

“Well, I was afeard.”

“Why, Tom Sawyer, we wouldn't be alive two days if that got found out.
_You_ know that.”

Tom felt more comfortable. After a pause:

“Huck, they couldn't anybody get you to tell, could they?”

“Get me to tell? Why, if I wanted that halfbreed devil to drownd me they
could get me to tell. They ain't no different way.”

“Well, that's all right, then. I reckon we're safe as long as we keep
mum. But let's swear again, anyway. It's more surer.”

“I'm agreed.”

So they swore again with dread solemnities.

“What is the talk around, Huck? I've heard a power of it.”

“Talk? Well, it's just Muff Potter, Muff Potter, Muff Potter all the
time. It keeps me in a sweat, constant, so's I want to hide som'ers.”

“That's just the same way they go on round me. I reckon he's a goner.
Don't you feel sorry for him, sometimes?”

“Most always--most always. He ain't no account; but then he hain't ever
done anything to hurt anybody. Just fishes a little, to get money to
get drunk on--and loafs around considerable; but lord, we all do
that--leastways most of us--preachers and such like. But he's kind of
good--he give me half a fish, once, when there warn't enough for two; and
lots of times he's kind of stood by me when I was out of luck.”

“Well, he's mended kites for me, Huck, and knitted hooks on to my line.
I wish we could get him out of there.”

“My! we couldn't get him out, Tom. And besides, 'twouldn't do any good;
they'd ketch him again.”

“Yes--so they would. But I hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the dickens
when he never done--that.”

“I do too, Tom. Lord, I hear 'em say he's the bloodiest looking villain
in this country, and they wonder he wasn't ever hung before.”

“Yes, they talk like that, all the time. I've heard 'em say that if he
was to get free they'd lynch him.”

“And they'd do it, too.”

The boys had a long talk, but it brought them little comfort. As the
twilight drew on, they found themselves hanging about the neighborhood
of the little isolated jail, perhaps with an undefined hope that
something would happen that might clear away their difficulties. But
nothing happened; there seemed to be no angels or fairies interested in
this luckless captive.

The boys did as they had often done before--went to the cell grating and
gave Potter some tobacco and matches. He was on the ground floor and
there were no guards.

His gratitude for their gifts had always smote their consciences
before--it cut deeper than ever, this time. They felt cowardly and
treacherous to the last degree when Potter said:

“You've been mighty good to me, boys--better'n anybody else in this town.
And I don't forget it, I don't. Often I says to myself, says I, 'I used
to mend all the boys' kites and things, and show 'em where the good
fishin' places was, and befriend 'em what I could, and now they've
all forgot old Muff when he's in trouble; but Tom don't, and Huck
don't--_they_ don't forget him, says I, 'and I don't forget them.' Well,
boys, I done an awful thing--drunk and crazy at the time--that's the only
way I account for it--and now I got to swing for it, and it's right.
Right, and _best_, too, I reckon--hope so, anyway. Well, we won't talk
about that. I don't want to make _you_ feel bad; you've befriended me.
But what I want to say, is, don't _you_ ever get drunk--then you won't
ever get here. Stand a litter furder west--so--that's it; it's a prime
comfort to see faces that's friendly when a body's in such a muck
of trouble, and there don't none come here but yourn. Good friendly
faces--good friendly faces. Git up on one another's backs and let me
touch 'em. That's it. Shake hands--yourn'll come through the bars, but
mine's too big. Little hands, and weak--but they've helped Muff Potter a
power, and they'd help him more if they could.”

Tom went home miserable, and his dreams that night were full of horrors.
The next day and the day after, he hung about the courtroom, drawn by an
almost irresistible impulse to go in, but forcing himself to stay out.
Huck was having the same experience. They studiously avoided each other.
Each wandered away, from time to time, but the same dismal fascination
always brought them back presently. Tom kept his ears open when idlers
sauntered out of the courtroom, but invariably heard distressing
news--the toils were closing more and more relentlessly around poor
Potter. At the end of the second day the village talk was to the effect
that Injun Joe's evidence stood firm and unshaken, and that there was
not the slightest question as to what the jury's verdict would be.

Tom was out late, that night, and came to bed through the window. He
was in a tremendous state of excitement. It was hours before he got to
sleep. All the village flocked to the courthouse the next morning, for
this was to be the great day. Both sexes were about equally represented
in the packed audience. After a long wait the jury filed in and took
their places; shortly afterward, Potter, pale and haggard, timid and
hopeless, was brought in, with chains upon him, and seated where all
the curious eyes could stare at him; no less conspicuous was Injun Joe,
stolid as ever. There was another pause, and then the judge arrived and
the sheriff proclaimed the opening of the court. The usual whisperings
among the lawyers and gathering together of papers followed. These
details and accompanying delays worked up an atmosphere of preparation
that was as impressive as it was fascinating.

Now a witness was called who testified that he found Muff Potter washing
in the brook, at an early hour of the morning that the murder was
discovered, and that he immediately sneaked away. After some further
questioning, counsel for the prosecution said:

“Take the witness.”

The prisoner raised his eyes for a moment, but dropped them again when
his own counsel said:

“I have no questions to ask him.”

The next witness proved the finding of the knife near the corpse.
Counsel for the prosecution said:

“Take the witness.”

“I have no questions to ask him,” Potter's lawyer replied.

A third witness swore he had often seen the knife in Potter's
possession.

“Take the witness.”

Counsel for Potter declined to question him. The faces of the audience
began to betray annoyance. Did this attorney mean to throw away his
client's life without an effort?

Several witnesses deposed concerning Potter's guilty behavior when
brought to the scene of the murder. They were allowed to leave the stand
without being cross-questioned.

Every detail of the damaging circumstances that occurred in the
graveyard upon that morning which all present remembered so well was
brought out by credible witnesses, but none of them were cross-examined
by Potter's lawyer. The perplexity and dissatisfaction of the house
expressed itself in murmurs and provoked a reproof from the bench.
Counsel for the prosecution now said:

“By the oaths of citizens whose simple word is above suspicion, we have
fastened this awful crime, beyond all possibility of question, upon the
unhappy prisoner at the bar. We rest our case here.”

A groan escaped from poor Potter, and he put his face in his hands and
rocked his body softly to and fro, while a painful silence reigned
in the courtroom. Many men were moved, and many women's compassion
testified itself in tears. Counsel for the defence rose and said:

“Your honor, in our remarks at the opening of this trial, we
foreshadowed our purpose to prove that our client did this fearful deed
while under the influence of a blind and irresponsible delirium produced
by drink. We have changed our mind. We shall not offer that plea.” [Then
to the clerk:] “Call Thomas Sawyer!”

A puzzled amazement awoke in every face in the house, not even excepting
Potter's. Every eye fastened itself with wondering interest upon Tom as
he rose and took his place upon the stand. The boy looked wild enough,
for he was badly scared. The oath was administered.

“Thomas Sawyer, where were you on the seventeenth of June, about the
hour of midnight?”

Tom glanced at Injun Joe's iron face and his tongue failed him. The
audience listened breathless, but the words refused to come. After a few
moments, however, the boy got a little of his strength back, and managed
to put enough of it into his voice to make part of the house hear:

“In the graveyard!”

“A little bit louder, please. Don't be afraid. You were--”

“In the graveyard.”

A contemptuous smile flitted across Injun Joe's face.

“Were you anywhere near Horse Williams' grave?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Speak up--just a trifle louder. How near were you?”

“Near as I am to you.”

“Were you hidden, or not?”

“I was hid.”

“Where?”

“Behind the elms that's on the edge of the grave.”

Injun Joe gave a barely perceptible start.

“Any one with you?”

“Yes, sir. I went there with--”

“Wait--wait a moment. Never mind mentioning your companion's name. We
will produce him at the proper time. Did you carry anything there with
you.”

Tom hesitated and looked confused.

“Speak out, my boy--don't be diffident. The truth is always respectable.
What did you take there?”

“Only a--a--dead cat.”

There was a ripple of mirth, which the court checked.

“We will produce the skeleton of that cat. Now, my boy, tell us
everything that occurred--tell it in your own way--don't skip anything,
and don't be afraid.”

Tom began--hesitatingly at first, but as he warmed to his subject his
words flowed more and more easily; in a little while every sound ceased
but his own voice; every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips and
bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time,
rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale. The strain upon pent
emotion reached its climax when the boy said:

“--and as the doctor fetched the board around and Muff Potter fell, Injun
Joe jumped with the knife and--”

Crash! Quick as lightning the halfbreed sprang for a window, tore his
way through all opposers, and was gone!




CHAPTER XXIV

TOM was a glittering hero once more--the pet of the old, the envy of the
young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village paper
magnified him. There were some that believed he would be President, yet,
if he escaped hanging.

As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom
and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort
of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not well to find
fault with it.

Tom's days were days of splendor and exultation to him, but his nights
were seasons of horror. Injun Joe infested all his dreams, and always
with doom in his eye. Hardly any temptation could persuade the boy
to stir abroad after nightfall. Poor Huck was in the same state of
wretchedness and terror, for Tom had told the whole story to the lawyer
the night before the great day of the trial, and Huck was sore afraid
that his share in the business might leak out, yet, notwithstanding
Injun Joe's flight had saved him the suffering of testifying in court.
The poor fellow had got the attorney to promise secrecy, but what of
that? Since Tom's harassed conscience had managed to drive him to the
lawyer's house by night and wring a dread tale from lips that had
been sealed with the dismalest and most formidable of oaths, Huck's
confidence in the human race was wellnigh obliterated.

Daily Muff Potter's gratitude made Tom glad he had spoken; but nightly
he wished he had sealed up his tongue.

Half the time Tom was afraid Injun Joe would never be captured; the
other half he was afraid he would be. He felt sure he never could draw a
safe breath again until that man was dead and he had seen the corpse.

Rewards had been offered, the country had been scoured, but no Injun
Joe was found. One of those omniscient and aweinspiring marvels, a
detective, came up from St. Louis, moused around, shook his head, looked
wise, and made that sort of astounding success which members of that
craft usually achieve. That is to say, he “found a clew.” But you can't
hang a “clew” for murder, and so after that detective had got through
and gone home, Tom felt just as insecure as he was before.

The slow days drifted on, and each left behind it a slightly lightened
weight of apprehension.




CHAPTER XXV

THERE comes a time in every rightly-constructed boy's life when he has
a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. This desire
suddenly came upon Tom one day. He sallied out to find Joe Harper,
but failed of success. Next he sought Ben Rogers; he had gone fishing.
Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn the Red-Handed. Huck would
answer. Tom took him to a private place and opened the matter to him
confidentially. Huck was willing. Huck was always willing to take a hand
in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital,
for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time which is
not money. “Where'll we dig?” said Huck.

“Oh, most anywhere.”

“Why, is it hid all around?”

“No, indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places,
Huck--sometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of
a limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight; but
mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses.”

“Who hides it?”

“Why, robbers, of course--who'd you reckon? Sunday-school
sup'rintendents?”

“I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't hide it; I'd spend it and have a
good time.”

“So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They always hide it and
leave it there.”

“Don't they come after it any more?”

“No, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks, or else
they die. Anyway, it lays there a long time and gets rusty; and by and
by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the marks--a
paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because it's mostly
signs and hy'roglyphics.”

“Hyro--which?”

“Hy'roglyphics--pictures and things, you know, that don't seem to mean
anything.”

“Have you got one of them papers, Tom?”

“No.”

“Well then, how you going to find the marks?”

“I don't want any marks. They always bury it under a ha'nted house or on
an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking out. Well,
we've tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it again some
time; and there's the old ha'nted house up the Still-House branch, and
there's lots of dead-limb trees--dead loads of 'em.”

“Is it under all of them?”

“How you talk! No!”

“Then how you going to know which one to go for?”

“Go for all of 'em!”

“Why, Tom, it'll take all summer.”

“Well, what of that? Suppose you find a brass pot with a hundred dollars
in it, all rusty and gray, or rotten chest full of di'monds. How's
that?”

Huck's eyes glowed.

“That's bully. Plenty bully enough for me. Just you gimme the hundred
dollars and I don't want no di'monds.”

“All right. But I bet you I ain't going to throw off on di'monds. Some
of 'em's worth twenty dollars apiece--there ain't any, hardly, but's
worth six bits or a dollar.”

“No! Is that so?”

“Cert'nly--anybody'll tell you so. Hain't you ever seen one, Huck?”

“Not as I remember.”

“Oh, kings have slathers of them.”

“Well, I don' know no kings, Tom.”

“I reckon you don't. But if you was to go to Europe you'd see a raft of
'em hopping around.”

“Do they hop?”

“Hop?--your granny! No!”

“Well, what did you say they did, for?”

“Shucks, I only meant you'd _see_ 'em--not hopping, of course--what do
they want to hop for?--but I mean you'd just see 'em--scattered around,
you know, in a kind of a general way. Like that old humpbacked Richard.”

“Richard? What's his other name?”

“He didn't have any other name. Kings don't have any but a given name.”

“No?”

“But they don't.”

“Well, if they like it, Tom, all right; but I don't want to be a king
and have only just a given name, like a nigger. But say--where you going
to dig first?”

“Well, I don't know. S'pose we tackle that old dead-limb tree on the
hill t'other side of Still-House branch?”

“I'm agreed.”

So they got a crippled pick and a shovel, and set out on their
three-mile tramp. They arrived hot and panting, and threw themselves
down in the shade of a neighboring elm to rest and have a smoke.

“I like this,” said Tom.

“So do I.”

“Say, Huck, if we find a treasure here, what you going to do with your
share?”

“Well, I'll have pie and a glass of soda every day, and I'll go to every
circus that comes along. I bet I'll have a gay time.”

“Well, ain't you going to save any of it?”

“Save it? What for?”

“Why, so as to have something to live on, by and by.”

“Oh, that ain't any use. Pap would come back to thish-yer town some day
and get his claws on it if I didn't hurry up, and I tell you he'd clean
it out pretty quick. What you going to do with yourn, Tom?”

“I'm going to buy a new drum, and a sure'nough sword, and a red necktie
and a bull pup, and get married.”

“Married!”

“That's it.”

“Tom, you--why, you ain't in your right mind.”

“Wait--you'll see.”

“Well, that's the foolishest thing you could do. Look at pap and my
mother. Fight! Why, they used to fight all the time. I remember, mighty
well.”

“That ain't anything. The girl I'm going to marry won't fight.”

“Tom, I reckon they're all alike. They'll all comb a body. Now you
better think 'bout this awhile. I tell you you better. What's the name
of the gal?”

“It ain't a gal at all--it's a girl.”

“It's all the same, I reckon; some says gal, some says girl--both's
right, like enough. Anyway, what's her name, Tom?”

“I'll tell you some time--not now.”

“All right--that'll do. Only if you get married I'll be more lonesomer
than ever.”

“No you won't. You'll come and live with me. Now stir out of this and
we'll go to digging.”

They worked and sweated for half an hour. No result. They toiled another
halfhour. Still no result. Huck said:

“Do they always bury it as deep as this?”

“Sometimes--not always. Not generally. I reckon we haven't got the right
place.”

So they chose a new spot and began again. The labor dragged a little,
but still they made progress. They pegged away in silence for some time.
Finally Huck leaned on his shovel, swabbed the beaded drops from his
brow with his sleeve, and said:

“Where you going to dig next, after we get this one?”

“I reckon maybe we'll tackle the old tree that's over yonder on Cardiff
Hill back of the widow's.”

“I reckon that'll be a good one. But won't the widow take it away from
us, Tom? It's on her land.”

“_She_ take it away! Maybe she'd like to try it once. Whoever finds one
of these hid treasures, it belongs to him. It don't make any difference
whose land it's on.”

That was satisfactory. The work went on. By and by Huck said:

“Blame it, we must be in the wrong place again. What do you think?”

“It is mighty curious, Huck. I don't understand it. Sometimes witches
interfere. I reckon maybe that's what's the trouble now.”

“Shucks! Witches ain't got no power in the daytime.”

“Well, that's so. I didn't think of that. Oh, I know what the matter is!
What a blamed lot of fools we are! You got to find out where the shadow
of the limb falls at midnight, and that's where you dig!”

“Then consound it, we've fooled away all this work for nothing. Now hang
it all, we got to come back in the night. It's an awful long way. Can
you get out?”

“I bet I will. We've got to do it tonight, too, because if somebody sees
these holes they'll know in a minute what's here and they'll go for it.”

“Well, I'll come around and maow tonight.”

“All right. Let's hide the tools in the bushes.”

The boys were there that night, about the appointed time. They sat in
the shadow waiting. It was a lonely place, and an hour made solemn by
old traditions. Spirits whispered in the rustling leaves, ghosts lurked
in the murky nooks, the deep baying of a hound floated up out of the
distance, an owl answered with his sepulchral note. The boys were
subdued by these solemnities, and talked little. By and by they judged
that twelve had come; they marked where the shadow fell, and began to
dig. Their hopes commenced to rise. Their interest grew stronger, and
their industry kept pace with it. The hole deepened and still deepened,
but every time their hearts jumped to hear the pick strike upon
something, they only suffered a new disappointment. It was only a stone
or a chunk. At last Tom said:

“It ain't any use, Huck, we're wrong again.”

“Well, but we _can't_ be wrong. We spotted the shadder to a dot.”

“I know it, but then there's another thing.”

“What's that?”.

“Why, we only guessed at the time. Like enough it was too late or too
early.”

Huck dropped his shovel.

“That's it,” said he. “That's the very trouble. We got to give this one
up. We can't ever tell the right time, and besides this kind of thing's
too awful, here this time of night with witches and ghosts a-fluttering
around so. I feel as if something's behind me all the time;  and I'm
afeard to turn around, becuz maybe there's others in front a-waiting for
a chance. I been creeping all over, ever since I got here.”

“Well, I've been pretty much so, too, Huck. They most always put in a
dead man when they bury a treasure under a tree, to look out for it.”

“Lordy!”

“Yes, they do. I've always heard that.”

“Tom, I don't like to fool around much where there's dead people. A
body's bound to get into trouble with 'em, sure.”

“I don't like to stir 'em up, either. S'pose this one here was to stick
his skull out and say something!”

“Don't Tom! It's awful.”

“Well, it just is. Huck, I don't feel comfortable a bit.”

“Say, Tom, let's give this place up, and try somewheres else.”

“All right, I reckon we better.”

“What'll it be?”

Tom considered awhile; and then said:

“The ha'nted house. That's it!”

“Blame it, I don't like ha'nted houses, Tom. Why, they're a dern sight
worse'n dead people. Dead people might talk, maybe, but they don't come
sliding around in a shroud, when you ain't noticing, and peep over your
shoulder all of a sudden and grit their teeth, the way a ghost does. I
couldn't stand such a thing as that, Tom--nobody could.”

“Yes, but, Huck, ghosts don't travel around only at night. They won't
hender us from digging there in the daytime.”

“Well, that's so. But you know mighty well people don't go about that
ha'nted house in the day nor the night.”

“Well, that's mostly because they don't like to go where a man's been
murdered, anyway--but nothing's ever been seen around that house except
in the night--just some blue lights slipping by the windows--no regular
ghosts.”

“Well, where you see one of them blue lights flickering around, Tom,
you can bet there's a ghost mighty close behind it. It stands to reason.
Becuz you know that they don't anybody but ghosts use 'em.”

“Yes, that's so. But anyway they don't come around in the daytime, so
what's the use of our being afeard?”

“Well, all right. We'll tackle the ha'nted house if you say so--but I
reckon it's taking chances.”

They had started down the hill by this time. There in the middle of the
moonlit valley below them stood the “ha'nted” house, utterly isolated,
its fences gone long ago, rank weeds smothering the very doorsteps, the
chimney crumbled to ruin, the window-sashes vacant, a corner of the roof
caved in. The boys gazed awhile, half expecting to see a blue light flit
past a window; then talking in a low tone, as befitted the time and the
circumstances, they struck far off to the right, to give the haunted
house a wide berth, and took their way homeward through the woods that
adorned the rearward side of Cardiff Hill.




CHAPTER XVI

ABOUT noon the next day the boys arrived at the dead tree; they had come
for their tools. Tom was impatient to go to the haunted house; Huck was
measurably so, also--but suddenly said:

“Lookyhere, Tom, do you know what day it is?”

Tom mentally ran over the days of the week, and then quickly lifted his
eyes with a startled look in them--

“My! I never once thought of it, Huck!”

“Well, I didn't neither, but all at once it popped onto me that it was
Friday.”

“Blame it, a body can't be too careful, Huck. We might 'a' got into an
awful scrape, tackling such a thing on a Friday.”

“_Might_! Better say we _would_! There's some lucky days, maybe, but
Friday ain't.”

“Any fool knows that. I don't reckon _you_ was the first that found it
out, Huck.”

“Well, I never said I was, did I? And Friday ain't all, neither. I had a
rotten bad dream last night--dreampt about rats.”

“No! Sure sign of trouble. Did they fight?”

“No.”

“Well, that's good, Huck. When they don't fight it's only a sign that
there's trouble around, you know. All we got to do is to look mighty
sharp and keep out of it. We'll drop this thing for today, and play. Do
you know Robin Hood, Huck?”

“No. Who's Robin Hood?”

“Why, he was one of the greatest men that was ever in England--and the
best. He was a robber.”

“Cracky, I wisht I was. Who did he rob?”

“Only sheriffs and bishops and rich people and kings, and such like. But
he never bothered the poor. He loved 'em. He always divided up with 'em
perfectly square.”

“Well, he must 'a' been a brick.”

“I bet you he was, Huck. Oh, he was the noblest man that ever was.
They ain't any such men now, I can tell you. He could lick any man in
England, with one hand tied behind him; and he could take his yew bow
and plug a ten-cent piece every time, a mile and a half.”

“What's a _yew_ bow?”

“I don't know. It's some kind of a bow, of course. And if he hit that
dime only on the edge he would set down and cry--and curse. But we'll
play Robin Hood--it's nobby fun. I'll learn you.”

“I'm agreed.”

So they played Robin Hood all the afternoon, now and then casting a
yearning eye down upon the haunted house and passing a remark about the
morrow's prospects and possibilities there. As the sun began to sink
into the west they took their way homeward athwart the long shadows
of the trees and soon were buried from sight in the forests of Cardiff
Hill.

On Saturday, shortly after noon, the boys were at the dead tree again.
They had a smoke and a chat in the shade, and then dug a little in their
last hole, not with great hope, but merely because Tom said there were
so many cases where people had given up a treasure after getting down
within six inches of it, and then somebody else had come along and
turned it up with a single thrust of a shovel. The thing failed this
time, however, so the boys shouldered their tools and went away feeling
that they had not trifled with fortune, but had fulfilled all the
requirements that belong to the business of treasure-hunting.

When they reached the haunted house there was something so weird and
grisly about the dead silence that reigned there under the baking sun,
and something so depressing about the loneliness and desolation of the
place, that they were afraid, for a moment, to venture in. Then they
crept to the door and took a trembling peep. They saw a weedgrown,
floorless room, unplastered, an ancient fireplace, vacant windows,
a ruinous staircase; and here, there, and everywhere hung ragged and
abandoned cobwebs. They presently entered, softly, with quickened
pulses, talking in whispers, ears alert to catch the slightest sound,
and muscles tense and ready for instant retreat.

In a little while familiarity modified their fears and they gave the
place a critical and interested examination, rather admiring their own
boldness, and wondering at it, too. Next they wanted to look upstairs.
This was something like cutting off retreat, but they got to daring
each other, and of course there could be but one result--they threw their
tools into a corner and made the ascent. Up there were the same signs of
decay. In one corner they found a closet that promised mystery, but the
promise was a fraud--there was nothing in it. Their courage was up now
and well in hand. They were about to go down and begin work when--

“Sh!” said Tom.

“What is it?” whispered Huck, blanching with fright.

“Sh!... There!... Hear it?”

“Yes!... Oh, my! Let's run!”

“Keep still! Don't you budge! They're coming right toward the door.”

The boys stretched themselves upon the floor with their eyes to
knotholes in the planking, and lay waiting, in a misery of fear.

“They've stopped.... No--coming.... Here they are. Don't whisper another
word, Huck. My goodness, I wish I was out of this!”

Two men entered. Each boy said to himself: “There's the old deaf and
dumb Spaniard that's been about town once or twice lately--never saw
t'other man before.”

“T'other” was a ragged, unkempt creature, with nothing very pleasant
in his face. The Spaniard was wrapped in a serape; he had bushy white
whiskers; long white hair flowed from under his sombrero, and he wore
green goggles. When they came in, “t'other” was talking in a low voice;
they sat down on the ground, facing the door, with their backs to the
wall, and the speaker continued his remarks. His manner became less
guarded and his words more distinct as he proceeded:

“No,” said he, “I've thought it all over, and I don't like it. It's
dangerous.”

“Dangerous!” grunted the “deaf and dumb” Spaniard--to the vast surprise
of the boys. “Milksop!”

This voice made the boys gasp and quake. It was Injun Joe's! There was
silence for some time. Then Joe said:

“What's any more dangerous than that job up yonder--but nothing's come of
it.”

“That's different. Away up the river so, and not another house about.
'Twon't ever be known that we tried, anyway, long as we didn't succeed.”

“Well, what's more dangerous than coming here in the daytime!--anybody
would suspicion us that saw us.”

“I know that. But there warn't any other place as handy after that fool
of a job. I want to quit this shanty. I wanted to yesterday, only it
warn't any use trying to stir out of here, with those infernal boys
playing over there on the hill right in full view.”

“Those infernal boys” quaked again under the inspiration of this remark,
and thought how lucky it was that they had remembered it was Friday and
concluded to wait a day. They wished in their hearts they had waited a
year.

The two men got out some food and made a luncheon. After a long and
thoughtful silence, Injun Joe said:

“Look here, lad--you go back up the river where you belong. Wait there
till you hear from me. I'll take the chances on dropping into this town
just once more, for a look. We'll do that 'dangerous' job after I've
spied around a little and think things look well for it. Then for Texas!
We'll leg it together!”

This was satisfactory. Both men presently fell to yawning, and Injun Joe
said:

“I'm dead for sleep! It's your turn to watch.”

He curled down in the weeds and soon began to snore. His comrade stirred
him once or twice and he became quiet. Presently the watcher began to
nod; his head drooped lower and lower, both men began to snore now.

The boys drew a long, grateful breath. Tom whispered:

“Now's our chance--come!”

Huck said:

“I can't--I'd die if they was to wake.”

Tom urged--Huck held back. At last Tom rose slowly and softly, and
started alone. But the first step he made wrung such a hideous creak
from the crazy floor that he sank down almost dead with fright. He never
made a second attempt. The boys lay there counting the dragging moments
till it seemed to them that time must be done and eternity growing gray;
and then they were grateful to note that at last the sun was setting.

Now one snore ceased. Injun Joe sat up, stared around--smiled grimly upon
his comrade, whose head was drooping upon his knees--stirred him up with
his foot and said:

“Here! _You're_ a watchman, ain't you! All right, though--nothing's
happened.”

“My! have I been asleep?”

“Oh, partly, partly. Nearly time for us to be moving, pard. What'll we
do with what little swag we've got left?”

“I don't know--leave it here as we've always done, I reckon. No use to
take it away till we start south. Six hundred and fifty in silver's
something to carry.”

“Well--all right--it won't matter to come here once more.”

“No--but I'd say come in the night as we used to do--it's better.”

“Yes: but look here; it may be a good while before I get the right
chance at that job; accidents might happen; 'tain't in such a very good
place; we'll just regularly bury it--and bury it deep.”

“Good idea,” said the comrade, who walked across the room, knelt down,
raised one of the rearward hearth-stones and took out a bag that jingled
pleasantly. He subtracted from it twenty or thirty dollars for himself
and as much for Injun Joe, and passed the bag to the latter, who was on
his knees in the corner, now, digging with his bowie-knife.

The boys forgot all their fears, all their miseries in an instant. With
gloating eyes they watched every movement. Luck!--the splendor of it was
beyond all imagination! Six hundred dollars was money enough to make
half a dozen boys rich! Here was treasure-hunting under the happiest
auspices--there would not be any bothersome uncertainty as to where to
dig. They nudged each other every moment--eloquent nudges and easily
understood, for they simply meant--“Oh, but ain't you glad _now_ we're
here!”

Joe's knife struck upon something.

“Hello!” said he.

“What is it?” said his comrade.

“Half-rotten plank--no, it's a box, I believe. Here--bear a hand and we'll
see what it's here for. Never mind, I've broke a hole.”

He reached his hand in and drew it out--

“Man, it's money!”

The two men examined the handful of coins. They were gold. The boys
above were as excited as themselves, and as delighted.

Joe's comrade said:

“We'll make quick work of this. There's an old rusty pick over amongst
the weeds in the corner the other side of the fireplace--I saw it a
minute ago.”

He ran and brought the boys' pick and shovel. Injun Joe took the
pick, looked it over critically, shook his head, muttered something to
himself, and then began to use it. The box was soon unearthed. It was
not very large; it was iron bound and had been very strong before the
slow years had injured it. The men contemplated the treasure awhile in
blissful silence.

“Pard, there's thousands of dollars here,” said Injun Joe.

“'Twas always said that Murrel's gang used to be around here one
summer,” the stranger observed.

“I know it,” said Injun Joe; “and this looks like it, I should say.”

“Now you won't need to do that job.”

The halfbreed frowned. Said he:

“You don't know me. Least you don't know all about that thing. 'Tain't
robbery altogether--it's _revenge_!” and a wicked light flamed in his
eyes. “I'll need your help in it. When it's finished--then Texas. Go home
to your Nance and your kids, and stand by till you hear from me.”

“Well--if you say so; what'll we do with this--bury it again?”

“Yes. [Ravishing delight overhead.] _No_! by the great Sachem, no!
[Profound distress overhead.] I'd nearly forgot. That pick had fresh
earth on it! [The boys were sick with terror in a moment.] What business
has a pick and a shovel here? What business with fresh earth on
them? Who brought them here--and where are they gone? Have you heard
anybody?--seen anybody? What! bury it again and leave them to come and
see the ground disturbed? Not exactly--not exactly. We'll take it to my
den.”

“Why, of course! Might have thought of that before. You mean Number
One?”

“No--Number Two--under the cross. The other place is bad--too common.”

“All right. It's nearly dark enough to start.”

Injun Joe got up and went about from window to window cautiously peeping
out. Presently he said:

“Who could have brought those tools here? Do you reckon they can be
upstairs?”

The boys' breath forsook them. Injun Joe put his hand on his knife,
halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the stairway. The
boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone. The steps came
creaking up the stairs--the intolerable distress of the situation woke
the stricken resolution of the lads--they were about to spring for the
closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers and Injun Joe landed on
the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway. He gathered himself
up cursing, and his comrade said:

“Now what's the use of all that? If it's anybody, and they're up there,
let them _stay_ there--who cares? If they want to jump down, now, and get
into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes--and then
let them follow us if they want to. I'm willing. In my opinion, whoever
hove those things in here caught a sight of us and took us for ghosts or
devils or something. I'll bet they're running yet.”

Joe grumbled awhile; then he agreed with his friend that what daylight
was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for leaving.
Shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the deepening
twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious box.

Tom and Huck rose up, weak but vastly relieved, and stared after them
through the chinks between the logs of the house. Follow? Not they. They
were content to reach ground again without broken necks, and take the
townward track over the hill. They did not talk much. They were too much
absorbed in hating themselves--hating the ill luck that made them take
the spade and the pick there. But for that, Injun Joe never would have
suspected. He would have hidden the silver with the gold to wait
there till his “revenge” was satisfied, and then he would have had the
misfortune to find that money turn up missing. Bitter, bitter luck that
the tools were ever brought there!

They resolved to keep a lookout for that Spaniard when he should come to
town spying out for chances to do his revengeful job, and follow him to
“Number Two,” wherever that might be. Then a ghastly thought occurred to
Tom.

“Revenge? What if he means _us_, Huck!”

“Oh, don't!” said Huck, nearly fainting.

They talked it all over, and as they entered town they agreed to believe
that he might possibly mean somebody else--at least that he might at
least mean nobody but Tom, since only Tom had testified.

Very, very small comfort it was to Tom to be alone in danger! Company
would be a palpable improvement, he thought.




CHAPTER XXVII

THE adventure of the day mightily tormented Tom's dreams that night.
Four times he had his hands on that rich treasure and four times
it wasted to nothingness in his fingers as sleep forsook him and
wakefulness brought back the hard reality of his misfortune. As he lay
in the early morning recalling the incidents of his great adventure, he
noticed that they seemed curiously subdued and far away--somewhat as if
they had happened in another world, or in a time long gone by. Then it
occurred to him that the great adventure itself must be a dream! There
was one very strong argument in favor of this idea--namely, that the
quantity of coin he had seen was too vast to be real. He had never seen
as much as fifty dollars in one mass before, and he was like all boys of
his age and station in life, in that he imagined that all references to
“hundreds” and “thousands” were mere fanciful forms of speech, and that
no such sums really existed in the world. He never had supposed for
a moment that so large a sum as a hundred dollars was to be found in
actual money in any one's possession. If his notions of hidden treasure
had been analyzed, they would have been found to consist of a handful of
real dimes and a bushel of vague, splendid, ungraspable dollars.

But the incidents of his adventure grew sensibly sharper and clearer
under the attrition of thinking them over, and so he presently found
himself leaning to the impression that the thing might not have been a
dream, after all. This uncertainty must be swept away. He would snatch a
hurried breakfast and go and find Huck. Huck was sitting on the gunwale
of a flatboat, listlessly dangling his feet in the water and looking
very melancholy. Tom concluded to let Huck lead up to the subject. If
he did not do it, then the adventure would be proved to have been only a
dream.

“Hello, Huck!”

“Hello, yourself.”

Silence, for a minute.

“Tom, if we'd 'a' left the blame tools at the dead tree, we'd 'a' got
the money. Oh, ain't it awful!”

“'Tain't a dream, then, 'tain't a dream! Somehow I most wish it was.
Dog'd if I don't, Huck.”

“What ain't a dream?”

“Oh, that thing yesterday. I been half thinking it was.”

“Dream! If them stairs hadn't broke down you'd 'a' seen how much dream
it was! I've had dreams enough all night--with that patch-eyed Spanish
devil going for me all through 'em--rot him!”

“No, not rot him. _Find_ him! Track the money!”

“Tom, we'll never find him. A feller don't have only one chance for such
a pile--and that one's lost. I'd feel mighty shaky if I was to see him,
anyway.”

“Well, so'd I; but I'd like to see him, anyway--and track him out--to his
Number Two.”

“Number Two--yes, that's it. I been thinking 'bout that. But I can't make
nothing out of it. What do you reckon it is?”

“I dono. It's too deep. Say, Huck--maybe it's the number of a house!”

“Goody!... No, Tom, that ain't it. If it is, it ain't in this one-horse
town. They ain't no numbers here.”

“Well, that's so. Lemme think a minute. Here--it's the number of a
room--in a tavern, you know!”

“Oh, that's the trick! They ain't only two taverns. We can find out
quick.”

“You stay here, Huck, till I come.”

Tom was off at once. He did not care to have Huck's company in public
places. He was gone half an hour. He found that in the best tavern, No.
2 had long been occupied by a young lawyer, and was still so occupied.
In the less ostentatious house, No. 2 was a mystery. The tavern-keeper's
young son said it was kept locked all the time, and he never saw anybody
go into it or come out of it except at night; he did not know any
particular reason for this state of things; had had some little
curiosity, but it was rather feeble; had made the most of the mystery
by entertaining himself with the idea that that room was “ha'nted”; had
noticed that there was a light in there the night before.

“That's what I've found out, Huck. I reckon that's the very No. 2 we're
after.”

“I reckon it is, Tom. Now what you going to do?”

“Lemme think.”

Tom thought a long time. Then he said:

“I'll tell you. The back door of that No. 2 is the door that comes out
into that little close alley between the tavern and the old rattle trap
of a brick store. Now you get hold of all the doorkeys you can find, and
I'll nip all of auntie's, and the first dark night we'll go there and
try 'em. And mind you, keep a lookout for Injun Joe, because he said he
was going to drop into town and spy around once more for a chance to get
his revenge. If you see him, you just follow him; and if he don't go to
that No. 2, that ain't the place.”

“Lordy, I don't want to foller him by myself!”

“Why, it'll be night, sure. He mightn't ever see you--and if he did,
maybe he'd never think anything.”

“Well, if it's pretty dark I reckon I'll track him. I dono--I dono. I'll
try.”

“You bet I'll follow him, if it's dark, Huck. Why, he might 'a' found
out he couldn't get his revenge, and be going right after that money.”

“It's so, Tom, it's so. I'll foller him; I will, by jingoes!”

“Now you're _talking_! Don't you ever weaken, Huck, and I won't.”




CHAPTER XXVIII

THAT night Tom and Huck were ready for their adventure. They hung about
the neighborhood of the tavern until after nine, one watching the alley
at a distance and the other the tavern door. Nobody entered the alley or
left it; nobody resembling the Spaniard entered or left the tavern
door. The night promised to be a fair one; so Tom went home with the
understanding that if a considerable degree of darkness came on, Huck
was to come and “maow,” whereupon he would slip out and try the keys.
But the night remained clear, and Huck closed his watch and retired to
bed in an empty sugar hogshead about twelve.

Tuesday the boys had the same ill luck. Also Wednesday. But Thursday
night promised better. Tom slipped out in good season with his aunt's
old tin lantern, and a large towel to blindfold it with. He hid the
lantern in Huck's sugar hogshead and the watch began. An hour before
midnight the tavern closed up and its lights (the only ones thereabouts)
were put out. No Spaniard had been seen. Nobody had entered or left the
alley. Everything was auspicious. The blackness of darkness reigned,
the perfect stillness was interrupted only by occasional mutterings of
distant thunder.

Tom got his lantern, lit it in the hogshead, wrapped it closely in the
towel, and the two adventurers crept in the gloom toward the tavern.
Huck stood sentry and Tom felt his way into the alley. Then there was
a season of waiting anxiety that weighed upon Huck's spirits like a
mountain. He began to wish he could see a flash from the lantern--it
would frighten him, but it would at least tell him that Tom was alive
yet. It seemed hours since Tom had disappeared. Surely he must have
fainted; maybe he was dead; maybe his heart had burst under terror and
excitement. In his uneasiness Huck found himself drawing closer
and closer to the alley; fearing all sorts of dreadful things, and
momentarily expecting some catastrophe to happen that would take away
his breath. There was not much to take away, for he seemed only able to
inhale it by thimblefuls, and his heart would soon wear itself out, the
way it was beating. Suddenly there was a flash of light and Tom came
tearing by him: “Run!” said he; “run, for your life!”

He needn't have repeated it; once was enough; Huck was making thirty or
forty miles an hour before the repetition was uttered. The boys never
stopped till they reached the shed of a deserted slaughter-house at the
lower end of the village. Just as they got within its shelter the storm
burst and the rain poured down. As soon as Tom got his breath he said:

“Huck, it was awful! I tried two of the keys, just as soft as I could;
but they seemed to make such a power of racket that I couldn't hardly
get my breath I was so scared. They wouldn't turn in the lock, either.
Well, without noticing what I was doing, I took hold of the knob, and
open comes the door! It warn't locked! I hopped in, and shook off the
towel, and, _Great Caesar's Ghost!_”

“What!--what'd you see, Tom?”

“Huck, I most stepped onto Injun Joe's hand!”

“No!”

“Yes! He was lying there, sound asleep on the floor, with his old patch
on his eye and his arms spread out.”

“Lordy, what did you do? Did he wake up?”

“No, never budged. Drunk, I reckon. I just grabbed that towel and
started!”

“I'd never 'a' thought of the towel, I bet!”

“Well, I would. My aunt would make me mighty sick if I lost it.”

“Say, Tom, did you see that box?”

“Huck, I didn't wait to look around. I didn't see the box, I didn't see
the cross. I didn't see anything but a bottle and a tin cup on the floor
by Injun Joe; yes, I saw two barrels and lots more bottles in the room.
Don't you see, now, what's the matter with that ha'nted room?”

“How?”

“Why, it's ha'nted with whiskey! Maybe _all_ the Temperance Taverns have
got a ha'nted room, hey, Huck?”

“Well, I reckon maybe that's so. Who'd 'a' thought such a thing? But
say, Tom, now's a mighty good time to get that box, if Injun Joe's
drunk.”

“It is, that! You try it!”

Huck shuddered.

“Well, no--I reckon not.”

“And I reckon not, Huck. Only one bottle alongside of Injun Joe ain't
enough. If there'd been three, he'd be drunk enough and I'd do it.”

There was a long pause for reflection, and then Tom said:

“Lookyhere, Huck, less not try that thing any more till we know Injun
Joe's not in there. It's too scary. Now, if we watch every night, we'll
be dead sure to see him go out, some time or other, and then we'll
snatch that box quicker'n lightning.”

“Well, I'm agreed. I'll watch the whole night long, and I'll do it every
night, too, if you'll do the other part of the job.”

“All right, I will. All you got to do is to trot up Hooper Street a
block and maow--and if I'm asleep, you throw some gravel at the window
and that'll fetch me.”

“Agreed, and good as wheat!”

“Now, Huck, the storm's over, and I'll go home. It'll begin to be
daylight in a couple of hours. You go back and watch that long, will
you?”

“I said I would, Tom, and I will. I'll ha'nt that tavern every night for
a year! I'll sleep all day and I'll stand watch all night.”

“That's all right. Now, where you going to sleep?”

“In Ben Rogers' hayloft. He lets me, and so does his pap's nigger man,
Uncle Jake. I tote water for Uncle Jake whenever he wants me to, and any
time I ask him he gives me a little something to eat if he can spare it.
That's a mighty good nigger, Tom. He likes me, becuz I don't ever act as
if I was above him. Sometime I've set right down and eat _with_ him. But
you needn't tell that. A body's got to do things when he's awful hungry
he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing.”

“Well, if I don't want you in the daytime, I'll let you sleep. I won't
come bothering around. Any time you see something's up, in the night,
just skip right around and maow.”




CHAPTER XXIX

THE first thing Tom heard on Friday morning was a glad piece of
news--Judge Thatcher's family had come back to town the night before.
Both Injun Joe and the treasure sunk into secondary importance for a
moment, and Becky took the chief place in the boy's interest. He saw her
and they had an exhausting good time playing “hispy” and “gully-keeper”
 with a crowd of their schoolmates. The day was completed and crowned in
a peculiarly satisfactory way: Becky teased her mother to appoint
the next day for the long-promised and long-delayed picnic, and she
consented. The child's delight was boundless; and Tom's not more
moderate. The invitations were sent out before sunset, and straightway
the young folks of the village were thrown into a fever of preparation
and pleasurable anticipation. Tom's excitement enabled him to keep
awake until a pretty late hour, and he had good hopes of hearing Huck's
“maow,” and of having his treasure to astonish Becky and the picnickers
with, next day; but he was disappointed. No signal came that night.

Morning came, eventually, and by ten or eleven o'clock a giddy and
rollicking company were gathered at Judge Thatcher's, and everything was
ready for a start. It was not the custom for elderly people to mar the
picnics with their presence. The children were considered safe enough
under the wings of a few young ladies of eighteen and a few young
gentlemen of twenty-three or thereabouts. The old steam ferry-boat was
chartered for the occasion; presently the gay throng filed up the main
street laden with provision-baskets. Sid was sick and had to miss
the fun; Mary remained at home to entertain him. The last thing Mrs.
Thatcher said to Becky, was:

“You'll not get back till late. Perhaps you'd better stay all night with
some of the girls that live near the ferry-landing, child.”

“Then I'll stay with Susy Harper, mamma.”

“Very well. And mind and behave yourself and don't be any trouble.”

Presently, as they tripped along, Tom said to Becky:

“Say--I'll tell you what we'll do. 'Stead of going to Joe Harper's we'll
climb right up the hill and stop at the Widow Douglas'. She'll have
ice-cream! She has it most every day--dead loads of it. And she'll be
awful glad to have us.”

“Oh, that will be fun!”

Then Becky reflected a moment and said:

“But what will mamma say?”

“How'll she ever know?”

The girl turned the idea over in her mind, and said reluctantly:

“I reckon it's wrong--but--”

“But shucks! Your mother won't know, and so what's the harm? All she
wants is that you'll be safe; and I bet you she'd 'a' said go there if
she'd 'a' thought of it. I know she would!”

The Widow Douglas' splendid hospitality was a tempting bait. It and
Tom's persuasions presently carried the day. So it was decided to say
nothing to anybody about the night's programme. Presently it occurred to
Tom that maybe Huck might come this very night and give the signal. The
thought took a deal of the spirit out of his anticipations. Still he
could not bear to give up the fun at Widow Douglas'. And why should he
give it up, he reasoned--the signal did not come the night before, so
why should it be any more likely to come tonight? The sure fun of the
evening outweighed the uncertain treasure; and, boy-like, he determined
to yield to the stronger inclination and not allow himself to think of
the box of money another time that day.

Three miles below town the ferryboat stopped at the mouth of a woody
hollow and tied up. The crowd swarmed ashore and soon the forest
distances and craggy heights echoed far and near with shoutings and
laughter. All the different ways of getting hot and tired were gone
through with, and by-and-by the rovers straggled back to camp fortified
with responsible appetites, and then the destruction of the good things
began. After the feast there was a refreshing season of rest and chat in
the shade of spreading oaks. By-and-by somebody shouted:

“Who's ready for the cave?”

Everybody was. Bundles of candles were procured, and straightway there
was a general scamper up the hill. The mouth of the cave was up the
hillside--an opening shaped like a letter A. Its massive oaken door stood
unbarred. Within was a small chamber, chilly as an icehouse, and walled
by Nature with solid limestone that was dewy with a cold sweat. It was
romantic and mysterious to stand here in the deep gloom and look out
upon the green valley shining in the sun. But the impressiveness of the
situation quickly wore off, and the romping began again. The moment
a candle was lighted there was a general rush upon the owner of it; a
struggle and a gallant defence followed, but the candle was soon knocked
down or blown out, and then there was a glad clamor of laughter and a
new chase. But all things have an end. By-and-by the procession went
filing down the steep descent of the main avenue, the flickering rank of
lights dimly revealing the lofty walls of rock almost to their point of
junction sixty feet overhead. This main avenue was not more than
eight or ten feet wide. Every few steps other lofty and still narrower
crevices branched from it on either hand--for McDougal's cave was but a
vast labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and out again
and led nowhere. It was said that one might wander days and nights
together through its intricate tangle of rifts and chasms, and never
find the end of the cave; and that he might go down, and down, and
still down, into the earth, and it was just the same--labyrinth under
labyrinth, and no end to any of them. No man “knew” the cave. That was
an impossible thing. Most of the young men knew a portion of it, and it
was not customary to venture much beyond this known portion. Tom Sawyer
knew as much of the cave as any one.

The procession moved along the main avenue some three-quarters of
a mile, and then groups and couples began to slip aside into branch
avenues, fly along the dismal corridors, and take each other by surprise
at points where the corridors joined again. Parties were able to elude
each other for the space of half an hour without going beyond the
“known” ground.

By-and-by, one group after another came straggling back to the mouth
of the cave, panting, hilarious, smeared from head to foot with tallow
drippings, daubed with clay, and entirely delighted with the success of
the day. Then they were astonished to find that they had been taking
no note of time and that night was about at hand. The clanging bell had
been calling for half an hour. However, this sort of close to the day's
adventures was romantic and therefore satisfactory. When the ferryboat
with her wild freight pushed into the stream, nobody cared sixpence for
the wasted time but the captain of the craft.

Huck was already upon his watch when the ferryboat's lights went
glinting past the wharf. He heard no noise on board, for the young
people were as subdued and still as people usually are who are nearly
tired to death. He wondered what boat it was, and why she did not
stop at the wharf--and then he dropped her out of his mind and put his
attention upon his business. The night was growing cloudy and dark. Ten
o'clock came, and the noise of vehicles ceased, scattered lights began
to wink out, all straggling foot-passengers disappeared, the village
betook itself to its slumbers and left the small watcher alone with the
silence and the ghosts. Eleven o'clock came, and the tavern lights were
put out; darkness everywhere, now. Huck waited what seemed a weary long
time, but nothing happened. His faith was weakening. Was there any use?
Was there really any use? Why not give it up and turn in?

A noise fell upon his ear. He was all attention in an instant. The alley
door closed softly. He sprang to the corner of the brick store. The next
moment two men brushed by him, and one seemed to have something under
his arm. It must be that box! So they were going to remove the treasure.
Why call Tom now? It would be absurd--the men would get away with the box
and never be found again. No, he would stick to their wake and follow
them; he would trust to the darkness for security from discovery. So
communing with himself, Huck stepped out and glided along behind the
men, cat-like, with bare feet, allowing them to keep just far enough
ahead not to be invisible.

They moved up the river street three blocks, then turned to the left up
a crossstreet. They went straight ahead, then, until they came to the
path that led up Cardiff Hill; this they took. They passed by the old
Welshman's house, halfway up the hill, without hesitating, and still
climbed upward. Good, thought Huck, they will bury it in the old quarry.
But they never stopped at the quarry. They passed on, up the summit.
They plunged into the narrow path between the tall sumach bushes, and
were at once hidden in the gloom. Huck closed up and shortened his
distance, now, for they would never be able to see him. He trotted along
awhile; then slackened his pace, fearing he was gaining too fast; moved
on a piece, then stopped altogether; listened; no sound; none, save that
he seemed to hear the beating of his own heart. The hooting of an
owl came over the hill--ominous sound! But no footsteps. Heavens, was
everything lost! He was about to spring with winged feet, when a man
cleared his throat not four feet from him! Huck's heart shot into his
throat, but he swallowed it again; and then he stood there shaking as
if a dozen agues had taken charge of him at once, and so weak that he
thought he must surely fall to the ground. He knew where he was. He
knew he was within five steps of the stile leading into Widow Douglas'
grounds. Very well, he thought, let them bury it there; it won't be hard
to find.

Now there was a voice--a very low voice--Injun Joe's:

“Damn her, maybe she's got company--there's lights, late as it is.”

“I can't see any.”

This was that stranger's voice--the stranger of the haunted house. A
deadly chill went to Huck's heart--this, then, was the “revenge” job! His
thought was, to fly. Then he remembered that the Widow Douglas had been
kind to him more than once, and maybe these men were going to murder
her. He wished he dared venture to warn her; but he knew he didn't
dare--they might come and catch him. He thought all this and more in
the moment that elapsed between the stranger's remark and Injun Joe's
next--which was--

“Because the bush is in your way. Now--this way--now you see, don't you?”

“Yes. Well, there _is_ company there, I reckon. Better give it up.”

“Give it up, and I just leaving this country forever! Give it up and
maybe never have another chance. I tell you again, as I've told you
before, I don't care for her swag--you may have it. But her husband was
rough on me--many times he was rough on me--and mainly he was the justice
of the peace that jugged me for a vagrant. And that ain't all. It ain't
a millionth part of it! He had me _horsewhipped_!--horsewhipped in
front of the jail, like a nigger!--with all the town looking on!
_Horsewhipped_!--do you understand? He took advantage of me and died. But
I'll take it out of _her_.”

“Oh, don't kill her! Don't do that!”

“Kill? Who said anything about killing? I would kill _him_ if he was
here; but not her. When you want to get revenge on a woman you don't
kill her--bosh! you go for her looks. You slit her nostrils--you notch her
ears like a sow!”

“By God, that's--”

“Keep your opinion to yourself! It will be safest for you. I'll tie her
to the bed. If she bleeds to death, is that my fault? I'll not cry, if
she does. My friend, you'll help me in this thing--for _my_ sake--that's
why you're here--I mightn't be able alone. If you flinch, I'll kill you.
Do you understand that? And if I have to kill you, I'll kill her--and
then I reckon nobody'll ever know much about who done this business.”

“Well, if it's got to be done, let's get at it. The quicker the
better--I'm all in a shiver.”

“Do it _now_? And company there? Look here--I'll get suspicious of you,
first thing you know. No--we'll wait till the lights are out--there's no
hurry.”

Huck felt that a silence was going to ensue--a thing still more awful
than any amount of murderous talk; so he held his breath and stepped
gingerly back; planted his foot carefully and firmly, after balancing,
one-legged, in a precarious way and almost toppling over, first on one
side and then on the other. He took another step back, with the same
elaboration and the same risks; then another and another, and--a twig
snapped under his foot! His breath stopped and he listened. There was no
sound--the stillness was perfect. His gratitude was measureless. Now he
turned in his tracks, between the walls of sumach bushes--turned
himself as carefully as if he were a ship--and then stepped quickly but
cautiously along. When he emerged at the quarry he felt secure, and
so he picked up his nimble heels and flew. Down, down he sped, till he
reached the Welshman's. He banged at the door, and presently the heads
of the old man and his two stalwart sons were thrust from windows.

“What's the row there? Who's banging? What do you want?”

“Let me in--quick! I'll tell everything.”

“Why, who are you?”

“Huckleberry Finn--quick, let me in!”

“Huckleberry Finn, indeed! It ain't a name to open many doors, I judge!
But let him in, lads, and let's see what's the trouble.”

“Please don't ever tell I told you,” were Huck's first words when he got
in. “Please don't--I'd be killed, sure--but the widow's been good friends
to me sometimes, and I want to tell--I _will_ tell if you'll promise you
won't ever say it was me.”

“By George, he _has_ got something to tell, or he wouldn't act so!”
 exclaimed the old man; “out with it and nobody here'll ever tell, lad.”

Three minutes later the old man and his sons, well armed, were up the
hill, and just entering the sumach path on tiptoe, their weapons in
their hands. Huck accompanied them no further. He hid behind a great
bowlder and fell to listening. There was a lagging, anxious silence, and
then all of a sudden there was an explosion of firearms and a cry.

Huck waited for no particulars. He sprang away and sped down the hill as
fast as his legs could carry him.




CHAPTER XXX

AS the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck came
groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welshman's door. The
inmates were asleep, but it was a sleep that was set on a hair-trigger,
on account of the exciting episode of the night. A call came from a
window:

“Who's there!”

Huck's scared voice answered in a low tone:

“Please let me in! It's only Huck Finn!”

“It's a name that can open this door night or day, lad!--and welcome!”

These were strange words to the vagabond boy's ears, and the pleasantest
he had ever heard. He could not recollect that the closing word had ever
been applied in his case before. The door was quickly unlocked, and he
entered. Huck was given a seat and the old man and his brace of tall
sons speedily dressed themselves.

“Now, my boy, I hope you're good and hungry, because breakfast will be
ready as soon as the sun's up, and we'll have a piping hot one, too--make
yourself easy about that! I and the boys hoped you'd turn up and stop
here last night.”

“I was awful scared,” said Huck, “and I run. I took out when the pistols
went off, and I didn't stop for three mile. I've come now becuz I wanted
to know about it, you know; and I come before daylight becuz I didn't
want to run across them devils, even if they was dead.”

“Well, poor chap, you do look as if you'd had a hard night of it--but
there's a bed here for you when you've had your breakfast. No, they
ain't dead, lad--we are sorry enough for that. You see we knew right
where to put our hands on them, by your description; so we crept along
on tiptoe till we got within fifteen feet of them--dark as a cellar that
sumach path was--and just then I found I was going to sneeze. It was the
meanest kind of luck! I tried to keep it back, but no use--'twas bound to
come, and it did come! I was in the lead with my pistol raised, and when
the sneeze started those scoundrels a-rustling to get out of the path,
I sung out, 'Fire boys!' and blazed away at the place where the rustling
was. So did the boys. But they were off in a jiffy, those villains, and
we after them, down through the woods. I judge we never touched them.
They fired a shot apiece as they started, but their bullets whizzed by
and didn't do us any harm. As soon as we lost the sound of their feet
we quit chasing, and went down and stirred up the constables. They got a
posse together, and went off to guard the river bank, and as soon as it
is light the sheriff and a gang are going to beat up the woods. My boys
will be with them presently. I wish we had some sort of description of
those rascals--'twould help a good deal. But you couldn't see what they
were like, in the dark, lad, I suppose?”

“Oh yes; I saw them downtown and follered them.”

“Splendid! Describe them--describe them, my boy!”

“One's the old deaf and dumb Spaniard that's ben around here once or
twice, and t'other's a mean-looking, ragged--”

“That's enough, lad, we know the men! Happened on them in the woods back
of the widow's one day, and they slunk away. Off with you, boys, and
tell the sheriff--get your breakfast tomorrow morning!”

The Welshman's sons departed at once. As they were leaving the room Huck
sprang up and exclaimed:

“Oh, please don't tell _any_body it was me that blowed on them! Oh,
please!”

“All right if you say it, Huck, but you ought to have the credit of what
you did.”

“Oh no, no! Please don't tell!”

When the young men were gone, the old Welshman said:

“They won't tell--and I won't. But why don't you want it known?”

Huck would not explain, further than to say that he already knew too
much about one of those men and would not have the man know that he knew
anything against him for the whole world--he would be killed for knowing
it, sure.

The old man promised secrecy once more, and said:

“How did you come to follow these fellows, lad? Were they looking
suspicious?”

Huck was silent while he framed a duly cautious reply. Then he said:

“Well, you see, I'm a kind of a hard lot,--least everybody says so, and
I don't see nothing agin it--and sometimes I can't sleep much, on account
of thinking about it and sort of trying to strike out a new way of
doing. That was the way of it last night. I couldn't sleep, and so I
come along upstreet 'bout midnight, a-turning it all over, and when I
got to that old shackly brick store by the Temperance Tavern, I backed
up agin the wall to have another think. Well, just then along comes
these two chaps slipping along close by me, with something under their
arm, and I reckoned they'd stole it. One was a-smoking, and t'other one
wanted a light; so they stopped right before me and the cigars lit up
their faces and I see that the big one was the deaf and dumb Spaniard,
by his white whiskers and the patch on his eye, and t'other one was a
rusty, ragged-looking devil.”

“Could you see the rags by the light of the cigars?”

This staggered Huck for a moment. Then he said:

“Well, I don't know--but somehow it seems as if I did.”

“Then they went on, and you--”

“Follered 'em--yes. That was it. I wanted to see what was up--they sneaked
along so. I dogged 'em to the widder's stile, and stood in the dark and
heard the ragged one beg for the widder, and the Spaniard swear he'd
spile her looks just as I told you and your two--”

“What! The _deaf and dumb_ man said all that!”

Huck had made another terrible mistake! He was trying his best to keep
the old man from getting the faintest hint of who the Spaniard might be,
and yet his tongue seemed determined to get him into trouble in spite of
all he could do. He made several efforts to creep out of his scrape,
but the old man's eye was upon him and he made blunder after blunder.
Presently the Welshman said:

“My boy, don't be afraid of me. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head for
all the world. No--I'd protect you--I'd protect you. This Spaniard is
not deaf and dumb; you've let that slip without intending it; you can't
cover that up now. You know something about that Spaniard that you want
to keep dark. Now trust me--tell me what it is, and trust me--I won't
betray you.”

Huck looked into the old man's honest eyes a moment, then bent over and
whispered in his ear:

“'Tain't a Spaniard--it's Injun Joe!”

The Welshman almost jumped out of his chair. In a moment he said:

“It's all plain enough, now. When you talked about notching ears and
slitting noses I judged that that was your own embellishment, because
white men don't take that sort of revenge. But an Injun! That's a
different matter altogether.”

During breakfast the talk went on, and in the course of it the old man
said that the last thing which he and his sons had done, before going
to bed, was to get a lantern and examine the stile and its vicinity for
marks of blood. They found none, but captured a bulky bundle of--

“Of _what_?”

If the words had been lightning they could not have leaped with a more
stunning suddenness from Huck's blanched lips. His eyes were staring
wide, now, and his breath suspended--waiting for the answer. The Welshman
started--stared in return--three seconds--five seconds--ten--then replied:

“Of burglar's tools. Why, what's the _matter_ with you?”

Huck sank back, panting gently, but deeply, unutterably grateful. The
Welshman eyed him gravely, curiously--and presently said:

“Yes, burglar's tools. That appears to relieve you a good deal. But what
did give you that turn? What were _you_ expecting we'd found?”

Huck was in a close place--the inquiring eye was upon him--he would have
given anything for material for a plausible answer--nothing suggested
itself--the inquiring eye was boring deeper and deeper--a senseless
reply offered--there was no time to weigh it, so at a venture he uttered
it--feebly:

“Sunday-school books, maybe.”

Poor Huck was too distressed to smile, but the old man laughed loud and
joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and
ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a-man's pocket, because
it cut down the doctor's bill like everything. Then he added:

“Poor old chap, you're white and jaded--you ain't well a bit--no wonder
you're a little flighty and off your balance. But you'll come out of it.
Rest and sleep will fetch you out all right, I hope.”

Huck was irritated to think he had been such a goose and betrayed such
a suspicious excitement, for he had dropped the idea that the parcel
brought from the tavern was the treasure, as soon as he had heard the
talk at the widow's stile. He had only thought it was not the treasure,
however--he had not known that it wasn't--and so the suggestion of a
captured bundle was too much for his self-possession. But on the whole
he felt glad the little episode had happened, for now he knew beyond all
question that that bundle was not _the_ bundle, and so his mind was
at rest and exceedingly comfortable. In fact, everything seemed to be
drifting just in the right direction, now; the treasure must be still
in No. 2, the men would be captured and jailed that day, and he and
Tom could seize the gold that night without any trouble or any fear of
interruption.

Just as breakfast was completed there was a knock at the door. Huck
jumped for a hiding-place, for he had no mind to be connected even
remotely with the late event. The Welshman admitted several ladies and
gentlemen, among them the Widow Douglas, and noticed that groups of
citizens were climbing up the hill--to stare at the stile. So the news
had spread. The Welshman had to tell the story of the night to the
visitors. The widow's gratitude for her preservation was outspoken.

“Don't say a word about it, madam. There's another that you're more
beholden to than you are to me and my boys, maybe, but he don't allow me
to tell his name. We wouldn't have been there but for him.”

Of course this excited a curiosity so vast that it almost belittled the
main matter--but the Welshman allowed it to eat into the vitals of his
visitors, and through them be transmitted to the whole town, for he
refused to part with his secret. When all else had been learned, the
widow said:

“I went to sleep reading in bed and slept straight through all that
noise. Why didn't you come and wake me?”

“We judged it warn't worth while. Those fellows warn't likely to come
again--they hadn't any tools left to work with, and what was the use of
waking you up and scaring you to death? My three negro men stood guard
at your house all the rest of the night. They've just come back.”

More visitors came, and the story had to be told and retold for a couple
of hours more.

There was no Sabbath-school during day-school vacation, but everybody
was early at church. The stirring event was well canvassed. News came
that not a sign of the two villains had been yet discovered. When the
sermon was finished, Judge Thatcher's wife dropped alongside of Mrs.
Harper as she moved down the aisle with the crowd and said:

“Is my Becky going to sleep all day? I just expected she would be tired
to death.”

“Your Becky?”

“Yes,” with a startled look--“didn't she stay with you last night?”

“Why, no.”

Mrs. Thatcher turned pale, and sank into a pew, just as Aunt Polly,
talking briskly with a friend, passed by. Aunt Polly said:

“Goodmorning, Mrs. Thatcher. Goodmorning, Mrs. Harper. I've got a boy
that's turned up missing. I reckon my Tom stayed at your house last
night--one of you. And now he's afraid to come to church. I've got to
settle with him.”

Mrs. Thatcher shook her head feebly and turned paler than ever.

“He didn't stay with us,” said Mrs. Harper, beginning to look uneasy. A
marked anxiety came into Aunt Polly's face.

“Joe Harper, have you seen my Tom this morning?”

“No'm.”

“When did you see him last?”

Joe tried to remember, but was not sure he could say. The people had
stopped moving out of church. Whispers passed along, and a boding
uneasiness took possession of every countenance. Children were anxiously
questioned, and young teachers. They all said they had not noticed
whether Tom and Becky were on board the ferryboat on the homeward trip;
it was dark; no one thought of inquiring if any one was missing. One
young man finally blurted out his fear that they were still in the cave!
Mrs. Thatcher swooned away. Aunt Polly fell to crying and wringing her
hands.

The alarm swept from lip to lip, from group to group, from street to
street, and within five minutes the bells were wildly clanging and
the whole town was up! The Cardiff Hill episode sank into instant
insignificance, the burglars were forgotten, horses were saddled, skiffs
were manned, the ferryboat ordered out, and before the horror was half
an hour old, two hundred men were pouring down highroad and river toward
the cave.

All the long afternoon the village seemed empty and dead. Many women
visited Aunt Polly and Mrs. Thatcher and tried to comfort them. They
cried with them, too, and that was still better than words. All the
tedious night the town waited for news; but when the morning dawned at
last, all the word that came was, “Send more candles--and send food.”
 Mrs. Thatcher was almost crazed; and Aunt Polly, also. Judge Thatcher
sent messages of hope and encouragement from the cave, but they conveyed
no real cheer.

The old Welshman came home toward daylight, spattered with
candle-grease, smeared with clay, and almost worn out. He found Huck
still in the bed that had been provided for him, and delirious with
fever. The physicians were all at the cave, so the Widow Douglas came
and took charge of the patient. She said she would do her best by him,
because, whether he was good, bad, or indifferent, he was the Lord's,
and nothing that was the Lord's was a thing to be neglected. The
Welshman said Huck had good spots in him, and the widow said:

“You can depend on it. That's the Lord's mark. He don't leave it off.
He never does. Puts it somewhere on every creature that comes from his
hands.”

Early in the forenoon parties of jaded men began to straggle into the
village, but the strongest of the citizens continued searching. All the
news that could be gained was that remotenesses of the cavern were being
ransacked that had never been visited before; that every corner and
crevice was going to be thoroughly searched; that wherever one wandered
through the maze of passages, lights were to be seen flitting hither
and thither in the distance, and shoutings and pistol-shots sent their
hollow reverberations to the ear down the sombre aisles. In one place,
far from the section usually traversed by tourists, the names “BECKY &
TOM” had been found traced upon the rocky wall with candle-smoke, and
near at hand a grease-soiled bit of ribbon. Mrs. Thatcher recognized the
ribbon and cried over it. She said it was the last relic she should ever
have of her child; and that no other memorial of her could ever be so
precious, because this one parted latest from the living body before the
awful death came. Some said that now and then, in the cave, a far-away
speck of light would glimmer, and then a glorious shout would burst
forth and a score of men go trooping down the echoing aisle--and then a
sickening disappointment always followed; the children were not there;
it was only a searcher's light.

Three dreadful days and nights dragged their tedious hours along, and
the village sank into a hopeless stupor. No one had heart for anything.
The accidental discovery, just made, that the proprietor of the
Temperance Tavern kept liquor on his premises, scarcely fluttered the
public pulse, tremendous as the fact was. In a lucid interval, Huck
feebly led up to the subject of taverns, and finally asked--dimly
dreading the worst--if anything had been discovered at the Temperance
Tavern since he had been ill.

“Yes,” said the widow.

Huck started up in bed, wildeyed:

“What? What was it?”

“Liquor!--and the place has been shut up. Lie down, child--what a turn you
did give me!”

“Only tell me just one thing--only just one--please! Was it Tom Sawyer
that found it?”

The widow burst into tears. “Hush, hush, child, hush! I've told you
before, you must _not_ talk. You are very, very sick!”

Then nothing but liquor had been found; there would have been a great
powwow if it had been the gold. So the treasure was gone forever--gone
forever! But what could she be crying about? Curious that she should
cry.

These thoughts worked their dim way through Huck's mind, and under the
weariness they gave him he fell asleep. The widow said to herself:

“There--he's asleep, poor wreck. Tom Sawyer find it! Pity but somebody
could find Tom Sawyer! Ah, there ain't many left, now, that's got hope
enough, or strength enough, either, to go on searching.”




CHAPTER XXXI

NOW to return to Tom and Becky's share in the picnic. They tripped along
the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting the familiar
wonders of the cave--wonders dubbed with rather over-descriptive names,
such as “The Drawing-Room,” “The Cathedral,” “Aladdin's Palace,” and
so on. Presently the hide-and-seek frolicking began, and Tom and Becky
engaged in it with zeal until the exertion began to grow a trifle
wearisome; then they wandered down a sinuous avenue holding their
candles aloft and reading the tangled webwork of names, dates,
postoffice addresses, and mottoes with which the rocky walls had been
frescoed (in candle-smoke). Still drifting along and talking, they
scarcely noticed that they were now in a part of the cave whose walls
were not frescoed. They smoked their own names under an overhanging
shelf and moved on. Presently they came to a place where a little stream
of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone sediment with
it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and ruffled Niagara
in gleaming and imperishable stone. Tom squeezed his small body behind
it in order to illuminate it for Becky's gratification. He found that
it curtained a sort of steep natural stairway which was enclosed between
narrow walls, and at once the ambition to be a discoverer seized him.

Becky responded to his call, and they made a smoke-mark for future
guidance, and started upon their quest. They wound this way and that,
far down into the secret depths of the cave, made another mark, and
branched off in search of novelties to tell the upper world about. In
one place they found a spacious cavern, from whose ceiling depended a
multitude of shining stalactites of the length and circumference of
a man's leg; they walked all about it, wondering and admiring, and
presently left it by one of the numerous passages that opened into
it. This shortly brought them to a bewitching spring, whose basin was
incrusted with a frostwork of glittering crystals; it was in the midst
of a cavern whose walls were supported by many fantastic pillars which
had been formed by the joining of great stalactites and stalagmites
together, the result of the ceaseless water-drip of centuries. Under the
roof vast knots of bats had packed themselves together, thousands in a
bunch; the lights disturbed the creatures and they came flocking down by
hundreds, squeaking and darting furiously at the candles. Tom knew their
ways and the danger of this sort of conduct. He seized Becky's hand and
hurried her into the first corridor that offered; and none too soon, for
a bat struck Becky's light out with its wing while she was passing out
of the cavern. The bats chased the children a good distance; but the
fugitives plunged into every new passage that offered, and at last got
rid of the perilous things. Tom found a subterranean lake, shortly,
which stretched its dim length away until its shape was lost in the
shadows. He wanted to explore its borders, but concluded that it would
be best to sit down and rest awhile, first. Now, for the first time, the
deep stillness of the place laid a clammy hand upon the spirits of the
children. Becky said:

“Why, I didn't notice, but it seems ever so long since I heard any of
the others.”

“Come to think, Becky, we are away down below them--and I don't know how
far away north, or south, or east, or whichever it is. We couldn't hear
them here.”

Becky grew apprehensive.

“I wonder how long we've been down here, Tom? We better start back.”

“Yes, I reckon we better. P'raps we better.”

“Can you find the way, Tom? It's all a mixed-up crookedness to me.”

“I reckon I could find it--but then the bats. If they put our candles
out it will be an awful fix. Let's try some other way, so as not to go
through there.”

“Well. But I hope we won't get lost. It would be so awful!” and the girl
shuddered at the thought of the dreadful possibilities.

They started through a corridor, and traversed it in silence a long
way, glancing at each new opening, to see if there was anything familiar
about the look of it; but they were all strange. Every time Tom made an
examination, Becky would watch his face for an encouraging sign, and he
would say cheerily:

“Oh, it's all right. This ain't the one, but we'll come to it right
away!”

But he felt less and less hopeful with each failure, and presently began
to turn off into diverging avenues at sheer random, in desperate hope of
finding the one that was wanted. He still said it was “all right,” but
there was such a leaden dread at his heart that the words had lost their
ring and sounded just as if he had said, “All is lost!” Becky clung to
his side in an anguish of fear, and tried hard to keep back the tears,
but they would come. At last she said:

“Oh, Tom, never mind the bats, let's go back that way! We seem to get
worse and worse off all the time.”

“Listen!” said he.

Profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were
conspicuous in the hush. Tom shouted. The call went echoing down
the empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that
resembled a ripple of mocking laughter.

“Oh, don't do it again, Tom, it is too horrid,” said Becky.

“It is horrid, but I better, Becky; they might hear us, you know,” and
he shouted again.

The “might” was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it so
confessed a perishing hope. The children stood still and listened; but
there was no result. Tom turned upon the back track at once, and hurried
his steps. It was but a little while before a certain indecision in his
manner revealed another fearful fact to Becky--he could not find his way
back!

“Oh, Tom, you didn't make any marks!”

“Becky, I was such a fool! Such a fool! I never thought we might want to
come back! No--I can't find the way. It's all mixed up.”

“Tom, Tom, we're lost! we're lost! We never can get out of this awful
place! Oh, why _did_ we ever leave the others!”

She sank to the ground and burst into such a frenzy of crying that Tom
was appalled with the idea that she might die, or lose her reason. He
sat down by her and put his arms around her; she buried her face in
his bosom, she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing
regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering laughter. Tom
begged her to pluck up hope again, and she said she could not. He fell
to blaming and abusing himself for getting her into this miserable
situation; this had a better effect. She said she would try to hope
again, she would get up and follow wherever he might lead if only he
would not talk like that any more. For he was no more to blame than she,
she said.

So they moved on again--aimlessly--simply at random--all they could do
was to move, keep moving. For a little while, hope made a show of
reviving--not with any reason to back it, but only because it is its
nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age and
familiarity with failure.

By-and-by Tom took Becky's candle and blew it out. This economy meant so
much! Words were not needed. Becky understood, and her hope died again.
She knew that Tom had a whole candle and three or four pieces in his
pockets--yet he must economize.

By-and-by, fatigue began to assert its claims; the children tried to pay
attention, for it was dreadful to think of sitting down when time was
grown to be so precious, moving, in some direction, in any direction,
was at least progress and might bear fruit; but to sit down was to
invite death and shorten its pursuit.

At last Becky's frail limbs refused to carry her farther. She sat down.
Tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends there,
and the comfortable beds and, above all, the light! Becky cried, and Tom
tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his encouragements
were grown thread-bare with use, and sounded like sarcasms. Fatigue bore
so heavily upon Becky that she drowsed off to sleep. Tom was grateful.
He sat looking into her drawn face and saw it grow smooth and natural
under the influence of pleasant dreams; and by-and-by a smile dawned and
rested there. The peaceful face reflected somewhat of peace and healing
into his own spirit, and his thoughts wandered away to bygone times and
dreamy memories. While he was deep in his musings, Becky woke up with a
breezy little laugh--but it was stricken dead upon her lips, and a groan
followed it.

“Oh, how _could_ I sleep! I wish I never, never had waked! No! No, I
don't, Tom! Don't look so! I won't say it again.”

“I'm glad you've slept, Becky; you'll feel rested, now, and we'll find
the way out.”

“We can try, Tom; but I've seen such a beautiful country in my dream. I
reckon we are going there.”

“Maybe not, maybe not. Cheer up, Becky, and let's go on trying.”

They rose up and wandered along, hand in hand and hopeless. They tried
to estimate how long they had been in the cave, but all they knew was
that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not
be, for their candles were not gone yet. A long time after this--they
could not tell how long--Tom said they must go softly and listen for
dripping water--they must find a spring. They found one presently, and
Tom said it was time to rest again. Both were cruelly tired, yet Becky
said she thought she could go a little farther. She was surprised to
hear Tom dissent. She could not understand it. They sat down, and Tom
fastened his candle to the wall in front of them with some clay. Thought
was soon busy; nothing was said for some time. Then Becky broke the
silence:

“Tom, I am so hungry!”

Tom took something out of his pocket.

“Do you remember this?” said he.

Becky almost smiled.

“It's our wedding-cake, Tom.”

“Yes--I wish it was as big as a barrel, for it's all we've got.”

“I saved it from the picnic for us to dream on, Tom, the way grownup
people do with wedding-cake--but it'll be our--”

She dropped the sentence where it was. Tom divided the cake and Becky
ate with good appetite, while Tom nibbled at his moiety. There was
abundance of cold water to finish the feast with. By-and-by Becky
suggested that they move on again. Tom was silent a moment. Then he
said:

“Becky, can you bear it if I tell you something?”

Becky's face paled, but she thought she could.

“Well, then, Becky, we must stay here, where there's water to drink.
That little piece is our last candle!”

Becky gave loose to tears and wailings. Tom did what he could to comfort
her, but with little effect. At length Becky said:

“Tom!”

“Well, Becky?”

“They'll miss us and hunt for us!”

“Yes, they will! Certainly they will!”

“Maybe they're hunting for us now, Tom.”

“Why, I reckon maybe they are. I hope they are.”

“When would they miss us, Tom?”

“When they get back to the boat, I reckon.”

“Tom, it might be dark then--would they notice we hadn't come?”

“I don't know. But anyway, your mother would miss you as soon as they
got home.”

A frightened look in Becky's face brought Tom to his senses and he saw
that he had made a blunder. Becky was not to have gone home that night!
The children became silent and thoughtful. In a moment a new burst of
grief from Becky showed Tom that the thing in his mind had struck hers
also--that the Sabbath morning might be half spent before Mrs. Thatcher
discovered that Becky was not at Mrs. Harper's.

The children fastened their eyes upon their bit of candle and watched it
melt slowly and pitilessly away; saw the half inch of wick stand alone
at last; saw the feeble flame rise and fall, climb the thin column of
smoke, linger at its top a moment, and then--the horror of utter darkness
reigned!

How long afterward it was that Becky came to a slow consciousness that
she was crying in Tom's arms, neither could tell. All that they knew
was, that after what seemed a mighty stretch of time, both awoke out of
a dead stupor of sleep and resumed their miseries once more. Tom said
it might be Sunday, now--maybe Monday. He tried to get Becky to talk, but
her sorrows were too oppressive, all her hopes were gone. Tom said that
they must have been missed long ago, and no doubt the search was going
on. He would shout and maybe some one would come. He tried it; but in
the darkness the distant echoes sounded so hideously that he tried it no
more.

The hours wasted away, and hunger came to torment the captives again. A
portion of Tom's half of the cake was left; they divided and ate it. But
they seemed hungrier than before. The poor morsel of food only whetted
desire.

By-and-by Tom said:

“SH! Did you hear that?”

Both held their breath and listened. There was a sound like the
faintest, far-off shout. Instantly Tom answered it, and leading Becky by
the hand, started groping down the corridor in its direction. Presently
he listened again; again the sound was heard, and apparently a little
nearer.

“It's them!” said Tom; “they're coming! Come along, Becky--we're all
right now!”

The joy of the prisoners was almost overwhelming. Their speed was slow,
however, because pitfalls were somewhat common, and had to be guarded
against. They shortly came to one and had to stop. It might be three
feet deep, it might be a hundred--there was no passing it at any rate.
Tom got down on his breast and reached as far down as he could. No
bottom. They must stay there and wait until the searchers came. They
listened; evidently the distant shoutings were growing more distant!
a moment or two more and they had gone altogether. The heart-sinking
misery of it! Tom whooped until he was hoarse, but it was of no use. He
talked hopefully to Becky; but an age of anxious waiting passed and no
sounds came again.

The children groped their way back to the spring. The weary time dragged
on; they slept again, and awoke famished and woe-stricken. Tom believed
it must be Tuesday by this time.

Now an idea struck him. There were some side passages near at hand. It
would be better to explore some of these than bear the weight of the
heavy time in idleness. He took a kite-line from his pocket, tied it to
a projection, and he and Becky started, Tom in the lead, unwinding the
line as he groped along. At the end of twenty steps the corridor ended
in a “jumping-off place.” Tom got down on his knees and felt below,
and then as far around the corner as he could reach with his hands
conveniently; he made an effort to stretch yet a little farther to the
right, and at that moment, not twenty yards away, a human hand, holding
a candle, appeared from behind a rock! Tom lifted up a glorious shout,
and instantly that hand was followed by the body it belonged to--Injun
Joe's! Tom was paralyzed; he could not move. He was vastly gratified the
next moment, to see the “Spaniard” take to his heels and get himself out
of sight. Tom wondered that Joe had not recognized his voice and come
over and killed him for testifying in court. But the echoes must have
disguised the voice. Without doubt, that was it, he reasoned. Tom's
fright weakened every muscle in his body. He said to himself that if he
had strength enough to get back to the spring he would stay there, and
nothing should tempt him to run the risk of meeting Injun Joe again. He
was careful to keep from Becky what it was he had seen. He told her he
had only shouted “for luck.”

But hunger and wretchedness rise superior to fears in the long run.
Another tedious wait at the spring and another long sleep brought
changes. The children awoke tortured with a raging hunger. Tom believed
that it must be Wednesday or Thursday or even Friday or Saturday, now,
and that the search had been given over. He proposed to explore another
passage. He felt willing to risk Injun Joe and all other terrors. But
Becky was very weak. She had sunk into a dreary apathy and would not be
roused. She said she would wait, now, where she was, and die--it would
not be long. She told Tom to go with the kite-line and explore if he
chose; but she implored him to come back every little while and speak
to her; and she made him promise that when the awful time came, he would
stay by her and hold her hand until all was over.

Tom kissed her, with a choking sensation in his throat, and made a show
of being confident of finding the searchers or an escape from the cave;
then he took the kite-line in his hand and went groping down one of the
passages on his hands and knees, distressed with hunger and sick with
bodings of coming doom.




CHAPTER XXXII

TUESDAY afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. The village of St.
Petersburg still mourned. The lost children had not been found. Public
prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a private prayer
that had the petitioner's whole heart in it; but still no good news came
from the cave. The majority of the searchers had given up the quest
and gone back to their daily avocations, saying that it was plain the
children could never be found. Mrs. Thatcher was very ill, and a great
part of the time delirious. People said it was heartbreaking to hear her
call her child, and raise her head and listen a whole minute at a time,
then lay it wearily down again with a moan. Aunt Polly had drooped into
a settled melancholy, and her gray hair had grown almost white. The
village went to its rest on Tuesday night, sad and forlorn.

Away in the middle of the night a wild peal burst from the village
bells, and in a moment the streets were swarming with frantic half-clad
people, who shouted, “Turn out! turn out! they're found! they're found!”
 Tin pans and horns were added to the din, the population massed itself
and moved toward the river, met the children coming in an open carriage
drawn by shouting citizens, thronged around it, joined its homeward
march, and swept magnificently up the main street roaring huzzah after
huzzah!

The village was illuminated; nobody went to bed again; it was the
greatest night the little town had ever seen. During the first half-hour
a procession of villagers filed through Judge Thatcher's house, seized
the saved ones and kissed them, squeezed Mrs. Thatcher's hand, tried to
speak but couldn't--and drifted out raining tears all over the place.

Aunt Polly's happiness was complete, and Mrs. Thatcher's nearly so. It
would be complete, however, as soon as the messenger dispatched with the
great news to the cave should get the word to her husband. Tom lay upon
a sofa with an eager auditory about him and told the history of the
wonderful adventure, putting in many striking additions to adorn it
withal; and closed with a description of how he left Becky and went
on an exploring expedition; how he followed two avenues as far as his
kite-line would reach; how he followed a third to the fullest stretch
of the kite-line, and was about to turn back when he glimpsed a far-off
speck that looked like daylight; dropped the line and groped toward it,
pushed his head and shoulders through a small hole, and saw the broad
Mississippi rolling by!

And if it had only happened to be night he would not have seen that
speck of daylight and would not have explored that passage any more! He
told how he went back for Becky and broke the good news and she told
him not to fret her with such stuff, for she was tired, and knew she was
going to die, and wanted to. He described how he labored with her and
convinced her; and how she almost died for joy when she had groped to
where she actually saw the blue speck of daylight; how he pushed his way
out at the hole and then helped her out; how they sat there and cried
for gladness; how some men came along in a skiff and Tom hailed them
and told them their situation and their famished condition; how the men
didn't believe the wild tale at first, “because,” said they, “you are
five miles down the river below the valley the cave is in”--then took
them aboard, rowed to a house, gave them supper, made them rest till two
or three hours after dark and then brought them home.

Before day-dawn, Judge Thatcher and the handful of searchers with him
were tracked out, in the cave, by the twine clews they had strung behind
them, and informed of the great news.

Three days and nights of toil and hunger in the cave were not to
be shaken off at once, as Tom and Becky soon discovered. They were
bedridden all of Wednesday and Thursday, and seemed to grow more and
more tired and worn, all the time. Tom got about, a little, on Thursday,
was downtown Friday, and nearly as whole as ever Saturday; but Becky
did not leave her room until Sunday, and then she looked as if she had
passed through a wasting illness.

Tom learned of Huck's sickness and went to see him on Friday, but could
not be admitted to the bedroom; neither could he on Saturday or Sunday.
He was admitted daily after that, but was warned to keep still about his
adventure and introduce no exciting topic. The Widow Douglas stayed by
to see that he obeyed. At home Tom learned of the Cardiff Hill event;
also that the “ragged man's” body had eventually been found in the river
near the ferry-landing; he had been drowned while trying to escape,
perhaps.

About a fortnight after Tom's rescue from the cave, he started off to
visit Huck, who had grown plenty strong enough, now, to hear exciting
talk, and Tom had some that would interest him, he thought. Judge
Thatcher's house was on Tom's way, and he stopped to see Becky. The
Judge and some friends set Tom to talking, and some one asked him
ironically if he wouldn't like to go to the cave again. Tom said he
thought he wouldn't mind it. The Judge said:

“Well, there are others just like you, Tom, I've not the least doubt.
But we have taken care of that. Nobody will get lost in that cave any
more.”

“Why?”

“Because I had its big door sheathed with boiler iron two weeks ago, and
triple-locked--and I've got the keys.”

Tom turned as white as a sheet.

“What's the matter, boy! Here, run, somebody! Fetch a glass of water!”

The water was brought and thrown into Tom's face.

“Ah, now you're all right. What was the matter with you, Tom?”

“Oh, Judge, Injun Joe's in the cave!”




CHAPTER XXXIII

WITHIN a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen skiff-loads of
men were on their way to McDougal's cave, and the ferryboat, well filled
with passengers, soon followed. Tom Sawyer was in the skiff that bore
Judge Thatcher.

When the cave door was unlocked, a sorrowful sight presented itself in
the dim twilight of the place. Injun Joe lay stretched upon the ground,
dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing
eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer
of the free world outside. Tom was touched, for he knew by his own
experience how this wretch had suffered. His pity was moved, but
nevertheless he felt an abounding sense of relief and security, now,
which revealed to him in a degree which he had not fully appreciated
before how vast a weight of dread had been lying upon him since the day
he lifted his voice against this bloody-minded outcast.

Injun Joe's bowie-knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. The great
foundation-beam of the door had been chipped and hacked through, with
tedious labor; useless labor, too, it was, for the native rock formed a
sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife had wrought
no effect; the only damage done was to the knife itself. But if there
had been no stony obstruction there the labor would have been useless
still, for if the beam had been wholly cut away Injun Joe could not have
squeezed his body under the door, and he knew it. So he had only hacked
that place in order to be doing something--in order to pass the weary
time--in order to employ his tortured faculties. Ordinarily one could
find half a dozen bits of candle stuck around in the crevices of this
vestibule, left there by tourists; but there were none now. The prisoner
had searched them out and eaten them. He had also contrived to catch a
few bats, and these, also, he had eaten, leaving only their claws. The
poor unfortunate had starved to death. In one place, near at hand, a
stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages, builded
by the water-drip from a stalactite overhead. The captive had broken off
the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had
scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once
in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock-tick--a
dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was falling
when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the foundations of Rome
were laid; when Christ was crucified; when the Conqueror created the
British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at Lexington was
“news.”

It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall
have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition,
and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a
purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand
years to be ready for this flitting human insect's need? and has it
another important object to accomplish ten thousand years to come? No
matter. It is many and many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped
out the stone to catch the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist
stares longest at that pathetic stone and that slow-dropping water when
he comes to see the wonders of McDougal's cave. Injun Joe's cup stands
first in the list of the cavern's marvels; even “Aladdin's Palace”
 cannot rival it.

Injun Joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people flocked
there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and
hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and
all sorts of provisions, and confessed that they had had almost as
satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the
hanging.

This funeral stopped the further growth of one thing--the petition to the
governor for Injun Joe's pardon. The petition had been largely signed;
many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a committee of
sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail around the
governor, and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample his duty
under foot. Injun Joe was believed to have killed five citizens of the
village, but what of that? If he had been Satan himself there would
have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a
pardon-petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired
and leaky water-works.

The morning after the funeral Tom took Huck to a private place to have
an important talk. Huck had learned all about Tom's adventure from the
Welshman and the Widow Douglas, by this time, but Tom said he reckoned
there was one thing they had not told him; that thing was what he wanted
to talk about now. Huck's face saddened. He said:

“I know what it is. You got into No. 2 and never found anything but
whiskey. Nobody told me it was you; but I just knowed it must 'a' ben
you, soon as I heard 'bout that whiskey business; and I knowed you
hadn't got the money becuz you'd 'a' got at me some way or other and
told me even if you was mum to everybody else. Tom, something's always
told me we'd never get holt of that swag.”

“Why, Huck, I never told on that tavern-keeper. _You_ know his tavern
was all right the Saturday I went to the picnic. Don't you remember you
was to watch there that night?”

“Oh yes! Why, it seems 'bout a year ago. It was that very night that I
follered Injun Joe to the widder's.”

“_You_ followed him?”

“Yes--but you keep mum. I reckon Injun Joe's left friends behind him, and
I don't want 'em souring on me and doing me mean tricks. If it hadn't
ben for me he'd be down in Texas now, all right.”

Then Huck told his entire adventure in confidence to Tom, who had only
heard of the Welshman's part of it before.

“Well,” said Huck, presently, coming back to the main question, “whoever
nipped the whiskey in No. 2, nipped the money, too, I reckon--anyways
it's a goner for us, Tom.”

“Huck, that money wasn't ever in No. 2!”

“What!” Huck searched his comrade's face keenly. “Tom, have you got on
the track of that money again?”

“Huck, it's in the cave!”

Huck's eyes blazed.

“Say it again, Tom.”

“The money's in the cave!”

“Tom--honest injun, now--is it fun, or earnest?”

“Earnest, Huck--just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go in
there with me and help get it out?”

“I bet I will! I will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and not
get lost.”

“Huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the
world.”

“Good as wheat! What makes you think the money's--”

“Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don't find it I'll
agree to give you my drum and every thing I've got in the world. I will,
by jings.”

“All right--it's a whiz. When do you say?”

“Right now, if you say it. Are you strong enough?”

“Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a little, three or four days,
now, but I can't walk more'n a mile, Tom--least I don't think I could.”

“It's about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go, Huck,
but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me know
about. Huck, I'll take you right to it in a skiff. I'll float the skiff
down there, and I'll pull it back again all by myself. You needn't ever
turn your hand over.”

“Less start right off, Tom.”

“All right. We want some bread and meat, and our pipes, and a little
bag or two, and two or three kite-strings, and some of these new-fangled
things they call lucifer matches. I tell you, many's the time I wished I
had some when I was in there before.”

A trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a citizen who
was absent, and got under way at once. When they were several miles
below “Cave Hollow,” Tom said:

“Now you see this bluff here looks all alike all the way down from the
cave hollow--no houses, no wood-yards, bushes all alike. But do you see
that white place up yonder where there's been a landslide? Well, that's
one of my marks. We'll get ashore, now.”

They landed.

“Now, Huck, where we're a-standing you could touch that hole I got out
of with a fishing-pole. See if you can find it.”

Huck searched all the place about, and found nothing. Tom proudly
marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said:

“Here you are! Look at it, Huck; it's the snuggest hole in this country.
You just keep mum about it. All along I've been wanting to be a robber,
but I knew I'd got to have a thing like this, and where to run across
it was the bother. We've got it now, and we'll keep it quiet, only we'll
let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers in--because of course there's got to be a
Gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it. Tom Sawyer's Gang--it
sounds splendid, don't it, Huck?”

“Well, it just does, Tom. And who'll we rob?”

“Oh, most anybody. Waylay people--that's mostly the way.”

“And kill them?”

“No, not always. Hive them in the cave till they raise a ransom.”

“What's a ransom?”

“Money. You make them raise all they can, off'n their friends; and after
you've kept them a year, if it ain't raised then you kill them. That's
the general way. Only you don't kill the women. You shut up the women,
but you don't kill them. They're always beautiful and rich, and awfully
scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take your hat
off and talk polite. They ain't anybody as polite as robbers--you'll see
that in any book. Well, the women get to loving you, and after they've
been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and after that
you couldn't get them to leave. If you drove them out they'd turn right
around and come back. It's so in all the books.”

“Why, it's real bully, Tom. I believe it's better'n to be a pirate.”

“Yes, it's better in some ways, because it's close to home and circuses
and all that.”

By this time everything was ready and the boys entered the hole, Tom in
the lead. They toiled their way to the farther end of the tunnel, then
made their spliced kite-strings fast and moved on. A few steps brought
them to the spring, and Tom felt a shudder quiver all through him.
He showed Huck the fragment of candle-wick perched on a lump of clay
against the wall, and described how he and Becky had watched the flame
struggle and expire.

The boys began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and
gloom of the place oppressed their spirits. They went on, and presently
entered and followed Tom's other corridor until they reached the
“jumping-off place.” The candles revealed the fact that it was not
really a precipice, but only a steep clay hill twenty or thirty feet
high. Tom whispered:

“Now I'll show you something, Huck.”

He held his candle aloft and said:

“Look as far around the corner as you can. Do you see that? There--on the
big rock over yonder--done with candle-smoke.”

“Tom, it's a _cross_!”

“_Now_ where's your Number Two? '_under the cross_,' hey? Right yonder's
where I saw Injun Joe poke up his candle, Huck!”

Huck stared at the mystic sign awhile, and then said with a shaky voice:

“Tom, less git out of here!”

“What! and leave the treasure?”

“Yes--leave it. Injun Joe's ghost is round about there, certain.”

“No it ain't, Huck, no it ain't. It would ha'nt the place where he
died--away out at the mouth of the cave--five mile from here.”

“No, Tom, it wouldn't. It would hang round the money. I know the ways of
ghosts, and so do you.”

Tom began to fear that Huck was right. Mis-givings gathered in his mind.
But presently an idea occurred to him--

“Lookyhere, Huck, what fools we're making of ourselves! Injun Joe's
ghost ain't a going to come around where there's a cross!”

The point was well taken. It had its effect.

“Tom, I didn't think of that. But that's so. It's luck for us, that
cross is. I reckon we'll climb down there and have a hunt for that box.”

Tom went first, cutting rude steps in the clay hill as he descended.
Huck followed. Four avenues opened out of the small cavern which the
great rock stood in. The boys examined three of them with no result.
They found a small recess in the one nearest the base of the rock, with
a pallet of blankets spread down in it; also an old suspender, some
bacon rind, and the well-gnawed bones of two or three fowls. But there
was no moneybox. The lads searched and researched this place, but in
vain. Tom said:

“He said _under_ the cross. Well, this comes nearest to being under the
cross. It can't be under the rock itself, because that sets solid on the
ground.”

They searched everywhere once more, and then sat down discouraged. Huck
could suggest nothing. By-and-by Tom said:

“Lookyhere, Huck, there's footprints and some candle-grease on the clay
about one side of this rock, but not on the other sides. Now, what's
that for? I bet you the money _is_ under the rock. I'm going to dig in
the clay.”

“That ain't no bad notion, Tom!” said Huck with animation.

Tom's “real Barlow” was out at once, and he had not dug four inches
before he struck wood.

“Hey, Huck!--you hear that?”

Huck began to dig and scratch now. Some boards were soon uncovered and
removed. They had concealed a natural chasm which led under the rock.
Tom got into this and held his candle as far under the rock as he
could, but said he could not see to the end of the rift. He proposed
to explore. He stooped and passed under; the narrow way descended
gradually. He followed its winding course, first to the right, then to
the left, Huck at his heels. Tom turned a short curve, by-and-by, and
exclaimed:

“My goodness, Huck, lookyhere!”

It was the treasure-box, sure enough, occupying a snug little cavern,
along with an empty powder-keg, a couple of guns in leather cases, two
or three pairs of old moccasins, a leather belt, and some other rubbish
well soaked with the water-drip.

“Got it at last!” said Huck, ploughing among the tarnished coins with
his hand. “My, but we're rich, Tom!”

“Huck, I always reckoned we'd get it. It's just too good to believe, but
we _have_ got it, sure! Say--let's not fool around here. Let's snake it
out. Lemme see if I can lift the box.”

It weighed about fifty pounds. Tom could lift it, after an awkward
fashion, but could not carry it conveniently.

“I thought so,” he said; “_They_ carried it like it was heavy, that day
at the ha'nted house. I noticed that. I reckon I was right to think of
fetching the little bags along.”

The money was soon in the bags and the boys took it up to the cross
rock.

“Now less fetch the guns and things,” said Huck.

“No, Huck--leave them there. They're just the tricks to have when we
go to robbing. We'll keep them there all the time, and we'll hold our
orgies there, too. It's an awful snug place for orgies.”

“What orgies?”

“I dono. But robbers always have orgies, and of course we've got to
have them, too. Come along, Huck, we've been in here a long time. It's
getting late, I reckon. I'm hungry, too. We'll eat and smoke when we get
to the skiff.”

They presently emerged into the clump of sumach bushes, looked warily
out, found the coast clear, and were soon lunching and smoking in the
skiff. As the sun dipped toward the horizon they pushed out and got
under way. Tom skimmed up the shore through the long twilight, chatting
cheerily with Huck, and landed shortly after dark.

“Now, Huck,” said Tom, “we'll hide the money in the loft of the widow's
woodshed, and I'll come up in the morning and we'll count it and divide,
and then we'll hunt up a place out in the woods for it where it will be
safe. Just you lay quiet here and watch the stuff till I run and hook
Benny Taylor's little wagon; I won't be gone a minute.”

He disappeared, and presently returned with the wagon, put the two small
sacks into it, threw some old rags on top of them, and started off,
dragging his cargo behind him. When the boys reached the Welshman's
house, they stopped to rest. Just as they were about to move on, the
Welshman stepped out and said:

“Hallo, who's that?”

“Huck and Tom Sawyer.”

“Good! Come along with me, boys, you are keeping everybody waiting.
Here--hurry up, trot ahead--I'll haul the wagon for you. Why, it's not as
light as it might be. Got bricks in it?--or old metal?”

“Old metal,” said Tom.

“I judged so; the boys in this town will take more trouble and fool away
more time hunting up six bits' worth of old iron to sell to the foundry
than they would to make twice the money at regular work. But that's
human nature--hurry along, hurry along!”

The boys wanted to know what the hurry was about.

“Never mind; you'll see, when we get to the Widow Douglas'.”

Huck said with some apprehension--for he was long used to being falsely
accused:

“Mr. Jones, we haven't been doing nothing.”

The Welshman laughed.

“Well, I don't know, Huck, my boy. I don't know about that. Ain't you
and the widow good friends?”

“Yes. Well, she's ben good friends to me, anyway.”

“All right, then. What do you want to be afraid for?”

This question was not entirely answered in Huck's slow mind before he
found himself pushed, along with Tom, into Mrs. Douglas' drawing-room.
Mr. Jones left the wagon near the door and followed.

The place was grandly lighted, and everybody that was of any consequence
in the village was there. The Thatchers were there, the Harpers, the
Rogerses, Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, the minister, the editor, and a great
many more, and all dressed in their best. The widow received the boys
as heartily as any one could well receive two such looking beings. They
were covered with clay and candle-grease. Aunt Polly blushed crimson
with humiliation, and frowned and shook her head at Tom. Nobody suffered
half as much as the two boys did, however. Mr. Jones said:

“Tom wasn't at home, yet, so I gave him up; but I stumbled on him and
Huck right at my door, and so I just brought them along in a hurry.”

“And you did just right,” said the widow. “Come with me, boys.”

She took them to a bedchamber and said:

“Now wash and dress yourselves. Here are two new suits of
clothes--shirts, socks, everything complete. They're Huck's--no, no
thanks, Huck--Mr. Jones bought one and I the other. But they'll fit both
of you. Get into them. We'll wait--come down when you are slicked up
enough.”

Then she left.




CHAPTER XXXIV

HUCK said: “Tom, we can slope, if we can find a rope. The window ain't
high from the ground.”

“Shucks! what do you want to slope for?”

“Well, I ain't used to that kind of a crowd. I can't stand it. I ain't
going down there, Tom.”

“Oh, bother! It ain't anything. I don't mind it a bit. I'll take care of
you.”

Sid appeared.

“Tom,” said he, “auntie has been waiting for you all the afternoon. Mary
got your Sunday clothes ready, and everybody's been fretting about you.
Say--ain't this grease and clay, on your clothes?”

“Now, Mr. Siddy, you jist 'tend to your own business. What's all this
blowout about, anyway?”

“It's one of the widow's parties that she's always having. This time
it's for the Welshman and his sons, on account of that scrape they
helped her out of the other night. And say--I can tell you something, if
you want to know.”

“Well, what?”

“Why, old Mr. Jones is going to try to spring something on the people
here tonight, but I overheard him tell auntie today about it, as a
secret, but I reckon it's not much of a secret now. Everybody knows--the
widow, too, for all she tries to let on she don't. Mr. Jones was bound
Huck should be here--couldn't get along with his grand secret without
Huck, you know!”

“Secret about what, Sid?”

“About Huck tracking the robbers to the widow's. I reckon Mr. Jones was
going to make a grand time over his surprise, but I bet you it will drop
pretty flat.”

Sid chuckled in a very contented and satisfied way.

“Sid, was it you that told?”

“Oh, never mind who it was. _Somebody_ told--that's enough.”

“Sid, there's only one person in this town mean enough to do that, and
that's you. If you had been in Huck's place you'd 'a' sneaked down the
hill and never told anybody on the robbers. You can't do any but mean
things, and you can't bear to see anybody praised for doing good ones.
There--no thanks, as the widow says”--and Tom cuffed Sid's ears and helped
him to the door with several kicks. “Now go and tell auntie if you
dare--and tomorrow you'll catch it!”

Some minutes later the widow's guests were at the supper-table, and a
dozen children were propped up at little side-tables in the same room,
after the fashion of that country and that day. At the proper time Mr.
Jones made his little speech, in which he thanked the widow for the
honor she was doing himself and his sons, but said that there was
another person whose modesty--

And so forth and so on. He sprung his secret about Huck's share in
the adventure in the finest dramatic manner he was master of, but the
surprise it occasioned was largely counterfeit and not as clamorous and
effusive as it might have been under happier circumstances. However,
the widow made a pretty fair show of astonishment, and heaped so many
compliments and so much gratitude upon Huck that he almost forgot
the nearly intolerable discomfort of his new clothes in the entirely
intolerable discomfort of being set up as a target for everybody's gaze
and everybody's laudations.

The widow said she meant to give Huck a home under her roof and have him
educated; and that when she could spare the money she would start him in
business in a modest way. Tom's chance was come. He said:

“Huck don't need it. Huck's rich.”

Nothing but a heavy strain upon the good manners of the company kept
back the due and proper complimentary laugh at this pleasant joke. But
the silence was a little awkward. Tom broke it:

“Huck's got money. Maybe you don't believe it, but he's got lots of it.
Oh, you needn't smile--I reckon I can show you. You just wait a minute.”

Tom ran out of doors. The company looked at each other with a perplexed
interest--and inquiringly at Huck, who was tongue-tied.

“Sid, what ails Tom?” said Aunt Polly. “He--well, there ain't ever any
making of that boy out. I never--”

Tom entered, struggling with the weight of his sacks, and Aunt Polly
did not finish her sentence. Tom poured the mass of yellow coin upon the
table and said:

“There--what did I tell you? Half of it's Huck's and half of it's mine!”

The spectacle took the general breath away. All gazed, nobody spoke for
a moment. Then there was a unanimous call for an explanation. Tom said
he could furnish it, and he did. The tale was long, but brimful of
interest. There was scarcely an interruption from any one to break the
charm of its flow. When he had finished, Mr. Jones said:

“I thought I had fixed up a little surprise for this occasion, but it
don't amount to anything now. This one makes it sing mighty small, I'm
willing to allow.”

The money was counted. The sum amounted to a little over twelve thousand
dollars. It was more than any one present had ever seen at one time
before, though several persons were there who were worth considerably
more than that in property.




CHAPTER XXXV

THE reader may rest satisfied that Tom's and Huck's windfall made a
mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a
sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked
about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the citizens
tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every “haunted”
 house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected,
plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden
treasure--and not by boys, but men--pretty grave, unromantic men, too,
some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were courted, admired,
stared at. The boys were not able to remember that their remarks had
possessed weight before; but now their sayings were treasured and
repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be regarded as
remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing and saying
commonplace things; moreover, their past history was raked up and
discovered to bear marks of conspicuous originality. The village paper
published biographical sketches of the boys.

The Widow Douglas put Huck's money out at six per cent., and Judge
Thatcher did the same with Tom's at Aunt Polly's request. Each lad had
an income, now, that was simply prodigious--a dollar for every weekday in
the year and half of the Sundays. It was just what the minister got--no,
it was what he was promised--he generally couldn't collect it. A dollar
and a quarter a week would board, lodge, and school a boy in those old
simple days--and clothe him and wash him, too, for that matter.

Judge Thatcher had conceived a great opinion of Tom. He said that no
commonplace boy would ever have got his daughter out of the cave. When
Becky told her father, in strict confidence, how Tom had taken her
whipping at school, the Judge was visibly moved; and when she pleaded
grace for the mighty lie which Tom had told in order to shift that
whipping from her shoulders to his own, the Judge said with a fine
outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a magnanimous lie--a lie that
was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to
breast with George Washington's lauded Truth about the hatchet! Becky
thought her father had never looked so tall and so superb as when he
walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that. She went straight
off and told Tom about it.

Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or a great soldier some
day. He said he meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted to the
National Military Academy and afterward trained in the best law school
in the country, in order that he might be ready for either career or
both.

Huck Finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the Widow Douglas'
protection introduced him into society--no, dragged him into it, hurled
him into it--and his sufferings were almost more than he could bear. The
widow's servants kept him clean and neat, combed and brushed, and they
bedded him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had not one little spot
or stain which he could press to his heart and know for a friend. He had
to eat with a knife and fork; he had to use napkin, cup, and plate;
he had to learn his book, he had to go to church; he had to talk so
properly that speech was become insipid in his mouth; whithersoever he
turned, the bars and shackles of civilization shut him in and bound him
hand and foot.

He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up
missing. For forty-eight hours the widow hunted for him everywhere in
great distress. The public were profoundly concerned; they searched high
and low, they dragged the river for his body. Early the third morning
Tom Sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads down behind
the abandoned slaughter-house, and in one of them he found the refugee.
Huck had slept there; he had just breakfasted upon some stolen odds and
ends of food, and was lying off, now, in comfort, with his pipe. He was
unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old ruin of rags that had made
him picturesque in the days when he was free and happy. Tom routed him
out, told him the trouble he had been causing, and urged him to go home.
Huck's face lost its tranquil content, and took a melancholy cast. He
said:

“Don't talk about it, Tom. I've tried it, and it don't work; it don't
work, Tom. It ain't for me; I ain't used to it. The widder's good to me,
and friendly; but I can't stand them ways. She makes me get up just
at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all
to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them
blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to any air
git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't
set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a
cellar-door for--well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church
and sweat and sweat--I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in
there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by
a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell--everything's so
awful reg'lar a body can't stand it.”

“Well, everybody does that way, Huck.”

“Tom, it don't make no difference. I ain't everybody, and I can't
_stand_ it. It's awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy--I don't
take no interest in vittles, that way. I got to ask to go a-fishing;
I got to ask to go in a-swimming--dern'd if I hain't got to ask to do
everything. Well, I'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comfort--I'd got
to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, every day, to git a taste
in my mouth, or I'd a died, Tom. The widder wouldn't let me smoke;
she wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't let me gape, nor stretch, nor
scratch, before folks--” [Then with a spasm of special irritation and
injury]--“And dad fetch it, she prayed all the time! I never see such a
woman! I _had_ to shove, Tom--I just had to. And besides, that school's
going to open, and I'd a had to go to it--well, I wouldn't stand _that_,
Tom. Looky-here, Tom, being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's
just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead
all the time. Now these clothes suits me, and this bar'l suits me, and
I ain't ever going to shake 'em any more. Tom, I wouldn't ever got into
all this trouble if it hadn't 'a' ben for that money; now you just take
my sheer of it along with your'n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes--not
many times, becuz I don't give a dern for a thing 'thout it's tollable
hard to git--and you go and beg off for me with the widder.”

“Oh, Huck, you know I can't do that. 'Tain't fair; and besides if you'll
try this thing just a while longer you'll come to like it.”

“Like it! Yes--the way I'd like a hot stove if I was to set on it long
enough. No, Tom, I won't be rich, and I won't live in them cussed
smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and
I'll stick to 'em, too. Blame it all! just as we'd got guns, and a cave,
and all just fixed to rob, here this dern foolishness has got to come up
and spile it all!”

Tom saw his opportunity--

“Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from turning
robber.”

“No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood earnest, Tom?”

“Just as dead earnest as I'm sitting here. But Huck, we can't let you
into the gang if you ain't respectable, you know.”

Huck's joy was quenched.

“Can't let me in, Tom? Didn't you let me go for a pirate?”

“Yes, but that's different. A robber is more high-toned than what a
pirate is--as a general thing. In most countries they're awful high up in
the nobility--dukes and such.”

“Now, Tom, hain't you always ben friendly to me? You wouldn't shet me
out, would you, Tom? You wouldn't do that, now, _would_ you, Tom?”

“Huck, I wouldn't want to, and I _don't_ want to--but what would people
say? Why, they'd say, 'Mph! Tom Sawyer's Gang! pretty low characters in
it!' They'd mean you, Huck. You wouldn't like that, and I wouldn't.”

Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. Finally he
said:

“Well, I'll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if I
can come to stand it, if you'll let me b'long to the gang, Tom.”

“All right, Huck, it's a whiz! Come along, old chap, and I'll ask the
widow to let up on you a little, Huck.”

“Will you, Tom--now will you? That's good. If she'll let up on some of
the roughest things, I'll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd
through or bust. When you going to start the gang and turn robbers?”

“Oh, right off. We'll get the boys together and have the initiation
tonight, maybe.”

“Have the which?”

“Have the initiation.”

“What's that?”

“It's to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang's
secrets, even if you're chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and
all his family that hurts one of the gang.”

“That's gay--that's mighty gay, Tom, I tell you.”

“Well, I bet it is. And all that swearing's got to be done at midnight,
in the lonesomest, awfulest place you can find--a ha'nted house is the
best, but they're all ripped up now.”

“Well, midnight's good, anyway, Tom.”

“Yes, so it is. And you've got to swear on a coffin, and sign it with
blood.”

“Now, that's something _like_! Why, it's a million times bullier than
pirating. I'll stick to the widder till I rot, Tom; and if I git to be
a reg'lar ripper of a robber, and everybody talking 'bout it, I reckon
she'll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet.”

CONCLUSION

SO endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a _boy_, it
must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the
history of a _man_. When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows
exactly where to stop--that is, with a marriage; but when he writes of
juveniles, he must stop where he best can.

Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are
prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up the
story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they
turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any of that
part of their lives at present.

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Complete, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar
Wilde


This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org





Title: The Importance of Being Earnest
       A Trivial Comedy for Serious People


Author: Oscar Wilde



Release Date: August 29, 2006  [eBook #844]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST***






Transcribed from the 1915 Methuen & Co. Ltd. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org





The Importance of Being Earnest
A Trivial Comedy for Serious People


THE PERSONS IN THE PLAY


John Worthing, J.P.
Algernon Moncrieff
Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D.
Merriman, Butler
Lane, Manservant
Lady Bracknell
Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax
Cecily Cardew
Miss Prism, Governess




THE SCENES OF THE PLAY


ACT I.  Algernon Moncrieff's Flat in Half-Moon Street, W.

ACT II.  The Garden at the Manor House, Woolton.

ACT III.  Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton.

TIME: The Present.




LONDON: ST. JAMES'S THEATRE


Lessee and Manager: Mr. George Alexander

February 14th, 1895

* * * * *

John Worthing, J.P.: Mr. George Alexander.
Algernon Moncrieff: Mr. Allen Aynesworth.
Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D.: Mr. H. H. Vincent.
Merriman: Mr. Frank Dyall.
Lane: Mr. F. Kinsey Peile.
Lady Bracknell: Miss Rose Leclercq.
Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax: Miss Irene Vanbrugh.
Cecily Cardew: Miss Evelyn Millard.
Miss Prism: Mrs. George Canninge.




FIRST ACT


SCENE


Morning-room in Algernon's flat in Half-Moon Street.  The room is
luxuriously and artistically furnished.  The sound of a piano is heard in
the adjoining room.

[Lane is arranging afternoon tea on the table, and after the music has
ceased, Algernon enters.]

Algernon.  Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?

Lane.  I didn't think it polite to listen, sir.

Algernon.  I'm sorry for that, for your sake.  I don't play
accurately--any one can play accurately--but I play with wonderful
expression.  As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte.  I
keep science for Life.

Lane.  Yes, sir.

Algernon.  And, speaking of the science of Life, have you got the
cucumber sandwiches cut for Lady Bracknell?

Lane.  Yes, sir.  [Hands them on a salver.]

Algernon.  [Inspects them, takes two, and sits down on the sofa.]  Oh! . . .
by the way, Lane, I see from your book that on Thursday night, when
Lord Shoreman and Mr. Worthing were dining with me, eight bottles of
champagne are entered as having been consumed.

Lane.  Yes, sir; eight bottles and a pint.

Algernon.  Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants
invariably drink the champagne?  I ask merely for information.

Lane.  I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir.  I have
often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a
first-rate brand.

Algernon.  Good heavens!  Is marriage so demoralising as that?

Lane.  I believe it _is_ a very pleasant state, sir.  I have had very
little experience of it myself up to the present.  I have only been
married once.  That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between
myself and a young person.

Algernon.  [Languidly_._]  I don't know that I am much interested in your
family life, Lane.

Lane.  No, sir; it is not a very interesting subject.  I never think of
it myself.

Algernon.  Very natural, I am sure.  That will do, Lane, thank you.

Lane.  Thank you, sir.  [Lane goes out.]

Algernon.  Lane's views on marriage seem somewhat lax.  Really, if the
lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of
them?  They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral
responsibility.

[Enter Lane.]

Lane.  Mr. Ernest Worthing.

[Enter Jack.]

[Lane goes out_._]

Algernon.  How are you, my dear Ernest?  What brings you up to town?

Jack.  Oh, pleasure, pleasure!  What else should bring one anywhere?
Eating as usual, I see, Algy!

Algernon.  [Stiffly_._]  I believe it is customary in good society to
take some slight refreshment at five o'clock.  Where have you been since
last Thursday?

Jack.  [Sitting down on the sofa.]  In the country.

Algernon.  What on earth do you do there?

Jack.  [Pulling off his gloves_._]  When one is in town one amuses
oneself.  When one is in the country one amuses other people.  It is
excessively boring.

Algernon.  And who are the people you amuse?

Jack.  [Airily_._]  Oh, neighbours, neighbours.

Algernon.  Got nice neighbours in your part of Shropshire?

Jack.  Perfectly horrid!  Never speak to one of them.

Algernon.  How immensely you must amuse them!  [Goes over and takes
sandwich.]  By the way, Shropshire is your county, is it not?

Jack.  Eh?  Shropshire?  Yes, of course.  Hallo!  Why all these cups?  Why
cucumber sandwiches?  Why such reckless extravagance in one so young?  Who
is coming to tea?

Algernon.  Oh! merely Aunt Augusta and Gwendolen.

Jack.  How perfectly delightful!

Algernon.  Yes, that is all very well; but I am afraid Aunt Augusta won't
quite approve of your being here.

Jack.  May I ask why?

Algernon.  My dear fellow, the way you flirt with Gwendolen is perfectly
disgraceful.  It is almost as bad as the way Gwendolen flirts with you.

Jack.  I am in love with Gwendolen.  I have come up to town expressly to
propose to her.

Algernon.  I thought you had come up for pleasure? . . . I call that
business.

Jack.  How utterly unromantic you are!

Algernon.  I really don't see anything romantic in proposing.  It is very
romantic to be in love.  But there is nothing romantic about a definite
proposal.  Why, one may be accepted.  One usually is, I believe.  Then
the excitement is all over.  The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.

Jack.  I have no doubt about that, dear Algy.  The Divorce Court was
specially invented for people whose memories are so curiously
constituted.

Algernon.  Oh! there is no use speculating on that subject.  Divorces are
made in Heaven--[Jack puts out his hand to take a sandwich.  Algernon at
once interferes.]  Please don't touch the cucumber sandwiches.  They are
ordered specially for Aunt Augusta.  [Takes one and eats it.]

Jack.  Well, you have been eating them all the time.

Algernon.  That is quite a different matter.  She is my aunt.  [Takes
plate from below.]  Have some bread and butter.  The bread and butter is
for Gwendolen.  Gwendolen is devoted to bread and butter.

Jack.  [Advancing to table and helping himself.]  And very good bread and
butter it is too.

Algernon.  Well, my dear fellow, you need not eat as if you were going to
eat it all.  You behave as if you were married to her already.  You are
not married to her already, and I don't think you ever will be.

Jack.  Why on earth do you say that?

Algernon.  Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt
with.  Girls don't think it right.

Jack.  Oh, that is nonsense!

Algernon.  It isn't.  It is a great truth.  It accounts for the
extraordinary number of bachelors that one sees all over the place.  In
the second place, I don't give my consent.

Jack.  Your consent!

Algernon.  My dear fellow, Gwendolen is my first cousin.  And before I
allow you to marry her, you will have to clear up the whole question of
Cecily.  [Rings bell.]

Jack.  Cecily!  What on earth do you mean?  What do you mean, Algy, by
Cecily!  I don't know any one of the name of Cecily.

[Enter Lane.]

Algernon.  Bring me that cigarette case Mr. Worthing left in the smoking-
room the last time he dined here.

Lane.  Yes, sir.  [Lane goes out.]

Jack.  Do you mean to say you have had my cigarette case all this time?  I
wish to goodness you had let me know.  I have been writing frantic
letters to Scotland Yard about it.  I was very nearly offering a large
reward.

Algernon.  Well, I wish you would offer one.  I happen to be more than
usually hard up.

Jack.  There is no good offering a large reward now that the thing is
found.

[Enter Lane with the cigarette case on a salver.  Algernon takes it at
once.  Lane goes out.]

Algernon.  I think that is rather mean of you, Ernest, I must say.  [Opens
case and examines it.]  However, it makes no matter, for, now that I look
at the inscription inside, I find that the thing isn't yours after all.

Jack.  Of course it's mine.  [Moving to him.]  You have seen me with it a
hundred times, and you have no right whatsoever to read what is written
inside.  It is a very ungentlemanly thing to read a private cigarette
case.

Algernon.  Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one
should read and what one shouldn't.  More than half of modern culture
depends on what one shouldn't read.

Jack.  I am quite aware of the fact, and I don't propose to discuss
modern culture.  It isn't the sort of thing one should talk of in
private.  I simply want my cigarette case back.

Algernon.  Yes; but this isn't your cigarette case.  This cigarette case
is a present from some one of the name of Cecily, and you said you didn't
know any one of that name.

Jack.  Well, if you want to know, Cecily happens to be my aunt.

Algernon.  Your aunt!

Jack.  Yes.  Charming old lady she is, too.  Lives at Tunbridge Wells.
Just give it back to me, Algy.

Algernon.  [Retreating to back of sofa.]  But why does she call herself
little Cecily if she is your aunt and lives at Tunbridge Wells?
[Reading.]  'From little Cecily with her fondest love.'

Jack.  [Moving to sofa and kneeling upon it.]  My dear fellow, what on
earth is there in that?  Some aunts are tall, some aunts are not tall.
That is a matter that surely an aunt may be allowed to decide for
herself.  You seem to think that every aunt should be exactly like your
aunt!  That is absurd!  For Heaven's sake give me back my cigarette case.
[Follows Algernon round the room.]

Algernon.  Yes.  But why does your aunt call you her uncle?  'From little
Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack.'  There is no
objection, I admit, to an aunt being a small aunt, but why an aunt, no
matter what her size may be, should call her own nephew her uncle, I
can't quite make out.  Besides, your name isn't Jack at all; it is
Ernest.

Jack.  It isn't Ernest; it's Jack.

Algernon.  You have always told me it was Ernest.  I have introduced you
to every one as Ernest.  You answer to the name of Ernest.  You look as
if your name was Ernest.  You are the most earnest-looking person I ever
saw in my life.  It is perfectly absurd your saying that your name isn't
Ernest.  It's on your cards.  Here is one of them.  [Taking it from
case.]  'Mr. Ernest Worthing, B. 4, The Albany.'  I'll keep this as a
proof that your name is Ernest if ever you attempt to deny it to me, or
to Gwendolen, or to any one else.  [Puts the card in his pocket.]

Jack.  Well, my name is Ernest in town and Jack in the country, and the
cigarette case was given to me in the country.

Algernon.  Yes, but that does not account for the fact that your small
Aunt Cecily, who lives at Tunbridge Wells, calls you her dear uncle.
Come, old boy, you had much better have the thing out at once.

Jack.  My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist.  It is
very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist.  It produces
a false impression.

Algernon.  Well, that is exactly what dentists always do.  Now, go on!
Tell me the whole thing.  I may mention that I have always suspected you
of being a confirmed and secret Bunburyist; and I am quite sure of it
now.

Jack.  Bunburyist? What on earth do you mean by a Bunburyist?

Algernon.  I'll reveal to you the meaning of that incomparable expression
as soon as you are kind enough to inform me why you are Ernest in town
and Jack in the country.

Jack.  Well, produce my cigarette case first.

Algernon.  Here it is.  [Hands cigarette case.]  Now produce your
explanation, and pray make it improbable.  [Sits on sofa.]

Jack.  My dear fellow, there is nothing improbable about my explanation
at all.  In fact it's perfectly ordinary.  Old Mr. Thomas Cardew, who
adopted me when I was a little boy, made me in his will guardian to his
grand-daughter, Miss Cecily Cardew.  Cecily, who addresses me as her
uncle from motives of respect that you could not possibly appreciate,
lives at my place in the country under the charge of her admirable
governess, Miss Prism.

Algernon.  Where is that place in the country, by the way?

Jack.  That is nothing to you, dear boy.  You are not going to be invited
. . . I may tell you candidly that the place is not in Shropshire.

Algernon.  I suspected that, my dear fellow!  I have Bunburyed all over
Shropshire on two separate occasions.  Now, go on.  Why are you Ernest in
town and Jack in the country?

Jack.  My dear Algy, I don't know whether you will be able to understand
my real motives.  You are hardly serious enough.  When one is placed in
the position of guardian, one has to adopt a very high moral tone on all
subjects.  It's one's duty to do so.  And as a high moral tone can hardly
be said to conduce very much to either one's health or one's happiness,
in order to get up to town I have always pretended to have a younger
brother of the name of Ernest, who lives in the Albany, and gets into the
most dreadful scrapes.  That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and
simple.

Algernon.  The truth is rarely pure and never simple.  Modern life would
be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete
impossibility!

Jack.  That wouldn't be at all a bad thing.

Algernon.  Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow.  Don't
try it.  You should leave that to people who haven't been at a
University.  They do it so well in the daily papers.  What you really are
is a Bunburyist.  I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist.  You
are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.

Jack.  What on earth do you mean?

Algernon.  You have invented a very useful younger brother called Ernest,
in order that you may be able to come up to town as often as you like.  I
have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order
that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.  Bunbury
is perfectly invaluable.  If it wasn't for Bunbury's extraordinary bad
health, for instance, I wouldn't be able to dine with you at Willis's to-
night, for I have been really engaged to Aunt Augusta for more than a
week.

Jack.  I haven't asked you to dine with me anywhere to-night.

Algernon.  I know.  You are absurdly careless about sending out
invitations.  It is very foolish of you.  Nothing annoys people so much
as not receiving invitations.

Jack.  You had much better dine with your Aunt Augusta.

Algernon.  I haven't the smallest intention of doing anything of the
kind.  To begin with, I dined there on Monday, and once a week is quite
enough to dine with one's own relations.  In the second place, whenever I
do dine there I am always treated as a member of the family, and sent
down with either no woman at all, or two.  In the third place, I know
perfectly well whom she will place me next to, to-night.  She will place
me next Mary Farquhar, who always flirts with her own husband across the
dinner-table.  That is not very pleasant.  Indeed, it is not even decent
. . . and that sort of thing is enormously on the increase.  The amount
of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly
scandalous.  It looks so bad.  It is simply washing one's clean linen in
public.  Besides, now that I know you to be a confirmed Bunburyist I
naturally want to talk to you about Bunburying.  I want to tell you the
rules.

Jack.  I'm not a Bunburyist at all.  If Gwendolen accepts me, I am going
to kill my brother, indeed I think I'll kill him in any case.  Cecily is
a little too much interested in him.  It is rather a bore.  So I am going
to get rid of Ernest.  And I strongly advise you to do the same with Mr.
. . . with your invalid friend who has the absurd name.

Algernon.  Nothing will induce me to part with Bunbury, and if you ever
get married, which seems to me extremely problematic, you will be very
glad to know Bunbury.  A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a
very tedious time of it.

Jack.  That is nonsense.  If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and
she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I
certainly won't want to know Bunbury.

Algernon.  Then your wife will.  You don't seem to realise, that in
married life three is company and two is none.

Jack.  [Sententiously.]  That, my dear young friend, is the theory that
the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.

Algernon.  Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the
time.

Jack.  For heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical.  It's perfectly easy
to be cynical.

Algernon.  My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays.  There's
such a lot of beastly competition about.  [The sound of an electric bell
is heard.]  Ah! that must be Aunt Augusta.  Only relatives, or creditors,
ever ring in that Wagnerian manner.  Now, if I get her out of the way for
ten minutes, so that you can have an opportunity for proposing to
Gwendolen, may I dine with you to-night at Willis's?

Jack.  I suppose so, if you want to.

Algernon.  Yes, but you must be serious about it.  I hate people who are
not serious about meals.  It is so shallow of them.

[Enter Lane.]

Lane.  Lady Bracknell and Miss Fairfax.

[Algernon goes forward to meet them.  Enter Lady Bracknell and
Gwendolen.]

Lady Bracknell.  Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving
very well.

Algernon.  I'm feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.

Lady Bracknell.  That's not quite the same thing.  In fact the two things
rarely go together.  [Sees Jack and bows to him with icy coldness.]

Algernon.  [To Gwendolen.]  Dear me, you are smart!

Gwendolen.  I am always smart!  Am I not, Mr. Worthing?

Jack.  You're quite perfect, Miss Fairfax.

Gwendolen.  Oh! I hope I am not that.  It would leave no room for
developments, and I intend to develop in many directions.  [Gwendolen and
Jack sit down together in the corner.]

Lady Bracknell.  I'm sorry if we are a little late, Algernon, but I was
obliged to call on dear Lady Harbury.  I hadn't been there since her poor
husband's death.  I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty
years younger.  And now I'll have a cup of tea, and one of those nice
cucumber sandwiches you promised me.

Algernon.  Certainly, Aunt Augusta.  [Goes over to tea-table.]

Lady Bracknell.  Won't you come and sit here, Gwendolen?

Gwendolen.  Thanks, mamma, I'm quite comfortable where I am.

Algernon.  [Picking up empty plate in horror.]  Good heavens!  Lane!  Why
are there no cucumber sandwiches?  I ordered them specially.

Lane.  [Gravely.]  There were no cucumbers in the market this morning,
sir.  I went down twice.

Algernon.  No cucumbers!

Lane.  No, sir.  Not even for ready money.

Algernon.  That will do, Lane, thank you.

Lane.  Thank you, sir.  [Goes out.]

Algernon.  I am greatly distressed, Aunt Augusta, about there being no
cucumbers, not even for ready money.

Lady Bracknell.  It really makes no matter, Algernon.  I had some
crumpets with Lady Harbury, who seems to me to be living entirely for
pleasure now.

Algernon.  I hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief.

Lady Bracknell.  It certainly has changed its colour.  From what cause I,
of course, cannot say.  [Algernon crosses and hands tea.]  Thank you.
I've quite a treat for you to-night, Algernon.  I am going to send you
down with Mary Farquhar.  She is such a nice woman, and so attentive to
her husband.  It's delightful to watch them.

Algernon.  I am afraid, Aunt Augusta, I shall have to give up the
pleasure of dining with you to-night after all.

Lady Bracknell.  [Frowning.]  I hope not, Algernon.  It would put my
table completely out.  Your uncle would have to dine upstairs.
Fortunately he is accustomed to that.

Algernon.  It is a great bore, and, I need hardly say, a terrible
disappointment to me, but the fact is I have just had a telegram to say
that my poor friend Bunbury is very ill again.  [Exchanges glances with
Jack.]  They seem to think I should be with him.

Lady Bracknell.  It is very strange.  This Mr. Bunbury seems to suffer
from curiously bad health.

Algernon.  Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid.

Lady Bracknell.  Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time
that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die.
This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd.  Nor do I in any way
approve of the modern sympathy with invalids.  I consider it morbid.
Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.  Health
is the primary duty of life.  I am always telling that to your poor
uncle, but he never seems to take much notice . . . as far as any
improvement in his ailment goes.  I should be much obliged if you would
ask Mr. Bunbury, from me, to be kind enough not to have a relapse on
Saturday, for I rely on you to arrange my music for me.  It is my last
reception, and one wants something that will encourage conversation,
particularly at the end of the season when every one has practically said
whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much.

Algernon.  I'll speak to Bunbury, Aunt Augusta, if he is still conscious,
and I think I can promise you he'll be all right by Saturday.  Of course
the music is a great difficulty.  You see, if one plays good music,
people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.  But
I'll run over the programme I've drawn out, if you will kindly come into
the next room for a moment.

Lady Bracknell.  Thank you, Algernon.  It is very thoughtful of you.
[Rising, and following Algernon.]  I'm sure the programme will be
delightful, after a few expurgations.  French songs I cannot possibly
allow.  People always seem to think that they are improper, and either
look shocked, which is vulgar, or laugh, which is worse.  But German
sounds a thoroughly respectable language, and indeed, I believe is so.
Gwendolen, you will accompany me.

Gwendolen.  Certainly, mamma.

[Lady Bracknell and Algernon go into the music-room, Gwendolen remains
behind.]

Jack.  Charming day it has been, Miss Fairfax.

Gwendolen.  Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing.
Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain
that they mean something else.  And that makes me so nervous.

Jack.  I do mean something else.

Gwendolen.  I thought so.  In fact, I am never wrong.

Jack.  And I would like to be allowed to take advantage of Lady
Bracknell's temporary absence . . .

Gwendolen.  I would certainly advise you to do so.  Mamma has a way of
coming back suddenly into a room that I have often had to speak to her
about.

Jack.  [Nervously.]  Miss Fairfax, ever since I met you I have admired
you more than any girl . . . I have ever met since . . . I met you.

Gwendolen.  Yes, I am quite well aware of the fact.  And I often wish
that in public, at any rate, you had been more demonstrative.  For me you
have always had an irresistible fascination.  Even before I met you I was
far from indifferent to you.  [Jack looks at her in amazement.]  We live,
as I hope you know, Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideals.  The fact is
constantly mentioned in the more expensive monthly magazines, and has
reached the provincial pulpits, I am told; and my ideal has always been
to love some one of the name of Ernest.  There is something in that name
that inspires absolute confidence.  The moment Algernon first mentioned
to me that he had a friend called Ernest, I knew I was destined to love
you.

Jack.  You really love me, Gwendolen?

Gwendolen.  Passionately!

Jack.  Darling!  You don't know how happy you've made me.

Gwendolen.  My own Ernest!

Jack.  But you don't really mean to say that you couldn't love me if my
name wasn't Ernest?

Gwendolen.  But your name is Ernest.

Jack.  Yes, I know it is.  But supposing it was something else?  Do you
mean to say you couldn't love me then?

Gwendolen.  [Glibly.]  Ah! that is clearly a metaphysical speculation,
and like most metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all
to the actual facts of real life, as we know them.

Jack.  Personally, darling, to speak quite candidly, I don't much care
about the name of Ernest . . . I don't think the name suits me at all.

Gwendolen.  It suits you perfectly.  It is a divine name.  It has a music
of its own.  It produces vibrations.

Jack.  Well, really, Gwendolen, I must say that I think there are lots of
other much nicer names.  I think Jack, for instance, a charming name.

Gwendolen.  Jack? . . . No, there is very little music in the name Jack,
if any at all, indeed.  It does not thrill.  It produces absolutely no
vibrations . . . I have known several Jacks, and they all, without
exception, were more than usually plain.  Besides, Jack is a notorious
domesticity for John!  And I pity any woman who is married to a man
called John.  She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing
pleasure of a single moment's solitude.  The only really safe name is
Ernest.

Jack.  Gwendolen, I must get christened at once--I mean we must get
married at once.  There is no time to be lost.

Gwendolen.  Married, Mr. Worthing?

Jack.  [Astounded.]  Well . . . surely.  You know that I love you, and
you led me to believe, Miss Fairfax, that you were not absolutely
indifferent to me.

Gwendolen.  I adore you.  But you haven't proposed to me yet.  Nothing
has been said at all about marriage.  The subject has not even been
touched on.

Jack.  Well . . . may I propose to you now?

Gwendolen.  I think it would be an admirable opportunity.  And to spare
you any possible disappointment, Mr. Worthing, I think it only fair to
tell you quite frankly before-hand that I am fully determined to accept
you.

Jack.  Gwendolen!

Gwendolen.  Yes, Mr. Worthing, what have you got to say to me?

Jack.  You know what I have got to say to you.

Gwendolen.  Yes, but you don't say it.

Jack.  Gwendolen, will you marry me?  [Goes on his knees.]

Gwendolen.  Of course I will, darling.  How long you have been about it!
I am afraid you have had very little experience in how to propose.

Jack.  My own one, I have never loved any one in the world but you.

Gwendolen.  Yes, but men often propose for practice.  I know my brother
Gerald does.  All my girl-friends tell me so.  What wonderfully blue eyes
you have, Ernest!  They are quite, quite, blue.  I hope you will always
look at me just like that, especially when there are other people
present.  [Enter Lady Bracknell.]

Lady Bracknell.  Mr. Worthing!  Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent
posture.  It is most indecorous.

Gwendolen.  Mamma!  [He tries to rise; she restrains him.]  I must beg
you to retire.  This is no place for you.  Besides, Mr. Worthing has not
quite finished yet.

Lady Bracknell.  Finished what, may I ask?

Gwendolen.  I am engaged to Mr. Worthing, mamma.  [They rise together.]

Lady Bracknell.  Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one.  When you do
become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit
him, will inform you of the fact.  An engagement should come on a young
girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be.  It is
hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself . . .
And now I have a few questions to put to you, Mr. Worthing.  While I am
making these inquiries, you, Gwendolen, will wait for me below in the
carriage.

Gwendolen.  [Reproachfully.]  Mamma!

Lady Bracknell.  In the carriage, Gwendolen!  [Gwendolen goes to the
door.  She and Jack blow kisses to each other behind Lady Bracknell's
back.  Lady Bracknell looks vaguely about as if she could not understand
what the noise was.  Finally turns round.]  Gwendolen, the carriage!

Gwendolen.  Yes, mamma.  [Goes out, looking back at Jack.]

Lady Bracknell.  [Sitting down.]  You can take a seat, Mr. Worthing.

[Looks in her pocket for note-book and pencil.]

Jack.  Thank you, Lady Bracknell, I prefer standing.

Lady Bracknell.  [Pencil and note-book in hand.]  I feel bound to tell
you that you are not down on my list of eligible young men, although I
have the same list as the dear Duchess of Bolton has.  We work together,
in fact.  However, I am quite ready to enter your name, should your
answers be what a really affectionate mother requires.  Do you smoke?

Jack.  Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.

Lady Bracknell.  I am glad to hear it.  A man should always have an
occupation of some kind.  There are far too many idle men in London as it
is.  How old are you?

Jack.  Twenty-nine.

Lady Bracknell.  A very good age to be married at.  I have always been of
opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either
everything or nothing.  Which do you know?

Jack.  [After some hesitation.]  I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.

Lady Bracknell.  I am pleased to hear it.  I do not approve of anything
that tampers with natural ignorance.  Ignorance is like a delicate exotic
fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.  The whole theory of modern
education is radically unsound.  Fortunately in England, at any rate,
education produces no effect whatsoever.  If it did, it would prove a
serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of
violence in Grosvenor Square.  What is your income?

Jack.  Between seven and eight thousand a year.

Lady Bracknell.  [Makes a note in her book.]  In land, or in investments?

Jack.  In investments, chiefly.

Lady Bracknell.  That is satisfactory.  What between the duties expected
of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's
death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure.  It gives one
position, and prevents one from keeping it up.  That's all that can be
said about land.

Jack.  I have a country house with some land, of course, attached to it,
about fifteen hundred acres, I believe; but I don't depend on that for my
real income.  In fact, as far as I can make out, the poachers are the
only people who make anything out of it.

Lady Bracknell.  A country house!  How many bedrooms?  Well, that point
can be cleared up afterwards.  You have a town house, I hope?  A girl
with a simple, unspoiled nature, like Gwendolen, could hardly be expected
to reside in the country.

Jack.  Well, I own a house in Belgrave Square, but it is let by the year
to Lady Bloxham.  Of course, I can get it back whenever I like, at six
months' notice.

Lady Bracknell.  Lady Bloxham?  I don't know her.

Jack.  Oh, she goes about very little.  She is a lady considerably
advanced in years.

Lady Bracknell.  Ah, nowadays that is no guarantee of respectability of
character.  What number in Belgrave Square?

Jack.  149.

Lady Bracknell.  [Shaking her head.]  The unfashionable side.  I thought
there was something.  However, that could easily be altered.

Jack.  Do you mean the fashion, or the side?

Lady Bracknell.  [Sternly.]  Both, if necessary, I presume.  What are
your politics?

Jack.  Well, I am afraid I really have none.  I am a Liberal Unionist.

Lady Bracknell.  Oh, they count as Tories.  They dine with us.  Or come
in the evening, at any rate.  Now to minor matters.  Are your parents
living?

Jack.  I have lost both my parents.

Lady Bracknell.  To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a
misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.  Who was your father?
He was evidently a man of some wealth.  Was he born in what the Radical
papers call the purple of commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the
aristocracy?

Jack.  I am afraid I really don't know.  The fact is, Lady Bracknell, I
said I had lost my parents.  It would be nearer the truth to say that my
parents seem to have lost me . . . I don't actually know who I am by
birth.  I was . . . well, I was found.

Lady Bracknell.  Found!

Jack.  The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentleman of a very charitable
and kindly disposition, found me, and gave me the name of Worthing,
because he happened to have a first-class ticket for Worthing in his
pocket at the time.  Worthing is a place in Sussex.  It is a seaside
resort.

Lady Bracknell.  Where did the charitable gentleman who had a first-class
ticket for this seaside resort find you?

Jack.  [Gravely.]  In a hand-bag.

Lady Bracknell.  A hand-bag?

Jack.  [Very seriously.]  Yes, Lady Bracknell.  I was in a hand-bag--a
somewhat large, black leather hand-bag, with handles to it--an ordinary
hand-bag in fact.

Lady Bracknell.  In what locality did this Mr. James, or Thomas, Cardew
come across this ordinary hand-bag?

Jack.  In the cloak-room at Victoria Station.  It was given to him in
mistake for his own.

Lady Bracknell.  The cloak-room at Victoria Station?

Jack.  Yes.  The Brighton line.

Lady Bracknell.  The line is immaterial.  Mr. Worthing, I confess I feel
somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me.  To be born, or at any
rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to
display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds
one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.  And I presume you
know what that unfortunate movement led to?  As for the particular
locality in which the hand-bag was found, a cloak-room at a railway
station might serve to conceal a social indiscretion--has probably,
indeed, been used for that purpose before now--but it could hardly be
regarded as an assured basis for a recognised position in good society.

Jack.  May I ask you then what you would advise me to do?  I need hardly
say I would do anything in the world to ensure Gwendolen's happiness.

Lady Bracknell.  I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try and
acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort
to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is
quite over.

Jack.  Well, I don't see how I could possibly manage to do that.  I can
produce the hand-bag at any moment.  It is in my dressing-room at home.  I
really think that should satisfy you, Lady Bracknell.

Lady Bracknell.  Me, sir!  What has it to do with me?  You can hardly
imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only
daughter--a girl brought up with the utmost care--to marry into a cloak-
room, and form an alliance with a parcel?  Good morning, Mr. Worthing!

[Lady Bracknell sweeps out in majestic indignation.]

Jack.  Good morning!  [Algernon, from the other room, strikes up the
Wedding March.  Jack looks perfectly furious, and goes to the door.]  For
goodness' sake don't play that ghastly tune, Algy.  How idiotic you are!

[The music stops and Algernon enters cheerily.]

Algernon.  Didn't it go off all right, old boy?  You don't mean to say
Gwendolen refused you?  I know it is a way she has.  She is always
refusing people.  I think it is most ill-natured of her.

Jack.  Oh, Gwendolen is as right as a trivet.  As far as she is
concerned, we are engaged.  Her mother is perfectly unbearable.  Never
met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I
am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one.  In any case, she is a monster,
without being a myth, which is rather unfair . . . I beg your pardon,
Algy, I suppose I shouldn't talk about your own aunt in that way before
you.

Algernon.  My dear boy, I love hearing my relations abused.  It is the
only thing that makes me put up with them at all.  Relations are simply a
tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to
live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

Jack.  Oh, that is nonsense!

Algernon.  It isn't!

Jack.  Well, I won't argue about the matter.  You always want to argue
about things.

Algernon.  That is exactly what things were originally made for.

Jack.  Upon my word, if I thought that, I'd shoot myself . . . [A pause.]
You don't think there is any chance of Gwendolen becoming like her mother
in about a hundred and fifty years, do you, Algy?

Algernon.  All women become like their mothers.  That is their tragedy.
No man does.  That's his.

Jack.  Is that clever?

Algernon.  It is perfectly phrased! and quite as true as any observation
in civilised life should be.

Jack.  I am sick to death of cleverness.  Everybody is clever nowadays.
You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people.  The thing has
become an absolute public nuisance.  I wish to goodness we had a few
fools left.

Algernon.  We have.

Jack.  I should extremely like to meet them.  What do they talk about?

Algernon.  The fools?  Oh! about the clever people, of course.

Jack.  What fools!

Algernon.  By the way, did you tell Gwendolen the truth about your being
Ernest in town, and Jack in the country?

Jack.  [In a very patronising manner.]  My dear fellow, the truth isn't
quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl.  What
extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!

Algernon.  The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if
she is pretty, and to some one else, if she is plain.

Jack.  Oh, that is nonsense.

Algernon.  What about your brother?  What about the profligate Ernest?

Jack.  Oh, before the end of the week I shall have got rid of him.  I'll
say he died in Paris of apoplexy.  Lots of people die of apoplexy, quite
suddenly, don't they?

Algernon.  Yes, but it's hereditary, my dear fellow.  It's a sort of
thing that runs in families.  You had much better say a severe chill.

Jack.  You are sure a severe chill isn't hereditary, or anything of that
kind?

Algernon.  Of course it isn't!

Jack.  Very well, then.  My poor brother Ernest to carried off suddenly,
in Paris, by a severe chill.  That gets rid of him.

Algernon.  But I thought you said that . . . Miss Cardew was a little too
much interested in your poor brother Ernest?  Won't she feel his loss a
good deal?

Jack.  Oh, that is all right.  Cecily is not a silly romantic girl, I am
glad to say.  She has got a capital appetite, goes long walks, and pays
no attention at all to her lessons.

Algernon.  I would rather like to see Cecily.

Jack.  I will take very good care you never do.  She is excessively
pretty, and she is only just eighteen.

Algernon.  Have you told Gwendolen yet that you have an excessively
pretty ward who is only just eighteen?

Jack.  Oh! one doesn't blurt these things out to people.  Cecily and
Gwendolen are perfectly certain to be extremely great friends.  I'll bet
you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be
calling each other sister.

Algernon.  Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of
other things first.  Now, my dear boy, if we want to get a good table at
Willis's, we really must go and dress.  Do you know it is nearly seven?

Jack.  [Irritably.]  Oh!  It always is nearly seven.

Algernon.  Well, I'm hungry.

Jack.  I never knew you when you weren't . . .

Algernon.  What shall we do after dinner?  Go to a theatre?

Jack.  Oh no!  I loathe listening.

Algernon.  Well, let us go to the Club?

Jack.  Oh, no!  I hate talking.

Algernon.  Well, we might trot round to the Empire at ten?

Jack.  Oh, no!  I can't bear looking at things.  It is so silly.

Algernon.  Well, what shall we do?

Jack.  Nothing!

Algernon.  It is awfully hard work doing nothing.  However, I don't mind
hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.

[Enter Lane.]

Lane.  Miss Fairfax.

[Enter Gwendolen.  Lane goes out.]

Algernon.  Gwendolen, upon my word!

Gwendolen.  Algy, kindly turn your back.  I have something very
particular to say to Mr. Worthing.

Algernon.  Really, Gwendolen, I don't think I can allow this at all.

Gwendolen.  Algy, you always adopt a strictly immoral attitude towards
life.  You are not quite old enough to do that.  [Algernon retires to the
fireplace.]

Jack.  My own darling!

Gwendolen.  Ernest, we may never be married.  From the expression on
mamma's face I fear we never shall.  Few parents nowadays pay any regard
to what their children say to them.  The old-fashioned respect for the
young is fast dying out.  Whatever influence I ever had over mamma, I
lost at the age of three.  But although she may prevent us from becoming
man and wife, and I may marry some one else, and marry often, nothing
that she can possibly do can alter my eternal devotion to you.

Jack.  Dear Gwendolen!

Gwendolen.  The story of your romantic origin, as related to me by mamma,
with unpleasing comments, has naturally stirred the deeper fibres of my
nature.  Your Christian name has an irresistible fascination.  The
simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to
me.  Your town address at the Albany I have.  What is your address in the
country?

Jack.  The Manor House, Woolton, Hertfordshire.

[Algernon, who has been carefully listening, smiles to himself, and
writes the address on his shirt-cuff.  Then picks up the Railway Guide.]

Gwendolen.  There is a good postal service, I suppose?  It may be
necessary to do something desperate.  That of course will require serious
consideration.  I will communicate with you daily.

Jack.  My own one!

Gwendolen.  How long do you remain in town?

Jack.  Till Monday.

Gwendolen.  Good!  Algy, you may turn round now.

Algernon.  Thanks, I've turned round already.

Gwendolen.  You may also ring the bell.

Jack.  You will let me see you to your carriage, my own darling?

Gwendolen.  Certainly.

Jack.  [To Lane, who now enters.]  I will see Miss Fairfax out.

Lane.  Yes, sir.  [Jack and Gwendolen go off.]

[Lane presents several letters on a salver to Algernon.  It is to be
surmised that they are bills, as Algernon, after looking at the
envelopes, tears them up.]

Algernon.  A glass of sherry, Lane.

Lane.  Yes, sir.

Algernon.  To-morrow, Lane, I'm going Bunburying.

Lane.  Yes, sir.

Algernon.  I shall probably not be back till Monday.  You can put up my
dress clothes, my smoking jacket, and all the Bunbury suits . . .

Lane.  Yes, sir.  [Handing sherry.]

Algernon.  I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane.

Lane.  It never is, sir.

Algernon.  Lane, you're a perfect pessimist.

Lane.  I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.

[Enter Jack.  Lane goes off.]

Jack.  There's a sensible, intellectual girl! the only girl I ever cared
for in my life.  [Algernon is laughing immoderately.]  What on earth are
you so amused at?

Algernon.  Oh, I'm a little anxious about poor Bunbury, that is all.

Jack.  If you don't take care, your friend Bunbury will get you into a
serious scrape some day.

Algernon.  I love scrapes.  They are the only things that are never
serious.

Jack.  Oh, that's nonsense, Algy.  You never talk anything but nonsense.

Algernon.  Nobody ever does.

[Jack looks indignantly at him, and leaves the room.  Algernon lights a
cigarette, reads his shirt-cuff, and smiles.]

ACT DROP




SECOND ACT


SCENE


Garden at the Manor House.  A flight of grey stone steps leads up to the
house.  The garden, an old-fashioned one, full of roses.  Time of year,
July.  Basket chairs, and a table covered with books, are set under a
large yew-tree.

[Miss Prism discovered seated at the table.  Cecily is at the back
watering flowers.]

Miss Prism.  [Calling.]  Cecily, Cecily!  Surely such a utilitarian
occupation as the watering of flowers is rather Moulton's duty than
yours?  Especially at a moment when intellectual pleasures await you.
Your German grammar is on the table.  Pray open it at page fifteen.  We
will repeat yesterday's lesson.

Cecily.  [Coming over very slowly.]  But I don't like German.  It isn't
at all a becoming language.  I know perfectly well that I look quite
plain after my German lesson.

Miss Prism.  Child, you know how anxious your guardian is that you should
improve yourself in every way.  He laid particular stress on your German,
as he was leaving for town yesterday.  Indeed, he always lays stress on
your German when he is leaving for town.

Cecily.  Dear Uncle Jack is so very serious!  Sometimes he is so serious
that I think he cannot be quite well.

Miss Prism.  [Drawing herself up.]  Your guardian enjoys the best of
health, and his gravity of demeanour is especially to be commended in one
so comparatively young as he is.  I know no one who has a higher sense of
duty and responsibility.

Cecily.  I suppose that is why he often looks a little bored when we
three are together.

Miss Prism.  Cecily!  I am surprised at you.  Mr. Worthing has many
troubles in his life.  Idle merriment and triviality would be out of
place in his conversation.  You must remember his constant anxiety about
that unfortunate young man his brother.

Cecily.  I wish Uncle Jack would allow that unfortunate young man, his
brother, to come down here sometimes.  We might have a good influence
over him, Miss Prism.  I am sure you certainly would.  You know German,
and geology, and things of that kind influence a man very much.  [Cecily
begins to write in her diary.]

Miss Prism.  [Shaking her head.]  I do not think that even I could
produce any effect on a character that according to his own brother's
admission is irretrievably weak and vacillating.  Indeed I am not sure
that I would desire to reclaim him.  I am not in favour of this modern
mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment's notice.  As a
man sows so let him reap.  You must put away your diary, Cecily.  I
really don't see why you should keep a diary at all.

Cecily.  I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my
life.  If I didn't write them down, I should probably forget all about
them.

Miss Prism.  Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about
with us.

Cecily.  Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never
happened, and couldn't possibly have happened.  I believe that Memory is
responsible for nearly all the three-volume novels that Mudie sends us.

Miss Prism.  Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily.
I wrote one myself in earlier days.

Cecily.  Did you really, Miss Prism?  How wonderfully clever you are!  I
hope it did not end happily?  I don't like novels that end happily.  They
depress me so much.

Miss Prism.  The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily.  That is what
Fiction means.

Cecily.  I suppose so.  But it seems very unfair.  And was your novel
ever published?

Miss Prism.  Alas! no.  The manuscript unfortunately was abandoned.
[Cecily starts.]  I use the word in the sense of lost or mislaid.  To
your work, child, these speculations are profitless.

Cecily.  [Smiling.]  But I see dear Dr. Chasuble coming up through the
garden.

Miss Prism.  [Rising and advancing.]  Dr. Chasuble!  This is indeed a
pleasure.

[Enter Canon Chasuble.]

Chasuble.  And how are we this morning?  Miss Prism, you are, I trust,
well?

Cecily.  Miss Prism has just been complaining of a slight headache.  I
think it would do her so much good to have a short stroll with you in the
Park, Dr. Chasuble.

Miss Prism.  Cecily, I have not mentioned anything about a headache.

Cecily.  No, dear Miss Prism, I know that, but I felt instinctively that
you had a headache.  Indeed I was thinking about that, and not about my
German lesson, when the Rector came in.

Chasuble.  I hope, Cecily, you are not inattentive.

Cecily.  Oh, I am afraid I am.

Chasuble.  That is strange.  Were I fortunate enough to be Miss Prism's
pupil, I would hang upon her lips.  [Miss Prism glares.]  I spoke
metaphorically.--My metaphor was drawn from bees.  Ahem!  Mr. Worthing, I
suppose, has not returned from town yet?

Miss Prism.  We do not expect him till Monday afternoon.

Chasuble.  Ah yes, he usually likes to spend his Sunday in London.  He is
not one of those whose sole aim is enjoyment, as, by all accounts, that
unfortunate young man his brother seems to be.  But I must not disturb
Egeria and her pupil any longer.

Miss Prism.  Egeria?  My name is Laetitia, Doctor.

Chasuble.  [Bowing.]  A classical allusion merely, drawn from the Pagan
authors.  I shall see you both no doubt at Evensong?

Miss Prism.  I think, dear Doctor, I will have a stroll with you.  I find
I have a headache after all, and a walk might do it good.

Chasuble.  With pleasure, Miss Prism, with pleasure.  We might go as far
as the schools and back.

Miss Prism.  That would be delightful.  Cecily, you will read your
Political Economy in my absence.  The chapter on the Fall of the Rupee
you may omit.  It is somewhat too sensational.  Even these metallic
problems have their melodramatic side.

[Goes down the garden with Dr. Chasuble.]

Cecily.  [Picks up books and throws them back on table.]  Horrid
Political Economy!  Horrid Geography!  Horrid, horrid German!

[Enter Merriman with a card on a salver.]

Merriman.  Mr. Ernest Worthing has just driven over from the station.  He
has brought his luggage with him.

Cecily.  [Takes the card and reads it.]  'Mr. Ernest Worthing, B. 4, The
Albany, W.'  Uncle Jack's brother!  Did you tell him Mr. Worthing was in
town?

Merriman.  Yes, Miss.  He seemed very much disappointed.  I mentioned
that you and Miss Prism were in the garden.  He said he was anxious to
speak to you privately for a moment.

Cecily.  Ask Mr. Ernest Worthing to come here.  I suppose you had better
talk to the housekeeper about a room for him.

Merriman.  Yes, Miss.

[Merriman goes off.]

Cecily.  I have never met any really wicked person before.  I feel rather
frightened.  I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.

[Enter Algernon, very gay and debonnair.]  He does!

Algernon.  [Raising his hat.]  You are my little cousin Cecily, I'm sure.

Cecily.  You are under some strange mistake.  I am not little.  In fact,
I believe I am more than usually tall for my age.  [Algernon is rather
taken aback.]  But I am your cousin Cecily.  You, I see from your card,
are Uncle Jack's brother, my cousin Ernest, my wicked cousin Ernest.

Algernon.  Oh! I am not really wicked at all, cousin Cecily.  You mustn't
think that I am wicked.

Cecily.  If you are not, then you have certainly been deceiving us all in
a very inexcusable manner.  I hope you have not been leading a double
life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time.  That
would be hypocrisy.

Algernon.  [Looks at her in amazement.]  Oh!  Of course I have been
rather reckless.

Cecily.  I am glad to hear it.

Algernon.  In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in
my own small way.

Cecily.  I don't think you should be so proud of that, though I am sure
it must have been very pleasant.

Algernon.  It is much pleasanter being here with you.

Cecily.  I can't understand how you are here at all.  Uncle Jack won't be
back till Monday afternoon.

Algernon.  That is a great disappointment.  I am obliged to go up by the
first train on Monday morning.  I have a business appointment that I am
anxious . . . to miss?

Cecily.  Couldn't you miss it anywhere but in London?

Algernon.  No: the appointment is in London.

Cecily.  Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a
business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of
life, but still I think you had better wait till Uncle Jack arrives.  I
know he wants to speak to you about your emigrating.

Algernon.  About my what?

Cecily.  Your emigrating.  He has gone up to buy your outfit.

Algernon.  I certainly wouldn't let Jack buy my outfit.  He has no taste
in neckties at all.

Cecily.  I don't think you will require neckties.  Uncle Jack is sending
you to Australia.

Algernon.  Australia!  I'd sooner die.

Cecily.  Well, he said at dinner on Wednesday night, that you would have
to choose between this world, the next world, and Australia.

Algernon.  Oh, well!  The accounts I have received of Australia and the
next world, are not particularly encouraging.  This world is good enough
for me, cousin Cecily.

Cecily.  Yes, but are you good enough for it?

Algernon.  I'm afraid I'm not that.  That is why I want you to reform me.
You might make that your mission, if you don't mind, cousin Cecily.

Cecily.  I'm afraid I've no time, this afternoon.

Algernon.  Well, would you mind my reforming myself this afternoon?

Cecily.  It is rather Quixotic of you.  But I think you should try.

Algernon.  I will.  I feel better already.

Cecily.  You are looking a little worse.

Algernon.  That is because I am hungry.

Cecily.  How thoughtless of me.  I should have remembered that when one
is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome
meals.  Won't you come in?

Algernon.  Thank you.  Might I have a buttonhole first?  I never have any
appetite unless I have a buttonhole first.

Cecily.  A Marechal Niel?  [Picks up scissors.]

Algernon.  No, I'd sooner have a pink rose.

Cecily.  Why?  [Cuts a flower.]

Algernon.  Because you are like a pink rose, Cousin Cecily.

Cecily.  I don't think it can be right for you to talk to me like that.
Miss Prism never says such things to me.

Algernon.  Then Miss Prism is a short-sighted old lady.  [Cecily puts the
rose in his buttonhole.]  You are the prettiest girl I ever saw.

Cecily.  Miss Prism says that all good looks are a snare.

Algernon.  They are a snare that every sensible man would like to be
caught in.

Cecily.  Oh, I don't think I would care to catch a sensible man.  I
shouldn't know what to talk to him about.

[They pass into the house.  Miss Prism and Dr. Chasuble return.]

Miss Prism.  You are too much alone, dear Dr. Chasuble.  You should get
married.  A misanthrope I can understand--a womanthrope, never!

Chasuble.  [With a scholar's shudder.]  Believe me, I do not deserve so
neologistic a phrase.  The precept as well as the practice of the
Primitive Church was distinctly against matrimony.

Miss Prism.  [Sententiously.]  That is obviously the reason why the
Primitive Church has not lasted up to the present day.  And you do not
seem to realise, dear Doctor, that by persistently remaining single, a
man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.  Men should be
more careful; this very celibacy leads weaker vessels astray.

Chasuble.  But is a man not equally attractive when married?

Miss Prism.  No married man is ever attractive except to his wife.

Chasuble.  And often, I've been told, not even to her.

Miss Prism.  That depends on the intellectual sympathies of the woman.
Maturity can always be depended on.  Ripeness can be trusted.  Young
women are green.  [Dr. Chasuble starts.]  I spoke horticulturally.  My
metaphor was drawn from fruits.  But where is Cecily?

Chasuble.  Perhaps she followed us to the schools.

[Enter Jack slowly from the back of the garden.  He is dressed in the
deepest mourning, with crape hatband and black gloves.]

Miss Prism.  Mr. Worthing!

Chasuble.  Mr. Worthing?

Miss Prism.  This is indeed a surprise.  We did not look for you till
Monday afternoon.

Jack.  [Shakes Miss Prism's hand in a tragic manner.]  I have returned
sooner than I expected.  Dr. Chasuble, I hope you are well?

Chasuble.  Dear Mr. Worthing, I trust this garb of woe does not betoken
some terrible calamity?

Jack.  My brother.

Miss Prism.  More shameful debts and extravagance?

Chasuble.  Still leading his life of pleasure?

Jack.  [Shaking his head.]  Dead!

Chasuble.  Your brother Ernest dead?

Jack.  Quite dead.

Miss Prism.  What a lesson for him!  I trust he will profit by it.

Chasuble.  Mr. Worthing, I offer you my sincere condolence.  You have at
least the consolation of knowing that you were always the most generous
and forgiving of brothers.

Jack.  Poor Ernest!  He had many faults, but it is a sad, sad blow.

Chasuble.  Very sad indeed.  Were you with him at the end?

Jack.  No.  He died abroad; in Paris, in fact.  I had a telegram last
night from the manager of the Grand Hotel.

Chasuble.  Was the cause of death mentioned?

Jack.  A severe chill, it seems.

Miss Prism.  As a man sows, so shall he reap.

Chasuble.  [Raising his hand.]  Charity, dear Miss Prism, charity!  None
of us are perfect.  I myself am peculiarly susceptible to draughts.  Will
the interment take place here?

Jack.  No.  He seems to have expressed a desire to be buried in Paris.

Chasuble.  In Paris!  [Shakes his head.]  I fear that hardly points to
any very serious state of mind at the last.  You would no doubt wish me
to make some slight allusion to this tragic domestic affliction next
Sunday.  [Jack presses his hand convulsively.]  My sermon on the meaning
of the manna in the wilderness can be adapted to almost any occasion,
joyful, or, as in the present case, distressing.  [All sigh.]  I have
preached it at harvest celebrations, christenings, confirmations, on days
of humiliation and festal days.  The last time I delivered it was in the
Cathedral, as a charity sermon on behalf of the Society for the
Prevention of Discontent among the Upper Orders.  The Bishop, who was
present, was much struck by some of the analogies I drew.

Jack.  Ah! that reminds me, you mentioned christenings I think, Dr.
Chasuble?  I suppose you know how to christen all right?  [Dr. Chasuble
looks astounded.]  I mean, of course, you are continually christening,
aren't you?

Miss Prism.  It is, I regret to say, one of the Rector's most constant
duties in this parish.  I have often spoken to the poorer classes on the
subject.  But they don't seem to know what thrift is.

Chasuble.  But is there any particular infant in whom you are interested,
Mr. Worthing?  Your brother was, I believe, unmarried, was he not?

Jack.  Oh yes.

Miss Prism.  [Bitterly.]  People who live entirely for pleasure usually
are.

Jack.  But it is not for any child, dear Doctor.  I am very fond of
children.  No! the fact is, I would like to be christened myself, this
afternoon, if you have nothing better to do.

Chasuble.  But surely, Mr. Worthing, you have been christened already?

Jack.  I don't remember anything about it.

Chasuble.  But have you any grave doubts on the subject?

Jack.  I certainly intend to have.  Of course I don't know if the thing
would bother you in any way, or if you think I am a little too old now.

Chasuble.  Not at all.  The sprinkling, and, indeed, the immersion of
adults is a perfectly canonical practice.

Jack.  Immersion!

Chasuble.  You need have no apprehensions.  Sprinkling is all that is
necessary, or indeed I think advisable.  Our weather is so changeable.  At
what hour would you wish the ceremony performed?

Jack.  Oh, I might trot round about five if that would suit you.

Chasuble.  Perfectly, perfectly!  In fact I have two similar ceremonies
to perform at that time.  A case of twins that occurred recently in one
of the outlying cottages on your own estate.  Poor Jenkins the carter, a
most hard-working man.

Jack.  Oh!  I don't see much fun in being christened along with other
babies.  It would be childish.  Would half-past five do?

Chasuble.  Admirably!  Admirably!  [Takes out watch.]  And now, dear Mr.
Worthing, I will not intrude any longer into a house of sorrow.  I would
merely beg you not to be too much bowed down by grief.  What seem to us
bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.

Miss Prism.  This seems to me a blessing of an extremely obvious kind.

[Enter Cecily from the house.]

Cecily.  Uncle Jack!  Oh, I am pleased to see you back.  But what horrid
clothes you have got on!  Do go and change them.

Miss Prism.  Cecily!

Chasuble.  My child! my child!  [Cecily goes towards Jack; he kisses her
brow in a melancholy manner.]

Cecily.  What is the matter, Uncle Jack?  Do look happy!  You look as if
you had toothache, and I have got such a surprise for you.  Who do you
think is in the dining-room?  Your brother!

Jack.  Who?

Cecily.  Your brother Ernest.  He arrived about half an hour ago.

Jack.  What nonsense!  I haven't got a brother.

Cecily.  Oh, don't say that.  However badly he may have behaved to you in
the past he is still your brother.  You couldn't be so heartless as to
disown him.  I'll tell him to come out.  And you will shake hands with
him, won't you, Uncle Jack?  [Runs back into the house.]

Chasuble.  These are very joyful tidings.

Miss Prism.  After we had all been resigned to his loss, his sudden
return seems to me peculiarly distressing.

Jack.  My brother is in the dining-room?  I don't know what it all means.
I think it is perfectly absurd.

[Enter Algernon and Cecily hand in hand.  They come slowly up to Jack.]

Jack.  Good heavens!  [Motions Algernon away.]

Algernon.  Brother John, I have come down from town to tell you that I am
very sorry for all the trouble I have given you, and that I intend to
lead a better life in the future.  [Jack glares at him and does not take
his hand.]

Cecily.  Uncle Jack, you are not going to refuse your own brother's hand?

Jack.  Nothing will induce me to take his hand.  I think his coming down
here disgraceful.  He knows perfectly well why.

Cecily.  Uncle Jack, do be nice.  There is some good in every one.  Ernest
has just been telling me about his poor invalid friend Mr. Bunbury whom
he goes to visit so often.  And surely there must be much good in one who
is kind to an invalid, and leaves the pleasures of London to sit by a bed
of pain.

Jack.  Oh! he has been talking about Bunbury, has he?

Cecily.  Yes, he has told me all about poor Mr. Bunbury, and his terrible
state of health.

Jack.  Bunbury!  Well, I won't have him talk to you about Bunbury or
about anything else.  It is enough to drive one perfectly frantic.

Algernon.  Of course I admit that the faults were all on my side.  But I
must say that I think that Brother John's coldness to me is peculiarly
painful.  I expected a more enthusiastic welcome, especially considering
it is the first time I have come here.

Cecily.  Uncle Jack, if you don't shake hands with Ernest I will never
forgive you.

Jack.  Never forgive me?

Cecily.  Never, never, never!

Jack.  Well, this is the last time I shall ever do it.  [Shakes with
Algernon and glares.]

Chasuble.  It's pleasant, is it not, to see so perfect a reconciliation?
I think we might leave the two brothers together.

Miss Prism.  Cecily, you will come with us.

Cecily.  Certainly, Miss Prism.  My little task of reconciliation is
over.

Chasuble.  You have done a beautiful action to-day, dear child.

Miss Prism.  We must not be premature in our judgments.

Cecily.  I feel very happy.  [They all go off except Jack and Algernon.]

Jack.  You young scoundrel, Algy, you must get out of this place as soon
as possible.  I don't allow any Bunburying here.

[Enter Merriman.]

Merriman.  I have put Mr. Ernest's things in the room next to yours, sir.
I suppose that is all right?

Jack.  What?

Merriman.  Mr. Ernest's luggage, sir.  I have unpacked it and put it in
the room next to your own.

Jack.  His luggage?

Merriman.  Yes, sir.  Three portmanteaus, a dressing-case, two hat-boxes,
and a large luncheon-basket.

Algernon.  I am afraid I can't stay more than a week this time.

Jack.  Merriman, order the dog-cart at once.  Mr. Ernest has been
suddenly called back to town.

Merriman.  Yes, sir.  [Goes back into the house.]

Algernon.  What a fearful liar you are, Jack.  I have not been called
back to town at all.

Jack.  Yes, you have.

Algernon.  I haven't heard any one call me.

Jack.  Your duty as a gentleman calls you back.

Algernon.  My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures
in the smallest degree.

Jack.  I can quite understand that.

Algernon.  Well, Cecily is a darling.

Jack.  You are not to talk of Miss Cardew like that.  I don't like it.

Algernon.  Well, I don't like your clothes.  You look perfectly
ridiculous in them.  Why on earth don't you go up and change?  It is
perfectly childish to be in deep mourning for a man who is actually
staying for a whole week with you in your house as a guest.  I call it
grotesque.

Jack.  You are certainly not staying with me for a whole week as a guest
or anything else.  You have got to leave . . . by the four-five train.

Algernon.  I certainly won't leave you so long as you are in mourning.  It
would be most unfriendly.  If I were in mourning you would stay with me,
I suppose.  I should think it very unkind if you didn't.

Jack.  Well, will you go if I change my clothes?

Algernon.  Yes, if you are not too long.  I never saw anybody take so
long to dress, and with such little result.

Jack.  Well, at any rate, that is better than being always over-dressed
as you are.

Algernon.  If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it
by being always immensely over-educated.

Jack.  Your vanity is ridiculous, your conduct an outrage, and your
presence in my garden utterly absurd.  However, you have got to catch the
four-five, and I hope you will have a pleasant journey back to town.  This
Bunburying, as you call it, has not been a great success for you.

[Goes into the house.]

Algernon.  I think it has been a great success.  I'm in love with Cecily,
and that is everything.

[Enter Cecily at the back of the garden.  She picks up the can and begins
to water the flowers.]  But I must see her before I go, and make
arrangements for another Bunbury.  Ah, there she is.

Cecily.  Oh, I merely came back to water the roses.  I thought you were
with Uncle Jack.

Algernon.  He's gone to order the dog-cart for me.

Cecily.  Oh, is he going to take you for a nice drive?

Algernon.  He's going to send me away.

Cecily.  Then have we got to part?

Algernon.  I am afraid so.  It's a very painful parting.

Cecily.  It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for
a very brief space of time.  The absence of old friends one can endure
with equanimity.  But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one
has just been introduced is almost unbearable.

Algernon.  Thank you.

[Enter Merriman.]

Merriman.  The dog-cart is at the door, sir.  [Algernon looks appealingly
at Cecily.]

Cecily.  It can wait, Merriman for . . . five minutes.

Merriman.  Yes, Miss.  [Exit Merriman.]

Algernon.  I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite
frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible
personification of absolute perfection.

Cecily.  I think your frankness does you great credit, Ernest.  If you
will allow me, I will copy your remarks into my diary.  [Goes over to
table and begins writing in diary.]

Algernon.  Do you really keep a diary?  I'd give anything to look at it.
May I?

Cecily.  Oh no.  [Puts her hand over it.]  You see, it is simply a very
young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently
meant for publication.  When it appears in volume form I hope you will
order a copy.  But pray, Ernest, don't stop.  I delight in taking down
from dictation.  I have reached 'absolute perfection'.  You can go on.  I
am quite ready for more.

Algernon.  [Somewhat taken aback.]  Ahem!  Ahem!

Cecily.  Oh, don't cough, Ernest.  When one is dictating one should speak
fluently and not cough.  Besides, I don't know how to spell a cough.
[Writes as Algernon speaks.]

Algernon.  [Speaking very rapidly.]  Cecily, ever since I first looked
upon your wonderful and incomparable beauty, I have dared to love you
wildly, passionately, devotedly, hopelessly.

Cecily.  I don't think that you should tell me that you love me wildly,
passionately, devotedly, hopelessly.  Hopelessly doesn't seem to make
much sense, does it?

Algernon.  Cecily!

[Enter Merriman.]

Merriman.  The dog-cart is waiting, sir.

Algernon.  Tell it to come round next week, at the same hour.

Merriman.  [Looks at Cecily, who makes no sign.]  Yes, sir.

[Merriman retires.]

Cecily.  Uncle Jack would be very much annoyed if he knew you were
staying on till next week, at the same hour.

Algernon.  Oh, I don't care about Jack.  I don't care for anybody in the
whole world but you.  I love you, Cecily.  You will marry me, won't you?

Cecily.  You silly boy!  Of course.  Why, we have been engaged for the
last three months.

Algernon.  For the last three months?

Cecily.  Yes, it will be exactly three months on Thursday.

Algernon.  But how did we become engaged?

Cecily.  Well, ever since dear Uncle Jack first confessed to us that he
had a younger brother who was very wicked and bad, you of course have
formed the chief topic of conversation between myself and Miss Prism.  And
of course a man who is much talked about is always very attractive.  One
feels there must be something in him, after all.  I daresay it was
foolish of me, but I fell in love with you, Ernest.

Algernon.  Darling!  And when was the engagement actually settled?

Cecily.  On the 14th of February last.  Worn out by your entire ignorance
of my existence, I determined to end the matter one way or the other, and
after a long struggle with myself I accepted you under this dear old tree
here.  The next day I bought this little ring in your name, and this is
the little bangle with the true lover's knot I promised you always to
wear.

Algernon.  Did I give you this?  It's very pretty, isn't it?

Cecily.  Yes, you've wonderfully good taste, Ernest.  It's the excuse
I've always given for your leading such a bad life.  And this is the box
in which I keep all your dear letters.  [Kneels at table, opens box, and
produces letters tied up with blue ribbon.]

Algernon.  My letters!  But, my own sweet Cecily, I have never written
you any letters.

Cecily.  You need hardly remind me of that, Ernest.  I remember only too
well that I was forced to write your letters for you.  I wrote always
three times a week, and sometimes oftener.

Algernon.  Oh, do let me read them, Cecily?

Cecily.  Oh, I couldn't possibly.  They would make you far too conceited.
[Replaces box.]  The three you wrote me after I had broken off the
engagement are so beautiful, and so badly spelled, that even now I can
hardly read them without crying a little.

Algernon.  But was our engagement ever broken off?

Cecily.  Of course it was.  On the 22nd of last March.  You can see the
entry if you like. [Shows diary.]  'To-day I broke off my engagement with
Ernest.  I feel it is better to do so.  The weather still continues
charming.'

Algernon.  But why on earth did you break it off?  What had I done?  I
had done nothing at all.  Cecily, I am very much hurt indeed to hear you
broke it off.  Particularly when the weather was so charming.

Cecily.  It would hardly have been a really serious engagement if it
hadn't been broken off at least once.  But I forgave you before the week
was out.

Algernon.  [Crossing to her, and kneeling.]  What a perfect angel you
are, Cecily.

Cecily.  You dear romantic boy.  [He kisses her, she puts her fingers
through his hair.]  I hope your hair curls naturally, does it?

Algernon.  Yes, darling, with a little help from others.

Cecily.  I am so glad.

Algernon.  You'll never break off our engagement again, Cecily?

Cecily.  I don't think I could break it off now that I have actually met
you.  Besides, of course, there is the question of your name.

Algernon.  Yes, of course.  [Nervously.]

Cecily.  You must not laugh at me, darling, but it had always been a
girlish dream of mine to love some one whose name was Ernest.  [Algernon
rises, Cecily also.]  There is something in that name that seems to
inspire absolute confidence.  I pity any poor married woman whose husband
is not called Ernest.

Algernon.  But, my dear child, do you mean to say you could not love me
if I had some other name?

Cecily.  But what name?

Algernon.  Oh, any name you like--Algernon--for instance . . .

Cecily.  But I don't like the name of Algernon.

Algernon.  Well, my own dear, sweet, loving little darling, I really
can't see why you should object to the name of Algernon.  It is not at
all a bad name.  In fact, it is rather an aristocratic name.  Half of the
chaps who get into the Bankruptcy Court are called Algernon.  But
seriously, Cecily . . . [Moving to her] . . . if my name was Algy,
couldn't you love me?

Cecily.  [Rising.]  I might respect you, Ernest, I might admire your
character, but I fear that I should not be able to give you my undivided
attention.

Algernon.  Ahem!  Cecily!  [Picking up hat.]  Your Rector here is, I
suppose, thoroughly experienced in the practice of all the rites and
ceremonials of the Church?

Cecily.  Oh, yes.  Dr. Chasuble is a most learned man.  He has never
written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows.

Algernon.  I must see him at once on a most important christening--I mean
on most important business.

Cecily.  Oh!

Algernon.  I shan't be away more than half an hour.

Cecily.  Considering that we have been engaged since February the 14th,
and that I only met you to-day for the first time, I think it is rather
hard that you should leave me for so long a period as half an hour.
Couldn't you make it twenty minutes?

Algernon.  I'll be back in no time.

[Kisses her and rushes down the garden.]

Cecily.  What an impetuous boy he is!  I like his hair so much.  I must
enter his proposal in my diary.

[Enter Merriman.]

Merriman.  A Miss Fairfax has just called to see Mr. Worthing.  On very
important business, Miss Fairfax states.

Cecily.  Isn't Mr. Worthing in his library?

Merriman.  Mr. Worthing went over in the direction of the Rectory some
time ago.

Cecily.  Pray ask the lady to come out here; Mr. Worthing is sure to be
back soon.  And you can bring tea.

Merriman.  Yes, Miss.  [Goes out.]

Cecily.  Miss Fairfax!  I suppose one of the many good elderly women who
are associated with Uncle Jack in some of his philanthropic work in
London.  I don't quite like women who are interested in philanthropic
work.  I think it is so forward of them.

[Enter Merriman.]

Merriman.  Miss Fairfax.

[Enter Gwendolen.]

[Exit Merriman.]

Cecily.  [Advancing to meet her.]  Pray let me introduce myself to you.
My name is Cecily Cardew.

Gwendolen.  Cecily Cardew?  [Moving to her and shaking hands.]  What a
very sweet name!  Something tells me that we are going to be great
friends.  I like you already more than I can say.  My first impressions
of people are never wrong.

Cecily.  How nice of you to like me so much after we have known each
other such a comparatively short time.  Pray sit down.

Gwendolen.  [Still standing up.]  I may call you Cecily, may I not?

Cecily.  With pleasure!

Gwendolen.  And you will always call me Gwendolen, won't you?

Cecily.  If you wish.

Gwendolen.  Then that is all quite settled, is it not?

Cecily.  I hope so.  [A pause.  They both sit down together.]

Gwendolen.  Perhaps this might be a favourable opportunity for my
mentioning who I am.  My father is Lord Bracknell.  You have never heard
of papa, I suppose?

Cecily.  I don't think so.

Gwendolen.  Outside the family circle, papa, I am glad to say, is
entirely unknown.  I think that is quite as it should be.  The home seems
to me to be the proper sphere for the man.  And certainly once a man
begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate,
does he not?  And I don't like that.  It makes men so very attractive.
Cecily, mamma, whose views on education are remarkably strict, has
brought me up to be extremely short-sighted; it is part of her system; so
do you mind my looking at you through my glasses?

Cecily.  Oh! not at all, Gwendolen.  I am very fond of being looked at.

Gwendolen.  [After examining Cecily carefully through a lorgnette.]  You
are here on a short visit, I suppose.

Cecily.  Oh no!  I live here.

Gwendolen.  [Severely.]  Really?  Your mother, no doubt, or some female
relative of advanced years, resides here also?

Cecily.  Oh no!  I have no mother, nor, in fact, any relations.

Gwendolen.  Indeed?

Cecily.  My dear guardian, with the assistance of Miss Prism, has the
arduous task of looking after me.

Gwendolen.  Your guardian?

Cecily.  Yes, I am Mr. Worthing's ward.

Gwendolen.  Oh!  It is strange he never mentioned to me that he had a
ward.  How secretive of him!  He grows more interesting hourly.  I am not
sure, however, that the news inspires me with feelings of unmixed
delight.  [Rising and going to her.]  I am very fond of you, Cecily; I
have liked you ever since I met you!  But I am bound to state that now
that I know that you are Mr. Worthing's ward, I cannot help expressing a
wish you were--well, just a little older than you seem to be--and not
quite so very alluring in appearance.  In fact, if I may speak candidly--

Cecily.  Pray do!  I think that whenever one has anything unpleasant to
say, one should always be quite candid.

Gwendolen.  Well, to speak with perfect candour, Cecily, I wish that you
were fully forty-two, and more than usually plain for your age.  Ernest
has a strong upright nature.  He is the very soul of truth and honour.
Disloyalty would be as impossible to him as deception.  But even men of
the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the
influence of the physical charms of others.  Modern, no less than Ancient
History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to.
If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.

Cecily.  I beg your pardon, Gwendolen, did you say Ernest?

Gwendolen.  Yes.

Cecily.  Oh, but it is not Mr. Ernest Worthing who is my guardian.  It is
his brother--his elder brother.

Gwendolen.  [Sitting down again.]  Ernest never mentioned to me that he
had a brother.

Cecily.  I am sorry to say they have not been on good terms for a long
time.

Gwendolen.  Ah! that accounts for it.  And now that I think of it I have
never heard any man mention his brother.  The subject seems distasteful
to most men.  Cecily, you have lifted a load from my mind.  I was growing
almost anxious.  It would have been terrible if any cloud had come across
a friendship like ours, would it not?  Of course you are quite, quite
sure that it is not Mr. Ernest Worthing who is your guardian?

Cecily.  Quite sure.  [A pause.]  In fact, I am going to be his.

Gwendolen.  [Inquiringly.]  I beg your pardon?

Cecily.  [Rather shy and confidingly.]  Dearest Gwendolen, there is no
reason why I should make a secret of it to you.  Our little county
newspaper is sure to chronicle the fact next week.  Mr. Ernest Worthing
and I are engaged to be married.

Gwendolen.  [Quite politely, rising.]  My darling Cecily, I think there
must be some slight error.  Mr. Ernest Worthing is engaged to me.  The
announcement will appear in the _Morning Post_ on Saturday at the latest.

Cecily.  [Very politely, rising.]  I am afraid you must be under some
misconception.  Ernest proposed to me exactly ten minutes ago.  [Shows
diary.]

Gwendolen.  [Examines diary through her lorgnettte carefully.]  It is
certainly very curious, for he asked me to be his wife yesterday
afternoon at 5.30.  If you would care to verify the incident, pray do so.
[Produces diary of her own.]  I never travel without my diary.  One
should always have something sensational to read in the train.  I am so
sorry, dear Cecily, if it is any disappointment to you, but I am afraid I
have the prior claim.

Cecily.  It would distress me more than I can tell you, dear Gwendolen,
if it caused you any mental or physical anguish, but I feel bound to
point out that since Ernest proposed to you he clearly has changed his
mind.

Gwendolen.  [Meditatively.]  If the poor fellow has been entrapped into
any foolish promise I shall consider it my duty to rescue him at once,
and with a firm hand.

Cecily.  [Thoughtfully and sadly.]  Whatever unfortunate entanglement my
dear boy may have got into, I will never reproach him with it after we
are married.

Gwendolen.  Do you allude to me, Miss Cardew, as an entanglement?  You
are presumptuous.  On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a
moral duty to speak one's mind.  It becomes a pleasure.

Cecily.  Do you suggest, Miss Fairfax, that I entrapped Ernest into an
engagement?  How dare you?  This is no time for wearing the shallow mask
of manners.  When I see a spade I call it a spade.

Gwendolen.  [Satirically.]  I am glad to say that I have never seen a
spade.  It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

[Enter Merriman, followed by the footman.  He carries a salver, table
cloth, and plate stand.  Cecily is about to retort.  The presence of the
servants exercises a restraining influence, under which both girls
chafe.]

Merriman.  Shall I lay tea here as usual, Miss?

Cecily.  [Sternly, in a calm voice.]  Yes, as usual.  [Merriman begins to
clear table and lay cloth.  A long pause.  Cecily and Gwendolen glare at
each other.]

Gwendolen.  Are there many interesting walks in the vicinity, Miss
Cardew?

Cecily.  Oh! yes! a great many.  From the top of one of the hills quite
close one can see five counties.

Gwendolen.  Five counties!  I don't think I should like that; I hate
crowds.

Cecily.  [Sweetly.]  I suppose that is why you live in town?  [Gwendolen
bites her lip, and beats her foot nervously with her parasol.]

Gwendolen.  [Looking round.]  Quite a well-kept garden this is, Miss
Cardew.

Cecily.  So glad you like it, Miss Fairfax.

Gwendolen.  I had no idea there were any flowers in the country.

Cecily.  Oh, flowers are as common here, Miss Fairfax, as people are in
London.

Gwendolen.  Personally I cannot understand how anybody manages to exist
in the country, if anybody who is anybody does.  The country always bores
me to death.

Cecily.  Ah!  This is what the newspapers call agricultural depression,
is it not?  I believe the aristocracy are suffering very much from it
just at present.  It is almost an epidemic amongst them, I have been
told.  May I offer you some tea, Miss Fairfax?

Gwendolen.  [With elaborate politeness.]  Thank you.  [Aside.]  Detestable
girl!  But I require tea!

Cecily.  [Sweetly.]  Sugar?

Gwendolen.  [Superciliously.]  No, thank you.  Sugar is not fashionable
any more. [Cecily looks angrily at her, takes up the tongs and puts four
lumps of sugar into the cup.]

Cecily.  [Severely.]  Cake or bread and butter?

Gwendolen.  [In a bored manner.]  Bread and butter, please.  Cake is
rarely seen at the best houses nowadays.

Cecily.  [Cuts a very large slice of cake, and puts it on the tray.]  Hand
that to Miss Fairfax.

[Merriman does so, and goes out with footman.  Gwendolen drinks the tea
and makes a grimace.  Puts down cup at once, reaches out her hand to the
bread and butter, looks at it, and finds it is cake.  Rises in
indignation.]

Gwendolen.  You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I
asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake.  I am
known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary
sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.

Cecily.  [Rising.]  To save my poor, innocent, trusting boy from the
machinations of any other girl there are no lengths to which I would not
go.

Gwendolen.  From the moment I saw you I distrusted you.  I felt that you
were false and deceitful.  I am never deceived in such matters.  My first
impressions of people are invariably right.

Cecily.  It seems to me, Miss Fairfax, that I am trespassing on your
valuable time.  No doubt you have many other calls of a similar character
to make in the neighbourhood.

[Enter Jack.]

Gwendolen.  [Catching sight of him.]  Ernest!  My own Ernest!

Jack.  Gwendolen!  Darling!  [Offers to kiss her.]

Gwendolen.  [Draws back.]  A moment!  May I ask if you are engaged to be
married to this young lady?  [Points to Cecily.]

Jack.  [Laughing.]  To dear little Cecily!  Of course not!  What could
have put such an idea into your pretty little head?

Gwendolen.  Thank you.  You may!  [Offers her cheek.]

Cecily.  [Very sweetly.]  I knew there must be some misunderstanding,
Miss Fairfax.  The gentleman whose arm is at present round your waist is
my guardian, Mr. John Worthing.

Gwendolen.  I beg your pardon?

Cecily.  This is Uncle Jack.

Gwendolen.  [Receding.]  Jack!  Oh!

[Enter Algernon.]

Cecily.  Here is Ernest.

Algernon.  [Goes straight over to Cecily without noticing any one else.]
My own love!  [Offers to kiss her.]

Cecily.  [Drawing back.]  A moment, Ernest!  May I ask you--are you
engaged to be married to this young lady?

Algernon.  [Looking round.]  To what young lady?  Good heavens!
Gwendolen!

Cecily.  Yes! to good heavens, Gwendolen, I mean to Gwendolen.

Algernon.  [Laughing.]  Of course not!  What could have put such an idea
into your pretty little head?

Cecily.  Thank you.  [Presenting her cheek to be kissed.]  You may.
[Algernon kisses her.]

Gwendolen.  I felt there was some slight error, Miss Cardew.  The
gentleman who is now embracing you is my cousin, Mr. Algernon Moncrieff.

Cecily.  [Breaking away from Algernon.]  Algernon Moncrieff!  Oh!  [The
two girls move towards each other and put their arms round each other's
waists as if for protection.]

Cecily.  Are you called Algernon?

Algernon.  I cannot deny it.

Cecily.  Oh!

Gwendolen.  Is your name really John?

Jack.  [Standing rather proudly.]  I could deny it if I liked.  I could
deny anything if I liked.  But my name certainly is John.  It has been
John for years.

Cecily.  [To Gwendolen.]  A gross deception has been practised on both of
us.

Gwendolen.  My poor wounded Cecily!

Cecily.  My sweet wronged Gwendolen!

Gwendolen.  [Slowly and seriously.]  You will call me sister, will you
not?  [They embrace.  Jack and Algernon groan and walk up and down.]

Cecily.  [Rather brightly.]  There is just one question I would like to
be allowed to ask my guardian.

Gwendolen.  An admirable idea!  Mr. Worthing, there is just one question
I would like to be permitted to put to you.  Where is your brother
Ernest?  We are both engaged to be married to your brother Ernest, so it
is a matter of some importance to us to know where your brother Ernest is
at present.

Jack.  [Slowly and hesitatingly.]  Gwendolen--Cecily--it is very painful
for me to be forced to speak the truth.  It is the first time in my life
that I have ever been reduced to such a painful position, and I am really
quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind.  However, I will tell
you quite frankly that I have no brother Ernest.  I have no brother at
all.  I never had a brother in my life, and I certainly have not the
smallest intention of ever having one in the future.

Cecily.  [Surprised.]  No brother at all?

Jack.  [Cheerily.]  None!

Gwendolen.  [Severely.]  Had you never a brother of any kind?

Jack.  [Pleasantly.]  Never.  Not even of any kind.

Gwendolen.  I am afraid it is quite clear, Cecily, that neither of us is
engaged to be married to any one.

Cecily.  It is not a very pleasant position for a young girl suddenly to
find herself in.  Is it?

Gwendolen.  Let us go into the house.  They will hardly venture to come
after us there.

Cecily.  No, men are so cowardly, aren't they?

[They retire into the house with scornful looks.]

Jack.  This ghastly state of things is what you call Bunburying, I
suppose?

Algernon.  Yes, and a perfectly wonderful Bunbury it is.  The most
wonderful Bunbury I have ever had in my life.

Jack.  Well, you've no right whatsoever to Bunbury here.

Algernon.  That is absurd.  One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one
chooses.  Every serious Bunburyist knows that.

Jack.  Serious Bunburyist!  Good heavens!

Algernon.  Well, one must be serious about something, if one wants to
have any amusement in life.  I happen to be serious about Bunburying.
What on earth you are serious about I haven't got the remotest idea.
About everything, I should fancy.  You have such an absolutely trivial
nature.

Jack.  Well, the only small satisfaction I have in the whole of this
wretched business is that your friend Bunbury is quite exploded.  You
won't be able to run down to the country quite so often as you used to
do, dear Algy.  And a very good thing too.

Algernon.  Your brother is a little off colour, isn't he, dear Jack?  You
won't be able to disappear to London quite so frequently as your wicked
custom was.  And not a bad thing either.

Jack.  As for your conduct towards Miss Cardew, I must say that your
taking in a sweet, simple, innocent girl like that is quite inexcusable.
To say nothing of the fact that she is my ward.

Algernon.  I can see no possible defence at all for your deceiving a
brilliant, clever, thoroughly experienced young lady like Miss Fairfax.
To say nothing of the fact that she is my cousin.

Jack.  I wanted to be engaged to Gwendolen, that is all.  I love her.

Algernon.  Well, I simply wanted to be engaged to Cecily.  I adore her.

Jack.  There is certainly no chance of your marrying Miss Cardew.

Algernon.  I don't think there is much likelihood, Jack, of you and Miss
Fairfax being united.

Jack.  Well, that is no business of yours.

Algernon.  If it was my business, I wouldn't talk about it.  [Begins to
eat muffins.]  It is very vulgar to talk about one's business.  Only
people like stock-brokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.

Jack.  How can you sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this
horrible trouble, I can't make out.  You seem to me to be perfectly
heartless.

Algernon.  Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner.  The butter
would probably get on my cuffs.  One should always eat muffins quite
calmly.  It is the only way to eat them.

Jack.  I say it's perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under
the circumstances.

Algernon.  When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles
me.  Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as any one who knows me
intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink.  At
the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy.  Besides, I
am particularly fond of muffins.  [Rising.]

Jack.  [Rising.]  Well, that is no reason why you should eat them all in
that greedy way. [Takes muffins from Algernon.]

Algernon.  [Offering tea-cake.]  I wish you would have tea-cake instead.
I don't like tea-cake.

Jack.  Good heavens!  I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own
garden.

Algernon.  But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat
muffins.

Jack.  I said it was perfectly heartless of you, under the circumstances.
That is a very different thing.

Algernon.  That may be.  But the muffins are the same.  [He seizes the
muffin-dish from Jack.]

Jack.  Algy, I wish to goodness you would go.

Algernon.  You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner.
It's absurd.  I never go without my dinner.  No one ever does, except
vegetarians and people like that.  Besides I have just made arrangements
with Dr. Chasuble to be christened at a quarter to six under the name of
Ernest.

Jack.  My dear fellow, the sooner you give up that nonsense the better.  I
made arrangements this morning with Dr. Chasuble to be christened myself
at 5.30, and I naturally will take the name of Ernest.  Gwendolen would
wish it.  We can't both be christened Ernest.  It's absurd.  Besides, I
have a perfect right to be christened if I like.  There is no evidence at
all that I have ever been christened by anybody.  I should think it
extremely probable I never was, and so does Dr. Chasuble.  It is entirely
different in your case.  You have been christened already.

Algernon.  Yes, but I have not been christened for years.

Jack.  Yes, but you have been christened.  That is the important thing.

Algernon.  Quite so.  So I know my constitution can stand it.  If you are
not quite sure about your ever having been christened, I must say I think
it rather dangerous your venturing on it now.  It might make you very
unwell.  You can hardly have forgotten that some one very closely
connected with you was very nearly carried off this week in Paris by a
severe chill.

Jack.  Yes, but you said yourself that a severe chill was not hereditary.

Algernon.  It usen't to be, I know--but I daresay it is now.  Science is
always making wonderful improvements in things.

Jack.  [Picking up the muffin-dish.]  Oh, that is nonsense; you are
always talking nonsense.

Algernon.  Jack, you are at the muffins again!  I wish you wouldn't.
There are only two left.  [Takes them.]  I told you I was particularly
fond of muffins.

Jack.  But I hate tea-cake.

Algernon.  Why on earth then do you allow tea-cake to be served up for
your guests?  What ideas you have of hospitality!

Jack.  Algernon!  I have already told you to go.  I don't want you here.
Why don't you go!

Algernon.  I haven't quite finished my tea yet! and there is still one
muffin left.  [Jack groans, and sinks into a chair.  Algernon still
continues eating.]

ACT DROP




THIRD ACT


SCENE


Morning-room at the Manor House.

[Gwendolen and Cecily are at the window, looking out into the garden.]

Gwendolen.  The fact that they did not follow us at once into the house,
as any one else would have done, seems to me to show that they have some
sense of shame left.

Cecily.  They have been eating muffins.  That looks like repentance.

Gwendolen.  [After a pause.]  They don't seem to notice us at all.
Couldn't you cough?

Cecily.  But I haven't got a cough.

Gwendolen.  They're looking at us.  What effrontery!

Cecily.  They're approaching.  That's very forward of them.

Gwendolen.  Let us preserve a dignified silence.

Cecily.  Certainly.  It's the only thing to do now.  [Enter Jack followed
by Algernon.  They whistle some dreadful popular air from a British
Opera.]

Gwendolen.  This dignified silence seems to produce an unpleasant effect.

Cecily.  A most distasteful one.

Gwendolen.  But we will not be the first to speak.

Cecily.  Certainly not.

Gwendolen.  Mr. Worthing, I have something very particular to ask you.
Much depends on your reply.

Cecily.  Gwendolen, your common sense is invaluable.  Mr. Moncrieff,
kindly answer me the following question.  Why did you pretend to be my
guardian's brother?

Algernon.  In order that I might have an opportunity of meeting you.

Cecily.  [To Gwendolen.]  That certainly seems a satisfactory
explanation, does it not?

Gwendolen.  Yes, dear, if you can believe him.

Cecily.  I don't.  But that does not affect the wonderful beauty of his
answer.

Gwendolen.  True.  In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity
is the vital thing.  Mr. Worthing, what explanation can you offer to me
for pretending to have a brother?  Was it in order that you might have an
opportunity of coming up to town to see me as often as possible?

Jack.  Can you doubt it, Miss Fairfax?

Gwendolen.  I have the gravest doubts upon the subject.  But I intend to
crush them.  This is not the moment for German scepticism.  [Moving to
Cecily.]  Their explanations appear to be quite satisfactory, especially
Mr. Worthing's.  That seems to me to have the stamp of truth upon it.

Cecily.  I am more than content with what Mr. Moncrieff said.  His voice
alone inspires one with absolute credulity.

Gwendolen.  Then you think we should forgive them?

Cecily.  Yes.  I mean no.

Gwendolen.  True!  I had forgotten.  There are principles at stake that
one cannot surrender.  Which of us should tell them?  The task is not a
pleasant one.

Cecily.  Could we not both speak at the same time?

Gwendolen.  An excellent idea!  I nearly always speak at the same time as
other people.  Will you take the time from me?

Cecily.  Certainly.  [Gwendolen beats time with uplifted finger.]

Gwendolen and Cecily [Speaking together.]  Your Christian names are still
an insuperable barrier.  That is all!

Jack and Algernon [Speaking together.]  Our Christian names!  Is that
all?  But we are going to be christened this afternoon.

Gwendolen.  [To Jack.]  For my sake you are prepared to do this terrible
thing?

Jack.  I am.

Cecily.  [To Algernon.]  To please me you are ready to face this fearful
ordeal?

Algernon.  I am!

Gwendolen.  How absurd to talk of the equality of the sexes!  Where
questions of self-sacrifice are concerned, men are infinitely beyond us.

Jack.  We are.  [Clasps hands with Algernon.]

Cecily.  They have moments of physical courage of which we women know
absolutely nothing.

Gwendolen.  [To Jack.]  Darling!

Algernon.  [To Cecily.]  Darling!  [They fall into each other's arms.]

[Enter Merriman.  When he enters he coughs loudly, seeing the situation.]

Merriman.  Ahem!  Ahem!  Lady Bracknell!

Jack.  Good heavens!

[Enter Lady Bracknell.  The couples separate in alarm.  Exit Merriman.]

Lady Bracknell.  Gwendolen!  What does this mean?

Gwendolen.  Merely that I am engaged to be married to Mr. Worthing,
mamma.

Lady Bracknell.  Come here.  Sit down.  Sit down immediately.  Hesitation
of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness
in the old.  [Turns to Jack.]  Apprised, sir, of my daughter's sudden
flight by her trusty maid, whose confidence I purchased by means of a
small coin, I followed her at once by a luggage train.  Her unhappy
father is, I am glad to say, under the impression that she is attending a
more than usually lengthy lecture by the University Extension Scheme on
the Influence of a permanent income on Thought.  I do not propose to
undeceive him.  Indeed I have never undeceived him on any question.  I
would consider it wrong.  But of course, you will clearly understand that
all communication between yourself and my daughter must cease immediately
from this moment.  On this point, as indeed on all points, I am firm.

Jack.  I am engaged to be married to Gwendolen, Lady Bracknell!

Lady Bracknell.  You are nothing of the kind, sir.  And now, as regards
Algernon! . . . Algernon!

Algernon.  Yes, Aunt Augusta.

Lady Bracknell.  May I ask if it is in this house that your invalid
friend Mr. Bunbury resides?

Algernon.  [Stammering.]  Oh!  No!  Bunbury doesn't live here.  Bunbury
is somewhere else at present.  In fact, Bunbury is dead.

Lady Bracknell.  Dead!  When did Mr. Bunbury die?  His death must have
been extremely sudden.

Algernon.  [Airily.]  Oh!  I killed Bunbury this afternoon.  I mean poor
Bunbury died this afternoon.

Lady Bracknell.  What did he die of?

Algernon.  Bunbury?  Oh, he was quite exploded.

Lady Bracknell.  Exploded!  Was he the victim of a revolutionary outrage?
I was not aware that Mr. Bunbury was interested in social legislation.  If
so, he is well punished for his morbidity.

Algernon.  My dear Aunt Augusta, I mean he was found out!  The doctors
found out that Bunbury could not live, that is what I mean--so Bunbury
died.

Lady Bracknell.  He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of
his physicians.  I am glad, however, that he made up his mind at the last
to some definite course of action, and acted under proper medical advice.
And now that we have finally got rid of this Mr. Bunbury, may I ask, Mr.
Worthing, who is that young person whose hand my nephew Algernon is now
holding in what seems to me a peculiarly unnecessary manner?

Jack.  That lady is Miss Cecily Cardew, my ward.  [Lady Bracknell bows
coldly to Cecily.]

Algernon.  I am engaged to be married to Cecily, Aunt Augusta.

Lady Bracknell.  I beg your pardon?

Cecily.  Mr. Moncrieff and I are engaged to be married, Lady Bracknell.

Lady Bracknell.  [With a shiver, crossing to the sofa and sitting down.]
I do not know whether there is anything peculiarly exciting in the air of
this particular part of Hertfordshire, but the number of engagements that
go on seems to me considerably above the proper average that statistics
have laid down for our guidance.  I think some preliminary inquiry on my
part would not be out of place.  Mr. Worthing, is Miss Cardew at all
connected with any of the larger railway stations in London?  I merely
desire information.  Until yesterday I had no idea that there were any
families or persons whose origin was a Terminus.  [Jack looks perfectly
furious, but restrains himself.]

Jack.  [In a clear, cold voice.]  Miss Cardew is the grand-daughter of
the late Mr. Thomas Cardew of 149 Belgrave Square, S.W.; Gervase Park,
Dorking, Surrey; and the Sporran, Fifeshire, N.B.

Lady Bracknell.  That sounds not unsatisfactory.  Three addresses always
inspire confidence, even in tradesmen.  But what proof have I of their
authenticity?

Jack.  I have carefully preserved the Court Guides of the period.  They
are open to your inspection, Lady Bracknell.

Lady Bracknell.  [Grimly.]  I have known strange errors in that
publication.

Jack.  Miss Cardew's family solicitors are Messrs. Markby, Markby, and
Markby.

Lady Bracknell.  Markby, Markby, and Markby?  A firm of the very highest
position in their profession.  Indeed I am told that one of the Mr.
Markby's is occasionally to be seen at dinner parties.  So far I am
satisfied.

Jack.  [Very irritably.]  How extremely kind of you, Lady Bracknell!  I
have also in my possession, you will be pleased to hear, certificates of
Miss Cardew's birth, baptism, whooping cough, registration, vaccination,
confirmation, and the measles; both the German and the English variety.

Lady Bracknell.  Ah! A life crowded with incident, I see; though perhaps
somewhat too exciting for a young girl.  I am not myself in favour of
premature experiences.  [Rises, looks at her watch.]  Gwendolen! the time
approaches for our departure.  We have not a moment to lose.  As a matter
of form, Mr. Worthing, I had better ask you if Miss Cardew has any little
fortune?

Jack.  Oh! about a hundred and thirty thousand pounds in the Funds.  That
is all.  Goodbye, Lady Bracknell.  So pleased to have seen you.

Lady Bracknell.  [Sitting down again.]  A moment, Mr. Worthing.  A
hundred and thirty thousand pounds!  And in the Funds!  Miss Cardew seems
to me a most attractive young lady, now that I look at her.  Few girls of
the present day have any really solid qualities, any of the qualities
that last, and improve with time.  We live, I regret to say, in an age of
surfaces.  [To Cecily.]  Come over here, dear.  [Cecily goes across.]
Pretty child! your dress is sadly simple, and your hair seems almost as
Nature might have left it.  But we can soon alter all that.  A thoroughly
experienced French maid produces a really marvellous result in a very
brief space of time.  I remember recommending one to young Lady Lancing,
and after three months her own husband did not know her.

Jack.  And after six months nobody knew her.

Lady Bracknell.  [Glares at Jack for a few moments.  Then bends, with a
practised smile, to Cecily.]  Kindly turn round, sweet child.  [Cecily
turns completely round.]  No, the side view is what I want.  [Cecily
presents her profile.]  Yes, quite as I expected.  There are distinct
social possibilities in your profile.  The two weak points in our age are
its want of principle and its want of profile.  The chin a little higher,
dear.  Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn.  They are worn
very high, just at present.  Algernon!

Algernon.  Yes, Aunt Augusta!

Lady Bracknell.  There are distinct social possibilities in Miss Cardew's
profile.

Algernon.  Cecily is the sweetest, dearest, prettiest girl in the whole
world.  And I don't care twopence about social possibilities.

Lady Bracknell.  Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon.  Only
people who can't get into it do that.  [To Cecily.]  Dear child, of
course you know that Algernon has nothing but his debts to depend upon.
But I do not approve of mercenary marriages.  When I married Lord
Bracknell I had no fortune of any kind.  But I never dreamed for a moment
of allowing that to stand in my way.  Well, I suppose I must give my
consent.

Algernon.  Thank you, Aunt Augusta.

Lady Bracknell.  Cecily, you may kiss me!

Cecily.  [Kisses her.]  Thank you, Lady Bracknell.

Lady Bracknell.  You may also address me as Aunt Augusta for the future.

Cecily.  Thank you, Aunt Augusta.

Lady Bracknell.  The marriage, I think, had better take place quite soon.

Algernon.  Thank you, Aunt Augusta.

Cecily.  Thank you, Aunt Augusta.

Lady Bracknell.  To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long
engagements.  They give people the opportunity of finding out each
other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

Jack.  I beg your pardon for interrupting you, Lady Bracknell, but this
engagement is quite out of the question.  I am Miss Cardew's guardian,
and she cannot marry without my consent until she comes of age.  That
consent I absolutely decline to give.

Lady Bracknell.  Upon what grounds may I ask?  Algernon is an extremely,
I may almost say an ostentatiously, eligible young man.  He has nothing,
but he looks everything.  What more can one desire?

Jack.  It pains me very much to have to speak frankly to you, Lady
Bracknell, about your nephew, but the fact is that I do not approve at
all of his moral character.  I suspect him of being untruthful.  [Algernon
and Cecily look at him in indignant amazement.]

Lady Bracknell.  Untruthful!  My nephew Algernon?  Impossible!  He is an
Oxonian.

Jack.  I fear there can be no possible doubt about the matter.  This
afternoon during my temporary absence in London on an important question
of romance, he obtained admission to my house by means of the false
pretence of being my brother.  Under an assumed name he drank, I've just
been informed by my butler, an entire pint bottle of my Perrier-Jouet,
Brut, '89; wine I was specially reserving for myself.  Continuing his
disgraceful deception, he succeeded in the course of the afternoon in
alienating the affections of my only ward.  He subsequently stayed to
tea, and devoured every single muffin.  And what makes his conduct all
the more heartless is, that he was perfectly well aware from the first
that I have no brother, that I never had a brother, and that I don't
intend to have a brother, not even of any kind.  I distinctly told him so
myself yesterday afternoon.

Lady Bracknell.  Ahem!  Mr. Worthing, after careful consideration I have
decided entirely to overlook my nephew's conduct to you.

Jack.  That is very generous of you, Lady Bracknell.  My own decision,
however, is unalterable.  I decline to give my consent.

Lady Bracknell.  [To Cecily.]  Come here, sweet child.  [Cecily goes
over.]  How old are you, dear?

Cecily.  Well, I am really only eighteen, but I always admit to twenty
when I go to evening parties.

Lady Bracknell.  You are perfectly right in making some slight
alteration.  Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her
age.  It looks so calculating . . . [In a meditative manner.]  Eighteen,
but admitting to twenty at evening parties.  Well, it will not be very
long before you are of age and free from the restraints of tutelage.  So
I don't think your guardian's consent is, after all, a matter of any
importance.

Jack.  Pray excuse me, Lady Bracknell, for interrupting you again, but it
is only fair to tell you that according to the terms of her grandfather's
will Miss Cardew does not come legally of age till she is thirty-five.

Lady Bracknell.  That does not seem to me to be a grave objection.  Thirty-
five is a very attractive age.  London society is full of women of the
very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-
five for years.  Lady Dumbleton is an instance in point.  To my own
knowledge she has been thirty-five ever since she arrived at the age of
forty, which was many years ago now.  I see no reason why our dear Cecily
should not be even still more attractive at the age you mention than she
is at present.  There will be a large accumulation of property.

Cecily.  Algy, could you wait for me till I was thirty-five?

Algernon.  Of course I could, Cecily.  You know I could.

Cecily.  Yes, I felt it instinctively, but I couldn't wait all that time.
I hate waiting even five minutes for anybody.  It always makes me rather
cross.  I am not punctual myself, I know, but I do like punctuality in
others, and waiting, even to be married, is quite out of the question.

Algernon.  Then what is to be done, Cecily?

Cecily.  I don't know, Mr. Moncrieff.

Lady Bracknell.  My dear Mr. Worthing, as Miss Cardew states positively
that she cannot wait till she is thirty-five--a remark which I am bound
to say seems to me to show a somewhat impatient nature--I would beg of
you to reconsider your decision.

Jack.  But my dear Lady Bracknell, the matter is entirely in your own
hands.  The moment you consent to my marriage with Gwendolen, I will most
gladly allow your nephew to form an alliance with my ward.

Lady Bracknell.  [Rising and drawing herself up.]  You must be quite
aware that what you propose is out of the question.

Jack.  Then a passionate celibacy is all that any of us can look forward
to.

Lady Bracknell.  That is not the destiny I propose for Gwendolen.
Algernon, of course, can choose for himself.  [Pulls out her watch.]
Come, dear, [Gwendolen rises] we have already missed five, if not six,
trains.  To miss any more might expose us to comment on the platform.

[Enter Dr. Chasuble.]

Chasuble.  Everything is quite ready for the christenings.

Lady Bracknell.  The christenings, sir!  Is not that somewhat premature?

Chasuble.  [Looking rather puzzled, and pointing to Jack and Algernon.]
Both these gentlemen have expressed a desire for immediate baptism.

Lady Bracknell.  At their age?  The idea is grotesque and irreligious!
Algernon, I forbid you to be baptized.  I will not hear of such excesses.
Lord Bracknell would be highly displeased if he learned that that was the
way in which you wasted your time and money.

Chasuble.  Am I to understand then that there are to be no christenings
at all this afternoon?

Jack.  I don't think that, as things are now, it would be of much
practical value to either of us, Dr. Chasuble.

Chasuble.  I am grieved to hear such sentiments from you, Mr. Worthing.
They savour of the heretical views of the Anabaptists, views that I have
completely refuted in four of my unpublished sermons.  However, as your
present mood seems to be one peculiarly secular, I will return to the
church at once.  Indeed, I have just been informed by the pew-opener that
for the last hour and a half Miss Prism has been waiting for me in the
vestry.

Lady Bracknell.  [Starting.]  Miss Prism!  Did I hear you mention a Miss
Prism?

Chasuble.  Yes, Lady Bracknell.  I am on my way to join her.

Lady Bracknell.  Pray allow me to detain you for a moment.  This matter
may prove to be one of vital importance to Lord Bracknell and myself.  Is
this Miss Prism a female of repellent aspect, remotely connected with
education?

Chasuble.  [Somewhat indignantly.]  She is the most cultivated of ladies,
and the very picture of respectability.

Lady Bracknell.  It is obviously the same person.  May I ask what
position she holds in your household?

Chasuble.  [Severely.]  I am a celibate, madam.

Jack.  [Interposing.]  Miss Prism, Lady Bracknell, has been for the last
three years Miss Cardew's esteemed governess and valued companion.

Lady Bracknell.  In spite of what I hear of her, I must see her at once.
Let her be sent for.

Chasuble.  [Looking off.]  She approaches; she is nigh.

[Enter Miss Prism hurriedly.]

Miss Prism.  I was told you expected me in the vestry, dear Canon.  I
have been waiting for you there for an hour and three-quarters.  [Catches
sight of Lady Bracknell, who has fixed her with a stony glare.  Miss
Prism grows pale and quails.  She looks anxiously round as if desirous to
escape.]

Lady Bracknell.  [In a severe, judicial voice.]  Prism!  [Miss Prism bows
her head in shame.]  Come here, Prism!  [Miss Prism approaches in a
humble manner.]  Prism!  Where is that baby?  [General consternation.  The
Canon starts back in horror.  Algernon and Jack pretend to be anxious to
shield Cecily and Gwendolen from hearing the details of a terrible public
scandal.]  Twenty-eight years ago, Prism, you left Lord Bracknell's
house, Number 104, Upper Grosvenor Street, in charge of a perambulator
that contained a baby of the male sex.  You never returned.  A few weeks
later, through the elaborate investigations of the Metropolitan police,
the perambulator was discovered at midnight, standing by itself in a
remote corner of Bayswater.  It contained the manuscript of a
three-volume novel of more than usually revolting sentimentality.  [Miss
Prism starts in involuntary indignation.]  But the baby was not there!
[Every one looks at Miss Prism.]  Prism!  Where is that baby?  [A pause.]

Miss Prism.  Lady Bracknell, I admit with shame that I do not know.  I
only wish I did.  The plain facts of the case are these.  On the morning
of the day you mention, a day that is for ever branded on my memory, I
prepared as usual to take the baby out in its perambulator.  I had also
with me a somewhat old, but capacious hand-bag in which I had intended to
place the manuscript of a work of fiction that I had written during my
few unoccupied hours.  In a moment of mental abstraction, for which I
never can forgive myself, I deposited the manuscript in the basinette,
and placed the baby in the hand-bag.

Jack.  [Who has been listening attentively.]  But where did you deposit
the hand-bag?

Miss Prism.  Do not ask me, Mr. Worthing.

Jack.  Miss Prism, this is a matter of no small importance to me.  I
insist on knowing where you deposited the hand-bag that contained that
infant.

Miss Prism.  I left it in the cloak-room of one of the larger railway
stations in London.

Jack.  What railway station?

Miss Prism.  [Quite crushed.]  Victoria.  The Brighton line.  [Sinks into
a chair.]

Jack.  I must retire to my room for a moment.  Gwendolen, wait here for
me.

Gwendolen.  If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my
life.  [Exit Jack in great excitement.]

Chasuble.  What do you think this means, Lady Bracknell?

Lady Bracknell.  I dare not even suspect, Dr. Chasuble.  I need hardly
tell you that in families of high position strange coincidences are not
supposed to occur.  They are hardly considered the thing.

[Noises heard overhead as if some one was throwing trunks about.  Every
one looks up.]

Cecily.  Uncle Jack seems strangely agitated.

Chasuble.  Your guardian has a very emotional nature.

Lady Bracknell.  This noise is extremely unpleasant.  It sounds as if he
was having an argument.  I dislike arguments of any kind.  They are
always vulgar, and often convincing.

Chasuble.  [Looking up.]  It has stopped now.  [The noise is redoubled.]

Lady Bracknell.  I wish he would arrive at some conclusion.

Gwendolen.  This suspense is terrible.  I hope it will last.  [Enter Jack
with a hand-bag of black leather in his hand.]

Jack.  [Rushing over to Miss Prism.]  Is this the hand-bag, Miss Prism?
Examine it carefully before you speak.  The happiness of more than one
life depends on your answer.

Miss Prism.  [Calmly.]  It seems to be mine.  Yes, here is the injury it
received through the upsetting of a Gower Street omnibus in younger and
happier days.  Here is the stain on the lining caused by the explosion of
a temperance beverage, an incident that occurred at Leamington.  And
here, on the lock, are my initials.  I had forgotten that in an
extravagant mood I had had them placed there.  The bag is undoubtedly
mine.  I am delighted to have it so unexpectedly restored to me.  It has
been a great inconvenience being without it all these years.

Jack.  [In a pathetic voice.]  Miss Prism, more is restored to you than
this hand-bag.  I was the baby you placed in it.

Miss Prism.  [Amazed.]  You?

Jack.  [Embracing her.]  Yes . . . mother!

Miss Prism.  [Recoiling in indignant astonishment.]  Mr. Worthing!  I am
unmarried!

Jack.  Unmarried!  I do not deny that is a serious blow.  But after all,
who has the right to cast a stone against one who has suffered?  Cannot
repentance wipe out an act of folly?  Why should there be one law for
men, and another for women?  Mother, I forgive you.  [Tries to embrace
her again.]

Miss Prism.  [Still more indignant.]  Mr. Worthing, there is some error.
[Pointing to Lady Bracknell.]  There is the lady who can tell you who you
really are.

Jack.  [After a pause.]  Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but
would you kindly inform me who I am?

Lady Bracknell.  I am afraid that the news I have to give you will not
altogether please you.  You are the son of my poor sister, Mrs.
Moncrieff, and consequently Algernon's elder brother.

Jack.  Algy's elder brother!  Then I have a brother after all.  I knew I
had a brother!  I always said I had a brother!  Cecily,--how could you
have ever doubted that I had a brother?  [Seizes hold of Algernon.]  Dr.
Chasuble, my unfortunate brother.  Miss Prism, my unfortunate brother.
Gwendolen, my unfortunate brother.  Algy, you young scoundrel, you will
have to treat me with more respect in the future.  You have never behaved
to me like a brother in all your life.

Algernon.  Well, not till to-day, old boy, I admit.  I did my best,
however, though I was out of practice.

[Shakes hands.]

Gwendolen.  [To Jack.]  My own!  But what own are you?  What is your
Christian name, now that you have become some one else?

Jack.  Good heavens! . . . I had quite forgotten that point.  Your
decision on the subject of my name is irrevocable, I suppose?

Gwendolen.  I never change, except in my affections.

Cecily.  What a noble nature you have, Gwendolen!

Jack.  Then the question had better be cleared up at once.  Aunt Augusta,
a moment.  At the time when Miss Prism left me in the hand-bag, had I
been christened already?

Lady Bracknell.  Every luxury that money could buy, including
christening, had been lavished on you by your fond and doting parents.

Jack.  Then I was christened!  That is settled.  Now, what name was I
given?  Let me know the worst.

Lady Bracknell.  Being the eldest son you were naturally christened after
your father.

Jack.  [Irritably.]  Yes, but what was my father's Christian name?

Lady Bracknell.  [Meditatively.]  I cannot at the present moment recall
what the General's Christian name was.  But I have no doubt he had one.
He was eccentric, I admit.  But only in later years.  And that was the
result of the Indian climate, and marriage, and indigestion, and other
things of that kind.

Jack.  Algy!  Can't you recollect what our father's Christian name was?

Algernon.  My dear boy, we were never even on speaking terms.  He died
before I was a year old.

Jack.  His name would appear in the Army Lists of the period, I suppose,
Aunt Augusta?

Lady Bracknell.  The General was essentially a man of peace, except in
his domestic life.  But I have no doubt his name would appear in any
military directory.

Jack.  The Army Lists of the last forty years are here.  These delightful
records should have been my constant study.  [Rushes to bookcase and
tears the books out.]  M. Generals . . . Mallam, Maxbohm, Magley, what
ghastly names they have--Markby, Migsby, Mobbs, Moncrieff!  Lieutenant
1840, Captain, Lieutenant-Colonel, Colonel, General 1869, Christian
names, Ernest John.  [Puts book very quietly down and speaks quite
calmly.]  I always told you, Gwendolen, my name was Ernest, didn't I?
Well, it is Ernest after all.  I mean it naturally is Ernest.

Lady Bracknell.  Yes, I remember now that the General was called Ernest,
I knew I had some particular reason for disliking the name.

Gwendolen.  Ernest!  My own Ernest!  I felt from the first that you could
have no other name!

Jack.  Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly
that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.  Can you
forgive me?

Gwendolen.  I can.  For I feel that you are sure to change.

Jack.  My own one!

Chasuble.  [To Miss Prism.]  Laetitia!  [Embraces her]

Miss Prism.  [Enthusiastically.]  Frederick!  At last!

Algernon.  Cecily!  [Embraces her.]  At last!

Jack.  Gwendolen!  [Embraces her.]  At last!

Lady Bracknell.  My nephew, you seem to be displaying signs of
triviality.

Jack.  On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I've now realised for the first
time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.

TABLEAU



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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Leviathan

Author: Thomas Hobbes

Release Date: May, 2002  [EBook #3207]
Posting Date: October 11, 2009 [EBook #3207]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEVIATHAN ***




Produced by Edward White








LEVIATHAN

By Thomas Hobbes

1651


LEVIATHAN OR THE MATTER, FORME, & POWER OF A COMMON-WEALTH
ECCLESIASTICAL AND CIVILL

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury


Printed for Andrew Crooke, at the Green Dragon in St. Paul's Churchyard,
1651.



TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES ON THE E-TEXT:

This E-text was prepared from the Pelican Classics edition of Leviathan,
which in turn was prepared from the first edition. I have tried to
follow as closely as possible the original, and to give the flavour of
the text that Hobbes himself proof-read, but the following differences
were unavoidable.

Hobbes used capitals and italics very extensively, for emphasis, for
proper names, for quotations, and sometimes, it seems, just because.

The original has very extensive margin notes, which are used to show
where he introduces the definitions of words and concepts, to give in
short the subject that a paragraph or section is dealing with, and to
give references to his quotations, largely but not exclusively biblical.
To some degree, these margin notes seem to have been intended to serve
in place of an index, the original having none. They are all in italics.

He also used italics for words in other languages than English, and
there are a number of Greek words, in the Greek alphabet, in the text.

To deal with these within the limits of plain vanilla ASCII, I have done
the following in this E-text.

I have restricted my use of full capitalization to those places where
Hobbes used it, except in the chapter headings, which I have fully
capitalized, where Hobbes used a mixture of full capitalization and
italics.

Where it is clear that the italics are to indicate the text is quoting,
I have introduced quotation marks. Within quotation marks I have
retained the capitalization that Hobbes used.

Where italics seem to be used for emphasis, or for proper names, or just
because, I have capitalized the initial letter of the words. This has
the disadvantage that they are not then distinguished from those that
Hobbes capitalized in plain text, but the extent of his italics would
make the text very ugly if I was to use an underscore or slash.

Where the margin notes are either to introduce the paragraph subject,
or to show where he introduces word definitions, I have included them as
headers to the paragraph, again with all words having initial capitals,
and on a shortened line.

For margin references to quotes, I have included them in the text,
in brackets immediately next to the quotation. Where Hobbes included
references in the main text, I have left them as he put them, except to
change his square brackets to round.

For the Greek alphabet, I have simply substituted the nearest ordinary
letters that I can, and I have used initial capitals for foreign
language words.

Neither Thomas Hobbes nor his typesetters seem to have had many
inhibitions about spelling and punctuation. I have tried to reproduce
both exactly, with the exception of the introduction of quotation marks.

In preparing the text, I have found that it has much more meaning if
I read it with sub-vocalization, or aloud, rather than trying to read
silently. Hobbes' use of emphasis and his eccentric punctuation and
construction seem then to work.



TO MY MOST HONOR'D FRIEND Mr. FRANCIS GODOLPHIN of GODOLPHIN


HONOR'D SIR.

Your most worthy Brother Mr SIDNEY GODOLPHIN, when he lived, was pleas'd
to think my studies something, and otherwise to oblige me, as you know,
with reall testimonies of his good opinion, great in themselves, and the
greater for the worthinesse of his person. For there is not any vertue
that disposeth a man, either to the service of God, or to the service
of his Country, to Civill Society, or private Friendship, that did not
manifestly appear in his conversation, not as acquired by necessity,
or affected upon occasion, but inhaerent, and shining in a generous
constitution of his nature. Therefore in honour and gratitude to him,
and with devotion to your selfe, I humbly Dedicate unto you this my
discourse of Common-wealth. I know not how the world will receive it,
nor how it may reflect on those that shall seem to favour it. For in a
way beset with those that contend on one side for too great Liberty, and
on the other side for too much Authority, 'tis hard to passe between the
points of both unwounded. But yet, me thinks, the endeavour to advance
the Civill Power, should not be by the Civill Power condemned; nor
private men, by reprehending it, declare they think that Power too
great. Besides, I speak not of the men, but (in the Abstract) of the
Seat of Power, (like to those simple and unpartiall creatures in the
Roman Capitol, that with their noyse defended those within it, not
because they were they, but there) offending none, I think, but those
without, or such within (if there be any such) as favour them. That
which perhaps may most offend, are certain Texts of Holy Scripture,
alledged by me to other purpose than ordinarily they use to be by
others. But I have done it with due submission, and also (in order to
my Subject) necessarily; for they are the Outworks of the Enemy, from
whence they impugne the Civill Power. If notwithstanding this, you find
my labour generally decryed, you may be pleased to excuse your selfe,
and say that I am a man that love my own opinions, and think all true I
say, that I honoured your Brother, and honour you, and have presum'd on
that, to assume the Title (without your knowledge) of being, as I am,

Sir,

Your most humble, and most obedient servant, Thomas Hobbes.

Paris APRILL 15/25 1651.




CONTENTS OF THE CHAPTERS


THE FIRST PART


OF MAN


INTRODUCTION

1. OF SENSE

2. OF IMAGINATION

3. OF THE CONSEQUENCES OR TRAIN OF IMAGINATIONS

4. OF SPEECH

5. OF REASON AND SCIENCE

6. OF THE INTERIOUR BEGINNINGS OF VOLUNTARY MOTIONS, COMMONLY CALLED THE
PASSIONS; AND THE SPEECHES BY WHICH THEY ARE EXPRESSED

7. OF THE ENDS OR RESOLUTIONS OF DISCOURSE

8. OF THE VERTUES, COMMONLY CALLED INTELLECTUALL, AND THEIR CONTRARY
DEFECTS

9. OF THE SEVERALL SUBJECTS OF KNOWLEDGE

10. OF POWER, WORTH, DIGNITY, HONOUR, AND WORTHINESSE

11. OF THE DIFFERENCE OF MANNERS

12. OF RELIGION

13. OF THE NATURALL CONDITION OF MANKIND AS CONCERNING THEIR FELICITY
AND MISERY

14. OF THE FIRST AND SECOND NATURALL LAWES, AND OF CONTRACT

15. OF OTHER LAWES OF NATURE

16. OF PERSONS, AUTHORS, AND THINGS PERSONATED


THE SECOND PART


OF COMMON-WEALTH


17. OF THE CAUSES, GENERATION, AND DEFINITION OF A COMMON-WEALTH

18. OF THE RIGHTS OF SOVERAIGNES BY INSTITUTION

19. OF SEVERALL KINDS OF COMMON-WEALTH BY INSTITUTION; AND OF SUCCESION
TO THE SOVERAIGN POWER

20. OF DOMINION PATERNALL, AND DESPOTICALL

21. OF THE LIBERTY OF SUBJECTS

22. OF SYSTEMES SUBJECT, POLITICALL, AND PRIVATE

23. OF THE PUBLIQUE MINISTERS OF SOVERAIGN POWER

24. OF THE NUTRITION, AND PROCREATION OF A COMMON-WEALTH

25. OF COUNSELL

26. OF CIVILL LAWES

27. OF CRIMES, EXCUSES, AND EXTENUATIONS

28. OF PUNISHMENTS, AND REWARDS

29. OF THOSE THINGS THAT WEAKEN, OR TEND TO THE DISSOLUTION OF A
COMMON-WEALTH

30. OF THE OFFICE OF THE SOVERAIGN REPRESENTATIVE

31. OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD BY NATURE



THE THIRD PART


OF A CHRISTIAN COMMON-WEALTH


32. OF THE PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIAN POLITIQUES

33. OF THE NUMBER, ANTIQUITY, SCOPE, AUTHORITY, AND INTERPRETERS OF THE
BOOKS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.

34. OF THE SIGNIFICATION, OF SPIRIT, ANGELL, AND INSPIRATION IN THE
BOOKS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

35. OF THE SIGNIFICATION IN SCRIPTURE OF THE KINGDOME OF GOD, OF HOLY,
SACRED, AND SACRAMENT

36. OF THE WORD OF GOD, AND OF PROPHETS

37. OF MIRACLES, AND THEIR USE

38. OF THE SIGNIFICATION IN SCRIPTURE OF ETERNALL LIFE, HEL, SALVATION,
THE WORLD TO COME, AND REDEMPTION

39. OF THE SIGNIFICATION IN SCRIPTURE OF THE WORD CHURCH

40. OF THE RIGHTS OF THE KINGDOME OF GOD, IN ABRAHAM, MOSES, THE HIGH
PRIESTS, AND THE KINGS OF JUDAH

41. OF THE OFFICE OF OUR BLESSED SAVIOUR

42. OF POWER ECCLESIASTICALL

43. OF WHAT IS NECESSARY FOR MANS RECEPTION INTO THE KINGDOME OF HEAVEN



THE FOURTH PART

OF THE KINGDOME OF DARKNESSE


44. OF SPIRITUALL DARKNESSE FROM MISINTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE

45. OF DAEMONOLOGY, AND OTHER RELIQUES OF THE RELIGION OF THE GENTILES

46. OF DARKNESSE FROM VAINE PHILOSOPHY, AND FABULOUS TRADITIONS

47. OF THE BENEFIT PROCEEDING FROM SUCH DARKNESSE; AND TO WHOM IT
ACCREWETH



48. A REVIEW AND CONCLUSION




THE INTRODUCTION


Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governes the world) is by the
art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it
can make an Artificial Animal. For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs,
the begining whereof is in some principall part within; why may we not
say, that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and
wheeles as doth a watch) have an artificiall life? For what is the
Heart, but a Spring; and the Nerves, but so many Strings; and the
Joynts, but so many Wheeles, giving motion to the whole Body, such as
was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that
Rationall and most excellent worke of Nature, Man. For by Art is created
that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMON-WEALTH, or STATE, (in latine
CIVITAS) which is but an Artificiall Man; though of greater stature
and strength than the Naturall, for whose protection and defence it
was intended; and in which, the Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul, as
giving life and motion to the whole body; The Magistrates, and other
Officers of Judicature and Execution, artificiall Joynts; Reward and
Punishment (by which fastned to the seat of the Soveraignty, every joynt
and member is moved to performe his duty) are the Nerves, that do the
same in the Body Naturall; The Wealth and Riches of all the particular
members, are the Strength; Salus Populi (the Peoples Safety) its
Businesse; Counsellors, by whom all things needfull for it to know,
are suggested unto it, are the Memory; Equity and Lawes, an artificiall
Reason and Will; Concord, Health; Sedition, Sicknesse; and Civill War,
Death. Lastly, the Pacts and Covenants, by which the parts of this Body
Politique were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that
Fiat, or the Let Us Make Man, pronounced by God in the Creation.

To describe the Nature of this Artificiall man, I will consider

First the Matter thereof, and the Artificer; both which is Man.

Secondly, How, and by what Covenants it is made; what are the Rights and
just Power or Authority of a Soveraigne; and what it is that Preserveth
and Dissolveth it.

Thirdly, what is a Christian Common-Wealth.

Lastly, what is the Kingdome of Darkness.

Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, That
Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men. Consequently
whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give no other proof
of being wise, take great delight to shew what they think they have read
in men, by uncharitable censures of one another behind their backs.
But there is another saying not of late understood, by which they might
learn truly to read one another, if they would take the pains; and that
is, Nosce Teipsum, Read Thy Self: which was not meant, as it is now
used, to countenance, either the barbarous state of men in power,
towards their inferiors; or to encourage men of low degree, to a
sawcie behaviour towards their betters; But to teach us, that for the
similitude of the thoughts, and Passions of one man, to the thoughts,
and Passions of another, whosoever looketh into himselfe, and
considereth what he doth, when he does Think, Opine, Reason, Hope,
Feare, &c, and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know,
what are the thoughts, and Passions of all other men, upon the like
occasions. I say the similitude of Passions, which are the same in all
men, Desire, Feare, Hope, &c; not the similitude or The Objects of the
Passions, which are the things Desired, Feared, Hoped, &c: for these the
constitution individuall, and particular education do so vary, and they
are so easie to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of mans
heart, blotted and confounded as they are, with dissembling, lying,
counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible onely to him that
searcheth hearts. And though by mens actions wee do discover their
designee sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with our own,
and distinguishing all circumstances, by which the case may come to
be altered, is to decypher without a key, and be for the most part
deceived, by too much trust, or by too much diffidence; as he that
reads, is himselfe a good or evill man.

But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it
serves him onely with his acquaintance, which are but few. He that is
to govern a whole Nation, must read in himselfe, not this, or that
particular man; but Man-kind; which though it be hard to do, harder than
to learn any Language, or Science; yet, when I shall have set down my
own reading orderly, and perspicuously, the pains left another, will be
onely to consider, if he also find not the same in himselfe. For this
kind of Doctrine, admitteth no other Demonstration.




PART 1 OF MAN




CHAPTER I. OF SENSE


Concerning the Thoughts of man, I will consider them first Singly, and
afterwards in Trayne, or dependance upon one another. Singly, they
are every one a Representation or Apparence, of some quality, or other
Accident of a body without us; which is commonly called an Object. Which
Object worketh on the Eyes, Eares, and other parts of mans body; and by
diversity of working, produceth diversity of Apparences.

The Originall of them all, is that which we call Sense; (For there is
no conception in a mans mind, which hath not at first, totally, or by
parts, been begotten upon the organs of Sense.) The rest are derived
from that originall.

To know the naturall cause of Sense, is not very necessary to the
business now in hand; and I have els-where written of the same at large.
Nevertheless, to fill each part of my present method, I will briefly
deliver the same in this place.

The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the
organ proper to each Sense, either immediatly, as in the Tast and Touch;
or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling: which pressure, by
the mediation of Nerves, and other strings, and membranes of the body,
continued inwards to the Brain, and Heart, causeth there a resistance,
or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart, to deliver it self:
which endeavour because Outward, seemeth to be some matter without. And
this Seeming, or Fancy, is that which men call sense; and consisteth, as
to the Eye, in a Light, or Colour Figured; To the Eare, in a Sound; To
the Nostrill, in an Odour; To the Tongue and Palat, in a Savour; and
to the rest of the body, in Heat, Cold, Hardnesse, Softnesse, and such
other qualities, as we discern by Feeling. All which qualities called
Sensible, are in the object that causeth them, but so many several
motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversly. Neither
in us that are pressed, are they anything els, but divers motions; (for
motion, produceth nothing but motion.) But their apparence to us is
Fancy, the same waking, that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing,
or striking the Eye, makes us fancy a light; and pressing the Eare,
produceth a dinne; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the
same by their strong, though unobserved action, For if those Colours,
and Sounds, were in the Bodies, or Objects that cause them, they could
not bee severed from them, as by glasses, and in Ecchoes by reflection,
wee see they are; where we know the thing we see, is in one place; the
apparence, in another. And though at some certain distance, the reall,
and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; Yet still
the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that Sense in
all cases, is nothing els but originall fancy, caused (as I have said)
by the pressure, that is, by the motion, of externall things upon our
Eyes, Eares, and other organs thereunto ordained.

But the Philosophy-schooles, through all the Universities of
Christendome, grounded upon certain Texts of Aristotle, teach another
doctrine; and say, For the cause of Vision, that the thing seen, sendeth
forth on every side a Visible Species(in English) a Visible Shew,
Apparition, or Aspect, or a Being Seen; the receiving whereof into the
Eye, is Seeing. And for the cause of Hearing, that the thing heard,
sendeth forth an Audible Species, that is, an Audible Aspect, or Audible
Being Seen; which entring at the Eare, maketh Hearing. Nay for the
cause of Understanding also, they say the thing Understood sendeth forth
Intelligible Species, that is, an Intelligible Being Seen; which
comming into the Understanding, makes us Understand. I say not this,
as disapproving the use of Universities: but because I am to speak
hereafter of their office in a Common-wealth, I must let you see on
all occasions by the way, what things would be amended in them; amongst
which the frequency of insignificant Speech is one.



CHAPTER II. OF IMAGINATION


That when a thing lies still, unlesse somewhat els stirre it, it will
lye still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a
thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat els
stay it, though the reason be the same, (namely, that nothing can change
it selfe,) is not so easily assented to. For men measure, not onely
other men, but all other things, by themselves: and because they find
themselves subject after motion to pain, and lassitude, think every
thing els growes weary of motion, and seeks repose of its own accord;
little considering, whether it be not some other motion, wherein that
desire of rest they find in themselves, consisteth. From hence it is,
that the Schooles say, Heavy bodies fall downwards, out of an appetite
to rest, and to conserve their nature in that place which is most proper
for them; ascribing appetite, and Knowledge of what is good for their
conservation, (which is more than man has) to things inanimate absurdly.

When a Body is once in motion, it moveth (unless something els hinder
it) eternally; and whatsoever hindreth it, cannot in an instant, but in
time, and by degrees quite extinguish it: And as wee see in the water,
though the wind cease, the waves give not over rowling for a long
time after; so also it happeneth in that motion, which is made in the
internall parts of a man, then, when he Sees, Dreams, &c. For after the
object is removed, or the eye shut, wee still retain an image of the
thing seen, though more obscure than when we see it. And this is it,
that Latines call Imagination, from the image made in seeing; and apply
the same, though improperly, to all the other senses. But the Greeks
call it Fancy; which signifies Apparence, and is as proper to one sense,
as to another. Imagination therefore is nothing but Decaying Sense; and
is found in men, and many other living Creatures, as well sleeping, as
waking.




Memory

The decay of Sense in men waking, is not the decay of the motion made in
sense; but an obscuring of it, in such manner, as the light of the Sun
obscureth the light of the Starres; which starrs do no less exercise
their vertue by which they are visible, in the day, than in the night.
But because amongst many stroaks, which our eyes, eares, and other
organs receive from externall bodies, the predominant onely is sensible;
therefore the light of the Sun being predominant, we are not affected
with the action of the starrs. And any object being removed from our
eyes, though the impression it made in us remain; yet other objects more
present succeeding, and working on us, the Imagination of the past is
obscured, and made weak; as the voyce of a man is in the noyse of the
day. From whence it followeth, that the longer the time is, after the
sight, or Sense of any object, the weaker is the Imagination. For the
continuall change of mans body, destroyes in time the parts which in
sense were moved: So that the distance of time, and of place, hath one
and the same effect in us. For as at a distance of place, that which wee
look at, appears dimme, and without distinction of the smaller parts;
and as Voyces grow weak, and inarticulate: so also after great distance
of time, our imagination of the Past is weak; and wee lose( for example)
of Cities wee have seen, many particular Streets; and of Actions, many
particular Circumstances. This Decaying Sense, when wee would express
the thing it self, (I mean Fancy it selfe,) wee call Imagination, as I
said before; But when we would express the Decay, and signifie that the
Sense is fading, old, and past, it is called Memory. So that Imagination
and Memory, are but one thing, which for divers considerations hath
divers names.

Much memory, or memory of many things, is called Experience. Againe,
Imagination being only of those things which have been formerly
perceived by Sense, either all at once, or by parts at severall
times; The former, (which is the imagining the whole object, as it was
presented to the sense) is Simple Imagination; as when one imagineth a
man, or horse, which he hath seen before. The other is Compounded; as
when from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we
conceive in our mind a Centaure. So when a man compoundeth the image of
his own person, with the image of the actions of an other man; as when a
man imagins himselfe a Hercules, or an Alexander, (which happeneth often
to them that are much taken with reading of Romants) it is a compound
imagination, and properly but a Fiction of the mind. There be also other
Imaginations that rise in men, (though waking) from the great impression
made in sense; As from gazing upon the Sun, the impression leaves an
image of the Sun before our eyes a long time after; and from being long
and vehemently attent upon Geometricall Figures, a man shall in the
dark, (though awake) have the Images of Lines, and Angles before his
eyes: which kind of Fancy hath no particular name; as being a thing that
doth not commonly fall into mens discourse.




Dreams

The imaginations of them that sleep, are those we call Dreams. And these
also (as all other Imaginations) have been before, either totally, or
by parcells in the Sense. And because in sense, the Brain, and Nerves,
which are the necessary Organs of sense, are so benummed in sleep, as
not easily to be moved by the action of Externall Objects, there can
happen in sleep, no Imagination; and therefore no Dreame, but what
proceeds from the agitation of the inward parts of mans body; which
inward parts, for the connexion they have with the Brayn, and other
Organs, when they be distempered, do keep the same in motion; whereby
the Imaginations there formerly made, appeare as if a man were waking;
saving that the Organs of Sense being now benummed, so as there is
no new object, which can master and obscure them with a more vigorous
impression, a Dreame must needs be more cleare, in this silence of
sense, than are our waking thoughts. And hence it cometh to pass, that
it is a hard matter, and by many thought impossible to distinguish
exactly between Sense and Dreaming. For my part, when I consider, that
in Dreames, I do not often, nor constantly think of the same Persons,
Places, Objects, and Actions that I do waking; nor remember so long a
trayne of coherent thoughts, Dreaming, as at other times; And because
waking I often observe the absurdity of Dreames, but never dream of
the absurdities of my waking Thoughts; I am well satisfied, that being
awake, I know I dreame not; though when I dreame, I think my selfe
awake.

And seeing dreames are caused by the distemper of some of the inward
parts of the Body; divers distempers must needs cause different Dreams.
And hence it is, that lying cold breedeth Dreams of Feare, and raiseth
the thought and Image of some fearfull object (the motion from the
brain to the inner parts, and from the inner parts to the Brain being
reciprocall:) and that as Anger causeth heat in some parts of the Body,
when we are awake; so when we sleep, the over heating of the same parts
causeth Anger, and raiseth up in the brain the Imagination of an Enemy.
In the same manner; as naturall kindness, when we are awake causeth
desire; and desire makes heat in certain other parts of the body; so
also, too much heat in those parts, while wee sleep, raiseth in the
brain an imagination of some kindness shewn. In summe, our Dreams are
the reverse of our waking Imaginations; The motion when we are awake,
beginning at one end; and when we Dream, at another.




Apparitions Or Visions

The most difficult discerning of a mans Dream, from his waking thoughts,
is then, when by some accident we observe not that we have slept:
which is easie to happen to a man full of fearfull thoughts; and
whose conscience is much troubled; and that sleepeth, without the
circumstances, of going to bed, or putting off his clothes, as one that
noddeth in a chayre. For he that taketh pains, and industriously layes
himselfe to sleep, in case any uncouth and exorbitant fancy come unto
him, cannot easily think it other than a Dream. We read of Marcus
Brutes, (one that had his life given him by Julius Caesar, and was also
his favorite, and notwithstanding murthered him,) how at Phillipi,
the night before he gave battell to Augustus Caesar, he saw a fearfull
apparition, which is commonly related by Historians as a Vision: but
considering the circumstances, one may easily judge to have been but
a short Dream. For sitting in his tent, pensive and troubled with the
horrour of his rash act, it was not hard for him, slumbering in the
cold, to dream of that which most affrighted him; which feare, as by
degrees it made him wake; so also it must needs make the Apparition by
degrees to vanish: And having no assurance that he slept, he could have
no cause to think it a Dream, or any thing but a Vision. And this is no
very rare Accident: for even they that be perfectly awake, if they be
timorous, and supperstitious, possessed with fearfull tales, and alone
in the dark, are subject to the like fancies, and believe they see
spirits and dead mens Ghosts walking in Churchyards; whereas it is
either their Fancy onely, or els the knavery of such persons, as make
use of such superstitious feare, to pass disguised in the night, to
places they would not be known to haunt.

From this ignorance of how to distinguish Dreams, and other strong
Fancies, from vision and Sense, did arise the greatest part of the
Religion of the Gentiles in time past, that worshipped Satyres, Fawnes,
nymphs, and the like; and now adayes the opinion than rude people have
of Fayries, Ghosts, and Goblins; and of the power of Witches. For as for
Witches, I think not that their witch craft is any reall power; but yet
that they are justly punished, for the false beliefe they have, that
they can do such mischiefe, joyned with their purpose to do it if they
can; their trade being neerer to a new Religion, than to a Craft or
Science. And for Fayries, and walking Ghosts, the opinion of them has I
think been on purpose, either taught, or not confuted, to keep in
credit the use of Exorcisme, of Crosses, of holy Water, and other such
inventions of Ghostly men. Neverthelesse, there is no doubt, but God can
make unnaturall Apparitions. But that he does it so often, as men need
to feare such things, more than they feare the stay, or change, of the
course of Nature, which he also can stay, and change, is no point of
Christian faith. But evill men under pretext that God can do any thing,
are so bold as to say any thing when it serves their turn, though
they think it untrue; It is the part of a wise man, to believe them no
further, than right reason makes that which they say, appear credible.
If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it,
Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things
depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the
simple people, men would be much more fitted than they are for civill
Obedience.

And this ought to be the work of the Schooles; but they rather nourish
such doctrine. For (not knowing what Imagination, or the Senses are),
what they receive, they teach: some saying, that Imaginations rise of
themselves, and have no cause: Others that they rise most commonly from
the Will; and that Good thoughts are blown (inspired) into a man, by
God; and evill thoughts by the Divell: or that Good thoughts are powred
(infused) into a man, by God; and evill ones by the Divell. Some say
the Senses receive the Species of things, and deliver them to the
Common-sense; and the Common Sense delivers them over to the Fancy, and
the Fancy to the Memory, and the Memory to the Judgement, like
handing of things from one to another, with many words making nothing
understood.




Understanding

The Imagination that is raysed in man (or any other creature indued with
the faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary signes, is that
we generally call Understanding; and is common to Man and Beast. For a
dogge by custome will understand the call, or the rating of his Master;
and so will many other Beasts. That Understanding which is peculiar to
man, is the Understanding not onely his will; but his conceptions and
thoughts, by the sequell and contexture of the names of things into
Affirmations, Negations, and other formes of Speech: And of this kinde
of Understanding I shall speak hereafter.



CHAPTER III. OF THE CONSEQUENCE OR TRAYNE OF IMAGINATIONS


By Consequence, or Trayne of Thoughts, I understand that succession
of one Thought to another, which is called (to distinguish it from
Discourse in words) Mentall Discourse.

When a man thinketh on any thing whatsoever, His next Thought after, is
not altogether so casuall as it seems to be. Not every Thought to every
Thought succeeds indifferently. But as wee have no Imagination, whereof
we have not formerly had Sense, in whole, or in parts; so we have no
Transition from one Imagination to another, whereof we never had the
like before in our Senses. The reason whereof is this. All Fancies
are Motions within us, reliques of those made in the Sense: And those
motions that immediately succeeded one another in the sense, continue
also together after Sense: In so much as the former comming again to
take place, and be praedominant, the later followeth, by coherence of
the matter moved, is such manner, as water upon a plain Table is drawn
which way any one part of it is guided by the finger. But because
in sense, to one and the same thing perceived, sometimes one thing,
sometimes another succeedeth, it comes to passe in time, that in the
Imagining of any thing, there is no certainty what we shall Imagine
next; Onely this is certain, it shall be something that succeeded the
same before, at one time or another.




Trayne Of Thoughts Unguided

This Trayne of Thoughts, or Mentall Discourse, is of two sorts. The
first is Unguided, Without Designee, and inconstant; Wherein there is no
Passionate Thought, to govern and direct those that follow, to it self,
as the end and scope of some desire, or other passion: In which case the
thoughts are said to wander, and seem impertinent one to another, as
in a Dream. Such are Commonly the thoughts of men, that are not onely
without company, but also without care of any thing; though even then
their Thoughts are as busie as at other times, but without harmony; as
the sound which a Lute out of tune would yeeld to any man; or in tune,
to one that could not play. And yet in this wild ranging of the mind,
a man may oft-times perceive the way of it, and the dependance of one
thought upon another. For in a Discourse of our present civill warre,
what could seem more impertinent, than to ask (as one did) what was the
value of a Roman Penny? Yet the Cohaerence to me was manifest enough.
For the Thought of the warre, introduced the Thought of the delivering
up the King to his Enemies; The Thought of that, brought in the Thought
of the delivering up of Christ; and that again the Thought of the 30
pence, which was the price of that treason: and thence easily followed
that malicious question; and all this in a moment of time; for Thought
is quick.




Trayne Of Thoughts Regulated

The second is more constant; as being Regulated by some desire, and
designee. For the impression made by such things as wee desire, or
feare, is strong, and permanent, or, (if it cease for a time,) of quick
return: so strong it is sometimes, as to hinder and break our sleep.
From Desire, ariseth the Thought of some means we have seen produce the
like of that which we ayme at; and from the thought of that, the
thought of means to that mean; and so continually, till we come to some
beginning within our own power. And because the End, by the greatnesse
of the impression, comes often to mind, in case our thoughts begin to
wander, they are quickly again reduced into the way: which observed by
one of the seven wise men, made him give men this praecept, which is
now worne out, Respice Finem; that is to say, in all your actions,
look often upon what you would have, as the thing that directs all your
thoughts in the way to attain it.




Remembrance

The Trayn of regulated Thoughts is of two kinds; One, when of an effect
imagined, wee seek the causes, or means that produce it: and this
is common to Man and Beast. The other is, when imagining any thing
whatsoever, wee seek all the possible effects, that can by it be
produced; that is to say, we imagine what we can do with it, when wee
have it. Of which I have not at any time seen any signe, but in man
onely; for this is a curiosity hardly incident to the nature of any
living creature that has no other Passion but sensuall, such as are
hunger, thirst, lust, and anger. In summe, the Discourse of the Mind,
when it is governed by designee, is nothing but Seeking, or the faculty
of Invention, which the Latines call Sagacitas, and Solertia; a hunting
out of the causes, of some effect, present or past; or of the effects,
of some present or past cause, sometimes a man seeks what he hath lost;
and from that place, and time, wherein hee misses it, his mind runs
back, from place to place, and time to time, to find where, and when
he had it; that is to say, to find some certain, and limited time and
place, in which to begin a method of seeking. Again, from thence, his
thoughts run over the same places and times, to find what action, or
other occasion might make him lose it. This we call Remembrance,
or Calling to mind: the Latines call it Reminiscentia, as it were a
Re-Conning of our former actions.

Sometimes a man knows a place determinate, within the compasse whereof
his is to seek; and then his thoughts run over all the parts thereof,
in the same manner, as one would sweep a room, to find a jewell; or as
a Spaniel ranges the field, till he find a sent; or as a man should run
over the alphabet, to start a rime.




Prudence

Sometime a man desires to know the event of an action; and then he
thinketh of some like action past, and the events thereof one after
another; supposing like events will follow like actions. As he that
foresees what wil become of a Criminal, re-cons what he has seen follow
on the like Crime before; having this order of thoughts, The Crime,
the Officer, the Prison, the Judge, and the Gallowes. Which kind
of thoughts, is called Foresight, and Prudence, or Providence; and
sometimes Wisdome; though such conjecture, through the difficulty of
observing all circumstances, be very fallacious. But this is certain; by
how much one man has more experience of things past, than another; by
so much also he is more Prudent, and his expectations the seldomer faile
him. The Present onely has a being in Nature; things Past have a being
in the Memory onely, but things To Come have no being at all; the Future
being but a fiction of the mind, applying the sequels of actions Past,
to the actions that are Present; which with most certainty is done by
him that has most Experience; but not with certainty enough. And though
it be called Prudence, when the Event answereth our Expectation; yet in
its own nature, it is but Presumption. For the foresight of things to
come, which is Providence, belongs onely to him by whose will they are
to come. From him onely, and supernaturally, proceeds Prophecy. The best
Prophet naturally is the best guesser; and the best guesser, he that is
most versed and studied in the matters he guesses at: for he hath most
Signes to guesse by.




Signes

A Signe, is the Event Antecedent, of the Consequent; and contrarily,
the Consequent of the Antecedent, when the like Consequences have been
observed, before: And the oftner they have been observed, the lesse
uncertain is the Signe. And therefore he that has most experience in
any kind of businesse, has most Signes, whereby to guesse at the Future
time, and consequently is the most prudent: And so much more prudent
than he that is new in that kind of business, as not to be equalled by
any advantage of naturall and extemporary wit: though perhaps many young
men think the contrary.

Neverthelesse it is not Prudence that distinguisheth man from beast.
There be beasts, that at a year old observe more, and pursue that which
is for their good, more prudently, than a child can do at ten.




Conjecture Of The Time Past

As Prudence is a Praesumtion of the Future, contracted from the
Experience of time Past; So there is a Praesumtion of things Past taken
from other things (not future but) past also. For he that hath seen
by what courses and degrees, a flourishing State hath first come into
civill warre, and then to ruine; upon the sights of the ruines of any
other State, will guesse, the like warre, and the like courses have been
there also. But his conjecture, has the same incertainty almost with the
conjecture of the Future; both being grounded onely upon Experience.

There is no other act of mans mind, that I can remember, naturally
planted in him, so, as to need no other thing, to the exercise of it,
but to be born a man, and live with the use of his five Senses. Those
other Faculties, of which I shall speak by and by, and which seem proper
to man onely, are acquired, and encreased by study and industry; and of
most men learned by instruction, and discipline; and proceed all from
the invention of Words, and Speech. For besides Sense, and Thoughts, and
the Trayne of thoughts, the mind of man has no other motion; though by
the help of Speech, and Method, the same Facultyes may be improved to
such a height, as to distinguish men from all other living Creatures.

Whatsoever we imagine, is Finite. Therefore there is no Idea, or
conception of anything we call Infinite. No man can have in his mind an
Image of infinite magnitude; nor conceive the ends, and bounds of
the thing named; having no Conception of the thing, but of our own
inability. And therefore the Name of GOD is used, not to make us
conceive him; (for he is Incomprehensible; and his greatnesse, and power
are unconceivable;) but that we may honour him. Also because whatsoever
(as I said before,) we conceive, has been perceived first by sense,
either all at once, or by parts; a man can have no thought, representing
any thing, not subject to sense. No man therefore can conceive any
thing, but he must conceive it in some place; and indued with some
determinate magnitude; and which may be divided into parts; nor that any
thing is all in this place, and all in another place at the same time;
nor that two, or more things can be in one, and the same place at once:
for none of these things ever have, or can be incident to Sense; but are
absurd speeches, taken upon credit (without any signification at all,)
from deceived Philosophers, and deceived, or deceiving Schoolemen.



CHAPTER IV. OF SPEECH




Originall Of Speech

The Invention of Printing, though ingenious, compared with the invention
of Letters, is no great matter. But who was the first that found the use
of Letters, is not known. He that first brought them into Greece, men
say was Cadmus, the sonne of Agenor, King of Phaenicia. A profitable
Invention for continuing the memory of time past, and the conjunction of
mankind, dispersed into so many, and distant regions of the Earth; and
with all difficult, as proceeding from a watchfull observation of the
divers motions of the Tongue, Palat, Lips, and other organs of Speech;
whereby to make as many differences of characters, to remember them.
But the most noble and profitable invention of all other, was that of
Speech, consisting of Names or Apellations, and their Connexion; whereby
men register their Thoughts; recall them when they are past; and also
declare them one to another for mutuall utility and conversation;
without which, there had been amongst men, neither Common-wealth, nor
Society, nor Contract, nor Peace, no more than amongst Lyons, Bears,
and Wolves. The first author of Speech was GOD himselfe, that instructed
Adam how to name such creatures as he presented to his sight; For the
Scripture goeth no further in this matter. But this was sufficient
to direct him to adde more names, as the experience and use of the
creatures should give him occasion; and to joyn them in such manner by
degrees, as to make himselfe understood; and so by succession of time,
so much language might be gotten, as he had found use for; though not so
copious, as an Orator or Philosopher has need of. For I do not find any
thing in the Scripture, out of which, directly or by consequence can
be gathered, that Adam was taught the names of all Figures, Numbers,
Measures, Colours, Sounds, Fancies, Relations; much less the names
of Words and Speech, as Generall, Speciall, Affirmative, Negative,
Interrogative, Optative, Infinitive, all which are usefull; and least of
all, of Entity, Intentionality, Quiddity, and other significant words of
the School.

But all this language gotten, and augmented by Adam and his posterity,
was again lost at the tower of Babel, when by the hand of God, every man
was stricken for his rebellion, with an oblivion of his former language.
And being hereby forced to disperse themselves into severall parts of
the world, it must needs be, that the diversity of Tongues that now is,
proceeded by degrees from them, in such manner, as need (the mother of
all inventions) taught them; and in tract of time grew every where more
copious.




The Use Of Speech

The generall use of Speech, is to transferre our Mentall Discourse, into
Verbal; or the Trayne of our Thoughts, into a Trayne of Words; and that
for two commodities; whereof one is, the Registring of the Consequences
of our Thoughts; which being apt to slip out of our memory, and put
us to a new labour, may again be recalled, by such words as they were
marked by. So that the first use of names, is to serve for Markes,
or Notes of remembrance. Another is, when many use the same words,
to signifie (by their connexion and order,) one to another, what they
conceive, or think of each matter; and also what they desire, feare,
or have any other passion for, and for this use they are called
Signes. Speciall uses of Speech are these; First, to Register, what by
cogitation, wee find to be the cause of any thing, present or past; and
what we find things present or past may produce, or effect: which in
summe, is acquiring of Arts. Secondly, to shew to others that knowledge
which we have attained; which is, to Counsell, and Teach one another.
Thirdly, to make known to others our wills, and purposes, that we may
have the mutuall help of one another. Fourthly, to please and delight
our selves, and others, by playing with our words, for pleasure or
ornament, innocently.




Abuses Of Speech

To these Uses, there are also foure correspondent Abuses. First,
when men register their thoughts wrong, by the inconstancy of the
signification of their words; by which they register for their
conceptions, that which they never conceived; and so deceive themselves.
Secondly, when they use words metaphorically; that is, in other sense
than that they are ordained for; and thereby deceive others. Thirdly,
when by words they declare that to be their will, which is not.
Fourthly, when they use them to grieve one another: for seeing nature
hath armed living creatures, some with teeth, some with horns, and some
with hands, to grieve an enemy, it is but an abuse of Speech, to grieve
him with the tongue, unlesse it be one whom wee are obliged to govern;
and then it is not to grieve, but to correct and amend.

The manner how Speech serveth to the remembrance of the consequence
of causes and effects, consisteth in the imposing of Names, and the
Connexion of them.




Names Proper & Common Universall

Of Names, some are Proper, and singular to one onely thing; as Peter,
John, This Man, This Tree: and some are Common to many things; as Man,
Horse, Tree; every of which though but one Name, is nevertheless the
name of divers particular things; in respect of all which together, it
is called an Universall; there being nothing in the world Universall
but Names; for the things named, are every one of them Individual and
Singular.

One Universall name is imposed on many things, for their similitude in
some quality, or other accident: And whereas a Proper Name bringeth to
mind one thing onely; Universals recall any one of those many.

And of Names Universall, some are of more, and some of lesse extent; the
larger comprehending the lesse large: and some again of equall extent,
comprehending each other reciprocally. As for example, the Name Body is
of larger signification than the word Man, and conprehendeth it; and the
names Man and Rationall, are of equall extent, comprehending mutually
one another. But here wee must take notice, that by a Name is not
alwayes understood, as in Grammar, one onely word; but sometimes by
circumlocution many words together. For all these words, Hee That In
His Actions Observeth The Lawes Of His Country, make but one Name,
equivalent to this one word, Just.

By this imposition of Names, some of larger, some of stricter
signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of things
imagined in the mind, into a reckoning of the consequences of
Appellations. For example, a man that hath no use of Speech at all,
(such, as is born and remains perfectly deafe and dumb,) if he set
before his eyes a triangle, and by it two right angles, (such as are the
corners of a square figure,) he may by meditation compare and find, that
the three angles of that triangle, are equall to those two right angles
that stand by it. But if another triangle be shewn him different in
shape from the former, he cannot know without a new labour, whether the
three angles of that also be equall to the same. But he that hath the
use of words, when he observes, that such equality was consequent, not
to the length of the sides, nor to any other particular thing in his
triangle; but onely to this, that the sides were straight, and the
angles three; and that that was all, for which he named it a Triangle;
will boldly conclude Universally, that such equality of angles is in
all triangles whatsoever; and register his invention in these generall
termes, Every Triangle Hath Its Three Angles Equall To Two Right Angles.
And thus the consequence found in one particular, comes to be registred
and remembred, as a Universall rule; and discharges our mentall
reckoning, of time and place; and delivers us from all labour of the
mind, saving the first; and makes that which was found true Here, and
Now, to be true in All Times and Places.

But the use of words in registring our thoughts, is in nothing so
evident as in Numbering. A naturall foole that could never learn by
heart the order of numerall words, as One, Two, and Three, may observe
every stroak of the Clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one; but can
never know what houre it strikes. And it seems, there was a time when
those names of number were not in use; and men were fayn to apply their
fingers of one or both hands, to those things they desired to keep
account of; and that thence it proceeded, that now our numerall words
are but ten, in any Nation, and in some but five, and then they begin
again. And he that can tell ten, if he recite them out of order, will
lose himselfe, and not know when he has done: Much lesse will he be
able to add, and substract, and performe all other operations of
Arithmetique. So that without words, there is no possibility of
reckoning of Numbers; much lesse of Magnitudes, of Swiftnesse, of Force,
and other things, the reckonings whereof are necessary to the being, or
well-being of man-kind.

When two Names are joyned together into a Consequence, or Affirmation;
as thus, A Man Is A Living Creature; or thus, If He Be A Man, He Is A
Living Creature, If the later name Living Creature, signifie all that
the former name Man signifieth, then the affirmation, or consequence is
True; otherwise False. For True and False are attributes of Speech, not
of things. And where Speech in not, there is neither Truth nor Falshood.
Errour there may be, as when wee expect that which shall not be; or
suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with
Untruth.

Seeing then that Truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our
affirmations, a man that seeketh precise Truth, had need to remember
what every name he uses stands for; and to place it accordingly; or els
he will find himselfe entangled in words, as a bird in lime-twiggs; the
more he struggles, the more belimed. And therefore in Geometry, (which
is the onely Science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on
mankind,) men begin at settling the significations of their words; which
settling of significations, they call Definitions; and place them in the
beginning of their reckoning.

By this it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true
Knowledge, to examine the Definitions of former Authors; and either
to correct them, where they are negligently set down; or to make them
himselfe. For the errours of Definitions multiply themselves, according
as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last
they see, but cannot avoyd, without reckoning anew from the beginning;
in which lyes the foundation of their errours. From whence it happens,
that they which trust to books, do as they that cast up many little
summs into a greater, without considering whether those little summes
were rightly cast up or not; and at last finding the errour visible,
and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to cleere
themselves; but spend time in fluttering over their bookes; as birds
that entring by the chimney, and finding themselves inclosed in a
chamber, flitter at the false light of a glasse window, for want of wit
to consider which way they came in. So that in the right Definition
of Names, lyes the first use of Speech; which is the Acquisition of
Science: And in wrong, or no Definitions' lyes the first abuse; from
which proceed all false and senslesse Tenets; which make those men that
take their instruction from the authority of books, and not from their
own meditation, to be as much below the condition of ignorant men, as
men endued with true Science are above it. For between true Science,
and erroneous Doctrines, Ignorance is in the middle. Naturall sense and
imagination, are not subject to absurdity. Nature it selfe cannot erre:
and as men abound in copiousnesse of language; so they become more wise,
or more mad than ordinary. Nor is it possible without Letters for any
man to become either excellently wise, or (unless his memory be hurt by
disease, or ill constitution of organs) excellently foolish. For words
are wise mens counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the
mony of fooles, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a
Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other Doctor whatsoever, if but a man.




Subject To Names

Subject To Names, is whatsoever can enter into, or be considered in an
account; and be added one to another to make a summe; or substracted one
from another, and leave a remainder. The Latines called Accounts of mony
Rationes, and accounting, Ratiocinatio: and that which we in bills or
books of account call Items, they called Nomina; that is, Names: and
thence it seems to proceed, that they extended the word Ratio, to the
faculty of Reckoning in all other things. The Greeks have but one word
Logos, for both Speech and Reason; not that they thought there was no
Speech without Reason; but no Reasoning without Speech: And the act of
reasoning they called syllogisme; which signifieth summing up of the
consequences of one saying to another. And because the same things may
enter into account for divers accidents; their names are (to shew that
diversity) diversly wrested, and diversified. This diversity of names
may be reduced to foure generall heads.

First, a thing may enter into account for Matter, or Body; as Living,
Sensible, Rationall, Hot, Cold, Moved, Quiet; with all which names the
word Matter, or Body is understood; all such, being names of Matter.

Secondly, it may enter into account, or be considered, for some accident
or quality, which we conceive to be in it; as for Being Moved, for Being
So Long, for Being Hot, &c; and then, of the name of the thing it selfe,
by a little change or wresting, wee make a name for that accident, which
we consider; and for Living put into account Life; for Moved, Motion;
for Hot, Heat; for Long, Length, and the like. And all such Names, are
the names of the accidents and properties, by which one Matter, and Body
is distinguished from another. These are called Names Abstract; Because
Severed (not from Matter, but) from the account of Matter.

Thirdly, we bring into account, the Properties of our own bodies,
whereby we make such distinction: as when any thing is Seen by us, we
reckon not the thing it selfe; but the Sight, the Colour, the Idea of
it in the fancy: and when any thing is Heard, wee reckon it not; but the
Hearing, or Sound onely, which is our fancy or conception of it by the
Eare: and such are names of fancies.

Fourthly, we bring into account, consider, and give names, to Names
themselves, and to Speeches: For, Generall, Universall, Speciall,
Oequivocall, are names of Names. And Affirmation, Interrogation,
Commandement, Narration, Syllogisme, Sermon, Oration, and many other
such, are names of Speeches.




Use Of Names Positive

And this is all the variety of Names Positive; which are put to mark
somewhat which is in Nature, or may be feigned by the mind of man, as
Bodies that are, or may be conceived to be; or of bodies, the Properties
that are, or may be feigned to be; or Words and Speech.




Negative Names With Their Uses

There be also other Names, called Negative; which are notes to signifie
that a word is not the name of the thing in question; as these words
Nothing, No Man, Infinite, Indocible, Three Want Foure, and the
like; which are nevertheless of use in reckoning, or in correcting of
reckoning; and call to mind our past cogitations, though they be not
names of any thing; because they make us refuse to admit of Names not
rightly used.




Words Insignificant

All other names, are but insignificant sounds; and those of two
sorts. One, when they are new, and yet their meaning not explained by
Definition; whereof there have been aboundance coyned by Schoole-men,
and pusled Philosophers.

Another, when men make a name of two Names, whose significations are
contradictory and inconsistent; as this name, an Incorporeall Body, or
(which is all one) an Incorporeall Substance, and a great number more.
For whensoever any affirmation is false, the two names of which it
is composed, put together and made one, signifie nothing at all. For
example if it be a false affirmation to say A Quadrangle Is Round,
the word Round Quadrangle signifies nothing; but is a meere sound. So
likewise if it be false, to say that vertue can be powred, or blown up
and down; the words In-powred Vertue, In-blown Vertue, are as absurd
and insignificant, as a Round Quadrangle. And therefore you shall hardly
meet with a senselesse and insignificant word, that is not made up of
some Latin or Greek names. A Frenchman seldome hears our Saviour called
by the name of Parole, but by the name of Verbe often; yet Verbe and
Parole differ no more, but that one is Latin, the other French.




Understanding

When a man upon the hearing of any Speech, hath those thoughts which the
words of that Speech, and their connexion, were ordained and constituted
to signifie; Then he is said to understand it; Understanding being
nothing els, but conception caused by Speech. And therefore if Speech
be peculiar to man (as for ought I know it is,) then is Understanding
peculiar to him also. And therefore of absurd and false affirmations,
in case they be universall, there can be no Understanding; though many
think they understand, then, when they do but repeat the words softly,
or con them in their mind.

What kinds of Speeches signifie the Appetites, Aversions, and Passions
of mans mind; and of their use and abuse, I shall speak when I have
spoken of the Passions.




Inconstant Names

The names of such things as affect us, that is, which please, and
displease us, because all men be not alike affected with the same thing,
nor the same man at all times, are in the common discourses of men, of
Inconstant signification. For seeing all names are imposed to signifie
our conceptions; and all our affections are but conceptions; when we
conceive the same things differently, we can hardly avoyd different
naming of them. For though the nature of that we conceive, be the
same; yet the diversity of our reception of it, in respect of different
constitutions of body, and prejudices of opinion, gives everything a
tincture of our different passions. And therefore in reasoning, a man
bust take heed of words; which besides the signification of what we
imagine of their nature, disposition, and interest of the speaker; such
as are the names of Vertues, and Vices; For one man calleth Wisdome,
what another calleth Feare; and one Cruelty, what another Justice;
one Prodigality, what another Magnanimity; one Gravity, what another
Stupidity, &c. And therefore such names can never be true grounds of any
ratiocination. No more can Metaphors, and Tropes of speech: but these
are less dangerous, because they profess their inconstancy; which the
other do not.



CHAPTER V. OF REASON, AND SCIENCE.




Reason What It Is

When a man Reasoneth, hee does nothing els but conceive a summe totall,
from Addition of parcels; or conceive a Remainder, from Substraction of
one summe from another: which (if it be done by Words,) is conceiving of
the consequence of the names of all the parts, to the name of the whole;
or from the names of the whole and one part, to the name of the other
part. And though in some things, (as in numbers,) besides Adding and
Substracting, men name other operations, as Multiplying and Dividing;
yet they are the same; for Multiplication, is but Addition together of
things equall; and Division, but Substracting of one thing, as often as
we can. These operations are not incident to Numbers onely, but to
all manner of things that can be added together, and taken one out of
another. For as Arithmeticians teach to adde and substract in Numbers;
so the Geometricians teach the same in Lines, Figures (solid and
superficiall,) Angles, Proportions, Times, degrees of Swiftnesse, Force,
Power, and the like; The Logicians teach the same in Consequences
Of Words; adding together Two Names, to make an Affirmation; and Two
Affirmations, to make a syllogisme; and Many syllogismes to make a
Demonstration; and from the Summe, or Conclusion of a syllogisme, they
substract one Proposition, to finde the other. Writers of Politiques,
adde together Pactions, to find mens Duties; and Lawyers, Lawes and
Facts, to find what is Right and Wrong in the actions of private men.
In summe, in what matter soever there is place for Addition and
Substraction, there also is place for Reason; and where these have no
place, there Reason has nothing at all to do.




Reason Defined

Out of all which we may define, (that is to say determine,) what that
is, which is meant by this word Reason, when wee reckon it amongst
the Faculties of the mind. For Reason, in this sense, is nothing but
Reckoning (that is, Adding and Substracting) of the Consequences of
generall names agreed upon, for the Marking and Signifying of our
thoughts; I say Marking them, when we reckon by our selves; and
Signifying, when we demonstrate, or approve our reckonings to other men.




Right Reason Where

And as in Arithmetique, unpractised men must, and Professors themselves
may often erre, and cast up false; so also in any other subject of
Reasoning, the ablest, most attentive, and most practised men, may
deceive themselves, and inferre false Conclusions; Not but that Reason
it selfe is always Right Reason, as well as Arithmetique is a certain
and infallible art: But no one mans Reason, nor the Reason of any
one number of men, makes the certaintie; no more than an account is
therefore well cast up, because a great many men have unanimously
approved it. And therfore, as when there is a controversy in an account,
the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the
Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence they will
both stand, or their controversie must either come to blowes, or be
undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is
it also in all debates of what kind soever: And when men that think
themselves wiser than all others, clamor and demand right Reason for
judge; yet seek no more, but that things should be determined, by no
other mens reason but their own, it is as intolerable in the society of
men, as it is in play after trump is turned, to use for trump on every
occasion, that suite whereof they have most in their hand. For they do
nothing els, that will have every of their passions, as it comes to
bear sway in them, to be taken for right Reason, and that in their own
controversies: bewraying their want of right Reason, by the claym they
lay to it.




The Use Of Reason

The Use and End of Reason, is not the finding of the summe, and truth
of one, or a few consequences, remote from the first definitions, and
settled significations of names; but to begin at these; and proceed from
one consequence to another. For there can be no certainty of the last
Conclusion, without a certainty of all those Affirmations and Negations,
on which it was grounded, and inferred. As when a master of a family,
in taking an account, casteth up the summs of all the bills of expence,
into one sum; and not regarding how each bill is summed up, by those
that give them in account; nor what it is he payes for; he advantages
himselfe no more, than if he allowed the account in grosse, trusting to
every of the accountants skill and honesty; so also in Reasoning of all
other things, he that takes up conclusions on the trust of Authors, and
doth not fetch them from the first Items in every Reckoning, (which are
the significations of names settled by definitions), loses his labour;
and does not know any thing; but onely beleeveth.




Of Error And Absurdity

When a man reckons without the use of words, which may be done in
particular things, (as when upon the sight of any one thing, wee
conjecture what was likely to have preceded, or is likely to follow upon
it;) if that which he thought likely to follow, followes not; or that
which he thought likely to have preceded it, hath not preceded it, this
is called ERROR; to which even the most prudent men are subject. But
when we Reason in Words of generall signification, and fall upon a
generall inference which is false; though it be commonly called Error,
it is indeed an ABSURDITY, or senseless Speech. For Error is but a
deception, in presuming that somewhat is past, or to come; of which,
though it were not past, or not to come; yet there was no impossibility
discoverable. But when we make a generall assertion, unlesse it be a
true one, the possibility of it is unconceivable. And words whereby we
conceive nothing but the sound, are those we call Absurd, insignificant,
and Non-sense. And therefore if a man should talk to me of a Round
Quadrangle; or Accidents Of Bread In Cheese; or Immaterial Substances;
or of A Free Subject; A Free Will; or any Free, but free from being
hindred by opposition, I should not say he were in an Errour; but that
his words were without meaning; that is to say, Absurd.

I have said before, (in the second chapter,) that a Man did excell
all other Animals in this faculty, that when he conceived any thing
whatsoever, he was apt to enquire the consequences of it, and what
effects he could do with it. And now I adde this other degree of the
same excellence, that he can by words reduce the consequences he findes
to generall Rules, called Theoremes, or Aphorismes; that is, he can
Reason, or reckon, not onely in number; but in all other things, whereof
one may be added unto, or substracted from another.

But this priviledge, is allayed by another; and that is, by the
priviledge of Absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man
onely. And of men, those are of all most subject to it, that professe
Philosophy. For it is most true that Cicero sayth of them somewhere;
that there can be nothing so absurd, but may be found in the books of
Philosophers. And the reason is manifest. For there is not one of them
that begins his ratiocination from the Definitions, or Explications of
the names they are to use; which is a method that hath been used onely
in Geometry; whose Conclusions have thereby been made indisputable.




Causes Of Absurditie

The first cause of Absurd conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method;
in that they begin not their Ratiocination from Definitions; that
is, from settled significations of their words: as if they could cast
account, without knowing the value of the numerall words, One, Two, and
Three.

And whereas all bodies enter into account upon divers considerations,
(which I have mentioned in the precedent chapter;) these considerations
being diversly named, divers absurdities proceed from the confusion, and
unfit connexion of their names into assertions. And therefore

The second cause of Absurd assertions, I ascribe to the giving of names
of Bodies, to Accidents; or of Accidents, to Bodies; As they do, that
say, Faith Is Infused, or Inspired; when nothing can be Powred, or
Breathed into any thing, but body; and that, Extension is Body; that
Phantasmes are Spirits, &c.

The third I ascribe to the giving of the names of the Accidents of
Bodies Without Us, to the Accidents of our Own Bodies; as they do that
say, the Colour Is In The Body; The Sound Is In The Ayre, &c.

The fourth, to the giving of the names of Bodies, to Names, or Speeches;
as they do that say, that There Be Things Universall; that A Living
Creature Is Genus, or A Generall Thing, &c.

The fifth, to the giving of the names of Accidents, to Names and
Speeches; as they do that say, The Nature Of A Thing Is In Its
Definition; A Mans Command Is His Will; and the like.

The sixth, to the use of Metaphors, Tropes, and other Rhetoricall
figures, in stead of words proper. For though it be lawfull to say, (for
example) in common speech, The Way Goeth, Or Leadeth Hither, Or Thither,
The Proverb Sayes This Or That (whereas wayes cannot go, nor Proverbs
speak;) yet in reckoning, and seeking of truth, such speeches are not to
be admitted.

The seventh, to names that signifie nothing; but are taken up, and
learned by rote from the Schooles, as Hypostatical, Transubstantiate,
Consubstantiate, Eternal-now, and the like canting of Schoole-men.

To him that can avoyd these things, it is not easie to fall into any
absurdity, unlesse it be by the length of an account; wherein he may
perhaps forget what went before. For all men by nature reason alike, and
well, when they have good principles. For who is so stupid, as both to
mistake in Geometry, and also to persist in it, when another detects his
error to him?




Science

By this it appears that Reason is not as Sense, and Memory, borne with
us; nor gotten by Experience onely; as Prudence is; but attayned by
Industry; first in apt imposing of Names; and secondly by getting a good
and orderly Method in proceeding from the Elements, which are Names,
to Assertions made by Connexion of one of them to another; and so to
syllogismes, which are the Connexions of one Assertion to another, till
we come to a knowledge of all the Consequences of names appertaining to
the subject in hand; and that is it, men call SCIENCE. And whereas
Sense and Memory are but knowledge of Fact, which is a thing past, and
irrevocable; Science is the knowledge of Consequences, and dependance
of one fact upon another: by which, out of that we can presently do, we
know how to do something els when we will, or the like, another time;
Because when we see how any thing comes about, upon what causes, and by
what manner; when the like causes come into our power, wee see how to
make it produce the like effects.

Children therefore are not endued with Reason at all, till they have
attained the use of Speech: but are called Reasonable Creatures, for the
possibility apparent of having the use of Reason in time to come. And
the most part of men, though they have the use of Reasoning a little
way, as in numbring to some degree; yet it serves them to little use in
common life; in which they govern themselves, some better, some worse,
according to their differences of experience, quicknesse of memory, and
inclinations to severall ends; but specially according to good or evill
fortune, and the errors of one another. For as for Science, or certain
rules of their actions, they are so farre from it, that they know
not what it is. Geometry they have thought Conjuring: but for other
Sciences, they who have not been taught the beginnings, and some
progresse in them, that they may see how they be acquired and generated,
are in this point like children, that having no thought of generation,
are made believe by the women, that their brothers and sisters are not
born, but found in the garden.

But yet they that have no Science, are in better, and nobler condition
with their naturall Prudence; than men, that by mis-reasoning, or by
trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall
rules. For ignorance of causes, and of rules, does not set men so farre
out of their way, as relying on false rules, and taking for causes of
what they aspire to, those that are not so, but rather causes of the
contrary.

To conclude, The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by
exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is
the Pace; Encrease of Science, the Way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the
End. And on the contrary, Metaphors, and senslesse and ambiguous words,
are like Ignes Fatui; and reasoning upon them, is wandering amongst
innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention, and sedition, or
contempt.




Prudence & Sapience, With Their Difference

As, much Experience, is Prudence; so, is much Science, Sapience. For
though wee usually have one name of Wisedome for them both; yet
the Latines did always distinguish between Prudentia and Sapientia,
ascribing the former to Experience, the later to Science. But to make
their difference appeare more cleerly, let us suppose one man endued
with an excellent naturall use, and dexterity in handling his armes; and
another to have added to that dexterity, an acquired Science, of where
he can offend, or be offended by his adversarie, in every possible
posture, or guard: The ability of the former, would be to the ability
of the later, as Prudence to Sapience; both usefull; but the later
infallible. But they that trusting onely to the authority of books,
follow the blind blindly, are like him that trusting to the false rules
of the master of fence, ventures praesumptuously upon an adversary, that
either kills, or disgraces him.




Signes Of Science

The signes of Science, are some, certain and infallible; some,
uncertain. Certain, when he that pretendeth the Science of any thing,
can teach the same; that is to say, demonstrate the truth thereof
perspicuously to another: Uncertain, when onely some particular events
answer to his pretence, and upon many occasions prove so as he sayes
they must. Signes of prudence are all uncertain; because to observe by
experience, and remember all circumstances that may alter the successe,
is impossible. But in any businesse, whereof a man has not infallible
Science to proceed by; to forsake his own natural judgement, and be
guided by generall sentences read in Authors, and subject to many
exceptions, is a signe of folly, and generally scorned by the name of
Pedantry. And even of those men themselves, that in Councells of the
Common-wealth, love to shew their reading of Politiques and History,
very few do it in their domestique affaires, where their particular
interest is concerned; having Prudence enough for their private
affaires: but in publique they study more the reputation of their owne
wit, than the successe of anothers businesse.



CHAPTER VI. OF THE INTERIOUR BEGINNINGS OF VOLUNTARY MOTIONS

COMMONLY CALLED THE PASSIONS. AND THE SPEECHES BY WHICH THEY ARE
EXPRESSED.




Motion Vitall And Animal

There be in Animals, two sorts of Motions peculiar to them: One called
Vitall; begun in generation, and continued without interruption through
their whole life; such as are the Course of the Bloud, the Pulse, the
Breathing, the Concoctions, Nutrition, Excretion, &c; to which Motions
there needs no help of Imagination: The other in Animal Motion,
otherwise called Voluntary Motion; as to Go, to Speak, to Move any of
our limbes, in such manner as is first fancied in our minds. That Sense,
is Motion in the organs and interiour parts of mans body, caused by
the action of the things we See, Heare, &c.; And that Fancy is but the
Reliques of the same Motion, remaining after Sense, has been already
sayd in the first and second Chapters. And because Going, Speaking, and
the like Voluntary motions, depend alwayes upon a precedent thought of
Whither, Which Way, and What; it is evident, that the Imagination is
the first internall beginning of all Voluntary Motion. And although
unstudied men, doe not conceive any motion at all to be there, where
the thing moved is invisible; or the space it is moved in, is (for the
shortnesse of it) insensible; yet that doth not hinder, but that such
Motions are. For let a space be never so little, that which is moved
over a greater space, whereof that little one is part, must first be
moved over that. These small beginnings of Motion, within the body
of Man, before they appear in walking, speaking, striking, and other
visible actions, are commonly called ENDEAVOUR.




Endeavour; Appetite; Desire; Hunger; Thirst; Aversion

This Endeavour, when it is toward something which causes it, is called
APPETITE, or DESIRE; the later, being the generall name; and the other,
oftentimes restrayned to signifie the Desire of Food, namely Hunger and
Thirst. And when the Endeavour is fromward something, it is generally
called AVERSION. These words Appetite, and Aversion we have from the
Latines; and they both of them signifie the motions, one of approaching,
the other of retiring. So also do the Greek words for the same, which
are orme and aphorme. For nature it selfe does often presse upon men
those truths, which afterwards, when they look for somewhat beyond
Nature, they stumble at. For the Schooles find in meere Appetite to go,
or move, no actuall Motion at all: but because some Motion they must
acknowledge, they call it Metaphoricall Motion; which is but an absurd
speech; for though Words may be called metaphoricall; Bodies, and
Motions cannot.

That which men Desire, they are also sayd to LOVE; and to HATE those
things, for which they have Aversion. So that Desire, and Love, are the
same thing; save that by Desire, we alwayes signifie the Absence of
the object; by Love, most commonly the Presence of the same. So also
by Aversion, we signifie the Absence; and by Hate, the Presence of the
Object.

Of Appetites, and Aversions, some are born with men; as Appetite of
food, Appetite of excretion, and exoneration, (which may also and more
properly be called Aversions, from somewhat they feele in their Bodies;)
and some other Appetites, not many. The rest, which are Appetites of
particular things, proceed from Experience, and triall of their effects
upon themselves, or other men. For of things wee know not at all, or
believe not to be, we can have no further Desire, than to tast and try.
But Aversion wee have for things, not onely which we know have hurt us;
but also that we do not know whether they will hurt us, or not.




Contempt

Those things which we neither Desire, nor Hate, we are said to Contemne:
CONTEMPT being nothing els but an immobility, or contumacy of the Heart,
in resisting the action of certain things; and proceeding from that the
Heart is already moved otherwise, by either more potent objects; or from
want of experience of them.

And because the constitution of a mans Body, is in continuall mutation;
it is impossible that all the same things should alwayes cause in him
the same Appetites, and aversions: much lesse can all men consent, in
the Desire of almost any one and the same Object.




Good Evill

But whatsoever is the object of any mans Appetite or Desire; that is
it, which he for his part calleth Good: And the object of his Hate,
and Aversion, evill; And of his contempt, Vile, and Inconsiderable.
For these words of Good, evill, and Contemptible, are ever used with
relation to the person that useth them: There being nothing simply and
absolutely so; nor any common Rule of Good and evill, to be taken from
the nature of the objects themselves; but from the Person of the man
(where there is no Common-wealth;) or, (in a Common-wealth,) From the
Person that representeth it; or from an Arbitrator or Judge, whom men
disagreeing shall by consent set up, and make his sentence the Rule
thereof.




Pulchrum Turpe; Delightfull Profitable; Unpleasant Unprofitable

The Latine Tongue has two words, whose significations approach to
those of Good and Evill; but are not precisely the same; And those are
Pulchrum and Turpe. Whereof the former signifies that, which by some
apparent signes promiseth Good; and the later, that, which promiseth
evill. But in our Tongue we have not so generall names to expresse them
by. But for Pulchrum, we say in some things, Fayre; in other Beautifull,
or Handsome, or Gallant, or Honourable, or Comely, or Amiable; and
for Turpe, Foule, Deformed, Ugly, Base, Nauseous, and the like, as the
subject shall require; All which words, in their proper places signifie
nothing els, but the Mine, or Countenance, that promiseth Good and
evill. So that of Good there be three kinds; Good in the Promise,
that is Pulchrum; Good in Effect, as the end desired, which is called
Jucundum, Delightfull; and Good as the Means, which is called Utile,
Profitable; and as many of evill: For evill, in Promise, is that
they call Turpe; evill in Effect, and End, is Molestum, Unpleasant,
Troublesome; and evill in the Means, Inutile, Unprofitable, Hurtfull.




Delight Displeasure

As, in Sense, that which is really within us, is (As I have sayd
before) onely Motion, caused by the action of externall objects, but in
apparence; to the Sight, Light and Colour; to the Eare, Sound; to the
Nostrill, Odour, &c: so, when the action of the same object is continued
from the Eyes, Eares, and other organs to the Heart; the real effect
there is nothing but Motion, or Endeavour; which consisteth in Appetite,
or Aversion, to, or from the object moving. But the apparence, or sense
of that motion, is that wee either call DELIGHT, or TROUBLE OF MIND.




Pleasure Offence

This Motion, which is called Appetite, and for the apparence of it
Delight, and Pleasure, seemeth to be, a corroboration of Vitall motion,
and a help thereunto; and therefore such things as caused Delight, were
not improperly called Jucunda, (A Juvando,) from helping or fortifying;
and the contrary, Molesta, Offensive, from hindering, and troubling the
motion vitall.

Pleasure therefore, (or Delight,) is the apparence, or sense of Good;
and Molestation or Displeasure, the apparence, or sense of evill. And
consequently all Appetite, Desire, and Love, is accompanied with some
Delight more or lesse; and all Hatred, and Aversion, with more or lesse
Displeasure and Offence.




Pleasures Of Sense; Pleasures Of The Mind; Joy Paine Griefe

Of Pleasures, or Delights, some arise from the sense of an object
Present; And those may be called Pleasures Of Sense, (The word Sensuall,
as it is used by those onely that condemn them, having no place till
there be Lawes.) Of this kind are all Onerations and Exonerations of the
body; as also all that is pleasant, in the Sight, Hearing, Smell,
Tast, Or Touch; Others arise from the Expectation, that proceeds from
foresight of the End, or Consequence of things; whether those things in
the Sense Please or Displease: And these are Pleasures Of The Mind of
him that draweth those consequences; and are generally called JOY. In
the like manner, Displeasures, are some in the Sense, and called PAYNE;
others, in the Expectation of consequences, and are called GRIEFE.

These simple Passions called Appetite, Desire, Love, Aversion, Hate,
Joy, and griefe, have their names for divers considerations diversified.
As first, when they one succeed another, they are diversly called from
the opinion men have of the likelihood of attaining what they
desire. Secondly, from the object loved or hated. Thirdly, from the
consideration of many of them together. Fourthly, from the Alteration or
succession it selfe.


Hope-- For Appetite with an opinion of attaining, is called HOPE.

Despaire-- The same, without such opinion, DESPAIRE.

Feare-- Aversion, with opinion of Hurt from the object, FEARE.

Courage-- The same, with hope of avoyding that Hurt by resistance,
COURAGE.

Anger-- Sudden Courage, ANGER.

Confidence-- Constant Hope, CONFIDENCE of our selves.

Diffidence-- Constant Despayre, DIFFIDENCE of our selves.

Indignation-- Anger for great hurt done to another, when we conceive the
same to be done by Injury, INDIGNATION.

Benevolence-- Desire of good to another, BENEVOLENCE, GOOD WILL,
CHARITY. If to man generally, GOOD NATURE.

Covetousnesse-- Desire of Riches, COVETOUSNESSE: a name used alwayes in
signification of blame; because men contending for them, are displeased
with one anothers attaining them; though the desire in it selfe, be to
be blamed, or allowed, according to the means by which those Riches are
sought.

Ambition-- Desire of Office, or precedence, AMBITION: a name used also
in the worse sense, for the reason before mentioned.

Pusillanimity-- Desire of things that conduce but a little to our ends;
And fear of things that are but of little hindrance, PUSILLANIMITY.

Magnanimity-- Contempt of little helps, and hindrances, MAGNANIMITY.

Valour-- Magnanimity, in danger of Death, or Wounds, VALOUR, FORTITUDE.

Liberality-- Magnanimity in the use of Riches, LIBERALITY

Miserablenesse-- Pusillanimity, in the same WRETCHEDNESSE,
MISERABLENESSE; or PARSIMONY; as it is liked or disliked.

Kindnesse-- Love of Persons for society, KINDNESSE.

Naturall Lust-- Love of Persons for Pleasing the sense onely, NATURAL
LUST.

Luxury-- Love of the same, acquired from Rumination, that is Imagination
of Pleasure past, LUXURY.

The Passion Of Love; Jealousie-- Love of one singularly, with desire to
be singularly beloved, THE PASSION OF LOVE. The same, with fear that the
love is not mutuall, JEALOUSIE.

Revengefulnesse-- Desire, by doing hurt to another, to make him condemn
some fact of his own, REVENGEFULNESSE.

Curiosity-- Desire, to know why, and how, CURIOSITY; such as is in no
living creature but Man; so that Man is distinguished, not onely by his
Reason; but also by this singular Passion from other Animals; in whom
the appetite of food, and other pleasures of Sense, by praedominance,
take away the care of knowing causes; which is a Lust of the mind,
that by a perseverance of delight in the continuall and indefatigable
generation of Knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnall
Pleasure.

Religion Superstition; True Religion-- Feare of power invisible, feigned
by the mind, or imagined from tales publiquely allowed, RELIGION; not
allowed, superstition. And when the power imagined is truly such as we
imagine, TRUE RELIGION.

Panique Terrour-- Feare, without the apprehension of why, or what,
PANIQUE TERROR; called so from the fables that make Pan the author of
them; whereas in truth there is always in him that so feareth, first,
some apprehension of the cause, though the rest run away by example;
every one supposing his fellow to know why. And therefore this Passion
happens to none but in a throng, or multitude of people.

Admiration-- Joy, from apprehension of novelty, ADMIRATION; proper to
man, because it excites the appetite of knowing the cause.

Glory Vaine-glory-- Joy, arising from imagination of a man's own power
and ability, is that exultation of the mind which is called GLORYING:
which, if grounded upon the experience of his own former actions, is
the same with Confidence: but if grounded on the flattery of others, or
onely supposed by himselfe, for delight in the consequences of it,
is called VAINE-GLORY: which name is properly given; because a
well-grounded Confidence begetteth attempt; whereas the supposing of
power does not, and is therefore rightly called Vaine.

Dejection-- Griefe, from opinion of want of power, is called dejection
of mind.

The Vaine-glory which consisteth in the feigning or supposing of
abilities in ourselves, which we know are not, is most incident to young
men, and nourished by the Histories or Fictions of Gallant Persons; and
is corrected often times by Age, and Employment.

Sudden Glory Laughter-- Sudden glory, is the passion which maketh those
Grimaces called LAUGHTER; and is caused either by some sudden act of
their own, that pleaseth them; or by the apprehension of some
deformed thing in another, by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud
themselves. And it is incident most to them, that are conscious of the
fewest abilities in themselves; who are forced to keep themselves in
their own favour, by observing the imperfections of other men.
And therefore much Laughter at the defects of others is a signe of
Pusillanimity. For of great minds, one of the proper workes is, to help
and free others from scorn; and compare themselves onely with the most
able.

Sudden Dejection Weeping-- On the contrary, Sudden Dejection is the
passion that causeth WEEPING; and is caused by such accidents, as
suddenly take away some vehement hope, or some prop of their power: and
they are most subject to it, that rely principally on helps externall,
such as are Women, and Children. Therefore, some Weep for the loss of
Friends; Others for their unkindnesse; others for the sudden stop made
to their thoughts of revenge, by Reconciliation. But in all cases, both
Laughter and Weeping, are sudden motions; Custome taking them both away.
For no man Laughs at old jests; or Weeps for an old calamity.

Shame Blushing-- Griefe, for the discovery of some defect of ability
is SHAME, or the passion that discovereth itself in BLUSHING; and
consisteth in the apprehension of some thing dishonourable; and in young
men, is a signe of the love of good reputation; and commendable: in
old men it is a signe of the same; but because it comes too late, not
commendable.

Impudence-- The Contempt of good reputation is called IMPUDENCE.

Pitty-- Griefe, for the calamity of another is PITTY; and ariseth
from the imagination that the like calamity may befall himselfe; and
therefore is called also COMPASSION, and in the phrase of this present
time a FELLOW-FEELING: and therefore for Calamity arriving from
great wickedness, the best men have the least Pitty; and for the same
Calamity, those have least Pitty, that think themselves least obnoxious
to the same.

Cruelty-- Contempt, or little sense of the calamity of others, is that
which men call CRUELTY; proceeding from Security of their own fortune.
For, that any man should take pleasure in other mens' great harmes,
without other end of his own, I do not conceive it possible.

Emulation Envy-- Griefe, for the success of a Competitor in wealth,
honour, or other good, if it be joyned with Endeavour to enforce our own
abilities to equal or exceed him, is called EMULATION: but joyned with
Endeavour to supplant or hinder a Competitor, ENVIE.

Deliberation-- When in the mind of man, Appetites and Aversions, Hopes
and Feares, concerning one and the same thing, arise alternately; and
divers good and evill consequences of the doing, or omitting the thing
propounded, come successively into our thoughts; so that sometimes we
have an Appetite to it, sometimes an Aversion from it; sometimes Hope to
be able to do it; sometimes Despaire, or Feare to attempt it; the whole
sum of Desires, Aversions, Hopes and Feares, continued till the thing be
either done, or thought impossible, is that we call DELIBERATION.

Therefore of things past, there is no Deliberation; because manifestly
impossible to be changed: nor of things known to be impossible, or
thought so; because men know, or think such Deliberation vaine. But
of things impossible, which we think possible, we may Deliberate; not
knowing it is in vain. And it is called DELIBERATION; because it is a
putting an end to the Liberty we had of doing, or omitting, according to
our own Appetite, or Aversion.

This alternate succession of Appetites, Aversions, Hopes and Feares is
no less in other living Creatures than in Man; and therefore Beasts also
Deliberate.

Every Deliberation is then sayd to End when that whereof they
Deliberate, is either done, or thought impossible; because till then wee
retain the liberty of doing, or omitting, according to our Appetite, or
Aversion.




The Will

In Deliberation, the last Appetite, or Aversion, immediately adhaering
to the action, or to the omission thereof, is that wee call the
WILL; the Act, (not the faculty,) of Willing. And Beasts that have
Deliberation must necessarily also have Will. The Definition of the
Will, given commonly by the Schooles, that it is a Rationall Appetite,
is not good. For if it were, then could there be no Voluntary Act
against Reason. For a Voluntary Act is that, which proceedeth from the
Will, and no other. But if in stead of a Rationall Appetite, we shall
say an Appetite resulting from a precedent Deliberation, then the
Definition is the same that I have given here. Will, therefore, Is The
Last Appetite In Deliberating. And though we say in common Discourse, a
man had a Will once to do a thing, that neverthelesse he forbore to
do; yet that is properly but an Inclination, which makes no Action
Voluntary; because the action depends not of it, but of the last
Inclination, or Appetite. For if the intervenient Appetites make any
action Voluntary, then by the same reason all intervenient Aversions
should make the same action Involuntary; and so one and the same action
should be both Voluntary & Involuntary.

By this it is manifest, that not onely actions that have their beginning
from Covetousness, Ambition, Lust, or other Appetites to the thing
propounded; but also those that have their beginning from Aversion,
or Feare of those consequences that follow the omission, are Voluntary
Actions.




Formes Of Speech, In Passion

The formes of Speech by which the Passions are expressed, are partly the
same, and partly different from those, by which we express our Thoughts.
And first generally all Passions may be expressed Indicatively; as, I
Love, I Feare, I Joy, I Deliberate, I Will, I Command: but some of them
have particular expressions by themselves, which nevertheless are not
affirmations, unless it be when they serve to make other inferences,
besides that of the Passion they proceed from. Deliberation is expressed
Subjunctively; which is a speech proper to signifie suppositions, with
their consequences; as, If This Be Done, Then This Will Follow; and
differs not from the language of Reasoning, save that Reasoning is in
generall words, but Deliberation for the most part is of Particulars.
The language of Desire, and Aversion, is Imperative; as, Do This,
Forbear That; which when the party is obliged to do, or forbear, is
Command; otherwise Prayer; or els Counsell. The language of Vaine-Glory,
of Indignation, Pitty and Revengefulness, Optative: but of the Desire to
know, there is a peculiar expression called Interrogative; as, What Is
It, When Shall It, How Is It Done, and Why So? Other language of the
Passions I find none: for Cursing, Swearing, Reviling, and the like, do
not signifie as Speech; but as the actions of a tongue accustomed.

These forms of Speech, I say, are expressions, or voluntary
significations of our Passions: but certain signes they be not; because
they may be used arbitrarily, whether they that use them, have such
Passions or not. The best signes of Passions present, are either in the
countenance, motions of the body, actions, and ends, or aims, which we
otherwise know the man to have.




Good And Evill Apparent

And because in Deliberation the Appetites and Aversions are raised by
foresight of the good and evill consequences, and sequels of the action
whereof we Deliberate; the good or evill effect thereof dependeth on the
foresight of a long chain of consequences, of which very seldome any man
is able to see to the end. But for so far as a man seeth, if the Good
in those consequences be greater than the evill, the whole chain is that
which Writers call Apparent or Seeming Good. And contrarily, when the
evill exceedeth the good, the whole is Apparent or Seeming Evill: so
that he who hath by Experience, or Reason, the greatest and surest
prospect of Consequences, Deliberates best himself; and is able, when he
will, to give the best counsel unto others.




Felicity

Continual Successe in obtaining those things which a man from time to
time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call
FELICITY; I mean the Felicity of this life. For there is no such thing
as perpetual Tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because Life
itself is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without
Feare, no more than without Sense. What kind of Felicity God hath
ordained to them that devoutly honour him, a man shall no sooner know,
than enjoy; being joys, that now are as incomprehensible, as the word of
School-men, Beatifical Vision, is unintelligible.




Praise Magnification

The form of speech whereby men signifie their opinion of the Goodnesse
of anything is PRAISE. That whereby they signifie the power and
greatness of anything is MAGNIFYING. And that whereby they signifie
the opinion they have of a man's felicity is by the Greeks called
Makarismos, for which we have no name in our tongue. And thus much is
sufficient for the present purpose to have been said of the passions.



CHAPTER VII. OF THE ENDS OR RESOLUTIONS OF DISCOURSE


Of all Discourse, governed by desire of Knowledge, there is at last
an End, either by attaining, or by giving over. And in the chain of
Discourse, wheresoever it be interrupted, there is an End for that time.




Judgement, or Sentence Final; Doubt

If the Discourse be meerly Mentall, it consisteth of thoughts that the
thing will be, and will not be; or that it has been, and has not been,
alternately. So that wheresoever you break off the chayn of a mans
Discourse, you leave him in a Praesumption of It Will Be, or, It Will
Not Be; or it Has Been, or, Has Not Been. All which is Opinion. And that
which is alternate Appetite, in Deliberating concerning Good and Evil,
the same is alternate Opinion in the Enquiry of the truth of Past, and
Future. And as the last Appetite in Deliberation is called the Will, so
the last Opinion in search of the truth of Past, and Future, is called
the JUDGEMENT, or Resolute and Final Sentence of him that Discourseth.
And as the whole chain of Appetites alternate, in the question of Good
or Bad is called Deliberation; so the whole chain of Opinions alternate,
in the question of True, or False is called DOUBT.

No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute knowledge of Fact, past, or
to come. For, as for the knowledge of Fact, it is originally, Sense; and
ever after, Memory. And for the knowledge of consequence, which I have
said before is called Science, it is not Absolute, but Conditionall. No
man can know by Discourse, that this, or that, is, has been, or will
be; which is to know absolutely: but onely, that if This be, That is; if
This has been, That has been; if This shall be, That shall be: which
is to know conditionally; and that not the consequence of one thing to
another; but of one name of a thing, to another name of the same thing.




Science Opinion Conscience

And therefore, when the Discourse is put into Speech, and begins with
the Definitions of Words, and proceeds by Connexion of the same into
general Affirmations, and of these again into Syllogismes, the end or
last sum is called the Conclusion; and the thought of the mind by it
signified is that conditional Knowledge, or Knowledge of the consequence
of words, which is commonly called Science. But if the first ground of
such Discourse be not Definitions, or if the Definitions be not rightly
joyned together into Syllogismes, then the End or Conclusion is again
OPINION, namely of the truth of somewhat said, though sometimes in
absurd and senslesse words, without possibility of being understood.
When two, or more men, know of one and the same fact, they are said
to be CONSCIOUS of it one to another; which is as much as to know it
together. And because such are fittest witnesses of the facts of one
another, or of a third, it was, and ever will be reputed a very Evill
act, for any man to speak against his Conscience; or to corrupt or force
another so to do: Insomuch that the plea of Conscience, has been always
hearkened unto very diligently in all times. Afterwards, men made use
of the same word metaphorically, for the knowledge of their own secret
facts, and secret thoughts; and therefore it is Rhetorically said that
the Conscience is a thousand witnesses. And last of all, men, vehemently
in love with their own new opinions, (though never so absurd,) and
obstinately bent to maintain them, gave those their opinions also that
reverenced name of Conscience, as if they would have it seem unlawful,
to change or speak against them; and so pretend to know they are true,
when they know at most but that they think so.




Beliefe Faith

When a mans Discourse beginneth not at Definitions, it beginneth either
at some other contemplation of his own, and then it is still called
Opinion; Or it beginneth at some saying of another, of whose ability to
know the truth, and of whose honesty in not deceiving, he doubteth
not; and then the Discourse is not so much concerning the Thing, as the
Person; And the Resolution is called BELEEFE, and FAITH: Faith, In the
man; Beleefe, both Of the man, and Of the truth of what he sayes. So
then in Beleefe are two opinions; one of the saying of the man; the
other of his vertue. To Have Faith In, or Trust To, or Beleeve A Man,
signifie the same thing; namely, an opinion of the veracity of the man:
But to Beleeve What Is Said, signifieth onely an opinion of the truth
of the saying. But wee are to observe that this Phrase, I Beleeve In;
as also the Latine, Credo In; and the Greek, Pisteno Eis, are never used
but in the writings of Divines. In stead of them, in other writings are
put, I Beleeve Him; I Have Faith In Him; I Rely On Him: and in Latin,
Credo Illi; Fido Illi: and in Greek, Pisteno Anto: and that this
singularity of the Ecclesiastical use of the word hath raised many
disputes about the right object of the Christian Faith.

But by Beleeving In, as it is in the Creed, is meant, not trust in the
Person; but Confession and acknowledgement of the Doctrine. For not
onely Christians, but all manner of men do so believe in God, as to hold
all for truth they heare him say, whether they understand it, or not;
which is all the Faith and trust can possibly be had in any person
whatsoever: But they do not all believe the Doctrine of the Creed.

From whence we may inferre, that when wee believe any saying whatsoever
it be, to be true, from arguments taken, not from the thing it selfe, or
from the principles of naturall Reason, but from the Authority, and
good opinion wee have, of him that hath sayd it; then is the speaker, or
person we believe in, or trust in, and whose word we take, the object of
our Faith; and the Honour done in Believing, is done to him onely. And
consequently, when wee Believe that the Scriptures are the word of God,
having no immediate revelation from God himselfe, our Beleefe, Faith,
and Trust is in the Church; whose word we take, and acquiesce therein.
And they that believe that which a Prophet relates unto them in the
name of God, take the word of the Prophet, do honour to him, and in him
trust, and believe, touching the truth of what he relateth, whether he
be a true, or a false Prophet. And so it is also with all other History.
For if I should not believe all that is written By Historians, of the
glorious acts of Alexander, or Caesar; I do not think the Ghost of
Alexander, or Caesar, had any just cause to be offended; or any body
else, but the Historian. If Livy say the Gods made once a Cow speak, and
we believe it not; wee distrust not God therein, but Livy. So that it is
evident, that whatsoever we believe, upon no other reason, than what is
drawn from authority of men onely, and their writings; whether they be
sent from God or not, is Faith in men onely.



CHAPTER VIII. OF THE VERTUES COMMONLY CALLED INTELLECTUAL;

AND THEIR CONTRARY DEFECTS




Intellectuall Vertue Defined

Vertue generally, in all sorts of subjects, is somewhat that is valued
for eminence; and consisteth in comparison. For if all things
were equally in all men, nothing would be prized. And by Vertues
INTELLECTUALL, are always understood such abilityes of the mind, as men
praise, value, and desire should be in themselves; and go commonly under
the name of a Good Witte; though the same word Witte, be used also, to
distinguish one certain ability from the rest.




Wit, Naturall, Or Acquired

These Vertues are of two sorts; Naturall, and Acquired. By Naturall, I
mean not, that which a man hath from his Birth: for that is nothing else
but Sense; wherein men differ so little one from another, and from brute
Beasts, as it is not to be reckoned amongst Vertues. But I mean, that
Witte, which is gotten by Use onely, and Experience; without Method,
Culture, or Instruction. This NATURALL WITTE, consisteth principally
in two things; Celerity Of Imagining, (that is, swift succession of one
thought to another;) and Steddy Direction to some approved end. On the
Contrary a slow Imagination, maketh that Defect, or fault of the mind,
which is commonly called DULNESSE, Stupidity, and sometimes by other
names that signifie slownesse of motion, or difficulty to be moved.




Good Wit, Or Fancy; Good Judgement; Discretion

And this difference of quicknesse, is caused by the difference of mens
passions; that love and dislike, some one thing, some another: and
therefore some mens thoughts run one way, some another: and are held to,
and observe differently the things that passe through their imagination.
And whereas in his succession of mens thoughts, there is nothing to
observe in the things they think on, but either in what they be Like One
Another, or in what they be Unlike, or What They Serve For, or How They
Serve To Such A Purpose; Those that observe their similitudes, in case
they be such as are but rarely observed by others, are sayd to have a
Good Wit; by which, in this occasion, is meant a Good Fancy. But they
that observe their differences, and dissimilitudes; which is called
Distinguishing, and Discerning, and Judging between thing and thing; in
case, such discerning be not easie, are said to have a Good Judgement:
and particularly in matter of conversation and businesse; wherein,
times, places, and persons are to be discerned, this Vertue is called
DISCRETION. The former, that is, Fancy, without the help of Judgement,
is not commended as a Vertue: but the later which is Judgement, and
Discretion, is commended for it selfe, without the help of Fancy.
Besides the Discretion of times, places, and persons, necessary to a
good Fancy, there is required also an often application of his thoughts
to their End; that is to say, to some use to be made of them. This done;
he that hath this Vertue, will be easily fitted with similitudes, that
will please, not onely by illustration of his discourse, and adorning it
with new and apt metaphors; but also, by the rarity or their invention.
But without Steddinesse, and Direction to some End, a great Fancy is one
kind of Madnesse; such as they have, that entring into any discourse,
are snatched from their purpose, by every thing that comes in their
thought, into so many, and so long digressions, and parentheses, that
they utterly lose themselves: Which kind of folly, I know no particular
name for: but the cause of it is, sometimes want of experience; whereby
that seemeth to a man new and rare, which doth not so to others:
sometimes Pusillanimity; by which that seems great to him, which other
men think a trifle: and whatsoever is new, or great, and therefore
thought fit to be told, withdrawes a man by degrees from the intended
way of his discourse.

In a good Poem, whether it be Epique, or Dramatique; as also in Sonnets,
Epigrams, and other Pieces, both Judgement and Fancy are required:
But the Fancy must be more eminent; because they please for the
Extravagancy; but ought not to displease by Indiscretion.

In a good History, the Judgement must be eminent; because the goodnesse
consisteth, in the Method, in the Truth, and in the Choyse of the
actions that are most profitable to be known. Fancy has no place, but
onely in adorning the stile.

In Orations of Prayse, and in Invectives, the Fancy is praedominant;
because the designe is not truth, but to Honour or Dishonour; which is
done by noble, or by vile comparisons. The Judgement does but suggest
what circumstances make an action laudable, or culpable.

In Hortatives, and Pleadings, as Truth, or Disguise serveth best to the
Designe in hand; so is the Judgement, or the Fancy most required.

In Demonstration, in Councell, and all rigourous search of Truth,
Judgement does all; except sometimes the understanding have need to be
opened by some apt similitude; and then there is so much use of Fancy.
But for Metaphors, they are in this case utterly excluded. For seeing
they openly professe deceipt; to admit them into Councell, or Reasoning,
were manifest folly.

And in any Discourse whatsoever, if the defect of Discretion be
apparent, how extravagant soever the Fancy be, the whole discourse
will be taken for a signe of want of wit; and so will it never when the
Discretion is manifest, though the Fancy be never so ordinary.

The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, prophane,
clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame, or blame; which verball
discourse cannot do, farther than the Judgement shall approve of the
Time, Place, and Persons. An Anatomist, or a Physitian may speak, or
write his judgement of unclean things; because it is not to please,
but profit: but for another man to write his extravagant, and pleasant
fancies of the same, is as if a man, from being tumbled into the dirt,
should come and present himselfe before good company. And 'tis the want
of Discretion that makes the difference. Again, in profest remissnesse
of mind, and familiar company, a man may play with the sounds, and
aequivocal significations of words; and that many times with encounters
of extraordinary Fancy: but in a Sermon, or in publique, or before
persons unknown, or whom we ought to reverence, there is no Gingling of
words that will not be accounted folly: and the difference is onely in
the want of Discretion. So that where Wit is wanting, it is not Fancy
that is wanting, but Discretion. Judgement therefore without Fancy is
Wit, but Fancy without Judgement not.




Prudence

When the thoughts of a man, that has a designe in hand, running over a
multitude of things, observes how they conduce to that designe; or what
designe they may conduce into; if his observations be such as are not
easie, or usuall, This wit of his is called PRUDENCE; and dependeth on
much Experience, and Memory of the like things, and their consequences
heretofore. In which there is not so much difference of Men, as there is
in their Fancies and Judgements; Because the Experience of men equall
in age, is not much unequall, as to the quantity; but lyes in different
occasions; every one having his private designes. To govern well a
family, and a kingdome, are not different degrees of Prudence; but
different sorts of businesse; no more then to draw a picture in little,
or as great, or greater then the life, are different degrees of Art. A
plain husband-man is more Prudent in affaires of his own house, then a
Privy Counseller in the affaires of another man.




Craft

To Prudence, if you adde the use of unjust, or dishonest means, such
as usually are prompted to men by Feare, or Want; you have that Crooked
Wisdome, which is called CRAFT; which is a signe of Pusillanimity. For
Magnanimity is contempt of unjust, or dishonest helps. And that which
the Latines Call Versutia, (translated into English, Shifting,) and is
a putting off of a present danger or incommodity, by engaging into
a greater, as when a man robbs one to pay another, is but a shorter
sighted Craft, called Versutia, from Versura, which signifies taking
mony at usurie, for the present payment of interest.




Acquired Wit

As for Acquired Wit, (I mean acquired by method and instruction,) there
is none but Reason; which is grounded on the right use of Speech; and
produceth the Sciences. But of Reason and Science, I have already spoken
in the fifth and sixth Chapters.

The causes of this difference of Witts, are in the Passions: and
the difference of Passions, proceedeth partly from the different
Constitution of the body, and partly from different Education. For if
the difference proceeded from the temper of the brain, and the organs of
Sense, either exterior or interior, there would be no lesse difference
of men in their Sight, Hearing, or other Senses, than in their Fancies,
and Discretions. It proceeds therefore from the Passions; which are
different, not onely from the difference of mens complexions; but also
from their difference of customes, and education.

The Passions that most of all cause the differences of Wit, are
principally, the more or lesse Desire of Power, of Riches, of Knowledge,
and of Honour. All which may be reduced to the first, that is Desire of
Power. For Riches, Knowledge and Honour are but severall sorts of Power.




Giddinesse Madnesse

And therefore, a man who has no great Passion for any of these things;
but is as men terme it indifferent; though he may be so farre a good
man, as to be free from giving offence; yet he cannot possibly have
either a great Fancy, or much Judgement. For the Thoughts, are to the
Desires, as Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the
things Desired: All Stedinesse of the minds motion, and all quicknesse
of the same, proceeding from thence. For as to have no Desire, is to
be Dead: so to have weak Passions, is Dulnesse; and to have Passions
indifferently for every thing, GIDDINESSE, and Distraction; and to have
stronger, and more vehement Passions for any thing, than is ordinarily
seen in others, is that which men call MADNESSE.

Whereof there be almost as many kinds, as of the Passions themselves.
Sometimes the extraordinary and extravagant Passion, proceedeth from the
evill constitution of the organs of the Body, or harme done them; and
sometimes the hurt, and indisposition of the Organs, is caused by the
vehemence, or long continuance of the Passion. But in both cases the
Madnesse is of one and the same nature.

The Passion, whose violence, or continuance maketh Madnesse, is either
great Vaine-Glory; which is commonly called Pride, and Selfe-Conceipt;
or great Dejection of mind.




Rage

Pride, subjecteth a man to Anger, the excesse whereof, is the Madnesse
called RAGE, and FURY. And thus it comes to passe that excessive desire
of Revenge, when it becomes habituall, hurteth the organs, and becomes
Rage: That excessive love, with jealousie, becomes also Rage: Excessive
opinion of a mans own selfe, for divine inspiration, for wisdome,
learning, forme, and the like, becomes Distraction, and Giddinesse:
the same, joyned with Envy, Rage: Vehement opinion of the truth of any
thing, contradicted by others, Rage.




Melancholy

Dejection, subjects a man to causelesse fears; which is a Madnesse
commonly called MELANCHOLY, apparent also in divers manners; as in
haunting of solitudes, and graves; in superstitious behaviour; and in
fearing some one, some another particular thing. In summe, all Passions
that produce strange and unusuall behaviour, are called by the generall
name of Madnesse. But of the severall kinds of Madnesse, he that
would take the paines, might enrowle a legion. And if the Excesses be
madnesse, there is no doubt but the Passions themselves, when they tend
to Evill, are degrees of the same.

(For example,) Though the effect of folly, in them that are possessed of
an opinion of being inspired, be not visible alwayes in one man, by any
very extravagant action, that proceedeth from such Passion; yet when
many of them conspire together, the Rage of the whole multitude is
visible enough. For what argument of Madnesse can there be greater, than
to clamour, strike, and throw stones at our best friends? Yet this is
somewhat lesse than such a multitude will do. For they will clamour,
fight against, and destroy those, by whom all their lifetime before,
they have been protected, and secured from injury. And if this be
Madnesse in the multitude, it is the same in every particular man. For
as in the middest of the sea, though a man perceive no sound of
that part of the water next him; yet he is well assured, that part
contributes as much, to the Roaring of the Sea, as any other part, of
the same quantity: so also, thought wee perceive no great unquietnesse,
in one, or two men; yet we may be well assured, that their singular
Passions, are parts of the Seditious roaring of a troubled Nation. And
if there were nothing else that bewrayed their madnesse; yet that very
arrogating such inspiration to themselves, is argument enough. If some
man in Bedlam should entertaine you with sober discourse; and you desire
in taking leave, to know what he were, that you might another time
requite his civility; and he should tell you, he were God the Father;
I think you need expect no extravagant action for argument of his
Madnesse.

This opinion of Inspiration, called commonly, Private Spirit, begins
very often, from some lucky finding of an Errour generally held by
others; and not knowing, or not remembring, by what conduct of reason,
they came to so singular a truth, (as they think it, though it be many
times an untruth they light on,) they presently admire themselves; as
being in the speciall grace of God Almighty, who hath revealed the same
to them supernaturally, by his Spirit.

Again, that Madnesse is nothing else, but too much appearing Passion,
may be gathered out of the effects of Wine, which are the same with
those of the evill disposition of the organs. For the variety of
behaviour in men that have drunk too much, is the same with that of
Mad-men: some of them Raging, others Loving, others laughing, all
extravagantly, but according to their severall domineering Passions:
For the effect of the wine, does but remove Dissimulation; and take from
them the sight of the deformity of their Passions. For, (I believe) the
most sober men, when they walk alone without care and employment of the
mind, would be unwilling the vanity and Extravagance of their thoughts
at that time should be publiquely seen: which is a confession, that
Passions unguided, are for the most part meere Madnesse.

The opinions of the world, both in antient and later ages, concerning
the cause of madnesse, have been two. Some, deriving them from the
Passions; some, from Daemons, or Spirits, either good, or bad, which
they thought might enter into a man, possesse him, and move his organs
is such strange, and uncouth manner, as mad-men use to do. The former
sort therefore, called such men, Mad-men: but the Later, called them
sometimes Daemoniacks, (that is, possessed with spirits;) sometimes
Energumeni, (that is agitated, or moved with spirits;) and now in
Italy they are called not onely Pazzi, Mad-men; but also Spiritati, men
possest.

There was once a great conflux of people in Abdera, a City of the
Greeks, at the acting of the Tragedy of Andromeda, upon an extream hot
day: whereupon, a great many of the spectators falling into Fevers, had
this accident from the heat, and from The Tragedy together, that they
did nothing but pronounce Iambiques, with the names of Perseus and
Andromeda; which together with the Fever, was cured, by the comming on
of Winter: And this madnesse was thought to proceed from the Passion
imprinted by the Tragedy. Likewise there raigned a fit of madnesse in
another Graecian city, which seized onely the young Maidens; and caused
many of them to hang themselves. This was by most then thought an act of
the Divel. But one that suspected, that contempt of life in them,
might proceed from some Passion of the mind, and supposing they did not
contemne also their honour, gave counsell to the Magistrates, to strip
such as so hang'd themselves, and let them hang out naked. This the
story sayes cured that madnesse. But on the other side, the same
Graecians, did often ascribe madnesse, to the operation of the
Eumenides, or Furyes; and sometimes of Ceres, Phoebus, and other Gods:
so much did men attribute to Phantasmes, as to think them aereal living
bodies; and generally to call them Spirits. And as the Romans in this,
held the same opinion with the Greeks: so also did the Jewes; For they
calle mad-men Prophets, or (according as they thought the spirits
good or bad) Daemoniacks; and some of them called both Prophets, and
Daemoniacks, mad-men; and some called the same man both Daemoniack, and
mad-man. But for the Gentiles, 'tis no wonder; because Diseases, and
Health; Vices, and Vertues; and many naturall accidents, were with them
termed, and worshipped as Daemons. So that a man was to understand by
Daemon, as well (sometimes) an Ague, as a Divell. But for the Jewes to
have such opinion, is somewhat strange. For neither Moses, nor Abraham
pretended to Prophecy by possession of a Spirit; but from the voyce of
God; or by a Vision or Dream: Nor is there any thing in his Law,
Morall, or Ceremoniall, by which they were taught, there was any such
Enthusiasme; or any Possession. When God is sayd, (Numb. 11. 25.) to
take from the Spirit that was in Moses, and give it to the 70. Elders,
the Spirit of God (taking it for the substance of God) is not divided.
The Scriptures by the Spirit of God in man, mean a mans spirit, enclined
to Godlinesse. And where it is said (Exod. 28. 3.) "Whom I have filled
with the Spirit of wisdome to make garments for Aaron," is not meant a
spirit put into them, that can make garments; but the wisdome of their
own spirits in that kind of work. In the like sense, the spirit of
man, when it produceth unclean actions, is ordinarily called an unclean
spirit; and so other spirits, though not alwayes, yet as often as the
vertue or vice so stiled, is extraordinary, and Eminent. Neither did the
other Prophets of the old Testament pretend Enthusiasme; or, that God
spake in them; but to them by Voyce, Vision, or Dream; and the Burthen
Of The Lord was not Possession, but Command. How then could the Jewes
fall into this opinion of possession? I can imagine no reason, but that
which is common to all men; namely, the want of curiosity to search
naturall causes; and their placing Felicity, in the acquisition of the
grosse pleasures of the Senses, and the things that most immediately
conduce thereto. For they that see any strange, and unusuall ability, or
defect in a mans mind; unlesse they see withall, from what cause it may
probably proceed, can hardly think it naturall; and if not naturall,
they must needs thinke it supernaturall; and then what can it be, but
that either God, or the Divell is in him? And hence it came to passe,
when our Saviour (Mark 3.21.) was compassed about with the multitude,
those of the house doubted he was mad, and went out to hold him: but
the Scribes said he had Belzebub, and that was it, by which he cast out
divels; as if the greater mad-man had awed the lesser. And that (John
10. 20.) some said, "He hath a Divell, and is mad;" whereas others
holding him for a Prophet, sayd, "These are not the words of one that
hath a Divell." So in the old Testament he that came to anoynt Jehu, (2
Kings 9.11.) was a Prophet; but some of the company asked Jehu, "What
came that mad-man for?" So that in summe, it is manifest, that whosoever
behaved himselfe in extraordinary manner, was thought by the Jewes to be
possessed either with a good, or evill spirit; except by the Sadduces,
who erred so farre on the other hand, as not to believe there were at
all any spirits, (which is very neere to direct Atheisme;) and thereby
perhaps the more provoked others, to terme such men Daemoniacks, rather
than mad-men.

But why then does our Saviour proceed in the curing of them, as if they
were possest; and not as if they were mad. To which I can give no other
kind of answer, but that which is given to those that urge the Scripture
in like manner against the opinion of the motion of the Earth. The
Scripture was written to shew unto men the kingdome of God; and to
prepare their mindes to become his obedient subjects; leaving the
world, and the Philosophy thereof, to the disputation of men, for the
exercising of their naturall Reason. Whether the Earths, or Suns motion
make the day, and night; or whether the Exorbitant actions of men,
proceed from Passion, or from the Divell, (so we worship him not) it is
all one, as to our obedience, and subjection to God Almighty; which is
the thing for which the Scripture was written. As for that our Saviour
speaketh to the disease, as to a person; it is the usuall phrase of all
that cure by words onely, as Christ did, (and Inchanters pretend to
do, whether they speak to a Divel or not.) For is not Christ also said
(Math. 8.26.) to have rebuked the winds? Is not he said also (Luk. 4.
39.) to rebuke a Fever? Yet this does not argue that a Fever is a Divel.
And whereas many of these Divels are said to confesse Christ; it is not
necessary to interpret those places otherwise, than that those mad-men
confessed him. And whereas our Saviour (Math. 12. 43.) speaketh of an
unclean Spirit, that having gone out of a man, wandreth through dry
places, seeking rest, and finding none; and returning into the same
man, with seven other spirits worse than himselfe; It is manifestly a
Parable, alluding to a man, that after a little endeavour to quit his
lusts, is vanquished by the strength of them; and becomes seven times
worse than he was. So that I see nothing at all in the Scripture, that
requireth a beliefe, that Daemoniacks were any other thing but Mad-men.




Insignificant Speech

There is yet another fault in the Discourses of some men; which may also
be numbred amongst the sorts of Madnesse; namely, that abuse of words,
whereof I have spoken before in the fifth chapter, by the Name of
Absurdity. And that is, when men speak such words, as put together, have
in them no signification at all; but are fallen upon by some, through
misunderstanding of the words they have received, and repeat by rote; by
others, from intention to deceive by obscurity. And this is incident to
none but those, that converse in questions of matters incomprehensible,
as the Schoole-men; or in questions of abstruse Philosophy. The common
sort of men seldome speak Insignificantly, and are therefore, by those
other Egregious persons counted Idiots. But to be assured their words
are without any thing correspondent to them in the mind, there would
need some Examples; which if any man require, let him take a Schoole-man
into his hands, and see if he can translate any one chapter concerning
any difficult point; as the Trinity; the Deity; the nature of Christ;
Transubstantiation; Free-will. &c. into any of the moderne tongues, so
as to make the same intelligible; or into any tolerable Latine, such
as they were acquainted withall, that lived when the Latine tongue was
Vulgar. What is the meaning of these words. "The first cause does not
necessarily inflow any thing into the second, by force of the Essential
subordination of the second causes, by which it may help it to worke?"
They are the Translation of the Title of the sixth chapter of Suarez
first Booke, Of The Concourse, Motion, And Help Of God. When men write
whole volumes of such stuffe, are they not Mad, or intend to make others
so? And particularly, in the question of Transubstantiation; where
after certain words spoken, they that say, the White-nesse, Round-nesse,
Magni-tude, Quali-ty, Corruptibili-ty, all which are incorporeall, &c.
go out of the Wafer, into the Body of our blessed Saviour, do they not
make those Nesses, Tudes and Ties, to be so many spirits possessing his
body? For by Spirits, they mean alwayes things, that being incorporeall,
are neverthelesse moveable from one place to another. So that this kind
of Absurdity, may rightly be numbred amongst the many sorts of Madnesse;
and all the time that guided by clear Thoughts of their worldly lust,
they forbear disputing, or writing thus, but Lucide Intervals. And thus
much of the Vertues and Defects Intellectuall.



CHAPTER IX. OF THE SEVERALL SUBJECTS OF KNOWLEDGE


There are of KNOWLEDGE two kinds; whereof one is Knowledge Of Fact: the
other Knowledge Of The Consequence Of One Affirmation To Another. The
former is nothing else, but Sense and Memory, and is Absolute Knowledge;
as when we see a Fact doing, or remember it done: And this is the
Knowledge required in a Witnesse. The later is called Science; and is
Conditionall; as when we know, that, If The Figure Showne Be A Circle,
Then Any Straight Line Through The Centre Shall Divide It Into Two
Equall Parts. And this is the Knowledge required in a Philosopher; that
is to say, of him that pretends to Reasoning.

The Register of Knowledge Of Fact is called History. Whereof there be
two sorts: one called Naturall History; which is the History of such
Facts, or Effects of Nature, as have no Dependance on Mans Will; Such as
are the Histories of Metals, Plants, Animals, Regions, and the like. The
other, is Civill History; which is the History of the Voluntary Actions
of men in Common-wealths.

The Registers of Science, are such Books as contain the Demonstrations
of Consequences of one Affirmation, to another; and are commonly called
Books of Philosophy; whereof the sorts are many, according to the
diversity of the Matter; And may be divided in such manner as I have
divided them in the following Table.

  I. Science, that is, Knowledge of Consequences; which is called
     also PHILOSOPHY

     A.  Consequences from Accidents of Bodies Naturall; which is
        called NATURALL PHILOSOPHY

        1.  Consequences from the Accidents common to all Bodies Naturall;
           which are Quantity, and Motion.

           a.  Consequences from Quantity, and Motion Indeterminate;
              which, being the Principles or first foundation of
              Philosophy, is called Philosophia Prima

              PHILOSOPHIA PRIMA

           b.  Consequences from Motion, and Quantity Determined

              1) Consequences from Quantity, and Motion Determined

                 a) By Figure, By Number

                   1] Mathematiques,

                      GEOMETRY
                      ARITHMETIQUE

              2) Consequences from the Motion, and Quantity of Bodies in
                 Speciall

                 a) Consequences from the Motion, and Quantity of the
                    great parts of the World, as the Earth and Stars,

                    1] Cosmography

                       ASTRONOMY
                       GEOGRAPHY

                 b) Consequences from the Motion of Speciall kinds, and
                    Figures of Body,

                    1] Mechaniques, Doctrine of Weight

                       Science of
                       ENGINEERS
                       ARCHITECTURE
                       NAVIGATION

        2.  PHYSIQUES, or Consequences from Qualities

           a.  Consequences from the Qualities of Bodies Transient, such
              as sometimes appear, sometimes vanish

              METEOROLOGY

           b.  Consequences from the Qualities of Bodies Permanent

              1) Consequences from the Qualities of the Starres

                 a) Consequences from the Light of the Starres.  Out of
                    this, and the Motion of the Sunne, is made the
                    Science of

                    SCIOGRAPHY

                 b) Consequences from the Influence of the Starres,

                    ASTROLOGY

              2) Consequences of the Qualities from Liquid Bodies that
                 fill the space between the Starres; such as are the
                 Ayre, or substance aetherial.


              3) Consequences from Qualities of Bodies Terrestrial

                 a) Consequences from parts of the Earth that are
                    without Sense,

                    1] Consequences from Qualities of Minerals, as
                       Stones, Metals, &c
.                    2] Consequences from the Qualities of Vegetables

                 b) Consequences from Qualities of Animals

                    1] Consequences from Qualities of Animals in
                       Generall

                       a] Consequences from Vision,

                          OPTIQUES

                       b] Consequences from Sounds,

                          MUSIQUE

                       c] Consequences from the rest of the senses

                    2] Consequences from Qualities of Men in Speciall

                       a] Consequences from Passions of Men,

                          ETHIQUES

                       b] Consequences from Speech,

                          i) In Magnifying, Vilifying, etc.

                             POETRY

                          ii) In Persuading,

                              RHETORIQUE

                          iii) In Reasoning,

                               LOGIQUE

                          iv) In Contracting,

                              The Science of
                              JUST and UNJUST


     B.  Consequences from the Accidents of Politique Bodies; which is
        called POLITIQUES, and CIVILL PHILOSOPHY

        1.  Of Consequences from the Institution of COMMON-WEALTHS, to
           the Rights, and Duties of the Body Politique, or Soveraign.

        2.  Of Consequences from the same, to the Duty and Right of
           the Subjects.



CHAPTER X. OF POWER, WORTH, DIGNITY, HONOUR AND WORTHINESS




Power

The POWER of a Man, (to take it Universally,) is his present means,
to obtain some future apparent Good. And is either Originall, or
Instrumentall.

Naturall Power, is the eminence of the Faculties of Body, or Mind: as
extraordinary Strength, Forme, Prudence, Arts, Eloquence, Liberality,
Nobility. Instrumentall are those Powers, which acquired by these, or
by fortune, are means and Instruments to acquire more: as Riches,
Reputation, Friends, and the Secret working of God, which men call
Good Luck. For the nature of Power, is in this point, like to Fame,
increasing as it proceeds; or like the motion of heavy bodies, which the
further they go, make still the more hast.

The Greatest of humane Powers, is that which is compounded of the Powers
of most men, united by consent, in one person, Naturall, or civill, that
has the use of all their Powers depending on his will; such as is the
Power of a Common-wealth: or depending on the wills of each particular;
such as is the Power of a Faction, or of divers factions leagued.
Therefore to have servants, is Power; To have Friends, is Power: for
they are strengths united.

Also Riches joyned with liberality, is Power; because it procureth
friends, and servants: Without liberality, not so; because in this case
they defend not; but expose men to Envy, as a Prey.

Reputation of power, is Power; because it draweth with it the adhaerance
of those that need protection.

So is Reputation of love of a mans Country, (called Popularity,) for the
same Reason.

Also, what quality soever maketh a man beloved, or feared of many; or
the reputation of such quality, is Power; because it is a means to have
the assistance, and service of many.

Good successe is Power; because it maketh reputation of Wisdome, or good
fortune; which makes men either feare him, or rely on him.

Affability of men already in power, is encrease of Power; because it
gaineth love.

Reputation of Prudence in the conduct of Peace or War, is Power; because
to prudent men, we commit the government of our selves, more willingly
than to others.

Nobility is Power, not in all places, but onely in those Common-wealths,
where it has Priviledges: for in such priviledges consisteth their
Power.

Eloquence is Power; because it is seeming Prudence.

Forme is Power; because being a promise of Good, it recommendeth men to
the favour of women and strangers.

The Sciences, are small Power; because not eminent; and therefore, not
acknowledged in any man; nor are at all, but in a few; and in them, but
of a few things. For Science is of that nature, as none can understand
it to be, but such as in a good measure have attayned it.

Arts of publique use, as Fortification, making of Engines, and other
Instruments of War; because they conferre to Defence, and Victory,
are Power; And though the true Mother of them, be Science, namely the
Mathematiques; yet, because they are brought into the Light, by the hand
of the Artificer, they be esteemed (the Midwife passing with the vulgar
for the Mother,) as his issue.




Worth

The Value, or WORTH of a man, is as of all other things, his Price;
that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power:
and therefore is not absolute; but a thing dependant on the need and
judgement of another. An able conductor of Souldiers, is of great Price
in time of War present, or imminent; but in Peace not so. A learned and
uncorrupt Judge, is much Worth in time of Peace; but not so much in
War. And as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer
determines the Price. For let a man (as most men do,) rate themselves as
the highest Value they can; yet their true Value is no more than it is
esteemed by others.

The manifestation of the Value we set on one another, is that which is
commonly called Honouring, and Dishonouring. To Value a man at a high
rate, is to Honour him; at a low rate, is to Dishonour him. But high,
and low, in this case, is to be understood by comparison to the rate
that each man setteth on himselfe.




Dignity

The publique worth of a man, which is the Value set on him by the
Common-wealth, is that which men commonly call DIGNITY. And this Value
of him by the Common-wealth, is understood, by offices of Command,
Judicature, publike Employment; or by Names and Titles, introduced for
distinction of such Value.




To Honour and Dishonour

To pray to another, for ayde of any kind, is to HONOUR; because a signe
we have an opinion he has power to help; and the more difficult the ayde
is, the more is the Honour.

To obey, is to Honour; because no man obeyes them, whom they think
have no power to help, or hurt them. And consequently to disobey, is to
Dishonour.

To give great gifts to a man, is to Honour him; because 'tis buying
of Protection, and acknowledging of Power. To give little gifts, is to
Dishonour; because it is but Almes, and signifies an opinion of the
need of small helps. To be sedulous in promoting anothers good; also
to flatter, is to Honour; as a signe we seek his protection or ayde. To
neglect, is to Dishonour.

To give way, or place to another, in any Commodity, is to Honour; being
a confession of greater power. To arrogate, is to Dishonour.

To shew any signe of love, or feare of another, is to Honour; for both
to love, and to feare, is to value. To contemne, or lesse to love or
feare then he expects, is to Dishonour; for 'tis undervaluing.

To praise, magnifie, or call happy, is to Honour; because nothing but
goodnesse, power, and felicity is valued. To revile, mock, or pitty, is
to Dishonour.

To speak to another with consideration, to appear before him with
decency, and humility, is to Honour him; as signes of fear to offend.
To speak to him rashly, to do anything before him obscenely, slovenly,
impudently, is to Dishonour.

To believe, to trust, to rely on another, is to Honour him; signe of
opinion of his vertue and power. To distrust, or not believe, is to
Dishonour.

To hearken to a mans counsell, or discourse of what kind soever, is to
Honour; as a signe we think him wise, or eloquent, or witty. To sleep,
or go forth, or talk the while, is to Dishonour.

To do those things to another, which he takes for signes of Honour, or
which the Law or Custome makes so, is to Honour; because in approving
the Honour done by others, he acknowledgeth the power which others
acknowledge. To refuse to do them, is to Dishonour.

To agree with in opinion, is to Honour; as being a signe of approving
his judgement, and wisdome. To dissent, is Dishonour; and an upbraiding
of errour; and (if the dissent be in many things) of folly.

To imitate, is to Honour; for it is vehemently to approve. To imitate
ones Enemy, is to Dishonour.

To honour those another honours, is to Honour him; as a signe of
approbation of his judgement. To honour his Enemies, is to Dishonour
him.

To employ in counsell, or in actions of difficulty, is to Honour; as a
signe of opinion of his wisdome, or other power. To deny employment in
the same cases, to those that seek it, is to Dishonour.

All these wayes of Honouring, are naturall; and as well within, as
without Common-wealths. But in Common-wealths, where he, or they that
have the supreme Authority, can make whatsoever they please, to stand
for signes of Honour, there be other Honours.

A Soveraigne doth Honour a Subject, with whatsoever Title, or Office, or
Employment, or Action, that he himselfe will have taken for a signe of
his will to Honour him.

The King of Persia, Honoured Mordecay, when he appointed he should be
conducted through the streets in the Kings Garment, upon one of the
Kings Horses, with a Crown on his head, and a Prince before him,
proclayming, "Thus shall it be done to him that the King will honour."
And yet another King of Persia, or the same another time, to one that
demanded for some great service, to weare one of the Kings robes, gave
him leave so to do; but with his addition, that he should weare it as
the Kings foole; and then it was Dishonour. So that of Civill Honour;
such as are Magistracy, Offices, Titles; and in some places Coats, and
Scutchions painted: and men Honour such as have them, as having so many
signes of favour in the Common-wealth; which favour is Power.

Honourable is whatsoever possession, action, or quality, is an argument
and signe of Power.

And therefore To be Honoured, loved, or feared of many, is Honourable;
as arguments of Power. To be Honoured of few or none, Dishonourable.

Good fortune (if lasting,) Honourable; as a signe of the favour of God.
Ill fortune, and losses, Dishonourable. Riches, are Honourable; for
they are Power. Poverty, Dishonourable. Magnanimity, Liberality,
Hope, Courage, Confidence, are Honourable; for they proceed from the
conscience of Power. Pusillanimity, Parsimony, Fear, Diffidence, are
Dishonourable.

Timely Resolution, or determination of what a man is to do, is
Honourable; as being the contempt of small difficulties, and dangers.
And Irresolution, Dishonourable; as a signe of too much valuing of
little impediments, and little advantages: For when a man has weighed
things as long as the time permits, and resolves not, the difference
of weight is but little; and therefore if he resolve not, he overvalues
little things, which is Pusillanimity.

All Actions, and Speeches, that proceed, or seem to proceed from much
Experience, Science, Discretion, or Wit, are Honourable; For all these
are Powers. Actions, or Words that proceed from Errour, Ignorance, or
Folly, Dishonourable.

Gravity, as farre forth as it seems to proceed from a mind employed on
some thing else, is Honourable; because employment is a signe of
Power. But if it seem to proceed from a purpose to appear grave, it is
Dishonourable. For the gravity of the Former, is like the steddinesse of
a Ship laden with Merchandise; but of the later, like the steddinesse of
a Ship ballasted with Sand, and other trash.

To be Conspicuous, that is to say, to be known, for Wealth, Office,
great Actions, or any eminent Good, is Honourable; as a signe of the
power for which he is conspicuous. On the contrary, Obscurity, is
Dishonourable.

To be descended from conspicuous Parents, is Honourable; because they
the more easily attain the aydes, and friends of their Ancestors. On the
contrary, to be descended from obscure Parentage, is Dishonourable.

Actions proceeding from Equity, joyned with losse, are Honourable;
as signes of Magnanimity: for Magnanimity is a signe of Power. On the
contrary, Craft, Shifting, neglect of Equity, is Dishonourable.

Nor does it alter the case of Honour, whether an action (so it be great
and difficult, and consequently a signe of much power,) be just or
unjust: for Honour consisteth onely in the opinion of Power. Therefore
the ancient Heathen did not thinke they Dishonoured, but greatly
Honoured the Gods, when they introduced them in their Poems, committing
Rapes, Thefts, and other great, but unjust, or unclean acts: In so much
as nothing is so much celebrated in Jupiter, as his Adulteries; nor
in Mercury, as his Frauds, and Thefts: of whose praises, in a hymne
of Homer, the greatest is this, that being born in the morning, he had
invented Musique at noon, and before night, stolen away the Cattell of
Appollo, from his Herdsmen.

Also amongst men, till there were constituted great Common-wealths,
it was thought no dishonour to be a Pyrate, or a High-way Theefe; but
rather a lawfull Trade, not onely amongst the Greeks, but also amongst
all other Nations; as is manifest by the Histories of antient time. And
at this day, in this part of the world, private Duels are, and alwayes
will be Honourable, though unlawfull, till such time as there shall be
Honour ordained for them that refuse, and Ignominy for them that make
the Challenge. For Duels also are many times effects of Courage; and the
ground of Courage is alwayes Strength or Skill, which are Power; though
for the most part they be effects of rash speaking, and of the fear of
Dishonour, in one, or both the Combatants; who engaged by rashnesse, are
driven into the Lists to avoyd disgrace.

Scutchions, and coats of Armes haereditary, where they have any eminent
Priviledges, are Honourable; otherwise not: for their Power consisteth
either in such Priviledges, or in Riches, or some such thing as is
equally honoured in other men. This kind of Honour, commonly called
Gentry, has been derived from the Antient Germans. For there never was
any such thing known, where the German Customes were unknown. Nor is it
now any where in use, where the Germans have not inhabited. The antient
Greek Commanders, when they went to war, had their Shields painted with
such Devises as they pleased; insomuch as an unpainted Buckler was a
signe of Poverty, and of a common Souldier: but they transmitted not the
Inheritance of them. The Romans transmitted the Marks of their Families:
but they were the Images, not the Devises of their Ancestors. Amongst
the people of Asia, Afrique, and America, there is not, nor was ever,
any such thing. The Germans onely had that custome; from whom it has
been derived into England, France, Spain, and Italy, when in great
numbers they either ayded the Romans, or made their own Conquests in
these Westerne parts of the world.

For Germany, being antiently, as all other Countries, in their
beginnings, divided amongst an infinite number of little Lords, or
Masters of Families, that continually had wars one with another; those
Masters, or Lords, principally to the end they might, when they were
Covered with Arms, be known by their followers; and partly for ornament,
both painted their Armor, or their Scutchion, or Coat, with the picture
of some Beast, or other thing; and also put some eminent and visible
mark upon the Crest of their Helmets. And his ornament both of the
Armes, and Crest, descended by inheritance to their Children; to the
eldest pure, and to the rest with some note of diversity, such as the
Old master, that is to say in Dutch, the Here-alt thought fit. But when
many such Families, joyned together, made a greater Monarchy, this duty
of the Herealt, to distinguish Scutchions, was made a private Office
a part. And the issue of these Lords, is the great and antient Gentry;
which for the most part bear living creatures, noted for courage, and
rapine; or Castles, Battlements, Belts, Weapons, Bars, Palisadoes, and
other notes of War; nothing being then in honour, but vertue military.
Afterwards, not onely Kings, but popular Common-wealths, gave divers
manners of Scutchions, to such as went forth to the War, or returned
from it, for encouragement, or recompence to their service. All which,
by an observing Reader, may be found in such ancient Histories, Greek
and Latine, as make mention of the German Nation, and Manners, in their
times.




Titles of Honour

Titles of Honour, such as are Duke, Count, Marquis, and Baron, are
Honourable; as signifying the value set upon them by the Soveraigne
Power of the Common-wealth: Which Titles, were in old time titles
of Office, and Command, derived some from the Romans, some from the
Germans, and French. Dukes, in Latine Duces, being Generalls in War:
Counts, Comites, such as bare the Generall company out of friendship;
and were left to govern and defend places conquered, and pacified:
Marquises, Marchiones, were Counts that governed the Marches, or bounds
of the Empire. Which titles of Duke, Count, and Marquis, came into the
Empire, about the time of Constantine the Great, from the customes of
the German Militia. But Baron, seems to have been a Title of the Gaules,
and signifies a Great man; such as were the Kings, or Princes men, whom
they employed in war about their persons; and seems to be derived from
Vir, to Ber, and Bar, that signified the same in the Language of the
Gaules, that Vir in Latine; and thence to Bero, and Baro: so that such
men were called Berones, and after Barones; and (in Spanish) Varones.
But he that would know more particularly the originall of Titles of
Honour, may find it, as I have done this, in Mr. Seldens most excellent
Treatise of that subject. In processe of time these offices of Honour,
by occasion of trouble, and for reasons of good and peacable government,
were turned into meer Titles; serving for the most part, to distinguish
the precedence, place, and order of subjects in the Common-wealth: and
men were made Dukes, Counts, Marquises, and Barons of Places, wherein
they had neither possession, nor command: and other Titles also, were
devised to the same end.




Worthinesse Fitnesse

WORTHINESSE, is a thing different from the worth, or value of a man; and
also from his merit, or desert; and consisteth in a particular power,
or ability for that, whereof he is said to be worthy: which particular
ability, is usually named FITNESSE, or Aptitude.

For he is Worthiest to be a Commander, to be a Judge, or to have any
other charge, that is best fitted, with the qualities required to the
well discharging of it; and Worthiest of Riches, that has the qualities
most requisite for the well using of them: any of which qualities being
absent, one may neverthelesse be a Worthy man, and valuable for
some thing else. Again, a man may be Worthy of Riches, Office, and
Employment, that neverthelesse, can plead no right to have it before
another; and therefore cannot be said to merit or deserve it. For Merit,
praesupposeth a right, and that the thing deserved is due by promise: Of
which I shall say more hereafter, when I shall speak of Contracts.




CHAPTER XI. OF THE DIFFERENCE OF MANNERS




What Is Here Meant By Manners

By MANNERS, I mean not here, Decency of behaviour; as how one man should
salute another, or how a man should wash his mouth, or pick his teeth
before company, and such other points of the Small Morals; But those
qualities of man-kind, that concern their living together in Peace, and
Unity. To which end we are to consider, that the Felicity of this life,
consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such
Finis Ultimus, (utmost ayme,) nor Summum Bonum, (greatest good,) as is
spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers. Nor can a man
any more live, whose Desires are at an end, than he, whose Senses and
Imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continuall progresse of the
desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former, being
still but the way to the later. The cause whereof is, That the object
of mans desire, is not to enjoy once onely, and for one instant of time;
but to assure for ever, the way of his future desire. And therefore the
voluntary actions, and inclinations of all men, tend, not only to the
procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life; and differ
onely in the way: which ariseth partly from the diversity of passions,
in divers men; and partly from the difference of the knowledge, or
opinion each one has of the causes, which produce the effect desired.




A Restlesse Desire Of Power, In All Men

So that in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of all
mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that
ceaseth onely in Death. And the cause of this, is not alwayes that a man
hopes for a more intensive delight, than he has already attained to; or
that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot
assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without
the acquisition of more. And from hence it is, that Kings, whose power
is greatest, turn their endeavours to the assuring it a home by Lawes,
or abroad by Wars: and when that is done, there succeedeth a new desire;
in some, of Fame from new Conquest; in others, of ease and sensuall
pleasure; in others, of admiration, or being flattered for excellence in
some art, or other ability of the mind.




Love Of Contention From Competition

Competition of Riches, Honour, command, or other power, enclineth to
Contention, Enmity, and War: because the way of one Competitor, to the
attaining of his desire, is to kill, subdue, supplant, or repell the
other. Particularly, competition of praise, enclineth to a reverence of
Antiquity. For men contend with the living, not with the dead; to these
ascribing more than due, that they may obscure the glory of the other.




Civil Obedience From Love Of Ease

Desire of Ease, and sensuall Delight, disposeth men to obey a common
Power: because by such Desires, a man doth abandon the protection might
be hoped for from his own Industry, and labour.




From Feare Of Death Or Wounds

Fear of Death, and Wounds, disposeth to the same; and for the same
reason. On the contrary, needy men, and hardy, not contented with their
present condition; as also, all men that are ambitious of Military
command, are enclined to continue the causes of warre; and to stirre up
trouble and sedition: for there is no honour Military but by warre; nor
any such hope to mend an ill game, as by causing a new shuffle.




And From Love Of Arts

Desire of Knowledge, and Arts of Peace, enclineth men to obey a common
Power: For such Desire, containeth a desire of leasure; and consequently
protection from some other Power than their own.




Love Of Vertue, From Love Of Praise

Desire of Praise, disposeth to laudable actions, such as please them
whose judgement they value; for of these men whom we contemn, we contemn
also the Praises. Desire of Fame after death does the same. And though
after death, there be no sense of the praise given us on Earth, as being
joyes, that are either swallowed up in the unspeakable joyes of Heaven,
or extinguished in the extreme torments of Hell: yet is not such Fame
vain; because men have a present delight therein, from the foresight
of it, and of the benefit that may rebound thereby to their posterity:
which though they now see not, yet they imagine; and any thing that is
pleasure in the sense, the same also is pleasure in the imagination.




Hate, From Difficulty Of Requiting Great Benefits

To have received from one, to whom we think our selves equall, greater
benefits than there is hope to Requite, disposeth to counterfiet love;
but really secret hatred; and puts a man into the estate of a desperate
debtor, that in declining the sight of his creditor, tacitely wishes
him there, where he might never see him more. For benefits oblige; and
obligation is thraldome; which is to ones equall, hateful. But to have
received benefits from one, whom we acknowledge our superiour, enclines
to love; because the obligation is no new depession: and cheerfull
acceptation, (which men call Gratitude,) is such an honour done to
the obliger, as is taken generally for retribution. Also to receive
benefits, though from an equall, or inferiour, as long as there is hope
of requitall, disposeth to love: for in the intention of the receiver,
the obligation is of ayd, and service mutuall; from whence proceedeth
an Emulation of who shall exceed in benefiting; the most noble and
profitable contention possible; wherein the victor is pleased with his
victory, and the other revenged by confessing it.




And From Conscience Of Deserving To Be Hated

To have done more hurt to a man, than he can, or is willing to expiate,
enclineth the doer to hate the sufferer. For he must expect revenge, or
forgivenesse; both which are hatefull.




Promptnesse To Hurt, From Fear

Feare of oppression, disposeth a man to anticipate, or to seek ayd by
society: for there is no other way by which a man can secure his life
and liberty.




And From Distrust Of Their Own Wit

Men that distrust their own subtilty, are in tumult, and sedition,
better disposed for victory, than they that suppose themselves wise,
or crafty. For these love to consult, the other (fearing to be
circumvented,) to strike first. And in sedition, men being alwayes in
the procincts of Battell, to hold together, and use all advantages of
force, is a better stratagem, than any that can proceed from subtilty of
Wit.




Vain Undertaking From Vain-glory

Vain-glorious men, such as without being conscious to themselves of
great sufficiency, delight in supposing themselves gallant men, are
enclined onely to ostentation; but not to attempt: Because when
danger or difficulty appears, they look for nothing but to have their
insufficiency discovered.

Vain-glorious men, such as estimate their sufficiency by the flattery
of other men, or the fortune of some precedent action, without assured
ground of hope from the true knowledge of themselves, are enclined to
rash engaging; and in the approach of danger, or difficulty, to retire
if they can: because not seeing the way of safety, they will rather
hazard their honour, which may be salved with an excuse; than their
lives, for which no salve is sufficient.




Ambition, From Opinion Of Sufficiency

Men that have a strong opinion of their own wisdome in matter of
government, are disposed to Ambition. Because without publique
Employment in counsell or magistracy, the honour of their wisdome is
lost. And therefore Eloquent speakers are enclined to Ambition; for
Eloquence seemeth wisdome, both to themselves and others




Irresolution, From Too Great Valuing Of Small Matters

Pusillanimity disposeth men to Irresolution, and consequently to lose
the occasions, and fittest opportunities of action. For after men have
been in deliberation till the time of action approach, if it be not
then manifest what is best to be done, tis a signe, the difference of
Motives, the one way and the other, are not great: Therefore not to
resolve then, is to lose the occasion by weighing of trifles; which is
pusillanimity.

Frugality,(though in poor men a Vertue,) maketh a man unapt to atchieve
such actions, as require the strength of many men at once: For it
weakeneth their Endeavour, which is to be nourished and kept in vigor by
Reward.

Confidence In Others From Ignorance Of The Marks Of Wisdome and
Kindnesse Eloquence, with flattery, disposeth men to confide in them
that have it; because the former is seeming Wisdome, the later seeming
Kindnesse. Adde to them Military reputation, and it disposeth men to
adhaere, and subject themselves to those men that have them. The two
former, having given them caution against danger from him; the later
gives them caution against danger from others.




And From The Ignorance Of Naturall Causes

Want of Science, that is, Ignorance of causes, disposeth, or rather
constraineth a man to rely on the advise, and authority of others. For
all men whom the truth concernes, if they rely not on their own,
must rely on the opinion of some other, whom they think wiser than
themselves, and see not why he should deceive them.




And From Want Of Understanding

Ignorance of the signification of words; which is, want of
understanding, disposeth men to take on trust, not onely the truth they
know not; but also the errors; and which is more, the non-sense of them
they trust: For neither Error, nor non-sense, can without a perfect
understanding of words, be detected.

From the same it proceedeth, that men give different names, to one and
the same thing, from the difference of their own passions: As they that
approve a private opinion, call it Opinion; but they that mislike it,
Haeresie: and yet haeresie signifies no more than private opinion; but
has onely a greater tincture of choler.

From the same also it proceedeth, that men cannot distinguish, without
study and great understanding, between one action of many men, and many
actions of one multitude; as for example, between the one action of
all the Senators of Rome in killing Catiline, and the many actions of a
number of Senators in killing Caesar; and therefore are disposed to take
for the action of the people, that which is a multitude of actions done
by a multitude of men, led perhaps by the perswasion of one.

Adhaerence To Custome, From Ignorance Of The Nature Of Right And Wrong
Ignorance of the causes, and originall constitution of Right, Equity,
Law, and Justice, disposeth a man to make Custome and Example the rule
of his actions; in such manner, as to think that Unjust which it
hath been the custome to punish; and that Just, of the impunity and
approbation whereof they can produce an Example, or (as the Lawyers
which onely use the false measure of Justice barbarously call it) a
Precedent; like little children, that have no other rule of good and
evill manners, but the correction they receive from their Parents, and
Masters; save that children are constant to their rule, whereas men are
not so; because grown strong, and stubborn, they appeale from custome
to reason, and from reason to custome, as it serves their turn; receding
from custome when their interest requires it, and setting themselves
against reason, as oft as reason is against them: Which is the cause,
that the doctrine of Right and Wrong, is perpetually disputed, both by
the Pen and the Sword: whereas the doctrine of Lines, and Figures, is
not so; because men care not, in that subject what be truth, as a thing
that crosses no mans ambition, profit, or lust. For I doubt not, but if
it had been a thing contrary to any mans right of dominion, or to the
interest of men that have dominion, That The Three Angles Of A Triangle
Should Be Equall To Two Angles Of A Square; that doctrine should have
been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of Geometry,
suppressed, as farre as he whom it concerned was able.

Adhaerence To Private Men, From Ignorance Of The Causes Of Peace
Ignorance of remote causes, disposeth men to attribute all events, to
the causes immediate, and Instrumentall: For these are all the causes
they perceive. And hence it comes to passe, that in all places, men that
are grieved with payments to the Publique, discharge their anger upon
the Publicans, that is to say, Farmers, Collectors, and other Officers
of the publique Revenue; and adhaere to such as find fault with the
publike Government; and thereby, when they have engaged themselves
beyond hope of justification, fall also upon the Supreme Authority, for
feare of punishment, or shame of receiving pardon.




Credulity From Ignorance Of Nature

Ignorance of naturall causes disposeth a man to Credulity, so as
to believe many times impossibilities: for such know nothing to
the contrary, but that they may be true; being unable to detect the
Impossibility. And Credulity, because men love to be hearkened unto in
company, disposeth them to lying: so that Ignorance it selfe without
Malice, is able to make a man bothe to believe lyes, and tell them; and
sometimes also to invent them.




Curiosity To Know, From Care Of Future Time

Anxiety for the future time, disposeth men to enquire into the causes
of things: because the knowledge of them, maketh men the better able to
order the present to their best advantage.




Naturall Religion, From The Same

Curiosity, or love of the knowledge of causes, draws a man from
consideration of the effect, to seek the cause; and again, the cause of
that cause; till of necessity he must come to this thought at last, that
there is some cause, whereof there is no former cause, but is eternall;
which is it men call God. So that it is impossible to make any profound
enquiry into naturall causes, without being enclined thereby to believe
there is one God Eternall; though they cannot have any Idea of him in
their mind, answerable to his nature. For as a man that is born blind,
hearing men talk of warming themselves by the fire, and being brought
to warm himself by the same, may easily conceive, and assure himselfe,
there is somewhat there, which men call Fire, and is the cause of the
heat he feeles; but cannot imagine what it is like; nor have an Idea of
it in his mind, such as they have that see it: so also, by the visible
things of this world, and their admirable order, a man may conceive
there is a cause of them, which men call God; and yet not have an Idea,
or Image of him in his mind.

And they that make little, or no enquiry into the naturall causes of
things, yet from the feare that proceeds from the ignorance it selfe,
of what it is that hath the power to do them much good or harm, are
enclined to suppose, and feign unto themselves, severall kinds of Powers
Invisible; and to stand in awe of their own imaginations; and in time
of distresse to invoke them; as also in the time of an expected good
successe, to give them thanks; making the creatures of their own
fancy, their Gods. By which means it hath come to passe, that from the
innumerable variety of Fancy, men have created in the world innumerable
sorts of Gods. And this Feare of things invisible, is the naturall Seed
of that, which every one in himself calleth Religion; and in them that
worship, or feare that Power otherwise than they do, Superstition.

And this seed of Religion, having been observed by many; some of those
that have observed it, have been enclined thereby to nourish, dresse,
and forme it into Lawes; and to adde to it of their own invention,
any opinion of the causes of future events, by which they thought they
should best be able to govern others, and make unto themselves the
greatest use of their Powers.



CHAPTER XII. OF RELIGION




Religion, In Man Onely

Seeing there are no signes, nor fruit of Religion, but in Man onely;
there is no cause to doubt, but that the seed of Religion, is also onely
in Man; and consisteth in some peculiar quality, or at least in some
eminent degree thereof, not to be found in other Living creatures.




First, From His Desire Of Knowing Causes

And first, it is peculiar to the nature of Man, to be inquisitive into
the Causes of the Events they see, some more, some lesse; but all men so
much, as to be curious in the search of the causes of their own good and
evill fortune.




From The Consideration Of The Beginning Of Things

Secondly, upon the sight of any thing that hath a Beginning, to think
also it had a cause, which determined the same to begin, then when it
did, rather than sooner or later.




From His Observation Of The Sequell Of Things

Thirdly, whereas there is no other Felicity of Beasts, but the enjoying
of their quotidian Food, Ease, and Lusts; as having little, or no
foresight of the time to come, for want of observation, and memory
of the order, consequence, and dependance of the things they see; Man
observeth how one Event hath been produced by another; and remembreth in
them Antecedence and Consequence; And when he cannot assure himselfe of
the true causes of things, (for the causes of good and evill fortune for
the most part are invisible,) he supposes causes of them, either such
as his own fancy suggesteth; or trusteth to the Authority of other men,
such as he thinks to be his friends, and wiser than himselfe.

The Naturall Cause Of Religion, The Anxiety Of The Time To Come The
two first, make Anxiety. For being assured that there be causes of all
things that have arrived hitherto, or shall arrive hereafter; it is
impossible for a man, who continually endeavoureth to secure himselfe
against the evill he feares, and procure the good he desireth, not to
be in a perpetuall solicitude of the time to come; So that every man,
especially those that are over provident, are in an estate like to that
of Prometheus. For as Prometheus, (which interpreted, is, The Prudent
Man,) was bound to the hill Caucasus, a place of large prospect, where,
an Eagle feeding on his liver, devoured in the day, as much as was
repayred in the night: So that man, which looks too far before him, in
the care of future time, hath his heart all the day long, gnawed on by
feare of death, poverty, or other calamity; and has no repose, nor pause
of his anxiety, but in sleep.




Which Makes Them Fear The Power Of Invisible Things

This perpetuall feare, alwayes accompanying mankind in the ignorance of
causes, as it were in the Dark, must needs have for object something.
And therefore when there is nothing to be seen, there is nothing to
accuse, either of their good, or evill fortune, but some Power, or Agent
Invisible: In which sense perhaps it was, that some of the old Poets
said, that the Gods were at first created by humane Feare: which spoken
of the Gods, (that is to say, of the many Gods of the Gentiles) is
very true. But the acknowledging of one God Eternall, Infinite, and
Omnipotent, may more easily be derived, from the desire men have to
know the causes of naturall bodies, and their severall vertues, and
operations; than from the feare of what was to befall them in time to
come. For he that from any effect hee seeth come to passe, should reason
to the next and immediate cause thereof, and from thence to the cause
of that cause, and plonge himselfe profoundly in the pursuit of causes;
shall at last come to this, that there must be (as even the Heathen
Philosophers confessed) one First Mover; that is, a First, and an
Eternall cause of all things; which is that which men mean by the name
of God: And all this without thought of their fortune; the solicitude
whereof, both enclines to fear, and hinders them from the search of the
causes of other things; and thereby gives occasion of feigning of as
many Gods, as there be men that feigne them.




And Suppose Them Incorporeall

And for the matter, or substance of the Invisible Agents, so fancyed;
they could not by naturall cogitation, fall upon any other conceipt, but
that it was the same with that of the Soule of man; and that the Soule
of man, was of the same substance, with that which appeareth in a Dream,
to one that sleepeth; or in a Looking-glasse, to one that is awake;
which, men not knowing that such apparitions are nothing else but
creatures of the Fancy, think to be reall, and externall Substances;
and therefore call them Ghosts; as the Latines called them Imagines,
and Umbrae; and thought them Spirits, that is, thin aereall bodies; and
those Invisible Agents, which they feared, to bee like them; save that
they appear, and vanish when they please. But the opinion that such
Spirits were Incorporeall, or Immateriall, could never enter into the
mind of any man by nature; because, though men may put together words of
contradictory signification, as Spirit, and Incorporeall; yet they
can never have the imagination of any thing answering to them:
And therefore, men that by their own meditation, arrive to the
acknowledgement of one Infinite, Omnipotent, and Eternall God,
choose rather to confesse he is Incomprehensible, and above their
understanding; than to define his Nature By Spirit Incorporeall, and
then Confesse their definition to be unintelligible: or if they give him
such a title, it is not Dogmatically, with intention to make the Divine
Nature understood; but Piously, to honour him with attributes, of
significations, as remote as they can from the grossenesse of Bodies
Visible.




But Know Not The Way How They Effect Anything

Then, for the way by which they think these Invisible Agents wrought
their effects; that is to say, what immediate causes they used, in
bringing things to passe, men that know not what it is that we call
Causing, (that is, almost all men) have no other rule to guesse by, but
by observing, and remembring what they have seen to precede the like
effect at some other time, or times before, without seeing between the
antecedent and subsequent Event, any dependance or connexion at all:
And therefore from the like things past, they expect the like things to
come; and hope for good or evill luck, superstitiously, from things that
have no part at all in the causing of it: As the Athenians did for their
war at Lepanto, demand another Phormio; the Pompeian faction for their
warre in Afrique, another Scipio; and others have done in divers other
occasions since. In like manner they attribute their fortune to a
stander by, to a lucky or unlucky place, to words spoken, especially
if the name of God be amongst them; as Charming, and Conjuring (the
Leiturgy of Witches;) insomuch as to believe, they have power to turn a
stone into bread, bread into a man, or any thing, into any thing.




But Honour Them As They Honour Men

Thirdly, for the worship which naturally men exhibite to Powers
invisible, it can be no other, but such expressions of their reverence,
as they would use towards men; Gifts, Petitions, Thanks, Submission
of Body, Considerate Addresses, sober Behaviour, premeditated Words,
Swearing (that is, assuring one another of their promises,) by invoking
them. Beyond that reason suggesteth nothing; but leaves them either to
rest there; or for further ceremonies, to rely on those they believe to
be wiser than themselves.




And Attribute To Them All Extraordinary Events

Lastly, concerning how these Invisible Powers declare to men the things
which shall hereafter come to passe, especially concerning their good
or evill fortune in generall, or good or ill successe in any particular
undertaking, men are naturally at a stand; save that using to conjecture
of the time to come, by the time past, they are very apt, not onely to
take casuall things, after one or two encounters, for Prognostiques
of the like encounter ever after, but also to believe the like
Prognostiques from other men, of whom they have once conceived a good
opinion.




Foure Things, Naturall Seeds Of Religion

And in these foure things, Opinion of Ghosts, Ignorance of second
causes, Devotion towards what men fear, and Taking of things Casuall for
Prognostiques, consisteth the Naturall seed of Religion; which by reason
of the different Fancies, Judgements, and Passions of severall men, hath
grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are used by one
man, are for the most part ridiculous to another.




Made Different By Culture

For these seeds have received culture from two sorts of men. One sort
have been they, that have nourished, and ordered them, according to
their own invention. The other, have done it, by Gods commandement, and
direction: but both sorts have done it, with a purpose to make those men
that relyed on them, the more apt to Obedience, Lawes, Peace, Charity,
and civill Society. So that the Religion of the former sort, is a part
of humane Politiques; and teacheth part of the duty which Earthly Kings
require of their Subjects. And the Religion of the later sort is
Divine Politiques; and containeth Precepts to those that have yeelded
themselves subjects in the Kingdome of God. Of the former sort, were all
the Founders of Common-wealths, and the Law-givers of the Gentiles: Of
the later sort, were Abraham, Moses, and our Blessed Saviour; by whom
have been derived unto us the Lawes of the Kingdome of God.




The Absurd Opinion Of Gentilisme

And for that part of Religion, which consisteth in opinions concerning
the nature of Powers Invisible, there is almost nothing that has a
name, that has not been esteemed amongst the Gentiles, in one place or
another, a God, or Divell; or by their Poets feigned to be inanimated,
inhabited, or possessed by some Spirit or other.

The unformed matter of the World, was a God, by the name of Chaos.

The Heaven, the Ocean, the Planets, the Fire, the Earth, the Winds, were
so many Gods.

Men, Women, a Bird, a Crocodile, a Calf, a Dogge, a Snake, an Onion,
a Leeke, Deified. Besides, that they filled almost all places, with
spirits called Daemons; the plains, with Pan, and Panises, or Satyres;
the Woods, with Fawnes, and Nymphs; the Sea, with Tritons, and other
Nymphs; every River, and Fountayn, with a Ghost of his name, and with
Nymphs; every house, with it Lares, or Familiars; every man, with his
Genius; Hell, with Ghosts, and spirituall Officers, as Charon, Cerberus,
and the Furies; and in the night time, all places with Larvae, Lemures,
Ghosts of men deceased, and a whole kingdome of Fayries, and Bugbears.
They have also ascribed Divinity, and built Temples to meer Accidents,
and Qualities; such as are Time, Night, Day, Peace, Concord, Love,
Contention, Vertue, Honour, Health, Rust, Fever, and the like; which
when they prayed for, or against, they prayed to, as if there were
Ghosts of those names hanging over their heads, and letting fall, or
withholding that Good, or Evill, for, or against which they prayed. They
invoked also their own Wit, by the name of Muses; their own Ignorance,
by the name of Fortune; their own Lust, by the name of Cupid; their
own Rage, by the name Furies; their own privy members by the name of
Priapus; and attributed their pollutions, to Incubi, and Succubae:
insomuch as there was nothing, which a Poet could introduce as a person
in his Poem, which they did not make either a God, or a Divel.

The same authors of the Religion of the Gentiles, observing the second
ground for Religion, which is mens Ignorance of causes; and thereby
their aptnesse to attribute their fortune to causes, on which there
was no dependence at all apparent, took occasion to obtrude on their
ignorance, in stead of second causes, a kind of second and ministeriall
Gods; ascribing the cause of Foecundity, to Venus; the cause of Arts, to
Apollo; of Subtilty and Craft, to Mercury; of Tempests and stormes,
to Aeolus; and of other effects, to other Gods: insomuch as there was
amongst the Heathen almost as great variety of Gods, as of businesse.

And to the Worship, which naturally men conceived fit to bee used
towards their Gods, namely Oblations, Prayers, Thanks, and the rest
formerly named; the same Legislators of the Gentiles have added their
Images, both in Picture, and Sculpture; that the more ignorant sort,
(that is to say, the most part, or generality of the people,) thinking
the Gods for whose representation they were made, were really included,
and as it were housed within them, might so much the more stand in feare
of them: And endowed them with lands, and houses, and officers, and
revenues, set apart from all other humane uses; that is, consecrated,
and made holy to those their Idols; as Caverns, Groves, Woods,
Mountains, and whole Ilands; and have attributed to them, not onely
the shapes, some of Men, some of Beasts, some of Monsters; but also the
Faculties, and Passions of men and beasts; as Sense, Speech, Sex, Lust,
Generation, (and this not onely by mixing one with another, to propagate
the kind of Gods; but also by mixing with men, and women, to beget
mongrill Gods, and but inmates of Heaven, as Bacchus, Hercules,
and others;) besides, Anger, Revenge, and other passions of living
creatures, and the actions proceeding from them, as Fraud, Theft,
Adultery, Sodomie, and any vice that may be taken for an effect of
Power, or a cause of Pleasure; and all such Vices, as amongst men are
taken to be against Law, rather than against Honour.

Lastly, to the Prognostiques of time to come; which are naturally, but
Conjectures upon the Experience of time past; and supernaturall, divine
Revelation; the same authors of the Religion of the Gentiles, partly
upon pretended Experience, partly upon pretended Revelation, have
added innumerable other superstitious wayes of Divination; and made men
believe they should find their fortunes, sometimes in the ambiguous
or senslesse answers of the priests at Delphi, Delos, Ammon, and other
famous Oracles; which answers, were made ambiguous by designe, to own
the event both wayes; or absurd by the intoxicating vapour of the place,
which is very frequent in sulphurous Cavernes: Sometimes in the leaves
of the Sibills; of whose Prophecyes (like those perhaps of Nostradamus;
for the fragments now extant seem to be the invention of later times)
there were some books in reputation in the time of the Roman Republique:
Sometimes in the insignificant Speeches of Mad-men, supposed to
be possessed with a divine Spirit; which Possession they called
Enthusiasme; and these kinds of foretelling events, were accounted
Theomancy, or Prophecy; Sometimes in the aspect of the Starres at their
Nativity; which was called Horoscopy, and esteemed a part of judiciary
Astrology: Sometimes in their own hopes and feares, called Thumomancy,
or Presage: Sometimes in the Prediction of Witches, that pretended
conference with the dead; which is called Necromancy, Conjuring, and
Witchcraft; and is but juggling and confederate knavery: Sometimes in
the Casuall flight, or feeding of birds; called Augury: Sometimes in
the Entrayles of a sacrificed beast; which was Aruspicina: Sometimes
in Dreams: Sometimes in Croaking of Ravens, or chattering of Birds:
Sometimes in the Lineaments of the face; which was called Metoposcopy;
or by Palmistry in the lines of the hand; in casuall words, called
Omina: Sometimes in Monsters, or unusuall accidents; as Ecclipses,
Comets, rare Meteors, Earthquakes, Inundations, uncouth Births, and the
like, which they called Portenta and Ostenta, because they thought them
to portend, or foreshew some great Calamity to come; Sometimes, in meer
Lottery, as Crosse and Pile; counting holes in a sive; dipping of Verses
in Homer, and Virgil; and innumerable other such vaine conceipts. So
easie are men to be drawn to believe any thing, from such men as have
gotten credit with them; and can with gentlenesse, and dexterity, take
hold of their fear, and ignorance.

The Designes Of The Authors Of The Religion Of The Heathen And therefore
the first Founders, and Legislators of Common-wealths amongst the
Gentiles, whose ends were only to keep the people in obedience, and
peace, have in all places taken care; First, to imprint in their minds a
beliefe, that those precepts which they gave concerning Religion, might
not be thought to proceed from their own device, but from the dictates
of some God, or other Spirit; or else that they themselves were of a
higher nature than mere mortalls, that their Lawes might the more easily
be received: So Numa Pompilius pretended to receive the Ceremonies he
instituted amongst the Romans, from the Nymph Egeria: and the first King
and founder of the Kingdome of Peru, pretended himselfe and his wife to
be the children of the Sunne: and Mahomet, to set up his new Religion,
pretended to have conferences with the Holy Ghost, in forme of a Dove.
Secondly, they have had a care, to make it believed, that the same
things were displeasing to the Gods, which were forbidden by the
Lawes. Thirdly, to prescribe Ceremonies, Supplications, Sacrifices, and
Festivalls, by which they were to believe, the anger of the Gods might
be appeased; and that ill success in War, great contagions of Sicknesse,
Earthquakes, and each mans private Misery, came from the Anger of
the Gods; and their Anger from the Neglect of their Worship, or the
forgetting, or mistaking some point of the Ceremonies required. And
though amongst the antient Romans, men were not forbidden to deny, that
which in the Poets is written of the paines, and pleasures after this
life; which divers of great authority, and gravity in that state have
in their Harangues openly derided; yet that beliefe was alwaies more
cherished, than the contrary.

And by these, and such other Institutions, they obtayned in order to
their end, (which was the peace of the Commonwealth,) that the common
people in their misfortunes, laying the fault on neglect, or errour in
their Ceremonies, or on their own disobedience to the lawes, were the
lesse apt to mutiny against their Governors. And being entertained with
the pomp, and pastime of Festivalls, and publike Gomes, made in
honour of the Gods, needed nothing else but bread, to keep them from
discontent, murmuring, and commotion against the State. And therefore
the Romans, that had conquered the greatest part of the then known
World, made no scruple of tollerating any Religion whatsoever in the
City of Rome it selfe; unlesse it had somthing in it, that could not
consist with their Civill Government; nor do we read, that any Religion
was there forbidden, but that of the Jewes; who (being the peculiar
Kingdome of God) thought it unlawfull to acknowledge subjection to any
mortall King or State whatsoever. And thus you see how the Religion of
the Gentiles was a part of their Policy.

The True Religion, And The Lawes Of Gods Kingdome The Same But where God
himselfe, by supernaturall Revelation, planted Religion; there he
also made to himselfe a peculiar Kingdome; and gave Lawes, not only of
behaviour towards himselfe; but also towards one another; and thereby
in the Kingdome of God, the Policy, and lawes Civill, are a part of
Religion; and therefore the distinction of Temporall, and Spirituall
Domination, hath there no place. It is true, that God is King of all the
Earth: Yet may he be King of a peculiar, and chosen Nation. For there is
no more incongruity therein, than that he that hath the generall command
of the whole Army, should have withall a peculiar Regiment, or Company
of his own. God is King of all the Earth by his Power: but of his
chosen people, he is King by Covenant. But to speake more largly of the
Kingdome of God, both by Nature, and Covenant, I have in the following
discourse assigned an other place.




The Causes Of Change In Religion

From the propagation of Religion, it is not hard to understand
the causes of the resolution of the same into its first seeds, or
principles; which are only an opinion of a Deity, and Powers invisible,
and supernaturall; that can never be so abolished out of humane nature,
but that new Religions may againe be made to spring out of them, by the
culture of such men, as for such purpose are in reputation.

For seeing all formed Religion, is founded at first, upon the faith
which a multitude hath in some one person, whom they believe not only to
be a wise man, and to labour to procure their happiness, but also to
be a holy man, to whom God himselfe vouchsafeth to declare his will
supernaturally; It followeth necessarily, when they that have the
Goverment of Religion, shall come to have either the wisedome of those
men, their sincerity, or their love suspected; or that they shall
be unable to shew any probable token of divine Revelation; that the
Religion which they desire to uphold, must be suspected likewise; and
(without the feare of the Civill Sword) contradicted and rejected.




Injoyning Beleefe Of Impossibilities

That which taketh away the reputation of Wisedome, in him that formeth
a Religion, or addeth to it when it is allready formed, is the enjoyning
of a beliefe of contradictories: For both parts of a contradiction
cannot possibly be true: and therefore to enjoyne the beliefe of them,
is an argument of ignorance; which detects the Author in that; and
discredits him in all things else he shall propound as from revelation
supernaturall: which revelation a man may indeed have of many things
above, but of nothing against naturall reason.




Doing Contrary To The Religion They Establish

That which taketh away the reputation of Sincerity, is the doing, or
saying of such things, as appeare to be signes, that what they require
other men to believe, is not believed by themselves; all which doings,
or sayings are therefore called Scandalous, because they be stumbling
blocks, that make men to fall in the way of Religion: as Injustice,
Cruelty, Prophanesse, Avarice, and Luxury. For who can believe, that he
that doth ordinarily such actions, as proceed from any of these
rootes, believeth there is any such Invisible Power to be feared, as he
affrighteth other men withall, for lesser faults?

That which taketh away the reputation of Love, is the being detected of
private ends: as when the beliefe they require of others, conduceth or
seemeth to conduce to the acquiring of Dominion, Riches, Dignity, or
secure Pleasure, to themselves onely, or specially. For that which men
reap benefit by to themselves, they are thought to do for their own
sakes, and not for love of others




Want Of The Testimony Of Miracles

Lastly, the testimony that men can render of divine Calling, can be no
other, than the operation of Miracles; or true Prophecy, (which also is
a Miracle;) or extraordinary Felicity. And therefore, to those points
of Religion, which have been received from them that did such Miracles;
those that are added by such, as approve not their Calling by some
Miracle, obtain no greater beliefe, than what the Custome, and Lawes of
the places, in which they be educated, have wrought into them. For as
in naturall things, men of judgement require naturall signes,
and arguments; so in supernaturall things, they require signes
supernaturall, (which are Miracles,) before they consent inwardly, and
from their hearts.

All which causes of the weakening of mens faith, do manifestly appear
in the Examples following. First, we have the Example of the children
of Israel; who when Moses, that had approved his Calling to them by
Miracles, and by the happy conduct of them out of Egypt, was absent but
40 dayes, revolted from the worship of the true God, recommended to
them by him; and setting up (Exod.32 1,2) a Golden Calfe for their God,
relapsed into the Idolatry of the Egyptians; from whom they had been
so lately delivered. And again, after Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and that
generation which had seen the great works of God in Israel, (Judges
2 11) were dead; another generation arose, and served Baal. So that
Miracles fayling, Faith also failed.

Again, when the sons of Samuel, (1 Sam.8.3) being constituted by their
father Judges in Bersabee, received bribes, and judged unjustly, the
people of Israel refused any more to have God to be their King, in other
manner than he was King of other people; and therefore cryed out to
Samuel, to choose them a King after the manner of the Nations. So that
Justice Fayling, Faith also fayled: Insomuch, as they deposed their God,
from reigning over them.

And whereas in the planting of Christian Religion, the Oracles ceased
in all parts of the Roman Empire, and the number of Christians encreased
wonderfully every day, and in every place, by the preaching of the
Apostles, and Evangelists; a great part of that successe, may reasonably
be attributed, to the contempt, into which the Priests of the Gentiles
of that time, had brought themselves, by their uncleannesse, avarice,
and jugling between Princes. Also the Religion of the Church of Rome,
was partly, for the same cause abolished in England, and many other
parts of Christendome; insomuch, as the fayling of Vertue in the
Pastors, maketh Faith faile in the People: and partly from bringing
of the Philosophy, and doctrine of Aristotle into Religion, by the
Schoole-men; from whence there arose so many contradictions, and
absurdities, as brought the Clergy into a reputation both of Ignorance,
and of Fraudulent intention; and enclined people to revolt from them,
either against the will of their own Princes, as in France, and Holland;
or with their will, as in England.

Lastly, amongst the points by the Church of Rome declared necessary for
Salvation, there be so many, manifestly to the advantage of the Pope,
and of his spirituall subjects, residing in the territories of other
Christian Princes, that were it not for the mutuall emulation of those
Princes, they might without warre, or trouble, exclude all forraign
Authority, as easily as it has been excluded in England. For who is
there that does not see, to whose benefit it conduceth, to have it
believed, that a King hath not his Authority from Christ, unlesse a
Bishop crown him? That a King, if he be a Priest, cannot Marry? That
whether a Prince be born in lawfull Marriage, or not, must be judged by
Authority from Rome? That Subjects may be freed from their Alleageance,
if by the Court of Rome, the King be judged an Heretique? That a King
(as Chilperique of France) may be deposed by a Pope (as Pope Zachary,)
for no cause; and his Kingdome given to one of his Subjects? That the
Clergy, and Regulars, in what Country soever, shall be exempt from the
Jurisdiction of their King, in cases criminall? Or who does not see, to
whose profit redound the Fees of private Masses, and Vales of Purgatory;
with other signes of private interest, enough to mortifie the most
lively Faith, if (as I sayd) the civill Magistrate, and Custome did not
more sustain it, than any opinion they have of the Sanctity, Wisdome,
or Probity of their Teachers? So that I may attribute all the changes
of Religion in the world, to one and the some cause; and that is,
unpleasing Priests; and those not onely amongst Catholiques, but even in
that Church that hath presumed most of Reformation.



CHAPTER XIII. OF THE NATURALL CONDITION OF MANKIND,

AS CONCERNING THEIR FELICITY, AND MISERY


Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind; as
that though there bee found one man sometimes manifestly stronger
in body, or of quicker mind then another; yet when all is reckoned
together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable,
as that one man can thereupon claim to himselfe any benefit, to which
another may not pretend, as well as he. For as to the strength of body,
the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret
machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger
with himselfe.

And as to the faculties of the mind, (setting aside the arts grounded
upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon generall, and
infallible rules, called Science; which very few have, and but in few
things; as being not a native faculty, born with us; nor attained,
(as Prudence,) while we look after somewhat els,) I find yet a greater
equality amongst men, than that of strength. For Prudence, is but
Experience; which equall time, equally bestowes on all men, in those
things they equally apply themselves unto. That which may perhaps make
such equality incredible, is but a vain conceipt of ones owne wisdome,
which almost all men think they have in a greater degree, than the
Vulgar; that is, than all men but themselves, and a few others, whom by
Fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve. For such is the
nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be
more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly
believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit
at hand, and other mens at a distance. But this proveth rather that men
are in that point equall, than unequall. For there is not ordinarily a
greater signe of the equall distribution of any thing, than that every
man is contented with his share.




From Equality Proceeds Diffidence

From this equality of ability, ariseth equality of hope in the attaining
of our Ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which
neverthelesse they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the
way to their End, (which is principally their owne conservation, and
sometimes their delectation only,) endeavour to destroy, or subdue one
an other. And from hence it comes to passe, that where an Invader hath
no more to feare, than an other mans single power; if one plant, sow,
build, or possesse a convenient Seat, others may probably be expected to
come prepared with forces united, to dispossesse, and deprive him, not
only of the fruit of his labour, but also of his life, or liberty. And
the Invader again is in the like danger of another.




From Diffidence Warre

And from this diffidence of one another, there is no way for any man to
secure himselfe, so reasonable, as Anticipation; that is, by force, or
wiles, to master the persons of all men he can, so long, till he see no
other power great enough to endanger him: And this is no more than his
own conservation requireth, and is generally allowed. Also because there
be some, that taking pleasure in contemplating their own power in
the acts of conquest, which they pursue farther than their security
requires; if others, that otherwise would be glad to be at ease within
modest bounds, should not by invasion increase their power, they would
not be able, long time, by standing only on their defence, to subsist.
And by consequence, such augmentation of dominion over men, being
necessary to a mans conservation, it ought to be allowed him.

Againe, men have no pleasure, (but on the contrary a great deale of
griefe) in keeping company, where there is no power able to over-awe
them all. For every man looketh that his companion should value him, at
the same rate he sets upon himselfe: And upon all signes of contempt,
or undervaluing, naturally endeavours, as far as he dares (which amongst
them that have no common power, to keep them in quiet, is far enough
to make them destroy each other,) to extort a greater value from his
contemners, by dommage; and from others, by the example.

So that in the nature of man, we find three principall causes of
quarrel. First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory.

The first, maketh men invade for Gain; the second, for Safety; and
the third, for Reputation. The first use Violence, to make themselves
Masters of other mens persons, wives, children, and cattell; the second,
to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different
opinion, and any other signe of undervalue, either direct in their
Persons, or by reflexion in their Kindred, their Friends, their Nation,
their Profession, or their Name.




Out Of Civil States,

There Is Alwayes Warre Of Every One Against Every One Hereby it is
manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep
them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre;
and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man. For WARRE,
consisteth not in Battell onely, or the act of fighting; but in a tract
of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battell is sufficiently known:
and therefore the notion of Time, is to be considered in the nature of
Warre; as it is in the nature of Weather. For as the nature of Foule
weather, lyeth not in a showre or two of rain; but in an inclination
thereto of many dayes together: So the nature of War, consisteth not in
actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the
time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.




The Incommodites Of Such A War

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man
is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men
live without other security, than what their own strength, and their
own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is
no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and
consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the
commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no
Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force;
no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no
Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and
danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty,
brutish, and short.

It may seem strange to some man, that has not well weighed these things;
that Nature should thus dissociate, and render men apt to invade,
and destroy one another: and he may therefore, not trusting to this
Inference, made from the Passions, desire perhaps to have the same
confirmed by Experience. Let him therefore consider with himselfe, when
taking a journey, he armes himselfe, and seeks to go well accompanied;
when going to sleep, he locks his dores; when even in his house he
locks his chests; and this when he knows there bee Lawes, and publike
Officers, armed, to revenge all injuries shall bee done him; what
opinion he has of his fellow subjects, when he rides armed; of his
fellow Citizens, when he locks his dores; and of his children, and
servants, when he locks his chests. Does he not there as much accuse
mankind by his actions, as I do by my words? But neither of us accuse
mans nature in it. The Desires, and other Passions of man, are in
themselves no Sin. No more are the Actions, that proceed from those
Passions, till they know a Law that forbids them; which till Lawes be
made they cannot know: nor can any Law be made, till they have agreed
upon the Person that shall make it.

It may peradventure be thought, there was never such a time, nor
condition of warre as this; and I believe it was never generally so,
over all the world: but there are many places, where they live so now.
For the savage people in many places of America, except the government
of small Families, the concord whereof dependeth on naturall lust, have
no government at all; and live at this day in that brutish manner, as
I said before. Howsoever, it may be perceived what manner of life there
would be, where there were no common Power to feare; by the manner of
life, which men that have formerly lived under a peacefull government,
use to degenerate into, in a civill Warre.

But though there had never been any time, wherein particular men were in
a condition of warre one against another; yet in all times, Kings, and
persons of Soveraigne authority, because of their Independency, are
in continuall jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators;
having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another;
that is, their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns upon the Frontiers of their
Kingdomes; and continuall Spyes upon their neighbours; which is a
posture of War. But because they uphold thereby, the Industry of their
Subjects; there does not follow from it, that misery, which accompanies
the Liberty of particular men.




In Such A Warre, Nothing Is Unjust

To this warre of every man against every man, this also is consequent;
that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and
Injustice have there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is
no Law: where no Law, no Injustice. Force, and Fraud, are in warre the
two Cardinall vertues. Justice, and Injustice are none of the Faculties
neither of the Body, nor Mind. If they were, they might be in a man that
were alone in the world, as well as his Senses, and Passions. They
are Qualities, that relate to men in Society, not in Solitude. It is
consequent also to the same condition, that there be no Propriety, no
Dominion, no Mine and Thine distinct; but onely that to be every mans
that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it. And thus much
for the ill condition, which man by meer Nature is actually placed in;
though with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the
Passions, partly in his Reason.




The Passions That Incline Men To Peace

The Passions that encline men to Peace, are Feare of Death; Desire of
such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a Hope by their
Industry to obtain them. And Reason suggesteth convenient Articles of
Peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement. These Articles, are
they, which otherwise are called the Lawes of Nature: whereof I shall
speak more particularly, in the two following Chapters.



CHAPTER XIV. OF THE FIRST AND SECOND NATURALL LAWES, AND OF CONTRACTS




Right Of Nature What

The RIGHT OF NATURE, which Writers commonly call Jus Naturale, is the
Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for
the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life;
and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and
Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.




Liberty What

By LIBERTY, is understood, according to the proper signification of the
word, the absence of externall Impediments: which Impediments, may oft
take away part of a mans power to do what hee would; but cannot hinder
him from using the power left him, according as his judgement, and
reason shall dictate to him.




A Law Of Nature What

A LAW OF NATURE, (Lex Naturalis,) is a Precept, or generall Rule,
found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which
is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the
same; and to omit, that, by which he thinketh it may be best preserved.
For though they that speak of this subject, use to confound Jus, and
Lex, Right and Law; yet they ought to be distinguished; because RIGHT,
consisteth in liberty to do, or to forbeare; Whereas LAW, determineth,
and bindeth to one of them: so that Law, and Right, differ as much,
as Obligation, and Liberty; which in one and the same matter are
inconsistent.




Naturally Every Man Has Right To Everything

And because the condition of Man, (as hath been declared in the
precedent Chapter) is a condition of Warre of every one against every
one; in which case every one is governed by his own Reason; and there
is nothing he can make use of, that may not be a help unto him, in
preserving his life against his enemyes; It followeth, that in such a
condition, every man has a Right to every thing; even to one anothers
body. And therefore, as long as this naturall Right of every man to
every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, (how strong
or wise soever he be,) of living out the time, which Nature ordinarily
alloweth men to live.




The Fundamental Law Of Nature

And consequently it is a precept, or generall rule of Reason, "That
every man, ought to endeavour Peace, as farre as he has hope of
obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use,
all helps, and advantages of Warre." The first branch, of which Rule,
containeth the first, and Fundamentall Law of Nature; which is, "To seek
Peace, and follow it." The Second, the summe of the Right of Nature;
which is, "By all means we can, to defend our selves."




The Second Law Of Nature

From this Fundamentall Law of Nature, by which men are commanded to
endeavour Peace, is derived this second Law; "That a man be willing,
when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of
himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all
things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as
he would allow other men against himselfe." For as long as every man
holdeth this Right, of doing any thing he liketh; so long are all men in
the condition of Warre. But if other men will not lay down their Right,
as well as he; then there is no Reason for any one, to devest himselfe
of his: For that were to expose himselfe to Prey, (which no man is bound
to) rather than to dispose himselfe to Peace. This is that Law of the
Gospell; "Whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do
ye to them." And that Law of all men, "Quod tibi feiri non vis, alteri
ne feceris."




What it is to lay down a Right

To Lay Downe a mans Right to any thing, is to Devest himselfe of the
Liberty, of hindring another of the benefit of his own Right to the
same. For he that renounceth, or passeth away his Right, giveth not to
any other man a Right which he had not before; because there is nothing
to which every man had not Right by Nature: but onely standeth out of
his way, that he may enjoy his own originall Right, without hindrance
from him; not without hindrance from another. So that the effect which
redoundeth to one man, by another mans defect of Right, is but so much
diminution of impediments to the use of his own Right originall.




Renouncing (or) Transferring Right What; Obligation Duty Justice

Right is layd aside, either by simply Renouncing it; or by Transferring
it to another. By Simply RENOUNCING; when he cares not to whom the
benefit thereof redoundeth. By TRANSFERRING; when he intendeth the
benefit thereof to some certain person, or persons. And when a man hath
in either manner abandoned, or granted away his Right; then is he said
to be OBLIGED, or BOUND, not to hinder those, to whom such Right is
granted, or abandoned, from the benefit of it: and that he Ought, and it
his DUTY, not to make voyd that voluntary act of his own: and that such
hindrance is INJUSTICE, and INJURY, as being Sine Jure; the Right being
before renounced, or transferred. So that Injury, or Injustice, in
the controversies of the world, is somewhat like to that, which in the
disputations of Scholers is called Absurdity. For as it is there called
an Absurdity, to contradict what one maintained in the Beginning: so in
the world, it is called Injustice, and Injury, voluntarily to undo that,
which from the beginning he had voluntarily done. The way by which a man
either simply Renounceth, or Transferreth his Right, is a Declaration,
or Signification, by some voluntary and sufficient signe, or signes,
that he doth so Renounce, or Transferre; or hath so Renounced, or
Transferred the same, to him that accepteth it. And these Signes are
either Words onely, or Actions onely; or (as it happeneth most often)
both Words and Actions. And the same are the BONDS, by which men are
bound, and obliged: Bonds, that have their strength, not from their own
Nature, (for nothing is more easily broken then a mans word,) but from
Feare of some evill consequence upon the rupture.




Not All Rights Are Alienable

Whensoever a man Transferreth his Right, or Renounceth it; it is either
in consideration of some Right reciprocally transferred to himselfe; or
for some other good he hopeth for thereby. For it is a voluntary act:
and of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some Good To
Himselfe. And therefore there be some Rights, which no man can be
understood by any words, or other signes, to have abandoned, or
transferred. As first a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them,
that assault him by force, to take away his life; because he cannot be
understood to ayme thereby, at any Good to himselfe. The same may be
sayd of Wounds, and Chayns, and Imprisonment; both because there is
no benefit consequent to such patience; as there is to the patience of
suffering another to be wounded, or imprisoned: as also because a man
cannot tell, when he seeth men proceed against him by violence, whether
they intend his death or not. And lastly the motive, and end for which
this renouncing, and transferring or Right is introduced, is nothing
else but the security of a mans person, in his life, and in the means of
so preserving life, as not to be weary of it. And therefore if a man by
words, or other signes, seem to despoyle himselfe of the End, for which
those signes were intended; he is not to be understood as if he meant
it, or that it was his will; but that he was ignorant of how such words
and actions were to be interpreted.




Contract What

The mutuall transferring of Right, is that which men call CONTRACT.

There is difference, between transferring of Right to the Thing; and
transferring, or tradition, that is, delivery of the Thing it selfe. For
the Thing may be delivered together with the Translation of the Right;
as in buying and selling with ready mony; or exchange of goods, or
lands: and it may be delivered some time after.




Covenant What

Again, one of the Contractors, may deliver the Thing contracted for on
his part, and leave the other to perform his part at some determinate
time after, and in the mean time be trusted; and then the Contract on
his part, is called PACT, or COVENANT: Or both parts may contract now,
to performe hereafter: in which cases, he that is to performe in time
to come, being trusted, his performance is called Keeping Of Promise, or
Faith; and the fayling of performance (if it be voluntary) Violation Of
Faith.




Free-gift

When the transferring of Right, is not mutuall; but one of the parties
transferreth, in hope to gain thereby friendship, or service from
another, or from his friends; or in hope to gain the reputation of
Charity, or Magnanimity; or to deliver his mind from the pain of
compassion; or in hope of reward in heaven; This is not Contract, but
GIFT, FREEGIFT, GRACE: which words signifie one and the same thing.




Signes Of Contract Expresse

Signes of Contract, are either Expresse, or By Inference. Expresse, are
words spoken with understanding of what they signifie; And such words
are either of the time Present, or Past; as, I Give, I Grant, I Have
Given, I Have Granted, I Will That This Be Yours: Or of the future;
as, I Will Give, I Will Grant; which words of the future, are called
Promise.




Signes Of Contract By Inference

Signes by Inference, are sometimes the consequence of Words; sometimes
the consequence of Silence; sometimes the consequence of Actions;
sometimes the consequence of Forbearing an Action: and generally a signe
by Inference, of any Contract, is whatsoever sufficiently argues the
will of the Contractor.




Free Gift Passeth By Words Of The Present Or Past

Words alone, if they be of the time to come, and contain a bare promise,
are an insufficient signe of a Free-gift and therefore not obligatory.
For if they be of the time to Come, as, To Morrow I Will Give, they
are a signe I have not given yet, and consequently that my right is not
transferred, but remaineth till I transferre it by some other Act. But
if the words be of the time Present, or Past, as, "I have given, or do
give to be delivered to morrow," then is my to morrows Right given away
to day; and that by the vertue of the words, though there were no
other argument of my will. And there is a great difference in the
signification of these words, Volos Hoc Tuum Esse Cras, and Cros Dabo;
that is between "I will that this be thine to morrow," and, "I will
give it to thee to morrow:" For the word I Will, in the former manner
of speech, signifies an act of the will Present; but in the later, it
signifies a promise of an act of the will to Come: and therefore the
former words, being of the Present, transferre a future right; the
later, that be of the Future, transferre nothing. But if there be other
signes of the Will to transferre a Right, besides Words; then, though
the gift be Free, yet may the Right be understood to passe by words of
the future: as if a man propound a Prize to him that comes first to the
end of a race, The gift is Free; and though the words be of the
Future, yet the Right passeth: for if he would not have his words so be
understood, he should not have let them runne.

Signes Of Contract Are Words Both Of The Past, Present, and Future In
Contracts, the right passeth, not onely where the words are of the time
Present, or Past; but also where they are of the Future; because all
Contract is mutuall translation, or change of Right; and therefore he
that promiseth onely, because he hath already received the benefit for
which he promiseth, is to be understood as if he intended the Right
should passe: for unlesse he had been content to have his words so
understood, the other would not have performed his part first. And
for that cause, in buying, and selling, and other acts of Contract, A
Promise is equivalent to a Covenant; and therefore obligatory.




Merit What

He that performeth first in the case of a Contract, is said to MERIT
that which he is to receive by the performance of the other; and he hath
it as Due. Also when a Prize is propounded to many, which is to be given
to him onely that winneth; or mony is thrown amongst many, to be enjoyed
by them that catch it; though this be a Free Gift; yet so to Win, or
so to Catch, is to Merit, and to have it as DUE. For the Right is
transferred in the Propounding of the Prize, and in throwing down the
mony; though it be not determined to whom, but by the Event of the
contention. But there is between these two sorts of Merit, this
difference, that In Contract, I Merit by vertue of my own power, and the
Contractors need; but in this case of Free Gift, I am enabled to
Merit onely by the benignity of the Giver; In Contract, I merit at The
Contractors hand that hee should depart with his right; In this case of
gift, I Merit not that the giver should part with his right; but that
when he has parted with it, it should be mine, rather than anothers.
And this I think to be the meaning of that distinction of the Schooles,
between Meritum Congrui, and Meritum Condigni. For God Almighty, having
promised Paradise to those men (hoodwinkt with carnall desires,) that
can walk through this world according to the Precepts, and Limits
prescribed by him; they say, he that shall so walk, shall Merit Paradise
Ex Congruo. But because no man can demand a right to it, by his own
Righteousnesse, or any other power in himselfe, but by the Free Grace of
God onely; they say, no man can Merit Paradise Ex Condigno. This I say,
I think is the meaning of that distinction; but because Disputers do not
agree upon the signification of their own termes of Art, longer than it
serves their turn; I will not affirme any thing of their meaning:
onely this I say; when a gift is given indefinitely, as a prize to be
contended for, he that winneth Meriteth, and may claime the Prize as
Due.




Covenants Of Mutuall Trust, When Invalid

If a Covenant be made, wherein neither of the parties performe
presently, but trust one another; in the condition of meer Nature,
(which is a condition of Warre of every man against every man,) upon
any reasonable suspition, it is Voyd; But if there be a common Power set
over them bothe, with right and force sufficient to compell performance;
it is not Voyd. For he that performeth first, has no assurance the other
will performe after; because the bonds of words are too weak to bridle
mens ambition, avarice, anger, and other Passions, without the feare of
some coerceive Power; which in the condition of meer Nature, where all
men are equall, and judges of the justnesse of their own fears cannot
possibly be supposed. And therefore he which performeth first, does
but betray himselfe to his enemy; contrary to the Right (he can never
abandon) of defending his life, and means of living.

But in a civill estate, where there is a Power set up to constrain
those that would otherwise violate their faith, that feare is no more
reasonable; and for that cause, he which by the Covenant is to perform
first, is obliged so to do.

The cause of Feare, which maketh such a Covenant invalid, must be
alwayes something arising after the Covenant made; as some new fact,
or other signe of the Will not to performe; else it cannot make the
Covenant Voyd. For that which could not hinder a man from promising,
ought not to be admitted as a hindrance of performing.




Right To The End, Containeth Right To The Means

He that transferreth any Right, transferreth the Means of enjoying it,
as farre as lyeth in his power. As he that selleth Land, is understood
to transferre the Herbage, and whatsoever growes upon it; Nor can he
that sells a Mill turn away the Stream that drives it. And they that
give to a man The Right of government in Soveraignty, are understood
to give him the right of levying mony to maintain Souldiers; and of
appointing Magistrates for the administration of Justice.




No Covenant With Beasts

To make Covenant with bruit Beasts, is impossible; because not
understanding our speech, they understand not, nor accept of any
translation of Right; nor can translate any Right to another; and
without mutuall acceptation, there is no Covenant.




Nor With God Without Speciall Revelation

To make Covenant with God, is impossible, but by Mediation of such
as God speaketh to, either by Revelation supernaturall, or by his
Lieutenants that govern under him, and in his Name; For otherwise we
know not whether our Covenants be accepted, or not. And therefore they
that Vow any thing contrary to any law of Nature, Vow in vain; as being
a thing unjust to pay such Vow. And if it be a thing commanded by the
Law of Nature, it is not the Vow, but the Law that binds them.




No Covenant, But Of Possible And Future

The matter, or subject of a Covenant, is alwayes something that falleth
under deliberation; (For to Covenant, is an act of the Will; that is to
say an act, and the last act, of deliberation;) and is therefore alwayes
understood to be something to come; and which is judged Possible for him
that Covenanteth, to performe.

And therefore, to promise that which is known to be Impossible, is no
Covenant. But if that prove impossible afterwards, which before was
thought possible, the Covenant is valid, and bindeth, (though not to the
thing it selfe,) yet to the value; or, if that also be impossible, to
the unfeigned endeavour of performing as much as is possible; for to
more no man can be obliged.




Covenants How Made Voyd

Men are freed of their Covenants two wayes; by Performing; or by being
Forgiven. For Performance, is the naturall end of obligation; and
Forgivenesse, the restitution of liberty; as being a retransferring of
that Right, in which the obligation consisted.




Covenants Extorted By Feare Are Valide

Covenants entred into by fear, in the condition of meer Nature, are
obligatory. For example, if I Covenant to pay a ransome, or service for
my life, to an enemy; I am bound by it. For it is a Contract, wherein
one receiveth the benefit of life; the other is to receive mony,
or service for it; and consequently, where no other Law (as in the
condition, of meer Nature) forbiddeth the performance, the Covenant
is valid. Therefore Prisoners of warre, if trusted with the payment of
their Ransome, are obliged to pay it; And if a weaker Prince, make a
disadvantageous peace with a stronger, for feare; he is bound to keep
it; unlesse (as hath been sayd before) there ariseth some new, and just
cause of feare, to renew the war. And even in Common-wealths, if I be
forced to redeem my selfe from a Theefe by promising him mony, I am
bound to pay it, till the Civill Law discharge me. For whatsoever I may
lawfully do without Obligation, the same I may lawfully Covenant to do
through feare: and what I lawfully Covenant, I cannot lawfully break.




The Former Covenant To One, Makes Voyd The Later To Another

A former Covenant, makes voyd a later. For a man that hath passed away
his Right to one man to day, hath it not to passe to morrow to another:
and therefore the later promise passeth no Right, but is null.




A Mans Covenant Not To Defend Himselfe, Is Voyd

A Covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is alwayes voyd.
For (as I have shewed before) no man can transferre, or lay down his
Right to save himselfe from Death, Wounds, and Imprisonment, (the
avoyding whereof is the onely End of laying down any Right,)
and therefore the promise of not resisting force, in no Covenant
transferreth any right; nor is obliging. For though a man may Covenant
thus, "Unlesse I do so, or so, kill me;" he cannot Covenant thus "Unless
I do so, or so, I will not resist you, when you come to kill me." For
man by nature chooseth the lesser evill, which is danger of death in
resisting; rather than the greater, which is certain and present death
in not resisting. And this is granted to be true by all men, in
that they lead Criminals to Execution, and Prison, with armed men,
notwithstanding that such Criminals have consented to the Law, by which
they are condemned.




No Man Obliged To Accuse Himselfe

A Covenant to accuse ones Selfe, without assurance of pardon, is
likewise invalide. For in the condition of Nature, where every man is
Judge, there is no place for Accusation: and in the Civill State, the
Accusation is followed with Punishment; which being Force, a man is
not obliged not to resist. The same is also true, of the Accusation of
those, by whose Condemnation a man falls into misery; as of a Father,
Wife, or Benefactor. For the Testimony of such an Accuser, if it be not
willingly given, is praesumed to be corrupted by Nature; and therefore
not to be received: and where a mans Testimony is not to be credited,
his not bound to give it. Also Accusations upon Torture, are not to
be reputed as Testimonies. For Torture is to be used but as means of
conjecture, and light, in the further examination, and search of truth;
and what is in that case confessed, tendeth to the ease of him that is
Tortured; not to the informing of the Torturers: and therefore ought
not to have the credit of a sufficient Testimony: for whether he deliver
himselfe by true, or false Accusation, he does it by the Right of
preserving his own life.




The End Of An Oath; The Forme Of As Oath

The force of Words, being (as I have formerly noted) too weak to hold
men to the performance of their Covenants; there are in mans nature, but
two imaginable helps to strengthen it. And those are either a Feare
of the consequence of breaking their word; or a Glory, or Pride in
appearing not to need to breake it. This later is a Generosity too
rarely found to be presumed on, especially in the pursuers of Wealth,
Command, or sensuall Pleasure; which are the greatest part of Mankind.
The Passion to be reckoned upon, is Fear; whereof there be two very
generall Objects: one, the Power of Spirits Invisible; the other, the
Power of those men they shall therein Offend. Of these two, though the
former be the greater Power, yet the feare of the later is commonly
the greater Feare. The Feare of the former is in every man, his own
Religion: which hath place in the nature of man before Civill Society.
The later hath not so; at least not place enough, to keep men to their
promises; because in the condition of meer Nature, the inequality of
Power is not discerned, but by the event of Battell. So that before the
time of Civill Society, or in the interruption thereof by Warre, there
is nothing can strengthen a Covenant of Peace agreed on, against the
temptations of Avarice, Ambition, Lust, or other strong desire, but the
feare of that Invisible Power, which they every one Worship as God; and
Feare as a Revenger of their perfidy. All therefore that can be done
between two men not subject to Civill Power, is to put one another
to swear by the God he feareth: Which Swearing or OATH, is a Forme Of
Speech, Added To A Promise; By Which He That Promiseth, Signifieth, That
Unlesse He Performe, He Renounceth The Mercy Of His God, Or Calleth To
Him For Vengeance On Himselfe. Such was the Heathen Forme, "Let Jupiter
kill me else, as I kill this Beast." So is our Forme, "I shall do thus,
and thus, so help me God." And this, with the Rites and Ceremonies,
which every one useth in his own Religion, that the feare of breaking
faith might be the greater.




No Oath, But By God

By this it appears, that an Oath taken according to any other Forme, or
Rite, then his, that sweareth, is in vain; and no Oath: And there is no
Swearing by any thing which the Swearer thinks not God. For though men
have sometimes used to swear by their Kings, for feare, or flattery; yet
they would have it thereby understood, they attributed to them Divine
honour. And that Swearing unnecessarily by God, is but prophaning of his
name: and Swearing by other things, as men do in common discourse, is
not Swearing, but an impious Custome, gotten by too much vehemence of
talking.




An Oath Addes Nothing To The Obligation

It appears also, that the Oath addes nothing to the Obligation. For a
Covenant, if lawfull, binds in the sight of God, without the Oath,
as much as with it; if unlawfull, bindeth not at all; though it be
confirmed with an Oath.



CHAPTER XV. OF OTHER LAWES OF NATURE




The Third Law Of Nature, Justice

From that law of Nature, by which we are obliged to transferre to
another, such Rights, as being retained, hinder the peace of Mankind,
there followeth a Third; which is this, That Men Performe Their
Covenants Made: without which, Covenants are in vain, and but Empty
words; and the Right of all men to all things remaining, wee are still
in the condition of Warre.




Justice And Injustice What

And in this law of Nature, consisteth the Fountain and Originall of
JUSTICE. For where no Covenant hath preceded, there hath no Right been
transferred, and every man has right to every thing; and consequently,
no action can be Unjust. But when a Covenant is made, then to break it
is Unjust: And the definition of INJUSTICE, is no other than The Not
Performance Of Covenant. And whatsoever is not Unjust, is Just.

Justice And Propriety Begin With The Constitution of Common-wealth
But because Covenants of mutuall trust, where there is a feare of not
performance on either part, (as hath been said in the former Chapter,)
are invalid; though the Originall of Justice be the making of Covenants;
yet Injustice actually there can be none, till the cause of such feare
be taken away; which while men are in the naturall condition of Warre,
cannot be done. Therefore before the names of Just, and Unjust can have
place, there must be some coercive Power, to compell men equally to
the performance of their Covenants, by the terrour of some punishment,
greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their Covenant;
and to make good that Propriety, which by mutuall Contract men acquire,
in recompence of the universall Right they abandon: and such power there
is none before the erection of a Common-wealth. And this is also to be
gathered out of the ordinary definition of Justice in the Schooles: For
they say, that "Justice is the constant Will of giving to every man his
own." And therefore where there is no Own, that is, no Propriety, there
is no Injustice; and where there is no coerceive Power erected, that is,
where there is no Common-wealth, there is no Propriety; all men having
Right to all things: Therefore where there is no Common-wealth, there
nothing is Unjust. So that the nature of Justice, consisteth in keeping
of valid Covenants: but the Validity of Covenants begins not but with
the Constitution of a Civill Power, sufficient to compell men to keep
them: And then it is also that Propriety begins.




Justice Not Contrary To Reason

The Foole hath sayd in his heart, there is no such thing as Justice;
and sometimes also with his tongue; seriously alleaging, that every mans
conservation, and contentment, being committed to his own care, there
could be no reason, why every man might not do what he thought conduced
thereunto; and therefore also to make, or not make; keep, or not keep
Covenants, was not against Reason, when it conduced to ones benefit.
He does not therein deny, that there be Covenants; and that they are
sometimes broken, sometimes kept; and that such breach of them may
be called Injustice, and the observance of them Justice: but he
questioneth, whether Injustice, taking away the feare of God, (for the
same Foole hath said in his heart there is no God,) may not sometimes
stand with that Reason, which dictateth to every man his own good; and
particularly then, when it conduceth to such a benefit, as shall put a
man in a condition, to neglect not onely the dispraise, and revilings,
but also the power of other men. The Kingdome of God is gotten by
violence; but what if it could be gotten by unjust violence? were it
against Reason so to get it, when it is impossible to receive hurt by
it? and if it be not against Reason, it is not against Justice; or else
Justice is not to be approved for good. From such reasoning as this,
Succesfull wickednesse hath obtained the Name of Vertue; and some that
in all other things have disallowed the violation of Faith; yet have
allowed it, when it is for the getting of a Kingdome. And the Heathen
that believed, that Saturn was deposed by his son Jupiter, believed
neverthelesse the same Jupiter to be the avenger of Injustice: Somewhat
like to a piece of Law in Cokes Commentaries on Litleton; where he
sayes, If the right Heire of the Crown be attainted of Treason; yet the
Crown shall descend to him, and Eo Instante the Atteynder be voyd; From
which instances a man will be very prone to inferre; that when the Heire
apparent of a Kingdome, shall kill him that is in possession, though his
father; you may call it Injustice, or by what other name you will; yet
it can never be against Reason, seeing all the voluntary actions of
men tend to the benefit of themselves; and those actions are most
Reasonable, that conduce most to their ends. This specious reasoning is
nevertheless false.

For the question is not of promises mutuall, where there is no security
of performance on either side; as when there is no Civill Power erected
over the parties promising; for such promises are no Covenants: But
either where one of the parties has performed already; or where there
is a Power to make him performe; there is the question whether it be
against reason, that is, against the benefit of the other to performe,
or not. And I say it is not against reason. For the manifestation
whereof, we are to consider; First, that when a man doth a thing, which
notwithstanding any thing can be foreseen, and reckoned on, tendeth to
his own destruction, howsoever some accident which he could not expect,
arriving may turne it to his benefit; yet such events do not make it
reasonably or wisely done. Secondly, that in a condition of Warre,
wherein every man to every man, for want of a common Power to keep them
all in awe, is an Enemy, there is no man can hope by his own strength,
or wit, to defend himselfe from destruction, without the help
of Confederates; where every one expects the same defence by the
Confederation, that any one else does: and therefore he which declares
he thinks it reason to deceive those that help him, can in reason expect
no other means of safety, than what can be had from his own single
Power. He therefore that breaketh his Covenant, and consequently
declareth that he thinks he may with reason do so, cannot be received
into any Society, that unite themselves for Peace and defence, but
by the errour of them that receive him; nor when he is received, be
retayned in it, without seeing the danger of their errour; which errours
a man cannot reasonably reckon upon as the means of his security; and
therefore if he be left, or cast out of Society, he perisheth; and if he
live in Society, it is by the errours of other men, which he could not
foresee, nor reckon upon; and consequently against the reason of his
preservation; and so, as all men that contribute not to his destruction,
forbear him onely out of ignorance of what is good for themselves.

As for the Instance of gaining the secure and perpetuall felicity of
Heaven, by any way; it is frivolous: there being but one way imaginable;
and that is not breaking, but keeping of Covenant.

And for the other Instance of attaining Soveraignty by Rebellion; it is
manifest, that though the event follow, yet because it cannot reasonably
be expected, but rather the contrary; and because by gaining it so,
others are taught to gain the same in like manner, the attempt thereof
is against reason. Justice therefore, that is to say, Keeping of
Covenant, is a Rule of Reason, by which we are forbidden to do any thing
destructive to our life; and consequently a Law of Nature.

There be some that proceed further; and will not have the Law of Nature,
to be those Rules which conduce to the preservation of mans life on
earth; but to the attaining of an eternall felicity after death; to
which they think the breach of Covenant may conduce; and consequently
be just and reasonable; (such are they that think it a work of merit
to kill, or depose, or rebell against, the Soveraigne Power constituted
over them by their own consent.) But because there is no naturall
knowledge of mans estate after death; much lesse of the reward that is
then to be given to breach of Faith; but onely a beliefe grounded upon
other mens saying, that they know it supernaturally, or that they know
those, that knew them, that knew others, that knew it supernaturally;
Breach of Faith cannot be called a Precept of Reason, or Nature.




Covenants Not Discharged By The Vice Of The Person To Whom Made

Others, that allow for a Law of Nature, the keeping of Faith, do
neverthelesse make exception of certain persons; as Heretiques, and
such as use not to performe their Covenant to others: And this also is
against reason. For if any fault of a man, be sufficient to discharge
our Covenant made; the same ought in reason to have been sufficient to
have hindred the making of it.




Justice Of Men, And Justice Of Actions What

The names of Just, and Unjust, when they are attributed to Men, signifie
one thing; and when they are attributed to Actions, another. When they
are attributed to Men, they signifie Conformity, or Inconformity of
Manners, to Reason. But when they are attributed to Actions, they
signifie the Conformity, or Inconformity to Reason, not of Manners, or
manner of life, but of particular Actions. A Just man therefore, is he
that taketh all the care he can, that his Actions may be all Just: and
an Unjust man, is he that neglecteth it. And such men are more often
in our Language stiled by the names of Righteous, and Unrighteous; then
Just, and Unjust; though the meaning be the same. Therefore a Righteous
man, does not lose that Title, by one, or a few unjust Actions, that
proceed from sudden Passion, or mistake of Things, or Persons: nor does
an Unrighteous man, lose his character, for such Actions, as he does,
of forbeares to do, for feare: because his Will is not framed by the
Justice, but by the apparant benefit of what he is to do. That which
gives to humane Actions the relish of Justice, is a certain Noblenesse
or Gallantnesse of courage, (rarely found,) by which a man scorns to
be beholding for the contentment of his life, to fraud, or breach of
promise. This Justice of the Manners, is that which is meant, where
Justice is called a Vertue; and Injustice a Vice.

But the Justice of Actions denominates men, not Just, but Guiltlesse;
and the Injustice of the same, (which is also called Injury,) gives them
but the name of Guilty.




Justice Of Manners, And Justice Of Actions

Again, the Injustice of Manners, is the disposition, or aptitude to
do Injurie; and is Injustice before it proceed to Act; and without
supposing any individuall person injured. But the Injustice of an
Action, (that is to say Injury,) supposeth an individuall person
Injured; namely him, to whom the Covenant was made: And therefore many
times the injury is received by one man, when the dammage redoundeth
to another. As when The Master commandeth his servant to give mony to a
stranger; if it be not done, the Injury is done to the Master, whom
he had before Covenanted to obey; but the dammage redoundeth to the
stranger, to whom he had no Obligation; and therefore could not Injure
him. And so also in Common-wealths, private men may remit to one another
their debts; but not robberies or other violences, whereby they are
endammaged; because the detaining of Debt, is an Injury to themselves;
but Robbery and Violence, are Injuries to the Person of the
Common-wealth.




Nothing Done To A Man, By His Own Consent Can Be Injury

Whatsoever is done to a man, conformable to his own Will signified to
the doer, is no Injury to him. For if he that doeth it, hath not passed
away his originall right to do what he please, by some Antecedent
Covenant, there is no breach of Covenant; and therefore no Injury done
him. And if he have; then his Will to have it done being signified, is a
release of that Covenant; and so again there is no Injury done him.




Justice Commutative, And Distributive

Justice of Actions, is by Writers divided into Commutative, and
Distributive; and the former they say consisteth in proportion
Arithmeticall; the later in proportion Geometricall. Commutative
therefore, they place in the equality of value of the things contracted
for; And Distributive, in the distribution of equall benefit, to men of
equall merit. As if it were Injustice to sell dearer than we buy; or to
give more to a man than he merits. The value of all things contracted
for, is measured by the Appetite of the Contractors: and therefore the
just value, is that which they be contented to give. And Merit (besides
that which is by Covenant, where the performance on one part, meriteth
the performance of the other part, and falls under Justice Commutative,
not Distributive,) is not due by Justice; but is rewarded of Grace
onely. And therefore this distinction, in the sense wherein it useth to
be expounded, is not right. To speak properly, Commutative Justice,
is the Justice of a Contractor; that is, a Performance of Covenant,
in Buying, and Selling; Hiring, and Letting to Hire; Lending, and
Borrowing; Exchanging, Bartering, and other acts of Contract.

And Distributive Justice, the Justice of an Arbitrator; that is to say,
the act of defining what is Just. Wherein, (being trusted by them that
make him Arbitrator,) if he performe his Trust, he is said to distribute
to every man his own: and his is indeed Just Distribution, and may
be called (though improperly) Distributive Justice; but more properly
Equity; which also is a Law of Nature, as shall be shewn in due place.




The Fourth Law Of Nature, Gratitude

As Justice dependeth on Antecedent Covenant; so does Gratitude depend
on Antecedent Grace; that is to say, Antecedent Free-gift: and is the
fourth Law of Nature; which may be conceived in this Forme, "That a man
which receiveth Benefit from another of meer Grace, Endeavour that he
which giveth it, have no reasonable cause to repent him of his good
will." For no man giveth, but with intention of Good to himselfe;
because Gift is Voluntary; and of all Voluntary Acts, the Object is to
every man his own Good; of which if men see they shall be frustrated,
there will be no beginning of benevolence, or trust; nor consequently of
mutuall help; nor of reconciliation of one man to another; and therefore
they are to remain still in the condition of War; which is contrary to
the first and Fundamentall Law of Nature, which commandeth men to Seek
Peace. The breach of this Law, is called Ingratitude; and hath the same
relation to Grace, that Injustice hath to Obligation by Covenant.




The Fifth, Mutuall accommodation, or Compleasance

A fifth Law of Nature, is COMPLEASANCE; that is to say, "That every
man strive to accommodate himselfe to the rest." For the understanding
whereof, we may consider, that there is in mens aptnesse to Society;
a diversity of Nature, rising from their diversity of Affections; not
unlike to that we see in stones brought together for building of an
Aedifice. For as that stone which by the asperity, and irregularity of
Figure, takes more room from others, than it selfe fills; and for
the hardnesse, cannot be easily made plain, and thereby hindereth the
building, is by the builders cast away as unprofitable, and troublesome:
so also, a man that by asperity of Nature, will strive to retain those
things which to himselfe are superfluous, and to others necessary; and
for the stubbornness of his Passions, cannot be corrected, is to be
left, or cast out of Society, as combersome thereunto. For seeing every
man, not onely by Right, but also by necessity of Nature, is supposed
to endeavour all he can, to obtain that which is necessary for his
conservation; He that shall oppose himselfe against it, for things
superfluous, is guilty of the warre that thereupon is to follow; and
therefore doth that, which is contrary to the fundamentall Law of
Nature, which commandeth To Seek Peace. The observers of this Law,
may be called SOCIABLE, (the Latines call them Commodi;) The contrary,
Stubborn, Insociable, Froward, Intractable.




The Sixth, Facility To Pardon

A sixth Law of Nature is this, "That upon caution of the Future time,
a man ought to pardon the offences past of them that repenting, desire
it." For PARDON, is nothing but granting of Peace; which though granted
to them that persevere in their hostility, be not Peace, but Feare; yet
not granted to them that give caution of the Future time, is signe of an
aversion to Peace; and therefore contrary to the Law of Nature.




The Seventh, That In Revenges, Men Respect Onely The Future Good

A seventh is, " That in Revenges, (that is, retribution of evil for
evil,) Men look not at the greatnesse of the evill past, but the
greatnesse of the good to follow." Whereby we are forbidden to inflict
punishment with any other designe, than for correction of the offender,
or direction of others. For this Law is consequent to the next before
it, that commandeth Pardon, upon security of the Future Time. Besides,
Revenge without respect to the Example, and profit to come, is a
triumph, or glorying in the hurt of another, tending to no end; (for the
End is alwayes somewhat to Come;) and glorying to no end, is vain-glory,
and contrary to reason; and to hurt without reason, tendeth to the
introduction of Warre; which is against the Law of Nature; and is
commonly stiled by the name of Cruelty.




The Eighth, Against Contumely

And because all signes of hatred, or contempt, provoke to fight;
insomuch as most men choose rather to hazard their life, than not to be
revenged; we may in the eighth place, for a Law of Nature set down this
Precept, "That no man by deed, word, countenance, or gesture, declare
Hatred, or Contempt of another." The breach of which Law, is commonly
called Contumely.




The Ninth, Against Pride

The question who is the better man, has no place in the condition of
meer Nature; where, (as has been shewn before,) all men are equall. The
inequallity that now is, has been introduced by the Lawes civill. I know
that Aristotle in the first booke of his Politiques, for a foundation of
his doctrine, maketh men by Nature, some more worthy to Command, meaning
the wiser sort (such as he thought himselfe to be for his Philosophy;)
others to Serve, (meaning those that had strong bodies, but were not
Philosophers as he;) as if Master and Servant were not introduced by
consent of men, but by difference of Wit; which is not only against
reason; but also against experience. For there are very few so foolish,
that had not rather governe themselves, than be governed by others:
Nor when the wise in their own conceit, contend by force, with them who
distrust their owne wisdome, do they alwaies, or often, or almost at any
time, get the Victory. If Nature therefore have made men equall, that
equalitie is to be acknowledged; or if Nature have made men unequall;
yet because men that think themselves equall, will not enter into
conditions of Peace, but upon Equall termes, such equalitie must be
admitted. And therefore for the ninth Law of Nature, I put this, "That
every man acknowledge other for his Equall by Nature." The breach of
this Precept is Pride.




The Tenth Against Arrogance

On this law, dependeth another, "That at the entrance into conditions of
Peace, no man require to reserve to himselfe any Right, which he is not
content should be reserved to every one of the rest." As it is necessary
for all men that seek peace, to lay down certaine Rights of Nature; that
is to say, not to have libertie to do all they list: so is it necessarie
for mans life, to retaine some; as right to governe their owne bodies;
enjoy aire, water, motion, waies to go from place to place; and all
things else without which a man cannot live, or not live well. If in
this case, at the making of Peace, men require for themselves, that
which they would not have to be granted to others, they do contrary
to the precedent law, that commandeth the acknowledgement of naturall
equalitie, and therefore also against the law of Nature. The observers
of this law, are those we call Modest, and the breakers Arrogant Men.
The Greeks call the violation of this law pleonexia; that is, a desire
of more than their share.




The Eleventh Equity

Also "If a man be trusted to judge between man and man," it is a precept
of the Law of Nature, "that he deale Equally between them." For without
that, the Controversies of men cannot be determined but by Warre.
He therefore that is partiall in judgment, doth what in him lies, to
deterre men from the use of Judges, and Arbitrators; and consequently,
(against the fundamentall Lawe of Nature) is the cause of Warre.

The observance of this law, from the equall distribution to each man, of
that which in reason belongeth to him, is called EQUITY, and (as I have
sayd before) distributive justice: the violation, Acception Of Persons,
Prosopolepsia.




The Twelfth, Equall Use Of Things Common

And from this followeth another law, "That such things as cannot be
divided, be enjoyed in Common, if it can be; and if the quantity of the
thing permit, without Stint; otherwise Proportionably to the number of
them that have Right." For otherwise the distribution is Unequall, and
contrary to Equitie.




The Thirteenth, Of Lot

But some things there be, that can neither be divided, nor enjoyed in
common. Then, The Law of Nature, which prescribeth Equity, requireth,
"That the Entire Right; or else, (making the use alternate,) the First
Possession, be determined by Lot." For equall distribution, is of
the Law of Nature; and other means of equall distribution cannot be
imagined.




The Fourteenth, Of Primogeniture, And First Seising

Of Lots there be two sorts, Arbitrary, and Naturall. Arbitrary, is
that which is agreed on by the Competitors; Naturall, is either
Primogeniture, (which the Greek calls Kleronomia, which signifies, Given
by Lot;) or First Seisure.

And therefore those things which cannot be enjoyed in common, nor
divided, ought to be adjudged to the First Possessor; and is some cases
to the First-Borne, as acquired by Lot.




The Fifteenth, Of Mediators

It is also a Law of Nature, "That all men that mediate Peace, be allowed
safe Conduct." For the Law that commandeth Peace, as the End, commandeth
Intercession, as the Means; and to Intercession the Means is safe
Conduct.




The Sixteenth, Of Submission To Arbitrement

And because, though men be never so willing to observe these Lawes,
there may neverthelesse arise questions concerning a mans action; First,
whether it were done, or not done; Secondly (if done) whether against
the Law, or not against the Law; the former whereof, is called a
question Of Fact; the later a question Of Right; therefore unlesse the
parties to the question, Covenant mutually to stand to the sentence
of another, they are as farre from Peace as ever. This other, to whose
Sentence they submit, is called an ARBITRATOR. And therefore it is of
the Law of Nature, "That they that are at controversie, submit their
Right to the judgement of an Arbitrator."




The Seventeenth, No Man Is His Own Judge

And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own
benefit, no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause: and if he were
never so fit; yet Equity allowing to each party equall benefit, if one
be admitted to be Judge, the other is to be admitted also; & so the
controversie, that is, the cause of War, remains, against the Law of
Nature.




The Eighteenth, No Man To Be Judge, That Has In Him Cause Of Partiality

For the same reason no man in any Cause ought to be received for
Arbitrator, to whom greater profit, or honour, or pleasure apparently
ariseth out of the victory of one party, than of the other: for he hath
taken (though an unavoydable bribe, yet) a bribe; and no man can be
obliged to trust him. And thus also the controversie, and the condition
of War remaineth, contrary to the Law of Nature.




The Nineteenth, Of Witnesse

And in a controversie of Fact, the Judge being to give no more credit
to one, than to the other, (if there be no other Arguments) must give
credit to a third; or to a third and fourth; or more: For else the
question is undecided, and left to force, contrary to the Law of Nature.

These are the Lawes of Nature, dictating Peace, for a means of the
conservation of men in multitudes; and which onely concern the doctrine
of Civill Society. There be other things tending to the destruction of
particular men; as Drunkenness, and all other parts of Intemperance;
which may therefore also be reckoned amongst those things which the Law
of Nature hath forbidden; but are not necessary to be mentioned, nor are
pertinent enough to this place.




A Rule, By Which The Laws Of Nature May Easily Be Examined

And though this may seem too subtile a deduction of the Lawes of Nature,
to be taken notice of by all men; whereof the most part are too busie in
getting food, and the rest too negligent to understand; yet to leave
all men unexcusable, they have been contracted into one easie sum,
intelligible even to the meanest capacity; and that is, "Do not that to
another, which thou wouldest not have done to thy selfe;" which sheweth
him, that he has no more to do in learning the Lawes of Nature, but,
when weighing the actions of other men with his own, they seem too
heavy, to put them into the other part of the ballance, and his own into
their place, that his own passions, and selfe-love, may adde nothing to
the weight; and then there is none of these Lawes of Nature that will
not appear unto him very reasonable.




The Lawes Of Nature Oblige In Conscience Alwayes,

But In Effect Then Onely When There Is Security The Lawes of Nature
oblige In Foro Interno; that is to say, they bind to a desire they
should take place: but In Foro Externo; that is, to the putting them
in act, not alwayes. For he that should be modest, and tractable, and
performe all he promises, in such time, and place, where no man els
should do so, should but make himselfe a prey to others, and procure his
own certain ruine, contrary to the ground of all Lawes of Nature, which
tend to Natures preservation. And again, he that shall observe the same
Lawes towards him, observes them not himselfe, seeketh not Peace, but
War; & consequently the destruction of his Nature by Violence.

And whatsoever Lawes bind In Foro Interno, may be broken, not onely by
a fact contrary to the Law but also by a fact according to it, in case a
man think it contrary. For though his Action in this case, be according
to the Law; which where the Obligation is In Foro Interno, is a breach.




The Laws Of Nature Are Eternal;

The Lawes of Nature are Immutable and Eternall, For Injustice,
Ingratitude, Arrogance, Pride, Iniquity, Acception of persons, and the
rest, can never be made lawfull. For it can never be that Warre shall
preserve life, and Peace destroy it.




And Yet Easie

The same Lawes, because they oblige onely to a desire, and endeavour, I
mean an unfeigned and constant endeavour, are easie to be observed. For
in that they require nothing but endeavour; he that endeavoureth their
performance, fulfilleth them; and he that fulfilleth the Law, is Just.




The Science Of These Lawes, Is The True Morall Philosophy

And the Science of them, is the true and onely Moral Philosophy. For
Morall Philosophy is nothing else but the Science of what is Good, and
Evill, in the conversation, and Society of mankind. Good, and Evill,
are names that signifie our Appetites, and Aversions; which in different
tempers, customes, and doctrines of men, are different: And divers men,
differ not onely in their Judgement, on the senses of what is pleasant,
and unpleasant to the tast, smell, hearing, touch, and sight; but also
of what is conformable, or disagreeable to Reason, in the actions of
common life. Nay, the same man, in divers times, differs from himselfe;
and one time praiseth, that is, calleth Good, what another time
he dispraiseth, and calleth Evil: From whence arise Disputes,
Controversies, and at last War. And therefore so long as man is in the
condition of meer Nature, (which is a condition of War,) as private
Appetite is the measure of Good, and Evill: and consequently all men
agree on this, that Peace is Good, and therefore also the way, or
means of Peace, which (as I have shewed before) are Justice, Gratitude,
Modesty, Equity, Mercy, & the rest of the Laws of Nature, are good; that
is to say, Morall Vertues; and their contrarie Vices, Evill. Now the
science of Vertue and Vice, is Morall Philosophie; and therfore the true
Doctrine of the Lawes of Nature, is the true Morall Philosophie. But the
Writers of Morall Philosophie, though they acknowledge the same Vertues
and Vices; Yet not seeing wherein consisted their Goodnesse; nor that
they come to be praised, as the meanes of peaceable, sociable, and
comfortable living; place them in a mediocrity of passions: as if not
the Cause, but the Degree of daring, made Fortitude; or not the Cause,
but the Quantity of a gift, made Liberality.

These dictates of Reason, men use to call by the name of Lawes; but
improperly: for they are but Conclusions, or Theoremes concerning what
conduceth to the conservation and defence of themselves; whereas Law,
properly is the word of him, that by right hath command over others. But
yet if we consider the same Theoremes, as delivered in the word of
God, that by right commandeth all things; then are they properly called
Lawes.



CHAPTER XVI. OF PERSONS, AUTHORS, AND THINGS PERSONATED



A Person What

A PERSON, is he "whose words or actions are considered, either as his
own, or as representing the words or actions of an other man, or of any
other thing to whom they are attributed, whether Truly or by Fiction."




Person Naturall, And Artificiall

When they are considered as his owne, then is he called a Naturall
Person: And when they are considered as representing the words and
actions of an other, then is he a Feigned or Artificiall person.




The Word Person, Whence

The word Person is latine: instead whereof the Greeks have Prosopon,
which signifies the Face, as Persona in latine signifies the Disguise,
or Outward Appearance of a man, counterfeited on the Stage; and somtimes
more particularly that part of it, which disguiseth the face, as a Mask
or Visard: And from the Stage, hath been translated to any Representer
of speech and action, as well in Tribunalls, as Theaters. So that a
Person, is the same that an Actor is, both on the Stage and in common
Conversation; and to Personate, is to Act, or Represent himselfe, or an
other; and he that acteth another, is said to beare his Person, or
act in his name; (in which sence Cicero useth it where he saies, "Unus
Sustineo Tres Personas; Mei, Adversarii, & Judicis, I beare three
Persons; my own, my Adversaries, and the Judges;") and is called in
diverse occasions, diversly; as a Representer, or Representative, a
Lieutenant, a Vicar, an Attorney, a Deputy, a Procurator, an Actor, and
the like.




Actor, Author; Authority

Of Persons Artificiall, some have their words and actions Owned by
those whom they represent. And then the Person is the Actor; and he that
owneth his words and actions, is the AUTHOR: In which case the
Actor acteth by Authority. For that which in speaking of goods and
possessions, is called an Owner, and in latine Dominus, in Greeke
Kurios; speaking of Actions, is called Author. And as the Right of
possession, is called Dominion; so the Right of doing any Action, is
called AUTHORITY. So that by Authority, is alwayes understood a Right
of doing any act: and Done By Authority, done by Commission, or Licence
from him whose right it is.




Covenants By Authority, Bind The Author

From hence it followeth, that when the Actor maketh a Covenant by
Authority, he bindeth thereby the Author, no lesse than if he had made
it himselfe; and no lesse subjecteth him to all the consequences of the
same. And therfore all that hath been said formerly, (Chap. 14) of the
nature of Covenants between man and man in their naturall capacity,
is true also when they are made by their Actors, Representers, or
Procurators, that have authority from them, so far-forth as is in their
Commission, but no farther.

And therefore he that maketh a Covenant with the Actor, or Representer,
not knowing the Authority he hath, doth it at his own perill. For no man
is obliged by a Covenant, whereof he is not Author; nor consequently by
a Covenant made against, or beside the Authority he gave.




But Not The Actor

When the Actor doth any thing against the Law of Nature by command of
the Author, if he be obliged by former Covenant to obey him, not he, but
the Author breaketh the Law of Nature: for though the Action be against
the Law of Nature; yet it is not his: but contrarily; to refuse to do
it, is against the Law of Nature, that forbiddeth breach of Covenant.




The Authority Is To Be Shewne

And he that maketh a Covenant with the Author, by mediation of the
Actor, not knowing what Authority he hath, but onely takes his word;
in case such Authority be not made manifest unto him upon demand, is
no longer obliged: For the Covenant made with the Author, is not valid,
without his Counter-assurance. But if he that so Covenanteth, knew
before hand he was to expect no other assurance, than the Actors word;
then is the Covenant valid; because the Actor in this case maketh
himselfe the Author. And therefore, as when the Authority is evident,
the Covenant obligeth the Author, not the Actor; so when the Authority
is feigned, it obligeth the Actor onely; there being no Author but
himselfe.




Things Personated, Inanimate

There are few things, that are uncapable of being represented by
Fiction. Inanimate things, as a Church, an Hospital, a Bridge, may
be Personated by a Rector, Master, or Overseer. But things Inanimate,
cannot be Authors, nor therefore give Authority to their Actors: Yet the
Actors may have Authority to procure their maintenance, given them by
those that are Owners, or Governours of those things. And therefore,
such things cannot be Personated, before there be some state of Civill
Government.




Irrational

Likewise Children, Fooles, and Mad-men that have no use of Reason, may
be Personated by Guardians, or Curators; but can be no Authors (during
that time) of any action done by them, longer then (when they shall
recover the use of Reason) they shall judge the same reasonable.
Yet during the Folly, he that hath right of governing them, may give
Authority to the Guardian. But this again has no place but in a State
Civill, because before such estate, there is no Dominion of Persons.




False Gods

An Idol, or meer Figment of the brain, my be Personated; as were the
Gods of the Heathen; which by such Officers as the State appointed, were
Personated, and held Possessions, and other Goods, and Rights, which men
from time to time dedicated, and consecrated unto them. But idols cannot
be Authors: for a Idol is nothing. The Authority proceeded from the
State: and therefore before introduction of Civill Government, the Gods
of the Heathen could not be Personated.




The True God

The true God may be Personated. As he was; first, by Moses; who governed
the Israelites, (that were not his, but Gods people,) not in his own
name, with Hoc Dicit Moses; but in Gods Name, with Hoc Dicit Dominus.
Secondly, by the son of man, his own Son our Blessed Saviour Jesus
Christ, that came to reduce the Jewes, and induce all Nations into the
Kingdome of his Father; not as of himselfe, but as sent from his Father.
And thirdly, by the Holy Ghost, or Comforter, speaking, and working
in the Apostles: which Holy Ghost, was a Comforter that came not of
himselfe; but was sent, and proceeded from them both.




A Multitude Of Men, How One Person

A Multitude of men, are made One Person, when they are by one man, or
one Person, Represented; so that it be done with the consent of
every one of that Multitude in particular. For it is the Unity of the
Representer, not the Unity of the Represented, that maketh the Person
One. And it is the Representer that beareth the Person, and but one
Person: And Unity, cannot otherwise be understood in Multitude.




Every One Is Author

And because the Multitude naturally is not One, but Many; they cannot
be understood for one; but many Authors, of every thing their
Representative faith, or doth in their name; Every man giving their
common Representer, Authority from himselfe in particular; and owning
all the actions the Representer doth, in case they give him Authority
without stint: Otherwise, when they limit him in what, and how farre
he shall represent them, none of them owneth more, than they gave him
commission to Act.




An Actor May Be Many Men Made One By Plurality Of Voyces

And if the Representative consist of many men, the voyce of the greater
number, must be considered as the voyce of them all. For if the lesser
number pronounce (for example) in the Affirmative, and the greater in
the Negative, there will be Negatives more than enough to destroy
the Affirmatives; and thereby the excesse of Negatives, standing
uncontradicted, are the onely voyce the Representative hath.




Representatives, When The Number Is Even, Unprofitable

And a Representative of even number, especially when the number is
not great, whereby the contradictory voyces are oftentimes equall, is
therefore oftentimes mute, and uncapable of Action. Yet in some cases
contradictory voyces equall in number, may determine a question; as in
condemning, or absolving, equality of votes, even in that they condemne
not, do absolve; but not on the contrary condemne, in that they absolve
not. For when a Cause is heard; not to condemne, is to absolve; but on
the contrary, to say that not absolving, is condemning, is not true. The
like it is in a deliberation of executing presently, or deferring
till another time; For when the voyces are equall, the not decreeing
Execution, is a decree of Dilation.




Negative Voyce

Or if the number be odde, as three, or more, (men, or assemblies;)
whereof every one has by a Negative Voice, authority to take away the
effect of all the Affirmative Voices of the rest, This number is no
Representative; because by the diversity of Opinions, and Interests of
men, it becomes oftentimes, and in cases of the greatest consequence, a
mute Person, and unapt, as for may things else, so for the government of
a Multitude, especially in time of Warre.

Of Authors there be two sorts. The first simply so called; which I have
before defined to be him, that owneth the Action of another simply.
The second is he, that owneth an Action, or Covenant of another
conditionally; that is to say, he undertaketh to do it, if the
other doth it not, at, or before a certain time. And these Authors
conditionall, are generally called SURETYES, in Latine Fidejussores, and
Sponsores; and particularly for Debt, Praedes; and for Appearance before
a Judge, or Magistrate, Vades.





PART II. OF COMMON-WEALTH



CHAPTER XVII. OF THE CAUSES, GENERATION, AND DEFINITION OF A
COMMON-WEALTH




The End Of Common-wealth, Particular Security

The finall Cause, End, or Designe of men, (who naturally love Liberty,
and Dominion over others,) in the introduction of that restraint upon
themselves, (in which wee see them live in Common-wealths,) is the
foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life
thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable
condition of Warre, which is necessarily consequent (as hath been shewn)
to the naturall Passions of men, when there is no visible Power to keep
them in awe, and tye them by feare of punishment to the performance of
their Covenants, and observation of these Lawes of Nature set down in
the fourteenth and fifteenth Chapters.




Which Is Not To Be Had From The Law Of Nature:

For the Lawes of Nature (as Justice, Equity, Modesty, Mercy, and (in
summe) Doing To Others, As Wee Would Be Done To,) if themselves, without
the terrour of some Power, to cause them to be observed, are contrary to
our naturall Passions, that carry us to Partiality, Pride, Revenge, and
the like. And Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words, and of no
strength to secure a man at all. Therefore notwithstanding the Lawes of
Nature, (which every one hath then kept, when he has the will to keep
them, when he can do it safely,) if there be no Power erected, or not
great enough for our security; every man will and may lawfully rely on
his own strength and art, for caution against all other men. And in all
places, where men have lived by small Families, to robbe and spoyle one
another, has been a Trade, and so farre from being reputed against the
Law of Nature, that the greater spoyles they gained, the greater was
their honour; and men observed no other Lawes therein, but the Lawes of
Honour; that is, to abstain from cruelty, leaving to men their lives,
and instruments of husbandry. And as small Familyes did then; so now
do Cities and Kingdomes which are but greater Families (for their own
security) enlarge their Dominions, upon all pretences of danger, and
fear of Invasion, or assistance that may be given to Invaders, endeavour
as much as they can, to subdue, or weaken their neighbours, by open
force, and secret arts, for want of other Caution, justly; and are
rememdbred for it in after ages with honour.




Nor From The Conjunction Of A Few Men Or Familyes

Nor is it the joyning together of a small number of men, that gives them
this security; because in small numbers, small additions on the one side
or the other, make the advantage of strength so great, as is sufficient
to carry the Victory; and therefore gives encouragement to an Invasion.
The Multitude sufficient to confide in for our Security, is not
determined by any certain number, but by comparison with the Enemy we
feare; and is then sufficient, when the odds of the Enemy is not of so
visible and conspicuous moment, to determine the event of warre, as to
move him to attempt.




Nor From A Great Multitude, Unlesse Directed By One Judgement

And be there never so great a Multitude; yet if their actions be
directed according to their particular judgements, and particular
appetites, they can expect thereby no defence, nor protection, neither
against a Common enemy, nor against the injuries of one another. For
being distracted in opinions concerning the best use and application
of their strength, they do not help, but hinder one another; and reduce
their strength by mutuall opposition to nothing: whereby they are
easily, not onely subdued by a very few that agree together; but also
when there is no common enemy, they make warre upon each other, for
their particular interests. For if we could suppose a great Multitude of
men to consent in the observation of Justice, and other Lawes of Nature,
without a common Power to keep them all in awe; we might as well suppose
all Man-kind to do the same; and then there neither would be nor need to
be any Civill Government, or Common-wealth at all; because there would
be Peace without subjection.




And That Continually

Nor is it enough for the security, which men desire should last all
the time of their life, that they be governed, and directed by one
judgement, for a limited time; as in one Battell, or one Warre. For
though they obtain a Victory by their unanimous endeavour against a
forraign enemy; yet afterwards, when either they have no common enemy,
or he that by one part is held for an enemy, is by another part held for
a friend, they must needs by the difference of their interests dissolve,
and fall again into a Warre amongst themselves.




Why Certain Creatures Without Reason, Or Speech,




Do Neverthelesse Live In Society, Without Any Coercive Power

It is true, that certain living creatures, as Bees, and Ants, live
sociably one with another, (which are therefore by Aristotle numbred
amongst Politicall creatures;) and yet have no other direction, than
their particular judgements and appetites; nor speech, whereby one of
them can signifie to another, what he thinks expedient for the common
benefit: and therefore some man may perhaps desire to know, why Man-kind
cannot do the same. To which I answer,

First, that men are continually in competition for Honour and Dignity,
which these creatures are not; and consequently amongst men there
ariseth on that ground, Envy and Hatred, and finally Warre; but amongst
these not so.

Secondly, that amongst these creatures, the Common good differeth not
from the Private; and being by nature enclined to their private, they
procure thereby the common benefit. But man, whose Joy consisteth
in comparing himselfe with other men, can relish nothing but what is
eminent.

Thirdly, that these creatures, having not (as man) the use of reason,
do not see, nor think they see any fault, in the administration of their
common businesse: whereas amongst men, there are very many, that thinke
themselves wiser, and abler to govern the Publique, better than the
rest; and these strive to reforme and innovate, one this way, another
that way; and thereby bring it into Distraction and Civill warre.

Fourthly, that these creatures, though they have some use of voice, in
making knowne to one another their desires, and other affections; yet
they want that art of words, by which some men can represent to others,
that which is Good, in the likenesse of Evill; and Evill, in the
likenesse of Good; and augment, or diminish the apparent greatnesse of
Good and Evill; discontenting men, and troubling their Peace at their
pleasure.

Fiftly, irrationall creatures cannot distinguish betweene Injury, and
Dammage; and therefore as long as they be at ease, they are not offended
with their fellowes: whereas Man is then most troublesome, when he is
most at ease: for then it is that he loves to shew his Wisdome, and
controule the Actions of them that governe the Common-wealth.

Lastly, the agreement of these creatures is Naturall; that of men, is
by Covenant only, which is Artificiall: and therefore it is no wonder
if there be somewhat else required (besides Covenant) to make their
Agreement constant and lasting; which is a Common Power, to keep them in
awe, and to direct their actions to the Common Benefit.




The Generation Of A Common-wealth

The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them
from the invasion of Forraigners, and the injuries of one another, and
thereby to secure them in such sort, as that by their owne industrie,
and by the fruites of the Earth, they may nourish themselves and live
contentedly; is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one
Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills,
by plurality of voices, unto one Will: which is as much as to say, to
appoint one man, or Assembly of men, to beare their Person; and every
one to owne, and acknowledge himselfe to be Author of whatsoever he
that so beareth their Person, shall Act, or cause to be Acted, in those
things which concerne the Common Peace and Safetie; and therein to
submit their Wills, every one to his Will, and their Judgements, to his
Judgment. This is more than Consent, or Concord; it is a reall Unitie of
them all, in one and the same Person, made by Covenant of every man with
every man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man, "I
Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to
this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right
to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner." This done, the
Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine
CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to
speake more reverently) of that Mortall God, to which wee owe under the
Immortall God, our peace and defence. For by this Authoritie, given him
by every particular man in the Common-Wealth, he hath the use of so
much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is
inabled to forme the wills of them all, to Peace at home, and mutuall
ayd against their enemies abroad.




The Definition Of A Common-wealth

And in him consisteth the Essence of the Common-wealth; which (to
define it,) is "One Person, of whose Acts a great Multitude, by mutuall
Covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the Author,
to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall
think expedient, for their Peace and Common Defence."




Soveraigne, And Subject, What

And he that carryeth this Person, as called SOVERAIGNE, and said to have
Soveraigne Power; and every one besides, his SUBJECT.

The attaining to this Soveraigne Power, is by two wayes. One, by
Naturall force; as when a man maketh his children, to submit themselves,
and their children to his government, as being able to destroy them if
they refuse, or by Warre subdueth his enemies to his will, giving them
their lives on that condition. The other, is when men agree amongst
themselves, to submit to some Man, or Assembly of men, voluntarily, on
confidence to be protected by him against all others. This later, may be
called a Politicall Common-wealth, or Common-wealth by Institution; and
the former, a Common-wealth by Acquisition. And first, I shall speak of
a Common-wealth by Institution.



CHAPTER XVIII. OF THE RIGHTS OF SOVERAIGNES BY INSTITUTION




The Act Of Instituting A Common-wealth, What

A Common-wealth is said to be Instituted, when a Multitude of men do
Agree, and Covenant, Every One With Every One, that to whatsoever Man,
or Assembly Of Men, shall be given by the major part, the Right
to Present the Person of them all, (that is to say, to be their
Representative;) every one, as well he that Voted For It, as he that
Voted Against It, shall Authorise all the Actions and Judgements, of
that Man, or Assembly of men, in the same manner, as if they were his
own, to the end, to live peaceably amongst themselves, and be protected
against other men.




The Consequences To Such Institution, Are




I. The Subjects Cannot Change The Forme Of Government




From this Institution of a Common-wealth are derived all the Rights, and
Facultyes of him, or them, on whom the Soveraigne Power is conferred by
the consent of the People assembled.

First, because they Covenant, it is to be understood, they are not
obliged by former Covenant to any thing repugnant hereunto. And
Consequently they that have already Instituted a Common-wealth, being
thereby bound by Covenant, to own the Actions, and Judgements of one,
cannot lawfully make a new Covenant, amongst themselves, to be obedient
to any other, in any thing whatsoever, without his permission. And
therefore, they that are subjects to a Monarch, cannot without his leave
cast off Monarchy, and return to the confusion of a disunited Multitude;
nor transferre their Person from him that beareth it, to another Man,
or other Assembly of men: for they are bound, every man to every man,
to Own, and be reputed Author of all, that he that already is their
Soveraigne, shall do, and judge fit to be done: so that any one man
dissenting, all the rest should break their Covenant made to that man,
which is injustice: and they have also every man given the Soveraignty
to him that beareth their Person; and therefore if they depose him,
they take from him that which is his own, and so again it is injustice.
Besides, if he that attempteth to depose his Soveraign, be killed, or
punished by him for such attempt, he is author of his own punishment,
as being by the Institution, Author of all his Soveraign shall do: And
because it is injustice for a man to do any thing, for which he may be
punished by his own authority, he is also upon that title, unjust.
And whereas some men have pretended for their disobedience to their
Soveraign, a new Covenant, made, not with men, but with God; this also
is unjust: for there is no Covenant with God, but by mediation of some
body that representeth Gods Person; which none doth but Gods Lieutenant,
who hath the Soveraignty under God. But this pretence of Covenant with
God, is so evident a lye, even in the pretenders own consciences, that
it is not onely an act of an unjust, but also of a vile, and unmanly
disposition.




2. Soveraigne Power Cannot Be Forfeited

Secondly, Because the Right of bearing the Person of them all, is given
to him they make Soveraigne, by Covenant onely of one to another, and
not of him to any of them; there can happen no breach of Covenant on the
part of the Soveraigne; and consequently none of his Subjects, by any
pretence of forfeiture, can be freed from his Subjection. That he which
is made Soveraigne maketh no Covenant with his Subjects beforehand, is
manifest; because either he must make it with the whole multitude, as
one party to the Covenant; or he must make a severall Covenant with
every man. With the whole, as one party, it is impossible; because as
yet they are not one Person: and if he make so many severall Covenants
as there be men, those Covenants after he hath the Soveraignty are voyd,
because what act soever can be pretended by any one of them for breach
thereof, is the act both of himselfe, and of all the rest, because done
in the Person, and by the Right of every one of them in particular.
Besides, if any one, or more of them, pretend a breach of the Covenant
made by the Soveraigne at his Institution; and others, or one other of
his Subjects, or himselfe alone, pretend there was no such breach,
there is in this case, no Judge to decide the controversie: it returns
therefore to the Sword again; and every man recovereth the right of
Protecting himselfe by his own strength, contrary to the designe they
had in the Institution. It is therefore in vain to grant Soveraignty by
way of precedent Covenant. The opinion that any Monarch receiveth his
Power by Covenant, that is to say on Condition, proceedeth from want
of understanding this easie truth, that Covenants being but words, and
breath, have no force to oblige, contain, constrain, or protect any man,
but what it has from the publique Sword; that is, from the untyed hands
of that Man, or Assembly of men that hath the Soveraignty, and whose
actions are avouched by them all, and performed by the strength of them
all, in him united. But when an Assembly of men is made Soveraigne; then
no man imagineth any such Covenant to have past in the Institution; for
no man is so dull as to say, for example, the People of Rome, made
a Covenant with the Romans, to hold the Soveraignty on such or such
conditions; which not performed, the Romans might lawfully depose the
Roman People. That men see not the reason to be alike in a Monarchy, and
in a Popular Government, proceedeth from the ambition of some, that
are kinder to the government of an Assembly, whereof they may hope to
participate, than of Monarchy, which they despair to enjoy.




3. No Man Can Without Injustice Protest Against The

Institution Of The Soveraigne Declared By The Major Part. Thirdly,
because the major part hath by consenting voices declared a Soveraigne;
he that dissented must now consent with the rest; that is, be contented
to avow all the actions he shall do, or else justly be destroyed by the
rest. For if he voluntarily entered into the Congregation of them that
were assembled, he sufficiently declared thereby his will (and therefore
tacitely covenanted) to stand to what the major part should ordayne: and
therefore if he refuse to stand thereto, or make Protestation against
any of their Decrees, he does contrary to his Covenant, and therfore
unjustly. And whether he be of the Congregation, or not; and whether his
consent be asked, or not, he must either submit to their decrees, or
be left in the condition of warre he was in before; wherein he might
without injustice be destroyed by any man whatsoever.




4. The Soveraigns Actions Cannot Be Justly Accused By The Subject

Fourthly, because every Subject is by this Institution Author of all the
Actions, and Judgements of the Soveraigne Instituted; it followes, that
whatsoever he doth, it can be no injury to any of his Subjects; nor
ought he to be by any of them accused of Injustice. For he that doth any
thing by authority from another, doth therein no injury to him by whose
authority he acteth: But by this Institution of a Common-wealth, every
particular man is Author of all the Soveraigne doth; and consequently
he that complaineth of injury from his Soveraigne, complaineth of that
whereof he himselfe is Author; and therefore ought not to accuse any man
but himselfe; no nor himselfe of injury; because to do injury to ones
selfe, is impossible. It is true that they that have Soveraigne
power, may commit Iniquity; but not Injustice, or Injury in the proper
signification.




5. What Soever The Soveraigne Doth, Is Unpunishable By The Subject

Fiftly, and consequently to that which was sayd last, no man that hath
Soveraigne power can justly be put to death, or otherwise in any manner
by his Subjects punished. For seeing every Subject is author of the
actions of his Soveraigne; he punisheth another, for the actions
committed by himselfe.




6. The Soveraigne Is Judge Of What Is Necessary For The Peace

And Defence Of His Subjects

And because the End of this Institution, is the Peace and Defence of
them all; and whosoever has right to the End, has right to the Means;
it belongeth of Right, to whatsoever Man, or Assembly that hath the
Soveraignty, to be Judge both of the meanes of Peace and Defence;
and also of the hindrances, and disturbances of the same; and to do
whatsoever he shall think necessary to be done, both beforehand, for the
preserving of Peace and Security, by prevention of discord at home and
Hostility from abroad; and, when Peace and Security are lost, for the
recovery of the same. And therefore,




And Judge Of What Doctrines Are Fit To Be Taught Them

Sixtly, it is annexed to the Soveraignty, to be Judge of what Opinions
and Doctrines are averse, and what conducing to Peace; and consequently,
on what occasions, how farre, and what, men are to be trusted withall,
in speaking to Multitudes of people; and who shall examine the Doctrines
of all bookes before they be published. For the Actions of men proceed
from their Opinions; and in the wel governing of Opinions, consisteth
the well governing of mens Actions, in order to their Peace, and
Concord. And though in matter of Doctrine, nothing ought to be regarded
but the Truth; yet this is not repugnant to regulating of the same by
Peace. For Doctrine Repugnant to Peace, can no more be True, than Peace
and Concord can be against the Law of Nature. It is true, that in
a Common-wealth, where by the negligence, or unskilfullnesse of
Governours, and Teachers, false Doctrines are by time generally
received; the contrary Truths may be generally offensive; Yet the most
sudden, and rough busling in of a new Truth, that can be, does never
breake the Peace, but onely somtimes awake the Warre. For those men that
are so remissely governed, that they dare take up Armes, to defend, or
introduce an Opinion, are still in Warre; and their condition not Peace,
but only a Cessation of Armes for feare of one another; and they live
as it were, in the procincts of battaile continually. It belongeth
therefore to him that hath the Soveraign Power, to be Judge, or
constitute all Judges of Opinions and Doctrines, as a thing necessary to
Peace, thereby to prevent Discord and Civill Warre.




7. The Right Of Making Rules, Whereby The Subject May

Every Man Know What Is So His Owne, As No Other Subject

Can Without Injustice Take It From Him

Seventhly, is annexed to the Soveraigntie, the whole power of
prescribing the Rules, whereby every man may know, what Goods he may
enjoy and what Actions he may doe, without being molested by any of
his fellow Subjects: And this is it men Call Propriety. For before
constitution of Soveraign Power (as hath already been shewn) all men had
right to all things; which necessarily causeth Warre: and therefore this
Proprietie, being necessary to Peace, and depending on Soveraign Power,
is the Act of the Power, in order to the publique peace. These Rules of
Propriety (or Meum and Tuum) and of Good, Evill, Lawfull and Unlawfull
in the actions of subjects, are the Civill Lawes, that is to say, the
lawes of each Commonwealth in particular; though the name of Civill Law
be now restrained to the antient Civill Lawes of the City of Rome; which
being the head of a great part of the World, her Lawes at that time were
in these parts the Civill Law.




8. To Him Also Belongeth The Right Of All Judicature

And Decision Of Controversies:

Eightly, is annexed to the Soveraigntie, the Right of Judicature; that
is to say, of hearing and deciding all Controversies, which may arise
concerning Law, either Civill, or naturall, or concerning Fact. For
without the decision of Controversies, there is no protection of one
Subject, against the injuries of another; the Lawes concerning Meum and
Tuum are in vaine; and to every man remaineth, from the naturall and
necessary appetite of his own conservation, the right of protecting
himselfe by his private strength, which is the condition of Warre; and
contrary to the end for which every Common-wealth is instituted.




9. And Of Making War, And Peace, As He Shall Think Best:

Ninthly, is annexed to the Soveraignty, the Right of making Warre, and
Peace with other Nations, and Common-wealths; that is to say, of
Judging when it is for the publique good, and how great forces are to
be assembled, armed, and payd for that end; and to levy mony upon the
Subjects, to defray the expenses thereof. For the Power by which the
people are to be defended, consisteth in their Armies; and the strength
of an Army, in the union of their strength under one Command; which
Command the Soveraign Instituted, therefore hath; because the command
of the Militia, without other Institution, maketh him that hath it
Soveraign. And therefore whosoever is made Generall of an Army, he that
hath the Soveraign Power is alwayes Generallissimo.




10. And Of Choosing All Counsellours, And Ministers,

Both Of Peace, And Warre:

Tenthly, is annexed to the Soveraignty, the choosing of all
Councellours, Ministers, Magistrates, and Officers, both in peace, and
War. For seeing the Soveraign is charged with the End, which is the
common Peace and Defence; he is understood to have Power to use such
Means, as he shall think most fit for his discharge.




11. And Of Rewarding, And Punishing, And That (Where No

Former Law hath Determined The Measure Of It) Arbitrary:

Eleventhly, to the Soveraign is committed the Power of Rewarding
with riches, or honour; and of Punishing with corporall, or pecuniary
punishment, or with ignominy every Subject according to the Lawe he hath
formerly made; or if there be no Law made, according as he shall judge
most to conduce to the encouraging of men to serve the Common-wealth, or
deterring of them from doing dis-service to the same.




12. And Of Honour And Order

Lastly, considering what values men are naturally apt to set upon
themselves; what respect they look for from others; and how little they
value other men; from whence continually arise amongst them, Emulation,
Quarrells, Factions, and at last Warre, to the destroying of one
another, and diminution of their strength against a Common Enemy; It
is necessary that there be Lawes of Honour, and a publique rate of the
worth of such men as have deserved, or are able to deserve well of the
Common-wealth; and that there be force in the hands of some or other, to
put those Lawes in execution. But it hath already been shown, that not
onely the whole Militia, or forces of the Common-wealth; but also the
Judicature of all Controversies, is annexed to the Soveraignty. To the
Soveraign therefore it belongeth also to give titles of Honour; and to
appoint what Order of place, and dignity, each man shall hold; and what
signes of respect, in publique or private meetings, they shall give to
one another.




These Rights Are Indivisible

These are the Rights, which make the Essence of Soveraignty; and which
are the markes, whereby a man may discern in what Man, or Assembly
of men, the Soveraign Power is placed, and resideth. For these are
incommunicable, and inseparable. The Power to coyn Mony; to dispose of
the estate and persons of Infant heires; to have praeemption in
Markets; and all other Statute Praerogatives, may be transferred by the
Soveraign; and yet the Power to protect his Subject be retained. But if
he transferre the Militia, he retains the Judicature in vain, for want
of execution of the Lawes; Or if he grant away the Power of raising
Mony; the Militia is in vain: or if he give away the government of
doctrines, men will be frighted into rebellion with the feare of
Spirits. And so if we consider any one of the said Rights, we shall
presently see, that the holding of all the rest, will produce no
effect, in the conservation of Peace and Justice, the end for which all
Common-wealths are Instituted. And this division is it, whereof it is
said, "A kingdome divided in it selfe cannot stand:" For unlesse this
division precede, division into opposite Armies can never happen. If
there had not first been an opinion received of the greatest part of
England, that these Powers were divided between the King, and the Lords,
and the House of Commons, the people had never been divided, and
fallen into this Civill Warre; first between those that disagreed
in Politiques; and after between the Dissenters about the liberty of
Religion; which have so instructed men in this point of Soveraign Right,
that there be few now (in England,) that do not see, that these Rights
are inseparable, and will be so generally acknowledged, at the next
return of Peace; and so continue, till their miseries are forgotten; and
no longer, except the vulgar be better taught than they have hetherto
been.




And Can By No Grant Passe Away Without Direct

Renouncing Of The Soveraign Power

And because they are essentiall and inseparable Rights, it follows
necessarily, that in whatsoever, words any of them seem to be granted
away, yet if the Soveraign Power it selfe be not in direct termes
renounced, and the name of Soveraign no more given by the Grantees to
him that Grants them, the Grant is voyd: for when he has granted all he
can, if we grant back the Soveraignty, all is restored, as inseparably
annexed thereunto.




The Power And Honour Of Subjects Vanisheth In The Presence

Of The Power Soveraign

This great Authority being indivisible, and inseparably annexed to the
Soveraignty, there is little ground for the opinion of them, that say of
Soveraign Kings, though they be Singulis Majores, of greater Power than
every one of their Subjects, yet they be Universis Minores, of lesse
power than them all together. For if by All Together, they mean not
the collective body as one person, then All Together, and Every One,
signifie the same; and the speech is absurd. But if by All Together,
they understand them as one Person (which person the Soveraign bears,)
then the power of all together, is the same with the Soveraigns power;
and so again the speech is absurd; which absurdity they see well enough,
when the Soveraignty is in an Assembly of the people; but in a Monarch
they see it not; and yet the power of Soveraignty is the same in
whomsoever it be placed.

And as the Power, so also the Honour of the Soveraign, ought to be
greater, than that of any, or all the Subjects. For in the Soveraignty
is the fountain of Honour. The dignities of Lord, Earle, Duke, and
Prince are his Creatures. As in the presence of the Master, the Servants
are equall, and without any honour at all; So are the Subjects, in the
presence of the Soveraign. And though they shine some more, some lesse,
when they are out of his sight; yet in his presence, they shine no more
than the Starres in presence of the Sun.




Soveraigne Power Not Hurtfull As The Want Of It,

And The Hurt Proceeds For The Greatest Part From Not

Submitting Readily, To A Lesse

But a man may here object, that the Condition of Subjects is very
miserable; as being obnoxious to the lusts, and other irregular passions
of him, or them that have so unlimited a Power in their hands. And
commonly they that live under a Monarch, think it the fault of Monarchy;
and they that live under the government of Democracy, or other
Soveraign Assembly, attribute all the inconvenience to that forme of
Common-wealth; whereas the Power in all formes, if they be perfect
enough to protect them, is the same; not considering that the estate
of Man can never be without some incommodity or other; and that the
greatest, that in any forme of Government can possibly happen to the
people in generall, is scarce sensible, in respect of the miseries, and
horrible calamities, that accompany a Civill Warre; or that dissolute
condition of masterlesse men, without subjection to Lawes, and a
coercive Power to tye their hands from rapine, and revenge: nor
considering that the greatest pressure of Soveraign Governours,
proceedeth not from any delight, or profit they can expect in the
dammage, or weakening of their subjects, in whose vigor, consisteth
their own selves, that unwillingly contributing to their own defence,
make it necessary for their Governours to draw from them what they can
in time of Peace, that they may have means on any emergent occasion, or
sudden need, to resist, or take advantage on their Enemies. For all men
are by nature provided of notable multiplying glasses, (that is their
Passions and Self-love,) through which, every little payment appeareth a
great grievance; but are destitute of those prospective glasses, (namely
Morall and Civill Science,) to see a farre off the miseries that hang
over them, and cannot without such payments be avoyded.



CHAPTER XIX. OF THE SEVERALL KINDS OF COMMON-WEALTH BY INSTITUTION,

AND OF SUCCESSION TO THE SOVERAIGNE POWER




The Different Formes Of Common-wealths But Three

The difference of Common-wealths, consisteth in the difference of the
Soveraign, or the Person representative of all and every one of the
Multitude. And because the Soveraignty is either in one Man, or in an
Assembly of more than one; and into that Assembly either Every man hath
right to enter, or not every one, but Certain men distinguished from the
rest; it is manifest, there can be but Three kinds of Common-wealth. For
the Representative must needs be One man, or More: and if more, then it
is the Assembly of All, or but of a Part. When the Representative is One
man, then is the Common-wealth a MONARCHY: when an Assembly of All that
will come together, then it is a DEMOCRACY, or Popular Common-wealth:
when an Assembly of a Part onely, then it is called an ARISTOCRACY.
Other kind of Common-wealth there can be none: for either One, or
More, or All must have the Soveraign Power (which I have shewn to be
indivisible) entire.




Tyranny And Oligarchy, But Different Names Of Monarchy, And Aristocracy

There be other names of Government, in the Histories, and books of
Policy; as Tyranny, and Oligarchy: But they are not the names of other
Formes of Government, but of the same Formes misliked. For they that
are discontented under Monarchy, call it Tyranny; and they that are
displeased with Aristocracy, called it Oligarchy: so also, they which
find themselves grieved under a Democracy, call it Anarchy, (which
signifies want of Government;) and yet I think no man believes, that
want of Government, is any new kind of Government: nor by the same
reason ought they to believe, that the Government is of one kind, when
they like it, and another, when they mislike it, or are oppressed by the
Governours.




Subordinate Representatives Dangerous

It is manifest, that men who are in absolute liberty, may, if they
please, give Authority to One Man, to represent them every one; as
well as give such Authority to any Assembly of men whatsoever; and
consequently may subject themselves, if they think good, to a Monarch,
as absolutely, as to any other Representative. Therefore, where there is
already erected a Soveraign Power, there can be no other Representative
of the same people, but onely to certain particular ends, by the
Soveraign limited. For that were to erect two Soveraigns; and every
man to have his person represented by two Actors, that by opposing one
another, must needs divide that Power, which (if men will live in Peace)
is indivisible, and thereby reduce the Multitude into the condition of
Warre, contrary to the end for which all Soveraignty is instituted. And
therefore as it is absurd, to think that a Soveraign Assembly, inviting
the People of their Dominion, to send up their Deputies, with power
to make known their Advise, or Desires, should therefore hold such
Deputies, rather than themselves, for the absolute Representative of
the people: so it is absurd also, to think the same in a Monarchy. And
I know not how this so manifest a truth, should of late be so little
observed; that in a Monarchy, he that had the Soveraignty from a descent
of 600 years, was alone called Soveraign, had the title of Majesty from
every one of his Subjects, and was unquestionably taken by them
for their King; was notwithstanding never considered as their
Representative; that name without contradiction passing for the title
of those men, which at his command were sent up by the people to carry
their Petitions, and give him (if he permitted it) their advise. Which
may serve as an admonition, for those that are the true, and absolute
Representative of a People, to instruct men in the nature of that
Office, and to take heed how they admit of any other generall
Representation upon any occasion whatsoever, if they mean to discharge
the truth committed to them.




Comparison Of Monarchy, With Soveraign Assemblyes

The difference between these three kindes of Common-wealth, consisteth
not in the difference of Power; but in the difference of Convenience, or
Aptitude to produce the Peace, and Security of the people; for which end
they were instituted. And to compare Monarchy with the other two, we may
observe; First, that whosoever beareth the Person of the people, or
is one of that Assembly that bears it, beareth also his own naturall
Person. And though he be carefull in his politique Person to procure
the common interest; yet he is more, or no lesse carefull to procure the
private good of himselfe, his family, kindred and friends; and for the
most part, if the publique interest chance to crosse the private, he
preferrs the private: for the Passions of men, are commonly more potent
than their Reason. From whence it follows, that where the publique and
private interest are most closely united, there is the publique most
advanced. Now in Monarchy, the private interest is the same with the
publique. The riches, power, and honour of a Monarch arise onely from
the riches, strength and reputation of his Subjects. For no King can
be rich, nor glorious, nor secure; whose Subjects are either poore, or
contemptible, or too weak through want, or dissention, to maintain a
war against their enemies: Whereas in a Democracy, or Aristocracy, the
publique prosperity conferres not so much to the private fortune of one
that is corrupt, or ambitious, as doth many times a perfidious advice, a
treacherous action, or a Civill warre.

Secondly, that a Monarch receiveth counsell of whom, when, and where he
pleaseth; and consequently may heare the opinion of men versed in the
matter about which he deliberates, of what rank or quality soever, and
as long before the time of action, and with as much secrecy, as he will.
But when a Soveraigne Assembly has need of Counsell, none are admitted
but such as have a Right thereto from the beginning; which for the
most part are of those who have beene versed more in the acquisition
of Wealth than of Knowledge; and are to give their advice in long
discourses, which may, and do commonly excite men to action, but
not governe them in it. For the Understanding is by the flame of the
Passions, never enlightned, but dazled: Nor is there any place, or time,
wherein an Assemblie can receive Counsell with secrecie, because of
their owne Multitude.

Thirdly, that the Resolutions of a Monarch, are subject to no other
Inconstancy, than that of Humane Nature; but in Assemblies, besides that
of Nature, there ariseth an Inconstancy from the Number. For the absence
of a few, that would have the Resolution once taken, continue firme,
(which may happen by security, negligence, or private impediments,) or
the diligent appearance of a few of the contrary opinion, undoes to day,
all that was concluded yesterday.

Fourthly, that a Monarch cannot disagree with himselfe, out of envy, or
interest; but an Assembly may; and that to such a height, as may produce
a Civill Warre.

Fifthly, that in Monarchy there is this inconvenience; that any Subject,
by the power of one man, for the enriching of a favourite or flatterer,
may be deprived of all he possesseth; which I confesse is a great and
inevitable inconvenience. But the same may as well happen, where the
Soveraigne Power is in an Assembly: for their power is the same; and
they are as subject to evill Counsell, and to be seduced by Orators, as
a Monarch by Flatterers; and becoming one an others Flatterers, serve
one anothers Covetousnesse and Ambition by turnes. And whereas the
Favorites of an Assembly, are many; and the Kindred much more numerous,
than of any Monarch. Besides, there is no Favourite of a Monarch, which
cannot as well succour his friends, as hurt his enemies: But Orators,
that is to say, Favourites of Soveraigne Assemblies, though they have
great power to hurt, have little to save. For to accuse, requires lesse
Eloquence (such is mans Nature) than to excuse; and condemnation, than
absolution more resembles Justice.

Sixtly, that it is an inconvenience in Monarchie, that the Soveraigntie
may descend upon an Infant, or one that cannot discerne between Good and
Evill: and consisteth in this, that the use of his Power, must be in the
hand of another Man, or of some Assembly of men, which are to governe by
his right, and in his name; as Curators, and Protectors of his Person,
and Authority. But to say there is inconvenience, in putting the use of
the Soveraign Power, into the hand of a Man, or an Assembly of men; is
to say that all Government is more Inconvenient, than Confusion, and
Civill Warre. And therefore all the danger that can be pretended, must
arise from the Contention of those, that for an office of so great
honour, and profit, may become Competitors. To make it appear, that
this inconvenience, proceedeth not from that forme of Government we call
Monarchy, we are to consider, that the precedent Monarch, hath appointed
who shall have the Tuition of his Infant Successor, either expressely
by Testament, or tacitly, by not controlling the Custome in that
case received: And then such inconvenience (if it happen) is to be
attributed, not to the Monarchy, but to the Ambition, and Injustice of
the Subjects; which in all kinds of Government, where the people are
not well instructed in their Duty, and the Rights of Soveraignty, is
the same. Or else the precedent Monarch, hath not at all taken order for
such Tuition; And then the Law of Nature hath provided this sufficient
rule, That the Tuition shall be in him, that hath by Nature most
interest in the preservation of the Authority of the Infant, and to whom
least benefit can accrue by his death, or diminution. For seeing every
man by nature seeketh his own benefit, and promotion; to put an Infant
into the power of those, that can promote themselves by his destruction,
or dammage, is not Tuition, but Trechery. So that sufficient provision
being taken, against all just quarrell, about the Government under a
Child, if any contention arise to the disturbance of the publique Peace,
it is not to be attributed to the forme of Monarchy, but to the ambition
of Subjects, and ignorance of their Duty. On the other side, there is
no great Common-wealth, the Soveraignty whereof is in a great Assembly,
which is not, as to consultations of Peace, and Warre, and making of
Lawes, in the same condition, as if the Government were in a Child. For
as a Child wants the judgement to dissent from counsell given him, and
is thereby necessitated to take the advise of them, or him, to whom he
is committed: So an Assembly wanteth the liberty, to dissent from the
counsell of the major part, be it good, or bad. And as a Child has need
of a Tutor, or Protector, to preserve his Person, and Authority: So also
(in great Common-wealths,) the Soveraign Assembly, in all great dangers
and troubles, have need of Custodes Libertatis; that is of Dictators, or
Protectors of their Authoritie; which are as much as Temporary Monarchs;
to whom for a time, they may commit the entire exercise of their Power;
and have (at the end of that time) been oftner deprived thereof, than
Infant Kings, by their Protectors, Regents, or any other Tutors.

Though the Kinds of Soveraigntie be, as I have now shewn, but three;
that is to say, Monarchie, where one Man has it; or Democracie, where
the generall Assembly of Subjects hath it; or Aristocracie, where it is
in an Assembly of certain persons nominated, or otherwise distinguished
from the rest: Yet he that shall consider the particular Common-wealthes
that have been, and are in the world, will not perhaps easily reduce
them to three, and may thereby be inclined to think there be other
Formes, arising from these mingled together. As for example, Elective
Kingdomes; where Kings have the Soveraigne Power put into their hands
for a time; of Kingdomes, wherein the King hath a power limited: which
Governments, are nevertheless by most Writers called Monarchie. Likewise
if a Popular, or Aristocraticall Common-wealth, subdue an Enemies
Countrie, and govern the same, by a President, Procurator, or
other Magistrate; this may seeme perhaps at first sight, to be a
Democraticall, or Aristocraticall Government. But it is not so. For
Elective Kings, are not Soveraignes, but Ministers of the Soveraigne;
nor limited Kings Soveraignes, but Ministers of them that have the
Soveraigne Power: nor are those Provinces which are in subjection to a
Democracie, or Aristocracie of another Common-wealth, Democratically, or
Aristocratically governed, but Monarchically.

And first, concerning an Elective King, whose power is limited to
his life, as it is in many places of Christendome at this day; or to
certaine Yeares or Moneths, as the Dictators power amongst the Romans;
If he have Right to appoint his Successor, he is no more Elective but
Hereditary. But if he have no Power to elect his Successor, then there
is some other Man, or Assembly known, which after his decease may elect
a new, or else the Common-wealth dieth, and dissolveth with him, and
returneth to the condition of Warre. If it be known who have the power
to give the Soveraigntie after his death, it is known also that the
Soveraigntie was in them before: For none have right to give that which
they have not right to possesse, and keep to themselves, if they think
good. But if there be none that can give the Soveraigntie, after the
decease of him that was first elected; then has he power, nay he is
obliged by the Law of Nature, to provide, by establishing his Successor,
to keep those that had trusted him with the Government, from relapsing
into the miserable condition of Civill warre. And consequently he was,
when elected, a Soveraign absolute.

Secondly, that King whose power is limited, is not superiour to him, or
them that have the power to limit it; and he that is not superiour, is
not supreme; that is to say not Soveraign. The Soveraignty therefore
was alwaies in that Assembly which had the Right to Limit him; and
by consequence the government not Monarchy, but either Democracy, or
Aristocracy; as of old time in Sparta; where the Kings had a priviledge
to lead their Armies; but the Soveraignty was in the Ephori.

Thirdly, whereas heretofore the Roman People, governed the land of Judea
(for example) by a President; yet was not Judea therefore a Democracy;
because they were not governed by any Assembly, into which, any of
them, had right to enter; nor by an Aristocracy; because they were
not governed by any Assembly, into which, any man could enter by their
Election: but they were governed by one Person, which though as to the
people of Rome was an Assembly of the people, or Democracy; yet as to
the people of Judea, which had no right at all of participating in the
government, was a Monarch. For though where the people are governed
by an Assembly, chosen by themselves out of their own number, the
government is called a Democracy, or Aristocracy; yet when they are
governed by an Assembly, not of their own choosing, 'tis a Monarchy; not
of One man, over another man; but of one people, over another people.




Of The Right Of Succession

Of all these Formes of Government, the matter being mortall, so that not
onely Monarchs, but also whole Assemblies dy, it is necessary for the
conservation of the peace of men, that as there was order taken for
an Artificiall Man, so there be order also taken, for an Artificiall
Eternity of life; without which, men that are governed by an Assembly,
should return into the condition of Warre in every age; and they
that are governed by One man, as soon as their Governour dyeth. This
Artificiall Eternity, is that which men call the Right of Succession.

There is no perfect forme of Government, where the disposing of the
Succession is not in the present Soveraign. For if it be in any other
particular Man, or private Assembly, it is in a person subject, and may
be assumed by the Soveraign at his pleasure; and consequently the Right
is in himselfe. And if it be in no particular man, but left to a new
choyce; then is the Common-wealth dissolved; and the Right is in him
that can get it; contrary to the intention of them that did institute
the Common-wealth, for their perpetuall, and not temporary security.

In a Democracy, the whole Assembly cannot faile, unlesse the Multitude
that are to be governed faile. And therefore questions of the right of
Succession, have in that forme of Government no place at all.

In an Aristocracy, when any of the Assembly dyeth, the election of
another into his room belongeth to the Assembly, as the Soveraign, to
whom belongeth the choosing of all Counsellours, and Officers. For that
which the Representative doth, as Actor, every one of the Subjects doth,
as Author. And though the Soveraign assembly, may give Power to others,
to elect new men, for supply of their Court; yet it is still by their
Authority, that the Election is made; and by the same it may (when the
publique shall require it) be recalled.

The Present Monarch Hath Right To Dispose Of The Succession The greatest
difficultie about the right of Succession, is in Monarchy: And the
difficulty ariseth from this, that at first sight, it is not manifest
who is to appoint the Successor; nor many times, who it is whom he
hath appointed. For in both these cases, there is required a more exact
ratiocination, than every man is accustomed to use. As to the question,
who shall appoint the Successor, of a Monarch that hath the Soveraign
Authority; that is to say, (for Elective Kings and Princes have not the
Soveraign Power in propriety, but in use only,) we are to consider, that
either he that is in possession, has right to dispose of the Succession,
or else that right is again in the dissolved Multitude. For the death
of him that hath the Soveraign power in propriety, leaves the Multitude
without any Soveraign at all; that is, without any Representative in
whom they should be united, and be capable of doing any one action at
all: And therefore they are incapable of Election of any new Monarch;
every man having equall right to submit himselfe to such as he thinks
best able to protect him, or if he can, protect himselfe by his owne
sword; which is a returne to Confusion, and to the condition of a War of
every man against every man, contrary to the end for which Monarchy had
its first Institution. Therfore it is manifest, that by the Institution
of Monarchy, the disposing of the Successor, is alwaies left to the
Judgment and Will of the present Possessor.

And for the question (which may arise sometimes) who it is that the
Monarch in possession, hath designed to the succession and inheritance
of his power; it is determined by his expresse Words, and Testament; or
by other tacite signes sufficient.




Succession Passeth By Expresse Words;

By expresse Words, or Testament, when it is declared by him in his life
time, viva voce, or by Writing; as the first Emperours of Rome declared
who should be their Heires. For the word Heire does not of it selfe
imply the Children, or nearest Kindred of a man; but whomsoever a man
shall any way declare, he would have to succeed him in his Estate.
If therefore a Monarch declare expresly, that such a man shall be his
Heire, either by Word or Writing, then is that man immediately after the
decease of his Predecessor, Invested in the right of being Monarch.




Or, By Not Controlling A Custome;

But where Testament, and expresse Words are wanting, other naturall
signes of the Will are to be followed: whereof the one is Custome. And
therefore where the Custome is, that the next of Kindred absolutely
succeedeth, there also the next of Kindred hath right to the Succession;
for that, if the will of him that was in posession had been otherwise,
he might easily have declared the same in his life time. And likewise
where the Custome is, that the next of the Male Kindred succeedeth,
there also the right of Succession is in the next of the Kindred Male,
for the same reason. And so it is if the Custome were to advance the
Female. For whatsoever Custome a man may by a word controule, and does
not, it is a naturall signe he would have that Custome stand.




Or, By Presumption Of Naturall Affection

But where neither Custome, nor Testament hath preceded, there it is
to be understood, First, that a Monarchs will is, that the government
remain Monarchicall; because he hath approved that government in
himselfe. Secondly, that a Child of his own, Male, or Female, be
preferred before any other; because men are presumed to be more enclined
by nature, to advance their own children, than the children of other
men; and of their own, rather a Male than a Female; because men, are
naturally fitter than women, for actions of labour and danger. Thirdly,
where his own Issue faileth, rather a Brother than a stranger; and so
still the neerer in bloud, rather than the more remote, because it is
alwayes presumed that the neerer of kin, is the neerer in affection; and
'tis evident that a man receives alwayes, by reflexion, the most honour
from the greatnesse of his neerest kindred.




To Dispose Of The Succession, Though To A King Of Another Nation,

Not Unlawfull

But if it be lawfull for a Monarch to dispose of the Succession by words
of Contract, or Testament, men may perhaps object a great inconvenience:
for he may sell, or give his Right of governing to a stranger; which,
because strangers (that is, men not used to live under the same
government, not speaking the same language) do commonly undervalue one
another, may turn to the oppression of his Subjects; which is indeed
a great inconvenience; but it proceedeth not necessarily from the
subjection to a strangers government, but from the unskilfulnesse of the
Governours, ignorant of the true rules of Politiques. And therefore
the Romans when they had subdued many Nations, to make their Government
digestible, were wont to take away that grievance, as much as they
thought necessary, by giving sometimes to whole Nations, and sometimes
to Principall men of every Nation they conquered, not onely the
Privileges, but also the Name of Romans; and took many of them into the
Senate, and Offices of charge, even in the Roman City. And this was it
our most wise King, King James, aymed at, in endeavouring the Union of
his two Realms of England and Scotland. Which if he could have obtained,
had in all likelihood prevented the Civill warres, which make both those
Kingdomes at this present, miserable. It is not therefore any injury to
the people, for a Monarch to dispose of the Succession by Will; though
by the fault of many Princes, it hath been sometimes found inconvenient.
Of the lawfulnesse of it, this also is an argument, that whatsoever
inconvenience can arrive by giving a Kingdome to a stranger, may arrive
also by so marrying with strangers, as the Right of Succession may
descend upon them: yet this by all men is accounted lawfull.



CHAPTER XX. OF DOMINION PATERNALL AND DESPOTICALL


A Common-wealth by Acquisition, is that, where the Soveraign Power is
acquired by Force; And it is acquired by force, when men singly, or
many together by plurality of voyces, for fear of death, or bonds, do
authorise all the actions of that Man, or Assembly, that hath their
lives and liberty in his Power.




Wherein Different From A Common-wealth By Institution

And this kind of Dominion, or Soveraignty, differeth from Soveraignty by
Institution, onely in this, That men who choose their Soveraign, do it
for fear of one another, and not of him whom they Institute: But in this
case, they subject themselves, to him they are afraid of. In both cases
they do it for fear: which is to be noted by them, that hold all such
Covenants, as proceed from fear of death, or violence, voyd: which if
it were true, no man, in any kind of Common-wealth, could be obliged
to Obedience. It is true, that in a Common-wealth once Instituted, or
acquired, Promises proceeding from fear of death, or violence, are no
Covenants, nor obliging, when the thing promised is contrary to the
Lawes; But the reason is not, because it was made upon fear, but because
he that promiseth, hath no right in the thing promised. Also, when he
may lawfully performe, and doth not, it is not the Invalidity of
the Covenant, that absolveth him, but the Sentence of the Soveraign.
Otherwise, whensoever a man lawfully promiseth, he unlawfully breaketh:
But when the Soveraign, who is the Actor, acquitteth him, then he is
acquitted by him that exorted the promise, as by the Author of such
absolution.




The Rights Of Soveraignty The Same In Both

But the Rights, and Consequences of Soveraignty, are the same in both.
His Power cannot, without his consent, be Transferred to another: He
cannot Forfeit it: He cannot be Accused by any of his Subjects, of
Injury: He cannot be Punished by them: He is Judge of what is necessary
for Peace; and Judge of Doctrines: He is Sole Legislator; and Supreme
Judge of Controversies; and of the Times, and Occasions of Warre,
and Peace: to him it belongeth to choose Magistrates, Counsellours,
Commanders, and all other Officers, and Ministers; and to determine of
Rewards, and punishments, Honour, and Order. The reasons whereof, are
the same which are alledged in the precedent Chapter, for the same
Rights, and Consequences of Soveraignty by Institution.




Dominion Paternall How Attained Not By Generation, But By Contract

Dominion is acquired two wayes; By Generation, and by Conquest. The
right of Dominion by Generation, is that, which the Parent hath over
his Children; and is called PATERNALL. And is not so derived from the
Generation, as if therefore the Parent had Dominion over his Child
because he begat him; but from the Childs Consent, either expresse, or
by other sufficient arguments declared. For as to the Generation, God
hath ordained to man a helper; and there be alwayes two that are equally
Parents: the Dominion therefore over the Child, should belong equally to
both; and he be equally subject to both, which is impossible; for no man
can obey two Masters. And whereas some have attributed the Dominion to
the Man onely, as being of the more excellent Sex; they misreckon in it.
For there is not always that difference of strength or prudence between
the man and the woman, as that the right can be determined without War.
In Common-wealths, this controversie is decided by the Civill Law: and
for the most part, (but not alwayes) the sentence is in favour of the
Father; because for the most part Common-wealths have been erected by
the Fathers, not by the Mothers of families. But the question lyeth
now in the state of meer Nature; where there are supposed no lawes
of Matrimony; no lawes for the Education of Children; but the Law of
Nature, and the naturall inclination of the Sexes, one to another, and
to their children. In this condition of meer Nature, either the Parents
between themselves dispose of the dominion over the Child by Contract;
or do not dispose thereof at all. If they dispose thereof, the right
passeth according to the Contract. We find in History that the Amazons
Contracted with the Men of the neighbouring Countries, to whom they had
recourse for issue, that the issue Male should be sent back, but the
Female remain with themselves: so that the dominion of the Females was
in the Mother.




Or Education;

If there be no Contract, the Dominion is in the Mother. For in the
condition of Meer Nature, where there are no Matrimoniall lawes, it
cannot be known who is the Father, unlesse it be declared by the Mother:
and therefore the right of Dominion over the Child dependeth on her
will, and is consequently hers. Again, seeing the Infant is first in the
power of the Mother; so as she may either nourish, or expose it, if she
nourish it, it oweth its life to the Mother; and is therefore obliged to
obey her, rather than any other; and by consequence the Dominion over
it is hers. But if she expose it, and another find, and nourish it, the
Dominion is in him that nourisheth it. For it ought to obey him by whom
it is preserved; because preservation of life being the end, for which
one man becomes subject to another, every man is supposed to promise
obedience, to him, in whose power it is to save, or destroy him.




Or Precedent Subjection Of One Of The Parents To The Other

If the Mother be the Fathers subject, the Child, is in the Fathers
power: and if the Father be the Mothers subject, (as when a Soveraign
Queen marrieth one of her subjects,) the Child is subject to the Mother;
because the Father also is her subject.

If a man and a woman, Monarches of two severall Kingdomes, have a Child,
and contract concerning who shall have the Dominion of him, the Right of
the Dominion passeth by the Contract. If they contract not, the Dominion
followeth the Dominion of the place of his residence. For the Soveraign
of each Country hath Dominion over all that reside therein.

He that hath the Dominion over the Child, hath Dominion also over their
Childrens Children. For he that hath Dominion over the person of a man,
hath Dominion over all that is his; without which, Dominion were but a
Title, without the effect.




The Right Of Succession Followeth The Rules Of The Rights Of Possession

The Right of Succession to Paternall dominion, proceedeth in the same
manner, as doth the Right of Succession to Monarchy; of which I have
already sufficiently spoken in the precedent chapter.




Despoticall Dominion, How Attained

Dominion acquired by Conquest, or Victory in war, is that which some
Writers call DESPOTICALL, from Despotes, which signifieth a Lord, or
Master; and is the Dominion of the Master over his Servant. And this
Dominion is then acquired to the Victor, when the Vanquished, to avoyd
the present stroke of death, covenanteth either in expresse words, or by
other sufficient signes of the Will, that so long as his life, and
the liberty of his body is allowed him, the Victor shall have the use
thereof, at his pleasure. And after such Covenant made, the Vanquished
is a SERVANT, and not before: for by the word Servant (whether it be
derived from Servire, to Serve, or from Servare, to Save, which I leave
to Grammarians to dispute) is not meant a Captive, which is kept in
prison, or bonds, till the owner of him that took him, or bought him
of one that did, shall consider what to do with him: (for such men,
(commonly called Slaves,) have no obligation at all; but may break their
bonds, or the prison; and kill, or carry away captive their Master,
justly:) but one, that being taken, hath corporall liberty allowed him;
and upon promise not to run away, nor to do violence to his Master, is
trusted by him.




Not By The Victory, But By The Consent Of The Vanquished

It is not therefore the Victory, that giveth the right of Dominion over
the Vanquished, but his own Covenant. Nor is he obliged because he is
Conquered; that is to say, beaten, and taken, or put to flight; but
because he commeth in, and submitteth to the Victor; Nor is the Victor
obliged by an enemies rendring himselfe, (without promise of life,) to
spare him for this his yeelding to discretion; which obliges not the
Victor longer, than in his own discretion hee shall think fit.

And that men do, when they demand (as it is now called) Quarter, (which
the Greeks called Zogria, taking alive,) is to evade the present fury of
the Victor, by Submission, and to compound for their life, with Ransome,
or Service: and therefore he that hath Quarter, hath not his life given,
but deferred till farther deliberation; For it is not an yeelding on
condition of life, but to discretion. And then onely is his life in
security, and his service due, when the Victor hath trusted him with his
corporall liberty. For Slaves that work in Prisons, or Fetters, do it
not of duty, but to avoyd the cruelty of their task-masters.

The Master of the Servant, is Master also of all he hath; and may exact
the use thereof; that is to say, of his goods, of his labour, of his
servants, and of his children, as often as he shall think fit. For he
holdeth his life of his Master, by the covenant of obedience; that is,
of owning, and authorising whatsoever the Master shall do. And in case
the Master, if he refuse, kill him, or cast him into bonds, or otherwise
punish him for his disobedience, he is himselfe the author of the same;
and cannot accuse him of injury.

In summe the Rights and Consequences of both Paternall and Despoticall
Dominion, are the very same with those of a Soveraign by Institution;
and for the same reasons: which reasons are set down in the precedent
chapter. So that for a man that is Monarch of divers Nations, whereof he
hath, in one the Soveraignty by Institution of the people assembled, and
in another by Conquest, that is by the Submission of each particular,
to avoyd death or bonds; to demand of one Nation more than of the other,
from the title of Conquest, as being a Conquered Nation, is an act of
ignorance of the Rights of Soveraignty. For the Soveraign is absolute
over both alike; or else there is no Soveraignty at all; and so every
man may Lawfully protect himselfe, if he can, with his own sword, which
is the condition of war.




Difference Between A Family And A Kingdom

By this it appears, that a great Family if it be not part of some
Common-wealth, is of it self, as to the Rights of Soveraignty, a little
Monarchy; whether that Family consist of a man and his children; or of
a man and his servants; or of a man, and his children, and servants
together: wherein the Father of Master is the Soveraign. But yet a
Family is not properly a Common-wealth; unlesse it be of that power by
its own number, or by other opportunities, as not to be subdued without
the hazard of war. For where a number of men are manifestly too weak to
defend themselves united, every one may use his own reason in time of
danger, to save his own life, either by flight, or by submission to
the enemy, as hee shall think best; in the same manner as a very small
company of souldiers, surprised by an army, may cast down their armes,
and demand quarter, or run away, rather than be put to the sword. And
thus much shall suffice; concerning what I find by speculation, and
deduction, of Soveraign Rights, from the nature, need, and designes
of men, in erecting of Commonwealths, and putting themselves under
Monarchs, or Assemblies, entrusted with power enough for their
protection.




The Right Of Monarchy From Scripture

Let us now consider what the Scripture teacheth in the same point. To
Moses, the children of Israel say thus. (Exod. 20. 19) "Speak thou to
us, and we will heare thee; but let not God speak to us, lest we dye."
This is absolute obedience to Moses. Concerning the Right of Kings, God
himself by the mouth of Samuel, saith, (1 Sam. 8. 11, 12, &c.) "This
shall be the Right of the King you will have to reigne over you. He
shall take your sons, and set them to drive his Chariots, and to be his
horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and gather in his harvest; and
to make his engines of War, and Instruments of his chariots; and shall
take your daughters to make perfumes, to be his Cookes, and Bakers. He
shall take your fields, your vine-yards, and your olive-yards, and give
them to his servants. He shall take the tyth of your corne and wine, and
give it to the men of his chamber, and to his other servants. He shall
take your man-servants, and your maid-servants, and the choice of your
youth, and employ them in his businesse. He shall take the tyth of your
flocks; and you shall be his servants." This is absolute power, and
summed up in the last words, "you shall be his servants." Againe, when
the people heard what power their King was to have, yet they consented
thereto, and say thus, (Verse. 19 &c.) "We will be as all other nations,
and our King shall judge our causes, and goe before us, to conduct our
wars." Here is confirmed the Right that Soveraigns have, both to the
Militia, and to all Judicature; in which is conteined as absolute power,
as one man can possibly transferre to another. Again, the prayer of
King Salomon to God, was this. (1 Kings 3. 9) "Give to thy servant
understanding, to judge thy people, and to discerne between Good and
Evill." It belongeth therefore to the Soveraigne to bee Judge, and
to praescribe the Rules of Discerning Good and Evill; which Rules are
Lawes; and therefore in him is the Legislative Power. Saul sought
the life of David; yet when it was in his power to slay Saul, and his
Servants would have done it, David forbad them, saying (1 Sam. 24. 9)
"God forbid I should do such an act against my Lord, the anoynted of
God." For obedience of servants St. Paul saith, (Coll. 3. 20) "Servants
obey your masters in All things," and, (Verse. 22) "Children obey your
Parents in All things." There is simple obedience in those that are
subject to Paternall, or Despoticall Dominion. Again, (Math. 23. 2,3)
"The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses chayre and therefore All that
they shall bid you observe, that observe and do." There again is simple
obedience. And St. Paul, (Tit. 3. 2) "Warn them that they subject
themselves to Princes, and to those that are in Authority, & obey
them." This obedience is also simple. Lastly, our Saviour himselfe
acknowledges, that men ought to pay such taxes as are by Kings imposed,
where he sayes, "Give to Caesar that which is Caesars;" and payed such
taxes himselfe. And that the Kings word, is sufficient to take any thing
from any subject, when there is need; and that the King is Judge of that
need: For he himselfe, as King of the Jewes, commanded his Disciples to
take the Asse, and Asses Colt to carry him into Jerusalem, saying, (Mat.
21. 2,3) "Go into the Village over against you, and you shall find a
shee Asse tyed, and her Colt with her, unty them, and bring them to me.
And if any man ask you, what you mean by it, Say the Lord hath need
of them: And they will let them go." They will not ask whether his
necessity be a sufficient title; nor whether he be judge of that
necessity; but acquiesce in the will of the Lord.

To these places may be added also that of Genesis, (Gen. 3. 5) "You
shall be as Gods, knowing Good and Evill." and verse 11. "Who told thee
that thou wast naked? hast thou eaten of the tree, of which I commanded
thee thou shouldest not eat?" For the Cognisance of Judicature of Good
and Evill, being forbidden by the name of the fruit of the tree of
Knowledge, as a triall of Adams obedience; The Divell to enflame the
Ambition of the woman, to whom that fruit already seemed beautifull,
told her that by tasting it, they should be as Gods, knowing Good and
Evill. Whereupon having both eaten, they did indeed take upon them
Gods office, which is Judicature of Good and Evill; but acquired no new
ability to distinguish between them aright. And whereas it is sayd, that
having eaten, they saw they were naked; no man hath so interpreted that
place, as if they had formerly blind, as saw not their own skins: the
meaning is plain, that it was then they first judged their nakednesse
(wherein it was Gods will to create them) to be uncomely; and by being
ashamed, did tacitely censure God himselfe. And thereupon God saith,
"Hast thou eaten, &c." as if he should say, doest thou that owest me
obedience, take upon thee to judge of my Commandements? Whereby it is
cleerly, (though Allegorically,) signified, that the Commands of
them that have the right to command, are not by their Subjects to be
censured, nor disputed.




Soveraign Power Ought In All Common-wealths To Be Absolute

So it appeareth plainly, to my understanding, both from Reason, and
Scripture, that the Soveraign Power, whether placed in One Man, as in
Monarchy, or in one Assembly of men, as in Popular, and Aristocraticall
Common-wealths, is as great, as possibly men can be imagined to make
it. And though of so unlimited a Power, men may fancy many evill
consequences, yet the consequences of the want of it, which is
perpetuall warre of every man against his neighbour, are much worse. The
condition of man in this life shall never be without Inconveniences; but
there happeneth in no Common-wealth any great Inconvenience, but what
proceeds from the Subjects disobedience, and breach of those Covenants,
from which the Common-wealth had its being. And whosoever thinking
Soveraign Power too great, will seek to make it lesse; must subject
himselfe, to the Power, that can limit it; that is to say, to a greater.

The greatest objection is, that of the Practise; when men ask, where,
and when, such Power has by Subjects been acknowledged. But one may
ask them again, when, or where has there been a Kingdome long free from
Sedition and Civill Warre. In those Nations, whose Common-wealths have
been long-lived, and not been destroyed, but by forraign warre, the
Subjects never did dispute of the Soveraign Power. But howsoever, an
argument for the Practise of men, that have not sifted to the bottom,
and with exact reason weighed the causes, and nature of Common-wealths,
and suffer daily those miseries, that proceed from the ignorance
thereof, is invalid. For though in all places of the world, men should
lay the foundation of their houses on the sand, it could not thence be
inferred, that so it ought to be. The skill of making, and maintaining
Common-wealths, consisteth in certain Rules, as doth Arithmetique and
Geometry; not (as Tennis-play) on Practise onely: which Rules, neither
poor men have the leisure, nor men that have had the leisure, have
hitherto had the curiosity, or the method to find out.



CHAPTER XXI. OF THE LIBERTY OF SUBJECTS




Liberty What

Liberty, or FREEDOME, signifieth (properly) the absence of Opposition;
(by Opposition, I mean externall Impediments of motion;) and may
be applyed no lesse to Irrational, and Inanimate creatures, than to
Rationall. For whatsoever is so tyed, or environed, as it cannot move,
but within a certain space, which space is determined by the opposition
of some externall body, we say it hath not Liberty to go further. And
so of all living creatures, whilest they are imprisoned, or restrained,
with walls, or chayns; and of the water whilest it is kept in by banks,
or vessels, that otherwise would spread it selfe into a larger space, we
use to say, they are not at Liberty, to move in such manner, as without
those externall impediments they would. But when the impediment of
motion, is in the constitution of the thing it selfe, we use not to
say, it wants the Liberty; but the Power to move; as when a stone lyeth
still, or a man is fastned to his bed by sicknesse.




What It Is To Be Free

And according to this proper, and generally received meaning of the
word, A FREE-MAN, is "he, that in those things, which by his strength
and wit he is able to do, is not hindred to doe what he has a will
to." But when the words Free, and Liberty, are applyed to any thing but
Bodies, they are abused; for that which is not subject to Motion, is not
subject to Impediment: And therefore, when 'tis said (for example) The
way is free, no liberty of the way is signified, but of those that walk
in it without stop. And when we say a Guift is free, there is not meant
any liberty of the Guift, but of the Giver, that was not bound by any
law, or Covenant to give it. So when we Speak Freely, it is not the
liberty of voice, or pronunciation, but of the man, whom no law hath
obliged to speak otherwise then he did. Lastly, from the use of the
word Freewill, no liberty can be inferred to the will, desire, or
inclination, but the liberty of the man; which consisteth in this, that
he finds no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination
to doe.




Feare And Liberty Consistent

Feare and Liberty are consistent; as when a man throweth his goods into
the Sea for Feare the ship should sink, he doth it neverthelesse very
willingly, and may refuse to doe it if he will: It is therefore the
action, of one that was Free; so a man sometimes pays his debt, only for
Feare of Imprisonment, which because no body hindred him from detaining,
was the action of a man at Liberty. And generally all actions which men
doe in Common-wealths, for Feare of the law, or actions, which the doers
had Liberty to omit.




Liberty And Necessity Consistent

Liberty and Necessity are Consistent: As in the water, that hath not
only Liberty, but a Necessity of descending by the Channel: so likewise
in the Actions which men voluntarily doe; which (because they proceed
from their will) proceed from Liberty; and yet because every act of
mans will, and every desire, and inclination proceedeth from some cause,
which causes in a continuall chaine (whose first link in the hand of
God the first of all causes) proceed from Necessity. So that to him
that could see the connexion of those causes, the Necessity of all
mens voluntary actions, would appeare manifest. And therefore God, that
seeth, and disposeth all things, seeth also that the Liberty of man
in doing what he will, is accompanied with the Necessity of doing that
which God will, & no more, nor lesse. For though men may do many things,
which God does not command, nor is therefore Author of them; yet they
can have no passion, nor appetite to any thing, of which appetite Gods
will is not the cause. And did not his will assure the Necessity of mans
will, and consequently of all that on mans will dependeth, the Liberty
of men would be a contradiction, and impediment to the omnipotence and
Liberty of God. And this shall suffice, (as to the matter in hand) of
that naturall Liberty, which only is properly called Liberty.




Artificiall Bonds, Or Covenants

But as men, for the atteyning of peace, and conservation of themselves
thereby, have made an Artificiall Man, which we call a Common-wealth; so
also have they made Artificiall Chains, called Civill Lawes, which they
themselves, by mutuall covenants, have fastned at one end, to the lips
of that Man, or Assembly, to whom they have given the Soveraigne Power;
and at the other end to their own Ears. These Bonds in their own nature
but weak, may neverthelesse be made to hold, by the danger, though not
by the difficulty of breaking them.




Liberty Of Subjects Consisteth In Liberty From Covenants

In relation to these Bonds only it is, that I am to speak now, of the
Liberty of Subjects. For seeing there is no Common-wealth in the world,
for the regulating of all the actions, and words of men, (as being
a thing impossible:) it followeth necessarily, that in all kinds of
actions, by the laws praetermitted, men have the Liberty, of doing what
their own reasons shall suggest, for the most profitable to themselves.
For if wee take Liberty in the proper sense, for corporall Liberty; that
is to say, freedome from chains, and prison, it were very absurd for men
to clamor as they doe, for the Liberty they so manifestly enjoy. Againe,
if we take Liberty, for an exemption from Lawes, it is no lesse absurd,
for men to demand as they doe, that Liberty, by which all other men may
be masters of their lives. And yet as absurd as it is, this is it they
demand; not knowing that the Lawes are of no power to protect them,
without a Sword in the hands of a man, or men, to cause those laws to
be put in execution. The Liberty of a Subject, lyeth therefore only
in those things, which in regulating their actions, the Soveraign hath
praetermitted; such as is the Liberty to buy, and sell, and otherwise
contract with one another; to choose their own aboad, their own diet,
their own trade of life, and institute their children as they themselves
think fit; & the like.




Liberty Of The Subject Consistent With Unlimited Power Of The Soveraign

Neverthelesse we are not to understand, that by such Liberty, the
Soveraign Power of life, and death, is either abolished, or limited. For
it has been already shewn, that nothing the Soveraign Representative
can doe to a Subject, on what pretence soever, can properly be called
Injustice, or Injury; because every Subject is Author of every act the
Soveraign doth; so that he never wanteth Right to any thing, otherwise,
than as he himself is the Subject of God, and bound thereby to observe
the laws of Nature. And therefore it may, and doth often happen in
Common-wealths, that a Subject may be put to death, by the command of
the Soveraign Power; and yet neither doe the other wrong: as when Jeptha
caused his daughter to be sacrificed: In which, and the like cases,
he that so dieth, had Liberty to doe the action, for which he is
neverthelesse, without Injury put to death. And the same holdeth also
in a Soveraign Prince, that putteth to death an Innocent Subject. For
though the action be against the law of Nature, as being contrary to
Equitie, (as was the killing of Uriah, by David;) yet it was not an
Injurie to Uriah; but to God. Not to Uriah, because the right to doe
what he pleased, was given him by Uriah himself; And yet to God, because
David was Gods Subject; and prohibited all Iniquitie by the law of
Nature. Which distinction, David himself, when he repented the fact,
evidently confirmed, saying, "To thee only have I sinned." In the same
manner, the people of Athens, when they banished the most potent of
their Common-wealth for ten years, thought they committed no Injustice;
and yet they never questioned what crime he had done; but what hurt he
would doe: Nay they commanded the banishment of they knew not whom; and
every Citizen bringing his Oystershell into the market place, written
with the name of him he desired should be banished, without actuall
accusing him, sometimes banished an Aristides, for his reputation of
Justice; And sometimes a scurrilous Jester, as Hyperbolus, to make a
Jest of it. And yet a man cannot say, the Soveraign People of Athens
wanted right to banish them; or an Athenian the Libertie to Jest, or to
be Just.




The Liberty Which Writers Praise, Is The Liberty Of Soveraigns;

Not Of Private Men

The Libertie, whereof there is so frequent, and honourable mention, in
the Histories, and Philosophy of the Antient Greeks, and Romans, and in
the writings, and discourse of those that from them have received all
their learning in the Politiques, is not the Libertie of Particular
men; but the Libertie of the Common-wealth: which is the same with
that, which every man then should have, if there were no Civil Laws,
nor Common-wealth at all. And the effects of it also be the same. For as
amongst masterlesse men, there is perpetuall war, of every man against
his neighbour; no inheritance, to transmit to the Son, nor to expect
from the Father; no propriety of Goods, or Lands; no security; but a
full and absolute Libertie in every Particular man: So in States, and
Common-wealths not dependent on one another, every Common-wealth, (not
every man) has an absolute Libertie, to doe what it shall judge (that is
to say, what that Man, or Assemblie that representeth it, shall judge)
most conducing to their benefit. But withall, they live in the condition
of a perpetuall war, and upon the confines of battel, with their
frontiers armed, and canons planted against their neighbours
round about. The Athenians, and Romanes, were free; that is, free
Common-wealths: not that any particular men had the Libertie to resist
their own Representative; but that their Representative had the Libertie
to resist, or invade other people. There is written on the Turrets of
the city of Luca in great characters at this day, the word LIBERTAS; yet
no man can thence inferre, that a particular man has more Libertie,
or Immunitie from the service of the Commonwealth there, than in
Constantinople. Whether a Common-wealth be Monarchicall, or Popular, the
Freedome is still the same.

But it is an easy thing, for men to be deceived, by the specious name
of Libertie; and for want of Judgement to distinguish, mistake that for
their Private Inheritance, and Birth right, which is the right of the
Publique only. And when the same errour is confirmed by the authority of
men in reputation for their writings in this subject, it is no wonder if
it produce sedition, and change of Government. In these westerne
parts of the world, we are made to receive our opinions concerning the
Institution, and Rights of Common-wealths, from Aristotle, Cicero, and
other men, Greeks and Romanes, that living under Popular States, derived
those Rights, not from the Principles of Nature, but transcribed them
into their books, out of the Practice of their own Common-wealths, which
were Popular; as the Grammarians describe the Rules of Language, out of
the Practise of the time; or the Rules of Poetry, out of the Poems of
Homer and Virgil. And because the Athenians were taught, (to keep them
from desire of changing their Government,) that they were Freemen, and
all that lived under Monarchy were slaves; therefore Aristotle puts it
down in his Politiques,(lib.6.cap.2) "In democracy, Liberty is to be
supposed: for 'tis commonly held, that no man is Free in any other
Government." And as Aristotle; so Cicero, and other Writers have
grounded their Civill doctrine, on the opinions of the Romans, who were
taught to hate Monarchy, at first, by them that having deposed their
Soveraign, shared amongst them the Soveraignty of Rome; and afterwards
by their Successors. And by reading of these Greek, and Latine Authors,
men from their childhood have gotten a habit (under a false shew of
Liberty,) of favouring tumults, and of licentious controlling the
actions of their Soveraigns; and again of controlling those controllers,
with the effusion of so much blood; as I think I may truly say, there
was never any thing so deerly bought, as these Western parts have bought
the learning of the Greek and Latine tongues.




Liberty Of The Subject How To Be Measured

To come now to the particulars of the true Liberty of a Subject; that is
to say, what are the things, which though commanded by the Soveraign, he
may neverthelesse, without Injustice, refuse to do; we are to consider,
what Rights we passe away, when we make a Common-wealth; or (which is
all one,) what Liberty we deny our selves, by owning all the Actions
(without exception) of the Man, or Assembly we make our Soveraign. For
in the act of our Submission, consisteth both our Obligation, and
our Liberty; which must therefore be inferred by arguments taken from
thence; there being no Obligation on any man, which ariseth not from
some Act of his own; for all men equally, are by Nature Free. And
because such arguments, must either be drawn from the expresse words, "I
Authorise all his Actions," or from the Intention of him that submitteth
himselfe to his Power, (which Intention is to be understood by the End
for which he so submitteth;) The Obligation, and Liberty of the Subject,
is to be derived, either from those Words, (or others equivalent;) or
else from the End of the Institution of Soveraignty; namely, the Peace
of the Subjects within themselves, and their Defence against a common
Enemy.




Subjects Have Liberty To Defend Their Own Bodies,

Even Against Them That Lawfully Invade Them

First therefore, seeing Soveraignty by Institution, is by Covenant of
every one to every one; and Soveraignty by Acquisition, by Covenants of
the Vanquished to the Victor, or Child to the Parent; It is manifest,
that every Subject has Liberty in all those things, the right whereof
cannot by Covenant be transferred. I have shewn before in the 14.
Chapter, that Covenants, not to defend a mans own body, are voyd.
Therefore,




Are Not Bound To Hurt Themselves;

If the Soveraign command a man (though justly condemned,) to kill,
wound, or mayme himselfe; or not to resist those that assault him; or
to abstain from the use of food, ayre, medicine, or any other thing,
without which he cannot live; yet hath that man the Liberty to disobey.

If a man be interrogated by the Soveraign, or his Authority, concerning
a crime done by himselfe, he is not bound (without assurance of Pardon)
to confesse it; because no man (as I have shewn in the same Chapter) can
be obliged by Covenant to accuse himselfe.

Again, the Consent of a Subject to Soveraign Power, is contained in
these words, "I Authorise, or take upon me, all his actions;" in which
there is no restriction at all, of his own former naturall Liberty:
For by allowing him to Kill Me, I am not bound to Kill my selfe when
he commands me. "'Tis one thing to say 'Kill me, or my fellow, if you
please;' another thing to say, 'I will kill my selfe, or my fellow.'" It
followeth therefore, that

No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himselfe, or
any other man; And consequently, that the Obligation a man may sometimes
have, upon the Command of the Soveraign to execute any dangerous, or
dishonourable Office, dependeth not on the Words of our Submission; but
on the Intention; which is to be understood by the End thereof. When
therefore our refusall to obey, frustrates the End for which the
Soveraignty was ordained; then there is no Liberty to refuse: otherwise
there is.




Nor To Warfare, Unless They Voluntarily Undertake It

Upon this ground, a man that is commanded as a Souldier to fight against
the enemy, though his Soveraign have Right enough to punish his refusall
with death, may neverthelesse in many cases refuse, without Injustice;
as when he substituteth a sufficient Souldier in his place: for in this
case he deserteth not the service of the Common-wealth. And there is
allowance to be made for naturall timorousnesse, not onely to women, (of
whom no such dangerous duty is expected,) but also to men of feminine
courage. When Armies fight, there is on one side, or both, a running
away; yet when they do it not out of trechery, but fear, they are not
esteemed to do it unjustly, but dishonourably. For the same reason, to
avoyd battell, is not Injustice, but Cowardise. But he that inrowleth
himselfe a Souldier, or taketh imprest mony, taketh away the excuse of
a timorous nature; and is obliged, not onely to go to the battell,
but also not to run from it, without his Captaines leave. And when the
Defence of the Common-wealth, requireth at once the help of all that
are able to bear Arms, every one is obliged; because otherwise the
Institution of the Common-wealth, which they have not the purpose, or
courage to preserve, was in vain.

To resist the Sword of the Common-wealth, in defence of another man,
guilty, or innocent, no man hath Liberty; because such Liberty, takes
away from the Soveraign, the means of Protecting us; and is therefore
destructive of the very essence of Government. But in case a great many
men together, have already resisted the Soveraign Power Unjustly, or
committed some Capitall crime, for which every one of them expecteth
death, whether have they not the Liberty then to joyn together, and
assist, and defend one another? Certainly they have: For they but defend
their lives, which the guilty man may as well do, as the Innocent. There
was indeed injustice in the first breach of their duty; Their bearing of
Arms subsequent to it, though it be to maintain what they have done, is
no new unjust act. And if it be onely to defend their persons, it is not
unjust at all. But the offer of Pardon taketh from them, to whom it
is offered, the plea of self-defence, and maketh their perseverance in
assisting, or defending the rest, unlawfull.




The Greatest Liberty Of Subjects, Dependeth On The Silence Of The Law


As for other Lyberties, they depend on the silence of the Law. In cases
where the Soveraign has prescribed no rule, there the Subject hath
the liberty to do, or forbeare, according to his own discretion. And
therefore such Liberty is in some places more, and in some lesse; and in
some times more, in other times lesse, according as they that have the
Soveraignty shall think most convenient. As for Example, there was
a time, when in England a man might enter in to his own Land,
(and dispossesse such as wrongfully possessed it) by force. But in
after-times, that Liberty of Forcible entry, was taken away by a Statute
made (by the King) in Parliament. And is some places of the world, men
have the Liberty of many wives: in other places, such Liberty is not
allowed.

If a Subject have a controversie with his Soveraigne, of Debt, or
of right of possession of lands or goods, or concerning any service
required at his hands, or concerning any penalty corporall, or
pecuniary, grounded on a precedent Law; He hath the same Liberty to sue
for his right, as if it were against a Subject; and before such Judges,
as are appointed by the Soveraign. For seeing the Soveraign demandeth
by force of a former Law, and not by vertue of his Power; he declareth
thereby, that he requireth no more, than shall appear to be due by that
Law. The sute therefore is not contrary to the will of the Soveraign;
and consequently the Subject hath the Liberty to demand the hearing of
his Cause; and sentence, according to that Law. But if he demand, or
take any thing by pretence of his Power; there lyeth, in that case, no
action of Law: for all that is done by him in Vertue of his Power, is
done by the Authority of every subject, and consequently, he that brings
an action against the Soveraign, brings it against himselfe.

If a Monarch, or Soveraign Assembly, grant a Liberty to all, or any of
his Subjects; which Grant standing, he is disabled to provide for their
safety, the Grant is voyd; unlesse he directly renounce, or transferre
the Soveraignty to another. For in that he might openly, (if it had been
his will,) and in plain termes, have renounced, or transferred it, and
did not; it is to be understood it was not his will; but that the Grant
proceeded from ignorance of the repugnancy between such a Liberty and
the Soveraign Power; and therefore the Soveraignty is still retayned;
and consequently all those Powers, which are necessary to the exercising
thereof; such as are the Power of Warre, and Peace, of Judicature, of
appointing Officers, and Councellours, of levying Mony, and the rest
named in the 18th Chapter.




In What Cases Subjects Absolved Of Their Obedience To Their Soveraign

The Obligation of Subjects to the Soveraign is understood to last as
long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to
protect them. For the right men have by Nature to protect themselves,
when none else can protect them, can by no Covenant be relinquished. The
Soveraignty is the Soule of the Common-wealth; which once departed from
the Body, the members doe no more receive their motion from it. The end
of Obedience is Protection; which, wheresoever a man seeth it, either in
his own, or in anothers sword, Nature applyeth his obedience to it, and
his endeavour to maintaine it. And though Soveraignty, in the intention
of them that make it, be immortall; yet is it in its own nature, not
only subject to violent death, by forreign war; but also through
the ignorance, and passions of men, it hath in it, from the very
institution, many seeds of a naturall mortality, by Intestine Discord.




In Case Of Captivity

If a Subject be taken prisoner in war; or his person, or his means of
life be within the Guards of the enemy, and hath his life and corporall
Libertie given him, on condition to be Subject to the Victor, he hath
Libertie to accept the condition; and having accepted it, is the subject
of him that took him; because he had no other way to preserve himselfe.
The case is the same, if he be deteined on the same termes, in a
forreign country. But if a man be held in prison, or bonds, or is not
trusted with the libertie of his bodie; he cannot be understood to be
bound by Covenant to subjection; and therefore may, if he can, make his
escape by any means whatsoever.




In Case The Soveraign Cast Off The Government From Himself And Heyrs

If a Monarch shall relinquish the Soveraignty, both for himself, and
his heires; His Subjects returne to the absolute Libertie of Nature;
because, though Nature may declare who are his Sons, and who are the
nerest of his Kin; yet it dependeth on his own will, (as hath been said
in the precedent chapter,) who shall be his Heyr. If therefore he will
have no Heyre, there is no Soveraignty, nor Subjection. The case is the
same, if he dye without known Kindred, and without declaration of
his Heyre. For then there can no Heire be known, and consequently no
Subjection be due.




In Case Of Banishment

If the Soveraign Banish his Subject; during the Banishment, he is not
Subject. But he that is sent on a message, or hath leave to travell, is
still Subject; but it is, by Contract between Soveraigns, not by vertue
of the covenant of Subjection. For whosoever entreth into anothers
dominion, is Subject to all the Lawes thereof; unless he have a
privilege by the amity of the Soveraigns, or by speciall licence.




In Case The Soveraign Render Himself Subject To Another

If a Monarch subdued by war, render himself Subject to the Victor; his
Subjects are delivered from their former obligation, and become obliged
to the Victor. But if he be held prisoner, or have not the liberty
of his own Body; he is not understood to have given away the Right of
Soveraigntie; and therefore his Subjects are obliged to yield obedience
to the Magistrates formerly placed, governing not in their own name,
but in his. For, his Right remaining, the question is only of the
Administration; that is to say, of the Magistrates and Officers; which,
if he have not means to name, he is supposed to approve those, which he
himself had formerly appointed.



CHAPTER XXII. OF SYSTEMES SUBJECT, POLITICALL, AND PRIVATE




The Divers Sorts Of Systemes Of People

Having spoken of the Generation, Forme, and Power of a Common-wealth, I
am in order to speak next of the parts thereof. And first of Systemes,
which resemble the similar parts, or Muscles of a Body naturall. By
SYSTEMES; I understand any numbers of men joyned in one Interest, or one
Businesse. Of which, some are Regular, and some Irregular. Regular are
those, where one Man, or Assembly of men, is constituted Representative
of the whole number. All other are Irregular.

Of Regular, some are Absolute, and Independent, subject to none but
their own Representative: such are only Common-wealths; Of which I have
spoken already in the 5. last preceding chapters. Others are Dependent;
that is to say, Subordinate to some Soveraign Power, to which every one,
as also their Representative is Subject.

Of Systemes subordinate, some are Politicall, and some Private.
Politicall (otherwise Called Bodies Politique, and Persons In Law,)
are those, which are made by authority from the Soveraign Power of the
Common-wealth. Private, are those, which are constituted by Subjects
amongst themselves, or by authoritie from a stranger. For no authority
derived from forraign power, within the Dominion of another, is Publique
there, but Private.

And of Private Systemes, some are Lawfull; some Unlawfull: Lawfull, are
those which are allowed by the Common-wealth: all other are Unlawfull.
Irregular Systemes, are those which having no Representative,
consist only in concourse of People; which if not forbidden by the
Common-wealth, nor made on evill designe, (such as are conflux of People
to markets, or shews, or any other harmelesse end,) are Lawfull. But
when the Intention is evill, or (if the number be considerable) unknown,
they are Unlawfull.




In All Bodies Politique The Power Of The Representative Is Limited

In Bodies Politique, the power of the Representative is alwaies Limited:
And that which prescribeth the limits thereof, is the Power Soveraign.
For Power Unlimited, is absolute Soveraignty. And the Soveraign, in
every Commonwealth, is the absolute Representative of all the Subjects;
and therefore no other, can be Representative of any part of them,
but so far forth, as he shall give leave; And to give leave to a Body
Politique of Subjects, to have an absolute Representative to all
intents and purposes, were to abandon the Government of so much of the
Commonwealth, and to divide the Dominion, contrary to their Peace and
Defence, which the Soveraign cannot be understood to doe, by any Grant,
that does not plainly, and directly discharge them of their subjection.
For consequences of words, are not the signes of his will, when other
consequences are signes of the contrary; but rather signes of errour,
and misreckoning; to which all mankind is too prone.

The bounds of that Power, which is given to the Representative of a
Bodie Politique, are to be taken notice of, from two things. One is
their Writt, or Letters from the Soveraign: the other is the Law of the
Common-wealth.




By Letters Patents

For though in the Institution or Acquisition of a Common-wealth,
which is independent, there needs no Writing, because the Power of the
Representative has there no other bounds, but such as are set out by
the unwritten Law of Nature; yet in subordinate bodies, there are such
diversities of Limitation necessary, concerning their businesses, times,
and places, as can neither be remembred without Letters, nor taken
notice of, unlesse such Letters be Patent, that they may be read to
them, and withall sealed, or testified, with the Seales, or other
permanent signes of the Authority Soveraign.




And The Lawes

And because such Limitation is not alwaies easie, or perhaps possible
to be described in writing; the ordinary Lawes, common to all Subjects,
must determine, that the Representative may lawfully do, in all Cases,
where the Letters themselves are silent. And therefore




When The Representative Is One Man, His Unwarranted Acts His Own Onely

In a Body Politique, if the Representative be one man, whatsoever he
does in the Person of the Body, which is not warranted in his Letters,
nor by the Lawes, is his own act, and not the act of the Body, nor of
any other Member thereof besides himselfe: Because further than his
Letters, or the Lawes limit, he representeth no mans person, but his
own. But what he does according to these, is the act of every one: For
of the Act of the Soveraign every one is Author, because he is their
Representative unlimited; and the act of him that recedes not from the
Letters of the Soveraign, is the act of the Soveraign, and therefore
every member of the Body is Author of it.




When It Is An Assembly, It Is The Act Of Them That Assented Onely

But if the Representative be an Assembly, whatsoever that Assembly shall
Decree, not warranted by their Letters, or the Lawes, is the act of the
Assembly, or Body Politique, and the act of every one by whose Vote the
Decree was made; but not the act of any man that being present Voted to
the contrary; nor of any man absent, unlesse he Voted it by procuration.
It is the act of the Assembly, because Voted by the major part; and if
it be a crime, the Assembly may be punished, as farre-forth as it is
capable, as by dissolution, or forfeiture of their Letters (which is to
such artificiall, and fictitious Bodies, capitall,) or (if the
Assembly have a Common stock, wherein none of the Innocent Members have
propriety,) by pecuniary Mulct. For from corporall penalties Nature hath
exempted all Bodies Politique. But they that gave not their Vote, are
therefore Innocent, because the Assembly cannot Represent any man in
things unwarranted by their Letters, and consequently are not involved
in their Votes.

When The Representative Is One Man, If He Borrow Mony, Or Owe It, By
Contract; He Is Lyable Onely, The Members Not If the person of the Body
Politique being in one man, borrow mony of a stranger, that is, of one
that is not of the same Body, (for no Letters need limit borrowing,
seeing it is left to mens own inclinations to limit lending) the debt is
the Representatives. For if he should have Authority from his Letters,
to make the members pay what he borroweth, he should have by consequence
the Soveraignty of them; and therefore the grant were either voyd,
as proceeding from Errour, commonly incident to humane Nature, and an
unsufficient signe of the will of the Granter; or if it be avowed
by him, then is the Representer Soveraign, and falleth not under the
present question, which is onely of Bodies subordinate. No member
therefore is obliged to pay the debt so borrowed, but the Representative
himselfe: because he that lendeth it, being a stranger to the Letters,
and to the qualification of the Body, understandeth those onely for
his debtors, that are engaged; and seeing the Representer can ingage
himselfe, and none else, has him onely for Debtor; who must therefore
pay him, out of the common stock (if there be any), or (if there be
none) out of his own estate.

If he come into debt by Contract, or Mulct, the case is the same.




When It Is An Assembly, They Onely Are Liable That Have Assented

But when the Representative is an Assembly, and the debt to a stranger;
all they, and onely they are responsible for the debt, that gave their
votes to the borrowing of it, or to the Contract that made it due, or to
the fact for which the Mulct was imposed; because every one of those in
voting did engage himselfe for the payment: For he that is author of
the borrowing, is obliged to the payment, even of the whole debt, though
when payd by any one, he be discharged.




If The Debt Be To One Of The Assembly, The Body Onely Is Obliged

But if the debt be to one of the Assembly, the Assembly onely is obliged
to the payment, out of their common stock (if they have any:) For having
liberty of Vote, if he Vote the Mony, shall be borrowed, he Votes it
shall be payd; If he Vote it shall not be borrowed, or be absent, yet
because in lending, he voteth the borrowing, he contradicteth his former
Vote, and is obliged by the later, and becomes both borrower and lender,
and consequently cannot demand payment from any particular man, but
from the common Treasure onely; which fayling he hath no remedy, nor
complaint, but against himselfe, that being privy to the acts of
the Assembly, and their means to pay, and not being enforced, did
neverthelesse through his own folly lend his mony.




Protestation Against The Decrees Of Bodies Politique

Sometimes Lawful; But Against Soveraign Power Never It is manifest by
this, that in Bodies Politique subordinate, and subject to a Soveraign
Power, it is sometimes not onely lawfull, but expedient, for a
particular man to make open protestation against the decrees of the
Representative Assembly, and cause their dissent to be Registred, or to
take witnesse of it; because otherwise they may be obliged to pay debts
contracted, and be responsible for crimes committed by other men: But in
a Soveraign Assembly, that liberty is taken away, both because he that
protesteth there, denies their Soveraignty; and also because whatsoever
is commanded by the Soveraign Power, is as to the Subject (though not
so alwayes in the sight of God) justified by the Command; for of such
command every Subject is the Author.




Bodies Politique For Government Of A Province, Colony, Or Town

The variety of Bodies Politique, is almost infinite; for they are
not onely distinguished by the severall affaires, for which they are
constituted, wherein there is an unspeakable diversitie; but also by the
times, places, and numbers, subject to many limitations. And as to their
affaires, some are ordained for Government; As first, the Government
of a Province may be committed to an Assembly of men, wherein all
resolutions shall depend on the Votes of the major part; and then this
Assembly is a Body Politique, and their power limited by Commission.
This word Province signifies a charge, or care of businesse, which he
whose businesse it is, committeth to another man, to be administred for,
and under him; and therefore when in one Common-wealth there be divers
Countries, that have their Lawes distinct one from another, or are farre
distant in place, the Administration of the Government being committed
to divers persons, those Countries where the Soveraign is not resident,
but governs by Commission, are called Provinces. But of the government
of a Province, by an Assembly residing in the Province it selfe, there
be few examples. The Romans who had the Soveraignty of many Provinces;
yet governed them alwaies by Presidents, and Praetors; and not by
Assemblies, as they governed the City of Rome, and Territories adjacent.
In like manner, when there were Colonies sent from England, to Plant
Virginia, and Sommer-Ilands; though the government of them here, were
committed to Assemblies in London, yet did those Assemblies never
commit the Government under them to any Assembly there; but did to each
Plantation send one Governour; For though every man, where he can be
present by Nature, desires to participate of government; yet where
they cannot be present, they are by Nature also enclined, to commit the
Government of their common Interest rather to a Monarchicall, then a
Popular form of Government: which is also evident in those men that have
great private estates; who when they are unwilling to take the paines of
administring the businesse that belongs to them, choose rather to trust
one Servant, than a Assembly either of their friends or servants.
But howsoever it be in fact, yet we may suppose the Government of a
Province, or Colony committed to an Assembly: and when it is, that which
in this place I have to say, is this; that whatsoever debt is by that
Assembly contracted; or whatsoever unlawfull Act is decreed, is the Act
onely of those that assented, and not of any that dissented, or were
absent, for the reasons before alledged. Also that an Assembly residing
out of the bounds of that Colony whereof they have the government,
cannot execute any power over the persons, or goods of any of the
Colonie, to seize on them for debt, or other duty, in any place
without the Colony it selfe, as having no Jurisdiction, nor Authoritie
elsewhere, but are left to the remedie, which the Law of the place
alloweth them. And though the Assembly have right, to impose a Mulct
upon any of their members, that shall break the Lawes they make; yet
out of the Colonie it selfe, they have no right to execute the same.
And that which is said here, of the Rights of an Assembly, for the
government of a Province, or a Colony, is appliable also to an Assembly
for the Government of a Town, or University, or a College, or a Church,
or for any other Government over the persons of men.

And generally, in all Bodies Politique, if any particular member
conceive himself Injured by the Body it self, the Cognisance of his
cause belongeth to the Soveraign, and those the Soveraign hath ordained
for Judges in such causes, or shall ordaine for that particular cause;
and not to the Body it self. For the whole Body is in this case his
fellow subject, which in a Soveraign Assembly, is otherwise: for there,
if the Soveraign be not Judge, though in his own cause, there can be no
Judge at all.




Bodies Politique For Ordering Of Trade

In a Bodie Politique, for the well ordering of forraigne Traffique, the
most commodious Representative is an Assembly of all the members; that
is to say, such a one, as every one that adventureth his mony, may be
present at all the Deliberations, and Resolutions of the Body, if they
will themselves. For proof whereof, we are to consider the end, for
which men that are Merchants, and may buy and sell, export, and import
their Merchandise, according to their own discretions, doe neverthelesse
bind themselves up in one Corporation. It is true, there be few
Merchants, that with the Merchandise they buy at home, can fraight a
Ship, to export it; or with that they buy abroad, to bring it home; and
have therefore need to joyn together in one Society; where every man
may either participate of the gaine, according to the proportion of his
adventure; or take his own; and sell what he transports, or imports, at
such prices as he thinks fit. But this is no Body Politique, there being
no Common Representative to oblige them to any other Law, than that
which is common to all other subjects. The End of their Incorporating,
is to make their gaine the greater; which is done two wayes; by sole
buying, and sole selling, both at home, and abroad. So that to grant
to a Company of Merchants to be a Corporation, or Body Politique, is to
grant them a double Monopoly, whereof one is to be sole buyers; another
to be sole sellers. For when there is a Company incorporate for any
particular forraign Country, they only export the Commodities vendible
in that Country; which is sole buying at home, and sole selling abroad.
For at home there is but one buyer, and abroad but one that selleth:
both which is gainfull to the Merchant, because thereby they buy at home
at lower, and sell abroad at higher rates: And abroad there is but one
buyer of forraign Merchandise, and but one that sels them at home; both
which againe are gainfull to the adventurers.

Of this double Monopoly one part is disadvantageous to the people at
home, the other to forraigners. For at home by their sole exportation
they set what price they please on the husbandry and handy-works of
the people; and by the sole importation, what price they please on all
forraign commodities the people have need of; both which are ill for the
people. On the contrary, by the sole selling of the native commodities
abroad, and sole buying the forraign commodities upon the place,
they raise the price of those, and abate the price of these, to
the disadvantage of the forraigner: For where but one selleth, the
Merchandise is the dearer; and where but one buyeth the cheaper: Such
Corporations therefore are no other then Monopolies; though they would
be very profitable for a Common-wealth, if being bound up into one body
in forraigne Markets they were at liberty at home, every man to buy, and
sell at what price he could.

The end then of these Bodies of Merchants, being not a Common benefit
to the whole Body, (which have in this case no common stock, but what
is deducted out of the particular adventures, for building, buying,
victualling and manning of Ships,) but the particular gaine of
every adventurer, it is reason that every one be acquainted with the
employment of his own; that is, that every one be of the Assembly, that
shall have the power to order the same; and be acquainted with their
accounts. And therefore the Representative of such a Body must be
an Assembly, where every member of the Body may be present at the
consultations, if he will.

If a Body Politique of Merchants, contract a debt to a stranger by the
act of their Representative Assembly, every Member is lyable by himself
for the whole. For a stranger can take no notice of their private Lawes,
but considereth them as so many particular men, obliged every one to the
whole payment, till payment made by one dischargeth all the rest: But if
the debt be to one of the Company, the creditor is debter for the whole
to himself, and cannot therefore demand his debt, but only from the
common stock, if there be any.

If the Common-wealth impose a Tax upon the Body, it is understood to be
layd upon every member proportionably to his particular adventure in the
Company. For there is in this case no other common stock, but what is
made of their particular adventures.

If a Mulct be layd upon the Body for some unlawfull act, they only are
lyable by whose votes the act was decreed, or by whose assistance it was
executed; for in none of the rest is there any other crime but being
of the Body; which if a crime, (because the Body was ordeyned by the
authority of the Common-wealth,) is not his.

If one of the Members be indebted to the Body, he may be sued by the
Body; but his goods cannot be taken, nor his person imprisoned by the
authority of the Body; but only by Authority of the Common-wealth:
for if they can doe it by their own Authority, they can by their own
Authority give judgement that the debt is due, which is as much as to be
Judge in their own Cause.




A Bodie Politique For Counsel To Be Give To The Soveraign

These Bodies made for the government of Men, or of Traffique, be either
perpetuall, or for a time prescribed by writing. But there be Bodies
also whose times are limited, and that only by the nature of their
businesse. For example, if a Soveraign Monarch, or a Soveraign Assembly,
shall think fit to give command to the towns, and other severall parts
of their territory, to send to him their Deputies, to enforme him of the
condition, and necessities of the Subjects, or to advise with him for
the making of good Lawes, or for any other cause, as with one Person
representing the whole Country, such Deputies, having a place and time
of meeting assigned them, are there, and at that time, a Body Politique,
representing every Subject of that Dominion; but it is onely for such
matters as shall be propounded unto them by that Man, or Assembly, that
by the Soveraign Authority sent for them; and when it shall be declared
that nothing more shall be propounded, nor debated by them, the Body is
dissolved. For if they were the absolute Representative of the people,
then were it the Soveraign Assembly; and so there would be two Soveraign
Assemblies, or two Soveraigns, over the same people; which cannot
consist with their Peace. And therefore where there is once a
Soveraignty, there can be no absolute Representation of the people, but
by it. And for the limits of how farre such a Body shall represent the
whole People, they are set forth in the Writing by which they were sent
for. For the People cannot choose their Deputies to other intent, than
is in the Writing directed to them from their Soveraign expressed.




A Regular Private Body, Lawfull, As A Family

Private Bodies Regular, and Lawfull, are those that are constituted
without Letters, or other written Authority, saving the Lawes common
to all other Subjects. And because they be united in one Person
Representative, they are held for Regular; such as are all Families, in
which the Father, or Master ordereth the whole Family. For he obligeth
his Children, and Servants, as farre as the Law permitteth, though not
further, because none of them are bound to obedience in those actions,
which the Law hath forbidden to be done. In all other actions, during
the time they are under domestique government, they are subject to their
Fathers, and Masters, as to their immediate Soveraigns. For the Father,
and Master being before the Institution of Common-wealth, absolute
Soveraigns in their own Families, they lose afterward no more of their
Authority, than the Law of the Common-wealth taketh from them.




Private Bodies Regular, But Unlawfull

Private Bodies Regular, but Unlawfull, are those that unite themselves
into one person Representative, without any publique Authority at all;
such as are the Corporations of Beggars, Theeves and Gipsies, the better
to order their trade of begging, and stealing; and the Corporations of
men, that by Authority from any forraign Person, unite themselves in
anothers Dominion, for easier propagation of Doctrines, and for making a
party, against the Power of the Common-wealth.




Systemes Irregular, Such As Are Private Leagues

Irregular Systemes, in their nature, but Leagues, or sometimes meer
concourse of people, without union to any particular designe, not by
obligation of one to another, but proceeding onely from a similitude of
wills and inclinations, become Lawfull, or Unlawfull, according to the
lawfulnesse, or unlawfulnesse of every particular mans design therein:
And his designe is to be understood by the occasion.

The Leagues of Subjects, (because Leagues are commonly made for mutuall
defence,) are in a Common-wealth (which is no more than a League of
all the Subjects together) for the most part unnecessary, and savour of
unlawfull designe; and are for that cause Unlawfull, and go commonly by
the name of factions, or Conspiracies. For a League being a connexion of
men by Covenants, if there be no power given to any one Man or Assembly,
(as in the condition of meer Nature) to compell them to performance,
is so long onely valid, as there ariseth no just cause of distrust: and
therefore Leagues between Common-wealths, over whom there is no humane
Power established, to keep them all in awe, are not onely lawfull, but
also profitable for the time they last. But Leagues of the Subjects of
one and the same Common-wealth, where every one may obtain his right
by means of the Soveraign Power, are unnecessary to the maintaining of
Peace and Justice, and (in case the designe of them be evill, or Unknown
to the Common-wealth) unlawfull. For all uniting of strength by private
men, is, if for evill intent, unjust; if for intent unknown, dangerous
to the Publique, and unjustly concealed.




Secret Cabals

If the Soveraign Power be in a great Assembly, and a number of men,
part of the Assembly, without authority, consult a part, to contrive
the guidance of the rest; This is a Faction, or Conspiracy unlawfull,
as being a fraudulent seducing of the Assembly for their particular
interest. But if he, whose private interest is to be debated, and
judged in the Assembly, make as many friends as he can; in him it is
no Injustice; because in this case he is no part of the Assembly. And
though he hire such friends with mony, (unlesse there be an expresse Law
against it,) yet it is not Injustice. For sometimes, (as mens manners
are,) Justice cannot be had without mony; and every man may think his
own cause just, till it be heard, and judged.




Feuds Of Private Families

In all Common-wealths, if a private man entertain more servants, than
the government of his estate, and lawfull employment he has for them
requires, it is Faction, and unlawfull. For having the protection of the
Common-wealth, he needeth not the defence of private force. And whereas
in Nations not throughly civilized, severall numerous Families have
lived in continuall hostility, and invaded one another with private
force; yet it is evident enough, that they have done unjustly; or else
that they had no Common-wealth.




Factions For Government

And as Factions for Kindred, so also Factions for Government of
Religion, as of Papists, Protestants, &c. or of State, as Patricians,
and Plebeians of old time in Rome, and of Aristocraticalls and
Democraticalls of old time in Greece, are unjust, as being contrary to
the peace and safety of the people, and a taking of the Sword out of the
hand of the Soveraign.

Concourse of people, is an Irregular Systeme, the lawfulnesse, or
unlawfulnesse, whereof dependeth on the occasion, and on the number of
them that are assembled. If the occasion be lawfull, and manifest, the
Concourse is lawfull; as the usuall meeting of men at Church, or at a
publique Shew, in usuall numbers: for if the numbers be extraordinarily
great, the occasion is not evident; and consequently he that cannot
render a particular and good account of his being amongst them, is to
be judged conscious of an unlawfull, and tumultuous designe. It may be
lawfull for a thousand men, to joyn in a Petition to be delivered to a
Judge, or Magistrate; yet if a thousand men come to present it, it is
a tumultuous Assembly; because there needs but one or two for that
purpose. But in such cases as these, it is not a set number that makes
the Assembly Unlawfull, but such a number, as the present Officers are
not able to suppresse, and bring to Justice.

When an unusuall number of men, assemble against a man whom they accuse;
the Assembly is an Unlawfull tumult; because they may deliver their
accusation to the Magistrate by a few, or by one man. Such was the case
of St. Paul at Ephesus; where Demetrius, and a great number of other
men, brought two of Pauls companions before the Magistrate, saying with
one Voyce, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians;" which was their way of
demanding Justice against them for teaching the people such doctrine,
as was against their Religion, and Trade. The occasion here, considering
the Lawes of that People, was just; yet was their Assembly Judged
Unlawfull, and the Magistrate reprehended them for it, in these
words,(Acts 19. 40) "If Demetrius and the other work-men can accuse any
man, of any thing, there be Pleas, and Deputies, let them accuse one
another. And if you have any other thing to demand, your case may
be judged in an Assembly Lawfully called. For we are in danger to be
accused for this dayes sedition, because, there is no cause by which any
man can render any reason of this Concourse of People." Where he calleth
an Assembly, whereof men can give no just account, a Sedition, and such
as they could not answer for. And this is all I shall say concerning
Systemes, and Assemblyes of People, which may be compared (as I said,)
to the Similar parts of mans Body; such as be Lawfull, to the Muscles;
such as are Unlawfull, to Wens, Biles, and Apostemes, engendred by the
unnaturall conflux of evill humours.



CHAPTER XXIII. OF THE PUBLIQUE MINISTERS OF SOVERAIGN POWER


In the last Chapter I have spoken of the Similar parts of a
Common-wealth; In this I shall speak of the parts Organicall, which are
Publique Ministers.




Publique Minister Who

A PUBLIQUE MINISTER, is he, that by the Soveraign, (whether a Monarch,
or an Assembly,) is employed in any affaires, with Authority to
represent in that employment, the Person of the Common-wealth. And
whereas every man, or assembly that hath Soveraignty, representeth
two Persons, or (as the more common phrase is) has two Capacities, one
Naturall, and another Politique, (as a Monarch, hath the person not
onely of the Common-wealth, but also of a man; and a Soveraign Assembly
hath the Person not onely of the Common-wealth, but also of the
Assembly); they that be servants to them in their naturall Capacity,
are not Publique Ministers; but those onely that serve them in the
Administration of the Publique businesse. And therefore neither Ushers,
nor Sergeants, nor other Officers that waite on the Assembly, for
no other purpose, but for the commodity of the men assembled, in an
Aristocracy, or Democracy; nor Stewards, Chamberlains, Cofferers, or any
other Officers of the houshold of a Monarch, are Publique Ministers in a
Monarchy.




Ministers For The Generall Administration

Of Publique Ministers, some have charge committed to them of a general
Administration, either of the whole Dominion, or of a part thereof.
Of the whole, as to a Protector, or Regent, may bee committed by
the Predecessor of an Infant King, during his minority, the whole
Administration of his Kingdome. In which case, every Subject is so far
obliged to obedience, as the Ordinances he shall make, and the commands
he shall give be in the Kings name, and not inconsistent with his
Soveraigne Power. Of a Part, or Province; as when either a Monarch, or
a Soveraign Assembly, shall give the generall charge thereof to a
Governour, Lieutenant, Praefect, or Vice-Roy: And in this case also,
every one of that Province, is obliged to all he shall doe in the name
of the Soveraign, and that not incompatible with the Soveraigns Right.
For such Protectors, Vice-Roys, and Governours, have no other right, but
what depends on the Soveraigns Will; and no Commission that can be given
them, can be interpreted for a Declaration of the will to transferre the
Soveraignty, without expresse and perspicuous words to that purpose. And
this kind of Publique Ministers resembleth the Nerves, and Tendons that
move the severall limbs of a body naturall.




For Speciall Administration, As For Oeconomy

Others have speciall Administration; that is to say, charges of some
speciall businesse, either at home, or abroad: As at home, First, for
the Oeconomy of a Common-wealth, They that have Authority concerning the
Treasure, as Tributes, Impositions, Rents, Fines, or whatsoever publique
revenue, to collect, receive, issue, or take the Accounts thereof,
are Publique Ministers: Ministers, because they serve the Person
Representative, and can doe nothing against his Command, nor without his
Authority: Publique, because they serve him in his Politicall Capacity.

Secondly, they that have Authority concerning the Militia; to have the
custody of Armes, Forts, Ports; to Levy, Pay, or Conduct Souldiers; or
to provide for any necessary thing for the use of war, either by Land or
Sea, are publique Ministers. But a Souldier without Command, though he
fight for the Common-wealth, does not therefore represent the Person of
it; because there is none to represent it to. For every one that hath
command, represents it to them only whom he commandeth.




For Instruction Of The People

They also that have authority to teach, or to enable others to teach
the people their duty to the Soveraign Power, and instruct them in the
knowledge of what is just, and unjust, thereby to render them more apt
to live in godlinesse, and in peace among themselves, and resist the
publique enemy, are Publique Ministers: Ministers, in that they doe it
not by their own Authority, but by anothers; and Publique, because they
doe it (or should doe it) by no Authority, but that of the Soveraign.
The Monarch, or the Soveraign Assembly only hath immediate Authority
from God, to teach and instruct the people; and no man but the
Soveraign, receiveth his power Dei Gratia simply; that is to say, from
the favour of none but God: All other, receive theirs from the favour
and providence of God, and their Soveraigns; as in a Monarchy Dei Gratia
& Regis; or Dei Providentia & Voluntate Regis.




For Judicature

They also to whom Jurisdiction is given, are Publique Ministers. For in
their Seats of Justice they represent the person of the Soveraign; and
their Sentence, is his Sentence; For (as hath been before declared) all
Judicature is essentially annexed to the Soveraignty; and therefore all
other Judges are but Ministers of him, or them that have the Soveraign
Power. And as Controversies are of two sorts, namely of Fact, and of
Law; so are judgements, some of Fact, some of Law: And consequently in
the same controversie, there may be two Judges, one of Fact, another of
Law.

And in both these controversies, there may arise a controversie between
the party Judged, and the Judge; which because they be both Subjects to
the Soveraign, ought in Equity to be Judged by men agreed on by consent
of both; for no man can be Judge in his own cause. But the Soveraign
is already agreed on for Judge by them both, and is therefore either to
heare the Cause, and determine it himself, or appoint for Judge such as
they shall both agree on. And this agreement is then understood to be
made between them divers wayes; as first, if the Defendant be allowed
to except against such of his Judges, whose interest maketh him suspect
them, (for as to the Complaynant he hath already chosen his own Judge,)
those which he excepteth not against, are Judges he himself agrees on.
Secondly, if he appeale to any other Judge, he can appeale no further;
for his appeale is his choice. Thirdly, if he appeale to the Soveraign
himself, and he by himself, or by Delegates which the parties shall
agree on, give Sentence; that Sentence is finall: for the Defendant is
Judged by his own Judges, that is to say, by himself.

These properties of just and rationall Judicature considered, I cannot
forbeare to observe the excellent constitution of the Courts of Justice,
established both for Common, and also for Publique Pleas in England. By
Common Pleas, I meane those, where both the Complaynant and Defendant
are Subjects: and by Publique, (which are also called Pleas of the
Crown) those, where the Complaynant is the Soveraign. For whereas there
were two orders of men, whereof one was Lords, the other Commons; The
Lords had this Priviledge, to have for Judges in all Capitall crimes,
none but Lords; and of them, as many as would be present; which being
ever acknowledged as a Priviledge of favour, their Judges were none but
such as they had themselves desired. And in all controversies, every
Subject (as also in civill controversies the Lords) had for Judges, men
of the Country where the matter in controversie lay; against which he
might make his exceptions, till at last Twelve men without exception
being agreed on, they were Judged by those twelve. So that having
his own Judges, there could be nothing alledged by the party, why the
sentence should not be finall, These publique persons, with Authority
from the Soveraign Power, either to Instruct, or Judge the people,
are such members of the Common-wealth, as may fitly be compared to the
organs of Voice in a Body naturall.




For Execution

Publique Ministers are also all those, that have Authority from the
Soveraign, to procure the Execution of Judgements given; to publish the
Soveraigns Commands; to suppresse Tumults; to apprehend, and imprison
Malefactors; and other acts tending to the conservation of the
Peace. For every act they doe by such Authority, is the act of the
Common-wealth; and their service, answerable to that of the Hands, in a
Bodie naturall.

Publique Ministers abroad, are those that represent the Person of their
own Soveraign, to forraign States. Such are Ambassadors, Messengers,
Agents, and Heralds, sent by publique Authoritie, and on publique
Businesse.

But such as are sent by Authoritie only of some private partie of a
troubled State, though they be received, are neither Publique, nor
Private Ministers of the Common-wealth; because none of their actions
have the Common-wealth for Author. Likewise, an Ambassador sent from a
Prince, to congratulate, condole, or to assist at a solemnity, though
Authority be Publique; yet because the businesse is Private, and
belonging to him in his naturall capacity; is a Private person. Also if
a man be sent into another Country, secretly to explore their counsels,
and strength; though both the Authority, and the Businesse be Publique;
yet because there is none to take notice of any Person in him, but
his own; he is but a Private Minister; but yet a Minister of the
Common-wealth; and may be compared to an Eye in the Body naturall. And
those that are appointed to receive the Petitions or other informations
of the People, and are as it were the publique Eare, are Publique
Ministers, and represent their Soveraign in that office.




Counsellers Without Other Employment Then To Advise

Are Not Publique Ministers

Neither a Counsellor, nor a Councell of State, if we consider it with
no Authority of Judicature or Command, but only of giving Advice to
the Soveraign when it is required, or of offering it when it is not
required, is a Publique Person. For the Advice is addressed to the
Soveraign only, whose person cannot in his own presence, be represented
to him, by another. But a Body of Counsellors, are never without some
other Authority, either of Judicature, or of immediate Administration:
As in a Monarchy, they represent the Monarch, in delivering his Commands
to the Publique Ministers: In a Democracy, the Councell, or Senate
propounds the Result of their deliberations to the people, as a
Councell; but when they appoint Judges, or heare Causes, or give
Audience to Ambassadors, it is in the quality of a Minister of the
People: And in an Aristocracy the Councell of State is the Soveraign
Assembly it self; and gives counsell to none but themselves.



CHAPTER XXIV. OF THE NUTRITION, AND PROCREATION OF A COMMON-WEALTH



The Nourishment Of A Common-wealth Consisteth In The Commodities

Of Sea And Land

The NUTRITION of a Common-wealth consisteth, in the Plenty, and
Distribution of Materials conducing to Life: In Concoction, or
Preparation; and (when concocted) in the Conveyance of it, by convenient
conduits, to the Publique use.

As for the Plenty of Matter, it is a thing limited by Nature, to those
commodities, which from (the two breasts of our common Mother) Land,
and Sea, God usually either freely giveth, or for labour selleth to
man-kind.

For the Matter of this Nutriment, consisting in Animals, Vegetals, and
Minerals, God hath freely layd them before us, in or neer to the face of
the Earth; so as there needeth no more but the labour, and industry
of receiving them. Insomuch as Plenty dependeth (next to Gods favour)
meerly on the labour and industry of men.

This Matter, commonly called Commodities, is partly Native, and partly
Forraign: Native, that which is to be had within the Territory of
the Common-wealth; Forraign, that which is imported from without. And
because there is no Territory under the Dominion of one Common-wealth,
(except it be of very vast extent,) that produceth all things needfull
for the maintenance, and motion of the whole Body; and few that produce
not something more than necessary; the superfluous commodities to be had
within, become no more superfluous, but supply these wants at home, by
importation of that which may be had abroad, either by Exchange, or
by just Warre, or by Labour: for a mans Labour also, is a commodity
exchangeable for benefit, as well as any other thing: And there have
been Common-wealths that having no more Territory, than hath served
them for habitation, have neverthelesse, not onely maintained, but also
encreased their Power, partly by the labour of trading from one place to
another, and partly by selling the Manifactures, whereof the Materials
were brought in from other places.




And The Right Of Distribution Of Them

The Distribution of the Materials of this Nourishment, is the
constitution of Mine, and Thine, and His, that is to say, in one word
Propriety; and belongeth in all kinds of Common-wealth to the Soveraign
Power. For where there is no Common-wealth, there is, (as hath been
already shewn) a perpetuall warre of every man against his neighbour;
And therefore every thing is his that getteth it, and keepeth it by
force; which is neither Propriety nor Community; but Uncertainty. Which
is so evident, that even Cicero, (a passionate defender of Liberty,) in
a publique pleading, attributeth all Propriety to the Law Civil, "Let
the Civill Law," saith he, "be once abandoned, or but negligently
guarded, (not to say oppressed,) and there is nothing, that any man can
be sure to receive from his Ancestor, or leave to his Children." And
again; "Take away the Civill Law, and no man knows what is his own, and
what another mans." Seeing therefore the Introduction of Propriety is
an effect of Common-wealth; which can do nothing but by the Person that
Represents it, it is the act onely of the Soveraign; and consisteth in
the Lawes, which none can make that have not the Soveraign Power. And
this they well knew of old, who called that Nomos, (that is to say,
Distribution,) which we call Law; and defined Justice, by distributing
to every man his own.




All Private Estates Of Land Proceed Originally

From The Arbitrary Distribution Of The Soveraign

In this Distribution, the First Law, is for Division of the Land it
selfe: wherein the Soveraign assigneth to every man a portion, according
as he, and not according as any Subject, or any number of them, shall
judge agreeable to Equity, and the Common Good. The Children of Israel,
were a Common-wealth in the Wildernesse; but wanted the commodities
of the Earth, till they were masters of the Land of Promise; which
afterward was divided amongst them, not by their own discretion, but
by the discretion of Eleazar the Priest, and Joshua their Generall: who
when there were twelve Tribes, making them thirteen by subdivision of
the Tribe of Joseph; made neverthelesse but twelve portions of the Land;
and ordained for the Tribe of Levi no land; but assigned them the Tenth
part of the whole fruits; which division was therefore Arbitrary. And
though a People comming into possession of a land by warre, do not
alwaies exterminate the antient Inhabitants, (as did the Jewes,) but
leave to many, or most, or all of them their Estates; yet it is manifest
they hold them afterwards, as of the Victors distribution; as the people
of England held all theirs of William the Conquerour.




Propriety Of A Subject Excludes Not The Dominion Of The Soveraign,

But Onely Of Another Subject

From whence we may collect, that the Propriety which a subject hath in
his lands, consisteth in a right to exclude all other subjects from the
use of them; and not to exclude their Soveraign, be it an Assembly, or
a Monarch. For seeing the Soveraign, that is to say, the Common-wealth
(whose Person he representeth,) is understood to do nothing but in order
to the common Peace and Security, this Distribution of lands, is to be
understood as done in order to the same: And consequently, whatsoever
Distribution he shall make in prejudice thereof, is contrary to the
will of every subject, that committed his Peace, and safety to his
discretion, and conscience; and therefore by the will of every one of
them, is to be reputed voyd. It is true, that a Soveraign Monarch, or
the greater part of a Soveraign Assembly, may ordain the doing of many
things in pursuit of their Passions, contrary to their own consciences,
which is a breach of trust, and of the Law of Nature; but this is not
enough to authorise any subject, either to make warre upon, or so much
as to accuse of Injustice, or any way to speak evill of their Soveraign;
because they have authorised all his actions, and in bestowing the
Soveraign Power, made them their own. But in what cases the Commands
of Soveraigns are contrary to Equity, and the Law of Nature, is to be
considered hereafter in another place.




The Publique Is Not To Be Dieted

In the Distribution of land, the Common-wealth it selfe, may be
conceived to have a portion, and possesse, and improve the same by
their Representative; and that such portion may be made sufficient, to
susteine the whole expence to the common Peace, and defence necessarily
required: Which were very true, if there could be any Representative
conceived free from humane passions, and infirmities. But the nature
of men being as it is, the setting forth of Publique Land, or of any
certaine Revenue for the Common-wealth, is in vaine; and tendeth to the
dissolution of Government, and to the condition of meere Nature, and
War, assoon as ever the Soveraign Power falleth into the hands of a
Monarch, or of an Assembly, that are either too negligent of mony, or
too hazardous in engaging the publique stock, into a long, or costly
war. Common-wealths can endure no Diet: For seeing their expence is
not limited by their own appetite, but by externall Accidents, and the
appetites of their neighbours, the Publique Riches cannot be limited by
other limits, than those which the emergent occasions shall require. And
whereas in England, there were by the Conquerour, divers Lands
reserved to his own use, (besides Forrests, and Chases, either for his
recreation, or for preservation of Woods,) and divers services reserved
on the Land he gave his Subjects; yet it seems they were not reserved
for his Maintenance in his Publique, but in his Naturall capacity: For
he, and his Successors did for all that, lay Arbitrary Taxes on all
Subjects land, when they judged it necessary. Or if those publique
Lands, and Services, were ordained as a sufficient maintenance of the
Common-wealth, it was contrary to the scope of the Institution; being
(as it appeared by those ensuing Taxes) insufficient, and (as it
appeares by the late Revenue of the Crown) Subject to Alienation,
and Diminution. It is therefore in vaine, to assign a portion to the
Common-wealth; which may sell, or give it away; and does sell, and give
it away when tis done by their Representative.




The Places And Matter Of Traffique Depend, As Their Distribution,

On The Soveraign

As the Distribution of Lands at home; so also to assigne in what places,
and for what commodities, the Subject shall traffique abroad, belongeth
to the Soveraign. For if it did belong to private persons to use their
own discretion therein, some of them would bee drawn for gaine, both
to furnish the enemy with means to hurt the Common-wealth, and hurt it
themselves, by importing such things, as pleasing mens appetites, be
neverthelesse noxious, or at least unprofitable to them. And therefore
it belongeth to the Common-wealth, (that is, to the Soveraign only,)
to approve, or disapprove both of the places, and matter of forraign
Traffique.




The Laws Of Transferring Property Belong Also To The Soveraign

Further, seeing it is not enough to the Sustentation of a Common-wealth,
that every man have a propriety in a portion of Land, or in some few
commodities, or a naturall property in some usefull art, and there is no
art in the world, but is necessary either for the being, or well being
almost of every particular man; it is necessary, that men distribute
that which they can spare, and transferre their propriety therein,
mutually one to another, by exchange, and mutuall contract. And
therefore it belongeth to the Common-wealth, (that is to say, to the
Soveraign,) to appoint in what manner, all kinds of contract between
Subjects, (as buying, selling, exchanging, borrowing, lending, letting,
and taking to hire,) are to bee made; and by what words, and signes they
shall be understood for valid. And for the Matter, and Distribution of
the Nourishment, to the severall Members of the Common-wealth, thus much
(considering the modell of the whole worke) is sufficient.




Mony The Bloud Of A Common-wealth

By Concoction, I understand the reducing of all commodities, which are
not presently consumed, but reserved for Nourishment in time to come, to
some thing of equal value, and withall so portably, as not to hinder
the motion of men from place to place; to the end a man may have in
what place soever, such Nourishment as the place affordeth. And this is
nothing else but Gold, and Silver, and Mony. For Gold and Silver, being
(as it happens) almost in all Countries of the world highly valued, is a
commodious measure for the value of all things else between Nations; and
Mony (of what matter soever coyned by the Soveraign of a Common-wealth,)
is a sufficient measure of the value of all things else, between the
Subjects of that Common-wealth. By the means of which measures, all
commodities, Moveable, and Immoveable, are made to accompany a man, to
all places of his resort, within and without the place of his
ordinary residence; and the same passeth from Man to Man, within the
Common-wealth; and goes round about, Nourishing (as it passeth)
every part thereof; In so much as this Concoction, is as it were the
Sanguification of the Common-wealth: For naturall Bloud is in like
manner made of the fruits of the Earth; and circulating, nourisheth by
the way, every Member of the Body of Man.

And because Silver and Gold, have their value from the matter it self;
they have first this priviledge, that the value of them cannot be
altered by the power of one, nor of a few Common-wealths; as being a
common measure of the commodities of all places. But base Mony, may
easily be enhanced, or abased. Secondly, they have the priviledge to
make Common-wealths, move, and stretch out their armes, when need is,
into forraign Countries; and supply, not only private Subjects that
travell, but also whole Armies with provision. But that Coyne, which is
not considerable for the Matter, but for the Stamp of the place, being
unable to endure change of ayr, hath its effect at home only; where
also it is subject to the change of Laws, and thereby to have the value
diminished, to the prejudice many times of those that have it.




The Conduits And Way Of Mony To The Publique Use

The Conduits, and Wayes by which it is conveyed to the Publique use, are
of two sorts; One, that Conveyeth it to the Publique Coffers; The other,
that Issueth the same out againe for publique payments. Of the first
sort, are Collectors, Receivers, and Treasurers; of the second are the
Treasurers againe, and the Officers appointed for payment of severall
publique or private Ministers. And in this also, the Artificiall Man
maintains his resemblance with the Naturall; whose Veins receiving the
Bloud from the severall Parts of the Body, carry it to the Heart; where
being made Vitall, the Heart by the Arteries sends it out again, to
enliven, and enable for motion all the Members of the same.




The Children Of A Common-wealth Colonies

The Procreation, or Children of a Common-wealth, are those we call
Plantations, or Colonies; which are numbers of men sent out from the
Common-wealth, under a Conductor, or Governour, to inhabit a Forraign
Country, either formerly voyd of Inhabitants, or made voyd then, by
warre. And when a Colony is setled, they are either a Common-wealth of
themselves, discharged of their subjection to their Soveraign that sent
them, (as hath been done by many Common-wealths of antient time,) in
which case the Common-wealth from which they went was called their
Metropolis, or Mother, and requires no more of them, then Fathers
require of the Children, whom they emancipate, and make free from their
domestique government, which is Honour, and Friendship; or else they
remain united to their Metropolis, as were the Colonies of the people of
Rome; and then they are no Common-wealths themselves, but Provinces, and
parts of the Common-wealth that sent them. So that the Right of Colonies
(saving Honour, and League with their Metropolis,) dependeth wholly on
their Licence, or Letters, by which their Soveraign authorised them to
Plant.



CHAPTER XXV. OF COUNSELL




Counsell What

How fallacious it is to judge of the nature of things, by the ordinary
and inconstant use of words, appeareth in nothing more, than in the
confusion of Counsels, and Commands, arising from the Imperative manner
of speaking in them both, and in many other occasions besides. For the
words "Doe this," are the words not onely of him that Commandeth; but
also of him that giveth Counsell; and of him that Exhorteth; and yet
there are but few, that see not, that these are very different things;
or that cannot distinguish between them, when they perceive who it
is that speaketh, and to whom the Speech is directed, and upon what
occasion. But finding those phrases in mens writings, and being not
able, or not willing to enter into a consideration of the circumstances,
they mistake sometimes the Precepts of Counsellours, for the Precepts
of them that command; and sometimes the contrary; according as it best
agreeth with the conclusions they would inferre, or the actions
they approve. To avoyd which mistakes, and render to those termes
of Commanding, Counselling, and Exhorting, their proper and distinct
significations, I define them thus.




Differences Between Command And Counsell

COMMAND is, where a man saith, "Doe this," or "Doe this not," without
expecting other reason than the Will of him that sayes it. From this it
followeth manifestly, that he that Commandeth, pretendeth thereby his
own Benefit: For the reason of his Command is his own Will onely, and
the proper object of every mans Will, is some Good to himselfe.

COUNSELL, is where a man saith, "Doe" or "Doe not this," and deduceth
his own reasons from the benefit that arriveth by it to him to whom he
saith it. And from this it is evident, that he that giveth Counsell,
pretendeth onely (whatsoever he intendeth) the good of him, to whom he
giveth it.

Therefore between Counsell and Command, one great difference is, that
Command is directed to a mans own benefit; and Counsell to the benefit
of another man. And from this ariseth another difference, that a man
may be obliged to do what he is Commanded; as when he hath covenanted
to obey: But he cannot be obliged to do as he is Counselled, because the
hurt of not following it, is his own; or if he should covenant to follow
it, then is the Counsell turned into the nature of a Command. A third
difference between them is, that no man can pretend a right to be of
another mans Counsell; because he is not to pretend benefit by it to
himselfe; but to demand right to Counsell another, argues a will to know
his designes, or to gain some other Good to himselfe; which (as I said
before) is of every mans will the proper object.

This also is incident to the nature of Counsell; that whatsoever it be,
he that asketh it, cannot in equity accuse, or punish it: For to ask
Counsell of another, is to permit him to give such Counsell as he shall
think best; And consequently, he that giveth counsell to his Soveraign,
(whether a Monarch, or an Assembly) when he asketh it, cannot in equity
be punished for it, whether the same be conformable to the opinion of
the most, or not, so it be to the Proposition in debate. For if the
sense of the Assembly can be taken notice of, before the Debate be
ended, they should neither ask, nor take any further Counsell; For the
Sense of the Assembly, is the Resolution of the Debate, and End of all
Deliberation. And generally he that demandeth Counsell, is Author of it;
and therefore cannot punish it; and what the Soveraign cannot, no man
else can. But if one Subject giveth Counsell to another, to do any
thing contrary to the Lawes, whether that Counsell proceed from
evill intention, or from ignorance onely, it is punishable by the
Common-wealth; because ignorance of the Law, is no good excuse, where
every man is bound to take notice of the Lawes to which he is subject.




Exhortation And Dehortation What

EXHORTATION, and DEHORTATION, is Counsell, accompanied with signes in
him that giveth it, of vehement desire to have it followed; or to say it
more briefly, Counsell Vehemently Pressed. For he that Exhorteth, doth
not deduce the consequences of what he adviseth to be done, and tye
himselfe therein to the rigour of true reasoning; but encourages him he
Counselleth, to Action: As he that Dehorteth, deterreth him from it. And
therefore they have in their speeches, a regard to the common Passions,
and opinions of men, in deducing their reasons; and make use of
Similitudes, Metaphors, Examples, and other tooles of Oratory, to
perswade their Hearers of the Utility, Honour, or Justice of following
their advise.

From whence may be inferred, First, that Exhortation and Dehortation,
is directed to the Good of him that giveth the Counsell, not of him that
asketh it, which is contrary to the duty of a Counsellour; who (by the
definition of Counsell) ought to regard, not his own benefits, but his
whom he adviseth. And that he directeth his Counsell to his own
benefit, is manifest enough, by the long and vehement urging, or by
the artificial giving thereof; which being not required of him, and
consequently proceeding from his own occasions, is directed principally
to his own benefit, and but accidentarily to the good of him that is
Counselled, or not at all.

Secondly, that the use of Exhortation and Dehortation lyeth onely, where
a man is to speak to a Multitude; because when the Speech is addressed
to one, he may interrupt him, and examine his reasons more rigorously,
than can be done in a Multitude; which are too many to enter into
Dispute, and Dialogue with him that speaketh indifferently to them
all at once. Thirdly, that they that Exhort and Dehort, where they are
required to give Counsell, are corrupt Counsellours, and as it were
bribed by their own interest. For though the Counsell they give be never
so good; yet he that gives it, is no more a good Counsellour, than he
that giveth a Just Sentence for a reward, is a just Judge. But where a
man may lawfully Command, as a Father in his Family, or a Leader in an
Army, his Exhortations and Dehortations, are not onely lawfull, but
also necessary, and laudable: But then they are no more Counsells, but
Commands; which when they are for Execution of soure labour; sometimes
necessity, and alwayes humanity requireth to be sweetned in the
delivery, by encouragement, and in the tune and phrase of Counsell,
rather then in harsher language of Command.

Examples of the difference between Command and Counsell, we may take
from the formes of Speech that expresse them in Holy Scripture. "Have no
other Gods but me; Make to thy selfe no graven Image; Take not Gods name
in vain; Sanctifie the Sabbath; Honour thy Parents; Kill not; Steale
not," &c. are Commands; because the reason for which we are to obey
them, is drawn from the will of God our King, whom we are obliged to
obey. But these words, "Sell all thou hast; give it to the poore; and
follow me," are Counsell; because the reason for which we are to do
so, is drawn from our own benefit; which is this, that we shall have
"Treasure in Heaven." These words, "Go into the village over against
you, and you shall find an Asse tyed, and her Colt; loose her, and bring
her to me," are a Command: for the reason of their fact is drawn from
the will of their Master: but these words, "Repent, and be Baptized in
the Name of Jesus," are Counsell; because the reason why we should so
do, tendeth not to any benefit of God Almighty, who shall still be King
in what manner soever we rebell; but of our selves, who have no other
means of avoyding the punishment hanging over us for our sins.




Differences Of Fit And Unfit Counsellours

As the difference of Counsell from Command, hath been now deduced from
the nature of Counsell, consisting in a deducing of the benefit, or
hurt that may arise to him that is to be Counselled, by the necessary
or probable consequences of the action he propoundeth; so may also the
differences between apt, and inept counsellours be derived from the
same. For Experience, being but Memory of the consequences of like
actions formerly observed, and Counsell but the Speech whereby that
experience is made known to another; the Vertues, and Defects of
Counsell, are the same with the Vertues, and Defects Intellectuall:
And to the Person of a Common-wealth, his Counsellours serve him in the
place of Memory, and Mentall Discourse. But with this resemblance of the
Common-wealth, to a naturall man, there is one dissimilitude joyned,
of great importance; which is, that a naturall man receiveth his
experience, from the naturall objects of sense, which work upon him
without passion, or interest of their own; whereas they that give
Counsell to the Representative person of a Common-wealth, may have,
and have often their particular ends, and passions, that render their
Counsells alwayes suspected, and many times unfaithfull. And therefore
we may set down for the first condition of a good Counsellour, That His
Ends, And Interest, Be Not Inconsistent With The Ends And Interest Of
Him He Counselleth.

Secondly, Because the office of a Counsellour, when an action comes
into deliberation, is to make manifest the consequences of it, in such
manner, as he that is Counselled may be truly and evidently informed; he
ought to propound his advise, in such forme of speech, as may make
the truth most evidently appear; that is to say, with as firme
ratiocination, as significant and proper language, and as briefly, as
the evidence will permit. And therefore Rash, And Unevident Inferences;
(such as are fetched onely from Examples, or authority of Books, and are
not arguments of what is good, or evill, but witnesses of fact, or
of opinion,) Obscure, Confused, And Ambiguous Expressions, Also All
Metaphoricall Speeches, Tending To The Stirring Up Of Passion, (because
such reasoning, and such expressions, are usefull onely to deceive, or
to lead him we Counsell towards other ends than his own) Are Repugnant
To The Office Of A Counsellour.

Thirdly, Because the Ability of Counselling proceedeth from Experience,
and long study; and no man is presumed to have experience in all those
things that to the Administration of a great Common-wealth are necessary
to be known, No Man Is Presumed To Be A Good Counsellour, But In Such
Businesse, As He Hath Not Onely Been Much Versed In, But Hath Also
Much Meditated On, And Considered. For seeing the businesse of a
Common-wealth is this, to preserve the people at home, and defend them
against forraign Invasion, we shall find, it requires great knowledge
of the disposition of Man-kind, of the Rights of Government, and of the
nature of Equity, Law, Justice, and Honour, not to be attained without
study; And of the Strength, Commodities, Places, both of their own
Country, and their Neighbours; as also of the inclinations, and designes
of all Nations that may any way annoy them. And this is not attained to,
without much experience. Of which things, not onely the whole summe, but
every one of the particulars requires the age, and observation of a man
in years, and of more than ordinary study. The wit required for Counsel,
as I have said before is Judgement. And the differences of men in that
point come from different education, of some to one kind of study, or
businesse, and of others to another. When for the doing of any thing,
there be Infallible rules, (as in Engines, and Edifices, the rules of
Geometry,) all the experience of the world cannot equall his Counsell,
that has learnt, or found out the Rule. And when there is no such Rule,
he that hath most experience in that particular kind of businesse, has
therein the best Judgement, and is the best Counsellour.

Fourthly, to be able to give Counsell to a Common-wealth, in a businesse
that hath reference to another Common-wealth, It Is Necessary To Be
Acquainted With The Intelligences, And Letters That Come From Thence,
And With All The Records Of Treaties, And Other Transactions Of State
Between Them; which none can doe, but such as the Representative
shall think fit. By which we may see, that they who are not called to
Counsell, can have no good Counsell in such cases to obtrude.

Fifthly, Supposing the number of Counsellors equall, a man is better
Counselled by hearing them apart, then in an Assembly; and that for many
causes. First, in hearing them apart, you have the advice of every man;
but in an Assembly may of them deliver their advise with I, or No, or
with their hands, or feet, not moved by their own sense, but by the
eloquence of another, or for feare of displeasing some that have spoken,
or the whole Assembly, by contradiction; or for feare of appearing
duller in apprehension, than those that have applauded the contrary
opinion. Secondly, in an Assembly of many, there cannot choose but be
some whose interests are contrary to that of the Publique; and these
their Interests make passionate, and Passion eloquent, and Eloquence
drawes others into the same advice. For the Passions of men, which
asunder are moderate, as the heat of one brand; in Assembly are like
many brands, that enflame one another, (especially when they blow one
another with Orations) to the setting of the Common-wealth on fire,
under pretence of Counselling it. Thirdly, in hearing every man apart,
one may examine (when there is need) the truth, or probability of
his reasons, and of the grounds of the advise he gives, by frequent
interruptions, and objections; which cannot be done in an Assembly,
where (in every difficult question) a man is rather astonied, and dazled
with the variety of discourse upon it, than informed of the course he
ought to take. Besides, there cannot be an Assembly of many, called
together for advice, wherein there be not some, that have the ambition
to be thought eloquent, and also learned in the Politiques; and give not
their advice with care of the businesse propounded, but of the applause
of their motly orations, made of the divers colored threds, or shreds of
Authors; which is an Impertinence at least, that takes away the time
of serious Consultation, and in the secret way of Counselling apart, is
easily avoided. Fourthly, in Deliberations that ought to be kept secret,
(whereof there be many occasions in Publique Businesse,) the Counsells
of many, and especially in Assemblies, are dangerous; And therefore
great Assemblies are necessitated to commit such affaires to lesser
numbers, and of such persons as are most versed, and in whose fidelity
they have most confidence.

To conclude, who is there that so far approves the taking of Counsell
from a great Assembly of Counsellours, that wisheth for, or would accept
of their pains, when there is a question of marrying his Children,
disposing of his Lands, governing his Household, or managing his
private Estate, especially if there be amongst them such as wish not
his prosperity? A man that doth his businesse by the help of many and
prudent Counsellours, with every one consulting apart in his proper
element, does it best, as he that useth able Seconds at Tennis play,
placed in their proper stations. He does next best, that useth his own
Judgement only; as he that has no Second at all. But he that is carried
up and down to his businesse in a framed Counsell, which cannot move
but by the plurality of consenting opinions, the execution whereof is
commonly (out of envy, or interest) retarded by the part dissenting,
does it worst of all, and like one that is carried to the ball, though
by good Players, yet in a Wheele-barrough, or other frame, heavy of it
self, and retarded also by the inconcurrent judgements, and endeavours
of them that drive it; and so much the more, as they be more that set
their hands to it; and most of all, when there is one, or more amongst
them, that desire to have him lose. And though it be true, that many eys
see more then one; yet it is not to be understood of many Counsellours;
but then only, when the finall Resolution is in one man. Otherwise,
because many eyes see the same thing in divers lines, and are apt to
look asquint towards their private benefit; they that desire not to
misse their marke, though they look about with two eyes, yet they never
ayme but with one; And therefore no great Popular Common-wealth was
ever kept up; but either by a forraign Enemy that united them; or by
the reputation of some one eminent Man amongst them; or by the secret
Counsell of a few; or by the mutuall feare of equall factions; and
not by the open Consultations of the Assembly. And as for very little
Common-wealths, be they Popular, or Monarchicall, there is no humane
wisdome can uphold them, longer then the Jealousy lasteth of their
potent Neighbours.



CHAPTER XXVI. OF CIVILL LAWES




Civill Law what

By CIVILL LAWES, I understand the Lawes, that men are therefore bound to
observe, because they are Members, not of this, or that Common-wealth
in particular, but of a Common-wealth. For the knowledge of particular
Lawes belongeth to them, that professe the study of the Lawes of their
severall Countries; but the knowledge of Civill Law in generall, to any
man. The antient Law of Rome was called their Civil Law, from the word
Civitas, which signifies a Common-wealth; And those Countries, which
having been under the Roman Empire, and governed by that Law, retaine
still such part thereof as they think fit, call that part the Civill
Law, to distinguish it from the rest of their own Civill Lawes. But that
is not it I intend to speak of here; my designe being not to shew what
is Law here, and there; but what is Law; as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,
and divers others have done, without taking upon them the profession of
the study of the Law.

And first it manifest, that Law in generall, is not Counsell, but
Command; nor a Command of any man to any man; but only of him, whose
Command is addressed to one formerly obliged to obey him. And as for
Civill Law, it addeth only the name of the person Commanding, which is
Persona Civitatis, the Person of the Common-wealth.

Which considered, I define Civill Law in this Manner. "CIVILL LAW, Is to
every Subject, those Rules, which the Common-wealth hath Commanded him,
by Word, Writing, or other sufficient Sign of the Will, to make use
of, for the Distinction of Right, and Wrong; that is to say, of what is
contrary, and what is not contrary to the Rule."

In which definition, there is nothing that is not at first sight
evident. For every man seeth, that some Lawes are addressed to all the
Subjects in generall; some to particular Provinces; some to particular
Vocations; and some to particular Men; and are therefore Lawes, to every
of those to whom the Command is directed; and to none else. As also,
that Lawes are the Rules of Just, and Unjust; nothing being reputed
Unjust, that is not contrary to some Law. Likewise, that none can
make Lawes but the Common-wealth; because our Subjection is to the
Common-wealth only: and that Commands, are to be signified by sufficient
Signs; because a man knows not otherwise how to obey them. And
therefore, whatsoever can from this definition by necessary consequence
be deduced, ought to be acknowledged for truth. Now I deduce from it
this that followeth.




The Soveraign Is Legislator

1. The Legislator in all Common-wealths, is only the Soveraign, be he
one Man, as in a Monarchy, or one Assembly of men, as in a Democracy,
or Aristocracy. For the Legislator, is he that maketh the Law. And the
Common-wealth only, praescribes, and commandeth the observation of those
rules, which we call Law: Therefore the Common-wealth is the Legislator.
But the Common-wealth is no Person, nor has capacity to doe any thing,
but by the Representative, (that is, the Soveraign;) and therefore the
Soveraign is the sole Legislator. For the same reason, none can abrogate
a Law made, but the Soveraign; because a Law is not abrogated, but by
another Law, that forbiddeth it to be put in execution.




And Not Subject To Civill Law

2. The Soveraign of a Common-wealth, be it an Assembly, or one Man, is
not subject to the Civill Lawes. For having power to make, and repeale
Lawes, he may when he pleaseth, free himselfe from that subjection,
by repealing those Lawes that trouble him, and making of new; and
consequently he was free before. For he is free, that can be free when
he will: Nor is it possible for any person to be bound to himselfe;
because he that can bind, can release; and therefore he that is bound to
himselfe onely, is not bound.




Use, A Law Not By Vertue Of Time, But Of The Soveraigns Consent

3. When long Use obtaineth the authority of a Law, it is not the
Length of Time that maketh the Authority, but the Will of the Soveraign
signified by his silence, (for Silence is sometimes an argument of
Consent;) and it is no longer Law, then the Soveraign shall be silent
therein. And therefore if the Soveraign shall have a question of Right
grounded, not upon his present Will, but upon the Lawes formerly
made; the Length of Time shal bring no prejudice to his Right; but the
question shal be judged by Equity. For many unjust Actions, and unjust
Sentences, go uncontrolled a longer time, than any man can remember.
And our Lawyers account no Customes Law, but such as are reasonable, and
that evill Customes are to be abolished; But the Judgement of what is
reasonable, and of what is to be abolished, belongeth to him that maketh
the Law, which is the Soveraign Assembly, or Monarch.




The Law Of Nature, And The Civill Law Contain Each Other

4. The Law of Nature, and the Civill Law, contain each other, and are
of equall extent. For the Lawes of Nature, which consist in Equity,
Justice, Gratitude, and other morall Vertues on these depending, in the
condition of meer Nature (as I have said before in the end of the 15th
Chapter,) are not properly Lawes, but qualities that dispose men to
peace, and to obedience. When a Common-wealth is once settled, then are
they actually Lawes, and not before; as being then the commands of the
Common-wealth; and therefore also Civill Lawes: for it is the Soveraign
Power that obliges men to obey them. For in the differences of private
men, to declare, what is Equity, what is Justice, and what is morall
Vertue, and to make them binding, there is need of the Ordinances of
Soveraign Power, and Punishments to be ordained for such as shall break
them; which Ordinances are therefore part of the Civill Law. The Law of
Nature therefore is a part of the Civill Law in all Common-wealths of
the world. Reciprocally also, the Civill Law is a part of the Dictates
of Nature. For Justice, that is to say, Performance of Covenant, and
giving to every man his own, is a Dictate of the Law of Nature. But
every subject in a Common-wealth, hath covenanted to obey the Civill
Law, (either one with another, as when they assemble to make a common
Representative, or with the Representative it selfe one by one, when
subdued by the Sword they promise obedience, that they may receive
life;) And therefore Obedience to the Civill Law is part also of the
Law of Nature. Civill, and Naturall Law are not different kinds, but
different parts of Law; whereof one part being written, is called
Civill, the other unwritten, Naturall. But the Right of Nature, that
is, the naturall Liberty of man, may by the Civill Law be abridged,
and restrained: nay, the end of making Lawes, is no other, but such
Restraint; without the which there cannot possibly be any Peace. And Law
was brought into the world for nothing else, but to limit the naturall
liberty of particular men, in such manner, as they might not hurt, but
assist one another, and joyn together against a common Enemy.




Provinciall Lawes Are Not Made By Custome, But By The Soveraign Power

5. If the Soveraign of one Common-wealth, subdue a people that have
lived under other written Lawes, and afterwards govern them by the
same Lawes, by which they were governed before; yet those Lawes are the
Civill Lawes of the Victor, and not of the Vanquished Common-wealth, For
the Legislator is he, not by whose authority the Lawes were first made,
but by whose authority they now continue to be Lawes. And therefore
where there be divers Provinces, within the Dominion of a Common-wealth,
and in those Provinces diversity of Lawes, which commonly are called the
Customes of each severall Province, we are not to understand that such
Customes have their Force, onely from Length of Time; but that they were
antiently Lawes written, or otherwise made known, for the Constitutions,
and Statutes of their Soveraigns; and are now Lawes, not by vertue of
the Praescription of time, but by the Constitutions of their present
Soveraigns. But if an unwritten Law, in all the Provinces of a Dominion,
shall be generally observed, and no iniquity appear in the use thereof;
that law can be no other but a Law of Nature, equally obliging all
man-kind.




Some Foolish Opinions Of Lawyers Concerning The Making Of Lawes

6. Seeing then all Lawes, written, and unwritten, have their Authority,
and force, from the Will of the Common-wealth; that is to say, from the
Will of the Representative; which in a Monarchy is the Monarch, and
in other Common-wealths the Soveraign Assembly; a man may wonder from
whence proceed such opinions, as are found in the Books of Lawyers of
eminence in severall Common-wealths, directly, or by consequence making
the Legislative Power depend on private men, or subordinate Judges.
As for example, "That the Common Law, hath no Controuler but the
Parlament;" which is true onely where a Parlament has the Soveraign
Power, and cannot be assembled, nor dissolved, but by their own
discretion. For if there be a right in any else to dissolve them, there
is a right also to controule them, and consequently to controule their
controulings. And if there be no such right, then the Controuler of
Lawes is not Parlamentum, but Rex In Parlamento. And where a Parlament
is Soveraign, if it should assemble never so many, or so wise men, from
the Countries subject to them, for whatsoever cause; yet there is no man
will believe, that such an Assembly hath thereby acquired to themselves
a Legislative Power. Item, that the two arms of a Common-wealth,
are Force, and Justice; The First Whereof Is In The King; The Other
Deposited In The Hands Of The Parlament. As if a Common-wealth could
consist, where the Force were in any hand, which Justice had not the
Authority to command and govern.

7. That Law can never be against Reason, our Lawyers are agreed; and
that not the Letter,(that is, every construction of it,) but that which
is according to the Intention of the Legislator, is the Law. And it is
true: but the doubt is, of whose Reason it is, that shall be received
for Law. It is not meant of any private Reason; for then there would be
as much contradiction in the Lawes, as there is in the Schooles; nor yet
(as Sr. Ed, Coke makes it (Sir Edward Coke, upon Littleton Lib.2. Ch.6
fol 97.b),) an Artificiall Perfection of Reason, Gotten By Long Study,
Observation, And Experience, (as his was.) For it is possible long study
may encrease, and confirm erroneous Sentences: and where men build on
false grounds, the more they build, the greater is the ruine; and of
those that study, and observe with equall time, and diligence, the
reasons and resolutions are, and must remain discordant: and therefore
it is not that Juris Prudentia, or wisedome of subordinate Judges;
but the Reason of this our Artificiall Man the Common-wealth, and
his Command, that maketh Law: And the Common-wealth being in
their Representative but one Person, there cannot easily arise any
contradiction in the Lawes; and when there doth, the same Reason is
able, by interpretation, or alteration, to take it away. In all Courts
of Justice, the Soveraign (which is the Person of the Common-wealth,)
is he that Judgeth: The subordinate Judge, ought to have regard to the
reason, which moved his Soveraign to make such Law, that his Sentence
may be according thereunto; which then is his Soveraigns Sentence;
otherwise it is his own, and an unjust one.




Law Made, If Not Also Made Known, Is No Law

8. From this, that the Law is a Command, and a Command consisteth in
declaration, or manifestation of the will of him that commandeth, by
voyce, writing, or some other sufficient argument of the same, we may
understand, that the Command of the Common-wealth, is Law onely to
those, that have means to take notice of it. Over naturall fooles,
children, or mad-men there is no Law, no more than over brute beasts;
nor are they capable of the title of just, or unjust; because they had
never power to make any covenant, or to understand the consequences
thereof; and consequently never took upon them to authorise the
actions of any Soveraign, as they must do that make to themselves a
Common-wealth. And as those from whom Nature, or Accident hath taken
away the notice of all Lawes in generall; so also every man, from whom
any accident, not proceeding from his own default, hath taken away the
means to take notice of any particular Law, is excused, if he observe it
not; And to speak properly, that Law is no Law to him. It is therefore
necessary, to consider in this place, what arguments, and signes be
sufficient for the knowledge of what is the Law; that is to say, what is
the will of the Soveraign, as well in Monarchies, as in other formes of
government.




Unwritten Lawes Are All Of Them Lawes Of Nature

And first, if it be a Law that obliges all the Subjects without
exception, and is not written, nor otherwise published in such places as
they may take notice thereof, it is a Law of Nature. For whatsoever men
are to take knowledge of for Law, not upon other mens words, but every
one from his own reason, must be such as is agreeable to the reason of
all men; which no Law can be, but the Law of Nature. The Lawes of Nature
therefore need not any publishing, nor Proclamation; as being contained
in this one Sentence, approved by all the world, "Do not that to
another, which thou thinkest unreasonable to be done by another to thy
selfe."

Secondly, if it be a Law that obliges only some condition of men, or one
particular man and be not written, nor published by word, then also it
is a Law of Nature; and known by the same arguments, and signs,
that distinguish those in such a condition, from other Subjects. For
whatsoever Law is not written, or some way published by him that makes
it Law, can be known no way, but by the reason of him that is to obey
it; and is therefore also a Law not only Civill, but Naturall. For
example, if the Soveraign employ a Publique Minister, without written
Instructions what to doe; he is obliged to take for Instructions the
Dictates of Reason; As if he make a Judge, The Judge is to take notice,
that his Sentence ought to be according to the reason of his Soveraign,
which being alwaies understood to be Equity, he is bound to it by the
Law of Nature: Or if an Ambassador, he is (in al things not conteined
in his written Instructions) to take for Instruction that which Reason
dictates to be most conducing to his Soveraigns interest; and so of
all other Ministers of the Soveraignty, publique and private. All which
Instructions of naturall Reason may be comprehended under one name of
Fidelity; which is a branch of naturall Justice.

The Law of Nature excepted, it belongeth to the essence of all other
Lawes, to be made known, to every man that shall be obliged to obey
them, either by word, or writing, or some other act, known to proceed
from the Soveraign Authority. For the will of another, cannot be
understood, but by his own word, or act, or by conjecture taken from his
scope and purpose; which in the person of the Common-wealth, is to be
supposed alwaies consonant to Equity and Reason. And in antient time,
before letters were in common use, the Lawes were many times put into
verse; that the rude people taking pleasure in singing, or reciting
them, might the more easily reteine them in memory. And for the same
reason Solomon adviseth a man, to bind the ten Commandements (Prov. 7.
3) upon his ten fingers. And for the Law which Moses gave to the people
of Israel at the renewing of the Covenant, (Deut. 11. 19) he biddeth
them to teach it their Children, by discoursing of it both at home, and
upon the way; at going to bed, and at rising from bed; and to write
it upon the posts, and dores of their houses; and (Deut. 31. 12) to
assemble the people, man, woman, and child, to heare it read.




Nothing Is Law Where The Legislator Cannot Be Known

Nor is it enough the Law be written, and published; but also that there
be manifest signs, that it proceedeth from the will of the Soveraign.
For private men, when they have, or think they have force enough to
secure their unjust designes, and convoy them safely to their ambitious
ends, may publish for Lawes what they please, without, or against
the Legislative Authority. There is therefore requisite, not only a
Declaration of the Law, but also sufficient signes of the Author, and
Authority. The Author, or Legislator is supposed in every Common-wealth
to be evident, because he is the Soveraign, who having been Constituted
by the consent of every one, is supposed by every one to be sufficiently
known. And though the ignorance, and security of men be such, for the
most part, as that when the memory of the first Constitution of their
Common-wealth is worn out, they doe not consider, by whose power they
use to be defended against their enemies, and to have their industry
protected, and to be righted when injury is done them; yet because no
man that considers, can make question of it, no excuse can be derived
from the ignorance of where the Soveraignty is placed. And it is a
Dictate of Naturall Reason, and consequently an evident Law of Nature,
that no man ought to weaken that power, the protection whereof he hath
himself demanded, or wittingly received against others. Therefore of
who is Soveraign, no man, but by his own fault, (whatsoever evill men
suggest,) can make any doubt. The difficulty consisteth in the evidence
of the Authority derived from him; The removing whereof, dependeth on
the knowledge of the publique Registers, publique Counsels, publique
Ministers, and publique Seales; by which all Lawes are sufficiently
verified.




Difference Between Verifying And Authorising

Verifyed, I say, not Authorised: for the Verification, is but the
Testimony and Record; not the Authority of the law; which consisteth in
the Command of the Soveraign only.




The Law Verifyed By The Subordinate Judge

If therefore a man have a question of Injury, depending on the Law of
Nature; that is to say, on common Equity; the Sentence of the Judge,
that by Commission hath Authority to take cognisance of such causes, is
a sufficient Verification of the Law of Nature in that individuall case.
For though the advice of one that professeth the study of the Law, be
usefull for the avoyding of contention; yet it is but advice; tis the
Judge must tell men what is Law, upon the hearing of the Controversy.




By The Publique Registers

But when the question is of injury, or crime, upon a written Law; every
man by recourse to the Registers, by himself, or others, may (if he
will) be sufficiently enformed, before he doe such injury, or commit the
crime, whither it be an injury, or not: Nay he ought to doe so: for when
a man doubts whether the act he goeth about, be just, or injust; and may
informe himself, if he will; the doing is unlawfull. In like manner, he
that supposeth himself injured, in a case determined by the written Law,
which he may by himself, or others see and consider; if he complaine
before he consults with the Law, he does unjustly, and bewrayeth a
disposition rather to vex other men, than to demand his own right.




By Letters Patent, And Publique Seale

If the question be of Obedience to a publique Officer; To have seen his
Commission, with the Publique Seale, and heard it read; or to have
had the means to be informed of it, if a man would, is a sufficient
Verification of his Authority. For every man is obliged to doe his best
endeavour, to informe himself of all written Lawes, that may concerne
his own future actions.




The Interpretation Of The Law Dependeth On The Soveraign Power

The Legislator known; and the Lawes, either by writing, or by the
light of Nature, sufficiently published; there wanteth yet another
very materiall circumstance to make them obligatory. For it is not the
Letter, but the Intendment, or Meaning; that is to say, the authentique
Interpretation of the Law (which is the sense of the Legislator,) in
which the nature of the Law consisteth; And therefore the Interpretation
of all Lawes dependeth on the Authority Soveraign; and the Interpreters
can be none but those, which the Soveraign, (to whom only the
Subject oweth obedience) shall appoint. For else, by the craft of an
Interpreter, the Law my be made to beare a sense, contrary to that of
the Soveraign; by which means the Interpreter becomes the Legislator.




All Lawes Need Interpretation

All Laws, written, and unwritten, have need of Interpretation.
The unwritten Law of Nature, though it be easy to such, as without
partiality, and passion, make use of their naturall reason, and
therefore leaves the violators thereof without excuse; yet considering
there be very few, perhaps none, that in some cases are not blinded by
self love, or some other passion, it is now become of all Laws the most
obscure; and has consequently the greatest need of able Interpreters.
The written Laws, if they be short, are easily mis-interpreted, from the
divers significations of a word, or two; if long, they be more obscure
by the diverse significations of many words: in so much as no written
Law, delivered in few, or many words, can be well understood, without a
perfect understanding of the finall causes, for which the Law was
made; the knowledge of which finall causes is in the Legislator. To him
therefore there can not be any knot in the Law, insoluble; either by
finding out the ends, to undoe it by; or else by making what ends he
will, (as Alexander did with his sword in the Gordian knot,) by the
Legislative power; which no other Interpreter can doe.




The Authenticall Interpretation Of Law Is Not That Of Writers

The Interpretation of the Lawes of Nature, in a Common-wealth, dependeth
not on the books of Morall Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without
the Authority of the Common-wealth, maketh not their opinions Law,
be they never so true. That which I have written in this Treatise,
concerning the Morall Vertues, and of their necessity, for the
procuring, and maintaining peace, though it bee evident Truth, is not
therefore presently Law; but because in all Common-wealths in the world,
it is part of the Civill Law: For though it be naturally reasonable; yet
it is by the Soveraigne Power that it is Law: Otherwise, it were a great
errour, to call the Lawes of Nature unwritten Law; whereof wee see
so many volumes published, and in them so many contradictions of one
another, and of themselves.




The Interpreter Of The Law Is The Judge Giving Sentence Viva Voce

In Every Particular Case

The Interpretation of the Law of Nature, is the Sentence of the Judge
constituted by the Soveraign Authority, to heare and determine such
controversies, as depend thereon; and consisteth in the application of
the Law to the present case. For in the act of Judicature, the Judge
doth no more but consider, whither the demand of the party, be consonant
to naturall reason, and Equity; and the Sentence he giveth, is therefore
the Interpretation of the Law of Nature; which Interpretation is
Authentique; not because it is his private Sentence; but because
he giveth it by Authority of the Soveraign, whereby it becomes the
Soveraigns Sentence; which is Law for that time, to the parties
pleading.




The Sentence Of A Judge, Does Not Bind Him, Or Another Judge

To Give Like Sentence In Like Cases Ever After

But because there is no Judge Subordinate, nor Soveraign, but may erre
in a Judgement of Equity; if afterward in another like case he find it
more consonant to Equity to give a contrary Sentence, he is obliged to
doe it. No mans error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist
in it. Neither (for the same reason) becomes it a Law to other Judges,
though sworn to follow it. For though a wrong Sentence given by
authority of the Soveraign, if he know and allow it, in such Lawes as
are mutable, be a constitution of a new Law, in cases, in which every
little circumstance is the same; yet in Lawes immutable, such as are the
Lawes of Nature, they are no Lawes to the same, or other Judges, in the
like cases for ever after. Princes succeed one another; and one Judge
passeth, another commeth; nay, Heaven and Earth shall passe; but not one
title of the Law of Nature shall passe; for it is the Eternall Law of
God. Therefore all the Sentences of precedent Judges that have ever
been, cannot all together make a Law contrary to naturall Equity: Nor
any Examples of former Judges, can warrant an unreasonable Sentence, or
discharge the present Judge of the trouble of studying what is Equity
(in the case he is to Judge,) from the principles of his own naturall
reason. For example sake, 'Tis against the Law of Nature, To Punish The
Innocent; and Innocent is he that acquitteth himselfe Judicially, and is
acknowledged for Innocent by the Judge. Put the case now, that a man is
accused of a capitall crime, and seeing the powers and malice of some
enemy, and the frequent corruption and partiality of Judges, runneth
away for feare of the event, and afterwards is taken, and brought to a
legall triall, and maketh it sufficiently appear, he was not guilty of
the crime, and being thereof acquitted, is neverthelesse condemned to
lose his goods; this is a manifest condemnation of the Innocent. I say
therefore, that there is no place in the world, where this can be an
interpretation of a Law of Nature, or be made a Law by the Sentences of
precedent Judges, that had done the same. For he that judged it first,
judged unjustly; and no Injustice can be a pattern of Judgement to
succeeding Judges. A written Law may forbid innocent men to fly, and
they may be punished for flying: But that flying for feare of injury,
should be taken for presumption of guilt, after a man is already
absolved of the crime Judicially, is contrary to the nature of a
Presumption, which hath no place after Judgement given. Yet this is set
down by a great Lawyer for the common Law of England. "If a man," saith
he, "that is Innocent, be accused of Felony, and for feare flyeth for
the same; albeit he judicially acquitteth himselfe of the Felony; yet
if it be found that he fled for the Felony, he shall notwithstanding his
Innocency, Forfeit all his goods, chattels, debts, and duties. For as
to the Forfeiture of them, the Law will admit no proofe against the
Presumption in Law, grounded upon his flight." Here you see, An Innocent
Man, Judicially Acquitted, Notwithstanding His Innocency, (when no
written Law forbad him to fly) after his acquitall, Upon A Presumption
In Law, condemned to lose all the goods he hath. If the Law ground upon
his flight a Presumption of the fact, (which was Capitall,) the Sentence
ought to have been Capitall: if the presumption were not of the Fact,
for what then ought he to lose his goods? This therefore is no Law of
England; nor is the condemnation grounded upon a Presumption of Law, but
upon the Presumption of the Judges. It is also against Law, to say
that no Proofe shall be admitted against a Presumption of Law. For
all Judges, Soveraign and subordinate, if they refuse to heare Proofe,
refuse to do Justice: for though the Sentence be Just, yet the Judges
that condemn without hearing the Proofes offered, are Unjust Judges; and
their Presumption is but Prejudice; which no man ought to bring with him
to the Seat of Justice, whatsoever precedent judgements, or examples he
shall pretend to follow. There be other things of this nature, wherein
mens Judgements have been perverted, by trusting to Precedents: but this
is enough to shew, that though the Sentence of the Judge, be a Law to
the party pleading, yet it is no Law to any Judge, that shall succeed
him in that Office.

In like manner, when question is of the Meaning of written Lawes, he is
not the Interpreter of them, that writeth a Commentary upon them. For
Commentaries are commonly more subject to cavill, than the Text; and
therefore need other Commentaries; and so there will be no end of such
Interpretation. And therefore unlesse there be an Interpreter authorised
by the Soveraign, from which the subordinate Judges are not to recede,
the Interpreter can be no other than the ordinary Judges, in the some
manner, as they are in cases of the unwritten Law; and their Sentences
are to be taken by them that plead, for Lawes in that particular case;
but not to bind other Judges, in like cases to give like judgements.
For a Judge may erre in the Interpretation even of written Lawes; but no
errour of a subordinate Judge, can change the Law, which is the generall
Sentence of the Soveraigne.




The Difference Between The Letter And Sentence Of The Law

In written Lawes, men use to make a difference between the Letter, and
the Sentence of the Law: And when by the Letter, is meant whatsoever
can be gathered from the bare words, 'tis well distinguished. For the
significations of almost all words, are either in themselves, or in the
metaphoricall use of them, ambiguous; and may be drawn in argument, to
make many senses; but there is onely one sense of the Law. But if by the
Letter, be meant the Literall sense, then the Letter, and the Sentence
or intention of the Law, is all one. For the literall sense is that,
which the Legislator is alwayes supposed to be Equity: For it were a
great contumely for a Judge to think otherwise of the Soveraigne.
He ought therefore, if the Word of the Law doe not fully authorise a
reasonable Sentence, to supply it with the Law of Nature; or if the
case be difficult, to respit Judgement till he have received more ample
authority. For Example, a written Law ordaineth, that he which is thrust
out of his house by force, shall be restored by force: It happens that
a man by negligence leaves his house empty, and returning is kept out by
force, in which case there is no speciall Law ordained. It is evident,
that this case is contained in the same Law: for else there is no remedy
for him at all; which is to be supposed against the Intention of the
Legislator. Again, the word of the Law, commandeth to Judge according
to the Evidence: A man is accused falsly of a fact, which the Judge saw
himself done by another; and not by him that is accused. In this case
neither shall the Letter of the Law be followed to the condemnation of
the Innocent, nor shall the Judge give Sentence against the evidence
of the Witnesses; because the Letter of the Law is to the contrary:
but procure of the Soveraign that another be made Judge, and himselfe
Witnesse. So that the incommodity that follows the bare words of a
written Law, may lead him to the Intention of the Law, whereby to
interpret the same the better; though no Incommodity can warrant a
Sentence against the Law. For every Judge of Right, and Wrong, is not
Judge of what is Commodious, or Incommodious to the Common-wealth.




The Abilities Required In A Judge

The abilities required in a good Interpreter of the Law, that is to say,
in a good Judge, are not the same with those of an Advocate; namely the
study of the Lawes. For a Judge, as he ought to take notice of the Fact,
from none but the Witnesses; so also he ought to take notice of the
Law, from nothing but the Statutes, and Constitutions of the Soveraign,
alledged in the pleading, or declared to him by some that have authority
from the Soveraign Power to declare them; and need not take care
before-hand, what hee shall Judge; for it shall bee given him what hee
shall say concerning the Fact, by Witnesses; and what hee shall say in
point of Law, from those that shall in their pleadings shew it, and by
authority interpret it upon the place. The Lords of Parlament in England
were Judges, and most difficult causes have been heard and determined
by them; yet few of them were much versed in the study of the Lawes,
and fewer had made profession of them: and though they consulted with
Lawyers, that were appointed to be present there for that purpose; yet
they alone had the authority of giving Sentence. In like manner, in
the ordinary trialls of Right, Twelve men of the common People, are the
Judges, and give Sentence, not onely of the Fact, but of the Right; and
pronounce simply for the Complaynant, or for the Defendant; that is to
say, are Judges not onely of the Fact, but also of the Right: and in a
question of crime, not onely determine whether done, or not done; but
also whether it be Murder, Homicide, Felony, Assault, and the like,
which are determinations of Law: but because they are not supposed to
know the Law of themselves, there is one that hath Authority to enforme
them of it, in the particular case they are to Judge of. But yet if they
judge not according to that he tells them, they are not subject thereby
to any penalty; unlesse it be made appear, they did it against their
consciences, or had been corrupted by reward. The things that make
a good Judge, or good Interpreter of the Lawes, are, first A Right
Understanding of that principall Law of Nature called Equity; which
depending not on the reading of other mens Writings, but on the
goodnesse of a mans own naturall Reason, and Meditation, is presumed
to be in those most, that have had most leisure, and had the most
inclination to meditate thereon. Secondly, Contempt Of Unnecessary
Riches, and Preferments. Thirdly, To Be Able In Judgement To Devest
Himselfe Of All Feare, Anger, Hatred, Love, And Compassion. Fourthly,
and lastly, Patience To Heare; Diligent Attention In Hearing; And Memory
To Retain, Digest And Apply What He Hath Heard.




Divisions Of Law

The difference and division of the Lawes, has been made in divers
manners, according to the different methods, of those men that have
written of them. For it is a thing that dependeth not on Nature, but on
the scope of the Writer; and is subservient to every mans proper method.
In the Institutions of Justinian, we find seven sorts of Civill Lawes.

1. The Edicts, Constitutions, and Epistles Of The Prince, that is, of
the Emperour; because the whole power of the people was in him. Like
these, are the Proclamations of the Kings of England.

2. The Decrees Of The Whole People Of Rome (comprehending the Senate,)
when they were put to the Question by the Senate. These were Lawes, at
first, by the vertue of the Soveraign Power residing in the people; and
such of them as by the Emperours were not abrogated, remained Lawes by
the Authority Imperiall. For all Lawes that bind, are understood to be
Lawes by his authority that has power to repeale them. Somewhat like to
these Lawes, are the Acts of Parliament in England.

3. The Decrees Of The Common People (excluding the Senate,) when they
were put to the question by the Tribune of the people. For such of them
as were not abrogated by the Emperours, remained Lawes by the Authority
Imperiall. Like to these, were the Orders of the House of Commons in
England.

4. Senatus Consulta, the Orders Of The Senate; because when the people
of Rome grew so numerous, as it was inconvenient to assemble them; it
was thought fit by the Emperour, that men should Consult the Senate in
stead of the people: And these have some resemblance with the Acts of
Counsell.

5. The Edicts Of Praetors, and (in some Cases) of the Aediles: such as
are the Chiefe Justices in the Courts of England.

6. Responsa Prudentum; which were the Sentences, and Opinions of those
Lawyers, to whom the Emperour gave Authority to interpret the Law, and
to give answer to such as in matter of Law demanded their advice;
which Answers, the Judges in giving Judgement were obliged by the
Constitutions of the Emperour to observe; And should be like the Reports
of Cases Judged, if other Judges be by the Law of England bound to
observe them. For the Judges of the Common Law of England, are not
properly Judges, but Juris Consulti; of whom the Judges, who are either
the Lords, or Twelve men of the Country, are in point of Law to ask
advice.

7. Also, Unwritten Customes, (which in their own nature are an imitation
of Law,) by the tacite consent of the Emperour, in case they be not
contrary to the Law of Nature, are very Lawes.

Another division of Lawes, is into Naturall and Positive. Naturall are
those which have been Lawes from all Eternity; and are called not onely
Naturall, but also Morall Lawes; consisting in the Morall Vertues, as
Justice, Equity, and all habits of the mind that conduce to Peace, and
Charity; of which I have already spoken in the fourteenth and fifteenth
Chapters.

Positive, are those which have not been for Eternity; but have been
made Lawes by the Will of those that have had the Soveraign Power over
others; and are either written, or made known to men, by some other
argument of the Will of their Legislator.




Another Division Of Law

Again, of Positive Lawes some are Humane, some Divine; And of Humane
positive lawes, some are Distributive, some Penal. Distributive are
those that determine the Rights of the Subjects, declaring to every man
what it is, by which he acquireth and holdeth a propriety in lands,
or goods, and a right or liberty of action; and these speak to all
the Subjects. Penal are those, which declare, what Penalty shall be
inflicted on those that violate the Law; and speak to the Ministers
and Officers ordained for execution. For though every one ought to be
informed of the Punishments ordained beforehand for their transgression;
neverthelesse the Command is not addressed to the Delinquent, (who
cannot be supposed will faithfully punish himselfe,) but to publique
Ministers appointed to see the Penalty executed. And these Penal Lawes
are for the most part written together with the Lawes Distributive; and
are sometimes called Judgements. For all Lawes are generall judgements,
or Sentences of the Legislator; as also every particular Judgement, is a
Law to him, whose case is Judged.




Divine Positive Law How Made Known To Be Law

Divine Positive Lawes (for Naturall Lawes being Eternall, and
Universall, are all Divine,) are those, which being the Commandements of
God, (not from all Eternity, nor universally addressed to all men, but
onely to a certain people, or to certain persons,) are declared for
such, by those whom God hath authorised to declare them. But this
Authority of man to declare what be these Positive Lawes of God, how can
it be known? God may command a man by a supernaturall way, to deliver
Lawes to other men. But because it is of the essence of Law, that he who
is to be obliged, be assured of the Authority of him that declareth
it, which we cannot naturally take notice to be from God, How Can A Man
Without Supernaturall Revelation Be Assured Of The Revelation Received
By The Declarer? and How Can He Be Bound To Obey Them? For the first
question, how a man can be assured of the Revelation of another, without
a Revelation particularly to himselfe, it is evidently impossible:
for though a man may be induced to believe such Revelation, from the
Miracles they see him doe, or from seeing the Extraordinary sanctity of
his life, or from seeing the Extraordinary wisedome, or Extraordinary
felicity of his Actions, all which are marks of Gods extraordinary
favour; yet they are not assured evidence of speciall Revelation.
Miracles are Marvellous workes: but that which is marvellous to one,
may not be so to another. Sanctity may be feigned; and the visible
felicities of this world, are most often the work of God by Naturall,
and ordinary causes. And therefore no man can infallibly know by
naturall reason, that another has had a supernaturall revelation of Gods
will; but only a beliefe; every one (as the signs thereof shall appear
greater, or lesser) a firmer, or a weaker belief.

But for the second, how he can be bound to obey them; it is not so hard.
For if the Law declared, be not against the Law of Nature (which is
undoubtedly Gods Law) and he undertake to obey it, he is bound by his
own act; bound I say to obey it, but not bound to believe it: for mens
beliefe, and interiour cogitations, are not subject to the commands,
but only to the operation of God, ordinary, or extraordinary. Faith of
Supernaturall Law, is not a fulfilling, but only an assenting to the
same; and not a duty that we exhibite to God, but a gift which God
freely giveth to whom he pleaseth; as also Unbelief is not a breach
of any of his Lawes; but a rejection of them all, except the Lawes
Naturall. But this that I say, will be made yet cleerer, by the
Examples, and Testimonies concerning this point in holy Scripture. The
Covenant God made with Abraham (in a Supernaturall Manner) was thus,
(Gen. 17. 10) "This is the Covenant which thou shalt observe between
Me and Thee and thy Seed after thee." Abrahams Seed had not this
revelation, nor were yet in being; yet they are a party to the Covenant,
and bound to obey what Abraham should declare to them for Gods Law;
which they could not be, but in vertue of the obedience they owed to
their Parents; who (if they be Subject to no other earthly power, as
here in the case of Abraham) have Soveraign power over their children,
and servants. Againe, where God saith to Abraham, "In thee shall all
Nations of the earth be blessed: For I know thou wilt command thy
children, and thy house after thee to keep the way of the Lord, and to
observe Righteousnesse and Judgement," it is manifest, the obedience of
his Family, who had no Revelation, depended on their former obligation
to obey their Soveraign. At Mount Sinai Moses only went up to God; the
people were forbidden to approach on paine of death; yet were they bound
to obey all that Moses declared to them for Gods Law. Upon what ground,
but on this submission of their own, "Speak thou to us, and we will
heare thee; but let not God speak to us, lest we dye?" By which two
places it sufficiently appeareth, that in a Common-wealth, a subject
that has no certain and assured Revelation particularly to himself
concerning the Will of God, is to obey for such, the Command of
the Common-wealth: for if men were at liberty, to take for Gods
Commandements, their own dreams, and fancies, or the dreams and
fancies of private men; scarce two men would agree upon what is Gods
Commandement; and yet in respect of them, every man would despise the
Commandements of the Common-wealth. I conclude therefore, that in all
things not contrary to the Morall Law, (that is to say, to the Law of
Nature,) all Subjects are bound to obey that for divine Law, which is
declared to be so, by the Lawes of the Common-wealth. Which also is
evident to any mans reason; for whatsoever is not against the Law of
Nature, may be made Law in the name of them that have the Soveraign
power; and there is no reason men should be the lesse obliged by it,
when tis propounded in the name of God. Besides, there is no place in
the world where men are permitted to pretend other Commandements of God,
than are declared for such by the Common-wealth. Christian States punish
those that revolt from Christian Religion, and all other States, those
that set up any Religion by them forbidden. For in whatsoever is not
regulated by the Common-wealth, tis Equity (which is the Law of Nature,
and therefore an eternall Law of God) that every man equally enjoy his
liberty.




Another Division Of Lawes

There is also another distinction of Laws, into Fundamentall, and Not
Fundamentall: but I could never see in any Author, what a Fundamentall
Law signifieth. Neverthelesse one may very reasonably distinguish Laws
in that manner.




A Fundamentall Law What

For a Fundamentall Law in every Common-wealth is that, which being taken
away, the Common-wealth faileth, and is utterly dissolved; as a building
whose Foundation is destroyed. And therefore a Fundamentall Law is that,
by which Subjects are bound to uphold whatsoever power is given to the
Soveraign, whether a Monarch, or a Soveraign Assembly, without which the
Common-wealth cannot stand, such as is the power of War and Peace, of
Judicature, of Election of Officers, and of doing whatsoever he shall
think necessary for the Publique good. Not Fundamentall is that
the abrogating whereof, draweth not with it the dissolution of the
Common-Wealth; such as are the Lawes Concerning Controversies between
subject and subject. Thus much of the Division of Lawes.




Difference Between Law And Right

I find the words Lex Civilis, and Jus Civile, that is to say, Law and
Right Civil, promiscuously used for the same thing, even in the most
learned Authors; which neverthelesse ought not to be so. For Right is
Liberty, namely that Liberty which the Civil Law leaves us: But Civill
Law is an Obligation; and takes from us the Liberty which the Law of
Nature gave us. Nature gave a Right to every man to secure himselfe
by his own strength, and to invade a suspected neighbour, by way of
prevention; but the Civill Law takes away that Liberty, in all cases
where the protection of the Lawe may be safely stayd for. Insomuch as
Lex and Jus, are as different as Obligation and Liberty.




And Between A Law And A Charter

Likewise Lawes and Charters are taken promiscuously for the same
thing. Yet Charters are Donations of the Soveraign; and not Lawes, but
exemptions from Law. The phrase of a Law is Jubeo, Injungo, I Command,
and Enjoyn: the phrase of a Charter is Dedi, Concessi, I Have Given, I
Have Granted: but what is given or granted, to a man, is not forced
upon him, by a Law. A Law may be made to bind All the Subjects of a
Common-wealth: a Liberty, or Charter is only to One man, or some One
part of the people. For to say all the people of a Common-wealth, have
Liberty in any case whatsoever; is to say, that in such case, there hath
been no Law made; or else having been made, is now abrogated.



CHAPTER XXVII. OF CRIMES, EXCUSES, AND EXTENUATIONS



Sinne What

A Sinne, is not onely a Transgression of a Law, but also any Contempt of
the Legislator. For such Contempt, is a breach of all his Lawes at once.
And therefore may consist, not onely in the Commission of a Fact, or in
the Speaking of Words by the Lawes forbidden, or in the Omission of
what the Law commandeth, but also in the Intention, or purpose to
transgresse. For the purpose to breake the Law, is some degree of
Contempt of him, to whom it belongeth to see it executed. To be
delighted in the Imagination onely, of being possessed of another mans
goods, servants, or wife, without any intention to take them from him
by force, or fraud, is no breach of the Law, that sayth, "Thou shalt not
covet:" nor is the pleasure a man my have in imagining, or dreaming of
the death of him, from whose life he expecteth nothing but dammage, and
displeasure, a Sinne; but the resolving to put some Act in execution,
that tendeth thereto. For to be pleased in the fiction of that, which
would please a man if it were reall, is a Passion so adhaerent to the
Nature both of a man, and every other living creature, as to make it a
Sinne, were to make Sinne of being a man. The consideration of this,
has made me think them too severe, both to themselves, and others, that
maintain, that the First motions of the mind, (though checked with the
fear of God) be Sinnes. But I confesse it is safer to erre on that hand,
than on the other.




A Crime What

A Crime, is a sinne, consisting in the Committing (by Deed, or Word)
of that which the Law forbiddeth, or the Omission of what it hath
commanded. So that every Crime is a sinne; but not every sinne a Crime.
To intend to steale, or kill, is a sinne, though it never appeare in
Word, or Fact: for God that seeth the thoughts of man, can lay it to
his charge: but till it appear by some thing done, or said, by which
the intention may be Crime; which distinction the Greeks observed in
the word amartema, and egklema, or aitia; wherof the former, (which is
translated Sinne,) signifieth any swarving from the Law whatsoever; but
the two later, (which are translated Crime,) signifie that sinne onely,
whereof one man may accuse another. But of Intentions, which never
appear by any outward act, there is no place for humane accusation. In
like manner the Latines by Peccatum, which is Sinne, signifie all manner
of deviation from the Law; but by crimen, (which word they derive from
Cerno, which signifies to perceive,) they mean onely such sinnes, as my
be made appear before a Judge; and therfore are not meer Intentions.




Where No Civill Law Is, There Is No Crime

From this relation of Sinne to the Law, and of Crime to the Civill
Law, may be inferred, First, that where Law ceaseth, Sinne ceaseth.
But because the Law of Nature is eternall, Violation of Covenants,
Ingratitude, Arrogance, and all Facts contrary to any Morall vertue, can
never cease to be Sinne. Secondly, that the Civill Law ceasing, Crimes
cease: for there being no other Law remaining, but that of Nature, there
is no place for Accusation; every man being his own Judge, and accused
onely by his own Conscience, and cleared by the Uprightnesse of his own
Intention. When therefore his Intention is Right, his fact is no Sinne:
if otherwise, his fact is Sinne; but not Crime. Thirdly, That when the
Soveraign Power ceaseth, Crime also ceaseth: for where there is no such
Power, there is no protection to be had from the Law; and therefore
every one may protect himself by his own power: for no man in the
Institution of Soveraign Power can be supposed to give away the Right
of preserving his own body; for the safety whereof all Soveraignty was
ordained. But this is to be understood onely of those, that have not
themselves contributed to the taking away of the Power that protected
them: for that was a Crime from the beginning.




Ignorance Of The Law Of Nature Excuseth No Man

The source of every Crime, is some defect of the Understanding; or some
errour in Reasoning, or some sudden force of the Passions. Defect in
the Understanding, is Ignorance; in Reasoning, Erroneous Opinion. Again,
ignorance is of three sort; of the Law, and of the Soveraign, and of the
Penalty. Ignorance of the Law of Nature Excuseth no man; because every
man that hath attained to the use of Reason, is supposed to know, he
ought not to do to another, what he would not have done to himselfe.
Therefore into what place soever a man shall come, if he do any thing
contrary to that Law, it is a Crime. If a man come from the Indies
hither, and perswade men here to receive a new Religion, or teach them
any thing that tendeth to disobedience of the Lawes of this Country,
though he be never so well perswaded of the truth of what he teacheth,
he commits a Crime, and may be justly punished for the same, not onely
because his doctrine is false, but also because he does that which he
would not approve in another, namely, that comming from hence, he should
endeavour to alter the Religion there. But ignorance of the Civill Law,
shall Excuse a man in a strange Country, till it be declared to him;
because, till then no Civill Law is binding.




Ignorance Of The Civill Law Excuseth Sometimes

In the like manner, if the Civill Law of a mans own Country, be not
so sufficiently declared, as he may know it if he will; nor the Action
against the Law of Nature; the Ignorance is a good Excuse: In other
cases ignorance of the Civill Law, Excuseth not.




Ignorance Of The Soveraign Excuseth Not

Ignorance of the Soveraign Power, in the place of a mans ordinary
residence, Excuseth him not; because he ought to take notice of the
Power, by which he hath been protected there.




Ignorance Of The Penalty Excuseth Not

Ignorance of the Penalty, where the Law is declared, Excuseth no man:
For in breaking the Law, which without a fear of penalty to follow, were
not a Law, but vain words, he undergoeth the penalty, though he know not
what it is; because, whosoever voluntarily doth any action, accepteth
all the known consequences of it; but Punishment is a known consequence
of the violation of the Lawes, in every Common-wealth; which punishment,
if it be determined already by the Law, he is subject to that; if not,
then is he subject to Arbitrary punishment. For it is reason, that he
which does Injury, without other limitation than that of his own Will,
should suffer punishment without other limitation, than that of his Will
whose Law is thereby violated.




Punishments Declared Before The Fact, Excuse From Greater Punishments

After It

But when a penalty, is either annexed to the Crime in the Law it selfe,
or hath been usually inflicted in the like cases; there the Delinquent
is Excused from a greater penalty. For the punishment foreknown, if not
great enough to deterre men from the action, is an invitement to it:
because when men compare the benefit of their Injustice, with the harm
of their punishment, by necessity of Nature they choose that which
appeareth best for themselves; and therefore when they are punished more
than the Law had formerly determined, or more than others were punished
for the same Crime; it the Law that tempted, and deceiveth them.




Nothing Can Be Made A Crime By A Law Made After The Fact

No Law, made after a Fact done, can make it a Crime: because if the
Fact be against the Law of Nature, the Law was before the Fact; and a
Positive Law cannot be taken notice of, before it be made; and therefore
cannot be Obligatory. But when the Law that forbiddeth a Fact, is made
before the Fact be done; yet he that doth the Fact, is lyable to the
Penalty ordained after, in case no lesser Penalty were made known
before, neither by Writing, nor by Example, for the reason immediatly
before alledged.




False Principles Of Right And Wrong Causes Of Crime

From defect in Reasoning, (that is to say, from Errour,) men are prone
to violate the Lawes, three wayes. First, by Presumption of false
Principles; as when men from having observed how in all places, and
in all ages, unjust Actions have been authorised, by the force, and
victories of those who have committed them; and that potent men,
breaking through the Cob-web Lawes of their Country, the weaker sort,
and those that have failed in their Enterprises, have been esteemed the
onely Criminals; have thereupon taken for Principles, and grounds of
their Reasoning, "That Justice is but a vain word: That whatsoever a man
can get by his own Industry, and hazard, is his own: That the Practice
of all Nations cannot be unjust: That examples of former times are good
Arguments of doing the like again;" and many more of that kind: Which
being granted, no Act in it selfe can be a Crime, but must be made so
(not by the Law, but) by the successe of them that commit it; and the
same Fact be vertuous, or vicious, as Fortune pleaseth; so that what
Marius makes a Crime, Sylla shall make meritorious, and Caesar (the same
Lawes standing) turn again into a Crime, to the perpetuall disturbance
of the Peace of the Common-wealth.




False Teachers Mis-interpreting The Law Of Nature Secondly, by false
Teachers, that either mis-interpret the Law of Nature, making it thereby
repugnant to the Law Civill; or by teaching for Lawes, such Doctrines of
their own, or Traditions of former times, as are inconsistent with the
duty of a Subject.




And False Inferences From True Principles, By Teachers

Thirdly, by Erroneous Inferences from True Principles; which happens
commonly to men that are hasty, and praecipitate in concluding, and
resolving what to do; such as are they, that have both a great opinion
of their own understanding, and believe that things of this nature
require not time and study, but onely common experience, and a good
naturall wit; whereof no man thinks himselfe unprovided: whereas the
knowledge, of Right and Wrong, which is no lesse difficult, there is no
man will pretend to, without great and long study. And of those defects
in Reasoning, there is none that can Excuse (though some of them may
Extenuate) a Crime, in any man, that pretendeth to the administration of
his own private businesse; much lesse in them that undertake a publique
charge; because they pretend to the Reason, upon the want whereof they
would ground their Excuse.




By Their Passions;

Of the Passions that most frequently are the causes of Crime, one,
is Vain-glory, or a foolish over-rating of their own worth; as if
difference of worth, were an effect of their wit, or riches, or bloud,
or some other naturall quality, not depending on the Will of those that
have the Soveraign Authority. From whence proceedeth a Presumption that
the punishments ordained by the Lawes, and extended generally to all
Subjects, ought not to be inflicted on them, with the same rigour they
are inflicted on poore, obscure, and simple men, comprehended under the
name of the Vulgar.




Presumption Of Riches

Therefore it happeneth commonly, that such as value themselves by the
greatnesse of their wealth, adventure on Crimes, upon hope of escaping
punishment, by corrupting publique Justice, or obtaining Pardon by Mony,
or other rewards.




And Friends

And that such as have multitude of Potent Kindred; and popular men, that
have gained reputation amongst the Multitude, take courage to violate
the Lawes, from a hope of oppressing the Power, to whom it belongeth to
put them in execution.




Wisedome

And that such as have a great, and false opinion of their own Wisedome,
take upon them to reprehend the actions, and call in question the
Authority of them that govern, and so to unsettle the Lawes with their
publique discourse, as that nothing shall be a Crime, but what their own
designes require should be so. It happeneth also to the same men, to be
prone to all such Crimes, as consist in Craft, and in deceiving of their
Neighbours; because they think their designes are too subtile to be
perceived. These I say are effects of a false presumption of their own
Wisdome. For of them that are the first movers in the disturbance of
Common-wealth, (which can never happen without a Civill Warre,) very few
are left alive long enough, to see their new Designes established: so
that the benefit of their Crimes, redoundeth to Posterity, and such as
would least have wished it: which argues they were not as wise, as
they thought they were. And those that deceive upon hope of not being
observed, do commonly deceive themselves, (the darknesse in which they
believe they lye hidden, being nothing else but their own blindnesse;)
and are no wiser than Children, that think all hid, by hiding their own
eyes.

And generally all vain-glorious men, (unlesse they be withall timorous,)
are subject to Anger; as being more prone than others to interpret for
contempt, the ordinary liberty of conversation: And there are few Crimes
that may not be produced by Anger.




Hatred, Lust, Ambition, Covetousnesse, Causes Of Crime

As for the Passions, of Hate, Lust, Ambition, and Covetousnesse, what
Crimes they are apt to produce, is so obvious to every mans experience
and understanding, as there needeth nothing to be said of them, saving
that they are infirmities, so annexed to the nature, both of man, and
all other living creatures, as that their effects cannot be hindred,
but by extraordinary use of Reason, or a constant severity in punishing
them. For in those things men hate, they find a continuall, and
unavoydable molestation; whereby either a mans patience must be
everlasting, or he must be eased by removing the power of that which
molesteth him; The former is difficult; the later is many times
impossible, without some violation of the Law. Ambition, and
Covetousnesse are Passions also that are perpetually incumbent, and
pressing; whereas Reason is not perpetually present, to resist them:
and therefore whensoever the hope of impunity appears, their effects
proceed. And for Lust, what it wants in the lasting, it hath in the
vehemence, which sufficeth to weigh down the apprehension of all easie,
or uncertain punishments.




Fear Sometimes Cause Of Crime, As When The Danger Is Neither Present,

Nor Corporeall

Of all Passions, that which enclineth men least to break the Lawes, is
Fear. Nay, (excepting some generous natures,) it is the onely thing,
(when there is apparence of profit, or pleasure by breaking the Lawes,)
that makes men keep them. And yet in many cases a Crime may be committed
through Feare.

For not every Fear justifies the Action it produceth, but the fear onely
of corporeall hurt, which we call Bodily Fear, and from which a man
cannot see how to be delivered, but by the action. A man is assaulted,
fears present death, from which he sees not how to escape, but by
wounding him that assaulteth him; If he wound him to death, this is no
Crime; because no man is supposed at the making of a Common-wealth, to
have abandoned the defence of his life, or limbes, where the Law cannot
arrive time enough to his assistance. But to kill a man, because from
his actions, or his threatnings, I may argue he will kill me when he
can, (seeing I have time, and means to demand protection, from the
Soveraign Power,) is a Crime. Again, a man receives words of disgrace,
or some little injuries (for which they that made the Lawes, had
assigned no punishment, nor thought it worthy of a man that hath the use
of Reason, to take notice of,) and is afraid, unlesse he revenge it,
he shall fall into contempt, and consequently be obnoxious to the like
injuries from others; and to avoyd this, breaks the Law, and protects
himselfe for the future, by the terrour of his private revenge. This is
a Crime; For the hurt is not Corporeall, but Phantasticall, and (though
in this corner of the world, made sensible by a custome not many years
since begun, amongst young and vain men,) so light, as a gallant man,
and one that is assured of his own courage, cannot take notice of. Also
a man may stand in fear of Spirits, either through his own superstition,
or through too much credit given to other men, that tell him of strange
Dreams and visions; and thereby be made believe they will hurt him, for
doing, or omitting divers things, which neverthelesse, to do, or omit,
is contrary to the Lawes; And that which is so done, or omitted, is not
to be Excused by this fear; but is a Crime. For (as I have shewn before
in the second Chapter) Dreams be naturally but the fancies remaining in
sleep, after the impressions our Senses had formerly received waking;
and when men are by any accident unassured they have slept, seem to be
reall Visions; and therefore he that presumes to break the Law upon his
own, or anothers Dream, or pretended Vision, or upon other Fancy of
the power of Invisible Spirits, than is permitted by the Common-wealth,
leaveth the Law of Nature, which is a certain offence, and followeth the
imagery of his own, or another private mans brain, which he can never
know whether it signifieth any thing, or nothing, nor whether he that
tells his Dream, say true, or lye; which if every private man should
have leave to do, (as they must by the Law of Nature, if any one have
it) there could no Law be made to hold, and so all Common-wealth would
be dissolved.




Crimes Not Equall

From these different sources of Crimes, it appeares already, that all
Crimes are not (as the Stoicks of old time maintained) of the same
allay. There is place, not only for EXCUSE, by which that which seemed
a Crime, is proved to be none at all; but also for EXTENUATION, by which
the Crime, that seemed great, is made lesse. For though all Crimes doe
equally deserve the name of Injustice, as all deviation from a strait
line is equally crookednesse, which the Stoicks rightly observed; yet
it does not follow that all Crimes are equally unjust, no more than that
all crooked lines are equally crooked; which the Stoicks not observing,
held it as great a Crime, to kill a Hen, against the Law, as to kill
ones Father.




Totall Excuses

That which totally Excuseth a Fact, and takes away from it the nature of
a Crime, can be none but that, which at the same time, taketh away the
obligation of the Law. For the fact committed once against the Law,
if he that committed it be obliged to the Law, can be no other than a
Crime.

The want of means to know the Law, totally Excuseth: For the Law whereof
a man has no means to enforme himself, is not obligatory. But the want
of diligence to enquire, shall not be considered as a want of means; Nor
shall any man, that pretendeth to reason enough for the Government of
his own affairs, be supposed to want means to know the Lawes of Nature;
because they are known by the reason he pretends to: only Children, and
Madmen are Excused from offences against the Law Naturall.

Where a man is captive, or in the power of the enemy, (and he is then in
the power of the enemy, when his person, or his means of living, is
so,) if it be without his own fault, the Obligation of the Law ceaseth;
because he must obey the enemy, or dye; and consequently such obedience
is no Crime: for no man is obliged (when the protection of the Law
faileth,) not to protect himself, by the best means he can.

If a man by the terrour of present death, be compelled to doe a fact
against the Law, he is totally Excused; because no Law can oblige a
man to abandon his own preservation. And supposing such a Law were
obligatory; yet a man would reason thus, "If I doe it not, I die
presently; if I doe it, I die afterwards; therefore by doing it, there
is time of life gained;" Nature therefore compells him to the fact.

When a man is destitute of food, or other thing necessary for his life,
and cannot preserve himselfe any other way, but by some fact against
the Law; as if in a great famine he take the food by force, or stealth,
which he cannot obtaine for mony nor charity; or in defence of his life,
snatch away another mans Sword, he is totally Excused, for the reason
next before alledged.




Excuses Against The Author

Again, Facts done against the Law, by the authority of another, are
by that authority Excused against the Author; because no man ought to
accuse his own fact in another, that is but his instrument: but it
is not Excused against a third person thereby injured; because in the
violation of the law, bothe the Author, and Actor are Criminalls.
From hence it followeth that when that Man, or Assembly, that hath the
Soveraign Power, commandeth a man to do that which is contrary to a
former Law, the doing of it is totally Excused: For he ought not to
condemn it himselfe, because he is the Author; and what cannot justly
be condemned by the Soveraign, cannot justly be punished by any other.
Besides, when the Soveraign commandeth any thing to be done against
his own former Law, the Command, as to that particular fact, is an
abrogation of the Law.

If that Man, or Assembly, that hath the Soveraign Power, disclaime
any Right essentiall to the Soveraignty, whereby there accrueth to the
Subject, any liberty inconsistent with the Soveraign Power, that is to
say, with the very being of a Common-wealth, if the Subject shall refuse
to obey the Command in any thing, contrary to the liberty granted, this
is neverthelesse a Sinne, and contrary to the duty of the Subject: for
he ought to take notice of what is inconsistent with the Soveraignty,
because it was erected by his own consent, and for his own defence;
and that such liberty as is inconsistent with it, was granted through
ignorance of the evill consequence thereof. But if he not onely disobey,
but also resist a publique Minister in the execution of it, then it is
a Crime; because he might have been righted, (without any breach of the
Peace,) upon complaint.

The Degrees of Crime are taken on divers Scales, and measured, First, by
the malignity of the Source, or Cause: Secondly, by the contagion of the
Example: Thirdly, by the mischiefe of the Effect; and Fourthly, by the
concurrence of Times, Places, and Persons.




Presumption Of Power, Aggravateth

The same Fact done against the Law, if it proceed from Presumption of
strength, riches, or friends to resist those that are to execute the
Law, is a greater Crime, than if it proceed from hope of not being
discovered, or of escape by flight: For Presumption of impunity by
force, is a Root, from whence springeth, at all times, and upon all
temptations, a contempt of all Lawes; whereas in the later case, the
apprehension of danger, that makes a man fly, renders him more obedient
for the future. A Crime which we know to be so, is greater than the same
Crime proceeding from a false perswasion that it is lawfull: For he that
committeth it against his own conscience, presumeth on his force, or
other power, which encourages him to commit the same again: but he that
doth it by errour, after the errour shewn him, is conformable to the
Law.




Evill Teachers, Extenuate

Hee, whose errour proceeds from the authority of a Teacher, or an
Interpreter of the Law publiquely authorised, is not so faulty, as he
whose errour proceedeth from a peremptory pursute of his own principles,
and reasoning: For what is taught by one that teacheth by publique
Authority, the Common-wealth teacheth, and hath a resemblance of Law,
till the same Authority controuleth it; and in all Crimes that contain
not in them a denyall of the Soveraign Power, nor are against an evident
Law, Excuseth totally: whereas he that groundeth his actions, on his
private Judgement, ought according to the rectitude, or errour thereof,
to stand, or fall.




Examples Of Impunity, Extenuate

The same Fact, if it have been constantly punished in other men, as
a greater Crime, than if there have been may precedent Examples of
impunity. For those Examples, are so many hopes of Impunity given by
the Soveraign himselfe: And because he which furnishes a man with such
a hope, and presumption of mercy, as encourageth him to offend, hath his
part in the offence; he cannot reasonably charge the offender with the
whole.




Praemeditation, Aggravateth

A Crime arising from a sudden Passion, is not so great, as when the same
ariseth from long meditation: For in the former case there is a place
for Extenuation, in the common infirmity of humane nature: but he that
doth it with praemeditation, has used circumspection, and cast his eye,
on the Law, on the punishment, and on the consequence thereof to humane
society; all which in committing the Crime, hee hath contemned, and
postposed to his own appetite. But there is no suddennesse of Passion
sufficient for a totall Excuse: For all the time between the first
knowing of the Law, and the Commission of the Fact, shall be taken for
a time of deliberation; because he ought by meditation of the Law, to
rectifie the irregularity of his Passions.

Where the Law is publiquely, and with assiduity, before all the people
read, and interpreted; a fact done against it, is a greater Crime,
than where men are left without such instruction, to enquire of it with
difficulty, uncertainty, and interruption of their Callings, and
be informed by private men: for in this case, part of the fault is
discharged upon common infirmity; but in the former there is apparent
negligence, which is not without some contempt of the Soveraign Power.




Tacite Approbation Of The Soveraign, Extenuates

Those facts which the Law expresly condemneth, but the Law-maker by
other manifest signes of his will tacitly approveth, are lesse Crimes,
than the same facts, condemned both by the Law, and Lawmaker. For
seeing the will of the Law-maker is a Law, there appear in this case two
contradictory Lawes; which would totally Excuse, if men were bound to
take notice of the Soveraigns approbation, by other arguments, than are
expressed by his command. But because there are punishments consequent,
not onely to the transgression of his Law, but also to the observing
of it, he is in part a cause of the transgression, and therefore cannot
reasonably impute the whole Crime to the Delinquent. For example, the
Law condemneth Duells; the punishment is made capitall: On the contrary
part, he that refuseth Duell, is subject to contempt and scorne, without
remedy; and sometimes by the Soveraign himselfe thought unworthy to
have any charge, or preferment in Warre: If thereupon he accept Duell,
considering all men lawfully endeavour to obtain the good opinion
of them that have the Soveraign Power, he ought not in reason to be
rigorously punished; seeing part of the fault may be discharged on the
punisher; which I say, not as wishing liberty of private revenges,
or any other kind of disobedience; but a care in Governours, not
to countenance any thing obliquely, which directly they forbid. The
examples of Princes, to those that see them, are, and ever have been,
more potent to govern their actions, than the Lawes themselves. And
though it be our duty to do, not what they do, but what they say; yet
will that duty never be performed, till it please God to give men an
extraordinary, and supernaturall grace to follow that Precept.




Comparison Of Crimes From Their Effects

Again, if we compare Crimes by the mischiefe of their Effects, First,
the same fact, when it redounds to the dammage of many, is greater, than
when it redounds to the hurt of few. And therefore, when a fact hurteth,
not onely in the present, but also, (by example) in the future, it is a
greater Crime, than if it hurt onely in the present: for the former,
is a fertile Crime, and multiplyes to the hurt of many; the later is
barren. To maintain doctrines contrary to the Religion established in
the Common-wealth, is a greater fault, in an authorised Preacher, than
in a private person: So also is it, to live prophanely, incontinently,
or do any irreligious act whatsoever. Likewise in a Professor of the
Law, to maintain any point, on do any act, that tendeth to the weakning
of the Soveraign Power, as a greater Crime, than in another man: Also in
a man that hath such reputation for wisedome, as that his counsells are
followed, or his actions imitated by many, his fact against the Law, is
a greater Crime, than the same fact in another: For such men not onely
commit Crime, but teach it for Law to all other men. And generally all
Crimes are the greater, by the scandall they give; that is to say, by
becoming stumbling-blocks to the weak, that look not so much upon the
way they go in, as upon the light that other men carry before them.




Laesae Majestas

Also Facts of Hostility against the present state of the Common-wealth,
are greater Crimes, than the same acts done to private men; For
the dammage extends it selfe to all: Such are the betraying of the
strengths, or revealing of the secrets of the Common-wealth to an Enemy;
also all attempts upon the Representative of the Common-wealth, be it a
monarch, or an Assembly; and all endeavours by word, or deed to diminish
the Authority of the same, either in the present time, or in succession:
which Crimes the Latines understand by Crimina Laesae Majestatis, and
consist in designe, or act, contrary to a Fundamentall Law.




Bribery And False Testimony

Likewise those Crimes, which render Judgements of no effect, are greater
Crimes, than Injuries done to one, or a few persons; as to receive
mony to give False judgement, or testimony, is a greater Crime, than
otherwise to deceive a man of the like, or a greater summe; because not
onely he has wrong, that falls by such judgements; but all Judgements
are rendered uselesse, and occasion ministred to force, and private
revenges.




Depeculation

Also Robbery, and Depeculation of the Publique treasure, or Revenues,
is a greater Crime, than the robbing, or defrauding of a Private man;
because to robbe the publique, is to robbe many at once.




Counterfeiting Authority

Also the Counterfeit usurpation of publique Ministery, the
Counterfeiting of publique Seales, or publique Coine, than
counterfeiting of a private mans person, or his seale; because the fraud
thereof, extendeth to the dammage of many.




Crimes Against Private Men Compared

Of facts against the Law, done to private men, the greater Crime, is
that, where the dammage in the common opinion of men, is most sensible.
And therefore

To kill against the Law, is a greater Crime, that any other injury, life
preserved.

And to kill with Torment, greater, than simply to kill.

And Mutilation of a limbe, greater, than the spoyling a man of his
goods.

And the spoyling a man of his goods, by Terrour of death, or wounds,
than by clandestine surreption.

And by clandestine Surreption, than by consent fraudulently obtained.

And the violation of chastity by Force, greater, than by flattery.

And of a woman Married, than of a woman not married.

For all these things are commonly so valued; though some men are more,
and some lesse sensible of the same offence. But the Law regardeth not
the particular, but the generall inclination of mankind.

And therefore the offence men take, from contumely, in words, or
gesture, when they produce no other harme, than the present griefe of
him that is reproached, hath been neglected in the Lawes of the Greeks,
Romans, and other both antient, and moderne Common-wealths; supposing
the true cause of such griefe to consist, not in the contumely, (which
takes no hold upon men conscious of their own Vertue,) but in the
Pusillanimity of him that is offended by it.

Also a Crime against a private man, is much aggravated by the person,
time, and place. For to kill ones Parent, is a greater Crime, than to
kill another: for the Parent ought to have the honour of a Soveraign,
(though he have surrendred his Power to the Civill Law,) because he had
it originally by Nature. And to Robbe a poore man, is a greater Crime,
than to robbe a rich man; because 'tis to the poore a more sensible
dammage.

And a Crime committed in the Time, or Place appointed for Devotion, is
greater, than if committed at another time or place: for it proceeds
from a greater contempt of the Law.

Many other cases of Aggravation, and Extenuation might be added: but by
these I have set down, it is obvious to every man, to take the altitude
of any other Crime proposed.




Publique Crimes What

Lastly, because in almost all Crimes there is an Injury done, not onely
to some Private man, but also to the Common-wealth; the same Crime, when
the accusation is in the name of the Common-wealth, is called Publique
Crime; and when in the name of a Private man, a Private Crime; And the
Pleas according thereunto called Publique, Judicia Publica, Pleas of the
Crown; or Private Pleas. As in an Accusation of Murder, if the accuser
be a Private man, the plea is a Private plea; if the accuser be the
Soveraign, the plea is a Publique plea.



CHAPTER XXVIII. OF PUNISHMENTS, AND REWARDS




The Definition Of Punishment

"A PUNISHMENT, is an Evill inflicted by publique Authority, on him that
hath done, or omitted that which is Judged by the same Authority to be
a Transgression of the Law; to the end that the will of men may thereby
the better be disposed to obedience."




Right To Punish Whence Derived

Before I inferre any thing from this definition, there is a question to
be answered, of much importance; which is, by what door the Right, or
Authority of Punishing in any case, came in. For by that which has
been said before, no man is supposed bound by Covenant, not to resist
violence; and consequently it cannot be intended, that he gave any right
to another to lay violent hands upon his person. In the making of a
Common-wealth, every man giveth away the right of defending another; but
not of defending himselfe. Also he obligeth himselfe, to assist him that
hath the Soveraignty, in the Punishing of another; but of himselfe
not. But to covenant to assist the Soveraign, in doing hurt to another,
unlesse he that so covenanteth have a right to doe it himselfe, is not
to give him a Right to Punish. It is manifest therefore that the Right
which the Common-wealth (that is, he, or they that represent it) hath to
Punish, is not grounded on any concession, or gift of the Subjects.
But I have also shewed formerly, that before the Institution of
Common-wealth, every man had a right to every thing, and to do
whatsoever he thought necessary to his own preservation; subduing,
hurting, or killing any man in order thereunto. And this is the
foundation of that right of Punishing, which is exercised in every
Common-wealth. For the Subjects did not give the Soveraign that right;
but onely in laying down theirs, strengthned him to use his own, as he
should think fit, for the preservation of them all: so that it was not
given, but left to him, and to him onely; and (excepting the limits set
him by naturall Law) as entire, as in the condition of meer Nature, and
of warre of every one against his neighbour.




Private Injuries, And Revenges No Punishments

From the definition of Punishment, I inferre, First, that neither
private revenges, nor injuries of private men, can properly be stiled
Punishment; because they proceed not from publique Authority.




Nor Denyall Of Preferment

Secondly, that to be neglected, and unpreferred by the publique
favour, is not a Punishment; because no new evill is thereby on any man
Inflicted; he is onely left in the estate he was in before.




Nor Pain Inflicted Without Publique Hearing

Thirdly, that the evill inflicted by publique Authority, without
precedent publique condemnation, is not to be stiled by the name of
Punishment; but of an hostile act; because the fact for which a man
is Punished, ought first to be Judged by publique Authority, to be a
transgression of the Law.




Nor Pain Inflicted By Usurped Power

Fourthly, that the evill inflicted by usurped power, and Judges
without Authority from the Soveraign, is not Punishment; but an act of
hostility; because the acts of power usurped, have not for Author, the
person condemned; and therefore are not acts of publique Authority.




Nor Pain Inflicted Without Respect To The Future Good

Fifthly, that all evill which is inflicted without intention, or
possibility of disposing the Delinquent, or (by his example) other men,
to obey the Lawes, is not Punishment; but an act of hostility; because
without such an end, no hurt done is contained under that name.




Naturall Evill Consequences, No Punishments

Sixthly, whereas to certain actions, there be annexed by Nature, divers
hurtfull consequences; as when a man in assaulting another, is himselfe
slain, or wounded; or when he falleth into sicknesse by the doing of
some unlawfull act; such hurt, though in respect of God, who is the
author of Nature, it may be said to be inflicted, and therefore a
Punishment divine; yet it is not contaned in the name of Punishment in
respect of men, because it is not inflicted by the Authority of man.




Hurt Inflicted, If Lesse Than The Benefit Of Transgressing,

Is Not Punishment

Seventhly, If the harm inflicted be lesse than the benefit, or
contentment that naturally followeth the crime committed, that harm is
not within the definition; and is rather the Price, or Redemption, than
the Punishment of a Crime: Because it is of the nature of Punishment, to
have for end, the disposing of men to obey the Law; which end (if it
be lesse that the benefit of the transgression) it attaineth not, but
worketh a contrary effect.




Where The Punishment Is Annexed To The Law, A Greater Hurt Is Not

Punishment, But Hostility

Eighthly, If a Punishment be determined and prescribed in the Law it
selfe, and after the crime committed, there be a greater Punishment
inflicted, the excesse is not Punishment, but an act of hostility. For
seeing the aym of Punishment is not a revenge, but terrour; and the
terrour of a great Punishment unknown, is taken away by the declaration
of a lesse, the unexpected addition is no part of the Punishment.
But where there is no Punishment at all determined by the Law, there
whatsoever is inflicted, hath the nature of Punishment. For he that
goes about the violation of a Law, wherein no penalty is determined,
expecteth an indeterminate, that is to say, an arbitrary Punishment.




Hurt Inflicted For A Fact Done Before The Law, No Punishment

Ninthly, Harme inflicted for a Fact done before there was a Law that
forbad it, is not Punishment, but an act of Hostility: For before the
Law, there is no transgression of the Law: But Punishment supposeth a
fact judged, to have been a transgression of the Law; Therefore
Harme inflicted before the Law made, is not Punishment, but an act of
Hostility.




The Representative Of The Common-wealth Unpunishable

Tenthly, Hurt inflicted on the Representative of the Common-wealth, is
not Punishment, but an act of Hostility: Because it is of the nature
of Punishment, to be inflicted by publique Authority, which is the
Authority only of the Representative it self.




Hurt To Revolted Subjects Is Done By Right Of War, Not

By Way Of Punishment

Lastly, Harme inflicted upon one that is a declared enemy, fals not
under the name of Punishment: Because seeing they were either never
subject to the Law, and therefore cannot transgresse it; or having been
subject to it, and professing to be no longer so, by consequence deny
they can transgresse it, all the Harmes that can be done them, must be
taken as acts of Hostility. But in declared Hostility, all infliction of
evill is lawfull. From whence it followeth, that if a subject shall
by fact, or word, wittingly, and deliberatly deny the authority of
the Representative of the Common-wealth, (whatsoever penalty hath
been formerly ordained for Treason,) he may lawfully be made to suffer
whatsoever the Representative will: For in denying subjection, he denyes
such Punishment as by the Law hath been ordained; and therefore suffers
as an enemy of the Common-wealth; that is, according to the will of
the Representative. For the Punishments set down in the Law, are to
Subjects, not to Enemies; such as are they, that having been by their
own act Subjects, deliberately revolting, deny the Soveraign Power.

The first, and most generall distribution of Punishments, is into
Divine, and Humane. Of the former I shall have occasion, to speak, in a
more convenient place hereafter.

Humane, are those Punishments that be inflicted by the Commandement
of Man; and are either Corporall, or Pecuniary, or Ignominy, or
Imprisonment, or Exile, or mixt of these.




Punishments Corporall

Corporall Punishment is that, which is inflicted on the body directly,
and according to the intention of him that inflicteth it: such as are
stripes, or wounds, or deprivation of such pleasures of the body, as
were before lawfully enjoyed.




Capitall

And of these, some be Capitall, some Lesse than Capitall. Capitall, is
the Infliction of Death; and that either simply, or with torment. Lesse
than Capitall, are Stripes, Wounds, Chains, and any other corporall
Paine, not in its own nature mortall. For if upon the Infliction of
a Punishment death follow not in the Intention of the Inflicter, the
Punishment is not be bee esteemed Capitall, though the harme prove
mortall by an accident not to be foreseen; in which case death is not
inflicted, but hastened.

Pecuniary Punishment, is that which consisteth not only in the
deprivation of a Summe of Mony, but also of Lands, or any other goods
which are usually bought and sold for mony. And in case the Law, that
ordaineth such a punishment, be made with design to gather mony, from
such as shall transgresse the same, it is not properly a Punishment,
but the Price of priviledge, and exemption from the Law, which doth not
absolutely forbid the fact, but only to those that are not able to pay
the mony: except where the Law is Naturall, or part of Religion; for in
that case it is not an exemption from the Law, but a transgression of
it. As where a Law exacteth a Pecuniary mulct, of them that take the
name of God in vaine, the payment of the mulct, is not the price of a
dispensation to sweare, but the Punishment of the transgression of a Law
undispensable. In like manner if the Law impose a Summe of Mony to be
payd, to him that has been Injured; this is but a satisfaction for the
hurt done him; and extinguisheth the accusation of the party injured,
not the crime of the offender.




Ignominy

Ignominy, is the infliction of such Evill, as is made Dishonorable;
or the deprivation of such Good, as is made Honourable by the
Common-wealth. For there be some things Honorable by Nature; as the
effects of Courage, Magnanimity, Strength, Wisdome, and other abilities
of body and mind: Others made Honorable by the Common-wealth; as Badges,
Titles, Offices, or any other singular marke of the Soveraigns favour.
The former, (though they may faile by nature, or accident,) cannot be
taken away by a Law; and therefore the losse of them is not Punishment.
But the later, may be taken away by the publique authority that made
them Honorable, and are properly Punishments: Such are degrading men
condemned, of their Badges, Titles, and Offices; or declaring them
uncapable of the like in time to come.




Imprisonment

Imprisonment, is when a man is by publique Authority deprived of
liberty; and may happen from two divers ends; whereof one is the safe
custody of a man accused; the other is the inflicting of paine on a man
condemned. The former is not Punishment; because no man is supposed
to be Punisht, before he be Judicially heard, and declared guilty.
And therefore whatsoever hurt a man is made to suffer by bonds, or
restraint, before his cause be heard, over and above that which is
necessary to assure his custody, is against the Law of Nature. But the
Later is Punishment, because Evill, and inflicted by publique Authority,
for somewhat that has by the same Authority been Judged a Transgression
of the Law. Under this word Imprisonment, I comprehend all restraint of
motion, caused by an externall obstacle, be it a House, which is called
by the generall name of a Prison; or an Iland, as when men are said to
be confined to it; or a place where men are set to worke, as in old time
men have been condemned to Quarries, and in these times to Gallies; or
be it a Chaine, or any other such impediment.




Exile

Exile, (Banishment) is when a man is for a crime, condemned to depart
out of the dominion of the Common-wealth, or out of a certaine part
thereof; and during a prefixed time, or for ever, not to return into it:
and seemeth not in its own nature, without other circumstances, to be
a Punishment; but rather an escape, or a publique commandement to
avoid Punishment by flight. And Cicero sayes, there was never any such
Punishment ordained in the City of Rome; but cals it a refuge of men in
danger. For if a man banished, be neverthelesse permitted to enjoy
his Goods, and the Revenue of his Lands, the meer change of ayr is no
punishment; nor does it tend to that benefit of the Common-wealth, for
which all Punishments are ordained, (that is to say, to the forming of
mens wils to the observation of the Law;) but many times to the dammage
of the Common-wealth. For a Banished man, is a lawfull enemy of the
Common-wealth that banished him; as being no more a Member of the
same. But if he be withall deprived of his Lands, or Goods, then
the Punishment lyeth not in the Exile, but is to be reckoned amongst
Punishments Pecuniary.




The Punishment Of Innocent Subjects Is Contrary To The Law Of Nature

All Punishments of Innocent subjects, be they great or little, are
against the Law of Nature; For Punishment is only of Transgression of
the Law, and therefore there can be no Punishment of the Innocent. It
is therefore a violation, First, of that Law of Nature, which forbiddeth
all men, in their Revenges, to look at any thing but some future good:
For there can arrive no good to the Common-wealth, by Punishing the
Innocent. Secondly, of that, which forbiddeth Ingratitude: For seeing
all Soveraign Power, is originally given by the consent of every one of
the Subjects, to the end they should as long as they are obedient, be
protected thereby; the Punishment of the Innocent, is a rendring of
Evill for Good. And thirdly, of the Law that commandeth Equity; that
is to say, an equall distribution of Justice; which in Punishing the
Innocent is not observed.




But The Harme Done To Innocents In War, Not So

But the Infliction of what evill soever, on an Innocent man, that is not
a Subject, if it be for the benefit of the Common-wealth, and without
violation of any former Covenant, is no breach of the Law of Nature.
For all men that are not Subjects, are either Enemies, or else they have
ceased from being so, by some precedent covenants. But against Enemies,
whom the Common-wealth judgeth capable to do them hurt, it is lawfull by
the originall Right of Nature to make warre; wherein the Sword Judgeth
not, nor doth the Victor make distinction of Nocent and Innocent, as to
the time past; nor has other respect of mercy, than as it conduceth to
the good of his own People. And upon this ground it is, that also
in Subjects, who deliberatly deny the Authority of the Common-wealth
established, the vengeance is lawfully extended, not onely to the
Fathers, but also to the third and fourth generation not yet in being,
and consequently innocent of the fact, for which they are afflicted:
because the nature of this offence, consisteth in the renouncing of
subjection; which is a relapse into the condition of warre, commonly
called Rebellion; and they that so offend, suffer not as Subjects, but
as Enemies. For Rebellion, is but warre renewed.




Reward, Is Either Salary, Or Grace

REWARD, is either of Gift, or by Contract. When by Contract, it is
called Salary, and Wages; which is benefit due for service performed, or
promised. When of Gift, it is benefit proceeding from the Grace of them
that bestow it, to encourage, or enable men to do them service. And
therefore when the Soveraign of a Common-wealth appointeth a Salary
to any publique Office, he that receiveth it, is bound in Justice
to performe his office; otherwise, he is bound onely in honour, to
acknowledgement, and an endeavour of requitall. For though men have no
lawfull remedy, when they be commanded to quit their private businesse,
to serve the publique, without Reward, or Salary; yet they are not
bound thereto, by the Law of Nature, nor by the institution of the
Common-wealth, unlesse the service cannot otherwise be done; because it
is supposed the Soveraign may make use of all their means, insomuch as
the most common Souldier, may demand the wages of his warrefare, as a
debt.




Benefits Bestowed For Fear, Are Not Rewards

The benefits which a Soveraign bestoweth on a Subject, for fear of some
power, and ability he hath to do hurt to the Common-wealth, are not
properly Rewards; for they are not Salaryes; because there is in this
case no contract supposed, every man being obliged already not to do the
Common-wealth disservice: nor are they Graces; because they be extorted
by feare, which ought not to be incident to the Soveraign Power: but
are rather Sacrifices, which the Soveraign (considered in his naturall
person, and not in the person of the Common-wealth) makes, for the
appeasing the discontent of him he thinks more potent than himselfe; and
encourage not to obedience, but on the contrary, to the continuance, and
increasing of further extortion.




Salaries Certain And Casuall

And whereas some Salaries are certain, and proceed from the publique
Treasure; and others uncertain, and casuall, proceeding from the
execution of the Office for which the Salary is ordained; the later
is in some cases hurtfull to the Common-wealth; as in the case of
Judicature. For where the benefit of the Judges, and Ministers of a
Court of Justice, ariseth for the multitude of Causes that are brought
to their cognisance, there must needs follow two Inconveniences: One,
is the nourishing of sutes; for the more sutes, the greater benefit: and
another that depends on that, which is contention about Jurisdiction;
each Court drawing to it selfe, as many Causes as it can. But in
offices of Execution there are not those Inconveniences; because their
employment cannot be encreased by any endeavour of their own. And thus
much shall suffice for the nature of Punishment, and Reward; which are,
as it were, the Nerves and Tendons, that move the limbes and joynts of a
Common-wealth.

Hitherto I have set forth the nature of Man, (whose Pride and other
Passions have compelled him to submit himselfe to Government;) together
with the great power of his Governour, whom I compared to Leviathan,
taking that comparison out of the two last verses of the one and
fortieth of Job; where God having set forth the great power of
Leviathan, called him King of the Proud. "There is nothing," saith he,
"on earth, to be compared with him. He is made so as not be afraid. Hee
seeth every high thing below him; and is King of all the children of
pride." But because he is mortall, and subject to decay, as all other
Earthly creatures are; and because there is that in heaven, (though not
on earth) that he should stand in fear of, and whose Lawes he ought to
obey; I shall in the next following Chapters speak of his Diseases, and
the causes of his Mortality; and of what Lawes of Nature he is bound to
obey.



CHAPTER XXIX. OF THOSE THINGS THAT WEAKEN, OR TEND TO THE DISSOLUTION OF
A COMMON-WEALTH


Dissolution Of Common-wealths Proceedeth From Imperfect Institution

Though nothing can be immortall, which mortals make; yet, if men had the
use of reason they pretend to, their Common-wealths might be secured, at
least, from perishing by internall diseases. For by the nature of their
Institution, they are designed to live, as long as Man-kind, or as
the Lawes of Nature, or as Justice it selfe, which gives them life.
Therefore when they come to be dissolved, not by externall violence, but
intestine disorder, the fault is not in men, as they are the Matter; but
as they are the Makers, and orderers of them. For men, as they become
at last weary of irregular justling, and hewing one another, and desire
with all their hearts, to conforme themselves into one firme and lasting
edifice; so for want, both of the art of making fit Laws, to square
their actions by, and also of humility, and patience, to suffer the rude
and combersome points of their present greatnesse to be taken off, they
cannot without the help of a very able Architect, be compiled, into any
other than a crasie building, such as hardly lasting out their own time,
must assuredly fall upon the heads of their posterity.

Amongst the Infirmities therefore of a Common-wealth, I will reckon in
the first place, those that arise from an Imperfect Institution,
and resemble the diseases of a naturall body, which proceed from a
Defectuous Procreation.




Want Of Absolute Power

Of which, this is one, "That a man to obtain a Kingdome, is sometimes
content with lesse Power, than to the Peace, and defence of the
Common-wealth is necessarily required." From whence it commeth to passe,
that when the exercise of the Power layd by, is for the publique safety
to be resumed, it hath the resemblance of as unjust act; which disposeth
great numbers of men (when occasion is presented) to rebell; In the
same manner as the bodies of children, gotten by diseased parents, are
subject either to untimely death, or to purge the ill quality, derived
from their vicious conception, by breaking out into biles and scabbs.
And when Kings deny themselves some such necessary Power, it is not
alwayes (though sometimes) out of ignorance of what is necessary to the
office they undertake; but many times out of a hope to recover the same
again at their pleasure: Wherein they reason not well; because such as
will hold them to their promises, shall be maintained against them by
forraign Common-wealths; who in order to the good of their own Subjects
let slip few occasions to Weaken the estate of their Neighbours. So was
Thomas Beckett Archbishop of Canterbury, supported against Henry
the Second, by the Pope; the subjection of Ecclesiastiques to the
Common-wealth, having been dispensed with by William the Conqueror at
his reception, when he took an Oath, not to infringe the liberty of the
Church. And so were the Barons, whose power was by William Rufus (to
have their help in transferring the Succession from his Elder brother,
to himselfe,) encreased to a degree, inconsistent with the Soveraign
Power, maintained in their Rebellion against King John, by the French.
Nor does this happen in Monarchy onely. For whereas the stile of the
antient Roman Common-wealth, was, The Senate, and People of Rome;
neither Senate, nor People pretended to the whole Power; which first
caused the seditions, of Tiberius Gracchus, Caius Gracchus, Lucius
Saturnius, and others; and afterwards the warres between the Senate and
the People, under Marius and Sylla; and again under Pompey and Caesar,
to the Extinction of their Democraty, and the setting up of Monarchy.

The people of Athens bound themselves but from one onely Action; which
was, that no man on pain of death should propound the renewing of the
warre for the Island of Salamis; And yet thereby, if Solon had not
caused to be given out he was mad, and afterwards in gesture and habit
of a mad-man, and in verse, propounded it to the People that flocked
about him, they had had an enemy perpetually in readinesse, even at the
gates of their Citie; such dammage, or shifts, are all Common-wealths
forced to, that have their Power never so little limited.




Private Judgement Of Good and Evill

In the second place, I observe the Diseases of a Common-wealth, that
proceed from the poyson of seditious doctrines; whereof one is, "That
every private man is Judge of Good and Evill actions." This is true in
the condition of meer Nature, where there are no Civill Lawes; and also
under Civill Government, in such cases as are not determined by the
Law. But otherwise, it is manifest, that the measure of Good and Evill
actions, is the Civill Law; and the Judge the Legislator, who is alwayes
Representative of the Common-wealth. From this false doctrine, men are
disposed to debate with themselves, and dispute the commands of the
Common-wealth; and afterwards to obey, or disobey them, as in their
private judgements they shall think fit. Whereby the Common-wealth is
distracted and Weakened.




Erroneous Conscience

Another doctrine repugnant to Civill Society, is, that "Whatsoever a
man does against his Conscience, is Sinne;" and it dependeth on the
presumption of making himself judge of Good and Evill. For a mans
Conscience, and his Judgement is the same thing; and as the Judgement,
so also the Conscience may be erroneous. Therefore, though he that is
subject to no Civill Law, sinneth in all he does against his Conscience,
because he has no other rule to follow but his own reason; yet it is
not so with him that lives in a Common-wealth; because the Law is the
publique Conscience, by which he hath already undertaken to be guided.
Otherwise in such diversity, as there is of private Consciences, which
are but private opinions, the Common-wealth must needs be distracted,
and no man dare to obey the Soveraign Power, farther than it shall seem
good in his own eyes.




Pretence Of Inspiration

It hath been also commonly taught, "That Faith and Sanctity, are not to
be attained by Study and Reason, but by supernaturall Inspiration, or
Infusion," which granted, I see not why any man should render a reason
of his Faith; or why every Christian should not be also a Prophet; or
why any man should take the Law of his Country, rather than his own
Inspiration, for the rule of his action. And thus wee fall again into
the fault of taking upon us to Judge of Good and Evill; or to make
Judges of it, such private men as pretend to be supernaturally Inspired,
to the Dissolution of all Civill Government. Faith comes by hearing,
and hearing by those accidents, which guide us into the presence of them
that speak to us; which accidents are all contrived by God Almighty; and
yet are not supernaturall, but onely, for the great number of them that
concurre to every effect, unobservable. Faith, and Sanctity, are indeed
not very frequent; but yet they are not Miracles, but brought to passe
by education, discipline, correction, and other naturall wayes, by which
God worketh them in his elect, as such time as he thinketh fit. And
these three opinions, pernicious to Peace and Government, have in this
part of the world, proceeded chiefly from the tongues, and pens of
unlearned Divines; who joyning the words of Holy Scripture together,
otherwise than is agreeable to reason, do what they can, to make men
think, that Sanctity and Naturall Reason, cannot stand together.




Subjecting The Soveraign Power To Civill Lawes

A fourth opinion, repugnant to the nature of a Common-wealth, is this,
"That he that hath the Soveraign Power, is subject to the Civill Lawes."
It is true, that Soveraigns are all subjects to the Lawes of Nature;
because such lawes be Divine, and cannot by any man, or Common-wealth
be abrogated. But to those Lawes which the Soveraign himselfe, that is,
which the Common-wealth maketh, he is not subject. For to be subject to
Lawes, is to be subject to the Common-wealth, that is to the Soveraign
Representative, that is to himselfe; which is not subjection, but
freedome from the Lawes. Which errour, because it setteth the Lawes
above the Soveraign, setteth also a Judge above him, and a Power to
punish him; which is to make a new Soveraign; and again for the same
reason a third, to punish the second; and so continually without end, to
the Confusion, and Dissolution of the Common-wealth.




Attributing Of Absolute Propriety To The Subjects

A Fifth doctrine, that tendeth to the Dissolution of a Common-wealth,
is, "That every private man has an absolute Propriety in his Goods;
such, as excludeth the Right of the Soveraign." Every man has indeed a
Propriety that excludes the Right of every other Subject: And he has it
onely from the Soveraign Power; without the protection whereof, every
other man should have equall Right to the same. But if the Right of the
Soveraign also be excluded, he cannot performe the office they have put
him into; which is, to defend them both from forraign enemies, and
from the injuries of one another; and consequently there is no longer a
Common-wealth.

And if the Propriety of Subjects, exclude not the Right of the
Soveraign Representative to their Goods; much lesse to their offices
of Judicature, or Execution, in which they Represent the Soveraign
himselfe.




Dividing Of The Soveraign Power

There is a Sixth doctrine, plainly, and directly against the essence
of a Common-wealth; and 'tis this, "That the Soveraign Power may be
divided." For what is it to divide the Power of a Common-wealth, but
to Dissolve it; for Powers divided mutually destroy each other. And for
these doctrines, men are chiefly beholding to some of those, that making
profession of the Lawes, endeavour to make them depend upon their own
learning, and not upon the Legislative Power.




Imitation Of Neighbour Nations

And as False Doctrine, so also often-times the Example of different
Government in a neighbouring Nation, disposeth men to alteration of
the forme already setled. So the people of the Jewes were stirred up to
reject God, and to call upon the Prophet Samuel, for a King after
the manner of the Nations; So also the lesser Cities of Greece, were
continually disturbed, with seditions of the Aristocraticall, and
Democraticall factions; one part of almost every Common-wealth, desiring
to imitate the Lacedaemonians; the other, the Athenians. And I doubt
not, but many men, have been contented to see the late troubles in
England, out of an imitation of the Low Countries; supposing there
needed no more to grow rich, than to change, as they had done, the forme
of their Government. For the constitution of mans nature, is of it selfe
subject to desire novelty: When therefore they are provoked to the same,
by the neighbourhood also of those that have been enriched by it, it is
almost impossible for them, not to be content with those that solicite
them to change; and love the first beginnings, though they be grieved
with the continuance of disorder; like hot blouds, that having gotten
the itch, tear themselves with their own nayles, till they can endure
the smart no longer.




Imitation Of The Greeks, And Romans

And as to Rebellion in particular against Monarchy; one of the most
frequent causes of it, is the Reading of the books of Policy, and
Histories of the antient Greeks, and Romans; from which, young men,
and all others that are unprovided of the Antidote of solid Reason,
receiving a strong, and delightfull impression, of the great exploits
of warre, atchieved by the Conductors of their Armies, receive withall
a pleasing Idea, of all they have done besides; and imagine their great
prosperity, not to have proceeded from the aemulation of particular men,
but from the vertue of their popular form of government: Not considering
the frequent Seditions, and Civill Warres, produced by the imperfection
of their Policy. From the reading, I say, of such books, men have
undertaken to kill their Kings, because the Greek and Latine writers,
in their books, and discourses of Policy, make it lawfull, and laudable,
for any man so to do; provided before he do it, he call him Tyrant. For
they say not Regicide, that is, killing of a King, but Tyrannicide, that
is, killing of a Tyrant is lawfull. From the same books, they that live
under a Monarch conceive an opinion, that the Subjects in a Popular
Common-wealth enjoy Liberty; but that in a Monarchy they are all Slaves.
I say, they that live under a Monarchy conceive such an opinion; not
they that live under a Popular Government; for they find no such matter.
In summe, I cannot imagine, how anything can be more prejudiciall to a
Monarchy, than the allowing of such books to be publikely read, without
present applying such correctives of discreet Masters, as are fit to
take away their Venime; Which Venime I will not doubt to compare to
the biting of a mad Dogge, which is a disease the Physicians call
Hydrophobia, or Fear Of Water. For as he that is so bitten, has a
continuall torment of thirst, and yet abhorreth water; and is in such
an estate, as if the poyson endeavoured to convert him into a Dogge:
So when a Monarchy is once bitten to the quick, by those Democraticall
writers, that continually snarle at that estate; it wanteth nothing
more than a strong Monarch, which neverthelesse out of a certain
Tyrannophobia, or feare of being strongly governed, when they have him,
they abhorre.

As here have been Doctors, that hold there be three Soules in a man;
so there be also that think there may be more Soules, (that is, more
Soveraigns,) than one, in a Common-wealth; and set up a Supremacy
against the Soveraignty; Canons against Lawes; and a Ghostly Authority
against the Civill; working on mens minds, with words and distinctions,
that of themselves signifie nothing, but bewray (by their obscurity)
that there walketh (as some think invisibly) another Kingdome, as it
were a Kingdome of Fayries, in the dark. Now seeing it is manifest, that
the Civill Power, and the Power of the Common-wealth is the same
thing; and that Supremacy, and the Power of making Canons, and granting
Faculties, implyeth a Common-wealth; it followeth, that where one is
Soveraign, another Supreme; where one can make Lawes, and another
make Canons; there must needs be two Common-wealths, of one & the same
Subjects; which is a Kingdome divided in it selfe, and cannot stand. For
notwithstanding the insignificant distinction of Temporall, and Ghostly,
they are still two Kingdomes, and every Subject is subject to two
Masters. For seeing the Ghostly Power challengeth the Right to declare
what is Sinne it challengeth by consequence to declare what is Law,
(Sinne being nothing but the transgression of the Law;) and again, the
Civill Power challenging to declare what is Law, every Subject must
obey two Masters, who bothe will have their Commands be observed as Law;
which is impossible. Or, if it be but one Kingdome, either the Civill,
which is the Power of the Common-wealth, must be subordinate to the
Ghostly; or the Ghostly must be subordinate to the Temporall and then
there is no Supremacy but the Temporall. When therefore these two Powers
oppose one another, the Common-wealth cannot but be in great danger
of Civill warre, and Dissolution. For the Civill Authority being more
visible, and standing in the cleerer light of naturall reason cannot
choose but draw to it in all times a very considerable part of the
people: And the Spirituall, though it stand in the darknesse of Schoole
distinctions, and hard words; yet because the fear of Darknesse, and
Ghosts, is greater than other fears, cannot want a party sufficient to
Trouble, and sometimes to Destroy a Common-wealth. And this is a Disease
which not unfitly may be compared to the Epilepsie, or Falling-sicknesse
(which the Jewes took to be one kind of possession by Spirits) in the
Body Naturall. For as in this Disease, there is an unnaturall spirit,
or wind in the head that obstructeth the roots of the Nerves, and moving
them violently, taketh away the motion which naturally they should have
from the power of the Soule in the Brain, and thereby causeth violent,
and irregular motions (which men call Convulsions) in the parts;
insomuch as he that is seized therewith, falleth down sometimes into the
water, and sometimes into the fire, as a man deprived of his senses;
so also in the Body Politique, when the Spirituall power, moveth the
Members of a Common-wealth, by the terrour of punishments, and hope of
rewards (which are the Nerves of it,) otherwise than by the Civill Power
(which is the Soule of the Common-wealth) they ought to be moved; and by
strange, and hard words suffocates the people, and either Overwhelm
the Common-wealth with Oppression, or cast it into the Fire of a Civill
warre.




Mixt Government

Sometimes also in the meerly Civill government, there be more than
one Soule: As when the Power of levying mony, (which is the Nutritive
faculty,) has depended on a generall Assembly; the Power of conduct and
command, (which is the Motive Faculty,) on one man; and the Power of
making Lawes, (which is the Rationall faculty,) on the accidentall
consent, not onely of those two, but also of a third; This endangereth
the Common-wealth, somtimes for want of consent to good Lawes; but most
often for want of such Nourishment, as is necessary to Life, and Motion.
For although few perceive, that such government, is not government,
but division of the Common-wealth into three Factions, and call it
mixt Monarchy; yet the truth is, that it is not one independent
Common-wealth, but three independent Factions; nor one Representative
Person, but three. In the Kingdome of God, there may be three Persons
independent, without breach of unity in God that Reigneth; but where men
Reigne, that be subject to diversity of opinions, it cannot be so. And
therefore if the King bear the person of the People, and the generall
Assembly bear also the person of the People, and another assembly bear
the person of a Part of the people, they are not one Person, nor one
Soveraign, but three Persons, and three Soveraigns.

To what Disease in the Naturall Body of man, I may exactly compare this
irregularity of a Common-wealth, I know not. But I have seen a man, that
had another man growing out of his side, with an head, armes, breast,
and stomach, of his own: If he had had another man growing out of his
other side, the comparison might then have been exact.




Want Of Mony

Hitherto I have named such Diseases of a Common-wealth, as are of the
greatest, and most present danger. There be other, not so great; which
neverthelesse are not unfit to be observed. As first, the difficulty of
raising Mony, for the necessary uses of the Common-wealth; especially
in the approach of warre. This difficulty ariseth from the opinion, that
every Subject hath of a Propriety in his lands and goods, exclusive of
the Soveraigns Right to the use of the same. From whence it commeth to
passe, that the Soveraign Power, which foreseeth the necessities and
dangers of the Common-wealth, (finding the passage of mony to the
publique Treasure obstructed, by the tenacity of the people,) whereas
it ought to extend it selfe, to encounter, and prevent such dangers in
their beginnings, contracteth it selfe as long as it can, and when it
cannot longer, struggles with the people by strategems of Law, to obtain
little summes, which not sufficing, he is fain at last violently to
open the way for present supply, or Perish; and being put often to these
extremities, at last reduceth the people to their due temper; or else
the Common-wealth must perish. Insomuch as we may compare this Distemper
very aptly to an Ague; wherein, the fleshy parts being congealed, or
by venomous matter obstructed; the Veins which by their naturall course
empty themselves into the Heart, are not (as they ought to be) supplyed
from the Arteries, whereby there succeedeth at first a cold contraction,
and trembling of the limbes; and afterwards a hot, and strong endeavour
of the Heart, to force a passage for the Bloud; and before it can do
that, contenteth it selfe with the small refreshments of such things as
coole of a time, till (if Nature be strong enough) it break at last
the contumacy of the parts obstructed, and dissipateth the venome into
sweat; or (if Nature be too weak) the Patient dyeth.




Monopolies And Abuses Of Publicans

Again, there is sometimes in a Common-wealth, a Disease, which
resembleth the Pleurisie; and that is, when the Treasure of the
Common-wealth, flowing out of its due course, is gathered together in
too much abundance, in one, or a few private men, by Monopolies, or by
Farmes of the Publique Revenues; in the same manner as the Blood in a
Pleurisie, getting into the Membrane of the breast, breedeth there an
Inflammation, accompanied with a Fever, and painfull stitches.




Popular Men

Also, the Popularity of a potent Subject, (unlesse the Common-wealth
have very good caution of his fidelity,) is a dangerous Disease; because
the people (which should receive their motion from the Authority of the
Soveraign,) by the flattery, and by the reputation of an ambitious man,
are drawn away from their obedience to the Lawes, to follow a man, of
whose vertues, and designes they have no knowledge. And this is commonly
of more danger in a Popular Government, than in a Monarchy; as it may
easily be made believe, they are the People. By this means it was, that
Julius Caesar, who was set up by the People against the Senate, having
won to himselfe the affections of his Army, made himselfe Master, both
of Senate and People. And this proceeding of popular, and ambitious men,
is plain Rebellion; and may be resembled to the effects of Witchcraft.




Excessive Greatnesse Of A Town, Multitude Of Corporations

Another infirmity of a Common-wealth, is the immoderate greatnesse of a
Town, when it is able to furnish out of its own Circuit, the number, and
expence of a great Army: As also the great number of Corporations; which
are as it were many lesser Common-wealths in the bowels of a greater,
like wormes in the entrayles of a naturall man.




Liberty Of Disputing Against Soveraign Power

To which may be added, the Liberty of Disputing against absolute Power,
by pretenders to Politicall Prudence; which though bred for the most
part in the Lees of the people; yet animated by False Doctrines, are
perpetually medling with the Fundamentall Lawes, to the molestation
of the Common-wealth; like the little Wormes, which Physicians call
Ascarides.

We may further adde, the insatiable appetite, or Bulimia, of enlarging
Dominion; with the incurable Wounds thereby many times received from
the enemy; And the Wens, of ununited conquests, which are many times a
burthen, and with lesse danger lost, than kept; As also the Lethargy of
Ease, and Consumption of Riot and Vain Expence.




Dissolution Of The Common-wealth

Lastly, when in a warre (forraign, or intestine,) the enemies got a
final Victory; so as (the forces of the Common-wealth keeping the field
no longer) there is no farther protection of Subjects in their loyalty;
then is the Common-wealth DISSOLVED, and every man at liberty to protect
himselfe by such courses as his own discretion shall suggest unto him.
For the Soveraign, is the publique Soule, giving Life and Motion to the
Common-wealth; which expiring, the Members are governed by it no more,
than the Carcasse of a man, by his departed (though Immortal) Soule. For
though the Right of a Soveraign Monarch cannot be extinguished by the
act of another; yet the Obligation of the members may. For he that
wants protection, may seek it anywhere; and when he hath it, is obliged
(without fraudulent pretence of having submitted himselfe out of fear,)
to protect his Protection as long as he is able. But when the Power of
an Assembly is once suppressed, the Right of the same perisheth utterly;
because the Assembly it selfe is extinct; and consequently, there is no
possibility for the Soveraignty to re-enter.



CHAPTER XXX. OF THE OFFICE OF THE SOVERAIGN REPRESENTATIVE




The Procuration Of The Good Of The People

The OFFICE of the Soveraign, (be it a Monarch, or an Assembly,)
consisteth in the end, for which he was trusted with the Soveraign
Power, namely the procuration of the Safety Of The People; to which he
is obliged by the Law of Nature, and to render an account thereof to
God, the Author of that Law, and to none but him. But by Safety here, is
not meant a bare Preservation, but also all other Contentments of life,
which every man by lawfull Industry, without danger, or hurt to the
Common-wealth, shall acquire to himselfe.




By Instruction & Lawes

And this is intended should be done, not by care applyed to
Individualls, further than their protection from injuries, when they
shall complain; but by a generall Providence, contained in publique
Instruction, both of Doctrine, and Example; and in the making, and
executing of good Lawes, to which individuall persons may apply their
own cases.




Against The Duty Of A Soveraign To Relinquish Any Essentiall Right

of Soveraignty Or Not To See The People Taught The Grounds Of Them

And because, if the essentiall Rights of Soveraignty (specified before
in the eighteenth Chapter) be taken away, the Common-wealth is thereby
dissolved, and every man returneth into the condition, and calamity of a
warre with every other man, (which is the greatest evill that can happen
in this life;) it is the Office of the Soveraign, to maintain those
Rights entire; and consequently against his duty, First, to transferre
to another, or to lay from himselfe any of them. For he that deserteth
the Means, deserteth the Ends; and he deserteth the Means, that being
the Soveraign, acknowledgeth himselfe subject to the Civill Lawes; and
renounceth the Power of Supreme Judicature; or of making Warre, or
Peace by his own Authority; or of Judging of the Necessities of the
Common-wealth; or of levying Mony, and Souldiers, when, and as much as
in his own conscience he shall judge necessary; or of making Officers,
and Ministers both of Warre, and Peace; or of appointing Teachers, and
examining what Doctrines are conformable, or contrary to the Defence,
Peace, and Good of the people. Secondly, it is against his duty, to let
the people be ignorant, or mis-in-formed of the grounds, and reasons
of those his essentiall Rights; because thereby men are easie to be
seduced, and drawn to resist him, when the Common-wealth shall require
their use and exercise.

And the grounds of these Rights, have the rather need to be diligently,
and truly taught; because they cannot be maintained by any Civill Law,
or terrour of legal punishment. For a Civill Law, that shall forbid
Rebellion, (and such is all resistance to the essentiall Rights of
Soveraignty,) is not (as a Civill Law) any obligation, but by vertue
onely of the Law of Nature, that forbiddeth the violation of Faith;
which naturall obligation if men know not, they cannot know the Right of
any Law the Soveraign maketh. And for the Punishment, they take it
but for an act of Hostility; which when they think they have strength
enough, they will endeavour by acts of Hostility, to avoyd.




Objection Of Those That Say There Are No Principles Of Reason For

Absolute Soveraignty

As I have heard some say, that Justice is but a word, without substance;
and that whatsoever a man can by force, or art, acquire to himselfe,
(not onely in the condition of warre, but also in a Common-wealth,) is
his own, which I have already shewed to be false: So there be also
that maintain, that there are no grounds, nor Principles of Reason, to
sustain those essentiall Rights, which make Soveraignty absolute. For
if there were, they would have been found out in some place, or other;
whereas we see, there has not hitherto been any Common-wealth, where
those Rights have been acknowledged, or challenged. Wherein they argue
as ill, as if the Savage people of America, should deny there were any
grounds, or Principles of Reason, so to build a house, as to last as
long as the materials, because they never yet saw any so well built.
Time, and Industry, produce every day new knowledge. And as the art
of well building, is derived from Principles of Reason, observed by
industrious men, that had long studied the nature of materials, and
the divers effects of figure, and proportion, long after mankind
began (though poorly) to build: So, long time after men have begun to
constitute Common-wealths, imperfect, and apt to relapse into disorder,
there may, Principles of Reason be found out, by industrious meditation,
to make use of them, or be neglected by them, or not, concerneth my
particular interest, at this day, very little. But supposing that
these of mine are not such Principles of Reason; yet I am sure they are
Principles from Authority of Scripture; as I shall make it appear, when
I shall come to speak of the Kingdome of God, (administred by Moses,)
over the Jewes, his peculiar people by Covenant.




Objection From The Incapacity Of The Vulgar

But they say again, that though the Principles be right, yet Common
people are not of capacity enough to be made to understand them. I
should be glad, that the Rich, and Potent Subjects of a Kingdome, or
those that are accounted the most Learned, were no lesse incapable than
they. But all men know, that the obstructions to this kind of doctrine,
proceed not so much from the difficulty of the matter, as from the
interest of them that are to learn. Potent men, digest hardly any thing
that setteth up a Power to bridle their affections; and Learned men,
any thing that discovereth their errours, and thereby lesseneth their
Authority: whereas the Common-peoples minds, unlesse they be tainted
with dependance on the Potent, or scribbled over with the opinions
of their Doctors, are like clean paper, fit to receive whatsoever by
Publique Authority shall be imprinted in them. Shall whole Nations be
brought to Acquiesce in the great Mysteries of Christian Religion, which
are above Reason; and millions of men be made believe, that the same
Body may be in innumerable places, at one and the same time, which
is against Reason; and shall not men be able, by their teaching, and
preaching, protected by the Law, to make that received, which is so
consonant to Reason, that any unprejudicated man, needs no more to learn
it, than to hear it? I conclude therefore, that in the instruction
of the people in the Essentiall Rights (which are the Naturall, and
Fundamentall Lawes) of Soveraignty, there is no difficulty, (whilest a
Soveraign has his Power entire,) but what proceeds from his own fault,
or the fault of those whom he trusteth in the administration of the
Common-wealth; and consequently, it is his Duty, to cause them so to be
instructed; and not onely his Duty, but his Benefit also, and Security,
against the danger that may arrive to himselfe in his naturall Person,
from Rebellion.




Subjects Are To Be Taught, Not To Affect Change Of Government

And (to descend to particulars) the People are to be taught, First, that
they ought not to be in love with any forme of Government they see
in their neighbour Nations, more than with their own, nor (whatsoever
present prosperity they behold in Nations that are otherwise governed
than they,) to desire change. For the prosperity of a People ruled by
an Aristocraticall, or Democraticall assembly, commeth not from
Aristocracy, nor from Democracy, but from the Obedience, and Concord of
the Subjects; nor do the people flourish in a Monarchy, because one man
has the right to rule them, but because they obey him. Take away in
any kind of State, the Obedience, (and consequently the Concord of the
People,) and they shall not onely not flourish, but in short time be
dissolved. And they that go about by disobedience, to doe no more than
reforme the Common-wealth, shall find they do thereby destroy it; like
the foolish daughters of Peleus (in the fable;) which desiring to renew
the youth of their decrepit Father, did by the Counsell of Medea, cut
him in pieces, and boyle him, together with strange herbs, but made not
of him a new man. This desire of change, is like the breach of the first
of Gods Commandements: For there God says, Non Habebis Deos Alienos;
Thou shalt not have the Gods of other Nations; and in another place
concerning Kings, that they are Gods.




Nor Adhere (Against The Soveraign) To Popular Men

Secondly, they are to be taught, that they ought not to be led with
admiration of the vertue of any of their fellow Subjects, how
high soever he stand, nor how conspicuously soever he shine in the
Common-wealth; nor of any Assembly, (except the Soveraign Assembly,)
so as to deferre to them any obedience, or honour, appropriate to the
Soveraign onely, whom (in their particular stations) they represent; nor
to receive any influence from them, but such as is conveighed by them
from the Soveraign Authority. For that Soveraign, cannot be imagined to
love his People as he ought, that is not Jealous of them, but suffers
them by the flattery of Popular men, to be seduced from their loyalty,
as they have often been, not onely secretly, but openly, so as to
proclaime Marriage with them In Facie Ecclesiae by Preachers; and by
publishing the same in the open streets: which may fitly be compared to
the violation of the second of the ten Commandements.



Nor To Dispute The Soveraign Power

Thirdly, in consequence to this, they ought to be informed, how great
fault it is, to speak evill of the Soveraign Representative, (whether
One man, or an Assembly of men;) or to argue and dispute his Power, or
any way to use his Name irreverently, whereby he may be brought into
Contempt with his People, and their Obedience (in which the safety
of the Common-wealth consisteth) slackened. Which doctrine the third
Commandement by resemblance pointeth to.




And To Have Dayes Set Apart To Learn Their Duty

Fourthly, seeing people cannot be taught this, nor when 'tis taught,
remember it, nor after one generation past, so much as know in whom the
Soveraign Power is placed, without setting a part from their ordinary
labour, some certain times, in which they may attend those that are
appointed to instruct them; It is necessary that some such times be
determined, wherein they may assemble together, and (after prayers and
praises given to God, the Soveraign of Soveraigns) hear those their
Duties told them, and the Positive Lawes, such as generally concern them
all, read and expounded, and be put in mind of the Authority that maketh
them Lawes. To this end had the Jewes every seventh day, a Sabbath, in
which the Law was read and expounded; and in the solemnity whereof they
were put in mind, that their King was God; that having created the world
in six days, he rested the seventh day; and by their resting on it from
their labour, that that God was their King, which redeemed them from
their servile, and painfull labour in Egypt, and gave them a time, after
they had rejoyced in God, to take joy also in themselves, by lawfull
recreation. So that the first Table of the Commandements, is spent all,
in setting down the summe of Gods absolute Power; not onely as God,
but as King by pact, (in peculiar) of the Jewes; and may therefore give
light, to those that have the Soveraign Power conferred on them by the
consent of men, to see what doctrine they Ought to teach their Subjects.




And To Honour Their Parents

And because the first instruction of Children, dependeth on the care
of their Parents; it is necessary that they should be obedient to them,
whilest they are under their tuition; and not onely so, but that also
afterwards (as gratitude requireth,) they acknowledge the benefit of
their education, by externall signes of honour. To which end they are
to be taught, that originally the Father of every man was also his
Soveraign Lord, with power over him of life and death; and that the
Fathers of families, when by instituting a Common-wealth, they resigned
that absolute Power, yet it was never intended, they should lose the
honour due unto them for their education. For to relinquish such right,
was not necessary to the Institution of Soveraign Power; nor would there
be any reason, why any man should desire to have children, or take the
care to nourish, and instruct them, if they were afterwards to have no
other benefit from them, than from other men. And this accordeth with
the fifth Commandement.




And To Avoyd Doing Of Injury:

Again, every Soveraign Ought to cause Justice to be taught, which
(consisting in taking from no man what is his) is as much as to say, to
cause men to be taught not to deprive their Neighbour, by violence,
or fraud, of any thing which by the Soveraign Authority is theirs. Of
things held in propriety, those that are dearest to a man are his own
life, & limbs; and in the next degree, (in most men,) those that
concern conjugall affection; and after them riches and means of living.
Therefore the People are to be taught, to abstain from violence to
one anothers person, by private revenges; from violation of conjugall
honour; and from forcibly rapine, and fraudulent surreption of one
anothers goods. For which purpose also it is necessary they be shewed
the evill consequences of false Judgement, by corruption either of
Judges or Witnesses, whereby the distinction of propriety is taken away,
and Justice becomes of no effect: all which things are intimated in the
sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth Commandements.




And To Do All This Sincerely From The Heart

Lastly, they are to be taught, that not onely the unjust facts, but the
designes and intentions to do them, (though by accident hindred,) are
Injustice; which consisteth in the pravity of the will, as well as in
the irregularity of the act. And this is the intention of the tenth
Commandement, and the summe of the Second Table; which is reduced all to
this one Commandement of mutuall Charity, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thy selfe:" as the summe of the first Table is reduced to "the love
of God;" whom they had then newly received as their King.




The Use Of Universities

As for the Means, and Conduits, by which the people may receive this
Instruction, wee are to search, by what means so may Opinions,
contrary to the peace of Man-kind, upon weak and false Principles, have
neverthelesse been so deeply rooted in them. I mean those, which I have
in the precedent Chapter specified: as That men shall Judge of what is
lawfull and unlawfull, not by the Law it selfe, but by their own
private Judgements; That Subjects sinne in obeying the Commands of the
Common-wealth, unlesse they themselves have first judged them to be
lawfull: That their Propriety in their riches is such, as to exclude the
Dominion, which the Common-wealth hath over the same: That it is lawfull
for Subjects to kill such, as they call Tyrants: That the Soveraign
Power may be divided, and the like; which come to be instilled into
the People by this means. They whom necessity, or covetousnesse keepeth
attent on their trades, and labour; and they, on the other side, whom
superfluity, or sloth carrieth after their sensuall pleasures, (which
two sorts of men take up the greatest part of Man-kind,) being diverted
from the deep meditation, which the learning of truth, not onely in the
matter of Naturall Justice, but also of all other Sciences necessarily
requireth, receive the Notions of their duty, chiefly from Divines
in the Pulpit, and partly from such of their Neighbours, or familiar
acquaintance, as having the Faculty of discoursing readily, and
plausibly, seem wiser and better learned in cases of Law, and
Conscience, than themselves. And the Divines, and such others as make
shew of Learning, derive their knowledge from the Universities, and from
the Schooles of Law, or from the Books, which by men eminent in
those Schooles, and Universities have been published. It is therefore
manifest, that the Instruction of the people, dependeth wholly, on the
right teaching of Youth in the Universities. But are not (may some men
say) the Universities of England learned enough already to do that? or
is it you will undertake to teach the Universities? Hard questions. Yet
to the first, I doubt not to answer; that till towards the later end of
Henry the Eighth, the Power of the Pope, was alwayes upheld against the
Power of the Common-wealth, principally by the Universities; and that
the doctrines maintained by so many Preachers, against the Soveraign
Power of the King, and by so many Lawyers, and others, that had their
education there, is a sufficient argument, that though the Universities
were not authors of those false doctrines, yet they knew not how to
plant the true. For in such a contradiction of Opinions, it is most
certain, that they have not been sufficiently instructed; and 'tis no
wonder, if they yet retain a relish of that subtile liquor, wherewith
they were first seasoned, against the Civill Authority. But to the later
question, it is not fit, nor needfull for me to say either I, or No: for
any man that sees what I am doing, may easily perceive what I think.

The safety of the People, requireth further, from him, or them that have
the Soveraign Power, that Justice be equally administred to all degrees
of People; that is, that as well the rich, and mighty, as poor and
obscure persons, may be righted of the injuries done them; so as the
great, may have no greater hope of impunity, when they doe violence,
dishonour, or any Injury to the meaner sort, than when one of these,
does the like to one of them: For in this consisteth Equity; to which,
as being a Precept of the Law of Nature, a Soveraign is as much subject,
as any of the meanest of his People. All breaches of the Law, are
offences against the Common-wealth: but there be some, that are also
against private Persons. Those that concern the Common-wealth onely, may
without breach of Equity be pardoned; for every man may pardon what is
done against himselfe, according to his own discretion. But an offence
against a private man, cannot in Equity be pardoned, without the consent
of him that is injured; or reasonable satisfaction.

The Inequality of Subjects, proceedeth from the Acts of Soveraign Power;
and therefore has no more place in the presence of the Soveraign; that
is to say, in a Court of Justice, then the Inequality between Kings,
and their Subjects, in the presence of the King of Kings. The honour of
great Persons, is to be valued for their beneficence, and the aydes
they give to men of inferiour rank, or not at all. And the violences,
oppressions, and injuries they do, are not extenuated, but aggravated by
the greatnesse of their persons; because they have least need to commit
them. The consequences of this partiality towards the great, proceed in
this manner. Impunity maketh Insolence; Insolence Hatred; and Hatred,
an Endeavour to pull down all oppressing and contumelious greatnesse,
though with the ruine of the Common-wealth.




Equall Taxes

To Equall Justice, appertaineth also the Equall imposition of Taxes;
the equality whereof dependeth not on the Equality of riches, but on the
Equality of the debt, that every man oweth to the Common-wealth for his
defence. It is not enough, for a man to labour for the maintenance
of his life; but also to fight, (if need be,) for the securing of his
labour. They must either do as the Jewes did after their return from
captivity, in re-edifying the Temple, build with one hand, and hold the
Sword in the other; or else they must hire others to fight for them. For
the Impositions that are layd on the People by the Soveraign Power, are
nothing else but the Wages, due to them that hold the publique Sword,
to defend private men in the exercise of severall Trades, and Callings.
Seeing then the benefit that every one receiveth thereby, is the
enjoyment of life, which is equally dear to poor, and rich; the debt
which a poor man oweth them that defend his life, is the same which a
rich man oweth for the defence of his; saving that the rich, who have
the service of the poor, may be debtors not onely for their own persons,
but for many more. Which considered, the Equality of Imposition,
consisteth rather in the Equality of that which is consumed, than of the
riches of the persons that consume the same. For what reason is there,
that he which laboureth much, and sparing the fruits of his labour,
consumeth little, should be more charged, then he that living idlely,
getteth little, and spendeth all he gets; seeing the one hath no
more protection from the Common-wealth, then the other? But when the
Impositions, are layd upon those things which men consume, every man
payeth Equally for what he useth: Nor is the Common-wealth defrauded, by
the luxurious waste of private men.




Publique Charity

And whereas many men, by accident unevitable, become unable to maintain
themselves by their labour; they ought not to be left to the Charity
of private persons; but to be provided for, (as far-forth as the
necessities of Nature require,) by the Lawes of the Common-wealth. For
as it is Uncharitablenesse in any man, to neglect the impotent; so it
is in the Soveraign of a Common-wealth, to expose them to the hazard of
such uncertain Charity.




Prevention Of Idlenesse

But for such as have strong bodies, the case is otherwise: they are to
be forced to work; and to avoyd the excuse of not finding employment,
there ought to be such Lawes, as may encourage all manner of Arts; as
Navigation, Agriculture, Fishing, and all manner of Manifacture that
requires labour. The multitude of poor, and yet strong people still
encreasing, they are to be transplanted into Countries not sufficiently
inhabited: where neverthelesse, they are not to exterminate those they
find there; but constrain them to inhabit closer together, and not range
a great deal of ground, to snatch what they find; but to court each
little Plot with art and labour, to give them their sustenance in due
season. And when all the world is overchargd with Inhabitants, then the
last remedy of all is Warre; which provideth for every man, by Victory,
or Death.




Good Lawes What

To the care of the Soveraign, belongeth the making of Good Lawes. But
what is a good Law? By a Good Law, I mean not a Just Law: for no Law can
be Unjust. The Law is made by the Soveraign Power, and all that is done
by such Power, is warranted, and owned by every one of the people; and
that which every man will have so, no man can say is unjust. It is in
the Lawes of a Common-wealth, as in the Lawes of Gaming: whatsoever
the Gamesters all agree on, is Injustice to none of them. A good Law
is that, which is Needfull, for the Good Of The People, and withall
Perspicuous.




Such As Are Necessary

For the use of Lawes, (which are but Rules Authorised) is not to bind
the People from all Voluntary actions; but to direct and keep them in
such a motion, as not to hurt themselves by their own impetuous desires,
rashnesse, or indiscretion, as Hedges are set, not to stop Travellers,
but to keep them in the way. And therefore a Law that is not Needfull,
having not the true End of a Law, is not Good. A Law may be conceived to
be Good, when it is for the benefit of the Soveraign; though it be
not Necessary for the People; but it is not so. For the good of the
Soveraign and People, cannot be separated. It is a weak Soveraign, that
has weak Subjects; and a weak People, whose Soveraign wanteth Power to
rule them at his will. Unnecessary Lawes are not good Lawes; but trapps
for Mony: which where the right of Soveraign Power is acknowledged, are
superfluous; and where it is not acknowledged, unsufficient to defend
the People.




Such As Are Perspicuous

The Perspicuity, consisteth not so much in the words of the Law it
selfe, as in a Declaration of the Causes, and Motives, for which it was
made. That is it, that shewes us the meaning of the Legislator, and the
meaning of the Legislator known, the Law is more easily understood
by few, than many words. For all words, are subject to ambiguity;
and therefore multiplication of words in the body of the Law, is
multiplication of ambiguity: Besides it seems to imply, (by too much
diligence,) that whosoever can evade the words, is without the compasse
of the Law. And this is a cause of many unnecessary Processes. For when
I consider how short were the Lawes of antient times; and how they
grew by degrees still longer; me thinks I see a contention between the
Penners, and Pleaders of the Law; the former seeking to circumscribe
the later; and the later to evade their circumscriptions; and that the
Pleaders have got the Victory. It belongeth therefore to the Office of
a Legislator, (such as is in all Common-wealths the Supreme
Representative, be it one Man, or an Assembly,) to make the reason
Perspicuous, why the Law was made; and the Body of the Law it selfe, as
short, but in as proper, and significant termes, as may be.




Punishments

It belongeth also to the Office of the Soveraign, to make a right
application of Punishments, and Rewards. And seeing the end of punishing
is not revenge, and discharge of choler; but correction, either of the
offender, or of others by his example; the severest Punishments are to
be inflicted for those Crimes, that are of most Danger to the
Publique; such as are those which proceed from malice to the Government
established; those that spring from contempt of Justice; those that
provoke Indignation in the Multitude; and those, which unpunished, seem
Authorised, as when they are committed by Sonnes, Servants, or Favorites
of men in Authority: For Indignation carrieth men, not onely against the
Actors, and Authors of Injustice; but against all Power that is likely
to protect them; as in the case of Tarquin; when for the Insolent act of
one of his Sonnes, he was driven out of Rome, and the Monarchy it selfe
dissolved. But Crimes of Infirmity; such as are those which proceed
from great provocation, from great fear, great need, or from ignorance
whether the Fact be a great Crime, or not, there is place many times for
Lenity, without prejudice to the Common-wealth; and Lenity when there is
such place for it, is required by the Law of Nature. The Punishment of
the Leaders, and teachers in a Commotion; not the poore seduced People,
when they are punished, can profit the Common-wealth by their example.
To be severe to the People, is to punish that ignorance, which may in
great part be imputed to the Soveraign, whose fault it was, they were no
better instructed.




Rewards

In like manner it belongeth to the Office, and Duty of the Soveraign,
to apply his Rewards alwayes so, as there may arise from them benefit
to the Common-wealth: wherein consisteth their Use, and End; and is then
done, when they that have well served the Common-wealth, are with
as little expence of the Common Treasure, as is possible, so well
recompenced, as others thereby may be encouraged, both to serve the same
as faithfully as they can, and to study the arts by which they may be
enabled to do it better. To buy with Mony, or Preferment, from a Popular
ambitious Subject, to be quiet, and desist from making ill impressions
in the mindes of the People, has nothing of the nature of Reward; (which
is ordained not for disservice, but for service past;) nor a signe of
Gratitude, but of Fear: nor does it tend to the Benefit, but to the
Dammage of the Publique. It is a contention with Ambition, like that of
Hercules with the Monster Hydra, which having many heads, for every one
that was vanquished, there grew up three. For in like manner, when the
stubbornnesse of one Popular man, is overcome with Reward, there arise
many more (by the Example) that do the same Mischiefe, in hope of like
Benefit: and as all sorts of Manifacture, so also Malice encreaseth by
being vendible. And though sometimes a Civill warre, may be differred,
by such wayes as that, yet the danger growes still the greater, and the
Publique ruine more assured. It is therefore against the Duty of the
Soveraign, to whom the Publique Safety is committed, to Reward those
that aspire to greatnesse by disturbing the Peace of their Country, and
not rather to oppose the beginnings of such men, with a little danger,
than after a longer time with greater.




Counsellours

Another Businesse of the Soveraign, is to choose good Counsellours;
I mean such, whose advice he is to take in the Government of the
Common-wealth. For this word Counsell, Consilium, corrupted from
Considium, is a large signification, and comprehendeth all Assemblies
of men that sit together, not onely to deliberate what is to be done
hereafter, but also to judge of Facts past, and of Law for the present.
I take it here in the first sense onely: And in this sense, there is no
choyce of Counsell, neither in a Democracy, nor Aristocracy; because the
persons Counselling are members of the person Counselled. The choyce
of Counsellours therefore is to Monarchy; In which, the Soveraign that
endeavoureth not to make choyce of those, that in every kind are the
most able, dischargeth not his Office as he ought to do. The most able
Counsellours, are they that have least hope of benefit by giving evill
Counsell, and most knowledge of those things that conduce to the Peace,
and Defence of the Common-wealth. It is a hard matter to know who
expecteth benefit from publique troubles; but the signes that guide to a
just suspicion, is the soothing of the people in their unreasonable,
or irremediable grievances, by men whose estates are not sufficient to
discharge their accustomed expences, and may easily be observed by any
one whom it concerns to know it. But to know, who has most knowledge of
the Publique affaires, is yet harder; and they that know them, need them
a great deale the lesse. For to know, who knowes the Rules almost of any
Art, is a great degree of the knowledge of the same Art; because no
man can be assured of the truth of anothers Rules, but he that is first
taught to understand them. But the best signes of Knowledge of any
Art, are, much conversing in it, and constant good effects of it. Good
Counsell comes not by Lot, nor by Inheritance; and therefore there is no
more reason to expect good Advice from the rich, or noble, in matter
of State, than in delineating the dimensions of a fortresse; unlesse we
shall think there needs no method in the study of the Politiques, (as
there does in the study of Geometry,) but onely to be lookers on; which
is not so. For the Politiques is the harder study of the two. Whereas
in these parts of Europe, it hath been taken for a Right of certain
persons, to have place in the highest Councell of State by Inheritance;
it is derived from the Conquests of the antient Germans; wherein many
absolute Lords joyning together to conquer other Nations, would not
enter in to the Confederacy, without such Priviledges, as might be
marks of difference in time following, between their Posterity, and the
posterity of their Subjects; which Priviledges being inconsistent with
the Soveraign Power, by the favour of the Soveraign, they may seem to
keep; but contending for them as their Right, they must needs by
degrees let them go, and have at last no further honour, than adhaereth
naturally to their abilities.

And how able soever be the Counsellours in any affaire, the benefit
of their Counsell is greater, when they give every one his Advice, and
reasons of it apart, than when they do it in an Assembly, by way of
Orations; and when they have praemeditated, than when they speak on the
sudden; both because they have more time, to survey the consequences
of action; and are lesse subject to be carried away to contradiction,
through Envy, Emulation, or other Passions arising from the difference
of opinion.

The best Counsell, in those things that concern not other Nations, but
onely the ease, and benefit the Subjects may enjoy, by Lawes that
look onely inward, is to be taken from the generall informations, and
complaints of the people of each Province, who are best acquainted
with their own wants, and ought therefore, when they demand nothing in
derogation of the essentiall Rights of Soveraignty, to be diligently
taken notice of. For without those Essentiall Rights, (as I have often
before said,) the Common-wealth cannot at all subsist.




Commanders

A Commander of an Army in chiefe, if he be not Popular, shall not be
beloved, nor feared as he ought to be by his Army; and consequently
cannot performe that office with good successe. He must therefore be
Industrious, Valiant, Affable, Liberall and Fortunate, that he may gain
an opinion both of sufficiency, and of loving his Souldiers. This is
Popularity, and breeds in the Souldiers both desire, and courage, to
recommend themselves to his favour; and protects the severity of
the Generall, in punishing (when need is) the Mutinous, or negligent
Souldiers. But this love of Souldiers, (if caution be not given of
the Commanders fidelity,) is a dangerous thing to Soveraign Power;
especially when it is in the hands of an Assembly not popular. It
belongeth therefore to the safety of the People, both that they be good
Conductors, and faithfull subjects, to whom the Soveraign Commits his
Armies.

But when the Soveraign himselfe is Popular, that is, reverenced and
beloved of his People, there is no danger at all from the Popularity of
a Subject. For Souldiers are never so generally unjust, as to side with
their Captain; though they love him, against their Soveraign, when they
love not onely his Person, but also his Cause. And therefore those,
who by violence have at any time suppressed the Power of their Lawfull
Soveraign, before they could settle themselves in his place, have been
alwayes put to the trouble of contriving their Titles, to save the
People from the shame of receiving them. To have a known Right to
Soveraign Power, is so popular a quality, as he that has it needs no
more, for his own part, to turn the hearts of his Subjects to him, but
that they see him able absolutely to govern his own Family: Nor, on the
part of his enemies, but a disbanding of their Armies. For the greatest
and most active part of Mankind, has never hetherto been well contented
with the present.

Concerning the Offices of one Soveraign to another, which are
comprehended in that Law, which is commonly called the Law of Nations,
I need not say any thing in this place; because the Law of Nations, and
the Law of Nature, is the same thing. And every Soveraign hath the same
Right, in procuring the safety of his People, that any particular man
can have, in procuring the safety of his own Body. And the same Law,
that dictateth to men that have no Civil Government, what they ought to
do, and what to avoyd in regard of one another, dictateth the same to
Common-wealths, that is, to the Consciences of Soveraign Princes, and
Soveraign Assemblies; there being no Court of Naturall Justice, but
in the Conscience onely; where not Man, but God raigneth; whose Lawes,
(such of them as oblige all Mankind,) in respect of God, as he is the
Author of Nature, are Naturall; and in respect of the same God, as he is
King of Kings, are Lawes. But of the Kingdome of God, as King of Kings,
and as King also of a peculiar People, I shall speak in the rest of this
discourse.



CHAPTER XXXI. OF THE KINGDOME OF GOD BY NATURE




The Scope Of The Following Chapters

That the condition of meer Nature, that is to say, of absolute Liberty,
such as is theirs, that neither are Soveraigns, nor Subjects, is
Anarchy, and the condition of Warre: That the Praecepts, by which men
are guided to avoyd that condition, are the Lawes of Nature: That
a Common-wealth, without Soveraign Power, is but a word, without
substance, and cannot stand: That Subjects owe to Soveraigns, simple
Obedience, in all things, wherein their obedience is not repugnant
to the Lawes of God, I have sufficiently proved, in that which I have
already written. There wants onely, for the entire knowledge of Civill
duty, to know what are those Lawes of God. For without that, a man knows
not, when he is commanded any thing by the Civill Power, whether it be
contrary to the Law of God, or not: and so, either by too much civill
obedience, offends the Divine Majesty, or through feare of offending
God, transgresses the commandements of the Common-wealth. To avoyd both
these Rocks, it is necessary to know what are the Lawes Divine. And
seeing the knowledge of all Law, dependeth on the knowledge of the
Soveraign Power; I shall say something in that which followeth, of the
KINGDOME OF GOD.




Who Are Subjects In The Kingdome Of God

"God is King, let the Earth rejoice," saith the Psalmist. (Psal. 96. 1).
And again, "God is King though the Nations be angry; and he that sitteth
on the Cherubins, though the earth be moved." (Psal. 98. 1). Whether
men will or not, they must be subject alwayes to the Divine Power. By
denying the Existence, or Providence of God, men may shake off their
Ease, but not their Yoke. But to call this Power of God, which extendeth
it selfe not onely to Man, but also to Beasts, and Plants, and Bodies
inanimate, by the name of Kingdome, is but a metaphoricall use of
the word. For he onely is properly said to Raigne, that governs his
Subjects, by his Word, and by promise of Rewards to those that obey
it, and by threatning them with Punishment that obey it not. Subjects
therefore in the Kingdome of God, are not Bodies Inanimate, nor
creatures Irrationall; because they understand no Precepts as his: Nor
Atheists; nor they that believe not that God has any care of the actions
of mankind; because they acknowledge no Word for his, nor have hope of
his rewards, or fear of his threatnings. They therefore that believe
there is a God that governeth the world, and hath given Praecepts, and
propounded Rewards, and Punishments to Mankind, are Gods Subjects; all
the rest, are to be understood as Enemies.




A Threefold Word Of God, Reason, Revelation, Prophecy

To rule by Words, requires that such Words be manifestly made known;
for else they are no Lawes: For to the nature of Lawes belongeth a
sufficient, and clear Promulgation, such as may take away the excuse of
Ignorance; which in the Lawes of men is but of one onely kind, and that
is, Proclamation, or Promulgation by the voyce of man. But God
declareth his Lawes three wayes; by the Dictates of Naturall Reason, By
Revelation, and by the Voyce of some Man, to whom by the operation of
Miracles, he procureth credit with the rest. From hence there ariseth
a triple Word of God, Rational, Sensible, and Prophetique: to which
Correspondeth a triple Hearing; Right Reason, Sense Supernaturall, and
Faith. As for Sense Supernaturall, which consisteth in Revelation, or
Inspiration, there have not been any Universall Lawes so given, because
God speaketh not in that manner, but to particular persons, and to
divers men divers things.

A Twofold Kingdome Of God, Naturall And Prophetique From the difference
between the other two kinds of Gods Word, Rationall, and Prophetique,
there may be attributed to God, a two-fold Kingdome, Naturall, and
Prophetique: Naturall, wherein he governeth as many of Mankind as
acknowledge his Providence, by the naturall Dictates of Right Reason;
And Prophetique, wherein having chosen out one peculiar Nation (the
Jewes) for his Subjects, he governed them, and none but them, not onely
by naturall Reason, but by Positive Lawes, which he gave them by the
mouths of his holy Prophets. Of the Naturall Kingdome of God I intend to
speak in this Chapter.

The Right Of Gods Soveraignty Is Derived From His Omnipotence The Right
of Nature, whereby God reigneth over men, and punisheth those that
break his Lawes, is to be derived, not from his Creating them, as if
he required obedience, as of Gratitude for his benefits; but from his
Irresistible Power. I have formerly shewn, how the Soveraign Right
ariseth from Pact: To shew how the same Right may arise from Nature,
requires no more, but to shew in what case it is never taken away.
Seeing all men by Nature had Right to All things, they had Right every
one to reigne over all the rest. But because this Right could not be
obtained by force, it concerned the safety of every one, laying by that
Right, to set up men (with Soveraign Authority) by common consent,
to rule and defend them: whereas if there had been any man of Power
Irresistible; there had been no reason, why he should not by that Power
have ruled, and defended both himselfe, and them, according to his own
discretion. To those therefore whose Power is irresistible, the dominion
of all men adhaereth naturally by their excellence of Power; and
consequently it is from that Power, that the Kingdome over men, and
the Right of afflicting men at his pleasure, belongeth Naturally to God
Almighty; not as Creator, and Gracious; but as Omnipotent. And though
Punishment be due for Sinne onely, because by that word is understood
Affliction for Sinne; yet the Right of Afflicting, is not alwayes
derived from mens Sinne, but from Gods Power.




Sinne Not The Cause Of All Affliction

This question, "Why Evill men often Prosper, and Good men suffer
Adversity," has been much disputed by the Antient, and is the same
with this of ours, "By what Right God dispenseth the Prosperities and
Adversities of this life;" and is of that difficulty, as it hath shaken
the faith, not onely of the Vulgar, but of Philosophers, and which is
more, of the Saints, concerning the Divine Providence. "How Good," saith
David, "is the God of Israel to those that are Upright in Heart; and yet
my feet were almost gone, my treadings had well-nigh slipt; for I was
grieved at the Wicked, when I saw the Ungodly in such Prosperity."
And Job, how earnestly does he expostulate with God, for the many
Afflictions he suffered, notwithstanding his Righteousnesse? This
question in the case of Job, is decided by God himselfe, not by
arguments derived from Job's Sinne, but his own Power. For whereas the
friends of Job drew their arguments from his Affliction to his Sinne,
and he defended himselfe by the conscience of his Innocence, God
himselfe taketh up the matter, and having justified the Affliction by
arguments drawn from his Power, such as this "Where was thou when I
layd the foundations of the earth," and the like, both approved
Job's Innocence, and reproved the Erroneous doctrine of his friends.
Conformable to this doctrine is the sentence of our Saviour, concerning
the man that was born Blind, in these words, "Neither hath this man
sinned, nor his fathers; but that the works of God might be made
manifest in him." And though it be said "That Death entred into the
world by sinne," (by which is meant that if Adam had never sinned, he had
never dyed, that is, never suffered any separation of his soule from his
body,) it follows not thence, that God could not justly have Afflicted
him, though he had not Sinned, as well as he afflicteth other living
creatures, that cannot sinne.




Divine Lawes

Having spoken of the Right of Gods Soveraignty, as grounded onely on
Nature; we are to consider next, what are the Divine Lawes, or Dictates
of Naturall Reason; which Lawes concern either the naturall Duties of
one man to another, or the Honour naturally due to our Divine Soveraign.
The first are the same Lawes of Nature, of which I have spoken already
in the 14. and 15. Chapters of this Treatise; namely, Equity, Justice,
Mercy, Humility, and the rest of the Morall Vertues. It remaineth
therefore that we consider, what Praecepts are dictated to men, by their
Naturall Reason onely, without other word of God, touching the Honour
and Worship of the Divine Majesty.




Honour And Worship What

Honour consisteth in the inward thought, and opinion of the Power, and
Goodnesse of another: and therefore to Honour God, is to think as Highly
of his Power and Goodnesse, as is possible. And of that opinion, the
externall signes appearing in the Words, and Actions of men, are called
Worship; which is one part of that which the Latines understand by the
word Cultus: For Cultus signifieth properly, and constantly, that labour
which a man bestowes on any thing, with a purpose to make benefit by it.
Now those things whereof we make benefit, are either subject to us, and
the profit they yeeld, followeth the labour we bestow upon them, as a
naturall effect; or they are not subject to us, but answer our labour,
according to their own Wills. In the first sense the labour bestowed on
the Earth, is called Culture; and the education of Children a Culture of
their mindes. In the second sense, where mens wills are to be wrought to
our purpose, not by Force, but by Compleasance, it signifieth as much as
Courting, that is, a winning of favour by good offices; as by praises,
by acknowledging their Power, and by whatsoever is pleasing to them from
whom we look for any benefit. And this is properly Worship: in which
sense Publicola, is understood for a Worshipper of the People, and
Cultus Dei, for the Worship of God.




Severall Signes Of Honour

From internall Honour, consisting in the opinion of Power and Goodnesse,
arise three Passions; Love, which hath reference to Goodnesse; and Hope,
and Fear, that relate to Power: And three parts of externall worship;
Praise, Magnifying, and Blessing: The subject of Praise, being
Goodnesse; the subject of Magnifying, and Blessing, being Power, and the
effect thereof Felicity. Praise, and Magnifying are significant both by
Words, and Actions: By Words, when we say a man is Good, or Great:
By Actions, when we thank him for his Bounty, and obey his Power. The
opinion of the Happinesse of another, can onely be expressed by words.




Worship Naturall And Arbitrary

There be some signes of Honour, (both in Attributes and Actions,) that
be Naturally so; as amongst Attributes, Good, Just, Liberall, and the
like; and amongst Actions, Prayers, Thanks, and Obedience. Others are
so by Institution, or Custome of men; and in some times and places are
Honourable; in others Dishonourable; in others Indifferent: such as are
the Gestures in Salutation, Prayer, and Thanksgiving, in different
times and places, differently used. The former is Naturall; the later
Arbitrary Worship.




Worship Commanded And Free

And of Arbitrary Worship, there bee two differences: For sometimes it is
a Commanded, sometimes Voluntary Worship: Commanded, when it is such
as hee requireth, who is Worshipped: Free, when it is such as the
Worshipper thinks fit. When it is Commanded, not the words, or gestures,
but the obedience is the Worship. But when Free, the Worship consists
in the opinion of the beholders: for if to them the words, or actions by
which we intend honour, seem ridiculous, and tending to contumely; they
are not Worship; because a signe is not a signe to him that giveth it,
but to him to whom it is made; that is, to the spectator.




Worship Publique And Private

Again, there is a Publique, and a Private Worship. Publique, is the
Worship that a Common-wealth performeth, as one Person. Private, is that
which a Private person exhibiteth. Publique, in respect of the whole
Common-wealth, is Free; but in respect of Particular men it is not so.
Private, is in secret Free; but in the sight of the multitude, it is
never without some Restraint, either from the Lawes, or from the Opinion
of men; which is contrary to the nature of Liberty.




The End Of Worship

The End of Worship amongst men, is Power. For where a man seeth another
worshipped he supposeth him powerfull, and is the readier to obey him;
which makes his Power greater. But God has no Ends: the worship we do
him, proceeds from our duty, and is directed according to our capacity,
by those rules of Honour, that Reason dictateth to be done by the weak
to the more potent men, in hope of benefit, for fear of dammage, or in
thankfulnesse for good already received from them.




Attributes Of Divine Honour

That we may know what worship of God is taught us by the light of
Nature, I will begin with his Attributes. Where, First, it is manifest,
we ought to attribute to him Existence: For no man can have the will to
honour that, which he thinks not to have any Beeing.

Secondly, that those Philosophers, who sayd the World, or the Soule of
the World was God, spake unworthily of him; and denyed his Existence:
For by God, is understood the cause of the World; and to say the World
is God, is to say there is no cause of it, that is, no God.

Thirdly, to say the World was not Created, but Eternall, (seeing that
which is Eternall has no cause,) is to deny there is a God.

Fourthly, that they who attributing (as they think) Ease to God, take
from him the care of Mankind; take from him his Honour: for it takes
away mens love, and fear of him; which is the root of Honour.

Fifthly, in those things that signifie Greatnesse, and Power; to say he
is Finite, is not to Honour him: For it is not a signe of the Will to
Honour God, to attribute to him lesse than we can; and Finite, is lesse
than we can; because to Finite, it is easie to adde more.

Therefore to attribute Figure to him, is not Honour; for all Figure is
Finite:

Nor to say we conceive, and imagine, or have an Idea of him, in our
mind: for whatsoever we conceive is Finite:

Not to attribute to him Parts, or Totality; which are the Attributes
onely of things Finite:

Nor to say he is this, or that Place: for whatsoever is in Place, is
bounded, and Finite:

Nor that he is Moved, or Resteth: for both these Attributes ascribe to
him Place:

Nor that there be more Gods than one; because it implies them all
Finite: for there cannot be more than one Infinite: Nor to ascribe to
him (unlesse Metaphorically, meaning not the Passion, but the Effect)
Passions that partake of Griefe; as Repentance, Anger, Mercy: or of
Want; as Appetite, Hope, Desire; or of any Passive faculty: For Passion,
is Power limited by somewhat else.

And therefore when we ascribe to God a Will, it is not to be understood,
as that of Man, for a Rationall Appetite; but as the Power, by which he
effecteth every thing.

Likewise when we attribute to him Sight, and other acts of Sense; as
also Knowledge, and Understanding; which in us is nothing else, but
a tumult of the mind, raised by externall things that presse the
organicall parts of mans body: For there is no such thing in God; and
being things that depend on naturall causes, cannot be attributed to
him.

Hee that will attribute to God, nothing but what is warranted by
naturall Reason, must either use such Negative Attributes, as Infinite,
Eternall, Incomprehensible; or Superlatives, as Most High, Most Great,
and the like; or Indefinite, as Good, Just, Holy, Creator; and in such
sense, as if he meant not to declare what he is, (for that were to
circumscribe him within the limits of our Fancy,) but how much wee
admire him, and how ready we would be to obey him; which is a signe of
Humility, and of a Will to honour him as much as we can: For there is
but one Name to signifie our Conception of his Nature, and that is, I
AM: and but one Name of his Relation to us, and that is God; in which is
contained Father, King, and Lord.




Actions That Are Signes Of Divine Honour

Concerning the actions of Divine Worship, it is a most generall Precept
of Reason, that they be signes of the Intention to Honour God; such as
are, First, Prayers: For not the Carvers, when they made Images, were
thought to make them Gods; but the People that Prayed to them.

Secondly, Thanksgiving; which differeth from Prayer in Divine Worship,
no otherwise, than that Prayers precede, and Thanks succeed the benefit;
the end both of the one, and the other, being to acknowledge God, for
Author of all benefits, as well past, as future.

Thirdly, Gifts; that is to say, Sacrifices, and Oblations, (if they be
of the best,) are signes of Honour: for they are Thanksgivings.

Fourthly, Not to swear by any but God, is naturally a signe of Honour:
for it is a confession that God onely knoweth the heart; and that no
mans wit, or strength can protect a man against Gods vengence on the
perjured.

Fifthly, it is a part of Rationall Worship, to speak Considerately
of God; for it argues a Fear of him, and Fear, is a confession of his
Power. Hence followeth, That the name of God is not to be used rashly,
and to no purpose; for that is as much, as in Vain: And it is to
no purpose; unlesse it be by way of Oath, and by order of the
Common-wealth, to make Judgements certain; or between Common-wealths,
to avoyd Warre. And that disputing of Gods nature is contrary to his
Honour: For it is supposed, that in this naturall Kingdome of God, there
is no other way to know any thing, but by naturall Reason; that is, from
the Principles of naturall Science; which are so farre from teaching us
any thing of Gods nature, as they cannot teach us our own nature, nor
the nature of the smallest creature living. And therefore, when men out
of the Principles of naturall Reason, dispute of the Attributes of God,
they but dishonour him: For in the Attributes which we give to God, we
are not to consider the signification of Philosophicall Truth; but the
signification of Pious Intention, to do him the greatest Honour we are
able. From the want of which consideration, have proceeded the volumes
of disputation about the Nature of God, that tend not to his Honour, but
to the honour of our own wits, and learning; and are nothing else but
inconsiderate, and vain abuses of his Sacred Name.

Sixthly, in Prayers, Thanksgivings, Offerings and Sacrifices, it is a
Dictate of naturall Reason, that they be every one in his kind the
best, and most significant of Honour. As for example, that Prayers, and
Thanksgiving, be made in Words and Phrases, not sudden, nor light, nor
Plebeian; but beautifull and well composed; For else we do not God
as much honour as we can. And therefore the Heathens did absurdly, to
worship Images for Gods: But their doing it in Verse, and with Musick,
both of Voyce, and Instruments, was reasonable. Also that the Beasts
they offered in sacrifice, and the Gifts they offered, and their actions
in Worshipping, were full of submission, and commemorative of benefits
received, was according to reason, as proceeding from an intention to
honour him.

Seventhly, Reason directeth not onely to worship God in Secret; but
also, and especially, in Publique, and in the sight of men: For without
that, (that which in honour is most acceptable) the procuring others to
honour him, is lost.

Lastly, Obedience to his Lawes (that is, in this case to the Lawes
of Nature,) is the greatest worship of all. For as Obedience is
more acceptable to God than sacrifice; so also to set light by his
Commandements, is the greatest of all contumelies. And these are the
Lawes of that Divine Worship, which naturall Reason dictateth to private
men.




Publique Worship Consisteth In Uniformity

But seeing a Common-wealth is but one Person, it ought also to exhibite
to God but one Worship; which then it doth, when it commandeth it to be
exhibited by Private men, Publiquely. And this is Publique Worship; the
property whereof, is to be Uniforme: For those actions that are done
differently, by different men, cannot be said to be a Publique Worship.
And therefore, where many sorts of Worship be allowed, proceeding from
the different Religions of Private men, it cannot be said there is any
Publique Worship, nor that the Common-wealth is of any Religion at all.




All Attributes Depend On The Lawes Civill

And because words (and consequently the Attributes of God) have their
signification by agreement, and constitution of men; those Attributes
are to be held significative of Honour, that men intend shall so be; and
whatsoever may be done by the wills of particular men, where there is no
Law but Reason, may be done by the will of the Common-wealth, by Lawes
Civill. And because a Common-wealth hath no Will, nor makes no Lawes,
but those that are made by the Will of him, or them that have the
Soveraign Power; it followeth, that those Attributes which the Soveraign
ordaineth, in the Worship of God, for signes of Honour, ought to be
taken and used for such, by private men in their publique Worship.




Not All Actions

But because not all Actions are signes by Constitution; but some are
Naturally signes of Honour, others of Contumely, these later (which are
those that men are ashamed to do in the sight of them they reverence)
cannot be made by humane power a part of Divine worship; nor the former
(such as are decent, modest, humble Behaviour) ever be separated from
it. But whereas there be an infinite number of Actions, and Gestures, of
an indifferent nature; such of them as the Common-wealth shall ordain to
be Publiquely and Universally in use, as signes of Honour, and part of
Gods Worship, are to be taken and used for such by the Subjects. And
that which is said in the Scripture, "It is better to obey God than
men," hath place in the kingdome of God by Pact, and not by Nature.




Naturall Punishments

Having thus briefly spoken of the Naturall Kingdome of God, and his
Naturall Lawes, I will adde onely to this Chapter a short declaration of
his Naturall Punishments. There is no action of man in this life, that
is not the beginning of so long a chayn of Consequences, as no humane
Providence, is high enough, to give a man a prospect to the end. And
in this Chayn, there are linked together both pleasing and unpleasing
events; in such manner, as he that will do any thing for his pleasure,
must engage himselfe to suffer all the pains annexed to it; and these
pains, are the Naturall Punishments of those actions, which are the
beginning of more Harme that Good. And hereby it comes to passe, that
Intemperance, is naturally punished with Diseases; Rashnesse, with
Mischances; Injustice, with the Violence of Enemies; Pride, with Ruine;
Cowardise, with Oppression; Negligent government of Princes, with
Rebellion; and Rebellion, with Slaughter. For seeing Punishments
are consequent to the breach of Lawes; Naturall Punishments must be
naturally consequent to the breach of the Lawes of Nature; and therfore
follow them as their naturall, not arbitrary effects.




The Conclusion Of The Second Part

And thus farre concerning the Constitution, Nature, and Right of
Soveraigns; and concerning the Duty of Subjects, derived from the
Principles of Naturall Reason. And now, considering how different
this Doctrine is, from the Practise of the greatest part of the world,
especially of these Western parts, that have received their Morall
learning from Rome, and Athens; and how much depth of Morall Philosophy
is required, in them that have the Administration of the Soveraign
Power; I am at the point of believing this my labour, as uselesse,
and the Common-wealth of Plato; For he also is of opinion that it is
impossible for the disorders of State, and change of Governments by
Civill Warre, ever to be taken away, till Soveraigns be Philosophers.
But when I consider again, that the Science of Naturall Justice, is the
onely Science necessary for Soveraigns, and their principall Ministers;
and that they need not be charged with the Sciences Mathematicall, (as
by Plato they are,) further, than by good Lawes to encourage men to
the study of them; and that neither Plato, nor any other Philosopher
hitherto, hath put into order, and sufficiently, or probably proved all
the Theoremes of Morall doctrine, that men may learn thereby, both how
to govern, and how to obey; I recover some hope, that one time or other,
this writing of mine, may fall into the hands of a Soveraign, who will
consider it himselfe, (for it is short, and I think clear,) without the
help of any interested, or envious Interpreter; and by the exercise of
entire Soveraignty, in protecting the Publique teaching of it, convert
this Truth of Speculation, into the Utility of Practice.





PART III. OF A CHRISTIAN COMMON-WEALTH




CHAPTER XXXII. OF THE PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIAN POLITIQUES


The Word Of God Delivered By Prophets Is The Main Principle

Of Christian Politiques

I have derived the Rights of Soveraigne Power, and the duty of Subjects
hitherto, from the Principles of Nature onely; such as Experience has
found true, or Consent (concerning the use of words) has made so; that
is to say, from the nature of Men, known to us by Experience, and
from Definitions (of such words as are Essentiall to all Politicall
reasoning) universally agreed on. But in that I am next to handle, which
is the Nature and Rights of a CHRISTIAN COMMON-WEALTH, whereof there
dependeth much upon Supernaturall Revelations of the Will of God; the
ground of my Discourse must be, not only the Naturall Word of God, but
also the Propheticall.

Neverthelesse, we are not to renounce our Senses, and Experience; nor
(that which is the undoubted Word of God) our naturall Reason. For they
are the talents which he hath put into our hands to negotiate, till the
coming again of our blessed Saviour; and therefore not to be folded up
in the Napkin of an Implicate Faith, but employed in the purchase of
Justice, Peace, and true Religion, For though there be many things in
Gods Word above Reason; that is to say, which cannot by naturall reason
be either demonstrated, or confuted; yet there is nothing contrary
to it; but when it seemeth so, the fault is either in our unskilfull
Interpretation, or erroneous Ratiocination.

Therefore, when any thing therein written is too hard for our
examination, wee are bidden to captivate our understanding to the Words;
and not to labour in sifting out a Philosophicall truth by Logick, of
such mysteries as are not comprehensible, nor fall under any rule of
naturall science. For it is with the mysteries of our Religion, as with
wholsome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the vertue to
cure; but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.




What It Is To Captivate The Understanding

But by the Captivity of our Understanding, is not meant a Submission of
the Intellectual faculty, to the Opinion of any other man; but of
the Will to Obedience, where obedience is due. For Sense, Memory,
Understanding, Reason, and Opinion are not in our power to change; but
alwaies, and necessarily such, as the things we see, hear, and consider
suggest unto us; and therefore are not effects of our Will, but our Will
of them. We then Captivate our Understanding and Reason, when we forbear
contradiction; when we so speak, as (by lawfull Authority) we are
commanded; and when we live accordingly; which in sum, is Trust, and
Faith reposed in him that speaketh, though the mind be incapable of any
Notion at all from the words spoken.




How God Speaketh To Men

When God speaketh to man, it must be either immediately; or by mediation
of another man, to whom he had formerly spoken by himself immediately.
How God speaketh to a man immediately, may be understood by those well
enough, to whom he hath so spoken; but how the same should be understood
by another, is hard, if not impossible to know. For if a man pretend to
me, that God hath spoken to him supernaturally, and immediately, and I
make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what argument he can produce,
to oblige me to beleeve it. It is true, that if he be my Soveraign,
he may oblige me to obedience, so, as not by act or word to declare I
beleeve him not; but not to think any otherwise then my reason perswades
me. But if one that hath not such authority over me, shall pretend the
same, there is nothing that exacteth either beleefe, or obedience.

For to say that God hath spoken to him in the Holy Scripture, is not
to say God hath spoken to him immediately, but by mediation of the
Prophets, or of the Apostles, or of the Church, in such manner as he
speaks to all other Christian men. To say he hath spoken to him in a
Dream, is no more than to say he dreamed that God spake to him; which is
not of force to win beleef from any man, that knows dreams are for
the most part naturall, and may proceed from former thoughts; and such
dreams as that, from selfe conceit, and foolish arrogance, and false
opinion of a mans own godlinesse, or other vertue, by which he thinks he
hath merited the favour of extraordinary Revelation. To say he hath
seen a Vision, or heard a Voice, is to say, that he hath dreamed between
sleeping and waking: for in such manner a man doth many times naturally
take his dream for a vision, as not having well observed his own
slumbering. To say he speaks by supernaturall Inspiration, is to say he
finds an ardent desire to speak, or some strong opinion of himself, for
which he can alledge no naturall and sufficient reason. So that
though God Almighty can speak to a man, by Dreams, Visions, Voice, and
Inspiration; yet he obliges no man to beleeve he hath so done to him
that pretends it; who (being a man), may erre, and (which is more) may
lie.




By What Marks Prophets Are Known

How then can he, to whom God hath never revealed his Wil immediately
(saving by the way of natural reason) know when he is to obey, or not
to obey his Word, delivered by him, that sayes he is a Prophet? (1 Kings
22) Of 400 Prophets, of whom the K. of Israel asked counsel, concerning
the warre he made against Ramoth Gilead, only Micaiah was a true one.(1
Kings 13) The Prophet that was sent to prophecy against the Altar set up
by Jeroboam, though a true Prophet, and that by two miracles done in
his presence appears to be a Prophet sent from God, was yet deceived by
another old Prophet, that perswaded him as from the mouth of God, to eat
and drink with him. If one Prophet deceive another, what certainty is
there of knowing the will of God, by other way than that of Reason? To
which I answer out of the Holy Scripture, that there be two marks, by
which together, not asunder, a true Prophet is to be known. One is the
doing of miracles; the other is the not teaching any other Religion than
that which is already established. Asunder (I say) neither of these is
sufficient. (Deut. 13 v. 1,2,3,4,5 ) "If a Prophet rise amongst you, or
a Dreamer of dreams, and shall pretend the doing of a miracle, and the
miracle come to passe; if he say, Let us follow strange Gods, which thou
hast not known, thou shalt not hearken to him, &c. But that Prophet and
Dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he hath spoken to you
to Revolt from the Lord your God." In which words two things are to
be observed, First, that God wil not have miracles alone serve for
arguments, to approve the Prophets calling; but (as it is in the third
verse) for an experiment of the constancy of our adherence to himself.
For the works of the Egyptian Sorcerers, though not so great as those
of Moses, yet were great miracles. Secondly, that how great soever the
miracle be, yet if it tend to stir up revolt against the King, or him
that governeth by the Kings authority, he that doth such miracle, is
not to be considered otherwise than as sent to make triall of their
allegiance. For these words, "revolt from the Lord your God," are in
this place equivalent to "revolt from your King." For they had made God
their King by pact at the foot of Mount Sinai; who ruled them by Moses
only; for he only spake with God, and from time to time declared Gods
Commandements to the people. In like manner, after our Saviour Christ
had made his Disciples acknowledge him for the Messiah, (that is to say,
for Gods anointed, whom the nation of the Jews daily expected for their
King, but refused when he came,) he omitted not to advertise them of the
danger of miracles. "There shall arise," (saith he) "false Christs, and
false Prophets, and shall doe great wonders and miracles, even to the
seducing (if it were possible) of the very Elect." (Mat. 24. 24) By
which it appears, that false Prophets may have the power of miracles;
yet are wee not to take their doctrin for Gods Word. St. Paul says
further to the Galatians, that "if himself, or an Angell from heaven
preach another Gospel to them, than he had preached, let him be
accursed." (Gal. 1. 8) That Gospel was, that Christ was King; so that
all preaching against the power of the King received, in consequence
to these words, is by St. Paul accursed. For his speech is addressed to
those, who by his preaching had already received Jesus for the Christ,
that is to say, for King of the Jews.




The Marks Of A Prophet In The Old Law, Miracles, And Doctrine

Conformable To The Law

And as Miracles, without preaching that Doctrine which God hath
established; so preaching the true Doctrine, without the doing of
Miracles, is an unsufficient argument of immediate Revelation. For if
a man that teacheth not false Doctrine, should pretend to bee a Prophet
without shewing any Miracle, he is never the more to bee regarded for
his pretence, as is evident by Deut. 18. v. 21, 22. "If thou say in
thy heart, How shall we know that the Word (of the Prophet) is not that
which the Lord hath spoken. When the Prophet shall have spoken in the
name of the Lord, that which shall not come to passe, that's the word
which the Lord hath not spoken, but the Prophet has spoken it out of
the pride of his own heart, fear him not." But a man may here again ask,
When the Prophet hath foretold a thing, how shal we know whether it will
come to passe or not? For he may foretel it as a thing to arrive after
a certain long time, longer then the time of mans life; or indefinitely,
that it will come to passe one time or other: in which case this mark
of a Prophet is unusefull; and therefore the miracles that oblige us to
beleeve a Prophet, ought to be confirmed by an immediate, or a not
long deferr'd event. So that it is manifest, that the teaching of
the Religion which God hath established, and the showing of a present
Miracle, joined together, were the only marks whereby the Scripture
would have a true Prophet, that is to say immediate Revelation to be
acknowledged; neither of them being singly sufficient to oblige any
other man to regard what he saith.




Miracles Ceasing, Prophets Cease, The Scripture Supplies Their Place

Seeing therefore Miracles now cease, we have no sign left, whereby to
acknowledge the pretended Revelations, or Inspirations of any private
man; nor obligation to give ear to any Doctrine, farther than it is
conformable to the Holy Scriptures, which since the time of our Saviour,
supply the want of all other Prophecy; and from which, by wise and
careful ratiocination, all rules and precepts necessary to the knowledge
of our duty both to God and man, without Enthusiasme, or supernaturall
Inspiration, may easily be deduced. And this Scripture is it, out of
which I am to take the Principles of my Discourse, concerning the
Rights of those that are the Supream Govenors on earth, of Christian
Common-wealths; and of the duty of Christian Subjects towards their
Soveraigns. And to that end, I shall speak in the next Chapter, or the
Books, Writers, Scope and Authority of the Bible.



CHAPTER XXXIII. OF THE NUMBER, ANTIQUITY, SCOPE, AUTHORITY,

AND INTERPRETERS OF THE BOOKS OF HOLY SCRIPTURES




Of The Books Of Holy Scripture

By the Books of Holy SCRIPTURE, are understood those, which ought to be
the Canon, that is to say, the Rules of Christian life. And because all
Rules of life, which men are in conscience bound to observe, are Laws;
the question of the Scripture, is the question of what is Law throughout
all Christendome, both Naturall, and Civill. For though it be not
determined in Scripture, what Laws every Christian King shall constitute
in his own Dominions; yet it is determined what laws he shall not
constitute. Seeing therefore I have already proved, that Soveraigns
in their own Dominions are the sole Legislators; those Books only are
Canonicall, that is, Law, in every nation, which are established for
such by the Soveraign Authority. It is true, that God is the Soveraign
of all Soveraigns; and therefore, when he speaks to any Subject, he
ought to be obeyed, whatsoever any earthly Potentate command to the
contrary. But the question is not of obedience to God, but of When,
and What God hath said; which to Subjects that have no supernaturall
revelation, cannot be known, but by that naturall reason, which guided
them, for the obtaining of Peace and Justice, to obey the authority
of their severall Common-wealths; that is to say, of their lawfull
Soveraigns. According to this obligation, I can acknowledge no other
Books of the Old Testament, to be Holy Scripture, but those which have
been commanded to be acknowledged for such, by the Authority of the
Church of England. What Books these are, is sufficiently known, without
a Catalogue of them here; and they are the same that are acknowledged
by St. Jerome, who holdeth the rest, namely, the Wisdome of Solomon,
Ecclesiasticus, Judith, Tobias, the first and second of Maccabees,
(though he had seen the first in Hebrew) and the third and fourth of
Esdras, for Apocrypha. Of the Canonicall, Josephus a learned Jew, that
wrote in the time of the Emperor Domitian, reckoneth Twenty Two, making
the number agree with the Hebrew Alphabet. St. Jerome does the same,
though they reckon them in different manner. For Josephus numbers Five
Books of Moses, Thirteen of Prophets, that writ the History of their own
times (which how it agrees with the Prophets writings contained in the
Bible wee shall see hereafter), and Four of Hymnes and Morall Precepts.
But St. Jerome reckons Five Books of Moses, Eight of Prophets, and Nine
of other Holy writ, which he calls of Hagiographa. The Septuagint, who
were 70. learned men of the Jews, sent for by Ptolemy King of Egypt, to
translate the Jewish Law, out of the Hebrew into the Greek, have left us
no other for holy Scripture in the Greek tongue, but the same that are
received in the Church of England.

As for the Books of the New Testament, they are equally acknowledged for
Canon by all Christian Churches, and by all sects of Christians, that
admit any Books at all for Canonicall.




Their Antiquity

Who were the originall writers of the severall Books of Holy Scripture,
has not been made evident by any sufficient testimony of other History,
(which is the only proof of matter of fact); nor can be by any arguments
of naturall Reason; for Reason serves only to convince the truth (not
of fact, but) of consequence. The light therefore that must guide us in
this question, must be that which is held out unto us from the Bookes
themselves: And this light, though it show us not the writer of every
book, yet it is not unusefull to give us knowledge of the time, wherein
they were written.




The Pentateuch Not Written By Moses

And first, for the Pentateuch, it is not argument enough that they were
written by Moses, because they are called the five Books of Moses; no
more than these titles, The Book of Joshua, the Book of Judges, The Book
of Ruth, and the Books of the Kings, are arguments sufficient to prove,
that they were written by Joshua, by the Judges, by Ruth, and by the
Kings. For in titles of Books, the subject is marked, as often as the
writer. The History Of Livy, denotes the Writer; but the History Of
Scanderbeg, is denominated from the subject. We read in the last Chapter
of Deuteronomie, Ver. 6. concerning the sepulcher of Moses, "that no man
knoweth of his sepulcher to this day," that is, to the day wherein those
words were written. It is therefore manifest, that those words were
written after his interrement. For it were a strange interpretation, to
say Moses spake of his own sepulcher (though by Prophecy), that it was
not found to that day, wherein he was yet living. But it may perhaps
be alledged, that the last Chapter only, not the whole Pentateuch, was
written by some other man, but the rest not: Let us therefore consider
that which we find in the Book of Genesis, Chap. 12. Ver. 6 "And Abraham
passed through the land to the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh,
and the Canaanite was then in the land;" which must needs bee the
words of one that wrote when the Canaanite was not in the land; and
consequently, not of Moses, who dyed before he came into it. Likewise
Numbers 21. Ver. 14. the Writer citeth another more ancient Book,
Entituled, The Book of the Warres of the Lord, wherein were registred
the Acts of Moses, at the Red-sea, and at the brook of Arnon. It is
therefore sufficiently evident, that the five Books of Moses were
written after his time, though how long after it be not so manifest.

But though Moses did not compile those Books entirely, and in the form
we have them; yet he wrote all that which hee is there said to have
written: as for example, the Volume of the Law, which is contained, as
it seemeth in the 11 of Deuteronomie, and the following Chapters to the
27. which was also commanded to be written on stones, in their entry
into the land of Canaan. (Deut. 31. 9) And this did Moses himself
write, and deliver to the Priests and Elders of Israel, to be read
every seventh year to all Israel, at their assembling in the feast of
Tabernacles. And this is that Law which God commanded, that their Kings
(when they should have established that form of Government) should take
a copy of from the Priests and Levites to lay in the side of the Arke;
(Deut. 31. 26) and the same which having been lost, was long time after
found again by Hilkiah, and sent to King Josias, who causing it to be
read to the People, renewed the Covenant between God and them. (2 King.
22. 8 & 23. 1,2,3)




The Book of Joshua Written After His Time

That the Book of Joshua was also written long after the time of Joshua,
may be gathered out of many places of the Book it self. Joshua had
set up twelve stones in the middest of Jordan, for a monument of their
passage; (Josh 4. 9) of which the Writer saith thus, "They are there
unto this day;" (Josh 5. 9) for "unto this day", is a phrase that
signifieth a time past, beyond the memory of man. In like manner, upon
the saying of the Lord, that he had rolled off from the people the
Reproach of Egypt, the Writer saith, "The place is called Gilgal unto
this day;" which to have said in the time of Joshua had been improper.
So also the name of the Valley of Achor, from the trouble that Achan
raised in the Camp, (Josh. 7. 26) the Writer saith, "remaineth unto
this day;" which must needs bee therefore long after the time of Joshua.
Arguments of this kind there be many other; as Josh. 8. 29. 13. 13. 14.
14. 15. 63.




The Booke Of Judges And Ruth Written Long After The Captivity

The same is manifest by like arguments of the Book of Judges, chap. 1.
21,26 6.24 10.4 15.19 17.6 and Ruth 1. 1. but especially Judg. 18. 30.
where it is said, that Jonathan "and his sonnes were Priests to the
Tribe of Dan, untill the day of the captivity of the land."




The Like Of The Bookes Of Samuel

That the Books of Samuel were also written after his own time, there
are the like arguments, 1 Sam. 5.5. 7.13,15. 27.6. & 30.25. where, after
David had adjudged equall part of the spoiles, to them that guarded
the Ammunition, with them that fought, the Writer saith, "He made it a
Statute and an Ordinance to Israel to this day." (2. Sam. 6.4.) Again,
when David (displeased, that the Lord had slain Uzzah, for putting out
his hand to sustain the Ark,) called the place Perez-Uzzah, the Writer
saith, it is called so "to this day": the time therefore of the writing
of that Book, must be long after the time of the fact; that is, long
after the time of David.




The Books Of The Kings, And The Chronicles

As for the two Books of the Kings, and the two books of the Chronicles,
besides the places which mention such monuments, as the Writer saith,
remained till his own days; such as are 1 Kings 9.13. 9.21. 10. 12.
12.19. 2 Kings 2.22. 8.22. 10.27. 14.7. 16.6. 17.23. 17.34. 17.41. 1
Chron. 4.41. 5.26. It is argument sufficient they were written after the
captivity in Babylon, that the History of them is continued till that
time. For the Facts Registred are alwaies more ancient than such Books
as make mention of, and quote the Register; as these Books doe in divers
places, referring the Reader to the Chronicles of the Kings of Juda,
to the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel, to the Books of the Prophet
Samuel, or the Prophet Nathan, of the Prophet Ahijah; to the Vision of
Jehdo, to the Books of the Prophet Serveiah, and of the Prophet Addo.




Ezra And Nehemiah

The Books of Esdras and Nehemiah were written certainly after their
return from captivity; because their return, the re-edification of
the walls and houses of Jerusalem, the renovation of the Covenant, and
ordination of their policy are therein contained.




Esther

The History of Queen Esther is of the time of the Captivity; and
therefore the Writer must have been of the same time, or after it.




Job

The Book of Job hath no mark in it of the time wherein it was written:
and though it appear sufficiently (Exekiel 14.14, and James 5.11.)
that he was no fained person; yet the Book it self seemeth not to be
a History, but a Treatise concerning a question in ancient time much
disputed, "why wicked men have often prospered in this world, and good
men have been afflicted;" and it is the most probably, because from the
beginning, to the third verse of the third chapter, where the complaint
of Job beginneth, the Hebrew is (as St. Jerome testifies) in prose; and
from thence to the sixt verse of the last chapter in Hexameter Verses;
and the rest of that chapter again in prose. So that the dispute is all
in verse; and the prose is added, but as a Preface in the beginning, and
an Epilogue in the end. But Verse is no usuall stile of such, as either
are themselves in great pain, as Job; or of such as come to comfort
them, as his friends; but in Philosophy, especially morall Philosophy,
in ancient time frequent.




The Psalter

The Psalmes were written the most part by David, for the use of the
Quire. To these are added some songs of Moses, and other holy men; and
some of them after the return from the Captivity; as the 137. and the
126. whereby it is manifest that the Psalter was compiled, and put into
the form it now hath, after the return of the Jews from Babylon.




The Proverbs

The Proverbs, being a Collection of wise and godly Sayings, partly of
Solomon, partly of Agur the son of Jakeh; and partly of the Mother
of King Lemuel, cannot probably be thought to have been collected by
Solomon, rather then by Agur, or the Mother of Lemues; and that, though
the sentences be theirs, yet the collection or compiling them into this
one Book, was the work of some other godly man, that lived after them
all.




Ecclesiastes And The Canticles

The Books of Ecclesiastes and the Canticles have nothing that was not
Solomons, except it be the Titles, or Inscriptions. For "The Words of
the Preacher, the Son of David, King in Jerusalem;" and, "the Song of
Songs, which is Solomon's," seem to have been made for distinctions
sake, then, when the Books of Scripture were gathered into one body of
the Law; to the end, that not the Doctrine only, but the Authors also
might be extant.




The Prophets

Of the Prophets, the most ancient, are Sophoniah, Jonas, Amos, Hosea,
Isaiah and Michaiah, who lived in the time of Amaziah, and Azariah,
otherwise Ozias, Kings of Judah. But the Book of Jonas is not properly
a Register of his Prophecy, (for that is contained in these few words,
"Fourty dayes and Ninivy shall be destroyed,") but a History or Narration
of his frowardenesse and disputing Gods commandements; so that there is
small probability he should be the Author, seeing he is the subject of
it. But the Book of Amos is his Prophecy.

Jeremiah, Abdias, Nahum, and Habakkuk prophecyed in the time of Josiah.

Ezekiel, Daniel, Aggeus, and Zacharias, in the Captivity.

When Joel and Malachi prophecyed, is not evident by their Writings. But
considering the Inscriptions, or Titles of their Books, it is manifest
enough, that the whole Scripture of the Old Testament, was set forth in
the form we have it, after the return of the Jews from their Captivity
in Babylon, and before the time of Ptolemaeus Philadelphus, that caused
it to bee translated into Greek by seventy men, which were sent him
out of Judea for that purpose. And if the Books of Apocrypha (which
are recommended to us by the Church, though not for Canonicall, yet for
profitable Books for our instruction) may in this point be credited, the
Scripture was set forth in the form wee have it in, by Esdras; as may
appear by that which he himself saith, in the second book, chapt. 14.
verse 21, 22, &c. where speaking to God, he saith thus, "Thy law is
burnt; therefore no man knoweth the things which thou has done, or the
works that are to begin. But if I have found Grace before thee, send
down the holy Spirit into me, and I shall write all that hath been done
in the world, since the beginning, which were written in thy Law, that
men may find thy path, and that they which will live in the later days,
may live." And verse 45. "And it came to passe when the forty dayes were
fulfilled, that the Highest spake, saying, 'The first that thou hast
written, publish openly, that the worthy and unworthy may read it; but
keep the seventy last, that thou mayst deliver them onely to such as
be wise among the people.'" And thus much concerning the time of the
writing of the Bookes of the Old Testament.




The New Testament

The Writers of the New Testament lived all in lesse then an age after
Christs Ascension, and had all of them seen our Saviour, or been his
Disciples, except St. Paul, and St. Luke; and consequently whatsoever
was written by them, is as ancient as the time of the Apostles. But
the time wherein the Books of the New Testament were received, and
acknowledged by the Church to be of their writing, is not altogether so
ancient. For, as the Bookes of the Old Testament are derived to us, from
no higher time then that of Esdras, who by the direction of Gods Spirit
retrived them, when they were lost: Those of the New Testament, of which
the copies were not many, nor could easily be all in any one private
mans hand, cannot bee derived from a higher time, that that wherein the
Governours of the Church collected, approved, and recommended them to
us, as the writings of those Apostles and Disciples; under whose names
they go. The first enumeration of all the Bookes, both of the Old,
and New Testament, is in the Canons of the Apostles, supposed to be
collected by Clement the first (after St. Peter) Bishop of Rome. But
because that is but supposed, and by many questioned, the Councell of
Laodicea is the first we know, that recommended the Bible to the then
Christian Churches, for the Writings of the Prophets and Apostles: and
this Councell was held in the 364. yeer after Christ. At which time,
though ambition had so far prevailed on the great Doctors of the Church,
as no more to esteem Emperours, though Christian, for the Shepherds of
the people, but for Sheep; and Emperours not Christian, for Wolves; and
endeavoured to passe their Doctrine, not for Counsell, and Information,
as Preachers; but for Laws, as absolute Governours; and thought such
frauds as tended to make the people the more obedient to Christian
Doctrine, to be pious; yet I am perswaded they did not therefore
falsifie the Scriptures, though the copies of the Books of the New
Testament, were in the hands only of the Ecclesiasticks; because if they
had had an intention so to doe, they would surely have made them more
favorable to their power over Christian Princes, and Civill Soveraignty,
than they are. I see not therefore any reason to doubt, but that the
Old, and New Testament, as we have them now, are the true Registers of
those things, which were done and said by the Prophets, and Apostles.
And so perhaps are some of those Books which are called Apocrypha, if
left out of the Canon, not for inconformity of Doctrine with the
rest, but only because they are not found in the Hebrew. For after the
conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great, there were few learned Jews,
that were not perfect in the Greek tongue. For the seventy Interpreters
that converted the Bible into Greek, were all of them Hebrews; and we
have extant the works of Philo and Josephus both Jews, written by them
eloquently in Greek. But it is not the Writer, but the authority of the
Church, that maketh a Book Canonicall.




Their Scope

And although these Books were written by divers men, yet it is manifest
the Writers were all indued with one and the same Spirit, in that they
conspire to one and the same end, which is the setting forth of the
Rights of the Kingdome of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. For
the Book of Genesis, deriveth the Genealogy of Gods people, from the
creation of the World, to the going into Egypt: the other four Books of
Moses, contain the Election of God for their King, and the Laws which
hee prescribed for their Government: The Books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth,
and Samuel, to the time of Saul, describe the acts of Gods people,
till the time they cast off Gods yoke, and called for a King, after the
manner of their neighbour nations; The rest of the History of the
Old Testament, derives the succession of the line of David, to the
Captivity, out of which line was to spring the restorer of the Kingdome
of God, even our blessed Saviour God the Son, whose coming was foretold
in the Bookes of the Prophets, after whom the Evangelists writt his
life, and actions, and his claim to the Kingdome, whilst he lived one
earth: and lastly, the Acts, and Epistles of the Apostles, declare the
coming of God, the Holy Ghost, and the Authority he left with them, and
their successors, for the direction of the Jews, and for the invitation
of the Gentiles. In summe, the Histories and the Prophecies of the old
Testament, and the Gospels, and Epistles of the New Testament, have had
one and the same scope, to convert men to the obedience of God; 1. in
Moses, and the Priests; 2. in the man Christ; and 3. in the Apostles and
the successors to Apostolicall power. For these three at several times
did represent the person of God: Moses, and his successors the High
Priests, and Kings of Judah, in the Old Testament: Christ himself, in
the time he lived on earth: and the Apostles, and their successors, from
the day of Pentecost (when the Holy Ghost descended on them) to this
day.




The Question Of The Authority Of The Scriptures Stated.

It is a question much disputed between the divers sects of Christian
Religion, From Whence The Scriptures Derive Their Authority; which
question is also propounded sometimes in other terms, as, How Wee Know
Them To Be The Word Of God, or, Why We Beleeve Them To Be So: and the
difficulty of resolving it, ariseth chiefly from the impropernesse of
the words wherein the question it self is couched. For it is beleeved
on all hands, that the first and originall Author of them is God; and
consequently the question disputed, is not that. Again, it is manifest,
that none can know they are Gods Word, (though all true Christians
beleeve it,) but those to whom God himself hath revealed it
supernaturally; and therefore the question is not rightly moved, of our
Knowledge of it. Lastly, when the question is propounded of our Beleefe;
because some are moved to beleeve for one, and others for other reasons,
there can be rendred no one generall answer for them all. The question
truly stated is, By What Authority They Are Made Law.




Their Authority And Interpretation

As far as they differ not from the Laws of Nature, there is no doubt,
but they are the Law of God, and carry their Authority with them,
legible to all men that have the use of naturall reason: but this is
no other Authority, then that of all other Morall Doctrine consonant to
Reason; the Dictates whereof are Laws, not Made, but Eternall.

If they be made Law by God himselfe, they are of the nature of written
Law, which are Laws to them only to whom God hath so sufficiently
published them, as no man can excuse himself, by saying, he know not
they were his.

He therefore, to whom God hath not supernaturally revealed, that they
are his, nor that those that published them, were sent by him, is not
obliged to obey them, by any Authority, but his, whose Commands have
already the force of Laws; that is to say, by any other Authority, then
that of the Common-wealth, residing in the Soveraign, who only has the
Legislative power. Again, if it be not the Legislative Authority of
the Common-wealth, that giveth them the force of Laws, it must bee
some other Authority derived from God, either private, or publique:
if private, it obliges onely him, to whom in particular God hath been
pleased to reveale it. For if every man should be obliged, to take for
Gods Law, what particular men, on pretence of private Inspiration, or
Revelation, should obtrude upon him, (in such a number of men, that out
of pride, and ignorance, take their own Dreams, and extravagant Fancies,
and Madnesse, for testimonies of Gods Spirit; or out of ambition,
pretend to such Divine testimonies, falsely, and contrary to their
own consciences,) it were impossible that any Divine Law should be
acknowledged. If publique, it is the Authority of the Common-wealth, or
of the Church. But the Church, if it be one person, is the same thing
with a Common-wealth of Christians; called a Common-wealth, because it
consisteth of men united in one person, their Soveraign; and a Church,
because it consisteth in Christian men, united in one Christian
Soveraign. But if the Church be not one person, then it hath no
authority at all; it can neither command, nor doe any action at all; nor
is capable of having any power, or right to any thing; nor has any Will,
Reason, nor Voice; for all these qualities are personall. Now if the
whole number of Christians be not contained in one Common-wealth, they
are not one person; nor is there an Universall Church that hath any
authority over them; and therefore the Scriptures are not made Laws,
by the Universall Church: or if it bee one Common-wealth, then all
Christian Monarchs, and States are private persons, and subject to
bee judged, deposed, and punished by an Universall Soveraigne of all
Christendome. So that the question of the Authority of the Scriptures is
reduced to this, "Whether Christian Kings, and the Soveraigne Assemblies
in Christian Common-wealths, be absolute in their own Territories,
immediately under God; or subject to one Vicar of Christ, constituted
over the Universall Church; to bee judged, condemned, deposed, and put
to death, as hee shall think expedient, or necessary for the common
good."

Which question cannot bee resolved, without a more particular
consideration of the Kingdome of God; from whence also, wee are to judge
of the Authority of Interpreting the Scripture. For, whosoever hath a
lawfull power over any Writing, to make it Law, hath the power also to
approve, or disapprove the interpretation of the same.



CHAPTER XXXIV. OF THE SIGNIFICATION OF SPIRIT, ANGEL, AND INSPIRATION IN
THE BOOKS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE




Body And Spirit How Taken In The Scripture

Seeing the foundation of all true Ratiocination, is the constant
Signification of words; which in the Doctrine following, dependeth not
(as in naturall science) on the Will of the Writer, nor (as in common
conversation) on vulgar use, but on the sense they carry in the
Scripture; It is necessary, before I proceed any further, to determine,
out of the Bible, the meaning of such words, as by their ambiguity, may
render what I am to inferre upon them, obscure, or disputable. I will
begin with the words BODY, and SPIRIT, which in the language of the
Schools are termed, Substances, Corporeall, and Incorporeall.

The Word Body, in the most generall acceptation, signifieth that
which filleth, or occupyeth some certain room, or imagined place; and
dependeth not on the imagination, but is a reall part of that we call
the Universe. For the Universe, being the Aggregate of all Bodies, there
is no reall part thereof that is not also Body; nor any thing properly
a Body, that is not also part of (that Aggregate of all Bodies) the
Universe. The same also, because Bodies are subject to change, that is
to say, to variety of apparence to the sense of living creatures, is
called Substance, that is to say, Subject, to various accidents, as
sometimes to be Moved, sometimes to stand Still; and to seem to our
senses sometimes Hot, sometimes Cold, sometimes of one Colour, Smel,
Tast, or Sound, somtimes of another. And this diversity of Seeming,
(produced by the diversity of the operation of bodies, on the organs
of our sense) we attribute to alterations of the Bodies that operate, &
call them Accidents of those Bodies. And according to this acceptation
of the word, Substance and Body, signifie the same thing; and therefore
Substance Incorporeall are words, which when they are joined together,
destroy one another, as if a man should say, an Incorporeall Body.

But in the sense of common people, not all the Universe is called Body,
but only such parts thereof as they can discern by the sense of Feeling,
to resist their force, or by the sense of their Eyes, to hinder them
from a farther prospect. Therefore in the common language of men, Aire,
and Aeriall Substances, use not to be taken for Bodies, but (as often
as men are sensible of their effects) are called Wind, or Breath, or
(because the some are called in the Latine Spiritus) Spirits; as when
they call that aeriall substance, which in the body of any living
creature, gives it life and motion, Vitall and Animall Spirits. But for
those Idols of the brain, which represent Bodies to us, where they
are not, as in a Looking-glasse, in a Dream, or to a Distempered brain
waking, they are (as the Apostle saith generally of all Idols) nothing;
Nothing at all, I say, there where they seem to bee; and in the brain
it self, nothing but tumult, proceeding either from the action of the
objects, or from the disorderly agitation of the Organs of our Sense.
And men, that are otherwise imployed, then to search into their causes,
know not of themselves, what to call them; and may therefore easily be
perswaded, by those whose knowledge they much reverence, some to
call them Bodies, and think them made of aire compacted by a power
supernaturall, because the sight judges them corporeall; and some to
call them Spirits, because the sense of Touch discerneth nothing in the
place where they appear, to resist their fingers: So that the proper
signification of Spirit in common speech, is either a subtile, fluid,
and invisible Body, or a Ghost, or other Idol or Phantasme of the
Imagination. But for metaphoricall significations, there be many: for
sometimes it is taken for Disposition or Inclination of the mind; as
when for the disposition to controwl the sayings of other men, we say,
A Spirit Contradiction; For A Disposition to Uncleannesse, An Unclean
Spirit; for Perversenesse, A Froward Spirit; for Sullennesse, A Dumb
Spirit, and for Inclination To Godlinesse, And Gods Service, the Spirit
of God: sometimes for any eminent ability, or extraordinary passion,
or disease of the mind, as when Great Wisdome is called the Spirit Of
Wisdome; and Mad Men are said to be Possessed With A Spirit.

Other signification of Spirit I find no where any; and where none
of these can satisfie the sense of that word in Scripture, the place
falleth not under humane Understanding; and our Faith therein consisteth
not in our Opinion, but in our Submission; as in all places where God
is said to be a Spirit; or where by the Spirit of God, is meant God
himselfe. For the nature of God is incomprehensible; that is to say, we
understand nothing of What He Is, but only That He Is; and therefore the
Attributes we give him, are not to tell one another, What He Is, Nor
to signifie our opinion of his Nature, but our desire to honor him with
such names as we conceive most honorable amongst our selves.




Spirit Of God Taken In The Scripture Sometimes For A Wind, Or Breath

Gen. 1. 2. "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the Waters." Here
if by the Spirit of God be meant God himself, then is Motion attributed
to God, and consequently Place, which are intelligible only of Bodies,
and not of substances incorporeall; and so the place is above our
understanding, that can conceive nothing moved that changes not place,
or that has not dimension; and whatsoever has dimension, is Body. But
the meaning of those words is best understood by the like place, Gen.
8. 1. Where when the earth was covered with Waters, as in the beginning,
God intending to abate them, and again to discover the dry land, useth
like words, "I will bring my Spirit upon the Earth, and the waters shall
be diminished:" in which place by Spirit is understood a Wind, (that is
an Aire or Spirit Moved,) which might be called (as in the former place)
the Spirit of God, because it was Gods Work.




Secondly, For Extraordinary Gifts Of The Understanding

Gen. 41. 38. Pharaoh calleth the Wisdome of Joseph, the Spirit of God.
For Joseph having advised him to look out a wise and discreet man, and
to set him over the land of Egypt, he saith thus, "Can we find such a
man as this is, in whom is the Spirit of God?" and Exod. 28.3. "Thou
shalt speak (saith God) to all that are wise hearted, whom I have filled
with the Spirit of Wisdome, to make Aaron Garments, to consecrate him."
Where extraordinary Understanding, though but in making Garments, as
being the Gift of God, is called the Spirit of God. The same is found
again, Exod. 31.3,4,5,6. and 35.31. And Isaiah 11.2,3. where the Prophet
speaking of the Messiah, saith, "The Spirit of the Lord shall abide upon
him, the Spirit of wisdome and understanding, the Spirit of counsell,
and fortitude; and the Spirit of the fear of the Lord." Where manifestly
is meant, not so many Ghosts, but so many eminent Graces that God would
give him.




Thirdly, For Extraordinary Affections

In the Book of Judges, an extraordinary Zeal, and Courage in the
defence of Gods people, is called the Spirit of God; as when it excited
Othoniel, Gideon, Jeptha, and Samson to deliver them from servitude,
Judg. 3.10. 6.34. 11.29. 13.25. 14.6,19. And of Saul, upon the newes of
the insolence of the Ammonites towards the men of Jabeth Gilead, it is
said (1 Sam.11.6.) that "The Spirit of God came upon Saul, and his Anger
(or, as it is in the Latine, His Fury) was kindled greatly." Where it is
not probable was meant a Ghost, but an extraordinary Zeal to punish the
cruelty of the Ammonites. In like manner by the Spirit of God, that came
upon Saul, when hee was amongst the Prophets that praised God in Songs,
and Musick (1 Sam.19.20.) is to be understood, not a Ghost, but an
unexpected and sudden Zeal to join with them in their devotions.




Fourthly, For The Gift Of Prediction By Dreams And Visions

The false Prophet Zedekiah, saith to Micaiah (1 Kings 22.24.) "Which way
went the Spirit of the Lord from me to speak to thee?" Which cannot be
understood of a Ghost; for Micaiah declared before the Kings of Israel
and Judah, the event of the battle, as from a Vision, and not as from a
Spirit, speaking in him.

In the same manner it appeareth, in the Books of the Prophets, that
though they spake by the Spirit of God, that is to say, by a speciall
grace of Prediction; yet their knowledge of the future, was not by a
Ghost within them, but by some supernaturall Dream or Vision.




Fiftly, For Life

Gen. 2.7. It is said, "God made man of the dust of the Earth, and
breathed into his nostrills (spiraculum vitae) the breath of life, and
man was made a living soul." There the Breath of Life inspired by God,
signifies no more, but that God gave him life; And (Job 27.3.) "as long
as the Spirit of God is in my nostrils;" is no more then to say, "as
long as I live." So in Ezek. 1.20. "the Spirit of life was in the
wheels," is equivalent to, "the wheels were alive." And (Ezek. 2.30.)
"the spirit entred into me, and set me on my feet," that is, "I
recovered my vitall strength;" not that any Ghost, or incorporeal
substance entred into, and possessed his body.




Sixtly, For A Subordination To Authority

In the 11 chap. of Numbers. verse 17. "I will take (saith God) of the
Spirit, which is upon thee, and will put it upon them, and they shall
bear the burthen of the people with thee;" that is, upon the seventy
Elders: whereupon two of the seventy are said to prophecy in the campe;
of whom some complained, and Joshua desired Moses to forbid them; which
Moses would not doe. Whereby it appears; that Joshua knew not they had
received authority so to do, and prophecyed according to the mind of
Moses, that is to say, by a Spirit, or Authority subordinate to his own.

In the like sense we read (Deut. 34.9.) that "Joshua was full of the
Spirit of wisdome," because Moses had laid his hands upon him: that is,
because he was Ordained by Moses, to prosecute the work hee had himselfe
begun, (namely, the bringing of Gods people into the promised land), but
prevented by death, could not finish.

In the like sense it is said, (Rom. 8.9.) "If any man have not the
Spirit of Christ, he is none of his:" not meaning thereby the Ghost of
Christ, but a Submission to his Doctrine. As also (1 John 4.2.) "Hereby
you shall know the Spirit of God; Every Spirit that confesseth that
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God;" by which is meant the
Spirit of unfained Christianity, or Submission to that main Article of
Christian faith, that Jesus is the Christ; which cannot be interpreted
of a Ghost.

Likewise these words (Luke 4.1.) "And Jesus full of the Holy Ghost"
(that is, as it is exprest, Mat. 4.1. and Mar. 1.12. "of the Holy
Spirit",) may be understood, for Zeal to doe the work for which hee was
sent by God the Father: but to interpret it of a Ghost, is to say, that
God himselfe (for so our Saviour was,) was filled with God; which is
very unproper, and unsignificant. How we came to translate Spirits, by
the word Ghosts, which signifieth nothing, neither in heaven, nor earth,
but the Imaginary inhabitants of mans brain, I examine not: but this I
say, the word Spirit in the text signifieth no such thing; but either
properly a reall Substance, or Metaphorically, some extraordinary
Ability of Affection of the Mind, or of the Body.




Seventhly, For Aeriall Bodies

The Disciples of Christ, seeing him walking upon the sea, (Mat. 14.26.
and Marke 6.49.) supposed him to be a Spirit, meaning thereby an Aeriall
Body, and not a Phantasme: for it is said, they all saw him; which
cannot be understood of the delusions of the brain, (which are not
common to many at once, as visible Bodies are; but singular, because of
the differences of Fancies), but of Bodies only. In like manner, where
he was taken for a Spirit, by the same Apostles (Luke 24.3,7.): So also
(Acts 12.15) when St. Peter was delivered out of Prison, it would not
be beleeved; but when the Maid said he was at the dore, they said it
was his Angel; by which must be meant a corporeall substance, or we must
say, the Disciples themselves did follow the common opinion of both Jews
and Gentiles, that some such apparitions were not Imaginary, but Reall;
and such as needed not the fancy of man for their Existence: These the
Jews called Spirits, and Angels, Good or Bad; as the Greeks called the
same by the name of Daemons. And some such apparitions may be reall, and
substantiall; that is to say, subtile Bodies, which God can form by
the same power, by which he formed all things, and make use of, as of
Ministers, and Messengers (that is to say, Angels) to declare his
will, and execute the same when he pleaseth, in extraordinary and
supernaturall manner. But when hee hath so formed them they are
Substances, endued with dimensions, and take up roome, and can be moved
from place to place, which is peculiar to Bodies; and therefore are not
Ghosts Incorporeall, that is to say, Ghosts that are in No Place;
that is to say, that are No Where; that is to say, that seeming to be
Somewhat, are Nothing. But if corporeall be taken in the most vulgar
manner, for such Substances as are perceptible by our externall Senses;
then is Substance Incorporeall, a thing not Imaginary, but Reall;
namely, a thin Substance Invisible, but that hath the same dimensions
that are in grosser Bodies.




Angel What

By the name of ANGEL, is signified generally, a Messenger; and most
often, a Messenger of God: And by a Messenger of God, is signified, any
thing that makes known his extraordinary Presence; that is to say, the
extraordinary manifestation of his power, especially by a Dream, or
Vision.

Concerning the creation of Angels, there is nothing delivered in the
Scriptures. That they are Spirits, is often repeated: but by the name of
Spirit, is signified both in Scripture, and vulgarly, both amongst Jews,
and Gentiles, sometimes thin Bodies; as the Aire, the Wind, the Spirits
Vitall, and Animall, of living creatures; and sometimes the Images
that rise in the fancy in Dreams, and Visions; which are not reall
Substances, but accidents of the brain; yet when God raiseth them
supernaturally, to signifie his Will, they are not unproperly termed
Gods Messengers, that is to say, his Angels.

And as the Gentiles did vulgarly conceive the Imagery of the brain, for
things really subsistent without them, and not dependent on the fancy;
and out of them framed their opinions of Daemons, Good and Evill; which
because they seemed to subsist really, they called Substances; and
because they could not feel them with their hands, Incorporeall: so also
the Jews upon the same ground, without any thing in the Old Testament
that constrained them thereunto, had generally an opinion, (except the
sect of the Sadduces,) that those apparitions (which it pleased God
sometimes to produce in the fancie of men, for his own service, and
therefore called them his Angels) were substances, not dependent on the
fancy, but permanent creatures of God; whereof those which they thought
were good to them, they esteemed the Angels of God, and those they
thought would hurt them, they called Evill Angels, or Evill Spirits;
such as was the Spirit of Python, and the Spirits of Mad-men, of
Lunatiques, and Epileptiques: For they esteemed such as were troubled
with such diseases, Daemoniaques.

But if we consider the places of the Old Testament where Angels are
mentioned, we shall find, that in most of them, there can nothing else
be understood by the word Angel, but some image raised (supernaturally)
in the fancy, to signifie the presence of God in the execution of some
supernaturall work; and therefore in the rest, where their nature is not
exprest, it may be understood in the same manner.

For we read Gen. 16. that the same apparition is called, not onely an
Angel, but God; where that which (verse 7.) is called the Angel of
the Lord, in the tenth verse, saith to Agar, "I will multiply thy seed
exceedingly;" that is, speaketh in the person of God. Neither was this
apparition a Fancy figured, but a Voice. By which it is manifest,
that Angel signifieth there, nothing but God himself, that caused Agar
supernaturally to apprehend a voice supernaturall, testifying Gods
speciall presence there. Why therefore may not the Angels that appeared
to Lot, and are called Gen. 19.13. Men; and to whom, though they were
but two, Lot speaketh (ver. 18.) as but one, and that one, as God, (for
the words are, "Lot said unto them, Oh not so my Lord") be understood of
images of men, supernaturally formed in the Fancy; as well as before by
Angel was understood a fancyed Voice? When the Angel called to Abraham
out of heaven, to stay his hand (Gen. 22.11.) from slaying Isaac, there
was no Apparition, but a Voice; which neverthelesse was called properly
enough a Messenger, or Angel of God, because it declared Gods will
supernaturally, and saves the labour of supposing any permanent Ghosts.
The Angels which Jacob saw on the Ladder of Heaven (Gen. 28.12.) were
a Vision of his sleep; therefore onely Fancy, and a Dream; yet being
supernaturall, and signs of Gods Speciall presence, those apparitions
are not improperly called Angels. The same is to be understood
(Gen.31.11.) where Jacob saith thus, "The Angel of the Lord appeared to
mee in my sleep." For an apparition made to a man in his sleep, is
that which all men call a Dreame, whether such Dreame be naturall, or
supernaturall: and that which there Jacob calleth an Angel, was God
himselfe; for the same Angel saith (verse 13.) "I am the God of Bethel."

Also (Exod.14.9.) the Angel that went before the Army of Israel to the
Red Sea, and then came behind it, is (verse 19.) the Lord himself; and
he appeared not in the form of a beautifull man, but in form (by day)
of a Pillar Of Cloud and (by night) in form of a Pillar Of Fire; and yet
this Pillar was all the apparition, and Angel promised to Moses (Exod.
14.9.) for the Armies guide: For this cloudy pillar, is said, to have
descended, and stood at the dore of the Tabernacle, and to have talked
with Moses.

There you see Motion, and Speech, which are commonly attributed to
Angels, attributed to a Cloud, because the Cloud served as a sign of
Gods presence; and was no lesse an Angel, then if it had had the form of
a Man, or Child of never so great beauty; or Wings, as usually they are
painted, for the false instruction of common people. For it is not the
shape; but their use, that makes them Angels. But their use is to be
significations of Gods presence in supernaturall operations; As when
Moses (Exod. 33.14.) had desired God to goe along with the Campe, (as
he had done alwaies before the making of the Golden Calfe,) God did not
answer, "I will goe," nor "I will send an Angel in my stead;" but thus,
"my presence shall goe with thee."

To mention all the places of the Old Testament where the name of Angel
is found, would be too long. Therefore to comprehend them all at once,
I say, there is no text in that part of the Old Testament, which the
Church of England holdeth for Canonicall, from which we can conclude,
there is, or hath been created, any permanent thing (understood by the
name of Spirit or Angel,) that hath not quantity; and that may not be,
by the understanding divided; that is to say, considered by parts; so
as one part may bee in one place, and the next part in the next place
to it; and, in summe, which is not (taking Body for that, which is some
what, or some where) Corporeall; but in every place, the sense will bear
the interpretation of Angel, for Messenger; as John Baptist is called
an Angel, and Christ the Angel of the Covenant; and as (according to the
same Analogy) the Dove, and the Fiery Tongues, in that they were signes
of Gods speciall presence, might also be called Angels. Though we find
in Daniel two names of Angels, Gabriel, and Michael; yet is cleer out of
the text it selfe, (Dan. 12.1) that by Michael is meant Christ, not as
an Angel, but as a Prince: and that Gabriel (as the like apparitions
made to other holy men in their sleep) was nothing but a supernaturall
phantasme, by which it seemed to Daniel, in his dream, that two Saints
being in talke, one of them said to the other, "Gabriel, let us make
this man understand his Vision:" For God needeth not, to distinguish
his Celestiall servants by names, which are usefull onely to the short
memories of Mortalls. Nor in the New Testament is there any place, out
of which it can be proved, that Angels (except when they are put for
such men, as God hath made the Messengers, and Ministers of his word,
or works) are things permanent, and withall incorporeall. That they
are permanent, may bee gathered from the words of our Saviour himselfe,
(Mat. 25.41.) where he saith, it shall be said to the wicked in the last
day, "Go ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his
Angels:" which place is manifest for the permanence of Evill Angels,
(unlesse wee might think the name of Devill and his Angels may be
understood of the Churches Adversaries and their Ministers;) but then
it is repugnant to their Immateriality; because Everlasting fire is no
punishment to impatible substances, such as are all things Incorporeall.
Angels therefore are not thence proved to be Incorporeall. In like
manner where St. Paul sayes (1 Cor. 6.3.) "Knew ye not that wee shall
judge the Angels?" And (2 Pet. 2.4.) "For if God spared not the Angels
that sinned, but cast them down into Hell." And (Jude 1,6.) "And the
Angels that kept not their first estate, but left their owne habitation,
hee hath reserved in everlasting chaines under darknesse unto the
Judgement of the last day;" though it prove the Permanence of Angelicall
nature, it confirmeth also their Materiality. And (Mat. 22.30.) In the
resurrection men doe neither marry, nor give in marriage, but are as
the Angels of God in heaven:" but in the resurrection men shall be
Permanent, and not Incorporeall; so therefore also are the Angels.

There be divers other places out of which may be drawn the like
conclusion. To men that understand the signification of these words,
Substance, and Incorporeall; as Incorporeall is taken not for subtile
body, but for Not Body, they imply a contradiction: insomuch as to say,
an Angel, or Spirit is (in that sense) an Incorporeall Substance, is
to say in effect, there is no Angel nor Spirit at all. Considering
therefore the signification of the word Angel in the Old Testament, and
the nature of Dreams and Visions that happen to men by the ordinary way
of Nature; I was enclined to this opinion, that Angels were nothing
but supernaturall apparitions of the Fancy, raised by the speciall
and extraordinary operation of God, thereby to make his presence and
commandements known to mankind, and chiefly to his own people. But the
many places of the New Testament, and our Saviours own words, and in
such texts, wherein is no suspicion of corruption of the Scripture, have
extorted from my feeble Reason, an acknowledgement, and beleef, that
there be also Angels substantiall, and permanent. But to beleeve they be
in no place, that is to say, no where, that is to say, nothing, as they
(though indirectly) say, that will have them Incorporeall, cannot by
Scripture bee evinced.




Inspiration What

On the signification of the word Spirit, dependeth that of the word
INSPIRATION; which must either be taken properly; and then it is nothing
but the blowing into a man some thin and subtile aire, or wind, in such
manner as a man filleth a bladder with his breath; or if Spirits be not
corporeal, but have their existence only in the fancy, it is nothing but
the blowing in of a Phantasme; which is improper to say, and impossible;
for Phantasmes are not, but only seem to be somewhat. That word
therefore is used in the Scripture metaphorically onely: As (Gen. 2.7.)
where it is said, that God Inspired into man the breath of life, no more
is meant, then that God gave unto him vitall motion. For we are not to
think that God made first a living breath, and then blew it into Adam
after he was made, whether that breath were reall, or seeming; but only
as it is (Acts 17.25.) "that he gave him life and breath;" that is,
made him a living creature. And where it is said (2 Tim. 3.16.) "all
Scripture is given by Inspiration from God," speaking there of the
Scripture of the Old Testament, it is an easie metaphor, to signifie,
that God enclined the spirit or mind of those Writers, to write that
which should be usefull, in teaching, reproving, correcting, and
instructing men in the way of righteous living. But where St. Peter (2
Pet. 1.21.) saith, that "Prophecy came not in old time by the will
of man, but the holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy
Spirit," by the Holy Spirit, is meant the voice of God in a Dream, or
Vision supernaturall, which is not Inspiration; Nor when our Saviour
breathing on his Disciples, said, "Receive the Holy Spirit," was that
Breath the Spirit, but a sign of the spirituall graces he gave unto
them. And though it be said of many, and of our Saviour himself, that he
was full of the Holy Spirit; yet that Fulnesse is not to be understood
for Infusion of the substance of God, but for accumulation of his gifts,
such as are the gift of sanctity of life, of tongues, and the like,
whether attained supernaturally, or by study and industry; for in all
cases they are the gifts of God. So likewise where God sayes (Joel
2.28.) "I will powre out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your Sons and
your Daughters shall prophecy, your Old men shall dream Dreams, and your
Young men shall see Visions," wee are not to understand it in the
proper sense, as if his Spirit were like water, subject to effusion, or
infusion; but as if God had promised to give them Propheticall Dreams,
and Visions. For the proper use of the word Infused, in speaking of
the graces of God, is an abuse of it; for those graces are Vertues, not
Bodies to be carryed hither and thither, and to be powred into men, as
into barrels.

In the same manner, to take Inspiration in the proper sense, or to
say that Good Spirits entred into men to make them prophecy, or Evill
Spirits into those that became Phrenetique, Lunatique, or Epileptique,
is not to take the word in the sense of the Scripture; for the Spirit
there is taken for the power of God, working by causes to us unknown. As
also (Acts 2.2.) the wind, that is there said to fill the house wherein
the Apostles were assembled on the day of Pentecost, is not to be
understood for the Holy Spirit, which is the Deity it self; but for an
Externall sign of Gods speciall working on their hearts, to effect in
them the internall graces, and holy vertues hee thought requisite for
the performance of their Apostleship.



CHAPTER XXXV. OF THE SIGNIFICATION IN SCRIPTURE OF KINGDOME OF GOD, OF
HOLY, SACRED, AND SACRAMENT




Kingdom Of God Taken By Divines Metaphorically But In The Scriptures

Properly

The Kingdome of God in the Writings of Divines, and specially in
Sermons, and Treatises of Devotion, is taken most commonly for Eternall
Felicity, after this life, in the Highest Heaven, which they also call
the Kingdome of Glory; and sometimes for (the earnest of that felicity)
Sanctification, which they terme the Kingdome of Grace, but never
for the Monarchy, that is to say, the Soveraign Power of God over
any Subjects acquired by their own consent, which is the proper
signification of Kingdome.

To the contrary, I find the KINGDOME OF GOD, to signifie in most places
of Scripture, a Kingdome Properly So Named, constituted by the Votes
of the People of Israel in peculiar manner; wherein they chose God
for their King by Covenant made with him, upon Gods promising them the
possession of the land of Canaan; and but seldom metaphorically;
and then it is taken for Dominion Over Sinne; (and only in the New
Testament;) because such a Dominion as that, every Subject shall have in
the Kingdome of God, and without prejudice to the Soveraign.

From the very Creation, God not only reigned over all men Naturally by
his might; but also had Peculiar Subjects, whom he commanded by a Voice,
as one man speaketh to another. In which manner he Reigned over Adam,
and gave him commandement to abstaine from the tree of cognizance of
Good and Evill; which when he obeyed not, but tasting thereof, took upon
him to be as God, judging between Good and Evill, not by his Creators
commandement, but by his own sense, his punishment was a privation of
the estate of Eternall life, wherein God had at first created him: And
afterwards God punished his posterity, for their vices, all but eight
persons, with an universall deluge; And in these eight did consist the
then Kingdome Of God.




The Originall Of The Kingdome Of God

After this, it pleased God to speak to Abraham, and (Gen. 17.7,8.) to
make a Covenant with him in these words, "I will establish my Covenant
between me, and thee, and thy seed after thee in their generations,
for an everlasting Covenant, to be a God to thee, and to thy seed after
thee; And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land
wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting
possession." And for a memoriall, and a token of this Covenant, he
ordaineth (verse 11.) the Sacrament of Circumcision. This is it which is
called the Old Covenant, or Testament; and containeth a Contract between
God and Abraham; by which Abraham obligeth himself, and his posterity,
in a peculiar manner to be subject to Gods positive Law; for to the Law
Morall he was obliged before, as by an Oath of Allegiance. And though
the name of King be not yet given to God, nor of Kingdome to Abraham and
his seed; yet the thing is the same; namely, an Institution by pact,
of Gods peculiar Soveraignty over the seed of Abraham; which in the
renewing of the same Covenant by Moses, at Mount Sinai, is expressely
called a peculiar Kingdome of God over the Jews: and it is of Abraham
(not of Moses) St. Paul saith (Rom. 4.11.) that he is the "Father of the
Faithfull," that is, of those that are loyall, and doe not violate their
Allegiance sworn to God, then by Circumcision, and afterwards in the New
Covenant by Baptisme.




That The Kingdome Of God Is Properly His Civill Soveraignty Over

A Peculiar People By Pact

This Covenant, at the Foot of Mount Sinai, was renewed by Moses (Exod.
19.5.) where the Lord commandeth Moses to speak to the people in this
manner, "If you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my Covenant, then
yee shall be a peculiar people to me, for all the Earth is mine; and
yee shall be unto me a Sacerdotall Kingdome, and an holy Nation." For a
"Peculiar people" the vulgar Latine hath, Peculium De Cunctis Populis:
the English translation made in the beginning of the Reign of King
James, hath, a "Peculiar treasure unto me above all Nations;" and the
Geneva French, "the most precious Jewel of all Nations." But the truest
Translation is the first, because it is confirmed by St. Paul himself
(Tit. 2.14.) where he saith, alluding to that place, that our blessed
Saviour "gave himself for us, that he might purifie us to himself, a
peculiar (that is, an extraordinary) people:" for the word is in the
Greek periousios, which is opposed commonly to the word epiousios: and
as this signifieth Ordinary, Quotidian, or (as in the Lords Prayer) Of
Daily Use; so the other signifieth that which is Overplus, and Stored
Up, and Enjoyed In A Speciall Manner; which the Latines call Peculium;
and this meaning of the place is confirmed by the reason God rendereth
of it, which followeth immediately, in that he addeth, "For all the
Earth is mine," as if he should say, "All the Nations of the world are
mine;" but it is not so that you are mine, but in a Speciall Manner: For
they are all mine, by reason of my Power; but you shall be mine, by your
own Consent, and Covenant; which is an addition to his ordinary title,
to all nations.

The same is again confirmed in expresse words in the same Text, "Yee
shall be to me a Sacerdotall Kingdome, and an holy Nation." The Vulgar
Latine hath it, Regnum Sacerdotale, to which agreeth the Translation of
that place (1 Pet. 2.9.) Sacerdotium Regale, A Regal Priesthood; as also
the Institution it self, by which no man might enter into the Sanctum
Sanctorum, that is to say, no man might enquire Gods will immediately of
God himselfe, but onely the High Priest. The English Translation before
mentioned, following that of Geneva, has, "a Kingdome of Priests;" which
is either meant of the succession of one High Priest after another, or
else it accordeth not with St. Peter, nor with the exercise of the High
Priesthood; For there was never any but the High Priest onely, that was
to informe the People of Gods Will; nor any Convocation of Priests ever
allowed to enter into the Sanctum Sanctorum.

Again, the title of a Holy Nation confirmes the same: For Holy
signifies, that which is Gods by speciall, not by generall Right. All
the Earth (as is said in the text) is Gods; but all the Earth is
not called Holy, but that onely which is set apart for his especiall
service, as was the Nation of the Jews. It is therefore manifest enough
by this one place, that by the Kingdome of God, is properly meant a
Common-wealth, instituted (by the consent of those which were to be
subject thereto) for their Civill Government, and the regulating of
their behaviour, not onely towards God their King, but also towards one
another in point of justice, and towards other Nations both in peace and
warre; which properly was a Kingdome, wherein God was King, and the
High priest was to be (after the death of Moses) his sole Viceroy, or
Lieutenant.

But there be many other places that clearly prove the same. As first (1
Sam. 8.7.) when the Elders of Israel (grieved with the corruption of
the Sons of Samuel) demanded a King, Samuel displeased therewith, prayed
unto the Lord; and the Lord answering said unto him, "Hearken unto the
voice of the People, for they have not rejected thee, but they have
rejected me, that I should not reign over them." Out of which it is
evident, that God himself was then their King; and Samuel did not
command the people, but only delivered to them that which God from time
to time appointed him.

Again, (1 Sam. 12.12.) where Samuel saith to the People, "When yee saw
that Nahash King of the Children of Ammon came against you, ye said unto
me, Nay, but a King shall reign over us, when the Lord your God was your
King:" It is manifest that God was their King, and governed the Civill
State of their Common-wealth.

And after the Israelites had rejected God, the Prophets did foretell his
restitution; as (Isaiah 24.23.) "Then the Moon shall be confounded, and
the Sun ashamed when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and
in Jerusalem;" where he speaketh expressely of his Reign in Zion, and
Jerusalem; that is, on Earth. And (Micah 4.7.) "And the Lord shall
reign over them in Mount Zion:" This Mount Zion is in Jerusalem upon the
Earth. And (Ezek. 20.33.) "As I live, saith the Lord God, surely with a
mighty hand, and a stretched out arme, and with fury powred out, I wil
rule over you; and (verse 37.) I will cause you to passe under the rod,
and I will bring you into the bond of the Covenant;" that is, I will
reign over you, and make you to stand to that Covenant which you made
with me by Moses, and brake in your rebellion against me in the days of
Samuel, and in your election of another King.

And in the New testament, the Angel Gabriel saith of our Saviour (Luke
1.32,33) "He shall be great, and be called the Son of the Most High,
and the Lord shall give him the throne of his Father David; and he shall
reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his Kingdome there shall
be no end." This is also a Kingdome upon Earth; for the claim whereof,
as an enemy to Caesar, he was put to death; the title of his crosse,
was, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews; hee was crowned in scorn with
a crown of Thornes; and for the proclaiming of him, it is said of
the Disciples (Acts 17.7.) "That they did all of them contrary to
the decrees of Caesar, saying there was another King, one Jesus. The
Kingdome therefore of God, is a reall, not a metaphoricall Kingdome; and
so taken, not onely in the Old Testament, but the New; when we say, "For
thine is the Kingdome, the Power, and Glory," it is to be understood of
Gods Kingdome, by force of our Covenant, not by the Right of Gods Power;
for such a Kingdome God alwaies hath; so that it were superfluous to
say in our prayer, "Thy Kingdome come," unlesse it be meant of the
Restauration of that Kingdome of God by Christ, which by revolt of the
Israelites had been interrupted in the election of Saul. Nor had it been
proper to say, "The Kingdome of Heaven is at hand," or to pray, "Thy
Kingdome come," if it had still continued.

There be so many other places that confirm this interpretation, that it
were a wonder there is no greater notice taken of it, but that it gives
too much light to Christian Kings to see their right of Ecclesiastical
Government. This they have observed, that in stead of a Sacerdotall
Kingdome, translate, a Kingdome of Priests: for they may as well
translate a Royall Priesthood, (as it is in St. Peter) into a Priesthood
of Kings. And whereas, for a Peculiar People, they put a Pretious Jewel,
or Treasure, a man might as well call the speciall Regiment, or Company
of a Generall, the Generalls pretious Jewel, or his Treasure.

In short, the Kingdome of God is a Civill Kingdome; which consisted,
first in the obligation of the people of Israel to those Laws, which
Moses should bring unto them from Mount Sinai; and which afterwards the
High Priest of the time being, should deliver to them from before the
Cherubins in the Sanctum Sanctorum; and which kingdome having been cast
off, in the election of Saul, the Prophets foretold, should be restored
by Christ; and the Restauration whereof we daily pray for, when we
say in the Lords Prayer, "Thy Kingdome come;" and the Right whereof we
acknowledge, when we adde, "For thine is the Kingdome, the Power, and
Glory, for ever and ever, Amen;" and the Proclaiming whereof, was
the Preaching of the Apostles; and to which men are prepared, by the
Teachers of the Gospel; to embrace which Gospel, (that is to say, to
promise obedience to Gods government) is, to bee in the Kingdome of
Grace, because God hath gratis given to such the power to bee the
subjects (that is, Children) of God hereafter, when Christ shall come
in Majesty to judge the world, and actually to govern his owne people,
which is called the Kingdome of Glory. If the Kingdome of God (called
also the Kingdome of Heaven, from the gloriousnesse, and admirable
height of that throne) were not a Kingdome which God by his Lieutenant,
or Vicars, who deliver his Commandements to the people, did exercise on
Earth; there would not have been so much contention, and warre, about
who it is, by whom God speaketh to us; neither would many Priests have
troubled themselves with Spirituall Jurisdiction, nor any King have
denied it them.

Out of this literall interpretation of the Kingdome of God, ariseth also
the true interpretation of the word HOLY. For it is a word, which in
Gods Kingdome answereth to that, which men in their Kingdomes use to
call Publique, or the Kings.

The King of any Countrey is the Publique Person, or Representative of
all his own Subjects. And God the King of Israel was the Holy One of
Israel. The Nation which is subject to one earthly Soveraign, is the
Nation of that Soveraign, that is, of the Publique Person. So the Jews,
who were Gods Nation, were called (Exod. 19.6.) "a Holy Nation." For by
Holy, is alwaies understood, either God himselfe, or that which is Gods
in propriety; as by Publique is alwaies meant, either the Person of the
Common-wealth it self, or something that is so the Common-wealths, as no
private person can claim any propriety therein.

Therefore the Sabbath (Gods day) is a Holy Day; the Temple, (Gods house)
a Holy House; Sacrifices, Tithes, and Offerings (Gods tribute) Holy
Duties; Priests, Prophets, and anointed Kings, under Christ (Gods
ministers) Holy Men; The Coelestiall ministring Spirits (Gods
Messengers) Holy Angels; and the like: and wheresoever the word Holy is
taken properly, there is still something signified of Propriety, gotten
by consent. In saying "Hallowed be thy name," we do but pray to God for
grace to keep the first Commandement, of "having no other Gods but
Him." Mankind is Gods Nation in propriety: but the Jews only were a Holy
Nation. Why, but because they became his Propriety by covenant.




Sacred What

And the word Profane, is usually taken in the Scripture for the same
with Common; and consequently their contraries, Holy, and Proper, in the
Kingdome of God must be the same also. But figuratively, those men also
are called Holy, that led such godly lives, as if they had forsaken all
worldly designes, and wholly devoted, and given themselves to God.
In the proper sense, that which is made Holy by Gods appropriating or
separating it to his own use, is said to be Sanctified by God, as the
Seventh day in the fourth Commandement; and as the Elect in the New
Testament were said to bee Sanctified, when they were endued with the
Spirit of godlinesse. And that which is made Holy by the dedication of
men, and given to God, so as to be used onely in his publique service,
is called also SACRED, and said to be consecrated, as Temples, and other
Houses of Publique Prayer, and their Utensils, Priests, and Ministers,
Victimes, Offerings, and the externall matter of Sacraments.




Degrees of Sanctity

Of Holinesse there be degrees: for of those things that are set apart
for the service of God, there may bee some set apart again, for a neerer
and more especial service. The whole Nation of the Israelites were a
people Holy to God; yet the tribe of Levi was amongst the Israelites a
Holy tribe; and amongst the Levites, the Priests were yet more Holy; and
amongst the Priests, the High Priest was the most Holy. So the Land
of Judea was the Holy Land; but the Holy City wherein God was to be
worshipped, was more Holy; and again, the Temples more Holy than the
City; and the Sanctum Sanctorum more Holy than the rest of the Temple.




Sacrament

A SACRAMENT, is a separation of some visible thing from common use;
and a consecration of it to Gods service, for a sign, either of our
admission into the Kingdome of God, to be of the number of his peculiar
people, or for a Commemoration of the same. In the Old Testament, the
sign of Admission was Circumcision; in the New Testament, Baptisme. The
Commemoration of it in the Old Testament, was the Eating (at a certain
time, which was Anniversary) of the Paschall Lamb; by which they were
put in mind of the night wherein they were delivered out of their
bondage in Egypt; and in the New Testament, the celebrating of the
Lords Supper; by which, we are put in mind, of our deliverance from
the bondage of sin, by our Blessed Saviours death upon the crosse. The
Sacraments of Admission, are but once to be used, because there needs
but one Admission; but because we have need of being often put in
mind of our deliverance, and of our Allegeance, The Sacraments of
Commemoration have need to be reiterated. And these are the principall
Sacraments, and as it were the solemne oathes we make of our
Alleageance. There be also other Consecrations, that may be called
Sacraments, as the word implyeth onely Consecration to Gods service; but
as it implies an oath, or promise of Alleageance to God, there were no
other in the Old Testament, but Circumcision, and the Passover; nor
are there any other in the New Testament, but Baptisme, and the Lords
Supper.



CHAPTER XXXVI. OF THE WORD OF GOD, AND OF PROPHETS




Word What

When there is mention of the Word of God, or of Man, it doth not
signifie a part of Speech, such as Grammarians call a Nown, or a Verb,
or any simple voice, without a contexture with other words to make it
significative; but a perfect Speech or Discourse, whereby the speaker
Affirmeth, Denieth, Commandeth, Promiseth, Threateneth, Wisheth, or
Interrogateth. In which sense it is not Vocabulum, that signifies a
Word; but Sermo, (in Greek Logos) that is some Speech, Discourse, or
Saying.




The Words Spoken By God And Concerning God, Both Are Called Gods Word

In Scripture

Again, if we say the Word of God, or of Man, it may bee understood
sometimes of the Speaker, (as the words that God hath spoken, or that
a Man hath spoken): In which sense, when we say, the Gospel of St.
Matthew, we understand St. Matthew to be the Writer of it: and sometimes
of the Subject: In which sense, when we read in the Bible, "The words
of the days of the Kings of Israel, or Judah," 'tis meant, that the acts
that were done in those days, were the Subject of those Words; And in
the Greek, which (in the Scripture) retaineth many Hebraismes, by the
Word of God is oftentimes meant, not that which is spoken by God, but
concerning God, and his government; that is to say, the Doctrine of
Religion: Insomuch, as it is all one, to say Logos Theou, and Theologia;
which is, that Doctrine which wee usually call Divinity, as is manifest
by the places following (Acts 13.46.) "Then Paul and Barnabas waxed
bold, and said, It was necessary that the Word of God should first
have been spoken to you, but seeing you put it from you, and judge your
selves unworthy of everlasting life, loe, we turn to the Gentiles."
That which is here called the Word of god, was the Doctrine of Christian
Religion; as it appears evidently by that which goes before. And (Acts
5.20.) where it is said to the Apostles by an Angel, "Go stand and speak
in the Temple, all the Words of this life;" by the Words of this life,
is meant, the Doctrine of the Gospel; as is evident by what they did in
the Temple, and is expressed in the last verse of the same Chap. "Daily
in the Temple, and in every house they ceased not to teach and preach
Christ Jesus:" In which place it is manifest, that Jesus Christ was the
subject of this Word of Life; or (which is all one) the subject of the
Words of this Life Eternall, that our saviour offered them. So (Acts
15.7.) the Word of God, is called the Word of the Gospel, because it
containeth the Doctrine of the Kingdome of Christ; and the same Word
(Rom. 10.8,9.) is called the Word of Faith; that is, as is there
expressed, the Doctrine of Christ come, and raised from the dead. Also
(Mat. 13. 19.) "When any one heareth the Word of the Kingdome;" that is,
the Doctrine of the Kingdome taught by Christ. Again, the same Word, is
said (Acts 12. 24.) "to grow and to be multiplied;" which to understand
of the Evangelicall Doctrine is easie, but of the Voice, or Speech
of God, hard and strange. In the same sense the Doctrine of Devils,
signifieth not the Words of any Devill, but the Doctrine of Heathen men
concerning Daemons, and those Phantasms which they worshipped as Gods.
(1 Tim. 4.1.)

Considering these two significations of the WORD OF GOD, as it is taken
in Scripture, it is manifest in this later sense (where it is taken for
the Doctrine of the Christian Religion,) that the whole scripture is the
Word of God: but in the former sense not so. For example, though these
words, "I am the Lord thy God, &c." to the end of the Ten Commandements,
were spoken by God to Moses; yet the Preface, "God spake these words
and said," is to be understood for the Words of him that wrote the holy
History. The Word of God, as it is taken for that which he hath spoken,
is understood sometimes Properly, sometimes Metaphorically. Properly,
as the words, he hath spoken to his Prophets; Metaphorically, for his
Wisdome, Power, and eternall Decree, in making the world; in which
sense, those Fiats, "Let there be light," "Let there be a firmament,"
"Let us make man," &c. (Gen. 1.) are the Word of God. And in the same
sense it is said (John 1.3.) "All things were made by it, and without it
was nothing made that was made; And (Heb. 1.3.) "He upholdeth all things
by the word of his Power;" that is, by the Power of his Word; that is,
by his Power; and (Heb. 11.3.) "The worlds were framed by the Word
of God;" and many other places to the same sense: As also amongst the
Latines, the name of Fate, which signifieth properly The Word Spoken, is
taken in the same sense.




Secondly, For The Effect Of His Word

Secondly, for the effect of his Word; that is to say, for the thing it
self, which by his Word is Affirmed, Commanded, Threatned, or Promised;
as (Psalm 105.19.) where Joseph is said to have been kept in prison,
"till his Word was come;" that is, till that was come to passe which
he had (Gen. 40.13.) foretold to Pharaohs Butler, concerning his being
restored to his office: for there by His Word Was Come, is meant, the
thing it self was come to passe. So also (1 King. 18.36.) Elijah saith
to God, "I have done all these thy Words," in stead of "I have done all
these things at thy Word," or commandement: and (Jer. 17.15.) "Where is
the Word of the Lord," is put for, "Where is the Evill he threatened:"
And (Ezek. 12.28.) "There shall none of my Words be prolonged any
more:" by "Words" are understood those Things, which God promised to his
people. And in the New Testament (Mat. 24.35.) "heaven and earth shal
pass away, but my Words shall not pass away;" that is, there is nothing
that I have promised or foretold, that shall not come to passe. And in
this sense it is, that St. John the Evangelist, and, I think, St. John
onely calleth our Saviour himself as in the flesh "the Word of God
(as Joh. 1.14.) the Word was made Flesh;" that is to say, the Word, or
Promise that Christ should come into the world, "who in the beginning
was with God;" that is to say, it was in the purpose of God the Father,
to send God the Son into the world, to enlighten men in the way of
Eternall life, but it was not till then put in execution, and actually
incarnate; So that our Saviour is there called "the Word," not because
he was the promise, but the thing promised. They that taking occasion
from this place, doe commonly call him the Verbe of God, do but render
the text more obscure. They might as well term him the Nown of God:
for as by Nown, so also by Verbe, men understand nothing but a part
of speech, a voice, a sound, that neither affirms, nor denies, nor
commands, nor promiseth, nor is any substance corporeall, or spirituall;
and therefore it cannot be said to bee either God, or Man; whereas our
Saviour is both. And this Word which St. John in his Gospel saith was
with God, is (in his 1 Epistle, verse 1.) called "the Word of Life;" and
(verse 2.) "The eternall life, which was with the Father:" so that he
can be in no other sense called the Word, then in that, wherein he is
called Eternall life; that is, "he that hath procured us Eternall life,"
by his comming in the flesh. So also (Apocalypse 19.13.) the Apostle
speaking of Christ, clothed in a garment dipt in bloud, saith; his name
is "the Word of God;" which is to be understood, as if he had said his
name had been, "He that was come according to the purpose of God from
the beginning, and according to his Word and promises delivered by the
Prophets." So that there is nothing here of the Incarnation of a Word,
but of the Incarnation of God the Son, therefore called the Word,
because his Incarnation was the Performance of the Promise; In like
manner as the Holy Ghost is called The Promise. (Acts 1.4. Luke 24.49.)




Thirdly, For The Words Of Reason And Equity

There are also places of the Scripture, where, by the Word of God, is
signified such Words as are consonant to reason, and equity, though
spoken sometimes neither by prophet, nor by a holy man. For Pharaoh
Necho was an Idolator; yet his Words to the good King Josiah, in which
he advised him by Messengers, not to oppose him in his march against
Carchemish, are said to have proceeded from the mouth of God; and that
Josiah not hearkning to them, was slain in the battle; as is to be read
2 Chron. 35. vers. 21,22,23. It is true, that as the same History is
related in the first book of Esdras, not Pharaoh, but Jeremiah spake
these words to Josiah, from the mouth of the Lord. But wee are to
give credit to the Canonicall Scripture, whatsoever be written in the
Apocrypha.

The Word of God, is then also to be taken for the Dictates of reason,
and equity, when the same is said in the Scriptures to bee written in
mans heart; as Psalm 36.31. Jerem. 31.33. Deut.30.11, 14. and many other
like places.




Divers Acceptions Of The Word Prophet

The name of PROPHET, signifieth in Scripture sometimes Prolocutor; that
is, he that speaketh from God to Man, or from man to God: And sometimes
Praedictor, or a foreteller of things to come; And sometimes one that
speaketh incoherently, as men that are distracted. It is most frequently
used in the sense of speaking from God to the People. So Moses, Samuel,
Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others were Prophets. And in this sense
the High Priest was a Prophet, for he only went into the Sanctum
Sanctorum, to enquire of God; and was to declare his answer to the
people. And therefore when Caiphas said, it was expedient that one man
should die for the people, St. John saith (chap. 11.51.) that "He spake
not this of himselfe, but being High Priest that year, he prophesied
that one man should dye for the nation." Also they that in Christian
Congregations taught the people, (1 Cor. 14.3.) are said to Prophecy. In
the like sense it is, that God saith to Moses (Exod. 4.16.) concerning
Aaron, "He shall be thy Spokes-man to the People; and he shall be to
thee a mouth, and thou shalt be to him in stead of God;" that which here
is Spokesman, is (chap.7.1.) interpreted Prophet; "See (saith God)
I have made thee a God to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy Brother shall be thy
Prophet." In the sense of speaking from man to God, Abraham is called
a Prophet (Genes. 20.7.) where God in a Dream speaketh to Abimelech
in this manner, "Now therefore restore the man his wife, for he is a
Prophet, and shall pray for thee;" whereby may be also gathered,
that the name of Prophet may be given, not unproperly to them that
in Christian Churches, have a Calling to say publique prayers for the
Congregation. In the same sense, the Prophets that came down from the
High place (or Hill of God) with a Psaltery, and a Tabret, and a Pipe,
and a Harp (1 Sam. 10.5,6.) and (vers. 10.) Saul amongst them, are said
to Prophecy, in that they praised God, in that manner publiquely. In the
like sense, is Miriam (Exod. 15.20.) called a Prophetesse. So is it
also to be taken (1 Cor. 11.4,5.) where St. Paul saith, "Every man that
prayeth or prophecyeth with his head covered, &c. and every woman that
prayeth or prophecyeth with her head uncovered: For Prophecy in that
place, signifieth no more, but praising God in Psalmes, and Holy Songs;
which women might doe in the Church, though it were not lawfull for them
to speak to the Congregation. And in this signification it is, that the
Poets of the Heathen, that composed Hymnes and other sorts of Poems in
the honor of their Gods, were called Vates (Prophets) as is well enough
known by all that are versed in the Books of the Gentiles, and as
is evident (Tit. 1.12.) where St. Paul saith of the Cretians, that a
Prophet of their owne said, they were Liars; not that St. Paul held
their Poets for Prophets, but acknowledgeth that the word Prophet was
commonly used to signifie them that celebrated the honour of God in
Verse




Praediction Of Future Contingents, Not Alwaies Prophecy

When by Prophecy is meant Praediction, or foretelling of future
Contingents; not only they were Prophets, who were Gods Spokesmen, and
foretold those things to others, which God had foretold to them; but
also all those Imposters, that pretend by the helpe of familiar spirits,
or by superstitious divination of events past, from false causes, to
foretell the like events in time to come: of which (as I have declared
already in the 12. chapter of this Discourse) there be many kinds, who
gain in the opinion of the common sort of men, a greater reputation
of Prophecy, by one casuall event that may bee but wrested to their
purpose, than can be lost again by never so many failings. Prophecy is
not an art, nor (when it is taken for Praediction) a constant Vocation;
but an extraordinary, and temporary Employment from God, most often of
Good men, but sometimes also of the Wicked. The woman of Endor, who
is said to have had a familiar spirit, and thereby to have raised a
Phantasme of Samuel, and foretold Saul his death, was not therefore a
Prophetesse; for neither had she any science, whereby she could raise
such a Phantasme; nor does it appear that God commanded the raising of
it; but onely guided that Imposture to be a means of Sauls terror and
discouragement; and by consequent, of the discomfiture, by which he
fell. And for Incoherent Speech, it was amongst the Gentiles taken for
one sort of Prophecy, because the Prophets of their Oracles, intoxicated
with a spirit, or vapour from the cave of the Pythian Oracle at Delphi,
were for the time really mad, and spake like mad-men; of whose loose
words a sense might be made to fit any event, in such sort, as all
bodies are said to be made of Materia prima. In the Scripture I find
it also so taken (1 Sam. 18. 10.) in these words, "And the Evill spirit
came upon Saul, and he Prophecyed in the midst of the house."




The Manner How God Hath Spoken To The Prophets

And although there be so many significations in Scripture of the word
Prophet; yet is that the most frequent, in which it is taken for him,
to whom God speaketh immediately, that which the Prophet is to say from
him, to some other man, or to the people. And hereupon a question may
be asked, in what manner God speaketh to such a Prophet. Can it (may some
say) be properly said, that God hath voice and language, when it cannot
be properly said, he hath a tongue, or other organs, as a man? The
Prophet David argueth thus, "Shall he that made the eye, not see? or he
that made the ear, not hear?" But this may be spoken, not (as usually) to
signifie Gods nature, but to signifie our intention to honor him. For
to See, and Hear, are Honorable Attributes, and may be given to God, to
declare (as far as our capacity can conceive) his Almighty power. But
if it were to be taken in the strict, and proper sense, one might argue
from his making of all parts of mans body, that he had also the same use
of them which we have; which would be many of them so uncomely, as it
would be the greatest contumely in the world to ascribe them to him.
Therefore we are to interpret Gods speaking to men immediately, for that
way (whatsoever it be), by which God makes them understand his will: And
the wayes whereby he doth this, are many; and to be sought onely in the
Holy Scripture: where though many times it be said, that God spake to
this, and that person, without declaring in what manner; yet there be
again many places, that deliver also the signes by which they were
to acknowledge his presence, and commandement; and by these may be
understood, how he spake to many of the rest.




To The Extraordinary Prophets Of The Old Testament He Spake

By Dreams, Or Visions

In what manner God spake to Adam, and Eve, and Cain, and Noah, is not
expressed; nor how he spake to Abraham, till such time as he came out of
his own countrey to Sichem in the land of Canaan; and then (Gen. 12.7.)
God is said to have Appeared to him. So there is one way, whereby God
made his presence manifest; that is, by an Apparition, or Vision. And
again, (Gen. 15.1.) The Word of the Lord came to Abraham in a Vision;
that is to say, somewhat, as a sign of Gods presence, appeared as Gods
Messenger, to speak to him. Again, the Lord appeared to Abraham (Gen.
18. 1.) by an apparition of three Angels; and to Abimelech (Gen. 20. 3.)
in a dream: To Lot (Gen. 19. 1.) by an apparition of Two Angels: And
to Hagar (Gen. 21. 17.) by the apparition of one Angel: And to Abraham
again (Gen. 22. 11.) by the apparition of a voice from heaven: And (Gen.
26. 24.) to Isaac in the night; (that is, in his sleep, or by dream):
And to Jacob (Gen. 18. 12.) in a dream; that is to say (as are the words
of the text) "Jacob dreamed that he saw a ladder, &c." And (Gen. 32. 1.)
in a Vision of Angels: And to Moses (Exod. 3.2.) in the apparition of a
flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: And after the time of Moses,
(where the manner how God spake immediately to man in the Old Testament,
is expressed) hee spake alwaies by a Vision, or by a Dream; as to
Gideon, Samuel, Eliah, Elisha, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the rest of the
Prophets; and often in the New Testament, as to Joseph, to St. Peter, to
St. Paul, and to St. John the Evangelist in the Apocalypse.

Onely to Moses hee spake in a more extraordinary manner in Mount Sinai,
and in the Tabernacle; and to the High Priest in the Tabernacle, and in
the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Temple. But Moses, and after him the
High Priests were Prophets of a more eminent place, and degree in
Gods favour; And God himself in express words declareth, that to other
Prophets hee spake in Dreams and Visions, but to his servant Moses, in
such manner as a man speaketh to his friend. The words are these (Numb.
12. 6,7,8.) "If there be a Prophet among you, I the Lord will make my
self known to him in a Vision, and will speak unto him in a Dream. My
servant Moses is not so, who is faithfull in all my house; with him I
will speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, not in dark speeches; and
the similitude of the Lord shall he behold." And (Exod. 33. 11.) "The
Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend."
And yet this speaking of God to Moses, was by mediation of an Angel, or
Angels, as appears expressely, Acts 7. ver. 35. and 53. and Gal. 3. 19.
and was therefore a Vision, though a more cleer Vision than was given to
other Prophets. And conformable hereunto, where God saith (Deut. 13. 1.)
"If there arise amongst you a Prophet, or Dreamer of Dreams," the later
word is but the interpretation of the former. And (Joel 2. 28.) "Your
sons and your daughters shall Prophecy; your old men shall dream Dreams,
and your young men shall see Visions:" where again, the word Prophecy is
expounded by Dream, and Vision. And in the same manner it was, that God
spake to Solomon, promising him Wisdome, Riches, and Honor; for the text
saith, (1 Kings 3. 15.) "And Solomon awoak, and behold it was a Dream:"
So that generally the Prophets extraordinary in the old Testament took
notice of the Word of God no otherwise, than from their Dreams, or
Visions, that is to say, from the imaginations which they had in their
sleep, or in an Extasie; which imaginations in every true Prophet were
supernaturall; but in false Prophets were either naturall, or feigned.

The same Prophets were neverthelesse said to speak by the Spirit; as
(Zach. 7. 12.) where the Prophet speaking of the Jewes, saith, "They
made their hearths hard as Adamant, lest they should hear the law, and
the words which the Lord of Hosts hath sent in his Spirit by the former
Prophets." By which it is manifest, that speaking by the Spirit, or
Inspiration, was not a particular manner of Gods speaking, different
from Vision, when they that were said to speak by the Spirit, were
extraordinary Prophets, such as for every new message, were to have a
particular Commission, or (which is all one) a new Dream, or Vision.

To Prophets Of Perpetuall Calling, And Supreme, God Spake In The
Old Testament From The Mercy Seat, In A Manner Not Expressed In The
Scripture. Of Prophets, that were so by a perpetuall Calling in the Old
Testament, some were Supreme, and some Subordinate: Supreme were first
Moses; and after him the High Priest, every one for his time, as long
as the Priesthood was Royall; and after the people of the Jews, had
rejected God, that he should no more reign over them, those Kings which
submitted themselves to Gods government, were also his chief Prophets;
and the High Priests office became Ministeriall. And when God was to be
consulted, they put on the holy vestments, and enquired of the Lord,
as the King commanded them, and were deprived of their office, when
the King thought fit. For King Saul (1 Sam. 13. 9.) commanded the burnt
offering to be brought, and (1 Sam. 14. 18.) he commands the Priest to
bring the Ark neer him; and (ver. 19.) again to let it alone, because he
saw an advantage upon his enemies. And in the same chapter Saul asketh
counsell of God. In like manner King David, after his being anointed,
though before he had possession of the Kingdome, is said to "enquire
of the Lord" (1 Sam. 23. 2.) whether he should fight against the
Philistines at Keilah; and (verse 10.) David commandeth the Priest to
bring him the Ephod, to enquire whether he should stay in Keilah,
or not. And King Solomon (1 Kings 2. 27.) took the Priesthood from
Abiathar, and gave it (verse 35.) to Zadoc. Therefore Moses, and
the High Priests, and the pious Kings, who enquired of God on all
extraordinary occasions, how they were to carry themselves, or what
event they were to have, were all Soveraign Prophets. But in what manner
God spake unto them, is not manifest. To say that when Moses went up to
God in Mount Sinai, it was a Dream, or Vision, such as other Prophets
had, is contrary to that distinction which God made between Moses, and
other Prophets, Numb. 12. 6,7,8. To say God spake or appeared as he
is in his own nature, is to deny his Infinitenesse, Invisibility,
Incomprehensibility. To say he spake by Inspiration, or Infusion of the
Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit signifieth the Deity, is to make Moses
equall with Christ, in whom onely the Godhead (as St. Paul speaketh Col.
2.9.) dwelleth bodily. And lastly, to say he spake by the Holy Spirit,
as it signifieth the graces, or gifts of the Holy Spirit, is to
attribute nothing to him supernaturall. For God disposeth men to Piety,
Justice, Mercy, Truth, Faith, and all manner of Vertue, both Morall,
and Intellectuall, by doctrine, example, and by severall occasions,
naturall, and ordinary.

And as these ways cannot be applyed to God, in his speaking to Moses, at
Mount Sinai; so also, they cannot be applyed to him, in his speaking
to the High Priests, from the Mercy-Seat. Therefore in what manner God
spake to those Soveraign Prophets of the Old Testament, whose office
it was to enquire of him, is not intelligible. In the time of the New
Testament, there was no Soveraign Prophet, but our Saviour; who was both
God that spake, and the Prophet to whom he spake.

To Prophets Of Perpetuall Calling, But Subordinate, God Spake By The
Spirit. To subordinate Prophets of perpetuall Calling, I find not any
place that proveth God spake to them supernaturally; but onely in
such manner, as naturally he inclineth men to Piety, to Beleef, to
Righteousnesse, and to other vertues all other Christian Men. Which
way, though it consist in Constitution, Instruction, Education, and the
occasions and invitements men have to Christian vertues; yet it is truly
attributed to the operation of the Spirit of God, or Holy Spirit
(which we in our language call the Holy Ghost): For there is no good
inclination, that is not of the operation of God. But these operations
are not alwaies supernaturall. When therefore a Prophet is said to speak
in the Spirit, or by the Spirit of God, we are to understand no more,
but that he speaks according to Gods will, declared by the supreme
Prophet. For the most common acceptation of the word Spirit, is in the
signification of a mans intention, mind, or disposition.

In the time of Moses, there were seventy men besides himself, that
Prophecyed in the Campe of the Israelites. In what manner God spake to
them, is declared in the 11 of Numbers, verse 25. "The Lord came down in
a cloud, and spake unto Moses, and took of the Spirit that was upon him,
and gave it to the seventy Elders. And it came to passe, when the Spirit
rested upon them, they Prophecyed, and did not cease," By which it is
manifest, first, that their Prophecying to the people, was subservient,
and subordinate to the Prophecying of Moses; for that God took of the
Spirit of Moses, to put upon them; so that they Prophecyed as Moses
would have them: otherwise they had not been suffered to Prophecy at
all. For there was (verse 27.) a complaint made against them to Moses;
and Joshua would have Moses to have forbidden them; which he did not,
but said to Joshua, Bee not jealous in my behalf. Secondly, that
the Spirit of God in that place, signifieth nothing but the Mind and
Disposition to obey, and assist Moses in the administration of the
Government. For if it were meant they had the substantial Spirit of God;
that is, the Divine nature, inspired into them, then they had it in no
lesse manner than Christ himself, in whom onely the Spirit of God dwelt
bodily. It is meant therefore of the Gift and Grace of God, that guided
them to co-operate with Moses; from whom their Spirit was derived. And
it appeareth (verse 16.) that, they were such as Moses himself should
appoint for Elders and Officers of the People: For the words are,
"Gather unto me seventy men, whom thou knowest to be Elders and
Officers of the people:" where, "thou knowest," is the same with "thou
appointest," or "hast appointed to be such." For we are told
before (Exod. 18.) that Moses following the counsell of Jethro his
Father-in-law, did appoint Judges, and Officers over the people, such as
feared God; and of these, were those Seventy, whom God by putting upon
them Moses spirit, inclined to aid Moses in the Administration of the
Kingdome: and in this sense the Spirit of God is said (1 Sam. 16. 13,
14.) presently upon the anointing of David, to have come upon David, and
left Saul; God giving his graces to him he chose to govern his people,
and taking them away from him, he rejected. So that by the Spirit is
meant Inclination to Gods service; and not any supernaturall Revelation.




God Sometimes Also Spake By Lots

God spake also many times by the event of Lots; which were ordered by
such as he had put in Authority over his people. So wee read that God
manifested by the Lots which Saul caused to be drawn (1 Sam. 14. 43.)
the fault that Jonathan had committed, in eating a honey-comb, contrary
to the oath taken by the people. And (Josh. 18. 10.) God divided the
land of Canaan amongst the Israelite, by the "lots that Joshua did cast
before the Lord in Shiloh." In the same manner it seemeth to be, that
God discovered (Joshua 7.16., &c.) the crime of Achan. And these are the
wayes whereby God declared his Will in the Old Testament.

All which ways he used also in the New Testament. To the Virgin Mary, by
a Vision of an Angel: To Joseph in a Dream: again to Paul in the way
to Damascus in a Vision of our Saviour: and to Peter in the Vision of
a sheet let down from heaven, with divers sorts of flesh, of clean and
unclean, beasts; and in prison, by Vision of an Angel: And to all the
Apostles, and Writers of the New Testament, by the graces of his Spirit;
and to the Apostles again (at the choosing of Matthias in the place of
Judas Iscariot) by lot.




Every Man Ought To Examine The Probability Of A Pretended Prophets

Calling

Seeing then all Prophecy supposeth Vision, or Dream, (which two, when
they be naturall, are the same,) or some especiall gift of God, so
rarely observed in mankind, as to be admired where observed; and seeing
as well such gifts, as the most extraordinary Dreams, and Visions, may
proceed from God, not onely by his supernaturall, and immediate, but
also by his naturall operation, and by mediation of second causes;
there is need of Reason and Judgement to discern between naturall, and
supernaturall Gifts, and between naturall, and supernaturall Visions, or
Dreams. And consequently men had need to be very circumspect, and wary,
in obeying the voice of man, that pretending himself to be a Prophet,
requires us to obey God in that way, which he in Gods name telleth us to
be the way to happinesse. For he that pretends to teach men the way of
so great felicity, pretends to govern them; that is to say, to rule, and
reign over them; which is a thing, that all men naturally desire, and
is therefore worthy to be suspected of Ambition and Imposture; and
consequently, ought to be examined, and tryed by every man, before hee
yeeld them obedience; unlesse he have yeelded it them already, in
the institution of a Common-wealth; as when the Prophet is the Civill
Soveraign, or by the Civil Soveraign Authorized. And if this examination
of Prophets, and Spirits, were not allowed to every one of the people,
it had been to no purpose, to set out the marks, by which every man
might be able, to distinguish between those, whom they ought, and those
whom they ought not to follow. Seeing therefore such marks are set out
(Deut. 13. 1,&c.) to know a Prophet by; and (1 John 4.1.&C) to know a
Spirit by: and seeing there is so much Prophecying in the Old Testament;
and so much Preaching in the New Testament against Prophets; and so much
greater a number ordinarily of false Prophets, then of true; every
one is to beware of obeying their directions, at their own perill. And
first, that there were many more false than true Prophets, appears by
this, that when Ahab (1 Kings 12.) consulted four hundred Prophets, they
were all false Imposters, but onely one Michaiah. And a little before
the time of the Captivity, the Prophets were generally lyars. "The
Prophets" (saith the Lord by Jerem. cha. 14. verse 14.) "prophecy Lies
in my name. I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, nor spake
unto them, they prophecy to you a false Vision, a thing of naught; and
the deceit of their heart." In so much as God commanded the People by
the mouth of the Prophet Jeremiah (chap. 23. 16.) not to obey them.
"Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, hearken not unto the words of the
Prophets, that prophecy to you. They make you vain, they speak a Vision
of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord."




All Prophecy But Of The Soveraign Prophet Is To Be Examined

By Every Subject

Seeing then there was in the time of the Old Testament, such quarrells
amongst the Visionary Prophets, one contesting with another, and asking
When departed the Spirit from me, to go to thee? as between Michaiah,
and the rest of the four hundred; and such giving of the Lye to one
another, (as in Jerem. 14.14.) and such controversies in the New
Testament at this day, amongst the Spirituall Prophets: Every man then
was, and now is bound to make use of his Naturall Reason, to apply to
all Prophecy those Rules which God hath given us, to discern the
true from the false. Of which rules, in the Old Testament, one was,
conformable doctrine to that which Moses the Soveraign Prophet had
taught them; and the other the miraculous power of foretelling what God
would bring to passe, as I have already shown out of Deut. 13. 1. &c.
and in the New Testament there was but one onely mark; and that was the
preaching of this Doctrine, That Jesus Is The Christ, that is, the
King of the Jews, promised in the Old Testament. Whosoever denyed that
Article, he was a false Prophet, whatsoever miracles he might seem to
work; and he that taught it was a true Prophet. For St. John (1 Epist,
4. 2, &c) speaking expressely of the means to examine Spirits, whether
they be of God, or not; after he hath told them that there would arise
false Prophets, saith thus, "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God. Every
Spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of
God;" that is, is approved and allowed as a Prophet of God: not that
he is a godly man, or one of the Elect, for this, that he confesseth,
professeth, or preacheth Jesus to be the Christ; but for that he is a
Prophet avowed. For God sometimes speaketh by Prophets, whose persons he
hath not accepted; as he did by Baalam; and as he foretold Saul of his
death, by the Witch of Endor. Again in the next verse, "Every Spirit
that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the Flesh, is not
of Christ. And this is the Spirit of Antichrist." So that the rule is
perfect on both sides; that he is a true Prophet, which preacheth the
Messiah already come, in the person of Jesus; and he a false one that
denyeth him come, and looketh for him in some future Imposter, that
shall take upon him that honour falsely, whom the Apostle there properly
calleth Antichrist. Every man therefore ought to consider who is the
Soveraign Prophet; that is to say, who it is, that is Gods Viceregent
on earth; and hath next under God, the Authority of Governing Christian
men; and to observe for a Rule, that Doctrine, which in the name of
God, hee commanded to bee taught; and thereby to examine and try out
the truth of those Doctrines, which pretended Prophets with miracles, or
without, shall at any time advance: and if they find it contrary to that
Rule, to doe as they did, that came to Moses, and complained that there
were some that Prophecyed in the Campe, whose Authority so to doe they
doubted of; and leave to the Soveraign, as they did to Moses to uphold,
or to forbid them, as hee should see cause; and if hee disavow them,
then no more to obey their voice; or if he approve them, then to obey
them, as men to whom God hath given a part of the Spirit of their
Soveraigne. For when Christian men, take not their Christian Soveraign,
for Gods Prophet; they must either take their owne Dreams, for the
prophecy they mean to bee governed by, and the tumour of their own
hearts for the Spirit of God; or they must suffer themselves to bee lead
by some strange Prince; or by some of their fellow subjects, that can
bewitch them, by slander of the government, into rebellion, without
other miracle to confirm their calling, then sometimes an extraordinary
successe, and Impunity; and by this means destroying all laws, both
divine, and humane, reduce all Order, Government, and Society, to the
first Chaos of Violence, and Civill warre.



CHAPTER XXXVII. OF MIRACLES, AND THEIR USE




A Miracle Is A Work That Causeth Admiration

By Miracles are signified the Admirable works of God: & therefore they
are also called Wonders. And because they are for the most part, done,
for a signification of his commandement, in such occasions, as
without them, men are apt to doubt, (following their private naturall
reasoning,) what he hath commanded, and what not, they are commonly in
Holy Scripture, called Signes, in the same sense, as they are called by
the Latines, Ostenta, and Portenta, from shewing, and fore-signifying
that, which the Almighty is about to bring to passe.




And Must Therefore Be Rare, Whereof There Is No Naturall Cause Known

To understand therefore what is a Miracle, we must first understand what
works they are, which men wonder at, and call Admirable. And there be
but two things which make men wonder at any event: The one is, if it
be strange, that is to say, such, as the like of it hath never, or very
rarely been produced: The other is, if when it is produced, we cannot
imagine it to have been done by naturall means, but onely by the
immediate hand of God. But when wee see some possible, naturall cause of
it, how rarely soever the like has been done; or if the like have been
often done, how impossible soever it be to imagine a naturall means
thereof, we no more wonder, nor esteem it for a Miracle.

Therefore, if a Horse, or Cow should speak, it were a Miracle; because
both the thing is strange, & the Naturall cause difficult to imagin: So
also were it, to see a strange deviation of nature, in the production
of some new shape of a living creature. But when a man, or other Animal,
engenders his like, though we know no more how this is done, than the
other; yet because 'tis usuall, it is no Miracle. In like manner, if a
man be metamorphosed into a stone, or into a pillar, it is a Miracle;
because strange: but if a peece of wood be so changed; because we see it
often, it is no Miracle: and yet we know no more, by what operation of
God, the one is brought to passe, than the other.

The first Rainbow that was seen in the world, was a Miracle, because the
first; and consequently strange; and served for a sign from God, placed
in heaven, to assure his people, there should be no more an universall
destruction of the world by Water. But at this day, because they
are frequent, they are not Miracles, neither to them that know their
naturall causes, nor to them who know them not. Again, there be many
rare works produced by the Art of man: yet when we know they are done;
because thereby wee know also the means how they are done, we count them
not for Miracles, because not wrought by the immediate hand of God, but
by mediation of humane Industry.




That Which Seemeth A Miracle To One Man, May Seem Otherwise To Another

Furthermore, seeing Admiration and Wonder, is consequent to the
knowledge and experience, wherewith men are endued, some more, some
lesse; it followeth, that the same thing, may be a Miracle to one, and
not to another. And thence it is, that ignorant, and superstitious men
make great Wonders of those works, which other men, knowing to proceed
from Nature, (which is not the immediate, but the ordinary work of God,)
admire not at all: As when Ecclipses of the Sun and Moon have been taken
for supernaturall works, by the common people; when neverthelesse, there
were others, could from their naturall causes, have foretold the very
hour they should arrive: Or, as when a man, by confederacy, and secret
intelligence, getting knowledge of the private actions of an ignorant,
unwary man, thereby tells him, what he has done in former time; it seems
to him a Miraculous thing; but amongst wise, and cautelous men, such
Miracles as those, cannot easily be done.




The End Of Miracles

Again, it belongeth to the nature of a Miracle, that it be wrought for
the procuring of credit to Gods Messengers, Ministers, and Prophets,
that thereby men may know, they are called, sent, and employed by God,
and thereby be the better inclined to obey them. And therefore, though
the creation of the world, and after that the destruction of all living
creatures in the universall deluge, were admirable works; yet because
they were not done to procure credit to any Prophet, or other Minister
of God, they use not to be called Miracles. For how admirable soever any
work be, the Admiration consisteth not in that it could be done, because
men naturally beleeve the Almighty can doe all things, but because he
does it at the Prayer, or Word of a man. But the works of God in Egypt,
by the hand of Moses, were properly Miracles; because they were done
with intention to make the people of Israel beleeve, that Moses came
unto them, not out of any design of his owne interest, but as sent from
God. Therefore after God had commanded him to deliver the Israelites
from the Egyptian bondage, when he said (Exod 4.1. &c.) "They will not
beleeve me, but will say, the Lord hath not appeared unto me," God gave
him power, to turn the Rod he had in his hand into a Serpent, and again
to return it into a Rod; and by putting his hand into his bosome, to
make it leprous; and again by pulling it out to make it whole, to make
the Children of Israel beleeve (as it is verse 5.) that the God of their
Fathers had appeared unto him; And if that were not enough, he gave
him power to turn their waters into bloud. And when hee had done these
Miracles before the people, it is said (verse 41.) that "they beleeved
him." Neverthelesse, for fear of Pharaoh, they durst not yet obey him.
Therefore the other works which were done to plague Pharaoh and the
Egyptians, tended all to make the Israelites beleeve in Moses, and were
properly Miracles. In like manner if we consider all the Miracles
done by the hand of Moses, and all the rest of the Prophets, till the
Captivity; and those of our Saviour, and his Apostles afterward; we
shall find, their end was alwaies to beget, or confirm beleefe, that
they came not of their own motion, but were sent by God. Wee may further
observe in Scripture, that the end of Miracles, was to beget beleef,
not universally in all men, elect, and reprobate; but in the elect
only; that is to say, is such as God had determined should become his
Subjects. For those miraculous plagues of Egypt, had not for end, the
conversion of Pharaoh; For God had told Moses before, that he would
harden the heart of Pharaoh, that he should not let the people goe: And
when he let them goe at last, not the Miracles perswaded him, but the
plagues forced him to it. So also of our Saviour, it is written, (Mat.
13. 58.) that he wrought not many Miracles in his own countrey, because
of their unbeleef; and (in Marke 6.5.) in stead of, "he wrought not
many," it is, "he could work none." It was not because he wanted power;
which to say, were blasphemy against God; nor that the end of Miracles
was not to convert incredulous men to Christ; for the end of all the
Miracles of Moses, of Prophets, of our Saviour, and of his Apostles
was to adde men to the Church; but it was, because the end of their
Miracles, was to adde to the Church (not all men, but) such as should
be saved; that is to say, such as God had elected. Seeing therefore
our Saviour sent from his Father, hee could not use his power in the
conversion of those, whom his Father had rejected. They that expounding
this place of St. Marke, say, that his word, "Hee could not," is put
for, "He would not," do it without example in the Greek tongue, (where
Would Not, is put sometimes for Could Not, in things inanimate, that
have no will; but Could Not, for Would Not, never,) and thereby lay
a stumbling block before weak Christians; as if Christ could doe no
Miracles, but amongst the credulous.




The Definition Of A Miracle

From that which I have here set down, of the nature, and use of a
Miracle, we may define it thus, "A MIRACLE, is a work of God, (besides
his operation by the way of Nature, ordained in the Creation,) done
for the making manifest to his elect, the mission of an extraordinary
Minister for their salvation."

And from this definition, we may inferre; First, that in all Miracles,
the work done, is not the effect of any vertue in the Prophet; because
it is the effect of the immediate hand of God; that is to say God hath
done it, without using the Prophet therein, as a subordinate cause.

Secondly, that no Devil, Angel, or other created Spirit, can do a
Miracle. For it must either be by vertue of some naturall science, or
by Incantation, that is, vertue of words. For if the Inchanters do it
by their own power independent, there is some power that proceedeth not
from God; which all men deny: and if they doe it by power given them,
then is the work not from the immediate hand of God, but naturall, and
consequently no Miracle.

There be some texts of Scripture, that seem to attribute the power of
working wonders (equall to some of those immediate Miracles, wrought
by God himself,) to certain Arts of Magick, and Incantation. As for
example, when we read that after the Rod of Moses being cast on the
ground became a Serpent, (Exod. 7. 11.) "the Magicians of Egypt did the
like by their Enchantments;" and that after Moses had turned the waters
of the Egyptian Streams, Rivers, Ponds, and Pooles of water into blood,
(Exod. 7. 22.) "the Magicians of Egypt did so likewise, with their
Enchantments;" and that after Moses had by the power of God brought
frogs upon the land, (Exod. 8. 7.) "the Magicians also did so with their
Enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt;" will not a
man be apt to attribute Miracles to Enchantments; that is to say, to the
efficacy of the sound of Words; and think the same very well proved out
of this, and other such places? and yet there is no place of Scripture,
that telleth us what on Enchantment is. If therefore Enchantment be not,
as many think it, a working of strange effects by spells, and words;
but Imposture, and delusion, wrought by ordinary means; and so far
from supernaturall, as the Impostors need not the study so much as of
naturall causes, but the ordinary ignorance, stupidity, and superstition
of mankind, to doe them; those texts that seem to countenance the power
of Magick, Witchcraft, and Enchantment, must needs have another sense,
than at first sight they seem to bear.




That Men Are Apt To Be Deceived By False Miracles

For it is evident enough, that Words have no effect, but on those
that understand them; and then they have no other, but to signifie the
intentions, or passions of them that speak; and thereby produce, hope,
fear, or other passions, or conceptions in the hearer. Therefore when a
Rod seemeth a Serpent, or the Water Bloud, or any other Miracle seemeth
done by Enchantment; if it be not to the edification of Gods people,
not the Rod, nor the Water, nor any other thing is enchanted; that is
to say, wrought upon by the Words, but the Spectator. So that all the
Miracle consisteth in this, that the Enchanter has deceived a man; which
is no Miracle, but a very easie matter to doe.

For such is the ignorance, and aptitude to error generally of all men,
but especially of them that have not much knowledge of naturall causes,
and of the nature, and interests of men; as by innumerable and easie
tricks to be abused. What opinion of miraculous power, before it was
known there was a Science of the course of the Stars, might a man have
gained, that should have told the people, This hour, or day the Sun
should be darkned? A juggler by the handling of his goblets, and other
trinkets, if it were not now ordinarily practised, would be thought
to do his wonders by the power at least of the Devil. A man that hath
practised to speak by drawing in of his breath, (which kind of men in
antient time were called Ventriloqui,) and so make the weaknesse of
his voice seem to proceed, not from the weak impulsion of the organs
of Speech, but from distance of place, is able to make very many men
beleeve it is a voice from Heaven, whatsoever he please to tell them.
And for a crafty man, that hath enquired into the secrets, and familiar
confessions that one man ordinarily maketh to another of his actions and
adventures past, to tell them him again is no hard matter; and yet there
be many, that by such means as that, obtain the reputation of being
Conjurers. But it is too long a businesse, to reckon up the severall
sorts of those men, which the Greeks called Thaumaturgi, that is to say,
workers of things wonderfull; and yet these do all they do, by their
own single dexterity. But if we looke upon the Impostures wrought by
Confederacy, there is nothing how impossible soever to be done, that is
impossible to bee beleeved. For two men conspiring, one to seem lame,
the other to cure him with a charme, will deceive many: but many
conspiring, one to seem lame, another so to cure him, and all the rest
to bear witnesse; will deceive many more.




Cautions Against The Imposture Of Miracles

In this aptitude of mankind, to give too hasty beleefe to pretended
Miracles, there can be no better, nor I think any other caution, than
that which God hath prescribed, first by Moses, (as I have said before
in the precedent chapter,) in the beginning of the 13. and end of the
18. of Deuteronomy; That wee take not any for Prophets, that teach any
other Religion, then that which Gods Lieutenant, (which at that time was
Moses,) hath established; nor any, (though he teach the same Religion,)
whose Praediction we doe not see come to passe. Moses therefore in his
time, and Aaron, and his successors in their times, and the Soveraign
Governour of Gods people, next under God himself, that is to say, the
Head of the Church in all times, are to be consulted, what doctrine
he hath established, before wee give credit to a pretended Miracle, or
Prophet. And when that is done, the thing they pretend to be a Miracle,
we must both see it done, and use all means possible to consider,
whether it be really done; and not onely so, but whether it be such, as
no man can do the like by his naturall power, but that it requires the
immediate hand of God. And in this also we must have recourse to Gods
Lieutenant; to whom in all doubtfull cases, wee have submitted our
private judgments. For Example; if a man pretend, that after certain
words spoken over a peece of bread, that presently God hath made it not
bread, but a God, or a man, or both, and neverthelesse it looketh still
as like bread as ever it did; there is no reason for any man to think
it really done; nor consequently to fear him, till he enquire of God,
by his Vicar, or Lieutenant, whether it be done, or not. If he say not,
then followeth that which Moses saith, (Deut. 18. 22.) "he hath spoken
it presumptuously, thou shalt not fear him." If he say 'tis done, then
he is not to contradict it. So also if wee see not, but onely hear tell
of a Miracle, we are to consult the Lawful Church; that is to say, the
lawful Head thereof, how far we are to give credit to the relators of
it. And this is chiefly the case of men, that in these days live under
Christian Soveraigns. For in these times, I do not know one man, that
ever saw any such wondrous work, done by the charm, or at the word,
or prayer of a man, that a man endued but with a mediocrity of reason,
would think supernaturall: and the question is no more, whether what wee
see done, be a Miracle; whether the Miracle we hear, or read of, were
a reall work, and not the Act of a tongue, or pen; but in plain terms,
whether the report be true, or a lye. In which question we are not every
one, to make our own private Reason, or Conscience, but the Publique
Reason, that is, the reason of Gods Supreme Lieutenant, Judge; and
indeed we have made him Judge already, if wee have given him a Soveraign
power, to doe all that is necessary for our peace and defence. A private
man has alwaies the liberty, (because thought is free,) to beleeve,
or not beleeve in his heart, those acts that have been given out for
Miracles, according as he shall see, what benefit can accrew by
mens belief, to those that pretend, or countenance them, and thereby
conjecture, whether they be Miracles, or Lies. But when it comes
to confession of that faith, the Private Reason must submit to the
Publique; that is to say, to Gods Lieutenant. But who is this Lieutenant
of God, and Head of the Church, shall be considered in its proper place
thereafter.



CHAPTER XXXVIII. OF THE SIGNIFICATION IN SCRIPTURE OF ETERNALL LIFE,

HELL, SALVATION, THE WORLD TO COME, AND REDEMPTION


The maintenance of Civill Society, depending on Justice; and Justice on
the power of Life and Death, and other lesse Rewards and Punishments,
residing in them that have the Soveraignty of the Common-wealth; It
is impossible a Common-wealth should stand, where any other than the
Soveraign, hath a power of giving greater rewards than Life; and of
inflicting greater punishments than Death. Now seeing Eternall Life is
a greater reward, than the Life Present; and Eternall Torment a greater
punishment than the Death of Nature; It is a thing worthy to be well
considered, of all men that desire (by obeying Authority) to avoid
the calamities of Confusion, and Civill war, what is meant in Holy
Scripture, by Life Eternall, and Torment Eternall; and for what
offences, against whom committed, men are to be Eternally Tormented; and
for what actions, they are to obtain Eternall Life.




Place Of Adams Eternity If He Had Not Sinned, The Terrestrial Paradise

And first we find, that Adam was created in such a condition of life,
as had he not broken the commandement of God, he had enjoyed it in the
Paradise of Eden Everlastingly. For there was the Tree of Life; whereof
he was so long allowed to eat, as he should forbear to eat of the tree
of Knowledge of Good an Evill; which was not allowed him. And therefore
as soon as he had eaten of it, God thrust him out of Paradise, "lest he
should put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and live
for ever." (Gen. 3. 22.) By which it seemeth to me, (with submission
neverthelesse both in this, and in all questions, whereof the
determination dependeth on the Scriptures, to the interpretation of the
Bible authorized by the Common-wealth, whose Subject I am,) that Adam if
he had not sinned, had had an Eternall Life on Earth: and that Mortality
entred upon himself, and his posterity, by his first Sin. Not that
actuall Death then entred; for Adam then could never have had children;
whereas he lived long after, and saw a numerous posterity ere he dyed.
But where it is said, "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt
surely die," it must needs bee meant of his Mortality, and certitude
of death. Seeing then Eternall life was lost by Adams forfeiture, in
committing sin, he that should cancell that forfeiture was to recover
thereby, that Life again. Now Jesus Christ hath satisfied for the sins
of all that beleeve in him; and therefore recovered to all beleevers,
that ETERNALL LIFE, which was lost by the sin of Adam. And in this sense
it is, that the comparison of St. Paul holdeth (Rom. 5.18, 19.) "As by
the offence of one, Judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even
so by the righteousnesse of one, the free gift came upon all men
to Justification of Life." Which is again (1 Cor. 15.21,22) more
perspicuously delivered in these words, "For since by man came death, by
man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even
so in Christ shall all be made alive."




Texts Concerning The Place Of Life Eternall For Beleevers

Concerning the place wherein men shall enjoy that Eternall Life, which
Christ hath obtained for them, the texts next before alledged seem to
make it on Earth. For if as in Adam, all die, that is, have forfeited
Paradise, and Eternall Life on Earth; even so in Christ all shall be
made alive; then all men shall be made to live on Earth; for else
the comparison were not proper. Hereunto seemeth to agree that of the
Psalmist, (Psal. 133.3.) "Upon Zion God commanded the blessing, even
Life for evermore;" for Zion, is in Jerusalem, upon Earth: as also that
of S. Joh. (Rev. 2.7.) "To him that overcommeth I will give to eat of
the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." This
was the tree of Adams Eternall life; but his life was to have been on
Earth. The same seemeth to be confirmed again by St. Joh. (Rev. 21.2.)
where he saith, "I John saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down
from God out of heaven, prepared as a Bride adorned for her husband:"
and again v. 10. to the same effect: As if he should say, the new
Jerusalem, the Paradise of God, at the coming again of Christ, should
come down to Gods people from Heaven, and not they goe up to it from
Earth. And this differs nothing from that, which the two men in white
clothing (that is, the two Angels) said to the Apostles, that were
looking upon Christ ascending (Acts 1.11.) "This same Jesus, who is
taken up from you into Heaven, shall so come, as you have seen him go up
into Heaven." Which soundeth as if they had said, he should come down
to govern them under his Father, Eternally here; and not take them up
to govern them in Heaven; and is conformable to the Restauration of the
Kingdom of God, instituted under Moses; which was a Political government
of the Jews on Earth. Again, that saying of our Saviour (Mat. 22.30.)
"that in the Resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage,
but are as the Angels of God in heaven," is a description of an Eternall
Life, resembling that which we lost in Adam in the point of Marriage.
For seeing Adam, and Eve, if they had not sinned, had lived on Earth
Eternally, in their individuall persons; it is manifest, they should
not continually have procreated their kind. For if Immortals should have
generated, as Mankind doth now; the Earth in a small time, would not
have been able to afford them a place to stand on. The Jews that asked
our Saviour the question, whose wife the woman that had married many
brothers, should be, in the resurrection, knew not what were the
consequences of Immortality; that there shal be no Generation, and
consequently no marriage, no more than there is Marriage, or generation
among the Angels. The comparison between that Eternall life which Adam
lost, and our Saviour by his Victory over death hath recovered; holdeth
also in this, that as Adam lost Eternall Life by his sin, and yet lived
after it for a time; so the faithful Christian hath recovered Eternal
Life by Christs passion, though he die a natural death, and remaine dead
for a time; namely, till the Resurrection. For as Death is reckoned from
the Condemnation of Adam, not from the Execution; so life is reckoned
from the Absolution, not from the Resurrection of them that are elected
in Christ.




Ascension Into Heaven

That the place wherein men are to live Eternally, after the
Resurrection, is the Heavens, meaning by Heaven, those parts of the
world, which are the most remote from Earth, as where the stars are,
or above the stars, in another Higher Heaven, called Caelum Empyreum,
(whereof there is no mention in Scripture, nor ground in Reason) is not
easily to be drawn from any text that I can find. By the Kingdome of
Heaven, is meant the Kingdome of the King that dwelleth in Heaven; and
his Kingdome was the people of Israel, whom he ruled by the Prophets
his Lieutenants, first Moses, and after him Eleazar, and the Soveraign
Priests, till in the days of Samuel they rebelled, and would have a
mortall man for their King, after the manner of other Nations. And
when our Saviour Christ, by the preaching of his Ministers, shall have
perswaded the Jews to return, and called the Gentiles to his obedience,
then shall there be a new Kingdome of Heaven, because our King shall
then be God, whose Throne is Heaven; without any necessity evident in
the Scripture, that man shall ascend to his happinesse any higher than
Gods Footstool the Earth. On the contrary, we find written (Joh. 3.13.)
that "no man hath ascended into Heaven, but he that came down from
Heaven, even the Son of man, that is in Heaven." Where I observe by the
way, that these words are not, as those which go immediately before, the
words of our Saviour, but of St. John himself; for Christ was then not
in Heaven, but upon the Earth. The like is said of David (Acts 2.34.)
where St. Peter, to prove the Ascension of Christ, using the words of
the Psalmist, (Psal. 16.10.) "Thou wilt not leave my soule in Hell, nor
suffer thine Holy one to see corruption," saith, they were spoken (not
of David, but) of Christ; and to prove it, addeth this Reason, "For
David is not ascended into Heaven." But to this a man may easily answer,
and say, that though their bodies were not to ascend till the generall
day of Judgment, yet their souls were in Heaven as soon as they were
departed from their bodies; which also seemeth to be confirmed by the
words of our Saviour (Luke 20.37,38.) who proving the Resurrection out
of the word of Moses, saith thus, "That the dead are raised, even Moses
shewed, at the bush, when he calleth the Lord, the God of Abraham, and
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the Dead,
but of the Living; for they all live to him." But if these words be to
be understood only of the Immortality of the Soul, they prove not at all
that which our Saviour intended to prove, which was the Resurrection
of the Body, that is to say, the Immortality of the Man. Therefore our
Saviour meaneth, that those Patriarchs were Immortall; not by a property
consequent to the essence, and nature of mankind, but by the will of
God, that was pleased of his mere grace, to bestow Eternall Life upon
the faithfull. And though at that time the Patriarchs and many other
faithfull men were Dead, yet as it is in the text, they Lived To God;
that is, they were written in the Book of Life with them that were
absolved of their sinnes, and ordained to Life eternall at the
Resurrection. That the Soul of man is in its own nature Eternall, and
a living Creature independent on the Body; or that any meer man is
Immortall, otherwise than by the Resurrection in the last day, (except
Enos and Elias,) is a doctrine not apparent in Scripture. The whole 14.
Chapter of Job, which is the speech not of his friends, but of himselfe,
is a complaint of this Mortality of Nature; and yet no contradiction of
the Immortality at the Resurrection. "There is hope of a tree," (saith
hee verse 7.) "if it be cast down, Though the root thereof wax old, and
the stock thereof die in the ground, yet when it scenteth the water
it will bud, and bring forth boughes like a Plant. But man dyeth, and
wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the Ghost, and where is he?" and (verse
12.) "man lyeth down, and riseth not, till the heavens be no more." But
when is it, that the heavens shall be no more? St. Peter tells us, that
it is at the generall Resurrection. For in his 2. Epistle, 3. Chapter,
and 7. verse, he saith, that "the Heavens and the Earth that are now,
are reserved unto fire against the day of Judgment, and perdition of
ungodly men," and (verse 12.) "looking for, and hasting to the comming
of God, wherein the Heavens shall be on fire, and shall be dissolved,
and the Elements shall melt with fervent heat. Neverthelesse, we
according to the promise look for new Heavens, and a new Earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousnesse." Therefore where Job saith, man riseth not till
the Heavens be no more; it is all one, as if he had said, the Immortall
Life (and Soule and Life in the Scripture, do usually signifie the same
thing) beginneth not in man, till the Resurrection, and day of Judgment;
and hath for cause, not his specificall nature, and generation; but the
Promise. For St. Peter saies not, "Wee look for new heavens, and a new
earth, (from Nature) but from Promise."

Lastly, seeing it hath been already proved out of divers evident places
of Scripture, in the 35. chapter of this book, that the Kingdom of God
is a Civil Common-wealth, where God himself is Soveraign, by vertue
first of the Old, and since of the New Covenant, wherein he reigneth by
his Vicar, or Lieutenant; the same places do therefore also prove, that
after the comming again of our Saviour in his Majesty, and glory, to
reign actually, and Eternally; the Kingdom of God is to be on Earth. But
because this doctrine (though proved out of places of Scripture not few,
nor obscure) will appear to most men a novelty; I doe but propound
it; maintaining nothing in this, or any other paradox of Religion;
but attending the end of that dispute of the sword, concerning the
Authority, (not yet amongst my Countrey-men decided,) by which all sorts
of doctrine are to bee approved, or rejected; and whose commands, both
in speech, and writing, (whatsoever be the opinions of private men) must
by all men, that mean to be protected by their Laws, be obeyed. For
the points of doctrine concerning the Kingdome (of) God, have so great
influence on the Kingdome of Man, as not to be determined, but by them,
that under God have the Soveraign Power.




The Place After Judgment, Of Those Who Were Never In The Kingdome

Of God, Or Having Been In, Are Cast Out

As the Kingdome of God, and Eternall Life, so also Gods Enemies, and
their Torments after Judgment, appear by the Scripture, to have their
place on Earth. The name of the place, where all men remain till the
Resurrection, that were either buryed, or swallowed up of the Earth, is
usually called in Scripture, by words that signifie Under Ground; which
the Latines read generally Infernus, and Inferni, and the Greeks Hades;
that is to say, a place where men cannot see; and containeth as well the
Grave, as any other deeper place. But for the place of the damned after
the Resurrection, it is not determined, neither in the Old, nor New
Testament, by any note of situation; but onely by the company: as that
it shall bee, where such wicked men were, as God in former times in
extraordinary, and miraculous manner, had destroyed from off the face of
the Earth: As for Example, that they are in Inferno, in Tartarus, or in
the bottomelesse pit; because Corah, Dathan, and Abirom, were swallowed
up alive into the earth. Not that the Writers of the Scripture would
have us beleeve, there could be in the globe of the Earth, which is
not only finite, but also (compared to the height of the Stars) of no
considerable magnitude, a pit without a bottome; that is, a hole of
infinite depth, such as the Greeks in their Daemonologie (that is to
say, in their doctrine concerning Daemons,) and after them, the Romans
called Tartarus; of which Virgill sayes,

    Bis patet in praeceps, tantem tenditque sub umbras,
    Quantus ad aethereum coeli suspectus Olympum:

for that is a thing the proportion of Earth to Heaven cannot bear: but
that wee should beleeve them there, indefinitely, where those men are,
on whom God inflicted that Exemplary punnishment.




The Congregation Of Giants

Again, because those mighty men of the Earth, that lived in the time
of Noah, before the floud, (which the Greeks called Heroes, and the
Scripture Giants, and both say, were begotten, by copulation of the
children of God, with the children of men,) were for their wicked life
destroyed by the generall deluge; the place of the Damned, is therefore
also sometimes marked out, by the company of those deceased Giants; as
Proverbs 21.16. "The man that wandreth out of the way of understanding,
shall remain in the congregation of the Giants," and Job 26.5. "Behold
the Giants groan under water, and they that dwell with them." Here
the place of the Damned, is under the water. And Isaiah 14.9. "Hell is
troubled how to meet thee," (that is, the King of Babylon) "and will
displace the Giants for thee:" and here again the place of the Damned,
(if the sense be literall,) is to be under water.




Lake Of Fire

Thirdly, because the Cities of Sodom, and Gomorrah, by the extraordinary
wrath of God, were consumed for their wickednesse with Fire and
Brimstone, and together with them the countrey about made a stinking
bituminous Lake; the place of the Damned is sometimes expressed by
Fire, and a Fiery Lake: as in the Apocalypse ch.21.8. "But the timorous,
incredulous, and abominable, and Murderers, and Whoremongers, and
Sorcerers, and Idolators, and all Lyars, shall have their part in the
Lake that burneth with Fire, and Brimstone; which is the second Death."
So that it is manifest, that Hell Fire, which is here expressed by
Metaphor, from the reall Fire of Sodome, signifieth not any certain
kind, or place of Torment; but is to be taken indefinitely, for
Destruction, as it is in the 20. Chapter, at the 14. verse; where it is
said, that "Death and Hell were cast into the Lake of Fire;" that is
to say, were abolished, and destroyed; as if after the day of Judgment,
there shall be no more Dying, nor no more going into Hell; that is, no
more going to Hades (from which word perhaps our word Hell is derived,)
which is the same with no more Dying.




Utter Darknesse

Fourthly, from the Plague of Darknesse inflicted on the Egyptians, of
which it is written (Exod. 10.23.) "They saw not one another, neither
rose any man from his place for three days; but all the Children of
Israel had light in their dwellings;" the place of the wicked after
Judgment, is called Utter Darknesse, or (as it is in the originall)
Darknesse Without. And so it is expressed (Mat. 22.13.) where the King
commandeth his Servants, "to bind hand and foot the man that had not
on his Wedding garment, and to cast him out," Eis To Skotos To Exoteron,
Externall Darknesse, or Darknesse Without: which though translated Utter
Darknesse, does not signifie How Great, but Where that darknesse is to
be; namely, Without The Habitation of Gods Elect.




Gehenna, And Tophet

Lastly, whereas there was a place neer Jerusalem, called the Valley of
the Children of Hinnon; in a part whereof, called Tophet, the Jews had
committed most grievous Idolatry, sacrificing their children to the
Idol Moloch; and wherein also God had afflicted his enemies with most
grievous punishments; and wherein Josias had burnt the Priests of Moloch
upon their own Altars, as appeareth at large in the 2 of Kings chap. 23.
the place served afterwards, to receive the filth, and garbage which was
carried thither, out of the City; and there used to be fires made, from
time to time, to purifie the aire, and take away the stench of Carrion.
From this abominable place, the Jews used ever after to call the place
of the Damned, by the name of Gehenna, or Valley of Hinnon. And this
Gehenna, is that word, which is usually now translated HELL; and
from the fires from time to time there burning, we have the notion of
Everlasting, and Unquenchable Fire.




Of The Literall Sense Of The Scripture Concerning Hell

Seeing now there is none, that so interprets the Scripture, as that
after the day of Judgment, the wicked are all Eternally to be punished
in the Valley of Hinnon; or that they shall so rise again, as to be ever
after under ground, or under water; or that after the Resurrection, they
shall no more see one another; nor stir from one place to another; it
followeth, me thinks, very necessarily, that that which is thus said
concerning Hell Fire, is spoken metaphorically; and that therefore there
is a proper sense to bee enquired after, (for of all Metaphors there is
some reall ground, that may be expressed in proper words) both of the
Place of Hell, and the nature of Hellish Torment, and Tormenters.




Satan, Devill, Not Proper Names, But Appellatives

And first for the Tormenters, wee have their nature, and properties,
exactly and properly delivered by the names of, The Enemy, or Satan;
The Accuser, or Diabolus; The Destroyer, or Abbadon. Which significant
names, Satan, Devill, Abbadon, set not forth to us any Individuall
person, as proper names use to doe; but onely an office, or quality;
and are therefore Appellatives; which ought not to have been left
untranslated, as they are, in the Latine, and Modern Bibles; because
thereby they seem to be the proper names of Daemons; and men are the
more easily seduced to beleeve the doctrine of Devills; which at that
time was the Religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses,
and of Christ.

And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant, the
Enemy of them that shall be in the Kingdome of God; therefore if the
Kingdome of God after the Resurrection, bee upon the Earth, (as in the
former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be,) The Enemy,
and his Kingdome must be on Earth also. For so also was it, in the time
before the Jews had deposed God. For Gods Kingdome was in Palestine;
and the Nations round about, were the Kingdomes of the Enemy; and
consequently by Satan, is meant any Earthly Enemy of the Church.




Torments Of Hell

The Torments of Hell, are expressed sometimes, by "weeping, and gnashing
of teeth," as Mat. 8.12. Sometimes, by "the worm of Conscience;" as
Isa.66.24. and Mark 9.44, 46, 48; sometimes, by Fire, as in the place
now quoted, "where the worm dyeth not, and the fire is not quenched,"
and many places beside: sometimes by "Shame, and contempt," as Dan.
12.2. "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the Earth, shall
awake; some to Everlasting life; and some to shame, and everlasting
contempt." All which places design metaphorically a grief, and
discontent of mind, from the sight of that Eternall felicity in others,
which they themselves through their own incredulity, and disobedience
have lost. And because such felicity in others, is not sensible but by
comparison with their own actuall miseries; it followeth that they are
to suffer such bodily paines, and calamities, as are incident to those,
who not onely live under evill and cruell Governours, but have also for
Enemy, the Eternall King of the Saints, God Almighty. And amongst these
bodily paines, is to be reckoned also to every one of the wicked a
second Death. For though the Scripture bee clear for an universall
Resurrection; yet wee do not read, that to any of the Reprobate is
promised an Eternall life. For whereas St. Paul (1 Cor. 15.42, 43.) to
the question concerning what bodies men shall rise with again, saith,
that "the body is sown in corruption, and is raised in incorruption; It
is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weaknesse, it
is raised in power;" Glory and Power cannot be applyed to the bodies of
the wicked: Nor can the name of Second Death, bee applyed to those
that can never die but once: And although in Metaphoricall speech, a
Calamitous life Everlasting, may bee called an Everlasting Death yet it
cannot well be understood of a Second Death. The fire prepared for the
wicked, is an Everlasting Fire: that is to say, the estate wherein
no man can be without torture, both of body and mind, after the
Resurrection, shall endure for ever; and in that sense the Fire shall
be unquenchable, and the torments Everlasting: but it cannot thence be
inferred, that hee who shall be cast into that fire, or be tormented
with those torments, shall endure, and resist them so, as to be
eternally burnt, and tortured, and yet never be destroyed, nor die. And
though there be many places that affirm Everlasting Fire, and Torments
(into which men may be cast successively one after another for ever;)
yet I find none that affirm there shall bee an Eternall Life therein of
any individuall person; but on the contrary, an Everlasting Death, which
is the Second Death: (Apoc. 20. 13,14.) "For after Death, and the Grave
shall have delivered up the dead which were in them, and every man be
judged according to his works; Death and the Grave shall also be cast
into the Lake of Fire. This is the Second Death." Whereby it is
evident, that there is to bee a Second Death of every one that shall bee
condemned at the day of Judgement, after which hee shall die no more.




The Joyes Of Life Eternall, And Salvation The Same Thing,

Salvation From Sin, And From Misery, All One

The joyes of Life Eternall, are in Scripture comprehended all under the
name of SALVATION, or Being Saved. To be saved, is to be secured, either
respectively, against speciall Evills, or absolutely against all Evill,
comprehending Want, Sicknesse, and Death it self. And because man
was created in a condition Immortall, not subject to corruption, and
consequently to nothing that tendeth to the dissolution of his nature;
and fell from that happinesse by the sin of Adam; it followeth, that
to be Saved From Sin, is to be saved from all the Evill, and Calamities
that Sinne hath brought upon us. And therefore in the Holy Scripture,
Remission of Sinne, and Salvation from Death and Misery, is the same
thing, as it appears by the words of our Saviour, who having cured a man
sick of the Palsey, by saying, (Mat. 9.2.) "Son be of good cheer, thy
Sins be forgiven thee;" and knowing that the Scribes took for blasphemy,
that a man should pretend to forgive Sins, asked them (v.5.) "whether
it were easier to say, Thy Sinnes be forgiven thee, or, Arise and walk;"
signifying thereby, that it was all one, as to the saving of the sick,
to say, "Thy Sins are forgiven," and "Arise and walk;" and that he used
that form of speech, onely to shew he had power to forgive Sins. And
it is besides evident in reason, that since Death and Misery, were the
punishments of Sin, the discharge of Sinne, must also be a discharge
of Death and Misery; that is to say, Salvation absolute, such as the
faithfull are to enjoy after the day of Judgment, by the power, and
favour of Jesus Christ, who for that cause is called our SAVIOUR.

Concerning Particular Salvations, such as are understood, 1 Sam. 14.39.
"as the Lord liveth that saveth Israel," that is, from their temporary
enemies, and 2 Sam. 22.4. "Thou art my Saviour, thou savest me from
violence;" and 2 Kings 13.5. "God gave the Israelites a Saviour, and
so they were delivered from the hand of the Assyrians," and the like,
I need say nothing; there being neither difficulty, nor interest, to
corrupt the interpretation of texts of that kind.




The Place Of Eternall Salvation

But concerning the Generall Salvation, because it must be in the
Kingdome of Heaven, there is great difficulty concerning the Place.
On one side, by Kingdome (which is an estate ordained by men for their
perpetuall security against enemies, and want) it seemeth that this
Salvation should be on Earth. For by Salvation is set forth unto us,
a glorious Reign of our King, by Conquest; not a safety by Escape:
and therefore there where we look for Salvation, we must look also
for Triumph; and before Triumph, for Victory; and before Victory, for
Battell; which cannot well be supposed, shall be in Heaven. But how good
soever this reason may be, I will not trust to it, without very evident
places of Scripture. The state of Salvation is described at large,
Isaiah, 33. ver. 20,21,22,23,24.

"Look upon Zion, the City of our solemnities, thine eyes shall see
Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down;
not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any
of the cords thereof be broken.

But there the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers, and
streams; wherein shall goe no Gally with oares; neither shall gallant
ship passe thereby.

For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our
King, he will save us.

Thy tacklings are loosed; they could not well strengthen their mast;
they could not spread the sail: then is the prey of a great spoil
divided; the lame take the prey.

And the Inhabitant shall not say, I am sicke; the people that shall
dwell therein shall be forgiven their Iniquity."

In which words wee have the place from whence Salvation is to proceed,
"Jerusalem, a quiet habitation;" the Eternity of it, "a tabernacle that
shall not be taken down," &c. The Saviour of it, "the Lord, their Judge,
their Lawgiver, their King, he will save us;" the Salvation, "the Lord
shall be to them as a broad mote of swift waters," &c. the condition of
their Enemies, "their tacklings are loose, their masts weake, the
lame shal take the spoil of them." The condition of the Saved,
"The Inhabitants shall not say, I am sick:" And lastly, all this is
comprehended in Forgivenesse of sin, "The people that dwell therein
shall be forgiven their iniquity." By which it is evident, that
Salvation shall be on Earth, then, when God shall reign, (at the coming
again of Christ) in Jerusalem; and from Jerusalem shall proceed the
Salvation of the Gentiles that shall be received into Gods Kingdome; as
is also more expressely declared by the same Prophet, Chap. 66.20, 21.
"And they," (that is, the Gentiles who had any Jew in bondage) "shall
bring all your brethren, for an offering to the Lord, out of all
nations, upon horses, and in charets, and in litters, and upon mules,
and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain, Jerusalem, saith the Lord,
as the Children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessell into
the House of the Lord. And I will also take of them for Priests and for
Levites, saith the Lord:" Whereby it is manifest, that the chief seat of
Gods Kingdome (which is the Place, from whence the Salvation of us that
were Gentiles, shall proceed) shall be Jerusalem; And the same is also
confirmed by our Saviour, in his discourse with the woman of Samaria,
concerning the place of Gods worship; to whom he saith, John 4.22. that
the Samaritans worshipped they know not what, but the Jews worship what
they knew, "For Salvation is of the Jews (Ex Judais, that is, begins at
the Jews): as if he should say, you worship God, but know not by whom
he wil save you, as we doe, that know it shall be one of the tribe
of Judah, a Jew, not a Samaritan. And therefore also the woman not
impertinently answered him again, "We know the Messias shall come." So
that which our saviour saith, "Salvation is from the Jews," is the
same that Paul sayes (Rom. 1.16,17.) "The Gospel is the power of God to
Salvation to every one that beleeveth; To the Jew first, and also to the
Greek. For therein is the righteousnesse of God revealed from faith to
faith;" from the faith of the Jew, to the faith of the Gentile. In
the like sense the Prophet Joel describing the day of Judgment, (chap.
2.30,31.) that God would "shew wonders in heaven, and in earth, bloud,
and fire, and pillars of smoak. The Sun should be turned to darknesse,
and the Moon into bloud, before the great and terrible day of the Lord
come," he addeth verse 32. "and it shall come to passe, that whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. For in Mount Zion,
and in Jerusalem shall be Salvation." And Obadiah verse 17 saith
the same, "Upon Mount Zion shall be Deliverance; and there shall be
holinesse, and the house of Jacob shall possesse their possessions,"
that is, the possessions of the Heathen, which possessions he expresseth
more particularly in the following verses, by the Mount of Esau, the
Land of the Philistines, the Fields of Ephraim, of Samaria, Gilead, and
the Cities of the South, and concludes with these words, "the Kingdom
shall be the Lords." All these places are for Salvation, and the
Kingdome of God (after the day of Judgement) upon Earth. On the other
side, I have not found any text that can probably be drawn, to prove
any Ascension of the Saints into Heaven; that is to say, into any Coelum
Empyreum, or other aetheriall Region; saving that it is called the
Kingdome of Heaven; which name it may have, because God, that was King
of the Jews, governed them by his commands, sent to Moses by Angels from
Heaven, to reduce them to their obedience; and shall send him thence
again, to rule both them, and all other faithfull men, from the day of
Judgment, Everlastingly: or from that, that the Throne of this our Great
King is in Heaven; whereas the Earth is but his Footstoole. But that the
Subjects of God should have any place as high as his throne, or higher
than his Footstoole, it seemeth not sutable to the dignity of a King,
nor can I find any evident text for it in holy Scripture.

From this that hath been said of the Kingdom of God, and of Salvation,
it is not hard to interpret, what is meant by the WORLD TO COME. There
are three worlds mentioned in Scripture, the Old World, the Present
World, and the World to Come. Of the first, St. Peter speaks, (2 Pet.
2.5.) "If God spared not the Old World, but saved Noah the eighth
person, a Preacher of righteousnesse, bringing the flood upon the world
of the ungodly," &c. So the First World, was from Adam to the generall
Flood. Of the present World, our Saviour speaks (John 18.36.) "My
Kingdome is not of this World." For he came onely to teach men the way
of Salvation, and to renew the Kingdome of his Father, by his doctrine.
Of the World to come, St. Peter speaks, (2 Pet. 3. 13.) "Neverthelesse
we according to his promise look for new Heavens, and a new Earth." This
is that WORLD, wherein Christ coming down from Heaven, in the clouds,
with great power, and glory, shall send his Angels, and shall gather
together his elect, from the four winds, and from the uttermost parts
of the Earth, and thence forth reign over them, (under his Father)
Everlastingly.




Redemption

Salvation of a sinner, supposeth a precedent REDEMPTION; for he that is
once guilty of Sin, is obnoxious to the Penalty of the same; and must
pay (or some other for him) such Ransome, as he that is offended, and
has him in his power, shall require. And seeing the person offended, is
Almighty God, in whose power are all things; such Ransome is to be paid
before Salvation can be acquired, as God hath been pleased to require.
By this Ransome, is not intended a satisfaction for Sin, equivalent to
the Offence, which no sinner for himselfe, nor righteous man can ever be
able to make for another; The dammage a man does to another, he may make
amends for by restitution, or recompence, but sin cannot be taken
away by recompence; for that were to make the liberty to sin, a thing
vendible. But sins may bee pardoned to the repentant, either Gratis, or
upon such penalty, as God is pleased to accept. That which God usually
accepted in the Old Testament, was some Sacrifice, or Oblation. To
forgive sin is not an act of Injustice, though the punishment have
been threatned. Even amongst men, though the promise of Good, bind the
promiser; yet threats, that is to say, promises, of Evill, bind them
not; much lesse shall they bind God, who is infinitely more mercifull
then men. Our Saviour Christ therefore to Redeem us, did not in that
sense satisfie for the Sins of men, as that his Death, of its own
vertue, could make it unjust in God to punish sinners with Eternall
death; but did make that Sacrifice, and Oblation of himself, at his
first coming, which God was pleased to require, for the Salvation at his
second coming, of such as in the mean time should repent, and beleeve in
him. And though this act of our Redemption, be not alwaies in Scripture
called a Sacrifice, and Oblation, but sometimes a Price, yet by Price
we are not to understand any thing, by the value whereof, he could claim
right to a pardon for us, from his offended Father, but that Price which
God the Father was pleased in mercy to demand.



CHAPTER XXXIX. OF THE SIGNIFICATION IN SCRIPTURE OF THE WORD CHURCH




Church The Lords House

The word Church, (Ecclesia) signifieth in the Books of Holy Scripture
divers things. Sometimes (though not often) it is taken for Gods House,
that is to say, for a Temple, wherein Christians assemble to perform
holy duties publiquely; as, 1 Cor. 14. ver. 34. "Let your women keep
silence in the Churches:" but this is Metaphorically put, for the
Congregation there assembled; and hath been since used for the
Edifice it self, to distinguish between the Temples of Christians, and
Idolaters. The Temple of Jerusalem was Gods House, and the House of
Prayer; and so is any Edifice dedicated by Christians to the worship of
Christ, Christs House: and therefore the Greek Fathers call it Kuriake,
The Lords House; and thence, in our language it came to be called Kyrke,
and Church.




Ecclesia Properly What

Church (when not taken for a House) signifieth the same that Ecclesia
signified in the Grecian Common-wealths; that is to say, a Congregation,
or an Assembly of Citizens, called forth, to hear the Magistrate speak
unto them; and which in the Common-wealth of Rome was called Concio, as
he that spake was called Ecclesiastes, and Concionator. And when they
were called forth by lawfull Authority, (Acts 19.39.) it was Ecclesia
Legitima, a Lawfull Church, Ennomos Ecclesia. But when they were excited
by tumultuous, and seditious clamor, then it was a confused Church,
Ecclesia Sugkechumene.

It is taken also sometimes for the men that have right to be of the
Congregation, though not actually assembled; that is to say, for the
whole multitude of Christian men, how far soever they be dispersed: as
(Act. 8.3.) where it is said, that "Saul made havock of the Church:" And
in this sense is Christ said to be Head of the Church. And sometimes for
a certain part of Christians, as (Col. 4.15.) "Salute the Church that is
in his house." Sometimes also for the Elect onely; as (Ephes. 5.27.) "A
Glorious Church, without spot, or wrinkle, holy, and without blemish;"
which is meant of the Church Triumphant, or, Church To Come. Sometimes,
for a Congregation assembled, of professors of Christianity, whether
their profession be true, or counterfeit, as it is understood, Mat.
18.17. where it is said, "Tell it to the Church, and if hee neglect to
hear the Church, let him be to thee as a Gentile, or Publican."




In What Sense The Church Is One Person Church Defined

And in this last sense only it is that the Church can be taken for one
Person; that is to say, that it can be said to have power to will, to
pronounce, to command, to be obeyed, to make laws, or to doe any other
action whatsoever; For without authority from a lawfull Congregation,
whatsoever act be done in a concourse of people, it is the particular
act of every one of those that were present, and gave their aid to the
performance of it; and not the act of them all in grosse, as of one
body; much lesse that act of them that were absent, or that being
present, were not willing it should be done. According to this sense, I
define a CHURCH to be, "A company of men professing Christian Religion,
united in the person of one Soveraign; at whose command they ought to
assemble, and without whose authority they ought not to assemble." And
because in all Common-wealths, that Assembly, which is without warrant
from the Civil Soveraign, is unlawful; that Church also, which is
assembled in any Common-wealth, that hath forbidden them to assemble, is
an unlawfull Assembly.




A Christian Common-wealth, And A Church All One

It followeth also, that there is on Earth, no such universall Church as
all Christians are bound to obey; because there is no power on Earth, to
which all other Common-wealths are subject: There are Christians, in
the Dominions of severall Princes and States; but every one of them
is subject to that Common-wealth, whereof he is himself a member; and
consequently, cannot be subject to the commands of any other Person.
And therefore a Church, such as one as is capable to Command, to Judge,
Absolve, Condemn, or do any other act, is the same thing with a Civil
Common-wealth, consisting of Christian men; and is called a Civill
State, for that the subjects of it are Men; and a Church, for that the
subjects thereof are Christians. Temporall and Spirituall Government,
are but two words brought into the world, to make men see double, and
mistake their Lawfull Soveraign. It is true, that the bodies of the
faithfull, after the Resurrection shall be not onely Spirituall, but
Eternall; but in this life they are grosse, and corruptible. There
is therefore no other Government in this life, neither of State, nor
Religion, but Temporall; nor teaching of any doctrine, lawfull to any
Subject, which the Governour both of the State, and of the Religion,
forbiddeth to be taught: And that Governor must be one; or else there
must needs follow Faction, and Civil war in the Common-wealth, between
the Church and State; between Spiritualists, and Temporalists; between
the Sword Of Justice, and the Shield Of Faith; and (which is more) in
every Christian mans own brest, between the Christian, and the Man.
The Doctors of the Church, are called Pastors; so also are Civill
Soveraignes: But if Pastors be not subordinate one to another, so
as that there may bee one chief Pastor, men will be taught contrary
Doctrines, whereof both may be, and one must be false. Who that one
chief Pastor is, according to the law of Nature, hath been already
shewn; namely, that it is the Civill Soveraign; And to whom the
Scripture hath assigned that Office, we shall see in the Chapters
following.



CHAPTER XL

OF THE RIGHTS OF THE KINGDOME OF GOD, IN ABRAHAM, MOSES, HIGH PRIESTS,

AND THE KINGS OF JUDAH




The Soveraign Rights Of Abraham

The Father of the Faithfull, and first in the Kingdome of God by
Covenant, was Abraham. For with him was the Covenant first made; wherein
he obliged himself, and his seed after him, to acknowledge and obey the
commands of God; not onely such, as he could take notice of, (as Morall
Laws,) by the light of Nature; but also such, as God should in speciall
manner deliver to him by Dreams and Visions. For as to the Morall law,
they were already obliged, and needed not have been contracted withall,
by promise of the Land of Canaan. Nor was there any Contract, that could
adde to, or strengthen the Obligation, by which both they, and all
men else were bound naturally to obey God Almighty: And therefore the
Covenant which Abraham made with God, was to take for the Commandement
of God, that which in the name of God was commanded him, in a Dream, or
Vision, and to deliver it to his family, and cause them to observe the
same.




Abraham Had The Sole Power Of Ordering The Religion Of His Own People

In this Contract of God with Abraham, wee may observe three points of
important consequence in the government of Gods people. First, that at
the making of this Covenant, God spake onely to Abraham; and therefore
contracted not with any of his family, or seed, otherwise then as their
wills (which make the essence of all Covenants) were before the Contract
involved in the will of Abraham; who was therefore supposed to have had
a lawfull power, to make them perform all that he covenanted for them.
According whereunto (Gen 18.18, 19.) God saith, "All the Nations of the
Earth shall be blessed in him, For I know him that he will command his
children and his houshold after him, and they shall keep the way of the
Lord." From whence may be concluded this first point, that they to
whom God hath not spoken immediately, are to receive the positive
commandements of God, from their Soveraign; as the family and seed of
Abraham did from Abraham their Father, and Lord, and Civill Soveraign.
And Consequently in every Common-wealth, they who have no supernaturall
Revelation to the contrary, ought to obey the laws of their own
Soveraign, in the externall acts and profession of Religion. As for the
inward Thought, and beleef of men, which humane Governours can take no
notice of, (for God onely knoweth the heart) they are not voluntary, nor
the effect of the laws, but of the unrevealed will, and of the power of
God; and consequently fall not under obligation.




No Pretence Of Private Spirit Against The Religion Of Abraham

From whence proceedeth another point, that it was not unlawfull for
Abraham, when any of his Subjects should pretend Private Vision, or
Spirit, or other Revelation from God, for the countenancing of any
doctrine which Abraham should forbid, or when they followed, or adhered
to any such pretender, to punish them; and consequently that it is
lawfull now for the Soveraign to punish any man that shall oppose his
Private Spirit against the Laws: For hee hath the same place in the
Common-wealth, that Abraham had in his own Family.




Abraham Sole Judge, And Interpreter Of What God Spake

There ariseth also from the same, a third point; that as none but
Abraham in his family, so none but the Soveraign in a Christian
Common-wealth, can take notice what is, or what is not the Word of God.
For God spake onely to Abraham; and it was he onely, that was able
to know what God said, and to interpret the same to his family: And
therefore also, they that have the place of Abraham in a Common-wealth,
are the onely Interpreters of what God hath spoken.




The Authority Of Moses Whereon Grounded

The same Covenant was renewed with Isaac; and afterwards with Jacob; but
afterwards no more, till the Israelites were freed from the Egyptians,
and arrived at the Foot of Mount Sinai: and then it was renewed by Moses
(as I have said before, chap. 35.) in such manner, as they became from
that time forward the Peculiar Kingdome of God; whose Lieutenant was
Moses, for his owne time; and the succession to that office was setled
upon Aaron, and his heirs after him, to bee to God a Sacerdotall
Kingdome for ever.

By this constitution, a Kingdome is acquired to God. But seeing Moses
had no authority to govern the Israelites, as a successor to the right
of Abraham, because he could not claim it by inheritance; it appeareth
not as yet, that the people were obliged to take him for Gods
Lieutenant, longer than they beleeved that God spake unto him. And
therefore his authority (notwithstanding the Covenant they made with
God) depended yet merely upon the opinion they had of his Sanctity,
and of the reality of his Conferences with God, and the verity of his
Miracles; which opinion coming to change, they were no more obliged to
take any thing for the law of God, which he propounded to them in Gods
name. We are therefore to consider, what other ground there was, of
their obligation to obey him. For it could not be the commandement of
God that could oblige them; because God spake not to them immediately,
but by the mediation of Moses Himself; And our Saviour saith of himself,
(John 5. 31.) "If I bear witnesse of my self, my witnesse is not true,"
much lesse if Moses bear witnesse of himselfe, (especially in a claim of
Kingly power over Gods people) ought his testimony to be received. His
authority therefore, as the authority of all other Princes, must be
grounded on the Consent of the People, and their Promise to obey him.
And so it was: for "the people" (Exod. 20.18.) "when they saw the
Thunderings, and the Lightnings, and the noyse of the Trumpet, and the
mountaine smoaking, removed, and stood a far off. And they said unto
Moses, speak thou with us, and we will hear, but let not God speak with
us lest we die." Here was their promise of obedience; and by this it was
they obliged themselves to obey whatsoever he should deliver unto them
for the Commandement of God.




Moses Was (Under God) Soveraign Of The Jews, All His Own Time,

Though Aaron Had The Priesthood

And notwithstanding the Covenant constituted a Sacerdotall Kingdome,
that is to say, a Kingdome hereditary to Aaron; yet that is to be
understood of the succession, after Moses should bee dead. For
whosoever ordereth, and establisheth the Policy, as first founder of
a Common-wealth (be it Monarchy, Aristocracy, or Democracy) must needs
have Soveraign Power over the people all the while he is doing of it.
And that Moses had that power all his own time, is evidently affirmed in
the Scripture. First, in the text last before cited, because the people
promised obedience, not to Aaron but to him. Secondly, (Exod. 24.1, 2.)
"And God said unto Moses, Come up unto the Lord, thou, and Aaron, Nadab
and Abihu, and seventy of the Elders of Israel. And Moses alone shall
come neer the Lord, but they shall not come nigh, neither shall the
people goe up with him." By which it is plain, that Moses who was alone
called up to God, (and not Aaron, nor the other Priests, nor the Seventy
Elders, nor the People who were forbidden to come up) was alone he, that
represented to the Israelites the Person of God; that is to say, was
their sole Soveraign under God. And though afterwards it be said (verse
9.) "Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the
Elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel, and there was under
his feet, as it were a paved work of a saphire stone," &c. yet this was
not till after Moses had been with God before, and had brought to
the people the words which God had said to him. He onely went for the
businesse of the people; the others, as the Nobles of his retinue, were
admitted for honour to that speciall grace, which was not allowed to
the people; which was, (as in the verse after appeareth) to see God and
live. "God laid not his hand upon them, they saw God and did eat and
drink" (that is, did live), but did not carry any commandement from
him to the people. Again, it is every where said, "The Lord spake unto
Moses," as in all other occasions of Government; so also in the ordering
of the Ceremonies of Religion, contained in the 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30,
and 31 Chapters of Exodus, and throughout Leviticus: to Aaron seldome.
The Calfe that Aaron made, Moses threw into the fire. Lastly, the
question of the Authority of Aaron, by occasion of his and Miriams
mutiny against Moses, was (Numbers 12.) judged by God himself for Moses.
So also in the question between Moses, and the People, when Corah,
Dathan, and Abiram, and two hundred and fifty Princes of the Assembly
"gathered themselves together" (Numbers 16. 3) "against Moses, and
against Aaron, and said unto them, 'Ye take too much upon you, seeing
all the congregation are Holy, every one of them, and the Lord is
amongst them, why lift you up your selves above the congregation of the
Lord?'" God caused the Earth to swallow Corah, Dathan, and Abiram with
their wives and children alive, and consumed those two hundred and fifty
Princes with fire. Therefore neither Aaron, nor the People, nor any
Aristocracy of the chief Princes of the People, but Moses alone had next
under God the Soveraignty over the Israelites: And that not onely in
causes of Civill Policy, but also of Religion; For Moses onely spake
with God, and therefore onely could tell the People, what it was that
God required at their hands. No man upon pain of death might be so
presumptuous as to approach the Mountain where God talked with Moses.
"Thou shalt set bounds" (saith the Lord, Exod 19. 12.) "to the people
round about, and say, Take heed to your selves that you goe not up into
the Mount, or touch the border of it; whosoever toucheth the Mount shall
surely be put to death." and again (verse 21.) "Get down, charge the
people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze." Out of which we
may conclude, that whosoever in a Christian Common-wealth holdeth the
place of Moses, is the sole Messenger of God, and Interpreter of
his Commandements. And according hereunto, no man ought in the
interpretation of the Scripture to proceed further then the bounds which
are set by their severall Soveraigns. For the Scriptures since God now
speaketh in them, are the Mount Sinai; the bounds whereof are the Laws
of them that represent Gods Person on Earth. To look upon them and
therein to behold the wondrous works of God, and learn to fear him is
allowed; but to interpret them; that is, to pry into what God saith to
him whom he appointeth to govern under him, and make themselves Judges
whether he govern as God commandeth him, or not, is to transgresse the
bounds God hath set us, and to gaze upon God irreverently.




All Spirits Were Subordinate To The Spirit Of Moses

There was no Prophet in the time of Moses, nor pretender to the Spirit
of God, but such as Moses had approved, and Authorized. For there were
in his time but Seventy men, that are said to Prophecy by the Spirit of
God, and these were of all Moses his election; concerning whom God saith
to Moses (Numb. 11.16.) "Gather to mee Seventy of the Elders of Israel,
whom thou knowest to be the Elders of the People." To these God imparted
his Spirit; but it was not a different Spirit from that of Moses; for
it is said (verse 25.) "God came down in a cloud, and took of the Spirit
that was upon Moses, and gave it to the Seventy Elders." But as I have
shewn before (chap. 36.) by Spirit, is understood the Mind; so that the
sense of the place is no other than this, that God endued them with
a mind conformable, and subordinate to that of Moses, that they might
Prophecy, that is to say, speak to the people in Gods name, in such
manner, as to set forward (as Ministers of Moses, and by his authority)
such doctrine as was agreeable to Moses his doctrine. For they were but
Ministers; and when two of them Prophecyed in the Camp, it was thought
a new and unlawfull thing; and as it is in the 27. and 28. verses of
the same Chapter, they were accused of it, and Joshua advised Moses to
forbid them, as not knowing that it was by Moses his Spirit that they
Prophecyed. By which it is manifest, that no Subject ought to pretend to
Prophecy, or to the Spirit, in opposition to the doctrine established by
him, whom God hath set in the place of Moses.




After Moses The Soveraignty Was In The High Priest

Aaron being dead, and after him also Moses, the Kingdome, as being a
Sacerdotall Kingdome, descended by vertue of the Covenant, to Aarons
Son, Eleazar the High Priest: And God declared him (next under himself)
for Soveraign, at the same time that he appointed Joshua for the
Generall of their Army. For thus God saith expressely (Numb. 27.21.)
concerning Joshua; "He shall stand before Eleazar the Priest, who shall
ask counsell for him, before the Lord, at his word shall they goe out,
and at his word they shall come in, both he, and all the Children of
Israel with him:" Therefore the Supreme Power of making War and Peace,
was in the Priest. The Supreme Power of Judicature belonged also to
the High Priest: For the Book of the Law was in their keeping; and the
Priests and Levites onely were the subordinate Judges in causes Civill,
as appears in Deut. 17.8, 9, 10. And for the manner of Gods worship,
there was never doubt made, but that the High Priest till the time
of Saul, had the Supreme Authority. Therefore the Civill and
Ecclesiasticall Power were both joined together in one and the same
person, the High Priest; and ought to bee so, in whosoever governeth by
Divine Right; that is, by Authority immediate from God.




Of The Soveraign Power Between The Time Of Joshua And Of Saul

After the death of Joshua, till the time of Saul, the time between is
noted frequently in the Book of Judges, "that there was in those dayes
no King in Israel;" and sometimes with this addition, that "every
man did that which was right in his own eyes." By which is to bee
understood, that where it is said, "there was no King," is meant, "there
was no Soveraign Power" in Israel. And so it was, if we consider the
Act, and Exercise of such power. For after the death of Joshua, &
Eleazar, "there arose another generation" (Judges 2.10.) "that knew not
the Lord, nor the works which he had done for Israel, but did evill in
the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim." And the Jews had that quality
which St. Paul noteth, "to look for a sign," not onely before they would
submit themselves to the government of Moses, but also after they had
obliged themselves by their submission. Whereas Signs, and Miracles had
for End to procure Faith, not to keep men from violating it, when they
have once given it; for to that men are obliged by the law of Nature.
But if we consider not the Exercise, but the Right of governing, the
Soveraign power was still in the High Priest. Therefore whatsoever
obedience was yeelded to any of the Judges, (who were men chosen by God
extraordinarily, to save his rebellious subjects out of the hands of
the enemy,) it cannot bee drawn into argument against the Right the High
Priest had to the Soveraign Power, in all matters, both of Policy and
Religion. And neither the Judges, nor Samuel himselfe had an ordinary,
but extraordinary calling to the Government; and were obeyed by the
Israelites, not out of duty, but out of reverence to their favour
with God, appearing in their wisdome, courage, or felicity. Hitherto
therefore the Right of Regulating both the Policy, and the Religion,
were inseparable.




Of The Rights Of The Kings Of Israel

To the Judges, succeeded Kings; And whereas before, all authority, both
in Religion, and Policy, was in the High Priest; so now it was all in
the King. For the Soveraignty over the people, which was before, not
onely by vertue of the Divine Power, but also by a particular pact of
the Israelites in God, and next under him, in the High Priest, as his
Viceregent on earth, was cast off by the People, with the consent of God
himselfe. For when they said to Samuel (1 Sam. 8.5.) "make us a King to
judge us, like all the Nations," they signified that they would no
more bee governed by the commands that should bee laid upon them by the
Priest, in the name of God; but by one that should command them in the
same manner that all other nations were commanded; and consequently in
deposing the High Priest of Royall authority, they deposed that peculiar
Government of God. And yet God consented to it, saying to Samuel (verse
7.) "Hearken unto the voice of the People, in all that they shall say
unto thee; for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected mee,
that I should not reign over them." Having therefore rejected God, in
whose Right the Priests governed, there was no authority left to the
Priests, but such as the King was pleased to allow them; which was
more, or lesse, according as the Kings were good, or evill. And for the
Government of Civill affaires, it is manifest, it was all in the hands
of the King. For in the same Chapter, verse 20. They say they will be
like all the Nations; that their King shall be their Judge, and goe
before them, and fight their battells; that is, he shall have the
whole authority, both in Peace and War. In which is contained also the
ordering of Religion; for there was no other Word of God in that time,
by which to regulate Religion, but the Law of Moses, which was their
Civill Law. Besides, we read (1 Kings 2.27.) that Solomon "thrust out
Abiathar from being Priest before the Lord:" He had therefore authority
over the High Priest, as over any other Subject; which is a great
mark of Supremacy in Religion. And we read also (1 Kings 8.) that hee
dedicated the Temple; that he blessed the People; and that he himselfe
in person made that excellent prayer, used in the Consecrations of all
Churches, and houses of Prayer; which is another great mark of Supremacy
in Religion. Again, we read (2 Kings 22.) that when there was question
concerning the Book of the Law found in the Temple, the same was not
decided by the High Priest, but Josiah sent both him, and others to
enquire concerning it, of Hulda, the Prophetesse; which is another mark
of the Supremacy in Religion. Lastly, wee read (1 Chro. 26.30.) that
David made Hashabiah and his brethren, Hebronites, Officers of Israel
among them Westward, "in all businesse of the Lord, and in the service
of the King." Likewise (verse 32.) that hee made other Hebronites,
"rulers over the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the halfe tribe of
Manasseh" (these were the rest of Israel that dwelt beyond Jordan) "for
every matter pertaining to God, and affairs of the King." Is not this
full Power, both Temporall and Spirituall, as they call it, that would
divide it? To conclude; from the first institution of Gods Kingdome, to
the Captivity, the Supremacy of Religion, was in the same hand with that
of the Civill Soveraignty; and the Priests office after the election of
Saul, was not Magisteriall, but Ministeriall.




The Practice Of Supremacy In Religion, Was Not In The Time Of The Kings,

According To The Right Thereof

Notwithstanding the government both in Policy and Religion, were joined,
first in the High Priests, and afterwards in the Kings, so far forth as
concerned the Right; yet it appeareth by the same Holy History, that the
people understood it not; but there being amongst them a great part, and
probably the greatest part, that no longer than they saw great miracles,
or (which is equivalent to a miracle) great abilities, or great felicity
in the enterprises of their Governours, gave sufficient credit, either
to the fame of Moses, or to the Colloquies between God and the Priests;
they took occasion as oft as their Governours displeased them, by
blaming sometimes the Policy, sometimes the Religion, to change the
Government, or revolt from their Obedience at their pleasure: And from
thence proceeded from time to time the civill troubles, divisions, and
calamities of the Nation. As for example, after the death of Eleazar and
Joshua, the next generation which had not seen the wonders of God, but
were left to their own weak reason, not knowing themselves obliged
by the Covenant of a Sacerdotall Kingdome, regarded no more the
Commandement of the Priest, nor any law of Moses, but did every man that
which was right in his own eyes; and obeyed in Civill affairs, such
men, as from time to time they thought able to deliver them from the
neighbour Nations that oppressed them; and consulted not with God (as
they ought to doe,) but with such men, or women, as they guessed to bee
Prophets by their Praedictions of things to come; and thought they had
an Idol in their Chappel, yet if they had a Levite for their Chaplain,
they made account they worshipped the God of Israel.

And afterwards when they demanded a King, after the manner of the
nations; yet it was not with a design to depart from the worship of God
their King; but despairing of the justice of the sons of Samuel, they
would have a King to judg them in Civill actions; but not that they
would allow their King to change the Religion which they thought was
recommended to them by Moses. So that they alwaies kept in store a
pretext, either of Justice, or Religion, to discharge themselves of
their obedience, whensoever they had hope to prevaile. Samuel was
displeased with the people, for that they desired a King, (for God was
their King already, and Samuel had but an authority under him); yet did
Samuel, when Saul observed not his counsell, in destroying Agag as God
had commanded, anoint another King, namely David, to take the succession
from his heirs. Rehoboam was no Idolater; but when the people thought
him an Oppressor; that Civil pretence carried from him ten Tribes to
Jeroboam an Idolater. And generally through the whole History of the
Kings, as well of Judah, as of Israel, there were Prophets that alwaies
controlled the Kings, for transgressing the Religion; and sometimes also
for Errours of State; (2 Chro. 19. 2.) as Jehosaphat was reproved by
the Prophet Jehu, for aiding the King of Israel against the Syrians;
and Hezekiah, by Isaiah, for shewing his treasures to the Ambassadors of
Babylon. By all which it appeareth, that though the power both of State
and Religion were in the Kings; yet none of them were uncontrolled
in the use of it, but such as were gracious for their own naturall
abilities, or felicities. So that from the practise of those times,
there can no argument be drawn, that the right of Supremacy in Religion
was not in the Kings, unlesse we place it in the Prophets; and conclude,
that because Hezekiah praying to the Lord before the Cherubins, was not
answered from thence, nor then, but afterwards by the Prophet Isaiah,
therefore Isaiah was supreme Head of the Church; or because Josiah
consulted Hulda the Prophetesse, concerning the Book of the Law, that
therefore neither he, nor the High Priest, but Hulda the Prophetesse had
the Supreme authority in matter of Religion; which I thinke is not the
opinion of any Doctor.




After The Captivity The Jews Had No Setled Common-wealth

During the Captivity, the Jews had no Common-wealth at all

And after their return, though they renewed their Covenant with God, yet
there was no promise made of obedience, neither to Esdras, nor to any
other; And presently after they became subjects to the Greeks (from
whose Customes, and Daemonology, and from the doctrine of the Cabalists,
their Religion became much corrupted): In such sort as nothing can be
gathered from their confusion, both in State and Religion, concerning
the Supremacy in either. And therefore so far forth as concerneth the
Old Testament, we may conclude, that whosoever had the Soveraignty
of the Common-wealth amongst the Jews, the same had also the Supreme
Authority in matter of Gods externall worship; and represented Gods
Person; that is the person of God the Father; though he were not called
by the name of Father, till such time as he sent into the world his Son
Jesus Christ, to redeem mankind from their sins, and bring them into his
Everlasting Kingdome, to be saved for evermore. Of which we are to speak
in the Chapter following.



CHAPTER XLI. OF THE OFFICE OF OUR BLESSED SAVIOUR




Three Parts Of The Office Of Christ

We find in Holy Scripture three parts of the Office of the Messiah: the
first of a Redeemer, or Saviour: The second of a Pastor, Counsellour,
or Teacher, that is, of a Prophet sent from God, to convert such as God
hath elected to Salvation; The third of a King, and Eternall King, but
under his Father, as Moses and the High Priests were in their severall
times. And to these three parts are corespondent three times. For our
Redemption he wrought at his first coming, by the Sacrifice, wherein
he offered up himself for our sinnes upon the Crosse: our conversion
he wrought partly then in his own Person; and partly worketh now by his
Ministers; and will continue to work till his coming again. And after
his coming again, shall begin that his glorious Reign over his elect,
which is to last eternally.




His Office As A Redeemer

To the Office of a Redeemer, that is, of one that payeth the Ransome of
Sin, (which Ransome is Death,) it appertaineth, that he was Sacrificed,
and thereby bare upon his own head, and carryed away from us our
iniquities, in such sort as God had required. Not that the death of one
man, though without sinne, can satisfie for the offences of all men,
in the rigour of Justice, but in the Mercy of God, that ordained such
Sacrifices for sin, as he was pleased in his mercy to accept. In the old
Law (as we may read, Leviticus the 16.) the Lord required, that there
should every year once, bee made an Atonement for the Sins of all
Israel, both Priests, and others; for the doing whereof, Aaron alone was
to sacrifice for himself and the Priests a young Bullock; and for the
rest of the people, he was to receive from them two young Goates, of
which he was to Sacrifice one; but as for the other, which was the Scape
Goat, he was to lay his hands on the head thereof, and by a confession
of the iniquities of the people, to lay them all on that head, and then
by some opportune man, to cause the Goat to be led into the wildernesse,
and there to Escape, and carry away with him the iniquities of the
people. As the Sacrifice of the one Goat was a sufficient (because an
acceptable) price for the Ransome of all Israel; so the death of the
Messiah, is a sufficient price, for the Sins of all mankind, because
there was no more required. Our Saviour Christs sufferings seem to be
here figured, as cleerly, as in the oblation of Isaac, or in any other
type of him in the Old Testament: He was both the sacrificed Goat, and
the Scape Goat; "Hee was oppressed, and he was afflicted (Isa. 53.7.);
he opened not his mouth; he brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a
sheep is dumbe before the shearer, so opened he not his mouth:" Here he
is the Sacrificed Goat. "He hath born our Griefs, (ver.4.) and carried
our sorrows;" And again, (ver. 6.) "the Lord hath laid upon him the
iniquities of us all:" And so he is the Scape Goat. "He was cut off from
the land of the living (ver. 8.) for the transgression of my People:"
There again he is the Sacrificed Goat. And again (ver. 11.) "he shall
bear their sins:" Hee is the Scape Goat. Thus is the Lamb of God
equivalent to both those Goates; sacrificed, in that he dyed; and
escaping, in his Resurrection; being raised opportunely by his Father,
and removed from the habitation of men in his Ascension.




Christs Kingdome Not Of This World

For as much therefore, as he that Redeemeth, hath no title to the Thing
Redeemed, before the Redemption, and Ransome paid; and this Ransome was
the Death of the Redeemer; it is manifest, that our Saviour (as man) was
not King of those that he Redeemed, before hee suffered death; that is,
during that time hee conversed bodily on the Earth. I say, he was not
then King in present, by vertue of the Pact, which the faithfull make
with him in Baptisme; Neverthelesse, by the renewing of their Pact with
God in Baptisme, they were obliged to obey him for King, (under his
Father) whensoever he should be pleased to take the Kingdome upon him.
According whereunto, our Saviour himself expressely saith, (John 18.36.)
"My Kingdome is not of this world." Now seeing the Scripture maketh
mention but of two worlds; this that is now, and shall remain to the day
of Judgment, (which is therefore also called, The Last Day;) and that
which shall bee a new Heaven, and a new Earth; the Kingdome of Christ
is not to begin till the general Resurrection. And that is it which our
Saviour saith, (Mat. 16.27.) "The Son of man shall come in the glory
of his Father, with his Angels; and then he shall reward every man
according to his works." To reward every man according to his works, is
to execute the Office of a King; and this is not to be till he come in
the glory of his Father, with his Angells. When our Saviour saith,
(Mat. 23.2.) "The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses seat; All therefore
whatsoever they bid you doe, that observe and doe;" hee declareth
plainly, that hee ascribeth Kingly Power, for that time, not to
himselfe, but to them. And so hee hath also, where he saith, (Luke
12.14.) "Who made mee a Judge, or Divider over you?" And (John 12.47.)
"I came not to judge the world, but to save the world." And yet our
Saviour came into this world that hee might bee a King, and a Judge in
the world to come: For hee was the Messiah, that is, the Christ, that
is, the Anointed Priest, and the Soveraign Prophet of God; that is to
say, he was to have all the power that was in Moses the Prophet, in the
High Priests that succeeded Moses, and in the Kings that succeeded the
Priests. And St. John saies expressely (chap. 5. ver. 22.) "The Father
judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son." And this is
not repugnant to that other place, "I came not to judge the world:" for
this is spoken of the world present, the other of the world to come; as
also where it is said, that at the second coming of Christ, (Mat. 19.
28.) "Yee that have followed me in the Regeneration, when the Son of
man shall sit in the throne of his Glory, yee shall also sit on twelve
thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."




The End Of Christs Comming Was To Renew The Covenant Of The Kingdome

Of God, And To Perswade The Elect To Imbrace It, Which Was The Second

Part Of His Office

If then Christ while hee was on Earth, had no Kingdome in this World,
to what end was his first coming? It was to restore unto God, by a new
Covenant, the Kingdome, which being his by the Old Covenant, had been
cut off by the rebellion of the Israelites in the election of Saul.
Which to doe, he was to preach unto them, that he was the Messiah, that
is, the King promised to them by the Prophets; and to offer himselfe in
sacrifice for the sinnes of them that should by faith submit themselves
thereto; and in case the nation generally should refuse him, to call
to his obedience such as should beleeve in him amongst the Gentiles. So
that there are two parts of our Saviours Office during his aboad upon
the Earth; One to Proclaim himself the Christ; and another by Teaching,
and by working of Miracles, to perswade, and prepare men to live so, as
to be worthy of the Immortality Beleevers were to enjoy, at such time as
he should come in majesty, to take possession of his Fathers Kingdome.
And therefore it is, that the time of his preaching, is often by himself
called the Regeneration; which is not properly a Kingdome, and thereby
a warrant to deny obedience to the Magistrates that then were, (for
hee commanded to obey those that sate then in Moses chaire, and to pay
tribute to Caesar;) but onely an earnest of the Kingdome of God that was
to come, to those to whom God had given the grace to be his disciples,
and to beleeve in him; For which cause the Godly are said to bee already
in the Kingdome of Grace, as naturalized in that heavenly Kingdome.




The Preaching Of Christ Not Contrary To The Then Law Of The Jews,

Nor Of Caesar

Hitherto therefore there is nothing done, or taught by Christ, that
tendeth to the diminution of the Civill Right of the Jewes, or of
Caesar. For as touching the Common-wealth which then was amongst
the Jews, both they that bare rule amongst them, that they that were
governed, did all expect the Messiah, and Kingdome of God; which they
could not have done if their Laws had forbidden him (when he came) to
manifest, and declare himself. Seeing therefore he did nothing, but by
Preaching, and Miracles go about to prove himselfe to be that Messiah,
hee did therein nothing against their laws. The Kingdome hee claimed was
to bee in another world; He taught all men to obey in the mean time them
that sate in Moses seat: he allowed them to give Caesar his tribute, and
refused to take upon himselfe to be a Judg. How then could his words,
or actions bee seditious, or tend to the overthrow of their then Civill
Government? But God having determined his sacrifice, for the reduction
of his elect to their former covenanted obedience, for the means,
whereby he would bring the same to effect, made use of their malice,
and ingratitude. Nor was it contrary to the laws of Caesar. For though
Pilate himself (to gratifie the Jews) delivered him to be crucified; yet
before he did so, he pronounced openly, that he found no fault in him:
And put for title of his condemnation, not as the Jews required, "that
he pretended to be King;" but simply, "That hee was King of the Jews;"
and notwithstanding their clamour, refused to alter it; saying, "What I
have written, I have written."




The Third Part Of His Office Was To Be King (Under His Father)

Of The Elect

As for the third part of his Office, which was to be King, I have
already shewn that his Kingdome was not to begin till the Resurrection.
But then he shall be King, not onely as God, in which sense he is
King already, and ever shall be, of all the Earth, in vertue of his
omnipotence; but also peculiarly of his own Elect, by vertue of the
pact they make with him in their Baptisme. And therefore it is, that
our Saviour saith (Mat. 19.28.) that his Apostles should sit upon twelve
thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, "When the Son of man shall
sit in the throne of his glory;" whereby he signified that he should
reign then in his humane nature; and (Mat. 16.27.) "The Son of man shall
come in the glory of his Father, with his Angels, and then he shall
reward every man according to his works." The same we may read, Marke
13..26. and 14.26. and more expressely for the time, Luke 22.29, 30. "I
appoint unto you a Kingdome, as my Father hath appointed to mee, that
you may eat and drink at my table in my Kingdome, and sit on thrones
judging the twelve tribes of Israel." By which it is manifest that the
Kingdome of Christ appointed to him by his Father, is not to be before
the Son of Man shall come in Glory, and make his Apostles Judges of
the twelve tribes of Israel. But a man may here ask, seeing there is
no marriage in the Kingdome of Heaven, whether men shall then eat, and
drink; what eating therefore is meant in this place? This is expounded
by our Saviour (John 6.27.) where he saith, "Labour not for the meat
which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting
life, which the Son of man shall give you." So that by eating at Christs
table, is meant the eating of the Tree of Life; that is to say, the
enjoying of Immortality, in the Kingdome of the Son of Man. By which
places, and many more, it is evident, that our Saviours Kingdome is to
bee exercised by him in his humane nature.




Christs Authority In The Kingdome Of God Subordinate To His Father

Again, he is to be King then, no otherwise than as subordinate, or
Viceregent of God the Father, as Moses was in the wildernesse; and as
the High Priests were before the reign of Saul; and as the Kings were
after it. For it is one of the Prophecies concerning Christ, that he
should be like (in Office) to Moses; "I will raise them up a Prophet
(saith the Lord, Deut. 18.18.) from amongst their Brethren like unto
thee, and will put my words into his mouth," and this similitude with
Moses, is also apparent in the actions of our Saviour himself, whilest
he was conversant on Earth. For as Moses chose twelve Princes of the
tribes, to govern under him; so did our Saviour choose twelve Apostles,
who shall sit on twelve thrones, and judge the twelve tribes of Israel;
And as Moses authorized Seventy Elders, to receive the Spirit of God,
and to Prophecy to the people, that is, (as I have said before,) to
speak unto them in the name of God; so our Saviour also ordained seventy
Disciples, to preach his Kingdome, and Salvation to all Nations. And as
when a complaint was made to Moses, against those of the Seventy that
prophecyed in the camp of Israel, he justified them in it, as being
subservient therein to his government; so also our Saviour, when St.
John complained to him of a certain man that cast out Devills in his
name, justified him therein, saying, (Luke 9.50.) "Forbid him not, for
hee that is not against us, is on our part."

Again, our Saviour resembled Moses in the institution of Sacraments,
both of Admission into the Kingdome of God, and of Commemoration of his
deliverance of his Elect from their miserable condition. As the Children
of Israel had for Sacrament of their Reception into the Kingdome of God,
before the time of Moses, the rite of Circumcision, which rite having
been omitted in the Wildernesse, was again restored as soon as they came
into the land of Promise; so also the Jews, before the coming of our
Saviour, had a rite of Baptizing, that is, of washing with water all
those that being Gentiles, embraced the God of Israel. This rite St.
John the Baptist used in the reception of all them that gave their names
to the Christ, whom hee preached to bee already come into the world; and
our Saviour instituted the same for a Sacrament to be taken by all that
beleeved in him. From what cause the rite of Baptisme first proceeded,
is not expressed formally in the Scripture; but it may be probably
thought to be an imitation of the law of Moses, concerning Leprousie;
wherein the Leprous man was commanded to be kept out of the campe of
Israel for a certain time; after which time being judged by the Priest
to be clean, hee was admitted into the campe after a solemne Washing.
And this may therefore bee a type of the Washing in Baptisme; wherein
such men as are cleansed of the Leprousie of Sin by Faith, are received
into the Church with the solemnity of Baptisme. There is another
conjecture drawn from the Ceremonies of the Gentiles, in a certain case
that rarely happens; and that is, when a man that was thought dead,
chanced to recover, other men made scruple to converse with him, as they
would doe to converse with a Ghost, unlesse hee were received again into
the number of men, by Washing, as Children new born were washed from
the uncleannesse of their nativity, which was a kind of new birth. This
ceremony of the Greeks, in the time that Judaea was under the Dominion
of Alexander, and the Greeks his successors, may probably enough have
crept into the Religion of the Jews. But seeing it is not likely our
Saviour would countenance a Heathen rite, it is most likely it proceeded
from the Legall Ceremony of Washing after Leprosie. And for the other
Sacraments, of eating the Paschall Lambe, it is manifestly imitated in
the Sacrament of the Lords Supper; in which the Breaking of the Bread,
and the pouring out of the Wine, do keep in memory our deliverance from
the Misery of Sin, by Christs Passion, as the eating of the Paschall
Lambe, kept in memory the deliverance of the Jewes out of the Bondage of
Egypt. Seeing therefore the authority of Moses was but subordinate, and
hee but a Lieutenant to God; it followeth, that Christ, whose authority,
as man, was to bee like that of Moses, was no more but subordinate to
the authority of his Father. The same is more expressely signified, by
that that hee teacheth us to pray, "Our Father, Let thy Kingdome come;"
and, "For thine is the Kingdome, the power and the Glory;" and by that
it is said, that "Hee shall come in the Glory of his Father;" and by
that which St. Paul saith, (1 Cor. 15.24.) "then commeth the end, when
hee shall have delivered up the Kingdome to God, even the Father;" and
by many other most expresse places.




One And The Same God Is The Person Represented By Moses, And By Christ

Our Saviour therefore, both in Teaching, and Reigning, representeth (as
Moses Did) the Person of God; which God from that time forward, but
not before, is called the Father; and being still one and the same
substance, is one Person as represented by Moses, and another Person as
represented by his Sonne the Christ. For Person being a relative to a
Representer, it is consequent to plurality of Representers, that there
bee a plurality of Persons, though of one and the same Substance.



CHAPTER XLII. OF POWER ECCLESIASTICALL


For the understanding of POWER ECCLESIASTICALL, what, and in whom it is,
we are to distinguish the time from the Ascension of our Saviour, into
two parts; one before the Conversion of Kings, and men endued with
Soveraign Civill Power; the other after their Conversion. For it was
long after the Ascension, before any King, or Civill Soveraign embraced,
and publiquely allowed the teaching of Christian Religion.




Of The Holy Spirit That Fel On The Apostles

And for the time between, it is manifest, that the Power
Ecclesiasticall, was in the Apostles; and after them in such as were by
them ordained to Preach the Gospell, and to convert men to Christianity,
and to direct them that were converted in the way of Salvation; and
after these the Power was delivered again to others by these ordained,
and this was done by Imposition of hands upon such as were ordained; by
which was signified the giving of the Holy Spirit, or Spirit of God, to
those whom they ordained Ministers of God, to advance his Kingdome.
So that Imposition of hands, was nothing else but the Seal of their
Commission to Preach Christ, and teach his Doctrine; and the giving of
the Holy Ghost by that ceremony of Imposition of hands, was an imitation
of that which Moses did. For Moses used the same ceremony to his
Minister Joshua, as wee read Deuteronomy 34. ver. 9. "And Joshua the son
of Nun was full of the Spirit of Wisdome; for Moses had laid his
hands upon him." Our Saviour therefore between his Resurrection, and
Ascension, gave his Spirit to the Apostles; first, by "Breathing on
them, and saying," (John 20.22.) "Receive yee the Holy Spirit;" and after
his Ascension (Acts 2.2, 3.) by sending down upon them, a "mighty wind,
and Cloven tongues of fire;" and not by Imposition of hands; as neither
did God lay his hands on Moses; and his Apostles afterward, transmitted
the same Spirit by Imposition of hands, as Moses did to Joshua. So that
it is manifest hereby, in whom the Power Ecclesiasticall continually
remained, in those first times, where there was not any Christian
Common-wealth; namely, in them that received the same from the Apostles,
by successive laying on of hands.




Of The Trinity

Here wee have the Person of God born now the third time. For as Moses,
and the High Priests, were Gods Representative in the Old Testament;
and our Saviour himselfe as Man, during his abode on earth: So the Holy
Ghost, that is to say, the Apostles, and their successors, in the Office
of Preaching, and Teaching, that had received the Holy Spirit, have
Represented him ever since. But a Person, (as I have shewn before,
[chapt. 16.].) is he that is Represented, as often as hee is
Represented; and therefore God, who has been Represented (that is,
Personated) thrice, may properly enough be said to be three Persons;
though neither the word Person, nor Trinity be ascribed to him in the
Bible. St. John indeed (1 Epist. 5.7.) saith, "There be three that bear
witnesse in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these
Three are One:" But this disagreeth not, but accordeth fitly with three
Persons in the proper signification of Persons; which is, that which is
Represented by another. For so God the Father, as Represented by Moses,
is one Person; and as Represented by his Sonne, another Person, and as
Represented by the Apostles, and by the Doctors that taught by authority
from them derived, is a third Person; and yet every Person here, is
the Person of one and the same God. But a man may here ask, what it was
whereof these three bare witnesse. St. John therefore tells us (verse
11.) that they bear witnesse, that "God hath given us eternall life
in his Son." Again, if it should be asked, wherein that testimony
appeareth, the Answer is easie; for he hath testified the same by the
miracles he wrought, first by Moses; secondly, by his Son himself; and
lastly by his Apostles, that had received the Holy Spirit; all which
in their times Represented the Person of God; and either prophecyed, or
preached Jesus Christ. And as for the Apostles, it was the character
of the Apostleship, in the twelve first and great Apostles, to bear
Witnesse of his Resurrection; as appeareth expressely (Acts 1. ver.
21,22.) where St Peter, when a new Apostle was to be chosen in the place
of Judas Iscariot, useth these words, "Of these men which have companied
with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out amongst us,
beginning at the Baptisme of John, unto that same day that hee was
taken up from us, must one bee ordained to be a Witnesse with us of his
Resurrection:" which words interpret the Bearing of Witnesse, mentioned
by St. John. There is in the same place mentioned another Trinity of
Witnesses in Earth. For (ver. 8.) he saith, "there are three that bear
Witnesse in Earth, the Spirit, and the Water, and the Bloud; and these
three agree in one:" that is to say, the graces of Gods Spirit, and the
two Sacraments, Baptisme, and the Lords Supper, which all agree in one
Testimony, to assure the consciences of beleevers, of eternall life; of
which Testimony he saith (verse 10.) "He that beleeveth on the Son of
man hath the Witnesse in himselfe." In this Trinity on Earth the Unity
is not of the thing; for the Spirit, the Water, and the Bloud, are not
the same substance, though they give the same testimony: But in the
Trinity of Heaven, the Persons are the persons of one and the same God,
though Represented in three different times and occasions. To conclude,
the doctrine of the Trinity, as far as can be gathered directly from
the Scripture, is in substance this; that God who is alwaies One and the
same, was the Person Represented by Moses; the Person Represented by
his Son Incarnate; and the Person Represented by the Apostles. As
Represented by the Apostles, the Holy Spirit by which they spake, is
God; As Represented by his Son (that was God and Man), the Son is that
God; As represented by Moses, and the High Priests, the Father, that is
to say, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is that God: From whence
we may gather the reason why those names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in
the signification of the Godhead, are never used in the Old Testament:
For they are Persons, that is, they have their names from Representing;
which could not be, till divers men had Represented Gods Person in
ruling, or in directing under him.

Thus wee see how the Power Ecclesiasticall was left by our Saviour
to the Apostles; and how they were (to the end they might the better
exercise that Power,) endued with the Holy Spirit, which is therefore
called sometime in the New Testament Paracletus which signifieth an
Assister, or one called to for helpe, though it bee commonly translated
a Comforter. Let us now consider the Power it selfe, what it was, and
over whom.




The Power Ecclesiasticall Is But The Power To Teach

Cardinall Bellarmine in his third generall Controversie, hath handled a
great many questions concerning the Ecclesiasticall Power of the Pope
of Rome; and begins with this, Whether it ought to be Monarchicall,
Aristocraticall, or Democraticall. All which sorts of Power, are
Soveraign, and Coercive. If now it should appear, that there is no
Coercive Power left them by our Saviour; but onely a Power to proclaim
the Kingdom of Christ, and to perswade men to submit themselves
thereunto; and by precepts and good counsell, to teach them that have
submitted, what they are to do, that they may be received into the
Kingdom of God when it comes; and that the Apostles, and other Ministers
of the Gospel, are our Schoolemasters, and not our Commanders, and their
Precepts not Laws, but wholesome Counsells then were all that dispute in
vain.




An Argument Thereof, The Power Of Christ Himself

I have shewn already (in the last Chapter,) that the Kingdome of Christ
is not of this world: therefore neither can his Ministers (unlesse they
be Kings,) require obedience in his name. For if the Supreme King, have
not his Regall Power in this world; by what authority can obedience be
required to his Officers? As my Father sent me, (so saith our Saviour)
I send you. But our Saviour was sent to perswade the Jews to return to,
and to invite the Gentiles, to receive the Kingdome of his Father, and
not to reign in Majesty, no not, as his Fathers Lieutenant, till the day
of Judgment.




From The Name Of Regeneration

The time between the Ascension, and the generall Resurrection, is
called, not a Reigning, but a Regeneration; that is, a Preparation
of men for the second and glorious coming of Christ, at the day of
Judgment; as appeareth by the words of our Saviour, Mat. 19.28. "You
that have followed me in the Regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit
in the throne of his glory, you shall also sit upon twelve Thrones;" And
of St. Paul (Ephes. 6.15.) "Having your feet shod with the Preparation
of the Gospell of Peace."




From The Comparison Of It, With Fishing, Leaven, Seed

And is compared by our Saviour, to Fishing; that is, to winning men
to obedience, not by Coercion, and Punishing; but by Perswasion: and
therefore he said not to his Apostles, hee would make them so many
Nimrods, Hunters Of Men; But Fishers Of Men. It is compared also to
Leaven; to Sowing of Seed, and to the Multiplication of a grain of
Mustard-seed; by all which Compulsion is excluded; and consequently
there can in that time be no actual Reigning. The work of Christs
Ministers, is Evangelization; that is, a Proclamation of Christ, and
a preparation for his second comming; as the Evangelization of John
Baptist, was a preparation to his first coming.




From The Nature Of Faith:

Again, the Office of Christs Ministers in this world, is to make men
Beleeve, and have Faith in Christ: But Faith hath no relation to, nor
dependence at all upon Compulsion, or Commandement; but onely upon
certainty, or probability of Arguments drawn from Reason, or from
something men beleeve already. Therefore the Ministers of Christ in this
world, have no Power by that title, to Punish any man for not Beleeving,
or for Contradicting what they say; they have I say no Power by that
title of Christs Ministers, to Punish such: but if they have Soveraign
Civill Power, by politick institution, then they may indeed lawfully
Punish any Contradiction to their laws whatsoever: And St. Paul, of
himselfe and other then Preachers of the Gospell saith in expresse
words, (2 Cor. 1.24.) "Wee have no Dominion over your Faith, but are
Helpers of your Joy."




From The Authority Christ Hath Left To Civill Princes

Another Argument, that the Ministers of Christ in this present world
have no right of Commanding, may be drawn from the lawfull Authority
which Christ hath left to all Princes, as well Christians, as Infidels.
St. Paul saith (Col. 3.20.) "Children obey your Parents in all things;
for this is well pleasing to the Lord." And ver. 22. "Servants obey in
all things your Masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service, as
men-pleasers, but in singlenesse of heart, as fearing the Lord;" This is
spoken to them whose Masters were Infidells; and yet they are bidden
to obey them In All Things. And again, concerning obedience to Princes.
(Rom. 13. the first 6. verses) exhorting to "be subject to the Higher
Powers," he saith, "that all Power is ordained of God;" and "that we
ought to be subject to them, not onely for" fear of incurring their
"wrath, but also for conscience sake." And St. Peter, (1 Epist. chap. 2e
ver. 13, 14, 15.) "Submit your selves to every Ordinance of Man, for the
Lords sake, whether it bee to the King, as Supreme, or unto Governours,
as to them that be sent by him for the punishment of evill doers, and
for the praise of them that doe well; for so is the will of God."
And again St. Paul (Tit. 3.1.) "Put men in mind to be subject to
Principalities, and Powers, and to obey Magistrates." These Princes, and
Powers, whereof St. Peter, and St. Paul here speak, were all Infidels;
much more therefore we are to obey those Christians, whom God hath
ordained to have Soveraign Power over us. How then can wee be obliged
to doe any thing contrary to the Command of the King, or other Soveraign
Representant of the Common-wealth, whereof we are members, and by whom
we look to be protected? It is therefore manifest, that Christ hath not
left to his Ministers in this world, unlesse they be also endued with
Civill Authority, any authority to Command other men.




What Christians May Do To Avoid Persecution

But what (may some object) if a King, or a Senate, or other Soveraign
Person forbid us to beleeve in Christ? To this I answer, that such
forbidding is of no effect, because Beleef, and Unbeleef never follow
mens Commands. Faith is a gift of God, which Man can neither give, nor
take away by promise of rewards, or menaces of torture. And if it be
further asked, What if wee bee commanded by our lawfull Prince, to say
with our tongue, wee beleeve not; must we obey such command? Profession
with the tongue is but an externall thing, and no more then any other
gesture whereby we signifie our obedience; and wherein a Christian,
holding firmely in his heart the Faith of Christ, hath the same liberty
which the Prophet Elisha allowed to Naaman the Syrian. Naaman was
converted in his heart to the God of Israel; For hee saith (2 Kings
5.17.) "Thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering, nor
sacrifice unto other Gods but unto the Lord. In this thing the Lord
pardon thy servant, that when my Master goeth into the house of Rimmon
to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow my selfe in the
house of Rimmon; when I bow my selfe in the house of Rimmon, the Lord
pardon thy servant in this thing." This the Prophet approved, and bid
him "Goe in peace." Here Naaman beleeved in his heart; but by bowing
before the Idol Rimmon, he denyed the true God in effect, as much as
if he had done it with his lips. But then what shall we answer to our
Saviours saying, "Whosoever denyeth me before men, I will deny him
before my Father which is in Heaven?" This we may say, that whatsoever
a Subject, as Naaman was, is compelled to in obedience to his Soveraign,
and doth it not in order to his own mind, but in order to the laws of
his country, that action is not his, but his Soveraigns; nor is it he
that in this case denyeth Christ before men, but his Governour, and the
law of his countrey. If any man shall accuse this doctrine, as repugnant
to true, and unfeigned Christianity; I ask him, in case there should be
a subject in any Christian Common-wealth, that should be inwardly in his
heart of the Mahometan Religion, whether if his Soveraign Command him to
bee present at the divine service of the Christian Church, and that on
pain of death, he think that Mamometan obliged in conscience to suffer
death for that cause, rather than to obey that command of his lawful
Prince. If he say, he ought rather to suffer death, then he authorizeth
all private men, to disobey their Princes, in maintenance of their
Religion, true, or false; if he say, he ought to bee obedient, then he
alloweth to himself, that which hee denyeth to another, contrary to the
words of our Saviour, "Whatsoever you would that men should doe unto
you, that doe yee unto them;" and contrary to the Law of Nature, (which
is the indubitable everlasting Law of God) "Do not to another, that
which thou wouldest not he should doe unto thee."




Of Martyrs

But what then shall we say of all those Martyrs we read of in the
History of the Church, that they have needlessely cast away their lives?
For answer hereunto, we are to distinguish the persons that have been
for that cause put to death; whereof some have received a Calling to
preach, and professe the Kingdome of Christ openly; others have had no
such Calling, nor more has been required of them than their owne faith.
The former sort, if they have been put to death, for bearing witnesse to
this point, that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, were true Martyrs;
For a Martyr is, (to give the true definition of the word) a Witnesse of
the Resurrection of Jesus the Messiah; which none can be but those
that conversed with him on earth, and saw him after he was risen: For a
Witnesse must have seen what he testifieth, or else his testimony is not
good. And that none but such, can properly be called Martyrs of Christ,
is manifest out of the words of St. Peter, Act. 1.21, 22. "Wherefore of
these men which have companyed with us all the time that the Lord Jesus
went in and out amongst us, beginning from the Baptisme of John unto
that same day hee was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a
Martyr (that is a Witnesse) with us of his Resurrection:" Where we
may observe, that he which is to bee a Witnesse of the truth of
the Resurrection of Christ, that is to say, of the truth of this
fundamentall article of Christian Religion, that Jesus was the Christ,
must be some Disciple that conversed with him, and saw him before, and
after his Resurrection; and consequently must be one of his originall
Disciples: whereas they which were not so, can Witnesse no more, but
that their antecessors said it, and are therefore but Witnesses of
other mens testimony; and are but second Martyrs, or Martyrs of Christs
Witnesses.

He, that to maintain every doctrine which he himself draweth out of
the History of our Saviours life, and of the Acts, or Epistles of the
Apostles; or which he beleeveth upon the authority of a private man,
wil oppose the Laws and Authority of the Civill State, is very far from
being a Martyr of Christ, or a Martyr of his Martyrs. 'Tis one Article
onely, which to die for, meriteth so honorable a name; and that Article
is this, that Jesus Is The Christ; that is to say, He that hath redeemed
us, and shall come again to give us salvation, and eternall life in his
glorious Kingdome. To die for every tenet that serveth the ambition,
or profit of the Clergy, is not required; nor is it the Death of the
Witnesse, but the Testimony it self that makes the Martyr: for the word
signifieth nothing else, but the man that beareth Witnesse, whether he
be put to death for his testimony, or not.

Also he that is not sent to preach this fundamentall article, but taketh
it upon him of his private authority, though he be a Witnesse, and
consequently a Martyr, either primary of Christ, or secondary of his
Apostles, Disciples, or their Successors; yet is he not obliged to
suffer death for that cause; because being not called thereto, tis
not required at his hands; nor ought hee to complain, if he loseth
the reward he expecteth from those that never set him on work. None
therefore can be a Martyr, neither of the first, nor second degree, that
have not a warrant to preach Christ come in the flesh; that is to say,
none, but such as are sent to the conversion of Infidels. For no man
is a Witnesse to him that already beleeveth, and therefore needs no
Witnesse; but to them that deny, or doubt, or have not heard it. Christ
sent his Apostles, and his Seventy Disciples, with authority to preach;
he sent not all that beleeved: And he sent them to unbeleevers; "I send
you (saith he) as sheep amongst wolves;" not as sheep to other sheep.




Argument From The Points Of Their Commission

Lastly the points of their Commission, as they are expressely set down
in the Gospel, contain none of them any authority over the Congregation.




To Preach

We have first (Mat. 10.) that the twelve Apostles were sent "to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel," and commanded to Preach, "that the
Kingdome of God was at hand." Now Preaching in the originall, is that
act, which a Crier, Herald, or other Officer useth to doe publiquely in
Proclaiming of a King. But a Crier hath not right to Command any man.
And (Luke 10.2.) the seventy Disciples are sent out, "as Labourers,
not as Lords of the Harvest;" and are bidden (verse 9.) to say, "The
Kingdome of God is come nigh unto you;" and by Kingdome here is meant,
not the Kingdome of Grace, but the Kingdome of Glory; for they are
bidden to denounce it (ver. 11.) to those Cities which shall not receive
them, as a threatning, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for
Sodome, than for such a City. And (Mat. 20.28.) our Saviour telleth his
Disciples, that sought Priority of place, their Office was to minister,
even as the Son of man came, not to be ministred unto, but to minister.
Preachers therefore have not Magisteriall, but Ministeriall power: "Bee
not called Masters, (saith our Saviour, Mat. 23.10) for one is your
Master, even Christ."




And Teach

Another point of their Commission, is, to Teach All Nations; as it is in
Mat. 28.19. or as in St. Mark 16.15 "Goe into all the world, and Preach
the Gospel to every creature." Teaching therefore, and Preaching is the
same thing. For they that Proclaim the comming of a King, must withall
make known by what right he commeth, if they mean men shall submit
themselves unto him: As St. Paul did to the Jews of Thessalonica,
when "three Sabbath days he reasoned with them out of the Scriptures,
opening, and alledging that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen
again from the dead, and that this Jesus is Christ." But to teach out
of the Old Testament that Jesus was Christ, (that is to say, King,)
and risen from the dead, is not to say, that men are bound after they
beleeve it, to obey those that tell them so, against the laws, and
commands of their Soveraigns; but that they shall doe wisely, to expect
the coming of Christ hereafter, in Patience, and Faith, with Obedience
to their present Magistrates.




To Baptize;

Another point of their Commission, is to Baptize, "in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." What is Baptisme?
Dipping into water. But what is it to Dip a man into the water in the
name of any thing? The meaning of these words of Baptisme is this. He
that is Baptized, is Dipped or Washed, as a sign of becomming a new man,
and a loyall subject to that God, whose Person was represented in old
time by Moses, and the High Priests, when he reigned over the Jews; and
to Jesus Christ, his Sonne, God, and Man, that hath redeemed us, and
shall in his humane nature Represent his Fathers Person in his eternall
Kingdome after the Resurrection; and to acknowledge the Doctrine of the
Apostles, who assisted by the Spirit of the Father, and of the Son, were
left for guides to bring us into that Kingdome, to be the onely, and
assured way thereunto. This, being our promise in Baptisme; and the
Authority of Earthly Soveraigns being not to be put down till the day of
Judgment; (for that is expressely affirmed by S. Paul 1 Cor. 15. 22, 23,
24. where he saith, "As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be
made alive. But every man in his owne order, Christ the first fruits,
afterward they that are Christs, at his comming; Then Commeth the end,
when he shall have delivered up the Kingdome of God, even the Father,
when he shall have put down all Rule, and all Authority and Power")
it is manifest, that we do not in Baptisme constitute over us another
authority, by which our externall actions are to be governed in this
life; but promise to take the doctrine of the Apostles for our direction
in the way to life eternall.




And To Forgive, And Retain Sinnes

The Power of Remission, And Retention Of Sinnes, called also the Power
of Loosing, and Binding, and sometimes the Keyes Of The Kingdome Of
Heaven, is a consequence of the Authority to Baptize, or refuse to
Baptize. For Baptisme is the Sacrament of Allegeance, of them that are
to be received into the Kingdome of God; that is to say, into Eternall
life; that is to say, to Remission of Sin: For as Eternall life was lost
by the Committing, so it is recovered by the Remitting of mens Sins. The
end of Baptisme is Remission of Sins: and therefore St. Peter, when they
that were converted by his Sermon on the day of Pentecost, asked what
they were to doe, advised them to "repent, and be Baptized in the name
of Jesus, for the Remission of Sins." And therefore seeing to Baptize
is to declare the Reception of men into Gods Kingdome; and to refuse to
Baptize is to declare their Exclusion; it followeth, that the Power
to declare them Cast out, or Retained in it, was given to the same
Apostles, and their Substitutes, and Successors. And therefore after our
Saviour had breathed upon them, saying, (John 20.22.) "Receive the Holy
Ghost," hee addeth in the next verse, "Whose soever Sins ye Remit,
they are Remitted unto them; and whose soever Sins ye Retain, they are
Retained." By which words, is not granted an Authority to Forgive, or
Retain Sins, simply and absolutely, as God Forgiveth or Retaineth them,
who knoweth the Heart of man, and truth of his Penitence and Conversion;
but conditionally, to the Penitent: And this Forgivenesse, or
Absolution, in case the absolved have but a feigned Repentance, is
thereby without other act, or sentence of the Absolvent, made void,
and hath no effect at all to Salvation, but on the contrary, to the
Aggravation of his Sin. Therefore the Apostles, and their Successors,
are to follow but the outward marks of Repentance; which appearing, they
have no Authority to deny Absolution; and if they appeare not, they have
no authority to Absolve. The same also is to be observed in Baptisme:
for to a converted Jew, or Gentile, the Apostles had not the Power to
deny Baptisme; nor to grant it to the Un-penitent. But seeing no man is
able to discern the truth of another mans Repentance, further than by
externall marks, taken from his words, and actions, which are subject to
hypocrisie; another question will arise, Who it is that is constituted
Judge of those marks. And this question is decided by our Saviour
himself; (Mat. 18. 15, 16, 17.) "If thy Brother (saith he) shall
trespasse against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee, and him
alone; if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy Brother. But if he
will not hear thee, then take with thee one, or two more. And if he
shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the Church, let him be unto
thee as an Heathen man, and a Publican." By which it is manifest, that
the Judgment concerning the truth of Repentance, belonged not to any one
Man, but to the Church, that is, to the Assembly of the Faithfull, or
to them that have authority to bee their Representant. But besides the
Judgment, there is necessary also the pronouncing of Sentence: And
this belonged alwaies to the Apostle, or some Pastor of the Church,
as Prolocutor; and of this our Saviour speaketh in the 18 verse,
"Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and
whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven." And
comformable hereunto was the practise of St. Paul (1 Cor. 5.3, 4, & 5.)
where he saith, "For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit,
have determined already, as though I were present, concerning him that
hath so done this deed; In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ when ye
are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus
Christ, To deliver such a one to Satan;" that is to say, to cast him
out of the Church, as a man whose Sins are not Forgiven. Paul here
pronounceth the Sentence; but the Assembly was first to hear the Cause,
(for St. Paul was absent;) and by consequence to condemn him. But in
the same chapter (ver. 11, 12.) the Judgment in such a case is more
expressely attributed to the Assembly: "But now I have written unto
you, not to keep company, if any man that is called a Brother be a
Fornicator, &c. with such a one no not to eat. For what have I to do to
judg them that are without? Do not ye judg them that are within?"
The Sentence therefore by which a man was put out of the Church, was
pronounced by the Apostle, or Pastor; but the Judgment concerning the
merit of the cause, was in the Church; that is to say, (as the times
were before the conversion of Kings, and men that had Soveraign
Authority in the Common-wealth,) the Assembly of the Christians dwelling
in the same City; as in Corinth, in the Assembly of the Christians of
Corinth.




Of Excommunication

This part of the Power of the Keyes, by which men were thrust out from
the Kingdome of God, is that which is called Excommunication; and to
excommunicate, is in the Originall, Aposunagogon Poiein, To Cast Out Of
The Synagogue; that is, out of the place of Divine service; a word drawn
from the custom of the Jews, to cast out of their Synagogues, such as
they thought in manners, or doctrine, contagious, as Lepers were by the
Law of Moses separated from the congregation of Israel, till such time
as they should be by the Priest pronounced clean.




The Use Of Excommunication Without Civill Power.

The Use and Effect of Excommunication, whilest it was not yet
strengthened with the Civill Power, was no more, than that they, who
were not Excommunicate, were to avoid the company of them that were.
It was not enough to repute them as Heathen, that never had been
Christians; for with such they might eate, and drink; which with
Excommunicate persons they might not do; as appeareth by the words of
St. Paul, (1 Cor. 5. ver. 9, 10, &c.) where he telleth them, he had
formerly forbidden them to "company with Fornicators;" but (because that
could not bee without going out of the world,) he restraineth it to such
Fornicators, and otherwise vicious persons, as were of the brethren;
"with such a one" (he saith) they ought not to keep company, "no, not to
eat." And this is no more than our Saviour saith (Mat. 18.17.) "Let
him be to thee as a Heathen, and as a Publican." For Publicans (which
signifieth Farmers, and Receivers of the revenue of the Common-wealth)
were so hated, and detested by the Jews that were to pay for it, as
that Publican and Sinner were taken amongst them for the same thing:
Insomuch, as when our Saviour accepted the invitation of Zacchaeus a
Publican; though it were to Convert him, yet it was objected to him as
a Crime. And therefore, when our Saviour, to Heathen, added Publican, he
did forbid them to eat with a man Excommunicate.

As for keeping them out of their Synagogues, or places of Assembly, they
had no Power to do it, but that of the owner of the place, whether he
were Christian, or Heathen. And because all places are by right, in the
Dominion of the Common-wealth; as well hee that was Excommunicated, as
hee that never was Baptized, might enter into them by Commission from
the Civill Magistrate; as Paul before his conversion entred into their
Synagogues at Damascus, (Acts 9.2.) to apprehend Christians, men and
women, and to carry them bound to Jerusalem, by Commission from the High
Priest.




Of No Effect Upon An Apostate

By which it appears, that upon a Christian, that should become an
Apostate, in a place where the Civill Power did persecute, or not assist
the Church, the effect of Excommunication had nothing in it, neither of
dammage in this world, nor of terrour: Not of terrour, because of their
unbeleef; nor of dammage, because they returned thereby into the favour
of the world; and in the world to come, were to be in no worse estate,
then they which never had beleeved. The dammage redounded rather to the
Church, by provocation of them they cast out, to a freer execution of
their malice.




But Upon The Faithfull Only

Excommunication therefore had its effect onely upon those, that beleeved
that Jesus Christ was to come again in Glory, to reign over, and to
judge both the quick, and the dead, and should therefore refuse entrance
into his Kingdom, to those whose Sins were Retained; that is, to those
that were Excommunicated by the Church. And thence it is that St. Paul
calleth Excommunication, a delivery of the Excommunicate person to
Satan. For without the Kingdom of Christ, all other Kingdomes after
Judgment, are comprehended in the Kingdome of Satan. This is it that the
faithfull stood in fear of, as long as they stood Excommunicate, that is
to say, in an estate wherein their sins were not Forgiven. Whereby wee
may understand, that Excommunication in the time that Christian Religion
was not authorized by the Civill Power, was used onely for a correction
of manners, not of errours in opinion: for it is a punishment, whereof
none could be sensible but such as beleeved, and expected the coming
again of our Saviour to judge the world; and they who so beleeved,
needed no other opinion, but onely uprightnesse of life, to be saved.




For What Fault Lyeth Excommunication

There Lyeth Excommunication for Injustice; as (Mat. 18.) If thy Brother
offend thee, tell it him privately; then with Witnesses; lastly, tell
the Church; and then if he obey not, "Let him be to thee as an Heathen
man, and a Publican." And there lyeth Excommunication for a Scandalous
Life, as (1 Cor. 5. 11.) "If any man that is called a Brother, be
a Fornicator, or Covetous, or an Idolater, or a Drunkard, or an
Extortioner, with such a one yee are not to eat." But to Excommunicate a
man that held this foundation, that Jesus Was The Christ, for difference
of opinion in other points, by which that Foundation was not destroyed,
there appeareth no authority in the Scripture, nor example in the
Apostles. There is indeed in St. Paul (Titus 3.10.) a text that seemeth
to be to the contrary. "A man that is an Haeretique, after the first
and second admonition, reject." For an Haeretique, is he, that being a
member of the Church, teacheth neverthelesse some private opinion, which
the Church has forbidden: and such a one, S. Paul adviseth Titus, after
the first, and second admonition, to Reject. But to Reject (in this
place) is not to Excommunicate the Man; But to Give Over Admonishing
Him, To Let Him Alone, To Set By Disputing With Him, as one that is to
be convinced onely by himselfe. The same Apostle saith (2 Tim. 2.23.)
"Foolish and unlearned questions avoid;" The word Avoid in this place,
and Reject in the former, is the same in the Originall, paraitou: but
Foolish questions may bee set by without Excommunication. And again,
(Tit. 3.93) "Avoid Foolish questions," where the Originall, periistaso,
(set them by) is equivalent to the former word Reject. There is no
other place that can so much as colourably be drawn, to countenance
the Casting out of the Church faithfull men, such as beleeved the
foundation, onely for a singular superstructure of their own, proceeding
perhaps from a good & pious conscience. But on the contrary, all such
places as command avoiding such disputes, are written for a Lesson to
Pastors, (such as Timothy and Titus were) not to make new Articles of
Faith, by determining every small controversie, which oblige men to a
needlesse burthen of Conscience, or provoke them to break the union of
the Church. Which Lesson the Apostles themselves observed well. S. Peter
and S. Paul, though their controversie were great, (as we may read
in Gal. 2.11.) yet they did not cast one another out of the Church.
Neverthelesse, during the Apostles time, there were other Pastors that
observed it not; As Diotrephes (3 John 9. &c.) who cast out of the
Church, such as S. John himself thought fit to be received into it, out
of a pride he took in Praeeminence; so early it was, that Vainglory, and
Ambition had found entrance into the Church of Christ.




Of Persons Liable To Excommunication

That a man be liable to Excommunication, there be many conditions
requisite; as First, that he be a member of some Commonalty, that is to
say, of some lawfull Assembly, that is to say, of some Christian
Church, that hath power to judge of the cause for which hee is to
bee Excommunicated. For where there is no community, there can bee no
Excommunication; nor where there is no power to Judge, can there bee any
power to give Sentence. From hence it followeth, that one Church cannot
be Excommunicated by another: For either they have equall power
to Excommunicate each other, in which case Excommunication is not
Discipline, nor an act of Authority, but Schisme, and Dissolution of
charity; or one is so subordinate to the other, as that they both
have but one voice, and then they be but one Church; and the part
Excommunicated, is no more a Church, but a dissolute number of
individuall persons.

And because the sentence of Excommunication, importeth an advice, not to
keep company, nor so much as to eat with him that is Excommunicate, if
a Soveraign Prince, or Assembly bee Excommunicate, the sentence is of no
effect. For all Subjects are bound to be in the company and presence of
their own Soveraign (when he requireth it) by the law of Nature; nor
can they lawfully either expell him from any place of his own Dominion,
whether profane or holy; nor go out of his Dominion, without his leave;
much lesse (if he call them to that honour,) refuse to eat with him. And
as to other Princes and States, because they are not parts of one and
the same congregation, they need not any other sentence to keep
them from keeping company with the State Excommunicate: for the
very Institution, as it uniteth many men into one Community; so it
dissociateth one Community from another: so that Excommunication is
not needfull for keeping Kings and States asunder; nor has any further
effect then is in the nature of Policy it selfe; unlesse it be to
instigate Princes to warre upon one another.

Nor is the Excommunication of a Christian Subject, that obeyeth the laws
of his own Soveraign, whether Christian, or Heathen, of any effect. For
if he beleeve that "Jesus is the Christ, he hath the Spirit of God" (1
Joh. 4.1.) "and God dwelleth in him, and he in God," (1 Joh. 4.15.) But
hee that hath the Spirit of God; hee that dwelleth in God; hee in
whom God dwelleth, can receive no harm by the Excommunication of men.
Therefore, he that beleeveth Jesus to be the Christ, is free from all
the dangers threatned to persons Excommunicate. He that beleeveth it
not, is no Christian. Therefore a true and unfeigned Christian is not
liable to Excommunication; Nor he also that is a professed Christian,
till his Hypocrisy appear in his Manners, that is, till his behaviour
bee contrary to the law of his Soveraign, which is the rule of Manners,
and which Christ and his Apostles have commanded us to be subject to.
For the Church cannot judge of Manners but by externall Actions, which
Actions can never bee unlawfull, but when they are against the Law of
the Common-wealth.

If a mans Father, or Mother, or Master bee Excommunicate, yet are not
the Children forbidden to keep them Company, nor to Eat with them; for
that were (for the most part) to oblige them not to eat at all, for want
of means to get food; and to authorise them to disobey their Parents,
and Masters, contrary to the Precept of the Apostles.

In summe, the Power of Excommunication cannot be extended further than
to the end for which the Apostles and Pastors of the Church have
their Commission from our Saviour; which is not to rule by Command and
Coaction, but by Teaching and Direction of men in the way of Salvation
in the world to come. And as a Master in any Science, may abandon his
Scholar, when hee obstinately neglecteth the practise of his rules; but
not accuse him of Injustice, because he was never bound to obey him:
so a Teacher of Christian doctrine may abandon his Disciples that
obstinately continue in an unchristian life; but he cannot say, they doe
him wrong, because they are not obliged to obey him: For to a Teacher
that shall so complain, may be applyed the Answer of God to Samuel in
the like place, (1 Sam. 8.) "They have not rejected thee, but mee."
Excommunication therefore when it wanteth the assistance of the Civill
Power, as it doth, when a Christian State, or Prince is Excommunicate
by a forain Authority, is without effect; and consequently ought to
be without terrour. The name of Fulmen Excommunicationis (that is, the
Thunderbolt Of Excommunication) proceeded from an imagination of the
Bishop of Rome, which first used it, that he was King of Kings, as the
Heathen made Jupiter King of the Gods; and assigned him in their Poems,
and Pictures, a Thunderbolt, wherewith to subdue, and punish the Giants,
that should dare to deny his power: Which imagination was grounded on
two errours; one, that the Kingdome of Christ is of this world, contrary
to our Saviours owne words, "My Kingdome is not of this world;" the
other, that hee is Christs Vicar, not onely over his owne Subjects,
but over all the Christians of the World; whereof there is no ground in
Scripture, and the contrary shall bee proved in its due place.




Of The Interpreter Of The Scriptures Before Civill Soveraigns

Became Christians

St. Paul coming to Thessalonica, where was a Synagogue of the Jews,
(Acts 17.2, 3.) "As his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath
dayes reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, Opening and alledging,
that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead; and
that this Jesus whom he preached was the Christ." The Scriptures here
mentioned were the Scriptures of the Jews, that is, the Old Testament.
The men, to whom he was to prove that Jesus was the Christ, and risen
again from the dead, were also Jews, and did beleeve already, that
they were the Word of God. Hereupon (as it is verse 4.) some of them
beleeved, and (as it is in the 5. ver.) some beleeved not. What was
the reason, when they all beleeved the Scripture, that they did not
all beleeve alike; but that some approved, others disapproved the
Interpretation of St. Paul that cited them; and every one Interpreted
them to himself? It was this; S. Paul came to them without any Legall
Commission, and in the manner of one that would not Command, but
Perswade; which he must needs do, either by Miracles, as Moses did
to the Israelites in Egypt, that they might see his Authority in Gods
works; or by Reasoning from the already received Scripture, that
they might see the truth of his doctrine in Gods Word. But whosoever
perswadeth by reasoning from principles written, maketh him to whom hee
speaketh Judge, both of the meaning of those principles, and also of the
force of his inferences upon them. If these Jews of Thessalonica were
not, who else was the Judge of what S. Paul alledged out of Scripture?
If S. Paul, what needed he to quote any places to prove his doctrine? It
had been enough to have said, I find it so in Scripture, that is to
say, in your Laws, of which I am Interpreter, as sent by Christ. The
Interpreter therefore of the Scripture, to whose Interpretation the
Jews of Thessalonica were bound to stand, could be none: every one might
beleeve, or not beleeve, according as the Allegations seemed to himselfe
to be agreeable, or not agreeable to the meaning of the places alledged.
And generally in all cases of the world, hee that pretendeth any proofe,
maketh Judge of his proofe him to whom he addresseth his speech. And as
to the case of the Jews in particular, they were bound by expresse words
(Deut. 17.) to receive the determination of all hard questions, from
the Priests and Judges of Israel for the time being. But this is to bee
understood of the Jews that were yet unconverted.

For the Conversion of the Gentiles, there was no use of alledging the
Scriptures, which they beleeved not. The Apostles therefore laboured by
Reason to confute their Idolatry; and that done, to perswade them to the
faith of Christ, by their testimony of his Life, and Resurrection. So
that there could not yet bee any controversie concerning the authority
to Interpret Scripture; seeing no man was obliged during his infidelity,
to follow any mans Interpretation of any Scripture, except his
Soveraigns Interpretation of the Laws of his countrey.

Let us now consider the Conversion it self, and see what there was
therein, that could be cause of such an obligation. Men were converted
to no other thing then to the Beleef of that which the Apostles
preached: And the Apostles preached nothing, but that Jesus was the
Christ, that is to say, the King that was to save them, and reign over
them eternally in the world to come; and consequently that hee was not
dead, but risen again from the dead, and gone up into Heaven, and should
come again one day to judg the world, (which also should rise again to
be judged,) and reward every man according to his works. None of them
preached that himselfe, or any other Apostle was such an Interpreter
of the Scripture, as all that became Christians, ought to take their
Interpretation for Law. For to Interpret the Laws, is part of the
Administration of a present Kingdome; which the Apostles had not. They
prayed then, and all other Pastors ever since, "Let thy Kingdome come;"
and exhorted their Converts to obey their then Ethnique Princes. The New
Testament was not yet published in one Body. Every of the Evangelists
was Interpreter of his own Gospel; and every Apostle of his own Epistle;
And of the Old Testament, our Saviour himselfe saith to the Jews (John
5. 39.) "Search the Scriptures; for in them yee thinke to have eternall
life, and they are they that testifie of me." If hee had not meant they
should Interpret them, hee would not have bidden them take thence the
proof of his being the Christ; he would either have Interpreted them
himselfe, or referred them to the Interpretation of the Priests.

When a difficulty arose, the Apostles and Elders of the Church assembled
themselves together, and determined what should bee preached, and
taught, and how they should Interpret the Scriptures to the People;
but took not from the People the liberty to read, and Interpret them to
themselves. The Apostles sent divers Letters to the Churches, and other
Writings for their instruction; which had been in vain, if they had not
allowed them to Interpret, that is, to consider the meaning of them.
And as it was in the Apostles time, it must be till such time as
there should be Pastors, that could authorise an Interpreter, whose
Interpretation should generally be stood to: But that could not be till
Kings were Pastors, or Pastors Kings.




Of The Power To Make Scripture Law

There be two senses, wherein a Writing may be said to be Canonicall;
for Canon, signifieth a Rule; and a Rule is a Precept, by which a man
is guided, and directed in any action whatsoever. Such Precepts, though
given by a Teacher to his Disciple, or a Counsellor to his friend,
without power to Compell him to observe them, are neverthelesse Canons;
because they are Rules: But when they are given by one, whom he that
receiveth them is bound to obey, then are those Canons, not onely Rules,
but Laws: The question therefore here, is of the Power to make the
Scriptures (which are the Rules of Christian Faith) Laws.




Of The Ten Commandements

That part of the Scripture, which was first Law, was the Ten
Commandements, written in two Tables of Stone, and delivered by God
himselfe to Moses; and by Moses made known to the people. Before that
time there was no written Law of God, who as yet having not chosen any
people to bee his peculiar Kingdome, had given no Law to men, but the
Law of Nature, that is to say, the Precepts of Naturall Reason, written
in every mans own heart. Of these two Tables, the first containeth the
law of Soveraignty; 1. That they should not obey, nor honour the Gods of
other Nations, in these words, "Non habebis Deos alienos coram me," that
is, "Thou shalt not have for Gods, the Gods that other Nations worship;
but onely me:" whereby they were forbidden to obey, or honor, as their
King and Governour, any other God, than him that spake unto them then by
Moses, and afterwards by the High Priest. 2. That they "should not make
any Image to represent him;" that is to say, they were not to choose to
themselves, neither in heaven, nor in earth, any Representative of their
own fancying, but obey Moses and Aaron, whom he had appointed to that
office. 3. That "they should not take the Name of God in vain;" that is,
they should not speak rashly of their King, nor dispute his Right,
nor the commissions of Moses and Aaron, his Lieutenants. 4. That "they
should every Seventh day abstain from their ordinary labour," and employ
that time in doing him Publique Honor. The second Table containeth the
Duty of one man towards another, as "To honor Parents; Not to kill;
Not to Commit Adultery; Not to steale; Not to corrupt Judgment by false
witnesse;" and finally, "Not so much as to designe in their heart the
doing of any injury one to another." The question now is, Who it was
that gave to these written Tables the obligatory force of Lawes. There
is no doubt but that they were made Laws by God himselfe: But because a
Law obliges not, nor is Law to any, but to them that acknowledge it to
be the act of the Soveraign, how could the people of Israel that were
forbidden to approach the Mountain to hear what God said to Moses, be
obliged to obedience to all those laws which Moses propounded to them?
Some of them were indeed the Laws of Nature, as all the Second Table;
and therefore to be acknowledged for Gods Laws; not to the Israelites
alone, but to all people: But of those that were peculiar to the
Israelites, as those of the first Table, the question remains; saving
that they had obliged themselves, presently after the propounding of
them, to obey Moses, in these words (Exod. 20.19.) "Speak them thou to
us, and we will hear thee; but let not God speak to us, lest we die." It
was therefore onely Moses then, and after him the High Priest, whom (by
Moses) God declared should administer this his peculiar Kingdome, that
had on Earth, the power to make this short Scripture of the Decalogue
to bee Law in the Common-wealth of Israel. But Moses, and Aaron, and the
succeeding High Priests were the Civill Soveraigns. Therefore hitherto,
the Canonizing, or making of the Scripture Law, belonged to the Civill
Soveraigne.




Of The Judicial, And Leviticall Law

The Judiciall Law, that is to say, the Laws that God prescribed to the
Magistrates of Israel, for the rule of their administration of Justice,
and of the Sentences, or Judgments they should pronounce, in Pleas
between man and man; and the Leviticall Law, that is to say, the rule
that God prescribed touching the Rites and Ceremonies of the Priests and
Levites, were all delivered to them by Moses onely; and therefore also
became Lawes, by vertue of the same promise of obedience to Moses.
Whether these laws were then written, or not written, but dictated to
the People by Moses (after his forty dayes being with God in the Mount)
by word of mouth, is not expressed in the Text; but they were all
positive Laws, and equivalent to holy Scripture, and made Canonicall by
Moses the Civill Soveraign.




The Second Law

After the Israelites were come into the Plains of Moab over against
Jericho, and ready to enter into the land of Promise, Moses to the
former Laws added divers others; which therefore are called Deuteronomy:
that is, Second Laws. And are (as it is written, Deut. 29.1.) "The words
of a Covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Children
of Israel, besides the Covenant which he made with them in Horeb." For
having explained those former Laws, in the beginning of the Book of
Deuteronomy, he addeth others, that begin at the 12. Cha. and continue
to the end of the 26. of the same Book. This Law (Deut. 27.1.) they were
commanded to write upon great stones playstered over, at their passing
over Jordan: This Law also was written by Moses himself in a Book; and
delivered into the hands of the "Priests, and to the Elders of Israel,"
(Deut. 31.9.) and commanded (ve. 26.) "to be put in the side of the
Arke;" for in the Ark it selfe was nothing but the Ten Commandements.
This was the Law, which Moses (Deuteronomy 17.18.) commanded the Kings
of Israel should keep a copie of: And this is the Law, which having been
long time lost, was found again in the Temple in the time of Josiah,
and by his authority received for the Law of God. But both Moses at the
writing, and Josiah at the recovery thereof, had both of them the
Civill Soveraignty. Hitherto therefore the Power of making Scripture
Canonicall, was in the Civill Soveraign.

Besides this Book of the Law, there was no other Book, from the time of
Moses, till after the Captivity, received amongst the Jews for the
Law of God. For the Prophets (except a few) lived in the time of the
Captivity it selfe; and the rest lived but a little before it; and were
so far from having their Prophecies generally received for Laws, as that
their persons were persecuted, partly by false Prophets, and partly by
the Kings which were seduced by them. And this Book it self, which was
confirmed by Josiah for the Law of God, and with it all the History of
the Works of God, was lost in the Captivity, and sack of the City of
Jerusalem, as appears by that of 2 Esdras 14.21. "Thy Law is burnt;
therefor no man knoweth the things that are done of thee, of the works
that shall begin." And before the Captivity, between the time when the
Law was lost, (which is not mentioned in the Scripture, but may probably
be thought to be the time of Rehoboam, when Shishak King of Egypt took
the spoils of the Temple,(1 Kings 14.26.)) and the time of Josiah,
when it was found againe, they had no written Word of God, but ruled
according to their own discretion, or by the direction of such, as each
of them esteemed Prophets.




The Old Testament, When Made Canonicall

From whence we may inferre, that the Scriptures of the Old Testament,
which we have at this day, were not Canonicall, nor a Law unto the Jews,
till the renovation of their Covenant with God at their return from the
Captivity, and restauration of their Common-wealth under Esdras. But
from that time forward they were accounted the Law of the Jews, and for
such translated into Greek by Seventy Elders of Judaea, and put into the
Library of Ptolemy at Alexandria, and approved for the Word of God. Now
seeing Esdras was the High Priest, and the High Priest was their Civill
Soveraigne, it is manifest, that the Scriptures were never made Laws,
but by the Soveraign Civill Power.

The New Testament Began To Be Canonicall Under Christian Soveraigns By
the Writings of the Fathers that lived in the time before that Christian
Religion was received, and authorised by Constantine the Emperour, we
may find, that the Books wee now have of the New Testament, were held by
the Christians of that time (except a few, in respect of whose paucity
the rest were called the Catholique Church, and others Haeretiques) for
the dictates of the Holy Ghost; and consequently for the Canon, or Rule
of Faith: such was the reverence and opinion they had of their Teachers;
as generally the reverence that the Disciples bear to their first
Masters, in all manner of doctrine they receive from them, is not small.
Therefore there is no doubt, but when S. Paul wrote to the Churches he
had converted; or any other Apostle, or Disciple of Christ, to those
which had then embraced Christ, they received those their Writings for
the true Christian Doctrine. But in that time, when not the Power and
Authority of the Teacher, but the Faith of the Hearer caused them
to receive it, it was not the Apostles that made their own Writings
Canonicall, but every Convert made them so to himself.

But the question here, is not what any Christian made a Law, or Canon
to himself, (which he might again reject, by the same right he received
it;) but what was so made a Canon to them, as without injustice they
could not doe any thing contrary thereunto. That the New Testament
should in this sense be Canonicall, that is to say, a Law in any place
where the Law of the Common-wealth had not made it so, is contrary to
the nature of a Law. For a Law, (as hath been already shewn) is the
Commandement of that Man, or Assembly, to whom we have given Soveraign
Authority, to make such Rules for the direction of our actions, as hee
shall think fit; and to punish us, when we doe any thing contrary to the
same. When therefore any other man shall offer unto us any other Rules,
which the Soveraign Ruler hath not prescribed, they are but Counsell,
and Advice; which, whether good, or bad, hee that is counselled, may
without injustice refuse to observe, and when contrary to the Laws
already established, without injustice cannot observe, how good soever
he conceiveth it to be. I say, he cannot in this case observe the same
in his actions, nor in his discourse with other men; though he may
without blame beleeve the his private Teachers, and wish he had the
liberty to practise their advice; and that it were publiquely received
for Law. For internall faith is in its own nature invisible, and
consequently exempted from all humane jurisdiction; whereas the words,
and actions that proceed from it, as breaches of our Civil obedience,
are injustice both before God and Man. Seeing then our Saviour hath
denyed his Kingdome to be in this world, seeing he hath said, he came
not to judge, but to save the world, he hath not subjected us to other
Laws than those of the Common-wealth; that is, the Jews to the Law
of Moses, (which he saith (Mat. 5.) he came not to destroy, but to
fulfill,) and other Nations to the Laws of their severall Soveraigns,
and all men to the Laws of Nature; the observing whereof, both he
himselfe, and his Apostles have in their teaching recommended to us, as
a necessary condition of being admitted by him in the last day into his
eternall Kingdome, wherein shall be Protection, and Life everlasting.
Seeing then our Saviour, and his Apostles, left not new Laws to oblige
us in this world, but new Doctrine to prepare us for the next; the Books
of the New Testament, which containe that Doctrine, untill obedience to
them was commanded, by them that God hath given power to on earth to be
Legislators, were not obligatory Canons, that is, Laws, but onely good,
and safe advice, for the direction of sinners in the way to salvation,
which every man might take, and refuse at his owne perill, without
injustice.

Again, our Saviour Christs Commission to his Apostles, and Disciples,
was to Proclaim his Kingdome (not present, but) to come; and to Teach
all Nations; and to Baptize them that should beleeve; and to enter into
the houses of them that should receive them; and where they were not
received, to shake off the dust of their feet against them; but not
to call for fire from heaven to destroy them, nor to compell them to
obedience by the Sword. In all which there is nothing of Power, but of
Perswasion. He sent them out as Sheep unto Wolves, not as Kings to their
Subjects. They had not in Commission to make Laws; but to obey, and
teach obedience to Laws made; and consequently they could not make their
Writings obligatory Canons, without the help of the Soveraign Civill
Power. And therefore the Scripture of the New Testament is there only
Law, where the lawfull Civill Power hath made it so. And there also the
King, or Soveraign, maketh it a Law to himself; by which he subjecteth
himselfe, not to the Doctor, or Apostle, that converted him, but to God
himself, and his Son Jesus Christ, as immediately as did the Apostles
themselves.




Of The Power Of Councells To Make The Scripture Law

That which may seem to give the New Testament, in respect of those that
have embraced Christian Doctrine, the force of Laws, in the times, and
places of persecution, is the decrees they made amongst themselves in
their Synods. For we read (Acts 15.28.) the stile of the Councell of the
Apostles, the Elders, and the whole Church, in this manner, "It seemed
good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burthen
than these necessary things, &C." which is a stile that signifieth a
Power to lay a burthen on them that had received their Doctrine. Now
"to lay a burthen on another," seemeth the same that "to oblige;" and
therefore the Acts of that Councell were Laws to the then Christians.
Neverthelesse, they were no more Laws than are these other Precepts,
"Repent, Be Baptized; Keep the Commandements; Beleeve the Gospel; Come
unto me; Sell all that thou hast; Give it to the poor;" and "Follow
me;" which are not Commands, but Invitations, and Callings of men to
Christianity, like that of Esay 55.1. "Ho, every man that thirsteth,
come yee to the waters, come, and buy wine and milke without money."
For first, the Apostles power was no other than that of our Saviour,
to invite men to embrace the Kingdome of God; which they themselves
acknowledged for a Kingdome (not present, but) to come; and they that
have no Kingdome, can make no Laws. And secondly, if their Acts of
Councell, were Laws, they could not without sin be disobeyed. But we
read not any where, that they who received not the Doctrine of Christ,
did therein sin; but that they died in their sins; that is, that their
sins against the Laws to which they owed obedience, were not pardoned.
And those Laws were the Laws of Nature, and the Civill Laws of the
State, whereto every Christian man had by pact submitted himself. And
therefore by the Burthen, which the Apostles might lay on such as they
had converted, are not to be understood Laws, but Conditions, proposed
to those that sought Salvation; which they might accept, or refuse at
their own perill, without a new sin, though not without the hazard of
being condemned, and excluded out of the Kingdome of God for their sins
past. And therefore of Infidels, S. John saith not, the wrath of God
shall "come" upon them, but "the wrath of God remaineth upon them;"
and not that they shall be condemned; but that "they are condemned
already."(John 3.36, 3.18) Nor can it be conceived, that the benefit
of Faith, "is Remission of sins" unlesse we conceive withall, that the
dammage of Infidelity, is "the Retention of the same sins."

But to what end is it (may some man aske), that the Apostles, and other
Pastors of the Church, after their time, should meet together, to agree
upon what Doctrine should be taught, both for Faith and Manners, if no
man were obliged to observe their Decrees? To this may be answered, that
the Apostles, and Elders of that Councell, were obliged even by their
entrance into it, to teach the Doctrine therein concluded, and decreed
to be taught, so far forth, as no precedent Law, to which they were
obliged to yeeld obedience, was to the contrary; but not that all other
Christians should be obliged to observe, what they taught. For though
they might deliberate what each of them should teach; yet they could
not deliberate what others should do, unless their Assembly had had
a Legislative Power; which none could have but Civill Soveraigns. For
though God be the Soveraign of all the world, we are not bound to take
for his Law, whatsoever is propounded by every man in his name; nor any
thing contrary to the Civill Law, which God hath expressely commanded us
to obey.

Seeing then the Acts of Councell of the Apostles, were then no Laws,
but Councells; much lesse are Laws the Acts of any other Doctors,
or Councells since, if assembled without the Authority of the Civill
Soveraign. And consequently, the Books of the New Testament, though most
perfect Rules of Christian Doctrine, could not be made Laws by any other
authority then that of Kings, or Soveraign Assemblies.

The first Councell, that made the Scriptures we now have, Canon, is not
extant: For that Collection the first Bishop of Rome after S. Peter, is
subject to question: For though the Canonicall books bee there reckoned
up; yet these words, "Sint vobis omnibus Clericis & Laicis Libris
venerandi, &c." containe a distinction of Clergy, and Laity, that was
not in use so neer St. Peters time. The first Councell for setling the
Canonicall Scripture, that is extant, is that of Laodicea, Can. 59.
which forbids the reading of other Books then those in the Churches;
which is a Mandate that is not addressed to every Christian, but to
those onely that had authority to read any publiquely in the Church;
that is, to Ecclesiastiques onely.




Of The Right Of Constituting Ecclesiasticall Officers In The Time

Of The Apostles

Of Ecclesiastical Officers in the time of the Apostles, some were
Magisteriall, some Ministeriall. Magisteriall were the Offices
of preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to Infidels; of
administring the Sacraments, and Divine Service; and of teaching the
Rules of Faith and Manners to those that were converted. Ministeriall
was the Office of Deacons, that is, of them that were appointed to the
administration of the secular necessities of the Church, at such time
as they lived upon a common stock of mony, raised out of the voluntary
contributions of the faithfull.

Amongst the Officers Magisteriall, the first, and principall were the
Apostles; whereof there were at first but twelve; and these were chosen
and constituted by our Saviour himselfe; and their Office was not onely
to Preach, Teach, and Baptize, but also to be Martyrs, (Witnesses of
our Saviours Resurrection.) This Testimony, was the specificall, and
essentiall mark; whereby the Apostleship was distinguished from other
Magistracy Ecclesiasticall; as being necessary for an Apostle, either to
have seen our Saviour after his Resurrection, or to have conversed with
him before, and seen his works, and other arguments of his Divinity,
whereby they might be taken for sufficient Witnesses. And therefore at
the election of a new Apostle in the place of Judas Iscariot, S. Peter
saith (Acts 1.21,22.) "Of these men that have companyed with us, all the
time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the
Baptisme of John unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must
one be ordained to be a Witnesse with us of his Resurrection:" where, by
this word Must, is implyed a necessary property of an Apostle, to have
companyed with the first and prime Apostles in the time that our Saviour
manifested himself in the flesh.




Matthias Made Apostle By The Congregation.

The first Apostle, of those which were not constituted by Christ in the
time he was upon the Earth, was Matthias, chosen in this manner: There
were assembled together in Jerusalem about 120 Christians (Acts 1.15.)
These appointed two, Joseph the Just, and Matthias (ver. 23.) and caused
lots to be drawn; "and (ver. 26.) the Lot fell on Matthias and he was
numbred with the Apostles." So that here we see the ordination of this
Apostle, was the act of the Congregation, and not of St. Peter, nor of
the eleven, otherwise then as Members of the Assembly.




Paul And Barnabas Made Apostles By The Church Of Antioch

After him there was never any other Apostle ordained, but Paul and
Barnabas, which was done (as we read Acts 13.1,2,3.) in this manner.
"There were in the Church that was at Antioch, certaine Prophets, and
Teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of
Cyrene, and Manaen; which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch,
and Saul. As they ministred unto the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost
said, 'Separate mee Barnabas, and Saul for the worke whereunto I have
called them.' And when they had fasted, and prayed, and laid their hands
on them, they sent them away."

By which it is manifest, that though they were called by the Holy Ghost,
their Calling was declared unto them, and their Mission authorized by
the particular Church of Antioch. And that this their calling was to
the Apostleship, is apparent by that, that they are both called (Acts
14.14.) Apostles: And that it was by vertue of this act of the Church of
Antioch, that they were Apostles, S. Paul declareth plainly (Rom. 1.1.)
in that hee useth the word, which the Holy Ghost used at his calling:
For he stileth himself, "An Apostle separated unto the Gospel of God;"
alluding to the words of the Holy Ghost, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul,
&c." But seeing the work of an Apostle, was to be a Witnesse of
the Resurrection of Christ, and man may here aske, how S. Paul that
conversed not with our Saviour before his passion, could know he was
risen. To which it is easily answered, that our Saviour himself appeared
to him in the way to Damascus, from Heaven, after his Ascension; "and
chose him for a vessell to bear his name before the Gentiles, and Kings,
and Children of Israel;" and consequently (having seen the Lord after
his passion) was a competent Witnesse of his Resurrection: And as for
Barnabas, he was a Disciple before the Passion. It is therefore evident
that Paul, and Barnabas were Apostles; and yet chosen, and authorized
(not by the first Apostles alone, but) by the Church of Antioch; as
Matthias was chosen, and authorized by the Church of Jerusalem.




What Offices In The Church Are Magisteriall

Bishop, a word formed in our language, out of the Greek Episcopus,
signifieth an overseer, or Superintendent of any businesse, and
particularly a Pastor or Shepherd; and thence by metaphor was taken, not
only amongst the Jews that were originally Shepherds, but also amongst
the Heathen, to signifie the Office of a King, or any other Ruler,
or Guide of People, whether he ruled by Laws, or Doctrine. And so
the Apostles were the first Christian Bishops, instituted by Christ
himselfe: in which sense the Apostleship of Judas is called (Acts 1.20.)
his Bishoprick. And afterwards, when there were constituted Elders in
the Christian Churches, with charge to guide Christs flock by their
doctrine, and advice; these Elders were also called Bishops. Timothy was
an Elder (which word Elder, in the New Testament is a name of Office, as
well as of Age;) yet he was also a Bishop. And Bishops were then content
with the Title of Elders. Nay S. John himselfe, the Apostle beloved of
our Lord, beginneth his Second Epistle with these words, "The Elder to
the Elect Lady." By which it is evident, that Bishop, Pastor, Elder,
Doctor, that is to say, Teacher, were but so many divers names of
the same Office in the time of the Apostles. For there was then no
government by Coercion, but only by Doctrine, and Perswading. The
Kingdome of God was yet to come, in a new world; so that there could
be no authority to compell in any Church, till the Common-wealth
had embraced the Christian Faith; and consequently no diversity of
Authority, though there were diversity of Employments.

Besides these Magisteriall employments in the Church, namely Apostles,
Bishops, Elders, Pastors, and Doctors, whose calling was to proclaim
Christ to the Jews, and Infidels, and to direct, and teach those that
beleeved we read in the New Testament of no other. For by the names
of Evangelists and Prophets, is not signified any Office, but severall
Gifts, by which severall men were profitable to the Church: as
Evangelists, by writing the life and acts of our Saviour; such as were
S. Matthew and S. John Apostles, and S. Marke and S. Luke Disciples, and
whosoever else wrote of that subject, (as S. Thomas, and S. Barnabas are
said to have done, though the Church have not received the Books
that have gone under their names:) and as Prophets, by the gift of
interpreting the Old Testament; and sometimes by declaring their
speciall Revelations to the Church. For neither these gifts, nor the
gifts of Languages, nor the gift of Casting out Devils, or of Curing
other diseases, nor any thing else did make an Officer in the Church,
save onely the due calling and election to the charge of Teaching.




Ordination Of Teachers

As the Apostles, Matthias, Paul, and Barnabas, were not made by our
Saviour himself, but were elected by the Church, that is, by the
Assembly of Christians; namely, Matthias by the Church of Jerusalem,
and Paul, and Barnabas by the Church of Antioch; so were also the
Presbyters, and Pastors in other Cities, elected by the Churches of
those Cities. For proof whereof, let us consider, first, how S. Paul
proceeded in the Ordination of Presbyters, in the Cities where he had
converted men to the Christian Faith, immediately after he and Barnabas
had received their Apostleship. We read (Acts 14.23.) that "they
ordained Elders in every Church;" which at first sight may be taken for
an Argument, that they themselves chose, and gave them their authority:
But if we consider the Originall text, it will be manifest, that they
were authorized, and chosen by the Assembly of the Christians of each
City. For the words there are, "cheirotonesantes autoispresbuterous kat
ekklesian," that is, "When they had Ordained them Elders by the Holding
up of Hands in every Congregation." Now it is well enough known, that in
all those Cities, the manner of choosing Magistrates, and Officers,
was by plurality of suffrages; and (because the ordinary way of
distinguishing the Affirmative Votes from the Negatives, was by Holding
up of Hands) to ordain an Officer in any of the Cities, was no more
but to bring the people together, to elect them by plurality of Votes,
whether it were by plurality of elevated hands, or by plurality of
voices, or plurality of balls, or beans, or small stones, of which every
man cast in one, into a vessell marked for the Affirmative, or Negative;
for divers Cities had divers customes in that point. It was therefore
the Assembly that elected their own Elders: the Apostles were onely
Presidents of the Assembly to call them together for such Election, and
to pronounce them Elected, and to give them the benediction, which now
is called Consecration. And for this cause they that were Presidents
of the Assemblies, as (in the absence of the Apostles) the Elders were,
were called proestotes, and in Latin Antistities; which words signifie
the Principall Person of the Assembly, whose office was to number the
Votes, and to declare thereby who was chosen; and where the Votes were
equall, to decide the matter in question, by adding his own; which is
the Office of a President in Councell. And (because all the Churches
had their Presbyters ordained in the same manner,) where the word is
Constitute, (as Titus 1.5.) "ina katasteses kata polin presbuterous,"
"For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest constitute
Elders in every City," we are to understand the same thing; namely, that
hee should call the faithfull together, and ordain them Presbyters by
plurality of suffrages. It had been a strange thing, if in a Town, where
men perhaps had never seen any Magistrate otherwise chosen then by an
Assembly, those of the Town becomming Christians, should so much as have
thought on any other way of Election of their Teachers, and Guides, that
is to say, of their Presbyters, (otherwise called Bishops,) then this of
plurality of suffrages, intimated by S. Paul (Acts 14.23.) in the word
Cheirotonesantes: Nor was there ever any choosing of Bishops, (before
the Emperors found it necessary to regulate them in order to the keeping
of the peace amongst them,) but by the Assemblies of the Christians in
every severall Town.

The same is also confirmed by the continuall practise even to this day,
in the Election of the Bishops of Rome. For if the Bishop of any place,
had the right of choosing another, to the succession of the Pastorall
Office, in any City, at such time as he went from thence, to plant the
same in another place; much more had he had the Right, to appoint his
successour in that place, in which he last resided and dyed: And we find
not, that ever any Bishop of Rome appointed his successor. For they were
a long time chosen by the People, as we may see by the sedition raised
about the Election, between Damascus, and Ursinicus; which Ammianus
Marcellinus saith was so great, that Juventius the Praefect, unable to
keep the peace between them, was forced to goe out of the City; and that
there were above an hundred men found dead upon that occasion in the
Church it self. And though they afterwards were chosen, first, by the
whole Clergy of Rome, and afterwards by the Cardinalls; yet never any
was appointed to the succession by his predecessor. If therefore they
pretended no right to appoint their successors, I think I may reasonably
conclude, they had no right to appoint the new power; which none could
take from the Church to bestow on them, but such as had a lawfull
authority, not onely to Teach, but to Command the Church; which none
could doe, but the Civill Soveraign.




Ministers Of The Church What

The word Minister in the Originall Diakonos signifieth one that
voluntarily doth the businesse of another man; and differeth from a
Servant onely in this, that Servants are obliged by their condition,
to what is commanded them; whereas Ministers are obliged onely by
their undertaking, and bound therefore to no more than that they have
undertaken: So that both they that teach the Word of God, and they that
administer the secular affairs of the Church, are both Ministers, but
they are Ministers of different Persons. For the Pastors of the Church,
called (Acts 6.4.) "The Ministers of the Word," are Ministers of Christ,
whose Word it is: But the Ministery of a Deacon, which is called (verse
2. of the same Chapter) "Serving of Tables," is a service done to the
Church, or Congregation: So that neither any one man, nor the whole
Church, could ever of their Pastor say, he was their Minister; but of
a Deacon, whether the charge he undertook were to serve tables, or
distribute maintenance to the Christians, when they lived in each City
on a common stock, or upon collections, as in the first times, or to
take a care of the House of Prayer, or of the Revenue, or other worldly
businesse of the Church, the whole Congregation might properly call him
their Minister.

For their employment, as Deacons, was to serve the Congregation; though
upon occasion they omitted not to preach the Gospel, and maintain the
Doctrine of Christ, every one according to his gifts, as S. Steven did;
and both to Preach, and Baptize, as Philip did: For that Philip, which
(Act. 8. 5.) Preached the Gospel at Samaria, and (verse 38.) Baptized
the Eunuch, was Philip the Deacon, not Philip the Apostle. For it is
manifest (verse 1.) that when Philip preached in Samaria, the Apostles
were at Jerusalem, and (verse 14.) "When they heard that Samaria had
received the Word of God, sent Peter and John to them;" by imposition of
whose hands, they that were Baptized (verse 15.) received (which before
by the Baptisme of Philip they had not received) the Holy Ghost. For it
was necessary for the conferring of the Holy Ghost, that their Baptisme
should be administred, or confirmed by a Minister of the Word, not by a
Minister of the Church. And therefore to confirm the Baptisme of those
that Philip the Deacon had Baptized, the Apostles sent out of their own
number from Jerusalem to Samaria, Peter, and John; who conferred on them
that before were but Baptized, those graces that were signs of the Holy
Spirit, which at that time did accompany all true Beleevers; which what
they were may be understood by that which S. Marke saith (chap. 16.17.)
"These signs follow them that beleeve in my Name; they shall cast out
Devills; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up Serpents,
and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; They shall
lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." This to doe, was it that
Philip could not give; but the Apostles could, and (as appears by this
place) effectually did to every man that truly beleeved, and was by
a Minister of Christ himself Baptized: which power either Christs
Ministers in this age cannot conferre, or else there are very few true
Beleevers, or Christ hath very few Ministers.




And How Chosen What

That the first Deacons were chosen, not by the Apostles, but by a
Congregation of the Disciples; that is, of Christian men of all sorts,
is manifest out of Acts 6. where we read that the Twelve, after the
number of Disciples was multiplyed, called them together, and having
told them, that it was not fit that the Apostles should leave the Word
of God, and serve tables, said unto them (verse 3.) "Brethren looke you
out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost, and of
Wisdome, whom we may appoint over this businesse." Here it is manifest,
that though the Apostles declared them elected; yet the Congregation
chose them; which also, (verse the fift) is more expressely said, where
it is written, that "the saying pleased the multitude, and they chose
seven, &c."




Of Ecclesiasticall Revenue, Under The Law Of Moses

Under the Old Testament, the Tribe of Levi were onely capable of the
Priesthood, and other inferiour Offices of the Church. The land
was divided amongst the other Tribes (Levi excepted,) which by the
subdivision of the Tribe of Joseph, into Ephraim and Manasses, were
still twelve. To the Tribe of Levi were assigned certain Cities for
their habitation, with the suburbs for their cattell: but for their
portion, they were to have the tenth of the fruits of the land of their
Brethren. Again, the Priests for their maintenance had the tenth of that
tenth, together with part of the oblations, and sacrifices. For God had
said to Aaron (Numb. 18. 20.) "Thou shalt have no inheritance in their
land, neither shalt thou have any part amongst them, I am thy part, and
thine inheritance amongst the Children of Israel." For God being then
King, and having constituted the Tribe of Levi to be his Publique
Ministers, he allowed them for their maintenance, the Publique revenue,
that is to say, the part that God had reserved to himself; which were
Tythes, and Offerings: and that it is which is meant, where God saith, I
am thine inheritance. And therefore to the Levites might not unfitly
be attributed the name of Clergy from Kleros, which signifieth Lot, or
Inheritance; not that they were heirs of the Kingdome of God, more than
other; but that Gods inheritance, was their maintenance. Now seeing
in this time God himself was their King, and Moses, Aaron, and the
succeeding High Priests were his Lieutenants; it is manifest, that the
Right of Tythes, and Offerings was constituted by the Civill Power.

After their rejection of God in the demand of a King, they enjoyed still
the same revenue; but the Right thereof was derived from that, that the
Kings did never take it from them: for the Publique Revenue was at
the disposing of him that was the Publique Person; and that (till the
Captivity) was the King. And again, after the return from the Captivity,
they paid their Tythes as before to the Priest. Hitherto therefore
Church Livings were determined by the Civill Soveraign.




In Our Saviours Time, And After

Of the maintenance of our Saviour, and his Apostles, we read onely they
had a Purse, (which was carried by Judas Iscariot;) and, that of the
Apostles, such as were Fisher-men, did sometimes use their trade; and
that when our Saviour sent the Twelve Apostles to Preach, he forbad them
"to carry Gold, and Silver, and Brasse in their purses, for that
the workman is worthy of his hire:" (Mat. 10. 9,10.) By which it
is probable, their ordinary maintenance was not unsuitable to their
employment; for their employment was (ver. 8.) "freely to give, because
they had freely received;" and their maintenance was the Free Gift of
those that beleeved the good tyding they carryed about of the coming
of the Messiah their Saviour. To which we may adde, that which was
contributed out of gratitude, by such as our Saviour had healed of
diseases; of which are mentioned "Certain women (Luke 8. 2,3.) which had
been healed of evill spirits and infirmities; Mary Magdalen, out of whom
went seven Devills; and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herods Steward; and
Susanna, and many others, which ministred unto him of their substance.

After our Saviours Ascension, the Christians of every City lived in
Common, (Acts 4. 34.) upon the mony which was made of the sale of their
lands and possessions, and laid down at the feet of the Apostles, of
good will, not of duty; for "whilest the Land remained (saith S. Peter
to Ananias Acts 5.4.) was it not thine? and after it was sold, was it
not in thy power?" which sheweth he needed not to have saved his land,
nor his money by lying, as not being bound to contribute any thing at
all, unlesse he had pleased. And as in the time of the Apostles, so also
all the time downward, till after Constantine the Great, we shall
find, that the maintenance of the Bishops, and Pastors of the Christian
Church, was nothing but the voluntary contribution of them that had
embraced their Doctrine. There was yet no mention of Tythes: but
such was in the time of Constantine, and his Sons, the affection of
Christians to their Pastors, as Ammianus Marcellinus saith (describing
the sedition of Damasus and Ursinicus about the Bishopricke,) that it
was worth their contention, in that the Bishops of those times by the
liberality of their flock, and especially of Matrons, lived splendidly,
were carryed in Coaches, and sumptuous in their fare and apparell.

The Ministers Of The Gospel Lived On The Benevolence Of Their Flocks
But here may some ask, whether the Pastor were then bound to live upon
voluntary contribution, as upon almes, "For who (saith S. Paul 1 Cor. 9.
7.) goeth to war at his own charges? or who feedeth a flock, and eatheth
not of the milke of the flock?" And again, (1 Cor. 9. 13.) "Doe ye not
know that they which minister about holy things, live of the things of
the Temple; and they which wait at the Altar, partake with the Altar;"
that is to say, have part of that which is offered at the Altar for
their maintenance? And then he concludeth, "Even so hath the Lord
appointed, that they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel.
From which place may be inferred indeed, that the Pastors of the Church
ought to be maintained by their flocks; but not that the Pastors were to
determine, either the quantity, or the kind of their own allowance, and
be (as it were) their own Carvers. Their allowance must needs therefore
be determined, either by the gratitude, and liberality of every
particular man of their flock, or by the whole Congregation. By the
whole Congregation it could not be, because their Acts were then no
Laws: Therefore the maintenance of Pastors, before Emperours and Civill
Soveraigns had made Laws to settle it, was nothing but Benevolence. They
that served at the Altar lived on what was offered. In what court should
they sue for it, who had no Tribunalls? Or if they had Arbitrators
amongst themselves, who should execute their Judgments, when they had no
power to arme their Officers? It remaineth therefore, that there could
be no certaine maintenance assigned to any Pastors of the Church, but by
the whole Congregation; and then onely, when their Decrees should have
the force (not onely of Canons, but also) of Laws; which Laws could not
be made, but by Emperours, Kings, or other Civill Soveraignes. The Right
of Tythes in Moses Law, could not be applyed to the then Ministers
of the Gospell; because Moses and the High Priests were the Civill
Soveraigns of the people under God, whose Kingdom amongst the Jews was
present; whereas the Kingdome of God by Christ is yet to come.

Hitherto hath been shewn what the Pastors of the Church are; what are
the points of their Commission (as that they were to Preach, to Teach,
to Baptize, to be Presidents in their severall Congregations;) what is
Ecclesiasticall Censure, viz. Excommunication, that is to say, in those
places where Christianity was forbidden by the Civill Laws, a putting
of themselves out of the company of the Excommunicate, and where
Christianity was by the Civill Law commanded, a putting the
Excommunicate out of the Congregations of Christians; who elected the
Pastors and Ministers of the Church, (that it was, the Congregation);
who consecrated and blessed them, (that it was the Pastor); what was
their due revenue, (that it was none but their own possessions,
and their own labour, and the voluntary contributions of devout and
gratefull Christians). We are to consider now, what Office those persons
have, who being Civill Soveraignes, have embraced also the Christian
Faith.




The Civill Soveraign Being A Christian Hath The Right Of Appointing

Pastors

And first, we are to remember, that the Right of Judging what
Doctrines are fit for Peace, and to be taught the Subjects, is in all
Common-wealths inseparably annexed (as hath been already proved cha.
18.) to the Soveraign Power Civill, whether it be in one Man, or in one
Assembly of men. For it is evident to the meanest capacity, that mens
actions are derived from the opinions they have of the Good, or Evill,
which from those actions redound unto themselves; and consequently,
men that are once possessed of an opinion, that their obedience to
the Soveraign Power, will bee more hurtfull to them, than their
disobedience, will disobey the Laws, and thereby overthrow the
Common-wealth, and introduce confusion, and Civill war; for the avoiding
whereof, all Civill Government was ordained. And therefore in all
Common-wealths of the Heathen, the Soveraigns have had the name of
Pastors of the People, because there was no Subject that could lawfully
Teach the people, but by their permission and authority.

This Right of the Heathen Kings, cannot bee thought taken from them by
their conversion to the Faith of Christ; who never ordained, that Kings
for beleeving in him, should be deposed, that is, subjected to any but
himself, or (which is all one) be deprived of the power necessary for
the conservation of Peace amongst their Subjects, and for their defence
against foraign Enemies. And therefore Christian Kings are still the
Supreme Pastors of their people, and have power to ordain what Pastors
they please, to teach the Church, that is, to teach the People committed
to their charge.

Again, let the right of choosing them be (as before the conversion
of Kings) in the Church, for so it was in the time of the Apostles
themselves (as hath been shewn already in this chapter); even so also
the Right will be in the Civill Soveraign, Christian. For in that he is
a Christian, he allowes the Teaching; and in that he is the Soveraign
(which is as much as to say, the Church by Representation,) the
Teachers hee elects, are elected by the Church. And when an Assembly of
Christians choose their Pastor in a Christian Common-wealth, it is the
Soveraign that electeth him, because tis done by his Authority; In the
same manner, as when a Town choose their Maior, it is the act of him
that hath the Soveraign Power: For every act done, is the act of him,
without whose consent it is invalid. And therefore whatsoever examples
may be drawn out of History, concerning the Election of Pastors, by the
People, or by the Clergy, they are no arguments against the Right of
any Civill Soveraign, because they that elected them did it by his
Authority.

Seeing then in every Christian Common-wealth, the Civill Soveraign is
the Supreme Pastor, to whose charge the whole flock of his Subjects is
committed, and consequently that it is by his authority, that all
other Pastors are made, and have power to teach, and performe all
other Pastorall offices; it followeth also, that it is from the Civill
Soveraign, that all other Pastors derive their right of Teaching,
Preaching, and other functions pertaining to that Office; and that they
are but his Ministers; in the same manner as the Magistrates of Towns,
Judges in Courts of Justice, and Commanders of Armies, are all but
Ministers of him that is the Magistrate of the whole Common-wealth,
Judge of all Causes, and Commander of the whole Militia, which is
alwayes the Civill Soveraign. And the reason hereof, is not because they
that Teach, but because they that are to Learn, are his Subjects.
For let it be supposed, that a Christian King commit the Authority of
Ordaining Pastors in his Dominions to another King, (as divers Christian
Kings allow that power to the Pope;) he doth not thereby constitute a
Pastor over himself, nor a Soveraign Pastor over his People; for that
were to deprive himself of the Civill Power; which depending on the
opinion men have of their Duty to him, and the fear they have of
Punishment in another world, would depend also on the skill, and loyalty
of Doctors, who are no lesse subject, not only to Ambition, but also
to Ignorance, than any other sort of men. So that where a stranger hath
authority to appoint Teachers, it is given him by the Soveraign in
whose Dominions he teacheth. Christian Doctors are our Schoolmasters
to Christianity; But Kings are Fathers of Families, and may receive
Schoolmasters for their Subjects from the recommendation of a stranger,
but not from the command; especially when the ill teaching them shall
redound to the great and manifest profit of him that recommends them:
nor can they be obliged to retain them, longer than it is for the
Publique good; the care of which they stand so long charged withall, as
they retain any other essentiall Right of the Soveraignty.




The Pastorall Authority Of Soveraigns Only Is De Jure Divino,

That Of Other Pastors Is Jure Civili

If a man therefore should ask a Pastor, in the execution of his Office,
as the chief Priests and Elders of the people (Mat. 21.23.) asked our
Saviour, "By what authority dost thou these things, and who gave thee
this authority:" he can make no other just Answer, but that he doth
it by the Authority of the Common-wealth, given him by the King, or
Assembly that representeth it. All Pastors, except the Supreme, execute
their charges in the Right, that is by the Authority of the Civill
Soveraign, that is, Jure Civili. But the King, and every other Soveraign
executeth his Office of Supreme Pastor, by immediate Authority from God,
that is to say, In Gods Right, or Jure Divino. And therefore none but
Kings can put into their Titles (a mark of their submission to God onely
) Dei Gratia Rex, &c. Bishops ought to say in the beginning of their
Mandates, "By the favour of the Kings Majesty, Bishop of such a
Diocesse;" or as Civill Ministers, "In his Majesties Name." For in
saying, Divina Providentia, which is the same with Dei Gratia, though
disguised, they deny to have received their authority from the Civill
State; and sliely slip off the Collar of their Civill Subjection,
contrary to the unity and defence of the Common-wealth.




Christian Kings Have Power To Execute All Manner Of Pastoral Function

But if every Christian Soveraign be the Supreme Pastor of his own
Subjects, it seemeth that he hath also the Authority, not only to Preach
(which perhaps no man will deny;) but also to Baptize, and to Administer
the Sacrament of the Lords Supper; and to Consecrate both Temples, and
Pastors to Gods service; which most men deny; partly because they use
not to do it; and partly because the Administration of Sacraments,
and Consecration of Persons, and Places to holy uses, requireth the
Imposition of such mens hands, as by the like Imposition successively
from the time of the Apostles have been ordained to the like Ministery.
For proof therefore that Christian Kings have power to Baptize, and to
Consecrate, I am to render a reason, both why they use not to doe it,
and how, without the ordinary ceremony of Imposition of hands, they are
made capable of doing it, when they will.

There is no doubt but any King, in case he were skilfull in the
Sciences, might by the same Right of his Office, read Lectures of
them himself, by which he authorizeth others to read them in the
Universities. Neverthelesse, because the care of the summe of the
businesse of the Common-wealth taketh up his whole time, it were not
convenient for him to apply himself in Person to that particular. A King
may also if he please, sit in Judgment, to hear and determine all manner
of Causes, as well as give others authority to doe it in his name; but
that the charge that lyeth upon him of Command and Government, constrain
him to bee continually at the Helm, and to commit the Ministeriall
Offices to others under him. In the like manner our Saviour (who surely
had power to Baptize) Baptized none himselfe, but sent his Apostles and
Disciples to Baptize. (John 4.2.) So also S. Paul, by the necessity of
Preaching in divers and far distant places, Baptized few: Amongst all
the Corinthians he Baptized only Crispus, Cajus, and Stephanus; (1
Cor.1.14,16.) and the reason was, because his principall Charge was to
Preach. (1 Cor. 1.17.) Whereby it is manifest, that the greater Charge,
(such as is the Government of the Church,) is a dispensation for the
lesse. The reason therefore why Christian Kings use not to Baptize, is
evident, and the same, for which at this day there are few Baptized by
Bishops, and by the Pope fewer.

And as concerning Imposition of Hands, whether it be needfull, for the
authorizing of a King to Baptize, and Consecrate, we may consider thus.

Imposition of Hands, was a most ancient publique ceremony amongst the
Jews, by which was designed, and made certain, the person, or other
thing intended in a mans prayer, blessing, sacrifice, consecration,
condemnation, or other speech. So Jacob in blessing the children of
Joseph (Gen. 48.14.) "Laid his right Hand on Ephraim the younger, and
his left Hand on Manasseh the first born;" and this he did Wittingly
(though they were so presented to him by Joseph, as he was forced in
doing it to stretch out his arms acrosse) to design to whom he intended
the greater blessing. So also in the sacrificing of the Burnt offering,
Aaron is commanded (Exod. 29.10.) "to Lay his Hands on the head of the
bullock;" and (ver. 15.) "to Lay his Hand on the head of the ramme."
The same is also said again, Levit. 1.4. & 8.14. Likewise Moses when he
ordained Joshua to be Captain of the Israelites, that is, consecrated
him to Gods service, (Numb. 27.23.) "Laid his hands upon him, and gave
him his Charge," designing and rendring certain, who it was they were
to obey in war. And in the consecration of the Levites (Numb. 8.10.) God
commanded that "the Children of Israel should Put their Hands upon the
Levites." And in the condemnation of him that had blasphemed the Lord
(Levit. 24.14.) God commanded that "all that heard him should Lay their
Hands on his head, and that all the Congregation should stone him." And
why should they only that heard him, Lay their Hands upon him, and not
rather a Priest, Levite, or other Minister of Justice, but that
none else were able to design, and demonstrate to the eyes of the
Congregation, who it was that had blasphemed, and ought to die? And
to design a man, or any other thing, by the Hand to the Eye is lesse
subject to mistake, than when it is done to the Eare by a Name.

And so much was this ceremony observed, that in blessing the whole
Congregation at once, which cannot be done by Laying on of Hands, yet
"Aaron (Levit. 9.22.) did lift up his Hand towards the people when he
blessed them." And we read also of the like ceremony of Consecration of
Temples amongst the Heathen, as that the Priest laid his Hands on
some post of the Temple, all the while he was uttering the words of
Consecration. So naturall it is to design any individuall thing, rather
by the Hand, to assure the Eyes, than by Words to inform the Eare in
matters of Gods Publique service.

This ceremony was not therefore new in our Saviours time. For Jairus
(Mark 5.23.) whose daughter was sick, besought our Saviour (not to heal
her, but) "to Lay his Hands upon her, that shee might bee healed." And
(Matth. 19.13.) "they brought unto him little children, that hee should
Put his Hands on them, and Pray."

According to this ancient Rite, the Apostles, and Presbyters, and the
Presbytery it self, Laid Hands on them whom they ordained Pastors, and
withall prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost; and that
not only once, but sometimes oftner, when a new occasion was presented:
but the end was still the same, namely a punctuall, and religious
designation of the person, ordained either to the Pastorall Charge
in general, or to a particular Mission: so (Act. 6.6.) "The Apostles
Prayed, and Laid their Hands" on the seven Deacons; which was done,
not to give them the Holy Ghost, (for they were full of the Holy Ghost
before thy were chosen, as appeareth immediately before, verse 3.) but
to design them to that Office. And after Philip the Deacon had converted
certain persons in Samaria, Peter and John went down (Act. 8.17.)" and
laid their Hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost." And not
only an Apostle, but a Presbyter had this power: For S. Paul adviseth
Timothy (1 Tim. 5.22.) "Lay Hands suddenly on no man;" that is, designe
no man rashly to the Office of a Pastor. The whole Presbytery Laid their
Hands on Timothy, as we read 1 Tim. 4.14. but this is to be understood,
as that some did it by the appointment of the Presbytery, and most
likely their Proestos, or Prolocutor, which it may be was St. Paul
himself. For in his 2 Epist. to Tim. ver. 6. he saith to him, "Stirre up
the gift of God which is in thee, by the Laying on of my Hands:" where
note by the way, that by the Holy ghost, is not meant the third Person
in the Trinity, but the Gifts necessary to the Pastorall Office. We read
also, that St. Paul had Imposition of Hands twice; once from Ananias at
Damascus (Acts 9.17,18.) at the time of his Baptisme; and again (Acts
13.3.) at Antioch, when he was first sent out to Preach. The use then of
this ceremony considered in the Ordination of Pastors, was to design
the Person to whom they gave such Power. But if there had been then any
Christian, that had had the Power of Teaching before; the Baptizing of
him, that is the making of him a Christian, had given him no new Power,
but had onely caused him to preach true Doctrine, that is, to use
his Power aright; and therefore the Imposition of Hands had been
unnecessary; Baptisme it selfe had been sufficient. But every Soveraign,
before Christianity, had the power of Teaching, and Ordaining Teachers;
and therefore Christianity gave them no new Right, but only directed
them in the way of teaching truth; and consequently they needed
no Imposition of Hands (besides that which is done in Baptisme) to
authorize them to exercise any part of the Pastorall Function, as
namely, to Baptize, and Consecrate. And in the Old Testament, though
the Priest only had right to Consecrate, during the time that the
Soveraignty was in the High Priest; yet it was not so when the
Soveraignty was in the King: For we read (1 Kings 8.) That Solomon
Blessed the People, Consecrated the Temple, and pronounced that Publique
Prayer, which is the pattern now for Consecration of all Christian
Churches, and Chappels: whereby it appears, he had not only the right
of Ecclesiasticall Government; but also of exercising Ecclesiasticall
Functions.




The Civill Soveraigne If A Christian, Is Head Of The Church

In His Own Dominions

From this consolidation of the Right Politique, and Ecclesiastique in
Christian Soveraigns, it is evident, they have all manner of Power over
their Subjects, that can be given to man, for the government of mens
externall actions, both in Policy, and Religion; and may make such
Laws, as themselves shall judge fittest, for the government of their
own Subjects, both as they are the Common-wealth, and as they are the
Church: for both State, and Church are the same men.

If they please therefore, they may (as many Christian Kings now doe)
commit the government of their Subjects in matters of Religion to
the Pope; but then the Pope is in that point Subordinate to them, and
exerciseth that Charge in anothers Dominion Jure Civili, in the Right of
the Civill Soveraign; not Jure Divino, in Gods Right; and may therefore
be discharged of that Office, when the Soveraign for the good of his
Subjects shall think it necessary. They may also if they please,
commit the care of Religion to one Supreme Pastor, or to an Assembly of
Pastors; and give them what power over the Church, or one over another,
they think most convenient; and what titles of honor, as of Bishops,
Archbishops, Priests, or Presbyters, they will; and make such Laws for
their maintenance, either by Tithes, or otherwise, as they please,
so they doe it out of a sincere conscience, of which God onely is
the Judge. It is the Civill Soveraign, that is to appoint Judges, and
Interpreters of the Canonicall Scriptures; for it is he that maketh them
Laws. It is he also that giveth strength to Excommunications; which but
for such Laws and Punishments, as may humble obstinate Libertines, and
reduce them to union with the rest of the Church, would bee
contemned. In summe, he hath the Supreme Power in all causes, as well
Ecclesiasticall, as Civill, as far as concerneth actions, and words, for
these onely are known, and may be accused; and of that which cannot be
accused, there is no Judg at all, but God, that knoweth the heart.
And these Rights are incident to all Soveraigns, whether Monarchs, or
Assemblies: for they that are the Representants of a Christian People,
are Representants of the Church: for a Church, and a Common-wealth of
Christian People, are the same thing.




Cardinal Bellarmines Books De Summo Pontifice Considered

Though this that I have here said, and in other places of this Book,
seem cleer enough for the asserting of the Supreme Ecclesiasticall Power
to Christian Soveraigns; yet because the Pope of Romes challenge to that
Power universally, hath been maintained chiefly, and I think as strongly
as is possible, by Cardinall Bellarmine, in his Controversie De Summo
Pontifice; I have thought it necessary, as briefly as I can, to examine
the grounds, and strength of his Discourse.




The First Book

Of five Books he hath written of this subject, the first containeth
three Questions: One, Which is simply the best government, Monarchy,
Aristocracy, or Democracy; and concludeth for neither, but for a
government mixt of all there: Another, which of these is the best
Government of the Church; and concludeth for the mixt, but which should
most participate of Monarchy: the third, whether in this mixt Monarchy,
St. Peter had the place of Monarch. Concerning his first Conclusion, I
have already sufficiently proved (chapt. 18.) that all Governments which
men are bound to obey, are Simple, and Absolute. In Monarchy there is
but One Man Supreme; and all other men that have any kind of Power in
the State, have it by his Commission, during his pleasure; and execute
it in his name: And in Aristocracy, and Democracy, but One Supreme
Assembly, with the same Power that in Monarchy belongeth to the Monarch,
which is not a Mixt, but an Absolute Soveraignty. And of the three
sorts, which is the best, is not to be disputed, where any one of them
is already established; but the present ought alwaies to be preferred,
maintained, and accounted best; because it is against both the Law of
Nature, and the Divine positive Law, to doe any thing tending to the
subversion thereof. Besides, it maketh nothing to the Power of
any Pastor, (unlesse he have the Civill Soveraignty,) what kind of
Government is the best; because their Calling is not to govern men by
Commandement, but to teach them, and perswade them by Arguments, and
leave it to them to consider, whether they shall embrace, or reject the
Doctrine taught. For Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy, do mark out
unto us three sorts of Soveraigns, not of Pastors; or, as we may say,
three sorts of Masters of Families, not three sorts of Schoolmasters for
their children.

And therefore the second Conclusion, concerning the best form of
Government of the Church, is nothing to the question of the Popes Power
without his own Dominions: For in all other Common-wealths his Power (if
hee have any at all) is that of the Schoolmaster onely, and not of the
Master of the Family.

For the third Conclusion, which is, that St. Peter was Monarch of the
Church, he bringeth for his chiefe argument the place of S. Matth.
(chap. 16.18, 19.) "Thou art Peter, And upon this rock I will build my
Church, &c. And I will give thee the keyes of Heaven; whatsoever thou
shalt bind on Earth, shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt
loose on Earth, shall be loosed in Heaven." Which place well considered,
proveth no more, but that the Church of Christ hath for foundation one
onely Article; namely, that which Peter in the name of all the Apostles
professing, gave occasion to our Saviour to speak the words here cited;
which that wee may cleerly understand, we are to consider, that our
Saviour preached by himself, by John Baptist, and by his Apostles,
nothing but this Article of Faith, "that he was the Christ;" all other
Articles requiring faith no otherwise, than as founded on that. John
began first, (Mat. 3.2.) preaching only this, "The Kingdome of God is at
hand." Then our Saviour himself (Mat. 4.17.) preached the same: And to
his Twelve Apostles, when he gave them their Commission (Mat. 10.7.)
there is no mention of preaching any other Article but that. This was
the fundamentall Article, that is the Foundation of the Churches Faith.
Afterwards the Apostles being returned to him, he asketh them all, (Mat.
16.13) not Peter onely, "Who men said he was;" and they answered, that
"some said he was John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremias,
or one of the Prophets:" Then (ver. 15.) he asked them all again, (not
Peter onely) "Whom say yee that I am?" Therefore Peter answered (for
them all) "Thou art Christ, the Son of the Living God;" which I said is
the Foundation of the Faith of the whole Church; from which our Saviour
takes the occasion of saying, "Upon this stone I will build my Church;"
By which it is manifest, that by the Foundation-Stone of the Church, was
meant the Fundamentall Article of the Churches Faith. But why then (will
some object) doth our Saviour interpose these words, "Thou art Peter"?
If the originall of this text had been rigidly translated, the reason
would easily have appeared: We are therefore to consider, that the
Apostle Simon, was surnamed Stone, (which is the signification of
the Syriacke word Cephas, and of the Greek word Petrus). Our Saviour
therefore after the confession of that Fundamentall Article, alluding
to his name, said (as if it were in English) thus, Thou art "Stone," and
upon this Stone I will build my Church: which is as much as to say, this
Article, that "I am the Christ," is the Foundation of all the Faith I
require in those that are to bee members of my Church: Neither is this
allusion to a name, an unusuall thing in common speech: But it had been
a strange, and obscure speech, if our Saviour intending to build his
Church on the Person of St. Peter, had said, "thou art a Stone, and
upon this Stone I will build my Church," when it was so obvious without
ambiguity to have said, "I will build my Church on thee; and yet there
had been still the same allusion to his name.

And for the following words, "I will give thee the Keyes of Heaven, &c."
it is no more than what our Saviour gave also to all the rest of his
Disciples (Matth. 18.18.) "Whatsoever yee shall bind on Earth, shall be
bound in Heaven. And whatsoever ye shall loose on Earth, shall be loosed
in Heaven." But howsoever this be interpreted, there is no doubt but
the Power here granted belongs to all Supreme Pastors; such as are all
Christian Civill Soveraignes in their own Dominions. In so much, as if
St. Peter, or our Saviour himself had converted any of them to beleeve
him, and to acknowledge his Kingdome; yet because his Kingdome is not of
this world, he had left the supreme care of converting his subjects to
none but him; or else hee must have deprived him of the Soveraignty,
to which the Right of Teaching is inseparably annexed. And thus much in
refutation of his first Book, wherein hee would prove St. Peter to have
been the Monarch Universall of the Church, that is to say, of all the
Christians in the world.




The Second Book

The second Book hath two Conclusions: One, that S. Peter was Bishop
of Rome, and there dyed: The other, that the Popes of Rome are his
Successors. Both which have been disputed by others. But supposing them
to be true; yet if by Bishop of Rome bee understood either the
Monarch of the Church, or the Supreme Pastor of it; not Silvester, but
Constantine (who was the first Christian Emperour) was that Bishop; and
as Constantine, so all other Christian Emperors were of Right supreme
Bishops of the Roman Empire; I say of the Roman Empire, not of all
Christendome: For other Christian Soveraigns had the same Right in their
severall Territories, as to an Office essentially adhaerent to their
Soveraignty. Which shall serve for answer to his second Book.




The Third Book

In the third Book, he handleth the question whether the Pope be
Antichrist. For my part, I see no argument that proves he is so, in that
sense that Scripture useth the name: nor will I take any argument from
the quality of Antichrist, to contradict the Authority he exerciseth,
or hath heretofore exercised in the Dominions of any other Prince, or
State.

It is evident that the Prophets of the Old Testament foretold, and the
Jews expected a Messiah, that is, a Christ, that should re-establish
amongst them the kingdom of God, which had been rejected by them in
the time of Samuel, when they required a King after the manner of
other Nations. This expectation of theirs, made them obnoxious to the
Imposture of all such, as had both the ambition to attempt the attaining
of the Kingdome, and the art to deceive the People by counterfeit
miracles, by hypocriticall life, or by orations and doctrine plausible.
Our Saviour therefore, and his Apostles forewarned men of False
Prophets, and of False Christs. False Christs, are such as pretend to
be the Christ, but are not, and are called properly Antichrists, in such
sense, as when there happeneth a Schisme in the Church by the election
of two Popes, the one calleth the other Antipapa, or the false Pope.
And therefore Antichrist in the proper signification hath two essentiall
marks; One, that he denyeth Jesus to be Christ; and another that he
professeth himselfe to bee Christ. The first Mark is set down by S. John
in his 1 Epist. 4. ch. 3. ver. "Every Spirit that confesseth not that
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God; And this is the Spirit
of Antichrist." The other Mark is expressed in the words of our Saviour,
(Mat. 24.5.) "Many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ;" and
again, "If any man shall say unto you, Loe, here is Christ, there is
Christ beleeve it not." And therefore Antichrist must be a False Christ,
that is, some one of them that shall pretend themselves to be Christ.
And out of these two Marks, "to deny Jesus to be the Christ," and to
"affirm himselfe to be the Christ," it followeth, that he must also be
an "Adversary of the true Christ," which is another usuall signification
of the word Antichrist. But of these many Antichrists, there is one
speciall one, O Antichristos, The Antichrist, or Antichrist definitely,
as one certaine person; not indefinitely An Antichrist. Now seeing the
Pope of Rome, neither pretendeth himself, nor denyeth Jesus to be the
Christ, I perceive not how he can be called Antichrist; by which word
is not meant, one that falsely pretendeth to be His Lieutenant, or Vicar
Generall, but to be Hee. There is also some Mark of the time of this
speciall Antichrist, as (Mat. 24.15.) when that abominable Destroyer,
spoken of by Daniel, (Dan. 9. 27.) shall stand in the Holy place, and
such tribulation as was not since the beginning of the world, nor ever
shall be again, insomuch as if it were to last long, (ver. 22.) "no
flesh could be saved; but for the elects sake those days shall be
shortened" (made fewer). But that tribulation is not yet come; for it
is to be followed immediately (ver. 29.) by a darkening of the Sun
and Moon, a falling of the Stars, a concussion of the Heavens, and the
glorious coming again of our Saviour, in the cloudes. And therefore The
Antichrist is not yet come; whereas, many Popes are both come and gone.
It is true, the Pope in taking upon him to give Laws to all Christian
Kings, and Nations, usurpeth a Kingdome in this world, which Christ took
not on him: but he doth it not As Christ, but as For Christ, wherein
there is nothing of the Antichrist.




The Fourth Book

In the fourth Book, to prove the Pope to be the supreme Judg in all
questions of Faith and Manners, (which is as much as to be the absolute
Monarch of all Christians in the world,) be bringeth three Propositions:
The first, that his Judgments are Infallible: The second, that he can
make very Laws, and punish those that observe them not: The third, that
our Saviour conferred all Jurisdiction Ecclesiasticall on the Pope of
Rome.




Texts For The Infallibility Of The Popes Judgement In Points Of Faith

For the Infallibility of his Judgments, he alledgeth the Scriptures: and
first, that of Luke 22.31. "Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired you that
hee may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith
faile not; and when thou art converted, strengthen thy Brethren." This,
according to Bellarmines exposition, is, that Christ gave here to Simon
Peter two priviledges: one, that neither his Faith should fail, neither
he, nor any of his successors should ever define any point concerning
Faith, or Manners erroneously, or contrary to the definition of a former
Pope: Which is a strange, and very much strained interpretation. But he
that with attention readeth that chapter, shall find there is no place
in the whole Scripture, that maketh more against the Popes Authority,
than this very place. The Priests and Scribes seeking to kill our
Saviour at the Passeover, and Judas possessed with a resolution to
betray him, and the day of killing the Passeover being come, our Saviour
celebrated the same with his Apostles, which he said, till the Kingdome
of God was come hee would doe no more; and withall told them, that one
of them was to betray him: Hereupon they questioned, which of them it
should be; and withall (seeing the next Passeover their Master would
celebrate should be when he was King) entred into a contention, who
should then be the greater man. Our Saviour therefore told them, that
the Kings of the Nations had Dominion over their Subjects, and are
called by a name (in Hebrew) that signifies Bountifull; but I cannot
be so to you, you must endeavour to serve one another; I ordain you a
Kingdome, but it is such as my Father hath ordained mee; a Kingdome that
I am now to purchase with my blood, and not to possesse till my second
coming; then yee shall eat and drink at my Table, and sit on Thrones,
judging the twelve Tribes of Israel: And then addressing himself to
St. Peter, he saith, Simon, Simon, Satan seeks by suggesting a present
domination, to weaken your faith of the future; but I have prayed for
thee, that thy faith shall not fail; Thou therefore (Note this,) being
converted, and understanding my Kingdome as of another world, confirm
the same faith in thy Brethren: To which S. Peter answered (as one that
no more expected any authority in this world) "Lord I am ready to goe
with thee, not onely to Prison, but to Death." Whereby it is manifest,
S. Peter had not onely no jurisdiction given him in this world, but a
charge to teach all the other Apostles, that they also should have none.
And for the Infallibility of St. Peters sentence definitive in matter
of Faith, there is no more to be attributed to it out of this Text, than
that Peter should continue in the beleef of this point, namely, that
Christ should come again, and possesse the Kingdome at the day of
Judgement; which was not given by the Text to all his Successors; for
wee see they claim it in the World that now is.

The second place is that of Matth. 16. "Thou art Peter, and upon this
rocke I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail
against it." By which (as I have already shewn in this chapter) is
proved no more, than that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against
the confession of Peter, which gave occasion to that speech; namely
this, That Jesus Is Christ The Sonne Of God.

The third text is John 21. ver. 16,17. "Feed my sheep;" which contains
no more but a Commission of Teaching: And if we grant the rest of the
Apostles to be contained in that name of Sheep; then it is the supreme
Power of Teaching: but it was onely for the time that there were no
Christian Soveraigns already possessed of that Supremacy. But I have
already proved, that Christian Soveraignes are in their owne Dominions
the supreme Pastors, and instituted thereto, by vertue of their being
Baptized, though without other Imposition of Hands. For such imposition
being a Ceremony of designing the person, is needlesse, when hee is
already designed to the Power of Teaching what Doctrine he will, by his
institution to an Absolute Power over his Subjects. For as I have proved
before, Soveraigns are supreme Teachers (in generall) by their Office
and therefore oblige themselves (by their Baptisme) to teach the
Doctrine of Christ: And when they suffer others to teach their people,
they doe it at the perill of their own souls; for it is at the hands
of the Heads of Families that God will require the account of the
instruction of his Children and Servants. It is of Abraham himself,
not of a hireling, that God saith (Gen. 18.19) "I know him that he will
command his Children, and his houshold after him, that they keep the way
of the Lord, and do justice and judgement.

The fourth place is that of Exod. 28.30. "Thou shalt put in the
Breastplate of Judgment, the Urim and the Thummin:" which hee saith is
interpreted by the Septuagint, delosin kai aletheian, that is, Evidence
and Truth: And thence concludeth, God had given Evidence, and Truth,
(which is almost infallibility,) to the High Priest. But be it Evidence
and Truth it selfe that was given; or be it but Admonition to the Priest
to endeavour to inform himself cleerly, and give judgment uprightly;
yet in that it was given to the High Priest, it was given to the Civill
Soveraign: For next under God was the High Priest in the Common-wealth
of Israel; and is an argument for Evidence and Truth, that is, for the
Ecclesiasticall Supremacy of Civill Soveraigns over their own Subjects,
against the pretended Power of the Pope. These are all the Texts hee
bringeth for the Infallibility of the Judgement of the Pope, in point of
Faith.




Texts For The Same In Point Of Manners

For the Infallibility of his Judgment concerning Manners, hee bringeth
one Text, which is that of John 16.13. "When the Spirit of truth is
come, hee will lead you into all truth" where (saith he) by All Truth,
is meant, at least, All Truth Necessary To Salvation. But with this
mitigation, he attributeth no more Infallibility to the Pope, than to
any man that professeth Christianity, and is not to be damned: For
if any man erre in any point, wherein not to erre is necessary to
Salvation, it is impossible he should be saved; for that onely is
necessary to Salvation, without which to be saved is impossible. What
points these are, I shall declare out of the Scripture in the Chapter
following. In this place I say no more, but that though it were granted,
the Pope could not possibly teach any error at all, yet doth not this
entitle him to any Jurisdiction in the Dominions of another Prince,
unlesse we shall also say, a man is obliged in conscience to set on
work upon all occasions the best workman, even then also when he hath
formerly promised his work to another.

Besides the Text, he argueth from Reason, thus, If the Pope could erre
in necessaries, then Christ hath not sufficiently provided for the
Churches Salvation; because he hath commanded her to follow the Popes
directions. But this Reason is invalid, unlesse he shew when, and where
Christ commanded that, or took at all any notice of a Pope: Nay granting
whatsoever was given to S. Peter was given to the Pope; yet seeing there
is in the Scripture no command to any man to obey St. Peter, no man can
bee just, that obeyeth him, when his commands are contrary to those of
his lawfull Soveraign.

Lastly, it hath not been declared by the Church, nor by the Pope
himselfe, that he is the Civill Soveraign of all the Christians in the
world; and therefore all Christians are not bound to acknowledge his
Jurisdiction in point of Manners. For the Civill Soveraignty, and
supreme Judicature in controversies of Manners, are the same thing: And
the Makers of Civill Laws, are not onely Declarers, but also Makers
of the justice, and injustice of actions; there being nothing in mens
Manners that makes them righteous, or unrighteous, but their conformity
with the Law of the Soveraign. And therefore when the Pope challengeth
Supremacy in controversies of Manners, hee teacheth men to disobey the
Civill Soveraign; which is an erroneous Doctrine, contrary to the
many precepts of our Saviour and his Apostles, delivered to us in the
Scripture.

To prove the Pope has Power to make Laws, he alledgeth many places; as
first, Deut. 17.12. "The man that will doe presumptuously, and will not
hearken unto the Priest, (that standeth to Minister there before the
Lord thy God, or unto the Judge,) even that man shall die, and thou
shalt put away the evill from Israel." For answer whereunto, we are to
remember that the High Priest (next and immediately under God) was the
Civill Soveraign; and all Judges were to be constituted by him. The
words alledged sound therefore thus. "The man that will presume to
disobey the Civill Soveraign for the time being, or any of his Officers
in the execution of their places, that man shall die, &c." which is
cleerly for the Civill Soveraignty, against the Universall power of the
Pope.

Secondly, he alledgeth that of Matth. 16. "Whatsoever yee shall bind,
&c." and interpreteth it for such Binding as is attributed (Matth.
23.4.) to the Scribes and Pharisees, "They bind heavy burthens, and
grievous to be born, and lay them on mens shoulders;" by which is meant
(he sayes) Making of Laws; and concludes thence, the Pope can make
Laws. But this also maketh onely for the Legislative power of Civill
Soveraigns: For the Scribes, and Pharisees sat in Moses Chaire,
but Moses next under God was Soveraign of the People of Israel: and
therefore our Saviour commanded them to doe all that they should say,
but not all that they should do. That is, to obey their Laws, but not
follow their Example.

The third place, is John 21.16. "Feed my sheep;" which is not a Power
to make Laws, but a command to Teach. Making Laws belongs to the Lord of
the Family; who by his owne discretion chooseth his Chaplain, as also a
Schoolmaster to Teach his children.

The fourth place John 20.21. is against him. The words are, "As my
Father sent me, so send I you." But our Saviour was sent to Redeem (by
his Death) such as should Beleeve; and by his own, and his Apostles
preaching to prepare them for their entrance into his Kingdome; which he
himself saith, is not of this world, and hath taught us to pray for the
coming of it hereafter, though hee refused (Acts 1.6,7.) to tell his
Apostles when it should come; and in which, when it comes, the twelve
Apostles shall sit on twelve Thrones (every one perhaps as high as that
of St. Peter) to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. Seeing then God the
Father sent not our Saviour to make Laws in this present world, wee may
conclude from the Text, that neither did our Saviour send S. Peter to
make Laws here, but to perswade men to expect his second comming with
a stedfast faith; and in the mean time, if Subjects, to obey their
Princes; and if Princes, both to beleeve it themselves, and to do their
best to make their Subjects doe the same; which is the Office of a
Bishop. Therefore this place maketh most strongly for the joining of the
Ecclesiasticall Supremacy to the Civill Soveraignty, contrary to that
which Cardinall Bellarmine alledgeth it for.

The fift place is Acts 15.28. "It hath seemed good to the Holy Spirit,
and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden, than these necessary
things, that yee abstaine from meats offered to Idols, and from bloud,
and from things strangled, and from fornication." Here hee notes the
word Laying Of Burdens for the Legislative Power. But who is there,
that reading this Text, can say, this stile of the Apostles may not as
properly be used in giving Counsell, as in making Laws? The stile of a
Law is, We Command: But, We Think Good, is the ordinary stile of them,
that but give Advice; and they lay a Burthen that give Advice, though
it bee conditionall, that is, if they to whom they give it, will
attain their ends: And such is the Burthen, of abstaining from things
strangled, and from bloud; not absolute, but in case they will not
erre. I have shewn before (chap. 25.) that Law, is distinguished from
Counsell, in this, that the reason of a Law, is taken from the designe,
and benefit of him that prescribeth it; but the reason of a Counsell,
from the designe, and benefit of him, to whom the Counsell is given. But
here, the Apostles aime onely at the benefit of the converted Gentiles,
namely their Salvation; not at their own benefit; for having done their
endeavour, they shall have their reward, whether they be obeyed, or not.
And therefore the Acts of this Councell, were not Laws, but Counsells.

The sixt place is that of Rom. 13. "Let every Soul be subject to the
Higher Powers, for there is no Power but of God;" which is meant, he
saith not onely of Secular, but also of Ecclesiasticall Princes. To
which I answer, first, that there are no Ecclesiasticall Princes but
those that are also Civill Soveraignes; and their Principalities exceed
not the compasse of their Civill Soveraignty; without those bounds
though they may be received for Doctors, they cannot be acknowledged for
Princes. For if the Apostle had meant, we should be subject both to our
own Princes, and also to the Pope, he had taught us a doctrine, which
Christ himself hath told us is impossible, namely, "to serve two
Masters." And though the Apostle say in another place, "I write these
things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpnesse,
according to the Power which the Lord hath given me;" it is not, that
he challenged a Power either to put to death, imprison, banish, whip,
or fine any of them, which are Punishments; but onely to Excommunicate,
which (without the Civill Power) is no more but a leaving of their
company, and having no more to doe with them, than with a Heathen man,
or a Publican; which in many occasions might be a greater pain to the
Excommunicant, than to the Excommunicate.

The seventh place is 1 Cor. 4.21. "Shall I come unto you with a Rod, or
in love, and the spirit of lenity?" But here again, it is not the Power
of a Magistrate to punish offenders, that is meant by a Rod; but
onely the Power of Excommunication, which is not in its owne nature
a Punishment, but onely a Denouncing of punishment, that Christ shall
inflict, when he shall be in possession of his Kingdome, at the day of
Judgment. Nor then also shall it bee properly a Punishment, as upon a
Subject that hath broken the Law; but a Revenge, as upon an Enemy, or
Revolter, that denyeth the Right of our Saviour to the Kingdome: And
therefore this proveth not the Legislative Power of any Bishop, that has
not also the Civill Power.

The eighth place is, Timothy 3.2. "A Bishop must be the husband but of
one wife, vigilant, sober, &c." which he saith was a Law. I thought that
none could make a Law in the Church, but the Monarch of the Church, St.
Peter. But suppose this Precept made by the authority of St. Peter;
yet I see no reason why to call it a Law, rather than an Advice, seeing
Timothy was not a Subject, but a Disciple of St. Paul; nor the flock
under the charge of Timothy, his Subjects in the Kingdome, but his
Scholars in the Schoole of Christ: If all the Precepts he giveth
Timothy, be Laws, why is not this also a Law, "Drink no longer water,
but use a little wine for thy healths sake"? And why are not also
the Precepts of good Physitians, so many Laws? but that it is not the
Imperative manner of speaking, but an absolute Subjection to a Person,
that maketh his Precept Laws.

In like manner, the ninth place, 1 Tim. 5. 19. "Against an Elder
receive not an accusation, but before two or three Witnesses," is a wise
Precept, but not a Law.

The tenth place is, Luke 10.16. "He that heareth you, heareth mee; and
he that despiseth you, despiseth me." And there is no doubt, but he that
despiseth the Counsell of those that are sent by Christ, despiseth
the Counsell of Christ himself. But who are those now that are sent by
Christ, but such as are ordained Pastors by lawfull Authority? and who
are lawfully ordained, that are not ordained by the Soveraign
Pastor? and who is ordained by the Soveraign Pastor in a Christian
Common-wealth, that is not ordained by the authority of the Soveraign
thereof? Out of this place therefore it followeth, that he which heareth
his Soveraign being a Christian, heareth Christ; and hee that despiseth
the Doctrine which his King being a Christian, authorizeth, despiseth
the Doctrine of Christ (which is not that which Bellarmine intendeth
here to prove, but the contrary). But all this is nothing to a Law. Nay
more, a Christian King, as a Pastor, and Teacher of his Subjects, makes
not thereby his Doctrines Laws. He cannot oblige men to beleeve; though
as a Civill Soveraign he may make Laws suitable to his Doctrine, which
may oblige men to certain actions, and sometimes to such as they would
not otherwise do, and which he ought not to command; and yet when
they are commanded, they are Laws; and the externall actions done in
obedience to them, without the inward approbation, are the actions of
the Soveraign, and not of the Subject, which is in that case but as
an instrument, without any motion of his owne at all; because God hath
commanded to obey them.

The eleventh, is every place, where the Apostle for Counsell, putteth
some word, by which men use to signifie Command; or calleth the
following of his Counsell, by the name of Obedience. And therefore they
are alledged out of 1 Cor. 11.2. "I commend you for keeping my Precepts
as I delivered them to you." The Greek is, "I commend you for keeping
those things I delivered to you, as I delivered them." Which is far from
signifying that they were Laws, or any thing else, but good Counsell.
And that of 1 Thess. 4.2. "You know what commandements we gave you:"
where the Greek word is paraggelias edokamen, equivalent to paredokamen,
what wee delivered to you, as in the place next before alledged, which
does not prove the Traditions of the Apostles, to be any more than
Counsells; though as is said in the 8th verse, "he that despiseth them,
despiseth not man, but God": For our Saviour himself came not to Judge,
that is, to be King in this world; but to Sacrifice himself for Sinners,
and leave Doctors in his Church, to lead, not to drive men to Christ,
who never accepteth forced actions, (which is all the Law produceth,)
but the inward conversion of the heart; which is not the work of Laws,
but of Counsell, and Doctrine.

And that of 2 Thess. 3.14. "If any man Obey not our word by this
Epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may bee
ashamed": where from the word Obey, he would inferre, that this Epistle
was a Law to the Thessalonians. The Epistles of the Emperours were
indeed Laws. If therefore the Epistle of S. Paul were also a Law, they
were to obey two Masters. But the word Obey, as it is in the Greek
upakouei, signifieth Hearkening To, or Putting In Practice, not onely
that which is Commanded by him that has right to punish, but also that
which is delivered in a way of Counsell for our good; and therefore St.
Paul does not bid kill him that disobeys, nor beat, nor imprison, nor
amerce him, which Legislators may all do; but avoid his company, that
he may bee ashamed: whereby it is evident, it was not the Empire of an
Apostle, but his Reputation amongst the Faithfull, which the Christians
stood in awe of.

The last place is that of Heb. 13.17. "Obey your Leaders, and submit
your selves to them, for they watch for your souls, as they that must
give account:" And here also is intended by Obedience, a following of
their Counsell: For the reason of our Obedience, is not drawn from the
will and command of our Pastors, but from our own benefit, as being the
Salvation of our Souls they watch for, and not for the Exaltation of
their own Power, and Authority. If it were meant here, that all they
teach were Laws, then not onely the Pope, but every Pastor in his Parish
should have Legislative Power. Again, they that are bound to obey, their
Pastors, have no power to examine their commands. What then shall wee
say to St. John who bids us (1 Epist. chap. 4. ver. 1.) "Not to beleeve
every Spirit, but to try the Spirits whether they are of God, because
many false Prophets are gone out into the world"? It is therefore
manifest, that wee may dispute the Doctrine of our Pastors; but no man
can dispute a Law. The Commands of Civill Soveraigns are on all sides
granted to be Laws: if any else can make a Law besides himselfe, all
Common-wealth, and consequently all Peace, and Justice must cease; which
is contrary to all Laws, both Divine and Humane. Nothing therefore can
be drawn from these, or any other places of Scripture, to prove the
Decrees of the Pope, where he has not also the Civill Soveraignty, to be
Laws.

The Question Of Superiority Between The Pope And Other Bishops The last
point hee would prove, is this, "That our Saviour Christ has committed
Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction immediately to none but the Pope." Wherein
he handleth not the Question of Supremacy between the Pope and Christian
Kings, but between the Pope and other Bishops. And first, he sayes it is
agreed, that the Jurisdiction of Bishops, is at least in the generall
De Jure Divino, that is, in the Right of God; for which he alledges S.
Paul, Ephes. 4.11. where hee sayes, that Christ after his Ascension
into heaven, "gave gifts to men, some Apostles, some Prophets, and some
Evangelists, and some Pastors, and some Teachers:" And thence inferres,
they have indeed their Jurisdiction in Gods Right; but will not grant
they have it immediately from God, but derived through the Pope. But if
a man may be said to have his Jurisdiction De Jure Divino, and yet not
immediately; what lawfull Jurisdiction, though but Civill, is there in a
Christian Common-wealth, that is not also De Jure Divino? For Christian
Kings have their Civill Power from God immediately; and the Magistrates
under him exercise their severall charges in vertue of his Commission;
wherein that which they doe, is no lesse De Jure Divino Mediato, than
that which the Bishops doe, in vertue of the Popes Ordination. All
lawfull Power is of God, immediately in the Supreme Governour, and
mediately in those that have Authority under him: So that either hee
must grant every Constable in the State, to hold his Office in the Right
of God; or he must not hold that any Bishop holds his so, besides the
Pope himselfe.

But this whole Dispute, whether Christ left the Jurisdiction to the Pope
onely, or to other Bishops also, if considered out of these places where
the Pope has the Civill Soveraignty, is a contention De Lana Caprina:
For none of them (where they are not Soveraigns) has any Jurisdiction
at all. For Jurisdiction is the Power of hearing and determining Causes
between man and man; and can belong to none, but him that hath the Power
to prescribe the Rules of Right and Wrong; that is, to make Laws;
and with the Sword of Justice to compell men to obey his Decisions,
pronounced either by himself, or by the Judges he ordaineth thereunto;
which none can lawfully do, but the Civill Soveraign.

Therefore when he alledgeth out of the 6 of Luke, that our Saviour
called his Disciples together, and chose twelve of them which he named
Apostles, he proveth that he Elected them (all, except Matthias, Paul
and Barnabas,) and gave them Power and Command to Preach, but not
to Judge of Causes between man and man: for that is a Power which
he refused to take upon himselfe, saying, "Who made me a Judge, or a
Divider, amongst you?" and in another place, "My Kingdome is not of this
world." But hee that hath not the Power to hear, and determine Causes
between man and man, cannot be said to have any Jurisdiction at all. And
yet this hinders not, but that our Saviour gave them Power to Preach and
Baptize in all parts of the world, supposing they were not by their own
lawfull Soveraign forbidden: For to our own Soveraigns Christ himself,
and his Apostles have in sundry places expressely commanded us in all
things to be obedient.

The arguments by which he would prove, that Bishops receive their
Jurisdiction from the Pope (seeing the Pope in the Dominions of other
Princes hath no Jurisdiction himself,) are all in vain. Yet because they
prove, on the contrary, that all Bishops receive Jurisdiction when they
have it from their Civill Soveraigns, I will not omit the recitall of
them.

The first, is from Numbers 11. where Moses not being able alone to
undergoe the whole burthen of administring the affairs of the People of
Israel, God commanded him to choose Seventy Elders, and took part of
the spirit of Moses, to put it upon those Seventy Elders: by which it is
understood, not that God weakened the spirit of Moses, for that had not
eased him at all; but that they had all of them their authority from
him; wherein he doth truly, and ingenuously interpret that place. But
seeing Moses had the entire Soveraignty in the Common-wealth of the
Jews, it is manifest, that it is thereby signified, that they had their
Authority from the Civill Soveraign: and therefore that place proveth,
that Bishops in every Christian Common-wealth have their Authority from
the Civill Soveraign; and from the Pope in his own Territories only, and
not in the Territories of any other State.

The second argument, is from the nature of Monarchy; wherein all
Authority is in one Man, and in others by derivation from him: But the
Government of the Church, he says, is Monarchicall. This also makes for
Christian Monarchs. For they are really Monarchs of their own people;
that is, of their own Church (for the Church is the same thing with a
Christian people;) whereas the Power of the Pope, though hee were
S. Peter, is neither Monarchy, nor hath any thing of Archicall, nor
Craticall, but onely of Didacticall; For God accepteth not a forced, but
a willing obedience.

The third, is, from that the Sea of S. Peter is called by S. Cyprian,
the Head, the Source, the Roote, the Sun, from whence the Authority
of Bishops is derived. But by the Law of Nature (which is a better
Principle of Right and Wrong, than the word of any Doctor that is but
a man) the Civill Soveraign in every Common-wealth, is the Head, the
Source, the Root, and the Sun, from which all Jurisdiction is derived.
And therefore, the Jurisdiction of Bishops, is derived from the Civill
Soveraign.

The fourth, is taken from the Inequality of their Jurisdictions: For
if God (saith he) had given it them immediately, he had given aswell
Equality of Jurisdiction, as of Order: But wee see, some are Bishops but
of own Town, some of a hundred Towns, and some of many whole Provinces;
which differences were not determined by the command of God; their
Jurisdiction therefore is not of God, but of Man; and one has a
greater, another a lesse, as it pleaseth the Prince of the Church. Which
argument, if he had proved before, that the Pope had had an Universall
Jurisdiction over all Christians, had been for his purpose. But seeing
that hath not been proved, and that it is notoriously known, the large
Jurisdiction of the Pope was given him by those that had it, that is,
by the Emperours of Rome, (for the Patriarch of Constantinople, upon the
same title, namely, of being Bishop of the Capitall City of the Empire,
and Seat of the Emperour, claimed to be equal to him,) it followeth,
that all other Bishops have their Jurisdiction from the Soveraigns of
the place wherein they exercise the same: And as for that cause they
have not their Authority De Jure Divino; so neither hath the Pope his De
Jure Divino, except onely where hee is also the Civill Soveraign.

His fift argument is this, "If Bishops have their Jurisdiction
immediately from God, the Pope could not take it from them, for he can
doe nothing contrary to Gods ordination;" And this consequence is good,
and well proved. "But, (saith he) the Pope can do this, and has done
it." This also is granted, so he doe it in his own Dominions, or in the
Dominions of any other Prince that hath given him that Power; but not
universally, in Right of the Popedome: For that power belongeth to
every Christian Soveraign, within the bounds of his owne Empire, and is
inseparable from the Soveraignty. Before the People of Israel had (by
the commandment of God to Samuel) set over themselves a King, after the
manner of other Nations, the High Priest had the Civill Government; and
none but he could make, nor depose an inferiour Priest: But that Power
was afterwards in the King, as may be proved by this same argument of
Bellarmine; For if the Priest (be he the High Priest or any other) had
his Jurisdiction immediately from God, then the King could not take it
from him; "for he could do nothing contrary to Gods ordinance: But it
is certain, that King Solomon (1 Kings 2.26.) deprived Abiathar the High
Priest of his office, and placed Zadok (verse 35.) in his room. Kings
therefore may in the like manner Ordaine, and Deprive Bishops, as they
shall thinke fit, for the well governing of their Subjects.

His sixth argument is this, If Bishops have their Jurisdiction De Jure
Divino (that is, immediately from God,) they that maintaine it, should
bring some Word of God to prove it: But they can bring none. The
argument is good; I have therefore nothing to say against it. But it
is an argument no lesse good, to prove the Pope himself to have no
Jurisdiction in the Dominion of any other Prince.

Lastly, hee bringeth for argument, the testimony of two Popes, Innocent,
and Leo; and I doubt not but hee might have alledged, with as good
reason, the testimonies of all the Popes almost since S. Peter: For
considering the love of Power naturally implanted in mankind, whosoever
were made Pope, he would be tempted to uphold the same opinion.
Neverthelesse, they should therein but doe, as Innocent, and Leo did,
bear witnesse of themselves, and therefore their witness should not be
good.




Of The Popes Temporall Power

In the fift Book he hath four Conclusions. The first is, "That the Pope
in not Lord of all the world:" the second, "that the Pope is not Lord
of all the Christian world:" The third, "That the Pope (without his owne
Territory) has not any Temporall Jurisdiction DIRECTLY:" These three
Conclusions are easily granted. The fourth is, "That the Pope has (in
the Dominions of other Princes) the Supreme Temporall Power INDIRECTLY:"
which is denyed; unlesse he mean by Indirectly, that he has gotten it by
Indirect means; then is that also granted. But I understand, that
when he saith he hath it Indirectly, he means, that such Temporall
Jurisdiction belongeth to him of Right, but that this Right is but a
Consequence of his Pastorall Authority, the which he could not exercise,
unlesse he have the other with it: And therefore to the Pastorall Power
(which he calls Spirituall) the Supreme Power Civill is necessarily
annexed; and that thereby hee hath a Right to change Kingdomes, giving
them to one, and taking them from another, when he shall think it
conduces to the Salvation of Souls.

Before I come to consider the Arguments by which hee would prove this
doctrine, it will not bee amisse to lay open the Consequences of it;
that Princes, and States, that have the Civill Soveraignty in their
severall Common-wealths, may bethink themselves, whether it bee
convenient for them, and conducing to the good of their Subjects, of
whom they are to give an account at the day of Judgment, to admit the
same.

When it is said, the Pope hath not (in the Territories of other States)
the Supreme Civill Power Directly; we are to understand, he doth
not challenge it, as other Civill Soveraigns doe, from the originall
submission thereto of those that are to be governed. For it is evident,
and has already been sufficiently in this Treatise demonstrated, that
the Right of all Soveraigns, is derived originally from the consent of
every one of those that are to bee governed; whether they that choose
him, doe it for their common defence against an Enemy, as when they
agree amongst themselves to appoint a Man, or an Assembly of men to
protect them; or whether they doe it, to save their lives, by submission
to a conquering Enemy. The Pope therefore, when he disclaimeth the
Supreme Civill Power over other States Directly, denyeth no more, but
that his Right cometh to him by that way; He ceaseth not for all that,
to claime it another way; and that is, (without the consent of them
that are to be governed) by a Right given him by God, (which hee calleth
Indirectly,) in his Assumption to the Papacy. But by what way soever he
pretend, the Power is the same; and he may (if it bee granted to be his
Right) depose Princes and States, as often as it is for the Salvation
of Soules, that is, as often as he will; for he claimeth also the Sole
Power to Judge, whether it be to the salvation of mens Souls, or not.
And this is the Doctrine, not onely that Bellarmine here, and many other
Doctors teach in their Sermons and Books, but also that some
Councells have decreed, and the Popes have decreed, and the Popes have
accordingly, when the occasion hath served them, put in practise. For
the fourth Councell of Lateran held under Pope Innocent the third, (in
the third Chap. De Haereticis,) hath this Canon. "If a King at the
Popes admonition, doe not purge his Kingdome of Haeretiques, and being
Excommunicate for the same, make not satisfaction within a year, his
subjects are absolved of their Obedience." And the practise hereof hath
been seen on divers occasions; as in the Deposing of Chilperique, King
of France; in the Translation of the Roman Empire to Charlemaine; in
the Oppression of John King of England; in Transferring the Kingdome
of Navarre; and of late years, in the League against Henry the third of
France, and in many more occurrences. I think there be few Princes that
consider not this as Injust, and Inconvenient; but I wish they would
all resolve to be Kings, or Subjects. Men cannot serve two Masters: They
ought therefore to ease them, either by holding the Reins of Government
wholly in their own hands; or by wholly delivering them into the
hands of the Pope; that such men as are willing to be obedient, may be
protected in their obedience. For this distinction of Temporall, and
Spirituall Power is but words. Power is as really divided, and as
dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another Indirect Power, as
with a Direct one. But to come now to his Arguments.

The first is this, "The Civill Power is subject to the Spirituall:
Therefore he that hath the Supreme Power Spirituall, hath right to
command Temporall Princes, and dispose of their Temporalls in order to
the Spirituall. As for the distinction of Temporall, and Spirituall,
let us consider in what sense it may be said intelligibly, that the
Temporall, or Civill Power is subject to the Spirituall. There be but
two ways that those words can be made sense. For when wee say, one Power
is subject to another Power, the meaning either is, that he which hath
the one, is subject to him that hath the other; or that the one Power is
to the other, as the means to the end. For wee cannot understand, that
one Power hath Power over another Power; and that one Power can have
Right or Command over another: For Subjection, Command, Right, and
Power are accidents, not of Powers, but of Persons: One Power may be
subordinate to another, as the art of a Sadler, to the art of a Rider.
If then it be granted, that the Civill Government be ordained as a means
to bring us to a Spirituall felicity; yet it does not follow, that if a
King have the Civill Power, and the Pope the Spirituall, that therefore
the King is bound to obey the Pope, more then every Sadler is bound to
obey every Rider. Therefore as from Subordination of an Art, cannot be
inferred the Subjection of the Professor; so from the Subordination of
a Government, cannot be inferred the Subjection of the Governor. When
therefore he saith, the Civill Power is Subject to the Spirituall, his
meaning is, that the Civill Soveraign, is Subject to the Spirituall
Soveraign. And the Argument stands thus, "The Civil Soveraign, is
subject to the Spirituall; Therefore the Spirituall Prince may
command Temporall Princes." Where the conclusion is the same, with the
Antecedent he should have proved. But to prove it, he alledgeth
first, this reason, "Kings and Popes, Clergy and Laity make but one
Common-wealth; that is to say, but one Church: And in all Bodies the
Members depend one upon another: But things Spirituall depend not
of things Temporall: Therefore, Temporall depend on Spirituall. And
therefore are Subject to them." In which Argumentation there be two
grosse errours: one is, that all Christian Kings, Popes, Clergy, and all
other Christian men, make but one Common-wealth: For it is evident that
France is one Common-wealth, Spain another, and Venice a third, &c. And
these consist of Christians; and therefore also are severall Bodies
of Christians; that is to say, severall Churches: And their severall
Soveraigns Represent them, whereby they are capable of commanding and
obeying, of doing and suffering, as a natural man; which no Generall or
Universall Church is, till it have a Representant; which it hath not on
Earth: for if it had, there is no doubt but that all Christendome were
one Common-wealth, whose Soveraign were that Representant, both in
things Spirituall and Temporall: And the Pope, to make himself this
Representant, wanteth three things that our Saviour hath not given
him, to Command, and to Judge, and to Punish, otherwise than (by
Excommunication) to run from those that will not Learn of him: For
though the Pope were Christs onely Vicar, yet he cannot exercise his
government, till our Saviours second coming: And then also it is not the
Pope, but St. Peter himselfe, with the other Apostles, that are to be
Judges of the world.

The other errour in this his first Argument is, that he sayes, the
Members of every Common-wealth, as of a naturall Body, depend one of
another: It is true, they cohaere together; but they depend onely on the
Soveraign, which is the Soul of the Common-wealth; which failing, the
Common-wealth is dissolved into a Civill war, no one man so much
as cohaering to another, for want of a common Dependance on a known
Soveraign; Just as the Members of the naturall Body dissolve into Earth,
for want of a Soul to hold them together. Therefore there is nothing in
this similitude, from whence to inferre a dependance of the Laity on the
Clergy, or of the Temporall Officers on the Spirituall; but of both on
the Civill Soveraign; which ought indeed to direct his Civill commands
to the Salvation of Souls; but is not therefore subject to any but God
himselfe. And thus you see the laboured fallacy of the first Argument,
to deceive such men as distinguish not between the Subordination of
Actions in the way to the End; and the Subjection of Persons one to
another in the administration of the Means. For to every End, the Means
are determined by Nature, or by God himselfe supernaturally: but the
Power to make men use the Means, is in every nation resigned (by the
Law of Nature, which forbiddeth men to violate their Faith given) to the
Civill Soveraign.

His second Argument is this, "Every Common-wealth, (because it is
supposed to be perfect and sufficient in it self,) may command any
other Common-wealth, not subject to it, and force it to change the
administration of the Government, nay depose the Prince, and set another
in his room, if it cannot otherwise defend it selfe against the injuries
he goes about to doe them: much more may a Spirituall Common-wealth
command a Temporall one to change the administration of their
Government, and may depose Princes, and institute others, when they
cannot otherwise defend the Spirituall Good."

That a Common-wealth, to defend it selfe against injuries, may lawfully
doe all that he hath here said, is very true; and hath already in that
which hath gone before been sufficiently demonstrated. And if it were
also true, that there is now in this world a Spirituall Common-wealth,
distinct from a Civill Common-wealth, then might the Prince thereof,
upon injury done him, or upon want of caution that injury be not done
him in time to come, repaire, and secure himself by Warre; which is in
summe, deposing, killing, or subduing, or doing any act of Hostility.
But by the same reason, it would be no lesse lawfull for a Civill
Soveraign, upon the like injuries done, or feared, to make warre
upon the Spirituall Soveraign; which I beleeve is more than Cardinall
Bellarmine would have inferred from his own proposition.

But Spirituall Common-wealth there is none in this world: for it is the
same thing with the Kingdome of Christ; which he himselfe saith, is not
of this world; but shall be in the next world, at the Resurrection, when
they that have lived justly, and beleeved that he was the Christ, shall
(though they died Naturall bodies) rise Spirituall bodies; and then it
is, that our Saviour shall judge the world, and conquer his Adversaries,
and make a Spirituall Common-wealth. In the mean time, seeing there are
no men on earth, whose bodies are Spirituall; there can be no Spirituall
Common-wealth amongst men that are yet in the flesh; unlesse wee call
Preachers, that have Commission to Teach, and prepare men for
their reception into the Kingdome of Christ at the Resurrection, a
Common-wealth; which I have proved to bee none.

The third Argument is this; "It is not lawfull for Christians to
tolerate an Infidel, or Haereticall King, in case he endeavour to draw
them to his Haeresie, or Infidelity. But to judge whether a King draw
his subjects to Haeresie, or not, belongeth to the Pope. Therefore hath
the Pope Right, to determine whether the Prince be to be deposed, or not
deposed."

To this I answer, that both these assertions are false. For Christians,
(or men of what Religion soever,) if they tolerate not their King,
whatsoever law hee maketh, though it bee concerning Religion, doe
violate their faith, contrary to the Divine Law, both Naturall and
Positive: Nor is there any Judge of Haeresie amongst Subjects, but
their own Civill Soveraign; for "Haeresie is nothing else, but a private
opinion, obstinately maintained, contrary to the opinion which the
Publique Person (that is to say, the Representant of the Common-wealth)
hath commanded to bee taught." By which it is manifest, that an
opinion publiquely appointed to bee taught, cannot be Haeresie; nor the
Soveraign Princes that authorize them, Haeretiques. For Haeretiques are
none but private men, that stubbornly defend some Doctrine, prohibited
by their lawful Soveraigns.

But to prove that Christians are not to tolerate Infidell, or
Haereticall Kings, he alledgeth a place in Deut. 17. where God
forbiddeth the Jews, when they shall set a King over themselves, to
choose a stranger; And from thence inferreth, that it is unlawfull for
a Christian, to choose a King, that is not a Christian. And 'tis true,
that he that is a Christian, that is, hee that hath already obliged
himself to receive our Saviour when he shall come, for his King, shal
tempt God too much in choosing for King in this world, one that hee
knoweth will endeavour, both by terrour, and perswasion to make him
violate his faith. But, it is (saith hee) the same danger, to choose one
that is not a Christian, for King, and not to depose him, when hee
is chosen. To this I say, the question is not of the danger of not
deposing; but of the Justice of deposing him. To choose him, may in some
cases bee unjust; but to depose him, when he is chosen, is in no case
Just. For it is alwaies violation of faith, and consequently against the
Law of Nature, which is the eternal Law of God. Nor doe wee read, that
any such Doctrine was accounted Christian in the time of the Apostles;
nor in the time of the Romane Emperours, till the Popes had the Civill
Soveraignty of Rome. But to this he hath replyed, that the Christians of
old, deposed not Nero, nor Diocletian, nor Julian, nor Valens an Arrian,
for this cause onely, that they wanted Temporall forces. Perhaps so. But
did our Saviour, who for calling for, might have had twelve Legions
of immortall, invulnerable Angels to assist him, want forces to depose
Caesar, or at least Pilate, that unjustly, without finding fault in him,
delivered him to the Jews to bee crucified? Or if the Apostles wanted
Temporall forces to depose Nero, was it therefore necessary for them in
their Epistles to the new made Christians, to teach them, (as they did)
to obey the Powers constituted over them, (whereof Nero in that time was
one,) and that they ought to obey them, not for fear of their wrath,
but for conscience sake? Shall we say they did not onely obey, but also
teach what they meant not, for want of strength? It is not therefore
for want of strength, but for conscience sake, that Christians are to
tolerate their Heathen Princes, or Princes (for I cannot call any one
whose Doctrine is the Publique Doctrine, an Haeretique) that authorize
the teaching of an Errour. And whereas for the Temporall Power of the
Pope, he alledgeth further, that St. Paul (1 Cor. 6.) appointed Judges
under the Heathen Princes of those times, such as were not ordained by
those Princes; it is not true. For St. Paul does but advise them,
to take some of their Brethren to compound their differences, as
Arbitrators, rather than to goe to law one with another before the
Heathen Judges; which is a wholsome Precept, and full of Charity, fit
to bee practised also in the Best Christian Common-wealths. And for
the danger that may arise to Religion, by the Subjects tolerating of an
Heathen, or an Erring Prince, it is a point, of which a Subject is no
competent Judge; or if hee bee, the Popes Temporall Subjects may judge
also of the Popes Doctrine. For every Christian Prince, as I have
formerly proved, is no lesse Supreme Pastor of his own Subjects, than
the Pope of his.

The fourth Argument, is taken from the Baptisme of Kings; wherein, that
they may be made Christians they submit their Scepters to Christ; and
promise to keep, and defend the Christian Faith. This is true; for
Christian Kings are no more but Christs Subjects: but they may, for all
that, bee the Popes Fellowes; for they are Supreme Pastors of their own
Subjects; and the Pope is no more but King, and Pastor, even in Rome it
selfe.

The fifth Argument, is drawn from the words spoken by our Saviour, Feed
My Sheep; by which was give all Power necessary for a Pastor; as the
Power to chase away Wolves, such as are Haeretiques; the Power to shut
up Rammes, if they be mad, or push at the other Sheep with their Hornes,
such as are Evill (though Christian) Kings; and Power to give the Flock
convenient food: From whence hee inferreth, that St. Peter had these
three Powers given him by Christ. To which I answer, that the last of
these Powers, is no more than the Power, or rather Command to Teach.
For the first, which is to chase away Wolves, that is, Haeretiques, the
place hee quoteth is (Matth. 7.15.) "Beware of false Prophets which
come to you in Sheeps clothing, but inwardly are ravening Wolves."
But neither are Haeretiques false Prophets, or at all Prophets: nor
(admitting Haeretiques for the Wolves there meant,) were the Apostles
commanded to kill them, or if they were Kings, to depose them; but to
beware of, fly, and avoid them: nor was it to St. Peter, nor to any of
the Apostles, but to the multitude of the Jews that followed him into
the mountain, men for the most part not yet converted, that hee gave
this Counsell, to Beware of false Prophets: which therefore if it
conferre a Power of chasing away Kings, was given, not onely to private
men; but to men that were not at all Christians. And as to the Power
of Separating, and Shutting up of furious Rammes, (by which hee meaneth
Christian Kings that refuse to submit themselves to the Roman Pastor,)
our Saviour refused to take upon him that Power in this world himself,
but advised to let the Corn and Tares grow up together till the day of
Judgment: much lesse did hee give it to St. Peter, or can S. Peter give
it to the Popes. St. Peter, and all other Pastors, are bidden to esteem
those Christians that disobey the Church, that is, (that disobey the
Christian Soveraigne) as Heathen men, and as Publicans. Seeing then men
challenge to the Pope no authority over Heathen Princes, they ought to
challenge none over those that are to bee esteemed as Heathen.

But from the Power to Teach onely, hee inferreth also a Coercive Power
in the Pope, over Kings. The Pastor (saith he) must give his flock
convenient food: Therefore the Pope may, and ought to compell Kings to
doe their duty. Out of which it followeth, that the Pope, as Pastor of
Christian men, is King of Kings: which all Christian Kings ought indeed
either to Confesse, or else they ought to take upon themselves the
Supreme Pastorall Charge, every one in his own Dominion.

His sixth, and last Argument, is from Examples. To which I answer,
first, that Examples prove nothing; Secondly, that the Examples he
alledgeth make not so much as a probability of Right. The fact of
Jehoiada, in Killing Athaliah (2 Kings 11.) was either by the Authority
of King Joash, or it was a horrible Crime in the High Priest, which
(ever after the election of King Saul) was a mere Subject. The fact of
St. Ambrose, in Excommunicating Theodosius the Emperour, (if it were
true hee did so,) was a Capitall Crime. And for the Popes, Gregory 1.
Greg. 2. Zachary, and Leo 3. their Judgments are void, as given in their
own Cause; and the Acts done by them conformably to this Doctrine, are
the greatest Crimes (especially that of Zachary) that are incident to
Humane Nature. And thus much of Power Ecclesiasticall; wherein I had
been more briefe, forbearing to examine these Arguments of Bellarmine,
if they had been his, as a Private man, and not as the Champion of the
Papacy, against all other Christian Princes, and States.



CHAPTER XLIII. OF WHAT IS NECESSARY FOR A MANS RECEPTION INTO THE
KINGDOME OF HEAVEN.




The Difficulty Of Obeying God And Man Both At Once

The most frequent praetext of Sedition, and Civill Warre, in Christian
Common-wealths hath a long time proceeded from a difficulty, not yet
sufficiently resolved, of obeying at once, both God, and Man, then
when their Commandements are one contrary to the other. It is manifest
enough, that when a man receiveth two contrary Commands, and knows that
one of them is Gods, he ought to obey that, and not the other, though
it be the command even of his lawfull Soveraign (whether a Monarch, or
a Soveraign Assembly,) or the command of his Father. The difficulty
therefore consisteth in this, that men when they are commanded in the
name of God, know not in divers Cases, whether the command be from God,
or whether he that commandeth, doe but abuse Gods name for some private
ends of his own. For as there ware in the Church of the Jews, many false
Prophets, that sought reputation with the people, by feigned Dreams, and
Visions; so there have been in all times in the Church of Christ, false
Teachers, that seek reputation with the people, by phantasticall and
false Doctrines; and by such reputation (as is the nature of Ambition,)
to govern them for their private benefit.




Is None To Them That Distinguish Between What Is, And What Is Not

Necessary To Salvation

But this difficulty of obeying both God, and the Civill Soveraign on
earth, to those that can distinguish between what is Necessary, and what
is not Necessary for their Reception into the Kingdome of God, is of no
moment. For if the command of the Civill Soveraign bee such, as that it
may be obeyed, without the forfeiture of life Eternall; not to obey it
is unjust; and the precept of the Apostle takes place; "Servants obey
your Masters in all things;" and, "Children obey your Parents in all
things;" and the precept of our Saviour, "The Scribes and Pharisees sit
in Moses Chaire, All therefore they shall say, that observe, and doe."
But if the command be such, as cannot be obeyed, without being damned
to Eternall Death, then it were madnesse to obey it, and the Counsell
of our Saviour takes place, (Mat. 10. 28.) "Fear not those that kill the
body, but cannot kill the soule." All men therefore that would avoid,
both the punishments that are to be in this world inflicted, for
disobedience to their earthly Soveraign, and those that shall be
inflicted in the world to come for disobedience to God, have need be
taught to distinguish well between what is, and what is not Necessary to
Eternall Salvation.




All That Is Necessary To Salvation Is Contained In Faith And Obedience

All that is NECESSARY to Salvation, is contained in two Vertues, Faith
in Christ, and Obedience to Laws. The latter of these, if it were
perfect, were enough to us. But because wee are all guilty of
disobedience to Gods Law, not onely originally in Adam, but also
actually by our own transgressions, there is required at our hands now,
not onely Obedience for the rest of our time, but also a Remission of
sins for the time past; which Remission is the reward of our Faith
in Christ. That nothing else is Necessarily required to Salvation, is
manifest from this, that the Kingdome of Heaven, is shut to none but
to Sinners; that is to say, to the disobedient, or transgressors of the
Law; nor to them, in case they Repent, and Beleeve all the Articles of
Christian Faith, Necessary to Salvation.




What Obedience Is Necessary;

The Obedience required at our hands by God, that accepteth in all our
actions the Will for the Deed, is a serious Endeavour to Obey him;
and is called also by all such names as signifie that Endeavour. And
therefore Obedience, is sometimes called by the names of Charity, and
Love, because they imply a Will to Obey; and our Saviour himself maketh
our Love to God, and to one another, a Fulfilling of the whole Law: and
sometimes by the name of Righteousnesse; for Righteousnesse is but the
will to give to every one his owne, that is to say, the will to obey
the Laws: and sometimes by the name of Repentance; because to Repent,
implyeth a turning away from sinne, which is the same, with the return
of the will to Obedience. Whosoever therefore unfeignedly desireth
to fulfill the Commandements of God, or repenteth him truely of his
transgressions, or that loveth God with all his heart, and his neighbor
as himself, hath all the Obedience Necessary to his Reception into the
Kingdome of God: For if God should require perfect Innocence, there
could no flesh be saved.




And To What Laws

But what Commandements are those that God hath given us? Are all
those Laws which were given to the Jews by the hand of Moses, the
Commandements of God? If they bee, why are not Christians taught to obey
them? If they be not, what others are so, besides the Law of Nature? For
our Saviour Christ hath not given us new Laws, but Counsell to observe
those wee are subject to; that is to say, the Laws of Nature, and the
Laws of our severall Soveraigns: Nor did he make any new Law to the Jews
in his Sermon on the Mount, but onely expounded the Laws of Moses, to
which they were subject before. The Laws of God therefore are none
but the Laws of Nature, whereof the principall is, that we should
not violate our Faith, that is, a commandement to obey our Civill
Soveraigns, which wee constituted over us, by mutuall pact one with
another. And this Law of God, that commandeth Obedience to the Law
Civill, commandeth by consequence Obedience to all the Precepts of the
Bible, which (as I have proved in the precedent Chapter) is there onely
Law, where the Civill Soveraign hath made it so; and in other places but
Counsell; which a man at his own perill, may without injustice refuse to
obey.




In The Faith Of A Christian, Who Is The Person Beleeved

Knowing now what is the Obedience Necessary to Salvation, and to whom
it is due; we are to consider next concerning Faith, whom, and why we
beleeve; and what are the Articles, or Points necessarily to be beleeved
by them that shall be saved. And first, for the Person whom we beleeve,
because it is impossible to beleeve any Person, before we know what he
saith, it is necessary he be one that wee have heard speak. The Person
therefore, whom Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and the Prophets beleeved,
was God himself, that spake unto them supernaturally: And the Person,
whom the Apostles and Disciples that conversed with Christ beleeved, was
our Saviour himself. But of them, to whom neither God the Father, nor
our Saviour ever spake, it cannot be said, that the Person whom they
beleeved, was God. They beleeved the Apostles, and after them the
Pastors and Doctors of the Church, that recommended to their faith the
History of the Old and New Testament: so that the Faith of Christians
ever since our Saviours time, hath had for foundation, first, the
reputation of their Pastors, and afterward, the authority of those that
made the Old and New Testament to be received for the Rule of Faith;
which none could do but Christian Soveraignes; who are therefore the
Supreme Pastors, and the onely Persons, whom Christians now hear speak
from God; except such as God speaketh to, in these days supernaturally.
But because there be many false Prophets "gone out into the world,"
other men are to examine such Spirits (as St. John advised us, 1
Epistle, Chap. 4. ver.1.) "whether they be of God, or not." And
therefore, seeing the Examination of Doctrines belongeth to the Supreme
Pastor, the Person which all they that have no speciall revelation are
to beleeve, is (in every Common-wealth) the Supreme Pastor, that is to
say, the Civill Soveraigne.




The Causes Of Christian Faith

The causes why men beleeve any Christian Doctrine, are various; For
Faith is the gift of God; and he worketh it in each severall man, by
such wayes, as it seemeth good unto himself. The most ordinary immediate
cause of our beleef, concerning any point of Christian Faith, is, that
wee beleeve the Bible to be the Word of God. But why wee beleeve the
Bible to be the Word of God, is much disputed, as all questions must
needs bee, that are not well stated. For they make not the question
to be, "Why we Beleeve it," but "How wee Know it;" as if Beleeving and
Knowing were all one. And thence while one side ground their Knowledge
upon the Infallibility of the Church, and the other side, on the
Testimony of the Private Spirit, neither side concludeth what it
pretends. For how shall a man know the Infallibility of the Church, but
by knowing first the Infallibility of the Scripture? Or how shall a man
know his own Private spirit to be other than a beleef, grounded upon the
Authority, and Arguments of his Teachers; or upon a Presumption of his
own Gifts? Besides, there is nothing in the Scripture, from which can be
inferred the Infallibility of the Church; much lesse, of any particular
Church; and least of all, the Infallibility of any particular man.




Faith Comes By Hearing

It is manifest, therefore, that Christian men doe not know, but onely
beleeve the Scripture to be the Word of God; and that the means of
making them beleeve which God is pleased to afford men ordinarily, is
according to the way of Nature, that is to say, from their Teachers.
It is the Doctrine of St. Paul concerning Christian Faith in generall,
(Rom. 10.17.) "Faith cometh by Hearing," that is, by Hearing our lawfull
Pastors. He saith also (ver. 14,15. of the same Chapter) "How shall
they beleeve in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear
without a Preacher? and how shall they Preach, except they be sent?"
Whereby it is evident, that the ordinary cause of beleeving that the
Scriptures are the Word of God, is the same with the cause of the
beleeving of all other Articles of our Faith, namely, the Hearing of
those that are by the Law allowed and appointed to Teach us, as our
Parents in their Houses, and our Pastors in the Churches: Which also
is made more manifest by experience. For what other cause can there bee
assigned, why in Christian Common-wealths all men either beleeve, or
at least professe the Scripture to bee the Word of God, and in other
Common-wealths scarce any; but that in Christian Common-wealths they
are taught it from their infancy; and in other places they are taught
otherwise?

But if Teaching be the cause of Faith, why doe not all beleeve? It is
certain therefore that Faith is the gift of God, and hee giveth it to
whom he will. Neverthelesse, because of them to whom he giveth it, he
giveth it by the means of Teachers, the immediate cause of Faith is
Hearing. In a School where many are taught, and some profit, others
profit not, the cause of learning in them that profit, is the Master;
yet it cannot be thence inferred, that learning is not the gift of God.
All good things proceed from God; yet cannot all that have them, say
they are Inspired; for that implies a gift supernaturall, and the
immediate hand of God; which he that pretends to, pretends to be a
Prophet, and is subject to the examination of the Church.

But whether men Know, or Beleeve, or Grant the Scriptures to be the Word
of God; if out of such places of them, as are without obscurity, I
shall shew what Articles of Faith are necessary, and onely necessary for
Salvation, those men must needs Know, Beleeve, or Grant the same.

The Onely Necessary Article Of Christian Faith, The (Unum Necessarium)
Onely Article of Faith, which the Scripture maketh simply Necessary to
Salvation, is this, that JESUS IS THE CHRIST. By the name of Christ, is
understood the King, which God had before promised by the Prophets of
the Old Testament, to send into the world, to reign (over the Jews,
and over such of other nations as should beleeve in him) under himself
eternally; and to give them that eternall life, which was lost by the
sin of Adam. Which when I have proved out of Scripture, I will further
shew when, and in what sense some other Articles may bee also called
Necessary.




Proved From The Scope Of The Evangelists

For Proof that the Beleef of this Article, Jesus Is The Christ, is all
the Faith required to Salvation, my first Argument shall bee from the
Scope of the Evangelists; which was by the description of the life of
our Saviour, to establish that one Article, Jesus Is The Christ. The
summe of St. Matthews Gospell is this, That Jesus was of the stock of
David; Born of a Virgin; which are the Marks of the true Christ: That
the Magi came to worship him as King of the Jews: That Herod for the
same cause sought to kill him: That John Baptist proclaimed him: That
he preached by himselfe, and his Apostles that he was that King; That
he taught the Law, not as a Scribe, but as a man of Authority: That he
cured diseases by his Word onely, and did many other Miracles, which
were foretold the Christ should doe: That he was saluted King when he
entered into Jerusalem: That he fore-warned them to beware of all others
that should pretend to be Christ: That he was taken, accused, and put
to death, for saying, hee was King: That the cause of his condemnation
written on the Crosse, was JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWES.
All which tend to no other end than this, that men should beleeve,
that Jesus Is The Christ. Such therefore was the Scope of St. Matthews
Gospel. But the Scope of all the Evangelists (as may appear by reading
them) was the same. Therefore the Scope of the whole Gospell, was the
establishing of that onely Article. And St. John expressely makes it his
conclusion, John 20. 31. "These things are written, that you may know
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God."




From The Sermons Of The Apostles:

My second Argument is taken from the Subject of the Sermons of the
Apostles, both whilest our Saviour lived on earth, and after his
Ascension. The Apostles in our Saviours time were sent, Luke 9.2. to
Preach the Kingdome of God: For neither there, nor Mat. 10.7. giveth he
any Commission to them, other than this, "As ye go, Preach, saying, the
Kingdome of Heaven is at hand;" that is, that Jesus is the Messiah, the
Christ, the King which was to come. That their Preaching also after his
ascension was the same, is manifest out of Acts 17.6. "They drew (saith
St. Luke) Jason and certain Brethren unto the Rulers of the City,
crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither
also, whom Jason hath received. And these all do contrary to the Decrees
of Caesar, saying, that there is another King, one Jesus:" And out of
the 2.&3. verses of the same Chapter, where it is said, that St. Paul
"as his manner was, went in unto them; and three Sabbath dayes reasoned
with them out of the Scriptures; opening and alledging, that Christ must
needs have suffered, and risen againe from the dead, and that this Jesus
(whom he preached) is Christ."




From The Easinesse Of The Doctrine:

The third Argument is, from those places of Scripture, by which all the
Faith required to Salvation is declared to be Easie. For if an inward
assent of the mind to all the Doctrines concerning Christian Faith now
taught, (whereof the greatest part are disputed,) were necessary to
Salvation, there would be nothing in the world so hard, as to be a
Christian. The Thief upon the Crosse though repenting, could not have
been saved for saying, "Lord remember me when thou commest into thy
Kingdome;" by which he testified no beleefe of any other Article, but
this, That Jesus Was The King. Nor could it bee said (as it is Mat.
11. 30.) that "Christs yoke is Easy, and his burthen Light:" Nor that
"Little Children beleeve in him," as it is Matth. 18.6. Nor could St.
Paul have said (1 Cor. 1. 21.) "It pleased God by the Foolishnesse of
preaching, to save them that beleeve:" Nor could St. Paul himself have
been saved, much lesse have been so great a Doctor of the Church
so suddenly, that never perhaps thought of Transsubstantiation, nor
Purgatory, nor many other Articles now obtruded.




From Formall And Cleer Texts

The fourth Argument is taken from places expresse, and such as receive
no controversie of Interpretation; as first, John 5. 39. "Search the
Scriptures, for in them yee thinke yee have eternall life; and they are
they that testifie of mee." Our Saviour here speaketh of the Scriptures
onely of the Old Testament; for the Jews at that time could not search
the Scriptures of the New Testament, which were not written. But the Old
Testament hath nothing of Christ, but the Markes by which men might
know him when hee came; as that he should descend from David, be born at
Bethlehem, and of a Virgin; doe great Miracles, and the like. Therefore
to beleeve that this Jesus was He, was sufficient to eternall life: but
more than sufficient is not Necessary; and consequently no other Article
is required. Again, (John 11. 26.) "Whosoever liveth and beleeveth in
mee, shall not die eternally," Therefore to beleeve in Christ, is faith
sufficient to eternall life; and consequently no more faith than that
is Necessary, But to beleeve in Jesus, and to beleeve that Jesus is the
Christ, is all one, as appeareth in the verses immediately following.
For when our Saviour (verse 26.) had said to Martha, "Beleevest thou
this?" she answereth (verse 27.) "Yea Lord, I beleeve that thou art the
Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world;" Therefore
this Article alone is faith sufficient to life eternall; and more than
sufficient is not Necessary. Thirdly, John 20. 31. "These things are
written that yee might beleeve, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God, and that beleeving yee might have life through his name." There, to
beleeve that Jesus Is The Christ, is faith sufficient to the obtaining
of life; and therefore no other Article is Necessary. Fourthly, 1 John
4. 2. "Every Spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh, is of God." And 1 Joh. 5. 1. "whosoever beleeveth that Jesus is
the Christ, is born of God." And verse 5. "Who is hee that overcommeth
the world, but he that beleeveth that Jesus is the Son of God?" Fiftly,
Act. 8. ver. 36, 37. "See (saith the Eunuch) here is water, what doth
hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou beleevest with all
thy heart thou mayst. And hee answered and said, I beleeve that Jesus
Christ is the Son of God." Therefore this Article beleeved, Jesus Is The
Christ, is sufficient to Baptisme, that is to say, to our Reception into
the Kingdome of God, and by consequence, onely Necessary. And generally
in all places where our Saviour saith to any man, "Thy faith hath saved
thee," the cause he saith it, is some Confession, which directly, or by
consequence, implyeth a beleef, that Jesus Is The Christ.




From That It Is The Foundation Of All Other Articles

The last Argument is from the places, where this Article is made the
Foundation of Faith: For he that holdeth the Foundation shall bee saved.
Which places are first, Mat. 24.23. "If any man shall say unto you, Loe,
here is Christ, or there, beleeve it not, for there shall arise false
Christs, and false Prophets, and shall shew great signes and wonders,
&c." Here wee see, this Article Jesus Is The Christ, must bee held,
though hee that shall teach the contrary should doe great miracles. The
second place is Gal. 1. 8. "Though we, or an Angell from Heaven preach
any other Gospell unto you, than that wee have preached unto you, let
him bee accursed." But the Gospell which Paul, and the other Apostles,
preached, was onely this Article, that Jesus Is The Christ; Therefore
for the Beleef of this Article, we are to reject the Authority of
an Angell from heaven; much more of any mortall man, if he teach the
contrary. This is therefore the Fundamentall Article of Christian Faith.
A third place is, 1 Joh. 4.1. "Beloved, beleeve not every spirit. Hereby
yee shall know the Spirit of God; every spirit that confesseth that
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God." By which it is evident,
that this Article, is the measure, and rule, by which to estimate,
and examine all other Articles; and is therefore onely Fundamentall.
A fourth is, Matt. 16.18. where after St. Peter had professed this
Article, saying to our Saviour, "Thou art Christ the Son of the living
God," Our Saviour answered, "Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I will
build my Church:" from whence I inferre, that this Article is that,
on which all other Doctrines of the Church are built, as on their
Foundation. A fift is (1 Cor. 3. ver. 11, 12, &c.) "Other Foundation can
no man lay, than that which is laid, Jesus is the Christ. Now if any man
build upon this Foundation, Gold, Silver, pretious Stones, Wood, Hay,
Stubble; Every mans work shall be made manifest; For the Day shall
declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try
every mans work, of what sort it is. If any mans work abide, which he
hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward: If any mans work shall
bee burnt, he shall suffer losse; but he himself shall be saved, yet so
as by fire." Which words, being partly plain and easie to understand,
and partly allegoricall and difficult; out of that which is plain, may
be inferred, that Pastors that teach this Foundation, that Jesus Is The
Christ, though they draw from it false consequences, (which all men are
sometimes subject to,) they may neverthelesse bee saved; much more that
they may bee saved, who being no Pastors, but Hearers, beleeve that
which is by their lawfull Pastors taught them. Therefore the beleef of
this Article is sufficient; and by consequence there is no other Article
of Faith Necessarily required to Salvation.

Now for the part which is Allegoricall, as "That the fire shall try
every mans work," and that "They shall be saved, but so as by fire,"
or "through fire," (for the originall is dia puros,) it maketh nothing
against this conclusion which I have drawn from the other words, that
are plain. Neverthelesse, because upon this place there hath been an
argument taken, to prove the fire of Purgatory, I will also here offer
you my conjecture concerning the meaning of this triall of Doctrines,
and saving of men as by Fire. The Apostle here seemeth to allude to
the words of the Prophet Zachary, Ch. 13. 8,9. who speaking of the
Restauration of the Kingdome of God, saith thus, "Two parts therein
shall be cut off, and die, but the third shall be left therein; and
I will bring the third part through the Fire, and will refine them as
Silver is refined, and will try them as Gold is tryed; they shall call
on the name of the Lord, and I will hear them." The day of Judgment, is
the day of the Restauration of the Kingdome of God; and at that day
it is, that St. Peter tells us (2 Pet. 3. v.7, 10, 12.) shall be the
Conflagration of the world, wherein the wicked shall perish; but the
remnant which God will save, shall passe through that Fire, unhurt,
and be therein (as Silver and Gold are refined by the fire from their
drosse) tryed, and refined from their Idolatry, and be made to call upon
the name of the true God. Alluding whereto St. Paul here saith, that The
Day (that is, the Day of Judgment, the Great Day of our Saviours comming
to restore the Kingdome of God in Israel) shall try every mans doctrine,
by Judging, which are Gold, Silver, Pretious Stones, Wood, Hay, Stubble;
And then they that have built false Consequences on the true Foundation,
shall see their Doctrines condemned; neverthelesse they themselves
shall be saved, and passe unhurt through this universall Fire, and live
eternally, to call upon the name of the true and onely God. In which
sense there is nothing that accordeth not with the rest of Holy
Scripture, or any glimpse of the fire of Purgatory.




In What Sense Other Articles May Be Called Necessary

But a man may here aske, whether it bee not as necessary to Salvation,
to beleeve, that God is Omnipotent; Creator of the world; that Jesus
Christ is risen; and that all men else shall rise again from the dead
at the last day; as to beleeve, that Jesus Is The Christ. To which I
answer, they are; and so are many more Articles: but they are such, as
are contained in this one, and may be deduced from it, with more, or
lesse difficulty. For who is there that does not see, that they
who beleeve Jesus to be the Son of the God of Israel, and that the
Israelites had for God the Omnipotent Creator of all things, doe therein
also beleeve, that God is the Omnipotent Creator of all things? Or how
can a man beleeve, that Jesus is the King that shall reign eternally,
unlesse hee beleeve him also risen again from the dead? For a dead man
cannot exercise the Office of a King. In summe, he that holdeth this
Foundation, Jesus Is The Christ, holdeth Expressely all that hee
seeth rightly deduced from it, and Implicitely all that is consequent
thereunto, though he have not skill enough to discern the consequence.
And therefore it holdeth still good, that the beleef of this one Article
is sufficient faith to obtaine remission of sinnes to the Penitent, and
consequently to bring them into the Kingdome of Heaven.




That Faith, And Obedience Are Both Of Them Necessary To Salvation

Now that I have shewn, that all the Obedience required to Salvation,
consisteth in the will to obey the Law of God, that is to say, in
Repentance; and all the Faith required to the same, is comprehended in
the beleef of this Article, Jesus Is The Christ; I will further alledge
those places of the Gospell, that prove, that all that is Necessary to
Salvation is contained in both these joined together. The men to whom
St. Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, next after the Ascension
of our Saviour, asked him, and the rest of the Apostles, saying, (Act.
2.37.) "Men and Brethren what shall we doe?" to whom St. Peter answered
(in the next verse) "Repent, and be Baptized every one of you, for the
remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."
Therefore Repentance, and Baptisme, that is, beleeving that Jesus Is The
Christ, is all that is Necessary to Salvation. Again, our Saviour being
asked by a certain Ruler, (Luke 18.18.) "What shall I doe to inherit
eternall life?" Answered (verse 20) "Thou knowest the Commandements,
Doe not commit Adultery, Doe not Kill, Doe not Steal, Doe not bear false
witnesse, Honor thy Father, and thy Mother;" which when he said he had
observed, our Saviour added, "Sell all thou hast, give it to the Poor,
and come and follow me:" which was as much as to say, Relye on me that
am the King: Therefore to fulfill the Law, and to beleeve that Jesus
is the King, is all that is required to bring a man to eternall life.
Thirdly, St. Paul saith (Rom. 1.17.) "The Just shall live by Faith;" not
every one, but the Just; therefore Faith and Justice (that is, the Will
To Be Just, or Repentance) are all that is Necessary to life eternall.
And (Mark 1.15.) our Saviour preached, saying, "The time is fulfilled,
and the Kingdom of God is at hand, Repent and Beleeve the Evangile,"
that is, the Good news that the Christ was come. Therefore to Repent,
and to Beleeve that Jesus is the Christ, is all that is required to
Salvation.




What Each Of Them Contributes Thereunto

Seeing then it is Necessary that Faith, and Obedience (implyed in the
word Repentance) do both concurre to our Salvation; the question
by which of the two we are Justified, is impertinently disputed.
Neverthelesse, it will not be impertinent, to make manifest in what
manner each of them contributes thereunto; and in what sense it is said,
that we are to be Justified by the one, and by the other. And first,
if by Righteousnesse be understood the Justice of the Works themselves,
there is no man that can be saved; for there is none that hath not
transgressed the Law of God. And therefore when wee are said to be
Justified by Works, it is to be understood of the Will, which God doth
alwaies accept for the Work it selfe, as well in good, as in evill men.
And in this sense onely it is, that a man is called Just, or Unjust; and
that his Justice Justifies him, that is, gives him the title, in Gods
acceptation, of Just; and renders him capable of Living By His Faith,
which before he was not. So that Justice Justifies in that that sense,
in which to Justifie, is the same that to Denominate A Man Just; and not
in the signification of discharging the Law; whereby the punishment of
his sins should be unjust.

But a man is then also said to be Justified, when his Plea, though in
it selfe unsufficient, is accepted; as when we Plead our Will, our
Endeavour to fulfill the Law, and Repent us of our failings, and God
accepteth it for the Performance it selfe: And because God accepteth not
the Will for the Deed, but onely in the Faithfull; it is therefore Faith
that makes good our Plea; and in this sense it is, that Faith onely
Justifies: So that Faith and Obedience are both Necessary to Salvation;
yet in severall senses each of them is said to Justifie.




Obedience To God And To The Civill Soveraign Not Inconsistent

Whether Christian, Having thus shewn what is Necessary to Salvation; it
is not hard to reconcile our Obedience to the Civill Soveraign; who is
either Christian, or Infidel. If he bee a Christian, he alloweth the
beleefe of this Article, that Jesus Is The Christ; and of all the
Articles that are contained in, or are evident consequence deduced from
it: which is all the Faith Necessary to Salvation. And because he is a
Soveraign, he requireth Obedience to all his owne, that is, to all the
Civill Laws; in which also are contained all the Laws of Nature, that
is, all the Laws of God: for besides the Laws of Nature, and the Laws of
the Church, which are part of the Civill Law, (for the Church that
can make Laws is the Common-wealth,) there bee no other Laws Divine.
Whosoever therefore obeyeth his Christian Soveraign, is not thereby
hindred, neither from beleeving, nor from obeying God. But suppose that
a Christian King should from this Foundation, Jesus Is The Christ, draw
some false consequences, that is to say, make some superstructions of
Hay, or Stubble, and command the teaching of the same; yet seeing St.
Paul says, he shal be saved; much more shall he be saved, that teacheth
them by his command; and much more yet, he that teaches not, but onely
beleeves his lawfull Teacher. And in case a Subject be forbidden by
the Civill Soveraign to professe some of those his opinions, upon
what grounds can he disobey? Christian Kings may erre in deducing a
Consequence, but who shall Judge? Shall a private man Judge, when the
question is of his own obedience? or shall any man Judg but he that is
appointed thereto by the Church, that is, by the Civill Soveraign that
representeth it? or if the Pope, or an Apostle Judge, may he not erre
in deducing of a consequence? did not one of the two, St. Peter, or St.
Paul erre in a superstructure, when St. Paul withstood St. Peter to his
face? There can therefore be no contradiction between the Laws of God,
and the Laws of a Christian Common-wealth.




Or Infidel

And when the Civill Soveraign is an Infidel, every one of his own
Subjects that resisteth him, sinneth against the Laws of God (for such
as are the Laws of Nature,) and rejecteth the counsell of the Apostles,
that admonisheth all Christians to obey their Princes, and all Children
and Servants to obey they Parents, and Masters, in all things. And for
their Faith, it is internall, and invisible; They have the licence that
Naaman had, and need not put themselves into danger for it. But if they
do, they ought to expect their reward in Heaven, and not complain of
their Lawfull Soveraign; much lesse make warre upon him. For he that
is not glad of any just occasion of Martyrdome, has not the faith be
professeth, but pretends it onely, to set some colour upon his own
contumacy. But what Infidel King is so unreasonable, as knowing he has
a Subject, that waiteth for the second comming of Christ, after the
present world shall be burnt, and intendeth then to obey him (which is
the intent of beleeving that Jesus is the Christ,) and in the mean time
thinketh himself bound to obey the Laws of that Infidel King, (which
all Christians are obliged in conscience to doe,) to put to death, or to
persecute such a Subject?

And thus much shall suffice, concerning the Kingdome of God, and Policy
Ecclesiasticall. Wherein I pretend not to advance any Position of
my own, but onely to shew what are the Consequences that seem to me
deducible from the Principles of Christian Politiques, (which are the
holy Scriptures,) in confirmation of the Power of Civill Soveraigns, and
the Duty of their Subjects. And in the allegation of Scripture, I have
endeavoured to avoid such Texts as are of obscure, or controverted
Interpretation; and to alledge none, but is such sense as is most plain,
and agreeable to the harmony and scope of the whole Bible; which was
written for the re-establishment of the Kingdome of God in Christ. For
it is not the bare Words, but the Scope of the writer that giveth the
true light, by which any writing is to bee interpreted; and they that
insist upon single Texts, without considering the main Designe, can
derive no thing from them cleerly; but rather by casting atomes of
Scripture, as dust before mens eyes, make every thing more obscure than
it is; an ordinary artifice of those that seek not the truth, but their
own advantage.



CHAPTER XLIV. OF SPIRITUALL DARKNESSE FROM MISINTERPRETATION OF
SCRIPTURE




The Kingdome Of Darknesse What

Besides these Soveraign Powers, Divine, and Humane, of which I have
hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another Power,
namely, (Eph. 6. 12.), that of "the Rulers of the Darknesse of this
world," (Mat. 12. 26.), "the Kingdome of Satan," and, (Mat. 9. 34.), "the
Principality of Beelzebub over Daemons," that is to say, over Phantasmes
that appear in the Air: For which cause Satan is also called (Eph. 2.
2.) "the Prince of the Power of the Air;" and (because he ruleth in the
darknesse of this world) (Joh. 16. 11.) "The Prince of this world;" And
in consequence hereunto, they who are under his Dominion, in opposition
to the faithfull (who are the Children Of The Light) are called the
Children Of Darknesse. For seeing Beelzebub is Prince of Phantasmes,
Inhabitants of his Dominion of Air and Darknesse, the Children of
Darknesse, and these Daemons, Phantasmes, or Spirits of Illusion,
signifie allegorically the same thing. This considered, the Kingdome
of Darknesse, as it is set forth in these, and other places of the
Scripture, is nothing else but a "Confederacy of Deceivers, that to
obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour by dark, and
erroneous Doctrines, to extinguish in them the Light, both of Nature,
and of the Gospell; and so to dis-prepare them for the Kingdome of God
to come."




The Church Not Yet Fully Freed Of Darknesse

As men that are utterly deprived from their Nativity, of the light
of the bodily Eye, have no Idea at all, of any such light; and no man
conceives in his imagination any greater light, than he hath at some
time, or other perceived by his outward Senses: so also is it of the
light of the Gospel, and of the light of the Understanding, that no man
can conceive there is any greater degree of it, than that which he hath
already attained unto. And from hence it comes to passe, that men
have no other means to acknowledge their owne Darknesse, but onely by
reasoning from the un-forseen mischances, that befall them in their
ways; The Darkest part of the Kingdome of Satan, is that which is
without the Church of God; that is to say, amongst them that beleeve not
in Jesus Christ. But we cannot say, that therefore the Church enjoyeth
(as the land of Goshen) all the light, which to the performance of
the work enjoined us by God, is necessary. Whence comes it, that in
Christendome there has been, almost from the time of the Apostles,
such justling of one another out of their places, both by forraign,
and Civill war? such stumbling at every little asperity of their own
fortune, and every little eminence of that of other men? and such
diversity of ways in running to the same mark, Felicity, if it be not
Night amongst us, or at least a Mist? wee are therefore yet in the Dark.




Four Causes Of Spirituall Darknesse

The Enemy has been here in the Night of our naturall Ignorance, and sown
the tares of Spirituall Errors; and that, First, by abusing, and
putting out the light of the Scriptures: For we erre, not knowing the
Scriptures. Secondly, by introducing the Daemonology of the Heathen
Poets, that is to say, their fabulous Doctrine concerning Daemons, which
are but Idols, or Phantasms of the braine, without any reall nature of
their own, distinct from humane fancy; such as are dead mens Ghosts, and
Fairies, and other matter of old Wives tales. Thirdly, by mixing with
the Scripture divers reliques of the Religion, and much of the vain and
erroneous Philosophy of the Greeks, especially of Aristotle. Fourthly,
by mingling with both these, false, or uncertain Traditions, and
fained, or uncertain History. And so we come to erre, by "giving heed
to seducing Spirits," and the Daemonology of such "as speak lies in
Hypocrisie," (or as it is in the Originall, 1 Tim. 4.1,2. "of those that
play the part of lyars") "with a seared conscience," that is, contrary
to their own knowledge. Concerning the first of these, which is the
Seducing of men by abuse of Scripture, I intend to speak briefly in this
Chapter.




Errors From Misinterpreting The Scriptures, Concerning The Kingdome

Of God

The greatest, and main abuse of Scripture, and to which almost all the
rest are either consequent, or subservient, is the wresting of it, to
prove that the Kingdome of God, mentioned so often in the Scripture, is
the present Church, or multitude of Christian men now living, or that
being dead, are to rise again at the last day: whereas the Kingdome of
God was first instituted by the Ministery of Moses, over the Jews onely;
who were therefore called his Peculiar People; and ceased afterward, in
the election of Saul, when they refused to be governed by God any more,
and demanded a King after the manner of the nations; which God himself
consented unto, as I have more at large proved before, in the 35.
Chapter. After that time, there was no other Kingdome of God in the
world, by any Pact, or otherwise, than he ever was, is, and shall be
King, of all men, and of all creatures, as governing according to his
Will, by his infinite Power. Neverthelesse, he promised by his Prophets
to restore this his Government to them again, when the time he hath in
his secret counsell appointed for it shall bee fully come, and when they
shall turn unto him by repentance, and amendment of life; and not
onely so, but he invited also the Gentiles to come in, and enjoy the
happinesse of his Reign, on the same conditions of conversion and
repentance; and hee promised also to send his Son into the world, to
expiate the sins of them all by his death, and to prepare them by his
Doctrine, to receive him at his second coming: Which second coming not
yet being, the Kingdome of God is not yet come, and wee are not now
under any other Kings by Pact, but our Civill Soveraigns; saving onely,
that Christian men are already in the Kingdome of Grace, in as much as
they have already the Promise of being received at his comming againe.




As That The Kingdome Of God Is The Present Church

Consequent to this Errour, that the present Church is Christs Kingdome,
there ought to be some one Man, or Assembly, by whose mouth our Saviour
(now in heaven) speaketh, giveth law, and which representeth his person
to all Christians, or divers Men, or divers Assemblies that doe the same
to divers parts of Christendome. This power Regal under Christ, being
challenged, universally by that Pope, and in particular Common-wealths
by Assemblies of the Pastors of the place, (when the Scripture gives it
to none but to Civill Soveraigns,) comes to be so passionately disputed,
that it putteth out the Light of Nature, and causeth so great a
Darknesse in mens understanding, that they see not who it is to whom
they have engaged their obedience.




And That The Pope Is His Vicar Generall

Consequent to this claim of the Pope to Vicar Generall of Christ in the
present Church, (supposed to be that Kingdom of his, to which we are
addressed in the Gospel,) is the Doctrine, that it is necessary for a
Christian King, to receive his Crown by a Bishop; as if it were from
that Ceremony, that he derives the clause of Dei Gratia in his title;
and that then onely he is made King by the favour of God, when he is
crowned by the authority of Gods universall Viceregent on earth; and
that every Bishop whosoever be his Soveraign, taketh at his Consecration
an oath of absolute Obedience to the Pope, Consequent to the same, is
the Doctrine of the fourth Councell of Lateran, held under Pope Innocent
the third, (Chap. 3. De Haereticis.) "That if a King at the Popes
admonition, doe not purge his Kingdome of Haeresies, and being
excommunicate for the same, doe not give satisfaction within a year,
his Subjects are absolved of the bond of their obedience." Where, by
Haeresies are understood all opinions which the Church of Rome hath
forbidden to be maintained. And by this means, as often as there is
any repugnancy between the Politicall designes of the Pope, and other
Christian Princes, as there is very often, there ariseth such a Mist
amongst their Subjects, that they know not a stranger that thrusteth
himself into the throne of their lawfull Prince, from him whom they
had themselves placed there; and in this Darknesse of mind, are made to
fight one against another, without discerning their enemies from their
friends, under the conduct of another mans ambition.




And That The Pastors Are The Clergy

From the same opinion, that the present Church is the Kingdome of God,
it proceeds that Pastours, Deacons, and all other Ministers of the
Church, take the name to themselves of the Clergy, giving to other
Christians the name of Laity, that is, simply People. For Clergy
signifies those, whose maintenance is that Revenue, which God having
reserved to himselfe during his Reigne over the Israelites, assigned
to the tribe of Levi (who were to be his publique Ministers, and had no
portion of land set them out to live on, as their brethren) to be their
inheritance. The Pope therefore, (pretending the present Church to be,
as the Realme of Israel, the Kingdome of God) challenging to himselfe
and his subordinate Ministers, the like revenue, as the Inheritance of
God, the name of Clergy was sutable to that claime. And thence it is,
that Tithes, or other tributes paid to the Levites, as Gods Right,
amongst the Israelites, have a long time been demanded, and taken of
Christians, by Ecclesiastiques, Jure Divino, that is, in Gods Right. By
which meanes, the people every where were obliged to a double tribute;
one to the State, another to the Clergy; whereof, that to the Clergy,
being the tenth of their revenue, is double to that which a King of
Athens (and esteemed a Tyrant) exacted of his subjects for the defraying
of all publique charges: For he demanded no more but the twentieth part;
and yet abundantly maintained therewith the Commonwealth. And in the
Kingdome of the Jewes, during the Sacerdotall Reigne of God, the Tithes
and Offerings were the whole Publique Revenue.

From the same mistaking of the present Church for the Kingdom of God,
came in the distinction betweene the Civill and the Canon Laws: The
civil Law being the acts of Soveraigns in their own Dominions, and
the Canon Law being the Acts of the Pope in the same Dominions. Which
Canons, though they were but Canons, that is, Rules Propounded, and but
voluntarily received by Christian Princes, till the translation of
the Empire to Charlemain; yet afterwards, as the power of the Pope
encreased, became Rules Commanded, and the Emperours themselves (to
avoyd greater mischiefes, which the people blinded might be led into)
were forced to let them passe for Laws.

From hence it is, that in all Dominions, where the Popes Ecclesiasticall
power is entirely received, Jewes, Turkes, and Gentiles, are in the
Roman Church tolerated in their Religion, as farre forth, as in the
exercise and profession thereof they offend not against the civill
power: whereas in a Christian, though a stranger, not to be of the Roman
Religion, is Capitall; because the Pope pretendeth that all Christians
are his Subjects. For otherwise it were as much against the law of
Nations, to persecute a Christian stranger, for professing the Religion
of his owne country, as an Infidell; or rather more, in as much as they
that are not against Christ, are with him.

From the same it is, that in every Christian State there are certaine
men, that are exempt, by Ecclesiasticall liberty, from the tributes, and
from the tribunals of the Civil State; for so are the secular Clergy,
besides Monks and Friars, which in many places, bear so great a
proportion to the common people, as if need were, there might be raised
out of them alone, an Army, sufficient for any warre the Church militant
should imploy them in, against their owne, or other Princes.




Error From Mistaking Consecration For Conjuration

A second generall abuse of Scripture, is the turning of Consecration
into Conjuration, or Enchantment. To Consecrate, is in Scripture, to
Offer, Give, or Dedicate, in pious and decent language and gesture, a
man, or any other thing to God, by separating of it from common use;
that is to say, to Sanctifie, or make it Gods, and to be used only by
those, whom God hath appointed to be his Publike Ministers, (as I have
already proved at large in the 35. Chapter;) and thereby to change, not
the thing Consecrated, but onely the use of it, from being Profane
and common, to be Holy, and peculiar to Gods service. But when by such
words, the nature of qualitie of the thing it selfe, is pretended to be
changed, it is not Consecration, but either an extraordinary worke of
God, or a vaine and impious Conjuration. But seeing (for the frequency
of pretending the change of Nature in their Consecrations,) it cannot
be esteemed a work extraordinary, it is no other than a Conjuration or
Incantation, whereby they would have men to beleeve an alteration of
Nature that is not, contrary to the testimony of mans Sight, and of all
the rest of his Senses. As for example, when the Priest, in stead of
Consecrating Bread and Wine to Gods peculiar service in the Sacrament of
the Lords Supper, (which is but a separation of it from the common use,
to signifie, that is, to put men in mind of their Redemption, by the
Passion of Christ, whose body was broken, and blood shed upon the Crosse
for our transgressions,) pretends, that by saying of the words of our
Saviour, "This is my Body," and "This is my Blood," the nature of Bread
is no more there, but his very Body; notwithstanding there appeared not
to the Sight, or other Sense of the Receiver, any thing that appeareth
not before the Consecration. The Egyptian Conjurers, that are said
to have turned their Rods to Serpents, and the Water into Bloud, are
thought but to have deluded the senses of the Spectators by a false shew
of things, yet are esteemed Enchanters: But what should wee have thought
of them, if there had appeared in their Rods nothing like a Serpent, and
in the Water enchanted, nothing like Bloud, nor like any thing else but
Water, but that they had faced down the King, that they were Serpents
that looked like Rods, and that it was Bloud that seemed Water? That
had been both Enchantment, and Lying. And yet in this daily act of
the Priest, they doe the very same, by turning the holy words into the
manner of a Charme, which produceth nothing now to the Sense; but they
face us down, that it hath turned the Bread into a Man; nay more, into
a God; and require men to worship it, as if it were our Saviour himself
present God and Man, and thereby to commit most grosse Idolatry. For if
it bee enough to excuse it of Idolatry, to say it is no more Bread, but
God; why should not the same excuse serve the Egyptians, in case they
had the faces to say, the Leeks, and Onyons they worshipped, were
not very Leeks, and Onyons, but a Divinity under their Species, or
likenesse. The words, "This is my Body," are aequivalent to these,
"This signifies, or represents my Body;" and it is an ordinary figure of
Speech: but to take it literally, is an abuse; nor though so taken, can
it extend any further, than to the Bread which Christ himself with his
own hands Consecrated. For hee never said, that of what Bread soever,
any Priest whatsoever, should say, "This is my Body," or, "This is
Christs Body," the same should presently be transubstantiated. Nor did
the Church of Rome ever establish this Transubstantiation, till the time
of Innocent the third; which was not above 500. years agoe, when the
Power of Popes was at the Highest, and the Darknesse of the time grown
so great, as men discerned not the Bread that was given them to eat,
especially when it was stamped with the figure of Christ upon the
Crosse, as if they would have men beleeve it were Transubstantiated, not
onely into the Body of Christ, but also into the Wood of his Crosse, and
that they did eat both together in the Sacrament.




Incantation In The Ceremonies Of Baptisme

The like incantation, in stead of Consecration, is used also in the
Sacrament of Baptisme: Where the abuse of Gods name in each severall
Person, and in the whole Trinity, with the sign of the Crosse at each
name, maketh up the Charm: As first, when they make the Holy water, the
Priest saith, "I Conjure thee, thou Creature of Water, in the name of
God the Father Almighty, and in the name of Jesus Christ his onely Son
our Lord, and in vertue of the Holy Ghost, that thou become Conjured
water, to drive away all the Powers of the Enemy, and to eradicate, and
supplant the Enemy, &c." And the same in the Benediction of the Salt
to be mingled with it; "That thou become Conjured Salt, that all
Phantasmes, and Knavery of the Devills fraud may fly and depart from the
place wherein thou art sprinkled; and every unclean Spirit bee Conjured
by Him that shall come to judge the quicke and the dead." The same in
the Benediction of the Oyle. "That all the Power of the Enemy, all the
Host of the Devill, all Assaults and Phantasmes of Satan, may be
driven away by this Creature of Oyle." And for the Infant that is to be
Baptized, he is subject to many Charms; First, at the Church dore the
Priest blows thrice in the Childs face, and sayes, "Goe out of him
unclean Spirit, and give place to the Holy Ghost the Comforter." As
if all Children, till blown on by the Priest were Daemoniaques: Again,
before his entrance into the Church, he saith as before, "I Conjure
thee, &c. to goe out, and depart from this Servant of God:" And again
the same Exorcisme is repeated once more before he be Baptized. These,
and some other Incantations, and Consecrations, in administration of the
Sacraments of Baptisme, and the Lords Supper; wherein every thing that
serveth to those holy men (except the unhallowed Spittle of the Priest)
hath some set form of Exorcisme.




In Marriage, In Visitation Of The Sick, And In Consecration Of Places

Nor are the other rites, as of Marriage, of Extreme Unction, of
Visitation of the Sick, of Consecrating Churches, and Church-yards, and
the like, exempt from Charms; in as much as there is in them the use of
Enchanted Oyle, and Water, with the abuse of the Crosse, and of the holy
word of David, "Asperges me Domine Hyssopo," as things of efficacy to
drive away Phantasmes, and Imaginery Spirits.




Errors From Mistaking Eternall Life, And Everlasting Death

Another generall Error, is from the Misinterpretation of the words
Eternall Life, Everlasting Death, and the Second Death. For though we
read plainly in Holy Scripture, that God created Adam in an estate of
Living for Ever, which was conditionall, that is to say, if he disobeyed
not his Commandement; which was not essentiall to Humane Nature, but
consequent to the vertue of the Tree of Life; whereof hee had liberty
to eat, as long as hee had not sinned; and that hee was thrust out of
Paradise after he had sinned, lest hee should eate thereof, and live for
ever; and that Christs Passion is a Discharge of sin to all that beleeve
on him; and by consequence, a restitution of Eternall Life, to all the
Faithfull, and to them onely: yet the Doctrine is now, and hath been a
long time far otherwise; namely, that every man hath Eternity of Life by
Nature, in as much as his Soul is Immortall: So that the flaming Sword
at the entrance of Paradise, though it hinder a man from coming to the
Tree of Life, hinders him not from the Immortality which God took from
him for his Sin; nor makes him to need the sacrificing of Christ, for
the recovering of the same; and consequently, not onely the faithfull
and righteous, but also the wicked, and the Heathen, shall enjoy
Eternall Life, without any Death at all; much lesse a Second, and
Everlasting Death. To salve this, it is said, that by Second, and
Everlasting Death, is meant a Second, and Everlasting Life, but in
Torments; a Figure never used, but in this very Case.

All which Doctrine is founded onely on some of the obscurer places of
the New Testament; which neverthelesse, the whole scope of the Scripture
considered, are cleer enough in a different sense, and unnecessary to
the Christian Faith. For supposing that when a man dies, there remaineth
nothing of him but his carkasse; cannot God that raised inanimated dust
and clay into a living creature by his Word, as easily raise a dead
carkasse to life again, and continue him alive for Ever, or make him
die again, by another Word? The Soule in Scripture, signifieth alwaies,
either the Life, or the Living Creature; and the Body and Soule jointly,
the Body Alive. In the fift day of the Creation, God said, Let the water
produce Reptile Animae Viventis, the creeping thing that hath in it a
Living Soule; the English translate it, "that hath Life:" And again,
God created Whales, "& omnem animam viventem;" which in the English is,
"every living Creature:" And likewise of Man, God made him of the dust
of the earth, and breathed in his face the breath of Life, "& factus est
Homo in animam viventem," that is, "and Man was made a Living Creature;"
And after Noah came out of the Arke, God saith, hee will no more smite
"omnem animam viventem," that is "every Living Creature;" And Deut.
12.23. "Eate not the Bloud, for the Bloud is the Soule;" that is
"the Life." From which places, if by Soule were meant a Substance
Incorporeall, with an existence separated from the Body, it might as
well be inferred of any other living Creature, as of Man. But that
the Souls of the Faithfull, are not of their own Nature, but by Gods
speciall Grace, to remaine in their bodies, from the Resurrection to
all Eternity, I have already I think sufficiently proved out of the
Scriptures, in the 38. Chapter. And for the places of the New Testament,
where it is said that any man shall be cast Body and Soul into Hell
fire, it is no more than Body and Life; that is to say, they shall be
cast alive into the perpetuall fire of Gehenna.




As The Doctrine Of Purgatory, And Exorcismes, And Invocation Of Saints

This window it is, that gives entrance to the Dark Doctrine, first, of
Eternall Torments; and afterwards of Purgatory, and consequently of the
walking abroad, especially in places Consecrated, Solitary, or Dark, of
the Ghosts of men deceased; and thereby to the pretences of Exorcisme
and Conjuration of Phantasmes; as also of Invocation of men dead; and to
the Doctrine of Indulgences; that is to say, of exemption for a time,
or for ever, from the fire of Purgatory, wherein these Incorporeall
Substances are pretended by burning to be cleansed, and made fit
for Heaven. For men being generally possessed before the time of our
Saviour, by contagion of the Daemonology of the Greeks, of an opinion,
that the Souls of men were substances distinct from their Bodies, and
therefore that when the Body was dead, the Soule of every man, whether
godly, or wicked, must subsist somewhere by vertue of its own nature,
without acknowledging therein any supernaturall gift of Gods; the
Doctors of the Church doubted a long time, what was the place, which
they were to abide in, till they should be re-united to their Bodies in
the Resurrection; supposing for a while, they lay under the Altars: but
afterward the Church of Rome found it more profitable, to build for them
this place of Purgatory; which by some other Churches in this later age,
has been demolished.




The Texts Alledged For The Doctrines Aforementioned Have Been Answered

Before

Let us now consider, what texts of Scripture seem most to confirm these
three generall Errors, I have here touched. As for those which Cardinall
Bellarmine hath alledged, for the present Kingdome of God administred by
the Pope, (than which there are none that make a better show of proof,)
I have already answered them; and made it evident, that the Kingdome
of God, instituted by Moses, ended in the election of Saul: After which
time the Priest of his own authority never deposed any King. That which
the High Priest did to Athaliah, was not done in his own right, but in
the right of the young King Joash her Son: But Solomon in his own right
deposed the High Priest Abiathar, and set up another in his place. The
most difficult place to answer, of all those than can be brought,
to prove the Kingdome of God by Christ is already in this world, is
alledged, not by Bellarmine, nor any other of the Church of Rome; but
by Beza; that will have it to begin from the Resurrection of Christ.
But whether hee intend thereby, to entitle the Presbytery to the Supreme
Power Ecclesiasticall in the Common-wealth of Geneva, (and consequently
to every Presbytery in every other Common-wealth,) or to Princes,
and other Civill Soveraignes, I doe not know. For the Presbytery hath
challenged the power to Excommunicate their owne Kings, and to bee the
Supreme Moderators in Religion, in the places where they have that form
of Church government, no lesse then the Pope challengeth it universally.




Answer To The Text On Which Beza Infereth

That The Kingdome Of Christ Began At The Resurrection The words are
(Marke 9.1.) "Verily, I say unto you, that there be some of them that
stand here, which shall not tast of death, till they have seene the
Kingdome of God come with power." Which words, if taken grammatically,
make it certaine, that either some of those men that stood by Christ at
that time, are yet alive; or else, that the Kingdome of God must be now
in this present world. And then there is another place more difficult:
For when the Apostles after our Saviours Resurrection, and immediately
before his Ascension, asked our Saviour, saying, (Acts.1.6.) "Wilt thou
at this time restore again the Kingdome to Israel," he answered them,
"It is not for you to know the times and the seasons, which the Father
hath put in his own power; But ye shall receive power by the comming of
the Holy Ghost upon you, and yee shall be my (Martyrs) witnesses both in
Jerusalem, & in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part
of the Earth:" Which is as much as to say, My Kingdome is not yet come,
nor shall you foreknow when it shall come, for it shall come as a theefe
in the night; But I will send you the Holy Ghost, and by him you shall
have power to beare witnesse to all the world (by your preaching) of
my Resurrection, and the workes I have done, and the doctrine I have
taught, that they may beleeve in me, and expect eternall life, at my
comming againe: How does this agree with the comming of Christs Kingdome
at the Resurrection? And that which St. Paul saies (1 Thessal. 1.9, 10.)
"That they turned from Idols, to serve the living and true God, and
to waite for his Sonne from Heaven:" Where to waite for his Sonne from
Heaven, is to wait for his comming to be King in power; which were
not necessary, if this Kingdome had beene then present. Againe, if the
Kingdome of God began (as Beza on that place (Mark 9.1.) would have it)
at the Resurrection; what reason is there for Christians ever since the
Resurrection to say in their prayers, "Let thy Kingdome Come"? It
is therefore manifest, that the words of St. Mark are not so to be
interpreted. There be some of them that stand here (saith our Saviour)
that shall not tast of death till they have seen the Kingdome of God
come in power. If then this Kingdome were to come at the Resurrection
of Christ, why is it said, "some of them" rather than all? For they all
lived till after Christ was risen.




Explication Of The Place In Mark 9.1

But they that require an exact interpretation of this text, let them
interpret first the like words of our Saviour to St. Peter concerning
St. John, (chap. 21.22.) "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is
that to thee?" upon which was grounded a report that hee should not dye:
Neverthelesse the truth of that report was neither confirmed, as well
grounded; nor refuted, as ill grounded on those words; but left as a
saying not understood. The same difficulty is also in the place of St.
Marke. And if it be lawfull to conjecture at their meaning, by that
which immediately followes, both here, and in St. Luke, where the same
is againe repeated, it is not unprobable, to say they have relation
to the Transfiguration, which is described in the verses immediately
following; where it is said, that "After six dayes Jesus taketh with
him Peter, and James, and John (not all, but some of his Disciples)
and leadeth them up into an high mountaine apart by themselves, and
was transfigured before them. And his rayment became shining, exceeding
white as snow; so as no Fuller on earth can white them. And there
appeared unto them Elias with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus,
&c." So that they saw Christ in Glory and Majestie, as he is to come;
insomuch as "They were sore afraid." And thus the promise of our Saviour
was accomplished by way of Vision: For it was a Vision, as may probably
bee inferred out of St. Luke, that reciteth the same story (ch. 9. ve.
28.) and saith, that Peter and they that were with him, were heavy with
sleep; But most certainly out of Matth. 17.9. (where the same is again
related;) for our Saviour charged them, saying, "Tell no man the Vision
untill the Son of man be Risen from the dead." Howsoever it be, yet
there can from thence be taken no argument, to prove that the Kingdome
of God taketh beginning till the day of Judgement.




Abuse Of Some Other Texts In Defence Of The Power Of The Pope

As for some other texts, to prove the Popes Power over civill
Soveraignes (besides those of Bellarmine;) as that the two Swords that
Christ and his Apostles had amongst them, were the Spirituall and the
Temporall Sword, which they say St. Peter had given him by Christ: And,
that of the two Luminaries, the greater signifies the Pope, and the
lesser the King; One might as well inferre out of the first verse of the
Bible, that by Heaven is meant the Pope, and by Earth the King: Which
is not arguing from Scripture, but a wanton insulting over Princes, that
came in fashion after the time the Popes were growne so secure of their
greatnesse, as to contemne all Christian Kings; and Treading on the
necks of Emperours, to mocke both them, and the Scripture, in the words
of the 91. Psalm, "Thou shalt Tread upon the Lion and the Adder, the
young Lion and the Dragon thou shalt Trample under thy feet."




The Manner Of Consecrations In The Scripture, Was Without Exorcisms

As for the rites of Consecration, though they depend for the most part
upon the discretion and judgement of the governors of the Church,
and not upon the Scriptures; yet those governors are obliged to such
direction, as the nature of the action it selfe requireth; as that the
ceremonies, words, and gestures, be both decent, and significant, or at
least conformable to the action. When Moses consecrated the Tabernacle,
the Altar, and the Vessels belonging to them (Exod. 40.) he anointed
them with the Oyle which God had commanded to bee made for that
purpose; and they were holy; There was nothing Exorcised, to drive away
Phantasmes. The same Moses (the civill Soveraigne of Israel) when he
consecrated Aaron (the High Priest,) and his Sons, did wash them with
Water, (not Exorcised water,) put their Garments upon them, and anointed
them with Oyle; and they were sanctified, to minister unto the Lord
in the Priests office; which was a simple and decent cleansing, and
adorning them, before hee presented them to God, to be his servants.
When King Solomon, (the civill Soveraigne of Israel) consecrated the
Temple hee had built, (2 Kings 8.) he stood before all the Congregation
of Israel; and having blessed them, he gave thanks to God, for putting
into the heart of his father, to build it; and for giving to himselfe
the grace to accomplish the same; and then prayed unto him, first,
to accept that House, though it were not sutable to his infinite
Greatnesse; and to hear the prayers of his Servants that should pray
therein, or (if they were absent) towards it; and lastly, he offered a
sacrifice of Peace-offering, and the House was dedicated. Here was no
Procession; the King stood still in his first place; no Exorcised Water;
no Asperges Me, nor other impertinent application of words spoken upon
another occasion; but a decent, and rationall speech, and such as in
making to God a present of his new built House, was most conformable
to the occasion. We read not that St. John did Exorcise the Water
of Jordan; nor Philip the Water of the river wherein he baptized the
Eunuch; nor that any Pastor in the time of the Apostles, did take his
spittle, and put it to the nose of the person to be Baptized, and say,
"In odorem suavitatis," that is, "for a sweet savour unto the Lord;"
wherein neither the Ceremony of Spittle, for the uncleannesse; nor the
application of that Scripture for the levity, can by any authority of
man be justified.




The Immortality Of Mans Soule, Not Proved By Scripture To Be Of Nature,

But Of Grace

To prove that the Soule separated from the Body liveth eternally, not
onely the Soules of the Elect, by especiall grace, and restauration of
the Eternall Life which Adam lost by Sinne, and our Saviour restored
by the Sacrifice of himself, to the Faithfull, but also the Soules
of Reprobates, as a property naturally consequent to the essence of
mankind, without other grace of God, but that which is universally given
to all mankind; there are divers places, which at the first sight seem
sufficiently to serve the turn: but such, as when I compare them with
that which I have before (Chapter 38.) alledged out of the 14 of Job,
seem to mee much more subject to a divers interpretation, than the words
of Job.

And first there are the words of Solomon (Ecclesiastes 12.7.) "Then
shall the Dust return to Dust, as it was, and the Spirit shall return to
God that gave it." Which may bear well enough (if there be no other text
directly against it) this interpretation, that God onely knows, (but
Man not,) what becomes of a mans spirit, when he expireth; and the same
Solomon, in the same Book, (Chap. 3. ver. 20,21.) delivereth in the same
sentence in the sense I have given it: His words are, "All goe, (man
and beast) to the same place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust
again; who knoweth that the spirit of Man goeth upward, and the spirit
of the Beast goeth downward to the earth?" That is, none knows but God;
Nor is it an unusuall phrase to say of things we understand not, "God
knows what," and "God knows where." That of Gen. 5.24. "Enoch walked
with God, and he was not; for God took him;" which is expounded Heb.
13.5. "He was translated, that he should not die; and was not found,
because God had translated him. For before his Translation, he had this
testimony, that he pleased God," making as much for the Immortality
of the Body, as of the Soule, proveth, that this his translation was
peculiar to them that please God; not common to them with the wicked;
and depending on Grace, not on Nature. But on the contrary, what
interpretation shall we give, besides the literall sense of the words of
Solomon (Eccles. 3.19.) "That which befalleth the Sons of Men, befalleth
Beasts, even one thing befalleth them; as the one dyeth, so doth the
other; yea, they have all one breath (one spirit;) so that a Man hath no
praeeminence above a Beast, for all is vanity." By the literall sense,
here is no Naturall Immortality of the Soule; nor yet any repugnancy
with the Life Eternall, which the Elect shall enjoy by Grace. And (chap.
4. ver.3.) "Better is he that hath not yet been, than both they;" that
is, than they that live, or have lived; which, if the Soule of all them
that have lived, were Immortall, were a hard saying; for then to have
an Immortall Soule, were worse than to have no Soule at all. And
againe,(Chapt. 9.5.) "The living know they shall die, but the dead know
not any thing;" that is, Naturally, and before the resurrection of the
body.

Another place which seems to make for a Naturall Immortality of the
Soule, is that, where our Saviour saith, that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
are living: but this is spoken of the promise of God, and of their
certitude to rise again, not of a Life then actuall; and in the same
sense that God said to Adam, that on the day hee should eate of the
forbidden fruit, he should certainly die; from that time forward he was
a dead man by sentence; but not by execution, till almost a thousand
years after. So Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were alive by promise, then,
when Christ spake; but are not actually till the Resurrection. And the
History of Dives and Lazarus, make nothing against this, if wee take it
(as it is) for a Parable.

But there be other places of the New Testament, where an Immortality
seemeth to be directly attributed to the wicked. For it is evident, that
they shall all rise to Judgement. And it is said besides in many places,
that they shall goe into "Everlasting fire, Everlasting torments,
Everlasting punishments; and that the worm of conscience never dyeth;"
and all this is comprehended in the word Everlasting Death, which is
ordinarily interpreted Everlasting Life In Torments: And yet I can find
no where that any man shall live in torments Everlastingly. Also, it
seemeth hard, to say, that God who is the Father of Mercies, that doth
in Heaven and Earth all that hee will; that hath the hearts of all men
in his disposing; that worketh in men both to doe, and to will; and
without whose free gift a man hath neither inclination to good, nor
repentance of evill, should punish mens transgressions without any end
of time, and with all the extremity of torture, that men can imagine,
and more. We are therefore to consider, what the meaning is, of
Everlasting Fire, and other the like phrases of Scripture.

I have shewed already, that the Kingdome of God by Christ beginneth at
the day of Judgment: That in that day, the Faithfull shall rise again,
with glorious, and spirituall Bodies, and bee his Subjects in that his
Kingdome, which shall be Eternall; That they shall neither marry, nor
be given in marriage, nor eate and drink, as they did in their naturall
bodies; but live for ever in their individuall persons, without the
specificall eternity of generation: And that the Reprobates also shall
rise again, to receive punishments for their sins: As also, that those
of the Elect, which shall be alive in their earthly bodies at that
day, shall have their bodies suddenly changed, and made spirituall, and
Immortall. But that the bodies of the Reprobate, who make the Kingdome
of Satan, shall also be glorious, or spirituall bodies, or that they
shall bee as the Angels of God, neither eating, nor drinking, nor
engendring; or that their life shall be Eternall in their individuall
persons, as the life of every faithfull man is, or as the life of Adam
had been if hee had not sinned, there is no place of Scripture to prove
it; save onely these places concerning Eternall Torments; which may
otherwise be interpreted.

From whence may be inferred, that as the Elect after the Resurrection
shall be restored to the estate, wherein Adam was before he had sinned;
so the Reprobate shall be in the estate, that Adam, and his posterity
were in after the sin committed; saving that God promised a Redeemer to
Adam, and such of his seed as should trust in him, and repent; but not
to them that should die in their sins, as do the Reprobate.




Eternall Torments What

These things considered, the texts that mention Eternall Fire, Eternal
Torments, or the Word That Never Dieth, contradict not the Doctrine of
a Second, and Everlasting Death, in the proper and naturall sense of the
word Death. The Fire, or Torments prepared for the wicked in Gehenna,
Tophet, or in what place soever, may continue for ever; and there may
never want wicked men to be tormented in them; though not every, nor
any one Eternally. For the wicked being left in the estate they were in
after Adams sin, may at the Resurrection live as they did, marry, and
give in marriage, and have grosse and corruptible bodies, as all
mankind now have; and consequently may engender perpetually, after the
Resurrection, as they did before: For there is no place of Scripture to
the contrary. For St. Paul, speaking of the Resurrection (1 Cor. 15.)
understandeth it onely of the Resurrection to Life Eternall; and not the
Resurrection to Punishment. And of the first, he saith that the Body is
"Sown in Corruption, raised in Incorruption; sown in Dishonour, raised
in Honour; sown in Weaknesse, raised in Power; sown a Naturall body,
raised a Spirituall body:" There is no such thing can be said of the
bodies of them that rise to Punishment. The text is Luke 20. Verses
34,35,36. a fertile text. "The Children of this world marry, and are
given in marriage; but they that shall be counted worthy to obtaine that
world, and the Resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given
in marriage: Neither can they die any more; for they are equall to
the Angells, and are the Children of God, being the Children of the
Resurrection:" The Children of this world, that are in the estate
which Adam left them in, shall marry, and be given in marriage; that is
corrupt, and generate successively; which is an Immortality of the Kind,
but not of the Persons of men: They are not worthy to be counted amongst
them that shall obtain the next world, and an absolute Resurrection from
the dead; but onely a short time, as inmates of that world; and to the
end onely to receive condign punishment for their contumacy. The Elect
are the onely children of the Resurrection; that is to say the sole
heirs of Eternall Life: they only can die no more; it is they that are
equall to the Angels, and that are the children of God; and not the
Reprobate. To the Reprobate there remaineth after the Resurrection,
a Second, and Eternall Death: between which Resurrection, and their
Second, and Eternall death, is but a time of Punishment and Torment; and
to last by succession of sinners thereunto, as long as the kind of Man
by propagation shall endure, which is Eternally.




Answer Of The Texts Alledged For Purgatory

Upon this Doctrine of the Naturall Eternity of separated Soules, is
founded (as I said) the Doctrine of Purgatory. For supposing Eternall
Life by Grace onely, there is no Life, but the Life of the Body; and no
Immortality till the Resurrection. The texts for Purgatory alledged by
Bellarmine out of the Canonicall Scripture of the old Testament, are
first, the Fasting of David for Saul and Jonathan, mentioned (2 Kings,
1. 12.); and againe, (2 Sam. 3. 35.) for the death of Abner. This
Fasting of David, he saith, was for the obtaining of something for them
at Gods hands, after their death; because after he had Fasted to procure
the recovery of his owne child, assoone as he know it was dead, he
called for meate. Seeing then the Soule hath an existence separate from
the Body, and nothing can be obtained by mens Fasting for the Soules
that are already either in Heaven, or Hell, it followeth that there be
some Soules of dead men, what are neither in Heaven, nor in Hell; and
therefore they must bee in some third place, which must be Purgatory.
And thus with hard straining, hee has wrested those places to the proofe
of a Purgatory; whereas it is manifest, that the ceremonies of Mourning,
and Fasting, when they are used for the death of men, whose life was
not profitable to the Mourners, they are used for honours sake to their
persons; and when tis done for the death of them by whose life the
Mourners had benefit, it proceeds from their particular dammage: And so
David honoured Saul, and Abner, with his Fasting; and in the death of
his owne child, recomforted himselfe, by receiving his ordinary food.

In the other places, which he alledgeth out of the old Testament, there
is not so much as any shew, or colour of proofe. He brings in every text
wherein there is the word Anger, or Fire, or Burning, or Purging, or
Clensing, in case any of the Fathers have but in a Sermon rhetorically
applied it to the Doctrine of Purgatory, already beleeved. The first
verse of Psalme, 37. "O Lord rebuke me not in thy wrath, nor chasten me
in thy hot displeasure:" What were this to Purgatory, if Augustine had
not applied the Wrath to the fire of Hell, and the Displeasure, to that
of Purgatory? And what is it to Purgatory, that of Psalme, 66. 12. "Wee
went through fire and water, and thou broughtest us to a moist place;"
and other the like texts, (with which the Doctors of those times
entended to adorne, or extend their Sermons, or Commentaries) haled to
their purposes by force of wit?




Places Of The New Testament For Purgatory Answered

But he alledgeth other places of the New Testament, that are not
so easie to be answered: And first that of Matth. 12.32. "Whosoever
speaketh a word against the Sonne of man, it shall be forgiven him; but
whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not bee forgiven
him neither in this world, nor in the world to come:" Where he will have
Purgatory to be the World to come, wherein some sinnes may be forgiven,
which in this World were not forgiven: notwithstanding that it is
manifest, there are but three Worlds; one from the Creation to the
Flood, which was destroyed by Water, and is called in Scripture the
Old World; another from the Flood to the day of Judgement, which is the
Present World, and shall bee destroyed by Fire; and the third, which
shall bee from the day of Judgement forward, everlasting, which is
called the World To Come; and in which it is agreed by all, there shall
be no Purgatory; And therefore the World to come, and Purgatory, are
inconsistent. But what then can bee the meaning of those our Saviours
words? I confesse they are very hardly to bee reconciled with all the
Doctrines now unanimously received: Nor is it any shame, to confesse the
profoundnesse of the Scripture, to bee too great to be sounded by the
shortnesse of humane understanding. Neverthelesse, I may propound such
things to the consideration of more learned Divines, as the text it
selfe suggesteth. And first, seeing to speake against the Holy Ghost, as
being the third Person of the Trinity, is to speake against the Church,
in which the Holy Ghost resideth; it seemeth the comparison is made,
betweene the Easinesse of our Saviour, in bearing with offences done to
him while he was on earth, and the Severity of the Pastors after him,
against those which should deny their authority, which was from the Holy
Ghost: As if he should say, You that deny my Power; nay you that shall
crucifie me, shall be pardoned by mee, as often as you turne unto mee by
Repentance: But if you deny the Power of them that teach you hereafter,
by vertue of the Holy Ghost, they shall be inexorable, and shall not
forgive you, but persecute you in this World, and leave you without
absolution, (though you turn to me, unlesse you turn also to them,) to
the punishments (as much as lies in them) of the World to come: And
so the words may be taken as a Prophecy, or Praediction concerning the
times, as they have along been in the Christian Church: Or if this be
not the meaning, (for I am not peremptory in such difficult places,)
perhaps there may be place left after the Resurrection for the
Repentance of some sinners: And there is also another place, that
seemeth to agree therewith. For considering the words of St. Paul (1
Cor. 15. 29.) "What shall they doe which are Baptized for the dead, if
the dead rise not at all? why also are they Baptized for the dead?" a
man may probably inferre, as some have done, that in St. Pauls time,
there was a custome by receiving Baptisme for the dead, (as men that now
beleeve, are Sureties and Undertakers for the Faith of Infants, that
are not capable of beleeving,) to undertake for the persons of their
deceased friends, that they should be ready to obey, and receive our
Saviour for their King, at his coming again; and then the forgivenesse
of sins in the world to come, has no need of a Purgatory. But in both
these interpretations, there is so much of paradox, that I trust not
to them; but propound them to those that are throughly versed in the
Scripture, to inquire if there be no clearer place that contradicts
them. Onely of thus much, I see evident Scripture, to perswade men, that
there is neither the word, nor the thing of Purgatory, neither in this,
nor any other text; nor any thing that can prove a necessity of a place
for the Soule without the Body; neither for the Soule of Lazarus during
the four days he was dead; nor for the Soules of them which the Romane
Church pretend to be tormented now in Purgatory. For God, that could
give a life to a peece of clay, hath the same power to give life again
to a dead man, and renew his inanimate, and rotten Carkasse, into a
glorious, spirituall, and immortall Body.

Another place is that of 1 Cor. 3. where it is said that they which
built Stubble, Hay, &c. on the true Foundation, their work shall perish;
but "they themselves shall be saved; but as through Fire:" This Fire, he
will have to be the Fire of Purgatory. The words, as I have said before,
are an allusion to those of Zach. 13. 9. where he saith, "I will bring
the third part through the Fire, and refine them as Silver is refined,
and will try them as Gold is tryed;" Which is spoken of the comming of
the Messiah in Power and Glory; that is, at the day of Judgment, and
Conflagration of the present world; wherein the Elect shall not be
consumed, but be refined; that is, depose their erroneous Doctrines, and
Traditions, and have them as it were sindged off; and shall afterwards
call upon the name of the true God. In like manner, the Apostle saith
of them, that holding this Foundation Jesus Is The Christ, shall build
thereon some other Doctrines that be erroneous, that they shall not be
consumed in that fire which reneweth the world, but shall passe through
it to Salvation; but so, as to see, and relinquish their former Errours.
The Builders, are the Pastors; the Foundation, that Jesus Is The Christ;
the Stubble and Hay, False Consequences Drawn From It Through Ignorance,
Or Frailty; the Gold, Silver, and pretious Stones, are their True
Doctrines; and their Refining or Purging, the Relinquishing Of Their
Errors. In all which there is no colour at all for the burning of
Incorporeall, that is to say, Impatible Souls.




Baptisme For The Dead, How Understood

A third place is that of 1 Cor. 15. before mentioned, concerning
Baptisme for the Dead: out of which he concludeth, first, that Prayers
for the Dead are not unprofitable; and out of that, that there is a Fire
of Purgatory: But neither of them rightly. For of many interpretations
of the word Baptisme, he approveth this in the first place, that by
Baptisme is meant (metaphorically) a Baptisme of Penance; and that men
are in this sense Baptized, when they Fast, and Pray, and give Almes:
And so Baptisme for the Dead, and Prayer of the Dead, is the same thing.
But this is a Metaphor, of which there is no example, neither in
the Scripture, nor in any other use of language; and which is also
discordant to the harmony, and scope of the Scripture. The word Baptisme
is used (Mar. 10. 38. & Luk. 12. 59.) for being Dipped in ones own
bloud, as Christ was upon the Cross, and as most of the Apostles
were, for giving testimony of him. But it is hard to say, that Prayer,
Fasting, and Almes, have any similitude with Dipping. The same is used
also Mat. 3. 11. (which seemeth to make somewhat for Purgatory) for
a Purging with Fire. But it is evident the Fire and Purging here
mentioned, is the same whereof the Prophet Zachary speaketh (chap. 13.
v. 9.) "I will bring the third part through the Fire, and will Refine
them, &c." And St. Peter after him (1 Epist. 1. 7.) "That the triall
of your Faith, which is much more precious than of Gold that perisheth,
though it be tryed with fire, might be found unto praise, and honour,
and glory at the Appearing of Jesus Christ;" And St. Paul (1 Cor. 3.
13.) The Fire shall trie every mans work of what sort it is." But
St. Peter, and St. Paul speak of the Fire that shall be at the Second
Appearing of Christ; and the Prophet Zachary of the Day of Judgment: And
therefore this place of S. Mat. may be interpreted of the same; and then
there will be no necessity of the Fire of Purgatory.

Another interpretation of Baptisme for the Dead, is that which I
have before mentioned, which he preferreth to the second place of
probability; And thence also he inferreth the utility of Prayer for the
Dead. For if after the Resurrection, such as have not heard of Christ,
or not beleeved in him, may be received into Christs Kingdome; it is
not in vain, after their death, that their friends should pray for them,
till they should be risen. But granting that God, at the prayers of the
faithfull, may convert unto him some of those that have not heard Christ
preached, and consequently cannot have rejected Christ, and that the
charity of men in that point, cannot be blamed; yet this concludeth
nothing for Purgatory, because to rise from Death to Life, is one thing;
to rise from Purgatory to Life is another; and being a rising from Life
to Life, from a Life in torments to a Life in joy.

A fourth place is that of Mat. 5. 25. "Agree with thine Adversary
quickly, whilest thou art in the way with him, lest at any time the
Adversary deliver thee to the Officer, and thou be cast into prison.
Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence, till
thou has paid the uttermost farthing." In which Allegory, the Offender
is the Sinner; both the Adversary and the Judge is God; the Way is
this Life; the Prison is the Grave; the Officer, Death; from which, the
sinner shall not rise again to life eternall, but to a second Death,
till he have paid the utmost farthing, or Christ pay it for him by his
Passion, which is a full Ransome for all manner of sin, as well lesser
sins, as greater crimes; both being made by the passion of Christ
equally veniall.

The fift place, is that of Matth. 5. 22. "Whosoever is angry with his
Brother without a cause, shall be guilty in Judgment. And whosoever
shall say to his Brother, RACHA, shall be guilty in the Councel. But
whosoever shall say, Thou Foole, shall be guilty to hell fire." From
which words he inferreth three sorts of Sins, and three sorts of
Punishments; and that none of those sins, but the last, shall be
punished with hell fire; and consequently, that after this life, there
is punishment of lesser sins in Purgatory. Of which inference, there is
no colour in any interpretation that hath yet been given to them: Shall
there be a distinction after this life of Courts of Justice, as there
was amongst the Jews in our Saviours time, to hear, and determine
divers sorts of Crimes; as the Judges, and the Councell? Shall not
all Judicature appertain to Christ, and his Apostles? To understand
therefore this text, we are not to consider it solitarily, but jointly
with the words precedent, and subsequent. Our Saviour in this Chapter
interpreteth the Law of Moses; which the Jews thought was then
fulfilled, when they had not transgressed the Grammaticall sense
thereof, howsoever they had transgressed against the sentence, or
meaning of the Legislator. Therefore whereas they thought the Sixth
Commandement was not broken, but by Killing a man; nor the Seventh, but
when a man lay with a woman, not his wife; our Saviour tells them, the
inward Anger of a man against his brother, if it be without just cause,
is Homicide: You have heard (saith hee) the Law of Moses, "Thou shalt
not Kill," and that "Whosoever shall Kill, shall be condemned before the
Judges," or before the Session of the Seventy: But I say unto you, to
be Angry with ones Brother without cause; or to say unto him Racha, or
Foole, is Homicide, and shall be punished at the day of Judgment, and
Session of Christ, and his Apostles, with Hell fire: so that those words
were not used to distinguish between divers Crimes, and divers Courts
of Justice, and divers Punishments; but to taxe the distinction between
sin, and sin, which the Jews drew not from the difference of the Will
in Obeying God, but from the difference of their Temporall Courts of
Justice; and to shew them that he that had the Will to hurt his Brother,
though the effect appear but in Reviling, or not at all, shall be cast
into hell fire, by the Judges, and by the Session, which shall be the
same, not different Courts at the day of Judgment. This Considered, what
can be drawn from this text, to maintain Purgatory, I cannot imagine.

The sixth place is Luke 16. 9. "Make yee friends of the unrighteous
Mammon, that when yee faile, they may receive you into Everlasting
Tabernacles." This he alledges to prove Invocation of Saints departed.
But the sense is plain, That we should make friends with our Riches, of
the Poore, and thereby obtain their Prayers whilest they live. "He that
giveth to the Poore, lendeth to the Lord. "The seventh is Luke 23. 42.
"Lord remember me when thou commest into thy Kingdome:" Therefore, saith
hee, there is Remission of sins after this life. But the consequence
is not good. Our Saviour then forgave him; and at his comming againe in
Glory, will remember to raise him againe to Life Eternall.

The Eight is Acts 2. 24. where St. Peter saith of Christ, "that God
had raised him up, and loosed the Paines of Death, because it was not
possible he should be holden of it;" Which hee interprets to bee a
descent of Christ into Purgatory, to loose some Soules there from their
torments; whereas it is manifest, that it was Christ that was loosed;
it was hee that could not bee holden of Death, or the Grave; and not the
Souls in Purgatory. But if that which Beza sayes in his notes on this
place be well observed, there is none that will not see, that in stead
of Paynes, it should be Bands; and then there is no further cause to
seek for Purgatory in this Text.



CHAPTER XLV. OF DAEMONOLOGY, AND OTHER RELIQUES OF THE RELIGION OF THE
GENTILES




The Originall Of Daemonology

The impression made on the organs of Sight, by lucide Bodies, either in
one direct line, or in many lines, reflected from Opaque, or refracted
in the passage through Diaphanous Bodies, produceth in living Creatures,
in whom God hath placed such Organs, an Imagination of the Object, from
whence the Impression proceedeth; which Imagination is called Sight; and
seemeth not to bee a meer Imagination, but the Body it selfe without
us; in the same manner, as when a man violently presseth his eye, there
appears to him a light without, and before him, which no man perceiveth
but himselfe; because there is indeed no such thing without him, but
onely a motion in the interiour organs, pressing by resistance
outward, that makes him think so. And the motion made by this pressure,
continuing after the object which caused it is removed, is that we call
Imagination, and Memory, and (in sleep, and sometimes in great distemper
of the organs by Sicknesse, or Violence) a Dream: of which things I have
already spoken briefly, in the second and third Chapters.

This nature of Sight having never been discovered by the ancient
pretenders to Naturall Knowledge; much lesse by those that consider not
things so remote (as that Knowledge is) from their present use; it was
hard for men to conceive of those Images in the Fancy, and in the Sense,
otherwise, than of things really without us: Which some (because they
vanish away, they know not whither, nor how,) will have to be absolutely
Incorporeall, that is to say Immateriall, of Formes without Matter;
Colour and Figure, without any coloured or figured Body; and that they
can put on Aiery bodies (as a garment) to make them Visible when
they will to our bodily Eyes; and others say, are Bodies, and living
Creatures, but made of Air, or other more subtile and aethereall Matter,
which is, then, when they will be seen, condensed. But Both of them
agree on one generall appellation of them, DAEMONS. As if the Dead of
whom they Dreamed, were not Inhabitants of their own Brain, but of the
Air, or of Heaven, or Hell; not Phantasmes, but Ghosts; with just
as much reason, as if one should say, he saw his own Ghost in a
Looking-Glasse, or the Ghosts of the Stars in a River; or call the
ordinary apparition of the Sun, of the quantity of about a foot, the
Daemon, or Ghost of that great Sun that enlighteneth the whole visible
world: And by that means have feared them, as things of an unknown, that
is, of an unlimited power to doe them good, or harme; and consequently,
given occasion to the Governours of the Heathen Common-wealths to
regulate this their fear, by establishing that DAEMONOLOGY (in which
the Poets, as Principal Priests of the Heathen Religion, were specially
employed, or reverenced) to the Publique Peace, and to the Obedience of
Subjects necessary thereunto; and to make some of them Good Daemons,
and others Evill; the one as a Spurre to the Observance, the other, as
Reines to withhold them from Violation of the Laws.




What Were The Daemons Of The Ancients

What kind of things they were, to whom they attributed the name of
Daemons, appeareth partly in the Genealogie of their Gods, written by
Hesiod, one of the most ancient Poets of the Graecians; and partly in
other Histories; of which I have observed some few before, in the 12.
Chapter of this discourse.




How That Doctrine Was Spread

The Graecians, by their Colonies and Conquests, communicated their
Language and Writings into Asia, Egypt, and Italy; and therein, by
necessary consequence their Daemonology, or (as St. Paul calles it)
"their Doctrines of Devils;" And by that meanes, the contagion was
derived also to the Jewes, both of Judaea, and Alexandria, and other
parts, whereinto they were dispersed. But the name of Daemon they did
not (as the Graecians) attribute to Spirits both Good, and Evill; but
to the Evill onely: And to the Good Daemons they gave the name of the
Spirit of God; and esteemed those into whose bodies they entred to be
Prophets. In summe, all singularity if Good, they attributed to the
Spirit of God; and if Evill, to some Daemon, but a kakodaimen, an Evill
Daemon, that is, a Devill. And therefore, they called Daemoniaques, that
is, possessed by the Devill, such as we call Madmen or Lunatiques; or
such as had the Falling Sicknesse; or that spoke any thing, which they
for want of understanding, thought absurd: As also of an Unclean person
in a notorious degree, they used to say he had an Unclean Spirit; of a
Dumbe man, that he had a Dumbe Devill; and of John Baptist (Math. 11.
18.) for the singularity of his fasting, that he had a Devill; and of
our Saviour, because he said, hee that keepeth his sayings should not
see Death In Aeternum, (John 8. 52.) "Now we know thou hast a Devill;
Abraham is dead, and the Prophets are dead:" And again, because he said
(John 7. 20.) "They went about to kill him," the people answered, "Thou
hast a Devill, who goeth about to kill thee?" Whereby it is manifest,
that the Jewes had the same opinions concerning Phantasmes, namely, that
they were not Phantasmes that is, Idols of the braine, but things reall,
and independent on the Fancy.




Why Our Saviour Controlled It Not

Which doctrine if it be not true, why (may some say) did not our Saviour
contradict it, and teach the Contrary? nay why does he use on diverse
occasions, such forms of speech as seem to confirm it? To this I answer,
that first, where Christ saith, "A Spirit hath not flesh and bone,"
though hee shew that there be Spirits, yet he denies not that they are
Bodies: And where St. Paul sais, "We shall rise Spirituall Bodies," he
acknowledgeth the nature of Spirits, but that they are Bodily Spirits;
which is not difficult to understand. For Air and many other things
are Bodies, though not Flesh and Bone, or any other grosse body, to bee
discerned by the eye. But when our Saviour speaketh to the Devill, and
commandeth him to go out of a man, if by the Devill, be meant a Disease,
as Phrenesy, or Lunacy, or a corporeal Spirit, is not the speech
improper? can Diseases heare? or can there be a corporeall Spirit in a
Body of Flesh and Bone, full already of vitall and animall Spirits?
Are there not therefore Spirits, that neither have Bodies, nor are meer
Imaginations? To the first I answer, that the addressing of our Saviours
command to the Madnesse, or Lunacy he cureth, is no more improper, then
was his rebuking of the Fever, or of the Wind, and Sea; for neither
do these hear: Or than was the command of God, to the Light, to the
Firmament, to the Sunne, and Starres, when he commanded them to bee; for
they could not heare before they had a beeing. But those speeches are
not improper, because they signifie the power of Gods Word: no more
therefore is it improper, to command Madnesse, or Lunacy (under the
appellation of Devils, by which they were then commonly understood,)
to depart out of a mans body. To the second, concerning their being
Incorporeall, I have not yet observed any place of Scripture, from
whence it can be gathered, that any man was ever possessed with any
other Corporeal Spirit, but that of his owne, by which his body is
naturally moved.




The Scriptures Doe Not Teach That Spirits Are Incorporeall

Our Saviour, immediately after the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the
form of a Dove, is said by St. Matthew (Chapt. 4. 1.) to have been "led
up by the Spirit into the Wildernesse;" and the same is recited (Luke 4.
1.) in these words, "Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost, was led in
the Spirit into the Wildernesse;" Whereby it is evident, that by
Spirit there, is meant the Holy Ghost. This cannot be interpreted for
a Possession: For Christ, and the Holy Ghost, are but one and the same
substance; which is no possession of one substance, or body, by another.
And whereas in the verses following, he is said "to have been taken
up by the Devill into the Holy City, and set upon a pinnacle of the
Temple," shall we conclude thence that hee was possessed of the Devill,
or carryed thither by violence? And again, "carryed thence by the Devill
into an exceeding high mountain, who shewed him them thence all the
Kingdomes of the world:" herein, wee are not to beleeve he was either
possessed, or forced by the Devill; nor that any Mountaine is high
enough, (according to the literall sense,) to shew him one whole
Hemisphere. What then can be the meaning of this place, other than that
he went of himself into the Wildernesse; and that this carrying of him
up and down, from the Wildernesse to the City, and from thence into a
Mountain, was a Vision? Conformable whereunto, is also the phrase of St.
Luke, that hee was led into the Wildernesse, not By, but In the Spirit:
whereas concerning His being Taken up into the Mountaine, and unto the
Pinnacle of the Temple, hee speaketh as St. Matthew doth. Which suiteth
with the nature of a Vision.

Again, where St. Luke sayes of Judas Iscariot, that "Satan entred into
him, and thereupon that he went and communed with the Chief Priests, and
Captaines, how he might betray Christ unto them:" it may be answered,
that by the Entring of Satan (that is the Enemy) into him, is meant, the
hostile and traiterous intention of selling his Lord and Master. For as
by the Holy Ghost, is frequently in Scripture understood, the Graces and
good Inclinations given by the Holy Ghost; so by the Entring of
Satan, may bee understood the wicked Cogitations, and Designes of the
Adversaries of Christ, and his Disciples. For as it is hard to say,
that the Devill was entred into Judas, before he had any such hostile
designe; so it is impertinent to say, he was first Christs Enemy in his
heart, and that the Devill entred into him afterwards. Therefore the
Entring of Satan, and his Wicked Purpose, was one and the same thing.

But if there be no Immateriall Spirit, nor any Possession of mens bodies
by any Spirit Corporeall, it may again be asked, why our Saviour and his
Apostles did not teach the People so; and in such cleer words, as they
might no more doubt thereof. But such questions as these, are more
curious, than necessary for a Christian mans Salvation. Men may as well
aske, why Christ that could have given to all men Faith, Piety, and all
manner of morall Vertues, gave it to some onely, and not to all: and
why he left the search of naturall Causes, and Sciences, to the naturall
Reason and Industry of men, and did not reveal it to all, or any man
supernaturally; and many other such questions: Of which neverthelesse
there may be alledged probable and pious reasons. For as God, when he
brought the Israelites into the Land of Promise, did not secure them
therein, by subduing all the Nations round about them; but left many of
them, as thornes in their sides, to awaken from time to time their
Piety and Industry: so our Saviour, in conducting us toward his heavenly
Kingdome, did not destroy all the difficulties of Naturall Questions;
but left them to exercise our Industry, and Reason; the Scope of
his preaching, being onely to shew us this plain and direct way to
Salvation, namely, the beleef of this Article, "that he was the Christ,
the Son of the living God, sent into the world to sacrifice himselfe for
our Sins, and at his comming again, gloriously to reign over his Elect,
and to save them from their Enemies eternally:" To which, the opinion
of Possession by Spirits, or Phantasmes, are no impediment in the way;
though it be to some an occasion of going out of the way, and to follow
their own Inventions. If wee require of the Scripture an account of all
questions, which may be raised to trouble us in the performance of Gods
commands; we may as well complaine of Moses for not having set downe the
time of the creation of such Spirits, as well as of the Creation of the
Earth, and Sea, and of Men, and Beasts. To conclude, I find in Scripture
that there be Angels, and Spirits, good and evill; but not that they are
Incorporeall, as are the Apparitions men see in the Dark, or in a Dream,
or Vision; which the Latines call Spectra, and took for Daemons. And I
find that there are Spirits Corporeal, (though subtile and Invisible;)
but not that any mans body was possessed, or inhabited by them; And that
the Bodies of the Saints shall be such, namely, Spirituall Bodies, as
St. Paul calls them.




The Power Of Casting Out Devills, Not The Same It Was In The Primitive

Church

Neverthelesse, the contrary Doctrine, namely, that there be Incorporeall
Spirits, hath hitherto so prevailed in the Church, that the use of
Exorcisme, (that is to say, of ejection of Devills by Conjuration) is
thereupon built; and (though rarely and faintly practised) is not yet
totally given over. That there were many Daemoniaques in the Primitive
Church, and few Mad-men, and other such singular diseases; whereas in
these times we hear of, and see many Mad-men, and few Daemoniaques,
proceeds not from the change of Nature; but of Names. But how it comes
to passe, that whereas heretofore the Apostles, and after them for a
time, the Pastors of the Church, did cure those singular Diseases, which
now they are not seen to doe; as likewise, why it is not in the power of
every true Beleever now, to doe all that the Faithfull did then, that is
to say, as we read (Mark 16. 17.) "In Christs name to cast out Devills,
to speak with new Tongues, to take up Serpents, to drink deadly Poison
without harm taking, and to cure the Sick by the laying on of their
hands," and all this without other words, but "in the Name of Jesus,"
is another question. And it is probable, that those extraordinary gifts
were given to the Church, for no longer a time, than men trusted wholly
to Christ, and looked for their felicity onely in his Kingdome to come;
and consequently, that when they sought Authority, and Riches, and
trusted to their own Subtilty for a Kingdome of this world, these
supernaturall gifts of God were again taken from them.




Another Relique Of Gentilisme, Worshipping Images, Left In The Church

Not Brought Into It

Another relique of Gentilisme, is the Worship of Images, neither
instituted by Moses in the Old, nor by Christ in the New Testament; nor
yet brought in from the Gentiles; but left amongst them, after they had
given their names to Christ. Before our Saviour preached, it was the
generall Religion of the Gentiles, to worship for Gods, those Apparences
that remain in the Brain from the impression of externall Bodies upon
the organs of their Senses, which are commonly called Ideas, Idols,
Phantasmes, Conceits, as being Representations of those externall
Bodies, which cause them, and have nothing in them of reality, no more
than there is in the things that seem to stand before us in a Dream:
And this is the reason why St. Paul says, "Wee know that an Idol is
Nothing:" Not that he thought that an Image of Metall, Stone, or Wood,
was nothing; but that the thing which they honored, or feared in
the Image, and held for a God, was a meer Figment, without place,
habitation, motion, or existence, but in the motions of the Brain.
And the worship of these with Divine Honour, is that which is in the
Scripture called Idolatry, and Rebellion against God. For God being King
of the Jews, and his Lieutenant being first Moses, and afterward the
High Priest; if the people had been permitted to worship, and pray to
Images, (which are Representations of their own Fancies,) they had
had no farther dependence on the true God, of whom there can be no
similitude; nor on his prime Ministers, Moses, and the High Priests;
but every man had governed himself according to his own appetite, to the
utter eversion of the Common-wealth, and their own destruction for want
of Union. And therefore the first Law of God was, "They should not take
for Gods, ALIENOS DEOS, that is, the Gods of other nations, but that
onely true God, who vouchsafed to commune with Moses, and by him to give
them laws and directions, for their peace, and for their salvation
from their enemies." And the second was, that "they should not make to
themselves any Image to Worship, of their own Invention." For it is the
same deposing of a King, to submit to another King, whether he be set up
by a neighbour nation, or by our selves.




Answer To Certain Seeming Texts For Images

The places of Scripture pretended to countenance the setting up of
Images, to worship them; or to set them up at all in the places where
God is worshipped, are First, two Examples; one of the Cherubins over
the Ark of God; the other of the Brazen Serpent: Secondly, some texts
whereby we are commanded to worship certain Creatures for their relation
to God; as to worship his Footstool: And lastly, some other texts, by
which is authorized, a religious honoring of Holy things. But before I
examine the force of those places, to prove that which is pretended, I
must first explain what is to be understood by Worshipping, and what by
Images, and Idols.




What Is Worship

I have already shewn in the 20 Chapter of this Discourse, that to Honor,
is to value highly the Power of any person: and that such value is
measured, by our comparing him with others. But because there is nothing
to be compared with God in Power; we Honor him not but Dishonour him
by any Value lesse than Infinite. And thus Honor is properly of its own
nature, secret, and internall in the heart. But the inward thoughts of
men, which appeare outwardly in their words and actions, are the signes
of our Honoring, and these goe by the name of WORSHIP, in Latine,
CULTUS. Therefore, to Pray to, to Swear by, to Obey, to bee Diligent,
and Officious in Serving: in summe, all words and actions that betoken
Fear to Offend, or Desire to Please, is Worship, whether those words
and actions be sincere, or feigned: and because they appear as signes of
Honoring, are ordinarily also called Honor.




Distinction Between Divine And Civill Worship

The Worship we exhibite to those we esteem to be but men, as to Kings,
and men in Authority, is Civill Worship: But the worship we exhibite
to that which we think to bee God, whatsoever the words, ceremonies,
gestures, or other actions be, is Divine Worship. To fall prostrate
before a King, in him that thinks him but a Man, is but Civill Worship:
And he that but putteth off his hat in the Church, for this cause, that
he thinketh it the House of God, worshippeth with Divine Worship. They
that seek the distinction of Divine and Civill Worship, not in the
intention of the Worshipper, but in the Words douleia, and latreia,
deceive themselves. For whereas there be two sorts of Servants; that
sort, which is of those that are absolutely in the power of their
Masters, as Slaves taken in war, and their Issue, whose bodies are not
in their own power, (their lives depending on the Will of their Masters,
in such manner as to forfeit them upon the least disobedience,) and that
are bought and sold as Beasts, were called Douloi, that is properly,
Slaves, and their Service, Douleia: The other, which is of those that
serve (for hire, or in hope of benefit from their Masters) voluntarily;
are called Thetes; that is, Domestique Servants; to whose service the
Masters have no further right, than is contained in the Covenants made
betwixt them. These two kinds of Servants have thus much common to them
both, that their labour is appointed them by another, whether, as a
Slave, or a voluntary Servant: And the word Latris, is the general name
of both, signifying him that worketh for another, whether, as a Slave,
or a voluntary Servant: So that Latreia signifieth generally all
Service; but Douleia the service of Bondmen onely, and the condition of
Slavery: And both are used in Scripture (to signifie our Service of God)
promiscuously. Douleia, because we are Gods Slaves; Latreia, because
wee Serve him: and in all kinds of Service is contained, not onely
Obedience, but also Worship, that is, such actions, gestures, and words,
as signifie Honor.




An Image What Phantasmes

An IMAGE (in the most strict signification of the word) is the
Resemblance of some thing visible: In which sense the Phantasticall
Formes, Apparitions, or Seemings of Visible Bodies to the Sight, are
onely Images; such as are the Shew of a man, or other thing in the
Water, by Reflexion, or Refraction; or of the Sun, or Stars by Direct
Vision in the Air; which are nothing reall in the things seen, nor in
the place where thy seem to bee; nor are their magnitudes and figures
the same with that of the object; but changeable, by the variation of
the organs of Sight, or by glasses; and are present oftentimes in our
Imagination, and in our Dreams, when the object is absent; or changed
into other colours, and shapes, as things that depend onely upon the
Fancy. And these are the Images which are originally and most properly
called Ideas, and IDOLS, and derived from the language of the Graecians,
with whom the word Eido signifieth to See. They are also called
PHANTASMES, which is in the same language, Apparitions. And from these
Images it is that one of the faculties of mans Nature, is called the
Imagination. And from hence it is manifest, that there neither is, nor
can bee any Image made of a thing Invisible.

It is also evident, that there can be no Image of a thing Infinite: for
all the Images, and Phantasmes that are made by the Impression of things
visible, are figured: but Figure is a quantity every way determined: And
therefore there can bee no Image of God: nor of the Soule of Man; nor of
Spirits, but onely of Bodies Visible, that is, Bodies that have light in
themselves, or are by such enlightened.




Fictions; Materiall Images

And whereas a man can fancy Shapes he never saw; making up a Figure out
of the parts of divers creatures; as the Poets make their Centaures,
Chimaeras, and other Monsters never seen: So can he also give Matter to
those Shapes, and make them in Wood, Clay or Metall. And these are also
called Images, not for the resemblance of any corporeall thing, but for
the resemblance of some Phantasticall Inhabitants of the Brain of the
Maker. But in these Idols, as they are originally in the Brain, and
as they are painted, carved, moulded, or moulten in matter, there is a
similitude of the one to the other, for which the Materiall Body made
by Art, may be said to be the Image of the Phantasticall Idoll made by
Nature.

But in a larger use of the word Image, is contained also, any
Representation of one thing by another. So an earthly Soveraign may be
called the Image of God: And an inferiour Magistrate the Image of an
earthly Soveraign. And many times in the Idolatry of the Gentiles there
was little regard to the similitude of their Materiall Idoll to the
Idol in their fancy, and yet it was called the Image of it. For a
Stone unhewn has been set up for Neptune, and divers other shapes far
different from the shapes they conceived of their Gods. And at this
day we see many Images of the Virgin Mary, and other Saints, unlike one
another, and without correspondence to any one mans Fancy; and yet serve
well enough for the purpose they were erected for; which was no more but
by the Names onely, to represent the Persons mentioned in the History;
to which every man applyeth a Mentall Image of his owne making, or
none at all. And thus an Image in the largest sense, is either the
Resemblance, or the Representation of some thing Visible; or both
together, as it happeneth for the most part.

But the name of Idoll is extended yet further in Scripture, to
signifie also the Sunne, or a Starre, or any other Creature, visible or
invisible, when they are worshipped for Gods.




Idolatry What

Having shewn what is Worship, and what an Image; I will now put them
together, and examine what that IDOLATRY is, which is forbidden in the
Second Commandement, and other places of the Scripture.

To worship an Image, is voluntarily to doe those externall acts, which
are signes of honoring either the matter of the Image, which is Wood,
Stone, or Metall, or some other visible creature; or the Phantasme of
the brain, for the resemblance, or representation whereof, the matter
was formed and figured; or both together, as one animate Body, composed
of the Matter and the Phantasme, as of a Body and Soule.

To be uncovered, before a man of Power and Authority, or before the
Throne of a Prince, or in such other places as hee ordaineth to that
purpose in his absence, is to Worship that man, or Prince with Civill
Worship; as being a signe, not of honoring the stoole, or place, but the
Person; and is not Idolatry. But if hee that doth it, should suppose the
Soule of the Prince to be in the Stool, or should present a Petition to
the Stool, it were Divine Worship, and Idolatry.

To pray to a King for such things, as hee is able to doe for us, though
we prostrate our selves before him, is but Civill Worship; because we
acknowledge no other power in him, but humane: But voluntarily to pray
unto him for fair weather, or for any thing which God onely can doe
for us, is Divine Worship, and Idolatry. On the other side, if a King
compell a man to it by the terrour of Death, or other great corporall
punishment, it is not Idolatry: For the Worship which the Soveraign
commandeth to bee done unto himself by the terrour of his Laws, is not
a sign that he that obeyeth him, does inwardly honour him as a God, but
that he is desirous to save himselfe from death, or from a miserable
life; and that which is not a sign of internall honor, is no Worship;
and therefore no Idolatry. Neither can it bee said, that hee that does
it, scandalizeth, or layeth any stumbling block before his Brother;
because how wise, or learned soever he be that worshippeth in that
manner, another man cannot from thence argue, that he approveth it; but
that he doth it for fear; and that it is not his act, but the act of the
Soveraign.

To worship God, in some peculiar Place, or turning a mans face towards
an Image, or determinate Place, is not to worship, or honor the Place,
or Image; but to acknowledge it Holy, that is to say, to acknowledge
the Image, or the Place to be set apart from common use: for that is the
meaning of the word Holy; which implies no new quality in the Place, or
Image; but onely a new Relation by Appropriation to God; and therefore
is not Idolatry; no more than it was Idolatry to worship God before
the Brazen Serpent; or for the Jews when they were out of their owne
countrey, to turn their faces (when they prayed) toward the Temple of
Jerusalem; or for Moses to put off his Shoes when he was before the
Flaming Bush, the ground appertaining to Mount Sinai; which place God
had chosen to appear in, and to give his Laws to the People of Israel,
and was therefore Holy ground, not by inhaerent sanctity, but by
separation to Gods use; or for Christians to worship in the Churches,
which are once solemnly dedicated to God for that purpose, by the
Authority of the King, or other true Representant of the Church. But to
worship God, is inanimating, or inhibiting, such Image, or place; that
is to say, an infinite substance in a finite place, is Idolatry: for
such finite Gods, are but Idols of the brain, nothing reall; and are
commonly called in the Scripture by the names of Vanity, and Lyes, and
Nothing. Also to worship God, not as inanimating, or present in the
place, or Image; but to the end to be put in mind of him, or of some
works of his, in case the Place, or Image be dedicated, or set up
by private authority, and not by the authority of them that are our
Soveraign Pastors, is Idolatry. For the Commandement is, "Thou shalt not
make to thy selfe any graven image." God commanded Moses to set up the
Brazen Serpent; hee did not make it to himselfe; it was not therefore
against the Commandement. But the making of the Golden Calfe by Aaron,
and the People, as being done without authority from God, was Idolatry;
not onely because they held it for God, but also because they made it
for a Religious use, without warrant either from God their Soveraign, or
from Moses, that was his Lieutenant.

The Gentiles worshipped for Gods, Jupiter, and others; that living, were
men perhaps that had done great and glorious Acts; and for the Children
of God, divers men and women, supposing them gotten between an Immortall
Deity, and a mortall man. This was Idolatry, because they made them so
to themselves, having no authority from God, neither in his eternall Law
of Reason, nor in his positive and revealed Will. But though our Saviour
was a man, whom wee also beleeve to bee God Immortall, and the Son of
God; yet this is no Idolatry; because wee build not that beleef upon
our own fancy, or judgment, but upon the Word of God revealed in the
Scriptures. And for the adoration of the Eucharist, if the words of
Christ, "This is my Body," signifie, "that he himselfe, and the seeming
bread in his hand; and not onely so, but that all the seeming morsells
of bread that have ever since been, and any time hereafter shall bee
consecrated by Priests, bee so many Christs bodies, and yet all of them
but one body," then is that no Idolatry, because it is authorized by our
Saviour: but if that text doe not signifie that, (for there is no other
that can be alledged for it,) then, because it is a worship of humane
institution, it is Idolatry. For it is not enough to say, God can
transubstantiate the Bread into Christs Body: For the Gentiles also held
God to be Omnipotent; and might upon that ground no lesse excuse their
Idolatry, by pretending, as well as others, as transubstantiation of
their Wood, and Stone into God Almighty.

Whereas there be, that pretend Divine Inspiration, to be a supernaturall
entring of the Holy Ghost into a man, and not an acquisition of Gods
grace, by doctrine, and study; I think they are in a very dangerous
Dilemma. For if they worship not the men whom they beleeve to be so
inspired, they fall into Impiety; as not adoring Gods supernaturall
Presence. And again, if they worship them, they commit Idolatry; for the
Apostles would never permit themselves to be so worshipped. Therefore
the safest way is to beleeve, that by the Descending of the Dove upon
the Apostles; and by Christs Breathing on them, when hee gave them
the Holy Ghost; and by the giving of it by Imposition of Hands, are
understood the signes which God hath been pleased to use, or ordain to
be used, of his promise to assist those persons in their study to
Preach his Kingdome, and in their Conversation, that it might not be
Scandalous, but Edifying to others.




Scandalous Worship Of Images

Besides the Idolatrous Worship of Images, there is also a Scandalous
Worship of them; which is also a sin; but not Idolatry. For Idolatry is
to worship by signes of an internall, and reall honour: but Scandalous
Worship, is but Seeming Worship; and may sometimes bee joined with
an inward, and hearty detestation, both of the Image, and of the
Phantasticall Daemon, or Idol, to which it is dedicated; and proceed
onely from the fear of death, or other grievous punishment; and is
neverthelesse a sin in them that so worship, in case they be men whose
actions are looked at by others, as lights to guide them by; because
following their ways, they cannot but stumble, and fall in the way of
Religion: Whereas the example of those we regard not, works not on us
at all, but leaves us to our own diligence and caution; and consequently
are no causes of our falling.

If therefore a Pastor lawfully called to teach and direct others, or any
other, of whose knowledge there is a great opinion, doe externall honor
to an Idol for fear; unlesse he make his feare, and unwillingnesse to
it, as evident as the worship; he Scandalizeth his Brother, by seeming
to approve Idolatry. For his Brother, arguing from the action of his
teacher, or of him whose knowledge he esteemeth great, concludes it
to bee lawfull in it selfe. And this Scandall, is Sin, and a Scandall
given. But if one being no Pastor, nor of eminent reputation for
knowledge in Christian Doctrine, doe the same, and another follow him;
this is no Scandall given; for he had no cause to follow such example:
but is a pretence of Scandall which hee taketh of himselfe for an excuse
before men: For an unlearned man, that is in the power of an idolatrous
King, or State, if commanded on pain of death to worship before an
Idoll, hee detesteth the Idoll in his heart, hee doth well; though if he
had the fortitude to suffer death, rather than worship it, he should
doe better. But if a Pastor, who as Christs Messenger, has undertaken to
teach Christs Doctrine to all nations, should doe the same, it were
not onely a sinfull Scandall, in respect of other Christian mens
consciences, but a perfidious forsaking of his charge.

The summe of that which I have said hitherto, concerning the Worship of
Images, is that, that he that worshippeth in an Image, or any Creature,
either the Matter thereof, or any Fancy of his own, which he thinketh
to dwell in it; or both together; or beleeveth that such things hear
his Prayers, or see his Devotions, without Ears, or Eyes, committeth
Idolatry: and he that counterfeiteth such Worship for fear of
punishment, if he bee a man whose example hath power amongst his
Brethren, committeth a sin: But he that worshippeth the Creator of the
world before such an Image, or in such a place as he hath not made, or
chosen of himselfe, but taken from the commandement of Gods Word, as the
Jewes did in worshipping God before the Cherubins, and before the Brazen
Serpent for a time, and in, or towards the Temple of Jerusalem, which
was also but for a time, committeth not Idolatry.

Now for the Worship of Saints, and Images, and Reliques, and other
things at this day practised in the Church of Rome, I say they are not
allowed by the Word of God, not brought into the Church of Rome, from
the Doctrine there taught; but partly left in it at the first conversion
of the Gentiles; and afterwards countenanced, and confirmed, and
augmented by the Bishops of Rome.




Answer To The Argument From The Cherubins, And Brazen Serpent

As for the proofs alledged out of Scripture, namely, those examples
of Images appointed by God to bee set up; They were not set up for the
people, or any man to worship; but that they should worship God himselfe
before them: as before the Cherubins over the Ark, and the Brazen
Serpent. For we read not, that the Priest, or any other did worship the
Cherubins; but contrarily wee read (2 Kings 18.4.) that Hezekiah brake
in pieces the Brazen Serpent which Moses had set up, because the
People burnt incense to it. Besides, those examples are not put for
our Imitation, that we also should set up Images, under pretence
of worshipping God before them; because the words of the second
Commandement, "Thou shalt not make to thy selfe any graven Image, &c."
distinguish between the Images that God commanded to be set up, and
those which wee set up to our selves. And therefore from the Cherubins,
or Brazen Serpent, to the Images of mans devising; and from the Worship
commanded by God, to the Will-Worship of men, the argument is not good.
This also is to bee considered, that as Hezekiah brake in pieces the
Brazen Serpent, because the Jews did worship it, to the end they should
doe so no more; so also Christian Soveraigns ought to break down the
Images which their Subjects have been accustomed to worship; that there
be no more occasion of such Idolatry. For at this day, the ignorant
People, where Images are worshipped, doe really beleeve there is a
Divine Power in the Images; and are told by their Pastors, that some
of them have spoken; and have bled; and that miracles have been done by
them; which they apprehend as done by the Saint, which they think either
is the Image it self, or in it. The Israelites, when they worshipped the
Calfe, did think they worshipped the God that brought them out of Egypt;
and yet it was Idolatry, because they thought the Calfe either was
that God, or had him in his belly. And though some man may think it
impossible for people to be so stupid, as to think the Image to be
God, or a Saint; or to worship it in that notion; yet it is manifest
in Scripture to the contrary; where when the Golden Calfe was made, the
people said, (Exod. 32. 2.) "These are thy Gods O Israel;" and where the
Images of Laban (Gen. 31.30.) are called his Gods. And wee see daily by
experience in all sorts of People, that such men as study nothing but
their food and ease, are content to beleeve any absurdity, rather than
to trouble themselves to examine it; holding their faith as it were by
entaile unalienable, except by an expresse and new Law.




Painting Of Fancies No Idolatry: Abusing Them To Religious Worship Is

But they inferre from some other places, that it is lawfull to paint
Angels, and also God himselfe: as from Gods walking in the Garden; from
Jacobs seeing God at the top of the ladder; and from other Visions, and
Dreams. But Visions, and Dreams whether naturall, or supernaturall, are
but Phantasmes: and he that painteth an Image of any of them, maketh not
an Image of God, but of his own Phantasm, which is, making of an Idol. I
say not, that to draw a Picture after a fancy, is a Sin; but when it
is drawn, to hold it for a Representation of God, is against the second
Commandement; and can be of no use, but to worship. And the same may be
said of the Images of Angels, and of men dead; unlesse as Monuments of
friends, or of men worthy remembrance: For such use of an Image, is not
Worship of the Image; but a civill honoring of the Person, not that is,
but that was: But when it is done to the Image which we make of a Saint,
for no other reason, but that we think he heareth our prayers, and is
pleased with the honour wee doe him, when dead, and without sense, wee
attribute to him more than humane power; and therefore it is Idolatry.

Seeing therefore there is no authority, neither in the Law of Moses,
nor in the Gospel, for the religious Worship of Images, or other
Representations of God, which men set up to themselves; or for the
Worship of the Image of any Creature in Heaven, or Earth, or under the
Earth: And whereas Christian Kings, who are living Representants of God,
are not to be worshipped by their Subjects, by any act, that signifieth
a greater esteem of his power, than the nature of mortall man is capable
of; It cannot be imagined, that the Religious Worship now in use,
was brought into the Church, by misunderstanding of the Scripture. It
resteth therefore, that it was left in it, by not destroying the Images
themselves, in the conversion of the Gentiles that worshipped them.




How Idolatry Was Left In The Church

The cause whereof, was the immoderate esteem, and prices set upon the
workmanship of them, which made the owners (though converted, from
worshipping them as they had done Religiously for Daemons) to retain
them still in their houses, upon pretence of doing it in the honor of
Christ, of the Virgin Mary, and of the Apostles, and other the Pastors
of the Primitive Church; as being easie, by giving them new names, to
make that an Image of the Virgin Mary, and of her Sonne our Saviour,
which before perhaps was called the Image of Venus, and Cupid; and so of
a Jupiter to make a Barnabas, and of Mercury a Paul, and the like. And
as worldly ambition creeping by degrees into the Pastors, drew them to
an endeavour of pleasing the new made Christians; and also to a liking
of this kind of honour, which they also might hope for after their
decease, as well as those that had already gained it: so the worshipping
of the Images of Christ and his Apostles, grow more and more Idolatrous;
save that somewhat after the time of Constantine, divers Emperors, and
Bishops, and generall Councells observed, and opposed the unlawfulnesse
thereof; but too late, or too weakly.




Canonizing Of Saints

The Canonizing of Saints, is another Relique of Gentilisme: It is
neither a misunderstanding of Scripture, nor a new invention of the
Roman Church, but a custome as ancient as the Common-wealth of Rome it
self. The first that ever was canonized at Rome, was Romulus, and that
upon the narration of Julius Proculus, that swore before the Senate,
he spake with him after his death, and was assured by him, he dwelt in
Heaven, and was there called Quirinius, and would be propitious to
the State of their new City: And thereupon the Senate gave Publique
Testimony of his Sanctity. Julius Caesar, and other Emperors after him,
had the like Testimony; that is, were Canonized for Saints; now defined;
and is the same with the Apotheosis of the Heathen.




The Name Of Pontifex

It is also from the Roman Heathen, that the Popes have received the
name, and power of PONTIFEX MAXIMUS. This was the name of him that in
the ancient Common-wealth of Rome, had the Supreme Authority under
the Senate and People, of regulating all Ceremonies, and Doctrines
concerning their Religion: And when Augustus Caesar changed the State
into a Monarchy, he took to himselfe no more but this office, and that
of Tribune of the People, (than is to say, the Supreme Power both in
State, and Religion;) and the succeeding Emperors enjoyed the same. But
when the Emperour Constantine lived, who was the first that professed
and authorized Christian Religion, it was consonant to his profession,
to cause Religion to be regulated (under his authority) by the Bishop
of Rome: Though it doe not appear they had so soon the name of Pontifex;
but rather, that the succeeding Bishops took it of themselves, to
countenance the power they exercised over the Bishops of the Roman
Provinces. For it is not any Priviledge of St. Peter, but the Priviledge
of the City of Rome, which the Emperors were alwaies willing to uphold;
that gave them such authority over other Bishops; as may be evidently
seen by that, that the Bishop of Constantinople, when the Emperour made
that City the Seat of the Empire, pretended to bee equall to the Bishop
of Rome; though at last, not without contention, the Pope carryed it,
and became the Pontifex Maximus; but in right onely of the Emperour; and
not without the bounds of the Empire; nor any where, after the Emperour
had lost his power in Rome; though it were the Pope himself that took
his power from him. From whence wee may by the way observe, that there
is no place for the superiority of the Pope over other Bishops, except
in the territories whereof he is himself the Civill Soveraign; and where
the Emperour having Soveraign Power Civill, hath expressely chosen the
Pope for the chief Pastor under himselfe, of his Christian Subjects.




Procession Of Images

The carrying about of Images in Procession, is another Relique of the
Religion of the Greeks, and Romans: For they also carried their
Idols from place to place, in a kind of Chariot, which was peculiarly
dedicated to that use, which the Latines called Thensa, and Vehiculum
Deorum; and the Image was placed in a frame, or Shrine, which they
called Ferculum: And that which they called Pompa, is the same that
now is named Procession: According whereunto, amongst the Divine Honors
which were given to Julius Caesar by the Senate, this was one, that in
the Pompe (or Procession) at the Circaean games, he should have Thensam
& Ferculum, a sacred Chariot, and a Shrine; which was as much, as to be
carried up and down as a God: Just as at this day the Popes are carried
by Switzers under a Canopie.




Wax Candles, And Torches Lighted

To these Processions also belonged the bearing of burning Torches, and
Candles, before the Images of the Gods, both amongst the Greeks, and
Romans. For afterwards the Emperors of Rome received the same honor; as
we read of Caligula, that at his reception to the Empire, he was carried
from Misenum to Rome, in the midst of a throng of People, the wayes
beset with Altars, and Beasts for Sacrifice, and burning Torches: And
of Caracalla that was received into Alexandria with Incense, and with
casting of Flowers, and Dadouchiais, that is, with Torches; for Dadochoi
were they that amongst the Greeks carried Torches lighted in the
Processions of their Gods: And in processe of time, the devout, but
ignorant People, did many times honor their Bishops with the like
pompe of Wax Candles, and the Images of our Saviour, and the Saints,
constantly, in the Church it self. And thus came in the use of Wax
Candles; and was also established by some of the ancient Councells.

The Heathens had also their Aqua Lustralis, that is to say, Holy Water.
The Church of Rome imitates them also in their Holy Dayes. They had
their Bacchanalia; and we have our Wakes, answering to them: They
their Saturnalia, and we our Carnevalls, and Shrove-tuesdays liberty
of Servants: They their Procession of Priapus; wee our fetching in,
erection, and dancing about May-poles; and Dancing is one kind of
Worship: They had their Procession called Ambarvalia; and we our
Procession about the fields in the Rogation Week. Nor do I think that
these are all the Ceremonies that have been left in the Church, from the
first conversion of the Gentiles: but they are all that I can for the
present call to mind; and if a man would wel observe that which is
delivered in the Histories, concerning the Religious Rites of the Greeks
and Romanes, I doubt not but he might find many more of these old empty
Bottles of Gentilisme, which the Doctors of the Romane Church, either
by Negligence, or Ambition, have filled up again with the new Wine of
Christianity, that will not faile in time to break them.



CHAPTER XLVI. OF DARKNESSE FROM VAIN PHILOSOPHY, AND FABULOUS TRADITIONS




What Philosophy Is

By Philosophy is understood "the Knowledge acquired by Reasoning, from
the Manner of the Generation of any thing, to the Properties; or from
the Properties, to some possible Way of Generation of the same; to the
end to bee able to produce, as far as matter, and humane force permit,
such Effects, as humane life requireth." So the Geometrician, from the
Construction of Figures, findeth out many Properties thereof; and from
the Properties, new Ways of their Construction, by Reasoning; to the end
to be able to measure Land and Water; and for infinite other uses. So
the Astronomer, from the Rising, Setting, and Moving of the Sun, and
Starres, in divers parts of the Heavens, findeth out the Causes of Day,
and Night, and of the different Seasons of the Year; whereby he keepeth
an account of Time: And the like of other Sciences.




Prudence No Part Of Philosophy

By which Definition it is evident, that we are not to account as any
part thereof, that originall knowledge called Experience, in which
consisteth Prudence: Because it is not attained by Reasoning, but found
as well in Brute Beasts, as in Man; and is but a Memory of successions
of events in times past, wherein the omission of every little
circumstance altering the effect, frustrateth the expectation of the
most Prudent: whereas nothing is produced by Reasoning aright, but
generall, eternall, and immutable Truth.




No False Doctrine Is Part Of Philosophy

Nor are we therefore to give that name to any false Conclusions: For he
that Reasoneth aright in words he understandeth, can never conclude an
Error:



No More Is Revelation Supernaturall

Nor to that which any man knows by supernaturall Revelation; because it
is not acquired by Reasoning:




Nor Learning Taken Upon Credit Of Authors

Nor that which is gotten by Reasoning from the Authority of Books;
because it is not by Reasoning from the Cause to the Effect, nor from
the Effect to the Cause; and is not Knowledge, but Faith.




Of The Beginnings And Progresse Of Philosophy

The faculty of Reasoning being consequent to the use of Speech, it was
not possible, but that there should have been some generall Truthes
found out by Reasoning, as ancient almost as Language it selfe. The
Savages of America, are not without some good Morall Sentences; also
they have a little Arithmetick, to adde, and divide in Numbers not too
great: but they are not therefore Philosophers. For as there were Plants
of Corn and Wine in small quantity dispersed in the Fields and Woods,
before men knew their vertue, or made use of them for their nourishment,
or planted them apart in Fields, and Vineyards; in which time they
fed on Akorns, and drank Water: so also there have been divers true,
generall, and profitable Speculations from the beginning; as being the
naturall plants of humane Reason: But they were at first but few in
number; men lived upon grosse Experience; there was no Method; that is
to say, no Sowing, nor Planting of Knowledge by it self, apart from the
Weeds, and common Plants of Errour and Conjecture: And the cause of it
being the want of leasure from procuring the necessities of life, and
defending themselves against their neighbours, it was impossible, till
the erecting of great Common-wealths, it should be otherwise. Leasure
is the mother of Philosophy; and Common-wealth, the mother of Peace, and
Leasure: Where first were great and flourishing Cities, there was first
the study of Philosophy. The Gymnosophists of India, the Magi of Persia,
and the Priests of Chaldea and Egypt, are counted the most ancient
Philosophers; and those Countreys were the most ancient of Kingdomes.
Philosophy was not risen to the Graecians, and other people of the West,
whose Common-wealths (no greater perhaps then Lucca, or Geneva) had
never Peace, but when their fears of one another were equall; nor the
Leasure to observe any thing but one another. At length, when Warre had
united many of these Graecian lesser Cities, into fewer, and greater;
then began Seven Men, of severall parts of Greece, to get the reputation
of being Wise; some of them for Morall and Politique Sentences; and
others for the learning of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, which was
Astronomy, and Geometry. But we hear not yet of any Schools of
Philosophy.




Of The Schools Of Philosophy Amongst The Athenians

After the Athenians by the overthrow of the Persian Armies, had gotten
the Dominion of the Sea; and thereby, of all the Islands, and Maritime
Cities of the Archipelago, as well of Asia as Europe; and were grown
wealthy; they that had no employment, neither at home, nor abroad, had
little else to employ themselves in, but either (as St. Luke says, Acts
17.21.) "in telling and hearing news," or in discoursing of Philosophy
publiquely to the youth of the City. Every Master took some place for
that purpose. Plato in certaine publique Walks called Academia, from one
Academus: Aristotle in the Walk of the Temple of Pan, called Lycaeum:
others in the Stoa, or covered Walk, wherein the Merchants Goods were
brought to land: others in other places; where they spent the time of
their Leasure, in teaching or in disputing of their Opinions: and some
in any place, where they could get the youth of the City together to
hear them talk. And this was it which Carneades also did at Rome, when
he was Ambassadour: which caused Cato to advise the Senate to dispatch
him quickly, for feare of corrupting the manners of the young men that
delighted to hear him speak (as they thought) fine things.

From this it was, that the place where any of them taught, and disputed,
was called Schola, which in their Tongue signifieth Leasure; and their
Disputations, Diatribae, that is to say, Passing of The Time. Also the
Philosophers themselves had the name of their Sects, some of them from
these their Schools: For they that followed Plato's Doctrine, were
called Academiques; The followers of Aristotle, Peripatetiques, from the
Walk hee taught in; and those that Zeno taught, Stoiques, from the Stoa:
as if we should denominate men from More-fields, from Pauls-Church, and
from the Exchange, because they meet there often, to prate and loyter.

Neverthelesse, men were so much taken with this custome, that in time
it spread it selfe over all Europe, and the best part of Afrique; so as
there were Schools publiquely erected, and maintained for Lectures, and
Disputations, almost in every Common-wealth.




Of The Schools Of The Jews

There were also Schools, anciently, both before, and after the time of
our Saviour, amongst the Jews: but they were Schools of their Law. For
though they were called Synagogues, that is to say, Congregations of the
People; yet in as much as the Law was every Sabbath day read, expounded,
and disputed in them, they differed not in nature, but in name onely
from Publique Schools; and were not onely in Jerusalem, but in every
City of the Gentiles, where the Jews inhabited. There was such a Schoole
at Damascus, whereinto Paul entred, to persecute. There were others at
Antioch, Iconium and Thessalonica, whereinto he entred, to dispute:
And such was the Synagogue of the Libertines, Cyrenians, Alexandrians,
Cilicians, and those of Asia; that is to say, the Schoole of Libertines,
and of Jewes, that were strangers in Jerusalem: And of this Schoole they
were that disputed with Saint Steven.




The Schoole Of Graecians Unprofitable

But what has been the Utility of those Schools? what Science is there
at this day acquired by their Readings and Disputings? That wee have
of Geometry, which is the Mother of all Naturall Science, wee are not
indebted for it to the Schools. Plato that was the best Philosopher
of the Greeks, forbad entrance into his Schoole, to all that were not
already in some measure Geometricians. There were many that studied that
Science to the great advantage of mankind: but there is no mention of
their Schools; nor was there any Sect of Geometricians; nor did they
then passe under the name of Philosophers. The naturall Philosophy
of those Schools, was rather a Dream than Science, and set forth in
senselesse and insignificant Language; which cannot be avoided by
those that will teach Philosophy, without having first attained great
knowledge in Geometry: For Nature worketh by Motion; the Wayes,
and Degrees whereof cannot be known, without the knowledge of the
Proportions and Properties of Lines, and Figures. Their Morall
Philosophy is but a description of their own Passions. For the rule of
Manners, without Civill Government, is the Law of Nature; and in it,
the Law Civill; that determineth what is Honest, and Dishonest; what is
Just, and Unjust; and generally what is Good, and Evill: whereas they
make the Rules of Good, and Bad, by their own Liking, and Disliking: By
which means, in so great diversity of taste, there is nothing generally
agreed on; but every one doth (as far as he dares) whatsoever seemeth
good in his own eyes, to the subversion of Common-wealth. Their Logique
which should bee the Method of Reasoning, is nothing else but Captions
of Words, and Inventions how to puzzle such as should goe about to pose
them. To conclude there is nothing so absurd, that the old Philosophers
(as Cicero saith, who was one of them) have not some of them maintained.
And I beleeve that scarce any thing can be more absurdly said
in naturall Philosophy, than that which now is called Aristotles
Metaphysiques, nor more repugnant to Government, than much of that hee
hath said in his Politiques; nor more ignorantly, than a great part of
his Ethiques.




The Schools Of The Jews Unprofitable

The Schoole of the Jews, was originally a Schoole of the Law of Moses;
who commanded (Deut. 31.10.) that at the end of every seventh year, at
the Feast of the Tabernacles, it should be read to all the people, that
they might hear, and learn it: Therefore the reading of the Law (which
was in use after the Captivity) every Sabbath day, ought to have had
no other end, but the acquainting of the people with the Commandements
which they were to obey, and to expound unto them the writings of the
Prophets. But it is manifest, by the many reprehensions of them by
our Saviour, that they corrupted the Text of the Law with their
false Commentaries, and vain Traditions; and so little understood the
Prophets, that they did neither acknowledge Christ, nor the works he
did; for which the Prophets prophecyed. So that by their Lectures and
Disputations in their Synagogues, they turned the Doctrine of their Law
into a Phantasticall kind of Philosophy, concerning the incomprehensible
nature of God, and of Spirits; which they compounded of the Vain
Philosophy and Theology of the Graecians, mingled with their own
fancies, drawn from the obscurer places of the Scripture, and which
might most easily bee wrested to their purpose; and from the Fabulous
Traditions of their Ancestors.




University What It Is

That which is now called an University, is a Joyning together, and an
Incorporation under one Government of many Publique Schools, in one and
the same Town or City. In which, the principal Schools were ordained for
the three Professions, that is to say, of the Romane Religion, of the
Romane Law, and of the Art of Medicine. And for the study of Philosophy
it hath no otherwise place, then as a handmaid to the Romane Religion:
And since the Authority of Aristotle is onely current there, that
study is not properly Philosophy, (the nature whereof dependeth not on
Authors,) but Aristotelity. And for Geometry, till of very late times it
had no place at all; as being subservient to nothing but rigide Truth.
And if any man by the ingenuity of his owne nature, had attained to any
degree of perfection therein, hee was commonly thought a Magician, and
his Art Diabolicall.




Errors Brought Into Religion From Aristotles Metaphysiques

Now to descend to the particular Tenets of Vain Philosophy, derived to
the Universities, and thence into the Church, partly from Aristotle,
partly from Blindnesse of understanding; I shall first consider their
Principles. There is a certain Philosophia Prima, on which all other
Philosophy ought to depend; and consisteth principally, in right
limiting of the significations of such Appellations, or Names, as are
of all others the most Universall: Which Limitations serve to avoid
ambiguity, and aequivocation in Reasoning; and are commonly called
Definitions; such as are the Definitions of Body, Time, Place, Matter,
Forme, Essence, Subject, Substance, Accident, Power, Act, Finite,
Infinite, Quantity, Quality, Motion, Action, Passion, and divers others,
necessary to the explaining of a mans Conceptions concerning the Nature
and Generation of Bodies. The Explication (that is, the setling of the
meaning) of which, and the like Terms, is commonly in the Schools called
Metaphysiques; as being a part of the Philosophy of Aristotle, which
hath that for title: but it is in another sense; for there it signifieth
as much, as "Books written, or placed after his naturall Philosophy:"
But the Schools take them for Books Of Supernaturall Philosophy: for the
word Metaphysiques will bear both these senses. And indeed that which is
there written, is for the most part so far from the possibility of being
understood, and so repugnant to naturall Reason, that whosoever
thinketh there is any thing to bee understood by it, must needs think it
supernaturall.




Errors Concerning Abstract Essences

From these Metaphysiques, which are mingled with the Scripture to make
Schoole Divinity, wee are told, there be in the world certaine
Essences separated from Bodies, which they call Abstract Essences, and
Substantiall Formes: For the Interpreting of which Jargon, there is
need of somewhat more than ordinary attention in this place. Also I
ask pardon of those that are not used to this kind of Discourse, for
applying my selfe to those that are. The World, (I mean not the Earth
onely, that denominates the Lovers of it Worldly Men, but the Universe,
that is, the whole masse of all things that are) is Corporeall, that
is to say, Body; and hath the dimensions of Magnitude, namely, Length,
Bredth, and Depth: also every part of Body, is likewise Body, and hath
the like dimensions; and consequently every part of the Universe,
is Body, and that which is not Body, is no part of the Universe: And
because the Universe is all, that which is no part of it, is Nothing;
and consequently No Where. Nor does it follow from hence, that Spirits
are Nothing: for they have dimensions, and are therefore really Bodies;
though that name in common Speech be given to such Bodies onely, as are
visible, or palpable; that is, that have some degree of Opacity: But for
Spirits, they call them Incorporeall; which is a name of more honour,
and may therefore with more piety bee attributed to God himselfe; in
whom wee consider not what Attribute expresseth best his Nature, which
is Incomprehensible; but what best expresseth our desire to honour him.

To know now upon what grounds they say there be Essences Abstract, or
Substantiall Formes, wee are to consider what those words do properly
signifie. The use of Words, is to register to our selves, and make
manifest to others the Thoughts and Conceptions of our Minds. Of which
Words, some are the names of the Things conceived; as the names of all
sorts of Bodies, that work upon the Senses, and leave an Impression in
the Imagination: Others are the names of the Imaginations themselves;
that is to say, of those Ideas, or mentall Images we have of all things
wee see, or remember: And others againe are names of Names; or of
different sorts of Speech: As Universall, Plurall, Singular, Negation,
True, False, Syllogisme, Interrogation, Promise, Covenant, are the names
of certain Forms of Speech. Others serve to shew the Consequence, or
Repugnance of one name to another; as when one saith, "A Man is a Body,"
hee intendeth that the name of Body is necessarily consequent to the
name of Man; as being but severall names of the same thing, Man; which
Consequence is signified by coupling them together with the word Is.
And as wee use the Verbe Is; so the Latines use their Verbe Est, and
the Greeks their Esti through all its Declinations. Whether all other
Nations of the world have in their severall languages a word that
answereth to it, or not, I cannot tell; but I am sure they have not need
of it: For the placing of two names in order may serve to signifie their
Consequence, if it were the custome, (for Custome is it, that give words
their force,) as well as the words Is, or Bee, or Are, and the like.

And if it were so, that there were a Language without any Verb
answerable to Est, or Is, or Bee; yet the men that used it would bee
not a jot the lesse capable of Inferring, Concluding, and of all kind of
Reasoning, than were the Greeks, and Latines. But what then would become
of these Terms, of Entity, Essence, Essentiall, Essentially, that are
derived from it, and of many more that depend on these, applyed as most
commonly they are? They are therefore no Names of Things; but Signes, by
which wee make known, that wee conceive the Consequence of one name or
Attribute to another: as when we say, "a Man, is, a living Body," wee
mean not that the Man is one thing, the Living Body another, and the Is,
or Beeing a third: but that the Man, and the Living Body, is the same
thing: because the Consequence, "If hee bee a Man, hee is a living
Body," is a true Consequence, signified by that word Is. Therefore, to
bee a Body, to Walke, to bee Speaking, to Live, to See, and the like
Infinitives; also Corporeity, Walking, Speaking, Life, Sight, and the
like, that signifie just the same, are the names of Nothing; as I have
elsewhere more amply expressed.

But to what purpose (may some man say) is such subtilty in a work of
this nature, where I pretend to nothing but what is necessary to the
doctrine of Government and Obedience? It is to this purpose, that men
may no longer suffer themselves to be abused, by them, that by this
doctrine of Separated Essences, built on the Vain Philosophy of
Aristotle, would fright them from Obeying the Laws of their Countrey,
with empty names; as men fright Birds from the Corn with an empty
doublet, a hat, and a crooked stick. For it is upon this ground, that
when a Man is dead and buried, they say his Soule (that is his Life) can
walk separated from his Body, and is seen by night amongst the graves.
Upon the same ground they say, that the Figure, and Colour, and Tast of
a peece of Bread, has a being, there, where they say there is no Bread:
And upon the same ground they say, that Faith, and Wisdome, and other
Vertues are sometimes powred into a man, sometimes blown into him from
Heaven; as if the Vertuous, and their Vertues could be asunder; and a
great many other things that serve to lessen the dependance of Subjects
on the Soveraign Power of their Countrey. For who will endeavour to obey
the Laws, if he expect Obedience to be Powred or Blown into him? Or who
will not obey a Priest, that can make God, rather than his Soveraign;
nay than God himselfe? Or who, that is in fear of Ghosts, will not bear
great respect to those that can make the Holy Water, that drives them
from him? And this shall suffice for an example of the Errors, which are
brought into the Church, from the Entities, and Essences of Aristotle:
which it may be he knew to be false Philosophy; but writ it as a thing
consonant to, and corroborative of their Religion; and fearing the fate
of Socrates.

Being once fallen into this Error of Separated Essences, they are
thereby necessarily involved in many other absurdities that follow it.
For seeing they will have these Forms to be reall, they are obliged to
assign them some place. But because they hold them Incorporeall, without
all dimension of Quantity, and all men know that Place is Dimension, and
not to be filled, but by that which is Corporeall; they are driven to
uphold their credit with a distinction, that they are not indeed any
where Circumscriptive, but Definitive: Which Terms being meer Words, and
in this occasion insignificant, passe onely in Latine, that the vanity
of them may bee concealed. For the Circumscription of a thing, is
nothing else but the Determination, or Defining of its Place; and so
both the Terms of the Distinction are the same. And in particular, of
the Essence of a Man, which (they say) is his Soule, they affirm it,
to be All of it in his little Finger, and All of it in every other Part
(how small soever) of his Body; and yet no more Soule in the Whole Body,
than in any one of those Parts. Can any man think that God is served
with such absurdities? And yet all this is necessary to beleeve,
to those that will beleeve the Existence of an Incorporeall Soule,
Separated from the Body.

And when they come to give account, how an Incorporeall Substance can
be capable of Pain, and be tormented in the fire of Hell, or Purgatory,
they have nothing at all to answer, but that it cannot be known how fire
can burn Soules.

Again, whereas Motion is change of Place, and Incorporeall Substances
are not capable of Place, they are troubled to make it seem possible,
how a Soule can goe hence, without the Body to Heaven, Hell, or
Purgatory; and how the Ghosts of men (and I may adde of their clothes
which they appear in) can walk by night in Churches, Church-yards, and
other places of Sepulture. To which I know not what they can answer,
unlesse they will say, they walke Definitive, not Circumscriptive, or
Spiritually, not Temporally: for such egregious distinctions are equally
applicable to any difficulty whatsoever.




Nunc-stans

For the meaning of Eternity, they will not have it to be an Endlesse
Succession of Time; for then they should not be able to render a reason
how Gods Will, and Praeordaining of things to come, should not be before
his Praescience of the same, as the Efficient Cause before the Effect,
or Agent before the Action; nor of many other their bold opinions
concerning the Incomprehensible Nature of God. But they will teach us,
that Eternity is the Standing still of the Present Time, a Nunc-stans
(as the Schools call it;) which neither they, nor any else understand,
no more than they would a Hic-stans for an Infinite greatnesse of Place.




One Body In Many Places, And Many Bodies In One Place At Once

And whereas men divide a Body in their thought, by numbring parts of
it, and in numbring those parts, number also the parts of the Place
it filled; it cannot be, but in making many parts, wee make also many
places of those parts; whereby there cannot bee conceived in the mind of
any man, more, or fewer parts, than there are places for: yet they will
have us beleeve, that by the Almighty power of God, one body may be at
one and the same time in many places; and many bodies at one and the
same time in one place; as if it were an acknowledgment of the Divine
Power, to say, that which is, is not; or that which has been, has not
been. And these are but a small part of the Incongruities they are
forced to, from their disputing Philosophically, in stead of admiring,
and adoring of the Divine and Incomprehensible Nature; whose Attributes
cannot signifie what he is, but ought to signifie our desire to honour
him, with the best Appellations we can think on. But they that venture
to reason of his Nature, from these Attributes of Honour, losing their
understanding in the very first attempt, fall from one Inconvenience
into another, without end, and without number; in the same manner,
as when a man ignorant of the Ceremonies of Court, comming into the
presence of a greater Person than he is used to speak to, and stumbling
at his entrance, to save himselfe from falling, lets slip his Cloake;
to recover his Cloake, lets fall his Hat; and with one disorder after
another, discovers his astonishment and rusticity.




Absurdities In Naturall Philosophy, As Gravity The Cause Of Heavinesse

Then for Physiques, that is, the knowledge of the subordinate, and
secundary causes of naturall events; they render none at all, but empty
words. If you desire to know why some kind of bodies sink naturally
downwards toward the Earth, and others goe naturally from it; The
Schools will tell you out of Aristotle, that the bodies that sink
downwards, are Heavy; and that this Heavinesse is it that causes them to
descend: But if you ask what they mean by Heavinesse, they will define
it to bee an endeavour to goe to the center of the Earth: so that the
cause why things sink downward, is an Endeavour to be below: which is
as much as to say, that bodies descend, or ascend, because they doe.
Or they will tell you the center of the Earth is the place of Rest, and
Conservation for Heavy things; and therefore they endeavour to be there:
As if Stones, and Metalls had a desire, or could discern the place they
would bee at, as Man does; or loved Rest, as Man does not; or that a
peece of Glasse were lesse safe in the Window, than falling into the
Street.




Quantity Put Into Body Already Made

If we would know why the same Body seems greater (without adding to it)
one time, than another; they say, when it seems lesse, it is Condensed;
when greater, Rarefied. What is that Condensed, and Rarefied? Condensed,
is when there is in the very same Matter, lesse Quantity than before;
and Rarefied, when more. As if there could be Matter, that had not some
determined Quantity; when Quantity is nothing else but the Determination
of Matter; that is to say of Body, by which we say one Body is greater,
or lesser than another, by thus, or thus much. Or as if a Body were made
without any Quantity at all, and that afterwards more, or lesse were put
into it, according as it is intended the Body should be more, or lesse
Dense.




Powring In Of Soules

For the cause of the Soule of Man, they say, Creatur Infundendo, and
Creando Infunditur: that is, "It is Created by Powring it in," and
"Powred in by Creation."




Ubiquity Of Apparition

For the Cause of Sense, an ubiquity of Species; that is, of the Shews
or Apparitions of objects; which when they be Apparitions to the Eye, is
Sight; when to the Eare, Hearing; to the Palate, Tast; to the Nostrill,
Smelling; and to the rest of the Body, Feeling.




Will, The Cause Of Willing

For cause of the Will, to doe any particular action, which is called
Volitio, they assign the Faculty, that is to say, the Capacity in
generall, that men have, to will sometimes one thing, sometimes another,
which is called Voluntas; making the Power the cause of the Act: As
if one should assign for cause of the good or evill Acts of men, their
Ability to doe them.




Ignorance An Occult Cause

And in many occasions they put for cause of Naturall events, their own
Ignorance, but disguised in other words: As when they say, Fortune is
the cause of things contingent; that is, of things whereof they know no
cause: And as when they attribute many Effects to Occult Qualities; that
is, qualities not known to them; and therefore also (as they thinke)
to no Man else. And to Sympathy, Antipathy, Antiperistasis, Specificall
Qualities, and other like Termes, which signifie neither the Agent that
produceth them, nor the Operation by which they are produced.

If such Metaphysiques, and Physiques as this, be not Vain Philosophy,
there was never any; nor needed St. Paul to give us warning to avoid it.




One Makes The Things Incongruent, Another The Incongruity

And for their Morall, and Civill Philosophy, it hath the same, or
greater absurdities. If a man doe an action of Injustice, that is to
say, an action contrary to the Law, God they say is the prime cause of
the Law, and also the prime cause of that, and all other Actions; but no
cause at all of the Injustice; which is the Inconformity of the Action
to the Law. This is Vain Philosophy. A man might as well say, that one
man maketh both a streight line, and a crooked, and another maketh their
Incongruity. And such is the Philosophy of all men that resolve of their
Conclusions, before they know their Premises; pretending to comprehend,
that which is Incomprehensible; and of Attributes of Honour to make
Attributes of Nature; as this distinction was made to maintain the
Doctrine of Free-Will, that is, of a Will of man, not subject to the
Will of God.




Private Appetite The Rule Of Publique Good:

Aristotle, and other Heathen Philosophers define Good, and Evill, by the
Appetite of men; and well enough, as long as we consider them governed
every one by his own Law: For in the condition of men that have no other
Law but their own Appetites, there can be no generall Rule of Good, and
Evill Actions. But in a Common-wealth this measure is false: Not the
Appetite of Private men, but the Law, which is the Will and Appetite of
the State is the measure. And yet is this Doctrine still practised; and
men judge the Goodnesse, or Wickednesse of their own, and of other mens
actions, and of the actions of the Common-wealth it selfe, by their own
Passions; and no man calleth Good or Evill, but that which is so in his
own eyes, without any regard at all to the Publique Laws; except onely
Monks, and Friers, that are bound by Vow to that simple obedience to
their Superiour, to which every Subject ought to think himself bound by
the Law of Nature to the Civill Soveraign. And this private measure of
Good, is a Doctrine, not onely Vain, but also Pernicious to the Publique
State.




And That Lawfull Marriage Is Unchastity

It is also Vain and false Philosophy, to say the work of Marriage is
repugnant to Chastity, or Continence, and by consequence to make them
Morall Vices; as they doe, that pretend Chastity, and Continence, for
the ground of denying Marriage to the Clergy. For they confesse it is
no more, but a Constitution of the Church, that requireth in those holy
Orders that continually attend the Altar, and administration of the
Eucharist, a continuall Abstinence from women, under the name of
continuall Chastity, Continence, and Purity. Therefore they call the
lawfull use of Wives, want of Chastity, and Continence; and so make
Marriage a Sin, or at least a thing so impure, and unclean, as to render
a man unfit for the Altar. If the Law were made because the use of Wives
is Incontinence, and contrary to Chastity, then all marriage is vice; If
because it is a thing too impure, and unclean for a man consecrated to
God; much more should other naturall, necessary, and daily works which
all men doe, render men unworthy to bee Priests, because they are more
unclean.

But the secret foundation of this prohibition of Marriage of Priests, is
not likely to have been laid so slightly, as upon such errours in Morall
Philosophy; nor yet upon the preference of single life, to the estate of
Matrimony; which proceeded from the wisdome of St. Paul, who perceived
how inconvenient a thing it was, for those that in those times of
persecution were Preachers of the Gospel, and forced to fly from one
countrey to another, to be clogged with the care of wife and children;
but upon the design of the Popes, and Priests of after times, to make
themselves the Clergy, that is to say, sole Heirs of the Kingdome of God
in this world; to which it was necessary to take from them the use of
Marriage, because our Saviour saith, that at the coming of his Kingdome
the Children of God shall "neither Marry, nor bee given in Marriage, but
shall bee as the Angels in heaven;" that is to say, Spirituall. Seeing
then they had taken on them the name of Spirituall, to have allowed
themselves (when there was no need) the propriety of Wives, had been an
Incongruity.




And That All Government But Popular, Is Tyranny

From Aristotles Civill Philosophy, they have learned, to call all manner
of Common-wealths but the Popular, (such as was at that time the state
of Athens,) Tyranny. All Kings they called Tyrants; and the Aristocracy
of the thirty Governours set up there by the Lacedemonians that subdued
them, the thirty Tyrants: As also to call the condition of the people
under the Democracy, Liberty. A Tyrant originally signified no more
simply, but a Monarch: But when afterwards in most parts of Greece that
kind of government was abolished, the name began to signifie, not onely
the thing it did before, but with it, the hatred which the Popular
States bare towards it: As also the name of King became odious after the
deposing of the Kings in Rome, as being a thing naturall to all men,
to conceive some great Fault to be signified in any Attribute, that is
given in despight, and to a great Enemy. And when the same men shall be
displeased with those that have the administration of the Democracy,
or Aristocracy, they are not to seek for disgraceful names to expresse
their anger in; but call readily the one Anarchy, and the other
Oligarchy, or the Tyranny Of A Few. And that which offendeth the People,
is no other thing, but that they are governed, not as every one of them
would himselfe, but as the Publique Representant, be it one Man, or an
Assembly of men thinks fit; that is, by an Arbitrary government: for
which they give evill names to their Superiors; never knowing (till
perhaps a little after a Civill warre) that without such Arbitrary
government, such Warre must be perpetuall; and that it is Men, and Arms,
not Words, and Promises, that make the Force and Power of the Laws.




That Not Men, But Law Governs

And therefore this is another Errour of Aristotles Politiques, that in
a wel ordered Common-wealth, not Men should govern, but the Laws. What
man, that has his naturall Senses, though he can neither write nor read,
does not find himself governed by them he fears, and beleeves can kill
or hurt him when he obeyeth not? or that beleeves the Law can hurt him;
that is, Words, and Paper, without the Hands, and Swords of men? And
this is of the number of pernicious Errors: for they induce men, as oft
as they like not their Governours, to adhaere to those that call them
Tyrants, and to think it lawfull to raise warre against them: And yet
they are many times cherished from the Pulpit, by the Clergy.




Laws Over The Conscience

There is another Errour in their Civill Philosophy (which they never
learned of Aristotle, nor Cicero, nor any other of the Heathen,) to
extend the power of the Law, which is the Rule of Actions onely, to the
very Thoughts, and Consciences of men, by Examination, and Inquisition
of what they Hold, notwithstanding the Conformity of their Speech and
Actions: By which, men are either punished for answering the truth
of their thoughts, or constrained to answer an untruth for fear of
punishment. It is true, that the Civill Magistrate, intending to employ
a Minister in the charge of Teaching, may enquire of him, if hee bee
content to Preach such, and such Doctrines; and in case of refusall,
may deny him the employment: But to force him to accuse himselfe of
Opinions, when his Actions are not by Law forbidden, is against the
Law of Nature; and especially in them, who teach, that a man shall bee
damned to Eternall and extream torments, if he die in a false opinion
concerning an Article of the Christian Faith. For who is there, that
knowing there is so great danger in an error, when the naturall care
of himself, compelleth not to hazard his Soule upon his own judgement,
rather than that of any other man that is unconcerned in his damnation?




Private Interpretation Of Law

For a Private man, without the Authority of the Common-wealth, that is
to say, without permission from the Representant thereof, to Interpret
the Law by his own Spirit, is another Error in the Politiques; but not
drawn from Aristotle, nor from any other of the Heathen Philosophers.
For none of them deny, but that in the Power of making Laws, is
comprehended also the Power of Explaining them when there is need. And
are not the Scriptures, in all places where they are Law, made Law by
the Authority of the Common-wealth, and consequently, a part of the
Civill Law?

Of the same kind it is also, when any but the Soveraign restraineth in
any man that power which the Common-wealth hath not restrained: as they
do, that impropriate the Preaching of the Gospell to one certain Order
of men, where the Laws have left it free. If the State give me leave to
preach, or teach; that is, if it forbid me not, no man can forbid me.
If I find my selfe amongst the Idolaters of America, shall I that am a
Christian, though not in Orders, think it a sin to preach Jesus Christ,
till I have received Orders from Rome? or when I have preached, shall
not I answer their doubts, and expound the Scriptures to them; that is
shall I not Teach? But for this may some say, as also for administring
to them the Sacraments, the necessity shall be esteemed for a sufficient
Mission; which is true: But this is true also, that for whatsoever,
a dispensation is due for the necessity, for the same there needs no
dispensation, when there is no Law that forbids it. Therefore to deny
these Functions to those, to whom the Civill Soveraigne hath not denyed
them, is a taking away of a lawfull Liberty, which is contrary to the
Doctrine of Civill Government.




Language Of Schoole-Divines

More examples of Vain Philosophy, brought into Religion by the Doctors
of Schoole-Divinity, might be produced; but other men may if they please
observe them of themselves. I shall onely adde this, that the
Writings of Schoole-Divines, are nothing else for the most part, but
insignificant Traines of strange and barbarous words, or words otherwise
used, then in the common use of the Latine tongue; such as would pose
Cicero, and Varro, and all the Grammarians of ancient Rome. Which if any
man would see proved, let him (as I have said once before) see whether
he can translate any Schoole-Divine into any of the Modern tongues, as
French, English, or any other copious language: for that which cannot
in most of these be made Intelligible, is no Intelligible in the Latine.
Which Insignificancy of language, though I cannot note it for false
Philosophy; yet it hath a quality, not onely to hide the Truth, but also
to make men think they have it, and desist from further search.




Errors From Tradition

Lastly, for the errors brought in from false, or uncertain History, what
is all the Legend of fictitious Miracles, in the lives of the Saints;
and all the Histories of Apparitions, and Ghosts, alledged by the
Doctors of the Romane Church, to make good their Doctrines of Hell, and
purgatory, the power of Exorcisme, and other Doctrines which have no
warrant, neither in Reason, nor Scripture; as also all those Traditions
which they call the unwritten Word of God; but old Wives Fables?
Whereof, though they find dispersed somewhat in the Writings of the
ancient Fathers; yet those Fathers were men, that might too easily
beleeve false reports; and the producing of their opinions for testimony
of the truth of what they beleeved, hath no other force with them that
(according to the Counsell of St. John 1 Epist. chap. 4. verse 1.)
examine Spirits, than in all things that concern the power of the Romane
Church, (the abuse whereof either they suspected not, or had benefit
by it,) to discredit their testimony, in respect of too rash beleef of
reports; which the most sincere men, without great knowledge of naturall
causes, (such as the Fathers were) are commonly the most subject to: For
naturally, the best men are the least suspicious of fraudulent purposes.
Gregory the Pope, and S. Bernard have somewhat of Apparitions of Ghosts,
that said they were in Purgatory; and so has our Beda: but no where, I
beleeve, but by report from others. But if they, or any other, relate
any such stories of their own knowledge, they shall not thereby confirm
the more such vain reports; but discover their own Infirmity, or Fraud.




Suppression Of Reason

With the Introduction of False, we may joyn also the suppression of True
Philosophy, by such men, as neither by lawfull authority, nor sufficient
study, are competent Judges of the truth. Our own Navigations make
manifest, and all men learned in humane Sciences, now acknowledge there
are Antipodes: And every day it appeareth more and more, that Years, and
Dayes are determined by Motions of the Earth. Neverthelesse, men that
have in their Writings but supposed such Doctrine, as an occasion to
lay open the reasons for, and against it, have been punished for it
by Authority Ecclesiasticall. But what reason is there for it? Is it
because such opinions are contrary to true Religion? that cannot be,
if they be true. Let therefore the truth be first examined by competent
Judges, or confuted by them that pretend to know the contrary. Is
it because they be contrary to the Religion established? Let them be
silenced by the Laws of those, to whom the Teachers of them are subject;
that is, by the Laws Civill: For disobedience may lawfully be punished
in them, that against the Laws teach even true Philosophy. Is it because
they tend to disorder in Government, as countenancing Rebellion, or
Sedition? then let them be silenced, and the Teachers punished by vertue
of his power to whom the care of the Publique quiet is committed; which
is the Authority Civill. For whatsoever Power Ecclesiastiques take upon
themselves (in any place where they are subject to the State) in their
own Right, though they call it Gods Right, is but Usurpation.



CHAPTER XLVII. OF THE BENEFIT THAT PROCEEDETH FROM SUCH DARKNESSE,

AND TO WHOM IT ACCREWETH




He That Receiveth Benefit By A Fact, Is Presumed To Be The Author

Cicero maketh honorable mention of one of the Cassii, a severe Judge
amongst the Romans, for a custome he had, in Criminal causes, (when the
testimony of the witnesses was not sufficient,) to ask the Accusers,
Cui Bono; that is to say, what Profit, Honor, or other Contentment, the
accused obtained, or expected by the Fact. For amongst Praesumptions,
there is none that so evidently declareth the Author, as doth the
BENEFIT of the Action. By the same rule I intend in this place to
examine, who they may be, that have possessed the People so long in this
part of Christendome, with these Doctrines, contrary to the Peaceable
Societies of Mankind.




That The Church Militant Is The Kingdome Of God, Was First Taught By

The Church Of Rome

And first, to this Error, That The Present Church Now Militant On Earth,
Is The Kingdome Of God, (that is, the Kingdome of Glory, or the Land of
Promise; not the Kingdome of Grace, which is but a Promise of the
Land,) are annexed these worldly Benefits, First, that the Pastors,
and Teachers of the Church, are entitled thereby, as Gods Publique
Ministers, to a Right of Governing the Church; and consequently (because
the Church, and Common-wealth are the same Persons) to be Rectors, and
Governours of the Common-wealth. By this title it is, that the Pope
prevailed with the subjects of all Christian Princes, to beleeve, that
to disobey him, was to disobey Christ himselfe; and in all differences
between him and other Princes, (charmed with the word Power Spirituall,)
to abandon their lawfull Soveraigns; which is in effect an universall
Monarchy over all Christendome. For though they were first invested in
the right of being Supreme Teachers of Christian Doctrine, by, and
under Christian Emperors, within the limits of the Romane Empire (as is
acknowledged by themselves) by the title of Pontifex Maximus, who was an
Officer subject to the Civill State; yet after the Empire was divided,
and dissolved, it was not hard to obtrude upon the people already
subject to them, another Title, namely, the Right of St. Peter; not
onely to save entire their pretended Power; but also to extend the same
over the same Christian Provinces, though no more united in the Empire
of Rome. This Benefit of an Universall Monarchy, (considering the desire
of men to bear Rule) is a sufficient Presumption, that the popes that
pretended to it, and for a long time enjoyed it, were the Authors of
the Doctrine, by which it was obtained; namely, that the Church now
on Earth, is the Kingdome of Christ. For that granted, it must be
understood, that Christ hath some Lieutenant amongst us, by whom we are
to be told what are his Commandements.

After that certain Churches had renounced this universall Power of the
Pope, one would expect in reason, that the Civill Soveraigns in all
those Churches, should have recovered so much of it, as (before they had
unadvisedly let it goe) was their own Right, and in their own hands.
And in England it was so in effect; saving that they, by whom the Kings
administred the Government of Religion, by maintaining their imployment
to be in Gods Right, seemed to usurp, if not a Supremacy, yet an
Independency on the Civill Power: and they but seemed to usurp it, in
as much as they acknowledged a Right in the King, to deprive them of the
Exercise of their Functions at his pleasure.




And Maintained Also By The Presbytery

But in those places where the Presbytery took that Office, though many
other Doctrines of the Church of Rome were forbidden to be taught; yet
this Doctrine, that the Kingdome of Christ is already come, and that it
began at the Resurrection of our Saviour, was still retained. But Cui
Bono? What Profit did they expect from it? The same which the Popes
expected: to have a Soveraign Power over the People. For what is it for
men to excommunicate their lawful King, but to keep him from all places
of Gods publique Service in his own Kingdom? and with force to resist
him, when he with force endeavoureth to correct them? Or what is it,
without Authority from the Civill Soveraign, to excommunicate any
person, but to take from him his Lawfull Liberty, that is, to usurpe
an unlawfull Power over their Brethren? The Authors therefore of this
Darknesse in Religion, are the Romane, and the Presbyterian Clergy.




Infallibility

To this head, I referre also all those Doctrines, that serve them to
keep the possession of this spirituall Soveraignty after it is gotten.
As first, that the Pope In His Publique Capacity Cannot Erre. For who
is there, that beleeving this to be true, will not readily obey him in
whatsoever he commands?




Subjection Of Bishops

Secondly, that all other Bishops, in what Common-wealth soever, have
not their Right, neither immediately from God, nor mediately from their
Civill Soveraigns, but from the Pope, is a Doctrine, by which there
comes to be in every Christian Common-wealth many potent men, (for so
are Bishops,) that have their dependance on the Pope, and owe obedience
to him, though he be a forraign Prince; by which means he is able, (as
he hath done many times) to raise a Civill War against the State
that submits not it self to be governed according to his pleasure and
Interest.




Exemptions Of The Clergy

Thirdly, the exemption of these, and of all other Priests, and of all
Monkes, and Fryers, from the Power of the Civill Laws. For by this
means, there is a great part of every Common-wealth, that enjoy the
benefit of the Laws, and are protected by the Power of the Civill State,
which neverthelesse pay no part of the Publique expence; nor are
lyable to the penalties, as other Subjects, due to their crimes; and
consequently, stand not in fear of any man, but the Pope; and adhere to
him onely, to uphold his universall Monarchy.




The Names Of Sacerdotes, And Sacrifices

Fourthly, the giving to their Priests (which is no more in the New
Testament but Presbyters, that is, Elders) the name of Sacerdotes, that
is, Sacrificers, which was the title of the Civill Soveraign, and his
publique Ministers, amongst the Jews, whilest God was their King. Also,
the making the Lords Supper a Sacrifice, serveth to make the People
beleeve the Pope hath the same power over all Christian, that Moses
and Aaron had over the Jews; that is to say, all power, both Civill and
Ecclesiasticall, as the High Priest then had.




The Sacramentation Of Marriage

Fiftly, the teaching that Matrimony is a Sacrament, giveth to the
Clergy the Judging of the lawfulnesse of Marriages; and thereby, of what
Children are Legitimate; and consequently, of the Right of Succession to
haereditary Kingdomes.




The Single Life Of Priests

Sixtly, the Deniall of Marriage to Priests, serveth to assure this Power
of the pope over Kings. For if a King be a Priest, he cannot Marry, and
transmit his Kingdome to his Posterity; If he be not a Priest then the
Pope pretendeth this Authority Ecclesiasticall over him, and over his
people.




Auricular Confession

Seventhly, from Auricular Confession, they obtain, for the assurance of
their Power, better intelligence of the designs of Princes, and great
persons in the Civill State, than these can have of the designs of the
State Ecclesiasticall.




Canonization Of Saints, And Declaring Of Martyrs

Eighthly, by the Canonization of Saints, and declaring who are Martyrs,
they assure their Power, in that they induce simple men into an
obstinacy against the Laws and Commands of their Civill Soveraigns even
to death, if by the Popes excommunication, they be declared Heretiques
or Enemies to the Church; that is, (as they interpret it,) to the Pope.




Transubstantiation, Penance, Absolution

Ninthly, they assure the same, by the Power they ascribe to every
Priest, of making Christ; and by the Power of ordaining Pennance; and of
Remitting, and Retaining of sins.




Purgatory, Indulgences, Externall Works

Tenthly, by the Doctrine of Purgatory, of Justification by externall
works, and of Indulgences, the Clergy is enriched.




Daemonology And Exorcism

Eleventhly, by their Daemonology, and the use of Exorcisme, and other
things appertaining thereto, they keep (or thinke they keep) the People
more in awe of their Power.




School-Divinity

Lastly, the Metaphysiques, Ethiques, and Politiques of Aristotle, the
frivolous Distinctions, barbarous Terms, and obscure Language of the
Schoolmen, taught in the Universities, (which have been all erected and
regulated by the Popes Authority,) serve them to keep these Errors
from being detected, and to make men mistake the Ignis Fatuus of Vain
Philosophy, for the Light of the Gospell.




The Authors Of Spirituall Darknesse, Who They Be

To these, if they sufficed not, might be added other of their dark
Doctrines, the profit whereof redoundeth manifestly, to the setting up
of an unlawfull Power over the lawfull Soveraigns of Christian People;
or for the sustaining of the same, when it is set up; or to the worldly
Riches, Honour, and Authority of those that sustain it. And therefore by
the aforesaid rule, of Cui Bono, we may justly pronounce for the Authors
of all this Spirituall Darknesse, the Pope, and Roman Clergy, and
all those besides that endeavour to settle in the mindes of men this
erroneous Doctrine, that the Church now on Earth, is that Kingdome of
God mentioned in the Old and New Testament.

But the Emperours, and other Christian Soveraigns, under whose
Government these Errours, and the like encroachments of Ecclesiastiques
upon their Office, at first crept in, to the disturbance of their
possessions, and of the tranquillity of their Subjects, though they
suffered the same for want of foresight of the Sequel, and of insight
into the designs of their Teachers, may neverthelesse bee esteemed
accessories to their own, and the Publique dammage; For without
their Authority there could at first no seditious Doctrine have been
publiquely preached. I say they might have hindred the same in the
beginning: But when the people were once possessed by those spirituall
men, there was no humane remedy to be applyed, that any man could
invent: And for the remedies that God should provide, who never faileth
in his good time to destroy all the Machinations of men against the
Truth, wee are to attend his good pleasure, that suffereth many times
the prosperity of his enemies, together with their ambition, to grow
to such a height, as the violence thereof openeth the eyes, which the
warinesse of their predecessours had before sealed up, and makes men
by too much grasping let goe all, as Peters net was broken, by the
struggling of too great a multitude of Fishes; whereas the Impatience
of those, that strive to resist such encroachment, before their Subjects
eyes were opened, did but encrease the power they resisted. I doe not
therefore blame the Emperour Frederick for holding the stirrop to our
countryman Pope Adrian; for such was the disposition of his subjects
then, as if hee had not doe it, hee was not likely to have succeeded in
the Empire: But I blame those, that in the beginning, when their power
was entire, by suffering such Doctrines to be forged in the Universities
of their own Dominions, have holden the Stirrop to all the succeeding
Popes, whilest they mounted into the Thrones of all Christian
Soveraigns, to ride, and tire, both them, and their people, at their
pleasure.

But as the Inventions of men are woven, so also are they ravelled out;
the way is the same, but the order is inverted: The web begins at the
first Elements of Power, which are Wisdom, Humility, Sincerity, and
other vertues of the Apostles, whom the people converted, obeyed, out
of Reverence, not by Obligation: Their Consciences were free, and their
Words and Actions subject to none but the Civill Power. Afterwards the
Presbyters (as the Flocks of Christ encreased) assembling to consider
what they should teach, and thereby obliging themselves to teach nothing
against the Decrees of their Assemblies, made it to be thought the
people were thereby obliged to follow their Doctrine, and when
they refused, refused to keep them company, (that was then called
Excommunication,) not as being Infidels, but as being disobedient: And
this was the first knot upon their Liberty. And the number of Presbyters
encreasing, the Presbyters of the chief City or Province, got themselves
an authority over the parochiall Presbyters, and appropriated to
themselves the names of Bishops: And this was a second knot on Christian
Liberty. Lastly, the Bishop of Rome, in regard of the Imperiall City,
took upon him an Authority (partly by the wills of the Emperours
themselves, and by the title of Pontifex Maximus, and at last when the
Emperours were grown weak, by the priviledges of St. Peter) over all
other Bishops of the Empire: Which was the third and last knot, and the
whole Synthesis and Construction of the Pontificall Power.

And therefore the Analysis, or Resolution is by the same way; but
beginning with the knot that was last tyed; as wee may see in the
dissolution of the praeterpoliticall Church Government in England.

First, the Power of the Popes was dissolved totally by Queen Elizabeth;
and the Bishops, who before exercised their Functions in Right of the
Pope, did afterwards exercise the same in Right of the Queen and her
Successours; though by retaining the phrase of Jure Divino, they were
thought to demand it by immediate Right from God: And so was untyed the
first knot. After this, the Presbyterians lately in England obtained the
putting down of Episcopacy: And so was the second knot dissolved:
And almost at the same time, the Power was taken also from the
Presbyterians: And so we are reduced to the Independency of the
Primitive Christians to follow Paul, or Cephas, or Apollos, every man
as he liketh best: Which, if it be without contention, and without
measuring the Doctrine of Christ, by our affection to the Person of his
Minister, (the fault which the Apostle reprehended in the Corinthians,)
is perhaps the best: First, because there ought to be no Power over the
Consciences of men, but of the Word it selfe, working Faith in every
one, not alwayes according to the purpose of them that Plant and Water,
but of God himself, that giveth the Increase: and secondly, because it
is unreasonable in them, who teach there is such danger in every little
Errour, to require of a man endued with Reason of his own, to follow the
Reason of any other man, or of the most voices of many other men; Which
is little better, then to venture his Salvation at crosse and pile. Nor
ought those Teachers to be displeased with this losse of their antient
Authority: For there is none should know better then they, that power is
preserved by the same Vertues by which it is acquired; that is to
say, by Wisdome, Humility, Clearnesse of Doctrine, and sincerity of
Conversation; and not by suppression of the Naturall Sciences, and
of the Morality of Naturall Reason; nor by obscure Language; nor by
Arrogating to themselves more Knowledge than they make appear; nor by
Pious Frauds; nor by such other faults, as in the Pastors of Gods Church
are not only Faults, but also scandalls, apt to make men stumble one
time or other upon the suppression of their Authority.




Comparison Of The Papacy With The Kingdome Of Fayries

But after this Doctrine, "that the Church now Militant, is the Kingdome
of God spoken of in the Old and New Testament," was received in
the World; the ambition, and canvasing for the Offices that belong
thereunto, and especially for that great Office of being Christs
Lieutenant, and the Pompe of them that obtained therein the principal
Publique Charges, became by degrees so evident, that they lost the
inward Reverence due to the Pastorall Function: in so much as the Wisest
men, of them that had any power in the Civill State, needed nothing but
the authority of their Princes, to deny them any further Obedience. For,
from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for
Bishop Universall, by pretence of Succession to St. Peter, their whole
Hierarchy, or Kingdome of Darknesse, may be compared not unfitly to
the Kingdome of Fairies; that is, to the old wives Fables in England,
concerning Ghosts and Spirits, and the feats they play in the night. And
if a man consider the originall of this great Ecclesiasticall Dominion,
he will easily perceive, that the Papacy, is no other, than the Ghost of
the deceased Romane Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: For
so did the Papacy start up on a Sudden out of the Ruines of that Heathen
Power.

The Language also, which they use, both in the Churches, and in their
Publique Acts, being Latine, which is not commonly used by any Nation
now in the world, what is it but the Ghost of the Old Romane Language.

The Fairies in what Nation soever they converse, have but one Universall
King, which some Poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls
Beelzebub, Prince of Daemons. The Ecclesiastiques likewise, in whose
Dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one Universall King, the
Pope.

The Ecclesiastiques are Spirituall men, and Ghostly Fathers. The
Fairies are Spirits, and Ghosts. Fairies and Ghosts inhabite Darknesse,
Solitudes, and Graves. The Ecclesiastiques walke in Obscurity of
Doctrine, in Monasteries, Churches, and Churchyards.

The Ecclesiastiques have their Cathedral Churches; which, in what Towne
soever they be erected, by vertue of Holy Water, and certain Charmes
called Exorcismes, have the power to make those Townes, cities, that is
to say, Seats of Empire. The Fairies also have their enchanted Castles,
and certain Gigantique Ghosts, that domineer over the Regions round
about them.

The fairies are not to be seized on; and brought to answer for the hurt
they do. So also the Ecclesiastiques vanish away from the Tribunals of
Civill Justice.

The Ecclesiastiques take from young men, the use of Reason, by certain
Charms compounded of Metaphysiques, and Miracles, and Traditions, and
Abused Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else, but to execute
what they command them. The Fairies likewise are said to take young
Children out of their Cradles, and to change them into Naturall Fools,
which Common people do therefore call Elves, and are apt to mischief.

In what Shop, or Operatory the Fairies make their Enchantment, the old
Wives have not determined. But the Operatories of the Clergy, are well
enough known to be the Universities, that received their Discipline from
Authority Pontificall.

When the Fairies are displeased with any body, they are said to
send their Elves, to pinch them. The Ecclesiastiques, when they are
displeased with any Civill State, make also their Elves, that is,
Superstitious, Enchanted Subjects, to pinch their Princes, by preaching
Sedition; or one Prince enchanted with promises, to pinch another.

The Fairies marry not; but there be amongst them Incubi, that have
copulation with flesh and bloud. The Priests also marry not.

The Ecclesiastiques take the Cream of the Land, by Donations of ignorant
men, that stand in aw of them, and by Tythes: So also it is in the Fable
of Fairies, that they enter into the Dairies, and Feast upon the Cream,
which they skim from the Milk.

What kind of Money is currant in the Kingdome of Fairies, is not
recorded in the Story. But the Ecclesiastiques in their Receipts accept
of the same Money that we doe; though when they are to make any Payment,
it is in Canonizations, Indulgences, and Masses.

To this, and such like resemblances between the Papacy, and the Kingdome
of Fairies, may be added this, that as the Fairies have no existence,
but in the Fancies of ignorant people, rising from the Traditions of old
Wives, or old Poets: so the Spirituall Power of the Pope (without the
bounds of his own Civill Dominion) consisteth onely in the Fear that
Seduced people stand in, of their Excommunication; upon hearing of false
Miracles, false Traditions, and false Interpretations of the Scripture.

It was not therefore a very difficult matter, for Henry 8. by his
Exorcisme; nor for Qu. Elizabeth by hers, to cast them out. But who
knows that this Spirit of Rome, now gone out, and walking by Missions
through the dry places of China, Japan, and the Indies, that yeeld him
little fruit, may not return, or rather an Assembly of Spirits worse
than he, enter, and inhabite this clean swept house, and make the End
thereof worse than the beginning? For it is not the Romane Clergy onely,
that pretends the Kingdome of God to be of this World, and thereby to
have a Power therein, distinct from that of the Civill State. And
this is all I had a designe to say, concerning the Doctrine of the
POLITIQUES. Which when I have reviewed, I shall willingly expose it to
the censure of my Countrey.




A REVIEW, AND CONCLUSION


From the contrariety of some of the Naturall Faculties of the Mind, one
to another, as also of one Passion to another, and from their reference
to Conversation, there has been an argument taken, to inferre an
impossibility that any one man should be sufficiently disposed to all
sorts of Civill duty. The Severity of Judgment, they say, makes men
Censorious, and unapt to pardon the Errours and Infirmities of other
men: and on the other side, Celerity of Fancy, makes the thoughts lesse
steddy than is necessary, to discern exactly between Right and Wrong.
Again, in all Deliberations, and in all Pleadings, the faculty of solid
Reasoning, is necessary: for without it, the Resolutions of men are
rash, and their Sentences unjust: and yet if there be not powerfull
Eloquence, which procureth attention and Consent, the effect of Reason
will be little. But these are contrary Faculties; the former being
grounded upon principles of Truth; the other upon Opinions already
received, true, or false; and upon the Passions and Interests of men,
which are different, and mutable.

And amongst the Passions, Courage, (by which I mean the Contempt of
Wounds, and violent Death) enclineth men to private Revenges, and
sometimes to endeavour the unsetling of the Publique Peace; And
Timorousnesse, many times disposeth to the desertion of the Publique
Defence. Both these they say cannot stand together in the same person.

And to consider the contrariety of mens Opinions, and Manners in
generall, It is they say, impossible to entertain a constant Civill
Amity with all those, with whom the Businesse of the world constrains
us to converse: Which Businesse consisteth almost in nothing else but a
perpetuall contention for Honor, Riches, and Authority.

To which I answer, that these are indeed great difficulties, but not
Impossibilities: For by Education, and Discipline, they may bee, and
are sometimes reconciled. Judgment, and Fancy may have place in the
same man; but by turnes; as the end which he aimeth at requireth. As the
Israelites in Egypt, were sometimes fastened to their labour of making
Bricks, and other times were ranging abroad to gather Straw: So also may
the Judgment sometimes be fixed upon one certain Consideration, and
the Fancy at another time wandring about the world. So also Reason,
and Eloquence, (though not perhaps in the Naturall Sciences, yet in the
Morall) may stand very well together. For wheresoever there is place for
adorning and preferring of Errour, there is much more place for adorning
and preferring of Truth, if they have it to adorn. Nor is there any
repugnancy between fearing the Laws, and not fearing a publique Enemy;
nor between abstaining from Injury, and pardoning it in others. There is
therefore no such Inconsistence of Humane Nature, with Civill Duties,
as some think. I have known cleernesse of Judgment, and largenesse of
Fancy; strength of Reason, and gracefull Elocution; a Courage for the
Warre, and a Fear for the Laws, and all eminently in one man; and that
was my most noble and honored friend Mr. Sidney Godolphin; who hating no
man, nor hated of any, was unfortunately slain in the beginning of the
late Civill warre, in the Publique quarrel, by an indiscerned, and an
undiscerning hand.

To the Laws of Nature, declared in the 15. Chapter, I would have this
added, "That every man is bound by Nature, as much as in him lieth, to
protect in Warre, the Authority, by which he is himself protected in
time of Peace." For he that pretendeth a Right of Nature to preserve
his owne body, cannot pretend a Right of Nature to destroy him, by whose
strength he is preserved: It is a manifest contradiction of himselfe.
And though this Law may bee drawn by consequence, from some of those
that are there already mentioned; yet the Times require to have it
inculcated, and remembred.

And because I find by divers English Books lately printed, that the
Civill warres have not yet sufficiently taught men, in what point of
time it is, that a Subject becomes obliged to the Conquerour; nor what
is Conquest; nor how it comes about, that it obliges men to obey his
Laws: Therefore for farther satisfaction of men therein, I say, the
point of time, wherein a man becomes subject of a Conquerour, is that
point, wherein having liberty to submit to him, he consenteth, either by
expresse words, or by other sufficient sign, to be his Subject. When it
is that a man hath the liberty to submit, I have showed before in the
end of the 21. Chapter; namely, that for him that hath no obligation to
his former Soveraign but that of an ordinary Subject, it is then, when
the means of his life is within the Guards and Garrisons of the Enemy;
for it is then, that he hath no longer Protection from him, but is
protected by the adverse party for his Contribution. Seeing
therefore such contribution is every where, as a thing inevitable,
(notwithstanding it be an assistance to the Enemy,) esteemed lawfull;
as totall Submission, which is but an assistance to the Enemy, cannot
be esteemed unlawfull. Besides, if a man consider that they who submit,
assist the Enemy but with part of their estates, whereas they that
refuse, assist him with the whole, there is no reason to call their
Submission, or Composition an Assistance; but rather a Detriment to the
Enemy. But if a man, besides the obligation of a Subject, hath taken
upon him a new obligation of a Souldier, then he hath not the liberty
to submit to a new Power, as long as the old one keeps the field, and
giveth him means of subsistence, either in his Armies, or Garrisons:
for in this case, he cannot complain of want of Protection, and means to
live as a Souldier: But when that also failes, a Souldier also may seek
his Protection wheresoever he has most hope to have it; and may lawfully
submit himself to his new Master. And so much for the Time when he may
do it lawfully, if hee will. If therefore he doe it, he is undoubtedly
bound to be a true Subject: For a Contract lawfully made, cannot
lawfully be broken.

By this also a man may understand, when it is, that men may be said to
be Conquered; and in what the nature of Conquest, and the Right of a
Conquerour consisteth: For this Submission is it implyeth them all.
Conquest, is not the Victory it self; but the Acquisition by Victory,
of a Right, over the persons of men. He therefore that is slain, is
Overcome, but not Conquered; He that is taken, and put into prison, or
chaines, is not Conquered, though Overcome; for he is still an Enemy,
and may save himself if hee can: But he that upon promise of Obedience,
hath his Life and Liberty allowed him, is then Conquered, and a Subject;
and not before. The Romanes used to say, that their Generall had
Pacified such a Province, that is to say, in English, Conquered it; and
that the Countrey was Pacified by Victory, when the people of it
had promised Imperata Facere, that is, To Doe What The Romane People
Commanded Them: this was to be Conquered. But this promise may be either
expresse, or tacite: Expresse, by Promise: Tacite, by other signes. As
for example, a man that hath not been called to make such an expresse
Promise, (because he is one whose power perhaps is not considerable;)
yet if he live under their Protection openly, hee is understood to
submit himselfe to the Government: But if he live there secretly, he is
lyable to any thing that may bee done to a Spie, and Enemy of the State.
I say not, hee does any Injustice, (for acts of open Hostility bear not
that name); but that he may be justly put to death. Likewise, if a man,
when his Country is conquered, be out of it, he is not Conquered, nor
Subject: but if at his return, he submit to the Government, he is bound
to obey it. So that Conquest (to define it) is the Acquiring of the
Right of Soveraignty by Victory. Which Right, is acquired, in the
peoples Submission, by which they contract with the Victor, promising
Obedience, for Life and Liberty.

In the 29th Chapter I have set down for one of the causes of the
Dissolutions of Common-wealths, their Imperfect Generation, consisting
in the want of an Absolute and Arbitrary Legislative Power; for want
whereof, the Civill Soveraign is fain to handle the Sword of Justice
unconstantly, and as if it were too hot for him to hold: One reason
whereof (which I have not there mentioned) is this, That they will all
of them justifie the War, by which their Power was at first gotten,
and whereon (as they think) their Right dependeth, and not on the
Possession. As if, for example, the Right of the Kings of England did
depend on the goodnesse of the cause of William the Conquerour, and upon
their lineall, and directest Descent from him; by which means, there
would perhaps be no tie of the Subjects obedience to their Soveraign
at this day in all the world: wherein whilest they needlessely think to
justifie themselves, they justifie all the successefull Rebellions that
Ambition shall at any time raise against them, and their Successors.
Therefore I put down for one of the most effectuall seeds of the Death
of any State, that the Conquerours require not onely a Submission of
mens actions to them for the future, but also an Approbation of all
their actions past; when there is scarce a Common-wealth in the world,
whose beginnings can in conscience be justified.

And because the name of Tyranny, signifieth nothing more, nor lesse,
than the name of Soveraignty, be it in one, or many men, saving that
they that use the former word, are understood to bee angry with them
they call Tyrants; I think the toleration of a professed hatred of
Tyranny, is a Toleration of hatred to Common-wealth in general, and
another evill seed, not differing much from the former. For to the
Justification of the Cause of a Conqueror, the Reproach of the Cause
of the Conquered, is for the most part necessary: but neither of them
necessary for the Obligation of the Conquered. And thus much I have
thought fit to say upon the Review of the first and second part of this
Discourse.

In the 35th Chapter, I have sufficiently declared out of the Scripture,
that in the Common-wealth of the Jewes, God himselfe was made the
Soveraign, by Pact with the People; who were therefore called his
Peculiar People, to distinguish them from the rest of the world, over
whom God reigned not by their Consent, but by his own Power: And that
in this Kingdome Moses was Gods Lieutenant on Earth; and that it was he
that told them what Laws God appointed to doe Execution; especially
in Capitall Punishments; not then thinking it a matter of so necessary
consideration, as I find it since. Wee know that generally in all
Common-wealths, the Execution of Corporeall Punishments, was either put
upon the Guards, or other Souldiers of the Soveraign Power; or given
to those, in whom want of means, contempt of honour, and hardnesse of
heart, concurred, to make them sue for such an Office. But amongst the
Israelites it was a Positive Law of God their Soveraign, that he that
was convicted of a capitall Crime, should be stoned to death by the
People; and that the Witnesses should cast the first Stone, and after
the Witnesses, then the rest of the People. This was a Law that designed
who were to be the Executioners; but not that any one should throw a
Stone at him before Conviction and Sentence, where the Congregation
was Judge. The Witnesses were neverthelesse to be heard before they
proceeded to Execution, unlesse the Fact were committed in the presence
of the Congregation it self, or in sight of the lawfull Judges; for
then there needed no other Witnesses but the Judges themselves.
Neverthelesse, this manner of proceeding being not throughly understood,
hath given occasion to a dangerous opinion, that any man may kill
another, is some cases, by a Right of Zeal; as if the Executions done
upon Offenders in the Kingdome of God in old time, proceeded not from
the Soveraign Command, but from the Authority of Private Zeal: which, if
we consider the texts that seem to favour it, is quite contrary.

First, where the Levites fell upon the People, that had made and
worshipped the Golden Calfe, and slew three thousand of them; it was by
the Commandement of Moses, from the mouth of God; as is manifest, Exod.
32.27. And when the Son of a woman of Israel had blasphemed God, they
that heard it, did not kill him, but brought him before Moses, who
put him under custody, till God should give Sentence against him; as
appears, Levit. 25.11, 12. Again, (Numbers 25.6, 7.) when Phinehas
killed Zimri and Cosbi, it was not by right of Private Zeale: Their
Crime was committed in the sight of the Assembly; there needed
no Witnesse; the Law was known, and he the heir apparent to the
Soveraignty; and which is the principall point, the Lawfulnesse of his
Act depended wholly upon a subsequent Ratification by Moses, whereof he
had no cause to doubt. And this Presumption of a future Ratification, is
sometimes necessary to the safety [of] a Common-wealth; as in a sudden
Rebellion, any man that can suppresse it by his own Power in the
Countrey where it begins, may lawfully doe it, and provide to have it
Ratified, or Pardoned, whilest it is in doing, or after it is done. Also
Numb. 35.30. it is expressely said, "Whosoever shall kill the Murtherer,
shall kill him upon the word of Witnesses:" but Witnesses suppose
a formall Judicature, and consequently condemn that pretence of Jus
Zelotarum. The Law of Moses concerning him that enticeth to Idolatry,
(that is to say, in the Kingdome of God to a renouncing of his
Allegiance) (Deut. 13.8.) forbids to conceal him, and commands the
Accuser to cause him to be put to death, and to cast the first stone at
him; but not to kill him before he be Condemned. And (Deut. 17. ver.4,
5, 6.) the Processe against Idolatry is exactly set down: For God there
speaketh to the People, as Judge, and commandeth them, when a man is
Accused of Idolatry, to Enquire diligently of the Fact, and finding it
true, then to Stone him; but still the hand of the Witnesse throweth
the first stone. This is not Private Zeal, but Publique Condemnation. In
like manner when a Father hath a rebellious Son, the Law is (Deut. 21.
18.) that he shall bring him before the Judges of the Town, and all the
people of the Town shall Stone him. Lastly, by pretence of these Laws
it was, that St. Steven was Stoned, and not by pretence of Private Zeal:
for before hee was carried away to Execution, he had Pleaded his Cause
before the High Priest. There is nothing in all this, nor in any other
part of the Bible, to countenance Executions by Private Zeal; which
being oftentimes but a conjunction of Ignorance and Passion, is against
both the Justice and Peace of a Common-wealth.

In the 36th Chapter I have said, that it is not declared in what
manner God spake supernaturally to Moses: Not that he spake not to him
sometimes by Dreams and Visions, and by a supernaturall Voice, as
to other Prophets: For the manner how he spake unto him from the
Mercy-seat, is expressely set down (Numbers 7.89.) in these words,
"From that time forward, when Moses entred into the Tabernacle of the
Congregation to speak with God, he heard a Voice which spake unto him
from over the Mercy-Seate, which is over the Arke of the Testimony, from
between the Cherubins he spake unto him." But it is not declared in
what consisted the praeeminence of the manner of Gods speaking to Moses,
above that of his speaking to other Prophets, as to Samuel, and to
Abraham, to whom he also spake by a Voice, (that is, by Vision) Unlesse
the difference consist in the cleernesse of the Vision. For Face
to Face, and Mouth to Mouth, cannot be literally understood of the
Infinitenesse, and Incomprehensibility of the Divine Nature.

And as to the whole Doctrine, I see not yet, but the principles of
it are true and proper; and the Ratiocination solid. For I ground the
Civill Right of Soveraigns, and both the Duty and Liberty of Subjects,
upon the known naturall Inclinations of Mankind, and upon the Articles
of the Law of Nature; of which no man, that pretends but reason enough
to govern his private family, ought to be ignorant. And for the Power
Ecclesiasticall of the same Soveraigns, I ground it on such Texts, as
are both evident in themselves, and consonant to the Scope of the whole
Scripture. And therefore am perswaded, that he that shall read it with
a purpose onely to be informed, shall be informed by it. But for those
that by Writing, or Publique Discourse, or by their eminent actions,
have already engaged themselves to the maintaining of contrary opinions,
they will not bee so easily satisfied. For in such cases, it is naturall
for men, at one and the same time, both to proceed in reading, and to
lose their attention, in the search of objections to that they had read
before: Of which, in a time wherein the interests of men are changed
(seeing much of that Doctrine, which serveth to the establishing of a
new Government, must needs be contrary to that which conduced to the
dissolution of the old,) there cannot choose but be very many.

In that part which treateth of a Christian Common-wealth, there are
some new Doctrines, which, it may be, in a State where the contrary were
already fully determined, were a fault for a Subject without leave to
divulge, as being an usurpation of the place of a Teacher. But in this
time, that men call not onely for Peace, but also for Truth, to offer
such Doctrines as I think True, and that manifestly tend to Peace and
Loyalty, to the consideration of those that are yet in deliberation, is
no more, but to offer New Wine, to bee put into New Cask, that bothe may
be preserved together. And I suppose, that then, when Novelty can breed
no trouble, nor disorder in a State, men are not generally so much
inclined to the reverence of Antiquity, as to preferre Ancient Errors,
before New and well proved Truth.

There is nothing I distrust more than my Elocution; which neverthelesse
I am confident (excepting the Mischances of the Presse) is not obscure.
That I have neglected the Ornament of quoting ancient Poets, Orators,
and Philosophers, contrary to the custome of late time, (whether I have
done well or ill in it,) proceedeth from my judgment, grounded on many
reasons. For first, all Truth of Doctrine dependeth either upon Reason,
or upon Scripture; both which give credit to many, but never receive it
from any Writer. Secondly, the matters in question are not of Fact, but
of Right, wherein there is no place for Witnesses. There is scarce any
of those old Writers, that contradicteth not sometimes both himself,
and others; which makes their Testimonies insufficient. Fourthly,
such Opinions as are taken onely upon Credit of Antiquity, are not
intrinsically the Judgment of those that cite them, but Words that
passe (like gaping) from mouth to mouth. Fiftly, it is many times with a
fraudulent Designe that men stick their corrupt Doctrine with the Cloves
of other mens Wit. Sixtly, I find not that the Ancients they cite, took
it for an Ornament, to doe the like with those that wrote before them.
Seventhly, it is an argument of Indigestion, when Greek and Latine
Sentences unchewed come up again, as they use to doe, unchanged. Lastly,
though I reverence those men of Ancient time, that either have written
Truth perspicuously, or set us in a better way to find it out our
selves; yet to the Antiquity it self I think nothing due: For if we will
reverence the Age, the Present is the Oldest. If the Antiquity of the
Writer, I am not sure, that generally they to whom such honor is given,
were more Ancient when they wrote, than I am that am Writing: But if it
bee well considered, the praise of Ancient Authors, proceeds not from
the reverence of the Dead, but from the competition, and mutuall envy of
the Living.

To conclude, there is nothing in this whole Discourse, nor in that I
writ before of the same Subject in Latine, as far as I can perceive,
contrary either to the Word of God, or to good Manners; or to the
disturbance of the Publique Tranquillity. Therefore I think it may be
profitably printed, and more profitably taught in the Universities, in
case they also think so, to whom the judgment of the same belongeth.
For seeing the Universities are the Fountains of Civill, and Morall
Doctrine, from whence the Preachers, and the Gentry, drawing such water
as they find, use to sprinkle the same (both from the Pulpit, and in
their Conversation) upon the People, there ought certainly to be
great care taken, to have it pure, both from the Venime of Heathen
Politicians, and from the Incantation of Deceiving Spirits. And by that
means the most men, knowing their Duties, will be the less subject to
serve the Ambition of a few discontented persons, in their purposes
against the State; and be the lesse grieved with the Contributions
necessary for their Peace, and Defence; and the Governours themselves
have the lesse cause, to maintain at the Common charge any greater
Army, than is necessary to make good the Publique Liberty, against the
Invasions and Encroachments of forraign Enemies.

And thus I have brought to an end my Discourse of Civill and
Ecclesiasticall Government, occasioned by the disorders of the present
time, without partiality, without application, and without other
designe, than to set before mens eyes the mutuall Relation between
Protection and Obedience; of which the condition of Humane Nature, and
the Laws Divine, (both Naturall and Positive) require an inviolable
observation. And though in the revolution of States, there can be no
very good Constellation for Truths of this nature to be born under, (as
having an angry aspect from the dissolvers of an old Government, and
seeing but the backs of them that erect a new;) yet I cannot think
it will be condemned at this time, either by the Publique Judge of
Doctrine, or by any that desires the continuance of Publique Peace. And
in this hope I return to my interrupted Speculation of Bodies Naturall;
wherein, (if God give me health to finish it,) I hope the Novelty will
as much please, as in the Doctrine of this Artificiall Body it useth to
offend. For such Truth, as opposeth no man profit, nor pleasure, is to
all men welcome.



FINIS








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The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

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Title: A Christmas Carol
       A Ghost Story of Christmas

Author: Charles Dickens

Release Date: August 11, 2004 [EBook #46]
Last Updated: March 4, 2018

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHRISTMAS CAROL ***




Produced by Jose Menendez




A CHRISTMAS CAROL

IN PROSE
BEING
A Ghost Story of Christmas

by Charles Dickens



PREFACE

I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little book,
to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my
readers out of humour with themselves, with each other,
with the season, or with me.  May it haunt their houses
pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant,
                                   C. D.
December, 1843.



CONTENTS

Stave   I: Marley's Ghost
Stave  II: The First of the Three Spirits
Stave III: The Second of the Three Spirits
Stave  IV: The Last of the Spirits
Stave   V: The End of It



STAVE I:  MARLEY'S GHOST

MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt
whatever about that. The register of his burial was
signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,
and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and
Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he
chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a
door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my
own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about
a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to
regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery
in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors
is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands
shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that
Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did.
How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were
partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge
was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole
assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and
sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully
cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent
man of business on the very day of the funeral,
and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to
the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley
was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or
nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going
to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that
Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there
would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a
stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts,
than there would be in any other middle-aged
gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy
spot--say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance--
literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name.
There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse
door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as
Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the
business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley,
but he answered to both names. It was all the
same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone,
Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping,
clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint,
from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire;
secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The
cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed
nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his
eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his
grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his
eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low
temperature always about with him; he iced his office in
the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on
Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather
chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he,
no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no
pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't
know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and
snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage
over him in only one respect. They often "came down"
handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with
gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you?
When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored
him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him
what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all
his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of
Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to
know him; and when they saw him coming on, would
tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and
then would wag their tails as though they said, "No
eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing
he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths
of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance,
was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.

Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year,
on Christmas Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his
counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy
withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside,
go wheezing up and down, beating their hands
upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the
pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had
only just gone three, but it was quite dark already--
it had not been light all day--and candles were flaring
in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like
ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog
came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was
so dense without, that although the court was of the
narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.
To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring
everything, one might have thought that Nature
lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.

The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open
that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a
dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying
letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's
fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one
coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept
the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the
clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted
that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore
the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to
warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being
a man of a strong imagination, he failed.

"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried
a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's
nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was
the first intimation he had of his approach.

"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the
fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was
all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his
eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's
nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure?"

"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What
right have you to be merry? What reason have you
to be merry? You're poor enough."

"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What
right have you to be dismal? What reason have you
to be morose? You're rich enough."

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur
of the moment, said, "Bah!" again; and followed it up
with "Humbug."

"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.

"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I
live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas!
Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas
time to you but a time for paying bills without
money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but
not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books
and having every item in 'em through a round dozen
of months presented dead against you? If I could
work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot
who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips,
should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried
with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"

"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.

"Nephew!" returned the uncle sternly, "keep Christmas
in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."

"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you
don't keep it."

"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much
good may it do you! Much good it has ever done
you!"

"There are many things from which I might have
derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare
say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the
rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas
time, when it has come round--apart from the
veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything
belonging to it can be apart from that--as a
good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant
time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar
of the year, when men and women seem by one consent
to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think
of people below them as if they really were
fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race
of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore,
uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or
silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me
good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded.
Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety,
he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark
for ever.

"Let me hear another sound from you," said
Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing
your situation! You're quite a powerful speaker,
sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you
don't go into Parliament."

"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."

Scrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he
did. He went the whole length of the expression,
and said that he would see him in that extremity first.

"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"

"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.

"Because I fell in love."

"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if
that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous
than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!"

"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before
that happened. Why give it as a reason for not
coming now?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you;
why cannot we be friends?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so
resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I
have been a party. But I have made the trial in
homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas
humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!"

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

"And A Happy New Year!"

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

His nephew left the room without an angry word,
notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to
bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who,
cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned
them cordially.

"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge; who
overheard him: "my clerk, with fifteen shillings a
week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry
Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."

This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had
let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen,
pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off,
in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in
their hands, and bowed to him.

"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the
gentlemen, referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure
of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"

"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,"
Scrooge replied. "He died seven years ago, this very
night."

"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented
by his surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting
his credentials.

It certainly was; for they had been two kindred
spirits. At the ominous word "liberality," Scrooge
frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials
back.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,"
said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than
usually desirable that we should make some slight
provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer
greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in
want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands
are in want of common comforts, sir."

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down
the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge.
"Are they still in operation?"

"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish
I could say they were not."

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour,
then?" said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir."

"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first,
that something had occurred to stop them in their
useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to
hear it."

"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish
Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,"
returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring
to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink,
and means of warmth. We choose this time, because
it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt,
and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down
for?"

"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.

"You wish to be anonymous?"

"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you
ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer.
I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't
afford to make idle people merry. I help to support
the establishments I have mentioned--they cost
enough; and those who are badly off must go there."

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had
better do it, and decrease the surplus population.
Besides--excuse me--I don't know that."

"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.

"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's
enough for a man to understand his own business, and
not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies
me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue
their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed
his labours with an improved opinion of himself,
and in a more facetious temper than was usual
with him.

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that
people ran about with flaring links, proffering their
services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct
them on their way. The ancient tower of a church,
whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down
at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became
invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the
clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if
its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.
The cold became intense. In the main street, at the
corner of the court, some labourers were repairing
the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier,
round which a party of ragged men and boys were
gathered: warming their hands and winking their
eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug
being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed,
and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness
of the shops where holly sprigs and berries
crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale
faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers'
trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant,
with which it was next to impossible to believe that
such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything
to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the
mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks
and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's
household should; and even the little tailor, whom he
had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for
being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up
to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean
wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.

Foggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting
cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped
the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather
as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then
indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The
owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled
by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs,
stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with
a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of

        "God bless you, merry gentleman!
         May nothing you dismay!"

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action,
that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to
the fog and even more congenial frost.

At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house
arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his
stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant
clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out,
and put on his hat.

"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said
Scrooge.

"If quite convenient, sir."

"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not
fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd
think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"

The clerk smiled faintly.

"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used,
when I pay a day's wages for no work."

The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every
twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning
his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must
have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next
morning."

The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge
walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a
twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his
white comforter dangling below his waist (for he
boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill,
at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in
honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home
to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play
at blindman's-buff.

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual
melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and
beguiled the rest of the evening with his
banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in
chambers which had once belonged to his deceased
partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a
lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so
little business to be, that one could scarcely help
fancying it must have run there when it was a young
house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses,
and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough
now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but
Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices.
The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew
its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands.
The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway
of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of
the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the
threshold.

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all
particular about the knocker on the door, except that it
was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had
seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence
in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what
is called fancy about him as any man in the city of
London, even including--which is a bold word--the
corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be
borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one
thought on Marley, since his last mention of his
seven years' dead partner that afternoon. And then
let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened
that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door,
saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate
process of change--not a knocker, but Marley's face.

Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow
as the other objects in the yard were, but had a
dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark
cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked
at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly
spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The
hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air;
and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly
motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it
horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the
face and beyond its control, rather than a part of
its own expression.

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it
was a knocker again.

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood
was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it
had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue.
But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished,
turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.

He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before
he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind
it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the
sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall.
But there was nothing on the back of the door, except
the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he
said "Pooh, pooh!" and closed it with a bang.

The sound resounded through the house like thunder.
Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant's
cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal
of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to
be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and
walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too:
trimming his candle as he went.

You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six
up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad
young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you
might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken
it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall
and the door towards the balustrades: and done it
easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room
to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge
thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before
him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of
the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well,
so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with
Scrooge's dip.

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that.
Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before
he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms
to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection
of the face to desire to do that.

Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they
should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under
the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin
ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had
a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the
bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown,
which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude
against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard,
old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three
legs, and a poker.

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked
himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his
custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off
his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and
his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take
his gruel.

It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a
bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and
brood over it, before he could extract the least
sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.
The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch
merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint
Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures.
There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters;
Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending
through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams,
Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats,
hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts;
and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came
like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the
whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first,
with power to shape some picture on its surface from
the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would
have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one.

"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the
room.

After several turns, he sat down again. As he
threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened
to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the
room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten
with a chamber in the highest story of the
building. It was with great astonishment, and with
a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he
saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in
the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it
rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute,
but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had
begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking
noise, deep down below; as if some person were
dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the
wine-merchant's cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have
heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as
dragging chains.

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound,
and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors
below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight
towards his door.

"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."

His colour changed though, when, without a pause,
it came on through the heavy door, and passed into
the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the
dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know
him; Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.

The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail,
usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on
the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts,
and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was
clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound
about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge
observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks,
ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.
His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him,
and looking through his waistcoat, could see
the two buttons on his coat behind.

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no
bowels, but he had never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he
looked the phantom through and through, and saw
it standing before him; though he felt the chilling
influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very
texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head
and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before;
he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.

"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever.
"What do you want with me?"

"Much!"--Marley's voice, no doubt about it.

"Who are you?"

"Ask me who I was."

"Who were you then?" said Scrooge, raising his
voice. "You're particular, for a shade." He was going
to say "to a shade," but substituted this, as more
appropriate.

"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."

"Can you--can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking
doubtfully at him.

"I can."

"Do it, then."

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know
whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in
a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event
of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity
of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat
down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he
were quite used to it.

"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.

"I don't," said Scrooge.

"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of
your senses?"

"I don't know," said Scrooge.

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them.
A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may
be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of
cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of
gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking
jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means
waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be
smart, as a means of distracting his own attention,
and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice
disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence
for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very
deuce with him. There was something very awful,
too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal
atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it
himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the
Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts,
and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour
from an oven.

"You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning
quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned;
and wishing, though it were only for a second, to
divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.

"I do," replied the Ghost.

"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.

"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."

"Well!" returned Scrooge, "I have but to swallow
this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a
legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug,
I tell you! humbug!"

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook
its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that
Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself
from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was
his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage
round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors,
its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!

Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands
before his face.

"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do
you trouble me?"

"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do
you believe in me or not?"

"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits
walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"

"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned,
"that the spirit within him should walk abroad among
his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that
spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so
after death. It is doomed to wander through the
world--oh, woe is me!--and witness what it cannot
share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to
happiness!"

Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain
and wrung its shadowy hands.

"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell
me why?"

"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost.
"I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded
it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I
wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"

Scrooge trembled more and more.

"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the
weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?
It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven
Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since.
It is a ponderous chain!"

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the
expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty
or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see
nothing.

"Jacob," he said, imploringly. "Old Jacob Marley,
tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!"

"I have none to give," the Ghost replied. "It comes
from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed
by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor
can I tell you what I would. A very little more is
all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I
cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked
beyond our counting-house--mark me!--in life my
spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our
money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before
me!"

It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became
thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets.
Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now,
but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his
knees.

"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,"
Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though
with humility and deference.

"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.

"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And travelling
all the time!"

"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no
peace. Incessant torture of remorse."

"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.

"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.

"You might have got over a great quantity of
ground in seven years," said Scrooge.

The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and
clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of
the night, that the Ward would have been justified in
indicting it for a nuisance.

"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the
phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour
by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into
eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is
all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit
working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may
be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast
means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of
regret can make amends for one life's opportunity
misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"

"But you were always a good man of business,
Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this
to himself.

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands
again. "Mankind was my business. The common
welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance,
and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings
of my trade were but a drop of water in the
comprehensive ocean of my business!"

It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were
the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it
heavily upon the ground again.

"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said,
"I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of
fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never
raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise
Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to
which its light would have conducted me!"

Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the
spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake
exceedingly.

"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly
gone."

"I will," said Scrooge. "But don't be hard upon
me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!"

"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that
you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible
beside you many and many a day."

It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered,
and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

"That is no light part of my penance," pursued
the Ghost. "I am here to-night to warn you, that you
have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A
chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."

"You were always a good friend to me," said
Scrooge. "Thank'ee!"

"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by
Three Spirits."

Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the
Ghost's had done.

"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned,
Jacob?" he demanded, in a faltering voice.

"It is."

"I--I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.

"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot
hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow,
when the bell tolls One."

"Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over,
Jacob?" hinted Scrooge.

"Expect the second on the next night at the same
hour. The third upon the next night when the last
stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see
me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you
remember what has passed between us!"

When it had said these words, the spectre took its
wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head,
as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its
teeth made, when the jaws were brought together
by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again,
and found his supernatural visitor confronting him
in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and
about its arm.

The apparition walked backward from him; and at
every step it took, the window raised itself a little,
so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.

It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did.
When they were within two paces of each other,
Marley's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to
come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear:
for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible
of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of
lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and
self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment,
joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the
bleak, dark night.

Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his
curiosity. He looked out.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither
and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they
went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's
Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments)
were linked together; none were free. Many had
been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He
had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white
waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to
its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist
a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below,
upon a door-step. The misery with them all was,
clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in
human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist
enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and
their spirit voices faded together; and the night became
as it had been when he walked home.

Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door
by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked,
as he had locked it with his own hands, and
the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say "Humbug!"
but stopped at the first syllable. And being,
from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues
of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or
the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of
the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to
bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the
instant.


STAVE II:  THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS

WHEN Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed,
he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from
the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to
pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a
neighbouring church struck the four quarters. So he listened
for the hour.

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from
six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to
twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he
went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have
got into the works. Twelve!

He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most
preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve:
and stopped.

"Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have
slept through a whole day and far into another night. It
isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and
this is twelve at noon!"

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed,
and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub
the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he
could see anything; and could see very little then. All he
could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely
cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro,
and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been
if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the
world.  This was a great relief, because "three days after sight
of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his
order," and so forth, would have become a mere United States'
security if there were no days to count by.

Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought
it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it.  The more he
thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavoured
not to think, the more he thought.

Marley's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved
within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his
mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first
position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through,
"Was it a dream or not?"

Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters
more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned
him of a visitation when the bell tolled one.  He resolved to lie
awake until the hour was passed; and, considering that he could
no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was perhaps the
wisest resolution in his power.

The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he
must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock.
At length it broke upon his listening ear.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.

"Ding, dong!"

"Half-past!" said Scrooge.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter to it," said Scrooge.

"Ding, dong!"

"The hour itself," said Scrooge, triumphantly, "and nothing else!"

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a
deep, dull, hollow, melancholy ONE.  Light flashed up in the room
upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.

The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a
hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his
back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains
of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a
half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the
unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now
to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.

It was a strange figure--like a child: yet not so like a
child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural
medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded
from the view, and being diminished to a child's proportions.
Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was
white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in
it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were
very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold
were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately
formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic
of the purest white; and round its waist was bound
a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held
a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular
contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed
with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was,
that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear
jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was
doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a
great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.

Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing
steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt
sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another,
and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so
the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a
thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs,
now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a
body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible
in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the
very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and
clear as ever.

"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to
me?" asked Scrooge.

"I am!"

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if
instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.

"Who, and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"Long Past?" inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish
stature.

"No. Your past."

Perhaps, Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if
anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire
to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered.

"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "would you so soon put out,
with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough
that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and
force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon
my brow!"

Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend
or any knowledge of having wilfully "bonneted" the Spirit at
any period of his life. He then made bold to inquire what
business brought him there.

"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.

Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not
help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been
more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard
him thinking, for it said immediately:

"Your reclamation, then. Take heed!"

It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him
gently by the arm.

"Rise! and walk with me!"

It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the
weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes;
that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below
freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers,
dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that he had a cold upon him at
that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand,
was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the Spirit
made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.

"I am a mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."

"Bear but a touch of my hand there," said the Spirit,
laying it upon his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more
than this!"

As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall,
and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either
hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it
was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished
with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon
the ground.

"Good Heaven!" said Scrooge, clasping his hands together,
as he looked about him. "I was bred in this place. I was
a boy here!"

The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch,
though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still
present to the old man's sense of feeling. He was conscious
of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected
with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares
long, long, forgotten!

"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is
that upon your cheek?"

Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice,
that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him
where he would.

"You recollect the way?" inquired the Spirit.

"Remember it!" cried Scrooge with fervour; "I could
walk it blindfold."

"Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!" observed
the Ghost. "Let us go on."

They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every
gate, and post, and tree; until a little market-town appeared
in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river.
Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them
with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in
country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys
were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the
broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air
laughed to hear it!

"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said
the Ghost. "They have no consciousness of us."

The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Scrooge
knew and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond
all bounds to see them! Why did his cold eye glisten, and
his heart leap up as they went past! Why was he filled
with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry
Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and bye-ways, for
their several homes! What was merry Christmas to Scrooge?
Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done
to him?

"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A
solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still."

Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.

They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and
soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little
weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell
hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken
fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their walls
were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their
gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables;
and the coach-houses and sheds were over-run with grass.
Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state, within; for
entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open
doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished,
cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in the air, a
chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow
with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too
much to eat.

They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a
door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and
disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by
lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely
boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down
upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he
used to be.

Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle
from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the
half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among
the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle
swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in
the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with a softening
influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.

The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his
younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in
foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at:
stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and
leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.

"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's
dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas
time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone,
he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And
Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his wild brother, Orson; there
they go! And what's his name, who was put down in his
drawers, asleep, at the Gate of Damascus; don't you see him!
And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii;
there he is upon his head! Serve him right. I'm glad of it.
What business had he to be married to the Princess!"

To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature
on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between
laughing and crying; and to see his heightened and excited
face; would have been a surprise to his business friends in
the city, indeed.

"There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. "Green body and
yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the
top of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called
him, when he came home again after sailing round the
island. 'Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin
Crusoe?'  The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't.
It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running
for his life to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!"

Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his
usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, "Poor
boy!" and cried again.

"I wish," Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his
pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his
cuff: "but it's too late now."

"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.

"Nothing," said Scrooge. "Nothing. There was a boy
singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should
like to have given him something: that's all."

The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand:
saying as it did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"

Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the
room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk,
the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the
ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how
all this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more than you
do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything
had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all
the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.

He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly.
Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of
his head, glanced anxiously towards the door.

It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy,
came darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and
often kissing him, addressed him as her "Dear, dear
brother."

"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the
child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh.
"To bring you home, home, home!"

"Home, little Fan?" returned the boy.

"Yes!" said the child, brimful of glee. "Home, for good
and all. Home, for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder
than he used to be, that home's like Heaven! He spoke so
gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that
I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come
home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach
to bring you. And you're to be a man!" said the child,
opening her eyes, "and are never to come back here; but
first, we're to be together all the Christmas long, and have
the merriest time in all the world."

"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" exclaimed the boy.

She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his
head; but being too little, laughed again, and stood on
tiptoe to embrace him. Then she began to drag him, in her
childish eagerness, towards the door; and he, nothing loth to
go, accompanied her.

A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master
Scrooge's box, there!" and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster
himself, who glared on Master Scrooge with a ferocious
condescension, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind
by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him and his
sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best-parlour that
ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial
and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold.
Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a
block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments
of those dainties to the young people: at the same time,
sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of "something"
to the postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman,
but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had
rather not. Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time tied
on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the schoolmaster
good-bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove
gaily down the garden-sweep: the quick wheels dashing the
hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens
like spray.

"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have
withered," said the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"

"So she had," cried Scrooge. "You're right. I will not
gainsay it, Spirit. God forbid!"

"She died a woman," said the Ghost, "and had, as I think,
children."

"One child," Scrooge returned.

"True," said the Ghost. "Your nephew!"

Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly,
"Yes."

Although they had but that moment left the school behind
them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city,
where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy
carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and
tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by
the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Christmas
time again; but it was evening, and the streets were
lighted up.

The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked
Scrooge if he knew it.

"Know it!" said Scrooge. "Was I apprenticed here!"

They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh
wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two
inches taller he must have knocked his head against the
ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement:

"Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it's Fezziwig
alive again!"

Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the
clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his
hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over
himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and
called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice:

"Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"

Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly
in, accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.

"Dick Wilkins, to be sure!" said Scrooge to the Ghost.
"Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached
to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear, dear!"

"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night.
Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's
have the shutters up," cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap
of his hands, "before a man can say Jack Robinson!"

You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it!
They charged into the street with the shutters--one, two,
three--had 'em up in their places--four, five, six--barred
'em and pinned 'em--seven, eight, nine--and came back
before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.

"Hilli-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the
high desk, with wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads,
and let's have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup,
Ebenezer!"

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared
away, or couldn't have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking
on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if
it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was
swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon
the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and
bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter's
night.

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the
lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty
stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial
smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and
lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they
broke. In came all the young men and women employed in
the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the
baker. In came the cook, with her brother's particular friend,
the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was
suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying
to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who
was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress.
In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly,
some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling;
in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went,
twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again
the other way; down the middle and up again; round
and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old
top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top
couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top
couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them! When
this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his
hands to stop the dance, cried out, "Well done!" and the
fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially
provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his
reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no
dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home,
exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man
resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.

There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more
dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there
was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece
of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer.
But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast
and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort
of man who knew his business better than you or I could
have told it him!) struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley."  Then
old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top
couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them;
three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were
not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no
notion of walking.

But if they had been twice as many--ah, four times--old
Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would
Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner
in every sense of the term. If that's not high praise, tell me
higher, and I'll use it. A positive light appeared to issue
from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the
dance like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given
time, what would have become of them next. And when old
Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance;
advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and
curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to
your place; Fezziwig "cut"--cut so deftly, that he appeared
to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without
a stagger.

When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up.
Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side
of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually
as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas.
When everybody had retired but the two 'prentices, they did
the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died away,
and the lads were left to their beds; which were under a
counter in the back-shop.

During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a
man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene,
and with his former self. He corroborated everything,
remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent
the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the
bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from
them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious
that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its
head burnt very clear.

"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly
folks so full of gratitude."

"Small!" echoed Scrooge.

The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices,
who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig:
and when he had done so, said,

"Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of
your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so
much that he deserves this praise?"

"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and
speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self.
"It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy
or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a
pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and
looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is
impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness
he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."

He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.

"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.

"Nothing particular," said Scrooge.

"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.

"No," said Scrooge, "No. I should like to be able to say
a word or two to my clerk just now. That's all."

His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance
to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by
side in the open air.

"My time grows short," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"

This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he
could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again
Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime
of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later
years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice.
There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which
showed the passion that had taken root, and where the
shadow of the growing tree would fall.

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young
girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears,
which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of
Christmas Past.

"It matters little," she said, softly. "To you, very little.
Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort
you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have
no just cause to grieve."

"What Idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.

"A golden one."

"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said.
"There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and
there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity
as the pursuit of wealth!"

"You fear the world too much," she answered, gently.
"All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being
beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your
nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion,
Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"

"What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so
much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you."

She shook her head.

"Am I?"

"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were
both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could
improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You
are changed. When it was made, you were another man."

"I was a boy," he said impatiently.

"Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you
are," she returned. "I am. That which promised happiness
when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that
we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of
this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it,
and can release you."

"Have I ever sought release?"

"In words. No. Never."

"In what, then?"

"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another
atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In
everything that made my love of any worth or value in your
sight. If this had never been between us," said the girl,
looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; "tell me,
would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!"

He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in
spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, "You think
not."

"I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered,
"Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this,
I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you
were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe
that you would choose a dowerless girl--you who, in your
very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or,
choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your
one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your
repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I
release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you
once were."

He was about to speak; but with her head turned from
him, she resumed.

"You may--the memory of what is past half makes me
hope you will--have pain in this. A very, very brief time,
and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an
unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you
awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!"

She left him, and they parted.

"Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Conduct
me home. Why do you delight to torture me?"

"One shadow more!" exclaimed the Ghost.

"No more!" cried Scrooge. "No more. I don't wish to
see it. Show me no more!"

But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms,
and forced him to observe what happened next.

They were in another scene and place; a room, not very
large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter
fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge
believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely
matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this
room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children
there, than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count;
and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not
forty children conducting themselves like one, but every
child was conducting itself like forty. The consequences
were uproarious beyond belief; but no one seemed to care;
on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily,
and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon beginning to
mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands
most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be one of
them! Though I never could have been so rude, no, no! I
wouldn't for the wealth of all the world have crushed that
braided hair, and torn it down; and for the precious little
shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it off, God bless my soul! to
save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they
did, bold young brood, I couldn't have done it; I should
have expected my arm to have grown round it for a punishment,
and never come straight again. And yet I should
have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have
questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have
looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never
raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of
which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should
have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence
of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its
value.

But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a
rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and
plundered dress was borne towards it the centre of a flushed
and boisterous group, just in time to greet the father, who
came home attended by a man laden with Christmas toys
and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and
the onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter!
The scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his
pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight
by his cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel his back,
and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The shouts of
wonder and delight with which the development of every
package was received! The terrible announcement that the
baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll's frying-pan
into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having
swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter!
The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy,
and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike.
It is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions
got out of the parlour, and by one stair at a time, up to the
top of the house; where they went to bed, and so subsided.

And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever,
when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning
fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his
own fireside; and when he thought that such another
creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might
have called him father, and been a spring-time in the
haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed.

"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a
smile, "I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon."

"Who was it?"

"Guess!"

"How can I? Tut, don't I know?" she added in the
same breath, laughing as he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."

"Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as
it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could
scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point
of death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in
the world, I do believe."

"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me
from this place."

"I told you these were shadows of the things that have
been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do
not blame me!"

"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed, "I cannot bear it!"

He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon
him with a face, in which in some strange way there were
fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.

"Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!"

In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which
the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was
undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed
that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly
connecting that with its influence over him, he seized the
extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down
upon its head.

The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher
covered its whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down
with all his force, he could not hide the light: which streamed
from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground.

He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an
irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own
bedroom.  He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand
relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank
into a heavy sleep.


STAVE III:  THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS

AWAKING in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and
sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had
no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the
stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness
in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding
a conference with the second messenger despatched to him
through Jacob Marley's intervention. But finding that he
turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which
of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put
them every one aside with his own hands; and lying down
again, established a sharp look-out all round the bed. For
he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its
appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise, and
made nervous.

Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves
on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually
equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their
capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for
anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which
opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and
comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for
Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don't mind calling on you
to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of
strange appearances, and that nothing between a baby and
rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.

Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by
any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the
Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a
violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter
of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time, he lay
upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy
light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the
hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than
a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it
meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive
that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of
spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of
knowing it. At last, however, he began to think--as you or
I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not
in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done
in it, and would unquestionably have done it too--at last, I
say, he began to think that the source and secret of this
ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence,
on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking
full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in
his slippers to the door.

The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange
voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He
obeyed.

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that.
But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls
and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a
perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming
berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and
ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had
been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring
up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had
never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and
many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form
a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn,
great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages,
mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts,
cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears,
immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that
made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy
state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to
see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's
horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge,
as he came peeping round the door.

"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! and know
me better, man!"

Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this
Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and
though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like
to meet them.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit.
"Look upon me!"

Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple
green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment
hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was
bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any
artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the
garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other
covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining
icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its
genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice,
its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded
round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword
was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.

"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed
the Spirit.

"Never," Scrooge made answer to it.

"Have never walked forth with the younger members of
my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers
born in these later years?" pursued the Phantom.

"I don't think I have," said Scrooge. "I am afraid I have
not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?"

"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.

"A tremendous family to provide for!" muttered Scrooge.

The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.

"Spirit," said Scrooge submissively, "conduct me where
you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt
a lesson which is working now. To-night, if you have aught
to teach me, let me profit by it."

"Touch my robe!"

Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.

Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game,
poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings,
fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room,
the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood
in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the
weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and
not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the
pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of
their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see
it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting
into artificial little snow-storms.

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows
blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow
upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground;
which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by
the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows that crossed
and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great
streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace
in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy,
and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist,
half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended
in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great
Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away
to their dear hearts' content. There was nothing very cheerful
in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of
cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest
summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.

For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops
were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another
from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious
snowball--better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest--
laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it
went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the
fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round,
pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats
of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out
into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were
ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in
the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking
from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went
by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were
pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there
were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence
to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might
water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy
and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among
the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered
leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting
off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great
compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and
beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after
dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among
these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and
stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was
something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and
round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.

The Grocers'! oh, the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps
two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such
glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the
counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller
parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled
up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended
scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even
that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so
extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight,
the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and
spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on
feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs
were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in
modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that
everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but
the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful
promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other
at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left
their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to
fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in
the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people
were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which
they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own,
worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws
to peck at if they chose.

But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and
chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in
their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the
same time there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and
nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners
to the bakers' shops. The sight of these poor revellers
appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with
Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off the
covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their
dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind
of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words
between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he
shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good
humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame
to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love
it, so it was!

In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and
yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners
and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of
wet above each baker's oven; where the pavement smoked as
if its stones were cooking too.

"Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from
your torch?" asked Scrooge.

"There is. My own."

"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?"
asked Scrooge.

"To any kindly given. To a poor one most."

"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.

"Because it needs it most."

"Spirit," said Scrooge, after a moment's thought, "I wonder
you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should
desire to cramp these people's opportunities of innocent
enjoyment."

"I!" cried the Spirit.

"You would deprive them of their means of dining every
seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said
to dine at all," said Scrooge. "Wouldn't you?"

"I!" cried the Spirit.

"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?" said
Scrooge. "And it comes to the same thing."

"I seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.

"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your
name, or at least in that of your family," said Scrooge.

"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit,
"who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion,
pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness
in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and
kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge
their doings on themselves, not us."

Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on,
invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the
town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which
Scrooge had observed at the baker's), that notwithstanding
his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place
with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as
gracefully and like a supernatural creature, as it was possible
he could have done in any lofty hall.

And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in
showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind,
generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor
men, that led him straight to Scrooge's clerk's; for there he
went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe; and
on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped
to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the sprinkling of his
torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen "Bob" a-week
himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his
Christian name; and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present
blessed his four-roomed house!

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out
but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons,
which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and
she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of
her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter
Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and
getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob's private
property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the
day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly
attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks.
And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing
in, screaming that outside the baker's they had smelt the
goose, and known it for their own; and basking in luxurious
thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits danced
about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the
skies, while he (not proud, although his collars nearly choked
him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up,
knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and
peeled.

"What has ever got your precious father then?" said Mrs.
Cratchit. "And your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha
warn't as late last Christmas Day by half-an-hour?"

"Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing as she
spoke.

"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits.
"Hurrah! There's such a goose, Martha!"

"Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!"
said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off
her shawl and bonnet for her with officious zeal.

"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the
girl, "and had to clear away this morning, mother!"

"Well! Never mind so long as you are come," said Mrs.
Cratchit. "Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have
a warm, Lord bless ye!"

"No, no! There's father coming," cried the two young
Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha,
hide!"

So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father,
with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe,
hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned
up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his
shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and
had his limbs supported by an iron frame!

"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking
round.

"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.

"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his
high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way
from church, and had come home rampant. "Not coming
upon Christmas Day!"

Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only
in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet
door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits
hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house,
that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.

"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit,
when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had
hugged his daughter to his heart's content.

"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he
gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the
strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home,
that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he
was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember
upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind
men see."

Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and
trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing
strong and hearty.

His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back
came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by
his brother and sister to his stool before the fire; and while
Bob, turning up his cuffs--as if, poor fellow, they were
capable of being made more shabby--compounded some hot
mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round
and round and put it on the hob to simmer; Master Peter,
and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the
goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.

Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose
the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a
black swan was a matter of course--and in truth it was
something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made
the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot;
Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour;
Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted
the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny
corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for
everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard
upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest
they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be
helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was
said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs.
Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared
to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the
long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of
delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim,
excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with
the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe
there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and
flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal
admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes,
it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as
Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small
atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at
last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest
Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to
the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss
Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous to
bear witnesses--to take the pudding up and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should
break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got
over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they
were merry with the goose--a supposition at which the two
young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were
supposed.

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of
the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the
cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next
door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that!
That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit
entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding,
like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half
of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with
Christmas holly stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly
too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by
Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that
now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had
had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had
something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it
was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have
been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed
to hint at such a thing.

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the
hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the
jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges
were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the
fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in
what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and
at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass.
Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as
golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with
beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and
cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:

"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"

Which all the family re-echoed.

"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

He sat very close to his father's side upon his little
stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he
loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and
dreaded that he might be taken from him.

"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt
before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."

"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor
chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully
preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future,
the child will die."

"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he
will be spared."

"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none
other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here.
What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and
decrease the surplus population."

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by
the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.

"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not
adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered
What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what
men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the
sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live
than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear
the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life
among his hungry brothers in the dust!"

Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast
his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily, on
hearing his own name.

"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob; "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the
Founder of the Feast!"

"The Founder of the Feast indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit,
reddening. "I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece
of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good
appetite for it."

"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas Day."

"It should be Christmas Day, I am sure," said she, "on
which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard,
unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert!
Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!"

"My dear," was Bob's mild answer, "Christmas Day."

"I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," said
Mrs. Cratchit, "not for his. Long life to him! A merry
Christmas and a happy new year! He'll be very merry and
very happy, I have no doubt!"

The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of
their proceedings which had no heartiness. Tiny Tim drank
it last of all, but he didn't care twopence for it. Scrooge
was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast
a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full
five minutes.

After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than
before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done
with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his
eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, full
five-and-sixpence weekly. The two young Cratchits laughed
tremendously at the idea of Peter's being a man of business;
and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from
between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular
investments he should favour when he came into the receipt
of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor
apprentice at a milliner's, then told them what kind of work
she had to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch,
and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for a
good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at
home. Also how she had seen a countess and a lord some
days before, and how the lord "was much about as tall as
Peter;" at which Peter pulled up his collars so high that you
couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. All this
time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and
by-and-bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in
the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice,
and sang it very well indeed.

There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not
a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes
were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty;
and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside
of a pawnbroker's. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased
with one another, and contented with the time; and when
they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings
of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon
them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.

By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty
heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets,
the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and
all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of
the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot
plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep
red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness.
There all the children of the house were running out
into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins,
uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again,
were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and
there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted,
and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near
neighbour's house; where, woe upon the single man who saw
them enter--artful witches, well they knew it--in a glow!

But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on
their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought
that no one was at home to give them welcome when they
got there, instead of every house expecting company, and
piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how
the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and
opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with
a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything
within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before,
dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was
dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly
as the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamplighter
that he had any company but Christmas!

And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they
stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses
of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place
of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed,
or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner;
and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse rank grass.
Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery
red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a
sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in
the thick gloom of darkest night.

"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.

"A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of
the earth," returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"

A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they
advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and
stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a
glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their
children and their children's children, and another generation
beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire.
The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling
of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a
Christmas song--it had been a very old song when he was a
boy--and from time to time they all joined in the chorus.
So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite
blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour
sank again.

The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his
robe, and passing on above the moor, sped--whither? Not
to sea? To sea. To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw
the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them;
and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it
rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it
had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.

Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league
or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed,
the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse.
Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds
--born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the
water--rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.

But even here, two men who watched the light had made
a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed
out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their
horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they
wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and
one of them: the elder, too, with his face all damaged and
scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship
might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in
itself.

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea
--on, on--until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any
shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman
at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who
had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations;
but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or
had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his
companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward
hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or
sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another
on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared
to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those
he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted
to remember him.

It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the
moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it
was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown
abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death: it
was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear
a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge
to recognise it as his own nephew's and to find himself in a
bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling
by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving
affability!

"Ha, ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha, ha, ha!"

If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a
man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can
say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me,
and I'll cultivate his acquaintance.

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that
while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing
in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and
good-humour. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding
his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the
most extravagant contortions: Scrooge's niece, by marriage,
laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being
not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily.

"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"

"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried
Scrooge's nephew. "He believed it too!"

"More shame for him, Fred!" said Scrooge's niece,
indignantly. Bless those women; they never do anything by
halves. They are always in earnest.

She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled,
surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that
seemed made to be kissed--as no doubt it was; all kinds of
good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another
when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever
saw in any little creature's head. Altogether she was what
you would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too.
Oh, perfectly satisfactory.

"He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew, "that's
the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However,
his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing
to say against him."

"I'm sure he is very rich, Fred," hinted Scrooge's niece.
"At least you always tell me so."

"What of that, my dear!" said Scrooge's nephew. "His
wealth is of no use to him. He don't do any good with it.
He don't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't the
satisfaction of thinking--ha, ha, ha!--that he is ever going
to benefit US with it."

"I have no patience with him," observed Scrooge's niece.
Scrooge's niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed
the same opinion.

"Oh, I have!" said Scrooge's nephew. "I am sorry for
him; I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers
by his ill whims! Himself, always. Here, he takes it into
his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us.
What's the consequence? He don't lose much of a dinner."

"Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted
Scrooge's niece. Everybody else said the same, and they
must be allowed to have been competent judges, because
they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert upon the
table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight.

"Well! I'm very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew,
"because I haven't great faith in these young housekeepers.
What do you say, Topper?"

Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's
sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast,
who had no right to express an opinion on the subject.
Whereat Scrooge's niece's sister--the plump one with the lace
tucker: not the one with the roses--blushed.

"Do go on, Fred," said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands.
"He never finishes what he begins to say! He is such a
ridiculous fellow!"

Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was
impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister
tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was
unanimously followed.

"I was only going to say," said Scrooge's nephew, "that
the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making
merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant
moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses
pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts,
either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I
mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he
likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas
till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it--I defy
him--if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after
year, and saying Uncle Scrooge, how are you? If it only
puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds,
that's something; and I think I shook him yesterday."

It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking
Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much
caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any
rate, he encouraged them in their merriment, and passed the
bottle joyously.

After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical
family, and knew what they were about, when they sung a
Glee or Catch, I can assure you: especially Topper, who
could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never
swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face
over it. Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp; and
played among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing:
you might learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had
been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from the
boarding-school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of
Christmas Past. When this strain of music sounded, all the
things that Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind; he
softened more and more; and thought that if he could have
listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the
kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands,
without resorting to the sexton's spade that buried Jacob
Marley.

But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After
a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children
sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its
mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first
a game at blind-man's buff. Of course there was. And I
no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he
had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done
thing between him and Scrooge's nephew; and that the
Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after
that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the
credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons,
tumbling over the chairs, bumping against the piano,
smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went,
there went he! He always knew where the plump sister was.
He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up
against him (as some of them did), on purpose, he would
have made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would
have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly
have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister.
She often cried out that it wasn't fair; and it really was not.
But when at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her
silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got
her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his
conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to
know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her
head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by
pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain
about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told
him her opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in
office, they were so very confidential together, behind the
curtains.

Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind-man's buff party,
but was made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool,
in a snug corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge were close
behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her
love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet.
Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was
very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, beat
her sisters hollow: though they were sharp girls too, as Topper
could have told you. There might have been twenty people there,
young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for
wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on, that
his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with
his guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too;
for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut
in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge; blunt as he took it in
his head to be.

The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood,
and looked upon him with such favour, that he begged like
a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But
this the Spirit said could not be done.

"Here is a new game," said Scrooge. "One half hour,
Spirit, only one!"

It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew
had to think of something, and the rest must find out what;
he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case
was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed,
elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live
animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an
animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes,
and lived in London, and walked about the streets,
and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and
didn't live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market,
and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a
tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh
question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a
fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that
he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last
the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:

"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know
what it is!"

"What is it?" cried Fred.

"It's your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal
sentiment, though some objected that the reply to "Is it a
bear?" ought to have been "Yes;" inasmuch as an answer
in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts
from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency
that way.

"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said
Fred, "and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health.
Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the
moment; and I say, 'Uncle Scrooge!'"

"Well! Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.

"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old
man, whatever he is!" said Scrooge's nephew. "He wouldn't
take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle
Scrooge!"

Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light
of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious
company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech,
if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene
passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his
nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they
visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood
beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands,
and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they
were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was
rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery's every
refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not
made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his
blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.

It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge
had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared
to be condensed into the space of time they passed
together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained
unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly
older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of
it, until they left a children's Twelfth Night party, when,
looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place,
he noticed that its hair was grey.

"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.

"My life upon this globe, is very brief," replied the Ghost.
"It ends to-night."

"To-night!" cried Scrooge.

"To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing
near."

The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at
that moment.

"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said
Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see
something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding
from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?"

"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was
the Spirit's sorrowful reply. "Look here."

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children;
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt
down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed
the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling,
wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where
graceful youth should have filled their features out, and
touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled
hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and
pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No
change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any
grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has
monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to
him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but
the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie
of such enormous magnitude.

"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.

"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon
them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for
on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out
its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye!
Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse.
And bide the end!"

"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.

"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him
for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"

The bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not.
As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the
prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes,
beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like
a mist along the ground, towards him.


STAVE IV:  THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS

THE Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When
it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in
the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to
scatter gloom and mystery.

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed
its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible
save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been
difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it
from the darkness by which it was surrounded.

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside
him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a
solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither
spoke nor moved.

"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To
Come?" said Scrooge.

The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its
hand.

"You are about to show me shadows of the things that
have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,"
Scrooge pursued. "Is that so, Spirit?"

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an
instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head.
That was the only answer he received.

Although well used to ghostly company by this time,
Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled
beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when
he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as
observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.

But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him
with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the
dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon
him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost,
could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap
of black.

"Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more
than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose
is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another
man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company,
and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak
to me?"

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight
before them.

"Lead on!" said Scrooge. "Lead on! The night is
waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead
on, Spirit!"

The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him.
Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him
up, he thought, and carried him along.

They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city rather
seemed to spring up about them, and encompass them of its
own act. But there they were, in the heart of it; on
'Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up and down,
and chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in
groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully
with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had
seen them often.

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men.
Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge
advanced to listen to their talk.

"No," said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, "I
don't know much about it, either way. I only know he's
dead."

"When did he die?" inquired another.

"Last night, I believe."

"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked a third,
taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box.
"I thought he'd never die."

"God knows," said the first, with a yawn.

"What has he done with his money?" asked a red-faced
gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his
nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.

"I haven't heard," said the man with the large chin,
yawning again. "Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn't
left it to me. That's all I know."

This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.

"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," said the same
speaker; "for upon my life I don't know of anybody to go
to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?"

"I don't mind going if a lunch is provided," observed the
gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. "But I must
be fed, if I make one."

Another laugh.

"Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,"
said the first speaker, "for I never wear black gloves, and I
never eat lunch. But I'll offer to go, if anybody else will.
When I come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't
his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak
whenever we met. Bye, bye!"

Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with
other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the
Spirit for an explanation.

The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed
to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking
that the explanation might lie here.

He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business:
very wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point
always of standing well in their esteem: in a business point
of view, that is; strictly in a business point of view.

"How are you?" said one.

"How are you?" returned the other.

"Well!" said the first. "Old Scratch has got his own at
last, hey?"

"So I am told," returned the second. "Cold, isn't it?"

"Seasonable for Christmas time. You're not a skater, I
suppose?"

"No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!"

Not another word. That was their meeting, their
conversation, and their parting.

Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the
Spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so
trivial; but feeling assured that they must have some hidden
purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to be.
They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the
death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was Past, and this
Ghost's province was the Future. Nor could he think of any
one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could
apply them. But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they
applied they had some latent moral for his own improvement,
he resolved to treasure up every word he heard,
and everything he saw; and especially to observe the
shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation
that the conduct of his future self would give him
the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these
riddles easy.

He looked about in that very place for his own image; but
another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the
clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he
saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured
in through the Porch. It gave him little surprise, however;
for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and
thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried
out in this.

Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its
outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his
thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and
its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes
were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel
very cold.

They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part
of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before,
although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute. The
ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched;
the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and
archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of
smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the
whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery.

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed,
beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags,
bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor
within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges,
files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets
that few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in
mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and
sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a
charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal,
nearly seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the
cold air without, by a frousy curtaining of miscellaneous
tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury
of calm retirement.

Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this
man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the
shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman,
similarly laden, came in too; and she was closely followed by
a man in faded black, who was no less startled by the sight
of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each
other. After a short period of blank astonishment, in which
the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three
burst into a laugh.

"Let the charwoman alone to be the first!" cried she who
had entered first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second;
and let the undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look
here, old Joe, here's a chance! If we haven't all three met
here without meaning it!"

"You couldn't have met in a better place," said old Joe,
removing his pipe from his mouth. "Come into the parlour.
You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the other
two an't strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop.
Ah! How it skreeks! There an't such a rusty bit of metal
in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I'm sure there's
no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha! We're all suitable
to our calling, we're well matched. Come into the
parlour. Come into the parlour."

The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The
old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and
having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night), with the
stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again.

While he did this, the woman who had already spoken
threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting
manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and
looking with a bold defiance at the other two.

"What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?" said the
woman. "Every person has a right to take care of themselves.
He always did."

"That's true, indeed!" said the laundress. "No man
more so."

"Why then, don't stand staring as if you was afraid,
woman; who's the wiser? We're not going to pick holes in
each other's coats, I suppose?"

"No, indeed!" said Mrs. Dilber and the man together.
"We should hope not."

"Very well, then!" cried the woman. "That's enough.
Who's the worse for the loss of a few things like these?
Not a dead man, I suppose."

"No, indeed," said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.

"If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old
screw," pursued the woman, "why wasn't he natural in his
lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look
after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying
gasping out his last there, alone by himself."

"It's the truest word that ever was spoke," said Mrs.
Dilber. "It's a judgment on him."

"I wish it was a little heavier judgment," replied the
woman; "and it should have been, you may depend upon it,
if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that
bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out
plain. I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to
see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves,
before we met here, I believe. It's no sin. Open the bundle,
Joe."

But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this;
and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first,
produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two,
a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no
great value, were all. They were severally examined and
appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed
to give for each, upon the wall, and added them up into a
total when he found there was nothing more to come.

"That's your account," said Joe, "and I wouldn't give
another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it.
Who's next?"

Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing
apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of
sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall
in the same manner.

"I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine,
and that's the way I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's
your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made
it an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal and knock
off half-a-crown."

"And now undo my bundle, Joe," said the first woman.

Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience
of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots,
dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff.

"What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed-curtains!"

"Ah!" returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward
on her crossed arms. "Bed-curtains!"

"You don't mean to say you took 'em down, rings and
all, with him lying there?" said Joe.

"Yes I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"

"You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and
you'll certainly do it."

"I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get anything
in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as He
was, I promise you, Joe," returned the woman coolly. "Don't
drop that oil upon the blankets, now."

"His blankets?" asked Joe.

"Whose else's do you think?" replied the woman. "He
isn't likely to take cold without 'em, I dare say."

"I hope he didn't die of anything catching? Eh?" said
old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.

"Don't you be afraid of that," returned the woman. "I
an't so fond of his company that I'd loiter about him for
such things, if he did. Ah! you may look through that
shirt till your eyes ache; but you won't find a hole in it, nor
a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine one too.
They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me."

"What do you call wasting of it?" asked old Joe.

"Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure," replied
the woman with a laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to
do it, but I took it off again. If calico an't good enough for
such a purpose, it isn't good enough for anything. It's quite
as becoming to the body. He can't look uglier than he did
in that one."

Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat
grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by
the old man's lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and
disgust, which could hardly have been greater, though they
had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself.

"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman, when old Joe,
producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their
several gains upon the ground. "This is the end of it, you
see! He frightened every one away from him when he was
alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!"

"Spirit!" said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. "I
see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own.
My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is
this!"

He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now
he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which,
beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up,
which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful
language.

The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with
any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience
to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it
was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon
the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept,
uncared for, was the body of this man.

Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand
was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted
that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon
Scrooge's part, would have disclosed the face. He thought
of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it;
but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss
the spectre at his side.

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar
here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy
command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved,
revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair
to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is
not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released;
it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the
hand WAS open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm,
and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike!
And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow
the world with life immortal!

No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge's ears, and
yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He
thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be
his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares?
They have brought him to a rich end, truly!

He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a
woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this
or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be
kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was
a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What
they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so
restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think.

"Spirit!" he said, "this is a fearful place. In leaving it,
I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!"

Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the
head.

"I understand you," Scrooge returned, "and I would do
it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have
not the power."

Again it seemed to look upon him.

"If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion
caused by this man's death," said Scrooge quite agonised,
"show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!"

The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a
moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a room
by daylight, where a mother and her children were.

She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness;
for she walked up and down the room; started at every
sound; looked out from the window; glanced at the clock;
tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and could hardly
bear the voices of the children in their play.

At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried
to the door, and met her husband; a man whose face was
careworn and depressed, though he was young. There was
a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of serious delight
of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.

He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for
him by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what news
(which was not until after a long silence), he appeared
embarrassed how to answer.

"Is it good?" she said, "or bad?"--to help him.

"Bad," he answered.

"We are quite ruined?"

"No. There is hope yet, Caroline."

"If he relents," she said, amazed, "there is! Nothing is
past hope, if such a miracle has happened."

"He is past relenting," said her husband. "He is dead."

She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke
truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she
said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next
moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of
her heart.

"What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of last
night, said to me, when I tried to see him and obtain a
week's delay; and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid
me; turns out to have been quite true. He was not only
very ill, but dying, then."

"To whom will our debt be transferred?"

"I don't know. But before that time we shall be ready
with the money; and even though we were not, it would be
a bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his
successor. We may sleep to-night with light hearts, Caroline!"

Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter.
The children's faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what
they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier
house for this man's death! The only emotion that the
Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one of
pleasure.

"Let me see some tenderness connected with a death," said
Scrooge; "or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just
now, will be for ever present to me."

The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar
to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and
there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They
entered poor Bob Cratchit's house; the dwelling he had
visited before; and found the mother and the children seated
round the fire.

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as
still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter,
who had a book before him. The mother and her daughters
were engaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet!

"'And He took a child, and set him in the midst of
them.'"

Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not
dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he
and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not
go on?

The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her
hand up to her face.

"The colour hurts my eyes," she said.

The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!

"They're better now again," said Cratchit's wife. "It
makes them weak by candle-light; and I wouldn't show weak
eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It
must be near his time."

"Past it rather," Peter answered, shutting up his book.
"But I think he has walked a little slower than he used,
these few last evenings, mother."

They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a
steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered once:

"I have known him walk with--I have known him walk
with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast indeed."

"And so have I," cried Peter. "Often."

"And so have I," exclaimed another. So had all.

"But he was very light to carry," she resumed, intent upon
her work, "and his father loved him so, that it was no
trouble: no trouble. And there is your father at the door!"

She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his comforter
--he had need of it, poor fellow--came in. His tea
was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried who should
help him to it most. Then the two young Cratchits got
upon his knees and laid, each child a little cheek, against
his face, as if they said, "Don't mind it, father. Don't be
grieved!"

Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to
all the family. He looked at the work upon the table, and
praised the industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls.
They would be done long before Sunday, he said.

"Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?" said his
wife.

"Yes, my dear," returned Bob. "I wish you could have
gone. It would have done you good to see how green a
place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised him that I
would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child!"
cried Bob. "My little child!"

He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If he
could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther
apart perhaps than they were.

He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room above,
which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas.
There was a chair set close beside the child, and there were
signs of some one having been there, lately. Poor Bob sat
down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed
himself, he kissed the little face. He was reconciled to what
had happened, and went down again quite happy.

They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother
working still. Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness
of Mr. Scrooge's nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but
once, and who, meeting him in the street that day, and seeing
that he looked a little--"just a little down you know," said
Bob, inquired what had happened to distress him. "On
which," said Bob, "for he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman
you ever heard, I told him. 'I am heartily sorry for it, Mr.
Cratchit,' he said, 'and heartily sorry for your good wife.'
By the bye, how he ever knew that, I don't know."

"Knew what, my dear?"

"Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.

"Everybody knows that!" said Peter.

"Very well observed, my boy!" cried Bob. "I hope they
do. 'Heartily sorry,' he said, 'for your good wife. If I
can be of service to you in any way,' he said, giving me
his card, 'that's where I live. Pray come to me.' Now, it
wasn't," cried Bob, "for the sake of anything he might be
able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was
quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our
Tiny Tim, and felt with us."

"I'm sure he's a good soul!" said Mrs. Cratchit.

"You would be surer of it, my dear," returned Bob, "if
you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised--
mark what I say!--if he got Peter a better situation."

"Only hear that, Peter," said Mrs. Cratchit.

"And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will be keeping
company with some one, and setting up for himself."

"Get along with you!" retorted Peter, grinning.

"It's just as likely as not," said Bob, "one of these days;
though there's plenty of time for that, my dear. But however
and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we
shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim--shall we--or this
first parting that there was among us?"

"Never, father!" cried they all.

"And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that when
we recollect how patient and how mild he was; although he
was a little, little child; we shall not quarrel easily among
ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it."

"No, never, father!" they all cried again.

"I am very happy," said little Bob, "I am very happy!"

Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the
two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook
hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from
God!

"Spectre," said Scrooge, "something informs me that our
parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not
how. Tell me what man that was whom we saw lying dead?"

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as
before--though at a different time, he thought: indeed, there
seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were
in the Future--into the resorts of business men, but showed
him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not stay for anything,
but went straight on, as to the end just now desired,
until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.

"This court," said Scrooge, "through which we hurry now,
is where my place of occupation is, and has been for a length
of time. I see the house. Let me behold what I shall be,
in days to come!"

The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.

"The house is yonder," Scrooge exclaimed. "Why do you
point away?"

The inexorable finger underwent no change.

Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked
in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was
not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself.
The Phantom pointed as before.

He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither
he had gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron gate.
He paused to look round before entering.

A churchyard. Here, then; the wretched man whose name
he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a
worthy place. Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and
weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked up
with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A
worthy place!

The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to
One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was
exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new
meaning in its solemn shape.

"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,"
said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the
shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of
things that May be, only?"

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which
it stood.

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if
persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the
courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is
thus with what you show me!"

The Spirit was immovable as ever.

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and
following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected
grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE.

"Am I that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried, upon
his knees.

The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.

"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"

The finger still was there.

"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me!
I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must
have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I
am past all hope!"

For the first time the hand appeared to shake.

"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he
fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities
me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you
have shown me, by an altered life!"

The kind hand trembled.

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it
all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the
Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I
will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I
may sponge away the writing on this stone!"

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to
free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it.
The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.

Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate
reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress.
It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.


STAVE V:  THE END OF IT

YES! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own,
the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time
before him was his own, to make amends in!

"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!"
Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits
of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley!
Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say
it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!"

He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions,
that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his
call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the
Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.

"They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of
his bed-curtains in his arms, "they are not torn down, rings
and all. They are here--I am here--the shadows of the
things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will
be. I know they will!"

His hands were busy with his garments all this time;
turning them inside out, putting them on upside down,
tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every
kind of extravagance.

"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and
crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of
himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I
am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I
am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to
everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo
here! Whoop! Hallo!"

He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing
there: perfectly winded.

"There's the saucepan that the gruel was in!" cried
Scrooge, starting off again, and going round the fireplace.
"There's the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley
entered! There's the corner where the Ghost of Christmas
Present, sat! There's the window where I saw the wandering
Spirits! It's all right, it's all true, it all happened.
Ha ha ha!"

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so
many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh.
The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!

"I don't know what day of the month it is!" said
Scrooge. "I don't know how long I've been among the
Spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never
mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop!
Hallo here!"

He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing
out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang,
hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang,
clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his
head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold;
cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight;
Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious!
Glorious!

"What's to-day!" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a
boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look
about him.

"EH?" returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.

"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.

"To-day!" replied the boy. "Why, CHRISTMAS DAY."

"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I
haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night.
They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of
course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"

"Hallo!" returned the boy.

"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one,
at the corner?" Scrooge inquired.

"I should hope I did," replied the lad.

"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy!
Do you know whether they've sold the prize Turkey that
was hanging up there?--Not the little prize Turkey: the
big one?"

"What, the one as big as me?" returned the boy.

"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure
to talk to him. Yes, my buck!"

"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.

"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."

"Walk-ER!" exclaimed the boy.

"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy
it, and tell 'em to bring it here, that I may give them the
direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and
I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than
five minutes and I'll give you half-a-crown!"

The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady
hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.

"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's!" whispered Scrooge,
rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. "He sha'n't
know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe
Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's
will be!"

The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady
one, but write it he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to
open the street door, ready for the coming of the poulterer's
man. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker
caught his eye.

"I shall love it, as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting
it with his hand. "I scarcely ever looked at it before.
What an honest expression it has in its face! It's a
wonderful knocker!--Here's the Turkey! Hallo! Whoop!
How are you! Merry Christmas!"

It was a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his
legs, that bird. He would have snapped 'em short off in a
minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.

"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town,"
said Scrooge. "You must have a cab."

The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with
which he paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which
he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed
the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle
with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and
chuckled till he cried.

Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to
shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even when
you don't dance while you are at it. But if he had cut the
end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of
sticking-plaister over it, and been quite satisfied.

He dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out
into the streets. The people were by this time pouring forth,
as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas Present;
and walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded
every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly
pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured fellows
said, "Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!"
And Scrooge said often afterwards, that of all the blithe
sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.

He had not gone far, when coming on towards him he
beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his
counting-house the day before, and said, "Scrooge and Marley's, I
believe?"  It sent a pang across his heart to think how this
old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but he
knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.

"My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and
taking the old gentleman by both his hands. "How do you
do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of
you. A merry Christmas to you, sir!"

"Mr. Scrooge?"

"Yes," said Scrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it
may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon.
And will you have the goodness"--here Scrooge whispered in
his ear.

"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath
were taken away. "My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"

"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A
great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you.
Will you do me that favour?"

"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him.
"I don't know what to say to such munifi--"

"Don't say anything, please," retorted Scrooge. "Come
and see me. Will you come and see me?"

"I will!" cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he
meant to do it.

"Thank'ee," said Scrooge. "I am much obliged to you.
I thank you fifty times. Bless you!"

He went to church, and walked about the streets, and
watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children
on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into
the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found
that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never
dreamed that any walk--that anything--could give him so
much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps
towards his nephew's house.

He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the
courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and
did it:

"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the
girl. Nice girl! Very.

"Yes, sir."

"Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.

"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I'll
show you up-stairs, if you please."

"Thank'ee. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand
already on the dining-room lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."

He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door.
They were looking at the table (which was spread out in
great array); for these young housekeepers are always nervous
on such points, and like to see that everything is right.

"Fred!" said Scrooge.

Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started!
Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting
in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn't have done
it, on any account.

"Why bless my soul!" cried Fred, "who's that?"

"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner.
Will you let me in, Fred?"

Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off.
He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier.
His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he
came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did
every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful
games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!

But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was
early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob
Cratchit coming late! That was the thing he had set his
heart upon.

And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No
Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen
minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his
door wide open, that he might see him come into the Tank.

His hat was off, before he opened the door; his comforter
too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his
pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o'clock.

"Hallo!" growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as
near as he could feign it. "What do you mean by coming
here at this time of day?"

"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I am behind my time."

"You are?" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are.
Step this way, sir, if you please."

"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from
the Tank. "It shall not be repeated. I was making rather
merry yesterday, sir."

"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge, "I
am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And
therefore," he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving
Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into
the Tank again; "and therefore I am about to raise your
salary!"

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He
had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it,
holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help
and a strait-waistcoat.

"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge, with an earnestness
that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the
back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I
have given you, for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and
endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss
your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of
smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another
coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"


Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and
infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was
a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a
master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or
any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old
world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him,
but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was
wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this
globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill
of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these
would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they
should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in
less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was
quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon
the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was
always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas
well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that
be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim
observed, God bless Us, Every One!





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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Complete
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use
it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Complete

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #76]
Last Updated: February 23, 2018
Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUCKLEBERRY FINN ***

Produced by David Widger





ADVENTURES

OF

HUCKLEBERRY FINN

(Tom Sawyer's Comrade)

By Mark Twain

Complete




CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. Civilizing Huck.--Miss Watson.--Tom Sawyer Waits.

CHAPTER II. The Boys Escape Jim.--Torn Sawyer's Gang.--Deep-laid Plans.

CHAPTER III. A Good Going-over.--Grace Triumphant.--“One of Tom Sawyers's
Lies”.

CHAPTER IV. Huck and the Judge.--Superstition.

CHAPTER V. Huck's Father.--The Fond Parent.--Reform.

CHAPTER VI. He Went for Judge Thatcher.--Huck Decided to Leave.--Political
Economy.--Thrashing Around.

CHAPTER VII. Laying for Him.--Locked in the Cabin.--Sinking the
Body.--Resting.

CHAPTER VIII. Sleeping in the Woods.--Raising the Dead.--Exploring the
Island.--Finding Jim.--Jim's Escape.--Signs.--Balum.

CHAPTER IX. The Cave.--The Floating House.

CHAPTER X. The Find.--Old Hank Bunker.--In Disguise.

CHAPTER XI. Huck and the Woman.--The Search.--Prevarication.--Going to
Goshen.

CHAPTER XII. Slow Navigation.--Borrowing Things.--Boarding the Wreck.--The
Plotters.--Hunting for the Boat.

CHAPTER XIII. Escaping from the Wreck.--The Watchman.--Sinking.

CHAPTER XIV. A General Good Time.--The Harem.--French.

CHAPTER XV. Huck Loses the Raft.--In the Fog.--Huck Finds the Raft.--Trash.

CHAPTER XVI. Expectation.--A White Lie.--Floating Currency.--Running by
Cairo.--Swimming Ashore.

CHAPTER XVII. An Evening Call.--The Farm in Arkansaw.--Interior
Decorations.--Stephen Dowling Bots.--Poetical Effusions.

CHAPTER XVIII. Col. Grangerford.--Aristocracy.--Feuds.--The
Testament.--Recovering the Raft.--The Wood--pile.--Pork and Cabbage.

CHAPTER XIX. Tying Up Day--times.--An Astronomical Theory.--Running a
Temperance Revival.--The Duke of Bridgewater.--The Troubles of Royalty.

CHAPTER XX. Huck Explains.--Laying Out a Campaign.--Working the
Camp--meeting.--A Pirate at the Camp--meeting.--The Duke as a Printer.

CHAPTER XXI. Sword Exercise.--Hamlet's Soliloquy.--They Loafed Around
Town.--A Lazy Town.--Old Boggs.--Dead.

CHAPTER XXII. Sherburn.--Attending the Circus.--Intoxication in the
Ring.--The Thrilling Tragedy.

CHAPTER XXIII. Sold.--Royal Comparisons.--Jim Gets Home-sick.

CHAPTER XXIV. Jim in Royal Robes.--They Take a Passenger.--Getting
Information.--Family Grief.

CHAPTER XXV. Is It Them?--Singing the “Doxologer.”--Awful Square--Funeral
Orgies.--A Bad Investment .

CHAPTER XXVI. A Pious King.--The King's Clergy.--She Asked His
Pardon.--Hiding in the Room.--Huck Takes the Money.

CHAPTER XXVII. The Funeral.--Satisfying Curiosity.--Suspicious of
Huck,--Quick Sales and Small.

CHAPTER XXVIII. The Trip to England.--“The Brute!”--Mary Jane Decides to
Leave.--Huck Parting with Mary Jane.--Mumps.--The Opposition Line.

CHAPTER XXIX. Contested Relationship.--The King Explains the Loss.--A
Question of Handwriting.--Digging up the Corpse.--Huck Escapes.

CHAPTER XXX. The King Went for Him.--A Royal Row.--Powerful Mellow.

CHAPTER XXXI. Ominous Plans.--News from Jim.--Old Recollections.--A Sheep
Story.--Valuable Information.

CHAPTER XXXII. Still and Sunday--like.--Mistaken Identity.--Up a Stump.--In
a Dilemma.

CHAPTER XXXIII. A Nigger Stealer.--Southern Hospitality.--A Pretty Long
Blessing.--Tar and Feathers.

CHAPTER XXXIV. The Hut by the Ash Hopper.--Outrageous.--Climbing the
Lightning Rod.--Troubled with Witches.

CHAPTER XXXV. Escaping Properly.--Dark Schemes.--Discrimination in
Stealing.--A Deep Hole.

CHAPTER XXXVI. The Lightning Rod.--His Level Best.--A Bequest to
Posterity.--A High Figure.

CHAPTER XXXVII. The Last Shirt.--Mooning Around.--Sailing Orders.--The
Witch Pie.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. The Coat of Arms.--A Skilled Superintendent.--Unpleasant
Glory.--A Tearful Subject.

CHAPTER XXXIX. Rats.--Lively Bed--fellows.--The Straw Dummy.

CHAPTER XL. Fishing.--The Vigilance Committee.--A Lively Run.--Jim Advises
a Doctor.

CHAPTER XLI. The Doctor.--Uncle Silas.--Sister Hotchkiss.--Aunt Sally in
Trouble.

CHAPTER XLII. Tom Sawyer Wounded.--The Doctor's Story.--Tom
Confesses.--Aunt Polly Arrives.--Hand Out Them Letters    .

CHAPTER THE LAST. Out of Bondage.--Paying the Captive.--Yours Truly, Huck
Finn.




ILLUSTRATIONS.


The Widows

Moses and the “Bulrushers”

Miss Watson

Huck Stealing Away

They Tip-toed Along

Jim

Tom Sawyer's Band of Robbers  

Huck Creeps into his Window

Miss Watson's Lecture

The Robbers Dispersed

Rubbing the Lamp

! ! ! !

Judge Thatcher surprised

Jim Listening

“Pap”

Huck and his Father

Reforming the Drunkard

Falling from Grace

Getting out of the Way

Solid Comfort

Thinking it Over

Raising a Howl

“Git Up”

The Shanty

Shooting the Pig

Taking a Rest

In the Woods

Watching the Boat

Discovering the Camp Fire

Jim and the Ghost

Misto Bradish's Nigger

Exploring the Cave

In the Cave

Jim sees a Dead Man

They Found Eight Dollars

Jim and the Snake

Old Hank Bunker

“A Fair Fit”

“Come In”

“Him and another Man”

She puts up a Snack

“Hump Yourself”

On the Raft

He sometimes Lifted a Chicken

“Please don't, Bill”

“It ain't Good Morals”

“Oh! Lordy, Lordy!”

In a Fix

“Hello, What's Up?”

The Wreck

We turned in and Slept

Turning over the Truck

Solomon and his Million Wives

The story of “Sollermun”

“We Would Sell the Raft”

Among the Snags

Asleep on the Raft

“Something being Raftsman”

“Boy, that's a Lie”

“Here I is, Huck”

Climbing up the Bank

“Who's There?”

“Buck”

“It made Her look Spidery”

“They got him out and emptied Him”  

The House

Col. Grangerford

Young Harney Shepherdson

Miss Charlotte

“And asked me if I Liked Her”

“Behind the Wood-pile”

Hiding Day-times

“And Dogs a-Coming”

“By rights I am a Duke!”

“I am the Late Dauphin”

Tail Piece

On the Raft

The King as Juliet

“Courting on the Sly”

“A Pirate for Thirty Years”

Another little Job

Practizing

Hamlet's Soliloquy

“Gimme a Chaw”

A Little Monthly Drunk

The Death of Boggs

Sherburn steps out

A Dead Head

He shed Seventeen Suits

Tragedy

Their Pockets Bulged

Henry the Eighth in Boston Harbor

Harmless

Adolphus

He fairly emptied that Young Fellow

“Alas, our Poor Brother”

“You Bet it is”

Leaking

Making up the “Deffisit”

Going for him

The Doctor

The Bag of Money

The Cubby

Supper with the Hare-Lip

Honest Injun

The Duke looks under the Bed

Huck takes the Money

A Crack in the Dining-room Door

The Undertaker

“He had a Rat!”

“Was you in my Room?”

Jawing

In Trouble

Indignation

How to Find Them

He Wrote

Hannah with the Mumps

The Auction

The True Brothers

The Doctor leads Huck

The Duke Wrote

“Gentlemen, Gentlemen!”

“Jim Lit Out”

The King shakes Huck

The Duke went for Him

Spanish Moss

“Who Nailed Him?”

Thinking

He gave him Ten Cents

Striking for the Back Country

Still and Sunday-like

She hugged him tight

“Who do you reckon it is?”

“It was Tom Sawyer”

“Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?”

A pretty long Blessing

Traveling By Rail

Vittles

A Simple Job

Witches

Getting Wood

One of the Best Authorities

The Breakfast-Horn

Smouching the Knives

Going down the Lightning-Rod

Stealing spoons

Tom advises a Witch Pie

The Rubbage-Pile

“Missus, dey's a Sheet Gone”

In a Tearing Way

One of his Ancestors

Jim's Coat of Arms

A Tough Job

Buttons on their Tails

Irrigation

Keeping off Dull Times

Sawdust Diet

Trouble is Brewing

Fishing

Every one had a Gun

Tom caught on a Splinter

Jim advises a Doctor

The Doctor

Uncle Silas in Danger

Old Mrs. Hotchkiss

Aunt Sally talks to Huck

Tom Sawyer wounded

The Doctor speaks for Jim

Tom rose square up in Bed

“Hand out them Letters”

Out of Bondage

Tom's Liberality

Yours Truly




EXPLANATORY

IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit:  the Missouri negro
dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the
ordinary “Pike County” dialect; and four modified varieties of this
last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by
guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and
support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers
would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and
not succeeding.

THE AUTHOR.




HUCKLEBERRY FINN

Scene:  The Mississippi Valley Time:  Forty to fifty years ago




CHAPTER I.

YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.  That book was made
by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.  There was things
which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.  That is nothing.  I
never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt
Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary.  Aunt Polly--Tom's Aunt Polly, she
is--and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which
is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up is this:  Tom and me found the money
that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich.  We got six
thousand dollars apiece--all gold.  It was an awful sight of money when
it was piled up.  Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out
at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year
round--more than a body could tell what to do with.  The Widow Douglas
she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was
rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular
and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand
it no longer I lit out.  I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead
again, and was free and satisfied.  But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and
said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I
would go back to the widow and be respectable.  So I went back.

The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she
called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by
it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but
sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up.  Well, then, the old thing
commenced again.  The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come
to time. When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but
you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little
over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with
them,--that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself.  In a
barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the
juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the
Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and
by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so
then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in
dead people.

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me.  But she
wouldn't.  She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must
try to not do it any more.  That is just the way with some people.  They
get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it.  Here she was
a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody,
being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a
thing that had some good in it.  And she took snuff, too; of course that
was all right, because she done it herself.

Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on,
had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a
spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then
the widow made her ease up.  I couldn't stood it much longer.  Then for
an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety.  Miss Watson would say,
“Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry;” and “Don't scrunch up
like that, Huckleberry--set up straight;” and pretty soon she would
say, “Don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry--why don't you try to
behave?”  Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished
I was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm.  All I wanted
was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn't particular.
 She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn't say it for
the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place.
 Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I
made up my mind I wouldn't try for it.  But I never said so, because it
would only make trouble, and wouldn't do no good.

Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good
place.  She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all
day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever.  So I didn't think
much of it. But I never said so.  I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer
would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight.  I was glad
about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.

Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome.
 By and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then
everybody was off to bed.  I went up to my room with a piece of candle,
and put it on the table.  Then I set down in a chair by the window and
tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use.  I felt
so lonesome I most wished I was dead.  The stars were shining, and the
leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away
off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a
dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying
to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so
it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard
that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about
something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so
can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night
grieving.  I got so down-hearted and scared I did wish I had some
company.  Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I
flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it
was all shriveled up.  I didn't need anybody to tell me that that was
an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared
and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my
tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied
up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away.  But
I hadn't no confidence.  You do that when you've lost a horseshoe that
you've found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn't ever
heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you'd killed
a spider.

I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke;
for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't
know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town
go boom--boom--boom--twelve licks; and all still again--stiller than
ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the
trees--something was a stirring.  I set still and listened.  Directly I
could just barely hear a “me-yow! me-yow!” down there.  That was good!
 Says I, “me-yow! me-yow!” as soft as I could, and then I put out the
light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed.  Then I slipped
down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough,
there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.




CHAPTER II.

WE went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of
the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our
heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made
a noise.  We scrouched down and laid still.  Miss Watson's big nigger,
named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty
clear, because there was a light behind him.  He got up and stretched
his neck out about a minute, listening.  Then he says:

“Who dah?”

He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right
between us; we could a touched him, nearly.  Well, likely it was
minutes and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close
together.  There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I
dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back,
right between my shoulders.  Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch.
 Well, I've noticed that thing plenty times since.  If you are with
the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't
sleepy--if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why
you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim
says:

“Say, who is you?  Whar is you?  Dog my cats ef I didn' hear sumf'n.
Well, I know what I's gwyne to do:  I's gwyne to set down here and
listen tell I hears it agin.”

So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom.  He leaned his back up
against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched
one of mine.  My nose begun to itch.  It itched till the tears come into
my eyes.  But I dasn't scratch.  Then it begun to itch on the inside.
Next I got to itching underneath.  I didn't know how I was going to set
still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but
it seemed a sight longer than that.  I was itching in eleven different
places now.  I reckoned I couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer,
but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try.  Just then Jim begun
to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore--and then I was pretty soon
comfortable again.

Tom he made a sign to me--kind of a little noise with his mouth--and we
went creeping away on our hands and knees.  When we was ten foot off Tom
whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun.  But I said
no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I
warn't in. Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip
in the kitchen and get some more.  I didn't want him to try.  I said Jim
might wake up and come.  But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there
and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay.
Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do
Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play
something on him.  I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was
so still and lonesome.

As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence,
and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of
the house.  Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off of his head and hung it
on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake.
Afterwards Jim said the witches be witched him and put him in a trance,
and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again,
and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it.  And next time Jim told
it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that, every
time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they
rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back
was all over saddle-boils.  Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he
got so he wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers.  Niggers would come
miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any
nigger in that country.  Strange niggers would stand with their mouths
open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder.  Niggers is
always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but
whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things,
Jim would happen in and say, “Hm!  What you know 'bout witches?” and
that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat.  Jim always kept
that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a
charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could
cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by
saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it.
 Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they
had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn't touch
it, because the devil had had his hands on it.  Jim was most ruined for
a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil
and been rode by witches.

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down
into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where
there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever
so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and
awful still and grand.  We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and
Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard.
 So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half,
to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.

We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the
secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest
part of the bushes.  Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our
hands and knees.  We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave
opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked
under a wall where you wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole.  We
went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and
sweaty and cold, and there we stopped.  Tom says:

“Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang.
Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name
in blood.”

Everybody was willing.  So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had
wrote the oath on, and read it.  It swore every boy to stick to the
band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to
any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and
his family must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he
had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign
of the band. And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that
mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be
killed.  And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he
must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the
ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with
blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it
and be forgot forever.

Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got
it out of his own head.  He said, some of it, but the rest was out of
pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had
it.

Some thought it would be good to kill the _families_ of boys that told
the secrets.  Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote
it in. Then Ben Rogers says:

“Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family; what you going to do 'bout
him?”

“Well, hain't he got a father?” says Tom Sawyer.

“Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days.  He
used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen
in these parts for a year or more.”

They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they
said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it
wouldn't be fair and square for the others.  Well, nobody could think of
anything to do--everybody was stumped, and set still.  I was most ready
to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss
Watson--they could kill her.  Everybody said:

“Oh, she'll do.  That's all right.  Huck can come in.”

Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with,
and I made my mark on the paper.

“Now,” says Ben Rogers, “what's the line of business of this Gang?”

“Nothing only robbery and murder,” Tom said.

“But who are we going to rob?--houses, or cattle, or--”

“Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery; it's burglary,”
 says Tom Sawyer.  “We ain't burglars.  That ain't no sort of style.  We
are highwaymen.  We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks
on, and kill the people and take their watches and money.”

“Must we always kill the people?”

“Oh, certainly.  It's best.  Some authorities think different, but
mostly it's considered best to kill them--except some that you bring to
the cave here, and keep them till they're ransomed.”

“Ransomed?  What's that?”

“I don't know.  But that's what they do.  I've seen it in books; and so
of course that's what we've got to do.”

“But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?”

“Why, blame it all, we've _got_ to do it.  Don't I tell you it's in the
books?  Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books,
and get things all muddled up?”

“Oh, that's all very fine to _say_, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation
are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it
to them?--that's the thing I want to get at.  Now, what do you reckon it
is?”

“Well, I don't know.  But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed,
it means that we keep them till they're dead.”

“Now, that's something _like_.  That'll answer.  Why couldn't you said
that before?  We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a
bothersome lot they'll be, too--eating up everything, and always trying
to get loose.”

“How you talk, Ben Rogers.  How can they get loose when there's a guard
over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?”

“A guard!  Well, that _is_ good.  So somebody's got to set up all night
and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them.  I think that's
foolishness. Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as
they get here?”

“Because it ain't in the books so--that's why.  Now, Ben Rogers, do you
want to do things regular, or don't you?--that's the idea.  Don't you
reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct
thing to do?  Do you reckon _you_ can learn 'em anything?  Not by a good
deal. No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way.”

“All right.  I don't mind; but I say it's a fool way, anyhow.  Say, do
we kill the women, too?”

“Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on.  Kill
the women?  No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that.  You
fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them;
and by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any
more.”

“Well, if that's the way I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it.
Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows
waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers.
But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say.”

Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was
scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't
want to be a robber any more.

So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him
mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets.  But
Tom give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and
meet next week, and rob somebody and kill some people.

Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted
to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it
on Sunday, and that settled the thing.  They agreed to get together and
fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first
captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so started home.

I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was
breaking. My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was
dog-tired.




CHAPTER III.

WELL, I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on
account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned
off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would
behave awhile if I could.  Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet
and prayed, but nothing come of it.  She told me to pray every day, and
whatever I asked for I would get it.  But it warn't so.  I tried it.
Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks.  It warn't any good to me without
hooks.  I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I
couldn't make it work.  By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to
try for me, but she said I was a fool.  She never told me why, and I
couldn't make it out no way.

I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it.
 I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't
Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork?  Why can't the widow get
back her silver snuffbox that was stole?  Why can't Miss Watson fat up?
No, says I to my self, there ain't nothing in it.  I went and told the
widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for
it was “spiritual gifts.”  This was too many for me, but she told me
what she meant--I must help other people, and do everything I could for
other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about
myself. This was including Miss Watson, as I took it.  I went out in the
woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no
advantage about it--except for the other people; so at last I reckoned
I wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go.  Sometimes the
widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make
a body's mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold
and knock it all down again.  I judged I could see that there was two
Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the
widow's Providence, but if Miss Watson's got him there warn't no help
for him any more.  I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong
to the widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was
a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was
so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery.

Pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable
for me; I didn't want to see him no more.  He used to always whale me
when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take
to the woods most of the time when he was around.  Well, about this time
he was found in the river drownded, about twelve mile above town, so
people said.  They judged it was him, anyway; said this drownded man was
just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was all
like pap; but they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had
been in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all.  They said
he was floating on his back in the water.  They took him and buried him
on the bank.  But I warn't comfortable long, because I happened to think
of something.  I knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on
his back, but on his face.  So I knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but
a woman dressed up in a man's clothes.  So I was uncomfortable again.
 I judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he
wouldn't.

We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned.  All
the boys did.  We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but
only just pretended.  We used to hop out of the woods and go charging
down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market,
but we never hived any of them.  Tom Sawyer called the hogs “ingots,”
 and he called the turnips and stuff “julery,” and we would go to the
cave and powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had killed
and marked.  But I couldn't see no profit in it.  One time Tom sent a
boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan
(which was the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he said he
had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish
merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two
hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand “sumter”
 mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard
of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called
it, and kill the lot and scoop the things.  He said we must slick up
our swords and guns, and get ready.  He never could go after even a
turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it,
though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them
till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more
than what they was before.  I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd
of Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants,
so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got
the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill.  But there warn't
no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants.
 It warn't anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class
at that.  We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we
never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got
a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the
teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut.

 I didn't see no di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so.  He said there was
loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too,
and elephants and things.  I said, why couldn't we see them, then?  He
said if I warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I
would know without asking.  He said it was all done by enchantment.  He
said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure,
and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had
turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite.
 I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the
magicians.  Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull.

“Why,” said he, “a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they
would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson.  They
are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church.”

“Well,” I says, “s'pose we got some genies to help _us_--can't we lick
the other crowd then?”

“How you going to get them?”

“I don't know.  How do _they_ get them?”

“Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies
come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the
smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it.
 They don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and
belting a Sunday-school superintendent over the head with it--or any
other man.”

“Who makes them tear around so?”

“Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring.  They belong to whoever rubs
the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says.  If he
tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill
it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's
daughter from China for you to marry, they've got to do it--and they've
got to do it before sun-up next morning, too.  And more:  they've got
to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you
understand.”

“Well,” says I, “I think they are a pack of flat-heads for not keeping
the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that.  And what's
more--if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would
drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp.”

“How you talk, Huck Finn.  Why, you'd _have_ to come when he rubbed it,
whether you wanted to or not.”

“What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a church?  All right, then;
I _would_ come; but I lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there
was in the country.”

“Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn.  You don't seem to
know anything, somehow--perfect saphead.”

I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I
would see if there was anything in it.  I got an old tin lamp and an
iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat
like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't
no use, none of the genies come.  So then I judged that all that stuff
was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies.  I reckoned he believed in the
A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different.  It had all
the marks of a Sunday-school.




CHAPTER IV.

WELL, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter
now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and
write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six
times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any
further than that if I was to live forever.  I don't take no stock in
mathematics, anyway.

At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it.
Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next
day done me good and cheered me up.  So the longer I went to school the
easier it got to be.  I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways,
too, and they warn't so raspy on me.  Living in a house and sleeping in
a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I
used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a
rest to me.  I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the
new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but
sure, and doing very satisfactory.  She said she warn't ashamed of me.

One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast.
 I reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left
shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me,
and crossed me off. She says, “Take your hands away, Huckleberry; what
a mess you are always making!”  The widow put in a good word for me, but
that warn't going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well enough.
 I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and
wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be.
 There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one
of them kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along
low-spirited and on the watch-out.

I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go
through the high board fence.  There was an inch of new snow on the
ground, and I seen somebody's tracks.  They had come up from the quarry
and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden
fence.  It was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so.  I
couldn't make it out.  It was very curious, somehow.  I was going to
follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first.  I didn't
notice anything at first, but next I did.  There was a cross in the left
boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.

I was up in a second and shinning down the hill.  I looked over my
shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody.  I was at Judge
Thatcher's as quick as I could get there.  He said:

“Why, my boy, you are all out of breath.  Did you come for your
interest?”

“No, sir,” I says; “is there some for me?”

“Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night--over a hundred and fifty
dollars.  Quite a fortune for you.  You had better let me invest it
along with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it.”

“No, sir,” I says, “I don't want to spend it.  I don't want it at
all--nor the six thousand, nuther.  I want you to take it; I want to give
it to you--the six thousand and all.”

He looked surprised.  He couldn't seem to make it out.  He says:

“Why, what can you mean, my boy?”

I says, “Don't you ask me no questions about it, please.  You'll take
it--won't you?”

He says:

“Well, I'm puzzled.  Is something the matter?”

“Please take it,” says I, “and don't ask me nothing--then I won't have to
tell no lies.”

He studied a while, and then he says:

“Oho-o!  I think I see.  You want to _sell_ all your property to me--not
give it.  That's the correct idea.”

Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says:

“There; you see it says 'for a consideration.'  That means I have bought
it of you and paid you for it.  Here's a dollar for you.  Now you sign
it.”

So I signed it, and left.

Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which
had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do
magic with it.  He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed
everything.  So I went to him that night and told him pap was here
again, for I found his tracks in the snow.  What I wanted to know was,
what he was going to do, and was he going to stay?  Jim got out his
hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped
it on the floor.  It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch.
 Jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same.
 Jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and listened.
 But it warn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it
wouldn't talk without money.  I told him I had an old slick counterfeit
quarter that warn't no good because the brass showed through the silver
a little, and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass didn't show,
because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it
every time.  (I reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got
from the judge.) I said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball
would take it, because maybe it wouldn't know the difference.  Jim smelt
it and bit it and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-ball
would think it was good.  He said he would split open a raw Irish potato
and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all night, and next
morning you couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't feel greasy no more,
and so anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball.
 Well, I knowed a potato would do that before, but I had forgot it.

Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened
again. This time he said the hair-ball was all right.  He said it
would tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to.  I says, go on.  So the
hair-ball talked to Jim, and Jim told it to me.  He says:

“Yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do.  Sometimes he
spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay.  De bes' way is to
res' easy en let de ole man take his own way.  Dey's two angels hoverin'
roun' 'bout him.  One uv 'em is white en shiny, en t'other one is black.
De white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sail
in en bust it all up.  A body can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch
him at de las'.  But you is all right.  You gwyne to have considable
trouble in yo' life, en considable joy.  Sometimes you gwyne to git
hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne
to git well agin.  Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life.  One
uv 'em's light en t'other one is dark. One is rich en t'other is po'.
 You's gwyne to marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by.  You
wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no
resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung.”

When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap his
own self!




CHAPTER V.

I had shut the door to.  Then I turned around and there he was.  I used
to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much.  I reckoned I
was scared now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken--that is, after
the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being
so unexpected; but right away after I see I warn't scared of him worth
bothring about.

He was most fifty, and he looked it.  His hair was long and tangled and
greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through
like he was behind vines.  It was all black, no gray; so was his long,
mixed-up whiskers.  There warn't no color in his face, where his face
showed; it was white; not like another man's white, but a white to make
a body sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawl--a tree-toad white, a
fish-belly white.  As for his clothes--just rags, that was all.  He had
one ankle resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and
two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then.  His hat
was laying on the floor--an old black slouch with the top caved in, like
a lid.

I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair
tilted back a little.  I set the candle down.  I noticed the window was
up; so he had clumb in by the shed.  He kept a-looking me all over.  By
and by he says:

“Starchy clothes--very.  You think you're a good deal of a big-bug,
_don't_ you?”

“Maybe I am, maybe I ain't,” I says.

“Don't you give me none o' your lip,” says he.  “You've put on
considerable many frills since I been away.  I'll take you down a peg
before I get done with you.  You're educated, too, they say--can read and
write.  You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because
he can't?  _I'll_ take it out of you.  Who told you you might meddle
with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?--who told you you could?”

“The widow.  She told me.”

“The widow, hey?--and who told the widow she could put in her shovel
about a thing that ain't none of her business?”

“Nobody never told her.”

“Well, I'll learn her how to meddle.  And looky here--you drop that
school, you hear?  I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs
over his own father and let on to be better'n what _he_ is.  You lemme
catch you fooling around that school again, you hear?  Your mother
couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died.  None
of the family couldn't before _they_ died.  I can't; and here you're
a-swelling yourself up like this.  I ain't the man to stand it--you hear?
Say, lemme hear you read.”

I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the
wars. When I'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack
with his hand and knocked it across the house.  He says:

“It's so.  You can do it.  I had my doubts when you told me.  Now looky
here; you stop that putting on frills.  I won't have it.  I'll lay for
you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I'll tan you good.
First you know you'll get religion, too.  I never see such a son.”

He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and
says:

“What's this?”

“It's something they give me for learning my lessons good.”

He tore it up, and says:

“I'll give you something better--I'll give you a cowhide.”

He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says:

“_Ain't_ you a sweet-scented dandy, though?  A bed; and bedclothes; and
a look'n'-glass; and a piece of carpet on the floor--and your own father
got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard.  I never see such a son.  I
bet I'll take some o' these frills out o' you before I'm done with you.
Why, there ain't no end to your airs--they say you're rich.  Hey?--how's
that?”

“They lie--that's how.”

“Looky here--mind how you talk to me; I'm a-standing about all I can
stand now--so don't gimme no sass.  I've been in town two days, and I
hain't heard nothing but about you bein' rich.  I heard about it
away down the river, too.  That's why I come.  You git me that money
to-morrow--I want it.”

“I hain't got no money.”

“It's a lie.  Judge Thatcher's got it.  You git it.  I want it.”

“I hain't got no money, I tell you.  You ask Judge Thatcher; he'll tell
you the same.”

“All right.  I'll ask him; and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know
the reason why.  Say, how much you got in your pocket?  I want it.”

“I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to--”

“It don't make no difference what you want it for--you just shell it
out.”

He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was
going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day.
When he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed
me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I
reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me
to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick
me if I didn't drop that.

Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bullyragged
him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then
he swore he'd make the law force him.

The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away
from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that
had just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't
interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther
not take a child away from its father.  So Judge Thatcher and the widow
had to quit on the business.

That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest.  He said he'd cowhide
me till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him.  I
borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got
drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying
on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight;
then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed
him again for a week.  But he said _he_ was satisfied; said he was boss
of his son, and he'd make it warm for _him_.

When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him.
So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and
had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just
old pie to him, so to speak.  And after supper he talked to him about
temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been
a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over
a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the
judge would help him and not look down on him.  The judge said he could
hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap
said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the
judge said he believed it.  The old man said that what a man wanted
that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried
again.  And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his
hand, and says:

“Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it.
There's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's
the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before
he'll go back.  You mark them words--don't forget I said them.  It's a
clean hand now; shake it--don't be afeard.”

So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried.  The
judge's wife she kissed it.  Then the old man he signed a pledge--made
his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something
like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was
the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and
clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his
new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old
time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and
rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most
froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up.  And when they come
to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could
navigate it.

The judge he felt kind of sore.  He said he reckoned a body could reform
the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way.




CHAPTER VI.

WELL, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went
for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he
went for me, too, for not stopping school.  He catched me a couple of
times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged
him or outrun him most of the time.  I didn't want to go to school much
before, but I reckoned I'd go now to spite pap.  That law trial was a
slow business--appeared like they warn't ever going to get started on it;
so every now and then I'd borrow two or three dollars off of the judge
for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding.  Every time he got money he
got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and
every time he raised Cain he got jailed.  He was just suited--this kind
of thing was right in his line.

He got to hanging around the widow's too much and so she told him at
last that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble
for him. Well, _wasn't_ he mad?  He said he would show who was Huck
Finn's boss.  So he watched out for me one day in the spring, and
catched me, and took me up the river about three mile in a skiff, and
crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't
no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick
you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was.

He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off.
We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the
key under his head nights.  He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon,
and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on.  Every little
while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the
ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got
drunk and had a good time, and licked me.  The widow she found out where
I was by and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but
pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn't long after that till I was
used to being where I was, and liked it--all but the cowhide part.

It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking
and fishing, and no books nor study.  Two months or more run along, and
my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever
got to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on
a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever
bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the
time.  I didn't want to go back no more.  I had stopped cussing, because
the widow didn't like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn't
no objections.  It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it
all around.

But by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't stand
it. I was all over welts.  He got to going away so much, too, and
locking me in.  Once he locked me in and was gone three days.  It was
dreadful lonesome.  I judged he had got drownded, and I wasn't ever
going to get out any more.  I was scared.  I made up my mind I would fix
up some way to leave there.  I had tried to get out of that cabin many
a time, but I couldn't find no way.  There warn't a window to it big
enough for a dog to get through.  I couldn't get up the chimbly; it
was too narrow.  The door was thick, solid oak slabs.  Pap was pretty
careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away;
I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I
was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in
the time.  But this time I found something at last; I found an old rusty
wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the
clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work.  There was an
old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin
behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and
putting the candle out.  I got under the table and raised the blanket,
and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out--big enough
to let me through.  Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting
towards the end of it when I heard pap's gun in the woods.  I got rid of
the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty
soon pap come in.

Pap warn't in a good humor--so he was his natural self.  He said he was
down town, and everything was going wrong.  His lawyer said he reckoned
he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on
the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge
Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there'd be
another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my
guardian, and they guessed it would win this time.  This shook me up
considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the widow's any more
and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it.  Then the old man
got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of,
and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any,
and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round,
including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names
of, and so called them what's-his-name when he got to them, and went
right along with his cussing.

He said he would like to see the widow get me.  He said he would watch
out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place
six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they
dropped and they couldn't find me.  That made me pretty uneasy again,
but only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got
that chance.

The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had
got. There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon,
ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two
newspapers for wadding, besides some tow.  I toted up a load, and went
back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest.  I thought it all
over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and
take to the woods when I run away.  I guessed I wouldn't stay in one
place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and
hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor
the widow couldn't ever find me any more.  I judged I would saw out and
leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would.  I
got so full of it I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old
man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drownded.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark.  While
I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of
warmed up, and went to ripping again.  He had been drunk over in town,
and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at.  A body
would a thought he was Adam--he was just all mud.  Whenever his liquor
begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says:

“Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like.
Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him--a
man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety
and all the expense of raising.  Yes, just as that man has got that
son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for
_him_ and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him.  And they call
_that_ govment!  That ain't all, nuther.  The law backs that old Judge
Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my property.  Here's what
the law does:  The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and
up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets
him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that
govment!  A man can't get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes
I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes,
and I _told_ 'em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face.  Lots of 'em
heard me, and can tell what I said.  Says I, for two cents I'd leave the
blamed country and never come a-near it agin.  Them's the very words.  I
says look at my hat--if you call it a hat--but the lid raises up and the
rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly
a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o'
stove-pipe.  Look at it, says I--such a hat for me to wear--one of the
wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.

“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful.  Why, looky here.
There was a free nigger there from Ohio--a mulatter, most as white as
a white man.  He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the
shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine
clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a
silver-headed cane--the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State.  And
what do you think?  They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could
talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything.  And that ain't the
wust. They said he could _vote_ when he was at home.  Well, that let me
out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to?  It was 'lection day,
and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get
there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where
they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out.  I says I'll never vote agin.
 Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may
rot for all me--I'll never vote agin as long as I live.  And to see the
cool way of that nigger--why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't
shoved him out o' the way.  I says to the people, why ain't this nigger
put up at auction and sold?--that's what I want to know.  And what do you
reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in
the State six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet.  There,
now--that's a specimen.  They call that a govment that can't sell a free
nigger till he's been in the State six months.  Here's a govment that
calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a
govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before
it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free
nigger, and--”

Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was
taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and
barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind
of language--mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give
the tub some, too, all along, here and there.  He hopped around the
cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding
first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his
left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick.  But it
warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his
toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that
fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and
rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over
anything he had ever done previous.  He said so his own self afterwards.
 He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid
over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.

After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there
for two drunks and one delirium tremens.  That was always his word.  I
judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal
the key, or saw myself out, one or t'other.  He drank and drank, and
tumbled down on his blankets by and by; but luck didn't run my way.
 He didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy.  He groaned and moaned and
thrashed around this way and that for a long time.  At last I got so
sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I
knowed what I was about I was sound asleep, and the candle burning.

I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an
awful scream and I was up.  There was pap looking wild, and skipping
around every which way and yelling about snakes.  He said they was
crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say
one had bit him on the cheek--but I couldn't see no snakes.  He started
and run round and round the cabin, hollering “Take him off! take him
off! he's biting me on the neck!”  I never see a man look so wild in the
eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he
rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way,
and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and
saying there was devils a-hold of him.  He wore out by and by, and laid
still a while, moaning.  Then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound.
 I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it
seemed terrible still.  He was laying over by the corner. By and by he
raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side.  He says,
very low:

“Tramp--tramp--tramp; that's the dead; tramp--tramp--tramp; they're coming
after me; but I won't go.  Oh, they're here! don't touch me--don't! hands
off--they're cold; let go.  Oh, let a poor devil alone!”

Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him
alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the
old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying.  I could
hear him through the blanket.

By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he
see me and went for me.  He chased me round and round the place with a
clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me,
and then I couldn't come for him no more.  I begged, and told him I
was only Huck; but he laughed _such_ a screechy laugh, and roared and
cussed, and kept on chasing me up.  Once when I turned short and
dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my
shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I slid out of the jacket quick
as lightning, and saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out, and
dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a
minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would
sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who.

So he dozed off pretty soon.  By and by I got the old split-bottom chair
and clumb up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the
gun.  I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then I
laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down
behind it to wait for him to stir.  And how slow and still the time did
drag along.




CHAPTER VII.

“GIT up!  What you 'bout?”

I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was.  It
was after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep.  Pap was standing over me
looking sour and sick, too.  He says:

“What you doin' with this gun?”

I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says:

“Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him.”

“Why didn't you roust me out?”

“Well, I tried to, but I couldn't; I couldn't budge you.”

“Well, all right.  Don't stand there palavering all day, but out with
you and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast.  I'll be along
in a minute.”

He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the river-bank.  I noticed
some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of
bark; so I knowed the river had begun to rise.  I reckoned I would have
great times now if I was over at the town.  The June rise used to be
always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins here comes
cordwood floating down, and pieces of log rafts--sometimes a dozen logs
together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the
wood-yards and the sawmill.

I went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and t'other one out
for what the rise might fetch along.  Well, all at once here comes a
canoe; just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding
high like a duck.  I shot head-first off of the bank like a frog,
clothes and all on, and struck out for the canoe.  I just expected
there'd be somebody laying down in it, because people often done that
to fool folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd
raise up and laugh at him.  But it warn't so this time.  It was a
drift-canoe sure enough, and I clumb in and paddled her ashore.  Thinks
I, the old man will be glad when he sees this--she's worth ten dollars.
 But when I got to shore pap wasn't in sight yet, and as I was running
her into a little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and
willows, I struck another idea:  I judged I'd hide her good, and then,
'stead of taking to the woods when I run off, I'd go down the river
about fifty mile and camp in one place for good, and not have such a
rough time tramping on foot.

It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old man
coming all the time; but I got her hid; and then I out and looked around
a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just
drawing a bead on a bird with his gun.  So he hadn't seen anything.

When he got along I was hard at it taking up a “trot” line.  He abused
me a little for being so slow; but I told him I fell in the river, and
that was what made me so long.  I knowed he would see I was wet, and
then he would be asking questions.  We got five catfish off the lines
and went home.

While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being about
wore out, I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep pap
and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing
than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me; you
see, all kinds of things might happen.  Well, I didn't see no way for a
while, but by and by pap raised up a minute to drink another barrel of
water, and he says:

“Another time a man comes a-prowling round here you roust me out, you
hear? That man warn't here for no good.  I'd a shot him.  Next time you
roust me out, you hear?”

Then he dropped down and went to sleep again; but what he had been
saying give me the very idea I wanted.  I says to myself, I can fix it
now so nobody won't think of following me.

About twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank.  The
river was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the
rise. By and by along comes part of a log raft--nine logs fast together.
 We went out with the skiff and towed it ashore.  Then we had dinner.
Anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch
more stuff; but that warn't pap's style.  Nine logs was enough for one
time; he must shove right over to town and sell.  So he locked me in and
took the skiff, and started off towing the raft about half-past three.
 I judged he wouldn't come back that night.  I waited till I reckoned he
had got a good start; then I out with my saw, and went to work on that
log again.  Before he was t'other side of the river I was out of the
hole; him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder.

I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and
shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done the same
with the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug.  I took all the coffee and
sugar there was, and all the ammunition; I took the wadding; I took the
bucket and gourd; I took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two
blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot.  I took fish-lines and
matches and other things--everything that was worth a cent.  I cleaned
out the place.  I wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only the one out
at the woodpile, and I knowed why I was going to leave that.  I fetched
out the gun, and now I was done.

I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging
out so many things.  So I fixed that as good as I could from the outside
by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the
sawdust.  Then I fixed the piece of log back into its place, and put two
rocks under it and one against it to hold it there, for it was bent up
at that place and didn't quite touch ground.  If you stood four or five
foot away and didn't know it was sawed, you wouldn't never notice
it; and besides, this was the back of the cabin, and it warn't likely
anybody would go fooling around there.

It was all grass clear to the canoe, so I hadn't left a track.  I
followed around to see.  I stood on the bank and looked out over the
river.  All safe.  So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods,
and was hunting around for some birds when I see a wild pig; hogs soon
went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie
farms. I shot this fellow and took him into camp.

I took the axe and smashed in the door.  I beat it and hacked it
considerable a-doing it.  I fetched the pig in, and took him back nearly
to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe, and laid him down
on the ground to bleed; I say ground because it was ground--hard packed,
and no boards.  Well, next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks
in it--all I could drag--and I started it from the pig, and dragged it to
the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and
down it sunk, out of sight.  You could easy see that something had been
dragged over the ground.  I did wish Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed he
would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy
touches.  Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as
that.

Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, and
stuck it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner.  Then I
took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn't
drip) till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into
the river.  Now I thought of something else.  So I went and got the bag
of meal and my old saw out of the canoe, and fetched them to the house.
 I took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the
bottom of it with the saw, for there warn't no knives and forks on the
place--pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking.  Then
I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through
the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide
and full of rushes--and ducks too, you might say, in the season.  There
was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went
miles away, I don't know where, but it didn't go to the river.  The meal
sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake.  I dropped
pap's whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by
accident. Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it
wouldn't leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again.

It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some
willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise.  I
made fast to a willow; then I took a bite to eat, and by and by laid
down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan.  I says to myself,
they'll follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then
drag the river for me.  And they'll follow that meal track to the lake
and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers
that killed me and took the things.  They won't ever hunt the river for
anything but my dead carcass. They'll soon get tired of that, and won't
bother no more about me.  All right; I can stop anywhere I want to.
Jackson's Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well,
and nobody ever comes there.  And then I can paddle over to town nights,
and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson's Island's the
place.

I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep.  When
I woke up I didn't know where I was for a minute.  I set up and looked
around, a little scared.  Then I remembered.  The river looked miles and
miles across.  The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs
that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from
shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and _smelt_ late.
You know what I mean--I don't know the words to put it in.

I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start
when I heard a sound away over the water.  I listened.  Pretty soon I
made it out.  It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from
oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night.  I peeped out through
the willow branches, and there it was--a skiff, away across the water.
 I couldn't tell how many was in it.  It kept a-coming, and when it was
abreast of me I see there warn't but one man in it.  Think's I, maybe
it's pap, though I warn't expecting him.  He dropped below me with the
current, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water,
and he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him.
 Well, it _was_ pap, sure enough--and sober, too, by the way he laid his
oars.

I didn't lose no time.  The next minute I was a-spinning down stream
soft but quick in the shade of the bank.  I made two mile and a half,
and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of
the river, because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry landing, and
people might see me and hail me.  I got out amongst the driftwood, and
then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float.

 I laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking
away into the sky; not a cloud in it.  The sky looks ever so deep when
you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before.
 And how far a body can hear on the water such nights!  I heard people
talking at the ferry landing. I heard what they said, too--every word
of it.  One man said it was getting towards the long days and the short
nights now.  T'other one said _this_ warn't one of the short ones, he
reckoned--and then they laughed, and he said it over again, and they
laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told him, and
laughed, but he didn't laugh; he ripped out something brisk, and said
let him alone.  The first fellow said he 'lowed to tell it to his
old woman--she would think it was pretty good; but he said that warn't
nothing to some things he had said in his time. I heard one man say it
was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than
about a week longer.  After that the talk got further and further away,
and I couldn't make out the words any more; but I could hear the mumble,
and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off.

I was away below the ferry now.  I rose up, and there was Jackson's
Island, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy timbered and
standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like
a steamboat without any lights.  There warn't any signs of the bar at
the head--it was all under water now.

It didn't take me long to get there.  I shot past the head at a ripping
rate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and
landed on the side towards the Illinois shore.  I run the canoe into
a deep dent in the bank that I knowed about; I had to part the willow
branches to get in; and when I made fast nobody could a seen the canoe
from the outside.

I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked
out on the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town,
three mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling.  A
monstrous big lumber-raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down,
with a lantern in the middle of it.  I watched it come creeping down,
and when it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, “Stern
oars, there! heave her head to stabboard!”  I heard that just as plain
as if the man was by my side.

There was a little gray in the sky now; so I stepped into the woods, and
laid down for a nap before breakfast.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight
o'clock.  I laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about
things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied.  I
could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees
all about, and gloomy in there amongst them.  There was freckled places
on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the
freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little
breeze up there.  A couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me
very friendly.

I was powerful lazy and comfortable--didn't want to get up and cook
breakfast.  Well, I was dozing off again when I thinks I hears a deep
sound of “boom!” away up the river.  I rouses up, and rests on my elbow
and listens; pretty soon I hears it again.  I hopped up, and went and
looked out at a hole in the leaves, and I see a bunch of smoke laying
on the water a long ways up--about abreast the ferry.  And there was the
ferryboat full of people floating along down.  I knowed what was the
matter now.  “Boom!” I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferryboat's
side.  You see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my
carcass come to the top.

I was pretty hungry, but it warn't going to do for me to start a fire,
because they might see the smoke.  So I set there and watched the
cannon-smoke and listened to the boom.  The river was a mile wide there,
and it always looks pretty on a summer morning--so I was having a good
enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a bite to
eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in
loaves of bread and float them off, because they always go right to the
drownded carcass and stop there.  So, says I, I'll keep a lookout, and
if any of them's floating around after me I'll give them a show.  I
changed to the Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could
have, and I warn't disappointed.  A big double loaf come along, and I
most got it with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out
further.  Of course I was where the current set in the closest to the
shore--I knowed enough for that.  But by and by along comes another one,
and this time I won.  I took out the plug and shook out the little dab
of quicksilver, and set my teeth in.  It was “baker's bread”--what the
quality eat; none of your low-down corn-pone.

I got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching
the bread and watching the ferry-boat, and very well satisfied.  And
then something struck me.  I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson
or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone
and done it.  So there ain't no doubt but there is something in that
thing--that is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the
parson prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for
only just the right kind.

I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke, and went on watching.  The
ferryboat was floating with the current, and I allowed I'd have a chance
to see who was aboard when she come along, because she would come in
close, where the bread did.  When she'd got pretty well along down
towards me, I put out my pipe and went to where I fished out the bread,
and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place.  Where
the log forked I could peep through.

By and by she come along, and she drifted in so close that they could
a run out a plank and walked ashore.  Most everybody was on the boat.
 Pap, and Judge Thatcher, and Bessie Thatcher, and Jo Harper, and Tom
Sawyer, and his old Aunt Polly, and Sid and Mary, and plenty more.
 Everybody was talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and
says:

“Look sharp, now; the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he's
washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge.  I
hope so, anyway.”

I didn't hope so.  They all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly
in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might.  I could see
them first-rate, but they couldn't see me.  Then the captain sung out:

“Stand away!” and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that
it made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke, and
I judged I was gone.  If they'd a had some bullets in, I reckon they'd
a got the corpse they was after.  Well, I see I warn't hurt, thanks to
goodness. The boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder
of the island.  I could hear the booming now and then, further and
further off, and by and by, after an hour, I didn't hear it no more.
 The island was three mile long.  I judged they had got to the foot, and
was giving it up.  But they didn't yet a while.  They turned around
the foot of the island and started up the channel on the Missouri side,
under steam, and booming once in a while as they went.  I crossed over
to that side and watched them. When they got abreast the head of the
island they quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri shore and
went home to the town.

I knowed I was all right now.  Nobody else would come a-hunting after
me. I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick
woods.  I made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things
under so the rain couldn't get at them.  I catched a catfish and haggled
him open with my saw, and towards sundown I started my camp fire and had
supper.  Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast.

When it was dark I set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty well
satisfied; but by and by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set
on the bank and listened to the current swashing along, and counted the
stars and drift logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed;
there ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you
can't stay so, you soon get over it.

And so for three days and nights.  No difference--just the same thing.
But the next day I went exploring around down through the island.  I was
boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and I wanted to know
all about it; but mainly I wanted to put in the time.  I found plenty
strawberries, ripe and prime; and green summer grapes, and green
razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show.  They
would all come handy by and by, I judged.

Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I warn't
far from the foot of the island.  I had my gun along, but I hadn't shot
nothing; it was for protection; thought I would kill some game nigh
home. About this time I mighty near stepped on a good-sized snake,
and it went sliding off through the grass and flowers, and I after
it, trying to get a shot at it. I clipped along, and all of a sudden I
bounded right on to the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking.

My heart jumped up amongst my lungs.  I never waited for to look
further, but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as
fast as ever I could.  Every now and then I stopped a second amongst the
thick leaves and listened, but my breath come so hard I couldn't hear
nothing else.  I slunk along another piece further, then listened again;
and so on, and so on.  If I see a stump, I took it for a man; if I trod
on a stick and broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my
breaths in two and I only got half, and the short half, too.

When I got to camp I warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand
in my craw; but I says, this ain't no time to be fooling around.  So I
got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight,
and I put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an
old last year's camp, and then clumb a tree.

I reckon I was up in the tree two hours; but I didn't see nothing,
I didn't hear nothing--I only _thought_ I heard and seen as much as a
thousand things.  Well, I couldn't stay up there forever; so at last I
got down, but I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the
time. All I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from
breakfast.

By the time it was night I was pretty hungry.  So when it was good
and dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the
Illinois bank--about a quarter of a mile.  I went out in the woods and
cooked a supper, and I had about made up my mind I would stay there
all night when I hear a _plunkety-plunk, plunkety-plunk_, and says
to myself, horses coming; and next I hear people's voices.  I got
everything into the canoe as quick as I could, and then went creeping
through the woods to see what I could find out.  I hadn't got far when I
hear a man say:

“We better camp here if we can find a good place; the horses is about
beat out.  Let's look around.”

I didn't wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy.  I tied up in the
old place, and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe.

I didn't sleep much.  I couldn't, somehow, for thinking.  And every time
I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck.  So the sleep didn't
do me no good.  By and by I says to myself, I can't live this way; I'm
a-going to find out who it is that's here on the island with me; I'll
find it out or bust.  Well, I felt better right off.

So I took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and
then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows.  The moon was
shining, and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day.
 I poked along well on to an hour, everything still as rocks and sound
asleep. Well, by this time I was most down to the foot of the island.  A
little ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying
the night was about done.  I give her a turn with the paddle and brung
her nose to shore; then I got my gun and slipped out and into the edge
of the woods.  I sat down there on a log, and looked out through the
leaves.  I see the moon go off watch, and the darkness begin to blanket
the river. But in a little while I see a pale streak over the treetops,
and knowed the day was coming.  So I took my gun and slipped off towards
where I had run across that camp fire, stopping every minute or two
to listen.  But I hadn't no luck somehow; I couldn't seem to find the
place.  But by and by, sure enough, I catched a glimpse of fire away
through the trees.  I went for it, cautious and slow.  By and by I was
close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground.  It
most give me the fan-tods. He had a blanket around his head, and his
head was nearly in the fire.  I set there behind a clump of bushes, in
about six foot of him, and kept my eyes on him steady.  It was getting
gray daylight now.  Pretty soon he gapped and stretched himself and hove
off the blanket, and it was Miss Watson's Jim!  I bet I was glad to see
him.  I says:

“Hello, Jim!” and skipped out.

He bounced up and stared at me wild.  Then he drops down on his knees,
and puts his hands together and says:

“Doan' hurt me--don't!  I hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'.  I alwuz
liked dead people, en done all I could for 'em.  You go en git in de
river agin, whah you b'longs, en doan' do nuffn to Ole Jim, 'at 'uz
awluz yo' fren'.”

Well, I warn't long making him understand I warn't dead.  I was ever so
glad to see Jim.  I warn't lonesome now.  I told him I warn't afraid of
_him_ telling the people where I was.  I talked along, but he only set
there and looked at me; never said nothing.  Then I says:

“It's good daylight.  Le's get breakfast.  Make up your camp fire good.”

“What's de use er makin' up de camp fire to cook strawbries en sich
truck? But you got a gun, hain't you?  Den we kin git sumfn better den
strawbries.”

“Strawberries and such truck,” I says.  “Is that what you live on?”

“I couldn' git nuffn else,” he says.

“Why, how long you been on the island, Jim?”

“I come heah de night arter you's killed.”

“What, all that time?”

“Yes--indeedy.”

“And ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?”

“No, sah--nuffn else.”

“Well, you must be most starved, ain't you?”

“I reck'n I could eat a hoss.  I think I could. How long you ben on de
islan'?”

“Since the night I got killed.”

“No!  W'y, what has you lived on?  But you got a gun.  Oh, yes, you got
a gun.  Dat's good.  Now you kill sumfn en I'll make up de fire.”

So we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a fire in
a grassy open place amongst the trees, I fetched meal and bacon and
coffee, and coffee-pot and frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the
nigger was set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done
with witchcraft. I catched a good big catfish, too, and Jim cleaned him
with his knife, and fried him.

When breakfast was ready we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot.
Jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved.  Then
when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied.  By and by
Jim says:

“But looky here, Huck, who wuz it dat 'uz killed in dat shanty ef it
warn't you?”

Then I told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart.  He said Tom
Sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what I had.  Then I says:

“How do you come to be here, Jim, and how'd you get here?”

He looked pretty uneasy, and didn't say nothing for a minute.  Then he
says:

“Maybe I better not tell.”

“Why, Jim?”

“Well, dey's reasons.  But you wouldn' tell on me ef I uz to tell you,
would you, Huck?”

“Blamed if I would, Jim.”

“Well, I b'lieve you, Huck.  I--_I run off_.”

“Jim!”

“But mind, you said you wouldn' tell--you know you said you wouldn' tell,
Huck.”

“Well, I did.  I said I wouldn't, and I'll stick to it.  Honest _injun_,
I will.  People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for
keeping mum--but that don't make no difference.  I ain't a-going to tell,
and I ain't a-going back there, anyways.  So, now, le's know all about
it.”

“Well, you see, it 'uz dis way.  Ole missus--dat's Miss Watson--she pecks
on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she
wouldn' sell me down to Orleans.  But I noticed dey wuz a nigger trader
roun' de place considable lately, en I begin to git oneasy.  Well, one
night I creeps to de do' pooty late, en de do' warn't quite shet, en I
hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but
she didn' want to, but she could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it
'uz sich a big stack o' money she couldn' resis'.  De widder she try to
git her to say she wouldn' do it, but I never waited to hear de res'.  I
lit out mighty quick, I tell you.

“I tuck out en shin down de hill, en 'spec to steal a skift 'long de
sho' som'ers 'bove de town, but dey wuz people a-stirring yit, so I hid
in de ole tumble-down cooper-shop on de bank to wait for everybody to
go 'way. Well, I wuz dah all night.  Dey wuz somebody roun' all de time.
 'Long 'bout six in de mawnin' skifts begin to go by, en 'bout eight er
nine every skift dat went 'long wuz talkin' 'bout how yo' pap come over
to de town en say you's killed.  Dese las' skifts wuz full o' ladies en
genlmen a-goin' over for to see de place.  Sometimes dey'd pull up at
de sho' en take a res' b'fo' dey started acrost, so by de talk I got to
know all 'bout de killin'.  I 'uz powerful sorry you's killed, Huck, but
I ain't no mo' now.

“I laid dah under de shavin's all day.  I 'uz hungry, but I warn't
afeard; bekase I knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin' to start to
de camp-meet'n' right arter breakfas' en be gone all day, en dey knows
I goes off wid de cattle 'bout daylight, so dey wouldn' 'spec to see me
roun' de place, en so dey wouldn' miss me tell arter dark in de evenin'.
De yuther servants wouldn' miss me, kase dey'd shin out en take holiday
soon as de ole folks 'uz out'n de way.

“Well, when it come dark I tuck out up de river road, en went 'bout two
mile er more to whah dey warn't no houses.  I'd made up my mine 'bout
what I's agwyne to do.  You see, ef I kep' on tryin' to git away afoot,
de dogs 'ud track me; ef I stole a skift to cross over, dey'd miss dat
skift, you see, en dey'd know 'bout whah I'd lan' on de yuther side, en
whah to pick up my track.  So I says, a raff is what I's arter; it doan'
_make_ no track.

“I see a light a-comin' roun' de p'int bymeby, so I wade' in en shove'
a log ahead o' me en swum more'n half way acrost de river, en got in
'mongst de drift-wood, en kep' my head down low, en kinder swum agin de
current tell de raff come along.  Den I swum to de stern uv it en tuck
a-holt.  It clouded up en 'uz pooty dark for a little while.  So I clumb
up en laid down on de planks.  De men 'uz all 'way yonder in de middle,
whah de lantern wuz.  De river wuz a-risin', en dey wuz a good current;
so I reck'n'd 'at by fo' in de mawnin' I'd be twenty-five mile down de
river, en den I'd slip in jis b'fo' daylight en swim asho', en take to
de woods on de Illinois side.

“But I didn' have no luck.  When we 'uz mos' down to de head er de
islan' a man begin to come aft wid de lantern, I see it warn't no use
fer to wait, so I slid overboard en struck out fer de islan'.  Well, I
had a notion I could lan' mos' anywhers, but I couldn't--bank too bluff.
 I 'uz mos' to de foot er de islan' b'fo' I found' a good place.  I went
into de woods en jedged I wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo', long as dey
move de lantern roun' so.  I had my pipe en a plug er dog-leg, en some
matches in my cap, en dey warn't wet, so I 'uz all right.”

“And so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time?  Why
didn't you get mud-turkles?”

“How you gwyne to git 'm?  You can't slip up on um en grab um; en how's
a body gwyne to hit um wid a rock?  How could a body do it in de night?
 En I warn't gwyne to show mysef on de bank in de daytime.”

“Well, that's so.  You've had to keep in the woods all the time, of
course. Did you hear 'em shooting the cannon?”

“Oh, yes.  I knowed dey was arter you.  I see um go by heah--watched um
thoo de bushes.”

Some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and
lighting. Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain.  He said it was
a sign when young chickens flew that way, and so he reckoned it was the
same way when young birds done it.  I was going to catch some of them,
but Jim wouldn't let me.  He said it was death.  He said his father laid
mighty sick once, and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny
said his father would die, and he did.

And Jim said you mustn't count the things you are going to cook for
dinner, because that would bring bad luck.  The same if you shook the
table-cloth after sundown.  And he said if a man owned a beehive
and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next
morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die.
 Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because
I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me.

I had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them.  Jim
knowed all kinds of signs.  He said he knowed most everything.  I said
it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so I asked
him if there warn't any good-luck signs.  He says:

“Mighty few--an' _dey_ ain't no use to a body.  What you want to know
when good luck's a-comin' for?  Want to keep it off?”  And he said:  “Ef
you's got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's agwyne
to be rich. Well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur
ahead. You see, maybe you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so you
might git discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f you didn' know by de sign dat
you gwyne to be rich bymeby.”

“Have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, Jim?”

“What's de use to ax dat question?  Don't you see I has?”

“Well, are you rich?”

“No, but I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich agin.  Wunst I had
foteen dollars, but I tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out.”

“What did you speculate in, Jim?”

“Well, fust I tackled stock.”

“What kind of stock?”

“Why, live stock--cattle, you know.  I put ten dollars in a cow.  But
I ain' gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock.  De cow up 'n' died on my
han's.”

“So you lost the ten dollars.”

“No, I didn't lose it all.  I on'y los' 'bout nine of it.  I sole de
hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents.”

“You had five dollars and ten cents left.  Did you speculate any more?”

“Yes.  You know that one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old Misto
Bradish? Well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar
would git fo' dollars mo' at de en' er de year.  Well, all de niggers
went in, but dey didn't have much.  I wuz de on'y one dat had much.  So
I stuck out for mo' dan fo' dollars, en I said 'f I didn' git it I'd
start a bank mysef. Well, o' course dat nigger want' to keep me out er
de business, bekase he says dey warn't business 'nough for two banks, so
he say I could put in my five dollars en he pay me thirty-five at de en'
er de year.

“So I done it.  Den I reck'n'd I'd inves' de thirty-five dollars right
off en keep things a-movin'.  Dey wuz a nigger name' Bob, dat had
ketched a wood-flat, en his marster didn' know it; en I bought it off'n
him en told him to take de thirty-five dollars when de en' er de
year come; but somebody stole de wood-flat dat night, en nex day de
one-laigged nigger say de bank's busted.  So dey didn' none uv us git no
money.”

“What did you do with the ten cents, Jim?”

“Well, I 'uz gwyne to spen' it, but I had a dream, en de dream tole me
to give it to a nigger name' Balum--Balum's Ass dey call him for short;
he's one er dem chuckleheads, you know.  But he's lucky, dey say, en I
see I warn't lucky.  De dream say let Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd
make a raise for me.  Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in
church he hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to de
Lord, en boun' to git his money back a hund'd times.  So Balum he tuck
en give de ten cents to de po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to
come of it.”

“Well, what did come of it, Jim?”

“Nuffn never come of it.  I couldn' manage to k'leck dat money no way;
en Balum he couldn'.  I ain' gwyne to len' no mo' money 'dout I see de
security.  Boun' to git yo' money back a hund'd times, de preacher says!
Ef I could git de ten _cents_ back, I'd call it squah, en be glad er de
chanst.”

“Well, it's all right anyway, Jim, long as you're going to be rich again
some time or other.”

“Yes; en I's rich now, come to look at it.  I owns mysef, en I's wuth
eight hund'd dollars.  I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'.”




CHAPTER IX.

I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island
that I'd found when I was exploring; so we started and soon got to it,
because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile
wide.

This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot
high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and
the bushes so thick.  We tramped and clumb around all over it, and by
and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the
side towards Illinois.  The cavern was as big as two or three rooms
bunched together, and Jim could stand up straight in it.  It was cool in
there. Jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but I said we
didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time.

Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps
in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island,
and they would never find us without dogs.  And, besides, he said them
little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things to
get wet?

So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern,
and lugged all the traps up there.  Then we hunted up a place close by
to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows.  We took some fish off
of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner.

The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one
side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a
good place to build a fire on.  So we built it there and cooked dinner.

We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there.
We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern.  Pretty
soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was
right about it.  Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury,
too, and I never see the wind blow so.  It was one of these regular
summer storms.  It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black
outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that
the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would
come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the
pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would
follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they
was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and
blackest--_FST_! it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little
glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm,
hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again
in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash,
and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the
under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs--where
it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.

“Jim, this is nice,” I says.  “I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but
here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread.”

“Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a ben for Jim.  You'd a ben
down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too;
dat you would, honey.  Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do
de birds, chile.”

The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at
last it was over the banks.  The water was three or four foot deep on
the island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom.  On that side
it was a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same
old distance across--a half a mile--because the Missouri shore was just a
wall of high bluffs.

Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe, It was mighty cool
and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside.  We
went winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hung
so thick we had to back away and go some other way.  Well, on every old
broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things; and
when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, on
account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your
hand on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles--they would
slide off in the water.  The ridge our cavern was in was full of them.
We could a had pets enough if we'd wanted them.

One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft--nice pine planks.
It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and
the top stood above water six or seven inches--a solid, level floor.  We
could see saw-logs go by in the daylight sometimes, but we let them go;
we didn't show ourselves in daylight.

Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before
daylight, here comes a frame-house down, on the west side.  She was
a two-story, and tilted over considerable.  We paddled out and got
aboard--clumb in at an upstairs window.  But it was too dark to see yet,
so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight.

The light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island.  Then
we looked in at the window.  We could make out a bed, and a table, and
two old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, and there
was clothes hanging against the wall.  There was something laying on the
floor in the far corner that looked like a man.  So Jim says:

“Hello, you!”

But it didn't budge.  So I hollered again, and then Jim says:

“De man ain't asleep--he's dead.  You hold still--I'll go en see.”

He went, and bent down and looked, and says:

“It's a dead man.  Yes, indeedy; naked, too.  He's ben shot in de back.
I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days.  Come in, Huck, but doan' look
at his face--it's too gashly.”

I didn't look at him at all.  Jim throwed some old rags over him, but
he needn't done it; I didn't want to see him.  There was heaps of old
greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles,
and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls
was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal.
 There was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some
women's underclothes hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing,
too.  We put the lot into the canoe--it might come good.  There was a
boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor; I took that, too.  And there
was a bottle that had had milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a
baby to suck.  We would a took the bottle, but it was broke.  There was
a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke.  They
stood open, but there warn't nothing left in them that was any account.
 The way things was scattered about we reckoned the people left in a
hurry, and warn't fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff.

We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and
a bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow
candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty
old bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and
beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet
and some nails, and a fishline as thick as my little finger with some
monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar,
and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label
on them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb,
and Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg.  The straps
was broke off of it, but, barring that, it was a good enough leg, though
it was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn't find
the other one, though we hunted all around.

And so, take it all around, we made a good haul.  When we was ready to
shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty
broad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the
quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good
ways off.  I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most
a half a mile doing it.  I crept up the dead water under the bank, and
hadn't no accidents and didn't see nobody.  We got home all safe.




CHAPTER X.

AFTER breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he
come to be killed, but Jim didn't want to.  He said it would fetch bad
luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha'nt us; he said a man
that warn't buried was more likely to go a-ha'nting around than one
that was planted and comfortable.  That sounded pretty reasonable, so
I didn't say no more; but I couldn't keep from studying over it and
wishing I knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for.

We rummaged the clothes we'd got, and found eight dollars in silver
sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat.  Jim said he reckoned
the people in that house stole the coat, because if they'd a knowed the
money was there they wouldn't a left it.  I said I reckoned they killed
him, too; but Jim didn't want to talk about that.  I says:

“Now you think it's bad luck; but what did you say when I fetched in the
snake-skin that I found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday?
You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin
with my hands.  Well, here's your bad luck!  We've raked in all this
truck and eight dollars besides.  I wish we could have some bad luck
like this every day, Jim.”

“Never you mind, honey, never you mind.  Don't you git too peart.  It's
a-comin'.  Mind I tell you, it's a-comin'.”

It did come, too.  It was a Tuesday that we had that talk.  Well, after
dinner Friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the
ridge, and got out of tobacco.  I went to the cavern to get some, and
found a rattlesnake in there.  I killed him, and curled him up on the
foot of Jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'd be some fun
when Jim found him there.  Well, by night I forgot all about the snake,
and when Jim flung himself down on the blanket while I struck a light
the snake's mate was there, and bit him.

He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the
varmint curled up and ready for another spring.  I laid him out in a
second with a stick, and Jim grabbed pap's whisky-jug and begun to pour
it down.

He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel.  That all
comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave
a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it.  Jim told
me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away, and then skin the
body and roast a piece of it.  I done it, and he eat it and said it
would help cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around
his wrist, too.  He said that that would help.  Then I slid out quiet
and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for I warn't going
to let Jim find out it was all my fault, not if I could help it.

Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his
head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he
went to sucking at the jug again.  His foot swelled up pretty big, and
so did his leg; but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so I judged
he was all right; but I'd druther been bit with a snake than pap's
whisky.

Jim was laid up for four days and nights.  Then the swelling was all
gone and he was around again.  I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take
a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come
of it. Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time.  And he said
that handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't
got to the end of it yet.  He said he druther see the new moon over his
left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake-skin
in his hand.  Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I've
always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is
one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do.  Old Hank
Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he
got drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so
that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him
edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so
they say, but I didn't see it.  Pap told me.  But anyway it all come of
looking at the moon that way, like a fool.

Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks
again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big
hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was
as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two
hundred pounds. We couldn't handle him, of course; he would a flung us
into Illinois.  We just set there and watched him rip and tear around
till he drownded.  We found a brass button in his stomach and a round
ball, and lots of rubbage.  We split the ball open with the hatchet,
and there was a spool in it.  Jim said he'd had it there a long time, to
coat it over so and make a ball of it.  It was as big a fish as was ever
catched in the Mississippi, I reckon.  Jim said he hadn't ever seen
a bigger one.  He would a been worth a good deal over at the village.
 They peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market-house
there; everybody buys some of him; his meat's as white as snow and makes
a good fry.

Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a
stirring up some way.  I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and
find out what was going on.  Jim liked that notion; but he said I
must go in the dark and look sharp.  Then he studied it over and said,
couldn't I put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl?
 That was a good notion, too.  So we shortened up one of the calico
gowns, and I turned up my trouser-legs to my knees and got into it.  Jim
hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit.  I put on the
sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in
and see my face was like looking down a joint of stove-pipe.  Jim said
nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly.  I practiced around
all day to get the hang of the things, and by and by I could do pretty
well in them, only Jim said I didn't walk like a girl; and he said
I must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britches-pocket.  I took
notice, and done better.

I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark.

I started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, and
the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town.  I
tied up and started along the bank.  There was a light burning in a
little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and I wondered
who had took up quarters there.  I slipped up and peeped in at the
window.  There was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by
a candle that was on a pine table.  I didn't know her face; she was a
stranger, for you couldn't start a face in that town that I didn't know.
 Now this was lucky, because I was weakening; I was getting afraid I had
come; people might know my voice and find me out.  But if this woman had
been in such a little town two days she could tell me all I wanted to
know; so I knocked at the door, and made up my mind I wouldn't forget I
was a girl.




CHAPTER XI.

“COME in,” says the woman, and I did.  She says:  “Take a cheer.”

I done it.  She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says:

“What might your name be?”

“Sarah Williams.”

“Where 'bouts do you live?  In this neighborhood?'

“No'm.  In Hookerville, seven mile below.  I've walked all the way and
I'm all tired out.”

“Hungry, too, I reckon.  I'll find you something.”

“No'm, I ain't hungry.  I was so hungry I had to stop two miles below
here at a farm; so I ain't hungry no more.  It's what makes me so late.
My mother's down sick, and out of money and everything, and I come to
tell my uncle Abner Moore.  He lives at the upper end of the town, she
says.  I hain't ever been here before.  Do you know him?”

“No; but I don't know everybody yet.  I haven't lived here quite two
weeks. It's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town.  You
better stay here all night.  Take off your bonnet.”

“No,” I says; “I'll rest a while, I reckon, and go on.  I ain't afeared
of the dark.”

She said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in
by and by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send him along with me.
Then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up
the river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better
off they used to was, and how they didn't know but they'd made a mistake
coming to our town, instead of letting well alone--and so on and so on,
till I was afeard I had made a mistake coming to her to find out what
was going on in the town; but by and by she dropped on to pap and the
murder, and then I was pretty willing to let her clatter right along.
 She told about me and Tom Sawyer finding the six thousand dollars (only
she got it ten) and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what
a hard lot I was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered.  I
says:

“Who done it?  We've heard considerable about these goings on down in
Hookerville, but we don't know who 'twas that killed Huck Finn.”

“Well, I reckon there's a right smart chance of people _here_ that'd
like to know who killed him.  Some think old Finn done it himself.”

“No--is that so?”

“Most everybody thought it at first.  He'll never know how nigh he come
to getting lynched.  But before night they changed around and judged it
was done by a runaway nigger named Jim.”

“Why _he_--”

I stopped.  I reckoned I better keep still.  She run on, and never
noticed I had put in at all:

“The nigger run off the very night Huck Finn was killed.  So there's a
reward out for him--three hundred dollars.  And there's a reward out for
old Finn, too--two hundred dollars.  You see, he come to town the
morning after the murder, and told about it, and was out with 'em on the
ferryboat hunt, and right away after he up and left.  Before night they
wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see.  Well, next day they
found out the nigger was gone; they found out he hadn't ben seen sence
ten o'clock the night the murder was done.  So then they put it on him,
you see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old Finn,
and went boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the
nigger all over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening
he got drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty
hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them.  Well, he hain't
come back sence, and they ain't looking for him back till this thing
blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and
fixed things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he'd get
Huck's money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit.
 People do say he warn't any too good to do it.  Oh, he's sly, I reckon.
 If he don't come back for a year he'll be all right.  You can't prove
anything on him, you know; everything will be quieted down then, and
he'll walk in Huck's money as easy as nothing.”

“Yes, I reckon so, 'm.  I don't see nothing in the way of it.  Has
everybody quit thinking the nigger done it?”

“Oh, no, not everybody.  A good many thinks he done it.  But they'll get
the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it out of him.”

“Why, are they after him yet?”

“Well, you're innocent, ain't you!  Does three hundred dollars lay
around every day for people to pick up?  Some folks think the nigger
ain't far from here.  I'm one of them--but I hain't talked it around.  A
few days ago I was talking with an old couple that lives next door in
the log shanty, and they happened to say hardly anybody ever goes to
that island over yonder that they call Jackson's Island.  Don't anybody
live there? says I. No, nobody, says they.  I didn't say any more, but
I done some thinking.  I was pretty near certain I'd seen smoke over
there, about the head of the island, a day or two before that, so I says
to myself, like as not that nigger's hiding over there; anyway, says
I, it's worth the trouble to give the place a hunt.  I hain't seen any
smoke sence, so I reckon maybe he's gone, if it was him; but husband's
going over to see--him and another man.  He was gone up the river; but he
got back to-day, and I told him as soon as he got here two hours ago.”

I had got so uneasy I couldn't set still.  I had to do something with my
hands; so I took up a needle off of the table and went to threading
it. My hands shook, and I was making a bad job of it.  When the woman
stopped talking I looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious
and smiling a little.  I put down the needle and thread, and let on to
be interested--and I was, too--and says:

“Three hundred dollars is a power of money.  I wish my mother could get
it. Is your husband going over there to-night?”

“Oh, yes.  He went up-town with the man I was telling you of, to get a
boat and see if they could borrow another gun.  They'll go over after
midnight.”

“Couldn't they see better if they was to wait till daytime?”

“Yes.  And couldn't the nigger see better, too?  After midnight he'll
likely be asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up
his camp fire all the better for the dark, if he's got one.”

“I didn't think of that.”

The woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and I didn't feel a bit
comfortable.  Pretty soon she says,

“What did you say your name was, honey?”

“M--Mary Williams.”

Somehow it didn't seem to me that I said it was Mary before, so I didn't
look up--seemed to me I said it was Sarah; so I felt sort of cornered,
and was afeared maybe I was looking it, too.  I wished the woman would
say something more; the longer she set still the uneasier I was.  But
now she says:

“Honey, I thought you said it was Sarah when you first come in?”

“Oh, yes'm, I did.  Sarah Mary Williams.  Sarah's my first name.  Some
calls me Sarah, some calls me Mary.”

“Oh, that's the way of it?”

“Yes'm.”

I was feeling better then, but I wished I was out of there, anyway.  I
couldn't look up yet.

Well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor
they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the
place, and so forth and so on, and then I got easy again.  She was right
about the rats. You'd see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner
every little while.  She said she had to have things handy to throw at
them when she was alone, or they wouldn't give her no peace.  She showed
me a bar of lead twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot
with it generly, but she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn't
know whether she could throw true now.  But she watched for a chance,
and directly banged away at a rat; but she missed him wide, and said
“Ouch!” it hurt her arm so.  Then she told me to try for the next one.
 I wanted to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course
I didn't let on.  I got the thing, and the first rat that showed his
nose I let drive, and if he'd a stayed where he was he'd a been a
tolerable sick rat.  She said that was first-rate, and she reckoned I
would hive the next one.  She went and got the lump of lead and fetched
it back, and brought along a hank of yarn which she wanted me to help
her with.  I held up my two hands and she put the hank over them, and
went on talking about her and her husband's matters.  But she broke off
to say:

“Keep your eye on the rats.  You better have the lead in your lap,
handy.”

So she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment, and I clapped
my legs together on it and she went on talking.  But only about a
minute. Then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face,
and very pleasant, and says:

“Come, now, what's your real name?”

“Wh--what, mum?”

“What's your real name?  Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob?--or what is it?”

I reckon I shook like a leaf, and I didn't know hardly what to do.  But
I says:

“Please to don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum.  If I'm in the
way here, I'll--”

“No, you won't.  Set down and stay where you are.  I ain't going to hurt
you, and I ain't going to tell on you, nuther.  You just tell me your
secret, and trust me.  I'll keep it; and, what's more, I'll help
you. So'll my old man if you want him to.  You see, you're a runaway
'prentice, that's all.  It ain't anything.  There ain't no harm in it.
You've been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut.  Bless you,
child, I wouldn't tell on you.  Tell me all about it now, that's a good
boy.”

So I said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer, and I
would just make a clean breast and tell her everything, but she musn't
go back on her promise.  Then I told her my father and mother was dead,
and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty
mile back from the river, and he treated me so bad I couldn't stand it
no longer; he went away to be gone a couple of days, and so I took my
chance and stole some of his daughter's old clothes and cleared out, and
I had been three nights coming the thirty miles.  I traveled nights,
and hid daytimes and slept, and the bag of bread and meat I carried from
home lasted me all the way, and I had a-plenty.  I said I believed my
uncle Abner Moore would take care of me, and so that was why I struck
out for this town of Goshen.

“Goshen, child?  This ain't Goshen.  This is St. Petersburg.  Goshen's
ten mile further up the river.  Who told you this was Goshen?”

“Why, a man I met at daybreak this morning, just as I was going to turn
into the woods for my regular sleep.  He told me when the roads forked I
must take the right hand, and five mile would fetch me to Goshen.”

“He was drunk, I reckon.  He told you just exactly wrong.”

“Well, he did act like he was drunk, but it ain't no matter now.  I got
to be moving along.  I'll fetch Goshen before daylight.”

“Hold on a minute.  I'll put you up a snack to eat.  You might want it.”

So she put me up a snack, and says:

“Say, when a cow's laying down, which end of her gets up first?  Answer
up prompt now--don't stop to study over it.  Which end gets up first?”

“The hind end, mum.”

“Well, then, a horse?”

“The for'rard end, mum.”

“Which side of a tree does the moss grow on?”

“North side.”

“If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with
their heads pointed the same direction?”

“The whole fifteen, mum.”

“Well, I reckon you _have_ lived in the country.  I thought maybe you
was trying to hocus me again.  What's your real name, now?”

“George Peters, mum.”

“Well, try to remember it, George.  Don't forget and tell me it's
Elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it's George
Elexander when I catch you.  And don't go about women in that old
calico.  You do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe.
 Bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle don't hold the
thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and
poke the thread at it; that's the way a woman most always does, but a
man always does t'other way.  And when you throw at a rat or anything,
hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as
awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. Throw
stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to
turn on, like a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out
to one side, like a boy.  And, mind you, when a girl tries to catch
anything in her lap she throws her knees apart; she don't clap them
together, the way you did when you catched the lump of lead.  Why, I
spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and I contrived
the other things just to make certain.  Now trot along to your uncle,
Sarah Mary Williams George Elexander Peters, and if you get into trouble
you send word to Mrs. Judith Loftus, which is me, and I'll do what I can
to get you out of it.  Keep the river road all the way, and next time
you tramp take shoes and socks with you. The river road's a rocky one,
and your feet'll be in a condition when you get to Goshen, I reckon.”

I went up the bank about fifty yards, and then I doubled on my tracks
and slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house.  I
jumped in, and was off in a hurry.  I went up-stream far enough to
make the head of the island, and then started across.  I took off the
sun-bonnet, for I didn't want no blinders on then.  When I was about the
middle I heard the clock begin to strike, so I stops and listens; the
sound come faint over the water but clear--eleven.  When I struck the
head of the island I never waited to blow, though I was most winded, but
I shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started
a good fire there on a high and dry spot.

Then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place, a mile and a half
below, as hard as I could go.  I landed, and slopped through the timber
and up the ridge and into the cavern.  There Jim laid, sound asleep on
the ground.  I roused him out and says:

“Git up and hump yourself, Jim!  There ain't a minute to lose.  They're
after us!”

Jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he
worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared.  By
that time everything we had in the world was on our raft, and she was
ready to be shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid.  We
put out the camp fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn't show a
candle outside after that.

I took the canoe out from the shore a little piece, and took a look;
but if there was a boat around I couldn't see it, for stars and shadows
ain't good to see by.  Then we got out the raft and slipped along down
in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still--never saying a
word.




CHAPTER XII.

IT must a been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island at
last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow.  If a boat was to come
along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois
shore; and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to
put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to eat.  We
was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things.  It warn't
good judgment to put _everything_ on the raft.

If the men went to the island I just expect they found the camp fire I
built, and watched it all night for Jim to come.  Anyways, they stayed
away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't no
fault of mine.  I played it as low down on them as I could.

When the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in a
big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with
the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there
had been a cave-in in the bank there.  A tow-head is a sandbar that has
cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth.

We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinois
side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we
warn't afraid of anybody running across us.  We laid there all day,
and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and
up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle.  I told Jim all
about the time I had jabbering with that woman; and Jim said she was
a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set
down and watch a camp fire--no, sir, she'd fetch a dog.  Well, then, I
said, why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog?  Jim said he
bet she did think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he
believed they must a gone up-town to get a dog and so they lost all that
time, or else we wouldn't be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile
below the village--no, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again.
 So I said I didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us as long
as they didn't.

When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the
cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across; nothing in sight;
so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug
wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things
dry. Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above
the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of
reach of steamboat waves.  Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a
layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for
to hold it to its place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather
or chilly; the wigwam would keep it from being seen.  We made an extra
steering-oar, too, because one of the others might get broke on a snag
or something. We fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern
on, because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat
coming down-stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn't have
to light it for up-stream boats unless we see we was in what they call
a “crossing”; for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being
still a little under water; so up-bound boats didn't always run the
channel, but hunted easy water.

This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current
that was making over four mile an hour.  We catched fish and talked,
and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness.  It was kind of
solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking
up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it
warn't often that we laughed--only a little kind of a low chuckle.  We
had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to
us at all--that night, nor the next, nor the next.

Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides,
nothing but just a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you see.  The
fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up.
In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand
people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful
spread of lights at two o'clock that still night.  There warn't a sound
there; everybody was asleep.

Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o'clock at some little
village, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal or bacon or other
stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roosting
comfortable, and took him along.  Pap always said, take a chicken when
you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy
find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot.  I never see
pap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to
say, anyway.

Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a
watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of
that kind.  Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if you
was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn't
anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it.
 Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly
right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things
from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them any more--then he reckoned
it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others.  So we talked it over all
one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds
whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons,
or what.  But towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and
concluded to drop crabapples and p'simmons.  We warn't feeling just
right before that, but it was all comfortable now.  I was glad the way
it come out, too, because crabapples ain't ever good, and the p'simmons
wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet.

We shot a water-fowl now and then that got up too early in the morning
or didn't go to bed early enough in the evening.  Take it all round, we
lived pretty high.

The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with
a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid
sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself.
When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead,
and high, rocky bluffs on both sides.  By and by says I, “Hel-_lo_, Jim,
looky yonder!” It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock.
 We was drifting straight down for her.  The lightning showed her very
distinct.  She was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above
water, and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a
chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it,
when the flashes come.

Well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all so mysterious-like,
I felt just the way any other boy would a felt when I see that wreck
laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river.  I
wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what
there was there.  So I says:

“Le's land on her, Jim.”

But Jim was dead against it at first.  He says:

“I doan' want to go fool'n 'long er no wrack.  We's doin' blame' well,
en we better let blame' well alone, as de good book says.  Like as not
dey's a watchman on dat wrack.”

“Watchman your grandmother,” I says; “there ain't nothing to watch but
the texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybody's going to resk
his life for a texas and a pilot-house such a night as this, when
it's likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?”  Jim
couldn't say nothing to that, so he didn't try.  “And besides,” I says,
“we might borrow something worth having out of the captain's stateroom.
 Seegars, I bet you--and cost five cents apiece, solid cash.  Steamboat
captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and _they_ don't
care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it.  Stick a
candle in your pocket; I can't rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging.
 Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing?  Not for pie, he
wouldn't. He'd call it an adventure--that's what he'd call it; and he'd
land on that wreck if it was his last act.  And wouldn't he throw style
into it?--wouldn't he spread himself, nor nothing?  Why, you'd think it
was Christopher C'lumbus discovering Kingdom-Come.  I wish Tom Sawyer
_was_ here.”

Jim he grumbled a little, but give in.  He said we mustn't talk any more
than we could help, and then talk mighty low.  The lightning showed us
the wreck again just in time, and we fetched the stabboard derrick, and
made fast there.

The deck was high out here.  We went sneaking down the slope of it to
labboard, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with our
feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so
dark we couldn't see no sign of them.  Pretty soon we struck the forward
end of the skylight, and clumb on to it; and the next step fetched us in
front of the captain's door, which was open, and by Jimminy, away down
through the texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we
seem to hear low voices in yonder!

Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come
along.  I says, all right, and was going to start for the raft; but just
then I heard a voice wail out and say:

“Oh, please don't, boys; I swear I won't ever tell!”

Another voice said, pretty loud:

“It's a lie, Jim Turner.  You've acted this way before.  You always want
more'n your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because
you've swore 't if you didn't you'd tell.  But this time you've said
it jest one time too many.  You're the meanest, treacherousest hound in
this country.”

By this time Jim was gone for the raft.  I was just a-biling with
curiosity; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't back out now,
and so I won't either; I'm a-going to see what's going on here.  So I
dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft
in the dark till there warn't but one stateroom betwixt me and the
cross-hall of the texas.  Then in there I see a man stretched on the
floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one
of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol.
 This one kept pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor, and
saying:

“I'd _like_ to!  And I orter, too--a mean skunk!”

The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, “Oh, please don't, Bill;
I hain't ever goin' to tell.”

And every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and
say:

“'Deed you _ain't!_  You never said no truer thing 'n that, you bet
you.” And once he said:  “Hear him beg! and yit if we hadn't got the
best of him and tied him he'd a killed us both.  And what _for_?  Jist
for noth'n. Jist because we stood on our _rights_--that's what for.  But
I lay you ain't a-goin' to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner.  Put
_up_ that pistol, Bill.”

Bill says:

“I don't want to, Jake Packard.  I'm for killin' him--and didn't he kill
old Hatfield jist the same way--and don't he deserve it?”

“But I don't _want_ him killed, and I've got my reasons for it.”

“Bless yo' heart for them words, Jake Packard!  I'll never forgit you
long's I live!” says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering.

Packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a nail
and started towards where I was there in the dark, and motioned Bill
to come.  I crawfished as fast as I could about two yards, but the boat
slanted so that I couldn't make very good time; so to keep from getting
run over and catched I crawled into a stateroom on the upper side.
 The man came a-pawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to my
stateroom, he says:

“Here--come in here.”

And in he come, and Bill after him.  But before they got in I was up
in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come.  Then they stood there,
with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked.  I couldn't see
them, but I could tell where they was by the whisky they'd been having.
 I was glad I didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn't made much difference
anyway, because most of the time they couldn't a treed me because I
didn't breathe.  I was too scared.  And, besides, a body _couldn't_
breathe and hear such talk.  They talked low and earnest.  Bill wanted
to kill Turner.  He says:

“He's said he'll tell, and he will.  If we was to give both our shares
to him _now_ it wouldn't make no difference after the row and the way
we've served him.  Shore's you're born, he'll turn State's evidence; now
you hear _me_.  I'm for putting him out of his troubles.”

“So'm I,” says Packard, very quiet.

“Blame it, I'd sorter begun to think you wasn't.  Well, then, that's all
right.  Le's go and do it.”

“Hold on a minute; I hain't had my say yit.  You listen to me.
Shooting's good, but there's quieter ways if the thing's _got_ to be
done. But what I say is this:  it ain't good sense to go court'n around
after a halter if you can git at what you're up to in some way that's
jist as good and at the same time don't bring you into no resks.  Ain't
that so?”

“You bet it is.  But how you goin' to manage it this time?”

“Well, my idea is this:  we'll rustle around and gather up whatever
pickins we've overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide
the truck. Then we'll wait.  Now I say it ain't a-goin' to be more'n two
hours befo' this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river.  See?
He'll be drownded, and won't have nobody to blame for it but his own
self.  I reckon that's a considerble sight better 'n killin' of him.
 I'm unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git aroun' it; it
ain't good sense, it ain't good morals.  Ain't I right?”

“Yes, I reck'n you are.  But s'pose she _don't_ break up and wash off?”

“Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can't we?”

“All right, then; come along.”

So they started, and I lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled
forward. It was dark as pitch there; but I said, in a kind of a coarse
whisper, “Jim!” and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a
moan, and I says:

“Quick, Jim, it ain't no time for fooling around and moaning; there's a
gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat and set
her drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from the
wreck there's one of 'em going to be in a bad fix.  But if we find their
boat we can put _all_ of 'em in a bad fix--for the sheriff 'll get 'em.
Quick--hurry!  I'll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. You
start at the raft, and--”

“Oh, my lordy, lordy!  _raf'_?  Dey ain' no raf' no mo'; she done broke
loose en gone I--en here we is!”




CHAPTER XIII.

WELL, I catched my breath and most fainted.  Shut up on a wreck with
such a gang as that!  But it warn't no time to be sentimentering.  We'd
_got_ to find that boat now--had to have it for ourselves.  So we went
a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was,
too--seemed a week before we got to the stern.  No sign of a boat.  Jim
said he didn't believe he could go any further--so scared he hadn't
hardly any strength left, he said.  But I said, come on, if we get left
on this wreck we are in a fix, sure.  So on we prowled again.  We struck
for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along
forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the
edge of the skylight was in the water.  When we got pretty close to the
cross-hall door there was the skiff, sure enough!  I could just barely
see her.  I felt ever so thankful.  In another second I would a been
aboard of her, but just then the door opened.  One of the men stuck his
head out only about a couple of foot from me, and I thought I was gone;
but he jerked it in again, and says:

“Heave that blame lantern out o' sight, Bill!”

He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and
set down.  It was Packard.  Then Bill _he_ come out and got in.  Packard
says, in a low voice:

“All ready--shove off!”

I couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so weak.  But Bill
says:

“Hold on--'d you go through him?”

“No.  Didn't you?”

“No.  So he's got his share o' the cash yet.”

“Well, then, come along; no use to take truck and leave money.”

“Say, won't he suspicion what we're up to?”

“Maybe he won't.  But we got to have it anyway. Come along.”

So they got out and went in.

The door slammed to because it was on the careened side; and in a half
second I was in the boat, and Jim come tumbling after me.  I out with my
knife and cut the rope, and away we went!

We didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor whisper, nor hardly even
breathe.  We went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the
paddle-box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was a
hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every
last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it.

When we was three or four hundred yards down-stream we see the lantern
show like a little spark at the texas door for a second, and we knowed
by that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to
understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner was.

Then Jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft.  Now was the
first time that I begun to worry about the men--I reckon I hadn't
had time to before.  I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for
murderers, to be in such a fix.  I says to myself, there ain't no
telling but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would
I like it?  So says I to Jim:

“The first light we see we'll land a hundred yards below it or above
it, in a place where it's a good hiding-place for you and the skiff, and
then I'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for
that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when
their time comes.”

But that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again,
and this time worse than ever.  The rain poured down, and never a light
showed; everybody in bed, I reckon.  We boomed along down the river,
watching for lights and watching for our raft.  After a long time the
rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering,
and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we
made for it.

It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again.  We
seen a light now away down to the right, on shore.  So I said I would
go for it. The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole
there on the wreck.  We hustled it on to the raft in a pile, and I told
Jim to float along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone
about two mile, and keep it burning till I come; then I manned my oars
and shoved for the light.  As I got down towards it three or four more
showed--up on a hillside.  It was a village.  I closed in above the shore
light, and laid on my oars and floated.  As I went by I see it was a
lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferryboat.  I skimmed
around for the watchman, a-wondering whereabouts he slept; and by and
by I found him roosting on the bitts forward, with his head down between
his knees.  I gave his shoulder two or three little shoves, and begun to
cry.

He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only
me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says:

“Hello, what's up?  Don't cry, bub.  What's the trouble?”

I says:

“Pap, and mam, and sis, and--”

Then I broke down.  He says:

“Oh, dang it now, _don't_ take on so; we all has to have our troubles,
and this 'n 'll come out all right.  What's the matter with 'em?”

“They're--they're--are you the watchman of the boat?”

“Yes,” he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like.  “I'm the captain
and the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head
deck-hand; and sometimes I'm the freight and passengers.  I ain't as
rich as old Jim Hornback, and I can't be so blame' generous and good
to Tom, Dick, and Harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he
does; but I've told him a many a time 't I wouldn't trade places with
him; for, says I, a sailor's life's the life for me, and I'm derned if
_I'd_ live two mile out o' town, where there ain't nothing ever goin'
on, not for all his spondulicks and as much more on top of it.  Says I--”

I broke in and says:

“They're in an awful peck of trouble, and--”

“_Who_ is?”

“Why, pap and mam and sis and Miss Hooker; and if you'd take your
ferryboat and go up there--”

“Up where?  Where are they?”

“On the wreck.”

“What wreck?”

“Why, there ain't but one.”

“What, you don't mean the Walter Scott?”

“Yes.”

“Good land! what are they doin' _there_, for gracious sakes?”

“Well, they didn't go there a-purpose.”

“I bet they didn't!  Why, great goodness, there ain't no chance for 'em
if they don't git off mighty quick!  Why, how in the nation did they
ever git into such a scrape?”

“Easy enough.  Miss Hooker was a-visiting up there to the town--”

“Yes, Booth's Landing--go on.”

“She was a-visiting there at Booth's Landing, and just in the edge of
the evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horse-ferry
to stay all night at her friend's house, Miss What-you-may-call-her I
disremember her name--and they lost their steering-oar, and swung
around and went a-floating down, stern first, about two mile, and
saddle-baggsed on the wreck, and the ferryman and the nigger woman and
the horses was all lost, but Miss Hooker she made a grab and got aboard
the wreck.  Well, about an hour after dark we come along down in our
trading-scow, and it was so dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was
right on it; and so _we_ saddle-baggsed; but all of us was saved but
Bill Whipple--and oh, he _was_ the best cretur!--I most wish 't it had
been me, I do.”

“My George!  It's the beatenest thing I ever struck.  And _then_ what
did you all do?”

“Well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide there we couldn't
make nobody hear.  So pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help
somehow. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a dash for it,
and Miss Hooker she said if I didn't strike help sooner, come here and
hunt up her uncle, and he'd fix the thing.  I made the land about a mile
below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do
something, but they said, 'What, in such a night and such a current?
There ain't no sense in it; go for the steam ferry.'  Now if you'll go
and--”

“By Jackson, I'd _like_ to, and, blame it, I don't know but I will; but
who in the dingnation's a-going' to _pay_ for it?  Do you reckon your
pap--”

“Why _that's_ all right.  Miss Hooker she tole me, _particular_, that
her uncle Hornback--”

“Great guns! is _he_ her uncle?  Looky here, you break for that light
over yonder-way, and turn out west when you git there, and about a
quarter of a mile out you'll come to the tavern; tell 'em to dart you
out to Jim Hornback's, and he'll foot the bill.  And don't you fool
around any, because he'll want to know the news.  Tell him I'll have
his niece all safe before he can get to town.  Hump yourself, now; I'm
a-going up around the corner here to roust out my engineer.”

I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back
and got into my skiff and bailed her out, and then pulled up shore in
the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among
some woodboats; for I couldn't rest easy till I could see the ferryboat
start. But take it all around, I was feeling ruther comfortable on
accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would
a done it.  I wished the widow knowed about it.  I judged she would be
proud of me for helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and
dead beats is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest
in.

Well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along
down! A kind of cold shiver went through me, and then I struck out for
her.  She was very deep, and I see in a minute there warn't much chance
for anybody being alive in her.  I pulled all around her and hollered
a little, but there wasn't any answer; all dead still.  I felt a little
bit heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckoned if they
could stand it I could.

Then here comes the ferryboat; so I shoved for the middle of the river
on a long down-stream slant; and when I judged I was out of eye-reach
I laid on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the
wreck for Miss Hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her
uncle Hornback would want them; and then pretty soon the ferryboat give
it up and went for the shore, and I laid into my work and went a-booming
down the river.

It did seem a powerful long time before Jim's light showed up; and when
it did show it looked like it was a thousand mile off.  By the time I
got there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east; so we
struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned
in and slept like dead people.




CHAPTER XIV.

BY and by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole
off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all
sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three
boxes of seegars.  We hadn't ever been this rich before in neither of
our lives.  The seegars was prime.  We laid off all the afternoon in the
woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good
time. I told Jim all about what happened inside the wreck and at the
ferryboat, and I said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said
he didn't want no more adventures.  He said that when I went in the
texas and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone he
nearly died, because he judged it was all up with _him_ anyway it could
be fixed; for if he didn't get saved he would get drownded; and if he
did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get
the reward, and then Miss Watson would sell him South, sure.  Well, he
was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a
nigger.

I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and
how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each
other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, 'stead
of mister; and Jim's eyes bugged out, and he was interested.  He says:

“I didn' know dey was so many un um.  I hain't hearn 'bout none un um,
skasely, but ole King Sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat's in a
pack er k'yards.  How much do a king git?”

“Get?”  I says; “why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want
it; they can have just as much as they want; everything belongs to
them.”

“_Ain'_ dat gay?  En what dey got to do, Huck?”

“_They_ don't do nothing!  Why, how you talk! They just set around.”

“No; is dat so?”

“Of course it is.  They just set around--except, maybe, when there's a
war; then they go to the war.  But other times they just lazy around; or
go hawking--just hawking and sp--Sh!--d' you hear a noise?”

We skipped out and looked; but it warn't nothing but the flutter of a
steamboat's wheel away down, coming around the point; so we come back.

“Yes,” says I, “and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the
parlyment; and if everybody don't go just so he whacks their heads off.
But mostly they hang round the harem.”

“Roun' de which?”

“Harem.”

“What's de harem?”

“The place where he keeps his wives.  Don't you know about the harem?
Solomon had one; he had about a million wives.”

“Why, yes, dat's so; I--I'd done forgot it.  A harem's a bo'd'n-house, I
reck'n.  Mos' likely dey has rackety times in de nussery.  En I reck'n
de wives quarrels considable; en dat 'crease de racket.  Yit dey say
Sollermun de wises' man dat ever live'.  I doan' take no stock in
dat. Bekase why: would a wise man want to live in de mids' er sich a
blim-blammin' all de time?  No--'deed he wouldn't.  A wise man 'ud take
en buil' a biler-factry; en den he could shet _down_ de biler-factry
when he want to res'.”

“Well, but he _was_ the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told
me so, her own self.”

“I doan k'yer what de widder say, he _warn't_ no wise man nuther.  He
had some er de dad-fetchedes' ways I ever see.  Does you know 'bout dat
chile dat he 'uz gwyne to chop in two?”

“Yes, the widow told me all about it.”

“_Well_, den!  Warn' dat de beatenes' notion in de worl'?  You jes'
take en look at it a minute.  Dah's de stump, dah--dat's one er de women;
heah's you--dat's de yuther one; I's Sollermun; en dish yer dollar bill's
de chile.  Bofe un you claims it.  What does I do?  Does I shin aroun'
mongs' de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill _do_ b'long to, en
han' it over to de right one, all safe en soun', de way dat anybody dat
had any gumption would?  No; I take en whack de bill in _two_, en give
half un it to you, en de yuther half to de yuther woman.  Dat's de way
Sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile.  Now I want to ast you:  what's
de use er dat half a bill?--can't buy noth'n wid it.  En what use is a
half a chile?  I wouldn' give a dern for a million un um.”

“But hang it, Jim, you've clean missed the point--blame it, you've missed
it a thousand mile.”

“Who?  Me?  Go 'long.  Doan' talk to me 'bout yo' pints.  I reck'n I
knows sense when I sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as
dat. De 'spute warn't 'bout a half a chile, de 'spute was 'bout a whole
chile; en de man dat think he kin settle a 'spute 'bout a whole chile
wid a half a chile doan' know enough to come in out'n de rain.  Doan'
talk to me 'bout Sollermun, Huck, I knows him by de back.”

“But I tell you you don't get the point.”

“Blame de point!  I reck'n I knows what I knows.  En mine you, de _real_
pint is down furder--it's down deeper.  It lays in de way Sollermun was
raised.  You take a man dat's got on'y one or two chillen; is dat man
gwyne to be waseful o' chillen?  No, he ain't; he can't 'ford it.  _He_
know how to value 'em.  But you take a man dat's got 'bout five million
chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt.  _He_ as soon chop a
chile in two as a cat. Dey's plenty mo'.  A chile er two, mo' er less,
warn't no consekens to Sollermun, dad fatch him!”

I never see such a nigger.  If he got a notion in his head once, there
warn't no getting it out again.  He was the most down on Solomon of
any nigger I ever see.  So I went to talking about other kings, and let
Solomon slide.  I told about Louis Sixteenth that got his head cut off
in France long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that
would a been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say
he died there.

“Po' little chap.”

“But some says he got out and got away, and come to America.”

“Dat's good!  But he'll be pooty lonesome--dey ain' no kings here, is
dey, Huck?”

“No.”

“Den he cain't git no situation.  What he gwyne to do?”

“Well, I don't know.  Some of them gets on the police, and some of them
learns people how to talk French.”

“Why, Huck, doan' de French people talk de same way we does?”

“_No_, Jim; you couldn't understand a word they said--not a single word.”

“Well, now, I be ding-busted!  How do dat come?”

“I don't know; but it's so.  I got some of their jabber out of a book.
S'pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy--what would you
think?”

“I wouldn' think nuff'n; I'd take en bust him over de head--dat is, if he
warn't white.  I wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat.”

“Shucks, it ain't calling you anything.  It's only saying, do you know
how to talk French?”

“Well, den, why couldn't he _say_ it?”

“Why, he _is_ a-saying it.  That's a Frenchman's _way_ of saying it.”

“Well, it's a blame ridicklous way, en I doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout
it.  Dey ain' no sense in it.”

“Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?”

“No, a cat don't.”

“Well, does a cow?”

“No, a cow don't, nuther.”

“Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?”

“No, dey don't.”

“It's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't
it?”

“Course.”

“And ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different
from _us_?”

“Why, mos' sholy it is.”

“Well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a _Frenchman_ to talk
different from us?  You answer me that.”

“Is a cat a man, Huck?”

“No.”

“Well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man.  Is a cow a
man?--er is a cow a cat?”

“No, she ain't either of them.”

“Well, den, she ain't got no business to talk like either one er the
yuther of 'em.  Is a Frenchman a man?”

“Yes.”

“_Well_, den!  Dad blame it, why doan' he _talk_ like a man?  You answer
me _dat_!”

I see it warn't no use wasting words--you can't learn a nigger to argue.
So I quit.




CHAPTER XV.

WE judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom
of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was
after.  We would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the
Ohio amongst the free States, and then be out of trouble.

Well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a towhead
to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog; but when I paddled
ahead in the canoe, with the line to make fast, there warn't anything
but little saplings to tie to.  I passed the line around one of them
right on the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current, and
the raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and
away she went.  I see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and
scared I couldn't budge for most a half a minute it seemed to me--and
then there warn't no raft in sight; you couldn't see twenty yards.  I
jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern, and grabbed the paddle
and set her back a stroke.  But she didn't come.  I was in such a hurry
I hadn't untied her.  I got up and tried to untie her, but I was so
excited my hands shook so I couldn't hardly do anything with them.

As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right
down the towhead.  That was all right as far as it went, but the towhead
warn't sixty yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of it I shot
out into the solid white fog, and hadn't no more idea which way I was
going than a dead man.

Thinks I, it won't do to paddle; first I know I'll run into the bank
or a towhead or something; I got to set still and float, and yet it's
mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time.
 I whooped and listened.  Away down there somewheres I hears a small
whoop, and up comes my spirits.  I went tearing after it, listening
sharp to hear it again.  The next time it come I see I warn't heading
for it, but heading away to the right of it.  And the next time I was
heading away to the left of it--and not gaining on it much either, for
I was flying around, this way and that and t'other, but it was going
straight ahead all the time.

I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the
time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops
that was making the trouble for me.  Well, I fought along, and directly
I hears the whoop _behind_ me.  I was tangled good now.  That was
somebody else's whoop, or else I was turned around.

I throwed the paddle down.  I heard the whoop again; it was behind me
yet, but in a different place; it kept coming, and kept changing its
place, and I kept answering, till by and by it was in front of me again,
and I knowed the current had swung the canoe's head down-stream, and I
was all right if that was Jim and not some other raftsman hollering.
 I couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, for nothing don't look
natural nor sound natural in a fog.

The whooping went on, and in about a minute I come a-booming down on a
cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed
me off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly
roared, the currrent was tearing by them so swift.

In another second or two it was solid white and still again.  I set
perfectly still then, listening to my heart thump, and I reckon I didn't
draw a breath while it thumped a hundred.

I just give up then.  I knowed what the matter was.  That cut bank
was an island, and Jim had gone down t'other side of it.  It warn't no
towhead that you could float by in ten minutes.  It had the big timber
of a regular island; it might be five or six miles long and more than
half a mile wide.

I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, I reckon.  I
was floating along, of course, four or five miles an hour; but you don't
ever think of that.  No, you _feel_ like you are laying dead still on
the water; and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by you don't think to
yourself how fast _you're_ going, but you catch your breath and think,
my! how that snag's tearing along.  If you think it ain't dismal and
lonesome out in a fog that way by yourself in the night, you try it
once--you'll see.

Next, for about a half an hour, I whoops now and then; at last I hears
the answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but I couldn't do
it, and directly I judged I'd got into a nest of towheads, for I had
little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me--sometimes just a narrow
channel between, and some that I couldn't see I knowed was there because
I'd hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash
that hung over the banks.  Well, I warn't long loosing the whoops down
amongst the towheads; and I only tried to chase them a little while,
anyway, because it was worse than chasing a Jack-o'-lantern.  You never
knowed a sound dodge around so, and swap places so quick and so much.

I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times, to
keep from knocking the islands out of the river; and so I judged the
raft must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it would
get further ahead and clear out of hearing--it was floating a little
faster than what I was.

Well, I seemed to be in the open river again by and by, but I couldn't
hear no sign of a whoop nowheres.  I reckoned Jim had fetched up on a
snag, maybe, and it was all up with him.  I was good and tired, so I
laid down in the canoe and said I wouldn't bother no more.  I didn't
want to go to sleep, of course; but I was so sleepy I couldn't help it;
so I thought I would take jest one little cat-nap.

But I reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when I waked up the stars
was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a
big bend stern first.  First I didn't know where I was; I thought I was
dreaming; and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come
up dim out of last week.

It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest
kind of timber on both banks; just a solid wall, as well as I could see
by the stars.  I looked away down-stream, and seen a black speck on the
water. I took after it; but when I got to it it warn't nothing but a
couple of sawlogs made fast together.  Then I see another speck, and
chased that; then another, and this time I was right.  It was the raft.

When I got to it Jim was setting there with his head down between his
knees, asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering-oar.  The
other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and
branches and dirt.  So she'd had a rough time.

I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose on the raft, and began to
gap, and stretch my fists out against Jim, and says:

“Hello, Jim, have I been asleep?  Why didn't you stir me up?”

“Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck?  En you ain' dead--you ain'
drownded--you's back agin?  It's too good for true, honey, it's too good
for true. Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o' you.  No, you ain'
dead! you's back agin, 'live en soun', jis de same ole Huck--de same ole
Huck, thanks to goodness!”

“What's the matter with you, Jim?  You been a-drinking?”

“Drinkin'?  Has I ben a-drinkin'?  Has I had a chance to be a-drinkin'?”

“Well, then, what makes you talk so wild?”

“How does I talk wild?”

“_How_?  Why, hain't you been talking about my coming back, and all that
stuff, as if I'd been gone away?”

“Huck--Huck Finn, you look me in de eye; look me in de eye.  _Hain't_ you
ben gone away?”

“Gone away?  Why, what in the nation do you mean?  I hain't been gone
anywheres.  Where would I go to?”

“Well, looky here, boss, dey's sumf'n wrong, dey is.  Is I _me_, or who
_is_ I? Is I heah, or whah _is_ I?  Now dat's what I wants to know.”

“Well, I think you're here, plain enough, but I think you're a
tangle-headed old fool, Jim.”

“I is, is I?  Well, you answer me dis:  Didn't you tote out de line in
de canoe fer to make fas' to de tow-head?”

“No, I didn't.  What tow-head?  I hain't see no tow-head.”

“You hain't seen no towhead?  Looky here, didn't de line pull loose en
de raf' go a-hummin' down de river, en leave you en de canoe behine in
de fog?”

“What fog?”

“Why, de fog!--de fog dat's been aroun' all night.  En didn't you whoop,
en didn't I whoop, tell we got mix' up in de islands en one un us got
los' en t'other one was jis' as good as los', 'kase he didn' know whah
he wuz? En didn't I bust up agin a lot er dem islands en have a turrible
time en mos' git drownded?  Now ain' dat so, boss--ain't it so?  You
answer me dat.”

“Well, this is too many for me, Jim.  I hain't seen no fog, nor no
islands, nor no troubles, nor nothing.  I been setting here talking with
you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I reckon
I done the same.  You couldn't a got drunk in that time, so of course
you've been dreaming.”

“Dad fetch it, how is I gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?”

“Well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it
happen.”

“But, Huck, it's all jis' as plain to me as--”

“It don't make no difference how plain it is; there ain't nothing in it.
I know, because I've been here all the time.”

Jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying
over it.  Then he says:

“Well, den, I reck'n I did dream it, Huck; but dog my cats ef it ain't
de powerfullest dream I ever see.  En I hain't ever had no dream b'fo'
dat's tired me like dis one.”

“Oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like
everything sometimes.  But this one was a staving dream; tell me all
about it, Jim.”

So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as
it happened, only he painted it up considerable.  Then he said he must
start in and “'terpret” it, because it was sent for a warning.  He said
the first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but
the current was another man that would get us away from him.  The whoops
was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't
try hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad
luck, 'stead of keeping us out of it.  The lot of towheads was troubles
we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean
folks, but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate
them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big
clear river, which was the free States, and wouldn't have no more
trouble.

It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft, but it
was clearing up again now.

“Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim,” I
says; “but what does _these_ things stand for?”

It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar.  You
could see them first-rate now.

Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash
again.  He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he
couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place
again right away.  But when he did get the thing straightened around he
looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says:

“What do dey stan' for?  I'se gwyne to tell you.  When I got all wore
out wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz
mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no' mo' what become
er me en de raf'.  En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe
en soun', de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo'
foot, I's so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could
make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie.  Dat truck dah is _trash_; en trash
is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em
ashamed.”

Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without
saying anything but that.  But that was enough.  It made me feel so mean
I could almost kissed _his_ foot to get him to take it back.

It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble
myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it
afterwards, neither.  I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I
wouldn't done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way.




CHAPTER XVI.

WE slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a
monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession.  She had
four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty
men, likely.  She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open
camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end.  There was a
power of style about her.  It _amounted_ to something being a raftsman
on such a craft as that.

We went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got
hot.  The river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on
both sides; you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or a light.  We
talked about Cairo, and wondered whether we would know it when we got to
it.  I said likely we wouldn't, because I had heard say there warn't but
about a dozen houses there, and if they didn't happen to have them lit
up, how was we going to know we was passing a town?  Jim said if the two
big rivers joined together there, that would show.  But I said maybe
we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the
same old river again. That disturbed Jim--and me too.  So the question
was, what to do?  I said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed,
and tell them pap was behind, coming along with a trading-scow, and
was a green hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to
Cairo.  Jim thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and
waited.

There warn't nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town, and
not pass it without seeing it.  He said he'd be mighty sure to see it,
because he'd be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it
he'd be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom.  Every
little while he jumps up and says:

“Dah she is?”

But it warn't.  It was Jack-o'-lanterns, or lightning bugs; so he set
down again, and went to watching, same as before.  Jim said it made him
all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom.  Well, I can
tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him,
because I begun to get it through my head that he _was_ most free--and
who was to blame for it?  Why, _me_.  I couldn't get that out of my
conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't
rest; I couldn't stay still in one place.  It hadn't ever come home to
me before, what this thing was that I was doing.  But now it did; and it
stayed with me, and scorched me more and more.  I tried to make out to
myself that I warn't to blame, because I didn't run Jim off from his
rightful owner; but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every
time, “But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a
paddled ashore and told somebody.”  That was so--I couldn't get around
that noway.  That was where it pinched.  Conscience says to me, “What
had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off
right under your eyes and never say one single word?  What did that poor
old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean?  Why, she tried to
learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to
be good to you every way she knowed how.  _That's_ what she done.”

I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead.  I
fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was
fidgeting up and down past me.  We neither of us could keep still.
 Every time he danced around and says, “Dah's Cairo!” it went through me
like a shot, and I thought if it _was_ Cairo I reckoned I would die of
miserableness.

Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself.  He was
saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he
would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he
got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to
where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the
two children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an
Ab'litionist to go and steal them.

It most froze me to hear such talk.  He wouldn't ever dared to talk such
talk in his life before.  Just see what a difference it made in him the
minute he judged he was about free.  It was according to the old saying,
“Give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell.”  Thinks I, this is what
comes of my not thinking.  Here was this nigger, which I had as good
as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would
steal his children--children that belonged to a man I didn't even know; a
man that hadn't ever done me no harm.

I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him.  My
conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says
to it, “Let up on me--it ain't too late yet--I'll paddle ashore at the
first light and tell.”  I felt easy and happy and light as a feather
right off.  All my troubles was gone.  I went to looking out sharp for a
light, and sort of singing to myself.  By and by one showed.  Jim sings
out:

“We's safe, Huck, we's safe!  Jump up and crack yo' heels!  Dat's de
good ole Cairo at las', I jis knows it!”

I says:

“I'll take the canoe and go and see, Jim.  It mightn't be, you know.”

He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom
for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as I shoved off, he says:

“Pooty soon I'll be a-shout'n' for joy, en I'll say, it's all on
accounts o' Huck; I's a free man, en I couldn't ever ben free ef it
hadn' ben for Huck; Huck done it.  Jim won't ever forgit you, Huck;
you's de bes' fren' Jim's ever had; en you's de _only_ fren' ole Jim's
got now.”

I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says
this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me.  I went along
slow then, and I warn't right down certain whether I was glad I started
or whether I warn't.  When I was fifty yards off, Jim says:

“Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his
promise to ole Jim.”

Well, I just felt sick.  But I says, I _got_ to do it--I can't get _out_
of it.  Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns, and
they stopped and I stopped.  One of them says:

“What's that yonder?”

“A piece of a raft,” I says.

“Do you belong on it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any men on it?”

“Only one, sir.”

“Well, there's five niggers run off to-night up yonder, above the head
of the bend.  Is your man white or black?”

I didn't answer up prompt.  I tried to, but the words wouldn't come. I
tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn't man
enough--hadn't the spunk of a rabbit.  I see I was weakening; so I just
give up trying, and up and says:

“He's white.”

“I reckon we'll go and see for ourselves.”

“I wish you would,” says I, “because it's pap that's there, and maybe
you'd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is.  He's sick--and so
is mam and Mary Ann.”

“Oh, the devil! we're in a hurry, boy.  But I s'pose we've got to.
 Come, buckle to your paddle, and let's get along.”

I buckled to my paddle and they laid to their oars.  When we had made a
stroke or two, I says:

“Pap'll be mighty much obleeged to you, I can tell you.  Everybody goes
away when I want them to help me tow the raft ashore, and I can't do it
by myself.”

“Well, that's infernal mean.  Odd, too.  Say, boy, what's the matter
with your father?”

“It's the--a--the--well, it ain't anything much.”

They stopped pulling.  It warn't but a mighty little ways to the raft
now. One says:

“Boy, that's a lie.  What _is_ the matter with your pap?  Answer up
square now, and it'll be the better for you.”

“I will, sir, I will, honest--but don't leave us, please.  It's
the--the--Gentlemen, if you'll only pull ahead, and let me heave you the
headline, you won't have to come a-near the raft--please do.”

“Set her back, John, set her back!” says one.  They backed water.  “Keep
away, boy--keep to looard.  Confound it, I just expect the wind has
blowed it to us.  Your pap's got the small-pox, and you know it precious
well.  Why didn't you come out and say so?  Do you want to spread it all
over?”

“Well,” says I, a-blubbering, “I've told everybody before, and they just
went away and left us.”

“Poor devil, there's something in that.  We are right down sorry for
you, but we--well, hang it, we don't want the small-pox, you see.  Look
here, I'll tell you what to do.  Don't you try to land by yourself, or
you'll smash everything to pieces.  You float along down about twenty
miles, and you'll come to a town on the left-hand side of the river.  It
will be long after sun-up then, and when you ask for help you tell them
your folks are all down with chills and fever.  Don't be a fool again,
and let people guess what is the matter.  Now we're trying to do you a
kindness; so you just put twenty miles between us, that's a good boy.
 It wouldn't do any good to land yonder where the light is--it's only a
wood-yard. Say, I reckon your father's poor, and I'm bound to say he's
in pretty hard luck.  Here, I'll put a twenty-dollar gold piece on this
board, and you get it when it floats by.  I feel mighty mean to leave
you; but my kingdom! it won't do to fool with small-pox, don't you see?”

“Hold on, Parker,” says the other man, “here's a twenty to put on the
board for me.  Good-bye, boy; you do as Mr. Parker told you, and you'll
be all right.”

“That's so, my boy--good-bye, good-bye.  If you see any runaway niggers
you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it.”

“Good-bye, sir,” says I; “I won't let no runaway niggers get by me if I
can help it.”

They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I
knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me
to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get _started_ right when
he's little ain't got no show--when the pinch comes there ain't nothing
to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat.  Then I
thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s'pose you'd a done right
and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now?  No, says
I, I'd feel bad--I'd feel just the same way I do now.  Well, then, says
I, what's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do
right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?
 I was stuck.  I couldn't answer that.  So I reckoned I wouldn't bother
no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at
the time.

I went into the wigwam; Jim warn't there.  I looked all around; he
warn't anywhere.  I says:

“Jim!”

“Here I is, Huck.  Is dey out o' sight yit?  Don't talk loud.”

He was in the river under the stern oar, with just his nose out.  I told
him they were out of sight, so he come aboard.  He says:

“I was a-listenin' to all de talk, en I slips into de river en was gwyne
to shove for sho' if dey come aboard.  Den I was gwyne to swim to de
raf' agin when dey was gone.  But lawsy, how you did fool 'em, Huck!
 Dat _wuz_ de smartes' dodge!  I tell you, chile, I'spec it save' ole
Jim--ole Jim ain't going to forgit you for dat, honey.”

Then we talked about the money.  It was a pretty good raise--twenty
dollars apiece.  Jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat
now, and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free
States. He said twenty mile more warn't far for the raft to go, but he
wished we was already there.

Towards daybreak we tied up, and Jim was mighty particular about hiding
the raft good.  Then he worked all day fixing things in bundles, and
getting all ready to quit rafting.

That night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town away down
in a left-hand bend.

I went off in the canoe to ask about it.  Pretty soon I found a man out
in the river with a skiff, setting a trot-line.  I ranged up and says:

“Mister, is that town Cairo?”

“Cairo? no.  You must be a blame' fool.”

“What town is it, mister?”

“If you want to know, go and find out.  If you stay here botherin'
around me for about a half a minute longer you'll get something you
won't want.”

I paddled to the raft.  Jim was awful disappointed, but I said never
mind, Cairo would be the next place, I reckoned.

We passed another town before daylight, and I was going out again; but
it was high ground, so I didn't go.  No high ground about Cairo, Jim
said. I had forgot it.  We laid up for the day on a towhead tolerable
close to the left-hand bank.  I begun to suspicion something.  So did
Jim.  I says:

“Maybe we went by Cairo in the fog that night.”

He says:

“Doan' le's talk about it, Huck.  Po' niggers can't have no luck.  I
awluz 'spected dat rattlesnake-skin warn't done wid its work.”

“I wish I'd never seen that snake-skin, Jim--I do wish I'd never laid
eyes on it.”

“It ain't yo' fault, Huck; you didn' know.  Don't you blame yo'self
'bout it.”

When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water inshore, sure
enough, and outside was the old regular Muddy!  So it was all up with
Cairo.

We talked it all over.  It wouldn't do to take to the shore; we couldn't
take the raft up the stream, of course.  There warn't no way but to wait
for dark, and start back in the canoe and take the chances.  So we slept
all day amongst the cottonwood thicket, so as to be fresh for the work,
and when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone!

We didn't say a word for a good while.  There warn't anything to
say.  We both knowed well enough it was some more work of the
rattlesnake-skin; so what was the use to talk about it?  It would only
look like we was finding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more
bad luck--and keep on fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to keep
still.

By and by we talked about what we better do, and found there warn't no
way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy
a canoe to go back in.  We warn't going to borrow it when there warn't
anybody around, the way pap would do, for that might set people after
us.

So we shoved out after dark on the raft.

Anybody that don't believe yet that it's foolishness to handle a
snake-skin, after all that that snake-skin done for us, will believe it
now if they read on and see what more it done for us.

The place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore.  But we
didn't see no rafts laying up; so we went along during three hours and
more.  Well, the night got gray and ruther thick, which is the next
meanest thing to fog.  You can't tell the shape of the river, and you
can't see no distance. It got to be very late and still, and then along
comes a steamboat up the river.  We lit the lantern, and judged she
would see it.  Up-stream boats didn't generly come close to us; they
go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs; but
nights like this they bull right up the channel against the whole river.

We could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she
was close.  She aimed right for us.  Often they do that and try to see
how close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites off
a sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks
he's mighty smart.  Well, here she comes, and we said she was going to
try and shave us; but she didn't seem to be sheering off a bit.  She
was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black
cloud with rows of glow-worms around it; but all of a sudden she bulged
out, big and scary, with a long row of wide-open furnace doors shining
like red-hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right
over us.  There was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the
engines, a powwow of cussing, and whistling of steam--and as Jim went
overboard on one side and I on the other, she come smashing straight
through the raft.

I dived--and I aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirty-foot wheel
had got to go over me, and I wanted it to have plenty of room.  I could
always stay under water a minute; this time I reckon I stayed under a
minute and a half.  Then I bounced for the top in a hurry, for I was
nearly busting.  I popped out to my armpits and blowed the water out of
my nose, and puffed a bit.  Of course there was a booming current; and
of course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she
stopped them, for they never cared much for raftsmen; so now she was
churning along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, though I
could hear her.

I sung out for Jim about a dozen times, but I didn't get any answer;
so I grabbed a plank that touched me while I was “treading water,” and
struck out for shore, shoving it ahead of me.  But I made out to see
that the drift of the current was towards the left-hand shore, which
meant that I was in a crossing; so I changed off and went that way.

It was one of these long, slanting, two-mile crossings; so I was a good
long time in getting over.  I made a safe landing, and clumb up the
bank. I couldn't see but a little ways, but I went poking along over
rough ground for a quarter of a mile or more, and then I run across a
big old-fashioned double log-house before I noticed it.  I was going to
rush by and get away, but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to howling
and barking at me, and I knowed better than to move another peg.




CHAPTER XVII.

IN about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his
head out, and says:

“Be done, boys!  Who's there?”

I says:

“It's me.”

“Who's me?”

“George Jackson, sir.”

“What do you want?”

“I don't want nothing, sir.  I only want to go along by, but the dogs
won't let me.”

“What are you prowling around here this time of night for--hey?”

“I warn't prowling around, sir, I fell overboard off of the steamboat.”

“Oh, you did, did you?  Strike a light there, somebody.  What did you
say your name was?”

“George Jackson, sir.  I'm only a boy.”

“Look here, if you're telling the truth you needn't be afraid--nobody'll
hurt you.  But don't try to budge; stand right where you are.  Rouse out
Bob and Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns.  George Jackson, is there
anybody with you?”

“No, sir, nobody.”

I heard the people stirring around in the house now, and see a light.
The man sung out:

“Snatch that light away, Betsy, you old fool--ain't you got any sense?
Put it on the floor behind the front door.  Bob, if you and Tom are
ready, take your places.”

“All ready.”

“Now, George Jackson, do you know the Shepherdsons?”

“No, sir; I never heard of them.”

“Well, that may be so, and it mayn't.  Now, all ready.  Step forward,
George Jackson.  And mind, don't you hurry--come mighty slow.  If there's
anybody with you, let him keep back--if he shows himself he'll be shot.
Come along now.  Come slow; push the door open yourself--just enough to
squeeze in, d' you hear?”

I didn't hurry; I couldn't if I'd a wanted to.  I took one slow step at
a time and there warn't a sound, only I thought I could hear my heart.
 The dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind
me. When I got to the three log doorsteps I heard them unlocking and
unbarring and unbolting.  I put my hand on the door and pushed it a
little and a little more till somebody said, “There, that's enough--put
your head in.” I done it, but I judged they would take it off.

The candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me, and
me at them, for about a quarter of a minute:  Three big men with guns
pointed at me, which made me wince, I tell you; the oldest, gray
and about sixty, the other two thirty or more--all of them fine and
handsome--and the sweetest old gray-headed lady, and back of her two
young women which I couldn't see right well.  The old gentleman says:

“There; I reckon it's all right.  Come in.”

As soon as I was in the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it
and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and
they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor,
and got together in a corner that was out of the range of the front
windows--there warn't none on the side.  They held the candle, and took a
good look at me, and all said, “Why, _he_ ain't a Shepherdson--no, there
ain't any Shepherdson about him.”  Then the old man said he hoped I
wouldn't mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by
it--it was only to make sure.  So he didn't pry into my pockets, but only
felt outside with his hands, and said it was all right.  He told me to
make myself easy and at home, and tell all about myself; but the old
lady says:

“Why, bless you, Saul, the poor thing's as wet as he can be; and don't
you reckon it may be he's hungry?”

“True for you, Rachel--I forgot.”

So the old lady says:

“Betsy” (this was a nigger woman), “you fly around and get him something
to eat as quick as you can, poor thing; and one of you girls go and wake
up Buck and tell him--oh, here he is himself.  Buck, take this little
stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some
of yours that's dry.”

Buck looked about as old as me--thirteen or fourteen or along there,
though he was a little bigger than me.  He hadn't on anything but a
shirt, and he was very frowzy-headed.  He came in gaping and digging one
fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one.
He says:

“Ain't they no Shepherdsons around?”

They said, no, 'twas a false alarm.

“Well,” he says, “if they'd a ben some, I reckon I'd a got one.”

They all laughed, and Bob says:

“Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all, you've been so slow in
coming.”

“Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right I'm always kept down; I
don't get no show.”

“Never mind, Buck, my boy,” says the old man, “you'll have show enough,
all in good time, don't you fret about that.  Go 'long with you now, and
do as your mother told you.”

When we got up-stairs to his room he got me a coarse shirt and a
roundabout and pants of his, and I put them on.  While I was at it he
asked me what my name was, but before I could tell him he started to
tell me about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods
day before yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle
went out.  I said I didn't know; I hadn't heard about it before, no way.

“Well, guess,” he says.

“How'm I going to guess,” says I, “when I never heard tell of it
before?”

“But you can guess, can't you?  It's just as easy.”

“_Which_ candle?”  I says.

“Why, any candle,” he says.

“I don't know where he was,” says I; “where was he?”

“Why, he was in the _dark_!  That's where he was!”

“Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?”

“Why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see?  Say, how long are you
going to stay here?  You got to stay always.  We can just have booming
times--they don't have no school now.  Do you own a dog?  I've got a
dog--and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in.  Do
you like to comb up Sundays, and all that kind of foolishness?  You bet
I don't, but ma she makes me.  Confound these ole britches!  I reckon
I'd better put 'em on, but I'd ruther not, it's so warm.  Are you all
ready? All right.  Come along, old hoss.”

Cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilk--that is what they
had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever I've
come across yet.  Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes,
except the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women.  They
all smoked and talked, and I eat and talked.  The young women had
quilts around them, and their hair down their backs.  They all asked me
questions, and I told them how pap and me and all the family was living
on a little farm down at the bottom of Arkansaw, and my sister Mary Ann
run off and got married and never was heard of no more, and Bill went
to hunt them and he warn't heard of no more, and Tom and Mort died,
and then there warn't nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just
trimmed down to nothing, on account of his troubles; so when he died
I took what there was left, because the farm didn't belong to us, and
started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard; and that was how
I come to be here.  So they said I could have a home there as long as I
wanted it.  Then it was most daylight and everybody went to bed, and I
went to bed with Buck, and when I waked up in the morning, drat it all,
I had forgot what my name was. So I laid there about an hour trying to
think, and when Buck waked up I says:

“Can you spell, Buck?”

“Yes,” he says.

“I bet you can't spell my name,” says I.

“I bet you what you dare I can,” says he.

“All right,” says I, “go ahead.”

“G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n--there now,” he says.

“Well,” says I, “you done it, but I didn't think you could.  It ain't no
slouch of a name to spell--right off without studying.”

I set it down, private, because somebody might want _me_ to spell it
next, and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was
used to it.

It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too.  I hadn't
seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much
style.  It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one
with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in
town. There warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed; but heaps
of parlors in towns has beds in them.  There was a big fireplace that
was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by
pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another brick; sometimes
they wash them over with red water-paint that they call Spanish-brown,
same as they do in town.  They had big brass dog-irons that could hold
up a saw-log. There was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece, with
a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and
a round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the
pendulum swinging behind it.  It was beautiful to hear that clock tick;
and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her
up and got her in good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred
and fifty before she got tuckered out.  They wouldn't took any money for
her.

Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock,
made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy.  By one of the
parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other;
and when you pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open
their mouths nor look different nor interested.  They squeaked through
underneath.  There was a couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out
behind those things.  On the table in the middle of the room was a kind
of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and
grapes piled up in it, which was much redder and yellower and prettier
than real ones is, but they warn't real because you could see where
pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk, or whatever it
was, underneath.

This table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and
blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around.  It
come all the way from Philadelphia, they said.  There was some books,
too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table.  One was a
big family Bible full of pictures.  One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a
man that left his family, it didn't say why.  I read considerable in it
now and then.  The statements was interesting, but tough.  Another was
Friendship's Offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I didn't
read the poetry.  Another was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another was Dr.
Gunn's Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body
was sick or dead.  There was a hymn book, and a lot of other books.  And
there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, too--not bagged
down in the middle and busted, like an old basket.

They had pictures hung on the walls--mainly Washingtons and Lafayettes,
and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called “Signing the
Declaration.” There was some that they called crayons, which one of the
daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only
fifteen years old.  They was different from any pictures I ever see
before--blacker, mostly, than is common.  One was a woman in a slim black
dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in
the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with
a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and
very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a
tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand
hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule,
and underneath the picture it said “Shall I Never See Thee More Alas.”
  Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight
to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a
chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird
laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath
the picture it said “I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas.”
  There was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the
moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in
one hand with black sealing wax showing on one edge of it, and she was
mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath
the picture it said “And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas.”  These
was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take
to them, because if ever I was down a little they always give me the
fan-tods.  Everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot
more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done
what they had lost.  But I reckoned that with her disposition she was
having a better time in the graveyard.  She was at work on what they
said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and
every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it
done, but she never got the chance.  It was a picture of a young woman
in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump
off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with
the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her
breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up
towards the moon--and the idea was to see which pair would look best,
and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as I was saying, she died
before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the
head of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung
flowers on it.  Other times it was hid with a little curtain.  The young
woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so
many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me.

This young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste
obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the
Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head.
It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name
of Stephen Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded:

ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D

And did young Stephen sicken,    And did young Stephen die? And did the
sad hearts thicken,    And did the mourners cry?

No; such was not the fate of    Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad
hearts round him thickened,    'Twas not from sickness' shots.

No whooping-cough did rack his frame,    Nor measles drear with spots;
Not these impaired the sacred name    Of Stephen Dowling Bots.

Despised love struck not with woe    That head of curly knots, Nor
stomach troubles laid him low,    Young Stephen Dowling Bots.

O no. Then list with tearful eye,    Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul
did from this cold world fly    By falling down a well.

They got him out and emptied him;    Alas it was too late; His spirit
was gone for to sport aloft    In the realms of the good and great.

If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was
fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could a done by and by.  Buck
said she could rattle off poetry like nothing.  She didn't ever have to
stop to think.  He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't
find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down
another one, and go ahead. She warn't particular; she could write about
anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful.
Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on
hand with her “tribute” before he was cold.  She called them tributes.
The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the
undertaker--the undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and
then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was
Whistler.  She warn't ever the same after that; she never complained,
but she kinder pined away and did not live long.  Poor thing, many's the
time I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get
out her poor old scrap-book and read in it when her pictures had been
aggravating me and I had soured on her a little.  I liked all that
family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between
us.  Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was
alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some
about her now she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or two
myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go somehow.  They kept Emmeline's
room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she
liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there.
 The old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty
of niggers, and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there
mostly.

Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on
the windows:  white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines
all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink.  There was a little
old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever
so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing “The Last Link is Broken”
 and play “The Battle of Prague” on it.  The walls of all the rooms was
plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was
whitewashed on the outside.

It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed
and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the
day, and it was a cool, comfortable place.  Nothing couldn't be better.
 And warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too!




CHAPTER XVIII.

COL.  Grangerford was a gentleman, you see.  He was a gentleman all
over; and so was his family.  He was well born, as the saying is, and
that's worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas
said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy
in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn't no more
quality than a mudcat himself.  Col.  Grangerford was very tall and
very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it
anywheres; he was clean shaved every morning all over his thin face, and
he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and
a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so
deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at
you, as you may say.  His forehead was high, and his hair was black and
straight and hung to his shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and
every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head
to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it;
and on Sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with brass buttons on it.  He
carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it.  There warn't no
frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn't ever loud.  He was
as kind as he could be--you could feel that, you know, and so you had
confidence.  Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see; but when he
straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to
flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first,
and find out what the matter was afterwards.  He didn't ever have to
tell anybody to mind their manners--everybody was always good-mannered
where he was.  Everybody loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine
most always--I mean he made it seem like good weather.  When he turned
into a cloudbank it was awful dark for half a minute, and that was
enough; there wouldn't nothing go wrong again for a week.

When him and the old lady come down in the morning all the family got
up out of their chairs and give them good-day, and didn't set down again
till they had set down.  Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where
the decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and
he held it in his hand and waited till Tom's and Bob's was mixed, and
then they bowed and said, “Our duty to you, sir, and madam;” and _they_
bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank,
all three, and Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and
the mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and
give it to me and Buck, and we drank to the old people too.

Bob was the oldest and Tom next--tall, beautiful men with very broad
shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes.  They
dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and
wore broad Panama hats.

Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud
and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn't stirred up; but
when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks,
like her father.  She was beautiful.

So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind.  She was
gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty.

Each person had their own nigger to wait on them--Buck too.  My nigger
had a monstrous easy time, because I warn't used to having anybody do
anything for me, but Buck's was on the jump most of the time.

This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be
more--three sons; they got killed; and Emmeline that died.

The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers.
Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or
fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junketings
round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods
daytimes, and balls at the house nights.  These people was mostly
kinfolks of the family.  The men brought their guns with them.  It was a
handsome lot of quality, I tell you.

There was another clan of aristocracy around there--five or six
families--mostly of the name of Shepherdson.  They was as high-toned
and well born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords.  The
Shepherdsons and Grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was
about two mile above our house; so sometimes when I went up there with a
lot of our folks I used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons there on their
fine horses.

One day Buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse
coming.  We was crossing the road.  Buck says:

“Quick!  Jump for the woods!”

We done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves.  Pretty
soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, setting his
horse easy and looking like a soldier.  He had his gun across his
pommel.  I had seen him before.  It was young Harney Shepherdson.  I
heard Buck's gun go off at my ear, and Harney's hat tumbled off from his
head.  He grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was
hid.  But we didn't wait.  We started through the woods on a run.  The
woods warn't thick, so I looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet,
and twice I seen Harney cover Buck with his gun; and then he rode away
the way he come--to get his hat, I reckon, but I couldn't see.  We never
stopped running till we got home.  The old gentleman's eyes blazed a
minute--'twas pleasure, mainly, I judged--then his face sort of smoothed
down, and he says, kind of gentle:

“I don't like that shooting from behind a bush.  Why didn't you step
into the road, my boy?”

“The Shepherdsons don't, father.  They always take advantage.”

Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling
his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped.  The two young
men looked dark, but never said nothing.  Miss Sophia she turned pale,
but the color come back when she found the man warn't hurt.

Soon as I could get Buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by
ourselves, I says:

“Did you want to kill him, Buck?”

“Well, I bet I did.”

“What did he do to you?”

“Him?  He never done nothing to me.”

“Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?”

“Why, nothing--only it's on account of the feud.”

“What's a feud?”

“Why, where was you raised?  Don't you know what a feud is?”

“Never heard of it before--tell me about it.”

“Well,” says Buck, “a feud is this way:  A man has a quarrel with
another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills _him_;
then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the
_cousins_ chip in--and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't
no more feud.  But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time.”

“Has this one been going on long, Buck?”

“Well, I should _reckon_!  It started thirty year ago, or som'ers along
there.  There was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle
it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the
man that won the suit--which he would naturally do, of course.  Anybody
would.”

“What was the trouble about, Buck?--land?”

“I reckon maybe--I don't know.”

“Well, who done the shooting?  Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?”

“Laws, how do I know?  It was so long ago.”

“Don't anybody know?”

“Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they
don't know now what the row was about in the first place.”

“Has there been many killed, Buck?”

“Yes; right smart chance of funerals.  But they don't always kill.  Pa's
got a few buckshot in him; but he don't mind it 'cuz he don't weigh
much, anyway.  Bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and Tom's been
hurt once or twice.”

“Has anybody been killed this year, Buck?”

“Yes; we got one and they got one.  'Bout three months ago my cousin
Bud, fourteen year old, was riding through the woods on t'other side
of the river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame'
foolishness, and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming behind
him, and sees old Baldy Shepherdson a-linkin' after him with his gun in
his hand and his white hair a-flying in the wind; and 'stead of jumping
off and taking to the brush, Bud 'lowed he could out-run him; so they
had it, nip and tuck, for five mile or more, the old man a-gaining all
the time; so at last Bud seen it warn't any use, so he stopped and faced
around so as to have the bullet holes in front, you know, and the old
man he rode up and shot him down.  But he didn't git much chance to
enjoy his luck, for inside of a week our folks laid _him_ out.”

“I reckon that old man was a coward, Buck.”

“I reckon he _warn't_ a coward.  Not by a blame' sight.  There ain't a
coward amongst them Shepherdsons--not a one.  And there ain't no cowards
amongst the Grangerfords either.  Why, that old man kep' up his end in a
fight one day for half an hour against three Grangerfords, and come
out winner.  They was all a-horseback; he lit off of his horse and got
behind a little woodpile, and kep' his horse before him to stop the
bullets; but the Grangerfords stayed on their horses and capered around
the old man, and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them.
 Him and his horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the
Grangerfords had to be _fetched_ home--and one of 'em was dead, and
another died the next day.  No, sir; if a body's out hunting for cowards
he don't want to fool away any time amongst them Shepherdsons, becuz
they don't breed any of that _kind_.”

Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody
a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept
them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall.  The
Shepherdsons done the same.  It was pretty ornery preaching--all about
brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was
a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such
a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and
preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me
to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.

About an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, some in their
chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull.  Buck and
a dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun sound asleep.  I went up
to our room, and judged I would take a nap myself.  I found that sweet
Miss Sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took
me in her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if I liked her,
and I said I did; and she asked me if I would do something for her and
not tell anybody, and I said I would.  Then she said she'd forgot her
Testament, and left it in the seat at church between two other books,
and would I slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say
nothing to nobody.  I said I would. So I slid out and slipped off up the
road, and there warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two,
for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor
in summer-time because it's cool.  If you notice, most folks don't go to
church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.

Says I to myself, something's up; it ain't natural for a girl to be in
such a sweat about a Testament.  So I give it a shake, and out drops a
little piece of paper with “HALF-PAST TWO” wrote on it with a pencil.  I
ransacked it, but couldn't find anything else.  I couldn't make anything
out of that, so I put the paper in the book again, and when I got home
and upstairs there was Miss Sophia in her door waiting for me.  She
pulled me in and shut the door; then she looked in the Testament till
she found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad; and
before a body could think she grabbed me and give me a squeeze, and
said I was the best boy in the world, and not to tell anybody.  She was
mighty red in the face for a minute, and her eyes lighted up, and it
made her powerful pretty.  I was a good deal astonished, but when I got
my breath I asked her what the paper was about, and she asked me if I
had read it, and I said no, and she asked me if I could read writing,
and I told her “no, only coarse-hand,” and then she said the paper
warn't anything but a book-mark to keep her place, and I might go and
play now.

I went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty soon
I noticed that my nigger was following along behind.  When we was out
of sight of the house he looked back and around a second, and then comes
a-running, and says:

“Mars Jawge, if you'll come down into de swamp I'll show you a whole
stack o' water-moccasins.”

Thinks I, that's mighty curious; he said that yesterday.  He oughter
know a body don't love water-moccasins enough to go around hunting for
them. What is he up to, anyway?  So I says:

“All right; trot ahead.”

I followed a half a mile; then he struck out over the swamp, and waded
ankle deep as much as another half-mile.  We come to a little flat piece
of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines,
and he says:

“You shove right in dah jist a few steps, Mars Jawge; dah's whah dey is.
I's seed 'm befo'; I don't k'yer to see 'em no mo'.”

Then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid
him.  I poked into the place a-ways and come to a little open patch
as big as a bedroom all hung around with vines, and found a man laying
there asleep--and, by jings, it was my old Jim!

I waked him up, and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to
him to see me again, but it warn't.  He nearly cried he was so glad, but
he warn't surprised.  Said he swum along behind me that night, and heard
me yell every time, but dasn't answer, because he didn't want nobody to
pick _him_ up and take him into slavery again.  Says he:

“I got hurt a little, en couldn't swim fas', so I wuz a considable ways
behine you towards de las'; when you landed I reck'ned I could ketch
up wid you on de lan' 'dout havin' to shout at you, but when I see dat
house I begin to go slow.  I 'uz off too fur to hear what dey say to
you--I wuz 'fraid o' de dogs; but when it 'uz all quiet agin I knowed
you's in de house, so I struck out for de woods to wait for day.  Early
in de mawnin' some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields, en dey
tuk me en showed me dis place, whah de dogs can't track me on accounts
o' de water, en dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how
you's a-gitt'n along.”

“Why didn't you tell my Jack to fetch me here sooner, Jim?”

“Well, 'twarn't no use to 'sturb you, Huck, tell we could do sumfn--but
we's all right now.  I ben a-buyin' pots en pans en vittles, as I got a
chanst, en a-patchin' up de raf' nights when--”

“_What_ raft, Jim?”

“Our ole raf'.”

“You mean to say our old raft warn't smashed all to flinders?”

“No, she warn't.  She was tore up a good deal--one en' of her was; but
dey warn't no great harm done, on'y our traps was mos' all los'.  Ef we
hadn' dive' so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn' ben
so dark, en we warn't so sk'yerd, en ben sich punkin-heads, as de sayin'
is, we'd a seed de raf'.  But it's jis' as well we didn't, 'kase now
she's all fixed up agin mos' as good as new, en we's got a new lot o'
stuff, in de place o' what 'uz los'.”

“Why, how did you get hold of the raft again, Jim--did you catch her?”

“How I gwyne to ketch her en I out in de woods?  No; some er de niggers
foun' her ketched on a snag along heah in de ben', en dey hid her in a
crick 'mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin' 'bout which un 'um
she b'long to de mos' dat I come to heah 'bout it pooty soon, so I ups
en settles de trouble by tellin' 'um she don't b'long to none uv um, but
to you en me; en I ast 'm if dey gwyne to grab a young white genlman's
propaty, en git a hid'n for it?  Den I gin 'm ten cents apiece, en dey
'uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some mo' raf's 'ud come along en
make 'm rich agin. Dey's mighty good to me, dese niggers is, en whatever
I wants 'm to do fur me I doan' have to ast 'm twice, honey.  Dat Jack's
a good nigger, en pooty smart.”

“Yes, he is.  He ain't ever told me you was here; told me to come, and
he'd show me a lot of water-moccasins.  If anything happens _he_ ain't
mixed up in it.  He can say he never seen us together, and it 'll be the
truth.”

I don't want to talk much about the next day.  I reckon I'll cut it
pretty short.  I waked up about dawn, and was a-going to turn over and
go to sleep again when I noticed how still it was--didn't seem to be
anybody stirring.  That warn't usual.  Next I noticed that Buck was
up and gone. Well, I gets up, a-wondering, and goes down stairs--nobody
around; everything as still as a mouse.  Just the same outside.  Thinks
I, what does it mean?  Down by the wood-pile I comes across my Jack, and
says:

“What's it all about?”

Says he:

“Don't you know, Mars Jawge?”

“No,” says I, “I don't.”

“Well, den, Miss Sophia's run off! 'deed she has.  She run off in de
night some time--nobody don't know jis' when; run off to get married
to dat young Harney Shepherdson, you know--leastways, so dey 'spec.  De
fambly foun' it out 'bout half an hour ago--maybe a little mo'--en' I
_tell_ you dey warn't no time los'.  Sich another hurryin' up guns
en hosses _you_ never see!  De women folks has gone for to stir up de
relations, en ole Mars Saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de
river road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him 'fo' he kin
git acrost de river wid Miss Sophia.  I reck'n dey's gwyne to be mighty
rough times.”

“Buck went off 'thout waking me up.”

“Well, I reck'n he _did_!  Dey warn't gwyne to mix you up in it.
 Mars Buck he loaded up his gun en 'lowed he's gwyne to fetch home a
Shepherdson or bust. Well, dey'll be plenty un 'm dah, I reck'n, en you
bet you he'll fetch one ef he gits a chanst.”

I took up the river road as hard as I could put.  By and by I begin to
hear guns a good ways off.  When I come in sight of the log store and
the woodpile where the steamboats lands I worked along under the trees
and brush till I got to a good place, and then I clumb up into the
forks of a cottonwood that was out of reach, and watched.  There was a
wood-rank four foot high a little ways in front of the tree, and first I
was going to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier I didn't.

There was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open
place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at
a couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside of the
steamboat landing; but they couldn't come it.  Every time one of them
showed himself on the river side of the woodpile he got shot at.  The
two boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch
both ways.

By and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling.  They started
riding towards the store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady
bead over the wood-rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle.  All
the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started
to carry him to the store; and that minute the two boys started on the
run.  They got half way to the tree I was in before the men noticed.
Then the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after
them.  They gained on the boys, but it didn't do no good, the boys had
too good a start; they got to the woodpile that was in front of my tree,
and slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge on the men again.
One of the boys was Buck, and the other was a slim young chap about
nineteen years old.

The men ripped around awhile, and then rode away.  As soon as they was
out of sight I sung out to Buck and told him.  He didn't know what
to make of my voice coming out of the tree at first.  He was awful
surprised.  He told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the
men come in sight again; said they was up to some devilment or
other--wouldn't be gone long.  I wished I was out of that tree, but I
dasn't come down.  Buck begun to cry and rip, and 'lowed that him and
his cousin Joe (that was the other young chap) would make up for this
day yet.  He said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two
or three of the enemy.  Said the Shepherdsons laid for them in
ambush.  Buck said his father and brothers ought to waited for their
relations--the Shepherdsons was too strong for them.  I asked him what
was become of young Harney and Miss Sophia.  He said they'd got across
the river and was safe.  I was glad of that; but the way Buck did take
on because he didn't manage to kill Harney that day he shot at him--I
hain't ever heard anything like it.

All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns--the men had
slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their
horses!  The boys jumped for the river--both of them hurt--and as they
swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and
singing out, “Kill them, kill them!”  It made me so sick I most fell out
of the tree.  I ain't a-going to tell _all_ that happened--it would make
me sick again if I was to do that.  I wished I hadn't ever come ashore
that night to see such things.  I ain't ever going to get shut of
them--lots of times I dream about them.

I stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down.
Sometimes I heard guns away off in the woods; and twice I seen little
gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns; so I reckoned the
trouble was still a-going on.  I was mighty downhearted; so I made up my
mind I wouldn't ever go anear that house again, because I reckoned I
was to blame, somehow. I judged that that piece of paper meant that Miss
Sophia was to meet Harney somewheres at half-past two and run off; and
I judged I ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way
she acted, and then maybe he would a locked her up, and this awful mess
wouldn't ever happened.

When I got down out of the tree I crept along down the river bank a
piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and
tugged at them till I got them ashore; then I covered up their faces,
and got away as quick as I could.  I cried a little when I was covering
up Buck's face, for he was mighty good to me.

It was just dark now.  I never went near the house, but struck through
the woods and made for the swamp.  Jim warn't on his island, so I
tramped off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows,
red-hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful country.  The raft was
gone!  My souls, but I was scared!  I couldn't get my breath for most
a minute. Then I raised a yell.  A voice not twenty-five foot from me
says:

“Good lan'! is dat you, honey?  Doan' make no noise.”

It was Jim's voice--nothing ever sounded so good before.  I run along the
bank a piece and got aboard, and Jim he grabbed me and hugged me, he was
so glad to see me.  He says:

“Laws bless you, chile, I 'uz right down sho' you's dead agin.  Jack's
been heah; he say he reck'n you's ben shot, kase you didn' come home no
mo'; so I's jes' dis minute a startin' de raf' down towards de mouf er
de crick, so's to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as Jack
comes agin en tells me for certain you _is_ dead.  Lawsy, I's mighty
glad to git you back again, honey.”

I says:

“All right--that's mighty good; they won't find me, and they'll think
I've been killed, and floated down the river--there's something up there
that 'll help them think so--so don't you lose no time, Jim, but just
shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can.”

I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in
the middle of the Mississippi.  Then we hung up our signal lantern, and
judged that we was free and safe once more.  I hadn't had a bite to eat
since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk,
and pork and cabbage and greens--there ain't nothing in the world so good
when it's cooked right--and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a
good time.  I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was
Jim to get away from the swamp.  We said there warn't no home like a
raft, after all.  Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a
raft don't.  You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.




CHAPTER XIX.

TWO or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by,
they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely.  Here is the way we put
in the time.  It was a monstrous big river down there--sometimes a mile
and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as
night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up--nearly always
in the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and
willows, and hid the raft with them.  Then we set out the lines.  Next
we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool
off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee
deep, and watched the daylight come.  Not a sound anywheres--perfectly
still--just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs
a-cluttering, maybe.  The first thing to see, looking away over the
water, was a kind of dull line--that was the woods on t'other side; you
couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more
paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and
warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots
drifting along ever so far away--trading scows, and such things; and
long black streaks--rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or
jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and
by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the
streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it
and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off
of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a
log-cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of
the river, being a woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can
throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and
comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell
on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way,
because they've left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they
do get pretty rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything
smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it!

A little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off
of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast.  And afterwards we would watch
the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by
lazy off to sleep.  Wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and
maybe see a steamboat coughing along up-stream, so far off towards the
other side you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was
a stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn't be
nothing to hear nor nothing to see--just solid lonesomeness.  Next
you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it
chopping, because they're most always doing it on a raft; you'd see the
axe flash and come down--you don't hear nothing; you see that axe go
up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the
_k'chunk_!--it had took all that time to come over the water.  So we
would put in the day, lazying around, listening to the stillness.  Once
there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things that went by was beating
tin pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them.  A scow or a
raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and
laughing--heard them plain; but we couldn't see no sign of them; it made
you feel crawly; it was like spirits carrying on that way in the air.
 Jim said he believed it was spirits; but I says:

“No; spirits wouldn't say, 'Dern the dern fog.'”

Soon as it was night out we shoved; when we got her out to about the
middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted
her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and
talked about all kinds of things--we was always naked, day and night,
whenever the mosquitoes would let us--the new clothes Buck's folks made
for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn't go much on
clothes, nohow.

Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest
time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe
a spark--which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water
you could see a spark or two--on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe
you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts.
It's lovely to live on a raft.  We had the sky up there, all speckled
with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and
discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.  Jim he
allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would
have took too long to _make_ so many.  Jim said the moon could a _laid_
them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing
against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it
could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them
streak down.  Jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the
nest.

Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the
dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out
of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful
pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and
her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her
waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the
raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't
tell how long, except maybe frogs or something.

After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or
three hours the shores was black--no more sparks in the cabin windows.
 These sparks was our clock--the first one that showed again meant
morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away.

One morning about daybreak I found a canoe and crossed over a chute to
the main shore--it was only two hundred yards--and paddled about a mile
up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if I couldn't get some
berries. Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cowpath crossed
the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as
they could foot it.  I thought I was a goner, for whenever anybody was
after anybody I judged it was _me_--or maybe Jim.  I was about to dig out
from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and sung
out and begged me to save their lives--said they hadn't been doing
nothing, and was being chased for it--said there was men and dogs
a-coming.  They wanted to jump right in, but I says:

“Don't you do it.  I don't hear the dogs and horses yet; you've got time
to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways; then you
take to the water and wade down to me and get in--that'll throw the dogs
off the scent.”

They done it, and soon as they was aboard I lit out for our towhead,
and in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off,
shouting. We heard them come along towards the crick, but couldn't
see them; they seemed to stop and fool around a while; then, as we got
further and further away all the time, we couldn't hardly hear them at
all; by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the
river, everything was quiet, and we paddled over to the towhead and hid
in the cottonwoods and was safe.

One of these fellows was about seventy or upwards, and had a bald head
and very gray whiskers.  He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and
a greasy blue woollen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed
into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses--no, he only had one.  He had
an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over
his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet-bags.

The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery.  After
breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come out
was that these chaps didn't know one another.

“What got you into trouble?” says the baldhead to t'other chap.

“Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth--and
it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it--but I
stayed about one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act
of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town, and
you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off.  So
I told you I was expecting trouble myself, and would scatter out _with_
you. That's the whole yarn--what's yourn?

“Well, I'd ben a-running' a little temperance revival thar 'bout a week,
and was the pet of the women folks, big and little, for I was makin' it
mighty warm for the rummies, I _tell_ you, and takin' as much as five
or six dollars a night--ten cents a head, children and niggers free--and
business a-growin' all the time, when somehow or another a little report
got around last night that I had a way of puttin' in my time with a
private jug on the sly.  A nigger rousted me out this mornin', and told
me the people was getherin' on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and
they'd be along pretty soon and give me 'bout half an hour's start,
and then run me down if they could; and if they got me they'd tar
and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure.  I didn't wait for no
breakfast--I warn't hungry.”

“Old man,” said the young one, “I reckon we might double-team it
together; what do you think?”

“I ain't undisposed.  What's your line--mainly?”

“Jour printer by trade; do a little in patent medicines;
theater-actor--tragedy, you know; take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology
when there's a chance; teach singing-geography school for a change;
sling a lecture sometimes--oh, I do lots of things--most anything that
comes handy, so it ain't work.  What's your lay?”

“I've done considerble in the doctoring way in my time.  Layin' on o'
hands is my best holt--for cancer and paralysis, and sich things; and I
k'n tell a fortune pretty good when I've got somebody along to find out
the facts for me.  Preachin's my line, too, and workin' camp-meetin's,
and missionaryin' around.”

Nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh
and says:

“Alas!”

“What 're you alassin' about?” says the bald-head.

“To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded
down into such company.”  And he begun to wipe the corner of his eye
with a rag.

“Dern your skin, ain't the company good enough for you?” says the
baldhead, pretty pert and uppish.

“Yes, it _is_ good enough for me; it's as good as I deserve; for who
fetched me so low when I was so high?  I did myself.  I don't blame
_you_, gentlemen--far from it; I don't blame anybody.  I deserve it
all.  Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know--there's a grave
somewhere for me. The world may go on just as it's always done, and take
everything from me--loved ones, property, everything; but it can't take
that. Some day I'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken
heart will be at rest.”  He went on a-wiping.

“Drot your pore broken heart,” says the baldhead; “what are you heaving
your pore broken heart at _us_ f'r?  _we_ hain't done nothing.”

“No, I know you haven't.  I ain't blaming you, gentlemen.  I brought
myself down--yes, I did it myself.  It's right I should suffer--perfectly
right--I don't make any moan.”

“Brought you down from whar?  Whar was you brought down from?”

“Ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes--let it pass--'tis
no matter.  The secret of my birth--”

“The secret of your birth!  Do you mean to say--”

“Gentlemen,” says the young man, very solemn, “I will reveal it to you,
for I feel I may have confidence in you.  By rights I am a duke!”

Jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that; and I reckon mine did, too.
Then the baldhead says:  “No! you can't mean it?”

“Yes.  My great-grandfather, eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, fled
to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure
air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father
dying about the same time.  The second son of the late duke seized the
titles and estates--the infant real duke was ignored.  I am the lineal
descendant of that infant--I am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater; and
here am I, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised
by the cold world, ragged, worn, heart-broken, and degraded to the
companionship of felons on a raft!”

Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to comfort him, but
he said it warn't much use, he couldn't be much comforted; said if we
was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most
anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how.  He said we
ought to bow when we spoke to him, and say “Your Grace,” or “My Lord,”
 or “Your Lordship”--and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain
“Bridgewater,” which, he said, was a title anyway, and not a name; and
one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for
him he wanted done.

Well, that was all easy, so we done it.  All through dinner Jim stood
around and waited on him, and says, “Will yo' Grace have some o' dis or
some o' dat?” and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to
him.

But the old man got pretty silent by and by--didn't have much to say, and
didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on
around that duke.  He seemed to have something on his mind.  So, along
in the afternoon, he says:

“Looky here, Bilgewater,” he says, “I'm nation sorry for you, but you
ain't the only person that's had troubles like that.”

“No?”

“No you ain't.  You ain't the only person that's ben snaked down
wrongfully out'n a high place.”

“Alas!”

“No, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth.”  And,
by jings, _he_ begins to cry.

“Hold!  What do you mean?”

“Bilgewater, kin I trust you?” says the old man, still sort of sobbing.

“To the bitter death!”  He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it,
and says, “That secret of your being:  speak!”

“Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin!”

You bet you, Jim and me stared this time.  Then the duke says:

“You are what?”

“Yes, my friend, it is too true--your eyes is lookin' at this very moment
on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the
Sixteen and Marry Antonette.”

“You!  At your age!  No!  You mean you're the late Charlemagne; you must
be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least.”

“Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung
these gray hairs and this premature balditude.  Yes, gentlemen, you
see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin', exiled,
trampled-on, and sufferin' rightful King of France.”

Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn't know hardly what to
do, we was so sorry--and so glad and proud we'd got him with us, too.
 So we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort
_him_. But he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead and done
with it all could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel
easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his
rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him
“Your Majesty,” and waited on him first at meals, and didn't set down
in his presence till he asked them. So Jim and me set to majestying him,
and doing this and that and t'other for him, and standing up till he
told us we might set down.  This done him heaps of good, and so he
got cheerful and comfortable.  But the duke kind of soured on him, and
didn't look a bit satisfied with the way things was going; still,
the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the duke's
great-grandfather and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was a good
deal thought of by _his_ father, and was allowed to come to the palace
considerable; but the duke stayed huffy a good while, till by and by the
king says:

“Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this h-yer
raft, Bilgewater, and so what's the use o' your bein' sour?  It 'll only
make things oncomfortable.  It ain't my fault I warn't born a duke,
it ain't your fault you warn't born a king--so what's the use to worry?
 Make the best o' things the way you find 'em, says I--that's my motto.
 This ain't no bad thing that we've struck here--plenty grub and an easy
life--come, give us your hand, duke, and le's all be friends.”

The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it.  It took
away all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it, because
it would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the
raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody
to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others.

It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no
kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds.  But I
never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way;
then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble.  If they
wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no objections, 'long as
it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell Jim, so
I didn't tell him.  If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt
that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them
have their own way.




CHAPTER XX.

THEY asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we
covered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead of
running--was Jim a runaway nigger?  Says I:

“Goodness sakes! would a runaway nigger run _south_?”

No, they allowed he wouldn't.  I had to account for things some way, so
I says:

“My folks was living in Pike County, in Missouri, where I was born, and
they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike.  Pa, he 'lowed
he'd break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who's got a little
one-horse place on the river, forty-four mile below Orleans.  Pa was
pretty poor, and had some debts; so when he'd squared up there warn't
nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, Jim.  That warn't
enough to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other way.
 Well, when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day; he ketched
this piece of a raft; so we reckoned we'd go down to Orleans on it.
 Pa's luck didn't hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard corner of
the raft one night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel;
Jim and me come up all right, but pa was drunk, and Ike was only four
years old, so they never come up no more.  Well, for the next day or
two we had considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in
skiffs and trying to take Jim away from me, saying they believed he was
a runaway nigger.  We don't run daytimes no more now; nights they don't
bother us.”

The duke says:

“Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we
want to.  I'll think the thing over--I'll invent a plan that'll fix it.
We'll let it alone for to-day, because of course we don't want to go by
that town yonder in daylight--it mightn't be healthy.”

Towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat
lightning was squirting around low down in the sky, and the leaves was
beginning to shiver--it was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see
that.  So the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see
what the beds was like.  My bed was a straw tick better than Jim's,
which was a corn-shuck tick; there's always cobs around about in a shuck
tick, and they poke into you and hurt; and when you roll over the dry
shucks sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves; it
makes such a rustling that you wake up.  Well, the duke allowed he would
take my bed; but the king allowed he wouldn't.  He says:

“I should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that
a corn-shuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on.  Your Grace 'll
take the shuck bed yourself.”

Jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute, being afraid there was
going to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when
the duke says:

“'Tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of
oppression.  Misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I
submit; 'tis my fate.  I am alone in the world--let me suffer; can bear
it.”

We got away as soon as it was good and dark.  The king told us to stand
well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we
got a long ways below the town.  We come in sight of the little bunch of
lights by and by--that was the town, you know--and slid by, about a half
a mile out, all right.  When we was three-quarters of a mile below we
hoisted up our signal lantern; and about ten o'clock it come on to rain
and blow and thunder and lighten like everything; so the king told us
to both stay on watch till the weather got better; then him and the duke
crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night.  It was my watch
below till twelve, but I wouldn't a turned in anyway if I'd had a bed,
because a body don't see such a storm as that every day in the week, not
by a long sight.  My souls, how the wind did scream along!  And every
second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half
a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain,
and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a H-WHACK!--bum!
bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum--and the thunder would go rumbling
and grumbling away, and quit--and then RIP comes another flash and
another sockdolager.  The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes,
but I hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind.  We didn't have no trouble
about snags; the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant
that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or
that and miss them.

I had the middle watch, you know, but I was pretty sleepy by that time,
so Jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he was always
mighty good that way, Jim was.  I crawled into the wigwam, but the king
and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warn't no show for
me; so I laid outside--I didn't mind the rain, because it was warm, and
the waves warn't running so high now.  About two they come up again,
though, and Jim was going to call me; but he changed his mind, because
he reckoned they warn't high enough yet to do any harm; but he was
mistaken about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a
regular ripper and washed me overboard.  It most killed Jim a-laughing.
 He was the easiest nigger to laugh that ever was, anyway.

I took the watch, and Jim he laid down and snored away; and by and by
the storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin-light that showed
I rousted him out, and we slid the raft into hiding quarters for the
day.

The king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast, and him
and the duke played seven-up a while, five cents a game.  Then they got
tired of it, and allowed they would “lay out a campaign,” as they called
it. The duke went down into his carpet-bag, and fetched up a lot of
little printed bills and read them out loud.  One bill said, “The
celebrated Dr. Armand de Montalban, of Paris,” would “lecture on the
Science of Phrenology” at such and such a place, on the blank day of
blank, at ten cents admission, and “furnish charts of character at
twenty-five cents apiece.”  The duke said that was _him_.  In another
bill he was the “world-renowned Shakespearian tragedian, Garrick the
Younger, of Drury Lane, London.”  In other bills he had a lot of other
names and done other wonderful things, like finding water and gold with
a “divining-rod,” “dissipating witch spells,” and so on.  By and by he
says:

“But the histrionic muse is the darling.  Have you ever trod the boards,
Royalty?”

“No,” says the king.

“You shall, then, before you're three days older, Fallen Grandeur,” says
the duke.  “The first good town we come to we'll hire a hall and do the
sword fight in Richard III. and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.
How does that strike you?”

“I'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater; but, you
see, I don't know nothing about play-actin', and hain't ever seen much
of it.  I was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace.  Do you
reckon you can learn me?”

“Easy!”

“All right.  I'm jist a-freezn' for something fresh, anyway.  Le's
commence right away.”

So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was, and
said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet.

“But if Juliet's such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white
whiskers is goin' to look oncommon odd on her, maybe.”

“No, don't you worry; these country jakes won't ever think of that.
Besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the
difference in the world; Juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight
before she goes to bed, and she's got on her night-gown and her ruffled
nightcap.  Here are the costumes for the parts.”

He got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was
meedyevil armor for Richard III. and t'other chap, and a long white
cotton nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match.  The king was
satisfied; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the
most splendid spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same
time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the
king and told him to get his part by heart.

There was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and
after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run
in daylight without it being dangersome for Jim; so he allowed he would
go down to the town and fix that thing.  The king allowed he would go,
too, and see if he couldn't strike something.  We was out of coffee, so
Jim said I better go along with them in the canoe and get some.

When we got there there warn't nobody stirring; streets empty, and
perfectly dead and still, like Sunday.  We found a sick nigger sunning
himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn't too young or
too sick or too old was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in the
woods.  The king got the directions, and allowed he'd go and work that
camp-meeting for all it was worth, and I might go, too.

The duke said what he was after was a printing-office.  We found it;
a little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shop--carpenters and
printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked.  It was a dirty,
littered-up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of
horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls.  The duke shed
his coat and said he was all right now.  So me and the king lit out for
the camp-meeting.

We got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most
awful hot day.  There was as much as a thousand people there from
twenty mile around.  The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched
everywheres, feeding out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep
off the flies.  There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with
branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of
watermelons and green corn and such-like truck.

The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was
bigger and held crowds of people.  The benches was made out of outside
slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into
for legs. They didn't have no backs.  The preachers had high platforms
to stand on at one end of the sheds.  The women had on sun-bonnets;
and some had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the
young ones had on calico.  Some of the young men was barefooted, and
some of the children didn't have on any clothes but just a tow-linen
shirt.  Some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks
was courting on the sly.

The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn.  He lined
out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it,
there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then
he lined out two more for them to sing--and so on.  The people woke up
more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some
begun to groan, and some begun to shout.  Then the preacher begun to
preach, and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of
the platform and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front
of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his
words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up
his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and
that, shouting, “It's the brazen serpent in the wilderness!  Look upon
it and live!”  And people would shout out, “Glory!--A-a-_men_!”  And so
he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen:

“Oh, come to the mourners' bench! come, black with sin! (_Amen_!) come,
sick and sore! (_Amen_!) come, lame and halt and blind! (_Amen_!) come,
pore and needy, sunk in shame! (_A-A-Men_!) come, all that's worn and
soiled and suffering!--come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite
heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse
is free, the door of heaven stands open--oh, enter in and be at rest!”
 (_A-A-Men_!  _Glory, Glory Hallelujah!_)

And so on.  You couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on
account of the shouting and crying.  Folks got up everywheres in the
crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners'
bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the
mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and
shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild.

Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him
over everybody; and next he went a-charging up on to the platform, and
the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it.  He
told them he was a pirate--been a pirate for thirty years out in the
Indian Ocean--and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in
a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to
goodness he'd been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat
without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that
ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for
the first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start
right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest
of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could
do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews
in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there
without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced
a pirate he would say to him, “Don't you thank me, don't you give me no
credit; it all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville camp-meeting,
natural brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher
there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!”

And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody.  Then somebody
sings out, “Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!”  Well,
a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, “Let _him_
pass the hat around!”  Then everybody said it, the preacher too.

So the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes,
and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being
so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the
prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would
up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he
always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or
six times--and he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to
live in their houses, and said they'd think it was an honor; but he said
as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn't do no good, and
besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to
work on the pirates.

When we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had
collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents.  And then he had
fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a
wagon when he was starting home through the woods.  The king said,
take it all around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the
missionarying line.  He said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't
amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with.

The duke was thinking _he'd_ been doing pretty well till the king come
to show up, but after that he didn't think so so much.  He had set
up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that
printing-office--horse bills--and took the money, four dollars.  And he
had got in ten dollars' worth of advertisements for the paper, which he
said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance--so
they done it. The price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took
in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them
paying him in advance; they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as
usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the
price as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash.
 He set up a little piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of
his own head--three verses--kind of sweet and saddish--the name of it was,
“Yes, crush, cold world, this breaking heart”--and he left that all set
up and ready to print in the paper, and didn't charge nothing for it.
 Well, he took in nine dollars and a half, and said he'd done a pretty
square day's work for it.

Then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged
for, because it was for us.  It had a picture of a runaway nigger with
a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and “$200 reward” under it.  The
reading was all about Jim, and just described him to a dot.  It said
he run away from St. Jacques' plantation, forty mile below New Orleans,
last winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send
him back he could have the reward and expenses.

“Now,” says the duke, “after to-night we can run in the daytime if we
want to.  Whenever we see anybody coming we can tie Jim hand and foot
with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we
captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat,
so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down
to get the reward.  Handcuffs and chains would look still better on Jim,
but it wouldn't go well with the story of us being so poor.  Too much
like jewelry.  Ropes are the correct thing--we must preserve the unities,
as we say on the boards.”

We all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no trouble
about running daytimes.  We judged we could make miles enough that night
to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the duke's work in
the printing office was going to make in that little town; then we could
boom right along if we wanted to.

We laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten
o'clock; then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't
hoist our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it.

When Jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says:

“Huck, does you reck'n we gwyne to run acrost any mo' kings on dis
trip?”

“No,” I says, “I reckon not.”

“Well,” says he, “dat's all right, den.  I doan' mine one er two kings,
but dat's enough.  Dis one's powerful drunk, en de duke ain' much
better.”

I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French, so he could hear
what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so long, and
had so much trouble, he'd forgot it.




CHAPTER XXI.

IT was after sun-up now, but we went right on and didn't tie up.  The
king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty; but after
they'd jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good
deal. After breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft,
and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs
dangle in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went
to getting his Romeo and Juliet by heart.  When he had got it pretty
good him and the duke begun to practice it together.  The duke had to
learn him over and over again how to say every speech; and he made him
sigh, and put his hand on his heart, and after a while he said he done
it pretty well; “only,” he says, “you mustn't bellow out _Romeo_!
that way, like a bull--you must say it soft and sick and languishy,
so--R-o-o-meo! that is the idea; for Juliet's a dear sweet mere child of
a girl, you know, and she doesn't bray like a jackass.”

Well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out
of oak laths, and begun to practice the sword fight--the duke called
himself Richard III.; and the way they laid on and pranced around
the raft was grand to see.  But by and by the king tripped and fell
overboard, and after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all
kinds of adventures they'd had in other times along the river.

After dinner the duke says:

“Well, Capet, we'll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so
I guess we'll add a little more to it.  We want a little something to
answer encores with, anyway.”

“What's onkores, Bilgewater?”

The duke told him, and then says:

“I'll answer by doing the Highland fling or the sailor's hornpipe; and
you--well, let me see--oh, I've got it--you can do Hamlet's soliloquy.”

“Hamlet's which?”

“Hamlet's soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare.
Ah, it's sublime, sublime!  Always fetches the house.  I haven't got
it in the book--I've only got one volume--but I reckon I can piece it out
from memory.  I'll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call
it back from recollection's vaults.”

So he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible
every now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would
squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next
he would sigh, and next he'd let on to drop a tear.  It was beautiful
to see him. By and by he got it.  He told us to give attention.  Then
he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his
arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky;
and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that,
all through his speech, he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his
chest, and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever I see before.
 This is the speech--I learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it
to the king:

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of
so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come
to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the
innocent sleep, Great nature's second course, And makes us rather sling
the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of.
There's the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I
would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The
oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The law's delay, and the
quietus which his pangs might take. In the dead waste and middle of the
night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But
that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns,
Breathes forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of
resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage, Is sicklied o'er with care.
And all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops, With this
regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. 'Tis a
consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope
not thy ponderous and marble jaws. But get thee to a nunnery—go!

Well, the old man he liked that speech, and he mighty soon got it so he
could do it first rate. It seemed like he was just born for it; and when
he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he
would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it off.

The first chance we got, the duke he had some show bills printed; and
after that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a
most uncommon lively place, for there warn't nothing but sword-fighting
and rehearsing--as the duke called it--going on all the time. One morning,
when we was pretty well down the State of Arkansaw, we come in sight
of a little one-horse town in a big bend; so we tied up about
three-quarters of a mile above it, in the mouth of a crick which was
shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but Jim took
the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that
place for our show.

We struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that
afternoon, and the country people was already beginning to come in, in
all kinds of old shackly wagons, and on horses. The circus would leave
before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. The duke he
hired the court house, and we went around and stuck up our bills. They
read like this:

Shaksperean Revival!!!

Wonderful Attraction!

For One Night Only! The world renowned tragedians,

David Garrick the younger, of Drury Lane Theatre, London,

and

Edmund Kean the elder, of the Royal Haymarket Theatre, Whitechapel,
Pudding Lane, Piccadilly, London, and the Royal Continental Theatres, in
their sublime Shaksperean Spectacle entitled The Balcony Scene in

Romeo and Juliet!!!

Romeo...................................... Mr. Garrick.

Juliet..................................... Mr. Kean.

Assisted by the whole strength of the company!

New costumes, new scenery, new appointments!

Also:

The thrilling, masterly, and blood-curdling Broad-sword conflict In
Richard III.!!!

Richard III................................ Mr. Garrick.

Richmond................................... Mr. Kean.

also:

(by special request,)

Hamlet's Immortal Soliloquy!!

By the Illustrious Kean!

Done by him 300 consecutive nights in Paris!

For One Night Only,

On account of imperative European engagements!

Admission 25 cents; children and servants, 10 cents.

Then we went loafing around the town. The stores and houses was most all
old shackly dried-up frame concerns that hadn't ever been painted; they
was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts, so as to be out of
reach of the water when the river was overflowed. The houses had little
gardens around them, but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in
them but jimpson weeds, and sunflowers, and ash-piles, and old curled-up
boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles, and rags, and played-out
tin-ware. The fences was made of different kinds of boards, nailed on
at different times; and they leaned every which-way, and had gates that
didn't generly have but one hinge--a leather one. Some of the fences
had been whitewashed, some time or another, but the duke said it was in
Clumbus's time, like enough. There was generly hogs in the garden, and
people driving them out.

All the stores was along one street.  They had white domestic awnings in
front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awning-posts.
There was empty drygoods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting
on them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives; and
chawing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching--a mighty ornery
lot. They generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella,
but didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats, they called one another Bill,
and Buck, and Hank, and Joe, and Andy, and talked lazy and drawly, and
used considerable many cuss words.  There was as many as one loafer
leaning up against every awning-post, and he most always had his hands
in his britches-pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw
of tobacco or scratch.  What a body was hearing amongst them all the
time was:

“Gimme a chaw 'v tobacker, Hank.”

“Cain't; I hain't got but one chaw left.  Ask Bill.”

Maybe Bill he gives him a chaw; maybe he lies and says he ain't got
none. Some of them kinds of loafers never has a cent in the world, nor a
chaw of tobacco of their own.  They get all their chawing by borrowing;
they say to a fellow, “I wisht you'd len' me a chaw, Jack, I jist this
minute give Ben Thompson the last chaw I had”--which is a lie pretty
much everytime; it don't fool nobody but a stranger; but Jack ain't no
stranger, so he says:

“_You_ give him a chaw, did you?  So did your sister's cat's
grandmother. You pay me back the chaws you've awready borry'd off'n me,
Lafe Buckner, then I'll loan you one or two ton of it, and won't charge
you no back intrust, nuther.”

“Well, I _did_ pay you back some of it wunst.”

“Yes, you did--'bout six chaws.  You borry'd store tobacker and paid back
nigger-head.”

Store tobacco is flat black plug, but these fellows mostly chaws the
natural leaf twisted.  When they borrow a chaw they don't generly cut it
off with a knife, but set the plug in between their teeth, and gnaw with
their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in
two; then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it
when it's handed back, and says, sarcastic:

“Here, gimme the _chaw_, and you take the _plug_.”

All the streets and lanes was just mud; they warn't nothing else _but_
mud--mud as black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places,
and two or three inches deep in _all_ the places.  The hogs loafed and
grunted around everywheres.  You'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs
come lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way,
where folks had to walk around her, and she'd stretch out and shut her
eyes and wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as
happy as if she was on salary. And pretty soon you'd hear a loafer
sing out, “Hi!  _so_ boy! sick him, Tige!” and away the sow would go,
squealing most horrible, with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and
three or four dozen more a-coming; and then you would see all the
loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight, and laugh at the fun
and look grateful for the noise.  Then they'd settle back again till
there was a dog fight.  There couldn't anything wake them up all over,
and make them happy all over, like a dog fight--unless it might be
putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him, or tying a
tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death.

On the river front some of the houses was sticking out over the bank,
and they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in. The people
had moved out of them.  The bank was caved away under one corner of some
others, and that corner was hanging over.  People lived in them yet, but
it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house
caves in at a time.  Sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep
will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the
river in one summer. Such a town as that has to be always moving back,
and back, and back, because the river's always gnawing at it.

The nearer it got to noon that day the thicker and thicker was the
wagons and horses in the streets, and more coming all the time.
 Families fetched their dinners with them from the country, and eat them
in the wagons.  There was considerable whisky drinking going on, and I
seen three fights.  By and by somebody sings out:

“Here comes old Boggs!--in from the country for his little old monthly
drunk; here he comes, boys!”

All the loafers looked glad; I reckoned they was used to having fun out
of Boggs.  One of them says:

“Wonder who he's a-gwyne to chaw up this time.  If he'd a-chawed up all
the men he's ben a-gwyne to chaw up in the last twenty year he'd have
considerable ruputation now.”

Another one says, “I wisht old Boggs 'd threaten me, 'cuz then I'd know
I warn't gwyne to die for a thousan' year.”

Boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an
Injun, and singing out:

“Cler the track, thar.  I'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is
a-gwyne to raise.”

He was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year
old, and had a very red face.  Everybody yelled at him and laughed at
him and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and
lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now because
he'd come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, “Meat
first, and spoon vittles to top off on.”

He see me, and rode up and says:

“Whar'd you come f'm, boy?  You prepared to die?”

Then he rode on.  I was scared, but a man says:

“He don't mean nothing; he's always a-carryin' on like that when he's
drunk.  He's the best naturedest old fool in Arkansaw--never hurt nobody,
drunk nor sober.”

Boggs rode up before the biggest store in town, and bent his head down
so he could see under the curtain of the awning and yells:

“Come out here, Sherburn! Come out and meet the man you've swindled.
You're the houn' I'm after, and I'm a-gwyne to have you, too!”

And so he went on, calling Sherburn everything he could lay his tongue
to, and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and
going on.  By and by a proud-looking man about fifty-five--and he was a
heap the best dressed man in that town, too--steps out of the store, and
the crowd drops back on each side to let him come.  He says to Boggs,
mighty ca'm and slow--he says:

“I'm tired of this, but I'll endure it till one o'clock.  Till one
o'clock, mind--no longer.  If you open your mouth against me only once
after that time you can't travel so far but I will find you.”

Then he turns and goes in.  The crowd looked mighty sober; nobody
stirred, and there warn't no more laughing.  Boggs rode off
blackguarding Sherburn as loud as he could yell, all down the street;
and pretty soon back he comes and stops before the store, still keeping
it up.  Some men crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up,
but he wouldn't; they told him it would be one o'clock in about fifteen
minutes, and so he _must_ go home--he must go right away.  But it didn't
do no good.  He cussed away with all his might, and throwed his hat down
in the mud and rode over it, and pretty soon away he went a-raging down
the street again, with his gray hair a-flying. Everybody that could get
a chance at him tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they
could lock him up and get him sober; but it warn't no use--up the street
he would tear again, and give Sherburn another cussing.  By and by
somebody says:

“Go for his daughter!--quick, go for his daughter; sometimes he'll listen
to her.  If anybody can persuade him, she can.”

So somebody started on a run.  I walked down street a ways and stopped.
In about five or ten minutes here comes Boggs again, but not on his
horse.  He was a-reeling across the street towards me, bare-headed, with
a friend on both sides of him a-holt of his arms and hurrying him along.
He was quiet, and looked uneasy; and he warn't hanging back any, but was
doing some of the hurrying himself.  Somebody sings out:

“Boggs!”

I looked over there to see who said it, and it was that Colonel
Sherburn. He was standing perfectly still in the street, and had a
pistol raised in his right hand--not aiming it, but holding it out with
the barrel tilted up towards the sky.  The same second I see a young
girl coming on the run, and two men with her.  Boggs and the men turned
round to see who called him, and when they see the pistol the men
jumped to one side, and the pistol-barrel come down slow and steady to
a level--both barrels cocked. Boggs throws up both of his hands and says,
“O Lord, don't shoot!”  Bang! goes the first shot, and he staggers back,
clawing at the air--bang! goes the second one, and he tumbles backwards
on to the ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread out.  That young
girl screamed out and comes rushing, and down she throws herself on her
father, crying, and saying, “Oh, he's killed him, he's killed him!”  The
crowd closed up around them, and shouldered and jammed one another, with
their necks stretched, trying to see, and people on the inside trying to
shove them back and shouting, “Back, back! give him air, give him air!”

Colonel Sherburn he tossed his pistol on to the ground, and turned
around on his heels and walked off.

They took Boggs to a little drug store, the crowd pressing around just
the same, and the whole town following, and I rushed and got a good
place at the window, where I was close to him and could see in.  They
laid him on the floor and put one large Bible under his head, and opened
another one and spread it on his breast; but they tore open his shirt
first, and I seen where one of the bullets went in.  He made about a
dozen long gasps, his breast lifting the Bible up when he drawed in his
breath, and letting it down again when he breathed it out--and after that
he laid still; he was dead.  Then they pulled his daughter away from
him, screaming and crying, and took her off.  She was about sixteen, and
very sweet and gentle looking, but awful pale and scared.

Well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirming and scrouging and
pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look, but people
that had the places wouldn't give them up, and folks behind them was
saying all the time, “Say, now, you've looked enough, you fellows;
'tain't right and 'tain't fair for you to stay thar all the time, and
never give nobody a chance; other folks has their rights as well as
you.”

There was considerable jawing back, so I slid out, thinking maybe
there was going to be trouble.  The streets was full, and everybody was
excited. Everybody that seen the shooting was telling how it happened,
and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows,
stretching their necks and listening.  One long, lanky man, with long
hair and a big white fur stovepipe hat on the back of his head, and a
crooked-handled cane, marked out the places on the ground where Boggs
stood and where Sherburn stood, and the people following him around from
one place to t'other and watching everything he done, and bobbing their
heads to show they understood, and stooping a little and resting their
hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with
his cane; and then he stood up straight and stiff where Sherburn had
stood, frowning and having his hat-brim down over his eyes, and sung
out, “Boggs!” and then fetched his cane down slow to a level, and says
“Bang!” staggered backwards, says “Bang!” again, and fell down flat on
his back. The people that had seen the thing said he done it perfect;
said it was just exactly the way it all happened.  Then as much as a
dozen people got out their bottles and treated him.

Well, by and by somebody said Sherburn ought to be lynched.  In about a
minute everybody was saying it; so away they went, mad and yelling, and
snatching down every clothes-line they come to to do the hanging with.




CHAPTER XXII.

THEY swarmed up towards Sherburn's house, a-whooping and raging like
Injuns, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped
to mush, and it was awful to see.  Children was heeling it ahead of the
mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way; and every window along
the road was full of women's heads, and there was nigger boys in every
tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence; and as soon as the
mob would get nearly to them they would break and skaddle back out of
reach.  Lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared
most to death.

They swarmed up in front of Sherburn's palings as thick as they could
jam together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise.  It
was a little twenty-foot yard.  Some sung out “Tear down the fence! tear
down the fence!”  Then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and
smashing, and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to
roll in like a wave.

Just then Sherburn steps out on to the roof of his little front porch,
with a double-barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly
ca'm and deliberate, not saying a word.  The racket stopped, and the
wave sucked back.

Sherburn never said a word--just stood there, looking down.  The
stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable.  Sherburn run his eye slow
along the crowd; and wherever it struck the people tried a little to
out-gaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes and looked
sneaky. Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant
kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread
that's got sand in it.

Then he says, slow and scornful:

“The idea of _you_ lynching anybody!  It's amusing.  The idea of you
thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a _man_!  Because you're brave
enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along
here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a
_man_?  Why, a _man's_ safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind--as
long as it's daytime and you're not behind him.

“Do I know you?  I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the
South, and I've lived in the North; so I know the average all around.
The average man's a coward.  In the North he lets anybody walk over him
that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it.
In the South one man all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men
in the daytime, and robbed the lot.  Your newspapers call you a
brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other
people--whereas you're just _as_ brave, and no braver.  Why don't your
juries hang murderers?  Because they're afraid the man's friends will
shoot them in the back, in the dark--and it's just what they _would_ do.

“So they always acquit; and then a _man_ goes in the night, with a
hundred masked cowards at his back and lynches the rascal.  Your mistake
is, that you didn't bring a man with you; that's one mistake, and the
other is that you didn't come in the dark and fetch your masks.  You
brought _part_ of a man--Buck Harkness, there--and if you hadn't had him
to start you, you'd a taken it out in blowing.

“You didn't want to come.  The average man don't like trouble and
danger. _You_ don't like trouble and danger.  But if only _half_ a
man--like Buck Harkness, there--shouts 'Lynch him! lynch him!' you're
afraid to back down--afraid you'll be found out to be what you
are--_cowards_--and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves on to that
half-a-man's coat-tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big
things you're going to do. The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's
what an army is--a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in
them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their
officers.  But a mob without any _man_ at the head of it is _beneath_
pitifulness.  Now the thing for _you_ to do is to droop your tails and
go home and crawl in a hole.  If any real lynching's going to be done it
will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they'll
bring their masks, and fetch a _man_ along.  Now _leave_--and take your
half-a-man with you”--tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking
it when he says this.

The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart, and went tearing
off every which way, and Buck Harkness he heeled it after them, looking
tolerable cheap.  I could a stayed if I wanted to, but I didn't want to.

I went to the circus and loafed around the back side till the watchman
went by, and then dived in under the tent.  I had my twenty-dollar gold
piece and some other money, but I reckoned I better save it, because
there ain't no telling how soon you are going to need it, away from
home and amongst strangers that way.  You can't be too careful.  I ain't
opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain't no other way, but
there ain't no use in _wasting_ it on them.

It was a real bully circus.  It was the splendidest sight that ever was
when they all come riding in, two and two, a gentleman and lady, side
by side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes
nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs easy and
comfortable--there must a been twenty of them--and every lady with a
lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang
of real sure-enough queens, and dressed in clothes that cost millions of
dollars, and just littered with diamonds.  It was a powerful fine sight;
I never see anything so lovely.  And then one by one they got up
and stood, and went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and
graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight, with their
heads bobbing and skimming along, away up there under the tent-roof, and
every lady's rose-leafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips,
and she looking like the most loveliest parasol.

And then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, first one
foot out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and
more, and the ringmaster going round and round the center-pole, cracking
his whip and shouting “Hi!--hi!” and the clown cracking jokes behind
him; and by and by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her
knuckles on her hips and every gentleman folded his arms, and then how
the horses did lean over and hump themselves!  And so one after the
other they all skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow I
ever see, and then scampered out, and everybody clapped their hands and
went just about wild.

Well, all through the circus they done the most astonishing things; and
all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people.  The
ringmaster couldn't ever say a word to him but he was back at him quick
as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said; and how he ever
_could_ think of so many of them, and so sudden and so pat, was what I
couldn't noway understand. Why, I couldn't a thought of them in a year.
And by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ring--said he wanted to
ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was.  They argued
and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show
come to a standstill.  Then the people begun to holler at him and make
fun of him, and that made him mad, and he begun to rip and tear; so that
stirred up the people, and a lot of men begun to pile down off of the
benches and swarm towards the ring, saying, “Knock him down! throw him
out!” and one or two women begun to scream.  So, then, the ringmaster
he made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn't be no
disturbance, and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more
trouble he would let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse.
 So everybody laughed and said all right, and the man got on. The minute
he was on, the horse begun to rip and tear and jump and cavort around,
with two circus men hanging on to his bridle trying to hold him, and the
drunk man hanging on to his neck, and his heels flying in the air every
jump, and the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing
till tears rolled down.  And at last, sure enough, all the circus men
could do, the horse broke loose, and away he went like the very nation,
round and round the ring, with that sot laying down on him and hanging
to his neck, with first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side,
and then t'other one on t'other side, and the people just crazy.  It
warn't funny to me, though; I was all of a tremble to see his danger.
 But pretty soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle,
a-reeling this way and that; and the next minute he sprung up and
dropped the bridle and stood! and the horse a-going like a house afire
too.  He just stood up there, a-sailing around as easy and comfortable
as if he warn't ever drunk in his life--and then he begun to pull off his
clothes and sling them.  He shed them so thick they kind of clogged up
the air, and altogether he shed seventeen suits. And, then, there he
was, slim and handsome, and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you
ever saw, and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly
hum--and finally skipped off, and made his bow and danced off to
the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling with pleasure and
astonishment.

Then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled, and he _was_ the
sickest ringmaster you ever see, I reckon.  Why, it was one of his own
men!  He had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on
to nobody. Well, I felt sheepish enough to be took in so, but I wouldn't
a been in that ringmaster's place, not for a thousand dollars.  I don't
know; there may be bullier circuses than what that one was, but I
never struck them yet. Anyways, it was plenty good enough for _me_; and
wherever I run across it, it can have all of _my_ custom every time.

Well, that night we had _our_ show; but there warn't only about twelve
people there--just enough to pay expenses.  And they laughed all the
time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before
the show was over, but one boy which was asleep.  So the duke said these
Arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare; what they wanted
was low comedy--and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he
reckoned.  He said he could size their style.  So next morning he got
some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off
some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village.  The bills said:




CHAPTER XXIII.

WELL, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and
a curtain and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house
was jam full of men in no time.  When the place couldn't hold no more,
the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on
to the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech,
and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one
that ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy, and about
Edmund Kean the Elder, which was to play the main principal part in it;
and at last when he'd got everybody's expectations up high enough, he
rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing
out on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over,
ring-streaked-and-striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a
rainbow.  And--but never mind the rest of his outfit; it was just wild,
but it was awful funny. The people most killed themselves laughing; and
when the king got done capering and capered off behind the scenes, they
roared and clapped and stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done
it over again, and after that they made him do it another time. Well, it
would make a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut.

Then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and says
the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of
pressing London engagements, where the seats is all sold already for it
in Drury Lane; and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has
succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply
obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come
and see it.

Twenty people sings out:

“What, is it over?  Is that _all_?”

The duke says yes.  Then there was a fine time.  Everybody sings
out, “Sold!” and rose up mad, and was a-going for that stage and them
tragedians.  But a big, fine looking man jumps up on a bench and shouts:

“Hold on!  Just a word, gentlemen.”  They stopped to listen.  “We are
sold--mighty badly sold.  But we don't want to be the laughing stock of
this whole town, I reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as long
as we live.  _No_.  What we want is to go out of here quiet, and talk
this show up, and sell the _rest_ of the town!  Then we'll all be in the
same boat.  Ain't that sensible?” (“You bet it is!--the jedge is right!”
 everybody sings out.) “All right, then--not a word about any sell.  Go
along home, and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy.”

Next day you couldn't hear nothing around that town but how splendid
that show was.  House was jammed again that night, and we sold this
crowd the same way.  When me and the king and the duke got home to the
raft we all had a supper; and by and by, about midnight, they made Jim
and me back her out and float her down the middle of the river, and
fetch her in and hide her about two mile below town.

The third night the house was crammed again--and they warn't new-comers
this time, but people that was at the show the other two nights.  I
stood by the duke at the door, and I see that every man that went in had
his pockets bulging, or something muffled up under his coat--and I see it
warn't no perfumery, neither, not by a long sight.  I smelt sickly eggs
by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if I know the
signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do, there was sixty-four
of them went in.  I shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various
for me; I couldn't stand it.  Well, when the place couldn't hold no more
people the duke he give a fellow a quarter and told him to tend door
for him a minute, and then he started around for the stage door, I after
him; but the minute we turned the corner and was in the dark he says:

“Walk fast now till you get away from the houses, and then shin for the
raft like the dickens was after you!”

I done it, and he done the same.  We struck the raft at the same time,
and in less than two seconds we was gliding down stream, all dark and
still, and edging towards the middle of the river, nobody saying a
word. I reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the
audience, but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawls out from under
the wigwam, and says:

“Well, how'd the old thing pan out this time, duke?”  He hadn't been
up-town at all.

We never showed a light till we was about ten mile below the village.
Then we lit up and had a supper, and the king and the duke fairly
laughed their bones loose over the way they'd served them people.  The
duke says:

“Greenhorns, flatheads!  I knew the first house would keep mum and let
the rest of the town get roped in; and I knew they'd lay for us the
third night, and consider it was _their_ turn now.  Well, it _is_ their
turn, and I'd give something to know how much they'd take for it.  I
_would_ just like to know how they're putting in their opportunity.
 They can turn it into a picnic if they want to--they brought plenty
provisions.”

Them rapscallions took in four hundred and sixty-five dollars in that
three nights.  I never see money hauled in by the wagon-load like that
before.  By and by, when they was asleep and snoring, Jim says:

“Don't it s'prise you de way dem kings carries on, Huck?”

“No,” I says, “it don't.”

“Why don't it, Huck?”

“Well, it don't, because it's in the breed.  I reckon they're all
alike.”

“But, Huck, dese kings o' ourn is reglar rapscallions; dat's jist what
dey is; dey's reglar rapscallions.”

“Well, that's what I'm a-saying; all kings is mostly rapscallions, as
fur as I can make out.”

“Is dat so?”

“You read about them once--you'll see.  Look at Henry the Eight; this 'n
's a Sunday-school Superintendent to _him_.  And look at Charles Second,
and Louis Fourteen, and Louis Fifteen, and James Second, and Edward
Second, and Richard Third, and forty more; besides all them Saxon
heptarchies that used to rip around so in old times and raise Cain.  My,
you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom.  He _was_ a
blossom.  He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head
next morning.  And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was
ordering up eggs.  'Fetch up Nell Gwynn,' he says.  They fetch her up.
Next morning, 'Chop off her head!'  And they chop it off.  'Fetch up
Jane Shore,' he says; and up she comes, Next morning, 'Chop off her
head'--and they chop it off.  'Ring up Fair Rosamun.'  Fair Rosamun
answers the bell.  Next morning, 'Chop off her head.'  And he made every
one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had
hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a
book, and called it Domesday Book--which was a good name and stated the
case.  You don't know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this old rip
of ourn is one of the cleanest I've struck in history.  Well, Henry he
takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. How
does he go at it--give notice?--give the country a show?  No.  All of a
sudden he heaves all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacks
out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on.  That was
_his_ style--he never give anybody a chance.  He had suspicions of his
father, the Duke of Wellington.  Well, what did he do?  Ask him to show
up?  No--drownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat.  S'pose people
left money laying around where he was--what did he do?  He collared it.
 S'pose he contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn't set
down there and see that he done it--what did he do?  He always done the
other thing. S'pose he opened his mouth--what then?  If he didn't shut it
up powerful quick he'd lose a lie every time.  That's the kind of a bug
Henry was; and if we'd a had him along 'stead of our kings he'd a fooled
that town a heap worse than ourn done.  I don't say that ourn is lambs,
because they ain't, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they
ain't nothing to _that_ old ram, anyway.  All I say is, kings is kings,
and you got to make allowances.  Take them all around, they're a mighty
ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.”

“But dis one do _smell_ so like de nation, Huck.”

“Well, they all do, Jim.  We can't help the way a king smells; history
don't tell no way.”

“Now de duke, he's a tolerble likely man in some ways.”

“Yes, a duke's different.  But not very different.  This one's
a middling hard lot for a duke.  When he's drunk there ain't no
near-sighted man could tell him from a king.”

“Well, anyways, I doan' hanker for no mo' un um, Huck.  Dese is all I
kin stan'.”

“It's the way I feel, too, Jim.  But we've got them on our hands, and we
got to remember what they are, and make allowances.  Sometimes I wish we
could hear of a country that's out of kings.”

What was the use to tell Jim these warn't real kings and dukes?  It
wouldn't a done no good; and, besides, it was just as I said:  you
couldn't tell them from the real kind.

I went to sleep, and Jim didn't call me when it was my turn.  He often
done that.  When I waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there with
his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself.  I
didn't take notice nor let on.  I knowed what it was about.  He was
thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low
and homesick; because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his
life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white
folks does for their'n.  It don't seem natural, but I reckon it's so.
 He was often moaning and mourning that way nights, when he judged I
was asleep, and saying, “Po' little 'Lizabeth! po' little Johnny! it's
mighty hard; I spec' I ain't ever gwyne to see you no mo', no mo'!”  He
was a mighty good nigger, Jim was.

But this time I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young
ones; and by and by he says:

“What makes me feel so bad dis time 'uz bekase I hear sumpn over yonder
on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time
I treat my little 'Lizabeth so ornery.  She warn't on'y 'bout fo' year
ole, en she tuck de sk'yarlet fever, en had a powful rough spell; but
she got well, en one day she was a-stannin' aroun', en I says to her, I
says:

“'Shet de do'.'

“She never done it; jis' stood dah, kiner smilin' up at me.  It make me
mad; en I says agin, mighty loud, I says:

“'Doan' you hear me?  Shet de do'!'

“She jis stood de same way, kiner smilin' up.  I was a-bilin'!  I says:

“'I lay I _make_ you mine!'

“En wid dat I fetch' her a slap side de head dat sont her a-sprawlin'.
Den I went into de yuther room, en 'uz gone 'bout ten minutes; en when
I come back dah was dat do' a-stannin' open _yit_, en dat chile stannin'
mos' right in it, a-lookin' down and mournin', en de tears runnin' down.
 My, but I _wuz_ mad!  I was a-gwyne for de chile, but jis' den--it was a
do' dat open innerds--jis' den, 'long come de wind en slam it to, behine
de chile, ker-BLAM!--en my lan', de chile never move'!  My breff mos'
hop outer me; en I feel so--so--I doan' know HOW I feel.  I crope out,
all a-tremblin', en crope aroun' en open de do' easy en slow, en poke my
head in behine de chile, sof' en still, en all uv a sudden I says POW!
jis' as loud as I could yell.  _She never budge!_  Oh, Huck, I bust out
a-cryin' en grab her up in my arms, en say, 'Oh, de po' little thing!
 De Lord God Amighty fogive po' ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive
hisself as long's he live!'  Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb
deef en dumb--en I'd ben a-treat'n her so!”




CHAPTER XXIV.

NEXT day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow towhead out in
the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the
duke and the king begun to lay out a plan for working them towns.  Jim
he spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn't take but a few
hours, because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to
lay all day in the wigwam tied with the rope.  You see, when we left him
all alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on to him all
by himself and not tied it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway
nigger, you know. So the duke said it _was_ kind of hard to have to lay
roped all day, and he'd cipher out some way to get around it.

He was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it.  He dressed
Jim up in King Lear's outfit--it was a long curtain-calico gown, and a
white horse-hair wig and whiskers; and then he took his theater paint
and painted Jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead,
dull, solid blue, like a man that's been drownded nine days.  Blamed if
he warn't the horriblest looking outrage I ever see.  Then the duke took
and wrote out a sign on a shingle so:

Sick Arab--but harmless when not out of his head.

And he nailed that shingle to a lath, and stood the lath up four or five
foot in front of the wigwam.  Jim was satisfied.  He said it was a sight
better than lying tied a couple of years every day, and trembling all
over every time there was a sound.  The duke told him to make himself
free and easy, and if anybody ever come meddling around, he must hop
out of the wigwam, and carry on a little, and fetch a howl or two like
a wild beast, and he reckoned they would light out and leave him alone.
 Which was sound enough judgment; but you take the average man, and he
wouldn't wait for him to howl.  Why, he didn't only look like he was
dead, he looked considerable more than that.

These rapscallions wanted to try the Nonesuch again, because there was
so much money in it, but they judged it wouldn't be safe, because maybe
the news might a worked along down by this time.  They couldn't hit no
project that suited exactly; so at last the duke said he reckoned he'd
lay off and work his brains an hour or two and see if he couldn't put up
something on the Arkansaw village; and the king he allowed he would drop
over to t'other village without any plan, but just trust in Providence
to lead him the profitable way--meaning the devil, I reckon.  We had all
bought store clothes where we stopped last; and now the king put his'n
on, and he told me to put mine on.  I done it, of course.  The king's
duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy.  I never
knowed how clothes could change a body before.  Why, before, he looked
like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he'd take off
his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand
and good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark,
and maybe was old Leviticus himself.  Jim cleaned up the canoe, and I
got my paddle ready.  There was a big steamboat laying at the shore away
up under the point, about three mile above the town--been there a couple
of hours, taking on freight.  Says the king:

“Seein' how I'm dressed, I reckon maybe I better arrive down from St.
Louis or Cincinnati, or some other big place.  Go for the steamboat,
Huckleberry; we'll come down to the village on her.”

I didn't have to be ordered twice to go and take a steamboat ride.
 I fetched the shore a half a mile above the village, and then went
scooting along the bluff bank in the easy water.  Pretty soon we come to
a nice innocent-looking young country jake setting on a log swabbing the
sweat off of his face, for it was powerful warm weather; and he had a
couple of big carpet-bags by him.

“Run her nose in shore,” says the king.  I done it.  “Wher' you bound
for, young man?”

“For the steamboat; going to Orleans.”

“Git aboard,” says the king.  “Hold on a minute, my servant 'll he'p you
with them bags.  Jump out and he'p the gentleman, Adolphus”--meaning me,
I see.

I done so, and then we all three started on again.  The young chap was
mighty thankful; said it was tough work toting his baggage such weather.
He asked the king where he was going, and the king told him he'd come
down the river and landed at the other village this morning, and now he
was going up a few mile to see an old friend on a farm up there.  The
young fellow says:

“When I first see you I says to myself, 'It's Mr. Wilks, sure, and he
come mighty near getting here in time.'  But then I says again, 'No, I
reckon it ain't him, or else he wouldn't be paddling up the river.'  You
_ain't_ him, are you?”

“No, my name's Blodgett--Elexander Blodgett--_Reverend_ Elexander
Blodgett, I s'pose I must say, as I'm one o' the Lord's poor servants.
 But still I'm jist as able to be sorry for Mr. Wilks for not arriving
in time, all the same, if he's missed anything by it--which I hope he
hasn't.”

“Well, he don't miss any property by it, because he'll get that all
right; but he's missed seeing his brother Peter die--which he mayn't
mind, nobody can tell as to that--but his brother would a give anything
in this world to see _him_ before he died; never talked about nothing
else all these three weeks; hadn't seen him since they was boys
together--and hadn't ever seen his brother William at all--that's the deef
and dumb one--William ain't more than thirty or thirty-five.  Peter and
George were the only ones that come out here; George was the married
brother; him and his wife both died last year.  Harvey and William's the
only ones that's left now; and, as I was saying, they haven't got here
in time.”

“Did anybody send 'em word?”

“Oh, yes; a month or two ago, when Peter was first took; because Peter
said then that he sorter felt like he warn't going to get well this
time. You see, he was pretty old, and George's g'yirls was too young to
be much company for him, except Mary Jane, the red-headed one; and so he
was kinder lonesome after George and his wife died, and didn't seem
to care much to live.  He most desperately wanted to see Harvey--and
William, too, for that matter--because he was one of them kind that can't
bear to make a will.  He left a letter behind for Harvey, and said he'd
told in it where his money was hid, and how he wanted the rest of the
property divided up so George's g'yirls would be all right--for George
didn't leave nothing.  And that letter was all they could get him to put
a pen to.”

“Why do you reckon Harvey don't come?  Wher' does he live?”

“Oh, he lives in England--Sheffield--preaches there--hasn't ever been in
this country.  He hasn't had any too much time--and besides he mightn't a
got the letter at all, you know.”

“Too bad, too bad he couldn't a lived to see his brothers, poor soul.
You going to Orleans, you say?”

“Yes, but that ain't only a part of it.  I'm going in a ship, next
Wednesday, for Ryo Janeero, where my uncle lives.”

“It's a pretty long journey.  But it'll be lovely; wisht I was a-going.
Is Mary Jane the oldest?  How old is the others?”

“Mary Jane's nineteen, Susan's fifteen, and Joanna's about
fourteen--that's the one that gives herself to good works and has a
hare-lip.”

“Poor things! to be left alone in the cold world so.”

“Well, they could be worse off.  Old Peter had friends, and they
ain't going to let them come to no harm.  There's Hobson, the Babtis'
preacher; and Deacon Lot Hovey, and Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford,
and Levi Bell, the lawyer; and Dr. Robinson, and their wives, and the
widow Bartley, and--well, there's a lot of them; but these are the ones
that Peter was thickest with, and used to write about sometimes, when
he wrote home; so Harvey 'll know where to look for friends when he gets
here.”

Well, the old man went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied
that young fellow.  Blamed if he didn't inquire about everybody and
everything in that blessed town, and all about the Wilkses; and about
Peter's business--which was a tanner; and about George's--which was a
carpenter; and about Harvey's--which was a dissentering minister; and so
on, and so on.  Then he says:

“What did you want to walk all the way up to the steamboat for?”

“Because she's a big Orleans boat, and I was afeard she mightn't stop
there.  When they're deep they won't stop for a hail.  A Cincinnati boat
will, but this is a St. Louis one.”

“Was Peter Wilks well off?”

“Oh, yes, pretty well off.  He had houses and land, and it's reckoned he
left three or four thousand in cash hid up som'ers.”

“When did you say he died?”

“I didn't say, but it was last night.”

“Funeral to-morrow, likely?”

“Yes, 'bout the middle of the day.”

“Well, it's all terrible sad; but we've all got to go, one time or
another. So what we want to do is to be prepared; then we're all right.”

“Yes, sir, it's the best way.  Ma used to always say that.”

When we struck the boat she was about done loading, and pretty soon she
got off.  The king never said nothing about going aboard, so I lost
my ride, after all.  When the boat was gone the king made me paddle up
another mile to a lonesome place, and then he got ashore and says:

“Now hustle back, right off, and fetch the duke up here, and the new
carpet-bags.  And if he's gone over to t'other side, go over there and
git him.  And tell him to git himself up regardless.  Shove along, now.”

I see what _he_ was up to; but I never said nothing, of course.  When
I got back with the duke we hid the canoe, and then they set down on a
log, and the king told him everything, just like the young fellow had
said it--every last word of it.  And all the time he was a-doing it he
tried to talk like an Englishman; and he done it pretty well, too, for
a slouch. I can't imitate him, and so I ain't a-going to try to; but he
really done it pretty good.  Then he says:

“How are you on the deef and dumb, Bilgewater?”

The duke said, leave him alone for that; said he had played a deef
and dumb person on the histronic boards.  So then they waited for a
steamboat.

About the middle of the afternoon a couple of little boats come along,
but they didn't come from high enough up the river; but at last there
was a big one, and they hailed her.  She sent out her yawl, and we went
aboard, and she was from Cincinnati; and when they found we only wanted
to go four or five mile they was booming mad, and gave us a cussing, and
said they wouldn't land us.  But the king was ca'm.  He says:

“If gentlemen kin afford to pay a dollar a mile apiece to be took on and
put off in a yawl, a steamboat kin afford to carry 'em, can't it?”

So they softened down and said it was all right; and when we got to the
village they yawled us ashore.  About two dozen men flocked down when
they see the yawl a-coming, and when the king says:

“Kin any of you gentlemen tell me wher' Mr. Peter Wilks lives?” they
give a glance at one another, and nodded their heads, as much as to say,
“What d' I tell you?”  Then one of them says, kind of soft and gentle:

“I'm sorry sir, but the best we can do is to tell you where he _did_
live yesterday evening.”

Sudden as winking the ornery old cretur went an to smash, and fell up
against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his
back, and says:

“Alas, alas, our poor brother--gone, and we never got to see him; oh,
it's too, too hard!”

Then he turns around, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to
the duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn't drop a carpet-bag and
bust out a-crying.  If they warn't the beatenest lot, them two frauds,
that ever I struck.

Well, the men gathered around and sympathized with them, and said all
sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill
for them, and let them lean on them and cry, and told the king all about
his brother's last moments, and the king he told it all over again on
his hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tanner
like they'd lost the twelve disciples.  Well, if ever I struck anything
like it, I'm a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human
race.




CHAPTER XXV.

THE news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people
tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on
their coats as they come.  Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd,
and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march.  The windows and
dooryards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence:

“Is it _them_?”

And somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say:

“You bet it is.”

When we got to the house the street in front of it was packed, and the
three girls was standing in the door.  Mary Jane _was_ red-headed, but
that don't make no difference, she was most awful beautiful, and her
face and her eyes was all lit up like glory, she was so glad her uncles
was come. The king he spread his arms, and Mary Jane she jumped for
them, and the hare-lip jumped for the duke, and there they had it!
 Everybody most, leastways women, cried for joy to see them meet again
at last and have such good times.

Then the king he hunched the duke private--I see him do it--and then he
looked around and see the coffin, over in the corner on two chairs; so
then him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and
t'other hand to their eyes, walked slow and solemn over there, everybody
dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping,
people saying “Sh!” and all the men taking their hats off and drooping
their heads, so you could a heard a pin fall.  And when they got there
they bent over and looked in the coffin, and took one sight, and then
they bust out a-crying so you could a heard them to Orleans, most; and
then they put their arms around each other's necks, and hung their chins
over each other's shoulders; and then for three minutes, or maybe four,
I never see two men leak the way they done.  And, mind you, everybody
was doing the same; and the place was that damp I never see anything
like it. Then one of them got on one side of the coffin, and t'other on
t'other side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the
coffin, and let on to pray all to themselves.  Well, when it come
to that it worked the crowd like you never see anything like it, and
everybody broke down and went to sobbing right out loud--the poor girls,
too; and every woman, nearly, went up to the girls, without saying a
word, and kissed them, solemn, on the forehead, and then put their hand
on their head, and looked up towards the sky, with the tears running
down, and then busted out and went off sobbing and swabbing, and give
the next woman a show.  I never see anything so disgusting.

Well, by and by the king he gets up and comes forward a little, and
works himself up and slobbers out a speech, all full of tears and
flapdoodle about its being a sore trial for him and his poor brother
to lose the diseased, and to miss seeing diseased alive after the long
journey of four thousand mile, but it's a trial that's sweetened and
sanctified to us by this dear sympathy and these holy tears, and so he
thanks them out of his heart and out of his brother's heart, because out
of their mouths they can't, words being too weak and cold, and all that
kind of rot and slush, till it was just sickening; and then he blubbers
out a pious goody-goody Amen, and turns himself loose and goes to crying
fit to bust.

And the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the
crowd struck up the doxolojer, and everybody joined in with all their
might, and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church
letting out. Music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and
hogwash I never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and
bully.

Then the king begins to work his jaw again, and says how him and his
nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the
family would take supper here with them this evening, and help set up
with the ashes of the diseased; and says if his poor brother laying
yonder could speak he knows who he would name, for they was names that
was very dear to him, and mentioned often in his letters; and so he will
name the same, to wit, as follows, vizz.:--Rev. Mr. Hobson, and Deacon
Lot Hovey, and Mr. Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi Bell, and
Dr. Robinson, and their wives, and the widow Bartley.

Rev. Hobson and Dr. Robinson was down to the end of the town a-hunting
together--that is, I mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to t'other
world, and the preacher was pinting him right.  Lawyer Bell was away up
to Louisville on business.  But the rest was on hand, and so they all
come and shook hands with the king and thanked him and talked to him;
and then they shook hands with the duke and didn't say nothing, but just
kept a-smiling and bobbing their heads like a passel of sapheads whilst
he made all sorts of signs with his hands and said “Goo-goo--goo-goo-goo”
 all the time, like a baby that can't talk.

So the king he blattered along, and managed to inquire about pretty
much everybody and dog in town, by his name, and mentioned all sorts
of little things that happened one time or another in the town, or to
George's family, or to Peter.  And he always let on that Peter wrote him
the things; but that was a lie:  he got every blessed one of them out of
that young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat.

Then Mary Jane she fetched the letter her father left behind, and the
king he read it out loud and cried over it.  It give the dwelling-house
and three thousand dollars, gold, to the girls; and it give the tanyard
(which was doing a good business), along with some other houses and
land (worth about seven thousand), and three thousand dollars in gold
to Harvey and William, and told where the six thousand cash was hid down
cellar.  So these two frauds said they'd go and fetch it up, and have
everything square and above-board; and told me to come with a candle.
 We shut the cellar door behind us, and when they found the bag
they spilt it out on the floor, and it was a lovely sight, all them
yaller-boys.  My, the way the king's eyes did shine!  He slaps the duke
on the shoulder and says:

“Oh, _this_ ain't bully nor noth'n!  Oh, no, I reckon not!  Why,
_bully_, it beats the Nonesuch, _don't_ it?”

The duke allowed it did.  They pawed the yaller-boys, and sifted them
through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor; and the
king says:

“It ain't no use talkin'; bein' brothers to a rich dead man and
representatives of furrin heirs that's got left is the line for you and
me, Bilge.  Thish yer comes of trust'n to Providence.  It's the best
way, in the long run.  I've tried 'em all, and ther' ain't no better
way.”

Most everybody would a been satisfied with the pile, and took it on
trust; but no, they must count it.  So they counts it, and it comes out
four hundred and fifteen dollars short.  Says the king:

“Dern him, I wonder what he done with that four hundred and fifteen
dollars?”

They worried over that awhile, and ransacked all around for it.  Then
the duke says:

“Well, he was a pretty sick man, and likely he made a mistake--I reckon
that's the way of it.  The best way's to let it go, and keep still about
it.  We can spare it.”

“Oh, shucks, yes, we can _spare_ it.  I don't k'yer noth'n 'bout
that--it's the _count_ I'm thinkin' about.  We want to be awful square
and open and above-board here, you know.  We want to lug this h-yer
money up stairs and count it before everybody--then ther' ain't noth'n
suspicious.  But when the dead man says ther's six thous'n dollars, you
know, we don't want to--”

“Hold on,” says the duke.  “Le's make up the deffisit,” and he begun to
haul out yaller-boys out of his pocket.

“It's a most amaz'n' good idea, duke--you _have_ got a rattlin' clever
head on you,” says the king.  “Blest if the old Nonesuch ain't a heppin'
us out agin,” and _he_ begun to haul out yaller-jackets and stack them
up.

It most busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear.

“Say,” says the duke, “I got another idea.  Le's go up stairs and count
this money, and then take and _give it to the girls_.”

“Good land, duke, lemme hug you!  It's the most dazzling idea 'at ever a
man struck.  You have cert'nly got the most astonishin' head I ever see.
Oh, this is the boss dodge, ther' ain't no mistake 'bout it.  Let 'em
fetch along their suspicions now if they want to--this 'll lay 'em out.”

When we got up-stairs everybody gethered around the table, and the king
he counted it and stacked it up, three hundred dollars in a pile--twenty
elegant little piles.  Everybody looked hungry at it, and licked their
chops.  Then they raked it into the bag again, and I see the king begin
to swell himself up for another speech.  He says:

“Friends all, my poor brother that lays yonder has done generous by
them that's left behind in the vale of sorrers.  He has done generous by
these yer poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered, and that's left
fatherless and motherless.  Yes, and we that knowed him knows that he
would a done _more_ generous by 'em if he hadn't ben afeard o' woundin'
his dear William and me.  Now, _wouldn't_ he?  Ther' ain't no question
'bout it in _my_ mind.  Well, then, what kind o' brothers would it be
that 'd stand in his way at sech a time?  And what kind o' uncles would
it be that 'd rob--yes, _rob_--sech poor sweet lambs as these 'at he loved
so at sech a time?  If I know William--and I _think_ I do--he--well, I'll
jest ask him.” He turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to
the duke with his hands, and the duke he looks at him stupid and
leather-headed a while; then all of a sudden he seems to catch his
meaning, and jumps for the king, goo-gooing with all his might for joy,
and hugs him about fifteen times before he lets up.  Then the king says,
“I knowed it; I reckon _that 'll_ convince anybody the way _he_ feels
about it.  Here, Mary Jane, Susan, Joanner, take the money--take it
_all_.  It's the gift of him that lays yonder, cold but joyful.”

Mary Jane she went for him, Susan and the hare-lip went for the
duke, and then such another hugging and kissing I never see yet.  And
everybody crowded up with the tears in their eyes, and most shook the
hands off of them frauds, saying all the time:

“You _dear_ good souls!--how _lovely_!--how _could_ you!”

Well, then, pretty soon all hands got to talking about the diseased
again, and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that; and
before long a big iron-jawed man worked himself in there from outside,
and stood a-listening and looking, and not saying anything; and nobody
saying anything to him either, because the king was talking and they was
all busy listening.  The king was saying--in the middle of something he'd
started in on--

“--they bein' partickler friends o' the diseased.  That's why they're
invited here this evenin'; but tomorrow we want _all_ to come--everybody;
for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fitten that
his funeral orgies sh'd be public.”

And so he went a-mooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and
every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the duke
he couldn't stand it no more; so he writes on a little scrap of paper,
“_Obsequies_, you old fool,” and folds it up, and goes to goo-gooing and
reaching it over people's heads to him.  The king he reads it and puts
it in his pocket, and says:

“Poor William, afflicted as he is, his _heart's_ aluz right.  Asks me
to invite everybody to come to the funeral--wants me to make 'em all
welcome.  But he needn't a worried--it was jest what I was at.”

Then he weaves along again, perfectly ca'm, and goes to dropping in his
funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he done before.  And
when he done it the third time he says:

“I say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it
ain't--obsequies bein' the common term--but because orgies is the right
term. Obsequies ain't used in England no more now--it's gone out.  We
say orgies now in England.  Orgies is better, because it means the thing
you're after more exact.  It's a word that's made up out'n the Greek
_orgo_, outside, open, abroad; and the Hebrew _jeesum_, to plant, cover
up; hence in_ter._  So, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public
funeral.”

He was the _worst_ I ever struck.  Well, the iron-jawed man he laughed
right in his face.  Everybody was shocked.  Everybody says, “Why,
_doctor_!” and Abner Shackleford says:

“Why, Robinson, hain't you heard the news?  This is Harvey Wilks.”

The king he smiled eager, and shoved out his flapper, and says:

“Is it my poor brother's dear good friend and physician?  I--”

“Keep your hands off of me!” says the doctor.  “_You_ talk like an
Englishman, _don't_ you?  It's the worst imitation I ever heard.  _You_
Peter Wilks's brother!  You're a fraud, that's what you are!”

Well, how they all took on!  They crowded around the doctor and tried to
quiet him down, and tried to explain to him and tell him how Harvey 'd
showed in forty ways that he _was_ Harvey, and knowed everybody by name,
and the names of the very dogs, and begged and _begged_ him not to hurt
Harvey's feelings and the poor girl's feelings, and all that.  But it
warn't no use; he stormed right along, and said any man that pretended
to be an Englishman and couldn't imitate the lingo no better than what
he did was a fraud and a liar.  The poor girls was hanging to the king
and crying; and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on _them_.  He
says:

“I was your father's friend, and I'm your friend; and I warn you as a
friend, and an honest one that wants to protect you and keep you out of
harm and trouble, to turn your backs on that scoundrel and have nothing
to do with him, the ignorant tramp, with his idiotic Greek and Hebrew,
as he calls it.  He is the thinnest kind of an impostor--has come here
with a lot of empty names and facts which he picked up somewheres, and
you take them for _proofs_, and are helped to fool yourselves by these
foolish friends here, who ought to know better.  Mary Jane Wilks, you
know me for your friend, and for your unselfish friend, too.  Now listen
to me; turn this pitiful rascal out--I _beg_ you to do it.  Will you?”

Mary Jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome!  She
says:

“_Here_ is my answer.”  She hove up the bag of money and put it in the
king's hands, and says, “Take this six thousand dollars, and invest for
me and my sisters any way you want to, and don't give us no receipt for
it.”

Then she put her arm around the king on one side, and Susan and the
hare-lip done the same on the other.  Everybody clapped their hands and
stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his
head and smiled proud.  The doctor says:

“All right; I wash _my_ hands of the matter.  But I warn you all that a
time 's coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this
day.” And away he went.

“All right, doctor,” says the king, kinder mocking him; “we'll try and
get 'em to send for you;” which made them all laugh, and they said it
was a prime good hit.




CHAPTER XXVI.

WELL, when they was all gone the king he asks Mary Jane how they was off
for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for
Uncle William, and she'd give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was
a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and
sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it.
The king said the cubby would do for his valley--meaning me.

So Mary Jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was
plain but nice.  She said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps
took out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey's way, but he said
they warn't.  The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was
a curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor.  There was an
old hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar-box in another, and all sorts
of little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room
with.  The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for
these fixings, and so don't disturb them.  The duke's room was pretty
small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby.

That night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there,
and I stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them,
and the niggers waited on the rest.  Mary Jane she set at the head of
the table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits
was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried
chickens was--and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to
force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop,
and said so--said “How _do_ you get biscuits to brown so nice?” and
“Where, for the land's sake, _did_ you get these amaz'n pickles?” and
all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a
supper, you know.

And when it was all done me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen
off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up
the things.  The hare-lip she got to pumping me about England, and blest
if I didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes.  She says:

“Did you ever see the king?”

“Who?  William Fourth?  Well, I bet I have--he goes to our church.”  I
knowed he was dead years ago, but I never let on.  So when I says he
goes to our church, she says:

“What--regular?”

“Yes--regular.  His pew's right over opposite ourn--on t'other side the
pulpit.”

“I thought he lived in London?”

“Well, he does.  Where _would_ he live?”

“But I thought _you_ lived in Sheffield?”

I see I was up a stump.  I had to let on to get choked with a chicken
bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again.  Then I says:

“I mean he goes to our church regular when he's in Sheffield.  That's
only in the summer time, when he comes there to take the sea baths.”

“Why, how you talk--Sheffield ain't on the sea.”

“Well, who said it was?”

“Why, you did.”

“I _didn't_ nuther.”

“You did!”

“I didn't.”

“You did.”

“I never said nothing of the kind.”

“Well, what _did_ you say, then?”

“Said he come to take the sea _baths_--that's what I said.”

“Well, then, how's he going to take the sea baths if it ain't on the
sea?”

“Looky here,” I says; “did you ever see any Congress-water?”

“Yes.”

“Well, did you have to go to Congress to get it?”

“Why, no.”

“Well, neither does William Fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea
bath.”

“How does he get it, then?”

“Gets it the way people down here gets Congress-water--in barrels.  There
in the palace at Sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water
hot.  They can't bile that amount of water away off there at the sea.
They haven't got no conveniences for it.”

“Oh, I see, now.  You might a said that in the first place and saved
time.”

When she said that I see I was out of the woods again, and so I was
comfortable and glad.  Next, she says:

“Do you go to church, too?”

“Yes--regular.”

“Where do you set?”

“Why, in our pew.”

“_Whose_ pew?”

“Why, _ourn_--your Uncle Harvey's.”

“His'n?  What does _he_ want with a pew?”

“Wants it to set in.  What did you _reckon_ he wanted with it?”

“Why, I thought he'd be in the pulpit.”

Rot him, I forgot he was a preacher.  I see I was up a stump again, so I
played another chicken bone and got another think.  Then I says:

“Blame it, do you suppose there ain't but one preacher to a church?”

“Why, what do they want with more?”

“What!--to preach before a king?  I never did see such a girl as you.
They don't have no less than seventeen.”

“Seventeen!  My land!  Why, I wouldn't set out such a string as that,
not if I _never_ got to glory.  It must take 'em a week.”

“Shucks, they don't _all_ of 'em preach the same day--only _one_ of 'em.”

“Well, then, what does the rest of 'em do?”

“Oh, nothing much.  Loll around, pass the plate--and one thing or
another.  But mainly they don't do nothing.”

“Well, then, what are they _for_?”

“Why, they're for _style_.  Don't you know nothing?”

“Well, I don't _want_ to know no such foolishness as that.  How is
servants treated in England?  Do they treat 'em better 'n we treat our
niggers?”

“_No_!  A servant ain't nobody there.  They treat them worse than dogs.”

“Don't they give 'em holidays, the way we do, Christmas and New Year's
week, and Fourth of July?”

“Oh, just listen!  A body could tell _you_ hain't ever been to England
by that.  Why, Hare-l--why, Joanna, they never see a holiday from year's
end to year's end; never go to the circus, nor theater, nor nigger
shows, nor nowheres.”

“Nor church?”

“Nor church.”

“But _you_ always went to church.”

Well, I was gone up again.  I forgot I was the old man's servant.  But
next minute I whirled in on a kind of an explanation how a valley was
different from a common servant and _had_ to go to church whether he
wanted to or not, and set with the family, on account of its being the
law.  But I didn't do it pretty good, and when I got done I see she
warn't satisfied.  She says:

“Honest injun, now, hain't you been telling me a lot of lies?”

“Honest injun,” says I.

“None of it at all?”

“None of it at all.  Not a lie in it,” says I.

“Lay your hand on this book and say it.”

I see it warn't nothing but a dictionary, so I laid my hand on it and
said it.  So then she looked a little better satisfied, and says:

“Well, then, I'll believe some of it; but I hope to gracious if I'll
believe the rest.”

“What is it you won't believe, Joe?” says Mary Jane, stepping in with
Susan behind her.  “It ain't right nor kind for you to talk so to him,
and him a stranger and so far from his people.  How would you like to be
treated so?”

“That's always your way, Maim--always sailing in to help somebody before
they're hurt.  I hain't done nothing to him.  He's told some stretchers,
I reckon, and I said I wouldn't swallow it all; and that's every bit
and grain I _did_ say.  I reckon he can stand a little thing like that,
can't he?”

“I don't care whether 'twas little or whether 'twas big; he's here in
our house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it.  If you
was in his place it would make you feel ashamed; and so you oughtn't to
say a thing to another person that will make _them_ feel ashamed.”

“Why, Mam, he said--”

“It don't make no difference what he _said_--that ain't the thing.  The
thing is for you to treat him _kind_, and not be saying things to make
him remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks.”

I says to myself, _this_ is a girl that I'm letting that old reptile rob
her of her money!

Then Susan _she_ waltzed in; and if you'll believe me, she did give
Hare-lip hark from the tomb!

Says I to myself, and this is _another_ one that I'm letting him rob her
of her money!

Then Mary Jane she took another inning, and went in sweet and lovely
again--which was her way; but when she got done there warn't hardly
anything left o' poor Hare-lip.  So she hollered.

“All right, then,” says the other girls; “you just ask his pardon.”

She done it, too; and she done it beautiful.  She done it so beautiful
it was good to hear; and I wished I could tell her a thousand lies, so
she could do it again.

I says to myself, this is _another_ one that I'm letting him rob her of
her money.  And when she got through they all jest laid theirselves
out to make me feel at home and know I was amongst friends.  I felt so
ornery and low down and mean that I says to myself, my mind's made up;
I'll hive that money for them or bust.

So then I lit out--for bed, I said, meaning some time or another.  When
I got by myself I went to thinking the thing over.  I says to myself,
shall I go to that doctor, private, and blow on these frauds?  No--that
won't do. He might tell who told him; then the king and the duke would
make it warm for me.  Shall I go, private, and tell Mary Jane?  No--I
dasn't do it. Her face would give them a hint, sure; they've got the
money, and they'd slide right out and get away with it.  If she was to
fetch in help I'd get mixed up in the business before it was done with,
I judge.  No; there ain't no good way but one.  I got to steal that
money, somehow; and I got to steal it some way that they won't suspicion
that I done it. They've got a good thing here, and they ain't a-going
to leave till they've played this family and this town for all they're
worth, so I'll find a chance time enough. I'll steal it and hide it; and
by and by, when I'm away down the river, I'll write a letter and tell
Mary Jane where it's hid.  But I better hive it tonight if I can,
because the doctor maybe hasn't let up as much as he lets on he has; he
might scare them out of here yet.

So, thinks I, I'll go and search them rooms.  Upstairs the hall was
dark, but I found the duke's room, and started to paw around it with
my hands; but I recollected it wouldn't be much like the king to let
anybody else take care of that money but his own self; so then I went to
his room and begun to paw around there.  But I see I couldn't do nothing
without a candle, and I dasn't light one, of course.  So I judged I'd
got to do the other thing--lay for them and eavesdrop.  About that time
I hears their footsteps coming, and was going to skip under the bed; I
reached for it, but it wasn't where I thought it would be; but I touched
the curtain that hid Mary Jane's frocks, so I jumped in behind that and
snuggled in amongst the gowns, and stood there perfectly still.

They come in and shut the door; and the first thing the duke done was to
get down and look under the bed.  Then I was glad I hadn't found the bed
when I wanted it.  And yet, you know, it's kind of natural to hide under
the bed when you are up to anything private.  They sets down then, and
the king says:

“Well, what is it?  And cut it middlin' short, because it's better for
us to be down there a-whoopin' up the mournin' than up here givin' 'em a
chance to talk us over.”

“Well, this is it, Capet.  I ain't easy; I ain't comfortable.  That
doctor lays on my mind.  I wanted to know your plans.  I've got a
notion, and I think it's a sound one.”

“What is it, duke?”

“That we better glide out of this before three in the morning, and clip
it down the river with what we've got.  Specially, seeing we got it so
easy--_given_ back to us, flung at our heads, as you may say, when of
course we allowed to have to steal it back.  I'm for knocking off and
lighting out.”

That made me feel pretty bad.  About an hour or two ago it would a been
a little different, but now it made me feel bad and disappointed, The
king rips out and says:

“What!  And not sell out the rest o' the property?  March off like
a passel of fools and leave eight or nine thous'n' dollars' worth o'
property layin' around jest sufferin' to be scooped in?--and all good,
salable stuff, too.”

The duke he grumbled; said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn't
want to go no deeper--didn't want to rob a lot of orphans of _everything_
they had.

“Why, how you talk!” says the king.  “We sha'n't rob 'em of nothing at
all but jest this money.  The people that _buys_ the property is the
suff'rers; because as soon 's it's found out 'at we didn't own it--which
won't be long after we've slid--the sale won't be valid, and it 'll all
go back to the estate.  These yer orphans 'll git their house back agin,
and that's enough for _them_; they're young and spry, and k'n easy
earn a livin'.  _they_ ain't a-goin to suffer.  Why, jest think--there's
thous'n's and thous'n's that ain't nigh so well off.  Bless you, _they_
ain't got noth'n' to complain of.”

Well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all
right, but said he believed it was blamed foolishness to stay, and that
doctor hanging over them.  But the king says:

“Cuss the doctor!  What do we k'yer for _him_?  Hain't we got all the
fools in town on our side?  And ain't that a big enough majority in any
town?”

So they got ready to go down stairs again.  The duke says:

“I don't think we put that money in a good place.”

That cheered me up.  I'd begun to think I warn't going to get a hint of
no kind to help me.  The king says:

“Why?”

“Because Mary Jane 'll be in mourning from this out; and first you know
the nigger that does up the rooms will get an order to box these duds
up and put 'em away; and do you reckon a nigger can run across money and
not borrow some of it?”

“Your head's level agin, duke,” says the king; and he comes a-fumbling
under the curtain two or three foot from where I was.  I stuck tight to
the wall and kept mighty still, though quivery; and I wondered what them
fellows would say to me if they catched me; and I tried to think what
I'd better do if they did catch me.  But the king he got the bag before
I could think more than about a half a thought, and he never suspicioned
I was around.  They took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw
tick that was under the feather-bed, and crammed it in a foot or two
amongst the straw and said it was all right now, because a nigger only
makes up the feather-bed, and don't turn over the straw tick only about
twice a year, and so it warn't in no danger of getting stole now.

But I knowed better.  I had it out of there before they was half-way
down stairs.  I groped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till I
could get a chance to do better.  I judged I better hide it outside
of the house somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the
house a good ransacking:  I knowed that very well.  Then I turned in,
with my clothes all on; but I couldn't a gone to sleep if I'd a wanted
to, I was in such a sweat to get through with the business.  By and by I
heard the king and the duke come up; so I rolled off my pallet and laid
with my chin at the top of my ladder, and waited to see if anything was
going to happen.  But nothing did.

So I held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't
begun yet; and then I slipped down the ladder.




CHAPTER XXVII.

I crept to their doors and listened; they was snoring.  So I tiptoed
along, and got down stairs all right.  There warn't a sound anywheres.
 I peeped through a crack of the dining-room door, and see the men that
was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs.  The door
was open into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a
candle in both rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open; but
I see there warn't nobody in there but the remainders of Peter; so I
shoved on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there.
 Just then I heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me.  I
run in the parlor and took a swift look around, and the only place I
see to hide the bag was in the coffin.  The lid was shoved along about
a foot, showing the dead man's face down in there, with a wet cloth over
it, and his shroud on.  I tucked the money-bag in under the lid, just
down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was
so cold, and then I run back across the room and in behind the door.

The person coming was Mary Jane.  She went to the coffin, very soft, and
kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief, and I see
she begun to cry, though I couldn't hear her, and her back was to me.  I
slid out, and as I passed the dining-room I thought I'd make sure them
watchers hadn't seen me; so I looked through the crack, and everything
was all right.  They hadn't stirred.

I slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts of the thing
playing out that way after I had took so much trouble and run so much
resk about it.  Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right; because
when we get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write back to
Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that ain't the
thing that's going to happen; the thing that's going to happen is, the
money 'll be found when they come to screw on the lid.  Then the king
'll get it again, and it 'll be a long day before he gives anybody
another chance to smouch it from him. Of course I _wanted_ to slide
down and get it out of there, but I dasn't try it.  Every minute it was
getting earlier now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin
to stir, and I might get catched--catched with six thousand dollars in my
hands that nobody hadn't hired me to take care of.  I don't wish to be
mixed up in no such business as that, I says to myself.

When I got down stairs in the morning the parlor was shut up, and the
watchers was gone.  There warn't nobody around but the family and the
widow Bartley and our tribe.  I watched their faces to see if anything
had been happening, but I couldn't tell.

Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they
set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then
set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till
the hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full.  I see the coffin
lid was the way it was before, but I dasn't go to look in under it, with
folks around.

Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took
seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour
the people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the
dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was
all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding
handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a
little.  There warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on
the floor and blowing noses--because people always blows them more at a
funeral than they do at other places except church.

When the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his
black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last
touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable,
and making no more sound than a cat.  He never spoke; he moved people
around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done
it with nods, and signs with his hands.  Then he took his place over
against the wall. He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever
see; and there warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham.

They had borrowed a melodeum--a sick one; and when everything was ready
a young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and
colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one
that had a good thing, according to my notion.  Then the Reverend Hobson
opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most
outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only
one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right
along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait--you
couldn't hear yourself think.  It was right down awkward, and nobody
didn't seem to know what to do.  But pretty soon they see that
long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say,
“Don't you worry--just depend on me.”  Then he stooped down and begun
to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's
heads.  So he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and
more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two
sides of the room, he disappears down cellar.  Then in about two seconds
we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or
two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn
talk where he left off.  In a minute or two here comes this undertaker's
back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided and
glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his
mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher,
over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, “_He
had a rat_!”  Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to
his place.  You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people,
because naturally they wanted to know.  A little thing like that don't
cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be
looked up to and liked.  There warn't no more popular man in town than
what that undertaker was.

Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome; and
then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and
at last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the
coffin with his screw-driver.  I was in a sweat then, and watched him
pretty keen. But he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along as
soft as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast.  So there I was!  I
didn't know whether the money was in there or not.  So, says I, s'pose
somebody has hogged that bag on the sly?--now how do I know whether
to write to Mary Jane or not? S'pose she dug him up and didn't find
nothing, what would she think of me? Blame it, I says, I might get
hunted up and jailed; I'd better lay low and keep dark, and not write at
all; the thing's awful mixed now; trying to better it, I've worsened it
a hundred times, and I wish to goodness I'd just let it alone, dad fetch
the whole business!

They buried him, and we come back home, and I went to watching faces
again--I couldn't help it, and I couldn't rest easy.  But nothing come of
it; the faces didn't tell me nothing.

The king he visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up,
and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his
congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him, so he must
hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home.  He was
very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could
stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done.  And he
said of course him and William would take the girls home with them; and
that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed
and amongst their own relations; and it pleased the girls, too--tickled
them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world; and told
him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready.  Them
poor things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them
getting fooled and lied to so, but I didn't see no safe way for me to
chip in and change the general tune.

Well, blamed if the king didn't bill the house and the niggers and all
the property for auction straight off--sale two days after the funeral;
but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to.

So the next day after the funeral, along about noon-time, the girls' joy
got the first jolt.  A couple of nigger traders come along, and the king
sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts as they called
it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their
mother down the river to Orleans.  I thought them poor girls and them
niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each
other, and took on so it most made me down sick to see it.  The girls
said they hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold
away from the town.  I can't ever get it out of my memory, the sight of
them poor miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks
and crying; and I reckon I couldn't a stood it all, but would a had
to bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn't knowed the sale warn't no
account and the niggers would be back home in a week or two.

The thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out
flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the
children that way.  It injured the frauds some; but the old fool he
bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and I tell
you the duke was powerful uneasy.

Next day was auction day.  About broad day in the morning the king and
the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and I see by their look
that there was trouble.  The king says:

“Was you in my room night before last?”

“No, your majesty”--which was the way I always called him when nobody but
our gang warn't around.

“Was you in there yisterday er last night?”

“No, your majesty.”

“Honor bright, now--no lies.”

“Honor bright, your majesty, I'm telling you the truth.  I hain't been
a-near your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke and showed
it to you.”

The duke says:

“Have you seen anybody else go in there?”

“No, your grace, not as I remember, I believe.”

“Stop and think.”

I studied awhile and see my chance; then I says:

“Well, I see the niggers go in there several times.”

Both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn't ever
expected it, and then like they _had_.  Then the duke says:

“What, all of them?”

“No--leastways, not all at once--that is, I don't think I ever see them
all come _out_ at once but just one time.”

“Hello!  When was that?”

“It was the day we had the funeral.  In the morning.  It warn't early,
because I overslept.  I was just starting down the ladder, and I see
them.”

“Well, go on, _go_ on!  What did they do?  How'd they act?”

“They didn't do nothing.  And they didn't act anyway much, as fur as I
see. They tiptoed away; so I seen, easy enough, that they'd shoved in
there to do up your majesty's room, or something, s'posing you was up;
and found you _warn't_ up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the
way of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn't already waked you
up.”

“Great guns, _this_ is a go!” says the king; and both of them looked
pretty sick and tolerable silly.  They stood there a-thinking and
scratching their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a
little raspy chuckle, and says:

“It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand.  They let on
to be _sorry_ they was going out of this region!  And I believed they
_was_ sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody.  Don't ever tell _me_
any more that a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent.  Why, the way
they played that thing it would fool _anybody_.  In my opinion, there's
a fortune in 'em.  If I had capital and a theater, I wouldn't want a
better lay-out than that--and here we've gone and sold 'em for a song.
 Yes, and ain't privileged to sing the song yet.  Say, where _is_ that
song--that draft?”

“In the bank for to be collected.  Where _would_ it be?”

“Well, _that's_ all right then, thank goodness.”

Says I, kind of timid-like:

“Is something gone wrong?”

The king whirls on me and rips out:

“None o' your business!  You keep your head shet, and mind y'r own
affairs--if you got any.  Long as you're in this town don't you forgit
_that_--you hear?”  Then he says to the duke, “We got to jest swaller it
and say noth'n':  mum's the word for _us_.”

As they was starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles again, and
says:

“Quick sales _and_ small profits!  It's a good business--yes.”

The king snarls around on him and says:

“I was trying to do for the best in sellin' 'em out so quick.  If the
profits has turned out to be none, lackin' considable, and none to
carry, is it my fault any more'n it's yourn?”

“Well, _they'd_ be in this house yet and we _wouldn't_ if I could a got
my advice listened to.”

The king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped
around and lit into _me_ again.  He give me down the banks for not
coming and _telling_ him I see the niggers come out of his room acting
that way--said any fool would a _knowed_ something was up.  And then
waltzed in and cussed _himself_ awhile, and said it all come of him not
laying late and taking his natural rest that morning, and he'd be
blamed if he'd ever do it again.  So they went off a-jawing; and I felt
dreadful glad I'd worked it all off on to the niggers, and yet hadn't
done the niggers no harm by it.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

BY and by it was getting-up time.  So I come down the ladder and started
for down-stairs; but as I come to the girls' room the door was open, and
I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she'd
been packing things in it--getting ready to go to England.  But she
had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her
hands, crying.  I felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would.  I
went in there and says:

“Miss Mary Jane, you can't a-bear to see people in trouble, and I
can't--most always.  Tell me about it.”

So she done it.  And it was the niggers--I just expected it.  She said
the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her; she didn't
know _how_ she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and
the children warn't ever going to see each other no more--and then busted
out bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says:

“Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain't _ever_ going to see each other any
more!”

“But they _will_--and inside of two weeks--and I _know_ it!” says I.

Laws, it was out before I could think!  And before I could budge she
throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it _again_, say it
_again_, say it _again_!

I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close
place. I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very
impatient and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and
eased-up, like a person that's had a tooth pulled out.  So I went to
studying it out.  I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells
the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks,
though I ain't had no experience, and can't say for certain; but it
looks so to me, anyway; and yet here's a case where I'm blest if it
don't look to me like the truth is better and actuly _safer_ than a lie.
 I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it's
so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it.  Well, I
says to myself at last, I'm a-going to chance it; I'll up and tell the
truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of
powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to. Then I says:

“Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where you
could go and stay three or four days?”

“Yes; Mr. Lothrop's.  Why?”

“Never mind why yet.  If I'll tell you how I know the niggers will see
each other again inside of two weeks--here in this house--and _prove_ how
I know it--will you go to Mr. Lothrop's and stay four days?”

“Four days!” she says; “I'll stay a year!”

“All right,” I says, “I don't want nothing more out of _you_ than just
your word--I druther have it than another man's kiss-the-Bible.”  She
smiled and reddened up very sweet, and I says, “If you don't mind it,
I'll shut the door--and bolt it.”

Then I come back and set down again, and says:

“Don't you holler.  Just set still and take it like a man.  I got to
tell the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it's a
bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for
it.  These uncles of yourn ain't no uncles at all; they're a couple of
frauds--regular dead-beats.  There, now we're over the worst of it, you
can stand the rest middling easy.”

It jolted her up like everything, of course; but I was over the shoal
water now, so I went right along, her eyes a-blazing higher and higher
all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck
that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she
flung herself on to the king's breast at the front door and he kissed
her sixteen or seventeen times--and then up she jumps, with her face
afire like sunset, and says:

“The brute!  Come, don't waste a minute--not a _second_--we'll have them
tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!”

Says I:

“Cert'nly.  But do you mean _before_ you go to Mr. Lothrop's, or--”

“Oh,” she says, “what am I _thinking_ about!” she says, and set right
down again.  “Don't mind what I said--please don't--you _won't,_ now,
_will_ you?” Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that
I said I would die first.  “I never thought, I was so stirred up,” she
says; “now go on, and I won't do so any more.  You tell me what to do,
and whatever you say I'll do it.”

“Well,” I says, “it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and I'm fixed so
I got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not--I
druther not tell you why; and if you was to blow on them this town would
get me out of their claws, and I'd be all right; but there'd be another
person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble.  Well, we
got to save _him_, hain't we?  Of course.  Well, then, we won't blow on
them.”

Saying them words put a good idea in my head.  I see how maybe I could
get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave.
But I didn't want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard
to answer questions but me; so I didn't want the plan to begin working
till pretty late to-night.  I says:

“Miss Mary Jane, I'll tell you what we'll do, and you won't have to stay
at Mr. Lothrop's so long, nuther.  How fur is it?”

“A little short of four miles--right out in the country, back here.”

“Well, that 'll answer.  Now you go along out there, and lay low
till nine or half-past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home
again--tell them you've thought of something.  If you get here before
eleven put a candle in this window, and if I don't turn up wait _till_
eleven, and _then_ if I don't turn up it means I'm gone, and out of the
way, and safe. Then you come out and spread the news around, and get
these beats jailed.”

“Good,” she says, “I'll do it.”

“And if it just happens so that I don't get away, but get took up along
with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand,
and you must stand by me all you can.”

“Stand by you! indeed I will.  They sha'n't touch a hair of your head!”
 she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said
it, too.

“If I get away I sha'n't be here,” I says, “to prove these rapscallions
ain't your uncles, and I couldn't do it if I _was_ here.  I could swear
they was beats and bummers, that's all, though that's worth something.
Well, there's others can do that better than what I can, and they're
people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as I'd be.  I'll tell you
how to find them.  Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper.  There--'Royal
Nonesuch, Bricksville.'  Put it away, and don't lose it.  When the
court wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to
Bricksville and say they've got the men that played the Royal Nonesuch,
and ask for some witnesses--why, you'll have that entire town down here
before you can hardly wink, Miss Mary.  And they'll come a-biling, too.”

I judged we had got everything fixed about right now.  So I says:

“Just let the auction go right along, and don't worry.  Nobody don't
have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction
on accounts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till
they get that money; and the way we've fixed it the sale ain't going to
count, and they ain't going to get no money.  It's just like the way
it was with the niggers--it warn't no sale, and the niggers will be
back before long.  Why, they can't collect the money for the _niggers_
yet--they're in the worst kind of a fix, Miss Mary.”

“Well,” she says, “I'll run down to breakfast now, and then I'll start
straight for Mr. Lothrop's.”

“'Deed, _that_ ain't the ticket, Miss Mary Jane,” I says, “by no manner
of means; go _before_ breakfast.”

“Why?”

“What did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary?”

“Well, I never thought--and come to think, I don't know.  What was it?”

“Why, it's because you ain't one of these leather-face people.  I don't
want no better book than what your face is.  A body can set down and
read it off like coarse print.  Do you reckon you can go and face your
uncles when they come to kiss you good-morning, and never--”

“There, there, don't!  Yes, I'll go before breakfast--I'll be glad to.
And leave my sisters with them?”

“Yes; never mind about them.  They've got to stand it yet a while.  They
might suspicion something if all of you was to go.  I don't want you to
see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town; if a neighbor was
to ask how is your uncles this morning your face would tell something.
 No, you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I'll fix it with all of
them. I'll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles and say
you've went away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change, or
to see a friend, and you'll be back to-night or early in the morning.”

“Gone to see a friend is all right, but I won't have my love given to
them.”

“Well, then, it sha'n't be.”  It was well enough to tell _her_ so--no
harm in it.  It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it's
the little things that smooths people's roads the most, down here below;
it would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing.  Then
I says:  “There's one more thing--that bag of money.”

“Well, they've got that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think
_how_ they got it.”

“No, you're out, there.  They hain't got it.”

“Why, who's got it?”

“I wish I knowed, but I don't.  I _had_ it, because I stole it from
them; and I stole it to give to you; and I know where I hid it, but I'm
afraid it ain't there no more.  I'm awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane, I'm
just as sorry as I can be; but I done the best I could; I did honest.  I
come nigh getting caught, and I had to shove it into the first place I
come to, and run--and it warn't a good place.”

“Oh, stop blaming yourself--it's too bad to do it, and I won't allow
it--you couldn't help it; it wasn't your fault.  Where did you hide it?”

I didn't want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and I
couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that
corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach.  So
for a minute I didn't say nothing; then I says:

“I'd ruther not _tell_ you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don't
mind letting me off; but I'll write it for you on a piece of paper, and
you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop's, if you want to.  Do you
reckon that 'll do?”

“Oh, yes.”

So I wrote:  “I put it in the coffin.  It was in there when you was
crying there, away in the night.  I was behind the door, and I was
mighty sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane.”

It made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by
herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own
roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when I folded it up and give it
to her I see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the
hand, hard, and says:

“_Good_-bye.  I'm going to do everything just as you've told me; and if
I don't ever see you again, I sha'n't ever forget you and I'll think of
you a many and a many a time, and I'll _pray_ for you, too!”--and she was
gone.

Pray for me!  I reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more
nearer her size.  But I bet she done it, just the same--she was just that
kind.  She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion--there
warn't no back-down to her, I judge.  You may say what you want to, but
in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in
my opinion she was just full of sand.  It sounds like flattery, but it
ain't no flattery.  And when it comes to beauty--and goodness, too--she
lays over them all.  I hain't ever seen her since that time that I see
her go out of that door; no, I hain't ever seen her since, but I reckon
I've thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying
she would pray for me; and if ever I'd a thought it would do any good
for me to pray for _her_, blamed if I wouldn't a done it or bust.

Well, Mary Jane she lit out the back way, I reckon; because nobody see
her go.  When I struck Susan and the hare-lip, I says:

“What's the name of them people over on t'other side of the river that
you all goes to see sometimes?”

They says:

“There's several; but it's the Proctors, mainly.”

“That's the name,” I says; “I most forgot it.  Well, Miss Mary Jane she
told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry--one of
them's sick.”

“Which one?”

“I don't know; leastways, I kinder forget; but I thinks it's--”

“Sakes alive, I hope it ain't _Hanner_?”

“I'm sorry to say it,” I says, “but Hanner's the very one.”

“My goodness, and she so well only last week!  Is she took bad?”

“It ain't no name for it.  They set up with her all night, Miss Mary
Jane said, and they don't think she'll last many hours.”

“Only think of that, now!  What's the matter with her?”

I couldn't think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says:

“Mumps.”

“Mumps your granny!  They don't set up with people that's got the
mumps.”

“They don't, don't they?  You better bet they do with _these_ mumps.
 These mumps is different.  It's a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said.”

“How's it a new kind?”

“Because it's mixed up with other things.”

“What other things?”

“Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and
yaller janders, and brain-fever, and I don't know what all.”

“My land!  And they call it the _mumps_?”

“That's what Miss Mary Jane said.”

“Well, what in the nation do they call it the _mumps_ for?”

“Why, because it _is_ the mumps.  That's what it starts with.”

“Well, ther' ain't no sense in it.  A body might stump his toe, and take
pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains
out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull
up and say, 'Why, he stumped his _toe_.'  Would ther' be any sense
in that? _No_.  And ther' ain't no sense in _this_, nuther.  Is it
ketching?”

“Is it _ketching_?  Why, how you talk.  Is a _harrow_ catching--in the
dark? If you don't hitch on to one tooth, you're bound to on another,
ain't you? And you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the
whole harrow along, can you?  Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a
harrow, as you may say--and it ain't no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you
come to get it hitched on good.”

“Well, it's awful, I think,” says the hare-lip.  “I'll go to Uncle
Harvey and--”

“Oh, yes,” I says, “I _would_.  Of _course_ I would.  I wouldn't lose no
time.”

“Well, why wouldn't you?”

“Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see.  Hain't your uncles
obleegd to get along home to England as fast as they can?  And do you
reckon they'd be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that
journey by yourselves?  _you_ know they'll wait for you.  So fur, so
good. Your uncle Harvey's a preacher, ain't he?  Very well, then; is a
_preacher_ going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive
a _ship clerk?_--so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard?  Now
_you_ know he ain't.  What _will_ he do, then?  Why, he'll say, 'It's a
great pity, but my church matters has got to get along the best way they
can; for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum mumps,
and so it's my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months
it takes to show on her if she's got it.'  But never mind, if you think
it's best to tell your uncle Harvey--”

“Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good
times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane's
got it or not?  Why, you talk like a muggins.”

“Well, anyway, maybe you'd better tell some of the neighbors.”

“Listen at that, now.  You do beat all for natural stupidness.  Can't
you _see_ that _they'd_ go and tell?  Ther' ain't no way but just to not
tell anybody at _all_.”

“Well, maybe you're right--yes, I judge you _are_ right.”

“But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she's gone out a while,
anyway, so he won't be uneasy about her?”

“Yes, Miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that.  She says, 'Tell them to
give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I've run over
the river to see Mr.'--Mr.--what _is_ the name of that rich family your
uncle Peter used to think so much of?--I mean the one that--”

“Why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain't it?”

“Of course; bother them kind of names, a body can't ever seem to
remember them, half the time, somehow.  Yes, she said, say she has run
over for to ask the Apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy
this house, because she allowed her uncle Peter would ruther they had
it than anybody else; and she's going to stick to them till they say
they'll come, and then, if she ain't too tired, she's coming home; and
if she is, she'll be home in the morning anyway.  She said, don't say
nothing about the Proctors, but only about the Apthorps--which 'll be
perfectly true, because she is going there to speak about their buying
the house; I know it, because she told me so herself.”

“All right,” they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and
give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message.

Everything was all right now.  The girls wouldn't say nothing because
they wanted to go to England; and the king and the duke would ruther
Mary Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of
Doctor Robinson.  I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat--I
reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself.  Of course he
would a throwed more style into it, but I can't do that very handy, not
being brung up to it.

Well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end
of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man
he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of the
auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture now and then, or a little
goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing
for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly.

But by and by the thing dragged through, and everything was
sold--everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard.  So
they'd got to work that off--I never see such a girafft as the king was
for wanting to swallow _everything_.  Well, whilst they was at it a
steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a-whooping
and yelling and laughing and carrying on, and singing out:

“_Here's_ your opposition line! here's your two sets o' heirs to old
Peter Wilks--and you pays your money and you takes your choice!”




CHAPTER XXIX.

THEY was fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a
nice-looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling.  And, my souls,
how the people yelled and laughed, and kept it up.  But I didn't see no
joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king some
to see any.  I reckoned they'd turn pale.  But no, nary a pale did
_they_ turn. The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but
just went a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that's
googling out buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed
down sorrowful on them new-comers like it give him the stomach-ache in
his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the
world.  Oh, he done it admirable.  Lots of the principal people
gethered around the king, to let him see they was on his side.  That old
gentleman that had just come looked all puzzled to death.  Pretty
soon he begun to speak, and I see straight off he pronounced _like_ an
Englishman--not the king's way, though the king's _was_ pretty good for
an imitation.  I can't give the old gent's words, nor I can't imitate
him; but he turned around to the crowd, and says, about like this:

“This is a surprise to me which I wasn't looking for; and I'll
acknowledge, candid and frank, I ain't very well fixed to meet it and
answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes; he's broke his
arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the
night by a mistake.  I am Peter Wilks' brother Harvey, and this is his
brother William, which can't hear nor speak--and can't even make signs to
amount to much, now't he's only got one hand to work them with.  We are
who we say we are; and in a day or two, when I get the baggage, I can
prove it. But up till then I won't say nothing more, but go to the hotel
and wait.”

So him and the new dummy started off; and the king he laughs, and
blethers out:

“Broke his arm--_very_ likely, _ain't_ it?--and very convenient, too,
for a fraud that's got to make signs, and ain't learnt how.  Lost
their baggage! That's _mighty_ good!--and mighty ingenious--under the
_circumstances_!”

So he laughed again; and so did everybody else, except three or four,
or maybe half a dozen.  One of these was that doctor; another one was
a sharp-looking gentleman, with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind
made out of carpet-stuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and
was talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and
then and nodding their heads--it was Levi Bell, the lawyer that was gone
up to Louisville; and another one was a big rough husky that come along
and listened to all the old gentleman said, and was listening to the
king now. And when the king got done this husky up and says:

“Say, looky here; if you are Harvey Wilks, when'd you come to this
town?”

“The day before the funeral, friend,” says the king.

“But what time o' day?”

“In the evenin'--'bout an hour er two before sundown.”

“_How'd_ you come?”

“I come down on the Susan Powell from Cincinnati.”

“Well, then, how'd you come to be up at the Pint in the _mornin_'--in a
canoe?”

“I warn't up at the Pint in the mornin'.”

“It's a lie.”

Several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an
old man and a preacher.

“Preacher be hanged, he's a fraud and a liar.  He was up at the Pint
that mornin'.  I live up there, don't I?  Well, I was up there, and
he was up there.  I see him there.  He come in a canoe, along with Tim
Collins and a boy.”

The doctor he up and says:

“Would you know the boy again if you was to see him, Hines?”

“I reckon I would, but I don't know.  Why, yonder he is, now.  I know
him perfectly easy.”

It was me he pointed at.  The doctor says:

“Neighbors, I don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not; but if
_these_ two ain't frauds, I am an idiot, that's all.  I think it's our
duty to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into
this thing. Come along, Hines; come along, the rest of you.  We'll take
these fellows to the tavern and affront them with t'other couple, and I
reckon we'll find out _something_ before we get through.”

It was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king's friends; so
we all started.  It was about sundown.  The doctor he led me along by
the hand, and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand.

We all got in a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles, and
fetched in the new couple.  First, the doctor says:

“I don't wish to be too hard on these two men, but I think they're
frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about.
 If they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold Peter
Wilks left?  It ain't unlikely.  If these men ain't frauds, they won't
object to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove
they're all right--ain't that so?”

Everybody agreed to that.  So I judged they had our gang in a pretty
tight place right at the outstart.  But the king he only looked
sorrowful, and says:

“Gentlemen, I wish the money was there, for I ain't got no disposition
to throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation
o' this misable business; but, alas, the money ain't there; you k'n send
and see, if you want to.”

“Where is it, then?”

“Well, when my niece give it to me to keep for her I took and hid it
inside o' the straw tick o' my bed, not wishin' to bank it for the few
days we'd be here, and considerin' the bed a safe place, we not bein'
used to niggers, and suppos'n' 'em honest, like servants in England.
 The niggers stole it the very next mornin' after I had went down
stairs; and when I sold 'em I hadn't missed the money yit, so they got
clean away with it.  My servant here k'n tell you 'bout it, gentlemen.”

The doctor and several said “Shucks!” and I see nobody didn't altogether
believe him.  One man asked me if I see the niggers steal it.  I said
no, but I see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and I
never thought nothing, only I reckoned they was afraid they had waked up
my master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them.
 That was all they asked me.  Then the doctor whirls on me and says:

“Are _you_ English, too?”

I says yes; and him and some others laughed, and said, “Stuff!”

Well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had
it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about
supper, nor ever seemed to think about it--and so they kept it up, and
kept it up; and it _was_ the worst mixed-up thing you ever see.  They
made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his'n;
and anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would a _seen_ that the
old gentleman was spinning truth and t'other one lies.  And by and by
they had me up to tell what I knowed.  The king he give me a left-handed
look out of the corner of his eye, and so I knowed enough to talk on the
right side.  I begun to tell about Sheffield, and how we lived there,
and all about the English Wilkses, and so on; but I didn't get pretty
fur till the doctor begun to laugh; and Levi Bell, the lawyer, says:

“Set down, my boy; I wouldn't strain myself if I was you.  I reckon
you ain't used to lying, it don't seem to come handy; what you want is
practice.  You do it pretty awkward.”

I didn't care nothing for the compliment, but I was glad to be let off,
anyway.

The doctor he started to say something, and turns and says:

“If you'd been in town at first, Levi Bell--” The king broke in and
reached out his hand, and says:

“Why, is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often
about?”

The lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked
pleased, and they talked right along awhile, and then got to one side
and talked low; and at last the lawyer speaks up and says:

“That 'll fix it.  I'll take the order and send it, along with your
brother's, and then they'll know it's all right.”

So they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted
his head to one side, and chawed his tongue, and scrawled off something;
and then they give the pen to the duke--and then for the first time the
duke looked sick.  But he took the pen and wrote.  So then the lawyer
turns to the new old gentleman and says:

“You and your brother please write a line or two and sign your names.”

The old gentleman wrote, but nobody couldn't read it.  The lawyer looked
powerful astonished, and says:

“Well, it beats _me_”--and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket,
and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then
_them_ again; and then says:  “These old letters is from Harvey Wilks;
and here's _these_ two handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't
write them” (the king and the duke looked sold and foolish, I tell
you, to see how the lawyer had took them in), “and here's _this_ old
gentleman's hand writing, and anybody can tell, easy enough, _he_ didn't
write them--fact is, the scratches he makes ain't properly _writing_ at
all.  Now, here's some letters from--”

The new old gentleman says:

“If you please, let me explain.  Nobody can read my hand but my brother
there--so he copies for me.  It's _his_ hand you've got there, not mine.”

“_Well_!” says the lawyer, “this _is_ a state of things.  I've got some
of William's letters, too; so if you'll get him to write a line or so we
can com--”

“He _can't_ write with his left hand,” says the old gentleman.  “If he
could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters
and mine too.  Look at both, please--they're by the same hand.”

The lawyer done it, and says:

“I believe it's so--and if it ain't so, there's a heap stronger
resemblance than I'd noticed before, anyway.  Well, well, well!  I
thought we was right on the track of a solution, but it's gone to grass,
partly.  But anyway, one thing is proved--_these_ two ain't either of 'em
Wilkses”--and he wagged his head towards the king and the duke.

Well, what do you think?  That muleheaded old fool wouldn't give in
_then_! Indeed he wouldn't.  Said it warn't no fair test.  Said his
brother William was the cussedest joker in the world, and hadn't tried
to write--_he_ see William was going to play one of his jokes the minute
he put the pen to paper.  And so he warmed up and went warbling and
warbling right along till he was actuly beginning to believe what he was
saying _himself_; but pretty soon the new gentleman broke in, and says:

“I've thought of something.  Is there anybody here that helped to lay
out my br--helped to lay out the late Peter Wilks for burying?”

“Yes,” says somebody, “me and Ab Turner done it.  We're both here.”

Then the old man turns towards the king, and says:

“Perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tattooed on his breast?”

Blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick, or he'd a
squshed down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took
him so sudden; and, mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make
most _anybody_ sqush to get fetched such a solid one as that without any
notice, because how was _he_ going to know what was tattooed on the man?
 He whitened a little; he couldn't help it; and it was mighty still in
there, and everybody bending a little forwards and gazing at him.  Says
I to myself, _now_ he'll throw up the sponge--there ain't no more use.
 Well, did he?  A body can't hardly believe it, but he didn't.  I reckon
he thought he'd keep the thing up till he tired them people out, so
they'd thin out, and him and the duke could break loose and get away.
 Anyway, he set there, and pretty soon he begun to smile, and says:

“Mf!  It's a _very_ tough question, _ain't_ it!  _yes_, sir, I k'n
tell you what's tattooed on his breast.  It's jest a small, thin, blue
arrow--that's what it is; and if you don't look clost, you can't see it.
 _now_ what do you say--hey?”

Well, I never see anything like that old blister for clean out-and-out
cheek.

The new old gentleman turns brisk towards Ab Turner and his pard, and
his eye lights up like he judged he'd got the king _this_ time, and
says:

“There--you've heard what he said!  Was there any such mark on Peter
Wilks' breast?”

Both of them spoke up and says:

“We didn't see no such mark.”

“Good!” says the old gentleman.  “Now, what you _did_ see on his breast
was a small dim P, and a B (which is an initial he dropped when he was
young), and a W, with dashes between them, so:  P--B--W”--and he marked
them that way on a piece of paper.  “Come, ain't that what you saw?”

Both of them spoke up again, and says:

“No, we _didn't_.  We never seen any marks at all.”

Well, everybody _was_ in a state of mind now, and they sings out:

“The whole _bilin_' of 'm 's frauds!  Le's duck 'em! le's drown 'em!
le's ride 'em on a rail!” and everybody was whooping at once, and there
was a rattling powwow.  But the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells,
and says:

“Gentlemen--gentle_men!_  Hear me just a word--just a _single_ word--if you
_please_!  There's one way yet--let's go and dig up the corpse and look.”

That took them.

“Hooray!” they all shouted, and was starting right off; but the lawyer
and the doctor sung out:

“Hold on, hold on!  Collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch
_them_ along, too!”

“We'll do it!” they all shouted; “and if we don't find them marks we'll
lynch the whole gang!”

I _was_ scared, now, I tell you.  But there warn't no getting away, you
know. They gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the
graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole
town at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the
evening.

As we went by our house I wished I hadn't sent Mary Jane out of town;
because now if I could tip her the wink she'd light out and save me, and
blow on our dead-beats.

Well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like
wildcats; and to make it more scary the sky was darking up, and the
lightning beginning to wink and flitter, and the wind to shiver amongst
the leaves. This was the most awful trouble and most dangersome I ever
was in; and I was kinder stunned; everything was going so different from
what I had allowed for; stead of being fixed so I could take my own time
if I wanted to, and see all the fun, and have Mary Jane at my back to
save me and set me free when the close-fit come, here was nothing in the
world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tattoo-marks.  If they
didn't find them--

I couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn't think
about nothing else.  It got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful
time to give the crowd the slip; but that big husky had me by the
wrist--Hines--and a body might as well try to give Goliar the slip.  He
dragged me right along, he was so excited, and I had to run to keep up.

When they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it
like an overflow.  And when they got to the grave they found they had
about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't
thought to fetch a lantern.  But they sailed into digging anyway by the
flicker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house, a half a
mile off, to borrow one.

So they dug and dug like everything; and it got awful dark, and the rain
started, and the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come
brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed; but them people never took
no notice of it, they was so full of this business; and one minute
you could see everything and every face in that big crowd, and the
shovelfuls of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the
dark wiped it all out, and you couldn't see nothing at all.

At last they got out the coffin and begun to unscrew the lid, and then
such another crowding and shouldering and shoving as there was, to
scrouge in and get a sight, you never see; and in the dark, that way, it
was awful.  Hines he hurt my wrist dreadful pulling and tugging so,
and I reckon he clean forgot I was in the world, he was so excited and
panting.

All of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare,
and somebody sings out:

“By the living jingo, here's the bag of gold on his breast!”

Hines let out a whoop, like everybody else, and dropped my wrist and
give a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and the way I lit
out and shinned for the road in the dark there ain't nobody can tell.

I had the road all to myself, and I fairly flew--leastways, I had it all
to myself except the solid dark, and the now-and-then glares, and the
buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of
the thunder; and sure as you are born I did clip it along!

When I struck the town I see there warn't nobody out in the storm, so
I never hunted for no back streets, but humped it straight through the
main one; and when I begun to get towards our house I aimed my eye and
set it. No light there; the house all dark--which made me feel sorry and
disappointed, I didn't know why.  But at last, just as I was sailing by,
_flash_ comes the light in Mary Jane's window! and my heart swelled up
sudden, like to bust; and the same second the house and all was behind
me in the dark, and wasn't ever going to be before me no more in this
world. She _was_ the best girl I ever see, and had the most sand.

The minute I was far enough above the town to see I could make the
towhead, I begun to look sharp for a boat to borrow, and the first
time the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained I snatched it and
shoved. It was a canoe, and warn't fastened with nothing but a rope.
 The towhead was a rattling big distance off, away out there in the
middle of the river, but I didn't lose no time; and when I struck the
raft at last I was so fagged I would a just laid down to blow and gasp
if I could afforded it.  But I didn't.  As I sprung aboard I sung out:

“Out with you, Jim, and set her loose!  Glory be to goodness, we're shut
of them!”

Jim lit out, and was a-coming for me with both arms spread, he was so
full of joy; but when I glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up
in my mouth and I went overboard backwards; for I forgot he was old King
Lear and a drownded A-rab all in one, and it most scared the livers and
lights out of me.  But Jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and
bless me, and so on, he was so glad I was back and we was shut of the
king and the duke, but I says:

“Not now; have it for breakfast, have it for breakfast!  Cut loose and
let her slide!”

So in two seconds away we went a-sliding down the river, and it _did_
seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and
nobody to bother us.  I had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack
my heels a few times--I couldn't help it; but about the third crack
I noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well, and held my breath and
listened and waited; and sure enough, when the next flash busted out
over the water, here they come!--and just a-laying to their oars and
making their skiff hum!  It was the king and the duke.

So I wilted right down on to the planks then, and give up; and it was
all I could do to keep from crying.




CHAPTER XXX.

WHEN they got aboard the king went for me, and shook me by the collar,
and says:

“Tryin' to give us the slip, was ye, you pup!  Tired of our company,
hey?”

I says:

“No, your majesty, we warn't--_please_ don't, your majesty!”

“Quick, then, and tell us what _was_ your idea, or I'll shake the
insides out o' you!”

“Honest, I'll tell you everything just as it happened, your majesty.
 The man that had a-holt of me was very good to me, and kept saying he
had a boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry
to see a boy in such a dangerous fix; and when they was all took by
surprise by finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go
of me and whispers, 'Heel it now, or they'll hang ye, sure!' and I lit
out.  It didn't seem no good for _me_ to stay--I couldn't do nothing,
and I didn't want to be hung if I could get away.  So I never stopped
running till I found the canoe; and when I got here I told Jim to hurry,
or they'd catch me and hang me yet, and said I was afeard you and the
duke wasn't alive now, and I was awful sorry, and so was Jim, and was
awful glad when we see you coming; you may ask Jim if I didn't.”

Jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, “Oh,
yes, it's _mighty_ likely!” and shook me up again, and said he reckoned
he'd drownd me.  But the duke says:

“Leggo the boy, you old idiot!  Would _you_ a done any different?  Did
you inquire around for _him_ when you got loose?  I don't remember it.”

So the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in
it. But the duke says:

“You better a blame' sight give _yourself_ a good cussing, for you're
the one that's entitled to it most.  You hain't done a thing from the
start that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky
with that imaginary blue-arrow mark.  That _was_ bright--it was right
down bully; and it was the thing that saved us.  For if it hadn't been
for that they'd a jailed us till them Englishmen's baggage come--and
then--the penitentiary, you bet! But that trick took 'em to the
graveyard, and the gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the
excited fools hadn't let go all holts and made that rush to get a
look we'd a slept in our cravats to-night--cravats warranted to _wear_,
too--longer than _we'd_ need 'em.”

They was still a minute--thinking; then the king says, kind of
absent-minded like:

“Mf!  And we reckoned the _niggers_ stole it!”

That made me squirm!

“Yes,” says the duke, kinder slow and deliberate and sarcastic, “_we_
did.”

After about a half a minute the king drawls out:

“Leastways, I did.”

The duke says, the same way:

“On the contrary, I did.”

The king kind of ruffles up, and says:

“Looky here, Bilgewater, what'r you referrin' to?”

The duke says, pretty brisk:

“When it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask, what was _you_
referring to?”

“Shucks!” says the king, very sarcastic; “but I don't know--maybe you was
asleep, and didn't know what you was about.”

The duke bristles up now, and says:

“Oh, let _up_ on this cussed nonsense; do you take me for a blame' fool?
Don't you reckon I know who hid that money in that coffin?”

“_Yes_, sir!  I know you _do_ know, because you done it yourself!”

“It's a lie!”--and the duke went for him.  The king sings out:

“Take y'r hands off!--leggo my throat!--I take it all back!”

The duke says:

“Well, you just own up, first, that you _did_ hide that money there,
intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig
it up, and have it all to yourself.”

“Wait jest a minute, duke--answer me this one question, honest and fair;
if you didn't put the money there, say it, and I'll b'lieve you, and
take back everything I said.”

“You old scoundrel, I didn't, and you know I didn't.  There, now!”

“Well, then, I b'lieve you.  But answer me only jest this one more--now
_don't_ git mad; didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and
hide it?”

The duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says:

“Well, I don't care if I _did_, I didn't _do_ it, anyway.  But you not
only had it in mind to do it, but you _done_ it.”

“I wisht I never die if I done it, duke, and that's honest.  I won't say
I warn't goin' to do it, because I _was_; but you--I mean somebody--got in
ahead o' me.”

“It's a lie!  You done it, and you got to _say_ you done it, or--”

The king began to gurgle, and then he gasps out:

“'Nough!--I _own up!_”

I was very glad to hear him say that; it made me feel much more easier
than what I was feeling before.  So the duke took his hands off and
says:

“If you ever deny it again I'll drown you.  It's _well_ for you to set
there and blubber like a baby--it's fitten for you, after the way
you've acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble
everything--and I a-trusting you all the time, like you was my own
father.  You ought to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it
saddled on to a lot of poor niggers, and you never say a word for 'em.
 It makes me feel ridiculous to think I was soft enough to _believe_
that rubbage.  Cuss you, I can see now why you was so anxious to make
up the deffisit--you wanted to get what money I'd got out of the Nonesuch
and one thing or another, and scoop it _all_!”

The king says, timid, and still a-snuffling:

“Why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffisit; it warn't me.”

“Dry up!  I don't want to hear no more out of you!” says the duke.  “And
_now_ you see what you GOT by it.  They've got all their own money back,
and all of _ourn_ but a shekel or two _besides_.  G'long to bed, and
don't you deffersit _me_ no more deffersits, long 's _you_ live!”

So the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort,
and before long the duke tackled HIS bottle; and so in about a half an
hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got the
lovinger they got, and went off a-snoring in each other's arms.  They
both got powerful mellow, but I noticed the king didn't get mellow
enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag
again.  That made me feel easy and satisfied.  Of course when they got
to snoring we had a long gabble, and I told Jim everything.




CHAPTER XXXI.

WE dasn't stop again at any town for days and days; kept right along
down the river.  We was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty
long ways from home.  We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on
them, hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards.  It was the
first I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and
dismal.  So now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they
begun to work the villages again.

First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough
for them both to get drunk on.  Then in another village they started
a dancing-school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a
kangaroo does; so the first prance they made the general public jumped
in and pranced them out of town.  Another time they tried to go at
yellocution; but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and
give them a solid good cussing, and made them skip out.  They tackled
missionarying, and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and
a little of everything; but they couldn't seem to have no luck.  So at
last they got just about dead broke, and laid around the raft as she
floated along, thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the
half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and desperate.

And at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in
the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time.
Jim and me got uneasy.  We didn't like the look of it.  We judged they
was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever.  We turned it
over and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break
into somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money
business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an
agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such
actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold
shake and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we
hid the raft in a good, safe place about two mile below a little bit of
a shabby village named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore and told
us all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see
if anybody had got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. (“House to
rob, you _mean_,” says I to myself; “and when you get through robbing it
you'll come back here and wonder what has become of me and Jim and the
raft--and you'll have to take it out in wondering.”) And he said if he
warn't back by midday the duke and me would know it was all right, and
we was to come along.

So we stayed where we was.  The duke he fretted and sweated around, and
was in a mighty sour way.  He scolded us for everything, and we couldn't
seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing.
Something was a-brewing, sure.  I was good and glad when midday come
and no king; we could have a change, anyway--and maybe a chance for _the_
change on top of it.  So me and the duke went up to the village, and
hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the
back room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers
bullyragging him for sport, and he a-cussing and a-threatening with all
his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to
them.  The duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king
begun to sass back, and the minute they was fairly at it I lit out and
shook the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like
a deer, for I see our chance; and I made up my mind that it would be a
long day before they ever see me and Jim again.  I got down there all
out of breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out:

“Set her loose, Jim! we're all right now!”

But there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam.  Jim was
gone!  I set up a shout--and then another--and then another one; and run
this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't
no use--old Jim was gone.  Then I set down and cried; I couldn't help
it. But I couldn't set still long.  Pretty soon I went out on the road,
trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and
asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says:

“Yes.”

“Whereabouts?” says I.

“Down to Silas Phelps' place, two mile below here.  He's a runaway
nigger, and they've got him.  Was you looking for him?”

“You bet I ain't!  I run across him in the woods about an hour or two
ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers out--and told me to lay
down and stay where I was; and I done it.  Been there ever since; afeard
to come out.”

“Well,” he says, “you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him.
He run off f'm down South, som'ers.”

“It's a good job they got him.”

“Well, I _reckon_!  There's two hunderd dollars reward on him.  It's
like picking up money out'n the road.”

“Yes, it is--and I could a had it if I'd been big enough; I see him
_first_. Who nailed him?”

“It was an old fellow--a stranger--and he sold out his chance in him for
forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait.  Think
o' that, now!  You bet _I'd_ wait, if it was seven year.”

“That's me, every time,” says I.  “But maybe his chance ain't worth
no more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap.  Maybe there's something
ain't straight about it.”

“But it _is_, though--straight as a string.  I see the handbill myself.
 It tells all about him, to a dot--paints him like a picture, and tells
the plantation he's frum, below Newr_leans_.  No-sirree-_bob_, they
ain't no trouble 'bout _that_ speculation, you bet you.  Say, gimme a
chaw tobacker, won't ye?”

I didn't have none, so he left.  I went to the raft, and set down in the
wigwam to think.  But I couldn't come to nothing.  I thought till I wore
my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble.  After all
this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it
was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because
they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make
him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty
dirty dollars.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to
be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd _got_ to be a
slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to
tell Miss Watson where he was.  But I soon give up that notion for two
things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness
for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again;
and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger,
and they'd make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and
disgraced. And then think of _me_!  It would get all around that Huck
Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see
anybody from that town again I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots
for shame.  That's just the way:  a person does a low-down thing, and
then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he
can hide it, it ain't no disgrace.  That was my fix exactly. The more I
studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the
more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when
it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence
slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being
watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a
poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was
showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't a-going
to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further,
I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared.  Well, I tried the best I
could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung
up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me
kept saying, “There was the Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and
if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you there that people that acts as
I'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire.”

It made me shiver.  And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I
couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better.  So
I kneeled down.  But the words wouldn't come.  Why wouldn't they?  It
warn't no use to try and hide it from Him.  Nor from _me_, neither.  I
knowed very well why they wouldn't come.  It was because my heart warn't
right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing
double.  I was letting _on_ to give up sin, but away inside of me I was
holding on to the biggest one of all.  I was trying to make my mouth
_say_ I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write
to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I
knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it.  You can't pray a lie--I found
that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to
do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter--and
then see if I can pray.  Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as
light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone.  So I
got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down
and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below
Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the
reward if you send.

_Huck Finn._

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever
felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now.  But I didn't do it
straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking
how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost
and going to hell.  And went on thinking.  And got to thinking over our
trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time:  in the day
and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we
a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing.  But somehow I
couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the
other kind.  I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of
calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when
I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp,
up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call
me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how
good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling
the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was
the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the _only_ one he's
got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place.  I took it up, and held it in my hand.  I was
a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and
I knowed it.  I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then
says to myself:

“All right, then, I'll _go_ to hell”--and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said.  And I let
them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.  I shoved the
whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again,
which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't.  And
for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again;
and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as
long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.

Then I set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over some
considerable many ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that
suited me.  So then I took the bearings of a woody island that was down
the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out with my
raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in.  I slept the
night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast,
and put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or
another in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore.  I landed
below where I judged was Phelps's place, and hid my bundle in the woods,
and then filled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks into her and
sunk her where I could find her again when I wanted her, about a quarter
of a mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank.

Then I struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I see a sign on
it, “Phelps's Sawmill,” and when I come to the farm-houses, two or
three hundred yards further along, I kept my eyes peeled, but didn't
see nobody around, though it was good daylight now.  But I didn't mind,
because I didn't want to see nobody just yet--I only wanted to get the
lay of the land. According to my plan, I was going to turn up there from
the village, not from below.  So I just took a look, and shoved along,
straight for town. Well, the very first man I see when I got there was
the duke.  He was sticking up a bill for the Royal Nonesuch--three-night
performance--like that other time.  They had the cheek, them frauds!  I
was right on him before I could shirk.  He looked astonished, and says:

“Hel-_lo_!  Where'd _you_ come from?”  Then he says, kind of glad and
eager, “Where's the raft?--got her in a good place?”

I says:

“Why, that's just what I was going to ask your grace.”

Then he didn't look so joyful, and says:

“What was your idea for asking _me_?” he says.

“Well,” I says, “when I see the king in that doggery yesterday I says
to myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer; so I went
a-loafing around town to put in the time and wait.  A man up and offered
me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch
a sheep, and so I went along; but when we was dragging him to the boat,
and the man left me a-holt of the rope and went behind him to shove him
along, he was too strong for me and jerked loose and run, and we after
him.  We didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the
country till we tired him out.  We never got him till dark; then we
fetched him over, and I started down for the raft.  When I got there and
see it was gone, I says to myself, 'They've got into trouble and had to
leave; and they've took my nigger, which is the only nigger I've got in
the world, and now I'm in a strange country, and ain't got no property
no more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living;' so I set down and
cried.  I slept in the woods all night.  But what _did_ become of the
raft, then?--and Jim--poor Jim!”

“Blamed if I know--that is, what's become of the raft.  That old fool had
made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery
the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every cent but
what he'd spent for whisky; and when I got him home late last night and
found the raft gone, we said, 'That little rascal has stole our raft and
shook us, and run off down the river.'”

“I wouldn't shake my _nigger_, would I?--the only nigger I had in the
world, and the only property.”

“We never thought of that.  Fact is, I reckon we'd come to consider him
_our_ nigger; yes, we did consider him so--goodness knows we had trouble
enough for him.  So when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke,
there warn't anything for it but to try the Royal Nonesuch another
shake. And I've pegged along ever since, dry as a powder-horn.  Where's
that ten cents? Give it here.”

I had considerable money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him to
spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the
money I had, and I hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday.  He never
said nothing.  The next minute he whirls on me and says:

“Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us?  We'd skin him if he done
that!”

“How can he blow?  Hain't he run off?”

“No!  That old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money's
gone.”

“_Sold_ him?”  I says, and begun to cry; “why, he was _my_ nigger, and
that was my money.  Where is he?--I want my nigger.”

“Well, you can't _get_ your nigger, that's all--so dry up your
blubbering. Looky here--do you think _you'd_ venture to blow on us?
 Blamed if I think I'd trust you.  Why, if you _was_ to blow on us--”

He stopped, but I never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes
before. I went on a-whimpering, and says:

“I don't want to blow on nobody; and I ain't got no time to blow, nohow.
I got to turn out and find my nigger.”

He looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on
his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead.  At last he says:

“I'll tell you something.  We got to be here three days.  If you'll
promise you won't blow, and won't let the nigger blow, I'll tell you
where to find him.”

So I promised, and he says:

“A farmer by the name of Silas Ph--” and then he stopped.  You see, he
started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped that way, and begun to
study and think again, I reckoned he was changing his mind.  And so he
was. He wouldn't trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out of
the way the whole three days.  So pretty soon he says:

“The man that bought him is named Abram Foster--Abram G. Foster--and he
lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to Lafayette.”

“All right,” I says, “I can walk it in three days.  And I'll start this
very afternoon.”

“No you wont, you'll start _now_; and don't you lose any time about it,
neither, nor do any gabbling by the way.  Just keep a tight tongue in
your head and move right along, and then you won't get into trouble with
_us_, d'ye hear?”

That was the order I wanted, and that was the one I played for.  I
wanted to be left free to work my plans.

“So clear out,” he says; “and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you want
to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim _is_ your nigger--some
idiots don't require documents--leastways I've heard there's such down
South here.  And when you tell him the handbill and the reward's bogus,
maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for
getting 'em out.  Go 'long now, and tell him anything you want to; but
mind you don't work your jaw any _between_ here and there.”

So I left, and struck for the back country.  I didn't look around, but I
kinder felt like he was watching me.  But I knowed I could tire him out
at that.  I went straight out in the country as much as a mile before
I stopped; then I doubled back through the woods towards Phelps'.  I
reckoned I better start in on my plan straight off without fooling
around, because I wanted to stop Jim's mouth till these fellows could
get away.  I didn't want no trouble with their kind.  I'd seen all I
wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them.




CHAPTER XXXII.

WHEN I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny;
the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint
dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and
like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers
the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's
spirits whispering--spirits that's been dead ever so many years--and you
always think they're talking about _you_.  As a general thing it makes a
body wish _he_ was dead, too, and done with it all.

Phelps' was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations, and they
all look alike.  A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out
of logs sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different
length, to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when
they are going to jump on to a horse; some sickly grass-patches in the
big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the
nap rubbed off; big double log-house for the white folks--hewed logs,
with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud-stripes
been whitewashed some time or another; round-log kitchen, with a big
broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log smoke-house
back of the kitchen; three little log nigger-cabins in a row t'other
side the smoke-house; one little hut all by itself away down against
the back fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side;
ash-hopper and big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut; bench by
the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there
in the sun; more hounds asleep round about; about three shade trees away
off in a corner; some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place
by the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch; then
the cotton fields begins, and after the fields the woods.

I went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and
started for the kitchen.  When I got a little ways I heard the dim hum
of a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again;
and then I knowed for certain I wished I was dead--for that _is_ the
lonesomest sound in the whole world.

I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting
to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for
I'd noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth
if I left it alone.

When I got half-way, first one hound and then another got up and went
for me, and of course I stopped and faced them, and kept still.  And
such another powwow as they made!  In a quarter of a minute I was a kind
of a hub of a wheel, as you may say--spokes made out of dogs--circle of
fifteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses
stretched up towards me, a-barking and howling; and more a-coming; you
could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres.

A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her
hand, singing out, “Begone _you_ Tige! you Spot! begone sah!” and she
fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling,
and then the rest followed; and the next second half of them come back,
wagging their tails around me, and making friends with me.  There ain't
no harm in a hound, nohow.

And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger
boys without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung on to their
mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way
they always do.  And here comes the white woman running from the house,
about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinning-stick
in her hand; and behind her comes her little white children, acting the
same way the little niggers was doing.  She was smiling all over so she
could hardly stand--and says:

“It's _you_, at last!--_ain't_ it?”

I out with a “Yes'm” before I thought.

She grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands
and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over;
and she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, “You
don't look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would; but law
sakes, I don't care for that, I'm so glad to see you!  Dear, dear, it
does seem like I could eat you up!  Children, it's your cousin Tom!--tell
him howdy.”

But they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and
hid behind her.  So she run on:

“Lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away--or did you get
your breakfast on the boat?”

I said I had got it on the boat.  So then she started for the house,
leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after.  When we got
there she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down on
a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says:

“Now I can have a _good_ look at you; and, laws-a-me, I've been hungry
for it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's come
at last! We been expecting you a couple of days and more.  What kep'
you?--boat get aground?”

“Yes'm--she--”

“Don't say yes'm--say Aunt Sally.  Where'd she get aground?”

I didn't rightly know what to say, because I didn't know whether the
boat would be coming up the river or down.  But I go a good deal on
instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming up--from down towards
Orleans. That didn't help me much, though; for I didn't know the names
of bars down that way.  I see I'd got to invent a bar, or forget the
name of the one we got aground on--or--Now I struck an idea, and fetched
it out:

“It warn't the grounding--that didn't keep us back but a little.  We
blowed out a cylinder-head.”

“Good gracious! anybody hurt?”

“No'm.  Killed a nigger.”

“Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.  Two years ago
last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old
Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man.  And
I think he died afterwards.  He was a Baptist.  Your uncle Silas knowed
a family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well.  Yes, I
remember now, he _did_ die.  Mortification set in, and they had to
amputate him. But it didn't save him.  Yes, it was mortification--that
was it.  He turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious
resurrection. They say he was a sight to look at.  Your uncle's been up
to the town every day to fetch you. And he's gone again, not more'n an
hour ago; he'll be back any minute now. You must a met him on the road,
didn't you?--oldish man, with a--”

“No, I didn't see nobody, Aunt Sally.  The boat landed just at daylight,
and I left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking around the town
and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too
soon; and so I come down the back way.”

“Who'd you give the baggage to?”

“Nobody.”

“Why, child, it 'll be stole!”

“Not where I hid it I reckon it won't,” I says.

“How'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?”

It was kinder thin ice, but I says:

“The captain see me standing around, and told me I better have something
to eat before I went ashore; so he took me in the texas to the officers'
lunch, and give me all I wanted.”

I was getting so uneasy I couldn't listen good.  I had my mind on the
children all the time; I wanted to get them out to one side and pump
them a little, and find out who I was.  But I couldn't get no show, Mrs.
Phelps kept it up and run on so.  Pretty soon she made the cold chills
streak all down my back, because she says:

“But here we're a-running on this way, and you hain't told me a word
about Sis, nor any of them.  Now I'll rest my works a little, and you
start up yourn; just tell me _everything_--tell me all about 'm all every
one of 'm; and how they are, and what they're doing, and what they told
you to tell me; and every last thing you can think of.”

Well, I see I was up a stump--and up it good.  Providence had stood by
me this fur all right, but I was hard and tight aground now.  I see it
warn't a bit of use to try to go ahead--I'd got to throw up my hand.  So
I says to myself, here's another place where I got to resk the truth.
 I opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind
the bed, and says:

“Here he comes!  Stick your head down lower--there, that'll do; you can't
be seen now.  Don't you let on you're here.  I'll play a joke on him.
Children, don't you say a word.”

I see I was in a fix now.  But it warn't no use to worry; there warn't
nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from
under when the lightning struck.

I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in; then
the bed hid him.  Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him, and says:

“Has he come?”

“No,” says her husband.

“Good-_ness_ gracious!” she says, “what in the warld can have become of
him?”

“I can't imagine,” says the old gentleman; “and I must say it makes me
dreadful uneasy.”

“Uneasy!” she says; “I'm ready to go distracted!  He _must_ a come; and
you've missed him along the road.  I _know_ it's so--something tells me
so.”

“Why, Sally, I _couldn't_ miss him along the road--_you_ know that.”

“But oh, dear, dear, what _will_ Sis say!  He must a come!  You must a
missed him.  He--”

“Oh, don't distress me any more'n I'm already distressed.  I don't know
what in the world to make of it.  I'm at my wit's end, and I don't mind
acknowledging 't I'm right down scared.  But there's no hope that he's
come; for he _couldn't_ come and me miss him.  Sally, it's terrible--just
terrible--something's happened to the boat, sure!”

“Why, Silas!  Look yonder!--up the road!--ain't that somebody coming?”

He sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that give Mrs.
Phelps the chance she wanted.  She stooped down quick at the foot of the
bed and give me a pull, and out I come; and when he turned back from the
window there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house afire, and
I standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside.  The old gentleman stared,
and says:

“Why, who's that?”

“Who do you reckon 't is?”

“I hain't no idea.  Who _is_ it?”

“It's _Tom Sawyer!_”

By jings, I most slumped through the floor!  But there warn't no time to
swap knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on
shaking; and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and
cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid, and Mary,
and the rest of the tribe.

But if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what I was; for it was like
being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was.  Well, they froze
to me for two hours; and at last, when my chin was so tired it couldn't
hardly go any more, I had told them more about my family--I mean the
Sawyer family--than ever happened to any six Sawyer families.  And I
explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the mouth of
White River, and it took us three days to fix it.  Which was all right,
and worked first-rate; because _they_ didn't know but what it would take
three days to fix it.  If I'd a called it a bolthead it would a done
just as well.

Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty
uncomfortable all up the other.  Being Tom Sawyer was easy and
comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I hear a
steamboat coughing along down the river.  Then I says to myself, s'pose
Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat?  And s'pose he steps in here any
minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep
quiet?

Well, I couldn't _have_ it that way; it wouldn't do at all.  I must go
up the road and waylay him.  So I told the folks I reckoned I would go
up to the town and fetch down my baggage.  The old gentleman was for
going along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and
I druther he wouldn't take no trouble about me.




CHAPTER XXXIII.

SO I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a
wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and
waited till he come along.  I says “Hold on!” and it stopped alongside,
and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed
two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says:

“I hain't ever done you no harm.  You know that.  So, then, what you
want to come back and ha'nt _me_ for?”

I says:

“I hain't come back--I hain't been _gone_.”

When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn't quite
satisfied yet.  He says:

“Don't you play nothing on me, because I wouldn't on you.  Honest injun
now, you ain't a ghost?”

“Honest injun, I ain't,” I says.

“Well--I--I--well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can't somehow
seem to understand it no way.  Looky here, warn't you ever murdered _at
all?_”

“No.  I warn't ever murdered at all--I played it on them.  You come in
here and feel of me if you don't believe me.”

So he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me
again he didn't know what to do.  And he wanted to know all about it
right off, because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it
hit him where he lived.  But I said, leave it alone till by and by; and
told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and I told
him the kind of a fix I was in, and what did he reckon we better do?  He
said, let him alone a minute, and don't disturb him.  So he thought and
thought, and pretty soon he says:

“It's all right; I've got it.  Take my trunk in your wagon, and let on
it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the
house about the time you ought to; and I'll go towards town a piece, and
take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you;
and you needn't let on to know me at first.”

I says:

“All right; but wait a minute.  There's one more thing--a thing that
_nobody_ don't know but me.  And that is, there's a nigger here that
I'm a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is _Jim_--old Miss
Watson's Jim.”

He says:

“What!  Why, Jim is--”

He stopped and went to studying.  I says:

“I know what you'll say.  You'll say it's dirty, low-down business; but
what if it is?  I'm low down; and I'm a-going to steal him, and I want
you keep mum and not let on.  Will you?”

His eye lit up, and he says:

“I'll _help_ you steal him!”

Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot.  It was the most
astonishing speech I ever heard--and I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer fell
considerable in my estimation.  Only I couldn't believe it.  Tom Sawyer
a _nigger-stealer!_

“Oh, shucks!”  I says; “you're joking.”

“I ain't joking, either.”

“Well, then,” I says, “joking or no joking, if you hear anything said
about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that _you_ don't know
nothing about him, and I don't know nothing about him.”

Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his
way and I drove mine.  But of course I forgot all about driving slow on
accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home a heap too
quick for that length of a trip.  The old gentleman was at the door, and
he says:

“Why, this is wonderful!  Whoever would a thought it was in that mare
to do it?  I wish we'd a timed her.  And she hain't sweated a hair--not
a hair. It's wonderful.  Why, I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that
horse now--I wouldn't, honest; and yet I'd a sold her for fifteen before,
and thought 'twas all she was worth.”

That's all he said.  He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see.
But it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was
a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the
plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church
and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was
worth it, too.  There was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and
done the same way, down South.

In about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and Aunt
Sally she see it through the window, because it was only about fifty
yards, and says:

“Why, there's somebody come!  I wonder who 'tis?  Why, I do believe it's
a stranger.  Jimmy” (that's one of the children) “run and tell Lize to
put on another plate for dinner.”

Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger
don't come _every_ year, and so he lays over the yaller-fever, for
interest, when he does come.  Tom was over the stile and starting for
the house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we
was all bunched in the front door.  Tom had his store clothes on, and an
audience--and that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer.  In them circumstances
it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was
suitable.  He warn't a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no,
he come ca'm and important, like the ram.  When he got a-front of us he
lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box
that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them,
and says:

“Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?”

“No, my boy,” says the old gentleman, “I'm sorry to say 't your driver
has deceived you; Nichols's place is down a matter of three mile more.
Come in, come in.”

Tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, “Too late--he's out
of sight.”

“Yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with
us; and then we'll hitch up and take you down to Nichols's.”

“Oh, I _can't_ make you so much trouble; I couldn't think of it.  I'll
walk--I don't mind the distance.”

“But we won't _let_ you walk--it wouldn't be Southern hospitality to do
it. Come right in.”

“Oh, _do_,” says Aunt Sally; “it ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a
bit in the world.  You must stay.  It's a long, dusty three mile, and
we can't let you walk.  And, besides, I've already told 'em to put on
another plate when I see you coming; so you mustn't disappoint us.  Come
right in and make yourself at home.”

So Tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be
persuaded, and come in; and when he was in he said he was a stranger
from Hicksville, Ohio, and his name was William Thompson--and he made
another bow.

Well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about Hicksville and
everybody in it he could invent, and I getting a little nervious, and
wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape; and at last,
still talking along, he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the
mouth, and then settled back again in his chair comfortable, and was
going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of
her hand, and says:

“You owdacious puppy!”

He looked kind of hurt, and says:

“I'm surprised at you, m'am.”

“You're s'rp--Why, what do you reckon I am?  I've a good notion to take
and--Say, what do you mean by kissing me?”

He looked kind of humble, and says:

“I didn't mean nothing, m'am.  I didn't mean no harm.  I--I--thought you'd
like it.”

“Why, you born fool!”  She took up the spinning stick, and it looked
like it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it.
 “What made you think I'd like it?”

“Well, I don't know.  Only, they--they--told me you would.”

“_They_ told you I would.  Whoever told you's _another_ lunatic.  I
never heard the beat of it.  Who's _they_?”

“Why, everybody.  They all said so, m'am.”

It was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her
fingers worked like she wanted to scratch him; and she says:

“Who's 'everybody'?  Out with their names, or ther'll be an idiot
short.”

He got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says:

“I'm sorry, and I warn't expecting it.  They told me to.  They all told
me to.  They all said, kiss her; and said she'd like it.  They all said
it--every one of them.  But I'm sorry, m'am, and I won't do it no more--I
won't, honest.”

“You won't, won't you?  Well, I sh'd _reckon_ you won't!”

“No'm, I'm honest about it; I won't ever do it again--till you ask me.”

“Till I _ask_ you!  Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days!
 I lay you'll be the Methusalem-numskull of creation before ever I ask
you--or the likes of you.”

“Well,” he says, “it does surprise me so.  I can't make it out, somehow.
They said you would, and I thought you would.  But--” He stopped and
looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye
somewheres, and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, “Didn't
_you_ think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?”

“Why, no; I--I--well, no, I b'lieve I didn't.”

Then he looks on around the same way to me, and says:

“Tom, didn't _you_ think Aunt Sally 'd open out her arms and say, 'Sid
Sawyer--'”

“My land!” she says, breaking in and jumping for him, “you impudent
young rascal, to fool a body so--” and was going to hug him, but he
fended her off, and says:

“No, not till you've asked me first.”

So she didn't lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed
him over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he
took what was left.  And after they got a little quiet again she says:

“Why, dear me, I never see such a surprise.  We warn't looking for _you_
at all, but only Tom.  Sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but
him.”

“It's because it warn't _intended_ for any of us to come but Tom,” he
says; “but I begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me
come, too; so, coming down the river, me and Tom thought it would be a
first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me
to by and by tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger.  But it
was a mistake, Aunt Sally.  This ain't no healthy place for a stranger
to come.”

“No--not impudent whelps, Sid.  You ought to had your jaws boxed; I
hain't been so put out since I don't know when.  But I don't care, I
don't mind the terms--I'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to
have you here. Well, to think of that performance!  I don't deny it, I
was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack.”

We had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and
the kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven
families--and all hot, too; none of your flabby, tough meat that's laid
in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of
old cold cannibal in the morning.  Uncle Silas he asked a pretty long
blessing over it, but it was worth it; and it didn't cool it a bit,
neither, the way I've seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times.
 There was a considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon, and me
and Tom was on the lookout all the time; but it warn't no use, they
didn't happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was afraid
to try to work up to it.  But at supper, at night, one of the little
boys says:

“Pa, mayn't Tom and Sid and me go to the show?”

“No,” says the old man, “I reckon there ain't going to be any; and you
couldn't go if there was; because the runaway nigger told Burton and
me all about that scandalous show, and Burton said he would tell the
people; so I reckon they've drove the owdacious loafers out of town
before this time.”

So there it was!--but I couldn't help it.  Tom and me was to sleep in the
same room and bed; so, being tired, we bid good-night and went up to
bed right after supper, and clumb out of the window and down the
lightning-rod, and shoved for the town; for I didn't believe anybody was
going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so if I didn't hurry up
and give them one they'd get into trouble sure.

On the road Tom he told me all about how it was reckoned I was murdered,
and how pap disappeared pretty soon, and didn't come back no more, and
what a stir there was when Jim run away; and I told Tom all about our
Royal Nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the raft voyage as I had
time to; and as we struck into the town and up through the the middle of
it--it was as much as half-after eight, then--here comes a raging rush of
people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin
pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by;
and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a
rail--that is, I knowed it _was_ the king and the duke, though they was
all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the
world that was human--just looked like a couple of monstrous big
soldier-plumes.  Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for
them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any
hardness against them any more in the world.  It was a dreadful thing to
see.  Human beings _can_ be awful cruel to one another.

We see we was too late--couldn't do no good.  We asked some stragglers
about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very
innocent; and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the
middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and
the house rose up and went for them.

So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so brash as I was
before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow--though
I hadn't done nothing.  But that's always the way; it don't make no
difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't
got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.  If I had a yaller dog that
didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him.
It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet
ain't no good, nohow.  Tom Sawyer he says the same.




CHAPTER XXXIV.

WE stopped talking, and got to thinking.  By and by Tom says:

“Looky here, Huck, what fools we are to not think of it before!  I bet I
know where Jim is.”

“No!  Where?”

“In that hut down by the ash-hopper.  Why, looky here.  When we was at
dinner, didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think the vittles was for?”

“For a dog.”

“So 'd I. Well, it wasn't for a dog.”

“Why?”

“Because part of it was watermelon.”

“So it was--I noticed it.  Well, it does beat all that I never thought
about a dog not eating watermelon.  It shows how a body can see and
don't see at the same time.”

“Well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he locked it
again when he came out.  He fetched uncle a key about the time we got up
from table--same key, I bet.  Watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner;
and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation,
and where the people's all so kind and good.  Jim's the prisoner.  All
right--I'm glad we found it out detective fashion; I wouldn't give shucks
for any other way.  Now you work your mind, and study out a plan to
steal Jim, and I will study out one, too; and we'll take the one we like
the best.”

What a head for just a boy to have!  If I had Tom Sawyer's head I
wouldn't trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown
in a circus, nor nothing I can think of.  I went to thinking out a plan,
but only just to be doing something; I knowed very well where the right
plan was going to come from.  Pretty soon Tom says:

“Ready?”

“Yes,” I says.

“All right--bring it out.”

“My plan is this,” I says.  “We can easy find out if it's Jim in there.
Then get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my raft over from the
island.  Then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the
old man's britches after he goes to bed, and shove off down the river
on the raft with Jim, hiding daytimes and running nights, the way me and
Jim used to do before.  Wouldn't that plan work?”

“_Work_?  Why, cert'nly it would work, like rats a-fighting.  But it's
too blame' simple; there ain't nothing _to_ it.  What's the good of a
plan that ain't no more trouble than that?  It's as mild as goose-milk.
 Why, Huck, it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap
factory.”

I never said nothing, because I warn't expecting nothing different; but
I knowed mighty well that whenever he got _his_ plan ready it wouldn't
have none of them objections to it.

And it didn't.  He told me what it was, and I see in a minute it was
worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man
as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides.  So I was satisfied,
and said we would waltz in on it.  I needn't tell what it was here,
because I knowed it wouldn't stay the way, it was.  I knowed he would be
changing it around every which way as we went along, and heaving in new
bullinesses wherever he got a chance.  And that is what he done.

Well, one thing was dead sure, and that was that Tom Sawyer was in
earnest, and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of slavery.
That was the thing that was too many for me.  Here was a boy that was
respectable and well brung up; and had a character to lose; and folks at
home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and
knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was,
without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to
this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame,
before everybody.  I _couldn't_ understand it no way at all.  It was
outrageous, and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so; and so be
his true friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save
himself. And I _did_ start to tell him; but he shut me up, and says:

“Don't you reckon I know what I'm about?  Don't I generly know what I'm
about?”

“Yes.”

“Didn't I _say_ I was going to help steal the nigger?”

“Yes.”

“_Well_, then.”

That's all he said, and that's all I said.  It warn't no use to say any
more; because when he said he'd do a thing, he always done it.  But I
couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing; so I just
let it go, and never bothered no more about it.  If he was bound to have
it so, I couldn't help it.

When we got home the house was all dark and still; so we went on down to
the hut by the ash-hopper for to examine it.  We went through the yard
so as to see what the hounds would do.  They knowed us, and didn't make
no more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by
in the night.  When we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and
the two sides; and on the side I warn't acquainted with--which was the
north side--we found a square window-hole, up tolerable high, with just
one stout board nailed across it.  I says:

“Here's the ticket.  This hole's big enough for Jim to get through if we
wrench off the board.”

Tom says:

“It's as simple as tit-tat-toe, three-in-a-row, and as easy as
playing hooky.  I should _hope_ we can find a way that's a little more
complicated than _that_, Huck Finn.”

“Well, then,” I says, “how 'll it do to saw him out, the way I done
before I was murdered that time?”

“That's more _like_,” he says.  “It's real mysterious, and troublesome,
and good,” he says; “but I bet we can find a way that's twice as long.
 There ain't no hurry; le's keep on looking around.”

Betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to that
joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank.  It was as long
as the hut, but narrow--only about six foot wide.  The door to it was at
the south end, and was padlocked.  Tom he went to the soap-kettle and
searched around, and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with;
so he took it and prized out one of the staples.  The chain fell down,
and we opened the door and went in, and shut it, and struck a match,
and see the shed was only built against a cabin and hadn't no connection
with it; and there warn't no floor to the shed, nor nothing in it but
some old rusty played-out hoes and spades and picks and a crippled plow.
 The match went out, and so did we, and shoved in the staple again, and
the door was locked as good as ever. Tom was joyful.  He says;

“Now we're all right.  We'll _dig_ him out.  It 'll take about a week!”

Then we started for the house, and I went in the back door--you only have
to pull a buckskin latch-string, they don't fasten the doors--but that
warn't romantical enough for Tom Sawyer; no way would do him but he must
climb up the lightning-rod.  But after he got up half way about three
times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last time most
busted his brains out, he thought he'd got to give it up; but after he
was rested he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this
time he made the trip.

In the morning we was up at break of day, and down to the nigger cabins
to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed Jim--if it
_was_ Jim that was being fed.  The niggers was just getting through
breakfast and starting for the fields; and Jim's nigger was piling up
a tin pan with bread and meat and things; and whilst the others was
leaving, the key come from the house.

This nigger had a good-natured, chuckle-headed face, and his wool was
all tied up in little bunches with thread.  That was to keep witches
off.  He said the witches was pestering him awful these nights, and
making him see all kinds of strange things, and hear all kinds of
strange words and noises, and he didn't believe he was ever witched so
long before in his life.  He got so worked up, and got to running on so
about his troubles, he forgot all about what he'd been a-going to do.
 So Tom says:

“What's the vittles for?  Going to feed the dogs?”

The nigger kind of smiled around gradually over his face, like when you
heave a brickbat in a mud-puddle, and he says:

“Yes, Mars Sid, A dog.  Cur'us dog, too.  Does you want to go en look at
'im?”

“Yes.”

I hunched Tom, and whispers:

“You going, right here in the daybreak?  _that_ warn't the plan.”

“No, it warn't; but it's the plan _now_.”

So, drat him, we went along, but I didn't like it much.  When we got in
we couldn't hardly see anything, it was so dark; but Jim was there, sure
enough, and could see us; and he sings out:

“Why, _Huck_!  En good _lan_'! ain' dat Misto Tom?”

I just knowed how it would be; I just expected it.  I didn't know
nothing to do; and if I had I couldn't a done it, because that nigger
busted in and says:

“Why, de gracious sakes! do he know you genlmen?”

We could see pretty well now.  Tom he looked at the nigger, steady and
kind of wondering, and says:

“Does _who_ know us?”

“Why, dis-yer runaway nigger.”

“I don't reckon he does; but what put that into your head?”

“What _put_ it dar?  Didn' he jis' dis minute sing out like he knowed
you?”

Tom says, in a puzzled-up kind of way:

“Well, that's mighty curious.  _Who_ sung out? _when_ did he sing out?
 _what_ did he sing out?” And turns to me, perfectly ca'm, and says,
“Did _you_ hear anybody sing out?”

Of course there warn't nothing to be said but the one thing; so I says:

“No; I ain't heard nobody say nothing.”

Then he turns to Jim, and looks him over like he never see him before,
and says:

“Did you sing out?”

“No, sah,” says Jim; “I hain't said nothing, sah.”

“Not a word?”

“No, sah, I hain't said a word.”

“Did you ever see us before?”

“No, sah; not as I knows on.”

So Tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed, and
says, kind of severe:

“What do you reckon's the matter with you, anyway?  What made you think
somebody sung out?”

“Oh, it's de dad-blame' witches, sah, en I wisht I was dead, I do.
 Dey's awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey sk'yers me so.
 Please to don't tell nobody 'bout it sah, er ole Mars Silas he'll scole
me; 'kase he say dey _ain't_ no witches.  I jis' wish to goodness he was
heah now--_den_ what would he say!  I jis' bet he couldn' fine no way to
git aroun' it _dis_ time.  But it's awluz jis' so; people dat's _sot_,
stays sot; dey won't look into noth'n'en fine it out f'r deyselves, en
when _you_ fine it out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan' b'lieve you.”

Tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn't tell nobody; and told him to
buy some more thread to tie up his wool with; and then looks at Jim, and
says:

“I wonder if Uncle Silas is going to hang this nigger.  If I was to
catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, I wouldn't give
him up, I'd hang him.”  And whilst the nigger stepped to the door to
look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good, he whispers to Jim
and says:

“Don't ever let on to know us.  And if you hear any digging going on
nights, it's us; we're going to set you free.”

Jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it; then the nigger
come back, and we said we'd come again some time if the nigger wanted
us to; and he said he would, more particular if it was dark, because the
witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to have folks
around then.




CHAPTER XXXV.

IT would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck down
into the woods; because Tom said we got to have _some_ light to see how
to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble;
what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called
fox-fire, and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a
dark place.  We fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down
to rest, and Tom says, kind of dissatisfied:

“Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be.
And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan.
 There ain't no watchman to be drugged--now there _ought_ to be a
watchman.  There ain't even a dog to give a sleeping-mixture to.  And
there's Jim chained by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of his
bed:  why, all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off
the chain.  And Uncle Silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to the
punkin-headed nigger, and don't send nobody to watch the nigger.  Jim
could a got out of that window-hole before this, only there wouldn't be
no use trying to travel with a ten-foot chain on his leg.  Why, drat it,
Huck, it's the stupidest arrangement I ever see. You got to invent _all_
the difficulties.  Well, we can't help it; we got to do the best we can
with the materials we've got. Anyhow, there's one thing--there's more
honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers,
where there warn't one of them furnished to you by the people who it was
their duty to furnish them, and you had to contrive them all out of your
own head.  Now look at just that one thing of the lantern.  When you
come down to the cold facts, we simply got to _let on_ that a lantern's
resky.  Why, we could work with a torchlight procession if we wanted to,
I believe.  Now, whilst I think of it, we got to hunt up something to
make a saw out of the first chance we get.”

“What do we want of a saw?”

“What do we _want_ of it?  Hain't we got to saw the leg of Jim's bed
off, so as to get the chain loose?”

“Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain
off.”

“Well, if that ain't just like you, Huck Finn.  You _can_ get up the
infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing.  Why, hain't you ever read
any books at all?--Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto Chelleeny,
nor Henri IV., nor none of them heroes?  Who ever heard of getting a
prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that?  No; the way all the
best authorities does is to saw the bed-leg in two, and leave it just
so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can't be found, and put some dirt and
grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal can't see
no sign of it's being sawed, and thinks the bed-leg is perfectly sound.
Then, the night you're ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip
off your chain, and there you are.  Nothing to do but hitch your
rope ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the
moat--because a rope ladder is nineteen foot too short, you know--and
there's your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and
fling you across a saddle, and away you go to your native Langudoc, or
Navarre, or wherever it is. It's gaudy, Huck.  I wish there was a moat
to this cabin. If we get time, the night of the escape, we'll dig one.”

I says:

“What do we want of a moat when we're going to snake him out from under
the cabin?”

But he never heard me.  He had forgot me and everything else.  He had
his chin in his hand, thinking.  Pretty soon he sighs and shakes his
head; then sighs again, and says:

“No, it wouldn't do--there ain't necessity enough for it.”

“For what?”  I says.

“Why, to saw Jim's leg off,” he says.

“Good land!”  I says; “why, there ain't _no_ necessity for it.  And what
would you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?”

“Well, some of the best authorities has done it.  They couldn't get the
chain off, so they just cut their hand off and shoved.  And a leg would
be better still.  But we got to let that go.  There ain't necessity
enough in this case; and, besides, Jim's a nigger, and wouldn't
understand the reasons for it, and how it's the custom in Europe; so
we'll let it go.  But there's one thing--he can have a rope ladder; we
can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough.  And we
can send it to him in a pie; it's mostly done that way.  And I've et
worse pies.”

“Why, Tom Sawyer, how you talk,” I says; “Jim ain't got no use for a
rope ladder.”

“He _has_ got use for it.  How _you_ talk, you better say; you don't
know nothing about it.  He's _got_ to have a rope ladder; they all do.”

“What in the nation can he _do_ with it?”

“_Do_ with it?  He can hide it in his bed, can't he?”  That's what they
all do; and _he's_ got to, too.  Huck, you don't ever seem to want to do
anything that's regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the
time. S'pose he _don't_ do nothing with it? ain't it there in his bed,
for a clew, after he's gone? and don't you reckon they'll want clews?
 Of course they will.  And you wouldn't leave them any?  That would be a
_pretty_ howdy-do, _wouldn't_ it!  I never heard of such a thing.”

“Well,” I says, “if it's in the regulations, and he's got to have
it, all right, let him have it; because I don't wish to go back on no
regulations; but there's one thing, Tom Sawyer--if we go to tearing up
our sheets to make Jim a rope ladder, we're going to get into trouble
with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you're born.  Now, the way I look at
it, a hickry-bark ladder don't cost nothing, and don't waste nothing,
and is just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick,
as any rag ladder you can start; and as for Jim, he ain't had no
experience, and so he don't care what kind of a--”

“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I was as ignorant as you I'd keep
still--that's what I'D do.  Who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping
by a hickry-bark ladder?  Why, it's perfectly ridiculous.”

“Well, all right, Tom, fix it your own way; but if you'll take my
advice, you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothesline.”

He said that would do.  And that gave him another idea, and he says:

“Borrow a shirt, too.”

“What do we want of a shirt, Tom?”

“Want it for Jim to keep a journal on.”

“Journal your granny--_Jim_ can't write.”

“S'pose he _can't_ write--he can make marks on the shirt, can't he, if
we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron
barrel-hoop?”

“Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better
one; and quicker, too.”

“_Prisoners_ don't have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull
pens out of, you muggins.  They _always_ make their pens out of the
hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or
something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks
and weeks and months and months to file it out, too, because they've got
to do it by rubbing it on the wall.  _They_ wouldn't use a goose-quill
if they had it. It ain't regular.”

“Well, then, what'll we make him the ink out of?”

“Many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that's the common sort
and women; the best authorities uses their own blood.  Jim can do that;
and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message
to let the world know where he's captivated, he can write it on the
bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window.  The
Iron Mask always done that, and it's a blame' good way, too.”

“Jim ain't got no tin plates.  They feed him in a pan.”

“That ain't nothing; we can get him some.”

“Can't nobody _read_ his plates.”

“That ain't got anything to _do_ with it, Huck Finn.  All _he's_ got to
do is to write on the plate and throw it out.  You don't _have_ to be
able to read it. Why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner
writes on a tin plate, or anywhere else.”

“Well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?”

“Why, blame it all, it ain't the _prisoner's_ plates.”

“But it's _somebody's_ plates, ain't it?”

“Well, spos'n it is?  What does the _prisoner_ care whose--”

He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing.  So we
cleared out for the house.

Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the
clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went
down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too.  I called it borrowing,
because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it warn't
borrowing, it was stealing.  He said we was representing prisoners; and
prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody
don't blame them for it, either.  It ain't no crime in a prisoner to
steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it's his right; and
so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to
steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves
out of prison with.  He said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very
different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when
he warn't a prisoner.  So we allowed we would steal everything there was
that come handy.  And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that,
when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger-patch and eat it; and he
made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it
was for. Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we
_needed_. Well, I says, I needed the watermelon.  But he said I didn't
need it to get out of prison with; there's where the difference was.
 He said if I'd a wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim
to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right.  So I let it go at
that, though I couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner
if I got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like
that every time I see a chance to hog a watermelon.

Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled
down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then Tom he
carried the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to keep
watch.  By and by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile
to talk.  He says:

“Everything's all right now except tools; and that's easy fixed.”

“Tools?”  I says.

“Yes.”

“Tools for what?”

“Why, to dig with.  We ain't a-going to _gnaw_ him out, are we?”

“Ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a
nigger out with?”  I says.

He turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says:

“Huck Finn, did you _ever_ hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels,
and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with?
 Now I want to ask you--if you got any reasonableness in you at all--what
kind of a show would _that_ give him to be a hero?  Why, they might as
well lend him the key and done with it.  Picks and shovels--why, they
wouldn't furnish 'em to a king.”

“Well, then,” I says, “if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do
we want?”

“A couple of case-knives.”

“To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?”

“Yes.”

“Confound it, it's foolish, Tom.”

“It don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the _right_ way--and
it's the regular way.  And there ain't no _other_ way, that ever I heard
of, and I've read all the books that gives any information about these
things. They always dig out with a case-knife--and not through dirt, mind
you; generly it's through solid rock.  And it takes them weeks and weeks
and weeks, and for ever and ever.  Why, look at one of them prisoners in
the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that
dug himself out that way; how long was _he_ at it, you reckon?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, guess.”

“I don't know.  A month and a half.”

“_Thirty-seven year_--and he come out in China.  _That's_ the kind.  I
wish the bottom of _this_ fortress was solid rock.”

“_Jim_ don't know nobody in China.”

“What's _that_ got to do with it?  Neither did that other fellow.  But
you're always a-wandering off on a side issue.  Why can't you stick to
the main point?”

“All right--I don't care where he comes out, so he _comes_ out; and Jim
don't, either, I reckon.  But there's one thing, anyway--Jim's too old to
be dug out with a case-knife.  He won't last.”

“Yes he will _last_, too.  You don't reckon it's going to take
thirty-seven years to dig out through a _dirt_ foundation, do you?”

“How long will it take, Tom?”

“Well, we can't resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn't
take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans.
 He'll hear Jim ain't from there.  Then his next move will be to
advertise Jim, or something like that.  So we can't resk being as long
digging him out as we ought to.  By rights I reckon we ought to be
a couple of years; but we can't.  Things being so uncertain, what I
recommend is this:  that we really dig right in, as quick as we can;
and after that, we can _let on_, to ourselves, that we was at it
thirty-seven years.  Then we can snatch him out and rush him away the
first time there's an alarm.  Yes, I reckon that 'll be the best way.”

“Now, there's _sense_ in that,” I says.  “Letting on don't cost nothing;
letting on ain't no trouble; and if it's any object, I don't mind
letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year.  It wouldn't strain
me none, after I got my hand in.  So I'll mosey along now, and smouch a
couple of case-knives.”

“Smouch three,” he says; “we want one to make a saw out of.”

“Tom, if it ain't unregular and irreligious to sejest it,” I says,
“there's an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the
weather-boarding behind the smoke-house.”

He looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says:

“It ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck.  Run along and
smouch the knives--three of them.”  So I done it.




CHAPTER XXXVI.

AS soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the
lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our
pile of fox-fire, and went to work.  We cleared everything out of the
way, about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log.  Tom
said he was right behind Jim's bed now, and we'd dig in under it, and
when we got through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there
was any hole there, because Jim's counter-pin hung down most to the
ground, and you'd have to raise it up and look under to see the hole.
 So we dug and dug with the case-knives till most midnight; and then
we was dog-tired, and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn't see
we'd done anything hardly.  At last I says:

“This ain't no thirty-seven year job; this is a thirty-eight year job,
Tom Sawyer.”

He never said nothing.  But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped
digging, and then for a good little while I knowed that he was thinking.
Then he says:

“It ain't no use, Huck, it ain't a-going to work.  If we was prisoners
it would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted, and no
hurry; and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while
they was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get blistered, and
we could keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right,
and the way it ought to be done.  But _we_ can't fool along; we got to
rush; we ain't got no time to spare.  If we was to put in another
night this way we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get
well--couldn't touch a case-knife with them sooner.”

“Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?”

“I'll tell you.  It ain't right, and it ain't moral, and I wouldn't like
it to get out; but there ain't only just the one way:  we got to dig him
out with the picks, and _let on_ it's case-knives.”

“_Now_ you're _talking_!”  I says; “your head gets leveler and leveler
all the time, Tom Sawyer,” I says.  “Picks is the thing, moral or no
moral; and as for me, I don't care shucks for the morality of it, nohow.
 When I start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sunday-school
book, I ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done.  What I
want is my nigger; or what I want is my watermelon; or what I want is my
Sunday-school book; and if a pick's the handiest thing, that's the thing
I'm a-going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that Sunday-school
book out with; and I don't give a dead rat what the authorities thinks
about it nuther.”

“Well,” he says, “there's excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like
this; if it warn't so, I wouldn't approve of it, nor I wouldn't stand by
and see the rules broke--because right is right, and wrong is wrong,
and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and
knows better.  It might answer for _you_ to dig Jim out with a pick,
_without_ any letting on, because you don't know no better; but it
wouldn't for me, because I do know better.  Gimme a case-knife.”

He had his own by him, but I handed him mine.  He flung it down, and
says:

“Gimme a _case-knife_.”

I didn't know just what to do--but then I thought.  I scratched around
amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he took
it and went to work, and never said a word.

He was always just that particular.  Full of principle.

So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about,
and made the fur fly.  We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as
long as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for
it. When I got up stairs I looked out at the window and see Tom doing
his level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn't come it, his
hands was so sore.  At last he says:

“It ain't no use, it can't be done.  What you reckon I better do?  Can't
you think of no way?”

“Yes,” I says, “but I reckon it ain't regular.  Come up the stairs, and
let on it's a lightning-rod.”

So he done it.

Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house,
for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles; and I
hung around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three tin
plates.  Tom says it wasn't enough; but I said nobody wouldn't ever see
the plates that Jim throwed out, because they'd fall in the dog-fennel
and jimpson weeds under the window-hole--then we could tote them back and
he could use them over again.  So Tom was satisfied.  Then he says:

“Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim.”

“Take them in through the hole,” I says, “when we get it done.”

He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard
of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying.  By and by he
said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no need to
decide on any of them yet.  Said we'd got to post Jim first.

That night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took
one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard
Jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him.  Then we
whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half
the job was done.  We crept in under Jim's bed and into the cabin, and
pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim awhile,
and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle
and gradual.  He was so glad to see us he most cried; and called us
honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for having us
hunt up a cold-chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away,
and clearing out without losing any time.  But Tom he showed him how
unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our plans,
and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm; and
not to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, _sure_.
 So Jim he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old
times awhile, and then Tom asked a lot of questions, and when Jim told
him Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and Aunt
Sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and
both of them was kind as they could be, Tom says:

“_Now_ I know how to fix it.  We'll send you some things by them.”

I said, “Don't do nothing of the kind; it's one of the most jackass
ideas I ever struck;” but he never paid no attention to me; went right
on.  It was his way when he'd got his plans set.

So he told Jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie and other
large things by Nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the
lookout, and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him open them; and
we would put small things in uncle's coat-pockets and he must steal them
out; and we would tie things to aunt's apron-strings or put them in her
apron-pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would be and
what they was for.  And told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with
his blood, and all that. He told him everything.  Jim he couldn't see
no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed
better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just
as Tom said.

Jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good
sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to
bed, with hands that looked like they'd been chawed.  Tom was in high
spirits. He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the
most intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would
keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our children to
get out; for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the
more he got used to it.  He said that in that way it could be strung out
to as much as eighty year, and would be the best time on record.  And he
said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it.

In the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass
candlestick into handy sizes, and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in
his pocket.  Then we went to the nigger cabins, and while I got Nat's
notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a
corn-pone that was in Jim's pan, and we went along with Nat to see how
it would work, and it just worked noble; when Jim bit into it it most
mashed all his teeth out; and there warn't ever anything could a worked
better. Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was only
just a piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into
bread, you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he
jabbed his fork into it in three or four places first.

And whilst we was a-standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a
couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim's bed; and they kept on
piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn't hardly room
in there to get your breath.  By jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to
door!  The nigger Nat he only just hollered “Witches” once, and keeled
over on to the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was
dying.  Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jim's meat,
and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back
again and shut the door, and I knowed he'd fixed the other door too.
Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and
asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again.  He raised up,
and blinked his eyes around, and says:

“Mars Sid, you'll say I's a fool, but if I didn't b'lieve I see most a
million dogs, er devils, er some'n, I wisht I may die right heah in dese
tracks.  I did, mos' sholy.  Mars Sid, I _felt_ um--I _felt_ um, sah; dey
was all over me.  Dad fetch it, I jis' wisht I could git my han's on one
er dem witches jis' wunst--on'y jis' wunst--it's all I'd ast.  But mos'ly
I wisht dey'd lemme 'lone, I does.”

Tom says:

“Well, I tell you what I think.  What makes them come here just at this
runaway nigger's breakfast-time?  It's because they're hungry; that's
the reason.  You make them a witch pie; that's the thing for _you_ to
do.”

“But my lan', Mars Sid, how's I gwyne to make 'm a witch pie?  I doan'
know how to make it.  I hain't ever hearn er sich a thing b'fo'.”

“Well, then, I'll have to make it myself.”

“Will you do it, honey?--will you?  I'll wusshup de groun' und' yo' foot,
I will!”

“All right, I'll do it, seeing it's you, and you've been good to us and
showed us the runaway nigger.  But you got to be mighty careful.  When
we come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we've put in the
pan, don't you let on you see it at all.  And don't you look when Jim
unloads the pan--something might happen, I don't know what.  And above
all, don't you _handle_ the witch-things.”

“_Hannel 'M_, Mars Sid?  What _is_ you a-talkin' 'bout?  I wouldn'
lay de weight er my finger on um, not f'r ten hund'd thous'n billion
dollars, I wouldn't.”




CHAPTER XXXVII.

THAT was all fixed.  So then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile
in the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces
of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched
around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as
we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full
of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of shingle-nails
that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and
sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in Aunt
Sally's apron-pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t'other we stuck
in the band of Uncle Silas's hat, which was on the bureau, because we
heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's
house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the
pewter spoon in Uncle Silas's coat-pocket, and Aunt Sally wasn't come
yet, so we had to wait a little while.

And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn't hardly
wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one
hand and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the
other, and says:

“I've hunted high and I've hunted low, and it does beat all what _has_
become of your other shirt.”

My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard
piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the
road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the
children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry
out of him the size of a warwhoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around
the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for
about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out
for half price if there was a bidder.  But after that we was all right
again--it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold.
Uncle Silas he says:

“It's most uncommon curious, I can't understand it.  I know perfectly
well I took it _off_, because--”

“Because you hain't got but one _on_.  Just _listen_ at the man!  I know
you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering
memory, too, because it was on the clo's-line yesterday--I see it there
myself. But it's gone, that's the long and the short of it, and you'll
just have to change to a red flann'l one till I can get time to make a
new one. And it 'll be the third I've made in two years.  It just keeps
a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to
_do_ with 'm all is more'n I can make out.  A body 'd think you _would_
learn to take some sort of care of 'em at your time of life.”

“I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can.  But it oughtn't to be
altogether my fault, because, you know, I don't see them nor have
nothing to do with them except when they're on me; and I don't believe
I've ever lost one of them _off_ of me.”

“Well, it ain't _your_ fault if you haven't, Silas; you'd a done it
if you could, I reckon.  And the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther.
 Ther's a spoon gone; and _that_ ain't all.  There was ten, and now
ther's only nine. The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf never
took the spoon, _that's_ certain.”

“Why, what else is gone, Sally?”

“Ther's six _candles_ gone--that's what.  The rats could a got the
candles, and I reckon they did; I wonder they don't walk off with the
whole place, the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't
do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, Silas--_you'd_
never find it out; but you can't lay the _spoon_ on the rats, and that I
know.”

“Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it; I've been remiss; but
I won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes.”

“Oh, I wouldn't hurry; next year 'll do.  Matilda Angelina Araminta
_Phelps!_”

Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the
sugar-bowl without fooling around any.  Just then the nigger woman steps
on to the passage, and says:

“Missus, dey's a sheet gone.”

“A _sheet_ gone!  Well, for the land's sake!”

“I'll stop up them holes to-day,” says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful.

“Oh, _do_ shet up!--s'pose the rats took the _sheet_?  _where's_ it gone,
Lize?”

“Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss' Sally.  She wuz on de
clo'sline yistiddy, but she done gone:  she ain' dah no mo' now.”

“I reckon the world _is_ coming to an end.  I _never_ see the beat of it
in all my born days.  A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can--”

“Missus,” comes a young yaller wench, “dey's a brass cannelstick
miss'n.”

“Cler out from here, you hussy, er I'll take a skillet to ye!”

Well, she was just a-biling.  I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned
I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated.  She
kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and
everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking
kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket.  She stopped,
with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished I was in
Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says:

“It's _just_ as I expected.  So you had it in your pocket all the time;
and like as not you've got the other things there, too.  How'd it get
there?”

“I reely don't know, Sally,” he says, kind of apologizing, “or you know
I would tell.  I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen before
breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put
my Testament in, and it must be so, because my Testament ain't in; but
I'll go and see; and if the Testament is where I had it, I'll know I
didn't put it in, and that will show that I laid the Testament down and
took up the spoon, and--”

“Oh, for the land's sake!  Give a body a rest!  Go 'long now, the whole
kit and biling of ye; and don't come nigh me again till I've got back my
peace of mind.”

I'D a heard her if she'd a said it to herself, let alone speaking it
out; and I'd a got up and obeyed her if I'd a been dead.  As we was
passing through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat, and the
shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and
laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out.  Tom
see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says:

“Well, it ain't no use to send things by _him_ no more, he ain't
reliable.” Then he says:  “But he done us a good turn with the spoon,
anyway, without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without _him_
knowing it--stop up his rat-holes.”

There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole
hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape.  Then we heard
steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes
the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t'other,
looking as absent-minded as year before last.  He went a mooning around,
first to one rat-hole and then another, till he'd been to them all.
 Then he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle
and thinking.  Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs,
saying:

“Well, for the life of me I can't remember when I done it.  I could
show her now that I warn't to blame on account of the rats.  But never
mind--let it go.  I reckon it wouldn't do no good.”

And so he went on a-mumbling up stairs, and then we left.  He was a
mighty nice old man.  And always is.

Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said
we'd got to have it; so he took a think.  When he had ciphered it out
he told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the
spoon-basket till we see Aunt Sally coming, and then Tom went to
counting the spoons and laying them out to one side, and I slid one of
them up my sleeve, and Tom says:

“Why, Aunt Sally, there ain't but nine spoons _yet_.”

She says:

“Go 'long to your play, and don't bother me.  I know better, I counted
'm myself.”

“Well, I've counted them twice, Aunty, and I can't make but nine.”

She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count--anybody
would.

“I declare to gracious ther' _ain't_ but nine!” she says.  “Why, what in
the world--plague _take_ the things, I'll count 'm again.”

So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she
says:

“Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther's _ten_ now!” and she looked huffy
and bothered both.  But Tom says:

“Why, Aunty, I don't think there's ten.”

“You numskull, didn't you see me _count 'm?_”

“I know, but--”

“Well, I'll count 'm _again_.”

So I smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time.
 Well, she _was_ in a tearing way--just a-trembling all over, she was so
mad.  But she counted and counted till she got that addled she'd start
to count in the basket for a spoon sometimes; and so, three times they
come out right, and three times they come out wrong.  Then she grabbed
up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat
galley-west; and she said cle'r out and let her have some peace, and if
we come bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner she'd skin
us.  So we had the odd spoon, and dropped it in her apron-pocket whilst
she was a-giving us our sailing orders, and Jim got it all right, along
with her shingle nail, before noon.  We was very well satisfied with
this business, and Tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took,
because he said _now_ she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike
again to save her life; and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if
she _did_; and said that after she'd about counted her head off for the
next three days he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody
that wanted her to ever count them any more.

So we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of
her closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a
couple of days till she didn't know how many sheets she had any more,
and she didn't _care_, and warn't a-going to bullyrag the rest of her
soul out about it, and wouldn't count them again not to save her life;
she druther die first.

So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon
and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up
counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn't no consequence, it would
blow over by and by.

But that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie.  We
fixed it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it
done at last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and we
had to use up three wash-pans full of flour before we got through, and
we got burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with
the smoke; because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust, and we
couldn't prop it up right, and she would always cave in.  But of course
we thought of the right way at last--which was to cook the ladder, too,
in the pie.  So then we laid in with Jim the second night, and tore
up the sheet all in little strings and twisted them together, and long
before daylight we had a lovely rope that you could a hung a person
with.  We let on it took nine months to make it.

And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go
into the pie.  Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope
enough for forty pies if we'd a wanted them, and plenty left over
for soup, or sausage, or anything you choose.  We could a had a whole
dinner.

But we didn't need it.  All we needed was just enough for the pie, and
so we throwed the rest away.  We didn't cook none of the pies in the
wash-pan--afraid the solder would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a noble
brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged
to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from
England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower or one of them early
ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things
that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they
warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked
her out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first
pies, because we didn't know how, but she come up smiling on the last
one.  We took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and
loaded her up with rag rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the
lid, and put hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long
handle, cool and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a
pie that was a satisfaction to look at. But the person that et it would
want to fetch a couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that rope
ladder wouldn't cramp him down to business I don't know nothing what I'm
talking about, and lay him in enough stomach-ache to last him till next
time, too.

Nat didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan; and we put the
three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so Jim
got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted
into the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick,
and scratched some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the
window-hole.




CHAPTER XXXVIII.

MAKING them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and Jim
allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all.  That's the
one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall.  But he had to have
it; Tom said he'd _got_ to; there warn't no case of a state prisoner not
scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms.

“Look at Lady Jane Grey,” he says; “look at Gilford Dudley; look at old
Northumberland!  Why, Huck, s'pose it _is_ considerble trouble?--what
you going to do?--how you going to get around it?  Jim's _got_ to do his
inscription and coat of arms.  They all do.”

Jim says:

“Why, Mars Tom, I hain't got no coat o' arm; I hain't got nuffn but dish
yer ole shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat.”

“Oh, you don't understand, Jim; a coat of arms is very different.”

“Well,” I says, “Jim's right, anyway, when he says he ain't got no coat
of arms, because he hain't.”

“I reckon I knowed that,” Tom says, “but you bet he'll have one before
he goes out of this--because he's going out _right_, and there ain't
going to be no flaws in his record.”

So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, Jim
a-making his'n out of the brass and I making mine out of the spoon,
Tom set to work to think out the coat of arms.  By and by he said he'd
struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but there
was one which he reckoned he'd decide on.  He says:

“On the scutcheon we'll have a bend _or_ in the dexter base, a saltire
_murrey_ in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under
his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron _vert_ in a
chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field _azure_, with the
nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger,
_sable_, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a
couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, _Maggiore
Fretta, Minore Otto._  Got it out of a book--means the more haste the
less speed.”

“Geewhillikins,” I says, “but what does the rest of it mean?”

“We ain't got no time to bother over that,” he says; “we got to dig in
like all git-out.”

“Well, anyway,” I says, “what's _some_ of it?  What's a fess?”

“A fess--a fess is--_you_ don't need to know what a fess is.  I'll show
him how to make it when he gets to it.”

“Shucks, Tom,” I says, “I think you might tell a person.  What's a bar
sinister?”

“Oh, I don't know.  But he's got to have it.  All the nobility does.”

That was just his way.  If it didn't suit him to explain a thing to you,
he wouldn't do it.  You might pump at him a week, it wouldn't make no
difference.

He'd got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to
finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a
mournful inscription--said Jim got to have one, like they all done.  He
made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so:

1.  Here a captive heart busted. 2.  Here a poor prisoner, forsook by
the world and friends, fretted his sorrowful life. 3.  Here a lonely
heart broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirty-seven
years of solitary captivity. 4.  Here, homeless and friendless, after
thirty-seven years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger,
natural son of Louis XIV.

Tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down.
When he got done he couldn't no way make up his mind which one for Jim
to scrabble on to the wall, they was all so good; but at last he allowed
he would let him scrabble them all on.  Jim said it would take him a
year to scrabble such a lot of truck on to the logs with a nail, and he
didn't know how to make letters, besides; but Tom said he would block
them out for him, and then he wouldn't have nothing to do but just
follow the lines.  Then pretty soon he says:

“Come to think, the logs ain't a-going to do; they don't have log walls
in a dungeon:  we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock.  We'll fetch
a rock.”

Jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said it would take him
such a pison long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn't ever get out.
 But Tom said he would let me help him do it.  Then he took a look to
see how me and Jim was getting along with the pens.  It was most pesky
tedious hard work and slow, and didn't give my hands no show to get
well of the sores, and we didn't seem to make no headway, hardly; so Tom
says:

“I know how to fix it.  We got to have a rock for the coat of arms and
mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock.
There's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smouch it,
and carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the saw on it,
too.”

It warn't no slouch of an idea; and it warn't no slouch of a grindstone
nuther; but we allowed we'd tackle it.  It warn't quite midnight yet,
so we cleared out for the mill, leaving Jim at work.  We smouched the
grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a most nation tough
job. Sometimes, do what we could, we couldn't keep her from falling
over, and she come mighty near mashing us every time.  Tom said she was
going to get one of us, sure, before we got through.  We got her half
way; and then we was plumb played out, and most drownded with sweat.  We
see it warn't no use; we got to go and fetch Jim. So he raised up his
bed and slid the chain off of the bed-leg, and wrapt it round and round
his neck, and we crawled out through our hole and down there, and Jim
and me laid into that grindstone and walked her along like nothing; and
Tom superintended.  He could out-superintend any boy I ever see.  He
knowed how to do everything.

Our hole was pretty big, but it warn't big enough to get the grindstone
through; but Jim he took the pick and soon made it big enough.  Then Tom
marked out them things on it with the nail, and set Jim to work on them,
with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbage in the
lean-to for a hammer, and told him to work till the rest of his candle
quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the grindstone under
his straw tick and sleep on it.  Then we helped him fix his chain back
on the bed-leg, and was ready for bed ourselves.  But Tom thought of
something, and says:

“You got any spiders in here, Jim?”

“No, sah, thanks to goodness I hain't, Mars Tom.”

“All right, we'll get you some.”

“But bless you, honey, I doan' _want_ none.  I's afeard un um.  I jis'
's soon have rattlesnakes aroun'.”

Tom thought a minute or two, and says:

“It's a good idea.  And I reckon it's been done.  It _must_ a been done;
it stands to reason.  Yes, it's a prime good idea.  Where could you keep
it?”

“Keep what, Mars Tom?”

“Why, a rattlesnake.”

“De goodness gracious alive, Mars Tom!  Why, if dey was a rattlesnake to
come in heah I'd take en bust right out thoo dat log wall, I would, wid
my head.”

“Why, Jim, you wouldn't be afraid of it after a little.  You could tame
it.”

“_Tame_ it!”

“Yes--easy enough.  Every animal is grateful for kindness and petting,
and they wouldn't _think_ of hurting a person that pets them.  Any book
will tell you that.  You try--that's all I ask; just try for two or three
days. Why, you can get him so, in a little while, that he'll love you;
and sleep with you; and won't stay away from you a minute; and will let
you wrap him round your neck and put his head in your mouth.”

“_Please_, Mars Tom--_doan_' talk so!  I can't _stan_' it!  He'd _let_
me shove his head in my mouf--fer a favor, hain't it?  I lay he'd wait a
pow'ful long time 'fo' I _ast_ him.  En mo' en dat, I doan' _want_ him
to sleep wid me.”

“Jim, don't act so foolish.  A prisoner's _got_ to have some kind of a
dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain't ever been tried, why, there's more
glory to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other
way you could ever think of to save your life.”

“Why, Mars Tom, I doan' _want_ no sich glory.  Snake take 'n bite
Jim's chin off, den _whah_ is de glory?  No, sah, I doan' want no sich
doin's.”

“Blame it, can't you _try_?  I only _want_ you to try--you needn't keep
it up if it don't work.”

“But de trouble all _done_ ef de snake bite me while I's a tryin' him.
Mars Tom, I's willin' to tackle mos' anything 'at ain't onreasonable,
but ef you en Huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, I's
gwyne to _leave_, dat's _shore_.”

“Well, then, let it go, let it go, if you're so bull-headed about it.
 We can get you some garter-snakes, and you can tie some buttons on
their tails, and let on they're rattlesnakes, and I reckon that 'll have
to do.”

“I k'n stan' _dem_, Mars Tom, but blame' 'f I couldn' get along widout
um, I tell you dat.  I never knowed b'fo' 't was so much bother and
trouble to be a prisoner.”

“Well, it _always_ is when it's done right.  You got any rats around
here?”

“No, sah, I hain't seed none.”

“Well, we'll get you some rats.”

“Why, Mars Tom, I doan' _want_ no rats.  Dey's de dadblamedest creturs
to 'sturb a body, en rustle roun' over 'im, en bite his feet, when he's
tryin' to sleep, I ever see.  No, sah, gimme g'yarter-snakes, 'f I's
got to have 'm, but doan' gimme no rats; I hain' got no use f'r um,
skasely.”

“But, Jim, you _got_ to have 'em--they all do.  So don't make no more
fuss about it.  Prisoners ain't ever without rats.  There ain't no
instance of it.  And they train them, and pet them, and learn them
tricks, and they get to be as sociable as flies.  But you got to play
music to them.  You got anything to play music on?”

“I ain' got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o' paper, en a juice-harp;
but I reck'n dey wouldn' take no stock in a juice-harp.”

“Yes they would _they_ don't care what kind of music 'tis.  A
jews-harp's plenty good enough for a rat.  All animals like music--in a
prison they dote on it.  Specially, painful music; and you can't get no
other kind out of a jews-harp.  It always interests them; they come out
to see what's the matter with you.  Yes, you're all right; you're fixed
very well.  You want to set on your bed nights before you go to sleep,
and early in the mornings, and play your jews-harp; play 'The Last Link
is Broken'--that's the thing that 'll scoop a rat quicker 'n anything
else; and when you've played about two minutes you'll see all the rats,
and the snakes, and spiders, and things begin to feel worried about you,
and come.  And they'll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good
time.”

“Yes, _dey_ will, I reck'n, Mars Tom, but what kine er time is _Jim_
havin'? Blest if I kin see de pint.  But I'll do it ef I got to.  I
reck'n I better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in de
house.”

Tom waited to think it over, and see if there wasn't nothing else; and
pretty soon he says:

“Oh, there's one thing I forgot.  Could you raise a flower here, do you
reckon?”

“I doan know but maybe I could, Mars Tom; but it's tolable dark in heah,
en I ain' got no use f'r no flower, nohow, en she'd be a pow'ful sight
o' trouble.”

“Well, you try it, anyway.  Some other prisoners has done it.”

“One er dem big cat-tail-lookin' mullen-stalks would grow in heah, Mars
Tom, I reck'n, but she wouldn't be wuth half de trouble she'd coss.”

“Don't you believe it.  We'll fetch you a little one and you plant it in
the corner over there, and raise it.  And don't call it mullen, call it
Pitchiola--that's its right name when it's in a prison.  And you want to
water it with your tears.”

“Why, I got plenty spring water, Mars Tom.”

“You don't _want_ spring water; you want to water it with your tears.
 It's the way they always do.”

“Why, Mars Tom, I lay I kin raise one er dem mullen-stalks twyste wid
spring water whiles another man's a _start'n_ one wid tears.”

“That ain't the idea.  You _got_ to do it with tears.”

“She'll die on my han's, Mars Tom, she sholy will; kase I doan' skasely
ever cry.”

So Tom was stumped.  But he studied it over, and then said Jim would
have to worry along the best he could with an onion.  He promised
he would go to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in Jim's
coffee-pot, in the morning. Jim said he would “jis' 's soon have
tobacker in his coffee;” and found so much fault with it, and with the
work and bother of raising the mullen, and jews-harping the rats, and
petting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things, on top of
all the other work he had to do on pens, and inscriptions, and journals,
and things, which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to
be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook, that Tom most lost all
patience with him; and said he was just loadened down with more gaudier
chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for
himself, and yet he didn't know enough to appreciate them, and they was
just about wasted on him.  So Jim he was sorry, and said he wouldn't
behave so no more, and then me and Tom shoved for bed.




CHAPTER XXXIX.

IN the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and
fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour
we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put
it in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed.  But while we was gone for
spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found
it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out,
and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was
a-standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what
they could to keep off the dull times for her.  So she took and dusted
us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching
another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't
the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock.
 I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was.

We got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and
caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we like to got a hornet's
nest, but we didn't.  The family was at home.  We didn't give it right
up, but stayed with them as long as we could; because we allowed we'd
tire them out or they'd got to tire us out, and they done it.  Then we
got allycumpain and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right
again, but couldn't set down convenient.  And so we went for the snakes,
and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house-snakes, and put them in
a bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper-time, and
a rattling good honest day's work:  and hungry?--oh, no, I reckon not!
 And there warn't a blessed snake up there when we went back--we didn't
half tie the sack, and they worked out somehow, and left.  But it didn't
matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres.  So
we judged we could get some of them again.  No, there warn't no real
scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell.  You'd see
them dripping from the rafters and places every now and then; and they
generly landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most
of the time where you didn't want them.  Well, they was handsome and
striped, and there warn't no harm in a million of them; but that never
made no difference to Aunt Sally; she despised snakes, be the breed what
they might, and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it; and
every time one of them flopped down on her, it didn't make no difference
what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out.  I
never see such a woman.  And you could hear her whoop to Jericho.  You
couldn't get her to take a-holt of one of them with the tongs.  And if
she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a
howl that you would think the house was afire.  She disturbed the old
man so that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes
created.  Why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the
house for as much as a week Aunt Sally warn't over it yet; she warn't
near over it; when she was setting thinking about something you could
touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump
right out of her stockings.  It was very curious.  But Tom said all
women was just so.  He said they was made that way for some reason or
other.

We got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way, and she
allowed these lickings warn't nothing to what she would do if we ever
loaded up the place again with them.  I didn't mind the lickings,
because they didn't amount to nothing; but I minded the trouble we
had to lay in another lot.  But we got them laid in, and all the other
things; and you never see a cabin as blithesome as Jim's was when they'd
all swarm out for music and go for him.  Jim didn't like the spiders,
and the spiders didn't like Jim; and so they'd lay for him, and make it
mighty warm for him.  And he said that between the rats and the snakes
and the grindstone there warn't no room in bed for him, skasely; and
when there was, a body couldn't sleep, it was so lively, and it was
always lively, he said, because _they_ never all slept at one time, but
took turn about, so when the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and
when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch, so he always had one
gang under him, in his way, and t'other gang having a circus over him,
and if he got up to hunt a new place the spiders would take a chance at
him as he crossed over. He said if he ever got out this time he wouldn't
ever be a prisoner again, not for a salary.

Well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape.
 The shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit Jim he
would get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh;
the pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the
grindstone; the bed-leg was sawed in two, and we had et up the sawdust,
and it give us a most amazing stomach-ache.  We reckoned we was all
going to die, but didn't.  It was the most undigestible sawdust I ever
see; and Tom said the same.

But as I was saying, we'd got all the work done now, at last; and we was
all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly Jim.  The old man had wrote
a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to come and get their
runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer, because there warn't no such
plantation; so he allowed he would advertise Jim in the St. Louis and
New Orleans papers; and when he mentioned the St. Louis ones it give me
the cold shivers, and I see we hadn't no time to lose. So Tom said, now
for the nonnamous letters.

“What's them?”  I says.

“Warnings to the people that something is up.  Sometimes it's done one
way, sometimes another.  But there's always somebody spying around that
gives notice to the governor of the castle.  When Louis XVI. was going
to light out of the Tooleries, a servant-girl done it.  It's a very good
way, and so is the nonnamous letters.  We'll use them both.  And it's
usual for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him, and she
stays in, and he slides out in her clothes.  We'll do that, too.”

“But looky here, Tom, what do we want to _warn_ anybody for that
something's up?  Let them find it out for themselves--it's their
lookout.”

“Yes, I know; but you can't depend on them.  It's the way they've acted
from the very start--left us to do _everything_.  They're so confiding
and mullet-headed they don't take notice of nothing at all.  So if we
don't _give_ them notice there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere
with us, and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape 'll go
off perfectly flat; won't amount to nothing--won't be nothing _to_ it.”

“Well, as for me, Tom, that's the way I'd like.”

“Shucks!” he says, and looked disgusted.  So I says:

“But I ain't going to make no complaint.  Any way that suits you suits
me. What you going to do about the servant-girl?”

“You'll be her.  You slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that
yaller girl's frock.”

“Why, Tom, that 'll make trouble next morning; because, of course, she
prob'bly hain't got any but that one.”

“I know; but you don't want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the
nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door.”

“All right, then, I'll do it; but I could carry it just as handy in my
own togs.”

“You wouldn't look like a servant-girl _then_, would you?”

“No, but there won't be nobody to see what I look like, _anyway_.”

“That ain't got nothing to do with it.  The thing for us to do is just
to do our _duty_, and not worry about whether anybody _sees_ us do it or
not. Hain't you got no principle at all?”

“All right, I ain't saying nothing; I'm the servant-girl.  Who's Jim's
mother?”

“I'm his mother.  I'll hook a gown from Aunt Sally.”

“Well, then, you'll have to stay in the cabin when me and Jim leaves.”

“Not much.  I'll stuff Jim's clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed
to represent his mother in disguise, and Jim 'll take the nigger woman's
gown off of me and wear it, and we'll all evade together.  When a
prisoner of style escapes it's called an evasion.  It's always called
so when a king escapes, f'rinstance.  And the same with a king's son;
it don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural
one.”

So Tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and I smouched the yaller wench's
frock that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the front door, the
way Tom told me to.  It said:

Beware.  Trouble is brewing.  Keep a sharp lookout. _Unknown_ _Friend_.

Next night we stuck a picture, which Tom drawed in blood, of a skull and
crossbones on the front door; and next night another one of a coffin on
the back door.  I never see a family in such a sweat.  They couldn't a
been worse scared if the place had a been full of ghosts laying for them
behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air.  If
a door banged, Aunt Sally she jumped and said “ouch!” if anything fell,
she jumped and said “ouch!” if you happened to touch her, when she
warn't noticing, she done the same; she couldn't face noway and be
satisfied, because she allowed there was something behind her every
time--so she was always a-whirling around sudden, and saying “ouch,” and
before she'd got two-thirds around she'd whirl back again, and say it
again; and she was afraid to go to bed, but she dasn't set up.  So the
thing was working very well, Tom said; he said he never see a thing work
more satisfactory. He said it showed it was done right.

So he said, now for the grand bulge!  So the very next morning at the
streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and was wondering what we
better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going
to have a nigger on watch at both doors all night.  Tom he went down the
lightning-rod to spy around; and the nigger at the back door was asleep,
and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back.  This letter
said:

Don't betray me, I wish to be your friend.  There is a desprate gang of
cutthroats from over in the Indian Territory going to steal your runaway
nigger to-night, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will
stay in the house and not bother them.  I am one of the gang, but have
got religgion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again, and
will betray the helish design. They will sneak down from northards,
along the fence, at midnight exact, with a false key, and go in the
nigger's cabin to get him. I am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn
if I see any danger; but stead of that I will _baa_ like a sheep soon as
they get in and not blow at all; then whilst they are getting his
chains loose, you slip there and lock them in, and can kill them at your
leasure.  Don't do anything but just the way I am telling you, if you do
they will suspicion something and raise whoop-jamboreehoo. I do not wish
any reward but to know I have done the right thing. _Unknown Friend._




CHAPTER XL.

WE was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went
over the river a-fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a
look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper,
and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end they
was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done
supper, and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a
word about the new letter, but didn't need to, because we knowed as much
about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half up stairs and her
back was turned we slid for the cellar cupboard and loaded up a good
lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about
half-past eleven, and Tom put on Aunt Sally's dress that he stole and
was going to start with the lunch, but says:

“Where's the butter?”

“I laid out a hunk of it,” I says, “on a piece of a corn-pone.”

“Well, you _left_ it laid out, then--it ain't here.”

“We can get along without it,” I says.

“We can get along _with_ it, too,” he says; “just you slide down cellar
and fetch it.  And then mosey right down the lightning-rod and come
along. I'll go and stuff the straw into Jim's clothes to represent his
mother in disguise, and be ready to _baa_ like a sheep and shove soon as
you get there.”

So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as
a person's fist, was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of
corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up stairs
very stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes
Aunt Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped
my hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she says:

“You been down cellar?”

“Yes'm.”

“What you been doing down there?”

“Noth'n.”

“_Noth'n!_”

“No'm.”

“Well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?”

“I don't know 'm.”

“You don't _know_?  Don't answer me that way. Tom, I want to know what
you been _doing_ down there.”

“I hain't been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I hope to gracious if I
have.”

I reckoned she'd let me go now, and as a generl thing she would; but I
s'pose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat
about every little thing that warn't yard-stick straight; so she says,
very decided:

“You just march into that setting-room and stay there till I come.  You
been up to something you no business to, and I lay I'll find out what it
is before I'M done with you.”

So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the setting-room.
My, but there was a crowd there!  Fifteen farmers, and every one of them
had a gun.  I was most powerful sick, and slunk to a chair and set down.
They was setting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice,
and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn't;
but I knowed they was, because they was always taking off their hats,
and putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their
seats, and fumbling with their buttons.  I warn't easy myself, but I
didn't take my hat off, all the same.

I did wish Aunt Sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me, if
she wanted to, and let me get away and tell Tom how we'd overdone this
thing, and what a thundering hornet's-nest we'd got ourselves into, so
we could stop fooling around straight off, and clear out with Jim before
these rips got out of patience and come for us.

At last she come and begun to ask me questions, but I _couldn't_ answer
them straight, I didn't know which end of me was up; because these men
was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right NOW and
lay for them desperadoes, and saying it warn't but a few minutes to
midnight; and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the
sheep-signal; and here was Aunty pegging away at the questions, and
me a-shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks I was
that scared; and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter
beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears; and pretty
soon, when one of them says, “I'M for going and getting in the cabin
_first_ and right _now_, and catching them when they come,” I most
dropped; and a streak of butter come a-trickling down my forehead, and
Aunt Sally she see it, and turns white as a sheet, and says:

“For the land's sake, what _is_ the matter with the child?  He's got the
brain-fever as shore as you're born, and they're oozing out!”

And everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes
the bread and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and
hugged me, and says:

“Oh, what a turn you did give me! and how glad and grateful I am it
ain't no worse; for luck's against us, and it never rains but it pours,
and when I see that truck I thought we'd lost you, for I knowed by
the color and all it was just like your brains would be if--Dear,
dear, whyd'nt you _tell_ me that was what you'd been down there for, I
wouldn't a cared.  Now cler out to bed, and don't lemme see no more of
you till morning!”

I was up stairs in a second, and down the lightning-rod in another one,
and shinning through the dark for the lean-to.  I couldn't hardly get my
words out, I was so anxious; but I told Tom as quick as I could we must
jump for it now, and not a minute to lose--the house full of men, yonder,
with guns!

His eyes just blazed; and he says:

“No!--is that so?  _ain't_ it bully!  Why, Huck, if it was to do over
again, I bet I could fetch two hundred!  If we could put it off till--”

“Hurry!  _Hurry_!”  I says.  “Where's Jim?”

“Right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him.
 He's dressed, and everything's ready.  Now we'll slide out and give the
sheep-signal.”

But then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them
begin to fumble with the pad-lock, and heard a man say:

“I _told_ you we'd be too soon; they haven't come--the door is locked.
Here, I'll lock some of you into the cabin, and you lay for 'em in the
dark and kill 'em when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece,
and listen if you can hear 'em coming.”

So in they come, but couldn't see us in the dark, and most trod on
us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed.  But we got under all
right, and out through the hole, swift but soft--Jim first, me next,
and Tom last, which was according to Tom's orders.  Now we was in the
lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside.  So we crept to the door,
and Tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn't make
out nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he would listen
for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us Jim must glide out
first, and him last.  So he set his ear to the crack and listened, and
listened, and listened, and the steps a-scraping around out there all
the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down,
not breathing, and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy
towards the fence in Injun file, and got to it all right, and me and Jim
over it; but Tom's britches catched fast on a splinter on the top
rail, and then he hear the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which
snapped the splinter and made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks
and started somebody sings out:

“Who's that?  Answer, or I'll shoot!”

But we didn't answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved.  Then there
was a rush, and a _Bang, Bang, Bang!_ and the bullets fairly whizzed
around us! We heard them sing out:

“Here they are!  They've broke for the river!  After 'em, boys, and turn
loose the dogs!”

So here they come, full tilt.  We could hear them because they wore
boots and yelled, but we didn't wear no boots and didn't yell.  We was
in the path to the mill; and when they got pretty close on to us we
dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind
them.  They'd had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn't scare off the
robbers; but by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they
come, making powwow enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we
stopped in our tracks till they catched up; and when they see it warn't
nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just said
howdy, and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering; and
then we up-steam again, and whizzed along after them till we was nearly
to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was
tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the
river, but didn't make no more noise than we was obleeged to. Then we
struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island where my raft was; and
we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the
bank, till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out.  And when
we stepped on to the raft I says:

“_Now_, old Jim, you're a free man again, and I bet you won't ever be a
slave no more.”

“En a mighty good job it wuz, too, Huck.  It 'uz planned beautiful, en
it 'uz done beautiful; en dey ain't _nobody_ kin git up a plan dat's mo'
mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz.”

We was all glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all because
he had a bullet in the calf of his leg.

When me and Jim heard that we didn't feel so brash as what we did
before. It was hurting him considerable, and bleeding; so we laid him in
the wigwam and tore up one of the duke's shirts for to bandage him, but
he says:

“Gimme the rags; I can do it myself.  Don't stop now; don't fool around
here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set
her loose!  Boys, we done it elegant!--'deed we did.  I wish _we'd_ a
had the handling of Louis XVI., there wouldn't a been no 'Son of Saint
Louis, ascend to heaven!' wrote down in _his_ biography; no, sir, we'd
a whooped him over the _border_--that's what we'd a done with _him_--and
done it just as slick as nothing at all, too.  Man the sweeps--man the
sweeps!”

But me and Jim was consulting--and thinking.  And after we'd thought a
minute, I says:

“Say it, Jim.”

So he says:

“Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck.  Ef it wuz _him_ dat 'uz
bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'Go on
en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one?'  Is dat like
Mars Tom Sawyer?  Would he say dat?  You _bet_ he wouldn't!  _well_,
den, is _Jim_ gywne to say it?  No, sah--I doan' budge a step out'n dis
place 'dout a _doctor_, not if it's forty year!”

I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he'd say what he did say--so
it was all right now, and I told Tom I was a-going for a doctor.
 He raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it and
wouldn't budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose
himself; but we wouldn't let him.  Then he give us a piece of his mind,
but it didn't do no good.

So when he sees me getting the canoe ready, he says:

“Well, then, if you're bound to go, I'll tell you the way to do when you
get to the village.  Shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and
fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse
full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the
back alleys and everywheres in the dark, and then fetch him here in the
canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take
his chalk away from him, and don't give it back to him till you get him
back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it
again. It's the way they all do.”

So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods when he
see the doctor coming till he was gone again.




CHAPTER XLI.

THE doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man when I got
him up.  I told him me and my brother was over on Spanish Island hunting
yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about
midnight he must a kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and
shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and
not say nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we wanted to
come home this evening and surprise the folks.

“Who is your folks?” he says.

“The Phelpses, down yonder.”

“Oh,” he says.  And after a minute, he says:

“How'd you say he got shot?”

“He had a dream,” I says, “and it shot him.”

“Singular dream,” he says.

So he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags, and we started.  But
when he sees the canoe he didn't like the look of her--said she was big
enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two.  I says:

“Oh, you needn't be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us easy
enough.”

“What three?”

“Why, me and Sid, and--and--and _the guns_; that's what I mean.”

“Oh,” he says.

But he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her, and shook his head,
and said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one.  But they was
all locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for me to wait
till he come back, or I could hunt around further, or maybe I better
go down home and get them ready for the surprise if I wanted to.  But
I said I didn't; so I told him just how to find the raft, and then he
started.

I struck an idea pretty soon.  I says to myself, spos'n he can't fix
that leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is?
spos'n it takes him three or four days?  What are we going to do?--lay
around there till he lets the cat out of the bag?  No, sir; I know what
_I'll_ do.  I'll wait, and when he comes back if he says he's got to
go any more I'll get down there, too, if I swim; and we'll take and tie
him, and keep him, and shove out down the river; and when Tom's done
with him we'll give him what it's worth, or all we got, and then let him
get ashore.

So then I crept into a lumber-pile to get some sleep; and next time I
waked up the sun was away up over my head!  I shot out and went for the
doctor's house, but they told me he'd gone away in the night some time
or other, and warn't back yet.  Well, thinks I, that looks powerful bad
for Tom, and I'll dig out for the island right off.  So away I shoved,
and turned the corner, and nearly rammed my head into Uncle Silas's
stomach! He says:

“Why, _Tom!_  Where you been all this time, you rascal?”

“I hain't been nowheres,” I says, “only just hunting for the runaway
nigger--me and Sid.”

“Why, where ever did you go?” he says.  “Your aunt's been mighty
uneasy.”

“She needn't,” I says, “because we was all right.  We followed the men
and the dogs, but they outrun us, and we lost them; but we thought we
heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them and
crossed over, but couldn't find nothing of them; so we cruised along
up-shore till we got kind of tired and beat out; and tied up the canoe
and went to sleep, and never waked up till about an hour ago; then we
paddled over here to hear the news, and Sid's at the post-office to see
what he can hear, and I'm a-branching out to get something to eat for
us, and then we're going home.”

So then we went to the post-office to get “Sid”; but just as I
suspicioned, he warn't there; so the old man he got a letter out of the
office, and we waited awhile longer, but Sid didn't come; so the old man
said, come along, let Sid foot it home, or canoe it, when he got done
fooling around--but we would ride.  I couldn't get him to let me stay
and wait for Sid; and he said there warn't no use in it, and I must come
along, and let Aunt Sally see we was all right.

When we got home Aunt Sally was that glad to see me she laughed and
cried both, and hugged me, and give me one of them lickings of hern that
don't amount to shucks, and said she'd serve Sid the same when he come.

And the place was plum full of farmers and farmers' wives, to dinner;
and such another clack a body never heard.  Old Mrs. Hotchkiss was the
worst; her tongue was a-going all the time.  She says:

“Well, Sister Phelps, I've ransacked that-air cabin over, an' I b'lieve
the nigger was crazy.  I says to Sister Damrell--didn't I, Sister
Damrell?--s'I, he's crazy, s'I--them's the very words I said.  You all
hearn me: he's crazy, s'I; everything shows it, s'I.  Look at that-air
grindstone, s'I; want to tell _me_'t any cretur 't's in his right mind
's a goin' to scrabble all them crazy things onto a grindstone, s'I?
 Here sich 'n' sich a person busted his heart; 'n' here so 'n' so
pegged along for thirty-seven year, 'n' all that--natcherl son o' Louis
somebody, 'n' sich everlast'n rubbage.  He's plumb crazy, s'I; it's what
I says in the fust place, it's what I says in the middle, 'n' it's what
I says last 'n' all the time--the nigger's crazy--crazy 's Nebokoodneezer,
s'I.”

“An' look at that-air ladder made out'n rags, Sister Hotchkiss,” says
old Mrs. Damrell; “what in the name o' goodness _could_ he ever want
of--”

“The very words I was a-sayin' no longer ago th'n this minute to Sister
Utterback, 'n' she'll tell you so herself.  Sh-she, look at that-air rag
ladder, sh-she; 'n' s'I, yes, _look_ at it, s'I--what _could_ he a-wanted
of it, s'I.  Sh-she, Sister Hotchkiss, sh-she--”

“But how in the nation'd they ever _git_ that grindstone _in_ there,
_anyway_? 'n' who dug that-air _hole_? 'n' who--”

“My very _words_, Brer Penrod!  I was a-sayin'--pass that-air sasser o'
m'lasses, won't ye?--I was a-sayin' to Sister Dunlap, jist this minute,
how _did_ they git that grindstone in there, s'I.  Without _help_, mind
you--'thout _help_!  _that's_ wher 'tis.  Don't tell _me_, s'I; there
_wuz_ help, s'I; 'n' ther' wuz a _plenty_ help, too, s'I; ther's ben a
_dozen_ a-helpin' that nigger, 'n' I lay I'd skin every last nigger on
this place but _I'd_ find out who done it, s'I; 'n' moreover, s'I--”

“A _dozen_ says you!--_forty_ couldn't a done every thing that's been
done. Look at them case-knife saws and things, how tedious they've been
made; look at that bed-leg sawed off with 'm, a week's work for six men;
look at that nigger made out'n straw on the bed; and look at--”

“You may _well_ say it, Brer Hightower!  It's jist as I was a-sayin'
to Brer Phelps, his own self.  S'e, what do _you_ think of it, Sister
Hotchkiss, s'e? Think o' what, Brer Phelps, s'I?  Think o' that bed-leg
sawed off that a way, s'e?  _think_ of it, s'I?  I lay it never sawed
_itself_ off, s'I--somebody _sawed_ it, s'I; that's my opinion, take it
or leave it, it mayn't be no 'count, s'I, but sich as 't is, it's my
opinion, s'I, 'n' if any body k'n start a better one, s'I, let him _do_
it, s'I, that's all.  I says to Sister Dunlap, s'I--”

“Why, dog my cats, they must a ben a house-full o' niggers in there
every night for four weeks to a done all that work, Sister Phelps.  Look
at that shirt--every last inch of it kivered over with secret African
writ'n done with blood!  Must a ben a raft uv 'm at it right along, all
the time, amost.  Why, I'd give two dollars to have it read to me; 'n'
as for the niggers that wrote it, I 'low I'd take 'n' lash 'm t'll--”

“People to _help_ him, Brother Marples!  Well, I reckon you'd _think_
so if you'd a been in this house for a while back.  Why, they've stole
everything they could lay their hands on--and we a-watching all the time,
mind you. They stole that shirt right off o' the line! and as for that
sheet they made the rag ladder out of, ther' ain't no telling how
many times they _didn't_ steal that; and flour, and candles, and
candlesticks, and spoons, and the old warming-pan, and most a thousand
things that I disremember now, and my new calico dress; and me and
Silas and my Sid and Tom on the constant watch day _and_ night, as I was
a-telling you, and not a one of us could catch hide nor hair nor sight
nor sound of them; and here at the last minute, lo and behold you, they
slides right in under our noses and fools us, and not only fools _us_
but the Injun Territory robbers too, and actuly gets _away_ with that
nigger safe and sound, and that with sixteen men and twenty-two dogs
right on their very heels at that very time!  I tell you, it just bangs
anything I ever _heard_ of. Why, _sperits_ couldn't a done better and
been no smarter. And I reckon they must a _been_ sperits--because, _you_
know our dogs, and ther' ain't no better; well, them dogs never even got
on the _track_ of 'm once!  You explain _that_ to me if you can!--_any_
of you!”

“Well, it does beat--”

“Laws alive, I never--”

“So help me, I wouldn't a be--”

“_House_-thieves as well as--”

“Goodnessgracioussakes, I'd a ben afeard to live in sich a--”

“'Fraid to _live_!--why, I was that scared I dasn't hardly go to bed, or
get up, or lay down, or _set_ down, Sister Ridgeway.  Why, they'd steal
the very--why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster I was
in by the time midnight come last night.  I hope to gracious if I warn't
afraid they'd steal some o' the family!  I was just to that pass I
didn't have no reasoning faculties no more.  It looks foolish enough
_now_, in the daytime; but I says to myself, there's my two poor boys
asleep, 'way up stairs in that lonesome room, and I declare to goodness
I was that uneasy 't I crep' up there and locked 'em in!  I _did_.  And
anybody would. Because, you know, when you get scared that way, and it
keeps running on, and getting worse and worse all the time, and your
wits gets to addling, and you get to doing all sorts o' wild things,
and by and by you think to yourself, spos'n I was a boy, and was away up
there, and the door ain't locked, and you--” She stopped, looking kind
of wondering, and then she turned her head around slow, and when her eye
lit on me--I got up and took a walk.

Says I to myself, I can explain better how we come to not be in that
room this morning if I go out to one side and study over it a little.
 So I done it.  But I dasn't go fur, or she'd a sent for me.  And when
it was late in the day the people all went, and then I come in and
told her the noise and shooting waked up me and “Sid,” and the door was
locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning-rod,
and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn't never want to try _that_
no more.  And then I went on and told her all what I told Uncle Silas
before; and then she said she'd forgive us, and maybe it was all right
enough anyway, and about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys
was a pretty harum-scarum lot as fur as she could see; and so, as long
as no harm hadn't come of it, she judged she better put in her time
being grateful we was alive and well and she had us still, stead of
fretting over what was past and done.  So then she kissed me, and patted
me on the head, and dropped into a kind of a brown study; and pretty
soon jumps up, and says:

“Why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and Sid not come yet!  What _has_
become of that boy?”

I see my chance; so I skips up and says:

“I'll run right up to town and get him,” I says.

“No you won't,” she says.  “You'll stay right wher' you are; _one's_
enough to be lost at a time.  If he ain't here to supper, your uncle 'll
go.”

Well, he warn't there to supper; so right after supper uncle went.

He come back about ten a little bit uneasy; hadn't run across Tom's
track. Aunt Sally was a good _deal_ uneasy; but Uncle Silas he said
there warn't no occasion to be--boys will be boys, he said, and you'll
see this one turn up in the morning all sound and right.  So she had
to be satisfied.  But she said she'd set up for him a while anyway, and
keep a light burning so he could see it.

And then when I went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her
candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good I felt mean, and like
I couldn't look her in the face; and she set down on the bed and talked
with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy Sid was, and didn't
seem to want to ever stop talking about him; and kept asking me every
now and then if I reckoned he could a got lost, or hurt, or maybe
drownded, and might be laying at this minute somewheres suffering or
dead, and she not by him to help him, and so the tears would drip down
silent, and I would tell her that Sid was all right, and would be home
in the morning, sure; and she would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me,
and tell me to say it again, and keep on saying it, because it done her
good, and she was in so much trouble.  And when she was going away she
looked down in my eyes so steady and gentle, and says:

“The door ain't going to be locked, Tom, and there's the window and
the rod; but you'll be good, _won't_ you?  And you won't go?  For _my_
sake.”

Laws knows I _wanted_ to go bad enough to see about Tom, and was all
intending to go; but after that I wouldn't a went, not for kingdoms.

But she was on my mind and Tom was on my mind, so I slept very restless.
And twice I went down the rod away in the night, and slipped around
front, and see her setting there by her candle in the window with her
eyes towards the road and the tears in them; and I wished I could do
something for her, but I couldn't, only to swear that I wouldn't never
do nothing to grieve her any more.  And the third time I waked up at
dawn, and slid down, and she was there yet, and her candle was most out,
and her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep.




CHAPTER XLII.

THE old man was uptown again before breakfast, but couldn't get no
track of Tom; and both of them set at the table thinking, and not saying
nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not
eating anything. And by and by the old man says:

“Did I give you the letter?”

“What letter?”

“The one I got yesterday out of the post-office.”

“No, you didn't give me no letter.”

“Well, I must a forgot it.”

So he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he had
laid it down, and fetched it, and give it to her.  She says:

“Why, it's from St. Petersburg--it's from Sis.”

I allowed another walk would do me good; but I couldn't stir.  But
before she could break it open she dropped it and run--for she see
something. And so did I. It was Tom Sawyer on a mattress; and that old
doctor; and Jim, in _her_ calico dress, with his hands tied behind him;
and a lot of people.  I hid the letter behind the first thing that come
handy, and rushed.  She flung herself at Tom, crying, and says:

“Oh, he's dead, he's dead, I know he's dead!”

And Tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other,
which showed he warn't in his right mind; then she flung up her hands,
and says:

“He's alive, thank God!  And that's enough!” and she snatched a kiss of
him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering orders
right and left at the niggers and everybody else, as fast as her tongue
could go, every jump of the way.

I followed the men to see what they was going to do with Jim; and the
old doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house.  The men
was very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim for an example to
all the other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run
away like Jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a
whole family scared most to death for days and nights.  But the others
said, don't do it, it wouldn't answer at all; he ain't our nigger, and
his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure.  So that cooled
them down a little, because the people that's always the most anxious
for to hang a nigger that hain't done just right is always the very
ones that ain't the most anxious to pay for him when they've got their
satisfaction out of him.

They cussed Jim considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two side the
head once in a while, but Jim never said nothing, and he never let on to
know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes
on him, and chained him again, and not to no bed-leg this time, but to
a big staple drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and
both legs, and said he warn't to have nothing but bread and water to
eat after this till his owner come, or he was sold at auction because
he didn't come in a certain length of time, and filled up our hole, and
said a couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the
cabin every night, and a bulldog tied to the door in the daytime; and
about this time they was through with the job and was tapering off with
a kind of generl good-bye cussing, and then the old doctor comes and
takes a look, and says:

“Don't be no rougher on him than you're obleeged to, because he ain't
a bad nigger.  When I got to where I found the boy I see I couldn't cut
the bullet out without some help, and he warn't in no condition for
me to leave to go and get help; and he got a little worse and a little
worse, and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn't let
me come a-nigh him any more, and said if I chalked his raft he'd kill
me, and no end of wild foolishness like that, and I see I couldn't do
anything at all with him; so I says, I got to have _help_ somehow; and
the minute I says it out crawls this nigger from somewheres and says
he'll help, and he done it, too, and done it very well.  Of course I
judged he must be a runaway nigger, and there I _was_! and there I had
to stick right straight along all the rest of the day and all night.  It
was a fix, I tell you! I had a couple of patients with the chills, and
of course I'd of liked to run up to town and see them, but I dasn't,
because the nigger might get away, and then I'd be to blame; and yet
never a skiff come close enough for me to hail.  So there I had to stick
plumb until daylight this morning; and I never see a nigger that was a
better nuss or faithfuller, and yet he was risking his freedom to do it,
and was all tired out, too, and I see plain enough he'd been worked
main hard lately.  I liked the nigger for that; I tell you, gentlemen, a
nigger like that is worth a thousand dollars--and kind treatment, too.  I
had everything I needed, and the boy was doing as well there as he
would a done at home--better, maybe, because it was so quiet; but there I
_was_, with both of 'm on my hands, and there I had to stick till about
dawn this morning; then some men in a skiff come by, and as good luck
would have it the nigger was setting by the pallet with his head propped
on his knees sound asleep; so I motioned them in quiet, and they slipped
up on him and grabbed him and tied him before he knowed what he was
about, and we never had no trouble. And the boy being in a kind of a
flighty sleep, too, we muffled the oars and hitched the raft on, and
towed her over very nice and quiet, and the nigger never made the least
row nor said a word from the start.  He ain't no bad nigger, gentlemen;
that's what I think about him.”

Somebody says:

“Well, it sounds very good, doctor, I'm obleeged to say.”

Then the others softened up a little, too, and I was mighty thankful
to that old doctor for doing Jim that good turn; and I was glad it was
according to my judgment of him, too; because I thought he had a good
heart in him and was a good man the first time I see him.  Then they
all agreed that Jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some
notice took of it, and reward.  So every one of them promised, right out
and hearty, that they wouldn't cuss him no more.

Then they come out and locked him up.  I hoped they was going to say he
could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was rotten
heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water; but they
didn't think of it, and I reckoned it warn't best for me to mix in, but
I judged I'd get the doctor's yarn to Aunt Sally somehow or other as
soon as I'd got through the breakers that was laying just ahead of
me--explanations, I mean, of how I forgot to mention about Sid being shot
when I was telling how him and me put in that dratted night paddling
around hunting the runaway nigger.

But I had plenty time.  Aunt Sally she stuck to the sick-room all day
and all night, and every time I see Uncle Silas mooning around I dodged
him.

Next morning I heard Tom was a good deal better, and they said Aunt
Sally was gone to get a nap.  So I slips to the sick-room, and if I
found him awake I reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that
would wash. But he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful, too; and
pale, not fire-faced the way he was when he come.  So I set down and
laid for him to wake.  In about half an hour Aunt Sally comes gliding
in, and there I was, up a stump again!  She motioned me to be still, and
set down by me, and begun to whisper, and said we could all be joyful
now, because all the symptoms was first-rate, and he'd been sleeping
like that for ever so long, and looking better and peacefuller all the
time, and ten to one he'd wake up in his right mind.

So we set there watching, and by and by he stirs a bit, and opened his
eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says:

“Hello!--why, I'm at _home_!  How's that?  Where's the raft?”

“It's all right,” I says.

“And _Jim_?”

“The same,” I says, but couldn't say it pretty brash.  But he never
noticed, but says:

“Good!  Splendid!  _Now_ we're all right and safe! Did you tell Aunty?”

I was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says:  “About what, Sid?”

“Why, about the way the whole thing was done.”

“What whole thing?”

“Why, _the_ whole thing.  There ain't but one; how we set the runaway
nigger free--me and Tom.”

“Good land!  Set the run--What _is_ the child talking about!  Dear, dear,
out of his head again!”

“_No_, I ain't out of my _head_; I know all what I'm talking about.  We
_did_ set him free--me and Tom.  We laid out to do it, and we _done_ it.
 And we done it elegant, too.”  He'd got a start, and she never checked
him up, just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and
I see it warn't no use for _me_ to put in.  “Why, Aunty, it cost us a
power of work--weeks of it--hours and hours, every night, whilst you was
all asleep. And we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt,
and your dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case-knives, and the
warming-pan, and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things,
and you can't think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and
inscriptions, and one thing or another, and you can't think _half_ the
fun it was.  And we had to make up the pictures of coffins and things,
and nonnamous letters from the robbers, and get up and down the
lightning-rod, and dig the hole into the cabin, and made the rope ladder
and send it in cooked up in a pie, and send in spoons and things to work
with in your apron pocket--”

“Mercy sakes!”

“--and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company for
Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat that
you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before
we was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let
drive at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let
them go by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in us, but
went for the most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the
raft, and was all safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all by
ourselves, and _wasn't_ it bully, Aunty!”

“Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days!  So it was
_you_, you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble,
and turned everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to
death.  I've as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out
o' you this very minute.  To think, here I've been, night after night,
a--_you_ just get well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll tan the Old
Harry out o' both o' ye!”

But Tom, he _was_ so proud and joyful, he just _couldn't_ hold in,
and his tongue just _went_ it--she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all
along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and she
says:

“_Well_, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it _now_, for mind I
tell you if I catch you meddling with him again--”

“Meddling with _who_?”  Tom says, dropping his smile and looking
surprised.

“With _who_?  Why, the runaway nigger, of course.  Who'd you reckon?”

Tom looks at me very grave, and says:

“Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right?  Hasn't he got away?”

“_Him_?” says Aunt Sally; “the runaway nigger?  'Deed he hasn't.
 They've got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again,
on bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or
sold!”

Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening
and shutting like gills, and sings out to me:

“They hain't no _right_ to shut him up!  SHOVE!--and don't you lose a
minute.  Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur
that walks this earth!”

“What _does_ the child mean?”

“I mean every word I _say_, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, _I'll_
go. I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there.  Old Miss
Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to
sell him down the river, and _said_ so; and she set him free in her
will.”

“Then what on earth did _you_ want to set him free for, seeing he was
already free?”

“Well, that _is_ a question, I must say; and just like women!  Why,
I wanted the _adventure_ of it; and I'd a waded neck-deep in blood
to--goodness alive, _Aunt Polly!_”

If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as
sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never!

Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and
cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed,
for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me.  And I peeped
out, and in a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and
stood there looking across at Tom over her spectacles--kind of grinding
him into the earth, you know.  And then she says:

“Yes, you _better_ turn y'r head away--I would if I was you, Tom.”

“Oh, deary me!” says Aunt Sally; “_Is_ he changed so?  Why, that ain't
_Tom_, it's Sid; Tom's--Tom's--why, where is Tom?  He was here a minute
ago.”

“You mean where's Huck _Finn_--that's what you mean!  I reckon I hain't
raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I
_see_ him.  That _would_ be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that
bed, Huck Finn.”

So I done it.  But not feeling brash.

Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons I ever
see--except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in and they told
it all to him.  It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't
know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting
sermon that night that gave him a rattling ruputation, because the
oldest man in the world couldn't a understood it.  So Tom's Aunt Polly,
she told all about who I was, and what; and I had to up and tell how
I was in such a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took me for Tom
Sawyer--she chipped in and says, “Oh, go on and call me Aunt Sally, I'm
used to it now, and 'tain't no need to change”--that when Aunt Sally took
me for Tom Sawyer I had to stand it--there warn't no other way, and
I knowed he wouldn't mind, because it would be nuts for him, being
a mystery, and he'd make an adventure out of it, and be perfectly
satisfied.  And so it turned out, and he let on to be Sid, and made
things as soft as he could for me.

And his Aunt Polly she said Tom was right about old Miss Watson setting
Jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone and took
all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and I couldn't
ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he _could_
help a body set a nigger free with his bringing-up.

Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and
_Sid_ had come all right and safe, she says to herself:

“Look at that, now!  I might have expected it, letting him go off that
way without anybody to watch him.  So now I got to go and trapse all
the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that
creetur's up to _this_ time, as long as I couldn't seem to get any
answer out of you about it.”

“Why, I never heard nothing from you,” says Aunt Sally.

“Well, I wonder!  Why, I wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean
by Sid being here.”

“Well, I never got 'em, Sis.”

Aunt Polly she turns around slow and severe, and says:

“You, Tom!”

“Well--_what_?” he says, kind of pettish.

“Don't you what _me_, you impudent thing--hand out them letters.”

“What letters?”

“_Them_ letters.  I be bound, if I have to take a-holt of you I'll--”

“They're in the trunk.  There, now.  And they're just the same as they
was when I got them out of the office.  I hain't looked into them, I
hain't touched them.  But I knowed they'd make trouble, and I thought if
you warn't in no hurry, I'd--”

“Well, you _do_ need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it.  And I
wrote another one to tell you I was coming; and I s'pose he--”

“No, it come yesterday; I hain't read it yet, but _it's_ all right, I've
got that one.”

I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but I reckoned maybe it
was just as safe to not to.  So I never said nothing.




CHAPTER THE LAST

THE first time I catched Tom private I asked him what was his idea, time
of the evasion?--what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all
right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before?
And he said, what he had planned in his head from the start, if we got
Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft, and
have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about
his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style,
and pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all
the niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight
procession and a brass-band, and then he would be a hero, and so would
we.  But I reckoned it was about as well the way it was.

We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle
Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse Tom,
they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and give him
all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do.  And we had
him up to the sick-room, and had a high talk; and Tom give Jim forty
dollars for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good,
and Jim was pleased most to death, and busted out, and says:

“Dah, now, Huck, what I tell you?--what I tell you up dah on Jackson
islan'?  I _tole_ you I got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en
I _tole_ you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich _agin_; en it's
come true; en heah she is!  _dah_, now! doan' talk to _me_--signs is
_signs_, mine I tell you; en I knowed jis' 's well 'at I 'uz gwineter be
rich agin as I's a-stannin' heah dis minute!”

And then Tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all three
slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for
howling adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the Territory, for a
couple of weeks or two; and I says, all right, that suits me, but I
ain't got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon I couldn't get
none from home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and got
it all away from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.

“No, he hain't,” Tom says; “it's all there yet--six thousand dollars
and more; and your pap hain't ever been back since.  Hadn't when I come
away, anyhow.”

Jim says, kind of solemn:

“He ain't a-comin' back no mo', Huck.”

I says:

“Why, Jim?”

“Nemmine why, Huck--but he ain't comin' back no mo.”

But I kept at him; so at last he says:

“Doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey wuz a
man in dah, kivered up, en I went in en unkivered him and didn' let you
come in?  Well, den, you kin git yo' money when you wants it, kase dat
wuz him.”

Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard
for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't
nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd
a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it,
and ain't a-going to no more.  But I reckon I got to light out for the
Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me
and sivilize me, and I can't stand it.  I been there before.

THE END. YOURS TRULY, _HUCK FINN_.





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Title: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Author: Benjamin Franklin

Editor: Frank Woodworth Pine

Illustrator: E. Boyd Smith

Release Date: December 28, 2006 [EBook #20203]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN ***




Produced by Turgut Dincer, Brian Sogard and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net










[Illustration: FRANKLIN ARMS]

[Illustration: FRANKLIN SEAL]

[Illustration: Franklin at the Court of Louis XVI

    "He was therefore, feasted and invited to all the court
    parties. At these he sometimes met the old Duchess of
    Bourbon, who, being a chess player of about his force,
    they very generally played together. Happening once to
    put her king into prize, the Doctor took it. 'Ah,' says
    she, 'we do not take kings so.' 'We do in America,' said
    the Doctor."--Thomas Jefferson.]




AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

BENJAMIN

FRANKLIN


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
_by_
E. BOYD SMITH

EDITED
_by_
FRANK WOODWORTH PINE


[Illustration: Printers Mark]


_New York_
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1916

Copyright, 1916,

BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY


June, 1922


THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.




CONTENTS



                                                             PAGE
Introduction                                                  vii

The Autobiography

      I. Ancestry and Early Life in Boston                      3
     II. Beginning Life as a Printer                           21
    III. Arrival in Philadelphia                               41
     IV. First Visit to Boston                                 55
      V. Early Friends in Philadelphia                         69
     VI. First Visit to London                                 77
    VII. Beginning Business in Philadelphia                    99
   VIII. Business Success and First Public Service            126
     IX. Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection                  146
      X. _Poor Richard's Almanac_ and Other Activities        169
     XI. Interest in Public Affairs                           188
    XII. Defense of the Province                              201
   XIII. Public Services and Duties                           217
    XIV. Albany Plan of Union                                 241
     XV. Quarrels with the Proprietary Governors              246
    XVI. Braddock's Expedition                                253
   XVII. Franklin's Defense of the Frontier                   274
  XVIII. Scientific Experiments                               289
    XIX. Agent of Pennsylvania in London                      296

Appendix

         Electrical Kite                                      327
         The Way to Wealth                                    331
         The Whistle                                          336
         A Letter to Samuel Mather                            34O

Bibliography                                                  343




ILLUSTRATIONS

Franklin at the Court of Louis XVI                 _Frontispiece_

  "He was therefore, feasted and invited to all the court
  parties. At these he sometimes met the old Duchess of
  Bourbon, who, being a chess player of about his force,
  they very generally played together. Happening once to
  put her king into prize, the Doctor took it. 'Ah,' says
  she, 'we do not take kings so.' 'We do in America,'
  said the Doctor."--Thomas Jefferson.


                                                             PAGE
Portrait of Franklin                                          vii

Pages 1 and 4 of _The Pennsylvania Gazette_, Number
  XL, the first number after Franklin took control            xxi

First page of _The New England Courant_ of December
  4-11, 1721                                                   33

"I was employed to carry the papers thro' the streets
  to the customers"                                            36

"She, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I
  made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous
  appearance"                                                  48

"I took to working at press"                                   88

"I see him still at work when I go home from club"            120

Two pages from _Poor Richard's Almanac_ for 1736              171

"I regularly took my turn of duty there as a common
  soldier"                                                    204

"In the evening, hearing a great noise among them,
  the commissioners walk'd out to see what was the
  matter"                                                     224

"Our axes ... were immediately set to work to
  cut down trees"                                             278

"We now appeared very wide, and so far from each
  other in our opinions as to discourage all hope
  of agreement"                                               318

"You will find it stream out plentifully from the key
  on the approach of your knuckle"                            328

Father Abraham in his study                                   330

The end papers show, at the front, the Franklin arms and
  the Franklin seal; at the back, the medal given by the
  Boston public schools from the fund left by Franklin for
  that purpose as provided in the following extract from his
  will:


  "I was born in Boston, New England, and owe my first
  instructions in literature to the free grammar-schools
  established there. I therefore give one hundred pounds
  sterling to my executors, to be by them ... paid over to
  the managers or directors of the free schools in my native
  town of Boston, to be by them ... put out to interest, and
  so continued at interest forever, which interest annually
  shall be laid out in silver medals, and given as honorary
  rewards annually by the directors of the said free schools
  belonging to the said town, in such manner as to the
  discretion of the selectmen of the said town shall seem
  meet."

[Illustration: B. Franklin From an engraving by J. Thomson from the
original picture by J. A. Duplessis]

[Illustration: B. Franklin's signature]


INTRODUCTION


We Americans devour eagerly any piece of writing that purports to tell
us the secret of success in life; yet how often we are disappointed to
find nothing but commonplace statements, or receipts that we know by
heart but never follow. Most of the life stories of our famous and
successful men fail to inspire because they lack the human element
that makes the record real and brings the story within our grasp.
While we are searching far and near for some Aladdin's Lamp to give
coveted fortune, there is ready at our hand if we will only reach out
and take it, like the charm in Milton's _Comus_,

  "Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull swain
   Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon;"

the interesting, human, and vividly told story of one of the wisest
and most useful lives in our own history, and perhaps in any history.
In Franklin's _Autobiography_ is offered not so much a ready-made
formula for success, as the companionship of a real flesh and blood
man of extraordinary mind and quality, whose daily walk and
conversation will help us to meet our own difficulties, much as does
the example of a wise and strong friend. While we are fascinated by
the story, we absorb the human experience through which a strong and
helpful character is building.

The thing that makes Franklin's _Autobiography_ different from every
other life story of a great and successful man is just this human
aspect of the account. Franklin told the story of his life, as he
himself says, for the benefit of his posterity. He wanted to help them
by the relation of his own rise from obscurity and poverty to eminence
and wealth. He is not unmindful of the importance of his public
services and their recognition, yet his accounts of these achievements
are given only as a part of the story, and the vanity displayed is
incidental and in keeping with the honesty of the recital. There is
nothing of the impossible in the method and practice of Franklin as he
sets them forth. The youth who reads the fascinating story is
astonished to find that Franklin in his early years struggled with the
same everyday passions and difficulties that he himself experiences,
and he loses the sense of discouragement that comes from a
realization of his own shortcomings and inability to attain.

There are other reasons why the _Autobiography_ should be an intimate
friend of American young people. Here they may establish a close
relationship with one of the foremost Americans as well as one of the
wisest men of his age.

The life of Benjamin Franklin is of importance to every American
primarily because of the part he played in securing the independence
of the United States and in establishing it as a nation. Franklin
shares with Washington the honors of the Revolution, and of the events
leading to the birth of the new nation. While Washington was the
animating spirit of the struggle in the colonies, Franklin was its
ablest champion abroad. To Franklin's cogent reasoning and keen
satire, we owe the clear and forcible presentation of the American
case in England and France; while to his personality and diplomacy as
well as to his facile pen, we are indebted for the foreign alliance
and the funds without which Washington's work must have failed. His
patience, fortitude, and practical wisdom, coupled with
self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of his country, are hardly less
noticeable than similar qualities displayed by Washington. In fact,
Franklin as a public man was much like Washington, especially in the
entire disinterestedness of his public service.

Franklin is also interesting to us because by his life and teachings
he has done more than any other American to advance the material
prosperity of his countrymen. It is said that his widely and
faithfully read maxims made Philadelphia and Pennsylvania wealthy,
while Poor Richard's pithy sayings, translated into many languages,
have had a world-wide influence.

Franklin is a good type of our American manhood. Although not the
wealthiest or the most powerful, he is undoubtedly, in the versatility
of his genius and achievements, the greatest of our self-made men. The
simple yet graphic story in the _Autobiography_ of his steady rise
from humble boyhood in a tallow-chandler shop, by industry, economy,
and perseverance in self-improvement, to eminence, is the most
remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men. It is
in itself a wonderful illustration of the results possible to be
attained in a land of unequaled opportunity by following Franklin's
maxims.

Franklin's fame, however, was not confined to his own country.
Although he lived in a century notable for the rapid evolution of
scientific and political thought and activity, yet no less a keen
judge and critic than Lord Jeffrey, the famous editor of the
_Edinburgh Review_, a century ago said that "in one point of view
the name of Franklin must be considered as standing higher than any of
the others which illustrated the eighteenth century. Distinguished as
a statesman, he was equally great as a philosopher, thus uniting in
himself a rare degree of excellence in both these pursuits, to excel
in either of which is deemed the highest praise."

Franklin has indeed been aptly called "many-sided." He was eminent in
science and public service, in diplomacy and in literature. He was the
Edison of his day, turning his scientific discoveries to the benefit
of his fellow-men. He perceived the identity of lightning and
electricity and set up the lightning rod. He invented the Franklin
stove, still widely used, and refused to patent it. He possessed a
masterly shrewdness in business and practical affairs. Carlyle called
him the father of all the Yankees. He founded a fire company, assisted
in founding a hospital, and improved the cleaning and lighting of
streets. He developed journalism, established the American
Philosophical Society, the public library in Philadelphia, and the
University of Pennsylvania. He organized a postal system for the
colonies, which was the basis of the present United States Post
Office. Bancroft, the eminent historian, called him "the greatest
diplomatist of his century." He perfected the Albany Plan of Union for
the colonies. He is the only statesman who signed the Declaration of
Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace
with England, and the Constitution. As a writer, he has produced, in
his _Autobiography_ and in _Poor Richard's Almanac_, two works that
are not surpassed by similar writing. He received honorary degrees
from Harvard and Yale, from Oxford and St. Andrews, and was made a
fellow of the Royal Society, which awarded him the Copley gold medal
for improving natural knowledge. He was one of the eight foreign
associates of the French Academy of Science.

The careful study of the _Autobiography_ is also valuable because of
the style in which it is written. If Robert Louis Stevenson is right
in believing that his remarkable style was acquired by imitation then
the youth who would gain the power to express his ideas clearly,
forcibly, and interestingly cannot do better than to study Franklin's
method. Franklin's fame in the scientific world was due almost as much
to his modest, simple, and sincere manner of presenting his
discoveries and to the precision and clearness of the style in which
he described his experiments, as to the results he was able to
announce. Sir Humphry Davy, the celebrated English chemist, himself an
excellent literary critic as well as a great scientist, said: "A
singular felicity guided all Franklin's researches, and by very small
means he established very grand truths. The style and manner of his
publication on electricity are almost as worthy of admiration as the
doctrine it contains."

Franklin's place in literature is hard to determine because he was not
primarily a literary man. His aim in his writings as in his life work
was to be helpful to his fellow-men. For him writing was never an end
in itself, but always a means to an end. Yet his success as a
scientist, a statesman, and a diplomat, as well as socially, was in no
little part due to his ability as a writer. "His letters charmed all,
and made his correspondence eagerly sought. His political arguments
were the joy of his party and the dread of his opponents. His
scientific discoveries were explained in language at once so simple
and so clear that plow-boy and exquisite could follow his thought or
his experiment to its conclusion."[1]

    [1] _The Many-Sided Franklin._ Paul L. Ford.

As far as American literature is concerned, Franklin has no
contemporaries. Before the _Autobiography_ only one literary work of
importance had been produced in this country--Cotton Mather's
_Magnalia_, a church history of New England in a ponderous, stiff
style. Franklin was the first American author to gain a wide and
permanent reputation in Europe. The _Autobiography_, _Poor Richard_,
_Father Abraham's Speech_ or _The Way to Wealth_, as well as some of
the _Bagatelles_, are as widely known abroad as any American writings.
Franklin must also be classed as the first American humorist.

English literature of the eighteenth century was characterized by the
development of prose. Periodical literature reached its perfection
early in the century in _The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_ of Addison
and Steele. Pamphleteers flourished throughout the period. The
homelier prose of Bunyan and Defoe gradually gave place to the more
elegant and artificial language of Samuel Johnson, who set the
standard for prose writing from 1745 onward. This century saw the
beginnings of the modern novel, in Fielding's _Tom Jones_,
Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_, Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_, and
Goldsmith's _Vicar of Wakefield_. Gibbon wrote _The Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire_, Hume his _History of England_, and Adam Smith
the _Wealth of Nations_.

In the simplicity and vigor of his style Franklin more nearly
resembles the earlier group of writers. In his first essays he was not
an inferior imitator of Addison. In his numerous parables, moral
allegories, and apologues he showed Bunyan's influence. But Franklin
was essentially a journalist. In his swift, terse style, he is most
like Defoe, who was the first great English journalist and master of
the newspaper narrative. The style of both writers is marked by
homely, vigorous expression, satire, burlesque, repartee. Here the
comparison must end. Defoe and his contemporaries were authors. Their
vocation was writing and their success rests on the imaginative or
creative power they displayed. To authorship Franklin laid no claim.
He wrote no work of the imagination. He developed only incidentally a
style in many respects as remarkable as that of his English
contemporaries. He wrote the best autobiography in existence, one of
the most widely known collections of maxims, and an unsurpassed series
of political and social satires, because he was a man of unusual scope
of power and usefulness, who knew how to tell his fellow-men the
secrets of that power and that usefulness.


The Story of the Autobiography

The account of how Franklin's _Autobiography_ came to be written and
of the adventures of the original manuscript forms in itself an
interesting story. The _Autobiography_ is Franklin's longest work,
and yet it is only a fragment. The first part, written as a letter to
his son, William Franklin, was not intended for publication; and the
composition is more informal and the narrative more personal than in
the second part, from 1730 on, which was written with a view to
publication. The entire manuscript shows little evidence of revision.
In fact, the expression is so homely and natural that his grandson,
William Temple Franklin, in editing the work changed some of the
phrases because he thought them inelegant and vulgar.

Franklin began the story of his life while on a visit to his friend,
Bishop Shipley, at Twyford, in Hampshire, southern England, in 1771.
He took the manuscript, completed to 1731, with him when he returned
to Philadelphia in 1775. It was left there with his other papers when
he went to France in the following year, and disappeared during the
confusion incident to the Revolution. Twenty-three pages of closely
written manuscript fell into the hands of Abel James, an old friend,
who sent a copy to Franklin at Passy, near Paris, urging him to
complete the story. Franklin took up the work at Passy in 1784 and
carried the narrative forward a few months. He changed the plan to
meet his new purpose of writing to benefit the young reader. His work
was soon interrupted and was not resumed until 1788, when he was at
home in Philadelphia. He was now old, infirm, and suffering, and was
still engaged in public service. Under these discouraging conditions
the work progressed slowly. It finally stopped when the narrative
reached the year 1757. Copies of the manuscript were sent to friends
of Franklin in England and France, among others to Monsieur Le
Veillard at Paris.

The first edition of the _Autobiography_ was published in French at
Paris in 1791. It was clumsily and carelessly translated, and was
imperfect and unfinished. Where the translator got the manuscript is
not known. Le Veillard disclaimed any knowledge of the publication.
From this faulty French edition many others were printed, some in
Germany, two in England, and another in France, so great was the
demand for the work.

In the meantime the original manuscript of the _Autobiography_ had
started on a varied and adventurous career. It was left by Franklin
with his other works to his grandson, William Temple Franklin, whom
Franklin designated as his literary executor. When Temple Franklin
came to publish his grandfather's works in 1817, he sent the original
manuscript of the _Autobiography_ to the daughter of Le Veillard in
exchange for her father's copy, probably thinking the clearer
transcript would make better printer's copy. The original manuscript
thus found its way to the Le Veillard family and connections, where it
remained until sold in 1867 to Mr. John Bigelow, United States
Minister to France. By him it was later sold to Mr. E. Dwight Church
of New York, and passed with the rest of Mr. Church's library into the
possession of Mr. Henry E. Huntington. The original manuscript of
Franklin's _Autobiography_ now rests in the vault in Mr. Huntington's
residence at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, New York City.

When Mr. Bigelow came to examine his purchase, he was astonished to
find that what people had been reading for years as the authentic
_Life of Benjamin Franklin by Himself_, was only a garbled and
incomplete version of the real _Autobiography_. Temple Franklin had
taken unwarranted liberties with the original. Mr. Bigelow says he
found more than twelve hundred changes in the text. In 1868,
therefore, Mr. Bigelow published the standard edition of Franklin's
_Autobiography_. It corrected errors in the previous editions and was
the first English edition to contain the short fourth part,
comprising the last few pages of the manuscript, written during the
last year of Franklin's life. Mr. Bigelow republished the
_Autobiography_, with additional interesting matter, in three volumes
in 1875, in 1905, and in 1910. The text in this volume is that of Mr.
Bigelow's editions.[2]

    [2] For the division into chapters and the chapter
    titles, however, the present editor is responsible.

The _Autobiography_ has been reprinted in the United States many
scores of times and translated into all the languages of Europe. It
has never lost its popularity and is still in constant demand at
circulating libraries. The reason for this popularity is not far to
seek. For in this work Franklin told in a remarkable manner the story
of a remarkable life. He displayed hard common sense and a practical
knowledge of the art of living. He selected and arranged his material,
perhaps unconsciously, with the unerring instinct of the journalist
for the best effects. His success is not a little due to his plain,
clear, vigorous English. He used short sentences and words, homely
expressions, apt illustrations, and pointed allusions. Franklin had a
most interesting, varied, and unusual life. He was one of the greatest
conversationalists of his time.

His book is the record of that unusual life told in Franklin's own
unexcelled conversational style. It is said that the best parts of
Boswell's famous biography of Samuel Johnson are those parts where
Boswell permits Johnson to tell his own story. In the _Autobiography_
a no less remarkable man and talker than Samuel Johnson is telling his
own story throughout.

F. W. P.

The Gilman Country School,
Baltimore, September, 1916.

[Illustration: Pages 1 and 4 of The Pennsylvania Gazette, the first
number after Franklin took control. Reduced nearly one-half.
Reproduced from a copy at the New York Public Library.]

[Transcriber's note: Transcription of these pages are given at the end
of the text.]




AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN




I

ANCESTRY AND EARLY YOUTH IN
BOSTON


  Twyford,[3] _at the Bishop of St. Asaph's_, 1771.

Dear son: I have ever had pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes
of my ancestors. You may remember the inquiries I made among the
remains of my relations when you were with me in England, and the
journey I undertook for that purpose. Imagining it may be equally
agreeable to you to know the circumstances of my life, many of which
you are yet unacquainted with, and expecting the enjoyment of a week's
uninterrupted leisure in my present country retirement, I sit down to
write them for you. To which I have besides some other inducements.
Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and
bred, to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the
world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share
of felicity, the conducing means I made use of, which with the
blessing of God so well succeeded, my posterity may like to know, as
they may find some of them suitable to their own situations, and
therefore fit to be imitated.

    [3] A small village not far from Winchester in
    Hampshire, southern England. Here was the country seat
    of the Bishop of St. Asaph, Dr. Jonathan Shipley, the
    "good Bishop," as Dr. Franklin used to style him. Their
    relations were intimate and confidential. In his pulpit,
    and in the House of Lords, as well as in society, the
    bishop always opposed the harsh measures of the Crown
    toward the Colonies.--Bigelow.

That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to
say, that were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to
a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the
advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of
the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some
sinister accidents and events of it for others more favourable. But
though this were denied, I should still accept the offer. Since such a
repetition is not to be expected, the next thing most like living
one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to
make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in
writing.

Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination so natural in old men, to
be talking of themselves and their own past actions; and I shall
indulge it without being tiresome to others, who, through respect to
age, might conceive themselves obliged to give me a hearing, since
this may be read or not as anyone pleases. And, lastly (I may as well
confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by nobody), perhaps
I shall a good deal gratify my own _vanity_.[4] Indeed, I scarce ever
heard or saw the introductory words, "_Without vanity I may say_,"
etc., but some vain thing immediately followed. Most people dislike
vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I
give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it
is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are
within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would
not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity
among the other comforts of life.

    [4] In this connection Woodrow Wilson says, "And yet the
    surprising and delightful thing about this book (the
    _Autobiography_) is that, take it all in all, it has not
    the low tone of conceit, but is a staunch man's sober
    and unaffected assessment of himself and the
    circumstances of his career."

    Gibbon and Hume, the great British historians, who were
    contemporaries of Franklin, express in their
    autobiographies the same feeling about the propriety of
    just self-praise.

And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to
acknowledge that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to His
kind providence, which lead me to the means I used and gave them
success. My belief of this induces me to _hope_, though I must not
_presume_, that the same goodness will still be exercised toward me,
in continuing that happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse,
which I may experience as others have done; the complexion of my
future fortune being known to Him only in whose power it is to bless
to us even our afflictions.

The notes one of my uncles (who had the same kind of curiosity in
collecting family anecdotes) once put into my hands, furnished me with
several particulars relating to our ancestors. From these notes I
learned that the family had lived in the same village, Ecton, in
Northamptonshire,[5] for three hundred years, and how much longer he
knew not (perhaps from the time when the name of Franklin, that before
was the name of an order of people,[6] was assumed by them as a
surname when others took surnames all over the kingdom), on a freehold
of about thirty acres, aided by the smith's business, which had
continued in the family till his time, the eldest son being always
bred to that business; a custom which he and my father followed as to
their eldest sons. When I searched the registers at Ecton, I found an
account of their births, marriages and burials from the year 1555
only, there being no registers kept in that parish at any time
preceding. By that register I perceived that I was the youngest son of
the youngest son for five generations back. My grandfather Thomas, who
was born in 1598, lived at Ecton till he grew too old to follow
business longer, when he went to live with his son John, a dyer at
Banbury, in Oxfordshire, with whom my father served an apprenticeship.
There my grandfather died and lies buried. We saw his gravestone in
1758. His eldest son Thomas lived in the house at Ecton, and left it
with the land to his only child, a daughter, who, with her husband,
one Fisher, of Wellingborough, sold it to Mr. Isted, now lord of the
manor there. My grandfather had four sons that grew up, viz.: Thomas,
John, Benjamin and Josiah. I will give you what account I can of them
at this distance from my papers, and if these are not lost in my
absence, you will among them find many more particulars.

    [5] See _Introduction_.

    [6] A small landowner.

Thomas was bred a smith under his father; but, being ingenious, and
encouraged in learning (as all my brothers were) by an Esquire Palmer,
then the principal gentleman in that parish, he qualified himself for
the business of scrivener; became a considerable man in the county;
was a chief mover of all public-spirited undertakings for the county
or town of Northampton, and his own village, of which many instances
were related of him; and much taken notice of and patronized by the
then Lord Halifax. He died in 1702, January 6, old style,[7] just four
years to a day before I was born. The account we received of his life
and character from some old people at Ecton, I remember, struck you as
something extraordinary, from its similarity to what you knew of mine.
"Had he died on the same day," you said, "one might have supposed a
transmigration."

    [7] January 17, new style. This change in the calendar
    was made in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, and adopted in
    England in 1752. Every year whose number in the common
    reckoning since Christ is not divisible by 4, as well as
    every year whose number is divisible by 100 but not by
    400, shall have 365 days, and all other years shall have
    366 days. In the eighteenth century there was a
    difference of eleven days between the old and the new
    style of reckoning, which the English Parliament
    canceled by making the 3rd of September, 1752, the 14th.
    The Julian calendar, or "old style," is still retained
    in Russia and Greece, whose dates consequently are now
    13 days behind those of other Christian countries.

John was bred a dyer, I believe of woollens, Benjamin was bred a silk
dyer, serving an apprenticeship at London. He was an ingenious man. I
remember him well, for when I was a boy he came over to my father in
Boston, and lived in the house with us some years. He lived to a
great age. His grandson, Samuel Franklin, now lives in Boston. He left
behind him two quarto volumes, MS., of his own poetry, consisting of
little occasional pieces addressed to his friends and relations, of
which the following, sent to me, is a specimen.[8] He had formed a
short-hand of his own, which he taught me, but, never practising it, I
have now forgot it. I was named after this uncle, there being a
particular affection between him and my father. He was very pious, a
great attender of sermons of the best preachers, which he took down in
his short-hand, and had with him many volumes of them. He was also
much of a politician; too much, perhaps, for his station. There fell
lately into my hands, in London, a collection he had made of all the
principal pamphlets relating to public affairs, from 1641 to 1717;
many of the volumes are wanting as appears by the numbering, but
there still remain eight volumes in folio, and twenty-four in quarto
and in octavo. A dealer in old books met with them, and knowing me by
my sometimes buying of him, he brought them to me. It seems my uncle
must have left them here when he went to America, which was about
fifty years since. There are many of his notes in the margins.

    [8] The specimen is not in the manuscript of the
    _Autobiography_.

This obscure family of ours was early in the Reformation, and
continued Protestants through the reign of Queen Mary, when they were
sometimes in danger of trouble on account of their zeal against
popery. They had got an English Bible, and to conceal and secure it,
it was fastened open with tapes under and within the cover of a
joint-stool. When my great-great-grandfather read it to his family, he
turned up the joint-stool upon his knees, turning over the leaves then
under the tapes. One of the children stood at the door to give notice
if he saw the apparitor coming, who was an officer of the spiritual
court. In that case the stool was turned down again upon its feet,
when the Bible remained concealed under it as before. This anecdote I
had from my uncle Benjamin. The family continued all of the Church of
England till about the end of Charles the Second's reign, when some of
the ministers that had been outed for non-conformity, holding
conventicles[9] in Northamptonshire, Benjamin and Josiah adhered to
them, and so continued all their lives: the rest of the family
remained with the Episcopal Church.

    [9] Secret gatherings of dissenters from the established
    Church.

[Illustration: Birthplace of Franklin. Milk Street, Boston.]

Josiah, my father, married young, and carried his wife with three
children into New England, about 1682. The conventicles having been
forbidden by law, and frequently disturbed, induced some considerable
men of his acquaintance to remove to that country, and he was
prevailed with to accompany them thither, where they expected to enjoy
their mode of religion with freedom. By the same wife he had four
children more born there, and by a second wife ten more, in all
seventeen; of which I remember thirteen sitting at one time at his
table, who all grew up to be men and women, and married; I was the
youngest son, and the youngest child but two, and was born in Boston,
New England.[10] My mother, the second wife, was Abiah Folger,
daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of
whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather,[11] in his church
history of that country, entitled _Magnalia Christi Americana_, as "_a
godly, learned Englishman_," if I remember the words rightly. I have
heard that he wrote sundry small occasional pieces, but only one of
them was printed, which I saw now many years since. It was written in
1675, in the home-spun verse of that time and people, and addressed to
those then concerned in the government there. It was in favour of
liberty of conscience, and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and
other sectaries that had been under persecution, ascribing the Indian
wars, and other distresses that had befallen the country, to that
persecution, as so many judgments of God to punish so heinous an
offense, and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws. The whole
appeared to me as written with a good deal of decent plainness and
manly freedom. The six concluding lines I remember, though I have
forgotten the two first of the stanza; but the purport of them was,
that his censures proceeded from good-will, and, therefore, he would
be known to be the author.

  "Because to be a libeller (says he)
    I hate it with my heart;
  From Sherburne town,[12] where now I dwell
    My name I do put here;
  Without offense your real friend,
    It is Peter Folgier."

    [10] Franklin was born on Sunday, January 6, old style,
    1706, in a house on Milk Street, opposite the Old South
    Meeting House, where he was baptized on the day of his
    birth, during a snowstorm. The house where he was born
    was burned in 1810.--Griffin.

    [11] Cotton Mather (1663-1728), clergyman, author, and
    scholar. Pastor of the North Church, Boston. He took an
    active part in the persecution of witchcraft.

    [12] Nantucket.

My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was
put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending
to devote me, as the tithe[13] of his sons, to the service of the
Church. My early readiness in learning to read (which must have been
very early, as I do not remember when I could not read), and the
opinion of all his friends, that I should certainly make a good
scholar, encouraged him in this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin,
too, approved of it, and proposed to give me all his short-hand
volumes of sermons, I suppose as a stock to set up with, if I would
learn his character.[14] I continued, however, at the grammar-school
not quite one year, though in that time I had risen gradually from the
middle of the class of that year to be the head of it, and farther was
removed into the next class above it, in order to go with that into
the third at the end of the year. But my father, in the meantime, from
a view of the expense of a college education, which having so large a
family he could not well afford, and the mean living many so educated
were afterwards able to obtain--reasons that he gave to his friends in
my hearing--altered his first intention, took me from the
grammar-school, and sent me to a school for writing and arithmetic,
kept by a then famous man, Mr. George Brownell, very successful in
his profession generally, and that by mild, encouraging methods. Under
him I acquired fair writing pretty soon, but I failed in the
arithmetic, and made no progress in it. At ten years old I was taken
home to assist my father in his business, which was that of a
tallow-chandler and sope-boiler; a business he was not bred to, but
had assumed on his arrival in New England, and on finding his dyeing
trade would not maintain his family, being in little request.
Accordingly, I was employed in cutting wick for the candles, filling
the dipping mould and the moulds for cast candles, attending the shop,
going of errands, etc.

    [13] Tenth.

    [14] System of short-hand.

I disliked the trade, and had a strong inclination for the sea, but my
father declared against it; however, living near the water, I was much
in and about it, learnt early to swim well, and to manage boats; and
when in a boat or canoe with other boys, I was commonly allowed to
govern, especially in any case of difficulty; and upon other occasions
I was generally a leader among the boys, and sometimes led them into
scrapes, of which I will mention one instance, as it shows an early
projecting public spirit, tho' not then justly conducted.

There was a salt-marsh that bounded part of the mill-pond, on the edge
of which, at high water, we used to stand to fish for minnows. By much
trampling, we had made it a mere quagmire. My proposal was to build a
wharf there fit for us to stand upon, and I showed my comrades a large
heap of stones, which were intended for a new house near the marsh,
and which would very well suit our purpose. Accordingly, in the
evening, when the workmen were gone, I assembled a number of my
playfellows, and working with them diligently like so many emmets,
sometimes two or three to a stone, we brought them all away and built
our little wharf. The next morning the workmen were surprised at
missing the stones, which were found in our wharf. Inquiry was made
after the removers; we were discovered and complained of; several of
us were corrected by our fathers; and, though I pleaded the usefulness
of the work, mine convinced me that nothing was useful which was not
honest.

I think you may like to know something of his person and character. He
had an excellent constitution of body, was of middle stature, but well
set, and very strong; he was ingenious, could draw prettily, was
skilled a little in music, and had a clear, pleasing voice, so that
when he played psalm tunes on his violin and sung withal, as he
sometimes did in an evening after the business of the day was over, it
was extremely agreeable to hear. He had a mechanical genius too, and,
on occasion, was very handy in the use of other tradesmen's tools; but
his great excellence lay in a sound understanding and solid judgment
in prudential matters, both in private and publick affairs. In the
latter, indeed, he was never employed, the numerous family he had to
educate and the straitness of his circumstances keeping him close to
his trade; but I remember well his being frequently visited by leading
people, who consulted him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of
the church he belonged to, and showed a good deal of respect for his
judgment and advice: he was also much consulted by private persons
about their affairs when any difficulty occurred, and frequently
chosen an arbitrator between contending parties. At his table he liked
to have, as often as he could, some sensible friend or neighbor to
converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful
topic for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds of his
children. By this means he turned our attention to what was good,
just, and prudent in the conduct of life; and little or no notice was
ever taken of what related to the victuals on the table, whether it
was well or ill dressed, in or out of season, of good or bad flavor,
preferable or inferior to this or that other thing of the kind, so
that I was bro't up in such a perfect inattention to those matters as
to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me, and so
unobservant of it, that to this day if I am asked I can scarce tell a
few hours after dinner what I dined upon. This has been a convenience
to me in traveling, where my companions have been sometimes very
unhappy for want of a suitable gratification of their more delicate,
because better instructed, tastes and appetites.

My mother had likewise an excellent constitution: she suckled all her
ten children. I never knew either my father or mother to have any
sickness but that of which they dy'd, he at 89, and she at 85 years of
age. They lie buried together at Boston, where I some years since
placed a marble over their grave,[15] with this inscription:

                     Josiah Franklin,
                           and
                     Abiah his wife,
                   lie here interred.
         They lived lovingly together in wedlock
                    fifty-five years.
       Without an estate, or any gainful employment,
             By constant labor and industry,
                  with God's blessing,
             They maintained a large family
                      comfortably,
            and brought up thirteen children
                 and seven grandchildren
                       reputably.
               From this instance, reader,
        Be encouraged to diligence in thy calling,
               And distrust not Providence.
             He was a pious and prudent man;
           She, a discreet and virtuous woman.
                 Their youngest son,
            In filial regard to their memory,
                  Places this stone.
          J. F. born 1655, died 1744, Ætat 89.
          A. F. born 1667, died 1752,----85.

    [15] This marble having decayed, the citizens of Boston
    in 1827 erected in its place a granite obelisk,
    twenty-one feet high, bearing the original inscription
    quoted in the text and another explaining the erection
    of the monument.

By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be grown old. I us'd
to write more methodically. But one does not dress for private company
as for a publick ball. 'Tis perhaps only negligence.

To return: I continued thus employed in my father's business for two
years, that is, till I was twelve years old; and my brother John, who
was bred to that business, having left my father, married, and set up
for himself at Rhode Island, there was all appearance that I was
destined to supply his place, and become a tallow-chandler. But my
dislike to the trade continuing, my father was under apprehensions
that if he did not find one for me more agreeable, I should break away
and get to sea, as his son Josiah had done, to his great vexation. He
therefore sometimes took me to walk with him, and see joiners,
bricklayers, turners, braziers, etc., at their work, that he might
observe my inclination, and endeavor to fix it on some trade or other
on land. It has ever since been a pleasure to me to see good workmen
handle their tools; and it has been useful to me, having learnt so
much by it as to be able to do little jobs myself in my house when a
workman could not readily be got, and to construct little machines for
my experiments, while the intention of making the experiment was fresh
and warm in my mind. My father at last fixed upon the cutler's trade,
and my uncle Benjamin's son Samuel, who was bred to that business in
London, being about that time established in Boston, I was sent to be
with him some time on liking. But his expectations of a fee with me
displeasing my father, I was taken home again.




II

BEGINNING LIFE AS A PRINTER


From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came
into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the _Pilgrim's
Progress_, my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate
little volumes. I afterward sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton's
_Historical Collections_; they were small chapmen's books,[16] and
cheap, 40 or 50 in all. My father's little library consisted chiefly
of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since
often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for
knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way, since it was
now resolved I should not be a clergyman. Plutarch's _Lives_ there was
in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great
advantage. There was also a book of DeFoe's, called an _Essay on
Projects_, and another of Dr. Mather's, called _Essays to do Good_,
which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on
some of the principal future events of my life.

    [16] Small books, sold by chapmen or peddlers.

This bookish inclination at length determined my father to make me a
printer, though he had already one son (James) of that profession. In
1717 my brother James returned from England with a press and letters
to set up his business in Boston. I liked it much better than that of
my father, but still had a hankering for the sea. To prevent the
apprehended effect of such an inclination, my father was impatient to
have me bound to my brother. I stood out some time, but at last was
persuaded, and signed the indentures when I was yet but twelve years
old. I was to serve as an apprentice till I was twenty-one years of
age, only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages during the last year.
In a little time I made great proficiency in the business, and became
a useful hand to my brother. I now had access to better books. An
acquaintance with the apprentices of booksellers enabled me sometimes
to borrow a small one, which I was careful to return soon and clean.
Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when
the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the
morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.

And after some time an ingenious tradesman, Mr. Matthew Adams, who
had a pretty collection of books, and who frequented our
printing-house, took notice of me, invited me to his library, and
very kindly lent me such books as I chose to read. I now took a fancy
to poetry, and made some little pieces; my brother, thinking it might
turn to account, encouraged me, and put me on composing occasional
ballads. One was called _The Lighthouse Tragedy_, and contained an
account of the drowning of Captain Worthilake, with his two daughters:
the other was a sailor's song, on the taking of _Teach_ (or
Blackbeard) the pirate. They were wretched stuff, in the
Grub-street-ballad style;[17] and when they were printed he sent me
about the town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the event
being recent, having made a great noise. This flattered my vanity; but
my father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances, and telling me
verse-makers were generally beggars. So I escaped being a poet, most
probably a very bad one; but as prose writing has been of great use to
me in the course of my life, and was a principal means of my
advancement, I shall tell you how, in such a situation, I acquired
what little ability I have in that way.

    [17] Grub-street: famous in English literature as the
    home of poor writers.

There was another bookish lad in the town, John Collins by name, with
whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond
we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one another,
which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad
habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the
contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice; and thence,
besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of
disgusts and, perhaps enmities where you may have occasion for
friendship. I had caught it by reading my father's books of dispute
about religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom
fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts
that have been bred at Edinborough.

A question was once, somehow or other, started between Collins and me,
of the propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and their
abilities for study. He was of opinion that it was improper, and that
they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a
little for dispute's sake. He was naturally more eloquent, had a ready
plenty of words, and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down more by his
fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without
settling the point, and were not to see one another again for some
time, I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair
and sent to him. He answered, and I replied. Three or four letters of
a side had passed, when my father happened to find my papers and read
them. Without entering into the discussion, he took occasion to talk
to me about the manner of my writing; observed that, though I had the
advantage of my antagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which I
ow'd to the printing-house), I fell far short in elegance of
expression, in method and in perspicuity, of which he convinced me by
several instances. I saw the justice of his remarks, and thence grew
more attentive to the manner in writing, and determined to endeavor at
improvement.

About this time I met with an odd volume of the _Spectator_.[18] It was
the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it
over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing
excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I
took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in
each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at
the book, try'd to compleat the papers again, by expressing each
hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed
before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I
compared my _Spectator_ with the original, discovered some of my
faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or
a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should
have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since
the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different
length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme,
would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for
variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make
me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them
into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the
prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections
of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce
them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences
and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement
of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I
discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the
pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I
had been lucky enough to improve the method of the language, and this
encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable
English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. My time for these
exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began
in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the
printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance
on public worship which my father used to exact of me when I was under
his care, and which indeed I still thought a duty, thought I could
not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practise it.

    [18] A daily London journal, comprising satirical essays
    on social subjects, published by Addison and Steele in
    1711-1712. The _Spectator_ and its predecessor, the
    _Tatler_ (1709), marked the beginning of periodical
    literature.

When about 16 years of age I happened to meet with a book, written by
one Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it.
My brother, being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but boarded
himself and his apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat
flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chid for my
singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon's manner of preparing
some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty
pudding, and a few others, and then proposed to my brother, that if he
would give me, weekly, half the money he paid for my board, I would
board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I
could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund for
buying books. But I had another advantage in it. My brother and the
rest going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there
alone, and, dispatching presently my light repast, which often was no
more than a bisket or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart
from the pastry-cook's, and a glass of water, had the rest of the time
till their return for study, in which I made the greater progress,
from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which
usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.

And now it was that, being on some occasion made asham'd of my
ignorance in figures, which I had twice failed in learning when at
school, I took Cocker's book of Arithmetick, and went through the
whole by myself with great ease. I also read Seller's and Shermy's
books of Navigation, and became acquainted with the little geometry
they contain; but never proceeded far in that science. And I read
about this time Locke _On Human Understanding_,[19] and the _Art of
Thinking_, by Messrs. du Port Royal.[20]

    [19] John Locke (1632-1704), a celebrated English
    philosopher, founder of the so-called "common-sense"
    school of philosophers. He drew up a constitution for
    the colonists of Carolina.

    [20] A noted society of scholarly and devout men
    occupying the abbey of Port Royal near Paris, who
    published learned works, among them the one here
    referred to, better known as the _Port Royal Logic_.

While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English
grammar (I think it was Greenwood's), at the end of which there were
two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter
finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic[21] method; and
soon after I procur'd Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein
there are many instances of the same method. I was charm'd with it,
adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation,
and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from
reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points
of our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and
very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a
delight in it, practis'd it continually, and grew very artful and
expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into
concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee,
entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate
themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my
cause always deserved. I continu'd this method some few years, but
gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in
terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced anything that
may possibly be disputed, the words _certainly_, _undoubtedly_, or any
others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather
say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to
me, or _I should think it so or so_, for such and such reasons; or _I
imagine it to be so_; or _it is so, if I am not mistaken_. This habit,
I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion
to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have
been from time to time engaged in promoting; and, as the chief ends of
conversation are to _inform_ or to be _informed_, to _please_ or to
_persuade_, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their
power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails
to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat everyone of
those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or
receiving information or pleasure. For, if you would inform, a
positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may
provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish
information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at
the same time express yourself as firmly fix'd in your present
opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will
probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error. And by
such a manner, you can seldom hope to recommend yourself in _pleasing_
your hearers, or to persuade those whose concurrence you desire.
Pope[22] says, judiciously:

  _"Men should be taught as if you taught them not,
   And things unknown propos'd as things forgot;"_

farther recommending to us

  "To speak, tho' sure, with seeming diffidence."

And he might have coupled with this line that
which he has coupled with another, I think,
less properly,

  "For want of modesty is want of sense."

If you ask, Why less properly? I must repeat the lines,

  "Immodest words admit of no defense,
   For want of modesty is want of sense."

Now, is not _want of sense_ (where a man is so unfortunate as to want
it) some apology for his _want of modesty_? and would not the lines
stand more justly thus?

  "Immodest words admit _but_ this defense,
   That want of modesty is want of sense."

This, however, I should submit to better judgments.

    [21] Socrates confuted his opponents in argument by
    asking questions so skillfully devised that the answers
    would confirm the questioner's position or show the
    error of the opponent.

    [22] Alexander Pope (1688-1744), the greatest English
    poet of the first half of the eighteenth century.

My brother had, in 1720 or 1721, begun to print a newspaper. It was
the second that appeared in America,[23] and was called the New England
Courant. The only one before it was the Boston News-Letter. I remember
his being dissuaded by some of his friends from the undertaking, as
not likely to succeed, one newspaper being, in their judgment, enough
for America. At this time (1771) there are not less than
five-and-twenty. He went on, however, with the undertaking, and after
having worked in composing the types and printing off the sheets, I
was employed to carry the papers thro' the streets to the customers.

    [23] Franklin's memory does not serve him correctly here.
    The _Courant_ was really the fifth newspaper established
    in America, although generally called the fourth,
    because the first, _Public Occurrences_, published in
    Boston in 1690, was suppressed after the first issue.
    Following is the order in which the other four papers
    were published: _Boston News Letter_, 1704; _Boston
    Gazette_, December 21, 1719; _The American Weekly
    Mercury_, Philadelphia, December 22, 1719; _The New
    England Courant_, 1721.

[Illustration: First page of The New England Courant of Dec. 4-11,
1721. Reduced about one-third. From a copy in the Library of the
Massachusetts Historical Society.]

[Transcriber's note: Transcription given at the end of the text.]

He had some ingenious men among his friends, who amus'd themselves by
writing little pieces for this paper, which gain'd it credit and made
it more in demand, and these gentlemen often visited us. Hearing their
conversations, and their accounts of the approbation their papers were
received with, I was excited to try my hand among them; but, being
still a boy, and suspecting that my brother would object to printing
anything of mine in his paper if he knew it to be mine, I contrived to
disguise my hand, and, writing an anonymous paper, I put it in at
night under the door of the printing-house. It was found in the
morning, and communicated to his writing friends when they call'd in
as usual. They read it, commented on it in my hearing, and I had the
exquisite pleasure of finding it met with their approbation, and that,
in their different guesses at the author, none were named but men of
some character among us for learning and ingenuity. I suppose now that
I was rather lucky in my judges, and that perhaps they were not really
so very good ones as I then esteem'd them.

Encourag'd, however, by this, I wrote and conveyed in the same way to
the press several more papers which were equally approv'd; and I kept
my secret till my small fund of sense for such performances was pretty
well exhausted, and then I discovered[24] it, when I began to be
considered a little more by my brother's acquaintance, and in a manner
that did not quite please him, as he thought, probably with reason,
that it tended to make me too vain. And, perhaps, this might be one
occasion of the differences that we began to have about this time.
Though a brother, he considered himself as my master, and me as his
apprentice, and, accordingly, expected the same services from me as he
would from another, while I thought he demean'd me too much in some he
requir'd of me, who from a brother expected more indulgence. Our
disputes were often brought before our father, and I fancy I was
either generally in the right, or else a better pleader, because the
judgment was generally in my favor. But my brother was passionate,
and had often beaten me, which I took extreamly amiss; and, thinking
my apprenticeship very tedious, I was continually wishing for some
opportunity of shortening it, which at length offered in a manner
unexpected.

    [24] Disclosed.

[Illustration: "I was employed to carry the papers thro' the streets
to the customers"]

One of the pieces in our newspaper on some political point, which I
have now forgotten, gave offense to the Assembly. He was taken up,
censur'd, and imprison'd for a month, by the speaker's warrant, I
suppose, because he would not discover his author. I too was taken up
and examin'd before the council; but, tho' I did not give them any
satisfaction, they contented themselves with admonishing me, and
dismissed me, considering me, perhaps, as an apprentice, who was bound
to keep his master's secrets.

During my brother's confinement, which I resented a good deal,
notwithstanding our private differences, I had the management of the
paper; and I made bold to give our rulers some rubs in it, which my
brother took very kindly, while others began to consider me in an
unfavorable light, as a young genius that had a turn for libeling and
satyr. My brother's discharge was accompany'd with an order of the
House (a very odd one), that "_James Franklin should no longer print
the paper called the New England Courant_."

There was a consultation held in our printing-house among his friends,
what he should do in this case. Some proposed to evade the order by
changing the name of the paper; but my brother, seeing inconveniences
in that, it was finally concluded on as a better way, to let it be
printed for the future under the name of Benjamin Franklin; and to
avoid the censure of the Assembly, that might fall on him as still
printing it by his apprentice, the contrivance was that my old
indenture should be return'd to me, with a full discharge on the back
of it, to be shown on occasion, but to secure to him the benefit of my
service, I was to sign new indentures for the remainder of the term,
which were to be kept private. A very flimsy scheme it was; however,
it was immediately executed, and the paper went on accordingly, under
my name for several months.

At length, a fresh difference arising between my brother and me, I
took upon me to assert my freedom, presuming that he would not venture
to produce the new indentures. It was not fair in me to take this
advantage, and this I therefore reckon one of the first errata of my
life; but the unfairness of it weighed little with me, when under the
impressions of resentment for the blows his passion too often urged
him to bestow upon me, though he was otherwise not an ill-natur'd man:
perhaps I was too saucy and provoking.

When he found I would leave him, he took care to prevent my getting
employment in any other printing-house of the town, by going round and
speaking to every master, who accordingly refus'd to give me work. I
then thought of going to New York, as the nearest place where there
was a printer; and I was rather inclin'd to leave Boston when I
reflected that I had already made myself a little obnoxious to the
governing party, and, from the arbitrary proceedings of the Assembly
in my brother's case, it was likely I might, if I stay'd, soon bring
myself into scrapes; and farther, that my indiscreet disputations
about religion began to make me pointed at with horror by good people
as an infidel or atheist. I determin'd on the point, but my father now
siding with my brother, I was sensible that, if I attempted to go
openly, means would be used to prevent me. My friend Collins,
therefore, undertook to manage a little for me. He agreed with the
captain of a New York sloop for my passage, under the notion of my
being a young acquaintance of his. So I sold some of my books to raise
a little money, was taken on board privately, and as we had a fair
wind, in three days I found myself in New York, near 300 miles from
home, a boy of but 17, without the least recommendation to, or
knowledge of, any person in the place, and with very little money in
my pocket.

[Illustration: Sailboat]




III

ARRIVAL IN PHILADELPHIA


My inclinations for the sea were by this time worne out, or I might
now have gratify'd them. But, having a trade, and supposing myself a
pretty good workman, I offer'd my service to the printer in the place,
old Mr. William Bradford, who had been the first printer in
Pennsylvania, but removed from thence upon the quarrel of George
Keith. He could give me no employment, having little to do, and help
enough already; but says he, "My son at Philadelphia has lately lost
his principal hand, Aquilla Rose, by death; if you go thither, I
believe he may employ you." Philadelphia was a hundred miles further;
I set out, however, in a boat for Amboy, leaving my chest and things
to follow me round by sea.

In crossing the bay, we met with a squall that tore our rotten sails
to pieces, prevented our getting into the Kill,[25] and drove us upon
Long Island. In our way, a drunken Dutchman, who was a passenger too,
fell overboard; when he was sinking, I reached through the water to
his shock pate, and drew him up, so that we got him in again. His
ducking sobered him a little, and he went to sleep, taking first out
of his pocket a book, which he desir'd I would dry for him. It proved
to be my old favorite author, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in Dutch,
finely printed on good paper, with copper cuts, a dress better than I
had ever seen it wear in its own language. I have since found that it
has been translated into most of the languages of Europe, and suppose
it has been more generally read than any other book, except perhaps
the Bible. Honest John was the first that I know of who mix'd
narration and dialogue; a method of writing very engaging to the
reader, who in the most interesting parts finds himself, as it were,
brought into the company and present at the discourse. De Foe in his
Cruso, his Moll Flanders, Religious Courtship, Family Instructor, and
other pieces, has imitated it with success; and Richardson[26] has done
the same in his Pamela, etc.

    [25] Kill van Kull, the channel separating Staten Island
    from New Jersey on the north.

    [26] Samuel Richardson, the father of the English novel,
    wrote _Pamela_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, and the _History of
    Sir Charles Grandison_, novels published in the form of
    letters.

When we drew near the island, we found it was at a place where there
could be no landing, there being a great surff on the stony beach. So
we dropt anchor, and swung round towards the shore. Some people came
down to the water edge and hallow'd to us, as we did to them; but the
wind was so high, and the surff so loud, that we could not hear so as
to understand each other. There were canoes on the shore, and we made
signs, and hallow'd that they should fetch us; but they either did not
understand us, or thought it impracticable, so they went away, and
night coming on, we had no remedy but to wait till the wind should
abate; and, in the meantime, the boatman and I concluded to sleep, if
we could; and so crowded into the scuttle, with the Dutchman, who was
still wet, and the spray beating over the head of our boat, leak'd
thro' to us, so that we were soon almost as wet as he. In this manner
we lay all night, with very little rest; but, the wind abating the
next day, we made a shift to reach Amboy before night, having been
thirty hours on the water, without victuals, or any drink but a bottle
of filthy rum, and the water we sail'd on being salt.

In the evening I found myself very feverish, and went in to bed; but,
having read somewhere that cold water drank plentifully was good for a
fever, I follow'd the prescription, sweat plentifully most of the
night, my fever left me, and in the morning, crossing the ferry, I
proceeded on my journey on foot, having fifty miles to Burlington,
where I was told I should find boats that would carry me the rest of
the way to Philadelphia.

[Illustration: It rained very hard all the day]

It rained very hard all the day; I was thoroughly soak'd, and by noon
a good deal tired; so I stopt at a poor inn, where I staid all night,
beginning now to wish that I had never left home. I cut so miserable a
figure, too, that I found, by the questions ask'd me, I was suspected
to be some runaway servant, and in danger of being taken up on that
suspicion. However, I proceeded the next day, and got in the evening
to an inn, within eight or ten miles of Burlington, kept by one Dr.
Brown. He entered into conversation with me while I took some
refreshment, and, finding I had read a little, became very sociable
and friendly. Our acquaintance continu'd as long as he liv'd. He had
been, I imagine, an itinerant doctor, for there was no town in
England, or country in Europe, of which he could not give a very
particular account. He had some letters, and was ingenious, but much
of an unbeliever, and wickedly undertook, some years after, to
travesty the Bible in doggrel verse, as Cotton had done Virgil. By
this means he set many of the facts in a very ridiculous light, and
might have hurt weak minds if his work had been published; but it
never was.

At his house I lay that night, and the next morning reach'd
Burlington, but had the mortification to find that the regular boats
were gone a little before my coming, and no other expected to go
before Tuesday, this being Saturday; wherefore I returned to an old
woman in the town, of whom I had bought gingerbread to eat on the
water, and ask'd her advice. She invited me to lodge at her house till
a passage by water should offer; and being tired with my foot
traveling, I accepted the invitation. She understanding I was a
printer, would have had me stay at that town and follow my business,
being ignorant of the stock necessary to begin with. She was very
hospitable, gave me a dinner of ox-cheek with great good will,
accepting only of a pot of ale in return; and I thought myself fixed
till Tuesday should come. However, walking in the evening by the side
of the river, a boat came by, which I found was going towards
Philadelphia, with several people in her. They took me in, and, as
there was no wind, we row'd all the way; and about midnight, not
having yet seen the city, some of the company were confident we must
have passed it, and would row no farther; the others knew not where we
were; so we put toward the shore, got into a creek, landed near an old
fence, with the rails of which we made a fire, the night being cold,
in October, and there we remained till daylight. Then one of the
company knew the place to be Cooper's Creek, a little above
Philadelphia, which we saw as soon as we got out of the creek, and
arriv'd there about eight or nine o'clock on the Sunday morning, and
landed at the Market-street wharf.

I have been the more particular in this description of my journey, and
shall be so of my first entry into that city, that you may in your
mind compare such unlikely beginnings with the figure I have since
made there. I was in my working dress, my best clothes being to come
round by sea. I was dirty from my journey; my pockets were stuff'd out
with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul nor where to look for
lodging. I was fatigued with traveling, rowing, and want of rest, I
was very hungry; and my whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch
dollar, and about a shilling in copper. The latter I gave the people
of the boat for my passage, who at first refus'd it, on account of my
rowing; but I insisted on their taking it. A man being sometimes more
generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty,
perhaps thro' fear of being thought to have but little.

Then I walked up the street, gazing about till near the market-house I
met a boy with bread. I had made many a meal on bread, and, inquiring
where he got it, I went immediately to the baker's he directed me to,
in Second-street, and ask'd for bisket, intending such as we had in
Boston; but they, it seems, were not made in Philadelphia. Then I
asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none such. So not
considering or knowing the difference of money, and the greater
cheapness nor the names of his bread, I bade him give me three-penny
worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I
was surpris'd at the quantity, but took it, and, having no room in my
pockets, walk'd off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other.
Thus I went up Market-street as far as Fourth-street, passing by the
door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father; when she, standing at the
door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward,
ridiculous appearance. Then I turned and went down Chestnut-street and
part of Walnut-street, eating my roll all the way, and, coming round,
found myself again at Market-street wharf, near the boat I came in, to
which I went for a draught of the river water; and, being filled with
one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that came
down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther.

[Illustration: "She, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made,
as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance"]

Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by this time had
many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking the same way. I
joined them, and thereby was led into the great meeting-house of the
Quakers near the market. I sat down among them, and, after looking round
awhile and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy thro' labour and want
of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and continu'd so till
the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. This was,
therefore, the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia.

Walking down again toward the river, and, looking in the faces of
people, I met a young Quaker man, whose countenance I lik'd, and,
accosting him, requested he would tell me where a stranger could get
lodging. We were then near the sign of the Three Mariners. "Here,"
says he, "is one place that entertains strangers, but it is not a
reputable house; if thee wilt walk with me, I'll show thee a better."
He brought me to the Crooked Billet in Water-street. Here I got a
dinner; and, while I was eating it, several sly questions were asked
me, as it seemed to be suspected from my youth and appearance, that I
might be some runaway.

After dinner, my sleepiness return'd, and being shown to a bed, I lay
down without undressing, and slept till six in the evening, was call'd
to supper, went to bed again very early, and slept soundly till next
morning. Then I made myself as tidy as I could, and went to Andrew
Bradford the printer's. I found in the shop the old man his father,
whom I had seen at New York, and who, traveling on horseback, had got
to Philadelphia before me. He introduc'd me to his son, who receiv'd
me civilly, gave me a breakfast, but told me he did not at present
want a hand, being lately suppli'd with one; but there was another
printer in town, lately set up, one Keimer, who, perhaps, might employ
me; if not, I should be welcome to lodge at his house, and he would
give me a little work to do now and then till fuller business should
offer.

The old gentleman said he would go with me to the new printer; and
when we found him, "Neighbour," says Bradford, "I have brought to see
you a young man of your business; perhaps you may want such a one." He
ask'd me a few questions, put a composing stick in my hand to see how
I work'd, and then said he would employ me soon, though he had just
then nothing for me to do; and, taking old Bradford, whom he had never
seen before, to be one of the town's people that had a good will for
him, enter'd into a conversation on his present undertaking and
prospects; while Bradford, not discovering that he was the other
printer's father, on Keimer's saying he expected soon to get the
greatest part of the business into his own hands, drew him on by
artful questions, and starting little doubts, to explain all his
views, what interest he reli'd on, and in what manner he intended to
proceed. I, who stood by and heard all, saw immediately that one of
them was a crafty old sophister, and the other a mere novice. Bradford
left me with Keimer, who was greatly surpris'd when I told him who the
old man was.

Keimer's printing-house, I found, consisted of an old shatter'd press,
and one small, worn-out font of English, which he was then using
himself, composing an Elegy on Aquilla Rose, before mentioned, an
ingenious young man, of excellent character, much respected in the
town, clerk of the Assembly, and a pretty poet. Keimer made verses
too, but very indifferently. He could not be said to write them, for
his manner was to compose them in the types directly out of his head.
So there being no copy,[27] but one pair of cases, and the Elegy likely
to require all the letter, no one could help him. I endeavour'd to put
his press (which he had not yet us'd, and of which he understood
nothing) into order fit to be work'd with; and, promising to come and
print off his Elegy as soon as he should have got it ready, I
return'd to Bradford's, who gave me a little job to do for the
present, and there I lodged and dieted. A few days after, Keimer sent
for me to print off the Elegy. And now he had got another pair of
cases,[28] and a pamphlet to reprint, on which he set me to work.

These two printers I found poorly qualified for their business.
Bradford had not been bred to it, and was very illiterate; and Keimer,
tho' something of a scholar, was a mere compositor, knowing nothing of
presswork. He had been one of the French prophets,[29] and could act
their enthusiastic agitations. At this time he did not profess any
particular religion, but something of all on occasion; was very
ignorant of the world, and had, as I afterward found, a good deal of
the knave in his composition. He did not like my lodging at Bradford's
while I work'd with him. He had a house, indeed, but without
furniture, so he could not lodge me; but he got me a lodging at Mr.
Read's before mentioned, who was the owner of his house; and, my chest
and clothes being come by this time, I made rather a more respectable
appearance in the eyes of Miss Read than I had done when she first
happen'd to see me eating my roll in the street.

    [27] Manuscript.

    [28] The frames for holding type are in two sections, the
    upper for capitals and the lower for small letters.

    [29] Protestants of the South of France, who became
    fanatical under the persecutions of Louis XIV, and
    thought they had the gift of prophecy. They had as
    mottoes "No Taxes" and "Liberty of Conscience."

I began now to have some acquaintance among the young people of the
town, that were lovers of reading, with whom I spent my evenings very
pleasantly; and gaining money by my industry and frugality, I lived
very agreeably, forgetting Boston as much as I could, and not desiring
that any there should know where I resided, except my friend Collins,
who was in my secret, and kept it when I wrote to him. At length, an
incident happened that sent me back again much sooner than I had
intended. I had a brother-in-law, Robert Holmes, master of a sloop
that traded between Boston and Delaware. He being at Newcastle, forty
miles below Philadelphia, heard there of me, and wrote me a letter
mentioning the concern of my friends in Boston at my abrupt departure,
assuring me of their good will to me, and that everything would be
accommodated to my mind if I would return, to which he exhorted me
very earnestly. I wrote an answer to his letter, thank'd him for his
advice, but stated my reasons for quitting Boston fully and in such a
light as to convince him I was not so wrong as he had apprehended.




IV

FIRST VISIT TO BOSTON


Sir William Keith, governor of the province, was then at Newcastle,
and Captain Holmes, happening to be in company with him when my letter
came to hand, spoke to him of me, and show'd him the letter. The
governor read it, and seem'd surpris'd when he was told my age. He
said I appear'd a young man of promising parts, and therefore should
be encouraged; the printers at Philadelphia were wretched ones; and,
if I would set up there, he made no doubt I should succeed; for his
part, he would procure me the public business, and do me every other
service in his power. This my brother-in-law afterwards told me in
Boston, but I knew as yet nothing of it; when, one day, Keimer and I
being at work together near the window, we saw the governor and
another gentleman (which proved to be Colonel French, of Newcastle),
finely dress'd, come directly across the street to our house, and
heard them at the door.

Keimer ran down immediately, thinking it a visit to him; but the
governor inquir'd for me, came up, and with a condescension and
politeness I had been quite unus'd to, made me many compliments,
desired to be acquainted with me, blam'd me kindly for not having made
myself known to him when I first came to the place, and would have me
away with him to the tavern, where he was going with Colonel French to
taste, as he said, some excellent Madeira. I was not a little
surprised, and Keimer star'd like a pig poison'd.[30] I went, however,
with the governor and Colonel French to a tavern, at the corner of
Third-street, and over the Madeira he propos'd my setting up my
business, laid before me the probabilities of success, and both he and
Colonel French assur'd me I should have their interest and influence
in procuring the public business of both governments.[31] On my
doubting whether my father would assist me in it, Sir William said he
would give me a letter to him, in which he would state the advantages,
and he did not doubt of prevailing with him. So it was concluded I
should return to Boston in the first vessel, with the governor's
letter recommending me to my father. In the meantime the intention was
to be kept a secret, and I went on working with Keimer as usual, the
governor sending for me now and then to dine with him, a very great
honour I thought it, and conversing with me in the most affable,
familiar, and friendly manner imaginable.

    [30] Temple Franklin considered this specific figure
    vulgar and changed it to "stared with astonishment."

    [31] Pennsylvania and Delaware.

About the end of April, 1724, a little vessel offer'd for Boston. I
took leave of Keimer as going to see my friends. The governor gave me
an ample letter, saying many flattering things of me to my father, and
strongly recommending the project of my setting up at Philadelphia as
a thing that must make my fortune. We struck on a shoal in going down
the bay, and sprung a leak; we had a blustering time at sea, and were
oblig'd to pump almost continually, at which I took my turn. We
arriv'd safe, however, at Boston in about a fortnight. I had been
absent seven months, and my friends had heard nothing of me; for my
br. Holmes was not yet return'd, and had not written about me. My
unexpected appearance surpris'd the family; all were, however, very
glad to see me, and made me welcome, except my brother. I went to see
him at his printing-house. I was better dress'd than ever while in his
service, having a genteel new suit from head to foot, a watch, and my
pockets lin'd with near five pounds sterling in silver. He receiv'd me
not very frankly, look'd me all over, and turn'd to his work again.

[Illustration: The journeymen were inquisitive]

The journeymen were inquisitive where I had been, what sort of a
country it was, and how I lik'd it. I prais'd it much, and the happy
life I led in it, expressing strongly my intention of returning to it;
and, one of them asking what kind of money we had there, I produc'd a
handful of silver, and spread it before them, which was a kind of
raree-show[32] they had not been us'd to, paper being the money of
Boston.[33] Then I took an opportunity of letting them see my watch;
and, lastly (my brother still grum and sullen), I gave them a piece
of eight[34] to drink, and took my leave. This visit of mine offended
him extreamly; for, when my mother some time after spoke to him of a
reconciliation, and of her wishes to see us on good terms together,
and that we might live for the future as brothers, he said I had
insulted him in such a manner before his people that he could never
forget or forgive it. In this, however, he was mistaken.

    [32] A peep-show in a box.

    [33] There were no mints in the colonies, so the metal
    money was of foreign coinage and not nearly so common as
    paper money, which was printed in large quantities in
    America, even in small denominations.

    [34] Spanish dollar about equivalent to our dollar.

My father received the governor's letter with some apparent surprise,
but said little of it to me for some days, when Capt. Holmes returning
he show'd it to him, asked him if he knew Keith, and what kind of man
he was; adding his opinion that he must be of small discretion to
think of setting a boy up in business who wanted yet three years of
being at man's estate. Holmes said what he could in favour of the
project, but my father was clear in the impropriety of it, and at
last, gave a flat denial to it. Then he wrote a civil letter to Sir
William, thanking him for the patronage he had so kindly offered me,
but declining to assist me as yet in setting up, I being, in his
opinion, too young to be trusted with the management of a business so
important, and for which the preparation must be so expensive.

My friend and companion Collins, who was a clerk in the post-office,
pleas'd with the account I gave him of my new country, determined to
go thither also; and, while I waited for my father's determination, he
set out before me by land to Rhode Island, leaving his books, which
were a pretty collection of mathematicks and natural philosophy, to
come with mine and me to New York, where he propos'd to wait for me.

My father, tho' he did not approve Sir William's proposition, was yet
pleas'd that I had been able to obtain so advantageous a character
from a person of such note where I had resided, and that I had been so
industrious and careful as to equip myself so handsomely in so short a
time; therefore, seeing no prospect of an accommodation between my
brother and me, he gave his consent to my returning again to
Philadelphia, advis'd me to behave respectfully to the people there,
endeavour to obtain the general esteem, and avoid lampooning and
libeling, to which he thought I had too much inclination; telling me,
that by steady industry and a prudent parsimony I might save enough by
the time I was one-and-twenty to set me up; and that, if I came near
the matter, he would help me out with the rest. This was all I could
obtain, except some small gifts as tokens of his and my mother's love,
when I embark'd again for New York, now with their approbation and
their blessing.

The sloop putting in at Newport, Rhode Island, I visited my brother
John, who had been married and settled there some years. He received
me very affectionately, for he always lov'd me. A friend of his, one
Vernon, having some money due to him in Pennsylvania, about
thirty-five pounds currency, desired I would receive it for him, and
keep it till I had his directions what to remit it in. Accordingly, he
gave me an order. This afterwards occasion'd me a good deal of
uneasiness.

At Newport we took in a number of passengers for New York, among
which were two young women, companions, and a grave, sensible,
matronlike Quaker woman, with her attendants. I had shown an obliging
readiness to do her some little services, which impress'd her I
suppose with a degree of good will toward me; therefore, when she saw
a daily growing familiarity between me and the two young women, which
they appear'd to encourage, she took me aside, and said, "Young man, I
am concern'd for thee, as thou hast no friend with thee, and seems not
to know much of the world, or of the snares youth is expos'd to;
depend upon it, those are very bad women; I can see it in all their
actions; and if thee art not upon thy guard, they will draw thee into
some danger; they are strangers to thee, and I advise thee, in a
friendly concern for thy welfare, to have no acquaintance with them."
As I seem'd at first not to think so ill of them as she did, she
mentioned some things she had observ'd and heard that had escap'd my
notice, but now convinc'd me she was right. I thank'd her for her kind
advice, and promis'd to follow it. When we arriv'd at New York, they
told me where they liv'd, and invited me to come and see them; but I
avoided it, and it was well I did; for the next day the captain miss'd
a silver spoon and some other things, that had been taken out of his
cabin, and, knowing that these were a couple of strumpets, he got a
warrant to search their lodgings, found the stolen goods, and had the
thieves punish'd. So, tho' we had escap'd a sunken rock, which we
scrap'd upon in the passage, I thought this escape of rather more
importance to me.

At New York I found my friend Collins, who had arriv'd there some time
before me. We had been intimate from children, and had read the same
books together; but he had the advantage of more time for reading and
studying, and a wonderful genius for mathematical learning, in which
he far outstript me. While I liv'd in Boston, most of my hours of
leisure for conversation were spent with him, and he continu'd a sober
as well as an industrious lad; was much respected for his learning by
several of the clergy and other gentlemen, and seemed to promise
making a good figure in life. But, during my absence, he had acquir'd
a habit of sotting with brandy; and I found by his own account, and
what I heard from others, that he had been drunk every day since his
arrival at New York, and behav'd very oddly. He had gam'd, too, and
lost his money, so that I was oblig'd to discharge his lodgings, and
defray his expenses to and at Philadelphia, which prov'd extremely
inconvenient to me.

The then governor of New York, Burnet (son of Bishop Burnet), hearing
from the captain that a young man, one of his passengers, had a great
many books, desir'd he would bring me to see him. I waited upon him
accordingly, and should have taken Collins with me but that he was not
sober. The gov'r. treated me with great civility, show'd me his
library, which was a very large one, and we had a good deal of
conversation about books and authors. This was the second governor who
had done me the honour to take notice of me; which, to a poor boy like
me, was very pleasing.

We proceeded to Philadelphia. I received on the way Vernon's money,
without which we could hardly have finish'd our journey. Collins
wished to be employ'd in some counting-house; but, whether they
discover'd his dramming by his breath, or by his behaviour, tho' he
had some recommendations, he met with no success in any application,
and continu'd lodging and boarding at the same house with me, and at
my expense. Knowing I had that money of Vernon's, he was continually
borrowing of me, still promising repayment as soon as he should be in
business. At length he had got so much of it that I was distress'd to
think what I should do in case of being call'd on to remit it.

His drinking continu'd, about which we sometimes quarrel'd; for, when
a little intoxicated, he was very fractious. Once, in a boat on the
Delaware with some other young men, he refused to row in his turn. "I
will be row'd home," says he. "We will not row you," says I. "You
must, or stay all night on the water," says he, "just as you please."
The others said, "Let us row; what signifies it?" But, my mind being
soured with his other conduct, I continu'd to refuse. So he swore he
would make me row, or throw me overboard; and coming along, stepping
on the thwarts, toward me, when he came up and struck at me, I clapped
my hand under his crutch, and, rising, pitched him head-foremost into
the river. I knew he was a good swimmer, and so was under little
concern about him; but before he could get round to lay hold of the
boat, we had with a few strokes pull'd her out of his reach; and ever
when he drew near the boat, we ask'd if he would row, striking a few
strokes to slide her away from him. He was ready to die with
vexation, and obstinately would not promise to row. However, seeing
him at last beginning to tire, we lifted him in and brought him home
dripping wet in the evening. We hardly exchang'd a civil word
afterwards, and a West India captain, who had a commission to procure
a tutor for the sons of a gentleman at Barbados, happening to meet
with him, agreed to carry him thither. He left me then, promising to
remit me the first money he should receive in order to discharge the
debt; but I never heard of him after.

The breaking into this money of Vernon's was one of the first great
errata of my life; and this affair show'd that my father was not much
out in his judgment when he suppos'd me too young to manage business
of importance. But Sir William, on reading his letter, said he was too
prudent. There was great difference in persons; and discretion did not
always accompany years, nor was youth always without it. "And since he
will not set you up," says he, "I will do it myself. Give me an
inventory of the things necessary to be had from England, and I will
send for them. You shall repay me when you are able; I am resolv'd to
have a good printer here, and I am sure you must succeed." This was
spoken with such an appearance of cordiality, that I had not the least
doubt of his meaning what he said. I had hitherto kept the proposition
of my setting up, a secret in Philadelphia, and I still kept it. Had
it been known that I depended on the governor, probably some friend,
that knew him better, would have advis'd me not to rely on him, as I
afterwards heard it as his known character to be liberal of promises
which he never meant to keep. Yet, unsolicited as he was by me, how
could I think his generous offers insincere? I believ'd him one of the
best men in the world.

I presented him an inventory of a little print'-house, amounting by my
computation to about one hundred pounds sterling. He lik'd it, but
ask'd me if my being on the spot in England to chuse the types, and
see that everything was good of the kind, might not be of some
advantage. "Then," says he, "when there, you may make acquaintances,
and establish correspondences in the bookselling and stationery way."
I agreed that this might be advantageous. "Then," says he, "get
yourself ready to go with Annis;" which was the annual ship, and the
only one at that time usually passing between London and Philadelphia.
But it would be some months before Annis sail'd, so I continued
working with Keimer, fretting about the money Collins had got from me,
and in daily apprehensions of being call'd upon by Vernon, which,
however, did not happen for some years after.

I believe I have omitted mentioning that, in my first voyage from
Boston, being becalm'd off Block Island, our people set about catching
cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution
of not eating animal food, and on this occasion I consider'd, with my
master Tryon, the taking every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder,
since none of them had, or ever could do us any injury that might
justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable. But I had
formerly been a great lover of fish, and, when this came hot out of
the frying-pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc'd some time between
principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were
opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought
I, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you." So I
din'd upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people,
returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So
convenient a thing is it to be a _reasonable creature_, since it
enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to
do.




V

EARLY FRIENDS IN PHILADELPHIA


Keimer and I liv'd on a pretty good familiar footing, and agreed
tolerably well, for he suspected nothing of my setting up. He retained
a great deal of his old enthusiasms and lov'd argumentation. We
therefore had many disputations. I used to work him so with my
Socratic method, and had trepann'd him so often by questions
apparently so distant from any point we had in hand, and yet by
degrees led to the point, and brought him into difficulties and
contradictions, that at last he grew ridiculously cautious, and would
hardly answer me the most common question, without asking first,
"_What do you intend to infer from that_?" However, it gave him so
high an opinion of my abilities in the confuting way, that he
seriously proposed my being his colleague in a project he had of
setting up a new sect. He was to preach the doctrines, and I was to
confound all opponents. When he came to explain with me upon the
doctrines, I found several conundrums which I objected to, unless I
might have my way a little too, and introduce some of mine.

Keimer wore his beard at full length, because somewhere in the Mosaic
law it is said, "_Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard_." He
likewise kept the Seventh day, Sabbath; and these two points were
essentials with him. I dislik'd both; but agreed to admit them upon
condition of his adopting the doctrine of using no animal food. "I
doubt," said he, "my constitution will not bear that." I assur'd him
it would, and that he would be the better for it. He was usually a
great glutton, and I promised myself some diversion in half starving
him. He agreed to try the practice, if I would keep him company. I did
so, and we held it for three months. We had our victuals dress'd, and
brought to us regularly by a woman in the neighborhood, who had from
me a list of forty dishes, to be prepar'd for us at different times,
in all which there was neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, and the whim
suited me the better at this time from the cheapness of it, not
costing us above eighteenpence sterling each per week. I have since
kept several Lents most strictly, leaving the common diet for that,
and that for the common, abruptly, without the least inconvenience, so
that I think there is little in the advice of making those changes by
easy gradations. I went on pleasantly, but poor Keimer suffered
grievously, tired of the project, long'd for the flesh-pots of Egypt,
and order'd a roast pig. He invited me and two women friends to dine
with him; but, it being brought too soon upon table, he could not
resist the temptation, and ate the whole before we came.

I had made some courtship during this time to Miss Read. I had a great
respect and affection for her, and had some reason to believe she had
the same for me; but, as I was about to take a long voyage, and we
were both very young, only a little above eighteen, it was thought
most prudent by her mother to prevent our going too far at present, as
a marriage, if it was to take place, would be more convenient after my
return, when I should be, as I expected, set up in my business.
Perhaps, too, she thought my expectations not so well founded as I
imagined them to be.

My chief acquaintances at this time were Charles Osborne, Joseph
Watson, and James Ralph, all lovers of reading. The two first were
clerks to an eminent scrivener or conveyancer in the town, Charles
Brockden; the other was clerk to a merchant. Watson was a pious,
sensible young man, of great integrity; the others rather more lax in
their principles of religion, particularly Ralph, who, as well as
Collins, had been unsettled by me, for which they both made me suffer.
Osborne was sensible, candid, frank; sincere and affectionate to his
friends; but, in literary matters, too fond of criticizing. Ralph was
ingenious, genteel in his manners, and extremely eloquent; I think I
never knew a prettier talker. Both of them were great admirers of
poetry, and began to try their hands in little pieces. Many pleasant
walks we four had together on Sundays into the woods, near
Schuylkill, where we read to one another, and conferr'd on what we
read.

[Illustration: "Many pleasant walks we four had together"]

Ralph was inclin'd to pursue the study of poetry, not doubting but he
might become eminent in it, and make his fortune by it, alleging that
the best poets must, when they first began to write, make as many
faults as he did. Osborne dissuaded him, assur'd him he had no genius
for poetry, and advis'd him to think of nothing beyond the business he
was bred to; that, in the mercantile way, tho' he had no stock, he
might, by his diligence and punctuality, recommend himself to
employment as a factor, and in time acquire wherewith to trade on his
own account. I approv'd the amusing one's self with poetry now and
then, so far as to improve one's language, but no farther.

On this it was propos'd that we should each of us, at our next
meeting, produce a piece of our own composing, in order to improve by
our mutual observations, criticisms, and corrections. As language and
expression were what we had in view, we excluded all considerations of
invention by agreeing that the task should be a version of the
eighteenth Psalm, which describes the descent of a Deity. When the
time of our meeting drew nigh, Ralph called on me first, and let me
know his piece was ready. I told him I had been busy, and, having
little inclination, had done nothing. He then show'd me his piece for
my opinion, and I much approv'd it, as it appear'd to me to have great
merit. "Now," says he, "Osborne never will allow the least merit in
anything of mine, but makes 1000 criticisms out of mere envy. He is
not so jealous of you; I wish, therefore, you would take this piece,
and produce it as yours; I will pretend not to have had time, and so
produce nothing. We shall then see what he will say to it." It was
agreed, and I immediately transcrib'd it, that it might appear in my
own hand.

We met; Watson's performance was read; there were some beauties in it,
but many defects. Osborne's was read; it was much better; Ralph did it
justice; remarked some faults, but applauded the beauties. He himself
had nothing to produce. I was backward; seemed desirous of being
excused; had not had sufficient time to correct, etc.; but no excuse
could be admitted; produce I must. It was read and repeated; Watson
and Osborne gave up the contest, and join'd in applauding it. Ralph
only made some criticisms, and propos'd some amendments; but I
defended my text. Osborne was against Ralph, and told him he was no
better a critic than poet, so he dropt the argument. As they two went
home together, Osborne expressed himself still more strongly in favor
of what he thought my production; having restrain'd himself before, as
he said, lest I should think it flattery. "But who would have
imagin'd," said he, "that Franklin had been capable of such a
performance; such painting, such force, such fire! He has even
improv'd the original. In his common conversation he seems to have no
choice of words; he hesitates and blunders; and yet, good God! how he
writes!" When we next met, Ralph discovered the trick we had plaid
him, and Osborne was a little laughed at.

This transaction fixed Ralph in his resolution of becoming a poet. I
did all I could to dissuade him from it, but he continued scribbling
verses till _Pope_ cured him.[35] He became, however, a pretty good
prose writer. More of him hereafter. But, as I may not have occasion
again to mention the other two, I shall just remark here, that Watson
died in my arms a few years after, much lamented, being the best of
our set. Osborne went to the West Indies, where he became an eminent
lawyer and made money, but died young. He and I had made a serious
agreement, that the one who happen'd first to die should, if possible,
make a friendly visit to the other, and acquaint him how he found
things in that separate state. But he never fulfill'd his promise.

    [35] "In one of the later editions of the _Dunciad_ occur
    the following lines:

       'Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls,
       And makes night hideous--answer him, ye owls.'

    To this the poet adds the following note:

    'James Ralph, a name inserted after the first editions,
    not known till he writ a swearing-piece called _Sawney_,
    very abusive of Dr. Swift, Mr. Gay, and myself.'"




VI

FIRST VISIT TO LONDON


The governor, seeming to like my company, had me frequently to his
house, and his setting me up was always mention'd as a fixed thing. I
was to take with me letters recommendatory to a number of his friends,
besides the letter of credit to furnish me with the necessary money
for purchasing the press and types, paper, etc. For these letters I
was appointed to call at different times, when they were to be ready;
but a future time was still named. Thus he went on till the ship,
whose departure too had been several times postponed, was on the point
of sailing. Then, when I call'd to take my leave and receive the
letters, his secretary, Dr. Bard, came out to me and said the governor
was extremely busy in writing, but would be down at Newcastle, before
the ship, and there the letters would be delivered to me.

Ralph, though married, and having one child, had determined to
accompany me in this voyage. It was thought he intended to establish a
correspondence, and obtain goods to sell on commission; but I found
afterwards, that, thro' some discontent with his wife's relations, he
purposed to leave her on their hands, and never return again. Having
taken leave of my friends, and interchang'd some promises with Miss
Read, I left Philadelphia in the ship, which anchor'd at Newcastle.
The governor was there; but when I went to his lodging, the secretary
came to me from him with the civillest message in the world, that he
could not then see me, being engaged in business of the utmost
importance, but should send the letters to me on board, wished me
heartily a good voyage and a speedy return, etc. I returned on board a
little puzzled, but still not doubting.

Mr. Andrew Hamilton, a famous lawyer of Philadelphia, had taken
passage in the same ship for himself and son, and with Mr. Denham, a
Quaker merchant, and Messrs. Onion and Russel, masters of an iron work
in Maryland, had engaged the great cabin; so that Ralph and I were
forced to take up with a berth in the steerage, and none on board
knowing us, were considered as ordinary persons. But Mr. Hamilton and
his son (it was James, since governor) return'd from Newcastle to
Philadelphia, the father being recall'd by a great fee to plead for a
seized ship; and, just before we sail'd, Colonel French coming on
board, and showing me great respect, I was more taken notice of, and,
with my friend Ralph, invited by the other gentlemen to come into the
cabin, there being now room. Accordingly, we remov'd thither.

Understanding that Colonel French had brought on board the governor's
despatches, I ask'd the captain for those letters that were to be
under my care. He said all were put into the bag together and he could
not then come at them; but, before we landed in England, I should have
an opportunity of picking them out; so I was satisfied for the
present, and we proceeded on our voyage. We had a sociable company in
the cabin, and lived uncommonly well, having the addition of all Mr.
Hamilton's stores, who had laid in plentifully. In this passage Mr.
Denham contracted a friendship for me that continued during his life.
The voyage was otherwise not a pleasant one, as we had a great deal of
bad weather.

When we came into the Channel, the captain kept his word with me, and
gave me an opportunity of examining the bag for the governor's
letters. I found none upon which my name was put as under my care. I
picked out six or seven, that, by the handwriting, I thought might be
the promised letters, especially as one of them was directed to
Basket, the king's printer, and another to some stationer. We arriv'd
in London the 24th of December, 1724. I waited upon the stationer, who
came first in my way, delivering the letter as from Governor Keith. "I
don't know such a person," says he; but, opening the letter, "O! this
is from Riddlesden. I have lately found him to be a compleat rascal,
and I will have nothing to do with him, nor receive any letters from
him." So, putting the letter into my hand, he turn'd on his heel and
left me to serve some customer. I was surprized to find these were not
the governor's letters; and, after recollecting and comparing
circumstances, I began to doubt his sincerity. I found my friend
Denham, and opened the whole affair to him. He let me into Keith's
character; told me there was not the least probability that he had
written any letters for me; that no one, who knew him, had the
smallest dependence on him; and he laught at the notion of the
governor's giving me a letter of credit, having, as he said, no credit
to give. On my expressing some concern about what I should do, he
advised me to endeavour getting some employment in the way of my
business. "Among the printers here," said he, "you will improve
yourself, and when you return to America, you will set up to greater
advantage."

[Illustration: "So, putting the letter into my hand"]

We both of us happen'd to know, as well as the stationer, that
Riddlesden, the attorney, was a very knave. He had half ruin'd Miss
Read's father by persuading him to be bound for him. By this letter it
appear'd there was a secret scheme on foot to the prejudice of
Hamilton (suppos'd to be then coming over with us); and that Keith was
concerned in it with Riddlesden. Denham, who was a friend of
Hamilton's, thought he ought to be acquainted with it; so, when he
arriv'd in England, which was soon after, partly from resentment and
ill-will to Keith and Riddlesden, and partly from good-will to him, I
waited on him, and gave him the letter. He thank'd me cordially, the
information being of importance to him; and from that time he became
my friend, greatly to my advantage afterwards on many occasions.

But what shall we think of a governor's playing such pitiful tricks,
and imposing so grossly on a poor ignorant boy! It was a habit he had
acquired. He wish'd to please everybody; and, having little to give,
he gave expectations. He was otherwise an ingenious, sensible man, a
pretty good writer, and a good governor for the people, tho' not for
his constituents, the proprietaries, whose instructions he sometimes
disregarded. Several of our best laws were of his planning and passed
during his administration.

Ralph and I were inseparable companions. We took lodgings together in
Little Britain[36] at three shillings and sixpence a week--as much as
we could then afford. He found some relations, but they were poor, and
unable to assist him. He now let me know his intentions of remaining
in London, and that he never meant to return to Philadelphia. He had
brought no money with him, the whole he could muster having been
expended in paying his passage. I had fifteen pistoles;[37] so he
borrowed occasionally of me to subsist, while he was looking out for
business. He first endeavoured to get into the play-house, believing
himself qualify'd for an actor; but Wilkes,[38] to whom he apply'd,
advis'd him candidly not to think of that employment, as it was
impossible he should succeed in it. Then he propos'd to Roberts, a
publisher in Paternoster Row,[39] to write for him a weekly paper like
the Spectator, on certain conditions, which Roberts did not approve.
Then he endeavoured to get employment as a hackney writer, to copy for
the stationers and lawyers about the Temple,[40] but could find no
vacancy.

    [36] One of the oldest parts of London, north of St.
    Paul's Cathedral, called "Little Britain" because the
    Dukes of Brittany used to live there. See the essay
    entitled "Little Britain" in Washington Irving's _Sketch
    Book_.

    [37] A gold coin worth about four dollars in our money.

    [38] A popular comedian, manager of Drury Lane Theater.

    [39] Street north of St. Paul's, occupied by publishing
    houses.

    [40] Law schools and lawyers' residences situated
    southwest of St. Paul's, between Fleet Street and the
    Thames.

I immediately got into work at Palmer's, then a famous printing-house
in Bartholomew Close, and here I continu'd near a year. I was pretty
diligent, but spent with Ralph a good deal of my earnings in going to
plays and other places of amusement. We had together consumed all my
pistoles, and now just rubbed on from hand to mouth. He seem'd quite
to forget his wife and child, and I, by degrees, my engagements with
Miss Read, to whom I never wrote more than one letter, and that was to
let her know I was not likely soon to return. This was another of the
great errata of my life, which I should wish to correct if I were to
live it over again. In fact, by our expenses, I was constantly kept
unable to pay my passage.

At Palmer's I was employed in composing for the second edition of
Wollaston's "Religion of Nature." Some of his reasonings not appearing
to me well founded, I wrote a little metaphysical piece in which I
made remarks on them. It was entitled "A Dissertation on Liberty and
Necessity, Pleasure and Pain." I inscribed it to my friend Ralph; I
printed a small number. It occasion'd my being more consider'd by Mr.
Palmer as a young man of some ingenuity, tho' he seriously
expostulated with me upon the principles of my pamphlet, which to him
appear'd abominable. My printing this pamphlet was another erratum.

While I lodg'd in Little Britain, I made an acquaintance with one
Wilcox, a bookseller, whose shop was at the next door. He had an
immense collection of second-hand books. Circulating libraries were
not then in use; but we agreed that, on certain reasonable terms,
which I have now forgotten, I might take, read, and return any of his
books. This I esteem'd a great advantage, and I made as much use of it
as I could.

My pamphlet by some means falling into the hands of one Lyons, a
surgeon, author of a book entitled "The Infallibility of Human
Judgment," it occasioned an acquaintance between us. He took great
notice of me, called on me often to converse on those subjects,
carried me to the Horns, a pale alehouse in----Lane, Cheapside,
and introduced me to Dr. Mandeville, author of the "Fable of the
Bees," who had a club there, of which he was the soul, being a most
facetious, entertaining companion. Lyons, too, introduced me to Dr.
Pemberton, at Batson's Coffee-house, who promis'd to give me an
opportunity, sometime or other, of seeing Sir Isaac Newton, of which I
was extreamly desirous; but this never happened.

I had brought over a few curiosities, among which the principal was a
purse made of the asbestos, which purifies by fire. Sir Hans Sloane
heard of it, came to see me, and invited me to his house in Bloomsbury
Square, where he show'd me all his curiosities, and persuaded me to
let him add that to the number, for which he paid me handsomely.

In our house there lodg'd a young woman, a milliner, who, I think, had
a shop in the Cloisters. She had been genteelly bred, was sensible and
lively, and of most pleasing conversation. Ralph read plays to her in
the evenings, they grew intimate, she took another lodging, and he
followed her. They liv'd together some time; but, he being still out
of business, and her income not sufficient to maintain them with her
child, he took a resolution of going from London, to try for a country
school, which he thought himself well qualified to undertake, as he
wrote an excellent hand, and was a master of arithmetic and accounts.
This, however, he deemed a business below him, and confident of future
better fortune, when he should be unwilling to have it known that he
once was so meanly employed, he changed his name, and did me the
honour to assume mine; for I soon after had a letter from him,
acquainting me that he was settled in a small village (in Berkshire, I
think it was, where he taught reading and writing to ten or a dozen
boys, at sixpence each per week), recommending Mrs. T---- to my care,
and desiring me to write to him, directing for Mr. Franklin,
schoolmaster, at such a place.

He continued to write frequently, sending me large specimens of an
epic poem which he was then composing, and desiring my remarks and
corrections. These I gave him from time to time, but endeavour'd
rather to discourage his proceeding. One of Young's Satires[41] was
then just published. I copy'd and sent him a great part of it, which
set in a strong light the folly of pursuing the Muses with any hope of
advancement by them. All was in vain; sheets of the poem continued to
come by every post. In the meantime, Mrs. T----, having on his account
lost her friends and business, was often in distresses, and us'd to
send for me and borrow what I could spare to help her out of them. I
grew fond of her company, and, being at that time under no religious
restraint, and presuming upon my importance to her, I attempted
familiarities (another erratum) which she repuls'd with a proper
resentment, and acquainted him with my behaviour. This made a breach
between us; and, when he returned again to London, he let me know he
thought I had cancell'd all the obligations he had been under to me.
So I found I was never to expect his repaying me what I lent to him or
advanc'd for him. This, however, was not then of much consequence, as
he was totally unable; and in the loss of his friendship I found
myself relieved from a burthen. I now began to think of getting a
little money beforehand, and, expecting better work, I left Palmer's
to work at Watts's, near Lincoln's Inn Fields, a still greater
printing-house.[42] Here I continued all the rest of my stay in London.

    [41] Edward Young (1681-1765), an English poet. See his
    satires, Vol. III, Epist. ii, page 70.

    [42] The printing press at which Franklin worked is
    preserved in the Patent Office at Washington.

At my first admission into this printing-house I took to working at
press, imagining I felt a want of the bodily exercise I had been us'd
to in America, where presswork is mix'd with composing. I drank only
water; the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great guzzlers of
beer. On occasion, I carried up and down stairs a large form of types
in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands. They wondered
to see, from this and several instances, that the _Water-American_, as
they called me, was _stronger_ than themselves, who drank _strong_
beer! We had an alehouse boy who attended always in the house to
supply the workmen. My companion at the press drank every day a pint
before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a
pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the
afternoon about six o'clock, and another when he had done his day's
work. I thought it a detestable custom; but it was necessary, he
suppos'd, to drink _strong_ beer, that he might be _strong_ to labour.
I endeavoured to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by
beer could only be in proportion to the grain or flour of the barley
dissolved in the water of which it was made; that there was more flour
in a pennyworth of bread; and therefore, if he would eat that with a
pint of water, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer.
He drank on, however, and had four or five shillings to pay out of his
wages every Saturday night for that muddling liquor; an expense I was
free from. And thus these poor devils keep themselves always under.

[Illustration: "I took to working at press"]

Watts, after some weeks, desiring to have me in the composing-room,[43]
I left the pressmen; a new bien venu or sum for drink, being five
shillings, was demanded of me by the compositors. I thought it an
imposition, as I had paid below; the master thought so too, and forbade
my paying it. I stood out two or three weeks, was accordingly considered
as an excommunicate, and had so many little pieces of private mischief
done me, by mixing my sorts, transposing my pages, breaking my matter,
etc., etc., if I were ever so little out of the room, and all ascribed
to the chappel ghost, which they said ever haunted those not regularly
admitted, that, notwithstanding the master's protection, I found myself
oblig'd to comply and pay the money, convinc'd of the folly of being on
ill terms with those one is to live with continually.

    [43] Franklin now left the work of operating the printing
    presses, which was largely a matter of manual labor, and
    began setting type, which required more skill and
    intelligence.

I was now on a fair footing with them, and soon acquir'd considerable
influence. I propos'd some reasonable alterations in their chappel
laws,[44] and carried them against all opposition. From my example, a
great part of them left their muddling breakfast of beer, and bread,
and cheese, finding they could with me be supply'd from a neighbouring
house with a large porringer of hot water-gruel, sprinkled with
pepper, crumb'd with bread, and a bit of butter in it, for the price
of a pint of beer, viz., three half-pence. This was a more comfortable
as well as cheaper breakfast, and keep their heads clearer. Those who
continued sotting with beer all day, were often, by not paying, out of
credit at the alehouse, and us'd to make interest with me to get beer;
their _light_, as they phrased it, _being out_. I watch'd the
pay-table on Saturday night, and collected what I stood engag'd for
them, having to pay sometimes near thirty shillings a week on their
accounts. This, and my being esteem'd a pretty good _riggite_, that
is, a jocular verbal satirist, supported my consequence in the
society. My constant attendance (I never making a St. Monday)[45]
recommended me to the master; and my uncommon quickness at composing
occasioned my being put upon all work of dispatch, which was generally
better paid. So I went on now very agreeably.

    [44] A printing house is called a chapel because Caxton,
    the first English printer, did his printing in a chapel
    connected with Westminster Abbey.

    [45] A holiday taken to prolong the dissipation of
    Saturday's wages.

My lodging in Little Britain being too remote, I found another in
Duke-street, opposite to the Romish Chapel. It was two pair of stairs
backwards, at an Italian warehouse. A widow lady kept the house; she
had a daughter, and a maid servant, and a journeyman who attended the
warehouse, but lodg'd abroad. After sending to inquire my character at
the house where I last lodg'd she agreed to take me in at the same
rate, 3s. 6d. per week; cheaper, as she said, from the protection she
expected in having a man lodge in the house. She was a widow, an
elderly woman; had been bred a Protestant, being a clergyman's
daughter, but was converted to the Catholic religion by her husband,
whose memory she much revered; had lived much among people of
distinction, and knew a thousand anecdotes of them as far back as the
times of Charles the Second. She was lame in her knees with the gout,
and, therefore, seldom stirred out of her room, so sometimes wanted
company; and hers was so highly amusing to me, that I was sure to
spend an evening with her whenever she desired it. Our supper was
only half an anchovy each, on a very little strip of bread and butter,
and half a pint of ale between us; but the entertainment was in her
conversation. My always keeping good hours, and giving little trouble
in the family, made her unwilling to part with me, so that, when I
talk'd of a lodging I had heard of, nearer my business, for two
shillings a week, which, intent as I now was on saving money, made
some difference, she bid me not think of it, for she would abate me
two shillings a week for the future; so I remained with her at one
shilling and sixpence as long as I staid in London.

In a garret of her house there lived a maiden lady of seventy, in the
most retired manner, of whom my landlady gave me this account: that
she was a Roman Catholic, had been sent abroad when young, and lodg'd
in a nunnery with an intent of becoming a nun; but, the country not
agreeing with her, she returned to England, where, there being no
nunnery, she had vow'd to lead the life of a nun, as near as might be
done in those circumstances. Accordingly, she had given all her estate
to charitable uses, reserving only twelve pounds a year to live on,
and out of this sum she still gave a great deal in charity, living
herself on water-gruel only, and using no fire but to boil it. She had
lived many years in that garret, being permitted to remain there
gratis by successive Catholic tenants of the house below, as they
deemed it a blessing to have her there. A priest visited her to
confess her every day. "I have ask'd her," says my landlady, "how she,
as she liv'd, could possibly find so much employment for a confessor?"
"Oh," said she, "it is impossible to avoid _vain thoughts_." I was
permitted once to visit her. She was cheerful and polite, and
convers'd pleasantly. The room was clean, but had no other furniture
than a matras, a table with a crucifix and book, a stool which she
gave me to sit on, and a picture over the chimney of Saint Veronica
displaying her handkerchief, with the miraculous figure of Christ's
bleeding face on it,[46] which she explained to me with great
seriousness. She look'd pale, but was never sick; and I give it as
another instance on how small an income, life and health may be
supported.

At Watts's printing-house I contracted an acquaintance with an
ingenious young man, one Wygate, who, having wealthy relations, had
been better educated than most printers; was a tolerable Latinist,
spoke French, and lov'd reading. I taught him and a friend of his to
swim at twice going into the river, and they soon became good
swimmers. They introduc'd me to some gentlemen from the country, who
went to Chelsea by water to see the College and Don Saltero's
curiosities.[47] In our return, at the request of the company, whose
curiosity Wygate had excited, I stripped and leaped into the river,
and swam from near Chelsea to Blackfriar's,[48] performing on the way
many feats of activity, both upon and under water, that surpris'd and
pleas'd those to whom they were novelties.

    [46] The story is that she met Christ on His way to
    crucifixion and offered Him her handkerchief to wipe the
    blood from His face, after which the handkerchief always
    bore the image of Christ's bleeding face.

    [47] James Salter, a former servant of Hans Sloane, lived
    in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. "His house, a barber-shop, was
    known as 'Don Saltero's Coffee-House.' The curiosities
    were in glass cases and constituted an amazing and
    motley collection--a petrified crab from China, a
    'lignified hog,' Job's tears, Madagascar lances, William
    the Conqueror's flaming sword, and Henry the Eighth's
    coat of mail."--Smyth.

    [48] About three miles.

I had from a child been ever delighted with this exercise, had studied
and practis'd all Thevenot's motions and positions, added some of my
own, aiming at the graceful and easy as well as the useful. All these
I took this occasion of exhibiting to the company, and was much
flatter'd by their admiration; and Wygate, who was desirous of
becoming a master, grew more and more attach'd to me on that account,
as well as from the similarity of our studies. He at length proposed
to me traveling all over Europe together, supporting ourselves
everywhere by working at our business. I was once inclined to it; but,
mentioning it to my good friend Mr. Denham, with whom I often spent an
hour when I had leisure, he dissuaded me from it, advising me to think
only of returning to Pennsylvania, which he was now about to do.

I must record one trait of this good man's character. He had formerly
been in business at Bristol, but failed in debt to a number of people,
compounded and went to America. There, by a close application to
business as a merchant, he acquired a plentiful fortune in a few
years. Returning to England in the ship with me, he invited his old
creditors to an entertainment, at which he thank'd them for the easy
composition they had favoured him with, and, when they expected
nothing but the treat, every man at the first remove found under his
plate an order on a banker for the full amount of the unpaid
remainder with interest.

He now told me he was about to return to Philadelphia, and should
carry over a great quantity of goods in order to open a store there.
He propos'd to take me over as his clerk, to keep his books, in which
he would instruct me, copy his letters, and attend the store. He
added, that, as soon as I should be acquainted with mercantile
business, he would promote me by sending me with a cargo of flour and
bread, etc., to the West Indies, and procure me commissions from
others which would be profitable; and, if I manag'd well, would
establish me handsomely. The thing pleas'd me; for I was grown tired
of London, remembered with pleasure the happy months I had spent in
Pennsylvania, and wish'd again to see it; therefore I immediately
agreed on the terms of fifty pounds a year,[49] Pennsylvania money;
less, indeed, than my present gettings as a compositor, but affording
a better prospect.

    [49] About $167.

I now took leave of printing, as I thought, forever, and was daily
employed in my new business, going about with Mr. Denham among the
tradesmen to purchase various articles, and seeing them pack'd up,
doing errands, calling upon workmen to dispatch, etc.; and, when all
was on board, I had a few days' leisure. On one of these days, I was,
to my surprise, sent for by a great man I knew only by name, a Sir
William Wyndham, and I waited upon him. He had heard by some means or
other of my swimming from Chelsea to Blackfriars, and of my teaching
Wygate and another young man to swim in a few hours. He had two sons,
about to set out on their travels; he wish'd to have them first taught
swimming, and proposed to gratify me handsomely if I would teach them.
They were not yet come to town, and my stay was uncertain, so I could
not undertake it; but, from this incident, I thought it likely that,
if I were to remain in England and open a swimming-school, I might get
a good deal of money; and it struck me so strongly, that, had the
overture been sooner made me, probably I should not so soon have
returned to America. After many years, you and I had something of more
importance to do with one of these sons of Sir William Wyndham,
become Earl of Egremont, which I shall mention in its place.

Thus I spent about eighteen months in London; most part of the time I
work'd hard at my business, and spent but little upon myself except in
seeing plays and in books. My friend Ralph had kept me poor; he owed
me about twenty-seven pounds, which I was now never likely to receive;
a great sum out of my small earnings! I lov'd him, notwithstanding,
for he had many amiable qualities. I had by no means improv'd my
fortune; but I had picked up some very ingenious acquaintance, whose
conversation was of great advantage to me; and I had read
considerably.




VII

BEGINNING BUSINESS IN
PHILADELPHIA


We sail'd from Gravesend on the 23rd of July, 1726. For the incidents
of the voyage, I refer you to my Journal, where you will find them all
minutely related. Perhaps the most important part of that journal is
the _plan_[50] to be found in it, which I formed at sea, for
regulating my future conduct in life. It is the more remarkable, as
being formed when I was so young, and yet being pretty faithfully
adhered to quite thro' to old age.

    [50] "Not found in the manuscript journal, which was left
    among Franklin's papers."--Bigelow.

We landed in Philadelphia on the 11th of October, where I found sundry
alterations. Keith was no longer governor, being superseded by Major
Gordon. I met him walking the streets as a common citizen. He seem'd a
little asham'd at seeing me, but pass'd without saying anything. I
should have been as much asham'd at seeing Miss Read, had not her
friends, despairing with reason of my return after the receipt of my
letter, persuaded her to marry another, one Rogers, a potter, which
was done in my absence. With him, however, she was never happy, and
soon parted from him, refusing to cohabit with him or bear his name,
it being now said that he had another wife. He was a worthless fellow,
tho' an excellent workman, which was the temptation to her friends. He
got into debt, ran away in 1727 or 1728, went to the West Indies, and
died there. Keimer had got a better house, a shop well supply'd with
stationery, plenty of new types, a number of hands, tho' none good,
and seem'd to have a great deal of business.

Mr. Denham took a store in Water-street, where we open'd our goods; I
attended the business diligently, studied accounts, and grew, in a
little time, expert at selling. We lodg'd and boarded together; he
counsell'd me as a father, having a sincere regard for me. I respected
and loved him, and we might have gone on together very happy; but, in
the beginning of February, 1726/7, when I had just pass'd my
twenty-first year, we both were taken ill. My distemper was a
pleurisy, which very nearly carried me off. I suffered a good deal,
gave up the point in my own mind, and was rather disappointed when I
found myself recovering, regretting, in some degree, that I must now,
some time or other, have all that disagreeable work to do over again.
I forget what his distemper was; it held him a long time, and at
length carried him off. He left me a small legacy in a nuncupative
will, as a token of his kindness for me, and he left me once more to
the wide world; for the store was taken into the care of his
executors, and my employment under him ended.

[Illustration: "Mr. Denham took a store in Water-street"]

My brother-in-law, Holmes, being now at Philadelphia, advised my
return to my business; and Keimer tempted me, with an offer of large
wages by the year, to come and take the management of his
printing-house, that he might better attend his stationer's shop. I
had heard a bad character of him in London from his wife and her
friends, and was not fond of having any more to do with him. I tri'd
for farther employment as a merchant's clerk; but, not readily meeting
with any, I clos'd again with Keimer. I found in his house these
hands: Hugh Meredith, a Welsh Pennsylvanian, thirty years of age, bred
to country work; honest, sensible, had a great deal of solid
observation, was something of a reader, but given to drink. Stephen
Potts, a young countryman of full age, bred to the same, of uncommon
natural parts, and great wit and humor, but a little idle. These he
had agreed with at extream low wages per week to be rais'd a shilling
every three months, as they would deserve by improving in their
business; and the expectation of these high wages, to come on
hereafter, was what he had drawn them in with. Meredith was to work at
press, Potts at book-binding, which he, by agreement, was to teach
them, though he knew neither one nor t'other. John----, a wild
Irishman, brought up to no business, whose service, for four
years, Keimer had purchased from the captain of a ship; he, too, was
to be made a pressman. George Webb, an Oxford scholar, whose time for
four years he had likewise bought, intending him for a compositor, of
whom more presently; and David Harry, a country boy, whom he had taken
apprentice.

I soon perceiv'd that the intention of engaging me at wages so much
higher than he had been us'd to give, was, to have these raw, cheap
hands form'd thro' me; and, as soon as I had instructed them, then
they being all articled to him, he should be able to do without me. I
went on, however, very chearfully, put his printing-house in order,
which had been in great confusion, and brought his hands by degrees to
mind their business and to do it better.

It was an odd thing to find an Oxford scholar in the situation of a
bought servant. He was not more than eighteen years of age, and gave
me this account of himself; that he was born in Gloucester, educated
at a grammar-school there, had been distinguish'd among the scholars
for some apparent superiority in performing his part, when they
exhibited plays; belong'd to the Witty Club there, and had written
some pieces in prose and verse, which were printed in the Gloucester
newspapers; thence he was sent to Oxford; where he continued about a
year, but not well satisfi'd, wishing of all things to see London, and
become a player. At length, receiving his quarterly allowance of
fifteen guineas, instead of discharging his debts he walk'd out of
town, hid his gown in a furze bush, and footed it to London, where,
having no friend to advise him, he fell into bad company, soon spent
his guineas, found no means of being introduc'd among the players,
grew necessitous, pawn'd his cloaths, and wanted bread. Walking the
street very hungry, and not knowing what to do with himself, a crimp's
bill[51] was put into his hand, offering immediate entertainment and
encouragement to such as would bind themselves to serve in America. He
went directly, sign'd the indentures, was put into the ship, and came
over, never writing a line to acquaint his friends what was become of
him. He was lively, witty, good-natur'd, and a pleasant companion, but
idle, thoughtless, and imprudent to the last degree.

    [51] A crimp was the agent of a shipping company. Crimps
    were sometimes employed to decoy men into such service
    as is here mentioned.

John, the Irishman, soon ran away; with the rest I began to live very
agreeably, for they all respected me the more, as they found Keimer
incapable of instructing them, and that from me they learned something
daily. We never worked on Saturday, that being Keimer's Sabbath, so I
had two days for reading. My acquaintance with ingenious people in the
town increased. Keimer himself treated me with great civility and
apparent regard, and nothing now made me uneasy but my debt to Vernon,
which I was yet unable to pay, being hitherto but a poor æconomist.
He, however, kindly made no demand of it.

Our printing-house often wanted sorts, and there was no letter-founder
in America; I had seen types cast at James's in London, but without
much attention to the manner; however, I now contrived a mould, made
use of the letters we had as puncheons, struck the mattrices in lead,
and thus supply'd in a pretty tolerable way all deficiencies. I also
engrav'd several things on occasion; I made the ink; I was
warehouseman, and everything, and, in short, quite a fac-totum.

But, however serviceable I might be, I found that my services became
every day of less importance, as the other hands improv'd in the
business; and, when Keimer paid my second quarter's wages, he let me
know that he felt them too heavy, and thought I should make an
abatement. He grew by degrees less civil, put on more of the master,
frequently found fault, was captious, and seem'd ready for an
outbreaking. I went on, nevertheless, with a good deal of patience,
thinking that his encumber'd circumstances were partly the cause. At
length a trifle snapt our connections; for, a great noise happening
near the court-house, I put my head out of the window to see what was
the matter. Keimer, being in the street, look'd up and saw me, call'd
out to me in a loud voice and angry tone to mind my business, adding
some reproachful words, that nettled me the more for their publicity,
all the neighbours who were looking out on the same occasion being
witnesses how I was treated. He came up immediately into the
printing-house, continu'd the quarrel, high words pass'd on both
sides, he gave me the quarter's warning we had stipulated, expressing
a wish that he had not been oblig'd to so long a warning. I told him
his wish was unnecessary, for I would leave him that instant; and so,
taking my hat, walk'd out of doors, desiring Meredith, whom I saw
below, to take care of some things I left, and bring them to my
lodgings.

Meredith came accordingly in the evening, when we talked my affair
over. He had conceiv'd a great regard for me, and was very unwilling
that I should leave the house while he remain'd in it. He dissuaded me
from returning to my native country, which I began to think of; he
reminded me that Keimer was in debt for all he possess'd; that his
creditors began to be uneasy; that he kept his shop miserably, sold
often without profit for ready money, and often trusted without
keeping accounts; that he must therefore fail, which would make a
vacancy I might profit of. I objected my want of money. He then let me
know that his father had a high opinion of me, and, from some
discourse that had pass'd between them, he was sure would advance
money to set us up, if I would enter into partnership with him. "My
time," says he, "will be out with Keimer in the spring; by that time
we may have our press and types in from London. I am sensible I am no
workman; if you like it, your skill in the business shall be set
against the stock I furnish, and we will share the profits equally."

The proposal was agreeable, and I consented; his father was in town
and approv'd of it; the more as he saw I had great influence with his
son, had prevailed on him to abstain long from dram-drinking, and he
hop'd might break him of that wretched habit entirely, when we came to
be so closely connected. I gave an inventory to the father, who
carry'd it to a merchant; the things were sent for, the secret was to
be kept till they should arrive, and in the meantime I was to get
work, if I could, at the other printing-house. But I found no vacancy
there, and so remained idle a few days, when Keimer, on a prospect of
being employ'd to print some paper money in New Jersey, which would
require cuts and various types that I only could supply, and
apprehending Bradford might engage me and get the jobb from him, sent
me a very civil message, that old friends should not part for a few
words, the effect of sudden passion, and wishing me to return.
Meredith persuaded me to comply, as it would give more opportunity for
his improvement under my daily instructions; so I return'd, and we
went on more smoothly than for some time before. The New Jersey jobb
was obtained, I contriv'd a copperplate press for it, the first that
had been seen in the country; I cut several ornaments and checks for
the bills. We went together to Burlington, where I executed the whole
to satisfaction; and he received so large a sum for the work as to be
enabled thereby to keep his head much longer above water.

At Burlington I made an acquaintance with many principal people of the
province. Several of them had been appointed by the Assembly a
committee to attend the press, and take care that no more bills were
printed than the law directed. They were therefore, by turns,
constantly with us, and generally he who attended, brought with him a
friend or two for company. My mind having been much more improv'd by
reading than Keimer's, I suppose it was for that reason my
conversation seem'd to be more valu'd. They had me to their houses,
introduced me to their friends, and show'd me much civility; while he,
tho' the master, was a little neglected. In truth, he was an odd fish;
ignorant of common life, fond of rudely opposing receiv'd opinions,
slovenly to extream dirtiness, enthusiastic in some points of
religion, and a little knavish withal.

We continu'd there near three months; and by that time I could reckon
among my acquired friends, Judge Allen, Samuel Bustill, the secretary
of the Province, Isaac Pearson, Joseph Cooper, and several of the
Smiths, members of Assembly, and Isaac Decow, the surveyor-general.
The latter was a shrewd, sagacious old man, who told me that he began
for himself, when young, by wheeling clay for brick-makers, learned to
write after he was of age, carri'd the chain for surveyors, who taught
him surveying, and he had now by his industry, acquir'd a good
estate; and says he, "I foresee that you will soon work this man out
of his business, and make a fortune in it at Philadelphia." He had not
then the least intimation of my intention to set up there or anywhere.
These friends were afterwards of great use to me, as I occasionally
was to some of them. They all continued their regard for me as long as
they lived.

Before I enter upon my public appearance in business, it may be well
to let you know the then state of my mind with regard to my principles
and morals, that you may see how far those influenc'd the future
events of my life. My parents had early given me religious
impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the
Dissenting way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by
turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different
books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books
against Deism[52] fell into my hands; they were said to be the
substance of sermons preached at Boyle's Lectures. It happened that
they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by
them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be
refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short,
I soon became a thorough Deist. My arguments perverted some others,
particularly Collins and Ralph; but, each of them having afterwards
wrong'd me greatly without the least compunction, and recollecting
Keith's conduct towards me (who was another free-thinker), and my own
towards Vernon and Miss Read, which at times gave me great trouble, I
began to suspect that this doctrine, tho' it might be true, was not
very useful. My London pamphlet, which had for its motto these lines
of Dryden:[53]

  "Whatever is, is right. Though purblind man
   Sees but a part o' the chain, the nearest link:
   His eyes not carrying to the equal beam,
   That poises all above;"

and from the attributes of God, his infinite wisdom, goodness and
power, concluded that nothing could possibly be wrong in the world,
and that vice and virtue were empty distinctions, no such things
existing, appear'd now not so clever a performance as I once thought
it; and I doubted whether some error had not insinuated itself
unperceiv'd into my argument, so as to infect all that follow'd, as is
common in metaphysical reasonings.

    [52] The creed of an eighteenth century theological sect
    which, while believing in God, refused to credit the
    possibility of miracles and to acknowledge the validity
    of revelation.

    [53] A great English poet, dramatist, and critic
    (1631-1700). The lines are inaccurately quoted from
    Dryden's OEdipus, Act III, Scene I, line 293.

I grew convinc'd that _truth_, _sincerity_ and _integrity_ in dealings
between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of
life; and I form'd written resolutions, which still remain in my
journal book, to practice them ever while I lived. Revelation had
indeed no weight with me, as such; but I entertain'd an opinion that,
though certain actions might not be bad _because_ they were forbidden
by it, or good _because_ it commanded them, yet probably these actions
might be forbidden _because_ they were bad for us, or commanded
_because_ they were beneficial to us, in their own natures, all the
circumstances of things considered. And this persuasion, with the kind
hand of Providence, or some guardian angel, or accidental favourable
circumstances and situations, or all together, preserved me, thro'
this dangerous time of youth, and the hazardous situations I was
sometimes in among strangers, remote from the eye and advice of my
father, without any willful gross immorality or injustice, that might
have been expected from my want of religion. I say willful, because
the instances I have mentioned had something of _necessity_ in them,
from my youth, inexperience, and the knavery of others. I had
therefore a tolerable character to begin the world with; I valued it
properly, and determin'd to preserve it.

We had not been long return'd to Philadelphia before the new types
arriv'd from London. We settled with Keimer, and left him by his
consent before he heard of it. We found a house to hire near the
market, and took it. To lessen the rent, which was then but
twenty-four pounds a year, tho' I have since known it to let for
seventy, we took in Thomas Godfrey, a glazier, and his family, who
were to pay a considerable part of it to us, and we to board with
them. We had scarce opened our letters and put our press in order,
before George House, an acquaintance of mine, brought a countryman to
us, whom he had met in the street inquiring for a printer. All our
cash was now expended in the variety of particulars we had been
obliged to procure, and this countryman's five shillings, being our
first-fruits, and coming so seasonably, gave me more pleasure than any
crown I have since earned; and the gratitude I felt toward House has
made me often more ready than perhaps I should otherwise have been to
assist young beginners.

There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a
one then lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man, with
a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel
Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopt one day at my door,
and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new
printing-house. Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was
sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense
would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people
already half-bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances to the
contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his
certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact, among the things
that would soon ruin us. And he gave me such a detail of misfortunes
now existing, or that were soon to exist, that he left me half
melancholy. Had I known him before I engaged in this business,
probably I never should have done it. This man continued to live in
this decaying place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for
many years to buy a house there, because all was going to
destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five
times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first
began his croaking.

I should have mentioned before, that, in the autumn of the preceding
year, I had form'd most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club of
mutual improvement, which was called the Junto;[54] we met on Friday
evenings. The rules that I drew up required that every member, in his
turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of Morals,
Politics, or Natural Philosophy, to be discuss'd by the company; and
once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on
any subject he pleased. Our debates were to be under the direction of
a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry
after truth, without fondness for dispute, or desire of victory; and,
to prevent warmth, all expressions of positiveness in opinions, or
direct contradiction, were after some time made contraband, and
prohibited under small pecuniary penalties.

    [54] A Spanish term meaning a combination for political
    intrigue; here a club or society.

The first members were Joseph Breintnal, a copyer of deeds for the
scriveners, a good-natur'd, friendly middle-ag'd man, a great lover
of poetry, reading all he could meet with, and writing some that was
tolerable; very ingenious in many little Nicknackeries, and of
sensible conversation.

Thomas Godfrey, a self-taught mathematician, great in his way, and
afterward inventor of what is now called Hadley's Quadrant. But he
knew little out of his way, and was not a pleasing companion; as, like
most great mathematicians I have met with, he expected universal
precision in everything said, or was forever denying or distinguishing
upon trifles, to the disturbance of all conversation. He soon left us.

Nicholas Scull, a surveyor, afterwards surveyor-general, who lov'd
books, and sometimes made a few verses.

William Parsons, bred a shoemaker, but, loving reading, had acquir'd a
considerable share of mathematics, which he first studied with a view
to astrology, that he afterwards laught at it. He also became
surveyor-general.

William Maugridge, a joiner, a most exquisite mechanic, and a solid,
sensible man.

Hugh Meredith, Stephen Potts, and George Webb I have characteriz'd
before.

Robert Grace, a young gentleman of some fortune, generous, lively, and
witty; a lover of punning and of his friends.

And William Coleman, then a merchant's clerk, about my age, who had
the coolest, clearest head, the best heart, and the exactest morals of
almost any man I ever met with. He became afterwards a merchant of
great note, and one of our provincial judges. Our friendship continued
without interruption to his death, upwards of forty years; and the
club continued almost as long, and was the best school of philosophy,
morality, and politics that then existed in the province; for our
queries, which were read the week preceding their discussion, put us
upon reading with attention upon the several subjects, that we might
speak more to the purpose; and here, too, we acquired better habits of
conversation, everything being studied in our rules which might
prevent our disgusting each other. From hence the long continuance of
the club, which I shall have frequent occasion to speak further of
hereafter.

But my giving this account of it here is to show something of the
interest I had, everyone of these exerting themselves in recommending
business to us. Breintnal particularly procur'd us from the Quakers
the printing forty sheets of their history, the rest being to be done
by Keimer; and upon this we work'd exceedingly hard, for the price was
low. It was a folio, pro patria size, in pica, with long primer
notes.[55] I compos'd of it a sheet a day, and Meredith worked it off
at press; it was often eleven at night, and sometimes later, before I
had finished my distribution for the next day's work, for the little
jobbs sent in by our other friends now and then put us back. But so
determin'd I was to continue doing a sheet a day of the folio, that
one night, when, having impos'd[56] my forms, I thought my day's work
over, one of them by accident was broken, and two pages reduced to
pi,[57] I immediately distribut'd and composed it over again before I
went to bed; and this industry, visible to our neighbors, began to
give us character and credit; particularly, I was told, that mention
being made of the new printing-office at the merchants' Every-night
club, the general opinion was that it must fail, there being already
two printers in the place, Keimer and Bradford; but Dr. Baird (whom
you and I saw many years after at his native place, St. Andrew's in
Scotland) gave a contrary opinion: "For the industry of that
Franklin," says he, "is superior to anything I ever saw of the kind; I
see him still at work when I go home from club, and he is at work
again before his neighbors are out of bed." This struck the rest, and
we soon after had offers from one of them to supply us with
stationery; but as yet we did not chuse to engage in shop business.

    [55] A sheet 8-1/2 by 13-1/2 inches, having the words
    _pro patria_ in translucent letters in the body of the
    paper. Pica--a size of type; as, A B C D: Long Primer--a
    smaller size of type; as, A B C D.

    [56] To arrange and lock up pages or columns of type in a
    rectangular iron frame, ready for printing.

    [57] Reduced to complete disorder.

I mention this industry the more particularly and the more freely,
tho' it seems to be talking in my own praise, that those of my
posterity, who shall read it, may know the use of that virtue, when
they see its effects in my favour throughout this relation.

George Webb, who had found a female friend that lent him wherewith to
purchase his time of Keimer, now came to offer himself as a
journeyman to us. We could not then employ him; but I foolishly let
him know as a secret that I soon intended to begin a newspaper, and
might then have work for him. My hopes of success, as I told him, were
founded on this, that the then only newspaper, printed by Bradford,
was a paltry thing, wretchedly manag'd, no way entertaining, and yet
was profitable to him; I therefore thought a good paper would scarcely
fail of good encouragement. I requested Webb not to mention it; but he
told it to Keimer, who immediately, to be beforehand with me,
published proposals for printing one himself, on which Webb was to be
employ'd. I resented this; and, to counteract them, as I could not yet
begin our paper, I wrote several pieces of entertainment for
Bradford's paper, under the title of the Busy Body, which Breintnal
continu'd some months. By this means the attention of the publick was
fixed on that paper, and Keimer's proposals, which we burlesqu'd and
ridicul'd, were disregarded. He began his paper, however, and, after
carrying it on three quarters of a year, with at most only ninety
subscribers, he offered it to me for a trifle; and I, having been
ready some time to go on with it, took it in hand directly; and it
prov'd in a few years extremely profitable to me.

I perceive that I am apt to speak in the singular number, though our
partnership still continu'd; the reason may be that, in fact, the
whole management of the business lay upon me. Meredith was no
compositor, a poor pressman, and seldom sober. My friends lamented my
connection with him, but I was to make the best of it.

[Illustration: "I see him still at work when I go home from club"]

Our first papers made a quite different appearance from any before in
the province; a better type, and better printed; but some spirited
remarks of my writing, on the dispute then going on between Governor
Burnet and the Massachusetts Assembly, struck the principal people,
occasioned the paper and the manager of it to be much talk'd of, and
in a few weeks brought them all to be our subscribers.

Their example was follow'd by many, and our number went on growing
continually. This was one of the first good effects of my having
learnt a little to scribble; another was, that the leading men, seeing
a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen,
thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still
printed the votes, and laws, and other publick business. He had
printed an address of the House to the governor, in a coarse,
blundering manner; we reprinted it elegantly and correctly, and sent
one to every member. They were sensible of the difference: it
strengthened the hands of our friends in the House, and they voted us
their printers for the year ensuing.

Among my friends in the House I must not forget Mr. Hamilton, before
mentioned, who was then returned from England, and had a seat in it.
He interested himself for me strongly in that instance, as he did in
many others afterward, continuing his patronage till his death.[58]

    [58] I got his son once £500.--_Marg. note_.

Mr. Vernon, about this time, put me in mind of the debt I ow'd him,
but did not press me. I wrote him an ingenuous letter of
acknowledgment, crav'd his forbearance a little longer, which he
allow'd me, and as soon as I was able, I paid the principal with
interest, and many thanks; so that erratum was in some degree
corrected.

But now another difficulty came upon me which I had never the least
reason to expect. Mr. Meredith's father, who was to have paid for our
printing-house, according to the expectations given me, was able to
advance only one hundred pounds currency, which had been paid; and a
hundred more was due to the merchant, who grew impatient, and su'd us
all. We gave bail, but saw that, if the money could not be rais'd in
time, the suit must soon come to a judgment and execution, and our
hopeful prospects must, with us, be ruined, as the press and letters
must be sold for payment, perhaps at half price.

In this distress two true friends, whose kindness I have never
forgotten, nor ever shall forget while I can remember any thing, came
to me separately, unknown to each other, and, without any application
from me, offering each of them to advance me all the money that should
be necessary to enable me to take the whole business upon myself, if
that should be practicable; but they did not like my continuing the
partnership with Meredith, who, as they said, was often seen drunk in
the streets, and playing at low games in alehouses, much to our
discredit. These two friends were William Coleman and Robert Grace. I
told them I could not propose a separation while any prospect remain'd
of the Meredith's fulfilling their part of our agreement, because I
thought myself under great obligations to them for what they had done,
and would do if they could; but, if they finally fail'd in their
performance, and our partnership must be dissolv'd, I should then
think myself at liberty to accept the assistance of my friends.

Thus the matter rested for some time, when I said to my partner,
"Perhaps your father is dissatisfied at the part you have undertaken
in this affair of ours, and is unwilling to advance for you and me
what he would for you alone. If that is the case, tell me, and I will
resign the whole to you, and go about my business." "No," said he, "my
father has really been disappointed, and is really unable; and I am
unwilling to distress him farther. I see this is a business I am not
fit for. I was bred a farmer, and it was a folly in me to come to
town, and put myself, at thirty years of age, an apprentice to learn a
new trade. Many of our Welsh people are going to settle in North
Carolina, where land is cheap. I am inclin'd to go with them, and
follow my old employment. You may find friends to assist you. If you
will take the debts of the company upon you; return to my father the
hundred pounds he has advanced; pay my little personal debts, and give
me thirty pounds and a new saddle, I will relinquish the partnership,
and leave the whole in your hands." I agreed to this proposal: it was
drawn up in writing, sign'd, and seal'd immediately. I gave him what
he demanded, and he went soon after to Carolina, from whence he sent
me next year two long letters, containing the best account that had
been given of that country, the climate, the soil, husbandry, etc.,
for in those matters he was very judicious. I printed them in the
papers, and they gave great satisfaction to the publick.

As soon as he was gone, I recurr'd to my two friends; and because I
would not give an unkind preference to either, I took half of what
each had offered and I wanted of one, and half of the other; paid off
the company's debts, and went on with the business in my own name,
advertising that the partnership was dissolved. I think this was in or
about the year 1729.




VIII

BUSINESS SUCCESS AND FIRST
PUBLIC SERVICE


About this time there was a cry among the people for more paper money,
only fifteen thousand pounds being extant in the province, and that
soon to be sunk.[59] The wealthy inhabitants oppos'd any addition,
being against all paper currency, from an apprehension that it would
depreciate, as it had done in New England, to the prejudice of all
creditors. We had discuss'd this point in our Junto, where I was on
the side of an addition, being persuaded that the first small sum
struck in 1723 had done much good by increasing the trade, employment,
and number of inhabitants in the province, since I now saw all the old
houses inhabited, and many new ones building: whereas I remembered
well, that when I first walk'd about the streets of Philadelphia,
eating my roll, I saw most of the houses in Walnut Street, between
Second and Front streets,[60] with bills on their doors, "To be let";
and many likewise in Chestnut-street and other streets, which made me
then think the inhabitants of the city were deserting it one after
another.

    [59] Recalled to be redeemed.

    [60] This part of Philadelphia is now the center of the
    wholesale business district.

Our debates possess'd me so fully of the subject, that I wrote and
printed an anonymous pamphlet on it, entitled "_The Nature and
Necessity of a Paper Currency_." It was well receiv'd by the common
people in general; but the rich men dislik'd it, for it increas'd and
strengthen'd the clamor for more money, and they happening to have no
writers among them that were able to answer it, their opposition
slacken'd, and the point was carried by a majority in the House. My
friends there, who conceiv'd I had been of some service, thought fit
to reward me by employing me in printing the money; a very profitable
jobb and a great help to me. This was another advantage gain'd by my
being able to write.

The utility of this currency became by time and experience so evident
as never afterwards to be much disputed; so that it grew soon to
fifty-five thousand pounds, and in 1739 to eighty thousand pounds,
since which it arose during war to upwards of three hundred and fifty
thousand pounds, trade, building, and inhabitants all the while
increasing, tho' I now think there are limits beyond which the
quantity may be hurtful.[61]

    [61] Paper money is a promise to pay its face value in
    gold or silver. When a state or nation issues more such
    promises than there is a likelihood of its being able to
    redeem, the paper representing the promises depreciates
    in value. Before the success of the Colonies in the
    Revolution was assured, it took hundreds of dollars of
    their paper money to buy a pair of boots.

I soon after obtain'd, thro' my friend Hamilton, the printing of the
Newcastle paper money, another profitable jobb as I then thought it;
small things appearing great to those in small circumstances; and
these, to me, were really great advantages, as they were great
encouragements. He procured for me, also, the printing of the laws and
votes of that government, which continu'd in my hands as long as I
follow'd the business.

I now open'd a little stationer's shop. I had in it blanks of all
sorts, the correctest that ever appear'd among us, being assisted in
that by my friend Breintnal. I had also paper, parchment, chapmen's
books, etc. One Whitemash, a compositor I had known in London, an
excellent workman, now came to me, and work'd with me constantly and
diligently; and I took an apprentice, the son of Aquilla Rose.

[Illustration: "I sometimes brought home the paper I purchas'd at the
stores thro' the streets on a wheelbarrow"]

I began now gradually to pay off the debt I was under for the
printing-house. In order to secure my credit and character as a
tradesman, I took care not only to be in _reality_ industrious and
frugal, but to avoid all appearances to the contrary. I drest plainly;
I was seen at no places of idle diversion. I never went out a fishing
or shooting; a book, indeed, sometimes debauch'd me from my work, but
that was seldom, snug, and gave no scandal; and, to show that I was
not above my business, I sometimes brought home the paper I purchas'd
at the stores thro' the streets on a wheelbarrow. Thus being esteem'd
an industrious, thriving young man, and paying duly for what I bought,
the merchants who imported stationery solicited my custom; others
proposed supplying me with books, and I went on swimmingly. In the
meantime, Keimer's credit and business declining daily, he was at last
forc'd to sell his printing-house to satisfy his creditors. He went to
Barbadoes, and there lived some years in very poor circumstances.

His apprentice, David Harry, whom I had instructed while I work'd with
him, set up in his place at Philadelphia, having bought his materials.
I was at first apprehensive of a powerful rival in Harry, as his
friends were very able, and had a good deal of interest. I therefore
propos'd a partnership to him, which he, fortunately for me, rejected
with scorn. He was very proud, dress'd like a gentleman, liv'd
expensively, took much diversion and pleasure abroad, ran in debt, and
neglected his business; upon which, all business left him; and,
finding nothing to do, he followed Keimer to Barbadoes, taking the
printing-house with him. There this apprentice employ'd his former
master as a journeyman; they quarrell'd often; Harry went continually
behindhand, and at length was forc'd to sell his types and return to
his country work in Pennsylvania. The person that bought them employ'd
Keimer to use them, but in a few years he died.

There remained now no competitor with me at Philadelphia but the old
one, Bradford; who was rich and easy, did a little printing now and
then by straggling hands, but was not very anxious about the business.
However, as he kept the post-office, it was imagined he had better
opportunities of obtaining news; his paper was thought a better
distributer of advertisements than mine, and therefore had many more,
which was a profitable thing to him, and a disadvantage to me; for,
tho' I did indeed receive and send papers by the post, yet the publick
opinion was otherwise, for what I did send was by bribing the riders,
who took them privately, Bradford being unkind enough to forbid it,
which occasion'd some resentment on my part; and I thought so meanly
of him for it, that, when I afterward came into his situation, I took
care never to imitate it.

I had hitherto continu'd to board with Godfrey, who lived in part of
my house with his wife and children, and had one side of the shop for
his glazier's business, tho' he worked little, being always absorbed
in his mathematics. Mrs. Godfrey projected a match for me with a
relation's daughter, took opportunities of bringing us often together,
till a serious courtship on my part ensu'd, the girl being in herself
very deserving. The old folks encourag'd me by continual invitations
to supper, and by leaving us together, till at length it was time to
explain. Mrs. Godfrey manag'd our little treaty. I let her know that I
expected as much money with their daughter as would pay off my
remaining debt for the printing-house, which I believe was not then
above a hundred pounds. She brought me word they had no such sum to
spare; I said they might mortgage their house in the loan-office. The
answer to this, after some days, was, that they did not approve the
match; that, on inquiry of Bradford, they had been informed the
printing business was not a profitable one; the types would soon be
worn out, and more wanted; that S. Keimer and D. Harry had failed one
after the other, and I should probably soon follow them; and,
therefore, I was forbidden the house, and the daughter shut up.

Whether this was a real change of sentiment or only artifice, on a
supposition of our being too far engaged in affection to retract, and
therefore that we should steal a marriage, which would leave them at
liberty to give or withhold what they pleas'd, I know not; but I
suspected the latter, resented it, and went no more. Mrs. Godfrey
brought me afterward some more favorable accounts of their
disposition, and would have drawn me on again; but I declared
absolutely my resolution to have nothing more to do with that family.
This was resented by the Godfreys; we differed, and they removed,
leaving me the whole house, and I resolved to take no more inmates.

But this affair having turned my thoughts to marriage, I look'd round
me and made overtures of acquaintance in other places; but soon found
that, the business of a printer being generally thought a poor one, I
was not to expect money with a wife, unless with such a one as I
should not otherwise think agreeable. A friendly correspondence as
neighbours and old acquaintances had continued between me and Mrs.
Read's family, who all had a regard for me from the time of my first
lodging in their house. I was often invited there and consulted in
their affairs, wherein I sometimes was of service. I piti'd poor Miss
Read's unfortunate situation, who was generally dejected, seldom
chearful, and avoided company. I considered my giddiness and
inconstancy when in London as in a great degree the cause of her
unhappiness, tho' the mother was good enough to think the fault more
her own than mine, as she had prevented our marrying before I went
thither, and persuaded the other match in my absence. Our mutual
affection was revived, but there were now great objections to our
union. The match was indeed looked upon as invalid, a preceding wife
being said to be living in England; but this could not easily be
prov'd, because of the distance; and, tho' there was a report of his
death, it was not certain. Then, tho' it should be true, he had left
many debts, which his successor might be call'd upon to pay. We
ventured, however, over all these difficulties, and I took her to
wife, September 1st, 1730. None of the inconveniences happened that we
had apprehended; she proved a good and faithful helpmate,[62] assisted
me much by attending the shop; we throve together, and have ever
mutually endeavour'd to make each other happy. Thus I corrected that
great _erratum_ as well as I could.

    [62] Mrs. Franklin survived her marriage over forty
    years. Franklin's correspondence abounds with evidence
    that their union was a happy one. "We are grown old
    together, and if she has any faults, I am so used to
    them that I don't perceive them." The following is a
    stanza from one of Franklin's own songs written for the
    Junto:

      "Of their Chloes and Phyllises poets may prate,
         I sing my plain country Joan,
       These twelve years my wife, still the joy of my life,
         Blest day that I made her my own."

About this time, our club meeting, not at a tavern, but in a little
room of Mr. Grace's, set apart for that purpose, a proposition was
made by me, that, since our books were often referr'd to in our
disquisitions upon the queries, it might be convenient to us to have
them altogether where we met, that upon occasion they might be
consulted; and by thus clubbing our books to a common library, we
should, while we lik'd to keep them together, have each of us the
advantage of using the books of all the other members, which would be
nearly as beneficial as if each owned the whole. It was lik'd and
agreed to, and we fill'd one end of the room with such books as we
could best spare. The number was not so great as we expected; and tho'
they had been of great use, yet some inconveniences occurring for want
of due care of them, the collection, after about a year, was
separated, and each took his books home again.

And now I set on foot my first project of a public nature, that for a
subscription library. I drew up the proposals, got them put into form
by our great scrivener, Brockden, and, by the help of my friends in
the Junto, procured fifty subscribers of forty shillings each to begin
with, and ten shillings a year for fifty years, the term our company
was to continue. We afterwards obtain'd a charter, the company being
increased to one hundred: this was the mother of all the North
American subscription libraries, now so numerous. It is become a great
thing itself, and continually increasing. These libraries have
improved the general conversation of the Americans, made the common
tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other
countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so
generally made throughout the colonies in defense of their
privileges.[63]

_Mem°._ Thus far was written with the intention express'd in the
beginning and therefore contains several little family anecdotes of no
importance to others. What follows was written many years after in
compliance with the advice contain'd in these letters, and accordingly
intended for the public. The affairs of the Revolution occasion'd the
interruption.[64]

    [63] Here the first part of the _Autobiography_, written
    at Twyford in 1771, ends. The second part, which
    follows, was written at Passy in 1784.

    [64] After this memorandum, Franklin inserted letters
    from Abel James and Benjamin Vaughan, urging him to
    continue his _Autobiography_.

[_Continuation of the Account of my Life, begun at Passy, near Paris,
1784._]

It is some time since I receiv'd the above letters, but I have been
too busy till now to think of complying with the request they contain.
It might, too, be much better done if I were at home among my papers,
which would aid my memory, and help to ascertain dates; but my return
being uncertain, and having just now a little leisure, I will
endeavour to recollect and write what I can; if I live to get home, it
may there be corrected and improv'd.

Not having any copy here of what is already written, I know not
whether an account is given of the means I used to establish the
Philadelphia public library, which, from a small beginning, is now
become so considerable, though I remember to have come down to near
the time of that transaction (1730). I will therefore begin here with
an account of it, which may be struck out if found to have been
already given.

At the time I establish'd myself in Pennsylvania, there was not a good
bookseller's shop in any of the colonies to the southward of Boston.
In New York and Philad'a the printers were indeed stationers; they
sold only paper, etc., almanacs, ballads, and a few common
school-books. Those who lov'd reading were obliged to send for their
books from England; the members of the Junto had each a few. We had
left the alehouse, where we first met, and hired a room to hold our
club in. I propos'd that we should all of us bring our books to that
room, where they would not only be ready to consult in our
conferences, but become a common benefit, each of us being at liberty
to borrow such as he wish'd to read at home. This was accordingly
done, and for some time contented us.

Finding the advantage of this little collection, I propos'd to render
the benefit from books more common, by commencing a public
subscription library. I drew a sketch of the plan and rules that would
be necessary, and got a skilful conveyancer, Mr. Charles Brockden, to
put the whole in form of articles of agreement to be subscribed, by
which each subscriber engag'd to pay a certain sum down for the first
purchase of books, and an annual contribution for increasing them. So
few were the readers at that time in Philadelphia, and the majority of
us so poor, that I was not able, with great industry, to find more
than fifty persons, mostly young tradesmen, willing to pay down for
this purpose forty shillings each, and ten shillings per annum. On
this little fund we began. The books were imported; the library was
opened one day in the week for lending to the subscribers, on their
promissory notes to pay double the value if not duly returned. The
institution soon manifested its utility, was imitated by other towns,
and in other provinces. The libraries were augmented by donations;
reading became fashionable; and our people, having no publick
amusements to divert their attention from study, became better
acquainted with books, and in a few years were observ'd by strangers
to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same
rank generally are in other countries.

When we were about to sign the above mentioned articles, which were
to be binding on us, our heirs, etc., for fifty years, Mr. Brockden,
the scrivener, said to us, "You are young men, but it is scarcely
probable that any of you will live to see the expiration of the term
fix'd in the instrument." A number of us, however, are yet living; but
the instrument was after a few years rendered null by a charter that
incorporated and gave perpetuity to the company.

The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the
subscriptions, made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting one's
self as the proposer of any useful project, that might be suppos'd to
raise one's reputation in the smallest degree above that of one's
neighbours, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that
project. I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight, and
stated it as a scheme of a _number of friends_, who had requested me
to go about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of reading.
In this way my affair went on more smoothly, and I ever after
practis'd it on such occasions; and, from my frequent successes, can
heartily recommend it. The present little sacrifice of your vanity
will afterwards be amply repaid. If it remains a while uncertain to
whom the merit belongs, someone more vain than yourself will be
encouraged to claim it, and then even envy will be disposed to do you
justice by plucking those assumed feathers, and restoring them to
their right owner.

This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study,
for which I set apart an hour or two each day, and thus repair'd in
some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended
for me. Reading was the only amusement I allow'd myself. I spent no
time in taverns, games, or frolicks of any kind; and my industry in
my business continu'd as indefatigable as it was necessary. I was
indebted for my printing-house; I had a young family coming on to be
educated, and I had to contend with for business two printers, who
were established in the place before me. My circumstances, however,
grew daily easier. My original habits of frugality continuing, and my
father having, among his instructions to me when a boy, frequently
repeated a proverb of Solomon, "Seest thou a man diligent in his
calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean
men," I from thence considered industry as a means of obtaining wealth
and distinction, which encourag'd me, tho' I did not think that I
should ever literally _stand before kings_, which, however, has since
happened; for I have stood before _five_, and even had the honor of
sitting down with one, the King of Denmark, to dinner.

We have an English proverb that says, "_He that would thrive, must ask
his wife_." It was lucky for me that I had one as much dispos'd to
industry and frugality as myself. She assisted me chearfully in my
business, folding and stitching pamphlets, tending shop, purchasing
old linen rags for the paper-makers, etc., etc. We kept no idle
servants, our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the
cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was a long time break and milk
(no tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer, with a
pewter spoon. But mark how luxury will enter families, and make a
progress, in spite of principle: being call'd one morning to
breakfast, I found it in a China bowl, with a spoon of silver! They
had been bought for me without my knowledge by my wife, and had cost
her the enormous sum of three-and-twenty shillings, for which she had
no other excuse or apology to make, but that she thought _her_ husband
deserv'd a silver spoon and China bowl as well as any of his
neighbors. This was the first appearance of plate and China in our
house, which afterward, in a course of years, as our wealth increas'd,
augmented gradually to several hundred pounds in value.

I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and though some of
the dogmas of that persuasion, such as the _eternal decrees of God_,
_election_, _reprobation_, _etc._, appeared to me unintelligible,
others doubtful, and I early absented myself from the public
assemblies of the sect, Sunday being my studying day, I never was
without some religious principles. I never doubted, for instance, the
existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and govern'd it by his
Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good
to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be
punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter. These I
esteem'd the essentials of every religion; and, being to be found in
all the religions we had in our country, I respected them all, tho'
with different degrees of respect, as I found them more or less mix'd
with other articles, which, without any tendency to inspire, promote,
or confirm morality, serv'd principally to divide us, and make us
unfriendly to one another. This respect to all, with an opinion that
the worst had some good effects, induc'd me to avoid all discourse
that might tend to lessen the good opinion another might have of his
own religion; and as our province increas'd in people, and new places
of worship were continually wanted, and generally erected by voluntary
contribution, my mite for such purpose, whatever might be the sect,
was never refused.

Tho' I seldom attended any public worship, I had still an opinion of
its propriety, and of its utility when rightly conducted, and I
regularly paid my annual subscription for the support of the only
Presbyterian minister or meeting we had in Philadelphia. He us'd to
visit me sometimes as a friend, and admonished me to attend his
administrations, and I was now and then prevail'd on to do so, once
for five Sundays successively. Had he been in my opinion a good
preacher, perhaps I might have continued,[65] notwithstanding the
occasion I had for the Sunday's leisure in my course of study; but his
discourses were chiefly either polemic arguments, or explications of
the peculiar doctrines of our sect, and were all to me very dry,
uninteresting, and unedifying, since not a single moral principle was
inculcated or enforc'd, their aim seeming to be rather to make us
Presbyterians than good citizens.

    [65] Franklin expressed a different view about the duty
    of attending church later.

At length he took for his text that verse of the fourth chapter of
Philippians, "_Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, honest,
just, pure, lovely, or of good report, if there be any virtue, or any
praise, think on these things._" And I imagin'd, in a sermon on such a
text, we could not miss of having some morality. But he confin'd
himself to five points only, as meant by the apostle, viz.: 1. Keeping
holy the Sabbath day. 2. Being diligent in reading the holy
Scriptures. 3. Attending duly the publick worship. 4. Partaking of the
Sacrament. 5. Paying a due respect to God's ministers. These might be
all good things; but, as they were not the kind of good things that I
expected from that text, I despaired of ever meeting with them from
any other, was disgusted, and attended his preaching no more. I had
some years before compos'd a little Liturgy, or form of prayer, for my
own private use (viz., in 1728), entitled, _Articles of Belief and
Acts of Religion_. I return'd to the use of this, and went no more to
the public assemblies. My conduct might be blameable, but I leave it,
without attempting further to excuse it; my present purpose being to
relate facts, and not to make apologies for them.




IX

PLAN FOR ATTAINING MORAL
PERFECTION


It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of
arriving at moral perfection. I wish'd to live without committing any
fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural
inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or
thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might
not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had
undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined.[66] While my
care was employ'd in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised
by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was
sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere
speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely
virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the
contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and
established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform
rectitude of conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived the
following method.

    [66] Compare Philippians iv, 8.

In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with in my
reading, I found the catalogue more or less numerous, as different
writers included more or fewer ideas under the same name. Temperance,
for example, was by some confined to eating and drinking, while by
others it was extended to mean the moderating every other pleasure,
appetite, inclination, or passion, bodily or mental, even to our
avarice and ambition. I propos'd to myself, for the sake of clearness,
to use rather more names, with fewer ideas annex'd to each, than a few
names with more ideas; and I included under thirteen names of virtues
all that at that time occurr'd to me as necessary or desirable, and
annexed to each a short precept, which fully express'd the extent I
gave to its meaning.

These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:

1. Temperance.

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. Silence.

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling
conversation.

3. Order.

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business
have its time.

4. Resolution.

Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you
resolve.

5. Frugality.

Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; _i. e._, waste
nothing.

6. INDUSTRY.

Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all
unnecessary actions.

7. Sincerity.

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak,
speak accordingly.

8. Justice.

Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your
duty.

9. Moderation.

Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they
deserve.

10. Cleanliness.

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.

11. Tranquillity.

Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12. Chastity.

13. Humility.

Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

My intention being to acquire the _habitude_ of all these virtues, I
judg'd it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the
whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time; and, when I
should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till
I should have gone thro' the thirteen; and, as the previous
acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain
others, I arrang'd them with that view, as they stand above.
Temperance first, as it tends to procure that coolness and clearness
of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to be kept
up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of ancient
habits, and the force of perpetual temptations. This being acquir'd
and establish'd, Silence would be more easy; and my desire being to
gain knowledge at the same time that I improv'd in virtue, and
considering that in conversation it was obtain'd rather by the use of
the ears than of the tongue, and therefore wishing to break a habit I
was getting into of prattling, punning, and joking, which only made me
acceptable to trifling company, I gave _Silence_ the second place.
This and the next, _Order_, I expected would allow me more time for
attending to my project and my studies. _Resolution_, once become
habitual, would keep me firm in my endeavours to obtain all the
subsequent virtues; _Frugality_ and Industry freeing me from my
remaining debt, and producing affluence and independence, would make
more easy the practice of Sincerity and Justice, etc., etc. Conceiving
then, that, agreeably to the advice of Pythagoras[67] in his Golden
Verses, daily examination would be necessary, I contrived the
following method for conducting that examination.

I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the
virtues.[68] I rul'd each page with red ink, so as to have seven
columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a
letter for the day. I cross'd these columns with thirteen red lines,
marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of the
virtues, on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark, by a
little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been
committed respecting that virtue upon that day.

    [67] A famous Greek philosopher, who lived about 582-500
    B. C. The _Golden Verses_ here ascribed to him are
    probably of later origin. "The time which he recommends
    for this work is about even or bed-time, that we may
    conclude the action of the day with the judgment of
    conscience, making the examination of our conversation
    an evening song to God."

    [68] This "little book" is dated July 1, 1733.--W. T. F.

_Form of the pages._

TEMPERANCE.

EAT NOT TO DULLNESS.
DRINK NOT TO ELEVATION.
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
|              TEMPERANCE.              |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
|          EAT NOT TO DULLNESS.         |
|        DRINK NOT TO ELEVATION.        |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
|    | S. | M. | T. | W. | T. | F. | S. |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| T. |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| S. |  * |  * |    |  * |    |  * |    |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| O. | ** |  * |  * |    |  * |  * |  * |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| R. |    |    |  * |    |    |  * |    |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| F. |    |  * |    |    |  * |    |    |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| I. |    |    |  * |    |    |    |    |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| S. |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| J. |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| M. |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| C. |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| T. |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| C. |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+

I determined to give a week's strict attention to each of the virtues
successively. Thus, in the first week, my great guard was to avoid
every the least offense against _Temperance_, leaving the other
virtues to their ordinary chance, only marking every evening the
faults of the day. Thus, if in the first week I could keep my first
line, marked T, clear of spots, I suppos'd the habit of that virtue so
much strengthen'd, and its opposite weaken'd, that I might venture
extending my attention to include the next, and for the following week
keep both lines clear of spots. Proceeding thus to the last, I could
go thro' a course compleat in thirteen weeks, and four courses in a
year. And like him who, having a garden to weed, does not attempt to
eradicate all the bad herbs at once, which would exceed his reach and
his strength, but works on one of the beds at a time, and, having
accomplish'd the first, proceeds to a second, so I should have, I
hoped, the encouraging pleasure of seeing on my pages the progress I
made in virtue, by clearing successively my lines of their spots, till
in the end, by a number of courses, I should be happy in viewing a
clean book, after a thirteen weeks' daily examination.

This my little book had for its motto these lines from Addison's
_Cato_:

  "Here will I hold. If there's a power above us
   (And that there is, all nature cries aloud
   Thro' all her works), He must delight in virtue;
   And that which he delights in must be happy."

Another from Cicero,

"O vitæ Philosophia dux! O virtutum indagatrix expultrixque
vitiorum! Unus dies, bene et ex præceptis tuis
actus, peccanti immortalitati est anteponendus."[69]

    [69] "O philosophy, guide of life! O searcher out of
    virtue and exterminator of vice! One day spent well and
    in accordance with thy precepts is worth an immortality
    of sin."--_Tusculan Inquiries_, Book V.

Another from the Proverbs of Solomon, speaking of wisdom or virtue:

"Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand
riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace." iii. 16, 17.

And conceiving God to be the fountain of wisdom, I thought it right
and necessary to solicit his assistance for obtaining it; to this end
I formed the following little prayer, which was prefix'd to my tables
of examination, for daily use.

"_O powerful Goodness! bountiful Father! merciful
Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers my
truest interest. Strengthen my resolutions to perform what
that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to thy other
children as the only return in my power for thy continual
favours to me_."

I used also sometimes a little prayer which I took from Thomson's
Poems, viz.:

  "Father of light and life, thou Good Supreme!
   O teach me what is good; teach me Thyself!
   Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
   From every low pursuit; and fill my soul
   With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure;
   Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!"

The precept of _Order_ requiring that _every part of my business
should have its allotted time_, one page in my little book contain'd
the following scheme of employment for the twenty-four hours of a
natural day.

                            { 5}  Rise, wash, and address
                            { 6}  _Powerful Goodness_!
The Morning.                {  }  Contrive day's
_Question._ What good       {  }  business, and take the
shall I do this day?        {  }  resolution of the day;
                            { 7}  prosecute the present
                            {  }  study, and breakfast.

                              8}
                              9}  Work.
                             10}
                             11}

Noon.              {12}  Read, or overlook my
                            { 1}  accounts, and dine.

                              2}
                              3}  Work.
                              4}
                              5}
Evening.                    { 6} Put things in their
_Question._ What good       { 7} places. Supper. Music
have I done to-day?         { 8} or diversion, or conversation.
                            { 9} Examination of
                            {  } the day.


Night.                      {10} Sleep.
                            {11}
                            {12}
                            { 1}
                            { 2}
                            { 3}
                            { 4}

I enter'd upon the execution of this plan for self-examination, and
continu'd it with occasional intermissions for some time. I was
surpris'd to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined;
but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish. To avoid the
trouble of renewing now and then my little book, which, by scraping
out the marks on the paper of old faults to make room for new ones in
a new course, became full of holes, I transferr'd my tables and
precepts to the ivory leaves of a memorandum book, on which the lines
were drawn with red ink, that made a durable stain, and on those lines
I mark'd my faults with a black-lead pencil, which marks I could
easily wipe out with a wet sponge. After a while I went thro' one
course only in a year, and afterward only one in several years, till
at length I omitted them entirely, being employ'd in voyages and
business abroad, with a multiplicity of affairs that interfered; but I
always carried my little book with me.

My scheme of Order gave me the most trouble;[70] and I found that, tho'
it might be practicable where a man's business was such as to leave
him the disposition of his time, that of a journeyman printer, for
instance, it was not possible to be exactly observed by a master, who
must mix with the world, and often receive people of business at their
own hours. _Order_, too, with regard to places for things, papers,
etc., I found extreamly difficult to acquire. I had not been early
accustomed to it, and, having an exceeding good memory, I was not so
sensible of the inconvenience attending want of method. This article,
therefore, cost me so much painful attention, and my faults in it
vexed me so much, and I made so little progress in amendment, and had
such frequent relapses, that I was almost ready to give up the
attempt, and content myself with a faulty character in that respect,
like the man who, in buying an ax of a smith, my neighbour, desired to
have the whole of its surface as bright as the edge. The smith
consented to grind it bright for him if he would turn the wheel; he
turn'd, while the smith press'd the broad face of the ax hard and
heavily on the stone, which made the turning of it very fatiguing. The
man came every now and then from the wheel to see how the work went
on, and at length would take his ax as it was, without farther
grinding. "No," said the smith, "turn on, turn on; we shall have it
bright by-and-by; as yet, it is only speckled." "Yes," says the man,
"_but I think I like a speckled ax best_." And I believe this may have
been the case with many, who, having, for want of some such means as I
employ'd, found the difficulty of obtaining good and breaking bad
habits in other points of vice and virtue, have given up the struggle,
and concluded that "_a speckled ax was best_"; for something, that
pretended to be reason, was every now and then suggesting to me that
such extream nicety as I exacted of myself might be a kind of foppery
in morals, which, if it were known, would make me ridiculous; that a
perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being
envied and hated; and that a benevolent man should allow a few faults
in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.

[Illustration: "The smith consented to grind it bright for him if he
would turn the wheel"]

    [70] Professor McMaster tells us that when Franklin was
    American Agent in France, his lack of business order was
    a source of annoyance to his colleagues and friends.
    "Strangers who came to see him were amazed to behold
    papers of the greatest importance scattered in the most
    careless way over the table and floor."

In truth, I found myself incorrigible with respect to Order; and now I
am grown old, and my memory bad, I feel very sensibly the want of it.
But, on the whole, tho' I never arrived at the perfection I had been
so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the
endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have
been if I had not attempted it; as those who aim at perfect writing by
imitating the engraved copies, tho' they never reach the wish'd-for
excellence of those copies, their hand is mended by the endeavour, and
is tolerable while it continues fair and legible.

It may be well my posterity should be informed that to this little
artifice, with the blessing of God, their ancestor ow'd the constant
felicity of his life, down to his 79th year, in which this is written.
What reverses may attend the remainder is in the hand of Providence;
but, if they arrive, the reflection on past happiness enjoy'd ought to
help his bearing them with more resignation. To Temperance he ascribes
his long-continued health, and what is still left to him of a good
constitution; to Industry and Frugality, the early easiness of his
circumstances and acquisition of his fortune, with all that knowledge
that enabled him to be a useful citizen, and obtained for him some
degree of reputation among the learned; to Sincerity and Justice, the
confidence of his country, and the honorable employs it conferred upon
him; and to the joint influence of the whole mass of the virtues,[71]
even in the imperfect state he was able to acquire them, all that
evenness of temper, and that cheerfulness in conversation, which makes
his company still sought for, and agreeable even to his younger
acquaintance. I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may
follow the example and reap the benefit.

    [71] While there can be no question that Franklin's moral
    improvement and happiness were due to the practice of
    these virtues, yet most people will agree that we shall
    have to go back of his plan for the impelling motive to
    a virtuous life. Franklin's own suggestion that the
    scheme smacks of "foppery in morals" seems justified.
    Woodrow Wilson well puts it: "Men do not take fire from
    such thoughts, unless something deeper, which is missing
    here, shine through them. What may have seemed to the
    eighteenth century a system of morals seems to us
    nothing more vital than a collection of the precepts of
    good sense and sound conduct. What redeems it from
    pettiness in this book is the scope of power and of
    usefulness to be seen in Franklin himself, who set these
    standards up in all seriousness and candor for his own
    life." See _Galatians_, chapter V, for the Christian
    plan of moral perfection.

It will be remark'd that, tho' my scheme was not wholly without
religion, there was in it no mark of any of the distinguishing tenets
of any particular sect. I had purposely avoided them; for, being fully
persuaded of the utility and excellency of my method, and that it
might be serviceable to people in all religions, and intending some
time or other to publish it, I would not have anything in it that
should prejudice anyone, of any sect, against it. I purposed writing a
little comment on each virtue, in which I would have shown the
advantages of possessing it, and the mischiefs attending its opposite
vice; and I should have called my book The Art of Virtue,[72] because
it would have shown the means and manner of obtaining virtue, which
would have distinguished it from the mere exhortation to be good, that
does not instruct and indicate the means, but is like the apostle's
man of verbal charity, who only without showing to the naked and
hungry how or where they might get clothes or victuals, exhorted them
to be fed and clothed.--James ii. 15, 16.

    [72] Nothing so likely to make a man's fortune as
    virtue.--_Marg. note_.

But it so happened that my intention of writing and publishing this
comment was never fulfilled. I did, indeed, from time to time, put
down short hints of the sentiments, reasonings, etc., to be made use
of in it, some of which I have still by me; but the necessary close
attention to private business in the earlier part of my life, and
public business since, have occasioned my postponing it; for, it being
connected in my mind with _a great and extensive project_, that
required the whole man to execute, and which an unforeseen succession
of employs prevented my attending to, it has hitherto remain'd
unfinish'd.

In this piece it was my design to explain and enforce this doctrine,
that vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but
forbidden because they are hurtful, the nature of man alone
considered; that it was, therefore, everyone's interest to be virtuous
who wish'd to be happy even in this world; and I should, from this
circumstance (there being always in the world a number of rich
merchants, nobility, states, and princes, who have need of honest
instruments for the management of their affairs, and such being so
rare), have endeavoured to convince young persons that no qualities
were so likely to make a poor man's fortune as those of probity and
integrity.

My list of virtues contain'd at first but twelve; but a Quaker friend
having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my
pride show'd itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content
with being in the right when discussing any point, but was
overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc'd me by
mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring to cure
myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the rest, and I added
_Humility_ to my list, giving an extensive meaning to the word.

I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the _reality_ of this
virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the _appearance_ of it. I
made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments
of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself,
agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or
expression in the language that imported a fix'd opinion, such as
_certainly, undoubtedly_, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, _I
conceive, I apprehend_, or _I imagine_ a thing to be so or so; or it
_so appears to me at present_. When another asserted something that I
thought an error, I deny'd myself the pleasure of contradicting him
abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his
proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain
cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present
case there _appear'd_ or _seem'd_ to me some difference, etc. I soon
found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I
engag'd in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos'd
my opinions procur'd them a readier reception and less contradiction;
I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I
more easily prevail'd with others to give up their mistakes and join
with me when I happened to be in the right.

And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to natural
inclination, became at length so easy, and so habitual to me, that
perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical
expression escape me. And to this habit (after my character of
integrity) I think it principally owing that I had early so much
weight with my fellow-citizens when I proposed new institutions, or
alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when
I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent,
subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in
language, and yet I generally carried my points.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard
to subdue as _pride_. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down,
stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and
will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it,
perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I
had compleatly overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

[Thus far written at Passy, 1784.]

[_"I am now about to write at home, August, 1788, but cannot have the
help expected from my papers, many of them being lost in the war. I
have, however, found the following."_][73]

    [73] This is a marginal memorandum.--B.

Having mentioned _a great and extensive project_ which I had
conceiv'd, it seems proper that some account should be here given of
that project and its object. Its first rise in my mind appears in the
following little paper, accidentally preserv'd, viz.:

_Observations_ on my reading history, in Library, May 19th, 1731.

"That the great affairs of the world, the wars, revolutions, etc., are
carried on and effected by parties.

"That the view of these parties is their present general interest, or
what they take to be such.

"That the different views of these different parties occasion all
confusion.

"That while a party is carrying on a general design, each man has his
particular private interest in view.

"That as soon as a party has gain'd its general point, each member
becomes intent upon his particular interest; which, thwarting others,
breaks that party into divisions, and occasions more confusion.

"That few in public affairs act from a mere view of the good of their
country, whatever they may pretend; and, tho' their actings bring real
good to their country, yet men primarily considered that their own and
their country's interest was united, and did not act from a principle
of benevolence.

"That fewer still, in public affairs, act with a view to the good of
mankind.

"There seems to me at present to be great occasion for raising a
United Party for Virtue, by forming the virtuous and good men of all
nations into a regular body, to be govern'd by suitable good and wise
rules, which good and wise men may probably be more unanimous in their
obedience to, than common people are to common laws.

"I at present think that whoever attempts this aright, and is well
qualified, cannot fail of pleasing God, and of meeting with success.

B. F."

Revolving this project in my mind, as to be undertaken hereafter, when
my circumstances should afford me the necessary leisure, I put down
from time to time, on pieces of paper, such thoughts as occurr'd to me
respecting it. Most of these are lost; but I find one purporting to be
the substance of an intended creed, containing, as I thought, the
essentials of every known religion, and being free of everything that
might shock the professors of any religion. It is express'd in these
words, viz.:

"That there is one God, who made all things.

"That he governs the world by his providence.

"That he ought to be worshiped by adoration, prayer, and
thanksgiving.

"But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man.

"That the soul is immortal.

"And that God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either
here or hereafter."

My ideas at that time were, that the sect should be begun and spread
at first among young and single men only; that each person to be
initiated should not only declare his assent to such creed, but should
have exercised himself with the thirteen weeks' examination and
practice of the virtues, as in the beforemention'd model; that the
existence of such a society should be kept a secret, till it was
become considerable, to prevent solicitations for the admission of
improper persons, but that the members should each of them search
among his acquaintance for ingenuous, well-disposed youths, to whom,
with prudent caution, the scheme should be gradually communicated;
that the members should engage to afford their advice, assistance, and
support to each other in promoting one another's interests, business,
and advancement in life; that, for distinction, we should be call'd
_The Society of the Free and Easy_: free, as being, by the general
practice and habit of the virtues, free from the dominion of vice;
and particularly by the practice of industry and frugality, free from
debt, which exposes a man to confinement, and a species of slavery to
his creditors.

This is as much as I can now recollect of the project, except that I
communicated it in part to two young men, who adopted it with some
enthusiasm; but my then narrow circumstances, and the necessity I was
under of sticking close to my business, occasioned my postponing the
further prosecution of it at that time; and my multifarious
occupations, public and private, induc'd me to continue postponing, so
that it has been omitted till I have no longer strength or activity
left sufficient for such an enterprise; though I am still of opinion
that it was a practicable scheme, and might have been very useful, by
forming a great number of good citizens; and I was not discourag'd by
the seeming magnitude of the undertaking, as I have always thought
that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and
accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan,
and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert
his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study
and business.




X

POOR RICHARD'S ALMANAC AND
OTHER ACTIVITIES


In 1732 I first publish'd my Almanack, under the name of _Richard
Saunders_; it was continu'd by me about twenty-five years, commonly
call'd _Poor Richard's Almanac_.[74] I endeavour'd to make it both
entertaining and useful, and it accordingly came to be in such demand,
that I reap'd considerable profit from it, vending annually near ten
thousand. And observing that it was generally read, scarce any
neighborhood in the province being without it, I consider'd it as a
proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who
bought scarcely any other books; I therefore filled all the little
spaces that occurr'd between the remarkable days in the calendar with
proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and
frugality, as the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing
virtue; it being more difficult for a man in want, to act always
honestly, as, to use here one of those proverbs, _it is hard for an
empty sack to stand upright_.

    [74] The almanac at that time was a kind of periodical as
    well as a guide to natural phenomena and the weather.
    Franklin took his title from _Poor Robin_, a famous
    English almanac, and from Richard Saunders, a well-known
    almanac publisher. For the maxims of Poor Richard, see
    pages 331-335.

These proverbs, which contained the wisdom of many ages and nations, I
assembled and form'd into a connected discourse prefix'd to the Almanack
of 1757, as the harangue of a wise old man to the people attending an
auction. The bringing all these scatter'd councils thus into a focus
enabled them to make greater impression. The piece, being universally
approved, was copied in all the newspapers of the Continent; reprinted
in Britain on a broadside, to be stuck up in houses; two translations
were made of it in French, and great numbers bought by the clergy and
gentry, to distribute gratis among their poor parishioners and tenants.
In Pennsylvania, as it discouraged useless expense in foreign
superfluities, some thought it had its share of influence in producing
that growing plenty of money which was observable for several years
after its publication.

Two pages from _Poor Richard's Almanac_ for 1736. Size of original.
Reproduced from a copy at the New York Public Library.

    _IV Mon._ June hath xxx days.

    Things that are bitter, bitterrer than Gall Physicians
    say are always physical: Now Women's Tongues if into
    Powder beaten, May in a Potion or a Pill be eaten, And
    as there's nought more bitter, I do muse, That Women's
    Tongues in Physick they ne'er use. My self and others
    who lead restless Lives, Would spare that bitter Member
    of our Wives.

 1 3 _fine weather_,                4  Le   4 36 8  Moon set 10 12 aft
 2 4  Ascension Day                 5  19   4 35 8 _He that can have_
 3 5  Mars Sat. Ven. _Sudden_       6  Vi   4 35 8 _Patience, can_
 4 6 _showers_                      6h 19   4 35 8 _have what he_
 5 7 _of Rain_.                     7  Li   4 35 8  First Quarter.
 6 C  Eraudi                        8  19   4 35 8 _will._
 7 2  Trine Mars Merc. _thunder_,   9  Sc   4 35 8  Le. Vi. Li.
 8 3 _perhaps hail._               10  17   4 35 8  Sun ent. Cn. today
 9 4  7* rise 2 15                 10  Sa   4 34 8  making longest
10 5 _very hot_,                   11  13   4 34 8  day 14 h. 51 m.
11 6  St. Barnabas.                12  26   4 34 8  Full Moon 12 day,
12 7 _then rain_.                   1  Cp   4 34 8  at 1 morn.
13 C  Whitsunday.                   2  20   4 35 8  Moon rise 8 20 aft.
14 2                                2h Aq   4 35 8 _Now I've a sheep_
15 3  K. Geo. II. procl             3  15   4 35 8 _and a cow, every_
16 4  ff. Sun Sat. _wind, rain_,    4  27   4 35 8 _body bids me good_
17 5  Sxtil Sat. Merc. _hail and_   5  Pi   4 35 8 _morrow._
18 6 _thunder_                      6  21   4 35 8  Moon rise 11 10 af.
19 7  Day shorter 2 m.              6h Ar   4 35 8
20 C  Trinity Sund.                 7  15   4 36 8  Last Quarter
21 2 _If we have rain about_        8  27   4 36 8 _God helps them_
22 3 _the Change_,                  9  Ta   4 36 8 _that help themselves_
23 4 _Let not my reader_           10  22   4 36 8
24 5  St. John Bap.                10  Gm   4 36 8  Moon rise 2 morn.
25 6  7* rise 1  8                 11  18   4 37 8 _Why does the_
26 7  vc Sun Jup. _think it_       12  Cn   4 37 8 _blind man's wife_
27 C _strange._                     1  16   4 38 8  New moon 27 day,
28 2  Sxtil Sat. Mars _hail and_    2  Le   4 38 8  near noon.
29 3  St. Peter & Paul              2h 15   4 39 8 _paint herself._
30 4  Square Mars Ven. _rain_.      3  Vi   4 40 8  Moon sets 9 30


    _V Mon._ July hath xxxi days.

    Who can charge _Ebrio_ with Thirst of Wealth? See he
    consumes his Money, Time and Health, In drunken Frolicks
    which will all confound, Neglects his Farm, forgets to
    till his Ground, His Stock grows less that might be kept
    with ease; In nought but Guts and Debts he finds
    Encrease. In Town reels as if he'd shove down each Wall,
    Yet Walls must stand, poor Soul, or he must fall.

 1 5   Day short 11 mi.             4  15   4 40 8 _None preaches_
 2 6   7* rise 12 32                5  Li   4 41 8 _better than the_
 3 7  _windy weather._              6  15   4 41 8 _ant, and she says_
 4 C   2 Sund. p Trinit             6h Sc   4 42 8  First Quarter.
 5 2   Vc Jup. Ven. _now_           7  14   4 43 8 _nothing._
 6 3  _pleasant weather_            8  27   4 44 8  Moon sets 12 30 m
 7 4  _some days_                   9  Sa   4 45 8 _The absent are_
 8 5  _together,_                  10  23   4 48 8 _never without_
 9 6  _but inclines to_            10  Cp   4 47 8 _fault, nor the_
10 7  _falling_                    11  18   4 48 8 _present without_
11 C   3 Sund. p. Trin.            12  Aq  4 49 8  Full moon 11 day,
12 2   Sxtil Sat. Merc. weather.    1  13   4 50 8  2 afternoon.
13 3   Dog-days begin               2  25   4 50 8  sun in Leo
14 4   Days 14h. 20 m               2h Pi   4 51 8  Moon rise 8 35 aft.
15 5   St. _Swithin_.               3  19   4 52 8 _excuse._
16 6   Le 1 Li                      4  Ar   4 53 8
17 7   conj. Sun Merc. _rain_       5  13   4 54 8 _Gifts burst_
18 C   7* rise 11 40                6  25   4 55 8 _rocks_
19 2  _hail or rain,_               6h Ta   4 56 8  Last Quarter.
20 3   Sxtil Sun Sat. thunder.      7  19   4 57 8  Moon rise 11 52 af
21 4   7* rise 11 18                8  Gm   4 57 8 _If wind blows on_
22 5  _then high_                   9  14   4 58 8 _you thro' a hole,_
23 6  _wind._                      10  27   4 59 8 _Make your will_
24 7   opp. Sun Jupiter            10  Cn   4 59 8 _and take care of_
25 C   St. James.                  11  25   5  0 7 _your soul._
26 2  _hail_                       12  Le   5  1 7  New moon 26 day,
27 3   Moon near cor Leo            1  24   5  2 7  near 8 aftern
28 4   opp. Jup. Ven. _a clear_     2  Vi   5  3 7  Moon sets 8 aftern
29 5  _air; and fine_               2h 24   5  4 7 _The rotten Apple_
30 6  _weather_                     3  Li   5  5 7 _spoils his_
31 7   7* rise 10 40                4  23   5  6 7 _Companion._

[Transcriber's note: Zodiac signs, aspects and symbols of the planets
have been replaced by their names and/or by their standard
abbreviations.

Ar=Aries, Ta=Taurus, Gm=Gemini, Cn=Cancer, Le=Leo, Vi=Virgo,
Li=Libra, Sc=Scorpio, Sa=Sagittarius, Cp=Capricorn, Aq=Aqua,
Pi=Pisces, Oppos=Opposition, Trine=Trine, Squr=Square,
Conj=Conjunction, Sxtil=Sextile, Qucnx= Quincunx.

Merc=Mercury, Ven=Venus, Mars=Mars, Jup=Jupiter, Sat=Saturn
Ura=Uranus, Nep=Neptune, Plu=Pluto.]

I considered my newspaper, also, as another means of communicating
instruction, and in that view frequently reprinted in it extracts from
the Spectator, and other moral writers; and sometimes publish'd little
pieces of my own, which had been first composed for reading in our
Junto. Of these are a Socratic dialogue, tending to prove that,
whatever might be his parts and abilities, a vicious man could not
properly be called a man of sense; and a discourse on self-denial,
showing that virtue was not secure till its practice became a
habitude, and was free from the opposition of contrary inclinations.
These may be found in the papers about the beginning of 1735.[75]

    [75] June 23 and July 7, 1730.--Smyth.

In the conduct of my newspaper, I carefully excluded all libeling and
personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our
country. Whenever I was solicited to insert anything of that kind, and
the writers pleaded, as they generally did, the liberty of the press,
and that a newspaper was like a stage-coach, in which anyone who would
pay had a right to a place, my answer was, that I would print the
piece separately if desired, and the author might have as many copies
as he pleased to distribute himself, but that I would not take upon me
to spread his detraction; and that, having contracted with my
subscribers to furnish them with what might be either useful or
entertaining, I could not fill their papers with private altercation,
in which they had no concern, without doing them manifest injustice.
Now, many of our printers make no scruple of gratifying the malice of
individuals by false accusations of the fairest characters among
ourselves, augmenting animosity even to the producing of duels; and
are, moreover, so indiscreet as to print scurrilous reflections on the
government of neighboring states, and even on the conduct of our best
national allies, which may be attended with the most pernicious
consequences. These things I mention as a caution to young printers,
and that they may be encouraged not to pollute their presses and
disgrace their profession by such infamous practices, but refuse
steadily, as they may see by my example that such a course of conduct
will not, on the whole, be injurious to their interests.

In 1733 I sent one of my journeymen to Charleston, South Carolina,
where a printer was wanting. I furnish'd him with a press and letters,
on an agreement of partnership, by which I was to receive one-third of
the profits of the business, paying one-third of the expense. He was a
man of learning, and honest but ignorant in matters of account; and,
tho' he sometimes made me remittances, I could get no account from
him, nor any satisfactory state of our partnership while he lived. On
his decease, the business was continued by his widow, who, being born
and bred in Holland, where, as I have been inform'd, the knowledge of
accounts makes a part of female education, she not only sent me as
clear a state as she could find of the transactions past, but
continued to account with the greatest regularity and exactness every
quarter afterwards, and managed the business with such success, that
she not only brought up reputably a family of children, but, at the
expiration of the term, was able to purchase of me the printing-house,
and establish her son in it.

I mention this affair chiefly for the sake of recommending that branch
of education for our young females, as likely to be of more use to
them and their children, in case of widowhood, than either music or
dancing, by preserving them from losses by imposition of crafty men,
and enabling them to continue, perhaps, a profitable mercantile house,
with establish'd correspondence, till a son is grown up fit to
undertake and go on with it, to the lasting advantage and enriching of
the family.

About the year 1734 there arrived among us from Ireland a young
Presbyterian preacher, named Hemphill, who delivered with a good
voice, and apparently extempore, most excellent discourses, which drew
together considerable numbers of different persuasions, who join'd in
admiring them. Among the rest, I became one of his constant hearers,
his sermons pleasing me, as they had little of the dogmatical kind,
but inculcated strongly the practice of virtue, or what in the
religious stile are called good works. Those, however, of our
congregation, who considered themselves as orthodox Presbyterians,
disapprov'd his doctrine, and were join'd by most of the old clergy,
who arraign'd him of heterodoxy before the synod, in order to have him
silenc'd. I became his zealous partisan, and contributed all I could
to raise a party in his favour, and we combated for him awhile with
some hopes of success. There was much scribbling pro and con upon the
occasion; and finding that, tho' an elegant preacher, he was but a
poor writer, I lent him my pen and wrote for him two or three
pamphlets, and one piece in the Gazette of April, 1735. Those
pamphlets, as is generally the case with controversial writings, tho'
eagerly read at the time, were soon out of vogue, and I question
whether a single copy of them now exists.[76]

    [76] See "A List of Books written by, or relating to
    Benjamin Franklin," by Paul Leicester Ford. 1889. p.
    15.--Smyth.

During the contest an unlucky occurrence hurt his cause exceedingly.
One of our adversaries having heard him preach a sermon that was much
admired, thought he had somewhere read the sermon before, or at least
a part of it. On search, he found that part quoted at length, in one
of the British Reviews, from a discourse of Dr. Foster's.[77] This
detection gave many of our party disgust, who accordingly abandoned
his cause, and occasion'd our more speedy discomfiture in the synod. I
stuck by him, however, as I rather approv'd his giving us good sermons
composed by others, than bad ones of his own manufacture, tho' the
latter was the practice of our common teachers. He afterward
acknowledg'd to me that none of those he preach'd were his own;
adding, that his memory was such as enabled him to retain and repeat
any sermon after one reading only. On our defeat, he left us in search
elsewhere of better fortune, and I quitted the congregation, never
joining it after, tho' I continu'd many years my subscription for the
support of its ministers.

    [77] Dr. James Foster (1697-1753):--

        "Let modest Foster, if he will excel
         Ten metropolitans in preaching well."

              --Pope (Epilogue to the Satires, I, 132).

    "Those who had not heard Farinelli sing and Foster
    preach were not qualified to appear in genteel company,"
    Hawkins. "History of Music."--Smyth.

I had begun in 1733 to study languages; I soon made myself so much a
master of the French as to be able to read the books with ease. I then
undertook the Italian. An acquaintance, who was also learning it, us'd
often to tempt me to play chess with him. Finding this took up too
much of the time I had to spare for study, I at length refus'd to play
any more, unless on this condition, that the victor in every game
should have a right to impose a task, either in parts of the grammar
to be got by heart, or in translations, etc., which tasks the
vanquish'd was to perform upon honour, before our next meeting. As we
play'd pretty equally, we thus beat one another into that language. I
afterwards with a little painstaking, acquir'd as much of the Spanish
as to read their books also.

I have already mention'd that I had only one year's instruction in a
Latin school, and that when very young, after which I neglected that
language entirely. But, when I had attained an acquaintance with the
French, Italian, and Spanish, I was surpris'd to find, on looking over
a Latin Testament, that I understood so much more of that language
than I had imagined, which encouraged me to apply myself again to the
study of it, and I met with more success, as those preceding languages
had greatly smooth'd my way.

From these circumstances, I have thought that there is some
inconsistency in our common mode of teaching languages. We are told
that it is proper to begin first with the Latin, and, having acquir'd
that, it will be more easy to attain those modern languages which are
deriv'd from it; and yet we do not begin with the Greek, in order more
easily to acquire the Latin. It is true that, if you can clamber and
get to the top of a staircase without using the steps, you will more
easily gain them in descending; but certainly, if you begin with the
lowest you will with more ease ascend to the top; and I would
therefore offer it to the consideration of those who superintend the
education of our youth, whether, since many of those who begin with
the Latin quit the same after spending some years without having made
any great proficiency, and what they have learnt becomes almost
useless, so that their time has been lost, it would not have been
better to have begun with the French, proceeding to the Italian, etc.;
for, tho', after spending the same time, they should quit the study of
languages and never arrive at the Latin, they would, however, have
acquired another tongue or two, that, being in modern use, might be
serviceable to them in common life.[78]

    [78] "The authority of Franklin, the most eminently
    practical man of his age, in favor of reserving the
    study of the dead languages until the mind has reached a
    certain maturity, is confirmed by the confession of one
    of the most eminent scholars of any age.

    "'Our seminaries of learning,' says Gibbon, 'do not
    exactly correspond with the precept of a Spartan king,
    that the child should be instructed in the arts which
    will be useful to the man; since a finished scholar may
    emerge from the head of Westminster or Eton, in total
    ignorance of the business and conversation of English
    gentlemen in the latter end of the eighteenth century.
    But these schools may assume the merit of teaching all
    that they pretend to teach, the Latin and Greek
    languages.'"--Bigelow.

After ten years' absence from Boston, and having become easy in my
circumstances, I made a journey thither to visit my relations, which I
could not sooner well afford. In returning, I call'd at Newport to see
my brother, then settled there with his printing-house. Our former
differences were forgotten, and our meeting was very cordial and
affectionate. He was fast declining in his health, and requested of me
that, in case of his death, which he apprehended not far distant, I
would take home his son, then but ten years of age, and bring him up
to the printing business. This I accordingly perform'd, sending him a
few years to school before I took him into the office. His mother
carried on the business till he was grown up, when I assisted him with
an assortment of new types, those of his father being in a manner worn
out. Thus it was that I made my brother ample amends for the service I
had depriv'd him of by leaving him so early.

[Illustration: "Our former differences were forgotten, and our
meeting was very cordial and affectionate"]

In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the
small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and
still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I
mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the
supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died
under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either
way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.

Our club, the Junto, was found so useful, and afforded such
satisfaction to the members, that several were desirous of introducing
their friends, which could not well be done without exceeding what we
had settled as a convenient number, viz., twelve. We had from the
beginning made it a rule to keep our institution a secret, which was
pretty well observ'd; the intention was to avoid applications of
improper persons for admittance, some of whom, perhaps, we might find
it difficult to refuse. I was one of those who were against any
addition to our number, but, instead of it, made in writing a
proposal, that every member separately should endeavour to form a
subordinate club, with the same rules respecting queries, etc., and
without informing them of the connection with the Junto. The
advantages proposed were, the improvement of so many more young
citizens by the use of our institutions; our better acquaintance with
the general sentiments of the inhabitants on any occasion, as the
Junto member might propose what queries we should desire, and was to
report to the Junto what pass'd in his separate club; the promotion of
our particular interests in business by more extensive recommendation,
and the increase of our influence in public affairs, and our power of
doing good by spreading thro' the several clubs the sentiments of the
Junto.

The project was approv'd, and every member undertook to form his club,
but they did not all succeed. Five or six only were compleated, which
were called by different names, as the Vine, the Union, the Band, etc.
They were useful to themselves, and afforded us a good deal of
amusement, information, and instruction, besides answering, in some
considerable degree, our views of influencing the public opinion on
particular occasions, of which I shall give some instances in course
of time as they happened.

My first promotion was my being chosen, in 1736, clerk of the General
Assembly. The choice was made that year without opposition; but the
year following, when I was again propos'd (the choice, like that of
the members, being annual), a new member made a long speech against
me, in order to favour some other candidate. I was, however, chosen,
which was the more agreeable to me, as, besides the pay for the
immediate service as clerk, the place gave me a better opportunity of
keeping up an interest among the members, which secur'd to me the
business of printing the votes, laws, paper money, and other
occasional jobbs for the public, that, on the whole, were very
profitable.

I therefore did not like the opposition of this new member, who was a
gentleman of fortune and education, with talents that were likely to
give him, in time, great influence in the House, which, indeed,
afterwards happened. I did not, however, aim at gaining his favour by
paying any servile respect to him, but, after some time, took this
other method. Having heard that he had in his library a certain very
scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire
of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of
lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I
return'd it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my
sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me
(which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever
after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we
became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death. This
is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which
says, _"He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do
you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged."_ And it shows
how much more profitable it is prudently to remove, than to resent,
return, and continue inimical proceedings.

In 1737, Colonel Spotswood, late governor of Virginia, and then
postmaster-general, being dissatisfied with the conduct of his deputy
at Philadelphia, respecting some negligence in rendering, and
inexactitude of his accounts, took from him the commission and offered
it to me. I accepted it readily, and found it of great advantage; for,
tho' the salary was small, it facilitated the correspondence that
improv'd my newspaper, increas'd the number demanded, as well as the
advertisements to be inserted, so that it came to afford me a
considerable income. My old competitor's newspaper declin'd
proportionately, and I was satisfy'd without retaliating his refusal,
while postmaster, to permit my papers being carried by the riders.
Thus he suffer'd greatly from his neglect in due accounting; and I
mention it as a lesson to those young men who may be employ'd in
managing affairs for others, that they should always render accounts,
and make remittances, with great clearness and punctuality. The
character of observing such a conduct is the most powerful of all
recommendations to new employments and increase of business.




XI

INTEREST IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS


I began now to turn my thoughts a little to public affairs, beginning,
however, with small matters. The city watch was one of the first
things that I conceiv'd to want regulation. It was managed by the
constables of the respective wards in turn; the constable warned a
number of housekeepers to attend him for the night. Those who chose
never to attend, paid him six shillings a year to be excus'd, which
was suppos'd to be for hiring substitutes, but was, in reality, much
more than was necessary for that purpose, and made the constableship a
place of profit; and the constable, for a little drink, often got such
ragamuffins about him as a watch, that respectable housekeepers did
not choose to mix with. Walking the rounds, too, was often neglected,
and most of the nights spent in tippling. I thereupon wrote a paper to
be read in Junto, representing these irregularities, but insisting
more particularly on the inequality of this six-shilling tax of the
constables, respecting the circumstances of those who paid it, since a
poor widow housekeeper, all whose property to be guarded by the watch
did not perhaps exceed the value of fifty pounds, paid as much as the
wealthiest merchant, who had thousands of pounds' worth of goods in
his stores.

On the whole, I proposed as a more effectual watch, the hiring of
proper men to serve constantly in that business; and as a more
equitable way of supporting the charge, the levying a tax that should
be proportion'd to the property. This idea, being approv'd by the
Junto, was communicated to the other clubs, but as arising in each of
them; and though the plan was not immediately carried into execution,
yet, by preparing the minds of people for the change, it paved the way
for the law obtained a few years after, when the members of our clubs
were grown into more influence.

About this time I wrote a paper (first to be read in Junto, but it was
afterward publish'd) on the different accidents and carelessnesses by
which houses were set on fire, with cautions against them, and means
proposed of avoiding them. This was much spoken of as a useful piece,
and gave rise to a project, which soon followed it, of forming a
company for the more ready extinguishing of fires, and mutual
assistance in removing and securing of goods when in danger.
Associates in this scheme were presently found, amounting to thirty.
Our articles of agreement oblig'd every member to keep always in good
order, and fit for use, a certain number of leather buckets, with
strong bags and baskets (for packing and transporting of goods), which
were to be brought to every fire; and we agreed to meet once a month
and spend a social evening together, in discoursing and communicating
such ideas as occurred to us upon the subjects of fires, as might be
useful in our conduct on such occasions.

The utility of this institution soon appeared, and many more desiring
to be admitted than we thought convenient for one company, they were
advised to form another, which was accordingly done; and this went on,
one new company being formed after another, till they became so
numerous as to include most of the inhabitants who were men of
property; and now, at the time of my writing this, tho' upward of
fifty years since its establishment, that which I first formed, called
the Union Fire Company, still subsists and flourishes, tho' the first
members are all deceas'd but myself and one, who is older by a year
than I am. The small fines that have been paid by members for absence
at the monthly meetings have been apply'd to the purchase of
fire-engines, ladders, fire-hooks, and other useful implements for
each company, so that I question whether there is a city in the world
better provided with the means of putting a stop to beginning
conflagrations; and, in fact, since these institutions, the city has
never lost by fire more than one or two houses at a time, and the
flames have often been extinguished before the house in which they
began has been half consumed.

[Illustration: "the flames have often been extinguished"]

In 1739 arrived among us from Ireland the Reverend Mr. Whitefield,[79]
who had made himself remarkable there as an itinerant preacher. He was
at first permitted to preach in some of our churches; but the clergy,
taking a dislike to him, soon refus'd him their pulpits, and he was
oblig'd to preach in the fields. The multitudes of all sects and
denominations that attended his sermons were enormous, and it was
matter of speculation to me, who was one of the number, to observe the
extraordinary influence of his oratory on his hearers, and how much
they admir'd and respected him, notwithstanding his common abuse of
them, by assuring them they were naturally _half beasts and half
devils_. It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners
of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about
religion, it seem'd as if all the world were growing religious, so
that one could not walk thro' the town in an evening without hearing
psalms sung in different families of every street.

    [79] George Whitefield, pronounced Hwit'field
    (1714-1770), a celebrated English clergyman and pulpit
    orator, one of the founders of Methodism.

And it being found inconvenient to assemble in the open air, subject
to its inclemencies, the building of a house to meet in was no sooner
propos'd, and persons appointed to receive contributions, but
sufficient sums were soon receiv'd to procure the ground and erect the
building, which was one hundred feet long and seventy broad, about the
size of Westminster Hall;[80] and the work was carried on with such
spirit as to be finished in a much shorter time than could have been
expected. Both house and ground were vested in trustees, expressly for
the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire
to say something to the people at Philadelphia; the design in building
not being to accommodate any particular sect, but the inhabitants in
general; so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a
missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at
his service.

    [80] A part of the palace of Westminster, now forming the
    vestibule to the Houses of Parliament in London.

Mr. Whitefield, in leaving us, went preaching all the way thro' the
colonies to Georgia. The settlement of that province had lately been
begun, but, instead of being made with hardy, industrious husbandmen,
accustomed to labour, the only people fit for such an enterprise, it
was with families of broken shop-keepers and other insolvent debtors,
many of indolent and idle habits, taken out of the jails, who, being
set down in the woods, unqualified for clearing land, and unable to
endure the hardships of a new settlement, perished in numbers, leaving
many helpless children unprovided for. The sight of their miserable
situation inspir'd the benevolent heart of Mr. Whitefield with the
idea of building an Orphan House there, in which they might be
supported and educated. Returning northward, he preach'd up this
charity, and made large collections, for his eloquence had a wonderful
power over the hearts and purses of his hearers, of which I myself was
an instance.

I did not disapprove of the design, but, as Georgia was then destitute
of materials and workmen, and it was proposed to send them from
Philadelphia at a great expense, I thought it would have been better
to have built the house here, and brought the children to it. This I
advis'd; but he was resolute in his first project, rejected my
counsel, and I therefore refus'd to contribute. I happened soon after
to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he
intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he
should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper
money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he
proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the coppers.
Another stroke of his oratory made me asham'd of that, and determin'd
me to give the silver; and he finish'd so admirably, that I empty'd my
pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all. At this sermon
there was also one of our club, who, being of my sentiments respecting
the building in Georgia, and suspecting a collection might be
intended, had, by precaution, emptied his pockets before he came from
home. Towards the conclusion of the discourse, however, he felt a
strong desire to give, and apply'd to a neighbour who stood near him,
to borrow some money for the purpose. The application was
unfortunately [made] to perhaps the only man in the company who had
the firmness not to be affected by the preacher. His answer was, "_At
any other time, Friend Hopkinson, I would lend to thee freely; but not
now, for thee seems to be out of thy right senses._"

Some of Mr. Whitefield's enemies affected to suppose that he would
apply these collections to his own private emolument; but I, who was
intimately acquainted with him (being employed in printing his Sermons
and Journals, etc.), never had the least suspicion of his integrity,
but am to this day decidedly of opinion that he was in all his conduct
a perfectly _honest man_; and methinks my testimony in his favour
ought to have the more weight, as we had no religious connection. He
us'd, indeed, sometimes to pray for my conversion, but never had the
satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard. Ours was a mere
civil friendship, sincere on both sides, and lasted to his death.

The following instance will show something of the terms on which we
stood. Upon one of his arrivals from England at Boston, he wrote to me
that he should come soon to Philadelphia, but knew not where he could
lodge when there, as he understood his old friend and host, Mr.
Benezet was removed to Germantown. My answer was, "You know my house;
if you can make shift with its scanty accommodations, you will be most
heartily welcome." He reply'd, that if I made that kind offer for
Christ's sake, I should not miss of a reward. And I returned, "_Don't
let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ's sake, but for your sake._"
One of our common acquaintance jocosely remark'd, that, knowing it to
be the custom of the saints, when they received any favour, to shift
the burden of the obligation from off their own shoulders, and place
it in heaven, I had contriv'd to fix it on earth.

The last time I saw Mr. Whitefield was in London, when he consulted me
about his Orphan House concern, and his purpose of appropriating it to
the establishment of a college.

He had a loud and clear voice, and articulated his words and sentences
so perfectly, that he might be heard and understood at a great
distance, especially as his auditories, however numerous, observ'd the
most exact silence. He preach'd one evening from the top of the
Courthouse steps, which are in the middle of Market-street, and on the
west side of Second-street, which crosses it at right angles. Both
streets were fill'd with his hearers to a considerable distance. Being
among the hindmost in Market-street, I had the curiosity to learn how
far he could be heard, by retiring backwards down the street towards
the river; and I found his voice distinct till I came near
Front-street, when some noise in that street obscur'd it. Imagining
then a semicircle, of which my distance should be the radius, and that
it were fill'd with auditors, to each of whom I allow'd two square
feet, I computed that he might well be heard by more than thirty
thousand. This reconcil'd me to the newspaper accounts of his having
preach'd to twenty-five thousand people in the fields, and to the
ancient histories of generals haranguing whole armies, of which I had
sometimes doubted.

By hearing him often, I came to distinguish easily between sermons
newly compos'd, and those which he had often preach'd in the course of
his travels. His delivery of the latter was so improv'd by frequent
repetitions that every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of
voice, was so perfectly well turn'd and well plac'd, that, without
being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleas'd with
the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that receiv'd
from an excellent piece of musick. This is an advantage itinerant
preachers have over those who are stationary, as the latter cannot
well improve their delivery of a sermon by so many rehearsals.

His writing and printing from time to time gave great advantage to his
enemies; unguarded expressions, and even erroneous opinions, delivered
in preaching, might have been afterwards explain'd or qualifi'd by
supposing others that might have accompani'd them, or they might have
been deny'd; but _litera scripta manet_. Critics attack'd his writings
violently, and with so much appearance of reason as to diminish the
number of his votaries and prevent their increase; so that I am of
opinion if he had never written anything, he would have left behind
him a much more numerous and important sect, and his reputation might
in that case have been still growing, even after his death, as there
being nothing of his writing on which to found a censure and give him
a lower character, his proselytes would be left at liberty to feign
for him as great a variety of excellences as their enthusiastic
admiration might wish him to have possessed.

My business was now continually augmenting, and my circumstances
growing daily easier, my newspaper having become very profitable, as
being for a time almost the only one in this and the neighbouring
provinces. I experienced, too, the truth of the observation, "_that
after getting the first hundred pound, it is more easy to get the
second_," money itself being of a prolific nature.

The partnership at Carolina having succeeded, I was encourag'd to
engage in others, and to promote several of my workmen, who had
behaved well, by establishing them with printing-houses in different
colonies, on the same terms with that in Carolina. Most of them did
well, being enabled at the end of our term, six years, to purchase the
types of me and go on working for themselves, by which means several
families were raised. Partnerships often finish in quarrels; but I was
happy in this, that mine were all carried on and ended amicably,
owing, I think, a good deal to the precaution of having very
explicitly settled, in our articles, everything to be done by or
expected from each partner, so that there was nothing to dispute,
which precaution I would therefore recommend to all who enter into
partnerships; for, whatever esteem partners may have for, and
confidence in each other at the time of the contract, little
jealousies and disgusts may arise, with ideas of inequality in the
care and burden of the business, etc., which are attended often with
breach of friendship and of the connection, perhaps with lawsuits and
other disagreeable consequences.




XII

DEFENSE OF THE PROVINCE


I had, on the whole, abundant reason to be satisfied with my being
established in Pennsylvania. There were, however, two, things that I
regretted, there being no provision for defense, nor for a compleat
education of youth; no militia, nor any college. I therefore, in 1743,
drew up a proposal for establishing an academy; and at that time,
thinking the Reverend Mr. Peters, who was out of employ, a fit person
to superintend such an institution, I communicated the project to him;
but he, having more profitable views in the service of the
proprietaries, which succeeded, declin'd the undertaking; and, not
knowing another at that time suitable for such a trust, I let the
scheme lie awhile dormant. I succeeded better the next year, 1744, in
proposing and establishing a Philosophical Society. The paper I wrote
for that purpose will be found among my writings, when collected.

With respect to defense, Spain having been several years at war
against Great Britain, and being at length join'd by France, which
brought us into great danger; and the laboured and long-continued
endeavour of our governor, Thomas, to prevail with our Quaker Assembly
to pass a militia law, and make other provisions for the security of
the province, having proved abortive, I determined to try what might
be done by a voluntary association of the people. To promote this, I
first wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled Plain Truth, in which I
stated our defenceless situation in strong lights, with the necessity
of union and discipline for our defense, and promis'd to propose in a
few days an association, to be generally signed for that purpose. The
pamphlet had a sudden and surprising effect. I was call'd upon for the
instrument of association, and having settled the draft of it with a
few friends, I appointed a meeting of the citizens in the large
building before mentioned. The house was pretty full; I had prepared a
number of printed copies, and provided pens and ink dispers'd all over
the room. I harangued them a little on the subject, read the paper,
and explained it, and then distributed the copies, which were eagerly
signed, not the least objection being made.

When the company separated, and the papers were collected, we found
above twelve hundred hands; and, other copies being dispersed in the
country, the subscribers amounted at length to upward of ten thousand.
These all furnished themselves as soon as they could with arms, formed
themselves into companies and regiments, chose their own officers, and
met every week to be instructed in the manual exercise, and other
parts of military discipline. The women, by subscriptions among
themselves, provided silk colours, which they presented to the
companies, painted with different devices and mottos, which I
supplied.

[Illustration: One of the flags of the Pennsylvania Association, 1747.
Designed by Franklin and made by the women of Philadelphia.]

The officers of the companies composing the Philadelphia regiment,
being met, chose me for their colonel; but, conceiving myself unfit, I
declin'd that station, and recommended Mr. Lawrence, a fine person,
and man of influence, who was accordingly appointed. I then propos'd a
lottery to defray the expense of building a battery below the town,
and furnishing it with cannon. It filled expeditiously, and the
battery was soon erected, the merlons being fram'd of logs and fill'd
with earth. We bought some old cannon from Boston, but, these not
being sufficient, we wrote to England for more, soliciting, at the
same time, our proprietaries for some assistance, tho' without much
expectation of obtaining it.

Meanwhile, Colonel Lawrence, William Allen, Abram Taylor, Esqr., and
myself were sent to New York by the associators, commission'd to
borrow some cannon of Governor Clinton. He at first refus'd us
peremptorily; but at dinner with his council, where there was great
drinking of Madeira wine, as the custom of that place then was, he
softened by degrees, and said he would lend us six. After a few more
bumpers he advanc'd to ten; and at length he very good-naturedly
conceded eighteen. They were fine cannon, eighteen-pounders, with
their carriages, which we soon transported and mounted on our battery,
where the associators kept a nightly guard while the war lasted, and
among the rest I regularly took my turn of duty there as a common
soldier.

[Illustration: "I regularly took my turn of duty there as a
common soldier"]

My activity in these operations was agreeable to the governor and
council; they took me into confidence, and I was consulted by them in
every measure wherein their concurrence was thought useful to the
association. Calling in the aid of religion, I propos'd to them the
proclaiming a fast, to promote reformation, and implore the blessing
of Heaven on our undertaking. They embrac'd the motion; but, as it was
the first fast ever thought of in the province, the secretary had no
precedent from which to draw the proclamation. My education in New
England, where a fast is proclaimed every year, was here of some
advantage: I drew it in the accustomed stile, it was translated into
German,[81] printed in both languages, and divulg'd thro' the province.
This gave the clergy of the different sects an opportunity of
influencing their congregations to join in the association, and it
would probably have been general among all but Quakers if the peace
had not soon interven'd.

    [81] Wm. Penn's agents sought recruits for the colony of
    Pennsylvania in the low countries of Germany, and there
    are still in eastern Pennsylvania many Germans,
    inaccurately called Pennsylvania Dutch. Many of them use
    a Germanized English.

It was thought by some of my friends that, by my activity in these
affairs, I should offend that sect, and thereby lose my interest in
the Assembly of the province, where they formed a great majority. A
young gentleman who had likewise some friends in the House, and wished
to succeed me as their clerk, acquainted me that it was decided to
displace me at the next election; and he, therefore, in good will,
advis'd me to resign, as more consistent with my honour than being
turn'd out. My answer to him was, that I had read or heard of some
public man who made it a rule never to ask for an office, and never to
refuse one when offer'd to him. "I approve," says I, "of his rule, and
will practice it with a small addition; I shall never _ask_, never
_refuse_, nor ever _resign_ an office. If they will have my office of
clerk to dispose of to another, they shall take it from me. I will
not, by giving it up, lose my right of some time or other making
reprisals on my adversaries." I heard, however, no more of this; I was
chosen again unanimously as usual at the next election. Possibly, as
they dislik'd my late intimacy with the members of council, who had
join'd the governors in all the disputes about military preparations,
with which the House had long been harass'd, they might have been
pleas'd if I would voluntarily have left them; but they did not care
to displace me on account merely of my zeal for the association, and
they could not well give another reason.

Indeed I had some cause to believe that the defense of the country was
not disagreeable to any of them, provided they were not requir'd to
assist in it. And I found that a much greater number of them than I
could have imagined, tho' against offensive war, were clearly for the
defensive. Many pamphlets _pro and con_ were publish'd on the subject,
and some by good Quakers, in favour of defense, which I believe
convinc'd most of their younger people.

A transaction in our fire company gave me some insight into their
prevailing sentiments. It had been propos'd that we should encourage
the scheme for building a battery by laying out the present stock,
then about sixty pounds, in tickets of the lottery. By our rules, no
money could be dispos'd of till the next meeting after the proposal.
The company consisted of thirty members, of which twenty-two were
Quakers, and eight only of other persuasions. We eight punctually
attended the meeting; but, tho' we thought that some of the Quakers
would join us, we were by no means sure of a majority. Only one
Quaker, Mr. James Morris, appear'd to oppose the measure. He expressed
much sorrow that it had ever been propos'd, as he said _Friends_ were
all against it, and it would create such discord as might break up the
company. We told him that we saw no reason for that; we were the
minority, and if _Friends_ were against the measure, and outvoted us,
we must and should, agreeably to the usage of all societies, submit.
When the hour for business arriv'd it was mov'd to put the vote; he
allow'd we might then do it by the rules, but, as he could assure us
that a number of members intended to be present for the purpose of
opposing it, it would be but candid to allow a little time for their
appearing.

While we were disputing this, a waiter came to tell me two gentlemen
below desir'd to speak with me. I went down, and found they were two
of our Quaker members. They told me there were eight of them assembled
at a tavern just by; that they were determin'd to come and vote with
us if there should be occasion, which they hop'd would not be the
case, and desir'd we would not call for their assistance if we could
do without it, as their voting for such a measure might embroil them
with their elders and friends. Being thus secure of a majority, I went
up, and after a little seeming hesitation, agreed to a delay of
another hour. This Mr. Morris allow'd to be extreamly fair. Not one of
his opposing friends appear'd, at which he express'd great surprize;
and, at the expiration of the hour, we carri'd the resolution eight to
one; and as, of the twenty-two Quakers, eight were ready to vote with
us, and thirteen, by their absence, manifested that they were not
inclin'd to oppose the measure, I afterward estimated the proportion
of Quakers sincerely against defense as one to twenty-one only; for
these were all regular members of that society, and in good reputation
among them, and had due notice of what was propos'd at that meeting.

The honorable and learned Mr. Logan, who had always been of that sect,
was one who wrote an address to them, declaring his approbation of
defensive war, and supporting his opinion by many strong arguments. He
put into my hands sixty pounds to be laid out in lottery tickets for
the battery, with directions to apply what prizes might be drawn
wholly to that service. He told me the following anecdote of his old
master, William Penn, respecting defense. He came over from England,
when a young man, with that proprietary, and as his secretary. It was
war-time, and their ship was chas'd by an armed vessel, suppos'd to be
an enemy. Their captain prepar'd for defense; but told William Penn,
and his company of Quakers, that he did not expect their assistance,
and they might retire into the cabin, which they did, except James
Logan,[82] who chose to stay upon deck, and was quarter'd to a gun. The
suppos'd enemy prov'd a friend, so there was no fighting; but when the
secretary went down to communicate the intelligence, William Penn
rebuk'd him severely for staying upon deck, and undertaking to assist
in defending the vessel, contrary to the principles of _Friends_,
especially as it had not been required by the captain. This reproof,
being before all the company, piqu'd the secretary, who answer'd, _"I
being thy servant, why did thee not order me to come down? But thee
was willing enough that I should stay and help to fight the ship when
thee thought there was danger."_

    [82] James Logan (1674-1751) came to America with William
    Penn in 1699, and was the business agent for the Penn
    family. He bequeathed his valuable library, preserved at
    his country seat, "Senton", to the city of
    Philadelphia.--Smyth.

My being many years in the Assembly, the majority of which were
constantly Quakers, gave me frequent opportunities of seeing the
embarrassment given them by their principle against war, whenever
application was made to them, by order of the crown, to grant aids for
military purposes. They were unwilling to offend government, on the
one hand, by a direct refusal; and their friends, the body of the
Quakers, on the other, by compliance contrary to their principles;
hence a variety of evasions to avoid complying, and modes of
disguising the compliance when it became unavoidable. The common mode
at last was, to grant money under the phrase of its being "_for the
king's use_," and never to inquire how it was applied.

But, if the demand was not directly from the crown, that phrase was
found not so proper, and some other was to be invented. As, when
powder was wanting (I think it was for the garrison at Louisburg), and
the government of New England solicited a grant of some from
Pennsylvania, which was much urg'd on the House by Governor Thomas,
they could not grant money to buy powder, because that was an
ingredient of war; but they voted an aid to New England of three
thousand pounds, to be put into the hands of the governor, and
appropriated it for the purchasing of bread, flour, wheat or _other
grain_. Some of the council, desirous of giving the House still
further embarrassment, advis'd the governor not to accept provision,
as not being the thing he had demanded; but he repli'd, "I shall take
the money, for I understand very well their meaning; other grain is
gunpowder," which he accordingly bought, and they never objected to
it.[83]

    [83] See the votes.--_Marg. note_.

It was in allusion to this fact that, when in our fire company we
feared the success of our proposal in favour of the lottery, and I had
said to my friend Mr. Syng, one of our members, "If we fail, let us
move the purchase of a fire-engine with the money; the Quakers can
have no objection to that; and then, if you nominate me and I you as a
committee for that purpose, we will buy a great gun, which is
certainly a _fire-engine_." "I see," says he, "you have improv'd by
being so long in the Assembly; your equivocal project would be just a
match for their wheat or _other grain_."

These embarrassments that the Quakers suffer'd from having establish'd
and published it as one of their principles that no kind of war was
lawful, and which, being once published, they could not afterwards,
however they might change their minds, easily get rid of, reminds me
of what I think a more prudent conduct in another sect among us, that
of the Dunkers. I was acquainted with one of its founders, Michael
Welfare, soon after it appear'd. He complain'd to me that they were
grievously calumniated by the zealots of other persuasions, and
charg'd with abominable principles and practices to which they were
utter strangers. I told him this had always been the case with new
sects, and that, to put a stop to such abuse, I imagin'd it might be
well to publish the articles of their belief, and the rules of their
discipline. He said that it had been propos'd among them, but not
agreed to, for this reason: "When we were first drawn together as a
society," says he, "it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far
as to see that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were
errors; and that others, which we had esteemed errors, were real
truths. From time to time He has been pleased to afford us farther
light, and our principles have been improving, and our errors
diminishing. Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the end of
this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological
knowledge; and we fear that, if we should once print our confession of
faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and confin'd by it, and
perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement, and our
successors still more so, as conceiving what we their elders and
founders had done, to be something sacred, never to be departed from."

This modesty in a sect is perhaps a singular instance in the history
of mankind, every other sect supposing itself in possession of all
truth, and that those who differ are so far in the wrong; like a man
traveling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the
road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and
also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears
clear, tho' in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them. To avoid
this kind of embarrassment, the Quakers have of late years been
gradually declining the public service in the Assembly and in the
magistracy, choosing rather to quit their power than their principle.

In order of time, I should have mentioned before, that having, in
1742, invented an open stove[84] for the better warming of rooms, and
at the same time saving fuel, as the fresh air admitted was warmed in
entering, I made a present of the model to Mr. Robert Grace, one of my
early friends, who, having an iron-furnace,[85] found the casting of
the plates for these stoves a profitable thing, as they were growing
in demand. To promote that demand, I wrote and published a pamphlet,
entitled "_An Account of the new-invented Pennsylvania Fireplaces;
wherein their Construction and Manner of Operation is particularly
explained; their Advantages above every other Method of warming Rooms
demonstrated; and all Objections that have been raised against the Use
of them answered and obviated_," etc. This pamphlet had a good effect.
Gov'r. Thomas was so pleas'd with the construction of this stove, as
described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole
vending of them for a term of years; but I declin'd it from a
principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz.,
_That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we
should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of
ours; and this we should do freely and generously._

    [84] The Franklin stove is still in use.

    [85] Warwick Furnace, Chester County, Pennsylvania,
    across the Schuylkill River from Pottstown.

An ironmonger in London however, assuming a good deal of my pamphlet,
and working it up into his own, and making some small changes in the
machine, which rather hurt its operation, got a patent for it there,
and made, as I was told, a little fortune by it. And this is not the
only instance of patents taken out for my inventions by others, tho'
not always with the same success, which I never contested, as having
no desire of profiting by patents myself, and hating disputes. The use
of these fireplaces in very many houses, both of this and the
neighbouring colonies, has been, and is, a great saving of wood to the
inhabitants.




XIII

PUBLIC SERVICES AND DUTIES

(1749-1753)


Peace being concluded, and the association business therefore at an
end, I turn'd my thoughts again to the affair of establishing an
academy. The first step I took was to associate in the design a number
of active friends, of whom the Junto furnished a good part; the next
was to write and publish a pamphlet, entitled _Proposals Relating to
the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania_. This I distributed among the
principal inhabitants gratis; and as soon as I could suppose their
minds a little prepared by the perusal of it, I set on foot a
subscription for opening and supporting an academy; it was to be paid
in quotas yearly for five years; by so dividing it, I judg'd the
subscription might be larger, and I believe it was so, amounting to no
less, if I remember right, than five thousand pounds.

In the introduction to these proposals, I stated their publication,
not as an act of mine, but of some _publick-spirited gentlemen_,
avoiding as much as I could, according to my usual rule, the
presenting myself to the publick as the author of any scheme for their
benefit.

The subscribers, to carry the project into immediate execution, chose
out of their number twenty-four trustees, and appointed Mr.
Francis,[86] then attorney-general, and myself to draw up constitutions
for the government of the academy; which being done and signed, a
house was hired, masters engag'd, and the schools opened, I think, in
the same year, 1749.

    [86] Tench Francis, uncle of Sir Philip Francis,
    emigrated from England to Maryland, and became attorney
    for Lord Baltimore. He removed to Philadelphia and was
    attorney-general of Pennsylvania from 1741 to 1755. He
    died in Philadelphia August 16, 1758.--Smyth.

The scholars increasing fast, the house was soon found too small, and
we were looking out for a piece of ground, properly situated, with
intention to build, when Providence threw into our way a large house
ready built, which, with a few alterations, might well serve our
purpose. This was the building before mentioned, erected by the
hearers of Mr. Whitefield, and was obtained for us in the following
manner.

It is to be noted that the contributions to this building being made
by people of different sects, care was taken in the nomination of
trustees, in whom the building and ground was to be vested, that a
predominancy should not be given to any sect, lest in time that
predominancy might be a means of appropriating the whole to the use of
such sect, contrary to the original intention. It was therefore that
one of each sect was appointed, viz., one Church-of-England man, one
Presbyterian, one Baptist, one Moravian, etc., those, in case of
vacancy by death, were to fill it by election from among the
contributors. The Moravian happen'd not to please his colleagues, and
on his death they resolved to have no other of that sect. The
difficulty then was, how to avoid having two of some other sect, by
means of the new choice.

Several persons were named, and for that reason not agreed to. At
length one mention'd me, with the observation that I was merely an
honest man, and of no sect at all, which prevailed with them to chuse
me. The enthusiasm which existed when the house was built had long
since abat'd, and its trustees had not been able to procure fresh
contributions for paying the ground-rent, and discharging some other
debts the building had occasion'd, which embarrass'd them greatly.
Being now a member of both sets of trustees, that for the building and
that for the academy, I had a good opportunity of negotiating with
both, and brought them finally to an agreement, by which the trustees
for the building were to cede it to those of the academy, the latter
undertaking to discharge the debt, to keep forever open in the
building a large hall for occasional preachers, according to the
original intention, and maintain a free-school for the instruction of
poor children. Writings were accordingly drawn, and on paying the
debts the trustees of the academy were put in possession of the
premises; and by dividing the great and lofty hall into stories, and
different rooms above and below for the several schools, and
purchasing some additional ground, the whole was soon made fit for our
purpose, and the scholars remov'd into the building. The care and
trouble of agreeing with the workmen, purchasing materials, and
superintending the work, fell upon me; and I went thro' it the more
cheerfully, as it did not then interfere with my private business,
having the year before taken a very able, industrious, and honest
partner, Mr. David Hall, with whose character I was well acquainted,
as he had work'd for me four years. He took off my hands all care of
the printing-office, paying me punctually my share of the profits. The
partnership continued eighteen years, successfully for us both.

The trustees of the academy, after a while, were incorporated by a
charter from the governor; their funds were increas'd by contributions
in Britain and grants of land from the proprietaries, to which the
Assembly has since made considerable addition; and thus was
established the present University of Philadelphia.[87] I have been
continued one of its trustees from the beginning, now near forty
years, and have had the very great pleasure of seeing a number of the
youth who have receiv'd their education in it, distinguish'd by their
improv'd abilities, serviceable in public stations, and ornaments to
their country.

    [87] Later called the University of Pennsylvania.

When I disengaged myself, as above mentioned, from private business, I
flatter'd myself that, by the sufficient tho' moderate fortune I had
acquir'd, I had secured leisure during the rest of my life for
philosophical studies and amusements. I purchased all Dr. Spence's
apparatus, who had come from England to lecture here, and I proceeded
in my electrical experiments with great alacrity; but the publick, now
considering me as a man of leisure, laid hold of me for their
purposes, every part of our civil government, and almost at the same
time, imposing some duty upon me. The governor put me into the
commission of the peace; the corporation of the city chose me of the
common council, and soon after an alderman; and the citizens at large
chose me a burgess to represent them in Assembly. This latter station
was the more agreeable to me, as I was at length tired with sitting
there to hear debates, in which, as clerk, I could take no part, and
which were often so unentertaining that I was induc'd to amuse myself
with making magic squares or circles, or anything to avoid weariness;
and I conceiv'd my becoming a member would enlarge my power of doing
good. I would not, however, insinuate that my ambition was not
flatter'd by all these promotions; it certainly was; for, considering
my low beginning, they were great things to me; and they were still
more pleasing, as being so many spontaneous testimonies of the public
good opinion, and by me entirely unsolicited.

The office of justice of the peace I try'd a little, by attending a
few courts, and sitting on the bench to hear causes; but finding that
more knowledge of the common law than I possess'd was necessary to act
in that station with credit, I gradually withdrew from it, excusing
myself by my being oblig'd to attend the higher duties of a legislator
in the Assembly. My election to this trust was repeated every year for
ten years, without my ever asking any elector for his vote, or
signifying, either directly or indirectly, any desire of being chosen.
On taking my seat in the House, my son was appointed their clerk.

The year following, a treaty being to be held with the Indians at
Carlisle, the governor sent a message to the House, proposing that
they should nominate some of their members, to be join'd with some
members of council, as commissioners for that purpose.[88] The House
named the speaker (Mr. Norris) and myself; and, being commission'd, we
went to Carlisle, and met the Indians accordingly.

    [88] See the votes to have this more correctly.--_Marg.
    note._

As those people are extreamly apt to get drunk, and, when so, are very
quarrelsome and disorderly, we strictly forbade the selling any
liquor to them; and when they complain'd of this restriction, we told
them that if they would continue sober during the treaty, we would
give them plenty of rum when business was over. They promis'd this,
and they kept their promise, because they could get no liquor, and the
treaty was conducted very orderly, and concluded to mutual
satisfaction. They then claim'd and received the rum; this was in the
afternoon: they were near one hundred men, women, and children, and
were lodg'd in temporary cabins, built in the form of a square, just
without the town. In the evening, hearing a great noise among them,
the commissioners walk'd out to see what was the matter. We found they
had made a great bonfire in the middle of the square; they were all
drunk, men and women, quarreling and fighting. Their dark-colour'd
bodies, half naked, seen only by the gloomy light of the bonfire,
running after and beating one another with firebrands, accompanied by
their horrid yellings, form'd a scene the most resembling our ideas of
hell that could well be imagin'd; there was no appeasing the tumult,
and we retired to our lodging. At midnight a number of them came
thundering at our door, demanding more rum, of which we took no
notice.

The next day, sensible they had misbehav'd in giving us that
disturbance, they sent three of their old counselors to make their
apology. The orator acknowledg'd the fault, but laid it upon the rum;
and then endeavoured to excuse the rum by saying, "_The Great Spirit,
who made all things, made everything for some use, and whatever use he
design'd anything for, that use it should always be put to. Now, when_
_he made rum, he said, 'Let this be for the Indians to get drunk
with,' and it must be so._" And, indeed, if it be the design of
Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for
cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the
appointed means. It has already annihilated all the tribes who
formerly inhabited the sea-coast.

[Illustration: "In the evening, hearing a great noise among them, the
commissioners walk'd out to see what was the matter"]

In 1751, Dr. Thomas Bond, a particular friend of mine, conceived the
idea of establishing a hospital in Philadelphia (a very beneficent
design, which has been ascrib'd to me, but was originally his), for
the reception and cure of poor sick persons, whether inhabitants of
the province or strangers. He was zealous and active in endeavouring
to procure subscriptions for it, but the proposal being a novelty in
America, and at first not well understood, he met but with small
success.

At length he came to me with the compliment that he found there was no
such thing as carrying a public-spirited project through without my
being concern'd in it. "For," says he, "I am often ask'd by those to
whom I propose subscribing, Have you consulted Franklin upon this
business? And what does he think of it? And when I tell them that I
have not (supposing it rather out of your line), they do not
subscribe, but say they will consider of it." I enquired into the
nature and probable utility of his scheme, and receiving from him a
very satisfactory explanation, I not only subscrib'd to it myself, but
engag'd heartily in the design of procuring subscriptions from others.
Previously, however, to the solicitation, I endeavoured to prepare the
minds of the people by writing on the subject in the newspapers, which
was my usual custom in such cases, but which he had omitted.

The subscriptions afterwards were more free and generous; but,
beginning to flag, I saw they would be insufficient without some
assistance from the Assembly, and therefore propos'd to petition for
it, which was done. The country members did not at first relish the
project; they objected that it could only be serviceable to the city,
and therefore the citizens alone should be at the expense of it; and
they doubted whether the citizens themselves generally approv'd of it.
My allegation on the contrary, that it met with such approbation as to
leave no doubt of our being able to raise two thousand pounds by
voluntary donations, they considered as a most extravagant
supposition, and utterly impossible.

On this I form'd my plan; and, asking leave to bring in a bill for
incorporating the contributors according to the prayer of their
petition, and granting them a blank sum of money, which leave was
obtained chiefly on the consideration that the House could throw the
bill out if they did not like it, I drew it so as to make the
important clause a conditional one, viz., "And be it enacted, by the
authority aforesaid, that when the said contributors shall have met
and chosen their managers and treasurer, _and shall have raised by
their contributions a capital stock of----value_ (the yearly
interest of which is to be applied to the accommodating of the
sick poor in the said hospital, free of charge for diet, attendance,
advice, and medicines), _and shall make the same appear to the
satisfaction of the speaker of the Assembly for the time being_, that
_then_ it shall and may be lawful for the said speaker, and he is
hereby required, to sign an order on the provincial treasurer for the
payment of two thousand pounds, in two yearly payments, to the
treasurer of the said hospital, to be applied to the founding,
building, and finishing of the same."

This condition carried the bill through; for the members, who had
oppos'd the grant, and now conceiv'd they might have the credit of
being charitable without the expense, agreed to its passage; and then,
in soliciting subscriptions among the people, we urg'd the conditional
promise of the law as an additional motive to give, since every man's
donation would be doubled; thus the clause work'd both ways. The
subscriptions accordingly soon exceeded the requisite sum, and we
claim'd and receiv'd the public gift, which enabled us to carry the
design into execution. A convenient and handsome building was soon
erected; the institution has by constant experience been found useful,
and flourishes to this day; and I do not remember any of my political
manoeuvers, the success of which gave me at the time more pleasure,
or wherein, after thinking of it, I more easily excus'd myself for
having made some use of cunning.

It was about this time that another projector, the Rev. Gilbert
Tennent[89], came to me with a request that I would assist him in
procuring a subscription for erecting a new meeting-house. It was to
be for the use of a congregation he had gathered among the
Presbyterians, who were originally disciples of Mr. Whitefield.
Unwilling to make myself disagreeable to my fellow-citizens by too
frequently soliciting their contributions, I absolutely refus'd. He
then desired I would furnish him with a list of the names of persons I
knew by experience to be generous and public-spirited. I thought it
would be unbecoming in me, after their kind compliance with my
solicitations, to mark them out to be worried by other beggars, and
therefore refus'd also to give such a list. He then desir'd I would at
least give him my advice. "That I will readily do," said I; "and, in
the first place, I advise you to apply to all those whom you know will
give something; next, to those whom you are uncertain whether they
will give anything or not, and show them the list of those who have
given; and, lastly, do not neglect those who you are sure will give
nothing, for in some of them you may be mistaken." He laugh'd and
thank'd me, and said he would take my advice. He did so, for he ask'd
of _everybody_, and he obtain'd a much larger sum than he expected,
with which he erected the capacious and very elegant meeting-house
that stands in Arch-street.

    [89] Gilbert Tennent (1703-1764) came to America with his
    father, Rev. William Tennent, and taught for a time in
    the "Log College," from which sprang the College of New
    Jersey.--Smyth.

Our city, tho' laid out with a beautiful regularity, the streets
large, straight, and crossing each other at right angles, had the
disgrace of suffering those streets to remain long unpav'd, and in wet
weather the wheels of heavy carriages plough'd them into a quagmire,
so that it was difficult to cross them; and in dry weather the dust
was offensive. I had liv'd near what was call'd the Jersey Market, and
saw with pain the inhabitants wading in mud while purchasing their
provisions. A strip of ground down the middle of that market was at
length pav'd with brick, so that, being once in the market, they had
firm footing, but were often over shoes in dirt to get there. By
talking and writing on the subject, I was at length instrumental in
getting the street pav'd with stone between the market and the brick'd
foot-pavement, that was on each side next the houses. This, for some
time, gave an easy access to the market dry-shod; but, the rest of the
street not being pav'd, whenever a carriage came out of the mud upon
this pavement, it shook off and left its dirt upon it, and it was soon
cover'd with mire, which was not remov'd, the city as yet having no
scavengers.

After some inquiry, I found a poor, industrious man, who was willing
to undertake keeping the pavement clean, by sweeping it twice a week,
carrying off the dirt from before all the neighbours' doors, for the
sum of sixpence per month, to be paid by each house. I then wrote and
printed a paper setting forth the advantages to the neighbourhood that
might be obtain'd by this small expense; the greater ease in keeping
our houses clean, so much dirt not being brought in by people's feet;
the benefit to the shops by more custom, etc., etc., as buyers could
more easily get at them; and by not having, in windy weather, the dust
blown in upon their goods, etc., etc. I sent one of these papers to
each house, and in a day or two went round to see who would subscribe
an agreement to pay these sixpences; it was unanimously sign'd, and
for a time well executed. All the inhabitants of the city were
delighted with the cleanliness of the pavement that surrounded the
market, it being a convenience to all, and this rais'd a general
desire to have all the streets paved, and made the people more willing
to submit to a tax for that purpose.

After some time I drew a bill for paving the city, and brought it into
the Assembly. It was just before I went to England, in 1757, and did
not pass till I was gone,[90] and then with an alteration in the mode
of assessment, which I thought not for the better, but with an
additional provision for lighting as well as paving the streets, which
was a great improvement. It was by a private person, the late Mr. John
Clifton, his giving a sample of the utility of lamps, by placing one
at his door, that the people were first impress'd with the idea of
enlighting all the city. The honour of this public benefit has also
been ascrib'd to me, but it belongs truly to that gentleman. I did but
follow his example, and have only some merit to claim respecting the
form of our lamps, as differing from the globe lamps we were at first
supply'd with from London. Those we found inconvenient in these
respects: they admitted no air below; the smoke, therefore, did not
readily go out above, but circulated in the globe, lodg'd on its
inside, and soon obstructed the light they were intended to afford;
giving, besides, the daily trouble of wiping them clean; and an
accidental stroke on one of them would demolish it, and render it
totally useless. I therefore suggested the composing them of four flat
panes, with a long funnel above to draw up the smoke, and crevices
admitting air below, to facilitate the ascent of the smoke; by this
means they were kept clean, and did not grow dark in a few hours, as
the London lamps do, but continu'd bright till morning, and an
accidental stroke would generally break but a single pane, easily
repair'd.

I have sometimes wonder'd that the Londoners did not, from the effect
holes in the bottom of the globe lamps us'd at Vauxhall[91] have in
keeping them clean, learn to have such holes in their street lamps.
But, these holes being made for another purpose, viz., to communicate
flame more suddenly to the wick by a little flax hanging down thro'
them, the other use, of letting in air, seems not to have been thought
of; and therefore, after the lamps have been lit a few hours, the
streets of London are very poorly illuminated.

    [90] See votes.

    [91] Vauxhall Gardens, once a popular and fashionable
    London resort, situated on the Thames above Lambeth. The
    Gardens were closed in 1859, but they will always be
    remembered because of Sir Roger de Coverley's visit to
    them in the _Spectator_ and from the descriptions in
    Smollett's _Humphry Clinker_ and Thackeray's _Vanity
    Fair_.

The mention of these improvements puts me in mind of one I propos'd,
when in London, to Dr. Fothergill, who was among the best men I have
known, and a great promoter of useful projects. I had observ'd that
the streets, when dry, were never swept, and the light dust carried
away; but it was suffer'd to accumulate till wet weather reduc'd it to
mud, and then, after lying some days so deep on the pavement that
there was no crossing but in paths kept clean by poor people with
brooms, it was with great labour rak'd together and thrown up into
carts open above, the sides of which suffered some of the slush at
every jolt on the pavement to shake out and fall, sometimes to the
annoyance of foot-passengers. The reason given for not sweeping the
dusty streets was that the dust would fly into the windows of shops
and houses.

[Illustration: "a poor woman sweeping my pavement with a birch
broom"]

An accidental occurrence had instructed me how much sweeping might be
done in a little time. I found at my door in Craven-street,[92] one
morning, a poor woman sweeping my pavement with a birch broom; she
appeared very pale and feeble, as just come out of a fit of sickness.
I ask'd who employ'd her to sweep there; she said, "Nobody, but I am
very poor and in distress, and I sweeps before gentle-folkses doors,
and hopes they will give me something." I bid her sweep the whole
street clean, and I would give her a shilling; this was at nine
o'clock; at 12 she came for the shilling. From the slowness I saw at
first in her working, I could scarce believe that the work was done so
soon, and sent my servant to examine it, who reported that the whole
street was swept perfectly clean, and all the dust plac'd in the
gutter, which was in the middle; and the next rain wash'd it quite
away, so that the pavement and even the kennel were perfectly clean.

    [92] A short street near Charing Cross, London.

I then judg'd that, if that feeble woman could sweep such a street in
three hours, a strong, active man might have done it in half the time.
And here let me remark the convenience of having but one gutter in
such a narrow street, running down its middle, instead of two, one on
each side, near the footway; for where all the rain that falls on a
street runs from the sides and meets in the middle, it forms there a
current strong enough to wash away all the mud it meets with; but when
divided into two channels, it is often too weak to cleanse either, and
only makes the mud it finds more fluid, so that the wheels of
carriages and feet of horses throw and dash it upon the foot-pavement,
which is thereby rendered foul and slippery, and sometimes splash it
upon those who are walking. My proposal, communicated to the good
doctor, was as follows:

"For the more effectual cleaning and keeping clean the streets of
London and Westminster, it is proposed that the several watchmen be
contracted with to have the dust swept up in dry seasons, and the mud
rak'd up at other times, each in the several streets and lanes of his
round; that they be furnish'd with brooms and other proper instruments
for these purposes, to be kept at their respective stands, ready to
furnish the poor people they may employ in the service.

"That in the dry summer months the dust be all swept up into heaps at
proper distances, before the shops and windows of houses are usually
opened, when the scavengers, with close-covered carts, shall also
carry it all away.

"That the mud, when rak'd up, be not left in heaps to be spread abroad
again by the wheels of carriages and trampling of horses, but that the
scavengers be provided with bodies of carts, not plac'd high upon
wheels, but low upon sliders, with lattice bottoms, which, being
cover'd with straw, will retain the mud thrown into them, and permit
the water to drain from it, whereby it will become much lighter, water
making the greatest part of its weight; these bodies of carts to be
plac'd at convenient distances, and the mud brought to them in
wheelbarrows; they remaining where plac'd till the mud is drain'd, and
then horses brought to draw them away."

I have since had doubts of the practicability of the latter part of
this proposal, on account of the narrowness of some streets, and the
difficulty of placing the draining-sleds so as not to encumber too
much the passage; but I am still of opinion that the former, requiring
the dust to be swept up and carry'd away before the shops are open, is
very practicable in the summer, when the days are long; for, in
walking thro' the Strand and Fleet-street one morning at seven
o'clock, I observ'd there was not one shop open, tho' it had been
daylight and the sun up above three hours; the inhabitants of London
chusing voluntarily to live much by candle-light, and sleep by
sunshine, and yet often complain, a little absurdly, of the duty on
candles, and the high price of tallow.

Some may think these trifling matters not worth minding or relating;
but when they consider that tho' dust blown into the eyes of a single
person, or into a single shop on a windy day, is but of small
importance, yet the great number of the instances in a populous city,
and its frequent repetitions give it weight and consequence, perhaps
they will not censure very severely those who bestow some attention to
affairs of this seemingly low nature. Human felicity is produced not
so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by
little advantages that occur every day. Thus, if you teach a poor
young man to shave himself, and keep his razor in order, you may
contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a
thousand guineas. The money may be soon spent, the regret only
remaining of having foolishly consumed it; but in the other case, he
escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their
sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths, and dull razors; he shaves
when most convenient to him, and enjoys daily the pleasure of its
being done with a good instrument. With these sentiments I have
hazarded the few preceding pages, hoping they may afford hints which
some time or other may be useful to a city I love, having lived many
years in it very happily, and perhaps to some of our towns in America.

Having been for some time employed by the postmaster-general of
America as his comptroller in regulating several offices, and bringing
the officers to account, I was, upon his death in 1753, appointed,
jointly with Mr. William Hunter, to succeed him, by a commission from
the postmaster-general in England. The American office never had
hitherto paid anything to that of Britain. We were to have six hundred
pounds a year between us, if we could make that sum out of the profits
of the office. To do this, a variety of improvements were necessary;
some of these were inevitably at first expensive, so that in the first
four years the office became above nine hundred pounds in debt to us.
But it soon after began to repay us; and before I was displac'd by a
freak of the ministers, of which I shall speak hereafter, we had
brought it to yield _three times_ as much clear revenue to the crown
as the post-office of Ireland. Since that imprudent transaction, they
have receiv'd from it--not one farthing!

The business of the post-office occasion'd my taking a journey this
year to New England, where the College of Cambridge, of their own
motion, presented me with the degree of Master of Arts. Yale College,
in Connecticut, had before made me a similar compliment. Thus, without
studying in any college, I came to partake of their honours. They were
conferr'd in consideration of my improvements and discoveries in the
electric branch of natural philosophy.




XIV

ALBANY PLAN OF UNION


In 1754, war with France being again apprehended, a congress of
commissioners from the different colonies was, by an order of the
Lords of Trade, to be assembled at Albany, there to confer with the
chiefs of the Six Nations concerning the means of defending both their
country and ours. Governor Hamilton, having receiv'd this order,
acquainted the House with it, requesting they would furnish proper
presents for the Indians, to be given on this occasion; and naming the
speaker (Mr. Norris) and myself to join Mr. Thomas Penn and Mr.
Secretary Peters as commissioners to act for Pennsylvania. The House
approv'd the nomination, and provided the goods for the present, and
tho' they did not much like treating out of the provinces; and we met
the other commissioners at Albany about the middle of June.

In our way thither, I projected and drew a plan for the union of all
the colonies under one government, so far as might be necessary for
defense, and other important general purposes. As we pass'd thro' New
York, I had there shown my project to Mr. James Alexander and Mr.
Kennedy, two gentlemen of great knowledge in public affairs, and,
being fortified by their approbation, I ventur'd to lay it before the
Congress. It then appeared that several of the commissioners had
form'd plans of the same kind. A previous question was first taken,
whether a union should be established, which pass'd in the affirmative
unanimously. A committee was then appointed, one member from each
colony, to consider the several plans and report. Mine happen'd to be
preferr'd, and, with a few amendments, was accordingly reported.

[Illustration: JOIN, or DIE.]

By this plan the general government was to be administered by a
president-general, appointed and supported by the crown, and a grand
council was to be chosen by the representatives of the people of the
several colonies, met in their respective assemblies. The debates upon
it in Congress went on daily, hand in hand with the Indian business.
Many objections and difficulties were started, but at length they were
all overcome, and the plan was unanimously agreed to, and copies
ordered to be transmitted to the Board of Trade and to the assemblies
of the several provinces. Its fate was singular; the assemblies did
not adopt it, as they all thought there was too much _prerogative_ in
it, and in England it was judg'd to have too much of the _democratic_.
The Board of Trade therefore did not approve of it, nor recommend it
for the approbation of his majesty; but another scheme was form'd,
supposed to answer the same purpose better, whereby the governors of
the provinces, with some members of their respective councils, were to
meet and order the raising of troops, building of forts, etc., and to
draw on the treasury of Great Britain for the expense, which was
afterwards to be refunded by an act of Parliament laying a tax on
America. My plan, with my reasons in support of it, is to be found
among my political papers that are printed.

Being the winter following in Boston, I had much conversation with
Governor Shirley upon both the plans. Part of what passed between us
on the occasion may also be seen among those papers. The different and
contrary reasons of dislike to my plan makes me suspect that it was
really the true medium; and I am still of opinion it would have been
happy for both sides the water if it had been adopted. The colonies,
so united, would have been sufficiently strong to have defended
themselves; there would then have been no need of troops from England;
of course, the subsequent pretence for taxing America, and the bloody
contest it occasioned, would have been avoided. But such mistakes are
not new; history is full of the errors of states and princes.

  "Look round the habitable world, how few
   Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!"

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not
generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into
execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom
_adopted from previous wisdom, but forc'd by the occasion_.

The Governor of Pennsylvania, in sending it down to the Assembly,
expressed his approbation of the plan, "as appearing to him to be
drawn up with great clearness and strength of judgment, and therefore
recommended it as well worthy of their closest and most serious
attention." The House, however, by the management of a certain member,
took it up when I happen'd to be absent, which I thought not very
fair, and reprobated it without paying any attention to it at all, to
my no small mortification.




XV

QUARRELS WITH THE PROPRIETARY
GOVERNORS


In my journey to Boston this year, I met at New York with our new
governor, Mr. Morris, just arriv'd there from England, with whom I had
been before intimately acquainted. He brought a commission to
supersede Mr. Hamilton, who, tir'd with the disputes his proprietary
instructions subjected him to, had resign'd. Mr. Morris ask'd me if I
thought he must expect as uncomfortable an administration. I said,
"No; you may, on the contrary, have a very comfortable one, if you
will only take care not to enter into any dispute with the Assembly."
"My dear friend," says he, pleasantly, "how can you advise my avoiding
disputes? You know I love disputing; it is one of my greatest
pleasures; however, to show the regard I have for your counsel, I
promise you I will, if possible, avoid them." He had some reason for
loving to dispute, being eloquent, an acute sophister, and, therefore,
generally successful in argumentative conversation. He had been
brought up to it from a boy, his father, as I have heard, accustoming
his children to dispute with one another for his diversion, while
sitting at table after dinner; but I think the practice was not wise;
for, in the course of my observation, these disputing, contradicting,
and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They
get victory sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of
more use to them. We parted, he going to Philadelphia, and I to
Boston.

In returning, I met at New York with the votes of the Assembly, by
which it appear'd that, notwithstanding his promise to me, he and the
House were already in high contention; and it was a continual battle
between them as long as he retain'd the government. I had my share of
it; for, as soon as I got back to my seat in the Assembly, I was put
on every committee for answering his speeches and messages, and by the
committees always desired to make the drafts. Our answers, as well as
his messages, were often tart, and sometimes indecently abusive; and,
as he knew I wrote for the Assembly, one might have imagined that,
when we met, we could hardly avoid cutting throats; but he was so
good-natur'd a man that no personal difference between him and me was
occasion'd by the contest, and we often din'd together.

[Illustration: "One afternoon, in the height of this
public quarrel, we met in the street"]

One afternoon, in the height of this public quarrel, we met in the
street. "Franklin," says he, "you must go home with me and spend the
evening; I am to have some company that you will like;" and, taking me
by the arm, he led me to his house. In gay conversation over our wine,
after supper, he told us, jokingly, that he much admir'd the idea of
Sancho Panza,[93] who, when it was proposed to give him a government,
requested it might be a government of _blacks_, as then, if he could
not agree with his people, he might sell them. One of his friends, who
sat next to me, says, "Franklin, why do you continue to side with
these damn'd Quakers? Had not you better sell them? The proprietor
would give you a good price." "The governor," says I, "has not yet
_blacked_ them enough." He, indeed, had laboured hard to blacken the
Assembly in all his messages, but they wip'd off his colouring as fast
as he laid it on, and plac'd it, in return, thick upon his own face;
so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as
Mr. Hamilton, grew tir'd of the contest, and quitted the government.

These public quarrels[94] were all at bottom owing to the
proprietaries, our hereditary governors, who, when any expense was to
be incurred for the defense of their province, with incredible
meanness instructed their deputies to pass no act for levying the
necessary taxes, unless their vast estates were in the same act
expressly excused; and they had even taken bonds of these deputies to
observe such instructions. The Assemblies for three years held out
against this injustice, tho' constrained to bend at last. At length
Captain Denny, who was Governor Morris's successor, ventured to
disobey those instructions; how that was brought about I shall show
hereafter.

    [93] The "round, selfish, and self-important" squire of
    Don Quixote in Cervantes' romance of that name.

    [94] My acts in Morris's time, military, etc.--_Marg.
    note_.

But I am got forward too fast with my story: there are still some
transactions to be mention'd that happened during the administration
of Governor Morris.

War being in a manner commenced with France, the government of
Massachusetts Bay projected an attack upon Crown Point,[95] and sent
Mr. Quincy to Pennsylvania, and Mr. Pownall, afterward Governor
Pownall, to New York, to solicit assistance. As I was in the Assembly,
knew its temper, and was Mr. Quincy's countryman, he appli'd to me for
my influence and assistance. I dictated his address to them, which was
well received. They voted an aid of ten thousand pounds, to be laid
out in provisions. But the governor refusing his assent to their bill
(which included this with other sums granted for the use of the
crown), unless a clause were inserted exempting the proprietary estate
from bearing any part of the tax that would be necessary, the
Assembly, tho' very desirous of making their grant to New England
effectual, were at a loss how to accomplish it. Mr. Quincy labored
hard with the governor to obtain his assent, but he was obstinate.

    [95] On Lake Champlain, ninety miles north of Albany. It
    was captured by the French in 1731, attacked by the
    English in 1755 and 1756, and abandoned by the French in
    1759. It was finally captured from the English by the
    Americans in 1775.

I then suggested a method of doing the business without the governor,
by orders on the trustees of the Loan office, which, by law, the
Assembly had the right of drawing. There was, indeed, little or no
money at that time in the office, and therefore I propos'd that the
orders should be payable in a year, and to bear an interest of five
per cent. With these orders I suppos'd the provisions might easily be
purchas'd. The Assembly, with very little hesitation, adopted the
proposal. The orders were immediately printed, and I was one of the
committee directed to sign and dispose of them. The fund for paying
them was the interest of all the paper currency then extant in the
province upon loan, together with the revenue arising from the excise,
which being known to be more than sufficient, they obtain'd instant
credit, and were not only receiv'd in payment for the provisions, but
many money'd people, who had cash lying by them, vested it in those
orders, which they found advantageous, as they bore interest while
upon hand, and might on any occasion be used as money; so that they
were eagerly all bought up, and in a few weeks none of them were to be
seen. Thus this important affair was by my means completed. Mr. Quincy
return'd thanks to the Assembly in a handsome memorial, went home
highly pleas'd with this success of his embassy, and ever after bore
for me the most cordial and affectionate friendship.




XVI

BRADDOCK'S EXPEDITION


The British government, not chusing to permit the union of the
colonies as propos'd at Albany, and to trust that union with their
defense, lest they should thereby grow too military, and feel their
own strength, suspicions and jealousies at this time being entertain'd
of them, sent over General Braddock with two regiments of regular
English troops for that purpose. He landed at Alexandria, in Virginia,
and thence march'd to Frederictown, in Maryland, where he halted for
carriages. Our Assembly apprehending, from some information, that he
had conceived violent prejudices against them, as averse to the
service, wish'd me to wait upon him, not as from them, but as
postmaster-general, under the guise of proposing to settle with him
the mode of conducting with most celerity and certainty the despatches
between him and the governors of the several provinces, with whom he
must necessarily have continual correspondence, and of which they
propos'd to pay the expense. My son accompanied me on this journey.

We found the general at Frederictown, waiting impatiently for the
return of those he had sent thro' the back parts of Maryland and
Virginia to collect waggons. I stayed with him several days, din'd
with him daily, and had full opportunity of removing all his
prejudices, by the information of what the Assembly had before his
arrival actually done, and were still willing to do, to facilitate his
operations. When I was about to depart, the returns of waggons to be
obtained were brought in, by which it appear'd that they amounted only
to twenty-five, and not all of those were in serviceable condition.
The general and all the officers were surpris'd, declar'd the
expedition was then at an end, being impossible, and exclaim'd against
the ministers for ignorantly landing them in a country destitute of
the means of conveying their stores, baggage, etc., not less than one
hundred and fifty waggons being necessary.

I happen'd to say I thought it was pity they had not been landed
rather in Pennsylvania, as in that country almost every farmer had his
waggon. The general eagerly laid hold of my words, and said, "Then
you, sir, who are a man of interest there, can probably procure them
for us; and I beg you will undertake it." I ask'd what terms were to
be offer'd the owners of the waggons, and I was desir'd to put on
paper the terms that appeared to me necessary. This I did, and they
were agreed to, and a commission and instructions accordingly prepar'd
immediately. What those terms were will appear in the advertisement I
publish'd as soon as I arriv'd at Lancaster, which being, from the
great and sudden effect it produc'd, a piece of some curiosity, I
shall insert it at length, as follows:

  "Advertisement.

   "Lancaster, _April_ 26, 1755.

"Whereas, one hundred and fifty waggons, with four horses to each
waggon, and fifteen hundred saddle or pack horses, are wanted for the
service of his majesty's forces now about to rendezvous at Will's
Creek, and his excellency General Braddock having been pleased to
empower me to contract for the hire of the same, I hereby give notice
that I shall attend for that purpose at Lancaster from this day to
next Wednesday evening, and at York from next Thursday morning till
Friday evening, where I shall be ready to agree for waggons and teams,
or single horses, on the following terms, viz.: 1. That there shall be
paid for each waggon, with four good horses and a driver, fifteen
shillings per diem; and for each able horse with a pack-saddle, or
other saddle and furniture, two shillings per diem; and for each able
horse without a saddle, eighteen pence per diem. 2. That the pay
commence from the time of their joining the forces at Will's Creek,
which must be on or before the 20th of May ensuing, and that a
reasonable allowance be paid over and above for the time necessary for
their travelling to Will's Creek and home again after their discharge.
3. Each waggon and team, and every saddle or pack horse, is to be
valued by indifferent persons chosen between me and the owner; and in
case of the loss of any waggon, team, or other horse in the service,
the price according to such valuation is to be allowed and paid. 4.
Seven days' pay is to be advanced and paid in hand by me to the owner
of each waggon and team, or horse, at the time of contracting, if
required, and the remainder to be paid by General Braddock, or by the
paymaster of the army, at the time of their discharge, or from time to
time, as it shall be demanded. 5. No drivers of waggons, or persons
taking care of the hired horses, are on any account to be called upon
to do the duty of soldiers, or be otherwise employed than in
conducting or taking care of their carriages or horses. 6. All oats,
Indian corn, or other forage that waggons or horses bring to the camp,
more than is necessary for the subsistence of the horses, is to be
taken for the use of the army, and a reasonable price paid for the
same.

"Note.--My son, William Franklin, is empowered to enter into like
contracts with any person in Cumberland county.

"B. Franklin."


  _"To the inhabitants of the Counties of Lancaster,
           York, and Cumberland._

"Friends and Countrymen,

"Being occasionally[96] at the camp at Frederic a few days since, I
found the general and officers extremely exasperated on account of
their not being supplied with horses and carriages, which had been
expected from this province, as most able to furnish them; but,
through the dissensions between our governor and Assembly, money had
not been provided, nor any steps taken for that purpose.

    [96] By chance.

"It was proposed to send an armed force immediately into these
counties, to seize as many of the best carriages and horses as should
be wanted, and compel as many persons into the service as would be
necessary to drive and take care of them.

"I apprehended that the progress of British soldiers through these
counties on such an occasion, especially considering the temper they
are in, and their resentment against us, would be attended with many
and great inconveniences to the inhabitants, and therefore more
willingly took the trouble of trying first what might be done by fair
and equitable means. The people of these back counties have lately
complained to the Assembly that a sufficient currency was wanting; you
have an opportunity of receiving and dividing among you a very
considerable sum; for, if the service of this expedition should
continue, as it is more than probable it will, for one hundred and
twenty days, the hire of these waggons and horses will amount to
upward of thirty thousand pounds, which will be paid you in silver and
gold of the king's money.

"The service will be light and easy, for the army will scarce march
above twelve miles per day, and the waggons and baggage-horses, as
they carry those things that are absolutely necessary to the welfare
of the army, must march with the army, and no faster; and are, for the
army's sake, always placed where they can be most secure, whether in a
march or in a camp.

"If you are really, as I believe you are, good and loyal subjects to
his majesty, you may now do a most acceptable service, and make it
easy to yourselves; for three or four of such as cannot separately
spare from the business of their plantations a waggon and four horses
and a driver, may do it together, one furnishing the waggon, another
one or two horses, and another the driver, and divide the pay
proportionately between you; but if you do not this service to your
king and country voluntarily, when such good pay and reasonable terms
are offered to you, your loyalty will be strongly suspected. The
king's business must be done; so many brave troops, come so far for
your defense, must not stand idle through your backwardness to do what
may be reasonably expected from you; waggons and horses must be had;
violent measures will probably be used, and you will be left to seek
for a recompense where you can find it, and your case, perhaps, be
little pitied or regarded.

"I have no particular interest in this affair, as, except the
satisfaction of endeavouring to do good, I shall have only my labour
for my pains. If this method of obtaining the waggons and horses is
not likely to succeed, I am obliged to send word to the general in
fourteen days; and I suppose Sir John St. Clair, the hussar, with a
body of soldiers, will immediately enter the province for the purpose,
which I shall be sorry to hear, because I am very sincerely and truly
your friend and well-wisher,

"B. Franklin."

I received of the general about eight hundred pounds, to be disbursed
in advance-money to the waggon owners, etc.; but that sum being
insufficient, I advanc'd upward of two hundred pounds more, and in two
weeks the one hundred and fifty waggons, with two hundred and
fifty-nine carrying horses, were on their march for the camp. The
advertisement promised payment according to the valuation, in case any
waggon or horse should be lost. The owners, however, alleging they did
not know General Braddock, or what dependence might be had on his
promise, insisted on my bond for the performance, which I accordingly
gave them.

While I was at the camp, supping one evening with the officers of
Colonel Dunbar's regiment, he represented to me his concern for the
subalterns, who, he said, were generally not in affluence, and could
ill afford, in this dear country, to lay in the stores that might be
necessary in so long a march, thro' a wilderness, where nothing was to
be purchas'd. I commiserated their case, and resolved to endeavour
procuring them some relief. I said nothing, however, to him of my
intention, but wrote the next morning to the committee of the
Assembly, who had the disposition of some public money, warmly
recommending the case of these officers to their consideration, and
proposing that a present should be sent them of necessaries and
refreshments. My son, who had some experience of a camp life, and of
its wants, drew up a list for me, which I enclos'd in my letter. The
committee approv'd, and used such diligence that, conducted by my son,
the stores arrived at the camp as soon as the waggons. They consisted
of twenty parcels, each containing

6 lbs. loaf sugar.
6 lbs. good Muscovado do.
1 lb. good green tea.
1 lb. good bohea do.
6 lbs. good ground coffee.
6 lbs. chocolate.
1-2 cwt. best white biscuit.
1-2 lb. pepper.
1 quart best white wine
vinegar.
1 Gloucester cheese.
1 kegg containing 20 lbs.
good butter.
2 doz. old Madeira wine.
2 gallons Jamaica spirits.
1 bottle flour of mustard.
2 well-cur'd hams.
1-2 dozen dry'd tongues.
6 lbs. rice.
6 lbs. raisins.

These twenty parcels, well pack'd, were placed on as many horses, each
parcel, with the horse, being intended as a present for one officer.
They were very thankfully receiv'd, and the kindness acknowledg'd by
letters to me from the colonels of both regiments, in the most
grateful terms. The general, too, was highly satisfied with my conduct
in procuring him the waggons, etc., and readily paid my account of
disbursements, thanking me repeatedly, and requesting my farther
assistance in sending provisions after him. I undertook this also, and
was busily employ'd in it till we heard of his defeat, advancing for
the service of my own money, upwards of one thousand pounds sterling,
of which I sent him an account. It came to his hands, luckily for me,
a few days before the battle, and he return'd me immediately an order
on the paymaster for the round sum of one thousand pounds, leaving the
remainder to the next account. I consider this payment as good luck,
having never been able to obtain that remainder, of which more
hereafter.

This general was, I think, a brave man, and might probably have made a
figure as a good officer in some European war. But he had too much
self-confidence, too high an opinion of the validity of regular
troops, and too mean a one of both Americans and Indians. George
Croghan, our Indian interpreter, join'd him on his march with one
hundred of those people, who might have been of great use to his army
as guides, scouts, etc., if he had treated them kindly; but he
slighted and neglected them, and they gradually left him.

In conversation with him one day, he was giving me some account of his
intended progress. "After taking Fort Duquesne,"[97] says he, "I am to
proceed to Niagara; and, having taken that, to Frontenac,[98] if the
season will allow time; and I suppose it will, for Duquesne can hardly
detain me above three or four days; and then I see nothing that can
obstruct my march to Niagara." Having before revolv'd in my mind the
long line his army must make in their march by a very narrow road, to
be cut for them thro' the woods and bushes, and also what I had read
of a former defeat of fifteen hundred French, who invaded the Iroquois
country, I had conceiv'd some doubts and some fears for the event of
the campaign. But I ventur'd only to say, "To be sure, sir, if you
arrive well before Duquesne, with these fine troops, so well provided
with artillery, that place not yet completely fortified, and as we
hear with no very strong garrison, can probably make but a short
resistance. The only danger I apprehend of obstruction to your march
is from ambuscades of Indians, who, by constant practice, are
dexterous in laying and executing them; and the slender line, near
four miles long, which your army must make, may expose it to be
attack'd by surprise in its flanks, and to be cut like a thread into
several pieces, which, from their distance, cannot come up in time to
support each other."

    [97] Pittsburg.

    [98] Kingston, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario.

He smil'd at my ignorance, and reply'd, "These savages may, indeed, be
a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the king's
regular and disciplin'd troops, sir, it is impossible they should make
any impression." I was conscious of an impropriety in my disputing
with a military man in matters of his profession, and said no more.
The enemy, however, did not take the advantage of his army which I
apprehended its long line of march expos'd it to, but let it advance
without interruption till within nine miles of the place; and then,
when more in a body (for it had just passed a river, where the front
had halted till all were come over), and in a more open part of the
woods than any it had pass'd, attack'd its advanced guard by heavy
fire from behind trees and bushes, which was the first intelligence
the general had of an enemy's being near him. This guard being
disordered, the general hurried the troops up to their assistance,
which was done in great confusion, thro' waggons, baggage, and cattle;
and presently the fire came upon their flank: the officers, being on
horseback, were more easily distinguish'd, pick'd out as marks, and
fell very fast; and the soldiers were crowded together in a huddle,
having or hearing no orders, and standing to be shot at till
two-thirds of them were killed; and then, being seiz'd with a panick,
the whole fled with precipitation.

[Illustration: "The only danger I apprehend of obstruction to your
march is from ambuscades of Indians"]

The waggoners took each a horse out of his team and scamper'd; their
example was immediately followed by others; so that all the waggons,
provisions, artillery, and stores were left to the enemy. The general,
being wounded, was brought off with difficulty; his secretary, Mr.
Shirley, was killed by his side; and out of eighty-six officers,
sixty-three were killed or wounded, and seven hundred and fourteen men
killed out of eleven hundred. These eleven hundred had been picked men
from the whole army; the rest had been left behind with Colonel
Dunbar, who was to follow with the heavier part of the stores,
provisions, and baggage. The flyers, not being pursu'd, arriv'd at
Dunbar's camp, and the panick they brought with them instantly seiz'd
him and all his people; and, tho' he had now above one thousand men,
and the enemy who had beaten Braddock did not at most exceed four
hundred Indians and French together, instead of proceeding, and
endeavouring to recover some of the lost honour, he ordered all the
stores, ammunition, etc., to be destroy'd, that he might have more
horses to assist his flight towards the settlements, and less lumber
to remove. He was there met with requests from the governors of
Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, that he would post his troops on
the frontier, so as to afford some protection to the inhabitants; but
he continued his hasty march thro' all the country, not thinking
himself safe till he arrived at Philadelphia, where the inhabitants
could protect him. This whole transaction gave us Americans the first
suspicion that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regulars
had not been well founded.[99]

    [99] Other accounts of this expedition and defeat may be
    found in Fiske's _Washington and his Country_, or
    Lodge's _George Washington_, Vol. 1.

In their first march, too, from their landing till they got beyond the
settlements, they had plundered and stripped the inhabitants, totally
ruining some poor families, besides insulting, abusing, and confining
the people if they remonstrated. This was enough to put us out of
conceit of such defenders, if we had really wanted any. How different
was the conduct of our French friends in 1781, who, during a march
thro' the most inhabited part of our country from Rhode Island to
Virginia, near seven hundred miles, occasioned not the smallest
complaint for the loss of a pig, a chicken, or even an apple.

Captain Orme, who was one of the general's aids-de-camp, and, being
grievously wounded, was brought off with him, and continu'd with him
to his death, which happen'd in a few days, told me that he was
totally silent all the first day, and at night only said, "_Who would
have thought it?_" That he was silent again the following day, saying
only at last, "_We shall better know how to deal with them another
time_"; and dy'd in a few minutes after.

The secretary's papers, with all the general's orders, instructions,
and correspondence, falling into the enemy's hands, they selected and
translated into French a number of the articles, which they printed,
to prove the hostile intentions of the British court before the
declaration of war. Among these I saw some letters of the general to
the ministry, speaking highly of the great service I had rendered the
army, and recommending me to their notice. David Hume,[100] too, who was
some years after secretary to Lord Hertford, when minister in France,
and afterward to General Conway, when secretary of state, told me he
had seen among the papers in that office, letters from Braddock highly
recommending me. But, the expedition having been unfortunate, my
service, it seems, was not thought of much value, for those
recommendations were never of any use to me.

    [100] A famous Scotch philosopher and historian
    (1711-1776).

As to rewards from himself, I ask'd only one, which was, that he would
give orders to his officers not to enlist any more of our bought
servants, and that he would discharge such as had been already
enlisted. This he readily granted, and several were accordingly
return'd to their masters, on my application. Dunbar, when the command
devolv'd on him, was not so generous. He being at Philadelphia, on his
retreat, or rather flight, I apply'd to him for the discharge of the
servants of three poor farmers of Lancaster county that he had
enlisted, reminding him of the late general's orders on that head. He
promised me that, if the masters would come to him at Trenton, where
he should be in a few days on his march to New York, he would there
deliver their men to them. They accordingly were at the expense and
trouble of going to Trenton, and there he refus'd to perform his
promise, to their great loss and disappointment.

As soon as the loss of the waggons and horses was generally known, all
the owners came upon me for the valuation which I had given bond to
pay. Their demands gave me a great deal of trouble, my acquainting
them that the money was ready in the paymaster's hands, but that
orders for paying it must first be obtained from General Shirley,[101]
and my assuring them that I had apply'd to that general by letter;
but, he being at a distance, an answer could not soon be receiv'd, and
they must have patience, all this was not sufficient to satisfy, and
some began to sue me. General Shirley at length relieved me from this
terrible situation by appointing commissioners to examine the claims,
and ordering payment. They amounted to near twenty thousand pound,
which to pay would have ruined me.

    [101] Governor of Massachusetts and commander of the
    British forces in America.

Before we had the news of this defeat, the two Doctors Bond came to me
with a subscription paper for raising money to defray the expense of a
grand firework, which it was intended to exhibit at a rejoicing on
receipt of the news of our taking Fort Duquesne. I looked grave, and
said it would, I thought, be time enough to prepare for the rejoicing
when we knew we should have occasion to rejoice. They seem'd surpris'd
that I did not immediately comply with their proposal. "Why the
d----l!" says one of them, "you surely don't suppose that the
fort will not be taken?" "I don't know that it will not be taken, but
I know that the events of war are subject to great uncertainty." I
gave them the reasons of my doubting; the subscription was dropt, and
the projectors thereby missed the mortification they would have
undergone if the firework had been prepared. Dr. Bond, on some other
occasion afterward, said that he did not like Franklin's forebodings.

Governor Morris, who had continually worried the Assembly with message
after message before the defeat of Braddock, to beat them into the
making of acts to raise money for the defense of the province, without
taxing, among others, the proprietary estates, and had rejected all
their bills for not having such an exempting clause, now redoubled his
attacks with more hope of success, the danger and necessity being
greater. The Assembly, however, continu'd firm, believing they had
justice on their side, and that it would be giving up an essential
right if they suffered the governor to amend their money-bills. In one
of the last, indeed, which was for granting fifty thousand pounds, his
propos'd amendment was only of a single word. The bill express'd "that
all estates, real and personal, were to be taxed, those of the
proprietaries _not_ excepted." His amendment was, for _not_ read
_only_: a small, but very material alteration. However, when the news
of this disaster reached England, our friends there whom we had taken
care to furnish with all the Assembly's answers to the governor's
messages, rais'd a clamor against the proprietaries for their meanness
and injustice in giving their governor such instructions; some going
so far as to say that, by obstructing the defense of their province,
they forfeited their right to it. They were intimidated by this, and
sent orders to their receiver-general to add five thousand pounds of
their money to whatever sum might be given by the Assembly for such
purpose.

This, being notified to the House, was accepted in lieu of their share
of a general tax, and a new bill was form'd, with an exempting clause,
which passed accordingly. By this act I was appointed one of the
commissioners for disposing of the money, sixty thousand pounds. I had
been active in modelling the bill and procuring its passage, and had,
at the same time, drawn a bill for establishing and disciplining a
voluntary militia, which I carried thro' the House without much
difficulty, as care was taken in it to leave the Quakers at their
liberty. To promote the association necessary to form the militia, I
wrote a dialogue,[102] stating and answering all the objections I could
think of to such a militia, which was printed, and had, as I thought,
great effect.

    [102] This dialogue and the militia act are in the
    Gentleman's Magazine for February and March,
    1756.--_Marg. note._




XVII

FRANKLIN'S DEFENSE OF THE
FRONTIER


While the several companies in the city and country were forming, and
learning their exercise, the governor prevail'd with me to take charge
of our North-western frontier, which was infested by the enemy, and
provide for the defense of the inhabitants by raising troops and
building a line of forts. I undertook this military business, tho' I
did not conceive myself well qualified for it. He gave me a commission
with full powers, and a parcel of blank commissions for officers, to
be given to whom I thought fit. I had but little difficulty in raising
men, having soon five hundred and sixty under my command. My son, who
had in the preceding war been an officer in the army rais'd against
Canada, was my aid-de-camp, and of great use to me. The Indians had
burned Gnadenhut,[103] a village settled by the Moravians, and massacred
the inhabitants; but the place was thought a good situation for one of
the forts.

    [103] Pronounced Gna´-den-hoot.

In order to march thither, I assembled the companies at Bethlehem, the
chief establishment of those people. I was surprised to find it in so
good a posture of defense; the destruction of Gnadenhut had made them
apprehend danger. The principal buildings were defended by a stockade;
they had purchased a quantity of arms and ammunition from New York,
and had even plac'd quantities of small paving stones between the
windows of their high stone houses, for their women to throw down upon
the heads of any Indians that should attempt to force into them. The
armed brethren, too, kept watch, and reliev'd as methodically as in
any garrison town. In conversation with the bishop, Spangenberg, I
mention'd this my surprise; for, knowing they had obtained an act of
Parliament exempting them from military duties in the colonies, I had
suppos'd they were conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms. He
answer'd me that it was not one of their established principles, but
that, at the time of their obtaining that act, it was thought to be a
principle with many of their people. On this occasion, however, they,
to their surprise, found it adopted by but a few. It seems they were
either deceiv'd in themselves, or deceiv'd the Parliament; but common
sense, aided by present danger, will sometimes be too strong for
whimsical opinions.

It was the beginning of January when we set out upon this business of
building forts. I sent one detachment toward the Minisink, with
instructions to erect one for the security of that upper part of the
country, and another to the lower part, with similar instructions; and
I concluded to go myself with the rest of my force to Gnadenhut, where
a fort was tho't more immediately necessary. The Moravians procur'd me
five waggons for our tools, stores, baggage, etc.

Just before we left Bethlehem, eleven farmers, who had been driven
from their plantations by the Indians, came to me requesting a supply
of firearms, that they might go back and fetch off their cattle. I
gave them each a gun with suitable ammunition. We had not march'd many
miles before it began to rain, and it continued raining all day; there
were no habitations on the road to shelter us, till we arriv'd near
night at the house of a German, where, and in his barn, we were all
huddled together, as wet as water could make us. It was well we were
not attack'd in our march, for our arms were of the most ordinary
sort, and our men could not keep their gun locks[104] dry. The Indians
are dexterous in contrivances for that purpose, which we had not. They
met that day the eleven poor farmers above mentioned, and killed ten
of them. The one who escap'd inform'd that his and his companions'
guns would not go off, the priming being wet with the rain.

    [104] Flint-lock guns, discharged by means of a spark
    struck from flint and steel into powder (priming) in an
    open pan.

[Illustration: "We had not march'd many miles before it began to rain"]

The next day being fair, we continu'd our march, and arriv'd at the
desolated Gnadenhut. There was a saw-mill near, round which were left
several piles of boards, with which we soon hutted ourselves; an
operation the more necessary at that inclement season, as we had no
tents. Our first work was to bury more effectually the dead we found
there, who had been half interr'd by the country people.

The next morning our fort was plann'd and mark'd out, the
circumference measuring four hundred and fifty-five feet, which would
require as many palisades to be made of trees, one with another, of a
foot diameter each. Our axes, of which we had seventy, were
immediately set to work to cut down trees, and, our men being
dexterous in the use of them, great despatch was made. Seeing the
trees fall so fast, I had the curiosity to look at my watch when two
men began to cut at a pine; in six minutes they had it upon the
ground, and I found it of fourteen inches diameter. Each pine made
three palisades of eighteen feet long, pointed at one end. While these
were preparing, our other men dug a trench all round, of three feet
deep, in which the palisades were to be planted; and, our waggons, the
bodies being taken off, and the fore and hind wheels separated
by taking out the pin which united the two parts of the perch,[105] we
had ten carriages, with two horses each, to bring the palisades from
the woods to the spot. When they were set up, our carpenters built a
stage

[Illustration: "Our axes ... were immediately set to work to cut down
trees"]

of boards all round within, about six feet high, for the men to stand
on when to fire thro' the loopholes. We had one swivel gun, which we
mounted on one of the angles, and fir'd it as soon as fix'd, to let
the Indians know, if any were within hearing, that we had such pieces;
and thus our fort, if such a magnificent name may be given to so
miserable a stockade, was finish'd in a week, though it rain'd so hard
every other day that the men could not work.

    [105] Here the pole connecting the front and rear wheels
    of a wagon.

This gave me occasion to observe, that, when men are employ'd, they
are best content'd; for on the days they worked they were good-natur'd
and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day's
work, they spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were
mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their pork, the bread,
etc., and in continual ill-humour, which put me in mind of a
sea-captain, whose rule it was to keep his men constantly at work;
and, when his mate once told him that they had done everything, and
there was nothing further to employ them about, _"Oh," says he, "make
them scour the anchor."_

This kind of fort, however contemptible, is a sufficient defense
against Indians, who have no cannon. Finding ourselves now posted
securely, and having a place to retreat to on occasion, we ventur'd
out in parties to scour the adjacent country. We met with no Indians,
but we found the places on the neighbouring hills where they had lain
to watch our proceedings. There was an art in their contrivance of
those places that seems worth mention. It being winter, a fire was
necessary for them; but a common fire on the surface of the ground
would by its light have discover'd their position at a distance. They
had therefore dug holes in the ground about three feet diameter, and
somewhat deeper; we saw where they had with their hatchets cut off the
charcoal from the sides of burnt logs lying in the woods. With these
coals they had made small fires in the bottom of the holes, and we
observ'd among the weeds and grass the prints of their bodies, made by
their laying all round, with their legs hanging down in the holes to
keep their feet warm, which, with them, is an essential point. This
kind of fire, so manag'd, could not discover them, either by its
light, flame, sparks, or even smoke: it appear'd that their number was
not great, and it seems they saw we were too many to be attacked by
them with prospect of advantage.

We had for our chaplain a zealous Presbyterian minister, Mr. Beatty,
who complained to me that the men did not generally attend his prayers
and exhortations. When they enlisted, they were promised, besides pay
and provisions, a gill of rum a day, which was punctually serv'd out
to them, half in the morning, and the other half in the evening; and I
observed they were as punctual in attending to receive it; upon which
I said to Mr. Beatty, "It is, perhaps, below the dignity of your
profession to act as steward of the rum, but if you were to deal it
out and only just after prayers, you would have them all about you."
He liked the tho't, undertook the office, and, with the help of a few
hands to measure out the liquor, executed it to satisfaction, and
never were prayers more generally and more punctually attended; so
that I thought this method preferable to the punishment inflicted by
some military laws for non-attendance on divine service.

I had hardly finish'd this business, and got my fort well stor'd with
provisions, when I receiv'd a letter from the governor, acquainting me
that he had call'd the Assembly, and wished my attendance there, if
the posture of affairs on the frontiers was such that my remaining
there was no longer necessary. My friends, too, of the Assembly,
pressing me by their letters to be, if possible, at the meeting, and
my three intended forts being now compleated, and the inhabitants
contented to remain on their farms under that protection, I resolved
to return; the more willingly, as a New England officer, Colonel
Clapham, experienced in Indian war, being on a visit to our
establishment, consented to accept the command. I gave him a
commission, and, parading the garrison, had it read before them, and
introduc'd him to them as an officer who, from his skill in military
affairs, was much more fit to command them than myself; and, giving
them a little exhortation, took my leave. I was escorted as far as
Bethlehem, where I rested a few days to recover from the fatigue I had
undergone. The first night, being in a good bed, I could hardly sleep,
it was so different from my hard lodging on the floor of our hut at
Gnaden wrapt only in a blanket or two.

While at Bethlehem, I inquir'd a little into the practice of the
Moravians: some of them had accompanied me, and all were very kind to
me. I found they work'd for a common stock, ate at common tables, and
slept in common dormitories, great numbers together. In the
dormitories I observed loopholes, at certain distances all along just
under the ceiling, which I thought judiciously placed for change of
air. I was at their church, where I was entertain'd with good musick,
the organ being accompanied with violins, hautboys, flutes, clarinets,
etc. I understood that their sermons were not usually preached to
mixed congregations of men, women, and children, as is our common
practice, but that they assembled sometimes the married men, at other
times their wives, then the young men, the young women, and the little
children, each division by itself. The sermon I heard was to the
latter, who came in and were plac'd in rows on benches; the boys under
the conduct of a young man, their tutor, and the girls conducted by a
young woman. The discourse seem'd well adapted to their capacities,
and was delivered in a pleasing, familiar manner, coaxing them, as it
were, to be good. They behav'd very orderly, but looked pale and
unhealthy, which made me suspect they were kept too much within doors,
or not allow'd sufficient exercise.

I inquir'd concerning the Moravian marriages, whether the report was
true that they were by lot. I was told that lots were us'd only in
particular cases; that generally, when a young man found himself
dispos'd to marry, he inform'd the elders of his class, who consulted
the elder ladies that govern'd the young women. As these elders of the
different sexes were well acquainted with the tempers and dispositions
of their respective pupils, they could best judge what matches were
suitable, and their judgments were generally acquiesc'd in; but if,
for example, it should happen that two or three young women were found
to be equally proper for the young man, the lot was then recurred to.
I objected, if the matches are not made by the mutual choice of the
parties, some of them may chance to be very unhappy. "And so they
may," answer'd my informer, "if you let the parties chuse for
themselves;" which, indeed, I could not deny.

Being returned to Philadelphia, I found the association went on
swimmingly, the inhabitants that were not Quakers having pretty
generally come into it, formed themselves into companies, and chose
their captains, lieutenants, and ensigns, according to the new law.
Dr. B. visited me, and gave me an account of the pains he had taken to
spread a general good liking to the law, and ascribed much to those
endeavours. I had had the vanity to ascribe all to my _Dialogue_;
however, not knowing but that he might be in the right, I let him
enjoy his opinion, which I take to be generally the best way in such
cases. The officers, meeting, chose me to be colonel of the regiment,
which I this time accepted. I forget how many companies we had, but we
paraded about twelve hundred well-looking men, with a company of
artillery, who had been furnished with six brass field-pieces, which
they had become so expert in the use of as to fire twelve times in a
minute. The first time I reviewed my regiment they accompanied me to
my house, and would salute me with some rounds fired before my door,
which shook down and broke several glasses of my electrical apparatus.
And my new honour proved not much less brittle; for all our
commissions were soon after broken by a repeal of the law in England.

During this short time of my colonelship, being about to set out on a
journey to Virginia, the officers of my regiment took it into their
heads that it would be proper for them to escort me out of town, as
far as the Lower Ferry. Just as I was getting on horseback they came
to my door, between thirty and forty, mounted, and all in their
uniforms. I had not been previously acquainted with the project, or I
should have prevented it, being naturally averse to the assuming of
state on any occasion; and I was a good deal chagrin'd at their
appearance, as I could not avoid their accompanying me. What made it
worse was, that, as soon as we began to move, they drew their swords
and rode with them naked all the way. Somebody wrote an account of
this to the proprietor, and it gave him great offense. No such honour
had been paid him when in the province, nor to any of his governors;
and he said it was only proper to princes of the blood royal, which
may be true for aught I know, who was, and still am, ignorant of the
etiquette in such cases.

This silly affair, however, greatly increased his rancour against me,
which was before not a little, on account of my conduct in the
Assembly respecting the exemption of his estate from taxation, which I
had always oppos'd very warmly, and not without severe reflections on
his meanness and injustice of contending for it. He accused me to the
ministry as being the great obstacle to the King's service,
preventing, by my influence in the House, the proper form of the bills
for raising money, and he instanced this parade with my officers as a
proof of my having an intention to take the government of the province
out of his hands by force. He also applied to Sir Everard Fawkener,
the postmaster-general, to deprive me of my office; but it had no
other effect than to procure from Sir Everard a gentle admonition.

Notwithstanding the continual wrangle between the governor and the
House, in which I, as a member, had so large a share, there still
subsisted a civil intercourse between that gentleman and myself, and
we never had any personal difference. I have sometimes since thought
that his little or no resentment against me, for the answers it was
known I drew up to his messages, might be the effect of professional
habit, and that, being bred a lawyer, he might consider us both as
merely advocates for contending clients in a suit, he for the
proprietaries and I for the Assembly. He would, therefore, sometimes
call in a friendly way to advise with me on difficult points, and
sometimes, tho' not often, take my advice.

We acted in concert to supply Braddock's army with provisions; and,
when the shocking news arrived of his defeat, the governor sent in
haste for me, to consult with him on measures for preventing the
desertion of the back counties. I forget now the advice I gave; but I
think it was, that Dunbar should be written to, and prevail'd with, if
possible, to post his troops on the frontiers for their protection,
till, by reinforcements from the colonies, he might be able to proceed
on the expedition. And, after my return from the frontier, he would
have had me undertake the conduct of such an expedition with
provincial troops, for the reduction of Fort Duquesne, Dunbar and his
men being otherwise employed; and he proposed to commission me as
general. I had not so good an opinion of my military abilities as he
profess'd to have, and I believe his professions must have exceeded
his real sentiments; but probably he might think that my popularity
would facilitate the raising of the men, and my influence in Assembly,
the grant of money to pay them, and that, perhaps, without taxing the
proprietary estate. Finding me not so forward to engage as he
expected, the project was dropt, and he soon after left the
government, being superseded by Captain Denny.




XVIII

SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS


Before I proceed in relating the part I had in public affairs under
this new governor's administration, it may not be amiss here to give
some account of the rise and progress of my philosophical reputation.

In 1746, being at Boston, I met there with a Dr. Spence, who was
lately arrived from Scotland, and show'd me some electric experiments.
They were imperfectly perform'd, as he was not very expert; but, being
on a subject quite new to me, they equally surpris'd and pleased me.
Soon after my return to Philadelphia, our library company receiv'd
from Mr. P. Collinson, Fellow of the Royal Society[106] of London, a
present of a glass tube, with some account of the use of it in making
such experiments. I eagerly seized the opportunity of repeating what I
had seen at Boston; and, by much practice, acquired great readiness in
performing those, also, which we had an account of from England,
adding a number of new ones. I say much practice, for my house was
continually full, for some time, with people who came to see these new
wonders.

    [106] The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural
    Knowledge was founded in 1660 and holds the foremost
    place among English societies for the advancement of
    science.

To divide a little this incumbrance among my friends, I caused a
number of similar tubes to be blown at our glass-house, with which
they furnish'd themselves, so that we had at length several
performers. Among these, the principal was Mr. Kinnersley, an
ingenious neighbour, who, being out of business, I encouraged to
undertake showing the experiments for money, and drew up for him two
lectures, in which the experiments were rang'd in such order, and
accompanied with such explanations in such method, as that the
foregoing should assist in comprehending the following. He procur'd an
elegant apparatus for the purpose, in which all the little machines
that I had roughly made for myself were nicely form'd by
instrument-makers. His lectures were well attended, and gave great
satisfaction; and after some time he went thro' the colonies,
exhibiting them in every capital town, and pick'd up some money. In
the West India islands, indeed, it was with difficulty the experiments
could be made, from the general moisture of the air.

Oblig'd as we were to Mr. Collinson for his present of the tube, etc.,
I thought it right he should be inform'd of our success in using it,
and wrote him several letters containing accounts of our experiments.
He got them read in the Royal Society, where they were not at first
thought worth so much notice as to be printed in their Transactions.
One paper, which I wrote for Mr. Kinnersley, on the sameness of
lightning with electricity,[107] I sent to Dr. Mitchel, an acquaintance
of mine, and one of the members also of that society, who wrote me
word that it had been read, but was laughed at by the connoisseurs.
The papers, however, being shown to Dr. Fothergill, he thought them of
too much value to be stifled, and advis'd the printing of them. Mr.
Collinson then gave them to _Cave_ for publication in his Gentleman's
Magazine; but he chose to print them separately in a pamphlet, and Dr.
Fothergill wrote the preface. Cave, it seems, judged rightly for his
profit, for by the additions that arrived afterward, they swell'd to a
quarto volume, which has had five editions, and cost him nothing for
copy-money.

    [107] See page 327.

It was, however, some time before those papers were much taken notice
of in England. A copy of them happening to fall into the hands of the
Count de Buffon,[108] a philosopher deservedly of great reputation in
France, and, indeed, all over Europe, he prevailed with M. Dalibard[109]
to translate them into French, and they were printed at Paris. The
publication offended the Abbé Nollet, preceptor in Natural Philosophy
to the royal family, and an able experimenter, who had form'd and
publish'd a theory of electricity, which then had the general vogue.
He could not at first believe that such a work came from America, and
said it must have been fabricated by his enemies at Paris, to decry
his system. Afterwards, having been assur'd that there really existed
such a person as Franklin at Philadelphia, which he had doubted, he
wrote and published a volume of Letters, chiefly address'd to me,
defending his theory, and denying the verity of my experiments, and of
the positions deduc'd from them.

    [108] A celebrated French naturalist (1707-1788).

    [109] Dalibard, who had translated Franklin's letters to
    Collinson into French, was the first to demonstrate, in
    a practical application of Franklin's experiment, that
    lightning and electricity are the same. "This was May
    10th, 1752, one month before Franklin flew his famous
    kite at Philadelphia and proved the fact
    himself."--McMaster.

I once purpos'd answering the abbé, and actually began the answer;
but, on consideration that my writings contained a description of
experiments which anyone might repeat and verify, and if not to be
verifi'd, could not be defended; or of observations offer'd as
conjectures, and not delivered dogmatically, therefore not laying me
under any obligation to defend them; and reflecting that a dispute
between two persons, writing in different languages, might be
lengthened greatly by mistranslations, and thence misconceptions of
one another's meaning, much of one of the abbé's letters being founded
on an error in the translation, I concluded to let my papers shift for
themselves, believing it was better to spend what time I could spare
from public business in making new experiments, than in disputing
about those already made. I therefore never answered M. Nollet, and
the event gave me no cause to repent my silence; for my friend M. le
Roy, of the Royal Academy of Sciences, took up my cause and refuted
him; my book was translated into the Italian, German, and Latin
languages; and the doctrine it contain'd was by degrees universally
adopted by the philosophers of Europe, in preference to that of the
abbé; so that he lived to see himself the last of his sect, except
Monsieur B----, of Paris, his _élève_ and immediate disciple.

What gave my book the more sudden and general celebrity, was the
success of one of its proposed experiments, made by Messrs. Dalibard
and De Lor at Marly, for drawing lightning from the clouds. This
engag'd the public attention everywhere. M. de Lor, who had an
apparatus for experimental philosophy, and lectur'd in that branch of
science, undertook to repeat what he called the _Philadelphia
Experiments_; and, after they were performed before the king and
court, all the curious of Paris flocked to see them. I will not swell
this narrative with an account of that capital experiment, nor of the
infinite pleasure I receiv'd in the success of a similar one I made
soon after with a kite at Philadelphia, as both are to be found in the
histories of electricity.

Dr. Wright, an English physician, when at Paris, wrote to a friend,
who was of the Royal Society, an account of the high esteem my
experiments were in among the learned abroad, and of their wonder that
my writings had been so little noticed in England. The society, on
this, resum'd the consideration of the letters that had been read to
them; and the celebrated Dr. Watson drew up a summary account of them,
and of all I had afterwards sent to England on the subject, which he
accompanied with some praise of the writer. This summary was then
printed in their Transactions; and some members of the society in
London, particularly the very ingenious Mr. Canton, having verified
the experiment of procuring lightning from the clouds by a pointed
rod, and acquainting them with the success, they soon made me more
than amends for the slight with which they had before treated me.
Without my having made any application for that honour, they chose me
a member, and voted that I should be excus'd the customary payments,
which would have amounted to twenty-five guineas; and ever since have
given me their Transactions gratis. They also presented me with the
gold medal of Sir Godfrey Copley[110] for the year 1753, the delivery of
which was accompanied by a very handsome speech of the president, Lord
Macclesfield, wherein I was highly honoured.

    [110] An English baronet (died in 1709), donator of a fund
    of £100, "in trust for the Royal Society of London for
    improving natural knowledge."

[Illustration: Gold medal of Sir Godfrey Copley.]




XIX

AGENT OF PENNSYLVANIA IN
LONDON


Our new governor, Captain Denny, brought over for me the
before mentioned medal from the Royal Society, which he presented to
me at an entertainment given him by the city. He accompanied it with
very polite expressions of his esteem for me, having, as he said, been
long acquainted with my character. After dinner, when the company, as
was customary at that time, were engag'd in drinking, he took me aside
into another room, and acquainted me that he had been advis'd by his
friends in England to cultivate a friendship with me, as one who was
capable of giving him the best advice, and of contributing most
effectually to the making his administration easy; that he therefore
desired of all things to have a good understanding with me, and he
begged me to be assured of his readiness on all occasions to render me
every service that might be in his power. He said much to me, also, of
the proprietor's good disposition towards the province, and of the
advantage it might be to us all, and to me in particular, if the
opposition that had been so long continu'd to his measures was dropt,
and harmony restor'd between him and the people; in effecting which,
it was thought no one could be more serviceable than myself; and I
might depend on adequate acknowledgments and recompenses, etc., etc.
The drinkers, finding we did not return immediately to the table, sent
us a decanter of Madeira, which the governor made liberal use of, and
in proportion became more profuse of his solicitations and promises.

My answers were to this purpose: that my circumstances, thanks to God,
were such as to make proprietary favours unnecessary to me; and that,
being a member of the Assembly, I could not possibly accept of any;
that, however, I had no personal enmity to the proprietary, and that,
whenever the public measures he propos'd should appear to be for the
good of the people, no one should espouse and forward them more
zealously than myself; my past opposition having been founded on this,
that the measures which had been urged were evidently intended to
serve the proprietary interest, with great prejudice to that of the
people; that I was much obliged to him (the governor) for his
professions of regard to me, and that he might rely on everything in
my power to make his administration as easy as possible, hoping at the
same time that he had not brought with him the same unfortunate
instruction his predecessor had been hampered with.

On this he did not then explain himself; but when he afterwards came
to do business with the Assembly, they appear'd again, the disputes
were renewed, and I was as active as ever in the opposition, being the
penman, first, of the request to have a communication of the
instructions, and then of the remarks upon them, which may be found in
the votes of the time, and in the Historical Review I afterward
publish'd. But between us personally no enmity arose; we were often
together; he was a man of letters, had seen much of the world, and was
very entertaining and pleasing in conversation. He gave me the first
information that my old friend Jas. Ralph was still alive; that he was
esteem'd one of the best political writers in England; had been
employed in the dispute[111] between Prince Frederic and the king, and
had obtain'd a pension of three hundred a year; that his reputation
was indeed small as a poet, Pope having damned his poetry in the
_Dunciad_,[112] but his prose was thought as good as any man's.

    [111] Quarrel between George II and his son, Frederick,
    Prince of Wales, who died before his father.

    [112] A satirical poem by Alexander Pope directed against
    various contemporary writers.

The Assembly finally finding the proprietary obstinately persisted in
manacling their deputies with instructions inconsistent not only with
the privileges of the people, but with the service of the crown,
resolv'd to petition the king against them, and appointed me their
agent to go over to England, to present and support the petition. The
House had sent up a bill to the governor, granting a sum of sixty
thousand pounds for the king's use (ten thousand pounds of which was
subjected to the orders of the then general, Lord Loudoun), which the
governor absolutely refus'd to pass, in compliance with his
instructions.

I had agreed with Captain Morris, of the packet at New York, for my
passage, and my stores were put on board, when Lord Loudoun arriv'd at
Philadelphia, expressly, as he told me, to endeavour an accommodation
between the governor and Assembly, that his majesty's service might
not be obstructed by their dissensions. Accordingly, he desir'd the
governor and myself to meet him, that he might hear what was to be
said on both sides. We met and discussed the business. In behalf of
the Assembly, I urged all the various arguments that may be found in
the public papers of that time, which were of my writing, and are
printed with the minutes of the Assembly; and the governor pleaded his
instructions, the bond he had given to observe them, and his ruin if
he disobey'd, yet seemed not unwilling to hazard himself if Lord
Loudoun would advise it. This his lordship did not chuse to do, though
I once thought I had nearly prevail'd with him to do it; but finally
he rather chose to urge the compliance of the Assembly; and he
entreated me to use my endeavours with them for that purpose,
declaring that he would spare none of the king's troops for the
defense of our frontiers, and that, if we did not continue to provide
for that defense ourselves, they must remain expos'd to the enemy.

I acquainted the House with what had pass'd, and, presenting them with
a set of resolutions I had drawn up, declaring our rights, and that we
did not relinquish our claim to those rights, but only suspended the
exercise of them on this occasion thro' _force_, against which we
protested, they at length agreed to drop that bill, and frame another
conformable to the proprietary instructions. This of course the
governor pass'd, and I was then at liberty to proceed on my voyage.
But, in the meantime, the packet had sailed with my sea-stores, which
was some loss to me, and my only recompense was his lordship's thanks
for my service, all the credit of obtaining the accommodation falling
to his share.

He set out for New York before me; and, as the time for dispatching
the packet-boats was at his disposition, and there were two then
remaining there, one of which, he said, was to sail very soon, I
requested to know the precise time, that I might not miss her by any
delay of mine. His answer was, "I have given out that she is to sail
on Saturday next; but I may let you know, _entre nous_, that if you
are there by Monday morning, you will be in time, but do not delay
longer." By some accidental hindrance at a ferry, it was Monday noon
before I arrived, and I was much afraid she might have sailed, as the
wind was fair; but I was soon made easy by the information that she
was still in the harbor, and would not move till the next day. One
would imagine that I was now on the very point of departing for
Europe. I thought so; but I was not then so well acquainted with his
lordship's character, of which _indecision_ was one of the strongest
features. I shall give some instances. It was about the beginning of
April that I came to New York, and I think it was near the end of June
before we sail'd. There were then two of the packet-boats, which had
been long in port, but were detained for the general's letters, which
were always to be ready to-morrow. Another packet arriv'd; she too was
detain'd; and, before we sail'd, a fourth was expected. Ours was the
first to be dispatch'd, as having been there longest. Passengers were
engaged in all, and some extremely impatient to be gone, and the
merchants uneasy about their letters, and the orders they had given
for insurance (it being war time) for fall goods; but their anxiety
avail'd nothing; his lordship's letters were not ready; and yet
whoever waited on him found him always at his desk, pen in hand, and
concluded he must needs write abundantly.

Going myself one morning to pay my respects, I found in his
antechamber one Innis, a messenger of Philadelphia, who had come from
thence express with a packet from Governor Denny for the general. He
delivered to me some letters from my friends there, which occasion'd
my inquiring when he was to return, and where he lodg'd, that I might
send some letters by him. He told me he was order'd to call to-morrow
at nine for the general's answer to the governor, and should set off
immediately. I put my letters into his hands the same day. A fortnight
after I met him again in the same place. "So, you are soon return'd,
Innis?" "_Return'd_! no, I am not _gone_ yet." "How so?" "I have
called here by order every morning these two weeks past for his
lordship's letter, and it is not yet ready." "Is it possible, when he
is so great a writer? for I see him constantly at his escritoire."
"Yes," says Innis, "but he is like St. George on the signs, _always on
horseback, and never rides on_." This observation of the messenger
was, it seems, well founded; for, when in England, I understood that
Mr. Pitt[113] gave it as one reason for removing this general, and
sending Generals Amherst and Wolfe, _that the minister never heard
from him, and could not know what he was doing_.

    [113] William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham (1708-1778), a
    great English statesman and orator. Under his able
    administration, England won Canada from France. He was a
    friend of America at the time of our Revolution.

This daily expectation of sailing, and all the three packets going
down to Sandy Hook, to join the fleet there, the passengers thought it
best to be on board, lest by a sudden order the ships should sail, and
they be left behind. There, if I remember right, we were about six
weeks, consuming our sea-stores, and oblig'd to procure more. At
length the fleet sail'd, the general and all his army on board, bound
to Louisburg, with the intent to besiege and take that fortress; all
the packet-boats in company ordered to attend the general's ship,
ready to receive his dispatches when they should be ready. We were out
five days before we got a letter with leave to part, and then our ship
quitted the fleet and steered for England. The other two packets he
still detained, carried them with him to Halifax, where he stayed some
time to exercise the men in sham attacks upon sham forts, then altered
his mind as to besieging Louisburg, and returned to New York, with all
his troops, together with the two packets above mentioned, and all
their passengers! During his absence the French and savages had taken
Fort George, on the frontier of that province, and the savages had
massacred many of the garrison after capitulation.

I saw afterwards in London Captain Bonnell, who commanded one of those
packets. He told me that, when he had been detain'd a month, he
acquainted his lordship that his ship was grown foul, to a degree that
must necessarily hinder her fast sailing, a point of consequence for a
packet-boat, and requested an allowance of time to heave her down and
clean her bottom. He was asked how long time that would require. He
answered, three days. The general replied, "If you can do it in one
day, I give leave; otherwise not; for you must certainly sail the day
after to-morrow." So he never obtain'd leave, though detained
afterwards from day to day during full three months.

I saw also in London one of Bonnell's passengers, who was so enrag'd
against his lordship for deceiving and detaining him so long at New
York, and then carrying him to Halifax and back again, that he swore
he would sue him for damages. Whether he did or not, I never heard;
but, as he represented the injury to his affairs, it was very
considerable.

On the whole, I wonder'd much how such a man came to be intrusted[114]
with so important a business as the conduct of a great army; but,
having since seen more of the great world, and the means of obtaining,
and motives for giving places, my wonder is diminished. General
Shirley, on whom the command of the army devolved upon the death of
Braddock, would, in my opinion, if continued in place, have made a
much better campaign than that of Loudoun in 1757, which was
frivolous, expensive, and disgraceful to our nation beyond conception;
for, tho' Shirley was not a bred soldier, he was sensible and
sagacious in himself, and attentive to good advice from others,
capable of forming judicious plans, and quick and active in carrying
them into execution. Loudoun, instead of defending the colonies with
his great army, left them totally expos'd while he paraded idly at
Halifax, by which means Fort George was lost, besides, he derang'd all
our mercantile operations, and distress'd our trade, by a long embargo
on the exportation of provisions, on pretence of keeping supplies from
being obtain'd by the enemy, but in reality for beating down their
price in favour of the contractors, in whose profits, it was said,
perhaps from suspicion only, he had a share. And, when at length the
embargo was taken off, by neglecting to send notice of it to
Charlestown, the Carolina fleet was detain'd near three months longer,
whereby their bottoms were so much damaged by the worm that a great
part of them foundered in their passage home.

    [114] This relation illustrates the corruption that
    characterized English public life in the eighteenth
    century. (See page 308). It was gradually overcome in
    the early part of the next century.

Shirley was, I believe, sincerely glad of being relieved from so
burdensome a charge as the conduct of an army must be to a man
unacquainted with military business. I was at the entertainment given
by the city of New York to Lord Loudoun, on his taking upon him the
command. Shirley, tho' thereby superseded, was present also. There was
a great company of officers, citizens, and strangers, and, some chairs
having been borrowed in the neighborhood, there was one among them
very low, which fell to the lot of Mr. Shirley. Perceiving it as I sat
by him, I said, "They have given you, sir, too low a seat." "No
matter," says he, "Mr. Franklin, I find _a low seat_ the easiest."

While I was, as afore mention'd, detain'd at New York, I receiv'd all
the accounts of the provisions, etc., that I had furnish'd to
Braddock, some of which accounts could not sooner be obtain'd from the
different persons I had employ'd to assist in the business. I
presented them to Lord Loudoun, desiring to be paid the balance. He
caus'd them to be regularly examined by the proper officer, who, after
comparing every article with its voucher, certified them to be right;
and the balance due for which his lordship promis'd to give me an
order on the paymaster. This was, however, put off from time to time;
and tho' I call'd often for it by appointment, I did not get it. At
length, just before my departure, he told me he had, on better
consideration, concluded not to mix his accounts with those of his
predecessors. "And you," says he, "when in England, have only to
exhibit your accounts at the treasury, and you will be paid
immediately."

I mention'd, but without effect, the great and unexpected expense I
had been put to by being detain'd so long at New York, as a reason for
my desiring to be presently paid; and on my observing that it was not
right I should be put to any further trouble or delay in obtaining the
money I had advanc'd, as I charged no commission for my service, "O,
Sir," says he, "you must not think of persuading us that you are no
gainer; we understand better those affairs, and know that every one
concerned in supplying the army finds means, in the doing it, to fill
his own pockets." I assur'd him that was not my case, and that I had
not pocketed a farthing; but he appear'd clearly not to believe me;
and, indeed, I have since learnt that immense fortunes are often made
in such employments. As to my balance, I am not paid it to
this day, of which more hereafter.

Our captain of the paquet had boasted much, before we sailed, of the
swiftness of his ship; unfortunately, when we came to sea, she proved
the dullest of ninety-six sail, to his no small mortification. After
many conjectures respecting the cause, when we were near another ship
almost as dull as ours, which, however, gain'd upon us, the captain
ordered all hands to come aft, and stand as near the ensign staff as
possible. We were, passengers included, about forty persons. While we
stood there, the ship mended her pace, and soon left her neighbour far
behind, which prov'd clearly what our captain suspected, that she was
loaded too much by the head. The casks of water, it seems, had been
all plac'd forward; these he therefore order'd to be mov'd further
aft, on which the ship recover'd her character, and proved the best
sailer in the fleet.

The captain said she had once gone at the rate of thirteen knots,
which is accounted thirteen miles per hour. We had on board, as a
passenger, Captain Kennedy, of the Navy, who contended that it was
impossible, and that no ship ever sailed so fast, and that there must
have been some error in the division of the log-line, or some mistake
in heaving the log.[115] A wager ensu'd between the two captains, to be
decided when there should be sufficient wind. Kennedy thereupon
examin'd rigorously the log-line, and, being satisfi'd with that, he
determin'd to throw the log himself. Accordingly some days after, when
the wind blew very fair and fresh, and the captain of the
paquet, Lutwidge, said he believ'd she then went at the rate of
thirteen knots, Kennedy made the experiment, and own'd his wager lost.

    [115] A piece of wood shaped and weighted so as to keep it
    stable when in the water. To this is attached a line
    knotted at regular distances. By these devices it is
    possible to tell the speed of a ship.

The above fact I give for the sake of the following observation. It
has been remark'd, as an imperfection in the art of ship-building,
that it can never be known, till she is tried, whether a new ship will
or will not be a good sailer; for that the model of a good-sailing
ship has been exactly follow'd in a new one, which has prov'd, on the
contrary, remarkably dull. I apprehend that this may partly be
occasion'd by the different opinions of seamen respecting the modes of
lading, rigging, and sailing of a ship; each has his system; and the
same vessel, laden by the judgment and orders of one captain, shall
sail better or worse than when by the orders of another. Besides, it
scarce ever happens that a ship is form'd, fitted for the sea, and
sail'd by the same person. One man builds the hull, another rigs her,
a third lades and sails her. No one of these has the advantage of
knowing all the ideas and experience of the others, and, therefore,
cannot draw just conclusions from a combination of the whole.

Even in the simple operation of sailing when at sea, I have often
observ'd different judgments in the officers who commanded the
successive watches, the wind being the same. One would have the sails
trimm'd sharper or flatter than another, so that they seem'd to have
no certain rule to govern by. Yet I think a set of experiments might
be instituted; first, to determine the most proper form of the hull
for swift sailing; next, the best dimensions and properest place for
the masts; then the form and quantity of sails, and their position, as
the wind may be; and, lastly, the disposition of the lading. This is
an age of experiments, and I think a set accurately made and combin'd
would be of great use. I am persuaded, therefore, that ere long some
ingenious philosopher will undertake it, to whom I wish success.

[Illustration: Sailing ship]

We were several times chas'd in our passage, but out-sail'd every
thing, and in thirty days had soundings. We had a good observation,
and the captain judg'd himself so near our port, Falmouth, that, if we
made a good run in the night, we might be off the mouth of that harbor
in the morning, and by running in the night might escape the notice of
the enemy's privateers, who often cruis'd near the entrance of the
channel. Accordingly, all the sail was set that we could possibly
make, and the wind being very fresh and fair, we went right before it,
and made great way. The captain, after his observation, shap'd his
course, as he thought, so as to pass wide of the Scilly Isles; but it
seems there is sometimes a strong indraught setting up St. George's
Channel, which deceives seamen and caused the loss of Sir Cloudesley
Shovel's squadron. This indraught was probably the cause of what
happened to us.

We had a watchman plac'd in the bow, to whom they often called, "_Look
well out before there_," and he as often answered, "_Ay, ay_"; but
perhaps had his eyes shut, and was half asleep at the time, they
sometimes answering, as is said, mechanically; for he did not see a
light just before us, which had been hid by the studding-sails from
the man at the helm, and from the rest of the watch, but by an
accidental yaw of the ship was discover'd, and occasion'd a great
alarm, we being very near it, the light appearing to me as big as a
cartwheel. It was midnight, and our captain fast asleep; but Captain
Kennedy, jumping upon deck, and seeing the danger, ordered the ship to
wear round, all sails standing; an operation dangerous to the masts,
but it carried us clear, and we escaped shipwreck, for we were running
right upon the rocks on which the lighthouse was erected. This
deliverance impressed me strongly with the utility of lighthouses, and
made me resolve to encourage the building more of them in America if I
should live to return there.

In the morning it was found by the soundings, etc., that we were near
our port, but a thick fog hid the land from our sight. About nine
o'clock the fog began to rise, and seem'd to be lifted up from the
water like the curtain at a play-house, discovering underneath, the
town of Falmouth, the vessels in its harbor, and the fields that
surrounded it. This was a most pleasing spectacle to those who had
been so long without any other prospects than the uniform view of a
vacant ocean, and it gave us the more pleasure as we were now free
from the anxieties which the state of war occasion'd.

I set out immediately, with my son, for London, and we only stopt a
little by the way to view Stonehenge[116] on Salisbury Plain, and Lord
Pembroke's house and gardens, with his very curious antiquities at
Wilton. We arrived in London the 27th of July, 1757.[117]

    [116] A celebrated prehistoric ruin, probably of a temple
    built by the early Britons, near Salisbury, England. It
    consists of inner and outer circles of enormous stones,
    some of which are connected by stone slabs.

    [117] "Here terminates the _Autobiography_, as published
    by Wm. Temple Franklin and his successors. What follows
    was written in the last year of Dr. Franklin's life, and
    was never before printed in English."--Mr. Bigelow's
    note in his edition of 1868.

As soon as I was settled in a lodging Mr. Charles had provided for me,
I went to visit Dr. Fothergill, to whom I was strongly recommended,
and whose counsel respecting my proceedings I was advis'd to obtain.
He was against an immediate complaint to government, and thought the
proprietaries should first be personally appli'd to, who might
possibly be induc'd by the interposition and persuasion of some
private friends, to accommodate matters amicably. I then waited on my
old friend and correspondent, Mr. Peter Collinson, who told me that
John Hanbury, the great Virginia merchant, had requested to be
informed when I should arrive, that he might carry me to Lord
Granville's,[118] who was then President of the Council and wished to
see me as soon as possible. I agreed to go with him the next morning.
Accordingly Mr. Hanbury called for me and took me in his carriage to
that nobleman's, who receiv'd me with great civility; and after some
questions respecting the present state of affairs in America and
discourse thereupon, he said to me: "You Americans have wrong ideas of
the nature of your constitution; you contend that the king's
instructions to his governors are not laws, and think yourselves at
liberty to regard or disregard them at your own discretion. But those
instructions are not like the pocket instructions given to a minister
going abroad, for regulating his conduct in some trifling point of
ceremony. They are first drawn up by judges learned in the laws; they
are then considered, debated, and perhaps amended in Council, after
which they are signed by the king. They are then, so far as they
relate to you, the _law of the land_, for the king is the Legislator
of the Colonies,"[119] I told his lordship this was new doctrine to me.
I had always understood from our charters that our laws were to be
made by our Assemblies, to be presented indeed to the king for his
royal assent, but that being once given the king could not repeal or
alter them. And as the Assemblies could not make permanent laws
without his assent, so neither could he make a law for them without
theirs. He assur'd me I was totally mistaken. I did not think so,
however, and his lordship's conversation having a little alarm'd me as
to what might be the sentiments of the court concerning us, I wrote it
down as soon as I return'd to my lodgings. I recollected that about 20
years before, a clause in a bill brought into Parliament by the
ministry had propos'd to make the king's instructions laws in the
colonies, but the clause was thrown out by the Commons, for which we
adored them as our friends and friends of liberty, till by their
conduct towards us in 1765 it seem'd that they had refus'd that point
of sovereignty to the king only that they might reserve it for
themselves.

    [118] George Granville or Grenville (1712-1770). As
    English premier from 1763 to 1765, he introduced the
    direct taxation of the American Colonies and has
    sometimes been called the immediate cause of the
    Revolution.

    [119] This whole passage shows how hopelessly divergent
    were the English and American views on the relations
    between the mother country and her colonies. Grenville
    here made clear that the Americans were to have no voice
    in making or amending their laws. Parliament and the
    king were to have absolute power over the colonies. No
    wonder Franklin was alarmed by this new doctrine. With
    his keen insight into human nature and his consequent
    knowledge of American character, he foresaw the
    inevitable result of such an attitude on the part of
    England. This conversation with Grenville makes these
    last pages of the _Autobiography_ one of its most
    important parts.

After some days, Dr. Fothergill having spoken to the proprietaries,
they agreed to a meeting with me at Mr. T. Penn's house in Spring
Garden. The conversation at first consisted of mutual declarations of
disposition to reasonable accommodations, but I suppose each party had
its own ideas of what should be meant by _reasonable_. We then went
into consideration of our several points of complaint, which I
enumerated. The proprietaries justify'd their conduct as well as they
could, and I the Assembly's. We now appeared very wide, and so far
from each other in our opinions as to discourage all hope of
agreement. However, it was concluded that I should give them the heads
of our complaints in writing, and they promis'd then to consider them.
I did so soon after, but they put the paper into the hands of their
solicitor, Ferdinand John Paris, who managed for them all their law
business in their great suit with the neighbouring proprietary of
Maryland, Lord Baltimore, which had subsisted 70 years, and wrote for
them all their papers and messages in their dispute with the Assembly.
He was a proud, angry man, and as I had occasionally in the answers of
the Assembly treated his papers with some severity, they being really
weak in point of argument and haughty in expression, he had conceived a
mortal enmity to me, which discovering itself whenever we met, I
declin'd the proprietary's proposal that he and I should discuss the
heads of complaint between our two selves, and refus'd treating with
anyone but them. They then by his advice put the paper into the hands
of the Attorney and Solicitor-General for their opinion and counsel
upon it, where it lay unanswered a year wanting eight days, during
which time I made frequent demands of an answer from the
proprietaries, but without obtaining any other than that they had not
yet received the opinion of the Attorney and Solicitor-General. What
it was when they did receive it I never learnt, for they did not
communicate it to me, but sent a long message to the Assembly drawn
and signed by Paris, reciting my paper, complaining of its want of
formality, as a rudeness on my part, and giving a flimsy justification
of their conduct, adding that they should be willing to accommodate
matters if the Assembly would send out _some person of candour_ to
treat with them for that purpose, intimating thereby that I was not
such.

[Illustration: "We now appeared very wide, and so far from each other
in our opinions as to discourage all hope of agreement"]

The want of formality or rudeness was, probably, my not having
address'd the paper to them with their assum'd titles of True and
Absolute Proprietaries of the Province of Pennsylvania, which I
omitted as not thinking it necessary in a paper, the intention of
which was only to reduce to a certainty by writing, what in
conversation I had delivered _viva voce_.

But during this delay, the Assembly having prevailed with Gov'r Denny
to pass an act taxing the proprietary estate in common with the
estates of the people, which was the grand point in dispute, they
omitted answering the message.

When this act however came over, the proprietaries, counselled by
Paris, determined to oppose its receiving the royal assent.
Accordingly they petitioned the king in Council, and a hearing was
appointed in which two lawyers were employ'd by them against the act,
and two by me in support of it. They alledg'd that the act was
intended to load the proprietary estate in order to spare those of the
people, and that if it were suffer'd to continue in force, and the
proprietaries, who were in odium with the people, left to their mercy
in proportioning the taxes, they would inevitably be ruined. We
reply'd that the act had no such intention, and would have no such
effect. That the assessors were honest and discreet men under an oath
to assess fairly and equitably, and that any advantage each of them
might expect in lessening his own tax by augmenting that of the
proprietaries was too trifling to induce them to perjure themselves.
This is the purport of what I remember as urged by both sides, except
that we insisted strongly on the mischievous consequences that must
attend a repeal, for that the money, £100,000, being printed and given
to the king's use, expended in his service, and now spread among the
people, the repeal would strike it dead in their hands to the ruin of
many, and the total discouragement of future grants, and the
selfishness of the proprietors in soliciting such a general
catastrophe, merely from a groundless fear of their estate being taxed
too highly, was insisted on in the strongest terms. On this, Lord
Mansfield, one of the counsel, rose, and beckoning me took me into the
clerk's chamber, while the lawyers were pleading, and asked me if I
was really of opinion that no injury would be done the proprietary
estate in the execution of the act. I said certainly. "Then," says he,
"you can have little objection to enter into an engagement to assure
that point." I answer'd, "None at all." He then call'd in Paris, and
after some discourse, his lordship's proposition was accepted on both
sides; a paper to the purpose was drawn up by the Clerk of the
Council, which I sign'd with Mr. Charles, who was also an Agent of the
Province for their ordinary affairs, when Lord Mansfield returned to
the Council Chamber, where finally the law was allowed to pass. Some
changes were however recommended and we also engaged they should be
made by a subsequent law, but the Assembly did not think them
necessary; for one year's tax having been levied by the act before the
order of Council arrived, they appointed a committee to examine the
proceedings of the assessors, and on this committee they put several
particular friends of the proprietaries. After a full enquiry, they
unanimously sign'd a report that they found the tax had been assess'd
with perfect equity.

The Assembly looked into my entering into the first part of the
engagement, as an essential service to the Province, since it secured
the credit of the paper money then spread over all the country. They
gave me their thanks in form when I return'd. But the proprietaries
were enraged at Governor Denny for having pass'd the act, and turn'd
him out with threats of suing him for breach of instructions which he
had given bond to observe. He, however, having done it at the instance
of the General, and for His Majesty's service, and having some
powerful interest at court, despis'd the threats and they were never
put in execution.... [unfinished]

[Illustration: Medal with inscription: BENJ. FRANLIN NATUS BOSTON XVII,
JAN. MDCCVI.]

APPENDIX




ELECTRICAL KITE


To Peter Collinson

[Philadelphia], Oct. 19, 1752.

Sir,

As frequent mention is made in public papers from Europe of the
success of the _Philadelphia_ experiment for drawing the electric fire
from clouds by means of pointed rods of iron erected on high
buildings, &c., it may be agreeable to the curious to be informed,
that the same experiment has succeeded in _Philadelphia_, though made
in a different and more easy manner, which is as follows:

Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as
to reach to the four corners of a large, thin silk handkerchief when
extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of
the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which being properly
accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like
those made of paper; but this being of silk, is fitter to bear the wet
and wind of a thunder-gust without tearing. To the top of the upright
stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a
foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand,
is to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join, a key
may be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears
to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within
a door or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not
be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame
of the door or window. As soon as any of the thunder clouds come over
the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and
the kite, with all the twine will be electrified, and the loose
filaments of the twine will stand out every way and be attracted by an
approaching finger. And when the rain has wet the kite and twine, so
that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream
out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this
key the phial may be charged; and from electric fire thus obtained,
spirits may be kindled, and all the electric experiments be performed,
which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube,
and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning
completely demonstrated.

B. Franklin.

[Illustration: "You will find it stream out plentifully from the key
on the approach of your knuckle"]

[Illustration: Father _Abraham_ in his STUDY with the following text:

    The Shade of Him who Counsel can bestow, Still pleas'd
    to teach, and yet not proud to know; Unbias'd or by
    Favour or by Spite; Nor dully prepossess'd, nor blindly
    right; Thô learn'd, well-bred; and, thô well-bred,
    sincere; Modestly bold, and humanely severe; Who to a
    Friend his Faults can sweetly show. And gladly praise
    the Merit of a Foe. Here, there he sits, his chearful
    Aid to lend; A firm, unshaken, uncorrupted Friend,
    Averse alike to flatter or offend.

_Printed by_ Benjamin Mecom, _at the_ New
Printing-Office, (_near the_ Town-House, _in_ Boston) _where_
BOOKS _are Sold, and_ PRINTING-WORK _done, Cheap_.

He's rarely _warm_ in Censure or in Praise:

_Good-Nature, Wit_, and _Judgment_ round him wait;
And thus he sits _inthron'd_ in _Classick-State_:

To Failings mild, but zealous for Desert;
The clearest Head, and the sincerest Heart.

Few Men deserve our _Passion_ either Ways.]

From "Father Abraham's Speech," 1760. Reproduced from
a copy at the New York Public Library.




THE WAY TO WEALTH

(From "Father Abraham's Speech," forming
the preface to Poor _Richard's Almanac_ for 1758.)

It would be thought a hard Government that should tax its People
one-tenth Part of their _Time_, to be employed in its Service. But
_Idleness_ taxes many of us much more, if we reckon all that is spent
in absolute _Sloth_, or doing of nothing, with that which is spent in
idle Employments or Amusements, that amount to nothing. _Sloth_, by
bringing on Diseases, absolutely shortens Life. _Sloth, like Rust,
consumes faster than Labor wears; while the used key is always bright,
as Poor Richard says. But dost thou love Life, then do not squander
Time, for that's the stuff Life is made of, as Poor Richard_ says. How
much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep, forgetting that _The
sleeping Fox catches no Poultry_, and that _There will be sleeping
enough in the Grave_, as _Poor Richard_ says.

_If Time be of all Things the most precious, wasting Time must be, as
Poor Richard_ says, _the_ _greatest Prodigality_; since, as he
elsewhere tells us, _Lost Time is never found again; and what we call
Time enough, always proves little enough_: Let us then up and be
doing, and doing to the Purpose; so by Diligence shall we do more with
less Perplexity. _Sloth makes all Things difficult, but Industry all
easy_, as _Poor Richard_ says; and _He that riseth late must trot all
Day, and shall scarce overtake his Business at Night; while Laziness
travels so slowly, that Poverty soon overtakes him_, as we read in
_Poor Richard_, who adds, _Drive thy Business, let not that drive
thee_; and _Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy,
wealthy, and wise._

_Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon Hope will die
fasting._

_There are no Gains without Pains._

_He that hath a Trade hath an Estate; and he that hath a Calling, hath
an Office of Profit and Honor_; but then the _Trade_ must be worked
at, and the _Calling_ well followed, or neither the _Estate_ nor the
_Office_ will enable us to pay our Taxes.

What though you have found no Treasure, nor has any rich Relation left
you a Legacy, _Diligence is the Mother of Good-luck_, as _Poor
Richard_ says, _and God gives all Things to Industry_.

_One To-day is worth two To-morrows_, and farther, _Have you somewhat
to do To-morrow, do it To-day_.

If you were a Servant, would you not be ashamed that a good Master
should catch you idle? Are you then your own Master, _be ashamed to
catch yourself idle_.

Stick to it steadily; and you will see great Effects, for _Constant
Dropping wears away Stones_, and by _Diligence and Patience the Mouse
ate in two the Cable_; and _Little Strokes fell great Oaks_.

Methinks I hear some of you say, _Must a Man afford himself no
Leisure_? I will tell thee, my friend, what _Poor Richard_ says,
_Employ thy Time well, if thou meanest to gain Leisure; and, since
thou art not sure of a Minute, throw not away an Hour_. Leisure, is
Time for doing something useful; this Leisure the diligent Man will
obtain, but the lazy Man never; so that, as _Poor Richard_ says, _A
Life of Leisure and a Life of Laziness are two things_.

_Keep thy Shop, and thy Shop will keep thee_; and again, _If you would
have your business done, go; if not, send._

If you would have a faithful Servant, and one that you like, serve
yourself.

_A little Neglect may breed great Mischief:_ adding, _for want of a
Nail the Shoe was lost; for want of a Shoe the Horse was lost; and for
want of a Horse the Rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the
Enemy; all for the want of Care about a Horse-shoe Nail_.

So much for Industry, my Friends, and Attention to one's own Business;
but to these we must add _Frugality_.

_What maintains one Vice, would bring up two Children_. You may think
perhaps, that a _little_ Tea, or a _little_ Punch now and then, Diet a
_little_ more costly, Clothes a _little_ finer, and a _little_
Entertainment now and then, can be no _great_ Matter; but remember
what _Poor Richard_ says, _Many a Little makes a Mickle._

_Beware of little expenses; A small Leak will sink a great Ship_; and
again, _Who Dainties love, shall Beggars prove_; and moreover, _Fools
make Feasts, and wise Men eat them._

Buy what thou hast no Need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy
Necessaries.

If you would know the Value of Money, go and try to borrow some; for,
he that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.

The second Vice is Lying, the first is running in Debt.

_Lying rides upon Debt's Back_.

Poverty often deprives a Man of all Spirit and Virtue: '_Tis hard for
an empty Bag to stand upright_.

And now to conclude, _Experience keeps a dear School, but Fools will
learn in no other, and scarce in that_; for it is true, _we may give
Advice, but we cannot give Conduct_, as _Poor Richard_ says: However,
remember this, _They that won't be counseled, can't be helped_, as
_Poor Richard_ says: and farther, That _if you will not hear Reason,
she'll surely rap your Knuckles_.




THE WHISTLE


To Madame Brillon

Passy, November 10, 1779.

I am charmed with your description of Paradise, and with your plan of
living there; and I approve much of your conclusion, that, in the
meantime, we should draw all the good we can from this world. In my
opinion, we might all draw more good from it than we do, and suffer
less evil, if we would take care not to give too much for whistles.
For to me it seems, that most of the unhappy people we meet with, are
become so by neglect of that caution.

You ask what I mean? You love stories, and will excuse my telling one
of myself.

When I was a child of seven year old, my friends, on a holiday, filled
my pocket with coppers. I went directly to a shop where they sold toys
for children; and being charmed with the sound of a _whistle_, that I
met by the way in the hands of another boy, I voluntarily offered and
gave all my money for one. I then came home, and went whistling all
over the house, much pleased with my _whistle_, but disturbing all the
family. My brothers, and sisters, and cousins, understanding the
bargain I had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as
it was worth; put me in mind what good things I might have bought with
the rest of the money; and laughed at me so much for my folly, that I
cried with vexation; and the reflection gave me more chagrin than the
_whistle_ gave me pleasure.

This, however, was afterwards of use to me, the impression continuing
on my mind; so that often, when I was tempted to buy some unnecessary
thing, I said to myself, _Don't give too much for the whistle_; and I
saved my money.

As I grew up, came into the world, and observed the actions of men, I
thought I met with many, very many, who _gave too much for the
whistle_.

When I saw one too ambitious of court favor, sacrificing his time in
attendance on levees, his repose, his liberty, his virtue, and perhaps
his friends, to attain it, I have said to myself, _This man gives too
much for his whistle_.

When I saw another fond of popularity, constantly employing himself in
political bustles, neglecting his own affairs, and ruining them by
neglect, _He pays, indeed_, said I, _too much for his whistle_.

If I knew a miser who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all
the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow
citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of
accumulating wealth, _Poor man_, said I, _you pay too much for your
whistle_.

When I met with a man of pleasure, sacrificing every laudable
improvement of the mind, or of his fortune, to mere corporeal
sensations, and ruining his health in their pursuit, _Mistaken man_,
said I, _you are providing pain for yourself, instead of pleasure; you
give too much for your whistle_.

If I see one fond of appearance, or fine clothes, fine houses, fine
furniture, fine equipages, all above his fortune, for which he
contracts debts, and ends his career in a prison, _Alas_! say I, _he
has paid dear, very dear, for his whistle_.

When I see a beautiful, sweet-tempered girl married to an ill-natured
brute of a husband, _What a pity_, say I, _that she should pay so much
for a whistle_!

In short, I conceive that great part of the miseries of mankind are
brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value
of things, and by their _giving too much for their whistles_.

Yet I ought to have charity for these unhappy people, when I consider,
that, with all this wisdom of which I am boasting, there are certain
things in the world so tempting, for example, the apples of King John,
which happily are not to be bought; for if they were put to sale by
auction, I might very easily be led to ruin myself in the purchase,
and find that I had once more given too much for the _whistle_.

Adieu, my dear friend, and believe me ever yours very sincerely and
with unalterable affection,

B. Franklin.




A LETTER TO SAMUEL MATHER

Passy, May 12, 1784.

Revd Sir,

It is now more than 60 years since I left Boston, but I remember well
both your father and grandfather, having heard them both in the
pulpit, and seen them in their houses. The last time I saw your father
was in the beginning of 1724, when I visited him after my first trip
to Pennsylvania. He received me in his library, and on my taking leave
showed me a shorter way out of the house through a narrow passage,
which was crossed by a beam overhead. We were still talking as I
withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I turning partly towards him,
when he said hastily, "_Stoop, stoop!_" I did not understand him, till
I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man that never missed
any occasion of giving instruction, and upon this he said to me, "_You
are young, and have the world before you; stoop as you go through it,
and you will miss many hard thumps_." This advice, thus beat into my
head, has frequently been of use to me; and I often think of it, when
I see pride mortified, and misfortunes brought upon people by their
carrying their heads too high.

B. Franklin.




THE END




BIBLIOGRAPHY


The last and most complete edition of Franklin's works is that by the
late Professor Albert H. Smyth, published in ten volumes by the
Macmillan Company, New York, under the title, _The Writings of
Benjamin Franklin_. The other standard edition is the _Works of
Benjamin Franklin_ by John Bigelow (New York, 1887). Mr. Bigelow's
first edition of the _Autobiography_ in one volume was published by
the J. B. Lippincott Company of Philadelphia in 1868. The life of
Franklin as a writer is well treated by J. B. McMaster in a volume of
_The American Men of Letters Series_; his life as a statesman and
diplomat, by J. T. Morse, _American Statesmen Series_, one volume;
Houghton, Mifflin Company publish both books. A more exhaustive
account of the life and times of Franklin may be found in James
Parton's _Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin_ (2 vols., New York,
1864). Paul Leicester Ford's _The Many-Sided Franklin_ is a most
chatty and readable book, replete with anecdotes and excellently and
fully illustrated. An excellent criticism by Woodrow Wilson introduces
an edition of the _Autobiography_ in _The Century Classics_ (Century
Co., New York, 1901). Interesting magazine articles are those of E. E.
Hale, _Christian Examiner_, lxxi, 447; W. P. Trent, _McClure's
Magazine_, viii, 273; John Hay, _The Century Magazine_, lxxi, 447.

See also the histories of American literature by C. F. Richardson,
Moses Coit Tyler, Brander Matthews, John Nichol, and Barrett Wendell,
as well as the various encyclopedias. An excellent bibliography of
Franklin is that of Paul Leicester Ford, entitled _A List of Books
Written by, or Relating to Benjamin Franklin_ (New York, 1889).

The following list of Franklin's works contains the more interesting
publications, together with the dates of first issue.


_1722. Dogood Papers._

Letters in the style of Addison's _Spectator_, contributed to
James Franklin's newspaper and signed "Silence Dogood."

_1729. The Busybody._

A series of essays published in Bradford's Philadelphia
_Weekly Mercury_, six of which only are ascribed to Franklin.
They are essays on morality, philosophy and politics,
similar to the _Dogood Papers_.

_1729. A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper
Currency._

_1732. to 1757. Prefaces to Poor Richard's Almanac._

Among these are _Hints for those that would be Rich_, 1737;
and _Plan for saving one hundred thousand pounds to New
Jersey, 1756_.

1_743. A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge Among the
British Plantations in America._

"This paper appears to contain the first suggestion, in
any public form, for an _American Philosophical Society_."
Sparks.

_1744. An Account of the New Invented Pennsylvania Fire-Places._

_1749. Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania._

Contains the plan for the school which later became the
University of Pennsylvania.

_1752. Electrical Kite._

A description of the famous kite experiment, first written in
a letter to Peter Collinson, dated Oct. 19, 1752, which was
published later in the same year in _The Gentleman's Magazine_.

_1754. Plan of Union._

A plan for the union of the colonies presented to the
colonial convention at Albany.

_1755. A Dialogue Between X, Y and Z._

An appeal to enlist in the provincial army for the defense
of Pennsylvania.

_1758. Father Abraham's Speech._

Published as a preface to Poor Richard's Almanac and
gathering into one writing the maxims of Poor Richard,
which had already appeared in previous numbers of the
Almanac. _The Speech_ was afterwards published in pamphlet
form as the _Way to Wealth_.

_1760. Of the Means of disposing the Enemy to Peace._

A satirical plea for the prosecution of the war against
France.

_1760. The Interest of Great Britain Considered, with regard to her
Colonies, and the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe._

_1764. Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of our Public Affairs._

A pamphlet favoring a Royal Government for Pennsylvania
in exchange for that of the Proprietors.

_1766. The Examination of Doctor Benjamin Franklin, etc., in The
British House of Commons, Relative to The Repeal of The
American Stamp Act._

_1773. Rules by which A Great Empire May Be Reduced to a
Small One._

Some twenty satirical rules embodying the line of conduct
England was pursuing with America.

_1773. An Edict of The King of Prussia._

A satire in which the King of Prussia was made to treat
England as England was treating America because England
was originally settled by Germans.

_1777. Comparison of Great Britain and the United States in Regard
to the Basis of Credit in The Two Countries._

One of several similar pamphlets written to effect loans
for the American cause.

_1782. On the Theory of the Earth._

The best of Franklin's papers on geology.

_1782. Letter purporting to emanate from a petty German Prince
and to be addressed to his officer in Command in America._

_1785. On the Causes and Cure of Smoky Chimneys._

_1786. Retort Courteous._

_Sending Felons to America._

Answers to the British clamor for the payment of American
debts.

1789. _Address to the Public from the Pennsylvania Society for
           Promoting Abolition of Slavery._

1789. _An Account of the Supremest Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania,
           viz. The Court of the Press._

1790. _Martin's Account of his Consulship._

           A parody of a pro-slavery speech in Congress.

1791. _Autobiography._

           The first edition.

1818. _Bagatelles._

           The Bagatelles were first published in 1818 in William
           Temple Franklin's edition of his grandfather's works. The
           following are the most famous of these essays and the
           dates when they were written:


           1774? _A Parable Against Persecution._

                     Franklin called this the LI Chapter of Genesis.

           1774? _A Parable on Brotherly Love._

           1778. _The Ephemera, an Emblem of Human Life._

                     A new rendition of an earlier essay on Human
                     Vanity.

           1779. _The Story of the Whistle._

           1779? _The Levee._

           1779? _Proposed New Version of the Bible._

                     Part of the first chapter of _Job_ modernized.

           (1779. Published) _The Morals of Chess._

           1780? _The Handsome and Deformed Leg._

           1780. _Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout._

                    (Published in 1802.)

1802. _A Petition of the Left Hand._

1806. _The Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams._

[Illustration: MEDAL GIVEN BY THE BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS FROM THE
FRANKLIN FUND]




[Transcriptions of newspaper pages]


[Page 1 of _The Pennsylvania Gazette_,].


Numb. XL.

THE

Pennsylvania _GAZETTE_.
Containing the freshest Advices Foreign and Domestick.

From Thursday, September 25. to Thursday, October 2. 1729.

_The_ Pennsylvania Gazette _being now to
be carry'd on by other Hands, the Reader
may expect some Account of the Method we
design to proceed in._

_Upon a View of Chambers's great Dictionaries,
from whence were taken the Materials of the_
Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences,
_which usually made the First Part of this Paper,
we find that besides their containing many Things
abstruse or insignificant to us, it will probably
be fifty Years before the Whole can be gone thro'
in this Manner of Publication. There are likewise
in those Books continual References from
Things under one Letter of the Alphabet to those
under another, which relate to the same Subject,
and are necessary to explain and compleat it;
those are taken in their Turn may perhaps be Ten
Years distant; and since it is likely that they who
desire to acquaint themselves with any particular
Art or Science, would gladly have the whole before
them in a much less Time, we believe our
Readers will not think such a Method of communicating
Knowledge to be a proper One._

_However, tho' we do not intend to continue the
Publication of those Dictionaries in a regular
Alphabetical Method, as has hitherto been done;
yet as several Things exhibited from them in the
Course of these Papers, have been entertaining
to such of the Curious, who never had and cannot
have the Advantage of good Libraries; and
as there are many Things still behind, which being
in this Manner made generally known, may
perhaps become of considerable Use, by giving such
Hints to the excellent natural Genius's of our
Country, as may contribute either to the Improvement
of our present Manufactures, or towards
the Invention of new Ones; we propose
from Time to Time to communicate such particular
Parts as appear to be of the most general
Consequence._

_As to the_ Religious Courtship, _Part of
which has been retal'd to the Publick in these
Papers, the Reader may be inform'd, that the
whole Book will probably in a little Time be
printed and bound up by it-self; and those who
approve of it, will doubtless be better pleas'd to
have it entire, than in this broken interrupted
Manner._

_There are many who have long desired to see a
good News-Paper in_ Pennsylvania; _and we hope
those Gentlemen who are able, will contribute towards
the making This such. We ask Assistance,
because we are fully sensible, that to publish a
good New-Paper is not so easy an Undertaking
as many People imagine it to be. The Author of
a Gazette (in the Opinion of the Learned) ought
to be qualified with an extensive Acquaintance
with Languages, a great Easiness and Command
of Writing and Relating Things cleanly and intelligibly,
and in few Words; he should be able
to speak of War both by Land and Sea; be well
acquainted with Geography, with the History of
the Time, with the several Interests of Princes
and States, the Secrets of Courts, and the Manners
and Customs of all Nations. Men thus accomplish'd
are very rare in this remote Part of
the World; and it would be well if the Writer
of these Papers could make up among his Friends
what is wanting in himself._

_Upon the Whole, we may assure the Publick,
that as far as the Encouragement we meet with
will enable us, no Care and Pains shall be omitted,
that may make the_ Pennsylvania Gazette
_as agreeable and useful an Entertainment as the
Nature of the Thing will allow._

The Following is the last Message sent by
his Excellency Governor _Burnet_, to the
House of Representatives in _Boston_.

_Gentlemen of the House of Representatives,_

It is not with so vain a Hope as to convince you, that
I take the Trouble to answer your Messages, but, if
possible, to open the Eyes of the deluded People whom
you represent, and whom you are at so much Pains to keep
in Ignorance of the true State of their Affairs. I need not
go further for an undeniable Proof of this Endeavour to
blind them, than your ordering the Letter of Messieurs
_Wilks_ and _Belcher_ of the 7th of _June_ last to your Speaker to
be published. This Letter is said (in _Page_ 1. of your
Votes) _to inclose a Copy of the Report of the Lords of the Committee
of His Majesty's Privy Council, with his Majesty's Approbation
and Orders thereon in Council_; Yet these Gentlemen
had at the same time the unparallell'd Presumption to
write to the Speaker in this Manner; _You'll observe by the
Conclusion, what is proposed to be the Consequence of your not complying
with his Majesty's Instruction (the whole Matter to be
laid_




[Page 4 of _The Pennsylvania Gazette_.]

*terfeited but those of 13 _d_. And it is remarkable that all
Attempts of this Kind upon the Paper Money of this and
the neighbouring Provinces, have been detected and met
with ill Success.

_Custom-House, Philadelphia_, Entred Inwards.

Sloop Hope, Elias Naudain, from Boston.
Sloop Dove, John Howel, from Antigua.
Brigt, Pennswood, Thomas Braly, from Madera.

_Entred Outwards._

Scooner John, Thomas Wright, to Boston.
Brigt. Richard and William, W. Mayle, for Lisbon.
Ship Diligence, James Bayley, for Maryland

_Cleared for Departure._

Ship London Hope, Thomas Annis, for London.
Ship John and Anna, James Sherley, for Plymouth.

Advertisements.

To be Sold by _Edward Shippen_, choice
Hard Soap, very Reasonable.

Run away on the 25th of _September_ past,
from _Rice Prichard_ of _Whiteland_ in _Chester_ County, a
Servant Man named _John Cresswel_, of a middle Stature and
ruddy Countenance, his Hair inclining to Red: He had on
when he went away, a little white short Wig, an old Hat,
Drugget Wastcoat, the Body lined with Linnen; coarse
Linnen Breeches, grey woollen Stockings, and round toe'd
Shoes.

Whoever shall secure the said Servant so that his Master
may have him again, shall have _Three Pounds_ Reward, and
reasonable Charges paid, by

_Rice Prichard._

Run away on the 10th of _September_ past,
from _William Dewees_ of _Germantown_ Township, in
_Philadelphia_ County, a Servant Man named _Mekbizedarh
Arnold_, of a middle Stature and reddish curled Hair:
He had on when he went away, a good Felt Hat, a dark
Cinnamon-colour'd Coat, black Drugget Jacket, mouse-colour'd
drugget Breeches, grey Stockings, and new Shoes.

Whoever secures the said Runaway, so that his Master
may have him again, shall have _Twenty Shillings_ Reward,
and reasonable Charges paid, by me

_William Dewees._

_Lately Re-printed and Sold at the New Printing-Office
near the Market._

The _PSALMS_ of _David_, Imitated
in the Language of the _New Testament_, and apply'd
to the Christian State and Worship  By _I. Watts_,
V D M  The Seventh Edition.

N. B. _This Work has met with such a general good Reception
and Esteem among the Protestant Dissenters in_ Great Britain, &c.
_whether_ Presbyterians, Independents, _or_ Baptists, _that Six
large Impressions before This have been sold off in a very short Time._

_The chief Design of this excellent Performance (as the Author
acquaints us in his Advertisement to the Reader) is "to improve_
Psalmody _or_ Religious Singing," _and so encourage and
assist the frequent Practice of it in publick Assemblies and private
Families with more Honour and Delight; yet the
Reading of it may also entertain the Parlour and the Closet
with devout Pleasure and holy Meditations. Therefore he would
request his Readers, at proper Seasons, to peruse it thro', and
among 340 sacred Hymns they may find out several that suit
their own Case and Temper, or the Circumstances of their Families
or Friends, they may teach their Children such as are
proper for their Age and by treasuring them in their Memory
they may be furnish'd for pious Retirement, or may entertain
their Friends with holy Melody._

Lately Imported from _London_, by _Johu
Le_, and are to be sold by him at the lowest Prices,
either by Wholesale or Retale, at his Shop in _Market Street_,
over against the _Presbyterian_ Meeting-House, these Goods
following, _viz._

Callicoes, divers Sorts. Hollands, and several sorts of
Sheeting Linnen. Several sorts of Diapers and Table-Cloths.
Several sorts of Cambricks. Mantua Silks, and Grassets.
Beryllan, and plain Callimanco. Tamie yard-wide. Men's
dyed shammie Gloves. Women's _Ditto_, Lamb. Stitching
Silk, Thread and Silk. Twist for Women. Silk and Ribbands.
Double Thread Stockings. Men's white shammie
Gloves. Silk Handkerchiefs, & other sorts of Handkerchiefs.
Men's glaz'd Gloves, Topp'd. Men's Shoe-Buckles, Bath-metal.
Masks for Women. Several sorts of Penknives.
Plain metal Buttons for Men's Coats and Jackets. Ivory
Case-Knives, and several sorts of Pocket-Knives. Dowlasses
several sorts. Huckabags, and Russia Linnen. Oznaburghs.
Several sorts of Looking Glasses. Garlicks and brown Holland.
Bag-Holland _Ditto_. Several sorts of Druggets. Fine
Kerseys. Superfine double-mill'd Drab. Broad-Cloths.
London Shalloons. Fine and coarse Hats. Men and Women's
_English_ Shoes. Stockings, several sorts, for Men, Women
and Children. Several sorts of Caps. Women's Bonnets.
Several sorts of Horn and Ivory Combs. Gun-powder,
Shot, and Flints. Bibles of several sorts. Testaments,
Psalters and Primers. Large Paper Books, and small ones,
with Pocket-Books, and other Stationary Ware. Several
sorts of Checquer'd Linnen. Flannels and Duroys. Scots-Snuff.

_To be LET by the above Person. One Half of the House he
now possesseth._ Enquire of him and know further.

Bibles, Testaments, Psalters, Psalm-Books,
Accompt-Books, Bills of Lading bound and
unbound, Common Blank Bonds for Money, Bonds with
Judgment, Counterbonds, Arbitration Bonds, Arbitration
Bonds with Umpirage, Bail Bonds, Counterbonds to save
Bail harmless, Bills of Sale, Powers of Attorney, Writs,
Summons, Apprentices Indentures, Servants Indentures,
Penal Bills, Promisory Notes, &c. all the Blanks in the
most authentick Forms, and correctly printed; may be had
At the Publishers of this Paper, who perform all above sorts
of Printing at reasonable Rates.

Very good Live-Geese Feathers to be sold
at _Evan Powel's_ in Chesnut-street, next Door but one
to _Andrew Hamilton_, Esq;

_Just Published:_

Titan Leeds's Almanack,
for the Year, 1730 in his usual plain Method; being
far preferable to any yet published in _America_  To be
Sold by _David Harry_ at the late Printing Office of _Samuel
Keimer_, at Three Shillings and nine-pence per Dozen.

N. B. _As this Almanack for its Worth has met with universal
Reception, it has raised the Price of the Copy to 25l. a year,
for which Reason the Printer cannot afford them under the above-mentioned
Price: But gives this Friendly Caution to the Publick,
That when they buy Almanacks for 3s. a Dozen they must not
expect Titan Leeds's, or any so valuable._

_Speedily will be Published:_

Godfrey's Almanack, for the
Year 1730. Containing the Lunations, Eclipses,
Judgment of the Weather, the Spring Tides, _Moon's Rising
and Setting_, Sun's Rising and Setting, Length of Days,
Seven Stars Rising, Southing and Setting, Time of High-Water,
Fairs, Courts, and observable Days. Fitted to
the Latitude of 40 Degrees, and a Meridian of Five Hours
West from London. _Beautifully Printed in Red and Black,
on One Side of a large Demi Sheet of Paper, after the London
Mariner_.  To be Sold by the Printers hereof, at the New
Printing-Office near the Market, for 3 _s._ per Dozen.

_Philadelphia_: Printed by _B. Franklin_ and _H. Meredith_, at the New
Printing-Office near the Market, where Advertisements are taken in, and
all Persons may be supplied with this Paper, at _Ten Shillings_ a Year.




[First page of _The New England Courant_.]


[N^{o} 19

THE

New-England Courant.

From MONDAY December 4. to MONDAY December 11. 1721.


_On_ SYLVIA _the Fair_. A Jingle.

A Swarm of Sparks, young, gay, and bold,
Lov'd _Sylvia_ long, but she was cold;
In'trest and Pride the Nymph control'd,
So they in vain their Passion told.
At last came Dalman, he was old;
Nay, he was ugly, but had Gold.
He came, and saw, and took the Hold,
While t'other Beaux their Loss Condol'd.
Some say, she's Wed; I say, she's sold.

_The Letter against Inoculating the Small Pox, (Sign'd
Absinthium) giving an Account of the Number of
Persons who have dy'd under that Operation, will be
Inserted in our next._

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

_Ispahan, March 6._ The Conspiracy form'd by the
Grand Vizir last January was Twelvemonth, with design
to make himself King of Persia, was seasonably
discover'd, and himself and Accomplices secured; since
which the State hath enjoy'd its former Tranquility,
and a new Vizir is appointed in his room, The old
one's Eyes being both put out, he is kept alive (but
in Prison) to make him discover all his Riches;
which must be immensely great, since they found in
one of his Chests four hundred thousand Persian Ducats,
beside Foreign Coin, and in another Place abundance
of Jewels, Gold and Silver; and so in proportion
among several of his Accomplices; by the help of
which Treasure they hoped to compass their Ends.

_Tripoli, July 12._ As soon as our Squadron fitted out
against the Famous Baffaw Gianur, Cogia, appear'd off
Dasna and Bengan, with two thousand five hundred
Moorish Horse, and a thousand Foot, and skirmish'd
a little with his Squadron, he abandon'd both those
Places, and fled to the Island of Serby in the Territories
of Tunis; But the Bey of that Place having deny'd
him Shelter, he sail'd farther away, in a French
Barque, we know not whether; and his own Galleys
and Barques, are gone after him, so that we are now
entirely rid of that troublesome Guest. Our Rovers
keep all in Port, for Fear of the Malteze.

_Cadiz, Aug. 12._ The Flota is expected Home from
the West-Indies before the End of this Month.
Thirteen Pieces of Cannon and two Mortars were lately
sent from hence to Ceuta. The three Spanish Men
of War of 50 to 60 Guns each, which carried the Spanish
Cardinals to Italy, are now at Alicant: It is said
they are to join the Dutch Vice-Admiral, who is now
in this Bay with four Ships of his Squadron of 50
Guns each, and cruize against the Algerines. Wheat
and Barley being very cheap in these Parts, great
Quantities have been sent lately to the Canaries,
where for some Time past the Inhabitants have been
in great Want of Corn. On the 9th Instant died Mr.
Charles, His Britannick Majesty's Consul at St.
Lucas.

_Berne, Aug. 20._ The Deputies of this Canton who
went to the Diet at Frawenfeldt, are now assembled
at Baden with those of Zurich and Glaris, to regulate
certain Affairs relating to the Town and County of
Baden, which formerly belonged to the Eight Eldest
Cantons, but in the last Swiss War was given up to
Zurich and Berne in Propriety, with a Reservation to
the Canton of Glaris (which is mostly Protestant) of
the Share it had before in the Sovereignty of that
District. The three Deputies of Zurich, Lucern &c
Ury, who were commissioned by the late General Dyet
to go to Wilchingen, to try to compose the Differences
which have been long standing between the Inhabitants
of that Place and the Canton of Schafhuysen
whose Subjects they are, have offered those Inhabitonts
a full Pardon for all past Misbehavior, and
the Maintenance of their Privileges for the future,
provided they forthwith return to their Duty; but
it is advised that those of Wilchingen persist hitherto
in this Disobedience.

_Schaffhausen Sept. 1._ They write from Italy, that
the Plague is no longer observ'd at Marseilles, Aix, &
several other Places; and that at Toulon it is very
much decreas'd: But alas! how should it be otherwise,
when the Distemper hath hardly any Objects
left to work upon? At Arles it is likewise abated,
we fear for the same Reason. Mean while, it spreads
in the Gevaudan; and two large Villages in the
Neighbourhood of Frejus were attack'd the beginning
of this Month. The French Court hath prohibited
all communication with the Gevaudan upon severe
Penalties. The Plague is certainly got into the
small Town of  Marvegue in that District, which
Town is shut in by eight hundred Men. Letters from
Geneva say, the two Battalions employ'd in surrounding
La Canourgue, are infected; and that Maages is
very much suspected. The Marquis de Quelus had
retired to a Castle near Avignon; but the Sickness
being got among his Domesticks, he was fled farther
away.

_Paris, Sept. 5._ The District over which the Duke
of Berwick is to have the Command, extends to the
Borders of the Bourbonnois; and the Court puts a
great Confidence in the Care of that General to hinder
the Infection from spreading. The Marquis de
Verceil is actually drawing Lines to shut in the Gevaudan;
and twelve Regiments of Foot, and as many
of Dragoons, are marching to reinforce the Troops
already posted on that side. The Plague seems to
have almost spent itself in Provence. Tho' it is yet
a great way off of us, Men talk nevertheless of laying
up Magazines of all sort of Provisions here, and of making
twenty thousand Beds, to be set up in the Hospitals
and Tennis-Courts.

_Hague, Sept. 9._ The Deputies of our Admiralties
had, last Saturday, an extraordinary Conference with
those of the States General, upon the spreading of a
Report, that ten or twelve Persons died daily at a certain
Place in Normandy, which was therefore suspected
to have received the Contagion; But upon the
matter, it doth not appear there was the least Foundation
for such a Report; tho' it is too plain the
Distemper gains ground space in the Southern Parts
of France.

We can by no means penetrate into the Designs of
the Czar; who, notwithstanding 'tis confidently
written that the Peace between him and Sweden is as
good as concluded, hath a Fleet of thirty Men of War
and two hundred Galleys at Sea near Aland. However,
an Express gone by from Stockholm, doth not
confirm.

[End of trancriptions.]







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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7,
1588-1591, by Emma Helen Blair

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net


Title: The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591

Author: Emma Helen Blair

Release Date: October 11, 2004 [EBook #13701]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS ***




Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Distributed Proofreaders Team







The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898

explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and
their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions,
as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the
political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those
islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the
close of the nineteenth century

Volume VII, 1588-1591



Edited and annotated by Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson
with historical introduction and additional notes by Edward Gaylord
Bourne.




Contents of Volume VII



Preface ...   9
Documents of 1588

	Relation of the Philipinas Islands. Domingo de Salazar,
	and others; Manila, 1586-88 ...  29
	Letter to Felipe II. Santiago de Vera, and others;
	Manila, June 26 ...  52
	Letter to Felipe II. Domingo de Salazar; Manila,
	June 27 ...  64

Documents of 1589

	Excerpt from a letter from the viceroy of India. Manuel
	de Sousa Coutinho; Goa, April 3 ...  79
	Letter to Felipe II. Santiago de Vera; Manila, June
	13 ...	83
	Conspiracy against the Spaniards. Santiago de Vera,
	and others; Manila, May-July ...  95
	Letter to Felipe II. [Gaspar] de Ayala; Manila,
	July 15 ... 112
	Decree regarding commerce. Felipe II; San Lorenzo,
	August 9 ... 137
	Instructions to Gomez Perez Dasmariñas. Felipe II;
	San Lorenzo, August 9  ... 141
	Customs of the Tagalogs (two relations). Juan de
	Plasencia, O.S.F.; Manila, October 21 ... 173

Documents of 1590

	Letter from Portugal to Felipe II. [Lisboa?] ... 199
	Decree ordering a grant to Salazar. Felipe II; Madrid,
	April 12 ... 205
	Letter from members of the suppressed Audiencia to
	Felipe II. Santiago de Vera, and others; Manila,
	June 20 ... 208
	The Chinese and the Parián at Manila. Domingo de
	Salazar; Manila, June 24 ... 212
	Two letters to Felipe II. Domingo de Salazar; Manila,
	June 24 ... 239
	Decree regulating commerce. Felipe II; San Lorenzo,
	July 23 ... 262

The collection of tributes in the Filipinas Islands. Domingo de
Salazar, and others; Manila, 1591 ... 265
Bibliographical Data ... 319





Illustrations



	Autograph signature of Doctor Santiago de Vera; photographic
	facsimile from MS. in Archivo general de Indias, Sevilla ...
	61
	Autograph signature of Juan de Plasencia, O.S.F.; photographic
	facsimile from MS. in Archivo general de Indias, Sevilla
	... 187




Preface


Important events and changes occur during the four years included
in the scope of this volume. The Audiencia is suppressed, and in
its place is sent a royal governor; the instructions given to him
embody many of the reforms demanded by the people through their
envoy Sánchez. Extensive and dangerous conspiracies among the natives
against the Spaniards are discovered, and severely punished. Trade
between Nueva España and China is beginning, and seems to menace the
welfare of the Philippine colony. A large immigration of Chinese to
the islands has set in, and is already seriously affecting economic
interests there. The city of Manila, recently destroyed by fire, is
being rebuilt, this time mainly with brick and stone. As usual, there
is much friction between the ecclesiastical and secular authorities,
largely concerning the collection of tributes from the Indians;
the most prominent figure in these contentions is the aged but fiery
bishop, Salazar.

Shortly after the Jesuit Sánchez had gone to Spain as envoy of the
Philippine colonists, a document was prepared (December 31, 1586),
by order of the Manila cabildo, to be sent to him for use at the
Spanish court. As this was lost on the "Santa Ana," and as Bishop
Salazar regards the supply of missionaries in the islands as very
inadequate, he applies (June 3, 1588) to the cabildo for another copy
of such part of this document as relates to the religious needs of the
natives. This he sends (June 25) to the royal Council of the Indias,
with considerable additions regarding certain islands not mentioned
in the cabildo's memorial. This document gives much interesting
information, not only on religious matters, but on the social and
economic conditions of both Spaniards and natives in the islands. In
each island or province are enumerated the population, both native
and Spanish; the number of Spanish troops, also of encomiendas and
tributarios; the number of convents and their inmates; the religious
and ecclesiastics, not only those resident, but those needed among
the natives; the officials employed by the government; the Chinese
immigrants and their occupations; the articles for sale in the public
market; and the imports and exports at Manila. The writer relates many
things of interest regarding the natural resources and products of the
country, the mode of life of both Spaniards and natives, the means of
defense possessed by the colony, the Indians who are not as yet under
Spanish rule. All this affords a valuable and curiously interesting
picture of the colony and its life; but Salazar, in presenting it,
is mainly concerned with the great need of more religious instruction
for the natives, and earnestly entreats the king to send more friars
and ecclesiastics for the purpose.

A letter from Santiago de Vera to the king (dated June 26, 1588)
gives his report for the past year. He recounts the exploits of the
English adventurer Candish against Spanish commerce. Hereafter the
ships which carry goods from the Philippines will be armed with cannon
and other means of defense. Vera asks for more artillery with which
to defend the islands, which are menaced by great dangers in their
present weak condition. He has built some galleys, but would prefer
some light ships for navigation among the islands. The new fort at
Manila is described; it will, when completed, be sufficient defense
for the city. The governor also enumerates the artillery which he
has, and asks that more be provided by the home government. He has
punished the royal officials for engaging in trade. Vera advises
that the sale of certain public offices be deferred for some years,
until the colony shall be more prosperous.

On the next day (June 27) Salazar writes to the king. He defends
himself against the royal reprimand for his dissensions with the
Audiencia. Further information is given regarding the capture of
Spanish ships by Candish. The resulting losses of citizens in the
islands are very great, and still more serious is the loss of Spanish
prestige in the archipelago. In Mindanao, Moslem missionaries are
conducting an extensive propaganda. The bishop complains that in
his diocese the churches, as well as their furniture, are often so
wretched and inadequate that they are a disgrace to religion, and are
"not fit to be entered by horses." This arises from the penuriousness
or the poverty of the encomenderos; nothing can be expected from
the natives, who are "so harassed and afflicted with public and
private undertakings that they are not able to take breath." The
bishop regards the calamities that have befallen the Spaniards as
punishments inflicted on them by God for their evil treatment of the
Indians. He recommends that many religious be sent to the islands,
who will be protectors of the natives; also that a governor be sent
who is not ruled by selfish or family interests. Salazar complains
of the harshness and severity shown by the viceroy of Nueva España,
especially as the latter will not allow certain Dominican friars to go
to the Philippines; and as he has injured the commerce of the islands
by his restrictive measures--especially by selling the vessel "Saint
Martin" to a Mexican merchant to be used in the Chinese trade. The
wreck of that ship at sea he regards as a punishment from heaven. He
urges that trade from Mexico to China be stopped, and that the viceroy
of Nueva España be ordered to send aid to the Philippines, especially
of troops and military supplies, and not to meddle with the decisions
of the Audiencia there regarding customs duties, etc. Salazar objects
to the presence of so many Chinamen in the islands.

An extract from a letter of the viceroy of India to the king (April 3,
1589) complains that some of his officers have violated the prohibition
of intercourse with China and the Philippines. He has sent officials
to Macao to quell disturbances there, and order has been given that
all Castilians there shall be sent away. He is greatly opposed to
the trade which has begun between Mexico and China, and thinks that
rigorous measures should be taken against it.

Vera writes (July 13) to the king imploring reenforcements and
supplies for the islands. Three Spaniards, among them a Franciscan
friar, have been treacherously slain by the Borneans. This proves to
be the outcome of a general conspiracy among the Filipinos, Borneans,
and other peoples to attack and drive out the Spaniards. The plotters
are detected and severely punished. Certain public offices have been
sold, account for which is rendered by the governor. He is endeavoring
to secure a small fleet of trading ships, but is obliged to ask
aid for this from the royal treasury. Not only ships, but sailors
and carpenters are needed, who should be paid in the same way. More
artillery is needed, also to be furnished by royal aid. The Chinese
trade is continually increasing. The city of Manila is being fast
rebuilt, and in stone. But the land is unhealthful and the soldiers
die fast, so that the islands have few men for their defense; and
again the king is earnestly entreated to order that men and supplies
be sent at once from Nueva España. The new fort has been injured by
earthquakes, but Vera is building it more strongly. He complains that
the friars have neglected his commands to learn the Chinese language
and instruct the Chinese who live on the islands. The Dominicans alone
have entered this field; they have achieved great results, and have
now among the Chinese "a village of Christians." Many more would be
converted, if it were not for the bishop's order that the long hair
of the converts should be cut off; accordingly the king orders that
a conference of religious and learned persons be held, who shall
take suitable action in regard to this and other matters concerning
the conversion of the Chinese. Vera complains of the arrogance,
obstinacy, and high temper of the bishop, and asks that the king
restrain him. There is no physician in Manila, and one is urgently
needed in the royal hospital. This document is followed by the notarial
record of proceedings in the trial of various Indians for conspiracy,
which is mentioned in Vera's letter. The punishments inflicted upon
them are specified: in each case, appeal was made to the Audiencia,
which in some cases modified the penalty, but otherwise affirmed the
former decision.

Gaspar de Ayala, royal fiscal in the islands, makes his report to
the king (July 15). He advises that ships for the royal service be
built in the islands; also that the gold used as currency there be
exchanged in Nueva España for Spanish coin--both of which measures
will be of profit to the royal treasury. He renders account of the
recent sale of offices in the islands, and gives advice regarding
this method of aiding the royal exchequer. Certain encomiendas
becoming vacant, Ayala, as fiscal, undertakes to secure them for
the crown; in this he has difficulties with the governor, who also
is trying to make trouble for Ayala with the soldiers. The latter
asks to be relieved from his post in the Philippines, and sent to
some other. The Chinese trade is meager this year, owing to war and
pestilence in China; and there are rumors that it is being diverted
to Peru or Nueva España. If this be true, the Philippine colony will
be ruined. A second plot against the Spaniards has been revealed,
this time in Cebú; but the leaders have been captured. The Indians
of Cagayán have also revolted, and troops have been sent against
them. Ayala adds, "I am ready to certify that there are few places
in these islands where the natives are not disaffected." The Spanish
colony is in great danger, and imperatively needs reenforcements to
save it from destruction. The galleys at Manila, now useless, should
be replaced by light sailing-vessels. A further levy of tribute has
been made on the Indians for the new fortress at Manila: this is an
oppressive burden for them. Ayala relates at length the dissensions
between the bishop and the secular authorities; the king is implored
to settle the question at issue. The bishop has also offended the
Augustinians, by sending Dominican friars into their field among the
Chinese residents: The king is asked to send more friars, to instruct
the natives. The Manila hospital for Indians has no income save of
alms: Ayala recommends that the Franciscans in charge be allowed to
sell a certain amount of pepper in Nueva España. The members of the
Audiencia, and the magistrates and officials appointed during the
current year are enumerated by name. A fierce tempest has occurred
at Manila, causing great damage, and destroying all the vessels in
the harbor except one small one. The expedition sent to Cagayán has
returned without accomplishing anything except the destruction of the
crops belonging to the hostile Indians, which will only irritate them
and incite them to revenge.

A royal decree (dated August 9, 1589) orders the newly appointed
governor of the Philippines, Gomez Perez Dasmariñas, to repeal the
import duties levied at Manila on provisions and military supplies,
also to suppress the retail trade conducted there by the Chinese.

As a result of Sanchez's embassy to Spain, the king and his counselors
decide to institute many reforms in the Philippines, and to send
thither a royal governor in place of the Audiencia. For this dignity
is selected Gomez Perez Dasmariñas, and the king's instructions to
him (dated August 9, 1589) embody the changes to be made in the
government and life of the colony. The cathedral at Manila is to
be built, for which purpose the king appropriates the sum of twelve
thousand ducados. Similar aid is to be granted to the two hospitals
at Manila. More religious are to be sent to the islands. The rate of
tribute from the Indians shall be increased from eight reals to ten;
this increase shall be used for tithes and the support of troops in
the islands; and the encomenderos must support religious instruction
among the natives, and pay tithes. A grant of money for six years
is made to the city of Manila; but the king declines to abolish
the customs duties--setting aside their proceeds, however, for the
payment of the soldiers stationed in the islands--except those on
food and military supplies. Appointments and encomiendas must be
given to old citizens, or to soldiers who have done actual service;
and a list of persons who are to be rewarded for their services is
furnished to the new governor. Workmen are to be paid at Manila,
not, as heretofore, at Mexico. Trade with Mexico is restricted to the
inhabitants of the Philippines. The question whether the Chinese and
other foreign merchants are to be allowed to sell goods at retail at
the ports is left to the discretion of Dasmariñas. Only Christian
Chinese may remain in the islands. Agricultural colonists shall be
sent thither from Spain, for whom various provisions are made; and it
is expected that from them the Indians will learn the Spanish methods
of farming. Cattle and horses are to be sent to the islands; and the
farmers sent out shall be ordered to tame and breed the wild buffaloes
found there. Agriculture shall be encouraged in all ways. A convent for
girls should be established, and its inmates provided with husbands;
and Indian women should be enabled to marry poor Spaniards. Encomiendas
must be granted with great care, and must be provided with adequate
religious instruction. Dasmariñas is advised to settle lawsuits
amicably out of court, when possible. In disaffected encomiendas,
only part of the tributes should be collected. Suitable instruction
for the natives must be provided, and those who are dispersed should
be gathered into settlements where they can be taught the Christian
faith. The king appoints Bishop Salazar the official protector of
the Indians; and the governor is instructed to cultivate friendly
relations with him. A force of four hundred paid soldiers shall be
maintained in the islands, and various provisions are made for their
discipline and welfare. The minimum age for military service is fixed
at fifteen years, and the enlistment of mestizos is discouraged. The
city of Manila shall be fortified and garrisoned; and the governor is
instructed to be on his guard against various enemies, "chiefly of
the Lutheran English pirates who infest those coasts," and to build
forts and galleys for the defense of the islands. He is expected
to continue the conquests begun there by the Spaniards, but only in
accordance with instructions furnished him. He must do all in his power
to pacify the Indians in the disaffected provinces. In attempting any
military expedition, the governor must consult with the most learned
and experienced men of the community; he may contract with captains or
encomenderos for the exploration or pacification of hitherto unsubdued
regions. Provision is made for the instruction of the natives; and
extortion and oppression of the natives in collecting the tributes
must be checked. All Indians enslaved by the Spaniards shall be
immediately set free. All lawsuits concerning the Indians shall be
settled as promptly and simply as possible. Religious persons sent to
the islands must remain there, except by permission of the authorities.

Of especial value are two relations (1589) by the Franciscan missionary
Juan de Plasencia, on the customs of the Tagalogs. He describes their
social organization, which was originally patriarchal; and rights of
property, which are partly individual and partly communistic. There
are three classes among the people--nobles, commoners and slaves. The
status and rights of each are carefully defined, and the causes and
kinds of slavery. A somewhat elaborate system of regulations concerning
inheritances is described, also the status of children by adoption,
which usage is widely prevalent among the Tagalogs. Marriage,
dowries, and divorce are fully treated. In the second of these
relations Plasencia describes their modes of burial and worship,
and the religious beliefs and superstitions current among that
people. They have no buildings set aside as temples, although they
sometimes celebrate, in a temporary edifice, a sort of worship. Their
chief idol is Badhala, but they also worship the sun and the moon,
and various minor divinities. They believe in omens, and practice
divination. A detailed account is given of the various classes of
priests, sorcerers, witches, etc., in which the natives believed;
also of the burial rites of both Tagalogs and Negritos.

A letter to the king from Portugal (written early in 1590) gives him
information which he had requested from Portuguese officials in India,
regarding the character and results of the trade between the Spanish
colonies and those established by the Portuguese in India and the
Eastern archipelago, and China. The continuance of this trade would,
they think, ruin the prosperity of the settlements in India, and
greatly injure the commerce of Spain, and deplete that country and her
colonies of their coin. At Salazar's petition, he receives from the
king (April 12, 1590) a grant of money toward the payment of debts
incurred by him in procuring the rebuilding of Manila in stone. On
June 20 of the same year, the members of the Audiencia, suppressed
by order of the king and replaced by Dasmariñas, notify the king that
they have surrendered their posts, and ask him for various favors.

Bishop Salazar writes to the king (June 24) a special communication
regarding the Chinese (or Sangleys) at Manila. He apologizes for
having formerly given, under a mistake as to their character,
a wrong impression of that people; and relates various instances
of their humane treatment of foreigners in their land. He blames
the Portuguese for having spread in China false reports about the
Spaniards, and thinks that by this means the devil is trying to hinder
the entrance of the gospel into that land. The bishop urges that no
hostile demonstration be made against the Chinese; for they are most
favorably inclined to the Christian religion, and many conversions may
be made among them. Most of Salazar's letter is devoted to the Chinese
residents of Manila, and their quarters there, which is called the
Parián. He narrates the gradual increase of the Chinese immigration
to the islands, their relations with the Spaniards, the establishment
of the Parián, and his efforts for their conversion. These last are
ineffectual until the coming of the Dominican friars in 1587; they
assume the charge of converting the Chinese, and build their convent
next the Parián, which brings the friars into constant and friendly
relations with the Chinese. An interesting description of the Parián
and its inhabitants is given; all trades are represented therein, and
the people carry on the manufactures to which they were accustomed
in China, but with a better finish, which they have learned to use
from the Spaniards. Salazar makes the enthusiastic statement that
"the Parián has so adorned the city [Manila] that I do not hesitate
to affirm to your Majesty that no other known city in España, or
in these regions, possesses anything so well worth seeing as this;
for in it can be found the whole trade of China, with all kinds of
goods and curious things which come from that country." Especially
interesting are the economic effects of their residence there;
"the handicrafts pursued by Spaniards have all died out, because
people all buy their clothes and shoes from the Sangleys, who are
very good craftsmen in Spanish fashion, and make everything at very
low cost." Salazar admires their cleverness and dexterity in all
kinds of handiwork especially as they have learned, in less than
ten years, both painting and sculpture; "I think that nothing more
perfect could be produced than some of their marble statues of the
Child Jesus which I have seen." The churches are thus being furnished
with images. A book-binder from Mexico had come to Manila, and his
trade has been quickly taken from him by his Chinese apprentice,
who has set up his own bindery, and excels his master. Many other
instances of the cleverness, ability, and industry of the Chinese
are related; and the city is almost entirely dependent on them for
its food supplies. Not the least of the benefits received from them
by the city is their work as stone-masons, and makers of bricks and
lime; they are so industrious, and work so cheaply, that Manila is
rapidly being rebuilt with substantial and elegant houses, churches,
and convents, of stone and brick. The day's wage of a Chinaman is one
real (equal to five cents of American money). So many Chinese are
coming to Manila that another Parián is being built to accommodate
them. Nearly seven thousand of them reside there, and in the vicinity
of Manila, and four Dominican friars labor among them. Salazar reports
the condition and progress of the missions conducted by that order
in the islands. Those who minister to the Chinese are securing some
converts, but many who are otherwise inclined to the Christian faith
are unwilling thus to exile themselves from their own land. After due
deliberation, the Dominicans conclude to open a mission in China, and
in that case to relax the rule compelling converts to cut off their
hair and foresake their native land. This purpose they are enabled to
accomplish, after encountering many difficulties, through the aid of
some Chinese Christians in Manila; and two friars are sent to China,
Miguel de Benavides and Juan Castro. The Dominicans have also built a
hospital for the Chinese; it is supported by alms, partly contributed
by "Sangley" infidels; and its physician is a converted Chinese
who devotes himself to its service. This institution has won much
renown and commendation in China. Salazar asks that the king grant
it some aid, and that he confirm a reward given by the governor to
the two Christian Chinese who aided the mission to China. Another
letter from Salazar bearing the same date (June 24) recounts many
things concerning affairs in the islands. He protests against the
royal orders to increase the rate of tribute paid by the Indians,
saying that the king has been misinformed regarding their ability
to pay. He makes comments on the several royal decrees which have
come in this year's mail. One commands that the conquerors make
restitution for the damages inflicted by them upon the natives; but
they or their heirs are tardy in paying the amounts levied for this
purpose, and meanwhile the Indians live in great poverty and want. The
bishop's heart and conscience are harassed not only by this, but by
the inability of the Spaniards to pay the full amount which is due
the Indians as restitution; he therefore asks the king to settle this
matter by remitting part of the amounts thus required. Salazar defends
himself for having encouraged the Indian slaves (who had been freed
by royal decree) to leave their Spanish masters; and for obliging the
Chinese converts to cut off their hair. He also explains, as being
greatly exaggerated, the accusations brought against his clergy of
engaging in traffic; and promises to do all in his power to check
them. One of the decrees settles the question of precedence between
him and the Audiencia; but, as that tribunal has been suppressed,
it is now useless. Salazar takes this opportunity to defend himself
against the aspersions cast upon him in this matter, and in regard
to certain legal proceedings wherein the Audiencia had claimed that
he defied its authority. He declares that he always complied with
its decisions or commands except in a few cases, which he explains in
detail; and complains that the Audiencia has at various times usurped
his jurisdiction, of which he relates instances.

In still another letter (of the same date) the bishop thanks his
sovereign for recent kindness shown him, and for decrees favorable to
the Philippine colony. The money which the king ordered to be given
for building the cathedral at Manila has not yet been paid, as the
royal treasury there is so poor. Salazar comments on certain recent
decrees by the king: that the friars should not leave the islands
without permission from the authorities; that tithes be remitted for
twenty years to new settlers in the islands; and that the processes
of justice be simplified, and pecuniary fines abrogated. The bishop
reiterates his complaint against the cruelty and injustice with which
the Spaniards collect the tributes from the natives, and the dearth
of religious instruction for the latter; he feels responsible for this
instruction, yet cannot provide it for lack of religious teachers. If
more priests can be sent, great results can be achieved. The spiritual
destitution of that region is so great that "of the ten divisions of
this bishopric, eight have no instruction; and some provinces have
been paying tribute to your Majesty for more than twenty years, but
without receiving on account of that any greater advantage than to be
tormented by the tribute, and afterward to go to hell." If religious
teachers are supplied, it will be comparatively easy to complete
the pacification of the Indians who are now hostile; then the royal
treasury will receive, from the increase in the tributes, far more than
it would now expend in sending out the missionaries. The bishop asks
that, as he is now appointed by the king the protector of the Indians,
he may have also funds for the expenses and assistants necessary for
this office; also that the same protection may be extended toward
the Chinese, who need it even more than the Indians. A royal decree
(July 23, 1590) orders that the trade with China shall be confined
for six years to the inhabitants of the islands.

Next follows a long document, a collection of papers (bearing
various dates in 1591) relating to the collection of tributes in
the islands. The first is a memorandum of the resources and needs
of the hospital at Manila; the former are so small, and the latter
so great, that the institution is badly crippled. A short letter
by Bishop Salazar (dated January 12) classifies the encomiendas
according to the amount of religious instruction given therein,
and lays down the conditions which ought to govern the collection
of tributes. He declares that the encomendero has not fulfilled his
obligations to the Indians under him by merely reserving a fourth
of the tributes for building churches; and advises that the small
encomiendas be combined to form larger ones. This letter is followed by
twenty-five "conclusions" (dated January 18) relating to this subject,
which express the opinions of bishop and clergy on the collection of
tributes from the Indians. These define the purposes for which this
tax should be collected, the restrictions under which collections
shall be permitted, and the respective duties in this matter of the
encomenderos, ministers of religion, and governors, They declare that
restitution should be made for all tribute unjustly collected from
the natives--which includes all that is taken from pagans who have
not been instructed, or from any Indian by force. Another letter
by the bishop (dated January 25) accompanies this document. He
states that he does not desire to forbid the encomenderos from
personally collecting the tributes. He advises that the amount of
such collections should be reduced, and that the Spaniards should not
be too heavily mulcted for the restitutions which should be made to
the Indians. The governor replies to these communications, expressing
much interest in the Indians and desire to lighten their burdens. The
collections should be uniform in rate everywhere, and of moderate
amount. Certain requirements should be made from the encomenderos,
especially in regard to the administration of justice; but they must
be enabled to retain their holdings. The governor wishes to adopt
some temporary regulations which shall be in force until the king can
provide suitable measures. On February 15 the city officials and the
encomenderos present a petition to the governor. They complain of the
pressure exerted upon them by the clergy and the friars to prevent
the collection of the tributes; and entreat the governor to interpose
his authority, and to secure a royal mandate, in order that they may
collect the tributes without ecclesiastical interference, or else
to permit them to return to Spain. Salazar answers (February 8) the
previous letter of Dasmariñas; this reply, and the opinions furnished
by the religious orders, we synopsize in our text, as being somewhat
too verbose for the edification of our readers. Salazar answers the
objections made to his earlier statements, and assures the governor
that the encomenderos can live on one-third of the tributes, that
there is no danger of their abandoning their holdings, and that the
chief obstacle to the conversion of the pagans is the cruelty of the
Spaniards. He urges the governor to reform the abuses practiced by
them, and to do justice to the poor Indians; and says that the clergy
will cooperate with him in this. The heads of the religious orders
(except the Dominicans) send written opinions on this subject to
the governor; and the Jesuits discuss certain measures proposed by
the bishop, with some of which they disagree. The remainder of the
document on tributes will be presented in _Vol_. VIII.

_The Editors_

September, 1903.





Documents of 1588



	Relation of the Philipinas Islands. Domingo de Salazar,
	and others; 1586-88.
	Letter to Felipe II. Santiago de Vera; June 26.
	Letter to Felipe II. Domingo de Salazar; June 27.



_Sources_: The first of these documents is obtained from _Cartas
de Indias_, pp. 637-652; the others, from the original MSS. in the
Archivo general de Indias, Sevilla.

_Translations_: The first document is translated by James A. Robertson;
the others, by José M. and Clara M. Asensio.



Relation of the Philipinas Islands


Most potent Sir:

I, the bishop of the Philipinas, declare that to your Highness [1]
it is evident and well-known that the greater number of the natives in
these islands are yet to be converted, and that many of those who are
converted are without instruction, because they have no one to give
it; and because, even in the districts where there are ministers,
they are so few, and the natives so numerous, that they cannot give
the latter sufficient instruction. I have, moreover, been informed
that in a letter which the cabildo of this city of Manilla wrote to
your Highness last year there was a section in which they gave your
Highness information of the districts and localities in these islands
where instruction is provided, and of those where it is not, and of
the number of ministers who are necessary to furnish instruction to
the natives therein. This letter, with all the others which went in
the said year on the ship "Sancta Ana," was lost. For the relief of
your royal conscience and my own, and for the welfare of the said
natives, it is best that an order be given that those natives who are
converted shall be supplied with ministers to instruct and maintain
them in the Christian faith; for it is well known that, as soon as
ministers fail them, they return to their rites and idolatries--in
some districts, because they have lacked ministers for many years;
and, in others quite near here, because those religious who had them
in charge have abandoned them. This is well known to your Highness,
through the information that has been given your Highness many times
from this Audiencia. I am ready to furnish you sufficient information
in this regard, if your Highness be so inclined. It is necessary
also that ministers be furnished to the natives yet unconverted,
that they may teach them and look after their conversion, since all
of these Indians are under the dominion of your Highness, and pay
tribute, as if they were Christians and received instruction. Unless
ministers come hither from España, it is impossible to make good
these deficiencies, or to supply the great lack of instruction. In
order that this matter may be manifest to your Highness, and that you
may be pleased to command that a remedy be provided, according to the
great necessity for instruction in these islands, I ask, and, in order
that the said need may be more certainly evident to your Highness,
it is fitting, that the [above-mentioned] section of the said letter
be sent to your royal hands. I beg and supplicate your Highness that
you order the notary of the cabildo of this said city to draw up from
the book of the cabildo one, two, or more copies of the said section,
publicly and duly authenticated, in order to approach therewith your
royal person--for which, etc.

_The Bishop of the Philippinas_


(In Manilla, on the third day of the month of June in the year one
thousand five hundred and eighty-eight. The honorable president and
auditors of the royal Audiencia of these Philipinas Islands being in
public session, this petition was read; and after examination by the
said members of the Audiencia, they declared that the request of the
bishop should be granted.

_Juan de la Paraya_)


(In fulfilment of the above order, I, Simon Lopez, notary of the king,
our lord, and of the cabildo of this distinguished and ever loyal city
of Manilla, [2] have caused to be made, from the books and papers of
the cabildo which are in my possession, a copy of the relation which
is mentioned in the present memoir. It is as follows:)

_Relation of the natives now inhabiting these Western Islands--those
who are pacified, and from whom tribute is collected, both those who
are under control of his Majesty and those allotted to encomenderos;
also of the religious, and the instruction given by them, among the
natives; of the number of Spanish inhabitants, both in this city of
Manila and in the settlements outside of it; and of the ministers of
religion who are needed here_.


_Manilla_

This city of Manilla was founded in the island of Luzon, which
is very fertile and populous. Outside of it, within the circuit
of five leagues, are settled seven thousand five hundred Indians;
four thousand of these belong to his Majesty, and the rest, three
thousand five hundred, are allotted to four encomenderos. There are
eight Augustinian friars, in four residences, and in another house
are two Franciscans, one of whom is a lay brother, all of the rest
being priests. In order that sufficient instruction be furnished the
Indians, five more religious are needed.

This city has eighty citizens. It contains the cathedral and the
bishop's house, and the ecclesiastical dignitaries--the latter
consisting of an arch-deacon, a schoolmaster, two canons, thirteen
clerics who are priests, and a few candidates for holy orders.

The monastery of St. Augustine, which usually has seven or eight
religious, four priests, and three brothers and candidates for
holy orders.

The monastery of St. Francis, which usually has four priests, and
eleven or twelve other professed members and novices.

Of the Society of Jesus, the father superior, with two other fathers
and two brothers.

A royal hospital for Spaniards, and another (in the Franciscan
monastery) for the Indians.

There are, ordinarily, two hundred soldiers in this city, quartered
among the citizens and in the houses of the Indians near them. These
soldiers are very poor, and are sustained by alms, as are likewise the
inmates of the monasteries and hospitals--although four hundred pesos
are given every year from the treasury, besides two hundred fanégas
of rice, for the support of four Augustinian religious; and the royal
hospital possesses an encomienda worth six or seven hundred pesos.

Fifty Spaniards in the city have married Spanish women; and some of
the others, native Indian women. There are fifteen Spanish widows;
also eight or ten girls who are marriageable, and some others who
are very young.

The president and three auditors, one fiscal, one alguaçil-mayor,
two secretaries--one for the Audiencia, and the other for the
government--one bailiff, one keeper of the antechamber, two reporters,
one proctor of the exchequer, four attorneys and as many interpreters,
[3] four commissioners of examination, two alguaçils of the court,
one prison warden, the officials of the royal Audiencia, an officer
to serve executions for the same, and one notary.

The governing body of the city, with two alcaldes-in-ordinary,
an alguaçil-mayor, twelve regidors, bailiffs, six notaries public,
two attorneys, a depositary-general, a chancellor, and registrar,
a superintendent of his Majesty's works, two city watchmen, and one
for vagabonds.

There are thirty captains, only four of whom have companies in
this city.

All the above is confined to the said eighty citizens of this city,
leaving out of account the churches, hospitals, and monasteries. Inside
this city is the silk-market of the Sangley merchants, [4] with shops
to the number of one hundred and fifty, in which there are usually
about six hundred Sangleys--besides a hundred others who live on
the other side of the river opposite this city; these are married,
and many of them are Christians. In addition to these there are more
than three hundred others--fishermen, gardeners, hunters, weavers,
brickmakers, lime-burners, carpenters, and iron-workers--who live
outside the silk market, and without the city, upon the shores of the
sea and river. Within the silk market are many tailors, cobblers,
bakers, carpenters, candle-makers, confectioners, apothecaries,
painters, silversmiths, and those engaged in other occupations.

Every day there is held a public market of articles of food, such as
fowls, swine, ducks, game-birds, wild hogs, buffaloes, fish, bread,
and other provisions, and garden-produce, and firewood; there are
also many commodities from China which are sold through the streets.

Twenty merchantmen generally sail hither each year from China, each
one carrying at least a hundred men, who trade from November until
May--in those vessels coming hither, living here, and departing
to their own country, during these seven months. They bring hither
two hundred thousand pesos' worth of merchandise, only ten thousand
pesos being in food supplies--such as flour, sugar, biscuits, butter,
oranges, walnuts, chestnuts, pineapples, figs, plums, pomegranates,
pears, and other fruits, salt pork, and hams--and in such abundance
that the city and its environs are supported thereby during the whole
year, and the fleets and trading-vessels are provisioned therefrom;
they bring also many horses and cows, with which their land is well
supplied. For two years, merchantmen have come hither laden with goods
from Japon, Macaon, Cian [Siam], and other places, in order to trade
in this city. The people of those countries are consequently becoming
desirous of our friendship and trade, and many of the inhabitants of
those nations are being converted.

They carry to their own countries, from this land, gold, wax, cotton,
dye-woods, and small shells, which latter pass for money in their
country, being used besides for many things, whereby they are held
in much esteem. They bring hither silks--figured satins, black and
colored damasks, brocades and other fabrics--which are now very
commonly seen, a great quantity of white and black cotton cloth,
and the above-mentioned articles of food.

Outside of this city and the above-mentioned villages lying within
five leagues of it, there are seven well-populated provinces in
this same island of Luzon--namely, Panpanga, Pangasinan, Ylocos,
Cagayan, Camarines, La Laguna, and Bonbon y Balayan. These include
three Spanish settlements--namely, Camarines, Ylocos, and Cagayan,
and have the following number of tributarios [i.e., Indians paying
tribute] and encomiendas.


_The province of Panpanga_

The province of Panpanga has twenty-two thousand tributarios, of
whom seven thousand belong to his Majesty, and fifteen thousand
are apportioned among eleven encomiendas. There are eight houses
of the religious of St. Augustine, and one house of St. Francis, in
which are sixteen Augustinian priests and one Franciscan. In another
house is a Dominican, who is a coadjutor of the bishop. All together,
there are eighteen priests. In order that sufficient instruction be
given in this province, twenty-six more priests are needed; because,
at the very least, a thousand tributarios means four thousand people,
who require two religious--and in this ratio throughout the islands,
where, it is believed, there will be a great increase of people and
of their instruction. This province has an alcalde-mayor, and needs
two corregidors.

This province is fifteen leagues in circuit, and is situated, at the
very most, a like distance from this city. Between this province and
that of Pangasinan, which is adjacent to it, there are three thousand
Indians apportioned between two encomiendas; they are Çanbales, and
many of them are pacified. Living at a distance of twenty-five or
thirty leagues from this city are more than three thousand others of
this same race--brave mountaineers--still to be pacified; and we have
not the wherewithal to send twenty soldiers for that purpose. This
entire population is without instruction. It needs six ministers.


_The province of Pangassinan_

The province of Pangassinan has five thousand tributarios, pacified,
but without instruction. It is forty leagues' distance from this city,
by either land or sea. His Majesty possesses one thousand five hundred
of its tributarios, and the rest are held by five encomenderos. It
has one alcalde-mayor. Ten religious are necessary.


_The province of Ylocos_

Five leagues beyond Pangasinan, by either land or sea, begins the
province of Ylocos, which is inhabited for forty leagues inland. It has
twenty-seven thousand tributarios. Of these the king has six thousand,
and twenty-one thousand are in fourteen encomiendas. There are three
Augustinian religious in two houses or districts, and two ecclesiastics
in two others. Fifty others are needed. There is a considerable
population of mountaineers who recognize no master. This province
has an alcalde-mayor, and the [Spanish] population of a small town.


_The province of Cagayan_

The province of Cagayan has many rivers and bayous. On its principal
river, by name Taxo, the city of Nueva Segovia has been founded,
being situated two leagues inland. This city has forty citizens
who are encomenderos. It has one Augustinian monastery, containing
two priests; one alcalde-mayor, two alcaldes-in-ordinary, one
alguaçil-mayor, and six regidors, who constitute the cabildo;
and a royal hospital, which has for its income the tribute-money
collected here for his Majesty. There is a fort with seven large
pieces of artillery, and an equal number of small pieces--such as
small culverins and falcons--a number of muskets and arquebuses,
pikes, and coats-of-mail, which constitute the weapons and armor
used in this land. For its maintenance this fort has assigned to it
the tribute from one village, which amounts to about one hundred
pesos. It has its own governor. The forty citizens of this city
maintain in addition forty soldiers, who help to pacify, conquer,
and collect the tribute of the encomiendas. Ten of these citizens
are married, the remainder single. Twenty-six thousand Indians, of
whom seven thousand are pacified and pay tribute, are apportioned
to thirty-three of these citizens--some along the principal river
Taxo, and the remainder in the districts near the same. Along this
river and in its neighborhood his Majesty has one thousand seven
hundred tributarios, of whom a thousand are pacified and pay their
tribute. This river Taxo is very broad and deep, and large vessels
can ascend it even to the city. It has an excellent bay. It rises
fifty leagues inland, and is inhabited along its entire course by the
above-mentioned people. Its water is excellent, and the whole land is
quite fertile and healthful, and abounds in rice, swine, fowls, and
palm-wine; and there is much hunting of buffaloes, deer, wild hogs,
and birds. A great amount of wax, cotton, and gold is collected in
this district, in which articles the natives pay their tribute. Two
leagues opposite the bar of the river Taxo is the dense population of
the Babuyanes Islands. One island is an encomienda under the control
of his Majesty, and is said to contain one thousand men. The tribute
has not been collected, because the inhabitants, it is said, are not
pacified. The eight other islands are distributed among the seven
[other] citizens [of Nueva Segovia]. They number three thousand men,
more rather than less from all of whom their masters collect three
hundred tributes. All of these islands are distant three or four
leagues from one another. Sixty priests would be needed for the care
of these thirty thousand Indians, counting two priests to each thousand
tributarios. At the present time, sixteen priests are needed for those
who are pacified, as we have said. These priests are very important
for the pacification and permanent settlement of the natives, and for
[the spiritual needs of] the soldiers. This province of Cagayan lies
seventy leagues from the mainland of China and the coast cities of
that country. Seventy ministers are necessary, who, with the help and
protection of the soldiers, will gather the inhabitants together and
pacify them all, and seek out the rest of the people--who, as we are
informed, exist in great number as far as Cagayan.


_The province of La Laguna_

The province of La Laguna ["the Lake"], commences at the lake--which is
the body of water above this city of Manilla where the river of this
city rises, as well as others in the mountain hard by--six leagues
from this city. [5] It is about twenty leagues in circuit, and in
this territory, inhabited by eleven thousand Indian tributarios,
there are twelve religious houses--ten of Franciscans, with fifteen
priests and nine brothers; one of Augustinians, with three priests;
and, in the other house, one ecclesiastic. Two thousand seven hundred
of the inhabitants are his Majesty's, and two thousand four hundred
[6] are distributed among eight encomenderos. Of all the provinces
in these islands, this one has the most instruction. It needs three
more priests. It has one alcalde-mayor, and should have besides one
corregidor. Near the coast of the bay of this city is the province
of Bonbon y Balayan.


_The province of Bonbon y Balayan_

The province of Bonbon contains the people of the Lake, who amount
to four thousand men, belonging to the Mariscal. [7] It comprises
the villages of Batangas, Galbandayun, Calilaya, and the lowlands
of Balayan, which amount in all to nine thousand tributarios. His
Majesty has one thousand two hundred of them, and five encomenderos
seven thousand eight hundred. There are four religious houses--two of
Augustinians, in Bonbon and Batangas; and the other two of Franciscans,
in Balayan and Dayun. These houses contain four Augustinian priests,
and three Franciscan priests and two brothers. Ten more ministers
are necessary.


_Province of Camarines_

The province of Camarines lies fifty leagues from this city. In
it is located the city of Caçeres, with thirty citizens, who have
generally thirty soldiers quartered among them. Twenty of these
citizens are married, six of them to native women. The city has
its own cabildo and governing body; also a church with one vicar,
one Franciscan monastery with two priests and two brothers besides,
and one alcalde-mayor. It could have three more corregidorships.

This province has twenty thousand tributarios, of whom two thousand
five hundred are his Majesty's, and seventeen thousand five hundred
are distributed among twenty encomiendas.

There are ten Franciscan houses in this province, besides the convent
of the city, with eleven priests and eight brothers in all. There
are two more ecclesiastics in two districts, not counting the curate
of the city. Twenty more priests are necessary. The faith has had an
excellent opening in this province of Camarines, and the preaching
of the gospel has shed its rays far and wide therein. The natives
are especially inclined to the sacrament of Penitence; and it is a
thing to marvel at, to see the churches continually filled, especially
during Lent, with people asking confession.

The people of this province are simple and well disposed. Their
country is delightful in its location, being healthful and very
beautiful. The chase yields many wild hogs, deer, and buffaloes;
and there are many birds, such as hens, ducks of many varieties, the
smaller birds, and many others. There is a river where fish abound
in great plenty, especially swordfish, and many black shellfish,
the latter being gathered at the river. There is much fine scenery
in this province, and it contains many springs and rivers of fresh,
clear water, on account of which there is always abundance of excellent
water in this province. Near the boundaries of the province are two
volcanoes of great size and remarkable beauty--one of fire, and the
other of water. [8] According to the report of the natives who have
climbed up to the volcano of water, there are many royal eagles there,
besides much white honey and wax, and fruits of various kinds.

The entire population of this province is in encomiendas, separated
two or three leagues, or even a less distance, from one another;
and all these encomiendas are contained within thirty leagues.

Besides this island of Luzon, there are many other inhabited islands,
situated close to it, within a circuit of one hundred leagues. There
are two more Spanish colonies--one the city of Nonbre de Jesus,
in Çebu; and the other the town of Arevalo, [9] in Oton.


_Concerning Cubu_

The city of Cubu has thirty citizens, among whom are quartered twenty
soldiers. These citizens are all encomenderos, and all married to
either Spanish or Indian women. Their encomiendas are located among
the neighboring islands, there being thirty-two encomiendas with
eighteen thousand tributarios. Here his Majesty possesses some few
little hamlets, in which but little tribute is collected, and the
natives of the city--who by special privilege pay no tribute, because
from the very first they received the Spaniards in a friendly manner,
furnishing the camp with provisions, and showing themselves loyal
on many occasions. This city has a church, with one vicar; and one
Augustinian monastery, containing three or four religious. In all
those encomiendas there is no other instruction. Three more priests
are necessary.

This city has a municipal council and alcaldes; and has a fortress
provided with three or four large pieces of artillery, and some
small ones, such as falcons and small culverins; and having its own
governor. This fort is located opposite Burney, the Malucos and
Mindanaos, and other infidel islands and kingdoms. This city has
one alcalde-mayor.


_The town of Arevalo_

The town of Arevalo is situated on the island of Oton [or Panay],
and has twenty citizens; they are encomenderos, and have thirty
soldiers quartered among them. The town has a municipal council,
alcaldes-in-ordinary, and one alcalde-mayor. In the islands near this
settlement there are twenty-two thousand tributarios; three thousand
of these are his Majesty's, and nineteen thousand are distributed
among eighteen encomiendas. There is one church and one vicar, and
one monastery with two Augustinians. Outside of the town, in certain
of the encomiendas, are four more houses of the same order. The five
houses contain ten priests. Three or four more are needed.

All of these islands, as well as those of the settlement of Çubu,
abound in flesh of wild hogs and birds; and in all the above-mentioned
places many fowls and swine are raised. Tribute is paid in gold,
cloth, wax, cotton thread, rice, and fowls, at a valuation based on
the peso of Tipuzque.

In addition to these islands and settlements, there are other
islands, namely, Marinduque, Luban, Mindoro, Elen, Calamianes, with
two thousand five hundred tributarios, besides a much greater number
still unpacified. None of them has any instruction, except Mindoro,
where his Majesty has five hundred Indians who are instructed. One
ecclesiastic in the islands of Calamianes collects the tribute,
in the name of his Majesty, from two hundred more. We hear of many
more who are still unpacified. The rest are in two encomiendas. Six
ecclesiastics are necessary.


_Summary of the Above Relation_

According to what is set forth in this relation, it is therefore
evident that there are one hundred and forty-six thousand, seven
hundred pacified tributarios in this island of Luzon and the other
islands of this government. Of this number his Majesty has twenty-eight
thousand seven hundred. The religious number fifty-four Augustinian
priests, and thirty-eight descalced Franciscan friars--all these
for this city and the instruction of the natives--with an additional
number of some ten ecclesiastics, in curacies and vicariates outside
of this city, as has been related. One hundred and ninety more priests
are necessary for the instruction of the said natives, which number
will furnish sufficient instruction, counting for each thousand
tributarios two religious--priests, friars, or ecclesiastics. These
thousand tributarios amount to somewhat less than four thousand
people. It is quite certain that with adequate instruction, such
as is indicated in the foregoing, many people, not yet pacified,
will become so, and the number of tributarios in the above-named
provinces would be increased to two hundred thousand. For we have
heard that in the province of Cagayan there are many more people
besides those apportioned in encomiendas, as also in the islands of
[Ca]lamianes, Mindoro, Luban, and Elin, as well as in many other
islands included in the colonies of Oton and Çebu. In all of these
the Christian instruction and conversion would be extended through
the territories and provinces adjoining them, and the inhabitants
would be rendered obedient to his Majesty without the necessity of
arms and war; whereby God, our Lord, would be much pleased and these
kingdoms greatly extended. The fathers of the Society, comprising
but three priests and two brothers, reside in this city, where by
means of their teaching they produce the greatest results. They are
studying and learning the language of the natives and of the Chinese,
in order to work among them when more of their Society come hither--a
pressing necessity, for which your Majesty should provide.

(This relation, in its present sum and substance, was made by the
cabildo of this city, in order that it might be sent to Father
Alonso Sanchez, general agent for this city and these islands at
his Majesty's court. Made on the last of December, one thousand five
hundred and eighty-six.

This copy was made and transcribed, corrected, and collated with
another copy in my possession, among the papers of the cabildo in
Manila, on the twenty-first day of the month of June, one thousand five
hundred and eighty-eight, Francisco de Zarate and Alonso Maldonado
being witnesses. Therefore, in testimony of the above, I, Simon
Lopez, notary of the king, our master, and of the cabildo of this
distinguished and ever loyal city of Manila, do affix hereunto my seal.

In testimony of the truth:

_Simon Lopez_, notary of the cabildo)


[The following matter is added by Salazar:] In addition to the towns
named in this relation, I feel in duty bound to give your Majesty some
general information concerning certain islands which are named in
it without making particular mention of them; and concerning others
which are not mentioned at all, which are very important, and have
a large population.

The town of Arevalo, of which mention is made above, was founded
in the island of Panay, which is one of the best islands of this
archipelago. This island is one hundred leagues in circuit, and is
well populated. The Augustinian friars had charge of it when the
relation was written; but they abandoned it about six months ago,
on account of having an insufficient number of friars for their houses.

Next to this island, at a league's distance, is the island of Ymaras,
which is apportioned among encomenderos. It is about twenty leagues in
circumference, and has six hundred tributarios. Instruction has never
been furnished it, although some Augustinian friars have visited it
at times.

Next this island of Ymaras, at three leagues' distance toward the
south, is situated the island called Negros. It is much larger
than Panay, but not so densely populated. It had two Augustinian
monasteries, but they were abandoned more than five years ago, and
the baptized Christians were left without instruction. The island is
without instruction now, and the baptized Christians have returned
to their idolatries.

The island of Bantayan is small and densely populated. It has more than
eight hundred tributarios, most of them Christians. The Augustinians
who had them in charge have abandoned them also, and they are now
without instruction. This island is twenty leagues from Zubu.


_The island of Leyte_

The island of Leyte is thirty leagues south of Cubu. It is one of the
most excellent islands of this bishopric, and produces much food. It
has sixteen or eighteen encomenderos, and fifteen or sixteen thousand
tributarios. It has never had, and has not now, any instruction.


_Island of Bohol_

The island of Bohol, situated near Çubu, is small and populated. It
has about six hundred tributarios.

The island of Mindanao is larger than that of Luzon, although it is
believed to be not so well populated. Much of it is apportioned among
Spaniards, and some of the natives pay tribute. For three years, the
preachers of Mahoma have come into the regions hereabout, coming from
Burney to Terrenate. We have heard that there are some Moros from Méca
among them. The law of Mahoma is preached publicly at the very river
of Mindanao, and mosques have been built and are being built. And it
is to the shame of Christianity there that it does not hasten to drive
these preachers from that region, since the inhabitants are vassals
of your Majesty, and have rendered your Majesty obedience for a long
time. The galleons sailing from India to Maluco know that island,
and obtain water and provisions there. Fifty leagues from this island
of Mindanao lies the island of Jolo, which has been given over to
encomenderos these many years. It is an island where many pearls are
found, and where elephants are reared. The inhabitants have a king of
their own, who is a relative of the monarch of Terrenate. Neither in
this island nor in that of Mindanao is there much Christian teaching;
nor can there ever be, unless the people are pacified.

The island of Ybabao, situated between this island of Luzon and that
of Cubu, is quite large, but does not contain many inhabitants. It
has a few encomenderos, is not yet entirely pacified, and has never
had any instruction. The island of Catanduanes is excellent and well
populated; it lies next to Camarines. There are four encomiendas
on it; it contains about three thousand tributarios, who up to the
present time have never had any Christian teaching. The island of
Marinduque, lying about three leagues from this island, is divided
into encomiendas. It has about eight hundred tributarios, who have
never been instructed in the faith. From this island to the strait
called Espiritu Sancto, many small islands are scatered--namely,
Masbate, Capul, Burias, Banton, Conblon, Simara, Sibuyan, the island
of Tablas, and many others--of which, because of their small size and
scanty population, no mention is made, although all are apportioned
into encomiendas and tribute is collected in them every year. They
have no Christian teaching, nor hope of any.

Eighteen or twenty leagues west of the island of Panay, is located an
exceeding fine and well-populated island, called Cuyo; it is very low
and small. Together with seven small islands near by, it contains one
thousand two hundred tributarios. Its inhabitants are rich, and the
principal men live very well. The people of Burney have intercourse
with this island, and we suspect that they preach here the law of
Mahoma, although not so publicly as in Mindanao. Many goats, pheasants,
and fowls of larger size than those of this region, are reared in
this island. Its encomendero goes thither each year in the months
of February and March for the purpose of collecting his tributes,
and, this done, returns to his home in the island of Panay. No other
communication is held with this island. It has no instruction now,
and has never had any.

Lying between the islands of Mindoro and Burney are a number of
islands called the Calamianes. They are scantily populated, and are
under his Majesty's control. Great quantities of wax are collected
therein. Their inhabitants pay tribute also to the people of Burney,
because the Spaniards do not trouble themselves about them further
than to collect the tribute, leaving them to whomsoever may come
from Burney to rob them. They have never had any Christian teaching,
nor is there hope of any speedily, because they are few in number
and widely scattered.

The island of Mindoro is situated twenty-five leagues southwest of this
city. From the nearest coast of this island [Luzón] the distance to
Mindoro is about six leagues. This island of Mindoro is sixty leagues
in circumference. It contains more than five thousand families, of whom
two thousand pay tribute and are pacified. The remainder, for lack
of men to subdue them, neglect to pay their tribute. Augustinian and
Franciscan friars have been in this district, but all have abandoned
it. There is at present one ecclesiastic there, who has the care of
about one thousand Christianized tributarios. All of the remainder
of the inhabitants are infidels, and without instruction.

Next to the island of Mindoro, and in the direction of this city, lies
the small island of Luban, with about five hundred tributarios. Its
inhabitants are well disposed, and have asked me many times for
Christian teaching; but, for lack of ministers to send to them,
they cannot have it.

This is the most trustworthy relation that your Majesty can have, in
order that your Majesty may see clearly the great need for ministers
who shall labor for the conversion of these infidels, and for the
preservation of those who have already received the faith, but are
falling back into their idolatrous practices, because they have been
abandoned by those who baptized them. Many of the islands named in
this relation I have visited personally, and concerning the others
I have been informed by those familiar with them; and, although it
is not possible to know the exact truth, I have tried to ascertain
it as nearly as I could. All of these islands are included in your
Majesty's kingdom; all pay tribute, and in sufficient quantities
to entitle them to receive instruction. Since your Majesty has in
your dominions so many and so excellent religious and ecclesiastics,
who, if your Majesty give the order, will prepare to come hither,
may your Majesty feel so strongly the ills of this land and its lack
of religious workers, that you will order to come hither as many as
are needed for the salvation of the great number of souls who are
perishing here for want of religious teaching. Your Majesty should
understand that, when we speak of such an island or town having so
many tributarios, we mean married men, or two single men who make one
whole tribute; so that when there are one thousand tributarios, it
follows that there must be two thousand persons. And it will happen
most frequently that the number will reach three or four thousand,
counting one or two children to each household. From the foregoing
your Majesty will realize clearly the countless number of souls under
your Majesty's charge, and who are waiting for your Majesty to provide
them with ministers of religion, in order that they may be drawn out
of their present darkness, and placed on the pathway of salvation. At
Manila, June twenty-fifth, 1585 [sic; should be 1588].




Letter from Vera to Felipe II


Sire:

In the past year of 87, I sent your Majesty an account of the
condition of this land, by the usual route, and also one by way of
India. As the voyage is so uncertain and dangerous, another duplicate
is sent herewith; and I beg your Majesty to have it examined, as it
is important for your service.

On the twenty-seventh of February of this year, I had news from the
Pintados Islands that, on the seventh of the said month, at one of
the islands about eighty leagues south of Luçon, an English ship had
been seen. With their small boat they had seized a Spanish sailor
who was coasting along carelessly in a small bark. He did not flee
from the enemy, as he took them to be Spaniards and friends; for it
is unusual for ships from England to come here. Next day the English
learned that a galleon of your Majesty was being built in the shipyard
of Caigoan on the island of Panay. An attempt was made to land troops
for the purpose, as is supposed, of burning it; but it was defended
by some carpenters and calkers who were working thereon. By this
it may be inferred that the enemy carried but a small force. After
this resistance, the enemy went to Mindanao, leaving on an islet in
their course the mariner whom they had taken prisoner. [10] From him
I ascertained the fresh destruction planned for this country. He
says that several Spaniards, who were his fellow-prisoners on the
English ship, told him that your Majesty's galleon "Santa Ana" had
been captured near California, a country on the mainland which is
continuous with Nueva España. The galleon left this port in June of
the past year, 87; and as no other ships but ours have ever been
sighted on this voyage, which is through so remote regions, they
have always sailed with little or no artillery, and with as little
fear from corsairs as if they were on the river of Sevilla. Thus
the English easily captured the galleon, plundered and burned it,
and hanged a canon of our church. The other persons were sent in a
small boat to land, where it is believed that some of them have died
of starvation and hardships. From this galleon there was plundered
a thousand marcos of registered gold, and there must have been as
large a sum unregistered; twenty-two and one-half arrobas of musk,
an abundance of civet, and many pearls, and the richest of silks and
brocades. At this capture, the enemy took with them [from the "Santa
Ana"] several skilful mariners and a pilot, to guide them to these
islands. The captive mariner knew these men, and in conversation with
them he learned what I have related. This ship left England with two
others, and plundered sixteen ships off the coast of Piru. One of the
three was lost; the remaining two captured the said galleon "Santa
Ana," and came to these islands. They were separated in a storm,
and only this one arrived. It brought about fifty men, most of them
pilots. This mariner noticed that this vessel carried twenty-five
pieces of bronze, and cast-iron artillery, and much ammunition. The
ship is small, of about one hundred and fifty toneladas, staunch
and well fitted. There is no doubt that they have plundered more
than a million [pesos'] worth of gold, pearls, musk, civet, and rich
merchandise, which all belonged in Nueva España. The Spaniards there
would have been diligent in pursuing this corsair; but, as I received
information so late, and the enemy only reconnoitered here, without
remaining at any place, to inform them would have done no good. I
sent word to Maluco, whither it seems the enemy directed his course,
to the captain-general and to the sea-captains who might be there
with their galleons; also to the petty kings friendly to your Majesty,
and to the fort at Ambueno--where, it is understood, this corsair is
going to spend the winter and repair his ship. Captain Francisco is
at an island of that archipelago called Jula, near either Macasar or
Japara. I advised the sending of a message to him, and the exercise
of diligence, as they have greater facility for obtaining news there
on account of the many ships which are usually near at hand. And
I advised them to follow the Englishman and ascertain where he was
going to winter; for it was impossible to return immediately to his
own country, because the weather began to be contrary. It would be
necessary to pass out through Sunda and other straits, of which the
Portuguese are warned; and there it would be easy to await him and cut
off his passage, as they hold him so closely. This account was given
by a sailor--a native of this land--who was seized in the galleon,
and carried away by the Englishman. He escaped at the mouth of the
channel of these islands, and I have kept him here with me. His
declarations accompany this letter.

The first time when this galleon "Sancta Ana" sailed from here, I sent
by her some artillery removed from your Majesty's forts, in order to
provide greater security. In Nueva España the artillery was taken out,
and the ship returned without it. I thought that if I sent more on the
ships, and it were taken out over there, the forts here would be in
need, while the ships would gain nothing. Understanding that there was
no danger from corsairs on the voyage, I sent the ships, as usual,
without artillery. Now that I have seen the need for artillery,
and the risk that they run, if it is not carried, I am sending
two ships this year, each with four heavy pieces of artillery, two
falcon guns, and arquebuses and other arms carried by the sailors and
passengers. I am collecting what metal I can find and making thereof
some pieces of ordnance with which to fill the place of those sent
from the said forts. The merchants are paying your Majesty the value
of the artillery, arms, and ammunition carried by one of the ships,
and I have loaned the price of those of the other. They will pay
this also in the coming year, and the ships will sail armed at the
account and cost of the merchants. I beseech your Majesty to command
the viceroy of Nueva España to have the artillery and arms returned
by the same ships; and that the pieces carried by the "Sancta Ana"
be returned to these forts, which greatly need them.

In another letter I have written to your Majesty about the general
fire in this city. The powder and military supplies were burned and
the artillery destroyed. Although I have had the pieces recast, using
the metal which was left, there are only twenty-five heavy pieces and
several lighter ones. This is but little artillery for the needs of
this land, for defense and the expeditions that are made. Some copper
mines have been discovered but although at first they seemed to be
very rich, on commencing to work them, it was found that the labor
was expensive and there was but little metal. Everything necessary
could be brought from Macan, if your Majesty were pleased to have
money sent from your royal treasury of Mexico for this purpose.

I have already written to your Majesty of the necessity that, for the
preservation of this land, the viceroy of Nueva España send annual
reenforcements of troops, arms, and ammunition. As this has not been
done for three years, the majority of the troops have died, and there
are now so few here, that if reenforcements are not supplied according
to the requests of the governor and officers of the royal exchequer,
great risk will be run, and what your Majesty has gained and preserved
at cost of such labors and expenses will be irretrievably lost. I
especially beg your Majesty to order such provision to be made that
so propitious a beginning be not lost, and the door closed which
has been opened by your Majesty for the conversion of so large and
powerful kingdoms with untold riches and innumerable inhabitants.

According to your Majesty's commands I had some galleys made in
these islands, and I have three at this port. They are of little use,
because of the lack of men skilled in managing and sailing with lateen
sails, and the scarcity of rowers. I have tried to keep up its crew by
hiring men; but the natives are so despicable a people that they are of
little use for this purpose, nor do they have sufficient strength for
rowing. On hearing the report of an arquebus they throw themselves on
the ground, and do not rise even at the lash. I have selected three
hundred Chinese, who are stronger, and who, if allowed liberty to
quit the work, and exemption from tribute, will bind themselves to
serve on the galleys. But although earnest endeavors have been made
to teach them, they row very badly, and have as little energy as the
natives of these islands have. They row in their own country with
a sort of oar which they call _lios lios_. By means of these the
galley moves very slowly, and therefore they may be of some benefit
among these islands. Better results would be obtained, however, if
instead of these galleys there were small ships of from sixty to a
hundred toneladas with which it is easier to navigate here. I inform
your Majesty thereof in order that provision may be made according
to the royal pleasure. As I have advised your Majesty, I have, in
anticipation of future contingencies, commenced a good stone fort
in this city, which will be entirely completed within a year. I have
levied taxes therefor upon the citizens and encomenderos; the Indian
tributarios have each paid one real, while one per cent has been
collected for two years on the coin brought from Nueva España. I am
sending to your Majesty the sketch and model of this fort; it is the
strongest which has been built in the Yndias, although it is not of
modern style. It was necessary to build it according to the condition
of the country; it is round in shape, high, and covered over so as to
be more capacious. The climate is so hot, the sun so fierce and the
rains so heavy, that if the soldiers who must defend the place were
not under cover they would perish from the heat, as would likewise
those who should undertake to erect the fort. The stone for the most of
the rampart is so suitable in quality that, wherever a ball strikes,
the wall remains unhurt, nor is any other injury inflicted. There
is no fear that an attack by a battery can do as much damage as if
the stone were hard and resisting. The balls cannot be fired so as
to strike, without great difficulty, as the fort is on the shore and
the country is perfectly level. Within there is fresh running water
in abundance; and in addition to that, wherever one digs, excellent
drinking water is found. It is impossible to undermine the fort,
because there is water around it, at a distance of one or two varas,
or even less in some places. The city is surrounded by water--the sea
on one side; on another the moat, which extends to the river; and, on
still another side, the river itself. Thus the city is on an island;
and, with the other bulwarks and the wooden fort, which I have had
repaired, this city is well defended, provided we had sufficient
troops and ammunition.

I received your Majesty's letter on the twenty-second of May of this
year; and, by a royal decree of the first of December of the year 86,
your Majesty orders me to act in accordance with my best judgment,
as your Majesty had understood that the auditors of this Audiencia
according to the present regulations, cannot visit the country out
of their turn. I will fulfil your Majesty's commands and will render
an account of all transactions.

By another royal decree of the nineteenth of August of said year,
your Majesty orders that, if it should appear necessary to me,
certain offices of notaries and magistrates in these islands should
be sold, under the condition that the persons who should be the
highest bidders should obtain confirmation of their title within
three years. These offices are of very little profit, and of none
at all in some places, as the land has been settled so recently,
and there are few inhabitants and little business therein. As it is
continually becoming more populous and well established, it would
be more advantageous to postpone the sale of these offices for some
years, until they shall be worth more. I will make the necessary
investigations, as your Majesty commands me, and will advise your
Majesty of the prices offered. If I find that for any of them I
can obtain its value in the future I will have it auctioned. In the
meantime I will make endeavors to have them sold for a price that
can be profitable to your Majesty's royal exchequer.

By another decree of the twenty-seventh of August of said year,
your Majesty orders me to give my opinion of the arms that are in
the fort of the city of Manila, and those that are needed. In three
forts which your Majesty has here, there are twenty-four heavy pieces,
two small ones, and some culverins, as will be seen below.

In the stone fort there are three swivel-guns, located in the three
casemates, of about twenty quintals' weight. On the first floor over
the rampart, there are seven heavy pieces, extra thick and strong at
the breech. Two are of about forty quintals' weight, three varas in
length and carry a ball of cast iron weighing sixteen libras. Two
others are of wrought iron, of sixty quintals' weight, three and
two-thirds varas in length, and carry a ball of cast iron weighing
fifteen libras. One cannon is of fifty-five quintals' weight, four and
one-third varas in length, and carries a ball of cast iron weighing
fourteen libras; one culverin, five and one-half varas in length,
weighs one hundred and one quintals one arroba, and carries a cast
iron ball weighing seventeen libras; another piece of thirty-five
quintals' weight, three varas in length, carries a cast iron ball
weighing twelve libras.

The fort at the point has one cannon weighing twenty-five quintals;
three small cannon [_sacres_], weighing twenty-two; and a half-sacre
weighing thirteen--the last, with its apparatus, being four varas
in length.

The cavalier of the beach has a piece, extra thick and strong at
the breech, of forty quintals' weight which carries a ball weighing
fifteen libras; and one half-sacre, of thirteen quintals' weight.

At the river there is a large swivel-gun with cross-bars, weighing
thirty quintals; one cannon weighing twenty-six quintals, one sacre
weighing twenty-two quintals, four half-sacres weighing thirteen or
fourteen quintals, and two _esmeriles_ [a small piece of ordnance]
weighing four or five quintals.

For the stone fort to be provided with artillery according to its
plan and embrasures, it is necessary to have twenty-five pieces,
three of them heavy, and twelve sacres and half-sacres.

The cavalier of the beach needs five pieces, two of them heavy,
and three sacres.

That at the point of the sea and the river needs six pieces--some
sacres, and two swivel-guns.

For the service of the ships and galleys there are needed four
cannon, six swivel-guns, six sacres, six half-sacres, and some small
culverins. Thus sixty pieces in all are necessary to provide the
city well with artillery for defense, as well as for the galleys
and ships of the fleet, and for the succor and pacification of all
these islands. There are only twenty-four needed, for there are now
thirty-six. In the shipyard there are now four sacres of twenty-two
quintals' weight, two of which have been cast, and the other two are
about to be cast. This class of arms is the best and most important for
this land these and the swivel-guns. This artillery could be provided,
and much more be made, for other of your Majesty's strongholds in these
islands and the Yndias, should your Majesty be pleased to have six or
eight thousand pesos sent annually from Mexico so that the metal could
be bought at Macao in China, as it is very plentiful and cheap there.

According to the commission of your Majesty, I have proceeded
against the royal officials in regard to their traffic and trade
in merchandise. By the convictions of guilt which have resulted
from the investigations and process of law, I have condemned the
guilty to pay fines to the exchequer. There seems to have been no
traffic with funds in the royal exchequer; or, if there were any,
no damage or injury to it has resulted. I am sending the testimony
of the sentences and proceedings to your Majesty's royal Council,
where your Majesty will order their examination, if such is your
pleasure. May God guard the Catholic person of your Majesty. Manila,
June twenty-sixth, of the year 1588.

The licentiate _Santiago de Vera_

[_Endorsed_: "Examined, with the other letter."]



Letter from Domingo de Salazar to Felipe II


Sire:

In a letter which your Majesty had written to me from Madrid, on the
eleventh of January of the year 87, I see the reprimand which your
Majesty gives me, on account of information that you had received that,
on certain occasions which had arisen, I had had controversies with the
royal Audiencia here; also that this has finally resulted in scandal
and comment in the town, and that there was fault on both sides. I
receive this reprimand as from my king and lord, but, although it
comes from him, it is very serious and is sufficient to cause much
pain; nevertheless, I have not allowed myself to feel hurt, since your
Majesty judges according to the information that you have received. He
who so informed your Majesty that I was made to appear guilty will
give account to God for his good or bad intention, since for my own
satisfaction the testimony of my conscience is all-sufficient. It is
well-known in the city, and outside of it, that if I had not entered
as mediator neither the president and auditors, nor the auditors
alone, would have had peace. It would not have been possible for me
to establish peace if there had not been friendly relations between
them and me. Since they were pacified through my intercession, peace
has lasted until now; and in order that this peace be lasting, and
that there be no occasion for violating it, I humbly beseech your
Majesty to be pleased to command the president and auditors not to
interfere with me in affairs which concern my privileges--since my
life is a very open one, a fact known to all. They have no cause for
complaint because I sat down in my own church on the gospel side;
for, besides my being the father and pastor of this state, and having
in charge the souls of the auditors, it is a very usual thing for
bishops and archbishops to seat themselves in that very place in the
presence of viceroys and presidents, without that act exciting any
surprise. For the sake of peace, I have overlooked the matter, and
have not again taken my seat in that place, hoping that your Majesty
would send commands concerning this and what ought to be done, since
it is not right that I should leave to my successors the disputes
and controversies with the Audiencia whereby results so much harm to
the commonwealth. It is of no less importance that the prelates be as
much respected by the people as are the audiencias. The latter make
themselves feared by the power which they hold; but if the prelates
are not favored by those who govern, they are speedily despised by
the people. Since your Majesty sees how important this matter is, may
it be your Majesty's pleasure not to leave us in controversies, but
to order that each shall do his duty without prejudice to the other.

The hardships and calamities sent by God to this land make me greatly
fear that we who live here have seriously offended Him. For I have
been here eight years, and not one year have I seen pass without the
happening of great calamities--loss of ships; death of the animals
which maintained us; hurricanes, called here _baguios_, which tear
up the trees by the roots and overthrow the houses completely, or
leave them so that they cannot be inhabited; and the general fire
of the year 83, of which your Majesty has been informed. Both before
and since that time, this city has been burned three or four times;
and now, as the last straw, the ship "Santa Ana," which left this
city last year, the richest ship to leave these islands, fell into
the hands of the Lutherans. With that loss, and also that of the ship
"Sant Juan" the year before, which likewise was laden with goods from
this country, some of the citizens of these islands are totally ruined,
and others have suffered so heavy losses that it will be long ere,
with much difficulty, they regain their former state.

It is very evident, and can be denied by no one, that the loss of
that particular ship was ordained by God; for, three days before
it reached the coast [of California], another ship--from Macao,
bound for Mexico--passed the same place and was not sighted by the
Lutherans. When news was received in Piru of the coming of this pirate,
the viceroy sent in pursuit of them a good fleet, with many soldiers
and ammunition sufficient to engage an equal or greater number. When
they came to the port of Acapulco, supplies were needed; and they
requested these from the purveyor who had them in your Majesty's
warehouses. He was unwilling to give them; and they even say that an
order was given to detain some pack-teams which brought biscuits, so
that the captain of the fleet from Peru could not take them. Thus they
say that, as it was not desired to supply them with provisions, and
because Doctor Palacios [11] became dictatorial in regard to several
points, they returned to Piru; while the Lutheran remained free to
attack and capture, as he did. So great was our misfortune that, at the
time when the two captains were debating as to who should take command,
the pirate was near Puerto de la Navidad, which is not very far from
Acapulco, repairing his ships. Had they attacked him, it would have
been impossible for him to escape; but God chose to blind our men,
so that we might be punished by this pirate. The punishment of God
did not stop here; for, having set fire to the ship "Santa Ana," they
left it half burnt, set sail, and came to these islands. With more than
human courage, they passed through the midst of them with a ship of one
hundred toneladas, where the natives venture with trembling in very
light boats; but this infidel dared not only to come into our midst,
but to collect tributes from your Majesty's vassals. A Spaniard was
captured, and after having told him what they wished him to say to us,
they put him ashore. What they said was in boast that they had left
the coasts of Peru and Nueva España utterly ruined; and that they had
robbed and burned the ship "Santa Ana," and hanged a canon who was
on his way from this city to Mexico. In testimony of his prowess and
our misfortune he displayed the silks, brocades, and cloths of gold
which he had seized as plunder. Not content with this, he went away
threatening us that he is to return soon to drive us all hence, and
to destroy the nest that we have made here--meaning thereby the stone
fortress built here. The grief that afflicts me is not because this
barbarian infidel has robbed us of the ship "Santa Ana," and destroyed
thereby the property of almost all the citizens; but because an English
youth of about twenty-two years, with a wretched little vessel of
a hundred toneladas and forty or fifty companions, should dare to
come to my own place of residence, defy us, and boast of the damage
that he had wrought. As your Majesty has here an army of captains,
who, as I understand, are certainly as many as the companions of the
Lutheran, he went from our midst laughing, without anyone molesting
or troubling him; neither has he felt that the Spaniards are in this
land to any purpose. In this matter, I do not care to blame anyone,
because I understand that the governor did his duty--although I was
always of the opinion that the pirate should be pursued and that the
result thereof would not be so bad as some say. The belief here,
however, is that God is chastising us for our sins, and is making
us the laughing-stock of other nations, who have all hitherto stood
in such fear of us. I must explain to your Majesty two other points
bearing on this subject, although it detains me somewhat, as I consider
that I do thereby a very great service. The first is the failure of
the expedition to Maluco. We all had been certain that with fewer men
and less equipment than there actually were, the king of Terrenate
could be subdued; but, quite to the contrary, our men came back as
if fleeing from an unknown foe. The Indians of this archipelago,
who feared us, now laugh; and, together with those of Terrenate,
threaten us. The second point is that in the island of Mindanao,
which is subject to your Majesty, and for many years has paid you
tribute, the law of Mahoma has been publicly proclaimed, for somewhat
more than three years, by preachers from Burney and Terrenate who
have come there--some of them even, it is believed, having come from
Meca. They have erected and are now building mosques, and the boys
are being circumcised, and there is a school where they are taught the
Alcoran. I was promptly informed of this, and urged the president to
supply a remedy therefor at once, in order that that pestilential fire
should not spread in these islands. I could not persuade them to go,
and thus the hatred of Christianity is there; and we are striving no
more to remedy this than if the matter did not concern us. Such are
the calamities and miseries to which we have come, and the punishments
which God inflicts upon us. The reason for it, He only knows; but,
as I infer and fear, it is because we have ill acquitted ourselves
in this land, where it is so needful that we be upright and furnish
good examples. I have written to your Majesty on this point at other
times; and I think that either my letters are not read, or what I
say is not credited. I assure your Majesty that I have never written
anything which is not true, and free from all outward influence,
or self-interest, or human considerations; but I have only done my
duty. The temporal affairs of this land are in the condition which I
have related to your Majesty; and I consider that there will never be
improvement, since cupidity is increasing so immeasurably that neither
the punishments of God nor the threats of men are effectual to produce
any moderation, nor do the manifold outrages cease to be felt.

The spiritual state, which is my concern, is in the sorriest condition,
because there is no more respect for the things of God than if we
were not Christians. I refer to the Indians and their instruction; and
because entering on this subject is like embarking on a bottomless sea,
I have determined to send to your Majesty a relation of the islands and
towns of this bishopric which are without instruction, in order that
your Majesty's conscience may be relieved by commanding that the remedy
be applied. Therefore I shall now proceed with the said relation.

The cause of ruin in these islands--which is very menacing, although
it is not declared in España--is that both the villages of your
Majesty and those of encomenderos are places where the curacy is so
ill-supplied with chalices and ornaments that it is a shame to see
them. Many of the churches are so indecent that when I visited them,
from pure shame I was obliged to command that they be torn down; they
were not fit to be entered by horses. There are two principal causes
for this: the first is that the encomenderos are penurious and allow
little for the proper ornamentation of the church; and the second,
that some or the majority of the encomiendas are so small that they do
not suffice to support their encomenderos, who thus cannot attend to
matters of divine worship. Consequently, the natives come to regard
the things of God as of little worth, and have little esteem for our
faith and the Christian religion, seeing that we who profess to be
Christians pay so little attention to them. Moreover, the natives of
these islands are so harassed and afflicted with public and private
undertakings, that they are not able to take breath; nor do they have
time to observe the instruction, and hold it of so little account that
when they lack for anything, it must be in the instruction and not in
temporal affairs. I cannot picture to your Majesty, nor declare what
I feel in my heart about this matter. Moreover, I am very sure that
all the chastisements given us by God, the hardships, misfortunes, and
calamities sent us, all are because of evil treatment of the Indians
and the little heed taken for the principal reason for our coming--that
is, their conversion and protection. The remedy therefor is not that
your Majesty send decrees and orders charging good treatment of the
Indians, as in the letters which have already been received here; but
that a number of the best religious be sent. They can deal with these
natives, and defend them from the labors imposed by the Spaniards,
and from the outrages that they inflict upon them. Again, it is of
even more importance that, if your Majesty, as is rumored here, is
to send hither a governor or president, he be a man free from all
human interests, whose head could not be turned by the great gains
in this country. He should not be married, nor should he bring with
him relatives or followers for whom to provide. For under any one of
the aforesaid conditions it is impossible to avoid the destruction of
this country, beyond the power of your Majesty to remedy it. I have
written this to your Majesty several times before, and now I repeat it,
since it is the most necessary thing for the betterment of this land,
which would be surely destroyed by its lack.

Of the viceroy of Nueva España, so many things are said in this
country, that if but one-tenth of them were true, it is impossible
for your Majesty to know them and fail to correct them. This is
another of the heavy afflictions that God has sent upon this land,
for even the severity which has been shown by him to those who
go from here is alone sufficient to make this land desolate. No
consideration is given to the fact that the citizens and soldiers
thereof serve your Majesty with the same hardships and loyalty with
which other men have served their king. Nevertheless, there is no
lack of persons to inform your Majesty thereof, since the loss of
temporal things is always felt more than the spiritual. I leave it
to be described by those who have felt the hurt, since it does not
concern me in any way, except the regret that I feel for the damage
done to my neighbors; for my enterprises and traffic are to remedy
the needs of the poor, and to defend and help the natives of these
islands, who have much need thereof. The complaint that I make of the
viceroy of Nueva España is that he has not allowed more than fifteen
Dominican friars to come here, although your Majesty sent to Mexico
forty of them. This is the greatest damage that the viceroy could do
to this country, as there is exceeding need of ministers of religion,
such as come now. If the fifteen were five hundred, the evils of the
country would be corrected, and the conscience of your Majesty quite
at ease. It is such men that your Majesty should order to come here,
and you should refuse to permit those to come who will do more harm
than good. Likewise your Majesty should order the generals of the
orders of St. Francis and St. Augustine to send hither visitors,
who are most necessary. Those of St. Augustine are to be preferred,
however, as the friars of St. Francis are more retired from the world.

I wrote to your Majesty, via Malaca, of what had happened with the
religious in regard to the observance of the royal decrees treating
of the instruction of the Indians by the religious. As the licentiate
Ayala, fiscal of the royal Audiencia here, sent the records concerning
the subject, I shall but mention and not refer to them at length.

At other times I have written to your Majesty explaining the
impossibility of a bishop being able to govern all the bishopric which
I have now. For this island of Luçon it is necessary to have two or
even three bishops--that is to say, I humbly beseech your Majesty to
be pleased to provide for the Pintados Islands a bishop with his seat
in the city of Çubu. By the relation which I am sending, your Majesty
will see that two bishops are not sufficient. I declare to your Majesty
that in that case the royal conscience would not be at ease nor would
mine; and I dare not leave it unsaid, for fear of my peace of mind.

As I have said before, I had determined to write nothing whatever in
detail concerning the damages that the viceroy of Nueva España had
done to these kingdoms. It seems to me that your Majesty will have had
advices thereof, and will have ordered a means of correction. Moreover,
as many are interested and have grievances, there will be no lack of
a person to advise your Majesty thereof. Nevertheless, I have since
thought that I neglect my duty in failing to send a testimonial to
your Majesty which was forwarded to this city from Lope de Palacios,
captain of the ship "Sant Martin," which went to China. He sent
to this city, asking that he be granted permission to leave Macao,
because he feared that they were about to kill him in order to gain
possession of his property. I am the only person who can send this
memorial to your Majesty, as Lope de Palacios sent it to this city
with much secrecy, and in the same manner was it given to me. I
discussed the matter with the president, saying that we should send
for the captain as if the idea were our own and he had not requested
it--employing so great secrecy, so that the Portuguese who were here
would not learn of it; for the same Lope de Palacios had declared that
he would be certainly put to death if they knew that he was trying
to come here. Nevertheless, the request to send for him was in vain,
and I was moved to forward this testimonial to your Majesty. It states
therein the great harm done by the viceroy in sending the ship "San
Martin" to Macao. As the same person who went to learn the damage gives
testimony thereof, no witness more worthy of credit can be entered in
the cause. I am also writing to the viceroy of Nueva España in regard
to the injuries which he wrought on these kingdoms by despatching
the ship "San Martin" to China--although God supplied the remedy,
by the loss of the same ship. I tell him that if that ship had been
sent to this city a more prosperous voyage would have been made than
the investors could have expected, for so many Chinese merchants came
this year to this city, that the merchandise was worth nothing; and
if the ship "San Martin" had come here a satisfactory and cheap cargo
could have been obtained, perhaps even in greater quantity than at
Macao. Instead of damaging this city, those persons would have been
enriched, who on account of greed were unable to see the damage done
to all of us. Thus God has punished them all, by depriving them of
that profit the desire for which had blinded them to their duty.

They also say that the ship "Sant Ana" was sold for thirty thousand
pesos and ordered to make a voyage to Macao. These proceedings also
were put to confusion by God, through means which have cost us dearly,
namely the loss, of that vessel. It can be said that if it had been
at Macao somewhat less damage would have been done to these islands
than in the burning of the ship by the Englishman. As I wrote to
your Majesty, via Malaca, for ships to go from Mexico to Macao is
to destroy both those kingdoms and these, since the Chinese raise
the prices of their merchandise to such an extent that Portuguese
and Castilians cannot live. May your Majesty be pleased to order
the viceroy to hold these lands in somewhat higher estimation,
since your Majesty considers them (and justly so) worthy of constant
attention. Ever since the viceroy came to Mexico, he has not sent to
this country any troops (except exiles or criminals), or ammunition,
or the customary supplies for this camp, as wine, flour, and other
articles; he has so reduced everything that there is great privation
here, and very little profit to your Majesty.

Your Majesty's governor and royal Audiencia in these islands look well
to the service of your Majesty and the good of this country. Will
your Majesty be pleased to order the viceroy of Nueva España,
present or future, not to disturb or change what may be decided by
them? not only in the customs duties, but in the price fixed for
each tonelada, and in the mode of registration. According to our
information, the viceroy has changed everything, greatly increasing
the taxes imposed here. The labors of the citizens in the service of
your Majesty in these islands should be sufficient without still more
severe requirements from Nueva España.

During the past year there was great confusion, which still continues,
about the goods which were brought to this city by your Majesty's
ships. The citizens claim that they ought to be preferred to the
merchants; and the merchants complain that, on account of the cargoes
of the citizens, their merchandise remained here. I understand that on
this point offenses' against God have been committed, and still more
serious damage may be done--some persons being ruined, as they have
no space in the cargoes for their property--unless it is checked by
your Majesty commanding what order must be followed in this affair. It
is of exceeding importance for the quiet and content of this city.

There are so many Chinese that come to this land that the islands
are full of them. Thereby follows much damage to the natives, as
the Chinese are a very vicious people, from intercourse with whom no
good but much harm can be gained. I have tried to have the governors
remedy the matter by commanding that all the Chinese be collected in
this city. I see no improvement, however; and it is of much importance
that this be corrected, for the temporal and spiritual good of these
lands. Will your Majesty be pleased to order that this be remedied
by severe measures. May our Lord guard your Majesty many years for
the good of us who can do but little. At Manila, June 27, 1588.

_The Bishop of the Filipinas_




Documents of 1589



	Excerpt from a letter from the viceroy of India. [Manuel de
	Sousa Coutinho]; April 3. Letter to Felipe II. Santiago de
	Vera; July 13. Conspiracy against the Spaniards. Santiago de
	Vera, and others; May-July.
	Letter to Felipe II. [Gaspar] de Ayala; July 15. Decree
	regarding commerce. Felipe II; August 9. Instructions to
	Dasmariñas. Felipe II; August 9. Customs of the Tagalogs
	(two relations). Juan de Plasencia, O.S.F.: October 21.


_Sources_: All but the fifth and the last of these documents are
obtained from MSS. in the Archivo general de Indias. The decree
of August 9 is taken from the "Cedulario Indico" in the Archivo
Historico Nacional, Madrid; and Plasencia's accounts of the Tagalogs,
from Santa Inés's Crónica, ii, pp. 592-603.

_Translations_: The first of these documents is translated by Arthur
B. Myrick, of Harvard University; the second and fourth are by José
M. and Clara M. Asensio; the third and fifth, by Alfonso de Salvio,
of Harvard University; the sixth, by James A. Robertson; the seventh,
by Frederic W. Morrison, of Harvard University.




Excerpt of a Letter from the Viceroy of India


One of the things that have seemed most surprising in Don Juan de Gama
is the following. When decrees were published by order of the viceroy;
Don Duarte, [12] in your Majesty's name, prohibiting navigation to
China and Luçoens [Luzón], which he [Juan de Gama] as captain-general
should have executed, he did the contrary. Jheronimo Pereira, captain
of the expedition to Japon, had already done likewise; thus those in
authority, who were under obligation to execute your Majesty's laws
and commands, were the first to break them, to the great scandal
of all. Therefore, as soon as possible, I ordered a remedy for such
disorders. For this purpose I appointed certain chief magistrates,
who excused themselves, either through fear of Don Juan or dread of
the sea. Things came to such a pass that, it was necessary to send by
schooner, outside the monsoon season, the licentiate Ruy Machado who
came from the kingdom this year, and who had been appointed to that
auditorship; his adjutant was Ynacio Nuñez de Mancelos, the captain of
the said vessel. The latter had a few soldiers, and is also to remain
as captain of the city, since an order for the voyage will not have
arrived from India. I think that these two vessels will suffice in
every respect for this matter, both to extend the voyage for Don Juan,
and to quiet various disturbances arising in the country, on account
of the navigation from Nueva España. I also hope that everything will
turn out well, and that your Majesty will bestow upon him great favor
and honor for this service alone. Among the despatches brought by the
auditor is a decree ordering, the embarcation for India and Luçoens of
all Castilians, both religious and secular, so that only the original
Portuguese citizens shall remain in Machao. That will do away with
any further occasion for vessels to go there from Nueva España. From
this last has resulted great injury to your Majesty's vassals in these
regions, to the royal exchequer, and religion itself. Peradventure
the Castilians were the cause of again closing the door to the
preaching of the gospel, being moved by indiscreet eagerness or too
much solicitude. They are so unrestrained in this particular, that, by
trading in China without your Majesty's permission, they are the first
who broke your decrees, under pretense of religion itself. No easier
remedy can be applied than preventing them from entering this trade,
which your Majesty should have for the advantage of your own service.

We might describe here the great inconveniences and hindrances to your
Majesty from a longer continuance of this navigation. But since this
letter will, be despatched by land, and the viceroy Don Duarte has
described these matters so fully, I refrain from doing so here. I say
only that, even if there were no other reason than not opening the
way to the English and other nations to resort to those regions (as
they did last year and this) that alone would be sufficient reason
to stop this intercourse entirely. The Englishman Don Thomas, who
came to these regions lately, has caused us much anxiety here. For
this reason the people of India are very confident that your Majesty
will order assistance in this case and apply the fitting remedy,
for the common good of these states and that of your service.

Don Thomas, the Englishman, sailed from England with three ships in
the year 87. Entering the straits of Magallanes, he sailed to the
South Seas. Having made some prizes of large and small vessels, he
loaded two of his own vessels and sent them to that kingdom [England]
by the same route. Nearing the Philipinas, he took his course to
Java, and entered the port of Balambuao in Java itself. At that
time two Portuguese were at that port, who came immediately to the
ship thinking it was from India. The Englishman received them well,
and gave them some church ornaments and other valuable articles,
together with a letter for the bishop of Malaca and another for the
captain, the substance of which was, that he had come to explore
those regions. From the questions asked these men by the auditor of
Malaca, it was ascertained that the purpose of their coming was none
other than trade, exploration, and prizes. He asked particularly about
Achen, the straits of Meca and Malaca, and their fortifications. It is
thought that this Englishman came especially to explore the channels
of Bale, whence these men said that he would sail in March of this
year to the island of Sant Lorenzo, from which place he would lay
his course to the island of Santa Helena, following the course taken
by the Portuguese vessels. Pray God he come not hither again, as an
example for the daring of others--although the interest they have in
doing so is so great, that I fear this navigation cannot be stopped
without much trouble, and the prohibition of navigation by Castilians
and Portuguese to Nueva España. A blockade will be established again,
so that foreign nations will not undertake this navigation. On this
account alone, it seems to me that this navigation should always be
rigorously prohibited.




Letter from Santiago de Vera to Felipe II


Sire:

This past year of eighty-eight I gave an account to your Majesty of
the condition of this land. As the voyage is so full of sea-perils
and danger from corsairs, and it is difficult for the despatches
to reach the hands of your Majesty, the duplicate of that letter
accompanies this. Therein is declared the extreme need of the islands
for reënforcements of troops and necessary supplies for the camp,
and other things, of which I gave an account to your Majesty. They
are most important to the royal service and the preservation of
this land. I beseech your Majesty to have provision made with all
possible expedition.

A small ship leaving this port for the city of Malaca carried two
descalced religious of the order of St. Francis. As the king of Burney
was at peace with us, they stopped at the port of Mohala which is
two leagues from Burney. They visited the king, to whom they gave
my letters, and were well received by him. He commanded houses to be
given them and everything necessary to assure their sustenance. One
night many people of that kingdom attacked them, among whom, it
is said, there were a brother and other kinsmen of the king. They
killed three Spaniards, among them one of the religious, and robbed
them of all their possessions. From those who escaped I learned that
the assaulting party were people well known in Burney, and that the
spoils were sold publicly in that city. Some articles were seen in
the possession of the king's kinsmen. I learned that some chiefs of
these islands had intrigued with that people to secure their aid;
and that they had plotted together to do this, and had agreed to bring
Burney and the kings of Jolo and of Mindanao, and many other foreigners
against this city, in order to rob and kill us. As there was a Japanese
ship here, they conferred with the captain, and with people who came
from that land, all Japanese, proposing that the latter should aid
them with what they had, and with supplies and everything necessary,
and thus deliver to them this land, in accordance with the plan and
arrangements previously agreed upon. So well did they keep this secret,
during fifteen months while they were awaiting a favorable opportunity,
that they were not even suspected by myself, or the religious, or any
other person. To accomplish their design, they despatched the chiefs
of these islands to Burney, and to the other kingdoms three chiefs of
their number. They wrote to Japon, so that, at the appointed time,
all would come; and all were given orders as to what they were to
do. I made secret investigations, and found out that all the aforesaid
was true; and in a short time I had in my hands the guilty ones who
were in these islands, and also those who had gone away after the
death of the people, so that none remained uncaptured. Without any
disturbance whatever, I beheaded seven of the authors of the rebellion,
sons, nephews, and grandsons of the lords of this land. Others not so
culpable I punished by exile to Nueva España and by other penalties,
so that it now seems that this disturbance is quelled. After that,
in the province of Cubu and in that called the Pintados, the chiefs
held a conference, and plotted to kill the Spaniards. The majority of
those who took part in this have been imprisoned, and proceedings are
being instituted against them. I think that this will cause us but
little trouble. This boldness is caused by the natives noticing the
fewness of Spanish troops in the islands and the few reënforcements
sent from Nueva España. It is necessary that your Majesty should
order that there be less negligence in this respect.

By a royal decree your Majesty commands me to sell the magistracies
of this city and four offices of notaries-public therein; also those
of the provinces of Oton, Cebu, Camarines, Ylocos, Cagayan, Panpanga,
and Bonbon. As the land is so newly settled, and the offices of so
little profit, I wrote to your Majesty that, in my opinion, it was
not time to dispose of them, and that they would bring but little if
offered at auction; but that, if anyone would buy them at a reasonable
price, I would sell them. This I did, and in order to enhance their
value at the sale, I announced that the offices could be renounced and
sold by paying to your Majesty the third part of the price they were
worth. As the offices of notary have been sold, will your Majesty
be pleased to provide that this condition be observed; or, if not,
that the price be returned to them and the offices be sold without
this condition--as the perquisites and influence of these offices are
held in such esteem in this land, that they have risen to very good
prices. The bids for the first of the magistracies that were commanded
to be sold closed at one thousand two hundred and fifty-one pesos;
and for the second, third, fourth, and fifth, at two thousand eight
hundred. The four offices of notary-public of this city brought two
thousand eight hundred and eighty pesos, at seven hundred and twenty
pesos each. That of the province of Panpanga brought one thousand;
of Oton, one thousand six hundred and twenty; that of the city and
province of Cubu, five hundred and sixty; of Ylocos, three hundred
pesos; and that of Bombon, two hundred and sixty-two pesos. The other
magistracies and offices of notary-public which were offered at auction
did not bring so high a price, as the stubbornness and competitions
which had caused the offices to rise so in value had ceased. For
this reason the remaining magistracies and offices of notary-public
have not been sold. I shall give an account to your Majesty, later,
of whatever is done with regard to them, and the sum they bring will
be placed in the royal treasury as soon as it is collected. [_Marginal
note_: "Write to the governor that, in what refers to the offices of
regidor, it is not expedient that there be the condition permitting
them to renounce the offices. The sales must be made in the usual
way. As regards the notarial offices, what has been done is approved."]

On this route to Nueva España your Majesty has four ships, and the
new one that has just been finished, and which makes the voyage this
year. Of these, the viceroy of Nueva España sold the ship "San Martin,"
to make the voyage to Macan, where it was wrecked and burned by the
Chinese. Another was taken by the English corsair, as I reported to
your Majesty; and but now when another, in the port of this city,
was ready to make the voyage, so great a hurricane burst on this and
many other Spanish and Chinese ships that only a small boat was left
unwrecked. Of the two remaining, only one is available; the other
cannot be used, as it is so old. Understanding the great need there
was of ships, I had a large galleon of six hundred toneladas, which
had been built in the Pintados Islands, placed in the shipyards of
your Majesty, for the above-named route. God willing, it may sail in
the year ninety-one. I have given orders for private persons to make
two other ships of less tonnage. One is already finished, and both
will be able to sail next year. It is most important that there be
for this navigation plenty of ships, both for the emergencies of war
which may arise, and for the preservation of these islands, which are
supported by trade. If, as I have suggested several times before, your
Majesty were pleased to have about ten thousand pesos sent annually
from Nueva España, two ships of good capacity can be launched very
easily, without harassing the natives in any way--and with this
help, at even less than a third of the cost elsewhere. Otherwise,
there is no way to bring it about. Your Majesty will signify your
royal pleasure in this. [_Marginal note_: "Write to the governor to
proceed with and carry out this plan, and to give orders for private
persons to build ships."]

For the ships sailing between these islands and Nueva España,
and to other places which may be found, sailors are much needed,
to navigate them and to remain here to look after them; also
carpenters and calkers who must reside here to repair them. They
should be paid in Nueva España as this treasury is too poor. As the
money for their wages must be sent, sometimes it is not brought,
and at other times it is lost, thereby causing the sailors to die of
starvation. Therefore the sailors serve half-heartedly, and desert;
and there is great negligence in the despatch of the fleets. The only
remedy for both these evils is from the exchequer of your Majesty. If
it is to be spent therefor, it would be best for your Majesty to have
the amount of the freight-charges on the property sent from these
islands in the said ships granted annually to this royal treasury
up to the sum of three thousand pesos. Thus the needs here will be
met without taking from the treasury of Mexico. [_Marginal note_:
"A decree in accordance herewith. Meanwhile order shall not be given
that the ships of this line shall sail at his Majesty's cost."]

I have already reported to your Majesty the removal from these forts
of a quantity of artillery, for the security of the two ships which
I despatched to Nueva España last year, eighty-eight. That carried by
one of the ships is paid for by the merchants, as well as the powder,
arms, and ammunition; and that on the other was at your Majesty's
expense. Part of the money received I sent to the kingdom of China
in order to buy what metal could be obtained. Thence they brought
me one hundred and twenty-five picos [13] (about five arrobas) of
copper, at thirteen pesos and eight rreals. With this artillery is
being cast; to take the place of the pieces carried by the ships,
I had others cast from the metal which I had here. The results are
very good. Bronze is so cheap in China, and so easy to transport
and cast in this country, that, if your Majesty will have money
sent hither from Nueva España for this purpose, artillery could
be provided in this country both for Nueva España and Piru. Will
your Majesty signify the royal pleasure in this. [_Marginal note_:
"Write to the viceroy of Nueva España that this seems expedient, and
that he may send money to the governor, in order that some artillery
may be made there, both for Nueva España and Peru. Advice as to what
is needed must be given to the viceroy of Peru."]

The trade with the Chinese is continually increasing in these
islands. About four thousand men of that land are here as a general
rule, including merchants and workmen. These become citizens and settle
in the alcaiceria [silk-market] of this city. In the surrounding
villages there are also a large number of Chinese. Their houses are
being rapidly built of stone, according to the Spanish custom. They
are very strong, large and imposing in appearance. In two or three
years, God willing, all the buildings will be erected, as also the
cathedral church, the monasteries, and other churches. They are being
built very substantially and some are already finished. The materials
are so good and the workmen, both Chinese and natives, so numerous,
that everyone is encouraged to build the houses in this manner. But
it is a melancholy fact (for it all is like an empty purse, or an
inn without a guest) that the land is unhealthful, and there are no
doctors or medicines; and so there is great lack of troops, and of
men for the usual work of guard and sentinel-duty, and for expeditions
to carry succor to the settlements and to pacify the uprisings of the
Indians. The soldiers are constantly dying and passing away, in such
number that I fear there will be no troops to defend the city from any
of the many enemies by whom we are surrounded. For the remedy thereof,
will your Majesty be pleased to have the viceroy of Nueva España send
the troops, arms, and ammunition which may be requested by the governor
of these islands, and also the medicines and supplies necessary for
the camp. It has been three years since we have had any kind of aid
whatever, and consequently we are in extreme necessity. I beseech
your Majesty, if you wish these islands to be preserved, that you will
expressly command the said viceroy to send reënforcements annually to
this camp, of two hundred men, with powder and ammunition; medicines,
and other supplies for the hospitals; and whatever the governor may
advise is necessary. I can assure your Majesty that if this succor
fail, everything else will fail also, and everything gained by your
Majesty at so great and excessive expenses, in order to start on the
way to heaven so many millions of souls who had been dominated by the
devil, will be lost. Thus will be closed the door of this new world
which has been opened by your Majesty. [_Marginal note_: "Write to
the governor that he continue the building. To Don Luis de Velasco,
that he observe this command, and aid the settlements."]

The fort which, as I had written to your Majesty, was being built, was
shaken, when about completed, in three places by great earthquakes. It
opened in one place more than a finger's breadth, although less in the
others. To assure its safety and construct it in the modern style,
although it was quite sufficiently strong before, I am constructing
cavaliers which are to serve as buttresses for it. The principal part,
that toward the sea, is finished; the other parts are commenced, and,
God helping, will soon be completed. These will make it so capacious
and strong that it can withstand any attack. I am sending the model,
report, and account herewith to your Majesty. _[Marginal note_:
"Let it be brought."]

Since coming to this country, I have insisted that the religious
should try to learn the Chinese language, in order to convert and
teach the Chinese in this land, who are ordinarily about as many as I
before stated. As it is so difficult and the religious are so busily
engaged with the natives of the islands, they have not done this. When
the Dominicans came here, I entrusted to them the instruction of
the Chinese, and supplied them with interpreters to teach them the
language. I bade them build a church and dwelling in the alcaiceria
(called the Parian); and at the point of Tondo, where the Chinese live
and carry on their trade. Two of the religious have been so apt that
one of them already understands and speaks that language well, and the
other will know it in a short time. They are preaching and teaching and
have converted many people, having now a village of Christians. This
year, on Holy Thursday they held a procession in honor of the blood
of Christ, wherein they displayed much devotion. I hope in our Lord
that, as this people so clearly and firmly understand what they learn,
and as they have no particular worship, in a short time they will all
be converted. It is certain that if their long hair were not cut off
when they are baptized (according to the bishop's commands), there
would already have been a general conversion in this land, and they
would have received baptism. I gave account thereof to your Majesty,
and await your orders. [_Marginal note_: "Write to the provincial
acknowledging this, and to the bishop "in regard to cutting off the
hair of the Chinese. This is not expedient, as their conversion is
thereby retarded. Moreover, they do not dare to return to their own
country where they could teach and convert others. This custom of the
Chinese, wearing their hair long, is more usual in other parts of
the Yndias, as he knows; and hitherto this has not been considered
unseemly. Let the bishop call together the superiors of the orders,
and other learned and zealous persons. They shall confer and give
commands for what is expedient in regard to suitable measures for the
conversion of the Chinese. He shall send advices thereof, and of the
difficulties in the way, and shall provide for both."]

The bishop of these islands, as I have at other times written to
your Majesty, does not countenance appeals made by force, and the
decrees of the Audiencia; and when he is so inclined, he refuses to
comply therewith. We have therefore been put to much annoyance and
constraint in enforcing exile and other penalties, particularly in
regard to the defense of the royal jurisdiction. This latter has
not been done because the land is new, and to avoid offending the
natives. He becomes very angry at times, with little or no occasion,
so that he often disagrees with the Audiencia, in the pulpit and out of
it, and causes others to do the same--notwithstanding what your Majesty
has commanded, and the reprimands that he has received. Although there
have been serious difficulties, I do not discuss them, in order not
to weary your Majesty with a longer account. I beseech your Majesty to
supply the remedy which you think suitable, and to order the bishop not
to publish, without reason, as he has done, causes of the Holy Office
against the Audiencia and fiscal. Although we must always do justice,
and the fiscal must act as plaintiff, there is caused much scandal and
many hindrances to the authority of your Majesty's Audiencia, by trying
to disgrace and intimidate the judges by threats of the Inquisition.

Although your Majesty has ordered this camp and the royal hospitals to
be provided with medicines and other necessities, as there is no doctor
the soldiers are only treated by unskilled surgeons who attempt to cure
them. For this reason many people die, and I beseech your Majesty,
as it so important to your service, to order the viceroy of Nueva
España to send a good physician with an adequate salary at the cost
of your royal estate. The city has no money with which to pay him,
nor do the soldiers, since even the richest of them has not enough
for his own support. _[Marginal note_: "Write to the viceroy of Nueva
España to send a doctor and a surgeon to treat these people and give
advice thereof."]

At the shipyard of these islands your Majesty's chief shipbuilder
and superintendent of work was Master Miguel de Palacio. He died and
his place was filled by Master Marco, a good builder of all kinds of
ships. He died also; and although I understand there is another now in
charge of the galleon which is being built in the Pintados, he is old
and cannot all alone attend to the work, to the repairing of the ships
of the line, and the building of others. There is great need of another
good officer. I beseech your Majesty to order that, if possible, men
be sent for this from the kingdoms of Nueva España. [_Marginal note:
"Idem."_]

In the relation written by the Audiencia are other matters, of which
I give no account here, since they are there mentioned; your Majesty
will please order that these be examined. May God preserve the Catholic
person of your Majesty. At Manila, July 13 of the year 1589.

The doctor _Santiago de Vera_

[_Endorsed_: "Provision is made for the within; let the governor
be informed."]




Conspiracy Against the Spaniards


_Testimony in certain investigations made by Doctor Santiago de Vera,
president of the Philipinas_


In the city of Manila, on the twentieth of May in the year one thousand
five hundred and eighty-nine. Doctor Santiago de Vera, of the Council
of the king, our lord, and his governor and captain-general in these
Philipinas Islands, stated that inasmuch as it is proper and necessary
to inform the king our sovereign of the compact and conspiracy which
the Indian chiefs and natives of these islands and the vicinity of
Manila had plotted against the service of God, our Lord, and against
his Majesty, and of the inquiry and investigations made thus far in
order to ascertain and verify the facts, and the status of the case:
he therefore would order, and he did order, Estevan de Marquina,
notary-public of Manila--before whom most of the trial has been
conducted, of which an account has already been given three times to
the royal Audiencia--to draw up an attested record of the said trial
in a summary and relation, or such documents as shall be necessary,
in order to send them to the royal Council of the Indias this present
year. He also ordered him to inform his Majesty of what is occurring,
and of what has been done about the matter. This was what Doctor
Santiago de Vera declared, ordered, and signed.

By order of his Lordship:

_Thomas Perez_


In fulfilment of the command and decree of Doctor Santiago de Vera,
governor and captain-general of these islands, and president of the
royal Audiencia, I, Estevan de Marquina, notary-public for the king our
sovereign, of the number [authorized] in the city of Manila, testify
that a trial and criminal process has been conducted and is still
pending before the said governor and captain-general. The parties are
the royal department of justice of the one part, and certain Indian
chiefs, natives of the villages of Tondo, Misilo, Bulacan, and other
villages in the neighborhood of Manila, of the other part. The cause
of this contention seems to be that on the twenty-sixth of October
of last year, one thousand five hundred and eighty-eight, Doctor
Santiago de Vera, governor and captain-general of these islands,
and president of the royal Audiencia, learned that the following
persons: Don Agustin de Legaspi, one of the chiefs of this land;
Martin Panga, governor of the village of Tondo, and his first cousin;
Magat Salamat, the son of the old lord of this land; and other chiefs,
had not long ago sent a present of weapons and other articles to the
king of Burney, and that they were quite intent upon holding meetings
and their usual drunken feasts, swearing to keep secret whatever they
discussed. He also learned that they had sold and were selling their
landed property. In order to ascertain what the condition of affairs
is, the governor made an inquiry and many witnesses were summoned. From
this inquiry and other investigations and inquests made in the course
of the trials, it appears that the said Don Agustin de Legaspi and
Magat Salamat had sent a quantity of shields, arquebuses, and other
weapons to Xapon and to the petty king of Burney, who has thus been
enabled to put himself on a war-footing. They warned these powers to
fortify themselves in their strongholds, because the Spaniards intended
to go there. They added that the said Don Agustin would notify them in
person of what was taking place; and that, for this purpose, he would
ask permission to set out on his commercial enterprises. Likewise
we learned that the people of the kingdom of Burney were thinking of
manning a fleet for the purpose of attacking the Spaniards; and that
they had killed a Franciscan friar and other Spaniards while on their
way to Malaca from Manila with messages and despatches for the king,
our sovereign. It appears that on the fourth of November of the said
year, when the inquiry had not gone further than this, Captain Pedro
Sarmiento arrived in this city from the Calamianes, which are islands
near Burney; and brought the news and information that he had left
behind in the said Calamianes three Indian chiefs of Tondo, namely,
Magat Salamat, Don Agustin Manuguit, son of Don Phelipe Salalila, and
Don Joan Banal, brother-in-law of the said Magat. Through Don Antonio
Surabao, his servant and chief of his encomienda, he had learned that
these men were going as ambassadors to the petty king of Burney, in
order to induce him to send a fleet to attack the Spaniards, and to
join the chiefs of Jolo, and Sumaelob, chief of Cuyo, who had already
come to terms and offered to help them with two thousand men. They had
persuaded the said Don Antonio Surabao to accompany them and carry
out their plans; but the latter while on the one hand he promised
to help them, in order not to arouse their suspicion, on the other
hand unfolded the plan to Captain Sarmiento. He added, moreover,
that Amarlangagui, chief of Baibai, who was within the jurisdiction
of Manila and held the office of master-of-artillery, had told him,
while in this city, that all the chiefs of this neighborhood had
plotted and conspired with the Borneans to rebel against the service
of the king our sovereign, and to kill the Spaniards of this city,
while they were off their guard. The plan was that when the fleet
of Burney reached the port of Cavite, and the Spaniards trustfully
called these chiefs to their aid, they would all immediately enter
the houses of the Spaniards with their men, fortify themselves in
them and thus take possession of them one by one. If the Spaniards
took refuge in the fortress, Indian soldiers would follow them; and,
being two to one, they would surely kill the Spaniards. Maluco offered
an example of this; for with but few people they had taken so large a
fortress from the Portuguese. To this end the people of Burney were
building seven galleys and other warships, and were getting ready
ammunition and war-material. Thus it is affirmed by the said Don
Antonio Surabao himself, who says that, under the pledge of friendship
and secrecy, he was made acquainted with all this, and was persuaded
to join the said conspiracy. Upon this, with the governor's approval,
soldiers and attendants were immediately despatched with his orders to
arrest the said chiefs, and to bring them to this city as quickly as
possible. From the inquiry and secret investigations which were taken
up anew, it appears that last year, five hundred and eighty-seven,
when Captain Don Joan Gayo and many Japanese with merchandise arrived
at this city in a ship from Xapon, Don Agustin de Legaspi became
very friendly to him, inviting him many times to eat and drink at
his house which is on the other side of the river of this city. The
agreement and stipulation which he made with Don Joan Gayo through
the Japanese interpreter, Dionisio Fernandez, and in the presence of
the said Magat Salamat, Don Agustin Manuguit, Don Phelipe Salalila,
his father, and Don Geronimo Bassi, Don Agustin de Legaspi's brother,
was, that the said captain should come to this city with soldiers from
Xapon, and enter it under pretext of peace and commerce, bringing in
his ship flags for the use of the Spaniards, so that the latter should
think his intentions peaceful. It was also agreed that the chiefs
of the neighborhood would help them to kill the Spaniards, and would
supply the provisions and everything necessary. The said Don Agustin
de Legaspi was to set out to meet them; and, in order that they might
recognize one another, he would carry some of the weapons which the
said captain had given him. After they had conquered the Spaniards,
they would make him [Don Agustin] king of the land, and collect the
tribute from the natives, which would be divided between Don Agustin
and the Japanese. They swore this after their fashion, by anointing
their necks with a broken egg. Don Agustin de Legaspi discussed and
arranged the whole plan with Amaghicon, an Indian chief of Navotas,
warned him to keep the secret, and gave him some of the weapons which
the Japanese had given him, in order that they might recognize one
another. According to the declarations of Dionisio Fernandez, the
Japanese interpreter, Don Phelipe Salalila, Don Geronimo Basi, Magat
Salamat, and other witnesses who were present at the said meetings and
compacts, and as it appears also from the trial and investigations,
it seems that when Don Martin Panga, under the charge of adultery,
Don Agustin de Legaspi, for accounts demanded of him at the time when
he was governor of Tondo, Don Gabriel Tuambaçan, Don Francisco Acta,
his son, and Pitongatan were taken to the prison of this court, each
and every one of them swore, after their fashion, to help one another
with their persons and property in all matters--be it concerning the
liberty of their slaves, or in any other difficulty.

Likewise it appears that after they left the said prison, the said
Don Martin Panga was exiled from the village of Tondo for a certain
period, and went to live in the village of Tambobo, not far from this
city. There he and Don Agustin de Legaspi invited the other leaders to
come together for a secret meeting. Under pretext of visiting said Don
Martin Panga, a meeting was held in the said village by Don Phelipe
Salalila, Don Agustin Manuguit; Magat Salamat, chief of Tondo; Don
Pedro Bolingui, chief of Pandaca; Don Geronimo Basi and Don Grabiel
Tuam Basar, Don Agustin's brothers; Don Luis Amanicalao and Calao
his son; the brothers Don Dionisio Capolo and Don Phelipe Salonga;
Don Phelipe Amarlangagui, chief of Catangalan; Don Francisco Acta and
Amaghicon; with other Indian timaguas, servants, and allies of his. For
three days they met, and drank after their fashion. During this time
they resolved to act in harmony and with one mind in everything. If
their slaves demanded liberty, they were to help one another against
them; for already they were not regarded or obeyed as before. They
possessed neither slaves nor gold, and found themselves poor and
cast down, ready to go to prison any day. Their sorrow was very keen
because their wives were being taken away from them, and given to
others to whom, they claimed, they had been first married. For all
these reasons they were very sad, and they discussed and plotted,
and took oath, according to their custom, that if an enemy came to
Manila to attack the Spaniards, they would unanimously and with one
mind aid the enemy against the Spaniards. Thus they would once more
become masters, as they had been before, and exercise the old tyranny
over the common people--who now were much favored by the Spaniards,
being promoted to superior places by them. The said Don Agustin de
Legaspi proposed to them the plan and compact which he had made with
the said Japanese Don Joan Payo [Gayo]; and the other chiefs declared
that they were ready to help him and to accede to his wishes.

After this, it appears that in the month of February, one thousand
five hundred and eighty-eight, when we heard of the English pirate
who passed through these islands and plundered the ship "Santana,"
the said chiefs made preparations, thinking he would come to this city,
to carry out their plan.

A few days afterward, Don Estevan Taes, chief of Bulacan, came to
the village of Tondo where they were. He conferred with Don Martin
Panga; and they decided that since the Englishman had not come, and
the compact made at the meeting of Tambobo had not been carried out,
they should call another meeting to discuss what had been planned at
the former one. To this end, he offered to notify and call together
all the chiefs from his village as far as Tondo, while Don Martin
Panga was to summon the other chiefs as far as Cavite. To this end,
the said Don Martin Panga said that he would carry a letter to the
governors of Malolos and Guiguinto, and tell them to hasten to the
meeting; and that, when they were assembled, he could communicate
to them the bad or the good which he kept within his breast. After
Don Esteban Tael [_sic_] had told him to leave the matter in his
hands, Don Martin Panga declared, in the presence of Pitongatan,
that he and Don Agustin had planned to call together the men of La
Laguna and Comitan; and that, when the people were all gathered,
they would discuss the means of regaining the freedom and lordship
which their fathers had enjoyed before them; and, with all the people
collected at Tondo, would attack Manila, as arranged with Balaya,
chief of Vangos, and with the natives of Batan. It seems that the
said meeting did not take place, on account of various occupations
which detained the said chiefs. Moreover it appears that about the
same time, when certain Indian chiefs of Panpanga came to Manila on
business connected with their province, on passing through the village
of Tondo, Don Agustin Panga summoned them; and he, together with
Don Agustin de Legaspi, Sagat Malagat, and Amanicalao, talked with
them, and inquired after the business that took them to Manila. The
chiefs answered that they came to entreat the governor to command the
cessation of the lawsuits concerning slaves in Panpanga, until they
could gather in the harvest. Don Martin said that this was very good,
and that they also wished to make the same entreaty and to bring their
slaves to court; but that to attain this it would be best to assemble
and choose a leader from among them, whom they should swear to obey
in everything as a king, in order that none should act alone. The
chiefs of Panpanga said that they had [no] war with the Spaniards,
to cause them to plot against the latter, and that they had a good
king. Thus they did not consent to what was asked from them by the
aforesaid chiefs, and proceeded to Manila in order to transact their
business. In Manila they were again invited to go to Tondo, to take
food with the plotters; but the Panpanga chiefs refused. On the same
day a meeting was held in Tondo by Don Agustin de Legaspi and Don
Martin Panga; Don Luis Balaya, chief of Bangos; Agustin Lea and Alonso
Digma, his nephews; Don Phelipe Salalila and Don Agustin Manuguit, his
son; Don Luis Amanicalao, and Calao, his son; Don Grabiel Tuambacar,
Don Francisco Acta, Don Phelipe Salonga, and other natives who rendered
service. While they were thus assembled, they all resolved and agreed,
amid the usual drinking, that the abovementioned Magat should go to the
Calamianes and from that place notify the Borneans to come to Manila
to attack the Spaniards; and the chiefs would wait for them here,
and would take care to receive and help them. In fulfilment of this,
the said chief Magat Salamat went to the Calamianes, which are near the
kingdom of Burney, taking with him the chiefs Don Agustin Manuguit and
Don Joan Banal. Thence he went to the island of Cuyo, where it seems
that he discussed the matter with Sumaelob, chief of the said island,
and persuaded him to come with the Borneans to plunder Manila. At
that time he was arrested for this trial, was brought to this city,
and openly confessed that what has been said actually occurred.

The said inquiries and investigations made in reference to the
trial of the aforesaid persons were examined by the governor and
captain-general; and he gave orders to arrest those who appeared
guilty, in the various regions and provinces in which they were
to be found, and on different days, letting no one of the guilty
ones escape. The men were arrested and their confessions were taken
down separately. At the proper time and place they were each charged
with the crime which resulted against each of them; and a copy of the
charge was given to them and to their attorneys on their behalf. Their
cases were received on trial in a certain order and for a certain
period, so as to give them, during that period, an opportunity of
clearing themselves from the charge. The time expired, and the trial
was definitely closed. The governor and captain-general reviewed the
trial, and on different days pronounced a final sentence against each
one of them, according to their guilt. The sentence is in substance
as follows:

Don Agustin de Legaspi and Don Martin Panga, as leaders and chiefs, and
being convicted by witnesses, were condemned to be dragged and hanged;
their heads were to be cut off and exposed on the gibbet in iron cages,
as an example and warning against the said crime. All their goods
were to be confiscated and set apart, half for the royal treasury
and half for judicial expenses. The above-mentioned appealed from
the aforesaid sentence to the royal Audiencia of these islands; but
after having examined the trial, the Audiencia confirmed the aforesaid
sentence, and returned the case to the governor and captain-general
in order that justice might be done. The death-punishment was to cut
their heads off and to expose them on the gibbet in iron cages. The
sites of their houses were to be plowed and sown with salt. All their
property, after the judicial expenses had been defrayed, should be
set aside for the royal treasury. This sentence was executed upon
the abovementioned persons as here stated.

Dionisio Fernandez, Japanese interpreter in the negotiations with
Xapon, having confessed and having been convicted, was condemned to
be hanged and to lose his property, half of it to be set aside for
the royal treasury and half for judicial expenses. He appealed from
this sentence to the royal Audiencia; but this court, after it had
examined the trial, returned it to the governor and captain-general,
in order that justice might be done. The sentence was executed upon
him as here stated.

Don Pedro Balinguit, chief of the village of Pandaca, was sentenced to
six years of prescribed exile in Nueva España, and was condemned to
pay six taes of orejeras gold [14] for the treasury of the king our
sovereign, and for judicial expenses. The fiscal and he appealed to
his Majesty's chamber--I mean to the royal Audiencia--and this court
returned the case to the captain-general, so that justice might be
done. This man is about to sail in these ships for his place of exile.

Pitongatan, chief of the village of Tondo, was sentenced to exile in
Nueva España for eight years. His property was to be equally divided
between the treasury of the king, our sovereign, and the judicial
expenses. He and the fiscal appealed to the royal Audiencia; and this
court on a second examination sentenced him to exile in such place
as the governor should choose, for two years--one prescribed and the
other unconditioned--and to pay costs only.

Don Phelipe Salonga, chief of the village of Polo, was sentenced to
exile in Nueva España for six years. Half of his property was to be
set aside for the treasury of the king, our sovereign, and half for
judicial expenses. He and the fiscal appealed to the royal Audiencia;
but the case was returned to the captain-general, in order that
justice might be done.

Don Phelipe Amarlangagui, chief of Catangalan, was sentenced to
exile from his village for six years, to a place prescribed. His
property was to be divided equally between the treasury of the king,
our sovereign, and the judicial expenses. He and the fiscal appealed to
the royal Audiencia; but the case was returned to the captain-general,
in order that justice might be done, except that the exile was to be
for four years.

Daulat, chief of the village of Castilla, was sentenced to prescribed
exile from this district for four years, and condemned to pay ten taes
of orejeras gold, half for the royal treasury and half for judicial
expenses. He and the fiscal appealed to the royal Audiencia; but
the case was returned to the captain-general, in order that justice
might be done, except that of the four years of exile two were to be
prescribed and two unconditioned.

Don Joan Basi, chief and former governor of the village of Tagui,
was sentenced to prescribed exile from this jurisdiction [15] for
four years. Half of his property was set aside for the treasury of
his Majesty, and half for the judicial expenses. He and the fiscal
appealed to the royal Audiencia, whence the case was remitted to the
captain-general, with the exception that the whole penalty should
consist only of two years of prescribed exile.

Dionisio Capolo, chief of Candava, was sentenced to prescribed exile
from this jurisdiction for eight years, and was condemned to pay
fifteen taes of orejeras gold, half of which was to be set aside
for the treasury of his Majesty, and half for judicial expenses. He
and the fiscal appealed to the royal Audiencia, which, after having
examined the report of the trial, remitted it to the captain-general,
in order that justice might be done--save that the whole penalty
was to consist of four years of prescribed exile, and the payment of
twelve taes of orejeras gold. The sentence was executed.

Don Francisco Acta, chief of Tondo, was sentenced to four years of
prescribed exile. Half of his goods and property was to be divided
between the treasury of his Majesty and judicial expenses. He and the
fiscal appealed to the court of his Majesty; but the case was remitted
to the captain-general in order that justice might be done--save that
the whole penalty was to consist of four years' prescribed exile,
and nothing more.

Don Luis Amanicalao was sentenced to prescribed exile from this
jurisdiction for six years. His goods were to be divided between the
treasury of his Majesty and the judicial expenses. He and the attorney
appealed to the royal Audiencia, but the case was likewise remitted
to the captain-general in order that justice might be done--only that
the exile was to be reduced to three years. The sentence was executed.

Don Grabiel Tuambacar, chief of Tondo, was sentenced to exile from
this jurisdiction for four years, and was condemned to pay six taes
of orejeras gold--half for the treasury of his Majesty, and half for
the judicial expenses. He appealed to the royal Audiencia, as did the
fiscal also; but the case was remitted to the governor, in order that
he might execute justice upon him--except that the penalty was to be
only four years' exile.

Calao, chief of Tondo, was sentenced to exile from this jurisdiction
for four years. Half of his goods were to be applied as in other
cases. He and the fiscal appealed to the royal Audiencia, whence
the case was returned to the captain-general, in order that he might
execute justice--except that the only penalty was four years' exile.

Omaghicon, chief of Navotas, was sentenced to prescribed exile in
Nueva España for six years, and was condemned to pay sixty taes of
orejeras gold, half of it to be set aside for the treasury of his
Majesty, and half for the judicial expenses. This money was to be paid
within a month, under pain of hanging. The fiscal of his Majesty and
the culprit appealed to the royal Audiencia; there the sentence was
revoked, and the guilty man was condemned to die, and to lose half of
his goods, the latter to be applied as specified above. Thus he was
condemned on a new trial, and put to death; and inquiries are being
made about his goods.

Don Geronimo Bassi was sentenced to exile in Nueva España for ten
years. His property was to be divided between the treasury of his
Majesty and the judicial expenses. He and the fiscal of his Majesty
appealed to the royal Audiencia--which, after an examination and a
new trial, revoked the sentence and condemned him to death, and to
the loss of all his goods in favor of the royal treasury. The sentence
was executed.

Don Phelipe Salalila, chief of Misilo, was exiled to Nueva España for
twelve years, and condemned to pay seventy taes of gold _de orejeras_,
of which half was to be set aside for the treasury of his Majesty
and half for judicial expenses. He was to pay the money within twenty
days under pain of death. He and the attorney of his Majesty appealed
to the royal Audiencia--which, after an examination and a new trial,
revoked the sentence and condemned him to death, and to the loss of
all his goods in favor of the treasury of his Majesty. The sentence
was executed upon him.

Don Esteban Taes, chief of Bulacan, was sentenced to prescribed
exile in Nueva España for eight years, and condemned to pay sixty
taes of orejeras gold, for the treasury of his Majesty and for
judicial expenses. The money was to be paid within thirty days
under pain of death. He and the fiscal of the king appealed to the
royal Audiencia--which, on an examination and new trial, revoked the
sentence, and condemned him to death and to the loss of all his goods
in favor of the royal exchequer and the treasury of his Majesty. The
sentence was executed.

Magat Salamat was condemned to death. His goods were to be employed
for the erection of the new fortress of this city. He appealed to
the royal Audiencia; but the case was remitted to the governor, in
order that justice might be done--except that the goods were to be
set aside for the treasury. The sentence was executed.

Don Agustin Manuguit was sentenced to exile in Nueva España for six
years, and condemned to pay twenty taes of orejeras gold toward the
building of the new fortress. Failing to pay this sum, the term of
his exile would be doubled. He agreed to pay it, and the sentence
was executed.

Don Luis Balaya, chief of Bangos, was sentenced to exile from his
village for two years, one prescribed and the other unconditioned. He
was also condemned to pay ten taes of orejeras gold toward the building
of the fortress, to which he agreed.

Alonso Lea was acquitted on the trial.

Amarlangagui, chief of the village of Tondo, was exiled from this
jurisdiction for four years, two prescribed and two unconditioned. He
was also condemned to pay fifteen taes of orejeras gold toward the
said building of the fortress. He agreed to this, and the sentence
was executed.

Don Joan Banal, chief of Tondo, was sentenced to exile from this
jurisdiction for six years, and condemned to pay ten taes of orejeras
gold toward the building of the said fortress. He agreed to this,
and paid the money.

In the case of Amaghicon, Indian chief of the island of Cuyo, sentence
is yet to be passed by the governor; for the man was brought hither
only a short time ago, as he lived very far from this city.

The said sentences, as specified, were executed upon the above-named
persons. Those who were exiled to Nueva España are about to sail in
the ships which are to be despatched this year to that country. As for
the goods [confiscated], most of the men have paid their fines; but in
case of those who have failed to do this, the alcaldes-mayor have been
ordered to make investigations about them. They are already doing so,
as appears from the said trial and process, to which I refer. And,
in order that the whole matter may be evident, I give by the said
command the present record, in Manila, on the thirteenth day of July
in the year one thousand five hundred and eighty-nine. I affix my seal,
in testimony of the truth.

_Esteban de Marquina_, notary-public.


We, the notaries who have here signed our names, [16] certify and
attest that Esteban de Marquina, from whom proceeds this authenticated
record, is indeed a notary-public, of the number authorized in this
city, as is stated herein, and is now exercising his office; and
that the deeds, attestations, and records which have been and are
transacted in his presence have been and are thoroughly certified
and authenticated, both within court and without. Done at Manila,
on the thirteenth day of July in the year one thousand five hundred
and eighty-nine.




Letter from Gaspar de Ayala to Felipe II


Sire:

Last year I gave your Majesty a detailed account of the events that
had hitherto occurred in these islands; of what has since happened I
will give account in this letter. As soon as the ships left for Nueva
España, we set about building a ship of seven hundred toneladas at
the cost of your Majesty's royal exchequer. As purveyor thereof was
appointed Captain Don Juan Ronquillo, alcalde-mayor of the province
of Pintados. The ship is being built in that district, and paid
for out of the tributes which your Majesty has from that province;
and this city provided some articles which were lacking there. The
purveyor writes that he can make the voyage this coming year. This ship
will be the fourth of your Majesty's vessels on that route [to Nueva
España]. I understand that two of them will be of no use for this next
year, as they will have to be laid aside. Thus it will be necessary,
that the navigation on that route may not cease, that ships be built
continually. Although the Mariscal Grabiel de Rribera and Captain Juan
Pablo de Carrion are each building a ship, they will not be able to
support them, and will be obliged to sell them at the port of Acapulco
on the first voyage, for the Piru trade. Although they could be bought
in these islands on the account of your Majesty's royal exchequer,
it seems to me better that your Majesty should save the profits that
will be made after their construction; since they can easily be built
at much less cost than if they were bought after they are built.

The accounts of your royal exchequer have been audited this year, and
are being sent with everything clearly expressed. The entire accounts
are set forth and the data in detail, each class by itself. Because
the gold was very cheap this year, on account of the great lack of
coin, some uneasiness was felt for your royal exchequer. Its income
has not reached the value of last year, although your Majesty's gold
has been more valuable than that of private persons, because it had
to be distributed in various payments. If it were possible for your
Majesty's royal treasury to keep the gold and sell it at the coming of
the ships, there would be considerable profit. However, as the gold is
being constantly needed, and there is nothing else with which to meet
the salaries and other necessary obligations, it is, when there is a
lack of coin, distributed at the common value--although, as I have said
before, a somewhat higher value is given to your Majesty's gold. If,
as I have written in other letters, your Majesty would be pleased to
command forty or fifty thousand pesos to be brought every year from
Nueva España to the royal treasury of these islands, returning thence
the value thereof in gold, it would give the greatest relief to this
treasury and profit to your royal exchequer; for twenty-five thousand
pesos in gold, at the price at which it is given in tribute by the
Indians, would amount to fifty thousand in Nueva España. This could
be done very easily, if your Majesty would assume the risk of the
transportation of the money and the return of the gold. As a result,
your royal treasury could in a short time be free from obligations,
and could aid in the maintenance of this kingdom. [_Marginal note_:
"Abstract this clause, and send it to the viceroy of Nueva España."]

By virtue of your royal decree received by your governor in the past
year, concerning the sale of the magistracies and offices of notary,
by order of your said governor the following offices were sold, in the
usual manner of selling your royal property: Four public notaryships
in this city, at eight hundred pesos each; the notarial office of
Panpanga, at one thousand pesos; that of the province of Pintados,
at one thousand seven hundred pesos; that of Cebu, at six hundred;
that of Bombon, at three hundred; that of Ylocos, at three hundred;
that of Camarines is set at six hundred, and has not been adjudged
to a bidder. These offices were sold with some inducements, in order
that there should be more bidding. Of ten magistracies which were
placed at auction, five were sold--the first at one thousand four
hundred pesos, the second at nine hundred, the third at a thousand,
the fourth at one thousand two hundred, and the fifth at nine hundred
and ten. The others are left to be auctioned upon the arrival of the
ship from Nueva España. To increase the value of the offices sold,
there were also admitted some bonuses, after payment of which, I
understand, the offices will clear fifteen thousand pesos more or
less. That the magistracies might have more value to meet the present
necessities, your said governor commanded that they be sold with the
condition that the owners thereof could renounce them by depositing
in your royal treasury the third of the value, as is done with the
offices of clerks. Should your Majesty confirm this, it will be of
much profit to your royal exchequer.

Besides the notarial offices which your royal decree ordered to be
sold, no mention was made of those of La Laguna, of the Coast and
Tondo, of Bulacan, of the cabildo of this city, and that of Pangasinan,
which are all large jurisdictions and have notaries appointed by
themselves. Moreover, there may thus be sold the office of notary of
the alcaiceria [silk-market] of the Chinese, where there is a separate
judge; and that of the mines and registries, with the inspection
of the Chinese ships, in the form provided by your governor, and
used by Thomas Perez. If this last office were sold with the others,
we could find a person who would give therefor five thousand pesos;
and should your governor provide the office of al-ferez-mayor and
that of depositary-general, it would come to six thousand pesos. I
understand that if your Majesty should command these offices to be
sold by open vote in the cabildo, there would be found many purchasers.

When Alonso Veltran, your notary of the court of this Audiencia,
departed for Nueva España, he sold his office, by official permission,
to Alonso de Torres, an honored merchant, for four thousand five
hundred pesos. The third thereof was placed in your royal treasury
of which he made royal exhibition in the Audiencia, and asked to be
admitted to the possession and exercise of said office. When your
governor examined the records, he said that the cognizance of that
cause was not for the Audiencia, but for the governor, because the
general decree providing for the sale of offices for Nueva España came
addressed to the viceroy. Consequently, the Audiencia referred to the
governor the cognizance and decision of this matter; and he declared
that the said Alonso de Torres was not entitled to admission. Although
the latter appealed, he did not dare continue the case, in order,
as he said, to avoid misfortune. For this reason, your royal treasury
lost one thousand five hundred pesos. To remedy this, and to increase
your royal exchequer, it is most important for your Majesty to command
that the said general decree directed to the viceroy of Nueva España
in the year eighty-one, [17] which treats of the sale and renunciation
of offices, be observed in these islands. Its fulfilment should be
enforced by your president and auditors; and, when a vacancy occurs
in any office, the said office should be sold, in order that your
royal treasury may have some relief. If it is not thus commanded,
the governors will exercise the privilege of providing offices.

Last year I reported to your Majesty that, because of the death of
Doña Ana de Palacios, there had been left vacant an encomienda owned
by her in Camarines. Petition had been made to your governor that
it be placed to the account of your royal crown, in virtue of your
Majesty's royal decree; and that twelve thousand pesos of income should
be paid to this royal Audiencia. But because Captain Joan Maldonado
presented another decree in which your Majesty commands that there
be given him two thousand pesos of income from unallotted Indians,
on account of his many services and extreme poverty, part of the
said encomienda was given him; while to your royal crown there was
assigned the other part, amounting to eleven hundred Indians, more or
less. Moreover, at the end of December of the past year, eighty-eight,
the encomienda owned by Don Luis de Sagajosa at Ylocos was left vacant
by his death. I petitioned your governor to place it to the account
of your royal crown, in compliance with the said royal decree. He
declared that it could not be allotted to the crown, but that it would
remain vacant, and the income would be assigned to your royal treasury
as royal property, until your Majesty should command otherwise. Less
than seven hundred Indians of this encomienda were apportioned to your
royal crown, in order that the income therefrom should be enjoyed by
the hospital. Appeal from this was made to the Audiencia, and the case
was continued. The result thereof was that another decree was issued
by your Majesty to the Augustinian friars, in which your Majesty
granted them a gift and alms of ten thousand ducats, payable within
ten years in unassigned Indians. In consideration of their poverty,
I consented that from the income of this encomienda there should be
given them three hundred pesos every year, until your decree should
be fulfilled. Then a revision of the decree was issued, ordering that
the said encomienda be allotted to your royal crown; but that from the
income thereof there should be given to the hospital six hundred pesos
for eight years, and to the convent of San Agustin three hundred pesos
every year until your decree should be fulfilled. After the payment
of that nine hundred pesos, the grants for religious instruction, and
the costs of the collection, I understand that there will remain clear
for your royal treasury the sum of one thousand four hundred pesos,
besides the nine hundred of the hospital and convent after their dues
are satisfied. The Audiencia placed this encomienda to the account of
your royal crown; for, although your governor was ordered twice to do
so, according to the ordinances of first consideration and revision,
he would not comply. He was ordered to give a writ, in order that
the officials of your royal exchequer could hold it as title.

Later, on account of the death of Captain Villanueva, two encomiendas
were left vacant--one called Malgandon, and the other near this
city--which were worth two thousand pesos of income. As soon as he
died, without notice thereof having been given to me, on the first
day of last May before daybreak, your governor assigned the said
encomiendas--that of Malgandon to Cristoval de Axqueta; and the
other to Don Luis Enrriques, who abandoned another encomienda which
he held, of as much and more income, but somewhat farther away from
this city. At the same time the encomienda that he had abandoned was
assigned, half to each of two other soldiers. On the following day
I heard the news, and I presented myself in the Audiencia in order
to appeal, and to take exception to whatever possession should
be taken. I appealed from whatever writ of possession might be
provided; and I ordered that a copy of this appeal be handed to the
parties. Cristoval de Axqueta kept himself hidden, in order that notice
might not be served on him; and four or five days after my appeal
the possession which I had opposed was given him by an alcalde-mayor
of Pangasinan. The other litigants did not take possession; and, the
case being concluded, a writ was issued, by which all were protected
in their possession. The decision in respect to the ownership was
submitted to your royal Council of the Indias, I having appealed
from the writ. The case has been concluded and considered, and the
decision has not been reached; of that I shall later send a report
to your Majesty.

For these reasons your governor is inciting the soldiers and telling
them that I am depriving them of means of sustenance, and various
other things, in order to set them against me, and make himself
popular with them, while disparaging me. Consequently, some of them
bear me ill-will. Your said governor, although he knows that he cannot
take Indians from your royal crown, has assigned some of them three
or four times; and I have had them taken away by process of law. He
satisfied himself by telling the soldiers that he had given them a
means of support, but that I had taken it away. As I took exception
to his acts, and caused several encomiendas to be revoked which
had been given by him, he says that he is not the governor, but I
am. I beseech your Majesty to be pleased to command your governor to
refrain from such indignities to me, as the diligence which I exercise
and the actions at law which I cause are for your royal service, the
increase of the royal exchequer, and the fulfilment of my conscience
and obligation. As I am hated in this country for doing my duty,
would your Majesty be pleased to favor me by granting me leave to
depart, and giving me a charge elsewhere where I may serve better and
more satisfactorily, and where no one will complain of me. When your
Majesty receives this, I shall have served in this office of fiscal
almost seven years. Should your Majesty not be disposed to grant me
this favor I shall continue in my service here until I die.

Still later, at the death of Doña Maria de Miranda, two encomiendas
were left vacant, both worth a thousand pesos of income. They were
given to Don Fernando de Villafaña, by virtue of your royal decree,
in which it is commanded that your governor should give him an
encomienda of Indians. He has served in these islands about ten years,
and for his good service and poverty but little has been given him. On
this account, and as your Majesty had commanded that he be given an
encomienda of Indians, I took no exception, as in the other cases.

This year there came from China eleven or twelve vessels with but
little merchandise, because, as they say, there have been many wars
and a severe plague. It has been reported that a ship from Panama
or Piru, prepared to lay out a large sum of money, has arrived at
Macan, which is on the river of Canton. As I have stated in previous
communications, if it is permitted to carry on trade between Piru
or Nueva España and China, this country will be depopulated and
ruined. The principal means of support here is the merchandise from
China, and the profit which results from sending those goods to be
sold in Nueva España. This would be completely done away with, should
ships go from that country or Piru to China; for it is evident that,
if these ships bought the merchandise needed, there would be no market
or sale for the goods brought from these islands. Neither would the
Chinese come here with their ships to sell the goods, or at least
not in so large numbers; and besides the general loss to this land,
there would be lost the customs duties of import and export.

At my petition, in view of the fact that a large part of the gold
paid as tribute had not been declared, and the fifth taken, it was
decreed that within a fortnight after the collection of tribute, the
gold should be declared, and the registers of collection displayed,
before the officials of your royal exchequer, under penalty of
losing the third part of the tribute for that year. The aforesaid was
proclaimed and notification was given to the encomenderos of this city,
and the decrees therefor were sent to the alcaldes-mayor. Nevertheless,
there is laxity in the declarations; and it would be of great benefit
for your Majesty to order the officers of your royal exchequer to
exercise great care in this, and to see that the disobedient suffer
the penalties. [_Marginal note_: "Bring the decrees in this case."]

Last year a fragata was despatched from this city to Maluco. Therein
were two descalced friars, who were going to that court on business
connected with their order; and they carried with them a packet of
letters from this Audiencia and your governor. This fragata anchored
in a port of the island of Borney, called El Paso; and the natives
attacked them, after having given assurance of safety so that they
would land. They killed one of the friars, and all the men except
three or four Spaniards; and burned the fragata, after having robbed
it. Those who escaped say that this attack had been made by order
of the king of Burney, and that a Spanish soldier who had gone
there had been persuaded to turn renegade. They pay him a stipend
for making plans for stone fortifications, and making weapons and
powder. Your governor despatched a ship, sending a messenger to ask
for this soldier; but the reply has not yet come. Many people were
of the opinion that, if soldiers had been in these islands in any
great number, a fleet should be sent to attack the said king--both
for the reason already given, and because he was a tributario to
your Majesty, and has refused to pay tribute. But with the few
troops in these islands, no expedition can be made, nor do we who
are in Manila feel at all secure, with the forces that we have in
this kingdom. There are many enemies and but few Spaniards, and
the latter are dying in great numbers every day. Also, for lack of
troops, punishment has not been meted out for the insolence which, as
I reported to your Majesty last year, had been perpetrated by the king
of Mindanao. In the past few days the Indians of Cibu have revolted,
and have killed the encomenderos who were collecting the tribute,
and other soldiers. They seized the women, and detained them for a
long time, until the alcalde-mayor of that island, with a number of
friendly Indians and fifty or sixty Spaniards, attacked and chastised
them. Some were killed in the encounter, and those most guilty were
hanged. Thereupon the said alcalde-mayor wrote that that island was
pacified. It lies more than one hundred and fifty leagues from this
city. Later, on the seventh of last June, there came further advices
from the said alcalde-mayor, to the effect that the natives of said
islands, with other neighboring peoples, had conspired to burn the
city, and kill all the Spaniards who might be there; and that several
of the principal authors of the plot have been captured, and steps are
being taken to arrest the others. Your governor sent him instructions
as to what he should do.

Four or five months ago two soldiers came from the city of Segovia,
located in the province of Cagayan. They were sent by the alcalde-mayor
of that province, bringing word that the province was all in rebellion
and that the Indians had killed many Spaniards. The natives were so
bold and daring that they entered into the city to murder and rob. He
begged for reënforcements of troops and ammunition, or that province
would be depopulated. It is the most important of these islands as
it is the nearest to Japon and is within fifty leagues of the coast
of China. Reënforcements were sent by the master-of-camp, Pedro de
Chaves, with four or five ships and fifty soldiers, besides what
supplies and ammunition they could take. We have received news of
their arrival only. The outcome of the expedition I will relate when
it is over. Captain Martin de Barrios was also slain by the Indians
while he was collecting the tribute from his encomienda, together with
other soldiers; and I am ready to certify that there are few places
in these islands where the natives are not disaffected. When there is
any uprising they communicate with one another, make allies, and send
messengers to keep up relations. This is because the Indians know that
there is but a small force of Spaniards, and that they are separated
from one another, and that their punishments are not inflicted as
they formerly were, under a military régime, but by a judicial order.

The past year we were informed that the Indian chiefs of this
district had met together at different times to discuss rebellion
against your royal service, and the death of all the Spaniards in
these islands, and the mastery of this land which was enjoyed by
their forefathers. At the time when this happened there was in this
city a Japanese captain, who had come here ostensibly for trading and
carrying on commerce. The natives made arrangements with him to come
to their aid with ships and soldiers. They were to give him part of
the land, and would send messengers to the king of Borney and other
principal Indians of other provinces, in order that they might come to
their assistance. They swore very solemnly according to their custom
to keep and fulfil the agreement. They chose a king, captains, and
officers of war; and weapons were made in secret. On the discovery
of their treachery and plots, the principal chiefs were arrested;
seven or eight of them were hanged and beheaded, and their property
confiscated. Many others were exiled, some from their villages, and
others to Nueva España who sail in this ship. By this punishment it
seems as if the people have become somewhat cowed. May God aid us,
and free us from so many dangers to which we are exposed. This land
will be lost and ruined if your Majesty does not expressly order a
goodly number of soldiers to be sent here, and that something be paid
to the men for their support. It is pitiful to see them die of hunger,
and if they are not paid no soldiers will care to come here, to be
in captivity; and we are dying off very fast. Your Majesty should
not permit such a thing; for, although this land is of much cost and
no profit, it is a foothold and stepping-stone by which to enter the
realms of Great China. For this it is very important to learn that
language, and for some religious of the orders of St. Augustine and
St. Dominic to teach the Chinese in that tongue, since in that wise
they will become fond of our religion. May God bring this to pass,
later. It would tend greatly to the preservation of the soldiers,
should your Majesty order your viceroy of Nueva España to send a doctor
to these islands, although he should be given a salary from your royal
treasury of Nueva España. For lack of a physician and of someone who
knows how to cure sickness, many of the people die--especially the
soldiers and sailors, who have few comforts.

Your Majesty's galleys in this city are useless, and serve for nothing
whatever. It will be more profitable and less costly to have a couple
of small ships and another couple of armed fragatas. This can be done
if your Majesty will order them to be built, and the galleys to be
broken up.

The fort, which is being built of stone, has been fractured in some
places, from the great weight. They say that it is caused by the
small amount of cement used, and because it is near the water and
built in a round shape. It seemed as if it could be made secure by
building three buttresses with three cavaliers; and this work is
now being done. If the cavaliers had been built at first, much money
could have been saved; but, as there are no engineers here, they have
done the best they could--although several captains say that they had
given warning at the beginning of the work. For this there has been
collected a little more than four thousand pesos from certain duties
which used to be paid to your Majesty on the money brought from Nueva
España. Later, collections were made from the Indians of the land,
on each being levied one real--thus raising another twelve thousand
pesos, more or less. Now another tax of one real has been levied on
the Indians, who are oppressed by it; but as your royal treasury is
so poor, everything must be borne.

In last year's letter I advised you that at my petition, taxes were
levied on the Indians in their suits, according to the tariff of Spain,
charging the Spaniards triple the amount. Finding that the clerks
could not support themselves on so small fees, and at risk of levying
too much, it was ordered that the fees be doubled, and it was so done.

Captain Esteban Rodriguez de Figueroa, son-in-law of the licentiate
Melchior Davalos, your auditor, killed his wife and nephew, the own
son of his brother, saying that they had committed adultery. This he
proved by some Indian women of his house, although he did not find
them in the act. I conducted the trial, and, after review thereof,
condemned him to six years of exile, and a fine of five thousand
pesos for your royal court, the expenses of justice, and other things.

This year a Japanese ship came to this port with many supplies and
arms. There must have been more than five hundred arquebuses and as
many of their kind of swords, and some battle-axes. As the conspiracy
of the Indians had taken place when the said ship arrived, it was
believed that it came for the execution of that plot. On entering the
port, this ship was boarded, and all its cargo was sequestered and
the crew imprisoned. It was learned that they were going to sell the
weapons in Cian, and they were released from custody, on condition
that they would sell the goods here. This they did, and this country
has consequently been supplied with weapons.

As your royal treasury is usually in need and lack of money,
it happened at the beginning of February of this year that,
on petition of the prebendaries and curas of the cathedral, the
bishop of these islands commanded the royal officials, under pain
of excommunication, to pay them the stipends assigned them from your
royal treasury--amounting to one thousand five hundred pesos annually,
for four prebendaries. According to my information your said officials
owed them nothing whatever, in accordance with the agreement made with
them in the month of July of the year eighty-seven--namely, that from
that day they were to be paid their entire current salary; and of that
due them they were to be paid little by little, as your royal treasury
was so over-burdened. At this notification they replied to the bishop
that he could not be judge of that case, as it was a secular one
and they were laymen. Of necessity, they appealed to the Audiencia;
and the bishop ordered that they be declared excommunicated. This
was publicly done, and their names written on the public list, on a
Saturday evening. After the Audiencia saw what difficulties would
follow on the excommunication of your royal officials, and after
it had examined the proceedings in the report made to the judge, it
passed an ordinance, asking and requiring the bishop to absolve and
reinstate the officials until the documents could be examined in the
council-room. To this he gave a certain reply, and after considering
this, with the documents, another decree was made, in which it was
declared to the bishop that he was not the judge of the cause, which
the Audiencia ordered to be retained under its own jurisdiction. As I
was not present at this decision it was ordered that I be notified,
and that I should appear in the suit in defense of your royal
jurisdiction. Therefore, on the Monday next following, I presented
before the said bishop a petition requesting that he absolve the
persons excommunicated, and declare himself not to have jurisdiction
over that cause. To establish the fact that the recognition thereof
did not belong to him, I stated in the first argument of my petition
that it could not pertain to him as the royal officials were mere
laymen, and not subject to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but to
the royal. I alleged further reasons that the cause was secular and
temporal. Among other things, the bishop replied to the petition
that he was not satisfied with a proposition that I had offered,
in reference to the holy office of the Inquisition. This caused
exceeding disturbance and scandal in this city, because the bishop was
not content with saying what he did in reply to my petition; but to
every person who entered his house he said that I had been guilty of a
heresy, and unlettered persons who heard this gave it credit. Moreover,
as there is here a commissary of the Inquisition, he called together
many friars and certified this proposition, separating it from the
petition and paying no attention to my purpose therein, or to the
circumstances under which I made it. I am sending a report of all the
proceedings, in order that your Majesty may provide for the future,
as to whether the bishop is to be the judge, and have entrance and
privilege to cause the salaries to be paid from your royal treasury,
which your Majesty in kindness and mercy had ordered to be assigned to
the prebendaries and curates. The bishop, for the sake of peace, after
he had kept your royal officials excommunicated many days, refusing to
obey or fulfil the ordinances of your royal Audiencia, issued a decree
in which he gave up the decision of the cause to his Holiness and to
your Majesty. He protested that he would proceed with the case when he
saw fit. Although I stated in petition that the bishop had not complied
with the ordinances of the Audiencia, and that thereby he had incurred
the penalties provided--which I begged to have executed--everything was
passed over, and it was not deemed proper to exact the penalties. In
this wise, whenever any dispute over jurisdiction occurs, the bishop
displays like obstinacy, as he has done in other cases which are being
added to the principal one. If a penalty should once be imposed that
would hurt him, he would obey and comply with the ordinances of the
Audiencia. But he says publicly that nothing can be done which will
restrain him, and this is what he desires. Because of this case the
prebendaries and bishop abandoned the cathedral church and did not
enter it, or celebrate the divine offices therein from the fourth of
February until the twenty-second of March--when, as it was holy week,
they returned. During this time only the cura came to the church, to
say mass; and thereby great complaint, scandal, and discontent were
caused among all the people. I beseech your Majesty to be pleased to
order this case to be summarily settled. The bishop declares that he
will use the right, which he claims to own, when he sees fit to do so;
and it should be decided if it is right to suffer this thing. Also,
because I as fiscal attend to the defense of your royal jurisdiction,
should the bishop have license to declare in writing that I had made
a proposition touching the Holy Inquisition? It was not only this,
but that the statement went from one pulpit to another, by his
command, that to say that the bishop was not judge of that cause
was a heresy. These and other words of which the Audiencia will
give information caused no little scandal in this city. Likewise he
refuses to obey the ordinances of the Audiencia, making light of and
disputing over them, for which he may be restrained and condemned in
temporal matters.

It is quite common for controversies to arise between your governor and
the bishop as to which of them is to assign the salary to be given to
the ecclesiastics who administer instruction, both in the encomiendas
of your royal crown and in those of private individuals. Since the
salaries in the encomiendas of the crown are paid from your royal
exchequer, it is but just that your governor assign them, or at
least that they do so jointly. In this way your royal patronage
will be better guarded, and it will be known for whom the bishop is
providing. I beg your Majesty to be pleased to have suitable orders
given in this matter, and that it be done shortly, for every day more
and more difficulties arise.

A case has been considered in the Audiencia, between the bishop and
the order of St. Augustine, as to whether the said order and the
religious thereof are to administer instruction to the Chinese living
in the village of Tondo. Ever since the settlement of this town,
they have had a convent there, ministering to the natives in their
own language. They say that they have also instructed the Chinese,
who understand what they say. The bishop placed in this town friars
of his own order, the Dominican, so that they could minister to the
Chinese in a chapel there. The Augustinians complained, saying that
by a brief of his Holiness, and a royal decree which they presented,
two monasteries of different orders should not be situated in the same
town, or in its vicinity. The Audiencia passed an ordinance requiring
that within thirty days the bishop should appoint ministers of one
order, to administer instruction to the natives and the Chinese. As
this ordinance concerned a matter already adjudicated, the bishop
asked for a declaration of their position; and it was thereupon
declared that by that ordinance the Dominicans were not excluded
from the administration of instruction to the Chinese. An appeal was
then made on the part of the order of St. Augustine; and they said
that some of their religious would in a short time know the Chinese
language. They were commanded by ordinance to observe the past decree,
until your Majesty should have been consulted and should provide
otherwise. Afterward, when the Augustinians saw that they were not
by the said ordinances excluded from administering instruction to
the Chinese, they commenced to undertake this work. The bishop, as he
desired a religious of the said order who was said to know the Chinese
language to preach to the Chinese on the afternoon of St John's day,
went to the town of Tondo, which is opposite this city, on the other
side of the river. He had trouble with the Augustinian friars, and
the abovementioned religious would not consent to preach. Thereby was
caused much severe comment and scandal, both among the natives and
Chinese, and among the Spaniards. The Augustinian friars complain that
the bishop, being a Dominican, favors his own order and persecutes
them; and that before the coming of the Dominicans to these islands
they did not have this persecution, but peace and concord.

There is great need of religious to administer instruction to the
natives, since of the few who were here a large number have died,
this year and last. There are many places without instruction, and
in still others there are ecclesiastics who do not know the language,
from which it results that the natives cannot be well instructed. It is
of much importance for the welfare and pacification of this land that
religious should come here, because in those places where they are now
stationed the Indians live more peaceably and with less license. I
beseech your Majesty to be pleased to give orders for their prompt
despatch, since their coming is so necessary for the service of God
and the good of souls. They should be of the three orders already here.

In this city there are two hospitals, one for Spaniards and the
other for the natives. That of the natives is under the charge of a
Franciscan friar, [18] who cares for them and ministers to them with
much charity. It seems as if God supports them as by a miracle; for
there are usually more than a hundred patients, sick with all kinds
of diseases, and they are maintained by alms, as they have no other
income. It would be very injurious if the Franciscan friars should
abandon it; and thus it will be expedient for your Majesty to order
that they hold and administer it, as has been done hitherto. Moreover,
license should be given for said hospital to send four toneladas
of pepper as cargo on the ships which sail every year from these
islands to Nueva España. There should be levied on them neither
duties in these islands, nor freight charges at Acapulco; for with
this privilege, which would little affect your Majesty's interests,
they can further the work, and support themselves.

Those who are serving your Majesty in this royal Audiencia are:
the doctor Santiago de Vera, your president; the licentiate Melchior
Davalos, the licentiate Pedro de Rrojas, and the licentiate Don Antonio
de Rribera, your auditors. The first two suffer from many ailments
and infirmities. There are also myself, a secretary, a reporter,
three attorneys, and interpreters and other officials of the Audiencia.

The persons who have been provided with offices this year are the
following: Don Fernando de Villafaña, alcalde-mayor of La Laguna, with
a salary of three hundred pesos, the amount usually given to other
alcaldes-mayor; Pedro Manrique, alcalde-mayor at Pangansinan, who has
served your Majesty nine years, in these islands; Cristoval de Leon,
chief magistrate at Calompite, an elderly man, long in the land, and
with wife and children; Gaspar de Ysla, chief magistrate at Lubao,
one of the early colonists, and married; Captain Gomez de Machuca,
alcalde-mayor of Camarines, who has served ten years in this country,
and married here; Bartolome Pacheco, alcalde-mayor of Bulacan, who has
seen six years' service in this land; Captain Don Alonso Maldonado,
alcalde-mayor of the alcaicería of the Chinese, who has served here six
years; Clemente Hurtado de Monrreal, alcalde-mayor of the coast of this
city, who has seen six years' service here; Lorenço Lopez de Abiste,
alcalde-mayor of the island of Çubu, who has served here six years;
Captain Don Diego de Alcaraso, who was appointed by your governor
as warden of the old fort, at the death of Captain Juan Maldonado,
who used to hold it, and draws a salary of three hundred pesos; Juan
de Bustamante, who was appointed by your governor as inspector to the
Indians, and is now inspecting in the province of Ylocos; Don Gaspar
de Vera, son of your governor, who was appointed as general of the
sea; and Joan, Cantero, alcalde-mayor of Calompite, who has served
seventeen years in this land.

On the twenty-ninth of June returned the messenger sent by your
governor to the kingdom of Burney to ask the king to deliver to him
the soldier who had turned renegade, as I have said above. Although
the king made some excuses for his acts, he nevertheless refused to
deliver the renegade.

On the same day there was an unusually severe tempest of wind and
water in this city. The natives say that they never saw such a
one. The sea and the river Madre rose until they joined and reached
the fort. Much damage was done in the houses; and worse still, two
ships which were here loading a cargo for Nueva España--one belonging
to your Majesty, and the other to the mariscal Grabiel de Rivera--were
driven on the coast by the force of this tempest, and it is understood
that they cannot be repaired. Even should one of them be repaired,
it cannot make the voyage this year. In all the port not one ship
or fragata escaped, except one small boat, which was taken to send
advices to Nueva España of the condition of this land, which is
most unpropitious. By this calamity, so injurious to the community,
the people have become greatly disheartened. Moreover, as I write
this clause, we have had thus far no news of ships from Nueva España,
although this is the seventh of July. The entire support of this land
depends on the coming and going of the ships; and if they are not
here by May or the middle of June, by delaying longer they run great
risk of being lost, and with them the welfare and support of this
land. Sailing from the port of Acapulco at the beginning of March,
they would arrive here in good time and without risk from storms. As
this is of so much importance, I beseech your Majesty to be pleased to
order your viceroy of Nueva España to exercise the utmost diligence
in the early despatch of the ships which are to come to this land,
in order that they may accomplish the purpose of the voyage.

On the first of July, arrived the master-of-camp, Pedro de Chaves,
who had gone to chastise the Indians of the province of Cagayan,
who as I have said before, were at war. Although he had gone out
with sixty soldiers and more than eight hundred friendly Indians, he
did nothing whatever except to cut down their palm-trees and destroy
their crops. He says that the Indians themselves burned their villages
and went to the mountains. It is known, however, that he left that
province in a worse state of war than before, and when the Indians
see our men turn back and leave them they regain courage.

We Spaniards are very few in number, and are surrounded by enemies
on every side. If we are not relieved in time by the despatch of
reënforcements, it will be impossible to apply a remedy when it
is wanted. As I have already said, we are but few, and the troops
die very quickly. When the Indians see an opportunity to crush us,
they are not likely to let it slip. I beseech your Majesty to be
pleased to order your viceroy that, when your governor sends to ask
troops and ammunition, or other necessaries, he should send them;
and also that he should send some money, because on account of the
many extraordinary occasions for expense which every day arise, your
royal treasury is usually much embarrassed and in debt. Sometimes,
for lack of money, important things are left undone.

On Sunday, the ninth of this month, I was in the cathedral, where
were gathered all the people and the orders, as there was to be a
solemn procession and sermon. The deacon came out to sprinkle the
holy water, and went directly to the choir and sprinkled it on the
bishop and all the persons who were in the choir. It is the custom
to give it first to the Audiencia. When the deacon came back from
the choir, your president and auditors told him that if the bishop
would not cause precedence to be observed for the Audiencia, they
would go to hear service elsewhere. When the bishop learned this,
he left the church immediately, and sent orders to the preacher not
to preach; and we were left without a sermon, to the great scandal
of the people gathered there.

There is nothing else at present. Only I pray that our Lord may
preserve your Majesty many years in perfect health, and with increase
of greater kingdoms and seigniories, in His holy service. At Manila,
July 15, 1589.

The licentiate _Ayala_.




Royal Decree Regarding Commerce


The King: To Gomez Perez Dasmariñas, [19] knight of the order of
Santiago, and appointed by me governor and captain-general of the
Phelipinas Islands. As soon as Father Alonso Sanchez, a religious
of the Society of Jesus, came here, ordered and empowered by all
the estates of the islands to discuss certain matters regarding
the service of our Lord, and the welfare and preservation of the
inhabitants and natives of those islands, I ordered certain members of
my councils to come together to hear him. This they did, and a thorough
examination was made of certain memorials which that religious had
been ordered to present. [20] After they had consulted with me upon
certain points of the said memorials, I decided, with the approval
of the above-mentioned councilors to whom the matter was delegated,
upon the following instructions which are given to you. I order you
to fulfil your duties, in every respect, with the consideration,
care, and diligence which I expect from you. The father has also
entreated me, in behalf of the said city, to order that no persons
entering the ports of the said islands from without shall be made to
pay duties--whether they be Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, Siamese,
Borneans, or any other people whatsoever, especially when they bring
provisions, ammunition, and raw material for these articles. These
taxes are a grievance to the Chinese, and trade is hindered, and there
are other resultant disadvantages, as the said Father Alonso Sanchez
has informed me at length; accordingly I have held and do now hold it
best that for the present no more of the said duties be levied upon
provisions and ammunitions. Therefore you will not permit any duty
to be levied until otherwise ordered and decreed. Another advisable
measure discussed was that no Chinese or foreign ships could sell at
retail the goods which they carried to the islands, as is done now;
nor could the inhabitants buy the goods, openly or in secret, under
severe penalties. The purchase of the said goods was to be discussed
by the Council, and as many and so qualified persons as the business
demanded were to be appointed. These persons alone should buy in a
lot all the merchandise brought by the ships, and then distribute it
fairly among the citizens, Spanish, the Chinese, and the Indians,
at the same price at which it should be appraised. The matter was
discussed and examined by the members of the said Council, and it
has seemed best to send you the decision reached in this affair,
as I now do. I order you, keeping this in mind, to give the orders
which you may think acceptable to me. You will keep me informed of
your proceedings, and will not permit or allow any person to go to
the ships except the ones appointed to do so by a special order. You
will endeavor to give products of the islands in exchange for the
said merchandise, so as to avoid, if possible, the introduction of so
much coin into foreign kingdoms as has been customary. Besides the
good results which will follow from carrying out the provisions of
the preceding clause, we may expect another of no less importance;
and that is, that by enforcing the regulations, not only will you
rid yourself of the Chinese retailers, who conceal and sell their
merchandise, but there will be also avoided many other losses,
expenses, and scarcity, and the secret sins and witchcraft which
they teach. Their shops, which are necessary for the sale at retail,
could, in the course of the year, be given up to Spaniards, so that
they might remain in their possession and bring them profit. Such a
course would also bring together a larger number of citizens. You might
permit the Chinese Christians and other old inhabitants to remain,
who do not come and go, and are not retailers in the true sense of
the word; but who work as mechanics, carpenters, gardeners, farmers,
and in other labors for food production. Considering the importance
of this affair, you are warned not to permit or allow the presence of
infidels and retailers in the said islands; and to prevent their coming
together in so large numbers as to give rise to difficulties. All this
you will carry out with the care and diligence which I am confident
lies in your character and prudence, and the zeal which you will show
where my service is concerned. San Lorenzo, August 9, 1589.




Instructions to Gomez Perez Dasmarinas


The King: To Gomez Perez Dasmarinas, knight of the order of Santiago,
whom I have appointed as my governor and captain-general of the
Philipinas Islands. Upon the arrival of Father Alonso Sanchez, a
religious of the Society of Jesus, who came, by order and authorization
of all estates of the said islands, to confer about certain matters
pertaining to the service of our Lord and the welfare and preservation
of the inhabitants and natives of the islands, [21] I convened certain
members of my councils in order that they might hear him. After they
had done so, and had examined in great detail certain memorials
that the father presented, in accordance with his orders, and had
consulted with me in regard to all the points of the said memorials,
I resolved, with the advice of the aforesaid my counselors, to whom
I committed the matter, upon what will follow here, which will serve
as your instructions. I order you to observe and fulfil them to the
letter, with the consideration, care, and diligence that I expect
from your person.

2. Infinite thanks should be given our Lord, and I hereby offer
them to Him, for the great mercy that He has been pleased to show
me, in that, during the period while I, by His mercy and will,
rule as king, and through me as the instrument, those so remote
islands have been discovered; and that at present, as I have heard,
more than two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants enjoy in those
islands evangelical instruction, besides the great inclination which is
manifest to spread the knowledge of our holy Catholic faith throughout
the other islands with which all that great archipelago is sown and
inhabited for the space of more than nine hundred leguas of latitude,
and more than five hundred of longitude. This does not include the
vast kingdoms of the mainland--China, Cochina, Conchinchina, Champa,
Canvoja, Siam, Patan, Joor [Johore], and others--notwithstanding
that I wish and desire that a pathway to them be opened. In order
that this end be attained, it is necessary that for the present, and
until our Lord so dispose and direct it, the conservation of what
has been pacified and conquered, by so great labor and at so vast
expense to my exchequer, be looked after carefully. I charge you
straitly to see to this, taking note of the condition of affairs,
what is advisable for their continuous improvement and settlement,
and giving them a sound foundation, so that among so many enemies,
not only may they be preserved, but continue to increase daily.

3. First: The above-mentioned father, Alonso Sanchez, has reported
that the cathedral of those islands, located in the said city of
Manila, has no building, ornaments, or other adornments pertaining
to the service of divine worship; or income, or alms for its aid, or
in order to provide it with sacristans, verger, or other necessary
assistants; and that being, as is the case, in the gaze of so many
idolatrous enemies and Mahometans, both natives and foreigners who meet
there--especially the Chinese, who have observed this condition--it
is very annoying that they should see it served so inadequately
and covered with wood and thatch--poor, dilapidated, and without
provision. And because it is very just, and in accord with my will
and desire, that the above-mentioned church be built and served with
all possible propriety, you shall, as soon as you arrive at the said
islands, especially further the building and construction of the
said church. You shall apportion for this purpose the sum of twelve
thousand ducados, in three parts--to wit, one from my royal exchequer,
another from the encomenderos, and the third from the Indians, as is
done in Nueva España. The said twelve thousand ducados shall be spent
upon the said building within four years, spending three thousand
each year. And in order that it may be better done and be commenced
immediately, I have ordered two thousand ducados paid, in anticipation,
on the account of my third, from my royal treasury of the said Nueva
España. As you pass there, you will ask them to send this amount.

4. I have been told that there are two hospitals in the said city of
Manila--one for Spaniards, and the other for Indians--and that both
of them suffer extreme need; for to that of the Spaniards resort many
soldiers, sailors, and other poor folk, who become ill through certain
exertions in my service, and those common to that country; while that
of the Indians is sustained by themselves, by means of their fruits,
work, and tributes. All those who are treated in the latter hospital
fall sick in the same manner as the others, and in the foundation
and preservation of the settlements. Both classes die in discomfort,
through having no building in which to be protected from the ravages
of the climate, and through the lack of beds, food, medicines, nurses,
and other necessities. It would be advisable to send these supplies
from the said Nueva Spaña, together with some blankets. This is,
as you see, a work of the greatest charity, and it is especially
desirable to assist with great care in the consolation and treatment
of the sick. And besides that, you shall have diligence to examine
the hospital built there, and ascertain what care is taken of the
sick. From the first repartimientos that may become vacant in the
said island, you shall apply to the principal hospital sufficient
for an income of five thousand pesos annually; and to that of the
Indians, five hundred ducados annually, granted from the increase of
the tributes of the Indians (which shall be collected in the manner
set down in the sixth section of these instructions), so that both
may enjoy the said income as long as may be my pleasure. From these
amounts the necessary buildings shall be constructed, and other things
provided, so that both may be properly conducted. In order that this
may be commenced immediately, I have granted four hundred ducados
to the principal hospital, and two hundred to that of the Indians,
to be paid from my royal treasury of the said Nueva Spaña, as you
will see by the decree that will be given you.

5. The said Father Alonso Sanchez also reported that the need of
ministers of instruction in the said islands is so great that many
Indians die without baptism; that because of the same need, the
conquest and conversion of other islands are neglected; and that
it would be advisable to send religious from the orders established
there, with instructions to remain there and not go elsewhere. Already
permission has been granted and the needful care taken, so that
some religious may go there, and others will be provided as soon as
possible. All of them shall be notified to resolve upon staying in the
said Philipinas Islands, and not to go to any other place without the
express permission of the bishop and of yourself. Therefore I charge
you that, whenever any religious shall offer themselves to you to
leave the said islands, you shall confer with the said bishop, and
shall consider and discuss the matter; but you shall grant the said
permission only after thorough consideration.

6. Another section of the above-mentioned memorials indicates how
instruction may be provided, not only where there is none, but also
where there is some, although inadequate; that it would be advisable to
increase the tributes and clear up the appraisements of the tributes,
for they are at present in a very confused and dangerous condition,
because of many scruples and injuries connected with them; and that,
as each Indian's tribute has hitherto generally been collected in
pesos of eight reals apiece, it should reasonably be raised to the
value of ten Castilian reals to each of the said pesos--provided that
the Indian may not be forced to pay it in any designated article,
but only in money, if he have it, or shall choose to give it, or in
some other article produced by him, or in goods acquired in trade,
according to their valuation at the time of payment. Because, after
discussing this point, it is believed that each peso may be increased
by two reals to make up the ten, as is petitioned, therefore you shall
order that this increase be paid into my royal treasury, and that half
a real be used to pay the obligations of the tithes, and the other one
and one-half reals be used for the pay of the soldiers stationed in
the said islands, and for other things pertaining thereto; and that
the encomenderos be obliged to pay, from the eight reals remaining,
for the necessary instruction, and their share of the building of
the church, during the time of its construction, in accordance with
the foregoing. The said Indians shall reserve the choice to pay the
tributes in money or in products, in whichever one they wish.

7. Another section of the said memorials also petitions that in
order that this increase of tributes may be more justifiable, the
encomenderos be ordered to pay the tithes, according to the use and
custom in Mexico; for, inasmuch as the commonwealth previously had
neither church, bishop, curates, nor settled rule, the tithes have
not been paid. This is a just order, and as such you shall enforce it,
providing that the said tithes due be paid from the products of their
farms and their animals.

8. On the part of the said city of Manila, I have been petitioned to
have it granted some public property, in order that it may attend to
the affairs of peace, war, government, and other matters pertaining to
its conservation and defense, and for suits that may arise--granting it
for this purpose some Indians, or something from the duties on Chinese
merchandise, or on the storehouses or shops where they trade. After
advising with my counselors, I have determined to bestow upon the
said city for six years, for its public property, one-half of the
fines and pecuniary penalties paid into my treasury, and the incomes
from the said storehouses; with the obligation that, each three years,
the account of money thus obtained be sent, as well as a statement of
what is expended. You shall take care to procure the advancement of the
said city in this, to watch in what manner this grant is used, and to
order that the said account and statement be sent at the proper time.

9. I have also been petitioned, in the name of the said city, to
order that neither in the said city nor in any other part of the
other islands shall be paid the three per cent duty [22] imposed by
Don Gonzalo Ronquillo, as the country is very new and needy, and the
inhabitants have to assist in many other things. Although I would be
very glad to relieve them, still expenses are so heavy, that I must
aid myself by whatever is available. Therefore it will be advisable to
collect the said three per cent. You shall give orders to this effect;
and that the amount that is collected from these duties on merchandise
be placed in my treasury on a separate account, and it shall be used
for paying the soldiers stationed there; and that of the rest that
is collected this duty be discontinued for the present. [23]

10. I have also been petitioned, in the name of the said city, to order
that none of those who resort from foreign parts to the ports of the
said islands--as Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, Cianese, Burneyes, or
any others--pay duty, especially on food, ammunition, and materials
for ammunition. Because of this, much annoyance is caused--as, for
instance to the Chinese--and the steady course of trade is hindered,
and other troubles follow. After receiving detailed information from
the said Father Alonso Sanchez, I have considered and still consider
it advisable that, for the present, the collection of the said duties
on provisions and ammunition be repealed; and therefore you shall
not allow them to be levied until I order and provide otherwise.

11. I was also petitioned by the said islands to order that, inasmuch
as none of the merchandise from Sevilla to Mexico pays any duties
on the first sale, it be not paid on the merchandise sent from
those islands to the port of Acapulco, or other places. So little is
collected in said port of Acapulco, namely, twelve pesos per tonelada
of freight on the goods of the inhabitants--the duty imposed by Don
Gonçalo Ronquillo--and because likewise the proceeds of this duty are
needed to pay the said soldiers, you shall order that it be collected
for the present for the above purpose.

12. One of the things most conducive to the good government of the
state and the happiness of the members and parts composing it, is
the equitable administration of distributive justice. Accordingly, I
command that the offices at your disposal and the advantageous posts
of the country be given to men who merit them by their services and
capacity, in such manner that the offices be filled by old citizens,
who have lived in the country at least three years, and are citizens
of it; and the encomiendas to soldiers who shall have lived there in
actual military duty and service. Among them you should always give the
preference to those who are most deserving; including, with the other
circumstances of greater and better services in the country, their
length of residence there. They must not be sons, brothers, relatives,
servants, or friends of yours; for--besides that you are advised that
you are not to grant encomiendas of Indians or provide offices to
such men; and, with this end in view, a sufficient salary is given
you to enable you to help them--it is not right for men who are but
new arrivals, and have done no work, to enjoy the fruit of another's
toil. If rewards are bestowed justly, all will serve willingly in the
hope of attaining reward. Therefore it is my will that you observe
this order; and, that it may be thus inviolable, I declare that, now
and henceforth, your said sons, brothers, servants, and friends shall
be incapable of holding the said encomiendas or offices. And because
certain persons, who already hold encomiendas in the said islands,
and with these easily [can satisfy] whatever needs they may have,
are begging for further reward, you are advised not to grant them
any more until many others--who, as I have been informed have been
there for so long a time and are deserving, and have toiled in the
conquest and maintenance of the country, to a much greater extent
than those who are petitioning anew; but who have not been rewarded,
and therefore are poor, irritated, and querulous--shall be provided
and rewarded with encomiendas and other posts and means of gain. You
shall take especial care to reward those whose names follow:

13. Diego Ronquillo, former governor and captain-general of those
islands, who, I am told, exercised the said offices excellently and
to the complete satisfaction of the country.

Don Rodrigo Ronquillo de Peñalosa, son of the governor Don Gonçalo
Ronquillo.

Captain Antonio Rodriguez Chacon.

Captain Agustin de Arceo.

Captain Don Gonçalo Vallesteras Saavedra.

Captain Diego del Castillo.

Captain Don Juan Ronquillo del Castillo.

Captain Caravallo.

Captain Rodrigo Alvarez.

Captain Gomez de Machuca.

Hernando Muñoz de Poyatos, regidor of Manila.

Ensign Juan de Medrano.

Miguel Rodriguez.

Ensign Antonio Guerrero.

Charavia, an old and good soldier.

Gaspar Ruiz de Morales.

Aguilar, likewise an excellent soldier.

Villalobos.

Bartholome Rodriguez.

Sargeant Cantero.

Gaspar de Ysla.

Ensign Christoval de Azcueta.

Geronimo de Cuellar.

Luis Nuñez Hernandez.

[14]. Others, who are said not to have been there so long, but who
are men of worth and account, are as follows:

Don Francisco de Porras y Guevara.

Joan de Alcega.

Don Luis de Velasco.

Don Fernando de Villafañe.

Christoval Gueral.

Joan Verdugo, who has lost his right arm in my service.

Joan Diaz Guerrero.

Blas Garcia.

Joan de Cuellar.

Gaspar de Mena.

Diego de Çarate, who is returning with you, and who, I have been
told, has usually been a commander, and has put down a rebellion,
and has served faithfully.

15. You shall provide for and reward all of the above according to age,
merits, and individual qualifications; and shall give them preference
over all others who do not possess the above qualifications, in the
distribution of encomiendas, posts of government and war, and other
means for the advancement of the country.

16. I charge and order you to observe the same plan in all that
pertains to the commissions and sources of profit, on land or on
sea--especially in the choice of masters and officers of vessels. For
besides observing, in regard to them, that they must have rendered
service and deserve the appointment, the others will be encouraged,
it will attract hither those who have gone away, and the country will
be settled and increased.

17. I have been petitioned also, in behalf of the said city, that
all those who have worked, or have held appointments for wages or
pay, in the said islands be paid their wages there--as for instance,
sailors, carpenters, smiths, and all others who live there, and they
must live there permanently; and that the money for this purpose be
paid from the said royal treasury of Mexico--in order that the country
may become more thickly settled, and other good results follow. In
regard to this, since there will be a treasury there, from which it
may be paid, you shall be careful to order that those who labor be
reimbursed fully for their services; and, if there is insufficient
money to meet the obligations, you and my royal officials shall advise
my officials of the said Nueva España thereof, where an order will be
given to furnish that portion which appears, by sufficient testimony
and report, to be needful.

18. In place of the third office of my royal treasury--namely, the
office of factor, which I ordered to be suppressed--they petition for
a ship-purveyor, in order that the vessels may leave better equipped
and more promptly; for the other two officials are so busy that they
cannot attend to it. As it would be advisable to place this in charge
of the factor whom I am having appointed, you shall have care to see
that he attends to it, as far as may be necessary, so that there may
be no grievance or lack in this matter.

19. In regard to the trade of the said islands, on which their growth
likewise depends, the said Father Alonso Sanchez relates that the
large consignments of money sent there by wealthy people of Mexico,
who do not quit their homes, is one of the things which has ruined
the country; for great injuries result from it. The first is that
all Chinese goods are bought by wholesale and are becoming dearer,
so that the poor and common people of the said islands cannot buy
them, or must buy them at extremely high rates. The second is that,
as the said consignments are many and large, and the vessels few in
number--being at times, and in fact generally, not more than one; and,
by this one being quite laden and filled with goods for Mexicans,
there is no space left for the citizens and common people to embark
their goods. They have petitioned me that, as a remedy for the above
wrongs, I forbid the sending of consignments of money from Mexico,
or the maintenance of agents or companies in the said islands for any
person of Nueva España; that only the inhabitants of the islands be
allowed to buy and export domestic and foreign goods to the said Nueva
España; and that, if anyone else wishes to trade and traffic, it must
be on consideration of his becoming a citizen and residing there for
at least ten years, and of not trading with the property of another,
under penalty of its confiscation, besides that of his other personal
effects. Since, by this method, some goods would still be sent to
Mexico, the money now taken by the Chinese would not be withdrawn from
the country, and goods would be bought more cheaply and in exchange for
products of the islands. Now, because I am desirous of the advancement
of the said islands, and the best interests of their inhabitants,
I have therefore granted them by one of my decrees [24] that, for
the space of six years, only the said inhabitants may trade in China
and in the said Nueva España. You shall observe the said decree, and
shall not allow anything to be done in any wise contrary to its tenor.

20. The question was also discussed whether it would not be better
to prohibit Chinese or other foreign vessels from selling at retail
the merchandise that they bring to the said islands (as is done
now), and the inhabitants of the country from buying those goods,
in public or private, under heavy penalties; and to provide that,
for the purchase of the said merchandise in bulk, as many and as
capable persons as the matter requires be there deputed and appointed,
so that they, and they alone, may buy in mass all the goods brought
in the vessels, and afterward divide them among the Spanish, Chinese,
and Indian inhabitants, with just and fair distribution, at the same
prices which they paid for them. After discussion and conference by
the members of the said assembly, it was decided to refer the entire
matter to you, as I hereby do. I order you, since you will have the
matter in hand, to ordain therein what you deem best. You shall advise
me of what you do, and shall not permit or allow any person to go
to the vessels except those assigned for that purpose, in the order
that shall be prescribed. You shall see that their said merchandise
is exchanged for other products of the islands, so that the taking
of so much coin as is now carried to foreign kingdoms may be avoided.

21. In addition to the good effects, that, it is said, will result
from the execution of what is ordered in the above section, it is
presupposed that another, no less important, will follow--namely,
that, through the operations of the aforesaid, the Chinese hucksters
who lurk there and hawk their goods, will not stay there. Moreover,
other very heavy expenses and increase in prices, and the secret
sins and sorceries which they teach, would be avoided; while their
shops, which are necessary for retail trade, in the course of the
year could be given to Spaniards, so that the profits could remain
among the Spaniards, and there would be an opportunity for more
persons to acquire citizenship. The Chinese Christians and other old
citizens who are not transients, or who are not expressly hucksters,
but workmen--such as mechanics, carpenters, gardeners, farmers,
or those engaged in other food trades--might be permitted to remain
there. Inasmuch as this is a matter of importance, you are advised not
to permit or allow any infidel hucksters in the said islands; or so
many to become residents there that they may give rise to any trouble.

22. Should you consider it advisable to permit and allow the
inhabitants of the said islands to go to Japon, Macan, or other
kingdoms, or settlements, whether of Portuguese or heathen, in order
that those countries may admit our commerce, you may do so--first
taking especial care that no trouble arises therefrom, and that it
is attended with no danger.

23. You shall cause the fifty settlers and fifty farmers whom you are
to take with you to assemble, and go with you, according to the order
contained in my decree that treats of this. In order to incline them to
make the voyage, you shall give them the rewards and privileges which I
have granted to them, which you shall maintain to the utmost. You shall
take especial care that they attend to their settlement and farming;
and that for the space of fifteen years, they and the Indians who aid
and accompany them in their farming are not to be compelled to go to
war, or to engage in any other personal service, such as manning the
vessels, building, or any other services which may hinder or fatigue
them. And since it is fair that, if these rewards and accommodations
are given them, they, on their part, engage only in the work for which
they go; and since peaceful men who are not forced from their trade
and mode of living, apply themselves better, you shall see to it that
those who enlist and are taken be married farmers, of humble estate
and quiet disposition. From each one of them you shall take accredited
bonds, to the amount that seems advisable to you, that for the period
of six years they will not change to any other occupation or means of
gain, or do anything else beyond the thing for which they enlisted,
under the penalties which you may impose, and which you shall inflict.

24. You shall see that the chiefs and timagua Indians have just
contracts and shares with the farmers, so that they may conceive
a liking for and learn farming as practiced here; and so that the
Spaniards may have those who can supply them with people and other
necessities. You shall see that these Indians are intelligent and know
how to keep their contracts with the farmers, especially if they are
peaceful, as above stated.

25. The said islands, as I am told, need stallions, mares, cows,
and other domestic animals. In order that they may be bred there
in numbers, I am writing to the viceroy of Nueva España to send
to the said islands twelve mares, two stallions, twenty-four cows,
and two bulls. You shall ask him for these as you pass there, and
shall take them with you in your vessels as you go upon your voyage;
and whatever you think needful for the animals can be brought from
China and Japon. You shall order those farmers who are about to go
to the said islands, and the chiefs, to tame and breed buffaloes,
so that with all these animals there may be a sufficiency to carry
on the farming, and for other needful services.

26.  It was also petitioned in behalf of the said islands that,
now and henceforth, the encomiendas be given under the obligation
and condition that the encomendero shall work a patch of ground,
and assist the farmers and Indians, so that they also may work and
cultivate the soil. You shall strive to begin this, and shall give
lands and homesteads, farms and horses, for breeding and farming,
to the settlers and farmers, without any prejudice to the Indians.

27.  Upon your arrival at the said islands, you shall find out how
and where, and with what endowment, a convent of secluded girls may
be established, so that both those who go from here, and those born
there may stay in it, and live respectably and well instructed, and
go out therefrom to be married and bear children. By this method
and by the naturalization of persons in the land, its population
will increase continually. You shall endeavor to find some good plan
or method for doing this without encroaching on my royal treasury,
or so that it may be relieved as much as possible. You shall advise
me of it on the first opportunity, as well as of the method that can
be employed in endowing the said poor girls; and how and from what
source other smaller dowries may be established, in order that the
Indian women may marry poor Spanish soldiers and sailors.

28.  In regard to what is petitioned by the said islands about
appointing citizens of the islands to the posts therein, and not
selling the offices, as former governors have tried to do, you shall
look to it carefully, and favor and reward the citizens.

29. Further, it was proposed also that, as far as the natural fitness
of the land and the settlements of the Indians permitted, it would be
advisable to order that encomiendas of not less than eight hundred
or one thousand Indians be granted, for there are tithes for the
instruction, and the other expenses of maintenance, which small
encomiendas cannot bear; and that those who have but few Indians
be allowed to transfer or sell them at their pleasure to other and
neighboring encomenderos, so that, by this union, the encomiendas may
be larger, and may be able to meet the above expenses. Inasmuch as
all matters pertaining to the sale of encomiendas have been enacted
with great care, and it is not fitting to violate these enactments,
you shall not permit this request. But you shall see to it carefully
that the repartimientos have enough for instruction, and for the
maintenance of the encomenderos. You shall endeavor to establish the
Indians in settlements, which shall have adequate instruction. This
you shall attend to with the most rigorous care and attention.

30. Among the things most wasteful of property, and which
embarrass, and may cause harm in, a country so new, because of
the animosity and quarrels resulting therefrom, are the suits and
controversies engendered among the citizens, and among the Indians
themselves. Although it is my will that complete justice be observed
in each case, I charge you that, in so far as may be possible, and
can be rightly done, you settle the differences and suits which
arise, without having recourse to the technicalities of the law
or proceeding by the ordinary methods, or condemning to pecuniary
fines; but observing throughout the provisions of the decrees that
shall be given you. And in order that all may enjoy the blessings
which must ensue from so mild a government, and may live in ease and
contentment, and without any perturbation in the great undertakings
that, God helping, will be accomplished, I am writing in like tenor
to the bishop of the said islands in regard to what touches their
ecclesiastical service. You shall give him my letter, which shall be
delivered to you, and you shall charge him straitly in my name.

31. I have been informed that there has been and is poor system, and
worse observance and fulfilment of the ordinances, in the collection of
the tributes of the disaffected or never-pacified encomiendas; and that
it would be advisable to command that the ordinances be kept, and that,
since such encomiendas ought not to be abandoned, at least the entire
tributes should not be collected, but only a small portion of them, as
a token of recognition. For since the Indians of the said encomiendas
receive no spiritual or temporal benefit from their encomenderos, it
is not right that they pay the tributes--especially as soldiers are
sent annually to make the collection. This latter renders impossible
the pacification of the country; and hence a large portion of the said
islands are in revolt, and we must subdue Burney, Maluco, Mindanao,
and other neighboring islands and mainlands. This matter demands much
reform as you may plan. Therefore I charge you to ordain for this
purpose what you may deem best, after consulting with the bishop;
and that you carry your resolution into prompt and rigorous execution,
in order that so great and injurious annoyances may cease.

32. As I have been informed, there is but little instruction in the
said islands, and much difficulty in providing it, which is greatly
increased by the natural conditions of the country, since it all
consists of islands. Most of them, too, are so small that they do
not have a population of more than three to five hundred Indians,
and some even of less than one or two hundred. It is also prevented
by the long and dangerous navigation, the heat, the rains, and the
poor roads of the country. It is not right that even all of these,
or the many other greater hindrances and difficulties should turn
aside the accomplishment of what is so important. Therefore I order
and charge you straitly that, immediately upon your arrival in the
said islands, you shall note very particularly how this instruction
can be furnished. After ascertaining the opinion of the bishop, with
whom you shall meet and whom you shall charge, in my name, to aid in
this matter with his person, as I expect from him--since, in truth,
this matter is one for him to procure and bring about, by reason of
his office--you shall enact what you consider advisable, so that all
parts of the islands may have sufficient instruction. This shall be
done with kind and gentle methods, in accordance with the will of the
chiefs; and all the Indians who are dispersed shall be established
in settlements, in order that account of them can be taken. You shall
have the greatest care possible in procuring the accomplishment of what
is ordained and enacted, since without that all the work will be lost.

33. Since I desire the welfare and conservation of the said Indians,
and their protection and defense, and as I think that the said bishop
can procure this better than anyone else, I am writing to him, and
charging him with their protection. I am quite sure that he will be
very glad to undertake this, inasmuch as it pertains to the service of
our Lord and the relief of his conscience. And in order that everything
may be done better and more smoothly, you shall maintain the best of
relations throughout with the said bishop; and on your part, you shall
have the greatest care to protect the said Indians and to aid them.

34. I have been informed that, because the soldiers who are stationed
in the said islands receive no pay, nor have any other remuneration,
they obey orders very unwillingly, and are discontented, since
they endure the greatest poverty and affliction; that they are all
spiritless, sick, necessitous, and compelled to become servants. Many
die from their discontent, hunger, lack of comfort, and less provision
for their sicknesses; and others escape by claiming to be married,
sick, or bound to religion. As a consequence, the country has fallen
into disrepute, and men of the requisite valor and quality do not
go there, but only a very few poor, unarmed, and worthless men. If
any of these do have weapons, they pawn or sell them for clothes and
food. Their needs constrain them to commit injuries upon the natives,
so that the latter are irritated. It is said that not only is there no
increase in what has been conquered, but that even that pacification
is becoming more doubtful each day; that domestic and neighboring
enemies are being aroused; and that all of this would be remedied by
giving pay to the said soldiers, who should be regularly and promptly
paid. Inasmuch as it is my will that this be done, it was decided,
after having considered how many soldiers it is necessary and advisable
to maintain usually in the said islands, that there be four hundred
soldiers; and that each one receive a monthly wage of six pesos,
the captains thirty-five, the ensigns twenty, the sergeants ten,
and the corporals seven. Also that the sum of one thousand pesos
additional pay be distributed annually and proportionally among all
of the companies, each person not to receive more than ten pesos each
year; and that this additional pay be given according to the order
and manner set forth in the decree that will be handed you. You shall
order that the said soldiers be regularly paid, and see that they are
satisfied, armed, and well disciplined; that the said number of four
hundred soldiers be not lessened; and that they be divided into what
companies you deem fitting. When you shall appoint the said captains,
officers, or soldiers to any encomienda or other post, you shall not
permit them to draw their pay any longer; and while they receive pay
they cannot trade or traffic, for their solicitude in that pursuit
necessarily occupies their minds and distracts them from their proper
object and the practice of war. For the same reason, likewise, you
shall not grant the said pay to any soldier who acts as servant to
another person, whoever he may be. Whenever any repartimientos of
Indians become vacant in the said islands, you shall apportion some
of the Indians to my crown, as an aid toward the said pay.

35. In respect to the said captains, officers, and soldiers, you shall
observe, and cause to be observed, their privilege of exemption from
arrest for debt contracted while they were in the service; or the
seizure of their weapons, horses, or other things needful and proper
to military service, in satisfaction therefor.

36. Whenever you shall send any captain with men on any commission
or business that arises, you shall order him also to maintain his
privileges, in whatever pertains to the usual exercise of the power
and authority requisite to command, direct, and punish his inferiors;
as well as all the other things peculiar to the service, and which
are conceded to and exercised by officers.

37. It is my will that you have a body-guard of twelve halberdiers,
who shall be paid the same sum as the soldiers. The said halberdiers
shall have a leader or captain, who shall receive pay of fifteen
pesos monthly. Although their principal service shall be to act as a
body-guard, and this is determined and ordained by that which pertains
to the authority and dignity of your position, you shall take note
that they also must go to war upon any occasion that arises.

38. Inasmuch as I have been informed that many of the soldiers,
who are sent to the said islands from Nueva España, are mere lads,
mestizos, and a few Indians, and unarmed; and that a portion of them
are pages and servants of the captains or other persons, who under the
title and name of soldier draw their pay but neither they nor their
masters are soldiers: you shall allow none of them to be enrolled
as soldiers unless they are more than fifteen years old; and accept
no page or servant of any person, while he serves as such, as above
stated. You shall receive only those mestizos who are worthy, but
shall not open a gateway for this in general. I charge and recommend
you to pay especial attention to this.

39. Immediately upon your arrival at the said islands, you shall
give orders to enclose the city of Manila with stone, along that
portion where it is necessary and advisable, and on the other sides
by water. You shall construct a fort in the place assigned and deemed
best there. You shall erect a tower at the junction and point made
by the river and sea. All this shall be very thoroughly done, and
with most careful planning and consideration; and shall be done at
the least possible expense to my treasury--since, as you know, the
buildings can be constructed there with great ease and cheapness.

40. You shall assign what garrison you judge advisable to the said
fort and tower, so that the country may be defended, and that they
may check the designs and hopes of the enemy, and the fear of revolts
and risings.

41. Although you ought to live in great vigilance and the continual
caution demanded for the conservation of a country so new, distant,
and surrounded by enemies, you must beware chiefly of five classes of
them. First, of the natives of the land, who are numerous, and but
partially settled and established in the faith. Second, of four or
five thousand Chinese Indians who live there, and go back and forth in
their tradings. Third, of the Japanese who usually go thither. Fourth,
of the natives of Maluco and Borney, who are aroused, and already
display themselves boldly and openly. Fifth and chiefly, of the
Lutheran English pirates who infest those coasts. In order to check
their incursions, and present a superior force and defense to them all,
you shall construct another fort in Yllocos or Cagayan, to oppose the
Japanese and Chinese robbers; a second in Cebu, to oppose the Borneans
and Malucos; a third in Panpanga, to oppose the Çambales. All shall be
located in places where they may be effectual, and shall be carefully
planned and substantially built by good engineers. The cost will be
very little, because of the great abundance of materials, and because
almost all of the Indians are workmen. You are to see that each fort
has an adequate and desirable garrison.

42. Besides these forts and presidios, it is presupposed that a
moderate-sized fleet of a few galleys or fragatas would be necessary,
to cruise along the coasts in order to protect them, and to prevent
the thefts and injuries wont to be committed along them by the
Japanese, especially in the districts of Cagayan and Ylocos. They
seize the Chinese vessels that bring food and merchandise to the said
islands, whereby great loss is suffered, and commerce and plenty
checked. This fleet would also serve to prevent the Chinese, when
they are returning to their own country, from going among the said
islands and committing depredations on the natives of them, and as a
countercheck to other Chinese or Bornean pirates, as well as against
all other undertakings, and troubles with foreigners. This appears
advisable to me, and desirable. Therefore, as soon as you shall arrive
at the said island, you shall construct six or eight galleys. You
shall note what Doctor Sande, my former governor of those islands,
and Father Alonso Sanchez say--namely, that it will cost but from
one hundred and fifty ducados upward; and that there are, moreover,
the necessary accommodations. You shall order these vessels to be
well equipped, strengthened, and provisioned, so that they may be
effectual. You shall give me an itemized account of the cost of the
said galleys and facilities for building them.

43. It is advisable to set about the construction of the said forts
and galleys as quickly as possible, in order to avoid the troubles
and harm that might ensue if the Spaniards, upon the occasion of any
danger from enemies, were compelled to retire inland among the Indians,
who are all irritated and offended because of the ill-treatment that
they have received; and I charge you straitly with this.

44. Upon your arrival at those islands, and when the situation
is actually before you, you shall investigate the new method and
circumstances with which the new entrances and pacifications are and
can be justifiably made, as well as the few soldiers, slight cost,
and the great ease and profit with which they can be made, because
of the country being divided into many islands, and there being many
petty rulers. These fall out among themselves on slight occasion,
and make treaties with the Spaniards, and hence are kept in order
with but little assistance. Since the petition made there in regard
to the pay and the number of soldiers has been granted--and you are
to maintain the soldiers in good discipline, and keep them quiet, and
punctually paid--you shall make the said entrances and pacifications
with great circumspection and just cause, in which you shall observe
the rules of the instructions, which shall be furnished to you,
regarding new discoveries.

45. It is said that there is great need of such pacification in the
said islands, especially in the very districts where the Spaniards
live and travel, for all of the natives are in revolt and unsubdued,
because of the lack of soldiers, and of the injuries and annoyances
inflicted upon the natives by what soldiers are there. Moreover,
as we are informed from there, many provinces of the island of Luçon
either have never been subdued, or, if subdued, have revolted--as,
for instance, those of Cagayan, Pangasinan, Payasondan, Çambales,
Balente, and others, which are situated among the pacified provinces
quite near and round about Manila; all the provinces, therefore,
are in confusion and disorder. Upon your arrival at the said islands,
you shall ordain in this whatever is advisable. You shall proceed in
this as shall seem expedient, commencing as shall be right, and be
attentive to the remedy for these evils, with very special care and
assistance, since evil may happen to what is distant, if one's own
house is left in suspicion and unsubdued. Besides there is the great
obligation to endeavor to instruct the many people converted already,
who are under my royal protection. These, because of their lack of
the requisite peace and quiet, live in great hardship and danger;
for those who are in revolt and unpacified harass them daily, kill and
assault them, and burn their crops. Because of this, and because they
also kill many Spaniards, not only is there no increase in what has
been gained, but each day that is becoming less. Everything demands
and requires so prompt a remedy, which is thus committed to you.

46. Beyond and beside the said provinces which are here and there
disaffected among the Spaniards and the Indians already converted, are
others, which although not so near, owing to their remoteness and the
nature of their inhabitants, still cannot be called new discoveries,
because they have been visited and known already. These are Babuyanes,
the island of Hermosa, the island of Cavallos ["horses"], Lequios,
the island of Ayncio, Javas, Burney, Paca, Guancalanyanes, Mindanao,
Siao [Siam], Maluco, and many others. Because it has been reported
that they are falling into a worse condition daily, and having been
advised that their welfare and the safety of the Spaniards demand
their pacification, and that delay might render it difficult, you shall
ascertain the manner and method with which the said pacification and
subjection can be best and most quickly brought about, and you shall
execute it, as seems best to you.

47. Since it seems advisable that you, from whom I expect so much,
should have authority and power to make all the said entrances and
pacifications at the cost of my royal estate, in respect to which if
you were constrained to await a reply from here, in a land so distant,
important occasions and opportunities might be lost, I have resolved
to give you authorization for this. Accordingly I grant it to you,
and order the officials of my royal estate of the said islands that,
in all matters under your control, they shall honor and pay all the
orders that you present to them for the said purpose. But you shall
observe that you are to use the said authority only in the most
important matters which shall arise, after consulting about matters
of law with the ecclesiastics and the lawyers, and those of action
with the captains and men of experience and conscience, and taking
account of all other necessary conditions, so that the expense may
be no greater than can be avoided, and profitable.

48. In order that you may accomplish them better and avoid expense, I
authorize you to covenant and bargain with captains, encomenderos, and
any others, in respect to the said entrances and pacifications, they
to make them wholly or partly at their own cost, as seems advisable to
you; and to give them title, for a limited time, as governors of the
islands or provinces that they explore or pacify, and as captains and
masters-of-camp, providing you do not give them title as adelantado
or mariscal. You shall advise me of it, when anyone undertakes this,
reporting the services, capacity, and merits of such person. The said
covenant and agreement which you shall make may be kept in force until
I approve them, because time will be saved thus--but with the condition
of sending them to me, so that I may confirm them. You shall bind the
parties to the agreement, upon the arrival of the said confirmations,
to some brief period, such as you may assign for it.

49. I have been told that, although a few of the encomenderos of
the said islands, who fear God and their consciences, are trying to
establish ministers of religious instruction in their encomiendas,
others are not doing this, and refuse to do it as they are obliged,
and as is advisable, notwithstanding that there are plenty of the
said ministers; that there are encomiendas which have been paying
tribute peacefully for fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five years, without
the Indians of them ever having seen a minister or heard a word
of Christian instruction; and that also many other encomiendas pay
tribute by pure force of soldiers and arquebuses, who rebel and revolt
because of the oppression and severity with which they are treated,
without knowing the reason why they should pay it, since they have no
instruction. Since, besides the obligation to procure the welfare of
those souls, their conversion, instruction, and teaching, which should
be the chief constraining force; and since even for temporal affairs,
for the peace and tranquillity of the country, so that those pacified
should not revolt, and so that those in revolt should be subdued, the
best method is that of instruction--for which the common treatment,
mildness, upright life, and counsels of the religious and ministers
of the gospel incline and regulate their minds: therefore I charge you
that, after consulting with the bishop you shall, in my name, provide
what is advisable in this, so that the necessary instruction may be
furnished, that my conscience, and his, and your own may be relieved.

50. I have also been informed that, in collecting the tributes from the
Indians, there has been in the past, and is at present, great disorder,
because the former governors of the said islands have done things very
confusedly and haphazardly.  Because the tribute of each Indian is
of the value of eight reals, paid in what the Indian might possess,
some persons take advantage of certain words of the said assessments,
and of the articles in which tributes are designated--such as cotton
cloth, rice, and other products of the country--to cause the said
lawlessness. This disorder has consisted in each one collecting
whatever he wished, to the great offense and injury of the said
Indians; for when gold is abundant, their encomenderos demand coin
from the Indians; and when coin is abundant and gold scarce, they
demand gold, although the said Indians have to search for and buy
it. In short, they always demand their tributes in those things which
are scarce, by reason of which, for the tribute worth eight reals,
some collect fifteen, and others twenty, twenty-five, thirty, and
more, according to the value of those things that are demanded. They
cause the Indians to seek them and bring them from other parts, to
their great vexation and affliction. It is advisable to check this
lawlessness and excess. Therefore I charge you to ordain that, in
the payment of the said tributes, the order referred to in section
six of these instructions shall be observed. That section treats
of the Indians being allowed to pay their tributes in coin, gold,
or products, as they may choose.

51. Another section of the said memorial also pointed out that,
although certain Spaniards of tender conscience have freed their
slaves, native to the said islands, in fulfilment of the provision
of my decrees, many others have retained them, and do not allow
them to have houses of their own, or to live on their own land under
the ordinary instruction. It is advisable to remedy this also; and
I therefore commit it to you, and order you that, immediately upon
your arrival at the said islands, you shall set at liberty all those
Indians held as slaves by the Spaniards.

52. I am informed that the said Indians have suffered many grievances
and burdens from all the ministers of justice, because the latter
have incited many suits, not only of cases after the country was
discovered, but of others that had happened in its pagan days,
among both the living and their forefathers, and both civil and
criminal cases. These are not summary, but have all the terms,
demands, preliminary hearings, and reviews, which can be found in any
chancilleria of these kingdoms. In these the Indians have wasted and
continue to waste their possessions. Although in section twenty-nine
of these instructions, it treats of what you and the bishop have to do
or provide as a remedy for these vexations of suits by Spaniards and
Indians, once more I charge you and recommend you to strive to have
the suits finished and decided promptly and summarily. You must take
note that this will be one of the matters in which I shall consider
myself most faithfully and fully served by you.

53. In regard to the confusion existing, past and present, in the
religious leaving the said islands for the mainland of China and other
places, without permission of the governor or bishop--asserting that,
through their all-sufficient power, those who hinder them shall be
excommunicated--the advisable course has also been pointed out in time
past--namely, that the religious should go there with the resolution
to settle in the said Philipinas Islands, and not go elsewhere without
your permission and that of the said bishop. This must be construed
in respect to the religious who shall have been assigned to make a
settlement and to live there, and not with those who have license
from me to pass farther and to go to other regions; for when this is
given or permitted to them, it is after much consideration.

54. It has been said that, for the remedy of past confusion and
wrongs, which have resulted from people going from the said islands
to China and other districts without order or permission, it would be
advisable to ordain, under severe penalties, that no secular Spaniard
may leave them for any place or on any business, or supply a fragata,
provisions, or any other assistance to any of the said religious,
without my special order, or your permission and that of the said
bishop. Inasmuch as this fits in with the provision of the above
section, the same provision there is to be noted by you, so that
likewise you may know what pertains to this, and doing that you shall
understand it thoroughly.

You shall attend to all of the above with the care and close attention
that I expect from your character and prudence, and from your earnest
zeal in affairs touching my service. San Lorenço, August nine, one
thousand five hundred and eighty-nine.

_I The King_

By order of the king, our sovereign:

_Juan de Ybarra_

Countersigned by the council.




Customs of the Tagalogs

(_Two Relations by Juan de Plasencia, O.S.F._)


After receiving your Lordship's letter, I wished to reply immediately;
but I postponed my answer in order that I might first thoroughly
inform myself in regard to your request, and to avoid discussing
the conflicting reports of the Indians, who are wont to tell what
suits their purpose. Therefore, to this end, I collected Indians from
different districts--old men, and those of most capacity, all known
to me; and from them I have obtained the simple truth, after weeding
out much foolishness, in regard to their government, administration
of justice, inheritances, slaves, and dowries. [25] It is as follows:

_Customs of the Tagalogs_

This people always had chiefs, called by them _datos_, who governed
them and were captains in their wars, and whom they obeyed and
reverenced. The subject who committed any offense against them,
or spoke but a word to their wives and children, was severely punished.

These chiefs ruled over but few people; sometimes as many as
a hundred houses, sometimes even less than thirty. This tribal
gathering is called in Tagalo a _barangay_. It was inferred that the
reason for giving themselves this name arose from the fact (as they
are classed, by their language, among the Malay nations) that when
they came to this land, the head of the barangay, which is a boat,
thus called--as is discussed at length in the first chapter of the
first ten chapters--became a _dato_. And so, even at the present day,
it is ascertained that this barangay in its origin was a family of
parents and children, relations and slaves. There were many of these
barangays in each town, or, at least, on account of wars, they did
not settle far from one another. They were not, however, subject to
one another, except in friendship and relationship. The chiefs, in
their various wars, helped one another with their respective barangays.

In addition to the chiefs, who corresponded to our knights, there
were three castes: nobles, commoners, and slaves. The nobles were the
free-born whom they call _maharlica_. They did not pay tax or tribute
to the dato, but must accompany him in war, at their own expense. The
chief offered them beforehand a feast, and afterward they divided
the spoils. Moreover, when the dato went upon the water those whom he
summoned rowed for him. If he built a house, they helped him, and had
to be fed for it. The same was true when the whole barangay went to
clear up his lands for tillage. The lands which they inhabited were
divided among the whole barangay, especially the irrigated portion,
and thus each one knew his own. No one belonging to another barangay
would cultivate them unless after purchase or inheritance. The lands
on the _tingues_, or mountain-ridges, are not divided, but owned in
common by the barangay. Consequently, at the time of the rice harvest,
any individual of any particular barangay, although he may have come
from some other village, if he commences to clear any land may sow it,
and no one can compel him to abandon it. There are some villages (as,
for example, Pila de la Laguna) in which these nobles, or maharlicas,
paid annually to the dato a hundred gantas of rice. The reason of this
was that, at the time of their settlement there, another chief occupied
the lands, which the new chief, upon his arrival, bought with his own
gold; and therefore the members of his barangay paid him for the arable
land, and he divided it, among those whom he saw fit to reward. But
now, since the advent of the Spaniards, it is not so divided.

The chiefs in some villages had also fisheries, with established
limits, and sections of the rivers for markets. At these no one could
fish, or trade in the markets, without paying for the privilege,
unless he belonged to the chief's barangay or village.

The commoners are called _aliping namamahay_. They are married, and
serve their master, whether he be a dato or not, with half of their
cultivated lands, as was agreed upon in the beginning. They accompanied
him whenever he went beyond the island, and rowed for him. They live
in their own houses, and are lords of their property and gold. Their
children inherit it, and enjoy their property and lands. The children,
then, enjoy the rank of their fathers, and they cannot be made slaves
(_sa guiguilir_) nor can either parents or children be sold. If they
should fall by inheritance into the hands of a son of their master who
was going to dwell in another village, they could not be taken from
their own village and carried with him; but they would remain in their
native village, doing service there and cultivating the sowed lands.

The slaves are called _aliping sa guiguilir_. They serve their master
in his house and on his cultivated lands, and may be sold. The master
grants them, should he see fit, and providing that he has profited
through their industry, a portion of their harvests, so that they
may work faithfully. For these reasons, servants who are born in the
house of their master are rarely, if ever, sold. That is the lot of
captives in war, and of those brought up in the harvest fields.

Those to whom a debt was owed transferred the debt to another, thereby
themselves making a profit, and reducing the wretched debtors to a
slavery which was not their natural lot. If any person among those
who were made slaves (_sa guiguilir_)--through war, by the trade of
goldsmith, or otherwise--happened to possess any gold beyond the sum
that he had to give his master, he ransomed himself, becoming thus
a _namamahay_, or what we call a commoner. The price of this ransom
was never less than five taels, and from that upwards; and if he gave
ten or more taels, as they might agree, he became wholly free. An
amusing ceremony accompanied this custom. After having divided all
the trinkets which the slave possessed, if he maintained a house of
his own, they divided even the pots and jars, and if an odd one of
these remained, they broke it; and if a piece of cloth were left,
they parted it in the middle.

The difference between the _aliping namamahay_ and the _aliping sa
guiguilir_, should be noted; for, by a confusion of the two terms,
many have been classed as slaves who really are not. The Indians seeing
that the alcaldes-mayor do not understand this, have adopted the custom
of taking away the children of the _aliping namamahay_, making use
of them as they would of the _aliping sa guiguilir_, as servants in
their households, which is illegal, and if the _aliping namamahay_
should appeal to justice, it is proved that he is an _aliping_ as
well as his father and mother before him and no reservation is made
as to whether he is _aliping namamahay_ or _atiping sa guiguilir_. He
is at once considered an _alipin_, without further declaration. In
this way he becomes a _sa guiguilir_, and is even sold. Consequently,
the alcaldes-mayor should be instructed to ascertain, when anyone
asks for his _alipin_, to which class he belongs, and to have the
answer put in the document that they give him.

In these three classes, those who are _maharlicas_ on both the father's
and mother's side continue to be so forever; and if it happens that
they should become slaves, it is through marriage, as I shall soon
explain. If these maharlicas had children among their slaves, the
children and their mothers became free; if one of them had children
by the slave-woman of another, she was compelled, when pregnant, to
give her master half of a gold tael, because of her risk of death,
and for her inability to labor during the pregnancy. In such a case
half of the child was free--namely, the half belonging to the father,
who supplied the child with food. If he did not do this, he showed
that he did not recognize him as his child, in which case the latter
was wholly a slave. If a free woman had children by a slave, they
were all free, provided he were not her husband.

If two persons married, of whom one was a _maharlica_ and the other
a slave, whether _namamahay_ or _sa guiguilir_, the children were
divided: the first, whether male or female, belonged to the father,
as did the third and fifth; the second, the fourth, and the sixth
fell to the mother, and so on. In this manner, if the father were
free, all those who belonged to him were free; if he were a slave,
all those who belonged to him were slaves; and the same applied to
the mother. If there should not be more than one child he was half
free and half slave. The only question here concerned the division,
whether the child were male or female. Those who became slaves fell
under the category of servitude which was their parent's, either
namamahay or sa guiguilir. If there were an odd number of children,
the odd one was half free and half slave. I have not been able to
ascertain with any certainty when or at what age the division of
children was made, for each one suited himself in this respect. Of
these two kinds of slaves the sa guiguilir could be sold, but not the
namamahay and their children, nor could they be transferred. However,
they could be transferred from the barangay by inheritance, provided
they remained in the same village.

The maharlicas could not, after marriage, move from one village to
another, or from one barangay to another, without paying a certain
fine in gold, as arranged among them. This fine was larger or smaller
according to the inclination of the different villages, running from
one to three taels and a banquet to the entire barangay. Failure
to pay the fine might result in a war between the barangay which
the person left and the one which he entered. This applied equally
to men and women, except that when one married a woman of another
village, the children were afterwards divided equally between the two
barangays. This arrangement kept them obedient to the dato, or chief,
which is no longer the case--because, if the dato is energetic and
commands what the religious fathers enjoin him, they soon leave him
and go to other villages and other datos, who endure and protect them
and do not order them about. This is the kind of dato that they now
prefer, not him who has the spirit to command. There is a great need
of reform in this, for the chiefs are spiritless and faint-hearted.

Investigations made and sentences passed by the dato must take place
in the presence of those of his barangay. If any of the litigants
felt himself aggrieved, an arbiter was unanimously named from
another village or barangay, whether he were a dato or not; since
they had for this purpose some persons, known as fair and just men,
who were said to give true judgment according to their customs. If the
controversy lay between two chiefs, when they wished to avoid war,
they also convoked judges to act as arbiters; they did the same if
the disputants belonged to two different barangays. In this ceremony
they always had to drink, the plaintiff inviting the others.

They had laws by which they condemned to death a man of low birth
who insulted the daughter or wife of a chief; likewise witches,
and others of the same class.

They condemned no one to slavery, unless he merited the
death-penalty. As for the witches, they killed them, and their
children and accomplices became slaves of the chief, after he had
made some recompense to the injured person. All other offenses
were punished by fines in gold, which, if not paid with promptness,
exposed the culprit to serve, until the payment should be made, the
person aggrieved, to whom the money was to be paid. This was done in
the following way: Half the cultivated lands and all their produce
belonged to the master. The master provided the culprit with food and
clothing, thus enslaving the culprit and his children until such time
as he might amass enough money to pay the fine. If the father should
by chance pay his debt, the master then claimed that he had fed and
clothed his children, and should be paid therefor. In this way he kept
possession of the children if the payment could not be met. This last
was usually the case, and they remained slaves. If the culprit had
some relative or friend who paid for him, he was obliged to render
the latter half his service until he was paid--not, however, service
within the house as aliping sa guiguilir, but living independently,
as aliping namamahay. If the creditor were not served in this wise,
the culprit had to pay the double of what was lent him. In this way
slaves were made by debt: either sa guiguilir, if they served the
master to whom the judgment applied; or aliping namamahay, if they
served the person who lent them wherewith to pay.

In what concerns loans, there was formerly, and is today, an excess of
usury, which is a great hindrance to baptism as well as to confession;
for it turns out in the same way as I have showed in the case of the
one under judgment, who gives half of his cultivated lands and profits
until he pays the debt. The debtor is condemned to a life of toil;
and thus borrowers become slaves, and after the death of the father
the children pay the debt. Not doing so, double the amount must be
paid. This system should and can be reformed.

As for inheritances, the legitimate children of a father and mother
inherited equally, except in the case where the father and mother
showed a slight partiality by such gifts as two or three gold taels,
or perhaps a jewel.

When the parents gave a dowry to any son, and, when, in order to
marry him to a chief's daughter, the dowry was greater than the
sum given the other sons, the excess was not counted in the whole
property to be divided. But any other thing that should have been
given to any son, though it might be for some necessity, was taken
into consideration at the time of the partition of the property,
unless the parents should declare that such a bestowal was made
outside of the inheritance. If one had had children by two or more
legitimate wives, each child received the inheritance and dowry of
his mother, with its increase, and that share of his father's estate
which fell to him out of the whole. If a man had a child by one of his
slaves, as well as legitimate children, the former had no share in
the inheritance; but the legitimate children were bound to free the
mother, and to give him something--a tael or a slave, if the father
were a chief; or if, finally, anything else were given it was by the
unanimous consent of all. If besides his legitimate children, he had
also some son by a free unmarried woman, to whom a dowry was given
but who was not considered as a real wife, all these were classed as
natural children, although the child by the unmarried woman should
have been begotten after his marriage. Such children did not inherit
equally with the legitimate children, but only the third part. For
example, if there were two children, the legitimate one had two parts,
and the one of the _inaasava_ one part. When there were no children
by a legitimate wife, but only children by an unmarried woman, or
_inaasava_, the latter inherited all. If he had a child by a slave
woman, that child received his share as above stated. If there were
no legitimate or natural child, or a child by an inaasava, whether
there was a son of a slave woman or not, the inheritance went only
to the father or grandparents, brothers, or nearest relatives of the
deceased, who gave to the slave-child as above stated.

In the case of a child by a free married woman, born while she was
married, if the husband punished the adulterer this was considered
a dowry; and the child entered with the others into partition in the
inheritance. His share equaled the part left by the father, nothing
more. If there were no other sons than he, the children and the nearest
relatives inherited equally with him. But if the adulterer were not
punished by the husband of the woman who had the child, the latter
was not considered as his child, nor did he inherit anything. It
should be noticed that the offender was not considered dishonored
by the punishment inflicted, nor did the husband leave the woman. By
the punishment of the father the child was fittingly made legitimate.

Adopted children, of whom there are many among them, inherit the
double of what was paid for their adoption. For example, if one gold
tael was given that he might be adopted when the first father died,
the child was given [in inheritance] two taels. But if this child
should die first, his children do not inherit from the second father,
for the arrangement stops at that point.

This is the danger to which his money is exposed, as well as his being
protected as a child. On this account this manner of adoption common
among them is considered lawful.

Dowries are given by the men to the women's parents. If the latter are
living, they enjoy the use of it. At their death, provided the dowry
has not been consumed, it is divided like the rest of the estate,
equally among the children, except in case the father should care to
bestow something additional upon the daughter. If the wife, at the
time of her marriage, has neither father, mother, nor grandparents,
she enjoys her dowry--which, in such a case, belongs to no other
relative or child. It should be noticed that unmarried women can own
no property, in land or dowry, for the result of all their labors
accrues to their parents.

In the case of a divorce before the birth of children, if the wife left
the husband for the purpose of marrying another, all her dowry and
an equal additional amount fell to the husband; but if she left him,
and did not marry another, the dowry was returned. When the husband
left his wife, he lost the half of the dowry, and the other half was
returned to him. If he possessed children at the time of his divorce,
the whole dowry and the fine went to the children, and was held for
them by their grandparents or other responsible relatives.

I have also seen another practice in two villages. In one case, upon
the death of the wife who in a year's time had borne no children,
the parents returned one-half the dowry to the husband whose wife had
died. In the other case, upon the death of the husband, one-half the
dowry was returned to the relatives of the husband. I have ascertained
that this is not a general practice; for upon inquiry I learned that
when this is done it is done through piety, and that all do not do it.

In the matter of marriage dowries which fathers bestow upon their
sons when they are about to be married, and half of which is given
immediately, even when they are only children, there is a great deal
more complexity. There is a fine stipulated in the contract, that he
who violates it shall pay a certain sum which varies according to the
practice of the village and the affluence of the individual. The fine
was heaviest if, upon the death of the parents, the son or daughter
should be unwilling to marry because it had been arranged by his or
her parents. In this case the dowry which the parents had received
was returned and nothing more. But if the parents were living, they
paid the fine, because it was assumed that it had been their design
to separate the children.

The above is what I have been able to ascertain clearly concerning
customs observed among these natives in all this Laguna and the
tingues, and among the entire Tagalo race. The old men say that a
dato who did anything contrary to this would not be esteemed; and,
in relating tyrannies which they had committed, some condemned them
and adjudged them wicked.

Others, perchance, may offer a more extended narrative, but leaving
aside irrelevant matters concerning government and justice among them,
a summary of the whole truth is contained in the above. I am sending
the account in this clear and concise form because I had received no
orders to pursue the work further. Whatever may be decided upon, it is
certainly important that it should be given to the alcal-des-mayor,
accompanied by an explanation; for the absurdities which are to be
found in their opinions are indeed pitiable.

May our Lord bestow upon your Lordship His grace and spirit, so that in
every step good fortune may be yours; and upon every occasion may your
Lordship deign to consider me your humble servant, to be which would
be the greatest satisfaction and favor that I could receive. Nagcarlán,
October 21, 1589.

_Fray Juan de Plasencia_ [26]


_Relation of the Worship of the Tagalogs, Their Gods, and Their
Burials and Superstitions_

In all the villages, or in other parts of the Filipinas Islands,
there are no temples consecrated to the performing of sacrifices,
the adoration of their idols, or the general practice of idolatry. It
is true that they have the name _simbahan_, which means a temple or
place of adoration; but this is because, formerly, when they wished to
celebrate a festival, which they called _pandot_, or "worship," they
celebrated it in the large house of a chief. There they constructed,
for the purpose of sheltering the assembled people, a temporary shed
on each side of the house, with a roof, called _sibi_, to protect the
people from the wet when it rained. They so constructed the house
that it might contain many people--dividing it, after the fashion
of ships, into three compartments. On the posts of the house they
set small lamps, called _sorihile_; in the center of the house they
placed one large lamp, adorned with leaves of the white palm, wrought
into many designs. They also brought together many drums, large and
small, which they beat successively while the feast lasted, which was
usually four days. During this time the whole barangay, or family,
united and joined in the worship which they call _nagaanitos_. The
house, for the above-mentioned period of time, was called a temple.

Among their many idols there was one called. Badhala, whom they
especially worshiped. The title seems to signify "all powerful,"
or "maker of all things." They also worshiped the sun, which, on
account of its beauty, is almost universally respected and honored by
heathens. They worshiped, too, the moon, especially when it was new,
at which time they held great rejoicings, adoring it and bidding it
welcome. Some of them also adored the stars, although they did not
know them by their names, as the Spaniards and other nations know the
planets--with the one exception of the morning star, which they called
Tala. They knew, too, the "seven little goats" [the Pleiades]--as
we call them--and, consequently, the change of seasons, which they
call Mapolon; and Balatic, which is our Greater Bear. They possessed
many idols called _lic-ha_, which were images with different shapes;
and at times they worshiped any little trifle, in which they adored,
as did the Romans, some particular dead man who was brave in war and
endowed with special faculties, to whom they commended themselves for
protection in their tribulations. They had another idol called Dian
masalanta, who was the patron of lovers and of generation. The idols
called Lacapati and Idianale were the patrons of the cultivated lands
and of husbandry. They paid reverence to water-lizards called by them
_buaya_, or crocodiles, from fear of being harmed by them. They were
even in the habit of offering these animals a portion of what they
carried in their boats, by throwing it into the water, or placing it
upon the bank.

They were, moreover, very liable to find auguries in things they
witnessed. For example, if they left their house and met on the
way a serpent or rat, or a bird called _Tigmamanuguin_ which was
singing in the tree, or if they chanced upon anyone who sneezed,
they returned at once to their house, considering the incident as an
augury that some evil might befall them if they should continue their
journey--especially when the above-mentioned bird sang. This song had
two different forms: in the one case it was considered as an evil
omen; in the other, as a good omen, and then they continued their
journey. They also practiced divination, to see whether weapons,
such as a dagger or knife, were to be useful and lucky for their
possessor whenever occasion should offer.

These natives had no established division of years, months, and days;
these are determined by the cultivation of the soil, counted by moons,
and the different effect produced upon the trees when yielding flowers,
fruits, and leaves: all this helps them in making up the year. The
winter and summer are distinguished as sun-time and water-time--the
latter term designating winter in those regions, where there is no
cold, snow, or ice.

It seems, however, that now since they have become Christians, the
seasons are not quite the same, for at Christmas it gets somewhat
cooler. The years, since the advent of the Spaniards, have been
determined by the latter, and the seasons have been given their proper
names, and they have been divided into weeks.

Their manner of offering sacrifice was to proclaim a feast, and offer
to the devil what they had to eat. This was done in front of the idol,
which they anoint with fragrant perfumes, such as musk and civet,
or gum of the storax-tree and other odoriferous woods, and praise it
in poetic songs sung by the officiating priest, male or female, who
is called _catolonan_. The participants made responses to the song,
beseeching the idol to favor them with those things of which they
were in need, and generally, by offering repeated healths, they all
became intoxicated. In some of their idolatries they were accustomed
to place a good piece of cloth, doubled, over the idol, and over the
cloth a chain or large, gold ring, thus worshiping the devil without
having sight of him. The devil was sometimes liable to enter into
the body of the catolonan, and, assuming her shape and appearance,
filled her with so great arrogance--he being the cause of it--that
she seemed to shoot flames from her eyes; her hair stood on end, a
fearful sight to those beholding, and she uttered words of arrogance
and superiority. In some districts, especially in the mountains, when
in those idolatries the devil incarnated himself and took on the form
of his minister, the latter had to be tied to a tree by his companions,
to prevent the devil in his infernal fury from destroying him. This,
however, happened but rarely. The objects of sacrifice were goats,
fowls, and swine, which were flayed, decapitated, and laid before
the idol. They performed another ceremony by cooking a jar of rice
until the water was evaporated, after which they broke the jar, and
the rice was left as an intact mass which was set before the idol;
and all about it, at intervals, were placed a few buyos--which is a
small fruit [27] wrapped in a leaf with some lime, a food generally
eaten in these regions--as well as fried food and fruits. All the
above-mentioned articles were eaten by the guests at the feast; the
heads [of the animals], after being "offered," as they expressed it,
were cooked and eaten also.

The reasons for offering this sacrifice and adoration were, in addition
to whatever personal matters there might be, the recovery of a sick
person, the prosperous voyage of those embarking on the sea, a good
harvest in the sowed lands, a propitious result in wars, a successful
delivery in childbirth, and a happy outcome in married life. If this
took place among people of rank, the festivities lasted thirty days.

In the case of young girls who first had their monthly courses, their
eyes were blindfolded four days and four nights; and, in the meantime,
the friends and relatives were all invited to partake of food and
drink. At the end of this period, the catolonan took the young girl
to the water, bathed her and washed her head, and removed the bandage
from her eyes. The old men said that they did this in order that the
girls might bear children, and have fortune in finding husbands to
their taste, who would not leave them widows in their youth.

The distinctions made among the priests of the devil were as follows:
The first, called catolonan, as above stated, was either a man or a
woman. This office was an honorable one among the natives, and was
held ordinarily by people of rank, this rule being general in all
the islands.

The second they called _mangagauay_, or witches, who deceived by
pretending to heal the sick. These priests even induced maladies by
their charms, which in proportion to the strength and efficacy of the
witchcraft, are capable of causing death. In this way, if they wished
to kill at once they did so; or they could prolong life for a year
by binding to the waist a live serpent, which was believed to be the
devil, or at least his substance. This office was general throughout
the land. The third they called _manyisalat_, which is the same as
magagauay. These priests had the power of applying such remedies to
lovers that they would abandon and despise their own wives, and in
fact could prevent them from having intercourse with the latter. If
the woman, constrained by these means, were abandoned, it would bring
sickness upon her; and on account of the desertion she would discharge
blood and matter. This office was also general throughout the land.

The fourth was called _mancocolam_, whose duty it was to emit fire
from himself at night, once or oftener each month. This fire could
not be extinguished; nor could it be thus emitted except as the priest
wallowed in the ordure and filth which falls from the houses; and he
who lived in the house where the priest was wallowing in order to emit
this fire from himself, fell ill and died. This office was general.

The fifth was called _hocloban_, which is another kind of witch, of
greater efficacy than the mangagauay. Without the use of medicine,
and by simply saluting or raising the hand, they killed whom they
chose. But if they desired to heal those whom they had made ill by
their charms, they did so by using other charms. Moreover, if they
wished to destroy the house of some Indian hostile to them, they
were able to do so without instruments. This was in Catanduanes,
an island off the upper part of Luzon.

The sixth was called _silagan_, whose office it was, if they saw anyone
clothed in white, to tear out his liver and eat it, thus causing his
death. This, like the preceding, was in the island of Catanduanes. Let
no one, moreover, consider this a fable; because, in Calavan, they
tore out in this way through the anus all the intestines of a Spanish
notary, who was buried in Calilaya by father Fray Juan de Mérida.

The seventh was called _magtatangal_, and his purpose was to show
himself at night to many persons, without his head or entrails. In
such wise the devil walked about and carried, or pretended to carry,
his head to different places; and, in the morning, returned it to his
body--remaining, as before, alive. This seems to me to be a fable,
although the natives affirm that they have seen it, because the devil
probably caused them so to believe. This occurred in Catanduanes.

The eighth they called _osuang_, which is equivalent to "sorcerer;"
they say that they have seen him fly, and that he murdered men and
ate their flesh. This was among the Visayas Islands; among the Tagalos
these did not exist.

The ninth was another class of witches called _mangagayoma_. They
made charms for lovers out of herbs, stones, and wood, which would
infuse the heart with love. Thus did they deceive the people, although
sometimes, through the intervention of the devil, they gained their
ends.

The tenth was known as _sonat_, which is equivalent to "preacher." It
was his office to help one to die, at which time he predicted the
salvation or condemnation of the soul. It was not lawful for the
functions of this office to be fulfilled by others than people of
high standing, on account of the esteem in which it was held. This
office was general throughout the islands.

The eleventh, _pangatahojan_, was a soothsayer, and predicted the
future. This office was general in all the islands.

The twelfth, _bayoguin_, signified a "cotquean," a man whose nature
inclined toward that of a woman.

Their manner of burying the dead was as follows: The deceased was
buried beside his house; and, if he were a chief, he was placed beneath
a little house or porch which they constructed for this purpose. Before
interring him, they mourned him for four days; and afterward laid him
on a boat which served as a coffin or bier, placing him beneath the
porch, where guard was kept over him by a slave. In place of rowers,
various animals were placed within the boat, each one being assigned
a place at the oar by twos--male and female of each species being
together--as for example two goats, two deer, or two fowls. It was
the slave's care to see that they were fed. If the deceased had
been a warrior, a living slave was tied beneath his body until in
this wretched way he died. In course of time, all suffered decay;
and for many days the relatives of the dead man bewailed him, singing
dirges, and praises of his good qualities, until finally they wearied
of it. This grief was also accompanied by eating and drinking. This
was a custom of the Tagalos.

The Aetas, [28] or Negrillos [Negritos] inhabitants of this island, had
also a form of burial, but different. They dug a deep, perpendicular
hole, and placed the deceased within it, leaving him upright with head
or crown unburied, on top of which they put half a cocoa-nut which was
to serve him as a shield. Then they went in pursuit of some Indian,
whom they killed in retribution for the Negrillo who had died. To
this end they conspired together, hanging a certain token on their
necks until some one of them procured the death of the innocent one.

These infidels said that they knew that there was another life of
rest which they called _maca_, just as if we should say "paradise,"
or, in other words, "village of rest." They say that those who go
to this place are the just, and the valiant, and those who lived
without doing harm, or who possessed other moral virtues. They
said also that in the other life and mortality, there was a place
of punishment, grief, and affliction, called _casanaan_, which was
"a place of anguish;" they also maintained that no one would go to
heaven, where there dwelt only Bathala, "the maker of all things,"
who governed from above. There were also other pagans who confessed
more clearly to a hell, which they called, as I have said, casanaan;
they said that all the wicked went to that place, and there dwelt
the demons, whom they called _sitan_.

All the various kinds of infernal ministers were, therefore, as has
been stated: _catolonan; sonat_ (who was a sort of bishop who ordained
priestesses and received their reverence, for they knelt before him as
before one who could pardon sins, and expected salvation through him);
_mangagauay, manyisalat, mancocolam, hocloban, silagan, magtatangal,
osuan, mangagayoma, pangatahoan_. [29]

There were also ghosts, which they called _vibit_; and phantoms,
which they called _Tigbalaang_. They had another deception--namely,
that if any woman died in childbirth, she and the child suffered
punishment; and that, at night, she could be heard lamenting. This
was called _patianac_. May the honor and glory be God our Lord's,
that among all the Tagalos not a trace of this is left; and that
those who are now marrying do not even know what it is, thanks to
the preaching of the holy gospel, which has banished it.




Documents of 1590



	Letter from Portugal to Felipe II. [Unsigned and undated.]
	Decree ordering a grant to Salazar. Felipe II; April 12.
	Letter from members of the suppressed Audiencia to Felipe
	II. Santiago de Vera, and others; June 20.
	The Chinese and the Parián at Manila. Domingo de Salazar;
	June 24.
	Two letters to Felipe II. Domingo de Salazar; June 24.
	Decree regarding commerce in the Philippines. Felipe II;
	July 23.



_Sources_: These documents are obtained from the original MSS. in
the Archivo general dé Indias, Sevilla--except the fourth, which is
taken from Retana's _Archivo del bibliófilo filipino_, iii, pp. 47-80.

_Translations_: The first document is translated by Arthur B. Myrick,
of Harvard University; the second, third, and sixth, by James
A. Robertson; the fourth, by Alfonso de Salvio, of Harvard University;
the fifth, by Isaac J. Cox, of the University of Pennsylvania, and
by José M. and Clara M. Asensio.




Letter from Portugal to Felipe II


After the king, our lord, succeeded to the crown of Portugal, there
began to open a new commerce between the Philipinas Islands and the
western Yndias belonging to the domain of Castilla and China, Maluco,
Amboino, Banda, and other parts of the Portuguese conquest. As soon
as this was known in the eastern Yndias, the viceroys and governors
thereof were continually writing to his Majesty, that from this new
commerce many heavy injuries were sustained by his Majesty's service,
in regard to the preservation and support of that state of eastern
Yndia, and the quiet of its inhabitants.

His Majesty after reading their letters and going over truthful
reports of the great injury that the continuation of this new trade
might cause, both to the crown of Castilla and to that of Portugal,
resolved to prohibit anyone from going from the western Yndias to
China, Maluco, Amboino, and Banda, and other places belonging to the
crown of Portugal; or from the Eastern to the Western Yndias. Decrees
for this prohibition, signed by his Majesty and by the Portuguese
ministers, were passed and sent to Yndia, where they were published
and ordered to be observed under heavy penalties. The same was to be
done by the ministers of the crown of Castilla and certain memoranda
of it were to be given. We do not know whether this has been done yet.

Because they have again written and continue to write from Yndia
that the said decrees prohibiting the said commerce are not being
observed by the Castilians, and because they everywhere encourage it
and increase to a great extent the evils that result therefrom, which
might be very serious indeed, and difficult to remedy, and involve the
total destruction and loss of those states: his Majesty ordered, for
the more thorough understanding of these details, that they should make
this report of the existing causes for not continuing this commerce,
and even for prohibiting it. These reasons are as follows:

The state of Eastern Yndia is very large, and its cities and
garrisons very distant and remote from one another, and situated in
the territories of kings and princes of great power. On this account
they are maintained by regular soldiery and very powerful fleets, of
large and small galleys and galleons. All the Portuguese resident in
those places, and other Christian vassals of his Majesty, easily bear
the excessive expense. The latter is made up by the income from those
cities and strongholds. This income, although it exceeds a million, is
not sufficient to obviate its being always pledged. Some aid in money
is sent from Portugal. This income from Yndia consists principally
in imposts from the said cities, which are paid for entries and
clearances. The entire amount of these imposts is raised on merchandise
from China, Maluco, Amboino, Banda, and other regions of the south;
for the taxes that are raised on merchandise coming from the northern
districts are of so much less importance, and the merchandise likewise,
that they cannot be compared with those of the south. The principal
commerce that the Portuguese have to live upon, is that from China
and other southern districts, because the other traffic is contracted
for by his Majesty's treasury and belongs to it. The better and more
valuable trade through the southern districts belongs to the crown.

From all this it may be inferred that if we continue this commerce
with China and other southern regions by way of the western Yndias,
the income from the customs duties, on which Yndia is supported,
will necessarily be lost. Nor will there be money or forces with which
many large fleets may be organized by his Majesty for its preservation
and defense, or with which to pay the soldiery stationed there, or to
bear all the other state expenses incurred by the public government,
or those incurred by his Majesty for the ecclesiastical estate in
those places the conquest of which was granted to him by the apostolic
bulls. The rest of these reasons which concern his Majesty's service,
the profit and loss of his treasury, and what is expedient for common
good of the inhabitants of that state, should be considered in this
case with the greatest care. For the inhabitants of Yndia have no
other resources to live upon except trade and commerce; and of these
the principal is the trade with China and other places to which
reference has been made. On this account, they feel very strongly
the seizure of this commerce by the Castilians, saying that they and
their fathers and forefathers conquered it for the royal crown with
their blood and lives. There are and were on this subject practices
and complaints of base character, principally in the city of Goa,
the capital of that state.

And even if all the above (in respect to what concerns Portugal and
the preservation and quiet of Yndia) were not of so great moment and
consideration for his Majesty's service, so great are the injuries
to the crown of Castilla which result from this new commerce that
only for that (both for reasons of state and finance) it should be
strictly prohibited. For if navigation is permitted from the western
Indias to China, all the money and coin in the kingdom will flow
thither and none will go to Hespaña, because China is so large and
has so much to exchange and sell that, however much coin is sent,
that country will absorb it all. The Indias will come to have no need
of Hespaña, because all the products obtained from this country can
be obtained from China in much greater abundance and more cheaply,
except wines and olives, which can be very easily introduced in the
Yndias. They might also do without them, because they are not very
necessary or requisite. So they would care for trade with Hespaña
only on that account, especially since they may get them from China
itself through the Portuguese traders. Of how much consequence and
importance this is in state matters, it is unnecessary to point out,
because it may be well understood. It is, moreover, understood that
the Indians have wine of their own.

And above all, when Chinese merchandise is in the western Indias and
money is flowing toward China, trade and commerce with Hespaña will
necessarily fall off, together with the income of the custom house
at Sevilla, while money will be scarce there and throughout España.

Let it be further noted that among the sworn promises which his Majesty
made to the kingdom of Portugal, there is one clause (the copy of
which accompanies this) in which it is said that traffic with Yndia,
Guinea, and other regions belonging to the kingdom of Portugal, both
discovered and to be discovered, will not be wrested from them or any
innovation made in present conditions; and the officials who are to
go out for the said commerce and on the ships for that purpose shall
be Portuguese. According to this clause, no alteration can be made
in the commerce with China, Maluco, Amboino, Banda, and other parts
of the Eastern Yndias. The Castilians shall not go there, nor shall
the Portuguese go from here to the Castilian Yndias. [30]

The Lord Cardinal Archduke, [31] to whom his Majesty has entrusted
the government of Portugal, seeing and considering all these dangers,
wrote many times to his Majesty that it would be greatly to his
interest to prohibit this commerce; and besides what he says in
many of his letters, in one letter of December 23, of last year, 89,
he wrote as follows:

"In this despatch is sent a report of all that has been written to your
Majesty by the viceroy Don Duarte, and by the governor Miguel de Sosa,
and other persons, affirming that it is of no use to your Majesty,
and unsafe for the state of Yndia, to continue the commerce which has
begun to be opened from the Indias of the Castilian crown to China;
and what your Majesty has had written in regard to it--in order that
your Majesty may have it examined. According to the information
which I possess in this matter, I advise your Majesty to order,
under heavy penalties, that no one shall further this commerce from
the said districts to China, nor from China the other way, because it
is known that if there is no remedy applied, we will lose the customs
receipts of the state of Yndia, and the trade of the merchants. It
seems to me that the lack of confidence and the suspicion which the
ships and embarkations of the Castilians cause in the Chinese are of
even greater consequence. The latter is referred to in the letter which
the city of Nombre de Dios wrote to your Majesty, on this matter."

Hereunto is added the copy of one clause from a letter by the governor
of Yndia (which was received a few days ago, having come by land)
that what he says in regard to this matter, and the way in which this
commerce is looked upon there, may be known. He concludes by explaining
how well it suits his Majesty's service, and how advantageous it is
to both Castilla and Portugal, to prohibit this commerce in such a
way that all the ports shall be closed to it.

		       +

[_Instructions_: "On the new commerce of the Western Yndias, with
China. His Majesty orders that this shall be examined in the Council
of the Indias. The Council shall then advise him of their opinion,
so that his Majesty can determine what measures must be taken, before
the sailing of the ships. Pardo, March 3, 1590."] [32]




Decree Ordering a Grant to Salazar


Sire:

From information received _de officio_ in the royal Audiencia of the
city of Manila, of the Philipinas Islands, and from the opinion of
the said Audiencia, it has been evident that, upon the arrival of
the bishop [Salazar] in the islands, all the houses were built of
wood and bamboo, and thatched with straw. As he saw that they were
burned frequently, and especially in the year eighty-three, when, in
but one fire, the city was nearly all destroyed including, with the
property of the citizens, the cathedral church, monastery, hospital,
fort, supplies, and artillery; seeing also the constant danger from
fire and from the natives of whom there was great fear, the said
bishop exerted himself to aid the citizens and soldiers with three
thousand pesos of his own and others' money, dividing this sum among
all of them, in order that they might rebuild their houses. By this
means he relieved their extreme necessity, and afterward endeavored
to persuade the governor and city to have the buildings constructed
of stone and roofed with tile; and although everyone placed decided
obstacles in the way, he set about this himself, and put great effort
into it, even to the seeking and opening of quarries, and procuring
the making of mortar and roof-tiles. Through his diligence, the result
was obtained and great increase followed therefrom to the said city,
for he built houses with the utmost toil and expense. Thereupon many
of the citizens began to do the same, and the city has been made
safe and fortified. Now, a fort, hospital, church, and monasteries
are being built--all of stone. In addition to the above, when he
went to those islands, he took altar-pieces, ornaments, and other
articles of value for the service of divine worship; and afterward
he bought there some buildings for the church, at an expense of
eight hundred ducados. As, for both this and the bishopric, there is
nothing left of the five hundred thousand maravedis paid him yearly
from your Majesty's royal exchequer--which sum, even, has not been
paid because there is no money there--he is deeply in debt and in
need. He beseeches your Majesty that, attentive to his great labors
in the service of our Lord and of your Majesty, and for the good of
that state, your Majesty will bestow upon him a sum equal to what he
has spent, in order that he may pay his debts; and that he be given
an order for it on the royal treasury of Mexico. The said Audiencia,
in its opinion cited above, declares that his debts amount to six
or seven thousand pesos; that his request seems to them very just;
and that any concession made to him will be a great aid to the
bishop. After deliberation in the council, it is our opinion that,
in consideration of the above, a concession of three thousand pesos,
the equivalent of three thousand six hundred ducados, might be made
the said bishop, as an aid in paying his debts: this sum to be given
him once from the tributes of unassigned Indians in those islands,
or from those that shall first become vacant. Your Majesty will act
herein as suits your pleasure. Madrid, April xii, 1590.

		      +

[_Endorsed_: "Council of the Indias. April 12, 1590. That the bishop
of the Philippinas be granted three thousand six hundred ducados
in unassigned tributes of those islands, as an aid in paying the
debts that he has contracted in the service of our Lord, and of your
Majesty, and the welfare of that state." "The opinion of the council
is approved, although the former concessions and assignments would be
preferable; for I suspect that in such favors irregularities are wont
to occur in the payment to the loss of the collectors." "A warrant
[for that sum] has been drawn up, in accordance with his Majesty's
commands."] [33]




Letter from Members of the Suppressed Audiencia to Felipe II


Sire: All vessels sailing to Nueva España, since the Audiencia was
established here, have taken advices to your Majesty of everything that
has appeared fitting to your royal service. The orders of your royal
decrees and the ordinances of the royal Council have been observed
with all care. Whenever any trouble has arisen in the execution of
these decrees and ordinances, advice thereof has been given in the
letters from this royal Audiencia, as your Majesty may see, should
you wish information thereof.

With the arrival of Gomez Perez Dasmariñas, governor and
captain-general of these islands, the president, auditors, and fiscal
of this Audiencia ceased to exercise their duties, and the trials of
cases pending in that body were suspended, so that, in accordance with
the orders of the royal decrees despatched in regard to this matter,
they might be concluded in the royal chancilleria of Mexico.

Doctor Sanctiago de Vera, former president of this Audiencia, intended
to go to Nueva España this year to assume his post as auditor in the
royal Audiencia of Mexico, to which your Majesty appointed him. Just as
he was about to embark, he was forced to remain here in these islands
this year, because of a certain very severe sickness of his wife, from
which she nearly died. He will sail next year. Licentiate Pedro de
Rojas remains in these islands in the capacity of lieutenant-governor
and counselor in government and military matters, in accordance with
his letters-patent. Although this country proves very unfavorable to
his health, so that he remains here at evident risk of life--because
of a disease from which many die, and which has brought him twice
or thrice to the verge of death--yet he thinks it his duty to
continue his service to your Majesty here, and to remain at his post,
notwithstanding all the danger. We beg your Majesty kindly to appoint
him to another post elsewhere, where his health may be preserved,
for he has always suffered here from weakness and ill-health. Not only
would this prove to be an assurance of his life; his services, which
are so acceptable and well-known, are such that he merits this favor
from your Majesty. Inasmuch as he was auditor of this Audiencia, and
the oldest member of it, because of the death of the licentiate Abalos,
he should not be permitted to remain now as lieutenant-governor; for
he is a person of whom your Majesty can make use in the government,
and in any post whatever of great importance and trust.

The licentiate Don Antonio de Rivera, auditor of this royal Audiencia,
and the licentiate Ayala, [34] its fiscal, remain here without
office. They were detained here one year in order to be present
in this city during the four months of their residencia. They are
very much disheartened over this, for they do not know to what post
your Majesty will appoint them. They have served in their respective
posts in these islands during their whole term with care, integrity,
and disinterestedness, that [_MS. illegible_] and they are suffering
from so great necessity and are five thousand leagues distant from
those kingdoms, burdened with large families and households. They are
grieving greatly over the prospect of so long, dangerous, and costly a
voyage. We entreat your Majesty, since it is so just that rewards and
promotions be given to your servants who have served you faithfully,
and which your Majesty has ever been wont to bestow so generously, that
you do not permit them to remain unrewarded, and that you have their
salaries paid them from the time when their offices became vacant;
for their services merit this, as well as the eagerness with which
they have always exerted themselves, devoting all their energies to
the sole service of God and your Majesty. They have ceased to exercise
their duties in-these posts--the best and chiefest of the kingdom--not
through any demerit, but through the suppression of the Audiencia. We
trust that your Majesty will look favorably upon them and upon your
other servants who have served you in this royal Audiencia; and that
you will reward them and promote them as we desire. May God preserve
the Catholic person of your Majesty. Manila, June 20, 1590.

The doctor _Santiago Devera_
The licentiate _Pedro de Rojas_
The licentiate _Don Antonio de Ribera Maldonado_


[_Endorsed_: "Filipinas; to his Majesty, 1590. The Audiencia, June
20. Seen, and no answer is necessary. Make a memorandum regarding
this auditor and fiscal."]



The Chinese, and the Parian at Manila


Sire:

As Chinese matters are so worthy of being known, I have thought best
to give your Majesty an account of them in a special letter, although
all I say will be but little in comparison with the facts. Before I
undertake to relate what God through His mercy has chosen to unfold to
us concerning the affairs of that kingdom which were so hidden to us,
I must, in order to ease my conscience, and die without this scruple,
undo an error into which I had fallen for a while. Under that error I
wrote to your Majesty as I felt then; and, although what I wrote was
true, according to the information received, I have learned since that
the contrary is the fact. As soon as I began to see the error, I wrote
to your Majesty; but it was not done with the necessary effectiveness,
for I was not yet completely undeceived. Now that I am, it would
be a very serious matter if I did not try to undo the deception. As
at that time I wrote to your Majesty what I felt, under an erroneous
impression, I shall write what I feel, now that I am fully undeceived;
for one ought always to present the entire and naked truth, with no
confusing elements, to all men, and much more to your Majesty.

Before reaching these islands, I heard that no foreigner could without
danger of death set foot in the kingdom of China unless he received
special permission from those having that kingdom in charge; and that
the native who took a foreigner into the land without permission would
be executed, and the foreigner sent to prison for life. When I reached
these islands, I first interviewed some Portuguese who came here,
and I heard them declare and affirm the same thing which I had heard
before. Since I had that impression at my coming, I easily believed
what the Portuguese told me, and persuaded myself that it was true that
no foreigner could enter China without risk of losing his life. For
a long time I have had the conversion of that kingdom at heart, and
with that thought I came to these islands. One of the reasons which
made me accept this bishopric was the fact that these islands were
very near China, and that many Chinese had come to live here. Being
grieved over the thought that by not allowing foreigners to set foot
in that land the preaching of the gospel there might be hindered, I
drew up a report signed by many Portuguese witnesses from Macan and
Yndia who were here. In this report, which I sent to your Majesty,
I gave evidence that the rulers of China, who are styled "mandarins,"
allowed no one to enter the kingdom without their permission; and that
for this purpose they kept large fleets to guard the coast, and to kill
or arrest all who land there. Relying upon the information given me by
the Portuguese, I wrote to your Majesty, asserting that it would be
justifiable for your Majesty to send your fleet to that kingdom, and
in case the preachers were denied entrance, to open a way by force,
and make the Chinese receive them--it being understood that this
opposition was from the mandarins alone, and that the common people
offered no resistance and would receive them well. While all those in
the islands, including myself, held this view, it pleased our Lord to
reveal this deception and to deliver us from this error. It so happened
that a ship left these islands for Mexico, and reached the coast of
China in distress. At first the crew were somewhat ill-treated by the
soldiers who guard the coast, because the latter had taken them for
thieves or spies; but as soon as they were brought before the mandarin
governor and it was learned that they had set out from the Lugones,
as they call these islands, the governor treated them well, gave
orders to return what the soldiers had taken from them, and punished
those who had taken it. They sent the Spaniards in peace to Macan,
whence they came to this city. The captain of the ship is living here
at the present day, as well as two Augustinians who were on board;
and they have told me all that happened to them.

From this time I began to be undeceived, and to understand that
the kingdom of China was not so inaccessible as the Portuguese had
represented it. Then I wrote to your Majesty the aforesaid letter,
asserting that the ill-report concerning the mandarins of China was
rather an invention of the Portuguese than a true report. Later on, my
belief in this truth was confirmed by certain persons, both religious
and laymen, who have gone to China from these islands. When these
persons arrived there the Chinese arrested them, in order to find out
whence they came and what they were seeking; and when it was learned
who they were, they were allowed to return in peace and were even
given supplies for the journey. While writing this, I have met two
Franciscan friars who tell me that, as soon as they reached China,
they were arrested and taken, handcuffed, before the mandarin. When he
learned who they were he gave orders to set them free, and to provide
for their support until they could return here. What fully confirms
me as to the truth of all this is the report which I received of the
kind reception given in the province of Chincheo to a ship which
the viceroy then governing Nueba España sent to Macan, and whose
captain was Lope de Palacios, the brother of the auditor Palacios,
auditor of Mexico. This ship was driven to Chincheo under stress
of weather, and there everyone in her was well received, when the
inhabitants of Chincheo learned that they were coming to trade in
China. They persuaded them to go no farther, saying that they would
give them a cargo there for their ship; but God, who had chosen to
punish those who by that means sought to destroy this land against
the wish of your Majesty, blinded them, so that they would not take
the most salutary advice that could have been given them. The three
Dominican religious who were on board the ship were well received and
lovingly treated by the mandarin of that province. He took them to
the city and lodged them in his own house, giving them an apartment
where they could celebrate mass. This they did with as much quiet
and safety as if they had been at your court. The mandarin kept
them with him for one week, after which he allowed them to go to
their ship and proceed to Macan. I had this relation from the very
religious who were there. At present I am entertaining at my house a
man who came from Mexico in that ship, and who, being an eyewitness,
has told me of all the occurrence; but, since this account and other
events which occurred were reported to your Majesty two years ago,
and I am sure that the report reached its destination, I shall not
detain you with a more detailed account of those matters.

I have said all this in order to correct the wrong opinion held
about the rulers of China; and although it is true that they are
cautious and suspicious, prudently seeking to protect their nation
against the entrance of foreigners who might harm and disturb the
land, still, without any question, what has been said against them
is a false accusation; for until now we know of no person whom they
have killed for setting foot in their land, nor do we know of any
one whom they have thrown into prison for life, as the Portuguese
reported. If any of the Spaniards who went to that land received
ill-treatment at the hands of the Chinese, it was due to the evil
reports of us which the Portuguese spread among them, warning them
to beware of Castilians as a people addicted to stealing and seizing
foreign kingdoms; and who, as they had become masters of Nueva España,
Peru, and the Philipinas, would strive likewise to obtain China. The
people of that kingdom, being the most cautious people in the world,
believed quite readily what the Portuguese told them of us; and in
consequence they ill-treated the Castilians who went there. What I
say here is a well ascertained fact, known by people who have seen
themselves in great danger of being killed in China, just because the
Portuguese had pointed them out to the Chinese as spies. One of the
Franciscan religious whom I mentioned above has affirmed to me that
he himself had heard it said that the Portuguese had reported them
as spies, and that for this reason they had been handcuffed. Were
I not sure that this was so, I would not dare to affirm it to your
Majesty, for these are serious matters which do not speak well for the
Portuguese. Although it is not to be believed that all of them say
these things of us, still it needs only a few of them to speak such
words in order to persuade the Chinese; and those few have caused
no little harm, for, had not God provided a remedy, they would have
greatly hindered the gospel from ever entering that kingdom. However,
since the Chinese have experienced the contrary of what had been told
them, and the Chinese or Sangleys (which mean the same thing) who go
there from here tell them of the fairness with which we treat them
here, and of the freedom that they enjoy among us, they have regained
confidence, and are not offended at seeing us there, as is proved by
those two ships which were driven on their shores. Doctor Sanctiago
de Vera told me last year that he intended to make arrangements with
the mandarins of Chincheo by which they might give us an island not
far from that coast where the Castilians might settle and establish
their commerce; he added that this plan met with no great opposition
on the part of the Sangleys. But this was not carried out, and I do
not know who was the cause of the failure. To corroborate the fact
that the mandarins do not keep the gates of that kingdom so tightly
closed as the Portuguese affirmed, something else has occurred quite
recently which shows it clearly. When the Portuguese expelled all the
Castilian religious from Macan and ordered them to go to Yndia, and
not to return here, two friars fled secretly to the city of Canton,
and thence they went to Chincheo by land, covering a distance of
about one hundred leagues, without receiving any harm whatever; on
the contrary, they were well treated, and the mardarin of Chincheo
sent them back to this city in one of his own ships. The captain
who brought them has visited me several times, and I have thanked
him. At present these religious are in this city, and have spoken to
me of what occurred to them on the journey from Macan to Chincheo,
and of the presents which the captain who brought them here from
Chincheo gave them. From all the aforesaid we infer that what has been
reported of the refusal of the Chinese kingdom, and of its rulers,
to permit entrance to foreigners has been invention and slander by the
Portuguese, who did this for their own private interests, fearing that
their commerce with the Chinese would cease if the Castilians gained
an entrance there. We who live here have attributed this slander to
that cause--or, more properly speaking, it has been the cunning of
the devil, who has tried in this way to hinder the results which we
hope to obtain by introducing the gospel into that great kingdom,
in such manner as Jesus Christ, our Lord, commanded his disciples
and apostles to preach it throughout the whole world, not trusting in
their own strength, or in human wisdom or power, but only in the power
of God. For He, when it pleases Him, smoothes out all difficulties
which may arise; and if at times He allows his ministers to suffer,
it is for their best good, in order that the perfection and power of
God may shine forth with more brilliancy. Therefore, I say that if
once I thought it possible to make war on China because of the false
report given me of the hindrance and obstacles offered by the rulers
of that kingdom to the preaching of the gospel, by not allowing those
who could preach it to enter the land, now that I know the truth,
I declare that one of the worst offenses which could be committed
against God, and the greatest possible obstacle and opposition to the
spread of the gospel, would be to go to China with the mailed hand,
or to use any sort of violence. For we have had at no time, nor do
we have, any cause, right, or reason to enter that kingdom by force
of arms; for it is evident that we have not told them, nor do they
know, our intention. On the contrary they take us for people whose
only aim is to usurp foreign kingdoms; and, since they think thus,
it is well for them to guard against us. In order to correct the
wrong opinion which they entertain of us, we should not go there
with large fleets and armies equipped, because the only result would
be to vex and offend the greatest and best kingdom in the world;
but if we go there in the way that God commands and desires, and at
the time appointed by His Divine Majesty (for we men cannot know),
we shall make one of the largest conversions ever seen since the time
of the primitive church. This is what the devil tries to hinder by
spreading abroad the notion that the only way by which China can
be entered is by force of arms. The truth is, that until now no
people has been discovered so ready to receive the gospel as this,
or of whom can be entertained such hope of great results by going
to preach the gospel as our Lord Jesus Christ commanded; and if any
one, be he even an angel from heaven, were of a different opinion,
may your Majesty consider him an agent of the devil, who tries to
convince people that the gospel of Jesus Christ is to be preached
with zeal and not with knowledge, with violence and force of arms,
like the alcoran of Mahoma. This is a principle which may God remove
from the minds of all Christian princes, and from all men who are well
acquainted with the law of God and evangelical truth. I am confident
that, when your Majesty learns the truth, you will not allow anything
to be done contrary to the will of God.

Now I shall speak of the Sangleys, of whom there would be much to
say had I not in the past given to your Majesty an account of many
things concerning them. Therefore I shall be brief, in order not to
make this account longer than is necessary.

When I arrived in this land, I found that in a village called
Tondo--which is not far from this city, there being a river
between--lived many Sangleys; of whom some were Christians, but
the larger part infidels. In this city were also some shops kept
by Sangleys, who lived here in order to sell the goods which they
kept here from year to year. These Sangleys were scattered among
the Spaniards, with no specific place assigned to them, until Don
Gongalo Ronquillo allotted them a place to live in, and to be used
as a silk-market (which is called here _Parián_), of four large
buildings. Here, many shops were opened, commerce increased, and more
Sangleys came to this city. Anxious for the conversion of this people,
I soon cast my eyes upon them, and took precautions that they be well
treated, for in that way they would become attached to our religion--as
I was aware that this was your Majesty's desire. Considering that,
wherever Spaniards are to be found, there will always be some unruly
ones, who, forgetting the good example which they ought to give
these infidels, ill-treat them at times, I began on this account to
protect and to assist the Chinese, reproaching those who maltreated
them. I took care to have their grievances removed so as to give them
freedom to attend to their mercantile interests, and to sell their
goods. In this there has been very much abuse in this city by those
who were under obligation to furnish a remedy for it. For this reason
the Sangleys began to have much love for me, for they are the most
grateful people I have ever seen. Gradually commerce has so increased,
and so many are the Sangley ships which come to this city laden with
goods--as all kinds of linen, and silks; ammunition; food supplies,
as wheat, flour, sugar; and many kinds of fruit (although I have not
seen the fruits common in Spaña)--and the city has been so embellished,
that were it not for the fires and the calamities visited upon her
by land and by sea, she would be the most prosperous and rich city
of your Majesty's domains. As I have written to your Majesty in
other letters, this city has the best possible location for both
its temporal and spiritual welfare, and for all its interests, that
could be desired. For on the east, although quite distant, yet not
so far as to hinder a man from coming hither, with favorable voyage,
lie Nueba España and Perú; to the north, about three hundred leagues,
are the large islands of Japón; on the northwest lies the great and
vast kingdom of China, which is so near this island that, starting
early in the morning with reasonable weather, one would sight China on
the next day; on the west lie Conchinchina, the kingdoms of Sián and
Patany, Malaca, the great kingdom of Dacheu (the ancient Trapobana),
and the two Xavas [Javas], the greater and the smaller; [35] and on
the south lie the islands of Maluco and Burney. From all these regions
people come to trade in this city; and from here we can go to them,
for they are near. As to spiritual advantages, if we had preachers
of the gospel to send thither, these regions all stand open to us,
and we could gain good results from it, because Franciscan religious
have gone to some of these places and have been well received, although
on account of many wars and the lack of interpreters they were forced
to return. It is not so certain that they would be received in China
as they are elsewhere; but up to this time no one of those who went
thither has been killed or thrown into prison.

When I came, all the Sangleys were almost forgotten, and relegated to
a corner. No thought was taken for their conversion, because no one
knew their language or undertook to learn it on account of its great
difficulty; and because the religious who lived here were too busy with
the natives of these islands. Although the Augustinian religious had
charge of the Sangleys of Tondo, they did not minister to or instruct
them in their own language, but in that of the natives of this land;
thus the Sangley Christians living here, were Christians only in name,
knowing no more of Christianity than if they had never accepted it. I
was much grieved that a nation of such renown should lack priests to
teach and instruct them in their own language. This led me to make
arrangements with Don Goncalo Ronquillo for a special location to be
assigned to them for their own use, and priests were to be given them
who should learn their language and teach them in it. When this had
been all arranged, and a priest had been appointed, the whole thing was
undone through obstacles which arose at that time. Then I appealed to
all religious orders to appoint some one of their religious to learn
the language and take charge of the Sangleys. Although all of them
showed a desire to do so, and some even began to learn it, yet no one
succeeded; and the Sangleys found themselves with no one to instruct
them and take up their conversion with the necessary earnestness,
until, in the year eighty-seven, God brought to these islands the
religious of St. Dominic. Their coming was for the welfare of the
Sangleys, as the result proved, and as I shall relate further on. God
soon showed us that the religious had come by His will, to take charge
of the Sangleys. This city, being built on a narrow site with the sea
on one side and a river on the other, was all occupied, and there
seemed to be no place where the Dominicans could settle; but there
was soon discovered a site of which no one had thought until then,
and which now is the best in the city. The site adjoins the Parian
of the Sangleys, and that gave the religious of that order occasion
to begin to hold intercourse with them, and for the religious and
Sangleys to become mutually attached to one another. For, whenever
the Sangleys come and go from the Parián, they pass by the church of
Sancto Domingo, and, being a very inquisitive people, they often stop
and watch what is taking place there. When the confraternities of the
Rosary and of the Oaths, which are founded in that house, hold their
processions, a great many Sangleys come out to watch them. They live
so near the monastery that in the night they hear the religious sing
matins, and are not a little edified by it; for they also have their
own form of religion, and there are among them religious men who lead
a very austere life and claim to live in profound meditation. When
it shall please God to enlighten them, Christianity will undoubtedly
profit much by this characteristic.

I said above that the monastery of Sancto Domingo stands close by
the Parián of the Sangleys, which is built in a marshy place on the
border of this city between its northern and southern sides. The
Sangleys were transferred thither by Diego Ronquillo, during his
governorship, because the Parián which Don Gonzalo Ronquillo had built
was destroyed by fire. At first it seemed absurd to think that human
habitations were to be built in that marsh, but the Sangleys, who are
very industrious, and a most ingenious people, managed it so well
that, in a place seemingly uninhabitable, they have built a Parián
resembling the other, although much larger and higher. According to
them it suits them better than the other, because on the firm ground
where the four rows of buildings are located they have built their
houses and the streets leading through the Parián, a separate street
for each row of buildings.

There are long passages and the buildings are quadrangular
in shape. This Parián was also destroyed by fire on account of
the houses being built of reeds; but through the diligence of the
president and governor, Doctor Vera, much better houses were built,
and covered with tiles for protection against fire. This Parián has
so adorned the city that I do not hesitate to affirm to your Majesty
that no other known city in España or in these regions possesses
anything so well worth seeing as this; for in it can be found the
whole trade of China, with all kinds of goods and curious things
which come from that country. These articles have already begun to be
manufactured here, as quickly and with better finish than in China;
and this is due to the intercourse between Chinese and Spaniards,
which has enabled the former to perfect themselves in things which
they were not wont to produce in China. In this Parián are to be found
workmen of all trades and handicrafts of a nation, and many of them
in each occupation. They make much prettier articles than are made in
España, and sometimes so cheap that I am ashamed to mention it. If we
Castilians were as cautious as the Portuguese in trading with them,
these articles would be much cheaper, and the Chinese would still
gain by it. For goods are sold at a very low cost in China; and,
no matter how little profit they make there, when these objects are
sold here they yield large profits. But no restraint can be put upon
the Castilians, nor can they be regulated--the consequence of which
is that everything is going to ruin; for the Sangleys, who were not
born as fools, begin to understand the Spaniards' disposition, and
to take advantage of their lack of prudence, thus becoming richer
than they would did the latter observe moderation.

This Parián is provided with doctors and apothecaries, who post in
their shops placards printed in their own language announcing what
they have to sell. There are also many eating-houses where the Sangleys
and the natives take their meals; and I have been told that these are
frequented even by Spaniards. The handicrafts pursued by Spaniards
have all died out, because people buy their clothes and shoes from
the Sangleys, who are very good craftsmen in Spanish fashion, and make
everything at a very low cost. Although the silversmiths do not know
how to enamel (for enamel is not used in China), in other respects
they produce marvelous work in gold and silver. They are so skilful
and clever that, as soon as they see any object made by a Spanish
workman, they reproduce it with exactness. What arouses my wonder
most is, that when I arrived no Sangley knew how to paint anything;
but now they have so perfected themselves in this art that they have
produced marvelous work with both the brush and the chisel, and I
think that nothing more perfect could be produced than some of their
marble statues of the Child Jesus which I have seen. This opinion is
affirmed by all who have seen them. The churches are beginning to
be furnished with the images which the Sangleys make, and which we
greatly lacked before; and considering the ability displayed by these
people in reproducing the images which come from España, I believe
that soon we shall not even miss those made in Flandes. What I say of
the painters applies also to embroiderers, who are already producing
excellent embroidered works, and are continually improving in that art.

What has pleased all of us here has been the arrival of a book-binder
from Mexico. He brought books with him, set up a bindery, and hired a
Sangley who had offered his services to him. The Sangley secretly, and
without his master noticing it, watched how the latter bound books,
and lo, in less than [_blank space in Retana_] he left the house,
saying that he wished to serve him no longer, and set up a similar
shop. I assure your Majesty that he became so excellent a workman
that his master has been forced to give up the business, because the
Sangley has drawn all the trade. His work is so good that there is
no need of the Spanish tradesman. At the time I am writing, I have in
my hand a Latin version of Nabarro bound by him; and, in my judgment,
it could not be better bound, even in Sevilla.

There are many gardeners among the Sangleys, who, in places which
seemed totally unproductive, are raising many good vegetables of the
kinds that grow in España and in Mexico. They keep the market here
as well supplied as that of Madrid or Salamanca. They make chairs,
bridles, and stirrups of so good a quality and so cheaply that some
merchants wish to load a cargo of these articles for Mexico.

Many bakers make bread with the wheat and fine flour which they bring
from China, and sell it in the market-place and along the streets. This
has much benefited the city, for they make good bread and sell it at
low cost; and although this land possesses much rice, many now use
bread who did not do so before. They are so accommodating that when
one has no money to pay for the bread, they give him credit and mark
it on a tally. It happens that many soldiers get food this way all
through the year, and the bakers never fail to provide them with all
the bread they need. This has been a great help for the poor of this
city, for had they not found this refuge they would suffer want. The
Sangleys sell meat of animals raised in this country, as swine,
deer, and carabaos (a kind of Italian buffalo, whose flesh is equal
to beef). They also sell many fowls and eggs; and if they did not
sell them we all would suffer want. They are so intent upon making
a livelihood that even split wood is sold in the Parián. The city
finds most of its sustenance in the fish which these Sangleys sell;
they catch so much of it every day that the surplus is left in the
streets, and they sell it at so low a cost that for one real one can
buy a sufficient quantity of fish to supply dinner and supper for
one of the leading houses in the city.

In the remaining space within the four fronts of the Parián is a
large pond, which receives water from the sea through an estuary. In
the middle of the pond is an islet, where the Sangleys who commit
crimes receive their punishment, so as to be seen by all. The pond
beautifies the Parián and proves to be of great advantage, because
many ships sail into it through the aforesaid estuary at high tide,
and bring to the Parián all the supplies, which are distributed thence
all over the city.

Among the benefits which this city receives from the intercourse
with the Sangleys, by no means the least important is that, while in
España stone-masonry is so expensive and difficult to produce, here,
through the diligence and industry of the Sangleys, we are able to
build fine houses of hewn stone at a low cost; and in so short a
time that in one year a man has been able to complete a house, all
ready for habitation. It is wonderful to see with what rapidity many
sumptuous houses, churches, monasteries, hospitals, and a fort are
being built. The Sangleys also made very good bricks and roof-tiles
at low cost. At first, lime was made with stone as in España; but now
the Sangleys are using a kind of pebble, called "white corals," which
they find on this coast; and also shells of large oysters, of which
there is a large quantity. At the beginning this lime did not seem to
be of good quality; but the kind produced ever since has been so good
that no other kind of lime is being employed in this city. It came to
be sold at so low a price that for my house as well as for others we
bought a cahiz [36] of lime for four reals, and one thousand bricks
for eight--although this is not the fixed price, for it fluctuates
according to the money which comes from Mexico. The Sangleys know how
to take advantage of the right time; they sell their goods dearer when
they know that there is money to buy them, but they never raise the
price so as to make it unreasonable. They agree to bring all the lime,
bricks, and tiles to the house of the purchaser, thus saving him a
great deal of labor. It is of great advantage also to have the Sangleys
construct the building; they agree on so much per braza, including the
cutting of stones and the carrying of the sand. If they are given the
lime, they will furnish all the rest, and will thus deliver the house
or work without any trouble to the owner. The day's wage of a Sangley,
when he does not work by the job, is one real, and he provides his own
food. The Sangleys are hard workers and very greedy for money. The
number of those who have come to this city is so large that another
large Parián is being built by the side of the above-mentioned one,
resembling it in shape. Many Sangleys have built their houses in it,
and it would be filled with people by this time had not the bricks of
Mexico failed us last year through the Marquis de Villa-Manrrique--who,
according to report, prevented the shipment of the bricks to us, thus
causing no little injury and loss to this city and to the Sangleys. He
shall give an account to your Majesty, and a more exact one to God,
of the injuries and loss that he has caused to this land. Had not your
Majesty set matters right by sending a successor to him, [37] and so
good a one as you did send, he would have brought ruin upon this land;
and, even so, he leaves it sufficiently harassed and afflicted.

The Sangleys who live in this Parián number ordinarily between three
and four thousand, not counting the two thousand and more who come
and go in ships. These, together with those residing in Tondo, and
the fishermen and gardeners who live in this neighborhood, number,
according to the Dominican fathers who have them in charge, from six
to seven thousand souls. Four religious of that order are engaged in
their conversion and instruction.

I have mentioned many small matters here, and it does not seem very
considerate to write so long a letter to one who is so occupied in
affairs of moment as your Majesty is; but my great zeal deserves
forgiveness. For, considering how far distant these regions are, and
how extraordinary are these people--of whom we have known so little
hitherto, on account of the opposition shown by the Portuguese to our
gaining any knowledge of them--it seemed right for me to send your
Majesty a relation and more specific news concerning the matter, so
that your Majesty may know what exists and occurs here in his realms,
and may enjoy through experience what was denied to his predecessors
to hear even through report. Had I not already given your Majesty
news of many other things which occur here, I would not dare to omit
them now, even if I might be considered prolix.

This was the condition and disposition of the Sangleys in temporal
matters, when the Dominican religious came to these islands in May,
eighty-seven. I have already sent to your Majesty an account of what
took place from the time of their arrival until the following year. I
reported the singular change which had taken place among the Sangleys
after the Dominican religious took charge of them, and the results
which began to be obtained among them; and that they willingly began
to accept Christianity, in which they have persevered until now. I
will not here reiterate that, although there are many things worthy of
being known, and for which many thanks are due to God, who shows how
wonderful is His power when it pleases Him. What is left for me to
relate, is the departure of the Dominican religious for China; and,
although we do not know how it has fared with them, as they set out
so recently, still the beginnings give us reason to hope that with
the help of our Lord, they will be very successful.

Of the Dominican religious who came to these islands, four are
engaged in ministering to the Sangleys. Two of these four officiate
in the church of Sant Gabriel, which, together with the house where
the religious live, stands close to the Parián. Another church with
its house is on the promontory of Bay-bay, near Tondo--which a river
divides, separating it from Manila. Two of the four have learned
the language of the Sangleys so well, and one of these two how
to write also (which is the most difficult part of the language),
that the Sangleys wonder at their knowledge. The opportunity which
the infidels of both towns had to hear the sermons preached by the
fathers to the Christians, made them acquainted with many matters
relating to our faith, and some of them desired to be baptized. But
when they saw that, by becoming Christians, they would not be allowed
to return to their own country, on account of the danger which the
faith encounters in a country where the people are all idolaters,
they said that our religion was too severe, since in embracing it one
has to forsake his native country, and to deprive himself of father,
mother, wife, children, and relatives. The arguments that they set
forth were such that it seemed as if they wished to persuade us to
baptize them without cutting off their hair, and without forbidding
them to return to their own country. We saw that it was not advisable
to do as they desired, and left matters as they stood. The Sangleys
themselves told us to send fathers to their country to preach to them,
saying that there they would become converted without so much risk as
here. After due consideration of the matter, the Dominican fathers
and myself decided that it was necessary to go to China; for, if
God permitted the religious to remain in that land, we could baptize
the Sangleys here without cutting off their hair, or preventing them
from returning to their country to rejoice in their children, wives,
and property. The Sangleys were much pleased at this decision; but
there were differences of opinion regarding the manner in which the
religious should go. The president thought that it would be best for
them to go in a fragata accompanied by Spaniards: but the Chinese said
that the friars should go alone, and not in the company of Spaniards;
thus many arguments were presented on both sides. Two or three times
I saw our endeavors thwarted, because the devil was laboring with
all his might to prevent them. A fragata had already been bought,
the captain and the men who were to take the friars over had been
chosen, and almost everything was ready for their setting sail, when
the plan was defeated I know not whence or how. My disappointment and
the great sadness which I felt in seeing the defeat of an expedition
which I so much desired, and for whose fulfilment had not sufficed his
Holiness's permission and the special ordinance from your Majesty,
made me think that this was the will of God; thus I was forced to
abandon the attempt. But God, whose plans do not depend upon the
advice of men, arranged matters better than I could have hoped, for
He moved the hearts of the Sangley Christians, Don Francisco Zanco, a
Christian and the governor of the Sangleys, and Don Tomás Syguán. The
latter I baptized about two years ago, without cutting his hair,
for I thought that God was to accomplish some great work through him,
as well as through the other--who, being one of the oldest Christians
in this island, also wore his hair long. When these two saw that the
Spaniards were not going to China, and that the friars remained here
because there was no one to take them over, they went to Fray Juan
Cobo, one of the two friars acquainted thoroughly with the language,
and who has charge of, the Sangleys of the Parián, and manifested to
him their grief at seeing how little they were trusted. They said that
since the fathers remained here because no Spaniards went to China,
they who were Christians and natives of that land would take them over
in more safety; they added that there should be no hesitation to accept
their company, for they would lose their own lives before any harm
should befall the religious. This we understood as an inspiration of
the Holy Spirit, because until then we had never heard that a Sangley
would dare to take any Spaniards to China; accordingly, we decided
to send the friars with the Chinese. When this was announced in the
Parián, all the friendly Sangleys, of whom there are many among the
infidels, were much pleased. One of the Sangley Christians had not
taken a mouthful of food for two days, through grief at seeing us
abandon the expedition; but when he heard that it was going to be
made, and how it was going to be carried out, his joy knew no bounds,
and he declared that it was just as he had hoped, and that it was
the necessary method to pursue. I called two Sangley infidels--who,
although without the faith, are endowed with all the qualities of
good men, and who, I hope, through God's blessing will soon become
Christians--and asked them what was their opinion concerning the
expedition. They answered that they were very glad to see the way in
which the religious were going; for, if they went with Spaniards,
all would be lost. Thus we decided upon the departure, sending at
present no more than two religious: Fray Miguel de Benavides, [38]
who was the first to learn the language of the Sangleys; and Father
Juan de Castro, who came as vicar of the religious, and who was made
provincial here. We preferred these two, as one is well acquainted
with the language, and the other is much loved and esteemed by the
Sangleys on account of his venerable gray locks and blessed old
age; and we know that in that land old people are much respected
and revered. As our Lord sent His disciples, so went these fathers,
stripped of all human support, and carrying nothing with them except
their own persons, their breviaries, and Bibles, for in this manner,
and not with encompassing soldiers, should the gospel be preached.

I give many thanks to God that this expedition, so much desired by
me, started under the best auspices which could be desired; for it is
being undertaken by special permission of the Pope and by a decree of
your Majesty, and with the consent of the governor, of myself, and
of the auditors of this Audiencia. This enterprise has caused great
happiness to all the religious orders, and to all the inhabitants of
this city; and many demonstrations of rejoicing on the part of all the
Sangleys. May it please the divine Majesty that the end be as we all
desire. Another event occurred at the time of the expedition, which
gave us a great deal of pleasure, and kindled in us the hope that
God was really about to open the gates of that great kingdom. The
aforesaid captain who brought the two Franciscan friars to this
city received a letter, which they call _chapa_, for the president,
in which the latter is entreated to do justice to the captain who
brought the letter, so that he might collect some money which was due
him in this city; in the letter, he anxiously entreats the two great
fathers Juan and Miguel, who know the language, to help the captain,
for they are known in that country to favor the Sangleys. Their names
occur twice in that chapa, the first letters of the two names being
written in red ink, which is considered a mark of veneration among
the Chinese. A Sangley woman who lives in Chincheo wrote a letter to
Fray Juan Cobo, thanking him for having helped her husband in a matter
of business. These were the first indications by which we knew that
this expedition was starting under the guidance of God. So on Tuesday,
the twenty-second of May, of this year ninety, I went to the church of
the Parián, and said mass there; after which the two Sangleys who had
offered their services went through a ceremony worthy of notice. They
knelt down before the altar where I said mass, and remained there
for the space of two _credos_, speaking to one another in their own
language and holding each other's hands; after that they embraced one
another, and I learned afterwards that they had sworn to each other
friendship and fidelity. From that place the fathers went to embark,
and I went with them, accompanied by many Sangleys. On account of a
contrary wind, the ship in which they were going could not set sail;
and there were sent, to tow it out, four champans, which are the
small boats of the Sangley ships. They gladly pulled it out to sea,
for more than a league, where we left them under God's protection,
and returned to the city. The captains of two Sangley ships who are
about to follow in the same course have asked me for letters for the
religious, promising me to place them in their own hands, and I shall
not fail to write to them.

In conclusion, I must announce to your Majesty that a hospital has been
built by the Dominican friars who have charge of the Sangleys of the
Parián, which is close by their house. The hospital takes care of sick
Sangleys and subsists on no other income than what the fathers gather
as charity, and what the Sangley infidels contribute towards it. This
fact has been so rumored in China, that the whole country feels very
kindly towards the fathers, knowing of the friendly reception given
to their countrymen here. About a year ago a prominent Sangley was
converted. He was a doctor and an herbalist; but, forsaking all other
worldly interests, he has offered and devoted himself to the service
of the hospital. He cures the sick, bestowing upon them much love and
charity, and prescribing for them his purges and medicines. In short,
it was God who led him thither for the welfare of that hospital, and,
to make the fame thereof more widely spread throughout China. Therefore
I humbly beg your Majesty to be pleased to order that this hospital be
endowed, so that the sick may be cared for. Moreover, if your Majesty
attend to this personally, that fact will be very well received in
China and will be of more benefit than the presents which your Majesty
ordered to be sent to the king.

Doctor Vera, who is now president, on seeing the good will with which
those two Sangley Christians, Don Francisco Canco and Don Tomás Siguán,
offered their services for taking the fathers to China, exempted them,
in the name of your Majesty, from paying taxes for the use of a ship
for six years. I entreat your Majesty to be pleased to confirm this
grant, and to extend it for life; for they certainly performed a great
deed, and one considered of much importance by all the inhabitants
of this city, both Spaniards and Sangleys. They deserve this favor
from your Majesty, even if we should not gain the desired result,
because they for their part have offered what they could.

Fray Juan Cobo, the Dominican religious--who, as I have said before,
knows the language of the Sangleys and their writing, and who is
most esteemed by them--is sending to your Majesty a book, one of a
number brought to him from China. This intercourse which is taking
root between them and ourselves is not a bad beginning for the object
we have in view. The book is in Chinese writing on one half of the
leaf, and Castilian on the other, the two corresponding to each
other. It is a work worthy of your Majesty, and may it be received
as such, not because of its worth, but because it is so rare a work,
never seen before in the Parián, or outside of China. According to
my judgment, it contains things worthy of consideration, by which
is seen the force of the human reason; since without the light
of the faith those things approach so near to those taught us by
the Christian religion. From this your Majesty will see how much in
error is the person who pretends that in kingdoms like that of China,
where such things are taught, we should enter by force of arms to
preach to them our faith. It is clear that with a people like this,
the force of reason has more power than that of arms. May our Lord
direct this affair according to His will; and may He be pleased that
within the days of your Majesty we may see these kingdoms converted
to the faith, and that your Majesty may enjoy this reputation first
on earth and then in heaven. Amen. Manila, June 24, 1590.

_Fray Domingo_, Bishop of the Philipinas.




Two Letters from Domingo de Salazar to Felipe II


Sire:

Five decrees of your Majesty came to me this year of ninety in the
ship "Santiago," which arrived at this port on the last of May. They
are all dated at Madrid, four on the twenty-third of June of the
year eighty-seven, and the fifth on the eighteenth of February of
eighty-eight. After perusing the contents of the said decrees, I can
truly not restrain my surprise that there can be men in the world who
dare to say and declare things which are not certainly proved to be
the truth, much less to give such information to their king. To report
to one's sovereign the contrary of what happens, or to affirm what
one is not certain is the truth, is a most grave offense, worthy of
all punishment and chastisement. Such persons may properly be called
destroyers of their countries, because, in not giving information
in accordance with the principles of truth, they fail to remedy the
evils and provide the good which is necessary for the preservation
of the land. As this commonwealth is so far away from your Majesty,
it has to be governed, not by what your Majesty sees and knows,
but by the information received by him regarding it. This must be
according to the good or bad intention of the informer. Consequently,
this commonwealth is subjected to many hardships and misfortunes, by
the fault not of your Majesty--with whose most holy zeal and desire
for the welfare of this land we are well acquainted--but of us here
who send information. There are but few of us who, oblivious of our own
interests and pretensions, now fix our eyes on the common good alone,
and seek only this; but the most of us seek only our own interests,
our informations and reports are shaped by these, as appears by the
increase of the tributes which your Majesty commands to be made. As
this is discussed, however, in another letter, I will go to no greater
length than to say that, if your Majesty were present here, no orders
would be given to increase the tributes of these miserable people,
but rather they would pay less. But he who informed your Majesty
that more tribute can be paid has already accounted or will account
to God also. I am affected in part by these hardships and dangers,
as it is now two years since your Majesty wrote me a reprimand, as
if I were the man to blame for the dissensions of the Audiencia. God
knows, as do all in this community, that if I had not made peace,
the dissensions between the president and auditors would have lasted
until today. The same I say of the five decrees which I received
this year. Among them are several which show that he who informed
your Majesty did so in an account entirely malicious and totally
contrary to the truth. Others show that, although the informer told
something of the truth, he did so in an entirely different manner from
the way in which things happened, concealing what he ought to say,
and affirming what he should not. This will appear by my reply to
each decree--not as an excuse for myself, as I consider myself to be
very rightly judged elsewhere; but in order to satisfy your Majesty,
as I shall proceed to relate.

Beginning with the first decree, which treats of the confessions of the
conquerors, they being constrained to make restitution _in solidum_,
I say that I have never done anything in this bishopric which leaves
me so vexed and conscience-stricken, as that I dealt so mildly with
those who came to this country nominally as conquerors, but actually
as destroyers. According to the true and sound doctrine of St. Thomas,
and of all right-feeling men, they are all bound to pay _in solidum_
for the damage which they have done. I, with more than necessary
boldness, have planned so that no one has been asked to pay more
than he himself has confessed that he owed; but that is nothing in
comparison with the innumerable injuries which have been committed in
this country. Four years have passed since I gave this order obliging
them to pay one hundred pesos, and then another two hundred pesos,
the largest amount not exceeding five hundred pesos. There were
very few persons taxed for the larger sum, and they were captains or
leaders of expeditions. They have put me off from one year to another
and even yet they have not paid me, always alleging poverty. I have
found it necessary to take from the little that I have to pay some
of these obligations, on account of the needs of the Indians, and
because the Spaniards had not the wherewithal to pay them. When I
considered the hardships suffered by Spaniards in this land, and that
it will utterly ruin them, if the matter with which we have to deal be
treated severely by the theologians, I dared, on this account, to do
what no one else would have done. There is no lack of religious who,
since their arrival here, condemn my action, and say that I am obliged
to constrain the conquerors still further, or to pay the compensation
myself. I assure your Majesty that these scruples have constrained me,
and do so today, to such an extent that this is the principal thing
among other matters of considerable import of which I have to give
an account to his Holiness and to your Majesty. There is no doubt
whatever that he who does the damage is obliged to make restitution;
and all the more when the injured persons are living as they, or their
children and heirs, do in these islands. From investigations which
I have had made regarding those persons who inflicted the injuries,
I am assured that the sums collected as restitution do not amount to
the hundredth part of the valuation of the damages. As my age makes it
impossible for me to go to Spain, and since your Majesty, as a most
Christian prince, so earnestly desires and strives for the welfare
of these natives, I shall send herewith a memorandum of what I have
done in this case, and of what each of the conquerors has paid, and
of the injuries committed--although it would be impossible to relate
them all. I do this so that your Majesty may be pleased to grant to me
and to all this land mercy and grace, when my actions are considered
there; and, if it should be necessary, to procure the approbation
of his Holiness to compromise the matter by releasing them from the
remainder of the restitutions, as full restitution is impossible. To
attempt to do more would be only to harass them, with no other result
than burdening their consciences. Thus I will be freed from these
intolerable scruples and continuous vexations in which I am placed.

Your Majesty seems to hold me guilty for having encouraged the slaves
to leave the Spaniards. I do not know how blame can be placed on me
therefor, since the Indians held as slaves by the Spaniards (who were
unwilling to let them go) have been declared free by your Majesty. It
was evident that the former could not be absolved, any more than
if they had stolen property; and your Majesty knows that, in the
jurisdiction of the conscience, there is not the liberty that there
is in external matters. Your Majesty may pardon a life, or remit the
penalty of the law to him whom he may consider meet; but the tribunal
of conscience is not free to pardon anyone, or to absolve persons from
any sin, except when they act as they ought. Confession being thus
rigorous, even greater laxity was permitted than should have been. Your
Majesty must believe that I am trying to do everything possible here,
so as not to exceed my duty, and I never take such action without first
consulting with such persons of learning and conscience as are here.

In the second decree, your Majesty orders that when the Sangleys
wish to be baptized, their hair shall not be cut off. He who reported
this to your Majesty deceived you, for there are not only a hundred
houses occupied by Sangleys who remain here for negotiations with
their merchandise, but more than [_blank space in MS_.] who live in
the alcaiceria of this city, called Parián, and more than [_blank
space in MS_.] [39] in all the neighborhood. It is certain that
in both places there are at the very least more than [_blank space
in MS_.]. Since the religious of St. Dominic came to this country,
more than two hundred have been baptized, and every day many more are
receiving baptism. But inasmuch as what concerns the Sangleys, and the
great compassion with which God has dealt with them and with us, will
go in a separate letter, in order not to increase the length of this,
your Majesty will read therein matters that will prove how well you
are served, and you will give abundant thanks to God. He who reported
this to your Majesty must have some zeal, but not with knowledge; for
I consider all the conditions, desire the conversion of these Chinese,
and obtain it, better than he who wrote to your Majesty. I would not
decide to have their hair cut off, if it were not so necessary that
not to do so would be to endanger greatly the faith and the persons
with whom I deal. These affairs are of such a nature that no matter
what opinion were given, I could not do anything else, even though I
should wish to do so. Because I considered it fitting to baptize two
of them without cutting off their hair, I thereby did myself much
harm; your Majesty may thus see how contrary to actual facts are
the things written you from here, and that the death-penalty is not
suffered for cutting off their hair, as was written to your Majesty;
for after the Dominican fathers learned the language we discovered
vast secrets of that land, which were formerly well hidden.

The third decree states that there are many ecclesiastics in this
bishopric who trade and carry on traffic, to the great scandal of
and bad example to both Spaniards and Indians. He who wrote your
Majesty told the truth in part, since two ecclesiastics from Nueva
España furnished this bad example, although I did what I could to
prevent them. Nevertheless, God punished them more severely than I
did; for all the property of one was taken away by the Englishman,
[40] and the other died here, and lost what he had sent to Nueva
España. Those ecclesiastics who are under my government, however,
have not exceeded their duty in this respect as much as your Majesty
has been informed. Moreover, they are not so many as has been said
in Spain, for there are not more than five who are stationed among
the Indians, and these are so poor that they do not even have enough
to eat. More than one and one-half years before this decree came, I
had taken measures to correct the excess which might result, having
ordered that no ecclesiastic should carry on traffic. This appears
by the ordinances which I had made concerning this. That your Majesty
may order them to be considered and amended, I enclose them with this
letter. In the future this order will be more rigorously observed,
according to your Majesty's command.

In the fourth decree, your Majesty says that the president of this
Audiencia wrote that when he came to this land, he agreed with me
as to the order [of precedence] to be followed when the Audiencia
and I should encounter each other in public. He further says that,
disregarding this arrangement, I sat in the place which did not belong
to me, and turned my back on the Audiencia. I would be very glad to
meet the president before your Majesty, and hear his reason for daring
to inform your Majesty in such a manner. It is very certain that no
such agreement was ever made between him and me, except that, when
there was to be a procession in the church, the president should go
with the auditors, and I with my clergy; for he claimed the right hand,
and I did not have it to take. Thus we came to this agreement. The
place, however, was not discussed, nor was there any excuse for doing
so, as it is well known that the Audiencia is always seated on the
gospel side in the body of the chapel; and, although the bishop is
usually in the choir, he may, when he wishes to do so, sit on the
gospel side, above the steps. Wherever I have been, this has been
the practice; and I sent an account thereof, with the testimony of
an eye-witness, to the Council of the Indias. Your Majesty provides
and commands by this decree that I shall take the place belonging to
me. This order means that I take the same place which I took then,
as that is the proper place belonging to a bishop, without giving
any cause whatever for the Audiencia to feel injured, as the places
are very distinct from each other. Although the vexation ceased,
because of the suppression of the Audiencia, the injury done me by
the president, in writing to your Majesty, has not yet come to an
end. I ought not to fail to reply to what is so unjustly imputed to me.

He who informed your Majesty of the matter contained in the fifth
decree, namely, that when appeal is made to the royal Audiencia in
cases of fuerça, [41] I do not allow the notaries to give an account
thereof; and that I seize the writs and records of proceedings, so that
they cannot be issued, the Audiencia having requested me in vain to do
otherwise--whoever, I say, gave this account to your Majesty did me
greater injury than any of the others. For not only is this not so,
but I even urge the notary to give a report; and I am so far from
[what has been said] to the contrary, that I assure your Majesty
that I much regretted the suppression of the Audiencia. For I was
very glad that, whenever I denied anything on appeal, the Audiencia
examined my reasons therefor; and, whatever was determined there,
my conscience was freed and at rest. Moreover, I always accepted,
without making any objection, the decisions of the Audiencia; for
I would consider it a grievous offense to deny your Majesty's right
to make the final decision in cases of fuerça, and would not presume
to contradict it in any manner whatsoever. If he who made that report
based it on two cases which came up--one when they erased my name from
the prayer at the mass of the Audiencia, and substituted their own
names; the other when, in an investigation, they claimed the right to
examine the proceedings which had been conducted in secret--in these
two cases I confess that I refused to give up the records. I did so in
one instance because there were therein very secret matters touching
the office of the Inquisition, of which I was then in charge. When
they commanded that report of this case be given, I said that it
would be furnished in so far as concerned the chaplain of the said
Audiencia. This was what they had asked, and claimed the right to
try this case. Nevertheless, they would accept nothing but the entire
proceedings; but with this I could not comply, for it would have been
impossible to do so without very grave damage to my office. After
considering my reasons therefor, the Audiencia insisted no more in
the case. The other case concerned the general investigation which I
had made of the prebendaries and clergy--two of whom appealed against
the sentence which I imposed, stipulating that the tenor thereof
be observed as is expressly commanded by the Council of Trent. They
had recourse to the Audiencia; and when an order was given for the
record of the case to be presented, I replied that there were secret
matters touching the honor of the clergy, which I could not show,
but that I would show that part referring to the two ecclesiastics;
as they wished their offenses to be known. Nevertheless, it was not
right to exhibit the guilt of the others, as they did not feel that
their sentences were unjust. There were many arguments over this point,
and all the theologians of this land said that I was right. To avoid
scandal I openly consented that the two ecclesiastics should appeal
to the archbishop. [42] Both then and now I have felt much aggrieved
by the injustice done me by the Audiencia. I have sent a complaint
thereof to your Majesty, and do not know why the testimony I sent has
not yet arrived there. I had then and still have reason for complaining
that the Audiencia usurped my jurisdiction and discussed proceedings
which properly belong to me, but in which they have forestalled me. A
citizen of this city left a piece of land whereon was built a hospital
and church for the poor. Although this was ecclesiastical property,
they deprived me of judgment in this case, and retained it in their own
body. At another time, the Indians had dared to take a friar from his
convent, and they dragged him to the place where I was. I commenced to
try the case, and gave a verdict against the Indians, as it was doubly
sacrilegious to take the friar from his convent, and to place hands
on an ecclesiastic. This case came to the Audiencia by way of appeal,
and it still remains there, with the records. A beneficed priest,
who was performing the duties of his office, was refused its dues
by the encomendero, and came to me for justice. After I had ordered
the encomendero to make the payment, he appealed to the Audiencia,
and they retained the suit there, claiming that the property given to
beneficiaries in this land is secular. As I am poor, and have little
power, these injuries and similar ones have not been heard of in
Spain. I have suffered them and have kept silence, in order to avoid
scandal; but for having resisted in but two cases, in which I was
obliged to defend the right of my jurisdiction, in order to comply
with the duties of my office, they made a damaging report of me to
your Majesty. They say that I would not permit a report to be made,
and took the records of the suit from the notary, so that they could
not be dealt with. In order that your Majesty may see the difference
between what I here declare (which is the actual truth), and what
they wrote to your Majesty, accusing me of resisting _in toto_ the
commands of the Audiencia in regard to the cases of fuerça (which
was glaringly false testimony against me), I have decided--although
everything touching the Audiencia is now settled, since your Majesty
has commanded it to be suppressed--to answer the account which they
gave your Majesty about the places and the cases of fuerça. Although I
am sure that my cause has been justified before God and those men who
know what has happened, I do it to satisfy your Majesty, to whom I owe
all obedience and subjection as to my king and lord. I am even bound
to explain my conduct; because, by the grace of God, your Majesty has
no one in this kingdom who serves you with greater love and zeal. I
claim no payment nor temporal interest whatever, because this I
neither desire nor demand; but I do only my duty, and that I do with
all my might. I could send your Majesty good and sufficient proofs
of everything which I have said here; for I certify, in all truth,
that everyone to whom I have shown these decrees has crossed himself
in surprise that there should be a person or persons who would dare
to make such malicious reports to your Majesty. It suffices me to say
that, if credit be not given me, not much time will pass before this
truth will be revealed, beyond all possibility of hiding.

May our Lord guard the royal person of your Majesty, and preserve
you many years. At Manila, the twenty-fourth of June, one thousand
five hundred and ninety.

_Fray Domingo_, Bishop of the Filipinas.

[_Endorsed_: "To the king our lord, in his royal Council of the
Indias. Filipinas. 1590. The bishop; June 24." "Received and read,
June 19, of the year 1591. It is unnecessary to respond thereto."]

Sire:

The letter which your Majesty ordered to be written to me from San
Lorenço el Real [i.e., the Escorial], on the seventeenth of August of
eighty-nine, I received by the hand of the secretary of the governor,
Gomes Perez Dasmarinas, in the village of Tabuco, outside of this
city, on the first of June of this year ninety. And for one so beset
with afflictions, labors, and difficulties as I am, the favor which
your Majesty therein shows me was no little comfort; for I have been
freed by it from the pains of conscience, which I continually bore in
my soul, at seeing the course of affairs in this land. I held myself
obliged by conscience to go in person to inform your Majesty of these
matters, as it appeared to me that my letters were accomplishing
little, in accord with my hope that your Majesty would at once amend
what you knew stood in need of betterment. And this thought gave me
more anxiety because, as at other times I have written your Majesty,
among the calamities and misfortunes under which this land suffers,
none the least is that your Majesty must get information of them
through the very men who have destroyed this land, and who work
for their private interests rather than for the common good. As
the reports are made by such persons, your Majesty can well see the
result. Therefore this land has come to its present misery; and the
new governor will have no small task if he maintains it, and saves it
from ruin, and it is even now all but lost. I am emboldened to say this
because hitherto there have been made to your Majesty many perverse
reports; and by this ship we have received the decrees, by which it
clearly appears that false reports were given your Majesty, because
of the provisions made in these decrees, as I shall explain elsewhere.

The greater part of the religious and other principal persons of this
land were of the same opinion as I, maintaining that I was in duty
bound to go in person and give your Majesty an account of affairs here,
because they see that everything here is going to ruin; and that this
common expedient was of greater importance than the harm that might be
done by my absence. But thanks be to God, in whose hands are the hearts
of kings, and who put into the heart of your Majesty what is provided,
ordained, and commanded by this letter for the weal and betterment of
all this land. If this be executed as your Majesty has ordered, the
country may be helped; but hitherto there has been so much sloth and
carelessness in executing what your Majesty provides and orders for the
good of this land, that thus it has come to its present extremity. I
trust in our Lord that this state of affairs will not continue, but
that the principal aim of the governor and of all the rest will be
to procure the good of these natives whom we have so afflicted.

This whole country has been well satisfied at your Majesty's
suppression of the Audiencia, for without doubt it was a greater
burden than a country so feeble and poor could bear; although I was
always of the opinion that, if it were paid from Mexico, the Audiencia
would work no harm here. But what your Majesty orders and commands is
expedient for all of us; and so we hold it a great favor, especially
as your Majesty sends in place of the Audiencia, as governor, Gomez
Perez Dasmarinas--who, from the good example which he has furnished
and the zeal which he has disclosed in the service of your Majesty
and the good of these realms, has given universal satisfaction, and
the hope that he will improve the condition of the land, and give it
the orderly condition which it was losing. May the divine Majesty
preserve in him these excellent intentions, and give him strength
and grace to execute them; because as the heart of man is so hard to
understand, and of itself so variable, and this land is so exposed,
it is not strange that we fear some alteration, having seen it in
others who also gave excellent examples. But if the governor who has
now come to us shall persevere in what he has begun (as I hope in
God he will persevere), your Majesty has sent us the man whom we need.

When Doctor Santiago de Vera came by command of your Majesty to
establish the Audiencia in this country, he set up for himself a seat
of honor in the church, as the viceroys do. The adelantado, Miguel
Lopez de Legaspi, did not establish one, nor did the governors who
afterward succeeded him. Gomez Perez, who is now governor, did not
wish to set one up; for in this and in all other things he has shown
himself very moderate. But it seemed to me that he should not fail to
establish it, and thus at my importunity, and that of other persons,
he has done so. Because your Majesty has already honored him in other
respects, favoring him with a guard of halberdiers, and as people from
all the kingdoms of the infidels by whom we are surrounded resort to
this city, and as these barbarians respect their superiors as gods,
it did not appear to me to be right that the person who represented
your Majesty should discontinue the dignity which was required to
represent you. And in order that your Majesty in the future may be
pleased to provide this land with a governor who shall be capable
and worthy to use his authority, I beg your Majesty to approve this
and send him the order to continue and make permanent the practice.

The twelve thousand ducats which your Majesty has ordered to be paid
in three installments for the work on this church, were necessary
enough, although I fear that they are to avail as little as the
rest; because, although your Majesty has so often commanded it,
and we on our part have exercised the greatest possible diligence,
it has not been possible to draw out from the royal treasury what was
due from it for the said work; and so it has come to a standstill,
or so little is done that it never advances. It really is a pity to
see a cathedral church, in a city containing so great a concourse of
heathen, where divine offices are celebrated in a church of straw,
in which, on the coming of a storm, no one can remain. Your Majesty
will see what the condition of the rest of the churches must be. It
certainly is a pity to see the little care there is in this matter,
and the scandal occasioned to the heathen and the recent converts by
the little veneration that we who have so long been Christians bestow
upon the temples in which we worship our God, for really many of them
are not fit to serve as stables. I have given your Majesty an account
of this before now. The two thousand ducats which your Majesty ordered
paid from the treasury of Mexico for this work were not brought,
because the governor could not bring the securities that were necessary
to obtain that sum there, because of his hurried departure. Moreover,
it should be understood that it will be very difficult to collect the
portions to be paid by Indians and encomenderos, because of their want
and poverty. And for this reason we do not dare to press them much,
deeming it better that the work should be done slowly than to harass
one who is unable to do more; and it has been the treasury of your
Majesty which has aided us least.

Your Majesty's command that the religious should not depart from the
bishopric without license of your Majesty, or that of the governor and
myself, is a very just thing, and therefore it will be carried out;
because it also seems fitting to me not to let the religious depart
from here, where they are so few and so many are needed. Before this
ship arrived the president and I had despatched two Dominican religious
to Chincheo, which is the province of China nearest to this land, and
the place whence all the Sangleys who come here to trade set forth. In
this departure there was a punctual observance of what your Majesty
commands in this clause of your letter, although we had not then
received it. And owing to the fact that before we determined to send
them, and at the time when we sent them, there occurred many notable
things from which your Majesty should receive much satisfaction,
I thought it better, in order not to make this letter so long, to
place them by themselves in another, which will accompany this one,
in order to give your Majesty a more detailed account of things so
worthy to be heard.

With regard to what your Majesty orders concerning the remission of
tithes for twenty years to those who now come to settle and who may
come in the future, I would to God that the Spaniards were inclined to
cultivate the land and to gather the fruits from it, rather than that
we should ever afflict the natives by tithes. But your Majesty should
know that when a man comes to this country, even if he were a beggar
in Spain, here he seeks to be a gentleman, and is not willing to work,
but desires to have all serve him; and so no one will give himself to
labor, but undertakes trafficking in merchandise, and for this reason
military and all other kinds of training have been forgotten. From
this fact not a little damage will come to this land, if the governor
does not regulate this. In the letter which the cabildo of the church
wrote to your Majesty a much longer account is given of this.

To proceed informally [_de plano_], without insisting on legal
technicalities [_sin llegar a tela de juicio_], and not to impose
pecuniary punishments in the suits which occur in these regions,
is a most holy and necessary practice. I desire greatly that in the
tribunals of your Majesty this be observed; in mine I have so provided,
and this practice has been observed and henceforth will be observed
with greater rigor.

He who informed your Majesty of the disorderly manner in which have
been collected the tributes of the encomiendas which are not fully
pacified, and how poorly the ordinances of your Majesty have been
observed, spoke the truth in this matter. The excess in this has
been so great that it has been the cause of all the riots and the
revolt of the Indians, and of the deaths which have occurred among
the Spaniards. I have given your Majesty news of this, grieving
for the evils which have sprung from it. For the Indians of this
province, in those places where the name of God has never entered,
nor that of your Majesty, must feel resentful where they have seen
neither ministers of instruction nor of justice; but only see that
each year a dozen of soldiers with arquebuses come to their houses
to take their property away from them, and the food upon which they
live, although their all is little enough. These collectors afflict,
maltreat, and torment them, and so leave them, until they return
another year to do the same. What else can these natives think of us,
but that we are tyrants, and that we come only to make our gain out
of their property and their persons? And this will be very difficult
to remedy, so distant from the rest are some of the encomiendas,
with water between, and so little fear of God have those who make
the collections. It may be that with the arrival of the new governor
there will be much improvement in this; although if he does not bear
an order from your Majesty to change some measures which up to the
present have been in force, I have no hope of betterment.

In the next to the last clause of this letter your Majesty says that
to remedy the present lack of instruction is my own special obligation,
which I confess; and I have so appreciated this that, seeing the great
present need of instruction and the little help which I can offer,
I am so disturbed and so filled with anxiety that, if I were able to
leave the bishopric, I would try to flee from it. But if, inasmuch as
your Majesty declares to me my obligation, and puts in my charge what
is lacking, you should give me, together with it, authority to right
affairs, your Majesty would be relieved of responsibility, and I of
anxiety, other than to make progress in learning my obligations. If
I do not have authority and power to remedy this, I must live all my
life in anxiety and perturbation of spirit, because every year I see
them collect tribute from a race that is never given to understand
why it is collected; nor is there any hope that they may be able to
have instruction, because of the great difficulty there is in giving
it to them. Knowing that this is the legitimate title which we have
in seeking tribute, your Majesty may see what peace of conscience
he can have who has all these souls in his charge, both those who
collect and those of whom collection is taken. To relieve me from the
anguish in which I live, the only means of removing all difficulties
is for your Majesty to send us a great number of religious of the
four orders already established here--without giving ear to those who
speak of a matter about which, in my opinion, they have no means of
judging here. They say that some have tried to persuade your Majesty,
with no other spirit than that of the devil (who wishes to hinder
so much good), that we have all the religious that are necessary. In
addition to the thirty-seven Augustinians now here, more than three
hundred others are needed; and even these will not be enough. Yet,
with this number great results would be accomplished.

The first is that your Majesty would be fulfilling the obligation
which you have toward these nations, in giving them instruction. They
need this, because of the ten divisions of this bishopric eight have
no instruction; and some provinces have been paying tribute to your
Majesty for more than twenty years, but without receiving on account
of that any greater advantage than to be tormented by the tribute
and afterward to go to hell.

Second, all the Indians who are to be pacified will then be found,
because experience has already shown us that to think of finding the
Indians with a force of soldiers is rather to lose them, and never
to pacify them; while with religious they all become obedient with
great good will. And, when they are pacified and converted, much
larger tributes can be exacted, and the increase of revenue in the
treasury of your Majesty from their tributes would be greater than the
amount spent in sending them religious; while the conscience of your
Majesty would be free from the greatest weight which, in my judgment,
it has in this land, because tributes are collected from Indians
who have never rendered obedience, and do not, as I have said above,
know why they are paying it.

In the last clause your Majesty orders me to charge myself with the
protection of the Indians of this bishopric. I receive this charge
as a special favor; because, as it was, I was burdened with the same
responsibility, and with this commission I shall have, as your Majesty
says, more authority in order to render aid. And this provision was
so necessary because, without it, I was able to do almost nothing to
succor the Indians. And with this I think I shall be able to serve your
Majesty more, and to advance the cause of those who shall come with
the charge of bishop, although the one joined to the other is of very
great consequence. The Indians who have learned of it are very glad,
since the obligation which is due them from the Spaniards is of no
concern to the latter. And as it is from the hand of your Majesty,
this office, then, is of greater importance for the relief of the
conscience of your Majesty and the preservation of the natives,
than any other one of all that are provided for afterward by the
governor. I have not the wherewithal for the expenses which occur;
for there must necessarily be a notary, interpreter, and lawyer,
and persons who with my authorization shall be present to plead the
suits--which will not be a few, and cannot be carried through without
spending money--since I am not able, nor is it right that I should be
on hand to present the petition, or to plead the causes and business
of so much weight and authority. To take this task of being my agent,
some honest man, however honorable his station, should be glad to do
it. It is necessary that he be a person of great credit and of resolute
mind, that he may not fear to defend the Indians, although at the risk
of injury from those who harm them, and this seldom fails to come to
pass, as the disputes are often with those who are very powerful.

It will also be necessary to send persons from this city through
all the bishopric to investigate the injuries that the Indians
suffer. Before they go to do this, I shall have notice of what is
happening; and this is to be done at the cost of your Majesty's
treasury, in order not to give occasion for the robbery of the
Indians, if they should have to pay them. All this is necessary in
order that I should be able to perform well this office, and relieve
the conscience of your Majesty and my own; because many are the wrongs
which the Indians receive in this bishopric from your encomenderos,
the alcaldes-mayor, and the tax-receivers; and, the farther away they
are, the greater the wrongs and the more difficult the remedy. I humbly
beseech your Majesty to be pleased to command provision to be made as
I here request, because otherwise my protection will be only nominal
and ineffectual. I have already discussed this with the governor,
and I understand that he will make provision in some of these things,
because the necessity is very urgent; and for the remainder we wait
what your Majesty is pleased to command. The friendly intercourse which
your Majesty commands me to observe with the governor, your Majesty
may be assured will not be lacking on my part; and I understand that
without doubt there will be as little lack on the part of the governor,
because in the little intercourse that I have had with him I have
conceived very great hopes of him. And I believe that God inspired
your Majesty to send him to us--although, as I have known him only
a little while, I am not able to express more than what I hope.

Because there is no mention made of the Sangleys in the clause of
the letter in which your Majesty commands me to take charge of the
protection of these natives, the governor has considered--and this
is his opinion--that because we were not there named, neither I nor
my agent could answer for them, as for the natives. May your Majesty
be pleased to command what is to be done in this case, because the
Sangleys have so much more need of protection than the natives. In
the meanwhile, according to the wish of the governor, I shall not
cease to aid in whatever may concern them, just as if I had been
appointed to look after them by your Majesty; and my agent will do
the same, in those matters which belong to him as such. May our Lord
preserve the royal person of your Majesty for many years. At Manila,
the twenty-fourth of June, 1590.

_Fray Domingo_, Bishop of the Filipinas.

[_Endorsed_: "Filipinas. To his Majesty; 1590. The bishop;
twenty-fourth of June." "Received and read on June 19, 1591; and
answer sent him that it had been received, and that what he advised
had been approved and should be continued."]




Royal Decree Regulating Commerce in the Philippines


Don Phelippe, by the grace of God, King of Castilla, Leon, Aragon,
the two Sicilies, Jherusalem, Portugal, Mallorca, Sevilla, Cerdeña,
Cordova, Corçega, Murçia, Jaem, the Algarves, Algezira, Gibraltar, the
islands of Canaria, the Eastern and Western Yndias, and the islands
and mainland of the Ocean Sea; Archduke of Austria; Duke of Borgoña,
Bravante, and Milan; Count of Habspurg, Flandes, Tirol, and Barzelona;
Seignior of Vizcaya and Molino, etc. Inasmuch as I have been informed
[43] by the city of Manila in the Philippinas Islands that the
great consignments of money sent by the wealthy from Nueva España,
for investment in Chinese merchandise and that of other countries,
have caused ruin to that country; and that the factors and others
taking part in the said trade buy the goods at wholesale prices,
and raise the price of all the merchandise, so that the poor and
common people of the said islands cannot buy them, or buy them at very
high rates; and furthermore that, because of the number and size of
the said consignments of goods, and the vessels being few in number
(indeed, sometimes and usually but one, and then quite filled up and
laden with the said merchandise for Mexicans), no space is left for
the citizens and common people [of the Philippines] to send their
merchandise: therefore, as they have implored me, as a remedy for
the said annoyances, to provide and order that no consignments of
money be sent from the said Nueva España to the said islands, and
that they be not allowed to have factors or companies there, but that
the citizens of the said islands alone be allowed to buy and export
to the said Nueva España domestic and foreign products; and that,
if anyone else should wish to trade and traffic there, he should be
compelled to become a citizen of the islands, and reside there for at
least ten years, or as might be my pleasure; and because my will is to
concede favor to the said islands, in order that their condition may
continue to improve, and the inhabitants thereof to be advantaged--I
grant that, for the present, they alone, and no others--whether of
Nueva España, or any other part of the Indias--may trade in China,
and export, take, or sell to the said Nueva España the merchandise and
articles thus traded for in both the kingdoms and mainland of China,
and in the said islands, for the time and space of six years, first
commencing from the date of the departure of the first vessel with a
cargo of merchandise for the said Nueva España. I prohibit and forbid
all other persons whomsoever, of whatever rank and preeminence, from
trading in the said islands and in China for the space of the said
six years, reckoned as above stated, under penalty of confiscation
of the merchandise that they have traded for therein. I order that
this my provision be promulgated in the City of Mexico, and that
my royal officials there enter it in their books. Those of the said
islands shall do likewise, and they shall endorse on the back of this
said provision the date upon which it took effect, by the departure
from port of the first vessel with the said merchandise. They shall
send me a separate attestation of the same, so that I may know when
the said six years are to be in force. And neither one nor the other
shall do anything contrary to this order. [_Blank spaces for place,
day, and month_] one thousand five hundred and ninety.

So that for the period of six years only, the citizens and inhabitants
of the Philippinas Islands and none others, whether in Nueva España
or other places, may trade and traffic in China. [44]

[Accompanying this decree is a separate paper reading as follows:
"÷ By the crown of Castilla. Provision allowing the people of Manila
to trade in China. His Majesty omitted to sign this decree, because
he wishes your Lordship to summon Pedro Barbosa and Pedro Alvarez
Pereira, and to ascertain from them what is written on the subject
from India from Don Christoval de Mora to Pedro Alvarez. This latter
will show your Lordship all the papers that he has bearing upon this
matter; and after you shall have examined them, you shall advise his
Majesty of your opinion. Sant Lorenzo, July 23, 1590." Without other
signature than a rubrica or flourish.]




The Collection of Tributes in the Filipinas Islands 1591


_Source_: This document is obtained from copies of the original MSS.,
in the Archivo general de Indias, Sevilla.

_Translation_: It is synopsized, and partially translated, by Emma
Helen Blair; the remaining translation is by Frederic W. Morrison,
of Harvard University, and Norman F. Hall.




The Collection of Tributes in the Filipinas Islands



Memorandum of the Resources of the Hospital of Manila and Its Needs



The royal hospital for the Spaniards possesses about
one hundred taes of gold in the encomienda of Darandum
in Ylocos, which was assigned to the said hospital
by Doctor Sande.											DC pesos

It possesses, further, six hundred pesos, which were
granted to it by the president from the encomienda
which fell vacant because of the death of Don Luis
de Sahajosa, in Ylocos.										DC pesos

It possesses one thousand five hundred fanegas of rice,
and one thousand seven hundred fowls, assigned by
the president from the tributes of Caruya and Lubao,
which belong to his Majesty.							  DLXX pesos

It possesses what your Lordship assigned it in the
encomienda of Bondoy Moron, which, it is thought,
will amount to more than eight hundred or nine
hundred pesos.											    IU pesos

													----------------
													IIU.DCCLXX pesos



With the above, the said hospital cannot even support the expenses
incurred for food and for services rendered by the Indians. It likewise
needs a doctor, medicine, nurses, and other services, as well as
exceptional delicacies, bed clothes, and tents. Indeed half the
money is expended in the anointings and sweatings which are applied
throughout the year.

There is also needed a chaplain, who is usually attached to the said
hospital, to administer the sacraments to the sick.

The building of the said hospital does not suffice for its needs. It
contains but one hall, where all classes of sick people are packed
together, to their own detriment. Another infirmary is greatly needed
for patients who suffer from buboes, and for anointings and sweatings;
there are many sick with this disease, since this country is well
suited to produce it. The said hospital also needs a room for the
convalescents, for lack of which many relapses are wont to occur.

We also need quarters for sick women, for many poor creatures do not
recover because they have no money, and no place where they can go.

Likewise, the said hospital is in need of a kitchen, utensils, and
quarters for its servants, all of which things are needful therein
for the suitable outfit and service of the said hospital.

The captain _Cuenca_, as director of the hospital.



Discussion and Conclusions of the Bishop Concerning the Matter
of Tributes

_Jesus_

Inasmuch as I understand that some of the encomenderos, and especially
those from Camarines, have gone, or desire to go, to ask permission
of your Lordship to collect from their encomiendas, in which they
never have, nor do they at present, maintain religious instruction,
I have deemed it best to send to your Lordship a brief statement
of what I and the theologians of this bishopric feel concerning the
collections in the aforesaid encomiendas, in order that your Lordship
may understand how and in what way they are to be licensed to make
these collections. [45] Although the king, our lord, has unburdened
his royal conscience by entrusting it to your Lordship and to myself,
I see no reason why we should weigh down our own souls and consciences
with what others are to eat and expend.

The encomiendas existing in these islands are, in general, divided into
two classes; for some of them have had and do still have religious
instruction, and others have never had it in the past, nor do they
enjoy it at present. The encomiendas which do not possess instruction
are themselves divided into two classes: the first consists of those
which have not had, and now have not, any religious instruction,
nor have they ever received from their encomenderos spiritual or
temporal benefits; on the contrary, their present condition is such
that it would seem the Spaniards had never gone thither to do aught
else than to reduce and conquer them in order to exact tributes. We
may even say that the encomiendas are in worse condition than if the
Spaniards had never come, for, with the harsh treatment and oppression
that they have received at our hands, they are at present further
from receiving the law of God than if they had never known us. The
second class consists of the encomiendas which, although they have
not been instructed, have received from their encomenderos, or by
means of them, some temporal advantages which tend toward spiritual
benefits, which prepare them so that they may be instructed, and
that one may live among them in security. In the first division are
included the encomiendas of Calamianes, which at present belong to
Captain Sarmyento; the islands of Cuyo, which belong to Captain Juan
Pablo de Carrion; the encomiendas which are in the islands of Mindanao
and Jolo, and on the coast opposite, Mindoro and Elin; the encomiendas
called Zambales, which extend from Maribeles to Pangasinan; in Ylocos,
the valley of Dinglas, and the encomiendas which extend from Ylagua to
Cagayan, and all those of Cagayan; and those which extend along the
farther coast from Cagayan to Mavban; and, finally, all those other
islands of like character, which I do not at present remember. In all
the aforementioned places, it has been hitherto impossible to collect
the tributes, and it will likewise be impossible in the future, should
they continue to maintain their present attitude; but whatever has
thus far been collected from them we are under obligations to restore.

In the other division are included all the remaining encomiendas of
the Pintados, with the exception of a few in Panay where there is
religious instruction. In the above division are included the islands
of Leite, Negros, Babao, Balon, and Bohol; and, in the island of Panay,
the encomienda of Captain Pedro Sarmiento; the encomienda of Axuy,
which belongs to his Majesty and to Francisco de Rribera; the tingues
[hills] of the river of Araud which belong to his Majesty and to
Captain Juan Pablo de Carrion and two or three other encomenderos;
the islands of Marinduque and Masbate, and all the others which
extend thence to the mouth of the channel; in Camarines, the islands
of Catanduanes and Lagunay, and those along the coast and many others
which are in this condition. In all the aforesaid places it may be
considered a general rule that religious teaching did not, and does
not exist--or at least has existed for so short a time that it is
practically the same as if it had never existed. Moreover, from all
the aforesaid places and from others like them, since they have been
in such condition that one could travel through them in security (and,
if ministers should come, their inhabitants could be instructed), it
has been possible to collect a certain amount of tribute, for aid,
and support, and expenses. Not all, or even half, of the tributes,
however, could be collected; if the encomiendas are rather large, only
the third part is obtained, and if they are small, only half. Moreover,
whatever collections were made from these encomiendas could not be
made until they had been prepared as aforesaid. Inasmuch as this
matter is a most difficult one, on account of the danger incurred
in collecting from the Indians what they do not owe, and when they
are not willing that it should be collected, and of depriving the
encomenderos of what is due them in case they have fulfilled their
obligations toward the Indians, this shall be the rule regarding
such action as has been taken hitherto by the confessors, namely,
that an encomendero who has simply made collections among the Indians,
without having done them any temporal or spiritual good, shall not be
entitled to collect any tributes; if, however, through his endeavors,
or by trading with them, they are so well-inclined that he can go about
safely among them, and they themselves can be instructed when they
have ministers, the encomenderos shall be entitled to collect from
them the portion which we have named above. In order that from this
time forth, the king in the royal encomiendas, and the encomenderos in
theirs, may, as has been stated, collect the third part or the half,
the following conditions must be observed:

First: That the encomenderos shall endeavor, with the utmost diligence
and care, to establish sufficient religious instruction in their
encomiendas. In case they are unable to do so, they shall write
to his Majesty, requesting him to provide the necessary number of
ministers to teach the Indians; and they shall ask this so earnestly
and effectively that his Majesty will feel himself under obligation
to send ministers. They shall likewise offer, if it be necessary, to
pay a part of the expenses which his Majesty shall incur in sending
the ministers.

Second: In case ministers cannot at once be found to instruct the
natives, orders shall meanwhile be given as to how the encomenderos
are to reside in their lands. This should not be done in the manner
which has been hitherto practiced, when some of the encomenderos
hoping thus to reduce their expenses go to live in their encomiendas
(indeed, I know not if there are any who act otherwise), and there
employ the Indians in the service of themselves, their families,
and their houses, taking away their possessions at the lowest price,
and treating them as if they were their slaves. They care nothing
for instructing the natives, or setting them a good example, or
preparing them to receive baptism; on the contrary they exasperate
the Indians with their harsh treatment, and cause them to abhor the
law of God. Such encomenderos as these should not reside in their
encomiendas: the governor ought to forbid them even to visit those
places, and should himself appoint such person or persons as would
fulfil toward the Indians the obligations which rest upon encomenderos.

Third: In the encomiendas of the king, and in those of the encomenderos
who, for the aforesaid reasons, ought not reside in their encomiendas,
such persons shall be appointed, with the approbation of the bishop
(to whom his Majesty has entrusted this care, and which of right falls
to him), as shall fulfil those obligations toward the aforesaid natives
which are incumbent upon encomenderos, conformably to the law of God
and to what his Majesty has provided and commanded in his laws and
ordinances--in order that in this manner the Indians may be pacified
and appeased; and so prepared that, when they shall have ministers,
they can receive instruction from them. Under these conditions and
limitations, the king in his encomiendas, and the encomenderos in
theirs, may collect from the said encomiendas something from their
current products, for help, maintenance, and expenses. That would be
a third part of the tributes, if the encomiendas are large and the
religious teaching sufficient therein; but if the encomiendas are
small it would be half, as has already been stated.

Among the encomiendas which maintain religious instruction
(although none, or very few, have enough of it), there are some whose
inhabitants, although including some Christians, are for the most part
infidels, and so ill-disposed and so unfavorably situated that it is
impossible for them to receive the instruction, since there are not
enough ministers in the said encomiendas. Even though instruction
exists therein, no tribute, or at least very little, ought to be
exacted of the infidels until they have ministers to teach them,
and the encomendero influences them to give consent, so that they can
be taught. In this class of encomiendas are included the tingues of
Silanga, Pasi, Tabuco, and Maragondon; those of Pangasinan, and others
in Ylocos; and the rest in the island of Panay. These encomiendas
are among those which have religious instruction: the others have
already been enumerated.

The encomenderos of these islands have fallen into an error, based upon
a misunderstanding of a decree of the king, in which he commands that
a fourth part of the tributes from the encomiendas shall be set aside
in order to construct churches and to provide for divine worship. They
imagine that by virtue of this decree those encomiendas which have
never had religious teaching may collect the entire tribute, after
setting aside a fourth part of it. Moreover, but a small number have
set aside this fourth part, and they have done it very seldom. It
is an unbearable deception for the encomenderos to hold this view,
for this decree does not refer to the encomiendas which, as we have
said, are deprived of religious teaching. As for the latter, not only
can the king not give them license to collect their tributes, but,
even were he here, he himself could not collect them. The aforesaid
decree, moreover, treats not of these, but of the encomiendas whose
inhabitants are already Christian. It is with regard to these that the
king commands that a fourth part of the tributes be appropriated for
the construction of churches; and that in place of the tithes which
they, as Christians, owe to the ministers for their maintenance, a
certain part of the tributes be appropriated in such wise as may be
here decided. Afterward, I shall satisfactorily prove that it never
entered the king's mind that the encomenderos would, by renouncing
the fourth part of the tributes, fulfil their obligations toward
their encomiendas.

The above is a summary of the contents of the opinion which I am
preparing, wherein may be found a more extensive treatment of what I
have here set down. In that document your Lordship will find complete
proofs of what is contained in this summary, accompanied by arguments
so cogent and convincing that there is neither room nor possibility
for doubt in this matter.

Two other points are to be found in the clauses furnished to me by
the secretary, Juan de Cuellar, drawn from the instructions which the
king, our lord, gave to your Lordship for the good government of this
land. In one of them there is a discussion of the two reals which his
Majesty ordered to be added to the tributes hitherto collected. It
also contains the views of the theologians of this bishopric, and
my own, concerning this increase. Your Lordship will find them all
in the document which, as I said above, I am preparing. Inasmuch as
the execution of that clause is not immediately pressing, it has not
seemed to me necessary to discuss it here.

The other clause deals with the means to be employed in establishing
religious instruction in the small encomiendas and districts where
the said instruction does not exist. Concerning this we shall have
but little to say at present, not because the affair is free from very
great difficulties, in undertaking to accomplish his Majesty's orders
as contained in the aforesaid clause; but because there is no present
occasion for anxiety regarding the establishment of this instruction,
inasmuch as there are no ministers to undertake the work. I will only
say that, if his Majesty does not decree that the small encomiendas
be made into a few large ones, it will be most difficult (and indeed
almost impossible) to establish therein religious instruction.

In conformity with this, your Lordship will see how you are to give
permission to the encomenderos who do not maintain instruction, so
that they may collect from their encomiendas, if your Lordship wishes
to make secure your own encomienda [46] which I, by this statement,
have enabled you to do.

May Jesus Christ, our Lord, bestow upon your Lordship the light of
His grace, so that in all matters you may be enabled to accomplish
His holy will, and secure the welfare and protection of these natives,
which they so sorely need. From our house, on the twelfth of January
of the year one thousand five hundred and ninety-one.

_Fray Domingo_, Bishop of the Filipinas.



Summary of the Decision Reached by the Bishop of these Philipinas
Islands, and the Other Theologians of this Bishopric, Concerning the
Collection of the Tributes Therein

_Jesus_

The first conclusion:  From the encomiendas which have not had and
do not have religious instruction, and have never received from
the encomenderos any other benefit or advantage, either spiritual
or temporal, than the collection of the tributes, then being left
in their former condition (and such are most of the encomiendas in
this bishopric), the tributes should not be exacted. But in case
they have already been exacted, or shall be in the future, and the
encomenderos shall have done no more good therein than they have thus
far, those who have made these collections shall be compelled to make
restitution therefor to the natives of the said encomiendas. This
same obligation also binds those who, being obliged by their office,
and having the power to prevent this evil, shall give license, or
consent, or permission, that these collections be made.

Second conclusion: In the encomiendas which, although they may not
have had or at present have religious instruction (or so little,
and for so short a space of time, that no result can be observed),
have been pacified through the earnest endeavors and good works of
the encomendero, and whose inhabitants are so subdued as to permit of
travel and residence among them, and favorably disposed to receive
instruction in case there should be anyone to impart it to them;
the encomenderos shall be allowed to collect a certain portion of the
tributes--as, for example, the third part, if the encomiendas are of
average size (for, if they are large, it is a great deal to collect the
third part), and one half, if they are small--by which we understand
a population of three hundred Indians, or a less number. The tributes
thus collected are granted as aid for the encomendero's maintenance,
and for the expenses of said pacification.

Third conclusion: All that was collected from the Indians before they
were thus rendered willing to pay must be restored to them by those
who made such collection, or by those who permitted it, as is stated
in the preceding clause.

Fourth conclusion: All the rest of the said half or third part
which has been or shall hereafter be levied upon the Indians,
before they shall have received sufficient religious instruction,
must be restored by those who have made or permitted to be made the
aforesaid collections.

Fifth conclusion: From the encomiendas which have received sufficient
religious instruction and whose inhabitants are all, or for the
most part, Christians; or when those who are not Christians have
voluntarily held back from conversion--all of the tributes may be
collected, provided that care be ever taken that the infidels be
persuaded and not compelled or forced to make these payments: indeed,
as much concern should be had for them as for the others. Let it
be understood that the said infidels do not refuse or be adverse to
becoming Christians; for in this case the tributes may not be exacted
from them--or, at least, not all, and even then with their consent.

Sixth conclusion: In the encomiendas where there are infidels who,
through lack of adequate religious instruction, have not received
baptism, taxes should not in the past nor shall they at present
be collected in full, but according to the manner set down in the
second clause.

Seventh conclusion: Although all the inhabitants may be Christians,
if their religious instruction has been insufficient the encomenderos
are obliged to deduct from the tributes all that should be expended for
a sufficient number of ministers to impart the necessary instruction.

Eighth conclusion: In order that an encomienda may be said to possess
sufficient and adequate religious instruction, the minister should not
be burdened with the care of more souls than he can properly instruct
and direct in spiritual matters, so that he can give to all those who
are infidels suitable instruction in Christian doctrine--not merely
so that they know it by rote, but also so that they may understand
(so far as they are capable of this) the signification of the words,
and the mysteries contained therein. Thus, too, he will be able to make
each and every one of them understand all that is necessary for them
to believe, and know, and do, in order to be good Christians. All this
should be done before baptism is conferred upon them; and like efforts
should be made that no one shall die without the sacrament. When the
minister undertakes to baptize them, he must see that they know well
what it is, and are prepared for it, and understand what they are
receiving--namely, that they are dead to their past life, and are
commencing a new one, and from that time forth are new men. As the
inhabitants of many of these islands have received baptism without
the aforesaid solicitude and preparation, many sacrileges have been
committed; and, as a result, many and great misfortunes have ensued,
which we can now clearly discern, and yet but poorly remedy.

In order that the Indians, after their conversion, may have adequate
religious teaching, and be taught and instructed and guided in the
conduct of their souls, a minister should not have the care of more
Indians than he can know, visit, and minister to in such wise that
all may understand and comprehend the doctrine. Then, if anyone is
sick, the minister can know of it, and visit and console him in his
sickness; and if the sick man be poor, the minister can give him what
he may need, or shall find someone to do so, so that the sick man may
not die without confession or extreme unction. To the living who are
prepared for it, he can administer the eucharist, and can persuade
everyone to prepare himself so that he can receive communion, and
can labor with all earnestness in making known the great benefits
which are contained in the most blessed sacrament, and how much is
lost by those who do not partake thereof, and the obligation of all
Christians to receive it. The minister can thus also personally care
for the burial of the dead; and, in short, fulfil with solicitude and
concern all the demands and obligations of his office as a priest,
and in the care of souls. It is because the ministers in the Indias
are burdened with so many souls, that we observe so little Christianity
there, that so many die without the sacraments, and there are so many
infidels to be converted.

Ninth conclusion: As soon as the Indians shall have become Christians
the encomendero may with good conscience exact from them the tributes
which are imposed and regulated by his Majesty or by persons
commissioned by him; and the Indians are bound by conscience and
justice to pay them, if they have adequate religious instruction
and the encomendero fulfils the obligations imposed upon him by his
acceptance of the encomienda.

Tenth conclusion: The encomenderos are under obligation to observe,
exactly and faithfully, the instructions given them, that they may not
transgress these in regard to the kind of tributes to be paid, or to
the age or condition of those who must pay them--under pain of mortal
sin, and of making restitution for what they shall have exacted in
violation of law or beyond the amount assessed. The damages moreover,
which are sustained by the natives in compelling them to pay tributes
which they are not bound to pay, and the expenses incurred in making
the collections, should be at the cost of the encomenderos and not
that of the Indians.

Eleventh conclusion: It is grievous inhumanity and a sort of cruel
tyranny to seize the chiefs and keep them prisoners until they pay
the tribute of those who fail to do so; and it is a much greater
wrong to afflict and torture them while in durance. He who shall
make collections in this manner, or permit them to be thus made,
is, aside from the mortal sin which he commits, bound to restore to
the chiefs the tributes thus exacted from them; and would be most
fittingly punished by being deprived of the encomienda of which,
through his own wrong-doing, he has made himself unworthy.

Twelfth conclusion: Although the encomiendas are given to the
encomenderos in return for their services to the king, our lord, the
principal aim and object of his Majesty in giving them has not been,
nor can it be, only that the Indians should pay tribute and render
service to the encomenderos; but, on the contrary, that in return for
the tributes which are paid them, the encomendero shall be obliged
to provide the Indians with ministers to instruct and care for them,
to defend and protect them, to see that they are not ill-treated,
and to answer for them in all necessary matters. It therefore follows
that the encomiendas are and should be instituted rather for the
good of the Indians than for that of the encomenderos; and that the
encomenderos cannot be termed, nor are they, the lords of the Indians,
but their attorneys, tutors, and protectors.

Thirteenth conclusion: The tributes which the king, our lord, has
imposed upon the Indians are not, nor can, nor should they be, all for
his Majesty or for the encomenderos--to whom he allots them in order
that from this fund may be taken all that is necessary to support the
ministers of religious instruction, and for the embellishment of the
churches and divine worship.

Fourteenth conclusion: The encomenderos who, to avoid or lessen
expense, neglect to employ in their encomiendas all the ministers
needed to accomplish and fulfil what has been set down in the eighth
conclusion are in mortal sin, and cannot be absolved. Moreover, it
is not enough to say that their encomiendas already have ministers;
they must employ as many of these as are necessary to fulfil all the
duties there enumerated, according to the number of souls contained
in their encomiendas. And the said encomenderos are responsible
for all the injuries and evils referred to in the said conclusion,
if through their fault there are not ministers to do what should be
done. The minister or ministers, moreover, are responsible if, when
they have in their care so many Indians that they cannot properly
minister to them, they shall be unwilling to receive or to look for
other ministers to help them.

Fifteenth conclusion: The number of ministers required for each
community cannot be readily determined, since there are not in all
the encomiendas the same conditions existing; in some, the people live
closer together than in others; and where they are more scattered, or
more difficult of access, more ministers will be needed than when they
live nearer one another. When they are thus near, and well disposed,
five hundred Indians are a sufficient number for one conscientious
minister to take in charge; and when we shall have an abundant
number of ministers, they should be stationed in each encomienda,
in that ratio.

Sixteenth conclusion: If through lack of ministers enough cannot be
placed in each encomienda to give adequate instruction, such as can
be obtained at the time should be employed, and the encomenderos
shall remain under obligation to deduct from the tributes what has
been stated in the seventh conclusion.

Seventeenth conclusion: All that the Indians have expended in erecting
churches and houses for the ministers, and in their maintenance,
through the unwillingness of the encomenderos to pay therefor, the
latter are obliged to make good--the entire amount expended, for the
maintenance of the ministers; and of that expended for churches and
houses, their share.

Eighteenth conclusion: In order that, from this time forth, the
encomenderos who do not maintain religious instruction may collect from
their encomiendas the portion which is stated in the second conclusion,
the following conditions shall be observed: (1) They shall endeavor,
most assiduously and earnestly, to establish religious instruction
in their encomiendas, that such establishment shall not be delayed;
or, if it be not made, so that the lack cannot be imputed to their
negligence and indifference. And, inasmuch as we have not here
the requisite number of ministers, the encomenderos shall inform
his Majesty how great is the lack, and supplicate him promptly to
send ministers hither--offering, if it shall be necessary, to pay
a part of the expenses to be incurred in sending them hither. (2)
The encomenderos shall endeavor, personally or through the medium of
persons skilled and competent, in whom may be placed entire confidence
that they will deal with the Indians as God requires and the king
commands, to defend the Indians and protect them against the injuries
inflicted upon them. They shall strive to influence them, by good
works and example, to accept the law of God, most carefully preparing
them so that, when they have ministers of the Christian doctrine,
they can be instructed. They shall not act as do some encomenderos
(and most of them are of this sort) who visit their encomiendas
not for the good of the Indians, but for their own profit; and who,
through their presence, work more injury to the Indians by the many
grievances which they occasion, and the bad example that they set,
than the latter are advantaged in being thus pacified.

Nineteenth conclusion: It has been a very great error on the part
of the encomenderos in these islands who do not maintain religious
instruction to think that because they contribute a fourth part of the
tributes they may collect and keep for themselves the remainder. This
is based upon their misinterpretation of a decree of the king which
states the portion which is to be appropriated from the tributes for
the erection of churches and the support of the ministers (although
this decree has already been annulled by others). This decree did
not apply to the encomiendas which we here mention; for if the king
himself cannot levy tributes, he could ill permit others to do so,
excepting the encomiendas which we discussed in the ninth conclusion.

Twentieth conclusion: What has been already said in the preceding
conclusions concerning the encomenderos likewise applies to the
encomiendas which belong to the royal crown; for the king is under even
greater obligation than are the encomenderos to provide his Indians
with religious teaching; and to the same extent as they, he is bound
to make restitution of all that has been unjustly collected. It
follows from this that the officials of the royal exchequer, who
are charged with the collection, of the tributes for the king, are
obliged in conscience to observe and fulfil all that is stated in the
preceding conclusions, and to make restitution of all the tributes,
or such part of them as has been or shall be collected contrary to
the tenor of the said conclusions. This obligation is all the greater
for the governor than for the officials of the royal exchequer; since
he, by reason of his office, is bound to care for all the natives of
these islands, and not to permit them to be wronged, and to require
satisfaction from anyone who may wrong them.

Twenty-first conclusion: Former governors were under obligation, as
are those who rule both now and hereafter, to observe and fulfil, in
the repartimientos which they assign or shall assign, the provisions
contained in section 144 of the royal ordinances drawn up in Segovia
in the year 73, the tenor of which is as follows: "When the country
has been pacified, and its rulers and inhabitants have been reduced
to obedience to us, the governor shall, with their consent, direct
the partition of the lands among the colonists so that each of them
shall be responsible for the Indians of his repartimiento, defend
and protect them, and provide a minister who shall teach them to live
in civilized ways, and shall do for them all else that encomenderos
are bound to do for the Indians of their repartimientos." In the
following section: "The Indians who shall be reduced to our obedience
and allotted to the conquerors shall be persuaded, in recognition of
universal seigniory and jurisdiction which we hold over the Indians,
to assist us by the payment of a moderate tribute, from the fruits of
the soil. It is our will that the tributes thus paid us be collected
by the Spaniards to whom encomiendas shall be given, for which reason
they fulfil the duties to which they are bound." What his Majesty
commands in these two sections of the said ordinances conforms to both
natural and divine law, both of which would be violated if even the
king should contravene these ordinances. From this the governors will
recognize the obligations under which they are to heed the attitude
of the Indians whom they must allot in encomiendas, in order not to
work against a law as just and necessary as this is.

Twenty-second conclusion: If in any case the governor allot an
encomienda whose inhabitants shall not be in the frame of mind
which the aforesaid law requires (a condition which must needs be
very rare, and the result of causes so forcible that the king, upon
consultation, would consider them of sufficient weight), in order that
the governor may not be under obligation to make restitution of what
shall be collected therefrom, he is bound to order such encomendero
not to collect the tributes until he has, by his earnest endeavors
and just treatment, brought the Indians to that disposition which,
in the aforesaid two sections, his Majesty requires. In case the
encomendero shall collect the tributes beforehand, the governor shall
command him to make restitution; and if, for lack of such orders,
the Indians shall suffer any wrong, the governor shall be responsible.

Twenty-third conclusion: The religious who are in the Indias are not
under obligation to go to Spain to obtain other religious; and if they
could avoid it they would do wrong in going on account of the great
deficiency of ministers caused by such departures. But as the need
of ministers is so great, and as they are not sent hither from Spain,
those who go thither to procure them should be well rewarded for the
great hardships that they undergo in bringing religious. His Majesty,
moreover, and the members of his royal Council are under obligation
to send back at once, and with suitable provision, those who in their
service to God and the king, and for the welfare of these souls,
have suffered such hardships.

Twenty-fourth conclusion: The king our lord and his royal Council
of the Indias are bound to send to these islands so many ministers
that they can give adequate instruction to all the natives therein,
even if our religious do not go or send for others.

Twenty-fifth conclusion: His Majesty is bound to give orders and to
make all possible efforts for the conversion of the infidels--not
only those who recognize him and pay tribute, but those who are
not under his sway and do not recognize him as their lord--so that
they may all come into the knowledge of God and enter the bosom of
the Church. Nor should this be accomplished in the manner hitherto
employed employed--namely, by the perversion of all law, divine
and human; by murders, robberies, captivities, conflagrations, and
the depopulation of villages, estates, and houses. These wrongs are
inflicted and perpetrated by those who, under pretext and in the name
of preaching the gospel, entered the Indias, and have thus profaned the
sacred name of God and made the holy gospel odious; and it is by them
that our holy religion has been dishonored. But now that his Majesty
knows what excesses have been committed in these islands, he should
order that henceforth they shall cease, and that in the promulgation of
the holy gospel the instructions and rules be observed which our Lord
Jesus Christ ordained, and which His holy evangelical law directs and
commands, and which the holy apostles and the apostolic men who came
after them practiced and observed until our wretched times. Since the
Spaniards entered the Indias, their excessive cupidity has devised
new methods of preaching the gospel such as our Lord Jesus Christ
never ordained, or His holy apostles knew; they are not permitted by
the law of nature, nor do they agree with reason.

I shall send the proofs of these conclusions to your Lordship as soon
as my occupations give me opportunity and leisure to prove them. At
Manila, on the eighteenth of January, 1591.

_The Bishop of the Filipinas_



Letter from the Bishop of the Philipinas to the Governor

_Jesus_

In the document which I sent to your Lordship the other day was
contained the substance of the opinion which I and other theologians
of this bishopric hold concerning the collection [of tributes] from
the encomiendas in these islands. I then stated that all the matter
outlined therein would be sent later to your Lordship, proved in detail
by convincing arguments. This, however, I have not been able to do,
nor will it be possible as long as I must remain in this city; for day
and night I am beset by necessary business. For this reason, I would be
glad to be able to leave the city for a few days in order that I might
conclude this matter--to which, since it is to be brought before his
Majesty and his royal Council, persons who are to consider it with
care, it would seem but right that I should also give most careful
attention. And yet the truth of all that I say is so manifest that I
would be put to little trouble if I were compelled to prove it; but
considerable time would be necessary to put it in order. Having sent
the aforesaid opinion to your Lordship, I ceased to concern myself
about the matter, for it seemed to me that the document contained
(although in outline) all that the truth required, and all that I
had to say thereon. Accordingly, what remains for me to set down will
not be an addition to the aforesaid, but merely an effort to explain
it further, and to prove by arguments and authority what has already
been stated in brief.

The dean informed me this morning that your Lordship was awaiting my
opinion, and had suspended action until I should send it. I told him
that, as far as I was concerned, I had already given it--that is to
say, I had told your Lordship how I, as well as the other theologians,
and right-thinking persons of this bishopric, felt in this matter. It
is true, I did not send, as soon as I might, what remained to be said;
but that, after all, matters but little for the truth of the affair. As
I stated in the opinion which your Lordship has in your possession,
all that I might afterward say is contained therein. However, in
order that your Lordship may have a clearer statement of what I sent
in that document, and of all else that I have to say, it has seemed
expedient to send to your Lordship another paper, which accompanies
this letter; therein are contained twenty-five conclusions, in
which there is a summary of all that may be said in relation to the
encomenderos of these islands, concerning both the collection of the
tributes, and the obligations of the encomenderos towards the Indians
of their encomiendas. Further, I have stated therein the duties of
the governors in respect to their treatment of the Indians and the
collection of tributes. I thought it best to state those conclusions
in the same order as before, since I shall place them in that order
in proving them.

I fully realize that for those who are accustomed to collect tributes
with no other care for the Indians of their encomiendas than to
obtain their money and then leave them to bear their afflictions,
those conclusions must of necessity appear very severe; but, although
the truth always hurts those whom it chastises, it should not on
that account be suppressed--for, as St. Gregory says, one should not
be hindered by any obstacle whatever from uttering the truth. The
difficulty of this affair, moreover, does not consist in knowing what
the truth is (for that is perfectly evident); but in the fact that
unrighteous custom favors the powerful, and is hostile to those who,
although they can do little, are unwilling to submit to what those who
are in power choose to command. But the weak have given thanks to God,
who has moved the heart of our most Christian king to order that a
remedy be applied to so many and so great disorders and excesses, which
up to the present time have been so contrary to natural law, and proved
so great an impediment to religion and evangelical preaching, and so
harmful and prejudicial to the inhabitants of these islands. Indeed,
if we should hear, as God does, the complaints and outcries which
continually arise in the hearts of these people, we would clearly see
how much more cause there is for comforting them than for favoring
those who have inflicted upon them such injury. And yet, if we but
consider this carefully, we shall see that the Spaniards have done
themselves still greater harm, since they have deprived the Indians
merely of their property, but have incurred the condemnation of their
own souls.

I, my Lord, do not wish, nor do I pretend, that the encomenderos
should die of hunger, or that your Lordship should lack the means to
fulfil your obligations; but I do maintain that we should have such
care for what is right for the Spaniards as not to sicken more souls,
or cause the gospel to be received in this land not gladly, but by
force, and in such wise that it will not avail those who receive it.

The king, our lord, need only decree that this matter be left to the
conscience of those who govern here; for his Majesty cannot examine
it with his own eyes, and, consequently, the entire burden falls upon
your Lordship and upon those of us who have to decide what shall be
done. This affair is not one of so little risk as not to require a
most careful consideration; for to deprive the Spaniards of the right
of collecting the tributes from their encomiendas, when they might
just as well do so, is to deprive them of their very property, and
give them permission to collect from those who do not owe tribute,
and to free them from obligation to the Indians. Thus the entire
responsibility would fall upon those who might express their opinion;
consequently, it has been necessary, as I have already said, to
consider the matter most carefully. This I have done by consulting
persons who know and thoroughly understand the point at issue; and
by comparing therewith what I have seen and know from experience,
and from my knowledge of the law.

Such are the contents of the conclusions which I herewith send your
Lordship. I trust that you will be pleased to read them and will expect
from me no other opinion than the one therein contained; for I have,
and shall have, no other, and there is not a right-minded person in
the bishopric who dares maintain the contrary.

Two points should be especially noted among those which I here
set down. The one concerns the second conclusion wherein I make the
following statement: From the small encomiendas may be collected half
of the tributes even where there is no instruction, if the encomendero
fulfils his duties; and from those of average size a third part of
the same. Although there is, in strictness, no reason why one-half
should be collected from the small encomiendas and only a third part
from the others, yet after careful consideration, it has seemed to
us both equitable and reasonable that, in a very small encomienda,
the encomendero should collect from each inhabitant somewhat more
for his maintenance than if the inhabitants were numerous and thus
could provide, even when a less sum was levied, better support for
the encomendero.

The other matter for consideration relates to the statements in the
third and fourth conclusions concerning the restitution of what has
thus far been taken from the natives. In this matter some moderation
should be displayed, in view of the present needy condition of the
encomenderos. This subject, however, will be discussed later, and
the best possible arrangement will be made for assuring the peace
of consciences, which we who are here strive to do. It is, too, no
small grace to your Lordship, that this matter should be considered
in your time. I can assure your Lordship that there has been much
criticism concerning what past governors have permitted, and I do not
know how in the end they are to fare with God; for a governor, from
the very character of his office, is under obligation to prevent,
within his jurisdiction, evils which can be remedied. God will
know how to call to account those who have permitted these abuses,
and will free your Lordship from these difficulties before they have
entangled you. Your Lordship indeed owes much gratitude to God, for,
whether or not the encomenderos make any collection, nothing will be
cast into your purse without your experiencing much scruple at not
having remedied the evil. God knows the scruples and anguish which
the past has caused my soul, for, although it seems that I could have
done no more than to raise my voice in opposition, and write to his
Majesty, I am not sure that this will avail me with God, who is wont to
dispose of such matters quite otherwise than we imagine; therefore, by
giving my views upon this question, and by expressing to your Lordship
my sentiments. I feel myself exonerated in the sight of God and of
men. Let your Lordship reflect what it is meet to do, for my opinion
has been already given. May God, our Lord, so enlighten your Lordship
that in all things you may do what is right. Amen. From this, your
Lordship's house, today, Friday, the twenty-fifth of January, 1591.

_The Bishop of the Filipinas_



The Governor's Reply

Assuming it to be his Majesty's will that, in the encomiendas where,
for lack of ministers, instruction is not given, some tribute
shall be collected, if only in recognition of services rendered,
it seems but fitting that enough should be collected to sustain the
encomendero--or, if he should abandon the encomienda, some person
who should continue, in his stead, intercourse and relations with the
Indians, so influencing and directing them that, when they are given
instruction, they may receive it willingly; and settling the minds of
the Indians, so that we can deal with them and travel among them. Such
persons or encomenderos are accessory to the gospel, and should be
supported, as ministers are, by the tributes of the Indians--who,
if deprived of their presence and left without this intercourse, will
doubtless become intractable, and a country which is at present secure
and orderly will require a fresh pacification. Accordingly I say that
if your Lordship should order the encomendero to appropriate, for his
own maintenance and for necessary expenses (which are so great, and
the encomiendas so small), [three--M.] [47] fourths of the tributes,
and if the remaining fourth should [be used--M.] for the erection of a
church, for ornaments, and other accessories of religious instruction;
or, if this fourth part should be remitted to the Indians (although,
in reality, if they think that by not becoming Christians less will be
exacted from them, they will never become Christians or admit fathers
into their territory; and it is certainly better for the Indians to
have this fourth part held as a deposit for the three years, since at
the end of that time [they can add--M.] to it a tribute, and assist
in paying the expenses of erecting the church and the costs of other
accessories of instruction and other necessary expenses which may
arise); and if the above should be asked from them in advance, and
as a whole--I maintain, that all this could not be exacted without
great injury to the Indians.

This tribute should be collected with much gentleness toward the
Indians, without the presence of soldiers and firearms, and without
entering their houses. One house should, however, be set apart for
the purpose of making these collections, where the Indians, summoned
in friendly terms, may come voluntarily to pay their tributes; and
no other force or pressure should be imposed upon them. Moreover,
of the increase of two reals in the tributes, only one (and no more)
should be exacted, and the aforesaid collection of the three-fourths
should be general in all the encomiendas. There are no grounds for
making a discrimination between the Indian of the large encomienda and
the Indian of the small one; and if it is right to collect in the one,
the same procedure holds good in the other, for the same thing applies
to [four--M.] as to forty, which in this case would mean not to change
the present and past condition of things, or the universal practice
throughout all the Indias, by interfering with his Majesty's decree.

We should consider how little there is in this country besides
the tributes, for the support of the encomendero or such person
who has to represent him; and that, if the Indians should cease
to pay the tributes, all would go to destruction; and even were
religious instruction to exist, there would be no system for applying
it. This instruction, moreover, is not at present in the hands of
the encomenderos, for they have asked me, as I believe they have your
Lordship, to make provision for the same, offering the necessary salary
and expenses. Accordingly, since this charge is not in their hands,
the above means might be justly employed; so that the districts which
are disaffected might, with such intercourse, be prepared to receive
the gospel in due time.

This plan can be followed temporarily, until information concerning
it shall reach his Majesty--who, I assure your Lordship, will
straightway adjust the matter by providing these islands, as well as
those most distant and as yet unpacified, with sufficient religious
instruction; and by determining what share of the cost shall fall to
the encomenderos according to the detailed information and report
which shall be sent hence to him, together with your Lordship's
statement. Thus all will come to enjoy the fruits of the gospel,
which is our principal end and object with these peoples. In return,
they are to offer this moderate tribute, which is to facilitate
their conversion, to which end everything is directed; and to prepare
them for it by this means, without which there would be no way for
endeavoring to interest anyone, even if the tribute should amount to
many millions. But, with this justification, it can be levied.

The encomenderos shall maintain their residence, and, as your
Lordship justly suggests, shall provide a good example and fair
treatment toward the Indians of their encomiendas. And, in order
that the latter may receive (as your Lordship says) some recompense
in return, orders shall be given that all the encomiendas, however
remote they may be, shall be provided with some administration of
justice, with orders to the alcaldes-mayor in whose district these
encomiendas chance to be to visit, at stated periods of the year,
the Indians thereof. The officials shall then settle the disputes
and redress the grievances of the Indians, bringing them by kind
acts into intercourse and friendship with us. Where the present
number of alcaldes-mayor is not large enough, others shall be sent,
in order that thus may be facilitated our intercourse and influence
among them. Under this pretext of administration of justice and of
defense, at least a sufficient maintenance may be derived.

Let your Lordship take this matter into careful consideration. For
my own part, cogent reasons oblige me to believe that, if this plan
be not carried out, the encomenderos much of necessity abandon their
encomiendas, as has [_illegible in MS._] and no one will be found
willing to burden himself with this charge and enter into relations
with the Indians, in return for so small a stipend. Even if there were
such persons, we could not place in them the confidence that we now
have in the encomenderos, in whose virtue and Christian spirit his
Majesty's conscience remains at rest. This would not be so secure in
the care of substitutes, who replace persons who have abandoned their
holdings, for lack [_illegible in MS._] without much fear of being
obliged to give a bad account of either themselves or the Indians;
and, consequently, instead of introducing our holy faith among them,
would only irritate the natives by oppression and ill-treatment.

This being so, if the encomenderos should abandon their offices, and
no capable persons could be found in their stead, the rule of the
Spaniards would come to an end in this land; for, as they possess
here nothing beyond the encomiendas as a source of profit and a
recompense for their services, if they should be deprived of these
I fear that they all would depart from the country and it would be
depopulated. In such a case, let your Lordship consider which of
the two evils is the less, and which should be preferred: namely,
that matters should remain in their present and past condition until
his Majesty, after thorough information, make suitable provision;
or that, in order to remedy this insignificant evil, we should run
the risk of ruining and depopulating all the islands. I, my Lord,
have not the slightest inclination to go to hell merely because the
encomendero collects one or two thousand. After all, whatever your
Lordship may consent to, and whatever we resolve to do, must be carried
out, and I must order it to be executed, with the utmost promptness;
for I understand this to be a matter which concerns the welfare of
my conscience, wherein his Majesty unburdens his. But at present,
I am thinking only of the difficulties involved in the execution of
this act, which must be so hard for the encomenderos. When, in the
establishment and accomplishment of a thing which in itself may be holy
and good, there exist such obstacles that by means of them the whole
is exposed to risk and danger, and the principal [_illegible in MS._],
as your Lordship may discern in the case of the religious fathers,
who, because they attempted to place the Indians in charge of justice,
desired them to give up all, and thus there was constraint. Yet they
had charity and love for them, for otherwise all would be lost. The
same injury will be inflicted on the encomendero, if we oblige him to
relinquish the tribute, and give him no other means of support. This
the king can do, by the decree which is expected.

It is certain that the very success of the affair admits of no other
outcome than this. For, assuming that his Majesty, to unburden his
own conscience, should commit to your Lordship and to myself the
conduct and decision of what should be done in this matter, and should
order me to execute what we both might determine, and agree upon,
provided your Lordship should decide that what you have set down in
your opinion and in your conclusions, ought in conscience to be done;
and if I should find that, although such action is just and right
according to law, yet in attempting to carry it out it would be in
no wise proper to run the risk of ruining these islands--in this case
your Lordship and I do not hold the same opinions, and we should report
this to his Majesty. In the meantime matters will remain as they now
are; and, if resolutions must be adopted, it is much better that we
should propose them conjointly to his Majesty, with complete harmony
and satisfaction on our part, in order that he may give such orders
as shall seem best to him. In the meantime we should not undertake
[_illegible in MS._] all the more because, considering the affair
in its beginnings, the commission and order of his Majesty--which
instruct me to see that your Lordship consider what should and can
be done in this matter; and also to execute the resolutions made
by our joint agreement, with all the punctuality which is required
therein--clearly express the will and determination of his Majesty,
who mentions only the encomiendas which are at present disaffected,
or have never been pacified. It is only concerning these latter,
that doubts may be entertained as to the question of collecting
the tributes, either in whole or in part (by way of recognition,
as is stated in your opinion). These encomiendas are not reached by
religious teaching, or by the administration of justice, or by other
advantages; and, consequently, are the ones concerning which, as I
have said, doubts are entertained. As for those encomiendas which may
possess any of the aforesaid benefits, such as religious teaching,
the administration of justice, intercourse, and other advantageous
relations, there is no occasion for any dispute concerning them; nor
should the management of these (as far as our present knowledge goes)
be committed to your Lordship. It is, therefore, needless to include
them in the general rule; but in dealing with the encomiendas which
are disaffected, and in those not yet pacified, only a part of the
tribute should be collected, for the unburdening of his Majesty's
and our own consciences. Your Lordship's, etc.




The Petition Presented to the Governor by the City and the Encomenderos
on the Fifteenth of February, 1591


We, the corporation and magistrates of the city of Manila, for
ourselves, and in the name of all these Filipinas Islands, and of their
encomenderos, settlers, and discoverers, do declare the following: As
is well known, many of us came here twenty-seven years ago, when these
islands were discovered, and have spent years in the propagation of
our holy Catholic faith, the defense of the preaching of the gospel,
and the service of the king, our lord. On account of this devotion
we abandoned our fatherland, and forgot our parents, brothers, and
relatives, and the comforts which each one of us possessed; and after
having endured the great dangers of a long and hitherto unknown voyage,
we settled in a land where we have shed our blood, and suffered the
fearful miseries of hunger, thirst, exposure, and many other hardships,
so great that they have cost the lives of the many thousands of men
who are known to have come to these islands--not to mention all those
valiant soldiers who serve his Majesty throughout his realm. At the
conclusion of so many toils and misfortunes--after we had made this
discovery, and had pacified and brought under the royal crown the
many vassals who today are to be found throughout these islands,
and had brought to the bosom of our faith the great number of souls
who have already received baptism--his Majesty and the governors
in his name have rewarded us by allotting to us a certain number of
natives. But these grants are under such limitations and the tributes
are so moderate that the most prosperous among us (and there are but
few) are living in straitened circumstances, and the others do not
receive the half of what is necessary for their sustenance; many of
these have no recompense. Although our possessions are so scanty, we
have been content therewith, inasmuch as we consider them as being a
reward which we have won with our blood and so great labors; for we
are thereby encouraged to serve our Lord and his Majesty--enjoying,
as we do, these tributes and encomiendas in tranquil and peaceable
possession of them, after they have been assigned to us. The king,
our lord, also is profited by those who hold positions in the service
of his royal crown; for they, with the tributes, assist in the great
expenses which his royal patrimony incurs for the churches, religious
orders, and ministers of the evangelical teaching, and for the
supplies necessary for their maintenance. In this state of affairs it
seems that on the part of the bishop of these islands and some of the
religious thereof--not only generally, in sermons and in the pulpit,
but privately, in the confessional--obstacles and difficulties are
imposed upon our consciences by maintaining that we cannot exact the
[_illegible in MS._] his Majesty those which he exacts, and that we
are going straight to hell [_illegible in MS._] and that we are under
obligation to make restitution for them. For this reason they refuse
us the sacraments of absolution and communion; and, finally, they
so obstruct us in the collection of this slender means of livelihood
that we, and in fact the whole colony, are continually disconsolate
and afflicted, and our consciences disturbed and ill at ease. We know
not what plan we are to pursue in making these collections; for if we
submit to the constraint which the aforesaid bishop and a portion of
the religious would impose upon us, the necessary result will be that
we cannot support ourselves, or even live; and his Majesty will be
unable to meet the costs and expenses necessary for the preservation
of the land--although our aim now as always, is to live and die in
the service of his Majesty like faithful and loyal vassals.

We therefore entreat and supplicate your Lordship--inasmuch as the
royal presence is so distant, and his authority is delegated to
you in order to preserve us in peace and justice--to decree, in the
name of his Majesty, as the person from whose hand we possess these
encomiendas, that orders and explicit statements be given us as to what
extent and in what manner we are to collect the aforesaid tributes, in
order that with definite knowledge and freedom from misunderstanding,
and without this present trouble and confusion, we may collect them
by virtue of the order which your Lordship may give us to make such
collections. And so likewise do we entreat your Lordship to command
that his Majesty be informed as promptly as possible of what your
Lordship shall order and decree, so that he may confirm and approve it,
and determine what plan shall be pursued in this matter; and so that
we may know and abide by it, and thus be delivered from these scruples
and anxieties. In case the above should not be done as we petition,
we would be deprived of part of the little that we possess; and,
if compelled to make our collections in conformity with the ideas of
the bishop and some of the religious, we shall not be able to support
ourselves. We therefore entreat your Lordship, inasmuch as we do not
depart from or fail in what we owe to the service of his Majesty as his
loyal vassals, to give us permission to depart for Spain, where we may
serve his Majesty in what he shall command us to do, and where he may
favor us in proportion to the quality of the services of each one of
us; thus we shall receive grace and justice, which is what we request.

_Francisco Mereado Dandrade_
_Pedro Davalos y Vargas_
_Juan de Moron_
_Diego de Castillo_
_Juan Pacheco Maldonado_
_Don Francisco de Poca y Pendara_
_Hernan Gomez de Cespedes_
_Don Luis Enriques de Guzman_
_Antonio de Canedo_
_Alonso Garrido de Salcedo_


[The remaining documents on tributes are presented partly in full,
partly in synopsis, because of the repetitions and diffuseness which
are frequent therein. Such parts as are thus synopsized will appear
in brackets.]



Letter from Salazar to the Governor

[Replying (February 8) to the governor's letter, the bishop makes
various suggestions. He considers that the responsibility for deciding
questions connected with the tribute rests upon himself and the
governor, and that it is unnecessary and undesirable to refer them
to the king in ordinary cases.] This has been done for the welfare
of these natives, or, to speak more exactly, in order that our holy
faith may be received in these realms. On account of the many and
glaring instances of lawlessness and disorder, this result is not
yet accomplished in the greater part of these islands; and even
those who have accepted the faith have received from it very little
benefit. [Salazar urges the governor to meet this responsibility,
and with him to determine the amount and methods of collection of
the tributes. He remonstrates with the latter against his intention
of collecting the whole or most of the tributes from the pagan
Indians. Salazar says:] You state that the encomenderos will not
desire the encomiendas, since they will obtain from them so little
advantage, but will abandon their holdings; that the Indians will
become unmanageable, and it will be necessary to pacify them anew,
in order to have them instructed; and (which would be still worse)
when the encomenderos can not be supported it will be necessary to
abandon the country, and the faith will be ruined. This is certainly
a very great difficulty, and would be the greatest which could befall
us. But God, who has established here the faith, will not permit it
to be so easily destroyed. Accordingly I maintain, first, that what is
assigned to the encomenderos is not too small to support adequately any
one of them whatsoever--not with the opulence and abundance that they
desire, but as the extreme poverty and wretchedness of the Indians
allows, and as the little that they have accomplished and are doing
requires. For, if the encomienda be of good size, the encomendero
can support himself very comfortably with the third part of the
tribute, if it is expended in the same encomienda, where goods are
held at lower prices; and if the encomienda be small, he may, by way
of equity--although by the letter of the law he should take no more
than does he who owns a large one--be allowed to collect the half of
the tribute, since it would seem that he could not support himself
with less. If they must have more, the encomenderos are not of so
poor standing as not to have other relations and dealings by which
they can increase their property and help to meet their expenses,
in order that all the burden may not be laid upon the Indians; since
even what they collect from the latter according to law they are not
entitled to, until they pay the Indians what is due them.

[Salazar goes on to say that there is no danger that the encomiendas
will be abandoned under this plan; and that the arrangement which he
proposes is for only such time as is necessary to provide adequate
religious instruction for the natives. Then the full amount of
tribute may be collected, and the encomenderos will enjoy all their
revenues. Most of them will shirk their obligations to the Indians,
as they have done in the past, unless they are compelled to meet them;
and Salazar thinks that they will be more ready to provide religious
instruction if they are restricted from collecting the tributes until
they shall have done so.] He who plants a vine expects to wait until it
can mature its fruit; it is only with the Indians that the encomenderos
will not wait until they are prepared to yield fruit, but are ready
at once to cut their throats to make them yield it. And since they
have thus far collected so many tributes from the Indians without
justification for exacting them, it will be right that henceforth
they should labor with them, without collecting from them the taxes
so harshly, waiting until the Indians are prepared for having to pay
the tribute; and the real preparation for this is to strive that they
shall have instruction.

... For this they deserve some reward, such as the concession made
to them in the second conclusion, which seems sufficient return
for the little value of all that will be done for the Indians until
they receive instruction. In order that your Lordship may be fully
convinced that, even if further limitations should be imposed on the
encomenderos, they need not for that abandon their holdings, your
Lordship should remember that, after coming here, you reduced the
salaries of some alcaldes-mayor, and took away those of some deputies;
and yet they did not cease on that account to discharge their duties
cheerfully, for they can with good conscience take whatever your
Lordship shall assign to them. Why, then, should we fear that the
encomenderos will leave their encomiendas, even if they are ordered
to collect no more than the third part of the tributes?... Former
governors, as well as your Lordship, have allotted encomiendas,
imposing upon them an annual charge, for a limited period, for
the benefit of the hospital or of some individual. These were most
willingly accepted, the owners knowing that when the annual pension
expired the encomiendas remained to them, which they might freely
enjoy. It is certain, too, that what the encomenderos collected
while the pension lasted was not equal to the third part. Why, then,
will not the encomenderos endure this pension for so short a time, in
order afterward to enjoy the encomiendas freely and with consciences
at ease? for they can do that now.

[The bishop declares that the conversion of the pagan Indians
will not be hindered by his plan. Not the least hindrance to the
conversion of these islands is the harshness with which the tributes
are collected from the Indians.] It is certain that when the faith
is preached to the Indians on the plan and with the gentleness which
our Lord ordained, attended with kind treatment and good examples,
in accordance with the requirements of God's law, the infidels will
never consider whether or not they have to pay tribute. For if they
once reach a real understanding of what it means to be converted to
God, and of the benefit which they receive from it, and the evils
from which they are set free, not only will they not heed whether or
not they are paying tribute, but they will, if necessary, surrender
their goods and estates, in order not to remain without baptism. We
need not vex ourselves to secure the baptism of infidels who avoid
baptism in order not to pay tribute; since it is not such whom God
chooses, or whom the church needs.

The greatest difficulty for the Sangleys who sought baptism has been
the command to cut off their hair. It is certain that on this account
many have failed to become Christians, whereat I have been exceedingly
grieved. Not that I have not always wished, and still desire, that
all of that nation might be converted, and I have exerted myself to
that end with all my strength; but when I see one of them hesitate
as to cutting off his hair, it seems to me that he has not come for
baptism in the right spirit, and for that reason I do not admit him
to baptism. Those, however, in whose hearts God has moved, and who
truly understand what they are receiving (and there are many such),
are not disturbed because their hair is cut, or because they are
forever abandoning their native land. On the contrary, these persons
have broken all ties, and submitted to every requirement, that they
might not remain without baptism. It is true that we have baptized
some of that nation without requiring them to cut off their hair,
through our reasonable consideration toward them; but we have never
consented that anyone of them should be baptized until he had made up
his mind to allow his hair to be cut: and then he did not know that we
intended to baptize him without removing his hair. From the above it
may be inferred that the payment of little, or much, or none of the
tribute is not in itself a reason for the infidels to avoid baptism;
they do so because we oppose so many obstacles to the preaching of
the gospel, and set so bad an example, and because it is so preached
that they do not understand it.

[Salazar protests against the notion entertained by the encomenderos
that "all their festivities and superfluous expenses should be at the
expense of the wretched Indians, when they themselves do not fulfil
their obligations toward the latter." Other persons can support
themselves without an encomienda; so those who possess such aid can
certainly do something outside of it to meet their expenses. The method
of collecting the tributes hitherto has been little more than slavery
for the natives; the bishop pleads in eloquent terms that the governor
will reform this abuse, and consider the subject from the standpoint
of the Indians as well as from that of the Spaniards.] In order that
they may endure their hardships cheerfully, it is well that they should
understand the change among the Spaniards which has occurred since the
coming of your Lordship; for their burdens have been lightened by the
reduction of the tributes from the former amount; and the Spaniards
have done what they did not previously--that is, to treat the natives
well, and to converse with them in a friendly manner. This, without
doubt, will greatly incline them toward our holy Christian religion;
and then the Indians cannot make this a matter of complaint against
the Spaniards, but will keep silence and yield to whatever commands
are given them. [The Spaniards have might on their side, and terrorize
the weaker natives; but the right only should be considered, and is
mainly on the side of the Indians. The conquerors have brought forward
many specious arguments to justify their oppression, which for a time
deceived even the bishop, who expresses his regret and remorse for
his own mistakes; but his long experience has opened his eyes, and he
espouses the cause of the oppressed Indians, urging the governor to
consider their needs, without allowing the Spaniards to influence him
in favor of their selfish and unjust practices. Salazar complains that
the orders of both the king and the governors have been systematically
violated or ignored; that no one has been punished for infractions
of law save the poor Indians, who often have been justified in these
actions.] But even this has not availed them to escape punishment
in their persons and property. Yet thus far there is no instance
known when an encontendero or collector has been punished for even
the grossest acts of injustice and injury which they have inflicted
upon the Indians. And this is the Christian spirit and the justice
with which we have thus far treated this unfortunate people--we, who
came hither to bestow upon them a knowledge of God! Notwithstanding
all that, we demand that they shall not dare to move, or to open
their lips in complaint. But we have a righteous God, who hears them,
and in His own time will bestow upon each man according to his deserts.

[The Audiencia had enacted laws favorable to the Indians, which the
governor should enforce. For this purpose, it is useless to depend
upon the alcaldes-mayor, since most of them care only for their own
interests and profit.] On this account the president undertook to
reduce the number of the alcaldes-mayor, and to increase the salaries
of those who were left, in order to remove from them the temptation
to plunder. He also wished to abolish entirely the office of deputy,
as he had already begun to do; this would have been no little benefit
to the country. [The country will only be injured by attempting to
increase the number of officials; they aid in the oppression of
the Indians, and care nothing for the bishop's efforts to oppose
them. If the condition of affairs in Luzon is so bad, what must it
be in Mindanao, or Xolo, or other remote districts? The Indians can
not come to the governor with their grievances, and are helpless in
the power of their oppressors.]

[Salazar briefly state the opinions given by the religious persons whom
he has consulted regarding some of the chief points at issue. Most of
them decide that the third part of the tributes will be enough for
any encomendero, no matter how small his holding may be. As for the
restitution of tributes unjustly collected, they all conclude that to
require the return of all the goods thus acquired by the Spaniards
would be too severe a penalty for the latter; but that hereafter no
encomendero should be allowed to collect tributes from Indians unless
he shall provide them with religious instruction, and if he shall
so collect, he shall be compelled to restore to them the goods thus
unjustly obtained. The governor is urgently entreated to investigate
the manner in which the encomenderos are dealing with the Indians;
to adopt and enforce the orders recommended by the clergy; and to
permit no Spaniard to make collections of tributes unless he fulfil
all obligations due from him to the natives. The same course should
be pursued in the encomiendas belonging to the royal crown. If the
governor will follow this course, the clergy will cooperate with him
by refusing absolution to all who disobey.] From our house, February
8, 1591.

_Fray Domingo_, Bishop of the Philipinas.



Opinions of the Religious

[At the request of the governor, the members of the various religious
orders furnish him with their opinions regarding the collection of
tributes. The Augustinians thus conclude, in brief: The natives who
enjoy the benefits of Spanish protection, the administration of
justice, and religious instruction, should pay the entire amount
assessed on them as tribute; for it is but just that they should
bear the expenses of these benefits. It was Spain to whom the Holy
See allotted the work of converting the pagans of the Indias; and,
although she has in doing so inflicted many injuries on the natives,
she has also conferred upon them many benefits in converting and
civilizing them. If she should abandon the islands great evils
would result. Even tyrannical treatment does not justify vassals in
refusing obedience to their rulers--in support of which position many
citations are made from the Bible and from historical precedents. The
Spanish rulers are accordingly entitled to collect the moderate
tribute which they have imposed on the Indians, if they protect and
instruct the latter--the condition on which their right to tribute
is based; but all should pay alike, infidels as well as Christians,
when they receive alike those benefits. As for the Indians who have
not been provided with instruction and the protection of law, no
tribute should in any case be demanded from them and whatever has
been thus far collected ought to be restored to them in full, as
having been unjustly and unrighteously exacted. In the encomiendas
which, although once pacified, have since rebelled, a small amount
of tribute should be collected, not to maintain the encomendero,
but to meet the expenses of restoring order and obedience therein. In
other cases, where the encomendero fulfils his obligations in other
respects, but fails to provide religious instruction for the natives
through lack of ministers, he is entitled to collect only part of
the tribute designated--that is, what remains after deducting the
amount due for the support of ministers (estimated in proportion to
the number of the people), and for the erection and maintenance of
churches. In short, the natives should pay only for such benefits as
they actually receive. The amount to be paid should be based on the
amount expended by the government and the encomenderos in providing
those benefits.] In these islands the number of five hundred Indians
(and in some places even a smaller number) has been assigned to
each minister as sufficient for his charge; and to each minister
of religion has been given a hundred pesos and a hundred fanégas of
rice, all which is worth at least one hundred and twenty-five pesos;
this is the fourth part of the five hundred pesos which the five
hundred Indians are worth to the encomendero. It is then a fair rate
of taxation, and usually the most exact, to deduct, when religious
instruction is lacking, the fourth part of the tribute. [If the
encomienda is governed with justice, its holder may in reason collect
the other three-fourths. The fathers remonstrate against the proposal
to allow the holder of a small encomienda to collect more than he may
who has a large one, as unjust and dangerous. If the fourth part is
to be withheld from the encomendero, they think that it should be at
once returned to the natives from whom it was taken. They recommend
that the governor give orders that the administration of justice be
everywhere established in the encomiendas, and then three-fourths
of the tributes may be collected. For this, however, they advise
the appointment of deputies directly by the governor, to inspect
the encomiendas regularly--a duty which will not be satisfactorily
performed by the present alcaldes-mayor, or by deputies whom they
would appoint; and these persons should be given adequate salaries,
to obviate the possibility of their defrauding the natives. The
paper is signed by the Augustinian provincial, Juan de Valderrama,
and eleven others of the order.]

[The Franciscans base their opinion upon the right of the king of
Spain to impose tribute, as derived from the commission given to
that country by the Holy See for the evangelization of the Indians;
but this right exists only where the gospel is actually preached. They
partially agree with the Augustinians, but hold a radically different
view as to the amount of collections to be made when the encomendero
does not or cannot provide religious instruction, but does protect and
defend the natives, and set them a good example. For these services,
as tending to prepare the Indians for receiving the true faith, he
may be entitled to collect one-third of the tributes; but considered
simply as temporal benefits, they do not give him any right to do
so. Even the administration of justice to the Indians confers upon
him no right in itself; it does so only as it may aid in or support
the preaching of the gospel. This opinion is signed by Fray Pedro
Baptista and three of his brethren.]

[The Jesuits regard both religious instruction and the administration
of justice as just ground for the imposition and collection of
tributes. When the Spaniards take possession of any land without
providing these benefits, they are only "establishing divisions of
territory between the crowns of Castilla and Portugal," which has
nothing to do with levying tributes on the natives of such region. In
encomiendas where instruction is not given through lack of ministers,
only such part of the tribute may be collected as belongs to the
administration of justice; and the part which would be used for the
support of religion must be returned to the natives. The fathers
cite, in support of their opinion, various learned theologians. They
would permit the encomendero who protects his Indians, but is
unable to maintain religious teaching, to collect means for the
support of himself and family--for which purpose they would allow him
three-fourths of the tributes. The other fourth should be returned to
the Indians; and, in districts where there is not and will not soon
be religious instruction, this should be done without telling them
the reason for such action; otherwise, they will not wish to become
Christians. They urge that definite and prompt action be taken in
regard to this matter. Their opinion is signed by Antonio Sedeño and
two other fathers, and is dated February 20.]

[The Jesuits also send to the bishop a long and learned discussion of
the question, answering some of the twenty-five "conclusions" which
were adopted by the bishop and clergy (_ante_, p. 276 ff.). Their
position is the same as that already stated to the governor; but they
make a more detailed and full statement of their opinions on certain
points mentioned by the bishop. They think that, in encomiendas where
both religion and justice are administered, the infidels as well as
the Christians should pay tribute; for they also are vassals of the
king, and receive from him those benefits, and they alone are to blame
if they do not profit by the instruction placed before them. Where
justice is administered, without instruction, the tributes should
be collected, after deducting the amount needed for the support of
religion.] The fundamental reason why your Lordship and we cannot
agree in this matter is, that your Lordship measures it by standards
of sustenance, and we by those of income and just and due tributes;
for since there are so many Christians here, there is no doubt that
the king holds these lands by just title, nor can he in conscience
abandon them. [In regard to making restitution to the Indians for
tributes unjustly collected, the Jesuits would exempt from this the
governors and royal officials; but it should be required from the
encomenderos. If in these matters, however, the bishop and governor do
not agree with them, the fathers will support the position taken by
those authorities. They desire that the latter shall make definite
decision on such points as can be settled, without unnecessary
delay. They oppose the bishop's desire to permit the collection of
a larger part of the tributes from small encomiendas than from large
ones, because this would be not only unjust, but a dangerous precedent
and a source of intolerable confusion and uncertainty. The tributes
should be considered not as the means of support for the encomendero,
but as the right and revenue of the king--a consideration which must
shape all conclusions reached upon this subject. The Indians are not
bound to support the encomendero; that is due him for his services
to the king, who gives him the encomienda for this purpose, and for
means to carry out the obligations of the king to the Indians. If
from this some encomenderos grow rich, that concerns only the king;
it is well that he should have in his colonies powerful men, "who
are the bone and sinew of commonwealths." Besides, the labors and
responsibilities of these men increase in proportion to the size of
their encomiendas; accordingly, they should be duly recompensed. The
services rendered to the natives by the king and the encomenderos are
enumerated; even those which are secular help to maintain religious
instruction, and are also more costly than that; they should then
be well recompensed. The restitution to be made by the encomenderos
is a matter to be decided by the secular rather than the religious
authorities; and such restitution need be only one-fourth of previous
collections. A curious piece of information is here furnished:
"It is known that a priest's district, even if it is not very large,
yields him eight hundred to one thousand pesos; and besides this he
has fees for burials, marriages, etc. There are reports, and even
numerous complaints, from both secular and religious sources, that
for lack of means to pay the fees, many persons do not marry, but
live in concubinage." The Jesuits think that this fee-system is wrong,
and that the priest should be content with his stipend, at least among
the poor, whether Indians or Spaniards; this applies both to regular
clergy and to friars. The bishop is urged to remedy this abuse.]

[This is followed by another paper, which discusses minutely,
from the standpoint of the logician and theologian, the question of
collecting tribute from infidels who are not provided with religious
instruction; it contains abundant citations from the Scriptures and
from ecclesiastical writers. As it simply elaborates the opinions they
have already stated, we do not here present it.] (_To be concluded_.)





Bibliographical Data


_Relation of 1586-88_.--The text of this document is obtained from
_Cartas de Indias_, pp. 637-652; but the location of the original
MS. is not indicated by the editor of that work.

_Decree of August 9, 1589_.--This is obtained from the "Cedulario
Indico" in the Archivo Historico Nacional, Madrid; its pressmark is:
"Tomo 7, fº 301, nº 449."

_Customs of the Tagalogs_.--This is one of the appendices to Santa
Inés's _Crónica_; see vol. ii, pp. 592-603.

_The Chinese and the Parián_.--This is translated from Retana's
_Archivo del bibliófilo filipino_, iii, pp. 47-80.

All the remaining documents presented in this volume, are obtained
from the Archivo general de Indias, Sevilla, and are translated either
from the originals or from transcripts thereof; the pressmark of each
is indicated as follows:

1. _Letter by Vera_ (1588).--"Simancas-Secular; Audiencia de Filipinas;
cartas y expedientes del gobernador de Filipinas, vistas en el Consejo;
años 1567 á 1599; est. 67, caj. 6, leg. 6."

2. _Letter by Salazar_ (1588).--"Simancas-Eclesiastico; Audiencia de
Filipinas; cartas y espedientes del arzobispo de Manila vistos en el
Consejo; años de 1579 á 1599; est. 68, caj. 1, leg. 32."

3. _Letter by viceroy of India_.--"Simancas-Secular; Audiencia de
Filipinas; cartas y expedientes del presidente y oidores de esta
Audiencia vistos en el Consejo; años 1583 á 1599; est. 67, caj. 6,
leg. 18."

4. _Letter by Vera_ (1589).--The same as No. 3.

5. _Conspiracy against the Spaniards_.--The same as No. 3.

6. _Letter by Ayala_.--The same as No. 3.

7. _Instructions to Dasmariñas_.--"Simancas-Secular; Audiencia de
Filipinas; registros de oficio y partes; reales ordenes dirigidas a
las autoridades y particulares del distrito de la Audiencia; años 1568
á 1605; est. 105, caj. 2, leg. 11, lib. i, fol. 171b-195a, part 2."

8. _Letter from Portugal_.--The same as No. 3.

9. _Grant to Salazar_.--"Simancas-Audiencia de Filipinas; consultas
originales correspondientes á dha Audiencia desde el año 1586 á 1636;
est. 67, caj. 6, leg. 1."

10. _Letter by Audiencia_.--The same as No. 3.

11. _Letter by Salazar_ (1590).--The same as No. 2.

12. _Decree of July 23_, 1590.--The same as No. 3.

13. _Collection of tributes_ (1591).--The same as No. 2.







NOTES

[1] This document is published in _Cartas de Indias_ (pp. 637-652),
under the title, "Letter of petition from the bishop of Manila to the
president of the Council of the Indias, giving information of the
religious condition and needs of the Filipinas Islands; December,
1585." This date is incorrect, as shown by the internal evidence
of the document itself, and probably arises from some error in
the transcription from the original; the cabildo's letter was dated
Dec. 31, 1586, and the bishop's on June 25, 1588 (incorrectly printed
1585 in _Cartas de Indias_). The allusions in this letter indicate
that it was addressed to the king, rather than to the president of
the council.

[2] Span., _ynsigne é siempre leal ciudad de Manilla_; see the royal
decree conferring this title, in _Vol_. III, pp. 250, 251.

[3] Span., _naguatatos_, originally a Mexican word.

[4] The alcaicería (silk-market) for the Chinese, where their trade
was exclusively carried on, was at first located on the Pasig River,
opposite Manila, and was established by Peñalosa (1581?). In 1583
it was brought within the city (_Vol_. V, p. 237) by his temporary
successor, Diego Ronquillo, and was generally styled "the Parián." An
interesting description of it is given by Salazar in a document,
dated 1590, which appears in the present volume, _post_. The Parián was
long the property of the city; it was destroyed under Governor Basco y
Vargas (1778-87), to make room for other edifices, but was rebuilt by
him in another location; it was finally destroyed in 1860. See Buzeta
and Bravo's _Diccionario_, ii, p. 229; and _Los Chinos en Filipinas_
(Manila, 1886).

[5] Lake Bombón, or Taal (_Vol_. III, p. 82).

[6] We here follow the text as given in _Cartas de Indias (dos mill)_;
but this number, if all the Indians in this province were allotted,
and the number of those in the royal encomienda is correctly given,
should be seven thousand four hundred.

[7] In 1579 Gabriel de Ribera, who had been one of Legazpi's officers,
was sent to conquer Mindanao--an undertaking, however, which was
unsuccessful. Later, he explored the coasts of Borneo and Patan, and
was afterward sent by Peñalosa to Spain, to render an account of the
conquests thus far made in the Indian archipelago. As a reward for
Ribera's services, Felipe II conferred upon him the title of Mariscal
de Bonbon; it is he who is referred to in our text.

[8] According to _U.S. Philippine Gazetteer_ (pp. 9, 10, 286), there
are now in the province of Ambos Camarines no active volcanoes,
although its mountains form a volcanic chain. The peaks of Labo,
Colasi, Isarog, and Iriga are extinct volcanoes, their height ranging
from 4,000 to 6,450 feet.

[9] This town was founded by Peñalosa (_Vol_. V, p. 26), and named
for his native town, Arevalo in Castilla. The former is located a
few miles west of Iloilo.

[10] See Candish's own account of this affair in Hakluyt's _Voyages_
(Goldsmid ed.). xvi, pp. 43-45.

[11] "The licentiate Palacios, alcalde of court in the Audiencia of
Mexico, who in 1581 made official visits to the ports of Guatulco and
Acapulco, where he had charge of the construction of ships intended
for the Philippine archipelago." (_Cartas de Indias_, p. 820.)

[12] The Portuguese admiral Don Duarte de Meneses--who had been present
in the negotiations between Legazpi and Pereira in 1569 (_Vol_. II,
pp. 295, 298, 310)--was viceroy of India from November, 1584 until
his death, May 15, 1588. He was succeeded in that office by Manuel de
Sousa Coutinho, the writer of this letter. See Linschoten's _Voyage_
(Hakluyt Society's trans., London, 1885), pp. 174, 200-203.

[13] The following table of Chinese weights is given in Clarke's
_Weights, Measures, and Money_ (N.Y., 1888): 10 mace = 1 tael; 16 taels
= 1 catty or kan; 2 catties = 1 yin; 50 yin = 1 pecul or tam. The catty
= 1 1/3 lbs., or 604.8 grammes. Hence the pecul = 133 1/3 lbs. The shik
is a weight of 160 lbs. In China almost everything is sold by weight.

[14] _Orejeras_ was the name of a fine grade of gold used by the
Malays; see _Vol_. III, p. 224, and IV, p. 99.

Exile thus inflicted was of two kinds. The Spanish phrase here is
_seis años de destierro precisos_--the last word meaning that the
culprit's residence was prescribed in a certain place. In the other
form of exile, read, for _precisos, voluntarios_ ("at will"), which
may be translated "unconditioned"--that is, he might choose his place
of residence.

[15] Span., _corte_; a now obsolete use of the word, to signify a
district of five leagues around the court. It will be remembered that
Sande, in 1577, fixed the boundaries of the city of Manila within
this limit. (See _Vol_. IV, p. 107.)

[16] As the names of these notaries do not appear on the MS. from
which our transcript was made, it was probably one of the duplicate
despatches sent to Spain, rather than the first and original document.

[17] Apparently a reference to the law found in _Recop. leyes Indias_
(ed. 1841), lib. viii, tit. xx, ley i, which enumerates the offices
that may be sold in the Indias. Cf. ley i, tit. xxi, which relates
to the renunciation of such offices after purchase.

[18] This was a lay brother, Juan Clemente, who came with the first
Franciscan mission. (1577). He devoted himself to the care of the
sick among the natives, and was in charge of a hospital for them
(founded by himself) for many years. For an account of this charity,
see Santa Inés's _Crónica_, i, pp. 379-392.

[19] Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas was corregidor of Murcia and Cartagena
in Spain when (in 1589) he was appointed governor of the Philippine
Islands. Arriving there in May, 1590, he at once began the task of
providing suitable fortifications for Manila, and a body of paid troops
in place of the irregular and unpaid soldiers who had hitherto been the
only dependence of the Spanish colony. In October, 1593, he formed a
naval expedition to recover the fortress at Ternate; but on the way
thither he was treacherously slain, with nearly all the Spaniards
in his galley, by the Chinese rowers thereon. See Morga's account
of him in _Sucesos_, cap. v, or in Stanley's translation (Hakluyt
Society's publications, no. 39), pp. 32-39; also La Concepcion's
_Hist. de Philipinas_, ii, pp. 177-213.

[20] The proceedings of Sanchez at the Spanish court, and the
decisions of the government regarding the Philippine colony, are
fully recounted by La Concepción in his _Hist. de Philipinas_,
ii, pp. 103-148. Sanchez did not return to the Philippines, being
assigned by the general of his order to various duties in Spain;
his death occurred not long afterward.

[21] For account of Sanchez's embassy, and of his instructions, see the
"Memorial" adopted by the junta of 1586, with accompanying documents,
in _Vol_. VI.

[22] Regarding the rates thus levied, see _Vol_. V, pp. 29, 30.

[23] This last sentence is literally translated from the MS which we
follow; but there is evidently a defect or error in the text--probably
arising from some mistake made by the first copyist, as the MS. is
not the first original, but a copy made apparently by some government
clerk.

[24] For the text of this decree, see p. 137, _ante_.

[25] With this document cf., throughout, the "Relation" by Miguel de
Loarca, in _Vol_. V of this series.

[26] Juan de Plasencia, who entered the Franciscan order in early
youth, came to the Philippine Islands as one of the first missionaries
of that order, in 1577. He was distinguished, in his labors among
the natives, for gathering the converts into reductions (villages in
which they dwelt apart from the heathen, and under the special care
of the missionaries), for establishing numerous primary schools, for
his linguistic abilities--being one of the first to form a grammar and
vocabulary of the Tagal language--and for the ethnological researches
embodied in the memoir which is presented in our text. He died at
Lilio, in the province of La Laguna, in 1590. See account of his life
in Santa Inés's _Crónica_, i, pp. 512-522; and of his writings, _Id_.,
ii, pp. 590, 591.

[27] The betel-nut; see _Vol_. IV, p. 222.

[28] The Aetas, or Negritos, were the primitive inhabitants
of the Philippine Islands; but their origin is not certainly
known. It is perhaps most probable that they came from Papua or New
Guinea. For various opinions on this point, see Zúñiga's _Estadismo_
(Retana's ed.), i, pp. 422-429; Delgado's _Historia general_, part i,
lib. iii, cap. i; and _Report_ of U.S. Philippine Commission, 1900,
iii, pp. 333-335. Invasions of the islands by Indonesian tribes, of
superior strength and culture, drove the Negritos into the forest
and mountain regions of the islands where they dwelt; they still
remain there, in a state of barbarism, but in gradually decreasing
numbers. See the _Report_ above cited (pp. 347-351), for habitat and
physical characteristics of this race.

[29] For much curious and interesting information regarding these
superstitions, beliefs in demons, etc., see Blumentritt's "_Diccionario
mitológico_," in Retana's _Archivo_, ii, pp. 345-454.

[30] This paragraph is a quite literal translation of the clause
therein mentioned; the latter (in Portuguese) is at the end of the
original MS. of this document.

[31] This was the Cardinal Archduke Albert of Austria, nephew of
Felipe II, who in 1583 appointed Albert viceroy of Portugal. In that
post he remained until 1594, when he was removed to the archiepiscopal
see of Toledo.

[32] The above instructions were intended doubtless for this
document. They occupy a separate sheet in the collection of documents,
but their position warrants this inference.

[33] The first sentence is the official endorsement by the Council;
the second, evidently that of the king; and the third, that of the
Council's secretary.

[34] The collection of documents of which the above forms a part
contains a letter from the licentiate Ayala to the king, under date
of June 25, 1590. As in so many letters from royal officials, Ayala
narrates his devotion to the king's service, and especially in the
Philippines, whither he had been ordered suddenly from the Canaries,
his previous post. He begs for a position in Mexico, and means to
return to that country. The king orders that one-half his salary be
given him.

[35] At that time, Java was supposed to contain two islands;
the western part, inhabited by the people of Sunda, was thought
to be separated by a river from the other, forming an entire
island. Trapobana is a misprint for Taprobana, the ancient name of
Sumatra; and Dacheu, for Achen (Achin).

[36] The cahiz is equal to twelve fanégas, or nearly nineteen and
one-fifth bushels.

[37] Villamanrique was removed from his post in 1589, and in his stead
as viceroy of Nueva España was appointed Luis de Velasco, Conde de
Santiago, a son of the second viceroy; he reached Mexico on Jan. 25,
1590. "The country made steady progress in every branch of industry
during Velasco's rule; political, commercial, and social conditions
were improved, and prosperity prevailed." (Bancroft, _Hist. Mexico_,
ii, p. 766.) He held the office until 1595, when he was appointed
viceroy of Peru.

[38] Miguel de Benavides was born about 1550, and came to the
Philippines as one of the first Dominican missionaries (1587). Soon
after his return from China, he sailed (1591) for Spain, where he
acted as procurator of his province. Early in 1598, he returned
to the Philippines as bishop of Nueva Segovia; but the archbishop
Santibañez dying in that same year (Aug. 14), he was succeeded by
Benavides. Under his administration was begun the college of Santo
Tomás at Manila. He died there July 26, 1605.

[39] Regarding the numbers of Chinese residents at Manila, see
Salazar's own statement in his account of the Parián (p. 230 _ante_.)

[40] The English pirate Candish, who plundered the "Santa Ana."

[41] _Fuerça_: as here used, indicates violence to law, done by
ecclesiastical judges; _see_ note 46, in _Vol_. V, p. 292.

[42] Reference is here made to the archbishop of Mexico, who
had ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Philippines until the
archbishopric was created there. At the time when Salazar's letter
was written, the see of Mexico had no incumbent, the diocese being
governed by the dean and chapter.

[43] The MS. from which this document was translated is evidently a
copy of a decree prepared in answer to the request of the citizens of
the Philippines (see the "Memorial" of the general junta, in _Vol_. VI,
p. 166 ff.).

[44] On the back, this document is signed by members of the royal
Council of the Indias.

[45] This statement by the bishop, and the twenty-five "conclusions"
which follow it are, in the original document from which we copy,
misplaced in order of time; we therefore restore them to their proper
place, as indicated by their respective dates.

[46] Apparently a metaphorical use of the word, a religious _double
entendre_.

[47] The original MS. is in places torn or illegible; and matter
enclosed in brackets, with the translator's initial, gives his
conjectural readings of lacunæ.






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Title: Siddhartha

Author: Herman Hesse

Translator: Gunther Olesch, Anke Dreher, Amy Coulter, Stefan Langer and Semyon Chaichenets

Release Date: April 6, 2008 [EBook #2500]
Last updated: July 2, 2011
Last updated: January 23, 2013

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIDDHARTHA ***




Produced by Michael Pullen,  Chandra Yenco, Isaac Jones





SIDDHARTHA

An Indian Tale

by Hermann Hesse





FIRST PART

To Romain Rolland, my dear friend




THE SON OF THE BRAHMAN

In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the
boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree
is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young
falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman.  The sun
tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing,
performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings.  In the mango
grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when
his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father,
the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked.  For a long time,
Siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men,
practising debate with Govinda, practising with Govinda the art of
reflection, the service of meditation.  He already knew how to speak the
Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while
inhaling, to speak it silently out of himself while exhaling, with all
the concentration of his soul, the forehead surrounded by the glow of
the clear-thinking spirit.  He already knew to feel Atman in the depths
of his being, indestructible, one with the universe.

Joy leapt in his father's heart for his son who was quick to learn,
thirsty for knowledge; he saw him growing up to become great wise man
and priest, a prince among the Brahmans.

Bliss leapt in his mother's breast when she saw him, when she saw him
walking, when she saw him sit down and get up, Siddhartha, strong,
handsome, he who was walking on slender legs, greeting her with perfect
respect.

Love touched the hearts of the Brahmans' young daughters when
Siddhartha walked through the lanes of the town with the luminous
forehead, with the eye of a king, with his slim hips.

But more than all the others he was loved by Govinda, his friend, the
son of a Brahman.  He loved Siddhartha's eye and sweet voice, he loved
his walk and the perfect decency of his movements, he loved everything
Siddhartha did and said and what he loved most was his spirit, his
transcendent, fiery thoughts, his ardent will, his high calling.
Govinda knew: he would not become a common Brahman, not a lazy official
in charge of offerings; not a greedy merchant with magic spells; not a
vain, vacuous speaker; not a mean, deceitful priest; and also not a
decent, stupid sheep in the herd of the many.  No, and he, Govinda, as
well did not want to become one of those, not one of those tens of
thousands of Brahmans.  He wanted to follow Siddhartha, the beloved,
the splendid.  And in days to come, when Siddhartha would become a god,
when he would join the glorious, then Govinda wanted to follow him as
his friend, his companion, his servant, his spear-carrier, his shadow.

Siddhartha was thus loved by everyone.  He was a source of joy for
everybody, he was a delight for them all.

But he, Siddhartha, was not a source of joy for himself, he found no
delight in himself.  Walking the rosy paths of the fig tree garden,
sitting in the bluish shade of the grove of contemplation, washing his
limbs daily in the bath of repentance, sacrificing in the dim shade of
the mango forest, his gestures of perfect decency, everyone's love and
joy, he still lacked all joy in his heart.  Dreams and restless thoughts
came into his mind, flowing from the water of the river, sparkling from
the stars of the night, melting from the beams of the sun, dreams came
to him and a restlessness of the soul, fuming from the sacrifices,
breathing forth from the verses of the Rig-Veda, being infused into him,
drop by drop, from the teachings of the old Brahmans.

Siddhartha had started to nurse discontent in himself, he had started
to feel that the love of his father and the love of his mother, and also
the love of his friend, Govinda, would not bring him joy for ever and
ever, would not nurse him, feed him, satisfy him.  He had started to
suspect that his venerable father and his other teachers, that the wise
Brahmans had already revealed to him the most and best of their wisdom,
that they had already filled his expecting vessel with their richness,
and the vessel was not full, the spirit was not content, the soul was
not calm, the heart was not satisfied.  The ablutions were good, but
they were water, they did not wash off the sin, they did not heal the
spirit's thirst, they did not relieve the fear in his heart.  The
sacrifices and the invocation of the gods were excellent--but was that
all?  Did the sacrifices give a happy fortune?  And what about the gods?
Was it really Prajapati who had created the world?  Was it not the
Atman, He, the only one, the singular one?  Were the gods not creations,
created like me and you, subject to time, mortal?  Was it therefore
good, was it right, was it meaningful and the highest occupation to make
offerings to the gods?  For whom else were offerings to be made, who
else was to be worshipped but Him, the only one, the Atman?  And where
was Atman to be found, where did He reside, where did his eternal heart
beat, where else but in one's own self, in its innermost part, in its
indestructible part, which everyone had in himself?  But where, where
was this self, this innermost part, this ultimate part?  It was not
flesh and bone, it was neither thought nor consciousness, thus the
wisest ones taught.  So, where, where was it?  To reach this place, the
self, myself, the Atman, there was another way, which was worthwhile
looking for?  Alas, and nobody showed this way, nobody knew it, not the
father, and not the teachers and wise men, not the holy sacrificial
songs!  They knew everything, the Brahmans and their holy books, they
knew everything, they had taken care of everything and of more than
everything, the creation of the world, the origin of speech, of food, of
inhaling, of exhaling, the arrangement of the senses, the acts of the
gods, they knew infinitely much--but was it valuable to know all of
this, not knowing that one and only thing, the most important thing, the
solely important thing?

Surely, many verses of the holy books, particularly in the Upanishades
of Samaveda, spoke of this innermost and ultimate thing, wonderful
verses.  "Your soul is the whole world", was written there, and it was
written that man in his sleep, in his deep sleep, would meet with his
innermost part and would reside in the Atman.  Marvellous wisdom was in
these verses, all knowledge of the wisest ones had been collected here
in magic words, pure as honey collected by bees.  No, not to be looked
down upon was the tremendous amount of enlightenment which lay here
collected and preserved by innumerable generations of wise Brahmans.--
But where were the Brahmans, where the priests, where the wise men or
penitents, who had succeeded in not just knowing this deepest of all
knowledge but also to live it?  Where was the knowledgeable one who wove
his spell to bring his familiarity with the Atman out of the sleep into
the state of being awake, into the life, into every step of the way,
into word and deed?  Siddhartha knew many venerable Brahmans, chiefly
his father, the pure one, the scholar, the most venerable one.  His
father was to be admired, quiet and noble were his manners, pure his
life, wise his words, delicate and noble thoughts lived behind its brow
--but even he, who knew so much, did he live in blissfulness, did he
have peace, was he not also just a searching man, a thirsty man?  Did he
not, again and again, have to drink from holy sources, as a thirsty man,
from the offerings, from the books, from the disputes of the Brahmans?
Why did he, the irreproachable one, have to wash off sins every day,
strive for a cleansing every day, over and over every day?  Was not
Atman in him, did not the pristine source spring from his heart?  It had
to be found, the pristine source in one's own self, it had to be
possessed!  Everything else was searching, was a detour, was getting
lost.

Thus were Siddhartha's thoughts, this was his thirst, this was his
suffering.

Often he spoke to himself from a Chandogya-Upanishad the words:
"Truly, the name of the Brahman is satyam--verily, he who knows such a
thing, will enter the heavenly world every day."  Often, it seemed near,
the heavenly world, but never he had reached it completely, never he had
quenched the ultimate thirst.  And among all the wise and wisest men, he
knew and whose instructions he had received, among all of them there was
no one, who had reached it completely, the heavenly world, who had
quenched it completely, the eternal thirst.

"Govinda," Siddhartha spoke to his friend, "Govinda, my dear, come with
me under the Banyan tree, let's practise meditation."

They went to the Banyan tree, they sat down, Siddhartha right here,
Govinda twenty paces away.  While putting himself down, ready to speak
the Om, Siddhartha repeated murmuring the verse:

Om is the bow, the arrow is soul,
The Brahman is the arrow's target,
That one should incessantly hit.

After the usual time of the exercise in meditation had passed, Govinda
rose.  The evening had come, it was time to perform the evening's ablution.
He called Siddhartha's name.  Siddhartha did not answer.  Siddhartha sat
there lost in thought, his eyes were rigidly focused towards a very
distant target, the tip of his tongue was protruding a little between
the teeth, he seemed not to breathe.  Thus sat he, wrapped up in
contemplation, thinking Om, his soul sent after the Brahman as an arrow.

Once, Samanas had travelled through Siddhartha's town, ascetics on a
pilgrimage, three skinny, withered men, neither old nor young, with
dusty and bloody shoulders, almost naked, scorched by the sun,
surrounded by loneliness, strangers and enemies to the world, strangers
and lank jackals in the realm of humans.  Behind them blew a hot scent
of quiet passion, of destructive service, of merciless self-denial.

In the evening, after the hour of contemplation, Siddhartha spoke to
Govinda:  "Early tomorrow morning, my friend, Siddhartha will go to the
Samanas.  He will become a Samana."

Govinda turned pale, when he heard these words and read the decision in
the motionless face of his friend, unstoppable like the arrow shot from
the bow.  Soon and with the first glance, Govinda realized:  Now it is
beginning, now Siddhartha is taking his own way, now his fate is
beginning to sprout, and with his, my own.  And he turned pale like a
dry banana-skin.

"O Siddhartha," he exclaimed, "will your father permit you to do that?"

Siddhartha looked over as if he was just waking up.  Arrow-fast he read
in Govinda's soul, read the fear, read the submission.

"O Govinda," he spoke quietly, "let's not waste words.  Tomorrow, at
daybreak I will begin the life of the Samanas.  Speak no more of it."

Siddhartha entered the chamber, where his father was sitting on a mat of
bast, and stepped behind his father and remained standing there, until
his father felt that someone was standing behind him.  Quoth the
Brahman:  "Is that you, Siddhartha?  Then say what you came to say."

Quoth Siddhartha: "With your permission, my father.  I came to tell you
that it is my longing to leave your house tomorrow and go to the
ascetics.  My desire is to become a Samana.  May my father not oppose
this."

The Brahman fell silent, and remained silent for so long that the stars
in the small window wandered and changed their relative positions, 'ere
the silence was broken.  Silent and motionless stood the son with his
arms folded, silent and motionless sat the father on the mat, and the
stars traced their paths in the sky.  Then spoke the father:  "Not
proper it is for a Brahman to speak harsh and angry words.  But
indignation is in my heart.  I wish not to hear this request for a
second time from your mouth."

Slowly, the Brahman rose; Siddhartha stood silently, his arms folded.

"What are you waiting for?" asked the father.

Quoth Siddhartha:  "You know what."

Indignant, the father left the chamber; indignant, he went to his bed
and lay down.

After an hour, since no sleep had come over his eyes, the Brahman stood
up, paced to and fro, and left the house.  Through the small window of
the chamber he looked back inside, and there he saw Siddhartha standing,
his arms folded, not moving from his spot.  Pale shimmered his bright
robe.  With anxiety in his heart, the father returned to his bed.

After another hour, since no sleep had come over his eyes, the Brahman
stood up again, paced to and fro, walked out of the house and saw that
the moon had risen.  Through the window of the chamber he looked back
inside; there stood Siddhartha, not moving from his spot, his arms
folded, moonlight reflecting from his bare shins.  With worry in his
heart, the father went back to bed.

And he came back after an hour, he came back after two hours, looked
through the small window, saw Siddhartha standing, in the moon light,
by the light of the stars, in the darkness.  And he came back hour after
hour, silently, he looked into the chamber, saw him standing in the same
place, filled his heart with anger, filled his heart with unrest, filled
his heart with anguish, filled it with sadness.

And in the night's last hour, before the day began, he returned, stepped
into the room, saw the young man standing there, who seemed tall and
like a stranger to him.

"Siddhartha," he spoke, "what are you waiting for?"

"You know what."

"Will you always stand that way and wait, until it'll becomes morning,
noon, and evening?"

"I will stand and wait.

"You will become tired, Siddhartha."

"I will become tired."

"You will fall asleep, Siddhartha."

"I will not fall asleep."

"You will die, Siddhartha."

"I will die."

"And would you rather die, than obey your father?"

"Siddhartha has always obeyed his father."

"So will you abandon your plan?"

"Siddhartha will do what his father will tell him to do."

The first light of day shone into the room.  The Brahman saw that
Siddhartha was trembling softly in his knees.  In Siddhartha's face he
saw no trembling, his eyes were fixed on a distant spot.  Then his
father realized that even now Siddhartha no longer dwelt with him in his
home, that he had already left him.

The Father touched Siddhartha's shoulder.

"You will," he spoke, "go into the forest and be a Samana.  When
you'll have found blissfulness in the forest, then come back and teach
me to be blissful.  If you'll find disappointment, then return and let
us once again make offerings to the gods together.  Go now and kiss your
mother, tell her where you are going to.  But for me it is time to go to
the river and to perform the first ablution."

He took his hand from the shoulder of his son and went outside.
Siddhartha wavered to the side, as he tried to walk.  He put his limbs
back under control, bowed to his father, and went to his mother to do as
his father had said.

As he slowly left on stiff legs in the first light of day the still
quiet town, a shadow rose near the last hut, who had crouched there,
and joined the pilgrim--Govinda.

"You have come," said Siddhartha and smiled.

"I have come," said Govinda.




WITH THE SAMANAS

In the evening of this day they caught up with the ascetics, the skinny
Samanas, and offered them their companionship and--obedience.  They
were accepted.

Siddhartha gave his garments to a poor Brahman in the street.  He wore
nothing more than the loincloth and the earth-coloured, unsown cloak.
He ate only once a day, and never something cooked.  He fasted for
fifteen days.  He fasted for twenty-eight days.  The flesh waned from
his thighs and cheeks.  Feverish dreams flickered from his enlarged
eyes, long nails grew slowly on his parched fingers and a dry, shaggy
beard grew on his chin.  His glance turned to ice when he encountered
women; his mouth twitched with contempt, when he walked through a city
of nicely dressed people.  He saw merchants trading, princes hunting,
mourners wailing for their dead, whores offering themselves, physicians
trying to help the sick, priests determining the most suitable day for
seeding, lovers loving, mothers nursing their children--and all of this
was not worthy of one look from his eye, it all lied, it all stank,
it all stank of lies, it all pretended to be meaningful and joyful and
beautiful, and it all was just concealed putrefaction.  The world tasted
bitter.  Life was torture.

A goal stood before Siddhartha, a single goal: to become empty, empty of
thirst, empty of wishing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow.
Dead to himself, not to be a self any more, to find tranquility with an
emptied heard, to be open to miracles in unselfish thoughts, that was
his goal.  Once all of my self was overcome and had died, once every
desire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate part
of me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer my
self, the great secret.

Silently, Siddhartha exposed himself to burning rays of the sun directly
above, glowing with pain, glowing with thirst, and stood there, until he
neither felt any pain nor thirst any more.  Silently, he stood there in
the rainy season, from his hair the water was dripping over freezing
shoulders, over freezing hips and legs, and the penitent stood there,
until he could not feel the cold in his shoulders and legs any more,
until they were silent, until they were quiet.  Silently, he cowered in
the thorny bushes, blood dripped from the burning skin, from festering
wounds dripped pus, and Siddhartha stayed rigidly, stayed motionless,
until no blood flowed any more, until nothing stung any more, until
nothing burned any more.

Siddhartha sat upright and learned to breathe sparingly, learned to
get along with only few breathes, learned to stop breathing.  He
learned, beginning with the breath, to calm the beat of his heart,
leaned to reduce the beats of his heart, until they were only a few and
almost none.

Instructed by the oldest of the Samanas, Siddhartha practised
self-denial, practised meditation, according to a new Samana rules.
A heron flew over the bamboo forest--and Siddhartha accepted the heron
into his soul, flew over forest and mountains, was a heron, ate fish,
felt the pangs of a heron's hunger, spoke the heron's croak, died a
heron's death.  A dead jackal was lying on the sandy bank, and
Siddhartha's soul slipped inside the body, was the dead jackal, lay on
the banks, got bloated, stank, decayed, was dismembered by hyaenas, was
skinned by vultures, turned into a skeleton, turned to dust, was blown
across the fields.  And Siddhartha's soul returned, had died, had
decayed, was scattered as dust, had tasted the gloomy intoxication of
the cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter in the gap, where he
could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an
eternity without suffering began.  He killed his senses, he killed his
memory, he slipped out of his self into thousands of other forms, was an
animal, was carrion, was stone, was wood, was water, and awoke every
time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon, was his self again,
turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame the thirst, felt new
thirst.

Siddhartha learned a lot when he was with the Samanas, many ways leading
away from the self he learned to go.  He went the way of self-denial
by means of pain, through voluntarily suffering and overcoming pain,
hunger, thirst, tiredness.  He went the way of self-denial by means of
meditation, through imagining the mind to be void of all conceptions.
These and other ways he learned to go, a thousand times he left his
self, for hours and days he remained in the non-self.  But though the
ways led away from the self, their end nevertheless always led back to
the self.  Though Siddhartha fled from the self a thousand times, stayed
in nothingness, stayed in the animal, in the stone, the return was
inevitable, inescapable was the hour, when he found himself back in the
sunshine or in the moonlight, in the shade or in the rain, and was once
again his self and Siddhartha, and again felt the agony of the cycle which
had been forced upon him.

By his side lived Govinda, his shadow, walked the same paths, undertook
the same efforts.  They rarely spoke to one another, than the service
and the exercises required.  Occasionally the two of them went through
the villages, to beg for food for themselves and their teachers.

"How do you think, Govinda," Siddhartha spoke one day while begging
this way, "how do you think did we progress?  Did we reach any goals?"

Govinda answered:  "We have learned, and we'll continue learning.
You'll be a great Samana, Siddhartha.  Quickly, you've learned every
exercise, often the old Samanas have admired you.  One day, you'll be
a holy man, oh Siddhartha."

Quoth Siddhartha:  "I can't help but feel that it is not like this, my
friend.  What I've learned, being among the Samanas, up to this day,
this, oh Govinda, I could have learned more quickly and by simpler
means.  In every tavern of that part of a town where the whorehouses
are, my friend, among carters and gamblers I could have learned it."

Quoth Govinda:  "Siddhartha is putting me on.  How could you have
learned meditation, holding your breath, insensitivity against hunger
and pain there among these wretched people?"

And Siddhartha said quietly, as if he was talking to himself:  "What is
meditation?  What is leaving one's body?  What is fasting?  What is
holding one's breath?  It is fleeing from the self, it is a short
escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the
senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life.  The same escape,
the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the
inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk.  Then
he won't feel his self any more, then he won't feel the pains of life
any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses.  When he falls
asleep over his bowl of rice-wine, he'll find the same what Siddhartha
and Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises,
staying in the non-self.  This is how it is, oh Govinda."

Quoth Govinda:  "You say so, oh friend, and yet you know that Siddhartha
is no driver of an ox-cart and a Samana is no drunkard.  It's true that
a drinker numbs his senses, it's true that he briefly escapes and rests,
but he'll return from the delusion, finds everything to be unchanged, has
not become wiser, has gathered no enlightenment,--has not risen several
steps."

And Siddhartha spoke with a smile:  "I do not know, I've never been a
drunkard.  But that I, Siddhartha, find only a short numbing of the
senses in my exercises and meditations and that I am just as far removed
from wisdom, from salvation, as a child in the mother's womb, this I
know, oh Govinda, this I know."

And once again, another time, when Siddhartha left the forest together
with Govinda, to beg for some food in the village for their brothers and
teachers, Siddhartha began to speak and said:  "What now, oh Govinda,
might we be on the right path?  Might we get closer to enlightenment?
Might we get closer to salvation?  Or do we perhaps live in a circle--
we, who have thought we were escaping the cycle?"

Quoth Govinda:  "We have learned a lot, Siddhartha, there is still
much to learn.  We are not going around in circles, we are moving up,
the circle is a spiral, we have already ascended many a level."

Siddhartha answered:  "How old, would you think, is our oldest Samana,
our venerable teacher?"

Quoth Govinda:  "Our oldest one might be about sixty years of age."

And Siddhartha:  "He has lived for sixty years and has not reached the
nirvana.  He'll turn seventy and eighty, and you and me, we will grow
just as old and will do our exercises, and will fast, and will meditate.
But we will not reach the nirvana, he won't and we won't.  Oh Govinda,
I believe out of all the Samanas out there, perhaps not a single one,
not a single one, will reach the nirvana.  We find comfort, we find
numbness, we learn feats, to deceive others.  But the most important
thing, the path of paths, we will not find."

"If you only," spoke Govinda, "wouldn't speak such terrible words,
Siddhartha!  How could it be that among so many learned men, among so
many Brahmans, among so many austere and venerable Samanas, among so
many who are searching, so many who are eagerly trying, so many holy
men, no one will find the path of paths?"

But Siddhartha said in a voice which contained just as much sadness as
mockery, with a quiet, a slightly sad, a slightly mocking voice:  "Soon,
Govinda, your friend will leave the path of the Samanas, he has walked
along your side for so long.  I'm suffering of thirst, oh Govinda, and
on this long path of a Samana, my thirst has remained as strong as ever.
I always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions.
I have asked the Brahmans, year after year, and I have asked the holy
Vedas, year after year, and I have asked the devote Samanas, year after
year.  Perhaps, oh Govinda, it had been just as well, had been just as
smart and just as profitable, if I had asked the hornbill-bird or the
chimpanzee.  It took me a long time and am not finished learning this
yet, oh Govinda: that there is nothing to be learned!  There is indeed
no such thing, so I believe, as what we refer to as `learning'.  There
is, oh my friend, just one knowledge, this is everywhere, this is Atman,
this is within me and within you and within every creature.  And so I'm
starting to believe that this knowledge has no worser enemy than the
desire to know it, than learning."

At this, Govinda stopped on the path, rose his hands, and spoke:  "If
you, Siddhartha, only would not bother your friend with this kind of
talk!  Truly, you words stir up fear in my heart.  And just consider:
what would become of the sanctity of prayer, what of the venerability of
the Brahmans' caste, what of the holiness of the Samanas, if it was as
you say, if there was no learning?!  What, oh Siddhartha, what would
then become of all of this what is holy, what is precious, what is
venerable on earth?!"

And Govinda mumbled a verse to himself, a verse from an Upanishad:

He who ponderingly, of a purified spirit, loses himself in the
meditation of Atman, unexpressable by words is his blissfulness of his
heart.

But Siddhartha remained silent.  He thought about the words which
Govinda had said to him and thought the words through to their end.

Yes, he thought, standing there with his head low, what would remain of
all that which seemed to us to be holy?  What remains?  What can stand
the test?  And he shook his head.

At one time, when the two young men had lived among the Samanas for
about three years and had shared their exercises, some news, a rumour, a
myth reached them after being retold many times:  A man had appeared,
Gotama by name, the exalted one, the Buddha, he had overcome the
suffering of the world in himself and had halted the cycle of rebirths.
He was said to wander through the land, teaching, surrounded by
disciples, without possession, without home, without a wife, in the
yellow cloak of an ascetic, but with a cheerful brow, a man of bliss,
and Brahmans and princes would bow down before him and would become his
students.

This myth, this rumour, this legend resounded, its fragrants rose up,
here and there; in the towns, the Brahmans spoke of it and in the
forest, the Samanas; again and again, the name of Gotama, the Buddha
reached the ears of the young men, with good and with bad talk, with
praise and with defamation.

It was as if the plague had broken out in a country and news had been
spreading around that in one or another place there was a man, a wise
man, a knowledgeable one, whose word and breath was enough to heal
everyone who had been infected with the pestilence, and as such news
would go through the land and everyone would talk about it, many would
believe, many would doubt, but many would get on their way as soon as
possible, to seek the wise man, the helper, just like this this myth
ran through the land, that fragrant myth of Gotama, the Buddha, the
wise man of the family of Sakya.  He possessed, so the believers said,
the highest enlightenment, he remembered his previous lives, he had
reached the nirvana and never returned into the cycle, was never again
submerged in the murky river of physical forms.  Many wonderful and
unbelievable things were reported of him, he had performed miracles,
had overcome the devil, had spoken to the gods.  But his enemies and
disbelievers said, this Gotama was a vain seducer, he would spent his
days in luxury, scorned the offerings, was without learning, and knew
neither exercises nor self-castigation.

The myth of Buddha sounded sweet.  The scent of magic flowed from these
reports.  After all, the world was sick, life was hard to bear--and
behold, here a source seemed to spring forth, here a messenger seemed
to call out, comforting, mild, full of noble promises.  Everywhere
where the rumour of Buddha was heard, everywhere in the lands of India,
the young men listened up, felt a longing, felt hope, and among the
Brahmans' sons of the towns and villages every pilgrim and stranger was
welcome, when he brought news of him, the exalted one, the Sakyamuni.

The myth had also reached the Samanas in the forest, and also
Siddhartha, and also Govinda, slowly, drop by drop, every drop laden
with hope, every drop laden with doubt.  They rarely talked about it,
because the oldest one of the Samanas did not like this myth.  He had
heard that this alleged Buddha used to be an ascetic before and had
lived in the forest, but had then turned back to luxury and worldly
pleasures, and he had no high opinion of this Gotama.

"Oh Siddhartha," Govinda spoke one day to his friend.  "Today, I was
in the village, and a Brahman invited me into his house, and in his
house, there was the son of a Brahman from Magadha, who has seen the
Buddha with his own eyes and has heard him teach.  Verily, this made
my chest ache when I breathed, and thought to myself:  If only I would
too, if only we both would too, Siddhartha and me, live to see the
hour when we will hear the teachings from the mouth of this perfected
man!  Speak, friend, wouldn't we want to go there too and listen to the
teachings from the Buddha's mouth?"

Quoth Siddhartha:  "Always, oh Govinda, I had thought, Govinda would
stay with the Samanas, always I had believed his goal was to live to be
sixty and seventy years of age and to keep on practising those feats and
exercises, which are becoming a Samana.  But behold, I had not known
Govinda well enough, I knew little of his heart.  So now you, my
faithful friend, want to take a new path and go there, where the Buddha
spreads his teachings."

Quoth Govinda:  "You're mocking me.  Mock me if you like, Siddhartha!
But have you not also developed a desire, an eagerness, to hear these
teachings?  And have you not at one time said to me, you would not walk
the path of the Samanas for much longer?"

At this, Siddhartha laughed in his very own manner, in which his voice
assumed a touch of sadness and a touch of mockery, and said:  "Well,
Govinda, you've spoken well, you've remembered correctly.  If you
only remembered the other thing as well, you've heard from me, which is
that I have grown distrustful and tired against teachings and learning,
and that my faith in words, which are brought to us by teachers, is
small.  But let's do it, my dear, I am willing to listen to these
teachings--though in my heart I believe that we've already tasted the
best fruit of these teachings."

Quoth Govinda:  "Your willingness delights my heart.  But tell me, how
should this be possible?  How should the Gotama's teachings, even before
we have heard them, have already revealed their best fruit to us?"

Quoth Siddhartha:  "Let us eat this fruit and wait for the rest, oh
Govinda!  But this fruit, which we already now received thanks to the
Gotama, consisted in him calling us away from the Samanas!  Whether he
has also other and better things to give us, oh friend, let us await
with calm hearts."

On this very same day, Siddhartha informed the oldest one of the Samanas
of his decision, that he wanted to leave him.  He informed the oldest
one with all the courtesy and modesty becoming to a younger one and a
student.  But the Samana became angry, because the two young men wanted
to leave him, and talked loudly and used crude swearwords.

Govinda was startled and became embarrassed.  But Siddhartha put his
mouth close to Govinda's ear and whispered to him:  "Now, I want to show
the old man that I've learned something from him."

Positioning himself closely in front of the Samana, with a concentrated
soul, he captured the old man's glance with his glances, deprived him of
his power, made him mute, took away his free will, subdued him under his
own will, commanded him, to do silently, whatever he demanded him to do.
The old man became mute, his eyes became motionless, his will was
paralysed, his arms were hanging down; without power, he had fallen
victim to Siddhartha's spell.  But Siddhartha's thoughts brought the
Samana under their control, he had to carry out, what they commanded.
And thus, the old man made several bows, performed gestures of blessing,
spoke stammeringly a godly wish for a good journey.  And the young men
returned the bows with thanks, returned the wish, went on their way with
salutations.

On the way, Govinda said:  "Oh Siddhartha, you have learned more from
the Samanas than I knew.  It is hard, it is very hard to cast a spell
on an old Samana.  Truly, if you had stayed there, you would soon have
learned to walk on water."

"I do not seek to walk on water," said Siddhartha.  "Let old Samanas be
content with such feats!"




GOTAMA

In the town of Savathi, every child knew the name of the exalted Buddha,
and every house was prepared to fill the alms-dish of Gotama's
disciples, the silently begging ones.  Near the town was Gotama's
favourite place to stay, the grove of Jetavana, which the rich merchant
Anathapindika, an obedient worshipper of the exalted one, had given him
and his people for a gift.

All tales and answers, which the two young ascetics had received in
their search for Gotama's abode, had pointed them towards this area.
And arriving at Savathi, in the very first house, before the door of
which they stopped to beg, food has been offered to them, and they
accepted the food, and Siddhartha asked the woman, who handed them the
food:

"We would like to know, oh charitable one, where the Buddha dwells, the
most venerable one, for we are two Samanas from the forest and have
come, to see him, the perfected one, and to hear the teachings from his
mouth."

Quoth the woman:  "Here, you have truly come to the right place, you
Samanas from the forest.  You should know, in Jetavana, in the garden
of Anathapindika is where the exalted one dwells.  There you pilgrims
shall spent the night, for there is enough space for the innumerable,
who flock here, to hear the teachings from his mouth."

This made Govinda happy, and full of joy he exclaimed:  "Well so, thus
we have reached our destination, and our path has come to an end!  But
tell us, oh mother of the pilgrims, do you know him, the Buddha, have
you seen him with your own eyes?"

Quoth the woman:  "Many times I have seen him, the exalted one.  On many
days, I have seen him, walking through the alleys in silence, wearing
his yellow cloak, presenting his alms-dish in silence at the doors of
the houses, leaving with a filled dish."

Delightedly, Govinda listened and wanted to ask and hear much more.
But Siddhartha urged him to walk on.  They thanked and left and hardly
had to ask for directions, for rather many pilgrims and monks as well
from Gotama's community were on their way to the Jetavana.  And since
they reached it at night, there were constant arrivals, shouts, and
talk of those who sought shelter and got it.  The two Samanas,
accustomed to life in the forest, found quickly and without making any
noise a place to stay and rested there until the morning.

At sunrise, they saw with astonishment what a large crowd of believers
and curious people had spent the night here.  On all paths of the
marvellous grove, monks walked in yellow robes, under the trees they
sat here and there, in deep contemplation--or in a conversation about
spiritual matters, the shady gardens looked like a city, full of people,
bustling like bees.  The majority of the monks went out with their
alms-dish, to collect food in town for their lunch, the only meal of the
day.  The Buddha himself, the enlightened one, was also in the habit of
taking this walk to beg in the morning.

Siddhartha saw him, and he instantly recognised him, as if a god had
pointed him out to him.  He saw him, a simple man in a yellow robe,
bearing the alms-dish in his hand, walking silently.

"Look here!" Siddhartha said quietly to Govinda.  "This one is the
Buddha."

Attentively, Govinda looked at the monk in the yellow robe, who seemed
to be in no way different from the hundreds of other monks.  And soon,
Govinda also realized:  This is the one.  And they followed him and
observed him.

The Buddha went on his way, modestly and deep in his thoughts, his
calm face was neither happy nor sad, it seemed to smile quietly and
inwardly.  With a hidden smile, quiet, calm, somewhat resembling a
healthy child, the Buddha walked, wore the robe and placed his feet
just as all of his monks did, according to a precise rule.  But his
face and his walk, his quietly lowered glance, his quietly dangling hand
and even every finger of his quietly dangling hand expressed peace,
expressed perfection, did not search, did not imitate, breathed softly
in an unwhithering calm, in an unwhithering light, an untouchable peace.

Thus Gotama walked towards the town, to collect alms, and the two
Samanas recognised him solely by the perfection of his calm, by the
quietness of his appearance, in which there was no searching, no desire,
no imitation, no effort to be seen, only light and peace.

"Today, we'll hear the teachings from his mouth." said Govinda.

Siddhartha did not answer.  He felt little curiosity for the teachings,
he did not believe that they would teach him anything new, but he had,
just as Govinda had, heard the contents of this Buddha's teachings
again and again, though these reports only represented second- or
third-hand information.  But attentively he looked at Gotama's head,
his shoulders, his feet, his quietly dangling hand, and it seemed to
him as if every joint of every finger of this hand was of these
teachings, spoke of, breathed of, exhaled the fragrant of, glistened of
truth.  This man, this Buddha was truthful down to the gesture of his
last finger.  This man was holy.  Never before, Siddhartha had venerated
a person so much, never before he had loved a person as much as this
one.

They both followed the Buddha until they reached the town and then
returned in silence, for they themselves intended to abstain from
on this day.  They saw Gotama returning--what he ate could not even have
satisfied a bird's appetite, and they saw him retiring into the shade
of the mango-trees.

But in the evening, when the heat cooled down and everyone in the camp
started to bustle about and gathered around, they heard the Buddha
teaching.  They heard his voice, and it was also perfected, was of
perfect calmness, was full of peace.  Gotama taught the teachings of
suffering, of the origin of suffering, of the way to relieve suffering.
Calmly and clearly his quiet speech flowed on.  Suffering was life,
full of suffering was the world, but salvation from suffering had been
found:  salvation was obtained by him who would walk the path of the
Buddha.  With a soft, yet firm voice the exalted one spoke, taught the
four main doctrines, taught the eightfold path, patiently he went the
usual path of the teachings, of the examples, of the repetitions,
brightly and quietly his voice hovered over the listeners, like a light,
like a starry sky.

When the Buddha--night had already fallen--ended his speech, many a
pilgrim stepped forward and asked to accepted into the community, sought
refuge in the teachings.  And Gotama accepted them by speaking:  "You
have heard the teachings well, it has come to you well.  Thus join us
and walk in holiness, to put an end to all suffering."

Behold, then Govinda, the shy one, also stepped forward and spoke:  "I
also take my refuge in the exalted one and his teachings," and he asked
to accepted into the community of his disciples and was accepted.

Right afterwards, when the Buddha had retired for the night, Govinda
turned to Siddhartha and spoke eagerly:  "Siddhartha, it is not my place
to scold you.  We have both heard the exalted one, we have both
perceived the teachings.  Govinda has heard the teachings, he has taken
refuge in it.  But you, my honoured friend, don't you also want to walk
the path of salvation?  Would you want to hesitate, do you want to wait
any longer?"

Siddhartha awakened as if he had been asleep, when he heard Govinda's
words.  For a long time, he looked into Govinda's face.  Then he spoke
quietly, in a voice without mockery:  "Govinda, my friend, now you have
taken this step, now you have chosen this path.  Always, oh Govinda,
you've been my friend, you've always walked one step behind me.  Often I
have thought:  Won't Govinda for once also take a step by himself,
without me, out of his own soul?  Behold, now you've turned into a man
and are choosing your path for yourself.  I wish that you would go it up
to its end, oh my friend, that you shall find salvation!"

Govinda, not completely understanding it yet, repeated his question in
an impatient tone:  "Speak up, I beg you, my dear!  Tell me, since it
could not be any other way, that you also, my learned friend, will take
your refuge with the exalted Buddha!"

Siddhartha placed his hand on Govinda's shoulder:  "You failed to hear
my good wish for you, oh Govinda.  I'm repeating it:  I wish that you
would go this path up to its end, that you shall find salvation!"

In this moment, Govinda realized that his friend had left him, and he
started to weep.

"Siddhartha!" he exclaimed lamentingly.

Siddhartha kindly spoke to him:  "Don't forget, Govinda, that you are
now one of the Samanas of the Buddha!  You have renounced your home
and your parents, renounced your birth and possessions, renounced your
free will, renounced all friendship.  This is what the teachings
require, this is what the exalted one wants.  This is what you wanted
for yourself.  Tomorrow, oh Govinda, I'll leave you."

For a long time, the friends continued walking in the grove; for a long
time, they lay there and found no sleep.  And over and over again,
Govinda urged his friend, he should tell him why he would not want to
seek refuge in Gotama's teachings, what fault he would find in these
teachings.  But Siddhartha turned him away every time and said:  "Be
content, Govinda!  Very good are the teachings of the exalted one, how
could I find a fault in them?"

Very early in the morning, a follower of Buddha, one of his oldest
monks, went through the garden and called all those to him who had as
novices taken their refuge in the teachings, to dress them up in the
yellow robe and to instruct them in the first teachings and duties of
their position.  Then Govinda broke loose, embraced once again his
childhood friend and left with the novices.

But Siddhartha walked through the grove, lost in thought.

Then he happened to meet Gotama, the exalted one, and when he greeted
him with respect and the Buddha's glance was so full of kindness and
calm, the young man summoned his courage and asked the venerable one for
the permission to talk to him.  Silently the exalted one nodded his
approval.

Quoth Siddhartha:  "Yesterday, oh exalted one, I had been privileged to
hear your wondrous teachings.  Together with my friend, I had come from
afar, to hear your teachings.  And now my friend is going to stay with
your people, he has taken his refuge with you.  But I will again start
on my pilgrimage."

"As you please," the venerable one spoke politely.

"Too bold is my speech," Siddhartha continued, "but I do not want to
leave the exalted one without having honestly told him my thoughts.
Does it please the venerable one to listen to me for one moment longer?"

Silently, the Buddha nodded his approval.

Quoth Siddhartha:  "One thing, oh most venerable one, I have admired in
your teachings most of all.  Everything in your teachings is perfectly
clear, is proven; you are presenting the world as a perfect chain, a
chain which is never and nowhere broken, an eternal chain the links of
which are causes and effects.  Never before, this has been seen so
clearly; never before, this has been presented so irrefutably; truly,
the heart of every Brahman has to beat stronger with love, once he has
seen the world through your teachings perfectly connected, without gaps,
clear as a crystal, not depending on chance, not depending on gods.
Whether it may be good or bad, whether living according to it would be
suffering or joy, I do not wish to discuss, possibly this is not
essential--but the uniformity of the world, that everything which
happens is connected, that the great and the small things are all
encompassed by the same forces of time, by the same law of causes, of
coming into being and of dying, this is what shines brightly out of your
exalted teachings, oh perfected one.  But according to your very own
teachings, this unity and necessary sequence of all things is
nevertheless broken in one place, through a small gap, this world of
unity is invaded by something alien, something new, something which had
not been there before, and which cannot be demonstrated and cannot be
proven: these are your teachings of overcoming the world, of salvation.
But with this small gap, with this small breach, the entire eternal and
uniform law of the world is breaking apart again and becomes void.
Please forgive me for expressing this objection."

Quietly, Gotama had listened to him, unmoved.  Now he spoke, the
perfected one, with his kind, with his polite and clear voice:  "You've
heard the teachings, oh son of a Brahman, and good for you that you've
thought about it thus deeply.  You've found a gap in it, an error.  You
should think about this further.  But be warned, oh seeker of knowledge,
of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words.  There is nothing
to opinions, they may be beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish, everyone
can support them or discard them.  But the teachings, you've heard from
me, are no opinion, and their goal is not to explain the world to those
who seek knowledge.  They have a different goal; their goal is salvation
from suffering.  This is what Gotama teaches, nothing else."

"I wish that you, oh exalted one, would not be angry with me," said the
young man.  "I have not spoken to you like this to argue with you, to
argue about words.  You are truly right, there is little to opinions.
But let me say this one more thing:  I have not doubted in you for a
single moment.  I have not doubted for a single moment that you are
Buddha, that you have reached the goal, the highest goal towards which
so many thousands of Brahmans and sons of Brahmans are on their way.
You have found salvation from death.  It has come to you in the course
of your own search, on your own path, through thoughts, through
meditation, through realizations, through enlightenment.  It has not
come to you by means of teachings!  And--thus is my thought, oh exalted
one,--nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings!  You will not
be able to convey and say to anybody, oh venerable one, in words and
through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment!
The teachings of the enlightened Buddha contain much, it teaches many to
live righteously, to avoid evil.  But there is one thing which these so
clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain:  they do not contain
the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he
alone among hundreds of thousands.  This is what I have thought and
realized, when I have heard the teachings.  This is why I am continuing
my travels--not to seek other, better teachings, for I know there are
none, but to depart from all teachings and all teachers and to reach my
goal by myself or to die.  But often, I'll think of this day, oh exalted
one, and of this hour, when my eyes beheld a holy man."

The Buddha's eyes quietly looked to the ground; quietly, in perfect
equanimity his inscrutable face was smiling.

"I wish," the venerable one spoke slowly, "that your thoughts shall not
be in error, that you shall reach the goal!  But tell me:  Have you seen
the multitude of my Samanas, my many brothers, who have taken refuge in
the teachings?  And do you believe, oh stranger, oh Samana, do you
believe that it would be better for them all the abandon the teachings
and to return into the life the world and of desires?"

"Far is such a thought from my mind," exclaimed Siddhartha.  "I wish
that they shall all stay with the teachings, that they shall reach their
goal!  It is not my place to judge another person's life.  Only for
myself, for myself alone, I must decide, I must chose, I must refuse.
Salvation from the self is what we Samanas search for, oh exalted one.
If I merely were one of your disciples, oh venerable one, I'd fear that
it might happen to me that only seemingly, only deceptively my self
would be calm and be redeemed, but that in truth it would live on and
grow, for then I had replaced my self with the teachings, my duty to
follow you, my love for you, and the community of the monks!"

With half of a smile, with an unwavering openness and kindness,
Gotama looked into the stranger's eyes and bid him to leave with a
hardly noticeable gesture.

"You are wise, oh Samana.", the venerable one spoke.

"You know how to talk wisely, my friend.  Be aware of too much wisdom!"

The Buddha turned away, and his glance and half of a smile remained
forever etched in Siddhartha's memory.

I have never before seen a person glance and smile, sit and walk this
way, he thought; truly, I wish to be able to glance and smile, sit and
walk this way, too, thus free, thus venerable, thus concealed, thus
open, thus child-like and mysterious.  Truly, only a person who has
succeeded in reaching the innermost part of his self would glance and
walk this way.  Well so, I also will seek to reach the innermost part
of my self.

I saw a man, Siddhartha thought, a single man, before whom I would have
to lower my glance.  I do not want to lower my glance before any other,
not before any other.  No teachings will entice me any more, since this
man's teachings have not enticed me.

I am deprived by the Buddha, thought Siddhartha, I am deprived, and
even more he has given to me.  He has deprived me of my friend, the one
who had believed in me and now believes in him, who had been my shadow
and is now Gotama's shadow.  But he has given me Siddhartha, myself.




AWAKENING

When Siddhartha left the grove, where the Buddha, the perfected one,
stayed behind, where Govinda stayed behind, then he felt that in this
grove his past life also stayed behind and parted from him.  He pondered
about this sensation, which filled him completely, as he was slowly
walking along.  He pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he
let himself sink down to the ground of the sensation, down to the place
where the causes lie, because to identify the causes, so it seemed to
him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn
into realizations and are not lost, but become entities and start to
emit like rays of light what is inside of them.

Slowly walking along, Siddhartha pondered.  He realized that he was no
youth any more, but had turned into a man.  He realized that one thing
had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that one thing no
longer existed in him, which had accompanied him throughout his youth
and used to be a part of him: the wish to have teachers and to listen to
teachings.  He had also left the last teacher who had appeared on his
path, even him, the highest and wisest teacher, the most holy one,
Buddha, he had left him, had to part with him, was not able to accept
his teachings.

Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself:  "But what
is this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers,
and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach
you?"  And he found:  "It was the self, the purpose and essence of which
I sought to learn.  It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which
I sought to overcome.  But I was not able to overcome it, could only
deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it.  Truly, no
thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own
self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being
separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha!  And
there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about
Siddhartha!"

Having been pondering while slowly walking along, he now stopped as
these thoughts caught hold of him, and right away another thought sprang
forth from these, a new thought, which was:  "That I know nothing about
myself, that Siddhartha has remained thus alien and unknown to me, stems
from one cause, a single cause:  I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing
from myself!  I searched Atman, I searched Brahman, I was willing to
dissect my self and peel off all of its layers, to find the core of
all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life, the divine part, the
ultimate part.  But I have lost myself in the process."

Siddhartha opened his eyes and looked around, a smile filled his face
and a feeling of awakening from long dreams flowed through him from his
head down to his toes.  And it was not long before he walked again,
walked quickly like a man who knows what he has got to do.

"Oh," he thought, taking a deep breath, "now I would not let Siddhartha
escape from me again!  No longer, I want to begin my thoughts and my
life with Atman and with the suffering of the world.  I do not want to
kill and dissect myself any longer, to find a secret behind the ruins.
Neither Yoga-Veda shall teach me any more, nor Atharva-Veda, nor the
ascetics, nor any kind of teachings.  I want to learn from myself, want
to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha."

He looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time.
Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious
was the world!  Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky
and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it
was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was
he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself.  All of this,
all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered Siddhartha for the
first time through the eyes, was no longer a spell of Mara, was no
longer the veil of Maya, was no longer a pointless and coincidental
diversity of mere appearances, despicable to the deeply thinking Brahman,
who scorns diversity, who seeks unity.  Blue was blue, river was river,
and if also in the blue and the river, in Siddhartha, the singular and
divine lived hidden, so it was still that very divinity's way and
purpose, to be here yellow, here blue, there sky, there forest, and here
Siddhartha.  The purpose and the essential properties were not somewhere
behind the things, they were in them, in everything.

"How deaf and stupid have I been!" he thought, walking swiftly along.
"When someone reads a text, wants to discover its meaning, he will not
scorn the symbols and letters and call them deceptions, coincidence,
and worthless hull, but he will read them, he will study and love them,
letter by letter.  But I, who wanted to read the book of the world and
the book of my own being, I have, for the sake of a meaning I had
anticipated before I read, scorned the symbols and letters, I called the
visible world a deception, called my eyes and my tongue coincidental
and worthless forms without substance.  No, this is over, I have
awakened, I have indeed awakened and have not been born before this
very day."

In thinking these thoughts, Siddhartha stopped once again, suddenly, as
if there was a snake lying in front of him on the path.

Because suddenly, he had also become aware of this:  He, who was indeed
like someone who had just woken up or like a new-born baby, he had to
start his life anew and start again at the very beginning.  When he had
left in this very morning from the grove Jetavana, the grove of that
exalted one, already awakening, already on the path towards himself,
he had every intention, regarded as natural and took for granted, that
he, after years as an ascetic, would return to his home and his father.
But now, only in this moment, when he stopped as if a snake was lying on
his path, he also awoke to this realization:  "But I am no longer the
one I was, I am no ascetic any more, I am not a priest any more, I am no
Brahman any more.  Whatever should I do at home and at my father's
place?  Study?  Make offerings?  Practise meditation?  But all this is
over, all of this is no longer alongside my path."

Motionless, Siddhartha remained standing there, and for the time of
one moment and breath, his heart felt cold, he felt a cold in his chest,
as a small animal, a bird or a rabbit, would when seeing how alone he
was.  For many years, he had been without home and had felt nothing.
Now, he felt it.  Still, even in the deepest meditation, he had been
his father's son, had been a Brahman, of a high caste, a cleric.  Now,
he was nothing but Siddhartha, the awoken one, nothing else was left.
Deeply, he inhaled, and for a moment, he felt cold and shivered.
Nobody was thus alone as he was.  There was no nobleman who did not
belong to the noblemen, no worker that did not belong to the workers,
and found refuge with them, shared their life, spoke their language.
No Brahman, who would not be regarded as Brahmans and lived with them,
no ascetic who would not find his refuge in the caste of the Samanas,
and even the most forlorn hermit in the forest was not just one and
alone, he was also surrounded by a place he belonged to, he also
belonged to a caste, in which he was at home.  Govinda had become a
monk, and a thousand monks were his brothers, wore the same robe as he,
believed in his faith, spoke his language.  But he, Siddhartha, where
did he belong to?  With whom would he share his life?  Whose language
would he speak?

Out of this moment, when the world melted away all around him, when he
stood alone like a star in the sky, out of this moment of a cold and
despair, Siddhartha emerged, more a self than before, more firmly
concentrated.  He felt:  This had been the last tremor of the awakening,
the last struggle of this birth.  And it was not long until he walked
again in long strides, started to proceed swiftly and impatiently,
heading no longer for home, no longer to his father, no longer back.





SECOND PART

Dedicated to Wilhelm Gundert, my cousin in Japan




KAMALA

Siddhartha learned something new on every step of his path, for the
world was transformed, and his heart was enchanted.  He saw the sun
rising over the mountains with their forests and setting over the
distant beach with its palm-trees.  At night, he saw the stars in the
sky in their fixed positions and the crescent of the moon floating like
a boat in the blue.  He saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows,
rocks, herbs, flowers, stream and river, the glistening dew in the
bushes in the morning, distant high mountains which were blue and
pale, birds sang and bees, wind silverishly blew through the rice-field.
All of this, a thousand-fold and colourful, had always been there,
always the sun and the moon had shone, always rivers had roared and
bees had buzzed, but in former times all of this had been nothing more
to Siddhartha than a fleeting, deceptive veil before his eyes,
looked upon in distrust, destined to be penetrated and destroyed by
thought, since it was not the essential existence, since this essence
lay beyond, on the other side of, the visible.  But now, his liberated
eyes stayed on this side, he saw and became aware of the visible, sought
to be at home in this world, did not search for the true essence, did
not aim at a world beyond.  Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus,
without searching, thus simply, thus childlike.  Beautiful were the moon
and the stars, beautiful was the stream and the banks, the forest and
the rocks, the goat and the gold-beetle, the flower and the butterfly.
Beautiful and lovely it was, thus to walk through the world, thus
childlike, thus awoken, thus open to what is near, thus without
distrust.  Differently the sun burnt the head, differently the shade
of the forest cooled him down, differently the stream and the cistern,
the pumpkin and the banana tasted.  Short were the days, short the
nights, every hour sped swiftly away like a sail on the sea, and under
the sail was a ship full of treasures, full of joy.  Siddhartha saw a
group of apes moving through the high canopy of the forest, high in the
branches, and heard their savage, greedy song.  Siddhartha saw a male
sheep following a female one and mating with her.  In a lake of reeds,
he saw the pike hungrily hunting for its dinner; propelling themselves
away from it, in fear, wiggling and sparkling, the young fish jumped in
droves out of the water; the scent of strength and passion came
forcefully out of the hasty eddies of the water, which the pike stirred
up, impetuously hunting.

All of this had always existed, and he had not seen it; he had not been
with it.  Now he was with it, he was part of it.  Light and shadow
ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart.

On the way, Siddhartha also remembered everything he had experienced in
the Garden Jetavana, the teaching he had heard there, the divine Buddha,
the farewell from Govinda, the conversation with the exalted one.  Again
he remembered his own words, he had spoken to the exalted one, every
word, and with astonishment he became aware of the fact that there he
had said things which he had not really known yet at this time.  What he
had said to Gotama: his, the Buddha's, treasure and secret was not the
teachings, but the unexpressable and not teachable, which he had
experienced in the hour of his enlightenment--it was nothing but this
very thing which he had now gone to experience, what he now began to
experience.  Now, he had to experience his self.  It is true that he had
already known for a long time that his self was Atman, in its essence
bearing the same eternal characteristics as Brahman.  But never, he had
really found this self, because he had wanted to capture it in the net
of thought.  With the body definitely not being the self, and not the
spectacle of the senses, so it also was not the thought, not the
rational mind, not the learned wisdom, not the learned ability to draw
conclusions and to develop previous thoughts in to new ones.  No, this
world of thought was also still on this side, and nothing could be
achieved by killing the random self of the senses, if the random self of
thoughts and learned knowledge was fattened on the other hand.  Both,
the thoughts as well as the senses, were pretty things, the ultimate
meaning was hidden behind both of them, both had to be listened to, both
had to be played with, both neither had to be scorned nor overestimated,
from both the secret voices of the innermost truth had to be attentively
perceived.  He wanted to strive for nothing, except for what the voice
commanded him to strive for, dwell on nothing, except where the voice
would advise him to do so.  Why had Gotama, at that time, in the hour
of all hours, sat down under the bo-tree, where the enlightenment hit
him?  He had heard a voice, a voice in his own heart, which had
commanded him to seek rest under this tree, and he had neither preferred
self-castigation, offerings, ablutions, nor prayer, neither food nor
drink, neither sleep nor dream, he had obeyed the voice.  To obey like
this, not to an external command, only to the voice, to be ready like
this, this was good, this was necessary, nothing else was necessary.

In the night when he slept in the straw hut of a ferryman by the river,
Siddhartha had a dream:  Govinda was standing in front of him, dressed
in the yellow robe of an ascetic.  Sad was how Govinda looked like,
sadly he asked:  Why have you forsaken me?  At this, he embraced
Govinda, wrapped his arms around him, and as he was pulling him close
to his chest and kissed him, it was not Govinda any more, but a woman,
and a full breast popped out of the woman's dress, at which Siddhartha
lay and drank, sweetly and strongly tasted the milk from this breast.
It tasted of woman and man, of sun and forest, of animal and flower,
of every fruit, of every joyful desire.  It intoxicated him and rendered
him unconscious.--When Siddhartha woke up, the pale river shimmered
through the door of the hut, and in the forest, a dark call of an owl
resounded deeply and pleasantly.

When the day began, Siddhartha asked his host, the ferryman, to get him
across the river.  The ferryman got him across the river on his
bamboo-raft, the wide water shimmered reddishly in the light of the
morning.

"This is a beautiful river," he said to his companion.

"Yes," said the ferryman, "a very beautiful river, I love it more than
anything.  Often I have listened to it, often I have looked into its
eyes, and always I have learned from it.  Much can be learned from a
river."

"I thank you, my benefactor," spoke Siddhartha, disembarking on the other
side of the river.  "I have no gift I could give you for your
hospitality, my dear, and also no payment for your work.  I am a man
without a home, a son of a Brahman and a Samana."

"I did see it," spoke the ferryman, "and I haven't expected any payment
from you and no gift which would be the custom for guests to bear.  You
will give me the gift another time."

"Do you think so?" asked Siddhartha amusedly.

"Surely.  This too, I have learned from the river: everything is coming
back!  You too, Samana, will come back.  Now farewell!  Let your
friendship be my reward.  Commemorate me, when you'll make offerings to
the gods."

Smiling, they parted.  Smiling, Siddhartha was happy about the
friendship and the kindness of the ferryman.  "He is like Govinda," he
thought with a smile, "all I meet on my path are like Govinda.  All are
thankful, though they are the ones who would have a right to receive
thanks.  All are submissive, all would like to be friends, like to
obey, think little.  Like children are all people."

At about noon, he came through a village.  In front of the mud cottages,
children were rolling about in the street, were playing with
pumpkin-seeds and sea-shells, screamed and wrestled, but they all
timidly fled from the unknown Samana.  In the end of the village, the
path led through a stream, and by the side of the stream, a young
woman was kneeling and washing clothes.  When Siddhartha greeted her,
she lifted her head and looked up to him with a smile, so that he saw
the white in her eyes glistening.  He called out a blessing to her, as
it is the custom among travellers, and asked how far he still had to go
to reach the large city.  Then she got up and came to him, beautifully
her wet mouth was shimmering in her young face.  She exchanged humorous
banter with him, asked whether he had eaten already, and whether it was
true that the Samanas slept alone in the forest at night and were not
allowed to have any women with them.  While talking, she put her left
foot on his right one and made a movement as a woman does who would want
to initiate that kind of sexual pleasure with a man, which the textbooks
call "climbing a tree".  Siddhartha felt his blood heating up, and since
in this moment he had to think of his dream again, he bend slightly
down to the woman and kissed with his lips the brown nipple of her
breast.  Looking up, he saw her face smiling full of lust and her
eyes, with contracted pupils, begging with desire.

Siddhartha also felt desire and felt the source of his sexuality moving;
but since he had never touched a woman before, he hesitated for a
moment, while his hands were already prepared to reach out for her.  And
in this moment he heard, shuddering with awe, the voice if his innermost
self, and this voice said No.  Then, all charms disappeared from the
young woman's smiling face, he no longer saw anything else but the damp
glance of a female animal in heat.  Politely, he petted her cheek,
turned away from her and disappeared away from the disappointed woman
with light steps into the bamboo-wood.

On this day, he reached the large city before the evening, and was
happy, for he felt the need to be among people.  For a long time, he
had lived in the forests, and the straw hut of the ferryman, in which
he had slept that night, had been the first roof for a long time he has
had over his head.

Before the city, in a beautifully fenced grove, the traveller came
across a small group of servants, both male and female, carrying
baskets.  In their midst, carried by four servants in an ornamental
sedan-chair, sat a woman, the mistress, on red pillows under a colourful
canopy.  Siddhartha stopped at the entrance to the pleasure-garden and
watched the parade, saw the servants, the maids, the baskets, saw the
sedan-chair and saw the lady in it.  Under black hair, which made to
tower high on her head, he saw a very fair, very delicate, very smart
face, a brightly red mouth, like a freshly cracked fig, eyebrows which
were well tended and painted in a high arch, smart and watchful dark
eyes, a clear, tall neck rising from a green and golden garment, resting
fair hands, long and thin, with wide golden bracelets over the wrists.

Siddhartha saw how beautiful she was, and his heart rejoiced.  He bowed
deeply, when the sedan-chair came closer, and straightening up again,
he looked at the fair, charming face, read for a moment in the smart
eyes with the high arcs above, breathed in a slight fragrant, he did
not know.  With a smile, the beautiful women nodded for a moment and
disappeared into the grove, and then the servant as well.

Thus I am entering this city, Siddhartha thought, with a charming omen.
He instantly felt drawn into the grove, but he thought about it, and
only now he became aware of how the servants and maids had looked at him
at the entrance, how despicable, how distrustful, how rejecting.

I am still a Samana, he thought, I am still an ascetic and beggar.  I
must not remain like this, I will not be able to enter the grove like
this.  And he laughed.

The next person who came along this path he asked about the grove and
for the name of the woman, and was told that this was the grove of
Kamala, the famous courtesan, and that, aside from the grove, she owned
a house in the city.

Then, he entered the city.  Now he had a goal.

Pursuing his goal, he allowed the city to suck him in, drifted through
the flow of the streets, stood still on the squares, rested on the
stairs of stone by the river.  When the evening came, he made friends
with barber's assistant, whom he had seen working in the shade of an
arch in a building, whom he found again praying in a temple of Vishnu,
whom he told about stories of Vishnu and the Lakshmi.  Among the boats
by the river, he slept this night, and early in the morning, before the
first customers came into his shop, he had the barber's assistant shave
his beard and cut his hair, comb his hair and anoint it with fine oil.
Then he went to take his bath in the river.

When late in the afternoon, beautiful Kamala approached her grove in her
sedan-chair, Siddhartha was standing at the entrance, made a bow and
received the courtesan's greeting.  But that servant who walked at the
very end of her train he motioned to him and asked him to inform his
mistress that a young Brahman would wish to talk to her.  After a while,
the servant returned, asked him, who had been waiting, to follow him
conducted him, who was following him, without a word into a pavilion,
where Kamala was lying on a couch, and left him alone with her.

"Weren't you already standing out there yesterday, greeting me?" asked
Kamala.

"It's true that I've already seen and greeted you yesterday."

"But didn't you yesterday wear a beard, and long hair, and dust in your
hair?"

"You have observed well, you have seen everything.  You have seen
Siddhartha, the son of a Brahman, who has left his home to become a
Samana, and who has been a Samana for three years.  But now, I have
left that path and came into this city, and the first one I met, even
before I had entered the city, was you.  To say this, I have come to
you, oh Kamala!  You are the first woman whom Siddhartha is not
addressing with his eyes turned to the ground.  Never again I want to
turn my eyes to the ground, when I'm coming across a beautiful woman."

Kamala smiled and played with her fan of peacocks' feathers.  And asked:
"And only to tell me this, Siddhartha has come to me?"

"To tell you this and to thank you for being so beautiful.  And if it
doesn't displease you, Kamala, I would like to ask you to be my friend
and teacher, for I know nothing yet of that art which you have mastered
in the highest degree."

At this, Kamala laughed aloud.

"Never before this has happened to me, my friend, that a Samana from the
forest came to me and wanted to learn from me!  Never before this has
happened to me, that a Samana came to me with long hair and an old, torn
loin-cloth!  Many young men come to me, and there are also sons of
Brahmans among them, but they come in beautiful clothes, they come in
fine shoes, they have perfume in their hair and money in their pouches.
This is, oh Samana, how the young men are like who come to me."

Quoth Siddhartha:  "Already I am starting to learn from you.  Even
yesterday, I was already learning.  I have already taken off my beard,
have combed the hair, have oil in my hair.  There is little which is
still missing in me, oh excellent one: fine clothes, fine shoes, money
in my pouch.  You shall know, Siddhartha has set harder goals for
himself than such trifles, and he has reached them.  How shouldn't I
reach that goal, which I have set for myself yesterday:  to be your
friend and to learn the joys of love from you!  You'll see that I'll
learn quickly, Kamala, I have already learned harder things than what
you're supposed to teach me.  And now let's get to it: You aren't
satisfied with Siddhartha as he is, with oil in his hair, but without
clothes, without shoes, without money?"

Laughing, Kamala exclaimed:  "No, my dear, he doesn't satisfy me yet.
Clothes are what he must have, pretty clothes, and shoes, pretty shoes,
and lots of money in his pouch, and gifts for Kamala.  Do you know it
now, Samana from the forest?  Did you mark my words?"

"Yes, I have marked your words," Siddhartha exclaimed.  "How should I
not mark words which are coming from such a mouth!  Your mouth is like
a freshly cracked fig, Kamala.  My mouth is red and fresh as well, it
will be a suitable match for yours, you'll see.--But tell me, beautiful
Kamala, aren't you at all afraid of the Samana from the forest, who has
come to learn how to make love?"

"Whatever for should I be afraid of a Samana, a stupid Samana from the
forest, who is coming from the jackals and doesn't even know yet what
women are?"

"Oh, he's strong, the Samana, and he isn't afraid of anything.  He could
force you, beautiful girl.  He could kidnap you.  He could hurt you."

"No, Samana, I am not afraid of this.  Did any Samana or Brahman ever
fear, someone might come and grab him and steal his learning, and his
religious devotion, and his depth of thought?  No, for they are his very
own, and he would only give away from those whatever he is willing to
give and to whomever he is willing to give.  Like this it is, precisely
like this it is also with Kamala and with the pleasures of love.
Beautiful and red is Kamala's mouth, but just try to kiss it against
Kamala's will, and you will not obtain a single drop of sweetness from
it, which knows how to give so many sweet things!  You are learning
easily, Siddhartha, thus you should also learn this: love can be
obtained by begging, buying, receiving it as a gift, finding it in the
street, but it cannot be stolen.  In this, you have come up with the
wrong path.  No, it would be a pity, if a pretty young man like you
would want to tackle it in such a wrong manner."

Siddhartha bowed with a smile.  "It would be a pity, Kamala, you are so
right!  It would be such a great pity.  No, I shall not lose a single
drop of sweetness from your mouth, nor you from mine!  So it is settled:
Siddhartha will return, once he'll have what he still lacks:
clothes, shoes, money.  But speak, lovely Kamala, couldn't you still
give me one small advice?"

"An advice?  Why not?  Who wouldn't like to give an advice to a poor,
ignorant Samana, who is coming from the jackals of the forest?"

"Dear Kamala, thus advise me where I should go to, that I'll find these
three things most quickly?"

"Friend, many would like to know this.  You must do what you've learned
and ask for money, clothes, and shoes in return.  There is no other way
for a poor man to obtain money.  What might you be able to do?"

"I can think.  I can wait.  I can fast."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing.  But yes, I can also write poetry.  Would you like to give me
a kiss for a poem?"

"I would like to, if I'll like your poem.  What would be its title?"

Siddhartha spoke, after he had thought about it for a moment, these
verses:

Into her shady grove stepped the pretty Kamala,
At the grove's entrance stood the brown Samana.
Deeply, seeing the lotus's blossom,
Bowed that man, and smiling Kamala thanked.
More lovely, thought the young man, than offerings for gods,
More lovely is offering to pretty Kamala.

Kamala loudly clapped her hands, so that the golden bracelets clanged.

"Beautiful are your verses, oh brown Samana, and truly, I'm losing
nothing when I'm giving you a kiss for them."

She beckoned him with her eyes, he tilted his head so that his face
touched hers and placed his mouth on that mouth which was like a
freshly cracked fig.  For a long time, Kamala kissed him, and with a
deep astonishment Siddhartha felt how she taught him, how wise she was,
how she controlled him, rejected him, lured him, and how after this first
one there was to be a long, a well ordered, well tested sequence of
kisses, everyone different from the others, he was still to receive.
Breathing deeply, he remained standing where he was, and was in this
moment astonished like a child about the cornucopia of knowledge and
things worth learning, which revealed itself before his eyes.

"Very beautiful are your verses," exclaimed Kamala, "if I was rich, I
would give you pieces of gold for them.  But it will be difficult for
you to earn thus much money with verses as you need.  For you need a lot
of money, if you want to be Kamala's friend."

"The way you're able to kiss, Kamala!" stammered Siddhartha.

"Yes, this I am able to do, therefore I do not lack clothes, shoes,
bracelets, and all beautiful things.  But what will become of you?
Aren't you able to do anything else but thinking, fasting, making
poetry?"

"I also know the sacrificial songs," said Siddhartha, "but I do not want
to sing them any more.  I also know magic spells, but I do not want to
speak them any more.  I have read the scriptures--"

"Stop," Kamala interrupted him.  "You're able to read?  And write?"

"Certainly, I can do this.  Many people can do this."

"Most people can't.  I also can't do it.  It is very good that you're
able to read and write, very good.  You will also still find use for
the magic spells."

In this moment, a maid came running in and whispered a message into
her mistress's ear.

"There's a visitor for me," exclaimed Kamala.  "Hurry and get yourself
away, Siddhartha, nobody may see you in here, remember this!  Tomorrow,
I'll see you again."

But to the maid she gave the order to give the pious Brahman white
upper garments.  Without fully understanding what was happening to him,
Siddhartha found himself being dragged away by the maid, brought into
a garden-house avoiding the direct path, being given upper garments as a
gift, led into the bushes, and urgently admonished to get himself out of
the grove as soon as possible without being seen.

Contently, he did as he had been told.  Being accustomed to the forest,
he managed to get out of the grove and over the hedge without making a
sound.  Contently, he returned to the city, carrying the rolled up
garments under his arm.  At the inn, where travellers stay, he
positioned himself by the door, without words he asked for food, without
a word he accepted a piece of rice-cake.  Perhaps as soon as tomorrow,
he thought, I will ask no one for food any more.

Suddenly, pride flared up in him.  He was no Samana any more, it was no
longer becoming to him to beg.  He gave the rice-cake to a dog and
remained without food.

"Simple is the life which people lead in this world here," thought
Siddhartha.  "It presents no difficulties.  Everything was difficult,
toilsome, and ultimately hopeless, when I was still a Samana.  Now,
everything is easy, easy like that lessons in kissing, which Kamala is
giving me.  I need clothes and money, nothing else; this a small, near
goals, they won't make a person lose any sleep."

He had already discovered Kamala's house in the city long before, there
he turned up the following day.

"Things are working out well," she called out to him.  "They are
expecting you at Kamaswami's, he is the richest merchant of the city.
If he'll like you, he'll accept you into his service.  Be smart, brown
Samana.  I had others tell him about you.  Be polite towards him, he is
very powerful.  But don't be too modest!  I do not want you to become
his servant, you shall become his equal, or else I won't be satisfied
with you.  Kamaswami is starting to get old and lazy.  If he'll like
you, he'll entrust you with a lot."

Siddhartha thanked her and laughed, and when she found out that he had
not eaten anything yesterday and today, she sent for bread and fruits
and treated him to it.

"You've been lucky," she said when they parted, "I'm opening one door
after another for you.  How come?  Do you have a spell?"

Siddhartha said:  "Yesterday, I told you I knew how to think, to wait,
and to fast, but you thought this was of no use.  But it is useful for
many things, Kamala, you'll see.  You'll see that the stupid Samanas are
learning and able to do many pretty things in the forest, which the
likes of you aren't capable of.  The day before yesterday, I was still a
shaggy beggar, as soon as yesterday I have kissed Kamala, and soon I'll
be a merchant and have money and all those things you insist upon."

"Well yes," she admitted.  "But where would you be without me?  What
would you be, if Kamala wasn't helping you?"

"Dear Kamala," said Siddhartha and straightened up to his full height,
"when I came to you into your grove, I did the first step.  It was my
resolution to learn love from this most beautiful woman.  From that
moment on when I had made this resolution, I also knew that I would
carry it out.  I knew that you would help me, at your first glance at
the entrance of the grove I already knew it."

"But what if I hadn't been willing?"

"You were willing.  Look, Kamala:  When you throw a rock into the water,
it will speed on the fastest course to the bottom of the water.  This
is how it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolution.  Siddhartha does
nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things
of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without
stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall.  His goal attracts him,
because he doesn't let anything enter his soul which might oppose the
goal.  This is what Siddhartha has learned among the Samanas.  This is
what fools call magic and of which they think it would be effected by
means of the daemons.  Nothing is effected by daemons, there are no
daemons.  Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if
he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast."

Kamala listened to him.  She loved his voice, she loved the look from
his eyes.

"Perhaps it is so," she said quietly, "as you say, friend.  But perhaps
it is also like this: that Siddhartha is a handsome man, that his glance
pleases the women, that therefore good fortune is coming towards him."

With one kiss, Siddhartha bid his farewell.  "I wish that it should be
this way, my teacher; that my glance shall please you, that always
good fortune shall come to me out of your direction!"




WITH THE CHILDLIKE PEOPLE

Siddhartha went to Kamaswami the merchant, he was directed into a rich
house, servants led him between precious carpets into a chamber, where
he awaited the master of the house.

Kamaswami entered, a swiftly, smoothly moving man with very gray hair,
with very intelligent, cautious eyes, with a greedy mouth.  Politely,
the host and the guest greeted one another.

"I have been told," the merchant began, "that you were a Brahman, a
learned man, but that you seek to be in the service of a merchant.
Might you have become destitute, Brahman, so that you seek to serve?"

"No," said Siddhartha, "I have not become destitute and have never been
destitute.  You should know that I'm coming from the Samanas, with
whom I have lived for a long time."

"If you're coming from the Samanas, how could you be anything but
destitute?  Aren't the Samanas entirely without possessions?"

"I am without possessions," said Siddhartha, "if this is what you mean.
Surely, I am without possessions.  But I am so voluntarily, and
therefore I am not destitute."

"But what are you planning to live of, being without possessions?"

"I haven't thought of this yet, sir.  For more than three years, I have
been without possessions, and have never thought about of what I should
live."

"So you've lived of the possessions of others."

"Presumable this is how it is.  After all, a merchant also lives of
what other people own."

"Well said.  But he wouldn't take anything from another person for
nothing; he would give his merchandise in return."

"So it seems to be indeed.  Everyone takes, everyone gives, such is
life."

"But if you don't mind me asking: being without possessions, what would
you like to give?"

"Everyone gives what he has.  The warrior gives strength, the merchant
gives merchandise, the teacher teachings, the farmer rice, the fisher
fish."

"Yes indeed.  And what is it now what you've got to give?  What is it
that you've learned, what you're able to do?"

"I can think.  I can wait.  I can fast."

"That's everything?"

"I believe, that's everything!"

"And what's the use of that?  For example, the fasting--what is it
good for?"

"It is very good, sir.  When a person has nothing to eat, fasting is the
smartest thing he could do.  When, for example, Siddhartha hadn't
learned to fast, he would have to accept any kind of service before this
day is up, whether it may be with you or wherever, because hunger would
force him to do so.  But like this, Siddhartha can wait calmly, he knows
no impatience, he knows no emergency, for a long time he can allow
hunger to besiege him and can laugh about it.  This, sir, is what
fasting is good for."

"You're right, Samana.  Wait for a moment."

Kamaswami left the room and returned with a scroll, which he handed to
his guest while asking:  "Can you read this?"

Siddhartha looked at the scroll, on which a sales-contract had been
written down, and began to read out its contents.

"Excellent," said Kamaswami.  "And would you write something for me on
this piece of paper?"

He handed him a piece of paper and a pen, and Siddhartha wrote and
returned the paper.

Kamaswami read:  "Writing is good, thinking is better.  Being smart is
good, being patient is better."

"It is excellent how you're able to write," the merchant praised him.
"Many a thing we will still have to discuss with one another.  For
today, I'm asking you to be my guest and to live in this house."

Siddhartha thanked and accepted, and lived in the dealers house from now
on.  Clothes were brought to him, and shoes, and every day, a servant
prepared a bath for him.  Twice a day, a plentiful meal was served, but
Siddhartha only ate once a day, and ate neither meat nor did he drink
wine.  Kamaswami told him about his trade, showed him the merchandise
and storage-rooms, showed him calculations.  Siddhartha got to know
many new things, he heard a lot and spoke little.  And thinking of
Kamala's words, he was never subservient to the merchant, forced him
to treat him as an equal, yes even more than an equal.  Kamaswami
conducted his business with care and often with passion, but Siddhartha
looked upon all of this as if it was a game, the rules of which he
tried hard to learn precisely, but the contents of which did not touch
his heart.

He was not in Kamaswami's house for long, when he already took part in
his landlords business.  But daily, at the hour appointed by her, he
visited beautiful Kamala, wearing pretty clothes, fine shoes, and soon
he brought her gifts as well.  Much he learned from her red, smart
mouth.  Much he learned from her tender, supple hand.  Him, who was,
regarding love, still a boy and had a tendency to plunge blindly and
insatiably into lust like into a bottomless pit, him she taught,
thoroughly starting with the basics, about that school of thought which
teaches that pleasure cannot be taken without giving pleasure, and
that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every look, every spot
of the body, however small it was, had its secret, which would bring
happiness to those who know about it and unleash it.  She taught him,
that lovers must not part from one another after celebrating love,
without one admiring the other, without being just as defeated as they
have been victorious, so that with none of them should start feeling
fed up or bored and get that evil feeling of having abused or having
been abused.  Wonderful hours he spent with the beautiful and smart
artist, became her student, her lover, her friend.  Here with Kamala
was the worth and purpose of his present life, nit with the business
of Kamaswami.

The merchant passed to duties of writing important letters and contracts
on to him and got into the habit of discussing all important affairs
with him.  He soon saw that Siddhartha knew little about rice and wool,
shipping and trade, but that he acted in a fortunate manner, and that
Siddhartha surpassed him, the merchant, in calmness and equanimity, and
in the art of listening and deeply understanding previously unknown
people.  "This Brahman," he said to a friend, "is no proper merchant and
will never be one, there is never any passion in his soul when he
conducts our business.  But he has that mysterious quality of those
people to whom success comes all by itself, whether this may be a good
star of his birth, magic, or something he has learned among Samanas.
He always seems to be merely playing with out business-affairs, they
never fully become a part of him, they never rule over him, he is never
afraid of failure, he is never upset by a loss."

The friend advised the merchant:  "Give him from the business he
conducts for you a third of the profits, but let him also be liable for
the same amount of the losses, when there is a loss.  Then, he'll become
more zealous."

Kamaswami followed the advice.  But Siddhartha cared little about this.
When he made a profit, he accepted it with equanimity; when he made
losses, he laughed and said:  "Well, look at this, so this one turned
out badly!"

It seemed indeed, as if he did not care about the business.  At one
time, he travelled to a village to buy a large harvest of rice there.
But when he got there, the rice had already been sold to another
merchant.  Nevertheless, Siddhartha stayed for several days in that
village, treated the farmers for a drink, gave copper-coins to their
children, joined in the celebration of a wedding, and returned extremely
satisfied from his trip.  Kamaswami held against him that he had not
turned back right away, that he had wasted time and money.  Siddhartha
answered:  "Stop scolding, dear friend!  Nothing was ever achieved by
scolding.  If a loss has occurred, let me bear that loss.  I am very
satisfied with this trip.  I have gotten to know many kinds of people,
a Brahman has become my friend, children have sat on my knees, farmers
have shown me their fields, nobody knew that I was a merchant."

"That's all very nice," exclaimed Kamaswami indignantly, "but in fact,
you are a merchant after all, one ought to think!  Or might you have
only travelled for your amusement?"

"Surely," Siddhartha laughed, "surely I have travelled for my amusement.
For what else?  I have gotten to know people and places, I have received
kindness and trust, I have found friendship.  Look, my dear, if I had
been Kamaswami, I would have travelled back, being annoyed and in a
hurry, as soon as I had seen that my purchase had been rendered
impossible, and time and money would indeed have been lost.  But like
this, I've had a few good days, I've learned, had joy, I've neither
harmed myself nor others by annoyance and hastiness.  And if I'll ever
return there again, perhaps to buy an upcoming harvest, or for whatever
purpose it might be, friendly people will receive me in a friendly and
happy manner, and I will praise myself for not showing any hurry and
displeasure at that time.  So, leave it as it is, my friend, and don't
harm yourself by scolding!  If the day will come, when you will see:
this Siddhartha is harming me, then speak a word and Siddhartha will go
on his own path.  But until then, let's be satisfied with one another."

Futile were also the merchant's attempts, to convince Siddhartha that he
should eat his bread.  Siddhartha ate his own bread, or rather they both
ate other people's bread, all people's bread.  Siddhartha never listened
to Kamaswami's worries and Kamaswami had many worries.  Whether there
was a business-deal going on which was in danger of failing, or whether
a shipment of merchandise seemed to have been lost, or a debtor seemed
to be unable to pay, Kamaswami could never convince his partner that it
would be useful to utter a few words of worry or anger, to have wrinkles
on the forehead, to sleep badly.  When, one day, Kamaswami held against
him that he had learned everything he knew from him, he replied:  "Would
you please not kid me with such jokes!  What I've learned from you is
how much a basket of fish costs and how much interests may be charged on
loaned money.  These are your areas of expertise.  I haven't learned to
think from you, my dear Kamaswami, you ought to be the one seeking to
learn from me."

Indeed his soul was not with the trade.  The business was good enough
to provide him with the money for Kamala, and it earned him much more
than he needed.  Besides from this, Siddhartha's interest and curiosity
was only concerned with the people, whose businesses, crafts, worries,
pleasures, and acts of foolishness used to be as alien and distant to
him as the moon.  However easily he succeeded in talking to all of them,
in living with all of them, in learning from all of them, he was still
aware that there was something which separated him from them and this
separating factor was him being a Samana.  He saw mankind going through
life in a childlike or animallike manner, which he loved and also
despised at the same time.  He saw them toiling, saw them suffering,
and becoming gray for the sake of things which seemed to him to entirely
unworthy of this price, for money, for little pleasures, for being
slightly honoured, he saw them scolding and insulting each other, he
saw them complaining about pain at which a Samana would only smile, and
suffering because of deprivations which a Samana would not feel.

He was open to everything, these people brought his way.  Welcome was
the merchant who offered him linen for sale, welcome was the debtor who
sought another loan, welcome was the beggar who told him for one hour
the story of his poverty and who was not half as poor as any given
Samana.  He did not treat the rich foreign merchant any different than
the servant who shaved him and the street-vendor whom he let cheat him
out of some small change when buying bananas.  When Kamaswami came to
him, to complain about his worries or to reproach him concerning his
business, he listened curiously and happily, was puzzled by him, tried
to understand him, consented that he was a little bit right, only as
much as he considered indispensable, and turned away from him, towards
the next person who would ask for him.  And there were many who came to
him, many to do business with him, many to cheat him, many to draw some
secret out of him, many to appeal to his sympathy, many to get his
advice.  He gave advice, he pitied, he made gifts, he let them cheat him
a bit, and this entire game and the passion with which all people played
this game occupied his thoughts just as much as the gods and Brahmans
used to occupy them.

At times he felt, deep in his chest, a dying, quiet voice, which
admonished him quietly, lamented quietly; he hardly perceived it.  And
then, for an hour, he became aware of the strange life he was leading,
of him doing lots of things which were only a game, of, though being
happy and feeling joy at times, real life still passing him by and not
touching him.  As a ball-player plays with his balls, he played with
his business-deals, with the people around him, watched them, found
amusement in them; with his heart, with the source of his being, he was
not with them.  The source ran somewhere, far away from him, ran and
ran invisibly, had nothing to do with his life any more.  And at several
times he suddenly became scared on account of such thoughts and wished
that he would also be gifted with the ability to participate in all of
this childlike-naive occupations of the daytime with passion and with
his heart, really to live, really to act, really to enjoy and to live
instead of just standing by as a spectator.  But again and again, he
came back to beautiful Kamala, learned the art of love, practised the
cult of lust, in which more than in anything else giving and taking
becomes one, chatted with her, learned from her, gave her advice,
received advice.  She understood him better than Govinda used to
understand him, she was more similar to him.

Once, he said to her:  "You are like me, you are different from most
people.  You are Kamala, nothing else, and inside of you, there is a
peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be
at home at yourself, as I can also do.  Few people have this, and yet
all could have it."

"Not all people are smart," said Kamala.

"No," said Siddhartha, "that's not the reason why.  Kamaswami is just as
smart as I, and still has no refuge in himself.  Others have it, who are
small children with respect to their mind.  Most people, Kamala, are
like a falling leaf, which is blown and is turning around through the
air, and wavers, and tumbles to the ground.  But others, a few, are
like stars, they go on a fixed course, no wind reaches them, in
themselves they have their law and their course.  Among all the learned
men and Samanas, of which I knew many, there was one of this kind, a
perfected one, I'll never be able to forget him.  It is that Gotama,
the exalted one, who is spreading that teachings.  Thousands of
followers are listening to his teachings every day, follow his
instructions every hour, but they are all falling leaves, not in
themselves they have teachings and a law."

Kamala looked at him with a smile.  "Again, you're talking about him,"
she said, "again, you're having a Samana's thoughts."

Siddhartha said nothing, and they played the game of love, one of the
thirty or forty different games Kamala knew.  Her body was flexible
like that of a jaguar and like the bow of a hunter; he who had learned
from her how to make love, was knowledgeable of many forms of lust, many
secrets.  For a long time, she played with Siddhartha, enticed him,
rejected him, forced him, embraced him: enjoyed his masterful skills,
until he was defeated and rested exhausted by her side.

The courtesan bent over him, took a long look at his face, at his eyes,
which had grown tired.

"You are the best lover," she said thoughtfully, "I ever saw.  You're
stronger than others, more supple, more willing.  You've learned my art
well, Siddhartha.  At some time, when I'll be older, I'd want to bear
your child.  And yet, my dear, you've remained a Samana, and yet you
do not love me, you love nobody.  Isn't it so?"

"It might very well be so," Siddhartha said tiredly.  "I am like you.
You also do not love--how else could you practise love as a craft?
Perhaps, people of our kind can't love.  The childlike people can;
that's their secret."




SANSARA

For a long time, Siddhartha had lived the life of the world and of lust,
though without being a part of it.  His senses, which he had killed off
in hot years as a Samana, had awoken again, he had tasted riches, had
tasted lust, had tasted power; nevertheless he had still remained in his
heart for a long time a Samana; Kamala, being smart, had realized this
quite right.  It was still the art of thinking, of waiting, of fasting,
which guided his life; still the people of the world, the childlike
people, had remained alien to him as he was alien to them.

Years passed by; surrounded by the good life, Siddhartha hardly felt
them fading away.  He had become rich, for quite a while he possessed a
house of his own and his own servants, and a garden before the city by
the river.  The people liked him, they came to him, whenever they needed
money or advice, but there was nobody close to him, except Kamala.

That high, bright state of being awake, which he had experienced that
one time at the height of his youth, in those days after Gotama's
sermon, after the separation from Govinda, that tense expectation, that
proud state of standing alone without teachings and without teachers,
that supple willingness to listen to the divine voice in his own heart,
had slowly become a memory, had been fleeting; distant and quiet, the
holy source murmured, which used to be near, which used to murmur within
himself.  Nevertheless, many things he had learned from the Samanas, he
had learned from Gotama, he had learned from his father the Brahman,
had remained within him for a long time afterwards: moderate living,
joy of thinking, hours of meditation, secret knowledge of the self,
of his eternal entity, which is neither body nor consciousness.  Many
a part of this he still had, but one part after another had been
submerged and had gathered dust.  Just as a potter's wheel, once it has
been set in motion, will keep on turning for a long time and only slowly
lose its vigour and come to a stop, thus Siddhartha's soul had kept on
turning the wheel of asceticism, the wheel of thinking, the wheel of
differentiation for a long time, still turning, but it turned slowly and
hesitantly and was close to coming to a standstill.  Slowly, like
humidity entering the dying stem of a tree, filling it slowly and
making it rot, the world and sloth had entered Siddhartha's soul,
slowly it filled his soul, made it heavy, made it tired, put it to
sleep.  On the other hand, his senses had become alive, there was much
they had learned, much they had experienced.

Siddhartha had learned to trade, to use his power over people, to enjoy
himself with a woman, he had learned to wear beautiful clothes, to give
orders to servants, to bathe in perfumed waters.  He had learned to eat
tenderly and carefully prepared food, even fish, even meat and poultry,
spices and sweets, and to drink wine, which causes sloth and
forgetfulness.  He had learned to play with dice and on a chess-board,
to watch dancing girls, to have himself carried about in a sedan-chair,
to sleep on a soft bed.  But still he had felt different from and
superior to the others; always he had watched them with some mockery,
some mocking disdain, with the same disdain which a Samana constantly
feels for the people of the world.  When Kamaswami was ailing, when he
was annoyed, when he felt insulted, when he was vexed by his worries as
a merchant, Siddhartha had always watched it with mockery.  Just slowly
and imperceptibly, as the harvest seasons and rainy seasons passed by,
his mockery had become more tired, his superiority had become more
quiet.  Just slowly, among his growing riches, Siddhartha had assumed
something of the childlike people's ways for himself, something of their
childlikeness and of their fearfulness.  And yet, he envied them, envied
them just the more, the more similar he became to them.  He envied them
for the one thing that was missing from him and that they had, the
importance they were able to attach to their lives, the amount of
passion in their joys and fears, the fearful but sweet happiness of
being constantly in love.  These people were all of the time in love
with themselves, with women, with their children, with honours or money,
with plans or hopes.  But he did not learn this from them, this out of
all things, this joy of a child and this foolishness of a child; he
learned from them out of all things the unpleasant ones, which he
himself despised.  It happened more and more often that, in the morning
after having had company the night before, he stayed in bed for a long
time, felt unable to think and tired.  It happened that he became angry
and impatient, when Kamaswami bored him with his worries.  It happened
that he laughed just too loud, when he lost a game of dice.  His face
was still smarter and more spiritual than others, but it rarely laughed,
and assumed, one after another, those features which are so often
found in the faces of rich people, those features of discontent, of
sickliness, of ill-humour, of sloth, of a lack of love.  Slowly the
disease of the soul, which rich people have, grabbed hold of him.

Like a veil, like a thin mist, tiredness came over Siddhartha, slowly,
getting a bit denser every day, a bit murkier every month, a bit heavier
every year.  As a new dress becomes old in time, loses its beautiful
colour in time, gets stains, gets wrinkles, gets worn off at the seams,
and starts to show threadbare spots here and there, thus Siddhartha's
new life, which he had started after his separation from Govinda, had
grown old, lost colour and splendour as the years passed by, was
gathering wrinkles and stains, and hidden at bottom, already showing its
ugliness here and there, disappointment and disgust were waiting.
Siddhartha did not notice it.  He only noticed that this bright and
reliable voice inside of him, which had awoken in him at that time and
had ever guided him in his best times, had become silent.

He had been captured by the world, by lust, covetousness, sloth, and
finally also by that vice which he had used to despise and mock the
most as the most foolish one of all vices: greed.  Property,
possessions, and riches also had finally captured him; they were no
longer a game and trifles to him, had become a shackle and a burden.
On a strange and devious way, Siddhartha had gotten into this final and
most base of all dependencies, by means of the game of dice.  It was
since that time, when he had stopped being a Samana in his heart, that
Siddhartha began to play the game for money and precious things, which
he at other times only joined with a smile and casually as a custom of
the childlike people, with an increasing rage and passion.  He was a
feared gambler, few dared to take him on, so high and audacious were his
stakes.  He played the game due to a pain of his heart, losing and
wasting his wretched money in the game brought him an angry joy, in no
other way he could demonstrate his disdain for wealth, the merchants'
false god, more clearly and more mockingly.  Thus he gambled with high
stakes and mercilessly, hating himself, mocking himself, won thousands,
threw away thousands, lost money, lost jewelry, lost a house in the
country, won again, lost again.  That fear, that terrible and petrifying
fear, which he felt while he was rolling the dice, while he was worried
about losing high stakes, that fear he loved and sought to always renew
it, always increase it, always get it to a slightly higher level, for in
this feeling alone he still felt something like happiness, something
like an intoxication, something like an elevated form of life in the
midst of his saturated, lukewarm, dull life.

And after each big loss, his mind was set on new riches, pursued the
trade more zealously, forced his debtors more strictly to pay, because
he wanted to continue gambling, he wanted to continue squandering,
continue demonstrating his disdain of wealth.  Siddhartha lost his
calmness when losses occurred, lost his patience when he was not payed
on time, lost his kindness towards beggars, lost his disposition for
giving away and loaning money to those who petitioned him.  He, who
gambled away tens of thousands at one roll of the dice and laughed at
it, became more strict and more petty in his business, occasionally
dreaming at night about money!  And whenever he woke up from this ugly
spell, whenever he found his face in the mirror at the bedroom's wall to
have aged and become more ugly, whenever embarrassment and disgust came
over him, he continued fleeing, fleeing into a new game, fleeing into a
numbing of his mind brought on by sex, by wine, and from there he fled
back into the urge to pile up and obtain possessions.  In this pointless
cycle he ran, growing tired, growing old, growing ill.

Then the time came when a dream warned him.  He had spend the hours of
the evening with Kamala, in her beautiful pleasure-garden.  They had
been sitting under the trees, talking, and Kamala had said thoughtful
words, words behind which a sadness and tiredness lay hidden.  She had
asked him to tell her about Gotama, and could not hear enough of him,
how clear his eyes, how still and beautiful his mouth, how kind his
smile, how peaceful his walk had been.  For a long time, he had to tell
her about the exalted Buddha, and Kamala had sighed and had said:  "One
day, perhaps soon, I'll also follow that Buddha.  I'll give him my
pleasure-garden for a gift and take my refuge in his teachings."  But
after this, she had aroused him, and had tied him to her in the act
of making love with painful fervour, biting and in tears, as if, once
more, she wanted to squeeze the last sweet drop out of this vain,
fleeting pleasure.  Never before, it had become so strangely clear to
Siddhartha, how closely lust was akin to death.  Then he had lain by
her side, and Kamala's face had been close to him, and under her eyes
and next to the corners of her mouth he had, as clearly as never before,
read a fearful inscription, an inscription of small lines, of slight
grooves, an inscription reminiscent of autumn and old age, just as
Siddhartha himself, who was only in his forties, had already noticed,
here and there, gray hairs among his black ones.  Tiredness was written
on Kamala's beautiful face, tiredness from walking a long path, which
has no happy destination, tiredness and the beginning of withering,
and concealed, still unsaid, perhaps not even conscious anxiety: fear of
old age, fear of the autumn, fear of having to die.  With a sigh, he had
bid his farewell to her, the soul full of reluctance, and full of
concealed anxiety.

Then, Siddhartha had spent the night in his house with dancing girls
and wine, had acted as if he was superior to them towards the
fellow-members of his caste, though this was no longer true, had drunk
much wine and gone to bed a long time after midnight, being tired and
yet excited, close to weeping and despair, and had for a long time
sought to sleep in vain, his heart full of misery which he thought he
could not bear any longer, full of a disgust which he felt penetrating
his entire body like the lukewarm, repulsive taste of the wine, the
just too sweet, dull music, the just too soft smile of the dancing
girls, the just too sweet scent of their hair and breasts.  But more
than by anything else, he was disgusted by himself, by his perfumed
hair, by the smell of wine from his mouth, by the flabby tiredness and
listlessness of his skin.  Like when someone, who has eaten and drunk
far too much, vomits it back up again with agonising pain and is
nevertheless glad about the relief, thus this sleepless man wished to
free himself of these pleasures, these habits and all of this pointless
life and himself, in an immense burst of disgust.  Not until the light
of the morning and the beginning of the first activities in the street
before his city-house, he had slightly fallen asleep, had found for a
few moments a half unconsciousness, a hint of sleep.  In those moments,
he had a dream:

Kamala owned a small, rare singing bird in a golden cage.  Of this bird,
he dreamt.  He dreamt: this bird had become mute, who at other times
always used to sing in the morning, and since this arose his attention,
he stepped in front of the cage and looked inside; there the small bird
was dead and lay stiff on the ground.  He took it out, weighed it for a
moment in his hand, and then threw it away, out in the street, and in
the same moment, he felt terribly shocked, and his heart hurt, as if he
had thrown away from himself all value and everything good by throwing
out this dead bird.

Starting up from this dream, he felt encompassed by a deep sadness.
Worthless, so it seemed to him, worthless and pointless was the way he
had been going through life; nothing which was alive, nothing which was
in some way delicious or worth keeping he had left in his hands.  Alone
he stood there and empty like a castaway on the shore.

With a gloomy mind, Siddhartha went to the pleasure-garden he owned,
locked the gate, sat down under a mango-tree, felt death in his heart
and horror in his chest, sat and sensed how everything died in him,
withered in him, came to an end in him.  By and by, he gathered his
thoughts, and in his mind, he once again went the entire path of his
life, starting with the first days he could remember.  When was there
ever a time when he had experienced happiness, felt a true bliss?  Oh
yes, several times he had experienced such a thing.  In his years as a
boy, he has had a taste of it, when he had obtained praise from the
Brahmans, he had felt it in his heart:  "There is a path in front of
the one who has distinguished himself in the recitation
of the holy verses, in the dispute with the learned ones, as an
assistant in the offerings."  Then, he had felt it in his heart:  "There
is a path in front of you, you are destined for, the gods are awaiting
you."  And again, as a young man, when the ever rising, upward fleeing,
goal of all thinking had ripped him out of and up from the multitude of
those seeking the same goal, when he wrestled in pain for the purpose of
Brahman, when every obtained knowledge only kindled new thirst in him,
then again he had, in the midst of the thirst, in the midst of the pain
felt this very same thing:  "Go on!  Go on!  You are called upon!"  He
had heard this voice when he had left his home and had chosen the life
of a Samana, and again when he had gone away from the Samanas to that
perfected one, and also when he had gone away from him to the uncertain.
For how long had he not heard this voice any more, for how long had he
reached no height any more, how even and dull was the manner in which
his path had passed through life, for many long years, without a high
goal, without thirst, without elevation, content with small lustful
pleasures and yet never satisfied!  For all of these many years, without
knowing it himself, he had tried hard and longed to become a man like
those many, like those children, and in all this, his life had been
much more miserable and poorer than theirs, and their goals were not
his, nor their worries; after all, that entire world of the
Kamaswami-people had only been a game to him, a dance he would watch, a
comedy.  Only Kamala had been dear, had been valuable to him--but was
she still thus?  Did he still need her, or she him?  Did they not play
a game without an ending?  Was it necessary to live for this?  No, it
was not necessary!  The name of this game was Sansara, a game for
children, a game which was perhaps enjoyable to play once, twice, ten
times--but for ever and ever over again?

Then, Siddhartha knew that the game was over, that he could not play it
any more.  Shivers ran over his body, inside of him, so he felt,
something had died.

That entire day, he sat under the mango-tree, thinking of his father,
thinking of Govinda, thinking of Gotama.  Did he have to leave them to
become a Kamaswami?  He still sat there, when the night had fallen.
When, looking up, he caught sight of the stars, he thought:  "Here I'm
sitting under my mango-tree, in my pleasure-garden."  He smiled a little
--was it really necessary, was it right, was it not as foolish game,
that he owned a mango-tree, that he owned a garden?

He also put an end to this, this also died in him.  He rose, bid his
farewell to the mango-tree, his farewell to the pleasure-garden.  Since
he had been without food this day, he felt strong hunger, and thought
of his house in the city, of his chamber and bed, of the table with the
meals on it.  He smiled tiredly, shook himself, and bid his farewell to
these things.

In the same hour of the night, Siddhartha left his garden, left the
city, and never came back.  For a long time, Kamaswami had people look
for him, thinking that he had fallen into the hands of robbers.  Kamala
had no one look for him.  When she was told that Siddhartha had
disappeared, she was not astonished.  Did she not always expect it?  Was
he not a Samana, a man who was at home nowhere, a pilgrim?  And most of
all, she had felt this the last time they had been together, and she was
happy, in spite of all the pain of the loss, that she had pulled him so
affectionately to her heart for this last time, that she had felt one
more time to be so completely possessed and penetrated by him.

When she received the first news of Siddhartha's disappearance, she went
to the window, where she held a rare singing bird captive in a golden
cage.  She opened the door of the cage, took the bird out and let it
fly.  For a long time, she gazed after it, the flying bird.  From this
day on, she received no more visitors and kept her house locked.  But
after some time, she became aware that she was pregnant from the last
time she was together with Siddhartha.




BY THE RIVER

Siddhartha walked through the forest, was already far from the city, and
knew nothing but that one thing, that there was no going back for him,
that this life, as he had lived it for many years until now, was over
and done away with, and that he had tasted all of it, sucked everything
out of it until he was disgusted with it.  Dead was the singing bird, he
had dreamt of.  Dead was the bird in his heart.  Deeply, he had been
entangled in Sansara, he had sucked up disgust and death from all sides
into his body, like a sponge sucks up water until it is full.  And full
he was, full of the feeling of been sick of it, full of misery, full of
death, there was nothing left in this world which could have attracted
him, given him joy, given him comfort.

Passionately he wished to know nothing about himself anymore, to have
rest, to be dead.  If there only was a lightning-bolt to strike him
dead!  If there only was a tiger to devour him!  If there only was a
wine, a poison which would numb his senses, bring him forgetfulness and
sleep, and no awakening from that!  Was there still any kind of filth,
he had not soiled himself with, a sin or foolish act he had not
committed, a dreariness of the soul he had not brought upon himself?
Was it still at all possible to be alive?  Was it possible, to breathe
in again and again, to breathe out, to feel hunger, to eat again, to
sleep again, to sleep with a woman again?  Was this cycle not exhausted
and brought to a conclusion for him?

Siddhartha reached the large river in the forest, the same river over
which a long time ago, when he had still been a young man and came from
the town of Gotama, a ferryman had conducted him.  By this river he
stopped, hesitantly he stood at the bank.  Tiredness and hunger had
weakened him, and whatever for should he walk on, wherever to, to which
goal?  No, there were no more goals, there was nothing left but the
deep, painful yearning to shake off this whole desolate dream, to spit
out this stale wine, to put an end to this miserable and shameful life.

A hang bent over the bank of the river, a coconut-tree; Siddhartha
leaned against its trunk with his shoulder, embraced the trunk with one
arm, and looked down into the green water, which ran and ran under him,
looked down and found himself to be entirely filled with the wish to
let go and to drown in these waters.  A frightening emptiness was
reflected back at him by the water, answering to the terrible emptiness
in his soul.  Yes, he had reached the end.  There was nothing left for
him, except to annihilate himself, except to smash the failure into
which he had shaped his life, to throw it away, before the feet of
mockingly laughing gods.  This was the great vomiting he had longed for:
death, the smashing to bits of the form he hated!  Let him be food for
fishes, this dog Siddhartha, this lunatic, this depraved and rotten
body, this weakened and abused soul!  Let him be food for fishes and
crocodiles, let him be chopped to bits by the daemons!

With a distorted face, he stared into the water, saw the reflection of
his face and spit at it.  In deep tiredness, he took his arm away from
the trunk of the tree and turned a bit, in order to let himself fall
straight down, in order to finally drown.  With his eyes closed, he
slipped towards death.

Then, out of remote areas of his soul, out of past times of his now
weary life, a sound stirred up.  It was a word, a syllable, which he,
without thinking, with a slurred voice, spoke to himself, the old word
which is the beginning and the end of all prayers of the Brahmans, the
holy "Om", which roughly means "that what is perfect" or "the
completion".  And in the moment when the sound of "Om" touched
Siddhartha's ear, his dormant spirit suddenly woke up and realized the
foolishness of his actions.

Siddhartha was deeply shocked.  So this was how things were with him,
so doomed was he, so much he had lost his way and was forsaken by all
knowledge, that he had been able to seek death, that this wish, this
wish of a child, had been able to grow in him: to find rest by
annihilating his body!  What all agony of these recent times, all
sobering realizations, all desperation had not brought about, this was
brought on by this moment, when the Om entered his consciousness:  he
became aware of himself in his misery and in his error.

Om! he spoke to himself:  Om!  and again he knew about Brahman, knew
about the indestructibility of life, knew about all that is divine,
which he had forgotten.

But this was only a moment, flash.  By the foot of the coconut-tree,
Siddhartha collapsed, struck down by tiredness, mumbling Om, placed his
head on the root of the tree and fell into a deep sleep.

Deep was his sleep and without dreams, for a long time he had not known
such a sleep any more.  When he woke up after many hours, he felt as if
ten years had passed, he heard the water quietly flowing, did not know
where he was and who had brought him here, opened his eyes, saw with
astonishment that there were trees and the sky above him, and he
remembered where he was and how he got here.  But it took him a long
while for this, and the past seemed to him as if it had been covered by
a veil, infinitely distant, infinitely far away, infinitely meaningless.
He only knew that his previous life (in the first moment when he thought
about it, this past life seemed to him like a very old, previous
incarnation, like an early pre-birth of his present self)--that his
previous life had been abandoned by him, that, full of disgust and
wretchedness, he had even intended to throw his life away, but that by a
river, under a coconut-tree, he has come to his senses, the holy word
Om on his lips, that then he had fallen asleep and had now woken up and
was looking at the world as a new man.  Quietly, he spoke the word Om to
himself, speaking which he had fallen asleep, and it seemed to him as if
his entire long sleep had been nothing but a long meditative recitation
of Om, a thinking of Om, a submergence and complete entering into Om,
into the nameless, the perfected.

What a wonderful sleep had this been!  Never before by sleep, he had
been thus refreshed, thus renewed, thus rejuvenated!  Perhaps, he had
really died, had drowned and was reborn in a new body?  But no, he knew
himself, he knew his hand and his feet, knew the place where he lay,
knew this self in his chest, this Siddhartha, the eccentric, the weird
one, but this Siddhartha was nevertheless transformed, was renewed,
was strangely well rested, strangely awake, joyful and curious.

Siddhartha straightened up, then he saw a person sitting opposite to him,
an unknown man, a monk in a yellow robe with a shaven head, sitting in
the position of pondering.  He observed the man, who had neither hair
on his head nor a beard, and he had not observed him for long when he
recognised this monk as Govinda, the friend of his youth, Govinda who
had taken his refuge with the exalted Buddha.  Govinda had aged, he too,
but still his face bore the same features, expressed zeal, faithfulness,
searching, timidness.  But when Govinda now, sensing his gaze, opened
his eyes and looked at him, Siddhartha saw that Govinda did not
recognise him.  Govinda was happy to find him awake; apparently, he had
been sitting here for a long time and been waiting for him to wake up,
though he did not know him.

"I have been sleeping," said Siddhartha.  "However did you get here?"

"You have been sleeping," answered Govinda.  "It is not good to be
sleeping in such places, where snakes often are and the animals of the
forest have their paths.  I, oh sir, am a follower of the exalted
Gotama, the Buddha, the Sakyamuni, and have been on a pilgrimage
together with several of us on this path, when I saw you lying and
sleeping in a place where it is dangerous to sleep.  Therefore, I sought
to wake you up, oh sir, and since I saw that your sleep was very deep,
I stayed behind from my group and sat with you.  And then, so it seems,
I have fallen asleep myself, I who wanted to guard your sleep.  Badly,
I have served you, tiredness has overwhelmed me.  But now that you're
awake, let me go to catch up with my brothers."

"I thank you, Samana, for watching out over my sleep," spoke Siddhartha.
"You're friendly, you followers of the exalted one.  Now you may go
then."

"I'm going, sir.  May you, sir, always be in good health."

"I thank you, Samana."

Govinda made the gesture of a salutation and said:  "Farewell."

"Farewell, Govinda," said Siddhartha.

The monk stopped.

"Permit me to ask, sir, from where do you know my name?"

Now, Siddhartha smiled.

"I know you, oh Govinda, from your father's hut, and from the school
of the Brahmans, and from the offerings, and from our walk to the
Samanas, and from that hour when you took your refuge with the exalted
one in the grove Jetavana."

"You're Siddhartha," Govinda exclaimed loudly.  "Now, I'm recognising
you, and don't comprehend any more how I couldn't recognise you right
away.  Be welcome, Siddhartha, my joy is great, to see you again."

"It also gives me joy, to see you again.  You've been the guard of my
sleep, again I thank you for this, though I wouldn't have required any
guard.  Where are you going to, oh friend?"

"I'm going nowhere.  We monks are always travelling, whenever it is not
the rainy season, we always move from one place to another, live
according to the rules if the teachings passed on to us, accept alms,
move on.  It is always like this.  But you, Siddhartha, where are you
going to?"

Quoth Siddhartha:  "With me too, friend, it is as it is with you.  I'm
going nowhere.  I'm just travelling.  I'm on a pilgrimage."

Govinda spoke:  "You're saying: you're on a pilgrimage, and I believe in
you.  But, forgive me, oh Siddhartha, you do not look like a pilgrim.
You're wearing a rich man's garments, you're wearing the shoes of a
distinguished gentleman, and your hair, with the fragrance of perfume,
is not a pilgrim's hair, not the hair of a Samana."

"Right so, my dear, you have observed well, your keen eyes see
everything.  But I haven't said to you that I was a Samana.  I said:
I'm on a pilgrimage.  And so it is:  I'm on a pilgrimage."

"You're on a pilgrimage," said Govinda.  "But few would go on a
pilgrimage in such clothes, few in such shoes, few with such hair.
Never I have met such a pilgrim, being a pilgrim myself for many years."

"I believe you, my dear Govinda.  But now, today, you've met a pilgrim
just like this, wearing such shoes, such a garment.  Remember, my dear:
Not eternal is the world of appearances, not eternal, anything but
eternal are our garments and the style of our hair, and our hair and
bodies themselves.  I'm wearing a rich man's clothes, you've seen this
quite right.  I'm wearing them, because I have been a rich man, and I'm
wearing my hair like the worldly and lustful people, for I have been
one of them."

"And now, Siddhartha, what are you now?"

"I don't know it, I don't know it just like you.  I'm travelling.  I was
a rich man and am no rich man any more, and what I'll be tomorrow, I
don't know."

"You've lost your riches?"

"I've lost them or they me.  They somehow happened to slip away from me.
The wheel of physical manifestations is turning quickly, Govinda.  Where
is Siddhartha the Brahman?  Where is Siddhartha the Samana?  Where is
Siddhartha the rich man?  Non-eternal things change quickly, Govinda,
you know it."

Govinda looked at the friend of his youth for a long time, with doubt in
his eyes.  After that, he gave him the salutation which one would use
on a gentleman and went on his way.

With a smiling face, Siddhartha watched him leave, he loved him still,
this faithful man, this fearful man.  And how could he not have loved
everybody and everything in this moment, in the glorious hour after his
wonderful sleep, filled with Om!  The enchantment, which had happened
inside of him in his sleep and by means of the Om, was this very thing
that he loved everything, that he was full of joyful love for everything
he saw.  And it was this very thing, so it seemed to him now, which had
been his sickness before, that he was not able to love anybody or
anything.

With a smiling face, Siddhartha watched the leaving monk.  The sleep had
strengthened him much, but hunger gave him much pain, for by now he had
not eaten for two days, and the times were long past when he had been
tough against hunger.  With sadness, and yet also with a smile, he
thought of that time.  In those days, so he remembered, he had boasted
of three things to Kamala, had been able to do three noble and
undefeatable feats: fasting--waiting--thinking.  These had been his
possession, his power and strength, his solid staff; in the busy,
laborious years of his youth, he had learned these three feats, nothing
else.  And now, they had abandoned him, none of them was his any more,
neither fasting, nor waiting, nor thinking.  For the most wretched
things, he had given them up, for what fades most quickly, for sensual
lust, for the good life, for riches!  His life had indeed been strange.
And now, so it seemed, now he had really become a childlike person.

Siddhartha thought about his situation.  Thinking was hard on him, he
did not really feel like it, but he forced himself.

Now, he thought, since all these most easily perishing things have
slipped from me again, now I'm standing here under the sun again just as
I have been standing here a little child, nothing is mine, I have no
abilities, there is nothing I could bring about, I have learned nothing.
How wondrous is this!  Now, that I'm no longer young, that my hair is
already half gray, that my strength is fading, now I'm starting again
at the beginning and as a child!  Again, he had to smile.  Yes, his fate
had been strange!  Things were going downhill with him, and now he was
again facing the world void and naked and stupid.  But he could not feed
sad about this, no, he even felt a great urge to laugh, to laugh about
himself, to laugh about this strange, foolish world.

"Things are going downhill with you!" he said to himself, and laughed
about it, and as he was saying it, he happened to glance at the river,
and he also saw the river going downhill, always moving on downhill,
and singing and being happy through it all.  He liked this well, kindly
he smiled at the river.  Was this not the river in which he had intended
to drown himself, in past times, a hundred years ago, or had he dreamed
this?

Wondrous indeed was my life, so he thought, wondrous detours it has
taken.  As I boy, I had only to do with gods and offerings.  As a youth,
I had only to do with asceticism, with thinking and meditation, was
searching for Brahman, worshipped the eternal in the Atman.  But as a
young man, I followed the penitents, lived in the forest, suffered of
heat and frost, learned to hunger, taught my body to become dead.
Wonderfully, soon afterwards, insight came towards me in the form of the
great Buddha's teachings, I felt the knowledge of the oneness of the
world circling in me like my own blood.  But I also had to leave Buddha
and the great knowledge.  I went and learned the art of love with
Kamala, learned trading with Kamaswami, piled up money, wasted money,
learned to love my stomach, learned to please my senses.  I had to spend
many years losing my spirit, to unlearn thinking again, to forget the
oneness.  Isn't it just as if I had turned slowly and on a long detour
from a man into a child, from a thinker into a childlike person?  And
yet, this path has been very good; and yet, the bird in my chest has
not died.  But what a path has this been!  I had to pass through so much
stupidity, through so much vices, through so many errors, through so
much disgust and disappointments and woe, just to become a child again
and to be able to start over.  But it was right so, my heart says "Yes"
to it, my eyes smile to it.  I've had to experience despair, I've had to
sink down to the most foolish one of all thoughts, to the thought of
suicide, in order to be able to experience divine grace, to hear Om
again, to be able to sleep properly and awake properly again.  I had to
become a fool, to find Atman in me again.  I had to sin, to be able to
live again.  Where else might my path lead me to?  It is foolish, this
path, it moves in loops, perhaps it is going around in a circle.  Let
it go as it likes, I want to take it.

Wonderfully, he felt joy rolling like waves in his chest.

Wherever from, he asked his heart, where from did you get this
happiness?  Might it come from that long, good sleep, which has done me
so good?  Or from the word Om, which I said?  Or from the fact that I
have escaped, that I have completely fled, that I am finally free again
and am standing like a child under the sky?  Oh how good is it to have
fled, to have become free!  How clean and beautiful is the air here, how
good to breathe!  There, where I ran away from, there everything smelled
of ointments, of spices, of wine, of excess, of sloth.  How did I hate
this world of the rich, of those who revel in fine food, of the
gamblers!  How did I hate myself for staying in this terrible world for
so long!  How did I hate myself, have deprive, poisoned, tortured
myself, have made myself old and evil!  No, never again I will, as I
used to like doing so much, delude myself into thinking that Siddhartha
was wise!  But this one thing I have done well, this I like, this I must
praise, that there is now an end to that hatred against myself, to that
foolish and dreary life!  I praise you, Siddhartha, after so many years
of foolishness, you have once again had an idea, have done something,
have heard the bird in your chest singing and have followed it!

Thus he praised himself, found joy in himself, listened curiously to his
stomach, which was rumbling with hunger.  He had now, so he felt, in
these recent times and days, completely tasted and spit out, devoured up
to the point of desperation and death, a piece of suffering, a piece of
misery.  Like this, it was good.  For much longer, he could have stayed
with Kamaswami, made money, wasted money, filled his stomach, and let
his soul die of thirst; for much longer he could have lived in this
soft, well upholstered hell, if this had not happened: the moment of
complete hopelessness and despair, that most extreme moment, when he
hung over the rushing waters and was ready to destroy himself.  That he
had felt this despair, this deep disgust, and that he had not succumbed
to it, that the bird, the joyful source and voice in him was still alive
after all, this was why he felt joy, this was why he laughed, this was
why his face was smiling brightly under his hair which had turned gray.

"It is good," he thought, "to get a taste of everything for oneself,
which one needs to know.  That lust for the world and riches do not
belong to the good things, I have already learned as a child.  I have
known it for a long time, but I have experienced only now.  And now I
know it, don't just know it in my memory, but in my eyes, in my heart,
in my stomach.  Good for me, to know this!"

For a long time, he pondered his transformation, listened to the bird,
as it sang for joy.  Had not this bird died in him, had he not felt its
death?  No, something else from within him had died, something which
already for a long time had yearned to die.  Was it not this what he
used to intend to kill in his ardent years as a penitent?  Was this not
his self, his small, frightened, and proud self, he had wrestled with
for so many years, which had defeated him again and again, which was
back again after every killing, prohibited joy, felt fear?  Was it not
this, which today had finally come to its death, here in the forest, by
this lovely river?  Was it not due to this death, that he was now like
a child, so full of trust, so without fear, so full of joy?

Now Siddhartha also got some idea of why he had fought this self in
vain as a Brahman, as a penitent.  Too much knowledge had held him
back, too many holy verses, too many sacrificial rules, to much
self-castigation, so much doing and striving for that goal!  Full of
arrogance, he had been, always the smartest, always working the most,
always one step ahead of all others, always the knowing and spiritual
one, always the priest or wise one.  Into being a priest, into this
arrogance, into this spirituality, his self had retreated, there it sat
firmly and grew, while he thought he would kill it by fasting and
penance.  Now he saw it and saw that the secret voice had been right,
that no teacher would ever have been able to bring about his salvation.
Therefore, he had to go out into the world, lose himself to lust and
power, to woman and money, had to become a merchant, a dice-gambler, a
drinker, and a greedy person, until the priest and Samana in him was
dead.  Therefore, he had to continue bearing these ugly years, bearing
the disgust, the teachings, the pointlessness of a dreary and
wasted life up to the end, up to bitter despair, until Siddhartha the
lustful, Siddhartha the greedy could also die.  He had died, a new
Siddhartha had woken up from the sleep.  He would also grow old, he
would also eventually have to die, mortal was Siddhartha, mortal was
every physical form.  But today he was young, was a child, the new
Siddhartha, and was full of joy.

He thought these thoughts, listened with a smile to his stomach,
listened gratefully to a buzzing bee.  Cheerfully, he looked into the
rushing river, never before he had liked a water so well as this one,
never before he had perceived the voice and the parable of the moving
water thus strongly and beautifully.  It seemed to him, as if the river
had something special to tell him, something he did not know yet, which
was still awaiting him.  In this river, Siddhartha had intended to
drown himself, in it the old, tired, desperate Siddhartha had drowned
today.  But the new Siddhartha felt a deep love for this rushing water,
and decided for himself, not to leave it very soon.




THE FERRYMAN

By this river I want to stay, thought Siddhartha, it is the same which
I have crossed a long time ago on my way to the childlike people, a
friendly ferryman had guided me then, he is the one I want to go to,
starting out from his hut, my path had led me at that time into a new
life, which had now grown old and is dead--my present path, my present
new life, shall also take its start there!

Tenderly, he looked into the rushing water, into the transparent green,
into the crystal lines of its drawing, so rich in secrets.  Bright
pearls he saw rising from the deep, quiet bubbles of air floating on
the reflecting surface, the blue of the sky being depicted in it.  With
a thousand eyes, the river looked at him, with green ones, with white
ones, with crystal ones, with sky-blue ones.  How did he love this
water, how did it delight him, how grateful was he to it!  In his heart
he heard the voice talking, which was newly awaking, and it told him:
Love this water!  Stay near it!  Learn from it!  Oh yes, he wanted to
learn from it, he wanted to listen to it.  He who would understand this
water and its secrets, so it seemed to him, would also understand many
other things, many secrets, all secrets.

But out of all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one
touched his soul.  He saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran,
and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same
and yet new in every moment!  Great be he who would grasp this,
understand this!  He understood and grasped it not, only felt some idea
of it stirring, a distant memory, divine voices.

Siddhartha rose, the workings of hunger in his body became unbearable.
In a daze he walked on, up the path by the bank, upriver,
listened to the current, listened to the rumbling hunger in his body.

When he reached the ferry, the boat was just ready, and the same
ferryman who had once transported the young Samana across the river,
stood in the boat, Siddhartha recognised him, he had also aged very
much.

"Would you like to ferry me over?" he asked.

The ferryman, being astonished to see such an elegant man walking along
and on foot, took him into his boat and pushed it off the bank.

"It's a beautiful life you have chosen for yourself," the passenger
spoke.  "It must be beautiful to live by this water every day and to
cruise on it."

With a smile, the man at the oar moved from side to side:  "It is
beautiful, sir, it is as you say.  But isn't every life, isn't every
work beautiful?"

"This may be true.  But I envy you for yours."

"Ah, you would soon stop enjoying it.  This is nothing for people
wearing fine clothes."

Siddhartha laughed.  "Once before, I have been looked upon today because
of my clothes, I have been looked upon with distrust.  Wouldn't you,
ferryman, like to accept these clothes, which are a nuisance to me,
from me?  For you must know, I have no money to pay your fare."

"You're joking, sir," the ferryman laughed.

"I'm not joking, friend.  Behold, once before you have ferried me across
this water in your boat for the immaterial reward of a good deed.  Thus,
do it today as well, and accept my clothes for it."

"And do you, sir, intent to continue travelling without clothes?"

"Ah, most of all I wouldn't want to continue travelling at all.  Most of
all I would like you, ferryman, to give me an old loincloth and kept me
with you as your assistant, or rather as your trainee, for I'll have to
learn first how to handle the boat."

For a long time, the ferryman looked at the stranger, searching.

"Now I recognise you," he finally said.  "At one time, you've slept in
my hut, this was a long time ago, possibly more than twenty years ago,
and you've been ferried across the river by me, and we parted like good
friends.  Haven't you've been a Samana?  I can't think of your name any
more."

"My name is Siddhartha, and I was a Samana, when you've last seen me."

"So be welcome, Siddhartha.  My name is Vasudeva.  You will, so I hope,
be my guest today as well and sleep in my hut, and tell me, where you're
coming from and why these beautiful clothes are such a nuisance to you."

They had reached the middle of the river, and Vasudeva pushed the oar
with more strength, in order to overcome the current.  He worked calmly,
his eyes fixed in on the front of the boat, with brawny arms.
Siddhartha sat and watched him, and remembered, how once before, on that
last day of his time as a Samana, love for this man had stirred in his
heart.  Gratefully, he accepted Vasudeva's invitation.  When they had
reached the bank, he helped him to tie the boat to the stakes; after
this, the ferryman asked him to enter the hut, offered him bread and
water, and Siddhartha ate with eager pleasure, and also ate with eager
pleasure of the mango fruits, Vasudeva offered him.

Afterwards, it was almost the time of the sunset, they sat on a log by
the bank, and Siddhartha told the ferryman about where he originally
came from and about his life, as he had seen it before his eyes today,
in that hour of despair.  Until late at night, lasted his tale.

Vasudeva listened with great attention.  Listening carefully, he let
everything enter his mind, birthplace and childhood, all that learning,
all that searching, all joy, all distress.  This was among the
ferryman's virtues one of the greatest:  like only a few, he knew how
to listen.  Without him having spoken a word, the speaker sensed how
Vasudeva let his words enter his mind, quiet, open, waiting, how he
did not lose a single one, awaited not a single one with impatience,
did not add his praise or rebuke, was just listening.  Siddhartha felt,
what a happy fortune it is, to confess to such a listener, to bury in
his heart his own life, his own search, his own suffering.

But in the end of Siddhartha's tale, when he spoke of the tree by the
river, and of his deep fall, of the holy Om, and how he had felt such
a love for the river after his slumber, the ferryman listened with twice
the attention, entirely and completely absorbed by it, with his eyes
closed.

But when Siddhartha fell silent, and a long silence had occurred, then
Vasudeva said:  "It is as I thought.  The river has spoken to you.  It
is your friend as well, it speaks to you as well.  That is good, that is
very good.  Stay with me, Siddhartha, my friend.  I used to have a wife,
her bed was next to mine, but she has died a long time ago, for a long
time, I have lived alone.  Now, you shall live with me, there is space
and food for both."

"I thank you," said Siddhartha, "I thank you and accept.  And I also
thank you for this, Vasudeva, for listening to me so well!  These people
are rare who know how to listen.  And I did not meet a single one who
knew it as well as you did.  I will also learn in this respect from
you."

"You will learn it," spoke Vasudeva, "but not from me.  The river has
taught me to listen, from it you will learn it as well.  It knows
everything, the river, everything can be learned from it.  See, you've
already learned this from the water too, that it is good to strive
downwards, to sink, to seek depth.  The rich and elegant Siddhartha is
becoming an oarsman's servant, the learned Brahman Siddhartha becomes a
ferryman: this has also been told to you by the river.  You'll learn
that other thing from it as well."

Quoth Siddhartha after a long pause:  "What other thing, Vasudeva?"

Vasudeva rose.  "It is late," he said, "let's go to sleep.  I can't
tell you that other thing, oh friend.  You'll learn it, or perhaps you
know it already.  See, I'm no learned man, I have no special skill in
speaking, I also have no special skill in thinking.  All I'm able to do
is to listen and to be godly, I have learned nothing else.  If I was
able to say and teach it, I might be a wise man, but like this I am only
a ferryman, and it is my task to ferry people across the river.  I have
transported many, thousands; and to all of them, my river has been
nothing but an obstacle on their travels.  They travelled to seek money
and business, and for weddings, and on pilgrimages, and the river was
obstructing their path, and the ferryman's job was to get them quickly
across that obstacle.  But for some among thousands, a few, four or
five, the river has stopped being an obstacle, they have heard its
voice, they have listened to it, and the river has become sacred to
them, as it has become sacred to me.  Let's rest now, Siddhartha."

Siddhartha stayed with the ferryman and learned to operate the boat, and
when there was nothing to do at the ferry, he worked with Vasudeva in
the rice-field, gathered wood, plucked the fruit off the banana-trees.
He learned to build an oar, and learned to mend the boat, and to weave
baskets, and was joyful because of everything he learned, and the days
and months passed quickly.  But more than Vasudeva could teach him, he
was taught by the river.  Incessantly, he learned from it.  Most of all,
he learned from it to listen, to pay close attention with a quiet heart,
with a waiting, opened soul, without passion, without a wish, without
judgement, without an opinion.

In a friendly manner, he lived side by side with Vasudeva, and
occasionally they exchanged some words, few and at length thought about
words.  Vasudeva was no friend of words; rarely, Siddhartha succeeded
in persuading him to speak.

"Did you," so he asked him at one time, "did you too learn that secret
from the river: that there is no time?"

Vasudeva's face was filled with a bright smile.

"Yes, Siddhartha," he spoke.  "It is this what you mean, isn't it: that
the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the
waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains,
everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not
the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?"

"This it is," said Siddhartha.  "And when I had learned it, I looked at
my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only
separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a
shadow, not by something real.  Also, Siddhartha's previous births were
no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future.  Nothing
was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is
present."

Siddhartha spoke with ecstasy; deeply, this enlightenment had delighted
him.  Oh, was not all suffering time, were not all forms of tormenting
oneself and being afraid time, was not everything hard, everything
hostile in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome time,
as soon as time would have been put out of existence by one's thoughts?
In ecstatic delight, he had spoken, but Vasudeva smiled at him brightly
and nodded in confirmation; silently he nodded, brushed his hand over
Siddhartha's shoulder, turned back to his work.

And once again, when the river had just increased its flow in the rainy
season and made a powerful noise, then said Siddhartha:  "Isn't it so,
oh friend, the river has many voices, very many voices?  Hasn't it the
voice of a king, and of a warrior, and of a bull, and of a bird of the
night, and of a woman giving birth, and of a sighing man, and a thousand
other voices more?"

"So it is," Vasudeva nodded, "all voices of the creatures are in its
voice."

"And do you know," Siddhartha continued, "what word it speaks, when you
succeed in hearing all of its ten thousand voices at once?"

Happily, Vasudeva's face was smiling, he bent over to Siddhartha and
spoke the holy Om into his ear.  And this had been the very thing which
Siddhartha had also been hearing.

And time after time, his smile became more similar to the ferryman's,
became almost just as bright, almost just as throughly glowing with
bliss, just as shining out of thousand small wrinkles, just as alike to
a child's, just as alike to an old man's.  Many travellers, seeing the
two ferrymen, thought they were brothers.  Often, they sat in the
evening together by the bank on the log, said nothing and both listened
to the water, which was no water to them, but the voice of life, the
voice of what exists, of what is eternally taking shape.  And it
happened from time to time that both, when listening to the river,
thought of the same things, of a conversation from the day before
yesterday, of one of their travellers, the face and fate of whom had
occupied their thoughts, of death, of their childhood, and that they
both in the same moment, when the river had been saying something good
to them, looked at each other, both thinking precisely the same thing,
both delighted about the same answer to the same question.

There was something about this ferry and the two ferrymen which was
transmitted to others, which many of the travellers felt.  It happened
occasionally that a traveller, after having looked at the face of one of
the ferrymen, started to tell the story of his life, told about pains,
confessed evil things, asked for comfort and advice.  It happened
occasionally that someone asked for permission to stay for a night with
them to listen to the river.  It also happened that curious people came,
who had been told that there were two wise men, or sorcerers, or holy
men living by that ferry.  The curious people asked many questions, but
they got no answers, and they found neither sorcerers nor wise men, they
only found two friendly little old men, who seemed to be mute and to
have become a bit strange and gaga.  And the curious people laughed and
were discussing how foolishly and gullibly the common people were
spreading such empty rumours.

The years passed by, and nobody counted them.  Then, at one time, monks
came by on a pilgrimage, followers of Gotama, the Buddha, who were
asking to be ferried across the river, and by them the ferrymen were
told that they were most hurriedly walking back to their great
teacher, for the news had spread the exalted one was deadly sick and
would soon die his last human death, in order to become one with the
salvation.  It was not long, until a new flock of monks came along on
their pilgrimage, and another one, and the monks as well as most of the
other travellers and people walking through the land spoke of nothing
else than of Gotama and his impending death.  And as people are flocking
from everywhere and from all sides, when they are going to war or to the
coronation of a king, and are gathering like ants in droves, thus they
flocked, like being drawn on by a magic spell, to where the great Buddha
was awaiting his death, where the huge event was to take place and the
great perfected one of an era was to become one with the glory.

Often, Siddhartha thought in those days of the dying wise man, the
great teacher, whose voice had admonished nations and had awoken
hundreds of thousands, whose voice he had also once heard, whose holy
face he had also once seen with respect.  Kindly, he thought of him, saw
his path to perfection before his eyes, and remembered with a smile
those words which he had once, as a young man, said to him, the exalted
one.  They had been, so it seemed to him, proud and precocious words;
with a smile, he remembered them.  For a long time he knew that there
was nothing standing between Gotama and him any more, though he was
still unable to accept his teachings.  No, there was no teaching a
truly searching person, someone who truly wanted to find, could accept.
But he who had found, he could approve of any teachings, every path,
every goal, there was nothing standing between him and all the other
thousand any more who lived in that what is eternal, who breathed what
is divine.

On one of these days, when so many went on a pilgrimage to the dying
Buddha, Kamala also went to him, who used to be the most beautiful of
the courtesans.  A long time ago, she had retired from her previous
life, had given her garden to the monks of Gotama as a gift, had taken
her refuge in the teachings, was among the friends and benefactors of
the pilgrims.  Together with Siddhartha the boy, her son, she had gone
on her way due to the news of the near death of Gotama, in simple
clothes, on foot.  With her little son, she was travelling by the river;
but the boy had soon grown tired, desired to go back home, desired to
rest, desired to eat, became disobedient and started whining.

Kamala often had to take a rest with him, he was accustomed to having
his way against her, she had to feed him, had to comfort him, had to
scold him.  He did not comprehend why he had to go on this exhausting
and sad pilgrimage with his mother, to an unknown place, to a stranger,
who was holy and about to die.  So what if he died, how did this concern
the boy?

The pilgrims were getting close to Vasudeva's ferry, when little
Siddhartha once again forced his mother to rest.  She, Kamala herself,
had also become tired, and while the boy was chewing a banana, she
crouched down on the ground, closed her eyes a bit, and rested.  But
suddenly, she uttered a wailing scream, the boy looked at her in fear
and saw her face having grown pale from horror; and from under her
dress, a small, black snake fled, by which Kamala had been bitten.

Hurriedly, they now both ran along the path, in order to reach people,
and got near to the ferry, there Kamala collapsed, and was not able to
go any further.  But the boy started crying miserably, only interrupting
it to kiss and hug his mother, and she also joined his loud screams for
help, until the sound reached Vasudeva's ears, who stood at the ferry.
Quickly, he came walking, took the woman on his arms, carried her into
the boat, the boy ran along, and soon they all reached the hut, were
Siddhartha stood by the stove and was just lighting the fire.  He looked
up and first saw the boy's face, which wondrously reminded him of
something, like a warning to remember something he had forgotten.  Then
he saw Kamala, whom he instantly recognised, though she lay unconscious
in the ferryman's arms, and now he knew that it was his own son, whose
face had been such a warning reminder to him, and the heart stirred in
his chest.

Kamala's wound was washed, but had already turned black and her body was
swollen, she was made to drink a healing potion.  Her consciousness
returned, she lay on Siddhartha's bed in the hut and bent over her stood
Siddhartha, who used to love her so much.  It seemed like a dream to
her; with a smile, she looked at her friend's face; just slowly she,
realized her situation, remembered the bite, called timidly for the boy.

"He's with you, don't worry," said Siddhartha.

Kamala looked into his eyes.  She spoke with a heavy tongue, paralysed
by the poison.  "You've become old, my dear," she said, "you've become
gray.  But you are like the young Samana, who at one time came without
clothes, with dusty feet, to me into the garden.  You are much more like
him, than you were like him at that time when you had left me and
Kamaswami.  In the eyes, you're like him, Siddhartha.  Alas, I have also
grown old, old--could you still recognise me?"

Siddhartha smiled:  "Instantly, I recognised you, Kamala, my dear."

Kamala pointed to her boy and said:  "Did you recognise him as well?
He is your son."

Her eyes became confused and fell shut.  The boy wept, Siddhartha took
him on his knees, let him weep, petted his hair, and at the sight of
the child's face, a Brahman prayer came to his mind, which he had
learned a long time ago, when he had been a little boy himself.  Slowly,
with a singing voice, he started to speak; from his past and childhood,
the words came flowing to him.  And with that singsong, the boy became
calm, was only now and then uttering a sob and fell asleep.  Siddhartha
placed him on Vasudeva's bed.  Vasudeva stood by the stove and cooked
rice.  Siddhartha gave him a look, which he returned with a smile.

"She'll die," Siddhartha said quietly.

Vasudeva nodded; over his friendly face ran the light of the stove's
fire.

Once again, Kamala returned to consciousness.  Pain distorted her face,
Siddhartha's eyes read the suffering on her mouth, on her pale cheeks.
Quietly, he read it, attentively, waiting, his mind becoming one with
her suffering.  Kamala felt it, her gaze sought his eyes.

Looking at him, she said:  "Now I see that your eyes have changed as
well.  They've become completely different.  By what do I still
recognise that you're Siddhartha?  It's you, and it's not you."

Siddhartha said nothing, quietly his eyes looked at hers.

"You have achieved it?" she asked.  "You have found peace?"

He smiled and placed his hand on hers.

"I'm seeing it," she said, "I'm seeing it.  I too will find peace."

"You have found it," Siddhartha spoke in a whisper.

Kamala never stopped looking into his eyes.  She thought about her
pilgrimage to Gotama, which wanted to take, in order to see the face of
the perfected one, to breathe his peace, and she thought that she had
now found him in his place, and that it was good, just as good, as if
she had seen the other one.  She wanted to tell this to him, but the
tongue no longer obeyed her will.  Without speaking, she looked at him,
and he saw the life fading from her eyes.  When the final pain filled
her eyes and made them grow dim, when the final shiver ran through her
limbs, his finger closed her eyelids.

For a long time, he sat and looked at her peacefully dead face.  For a
long time, he observed her mouth, her old, tired mouth, with those lips,
which had become thin, and he remembered, that he used to, in the spring
of his years, compare this mouth with a freshly cracked fig.  For a long
time, he sat, read in the pale face, in the tired wrinkles, filled
himself with this sight, saw his own face lying in the same manner,
just as white, just as quenched out, and saw at the same time his face
and hers being young, with red lips, with fiery eyes, and the feeling of
this both being present and at the same time real, the feeling of
eternity, completely filled every aspect of his being.  Deeply he felt,
more deeply than ever before, in this hour, the indestructibility of
every life, the eternity of every moment.

When he rose, Vasudeva had prepared rice for him.  But Siddhartha did
not eat.  In the stable, where their goat stood, the two old men
prepared beds of straw for themselves, and Vasudeva lay himself down
to sleep.  But Siddhartha went outside and sat this night before the
hut, listening to the river, surrounded by the past, touched and
encircled by all times of his life at the same time.  But occasionally,
he rose, stepped to the door of the hut and listened, whether the boy
was sleeping.

Early in the morning, even before the sun could be seen, Vasudeva came
out of the stable and walked over to his friend.

"You haven't slept," he said.

"No, Vasudeva.  I sat here, I was listening to the river.  A lot it has
told me, deeply it has filled me with the healing thought, with the
thought of oneness."

"You've experienced suffering, Siddhartha, but I see: no sadness has
entered your heart."

"No, my dear, how should I be sad?  I, who have been rich and happy,
have become even richer and happier now.  My son has been given to me."

"Your son shall be welcome to me as well.  But now, Siddhartha, let's
get to work, there is much to be done.  Kamala has died on the same bed,
on which my wife had died a long time ago.  Let us also build Kamala's
funeral pile on the same hill on which I had then built my wife's
funeral pile."

While the boy was still asleep, they built the funeral pile.




THE SON

Timid and weeping, the boy had attended his mother's funeral; gloomy
and shy, he had listened to Siddhartha, who greeted him as his son and
welcomed him at his place in Vasudeva's hut.  Pale, he sat for many
days by the hill of the dead, did not want to eat, gave no open look,
did not open his heart, met his fate with resistance and denial.

Siddhartha spared him and let him do as he pleased, he honoured his
mourning.  Siddhartha understood that his son did not know him, that
he could not love him like a father.  Slowly, he also saw and understood
that the eleven-year-old was a pampered boy, a mother's boy, and that he
had grown up in the habits of rich people, accustomed to finer food, to
a soft bed, accustomed to giving orders to servants.  Siddhartha
understood that the mourning, pampered child could not suddenly and
willingly be content with a life among strangers and in poverty.  He did
not force him, he did many a chore for him, always picked the best piece
of the meal for him.  Slowly, he hoped to win him over, by friendly
patience.

Rich and happy, he had called himself, when the boy had come to him.
Since time had passed on in the meantime, and the boy remained a
stranger and in a gloomy disposition, since he displayed a proud and
stubbornly disobedient heart, did not want to do any work, did not pay
his respect to the old men, stole from Vasudeva's fruit-trees, then
Siddhartha began to understand that his son had not brought him
happiness and peace, but suffering and worry.  But he loved him, and he
preferred the suffering and worries of love over happiness and joy
without the boy.  Since young Siddhartha was in the hut, the old men had
split the work.  Vasudeva had again taken on the job of the ferryman all
by himself, and Siddhartha, in order to be with his son, did the work in
the hut and the field.

For a long time, for long months, Siddhartha waited for his son to
understand him, to accept his love, to perhaps reciprocate it.  For
long months, Vasudeva waited, watching, waited and said nothing.  One
day, when Siddhartha the younger had once again tormented his father
very much with spite and an unsteadiness in his wishes and had broken
both of his rice-bowls, Vasudeva took in the evening his friend aside
and talked to him.

"Pardon me." he said, "from a friendly heart, I'm talking to you.  I'm
seeing that you are tormenting yourself, I'm seeing that you're in grief.
Your son, my dear, is worrying you, and he is also worrying me.  That
young bird is accustomed to a different life, to a different nest.  He
has not, like you, ran away from riches and the city, being disgusted
and fed up with it; against his will, he had to leave all this behind.
I asked the river, oh friend, many times I have asked it.  But the river
laughs, it laughs at me, it laughs at you and me, and is shaking with
laughter at our foolishness.  Water wants to join water, youth wants to
join youth, your son is not in the place where he can prosper.  You too
should ask the river; you too should listen to it!"

Troubled, Siddhartha looked into his friendly face, in the many wrinkles
of which there was incessant cheerfulness.

"How could I part with him?" he said quietly, ashamed.  "Give me some
more time, my dear!  See, I'm fighting for him, I'm seeking to win his
heart, with love and with friendly patience I intent to capture it.
One day, the river shall also talk to him, he also is called upon."

Vasudeva's smile flourished more warmly.  "Oh yes, he too is called
upon, he too is of the eternal life.  But do we, you and me, know what
he is called upon to do, what path to take, what actions to perform,
what pain to endure?  Not a small one, his pain will be; after all, his
heart is proud and hard, people like this have to suffer a lot, err a
lot, do much injustice, burden themselves with much sin.  Tell me, my
dear: you're not taking control of your son's upbringing?  You don't
force him?  You don't beat him?  You don't punish him?"

"No, Vasudeva, I don't do anything of this."

"I knew it.  You don't force him, don't beat him, don't give him orders,
because you know that 'soft' is stronger than 'hard', Water stronger
than rocks, love stronger than force.  Very good, I praise you.  But
aren't you mistaken in thinking that you wouldn't force him, wouldn't
punish him?  Don't you shackle him with your love?  Don't you make him
feel inferior every day, and don't you make it even harder on him with
your kindness and patience?  Don't you force him, the arrogant and
pampered boy, to live in a hut with two old banana-eaters, to whom even
rice is a delicacy, whose thoughts can't be his, whose hearts are old
and quiet and beats in a different pace than his?  Isn't forced, isn't
he punished by all this?"

Troubled, Siddhartha looked to the ground.  Quietly, he asked:  "What
do you think should I do?"

Quoth Vasudeva:  "Bring him into the city, bring him into his mother's
house, there'll still be servants around, give him to them.  And when
there aren't any around any more, bring him to a teacher, not for the
teachings' sake, but so that he shall be among other boys, and among
girls, and in the world which is his own.  Have you never thought of
this?"

"You're seeing into my heart," Siddhartha spoke sadly.  "Often, I have
thought of this.  But look, how shall I put him, who had no tender heart
anyhow, into this world?  Won't he become exuberant, won't he lose
himself to pleasure and power, won't he repeat all of his father's
mistakes, won't he perhaps get entirely lost in Sansara?"

Brightly, the ferryman's smile lit up; softly, he touched Siddhartha's
arm and said:  "Ask the river about it, my friend!  Hear it laugh about
it!  Would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts
in order to spare your son from committing them too?  And could you in
any way protect your son from Sansara?  How could you?  By means of
teachings, prayer, admonition?  My dear, have you entirely forgotten
that story, that story containing so many lessons, that story about
Siddhartha, a Brahman's son, which you once told me here on this very
spot?  Who has kept the Samana Siddhartha safe from Sansara, from sin,
from greed, from foolishness?  Were his father's religious devotion, his
teachers warnings, his own knowledge, his own search able to keep him
safe?  Which father, which teacher had been able to protect him from
living his life for himself, from soiling himself with life, from
burdening himself with guilt, from drinking the bitter drink for
himself, from finding his path for himself?  Would you think, my dear,
anybody might perhaps be spared from taking this path?  That perhaps
your little son would be spared, because you love him, because you would
like to keep him from suffering and pain and disappointment?  But even
if you would die ten times for him, you would not be able to take the
slightest part of his destiny upon yourself."

Never before, Vasudeva had spoken so many words.  Kindly, Siddhartha
thanked him, went troubled into the hut, could not sleep for a long
time.  Vasudeva had told him nothing, he had not already thought and
known for himself.  But this was a knowledge he could not act upon,
stronger than the knowledge was his love for the boy, stronger was his
tenderness, his fear to lose him.  Had he ever lost his heart so much
to something, had he ever loved any person thus, thus blindly, thus
sufferingly, thus unsuccessfully, and yet thus happily?

Siddhartha could not heed his friend's advice, he could not give up the
boy.  He let the boy give him orders, he let him disregard him.  He
said nothing and waited; daily, he began the mute struggle of
friendliness, the silent war of patience.  Vasudeva also said nothing
and waited, friendly, knowing, patient.  They were both masters of
patience.

At one time, when the boy's face reminded him very much of Kamala,
Siddhartha suddenly had to think of a line which Kamala a long time
ago, in the days of their youth, had once said to him.  "You cannot
love," she had said to him, and he had agreed with her and had compared
himself with a star, while comparing the childlike people with falling
leaves, and nevertheless he had also sensed an accusation in that line.
Indeed, he had never been able to lose or devote himself completely to
another person, to forget himself, to commit foolish acts for the love
of another person; never he had been able to do this, and this was, as
it had seemed to him at that time, the great distinction which set him
apart from the childlike people.  But now, since his son was here, now
he, Siddhartha, had also become completely a childlike person, suffering
for the sake of another person, loving another person, lost to a love,
having become a fool on account of love.  Now he too felt, late, once
in his lifetime, this strongest and strangest of all passions, suffered
from it, suffered miserably, and was nevertheless in bliss, was
nevertheless renewed in one respect, enriched by one thing.

He did sense very well that this love, this blind love for his son, was
a passion, something very human, that it was Sansara, a murky source,
dark waters.  Nevertheless, he felt at the same time, it was not
worthless, it was necessary, came from the essence of his own being.
This pleasure also had to be atoned for, this pain also had to be
endured, these foolish acts also had to be committed.

Through all this, the son let him commit his foolish acts, let him
court for his affection, let him humiliate himself every day by giving
in to his moods.  This father had nothing which would have delighted
him and nothing which he would have feared.  He was a good man, this
father, a good, kind, soft man, perhaps a very devout man, perhaps a
saint, all these there no attributes which could win the boy over.  He
was bored by this father, who kept him prisoner here in this miserable
hut of his, he was bored by him, and for him to answer every naughtiness
with a smile, every insult with friendliness, every viciousness with
kindness, this very thing was the hated trick of this old sneak.  Much
more the boy would have liked it if he had been threatened by him, if he
had been abused by him.

A day came, when what young Siddhartha had on his mind came bursting
forth, and he openly turned against his father.  The latter had given
him a task, he had told him to gather brushwood.  But the boy did not
leave the hut, in stubborn disobedience and rage he stayed where he was,
thumped on the ground with his feet, clenched his fists, and screamed in
a powerful outburst his hatred and contempt into his father's face.

"Get the brushwood for yourself!" he shouted foaming at the mouth, "I'm
not your servant.  I do know, that you won't hit me, you don't dare; I
do know, that you constantly want to punish me and put me down with
your religious devotion and your indulgence.  You want me to become like
you, just as devout, just as soft, just as wise!  But I, listen up, just
to make you suffer, I rather want to become a highway-robber and
murderer, and go to hell, than to become like you!  I hate you, you're
not my father, and if you've ten times been my mother's fornicator!"

Rage and grief boiled over in him, foamed at the father in a hundred
savage and evil words.  Then the boy ran away and only returned late at
night.

But the next morning, he had disappeared.  What had also disappeared was
a small basket, woven out of bast of two colours, in which the ferrymen
kept those copper and silver coins which they received as a fare.
The boat had also disappeared, Siddhartha saw it lying by the opposite
bank.  The boy had ran away.

"I must follow him," said Siddhartha, who had been shivering with grief
since those ranting speeches, the boy had made yesterday.  "A child
can't go through the forest all alone.  He'll perish.  We must build a
raft, Vasudeva, to get over the water."

"We will build a raft," said Vasudeva, "to get our boat back, which the
boy has taken away.  But him, you shall let run along, my friend, he is
no child any more, he knows how to get around.  He's looking for the
path to the city, and he is right, don't forget that.  He's doing what
you've failed to do yourself.  He's taking care of himself, he's taking
his course.  Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you're suffering
a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you'll soon laugh for
yourself."

Siddhartha did not answer.  He already held the axe in his hands and
began to make a raft of bamboo, and Vasudeva helped him to tie the
canes together with ropes of grass.  Then they crossed over, drifted
far off their course, pulled the raft upriver on the opposite bank.

"Why did you take the axe along?" asked Siddhartha.

Vasudeva said:  "It might have been possible that the oar of our boat
got lost."

But Siddhartha knew what his friend was thinking.  He thought, the boy
would have thrown away or broken the oar in order to get even and in
order to keep them from following him.  And in fact, there was no oar
left in the boat.  Vasudeva pointed to the bottom of the boat and looked
at his friend with a smile, as if he wanted to say:  "Don't you see what
your son is trying to tell you?  Don't you see that he doesn't want to
be followed?"  But he did not say this in words.  He started making a
new oar.  But Siddhartha bid his farewell, to look for the run-away.
Vasudeva did not stop him.

When Siddhartha had already been walking through the forest for a long
time, the thought occurred to him that his search was useless.  Either,
so he thought, the boy was far ahead and had already reached the city,
or, if he should still be on his way, he would conceal himself from him,
the pursuer.  As he continued thinking, he also found that he, on his
part, was not worried for his son, that he knew deep inside that he had
neither perished nor was in any danger in the forest.  Nevertheless, he
ran without stopping, no longer to save him, just to satisfy his desire,
just to perhaps see him one more time.  And he ran up to just outside of
the city.

When, near the city, he reached a wide road, he stopped, by the entrance
of the beautiful pleasure-garden, which used to belong to Kamala, where
he had seen her for the first time in her sedan-chair.  The past rose
up in his soul, again he saw himself standing there, young, a bearded,
naked Samana, the hair full of dust.  For a long time, Siddhartha stood
there and looked through the open gate into the garden, seeing monks in
yellow robes walking among the beautiful trees.

For a long time, he stood there, pondering, seeing images, listening to
the story of his life.  For a long time, he stood there, looked at the
monks, saw young Siddhartha in their place, saw young Kamala walking
among the high trees.  Clearly, he saw himself being served food and
drink by Kamala, receiving his first kiss from her, looking proudly and
disdainfully back on his Brahmanism, beginning proudly and full of
desire his worldly life.  He saw Kamaswami, saw the servants, the
orgies, the gamblers with the dice, the musicians, saw Kamala's
song-bird in the cage, lived through all this once again, breathed
Sansara, was once again old and tired, felt once again disgust, felt
once again the wish to annihilate himself, was once again healed by the
holy Om.

After having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time,
Siddhartha realised that his desire was foolish, which had made him go
up to this place, that he could not help his son, that he was not
allowed to cling him.  Deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his
heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had
not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to
become a blossom and had to shine.

That this wound did not blossom yet, did not shine yet, at this hour,
made him sad.  Instead of the desired goal, which had drawn him here
following the runaway son, there was now emptiness.  Sadly, he sat down,
felt something dying in his heart, experienced emptiness, saw no joy any
more, no goal.  He sat lost in thought and waited.  This he had learned
by the river, this one thing: waiting, having patience, listening
attentively.  And he sat and listened, in the dust of the road, listened
to his heart, beating tiredly and sadly, waited for a voice.  Many an
hour he crouched, listening, saw no images any more, fell into
emptiness, let himself fall, without seeing a path.  And when he felt
the wound burning, he silently spoke the Om, filled himself with Om.
The monks in the garden saw him, and since he crouched for many hours,
and dust was gathering on his gray hair, one of them came to him and
placed two bananas in front of him.  The old man did not see him.

From this petrified state, he was awoken by a hand touching his
shoulder.  Instantly, he recognised this touch, this tender, bashful
touch, and regained his senses.  He rose and greeted Vasudeva, who had
followed him.  And when he looked into Vasudeva's friendly face, into
the small wrinkles, which were as if they were filled with nothing but
his smile, into the happy eyes, then he smiled too.  Now he saw the
bananas lying in front of him, picked them up, gave one to the ferryman,
ate the other one himself.  After this, he silently went back into the
forest with Vasudeva, returned home to the ferry.  Neither one talked
about what had happened today, neither one mentioned the boy's name,
neither one spoke about him running away, neither one spoke about the
wound.  In the hut, Siddhartha lay down on his bed, and when after a
while Vasudeva came to him, to offer him a bowl of coconut-milk, he
already found him asleep.




OM

For a long time, the wound continued to burn.  Many a traveller
Siddhartha had to ferry across the river who was accompanied by a son or
a daughter, and he saw none of them without envying him, without
thinking:  "So many, so many thousands possess this sweetest of good
fortunes--why don't I?  Even bad people, even thieves and robbers have
children and love them, and are being loved by them, all except for me."
Thus simply, thus without reason he now thought, thus similar to the
childlike people he had become.

Differently than before, he now looked upon people, less smart, less
proud, but instead warmer, more curious, more involved.  When he ferried
travellers of the ordinary kind, childlike people, businessmen,
warriors, women, these people did not seem alien to him as they used to:
he understood them, he understood and shared their life, which was not
guided by thoughts and insight, but solely by urges and wishes, he felt
like them.  Though he was near perfection and was bearing his final
wound, it still seemed to him as if those childlike people were his
brothers, their vanities, desires for possession, and ridiculous aspects
were no longer ridiculous to him, became understandable, became lovable,
even became worthy of veneration to him.  The blind love of a mother
for her child, the stupid, blind pride of a conceited father for his
only son, the blind, wild desire of a young, vain woman for jewelry and
admiring glances from men, all of these urges, all of this childish
stuff, all of these simple, foolish, but immensely strong, strongly
living, strongly prevailing urges and desires were now no childish
notions for Siddhartha any more, he saw people living for their sake,
saw them achieving infinitely much for their sake, travelling,
conducting wars, suffering infinitely much, bearing infinitely much, and
he could love them for it, he saw life, that what is alive, the
indestructible, the Brahman in each of their passions, each of their
acts.  Worthy of love and admiration were these people in their blind
loyalty, their blind strength and tenacity.  They lacked nothing, there
was nothing the knowledgeable one, the thinker, had to put him above them
except for one little thing, a single, tiny, small thing: the
consciousness, the conscious thought of the oneness of all life.  And
Siddhartha even doubted in many an hour, whether this knowledge, this
thought was to be valued thus highly, whether it might not also perhaps
be a childish idea of the thinking people, of the thinking and childlike
people.  In all other respects, the worldly people were of equal rank
to the wise men, were often far superior to them, just as animals too
can, after all, in some moments, seem to be superior to humans in their
tough, unrelenting performance of what is necessary.

Slowly blossomed, slowly ripened in Siddhartha the realisation, the
knowledge, what wisdom actually was, what the goal of his long search
was.  It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability, a secret
art, to think every moment, while living his life, the thought of
oneness, to be able to feel and inhale the oneness.  Slowly this
blossomed in him, was shining back at him from Vasudeva's old, childlike
face: harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world,
smiling, oneness.

But the wound still burned, longingly and bitterly Siddhartha thought of
his son, nurtured his love and tenderness in his heart, allowed the
pain to gnaw at him, committed all foolish acts of love.  Not by itself,
this flame would go out.

And one day, when the wound burned violently, Siddhartha ferried across
the river, driven by a yearning, got off the boat and was willing to go
to the city and to look for his son.  The river flowed softly and
quietly, it was the dry season, but its voice sounded strange: it
laughed!  It laughed clearly.  The river laughed, it laughed brightly
and clearly at the old ferryman.  Siddhartha stopped, he bent over the
water, in order to hear even better, and he saw his face reflected in
the quietly moving waters, and in this reflected face there was
something, which reminded him, something he had forgotten, and as he
thought about it, he found it: this face resembled another face, which
he used to know and love and also fear.  It resembled his father's face,
the Brahman.  And he remembered how he, a long time ago, as a young man,
had forced his father to let him go to the penitents, how he had bed his
farewell to him, how he had gone and had never come back.  Had his
father not also suffered the same pain for him, which he now suffered
for his son?  Had his father not long since died, alone, without having
seen his son again?  Did he not have to expect the same fate for
himself?  Was it not a comedy, a strange and stupid matter, this
repetition, this running around in a fateful circle?

The river laughed.  Yes, so it was, everything came back, which had not
been suffered and solved up to its end, the same pain was suffered over
and over again.  But Siddhartha want back into the boat and ferried back
to the hut, thinking of his father, thinking of his son, laughed at by
the river, at odds with himself, tending towards despair, and not less
tending towards laughing along at (?? über) himself and the entire
world.

Alas, the wound was not blossoming yet, his heart was still fighting his
fate, cheerfulness and victory were not yet shining from his suffering.
Nevertheless, he felt hope, and once he had returned to the hut, he felt
an undefeatable desire to open up to Vasudeva, to show him everything,
the master of listening, to say everything.

Vasudeva was sitting in the hut and weaving a basket.  He no longer used
the ferry-boat, his eyes were starting to get weak, and not just his
eyes; his arms and hands as well.  Unchanged and flourishing was only
the joy and the cheerful benevolence of his face.

Siddhartha sat down next to the old man, slowly he started talking.
What they had never talked about, he now told him of, of his walk to
the city, at that time, of the burning wound, of his envy at the sight
of happy fathers, of his knowledge of the foolishness of such wishes, of
his futile fight against them.  He reported everything, he was able to
say everything, even the most embarrassing parts, everything could be
said, everything shown, everything he could tell.  He presented his
wound, also told how he fled today, how he ferried across the water,
a childish run-away, willing to walk to the city, how the river had
laughed.

While he spoke, spoke for a long time, while Vasudeva was listening
with a quiet face, Vasudeva's listening gave Siddhartha a stronger
sensation than ever before, he sensed how his pain, his fears flowed
over to him, how his secret hope flowed over, came back at him from
his counterpart.  To show his wound to this listener was the same as
bathing it in the river, until it had cooled and become one with the
river.  While he was still speaking, still admitting and confessing,
Siddhartha felt more and more that this was no longer Vasudeva, no
longer a human being, who was listening to him, that this motionless
listener was absorbing his confession into himself like a tree the rain,
that this motionless man was the river itself, that he was God himself,
that he was the eternal itself.  And while Siddhartha stopped thinking
of himself and his wound, this realisation of Vasudeva's changed
character took possession of him, and the more he felt it and entered
into it, the less wondrous it became, the more he realised that
everything was in order and natural, that Vasudeva had already been like
this for a long time, almost forever, that only he had not quite
recognised it, yes, that he himself had almost reached the same state.
He felt, that he was now seeing old Vasudeva as the people see the
gods, and that this could not last; in his heart, he started bidding his
farewell to Vasudeva.  Thoroughout all this, he talked incessantly.

When he had finished talking, Vasudeva turned his friendly eyes, which
had grown slightly weak, at him, said nothing, let his silent love and
cheerfulness, understanding and knowledge, shine at him.  He took
Siddhartha's hand, led him to the seat by the bank, sat down with him,
smiled at the river.

"You've heard it laugh," he said.  "But you haven't heard everything.
Let's listen, you'll hear more."

They listened.  Softly sounded the river, singing in many voices.
Siddhartha looked into the water, and images appeared to him in the
moving water: his father appeared, lonely, mourning for his son; he
himself appeared, lonely, he also being tied with the bondage of
yearning to his distant son; his son appeared, lonely as well, the boy,
greedily rushing along the burning course of his young wishes, each
one heading for his goal, each one obsessed by the goal, each one
suffering.  The river sang with a voice of suffering, longingly it sang,
longingly, it flowed towards its goal, lamentingly its voice sang.

"Do you hear?" Vasudeva's mute gaze asked.  Siddhartha nodded.

"Listen better!" Vasudeva whispered.

Siddhartha made an effort to listen better.  The image of his father,
his own image, the image of his son merged, Kamala's image also appeared
and was dispersed, and the image of Govinda, and other images, and they
merged with each other, turned all into the river, headed all, being the
river, for the goal, longing, desiring, suffering, and the river's voice
sounded full of yearning, full of burning woe, full of unsatisfiable
desire.  For the goal, the river was heading, Siddhartha saw it
hurrying, the river, which consisted of him and his loved ones and of
all people, he had ever seen, all of these waves and waters were
hurrying, suffering, towards goals, many goals, the waterfall, the lake,
the rapids, the sea, and all goals were reached, and every goal was
followed by a new one, and the water turned into vapour and rose to the
sky, turned into rain and poured down from the sky, turned into a
source, a stream, a river, headed forward once again, flowed on once
again.  But the longing voice had changed.  It still resounded, full of
suffering, searching, but other voices joined it, voices of joy and of
suffering, good and bad voices, laughing and sad ones, a hundred voices,
a thousand voices.

Siddhartha listened.  He was now nothing but a listener, completely
concentrated on listening, completely empty, he felt, that he had now
finished learning to listen.  Often before, he had heard all this, these
many voices in the river, today it sounded new.  Already, he could no
longer tell the many voices apart, not the happy ones from the weeping
ones, not the ones of children from those of men, they all belonged
together, the lamentation of yearning and the laughter of the
knowledgeable one, the scream of rage and the moaning of the dying ones,
everything was one, everything was intertwined and connected, entangled
a thousand times.  And everything together, all voices, all goals, all
yearning, all suffering, all pleasure, all that was good and evil, all
of this together was the world.  All of it together was the flow of
events, was the music of life.  And when Siddhartha was listening
attentively to this river, this song of a thousand voices, when he
neither listened to the suffering nor the laughter, when he did not tie
his soul to any particular voice and submerged his self into it, but
when he heard them all, perceived the whole, the oneness, then the great
song of the thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was Om:
the perfection.

"Do you hear," Vasudeva's gaze asked again.

Brightly, Vasudeva's smile was shining, floating radiantly over all the
wrinkles of his old face, as the Om was floating in the air over all the
voices of the river.  Brightly his smile was shining, when he looked at
his friend, and brightly the same smile was now starting to shine on
Siddhartha's face as well.  His wound blossomed, his suffering was
shining, his self had flown into the oneness.

In this hour, Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate, stopped suffering.
On his face flourished the cheerfulness of a knowledge, which is no
longer opposed by any will, which knows perfection, which is in
agreement with the flow of events, with the current of life, full of
sympathy for the pain of others, full of sympathy for the pleasure of
others, devoted to the flow, belonging to the oneness.

When Vasudeva rose from the seat by the bank, when he looked into
Siddhartha's eyes and saw the cheerfulness of the knowledge shining
in them, he softly touched his shoulder with his hand, in this careful
and tender manner, and said:  "I've been waiting for this hour, my dear.
Now that it has come, let me leave.  For a long time, I've been waiting
for this hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman.  Now
it's enough.  Farewell, hut, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!"

Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell.

"I've known it," he said quietly.  "You'll go into the forests?"

"I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke Vasudeva
with a bright smile.

With a bright smile, he left; Siddhartha watched him leaving.  With deep
joy, with deep solemnity he watched him leave, saw his steps full of
peace, saw his head full of lustre, saw his body full of light.




GOVINDA

Together with other monks, Govinda used to spend the time of rest
between pilgrimages in the pleasure-grove, which the courtesan Kamala
had given to the followers of Gotama for a gift.  He heard talk of an
old ferryman, who lived one day's journey away by the river, and
who was regarded as a wise man by many.  When Govinda went back on his
way, he chose the path to the ferry, eager to see the ferryman.
Because, though he had lived his entire life by the rules, though he was
also looked upon with veneration by the younger monks on account of his
age and his modesty, the restlessness and the searching still had not
perished from his heart.

He came to the river and asked the old man to ferry him over, and when
they got off the boat on the other side, he said to the old man:
"You're very good to us monks and pilgrims, you have already ferried
many of us across the river.  Aren't you too, ferryman, a searcher for
the right path?"

Quoth Siddhartha, smiling from his old eyes:  "Do you call yourself a
searcher, oh venerable one, though you are already of an old in years
and are wearing the robe of Gotama's monks?"

"It's true, I'm old," spoke Govinda, "but I haven't stopped searching.
Never I'll stop searching, this seems to be my destiny.  You too, so it
seems to me, have been searching.  Would you like to tell me something,
oh honourable one?"

Quoth Siddhartha:  "What should I possibly have to tell you, oh
venerable one?  Perhaps that you're searching far too much?  That in all
that searching, you don't find the time for finding?"

"How come?" asked Govinda.

"When someone is searching," said Siddhartha, "then it might easily
happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that what he searches
for, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his mind,
because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search,
because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by the goal.  Searching
means: having a goal.  But finding means: being free, being open, having
no goal.  You, oh venerable one, are perhaps indeed a searcher, because,
striving for your goal, there are many things you don't see, which are
directly in front of your eyes."

"I don't quite understand yet," asked Govinda, "what do you mean by
this?"

Quoth Siddhartha:  "A long time ago, oh venerable one, many years ago,
you've once before been at this river and have found a sleeping man by
the river, and have sat down with him to guard his sleep.  But, oh
Govinda, you did not recognise the sleeping man."

Astonished, as if he had been the object of a magic spell, the monk
looked into the ferryman's eyes.

"Are you Siddhartha?" he asked with a timid voice.  "I wouldn't have
recognised you this time as well!  From my heart, I'm greeting you,
Siddhartha; from my heart, I'm happy to see you once again!  You've
changed a lot, my friend.--And so you've now become a ferryman?"

In a friendly manner, Siddhartha laughed.  "A ferryman, yes.  Many
people, Govinda, have to change a lot, have to wear many a robe, I am
one of those, my dear.  Be welcome, Govinda, and spend the night in my
hut."

Govinda stayed the night in the hut and slept on the bed which used to
be Vasudeva's bed.  Many questions he posed to the friend of his youth,
many things Siddhartha had to tell him from his life.

When in the next morning the time had come to start the day's journey,
Govinda said, not without hesitation, these words:  "Before I'll
continue on my path, Siddhartha, permit me to ask one more question.
Do you have a teaching?  Do you have a faith, or a knowledge, you
follow, which helps you to live and to do right?"

Quoth Siddhartha:  "You know, my dear, that I already as a young man, in
those days when we lived with the penitents in the forest, started to
distrust teachers and teachings and to turn my back to them.  I have
stuck with this.  Nevertheless, I have had many teachers since then.  A
beautiful courtesan has been my teacher for a long time, and a rich
merchant was my teacher, and some gamblers with dice.  Once, even a
follower of Buddha, travelling on foot, has been my teacher; he sat with
me when I had fallen asleep in the forest, on the pilgrimage.  I've also
learned from him, I'm also grateful to him, very grateful.  But most of
all, I have learned here from this river and from my predecessor, the
ferryman Vasudeva.  He was a very simple person, Vasudeva, he was no
thinker, but he knew what is necessary just as well as Gotama, he was a
perfect man, a saint."

Govinda said:  "Still, oh Siddhartha, you love a bit to mock people, as
it seems to me.  I believe in you and know that you haven't followed a
teacher.  But haven't you found something by yourself, though you've
found no teachings, you still found certain thoughts, certain insights,
which are your own and which help you to live?  If you would like to
tell me some of these, you would delight my heart."

Quoth Siddhartha:  "I've had thoughts, yes, and insight, again and
again.  Sometimes, for an hour or for an entire day, I have felt
knowledge in me, as one would feel life in one's heart.  There have
been many thoughts, but it would be hard for me to convey them to you.
Look, my dear Govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which I have found:
wisdom cannot be passed on.  Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on
to someone always sounds like foolishness."

"Are you kidding?" asked Govinda.

"I'm not kidding.  I'm telling you what I've found.  Knowledge can be
conveyed, but not wisdom.  It can be found, it can be lived, it is
possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it
cannot be expressed in words and taught.  This was what I, even as a
young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the
teachers.  I have found a thought, Govinda, which you'll again regard as
a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought.  It says:  The
opposite of every truth is just as true!  That's like this: any truth
can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided.
Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with
words, it's all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness,
roundness, oneness.  When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of
the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception
and truth, into suffering and salvation.  It cannot be done differently,
there is no other way for him who wants to teach.  But the world itself,
what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided.  A person or
an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never
entirely holy or entirely sinful.  It does really seem like this,
because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real.
Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this often and often
again.  And if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between
the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between
evil and good, is also a deception."

"How come?" asked Govinda timidly.

"Listen well, my dear, listen well!  The sinner, which I am and which
you are, is a sinner, but in times to come he will be Brahma again, he
will reach the Nirvana, will be Buddha--and now see: these 'times to
come' are a deception, are only a parable!  The sinner is not on his
way to become a Buddha, he is not in the process of developing, though
our capacity for thinking does not know how else to picture these
things.  No, within the sinner is now and today already the future
Buddha, his future is already all there, you have to worship in him, in
you, in everyone the Buddha which is coming into being, the possible,
the hidden Buddha.  The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or
on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment,
all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small
children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already
have death, all dying people the eternal life.  It is not possible for
any person to see how far another one has already progressed on his
path; in the robber and dice-gambler, the Buddha is waiting; in the
Brahman, the robber is waiting.  In deep meditation, there is the
possibility to put time out of existence, to see all life which was,
is, and will be as if it was simultaneous, and there everything is
good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman.  Therefore, I see
whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness,
wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only
requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be
good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever
harm me.  I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I needed sin
very much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed
the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all
resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop
comparing it to some world I wished, I imagined, some kind of perfection
I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to enjoy
being a part of it.--These, oh Govinda, are some of the thoughts which
have come into my mind."

Siddhartha bent down, picked up a stone from the ground, and weighed it
in his hand.

"This here," he said playing with it, "is a stone, and will, after a
certain time, perhaps turn into soil, and will turn from soil into a
plant or animal or human being.  In the past, I would have said:  This
stone is just a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of the
Maja; but because it might be able to become also a human being and a
spirit in the cycle of transformations, therefore I also grant it
importance.  Thus, I would perhaps have thought in the past.  But today
I think: this stone is a stone, it is also animal, it is also god, it is
also Buddha, I do not venerate and love it because it could turn into
this or that, but rather because it is already and always everything--
and it is this very fact, that it is a stone, that it appears to me now
and today as a stone, this is why I love it and see worth and purpose in
each of its veins and cavities, in the yellow, in the gray, in the
hardness, in the sound it makes when I knock at it, in the dryness or
wetness of its surface.  There are stones which feel like oil or soap,
and others like leaves, others like sand, and every one is special and
prays the Om in its own way, each one is Brahman, but simultaneously and
just as much it is a stone, is oily or juicy, and this is this very fact
which I like and regard as wonderful and worthy of worship.--But let me
speak no more of this.  The words are not good for the secret meaning,
everything always becomes a bit different, as soon as it is put into
words, gets distorted a bit, a bit silly--yes, and this is also very
good, and I like it a lot, I also very much agree with this, that this
what is one man's treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to
another person."

Govinda listened silently.

"Why have you told me this about the stone?" he asked hesitantly after
a pause.

"I did it without any specific intention.  Or perhaps what I meant was,
that love this very stone, and the river, and all these things we are
looking at and from which we can learn.  I can love a stone, Govinda,
and also a tree or a piece of bark.  This are things, and things can be
loved.  But I cannot love words.  Therefore, teachings are no good for
me, they have no hardness, no softness, no colours, no edges, no smell,
no taste, they have nothing but words.  Perhaps it are these which keep
you from finding peace, perhaps it are the many words.  Because
salvation and virtue as well, Sansara and Nirvana as well, are mere
words, Govinda.  There is no thing which would be Nirvana; there is just
the word Nirvana."

Quoth Govinda:  "Not just a word, my friend, is Nirvana.  It is a
thought."

Siddhartha continued:  "A thought, it might be so.  I must confess to
you, my dear: I don't differentiate much between thoughts and words.
To be honest, I also have no high opinion of thoughts.  I have a better
opinion of things.  Here on this ferry-boat, for instance, a man has
been my predecessor and teacher, a holy man, who has for many years
simply believed in the river, nothing else.  He had noticed that the
river's spoke to him, he learned from it, it educated and taught him,
the river seemed to be a god to him, for many years he did not know that
every wind, every cloud, every bird, every beetle was just as divine and
knows just as much and can teach just as much as the worshipped river.
But when this holy man went into the forests, he knew everything, knew
more than you and me, without teachers, without books, only because he
had believed in the river."

Govinda said:  "But is that what you call `things', actually something
real, something which has existence?  Isn't it just a deception of the
Maja, just an image and illusion?  Your stone, your tree, your river--
are they actually a reality?"

"This too," spoke Siddhartha, "I do not care very much about.  Let the
things be illusions or not, after all I would then also be an illusion,
and thus they are always like me.  This is what makes them so dear and
worthy of veneration for me: they are like me.  Therefore, I can love
them.  And this is now a teaching you will laugh about: love, oh
Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all.  To
thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be
the thing great thinkers do.  But I'm only interested in being able to
love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to
look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great
respect."

"This I understand," spoke Govinda.  "But this very thing was discovered
by the exalted one to be a deception.  He commands benevolence,
clemency, sympathy, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to tie our
heart in love to earthly things."

"I know it," said Siddhartha; his smile shone golden.  "I know it,
Govinda.  And behold, with this we are right in the middle of the
thicket of opinions, in the dispute about words.  For I cannot deny, my
words of love are in a contradiction, a seeming contradiction with
Gotama's words.  For this very reason, I distrust in words so much, for
I know, this contradiction is a deception.  I know that I am in
agreement with Gotama.  How should he not know love, he, who has
discovered all elements of human existence in their transitoriness, in
their meaninglessness, and yet loved people thus much, to use a long,
laborious life only to help them, to teach them!  Even with him, even
with your great teacher, I prefer the thing over the words, place more
importance on his acts and life than on his speeches, more on the
gestures of his hand than his opinions.  Not in his speech, not in his
thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life."

For a long time, the two old men said nothing.  Then spoke Govinda,
while bowing for a farewell:  "I thank you, Siddhartha, for telling me
some of your thoughts.  They are partially strange thoughts, not all
have been instantly understandable to me.  This being as it may, I thank
you, and I wish you to have calm days."

(But secretly he thought to himself:  This Siddhartha is a bizarre
person, he expresses bizarre thoughts, his teachings sound foolish.
So differently sound the exalted one's pure teachings, clearer, purer,
more comprehensible, nothing strange, foolish, or silly is contained in
them.  But different from his thoughts seemed to me Siddhartha's hands
and feet, his eyes, his forehead, his breath, his smile, his greeting,
his walk.  Never again, after our exalted Gotama has become one with the
Nirvana, never since then have I met a person of whom I felt: this is a
holy man!  Only him, this Siddhartha, I have found to be like this.  May
his teachings be strange, may his words sound foolish; out of his gaze
and his hand, his skin and his hair, out of every part of him shines a
purity, shines a calmness, shines a cheerfulness and mildness and
holiness, which I have seen in no other person since the final death of
our exalted teacher.)

As Govinda thought like this, and there was a conflict in his heart, he
once again bowed to Siddhartha, drawn by love.  Deeply he bowed to him
who was calmly sitting.

"Siddhartha," he spoke, "we have become old men.  It is unlikely for
one of us to see the other again in this incarnation.  I see, beloved,
that you have found peace.  I confess that I haven't found it.  Tell me,
oh honourable one, one more word, give me something on my way which I
can grasp, which I can understand!  Give me something to be with me on
my path.  It is often hard, my path, often dark, Siddhartha."

Siddhartha said nothing and looked at him with the ever unchanged,
quiet smile.  Govinda stared at his face, with fear, with yearning,
suffering, and the eternal search was visible in his look, eternal
not-finding.

Siddhartha saw it and smiled.

"Bend down to me!" he whispered quietly in Govinda's ear.  "Bend down to
me!  Like this, even closer!  Very close!  Kiss my forehead, Govinda!"

But while Govinda with astonishment, and yet drawn by great love and
expectation, obeyed his words, bent down closely to him and touched his
forehead with his lips, something miraculous happened to him.  While his
thoughts were still dwelling on Siddhartha's wondrous words, while he
was still struggling in vain and with reluctance to think away time, to
imagine Nirvana and Sansara as one, while even a certain contempt for
the words of his friend was fighting in him against an immense love and
veneration, this happened to him:

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw
other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of
hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all
seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and
renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha.  He saw the
face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the
face of a dying fish, with fading eyes--he saw the face of a new-born
child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying--he saw the face
of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another
person--he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling
and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his
sword--he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps
of frenzied love--he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void--
he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of
bulls, of birds--he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni--he saw all of these
figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one
helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth
to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of
transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed,
was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time
having passed between the one and the other face--and all of these
figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along
and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by
something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like
a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of
water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling
face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips.
And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of
oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above
the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely
the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate,
impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold
smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great
respect a hundred times.  Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones
are smiling.

Not knowing any more whether time existed, whether the vision had lasted
a second or a hundred years, not knowing any more whether there existed
a Siddhartha, a Gotama, a me and a you, feeling in his innermost self
as if he had been wounded by a divine arrow, the injury of which tasted
sweet, being enchanted and dissolved in his innermost self, Govinda
still stood for a little while bent over Siddhartha's quiet face, which
he had just kissed, which had just been the scene of all manifestations,
all transformations, all existence.  The face was unchanged, after under
its surface the depth of the thousandfoldness had closed up again, he
smiled silently, smiled quietly and softly, perhaps very benevolently,
perhaps very mockingly, precisely as he used to smile, the exalted one.

Deeply, Govinda bowed; tears he knew nothing of, ran down his old face;
like a fire burnt the feeling of the most intimate love, the humblest
veneration in his heart.  Deeply, he bowed, touching the ground, before
him who was sitting motionlessly, whose smile reminded him of everything
he had ever loved in his life, what had ever been valuable and holy to
him in his life.





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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dubliners, by James Joyce

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use
it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Dubliners

Author: James Joyce

Release Date: September, 2001 [EBook #2814]
Last Updated: March 9, 2017

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUBLINERS ***




Produced by David Reed, Karol Pietrzak, and David Widger







DUBLINERS


By James Joyce





Contents

The Sisters

An Encounter

Araby

Eveline

After the Race

Two Gallants

The Boarding House

A Little Cloud

Couterparts

Clay

A Painful Case

Ivy Day in the Committee Room

A Mother

Grace

The Dead





DUBLINERS






THE SISTERS

There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night
after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied
the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it
lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought,
I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew
that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said
to me: “I am not long for this world,” and I had thought his words
idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the
window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded
strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word
simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some
maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to
be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.

Old Cotter was sitting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs
to supper. While my aunt was ladling out my stirabout he said, as if
returning to some former remark of his:

“No, I wouldn’t say he was exactly ... but there was something
queer ... there was something uncanny about him. I’ll tell you my
opinion....”

He began to puff at his pipe, no doubt arranging his opinion in his
mind. Tiresome old fool! When we knew him first he used to be rather
interesting, talking of faints and worms; but I soon grew tired of him
and his endless stories about the distillery.

“I have my own theory about it,” he said. “I think it was one of
those ... peculiar cases.... But it’s hard to say....”

He began to puff again at his pipe without giving us his theory. My
uncle saw me staring and said to me:

“Well, so your old friend is gone, you’ll be sorry to hear.”

“Who?” said I.

“Father Flynn.”

“Is he dead?”

“Mr Cotter here has just told us. He was passing by the house.”

I knew that I was under observation so I continued eating as if the news
had not interested me. My uncle explained to old Cotter.

“The youngster and he were great friends. The old chap taught him a
great deal, mind you; and they say he had a great wish for him.”

“God have mercy on his soul,” said my aunt piously.

Old Cotter looked at me for a while. I felt that his little beady black
eyes were examining me but I would not satisfy him by looking up from my
plate. He returned to his pipe and finally spat rudely into the grate.

“I wouldn’t like children of mine,” he said, “to have too much
to say to a man like that.”

“How do you mean, Mr Cotter?” asked my aunt.

“What I mean is,” said old Cotter, “it’s bad for children. My
idea is: let a young lad run about and play with young lads of his own
age and not be.... Am I right, Jack?”

“That’s my principle, too,” said my uncle. “Let him learn to box
his corner. That’s what I’m always saying to that Rosicrucian there:
take exercise. Why, when I was a nipper every morning of my life I had
a cold bath, winter and summer. And that’s what stands to me now.
Education is all very fine and large.... Mr Cotter might take a pick of
that leg mutton,” he added to my aunt.

“No, no, not for me,” said old Cotter.

My aunt brought the dish from the safe and put it on the table.

“But why do you think it’s not good for children, Mr Cotter?” she
asked.

“It’s bad for children,” said old Cotter, “because their minds
are so impressionable. When children see things like that, you know, it
has an effect....”

I crammed my mouth with stirabout for fear I might give utterance to my
anger. Tiresome old red-nosed imbecile!

It was late when I fell asleep. Though I was angry with old Cotter for
alluding to me as a child, I puzzled my head to extract meaning from his
unfinished sentences. In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw again
the heavy grey face of the paralytic. I drew the blankets over my head
and tried to think of Christmas. But the grey face still followed me. It
murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something. I felt
my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region; and there again
I found it waiting for me. It began to confess to me in a murmuring
voice and I wondered why it smiled continually and why the lips were so
moist with spittle. But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis
and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac
of his sin.

The next morning after breakfast I went down to look at the little house
in Great Britain Street. It was an unassuming shop, registered under
the vague name of Drapery. The drapery consisted mainly of children’s
bootees and umbrellas; and on ordinary days a notice used to hang in the
window, saying: Umbrellas Re-covered. No notice was visible now for
the shutters were up. A crape bouquet was tied to the door-knocker with
ribbon. Two poor women and a telegram boy were reading the card pinned
on the crape. I also approached and read:

July 1st, 1895 The Rev. James Flynn (formerly of S. Catherine’s
Church, Meath Street), aged sixty-five years. R. I. P.

The reading of the card persuaded me that he was dead and I was
disturbed to find myself at check. Had he not been dead I would have
gone into the little dark room behind the shop to find him sitting in
his arm-chair by the fire, nearly smothered in his great-coat. Perhaps
my aunt would have given me a packet of High Toast for him and this
present would have roused him from his stupefied doze. It was always I
who emptied the packet into his black snuff-box for his hands trembled
too much to allow him to do this without spilling half the snuff about
the floor. Even as he raised his large trembling hand to his nose little
clouds of smoke dribbled through his fingers over the front of his coat.
It may have been these constant showers of snuff which gave his ancient
priestly garments their green faded look for the red handkerchief,
blackened, as it always was, with the snuff-stains of a week, with which
he tried to brush away the fallen grains, was quite inefficacious.

I wished to go in and look at him but I had not the courage to knock. I
walked away slowly along the sunny side of the street, reading all the
theatrical advertisements in the shop-windows as I went. I found it
strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt
even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had
been freed from something by his death. I wondered at this for, as my
uncle had said the night before, he had taught me a great deal. He had
studied in the Irish college in Rome and he had taught me to pronounce
Latin properly. He had told me stories about the catacombs and about
Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of the
different ceremonies of the Mass and of the different vestments worn
by the priest. Sometimes he had amused himself by putting difficult
questions to me, asking me what one should do in certain circumstances
or whether such and such sins were mortal or venial or only
imperfections. His questions showed me how complex and mysterious were
certain institutions of the Church which I had always regarded as
the simplest acts. The duties of the priest towards the Eucharist and
towards the secrecy of the confessional seemed so grave to me that I
wondered how anybody had ever found in himself the courage to undertake
them; and I was not surprised when he told me that the fathers of the
Church had written books as thick as the Post Office Directory and as
closely printed as the law notices in the newspaper, elucidating all
these intricate questions. Often when I thought of this I could make
no answer or only a very foolish and halting one upon which he used
to smile and nod his head twice or thrice. Sometimes he used to put me
through the responses of the Mass which he had made me learn by heart;
and, as I pattered, he used to smile pensively and nod his head, now and
then pushing huge pinches of snuff up each nostril alternately. When he
smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his tongue
lie upon his lower lip—a habit which had made me feel uneasy in the
beginning of our acquaintance before I knew him well.

As I walked along in the sun I remembered old Cotter’s words and tried
to remember what had happened afterwards in the dream. I remembered
that I had noticed long velvet curtains and a swinging lamp of antique
fashion. I felt that I had been very far away, in some land where the
customs were strange—in Persia, I thought.... But I could not remember
the end of the dream.

In the evening my aunt took me with her to visit the house of mourning.
It was after sunset; but the window-panes of the houses that looked
to the west reflected the tawny gold of a great bank of clouds. Nannie
received us in the hall; and, as it would have been unseemly to have
shouted at her, my aunt shook hands with her for all. The old woman
pointed upwards interrogatively and, on my aunt’s nodding, proceeded
to toil up the narrow staircase before us, her bowed head being scarcely
above the level of the banister-rail. At the first landing she stopped
and beckoned us forward encouragingly towards the open door of the
dead-room. My aunt went in and the old woman, seeing that I hesitated to
enter, began to beckon to me again repeatedly with her hand.

I went in on tiptoe. The room through the lace end of the blind was
suffused with dusky golden light amid which the candles looked like pale
thin flames. He had been coffined. Nannie gave the lead and we three
knelt down at the foot of the bed. I pretended to pray but I could not
gather my thoughts because the old woman’s mutterings distracted me. I
noticed how clumsily her skirt was hooked at the back and how the heels
of her cloth boots were trodden down all to one side. The fancy came to
me that the old priest was smiling as he lay there in his coffin.

But no. When we rose and went up to the head of the bed I saw that he
was not smiling. There he lay, solemn and copious, vested as for the
altar, his large hands loosely retaining a chalice. His face was very
truculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled
by a scanty white fur. There was a heavy odour in the room—the
flowers.

We blessed ourselves and came away. In the little room downstairs we
found Eliza seated in his arm-chair in state. I groped my way towards my
usual chair in the corner while Nannie went to the sideboard and brought
out a decanter of sherry and some wine-glasses. She set these on the
table and invited us to take a little glass of wine. Then, at her
sister’s bidding, she filled out the sherry into the glasses and
passed them to us. She pressed me to take some cream crackers also but I
declined because I thought I would make too much noise eating them. She
seemed to be somewhat disappointed at my refusal and went over quietly
to the sofa where she sat down behind her sister. No one spoke: we all
gazed at the empty fireplace.

My aunt waited until Eliza sighed and then said:

“Ah, well, he’s gone to a better world.”

Eliza sighed again and bowed her head in assent. My aunt fingered the
stem of her wine-glass before sipping a little.

“Did he ... peacefully?” she asked.

“Oh, quite peacefully, ma’am,” said Eliza. “You couldn’t
tell when the breath went out of him. He had a beautiful death, God be
praised.”

“And everything...?”

“Father O’Rourke was in with him a Tuesday and anointed him and
prepared him and all.”

“He knew then?”

“He was quite resigned.”

“He looks quite resigned,” said my aunt.

“That’s what the woman we had in to wash him said. She said he just
looked as if he was asleep, he looked that peaceful and resigned. No one
would think he’d make such a beautiful corpse.”

“Yes, indeed,” said my aunt.

She sipped a little more from her glass and said:

“Well, Miss Flynn, at any rate it must be a great comfort for you to
know that you did all you could for him. You were both very kind to him,
I must say.”

Eliza smoothed her dress over her knees.

“Ah, poor James!” she said. “God knows we done all we could, as
poor as we are—we wouldn’t see him want anything while he was in
it.”

Nannie had leaned her head against the sofa-pillow and seemed about to
fall asleep.

“There’s poor Nannie,” said Eliza, looking at her, “she’s wore
out. All the work we had, she and me, getting in the woman to wash him
and then laying him out and then the coffin and then arranging about
the Mass in the chapel. Only for Father O’Rourke I don’t know what
we’d have done at all. It was him brought us all them flowers and
them two candlesticks out of the chapel and wrote out the notice for the
Freeman’s General and took charge of all the papers for the cemetery
and poor James’s insurance.”

“Wasn’t that good of him?” said my aunt.

Eliza closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.

“Ah, there’s no friends like the old friends,” she said, “when
all is said and done, no friends that a body can trust.”

“Indeed, that’s true,” said my aunt. “And I’m sure now that
he’s gone to his eternal reward he won’t forget you and all your
kindness to him.”

“Ah, poor James!” said Eliza. “He was no great trouble to us. You
wouldn’t hear him in the house any more than now. Still, I know he’s
gone and all to that....”

“It’s when it’s all over that you’ll miss him,” said my aunt.

“I know that,” said Eliza. “I won’t be bringing him in his cup
of beef-tea any more, nor you, ma’am, sending him his snuff. Ah, poor
James!”

She stopped, as if she were communing with the past and then said
shrewdly:

“Mind you, I noticed there was something queer coming over him
latterly. Whenever I’d bring in his soup to him there I’d find him
with his breviary fallen to the floor, lying back in the chair and his
mouth open.”

She laid a finger against her nose and frowned: then she continued:

“But still and all he kept on saying that before the summer was over
he’d go out for a drive one fine day just to see the old house again
where we were all born down in Irishtown and take me and Nannie with
him. If we could only get one of them new-fangled carriages that makes
no noise that Father O’Rourke told him about, them with the rheumatic
wheels, for the day cheap—he said, at Johnny Rush’s over the way
there and drive out the three of us together of a Sunday evening. He had
his mind set on that.... Poor James!”

“The Lord have mercy on his soul!” said my aunt.

Eliza took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes with it. Then she put
it back again in her pocket and gazed into the empty grate for some time
without speaking.

“He was too scrupulous always,” she said. “The duties of the
priesthood was too much for him. And then his life was, you might say,
crossed.”

“Yes,” said my aunt. “He was a disappointed man. You could see
that.”

A silence took possession of the little room and, under cover of it, I
approached the table and tasted my sherry and then returned quietly to
my chair in the corner. Eliza seemed to have fallen into a deep revery.
We waited respectfully for her to break the silence: and after a long
pause she said slowly:

“It was that chalice he broke.... That was the beginning of it. Of
course, they say it was all right, that it contained nothing, I mean.
But still.... They say it was the boy’s fault. But poor James was so
nervous, God be merciful to him!”

“And was that it?” said my aunt. “I heard something....”

Eliza nodded.

“That affected his mind,” she said. “After that he began to mope
by himself, talking to no one and wandering about by himself. So one
night he was wanted for to go on a call and they couldn’t find him
anywhere. They looked high up and low down; and still they couldn’t
see a sight of him anywhere. So then the clerk suggested to try the
chapel. So then they got the keys and opened the chapel and the clerk
and Father O’Rourke and another priest that was there brought in a
light for to look for him.... And what do you think but there he was,
sitting up by himself in the dark in his confession-box, wide-awake and
laughing-like softly to himself?”

She stopped suddenly as if to listen. I too listened; but there was no
sound in the house: and I knew that the old priest was lying still in
his coffin as we had seen him, solemn and truculent in death, an idle
chalice on his breast.

Eliza resumed:

“Wide-awake and laughing-like to himself.... So then, of course, when
they saw that, that made them think that there was something gone wrong
with him....”






AN ENCOUNTER

It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little
library made up of old numbers of The Union Jack, Pluck and The
Halfpenny Marvel. Every evening after school we met in his back garden
and arranged Indian battles. He and his fat young brother Leo, the
idler, held the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by storm;
or we fought a pitched battle on the grass. But, however well we fought,
we never won siege or battle and all our bouts ended with Joe Dillon’s
war dance of victory. His parents went to eight-o’clock mass every
morning in Gardiner Street and the peaceful odour of Mrs Dillon was
prevalent in the hall of the house. But he played too fiercely for us
who were younger and more timid. He looked like some kind of an Indian
when he capered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head, beating a
tin with his fist and yelling:

“Ya! yaka, yaka, yaka!”

Everyone was incredulous when it was reported that he had a vocation for
the priesthood. Nevertheless it was true.

A spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its
influence, differences of culture and constitution were waived. We
banded ourselves together, some boldly, some in jest and some almost in
fear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctant Indians who
were afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness, I was one. The
adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from
my nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape. I liked better
some American detective stories which were traversed from time to time
by unkempt fierce and beautiful girls. Though there was nothing wrong
in these stories and though their intention was sometimes literary
they were circulated secretly at school. One day when Father Butler was
hearing the four pages of Roman History clumsy Leo Dillon was discovered
with a copy of The Halfpenny Marvel.

“This page or this page? This page? Now, Dillon, up! ‘Hardly had the
day’.... Go on! What day? ‘Hardly had the day dawned’.... Have you
studied it? What have you there in your pocket?”

Everyone’s heart palpitated as Leo Dillon handed up the paper and
everyone assumed an innocent face. Father Butler turned over the pages,
frowning.

“What is this rubbish?” he said. “The Apache Chief! Is this what
you read instead of studying your Roman History? Let me not find any
more of this wretched stuff in this college. The man who wrote it, I
suppose, was some wretched fellow who writes these things for a drink.
I’m surprised at boys like you, educated, reading such stuff. I could
understand it if you were ... National School boys. Now, Dillon, I
advise you strongly, get at your work or....”

This rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of
the Wild West for me and the confused puffy face of Leo Dillon awakened
one of my consciences. But when the restraining influence of the school
was at a distance I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the
escape which those chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me. The
mimic warfare of the evening became at last as wearisome to me as the
routine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to
happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to
people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.

The summer holidays were near at hand when I made up my mind to break
out of the weariness of school-life for one day at least. With Leo
Dillon and a boy named Mahony I planned a day’s miching. Each of us
saved up sixpence. We were to meet at ten in the morning on the Canal
Bridge. Mahony’s big sister was to write an excuse for him and Leo
Dillon was to tell his brother to say he was sick. We arranged to go
along the Wharf Road until we came to the ships, then to cross in the
ferryboat and walk out to see the Pigeon House. Leo Dillon was afraid
we might meet Father Butler or someone out of the college; but Mahony
asked, very sensibly, what would Father Butler be doing out at the
Pigeon House. We were reassured: and I brought the first stage of the
plot to an end by collecting sixpence from the other two, at the
same time showing them my own sixpence. When we were making the last
arrangements on the eve we were all vaguely excited. We shook hands,
laughing, and Mahony said:

“Till tomorrow, mates!”

That night I slept badly. In the morning I was first-comer to the bridge
as I lived nearest. I hid my books in the long grass near the ashpit at
the end of the garden where nobody ever came and hurried along the canal
bank. It was a mild sunny morning in the first week of June. I sat up
on the coping of the bridge admiring my frail canvas shoes which I had
diligently pipeclayed overnight and watching the docile horses pulling
a tramload of business people up the hill. All the branches of the tall
trees which lined the mall were gay with little light green leaves and
the sunlight slanted through them on to the water. The granite stone of
the bridge was beginning to be warm and I began to pat it with my hands
in time to an air in my head. I was very happy.

When I had been sitting there for five or ten minutes I saw Mahony’s
grey suit approaching. He came up the hill, smiling, and clambered
up beside me on the bridge. While we were waiting he brought out
the catapult which bulged from his inner pocket and explained some
improvements which he had made in it. I asked him why he had brought it
and he told me he had brought it to have some gas with the birds. Mahony
used slang freely, and spoke of Father Butler as Old Bunser. We waited
on for a quarter of an hour more but still there was no sign of Leo
Dillon. Mahony, at last, jumped down and said:

“Come along. I knew Fatty’d funk it.”

“And his sixpence...?” I said.

“That’s forfeit,” said Mahony. “And so much the better for
us—a bob and a tanner instead of a bob.”

We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol Works
and then turned to the right along the Wharf Road. Mahony began to play
the Indian as soon as we were out of public sight. He chased a crowd
of ragged girls, brandishing his unloaded catapult and, when two ragged
boys began, out of chivalry, to fling stones at us, he proposed that we
should charge them. I objected that the boys were too small and so
we walked on, the ragged troop screaming after us: “Swaddlers!
Swaddlers!” thinking that we were Protestants because Mahony, who was
dark-complexioned, wore the silver badge of a cricket club in his cap.
When we came to the Smoothing Iron we arranged a siege; but it was a
failure because you must have at least three. We revenged ourselves on
Leo Dillon by saying what a funk he was and guessing how many he would
get at three o’clock from Mr Ryan.

We came then near the river. We spent a long time walking about the
noisy streets flanked by high stone walls, watching the working of
cranes and engines and often being shouted at for our immobility by the
drivers of groaning carts. It was noon when we reached the quays and, as
all the labourers seemed to be eating their lunches, we bought two big
currant buns and sat down to eat them on some metal piping beside
the river. We pleased ourselves with the spectacle of Dublin’s
commerce—the barges signalled from far away by their curls of
woolly smoke, the brown fishing fleet beyond Ringsend, the big white
sailing-vessel which was being discharged on the opposite quay. Mahony
said it would be right skit to run away to sea on one of those big ships
and even I, looking at the high masts, saw, or imagined, the geography
which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradually taking substance
under my eyes. School and home seemed to recede from us and their
influences upon us seemed to wane.

We crossed the Liffey in the ferryboat, paying our toll to be
transported in the company of two labourers and a little Jew with a bag.
We were serious to the point of solemnity, but once during the short
voyage our eyes met and we laughed. When we landed we watched the
discharging of the graceful threemaster which we had observed from the
other quay. Some bystander said that she was a Norwegian vessel. I went
to the stern and tried to decipher the legend upon it but, failing to do
so, I came back and examined the foreign sailors to see had any of them
green eyes for I had some confused notion.... The sailors’ eyes were
blue and grey and even black. The only sailor whose eyes could have been
called green was a tall man who amused the crowd on the quay by calling
out cheerfully every time the planks fell:

“All right! All right!”

When we were tired of this sight we wandered slowly into Ringsend. The
day had grown sultry, and in the windows of the grocers’ shops musty
biscuits lay bleaching. We bought some biscuits and chocolate which
we ate sedulously as we wandered through the squalid streets where the
families of the fishermen live. We could find no dairy and so we went
into a huckster’s shop and bought a bottle of raspberry lemonade each.
Refreshed by this, Mahony chased a cat down a lane, but the cat escaped
into a wide field. We both felt rather tired and when we reached the
field we made at once for a sloping bank over the ridge of which we
could see the Dodder.

It was too late and we were too tired to carry out our project of
visiting the Pigeon House. We had to be home before four o’clock lest
our adventure should be discovered. Mahony looked regretfully at his
catapult and I had to suggest going home by train before he regained
any cheerfulness. The sun went in behind some clouds and left us to our
jaded thoughts and the crumbs of our provisions.

There was nobody but ourselves in the field. When we had lain on the
bank for some time without speaking I saw a man approaching from the far
end of the field. I watched him lazily as I chewed one of those green
stems on which girls tell fortunes. He came along by the bank slowly. He
walked with one hand upon his hip and in the other hand he held a stick
with which he tapped the turf lightly. He was shabbily dressed in a suit
of greenish-black and wore what we used to call a jerry hat with a high
crown. He seemed to be fairly old for his moustache was ashen-grey. When
he passed at our feet he glanced up at us quickly and then continued his
way. We followed him with our eyes and saw that when he had gone on for
perhaps fifty paces he turned about and began to retrace his steps. He
walked towards us very slowly, always tapping the ground with his stick,
so slowly that I thought he was looking for something in the grass.

He stopped when he came level with us and bade us good-day. We answered
him and he sat down beside us on the slope slowly and with great care.
He began to talk of the weather, saying that it would be a very hot
summer and adding that the seasons had changed greatly since he was a
boy—a long time ago. He said that the happiest time of one’s life
was undoubtedly one’s schoolboy days and that he would give anything
to be young again. While he expressed these sentiments which bored us a
little we kept silent. Then he began to talk of school and of books. He
asked us whether we had read the poetry of Thomas Moore or the works of
Sir Walter Scott and Lord Lytton. I pretended that I had read every book
he mentioned so that in the end he said:

“Ah, I can see you are a bookworm like myself. Now,” he added,
pointing to Mahony who was regarding us with open eyes, “he is
different; he goes in for games.”

He said he had all Sir Walter Scott’s works and all Lord Lytton’s
works at home and never tired of reading them. “Of course,” he
said, “there were some of Lord Lytton’s works which boys couldn’t
read.” Mahony asked why couldn’t boys read them—a question which
agitated and pained me because I was afraid the man would think I was as
stupid as Mahony. The man, however, only smiled. I saw that he had great
gaps in his mouth between his yellow teeth. Then he asked us which of
us had the most sweethearts. Mahony mentioned lightly that he had three
totties. The man asked me how many had I. I answered that I had none. He
did not believe me and said he was sure I must have one. I was silent.

“Tell us,” said Mahony pertly to the man, “how many have you
yourself?”

The man smiled as before and said that when he was our age he had lots
of sweethearts.

“Every boy,” he said, “has a little sweetheart.”

His attitude on this point struck me as strangely liberal in a man
of his age. In my heart I thought that what he said about boys and
sweethearts was reasonable. But I disliked the words in his mouth and I
wondered why he shivered once or twice as if he feared something or felt
a sudden chill. As he proceeded I noticed that his accent was good. He
began to speak to us about girls, saying what nice soft hair they had
and how soft their hands were and how all girls were not so good as they
seemed to be if one only knew. There was nothing he liked, he said, so
much as looking at a nice young girl, at her nice white hands and her
beautiful soft hair. He gave me the impression that he was repeating
something which he had learned by heart or that, magnetised by some
words of his own speech, his mind was slowly circling round and round in
the same orbit. At times he spoke as if he were simply alluding to some
fact that everybody knew, and at times he lowered his voice and spoke
mysteriously as if he were telling us something secret which he did not
wish others to overhear. He repeated his phrases over and over again,
varying them and surrounding them with his monotonous voice. I continued
to gaze towards the foot of the slope, listening to him.

After a long while his monologue paused. He stood up slowly, saying
that he had to leave us for a minute or so, a few minutes, and, without
changing the direction of my gaze, I saw him walking slowly away from us
towards the near end of the field. We remained silent when he had gone.
After a silence of a few minutes I heard Mahony exclaim:

“I say! Look what he’s doing!”

As I neither answered nor raised my eyes Mahony exclaimed again:

“I say.... He’s a queer old josser!”

“In case he asks us for our names,” I said, “let you be Murphy and
I’ll be Smith.”

We said nothing further to each other. I was still considering whether
I would go away or not when the man came back and sat down beside us
again. Hardly had he sat down when Mahony, catching sight of the cat
which had escaped him, sprang up and pursued her across the field. The
man and I watched the chase. The cat escaped once more and Mahony began
to throw stones at the wall she had escaladed. Desisting from this, he
began to wander about the far end of the field, aimlessly.

After an interval the man spoke to me. He said that my friend was a very
rough boy and asked did he get whipped often at school. I was going to
reply indignantly that we were not National School boys to be whipped,
as he called it; but I remained silent. He began to speak on the subject
of chastising boys. His mind, as if magnetised again by his speech,
seemed to circle slowly round and round its new centre. He said that
when boys were that kind they ought to be whipped and well whipped. When
a boy was rough and unruly there was nothing would do him any good but a
good sound whipping. A slap on the hand or a box on the ear was no good:
what he wanted was to get a nice warm whipping. I was surprised at this
sentiment and involuntarily glanced up at his face. As I did so I met
the gaze of a pair of bottle-green eyes peering at me from under a
twitching forehead. I turned my eyes away again.

The man continued his monologue. He seemed to have forgotten his recent
liberalism. He said that if ever he found a boy talking to girls or
having a girl for a sweetheart he would whip him and whip him; and that
would teach him not to be talking to girls. And if a boy had a girl
for a sweetheart and told lies about it then he would give him such
a whipping as no boy ever got in this world. He said that there was
nothing in this world he would like so well as that. He described to
me how he would whip such a boy as if he were unfolding some elaborate
mystery. He would love that, he said, better than anything in this
world; and his voice, as he led me monotonously through the mystery,
grew almost affectionate and seemed to plead with me that I should
understand him.

I waited till his monologue paused again. Then I stood up abruptly. Lest
I should betray my agitation I delayed a few moments pretending to fix
my shoe properly and then, saying that I was obliged to go, I bade him
good-day. I went up the slope calmly but my heart was beating quickly
with fear that he would seize me by the ankles. When I reached the top
of the slope I turned round and, without looking at him, called loudly
across the field:

“Murphy!”

My voice had an accent of forced bravery in it and I was ashamed of my
paltry stratagem. I had to call the name again before Mahony saw me
and hallooed in answer. How my heart beat as he came running across the
field to me! He ran as if to bring me aid. And I was penitent; for in my
heart I had always despised him a little.






ARABY

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at
the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An
uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from
its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street,
conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown
imperturbable faces.

The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back
drawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all
the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old
useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages
of which were curled and damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout
Communicant and The Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its
leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central
apple-tree and a few straggling bushes under one of which I found
the late tenant’s rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable
priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the
furniture of his house to his sister.

When the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten
our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The
space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards
it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air
stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the
silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy
lanes behind the houses where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes
from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where
odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a
coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled
harness. When we returned to the street light from the kitchen windows
had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner we hid in
the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan’s sister
came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea we watched
her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see
whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our
shadow and walked up to Mangan’s steps resignedly. She was waiting
for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door. Her
brother always teased her before he obeyed and I stood by the railings
looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope
of her hair tossed from side to side.

Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door.
The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could
not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran
to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure
always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways
diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning
after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words,
and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On
Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry
some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled
by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers,
the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels
of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a
come-all-you about O’Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in
our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life
for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of
foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and
praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of
tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed
to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did
not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her,
how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like
a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the
wires.

One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had
died. It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house.
Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth,
the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some
distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I
could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves
and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of
my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: “O love! O love!”
many times.

At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was
so confused that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going
to Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid
bazaar, she said; she would love to go.

“And why can’t you?” I asked.

While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist.
She could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week
in her convent. Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their
caps and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes, bowing
her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught
the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and,
falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her
dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she
stood at ease.

“It’s well for you,” she said.

“If I go,” I said, “I will bring you something.”

What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts
after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days.
I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day
in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to
read. The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the
silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over
me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt
was surprised and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered few
questions in class. I watched my master’s face pass from amiability
to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my
wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious
work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed
to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play.

On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the
bazaar in the evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the
hat-brush, and answered me curtly:

“Yes, boy, I know.”

As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at
the window. I left the house in bad humour and walked slowly towards the
school. The air was pitilessly raw and already my heart misgave me.

When I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it was
early. I sat staring at the clock for some time and, when its ticking
began to irritate me, I left the room. I mounted the staircase and
gained the upper part of the house. The high cold empty gloomy rooms
liberated me and I went from room to room singing. From the front window
I saw my companions playing below in the street. Their cries reached me
weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the cool glass,
I looked over at the dark house where she lived. I may have stood
there for an hour, seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my
imagination, touched discreetly by the lamplight at the curved neck, at
the hand upon the railings and at the border below the dress.

When I came downstairs again I found Mrs Mercer sitting at the fire. She
was an old garrulous woman, a pawnbroker’s widow, who collected
used stamps for some pious purpose. I had to endure the gossip of the
tea-table. The meal was prolonged beyond an hour and still my uncle did
not come. Mrs Mercer stood up to go: she was sorry she couldn’t wait
any longer, but it was after eight o’clock and she did not like to be
out late as the night air was bad for her. When she had gone I began to
walk up and down the room, clenching my fists. My aunt said:

“I’m afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our
Lord.”

At nine o’clock I heard my uncle’s latchkey in the halldoor. I
heard him talking to himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had
received the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret these signs. When
he was midway through his dinner I asked him to give me the money to go
to the bazaar. He had forgotten.

“The people are in bed and after their first sleep now,” he said.

I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:

“Can’t you give him the money and let him go? You’ve kept him late
enough as it is.”

My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed
in the old saying: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
He asked me where I was going and, when I had told him a second time he
asked me did I know The Arab’s Farewell to his Steed. When I left
the kitchen he was about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my
aunt.

I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buckingham Street
towards the station. The sight of the streets thronged with buyers and
glaring with gas recalled to me the purpose of my journey. I took my
seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train. After an intolerable
delay the train moved out of the station slowly. It crept onward among
ruinous houses and over the twinkling river. At Westland Row Station
a crowd of people pressed to the carriage doors; but the porters moved
them back, saying that it was a special train for the bazaar. I remained
alone in the bare carriage. In a few minutes the train drew up beside an
improvised wooden platform. I passed out on to the road and saw by the
lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes to ten. In front of me
was a large building which displayed the magical name.

I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar
would be closed, I passed in quickly through a turnstile, handing a
shilling to a weary-looking man. I found myself in a big hall girdled at
half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and the
greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognised a silence like
that which pervades a church after a service. I walked into the centre
of the bazaar timidly. A few people were gathered about the stalls which
were still open. Before a curtain, over which the words Café Chantant
were written in coloured lamps, two men were counting money on a salver.
I listened to the fall of the coins.

Remembering with difficulty why I had come I went over to one of the
stalls and examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the
door of the stall a young lady was talking and laughing with two young
gentlemen. I remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to
their conversation.

“O, I never said such a thing!”

“O, but you did!”

“O, but I didn’t!”

“Didn’t she say that?”

“Yes. I heard her.”

“O, there’s a ... fib!”

Observing me the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy
anything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have
spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars
that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to
the stall and murmured:

“No, thank you.”

The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back to
the two young men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice
the young lady glanced at me over her shoulder.

I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make
my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly
and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to
fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one
end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall
was now completely dark.

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and
derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.






EVELINE

She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head
was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour
of dusty cretonne. She was tired.

Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way
home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and
afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One
time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every
evening with other people’s children. Then a man from Belfast bought
the field and built houses in it—not like their little brown houses
but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue
used to play together in that field—the Devines, the Waters, the
Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters.
Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used
often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but
usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her
father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her
father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was
a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up; her
mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back
to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the
others, to leave her home.

Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects
which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on
earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those
familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided.
And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the
priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken
harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed
Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father.
Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass
it with a casual word:

“He is in Melbourne now.”

She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She
tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had
shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about
her. Of course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business.
What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she
had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place
would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She
had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people
listening.

“Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?”

“Look lively, Miss Hill, please.”

She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.

But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like
that. Then she would be married—she, Eveline. People would treat her
with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even
now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger
of her father’s violence. She knew it was that that had given her the
palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her like
he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl; but latterly
he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for
her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody to protect her. Ernest
was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was
nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable
squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her
unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages—seven shillings—and
Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money
from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no
head, that he wasn’t going to give her his hard-earned money to throw
about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad of a
Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had
she any intention of buying Sunday’s dinner. Then she had to rush out
as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather
purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and
returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to
keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had
been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals
regularly. It was hard work—a hard life—but now that she was about
to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.

She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind,
manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to
be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home
waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen
him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit.
It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap
pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of
bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her
outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see
The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part
of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little.
People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the lass
that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to
call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been an excitement for
her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of
distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a
ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of
the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had
sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the
terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he
said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of
course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to
have anything to say to him.

“I know these sailor chaps,” he said.

One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her
lover secretly.

The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap
grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest
had been her favourite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming
old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very
nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read
her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day,
when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill
of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mother’s bonnet to
make the children laugh.

Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window,
leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty
cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing.
She knew the air. Strange that it should come that very night to remind
her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together
as long as she could. She remembered the last night of her mother’s
illness; she was again in the close dark room at the other side of the
hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ-player
had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She remembered her
father strutting back into the sickroom saying:

“Damned Italians! coming over here!”

As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother’s life laid its spell
on the very quick of her being—that life of commonplace sacrifices
closing in final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her
mother’s voice saying constantly with foolish insistence:

“Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!”

She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape!
Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she
wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness.
Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save
her.



She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He
held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something
about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers
with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a
glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall,
with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale
and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct
her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful
whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea
with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been
booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her
distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in
silent fervent prayer.

A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:

“Come!”

All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her
into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron
railing.

“Come!”

No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy.
Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish!

“Eveline! Evvy!”

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted
at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him,
passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or
farewell or recognition.






AFTER THE RACE

The cars came scudding in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets
in the groove of the Naas Road. At the crest of the hill at Inchicore
sightseers had gathered in clumps to watch the cars careering homeward
and through this channel of poverty and inaction the Continent sped its
wealth and industry. Now and again the clumps of people raised the cheer
of the gratefully oppressed. Their sympathy, however, was for the blue
cars—the cars of their friends, the French.

The French, moreover, were virtual victors. Their team had finished
solidly; they had been placed second and third and the driver of the
winning German car was reported a Belgian. Each blue car, therefore,
received a double measure of welcome as it topped the crest of the hill
and each cheer of welcome was acknowledged with smiles and nods by those
in the car. In one of these trimly built cars was a party of four
young men whose spirits seemed to be at present well above the level
of successful Gallicism: in fact, these four young men were almost
hilarious. They were Charles Ségouin, the owner of the car; André
Rivière, a young electrician of Canadian birth; a huge Hungarian named
Villona and a neatly groomed young man named Doyle. Ségouin was in good
humour because he had unexpectedly received some orders in advance (he
was about to start a motor establishment in Paris) and Rivière was in
good humour because he was to be appointed manager of the establishment;
these two young men (who were cousins) were also in good humour because
of the success of the French cars. Villona was in good humour because he
had had a very satisfactory luncheon; and besides he was an optimist by
nature. The fourth member of the party, however, was too excited to be
genuinely happy.

He was about twenty-six years of age, with a soft, light brown moustache
and rather innocent-looking grey eyes. His father, who had begun life as
an advanced Nationalist, had modified his views early. He had made his
money as a butcher in Kingstown and by opening shops in Dublin and in
the suburbs he had made his money many times over. He had also been
fortunate enough to secure some of the police contracts and in the end
he had become rich enough to be alluded to in the Dublin newspapers as a
merchant prince. He had sent his son to England to be educated in a big
Catholic college and had afterwards sent him to Dublin University to
study law. Jimmy did not study very earnestly and took to bad courses
for a while. He had money and he was popular; and he divided his time
curiously between musical and motoring circles. Then he had been sent
for a term to Cambridge to see a little life. His father, remonstrative,
but covertly proud of the excess, had paid his bills and brought him
home. It was at Cambridge that he had met Ségouin. They were not much
more than acquaintances as yet but Jimmy found great pleasure in the
society of one who had seen so much of the world and was reputed to
own some of the biggest hotels in France. Such a person (as his father
agreed) was well worth knowing, even if he had not been the charming
companion he was. Villona was entertaining also—a brilliant
pianist—but, unfortunately, very poor.

The car ran on merrily with its cargo of hilarious youth. The two
cousins sat on the front seat; Jimmy and his Hungarian friend sat
behind. Decidedly Villona was in excellent spirits; he kept up a deep
bass hum of melody for miles of the road. The Frenchmen flung their
laughter and light words over their shoulders and often Jimmy had
to strain forward to catch the quick phrase. This was not altogether
pleasant for him, as he had nearly always to make a deft guess at the
meaning and shout back a suitable answer in the face of a high wind.
Besides Villona’s humming would confuse anybody; the noise of the car,
too.

Rapid motion through space elates one; so does notoriety; so does
the possession of money. These were three good reasons for Jimmy’s
excitement. He had been seen by many of his friends that day in the
company of these Continentals. At the control Ségouin had presented him
to one of the French competitors and, in answer to his confused murmur
of compliment, the swarthy face of the driver had disclosed a line of
shining white teeth. It was pleasant after that honour to return to the
profane world of spectators amid nudges and significant looks. Then
as to money—he really had a great sum under his control. Ségouin,
perhaps, would not think it a great sum but Jimmy who, in spite of
temporary errors, was at heart the inheritor of solid instincts knew
well with what difficulty it had been got together. This knowledge had
previously kept his bills within the limits of reasonable recklessness
and, if he had been so conscious of the labour latent in money when
there had been question merely of some freak of the higher intelligence,
how much more so now when he was about to stake the greater part of his
substance! It was a serious thing for him.

Of course, the investment was a good one and Ségouin had managed to
give the impression that it was by a favour of friendship the mite of
Irish money was to be included in the capital of the concern. Jimmy had
a respect for his father’s shrewdness in business matters and in this
case it had been his father who had first suggested the investment;
money to be made in the motor business, pots of money. Moreover Ségouin
had the unmistakable air of wealth. Jimmy set out to translate into
days’ work that lordly car in which he sat. How smoothly it ran. In
what style they had come careering along the country roads! The journey
laid a magical finger on the genuine pulse of life and gallantly the
machinery of human nerves strove to answer the bounding courses of the
swift blue animal.

They drove down Dame Street. The street was busy with unusual
traffic, loud with the horns of motorists and the gongs of impatient
tram-drivers. Near the Bank Ségouin drew up and Jimmy and his friend
alighted. A little knot of people collected on the footpath to pay
homage to the snorting motor. The party was to dine together that
evening in Ségouin’s hotel and, meanwhile, Jimmy and his friend,
who was staying with him, were to go home to dress. The car steered
out slowly for Grafton Street while the two young men pushed their way
through the knot of gazers. They walked northward with a curious feeling
of disappointment in the exercise, while the city hung its pale globes
of light above them in a haze of summer evening.

In Jimmy’s house this dinner had been pronounced an occasion. A
certain pride mingled with his parents’ trepidation, a certain
eagerness, also, to play fast and loose for the names of great foreign
cities have at least this virtue. Jimmy, too, looked very well when he
was dressed and, as he stood in the hall giving a last equation to
the bows of his dress tie, his father may have felt even commercially
satisfied at having secured for his son qualities often unpurchaseable.
His father, therefore, was unusually friendly with Villona and his
manner expressed a real respect for foreign accomplishments; but this
subtlety of his host was probably lost upon the Hungarian, who was
beginning to have a sharp desire for his dinner.

The dinner was excellent, exquisite. Ségouin, Jimmy decided, had a very
refined taste. The party was increased by a young Englishman named Routh
whom Jimmy had seen with Ségouin at Cambridge. The young men supped in
a snug room lit by electric candle-lamps. They talked volubly and with
little reserve. Jimmy, whose imagination was kindling, conceived the
lively youth of the Frenchmen twined elegantly upon the firm framework
of the Englishman’s manner. A graceful image of his, he thought, and
a just one. He admired the dexterity with which their host directed the
conversation. The five young men had various tastes and their tongues
had been loosened. Villona, with immense respect, began to discover to
the mildly surprised Englishman the beauties of the English madrigal,
deploring the loss of old instruments. Rivière, not wholly ingenuously,
undertook to explain to Jimmy the triumph of the French mechanicians.
The resonant voice of the Hungarian was about to prevail in ridicule of
the spurious lutes of the romantic painters when Ségouin shepherded
his party into politics. Here was congenial ground for all. Jimmy, under
generous influences, felt the buried zeal of his father wake to life
within him: he aroused the torpid Routh at last. The room grew doubly
hot and Ségouin’s task grew harder each moment: there was even danger
of personal spite. The alert host at an opportunity lifted his glass
to Humanity and, when the toast had been drunk, he threw open a window
significantly.

That night the city wore the mask of a capital. The five young men
strolled along Stephen’s Green in a faint cloud of aromatic smoke.
They talked loudly and gaily and their cloaks dangled from their
shoulders. The people made way for them. At the corner of Grafton Street
a short fat man was putting two handsome ladies on a car in charge of
another fat man. The car drove off and the short fat man caught sight of
the party.

“André.”

“It’s Farley!”

A torrent of talk followed. Farley was an American. No one knew very
well what the talk was about. Villona and Rivière were the noisiest,
but all the men were excited. They got up on a car, squeezing themselves
together amid much laughter. They drove by the crowd, blended now into
soft colours, to a music of merry bells. They took the train at Westland
Row and in a few seconds, as it seemed to Jimmy, they were walking out
of Kingstown Station. The ticket-collector saluted Jimmy; he was an old
man:

“Fine night, sir!”

It was a serene summer night; the harbour lay like a darkened mirror at
their feet. They proceeded towards it with linked arms, singing Cadet
Roussel in chorus, stamping their feet at every:

“Ho! Ho! Hohé, vraiment!”

They got into a rowboat at the slip and made out for the American’s
yacht. There was to be supper, music, cards. Villona said with
conviction:

“It is delightful!”

There was a yacht piano in the cabin. Villona played a waltz for Farley
and Rivière, Farley acting as cavalier and Rivière as lady. Then
an impromptu square dance, the men devising original figures. What
merriment! Jimmy took his part with a will; this was seeing life, at
least. Then Farley got out of breath and cried “Stop!” A man brought
in a light supper, and the young men sat down to it for form’s sake.
They drank, however: it was Bohemian. They drank Ireland, England,
France, Hungary, the United States of America. Jimmy made a speech,
a long speech, Villona saying: “Hear! hear!” whenever there was a
pause. There was a great clapping of hands when he sat down. It must
have been a good speech. Farley clapped him on the back and laughed
loudly. What jovial fellows! What good company they were!

Cards! cards! The table was cleared. Villona returned quietly to his
piano and played voluntaries for them. The other men played game after
game, flinging themselves boldly into the adventure. They drank the
health of the Queen of Hearts and of the Queen of Diamonds. Jimmy felt
obscurely the lack of an audience: the wit was flashing. Play ran very
high and paper began to pass. Jimmy did not know exactly who was
winning but he knew that he was losing. But it was his own fault for
he frequently mistook his cards and the other men had to calculate his
I.O.U.‘s for him. They were devils of fellows but he wished they would
stop: it was getting late. Someone gave the toast of the yacht The Belle
of Newport and then someone proposed one great game for a finish.

The piano had stopped; Villona must have gone up on deck. It was a
terrible game. They stopped just before the end of it to drink for luck.
Jimmy understood that the game lay between Routh and Ségouin. What
excitement! Jimmy was excited too; he would lose, of course. How much
had he written away? The men rose to their feet to play the last tricks,
talking and gesticulating. Routh won. The cabin shook with the young
men’s cheering and the cards were bundled together. They began then to
gather in what they had won. Farley and Jimmy were the heaviest losers.

He knew that he would regret in the morning but at present he was glad
of the rest, glad of the dark stupor that would cover up his folly. He
leaned his elbows on the table and rested his head between his hands,
counting the beats of his temples. The cabin door opened and he saw the
Hungarian standing in a shaft of grey light:

“Daybreak, gentlemen!”






TWO GALLANTS

The grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city and a mild
warm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets. The streets,
shuttered for the repose of Sunday, swarmed with a gaily coloured crowd.
Like illumined pearls the lamps shone from the summits of their tall
poles upon the living texture below which, changing shape and hue
unceasingly, sent up into the warm grey evening air an unchanging
unceasing murmur.

Two young men came down the hill of Rutland Square. One of them was just
bringing a long monologue to a close. The other, who walked on the verge
of the path and was at times obliged to step on to the road, owing to
his companion’s rudeness, wore an amused listening face. He was squat
and ruddy. A yachting cap was shoved far back from his forehead and the
narrative to which he listened made constant waves of expression break
forth over his face from the corners of his nose and eyes and mouth.
Little jets of wheezing laughter followed one another out of his
convulsed body. His eyes, twinkling with cunning enjoyment, glanced at
every moment towards his companion’s face. Once or twice he rearranged
the light waterproof which he had slung over one shoulder in toreador
fashion. His breeches, his white rubber shoes and his jauntily slung
waterproof expressed youth. But his figure fell into rotundity at the
waist, his hair was scant and grey and his face, when the waves of
expression had passed over it, had a ravaged look.

When he was quite sure that the narrative had ended he laughed
noiselessly for fully half a minute. Then he said:

“Well!... That takes the biscuit!”

His voice seemed winnowed of vigour; and to enforce his words he added
with humour:

“That takes the solitary, unique, and, if I may so call it, recherché
biscuit!”

He became serious and silent when he had said this. His tongue was tired
for he had been talking all the afternoon in a public-house in Dorset
Street. Most people considered Lenehan a leech but, in spite of this
reputation, his adroitness and eloquence had always prevented his
friends from forming any general policy against him. He had a brave
manner of coming up to a party of them in a bar and of holding himself
nimbly at the borders of the company until he was included in a round.
He was a sporting vagrant armed with a vast stock of stories, limericks
and riddles. He was insensitive to all kinds of discourtesy. No one
knew how he achieved the stern task of living, but his name was vaguely
associated with racing tissues.

“And where did you pick her up, Corley?” he asked.

Corley ran his tongue swiftly along his upper lip.

“One night, man,” he said, “I was going along Dame Street and I
spotted a fine tart under Waterhouse’s clock and said good-night, you
know. So we went for a walk round by the canal and she told me she was a
slavey in a house in Baggot Street. I put my arm round her and squeezed
her a bit that night. Then next Sunday, man, I met her by appointment.
We went out to Donnybrook and I brought her into a field there. She told
me she used to go with a dairyman.... It was fine, man. Cigarettes every
night she’d bring me and paying the tram out and back. And one night
she brought me two bloody fine cigars—O, the real cheese, you know,
that the old fellow used to smoke.... I was afraid, man, she’d get in
the family way. But she’s up to the dodge.”

“Maybe she thinks you’ll marry her,” said Lenehan.

“I told her I was out of a job,” said Corley. “I told her I was in
Pim’s. She doesn’t know my name. I was too hairy to tell her that.
But she thinks I’m a bit of class, you know.”

Lenehan laughed again, noiselessly.

“Of all the good ones ever I heard,” he said, “that emphatically
takes the biscuit.”

Corley’s stride acknowledged the compliment. The swing of his burly
body made his friend execute a few light skips from the path to the
roadway and back again. Corley was the son of an inspector of police and
he had inherited his father’s frame and gait. He walked with his hands
by his sides, holding himself erect and swaying his head from side to
side. His head was large, globular and oily; it sweated in all weathers;
and his large round hat, set upon it sideways, looked like a bulb which
had grown out of another. He always stared straight before him as if he
were on parade and, when he wished to gaze after someone in the street,
it was necessary for him to move his body from the hips. At present he
was about town. Whenever any job was vacant a friend was always ready to
give him the hard word. He was often to be seen walking with policemen
in plain clothes, talking earnestly. He knew the inner side of all
affairs and was fond of delivering final judgments. He spoke without
listening to the speech of his companions. His conversation was mainly
about himself: what he had said to such a person and what such a person
had said to him and what he had said to settle the matter. When he
reported these dialogues he aspirated the first letter of his name after
the manner of Florentines.

Lenehan offered his friend a cigarette. As the two young men walked on
through the crowd Corley occasionally turned to smile at some of the
passing girls but Lenehan’s gaze was fixed on the large faint moon
circled with a double halo. He watched earnestly the passing of the grey
web of twilight across its face. At length he said:

“Well ... tell me, Corley, I suppose you’ll be able to pull it off
all right, eh?”

Corley closed one eye expressively as an answer.

“Is she game for that?” asked Lenehan dubiously. “You can never
know women.”

“She’s all right,” said Corley. “I know the way to get around
her, man. She’s a bit gone on me.”

“You’re what I call a gay Lothario,” said Lenehan. “And the
proper kind of a Lothario, too!”

A shade of mockery relieved the servility of his manner. To save himself
he had the habit of leaving his flattery open to the interpretation of
raillery. But Corley had not a subtle mind.

“There’s nothing to touch a good slavey,” he affirmed. “Take my
tip for it.”

“By one who has tried them all,” said Lenehan.

“First I used to go with girls, you know,” said Corley, unbosoming;
“girls off the South Circular. I used to take them out, man, on the
tram somewhere and pay the tram or take them to a band or a play at the
theatre or buy them chocolate and sweets or something that way. I used
to spend money on them right enough,” he added, in a convincing tone,
as if he was conscious of being disbelieved.

But Lenehan could well believe it; he nodded gravely.

“I know that game,” he said, “and it’s a mug’s game.”

“And damn the thing I ever got out of it,” said Corley.

“Ditto here,” said Lenehan.

“Only off of one of them,” said Corley.

He moistened his upper lip by running his tongue along it. The
recollection brightened his eyes. He too gazed at the pale disc of the
moon, now nearly veiled, and seemed to meditate.

“She was ... a bit of all right,” he said regretfully.

He was silent again. Then he added:

“She’s on the turf now. I saw her driving down Earl Street one night
with two fellows with her on a car.”

“I suppose that’s your doing,” said Lenehan.

“There was others at her before me,” said Corley philosophically.

This time Lenehan was inclined to disbelieve. He shook his head to and
fro and smiled.

“You know you can’t kid me, Corley,” he said.

“Honest to God!” said Corley. “Didn’t she tell me herself?”

Lenehan made a tragic gesture.

“Base betrayer!” he said.

As they passed along the railings of Trinity College, Lenehan skipped
out into the road and peered up at the clock.

“Twenty after,” he said.

“Time enough,” said Corley. “She’ll be there all right. I always
let her wait a bit.”

Lenehan laughed quietly.

“Ecod! Corley, you know how to take them,” he said.

“I’m up to all their little tricks,” Corley confessed.

“But tell me,” said Lenehan again, “are you sure you can bring it
off all right? You know it’s a ticklish job. They’re damn close on
that point. Eh?... What?”

His bright, small eyes searched his companion’s face for reassurance.
Corley swung his head to and fro as if to toss aside an insistent
insect, and his brows gathered.

“I’ll pull it off,” he said. “Leave it to me, can’t you?”

Lenehan said no more. He did not wish to ruffle his friend’s temper,
to be sent to the devil and told that his advice was not wanted. A
little tact was necessary. But Corley’s brow was soon smooth again.
His thoughts were running another way.

“She’s a fine decent tart,” he said, with appreciation;
“that’s what she is.”

They walked along Nassau Street and then turned into Kildare Street. Not
far from the porch of the club a harpist stood in the roadway, playing
to a little ring of listeners. He plucked at the wires heedlessly,
glancing quickly from time to time at the face of each new-comer and
from time to time, wearily also, at the sky. His harp, too, heedless
that her coverings had fallen about her knees, seemed weary alike of the
eyes of strangers and of her master’s hands. One hand played in the
bass the melody of Silent, O Moyle, while the other hand careered in the
treble after each group of notes. The notes of the air sounded deep and
full.

The two young men walked up the street without speaking, the mournful
music following them. When they reached Stephen’s Green they crossed
the road. Here the noise of trams, the lights and the crowd released
them from their silence.

“There she is!” said Corley.

At the corner of Hume Street a young woman was standing. She wore a blue
dress and a white sailor hat. She stood on the curbstone, swinging a
sunshade in one hand. Lenehan grew lively.

“Let’s have a look at her, Corley,” he said.

Corley glanced sideways at his friend and an unpleasant grin appeared on
his face.

“Are you trying to get inside me?” he asked.

“Damn it!” said Lenehan boldly, “I don’t want an introduction.
All I want is to have a look at her. I’m not going to eat her.”

“O.... A look at her?” said Corley, more amiably. “Well ... I’ll
tell you what. I’ll go over and talk to her and you can pass by.”

“Right!” said Lenehan.

Corley had already thrown one leg over the chains when Lenehan called
out:

“And after? Where will we meet?”

“Half ten,” answered Corley, bringing over his other leg.

“Where?”

“Corner of Merrion Street. We’ll be coming back.”

“Work it all right now,” said Lenehan in farewell.

Corley did not answer. He sauntered across the road swaying his head
from side to side. His bulk, his easy pace, and the solid sound of his
boots had something of the conqueror in them. He approached the young
woman and, without saluting, began at once to converse with her. She
swung her umbrella more quickly and executed half turns on her heels.
Once or twice when he spoke to her at close quarters she laughed and
bent her head.

Lenehan observed them for a few minutes. Then he walked rapidly along
beside the chains at some distance and crossed the road obliquely. As he
approached Hume Street corner he found the air heavily scented and his
eyes made a swift anxious scrutiny of the young woman’s appearance.
She had her Sunday finery on. Her blue serge skirt was held at the waist
by a belt of black leather. The great silver buckle of her belt seemed
to depress the centre of her body, catching the light stuff of her white
blouse like a clip. She wore a short black jacket with mother-of-pearl
buttons and a ragged black boa. The ends of her tulle collarette had
been carefully disordered and a big bunch of red flowers was pinned in
her bosom, stems upwards. Lenehan’s eyes noted approvingly her stout
short muscular body. Frank rude health glowed in her face, on her fat
red cheeks and in her unabashed blue eyes. Her features were blunt. She
had broad nostrils, a straggling mouth which lay open in a contented
leer, and two projecting front teeth. As he passed Lenehan took off his
cap and, after about ten seconds, Corley returned a salute to the air.
This he did by raising his hand vaguely and pensively changing the angle
of position of his hat.

Lenehan walked as far as the Shelbourne Hotel where he halted and
waited. After waiting for a little time he saw them coming towards him
and, when they turned to the right, he followed them, stepping lightly
in his white shoes, down one side of Merrion Square. As he walked on
slowly, timing his pace to theirs, he watched Corley’s head which
turned at every moment towards the young woman’s face like a big ball
revolving on a pivot. He kept the pair in view until he had seen them
climbing the stairs of the Donnybrook tram; then he turned about and
went back the way he had come.

Now that he was alone his face looked older. His gaiety seemed to
forsake him and, as he came by the railings of the Duke’s Lawn, he
allowed his hand to run along them. The air which the harpist had played
began to control his movements. His softly padded feet played the melody
while his fingers swept a scale of variations idly along the railings
after each group of notes.

He walked listlessly round Stephen’s Green and then down Grafton
Street. Though his eyes took note of many elements of the crowd through
which he passed they did so morosely. He found trivial all that was
meant to charm him and did not answer the glances which invited him to
be bold. He knew that he would have to speak a great deal, to invent
and to amuse, and his brain and throat were too dry for such a task. The
problem of how he could pass the hours till he met Corley again troubled
him a little. He could think of no way of passing them but to keep on
walking. He turned to the left when he came to the corner of Rutland
Square and felt more at ease in the dark quiet street, the sombre look
of which suited his mood. He paused at last before the window of a
poor-looking shop over which the words Refreshment Bar were printed in
white letters. On the glass of the window were two flying inscriptions:
Ginger Beer and Ginger Ale. A cut ham was exposed on a great blue dish
while near it on a plate lay a segment of very light plum-pudding. He
eyed this food earnestly for some time and then, after glancing warily
up and down the street, went into the shop quickly.

He was hungry for, except some biscuits which he had asked two grudging
curates to bring him, he had eaten nothing since breakfast-time. He
sat down at an uncovered wooden table opposite two work-girls and a
mechanic. A slatternly girl waited on him.

“How much is a plate of peas?” he asked.

“Three halfpence, sir,” said the girl.

“Bring me a plate of peas,” he said, “and a bottle of ginger
beer.”

He spoke roughly in order to belie his air of gentility for his entry
had been followed by a pause of talk. His face was heated. To appear
natural he pushed his cap back on his head and planted his elbows on the
table. The mechanic and the two work-girls examined him point by point
before resuming their conversation in a subdued voice. The girl brought
him a plate of grocer’s hot peas, seasoned with pepper and vinegar, a
fork and his ginger beer. He ate his food greedily and found it so good
that he made a note of the shop mentally. When he had eaten all the peas
he sipped his ginger beer and sat for some time thinking of Corley’s
adventure. In his imagination he beheld the pair of lovers walking along
some dark road; he heard Corley’s voice in deep energetic gallantries
and saw again the leer of the young woman’s mouth. This vision made
him feel keenly his own poverty of purse and spirit. He was tired
of knocking about, of pulling the devil by the tail, of shifts and
intrigues. He would be thirty-one in November. Would he never get a good
job? Would he never have a home of his own? He thought how pleasant it
would be to have a warm fire to sit by and a good dinner to sit down to.
He had walked the streets long enough with friends and with girls. He
knew what those friends were worth: he knew the girls too. Experience
had embittered his heart against the world. But all hope had not left
him. He felt better after having eaten than he had felt before, less
weary of his life, less vanquished in spirit. He might yet be able to
settle down in some snug corner and live happily if he could only come
across some good simple-minded girl with a little of the ready.

He paid twopence halfpenny to the slatternly girl and went out of the
shop to begin his wandering again. He went into Capel Street and walked
along towards the City Hall. Then he turned into Dame Street. At the
corner of George’s Street he met two friends of his and stopped to
converse with them. He was glad that he could rest from all his walking.
His friends asked him had he seen Corley and what was the latest. He
replied that he had spent the day with Corley. His friends talked
very little. They looked vacantly after some figures in the crowd and
sometimes made a critical remark. One said that he had seen Mac an hour
before in Westmoreland Street. At this Lenehan said that he had been
with Mac the night before in Egan’s. The young man who had seen Mac
in Westmoreland Street asked was it true that Mac had won a bit over
a billiard match. Lenehan did not know: he said that Holohan had stood
them drinks in Egan’s.

He left his friends at a quarter to ten and went up George’s Street.
He turned to the left at the City Markets and walked on into Grafton
Street. The crowd of girls and young men had thinned and on his way
up the street he heard many groups and couples bidding one another
good-night. He went as far as the clock of the College of Surgeons: it
was on the stroke of ten. He set off briskly along the northern side
of the Green hurrying for fear Corley should return too soon. When he
reached the corner of Merrion Street he took his stand in the shadow of
a lamp and brought out one of the cigarettes which he had reserved and
lit it. He leaned against the lamp-post and kept his gaze fixed on the
part from which he expected to see Corley and the young woman return.

His mind became active again. He wondered had Corley managed it
successfully. He wondered if he had asked her yet or if he would leave
it to the last. He suffered all the pangs and thrills of his friend’s
situation as well as those of his own. But the memory of Corley’s
slowly revolving head calmed him somewhat: he was sure Corley would pull
it off all right. All at once the idea struck him that perhaps Corley
had seen her home by another way and given him the slip. His eyes
searched the street: there was no sign of them. Yet it was surely
half-an-hour since he had seen the clock of the College of Surgeons.
Would Corley do a thing like that? He lit his last cigarette and began
to smoke it nervously. He strained his eyes as each tram stopped at the
far corner of the square. They must have gone home by another way. The
paper of his cigarette broke and he flung it into the road with a curse.

Suddenly he saw them coming towards him. He started with delight and,
keeping close to his lamp-post, tried to read the result in their walk.
They were walking quickly, the young woman taking quick short steps,
while Corley kept beside her with his long stride. They did not seem to
be speaking. An intimation of the result pricked him like the point of a
sharp instrument. He knew Corley would fail; he knew it was no go.

They turned down Baggot Street and he followed them at once, taking the
other footpath. When they stopped he stopped too. They talked for a few
moments and then the young woman went down the steps into the area of
a house. Corley remained standing at the edge of the path, a little
distance from the front steps. Some minutes passed. Then the hall-door
was opened slowly and cautiously. A woman came running down the front
steps and coughed. Corley turned and went towards her. His broad figure
hid hers from view for a few seconds and then she reappeared running
up the steps. The door closed on her and Corley began to walk swiftly
towards Stephen’s Green.

Lenehan hurried on in the same direction. Some drops of light rain fell.
He took them as a warning and, glancing back towards the house which the
young woman had entered to see that he was not observed, he ran eagerly
across the road. Anxiety and his swift run made him pant. He called out:

“Hallo, Corley!”

Corley turned his head to see who had called him, and then continued
walking as before. Lenehan ran after him, settling the waterproof on his
shoulders with one hand.

“Hallo, Corley!” he cried again.

He came level with his friend and looked keenly in his face. He could
see nothing there.

“Well?” he said. “Did it come off?”

They had reached the corner of Ely Place. Still without answering,
Corley swerved to the left and went up the side street. His features
were composed in stern calm. Lenehan kept up with his friend, breathing
uneasily. He was baffled and a note of menace pierced through his voice.

“Can’t you tell us?” he said. “Did you try her?”

Corley halted at the first lamp and stared grimly before him. Then
with a grave gesture he extended a hand towards the light and, smiling,
opened it slowly to the gaze of his disciple. A small gold coin shone in
the palm.






THE BOARDING HOUSE

Mrs Mooney was a butcher’s daughter. She was a woman who was quite
able to keep things to herself: a determined woman. She had married her
father’s foreman and opened a butcher’s shop near Spring Gardens.
But as soon as his father-in-law was dead Mr Mooney began to go to the
devil. He drank, plundered the till, ran headlong into debt. It was no
use making him take the pledge: he was sure to break out again a few
days after. By fighting his wife in the presence of customers and by
buying bad meat he ruined his business. One night he went for his wife
with the cleaver and she had to sleep in a neighbour’s house.

After that they lived apart. She went to the priest and got a separation
from him with care of the children. She would give him neither money
nor food nor house-room; and so he was obliged to enlist himself as a
sheriff’s man. He was a shabby stooped little drunkard with a white
face and a white moustache and white eyebrows, pencilled above his
little eyes, which were pink-veined and raw; and all day long he sat in
the bailiff’s room, waiting to be put on a job. Mrs Mooney, who had
taken what remained of her money out of the butcher business and set
up a boarding house in Hardwicke Street, was a big imposing woman. Her
house had a floating population made up of tourists from Liverpool and
the Isle of Man and, occasionally, artistes from the music-halls. Its
resident population was made up of clerks from the city. She governed
her house cunningly and firmly, knew when to give credit, when to be
stern and when to let things pass. All the resident young men spoke of
her as The Madam.

Mrs Mooney’s young men paid fifteen shillings a week for board and
lodgings (beer or stout at dinner excluded). They shared in common
tastes and occupations and for this reason they were very chummy with
one another. They discussed with one another the chances of favourites
and outsiders. Jack Mooney, the Madam’s son, who was clerk to a
commission agent in Fleet Street, had the reputation of being a hard
case. He was fond of using soldiers’ obscenities: usually he came home
in the small hours. When he met his friends he had always a good one to
tell them and he was always sure to be on to a good thing—that is to
say, a likely horse or a likely artiste. He was also handy with the mits
and sang comic songs. On Sunday nights there would often be a reunion in
Mrs Mooney’s front drawing-room. The music-hall artistes would oblige;
and Sheridan played waltzes and polkas and vamped accompaniments. Polly
Mooney, the Madam’s daughter, would also sing. She sang:

           I’m a ... naughty girl.
             You needn’t sham:
             You know I am.

Polly was a slim girl of nineteen; she had light soft hair and a small
full mouth. Her eyes, which were grey with a shade of green through
them, had a habit of glancing upwards when she spoke with anyone, which
made her look like a little perverse madonna. Mrs Mooney had first
sent her daughter to be a typist in a corn-factor’s office but, as a
disreputable sheriff’s man used to come every other day to the office,
asking to be allowed to say a word to his daughter, she had taken her
daughter home again and set her to do housework. As Polly was very
lively the intention was to give her the run of the young men. Besides,
young men like to feel that there is a young woman not very far away.
Polly, of course, flirted with the young men but Mrs Mooney, who was a
shrewd judge, knew that the young men were only passing the time away:
none of them meant business. Things went on so for a long time and Mrs
Mooney began to think of sending Polly back to typewriting when she
noticed that something was going on between Polly and one of the young
men. She watched the pair and kept her own counsel.

Polly knew that she was being watched, but still her mother’s
persistent silence could not be misunderstood. There had been no open
complicity between mother and daughter, no open understanding but,
though people in the house began to talk of the affair, still Mrs Mooney
did not intervene. Polly began to grow a little strange in her manner
and the young man was evidently perturbed. At last, when she judged
it to be the right moment, Mrs Mooney intervened. She dealt with moral
problems as a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up
her mind.

It was a bright Sunday morning of early summer, promising heat, but with
a fresh breeze blowing. All the windows of the boarding house were open
and the lace curtains ballooned gently towards the street beneath the
raised sashes. The belfry of George’s Church sent out constant peals
and worshippers, singly or in groups, traversed the little circus before
the church, revealing their purpose by their self-contained demeanour
no less than by the little volumes in their gloved hands. Breakfast
was over in the boarding house and the table of the breakfast-room was
covered with plates on which lay yellow streaks of eggs with morsels
of bacon-fat and bacon-rind. Mrs Mooney sat in the straw arm-chair and
watched the servant Mary remove the breakfast things. She made
Mary collect the crusts and pieces of broken bread to help to make
Tuesday’s bread-pudding. When the table was cleared, the broken bread
collected, the sugar and butter safe under lock and key, she began to
reconstruct the interview which she had had the night before with Polly.
Things were as she had suspected: she had been frank in her questions
and Polly had been frank in her answers. Both had been somewhat awkward,
of course. She had been made awkward by her not wishing to receive the
news in too cavalier a fashion or to seem to have connived and Polly had
been made awkward not merely because allusions of that kind always made
her awkward but also because she did not wish it to be thought that in
her wise innocence she had divined the intention behind her mother’s
tolerance.

Mrs Mooney glanced instinctively at the little gilt clock on the
mantelpiece as soon as she had become aware through her revery that the
bells of George’s Church had stopped ringing. It was seventeen minutes
past eleven: she would have lots of time to have the matter out with Mr
Doran and then catch short twelve at Marlborough Street. She was sure
she would win. To begin with she had all the weight of social opinion
on her side: she was an outraged mother. She had allowed him to live
beneath her roof, assuming that he was a man of honour, and he had
simply abused her hospitality. He was thirty-four or thirty-five years
of age, so that youth could not be pleaded as his excuse; nor could
ignorance be his excuse since he was a man who had seen something of
the world. He had simply taken advantage of Polly’s youth and
inexperience: that was evident. The question was: What reparation would
he make?

There must be reparation made in such cases. It is all very well for
the man: he can go his ways as if nothing had happened, having had his
moment of pleasure, but the girl has to bear the brunt. Some mothers
would be content to patch up such an affair for a sum of money; she had
known cases of it. But she would not do so. For her only one reparation
could make up for the loss of her daughter’s honour: marriage.

She counted all her cards again before sending Mary up to Mr Doran’s
room to say that she wished to speak with him. She felt sure she would
win. He was a serious young man, not rakish or loud-voiced like the
others. If it had been Mr Sheridan or Mr Meade or Bantam Lyons her task
would have been much harder. She did not think he would face publicity.
All the lodgers in the house knew something of the affair; details had
been invented by some. Besides, he had been employed for thirteen years
in a great Catholic wine-merchant’s office and publicity would mean
for him, perhaps, the loss of his job. Whereas if he agreed all might
be well. She knew he had a good screw for one thing and she suspected he
had a bit of stuff put by.

Nearly the half-hour! She stood up and surveyed herself in the
pier-glass. The decisive expression of her great florid face satisfied
her and she thought of some mothers she knew who could not get their
daughters off their hands.

Mr Doran was very anxious indeed this Sunday morning. He had made two
attempts to shave but his hand had been so unsteady that he had been
obliged to desist. Three days’ reddish beard fringed his jaws and
every two or three minutes a mist gathered on his glasses so that he
had to take them off and polish them with his pocket-handkerchief. The
recollection of his confession of the night before was a cause of acute
pain to him; the priest had drawn out every ridiculous detail of the
affair and in the end had so magnified his sin that he was almost
thankful at being afforded a loophole of reparation. The harm was done.
What could he do now but marry her or run away? He could not brazen it
out. The affair would be sure to be talked of and his employer would
be certain to hear of it. Dublin is such a small city: everyone knows
everyone else’s business. He felt his heart leap warmly in his throat
as he heard in his excited imagination old Mr Leonard calling out in his
rasping voice: “Send Mr Doran here, please.”

All his long years of service gone for nothing! All his industry and
diligence thrown away! As a young man he had sown his wild oats, of
course; he had boasted of his free-thinking and denied the existence of
God to his companions in public-houses. But that was all passed and done
with ... nearly. He still bought a copy of Reynolds’s Newspaper every
week but he attended to his religious duties and for nine-tenths of the
year lived a regular life. He had money enough to settle down on; it was
not that. But the family would look down on her. First of all there
was her disreputable father and then her mother’s boarding house was
beginning to get a certain fame. He had a notion that he was being had.
He could imagine his friends talking of the affair and laughing. She was
a little vulgar; sometimes she said “I seen” and “If I had’ve
known.” But what would grammar matter if he really loved her? He could
not make up his mind whether to like her or despise her for what she
had done. Of course he had done it too. His instinct urged him to remain
free, not to marry. Once you are married you are done for, it said.

While he was sitting helplessly on the side of the bed in shirt and
trousers she tapped lightly at his door and entered. She told him all,
that she had made a clean breast of it to her mother and that her mother
would speak with him that morning. She cried and threw her arms round
his neck, saying:

“O Bob! Bob! What am I to do? What am I to do at all?”

She would put an end to herself, she said.

He comforted her feebly, telling her not to cry, that it would be all
right, never fear. He felt against his shirt the agitation of her bosom.

It was not altogether his fault that it had happened. He remembered
well, with the curious patient memory of the celibate, the first casual
caresses her dress, her breath, her fingers had given him. Then late one
night as he was undressing for bed she had tapped at his door, timidly.
She wanted to relight her candle at his for hers had been blown out by
a gust. It was her bath night. She wore a loose open combing-jacket
of printed flannel. Her white instep shone in the opening of her furry
slippers and the blood glowed warmly behind her perfumed skin. From her
hands and wrists too as she lit and steadied her candle a faint perfume
arose.

On nights when he came in very late it was she who warmed up his dinner.
He scarcely knew what he was eating, feeling her beside him alone, at
night, in the sleeping house. And her thoughtfulness! If the night was
anyway cold or wet or windy there was sure to be a little tumbler of
punch ready for him. Perhaps they could be happy together....

They used to go upstairs together on tiptoe, each with a candle, and on
the third landing exchange reluctant good-nights. They used to kiss. He
remembered well her eyes, the touch of her hand and his delirium....

But delirium passes. He echoed her phrase, applying it to himself:
“What am I to do?” The instinct of the celibate warned him to hold
back. But the sin was there; even his sense of honour told him that
reparation must be made for such a sin.

While he was sitting with her on the side of the bed Mary came to the
door and said that the missus wanted to see him in the parlour. He stood
up to put on his coat and waistcoat, more helpless than ever. When he
was dressed he went over to her to comfort her. It would be all right,
never fear. He left her crying on the bed and moaning softly: “O my
God!”

Going down the stairs his glasses became so dimmed with moisture that
he had to take them off and polish them. He longed to ascend through the
roof and fly away to another country where he would never hear again
of his trouble, and yet a force pushed him downstairs step by step.
The implacable faces of his employer and of the Madam stared upon his
discomfiture. On the last flight of stairs he passed Jack Mooney who
was coming up from the pantry nursing two bottles of Bass. They saluted
coldly; and the lover’s eyes rested for a second or two on a thick
bulldog face and a pair of thick short arms. When he reached the foot of
the staircase he glanced up and saw Jack regarding him from the door of
the return-room.

Suddenly he remembered the night when one of the music-hall artistes,
a little blond Londoner, had made a rather free allusion to Polly.
The reunion had been almost broken up on account of Jack’s violence.
Everyone tried to quiet him. The music-hall artiste, a little paler than
usual, kept smiling and saying that there was no harm meant: but Jack
kept shouting at him that if any fellow tried that sort of a game on
with his sister he’d bloody well put his teeth down his throat, so he
would.



Polly sat for a little time on the side of the bed, crying. Then she
dried her eyes and went over to the looking-glass. She dipped the end of
the towel in the water-jug and refreshed her eyes with the cool water.
She looked at herself in profile and readjusted a hairpin above her ear.
Then she went back to the bed again and sat at the foot. She regarded
the pillows for a long time and the sight of them awakened in her mind
secret amiable memories. She rested the nape of her neck against the
cool iron bed-rail and fell into a revery. There was no longer any
perturbation visible on her face.

She waited on patiently, almost cheerfully, without alarm, her memories
gradually giving place to hopes and visions of the future. Her hopes and
visions were so intricate that she no longer saw the white pillows
on which her gaze was fixed or remembered that she was waiting for
anything.

At last she heard her mother calling. She started to her feet and ran to
the banisters.

“Polly! Polly!”

“Yes, mamma?”

“Come down, dear. Mr Doran wants to speak to you.”

Then she remembered what she had been waiting for.






A LITTLE CLOUD

Eight years before he had seen his friend off at the North Wall and
wished him godspeed. Gallaher had got on. You could tell that at once
by his travelled air, his well-cut tweed suit, and fearless accent. Few
fellows had talents like his and fewer still could remain unspoiled
by such success. Gallaher’s heart was in the right place and he had
deserved to win. It was something to have a friend like that.

Little Chandler’s thoughts ever since lunch-time had been of his
meeting with Gallaher, of Gallaher’s invitation and of the great city
London where Gallaher lived. He was called Little Chandler because,
though he was but slightly under the average stature, he gave one the
idea of being a little man. His hands were white and small, his frame
was fragile, his voice was quiet and his manners were refined. He took
the greatest care of his fair silken hair and moustache and used perfume
discreetly on his handkerchief. The half-moons of his nails were perfect
and when he smiled you caught a glimpse of a row of childish white
teeth.

As he sat at his desk in the King’s Inns he thought what changes those
eight years had brought. The friend whom he had known under a shabby and
necessitous guise had become a brilliant figure on the London Press. He
turned often from his tiresome writing to gaze out of the office window.
The glow of a late autumn sunset covered the grass plots and walks. It
cast a shower of kindly golden dust on the untidy nurses and decrepit
old men who drowsed on the benches; it flickered upon all the moving
figures—on the children who ran screaming along the gravel paths and
on everyone who passed through the gardens. He watched the scene and
thought of life; and (as always happened when he thought of life) he
became sad. A gentle melancholy took possession of him. He felt how
useless it was to struggle against fortune, this being the burden of
wisdom which the ages had bequeathed to him.

He remembered the books of poetry upon his shelves at home. He had
bought them in his bachelor days and many an evening, as he sat in the
little room off the hall, he had been tempted to take one down from the
bookshelf and read out something to his wife. But shyness had always
held him back; and so the books had remained on their shelves. At times
he repeated lines to himself and this consoled him.

When his hour had struck he stood up and took leave of his desk and of
his fellow-clerks punctiliously. He emerged from under the feudal arch
of the King’s Inns, a neat modest figure, and walked swiftly down
Henrietta Street. The golden sunset was waning and the air had grown
sharp. A horde of grimy children populated the street. They stood or
ran in the roadway or crawled up the steps before the gaping doors or
squatted like mice upon the thresholds. Little Chandler gave them no
thought. He picked his way deftly through all that minute vermin-like
life and under the shadow of the gaunt spectral mansions in which the
old nobility of Dublin had roystered. No memory of the past touched him,
for his mind was full of a present joy.

He had never been in Corless’s but he knew the value of the name. He
knew that people went there after the theatre to eat oysters and drink
liqueurs; and he had heard that the waiters there spoke French and
German. Walking swiftly by at night he had seen cabs drawn up before the
door and richly dressed ladies, escorted by cavaliers, alight and
enter quickly. They wore noisy dresses and many wraps. Their faces were
powdered and they caught up their dresses, when they touched earth,
like alarmed Atalantas. He had always passed without turning his head
to look. It was his habit to walk swiftly in the street even by day and
whenever he found himself in the city late at night he hurried on his
way apprehensively and excitedly. Sometimes, however, he courted the
causes of his fear. He chose the darkest and narrowest streets and,
as he walked boldly forward, the silence that was spread about his
footsteps troubled him, the wandering silent figures troubled him; and
at times a sound of low fugitive laughter made him tremble like a leaf.

He turned to the right towards Capel Street. Ignatius Gallaher on the
London Press! Who would have thought it possible eight years before?
Still, now that he reviewed the past, Little Chandler could remember
many signs of future greatness in his friend. People used to say that
Ignatius Gallaher was wild. Of course, he did mix with a rakish set of
fellows at that time, drank freely and borrowed money on all sides.
In the end he had got mixed up in some shady affair, some money
transaction: at least, that was one version of his flight. But nobody
denied him talent. There was always a certain ... something in Ignatius
Gallaher that impressed you in spite of yourself. Even when he was
out at elbows and at his wits’ end for money he kept up a bold face.
Little Chandler remembered (and the remembrance brought a slight flush
of pride to his cheek) one of Ignatius Gallaher’s sayings when he was
in a tight corner:

“Half time now, boys,” he used to say light-heartedly. “Where’s
my considering cap?”

That was Ignatius Gallaher all out; and, damn it, you couldn’t but
admire him for it.

Little Chandler quickened his pace. For the first time in his life he
felt himself superior to the people he passed. For the first time his
soul revolted against the dull inelegance of Capel Street. There was no
doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could
do nothing in Dublin. As he crossed Grattan Bridge he looked down the
river towards the lower quays and pitied the poor stunted houses. They
seemed to him a band of tramps, huddled together along the riverbanks,
their old coats covered with dust and soot, stupefied by the panorama
of sunset and waiting for the first chill of night bid them arise, shake
themselves and begone. He wondered whether he could write a poem to
express his idea. Perhaps Gallaher might be able to get it into some
London paper for him. Could he write something original? He was not sure
what idea he wished to express but the thought that a poetic moment had
touched him took life within him like an infant hope. He stepped onward
bravely.

Every step brought him nearer to London, farther from his own sober
inartistic life. A light began to tremble on the horizon of his mind. He
was not so old—thirty-two. His temperament might be said to be just
at the point of maturity. There were so many different moods and
impressions that he wished to express in verse. He felt them within him.
He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet’s soul. Melancholy
was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was a
melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple
joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men
would listen. He would never be popular: he saw that. He could not sway
the crowd but he might appeal to a little circle of kindred minds.
The English critics, perhaps, would recognise him as one of the Celtic
school by reason of the melancholy tone of his poems; besides that, he
would put in allusions. He began to invent sentences and phrases from
the notice which his book would get. “Mr Chandler has the gift of easy
and graceful verse.” ... “A wistful sadness pervades these
poems.” ... “The Celtic note.” It was a pity his name was not more
Irish-looking. Perhaps it would be better to insert his mother’s name
before the surname: Thomas Malone Chandler, or better still: T. Malone
Chandler. He would speak to Gallaher about it.

He pursued his revery so ardently that he passed his street and had to
turn back. As he came near Corless’s his former agitation began to
overmaster him and he halted before the door in indecision. Finally he
opened the door and entered.

The light and noise of the bar held him at the doorways for a few
moments. He looked about him, but his sight was confused by the shining
of many red and green wine-glasses The bar seemed to him to be full
of people and he felt that the people were observing him curiously. He
glanced quickly to right and left (frowning slightly to make his errand
appear serious), but when his sight cleared a little he saw that nobody
had turned to look at him: and there, sure enough, was Ignatius Gallaher
leaning with his back against the counter and his feet planted far
apart.

“Hallo, Tommy, old hero, here you are! What is it to be? What will you
have? I’m taking whisky: better stuff than we get across the water.
Soda? Lithia? No mineral? I’m the same. Spoils the flavour.... Here,
garçon, bring us two halves of malt whisky, like a good fellow....
Well, and how have you been pulling along since I saw you last? Dear
God, how old we’re getting! Do you see any signs of aging in me—eh,
what? A little grey and thin on the top—what?”

Ignatius Gallaher took off his hat and displayed a large closely cropped
head. His face was heavy, pale and clean-shaven. His eyes, which were of
bluish slate-colour, relieved his unhealthy pallor and shone out plainly
above the vivid orange tie he wore. Between these rival features the
lips appeared very long and shapeless and colourless. He bent his head
and felt with two sympathetic fingers the thin hair at the crown. Little
Chandler shook his head as a denial. Ignatius Galaher put on his hat
again.

“It pulls you down,” he said. “Press life. Always hurry and
scurry, looking for copy and sometimes not finding it: and then, always
to have something new in your stuff. Damn proofs and printers, I say,
for a few days. I’m deuced glad, I can tell you, to get back to the
old country. Does a fellow good, a bit of a holiday. I feel a ton better
since I landed again in dear dirty Dublin.... Here you are, Tommy.
Water? Say when.”

Little Chandler allowed his whisky to be very much diluted.

“You don’t know what’s good for you, my boy,” said Ignatius
Gallaher. “I drink mine neat.”

“I drink very little as a rule,” said Little Chandler modestly.
“An odd half-one or so when I meet any of the old crowd: that’s
all.”

“Ah, well,” said Ignatius Gallaher, cheerfully, “here’s to us
and to old times and old acquaintance.”

They clinked glasses and drank the toast.

“I met some of the old gang today,” said Ignatius Gallaher.
“O’Hara seems to be in a bad way. What’s he doing?”

“Nothing,” said Little Chandler. “He’s gone to the dogs.”

“But Hogan has a good sit, hasn’t he?”

“Yes; he’s in the Land Commission.”

“I met him one night in London and he seemed to be very flush.... Poor
O’Hara! Boose, I suppose?”

“Other things, too,” said Little Chandler shortly.

Ignatius Gallaher laughed.

“Tommy,” he said, “I see you haven’t changed an atom. You’re
the very same serious person that used to lecture me on Sunday mornings
when I had a sore head and a fur on my tongue. You’d want to knock
about a bit in the world. Have you never been anywhere even for a
trip?”

“I’ve been to the Isle of Man,” said Little Chandler.

Ignatius Gallaher laughed.

“The Isle of Man!” he said. “Go to London or Paris: Paris, for
choice. That’d do you good.”

“Have you seen Paris?”

“I should think I have! I’ve knocked about there a little.”

“And is it really so beautiful as they say?” asked Little Chandler.

He sipped a little of his drink while Ignatius Gallaher finished his
boldly.

“Beautiful?” said Ignatius Gallaher, pausing on the word and on the
flavour of his drink. “It’s not so beautiful, you know. Of course,
it is beautiful.... But it’s the life of Paris; that’s the thing.
Ah, there’s no city like Paris for gaiety, movement, excitement....”

Little Chandler finished his whisky and, after some trouble, succeeded
in catching the barman’s eye. He ordered the same again.

“I’ve been to the Moulin Rouge,” Ignatius Gallaher continued when
the barman had removed their glasses, “and I’ve been to all the
Bohemian cafés. Hot stuff! Not for a pious chap like you, Tommy.”

Little Chandler said nothing until the barman returned with two glasses:
then he touched his friend’s glass lightly and reciprocated the former
toast. He was beginning to feel somewhat disillusioned. Gallaher’s
accent and way of expressing himself did not please him. There was
something vulgar in his friend which he had not observed before. But
perhaps it was only the result of living in London amid the bustle and
competition of the Press. The old personal charm was still there under
this new gaudy manner. And, after all, Gallaher had lived, he had seen
the world. Little Chandler looked at his friend enviously.

“Everything in Paris is gay,” said Ignatius Gallaher. “They
believe in enjoying life—and don’t you think they’re right? If
you want to enjoy yourself properly you must go to Paris. And, mind you,
they’ve a great feeling for the Irish there. When they heard I was
from Ireland they were ready to eat me, man.”

Little Chandler took four or five sips from his glass.

“Tell me,” he said, “is it true that Paris is so ... immoral as
they say?”

Ignatius Gallaher made a catholic gesture with his right arm.

“Every place is immoral,” he said. “Of course you do find spicy
bits in Paris. Go to one of the students’ balls, for instance.
That’s lively, if you like, when the cocottes begin to let themselves
loose. You know what they are, I suppose?”

“I’ve heard of them,” said Little Chandler.

Ignatius Gallaher drank off his whisky and shook his head.

“Ah,” he said, “you may say what you like. There’s no woman like
the Parisienne—for style, for go.”

“Then it is an immoral city,” said Little Chandler, with timid
insistence—“I mean, compared with London or Dublin?”

“London!” said Ignatius Gallaher. “It’s six of one and
half-a-dozen of the other. You ask Hogan, my boy. I showed him a bit
about London when he was over there. He’d open your eye.... I say,
Tommy, don’t make punch of that whisky: liquor up.”

“No, really....”

“O, come on, another one won’t do you any harm. What is it? The same
again, I suppose?”

“Well ... all right.”

“François, the same again.... Will you smoke, Tommy?”

Ignatius Gallaher produced his cigar-case. The two friends lit their
cigars and puffed at them in silence until their drinks were served.

“I’ll tell you my opinion,” said Ignatius Gallaher, emerging
after some time from the clouds of smoke in which he had taken refuge,
“it’s a rum world. Talk of immorality! I’ve heard of cases—what
am I saying?—I’ve known them: cases of ... immorality....”

Ignatius Gallaher puffed thoughtfully at his cigar and then, in a calm
historian’s tone, he proceeded to sketch for his friend some pictures
of the corruption which was rife abroad. He summarised the vices of many
capitals and seemed inclined to award the palm to Berlin. Some things he
could not vouch for (his friends had told him), but of others he had had
personal experience. He spared neither rank nor caste. He revealed many
of the secrets of religious houses on the Continent and described some
of the practices which were fashionable in high society and ended by
telling, with details, a story about an English duchess—a story which
he knew to be true. Little Chandler was astonished.

“Ah, well,” said Ignatius Gallaher, “here we are in old jog-along
Dublin where nothing is known of such things.”

“How dull you must find it,” said Little Chandler, “after all the
other places you’ve seen!”

“Well,” said Ignatius Gallaher, “it’s a relaxation to come over
here, you know. And, after all, it’s the old country, as they say,
isn’t it? You can’t help having a certain feeling for it. That’s
human nature.... But tell me something about yourself. Hogan told me
you had ... tasted the joys of connubial bliss. Two years ago, wasn’t
it?”

Little Chandler blushed and smiled.

“Yes,” he said. “I was married last May twelve months.”

“I hope it’s not too late in the day to offer my best wishes,”
said Ignatius Gallaher. “I didn’t know your address or I’d have
done so at the time.”

He extended his hand, which Little Chandler took.

“Well, Tommy,” he said, “I wish you and yours every joy in life,
old chap, and tons of money, and may you never die till I shoot you. And
that’s the wish of a sincere friend, an old friend. You know that?”

“I know that,” said Little Chandler.

“Any youngsters?” said Ignatius Gallaher.

Little Chandler blushed again.

“We have one child,” he said.

“Son or daughter?”

“A little boy.”

Ignatius Gallaher slapped his friend sonorously on the back.

“Bravo,” he said, “I wouldn’t doubt you, Tommy.”

Little Chandler smiled, looked confusedly at his glass and bit his lower
lip with three childishly white front teeth.

“I hope you’ll spend an evening with us,” he said, “before you
go back. My wife will be delighted to meet you. We can have a little
music and——”

“Thanks awfully, old chap,” said Ignatius Gallaher, “I’m sorry
we didn’t meet earlier. But I must leave tomorrow night.”

“Tonight, perhaps...?”

“I’m awfully sorry, old man. You see I’m over here with another
fellow, clever young chap he is too, and we arranged to go to a little
card-party. Only for that....”

“O, in that case....”

“But who knows?” said Ignatius Gallaher considerately. “Next
year I may take a little skip over here now that I’ve broken the ice.
It’s only a pleasure deferred.”

“Very well,” said Little Chandler, “the next time you come we must
have an evening together. That’s agreed now, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s agreed,” said Ignatius Gallaher. “Next year if I
come, parole d’honneur.”

“And to clinch the bargain,” said Little Chandler, “we’ll just
have one more now.”

Ignatius Gallaher took out a large gold watch and looked at it.

“Is it to be the last?” he said. “Because you know, I have an
a.p.”

“O, yes, positively,” said Little Chandler.

“Very well, then,” said Ignatius Gallaher, “let us have another
one as a deoc an doruis—that’s good vernacular for a small whisky, I
believe.”

Little Chandler ordered the drinks. The blush which had risen to his
face a few moments before was establishing itself. A trifle made
him blush at any time: and now he felt warm and excited. Three small
whiskies had gone to his head and Gallaher’s strong cigar had confused
his mind, for he was a delicate and abstinent person. The adventure of
meeting Gallaher after eight years, of finding himself with Gallaher in
Corless’s surrounded by lights and noise, of listening to Gallaher’s
stories and of sharing for a brief space Gallaher’s vagrant and
triumphant life, upset the equipoise of his sensitive nature. He felt
acutely the contrast between his own life and his friend’s and it
seemed to him unjust. Gallaher was his inferior in birth and education.
He was sure that he could do something better than his friend had ever
done, or could ever do, something higher than mere tawdry journalism
if he only got the chance. What was it that stood in his way? His
unfortunate timidity! He wished to vindicate himself in some way,
to assert his manhood. He saw behind Gallaher’s refusal of his
invitation. Gallaher was only patronising him by his friendliness just
as he was patronising Ireland by his visit.

The barman brought their drinks. Little Chandler pushed one glass
towards his friend and took up the other boldly.

“Who knows?” he said, as they lifted their glasses. “When you come
next year I may have the pleasure of wishing long life and happiness to
Mr and Mrs Ignatius Gallaher.”

Ignatius Gallaher in the act of drinking closed one eye expressively
over the rim of his glass. When he had drunk he smacked his lips
decisively, set down his glass and said:

“No blooming fear of that, my boy. I’m going to have my fling
first and see a bit of life and the world before I put my head in the
sack—if I ever do.”

“Some day you will,” said Little Chandler calmly.

Ignatius Gallaher turned his orange tie and slate-blue eyes full upon
his friend.

“You think so?” he said.

“You’ll put your head in the sack,” repeated Little Chandler
stoutly, “like everyone else if you can find the girl.”

He had slightly emphasised his tone and he was aware that he had
betrayed himself; but, though the colour had heightened in his cheek, he
did not flinch from his friend’s gaze. Ignatius Gallaher watched him
for a few moments and then said:

“If ever it occurs, you may bet your bottom dollar there’ll be no
mooning and spooning about it. I mean to marry money. She’ll have a
good fat account at the bank or she won’t do for me.”

Little Chandler shook his head.

“Why, man alive,” said Ignatius Gallaher, vehemently, “do you
know what it is? I’ve only to say the word and tomorrow I can have the
woman and the cash. You don’t believe it? Well, I know it. There
are hundreds—what am I saying?—thousands of rich Germans and Jews,
rotten with money, that’d only be too glad.... You wait a while my
boy. See if I don’t play my cards properly. When I go about a thing I
mean business, I tell you. You just wait.”

He tossed his glass to his mouth, finished his drink and laughed loudly.
Then he looked thoughtfully before him and said in a calmer tone:

“But I’m in no hurry. They can wait. I don’t fancy tying myself up
to one woman, you know.”

He imitated with his mouth the act of tasting and made a wry face.

“Must get a bit stale, I should think,” he said.



Little Chandler sat in the room off the hall, holding a child in his
arms. To save money they kept no servant but Annie’s young sister
Monica came for an hour or so in the morning and an hour or so in the
evening to help. But Monica had gone home long ago. It was a quarter to
nine. Little Chandler had come home late for tea and, moreover, he had
forgotten to bring Annie home the parcel of coffee from Bewley’s. Of
course she was in a bad humour and gave him short answers. She said she
would do without any tea but when it came near the time at which the
shop at the corner closed she decided to go out herself for a quarter
of a pound of tea and two pounds of sugar. She put the sleeping child
deftly in his arms and said:

“Here. Don’t waken him.”

A little lamp with a white china shade stood upon the table and its
light fell over a photograph which was enclosed in a frame of crumpled
horn. It was Annie’s photograph. Little Chandler looked at it, pausing
at the thin tight lips. She wore the pale blue summer blouse which he
had brought her home as a present one Saturday. It had cost him ten and
elevenpence; but what an agony of nervousness it had cost him! How
he had suffered that day, waiting at the shop door until the shop was
empty, standing at the counter and trying to appear at his ease while
the girl piled ladies’ blouses before him, paying at the desk and
forgetting to take up the odd penny of his change, being called back by
the cashier, and finally, striving to hide his blushes as he left the
shop by examining the parcel to see if it was securely tied. When he
brought the blouse home Annie kissed him and said it was very pretty and
stylish; but when she heard the price she threw the blouse on the table
and said it was a regular swindle to charge ten and elevenpence for it.
At first she wanted to take it back but when she tried it on she was
delighted with it, especially with the make of the sleeves, and kissed
him and said he was very good to think of her.

Hm!...

He looked coldly into the eyes of the photograph and they answered
coldly. Certainly they were pretty and the face itself was pretty. But
he found something mean in it. Why was it so unconscious and ladylike?
The composure of the eyes irritated him. They repelled him and defied
him: there was no passion in them, no rapture. He thought of what
Gallaher had said about rich Jewesses. Those dark Oriental eyes, he
thought, how full they are of passion, of voluptuous longing!... Why had
he married the eyes in the photograph?

He caught himself up at the question and glanced nervously round the
room. He found something mean in the pretty furniture which he had
bought for his house on the hire system. Annie had chosen it herself and
it reminded him of her. It too was prim and pretty. A dull resentment
against his life awoke within him. Could he not escape from his little
house? Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like Gallaher?
Could he go to London? There was the furniture still to be paid for. If
he could only write a book and get it published, that might open the way
for him.

A volume of Byron’s poems lay before him on the table. He opened it
cautiously with his left hand lest he should waken the child and began
to read the first poem in the book:

     Hushed are the winds and still the evening gloom,
     Not e’en a Zephyr wanders through the grove,
     Whilst I return to view my Margaret’s tomb
     And scatter flowers on the dust I love.

He paused. He felt the rhythm of the verse about him in the room.
How melancholy it was! Could he, too, write like that, express the
melancholy of his soul in verse? There were so many things he wanted
to describe: his sensation of a few hours before on Grattan Bridge, for
example. If he could get back again into that mood....

The child awoke and began to cry. He turned from the page and tried to
hush it: but it would not be hushed. He began to rock it to and fro in
his arms but its wailing cry grew keener. He rocked it faster while his
eyes began to read the second stanza:

    Within this narrow cell reclines her clay,
    That clay where once....
It was useless. He couldn’t read. He couldn’t do anything. The
wailing of the child pierced the drum of his ear. It was useless,
useless! He was a prisoner for life. His arms trembled with anger and
suddenly bending to the child’s face he shouted:

“Stop!”

The child stopped for an instant, had a spasm of fright and began to
scream. He jumped up from his chair and walked hastily up and down the
room with the child in his arms. It began to sob piteously, losing its
breath for four or five seconds, and then bursting out anew. The thin
walls of the room echoed the sound. He tried to soothe it but it sobbed
more convulsively. He looked at the contracted and quivering face of
the child and began to be alarmed. He counted seven sobs without a
break between them and caught the child to his breast in fright. If it
died!...

The door was burst open and a young woman ran in, panting.

“What is it? What is it?” she cried.

The child, hearing its mother’s voice, broke out into a paroxysm of
sobbing.

“It’s nothing, Annie ... it’s nothing.... He began to cry....”

She flung her parcels on the floor and snatched the child from him.

“What have you done to him?” she cried, glaring into his face.

Little Chandler sustained for one moment the gaze of her eyes and his
heart closed together as he met the hatred in them. He began to stammer:

“It’s nothing.... He ... he began to cry.... I couldn’t ... I
didn’t do anything.... What?”

Giving no heed to him she began to walk up and down the room, clasping
the child tightly in her arms and murmuring:

“My little man! My little mannie! Was ’ou frightened, love?...
There now, love! There now!... Lambabaun! Mamma’s little lamb of the
world!... There now!”

Little Chandler felt his cheeks suffused with shame and he stood back
out of the lamplight. He listened while the paroxysm of the child’s
sobbing grew less and less; and tears of remorse started to his eyes.






COUNTERPARTS

The bell rang furiously and, when Miss Parker went to the tube, a
furious voice called out in a piercing North of Ireland accent:

“Send Farrington here!”

Miss Parker returned to her machine, saying to a man who was writing at
a desk:

“Mr Alleyne wants you upstairs.”

The man muttered “Blast him!” under his breath and pushed back his
chair to stand up. When he stood up he was tall and of great bulk.
He had a hanging face, dark wine-coloured, with fair eyebrows and
moustache: his eyes bulged forward slightly and the whites of them were
dirty. He lifted up the counter and, passing by the clients, went out of
the office with a heavy step.

He went heavily upstairs until he came to the second landing, where a
door bore a brass plate with the inscription Mr Alleyne. Here he halted,
puffing with labour and vexation, and knocked. The shrill voice cried:

“Come in!”

The man entered Mr Alleyne’s room. Simultaneously Mr Alleyne, a little
man wearing gold-rimmed glasses on a clean-shaven face, shot his head
up over a pile of documents. The head itself was so pink and hairless it
seemed like a large egg reposing on the papers. Mr Alleyne did not lose
a moment:

“Farrington? What is the meaning of this? Why have I always to
complain of you? May I ask you why you haven’t made a copy of that
contract between Bodley and Kirwan? I told you it must be ready by four
o’clock.”

“But Mr Shelley said, sir——”

“Mr Shelley said, sir.... Kindly attend to what I say and not to
what Mr Shelley says, sir. You have always some excuse or another for
shirking work. Let me tell you that if the contract is not copied before
this evening I’ll lay the matter before Mr Crosbie.... Do you hear me
now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you hear me now?... Ay and another little matter! I might as well
be talking to the wall as talking to you. Understand once for all that
you get a half an hour for your lunch and not an hour and a half. How
many courses do you want, I’d like to know.... Do you mind me, now?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr Alleyne bent his head again upon his pile of papers. The man stared
fixedly at the polished skull which directed the affairs of Crosbie &
Alleyne, gauging its fragility. A spasm of rage gripped his throat for
a few moments and then passed, leaving after it a sharp sensation of
thirst. The man recognised the sensation and felt that he must have a
good night’s drinking. The middle of the month was passed and, if he
could get the copy done in time, Mr Alleyne might give him an order on
the cashier. He stood still, gazing fixedly at the head upon the pile of
papers. Suddenly Mr Alleyne began to upset all the papers, searching for
something. Then, as if he had been unaware of the man’s presence till
that moment, he shot up his head again, saying:

“Eh? Are you going to stand there all day? Upon my word, Farrington,
you take things easy!”

“I was waiting to see....”

“Very good, you needn’t wait to see. Go downstairs and do your
work.”

The man walked heavily towards the door and, as he went out of the room,
he heard Mr Alleyne cry after him that if the contract was not copied by
evening Mr Crosbie would hear of the matter.

He returned to his desk in the lower office and counted the sheets which
remained to be copied. He took up his pen and dipped it in the ink but
he continued to stare stupidly at the last words he had written: In no
case shall the said Bernard Bodley be.... The evening was falling and
in a few minutes they would be lighting the gas: then he could write. He
felt that he must slake the thirst in his throat. He stood up from his
desk and, lifting the counter as before, passed out of the office. As he
was passing out the chief clerk looked at him inquiringly.

“It’s all right, Mr Shelley,” said the man, pointing with his
finger to indicate the objective of his journey.

The chief clerk glanced at the hat-rack but, seeing the row complete,
offered no remark. As soon as he was on the landing the man pulled a
shepherd’s plaid cap out of his pocket, put it on his head and ran
quickly down the rickety stairs. From the street door he walked on
furtively on the inner side of the path towards the corner and all
at once dived into a doorway. He was now safe in the dark snug of
O’Neill’s shop, and filling up the little window that looked into
the bar with his inflamed face, the colour of dark wine or dark meat, he
called out:

“Here, Pat, give us a g.p., like a good fellow.”

The curate brought him a glass of plain porter. The man drank it at a
gulp and asked for a caraway seed. He put his penny on the counter and,
leaving the curate to grope for it in the gloom, retreated out of the
snug as furtively as he had entered it.

Darkness, accompanied by a thick fog, was gaining upon the dusk of
February and the lamps in Eustace Street had been lit. The man went up
by the houses until he reached the door of the office, wondering whether
he could finish his copy in time. On the stairs a moist pungent odour of
perfumes saluted his nose: evidently Miss Delacour had come while he was
out in O’Neill’s. He crammed his cap back again into his pocket and
re-entered the office, assuming an air of absent-mindedness.

“Mr Alleyne has been calling for you,” said the chief clerk
severely. “Where were you?”

The man glanced at the two clients who were standing at the counter as
if to intimate that their presence prevented him from answering. As the
clients were both male the chief clerk allowed himself a laugh.

“I know that game,” he said. “Five times in one day is a little
bit.... Well, you better look sharp and get a copy of our correspondence
in the Delacour case for Mr Alleyne.”

This address in the presence of the public, his run upstairs and the
porter he had gulped down so hastily confused the man and, as he sat
down at his desk to get what was required, he realised how hopeless was
the task of finishing his copy of the contract before half past five.
The dark damp night was coming and he longed to spend it in the bars,
drinking with his friends amid the glare of gas and the clatter of
glasses. He got out the Delacour correspondence and passed out of the
office. He hoped Mr Alleyne would not discover that the last two letters
were missing.

The moist pungent perfume lay all the way up to Mr Alleyne’s room.
Miss Delacour was a middle-aged woman of Jewish appearance. Mr Alleyne
was said to be sweet on her or on her money. She came to the office
often and stayed a long time when she came. She was sitting beside his
desk now in an aroma of perfumes, smoothing the handle of her umbrella
and nodding the great black feather in her hat. Mr Alleyne had swivelled
his chair round to face her and thrown his right foot jauntily upon
his left knee. The man put the correspondence on the desk and bowed
respectfully but neither Mr Alleyne nor Miss Delacour took any notice
of his bow. Mr Alleyne tapped a finger on the correspondence and then
flicked it towards him as if to say: “That’s all right: you can
go.”

The man returned to the lower office and sat down again at his desk.
He stared intently at the incomplete phrase: In no case shall the said
Bernard Bodley be ... and thought how strange it was that the last three
words began with the same letter. The chief clerk began to hurry Miss
Parker, saying she would never have the letters typed in time for post.
The man listened to the clicking of the machine for a few minutes and
then set to work to finish his copy. But his head was not clear and his
mind wandered away to the glare and rattle of the public-house. It was a
night for hot punches. He struggled on with his copy, but when the
clock struck five he had still fourteen pages to write. Blast it! He
couldn’t finish it in time. He longed to execrate aloud, to bring
his fist down on something violently. He was so enraged that he wrote
Bernard Bernard instead of Bernard Bodley and had to begin again on a
clean sheet.

He felt strong enough to clear out the whole office singlehanded. His
body ached to do something, to rush out and revel in violence. All
the indignities of his life enraged him.... Could he ask the cashier
privately for an advance? No, the cashier was no good, no damn good:
he wouldn’t give an advance.... He knew where he would meet the boys:
Leonard and O’Halloran and Nosey Flynn. The barometer of his emotional
nature was set for a spell of riot.

His imagination had so abstracted him that his name was called twice
before he answered. Mr Alleyne and Miss Delacour were standing outside
the counter and all the clerks had turn round in anticipation of
something. The man got up from his desk. Mr Alleyne began a tirade of
abuse, saying that two letters were missing. The man answered that he
knew nothing about them, that he had made a faithful copy. The tirade
continued: it was so bitter and violent that the man could hardly
restrain his fist from descending upon the head of the manikin before
him:

“I know nothing about any other two letters,” he said stupidly.

“You—know—nothing. Of course you know nothing,” said Mr Alleyne.
“Tell me,” he added, glancing first for approval to the lady beside
him, “do you take me for a fool? Do you think me an utter fool?”

The man glanced from the lady’s face to the little egg-shaped head and
back again; and, almost before he was aware of it, his tongue had found
a felicitous moment:

“I don’t think, sir,” he said, “that that’s a fair question to
put to me.”

There was a pause in the very breathing of the clerks. Everyone was
astounded (the author of the witticism no less than his neighbours) and
Miss Delacour, who was a stout amiable person, began to smile broadly.
Mr Alleyne flushed to the hue of a wild rose and his mouth twitched
with a dwarf’s passion. He shook his fist in the man’s face till it
seemed to vibrate like the knob of some electric machine:

“You impertinent ruffian! You impertinent ruffian! I’ll make short
work of you! Wait till you see! You’ll apologise to me for your
impertinence or you’ll quit the office instanter! You’ll quit this,
I’m telling you, or you’ll apologise to me!”



He stood in a doorway opposite the office watching to see if the cashier
would come out alone. All the clerks passed out and finally the cashier
came out with the chief clerk. It was no use trying to say a word to him
when he was with the chief clerk. The man felt that his position was bad
enough. He had been obliged to offer an abject apology to Mr Alleyne for
his impertinence but he knew what a hornet’s nest the office would
be for him. He could remember the way in which Mr Alleyne had hounded
little Peake out of the office in order to make room for his own nephew.
He felt savage and thirsty and revengeful, annoyed with himself and with
everyone else. Mr Alleyne would never give him an hour’s rest; his
life would be a hell to him. He had made a proper fool of himself this
time. Could he not keep his tongue in his cheek? But they had never
pulled together from the first, he and Mr Alleyne, ever since the day Mr
Alleyne had overheard him mimicking his North of Ireland accent to amuse
Higgins and Miss Parker: that had been the beginning of it. He might
have tried Higgins for the money, but sure Higgins never had anything
for himself. A man with two establishments to keep up, of course he
couldn’t....

He felt his great body again aching for the comfort of the public-house.
The fog had begun to chill him and he wondered could he touch Pat in
O’Neill’s. He could not touch him for more than a bob—and a bob
was no use. Yet he must get money somewhere or other: he had spent his
last penny for the g.p. and soon it would be too late for getting money
anywhere. Suddenly, as he was fingering his watch-chain, he thought
of Terry Kelly’s pawn-office in Fleet Street. That was the dart! Why
didn’t he think of it sooner?

He went through the narrow alley of Temple Bar quickly, muttering to
himself that they could all go to hell because he was going to have a
good night of it. The clerk in Terry Kelly’s said A crown! but the
consignor held out for six shillings; and in the end the six shillings
was allowed him literally. He came out of the pawn-office joyfully,
making a little cylinder, of the coins between his thumb and fingers. In
Westmoreland Street the footpaths were crowded with young men and women
returning from business and ragged urchins ran here and there yelling
out the names of the evening editions. The man passed through the crowd,
looking on the spectacle generally with proud satisfaction and staring
masterfully at the office-girls. His head was full of the noises of
tram-gongs and swishing trolleys and his nose already sniffed the
curling fumes of punch. As he walked on he preconsidered the terms in
which he would narrate the incident to the boys:

“So, I just looked at him—coolly, you know, and looked at her. Then
I looked back at him again—taking my time, you know. ‘I don’t
think that that’s a fair question to put to me,’ says I.”

Nosey Flynn was sitting up in his usual corner of Davy Byrne’s and,
when he heard the story, he stood Farrington a half-one, saying it was
as smart a thing as ever he heard. Farrington stood a drink in his turn.
After a while O’Halloran and Paddy Leonard came in and the story was
repeated to them. O’Halloran stood tailors of malt, hot, all round and
told the story of the retort he had made to the chief clerk when he was
in Callan’s of Fownes’s Street; but, as the retort was after the
manner of the liberal shepherds in the eclogues, he had to admit that it
was not as clever as Farrington’s retort. At this Farrington told the
boys to polish off that and have another.

Just as they were naming their poisons who should come in but Higgins!
Of course he had to join in with the others. The men asked him to give
his version of it, and he did so with great vivacity for the sight of
five small hot whiskies was very exhilarating. Everyone roared
laughing when he showed the way in which Mr Alleyne shook his fist in
Farrington’s face. Then he imitated Farrington, saying, “And here
was my nabs, as cool as you please,” while Farrington looked at the
company out of his heavy dirty eyes, smiling and at times drawing forth
stray drops of liquor from his moustache with the aid of his lower lip.

When that round was over there was a pause. O’Halloran had money but
neither of the other two seemed to have any; so the whole party left
the shop somewhat regretfully. At the corner of Duke Street Higgins and
Nosey Flynn bevelled off to the left while the other three turned back
towards the city. Rain was drizzling down on the cold streets and, when
they reached the Ballast Office, Farrington suggested the Scotch House.
The bar was full of men and loud with the noise of tongues and glasses.
The three men pushed past the whining match-sellers at the door and
formed a little party at the corner of the counter. They began to
exchange stories. Leonard introduced them to a young fellow named
Weathers who was performing at the Tivoli as an acrobat and knockabout
artiste. Farrington stood a drink all round. Weathers said he would take
a small Irish and Apollinaris. Farrington, who had definite notions of
what was what, asked the boys would they have an Apollinaris too;
but the boys told Tim to make theirs hot. The talk became theatrical.
O’Halloran stood a round and then Farrington stood another round,
Weathers protesting that the hospitality was too Irish. He promised to
get them in behind the scenes and introduce them to some nice girls.
O’Halloran said that he and Leonard would go, but that Farrington
wouldn’t go because he was a married man; and Farrington’s heavy
dirty eyes leered at the company in token that he understood he was
being chaffed. Weathers made them all have just one little tincture
at his expense and promised to meet them later on at Mulligan’s in
Poolbeg Street.

When the Scotch House closed they went round to Mulligan’s. They went
into the parlour at the back and O’Halloran ordered small hot specials
all round. They were all beginning to feel mellow. Farrington was just
standing another round when Weathers came back. Much to Farrington’s
relief he drank a glass of bitter this time. Funds were getting low but
they had enough to keep them going. Presently two young women with big
hats and a young man in a check suit came in and sat at a table close
by. Weathers saluted them and told the company that they were out of the
Tivoli. Farrington’s eyes wandered at every moment in the direction of
one of the young women. There was something striking in her appearance.
An immense scarf of peacock-blue muslin was wound round her hat and
knotted in a great bow under her chin; and she wore bright yellow
gloves, reaching to the elbow. Farrington gazed admiringly at the plump
arm which she moved very often and with much grace; and when, after a
little time, she answered his gaze he admired still more her large dark
brown eyes. The oblique staring expression in them fascinated him. She
glanced at him once or twice and, when the party was leaving the room,
she brushed against his chair and said “O, pardon!” in a London
accent. He watched her leave the room in the hope that she would look
back at him, but he was disappointed. He cursed his want of money and
cursed all the rounds he had stood, particularly all the whiskies and
Apollinaris which he had stood to Weathers. If there was one thing that
he hated it was a sponge. He was so angry that he lost count of the
conversation of his friends.

When Paddy Leonard called him he found that they were talking about
feats of strength. Weathers was showing his biceps muscle to the company
and boasting so much that the other two had called on Farrington to
uphold the national honour. Farrington pulled up his sleeve accordingly
and showed his biceps muscle to the company. The two arms were examined
and compared and finally it was agreed to have a trial of strength. The
table was cleared and the two men rested their elbows on it, clasping
hands. When Paddy Leonard said “Go!” each was to try to bring down
the other’s hand on to the table. Farrington looked very serious and
determined.

The trial began. After about thirty seconds Weathers brought his
opponent’s hand slowly down on to the table. Farrington’s dark
wine-coloured face flushed darker still with anger and humiliation at
having been defeated by such a stripling.

“You’re not to put the weight of your body behind it. Play fair,”
he said.

“Who’s not playing fair?” said the other.

“Come on again. The two best out of three.”

The trial began again. The veins stood out on Farrington’s forehead,
and the pallor of Weathers’ complexion changed to peony. Their hands
and arms trembled under the stress. After a long struggle Weathers again
brought his opponent’s hand slowly on to the table. There was a murmur
of applause from the spectators. The curate, who was standing beside
the table, nodded his red head towards the victor and said with stupid
familiarity:

“Ah! that’s the knack!”

“What the hell do you know about it?” said Farrington fiercely,
turning on the man. “What do you put in your gab for?”

“Sh, sh!” said O’Halloran, observing the violent expression of
Farrington’s face. “Pony up, boys. We’ll have just one little
smahan more and then we’ll be off.”


A very sullen-faced man stood at the corner of O’Connell Bridge
waiting for the little Sandymount tram to take him home. He was full
of smouldering anger and revengefulness. He felt humiliated and
discontented; he did not even feel drunk; and he had only twopence in
his pocket. He cursed everything. He had done for himself in the office,
pawned his watch, spent all his money; and he had not even got drunk.
He began to feel thirsty again and he longed to be back again in the hot
reeking public-house. He had lost his reputation as a strong man, having
been defeated twice by a mere boy. His heart swelled with fury and, when
he thought of the woman in the big hat who had brushed against him and
said Pardon! his fury nearly choked him.

His tram let him down at Shelbourne Road and he steered his great body
along in the shadow of the wall of the barracks. He loathed returning
to his home. When he went in by the side-door he found the kitchen empty
and the kitchen fire nearly out. He bawled upstairs:

“Ada! Ada!”

His wife was a little sharp-faced woman who bullied her husband when
he was sober and was bullied by him when he was drunk. They had five
children. A little boy came running down the stairs.

“Who is that?” said the man, peering through the darkness.

“Me, pa.”

“Who are you? Charlie?”

“No, pa. Tom.”

“Where’s your mother?”

“She’s out at the chapel.”

“That’s right.... Did she think of leaving any dinner for me?”

“Yes, pa. I——”

“Light the lamp. What do you mean by having the place in darkness? Are
the other children in bed?”

The man sat down heavily on one of the chairs while the little boy lit
the lamp. He began to mimic his son’s flat accent, saying half to
himself: “At the chapel. At the chapel, if you please!” When the
lamp was lit he banged his fist on the table and shouted:

“What’s for my dinner?”

“I’m going ... to cook it, pa,” said the little boy.

The man jumped up furiously and pointed to the fire.

“On that fire! You let the fire out! By God, I’ll teach you to do
that again!”

He took a step to the door and seized the walking-stick which was
standing behind it.

“I’ll teach you to let the fire out!” he said, rolling up his
sleeve in order to give his arm free play.

The little boy cried “O, pa!” and ran whimpering round the table,
but the man followed him and caught him by the coat. The little boy
looked about him wildly but, seeing no way of escape, fell upon his
knees.

“Now, you’ll let the fire out the next time!” said the man
striking at him vigorously with the stick. “Take that, you little
whelp!”

The boy uttered a squeal of pain as the stick cut his thigh. He clasped
his hands together in the air and his voice shook with fright.

“O, pa!” he cried. “Don’t beat me, pa! And I’ll ... I’ll
say a Hail Mary for you.... I’ll say a Hail Mary for you, pa, if you
don’t beat me.... I’ll say a Hail Mary....”






CLAY

The matron had given her leave to go out as soon as the women’s tea
was over and Maria looked forward to her evening out. The kitchen was
spick and span: the cook said you could see yourself in the big copper
boilers. The fire was nice and bright and on one of the side-tables were
four very big barmbracks. These barmbracks seemed uncut; but if you went
closer you would see that they had been cut into long thick even slices
and were ready to be handed round at tea. Maria had cut them herself.

Maria was a very, very small person indeed but she had a very long
nose and a very long chin. She talked a little through her nose, always
soothingly: “Yes, my dear,” and “No, my dear.” She was always
sent for when the women quarrelled over their tubs and always succeeded
in making peace. One day the matron had said to her:

“Maria, you are a veritable peace-maker!”

And the sub-matron and two of the Board ladies had heard the compliment.
And Ginger Mooney was always saying what she wouldn’t do to the dummy
who had charge of the irons if it wasn’t for Maria. Everyone was so
fond of Maria.

The women would have their tea at six o’clock and she would be able to
get away before seven. From Ballsbridge to the Pillar, twenty minutes;
from the Pillar to Drumcondra, twenty minutes; and twenty minutes to buy
the things. She would be there before eight. She took out her purse with
the silver clasps and read again the words A Present from Belfast. She
was very fond of that purse because Joe had brought it to her five years
before when he and Alphy had gone to Belfast on a Whit-Monday trip. In
the purse were two half-crowns and some coppers. She would have five
shillings clear after paying tram fare. What a nice evening they would
have, all the children singing! Only she hoped that Joe wouldn’t come
in drunk. He was so different when he took any drink.

Often he had wanted her to go and live with them; but she would have
felt herself in the way (though Joe’s wife was ever so nice with her)
and she had become accustomed to the life of the laundry. Joe was a good
fellow. She had nursed him and Alphy too; and Joe used often say:

“Mamma is mamma but Maria is my proper mother.”

After the break-up at home the boys had got her that position in the
Dublin by Lamplight laundry, and she liked it. She used to have such
a bad opinion of Protestants but now she thought they were very nice
people, a little quiet and serious, but still very nice people to live
with. Then she had her plants in the conservatory and she liked looking
after them. She had lovely ferns and wax-plants and, whenever anyone
came to visit her, she always gave the visitor one or two slips from
her conservatory. There was one thing she didn’t like and that was the
tracts on the walks; but the matron was such a nice person to deal with,
so genteel.

When the cook told her everything was ready she went into the women’s
room and began to pull the big bell. In a few minutes the women began
to come in by twos and threes, wiping their steaming hands in their
petticoats and pulling down the sleeves of their blouses over their red
steaming arms. They settled down before their huge mugs which the cook
and the dummy filled up with hot tea, already mixed with milk and sugar
in huge tin cans. Maria superintended the distribution of the barmbrack
and saw that every woman got her four slices. There was a great deal of
laughing and joking during the meal. Lizzie Fleming said Maria was sure
to get the ring and, though Fleming had said that for so many Hallow
Eves, Maria had to laugh and say she didn’t want any ring or
man either; and when she laughed her grey-green eyes sparkled with
disappointed shyness and the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her
chin. Then Ginger Mooney lifted up her mug of tea and proposed Maria’s
health while all the other women clattered with their mugs on the table,
and said she was sorry she hadn’t a sup of porter to drink it in. And
Maria laughed again till the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her
chin and till her minute body nearly shook itself asunder because she
knew that Mooney meant well though, of course, she had the notions of a
common woman.

But wasn’t Maria glad when the women had finished their tea and the
cook and the dummy had begun to clear away the tea-things! She went into
her little bedroom and, remembering that the next morning was a mass
morning, changed the hand of the alarm from seven to six. Then she took
off her working skirt and her house-boots and laid her best skirt out on
the bed and her tiny dress-boots beside the foot of the bed. She changed
her blouse too and, as she stood before the mirror, she thought of how
she used to dress for mass on Sunday morning when she was a young girl;
and she looked with quaint affection at the diminutive body which she
had so often adorned. In spite of its years she found it a nice tidy
little body.

When she got outside the streets were shining with rain and she was glad
of her old brown waterproof. The tram was full and she had to sit on the
little stool at the end of the car, facing all the people, with her toes
barely touching the floor. She arranged in her mind all she was going to
do and thought how much better it was to be independent and to have your
own money in your pocket. She hoped they would have a nice evening. She
was sure they would but she could not help thinking what a pity it was
Alphy and Joe were not speaking. They were always falling out now but
when they were boys together they used to be the best of friends: but
such was life.

She got out of her tram at the Pillar and ferreted her way quickly among
the crowds. She went into Downes’s cake-shop but the shop was so full
of people that it was a long time before she could get herself attended
to. She bought a dozen of mixed penny cakes, and at last came out of the
shop laden with a big bag. Then she thought what else would she buy: she
wanted to buy something really nice. They would be sure to have plenty
of apples and nuts. It was hard to know what to buy and all she could
think of was cake. She decided to buy some plumcake but Downes’s
plumcake had not enough almond icing on top of it so she went over to
a shop in Henry Street. Here she was a long time in suiting herself and
the stylish young lady behind the counter, who was evidently a little
annoyed by her, asked her was it wedding-cake she wanted to buy. That
made Maria blush and smile at the young lady; but the young lady took it
all very seriously and finally cut a thick slice of plumcake, parcelled
it up and said:

“Two-and-four, please.”

She thought she would have to stand in the Drumcondra tram because none
of the young men seemed to notice her but an elderly gentleman made room
for her. He was a stout gentleman and he wore a brown hard hat; he had
a square red face and a greyish moustache. Maria thought he was a
colonel-looking gentleman and she reflected how much more polite he was
than the young men who simply stared straight before them. The gentleman
began to chat with her about Hallow Eve and the rainy weather. He
supposed the bag was full of good things for the little ones and said
it was only right that the youngsters should enjoy themselves while they
were young. Maria agreed with him and favoured him with demure nods and
hems. He was very nice with her, and when she was getting out at the
Canal Bridge she thanked him and bowed, and he bowed to her and raised
his hat and smiled agreeably, and while she was going up along the
terrace, bending her tiny head under the rain, she thought how easy it
was to know a gentleman even when he has a drop taken.

Everybody said: “O, here’s Maria!” when she came to Joe’s house.
Joe was there, having come home from business, and all the children had
their Sunday dresses on. There were two big girls in from next door
and games were going on. Maria gave the bag of cakes to the eldest boy,
Alphy, to divide and Mrs Donnelly said it was too good of her to bring
such a big bag of cakes and made all the children say:

“Thanks, Maria.”

But Maria said she had brought something special for papa and mamma,
something they would be sure to like, and she began to look for her
plumcake. She tried in Downes’s bag and then in the pockets of her
waterproof and then on the hallstand but nowhere could she find it. Then
she asked all the children had any of them eaten it—by mistake, of
course—but the children all said no and looked as if they did not like
to eat cakes if they were to be accused of stealing. Everybody had a
solution for the mystery and Mrs Donnelly said it was plain that Maria
had left it behind her in the tram. Maria, remembering how confused the
gentleman with the greyish moustache had made her, coloured with shame
and vexation and disappointment. At the thought of the failure of her
little surprise and of the two and fourpence she had thrown away for
nothing she nearly cried outright.

But Joe said it didn’t matter and made her sit down by the fire. He
was very nice with her. He told her all that went on in his office,
repeating for her a smart answer which he had made to the manager. Maria
did not understand why Joe laughed so much over the answer he had made
but she said that the manager must have been a very overbearing person
to deal with. Joe said he wasn’t so bad when you knew how to take him,
that he was a decent sort so long as you didn’t rub him the wrong way.
Mrs Donnelly played the piano for the children and they danced and sang.
Then the two next-door girls handed round the nuts. Nobody could find
the nutcrackers and Joe was nearly getting cross over it and asked how
did they expect Maria to crack nuts without a nutcracker. But Maria said
she didn’t like nuts and that they weren’t to bother about her. Then
Joe asked would she take a bottle of stout and Mrs Donnelly said there
was port wine too in the house if she would prefer that. Maria said she
would rather they didn’t ask her to take anything: but Joe insisted.

So Maria let him have his way and they sat by the fire talking over old
times and Maria thought she would put in a good word for Alphy. But Joe
cried that God might strike him stone dead if ever he spoke a word to
his brother again and Maria said she was sorry she had mentioned the
matter. Mrs Donnelly told her husband it was a great shame for him to
speak that way of his own flesh and blood but Joe said that Alphy was no
brother of his and there was nearly being a row on the head of it. But
Joe said he would not lose his temper on account of the night it was
and asked his wife to open some more stout. The two next-door girls
had arranged some Hallow Eve games and soon everything was merry again.
Maria was delighted to see the children so merry and Joe and his wife in
such good spirits. The next-door girls put some saucers on the table
and then led the children up to the table, blindfold. One got the
prayer-book and the other three got the water; and when one of the
next-door girls got the ring Mrs Donnelly shook her finger at the
blushing girl as much as to say: O, I know all about it! They insisted
then on blindfolding Maria and leading her up to the table to see
what she would get; and, while they were putting on the bandage, Maria
laughed and laughed again till the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of
her chin.

They led her up to the table amid laughing and joking and she put her
hand out in the air as she was told to do. She moved her hand about here
and there in the air and descended on one of the saucers. She felt a
soft wet substance with her fingers and was surprised that nobody spoke
or took off her bandage. There was a pause for a few seconds; and then
a great deal of scuffling and whispering. Somebody said something about
the garden, and at last Mrs Donnelly said something very cross to one
of the next-door girls and told her to throw it out at once: that was no
play. Maria understood that it was wrong that time and so she had to do
it over again: and this time she got the prayer-book.

After that Mrs Donnelly played Miss McCloud’s Reel for the children
and Joe made Maria take a glass of wine. Soon they were all quite merry
again and Mrs Donnelly said Maria would enter a convent before the year
was out because she had got the prayer-book. Maria had never seen Joe
so nice to her as he was that night, so full of pleasant talk and
reminiscences. She said they were all very good to her.

At last the children grew tired and sleepy and Joe asked Maria would
she not sing some little song before she went, one of the old songs. Mrs
Donnelly said “Do, please, Maria!” and so Maria had to get up and
stand beside the piano. Mrs Donnelly bade the children be quiet and
listen to Maria’s song. Then she played the prelude and said “Now,
Maria!” and Maria, blushing very much began to sing in a tiny
quavering voice. She sang I Dreamt that I Dwelt, and when she came to
the second verse she sang again:

            I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls
              With vassals and serfs at my side
            And of all who assembled within those walls
              That I was the hope and the pride.
            I had riches too great to count, could boast
              Of a high ancestral name,
            But I also dreamt, which pleased me most,
              That you loved me still the same.

But no one tried to show her her mistake; and when she had ended her
song Joe was very much moved. He said that there was no time like the
long ago and no music for him like poor old Balfe, whatever other people
might say; and his eyes filled up so much with tears that he could not
find what he was looking for and in the end he had to ask his wife to
tell him where the corkscrew was.






A PAINFUL CASE

Mr James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as
possible from the city of which he was a citizen and because he found
all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious. He lived
in an old sombre house and from his windows he could look into the
disused distillery or upwards along the shallow river on which Dublin is
built. The lofty walls of his uncarpeted room were free from pictures.
He had himself bought every article of furniture in the room: a black
iron bedstead, an iron washstand, four cane chairs, a clothes-rack,
a coal-scuttle, a fender and irons and a square table on which lay a
double desk. A bookcase had been made in an alcove by means of shelves
of white wood. The bed was clothed with white bedclothes and a black
and scarlet rug covered the foot. A little hand-mirror hung above the
washstand and during the day a white-shaded lamp stood as the sole
ornament of the mantelpiece. The books on the white wooden shelves were
arranged from below upwards according to bulk. A complete Wordsworth
stood at one end of the lowest shelf and a copy of the Maynooth
Catechism, sewn into the cloth cover of a notebook, stood at one end of
the top shelf. Writing materials were always on the desk. In the desk
lay a manuscript translation of Hauptmann’s Michael Kramer, the stage
directions of which were written in purple ink, and a little sheaf of
papers held together by a brass pin. In these sheets a sentence was
inscribed from time to time and, in an ironical moment, the headline of
an advertisement for Bile Beans had been pasted on to the first sheet.
On lifting the lid of the desk a faint fragrance escaped—the fragrance
of new cedarwood pencils or of a bottle of gum or of an overripe apple
which might have been left there and forgotten.

Mr Duffy abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder.
A mediæval doctor would have called him saturnine. His face, which
carried the entire tale of his years, was of the brown tint of Dublin
streets. On his long and rather large head grew dry black hair and a
tawny moustache did not quite cover an unamiable mouth. His cheekbones
also gave his face a harsh character; but there was no harshness in the
eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave
the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in
others but often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his
body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd
autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time
to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third
person and a predicate in the past tense. He never gave alms to beggars
and walked firmly, carrying a stout hazel.

He had been for many years cashier of a private bank in Baggot Street.
Every morning he came in from Chapelizod by tram. At midday he went to
Dan Burke’s and took his lunch—a bottle of lager beer and a small
trayful of arrowroot biscuits. At four o’clock he was set free. He
dined in an eating-house in George’s Street where he felt himself
safe from the society of Dublin’s gilded youth and where there was
a certain plain honesty in the bill of fare. His evenings were spent
either before his landlady’s piano or roaming about the outskirts of
the city. His liking for Mozart’s music brought him sometimes to an
opera or a concert: these were the only dissipations of his life.

He had neither companions nor friends, church nor creed. He lived his
spiritual life without any communion with others, visiting his relatives
at Christmas and escorting them to the cemetery when they died. He
performed these two social duties for old dignity’s sake but conceded
nothing further to the conventions which regulate the civic life. He
allowed himself to think that in certain circumstances he would rob
his bank but, as these circumstances never arose, his life rolled out
evenly—an adventureless tale.

One evening he found himself sitting beside two ladies in the Rotunda.
The house, thinly peopled and silent, gave distressing prophecy of
failure. The lady who sat next him looked round at the deserted house
once or twice and then said:

“What a pity there is such a poor house tonight! It’s so hard on
people to have to sing to empty benches.”

He took the remark as an invitation to talk. He was surprised that
she seemed so little awkward. While they talked he tried to fix her
permanently in his memory. When he learned that the young girl beside
her was her daughter he judged her to be a year or so younger than
himself. Her face, which must have been handsome, had remained
intelligent. It was an oval face with strongly marked features. The eyes
were very dark blue and steady. Their gaze began with a defiant note
but was confused by what seemed a deliberate swoon of the pupil into the
iris, revealing for an instant a temperament of great sensibility. The
pupil reasserted itself quickly, this half-disclosed nature fell again
under the reign of prudence, and her astrakhan jacket, moulding a bosom
of a certain fullness, struck the note of defiance more definitely.

He met her again a few weeks afterwards at a concert in Earlsfort
Terrace and seized the moments when her daughter’s attention was
diverted to become intimate. She alluded once or twice to her husband
but her tone was not such as to make the allusion a warning. Her name
was Mrs Sinico. Her husband’s great-great-grandfather had come from
Leghorn. Her husband was captain of a mercantile boat plying between
Dublin and Holland; and they had one child.

Meeting her a third time by accident he found courage to make an
appointment. She came. This was the first of many meetings; they met
always in the evening and chose the most quiet quarters for their walks
together. Mr Duffy, however, had a distaste for underhand ways and,
finding that they were compelled to meet stealthily, he forced her to
ask him to her house. Captain Sinico encouraged his visits, thinking
that his daughter’s hand was in question. He had dismissed his wife
so sincerely from his gallery of pleasures that he did not suspect that
anyone else would take an interest in her. As the husband was often
away and the daughter out giving music lessons Mr Duffy had many
opportunities of enjoying the lady’s society. Neither he nor she
had had any such adventure before and neither was conscious of any
incongruity. Little by little he entangled his thoughts with hers. He
lent her books, provided her with ideas, shared his intellectual life
with her. She listened to all.

Sometimes in return for his theories she gave out some fact of her own
life. With almost maternal solicitude she urged him to let his nature
open to the full: she became his confessor. He told her that for some
time he had assisted at the meetings of an Irish Socialist Party where
he had felt himself a unique figure amidst a score of sober workmen in
a garret lit by an inefficient oil-lamp. When the party had divided into
three sections, each under its own leader and in its own garret, he had
discontinued his attendances. The workmen’s discussions, he said,
were too timorous; the interest they took in the question of wages was
inordinate. He felt that they were hard-featured realists and that they
resented an exactitude which was the produce of a leisure not within
their reach. No social revolution, he told her, would be likely to
strike Dublin for some centuries.

She asked him why did he not write out his thoughts. For what, he asked
her, with careful scorn. To compete with phrasemongers, incapable of
thinking consecutively for sixty seconds? To submit himself to the
criticisms of an obtuse middle class which entrusted its morality to
policemen and its fine arts to impresarios?

He went often to her little cottage outside Dublin; often they spent
their evenings alone. Little by little, as their thoughts entangled,
they spoke of subjects less remote. Her companionship was like a warm
soil about an exotic. Many times she allowed the dark to fall upon
them, refraining from lighting the lamp. The dark discreet room, their
isolation, the music that still vibrated in their ears united them.
This union exalted him, wore away the rough edges of his character,
emotionalised his mental life. Sometimes he caught himself listening to
the sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascend
to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his
companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal
voice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul’s
incurable loneliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our
own. The end of these discourses was that one night during which she had
shown every sign of unusual excitement, Mrs Sinico caught up his hand
passionately and pressed it to her cheek.

Mr Duffy was very much surprised. Her interpretation of his words
disillusioned him. He did not visit her for a week, then he wrote to her
asking her to meet him. As he did not wish their last interview to be
troubled by the influence of their ruined confessional they met in a
little cakeshop near the Parkgate. It was cold autumn weather but in
spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park for
nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse: every
bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow. When they came out of the Park they
walked in silence towards the tram; but here she began to tremble
so violently that, fearing another collapse on her part, he bade her
good-bye quickly and left her. A few days later he received a parcel
containing his books and music.

Four years passed. Mr Duffy returned to his even way of life. His room
still bore witness of the orderliness of his mind. Some new pieces of
music encumbered the music-stand in the lower room and on his shelves
stood two volumes by Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Gay
Science. He wrote seldom in the sheaf of papers which lay in his desk.
One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with
Mrs Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there
must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is
impossible because there must be sexual intercourse. He kept away from
concerts lest he should meet her. His father died; the junior partner of
the bank retired. And still every morning he went into the city by
tram and every evening walked home from the city after having dined
moderately in George’s Street and read the evening paper for dessert.

One evening as he was about to put a morsel of corned beef and cabbage
into his mouth his hand stopped. His eyes fixed themselves on a
paragraph in the evening paper which he had propped against the
water-carafe. He replaced the morsel of food on his plate and read the
paragraph attentively. Then he drank a glass of water, pushed his plate
to one side, doubled the paper down before him between his elbows and
read the paragraph over and over again. The cabbage began to deposit a
cold white grease on his plate. The girl came over to him to ask was
his dinner not properly cooked. He said it was very good and ate a few
mouthfuls of it with difficulty. Then he paid his bill and went out.

He walked along quickly through the November twilight, his stout hazel
stick striking the ground regularly, the fringe of the buff Mail peeping
out of a side-pocket of his tight reefer overcoat. On the lonely road
which leads from the Parkgate to Chapelizod he slackened his pace.
His stick struck the ground less emphatically and his breath, issuing
irregularly, almost with a sighing sound, condensed in the wintry air.
When he reached his house he went up at once to his bedroom and, taking
the paper from his pocket, read the paragraph again by the failing light
of the window. He read it not aloud, but moving his lips as a priest
does when he reads the prayers Secreto. This was the paragraph:

               DEATH OF A LADY AT SYDNEY PARADE
                       A PAINFUL CASE

Today at the City of Dublin Hospital the Deputy Coroner (in the absence
of Mr Leverett) held an inquest on the body of Mrs Emily Sinico, aged
forty-three years, who was killed at Sydney Parade Station yesterday
evening. The evidence showed that the deceased lady, while attempting to
cross the line, was knocked down by the engine of the ten o’clock slow
train from Kingstown, thereby sustaining injuries of the head and right
side which led to her death.

James Lennon, driver of the engine, stated that he had been in the
employment of the railway company for fifteen years. On hearing the
guard’s whistle he set the train in motion and a second or two
afterwards brought it to rest in response to loud cries. The train was
going slowly.

P. Dunne, railway porter, stated that as the train was about to start he
observed a woman attempting to cross the lines. He ran towards her and
shouted, but, before he could reach her, she was caught by the buffer of
the engine and fell to the ground.

A juror. “You saw the lady fall?”

Witness. “Yes.”

Police Sergeant Croly deposed that when he arrived he found the deceased
lying on the platform apparently dead. He had the body taken to the
waiting-room pending the arrival of the ambulance.

Constable 57E corroborated.

Dr Halpin, assistant house surgeon of the City of Dublin Hospital,
stated that the deceased had two lower ribs fractured and had sustained
severe contusions of the right shoulder. The right side of the head
had been injured in the fall. The injuries were not sufficient to
have caused death in a normal person. Death, in his opinion, had been
probably due to shock and sudden failure of the heart’s action.

Mr H. B. Patterson Finlay, on behalf of the railway company, expressed
his deep regret at the accident. The company had always taken every
precaution to prevent people crossing the lines except by the bridges,
both by placing notices in every station and by the use of patent spring
gates at level crossings. The deceased had been in the habit of crossing
the lines late at night from platform to platform and, in view of
certain other circumstances of the case, he did not think the railway
officials were to blame.

Captain Sinico, of Leoville, Sydney Parade, husband of the deceased,
also gave evidence. He stated that the deceased was his wife. He was
not in Dublin at the time of the accident as he had arrived only that
morning from Rotterdam. They had been married for twenty-two years and
had lived happily until about two years ago when his wife began to be
rather intemperate in her habits.

Miss Mary Sinico said that of late her mother had been in the habit
of going out at night to buy spirits. She, witness, had often tried to
reason with her mother and had induced her to join a league. She was not
at home until an hour after the accident. The jury returned a verdict
in accordance with the medical evidence and exonerated Lennon from all
blame.

The Deputy Coroner said it was a most painful case, and expressed great
sympathy with Captain Sinico and his daughter. He urged on the railway
company to take strong measures to prevent the possibility of similar
accidents in the future. No blame attached to anyone.


Mr Duffy raised his eyes from the paper and gazed out of his window on
the cheerless evening landscape. The river lay quiet beside the empty
distillery and from time to time a light appeared in some house on the
Lucan road. What an end! The whole narrative of her death revolted him
and it revolted him to think that he had ever spoken to her of what he
held sacred. The threadbare phrases, the inane expressions of sympathy,
the cautious words of a reporter won over to conceal the details of
a commonplace vulgar death attacked his stomach. Not merely had she
degraded herself; she had degraded him. He saw the squalid tract of her
vice, miserable and malodorous. His soul’s companion! He thought of
the hobbling wretches whom he had seen carrying cans and bottles to
be filled by the barman. Just God, what an end! Evidently she had been
unfit to live, without any strength of purpose, an easy prey to habits,
one of the wrecks on which civilisation has been reared. But that she
could have sunk so low! Was it possible he had deceived himself
so utterly about her? He remembered her outburst of that night and
interpreted it in a harsher sense than he had ever done. He had no
difficulty now in approving of the course he had taken.

As the light failed and his memory began to wander he thought her hand
touched his. The shock which had first attacked his stomach was now
attacking his nerves. He put on his overcoat and hat quickly and went
out. The cold air met him on the threshold; it crept into the sleeves of
his coat. When he came to the public-house at Chapelizod Bridge he went
in and ordered a hot punch.

The proprietor served him obsequiously but did not venture to talk.
There were five or six workingmen in the shop discussing the value of
a gentleman’s estate in County Kildare. They drank at intervals from
their huge pint tumblers and smoked, spitting often on the floor and
sometimes dragging the sawdust over their spits with their heavy boots.
Mr Duffy sat on his stool and gazed at them, without seeing or hearing
them. After a while they went out and he called for another punch.
He sat a long time over it. The shop was very quiet. The proprietor
sprawled on the counter reading the Herald and yawning. Now and again a
tram was heard swishing along the lonely road outside.

As he sat there, living over his life with her and evoking alternately
the two images in which he now conceived her, he realised that she was
dead, that she had ceased to exist, that she had become a memory. He
began to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else could he have
done. He could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he
could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him
best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how
lonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that
room. His life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to exist,
became a memory—if anyone remembered him.

It was after nine o’clock when he left the shop. The night was cold
and gloomy. He entered the Park by the first gate and walked along
under the gaunt trees. He walked through the bleak alleys where they had
walked four years before. She seemed to be near him in the darkness. At
moments he seemed to feel her voice touch his ear, her hand touch his.
He stood still to listen. Why had he withheld life from her? Why had he
sentenced her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces.

When he gained the crest of the Magazine Hill he halted and looked
along the river towards Dublin, the lights of which burned redly and
hospitably in the cold night. He looked down the slope and, at the base,
in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw some human figures lying.
Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair. He gnawed the
rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life’s
feast. One human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her life
and happiness: he had sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame. He
knew that the prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him and
wished him gone. No one wanted him; he was outcast from life’s feast.
He turned his eyes to the grey gleaming river, winding along towards
Dublin. Beyond the river he saw a goods train winding out of Kingsbridge
Station, like a worm with a fiery head winding through the darkness,
obstinately and laboriously. It passed slowly out of sight; but still
he heard in his ears the laborious drone of the engine reiterating the
syllables of her name.

He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding
in his ears. He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. He
halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not
feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He
waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was
perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he
was alone.






IVY DAY IN THE COMMITTEE ROOM

Old Jack raked the cinders together with a piece of cardboard and spread
them judiciously over the whitening dome of coals. When the dome was
thinly covered his face lapsed into darkness but, as he set himself to
fan the fire again, his crouching shadow ascended the opposite wall and
his face slowly re-emerged into light. It was an old man’s face, very
bony and hairy. The moist blue eyes blinked at the fire and the moist
mouth fell open at times, munching once or twice mechanically when
it closed. When the cinders had caught he laid the piece of cardboard
against the wall, sighed and said:

“That’s better now, Mr O’Connor.”

Mr O’Connor, a grey-haired young man, whose face was disfigured by
many blotches and pimples, had just brought the tobacco for a cigarette
into a shapely cylinder but when spoken to he undid his handiwork
meditatively. Then he began to roll the tobacco again meditatively and
after a moment’s thought decided to lick the paper.

“Did Mr Tierney say when he’d be back?” he asked in a husky
falsetto.

“He didn’t say.”

Mr O’Connor put his cigarette into his mouth and began to search his
pockets. He took out a pack of thin pasteboard cards.

“I’ll get you a match,” said the old man.

“Never mind, this’ll do,” said Mr O’Connor.

He selected one of the cards and read what was printed on it:

      MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS
           —————
      ROYAL EXCHANGE WARD
           —————

Mr Richard J. Tierney, P.L.G., respectfully solicits the favour of your
vote and influence at the coming election in the Royal Exchange Ward.

           —————

Mr O’Connor had been engaged by Tierney’s agent to canvass one part
of the ward but, as the weather was inclement and his boots let in
the wet, he spent a great part of the day sitting by the fire in the
Committee Room in Wicklow Street with Jack, the old caretaker. They had
been sitting thus since the short day had grown dark. It was the sixth
of October, dismal and cold out of doors.

Mr O’Connor tore a strip off the card and, lighting it, lit his
cigarette. As he did so the flame lit up a leaf of dark glossy ivy in
the lapel of his coat. The old man watched him attentively and then,
taking up the piece of cardboard again, began to fan the fire slowly
while his companion smoked.

“Ah, yes,” he said, continuing, “it’s hard to know what way to
bring up children. Now who’d think he’d turn out like that! I sent
him to the Christian Brothers and I done what I could for him, and there
he goes boosing about. I tried to make him someway decent.”

He replaced the cardboard wearily.

“Only I’m an old man now I’d change his tune for him. I’d take
the stick to his back and beat him while I could stand over him—as
I done many a time before. The mother, you know, she cocks him up with
this and that....”

“That’s what ruins children,” said Mr O’Connor.

“To be sure it is,” said the old man. “And little thanks you get
for it, only impudence. He takes th’upper hand of me whenever he sees
I’ve a sup taken. What’s the world coming to when sons speaks that
way to their father?”

“What age is he?” said Mr O’Connor.

“Nineteen,” said the old man.

“Why don’t you put him to something?”

“Sure, amn’t I never done at the drunken bowsy ever since he left
school? ‘I won’t keep you,’ I says. ‘You must get a job for
yourself.’ But, sure, it’s worse whenever he gets a job; he drinks
it all.”

Mr O’Connor shook his head in sympathy, and the old man fell silent,
gazing into the fire. Someone opened the door of the room and called
out:

“Hello! Is this a Freemasons’ meeting?”

“Who’s that?” said the old man.

“What are you doing in the dark?” asked a voice.

“Is that you, Hynes?” asked Mr O’Connor.

“Yes. What are you doing in the dark?” said Mr Hynes. advancing into
the light of the fire.

He was a tall, slender young man with a light brown moustache. Imminent
little drops of rain hung at the brim of his hat and the collar of his
jacket-coat was turned up.

“Well, Mat,” he said to Mr O’Connor, “how goes it?”

Mr O’Connor shook his head. The old man left the hearth and, after
stumbling about the room returned with two candlesticks which he thrust
one after the other into the fire and carried to the table. A denuded
room came into view and the fire lost all its cheerful colour. The walls
of the room were bare except for a copy of an election address. In the
middle of the room was a small table on which papers were heaped.

Mr Hynes leaned against the mantelpiece and asked:

“Has he paid you yet?”

“Not yet,” said Mr O’Connor. “I hope to God he’ll not leave us
in the lurch tonight.”

Mr Hynes laughed.

“O, he’ll pay you. Never fear,” he said.

“I hope he’ll look smart about it if he means business,” said Mr
O’Connor.

“What do you think, Jack?” said Mr Hynes satirically to the old man.

The old man returned to his seat by the fire, saying:

“It isn’t but he has it, anyway. Not like the other tinker.”

“What other tinker?” said Mr Hynes.

“Colgan,” said the old man scornfully.

“It is because Colgan’s a working-man you say that? What’s
the difference between a good honest bricklayer and a publican—eh?
Hasn’t the working-man as good a right to be in the Corporation as
anyone else—ay, and a better right than those shoneens that are always
hat in hand before any fellow with a handle to his name? Isn’t that
so, Mat?” said Mr Hynes, addressing Mr O’Connor.

“I think you’re right,” said Mr O’Connor.

“One man is a plain honest man with no hunker-sliding about him. He
goes in to represent the labour classes. This fellow you’re working
for only wants to get some job or other.”

“Of course, the working-classes should be represented,” said the old
man.

“The working-man,” said Mr Hynes, “gets all kicks and no
halfpence. But it’s labour produces everything. The working-man is
not looking for fat jobs for his sons and nephews and cousins. The
working-man is not going to drag the honour of Dublin in the mud to
please a German monarch.”

“How’s that?” said the old man.

“Don’t you know they want to present an address of welcome to Edward
Rex if he comes here next year? What do we want kowtowing to a foreign
king?”

“Our man won’t vote for the address,” said Mr O’Connor. “He
goes in on the Nationalist ticket.”

“Won’t he?” said Mr Hynes. “Wait till you see whether he will or
not. I know him. Is it Tricky Dicky Tierney?”

“By God! perhaps you’re right, Joe,” said Mr O’Connor.
“Anyway, I wish he’d turn up with the spondulics.”

The three men fell silent. The old man began to rake more cinders
together. Mr Hynes took off his hat, shook it and then turned down the
collar of his coat, displaying, as he did so, an ivy leaf in the lapel.

“If this man was alive,” he said, pointing to the leaf, “we’d
have no talk of an address of welcome.”

“That’s true,” said Mr O’Connor.

“Musha, God be with them times!” said the old man. “There was some
life in it then.”

The room was silent again. Then a bustling little man with a snuffling
nose and very cold ears pushed in the door. He walked over quickly to
the fire, rubbing his hands as if he intended to produce a spark from
them.

“No money, boys,” he said.

“Sit down here, Mr Henchy,” said the old man, offering him his
chair.

“O, don’t stir, Jack, don’t stir,” said Mr Henchy.

He nodded curtly to Mr Hynes and sat down on the chair which the old man
vacated.

“Did you serve Aungier Street?” he asked Mr O’Connor.

“Yes,” said Mr O’Connor, beginning to search his pockets for
memoranda.

“Did you call on Grimes?”

“I did.”

“Well? How does he stand?”

“He wouldn’t promise. He said: ‘I won’t tell anyone what way
I’m going to vote.’ But I think he’ll be all right.”

“Why so?”

“He asked me who the nominators were; and I told him. I mentioned
Father Burke’s name. I think it’ll be all right.”

Mr Henchy began to snuffle and to rub his hands over the fire at a
terrific speed. Then he said:

“For the love of God, Jack, bring us a bit of coal. There must be some
left.”

The old man went out of the room.

“It’s no go,” said Mr Henchy, shaking his head. “I asked the
little shoeboy, but he said: ‘Oh, now, Mr Henchy, when I see work
going on properly I won’t forget you, you may be sure.’ Mean little
tinker! ’Usha, how could he be anything else?”

“What did I tell you, Mat?” said Mr Hynes. “Tricky Dicky
Tierney.”

“O, he’s as tricky as they make ’em,” said Mr Henchy. “He
hasn’t got those little pigs’ eyes for nothing. Blast his soul!
Couldn’t he pay up like a man instead of: ‘O, now, Mr Henchy, I
must speak to Mr Fanning.... I’ve spent a lot of money’? Mean little
shoeboy of hell! I suppose he forgets the time his little old father
kept the hand-me-down shop in Mary’s Lane.”

“But is that a fact?” asked Mr O’Connor.

“God, yes,” said Mr Henchy. “Did you never hear that? And the men
used to go in on Sunday morning before the houses were open to buy a
waistcoat or a trousers—moya! But Tricky Dicky’s little old father
always had a tricky little black bottle up in a corner. Do you mind now?
That’s that. That’s where he first saw the light.”

The old man returned with a few lumps of coal which he placed here and
there on the fire.

“That’s a nice how-do-you-do,” said Mr O’Connor. “How does he
expect us to work for him if he won’t stump up?”

“I can’t help it,” said Mr Henchy. “I expect to find the
bailiffs in the hall when I go home.”

Mr Hynes laughed and, shoving himself away from the mantelpiece with the
aid of his shoulders, made ready to leave.

“It’ll be all right when King Eddie comes,” he said. “Well boys,
I’m off for the present. See you later. ’Bye, ’bye.”

He went out of the room slowly. Neither Mr Henchy nor the old man said
anything but, just as the door was closing, Mr O’Connor, who had been
staring moodily into the fire, called out suddenly:

“’Bye, Joe.”

Mr Henchy waited a few moments and then nodded in the direction of the
door.

“Tell me,” he said across the fire, “what brings our friend in
here? What does he want?”

“’Usha, poor Joe!” said Mr O’Connor, throwing the end of his
cigarette into the fire, “he’s hard up, like the rest of us.”

Mr Henchy snuffled vigorously and spat so copiously that he nearly put
out the fire, which uttered a hissing protest.

“To tell you my private and candid opinion,” he said, “I think
he’s a man from the other camp. He’s a spy of Colgan’s, if you ask
me. Just go round and try and find out how they’re getting on. They
won’t suspect you. Do you twig?”

“Ah, poor Joe is a decent skin,” said Mr O’Connor.

“His father was a decent respectable man,” Mr Henchy admitted.
“Poor old Larry Hynes! Many a good turn he did in his day! But
I’m greatly afraid our friend is not nineteen carat. Damn it, I can
understand a fellow being hard up, but what I can’t understand is a
fellow sponging. Couldn’t he have some spark of manhood about him?”

“He doesn’t get a warm welcome from me when he comes,” said the
old man. “Let him work for his own side and not come spying around
here.”

“I don’t know,” said Mr O’Connor dubiously, as he took out
cigarette-papers and tobacco. “I think Joe Hynes is a straight man.
He’s a clever chap, too, with the pen. Do you remember that thing he
wrote...?”

“Some of these hillsiders and fenians are a bit too clever if you ask
me,” said Mr Henchy. “Do you know what my private and candid opinion
is about some of those little jokers? I believe half of them are in the
pay of the Castle.”

“There’s no knowing,” said the old man.

“O, but I know it for a fact,” said Mr Henchy. “They’re Castle
hacks.... I don’t say Hynes.... No, damn it, I think he’s a
stroke above that.... But there’s a certain little nobleman with a
cock-eye—you know the patriot I’m alluding to?”

Mr O’Connor nodded.

“There’s a lineal descendant of Major Sirr for you if you like! O,
the heart’s blood of a patriot! That’s a fellow now that’d sell
his country for fourpence—ay—and go down on his bended knees and
thank the Almighty Christ he had a country to sell.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” said Mr Henchy.

A person resembling a poor clergyman or a poor actor appeared in the
doorway. His black clothes were tightly buttoned on his short body and
it was impossible to say whether he wore a clergyman’s collar or a
layman’s, because the collar of his shabby frock-coat, the uncovered
buttons of which reflected the candlelight, was turned up about his
neck. He wore a round hat of hard black felt. His face, shining with
raindrops, had the appearance of damp yellow cheese save where two rosy
spots indicated the cheekbones. He opened his very long mouth suddenly
to express disappointment and at the same time opened wide his very
bright blue eyes to express pleasure and surprise.

“O Father Keon!” said Mr Henchy, jumping up from his chair. “Is
that you? Come in!”

“O, no, no, no!” said Father Keon quickly, pursing his lips as if he
were addressing a child.

“Won’t you come in and sit down?”

“No, no, no!” said Father Keon, speaking in a discreet indulgent
velvety voice. “Don’t let me disturb you now! I’m just looking for
Mr Fanning....”

“He’s round at the Black Eagle,” said Mr Henchy. “But won’t
you come in and sit down a minute?”

“No, no, thank you. It was just a little business matter,” said
Father Keon. “Thank you, indeed.”

He retreated from the doorway and Mr Henchy, seizing one of the
candlesticks, went to the door to light him downstairs.

“O, don’t trouble, I beg!”

“No, but the stairs is so dark.”

“No, no, I can see.... Thank you, indeed.”

“Are you right now?”

“All right, thanks.... Thanks.”

Mr Henchy returned with the candlestick and put it on the table. He sat
down again at the fire. There was silence for a few moments.

“Tell me, John,” said Mr O’Connor, lighting his cigarette with
another pasteboard card.

“Hm?”

“What he is exactly?”

“Ask me an easier one,” said Mr Henchy.

“Fanning and himself seem to me very thick. They’re often in
Kavanagh’s together. Is he a priest at all?”

“Mmmyes, I believe so.... I think he’s what you call a black sheep.
We haven’t many of them, thank God! but we have a few.... He’s an
unfortunate man of some kind....”

“And how does he knock it out?” asked Mr O’Connor.

“That’s another mystery.”

“Is he attached to any chapel or church or institution or——”

“No,” said Mr Henchy, “I think he’s travelling on his own
account.... God forgive me,” he added, “I thought he was the dozen
of stout.”

“Is there any chance of a drink itself?” asked Mr O’Connor.

“I’m dry too,” said the old man.

“I asked that little shoeboy three times,” said Mr Henchy, “would
he send up a dozen of stout. I asked him again now, but he was leaning
on the counter in his shirt-sleeves having a deep goster with Alderman
Cowley.”

“Why didn’t you remind him?” said Mr O’Connor.

“Well, I couldn’t go over while he was talking to Alderman Cowley. I
just waited till I caught his eye, and said: ‘About that little matter
I was speaking to you about....’ ‘That’ll be all right, Mr H.,’
he said. Yerra, sure the little hop-o’-my-thumb has forgotten all
about it.”

“There’s some deal on in that quarter,” said Mr O’Connor
thoughtfully. “I saw the three of them hard at it yesterday at Suffolk
Street corner.”

“I think I know the little game they’re at,” said Mr Henchy.
“You must owe the City Fathers money nowadays if you want to be made
Lord Mayor. Then they’ll make you Lord Mayor. By God! I’m thinking
seriously of becoming a City Father myself. What do you think? Would I
do for the job?”

Mr O’Connor laughed.

“So far as owing money goes....”

“Driving out of the Mansion House,” said Mr Henchy, “in all my
vermin, with Jack here standing up behind me in a powdered wig—eh?”

“And make me your private secretary, John.”

“Yes. And I’ll make Father Keon my private chaplain. We’ll have a
family party.”

“Faith, Mr Henchy,” said the old man, “you’d keep up better
style than some of them. I was talking one day to old Keegan, the
porter. ‘And how do you like your new master, Pat?’ says I to him.
‘You haven’t much entertaining now,’ says I. ‘Entertaining!’
says he. ‘He’d live on the smell of an oil-rag.’ And do you know
what he told me? Now, I declare to God I didn’t believe him.”

“What?” said Mr Henchy and Mr O’Connor.

“He told me: ‘What do you think of a Lord Mayor of Dublin sending
out for a pound of chops for his dinner? How’s that for high
living?’ says he. ‘Wisha! wisha,’ says I. ‘A pound of chops,’
says he, ‘coming into the Mansion House.’ ‘Wisha!’ says I,
‘what kind of people is going at all now?’”

At this point there was a knock at the door, and a boy put in his head.

“What is it?” said the old man.

“From the Black Eagle,” said the boy, walking in sideways and
depositing a basket on the floor with a noise of shaken bottles.

The old man helped the boy to transfer the bottles from the basket to
the table and counted the full tally. After the transfer the boy put his
basket on his arm and asked:

“Any bottles?”

“What bottles?” said the old man.

“Won’t you let us drink them first?” said Mr Henchy.

“I was told to ask for the bottles.”

“Come back tomorrow,” said the old man.

“Here, boy!” said Mr Henchy, “will you run over to O’Farrell’s
and ask him to lend us a corkscrew—for Mr Henchy, say. Tell him we
won’t keep it a minute. Leave the basket there.”

The boy went out and Mr Henchy began to rub his hands cheerfully,
saying:

“Ah, well, he’s not so bad after all. He’s as good as his word,
anyhow.”

“There’s no tumblers,” said the old man.

“O, don’t let that trouble you, Jack,” said Mr Henchy. “Many’s
the good man before now drank out of the bottle.”

“Anyway, it’s better than nothing,” said Mr O’Connor.

“He’s not a bad sort,” said Mr Henchy, “only Fanning has such a
loan of him. He means well, you know, in his own tinpot way.”

The boy came back with the corkscrew. The old man opened three bottles
and was handing back the corkscrew when Mr Henchy said to the boy:

“Would you like a drink, boy?”

“If you please, sir,” said the boy.

The old man opened another bottle grudgingly, and handed it to the boy.

“What age are you?” he asked.

“Seventeen,” said the boy.

As the old man said nothing further, the boy took the bottle and said:
“Here’s my best respects, sir,” to Mr Henchy, drank the contents,
put the bottle back on the table and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
Then he took up the corkscrew and went out of the door sideways,
muttering some form of salutation.

“That’s the way it begins,” said the old man.

“The thin edge of the wedge,” said Mr Henchy.

The old man distributed the three bottles which he had opened and the
men drank from them simultaneously. After having drunk each placed
his bottle on the mantelpiece within hand’s reach and drew in a long
breath of satisfaction.

“Well, I did a good day’s work today,” said Mr Henchy, after a
pause.

“That so, John?”

“Yes. I got him one or two sure things in Dawson Street, Crofton and
myself. Between ourselves, you know, Crofton (he’s a decent chap, of
course), but he’s not worth a damn as a canvasser. He hasn’t a word
to throw to a dog. He stands and looks at the people while I do the
talking.”

Here two men entered the room. One of them was a very fat man whose blue
serge clothes seemed to be in danger of falling from his sloping figure.
He had a big face which resembled a young ox’s face in expression,
staring blue eyes and a grizzled moustache. The other man, who was much
younger and frailer, had a thin, clean-shaven face. He wore a very high
double collar and a wide-brimmed bowler hat.

“Hello, Crofton!” said Mr Henchy to the fat man. “Talk of the
devil....”

“Where did the boose come from?” asked the young man. “Did the cow
calve?”

“O, of course, Lyons spots the drink first thing!” said Mr
O’Connor, laughing.

“Is that the way you chaps canvass,” said Mr Lyons, “and Crofton
and I out in the cold and rain looking for votes?”

“Why, blast your soul,” said Mr Henchy, “I’d get more votes in
five minutes than you two’d get in a week.”

“Open two bottles of stout, Jack,” said Mr O’Connor.

“How can I?” said the old man, “when there’s no corkscrew?”

“Wait now, wait now!” said Mr Henchy, getting up quickly. “Did you
ever see this little trick?”

He took two bottles from the table and, carrying them to the fire, put
them on the hob. Then he sat down again by the fire and took another
drink from his bottle. Mr Lyons sat on the edge of the table, pushed his
hat towards the nape of his neck and began to swing his legs.

“Which is my bottle?” he asked.

“This lad,” said Mr Henchy.

Mr Crofton sat down on a box and looked fixedly at the other bottle on
the hob. He was silent for two reasons. The first reason, sufficient in
itself, was that he had nothing to say; the second reason was that
he considered his companions beneath him. He had been a canvasser for
Wilkins, the Conservative, but when the Conservatives had withdrawn
their man and, choosing the lesser of two evils, given their support to
the Nationalist candidate, he had been engaged to work for Mr Tierney.

In a few minutes an apologetic “Pok!” was heard as the cork flew out
of Mr Lyons’ bottle. Mr Lyons jumped off the table, went to the fire,
took his bottle and carried it back to the table.

“I was just telling them, Crofton,” said Mr Henchy, “that we got a
good few votes today.”

“Who did you get?” asked Mr Lyons.

“Well, I got Parkes for one, and I got Atkinson for two, and got
Ward of Dawson Street. Fine old chap he is, too—regular old toff, old
Conservative! ‘But isn’t your candidate a Nationalist?’ said he.
‘He’s a respectable man,’ said I. ‘He’s in favour of whatever
will benefit this country. He’s a big ratepayer,’ I said. ‘He has
extensive house property in the city and three places of business
and isn’t it to his own advantage to keep down the rates? He’s a
prominent and respected citizen,’ said I, ‘and a Poor Law Guardian,
and he doesn’t belong to any party, good, bad, or indifferent.’
That’s the way to talk to ’em.”

“And what about the address to the King?” said Mr Lyons, after
drinking and smacking his lips.

“Listen to me,” said Mr Henchy. “What we want in this country, as
I said to old Ward, is capital. The King’s coming here will mean an
influx of money into this country. The citizens of Dublin will benefit
by it. Look at all the factories down by the quays there, idle! Look
at all the money there is in the country if we only worked the old
industries, the mills, the ship-building yards and factories. It’s
capital we want.”

“But look here, John,” said Mr O’Connor. “Why should we welcome
the King of England? Didn’t Parnell himself....”

“Parnell,” said Mr Henchy, “is dead. Now, here’s the way I
look at it. Here’s this chap come to the throne after his old mother
keeping him out of it till the man was grey. He’s a man of the world,
and he means well by us. He’s a jolly fine decent fellow, if you ask
me, and no damn nonsense about him. He just says to himself: ‘The old
one never went to see these wild Irish. By Christ, I’ll go myself and
see what they’re like.’ And are we going to insult the man when he
comes over here on a friendly visit? Eh? Isn’t that right, Crofton?”

Mr Crofton nodded his head.

“But after all now,” said Mr Lyons argumentatively, “King
Edward’s life, you know, is not the very....”

“Let bygones be bygones,” said Mr Henchy. “I admire the man
personally. He’s just an ordinary knockabout like you and me. He’s
fond of his glass of grog and he’s a bit of a rake, perhaps, and
he’s a good sportsman. Damn it, can’t we Irish play fair?”

“That’s all very fine,” said Mr Lyons. “But look at the case of
Parnell now.”

“In the name of God,” said Mr Henchy, “where’s the analogy
between the two cases?”

“What I mean,” said Mr Lyons, “is we have our ideals. Why, now,
would we welcome a man like that? Do you think now after what he did
Parnell was a fit man to lead us? And why, then, would we do it for
Edward the Seventh?”

“This is Parnell’s anniversary,” said Mr O’Connor, “and
don’t let us stir up any bad blood. We all respect him now that he’s
dead and gone—even the Conservatives,” he added, turning to Mr
Crofton.

Pok! The tardy cork flew out of Mr Crofton’s bottle. Mr Crofton got
up from his box and went to the fire. As he returned with his capture he
said in a deep voice:

“Our side of the house respects him, because he was a gentleman.”

“Right you are, Crofton!” said Mr Henchy fiercely. “He was the
only man that could keep that bag of cats in order. ‘Down, ye dogs!
Lie down, ye curs!’ That’s the way he treated them. Come in, Joe!
Come in!” he called out, catching sight of Mr Hynes in the doorway.

Mr Hynes came in slowly.

“Open another bottle of stout, Jack,” said Mr Henchy. “O, I forgot
there’s no corkscrew! Here, show me one here and I’ll put it at the
fire.”

The old man handed him another bottle and he placed it on the hob.

“Sit down, Joe,” said Mr O’Connor, “we’re just talking about
the Chief.”

“Ay, ay!” said Mr Henchy.

Mr Hynes sat on the side of the table near Mr Lyons but said nothing.

“There’s one of them, anyhow,” said Mr Henchy, “that didn’t
renege him. By God, I’ll say for you, Joe! No, by God, you stuck to
him like a man!”

“O, Joe,” said Mr O’Connor suddenly. “Give us that thing you
wrote—do you remember? Have you got it on you?”

“O, ay!” said Mr Henchy. “Give us that. Did you ever hear that,
Crofton? Listen to this now: splendid thing.”

“Go on,” said Mr O’Connor. “Fire away, Joe.”

Mr Hynes did not seem to remember at once the piece to which they were
alluding but, after reflecting a while, he said:

“O, that thing is it.... Sure, that’s old now.”

“Out with it, man!” said Mr O’Connor.

“’Sh, ’sh,” said Mr Henchy. “Now, Joe!”

Mr Hynes hesitated a little longer. Then amid the silence he took off
his hat, laid it on the table and stood up. He seemed to be rehearsing
the piece in his mind. After a rather long pause he announced:

                       THE DEATH OF PARNELL
                        6th October 1891

He cleared his throat once or twice and then began to recite:

            He is dead.  Our Uncrowned King is dead.
              O, Erin, mourn with grief and woe
            For he lies dead whom the fell gang
              Of modern hypocrites laid low.

            He lies slain by the coward hounds
              He raised to glory from the mire;
            And Erin’s hopes and Erin’s dreams
              Perish upon her monarch’s pyre.

            In palace, cabin or in cot
              The Irish heart where’er it be
            Is bowed with woe—for he is gone
              Who would have wrought her destiny.

            He would have had his Erin famed,
              The green flag gloriously unfurled,
            Her statesmen, bards and warriors raised
              Before the nations of the World.

            He dreamed (alas, ’twas but a dream!)
              Of Liberty: but as he strove
            To clutch that idol, treachery
              Sundered him from the thing he loved.

            Shame on the coward, caitiff hands
              That smote their Lord or with a kiss
            Betrayed him to the rabble-rout
              Of fawning priests—no friends of his.

            May everlasting shame consume
              The memory of those who tried
            To befoul and smear the exalted name
              Of one who spurned them in his pride.

            He fell as fall the mighty ones,
              Nobly undaunted to the last,
            And death has now united him
              With Erin’s heroes of the past.

            No sound of strife disturb his sleep!
              Calmly he rests: no human pain
            Or high ambition spurs him now
              The peaks of glory to attain.

            They had their way: they laid him low.
              But Erin, list, his spirit may
            Rise, like the Phœnix from the flames,
              When breaks the dawning of the day,

            The day that brings us Freedom’s reign.
              And on that day may Erin well
            Pledge in the cup she lifts to Joy
              One grief—the memory of Parnell.

Mr Hynes sat down again on the table. When he had finished his
recitation there was a silence and then a burst of clapping: even Mr
Lyons clapped. The applause continued for a little time. When it had
ceased all the auditors drank from their bottles in silence.

Pok! The cork flew out of Mr Hynes’ bottle, but Mr Hynes remained
sitting flushed and bareheaded on the table. He did not seem to have
heard the invitation.

“Good man, Joe!” said Mr O’Connor, taking out his cigarette papers
and pouch the better to hide his emotion.

“What do you think of that, Crofton?” cried Mr Henchy. “Isn’t
that fine? What?”

Mr Crofton said that it was a very fine piece of writing.






A MOTHER

Mr Holohan, assistant secretary of the Eire Abu Society, had been
walking up and down Dublin for nearly a month, with his hands and
pockets full of dirty pieces of paper, arranging about the series of
concerts. He had a game leg and for this his friends called him Hoppy
Holohan. He walked up and down constantly, stood by the hour at street
corners arguing the point and made notes; but in the end it was Mrs
Kearney who arranged everything.

Miss Devlin had become Mrs Kearney out of spite. She had been educated
in a high-class convent, where she had learned French and music. As
she was naturally pale and unbending in manner she made few friends at
school. When she came to the age of marriage she was sent out to many
houses where her playing and ivory manners were much admired. She sat
amid the chilly circle of her accomplishments, waiting for some suitor
to brave it and offer her a brilliant life. But the young men whom she
met were ordinary and she gave them no encouragement, trying to console
her romantic desires by eating a great deal of Turkish Delight in
secret. However, when she drew near the limit and her friends began
to loosen their tongues about her, she silenced them by marrying Mr
Kearney, who was a bootmaker on Ormond Quay.

He was much older than she. His conversation, which was serious, took
place at intervals in his great brown beard. After the first year of
married life, Mrs Kearney perceived that such a man would wear better
than a romantic person, but she never put her own romantic ideas away.
He was sober, thrifty and pious; he went to the altar every first
Friday, sometimes with her, oftener by himself. But she never weakened
in her religion and was a good wife to him. At some party in a strange
house when she lifted her eyebrow ever so slightly he stood up to take
his leave and, when his cough troubled him, she put the eider-down quilt
over his feet and made a strong rum punch. For his part, he was a model
father. By paying a small sum every week into a society, he ensured for
both his daughters a dowry of one hundred pounds each when they came to
the age of twenty-four. He sent the elder daughter, Kathleen, to a good
convent, where she learned French and music, and afterward paid her
fees at the Academy. Every year in the month of July Mrs Kearney found
occasion to say to some friend:

“My good man is packing us off to Skerries for a few weeks.”

If it was not Skerries it was Howth or Greystones.

When the Irish Revival began to be appreciable Mrs Kearney determined to
take advantage of her daughter’s name and brought an Irish teacher to
the house. Kathleen and her sister sent Irish picture postcards to their
friends and these friends sent back other Irish picture postcards.
On special Sundays, when Mr Kearney went with his family to the
pro-cathedral, a little crowd of people would assemble after mass at
the corner of Cathedral Street. They were all friends of the
Kearneys—musical friends or Nationalist friends; and, when they had
played every little counter of gossip, they shook hands with one another
all together, laughing at the crossing of so many hands, and said
good-bye to one another in Irish. Soon the name of Miss Kathleen Kearney
began to be heard often on people’s lips. People said that she was
very clever at music and a very nice girl and, moreover, that she was a
believer in the language movement. Mrs Kearney was well content at this.
Therefore she was not surprised when one day Mr Holohan came to her and
proposed that her daughter should be the accompanist at a series of
four grand concerts which his Society was going to give in the Antient
Concert Rooms. She brought him into the drawing-room, made him sit down
and brought out the decanter and the silver biscuit-barrel. She
entered heart and soul into the details of the enterprise, advised and
dissuaded; and finally a contract was drawn up by which Kathleen was to
receive eight guineas for her services as accompanist at the four grand
concerts.

As Mr Holohan was a novice in such delicate matters as the wording of
bills and the disposing of items for a programme, Mrs Kearney helped
him. She had tact. She knew what artistes should go into capitals and
what artistes should go into small type. She knew that the first tenor
would not like to come on after Mr Meade’s comic turn. To keep the
audience continually diverted she slipped the doubtful items in between
the old favourites. Mr Holohan called to see her every day to have her
advice on some point. She was invariably friendly and advising—homely,
in fact. She pushed the decanter towards him, saying:

“Now, help yourself, Mr Holohan!”

And while he was helping himself she said:

“Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid of it!”

Everything went on smoothly. Mrs Kearney bought some lovely blush-pink
charmeuse in Brown Thomas’s to let into the front of Kathleen’s
dress. It cost a pretty penny; but there are occasions when a little
expense is justifiable. She took a dozen of two-shilling tickets for the
final concert and sent them to those friends who could not be trusted to
come otherwise. She forgot nothing and, thanks to her, everything that
was to be done was done.

The concerts were to be on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
When Mrs Kearney arrived with her daughter at the Antient Concert Rooms
on Wednesday night she did not like the look of things. A few young men,
wearing bright blue badges in their coats, stood idle in the vestibule;
none of them wore evening dress. She passed by with her daughter and a
quick glance through the open door of the hall showed her the cause of
the stewards’ idleness. At first she wondered had she mistaken the
hour. No, it was twenty minutes to eight.

In the dressing-room behind the stage she was introduced to the
secretary of the Society, Mr Fitzpatrick. She smiled and shook his hand.
He was a little man, with a white vacant face. She noticed that he
wore his soft brown hat carelessly on the side of his head and that
his accent was flat. He held a programme in his hand and, while he was
talking to her, he chewed one end of it into a moist pulp. He seemed
to bear disappointments lightly. Mr Holohan came into the dressing-room
every few minutes with reports from the box-office. The artistes talked
among themselves nervously, glanced from time to time at the mirror and
rolled and unrolled their music. When it was nearly half-past eight, the
few people in the hall began to express their desire to be entertained.
Mr Fitzpatrick came in, smiled vacantly at the room, and said:

“Well now, ladies and gentlemen. I suppose we’d better open the
ball.”

Mrs Kearney rewarded his very flat final syllable with a quick stare of
contempt, and then said to her daughter encouragingly:

“Are you ready, dear?”

When she had an opportunity, she called Mr Holohan aside and asked him
to tell her what it meant. Mr Holohan did not know what it meant.
He said that the Committee had made a mistake in arranging for four
concerts: four was too many.

“And the artistes!” said Mrs Kearney. “Of course they are doing
their best, but really they are not good.”

Mr Holohan admitted that the artistes were no good but the Committee, he
said, had decided to let the first three concerts go as they pleased
and reserve all the talent for Saturday night. Mrs Kearney said nothing,
but, as the mediocre items followed one another on the platform and the
few people in the hall grew fewer and fewer, she began to regret
that she had put herself to any expense for such a concert. There was
something she didn’t like in the look of things and Mr Fitzpatrick’s
vacant smile irritated her very much. However, she said nothing and
waited to see how it would end. The concert expired shortly before ten,
and everyone went home quickly.

The concert on Thursday night was better attended, but Mrs Kearney
saw at once that the house was filled with paper. The audience behaved
indecorously, as if the concert were an informal dress rehearsal. Mr
Fitzpatrick seemed to enjoy himself; he was quite unconscious that Mrs
Kearney was taking angry note of his conduct. He stood at the edge of
the screen, from time to time jutting out his head and exchanging a
laugh with two friends in the corner of the balcony. In the course
of the evening, Mrs Kearney learned that the Friday concert was to be
abandoned and that the Committee was going to move heaven and earth to
secure a bumper house on Saturday night. When she heard this, she sought
out Mr Holohan. She buttonholed him as he was limping out quickly with
a glass of lemonade for a young lady and asked him was it true. Yes, it
was true.

“But, of course, that doesn’t alter the contract,” she said.
“The contract was for four concerts.”

Mr Holohan seemed to be in a hurry; he advised her to speak to Mr
Fitzpatrick. Mrs Kearney was now beginning to be alarmed. She called
Mr Fitzpatrick away from his screen and told him that her daughter had
signed for four concerts and that, of course, according to the terms
of the contract, she should receive the sum originally stipulated for,
whether the society gave the four concerts or not. Mr Fitzpatrick, who
did not catch the point at issue very quickly, seemed unable to resolve
the difficulty and said that he would bring the matter before the
Committee. Mrs Kearney’s anger began to flutter in her cheek and she
had all she could do to keep from asking:

“And who is the Cometty pray?”

But she knew that it would not be ladylike to do that: so she was
silent.

Little boys were sent out into the principal streets of Dublin early on
Friday morning with bundles of handbills. Special puffs appeared in all
the evening papers, reminding the music-loving public of the treat which
was in store for it on the following evening. Mrs Kearney was somewhat
reassured, but she thought well to tell her husband part of her
suspicions. He listened carefully and said that perhaps it would be
better if he went with her on Saturday night. She agreed. She respected
her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as
something large, secure and fixed; and though she knew the small number
of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male. She was
glad that he had suggested coming with her. She thought her plans over.

The night of the grand concert came. Mrs Kearney, with her husband and
daughter, arrived at the Antient Concert Rooms three-quarters of an hour
before the time at which the concert was to begin. By ill luck it was a
rainy evening. Mrs Kearney placed her daughter’s clothes and music
in charge of her husband and went all over the building looking for
Mr Holohan or Mr Fitzpatrick. She could find neither. She asked the
stewards was any member of the Committee in the hall and, after a great
deal of trouble, a steward brought out a little woman named Miss
Beirne to whom Mrs Kearney explained that she wanted to see one of the
secretaries. Miss Beirne expected them any minute and asked could she
do anything. Mrs Kearney looked searchingly at the oldish face which was
screwed into an expression of trustfulness and enthusiasm and answered:

“No, thank you!”

The little woman hoped they would have a good house. She looked out
at the rain until the melancholy of the wet street effaced all the
trustfulness and enthusiasm from her twisted features. Then she gave a
little sigh and said:

“Ah, well! We did our best, the dear knows.”

Mrs Kearney had to go back to the dressing-room.

The artistes were arriving. The bass and the second tenor had already
come. The bass, Mr Duggan, was a slender young man with a scattered
black moustache. He was the son of a hall porter in an office in the
city and, as a boy, he had sung prolonged bass notes in the resounding
hall. From this humble state he had raised himself until he had become
a first-rate artiste. He had appeared in grand opera. One night, when an
operatic artiste had fallen ill, he had undertaken the part of the king
in the opera of Maritana at the Queen’s Theatre. He sang his music
with great feeling and volume and was warmly welcomed by the gallery;
but, unfortunately, he marred the good impression by wiping his nose in
his gloved hand once or twice out of thoughtlessness. He was unassuming
and spoke little. He said yous so softly that it passed unnoticed and he
never drank anything stronger than milk for his voice’s sake. Mr Bell,
the second tenor, was a fair-haired little man who competed every year
for prizes at the Feis Ceoil. On his fourth trial he had been awarded
a bronze medal. He was extremely nervous and extremely jealous of
other tenors and he covered his nervous jealousy with an ebullient
friendliness. It was his humour to have people know what an ordeal a
concert was to him. Therefore when he saw Mr Duggan he went over to him
and asked:

“Are you in it too?”

“Yes,” said Mr Duggan.

Mr Bell laughed at his fellow-sufferer, held out his hand and said:

“Shake!”

Mrs Kearney passed by these two young men and went to the edge of the
screen to view the house. The seats were being filled up rapidly and a
pleasant noise circulated in the auditorium. She came back and spoke to
her husband privately. Their conversation was evidently about Kathleen
for they both glanced at her often as she stood chatting to one of her
Nationalist friends, Miss Healy, the contralto. An unknown solitary
woman with a pale face walked through the room. The women followed with
keen eyes the faded blue dress which was stretched upon a meagre body.
Someone said that she was Madam Glynn, the soprano.

“I wonder where did they dig her up,” said Kathleen to Miss Healy.
“I’m sure I never heard of her.”

Miss Healy had to smile. Mr Holohan limped into the dressing-room at
that moment and the two young ladies asked him who was the unknown
woman. Mr Holohan said that she was Madam Glynn from London. Madam Glynn
took her stand in a corner of the room, holding a roll of music stiffly
before her and from time to time changing the direction of her startled
gaze. The shadow took her faded dress into shelter but fell revengefully
into the little cup behind her collar-bone. The noise of the hall became
more audible. The first tenor and the baritone arrived together. They
were both well dressed, stout and complacent and they brought a breath
of opulence among the company.

Mrs Kearney brought her daughter over to them, and talked to them
amiably. She wanted to be on good terms with them but, while she strove
to be polite, her eyes followed Mr Holohan in his limping and devious
courses. As soon as she could she excused herself and went out after
him.

“Mr Holohan, I want to speak to you for a moment,” she said.

They went down to a discreet part of the corridor. Mrs Kearney asked
him when was her daughter going to be paid. Mr Holohan said that Mr
Fitzpatrick had charge of that. Mrs Kearney said that she didn’t know
anything about Mr Fitzpatrick. Her daughter had signed a contract for
eight guineas and she would have to be paid. Mr Holohan said that it
wasn’t his business.

“Why isn’t it your business?” asked Mrs Kearney. “Didn’t you
yourself bring her the contract? Anyway, if it’s not your business
it’s my business and I mean to see to it.”

“You’d better speak to Mr Fitzpatrick,” said Mr Holohan distantly.

“I don’t know anything about Mr Fitzpatrick,” repeated Mrs
Kearney. “I have my contract, and I intend to see that it is carried
out.”

When she came back to the dressing-room her cheeks were slightly
suffused. The room was lively. Two men in outdoor dress had taken
possession of the fireplace and were chatting familiarly with Miss Healy
and the baritone. They were the Freeman man and Mr O’Madden Burke. The
Freeman man had come in to say that he could not wait for the concert as
he had to report the lecture which an American priest was giving in
the Mansion House. He said they were to leave the report for him at the
Freeman office and he would see that it went in. He was a grey-haired
man, with a plausible voice and careful manners. He held an extinguished
cigar in his hand and the aroma of cigar smoke floated near him. He had
not intended to stay a moment because concerts and artistes bored him
considerably but he remained leaning against the mantelpiece. Miss
Healy stood in front of him, talking and laughing. He was old enough to
suspect one reason for her politeness but young enough in spirit to
turn the moment to account. The warmth, fragrance and colour of her body
appealed to his senses. He was pleasantly conscious that the bosom which
he saw rise and fall slowly beneath him rose and fell at that moment
for him, that the laughter and fragrance and wilful glances were his
tribute. When he could stay no longer he took leave of her regretfully.

“O’Madden Burke will write the notice,” he explained to Mr
Holohan, “and I’ll see it in.”

“Thank you very much, Mr Hendrick,” said Mr Holohan, “you’ll
see it in, I know. Now, won’t you have a little something before you
go?”

“I don’t mind,” said Mr Hendrick.

The two men went along some tortuous passages and up a dark staircase
and came to a secluded room where one of the stewards was uncorking
bottles for a few gentlemen. One of these gentlemen was Mr O’Madden
Burke, who had found out the room by instinct. He was a suave, elderly
man who balanced his imposing body, when at rest, upon a large silk
umbrella. His magniloquent western name was the moral umbrella upon
which he balanced the fine problem of his finances. He was widely
respected.

While Mr Holohan was entertaining the Freeman man Mrs Kearney was
speaking so animatedly to her husband that he had to ask her to lower
her voice. The conversation of the others in the dressing-room had
become strained. Mr Bell, the first item, stood ready with his music but
the accompanist made no sign. Evidently something was wrong. Mr Kearney
looked straight before him, stroking his beard, while Mrs Kearney spoke
into Kathleen’s ear with subdued emphasis. From the hall came sounds
of encouragement, clapping and stamping of feet. The first tenor and
the baritone and Miss Healy stood together, waiting tranquilly, but Mr
Bell’s nerves were greatly agitated because he was afraid the audience
would think that he had come late.

Mr Holohan and Mr O’Madden Burke came into the room. In a moment Mr
Holohan perceived the hush. He went over to Mrs Kearney and spoke with
her earnestly. While they were speaking the noise in the hall grew
louder. Mr Holohan became very red and excited. He spoke volubly, but
Mrs Kearney said curtly at intervals:

“She won’t go on. She must get her eight guineas.”

Mr Holohan pointed desperately towards the hall where the audience was
clapping and stamping. He appealed to Mr Kearney and to Kathleen. But Mr
Kearney continued to stroke his beard and Kathleen looked down, moving
the point of her new shoe: it was not her fault. Mrs Kearney repeated:

“She won’t go on without her money.”

After a swift struggle of tongues Mr Holohan hobbled out in haste. The
room was silent. When the strain of the silence had become somewhat
painful Miss Healy said to the baritone:

“Have you seen Mrs Pat Campbell this week?”

The baritone had not seen her but he had been told that she was very
fine. The conversation went no further. The first tenor bent his head
and began to count the links of the gold chain which was extended across
his waist, smiling and humming random notes to observe the effect on the
frontal sinus. From time to time everyone glanced at Mrs Kearney.

The noise in the auditorium had risen to a clamour when Mr Fitzpatrick
burst into the room, followed by Mr Holohan, who was panting. The
clapping and stamping in the hall were punctuated by whistling. Mr
Fitzpatrick held a few banknotes in his hand. He counted out four
into Mrs Kearney’s hand and said she would get the other half at the
interval. Mrs Kearney said:

“This is four shillings short.”

But Kathleen gathered in her skirt and said: “Now, Mr Bell,” to
the first item, who was shaking like an aspen. The singer and the
accompanist went out together. The noise in hall died away. There was a
pause of a few seconds: and then the piano was heard.

The first part of the concert was very successful except for Madam
Glynn’s item. The poor lady sang Killarney in a bodiless gasping
voice, with all the old-fashioned mannerisms of intonation and
pronunciation which she believed lent elegance to her singing. She
looked as if she had been resurrected from an old stage-wardrobe and the
cheaper parts of the hall made fun of her high wailing notes. The first
tenor and the contralto, however, brought down the house. Kathleen
played a selection of Irish airs which was generously applauded. The
first part closed with a stirring patriotic recitation delivered by
a young lady who arranged amateur theatricals. It was deservedly
applauded; and, when it was ended, the men went out for the interval,
content.

All this time the dressing-room was a hive of excitement. In one corner
were Mr Holohan, Mr Fitzpatrick, Miss Beirne, two of the stewards, the
baritone, the bass, and Mr O’Madden Burke. Mr O’Madden Burke said it
was the most scandalous exhibition he had ever witnessed. Miss Kathleen
Kearney’s musical career was ended in Dublin after that, he said. The
baritone was asked what did he think of Mrs Kearney’s conduct. He did
not like to say anything. He had been paid his money and wished to be at
peace with men. However, he said that Mrs Kearney might have taken the
artistes into consideration. The stewards and the secretaries debated
hotly as to what should be done when the interval came.

“I agree with Miss Beirne,” said Mr O’Madden Burke. “Pay her
nothing.”

In another corner of the room were Mrs Kearney and her husband, Mr Bell,
Miss Healy and the young lady who had to recite the patriotic piece. Mrs
Kearney said that the Committee had treated her scandalously. She had
spared neither trouble nor expense and this was how she was repaid.

They thought they had only a girl to deal with and that, therefore, they
could ride roughshod over her. But she would show them their mistake.
They wouldn’t have dared to have treated her like that if she had
been a man. But she would see that her daughter got her rights: she
wouldn’t be fooled. If they didn’t pay her to the last farthing
she would make Dublin ring. Of course she was sorry for the sake of the
artistes. But what else could she do? She appealed to the second tenor
who said he thought she had not been well treated. Then she appealed to
Miss Healy. Miss Healy wanted to join the other group but she did not
like to do so because she was a great friend of Kathleen’s and the
Kearneys had often invited her to their house.

As soon as the first part was ended Mr Fitzpatrick and Mr Holohan went
over to Mrs Kearney and told her that the other four guineas would be
paid after the Committee meeting on the following Tuesday and that, in
case her daughter did not play for the second part, the Committee would
consider the contract broken and would pay nothing.

“I haven’t seen any Committee,” said Mrs Kearney angrily. “My
daughter has her contract. She will get four pounds eight into her hand
or a foot she won’t put on that platform.”

“I’m surprised at you, Mrs Kearney,” said Mr Holohan. “I never
thought you would treat us this way.”

“And what way did you treat me?” asked Mrs Kearney.

Her face was inundated with an angry colour and she looked as if she
would attack someone with her hands.

“I’m asking for my rights.” she said.

“You might have some sense of decency,” said Mr Holohan.

“Might I, indeed?... And when I ask when my daughter is going to be
paid I can’t get a civil answer.”

She tossed her head and assumed a haughty voice:

“You must speak to the secretary. It’s not my business. I’m a
great fellow fol-the-diddle-I-do.”

“I thought you were a lady,” said Mr Holohan, walking away from her
abruptly.

After that Mrs Kearney’s conduct was condemned on all hands: everyone
approved of what the Committee had done. She stood at the door, haggard
with rage, arguing with her husband and daughter, gesticulating with
them. She waited until it was time for the second part to begin in the
hope that the secretaries would approach her. But Miss Healy had kindly
consented to play one or two accompaniments. Mrs Kearney had to stand
aside to allow the baritone and his accompanist to pass up to the
platform. She stood still for an instant like an angry stone image
and, when the first notes of the song struck her ear, she caught up her
daughter’s cloak and said to her husband:

“Get a cab!”

He went out at once. Mrs Kearney wrapped the cloak round her daughter
and followed him. As she passed through the doorway she stopped and
glared into Mr Holohan’s face.

“I’m not done with you yet,” she said.

“But I’m done with you,” said Mr Holohan.

Kathleen followed her mother meekly. Mr Holohan began to pace up and
down the room, in order to cool himself for he felt his skin on fire.

“That’s a nice lady!” he said. “O, she’s a nice lady!”

“You did the proper thing, Holohan,” said Mr O’Madden Burke,
poised upon his umbrella in approval.






GRACE

Two gentlemen who were in the lavatory at the time tried to lift him up:
but he was quite helpless. He lay curled up at the foot of the stairs
down which he had fallen. They succeeded in turning him over. His hat
had rolled a few yards away and his clothes were smeared with the filth
and ooze of the floor on which he had lain, face downwards. His eyes
were closed and he breathed with a grunting noise. A thin stream of
blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

These two gentlemen and one of the curates carried him up the stairs
and laid him down again on the floor of the bar. In two minutes he was
surrounded by a ring of men. The manager of the bar asked everyone
who he was and who was with him. No one knew who he was but one of the
curates said he had served the gentleman with a small rum.

“Was he by himself?” asked the manager.

“No, sir. There was two gentlemen with him.”

“And where are they?”

No one knew; a voice said:

“Give him air. He’s fainted.”

The ring of onlookers distended and closed again elastically. A
dark medal of blood had formed itself near the man’s head on the
tessellated floor. The manager, alarmed by the grey pallor of the
man’s face, sent for a policeman.

His collar was unfastened and his necktie undone. He opened his eyes
for an instant, sighed and closed them again. One of gentlemen who had
carried him upstairs held a dinged silk hat in his hand. The manager
asked repeatedly did no one know who the injured man was or where had
his friends gone. The door of the bar opened and an immense constable
entered. A crowd which had followed him down the laneway collected
outside the door, struggling to look in through the glass panels.

The manager at once began to narrate what he knew. The constable, a
young man with thick immobile features, listened. He moved his head
slowly to right and left and from the manager to the person on the
floor, as if he feared to be the victim of some delusion. Then he drew
off his glove, produced a small book from his waist, licked the lead of
his pencil and made ready to indite. He asked in a suspicious provincial
accent:

“Who is the man? What’s his name and address?”

A young man in a cycling-suit cleared his way through the ring of
bystanders. He knelt down promptly beside the injured man and called for
water. The constable knelt down also to help. The young man washed the
blood from the injured man’s mouth and then called for some brandy.
The constable repeated the order in an authoritative voice until a
curate came running with the glass. The brandy was forced down the
man’s throat. In a few seconds he opened his eyes and looked about
him. He looked at the circle of faces and then, understanding, strove to
rise to his feet.

“You’re all right now?” asked the young man in the cycling-suit.

“Sha, ’s nothing,” said the injured man, trying to stand up.

He was helped to his feet. The manager said something about a hospital
and some of the bystanders gave advice. The battered silk hat was placed
on the man’s head. The constable asked:

“Where do you live?”

The man, without answering, began to twirl the ends of his moustache.
He made light of his accident. It was nothing, he said: only a little
accident. He spoke very thickly.

“Where do you live?” repeated the constable.

The man said they were to get a cab for him. While the point was being
debated a tall agile gentleman of fair complexion, wearing a long yellow
ulster, came from the far end of the bar. Seeing the spectacle, he
called out:

“Hallo, Tom, old man! What’s the trouble?”

“Sha, ’s nothing,” said the man.

The new-comer surveyed the deplorable figure before him and then turned
to the constable, saying:

“It’s all right, constable. I’ll see him home.”

The constable touched his helmet and answered:

“All right, Mr Power!”

“Come now, Tom,” said Mr Power, taking his friend by the arm. “No
bones broken. What? Can you walk?”

The young man in the cycling-suit took the man by the other arm and the
crowd divided.

“How did you get yourself into this mess?” asked Mr Power.

“The gentleman fell down the stairs,” said the young man.

“I’ ’ery ’uch o’liged to you, sir,” said the injured man.

“Not at all.”

“’ant we have a little...?”

“Not now. Not now.”

The three men left the bar and the crowd sifted through the doors into
the laneway. The manager brought the constable to the stairs to inspect
the scene of the accident. They agreed that the gentleman must have
missed his footing. The customers returned to the counter and a curate
set about removing the traces of blood from the floor.

When they came out into Grafton Street, Mr Power whistled for an
outsider. The injured man said again as well as he could:

“I’ ’ery ’uch o’liged to you, sir. I hope we’ll ’eet
again. ’y na’e is Kernan.”

The shock and the incipient pain had partly sobered him.

“Don’t mention it,” said the young man.

They shook hands. Mr Kernan was hoisted on to the car and, while Mr
Power was giving directions to the carman, he expressed his gratitude
to the young man and regretted that they could not have a little drink
together.

“Another time,” said the young man.

The car drove off towards Westmoreland Street. As it passed Ballast
Office the clock showed half-past nine. A keen east wind hit them,
blowing from the mouth of the river. Mr Kernan was huddled together with
cold. His friend asked him to tell how the accident had happened.

“I ’an’t, ’an,” he answered, “’y ’ongue is hurt.”

“Show.”

The other leaned over the well of the car and peered into Mr Kernan’s
mouth but he could not see. He struck a match and, sheltering it in the
shell of his hands, peered again into the mouth which Mr Kernan opened
obediently. The swaying movement of the car brought the match to and
from the opened mouth. The lower teeth and gums were covered with
clotted blood and a minute piece of the tongue seemed to have been
bitten off. The match was blown out.

“That’s ugly,” said Mr Power.

“Sha, ’s nothing,” said Mr Kernan, closing his mouth and pulling
the collar of his filthy coat across his neck.

Mr Kernan was a commercial traveller of the old school which believed in
the dignity of its calling. He had never been seen in the city without
a silk hat of some decency and a pair of gaiters. By grace of these
two articles of clothing, he said, a man could always pass muster. He
carried on the tradition of his Napoleon, the great Blackwhite, whose
memory he evoked at times by legend and mimicry. Modern business methods
had spared him only so far as to allow him a little office in Crowe
Street on the window blind of which was written the name of his firm
with the address—London, E.C. On the mantelpiece of this little office
a little leaden battalion of canisters was drawn up and on the table
before the window stood four or five china bowls which were usually half
full of a black liquid. From these bowls Mr Kernan tasted tea. He took
a mouthful, drew it up, saturated his palate with it and then spat it
forth into the grate. Then he paused to judge.

Mr Power, a much younger man, was employed in the Royal Irish
Constabulary Office in Dublin Castle. The arc of his social rise
intersected the arc of his friend’s decline, but Mr Kernan’s decline
was mitigated by the fact that certain of those friends who had known
him at his highest point of success still esteemed him as a character.
Mr Power was one of these friends. His inexplicable debts were a byword
in his circle; he was a debonair young man.

The car halted before a small house on the Glasnevin road and Mr Kernan
was helped into the house. His wife put him to bed while Mr Power sat
downstairs in the kitchen asking the children where they went to
school and what book they were in. The children—two girls and a boy,
conscious of their father’s helplessness and of their mother’s
absence, began some horseplay with him. He was surprised at their
manners and at their accents, and his brow grew thoughtful. After a
while Mrs Kernan entered the kitchen, exclaiming:

“Such a sight! O, he’ll do for himself one day and that’s the holy
alls of it. He’s been drinking since Friday.”

Mr Power was careful to explain to her that he was not responsible, that
he had come on the scene by the merest accident. Mrs Kernan, remembering
Mr Power’s good offices during domestic quarrels, as well as many
small, but opportune loans, said:

“O, you needn’t tell me that, Mr Power. I know you’re a friend of
his, not like some of the others he does be with. They’re all right
so long as he has money in his pocket to keep him out from his wife and
family. Nice friends! Who was he with tonight, I’d like to know?”

Mr Power shook his head but said nothing.

“I’m so sorry,” she continued, “that I’ve nothing in the house
to offer you. But if you wait a minute I’ll send round to Fogarty’s
at the corner.”

Mr Power stood up.

“We were waiting for him to come home with the money. He never seems
to think he has a home at all.”

“O, now, Mrs Kernan,” said Mr Power, “we’ll make him turn over
a new leaf. I’ll talk to Martin. He’s the man. We’ll come here one
of these nights and talk it over.”

She saw him to the door. The carman was stamping up and down the
footpath, and swinging his arms to warm himself.

“It’s very kind of you to bring him home,” she said.

“Not at all,” said Mr Power.

He got up on the car. As it drove off he raised his hat to her gaily.

“We’ll make a new man of him,” he said. “Good-night, Mrs
Kernan.”



Mrs Kernan’s puzzled eyes watched the car till it was out of sight.
Then she withdrew them, went into the house and emptied her husband’s
pockets.

She was an active, practical woman of middle age. Not long before she
had celebrated her silver wedding and renewed her intimacy with her
husband by waltzing with him to Mr Power’s accompaniment. In her days
of courtship Mr Kernan had seemed to her a not ungallant figure: and she
still hurried to the chapel door whenever a wedding was reported and,
seeing the bridal pair, recalled with vivid pleasure how she had passed
out of the Star of the Sea Church in Sandymount, leaning on the arm of
a jovial well-fed man, who was dressed smartly in a frock-coat and
lavender trousers and carried a silk hat gracefully balanced upon his
other arm. After three weeks she had found a wife’s life irksome and,
later on, when she was beginning to find it unbearable, she had become a
mother. The part of mother presented to her no insuperable difficulties
and for twenty-five years she had kept house shrewdly for her husband.
Her two eldest sons were launched. One was in a draper’s shop in
Glasgow and the other was clerk to a tea-merchant in Belfast. They were
good sons, wrote regularly and sometimes sent home money. The other
children were still at school.

Mr Kernan sent a letter to his office next day and remained in bed. She
made beef-tea for him and scolded him roundly. She accepted his frequent
intemperance as part of the climate, healed him dutifully whenever he
was sick and always tried to make him eat a breakfast. There were worse
husbands. He had never been violent since the boys had grown up and she
knew that he would walk to the end of Thomas Street and back again to
book even a small order.

Two nights after his friends came to see him. She brought them up to
his bedroom, the air of which was impregnated with a personal odour,
and gave them chairs at the fire. Mr Kernan’s tongue, the occasional
stinging pain of which had made him somewhat irritable during the day,
became more polite. He sat propped up in the bed by pillows and the
little colour in his puffy cheeks made them resemble warm cinders. He
apologised to his guests for the disorder of the room, but at the same
time looked at them a little proudly, with a veteran’s pride.

He was quite unconscious that he was the victim of a plot which his
friends, Mr Cunningham, Mr M’Coy and Mr Power had disclosed to
Mrs Kernan in the parlour. The idea had been Mr Power’s but its
development was entrusted to Mr Cunningham. Mr Kernan came of Protestant
stock and, though he had been converted to the Catholic faith at the
time of his marriage, he had not been in the pale of the Church
for twenty years. He was fond, moreover, of giving side-thrusts at
Catholicism.

Mr Cunningham was the very man for such a case. He was an elder
colleague of Mr Power. His own domestic life was not very happy. People
had great sympathy with him for it was known that he had married an
unpresentable woman who was an incurable drunkard. He had set up house
for her six times; and each time she had pawned the furniture on him.

Everyone had respect for poor Martin Cunningham. He was a thoroughly
sensible man, influential and intelligent. His blade of human knowledge,
natural astuteness particularised by long association with cases in the
police courts, had been tempered by brief immersions in the waters
of general philosophy. He was well informed. His friends bowed to his
opinions and considered that his face was like Shakespeare’s.

When the plot had been disclosed to her, Mrs Kernan had said:

“I leave it all in your hands, Mr Cunningham.”

After a quarter of a century of married life, she had very few illusions
left. Religion for her was a habit and she suspected that a man of her
husband’s age would not change greatly before death. She was tempted
to see a curious appropriateness in his accident and, but that she did
not wish to seem bloody-minded, she would have told the gentlemen that
Mr Kernan’s tongue would not suffer by being shortened. However, Mr
Cunningham was a capable man; and religion was religion. The scheme
might do good and, at least, it could do no harm. Her beliefs were
not extravagant. She believed steadily in the Sacred Heart as the
most generally useful of all Catholic devotions and approved of the
sacraments. Her faith was bounded by her kitchen but, if she was put to
it, she could believe also in the banshee and in the Holy Ghost.

The gentlemen began to talk of the accident. Mr Cunningham said that he
had once known a similar case. A man of seventy had bitten off a piece
of his tongue during an epileptic fit and the tongue had filled in again
so that no one could see a trace of the bite.

“Well, I’m not seventy,” said the invalid.

“God forbid,” said Mr Cunningham.

“It doesn’t pain you now?” asked Mr M’Coy.

Mr M’Coy had been at one time a tenor of some reputation. His wife,
who had been a soprano, still taught young children to play the piano at
low terms. His line of life had not been the shortest distance between
two points and for short periods he had been driven to live by his
wits. He had been a clerk in the Midland Railway, a canvasser for
advertisements for The Irish Times and for The Freeman’s Journal, a
town traveller for a coal firm on commission, a private inquiry agent,
a clerk in the office of the Sub-Sheriff and he had recently become
secretary to the City Coroner. His new office made him professionally
interested in Mr Kernan’s case.

“Pain? Not much,” answered Mr Kernan. “But it’s so sickening. I
feel as if I wanted to retch off.”

“That’s the boose,” said Mr Cunningham firmly.

“No,” said Mr Kernan. “I think I caught a cold on the car.
There’s something keeps coming into my throat, phlegm or——”

“Mucus.” said Mr M’Coy.

“It keeps coming like from down in my throat; sickening thing.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr M’Coy, “that’s the thorax.”

He looked at Mr Cunningham and Mr Power at the same time with an air of
challenge. Mr Cunningham nodded his head rapidly and Mr Power said:

“Ah, well, all’s well that ends well.”

“I’m very much obliged to you, old man,” said the invalid.

Mr Power waved his hand.

“Those other two fellows I was with——”

“Who were you with?” asked Mr Cunningham.

“A chap. I don’t know his name. Damn it now, what’s his name?
Little chap with sandy hair....”

“And who else?”

“Harford.”

“Hm,” said Mr Cunningham.

When Mr Cunningham made that remark, people were silent. It was known
that the speaker had secret sources of information. In this case the
monosyllable had a moral intention. Mr Harford sometimes formed one of a
little detachment which left the city shortly after noon on Sunday with
the purpose of arriving as soon as possible at some public-house on the
outskirts of the city where its members duly qualified themselves as
bona fide travellers. But his fellow-travellers had never consented
to overlook his origin. He had begun life as an obscure financier by
lending small sums of money to workmen at usurious interest. Later on
he had become the partner of a very fat short gentleman, Mr Goldberg, in
the Liffey Loan Bank. Though he had never embraced more than the Jewish
ethical code his fellow-Catholics, whenever they had smarted in person
or by proxy under his exactions, spoke of him bitterly as an Irish Jew
and an illiterate and saw divine disapproval of usury made manifest
through the person of his idiot son. At other times they remembered his
good points.

“I wonder where did he go to,” said Mr Kernan.

He wished the details of the incident to remain vague. He wished his
friends to think there had been some mistake, that Mr Harford and he
had missed each other. His friends, who knew quite well Mr Harford’s
manners in drinking, were silent. Mr Power said again:

“All’s well that ends well.”

Mr Kernan changed the subject at once.

“That was a decent young chap, that medical fellow,” he said.
“Only for him——”

“O, only for him,” said Mr Power, “it might have been a case of
seven days, without the option of a fine.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr Kernan, trying to remember. “I remember now
there was a policeman. Decent young fellow, he seemed. How did it happen
at all?”

“It happened that you were peloothered, Tom,” said Mr Cunningham
gravely.

“True bill,” said Mr Kernan, equally gravely.

“I suppose you squared the constable, Jack,” said Mr M’Coy.

Mr Power did not relish the use of his Christian name. He was not
straight-laced, but he could not forget that Mr M’Coy had recently
made a crusade in search of valises and portmanteaus to enable Mrs
M’Coy to fulfil imaginary engagements in the country. More than he
resented the fact that he had been victimised he resented such low
playing of the game. He answered the question, therefore, as if Mr
Kernan had asked it.

The narrative made Mr Kernan indignant. He was keenly conscious of his
citizenship, wished to live with his city on terms mutually honourable
and resented any affront put upon him by those whom he called country
bumpkins.

“Is this what we pay rates for?” he asked. “To feed and clothe
these ignorant bostooms ... and they’re nothing else.”

Mr Cunningham laughed. He was a Castle official only during office
hours.

“How could they be anything else, Tom?” he said.

He assumed a thick provincial accent and said in a tone of command:

“65, catch your cabbage!”

Everyone laughed. Mr M’Coy, who wanted to enter the conversation by
any door, pretended that he had never heard the story. Mr Cunningham
said:

“It is supposed—they say, you know—to take place in the depot
where they get these thundering big country fellows, omadhauns, you
know, to drill. The sergeant makes them stand in a row against the wall
and hold up their plates.”

He illustrated the story by grotesque gestures.

“At dinner, you know. Then he has a bloody big bowl of cabbage before
him on the table and a bloody big spoon like a shovel. He takes up a wad
of cabbage on the spoon and pegs it across the room and the poor devils
have to try and catch it on their plates: 65, catch your cabbage.”

Everyone laughed again: but Mr Kernan was somewhat indignant still. He
talked of writing a letter to the papers.

“These yahoos coming up here,” he said, “think they can boss the
people. I needn’t tell you, Martin, what kind of men they are.”

Mr Cunningham gave a qualified assent.

“It’s like everything else in this world,” he said. “You get
some bad ones and you get some good ones.”

“O yes, you get some good ones, I admit,” said Mr Kernan, satisfied.

“It’s better to have nothing to say to them,” said Mr M’Coy.
“That’s my opinion!”

Mrs Kernan entered the room and, placing a tray on the table, said:

“Help yourselves, gentlemen.”

Mr Power stood up to officiate, offering her his chair. She declined
it, saying she was ironing downstairs, and, after having exchanged a nod
with Mr Cunningham behind Mr Power’s back, prepared to leave the room.
Her husband called out to her:

“And have you nothing for me, duckie?”

“O, you! The back of my hand to you!” said Mrs Kernan tartly.

Her husband called after her:

“Nothing for poor little hubby!”

He assumed such a comical face and voice that the distribution of the
bottles of stout took place amid general merriment.

The gentlemen drank from their glasses, set the glasses again on the
table and paused. Then Mr Cunningham turned towards Mr Power and said
casually:

“On Thursday night, you said, Jack.”

“Thursday, yes,” said Mr Power.

“Righto!” said Mr Cunningham promptly.

“We can meet in M’Auley’s,” said Mr M’Coy. “That’ll be the
most convenient place.”

“But we mustn’t be late,” said Mr Power earnestly, “because it
is sure to be crammed to the doors.”

“We can meet at half-seven,” said Mr M’Coy.

“Righto!” said Mr Cunningham.

“Half-seven at M’Auley’s be it!”

There was a short silence. Mr Kernan waited to see whether he would be
taken into his friends’ confidence. Then he asked:

“What’s in the wind?”

“O, it’s nothing,” said Mr Cunningham. “It’s only a little
matter that we’re arranging about for Thursday.”

“The opera, is it?” said Mr Kernan.

“No, no,” said Mr Cunningham in an evasive tone, “it’s just a
little ... spiritual matter.”

“O,” said Mr Kernan.

There was silence again. Then Mr Power said, point blank:

“To tell you the truth, Tom, we’re going to make a retreat.”

“Yes, that’s it,” said Mr Cunningham, “Jack and I and M’Coy
here—we’re all going to wash the pot.”

He uttered the metaphor with a certain homely energy and, encouraged by
his own voice, proceeded:

“You see, we may as well all admit we’re a nice collection of
scoundrels, one and all. I say, one and all,” he added with gruff
charity and turning to Mr Power. “Own up now!”

“I own up,” said Mr Power.

“And I own up,” said Mr M’Coy.

“So we’re going to wash the pot together,” said Mr Cunningham.

A thought seemed to strike him. He turned suddenly to the invalid and
said:

“D’ye know what, Tom, has just occurred to me? You might join in and
we’d have a four-handed reel.”

“Good idea,” said Mr Power. “The four of us together.”

Mr Kernan was silent. The proposal conveyed very little meaning to
his mind but, understanding that some spiritual agencies were about to
concern themselves on his behalf, he thought he owed it to his dignity
to show a stiff neck. He took no part in the conversation for a long
while but listened, with an air of calm enmity, while his friends
discussed the Jesuits.

“I haven’t such a bad opinion of the Jesuits,” he said,
intervening at length. “They’re an educated order. I believe they
mean well too.”

“They’re the grandest order in the Church, Tom,” said Mr
Cunningham, with enthusiasm. “The General of the Jesuits stands next
to the Pope.”

“There’s no mistake about it,” said Mr M’Coy, “if you want a
thing well done and no flies about it you go to a Jesuit. They’re the
boyos have influence. I’ll tell you a case in point....”

“The Jesuits are a fine body of men,” said Mr Power.

“It’s a curious thing,” said Mr Cunningham, “about the Jesuit
Order. Every other order of the Church had to be reformed at some time
or other but the Jesuit Order was never once reformed. It never fell
away.”

“Is that so?” asked Mr M’Coy.

“That’s a fact,” said Mr Cunningham. “That’s history.”

“Look at their church, too,” said Mr Power. “Look at the
congregation they have.”

“The Jesuits cater for the upper classes,” said Mr M’Coy.

“Of course,” said Mr Power.

“Yes,” said Mr Kernan. “That’s why I have a feeling for them.
It’s some of those secular priests, ignorant, bumptious——”

“They’re all good men,” said Mr Cunningham, “each in his own
way. The Irish priesthood is honoured all the world over.”

“O yes,” said Mr Power.

“Not like some of the other priesthoods on the continent,” said Mr
M’Coy, “unworthy of the name.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Mr Kernan, relenting.

“Of course I’m right,” said Mr Cunningham. “I haven’t been in
the world all this time and seen most sides of it without being a judge
of character.”

The gentlemen drank again, one following another’s example. Mr Kernan
seemed to be weighing something in his mind. He was impressed. He had a
high opinion of Mr Cunningham as a judge of character and as a reader of
faces. He asked for particulars.

“O, it’s just a retreat, you know,” said Mr Cunningham. “Father
Purdon is giving it. It’s for business men, you know.”

“He won’t be too hard on us, Tom,” said Mr Power persuasively.

“Father Purdon? Father Purdon?” said the invalid.

“O, you must know him, Tom,” said Mr Cunningham stoutly. “Fine
jolly fellow! He’s a man of the world like ourselves.”

“Ah, ... yes. I think I know him. Rather red face; tall.”

“That’s the man.”

“And tell me, Martin.... Is he a good preacher?”

“Munno.... It’s not exactly a sermon, you know. It’s just kind of
a friendly talk, you know, in a common-sense way.”

Mr Kernan deliberated. Mr M’Coy said:

“Father Tom Burke, that was the boy!”

“O, Father Tom Burke,” said Mr Cunningham, “that was a born
orator. Did you ever hear him, Tom?”

“Did I ever hear him!” said the invalid, nettled. “Rather! I heard
him....”

“And yet they say he wasn’t much of a theologian,” said Mr
Cunningham.

“Is that so?” said Mr M’Coy.

“O, of course, nothing wrong, you know. Only sometimes, they say, he
didn’t preach what was quite orthodox.”

“Ah! ... he was a splendid man,” said Mr M’Coy.

“I heard him once,” Mr Kernan continued. “I forget the subject of
his discourse now. Crofton and I were in the back of the ... pit, you
know ... the——”

“The body,” said Mr Cunningham.

“Yes, in the back near the door. I forget now what.... O yes, it was
on the Pope, the late Pope. I remember it well. Upon my word it was
magnificent, the style of the oratory. And his voice! God! hadn’t he
a voice! The Prisoner of the Vatican, he called him. I remember Crofton
saying to me when we came out——”

“But he’s an Orangeman, Crofton, isn’t he?” said Mr Power.

“‘Course he is,” said Mr Kernan, “and a damned decent Orangeman
too. We went into Butler’s in Moore Street—faith, I was genuinely
moved, tell you the God’s truth—and I remember well his very words.
Kernan, he said, we worship at different altars, he said, but our belief
is the same. Struck me as very well put.”

“There’s a good deal in that,” said Mr Power. “There used
always to be crowds of Protestants in the chapel where Father Tom was
preaching.”

“There’s not much difference between us,” said Mr M’Coy.

“We both believe in——”

He hesitated for a moment.

“... in the Redeemer. Only they don’t believe in the Pope and in the
mother of God.”

“But, of course,” said Mr Cunningham quietly and effectively, “our
religion is the religion, the old, original faith.”

“Not a doubt of it,” said Mr Kernan warmly.

Mrs Kernan came to the door of the bedroom and announced:

“Here’s a visitor for you!”

“Who is it?”

“Mr Fogarty.”

“O, come in! come in!”

A pale oval face came forward into the light. The arch of its fair
trailing moustache was repeated in the fair eyebrows looped above
pleasantly astonished eyes. Mr Fogarty was a modest grocer. He had
failed in business in a licensed house in the city because his financial
condition had constrained him to tie himself to second-class distillers
and brewers. He had opened a small shop on Glasnevin Road where, he
flattered himself, his manners would ingratiate him with the housewives
of the district. He bore himself with a certain grace, complimented
little children and spoke with a neat enunciation. He was not without
culture.

Mr Fogarty brought a gift with him, a half-pint of special whisky. He
inquired politely for Mr Kernan, placed his gift on the table and sat
down with the company on equal terms. Mr Kernan appreciated the gift all
the more since he was aware that there was a small account for groceries
unsettled between him and Mr Fogarty. He said:

“I wouldn’t doubt you, old man. Open that, Jack, will you?”

Mr Power again officiated. Glasses were rinsed and five small
measures of whisky were poured out. This new influence enlivened the
conversation. Mr Fogarty, sitting on a small area of the chair, was
specially interested.

“Pope Leo XIII.,” said Mr Cunningham, “was one of the lights of
the age. His great idea, you know, was the union of the Latin and Greek
Churches. That was the aim of his life.”

“I often heard he was one of the most intellectual men in Europe,”
said Mr Power. “I mean, apart from his being Pope.”

“So he was,” said Mr Cunningham, “if not the most so. His motto,
you know, as Pope, was Lux upon Lux—Light upon Light.”

“No, no,” said Mr Fogarty eagerly. “I think you’re wrong there.
It was Lux in Tenebris, I think—Light in Darkness.”

“O yes,” said Mr M’Coy, “Tenebrae.”

“Allow me,” said Mr Cunningham positively, “it was Lux upon Lux.
And Pius IX. his predecessor’s motto was Crux upon Crux—that
is, Cross upon Cross—to show the difference between their two
pontificates.”

The inference was allowed. Mr Cunningham continued.

“Pope Leo, you know, was a great scholar and a poet.”

“He had a strong face,” said Mr Kernan.

“Yes,” said Mr Cunningham. “He wrote Latin poetry.”

“Is that so?” said Mr Fogarty.

Mr M’Coy tasted his whisky contentedly and shook his head with a
double intention, saying:

“That’s no joke, I can tell you.”

“We didn’t learn that, Tom,” said Mr Power, following Mr
M’Coy’s example, “when we went to the penny-a-week school.”

“There was many a good man went to the penny-a-week school with a sod
of turf under his oxter,” said Mr Kernan sententiously. “The
old system was the best: plain honest education. None of your modern
trumpery....”

“Quite right,” said Mr Power.

“No superfluities,” said Mr Fogarty.

He enunciated the word and then drank gravely.

“I remember reading,” said Mr Cunningham, “that one of Pope
Leo’s poems was on the invention of the photograph—in Latin, of
course.”

“On the photograph!” exclaimed Mr Kernan.

“Yes,” said Mr Cunningham.

He also drank from his glass.

“Well, you know,” said Mr M’Coy, “isn’t the photograph
wonderful when you come to think of it?”

“O, of course,” said Mr Power, “great minds can see things.”

“As the poet says: Great minds are very near to madness,” said Mr
Fogarty.

Mr Kernan seemed to be troubled in mind. He made an effort to recall the
Protestant theology on some thorny points and in the end addressed Mr
Cunningham.

“Tell me, Martin,” he said. “Weren’t some of the popes—of
course, not our present man, or his predecessor, but some of the old
popes—not exactly ... you know ... up to the knocker?”

There was a silence. Mr Cunningham said:

“O, of course, there were some bad lots.... But the astonishing thing
is this. Not one of them, not the biggest drunkard, not the most ...
out-and-out ruffian, not one of them ever preached ex cathedra a word of
false doctrine. Now isn’t that an astonishing thing?”

“That is,” said Mr Kernan.

“Yes, because when the Pope speaks ex cathedra,” Mr Fogarty
explained, “he is infallible.”

“Yes,” said Mr Cunningham.

“O, I know about the infallibility of the Pope. I remember I was
younger then.... Or was it that——?”

Mr Fogarty interrupted. He took up the bottle and helped the others to
a little more. Mr M’Coy, seeing that there was not enough to go round,
pleaded that he had not finished his first measure. The others accepted
under protest. The light music of whisky falling into glasses made an
agreeable interlude.

“What’s that you were saying, Tom?” asked Mr M’Coy.

“Papal infallibility,” said Mr Cunningham, “that was the greatest
scene in the whole history of the Church.”

“How was that, Martin?” asked Mr Power.

Mr Cunningham held up two thick fingers.

“In the sacred college, you know, of cardinals and archbishops and
bishops there were two men who held out against it while the others were
all for it. The whole conclave except these two was unanimous. No! They
wouldn’t have it!”

“Ha!” said Mr M’Coy.

“And they were a German cardinal by the name of Dolling ... or Dowling
... or——”

“Dowling was no German, and that’s a sure five,” said Mr Power,
laughing.

“Well, this great German cardinal, whatever his name was, was one; and
the other was John MacHale.”

“What?” cried Mr Kernan. “Is it John of Tuam?”

“Are you sure of that now?” asked Mr Fogarty dubiously. “I thought
it was some Italian or American.”

“John of Tuam,” repeated Mr Cunningham, “was the man.”

He drank and the other gentlemen followed his lead. Then he resumed:

“There they were at it, all the cardinals and bishops and archbishops
from all the ends of the earth and these two fighting dog and devil
until at last the Pope himself stood up and declared infallibility a
dogma of the Church ex cathedra. On the very moment John MacHale, who
had been arguing and arguing against it, stood up and shouted out with
the voice of a lion: ‘Credo!’”

“I believe!” said Mr Fogarty.

“Credo!” said Mr Cunningham. “That showed the faith he had. He
submitted the moment the Pope spoke.”

“And what about Dowling?” asked Mr M’Coy.

“The German cardinal wouldn’t submit. He left the church.”

Mr Cunningham’s words had built up the vast image of the church in
the minds of his hearers. His deep raucous voice had thrilled them as it
uttered the word of belief and submission. When Mrs Kernan came into
the room drying her hands she came into a solemn company. She did not
disturb the silence, but leaned over the rail at the foot of the bed.

“I once saw John MacHale,” said Mr Kernan, “and I’ll never
forget it as long as I live.”

He turned towards his wife to be confirmed.

“I often told you that?”

Mrs Kernan nodded.

“It was at the unveiling of Sir John Gray’s statue. Edmund Dwyer
Gray was speaking, blathering away, and here was this old fellow,
crabbed-looking old chap, looking at him from under his bushy
eyebrows.”

Mr Kernan knitted his brows and, lowering his head like an angry bull,
glared at his wife.

“God!” he exclaimed, resuming his natural face, “I never saw such
an eye in a man’s head. It was as much as to say: I have you properly
taped, my lad. He had an eye like a hawk.”

“None of the Grays was any good,” said Mr Power.

There was a pause again. Mr Power turned to Mrs Kernan and said with
abrupt joviality:

“Well, Mrs Kernan, we’re going to make your man here a good holy
pious and God-fearing Roman Catholic.”

He swept his arm round the company inclusively.

“We’re all going to make a retreat together and confess our
sins—and God knows we want it badly.”

“I don’t mind,” said Mr Kernan, smiling a little nervously.

Mrs Kernan thought it would be wiser to conceal her satisfaction. So she
said:

“I pity the poor priest that has to listen to your tale.”

Mr Kernan’s expression changed.

“If he doesn’t like it,” he said bluntly, “he can ... do the
other thing. I’ll just tell him my little tale of woe. I’m not such
a bad fellow——”

Mr Cunningham intervened promptly.

“We’ll all renounce the devil,” he said, “together, not
forgetting his works and pomps.”

“Get behind me, Satan!” said Mr Fogarty, laughing and looking at the
others.

Mr Power said nothing. He felt completely out-generalled. But a pleased
expression flickered across his face.

“All we have to do,” said Mr Cunningham, “is to stand up with
lighted candles in our hands and renew our baptismal vows.”

“O, don’t forget the candle, Tom,” said Mr M’Coy, “whatever
you do.”

“What?” said Mr Kernan. “Must I have a candle?”

“O yes,” said Mr Cunningham.

“No, damn it all,” said Mr Kernan sensibly, “I draw the line
there. I’ll do the job right enough. I’ll do the retreat business
and confession, and ... all that business. But ... no candles! No, damn
it all, I bar the candles!”

He shook his head with farcical gravity.

“Listen to that!” said his wife.

“I bar the candles,” said Mr Kernan, conscious of having created an
effect on his audience and continuing to shake his head to and fro. “I
bar the magic-lantern business.”

Everyone laughed heartily.

“There’s a nice Catholic for you!” said his wife.

“No candles!” repeated Mr Kernan obdurately. “That’s off!”



The transept of the Jesuit Church in Gardiner Street was almost full;
and still at every moment gentlemen entered from the side door and,
directed by the lay-brother, walked on tiptoe along the aisles until
they found seating accommodation. The gentlemen were all well dressed
and orderly. The light of the lamps of the church fell upon an assembly
of black clothes and white collars, relieved here and there by tweeds,
on dark mottled pillars of green marble and on lugubrious canvases. The
gentlemen sat in the benches, having hitched their trousers slightly
above their knees and laid their hats in security. They sat well back
and gazed formally at the distant speck of red light which was suspended
before the high altar.

In one of the benches near the pulpit sat Mr Cunningham and Mr Kernan.
In the bench behind sat Mr M’Coy alone: and in the bench behind him
sat Mr Power and Mr Fogarty. Mr M’Coy had tried unsuccessfully to find
a place in the bench with the others and, when the party had settled
down in the form of a quincunx, he had tried unsuccessfully to make
comic remarks. As these had not been well received he had desisted. Even
he was sensible of the decorous atmosphere and even he began to respond
to the religious stimulus. In a whisper Mr Cunningham drew Mr Kernan’s
attention to Mr Harford, the moneylender, who sat some distance off, and
to Mr Fanning, the registration agent and mayor maker of the city, who
was sitting immediately under the pulpit beside one of the newly elected
councillors of the ward. To the right sat old Michael Grimes, the owner
of three pawnbroker’s shops, and Dan Hogan’s nephew, who was up for
the job in the Town Clerk’s office. Farther in front sat Mr Hendrick,
the chief reporter of The Freeman’s Journal, and poor O’Carroll,
an old friend of Mr Kernan’s, who had been at one time a considerable
commercial figure. Gradually, as he recognised familiar faces, Mr Kernan
began to feel more at home. His hat, which had been rehabilitated by his
wife, rested upon his knees. Once or twice he pulled down his cuffs with
one hand while he held the brim of his hat lightly, but firmly, with the
other hand.

A powerful-looking figure, the upper part of which was draped with
a white surplice, was observed to be struggling into the pulpit.
Simultaneously the congregation unsettled, produced handkerchiefs and
knelt upon them with care. Mr Kernan followed the general example. The
priest’s figure now stood upright in the pulpit, two-thirds of its
bulk, crowned by a massive red face, appearing above the balustrade.

Father Purdon knelt down, turned towards the red speck of light
and, covering his face with his hands, prayed. After an interval, he
uncovered his face and rose. The congregation rose also and settled
again on its benches. Mr Kernan restored his hat to its original
position on his knee and presented an attentive face to the preacher.
The preacher turned back each wide sleeve of his surplice with an
elaborate large gesture and slowly surveyed the array of faces. Then he
said:


“For the children of this world are wiser in their generation than
the children of light. Wherefore make unto yourselves friends out of
the mammon of iniquity so that when you die they may receive you into
everlasting dwellings.”


Father Purdon developed the text with resonant assurance. It was one of
the most difficult texts in all the Scriptures, he said, to interpret
properly. It was a text which might seem to the casual observer at
variance with the lofty morality elsewhere preached by Jesus Christ.
But, he told his hearers, the text had seemed to him specially adapted
for the guidance of those whose lot it was to lead the life of the world
and who yet wished to lead that life not in the manner of worldlings. It
was a text for business men and professional men. Jesus Christ, with
His divine understanding of every cranny of our human nature, understood
that all men were not called to the religious life, that by far the vast
majority were forced to live in the world and, to a certain extent,
for the world: and in this sentence He designed to give them a word of
counsel, setting before them as exemplars in the religious life those
very worshippers of Mammon who were of all men the least solicitous in
matters religious.

He told his hearers that he was there that evening for no terrifying,
no extravagant purpose; but as a man of the world speaking to his
fellow-men. He came to speak to business men and he would speak to them
in a businesslike way. If he might use the metaphor, he said, he was
their spiritual accountant; and he wished each and every one of his
hearers to open his books, the books of his spiritual life, and see if
they tallied accurately with conscience.

Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster. He understood our little
failings, understood the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood
the temptations of this life. We might have had, we all had from time to
time, our temptations: we might have, we all had, our failings. But one
thing only, he said, he would ask of his hearers. And that was: to be
straight and manly with God. If their accounts tallied in every point to
say:

“Well, I have verified my accounts. I find all well.”

But if, as might happen, there were some discrepancies, to admit the
truth, to be frank and say like a man:

“Well, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this
wrong. But, with God’s grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set
right my accounts.”






THE DEAD

Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly
had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office
on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the wheezy
hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare
hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not to
attend to the ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought
of that and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies’
dressing-room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and
laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the
stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask
her who had come.

It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan’s annual dance.
Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends
of the family, the members of Julia’s choir, any of Kate’s pupils
that were grown up enough, and even some of Mary Jane’s pupils too.
Never once had it fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in
splendid style as long as anyone could remember; ever since Kate and
Julia, after the death of their brother Pat, had left the house in
Stoney Batter and taken Mary Jane, their only niece, to live with them
in the dark gaunt house on Usher’s Island, the upper part of which
they had rented from Mr Fulham, the corn-factor on the ground floor.
That was a good thirty years ago if it was a day. Mary Jane, who was
then a little girl in short clothes, was now the main prop of the
household, for she had the organ in Haddington Road. She had been
through the Academy and gave a pupils’ concert every year in the upper
room of the Antient Concert Rooms. Many of her pupils belonged to the
better-class families on the Kingstown and Dalkey line. Old as they
were, her aunts also did their share. Julia, though she was quite grey,
was still the leading soprano in Adam and Eve’s, and Kate, being too
feeble to go about much, gave music lessons to beginners on the old
square piano in the back room. Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, did
housemaid’s work for them. Though their life was modest they
believed in eating well; the best of everything: diamond-bone sirloins,
three-shilling tea and the best bottled stout. But Lily seldom made a
mistake in the orders so that she got on well with her three mistresses.
They were fussy, that was all. But the only thing they would not stand
was back answers.

Of course they had good reason to be fussy on such a night. And then it
was long after ten o’clock and yet there was no sign of Gabriel and
his wife. Besides they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins
might turn up screwed. They would not wish for worlds that any of Mary
Jane’s pupils should see him under the influence; and when he was like
that it was sometimes very hard to manage him. Freddy Malins always came
late but they wondered what could be keeping Gabriel: and that was what
brought them every two minutes to the banisters to ask Lily had Gabriel
or Freddy come.

“O, Mr Conroy,” said Lily to Gabriel when she opened the door
for him, “Miss Kate and Miss Julia thought you were never coming.
Good-night, Mrs Conroy.”

“I’ll engage they did,” said Gabriel, “but they forget that my
wife here takes three mortal hours to dress herself.”

He stood on the mat, scraping the snow from his goloshes, while Lily led
his wife to the foot of the stairs and called out:

“Miss Kate, here’s Mrs Conroy.”

Kate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them
kissed Gabriel’s wife, said she must be perished alive and asked was
Gabriel with her.

“Here I am as right as the mail, Aunt Kate! Go on up. I’ll
follow,” called out Gabriel from the dark.

He continued scraping his feet vigorously while the three women went
upstairs, laughing, to the ladies’ dressing-room. A light fringe of
snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps
on the toes of his goloshes; and, as the buttons of his overcoat slipped
with a squeaking noise through the snow-stiffened frieze, a cold,
fragrant air from out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds.

“Is it snowing again, Mr Conroy?” asked Lily.

She had preceded him into the pantry to help him off with his overcoat.
Gabriel smiled at the three syllables she had given his surname and
glanced at her. She was a slim, growing girl, pale in complexion and
with hay-coloured hair. The gas in the pantry made her look still paler.
Gabriel had known her when she was a child and used to sit on the lowest
step nursing a rag doll.

“Yes, Lily,” he answered, “and I think we’re in for a night of
it.”

He looked up at the pantry ceiling, which was shaking with the stamping
and shuffling of feet on the floor above, listened for a moment to
the piano and then glanced at the girl, who was folding his overcoat
carefully at the end of a shelf.

“Tell me, Lily,” he said in a friendly tone, “do you still go to
school?”

“O no, sir,” she answered. “I’m done schooling this year and
more.”

“O, then,” said Gabriel gaily, “I suppose we’ll be going to your
wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh?”

The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great
bitterness:

“The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of
you.”

Gabriel coloured as if he felt he had made a mistake and, without
looking at her, kicked off his goloshes and flicked actively with his
muffler at his patent-leather shoes.

He was a stout tallish young man. The high colour of his cheeks pushed
upwards even to his forehead where it scattered itself in a few formless
patches of pale red; and on his hairless face there scintillated
restlessly the polished lenses and the bright gilt rims of the glasses
which screened his delicate and restless eyes. His glossy black hair was
parted in the middle and brushed in a long curve behind his ears where
it curled slightly beneath the groove left by his hat.

When he had flicked lustre into his shoes he stood up and pulled his
waistcoat down more tightly on his plump body. Then he took a coin
rapidly from his pocket.

“O Lily,” he said, thrusting it into her hands, “it’s
Christmas-time, isn’t it? Just ... here’s a little....”

He walked rapidly towards the door.

“O no, sir!” cried the girl, following him. “Really, sir, I
wouldn’t take it.”

“Christmas-time! Christmas-time!” said Gabriel, almost trotting to
the stairs and waving his hand to her in deprecation.

The girl, seeing that he had gained the stairs, called out after him:

“Well, thank you, sir.”

He waited outside the drawing-room door until the waltz should finish,
listening to the skirts that swept against it and to the shuffling of
feet. He was still discomposed by the girl’s bitter and sudden retort.
It had cast a gloom over him which he tried to dispel by arranging his
cuffs and the bows of his tie. He then took from his waistcoat pocket a
little paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He
was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for he feared they
would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they would
recognise from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. The
indelicate clacking of the men’s heels and the shuffling of their
soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He
would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they
could not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior
education. He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl
in the pantry. He had taken up a wrong tone. His whole speech was a
mistake from first to last, an utter failure.

Just then his aunts and his wife came out of the ladies’
dressing-room. His aunts were two small plainly dressed old women. Aunt
Julia was an inch or so the taller. Her hair, drawn low over the tops
of her ears, was grey; and grey also, with darker shadows, was her large
flaccid face. Though she was stout in build and stood erect her slow
eyes and parted lips gave her the appearance of a woman who did not know
where she was or where she was going. Aunt Kate was more vivacious. Her
face, healthier than her sister’s, was all puckers and creases, like
a shrivelled red apple, and her hair, braided in the same old-fashioned
way, had not lost its ripe nut colour.

They both kissed Gabriel frankly. He was their favourite nephew, the son
of their dead elder sister, Ellen, who had married T. J. Conroy of the
Port and Docks.

“Gretta tells me you’re not going to take a cab back to Monkstown
tonight, Gabriel,” said Aunt Kate.

“No,” said Gabriel, turning to his wife, “we had quite enough of
that last year, hadn’t we? Don’t you remember, Aunt Kate, what a
cold Gretta got out of it? Cab windows rattling all the way, and the
east wind blowing in after we passed Merrion. Very jolly it was. Gretta
caught a dreadful cold.”

Aunt Kate frowned severely and nodded her head at every word.

“Quite right, Gabriel, quite right,” she said. “You can’t be too
careful.”

“But as for Gretta there,” said Gabriel, “she’d walk home in the
snow if she were let.”

Mrs Conroy laughed.

“Don’t mind him, Aunt Kate,” she said. “He’s really an awful
bother, what with green shades for Tom’s eyes at night and making him
do the dumb-bells, and forcing Eva to eat the stirabout. The poor child!
And she simply hates the sight of it!... O, but you’ll never guess
what he makes me wear now!”

She broke out into a peal of laughter and glanced at her husband, whose
admiring and happy eyes had been wandering from her dress to her face
and hair. The two aunts laughed heartily too, for Gabriel’s solicitude
was a standing joke with them.

“Goloshes!” said Mrs Conroy. “That’s the latest. Whenever it’s
wet underfoot I must put on my goloshes. Tonight even he wanted me to
put them on, but I wouldn’t. The next thing he’ll buy me will be a
diving suit.”

Gabriel laughed nervously and patted his tie reassuringly while Aunt
Kate nearly doubled herself, so heartily did she enjoy the joke. The
smile soon faded from Aunt Julia’s face and her mirthless eyes were
directed towards her nephew’s face. After a pause she asked:

“And what are goloshes, Gabriel?”

“Goloshes, Julia!” exclaimed her sister “Goodness me, don’t you
know what goloshes are? You wear them over your ... over your boots,
Gretta, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Mrs Conroy. “Guttapercha things. We both have a pair
now. Gabriel says everyone wears them on the continent.”

“O, on the continent,” murmured Aunt Julia, nodding her head slowly.

Gabriel knitted his brows and said, as if he were slightly angered:

“It’s nothing very wonderful but Gretta thinks it very funny because
she says the word reminds her of Christy Minstrels.”

“But tell me, Gabriel,” said Aunt Kate, with brisk tact. “Of
course, you’ve seen about the room. Gretta was saying....”

“O, the room is all right,” replied Gabriel. “I’ve taken one in
the Gresham.”

“To be sure,” said Aunt Kate, “by far the best thing to do. And
the children, Gretta, you’re not anxious about them?”

“O, for one night,” said Mrs Conroy. “Besides, Bessie will look
after them.”

“To be sure,” said Aunt Kate again. “What a comfort it is to have
a girl like that, one you can depend on! There’s that Lily, I’m sure
I don’t know what has come over her lately. She’s not the girl she
was at all.”

Gabriel was about to ask his aunt some questions on this point but she
broke off suddenly to gaze after her sister who had wandered down the
stairs and was craning her neck over the banisters.

“Now, I ask you,” she said almost testily, “where is Julia going?
Julia! Julia! Where are you going?”

Julia, who had gone half way down one flight, came back and announced
blandly:

“Here’s Freddy.”

At the same moment a clapping of hands and a final flourish of the
pianist told that the waltz had ended. The drawing-room door was opened
from within and some couples came out. Aunt Kate drew Gabriel aside
hurriedly and whispered into his ear:

“Slip down, Gabriel, like a good fellow and see if he’s all right,
and don’t let him up if he’s screwed. I’m sure he’s screwed.
I’m sure he is.”

Gabriel went to the stairs and listened over the banisters. He could
hear two persons talking in the pantry. Then he recognised Freddy
Malins’ laugh. He went down the stairs noisily.

“It’s such a relief,” said Aunt Kate to Mrs Conroy, “that
Gabriel is here. I always feel easier in my mind when he’s here....
Julia, there’s Miss Daly and Miss Power will take some refreshment.
Thanks for your beautiful waltz, Miss Daly. It made lovely time.”

A tall wizen-faced man, with a stiff grizzled moustache and swarthy
skin, who was passing out with his partner said:

“And may we have some refreshment, too, Miss Morkan?”

“Julia,” said Aunt Kate summarily, “and here’s Mr Browne and
Miss Furlong. Take them in, Julia, with Miss Daly and Miss Power.”

“I’m the man for the ladies,” said Mr Browne, pursing his lips
until his moustache bristled and smiling in all his wrinkles. “You
know, Miss Morkan, the reason they are so fond of me is——”

He did not finish his sentence, but, seeing that Aunt Kate was out of
earshot, at once led the three young ladies into the back room. The
middle of the room was occupied by two square tables placed end to
end, and on these Aunt Julia and the caretaker were straightening
and smoothing a large cloth. On the sideboard were arrayed dishes and
plates, and glasses and bundles of knives and forks and spoons. The top
of the closed square piano served also as a sideboard for viands
and sweets. At a smaller sideboard in one corner two young men were
standing, drinking hop-bitters.

Mr Browne led his charges thither and invited them all, in jest, to some
ladies’ punch, hot, strong and sweet. As they said they never took
anything strong he opened three bottles of lemonade for them. Then
he asked one of the young men to move aside, and, taking hold of the
decanter, filled out for himself a goodly measure of whisky. The young
men eyed him respectfully while he took a trial sip.

“God help me,” he said, smiling, “it’s the doctor’s orders.”

His wizened face broke into a broader smile, and the three young ladies
laughed in musical echo to his pleasantry, swaying their bodies to and
fro, with nervous jerks of their shoulders. The boldest said:

“O, now, Mr Browne, I’m sure the doctor never ordered anything of
the kind.”

Mr Browne took another sip of his whisky and said, with sidling mimicry:

“Well, you see, I’m like the famous Mrs Cassidy, who is reported to
have said: ‘Now, Mary Grimes, if I don’t take it, make me take it,
for I feel I want it.’”

His hot face had leaned forward a little too confidentially and he had
assumed a very low Dublin accent so that the young ladies, with one
instinct, received his speech in silence. Miss Furlong, who was one of
Mary Jane’s pupils, asked Miss Daly what was the name of the pretty
waltz she had played; and Mr Browne, seeing that he was ignored, turned
promptly to the two young men who were more appreciative.

A red-faced young woman, dressed in pansy, came into the room, excitedly
clapping her hands and crying:

“Quadrilles! Quadrilles!”

Close on her heels came Aunt Kate, crying:

“Two gentlemen and three ladies, Mary Jane!”

“O, here’s Mr Bergin and Mr Kerrigan,” said Mary Jane. “Mr
Kerrigan, will you take Miss Power? Miss Furlong, may I get you a
partner, Mr Bergin. O, that’ll just do now.”

“Three ladies, Mary Jane,” said Aunt Kate.

The two young gentlemen asked the ladies if they might have the
pleasure, and Mary Jane turned to Miss Daly.

“O, Miss Daly, you’re really awfully good, after playing for the
last two dances, but really we’re so short of ladies tonight.”

“I don’t mind in the least, Miss Morkan.”

“But I’ve a nice partner for you, Mr Bartell D’Arcy, the tenor.
I’ll get him to sing later on. All Dublin is raving about him.”

“Lovely voice, lovely voice!” said Aunt Kate.

As the piano had twice begun the prelude to the first figure Mary Jane
led her recruits quickly from the room. They had hardly gone when Aunt
Julia wandered slowly into the room, looking behind her at something.

“What is the matter, Julia?” asked Aunt Kate anxiously. “Who is
it?”

Julia, who was carrying in a column of table-napkins, turned to her
sister and said, simply, as if the question had surprised her:

“It’s only Freddy, Kate, and Gabriel with him.”

In fact right behind her Gabriel could be seen piloting Freddy Malins
across the landing. The latter, a young man of about forty, was of
Gabriel’s size and build, with very round shoulders. His face was
fleshy and pallid, touched with colour only at the thick hanging lobes
of his ears and at the wide wings of his nose. He had coarse features,
a blunt nose, a convex and receding brow, tumid and protruded lips.
His heavy-lidded eyes and the disorder of his scanty hair made him look
sleepy. He was laughing heartily in a high key at a story which he had
been telling Gabriel on the stairs and at the same time rubbing the
knuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye.

“Good-evening, Freddy,” said Aunt Julia.

Freddy Malins bade the Misses Morkan good-evening in what seemed an
offhand fashion by reason of the habitual catch in his voice and then,
seeing that Mr Browne was grinning at him from the sideboard, crossed
the room on rather shaky legs and began to repeat in an undertone the
story he had just told to Gabriel.

“He’s not so bad, is he?” said Aunt Kate to Gabriel.

Gabriel’s brows were dark but he raised them quickly and answered:

“O, no, hardly noticeable.”

“Now, isn’t he a terrible fellow!” she said. “And his poor
mother made him take the pledge on New Year’s Eve. But come on,
Gabriel, into the drawing-room.”

Before leaving the room with Gabriel she signalled to Mr Browne by
frowning and shaking her forefinger in warning to and fro. Mr Browne
nodded in answer and, when she had gone, said to Freddy Malins:

“Now, then, Teddy, I’m going to fill you out a good glass of
lemonade just to buck you up.”

Freddy Malins, who was nearing the climax of his story, waved the offer
aside impatiently but Mr Browne, having first called Freddy Malins’
attention to a disarray in his dress, filled out and handed him a
full glass of lemonade. Freddy Malins’ left hand accepted the
glass mechanically, his right hand being engaged in the mechanical
readjustment of his dress. Mr Browne, whose face was once more wrinkling
with mirth, poured out for himself a glass of whisky while Freddy Malins
exploded, before he had well reached the climax of his story, in a kink
of high-pitched bronchitic laughter and, setting down his untasted and
overflowing glass, began to rub the knuckles of his left fist backwards
and forwards into his left eye, repeating words of his last phrase as
well as his fit of laughter would allow him.



Gabriel could not listen while Mary Jane was playing her Academy piece,
full of runs and difficult passages, to the hushed drawing-room. He
liked music but the piece she was playing had no melody for him and he
doubted whether it had any melody for the other listeners, though they
had begged Mary Jane to play something. Four young men, who had come
from the refreshment-room to stand in the doorway at the sound of the
piano, had gone away quietly in couples after a few minutes. The only
persons who seemed to follow the music were Mary Jane herself, her hands
racing along the keyboard or lifted from it at the pauses like those
of a priestess in momentary imprecation, and Aunt Kate standing at her
elbow to turn the page.

Gabriel’s eyes, irritated by the floor, which glittered with beeswax
under the heavy chandelier, wandered to the wall above the piano. A
picture of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet hung there and beside
it was a picture of the two murdered princes in the Tower which Aunt
Julia had worked in red, blue and brown wools when she was a girl.
Probably in the school they had gone to as girls that kind of work had
been taught for one year. His mother had worked for him as a birthday
present a waistcoat of purple tabinet, with little foxes’ heads upon
it, lined with brown satin and having round mulberry buttons. It was
strange that his mother had had no musical talent though Aunt Kate used
to call her the brains carrier of the Morkan family. Both she and Julia
had always seemed a little proud of their serious and matronly sister.
Her photograph stood before the pierglass. She held an open book on her
knees and was pointing out something in it to Constantine who, dressed
in a man-o’-war suit, lay at her feet. It was she who had chosen the
name of her sons for she was very sensible of the dignity of family
life. Thanks to her, Constantine was now senior curate in Balbrigan
and, thanks to her, Gabriel himself had taken his degree in the Royal
University. A shadow passed over his face as he remembered her sullen
opposition to his marriage. Some slighting phrases she had used still
rankled in his memory; she had once spoken of Gretta as being country
cute and that was not true of Gretta at all. It was Gretta who had
nursed her during all her last long illness in their house at Monkstown.

He knew that Mary Jane must be near the end of her piece for she was
playing again the opening melody with runs of scales after every bar and
while he waited for the end the resentment died down in his heart.
The piece ended with a trill of octaves in the treble and a final deep
octave in the bass. Great applause greeted Mary Jane as, blushing and
rolling up her music nervously, she escaped from the room. The most
vigorous clapping came from the four young men in the doorway who had
gone away to the refreshment-room at the beginning of the piece but had
come back when the piano had stopped.

Lancers were arranged. Gabriel found himself partnered with Miss Ivors.
She was a frank-mannered talkative young lady, with a freckled face and
prominent brown eyes. She did not wear a low-cut bodice and the large
brooch which was fixed in the front of her collar bore on it an Irish
device and motto.

When they had taken their places she said abruptly:

“I have a crow to pluck with you.”

“With me?” said Gabriel.

She nodded her head gravely.

“What is it?” asked Gabriel, smiling at her solemn manner.

“Who is G. C.?” answered Miss Ivors, turning her eyes upon him.

Gabriel coloured and was about to knit his brows, as if he did not
understand, when she said bluntly:

“O, innocent Amy! I have found out that you write for The Daily
Express. Now, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

“Why should I be ashamed of myself?” asked Gabriel, blinking his
eyes and trying to smile.

“Well, I’m ashamed of you,” said Miss Ivors frankly. “To say
you’d write for a paper like that. I didn’t think you were a West
Briton.”

A look of perplexity appeared on Gabriel’s face. It was true that he
wrote a literary column every Wednesday in The Daily Express, for which
he was paid fifteen shillings. But that did not make him a West Briton
surely. The books he received for review were almost more welcome than
the paltry cheque. He loved to feel the covers and turn over the pages
of newly printed books. Nearly every day when his teaching in the
college was ended he used to wander down the quays to the second-hand
booksellers, to Hickey’s on Bachelor’s Walk, to Webb’s or
Massey’s on Aston’s Quay, or to O’Clohissey’s in the by-street.
He did not know how to meet her charge. He wanted to say that literature
was above politics. But they were friends of many years’ standing and
their careers had been parallel, first at the university and then as
teachers: he could not risk a grandiose phrase with her. He continued
blinking his eyes and trying to smile and murmured lamely that he saw
nothing political in writing reviews of books.

When their turn to cross had come he was still perplexed and
inattentive. Miss Ivors promptly took his hand in a warm grasp and said
in a soft friendly tone:

“Of course, I was only joking. Come, we cross now.”

When they were together again she spoke of the University question and
Gabriel felt more at ease. A friend of hers had shown her his review of
Browning’s poems. That was how she had found out the secret: but she
liked the review immensely. Then she said suddenly:

“O, Mr Conroy, will you come for an excursion to the Aran Isles this
summer? We’re going to stay there a whole month. It will be splendid
out in the Atlantic. You ought to come. Mr Clancy is coming, and Mr
Kilkelly and Kathleen Kearney. It would be splendid for Gretta too if
she’d come. She’s from Connacht, isn’t she?”

“Her people are,” said Gabriel shortly.

“But you will come, won’t you?” said Miss Ivors, laying her warm
hand eagerly on his arm.

“The fact is,” said Gabriel, “I have just arranged to go——”

“Go where?” asked Miss Ivors.

“Well, you know, every year I go for a cycling tour with some fellows
and so——”

“But where?” asked Miss Ivors.

“Well, we usually go to France or Belgium or perhaps Germany,” said
Gabriel awkwardly.

“And why do you go to France and Belgium,” said Miss Ivors,
“instead of visiting your own land?”

“Well,” said Gabriel, “it’s partly to keep in touch with the
languages and partly for a change.”

“And haven’t you your own language to keep in touch with—Irish?”
asked Miss Ivors.

“Well,” said Gabriel, “if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not
my language.”

Their neighbours had turned to listen to the cross-examination. Gabriel
glanced right and left nervously and tried to keep his good humour under
the ordeal which was making a blush invade his forehead.

“And haven’t you your own land to visit,” continued Miss Ivors,
“that you know nothing of, your own people, and your own country?”

“O, to tell you the truth,” retorted Gabriel suddenly, “I’m sick
of my own country, sick of it!”

“Why?” asked Miss Ivors.

Gabriel did not answer for his retort had heated him.

“Why?” repeated Miss Ivors.

They had to go visiting together and, as he had not answered her, Miss
Ivors said warmly:

“Of course, you’ve no answer.”

Gabriel tried to cover his agitation by taking part in the dance with
great energy. He avoided her eyes for he had seen a sour expression on
her face. But when they met in the long chain he was surprised to feel
his hand firmly pressed. She looked at him from under her brows for a
moment quizzically until he smiled. Then, just as the chain was about to
start again, she stood on tiptoe and whispered into his ear:

“West Briton!”

When the lancers were over Gabriel went away to a remote corner of the
room where Freddy Malins’ mother was sitting. She was a stout feeble
old woman with white hair. Her voice had a catch in it like her son’s
and she stuttered slightly. She had been told that Freddy had come and
that he was nearly all right. Gabriel asked her whether she had had a
good crossing. She lived with her married daughter in Glasgow and came
to Dublin on a visit once a year. She answered placidly that she had
had a beautiful crossing and that the captain had been most attentive to
her. She spoke also of the beautiful house her daughter kept in Glasgow,
and of all the friends they had there. While her tongue rambled on
Gabriel tried to banish from his mind all memory of the unpleasant
incident with Miss Ivors. Of course the girl or woman, or whatever she
was, was an enthusiast but there was a time for all things. Perhaps he
ought not to have answered her like that. But she had no right to call
him a West Briton before people, even in joke. She had tried to make
him ridiculous before people, heckling him and staring at him with her
rabbit’s eyes.

He saw his wife making her way towards him through the waltzing couples.
When she reached him she said into his ear:

“Gabriel, Aunt Kate wants to know won’t you carve the goose as
usual. Miss Daly will carve the ham and I’ll do the pudding.”

“All right,” said Gabriel.

“She’s sending in the younger ones first as soon as this waltz is
over so that we’ll have the table to ourselves.”

“Were you dancing?” asked Gabriel.

“Of course I was. Didn’t you see me? What row had you with Molly
Ivors?”

“No row. Why? Did she say so?”

“Something like that. I’m trying to get that Mr D’Arcy to sing.
He’s full of conceit, I think.”

“There was no row,” said Gabriel moodily, “only she wanted me to
go for a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn’t.”

His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.

“O, do go, Gabriel,” she cried. “I’d love to see Galway
again.”

“You can go if you like,” said Gabriel coldly.

She looked at him for a moment, then turned to Mrs Malins and said:

“There’s a nice husband for you, Mrs Malins.”

While she was threading her way back across the room Mrs Malins, without
adverting to the interruption, went on to tell Gabriel what beautiful
places there were in Scotland and beautiful scenery. Her son-in-law
brought them every year to the lakes and they used to go fishing. Her
son-in-law was a splendid fisher. One day he caught a beautiful big fish
and the man in the hotel cooked it for their dinner.

Gabriel hardly heard what she said. Now that supper was coming near he
began to think again about his speech and about the quotation. When he
saw Freddy Malins coming across the room to visit his mother Gabriel
left the chair free for him and retired into the embrasure of the
window. The room had already cleared and from the back room came
the clatter of plates and knives. Those who still remained in the
drawing-room seemed tired of dancing and were conversing quietly in
little groups. Gabriel’s warm trembling fingers tapped the cold pane
of the window. How cool it must be outside! How pleasant it would be to
walk out alone, first along by the river and then through the park! The
snow would be lying on the branches of the trees and forming a bright
cap on the top of the Wellington Monument. How much more pleasant it
would be there than at the supper-table!

He ran over the headings of his speech: Irish hospitality, sad memories,
the Three Graces, Paris, the quotation from Browning. He repeated to
himself a phrase he had written in his review: “One feels that one is
listening to a thought-tormented music.” Miss Ivors had praised the
review. Was she sincere? Had she really any life of her own behind all
her propagandism? There had never been any ill-feeling between them
until that night. It unnerved him to think that she would be at the
supper-table, looking up at him while he spoke with her critical
quizzing eyes. Perhaps she would not be sorry to see him fail in his
speech. An idea came into his mind and gave him courage. He would say,
alluding to Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia: “Ladies and Gentlemen, the
generation which is now on the wane among us may have had its faults but
for my part I think it had certain qualities of hospitality, of humour,
of humanity, which the new and very serious and hypereducated generation
that is growing up around us seems to me to lack.” Very good: that
was one for Miss Ivors. What did he care that his aunts were only two
ignorant old women?

A murmur in the room attracted his attention. Mr Browne was advancing
from the door, gallantly escorting Aunt Julia, who leaned upon his arm,
smiling and hanging her head. An irregular musketry of applause escorted
her also as far as the piano and then, as Mary Jane seated herself on
the stool, and Aunt Julia, no longer smiling, half turned so as to pitch
her voice fairly into the room, gradually ceased. Gabriel recognised the
prelude. It was that of an old song of Aunt Julia’s—Arrayed for the
Bridal. Her voice, strong and clear in tone, attacked with great spirit
the runs which embellish the air and though she sang very rapidly she
did not miss even the smallest of the grace notes. To follow the voice,
without looking at the singer’s face, was to feel and share the
excitement of swift and secure flight. Gabriel applauded loudly with all
the others at the close of the song and loud applause was borne in from
the invisible supper-table. It sounded so genuine that a little colour
struggled into Aunt Julia’s face as she bent to replace in the
music-stand the old leather-bound songbook that had her initials on the
cover. Freddy Malins, who had listened with his head perched sideways to
hear her better, was still applauding when everyone else had ceased and
talking animatedly to his mother who nodded her head gravely and slowly
in acquiescence. At last, when he could clap no more, he stood up
suddenly and hurried across the room to Aunt Julia whose hand he seized
and held in both his hands, shaking it when words failed him or the
catch in his voice proved too much for him.

“I was just telling my mother,” he said, “I never heard you sing
so well, never. No, I never heard your voice so good as it is tonight.
Now! Would you believe that now? That’s the truth. Upon my word and
honour that’s the truth. I never heard your voice sound so fresh and
so ... so clear and fresh, never.”

Aunt Julia smiled broadly and murmured something about compliments as
she released her hand from his grasp. Mr Browne extended his open hand
towards her and said to those who were near him in the manner of a
showman introducing a prodigy to an audience:

“Miss Julia Morkan, my latest discovery!”

He was laughing very heartily at this himself when Freddy Malins turned
to him and said:

“Well, Browne, if you’re serious you might make a worse discovery.
All I can say is I never heard her sing half so well as long as I am
coming here. And that’s the honest truth.”

“Neither did I,” said Mr Browne. “I think her voice has greatly
improved.”

Aunt Julia shrugged her shoulders and said with meek pride:

“Thirty years ago I hadn’t a bad voice as voices go.”

“I often told Julia,” said Aunt Kate emphatically, “that she was
simply thrown away in that choir. But she never would be said by me.”

She turned as if to appeal to the good sense of the others against a
refractory child while Aunt Julia gazed in front of her, a vague smile
of reminiscence playing on her face.

“No,” continued Aunt Kate, “she wouldn’t be said or led by
anyone, slaving there in that choir night and day, night and day. Six
o’clock on Christmas morning! And all for what?”

“Well, isn’t it for the honour of God, Aunt Kate?” asked Mary
Jane, twisting round on the piano-stool and smiling.

Aunt Kate turned fiercely on her niece and said:

“I know all about the honour of God, Mary Jane, but I think it’s not
at all honourable for the pope to turn out the women out of the choirs
that have slaved there all their lives and put little whipper-snappers
of boys over their heads. I suppose it is for the good of the Church
if the pope does it. But it’s not just, Mary Jane, and it’s not
right.”

She had worked herself into a passion and would have continued in
defence of her sister for it was a sore subject with her but Mary Jane,
seeing that all the dancers had come back, intervened pacifically:

“Now, Aunt Kate, you’re giving scandal to Mr Browne who is of the
other persuasion.”

Aunt Kate turned to Mr Browne, who was grinning at this allusion to his
religion, and said hastily:

“O, I don’t question the pope’s being right. I’m only a stupid
old woman and I wouldn’t presume to do such a thing. But there’s
such a thing as common everyday politeness and gratitude. And if I were
in Julia’s place I’d tell that Father Healey straight up to his
face....”

“And besides, Aunt Kate,” said Mary Jane, “we really are all
hungry and when we are hungry we are all very quarrelsome.”

“And when we are thirsty we are also quarrelsome,” added Mr Browne.

“So that we had better go to supper,” said Mary Jane, “and finish
the discussion afterwards.”

On the landing outside the drawing-room Gabriel found his wife and Mary
Jane trying to persuade Miss Ivors to stay for supper. But Miss Ivors,
who had put on her hat and was buttoning her cloak, would not stay.
She did not feel in the least hungry and she had already overstayed her
time.

“But only for ten minutes, Molly,” said Mrs Conroy. “That won’t
delay you.”

“To take a pick itself,” said Mary Jane, “after all your
dancing.”

“I really couldn’t,” said Miss Ivors.

“I am afraid you didn’t enjoy yourself at all,” said Mary Jane
hopelessly.

“Ever so much, I assure you,” said Miss Ivors, “but you really
must let me run off now.”

“But how can you get home?” asked Mrs Conroy.

“O, it’s only two steps up the quay.”

Gabriel hesitated a moment and said:

“If you will allow me, Miss Ivors, I’ll see you home if you are
really obliged to go.”

But Miss Ivors broke away from them.

“I won’t hear of it,” she cried. “For goodness’ sake go in to
your suppers and don’t mind me. I’m quite well able to take care of
myself.”

“Well, you’re the comical girl, Molly,” said Mrs Conroy frankly.

“Beannacht libh,” cried Miss Ivors, with a laugh, as she ran down
the staircase.

Mary Jane gazed after her, a moody puzzled expression on her face,
while Mrs Conroy leaned over the banisters to listen for the hall-door.
Gabriel asked himself was he the cause of her abrupt departure. But she
did not seem to be in ill humour: she had gone away laughing. He stared
blankly down the staircase.

At the moment Aunt Kate came toddling out of the supper-room, almost
wringing her hands in despair.

“Where is Gabriel?” she cried. “Where on earth is Gabriel?
There’s everyone waiting in there, stage to let, and nobody to carve
the goose!”

“Here I am, Aunt Kate!” cried Gabriel, with sudden animation,
“ready to carve a flock of geese, if necessary.”

A fat brown goose lay at one end of the table and at the other end, on
a bed of creased paper strewn with sprigs of parsley, lay a great ham,
stripped of its outer skin and peppered over with crust crumbs, a neat
paper frill round its shin and beside this was a round of spiced beef.
Between these rival ends ran parallel lines of side-dishes: two little
minsters of jelly, red and yellow; a shallow dish full of blocks
of blancmange and red jam, a large green leaf-shaped dish with a
stalk-shaped handle, on which lay bunches of purple raisins and peeled
almonds, a companion dish on which lay a solid rectangle of Smyrna
figs, a dish of custard topped with grated nutmeg, a small bowl full of
chocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver papers and a glass vase
in which stood some tall celery stalks. In the centre of the table there
stood, as sentries to a fruit-stand which upheld a pyramid of oranges
and American apples, two squat old-fashioned decanters of cut glass, one
containing port and the other dark sherry. On the closed square piano
a pudding in a huge yellow dish lay in waiting and behind it were three
squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals, drawn up according to
the colours of their uniforms, the first two black, with brown and
red labels, the third and smallest squad white, with transverse green
sashes.

Gabriel took his seat boldly at the head of the table and, having looked
to the edge of the carver, plunged his fork firmly into the goose. He
felt quite at ease now for he was an expert carver and liked nothing
better than to find himself at the head of a well-laden table.

“Miss Furlong, what shall I send you?” he asked. “A wing or a
slice of the breast?”

“Just a small slice of the breast.”

“Miss Higgins, what for you?”

“O, anything at all, Mr Conroy.”

While Gabriel and Miss Daly exchanged plates of goose and plates of ham
and spiced beef Lily went from guest to guest with a dish of hot floury
potatoes wrapped in a white napkin. This was Mary Jane’s idea and she
had also suggested apple sauce for the goose but Aunt Kate had said that
plain roast goose without any apple sauce had always been good enough
for her and she hoped she might never eat worse. Mary Jane waited on
her pupils and saw that they got the best slices and Aunt Kate and Aunt
Julia opened and carried across from the piano bottles of stout and ale
for the gentlemen and bottles of minerals for the ladies. There was a
great deal of confusion and laughter and noise, the noise of orders
and counter-orders, of knives and forks, of corks and glass-stoppers.
Gabriel began to carve second helpings as soon as he had finished the
first round without serving himself. Everyone protested loudly so that
he compromised by taking a long draught of stout for he had found the
carving hot work. Mary Jane settled down quietly to her supper but Aunt
Kate and Aunt Julia were still toddling round the table, walking on each
other’s heels, getting in each other’s way and giving each other
unheeded orders. Mr Browne begged of them to sit down and eat their
suppers and so did Gabriel but they said they were time enough so that,
at last, Freddy Malins stood up and, capturing Aunt Kate, plumped her
down on her chair amid general laughter.

When everyone had been well served Gabriel said, smiling:

“Now, if anyone wants a little more of what vulgar people call
stuffing let him or her speak.”

A chorus of voices invited him to begin his own supper and Lily came
forward with three potatoes which she had reserved for him.

“Very well,” said Gabriel amiably, as he took another preparatory
draught, “kindly forget my existence, ladies and gentlemen, for a few
minutes.”

He set to his supper and took no part in the conversation with which the
table covered Lily’s removal of the plates. The subject of talk
was the opera company which was then at the Theatre Royal. Mr Bartell
D’Arcy, the tenor, a dark-complexioned young man with a smart
moustache, praised very highly the leading contralto of the company but
Miss Furlong thought she had a rather vulgar style of production. Freddy
Malins said there was a negro chieftain singing in the second part of
the Gaiety pantomime who had one of the finest tenor voices he had ever
heard.

“Have you heard him?” he asked Mr Bartell D’Arcy across the table.

“No,” answered Mr Bartell D’Arcy carelessly.

“Because,” Freddy Malins explained, “now I’d be curious to hear
your opinion of him. I think he has a grand voice.”

“It takes Teddy to find out the really good things,” said Mr Browne
familiarly to the table.

“And why couldn’t he have a voice too?” asked Freddy Malins
sharply. “Is it because he’s only a black?”

Nobody answered this question and Mary Jane led the table back to the
legitimate opera. One of her pupils had given her a pass for Mignon.
Of course it was very fine, she said, but it made her think of poor
Georgina Burns. Mr Browne could go back farther still, to the old
Italian companies that used to come to Dublin—Tietjens, Ilma de
Murzka, Campanini, the great Trebelli, Giuglini, Ravelli, Aramburo.
Those were the days, he said, when there was something like singing to
be heard in Dublin. He told too of how the top gallery of the old Royal
used to be packed night after night, of how one night an Italian tenor
had sung five encores to Let me like a Soldier fall, introducing a
high C every time, and of how the gallery boys would sometimes in their
enthusiasm unyoke the horses from the carriage of some great prima donna
and pull her themselves through the streets to her hotel. Why did they
never play the grand old operas now, he asked, Dinorah, Lucrezia Borgia?
Because they could not get the voices to sing them: that was why.

“Oh, well,” said Mr Bartell D’Arcy, “I presume there are as good
singers today as there were then.”

“Where are they?” asked Mr Browne defiantly.

“In London, Paris, Milan,” said Mr Bartell D’Arcy warmly. “I
suppose Caruso, for example, is quite as good, if not better than any of
the men you have mentioned.”

“Maybe so,” said Mr Browne. “But I may tell you I doubt it
strongly.”

“O, I’d give anything to hear Caruso sing,” said Mary Jane.

“For me,” said Aunt Kate, who had been picking a bone, “there was
only one tenor. To please me, I mean. But I suppose none of you ever
heard of him.”

“Who was he, Miss Morkan?” asked Mr Bartell D’Arcy politely.

“His name,” said Aunt Kate, “was Parkinson. I heard him when he
was in his prime and I think he had then the purest tenor voice that was
ever put into a man’s throat.”

“Strange,” said Mr Bartell D’Arcy. “I never even heard of
him.”

“Yes, yes, Miss Morkan is right,” said Mr Browne. “I remember
hearing of old Parkinson but he’s too far back for me.”

“A beautiful pure sweet mellow English tenor,” said Aunt Kate with
enthusiasm.

Gabriel having finished, the huge pudding was transferred to the table.
The clatter of forks and spoons began again. Gabriel’s wife served out
spoonfuls of the pudding and passed the plates down the table. Midway
down they were held up by Mary Jane, who replenished them with raspberry
or orange jelly or with blancmange and jam. The pudding was of Aunt
Julia’s making and she received praises for it from all quarters. She
herself said that it was not quite brown enough.

“Well, I hope, Miss Morkan,” said Mr Browne, “that I’m brown
enough for you because, you know, I’m all brown.”

All the gentlemen, except Gabriel, ate some of the pudding out of
compliment to Aunt Julia. As Gabriel never ate sweets the celery had
been left for him. Freddy Malins also took a stalk of celery and ate it
with his pudding. He had been told that celery was a capital thing for
the blood and he was just then under doctor’s care. Mrs Malins, who
had been silent all through the supper, said that her son was going
down to Mount Melleray in a week or so. The table then spoke of Mount
Melleray, how bracing the air was down there, how hospitable the monks
were and how they never asked for a penny-piece from their guests.

“And do you mean to say,” asked Mr Browne incredulously, “that a
chap can go down there and put up there as if it were a hotel and live
on the fat of the land and then come away without paying anything?”

“O, most people give some donation to the monastery when they
leave.” said Mary Jane.

“I wish we had an institution like that in our Church,” said Mr
Browne candidly.

He was astonished to hear that the monks never spoke, got up at two in
the morning and slept in their coffins. He asked what they did it for.

“That’s the rule of the order,” said Aunt Kate firmly.

“Yes, but why?” asked Mr Browne.

Aunt Kate repeated that it was the rule, that was all. Mr Browne still
seemed not to understand. Freddy Malins explained to him, as best he
could, that the monks were trying to make up for the sins committed by
all the sinners in the outside world. The explanation was not very clear
for Mr Browne grinned and said:

“I like that idea very much but wouldn’t a comfortable spring bed do
them as well as a coffin?”

“The coffin,” said Mary Jane, “is to remind them of their last
end.”

As the subject had grown lugubrious it was buried in a silence of the
table during which Mrs Malins could be heard saying to her neighbour in
an indistinct undertone:

“They are very good men, the monks, very pious men.”

The raisins and almonds and figs and apples and oranges and chocolates
and sweets were now passed about the table and Aunt Julia invited all
the guests to have either port or sherry. At first Mr Bartell D’Arcy
refused to take either but one of his neighbours nudged him and
whispered something to him upon which he allowed his glass to be filled.
Gradually as the last glasses were being filled the conversation
ceased. A pause followed, broken only by the noise of the wine and by
unsettlings of chairs. The Misses Morkan, all three, looked down at
the tablecloth. Someone coughed once or twice and then a few gentlemen
patted the table gently as a signal for silence. The silence came and
Gabriel pushed back his chair.

The patting at once grew louder in encouragement and then ceased
altogether. Gabriel leaned his ten trembling fingers on the tablecloth
and smiled nervously at the company. Meeting a row of upturned faces he
raised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune
and he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing-room door.
People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing
up at the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music. The air was
pure there. In the distance lay the park where the trees were weighted
with snow. The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that
flashed westward over the white field of Fifteen Acres.

He began:

“Ladies and Gentlemen,

“It has fallen to my lot this evening, as in years past, to perform a
very pleasing task but a task for which I am afraid my poor powers as a
speaker are all too inadequate.”

“No, no!” said Mr Browne.

“But, however that may be, I can only ask you tonight to take the will
for the deed and to lend me your attention for a few moments while
I endeavour to express to you in words what my feelings are on this
occasion.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, it is not the first time that we have gathered
together under this hospitable roof, around this hospitable board. It is
not the first time that we have been the recipients—or perhaps, I had
better say, the victims—of the hospitality of certain good ladies.”

He made a circle in the air with his arm and paused. Everyone laughed or
smiled at Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia and Mary Jane who all turned crimson
with pleasure. Gabriel went on more boldly:

“I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has
no tradition which does it so much honour and which it should guard so
jealously as that of its hospitality. It is a tradition that is unique
as far as my experience goes (and I have visited not a few places
abroad) among the modern nations. Some would say, perhaps, that with us
it is rather a failing than anything to be boasted of. But granted even
that, it is, to my mind, a princely failing, and one that I trust will
long be cultivated among us. Of one thing, at least, I am sure. As long
as this one roof shelters the good ladies aforesaid—and I wish from my
heart it may do so for many and many a long year to come—the
tradition of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality, which our
forefathers have handed down to us and which we in turn must hand down
to our descendants, is still alive among us.”

A hearty murmur of assent ran round the table. It shot through
Gabriel’s mind that Miss Ivors was not there and that she had gone
away discourteously: and he said with confidence in himself:

“Ladies and Gentlemen,

“A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by
new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for
these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I
believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if
I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that
this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those
qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged
to an older day. Listening tonight to the names of all those great
singers of the past it seemed to me, I must confess, that we were living
in a less spacious age. Those days might, without exaggeration, be
called spacious days: and if they are gone beyond recall let us hope, at
least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with
pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those
dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let
die.”

“Hear, hear!” said Mr Browne loudly.

“But yet,” continued Gabriel, his voice falling into a softer
inflection, “there are always in gatherings such as this sadder
thoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of youth,
of changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight. Our path through
life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon
them always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work
among the living. We have all of us living duties and living affections
which claim, and rightly claim, our strenuous endeavours.

“Therefore, I will not linger on the past. I will not let any gloomy
moralising intrude upon us here tonight. Here we are gathered together
for a brief moment from the bustle and rush of our everyday routine.
We are met here as friends, in the spirit of good-fellowship, as
colleagues, also to a certain extent, in the true spirit of camaraderie,
and as the guests of—what shall I call them?—the Three Graces of the
Dublin musical world.”

The table burst into applause and laughter at this allusion. Aunt Julia
vainly asked each of her neighbours in turn to tell her what Gabriel had
said.

“He says we are the Three Graces, Aunt Julia,” said Mary Jane.

Aunt Julia did not understand but she looked up, smiling, at Gabriel,
who continued in the same vein:

“Ladies and Gentlemen,

“I will not attempt to play tonight the part that Paris played on
another occasion. I will not attempt to choose between them. The task
would be an invidious one and one beyond my poor powers. For when I view
them in turn, whether it be our chief hostess herself, whose good heart,
whose too good heart, has become a byword with all who know her, or her
sister, who seems to be gifted with perennial youth and whose singing
must have been a surprise and a revelation to us all tonight, or, last
but not least, when I consider our youngest hostess, talented, cheerful,
hard-working and the best of nieces, I confess, Ladies and Gentlemen,
that I do not know to which of them I should award the prize.”

Gabriel glanced down at his aunts and, seeing the large smile on Aunt
Julia’s face and the tears which had risen to Aunt Kate’s eyes,
hastened to his close. He raised his glass of port gallantly, while
every member of the company fingered a glass expectantly, and said
loudly:

“Let us toast them all three together. Let us drink to their health,
wealth, long life, happiness and prosperity and may they long continue
to hold the proud and self-won position which they hold in their
profession and the position of honour and affection which they hold in
our hearts.”

All the guests stood up, glass in hand, and turning towards the three
seated ladies, sang in unison, with Mr Browne as leader:

     For they are jolly gay fellows,
     For they are jolly gay fellows,
     For they are jolly gay fellows,
     Which nobody can deny.

Aunt Kate was making frank use of her handkerchief and even Aunt Julia
seemed moved. Freddy Malins beat time with his pudding-fork and the
singers turned towards one another, as if in melodious conference, while
they sang with emphasis:

     Unless he tells a lie,
     Unless he tells a lie.

Then, turning once more towards their hostesses, they sang:

     For they are jolly gay fellows,
     For they are jolly gay fellows,
     For they are jolly gay fellows,
     Which nobody can deny.

The acclamation which followed was taken up beyond the door of the
supper-room by many of the other guests and renewed time after time,
Freddy Malins acting as officer with his fork on high.



The piercing morning air came into the hall where they were standing so
that Aunt Kate said:

“Close the door, somebody. Mrs Malins will get her death of cold.”

“Browne is out there, Aunt Kate,” said Mary Jane.

“Browne is everywhere,” said Aunt Kate, lowering her voice.

Mary Jane laughed at her tone.

“Really,” she said archly, “he is very attentive.”

“He has been laid on here like the gas,” said Aunt Kate in the same
tone, “all during the Christmas.”

She laughed herself this time good-humouredly and then added quickly:

“But tell him to come in, Mary Jane, and close the door. I hope to
goodness he didn’t hear me.”

At that moment the hall-door was opened and Mr Browne came in from the
doorstep, laughing as if his heart would break. He was dressed in a long
green overcoat with mock astrakhan cuffs and collar and wore on his head
an oval fur cap. He pointed down the snow-covered quay from where the
sound of shrill prolonged whistling was borne in.

“Teddy will have all the cabs in Dublin out,” he said.

Gabriel advanced from the little pantry behind the office, struggling
into his overcoat and, looking round the hall, said:

“Gretta not down yet?”

“She’s getting on her things, Gabriel,” said Aunt Kate.

“Who’s playing up there?” asked Gabriel.

“Nobody. They’re all gone.”

“O no, Aunt Kate,” said Mary Jane. “Bartell D’Arcy and Miss
O’Callaghan aren’t gone yet.”

“Someone is fooling at the piano anyhow,” said Gabriel.

Mary Jane glanced at Gabriel and Mr Browne and said with a shiver:

“It makes me feel cold to look at you two gentlemen muffled up like
that. I wouldn’t like to face your journey home at this hour.”

“I’d like nothing better this minute,” said Mr Browne stoutly,
“than a rattling fine walk in the country or a fast drive with a good
spanking goer between the shafts.”

“We used to have a very good horse and trap at home,” said Aunt
Julia sadly.

“The never-to-be-forgotten Johnny,” said Mary Jane, laughing.

Aunt Kate and Gabriel laughed too.

“Why, what was wonderful about Johnny?” asked Mr Browne.

“The late lamented Patrick Morkan, our grandfather, that is,”
explained Gabriel, “commonly known in his later years as the old
gentleman, was a glue-boiler.”

“O now, Gabriel,” said Aunt Kate, laughing, “he had a starch
mill.”

“Well, glue or starch,” said Gabriel, “the old gentleman had
a horse by the name of Johnny. And Johnny used to work in the old
gentleman’s mill, walking round and round in order to drive the mill.
That was all very well; but now comes the tragic part about Johnny. One
fine day the old gentleman thought he’d like to drive out with the
quality to a military review in the park.”

“The Lord have mercy on his soul,” said Aunt Kate compassionately.

“Amen,” said Gabriel. “So the old gentleman, as I said, harnessed
Johnny and put on his very best tall hat and his very best stock collar
and drove out in grand style from his ancestral mansion somewhere near
Back Lane, I think.”

Everyone laughed, even Mrs Malins, at Gabriel’s manner and Aunt Kate
said:

“O now, Gabriel, he didn’t live in Back Lane, really. Only the mill
was there.”

“Out from the mansion of his forefathers,” continued Gabriel, “he
drove with Johnny. And everything went on beautifully until Johnny came
in sight of King Billy’s statue: and whether he fell in love with the
horse King Billy sits on or whether he thought he was back again in the
mill, anyhow he began to walk round the statue.”

Gabriel paced in a circle round the hall in his goloshes amid the
laughter of the others.

“Round and round he went,” said Gabriel, “and the old gentleman,
who was a very pompous old gentleman, was highly indignant. ‘Go on,
sir! What do you mean, sir? Johnny! Johnny! Most extraordinary conduct!
Can’t understand the horse!’”

The peal of laughter which followed Gabriel’s imitation of the
incident was interrupted by a resounding knock at the hall door. Mary
Jane ran to open it and let in Freddy Malins. Freddy Malins, with
his hat well back on his head and his shoulders humped with cold, was
puffing and steaming after his exertions.

“I could only get one cab,” he said.

“O, we’ll find another along the quay,” said Gabriel.

“Yes,” said Aunt Kate. “Better not keep Mrs Malins standing in the
draught.”

Mrs Malins was helped down the front steps by her son and Mr Browne and,
after many manœuvres, hoisted into the cab. Freddy Malins clambered
in after her and spent a long time settling her on the seat, Mr Browne
helping him with advice. At last she was settled comfortably and Freddy
Malins invited Mr Browne into the cab. There was a good deal of confused
talk, and then Mr Browne got into the cab. The cabman settled his
rug over his knees, and bent down for the address. The confusion grew
greater and the cabman was directed differently by Freddy Malins and Mr
Browne, each of whom had his head out through a window of the cab. The
difficulty was to know where to drop Mr Browne along the route, and Aunt
Kate, Aunt Julia and Mary Jane helped the discussion from the doorstep
with cross-directions and contradictions and abundance of laughter. As
for Freddy Malins he was speechless with laughter. He popped his head in
and out of the window every moment to the great danger of his hat, and
told his mother how the discussion was progressing, till at last Mr
Browne shouted to the bewildered cabman above the din of everybody’s
laughter:

“Do you know Trinity College?”

“Yes, sir,” said the cabman.

“Well, drive bang up against Trinity College gates,” said Mr Browne,
“and then we’ll tell you where to go. You understand now?”

“Yes, sir,” said the cabman.

“Make like a bird for Trinity College.”

“Right, sir,” said the cabman.

The horse was whipped up and the cab rattled off along the quay amid a
chorus of laughter and adieus.

Gabriel had not gone to the door with the others. He was in a dark part
of the hall gazing up the staircase. A woman was standing near the top
of the first flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her face but
he could see the terracotta and salmon-pink panels of her skirt which
the shadow made appear black and white. It was his wife. She was leaning
on the banisters, listening to something. Gabriel was surprised at her
stillness and strained his ear to listen also. But he could hear little
save the noise of laughter and dispute on the front steps, a few chords
struck on the piano and a few notes of a man’s voice singing.

He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that
the voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and
mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked
himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening
to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her
in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her
hair against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show
off the light ones. Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a
painter.

The hall-door was closed; and Aunt Kate, Aunt Julia and Mary Jane came
down the hall, still laughing.

“Well, isn’t Freddy terrible?” said Mary Jane. “He’s really
terrible.”

Gabriel said nothing but pointed up the stairs towards where his wife
was standing. Now that the hall-door was closed the voice and the piano
could be heard more clearly. Gabriel held up his hand for them to be
silent. The song seemed to be in the old Irish tonality and the singer
seemed uncertain both of his words and of his voice. The voice,
made plaintive by distance and by the singer’s hoarseness, faintly
illuminated the cadence of the air with words expressing grief:

     O, the rain falls on my heavy locks
     And the dew wets my skin,
     My babe lies cold....

“O,” exclaimed Mary Jane. “It’s Bartell D’Arcy singing and he
wouldn’t sing all the night. O, I’ll get him to sing a song before
he goes.”

“O do, Mary Jane,” said Aunt Kate.

Mary Jane brushed past the others and ran to the staircase, but before
she reached it the singing stopped and the piano was closed abruptly.

“O, what a pity!” she cried. “Is he coming down, Gretta?”

Gabriel heard his wife answer yes and saw her come down towards them. A
few steps behind her were Mr Bartell D’Arcy and Miss O’Callaghan.

“O, Mr D’Arcy,” cried Mary Jane, “it’s downright mean of you
to break off like that when we were all in raptures listening to you.”

“I have been at him all the evening,” said Miss O’Callaghan,
“and Mrs Conroy too and he told us he had a dreadful cold and
couldn’t sing.”

“O, Mr D’Arcy,” said Aunt Kate, “now that was a great fib to
tell.”

“Can’t you see that I’m as hoarse as a crow?” said Mr D’Arcy
roughly.

He went into the pantry hastily and put on his overcoat. The others,
taken aback by his rude speech, could find nothing to say. Aunt Kate
wrinkled her brows and made signs to the others to drop the subject. Mr
D’Arcy stood swathing his neck carefully and frowning.

“It’s the weather,” said Aunt Julia, after a pause.

“Yes, everybody has colds,” said Aunt Kate readily, “everybody.”

“They say,” said Mary Jane, “we haven’t had snow like it for
thirty years; and I read this morning in the newspapers that the snow is
general all over Ireland.”

“I love the look of snow,” said Aunt Julia sadly.

“So do I,” said Miss O’Callaghan. “I think Christmas is never
really Christmas unless we have the snow on the ground.”

“But poor Mr D’Arcy doesn’t like the snow,” said Aunt Kate,
smiling.

Mr D’Arcy came from the pantry, fully swathed and buttoned, and in
a repentant tone told them the history of his cold. Everyone gave him
advice and said it was a great pity and urged him to be very careful of
his throat in the night air. Gabriel watched his wife, who did not join
in the conversation. She was standing right under the dusty fanlight and
the flame of the gas lit up the rich bronze of her hair, which he had
seen her drying at the fire a few days before. She was in the same
attitude and seemed unaware of the talk about her. At last she turned
towards them and Gabriel saw that there was colour on her cheeks and
that her eyes were shining. A sudden tide of joy went leaping out of his
heart.

“Mr D’Arcy,” she said, “what is the name of that song you were
singing?”

“It’s called The Lass of Aughrim,” said Mr D’Arcy, “but I
couldn’t remember it properly. Why? Do you know it?”

“The Lass of Aughrim,” she repeated. “I couldn’t think of the
name.”

“It’s a very nice air,” said Mary Jane. “I’m sorry you were
not in voice tonight.”

“Now, Mary Jane,” said Aunt Kate, “don’t annoy Mr D’Arcy. I
won’t have him annoyed.”

Seeing that all were ready to start she shepherded them to the door,
where good-night was said:

“Well, good-night, Aunt Kate, and thanks for the pleasant evening.”

“Good-night, Gabriel. Good-night, Gretta!”

“Good-night, Aunt Kate, and thanks ever so much. Good-night, Aunt
Julia.”

“O, good-night, Gretta, I didn’t see you.”

“Good-night, Mr D’Arcy. Good-night, Miss O’Callaghan.”

“Good-night, Miss Morkan.”

“Good-night, again.”

“Good-night, all. Safe home.”

“Good-night. Good-night.”

The morning was still dark. A dull yellow light brooded over the houses
and the river; and the sky seemed to be descending. It was slushy
underfoot; and only streaks and patches of snow lay on the roofs, on
the parapets of the quay and on the area railings. The lamps were still
burning redly in the murky air and, across the river, the palace of the
Four Courts stood out menacingly against the heavy sky.

She was walking on before him with Mr Bartell D’Arcy, her shoes in
a brown parcel tucked under one arm and her hands holding her skirt up
from the slush. She had no longer any grace of attitude but Gabriel’s
eyes were still bright with happiness. The blood went bounding along his
veins; and the thoughts went rioting through his brain, proud, joyful,
tender, valorous.

She was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to
run after her noiselessly, catch her by the shoulders and say something
foolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail that
he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with her.
Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.
A heliotrope envelope was lying beside his breakfast-cup and he was
caressing it with his hand. Birds were twittering in the ivy and the
sunny web of the curtain was shimmering along the floor: he could not
eat for happiness. They were standing on the crowded platform and he was
placing a ticket inside the warm palm of her glove. He was standing
with her in the cold, looking in through a grated window at a man making
bottles in a roaring furnace. It was very cold. Her face, fragrant in
the cold air, was quite close to his; and suddenly he called out to the
man at the furnace:

“Is the fire hot, sir?”

But the man could not hear with the noise of the furnace. It was just as
well. He might have answered rudely.

A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing
in warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fire of stars moments
of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke
upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments,
to make her forget the years of their dull existence together and
remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had not
quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her household
cares had not quenched all their souls’ tender fire. In one letter
that he had written to her then he had said: “Why is it that words
like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word
tender enough to be your name?”

Like distant music these words that he had written years before were
borne towards him from the past. He longed to be alone with her. When
the others had gone away, when he and she were in their room in the
hotel, then they would be alone together. He would call her softly:

“Gretta!”

Perhaps she would not hear at once: she would be undressing. Then
something in his voice would strike her. She would turn and look at
him....

At the corner of Winetavern Street they met a cab. He was glad of its
rattling noise as it saved him from conversation. She was looking out of
the window and seemed tired. The others spoke only a few words, pointing
out some building or street. The horse galloped along wearily under the
murky morning sky, dragging his old rattling box after his heels,
and Gabriel was again in a cab with her, galloping to catch the boat,
galloping to their honeymoon.

As the cab drove across O’Connell Bridge Miss O’Callaghan said:

“They say you never cross O’Connell Bridge without seeing a white
horse.”

“I see a white man this time,” said Gabriel.

“Where?” asked Mr Bartell D’Arcy.

Gabriel pointed to the statue, on which lay patches of snow. Then he
nodded familiarly to it and waved his hand.

“Good-night, Dan,” he said gaily.

When the cab drew up before the hotel, Gabriel jumped out and, in spite
of Mr Bartell D’Arcy’s protest, paid the driver. He gave the man a
shilling over his fare. The man saluted and said:

“A prosperous New Year to you, sir.”

“The same to you,” said Gabriel cordially.

She leaned for a moment on his arm in getting out of the cab and while
standing at the curbstone, bidding the others good-night. She leaned
lightly on his arm, as lightly as when she had danced with him a few
hours before. He had felt proud and happy then, happy that she was his,
proud of her grace and wifely carriage. But now, after the kindling
again of so many memories, the first touch of her body, musical and
strange and perfumed, sent through him a keen pang of lust. Under cover
of her silence he pressed her arm closely to his side; and, as they
stood at the hotel door, he felt that they had escaped from their lives
and duties, escaped from home and friends and run away together with
wild and radiant hearts to a new adventure.

An old man was dozing in a great hooded chair in the hall. He lit a
candle in the office and went before them to the stairs. They followed
him in silence, their feet falling in soft thuds on the thickly carpeted
stairs. She mounted the stairs behind the porter, her head bowed in
the ascent, her frail shoulders curved as with a burden, her skirt girt
tightly about her. He could have flung his arms about her hips and held
her still, for his arms were trembling with desire to seize her and only
the stress of his nails against the palms of his hands held the wild
impulse of his body in check. The porter halted on the stairs to settle
his guttering candle. They halted too on the steps below him. In the
silence Gabriel could hear the falling of the molten wax into the tray
and the thumping of his own heart against his ribs.

The porter led them along a corridor and opened a door. Then he set his
unstable candle down on a toilet-table and asked at what hour they were
to be called in the morning.

“Eight,” said Gabriel.

The porter pointed to the tap of the electric-light and began a muttered
apology but Gabriel cut him short.

“We don’t want any light. We have light enough from the street. And
I say,” he added, pointing to the candle, “you might remove that
handsome article, like a good man.”

The porter took up his candle again, but slowly for he was surprised by
such a novel idea. Then he mumbled good-night and went out. Gabriel shot
the lock to.

A ghostly light from the street lamp lay in a long shaft from one window
to the door. Gabriel threw his overcoat and hat on a couch and crossed
the room towards the window. He looked down into the street in order
that his emotion might calm a little. Then he turned and leaned against
a chest of drawers with his back to the light. She had taken off her hat
and cloak and was standing before a large swinging mirror, unhooking her
waist. Gabriel paused for a few moments, watching her, and then said:

“Gretta!”

She turned away from the mirror slowly and walked along the shaft of
light towards him. Her face looked so serious and weary that the words
would not pass Gabriel’s lips. No, it was not the moment yet.

“You looked tired,” he said.

“I am a little,” she answered.

“You don’t feel ill or weak?”

“No, tired: that’s all.”

She went on to the window and stood there, looking out. Gabriel waited
again and then, fearing that diffidence was about to conquer him, he
said abruptly:

“By the way, Gretta!”

“What is it?”

“You know that poor fellow Malins?” he said quickly.

“Yes. What about him?”

“Well, poor fellow, he’s a decent sort of chap after all,”
continued Gabriel in a false voice. “He gave me back that sovereign I
lent him, and I didn’t expect it, really. It’s a pity he wouldn’t
keep away from that Browne, because he’s not a bad fellow, really.”

He was trembling now with annoyance. Why did she seem so abstracted? He
did not know how he could begin. Was she annoyed, too, about something?
If she would only turn to him or come to him of her own accord! To take
her as she was would be brutal. No, he must see some ardour in her eyes
first. He longed to be master of her strange mood.

“When did you lend him the pound?” she asked, after a pause.

Gabriel strove to restrain himself from breaking out into brutal
language about the sottish Malins and his pound. He longed to cry to her
from his soul, to crush her body against his, to overmaster her. But he
said:

“O, at Christmas, when he opened that little Christmas-card shop in
Henry Street.”

He was in such a fever of rage and desire that he did not hear her come
from the window. She stood before him for an instant, looking at him
strangely. Then, suddenly raising herself on tiptoe and resting her
hands lightly on his shoulders, she kissed him.

“You are a very generous person, Gabriel,” she said.

Gabriel, trembling with delight at her sudden kiss and at the quaintness
of her phrase, put his hands on her hair and began smoothing it back,
scarcely touching it with his fingers. The washing had made it fine and
brilliant. His heart was brimming over with happiness. Just when he
was wishing for it she had come to him of her own accord. Perhaps her
thoughts had been running with his. Perhaps she had felt the impetuous
desire that was in him, and then the yielding mood had come upon her.
Now that she had fallen to him so easily, he wondered why he had been so
diffident.

He stood, holding her head between his hands. Then, slipping one arm
swiftly about her body and drawing her towards him, he said softly:

“Gretta, dear, what are you thinking about?”

She did not answer nor yield wholly to his arm. He said again, softly:

“Tell me what it is, Gretta. I think I know what is the matter. Do I
know?”

She did not answer at once. Then she said in an outburst of tears:

“O, I am thinking about that song, The Lass of Aughrim.”

She broke loose from him and ran to the bed and, throwing her arms
across the bed-rail, hid her face. Gabriel stood stock-still for a
moment in astonishment and then followed her. As he passed in the way of
the cheval-glass he caught sight of himself in full length, his broad,
well-filled shirt-front, the face whose expression always puzzled him
when he saw it in a mirror and his glimmering gilt-rimmed eyeglasses. He
halted a few paces from her and said:

“What about the song? Why does that make you cry?”

She raised her head from her arms and dried her eyes with the back of
her hand like a child. A kinder note than he had intended went into his
voice.

“Why, Gretta?” he asked.

“I am thinking about a person long ago who used to sing that song.”

“And who was the person long ago?” asked Gabriel, smiling.

“It was a person I used to know in Galway when I was living with my
grandmother,” she said.

The smile passed away from Gabriel’s face. A dull anger began to
gather again at the back of his mind and the dull fires of his lust
began to glow angrily in his veins.

“Someone you were in love with?” he asked ironically.

“It was a young boy I used to know,” she answered, “named Michael
Furey. He used to sing that song, The Lass of Aughrim. He was very
delicate.”

Gabriel was silent. He did not wish her to think that he was interested
in this delicate boy.

“I can see him so plainly,” she said after a moment. “Such eyes
as he had: big, dark eyes! And such an expression in them—an
expression!”

“O then, you were in love with him?” said Gabriel.

“I used to go out walking with him,” she said, “when I was in
Galway.”

A thought flew across Gabriel’s mind.

“Perhaps that was why you wanted to go to Galway with that Ivors
girl?” he said coldly.

She looked at him and asked in surprise:

“What for?”

Her eyes made Gabriel feel awkward. He shrugged his shoulders and said:

“How do I know? To see him, perhaps.”

She looked away from him along the shaft of light towards the window in
silence.

“He is dead,” she said at length. “He died when he was only
seventeen. Isn’t it a terrible thing to die so young as that?”

“What was he?” asked Gabriel, still ironically.

“He was in the gasworks,” she said.

Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the evocation
of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he had been
full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and
joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A
shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself
as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous,
well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his
own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse
of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light
lest she might see the shame that burned upon his forehead.

He tried to keep up his tone of cold interrogation, but his voice when
he spoke was humble and indifferent.

“I suppose you were in love with this Michael Furey, Gretta,” he
said.

“I was great with him at that time,” she said.

Her voice was veiled and sad. Gabriel, feeling now how vain it would be
to try to lead her whither he had purposed, caressed one of her hands
and said, also sadly:

“And what did he die of so young, Gretta? Consumption, was it?”

“I think he died for me,” she answered.

A vague terror seized Gabriel at this answer as if, at that hour when
he had hoped to triumph, some impalpable and vindictive being was coming
against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world. But he
shook himself free of it with an effort of reason and continued to
caress her hand. He did not question her again for he felt that she
would tell him of herself. Her hand was warm and moist: it did not
respond to his touch but he continued to caress it just as he had
caressed her first letter to him that spring morning.

“It was in the winter,” she said, “about the beginning of the
winter when I was going to leave my grandmother’s and come up here to
the convent. And he was ill at the time in his lodgings in Galway and
wouldn’t be let out and his people in Oughterard were written to.
He was in decline, they said, or something like that. I never knew
rightly.”

She paused for a moment and sighed.

“Poor fellow,” she said. “He was very fond of me and he was such a
gentle boy. We used to go out together, walking, you know, Gabriel, like
the way they do in the country. He was going to study singing only for
his health. He had a very good voice, poor Michael Furey.”

“Well; and then?” asked Gabriel.

“And then when it came to the time for me to leave Galway and come up
to the convent he was much worse and I wouldn’t be let see him so I
wrote him a letter saying I was going up to Dublin and would be back in
the summer and hoping he would be better then.”

She paused for a moment to get her voice under control and then went on:

“Then the night before I left I was in my grandmother’s house in
Nuns’ Island, packing up, and I heard gravel thrown up against the
window. The window was so wet I couldn’t see so I ran downstairs as
I was and slipped out the back into the garden and there was the poor
fellow at the end of the garden, shivering.”

“And did you not tell him to go back?” asked Gabriel.

“I implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get his
death in the rain. But he said he did not want to live. I can see his
eyes as well as well! He was standing at the end of the wall where there
was a tree.”

“And did he go home?” asked Gabriel.

“Yes, he went home. And when I was only a week in the convent he died
and he was buried in Oughterard where his people came from. O, the day I
heard that, that he was dead!”

She stopped, choking with sobs and, overcome by emotion, flung herself
face downward on the bed, sobbing in the quilt. Gabriel held her hand
for a moment longer, irresolutely, and then, shy of intruding on her
grief, let it fall gently and walked quietly to the window.

She was fast asleep.

Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully
on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn
breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her
sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband,
had played in her life. He watched her while she slept as though he and
she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested
long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must
have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange,
friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to
himself that her face was no longer beautiful but he knew that it was no
longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death.

Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the
chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string
dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen
down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot
of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his
aunt’s supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing,
the merry-making when saying good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the
walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon
be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had
caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing
Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same
drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds
would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying
and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast
about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find
only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon.

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself
cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by
one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other
world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally
with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her
heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had
told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that
himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love.
The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness
he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping
tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where
dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not
apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was
fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself
which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and
dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun
to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling
obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on
his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general
all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central
plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and,
farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.
It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the
hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the
crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on
the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling
faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of
their last end, upon all the living and the dead.










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Title: She Blows! And Sparm at That!

Author: William John Hopkins

Illustrator: Clifford Warren Ashley

Release Date: October 5, 2018 [EBook #58028]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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 She Blows! And Sparm at That!
 by William John Hopkins




[Illustration: LANCING A WHALE]




 SHE BLOWS!
 AND SPARM AT THAT!

 BY
 WILLIAM JOHN HOPKINS
 _Author of “The Clammer,” “Old Harbor,” “Burbury Stoke,” etc._

 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PAINTINGS BY
 CLIFFORD W. ASHLEY

 [Illustration]

 BOSTON AND NEW YORK
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
 The Riverside Press Cambridge




 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY WILLIAM J. HOPKINS
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


 SECOND IMPRESSION, MARCH, 1922


 The Riverside Press
 CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.




NOTE


I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Clifford W. Ashley for
his kindness in reading the proof of this book and in making various
corrections and suggestions.

W. J. H.




ILLUSTRATIONS


LANCING A WHALE • _Frontispiece_

FITTING OUT • 12

CUTTING-IN • 74

BAILING CASE • 88

HARPOONING PORPOISE • 122

LOWERING BOATS • 194

THE MATE • 280

A NANTUCKET SLEIGH-RIDE • 310




{1}

SHE BLOWS!




CHAPTER I


I am nearing the evening of life. Many people think of me, I know,
as a man who has attained to as much as one can reasonably hope for
in this life—if they think of me at all. It is not so much, after
all. The things I have aimed for and missed seem, at times, much more
important than those I have had. But I put this thought by. Youth
expects a good deal; and when one is young—and for a long time after;
indeed, until a man is old—he finds hope at the bottom of the cup,
enough of it to drown the taste of the bitter draught he has taken. I
have evolved the theory that a man is old only when, the cup drained,
there is no hope left in it. Thank God, I have not yet reached that
point.

But I am inclined to reminiscence, and it scares me somewhat, for
proneness to reminiscence is a symptom of age. I know that well,
and garrulity is its sister. I am going to give my inclination to
reminiscence play in writing of an experience of my youth. It may
help to prevent me from boring my friends, and if you find this
narrative becoming tedious, nothing is easier than to put the book
down.

I was born in New Bedford, on Mill Street, in 1857. My father was
Timothy Taycox, a ship carpenter, and a good one; a great whacking
man, with a pleasant face and the neck of a bull. My mother was—well,
{2} she was my mother. I remember her always as kind and loving,
and, indeed, so was my father; but my mother—well, I cannot seem to
get beyond that—she was my mother. I must have tried her greatly and
often, but she never failed me, and I worshipped her, so far as it
is in a boy who is healthy and strong and a roamer by nature. I had
two brothers, one older and one younger than myself. I might make a
history of my relations with my brothers, especially the older, who
used to pick upon me shamefully as long as I was unable to hold my
own, but that is none of my purpose.

My first school was on North Street. My recollections of that school
are vivid, and interesting—to me; but I suppose the school was not
unlike other schools of its size and character. It was a small
school, with about twenty-five scholars. The afternoon session was
over at four o’clock, and then I set my face to the wharves, as
the needle to the pole, except in the shortest days of winter. It
was often warm for long periods during the winter. Two or three of
us, kindred spirits, went together, sometimes running all the way,
sometimes merely wandering, but always bringing up at about the same
place. That was generally at the foot of Hamilton Street. Hamilton
Street is a little street not much more than a hundred feet long,
offset from the foot of William Street. It leads down very steeply
from Water Street to a wharf, and its very name brings up before
my mind a picture of a pair of heavy horses breasting the hill
vigorously, dragging a low truck loaded with barrels of oil, and
stirring up with their feet the powdery black dust of the street.

These low trucks were very generally used in New Bedford. The body
was hung below the axles, and cleared the ground by perhaps eight
inches. They had no sides, and the barrels of oil were rolled up on
them and stood on end, and with the continual shaking and rattling
about they wore deep grooves into the flooring of the truck. It was
a new truck which was not grooved in rings fore and aft of the great
beam which served for an axle. {3}

The basements of the buildings on that steep hill were shipping
offices, or the offices of oil merchants, or the agents of ships.
Indeed, you could hardly go into an office from Water Street to the
water-front without seeing sea-chests stacked along the walls, with
the name of some ship painted on the front of each chest. Not all of
the offices of owners or agents of whalers were within this area, but
they were not far from it. Wing’s outfitting store, where I suppose
all the business connected with their ships was done, was on Union
Street, about a block above Water.

At that time and for some years after there was no railroad along
the water-front, and nothing to impede the long line of trucks and
small boys wending to and fro. About where the railroad is now there
was usually a row of oil barrels on their sides, looking fresh and
black and greasy. Gaugers were apt to be busy about them. And just
beyond, on the throat of the wharf, were two structures like pens,
enclosures fenced in with old ships’ sheathing which showed plainly
the nail holes, the white efflorescence and the greenish stain which
proclaimed the fact that they had sailed thousands of miles of salt
ocean with the copper next them. These pens were on either side of
the entrance to the wharf, and between them was a lane, deep in
powdery black dust, and just about wide enough for a truck. Over the
tops of the fences of sheathing could be seen seaweed bleached white
with age, and flourishing green land weeds, nodding and waving in the
wind. Under the seaweed, I was told, were barrels of oil which their
owner had packed away there some years before. He was waiting for a
rise in price. The barrels may be there yet, but if they are they
must be nearly empty. The oil will have leaked out.

I describe these things, naturally enough, as the picture of them
forms in my mind; and that is as they appeared in the summer. For I
just about lived along the {4} wharves and on the water during the
summers. I remember very clearly the five old hulks which lay in the
dock at the foot of Union Street. One of them was the bark Phenix. I
cannot now recall the names of the others. All of them were stripped
of everything down to their masts. Not a yard nor a topmast was
left, nor anything removable without breaking them up. As I recall
their condition, even the copper was gone from their sides, as far
as I could see. They looked battered but mighty, and they filled me
with sadness. I never ventured on board of them, but I examined them
minutely and repeatedly from the wharves on either side, and I knew
every patch and stain. I have sat by the hour atop of a pile to which
hawsers were made fast, and I have sailed in imagination through
storm and through sunny seas in those old ships, and have had all
kinds of hair-raising adventures.

It was a rare occasion when any one of the wharves—at any rate the
three or four wharves from Union Street north—had no ships lying
beside it. There were usually two or three beside each wharf,
and sometimes more; discharging or fitting or being repaired. My
father was always at work upon some ship, on a staging in the
dock alongside. I never tired of watching him at work, and would
sit for hours on the stringpiece just above him or on the wharf
opposite, while he removed from the side or the bottom of the vessel
“hove-down” ribs which had begun to rot, and put others in their
places; or renewed the planking on the bottom.

“Heaving down” for repairs was a common occurrence. A tackle was
fastened to the mast and to a special heaving-pile on the wharf.
There were several of these heaving-piles on each wharf, each firmly
anchored by great masses of rock. I have seen scores of ships hauled
down. The sails were always unbent—stripped—from the yards almost
the first thing after a ship came in, but the yards were often in
place on a vessel when she was {5} hove down. They were braced
well around, of course, or she could not have been hove over very
far before her main yard would touch the wharf. Then they heaved on
the tackle, and the vessel was heaved over upon her bilge, exposing
the bottom on one side. I have often seen a vessel’s keel entirely
exposed in this way. The exposed side of the bottom was as easily got
at in this position as if she had been in dry dock; perhaps rather
more easily. The carpenters worked from float stages alongside, and
the ship was let up little by little as they worked up from the keel.
First the copper was ripped off, then the sheathing, and then the
planking, and then the ribs taken out, if any of them needed to be
replaced. I have seen the bare bones of many a ship exposed in this
way, and it would be possible to rebuild a ship completely, first one
side and then the other, without taking her out of the water. I have
no doubt that it has been done.

As long as I was pretty small I was fairly well contented to sit on
the stringpiece, with the sun on my back, and watch my father; or
to sit on one of the low, smooth, round-butted mooring-piles—always
called “spiles” in New Bedford—and gaze out over the harbor. It was
a beautiful harbor. It is a beautiful harbor now; but there seems
to me to be something lacking, and less of that atmosphere of peace
and serenity which I loved. Although there are still a few of the
old square-riggers left there are many days and weeks together when
not one of them is at the wharves, and I have not seen a vessel hove
down in many years. It is no longer to be expected that, as one turns
into Hamilton Street, there will appear the once familiar tracery
of masts and yards hanging like a net before his eyes; not a forest
of masts, perhaps, but enough of them to warm his heart. Some of
the yards had sails hanging from them and flapping gently in the
breeze, and on some the sails were neatly furled, but most of them
were bare. A jobbing wagon {6} would be driven upon the wharf in a
whirl of the black dust, and would discharge its load of sailors,
many of them natives of one of the Western Islands, or of Brava, some
very black, as I recall them, with great hoops of thin gold in their
ears; and their dunnage, some of it in sea-chests, but much done up
in shapeless bundles in a gay colored cloth or in a sheet. They were
fine, upstanding men, talking and laughing among themselves, and the
familiar way in which they handled the lances and harpoons and the
other boat-gear excited my envy. They had come from the home of such
gentry in South Water Street, a part of the town known as Fayal.
Fayal—the South Water Street Fayal—had an unsavory reputation.

These men and the white sailors who came with them were bound for
the vessel with sails on her yards, for she was about ready to set
out on a voyage of two or three or four years. In those days voyages
averaged between three and four years in length. There was always
great confusion, as it seemed to me: piles of boxes and barrels and
casks, a mate or two shouting orders, sweating men getting the things
aboard, some lengths of chain cable, coils of new rope which creaked
as they were handled, and innumerable odds and ends. I watched and
wondered until, at last, the tug came alongside, lines were cast
off, and the vessel was taken out into the stream to anchor there
overnight. The crew were kept busy there, stowing things, but even
then there was apt to be a great litter on the decks when she was
finally taken in tow by the tug. The tug cast her off somewhere below
Sow and Pigs—somewhere between Sow and Pigs and Block Island—and,
with a farewell blast of her whistle, turned about and came home
again. But I did not witness that ceremony until I was fifteen.

When the ship had hauled out into the stream I would sit on my
favorite pile and gaze out at her and at the harbor. She usually
anchored in the channel near Palmer’s {7} Island, almost in line
with Fort Phœnix on the Fairhaven side. I sat on my pile and gazed
at her, looking trim and seaworthy—as she was in fact—and envied
the black boys with the thin gold hoops in their ears, and dreamed
dreams, as I suppose all boys do, even the most matter-of-fact
of them. Those dreams of mine were to come true. Instead of the
whitewashed walls of Fort Phœnix and the whitewashed lighthouse on
Palmer’s Island, I saw a heaving ocean under a sunny sky, and off
upon the surface of that ocean I saw feathery clouds of vapor slowly
rise, like the drooping white ostrich plume on Ann McKim’s hat; and
the feathery shafts of vapor drifted off and vanished, and from the
masthead floated down to me the melodious cry, “Bl-o-ows!” And I
roused with a start, and there was nothing before my eyes but the low
whitewashed brick wall of Fort Phœnix and the whitewashed lighthouse
on Palmer’s Island, and the smiling surface of the harbor, and the
ship waiting there.

I used to row about a good deal, when I had money enough to hire a
boat—good boats were ten cents an hour—or when I thought I could
depend upon the good nature of Al Soule, who had boats to let. I
could not swim a stroke. It is not unusual for men who have much to
do with the water to neglect to learn to swim. For a sailor, what
use is it?—they ask. He is apt to be weighed down with sea boots
and heavy clothes, and the weather is usually such when a man falls
overboard that it is impossible to pick him up anyway. Mind you,
these are not my own ideas I am giving. A whaleman needs to know how
to swim, if he would save his life, and not depend too nearly upon
others. It is a good thing for a boy to know, even if he is not going
whaling. I would have a boy learn as soon as he can walk—or a girl
either. It is the source of a great deal of pleasure.

It happened that the father of my best friend had a boat, a
thirty-five-foot sloop. Naturally enough I was {8} asked to go
sailing in it whenever Jimmy went. Jimmy Appleby was the boy’s name.
The sloop was rather old-fashioned, even for those days, and our
going out in her was not all play. John Appleby found us of some
help even when we were only ten, and we learned quickly to help in
hoisting sail, and to tend sheets, and to reef, and to steer, and to
do the other little odd jobs in connection with sailing a boat. I
have gone out on the footropes of the bowsprit many a time when I was
not turned twelve, and it had come on to blow, and she was plunging
into a head sea—she pitched fearfully, with her shallow body, and a
head sea just about stopped her—and I have been trying to stow the
jib—not to furl it, just to tie it down any way—and holding on for my
life, and have been plunged to my neck in one sea after another as
she dived into them. That sloop was the champion high diver. I do not
think that that experience ever imbued me with the desire to learn to
swim. I was concerned only with holding on and getting my job done as
soon as possible.

I have no clear recollection of my usual standing at school, except
that I have the impression that I was apt to be in hot water from one
cause or another. I must have done reasonably well in my studies, for
I graduated from the Grammar School before my fifteenth birthday, but
my active interests were not there. The memories that surge up and
clamor to be let loose are those of the water-front, the wharves, the
ships, the harbor, and the bay.

{9}




CHAPTER II


One morning toward the end of June in the year 1872 I was on the
wharf at the foot of Hamilton Street, where I was most apt to be. My
father and a gang of ship carpenters were busy at the bottom of a
ship that was hove down there, and they were working on float stages
along her side. I have forgotten the name of the ship. It was yet
early, for in those days carpenters went to work at seven and stopped
at six or thereabouts, and no man that I ever knew of the old class
of artisans would leave his hammer in the air, but he would work a
few minutes more, if that was necessary to finish what he was at, and
they were a contented, happy lot—superior men, as a rule.

The merry sound of the mauls was not merry to my ears, for I was
restless and discontented, I remember, although there was nothing
that should have made me so. But I was just through school, and
although my father and my mother had said nothing about my getting
to work, and my father had done nothing about it—fathers were apt to
do something about it in those days, getting their sons apprenticed
to whatever trade seemed good to them, without much regard to the
preference of the sons—although my father had done nothing about
it, I say, I knew that I was expected to get to work with no more
delay than was reasonable. Both my father and my mother were wise
people, and they wanted me to have time and opportunity to look about
me and decide for myself what I preferred to do, for my decision
would involve my whole life, very probably, and greatly affect my
happiness. When I had decided, I knew that I could depend upon my
father to help me to the best of his ability; and that would be
considerable, for my father {10} was a man of some influence in his
way, and especially in his trade. He had already helped my older
brother Tom, who had chosen my father’s trade, a choice which greatly
pleased my father at the time. Tom was at his ship carpentering then
on one of the stages with the men, and he had served three years of
his apprenticeship. My younger brother, Joshua, was already planning
to go into the same trade, but my father was rather lukewarm about
it. He did not say why, but I can guess now that he was beginning to
see that it was a trade that was doomed to extinction.

Joshua had two years more at school, and before the two years were
up he had changed his mind. He became a machinist, and went into
structural steel work, and then into building steel ships. In 1917
both of my brothers were busy: Tom, at sixty-three, turning out
wooden ships at Bath as fast as he could get the timber and men to
put them together, and Joshua, at fifty-seven, turning out steel
ships with a tremendous clatter in a sort of gigantic boiler-works.
I could not stand Josh’s shipyard, while I enjoyed being in Tom’s.
I enjoyed it better than Tom enjoyed having me there, for they were
very busy, but the men were all old men and they could not be driven
beyond a certain pace; but they came to the yard at four o’clock of a
summer morning.

On that morning in June, 1872, I was making my choice, although I was
not aware of it, but knew only that I felt discontented and uneasy
and rather wanted to fight somebody. If Jimmy Appleby had been there
I should probably have fought him—we fought often, without rancor,
and without a decision—and the whole course of my life would have
been changed. But Jimmy’s father had put him to work, and he was not
there, and there was nothing for me to do but to wander about the
wharf, watching the men swinging their mauls; and I could not see
much of that, except at the bow and the stern, for the {11} vessel
was hove down over the wharf, and her hull hid them. From the other
side of the dock I should have had a fine view, but I saw it so often
that I did not care much for it, and I suppose I did not think of it,
being taken up with my restless state of mind, which impelled me to
and fro. It sent me to the end of the wharf, where I stood upon the
stringpiece and looked down into the water just below. It was of an
unhealthy, greenish cast, not like the green of the sea. It looked
filthy, but I saw an immense school of little fish nosing around the
piles of the wharf.

A whaler was at one of the Fairhaven wharves, and a number of other
boats were scattered along the water-front, most of them small. I
was about to look farther down toward the ferry slip and railroad
station, but there lay a whaler in the stream, all ready to start;
probably waiting for some of her crew, or for her captain to get his
papers at the Custom House. I knew the vessel. It was the Clearchus.
She had been fitting for some time, at the wharf next above the one
I was on, and I had watched the caulkers, the carpenters and the
riggers busy at her, each in their turn. The desire must have been
conceived and born and got well grown without my being aware of it
until that minute, but I knew it then. I looked at her lying there
on the water that was ruffled under a southwest breeze, some great
pennant flying at her masthead—I suppose it had her name on it, or
the name of her owners, for I know it was white with a blue border
and some blue letters in the centre—and there was not wind enough
to keep it out straight enough for me to read the letters, but it
would roll up and fall nearly straight down, and then unroll lazily
and whip out to its length for just an instant, and drop and roll
up again before I could make out a single one. She must have been
waiting for her crew, for I saw only two men aboard of her, and
they were doing nothing, but leaned upon the rail, which was at the
height of their shoulders. {12}

I had among my most treasured possessions two little books, in
paper-covered boards, “The Eventful History of the Mutiny of the
Bounty” and “Lives and Voyages of Early Navigators, with a History
of the Bucaniers.” They could not be called new books even then,
in 1872, for they were published by the Harpers in 1832 and 1833.
They are beside me at this moment, the paper-covered boards torn and
stained, and the pages dirty and much thumbed. Some of that thumbing
had already been done, for I had found the tales of adventure in the
books absorbingly interesting. No doubt I was thinking, as I gazed
at the Clearchus over the smiling waters of the harbor, of that huge
black savage of the Patagones who came capering and singing down to
the shore to greet Magellan, his face painted red and yellow; or of
Otaheite and its middle-aged queen—if that is what she was—a chiefess
separated from her husband, and languishing for Wallis. Although
of course I knew better, I always thought of those coasts and seas
as they were in the times of Magellan and Wallis. I had an intense
desire to visit them. But I have no clear recollection of what I was
thinking of. I must have given a thought to Jimmy Appleby. I know
that I stayed there, wandering impatiently to and fro, or standing at
the stringpiece watching the Clearchus, waiting for twelve o’clock
and praying that her captain might have trouble in filling his crew
at the last minute.

[Illustration: FITTING OUT]

The Vineyard boat went curving out in a wide sweep, another came in;
a tugboat pursued its leisurely way across the harbor, and I held my
breath in fear lest it should be bound for the Clearchus—with her
crew of two; a lightship began to warp into the next dock above,
preparatory to heaving down for repairs; the Custom House boat
started out with an inspector to meet a ship that had been sighted
down the bay; two catboats started from Al Soule’s for the same
purpose; riggers and {13} stevedores were busy on a whaleship in
the dock next below, getting her spars up and bending on sails; the
leisurely activities of New Bedford Harbor of nearly fifty years ago
went on; the sun was warm and the wind light, and the smell of tar
and sperm oil was heavy on the air, but in the lee of the hill the
oil smell overpowered everything else. I liked that sickish smell
of crude sperm oil. I like it yet. With that smell in my nostrils
I have but to close my eyes and I see the warm, sunny harbor, some
whaler lying in the stream ready to sail, the fluorescent green of
the water in the dock—its peculiar color due to a mixture of oil and
sewage—some other whaler lying at the wharf with her sails hanging
limp from her yards, perhaps a vessel hove down at the other side of
the wharf, and I heard the sound of mallets and the laughter and the
talk of men on the still air.

Fifty years ago I was actually hearing these things, waiting
impatiently for twelve o’clock. But I waited, for I wanted to speak
to my father alone. At last I heard the bell in the Stone Church
tower sound noon, but the sound of the mauls did not stop at once,
but one after another; then a few strokes of a single beetle, and I
heard it laid down. The men had already begun to come up. My father
was the last, and I watched him with some pride, a big, brawny,
smiling man. I wished I were big and brawny and smiling, like him.
And he saw me standing there, and smiled more than ever, a personal
smile and tender in a way.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Well, Timmie,” he said. “You here
yet? I thought you would have gone home long ago. Dinner ’ll be
waiting. What is it, boy? Walk along with me and tell me. I can see
it ’s something bothering you.”

My brother Tom had started walking with us, but we were too slow for
him, and he had run ahead. It was Big Tim and Little Tim. My father
was always known as Big Tim. {14}

I did not know how to begin, so I said nothing, but I struggled.

My father saw the struggle. He smiled again. “Out with it, Timmie,”
he said.

I raised my eyes slowly, and I am afraid that tears were in them.

“I want to go whaling, father,” I blurted out.

His smile faded swiftly. “Do you?” he said. “Do you? I hoped it
would n’t be that. It begins to look—or it has been looking for some
time as if the whaling business would die out. It won’t be a good
business for some time, if it does n’t go from bad to worse. Have you
thought of that, Timmie?”

I shook my head. “I want to go whaling,” I said again.

He laughed, and then he sighed. “It ’s a bad business for your
mother and me,” he said, “to have our boy starting out on a voyage
at fifteen for three or four years. But if you will you will, and
I ’d better see about getting you a berth.” He turned and looked at
the ship in the dock below. “There ’s a vessel the riggers should
be through with soon. She should sail in a couple o’ weeks or
thereabouts. I might get you in there. What do you say, Timmie?”

“Where is she going, father?”

“Well,” he answered slowly, “it ’s always hard to tell where
a whaler ’s going. Wherever whales promise. But we braced and
strengthened her for Ar’tic work. She ’s a good vessel now, Timmie,
and thoroughly braced. I think likely she ’ll round the Horn, and
make the Ar’tic next season. If she has luck in the South Seas she
may hang over there another winter, and not try the Ar’tic until the
next year. But the Ar’tic ’s where she ’s going sooner or later.”

“I don’t want to go to the Ar’tic, father. Where ’s the Clearchus
going?”

My father looked around in surprise. {15}

“The Clearchus!” he exclaimed. “Why she ’s in the stream. Her
crew ’ll be aboard in an hour or two. Cap’n Nelson expects to sail
to-day.”

“But where ’s she _going_?”

“Going sperm whaling, Hatteras, South Atlantic, Indian Ocean,
probably, and South Seas. I don’t know, and I don’t suppose Cap’n
Nelson knows. She is n’t going to the Ar’tic, that ’s sure.”

“If her crew is n’t aboard pretty soon,” I objected, “she can’t sail
to-day.”

“Well, no,” my father said, “probably won’t. Could of course, if he
wanted to, but ’t is n’t likely. Might go below and anchor, but what
are you up to, Timmie? Going on the Clearchus?” And my father smiled
as he asked the question, as though it were absurd.

“I ’d like to, father,” I said. “I want to go on a ship that ’s going
sperm whaling in the warm oceans; to the South Seas. I—I ’ve always
wanted to see the South Seas.”

My father smiled again. “ ‘Always’ is a long word, Timmie. How long
does it stand for? And as for seeing an ocean—why, one ocean ’s much
like another—except the Ar’tic. You might think you were out on the
bay with Jimmie. And a couple of hours’ notice is n’t much for your
mother and me, is it, now?—going off for three or four years?”

“No-o, I suppose not. But I did n’t know what I wanted until I saw
the Clearchus out there. I know now. And I ’ll come back, father. Of
course I hate to leave you and mother—”

My father laughed at that.

“Yes,” he said, “you seem to. But never mind, Timmie, I know how
you feel. Perhaps it ’s just as well. We shan’t have the month of
dreading it, and it ’ll be over before we know it. I ’ll do the best
I can for you, but I can’t promise. Nelson may be having trouble of
some {16} kind. I ’ll just drop in at the Custom House on the chance
of finding him there, and if he is n’t we ’ll run over to Wing’s to
see what they can tell us. But you must n’t fret if it can’t be done.”

I almost danced with joy, and I promised not to fret. I knew that I
should not fret at a thing that could not be done. I have never done
that. I do the most and the best that I can, and am quite cheerful
over the outcome. I was always the same; and what better can a man do
than his best, and accept the result with a cheerful heart? But if
we had made no attempt to find the captain I should have fretted at
having left something undone and possibly lost a chance that I might
have had.

We had been walking slowly up William Street as we talked, and it was
abreast of Eggers’s little gunshop—where I had been used to go for
my supply of fishlines and hooks—that my father virtually gave his
consent and told me not to fret. The steep, short slope of Johnnycake
Hill was just at our left—the Bourne Whaling Museum is now at the top
of it—and the Custom House was but a few steps away, on the upper
corner of the next street. I broke away and ran, looking back at my
father with an ecstatic smile.

My father laughed again. “Hold on, Timmie,” he called. “Where ’you
going?”

“Custom House,” I called back. “Cap’n Nelson might get away.”

So I ran, leaving my father laughing, and I waited impatiently for a
few seconds beside one of the huge Doric columns supporting the roof
of the portico of that ancient pile of granite. It always seemed to
me as old as the Pyramids. The Post-office then occupied the first
floor, but there was nobody passing either in or out at that time,
and my father joined me beside the Doric column. I remember that the
broad stone steps seemed not a whit too solid and strong for his
massive frame as he came up. {17}

He said nothing, but chuckled as he and I entered together that
empty, echoing room, and made for the stairs. It was—and is yet, I
suppose—a curved staircase of stone, and never failed to excite my
wonder that it stood and performed its function, for the granite
steps were without visible means of support at their outer ends. I
always mounted it with trepidation, half expecting that it would give
way beneath me and precipitate me into the echoing abyss below. The
stone steps were somewhat worn by the feet of many captains, and my
own feet had contributed.

We entered, and saw a long mahogany counter surmounted by a glass
fence, behind which a man was writing, standing at the counter. He
had a long, pointed beard, sprinkled with gray. He seemed to be alone
in that spacious room. He was the Deputy Collector.

We started along beside the counter, which seemed endless, and my
father was just opening the gate when suddenly we heard the sound of
voices, as if a door had been opened. The voices stopped, and a man
stumped toward us vigorously. I should say now that he was a youngish
man, but then I thought him very old. He was about forty, with a
close-clipped brown beard growing nearly up to his eyes, which were
gray and piercing, looking out from between half-closed lids. Those
eyes gave the impression of being at a great distance, and there
was a spark of light in them so that they always made me think of a
lighthouse with its cone of light. Even now I never see a lighthouse
at a distance of three or four miles that I do not think of Captain
Nelson’s eyes.

“Hello, Tim,” he said, with no apparent intention of stopping.

But my father blocked the gateway. He was a good head taller than
Captain Nelson.

“I ’d like to have a word with you, Cap’n, if you have time. I won’t
keep you long. Don’t you want a boy?” {18}

“A boy? One of your boys? This the one?” He took me by the arm and
made me face him. I was smiling nervously. “You want to go whaling?”

“Yes, sir,” I said as steadily as I could. “That is, I want to go if
you ’re going to the South Seas.”

Captain Nelson laughed. “No Ar’tic in yours, eh? What you want to
go to the South Seas for? We don’t lie ’round under palm trees and
eat breadfruit and watch the surf breaking on coral sands, like the
pictures in your geography books. What ’you been getting hold of?”

I squirmed and got very red, and stammered and said nothing.

Captain Nelson laughed again, and gave me a little shake and let me
go.

“Well, Tim, no need to ask about any of your boys. You recommend him,
I suppose?”

“I do, Cap’n. I ’m sorry he ’s taken with whaling, and that ’s the
truth; and it ’s rather sudden, for he ’s only told me within the
last half-hour, and his mother and I will hate to have him go off for
three or four years. But if that ’s what he wants I ’d better help
than try to hinder him.”

Captain Nelson nodded. “May be five years, Tim. No knowing.” He
turned suddenly to me. “What ’s your name?”

“Tim, sir.”

“Well, little Tim, I guess we can find room for you. May not get the
crew in time to sail to-night. Probably won’t. But you ’d better be
on hand and keep an eye out for us. Bright and early in the morning,
anyway.”

He nodded again, got his clearance papers, and stumped out. I stared
stupidly after him.

My father sighed. “Well, Timmie, that was soon done. We ’ll be late
for dinner. Come along.”

And I said nothing, but pegged along beside him down the echoing
stone stairs, my elation rapidly oozing out at {19} my finger-tips.
I was beginning to think of the other side of it—his side and my
mother’s—and to be more than half sorry for my haste; but what is
done is done. Boys—and girls too—are thoughtlessly cruel, fortunately
for them and the world.

I could not eat much dinner, but went off to my room to pack a few
things, among them my two precious books. It was not a large bundle
that I tied up. My father must have told my mother as soon as I had
gone, for she came up to my room as I was tying up my bundle. She had
been crying, and tears were yet in her eyes, but she smiled divinely
as she stood in my doorway.

“Well, Timmie, darling,” she said gently, “so you ’re going to leave
us. Four years is a long, long time to look forward to without you.
I had hope that you would choose something else. But if you had to
choose this it ’s better to have it soon over, and not to have a
month of dreading it. And I ’ll say nothing but God bless you and God
keep you, my precious!” She sat on the bed. “Come here, darling boy,
and let me have one hug and a kiss to remember.”

So I went, and I threw my arms around her neck, and I hid my face.
We stayed so for a long time, she rocking back and forth, hugging me
hard, and whispering to me.

{20}




CHAPTER III


The Clearchus did not get off that day, and at six o’clock my father
and I walked home together, my heart like lead. The evening passed
somehow. We all went up to bed at nine, as we always did, while the
bell on the Stone Church was ringing the curfew; but we might as
well have stayed up for two or three hours longer, for I could not
sleep, and I am sure that my mother could not. It had begun to rain,
a dreary drizzle, before I finally fell asleep.

I was awakened to find my mother standing in my doorway. She was
smiling, but she looked as if she had not slept well. It was already
after six. I jumped up, slid into my clothes hastily, and joined
the family at breakfast, but I could scarcely eat. I was glad when
my father pushed back his plate and got up. I said good-bye simply
enough to my brothers, and they said good-bye to me, but they did not
get up. They did not even stop eating. My mother came to the door
with us. Tears stood in her eyes, but she smiled as she gave me a
long, close hug. I returned her hug and her kiss, but I was very near
to tears and I could not speak, so I bolted out at the door into the
rain after my father, and I waved my hand to her. That was another
picture that I carried locked in my breast of my mother standing at
the open door, in the dreary drizzle, looking after me and smiling.
Mothers have a good deal to bear. I wonder that they stand it.

We did not get off until after ten o’clock. I was the first to
see it—I mean the job wagon with its load of men and bundles. It
was being driven on to the next wharf below—Central Wharf it was,
although I did not know the wharves infallibly by name then. I called
to {21} my father, took up my bundle, and walked, rather slowly, I
am afraid, around the head of the dock. The afternoon before I should
have run. My father caught up with me at the head of the wharf.

The wagon was unloading about halfway down the wharf when we got
there, and the men were taking out their bundles. Those bundles
were of all sizes and all colors, but all were shapeless, a few in
neat canvas bags, several in pillow-cases, and the others in gay
flame-colored cloths, red and orange and a peculiar blue, but the
predominating color was some shade of magenta. It is curious how
fond those Western Islanders are of magenta. The men were grouping
themselves, squatting on their bundles in the drizzle, or sitting
on the rounded tops of the mooring-piles or on the stringpiece, or
standing. I noticed only three of them: a great, gaunt, very black
man, with thin hoops of gold in his ears, who stood impassively,
his arms folded across his breast, and gazed at nothing and did not
speak; a smaller man, also intensely black and with similar gold
hoops in his ears, who sat atop of a pile and smiled and poured a
steady stream of talk that I could not understand up to the first,
and the gaunt man smiled now and then, showing a set of teeth that
were sharp and of a dazzling whiteness; and a very old man, who I
suppose was originally a white man, with fingers permanently bent,
like talons, and very wrinkled face that looked like leather in
texture and in color. He was sitting on the stringpiece, his neat
canvas bag between his knees, and looking up at the two black men;
and occasionally there would flit over his face a humorous smile,
leaving the look of humor there. On the whole it was a quiet crowd,
and merry enough, considering the weather. A man, who I found
afterwards was the second mate, moved slowly around among the groups
and finally stood still, holding converse with none and gazing out
over the harbor. {22}

The old man cast his humorous eye up at my father.

“Lovely morning,” he said.

My father laughed. “If you take it so,” he said, “it ’s better. After
all, what does the weather matter to an old sailorman like you?”

“Not a bit. I never let it make any difference to me. But the talk
of these lads,” he said, waving a weatherbeaten hand, with its
talon-fingers, at the two black men, “always makes me want to laugh.
It sounds like monkey talk.”

“Don’t you understand it?”

He shook his head. “Not me. I never learned Portagee. I should die
laughin’ if I tried. They had none in the navy in my day.”

My father was interested. “Have you been in the navy? I should have
said merchant vessels, but I did n’t think of the navy.”

The old man nodded. “Oh, aye,” he said. “It was the navy until the
war was over, and I was too old for that, and then the merchant
service for a couple o’ years, and then whalin’. Whalin’ ’s easier.
They don’t drive a vessel so. You were n’t goin’ on this ship?”

My father smiled, and laid his great arm across my shoulders.

“No, I ’m not going, but—”

“The boy?” the old man interrupted. “Is he so? Well, can I be sort of
lookin’ after him? I ’d take him under my wing with pleasure, perhaps
teach him a thing or two, and try to keep him out o’ trouble.”

My father was pleased, and accepted the old sailor’s offer; and he
told him of his own experience in the navy, and they swapped yarns
for half an hour. The old man had been a boatswain in the navy. He
was only fifty-eight, he said. I don’t wonder he put it that way. The
second mate had moved, and I looked up and saw the Helen Augusta,
our largest tugboat, just about to make a landing at the end of the
wharf. {23}

I seized my father’s arm in a panic.

He smiled. There was something infinitely protective in my father’s
smile.

“I ’m going down with you, Timmie, and come back in the tug. It ’s
too wet to work, luckily, so it won’t make any difference to me, and
I guess Cap’n Nelson ’ll let me go. Unless,” he added, looking at
me suddenly, “you ’d rather not have me. Perhaps you ’d rather say
good-bye here. If you would I ’d understand it.”

I shook my head, and clung fast to his arm. I could not have spoken
to save my life. The old sailor, my new friend, was rolling along
beside us, his canvas bag over his shoulder and sticking out a foot
or two fore and aft. He glanced at me and smiled, and we all trooped
aboard the tug on to her upper deck, and the men filed down the
ladder to a place where it was dry and warm.

We were about to follow them when we were hailed from the pilot
house. We obeyed the beckoning finger, and in the pilot house we
found Captain Nelson and the captain of the tugboat, a silent,
sour-faced man whose name I cannot now remember, although it was then
very familiar to me. Another man was leaning on the windowsill, his
head outside, and one hand grasping a spoke of the wheel. He shouted
some orders, pulled the bell, and we backed for a minute against
a stern hawser. Then he pulled the bell once, and the chug of the
engine stopped; before the water had stopped its swirling past the
side he pulled the bell again, the engine chugged once more, and
the bows turned faster toward the harbor. I was looking out at the
wharves through a glass covered with little fine drops of mist, and
I saw one of the men on the wharf lift the bight of heavy line over
the top of the mooring-pile and drop it into the water as we began to
go ahead. The man at the wheel pulled the jingle bell, and the engine
chugged faster, and I could hear little familiar noises from the
engine, as though it had settled down for a day’s work. {24}

I was still looking out through the misty glass at the rapidly
receding wharves, with the vessel that the riggers were not through
with, the other that my father was working on hauled down, the
stagings floating in the dock beside her; the lightship in the
process of being hove down; the pens of sheathing and the rows of
oil barrels; the tops of the wharves themselves, every foot of which
I knew intimately. I wondered when I should next set foot on those
familiar wharves; the picture blurred a little, and it was not the
rain. But I was not quite fifteen, and I was going away on a voyage
of four or five years. At fifteen, four or five years might as well
be four or five æons. Our turning had cut off my view of the wharves,
and we had straightened out for the Clearchus, and the rain was
coming dead ahead.

We were drawing alongside the Clearchus, and we made fast and the
crew went over the side stolidly, although some of them seemed merry
enough, and my old sailor took the whole thing as a joke. Then
Captain Nelson went, and my father and I. By the time I had got on
the deck of the ship the captain had gone aft and was talking with
the mate.

I had never happened to be on the Clearchus before, and neither had
I been on any whaler just starting on a voyage. Her deck was well
cluttered with all sorts of stuff, which there had been no time to
stow below, and no men to do it. Some of it was covered roughly with
tarpaulins to keep it from the wet, and it was shoved into corners
or littered the alleyways between the great brick try-works and the
bulwarks. The deck itself—where it showed at all—was covered with a
film of moisture, and seemed to have sweated just oil enough to make
it very slippery.

The deck of an old whaler is full of odd structures. On almost all
old whaleships there were two small deckhouses aft, one on either
side, with the wheel and the cabin {25} skylight between them;
and on many ships this space was roofed over, giving the steersman
protection in bad weather. This was the case on the Clearchus;
and there was another structure just forward of this after house.
This “gallows,” as it is called, was no more than a roof covering
the booby-hatch—which led to the steerage; where the boat-steerers
slept—supported on posts at the corners, the posts inclined sharply
inward at the angle of the standing rigging. On the top of this
roof were three spare whale-boats, bottom up. There was a third
structure—merely a roof—just aft of the foremast, over the try-works.
The galley was in the starboard side of the after house, which may
strike some as a very queer place for it, but it was always so on a
whaler. It was necessarily very small, taking up less than half of
that side. The cabin stairs, or companion, were in the port side of
the after house.

We took refuge under the gallows over the booby-hatch, from which
point we had as clear a view of the deck as it was possible to have
anywhere except from the scuppers. The deck was anything but clear,
and the man at the wheel saw the great butts of the masts, the
try-works, and other things of a more temporary nature, but little
of the deck, and of the sea before the ship and of the sky above
nothing at all. There was no need for him to see either. He had an
unobstructed view of the compass.

The tug took us about twenty-five miles, but it seemed an unbearably
short journey on that dull, rainy morning. The silence was broken
only by the soft noise of the sea, and of the ship going through it,
and by the creak and groan of the hawser on the bitts and of the
yards in the slings as she rose and fell gently; and by the sound of
the water dripping from the yards and rigging upon the deck, and now
and then a voice. Altogether it was a silent, gray, dismal journey.
Coils of rope hung from the belaying pins near me, and they swung
regularly with the {26} motion of the ship. I wished that they would
stop. They did not, of course, except for a moment, regularly; then
they began again.

The time was coming soon when the tug would cast off, and my father
must go back. We got beyond Devil’s Bridge, with the Vineyard looming
indistinctly, but scarcely visible, on our weather beam. The tug
whistled, and Captain Nelson came to us.

“Well, Tim,” he said, “I guess you ’ll have to get ready. It ’s too
rough for the tug to come alongside, but I ’ll send you over in a
boat. She ’s dropping us now.”

My father said he was sorry to be so much trouble; and Captain Nelson
said it was no matter, that it would be good practice for the crew.
Then he looked at me, and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Timmie,” he said gently, “you have n’t signed yet, and if you want
to go back with your father I ’ll send you.”

I shook my head furiously. “No, thank you, sir,” I said. “I ’ll sail
with you—if you want me—if you ’ll take me.”

How could I back out then? I should have been a laughing-stock for
years, and I should never have a better chance. But I did want to go
back with my father.

Captain Nelson smiled. “I ’ll take you, and you ’ll get over your
homesickness when we get a sight of the sun. It ’s a dismal day to
start off.”

They cast off the hawser, and backed the main topsail, and the vessel
lay there with the seas beating upon her while the tug came up abeam,
and lay rolling. And they came and cast loose the very boat we were
standing under, and the men tailed on to the falls, and the boat was
lowered until it was level with the rail; and two of the crew tumbled
in to look after the falls, and my father gave me one hug, and I
clung to him for a moment.

“Good-bye, Timmie,” he whispered. “I ’ll give your {27} love to your
mother. Be a good boy, and do a little more than is expected of you.
Be ready to do a man’s work when you are able, and let us be proud of
you when you come home.”

The men began to slack away on the falls. I watched the men slide
down the falls as the boat touched the water, my father among them;
and the falls were unhooked quickly, two men holding her off from the
side of the ship. Then they shoved off, the five long oars took the
water, and they rowed to the tug, the whaleboat rising to the seas as
lightly as a cork. And they drew alongside the tug, but did not stop,
and my father stepped out upon the broad rail of the tug and down
upon her deck, and turned to wave to me.

As the boat came back the tug started, with long blasts of her
whistle as a message of farewell to us. My father still stood in the
gangway, close to her house, and waved to me. I watched her as long
as I could see her; a mite—a speck tossing on the heaving sea.

{28}




CHAPTER IV


By the next morning the skies had cleared, and there was bright sun,
with a light breeze from the southwest. It had begun to clear soon
after midnight, and the stars had come out one by one, with drifts
of ragged scud flying over. I had not seen it, but I was sleeping
soundly, after some miserable hours, for I was a very homesick boy.
Mother and father—even brothers—and home never seemed so dear or so
far away, and I seemed to be cut off from them completely. I had no
pangs of seasickness, either then or later, for which I suppose I
should be thankful; but I did not give that matter a single thought,
as far as I can remember. I suppose my mind was too thoroughly taken
up with its own wretchedness to worry about a possible wretchedness
of body. And a full realization of my wretched and miserable state
came upon me the instant I was fully awake, with a distinct stab at
my heart. A few tears trickled from my eyes, and my heart was like
lead until I stepped out upon deck and saw the sun and a quiet sea,
misty about the horizon, and the bark making her way through it under
easy sail, rolling a very little, lazily, and the men, barefooted,
scrubbing the decks as clean as might be of their coating of oil with
the water standing upon it in little separate drops, like dew. I know
the deck had a queer, greasy, frosty look, and fairly large drops had
gathered and stood up, little smooth hills, about two or three inches
apart. The water from the hose and the men with their swabs made
these hills disappear like magic, together with the frosty look of
the deck. Tarpaulins in irregular heaps still covered piles of stuff
here and there on the deck, which the men avoided as well as they
could. {29}

One of the men swabbing the deck was my old friend the old navy man,
whose name I found was Peter Bottom. The two very black men with
gold hoops in their ears were there too, the tall one as silent and
dignified as ever, but working well, and the shorter one gay and
garrulous, but seldom evoking from the other as much as a smile. What
these men’s real names were I never knew, and it does not matter what
they were. The tall one always went by the name of Tony, and the
shorter one by the name of Man’el.

Peter Bottom looked up at me, and smiled and winked, and worked
nearer with his swab. There was a quarterdeck on the old Clearchus,
and a break in the deck with one low step up to the part covered by
the after house. I was standing on that step and leaning against the
house, for I did not want to get into the water that was flowing so
freely. When Peter had worked near enough, he told me in low tones
that if I would hunt him up later he would impart some information
that might be useful and the beginning of my education.

The men were busy nearly all day getting the decks reasonably
clear, and the stuff stowed below, and it was not until late in the
afternoon that I found Peter Bottom standing by the windlass, gazing
out to the eastward. The wind was light, as it had been all day, and
it looked very quiet and peaceful out there, with a grayish haze
all along the horizon. The water toward the west, on the weather
side, was too bright to look at with comfort. There was still a very
slight heave of the sea left from the night before. Many of the crew
were standing about, or sitting on the forecastle, but they were not
saying much.

Peter looked up as I approached. He had a sort of permanent smile on
his face, a pleasant, humorous expression of perpetual amusement.
This deepened to a personal smile when he saw me.

“Here you are, my lad,” he said. “I was just thinking {30} about
you, and that I ’d have to go after you if I could contrive a way.
Now to begin at the beginning, what might your name be?”

“Tim,” I answered; “Tim Taycox.”

“A good name,” he said. “I had a shipmate named Tim once, but he
did no credit to the name. My name ’s Peter Bottom.” That was how I
found out his name, although I have used it already. “A queer name,
Bottom, but it ’s none of my responsibility, my name. You ’ll call me
Peter, and so we ’ll get rid of it. Now, tell me what you know about
whaling, so I ’ll know where to begin. There ’s no sense in telling
you what you know a’ready. And then you might tell what you know of
ships and of sailing, for I s’pose you ’ve knocked about some in
small boats, living in New Bedford.”

Now, what I really knew about whaling was nothing at all, although I
had always heard it talked about, and had absorbed as much in that
way as a boy can who has seen nothing but the shore end of it. So I
told Peter just that, and I told him of my experiences in boats.

“What ’s your lay?” asked Peter Bottom suddenly.

“My lay?” I stammered. “I—I don’t know.”

“Don’t you know what I mean?” he pursued. “Every man on board has a
part o’ the voyage—the catch—instead o’ wages.”

I am afraid I interrupted him rather indignantly. Of course I knew
that, but I had not the least idea what the share of each man was. He
enlightened me. First he told me that the share of the boy was one
two-hundredth. That would give me, if our take of whales amounted
to fifty thousand dollars, the princely sum of two hundred and
fifty dollars for four years’ work. That did not seem very much,
but Peter comforted me by saying that Captain Nelson was a good
master, and had the reputation of making good voyages, and it was
likely that I would get more than that. He told me that the owners
took two {31} thirds of the take for their share, and furnished the
vessel and fitted her, and fed the crew throughout the voyage, and
made whatever advances were necessary. If the ship made a “broken
voyage,” as an unprofitable voyage was called, it might easily result
in considerable loss to the owners, while the crew at least could
not lose on it. Such unprofitable voyages were few, however. It was
everything to get a lucky master. Captain Nelson had the reputation
of being a very lucky master, and the Clearchus had always been a
fairly lucky ship. Peter had satisfied himself on those points before
signing, and he supposed that all the best men of the crew had been
equally particular. It was easy to get a good crew for a ship and a
captain known to be lucky, and often very hard to get any kind of a
crew for a captain without that reputation.

He told me further that Captain Nelson’s lay was one tenth, which is
the largest that was given to a captain; the mate’s one twentieth,
for our mate, Jehoram Baker, was also a good man. A first mate’s lay
ranges from one eighteenth to one twenty-fifth. Our second mate,
Alonzo Wallet, was “nothin’ to brag on,” as Peter whispered, but he
got the regular second mate’s lay of one thirty-fourth. The third
mate, John Brown, had a lay of one forty-fifth; the fourth and fifth
mates got a little less than that; and the five boatsteerers got from
one one-hundred-and-eighteenth to one one-hundred-and-fiftieth. Five
mates may seem an excessive number. I know it seemed so to me, but
the Clearchus was a five-boat ship, and needed five boatheaders. How
Peter found out the amount of the captain’s and the mates’ lays I
never knew; possibly it was only gossip. Then he gave me the lays of
the rest of the crew.

The cooper got one sixty-third; the steward one ninetieth; the cook
one one-hundred-and-twentieth and half the slush; what the slush was
I did not know at the time, although anybody of any intelligence
ought to have been {32} able to guess that it was the refuse from
the galley. I became familiar enough with slush before I got home
again, and a bucket of slush will come nearer to turning my stomach
than anything else. It consists chiefly of grease, often turned
rancid. Many a bucket of it have I carried to the masthead, and have
applied it generously and rapidly to the mast all the way down, for
I was always anxious to get that job done and to get rid of my slush
bucket as soon as possible.

But to come back to Peter Bottom and the lays. The lays of
foremast hands varied according to their ability from one
one-hundred-and-fiftieth to one two-hundredth, but Peter’s own lay
was one one-hundred-and-twenty-fifth. This was without doubt in
recognition of his skill as a seaman, and his record. He was a better
man than our second mate. He had sailed all the seas over and over,
could navigate a vessel, and could easily have got a post in the
cabin but that his long years as seaman had unfitted him for the
command of men, and he was too old to begin that now. But his ability
was recognized—owners were always very ready to recognize ability—and
he was greatly trusted by Captain Nelson and Mr. Baker, the mate.
The second mate was not a great friend of Peter’s. It is not to be
supposed that Peter himself told me all this while we stood there by
the windlass. He was a modest man, and he knew better than to brag
about himself even if he had been inclined to. I did not add up the
fractions—the lays—to see if they came out right. Probably they did
not.

Our crew consisted of twenty-five seamen, including the
boat-steerers, ranging in ability from Peter down to the green hands,
of whom there were eight at starting on that voyage; the captain and
five mates; and the cooper, the sailmaker, who could act on a pinch
as cooper and as carpenter, the steward, the cook, and the boy,
who was myself; thirty-six all told, enough to man the five {33}
boats and to leave six on the ship to work her if necessary. The
boat-steerers are included among the seamen, but their standing on
the ship was more that of petty officers.

All this time the ship was slowly forging ahead in the light air,
and rising and falling lazily, and the light of the late afternoon
sun was making the water to windward of a dazzling brightness, while
I looked off to leeward over a quiet sea to the hazy horizon. There
was not wind enough to keep the sails full, and now and then one fell
against the mast and made a curious scraping sound until a puff of
air drew it away again.

Peter was beginning on the sails of the ship. Now, what I knew about
a square-rigged vessel was even less than I had known about the
matter of lays, and I was feeling ashamed of my ignorance and rather
hopeless. But as I looked off at the water, I saw, about two or three
miles off, a little feathery puff of vapor rise, like the drooping
white ostrich plume on Ann McKim’s hat. The feathery shaft of vapor
rose lazily, and the sun shone on it and glorified it for a brief
moment, and it drifted off slowly and vanished. And I watched it
stupidly, and just as I came to and grasped Peter Bottom’s arm, there
floated down to us from aloft a melodious cry.

“Bl-o-o-ows! Bl-o-o-ows!”

It was most deliberately given, and was a quavering, musical cry,
running up and down the scale, much like a yodel. It was one of the
black men who gave it. These black men always gave the cry more
melodiously than a white man. They had had a man aloft all the
afternoon.

That cry was music to me, and all the men were interested, especially
the green hands, to whom it was as strange as it was to me.

Mr. Baker was waving his arms and beckoning, and the crews of the
first and second mate’s boats were running, Peter Bottom among the
best of them. The boats {34} were still lashed at the davits, but
it took only a few seconds to loose them and to begin to lower, two
or three of the men in each boat beginning to overhaul the harpoons
and lances and other gear. As soon as the boats struck the water, the
falls were unhooked, and they pushed off from the side of the ship
and lay there while the crew seemed to be busied with something on
the thwarts, I could not see what, and the ship was slowly leaving
them bobbing and drifting. I was just beginning to wonder about it
when I saw that it was the mast and sail they were busy with. The
second mate’s boat stepped her mast and spread the sail, but in Mr.
Baker’s boat they abandoned that intention, and began rowing, while
the ship kept off gradually on the same course as the boats.

By the time we had made our course Mr. Baker’s boat was well ahead
and going strong, the five long oars dipping slowly and with a fair
regularity, but with some splashing from the green hands. It occurs
to me to say something about a whaleboat for the benefit of those
who do not know the boats, and they must be many, for the whaleboat,
especially the boat fully equipped for chasing whales, has become a
very unfamiliar sight.

The whaleboat is sharp at both ends, and is built as lightly as is
consistent with great strength. Its length is thirty feet; beam, six
feet; depth at extreme ends, a trifle over three feet (thirty-seven
inches in the boats of the Clearchus); depth amidships, twenty-two
inches. It rides the seas like a cork, and the sense of buoyancy
is surprising to any one who is not used to the boat. It has a
centreboard, and is equipped with mast and sail, which can be set up
when wanted. For the purpose of stepping the mast quickly, it has a
sort of hinge to the thwart on the after side, and as it is raised,
the foot slides down to the step in a guide, or channel, until the
mast is erect, when the butt drops into the step. It is held in its
place {35} by stays, permanently fast to the mast near its head,
above the hoist of the sail, one on each side, which are then made
fast through eyes on the gunwales.

When the boat is going under sail it is steered by a rudder. This
rudder is always carried, when not in use, close under the gunwale at
the stern, outside the boat, of course. It is held in place by two
small lines permanently fast to it, one at the heel of the rudder,
the other up nearer its head, the inboard ends of the lines passing
through holes in the port gunwale to cleats on the little deck at
the stern. The rudder is always hung before the boat is lowered, as
it would be a difficult matter to hang it in a seaway, and might
consume much precious time. When fast to a whale, the mate hauls in
on the upper line, unshipping the rudder, and makes the line fast to
the starboard cleat; then he hauls in on the lower line, raising the
heel of the rudder to the gunwale, and makes fast to the port cleat.
This operation can be performed with a few turns of the hand, but
many mates preferred the steering oar, which is twenty-two feet long,
to the rudder, when at close quarters. A couple of sweeps with this
great oar will usually lay the boat around, but with the rudder it
is not easy. A whaleboat, because of its length and the comparative
flatness of its keel, and the slight purchase of the rudder, will not
come about easily under sail.

When going upon a whale, a boat always goes, if possible, under sail.
This is not for the purpose of saving the men trouble, although you
would think that a praiseworthy purpose. It is to avoid frightening
the whale, which hears the sound of oars at considerable distance,
the sound undoubtedly going through the water. When the sail cannot
be used, oars are used, or paddles. The paddles are used only when
it is necessary to go very quietly, and there is no wind. They are
usually stout and heavy, about four feet long; and when not in use
are {36} stuck along the sides, near the thwarts, and out of the way.

Oars are the normal method of propulsion. There are five long oars,
three to starboard and two to port. From bow to stern, they are
called harpooner’s (generally called “harpoonier” on a whaler), bow,
midship, tub, and after oar. The harpooner’s and the after oar are
fourteen feet long, and the midship oar eighteen feet. Those three
are the starboard oars. The port oars, the bow and the tub, are
sixteen feet each. Under the tub oar, by the way, seems to be the
favorite place for a whale to strike a boat. By this inequality in
length of the oars a pretty good balance is reached, whether the
harpooner is rowing or not. Each of these long, heavy oars is handled
by one man, who sits far over on the thwart on the opposite end from
the thole-pins or rowlocks. When thole-pins are used the oar works on
a mat laid up of small line, placed between the pins, to muffle the
sound; rowlocks are matted with marline or other small stuff.

The steering oar, as I have mentioned, is twenty-two feet long.
It passes out astern over the gunwale on the port side of the
stern-post, through a bight of rope covered with leather, which rests
on a bracket. One end of the rope forming this bight is taken inboard
through an eye, and belayed on a cleat on the deck at the stern.
There is a projecting handle on the upper side of the steering oar,
and the steersman stands up to his work. When the steering oar is not
in use, it is drawn in clear of the water, and on the boats of the
Clearchus, at any rate, the handle was held in an eye spliced into a
rope, which was worked in above the gunwale on the port side. This
just fitted the handle, and held the oar out of everybody’s way and
ready for instant use.

The boat is decked over for three feet at the bow, and four feet at
the stern. The deck at the bow is sunk six inches below the gunwale,
and is called the “box.” {37} Directly aft of the box is the cleat,
or “clumsy cleat.” This is a wide, heavy plank, on a level with the
gunwale, in which—on the port side, unless made especially for a
left-handed man—a roughly semicircular piece is cut out, into the
place of which will fit a man’s left thigh, or upper leg. The edges
of this hole are thickly matted with yarn or other soft stuff. Into
this opening the harpooner fits his left thigh to steady him when
he is about to dart the harpoon, or the mate fits his when he is
about to use the lance. Various sheaths are on the forward edge of
the cleat, for knives, and along its top runs a loose piece of heavy
line, its ends knotted underneath at opposite ends of the cleat. This
is the “kicking-strap,” under which the whale line passes. There is
a hatchet in a frame on the side of the boat below the cleat, where
the mate can reach it easily, to cut the line; and a whaling-gun lies
on a board under the cleat, at his right, fast to the boat by a line
through its stock.

The deck at the stern is used for the cleats which I have mentioned,
for the lines from the rudder and the steering oar, and under it
is the cuddy or locker in which are carried the breaker of water
and the lantern-keg and the compass and other small things with
which a whaleboat is usually equipped. The lantern-keg contains
biscuit—hardtack—candles, flint and steel, or matches, pipes and
tobacco; all the necessaries of life. The main purpose of this after
deck, however, is to provide a convenient place for the loggerhead.

The loggerhead is a miniature mooring-pile projecting from this deck
on the starboard side, and continued downward through the cuddy into
the keel. Its top is six inches in diameter, and it is eight inches
high. The whale line passes around it on its way out, and one or more
turns can be taken around it, so that the line can be snubbed as much
as is wished, or can be held there. It is a frequent occurrence for
the loggerhead to get so hot {38} from the friction of the line that
it smokes, and is only prevented from bursting into flame by throwing
water upon the line by the bucketful or the hatful.

Whale line is a beautiful silky rope, usually seven eighths of an
inch in diameter, although I have seen whale line that I thought
was larger than this, perhaps one-inch rope. Old line, however, may
change its diameter, becoming either larger or smaller than when
new. It is of long fibre manila, flexible and soft, the best rope
that can be made. In 1872 it may have been of hemp—I do not remember
distinctly. It is made in a rope-walk, not on machines, and its
length is therefore limited to the length of the walk in which it is
made. The line has a longer lay than machine-made rope, is not so
tightly laid up, which may make it less attractive in appearance to
one who does not know its qualities, but not to a whaleman. I have
a passion for whale line. There is an old piece somewhere among my
dunnage now—about three fathoms of it. I have had it for years. I
have no use for it, but I like to handle it—almost fondle it.

The whale line, without knots or splices, is kept in tubs, usually
one for a length, sometimes two, near the stern. The tub oar gets its
name from this. It is most carefully coiled, so that it shall run out
freely, without kinks. A second length of line, coiled in its tubs,
is carried by each whaleboat, and can be bent on to the first in case
of need.

From the tubs, then, the line passes around the loggerhead, where the
boatsteerer handles it, and snubs it as much as he wishes. It may
be running out so fast as to burn his hands; and a swiftly running
line not only burns the hands, but can take the very flesh off the
bones, as I know to my sorrow. To guard against this, hand-cloths
or “nippers” are provided, much like those worn by bricklayers, and
often forgotten. The “nipper” is a patch of canvas, eight inches
square, to be held in the {39} hand without fastening, as it might
take a man overboard if fast to him. From the loggerhead the line
passes forward along the length of the boat, in its middle line,
lying, when slack, on the looms of the oars. As each man sits well
over to one side of his thwart, the middle line of the boat is left
clear for it. It then passes under the kicking strap, and through a
groove—the “chocks”—in the head of the stem, in which it is held by
a small wooden peg or pin. This pin is purposely small and frail so
that if there is any obstruction, such as a kink in the line, the pin
will break instead of carrying the boat under. In the bottom of the
chocks there is a small metal roller which does not always work.

The whale line, after passing out of the boat through the chocks,
is taken in again, and a considerable length of it coiled up on the
box—the little sunken deck at the bow. This is called the “box line.”
The first harpoon is attached to the free end of the box line, the
second iron to an extra piece of line, the “short warp,” fast to the
box line a little way from its free end. These two harpoons rest
with their points projecting over the bow and their sapling hardwood
handles in the crotch. The crotch is a sort of double Y-shaped
contraption, which is set into a socket in the starboard gunwale, and
projects about sixteen inches above it.

The boatsteerer or harpooner rows the oar nearest the bow. When near
enough to the whale, at the command, “Stand up, Jack,” or “Stand
up, you!” from the mate or boatheader, he takes in and secures his
oar, turns around, stands up, takes the first harpoon, which is
immediately ready to his hand in the crotch, fits his leg firmly in
the opening in the cleat, and makes ready to dart. At the further
command from the boatheader, “Give it to him!” he darts the harpoon
with all the force left in him after rowing for miles, perhaps with
all his strength. The harpoon is heavy, and both hands are used {40}
in throwing it, the right hand around the upper part of the wooden
handle or haft, and giving it its forward impetus, and the left hand
supporting the haft toward its lower end. Then, as quickly as he can,
he grabs the second harpoon from its rest in the crotch, and darts
that. This is in the hope of getting two irons fast, but the second
harpoon must be thrown out of the boat in any case.

Lances and spare harpoons are stowed between the thwarts and the
gunwale, the iron shanks held in a little brass frame—at least, on
the boats of the Clearchus—with a sliding wire to lock them in,
and the wooden hafts held in marline. Lances are to starboard, and
harpoons to port; and on each, whether lance or harpoon, is a wooden
sheath covering the sharp edge. It is one of the duties of the bow
oar to remove the sheath, and to get out the lance. He has certain
other duties which are important, and which make the bow oar next in
line of promotion to the harpooner or boatsteerer.

When fast to the whale, the boatsteerer makes his way aft, and takes
the steering oar, changing places with the boatheader, who is usually
one of the mates, while the mate takes his position in the bow, a
lance in his hand, ready to lance the whale and finish the business.

A harpoon or a lance is a poor bedfellow in a seaway, for they are
kept very sharp. In fact, they are often a source of danger even when
out of the boat. The second harpoon has to be thrown out of the boat
in any case, whether there is a chance of getting it into the whale
or not, for it is fast to the whale line, and if it were not thrown
out there would be trouble. This second iron, when not in the whale,
where it belongs, goes jumping and skittering over the waves after
the fleeing whale, ahead of the boat or even abreast of it when the
boat is hauled up close, or afoul of it.

The placing of the loggerhead at the stem accomplishes three things:
it gives the boat-steerer easy control {41} of the line, which the
mate, in the bow, would have no time to attend to when they were at
close quarters; incidentally it avoids the possibility of pulling the
boat to pieces by a towing whale in which the harpoon is fast; but
the controlling reason for it is that the men can heave on the line
without leaving their places, which they must be able to do to get
the boat up to the whale, so that the mate can lance.

But to come back to the boats, which had been making progress
according to the natures of the men in charge of them. They were no
nearer than they had been at first, and we drifted on, Mr. Wallet’s
boat just abeam of us. The farther we went, the farther we were
behind the whales, which were wandering directly away from us. The
sun was near setting, and after an hour of a losing chase, signals
were made for the boats to come aboard again.

I cast another look about the horizon, and ran aft. There was nothing
to be seen of whales—from the deck, at any rate—only a beautiful
pearl-gray softness on the water. My dreams that night were a queer
mixture of whales and home, and of my father working on a staging
beside a whale in a dock, and removing several of his ribs.

{42}




CHAPTER V


We reached the Gulf Stream some time during that night. I remember
that I was awakened before dawn by the heeling of the ship so that I
was all but pitched out of my bunk. I sat up and held on, and heard
the rain, and the sound of feet on deck, and orders shouted, and
the hoarse singsong of the crew as they manned the sheets and the
halliards and the braces, and the noise of the yards swinging, and
the sails slatting. There was no singsong from the men aloft taking
in sail. The ship was pitching and rolling badly. The old Clearchus
was good at that. Then Captain Nelson went on deck, and I dressed
hastily, and went out too into the pitchy blackness of a stormy night
at sea.

The two men at the wheel were having a hard time of it. I took my
stand by the weather corner of the after house, hugging it close,
to keep out of the rain, and looked out at the wet deck, which
gleamed faintly now and then, and at the shadowy forms of the men who
happened to pass near me, and at the white tops of the seas rolling
past. The foam seemed to shine with a light of its own. Then the
ship gave a more violent plunge than ever, and I could tell by the
sound that she had shipped a sea over the bows, although I could see
nothing; but as she rose I heard it come rushing aft, and the next
moment the water was swirling in the near scupper, and slopped up
against the leeward wall of the house. I stood there for some time,
until long after they had sail reduced to reefed topsails, and my
feelings were a curious mixture of exultation in the wildness of
the night and—I may as well confess it now, although nothing could
have drawn such a confession from me then—a sneaking fear that the
ship {43} would not stand such buffeting. I thought of home, and
knew very well that my mother was lying awake and listening to the
wind and the rain, and thinking of me. And I knew that I was in my
father’s thoughts too, although those thoughts could not keep him
awake. He knew that I was taking but the ordinary risks that every
rightly constituted boy has to take, and goes to meet gladly. Indeed
the risk was not great. It did not seem possible that I had left home
less than two days before, and that it was such a few miles behind
me. My thoughts being in that direction, I decided to keep a journal
of some sort, and send it home when a chance offered. The chance may
be a brief one, merely a passing ship, when there is no time to write
letters.

I suppose I must have made up my mind that if I was to be drowned
I should be drowned, and I might as well be comfortable about it,
for as it was beginning to be gray in the east, with the melancholy
waste of wild waters just visible, and that sinking of the soul which
always comes at such a time, I went below and turned in again and
went to sleep immediately.

The next day there was a stiff breeze from the southwest, which
continued for several days. If the Clearchus had been at all fast, or
even an average sailer, she would have made the Hatteras grounds in
a couple of days; but that was a big “if,” as my father would have
said with his quiet smile. Captain Nelson, knowing her well, made no
attempt to crowd her, but went on under easy sail, so that we were a
long time in getting to Hatteras. We got there toward the latter part
of an afternoon. Cape Hatteras, of course, was not in sight, nor even
the lightship on Diamond Shoals; but there was one vessel in sight.
I tried to make myself believe that I knew it for the Desdemona or
the Palmetto, but Captain Nelson said that neither of those ships was
there. However, he announced his intention of going aboard of her,
and said he would take me if I wanted to go. {44}

I was delighted, and regarded it as a mark of special favor. It was.
Captain Nelson was continually showing me those marks of favor,
although if I had not behaved myself he would have stopped very soon.
But I cannot remember that it ever occurred to me to do otherwise,
and if I failed in any respect it was not by intention. Captain
Nelson was very easy on those of good intentions, if they were not
fools, and inclined to be indulgent toward harmless mischief, but
very hard on malice or slacking, and showed them no mercy. Like many
another man of action and results he had little patience with a fool.
I think he blamed himself for this, and regarded it as a weakness,
although he never said anything to me about it. I sympathize with
him. All my life I have never been able to abide a fool, and
there are many kinds; and I have been aware that it is a fault of
character, and that I should have patience with them, for they cannot
help their condition. But I have never been without faults, thank
God, although I suppose that I was a good boy, on the whole. And I
suppose that I should be ashamed of that, too, but I am not, and I
never was. I do not believe that I ever thought about it.

Captain Nelson was going over for a “gam.” Now a gam is nothing more
nor less than a gossip: each gives the other what news he has, the
gossip of home from the outbound captain, and from the inbound the
gossip of whales and their ways, and news of whalers and captains
that he has met, the number of barrels of oil that the George and
Susan has taken, the accident to the Addison, the men that the
Gosnold lost by a fighting whale on the Carroll grounds, and any
other items of interest that he can remember. The two captains,
before they get through, may be telling anecdotes of other whalemen
or of whales, or they may be talking of home or of Nantucket and
Old Ma’am Hackett’s garden. They may have something hot and glasses
between them, and the gam may last an hour {45} or three hours or
all day. It all depends upon the men. Two captains have been known to
spend all day gamming, and to turn up again in the morning for more
of it, but such an abuse of the practice is very rare. The gam has
its useful purpose as well as its pleasant one—although any pleasant
purpose is useful. The outbound captain gets the most out of it, the
news of ships and of men, but most of all, the news of whales, and
how they are running that season, and where they are to be met in
plenty; much more recent news than he had when he sailed. But any
really vital news likely to be of benefit to himself—a new whaling
ground discovered, for instance, hitherto unknown, in which whales
are plentiful—he carefully keeps to himself. The crew are not so
careful, although many of them are close-mouthed.

The vessel had been cutting in, as Captain Nelson could tell without
his glass, and as Peter Bottom and every other old hand could tell.
I could not see what they were doing, and I have no reason to think
that any of the green hands could. She was more than three miles
away, and there was a light bluish haze which made it difficult
to see clearly, but I got a pair of battered field glasses from
the rack, and managed to make out dimly the outline of some sort
of a flimsy structure on her side, the crew all crowded up by the
windlass, and something bulky being hoisted in over the gangway.
Captain Nelson had given me the use of those old field glasses, as
nobody else wanted them. I would have carried them about with me, for
I felt very proud and important at having glasses of my own; but it
would have taken a dray or an ice wagon at least to carry them.

A boat was lowered, Peter Bottom being in the crew of the boat, and
set off with the captain standing just in front of the steersman,
his head in constant danger from the handle of the long steering
oar, and his stomach from the shaft of the stern oar as it swung.
He had to stand, for {46} there was no seat for him. Whaleboats
are not designed for carrying passengers. But he kept his feet and
his dignity at the same time, and I felt a great admiration for
the way in which he did both. I was perched up in the bow, in the
harpooner’s place, and found the thigh-hole in the clumsy cleat a
great convenience in keeping my own balance and dignity. Then I gazed
ahead over the little sunken deck—the “box”—with its length of whale
line ready coiled upon it, and imagined myself striking a whale;
and I raised my arms in the attitude of a harpooner darting the
harpoon, and I hurled the imaginary weapon with tremendous force—all
imaginary, of course—and it sunk to the haft in the great body;
and I heard a snicker, and looked around, and there was one of the
mates—I think it must have been Mr. Wallet, although it was not his
boat—grinning at me from his place at the steering oar, and Captain
Nelson was smiling. I had already developed a cordial detestation of
Mr. Wallet. I remember to this day how red and uncomfortable I got,
even to the back of my neck. But I turned about at once, and stood as
stiff as a ramrod with the help of the thigh-hole, and I looked ahead
and I saw a great volume of black smoke rising from the try-works.
Astern of her there was something in the water, with an immense
flock of screaming gulls continually rising and settling again like
a fountain. It looked much like the sight I have often seen up to a
few years ago, off T wharf in Boston, the fishermen packed three deep
about the wharf and all the men busy either unloading and weighing
their fares of fish, or baiting trawls, and patches of scraps and
gurry on the water, and crowds of great gray or black-and-white
herring gulls screaming and dipping and elbowing for their share of
the vile stuff.

We were getting near enough for me to see things clearly. The
vessel’s starboard side was toward us, and there hung the
cutting-stage by the gangway. Strangely {47} enough, perhaps, I had
never before seen a cutting-stage. When a ship is in port they are
not in evidence, and we had had no occasion yet to rig ours. It is a
simple affair of three planks, the two shorter ones butted against
the side of the ship and resting on the wales. The two short planks
keep the outer plank, which is longer, at the proper distance from
the side. The planks are bolted together at the outer corners, and
are held up by ropes running from the outer corners to the main
rigging at one end, and at the other to a post rising above the rail
of the ship. Most of the work is done from the long outer plank,
which has bolted on its inner edge posts of iron supporting a light
railing. It is somewhat of a mystery why the men do not fall off of
those few inches of slippery, rocking plank, with nothing at their
backs but the wide ocean. They are supposed to have monkey-ropes
about their waists—usually forgotten—or a line at their backs along
the cutting-stage, and they have long, heavy spades in their hands,
which seem to anchor them. Sometimes they do fall off among the
sharks, but they rarely come to any harm. But at the time it looked
to me like a very insecure footing, and I was sure any house-painter
would have rejected it with scorn.

The ship turned out to be the Palm, of New Bedford, and the captain
was an old friend of Captain Nelson’s. The two stood apart, aft, for
some time, watching the busy men about the try-pots. The men were
stripped to the waist, most of them, and laughing and talking among
themselves like children. Some were passing pieces of blubber from
the hatch to the mincers; some were mincing the blubber on those
pieces with heavy knives much like a butcher’s cleaver with a handle
at each end; some were carrying the minced pieces to the try-pots;
and some were stirring the mess in the pots or feeding the fire, with
long, two-pronged iron forks in their hands. The black smoke billowed
up over their heads, and {48} copper gleamed red in the rays of the
low western sun, and the half-naked bodies wet with sweat gleamed
red, and there was a reddish tinge to the black smoke. It looked like
an orgy of devils about the pots, and when the men came out from
behind the try-works I almost expected to see their forked tails
hanging down, and cloven feet.

The two captains went into the cabin, and there was nothing for
the rest of us to do, for the crew of the Palm were too thoroughly
occupied to give us much of a welcome. Everything was covered with
oil and with huge pieces of what looked like butcher’s meat, besides
the blubber. Whale-meat is red, much the color of beef, only darker,
although it does not look like beef. We have recently been asked to
eat it, as if that were a new idea. And the newspapers have had their
short articles, or perhaps a column, carefully timed, telling us how
good it is, and that it is getting to be quite the fashion at New
York hotels, and that some firm in Oregon has been asked to put up a
million or two cans of it. I even saw some displayed in the window of
a fish market for two or three weeks; the same pieces, I judged, from
their continually ripening color. It did not seem to be in any great
demand. Whalemen have eaten whale-meat for a century or more. It is
the meat of the right whale that is eaten. Sperm whale meat is full
of oil and not edible. Once is usually enough for a man, a steak cut
from the small. Even right whale meat does not seem to be a favorite
article of diet, although porpoise steaks are good, and porpoises are
whales.

At the time I knew nothing of the palatability of whale-meat, and I
was interested only in the trying-out process. I stepped carelessly
nearer, and my foot slipped on the oily deck, and I should have
gone down if it had not been for a strong arm that caught me about
the body; and I found myself gazing into the smiling face of Peter
Bottom, and at an enormous raw and bloody jaw that was {49} just
behind him in the scuppers. It was more than fifteen feet long—the
jaw, not Peter’s face—and it was armed with backward curved teeth,
not close together, but spaced rather widely; several inches between
the teeth. They did not look so very formidable; not nearly so wicked
as a shark’s, and the whale’s upper jaw has no teeth. But whale’s
teeth were no new thing to me, although I had never seen a jaw
freshly cut off, with the ragged and bloody flesh on it.

“What are they going to do with it, Peter?” I asked, too much
interested in the jaw to thank him for catching me. “Will they try it
out? Is there oil in it?”

“Oil in what?” said Peter, looking about. “There ’s oil in near
everything around here. There ’d have been oil in your clothes and
in your hair if I had n’t been here to catch you. Oh, it ’s the jaw
you mean. There ’s no oil to speak of in it, but there ’s teeth. When
they get eased up on the oil, they ’ll pull the teeth with the help
of spades and a tackle. There ’s fine dentists among the crew, I ’m
thinking. And maybe they ’ll cut up the jawbone, for it ’s hard and
fine, and good for scrimshawing; anything that ’s too big for a tooth
to answer for. I ’ll show you, Timmie, when we get some whales of our
own.”

“What will you carve, Peter?”

“What will we carve? Anything you want, lad, from an ivory spoon or
a jagging-wheel, for your mother to mark pies with, to a model of
the Clearchus, exact in every line and rope, and all made of ivory
and silk. I brought me some silk thread for just that. Or we might
make a swift, to wind off the hanks of wool. One of the boatsteerers,
last voyage, made one. It was a strange thing, full of joints, and
could be pulled out large or pushed in small to fit, like a lazy
tongs. It seemed to work fine, but there was no real beauty in it,
just flat links and all; a very good machine, but no piece of work
for an artist to turn out. Still, it don’t need to be so plain. We
could carve {50} the links and the shaft and the pedestal with a
mermaid or two and some dolphins and old Nepchune and his car, and
tip off the links with a mermaid’s head at the top and her tail at
the bottom. Oh, yes, Timmie, it comes to me now that a real artist
might do something even with the reel. We ’ll make one if you like.
Or we might make you a cane to use when you get back from this voyage
a fine, big man, and go walking about the streets to turn the heads
of the girls. Oh, there ’s many a thing we can make, and—hello! Ahoy,
there!”

As Peter spoke I turned quickly toward the try-pots, for it was there
he was looking. The oil in one of the pots was being dipped out
into the copper cooling-tank, and the other pot was almost ready.
Something had happened to one of the men as he swung his dipper. The
dipper is practically a pail of copper held in an iron ring at the
end of an iron shaft about three feet long; and on the end of this
shaft is a long sapling handle. I did not know, at the time, what had
happened, but I found, afterwards, that the man had hit his elbow
and the contents of his dipper had been emptied into the second pot.
What I saw was a thin wreath of smoke rising from the pot, with a
tremendous bubbling and commotion in it, and instantly the oil burst
into flame, which licked the near-by woodwork and rigging, and sent
out a great volume of black smoke.

The orgy of devils about the pots became more of an orgy than ever,
although the devils no longer laughed. In the weird light and the
black smoke which, at times, rolled down and hid the whole thing from
me, the devils ran to and fro, and there was a confusion of shoutings
for perhaps a minute. Then I heard the mate’s voice bellowing orders,
and the other shouting grew less, but in place of it I heard the
grunting of men struggling with something heavy, or using every
muscle in pulling. The whole {51} thing seemed unreal to me, like
a sketch of Doré’s for a scene in Hell—although at that time I had
never heard of Doré—and I remember that I leaned back against the
bulwarks and laughed to myself. Peter had left me, and I had moved
clear of the jaw of the whale, but it never occurred to me to do
anything to help. No doubt I should only have been cursed by the mate
and by everybody else, for I should not have had the least idea what
to do, and I did not even know the names of things. But it is nothing
to my credit that I did not offer my blundering help, for I simply
did not think of it.

At last the flame died away and there was but little smoke and that
of a sickly grayish tinge, as if it were the ghost of what it had
hoped to be. I saw the two captains standing together, aft, watching
silently, and Peter joined me again, very black and dirty.

“A narrow squeak, Timmie,” he said. “I thought the ship would catch
afire in spite of us.”

“What was the matter, Peter?” I asked. “What did it?”

He turned to me with his humorous smile. Peter Bottom always had an
air of detachment in his way of looking at things which sometimes
concerned him very nearly.

“Does your mother never fry doughnuts,” he said, “in deep fat?”

I nodded—and I had a sudden lump in my throat. My mother did that,
and often; and her doughnuts were—but it was not of doughnuts I was
thinking.

“Well,” Peter went on, “your mother would not have asked me that
question. Does the fat never catch afire?”

I shook my head. “It never does when mother fries them. I tried it
once, and it did. Was that the reason?”

“Just that,” he said. And then our boat was ordered away, and Peter
ran.

The red sun was resting on the rim of the sea as we {52} started
back. From my place in the bow I watched it, and I lost myself. Our
course was directly in the golden track that led to the sun, and
whales and the black smoke of blubber and oily decks had no place in
my thoughts as I saw the sun sink into the sea.

{53}




CHAPTER VI


We stood away that night, going under very easy sail. We were in no
hurry, and did not want to get far away, but Captain Nelson had a
prejudice against whaling in too much company. I was out at daybreak,
eager and excited, and stayed out all day when my duties did not call
me below. Much of the time I spent in the maintop, which I attained
for the first time, my heart in my mouth as I crawled slowly and
carefully up and out on the futtock shrouds. Nothing would have
induced me to go through the lubber-hole. I had with me my battered
old glass—a load of junk, but it was better than nothing—and I
squatted there and watched for those drifting white plumes until my
eyes ached and watered. Peter laughed at me once when I came down,
but I went up again.

We sighted no whales that first day, although we expected to see
them, and kept a sharp lookout; but the next day, having laid a
course almost due south, and being then in about the latitude of
Frying Pan Shoals, we raised some. I was in the maintop again,
looking through my glass at the wrong place, of course. I should
have done better without the glass. At the mastheads we had two
Kanakas, one called the Admiral, I never could learn why. He had the
most wonderful way of crying “Bl-o-ows!” that I ever heard. The cry
began on a very high and piercing falsetto, sank a little in pitch,
quavered and trilled for a long time, then went up again like a
bugle, and ended as clear as a bell. I wonder that it did not scare
all the whales within four miles, but the whales seemed to like it.

As I sat with my eyes glued to the glass I heard the Admiral’s cry
begin. It startled me, for I had never {54} heard it before, and I
almost dropped the glass. I got it through my head what it was long
before the Admiral had finished.

“Oh, where?” I cried. “Where are they?”

The Admiral paid no attention to me, of course, and the other Kanaka
in his hoops took up the cry in the usual melodious fashion. Then
I saw the white plumes for which I had been looking for a day and
a half. They were directly to leeward, and about three miles off.
I found them with the glass, and I remember that I was perfectly
entranced with watching them. I could not see the bodies of the
whales at that distance, and not much more than the hump shows above
water, anyway, when the whales are undisturbed; but the spouts arose,
at intervals, in a leisurely sort of way, much like the occasional
spurt of steam from the stack of a locomotive at rest at a station.
The spout of the sperm whale does not go straight up, but forward
at an angle. And as the spouts rose, they went more slowly yet, and
they spread out and drifted slowly for a moment, perfect plumes, and
vanished.

It seemed to be a small pod of whales, I could not tell just how
many, for no sooner did one come to the surface and blow, than
another, having had his spoutings out, would up flukes and go down.
No one could miss seeing that, the great flukes high in air just
before the whale sounded, and the cry from the masthead of “There go
flukes!” seemed wholly unnecessary.

At that time I did not know very much about the habits of whales,
or about anything else, for that matter, connected with the life
I thought I had elected. Whales—sperm whales, for I always mean
sperm whales when I say simply whales—when undisturbed pursue their
regular round of activities in an extraordinarily orderly manner.
They go below the surface to feed. Nobody knows how deep they go,
but they go deep enough to {55} find the squid on which they feed.
Sounding whales frequently take half a mile of whale line almost
straight down, sometimes more; and they often come up straight at
the boat. There is no means of knowing whether they go habitually
deeper than that, but the pressure upon their huge bodies at that
depth is something enormous, and the changes of pressure in coming
up at the rate they sometimes—often—do come up are very rapid.
Deep-sea fish, pulled from that depth, are apt to be turned nearly
inside out, because of their inability to regulate the pressure in
their air-bladders quickly enough. I never knew what mechanism the
whale uses, if he has any, to guard against the consequences of such
rapid pressure changes, but he certainly does not use the air-bladder
method. It makes very little difference what method he uses, or
whether he has any other than his great strength, it works very well,
and in a way perfectly satisfactory to the whale.

Having sounded by the simple method of throwing his flukes in the
air, and pointing his body straight down, he stays down for a time
which is constant for the individual whale, so far as anybody has
been able to observe, and surprisingly uniform for whales in general,
taking into account age, size, and sex. The time is undoubtedly
determined by the reserves of oxygenated blood he has been able to
accumulate in some way or other—entirely obscure to me—to enable him
to close his spiracles and hold his breath for an hour or more. For a
full-grown bull whale will stay down for an hour or an hour and ten
minutes, and when he comes up he breathes perhaps seventy times at
intervals of about eleven seconds. When he has taken the usual number
of breaths, which is known as “having his spoutings out,” he ups
flukes and goes down again. A female will stay down from thirty to
forty minutes, and young whales perhaps twenty to thirty, depending
upon their age and strength. {56}

Whales are not always feeding, of course, and when not so engaged,
and when they are feeling lively, they may amuse themselves with
play, much as other animals do. The play of a sportive whale is not
of a kind that I ever cared to join in. They sometimes come up from
the depths at great speed, and throw their bodies clean out of the
water. This is called “breaching.” Breaching may not be the play of
a whale that is particularly sportive, but due to an effort to clear
the body of barnacles and crabs and such-like. And they sometimes
raise their flukes high in air, and bring them down on the surface
again, or “lobtail,” the blow upon the surface of the water making a
noise like a great gun that can be heard for a great distance.

They have other things which they do with their flukes, which seem
to be endowed with a special sense of touch, like the fingers of a
blind person. Indeed, as I think I have said, the sight of whales is
very poor. The eyes of a whale are so placed in his head that there
are considerable angles in front and behind throughout which he could
see nothing if he had the best of eyes; but it is more than that. His
eyes do not seem to be of the best.

I have never chanced to see any explanation of this which seemed
reasonable, but one occurred to me after I had learned to swim, which
I did a few years later. It is not possible for me to see outlines
clearly under water, and I suppose that the same thing is true of any
normal person. The reason is that the curvature of the surface of the
eye is adapted to use in air. Water is, of course, more dense than
air, optically as well as in other ways, and to see well in water the
eye surfaces would have to be much more curved. In other words, the
eye would have to be very near-sighted in air to have normal sight
under water. It is of some importance to the whale to have normal
sight under water, although there again is the difficulty of nearly
total absence of light {57} at great depths. But I should expect to
find the whale very near-sighted, and perhaps with an eye somewhat
similar to that of nocturnal animals. I do not know whether anybody
has ever observed that. I never have. It is somewhat difficult to
make such observations.

I have interrupted my narrative to say something about the habits of
whales, for I hope that has made it evident how hard it was for a
greenhorn like me to tell the number of whales in the pod from the
number of spouts that I could identify at any one time. In fact,
there were times when all had disappeared; but I stayed there,
crouched on my hunkers just forward of the lubber-hole, with my back
against the mast, and I watched those drifting plumes of vapor, and I
was much excited and quite happy.

The boats had been lowered, the harpooners overhauling their irons
as the boats were dropped into the water. I watched the four boats
tossing in the sea astern of us while their crews were stepping
the masts and setting the sails. Mr. Baker’s boat got her sail set
first, and stood away for the whales; then Mr. Brown, the third mate,
who seemed to have his crew well in hand. Mr. Brown was a silent,
uncommunicative man, but he knew his duties, and something more. Then
came Mr. Tilton’s boat, only a couple of seconds behind the third
mate. Mr. Tilton was fourth mate. Last of all came Mr. Wallet, fully
a minute behind the others. I am afraid I snickered at that, but it
was just what I had expected and hoped for. I hardly know why I had
taken such a dislike to Mr. Wallet so early in the voyage, for he had
not been unpleasant to me in any way. It must have been because I
thought him a poor stick.

It was a pretty sight. The weather was perfect, a moderate westerly
breeze, and bright sunshine sparkling on the water, with the four
boats driving ahead before the wind and spreading out fanwise as they
went, and the {58} occasional feathery spouts in the distance. The
boats looked like toy boats upon a painted ocean with tiny streaks of
cotton wool foam at their bows. I was not very high above them, but
the whole picture was spread out before my eyes. It would have been
much better at the masthead. I looked aloft as I thought of that,
with some vague idea of trying to get up there, and I saw the Admiral
busy with a flag. It was a sort of dirt-colored banner, and he seemed
to be trying experiments with it, hoisting it full up, then trying it
at half-mast, then stretching it out at one side or at the other, or
taking it in completely. He was signalling to the boats the position
of the whales, which he could see very well, while the men in the
boats could see them only occasionally or not at all. When the boats
got near enough the Admiral put his flag away.

Meanwhile the ship was keeping off after the boats. They had been
bracing the yards around slowly, for there were few men left on her
besides the idlers, of whom I was one. Nobody saw me—nobody thought
of me, very possibly—and I stayed crouched in the maintop and watched
the boats. It did not occur to me that my duty lay on deck. Captain
Nelson told me of it afterward. At the time the masthead man was the
only man who caught sight of me. I caught him grinning at me several
times, and wondered what he was grinning about.

The boats, by this time, had got very near the place where I had last
seen the spouts, but there were none to be seen now, and all boats
except Mr. Wallet’s had taken in their sails, and lay rocking and
waiting for the whales to come up. Mr. Wallet was still a long way
behind, for even the wind seemed to help all the others more than it
did him. I had my glass to my eyes, and I saw a gentle commotion in
the water beyond Mr. Brown’s boat, then another beyond Mr. Baker’s,
and almost instantly two spouts arose, very close to the boats, and
the men took to their oars with a will. As the whales had just come
up, {59} and had had no chance to breathe more than once or twice,
to say nothing of having their spoutings out, they could not go
down again, or if they did, they could stay down but a few minutes.
This was just the condition the men had been waiting for, and they
took full advantage of it. I could see Macy, the boatsteerer in Mr.
Baker’s boat,—the boatsteerer rows the bow oar,—take in his oar,
face about toward the bow, and stand up. He fitted his thigh into
the thigh-hole in the cleat, took the first harpoon from the crotch,
and poised it in his two hands, leaning far forward. The chance that
he was waiting for came in a few seconds, and he darted the harpoon
with all his strength; instantly seized the second harpoon from the
crotch, and threw that as the first one struck.

I had hardly been able to see the whale, as there was but little of
him out of water, and that little only an indistinguishable dark
mound; but immediately upon feeling the irons in him, he raised his
flukes high in air, and brought them down upon the surface with
a tremendous crash. They missed the boat, for the men had been
backing water with all their might, but the miss was by a small
margin, and the boat and the men in it were deluged with water.
Then the boatsteerer made his way aft, and took the steering oar,
and Mr. Baker went forward and selected his lance. He had no chance
to use it while they were in sight, however, for the whale set off
for the horizon at great speed, “head out,” the efforts of the
powerful flukes making his whole body undulate, so that his head
was alternately entirely buried in the sea, and almost completely
exposed, the narrow under-jaw serving as a cutwater. The last I
saw of that boat, Macy, the boatsteerer, stood at the steering
oar, keeping the boat straight behind the fleeing whale, while he
tried to snub the whale line completely by taking more turns around
the loggerhead. A thin wreath of blue smoke was rising from the
loggerhead, and one of the men was throwing {60} water by the hatful
upon it. The boat was throwing a sheet of water on each side of her
bow, almost like a stream from a fire hose.

All this hardly took longer than it takes to tell it. Meanwhile Mr.
Brown’s boat had pulled hard for the second whale, a longer pull
than Mr. Baker’s. They had got almost within darting distance when
Macy struck his whale, and every man in Mr. Brown’s boat heard the
thundering crash of the flukes on the water.

Wright, the boatsteerer, was already taking in his oar when Mr.
Brown gave him the word, for he knew what to expect. It is not
strange that I was in the dark as to the reasons for their actions,
but very naturally I thought it all right, although it did not seem
possible to dart the heavy harpoon that distance. Of course I could
not hear what Mr. Brown said, but Peter told me later, and explained
the actions of the whales according to his own notions—which may be
right enough. At all events, they are the notions generally held by
whalemen.

Wright took in his oar hurriedly—too hurriedly—scrambled to his place
in the bow, and grabbed a harpoon; but the whale had been losing no
time either, and the boat had gained but a few feet on him when he
started. He was going under without throwing his flukes into the air,
and he gathered speed very quickly. Wright threw the harpoon with
all the force left in him after his hard pull, but it was a good
twenty-five foot dart to the whale, which was going as fast as the
boat, and Wright had not the strength. The harpoon fell short and
nicked the whale’s flukes on an up stroke, serving only to increase
his speed instantly, and he disappeared.

I looked around, and could see no whales. There was Mr. Baker’s boat
well on its way to the Azores, with white water some distance ahead
of it, marking the action of their whale’s flukes as he ran. All the
others had vanished, and the boats lay still on the surface of the
{61} sea in attitudes of dejection, the men seeming to be looking
longingly after the fleeing whales. In a few minutes I heard a cry
from the masthead, and saw what the men were looking for. There,
miles away, was a lone spout, and then another, and a third; and they
seemed hurried. The whales had been swimming under water. We should
not get near those whales again, and the boats pulled slowly to the
ship.

What had happened, according to Peter, was this: Whales have some
mysterious way of communicating with each other, although there
may be miles of water between them. Peter did not undertake to say
what the means of communication was. It may have been the blow of
the flukes on the water when the whale was struck with the harpoon,
although whales lobtail frequently without causing alarm in their
companions. Whatever the means, old whalemen maintain that, when
a whale is struck, it communicates that fact, in some way, to the
others; and they become “gallied”—frightened—and make off at once. I
had seen them do so, and how could I doubt it? Of course Peter did
not tell me about it at that time. He and his boat, and all the men
in it, were out of sight.

I stirred myself when the boats were alongside, giving myself a
shake, I remember, and waking from the trance I had been in. I do not
know how I got down, but I must have thrown my legs over the edge of
the crosstrees and found the ratlines on the futtock shrouds with my
feet like any old hand, for I was concerned only with reaching the
deck as soon as possible.

Mr. Brown’s crew were just coming over the side as my feet struck the
deck. I rushed at Aziel Wright, the boatsteerer, and shot a fusillade
of questions at him, for I was worried about Mr. Baker’s boat and
Peter. The boat and her crew seemed to me to be as good as lost, well
out of sight beyond the rim of the sea, and going strong. Wright paid
no attention to me until the boat was up to the davits and the wooden
brackets swung out under her keel. {62}

When the boat was up and secure, Wright turned to me. He was a tall,
lanky man, and he could not have been over thirty, although he seemed
older. He had a little hacking cough, and seemed chronically tired;
but he was pleasant, and already a good friend of mine.

“What is it, Tim?” he asked. “Mr. Baker’s boat? Oh, they ’re all
right. We ’re running down after them now. We may sight them any time
now, or it may be dark before we find them.”

“But,” I objected, “the whale was going faster than the ship. He ’d
take them—”

Wright laughed. “True enough. There ’s no telling where he ’d take
them if he kept it up, for he was making a good ten knots, and the
ship is n’t making more ’n five or six. But he can’t keep it up a
great while—twenty mile or so. We ’ll sight them, it ’s likely, in a
few hours.”

“And will the whale fight when—”

“When he stops running?” Wright finished for me. “Can’t say, but
’t is n’t likely, for he ’ll be tired. But you never can tell what a
whale ’ll do.”

I was not wholly satisfied. “If we don’t see them before dark, how
will we find them?”

“Flares,” said Wright briefly. Then, seeing that I was mystified, he
proceeded to explain. I suppose he thought that he made the matter as
clear as daylight. “They ’ll burn flares now and then, and we ’ll see
one of ’em, maybe more, and we ’ll run down and pick her up.”

I nodded, and thanked him. There was nothing else that I knew enough
to ask him, although I was still unsatisfied, and I ran below to
get it all down in my journal. At the time I made mere notes, in a
fragmentary way, while my impressions were fresh. I wrote up the
notes later. I have that journal by me now. As I look over the
scrawled and stained pages, and read the disjointed sentences, the
whole thing comes back before me as if it had happened yesterday. I
sent the journal home from time to {63} time, as I had planned to
do, as long as I had opportunities, and managed to carry home the
part covering the last part of my cruise. My father and my mother
preserved my old journal as if it were a precious thing. I found it
nearly thirty years later with my father’s most valuable papers.

{64}




CHAPTER VII


It was past eight bells when the boats came aboard—eight bells being,
in this case, noon—and all hands had dinner. I hurried through my
work of helping the steward, and ran on deck. There was no sign of
Mr. Baker or of anything else on that limitless sea. The whale had
run to leeward, contrary to the custom of whales, which usually
run to windward when they can. The ship was rolling along in her
leisurely way, almost before the wind, and making a pleasant and
soothing noise under her forefoot and on either side as she rolled.
Ordinarily I should have enjoyed her leisurely progress, and should
have found some place which was out of sight from aft, perhaps on the
heel of the bowsprit, on the principle that out of sight was out of
mind. There I should have squatted, and gazed out ahead and fallen
to dreaming, probably, until recalled to myself by a shout of “Tim!
Where ’s that boy?” But I was getting anxious about Mr. Baker’s boat,
and I could not understand the indifferent attitude of everybody
on board. Nobody seemed to care whether he was ever found or not,
although I could not see, when I came to think it over, what more
could be done than was being done. The ship was going as fast as she
could—nearly as fast. They could have got a little more sail on her.
And the mastheads were manned.

I went up forward, and stood between the knightheads for a while,
but I was ashamed to ask anybody, and I gave it up, and went below
to work on my journal. I could not keep my mind on it, however, and
after half an hour or so I went on deck again. Mr. Wallet and Mr.
Brown were walking to and fro, and Captain Nelson was standing by the
starboard rail, not leaning, but swaying to the roll of the ship. I
went and stood beside him, saying nothing. {65}

He paid no attention to me for a long time, and I edged closer. He
glanced around then, with an expression of annoyance.

“Well,” he said, “what ’s the matter with you, Tim?”

“Nothing, sir,” I stammered hesitatingly. “I was wondering about Mr.
Baker.”

“Huh!” he said. “So was I. He ’s all right, I guess. We ’re edging
down that way now. Worried?”

“Well—no, sir, not if you ’re not.”

“Huh!” he said again, under his breath. “Always worried, more or
less, when a boat ’s lost. But Mr. Baker ’s pretty well able to take
care of himself. Nothing to worry about.”

“No, sir, I suppose not, but I thought we ’d sight him before this.
That whale must have taken him a long way.”

The captain only grunted in reply. I did not like to press the
matter, and I had turned away, when he called me back.

“Tim,” he said, “you can take your glass to the foremasthead, if you
want to, and see if you can see any sign of him.”

There was a little crinkle of amusement about his eyes as he spoke.
Evidently he thought that would be the last thing I wanted. It was.
As I turned and looked up, I saw that the foremasthead meant the
hoops. One man was already there, the tall, silent black man, that
we called Tony. I had but just got so that I could climb in and out
of the maintop without having my heart in my throat; but I was not
going to let anybody know how scared I was, if I could help it, and I
was not going to funk anything that the captain—the old man, as I had
come to call him to myself and to others of the crew—suggested for me
to do, even if he did not order it.

I turned back. “Yes, sir,” I said in a small voice; and I started.

I was an active boy, and fairly strong for my age; and {66} I did it
somehow. I think I held my breath for the last stretch, and I know
I was thoroughly scared until I got there, and Black Tony lent me a
hand into the hoops.

The ship was rolling more than I had thought. On deck the roll was
scarcely noticeable, but at the foremasthead it was a different
matter. I found that I was being carried through an arc of fifteen or
twenty feet, and at first I could do nothing but hold on to the hoop.
Tony did not laugh or speak. He did not even grin, but watched me and
waited, thereby earning my enduring gratitude. After a few minutes I
found that I did not mind the motion so much, and I put my arms over
the hoop, and took up my glass, but did not put it to my eyes.

It was beautiful weather, the sun shining brightly and pleasantly
warm, and a brisk breeze, under which the sea to leeward, as far as
I could see, was deep indigo, with white caps here and there which
flashed dazzlingly white in the sun. It seemed to me, I remember,
that I could see almost around the world, although there was a
curious saucer-like effect of the water near the ship. She seemed
to be moving in the centre of a slight depression, a mile or so in
diameter, and over that rim the sea curved away as it should. I was
so taken up with the beauty and the breadth of view that I forgot
what I had come there for, and I got to like the swing to and fro. It
was as soothing as a hammock, the gulls screamed about my head, and I
got to dreaming. I have never got over my liking for a wide prospect,
and with such a prospect unrolled before me, I am, even now, as apt
to get to dreaming as I ever was. I was too apt to do it then.

Something far off upon those bobbing waves must have attracted
the attention of my unseeing eyes, for I came out of my dreaming
abruptly; but the thing had gone. Again I thought I saw it, but it
was of the color of a sea in shadow. I put my glass to my eyes, and
searched the sea. It must have been six or seven miles off, or more,
{67} and I could not find it, but I saw only a panorama of curiously
bobbing waves going straight up and down. Then I happened upon it
again for an instant, as it crossed the field of my glass, what
looked like the bow of a boat just rising over a sea. I was still
searching for it when I felt a thump on the bottom of the ship, and
a strange shivering of the mast. It was over in a second, but I had
dropped my glass. If it had not been tied around my neck it would
have dropped to the deck below, and it might have killed a man. That
old glass was almost heavy enough to go through the deck, dropped
from the masthead. I found myself staring at Black Tony, while he
stared at me. Then he looked directly down into the sea below him.

What he saw there I did not know, but he gave a cry, and I felt
rather than heard a sort of scraping along the keel, and the
Clearchus almost stopped, and she began to careen. She careened more
and more, and up there at the masthead it seemed as if she must
capsize. I did not stop to think, but a panic seized me, and I slid
and scrambled down the starboard rigging until I was in the foretop.
There I stood and collected my scattered wits, and realized that, in
my panic, I had come down, without a thought, over rigging that I
had been very much afraid of. Although the topgallant shrouds have
ratlines on them on all whalers and most merchantmen, they are pretty
high up and seem none too secure to a boy on them for the first time.
If it had not been for my momentary scare I might be up there yet.

I was about to come down from the foretop with much dignity and a
swelling of the chest, when I saw that all hands, including the
officers, were looking intently into the water astern, and naturally
my gaze followed theirs. The ship had recovered her equilibrium by
this time, and was going serenely about her business; but, about
half a cable’s length in her wake, some huge, smooth body was slowly
rising to the surface. At first I thought it was a {68} whale which
we had run into and over; but as it continued to rise, I saw that
it was too big for a whale. It broke the surface, exposing a smooth
shape like a vessel’s bilge, dark-colored and covered with weed, and
continued to rise very slowly until the whole length was revealed,
and I could even catch glimpses of the keel. It remained on the
surface for half a minute, perhaps, then a sea heaved up the stem,
and the hulk began to sink as slowly and majestically as it had
risen. It was the hull of some vessel, waterlogged and water-soaked
so that it floated some feet below the surface of the sea, rising and
falling, or perhaps remaining stationary below the influence of the
waves. It must have been afloat for years to be so covered with weed.
I wondered where it had been when it met disaster; possibly on the
coast of Africa, or in the Bay of Biscay, or even in some more remote
seas; and how much longer would it be a plaything of ocean currents?

Captain Nelson was standing under the after house, still gazing
astern, when I went to report to him. Half a dozen men, including the
sailmaker who performed the duties of carpenter, and the cooper, had
been sent below to see whether the Clearchus had been damaged by the
collision, but the old man did not seem worried. I asked him about
it, no doubt a piece of impertinence on my part.

He shook his head. “Did n’t you see where we had run over her?
Did n’t even scrape off the whole of the weed. Glancing blow.”

“What sort of a vessel was it, sir? Do you think it was a whaler?”

He shook his head again. “Not a whaler. No copper on her bottom.”
Then he smiled suddenly, for he had seen the whole of my performance.
“See anything up there?”

I told him that I thought I had seen a boat, but I could not be sure,
there was so much mirage or something. {69}

“Looked like a boat, did it?”

“Yes, sir. Like the bow of a boat. I could n’t see it very well. It
was the color of the water, and it looked as if it was cut off, but I
don’t suppose it was. There was something that looked like a flag or
something.”

Captain Nelson smiled more broadly. “May have been a flag or
something. How far off?”

“Eight miles, perhaps. I don’t know.”

“Well, the lookout has n’t reported it, and I ’m afraid you did n’t
see anything. I did n’t know but you had seen a ghost, you came down
so fast.”

“No, sir—” I began. Then I felt myself growing red, my face and my
neck, even to my body and the roots of my hair, and I stammered and
stopped.

“Never mind. You got down quicker than you will again for a long
time, and I was afraid you might have trouble. There was some excuse
for you. I ’ve been scared, myself.”

“Then, Captain Nelson, may I go up again?”

“Now? What do you want to go up again now for? Nothing to see up
there. See if the steward does n’t want you.”

We stood on to leeward for the rest of the day without sighting the
boat. I was getting really worried about it. At sunset we shortened
sail, as we did always on cruising grounds. The light sails were
taken in, the topsail close-reefed, and the ship was brought close
to the wind, lying to during the night, so as to stay as nearly as
possible in one place. If we took any chances of overrunning the
boat, there was some danger that it might be lost in earnest, while,
if we kept to windward of it, there was little chance of that. I
stayed on deck after supper as long as I could keep my eyes open,
in the hope of seeing the flare which Wright had mentioned, but I
saw none. By two bells—nine o’clock—I was so sleepy that I fell
asleep halfway up the main rigging, and just caught myself as I was
{70} falling, my arm hooked around the shrouds. Men sometimes fall
sound asleep on a yard, toward the end of a long watch, hanging on
unconsciously by their shoulders and their legs, with an arm hooked
around a stay. No officer will arouse a man in this condition, for
there is great danger that he will fall overboard in his instinctive
start at a command. I did not know of this at the time, but I was a
little frightened at my narrow escape from a fall, and I went below
and turned in at once.

I fell asleep as soon as I touched my bunk, and slept until morning.
I remembered very vaguely that there was some unusual noise over
my head at some time during the night, and that afterward I heard
a noise in the cabin, but I did not rouse enough to wonder at it.
It was only in the morning that it seemed to have any significance,
and as soon as I was really awake I got into my clothes hurriedly
and went on deck. There was Mr. Baker’s boat on the davits, where
she belonged, and there was Peter Bottom smiling at me, and there,
alongside to starboard, was our first whale, floating on his side,
with his flukes toward the bow, the water about him filled with
sharks.

{71}




CHAPTER VIII


The water actually boiled with sharks, feasting and fighting. There
was a multitude of them, big fellows, from six to twelve feet long,
and they took bites about the size of a football right out of the
whale’s side. It was hard to see how they could do it, with their
projecting snouts, and I did not make it out very well with all my
watching. A shark would glide directly at the whale, about a foot
or two under the surface, there would be the flash of whitish belly
as he turned over, and he would glide on under, or turn without
stopping; but there was always the neat, round hole where he had
scooped out his mouthful. Two of the biggest sharks repeatedly threw
themselves up on the carcass, from which, of course, they slipped off
immediately; but they always left smooth, round holes behind them.

“And they take a good quart of oil at every mouthful,” said Peter’s
voice at my elbow. I had been so intent on the sharks that I had not
heard him come. “Those big fellows take more. Three of their bites
would make a gallon of oil.”

I seized the chance to get from Peter the story of the capture of the
whale. It was a short story in the telling, possibly because he saw
that I was as much interested in the sharks as I was in the story;
but I think Peter would have made no long story of it in any case.

“ ’T is soon told,” he said. “He ran for four or five hours, twelve
knots or more at first, then ten, and then less, but faster than
the ship sails. A nice kind of a sleigh-ride, Timmie. We had a good
deal of trouble heaving close to lance him, for he was cunning and
knowing, and managed to keep out of the way. He turned fin out about
{72} sunset, and we burned flares now and then while we pulled
to windward. Raised the ship about four bells, but the sea was so
high we had trouble getting the fluke-chain fast, and it was nearly
midnight before we had the boat on the davits. Look at that, now!
Would n’t it surprise you the life there is in a shark?”

He pointed to a shark whose bowels were protruding from a cut in its
belly. The shark was so intent on feasting while the feast was good
that he paid no attention to an injury which, one would think, was
disabling. The intestine gradually came out, and trailed in a long,
wriggling line as he swam. Other sharks attacked and tore at it.

For the sharks were not having it all their own way. The
cutting-stage had been rigged and lowered, and George Hall and
Miller, the boatsteerers for the second mate and the fifth mate, were
stationed on it with sharp spades, and were doing what damage to the
sharks they could. A shark has as many lives as a cat. An enormous
shark came at great speed, and threw himself fairly upon the carcass
of the whale.

“Pin him through the nose!” Peter shouted. “Pin him through the nose!”

I did not know what he was talking about, but Hall and Miller did. At
the same instant they threw their spades with all their force. The
aim was true, and while the shark was still wriggling on the whale
both spades struck him on the projecting snout, pierced it and went
through deep into the whale’s body, pinning him there. The projecting
snout of the shark is the one sensitive place in his whole body. The
struggles of this shark were terrific. He thrashed the water with his
tail, sending up sheets of spray which drenched Hall and Miller on
the cutting-stage; then the sea receded, and his tail thrashed the
bare blubber with noises like explosions. The crew quickly gathered
at the rail, laughing at Hall and Miller, {73} and at the struggles
of the shark. But his struggles were not fruitless, for they freed
the spades from the body of the whale, and the shark slipped back
into the sea. Here his struggles were more violent than ever, and the
spades quickly drew out of his nose, and he made off.

Both Hall and Miller had let go the handles of their spades in the
surprise of the drenching, but there were light lines attaching them
loosely to the railing of the cutting-stage. They now recovered them,
and were preparing to resume the slaughter, when they were called
in. Cutting-in was about to begin. Hall offered me his spade, and
suggested that I see if I could not get a shark or two. I was very
willing to try, as I would try anything. I did not make a success of
it. I might have improved if I had had time to practise, but I was
called in almost immediately. I did not become a really good shot
with a spade until I had my growth and strength.

Attached to the head of the mainmast—the top of the lower mast, where
I had sat in the crosstrees—were two great tackles, just alike. The
blocks in each of these “cutting-tackles,” which are used to strip
off and hoist in the blubber, are enormous and clumsy, reaching well
above a man’s knee as they rest on end on the deck. It is possible
that they use wire rope now, and iron blocks, which would be lighter
and less clumsy, but wire rope and iron blocks were not used, in my
time, for any such purpose. The gangway, from which two men were
taking out the removable section of bulwarks, is forward of the
mainmast. As all the blubber is hoisted in at the gangway, it is
desirable that the pull of the tackles shall be in line with the
gangway. Each of the falls, therefore, ran through a loop or eye in a
large cable running to the foremast; and by hauling in on this cable
the tackle could be pulled forward to a point over the line of the
gangway.

As I came inboard I met the men carrying these heavy, clumsy blocks
to the side, two men to each block, and {74} staggering at that; and
the artists who were to do the cutting were waiting for me to get
off the stage. These artists were the mates, four of the five. The
Clearchus was a five-boat ship, and had five mates to head her five
boats. The fifth mate was named Snow, a little man, but of tremendous
energy. Each of the four mates carried his spade, and as soon as they
had reached their places on the stage the cutting-in began.

The whaling-spade is perhaps the implement most used in whaling, and
for a surprising variety of purposes, but its primary purpose is
for cutting. Spades are made in many sizes and shapes, or the shape
of a spade may be changed by continual sharpening, or to suit the
individual taste of the user. The typical blade is usually about four
inches wide and a foot or so in length, with straight sides, and,
normally, a straight edge. It tapers in thickness from half an inch
or more at the top of the blade to about an eighth of an inch on the
line where grinding off for the edge begins; but in an old spade
which has been much ground, this line is not definite or distinct,
and such a spade is more like an old axe-head. Indeed, the spade is
much like an axe designed to do its cutting by being pushed or thrown
endwise instead of swung. Above the head of the spade is the socket
for the handle, and the socket and the head are connected by a shank
which may be several feet long, or may be reduced almost to nothing.

When spades are used for the purpose for which they are intended,
they must be kept very sharp, and the grindstone is always in service
on deck. A blow upon a bone destroys the edge of the spade, and mates
are usually careful to avoid the bones; but the cutting-in is often
done in a heaving sea, by a man on a single plank which may not heave
in time with the body of the whale, and the spade is heavy, with a
flexible sapling handle perhaps eighteen feet long, and he may not be
able to see what he is cutting, three or four feet within the body of
the {75} whale; when the head is being cut off, for instance, or
when cutting between the junk and the skull. Accidents will happen
to the best of us. Then he throws his spade inboard, and roars for a
sharp one.

[Illustration: CUTTING-IN]

Strangely enough, Mr. Wallet was the most skilful cutter we had, and
he put his heart into his work, and took great interest in doing it
well and quickly. He kept the others on the jump to keep up with
him, and nothing put him out more than to see that any other man did
not have to hurry. He was not at all of that temper in any other
work that he did. In fact, he was pretty nearly a flat failure as an
officer, and I often wondered whether it was not his great skill with
the spade that held his position.

The order of the different operations in cutting-in is always
necessarily about the same, but some slight variation in them is
found in different ships, in accordance with the ideas of the men who
do the cutting. It is usual to begin with cutting off the head at the
same time that the blanket strip of blubber is unrolled. Mr. Wallet
varied this practice by cutting out the tongue first, which, in the
sperm whale, is moderately large, thick, and soft; then he cut off
the jaw, and then severed the head from the body.

Before any cutting was done, the whale was hauled forward until his
eye was opposite the gangway. Then Mr. Wallet stepped proudly out
on the cutting-stage, and fastened his monkey-rope loosely to the
railing of the stage. The monkey-rope is about a man’s waist, the
other end fast to any convenient thing, or held by another man on the
ship. Its purpose is to prevent a man’s falling into the sea. After
Mr. Wallet came Mr. Brown, who disdained the use of the monkey-rope,
as did almost all of those for whose benefit it was intended. Mr.
Wallet and Mr. Brown were to be engaged in cutting the head, tongue
and jaw. Mr. Tilton and Mr. Snow, the fifth mate, {76} the little
man of prodigious energy, then went on. Mr. Baker did no cutting on
this whale, probably thinking that enough was enough.

The body of a dead whale, as I have said, floats on its side, with
one fin uppermost. Mr. Tilton and Mr. Snow went to work at once,
cutting a hole clear through the blubber, just above the fin; in
fact, this hole was so near the head that it was partly through
the “white horse,” which they call the extremely tough layer of
integuments surrounding the eye and most of the head. They worked
together, and the spades rose and fell in alternation, one driving
his spade down on one side, then the other driving down his spade on
the other side, as two axemen cut a scarf in a tree. Thus, at every
stroke, there was a V-shaped piece cut out. The heavy spade is almost
thrown at the place where the cut is to be made, with great accuracy,
and the scarf progresses with surprising speed.

Meanwhile Mr. Wallet and Mr. Brown were busy, cutting out the tongue.
Mr. Wallet found, for the first time in his career, I guessed, that
he had a working partner whom he was unable to hurry. Mr. Brown
matched stroke for stroke, however fast Mr. Wallet worked; and his
strokes were delivered with as great accuracy as Mr. Wallet’s, and
with greater force. Remember that this was the first chance there
had been on that voyage to match powers. I saw Mr. Wallet glance up
with annoyance, and put on more speed. Mr. Brown met the increase in
speed without turning a hair. Mr. Wallet nearly doubled his speed,
and Mr. Brown again met it, driving his spade in with greater force
than before. I had never, up to that time, seen a stamp mill, but
I saw one at the Centennial, after my return from that voyage, and
it reminded me so exactly of Mr. Wallet and Mr. Brown, cutting out
that tongue, that I stood before it, and laughed aloud, much to the
astonishment of the others who stood there. Both the men labored and
sweated, but Mr. Wallet sweated more, while there was the flicker of
a smile on Mr. Brown’s lips. {77}

“Too fast for you?” Mr. Wallet asked.

“Go as fast as you like,” said Mr. Brown.

It was a great waste of energy, and too much of a strain for Mr.
Wallet, who was then delivering strokes of his spade at the rate of
fifty or more a minute, while the greatest normal rate is twelve
to fifteen. Mr. Tilton and Mr. Snow were almost convulsed with
laughter, so that their blows fell to eight or less, and there was
no strength in them. I heard a snicker from one of the crew, and I
could not forbear a snicker of my own. Mr. Wallet may not have heard
the snickers; he affected not to, but he lowered his rate at once to
fifteen a minute.

They finished the cut on that side of the tongue before Mr. Tilton
and Mr. Snow had quite done cutting the hole; and, without a word,
Mr. Wallet transferred his attention to the uppermost hinge of the
lower jaw, probably relying on his superior knowledge of the anatomy
of the whale to enable him to get the better of Mr. Brown. Mr.
Wallet’s knowledge, in that respect—and in that respect alone, as far
as I was ever able to see—was very exact and complete. Mr. Brown’s,
however, if not quite equal to Mr. Wallet’s, was sufficient for the
occasion, and they finished their work like the artists they were,
before the fourth and fifth mates had done that allotted to them.

It was the duty of these men, when the hole was cut, to cut a
semicircular scarf, or deep groove, above it, and to continue this
scarf at each end of the semicircle, down past the hole, and past
the side fin, making this scarf not perpendicular to the axis of
the body, but slightly inclined to it, like the thread of a screw.
The rearmost scarf—that toward the whale’s flukes—which is the only
one which is continued after the carcass has made one revolution,
describes a spiral about the carcass, and the blubber unrolls in a
continuous strip, about three feet wide.

The neck of a sperm whale, if he can be said to have {78} a neck,
is about the thickest part of him. It may be eleven or twelve feet
through, or even more. It is here that his head is to be cut off, and
the junction of the vertebra with the head must be found far within
the mass of flesh; found very exactly, if the mate is to make a good
clean job of it. The foremost scarf, if the cutting has been done
as it should be done, marks the place where the mate must begin his
cut to sever the head. Mr. Wallet, having paused ostentatiously, for
the purpose of showing his righteous annoyance at the slowness of
Mr. Tilton and Mr. Snow—they did not seem put out by this show of
annoyance, but amused—Mr. Wallet, I say, having thrown out his chest
for a minute or two, took up the cutting of the foremost scarf, and
Mr. Brown joined him at it. The cutting was soon done as far down as
the men could get at it.

Azevedo, Mr. Tilton’s boatsteerer, was then lowered on one of the
blocks of the cutting-falls, and stepped off upon the carcass. He
had woolen socks upon his feet, I noticed. I noticed this, as he
was accustomed to go barefoot, as were the crew pretty generally. I
learned that woolen socks were supposed to give him a surer footing
than anything else. He had a monkey-rope also, although he would
have gone without it if the captain would let him; but if he slipped
in between the whale and the ship he would be a goner. He stood or
stepped about on the body with apparent carelessness, although he
did not let go his hold on the falls. My heart was in my mouth for
fear that he would slip off among the swarming sharks, but he paid
no attention to them, except to push aside with his foot one which
had come too close. He had had long experience, and told me afterward
that there was little to fear from the sharks as long as the whale
was there. The gulls, too, and other scavengers of the air, had
gathered, and there was a wheeling, screaming flock of them over my
head. We were not so very far offshore.

Attached to the lower end of the cutting-falls was a {79} gigantic
iron hook. This hook Azevedo fitted into the hole cut through the
blubber. The blubber of a whale is his skin, a peculiar cellular and
fibrous structure containing the oil, and it is from five to twelve
inches thick, varying with the size of the whale and the place on his
body that it comes from. The blubber of the right whale is thicker.
It is thickest on the back, less thick on the sides, and thinnest on
his belly. On the shoulder it is very tough. Although the sea was not
high, it was hard work getting the hook in place, and Azevedo grunted
and sweated as he squatted or kneeled on one knee on the carcass, and
the seas washed over his legs and wet him to the waist. But he got
the hook in place at last, with the help of a long knife. Then he
rose to his feet, holding to the falls with one hand, and gave the
word to heave.

This duty of the boatsteerer is unpleasant enough at best, but when
the sea is rough I have seen a man almost drowned by the water which
continually swept over him. Under such conditions the enormous hook
is jerked and swayed by the roll of the ship; and he has to be
constantly on the lookout that the heave of the ship and the heave
of the whale, which usually will not be in the same direction at any
instant, do not catch him between them.

Two men were at the gangway, to steer the sheet of blubber—called the
blanket piece—as it came up, and twenty men at the windlass. When
Azevedo gave the word, “Haul taut and heave away,” the whole twenty
of them pumped at the windlass, which clanked merrily at first, then
more slowly as the falls took the strain; then more slowly still,
with the men singing out, and puffing and grunting. The ship slowly
heeled over toward the whale. Then, suddenly, there was a ripping,
rending sound, the ship righted and rolled a little, and there was
the hook with the end of the blanket piece of blubber in the air,
clear of the carcass, which had turned part way over in the bight
of the fluke-chain. I may not have said {80} that the body is held
by a loop or bight of heavy chain at the “small,” just forward of
his flukes, so that it will turn freely. In addition to this there
is a chain about the lower jaw at first, but that, of course, does
not hold the carcass after the jaw is cut off, which is one of the
earliest operations.

Mr. Tilton and Mr. Snow continued cutting the rear scarf, Mr. Brown
kept at the forward scarf, or necklace, where the head was to be cut
off, and Mr. Wallet again attacked the tongue and the other hinge of
the jaw as the turning of the carcass gave him opportunity. The heavy
strip of blubber rose slowly as the crew pumped at the windlass, and
the spades of the mates rose and fell regularly. The tongue and the
jaw were hoisted in by the second cutting-falls. That jaw looked
enormous as it came in over the side. When the tackle was tight up,
block to block, it was not quite clear of the gangway, and they had
to swing the other end around, and heave it in. When it was on deck,
it was pushed over into the port scuppers, out of the way. They then
resumed work upon the blanket piece of blubber, the work of cutting
off the head being carried forward at the same time.

The blanket strip was soon high in the air, the falls block to block.
The steady clanking of the windlass stopped, and the men had a
breathing spell of a few minutes, as Mr. Baker called “Chock-a-block.
Board blanket piece.”

Mr. Tilton stood at the gangway with a boarding-knife in his hands,
and took the attitude of a man about to take part in a bayonet
charge. That was virtually what he did. The boarding-knife is a
sword-like blade, nearly straight, thirty inches long, and it
is fixed in the end of a stout wooden handle, about three feet
long. With this formidable weapon Mr. Tilton made violent lunges
and plunges at the strip of blubber just above the break of the
gangway, and soon had a hole through it. Through this hole {81}
an “eye-strop”—a loop of heavy rope, through one end of which the
blubber-hook passes—was passed, and its oak toggle pounded into place
on the other side and lashed, to make its hold on the blubber secure.

Meanwhile the fall of the first tackle had been secured and the
strain put on the second tackle. There are two drums on the windlass,
and one fall leads to each drum. The man with the boarding-knife
again attacked the strip of blubber, this time a little above the
hole, and by a series of stabs and slashes he cut it across, and the
upper piece swung in over the open hatch, and was lowered to the
blubber room, where it was stowed, the outside—“black skin,” as it
is called—down. This proceeding surprised me, for I had supposed,
without giving the matter any thought, that it would be dumped
upon the deck and cut up there. I did not know what a mountain of
blubber it would make, and the deck well cluttered up with the jaw
and the junk and the small, as you will see. One or two of the last
strips of blubber they did dump there. My surprise, I found, was
justified somewhat. No more blubber is put between decks than is
necessary to provide working space on deck. A big whale can be tried
out in thirty-six hours, and it would only mean hoisting out almost
immediately. But in this case there was a threat of rain, and rain
spoils blubber.

The cutting-in proceeded rapidly. Mr. Wallet and Mr. Brown were
engaged upon various dissections of the head at the same time that
the blanket piece was being stripped off, and from time to time there
were interruptions in the regular progress of the blanket pieces to
enable them to finish certain stages of the operation in the order
that has been found to be proper. It is necessary that the head
should be dissected into its parts and cut off before the stripping
of the blanket pieces has gone very far. This is the most important
operation in cutting-in, as the head of the sperm whale contains the
most valuable of his products.

{82}




CHAPTER IX


The head of the sperm whale, as seen from the side, is roughly
rectangular in outline, with an exaggerated upper jaw which seems out
of all manner of proportion to the lower. In large whales the height
of the square forehead or nose is eleven to thirteen feet, and the
width of it nine to eleven feet, while the lower jaw is slender and
pointed. This exaggeration of the upper part of the head does not
argue anything in regard to the size of the brain, as might naturally
be supposed. The brain is placed in a normal position in regard to
the eye, which is a little above and behind the angle of the mouth,
and appears to be set too low down in the head.

All of this huge upper part of the head is nothing but an
excrescence: a tough, fibrous or fatty matter, in which there can be
little feeling if there is any. Whales sometimes ram ships, striking
them with that upper part of the head or nose—and sink them, too—and
swim raging off, apparently little the worse for the encounter.
There are some well-authenticated cases which I cannot be expected
to remember, for they happened many years before I was born. I refer
especially to the cases of the Ann Alexander and the Essex, which
were sunk by whales, and there have been others. There is no doubt
about it, although the fact has been doubted by a good many people
who knew nothing about whales. You would never have found a whaleman
who doubted it. I know of one case, at least, which occurred well
within my recollection. The Kathleen was sunk by a whale in 1902,
several hundred miles from land, and the crew took to the boats,
cheerfully enough, I do not doubt, with the prospect before them of
a voyage of over a week at the very least, and possibly two or {83}
three. The master of the Kathleen lived within a block of me. His
wife was on that voyage, with her parrot, which lived to tell the
tale. These same Bolshevik whales can carry timbers, from the bows of
ships which they have sunk, embedded in their heads for years without
apparent inconvenience.

However, the primary purpose of that exaggeration of the upper jaw
is not to serve as a battering ram. In the upper part of that great
growth is a well of the purest oil extending very nearly the length
of the head. This is called the “case.” Just what its purpose is
nobody seems to know, although there have been many guesses. One of
these guesses is that the well of oil helps to float the heavy head;
but this guess can hardly be right, for the head, when severed,
immediately turns, with the spiracle, or blow-hole, down.

Between the case and the skull lies the “junk,” of still tougher
material than the case, but containing considerable oil, although it
is not contained in a single well. The cells of the junk are from
four to eight inches across, filled with faintly yellow oil, or oily
substance, which is translucent when warm. The walls of these cells
are composed of extremely tough, interlacing fibres, or ligaments,
called “white horse.” The separation of the junk from the case is on
a very nearly horizontal line running through the nose just above the
bump—or what looks like a bump. The contents of the case seem to be
liquid during the life of the whale, but after the body becomes cold,
they become partly solid. The solid part is spermaceti.

The skull, if separated from the excrescence, bears some resemblance
to the head of an alligator, and the eye seems to be set right
enough. This separation of the head into its parts was what Mr.
Wallet and Mr. Brown were proceeding to accomplish. While they were
cutting the case from the junk, Macy and George Hall, boat-steerers
for the first and second mates, rove ropes in each cheek {84} for
the chains which were to hold the case. When the separation was
complete, the case was passed astern, held by chains, nose down in
the water, until the cutting-in should be finished and the carcass
cut adrift. The junk was then cut away from the skull and hoisted
bodily on deck. During the operation of cutting the junk from the
skull, they cut alongside and close to the skull, and as they could
not see what they were cutting, but had to go by feeling, there were
several spades spoiled. The cutters passed these dulled spades in on
deck, and freshly sharpened spades were passed to them. I heard the
noise of the grindstone during the whole operation.

They were a long time in cutting the junk and the case, and there
was nothing to see except the swarming sharks, and I got tired of
seeing the spades rise and fall out of sight in that mass of flesh,
so I turned away. Unfortunately Mr. Baker chanced to see me, and
suggested, in unnecessarily vigorous language, that if I had nothing
else to do I had better turn the grindstone. I thought it best to
humor him, so I went over to that device of the devil, and found
Black Tony sharpening spades and Black Man’el turning for him.

Man’el looked up. “What you want, little Tim?” he asked, grinning.

“Mr. Baker told me to turn the grindstone,” I answered.

“Aw, you go ’way f’om here,” said Man’el, his grin widening. “I turn
for Tony. You could n’t turn well enough. Nice place over there,” he
went on, nodding his head sidewise toward the port rail. “Mr. Baker
won’t see you.”

He looked up at Tony, who nodded in confirmation, and I found an
inconspicuous place against the rail, on the side away from the
cutting. Here I stood, and looked out over a gentle sea. The sun
was high, and it was pleasantly warm, and the oily smell from the
cutting-in was not {85} disagreeable, although I was to leeward and
got it all. The sounds of the men pumping at the windlass, and the
mates on the cutting-stage, and the noise of an occasionally shouted
order, sounded more and more faintly in my ears until they ceased
to carry their message to my brain. I heard only the screams of the
seabirds wheeling above me, and I saw a glittering sea which danced
before my half-closed eyes.

How long I remained in this hypnotic state, between sleeping and
waking, I do not know; but I was suddenly aroused by a shout, and
turned, to see what seemed to be a blackfish come sliding across the
deck, straight at me. It was the small. The explanation is simple,
although I did not know it at the time. As they approach the small
in unrolling the blanket piece, it comes harder and harder, for the
forward end of the carcass has no support except the strip of blubber
to which the hook of the cutting-falls is fast, and the raw, red
shoulders hang low in the water, so that it is hard to turn them
over. When the small is reached, therefore, the carcass is cut clean
through, and the forward end sent adrift, accompanied by the shoal of
silent sharks and the swarming seabirds. The flukes are then cut off,
and the small hoisted bodily in upon deck.

My only thought, if I had a thought, was to get out of the way of
this slippery black monster. I jumped away from my place, which
seemed to be its destined resting-place, the next jump being as far
into the future as I had time to look. The deck was now a perilous
place to make your way about on, lumbered up as it was with the jaw
and the junk, and the last blanket piece of blubber, which lay pretty
well across it, beside the open hatch; and it was covered with oil,
as was the gangway and the rail near it. I had no time to consider or
to measure chances. I went skipping lightly from floe to floe, like
Eliza fleeing from the bloodhounds; and I stepped upon the piece of
blubber innocently lying there, meaning to spring across {86} the
hatch. It looked firm, and there was nowhere else to step without
running into something, and I was on my way and I could not stop.
It did not look so very slippery. But it was slippery, and it was
not firm; and my foot slipped, and the piece of blubber tipped just
enough to shoot me down the open hatch.

As I went down, I caught a glimpse of an astonished brown face, in
the comparative darkness of the blubber room, gazing with mouth
hanging open, and wide eyes. Then I landed, sitting down, on the
other pieces of blubber, which the owner of the brown face had been
stowing. I struggled about there in the half darkness for some time
before I could get upon my feet. I had no help from the Kanaka Tom.
I thought he would have a fit. He fairly shrieked with laughter
until he could not stand, to say nothing of helping me. The pieces
of blubber slipped about and threw me again and again, and when I
finally managed to get up, I seemed to have been swimming in oil. My
clothes were soaked with it. I had managed to keep my face and hair
out of it, but that was about all.

I heard great shouts of laughter from the deck, but I did not mind,
for it was funny. It would have been funnier for them if they could
all have seen me wrestling with the blubber. I found myself grinning
as soon as I had got over the immediate effects of my struggle. I
grinned at the helpless Tom. My clothes were not uncomfortable, but
they were hopelessly spoiled for any other use than an oily one.

When I got on deck again—I took good care to be aft of the hatch,
and stood under the gallows by the mainmast—they were shifting the
case forward, so that it should be near the gangway. A whip was
already rigged at the main yardarm, which was braced forward. Every
few seconds one of the crew caught sight of me standing there in
my oily clothes, and he whooped and shouted with laughter. I was
not sensitive about such things, and I {87} grinned in return. The
Admiral and Black Man’el were the most affected by the sight of me,
the Admiral letting out such a whoop as would have scared away all
the whales within ten miles. Even Black Tony, who rarely smiled and
never laughed, but was always dignified and as stiff and straight as
a poker, could not help smiling.

Black Tony should have been an officer of the high command in some
army. He looked the part, lean, straight, and tall, dignified always,
and silent and reserved, the only thing out of keeping being his
thin gold earrings, and perhaps his color. I think all the other men
looked up to him, even the mates, in a way; but he was not even a
boatsteerer. Certainly few attempts were made to play upon him any
of the rough jokes of sailors. I remember once, when we were on the
Western grounds, which are to the westward of the Azores, in the
middle of the Atlantic Ocean, some poor fool did try a practical joke
on him.

The case was now at the gangway, and there was no more chance for
shouts of merriment on the part of the crew, for they were again
at the windlass, swaying up on the cutting-tackles, which had been
hooked on to the case. They could do very little with it, however,
no matter how hard they pumped. The ship heeled over toward it, and
there it stuck, and there it was secured, the upper, open end about
on a level with the deck.

The case-bucket was then made fast to the line running through
the block at the yardarm. The case-bucket looks not unlike an
old-fashioned fire-bucket with a bulging bottom, except that old
fire-buckets were made of leather, and the case-bucket was of wood,
bound about with as many hoops as the old oaken bucket. Wright took
his place at the gangway, with a wooden pole in his hands nearly
twenty feet long. With this pole he pushed the bucket down, and a
bucketful of the mushy contents of the case, consisting of oil and
shreds of half-solidified spermaceti, plopped into it. It was then
drawn up by men {88} on the other end of the line, and emptied into
a butt. As many men as could get at the open end of the well of
oil were bailing with anything they could lay their hands to, the
long-handled copper dippers for dipping oil out of the try-pots,
buckets, tin pails without long handles. When the level of oil was
lowered, the dippers without long handles became useless, of course,
but the copper dippers could be used for some time. When these came
up nearly empty the case-bucket worked alone.

At last the long pole in Wright’s hands had been pushed down
for nearly its whole length, to the bottom of the well and the
case-bucket would bring up no more oil. There was still some at the
bottom of the well, however, and Black Man’el, stripped to a ragged
old pair of overalls, went down with the bucket. He disappeared in
the black cavern. We could see nothing of him, but the bucket made
more than one trip before it brought him up again. He was a sight to
see, dripping oil everywhere, his tightly curling hair full of it
and of soft, silky shreds of spermaceti. I laughed at him, saying
that it was my turn to laugh; but he only showed all his white
teeth, replying that he liked it, and that the oil kept him warm
and “soopled” him, and recommending it to me. I could understand
that it might be pleasant to bathe in oil, in case-oil, for it had
an agreeable smell, faintly like that of milk as it foams in the
buckets; but I could not have stood getting my hair full of it.

[Illustration: BAILING CASE]

As Man’el came up from his oil bath, I heard laughter behind me, and
other sounds of merriment and gaiety, and I turned to see the cause.
There was the small, from which the blubber had been stripped, lying
raw and ghastly. Some half-dozen men were gathered behind it, on the
side away from the gangway, and as I looked, they began to push. It
was like a game of push-ball, with the raw, red small of a whale for
the ball; too heavy to be {89} much like the real push-ball, of
which, of course, I had never heard at that time. Nobody had heard
of it in 1872. The ship was rolling gently, and while they had to
push uphill they made little or no progress, but when she rolled to
starboard, the small got to going pretty fast. The deck was slippery,
and each man was pushing as hard as he could for his chuckling,
hoping, I supposed, to swing it around so that it would not go out of
the gangway, for which it was aimed.

In that purpose they were successful. The small struck hard against
one of the stanchions at the corner of the opening, swung around, and
as the ship rolled back, it started for the port rail, knocking a
man down. Then the laughter bubbled forth, led by the blacks and the
Kanakas. I had some fear that the sliding small might break out the
rail on the port side; but the jaw was there, and the men collected
strength enough to stop the slide, although it carried very nearly
across the deck. The discipline was not strict, for it does no harm
to have a laughing crew; but the pushing rapidly developed into
horse-play. Then Mr. Brown stopped it with a curt word, and the men
fell to very industriously, but their faces were merry still, and
gushes of laughter bubbled out now and then. At the next roll of the
ship, the small shot from the gangway as from a catapult, and into
the water nearly a couple of fathoms from the side with a tremendous
splash, which wet the men at the gangway.

Of course it had to be Mr. Brown who stopped that horse-play, and I
felt an admiration for his way of doing it, with two or three words,
although I did not hear what he said. Mr. Baker would have stopped
it sooner and more violently. I think the men were all afraid of Mr.
Baker, which was, no doubt, the feeling which he wished to inspire.
As for Mr. Wallet, he could not have done it in a thousand years,
and it would never have occurred to him {90} to try; but Mr. Brown
stopped it at just the right point, and left the men feeling gay and
high-spirited. The whole thing, while unimportant in itself, showed
the feeling of the men toward our third mate, and his way of dealing
with them.

{91}




CHAPTER X


The cutting-in was over by the middle of the afternoon, for that
first whale of ours was not very large. If our windlass had been as
powerful as modern windlasses, we should have been able to get the
case—or even the whole head—bodily on deck, and to get at the oil
within it more quickly and completely. The holds of the cutting-falls
had been cut away, and the empty case had drifted astern, sinking
slowly as it went; the junk had been emptied of its oil, the
pure, sweet oil following the spades at every cut; and men were
already busy with squeezing out the shreds of spermaceti from the
case-matter, two men to a tub. These men seemed to be in no hurry,
and to find their task pleasant. I was naturally curious, as a boy
should be, and I plunged my hand into a tub of it. I found it to be
an exceedingly pleasant unguent, and the half-solidified spermaceti
infinitely soothing to hands that were cut and scraped, bruised and
chapped. I understood—or I thought I understood—the leisurely way
in which the men were working, although this work cannot be done in
a hurry and done well. If the spermaceti is not taken out pretty
completely, it chars in the try-pots, and darkens the oil, which
lessens its value. Head oil is the lightest in color, and the most
valuable, and it is always kept separate.

Our mainyards were now aback, the mainsail furled, the topsails
reefed, and the ship made very little way, rolling slowly on a drift
to leeward. Some of the crew had cleaned out the try-works, taking
out the odds and ends and trash with which the pots were filled, and
had laid a fire under them. Wood was used for this first fire, but
after the first lot of blubber has been tried out, the {92} scraps
or “fritters”—blubber from which the oil has been tried, and which
are fried crisp—are used for feeding the fire. They burn well and
fiercely, with a huge volume of nauseous black smoke. The scraps
remaining from one trying-out are kept to start the fire on the next
occasion.

The trying-out started on the head-matter, in order to keep the oil
from contamination, and to preserve its light color. Meanwhile there
were two men in the blubber room with knife and spade to cut from the
blubber the pieces of flesh that had come off with it. They then cut
the blanket strips into smaller pieces, roughly rectangular. These
“horse-pieces,” as they are called, were cut all the way across the
blanket, and about six or eight inches wide; so that, in this case,
they were strips, about three feet long and eight inches wide. They
are sometimes not so long. In cutting the horse-pieces, the men
generally stood on the strip in their bare feet, and cut it with a
sharp spade held vertically. I knew how slippery those strips of
blubber could be, and I trembled for fear that, on that unstable
footing, the sharp spade might fall on the wrong spot and cut off a
few of those wriggling toes, or even a foot. It would be easy. The
spade was sharp and heavy, and a man might cut off his toes before he
knew it; but I saw no such accident, either then or later, although
I believe it was not uncommon. The men did not seem to be afraid of
accidents.

When the blubber had been cut this way, the “horse-pieces” were
tossed on deck and taken to the mincers. The mincers were men—usually
two—who wielded heavy, two-handled knives about two feet long, with
a handle at each end; the knives being a sort of a cross between
a butcher’s cleaver and a carpenter’s draw-knife, or more nearly,
perhaps, a cleaver with a handle at each end. The mincers work
against the end of a heavy block, or horse, at the height of their
belts—if they happen to have {93} belts—and chop and slice the flesh
side of the blubber, with a peculiar rolling motion of the heavy
knife. The mincer used both hands to hold his mincing-knife, while a
second man held the horse-piece on the block. The flesh side of the
blubber is cut in this way into thin strips, resembling strips of
bacon, leaving the outside, or black skin, intact. These are called
“bible-leaves,” and are ready for the try-pots.

There was a pair of try-pots set in brickwork just abaft the
foremast, with room to work for the men tending them. These men
stand forward of the try-works. As I have said before, there was
a roof, or house, over them, as is usually, but not always, the
case. The fire-space underneath was separated from the deck by a
low platform which projected some distance beyond the fire-doors,
and this platform had under it a tank, which was always filled with
water when the fire was burning, to protect the deck. The fire-doors
were in the forward side of the try-works. They were of iron, and
could be slid back or swung upward. Two—three, if there are three
try-pots—smokestacks of copper, and of rectangular section, projected
a little way above the roof.

I have given these details of the arrangements because I know that
there are now comparatively few people who are familiar with them;
in fact, there are none except whalemen and outfitters, and men and
boys who have been in the habit of running over the ships at will.
Even the boys of that last class, if there are still any such, are
probably not as familiar with the arrangements as they ought to be,
although they may think they are. I had seen whalers since I could
remember, and had rambled over them, and played on them and beside
them throughout my boyhood, but I had never given a thought to
the question whether the fire was fed from aft or from forward of
the try-works. I suppose I should have said that the doors opened
aft. Somehow, that seemed the natural way—for {94} the men to
face the bows as they work. It is not, as it happens. Just aft of
the try-works was the bench, with a vise and other “fixins,” where
repairs were made on the harpoons and lances and pretty nearly
everything else.

Remembering my mistakes—some of them—I am not inclined to be so
severe upon the men of Atlantic City as some whalemen are. A
whaleship went ashore upon those hospitable sands, and they took
her as she was, high and dry on the beach, and they repaired her,
and fitted her completely, as they supposed, and used her as one
more exhibition—one more attraction for the crowds which throng the
Boardwalk. I can imagine them; I can even see them coming in crowds,
at ten or fifteen cents a head, to go over the whaler—the “spouter,”
as I have no doubt they called her, although I rarely heard the term
used among whalemen. But, on one day of ill-fortune, there chanced
to be a whaleman in that crowd. He looked critically over the old
ship, saying nothing; and he found that they had made the try-works
face the wrong way, putting the fire-doors aft instead of in the
forward side. He smiled, I do not doubt, but still he said nothing—in
Atlantic City. When he got home, however, it was a different thing,
and the matter was spread abroad in New Bedford, and it got into the
papers, which had no end of fun with the poor, ignorant Atlantic
Citizens. Occasionally it crops out yet in the “Mercury” or the
“Standard.” They simply cannot resist giving the natives of New
Jersey a poke now and then.

I can hardly expect readers of this rambling narrative to be better
versed in such matters than those men of Atlantic City. In order that
they may not be in a state of chaotic ignorance in regard to them, I
have dwelt on the details to a degree which most whalemen would think
unnecessary and an insult to their intelligence. They would take all
these things for granted.

The mates and boatsteerers officiate at the try-pots, {95} and
handle the long-handled, long-shanked devil-forks, or the skimmers,
or the copper dippers. They began with the head-matter, for reasons
which I have given. When this was cooked enough, it was ladled out
of the try-pots with the long-handled copper dippers that I have
mentioned, and into the copper cooling-tank which stood beside the
try-pots. From the cooling-tank the oil overflows into a huge iron
pot. From this, in turn, it is again dipped, and put into casks, or
barrels, marked “Head” or “Case” or “Junk.”

I did not see this last operation at this time, however. My duties
lay mostly in the cabin and the steerage, with the officers and
boatsteerers, and I had to go when I was called, or before if I had
sense enough for it. I was expected to be on hand at meal times, or
a little before, and help the steward. It was now about supper-time,
and I was so interested in the process of trying-out that the steward
had to send for me, or come for me, which did not improve his temper.
I am afraid that I skimped my duties much of the time, but a boy
of fifteen has no great sense of responsibility. Captain Nelson
was indulgent to me up to a certain point, but he had to give me a
wigging more than once. I deserved the wigging, and I knew it well,
and was always respectful and very repentant. The captain usually
ended by laughing and bidding me mind my eye, which I was quite
willing to do, and I always promised faithfully that I would. And
then there would come the next time, which was generally due to my
great interest in something which I was seeing for the first time,
perhaps. I have no doubt that that fact was taken into account in
Captain Nelson’s distribution of justice. He was a just man.

It was dark when I got back on deck. Trying-out goes on steadily,
day and night, until it is done. A trying-out watch is trying in
more senses than one. Each watch consists of half the crew, who are
on duty for a longer time {96} on end than usual. It is hard labor,
and in a long siege of trying-out, the men get so tired and dazed
and sleepy that they move in a drowse, and they will fall asleep
anywhere. It is in this state that the man will nap standing at the
wheel, and the man on the royal yard also, the thin stay in the
hollow of his shoulders, and an arm hooked in the running rigging.

They had finished the head-matter, and had it already ladled into
casks lashed along the rail. There it would stay for a day or two
until it was cool enough to stow below. They had been working on the
blubber for some little time, and the smoke coming from the stacks
was thick and black, except when red flames belched from them, mixed
with the smoke. Sometimes, when oil got into the fire, perhaps
from the boiling over of the pots, the stacks sent broad sheets of
flame six or eight feet into the air. These cast a ruddy glare over
everything, throwing the illuminated portions of the masts and sails
and rigging into high relief, and making bloody reflections from the
glistening faces and bare arms of the men, and from the crests of
breaking seas. Altogether it was a scene of weirdness, but it was
evil-smelling, and the whole thing smacked of evil, the men looking
like devils feeding the fire to torture some poor lost soul.

The mates stood on the little platform in front of the try-pots,
watching their kettles of fat, stirring them now and then with their
long-handled, long-shanked devil-forks. Now and then they picked up a
piece of blubber on their forks, holding it for an instant clear of
the mess, to see if the oil was all tried out of it, and if it was
thoroughly done. At last one of the pots was ready, and the piece of
blubber, after dripping for a moment into the pot, was thrown on deck
instead of being dropped back. It was crisp, and the edges curled
like a piece of bacon; it sizzled as it lay there, and it would
crackle when it had cooled a little. Standing at some distance from
the {97} try-pots, as I was, it made my mouth water; but I am afraid
it would not have been as good as it looked. At any rate, I was not
to try it, for the fire-door was opened, and the piece of bacon
thrown in with an iron fork.

The boatsteerers now came crowding around, with shallow strainers, or
skimmers, about a foot across, with a perforated bottom and a long
handle, and took out the pieces of blubber, letting each drain out
its oil, and threw them on deck. They were the scraps, and would be
used almost immediately for feeding the fires. There was an extra
try-pot there, three feet across, with legs a few inches long cast on
it, standing on the deck near; in fact, there were two of them. It
was intended that the hot scraps should be thrown into one of these,
but it was easier to throw them on deck, so that was where most of
them went, although some of them got into the pot.

A piece of cold minced blubber—bible-leaves—was put into the second
pot to hold it back while the first was emptied. A great square
copper tank stood beside the try-works, the cooling-tank already
mentioned. Although I never measured our tank, I should think it was
about three feet wide by four feet long, and stood nearly five feet
high. With the long-handled copper dippers the hot oil was ladled
from the try-pot into this tank, which held a good deal of oil. Here
the oil cooled a little, and some of the stuff, which the skimmers
had not taken out, settled toward the bottom. From the side of the
tank, near the top, projected an overflow spout, with a fine strainer
back of it, and under the spout was kept one of those huge iron pots
on short legs. The try-pot which had been emptied was now recharged
with fresh minced blubber, and the operation was being repeated.

The contents of the second pot were soon ready, and were ladled into
the tank, and that try-pot recharged with fresh minced blubber. So
it went on: horse-pieces, mincers, try-pots and tank. I know well
that all the men {98} concerned in the process were tired enough of
it before they got through, if they thought about it at all. Perhaps
they did not think, and merely did it as part of the day’s work; or,
at best, took pride in their individual skill in the part of the
process assigned to each.

I got very simply tired of the monotony of it, and nauseated with the
smell of the burning scraps. It was impossible to get away from that
smell without jumping overboard, and I was not yet ready for that.
The thick, oily black smoke rose in a column from the two copper
stacks, and drifted off in the darkness to leeward; and the men under
the shadow of the roof were occasionally bathed in a ruddy light, as
they wielded their forks or their skimmers or their copper dippers. I
watched the smooth stream of oil run smoking from the overflow spout
with each dipperful that was ladled into the tank, while the level of
the oil in the huge iron pot got higher and higher. I had had enough
of watching it. We had caught one whale, had tried out less than a
third of the oil, and there was blubber everywhere, and I was tired
of it already. How many whales would it take to fill us up? Perhaps
forty. Perhaps fifty or more if we were able to send home any of our
oil. The thought of it staggered me, and I turned away.

They had already broken out some of our cargo. The cargo consisted
largely of casks, which were variously labelled with chalk or white
paint, and some of the new casks, light colored, with that black
paint which is used in putting the addresses on wooden boxes or
cases. Of the new casks some were labelled “Bread,” some “Flour,”
and so on through our list of food that would keep. The “bread” was
not the soft kind that I was familiar with in the form of light,
delicately brown loaves—my mother’s. It was hardbread, or hardtack,
and it looked much like dogbread, like a rock when freshly baked.
Good dogbread tastes better than old hardtack, but hardtack in good
{99} condition is pretty good. It is good for the teeth. Of course
there were no casks of green vegetables, or of eggs or of butter or
of milk, or of many other things which we think necessary to our
well-being ashore. There were some of salt beef, such as it was. The
casks which contained the bread and the flour and what-not, when they
had been emptied in the regular course of events, would be filled
with oil.

We had been out too short a time to empty many of these casks, and
others were being hoisted from the hold, with the legend “Heads and
hoops.” There were shooks of staves, too, the staves for each cask
hooped together tightly, and bearing some resemblance to fasces. If
I had known at that time what fasces were, I should have expected
to see the sharp head of a cutting-spade projecting from each
bundle. Such a bundle might be borne before a whaling captain as the
symbol of his authority. But I had never heard of fasces, and I was
interested only in the process of opening the casks and getting out
the heads and hoops. The bundles of staves would come later.

The cooper was in charge of this work, but a number of men were
helping him. There is always more or less cooper work being done on a
whaler, and there were half a dozen men in the crew who were pretty
skilful at it. There was an abundance of cooper’s tools on board,
especially of hammers and the little tools that are set against the
hoops, and struck or tapped with the hammer held in the right hand,
to drive the hoops up or down. I think these were called “tappers,”
but I am not sure at this moment. Names which were once familiar
to me have a curious habit of slipping from my mind and eluding
all my efforts to recover them. I suppose it is a symptom of age.
The old-fashioned name of a perforated skimmer about five or six
inches across, very slightly concave upwards, and with a flat iron
handle—somewhat {100} resembling the try-pot skimmers on a small
scale—has eluded me in that way for some years. I almost have it,
and it is gone. My mother or my grandmother could have told me in an
instant, but I suppose it is of no use to ask anybody now.

It did not take long to open the casks. That is perhaps the simplest
form of cooperage. They opened enough to give them the heads and
hoops that were needed. Then came the bundles of staves, which were
undone carefully, one bundle at a time, so as not to get the staves
mixed. These staves, being old and oil-soaked, were quickly set up,
and the casks rolled over to join the others already lashed by the
bulwarks, to be filled with hot oil. They were filled through a big
copper funnel—Peter called it a tunnel—with a fine wire strainer
fastened in it, and a nozzle that fitted in the bunghole of a barrel.
The mouth of this funnel was large and square, and there was a double
bend in its long nose, setting off the mouth from the bunghole by a
couple of feet.

They do these things differently now. There are large iron
cooling-tanks below decks, and the hot oil is poured into them
through a pipe which opens in the deck near the try-pots. I have no
experience with them, for they were unknown to me in 1872, so that I
cannot say whether the oil cools as quickly in the tanks as it did
in the casks. The tanks save a great deal of work, although we had
men enough to do the work except when we were very much crowded, with
two or three whales at once fast alongside, waiting to be cut-in and
tried out.

The casks that had been filled were beginning to show a slight ooze
of oil at their seams. I was watching them when Peter Bottom stopped
beside me.

He gave me a friendly smile. “This ’ll never do,” he said, “will it?
’Most all the casks leak at first. You ’ll hear a deal of setting
up hoops before we stow it—and after, too, or the barrels might be
empty, some of ’em, when we {101} got home. A lot of oil can leak
out in four years, if it ’s only a few drops a day.”

I made no answer, and Peter glanced at me. “What ’s the matter?
Little mite seasick?”

“Oh, Peter!” I said. “The smell!”

He smiled again. “Lor’ love you,” he said, “this is nothin’. It ’s
pretty bad sometimes, when we ’ve had the try-works going for three
or four days and nights. Then we ’re so tired we can hardly stand,
and there ’s so much oil and water over everything you can’t walk
the deck. Why, many a time, I ’ve sat down and slid across the deck
on the seat of my trousers. And the foul smoke chokes and strangles
you, and it feels as if it had got all through you, and you ’d like
to scrape your lungs with a knife, to get off the soot. Everything ’s
covered with oil, your clothes soaked with it, your skin full of it,
your feet, hands, and hair. Break a biscuit and it shines with oil,
and cut a piece o’ meat out o’ the kid and the knife leaves its trail
of oil. There ’s no gettin’ away from it, and you fair hate yourself.
But cheer up, Tim, it ’ll soon be over, and then you ’ll see such a
cleanin’ up as you never knew. Sperm oil washes off easy, praise the
pigs!”

I was not greatly comforted. I could not stand it any longer, and I
went to the stern and tried to get a breath of sweet air. There was
none. All the air over that great ocean seemed to be loaded with
poison from the burning scraps, and I gave it up, and turned in.

I lay for a long time in the darkness, listening to the breathing of
the men in the other bunks, and seeing, before the eye of the mind,
the ooze from those seams grow into light amber-colored drops. Then
I thought of the multitude of barrels that would make up our full
cargo—twenty-four hundred of them—and from each cask an ooze of oil
that grew imperceptibly into a drop. It was incredibly slow, that
growth. And then all the drops growing, even more slowly, until they
shivered a little, {102} ready to fall. I almost held my breath,
waiting for them to fall, and tried to multiply twenty-four hundred
by three hundred and sixty-five by four—see whether you can do it, in
your head, while you wait for all those drops to fall at once—mental
arithmetic, they called it in school. I remember that I wished I knew
how much oil there was in a drop, so that I should know how much oil
we should lose if, for each barrel, there was a leak amounting to a
drop a day. Before I had the problem more than begun, I fell asleep,
with the drops all trembling, on the very point of falling. I dreamt
about it, and woke early. The problem still bothered me, and I went
to get pencil and paper, or its equivalent, and figure out that
product. Then I would ask Captain Nelson how much oil there was in a
drop, and I should know.

{103}




CHAPTER XI


We were nearly a month on Hatteras grounds, with good weather, on
the whole. We spoke several merchant vessels, one of which was a big
five-masted schooner bound into Charleston from Batavia. None of the
men had seen such a big schooner-rigged vessel before, and they all
gazed at her with their mouths hanging open as long as she was in
sight. There was nothing beautiful about her with her stubby-looking
masts and big sails. She would have made five of us easily, and the
Clearchus was fairly big for a whaler. There was a smashing southwest
breeze that day, and the schooner roared by us, close-hauled, with
all lowers set and trimmed flat, carrying a big bone in her teeth,
and spray flying over her, forward, with every sea.

We were working well toward the southern edge of the grounds. Whales
were scarce and shy. One wise old bull succeeded in inducing Mr.
Baker and Mr. Tilton to keep after him for eight hours, gradually
making to windward in a heavy sea, until he finally left them, giving
a snort of derision as he went. I suppose he thought that, as it was
about bedtime, he would call it a day. The men came back utterly beat
out and disgusted.

When no whales had even been raised for a week the ship’s head was
again turned to the north for a last look before making to the
eastward. We had taken but one whale. The morning after the change
of course I heard Mr. Baker, who had that watch, come into the
cabin and knock on the captain’s door. In response to the captain’s
roar, he asked him to come on deck and see what we had with us. I
heard Captain Nelson getting up—he was never very quiet about it,
especially when he was in a {104} hurry—and I bolted out, and up
the stairs at Mr. Baker’s heels, expecting to see something quite
unusual, a whale of enormous size, perhaps, or a large shark at
least, or perhaps an enormous squid. I think I was inclined to the
squid, for I had always heard of it, but I had never come across
anybody who had seen one, and I was anxious to see a great squid with
my own eyes—and at a safe distance.

As soon as I reached the deck I looked all around and saw nothing
unusual—no squid, at any rate. The sun was not yet up, and the waters
were heaving in slow swells, although the surface was calm and there
was hardly enough wind for steerage way. Deep silence was upon the
sea, so that I heard it breathing—or it was as real as that. The
watch stood about, or paced to and fro without a sound. The whole
aspect was inexpressibly melancholy and desolate, and the silence
seemed filled with evil. All the while the breathing of the sea went
on, as each great roller caught up with us, and raised the ship to
the top of its gentle slope, passed on from under us, dropping her
into the valley. I sighed, in spite of myself, and I looked about
even more carefully. There was nothing to be seen on the water except
a topsail schooner quite near, and drifting along with us.

I looked up at Mr. Baker, forgetting, for the moment, the pressing
matter that had brought me on deck. I could think of nothing but that
gentle breathing, like the sigh of some huge, invisible monster.

“Can you hear it, Mr. Baker?” I asked.

Mr. Baker was an abrupt and rough-spoken man, though good-hearted and
kind at bottom. He looked at me with a lively interest.

“Hear it!” he said. “Hear what?”

“Can you hear the sea breathing? I can sir.”

He burst into a great roar of laughter, and I got as red as
whale-meat. Mr. Baker had no imagination and I {105} ought to have
known better than to ask him. I did, but I forgot.

His laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun. “No, boy,” he said.
“Can’t say as I do. What does it sound like?”

“I thought that it might be something, sir, that you called the
captain to see—a big whale or a squid.”

“The great squid, eh?” he asked, smiling. “And breathing, too. How
big a squid did you hope to see? Big as a house?”

“Something like that, sir.”

“Big as a ship, with arms a hundred feet long, eh?” He burst into
another roar of laughter. “Been reading Melville? You have n’t, eh?
Well, there may be such squid, but I ’ve never seen any of ’em, and
I ’ve never seen anybody who had. All the squid I ’ve seen were
little fellows, a foot or two long, with arms not over nine or ten
feet, although Banks fishermen have got ’em up to thirty foot, they
say. No, I did n’t call the captain for anything of the sort. You see
that schooner over there, with yards at fore and main?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, that ’s it. She ’s the Annie Battles, and a very fast and able
boat she is. Hails from Nantucket, Coffin, master. Maybe you ’ll have
a chance to see her again before we get through, but just look at her
lines, and then look at the lines of the Clearchus.”

So I looked carefully at the lines of the Annie Battles. She was
long, almost as long as the Clearchus, I judged, but she gave the
impression of being quite a little smaller, because of her very
different model. She had an easy entrance, easy, swelling lines, a
full quarter and counter, but not too full. I could not see her beam,
of course, from where we were, but it was evidently of that generous
character which gives a vessel stability while not interfering with
her speed. Altogether, the Annie Battles would {106} have been
called at once powerful and able. That was the term that sprang at
once to a sailor’s lips—an able boat, a very able boat. I heard it
from many, and it was the first thing they said. I cannot think of
any form of praise that I would rather have had if I had been her
designer; it means so much, speed, seaworthiness, ability to carry
sail with safety. It must have given Coffin, master, a great deal
of sheer pleasure merely to contemplate his vessel, there was that
beauty in her.

She was rigged as a topsail schooner, with a topsail yard on each
mast, a rig that I have not happened to see in any other instance.
In fact, the Dobbin, a revenue cutter stationed at New Bedford a
few years later, and the Eva are the only other topsail schooners I
remember, and they had a topsail yard only on the foremast, according
to my recollection. It was a very pretty rig, but was never much in
fashion, and has gone out long ago.

I was still looking at the Battles when I heard Captain Nelson’s
step behind me. Mr. Baker and I were standing under the gallows just
forward of the mizzenmast. There is no whaleboat there, as a boat
would interfere with the use of the gangway. I was at the rail, but
Mr. Baker stood behind me, well in the shadow and the captain stopped
beside him.

“Well, I ’m damned!” he said in tones of utter disgust. Then he began
to laugh. “I am damned!” he said again. “How long’s he been there,
Mr. Baker?”

Mr. Baker shook his head. “He was there with the first streaks of
daylight. I did n’t see him come.”

Captain Nelson seemed to have got through with the Annie Battles.
He stood gazing absently at the great, smooth swells rolling up on
our starboard quarter, looked off at the horizon, as if he could see
beyond it, and sniffed the air like a dog. At last he turned to Mr.
Baker.

“I don’t like the look of these seas,” he said. “The glass has n’t
begun to fall yet, but it will. Make the course southeast, Mr. Baker.
We ’ll get out of this.” {107}

“As to these seas, Tim, here, says they breathe. He hears ’em.”

Captain Nelson glanced at me with a smile. “Does he? Well, so they
do, Tim. Could n’t Mr. Baker hear it?”

“I don’t know, sir. He did n’t seem to, and I was n’t very sure of
it, but it seemed as if I did.”

“Be sure of what you see and hear, Tim,” said the captain kindly.
“You ’re as likely to be right as another, as far as the evidence of
your senses goes. It ’s only in accounting for facts that a man of
knowledge and experience has the better of you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Mr. Baker was giving orders that would bring the ship on her new
course, and she soon began to wear slowly, for the gentle breath of
air was from the southwest. We passed astern of the Annie Battles,
which had got pretty far ahead by that time, but I could see
that the men on her deck were surprised at our change of course.
Captain Nelson was watching her, and presently a man came up her
companionway, and stood on her deck looking at us. He was a large
man, much larger than Captain Nelson. I could see nothing more than
that and that he was active enough to be a young man. He raised his
hand, but I could not tell whether he was shaking his fist or merely
waving his hand in salutation. Captain Nelson chuckled and waved his
hand.

The Battles was jibing, and she was coming after us. Captain Nelson
did not wait, but after giving another long look around, he went
below. I followed, and pestered him, for I wanted to know what it was
that he expected, and why he expected it. Of course I had no business
to bother him about such matters at all, and he would have been
quite right to tell me shortly to shut up, and many masters would.
Captain Nelson never did that if he believed that I was thirsting for
information which it was quite proper for me to have. This occasion
was no {108} exception, and he went to considerable pains to explain
what he could, and what I could digest, about tropical hurricanes,
which are most common about that season, especially just about the
place where we were. It was all intensely interesting to me, and I
listened in complete absorption, managing to remember most of what he
told me.

At that time there was a less general understanding of the
fundamental principles of weather, even among good seamen, than
there is now. For my own part, it has always been difficult for me
to remember instructions when they had to be memorized; but when I
once have mastered principles my troubles are over. I do not have to
search the stores of memory for a formula which fits the occasion,
like a formula in chemistry, and I rarely go astray.

Captain Nelson had not got far into the subject when he interrupted
himself.

“Well, Tim,” he said, “that ’s enough for this time. Better be off
about your business, and we ’ll have another lesson before long. I
want you to learn to navigate a vessel.”

This was good news to me. I knew nothing whatever about navigation,
or perhaps I should not have been so pleased. When Captain Nelson had
given me some instruction, and I plunged into Bowditch by myself, I
found that I had plunged into deep water without knowing how to swim.
I was not satisfied to do things in a superficial way, according to
formula, without knowing what I was doing, or why, and at first I had
a heartbreaking struggle with mathematics beyond my preparation for
it. But I happened to discover, quite by accident, in the third mate,
Mr. Brown, a man who knew all that mysterious country—or those seas.
Mr. Brown piloted me through those strange seas with considerable
skill and great patience, so that I could attack my navigation with
some satisfaction. But I am getting ahead of my story. {109}

Flocks of petrels, or Mother Carey’s chickens, were about the ship
by noon, with their curious habit of flight, as if walking on the
water. By the middle of the afternoon the wind had come in from
the eastward, and by dark it was blowing fresh, the wind heavy and
wet and increasing. Sail was reduced to reefed topsails, and the
Clearchus was put as close to the wind as she would go, making a
course a little south of southeast. Sailing on a taut bowline was
not one of the strong points of the Clearchus. She labored a great
deal, the seas slapped up against her bluff bows, she made much fuss
and comparatively little headway, but considerable leeway. There was
nothing to do, however, but to make everything snug, and to trust
in Providence and the ship; and I turned in with no misgivings, and
slept soundly.

The weather got worse as the night wore on, and I suddenly found
myself sprawling on the floor. The ship was cutting up curious
antics. I crawled on my hands and knees back to my bunk, but I could
not go to sleep again, although I was sleepy. My bunk was on the
weather side, and first I would be standing nearly on my feet, then
nearly on my head, then perhaps she would quiver and go slowly over
almost on her beam ends, so that I barely escaped being rolled on to
the floor again. I heard the bell striking wildly—the tongue must
have got loose—until somebody went and tied it up again, lashed it
tight. It must have been two or three o’clock in the morning. She
seemed to ease a little, sliding down the side of each sea until I
thought she must be bound for the bottom of the ocean; then rising
slowly, and struggling up the side of the next, until at last she
reached the top. There she paused for what seemed to me, down there
in my bunk, as much as an hour, and rolled to leeward, and I held on
with all my might.

I must have dropped off to sleep again, for the next thing I knew
daylight was filtering in. The ship was {110} keeping up her wild
coasting down and slow struggles upward, and my muscles were sore and
lame with holding on through my sleep.

Captain Nelson was on deck when I got there. He must have been there
most of the night. Never in my life, before or since, have I seen
such seas. They were veritable mountains, with rugged sides, long
and high. When we were in a valley we on the deck were sheltered
from the worst of the wind, and the oncoming sea towered so above us
that I wondered whether the ship would ever be able to climb that
steep slope. She did somehow. The seas were so long that she rode
them easily enough; with unnatural ease, it seemed to me. At last
I discovered the explanation. They had put out oil bags during the
night, bags of canvas stuffed with oakum and filled with oil. Two
of these bags were fast, by lines long enough to let them trail in
the water, to the ends of the spritsail yard, or spreader on the
bowsprit, and one to each cathead. As they trailed in the water at
the ends of their lines, the oil oozed slowly from them and formed
a thin film over the water which prevented its breaking, so that
the ship sailed in a little calm area of her own. This eased her
wonderfully.

The best course she could make was too much to the south to please
Captain Nelson, and she was hardly doing more than lie to. Soon after
I came up the foretopsail, close-reefed as it was, split from top to
bottom, and in a very few minutes it was nothing but ribbons. The men
had great trouble in getting in the remnants of the sail, but at last
it was secured after a fashion, the strips wound about the yard like
a bandage, and lashed.

One storm is much like another, except in degree. This one reached
its height just before noon, and wore off considerably toward night,
although it still blew with gale force. The sea went down during the
next day, the wind drawing to the westward. It was a dry, puffy wind,
and {111} the men got out their wet clothes and hung them on lines
all about the ship, so that we must have looked like a laundry. We
had got more sail on the ship, and with a fair wind she made pretty
good speed for her. A pretty sight she must have been, rolling
along under courses and maintopsail with garments of all hues and
descriptions festooned about her.

I went in search of Peter, and found him gazing toward the
southeastern horizon. He paid me no attention until I spoke.

“Is it you, lad?” he said, giving me a smile. “I thought I saw
something heaving atop of a sea. Then the sea went on, and let it
down, and I lost it. There it is again, just atop of that big sea. It
has the look of a cask or a barrel. Better run aft, Tim, and see what
they make of it.”

I found Captain Nelson with his glass at his eye.

“A barrel,” he said to Mr. Baker, “and an oil barrel, and half full
of oil, I should guess. And there ’s other wreckage. Better run down
that way.”

We changed our course to southeast, and in ten minutes or so we
were running through all sorts of wreckage scattered over a mile or
more of ocean: barrels, many of them full, and fragments of boats,
and pieces of a deckhouse, and broken oars, and splinters of some
vessel’s rail, and other like evidence of destruction. They seemed
worth further investigation, and we backed our main, while a boat was
lowered. The boat came back without having been able to identify the
vessel. There was no name on any of the fragments, and nothing which
gave a clue; and although there were several barrels in sight, they
seemed to be full of oil, and they floated awash, so that the name,
if it was there, could not be seen without getting them out of the
water. Mr. Baker suggested that, and made the further suggestion that
they were full of oil anyway, and we would be killing two birds with
one stone. He hated to see that good oil bound for Davy Jones. {112}

Captain Nelson shook his head. It was near sunset, and the yards
were braced around, and we filled off on our course again. We sailed
through more scattered wreckage for half an hour, some fragment of
the good ship here and there, broken out of her light upper works. It
made us all silent, each man busy with his own thoughts. They might
have been, with a few minutes’ streak of bad luck, the fragments of
the Clearchus which were scattered over those miles of ocean. I was
thinking of this, and looking out ahead, when I saw what seemed to
be a spar with a broken end rise on a sea, then vanish again. It
glistened in the light of the setting sun, but I thought that I had
made out the broken end clearly.

I spoke of it, but the captain was already examining it through his
glass.

“I ’ve got it, Tim,” he said. He put the glass down. “Two spars
lashed together, and a man lashed to them. No sign of life in him,
but we ’ll pick him up and see.”

We ran down to him, pretty close. It was a crazy apology for a raft,
merely two spars lashed together loosely. The man had been sitting on
them with his legs, from the knees down, in the water. Now his body
had fallen backward, and his head rested on the spars. In his hand he
gripped a hatchet. What could he have wanted with a hatchet? I asked
the captain.

Captain Nelson was looking at the man, but he turned to me for an
instant. “Sharks, I ’m afraid, Tim,” he said.

Just then our boat got to him, and somebody cut the lashings, and
they lifted him into the boat. His legs were terribly bitten by
sharks, and one foot was gone. I turned away, sick and faint.

It was dusk when they brought him aboard, still gripping his hatchet.
He was breathing, but the life was almost out of him. He was carried
below, and they did what they could for him, and he was still alive
when I turned in after writing what I considered a very solemn
{113} and arresting passage in my journal. I do not reproduce that
passage. It seems like betraying the confidence of a well-meaning
boy who seldom felt deeply on such matters, and still more seldom
gave utterance to thoughts of the kind when he had them. To me it
would seem much on the same order as publishing love-letters—to be
ridiculed. But the passage in my journal is funny, while it brings
tears to my eyes as I remember my feelings as I wrote it.

When I got on deck in the morning I saw the four Kanakas gathered
about the sailmaker, who was just finishing the job of sewing up a
long bundle done up in a piece of old canvas. It was the body of
the man we had rescued the evening before. He had died in the night
without regaining consciousness. He was a Kanaka, but beyond that one
evident fact we never knew who he was, or what ship he came from, for
by the time we got back to New Bedford so many things had happened
that the incident had slipped from our minds. Many things slip from
the minds of sailors in that way, and are recalled only in the course
of recounting some yarn, as I am doing.

The four Kanakas were chanting an improvised song, the Admiral
singing each verse, which he seemed to be making up as he went
along, and the other three joining in the chorus. The singing was
soft and seemed weird to me, for I had never before heard Kanaka
singing. There were a great many verses, and the singing continued
long after the sailmaker had got through and gone. Then the captain
and other officers came, and the crew was mustered, and we all stood
with uncovered heads while the captain read a very short service—or
prayer, I don’t know which—from a prayer book. The service took about
a minute, and then they tipped up the plank and shot the body into
the sea just as the sun was coming up out of it. I was at the rail,
and I caught the red gleam of sunlight on the canvas as the bundle
fell, making a crimson streak {114} through the air; it struck the
water, throwing the spray high, and disappeared from our sight,
and it was as if that man had never been. The ceremony over, and
the body, shrouded in canvas, plunging downward through the depths
of ocean, the crew put on their hats or caps and went about their
business, promptly forgetting the whole matter. But I have reason
to believe that the sharks did not forget, and I doubt whether that
bundle ever reached bottom.

That afternoon we sighted a sail rising to the southeast. It had
the look of a ship or a brig, for all we could see at first was the
dim outline of square topsails; but presently the upper parts of
her lower sails had risen from the sea, and they were fore-and-aft
sails unmistakably. There could be but one vessel which answered that
description, and that was the Annie Battles. Captain Nelson showed
a curious mixture of relief and disappointment. He smiled and swore
softly, and I was tempted to run and find Peter Bottom, but I did
not. It was exactly what he had expected.

I remember there was a flock of petrels near the ship at the time,
and my attention was divided between watching them and watching the
Battles. She was running close-hauled, at which she was very good;
and she got abeam of us, and very near, before I noticed that she had
a brand-new foretopmast. Mr. Baker and the captain, of course, had
seen it long before. Mr. Baker now turned to the captain.

“We got out of it,” he said, “better than she did.”

Captain Nelson nodded. There was a big young fellow standing near the
wheel of the Battles, and looking hard at us. Mr. Baker said it was
Captain Coffin. I was surprised, for, except for his size, he looked
too young to be captain of anything. He was as big as my father, and
seemed much like him, pleasant and easy-going and competent. He waved
his hand to Captain Nelson. {115}

“Just wanted to make sure you were all right,” he shouted.

Captain Nelson grinned. “Much obliged,” he answered. “All shipshape.
Did n’t even lose a to’gallan’mast.”

Coffin laughed at that. “Nor a sail either, I suppose,” he retorted,
pointing at our topsail yard. Some of the crew were on it at that
moment, bending a new foretopsail.

Captain Nelson grinned again. “It was so old,” he said, “that I
thought I ’d better bend a new one.”

The Battles was shaking in the wind, and fell off on the other tack,
and rounded under our stern. She shaved our stern so close that I
could almost have reached out and grabbed the leach of her mainsail.
She kept off with us on our course, but she was sailing nearly two
feet to our one, and she drew ahead rapidly.

Before she had sailed our length Captain Coffin hailed again.

“Where ’you bound now?”

Captain Nelson waved his hand vaguely. “Oh, to the east’ard,” he
said, “to the east’ard.”

“Western grounds, I suppose. We ’ll be waiting for you.”

{116}




CHAPTER XII


The first observation that the captain was able to take showed us
to be in latitude 27° N., which was much farther south than he had
any idea of. I was present when he worked out our position; I was
supposed to be having a lesson in navigation, but I had no notion
what he was doing, nor why. I remember that he could not believe
it, and thought that he must have made a mistake, but a second
observation confirmed the first, and I marked our position on the
chart. I knew enough for that. That made our course northeast.
Captain Nelson went on deck to give the new course, and left me alone
with Bowditch. I struggled along for a few minutes, but I might
as well have been blind for all the good I got out of the book. I
thought I might as well be out in the sunshine, so I put the book
under my arm, and went on deck.

Mr. Brown happened upon me as I sat on a coil of rope with the open
book on my knee. It is not likely that I was even trying to read,
but I was probably gazing out over the ocean, which I could just see
at every roll of the ship, or up at the sky. He stooped and saw what
I was at, and he smiled, and asked me how I was getting along. When
I confessed that I was not getting along at all, he offered to help
me, and I accepted gratefully. He could not help me then, for he was
on duty; but later on he gave me my first idea of trigonometry. That
was the beginning of my studies with Mr. Brown. He was an excellent
teacher, and I was anxious to learn, which makes all the difference
in the world.

It was four or five days later that we ran into the edge of the
Sargasso Sea. We should have been clear of it by good rights, but the
edge of the weed had been shifted {117} into what should have been
clear ocean, possibly by the very storm that we had come through. I
knew, of course, that it must be the Sargasso Sea. I had read about
it in my geography without much interest, and the teacher had not
seemed much more interested than I, or to know much more about it.

The idea that I had formed was of a close-packed mass of seaweed,
through which a ship could no more force her way than she could
through an enormous haystack. The real thing is very different. I
have never been any closer to the middle than I was that day in the
Clearchus, and so I do not know, from the evidence of my own senses,
how closely packed the weed may be; but it is not like a stack of hay
at all. It consists of separate plants, or pieces of a plant, not
above a foot across, every plant floating by itself. A ship would
probably have no great trouble in going through what looked like
a solid mass of floating weed, each separate plant giving to her
passage with but little more resistance than the water.

Peter got a bucketful of water, with a plant bearing its strange
freight of life: crabs, sea-horses, pipe-fish, shrimp, and slugs.

“Aye, Timmie,” he said as he dropped the bucket over the side, “it ’s
sargasso, and that means seaweed in some outlandish lingo. Why they
can’t say seaweed when they mean seaweed is beyond me. I ’ve seen it
many a time.”

That bucket of water led to a fresh dislike of Mr. Wallet. I had
made a hasty examination of it while all hands gathered around me.
As soon as I could I grabbed up the bucket and ran aft with it, the
water slopping over my legs as I ran. I wanted to study those strange
beings at my leisure.

Suddenly remembering duties which, as was quite customary with me,
I had forgotten in my interest in other things, I left my precious
bucket at the head of the cabin steps, and dashed down to attend to
them before {118} anybody found out. The cabin stairs were very
steep and narrow, and I ran plump into Mr. Wallet—actually collided
with him, and bounced off, eliciting a grunt and a curse. I picked
myself up, and he paid no more attention to me, but went on up; and I
heard him stumble at the top, and curse again, violently. I chuckled,
and thought no more about it; but when I went for my bucket again, I
could not find it. Mr. Wallet, coming up, had stumbled over it, and
had been angry, and forthwith had emptied it over the side. I would
have done him an injury if I could, and I hoped he might run foul of
a fighting bull whale. That was the worst thing I could think of.

I was so provoked with Mr. Wallet about the loss of that bucket of
water that I pretended not to hear him when he spoke to me as I ran
to the forecastle to find Peter. He was most probably only going to
give me a reprimand—which I deserved—for leaving the bucket where
I did, and when I seemed not to hear him, he did not follow me up.
As I ran forward I looked over the expanse of water which glittered
in the sun under the brisk southerly breeze, but I saw no patches
of weed. As it turned out I did not get another bucket of weed with
its strange freight of life, for we had run clear of it. Never in my
life have I been able to get another head of sargasso-weed. That was
another grudge I bore Mr. Wallet, and still bear him. His feelings
toward me were none too friendly.

I plunged below to find Peter Bottom and pour out my grievances. I
found him busy, but he stopped his work—I did not even glance at
it—and covered it with his hand, and listened until I had emptied my
heart. When at last I had come to a hesitating stop he looked up with
a twinkle in his eyes.

“Now you ’ve got it all out, Timmie,” he said, “you feel better,
I ’ll warrant.”

I did feel better, and not so angry as I had been. But {119} that
means nothing. I have always been like that, with a hot heart that
cools rapidly, leaving hardly enough resentment for self-respect. I
knew it even then for a fault. I hold that anything that is worth
such hot anger as I felt demands the keeping of a cold resentment
long enough to do some good. A man of any stability would do that, or
he would not get so angry. Captain Nelson was a man of stability, and
I was already beginning to think Mr. Brown even more so. Mr. Baker
was an ignorant man, except in one line, and he was hot-tempered
and hard; Mr. Tilton was even more ignorant, although even-tempered
enough, quick in decision in matters which he knew about, and
vigorous in action; but both Mr. Baker and Mr. Tilton were men of
stability. Mr. Snow was regarded as a little busybody; but nowhere
was there a good word for Mr. Wallet. His ignorance was stupendous,
his talent for failure was great, no dependence could be placed on
him in any kind of a pinch, and he had not the courage of a sheep. It
was more or less of a mystery how he got his second mate’s berth, and
a still greater mystery how he held it.

“That second mate ’s not worth getting mad at,” Peter said, “and
he ’ll get his deserts sooner or later. They ’most always do. Now
look. I told you I had something to show you, and here it is.”

With that he lifted his hand from the small thing it covered, which
was of ivory, one of the larger teeth of our only whale. This thing
of Peter’s was already plainly a model of the hull of the Clearchus,
although there had not been time to do more than roughly shape it.
Even with the largest tooth used for it, the model was on a very
small scale, only about five and a half inches long.

I forgot entirely my grievance against the second mate, and could
only look at it longingly, as a dog eyes a bone, licking my chops.

Peter laughed to see me. “Do you know what it is to be, then?” {120}

“Anybody would know that. It will be beautiful, Peter. Do—do you
suppose I ’ll ever be able to do anything like that?”

“You ’re able to do something like that now. It ’s nothing now, but
you wait till I have it farther along. I have to shape it a bit more
to make it a true copy—and it ’s going to be a true copy, Timmie—and
then I ’ll cut the deck down to show the rail. Every plank, chain
plate, and bolt that shows on the outside of the ship is going to
show on this model. Then I have to build the deckhouses out of plates
of ivory scraped thin, and build the try-works, and step ivory masts,
and rig her with ivory spars and ivory sails scraped thin as paper.
And there ’s to be ivory blocks, and the rigging ’s to be silk
thread. It ’ll be quite proper, and scraped and polished till it
shines. I have it in my mind, and it grows as I get on. Aye, it ’ll
be quite proper.”

It was quite proper. As I raise my eyes to the mantel, there sits the
dainty model now. Much of the rigging of silk thread is rotten and
brittle, and breaks at a touch; but the rest of Peter’s handiwork
is of more enduring stuff, although yellow with age. It makes me
positively homesick to see the very decks that I trod, the wheel
under its roof and the rail at the stern upon which I had leaned so
many times, looking over the sluggish wake, the gangway with the
cutting-stage in place, the great blocks of the cutting-tackles, the
try-works with the bench against its after side; every detail of the
ship and its fittings reproduced, even to the boats lashed to their
stiff davits, the cranes swung out for them to rest upon, and little
harpoons and lances and spades in place. The paper-thin, translucent
ivory sails still hang from their ivory yards and belly with the
breeze. It makes me homesick, I say, and makes that time—it was a
happy time, on the whole—it makes that time even more real than does
my journal, which lies before me. At the time when I first {121} saw
that model, however, rough as it then was, I could only gape and
smile, and I said nothing coherent, I think.

The teeth that were used for scrimshawing—and for many other
purposes, for on some of the islands of the South Seas whales’ teeth
had a high value—the teeth were salvaged by the crew after the
cutting-in and trying-out were over. I have described the cutting off
of the lower jaw, and getting it on deck, where it was put at one
side, out of the way, until the more serious business of trying-out
the oil and getting it below decks was over. One jaw is much like
another; that is, unless it happens to be deformed, and deformed jaws
are more frequently seen than one would believe. We got two, and one
of them was so badly deformed that the tip of the jaw was curled
tightly around twice, making a tight spiral. It has always been a
mystery to me how a whale could get a living with a jaw like that,
but they seem to have no difficulty in doing so. Both of our whales
with freak jaws were in excellent condition. Deformation of the jaws
is supposed to be due to the whales’ fighting among themselves. I
know of no first-hand information on that point, but the bull whales
certainly fight viciously on occasion. A deformed jaw, however, is
usually cleaned and kept for museum purposes.

Extracting the teeth is generally an occasion for hilarity among the
crew. You will see the hinge of the great jaw at the yardarm, and a
giggling, shouting mob, armed with spades and saws, about its lower
end, which is on the deck. A whip tackle is also on the yard, its
lower end brought down to the deck. Then they fall to with their
spades, cutting the flesh away from the lower part of the tooth
and loosening it, and completing the extraction by main strength,
very much after the fashion of a dentist, but by means of the falls
instead of forceps. Often the loop slips off of the tooth suddenly,
letting down the men who are swaying away on the falls, {122} and
starting shouts of laughter. Or the whole strip of teeth may come
together, held together by the gums. When the teeth have all been
drawn the jaw is sawed into slabs for convenient use, for the jawbone
is very hard and close-grained.

I was to have a share of the teeth obtained in this way. Peter
must have known what I wanted, for he produced a slab sawed from a
tooth, and started me at once on an ivory spoon, on which I was busy
for several days, in my spare time, and in much time that was not
spare. Your whaleman gets so interested in his scrimshawing very
often, that he neglects his duties. I was no exception. The spoon
was intended for my mother. When that was done, I began an elaborate
pie-marker, a jagging-wheel, also intended for my mother, and changed
the destination of the spoon to my father. The pie-marker consisted
of a wheel, the edge of which was to be cut in very intricate
convolutions, turning in an ivory handle. I planned this handle in
the figure of a sperm whale holding the wheel between his jaws,
and I meant to carve him within an inch of his life. Peter did not
discourage me, probably thinking that my plan was as good as another
for giving me practice. I did carve him within an inch of his life,
or within rather less than that; but I was not satisfied with the
result, and tried to improve it, “improving” it several times, and
at last producing a very lean and skinny whale. I did not dare to
make further improvements, although the whale seemed very much out of
health. The carving of the wheel, too, left something to be desired,
and the convolutions were less intricate than I hoped for. Peter
comforted me somewhat with the observation that it would be easier to
clean, and that if I had made it as I had planned, it would have cut
out a great many little pieces of dough, which would infallibly have
got stuck in it, and which my mother would have had to pick out with
a sharp knife or a wire—or perhaps a hairpin. That was Peter’s little
joke, {123} not mine. My mother must have liked her pie-marker,
crude as it was, for she used it as long as she lived, and kept it
hanging from a hook in the edge of the kitchen shelf, within reach of
her hand. She never had to use a hair-pin on it.

[Illustration: HARPOONING PORPOISE]

We had unbroken good weather, with variable winds, mostly southerly
or easterly during the first part of the passage, and westerly and
northerly during the last part, but always of good strength. One
morning, I remember, there was a great school of porpoises playing
about the ship. They seemed even more antic than usual, leaping and
diving and playing tag, and otherwise showing their contempt for a
vessel which could not go any faster than the Clearchus.

Their cavortings were too much for Aziel Wright, George Hall, and
Miller, three of the boatsteerers. They easily got permission, and
Hall was first with a porpoise-iron, and was getting out on the
jibboom. Miller got down into the forechains, Wright staying on deck.
Hall and Miller got their porpoises, and then more, until there were
half a dozen thumping the deck. The whole crew had gathered, and the
men laid hold of the line when a porpoise was struck, and hauled him
on deck by main strength.

Then they killed them. It seemed to me a horrid job, but I watched
it, as boys will watch horrid jobs; in the same spirit which used to
prompt me to go occasionally to John Green’s slaughter-house, and
see steers felled with a sledge, and have their throats ripped up
with a sharp knife as you would rip up an old boot leg. They used to
kill sheep there in what seemed to me a particularly brutal manner,
and I have seen the men step up nonchalantly to a calf hung by its
bound hind legs, seize it by the nose, and cut its head off, without
a sound of remonstrance from the calf. These methods were quite usual
at the time. Boys are queer little savages. {124}

We had porpoise-steak for two or three days after that, and then
hash. Porpoise-steak tastes pretty good to a man who has been
nearly two months without fresh meat. A porpoise is really a small
whale, and is roughly about the size of a swordfish. There must be
comparatively few people who have not seen porpoises. The meat is
much like whale-meat, but more tender and better flavored.

A fine oil is extracted from the porpoise, the best coming from the
jaw. The porpoise jaw-oil is used for chronometers and watches. Mr.
Baker thought we might as well get everything the porpoises had to
give, and he had the blubber tried out, and the jaw-oil. There was a
small quantity of jaw-oil, to which we added later.

{125}




CHAPTER XIII


In 1872 the sperm whale had almost disappeared from the Atlantic
Ocean, and old whalemen thought that he was doomed to practical
extinction. For twenty years or more sperm-whaling voyages had been
lengthened to an average of nearly four years, and it had been
necessary to hunt him over all the tropic and temperate seas of the
world. I had reason to believe that Captain Nelson had not really
expected to find any whales on the Hatteras grounds, and I know that
he expected to find none on the Western grounds. Besides, it was late
in the season by the time we reached the Western grounds, and it was
likely that the whales would have disappeared, if they had been there
at all. The mastheads were kept manned, however, as they were pretty
generally.

We were rolling along easily in a light westerly breeze when
Alexander, a Kanaka from Mr. Tilton’s boat, sounded his falsetto cry
from the foremasthead. It was early in the forenoon, and I was busy
below; but I heard the quick patter of feet on deck, and I knew what
it meant. So I dropped everything just where I stood, and ran up.
I happened to see the spout at once, a beautiful, light, feathery
thing in the bright sunlight, more like the drooping ostrich plume
than ever. There was but the one spout, repeated lazily at intervals,
although the others of the pod, if there were others, might have
sounded, and be feeding. The volume of the spout and the force with
which it was expelled, as well as the interval between spouts,
indicated a full-grown bull.

The whale had been sighted off the port bow, and was now nearly abeam
of us, going slowly to the westward, and making a course which took
him nearer to the ship as {126} he went on. Mr. Brown was already
away, with the light westerly breeze abeam, to head him off. Mr.
Wallet, as usual, was some minutes longer in getting his sail up, and
in getting under way. He headed still more to the westward. We began
to wear ship, and to change our course to follow them.

The boats went on, getting nearer the course of the whale, which
continued to swim with great deliberation. He seemed to be bent upon
getting nowhere in particular, and likely to achieve his purpose. By
the time the ship had got on her new course Mr. Brown had already
taken in his sail and got his mast down, and the men were paddling
until the whale should discover them. Mr. Wallet should have done the
same thing. He was near enough; but he delayed, as he did invariably,
a little too long. Just after he had given the order, and while
his men were busy with the mast,—they had made a little more noise
than necessary, perhaps,—the whale saw them, no doubt imperfectly.
He hesitated for an instant, then raised his flukes and lobtailed,
the blow on the water making a noise which sounded, to us on the
ship, like the report of a big gun, and raised a cataract of spray
and green water. This drenched the men in Mr. Brown’s boat, who had
paddled up on him from behind and were trying to get into position
to sink their irons just behind the side fin. Wright was standing
in the bow, a harpoon in his hands, and the boat was just even with
the flukes. I saw the men suddenly give way hard—they had no time to
change to their oars; then the whale started for Mr. Wallet’s boat,
and Wright let go both his irons, getting both fast, but well back
toward the small instead of near the side fin, where he had hoped to
place them.

The sting of the irons only served to make him the more furious and
bent upon destruction, and he rushed full-tilt upon Mr. Wallet. Mr.
Brown dropped back, the men put aside their paddles, and I saw two or
three turns {127} taken about the loggerhead. Then Wright came aft;
and Mr. Brown took his place in the bow, with a lance in his hand.
A thin wreath of blue smoke rose from the loggerhead, although they
were throwing water upon the line. Wright took another turn, and the
boat plunged wildly through the sea after the whale.

The whale seemed to be annoyed by the drag of the boat all on one
side of him. I thought I saw him gnash his jaws, although they were
kicking up such a fuss that I could not be sure. The ship was less
than half a mile away, and the ship and the whale were slowly working
nearer each other. It must have been the drag of the boat which
caused the whale to miss Mr. Wallet’s boat, which he did by a very
narrow margin, coming up for the attack about an oar’s length from
the starboard side, and abeam. That seemed to put him beside himself
with fury, and he turned at once upon Mr. Brown, shaking his head
and gnashing his jaws. As he turned, George Hall saw his chance and
planted his irons deep in his other side. If Mr. Wallet had been of
the quality of Hall or of some others of his men, he would have done
uniformly better.

Hall’s irons served to confuse the whale a little, although not to
shake his purpose of destroying Mr. Brown’s boat. He hesitated for an
instant, but immediately went on, and disappeared a short distance
from the boat. He had not sounded, however, which could be told from
the way Mr. Wallet’s line was going out. Hall had changed places
with Mr. Wallet, and had three or four turns around the loggerhead,
although not enough to check the line entirely. I saw the men in Mr.
Brown’s boat back water as hard as they could, and the next instant
the whale’s huge head shot out of the water just ahead of the boat,
the jaws gnashing. The lower jaw seemed to be crumpled up at the tip.
He just missed the boat completely, but got the whale line between
his jaws, and chewed it, getting a tooth through it, as I found out
later, and fraying the line badly. {128}

He came up out of the water so far that his side fin showed, and the
ends of Hall’s harpoons, and Mr. Brown seized that moment to lance
him. He got in two thrusts with the lance, and when he withdrew
it, its shank was bent almost at right angles. He did not stop to
straighten it, but seized another, which, however, he had no chance
to use.

As the whale went on, Mr. Brown’s line slipped off his tooth. The
teeth of the sperm whale are roughly conical in shape, and curved
slightly backward, with a considerable space between them; and there
are no teeth in the upper jaw. This will account for the fact that
the line was not bitten in two at once. The lines were crossed, too,
for Wright’s harpoons were in the left side of the whale, while the
boat from which they had come was now on his right side; and Mr.
Wallet’s boat had been on his right side when Hall planted his irons,
but was now behind him and well to his left. Both lines had slipped
over his back. Mr. Brown’s men had been unable to take in the slack
of their line as fast as the whale had come, and by some mischance
the whale had got a turn around his jaw. By a further mischance, the
whale turned again in the same direction, twisting the lines over
his back, and going over Mr. Wallet’s line this time. He was pretty
well tangled in the lines, and Mr. Wallet’s was wrapped about his
body once. Mr. Brown’s men were heaving in on their line as fast as
they could, and when, in the whale’s frantic career, it suddenly came
taut, it gripped his jaw like an Indian halter. This seemed to throw
him into a frenzy. He stopped, lobtailed several times, as rapidly as
such a huge mechanism can, lashing the water into foam, and caught
sight of the ship, not a quarter of a mile away. Before either of the
boats could haul up on him, he had started for her at full speed. Mr.
Brown’s line parted at the frayed spot; and before the whale had gone
very far, Mr. Wallet reached down to the hatchet at his knees, raised
it above his head, and cut. {129}

What impelled Mr. Wallet to cut I do not know. Very probably he was
simply afraid—panic-struck; although cutting loose from a fighting
whale, vicious and frenzied, and bent upon the destruction of the
boats, is perhaps not uncommon. But this whale, although vicious and
frenzied, had done no harm to the boats, so far, and cutting did not
seem justified. It seemed even less justified to the officers and
men than it did to me. As Peter told me, in confidence, he thought
there must be something wrong with that whale’s sight or sense of
direction, for he had missed his aim every time; missed by a little,
but he had missed. It was not necessary for him to say what he
thought of our second mate for cutting. I knew well enough.

The whale’s very obvious intention was to ram us, and we knew what
the consequences might be. The wheel was thrown hard over, and two
of the officers ran below. I have said that the old Clearchus was
slow in minding her helm, but she never seemed so slow as she did
on that occasion. Mr. Tilton and Mr. Baker had taken the two bomb
guns, which the men had brought up from below, before the ship had
changed her course five degrees. She went a little faster after that,
but her course was not changed many degrees when the whale was upon
us. The two bomb lances were fired over the quarter when he was less
than half a dozen fathoms away. They must have made a tremendous
commotion in the interior of the whale, for I could see him shiver,
but he did not stop swimming immediately, although there was no power
in his movements. He came on, and struck the ship a glancing blow
on the quarter which shook her from keel to trucks, and I thought
the foretopgallantmast would come down. The Admiral, up there in the
hoops, was shaken about like a pea in a box.

After the blow, the whale stopped swimming, and rested quietly just
astern of the ship—except for his {130} shivering. It was then that
Peter remarked to me on his defective sight, and observed further
that if he had had a grain of sense, he would have taken the chance
of Mr. Wallet’s cutting to get clean away, which he might have done
perfectly well. Then Mr. Baker, thinking to put a quick end to him,
I suppose, fired another bomb lance into him. This had just the
opposite effect. The whale stirred—no doubt he would have roared if
that were customary with whales—and turned, and made for the boats.

He missed again, but passed between them with open jaws, so close to
Mr. Wallet’s boat that he gathered in and crushed to splinters both
oars on the port side, and almost swamped the boat with the wave he
made. Mr. Brown was a little astern of Mr. Wallet, and as the whale
passed him, he gave a deep thrust with the lance. He had no time to
withdraw it, although he tried to, and bent the shank of the lance in
his attempt.

That was not the end of misfortune. The frayed end of line from
Mr. Brown’s boat was not completely hauled in, and there were some
fathoms still hanging down from the bow. The whale caught this frayed
end between his jaws as he passed, and worried it as a terrier does
a string. The effect was the same as if it had still been fast to
the iron in his body. The line tautened instantly, and whirled
the bow around, and then, as no attention was being given to the
loggerhead end of a frayed line with a few fathoms over the bow, it
began to snake out of its tub. I do not know how it happened—nobody
knew—but Wright somehow got a kink in the line around his leg, and
was snaked the length of the boat, kicking three men in the head on
his meteoric course and out at the bow. Mr. Brown and Wright had been
in the habit of doing without the kicking-strap. I have explained
the kicking-strap. It is a piece of heavy line which extends loosely
along the top of the clumsy cleat, and has its ends knotted under.
{131} The whale line passes under it on its way to the groove in
the stem. There was nothing, therefore, to stop Wright except the
frail peg in the stem, and breaking the peg was nothing to him. He
disappeared overboard.

Everybody in the boat had given him up when, suddenly, the line went
slack, and Wright shot to the surface. He had somehow managed to whip
out his knife and cut the line. They got him aboard the boat at once.
It was very nearly the end of poor Wright. He was in great pain and
almost done, his hip dislocated, although no bones were broken.

That was about the end of the whale. He went on for a little way,
enveloped by the twisting lines. Then he stopped, shivered once
more, and went into his flurry, spouting thick, black blood. That
flurry, as I think of it now, could not have been pleasant to see,
but I do not remember that it aroused any disgust in me at the time.
It was not far from the ship, and I can only recollect a consuming
curiosity, on my part, to see him die, and how he did it. It could
not have differed very much, except in the size of the beast, from
the scenes at John Green’s slaughter-house.

When the whale was alongside, and the cutting-in was under way, we
found that one eye was sightless and almost gone. This may have been
due to fighting, as the twisted jaw was supposed to be due to that
cause. I examined the jaw carefully when it was on deck, as did most
of the crew. The tip of the jaw was bent sidewise, about two feet of
it. It was a mystery to me, and ever since has remained a mystery,
how the jawbone of a full-grown whale could be so bent. I could
understand how it might be broken, but to be bent as this was, or to
be curled around in a spiral, as was the case in our later specimen,
it seemed to me that it would have had to be done while the whale
was young, and the bone soft and cartilaginous. I could not imagine
whales of that tender age fighting {132} fiercely enough to bend a
jaw or put out an eye, and I should be convinced—as to the bending of
the jaw—only by actually seeing the jaw of a whale bent in a fight
with another whale. It might be sufficient if I heard of such an
occurrence from a man in whose powers of observation and in whose
veracity I had absolute confidence; but who would believe the yarn of
the average whaleman? Whalemen are notoriously inaccurate observers,
anyway.

This whale was an old one, rather old for a whale, although by no
means decrepit. What that means in years of life I do not know. The
natural life of a whale, barring accidents, would be expected to be
of the same order as the life of an elephant, which is popularly
believed to live to a great age, from one hundred to three hundred
years. I should think that a whale three hundred years old would
yield little oil; and this whale of ours made nearly sixty barrels.

Poor Wright! We had no surgeon, of course, better than the captain
and Mr. Wallet. Wallet was a whale-surgeon. Wright was in great pain
for over a week, until we got into Fayal, and his thigh swelled to
great size. I used to hear him groaning at night in a subdued fashion.

{133}




CHAPTER XIV


We sighted no more whales, and made for the Azores as fast as the old
Clearchus would go, which was not at a dizzying speed. Wright was in
such distress that the old man was anxious to get him ashore as soon
as possible. He intended to call at Fayal, anyway. In addition to
Wright’s necessities, there was some slight refitting to be attended
to, he wanted another spare whaleboat, some oars, provisions, and
other small matters. He expected to meet the tender there, too. The
tender of the whaling fleet was a schooner, not what would be called
fast, but faster than any whaler. She would take home the little oil
we had, would have letters written since we left, and would take
whatever letters we had to send. I wrote up my journal fully, and
wrote letters to my father and my mother. I did not seal these, but
left them to be added to at the last minute.

That whale led indirectly to an adventure of my own. I have spoken
of the practical joke which a green hand tried to play on Black
Tony, “The Prince,” as we all called him. The green hand was Lupo, a
Portuguese who pulled midship oar in Mr. Brown’s boat, in which the
Prince had the bow oar. I do not know the real cause of the attempt,
and it is not important, but probably jealousy was at the bottom of
it. There was real malice in it, although Lupo meant that it should
pass for a joke. It happened just at twilight. I did not see the
whole of it, only the Prince standing on the rail, the sharp spade
in his hand instinctively raised to strike, his head up, the most
utter contempt in his gaze, as he looked down at Lupo from under
half-closed eyelids. He reminded me of a tiger, and very probably
he reminded Lupo of one, too. {134} Lupo was paralyzed with fear.
The Prince smiled slowly and contemptuously, and slowly lowered the
spade, but said nothing, and Lupo moved. He passed near me—I was in
the shadow of the foremast—muttering curses and threats as he went.

After that I was on the watch for them both, and about an hour later
I saw them. The Prince seemed to have forgotten Lupo’s existence, but
I had not, and I kept in the shadow and watched him closely, as he
edged nearer and nearer to the place where the Prince was working. We
were trying-out, and everybody was busy. Lupo himself was supposed to
be busy. He kept one hand back by his hip—on a knife, as it turned
out—and in the other hand he carried either a mincing-knife or a
boarding-knife. The light was too poor and uncertain for me to be
sure which it was, but either was a formidable weapon. I remember
just the feeling I had at the roots of my hair, and the prickling
all over my body, and the way I smiled, for I found myself about to
leap on him. I did not make up my mind to do it, I simply found that
I was going to do it, and I was filled with an exaltation of joy at
the knowledge. Call it what you will and explain it how you may, it
was pure joy of a kind that I have known many times since, but never
equal to that first time.

Well—I leaped just as he was raising his weapon, whatever it was,
and as I leaped I gave a little nervous laugh of excitement. He had
not seen me, and he was startled, and dropped his weapon, which
clattered on the deck. I seized him about the body, pinning his
elbows to his sides; but he was larger and stronger than I was, and
partially freed them. I felt a warm sting in my hip, and knew that
he had used his knife. Then I got thoroughly mad. When I was in that
condition I felt nothing, blows, knife thrusts, or anything else. It
is a curious phenomenon, and I suppose not peculiar to myself, that
in such a situation, when my rage is once completely aroused—it {135}
never took much to rouse it—I seemed to lose all sense of pain,
all feeling. It was always so with me, even as a very small boy. I
attacked Lupo in a fury with hands and feet and teeth. What he did to
me I did not know.

The fight did not last long. Suddenly he went down; inexplicably to
me until my vision cleared, and I saw Lupo lying at full length on
the deck, and the Prince stooping over him, holding a mincing-knife
at his throat like the knife of a guillotine. I fully expected to see
him beheaded on the instant. I wanted to see his head roll away, and
blood spurting from his neck.

“You move,” whispered the Prince, “and—”

Lupo heard the whisper, and he did not move, for the edge of the
knife was in contact with his throat. Then others came, and the
Prince rose to his feet, laid down his mincing-knife quietly, and
came and stood by me, while Lupo was led away.

“You hurt, Tim?” asked the Prince. “He knife you?”

I laughed a little nervously. The sense of feeling had not come back
completely.

“I guess so,” I answered, “but I don’t feel it.”

“Le ’s see,” he said. He took up a lantern and looked me over. Lupo’s
knife had found only certain soft portions of my anatomy, and those
far from any vital part.

The Prince laughed. “I see. All right. No harm, but you not sit down
much for a while. Better go to the old man and get fixed up, though.
Good boy, Tim! Great boy! You make good fight. Tony won’t forget. He
won’t forget.”

All this time he was patting my shoulder. Then, as I did not move, he
led me aft, keeping his hand on my shoulder.

“Now go below,” he said, giving me a gentle push toward the cabin
stairs.

I found Captain Nelson there, sitting at the cabin table. The row on
deck had been noiseless, and he had not been disturbed. He fixed me
up with some simple remedy. {136}

“It ’ll bleed a few minutes,” he said. “Let it. Now tell me the whole
story. Been in a fight, have you?”

I told him the whole story, and he made no comment whatever, although
I was expecting something, whether praise or blame I did not know.
I never felt sure how he would take any of my exploits. But he said
nothing, and I bade him good-night, and went to turn in. I did not go
to sleep immediately. My wounds gave me no pain whatever, but I was
still in a condition of excitement.

In the morning, however, I was so sore and lame that I dressed
with difficulty. We were under way again, and Wright was no worse,
although he certainly was no better. He told me that they had Lupo in
irons, and that they would hand him over to the consul in Fayal, who
would want my story again. This piece of information elated me, while
filling me with apprehension and nervousness. I must be sure that I
had my story straight, and I wrote it out at once, while it was all
fresh in my mind.

Later in that day I was studying trigonometry, and found myself
beyond my depth, when Mr. Brown came along. I was immersed in
mathematics, and thinking of nothing but spherical angles. He stood
for a few minutes, watching me, and half smiling to himself.

“Tim,” he said at last.

I looked up, startled at his abruptness.

“Yes, sir?”

“I guess that you had no intention of getting in that fight, but
suddenly found yourself in it. Is n’t that so?”

“Well—yes, sir.” I did not like to tell him of my joy in it, or of my
blind fury, but he must have guessed that too.

“I ’m afraid you like to fight.”

“Well—I did n’t know that I liked it, sir.”

“It ’s right that you should like it, in a good cause, but you ’ll
have to be on your guard. I like it—or I used to—and it let me in for
these.” {137}

With that he opened his shirt, and showed me three old scars almost
over his heart. I gaped at them.

“Just escaped with my life,” he added, smiling again. “My ribs
stopped it. And I have other scars. And the cause was n’t good. I
show you these only to let you know that I know what I am talking
about. Be on your guard, boy.”

I was still gaping up at him. “Where?” I asked.

“Batavia,” he answered shortly, “years ago. I had got down pretty
far. I don’t want you to. Now let ’s see what bothers you.”

So we took up that question of angles. I had forgotten it.

When we had finished our session, I went on deck. It was nearly five
o’clock, or two bells. The breeze had lightened, and the old ship
lumbered along lazily, pitching slowly in the swells, and now and
then throwing sheets of spray from her forefoot when a sea chanced
to break with it. I could not see it, but I could hear it. I stood
behind the steersman, and I forgot Batavia and Mr. Brown as I looked
out astern over our slowly seething wake in a golden ocean, with
crimson lights, and with shadows of dark green and blue in the seas
which chased us. The crew were finishing the cleaning up of the ship
with ashes from the try-works, and their noise sounded faintly behind
me. I lost myself once more.

There was no land in sight, and no vessel, nothing but that gently
heaving, golden ocean; but I imagined that the Elizabeth Islands
were concealed behind haze on the horizon, and that I was bound home
across the Bay. I wondered how my father would seem, and what he
was doing at that moment; and I saw in imagination my mother’s face
as she caught sight of me. I knew what she would be doing at that
moment. She would be cooking supper—perhaps it was half an hour too
early to be cooking supper, but soon she would be cooking supper;
{138} or frying doughnuts, although she was more apt to do that in
the morning; or making soda biscuit. I could just see the great pan
of them, and mother stooping before the open oven door. We had a
plenty of good, homely food, and mother’s soda biscuits were—well,
they were mother’s soda biscuits. There was nothing like them.

We got into Fayal in about a week. Wright was taken ashore the first
thing, and put into the hands of a surgeon. We left him there.
His hip was pretty bad, and he was really sick besides. He had
consumption, although he would not acknowledge it. He went back to
New Bedford on the tender, which left after we did, and I am afraid
we all forgot him quickly.

Lupo was delivered to our consul, and was also sent back on the
tender, according to the best recollection I have of the matter to
be tried in New Bedford—or in the Federal Court in that district. I
had to sign and swear to a deposition, which was merely a copy of my
journal of the fight. When that duty was over I felt much better, for
it had weighed on my mind for some days, although it turned out to be
nothing but a formality, and the consul was very kind and friendly,
as was everybody concerned except Lupo. I do not know what became of
him.

The tender was waiting for us. I finished up my journal, so far,
and my letters. The letters were not long, for all my narrative was
contained in my journal. There was a long letter from my mother,
filled with the news of home since I had left, and with the kind
of thing that mothers’ letters are always filled with. Boys treat
them carelessly sometimes, and affect not to value them, but they
always do value them, I think. My father had written a postscript
to my mother’s letter, not long, for my father never wrote long
letters, and was not given to that form of self-expression—to any
form of self-expression, for that matter. I wore that letter to
a rag, carrying it about with me, and reading it and re-reading
it. It brought {139} back my homesickness. I rather cherished my
homesickness, I think.

We had about a hundred barrels of oil to send home, and to be put
aboard the tender, supplies and provisions to get, and a whaleboat
if we could, and two men to recruit to take the places of Wright and
Lupo, and we were likely to stay there four or five days at least.

Some of us were given liberty ashore, and Peter, the Prince, Black
Man’el, and I undertook a tour into the interior. I cannot now
remember much about that trip. I know that we wandered about the town
for a half a day, and saw a little white and ancient-looking chapel,
which we were told that Columbus had visited on his return from
discovering America; and that we traveled on foot into the country.
Fayal is less mountainous than most of the other islands, but the
roads were not good. On the high ground back from the town we passed
farms, and many small, round, terraced areas, not much bigger than
a barn floor, with low walls of small boulders. They were floored
with a very hard sort of clay. I believe these areas were used as
threshing-floors. I remember best that I was pretty sore still.

Our oil was transferred, supplies and provisions on board, the new
men shipped, and Captain Nelson impatient to get away; but several of
the liberty men were not back, and although their liberty was not up
until the next day Mr. Tilton was sent ashore with two men to find
them. Mr. Tilton knew the places in Fayal where they would be likely
to be, and he came back in a little over an hour, bringing the men,
who were very drunk, and singing and shouting, or maudlin or sullen
and vicious, according to their natures. Azevedo soused them with
cold water, and we got under way at once.

Our course was a little east of south until we struck the northeast
trades in latitude 28° N., although there was a good easterly wind
all the way from Fayal, and the {140} Clearchus did pretty well
for her. We did not stop at Tenerife, which would have been several
hundred miles out of our way. With the trades on our quarter we did
better yet on a course a little west of south. This took us to the
Cape Verde grounds.

During all this time from Fayal up to getting on the Cape Verde
grounds, we hardly started a sheet, and the men had a good deal of
time to themselves. Most of them were occupied with scrimshawing. I
finished my pie marker, but did not begin anything else. A boy on
shipboard does not have nearly as much spare time as would naturally
be supposed by people who do not know; none of the crew have, either,
although the crew is much larger than necessary for working the
ship, and they do not care much for appearances, or for doing things
smartly or in shipshape fashion. A boy has none of the duties of the
men, except pulling and hauling when the boats are away, but he is
at the beck and call of all officers. I really do not know whether
all the officers have that right, but that was the way it worked out,
and I never questioned it. Then I had my studies, at which I was
really working. What spare time I had I preferred to spend on deck,
gazing at the sky and the sea, and what I could see in them, rather
than working with my eyes in my hat. There was little to be seen in
the air, but the sea sometimes seemed alive with porpoises, and one
day I saw a dolphin swimming just below the surface of the water
alongside the ship. As it passed, with no perceptible effort, under
the seas, with the sun shining upon it, it showed beautiful colors,
changing every instant from one delicate shade of blue or green to
another, like dissolving views. Then there came another and another,
and flying fish leaping from the water. Some of the flying fish came
aboard, or went clear across the deck in their flight, and I tried to
catch them in my cap as they passed. I did catch three.

In about 14° N. latitude we ran into the doldrums, {141} which
prevail over but two or three degrees at this point and at this
season. We were more than a week in getting out of them. It did not
rain so much as I had expected, although the clouds hardly broke, and
heavy showers were likely at almost any time.

In about latitude 9° N. we ran out of the doldrums and into a fresh
breeze from the southwest, which the captain said was the southwest
monsoon. I did not then know what a monsoon was. It sounded like
simoon and typhoon, and I knew that some of them were ferocious and
terrible things, but I was not at all sure which was the worst. It
was the strange and foreign sound, I have no doubt, that scared me.
If typhoons had been called simple hurricanes they would not have
seemed nearly so bad. I had studied about typhoons and simoons and
monsoons, and other winds, in my physical geography at school, but
they had meant nothing to me but names, largely because they were
nothing but names to my teacher. How could they be anything more?
When we ran into it we found that the monsoon—this one, at any
rate—was nothing to be afraid of. It is a sort of seasonal trade
wind, due to the nearness, in this case, of the continent of Africa.
We changed our course to southeast, and held it until we ran into the
southeast trades a few degrees farther south; then changed again,
running nearly west at first, to accommodate the ship to the wind,
which at first was nearly south. The wind got around more to the
eastward as we went on, and when we crossed the line we could lay a
southwest course.

We crossed the equator in about longitude 25° W. The actual crossing
occurred at night, but I think that fact had nothing to do with the
attitude of the men toward that important event. They took absolutely
no notice of it, and I do not believe that more than two or three of
them thought of it at all.

In the latitude of Cape St. Roque and Pernambuco, the usual tracks
for sailing ships from the United States {142} and Europe to Cape
Horn and the Cape of Good Hope converge because of the trade winds.
The tracks of vessels, either sail or steam, from Cape Horn and
the eastern ports of South America naturally pass through the same
somewhat narrow area; but although it seems narrow when you see it on
a chart, it covers six or seven degrees of longitude, which is about
four hundred miles in this latitude. The chance of meeting ships here
is, therefore, not so great as any one might suppose, but we did see
five ships in four days. We spoke none of them, although we did try
to speak one, a big ship which Captain Nelson thought was bound to
New York. He wanted to send letters, and we all hastily got together
what we had to send—there was no time to write more than a half dozen
words—and made up a packet.

The ship did not respond to our signal, however. She was nearly a
mile away, going like a race-horse, with everything she owned on her
yards, and the wind just abaft the beam. She may not have seen our
signal—she may not have looked for it, her master being unwilling to
go to the very considerable trouble involved in taking a packet of
letters from an old whaler. At any rate, she did not stop or give
any sign. She was a beautiful sight as she passed to windward under
her cloud of canvas, making a good sixteen knots, bowing slowly
and gracefully, and shouldering the seas out of her way, smothered
in foam to her knightheads. There is nothing so beautiful as a
full-rigged clipper ship with all her towering spread of sail, and
with as much wind as she can stagger under. I watched her as long as
I could see her, thinking that merely sailing in such a ship must be
sheer pleasure such as we in the Clearchus could not realize. I found
that I was smiling to myself. I wish that the day of the sailing ship
might come again. It really seems as if it might. There is a wide
field for the large, fast sailing ship. There is none for the small,
slow ship. After all, it is a {143} question of costs: crews and
wages against investment and depreciation and the price of coal or
oil.

We kept on down the coast of South America, but well out of sight
of land, for ten days. For the first half of the time we had the
southeast trades, which were very nearly east, and nothing happened
to break the pleasant monotony. I read the “Lives of the Navigators,”
for before long we should be off the coast of Patagonia, and I wished
to prepare for that experience. No information was to be despised,
and who knows how much the true Patagonians have changed in three
hundred years? I kept track of Peter’s scrimshawing too, although I
did none myself, and I devoted a good deal of time to my studies.

Mr. Brown spent a good deal of time in helping me, and from casual
remarks and allusions that he made from time to time I had pieced out
a fragmentary history of his career. I had a pretty good notion that
Brown was not his real name, but I had no evidence of it. His story,
as far as I had been able to get at it, with some guesses on my part,
was this.

He had come of good family, with some money; how much I could not
tell, but enough to send him to a good school and to college. At
school he was rather wild and uncontrollable, and at college he
was worse. In the middle of his college course came the Civil War,
and he left college and enlisted. What his history had been in the
war I could not guess, for he made but one allusion to being in it
at all. When the war was over, he went back to college; but in his
senior year he got into some drunken scrape, and was expelled. His
father seemed to have been a hard kind of man, or perhaps he had got
discouraged and tired of pulling him out of scrapes, and he turned
him adrift.

Mr. Brown, as I must call him, wandering down upon the Boston
wharves, rather desperate, shipped in a fisherman. He had always
been used to boats. It was a very short cruise, and upon his return
he shipped in a {144} merchantman for the East. On this voyage,
as I inferred, he had not abandoned his bad habits, and somehow or
other he found himself cast adrift for the second time, and “on the
beach” at Batavia. Here he got into some row—a fight, which almost
ended him—with his outcast companions, and barely escaped with his
life. That seemed to have sobered him. He pulled himself together,
and reformed; shipped as foremast hand on a whaler which had put into
Batavia short of men, and had followed whaling for the six years
since. Now he was thirty-two or thirty-three, quiet and kind and
efficient, and he had my unqualified admiration and affection. If I
were a second Conrad I would make a book of him.

In about latitude 17° S. the southeast trades left us, and the wind
came out from the northeast and north, which suited us just as well.
We continued on our course for another five days, and then stood in
to the westward for Rio.

{145}




CHAPTER XV


We had good weather to the River Plate. Our northeasterly wind
continued until we were two days out of Rio, then pulled around into
the southwest, and came stronger. There are not many days of calms
and variable winds in this part of the ocean, and gales at this
season are rare. We were making a course almost due south, and were
several hundred miles from the coast. When we arrived off the Plate,
early in November, we reduced sail, and cruised to and fro, keeping a
sharp lookout for whales.

We had seen no birds at all on the Western grounds, and but few on
our way down; but here I saw my first albatross, before we had got
any whales. The breeze was light, but there was quite a heavy swell
rolling from the southwest, and the ship, under easy sail, was barely
moving through the water. I happened to have—or to be taking—a brief
rest from my duties, as I was very apt to do. Probably I had been
sent on some errand, and, boylike, I was performing it by standing
at the rail near the windlass, looking out over the heaving sea, and
dreaming my dreams, when I saw, far ahead of us, a white speck on
the water. The white speck would rise slowly, as the great rollers
advanced, until it was on the top of one of them; then, with the
passage of the swell, it would fall as slowly, until it was hidden in
the valley. I had the old glass hung about my neck in case we should
raise a spout. All the officers used to laugh at me for carrying that
jangling load of junk, but I did not care for their laughter, and I
was glad that I had it then, for I could not have gone after it.

I looked through the glass, and after searching over a vast expanse
of sea and sky—it is no small trick to hold {146} a glass steady
on a vessel that is heaving as the Clearchus was, but I had got
the hang of letting my feet move with the ship and keeping my body
steady—after a long search, I say, I found my white speck, and saw
that it was some sort of a great white bird, sitting high in the
water, like a gull. It may have been sleeping, but it was not when
I caught sight of it through the glass. Its head was up, and it was
looking about alertly, and at last it caught sight of the ship. The
ship was not near to it, however, and it continued to stare right at
me for a long time, until I grew embarrassed, and put the glass down.
It sounds absurd enough, but you just try looking at a distant boat
or a duck or a gull, through a glass, and if you do not have the same
impulse I will eat it—if it is the right kind of a duck. When the
glass was down, my embarrassment vanished, and I put it to my eyes
again. The bird was still watching me, looking away now and then,
and getting more nervous; but it waited until I had a distinct view
of its shape and plumage, its bill, with a hook at the end, and its
staring eyes, before taking flight. Then, with a last glance toward
the ship, it spread long, narrow wings, held them out, seemed to rise
on its feet, and began a sort of run over the surface of the water.
When it had run a hundred feet or more in this way, and was going
at great speed, it managed to take the air. Albatrosses do not take
the air easily, and the men said that they are not able to rise from
calm water, but depend on the lift of the waves. As it rose it seemed
enormous, and I was reminded of the first great blue herons I ever
saw. I was on a visit to my grandmother, in Newburyport, and as we
were going over Chain Bridge we saw four of the great birds standing
in the edge of the marsh. They saw us too; and when we stopped to get
a better view, they rose. I remember they seemed as big as houses,
as they flew off across the river, trailing their long legs. That
albatross, seen through my glass, seemed as big as {147} a house.
Probably he had a spread of wing half as large again as that of a
great blue heron.

As I stood, with the glass at my eyes, watching the albatross rise
and sail away, the surface of the sea for a great distance was in the
field of the glass. My attention was caught by a commotion—a sort of
heaving of the surface—on the side of one of the rollers, three or
four miles away. At almost the same instant a glistening black body
shot out, rode high in the water for a moment, and then sank without
a splash until only two small islands were visible. I yelled at the
top of my lungs, and as if my yell had been a signal, a vigorous
spout arose from the whale’s spiracle, plumed off to leeward, and the
melodious cry of the Admiral came down to me.

The whale was undisturbed, and lay there like a huge log, taking his
time about having his spoutings out. He was off the lee bow, and we
kept on for perhaps ten minutes, to get more to windward of him.
Then we lowered two boats. The boats had not gone far when the whale
raised his flukes lazily, and went down again; and the boats went
on to the points which their officers thought advantageous for the
whale’s rising, took down their sails, unshipped their masts, and
waited.

They had been loafing there about a quarter of an hour when,
suddenly, without warning of any kind, the body of a whale shot clear
of the water, between the boats, and fell back with a tremendous
splash. This was too much for the nerves of one of the green hands,
who let loose a yell. The whale had no difficulty in hearing that
yell. We heard it on the ship. The whale, which was not the one they
had been waiting for, but another, lobtailed twice, and made off
between the boats, to windward, before the crews could get their oars
in the water. The whale was evidently “gallied,” and was swimming
head out. Although the boats took up the chase at once, and we
hastily lowered another boat to head him off, if {148} possible,
that boat was too late, and he passed a quarter of a mile ahead of
the ship. The first two boats, seeing that they were rowing a losing
race, returned to their stations, to wait until the first whale
rose; but the boat we had lowered, which was the fifth mate’s boat,
continued the chase for five miles. It got no nearer in the five
miles of hard rowing, and then gave it up, and returned.

Meanwhile the two boats were back again, watching the water for a
sign of the reappearance of the first whale. The hour was almost up,
and I glanced aloft at the Admiral’s station at the foremasthead. The
Admiral was not there, for he rowed bow oar in Mr. Snow’s boat—the
fifth mate’s—but another man was manipulating the signal flag. I had
learned a little of their system of signalling, and I saw that he was
telling them that their whale had risen far to leeward. I looked and
could just make out the spout, about a couple of miles to leeward of
the boats. The whale seemed to be reconnoitering. He swam slowly in a
circle, always keeping his distance from the boats and from the ship,
and working to windward.

“Clean gallied,” said a voice behind me. “Damn that man! They may as
well come aboard.”

That seemed to be Captain Nelson’s opinion, for the boats were soon
called back. It was a disgusted lot of men that came over the side.
I had no difficulty in spotting the man who had yelled, and thereby,
as they all maintained, had lost them a perfectly good whale. It was
Kane, in Mr. Brown’s boat. He looked sheepish and ashamed, and said
not a word. Kane afterward became one of our best men.

We were not always to have that kind of luck. A week later we raised
whales again. Mr. Baker and Mr. Brown lowered at once, and after
about half an hour, when more whales had come to the surface, Mr.
Tilton and Mr. Wallet. Mr. Baker struck almost immediately. His whale
was rather a small one which happened to rise just ahead {149} of
the boat, and Macy got both irons fast. The whale then started to
run under water, coming to the surface now and then to spout. He ran
so hard that it was impossible to pull up for lancing, and they were
unable even to hold all they had, and had to give him line. He was
heading for Montevideo, and passed out of sight with Mr. Baker in the
bow, holding a useless lance, and swearing volubly, I have no doubt;
and with Macy holding hard at the steering oar, and the boat throwing
a small cataract of spray from either side.

Meanwhile a second whale had risen some distance ahead of Mr. Brown.
They pulled hard for it, a much longer pull than Mr. Baker’s. When
Mr. Baker was well on his way to the coast of South America, and I
turned my glass on Mr. Brown’s boat, he had succeeded in getting
near the unsuspecting whale, approaching from behind. The whale
had just become aware of it—he had not seen it, but probably he
had heard it—and was preparing to see about having something done
about it. What that would have been I was never to find out, for the
boatsteerer was just taking in his oar. The boatsteerer was Starbuck,
an energetic Nantucketer from Mr. Tilton’s boat, who had been
given Wright’s place over the head of Black Tony—the Prince—to my
disappointment. I think most of the men would have been glad to see
the Prince get it. The officers would have been glad, too; but the
Prince was as black as the ace of spades. That fact stuck in their
crops. It always does, whatever may be said; and, although there was
no serious objection to a black boatsteerer, that would be the end of
promotion for him, while Starbuck was one of themselves, and would go
as high as his natural ability would take him.

Well, Starbuck was just taking in his oar. They were very close,
and he had no time to get his breath after his hard pull, but must
throw the harpoon at once; and it was his first whale, and he was
undoubtedly nervous. The {150} consequence was that he did not make
a good dart, and although the harpoon struck, it was not thrown
hard enough, and only the barb penetrated. His second iron missed
altogether.

Fortunately the whale did not seem greatly disturbed, but only a
little surprised. He appeared to change his mind about the boat,
and swam off at a leisurely gait. Mr. Tilton was nearly up by this
time, and Mr. Brown, fearing that the harpoon would pull out at any
moment, signalled him to get fast to the whale. Mr. Tilton did. His
boatsteerer, Azevedo, a stocky, heavily set Western Islander, sunk
both irons to the haft in the whale’s other side, just behind the
flipper. Whether the harpoons had touched a vital spot I do not know,
but the actions of the whale were peculiar. In fact, he did not act
at all, but lay like a vast log on the water, giving both Mr. Brown
and Mr. Tilton all the chance in the world to pull up and lance him.
This they did, both, one from each side. The whale lay so low in the
water that I could see nothing of him, but it turned me rather sick
to see them both pumping their lances up and down in him, seeking the
life, that being the great arterial reservoir I have mentioned. Mr.
Brown found it, and the whale began to spout thick blood. It seemed
to me a revolting business, mere butchery of a great beast that was
harmless and passive. Was this the career I had chosen? I put the
glass down, feeling a little sick at my stomach and rather faint, and
leaned against the mast and closed my eyes, missing the flurry, which
they told me afterwards was lively enough to make up for the whale’s
previous inaction.

By putting down the glass and closing my eyes I missed the first part
of an incident which would have given me some pleasure. The ship had
got pretty near the boats by that time, and I was roused by a shout
from the Admiral and from the crew on deck. Mr. Wallet was slow in
getting into action, as was quite usual with him. Two other {151}
whales had come up, and one of them, chancing to rise very near Mr.
Wallet’s boat just as he was taking in his sail and about to unstep
his mast, made for the boat without an instant’s hesitation. It was
this that had caused the men to shout. There was nothing harmless
and passive about that whale, and I could have killed him without
a qualm—if I had been in the boat and had had a chance. The men in
the boat evidently saw no chance to do anything but get out, for
the whale had gone under water a short distance from the boat, and
they knew what he would do next. He did it. He rose at some speed
directly under the boat, and tossed it into the air as if it had been
a straw, staving it completely, the men spilling out on each side.
Two of the men had jumped out before the whale struck them, and were
swimming away, and the others seemed to be swimming away from the
fragments of the boat as fast as they could, but I could not see, at
the time, whether they all got away or not. It was all white water
there. The whale was in a furious temper, and chewed the wreckage of
the boat and the oars to splinters, and then thrashed the mass with
his flukes. He missed the men, probably failing to see them; and,
having done all the damage he could, he made off slowly, pausing in
a truculent way as if he was in doubt whether he should attack Mr.
Brown and Mr. Tilton. I have had no doubt, since I have come to know
whales better than I did then, that he would have attacked them if he
had seen them clearly. They were over a quarter of a mile away. But
you never can tell what a whale will do.

Mr. Brown immediately cast loose from the dead whale, but he did not,
as I expected, go at once to the rescue of the men from Mr. Wallet’s
boat. These men were swimming about in the water. I could just see
their heads. They had begun to go back to the wreckage of the boat
and pick up pieces of oars and fragments of planks from the broken
boat to cling to. Mr. Brown, so far as I could {152} see, paid them
no attention, but made after the whale, which had abandoned its
leisurely gait, and was swimming in a business-like way, as though he
had just remembered an appointment. The chase was a short one, for
the boat did not gain at all with the men pulling their hearts out,
and Mr. Brown gave it up, and went back to pick up the men.

Mr. Tilton had also cast loose, having put a waif on the dead whale—a
waif is a little flag on a pole, which is stuck in a hole made with
a spade for that purpose—and he had gone in chase of other whales
which had come up. But the pod seemed to be thoroughly alarmed, and
the three whales in sight were making off at a pace too fast for the
boats. That made six whales in the pod, for I thought there were no
more.

Both Mr. Brown and Mr. Tilton appeared to be of my opinion, for they
were giving the dead whale all their attention. Both boats were
alongside of it for some time. I could not see just what they were
doing, but they were evidently getting ready to tow it—probably
making the lines fast—and presently the two boats straightened out
and began pulling toward the ship. It was hard work towing that
whale, and they got ahead so slowly that I could not mark their
progress, the whale nearly under water, and the seas washing gently
over his back. The ship was bearing down on them, and they stopped
rowing, and waited for her.

There were already sharks about the carcass, half a dozen or more,
attracted in some mysterious way. They had come in with it; had
appeared with the first blood. It took some little manœuvring to
get the carcass in proper position close along the starboard side,
where the cutting-stage is rigged, the flukes forward, and the head
about at the gangway. Then a line with a sinker attached was dropped
between the ship and the body of the whale. Beyond the sinker was
more line with a float on the end. {153} The sinker was dropped down
deep enough to carry the float down clear of the body, then pulled
up again, and the float came up beyond the whale. It always does. I
never saw it fail. The men in the boat got that line, and hauled in
on it, and pulled it all in, and a heavier line attached to its end,
and then a chain cable to which the heavy line was fast. They made
the chains fast, the fluke chain about the tail at the smallest part,
just before it begins to spread into the flukes, so that the carcass
would turn in it freely. The flukes sometimes measure, from point to
point, as much as twenty feet.

We began cutting-in at once. It was already well on into the
afternoon when we began, and within a couple of hours we sighted Mr.
Baker’s boat returning dejectedly, without their whale. The men soon
came aboard, rather crestfallen. Peter told me that the shank of one
iron twisted off, and the other pulled out. The whale was still going
too fast for the boat, and there was nothing to be done except to
come back.

“Best we could do, we could n’t heave in hard enough to get close,”
he said. “Then Mr. Baker tried pitchpoling.”

“How do you pitchpole, Peter?” I asked.

“Pitchpole?” said Peter. “Why, the shaft of a lance is light, of pine
or some light wood, and you take it under the end on your hand, with
the other hand to guide it. Then you toss it in the air blade first.
Of course you aim at the whale. You must ’a’ done the same thing with
a stick or an arrow many a time. The head being heavy and the shaft
light, the blade ’ll keep ahead. If you ain’t too far off, and if
you ’re any kind of a shot, it ’ll come down into the whale, but the
aim ain’t certain. It can’t be. You haul the lance back by the warp
that ’s fast to the shaft. Mr. Baker missed him clean the first time.
He must ’a’ been making twelve knots, right into the wind. The second
shot just tickled his flukes, and he gave such a powerful start that
the first iron twisted off as if it had {154} been made of cheese.
That first iron had been doing all the pulling, and when it went that
brought a sudden strain on the second iron, and it ripped out. So
there we were, and there was the whale leaving us at a mile a minute,
more or less. We came back.”

After supper I went on deck again, and saw Peter standing at the
starboard rail. I joined him, and we looked over at the whale lying
there. The cutting-in had been suspended for the night. It was dark,
and I could not see the carcass, but I saw in the water lambent
streams of phosphorescence moving slowly and lazily to and fro;
little streaks of bubbles which glowed for a brief second or two, and
then were gone. Now and then there was a burst of the tiny glowing
bubbles, as a fin moved powerfully. The streaks of uncanny, lambent
light seemed to interlace, but they all ended at the carcass of the
whale and outlined it, leaving it in black darkness.

“See, Peter!” I said. “What a lot of sharks! How many there must be
in the ocean!”

This whale was smaller than would have been thought from his actions,
and it had been possible to get the whole case on deck. It had been
reposing behind Peter and me while we discussed the matter of sharks.
It was emptied the next morning, after the blubber was all in and the
carcass cut adrift.

Bailing the case furnished sport for many of the crew. It was not
necessary to use the case-bucket, but every kind of a receptacle was
used, scoops and tin pails and old tin cans being in especial favor.
When the case was half empty, a man got inside. He looked perfectly
contented and happy, standing in the sloppy, slushy stuff up to his
waist, ladling it out with a scoop, and he seemed to revel in the
bath of oil and spermaceti. His getting in raised the level of the
stuff, so that tin pails and tin cans once more came into easy use.
I had never seen oil flowing so freely, slopping and spilling over
everything. {155}

When the trying-out was over, we found that we had made just over
forty-seven barrels from that whale; pretty near the average, taking
them as they come. The average is always called “five and forty.”

{156}




CHAPTER XVI


Nothing of note happened for very nearly a month. We had the usual
variations of weather, good and bad, but mostly good, and no gales.
We had no luck, however. Few whales were raised, and those that we
did see were shy and wild, and we got none of them. It was December
before we got another.

Early one morning I was out on deck. I had been sent on some errand
by Mr. Wallet. I was never very quick on Mr. Wallet’s errands, and
I stopped by the windlass, where I was out of sight from aft, and
looked out forward. It was a perfect morning, the sun just up,
making a path of gold over the tops of the seas, and the Clearchus
lazily rolling along that golden path. Of course I lost myself in
contemplation, half shut my eyes, and drank in the beauty of it.
Mr. Wallet and his errands were forgotten, the oily, grimy ship was
behind me, and the gentle breeze blew on my cheek. It was not strong
enough to keep the heavy sails filled out, and the jibs, over my
head, almost flapped with every roll of the ship. I imagined myself
Magellan, and ahead of me that unknown shore, on which a huge savage,
resplendent in yellow paint, danced and made gestures of invitation.
It was very real to me, and when there suddenly appeared a tiny, soft
feather in the savage’s hair—appeared, seemed to stand still for an
instant, a tiny, drooping ostrich plume, drifted, and disappeared—I
did not know it for what it was. It came again, the tiny, drooping
ostrich plume; and at the same moment the quavering cry from high
over my head—“Blo-o-ws!” The dancing savage vanished, and I ran.

There were between three and six whales in the pod; I could not tell
just how many, but I set those limits. I {157} waited until I was
sure Mr. Brown’s boat would go; then I went unobtrusively and stood
beside the captain, for I thought he might let me go in it. He took
no notice of me, and I walked away, my heart in my boots. All five
boats were away.

We had seen nothing of the Annie Battles since that day near
Hatteras, except a dissolving view of her topsails going south, just
as we went in to Fayal. Captain Coffin had not been waiting on the
Western grounds, in spite of his promise. I think that all of us,
including the officers, had completely forgotten her. I know that her
very existence had slipped from my mind, and our last meeting with
her was of the same order as our picking up the man with his foot
bitten off by sharks, but of less importance. Now, as I watched the
boats sailing slowly over that smooth sea, and spreading out fanwise
as they went, I caught sight of topmasts rising to the eastward. They
must have been in plain sight for some time before I saw them, with
their square topsails, for we were already raising her lower sails.
It was the Battles, there could be no doubt about it.

Where we were, the wind was nothing more than a light, variable air,
mostly from the southwest; but the Battles was bringing with her a
brisk breeze from the southeast. I ran below to get my glass—that
load of junk—and hung it about my neck. When I got on deck again the
Battles seemed to be hesitating, coming up slowly into the wind,
her topsails shaking and her booms evidently swinging. It was as if
she no longer felt the directing hand of any man; as if there was
nobody at the helm, or she had lost her rudder. I thought it queer
behavior, and so did Captain Nelson. He was gazing steadfastly at
her, muttering to himself, and wondering what Fred Coffin could be up
to. Then he saw me with the glass hanging about my neck.

“Here, Tim,” he said, “give me your glass, and run below and get
mine.” {158}

I gave it to him, and ran below without a word. I was gone but a
couple of minutes, but when I got back I saw that the Battles had
trimmed her sheets, and was paying off again.

“See anything, sir?” I asked eagerly.

He shook his head. “Her decks have n’t risen yet,” he said. “Seems to
be all right now. I did n’t know but she was in trouble, and we ’d
better run down to her; and we have n’t got much of a crew left
aboard.”

The breeze had not reached the boats yet—it had not reached the
whales—but the boats were very much nearer the pod of whales than the
Battles was, and our mates evidently thought that they would be fast
long before the Battles could lower a boat, and they held on under
sail. But the whales were wandering directly away from us, and the
Battles, her hesitation over, was now coming fast. I saw first one
boat and then another hurriedly take in sail, and the men taking to
their oars. I could see the Battles plainly through my glass, and I
almost caught the wave she was carrying under her bow. Now and then I
saw the top of it through the mirage, as she threw the spray high. It
seemed to me that she was almost on top of the whales. She was not,
of course. That phenomenon of loss of perspective in using a glass
has since become familiar to me.

Suddenly the Battles came up into the wind, throwing her topsails
aback. It stopped her short, all standing. Two of her boats were away
almost before she had stopped, and the men in them pulling as if in
a race, the boatheader throwing his weight, with his free hand, on
the after oar at each stroke. It was a race in fact, and the prize
was a thousand dollars or so. I forget what the price of oil was at
the time, but I have the impression that it was low. The Battles’ men
were fresh, ours were not, but I saw two of our boats, Mr. Baker’s
and Mr. Tilton’s, it turned out, although I could not distinguish
them at that {159} distance—both had been helping the pulling in the
same way that the boatheaders of the Battles had—come up on one side
of a whale just as one of the boats from the Battles came up on the
other side. All three harpooners seemed to dart at the same instant.

What happened then I could not see clearly. It was all pretty far
away, and all I saw was a confusion of boats and men, and the great
flukes of the whale rising instantly, and crashing down on the sea
near one of our boats, just missing it and apparently throwing a man
into the water. Then the whale started off, towing the three boats.
The details I had from Peter later.

Macy and Azevedo rarely missed a dart, and they had not missed this
time, in spite of their hard pull. Macy had both irons in to the
hafts, and Azevedo one. Azevedo was like a bull in strength, but he
was not so well placed as Macy—near the flukes—and his second iron
did not bite deep, not much above the barb. When the flukes crashed
down on the water Mr. Tilton’s boat was deluged, and Almeida, a green
hand, was so scared that he jumped overboard. They could not stop
then to pick him up, but he was picked up later, badly frightened,
but none the worse otherwise. It is doubtful whether any one in Mr.
Tilton’s boat gave him a thought, for the whale had started running.

Nobody in either Mr. Baker’s boat or in Mr. Tilton’s seemed to know
definitely who had struck first, although they all said, with more
or less emphasis, Macy or Azevedo. There was no agreement as to
which of the two it was, all in Mr. Baker’s boat saying Macy, and
all in Mr. Tilton’s saying Azevedo; and I really think there can
be no doubt that all three boats had struck at as nearly the same
instant as possible. Certainly the Battles’ men held up their end
of the argument a little later. The whale did not run fast nor far,
with three boats towing, and every man in every boat heaving on his
line for all he was worth. The {160} three mates were standing in
the bows with lances poised in their hands; and Mr. Baker, seeing a
chance, pitchpoled. At the same instant the mate of the Battles—if it
was the mate—also pitchpoled. Peter said it was a pretty sight to see
the two lances in the air at the same time, as if they were from two
guns fired with the same lanyard. The lances flew true, and pierced
the whale at the same moment. They were drawn back by the light warps
attached to the hafts, each man working frantically. Mr. Baker was a
trifle quicker in recovery. The boat was almost within reach of the
whale, but not quite, and he darted the lance with great force. The
Battles’ boat was a little nearer the whale, and its lance was held
for a second while the men heaved again. Then it was plunged into the
side of the whale.

Not one of the three boats took even the usual precautions, which
seem little enough, but what chance had the whale with three lances
being churned up and down in his in’ards? He just lay still and
quivered, spouting thick blood, and gave up the ghost. Then came a
ticklish time.

“For a quarter of an hour,” said Peter, who was telling me the story,
“I did n’t know whether there was going to be a fight or not, but I
rather thought there was. Mr. Baker and the mate of the Battles—he
was one of the mates, I s’pose—had it back and forth across the back
of the whale, and they both got pretty mad. Mr. Baker said they were
first up.

“ ‘You were not!’ said the Battles’ mate. ‘I was first up. But what
has that to do with it anyway? Our iron struck first.’

“ ‘Like hell,’ said Mr. Baker. ‘Macy’s iron struck first. Whale ’s
ours. I ’d swear to it.’

“ ‘No doubt,’ said the Battles’ mate; ‘but that don’t make it so.’

‘What d’ ye mean?’ said Mr. Baker. ‘Call me a liar, do you?’ {161}

“ ‘I ’ll call you anything you like!’ said the Battles’ mate. ‘I ’ll
call you thief if you take this whale. It ’s ours.’

“Mr. Baker gave him back as good as he sent, and they got madder and
madder. Just as I thought they were going to get in a fight over it,
Mr. Baker began to cool down, and the Battles’ mate began to cool
down too. We were two boats to his one, and if we chose to just take
the whale, he could n’t prevent us, and he knew it. Mr. Baker did n’t
want to do it that way, and he knew well enough what the old man
would think of it.

“ ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to fight about it. That
would n’t do you any good, nor me either, though we could do what we
pleased if it came to a fight. We ’ll see Cap’n Coffin and fix it up
with him.’

“ ‘Fix it up with me, here and now,’ said the Battles’ mate. ‘You
can’t see Cap’n Coffin. He ’s confined to his cabin.’

“ ‘Confined to his cabin!’ said Mr. Baker. ‘What ’s the matter with
him?’

“ ‘Nothing much,’ said the Battles’ mate. ‘Sticks in his cabin, and
won’t see anybody.’

“ ‘That ’s queer,’ said Mr. Baker. ‘How does he give his orders?’

“ ‘Instructions in writing to be left on the cabin table every
morning. No business of yours, but I don’t mind telling you.’

“ ‘Queer!’ said Mr. Baker. ‘Very queer.’

“It is mighty queer too, when you come to think of it,” said Peter.
“But I don’t know the rights of it.

“The Battles’ mate was impatient. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘what ’you got to
say?’

“Mr. Baker kind o’ smiled. ‘Fair division,’ he says; ‘we ’ll take the
blubber, and you take the carcass.’

“ ‘_What!_’ roars the Battles’ mate. ‘What the—’ Then his eye falls
on the whale, and travels over it, what you {162} can see of it,
and that ain’t much. He scratched his head, his eye travelling over
the whale from end to end. ‘ I ’ll take you,’ he says quietly. ‘The
carcass to be whole, and to be delivered at our side. Does the
carcass include the case?’

“ ‘The carcass does _not_ include the case,’ said Mr. Baker, very
sarcastic. He had been looking the whale over. ‘Don’t you think
you ’ve got enough?’

“ ‘I ’ll take a chance,’ said the Battles’ mate, smiling. ‘Delivered
at our side, remember.’

“ ‘I ’ll go halfway,’ said Mr. Baker. ‘Be ready to take it there.
I ’ll stand to my bargain, but I ’ve an idea that the joke ’s on me.’

“And the joke ’s on him, I ’m thinking, Tim, and on us. Come and take
a look.”

He led me to the side. The whale we had been talking about, with one
other, lay there below us.

“Now,” said Peter, “if you ’ll notice, that whale looks kind o’ thin
and withered-like for a whale of his size. It ’s not enough to see
unless you were taking special notice, but the Battles’ mate was;
and it ’s my idea that he ’ll not make more ’n thirty-five or forty
barrel, when he ought to make sixty. The Battles’ mate no doubt
expects to find ambergris in him, and Mr. Baker thinks he will, and I
think he will—unless we can find a way to get it out of him without
cutting him open. Mr. Baker gave his word not to cut the carcass.”

“How could they do that, Peter?”

“Well, Tim, I ’ve never seen it done, but we could try. Swing an
anchor, or some other heavy thing, say a hogshead o’ water, above
him, and let it drop a few times on his stomach or his insides so ’s
to stir ’em up well, and we might get a little. It ’d be worth
trying.”

When we had finished cutting-in, we did try just that. I suppose they
were afraid an anchor would tear the carcass, but a cask of sea-water
would not. We salvaged {163} a few scraps of ambergris, about a
thousand dollars’ worth, just enough to let the officers know what a
poor bargain Mr. Baker had made. I never knew how much of the stuff
the Battles got from this whale. Probably ten times as much.

Altogether that was one of our unlucky days. Mr. Wallet let the Annie
Battles herself get between him and his whale, and take it away from
him. He did not exert himself or his men to get it, it seemed to us,
and Captain Nelson’s displeasure was clear enough. I have no doubt it
was clear to Mr. Wallet, for I saw the captain talk forcibly to him
when he came aboard, although I do not know what he said. Mr. Snow
being on the end of the line farthest from the Battles, got his whale
without molestation.

Mr. Brown’s boat fared the worst. He was waiting for his whale to
rise, and the second boat from the Battles came up opposite him, and
waited also. When the whale rose, Starbuck struck him first. There
could be no doubt about it. I saw it all clearly through my glass.
Notwithstanding, the Battles’ boat pulled up at once, and sunk an
iron in him. At that third iron—Starbuck had two irons fast—the whale
started to run, and we had to give him line. While the line was
snaking out, rather slack, somehow or other, for the second time on
that voyage, it kinked and caught a man in the kink. It was Kane who
was caught, about his arm or shoulder. He had not far to go, for Mr.
Brown had put back his kicking-strap immediately after the accident
to poor Wright; but his going those few feet was rather sudden. The
kicking-strap stopped him. That might have been as unfortunate for
him as being taken overboard, but Mr. Brown, who had changed places
with Starbuck, saw it almost before it happened, and reached for the
hatchet and cut. His action was lightning-like in its quickness.
Although Kane brought up on the kicking-strap, he did not have to
start the heavy boat, {164} or quite possibly his arm might have
been torn out. As it was, he got off with a severe wrench to his
shoulder, and with a badly bruised arm. His arm turned black where
the kink had caught it, and showed the lay of the line plainly.

That was the end of that whale for us. The Battles’ boat got him.

{165}




CHAPTER XVII


Our officers were all highly indignant at the conduct of the Battles,
which was contrary to all the ethics of whaling, if not to the law of
the high seas. I overheard Captain Nelson talking with Mr. Baker, who
got very vehement about it, and wanted to take Starbuck’s whale away
from them by force.

Captain Nelson was quiet for a moment, stroking his beard, which had
got pretty ragged.

“Some excuse, perhaps,” he said at last. “Kind of a row with Fred
three or four weeks before we sailed. My house. Maybe I was a little
trifle hasty, but so was he. Both got mad, and I said more than I
meant to. Never thought he ’d—well, I ’ll go aboard of him in the
morning, and see if I can’t fix it up.”

So Lizzie Nelson was at the bottom of it all! At our house we always
spoke of her as “that Nelson girl,” a rather pretty girl in a buxom,
loud, Nelsonish sort of way; “pleasant-spoken” the best that people
said of her, and the worst much worse than that. I had the feeling
that I was warned against the wiles of Lizzie Nelson, although my
mother never actually said anything against her. You would think it
unnecessary to warn a boy of fifteen against the wiles of a girl
of twenty, but you did not know Lizzie Nelson, and my mother did.
However, I did not fancy her, nor any of her stripe. Ann McKim was
the idol of my boyhood, as she was the idol of my youth. I had no
room for fancy for the Lizzie Nelsons of the world, but there were
plenty of those who had.

We were not to know the results of Captain Nelson’s visit, for he
did not make it. The Annie Battles had finished cutting-in during
the night, and at dawn her {166} topsails were just dropping over
the horizon to the eastward. We followed. There was no chance of our
catching her, of course, unless she hove to to try out, and we could
creep up on her unbeknownst, like ’Zekiel. We soon lost her; and
although we kept on to the eastward for a couple of days, Captain
Nelson was not yet ready to leave those cruising grounds. He would
not be ready for that, with average luck, for weeks, and it was like
looking for a needle in a haystack, with the additional disadvantage
that, even if we found the needle, it would slip away at the first
sight of us. At the end of the second day we came about, and worked
back across the grounds.

While making a passage from one cruising ground to another the
distribution of duties is much the same as on a merchant vessel. When
whaling grounds have been reached, however, all this is changed.
Each boat’s crew constitutes a watch, and the night, from four bells
to four bells—from six in the evening to six in the morning—is
divided among them. The officer of the watch is the boatheader, or
mate. A watch, for a four-boat ship, is thus three hours long, and
for a five-boat ship, such as ours, two hours and forty minutes.
This easing up on the men is in order that they may be as fresh as
possible for the chase and taking of whales, which is their first and
most important business. For the same reason the crew has only the
most necessary duties during the day; and except for the necessary
change of sails morning and night, and washing down and scrubbing
the decks each morning, the day is passed in utter idleness, so far
as regular ship’s duties are concerned. The men are allowed to do
what they please: read—if they can read—play cards, mend clothes,
scrimshaw, sleep.

During the day the ship stands along under easy sail so that nothing
will be missed, usually going to windward slowly, tacking or beating;
picking up whales if they are seen and can be got. At sunset light
sails are {167} taken in, topsails close-reefed, and everything
done to insure the ship’s making as little progress as possible
during the night. They even wear ship occasionally, to keep in the
same place throughout the night. At six in the morning—four bells—or
perhaps earlier if they are in the more temperate latitudes, the crew
is called up, sail restored, decks washed and scrubbed, and she is
off again on her beating to windward. It made me think of the terns
fishing off Ricketson’s Point in Padanaram: tacking slowly, beating
to windward, the eyes above the coral-red bill, like a man at the
masthead, keeping a bright lookout for fish; then coming down swiftly
with the wind to the leeward side of their cruising ground to begin
once more their slow beating against the wind. In just this way, when
the ship has reached the windward edge of her cruising ground, she
wears around, and comes down before it, to repeat the process until
the old man has tired of it.

We had been doing this for three weeks, since the Annie Battles
parted from us, without taking any whales. We had seen but two
spouts, and lowered once without result. The other spout was sighted
about sunset, and we did not lower. I was standing, one morning, by
the rail, as I was always doing when I had a chance, and Macy was
walking the deck behind me. As he was passing I turned to him.

“No sign of the Battles,” I said. I had been thinking of her, and my
remark was only the continuation of my thought.

“No sign of the Battles,” he said cheerfully, stopping by me for a
moment. “I ’m glad of it. I thought we should surely see her again
before this, but we have n’t, and good riddance, I say.”

He began his pacing the deck again, and I strolled forward. I found
Peter sitting beside the windlass, working on his model. I never knew
Peter to be asleep. He did not seem to need sleep. I told him what
Macy had said. {168}

“Aye, Tim,” he said, “and I hope so too. The sea ’s a big place, but
it ’s a little place, too, and you ’re always running across some
vessel you don’t want to see, ’specially when she ’s on the same
business as yourself. One voyage I made to eastern ports, Canton,
Hong Kong, Shanghai, Manila, and the like, I was always meeting Tim
Fernand, who ’d been my shipmate in the navy. He ’d shipped on the
Mary Easton, and she followed us around from port to port, or beat us
to it. I was hard put to it to get rid of him, for he ’d fasten on me
like a leech, and he was a robber.”

“Like the Annie Battles.”

Peter looked up at me with a smile in his eyes, but said nothing, and
then there came down to us from the masthead the familiar, quavering
cry. Peter sighed, put down his model, and got up. It was a single
spout—from a lone whale, so far as he could judge—miles off to the
southeast. Peter turned back to me.

“Speak of the devil,” he said. “Do you see, Tim? Just there, well
beyond the whale? What do you make of it?”

I was a long time in seeing anything, but at last I made out dimly
the two slender topmasts with their yards, but no sails.

“Cutting-in, like as not,” said Peter. “If she was trying-out you ’d
see the smoke.”

We headed up toward the whale, and when we were near enough, Mr.
Wallet and Mr. Brown lowered. The whale led them a leisurely chase
directly toward the Battles, and we followed. Mr. Brown got fast,
but Mr. Wallet did not. He sailed on after the whale, which was
running away with Mr. Brown. The whale was going much faster than
Mr. Wallet’s boat was, and it was a losing chase from the moment
Mr. Brown struck. We wondered, and snickered, for it was so like
Wallet. As Peter said, it was like a drunken man chasing his hat,
{169} always hoping it would stop, and always keeping after it
with the one fixed idea. But Peter was wrong about the idea. If Mr.
Wallet had a fixed idea it was not what Peter—and all of us who
watched—thought it was, for he sailed straight up to the side of the
Battles. Although we had got within three miles of her, I could not
see clearly what was happening then, but Peter could. His eyes were
better than mine, in spite of his age.

“Now, what do you make of that?” he cried. “They ’re holding her
there, and the Battles’ crew ain’t making any sort of objection that
I c’n see. It ’s a queer vessel and a queer crew and queer doings,
and Cap’n Coffin ’s the queerest of the lot, if you believe what they
say of him—which I don’t. There goes Mr. Wallet over the side, and
that ’s queerer yet. Mebbe he thinks he can clear up the queerness,
but I miss my guess if that ’s what he thinks. If it was the old man
himself, now, or Mr. Baker, say, or Mr. Brown, I ’d say it would
be cleared up, but ’tween you and me, I doubt Mr. Wallet can if he
tries, and I doubt he tries.”

“What do you suppose, Peter,” I asked, “he means to—”

“I ain’t had time to s’pose anything, Tim,” said Peter. “There ’s
George Hall, now, wanting to go aboard, and they won’t let him. Tell
him to cast off and keep off. I c’n almost hear ’em say it. Quite
a crowd of ’em along by the gangway, and all motioning him off.
They were cutting-in, as I thought, and they ’ve let the carcass go
adrift. You can see it, I guess, going astern, just awash. Now some
of ’em take spades, and jab at the boathook, and they ’re getting
sail on her.”

Peter’s bulletins stopped, and we just stood there, gazing in silence.

“That Wallet,” he said at last, “ ’s got more sense than I gave
him credit for. You see, Tim, if it ’s desertion, which is more ’n
likely, and if we ever get hold of him {170} again, he ’ll say
that he was kidnapped by that crew of pickpockets. It ’d be hard to
prove ’t he was n’t, and it would n’t make much difference whether
anybody believed it or not. If we don’t get him—and I should think
that the old man ’d be glad to be rid of him—we ’ll never know the
rights of it, or what ’ll be done about his lay in our take so far. I
don’t know what course the—Aye, aye, sir.”

For Mr. Baker’s boat was called away, and Peter ran. Captain Nelson
himself took the boat, and the men pulled hard for the Battles; but
her mainsail was already up, and they got the foresail up and broke
out a jib, and she stood off on the wind before the boat had gone
half a mile. It was hopeless to chase her, and Captain Nelson came
back. He was very sober and stern as he came over the side, and we
watched the square topsails of the Battles gradually sinking to the
eastward, while we got ready to receive Mr. Brown and his whale.

As soon as the cutting-in and trying-out was finished we made
sail, and headed for Montevideo. It was within a couple of days of
Christmas, and the men hoped for some liberty ashore. Captain Nelson
was governed by other reasons in making for port; he wanted to send
letters, as it turned out, chiefly on account of the mysterious
behavior of the Battles, and the desertion of Wallet, I suppose,
although I never knew definitely. He let it be known that any letters
would be sent, and I wrote home, but by a piece of carelessness of my
own, my letter did not go.

We did not get into Montevideo by Christmas, as we had been more than
three hundred miles from the coast; and we had to be content with
the usual ship’s fare on that day, with the addition of plum duff
and a serving of rum. I did not take the rum, of course, but I took
the duff, which tasted good enough, although it was nothing more
than soggy dumpling, with molasses over it. I could {171} not help
thinking of my mother’s dumplings—food of a different species—and of
the turkey and cranberry sauce, and the pumpkin and apple pies, and
the apples and nuts and raisins to which my family were sitting down
on that day. No doubt they were thinking of me.

At Montevideo, which we reached in the afternoon of the twenty-sixth,
the captain sent his letters and tried to ship another man. This he
was unable to do, and he had to sail without him, a man short. The
men were disappointed in their hoped-for liberty, only one boat’s
crew getting two hours’ liberty. This crew was chosen with some care,
as the men must be those who could be relied upon to return at the
end of their two hours. We sailed at sunset, with some grumbling on
the part of the men.

Nothing was done about the second mate’s berth for more than a week,
and I did not happen to hear him mentioned, although I have an idea
that the captain talked the matter over with Mr. Baker. At last,
however, he acted, having concluded, as I supposed, that there was
little chance of getting Mr. Wallet back. There was some show of
letting the men choose, but it amounted to nothing. Macy was made
fifth mate, and the other mates moved up a peg, so that Mr. Brown was
second mate. That pleased me, and the appointment of Macy pleased
Peter, for he said that there was not a better man on the ship. I
agreed with him in that. Macy was one of the finest specimens of
man I have ever seen. He was over six feet tall, with a perfectly
proportioned figure, but his perfect proportions did not give an
adequate idea of his size unless he stood beside another man. He had
rather tightly curling flaxen hair—we called him “Towhead”—and deep
blue eyes, and a smile that won the heart of every one on whom it
shone. I felt that I should like to know him well, but it was not
easy to know him well. There was about him a certain atmosphere of
aloofness. No doubt this was due largely to a natural shyness; but,
knowing {172} less about such things then than I do now, I ascribed
it to a feeling of superiority on his part. That was his reputation
on the ship, a reputation which he did not deserve. He was a silent
giant, not given to useless motions, but you felt his power and his
alertness. It used to give me great pleasure merely to look at Macy.

Unfortunately, we were now one man short, and the vacancy was in Mr.
Brown’s boat, for Starbuck had been moved into Macy’s place in Mr.
Baker’s boat, again over the head of the man to whom the promotion
would naturally fall. This was Ezra Winslow, a good-natured young
fellow, but rather stupid, and not nearly as good a man as the
Prince. There were few men in the whole crew who were anywhere near
as good as the Prince, and there was another boatsteerer needed, and
he was it. I do not know whether it was the usual practice, in cases
of the promotion of mates, for the mates who were moved up to keep
the boats and crews they had had before, but they did in this case.
The Prince was therefore Mr. Brown’s boatsteerer. The vacancy in his
boat was not filled for some time, but it worked out very well for me.

{173}




CHAPTER XVIII


There was no unfavorable change in the weather, and we cruised
for three weeks without getting a whale, or even raising a spout.
One morning, however, after a rather thick haze had cleared away
somewhat, we found ourselves within half a mile of a pod of six or
seven, which were lying on the surface, spouting lazily. They did not
seem to be feeding, and I remember that I had heard a distant splash
while it was still too thick to see them, and Peter, to whom I had
turned inquiringly, had said that it was likely a whale breaching.
Almost everybody on board had heard it, and the lookouts were
doubled. They fully expected to sight whales, and they did sight them
from the masthead before we could see them from the deck. No cry was
given, but the men came down and reported.

There was hardly a breath of wind, and sound would carry easily in
that weather. Indeed, it was uncanny. There seemed to be streaks or
columns in the air which reflected the sound in the strangest ways,
or acted like a lens for sound, at one moment utterly cutting off
sounds that originated but a short distance away, and at the next
moment sending to us clearly faint noises made by the pod of whales
at a half-mile distance. Boats were lowered with the utmost care not
to make a noise, even being put into the water one end first, to
avoid any splash. The men were cautioned not to talk, and they sat
silent in their boats, cast off the falls quietly, and took to their
paddles as soon as the boats were in the water. It was of no use,
however. The whales were keeping tabs on us, and went down quietly
when a boat was within quarter of a mile of them, coming up half a
mile away. It was exasperating. There were whales almost at the side,
more than we had taken {174} in six months, and we could not get
near them; and after trying for hours, the boats were called back to
the ship.

I do not remember that I felt any disappointment, however. To tell
the truth, I was rather hoping for a pampero. It is not a fish, but
a wind. I had some vague recollection of the brief description in
Warren’s Physical Geography as a cold southwest wind which originates
in the Andes, and sweeps with great violence over the pampas of
Buenos Ayres, and is felt for some leagues at sea. My only comment
on this description is that I don’t believe it for a minute. We were
cruising just south of the latitude of Buenos Ayres, three or four
hundred miles from the coast. No wind whose origin is purely local,
in mountains even as high as the Andes, is at all likely to be of
the violence of the sample we had, after traversing the width of a
continent—narrow as it is at this latitude—and four hundred miles of
ocean. They must be fed from the pampas, be supplied with energy,
at least; and it seems much more reasonable to me to believe that
these winds originate over the pampas. They are of the nature of a
thunder-squall, and very probably of similar origin. But Warren can
hardly be considered a recent authority.

I had my wish gratified, and I shall never make another wish of that
kind. We were sailing along easily in a moderate northerly wind
about the middle of the afternoon when the Admiral’s cry came down
to us. There were two spouts to the eastward. I watched them rather
listlessly, for I had rather lost interest in spouts. An albatross or
a frigate bird would have roused much more interest. We were seeing
albatrosses occasionally, and one had followed the ship for two days,
picking up scraps from the galley, and finally following the carcass
of a whale when we cut it adrift. But the whole whale business had
become a matter of routine.

Three boats were called away, Mr. Baker’s, Mr. Brown’s, and Mr.
Macy’s. I had to move, for I was in the {175} way of one of
them; and I moved as little as possible, and gave them no further
attention. Then I heard Mr. Brown speaking to me.

“Here, Tim,” he said. “If you think you can pull one of these oars,
tumble in here, but be quick about it.”

Instantly I was all attention. I jumped for the boat, but stopped.

“The captain said,” I objected, “that I could n’t go until he—”

“Captain’s orders,” he interrupted sharply. “Go or not, but be quick
or the other boats ’ll get away first.”

I made no reply, but gave a little nervous laugh of delight, and
tumbled in. I did not know whether I could row one of the long, heavy
oars or not, but I could take two hands to it, and I had rowed all
my life in every kind of a boat, light and heavy. We took the water,
and cast off the falls, and shoved clear. Then we stepped the mast
and set the sail, and were off after my first whale. All the men were
kind and helpful, but the Prince took me especially under his wing,
and told me what my duties were in stepping the mast. When we were
under sail he gave me rapid instructions as to my duties in meeting
every emergency that ever arose in connection with the capture of a
whale. I could not remember a quarter of them. It was all I could do
to understand them.

Fortunately I did not have to remember. No emergency arose. We came
up with our whale without much pulling, the Prince planted both his
irons, and we backed off furiously. The whale stopped, astonished,
Mr. Baker came up on the other side, and Starbuck got an iron fast;
but not before the whale had recovered his power of motion, so that
Starbuck’s iron entered at the small, and not near the side fin,
where he had meant to place it. Mr. Baker’s boat was deluged with
water by a sweep of the flukes, and the whale was under way, head
out. Mr. Macy, I saw later, had struck the other whale, and was
having no trouble. {176}

Our whale had turned about to the eastward, and was running. We had
to give him line at first, and the whale line went twisting and
writhing out past me like a living snake, making a scraping, hissing
noise on my oar handle. I shrank away from it. Then, with another
turn around the loggerhead, it straightened and tautened, and did
not go so fast, but edged by me foot by foot; and the spray began to
rise in a miniature cascade on each side of the bow. Then another
turn around the loggerhead, and the progress of the line past me was
by inches, slower and slower, and I could hear it creaking. Then it
stopped, and we were fairly off on my first sleigh-ride behind a
whale. The Prince had gone aft and taken the steering oar, and Mr.
Brown had come forward.

The boats were going at a rate which seemed terrific, nine or ten
knots. Our boat rolled viciously in the cross-sea, and veered and
bucked. I could see the Prince putting all his strength and weight
on the long steering oar, first one way and then the other, to meet
her as she yawed, and keep her on a straight course. The cascades of
spray rose from her keel now, about a foot or two aft of the stem,
higher than the gunwale; and the northerly wind caught one of them,
and blew it inboard. I was drenched with it, and so was the man aft
of me. We seemed to leap from sea to sea. When I gathered courage
enough to look at Mr. Baker’s boat, I saw that that was a mistaken
impression; but I felt as if I were on a shingle swung skittering
along the top of the waves at the end of a pole.

Mr. Brown ordered us to heave in on the line. We strained our backs
to the last muscle, but could only gain a fraction of an inch. Mr.
Baker’s crew could do no better, and there was nothing for it but to
hang on and wait for the whale to tire and slacken speed. I looked
back—I continued to look back—and saw the Clearchus already hull
down. I could see no sign of Mr. Macy. I watched the ship until she
sank to her tops, then farther; {177} then I could no longer make
her out at all. And still that whale kept up his furious gait, head
out, as though he were bound to take us to the Cape of Good Hope or
to the Carroll grounds at least.

We must have been going on in that way for an hour and a half or
more before the whale showed any sign of weariness. It needed a man
of more experience than I had to tell the symptoms, or to perceive
that our speed was slackening. Mr. Baker’s boat was just about abeam
of ours, and a couple of oars’ lengths away. He had dropped back
a boat’s length or so to avoid fouling us, but the two boats were
within easy speaking distance, and Mr. Baker and Mr. Brown looked at
each other, and spoke at the same instant.

“Heave?”

Then they both nodded, and we got the order. We heaved, and gained a
couple of inches; heaved again, and six inches of line came in. Mr.
Brown was not a yelling mate. He spoke only loud enough for us to
hear.

Mr. Baker was an accomplished swearer, a linguist of parts. I did
not know there was such a variety of oaths in the language until I
heard him swearing at his crew, urging them to heave, and calling
them more vile names than you would think any men would be willing to
hear quietly. Swearing was very general on the Clearchus, and none
of Mr. Baker’s language was to be taken seriously, which, of course,
the men knew. I do not know what it is about the sea that prompts men
to swear, but there must be something. Most of them get so that they
cannot make the simplest remark without an oath. I was getting into
the habit myself, although I had never been accustomed to using such
language or to hearing it. Before I left home I had tried once or
twice saying “Damn!” with inward quakings, and half expecting to see
the heavens fall; now I said “Damn!” and other things quite fluently,
without quakings of any kind, and before I got home I {178} was a
confirmed swearer. It is a bad habit, and weakens what is said rather
than strengthening it. When I realized this I broke myself of the
habit. Mr. Brown was no swearer, nor was Mr. Macy, nor Peter Bottom,
nor the Prince, all of whom I admired, each according to his fashion.

With all Mr. Baker’s flow of language, his crew did not gain an inch
more than we did; but the heaving must have had its effect on the
whale. There was still a good deal of line out, perhaps fifteen or
twenty fathoms, when he seemed to stop suddenly. There was a general
cry of “Flukes!” and his flukes went into the air, and he sounded.

When Starbuck had struck, as I have said, he was a trifle late. He
succeeded in getting one iron fast—in the small—but had to heave the
other overboard. This second harpoon had been skittering over the
waves ever since, here and there, according to its whim. It had not
touched our line, although Mr. Brown had been afraid that it would;
and it might easily have touched our line, for a whale swims low in
the water, and there is seldom any part of him continually visible
aft of his hump, so that there is nothing in the way. But the harpoon
had touched Mr. Baker’s line several times—a good many times; each
touch lasting but an instant, like the bite of a shark. A harpoon is
even sharper than a shark’s tooth, and each touch had severed some
of the tough strands. It was a wonder that the line had survived the
heaving. It must have only just survived. When the whale sounded, Mr.
Baker did not give him line, but was holding until last second. This
may have been the proverbial last straw, or it may have been simply
that the time had come for the line to part. At any rate, it parted.
Mr. Baker cursed fluently in a really heartfelt way, and the line was
rapidly hauled in. The last fathom of it was a mere feather of manila.

This left us alone fast to the whale. He did not go {179} deep,
however, and Mr. Baker was waiting, near us, for him to come up,
which he did in about five minutes a few feet ahead of Mr. Baker’s
boat. He came up almost vertically, his head and body shooting out
of the water, and exposing his side fin. Then he fell over with a
tremendous splash; but Mr. Baker had shot his lance into him, and
quickly withdrawn it. The shank was bent, but Mr. Baker straightened
it by knocking on the gunwale, and let him have it again.

Meanwhile we had been taking in our slack line as fast as we could,
and when it tautened, heaving in on it to bring us up close enough
for Mr. Brown to use his lance. We had not been able to keep the
slack ahead of the whale, with all our haste, and he had got a turn
around his flukes, like a half hitch, so that we could not shake it
loose. It was impossible for us to haul in ahead of his flukes, and
lancing them would be no more than an annoyance to the whale, like
a mosquito bite. If he should take it into his head to slap that
mosquito, it might prove more than an annoyance for us. There was
nothing to be done but to slack off the line and try to row up to his
side fin, where Mr. Brown wanted to be. We could not have hoped to do
this if the whale’s attention had not been taken up with Mr. Baker’s
boat. He seemed to attribute all his troubles to that boat, and was
putting up a half-hearted sort of a fight; but even a half-hearted
fight by a fairly husky whale is not to be taken lightly. Mr. Baker
was having his hands full.

We pulled up to within a boat’s length, lay there for a few minutes
watching for an opening; then, putting all our strength into our
oars, we drove the boat in close to the side fin. Mr. Brown plunged
the lance in deep, and began churning it slowly up and down, feeling
for the heart or the great reservoir of arterial blood near it. The
whale had lobtailed once upon feeling the lance, without doing any
damage; but in a few strokes Mr. {180} Brown’s lance had found the
life. A tremor passed through the great body, a spout rose slowly
from his spiracle black with clotted blood, he bestirred himself, and
we backed off hastily. He was going into his flurry.

That flurry was not an elevating spectacle, but we all watched it. I
was fascinated, and so the others seemed to be, all in Mr. Baker’s
boat as well as in ours. Our attention for a long time had been so
entirely taken up by the whale that not a man of the twelve—counting
myself as a man—had looked about him, or been aware of anything but
the whale and the two boats, and what was happening there. Suddenly
Mr. Baker broke out in a perfect stream of curses. Mr. Brown smiled.

“Look!” he said. “Like a bad penny.”

We all looked where he pointed. There was the Annie Battles, not a
mile away, bearing down directly upon us. Not one of us said a word,
but two or three were grinning. It was beginning to seem funny.

Mr. Baker did not seem to think it funny. He had stopped his flow of
profanity, whether because he had exhausted his stock, or because his
choicest gems were inadequate, I could not guess; and now, standing
in his place in the bow like a gaunt statue of a man, silent and
motionless, he watched the Battles grow rapidly, and the foam under
her forefoot, and the men upon her deck. He held his lance loosely in
his hand, the shank resting on the gunwale. If she had shown any sign
of changing her course, I knew that he would have ordered his crew to
pull hard for her, in the hope of boarding her before she got away.
She did not; and there is no sense in hard pulling to meet a vessel
which is coming to meet you as straight and as fast as she can. And,
although Mr. Baker was holding his lance loosely, I knew that his
great fist would grip it hard at the slightest provocation.

At last the Battles put her helm down, slacked off her sheets, backed
one topsail, and hung there, almost near {181} enough for us to
heave a line aboard of her. No one on her hailed us, but some of her
men were standing at the rail like wooden images, watching us, while
others were going lazily aloft. By this time our whale had spouted
his last spout, and lay quiet in the sea, with our irons still in
him and our line fast to them. Mr. Baker’s men had their oars in the
water, and his boat seemed to be drifting toward the Battles. I saw
Mr. Wallet and another standing by the man at the wheel. I could see
even his feeble smile and his pale blue eyes and his tight curling
hair, almost like a negro’s but for the color. Mr. Wallet’s was
sandy, with a reddish tinge, like brown sandstone; some of our men
had called his hair his brownstone front. When he saw Mr. Baker’s
boat drifting toward them, he moved uneasily, his smile faded, and he
spoke to the man standing with him. He knew Mr. Baker of old.

Mr. Baker did not wait to get there. “If you try to steal _this_
whale,” he shouted, “why, damn your souls, there ’ll be blood
spilled.”

The man to whom Mr. Wallet had spoken was leaning on the rail. He
laughed. “There ’s been blood spilled already, ain’t there? Seems to
me I see it on your lance.”

“That ’s good clean blood of a whale!” retorted Mr. Baker. “There ’s
other blood waiting that ain’t so clean. I ’d hate to dirty a good
lance with it.”

“Cheap talk!” said the other contemptuously. “We don’t steal whales.”

The boat was now within an oar’s length of the side of the Battles.

“I ’m coming aboard,” said Mr. Baker, “to see Cap’n Coffin about
it—and about another matter.”

“You can’t see Cap’n Coffin,” replied the other, who seemed to be one
of the mates, and in command of the vessel at the moment, “and you
don’t come aboard of us. Sheer off there!”

A number of the men at the rail of the Battles showed {182}
themselves to have spades in their hands. They put the spades over
the side, and held them suspended there.

“Keep off!” said the mate of the Battles. “We ’ll smash it!”

For Mr. Baker had taken the boathook, and had hooked on to their
chains. He was drawing the boat up close, when a spade smashed down
on the boathook just back of the iron, and cut it off clean.

Perhaps it was too serious a matter for mere cursing. At any rate,
Mr. Baker said nothing at all for some seconds, to our great surprise.

“Very well,” he said then, quietly, “if you ’d rather have it that
way, so be it. I ’ll report it—fully. Now I make demand upon you for
Alonzo Wallet, formerly second mate of the Clearchus, a deserter from
his ship.”

The mate of the Battles smiled, and beckoned Mr. Wallet. He came,
with his weak smile again upon his face.

“What ’s wanted of me?” he asked.

“Cap’n Nelson wants you,” Mr. Baker replied, “strange as it may seem;
for you ’re the most good-for-nothing officer that ever I shipped
with.”

With those spades between him and Mr. Baker, Wallet’s courage had
revived, but he no longer smiled. He leaned over the rail as far as
he could, and shook a feeble finger at Mr. Baker.

“Tell the old man to go to hell,” he said; “and go to hell yourself,
will you, Jehoram? You ’re bound there now if you don’t look sharp.”

He pointed to the southwest. The sun had disappeared behind a heavy
mass of black cloud, in which there appeared, as we looked at it,
the glare of lightning. I had thought that it seemed early for it to
be getting dark, but it had not occurred to me to look. The mass of
clouds was but just above our horizon. A few men in the two boats had
observed it. Mr. Brown and Mr. Baker had seen it for {183} fifteen
or twenty minutes past. It may have accounted for Mr. Baker’s
readiness to cut short his controversy with the Battles.

“I ’ve known about that for some time, Wallet,” said Mr. Baker; “and
let me tell you that you ’re in much more danger of going to hell in
the next hour than I am. A whaleboat ’s the safest thing that rides
the sea. Maybe you did n’t know it. And you ’d better shorten sail
some more,” he added, “if you hope to ride it out.”

For the only answer to this the mate—if he was the mate—and Mr.
Wallet both turned and looked up at the sails. The men who had gone
aloft had been engaged in reefing the topsails in a very leisurely
manner. Now they had to put in another reef in response to orders
yelled by the mate, and they worked faster. Mr. Baker came back to
the whale, and the Battles slowly drifted to the southward, taking in
her great mainsail and her foresail and two of her jibs, leaving her
under staysail and double-reefed topsails. By the time that was done,
she had got well away from us, and the black cloud covered half the
heavens. Mr. Baker had rowed up to the whale, and had deliberately
planted another iron deep in the small, near his first one. I asked
no questions, but Mr. Brown must have read them in my face.

“Getting ready to ride it out, Tim,” he said, smiling kindly. We had
nothing to do, having fifteen or twenty fathoms of line out, and he
was leaning against the cleat, watching. “A whale ’s a ready made
sea-anchor, if he only stays afloat; and I guess he will. And we
shall be in his lee, where the seas won’t be quite so high—although
there ’s not much of the carcass showing.”

I turned and looked at the whale doubtfully.

“I should think, sir,” I ventured, “that Mr. Baker might foul us, or
we him, if he has about the same length of line that we have.”

“No,” Mr. Brown replied, smiling again. “A drifting {184} body
always drifts broadside to the wind—to the resistance. I could prove
that to you by mathematics if we had the chance, and if I had n’t
forgotten the proof. But experience proves the proof to be correct,
which is much more convincing than mere mathematics. You notice.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir, I will, if—”

Mr. Brown laughed. “If we get out of this, eh? We shall. Make your
mind easy.”

The carcass of the whale was lying nearly east and west under the
northerly wind. As the squall—pampero or whatever it was—advanced,
the wind dropped, until we were heaving on an oily swell in a flat
calm. The men in Mr. Baker’s boat took that chance of backing water,
and of working the body of the whale slowly around until it lay
very nearly north and south, while the squall was coming from the
southwest. Then there was nothing to do but to watch the clouds, and
to wait for the wind to strike.

The edge of the cloud seemed to be directly over us, writhing and
twisting, and it was almost as dark as night.

“There she comes,” said Mr. Brown quietly; and I saw what seemed a
blank wall of mist, with the black cloud above. We could see it some
miles away, and it was coming fast.

“Fog, sir?” I asked, puzzled.

“Rain, and hail, probably, and wind,” said Mr. Brown.

As it came on I could see the line of rain and hail, as sharp as
the cut side of a cheese; and there was a queer foaming commotion
in the water at the foot of the advancing wall. It had got almost
to the carcass of the whale before we felt the first cold puffs of
air. Those first cold puffs were from every direction, some straight
up; and the foaming commotion in the water resolved itself into an
infinite series of small geysers, from one to two feet high, like
columns of water sent up by explosions of shells, such as I have seen
many times in the last few years when the Fort has been at target
practice. At a distance of six {185} or seven miles, even through a
powerful glass, they look no higher than these did.

The edge of the wall reached the carcass, and there was a curious
effect of bombardment with small white rubber balls—I should have
thought at once of tennis balls if I had then ever seen a tennis
ball—the balls bounding high from the elastic surface of the carcass.
I knew it then for hail. The wall was past the whale, and completely
hid it from sight, less than a hundred feet off, and the wind struck
us like a blow from a chunk of ice. Then the hail struck us, hail
mixed with rain.

We hardly knew what to do to protect our heads. It was like being
pelted with rocks—rocks which there was no escaping. They were
everywhere. I instinctively put up my hands over my head, and had to
take them down again, for the bones of my hands were being bruised,
and I was really afraid they might be broken. None of us had a stiff
hat, but all wore soft hats or caps or were bareheaded. I did not
mind the wind—I was not conscious of it—and I did not see what the
others did; but I found myself crawling in the bottom of the boat,
partly under a thwart, and pulling out a corner of the sail to
protect my head. When I had time to think of anything but the safety
of my own head, I saw that the others had done the same thing.

I looked out from my protecting canvas, and saw the water absolutely
filled with those miniature geysers. The hail had beaten down the
sea, in spite of the furious wind, until the surface was almost as
smooth as a pond, with the rollers running under it as if the water
were covered with silk. After a while—perhaps half an hour, perhaps
a quarter—the hail stopped, and left only the rain and the wind, and
the rapidly growing seas. We were sitting in a deep slush of water
and hailstones, and the hailstones weighed heavily on my legs. They
were beautiful, round, white stones, many as large as robins’ eggs,
but most of {186} them the size of marbles. The boat was deep with
them, and rolled sluggishly. We had to get them out at once, which we
did with a couple of buckets, our hats and our hands, shoveling them
over the side.

I have never in my life known it to blow harder than it did in the
next few hours. We rode it out, safe in the lee of our sea anchor,
drenched to the skin, all of us, and very cold. Although the sea
rose very quickly as soon as the hail stopped, and ran very high,
the carcass of the whale seemed to smooth the seas out, and none
broke around us; but the boats stood almost on end. My heart was in
my mouth most of the time, but I do not think my apprehensions were
evident to the others. Heaven knows I tried hard enough, for I was
even more afraid of showing fear than I was of the wind and the sea.
I think the fact that we were in a small boat, and near the water,
was a help. I was more used to that, and, somehow, I never feel so
helpless in a small boat as I do in a ship. I have not got over that
feeling to this day. I suppose I should have felt better still if
I had been alone or with no one but Jimmy Appleby. A man seems to
have more of a chance in a small boat, and is not subject to the
orders—and the mistakes—of somebody. That somebody might be like Mr.
Wallet. If there is a mistake, it is his own.

Night fell while it was blowing viciously and raining. In a few hours
the rain stopped, but the wind did not. It seemed to blow harder, and
it gradually shifted to the southeast; and after a while the stars
came out. I do not know how long it was, for I had lost all sense of
time. I had got over the worst of my scare, and I was too tired to
think. I crouched down in the boat, and I fell asleep, soaked and
cold as I was.

It was gray dawn when I awoke, stiff and cramped. I saw Mr. Brown
in his place, gazing out at the eastern sky. He had been awake all
night, ready to cut if the carcass of the whale showed signs of
sinking; but it was still {187} afloat, and no lower in the water
than it had been the night before. Mr. Baker’s boat was so near that
we could almost have touched oars.

I made some noise in crawling out. Mr. Brown turned his head
and smiled at me, but said nothing. I took that as a sort of an
invitation. I got up and stood beside him, and we looked out together
over that desolate waste of heaving gray water, with the white tops
of breaking seas, and a faint touch of light here and there, and gray
clouds driving over, but no color yet. I was oppressed with that
feeling of melancholy and loneliness—and littleness—which always
seized me at such a time. I think Mr. Brown felt it too. I looked
around me, and saw two men evidently just awake, and the Prince
standing like a statue, silent and dignified, gazing at the east.
I could not help wondering afresh what he was in his own country,
and what was his own country. Whatever country it was, he ought to
have been a chief in it—_princeps_—instead of being no more than a
boatsteerer on a whaler, and the associate of men few of whom were
his equals. If it had been the fashion to be black, instead of white,
even the officers, excepting Mr. Brown and Mr. Macy, would have been
his acknowledged inferiors.

There was no sign of the Battles or of the Clearchus—nothing within
our horizon but the wide ocean, deep indigo in the distance, with
great seas rolling and tumbling, dark green near the boat, their tops
a ghastly white. After an hour or two my heart began to sink. How
could it be expected that anybody would find us, a speck in that vast
and dreary expanse of ocean? Mr. Brown seemed confident enough, but
my heart had sunk down into my soaked boots when, in the middle of
the forenoon, he spoke to me. No doubt he guessed my feelings. They
may have been evident enough.

“See there, Tim; almost abeam of us.”

We were streaming out to the northwest behind the {188} whale. I
looked, but I could see nothing but the tops of distant seas rising
and falling. I shook my head.

“Can’t you make it out? Three stubby topmasts, almost in line, and
the to’gallan’yards? If you knew them as well as I do—”

“The Clearchus?”

He nodded. “I think so. I ’m pretty sure.”

He was right, as he was apt to be. Mr. Baker had seen it too. The
Clearchus picked us up before noon, got the whale alongside, and
began to cut-in at once, rough and blowing as it was. She had been
caught by the blow with Mr. Macy’s whale alongside. They saw the blow
coming, and tried to save the case, but they did not succeed, and the
whale broke adrift, taking some of our tackle with it. They had to
cut and run for it. We never saw that whale again.

It moderated toward the middle of the afternoon, and by the time we
were ready to try out, we had a clear sky and a gentle breeze.

{189}




CHAPTER XIX


That was our last whale on these grounds, and we turned our nose
again to the southwest, for the grounds off Patagonia. Nourishing
the secret hope that we might land there, I carried the “Navigators”
around in my pocket, and read over again and again the account of
Magellan’s visit—all to no purpose, as it turned out. We saw nothing
of the Battles; but she had a nasty habit of turning up when we
thought we had lost her for good and least expected to see her. She
had become as a thorn in the flesh to Captain Nelson and Mr. Baker,
especially to Mr. Baker. I really think that at this time it would
have given him pleasure, as exquisite as he was capable of feeling,
actually to see her, with his own eyes, go down in deep water or
batter to pieces on a rocky shore. I know that he had reported to
Captain Nelson his controversy with her, his unsuccessful effort to
see Captain Coffin, and Wallet’s message. Captain Nelson was angry
for an instant, and his eyes darkened; then the whole thing seemed to
strike his sense of humor, which he had in plenty.

“Just as well,” he said, “you did n’t see Fred Coffin. I ’m going to
see Fred sooner or later—the first chance I get. And that settles
Wallet.”

We had good weather to the Patagonia grounds, mostly westerly and
northerly winds, and pretty strong, but nothing in the way of weather
could scare me now, after the Hatteras hurricane—of which we had
nothing more than a flirt from the skirt—and my taste of pampero. The
old ship made good time, as time goes for a whaler of her type, and
we arrived on the grounds to the north of the Falklands in about a
week. I was disappointed that we did not go even within sight of the
mainland of Patagonia. {190}

Albatrosses were a fairly common sight, however, and made up to me
somewhat for the lack of painted savages. In these latitudes there
was almost always at least one of these great birds in sight, and
although they were not always near the ship, they never failed to be
on hand when the cook emptied his pail of scraps over the side. I
never tired of watching their powerful, soaring flight. It seemed as
if they played with the ship, like porpoises. They would keep along
with us for a while, then suddenly shoot ahead or off to one side
until they were almost out of sight, without a motion of the wings,
so far as I could see. There must have been some slight motion of the
wings to adjust themselves to the wind or to the vertical angle at
which they were flying, but I could not detect it.

There have been various explanations, none of which is quite
satisfactory. One is that they make a long glide downward to get up
speed; and, having speed enough, they change their angle, and gain
height. How they can do this indefinitely without an occasional
flap, I never could see. Their slight rolling motion may do the
trick, first on one wing and then on the other. I do not pretend to
knowledge of the matter, but I am content to let a beautiful mystery
remain a mystery.

Whales were not plenty here. We took one in two weeks, and then
we gave it up, and bore away for the Falklands, for Port Stanley.
Here the captain went ashore, and we stood off shore and on for
some hours. At this point and this season the current sets to the
northeast about fifteen or twenty miles a day, and we made a rough
allowance for that by standing off shore for thirty minutes, and on
shore for thirty-five, until Captain Nelson came back.

We had strong westerly winds for days, and the crew had much time
to themselves. They used this time in mending their clothes or
in scrimshawing. Peter was getting on with his model, which was
beginning to look like a glorified Clearchus, a tiny ghost of the
ship. The masts were in {191} place, and most of the yards, and he
had finished one of the wee whaleboats, which he had hung at the
davits. It was completely equipped, even to the harpoons, lances, and
the bomb gun lying under the cleat, to which it was attached by a
thread through the stock.

Although my duties were not affected by the lightening of the duties
of the crew, I could almost always find time for doing the things
which I ought not to do, if I watched my chance. I studied rather
harder in periods of a letting up of work, for at such times Mr.
Brown could give me more attention. He seemed to like to do it;
and I had reached a pitch of admiration for him which was almost
worship, so that I did willingly and gladly anything which I thought
would please him. He was pleased, I think, and satisfied. At any
rate, he knew that I was doing my best, and he rewarded me with a
greater intimacy than I had ever known with a man as much older
than myself, not excepting even my father. True intimacy involves
an equal footing, and that was what I never felt in the case of my
father—never could feel, from the nature of the relationship.

There was always plenty of work for the carpenter and sailmaker
and cooper, and I used to watch the boatsteerers overhauling the
boat gear, and the consequent sharpening of harpoons and lances
and spades. The sound of the grindstone was almost continuous. I
had talks with Peter Bottom, of course, and some with the Prince.
It was always hard to talk with him, for he had very little to say
except with respect to the use of his especial tools and the chasing
of whales. He would deliver long discourses upon this subject, and
I might have profited greatly if it had been easier to understand
him. I should have preferred to have him talk about his own country,
which I was firmly convinced was a savage country, in which all
the inhabitants wore nothing but straw skirts and nose rings and
skewers through their lips; and where {192} they stood around in
groups, holding long spears and oval shields, like the pictures in my
geography.

They got out the remains of our stoven boat, and set it up near the
carpenter’s bench. When I got there the sailmaker and Peter Bottom
were looking over the broken bones of the boat, feeling them, testing
a rib or a plank here and there. They seemed to know what they were
about, although they said nothing. It was just the way my father or
one of his men would have gone about such a job. The very movements
of the sailmaker, as he went to the pile of new cedar planking, and
turned it over, and of Peter, as he picked out a piece of oak that
suited him, reminded me of my father’s men.

I stuck around for some time, watching their skilful, leisurely
movements. I knew good ship carpentry when I saw it, for I had been
observing it all my short life, and I had absorbed a good deal of the
methods. My father’s men worked rather faster, but not so very much.
There is more actually accomplished by making your work count, and
not wasting a stroke, than in merely keeping very busy. Peter was a
better workman than the sailmaker, and there was no object whatever
in working fast, for they had plenty of time.

The boat was done, as good as new, in ten days, and then painted, and
lashed, bottom up, on top of the after house. One result of Peter’s
work upon this boat was that thereafter he was a sort of unofficial
ship’s carpenter.

{193}




CHAPTER XX


We had the usual variations in weather, some good, some bad, but
none very bad, to the Carroll grounds. For two thirds of the way the
wind was mostly pretty strong from the west or southwest, giving
the Clearchus what she liked best; for the last third of the way
it drew in from the southeast, although we were not at any time in
the region of the steady southeast trades, merely touching upon the
border of that region toward the very last of the run. We ran into
no gales, and made a passage of about five weeks, arriving on the
Carroll grounds the last week in March. We then shortened sail,
and began to cruise. It was the captain’s intention to quarter the
ground thoroughly once, making slowly to the southeast, which was the
windward side, and then to beat up for the Cape.

For a week we beat back and forth in fine weather without a sign of a
whale. I had almost ceased to think of them, and spent my spare time
in surreptitious games with Peter or with the group of men who were
usually gathered about him; or I stood by the windlass or sat between
the knightheads—anywhere where I could not be spied from aft—and
looked out ahead over the white-capped seas, feeling the brisk wind
on my cheeks, and listening to the noise of the water under the bows,
and to the gentle creaking of the spars and rigging. To me those are
inexpressibly soothing sounds; they have always been so, and are to
this day. The noises of the life of the ship—not very loud at their
worst, in such a case—are far behind you, and they come faintly to
your ears, as if from another world. They do not seem real, as do the
bubbling of the water under the bow, and the wash of it as it passes
{194} astern, and the faint noise of breaking seas, and the soft
sound of the wind on the sails.

That pleasant mode of life was not to last forever. One afternoon I
was lying on my back on the heel of the bowsprit. I had just finished
my chores after dinner, and had lain down to gaze up at the sails,
full and straining, and at the sky above them. My gaze travelled up
the foremast, past the topsails, which were braced well around, for
we were sailing with the wind forward of the beam. The fore truck
described slow ellipses against the sky, and I was fascinated in
watching them. Now and then I caught a glimpse, past the bellying
topsail, of the masthead man. He seemed very far up. He was leaning
wearily against the hoops, as if he might have been asleep. Suddenly
he straightened alertly. I knew what to expect then, and I sat up as
the cry floated down to me; then I jumped to my feet, and ran to Mr.
Brown’s boat.

There were two spouts, about three miles to leeward, and the whales
seemed to be travelling at about the same rate as the ship, and
pretty near together. The spouts rose as regularly as the exhaust of
a tugboat, although nowhere near as fast; there were ten or twelve
seconds between them. The ship was laid around on a course nearly
parallel with that of the whales, and we waited to see if they would
not go down to feed. There was no sign of their doing so, however,
and after waiting over twenty minutes, we lowered three boats. Our
boat—that means Mr. Brown’s—was one of the three. I took my place in
it without asking leave, but as Mr. Brown looked right at me, and
made no objection, and as the Prince even smiled at me, I thought it
was probably what was expected.

[Illustration: LOWERING BOATS]

By hard pulling we got right in the course of the whales, Mr. Baker
and ourselves taking the farther one, and Mr. Macy the nearer. Our
whale was a little in advance of the other. Then we waited, our oars
in our hands, to be ready for any change of course of the whales.
Approaching a {195} whale head on is one of the favorite ways,
for a whale cannot see anything directly ahead of him, strange and
inconvenient as that may seem. The whales came on in a business-like
way, rising to spout, then pitching under, until they were perhaps
within fifty or sixty feet of the boats. The Prince was all set to
strike, and the four oarsmen gripping their oars hard, I, at least,
with my nerves on edge. Then the whales brought up suddenly; stopped
as completely as if they had run into a wall. Something had excited
their suspicion, although the men in the boats were as still as
death. Our whale—I should not have called him ours so soon—raised his
head from the water, as if listening, and Mr. Baker and Mr. Brown
signalled the men to pull up. It was only a little way, and the two
boats almost leaped from the water. I could see nothing of the whale,
pulling, as I was, with my back to him, and my eyes glued to the oar
of the man in front of me, but I could imagine that whale pricking up
his ears, if he had had any. Mr. Baker’s boat was just abeam of us,
to take him on his other side. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the
men in her laying to it, and the spray flying from her bow.

It is utterly useless to dart the harpoon at the front of a sperm
whale. The weapon almost always bounds back as if it were a mass of
rubber it had struck against. We had to get as far as his eye before
a chance would be offered. I saw his great cliff-like head shoot
by. Then, as we came within range of his vision, within ten feet of
him, he suddenly sank away from the boat and out of sight like a
lump of lead, without a motion of his fins, or his flukes either, so
far as I could judge by hearing. The Prince had darted, and so had
Starbuck—and had missed by inches, at ten feet. It was comical to see
the consternation and amazement of Starbuck, and I have no doubt the
Prince’s surprise was nearly as great, although he would not show it
so plainly. I did hear a grunt from him, however, and an exclamation.
The harpoons had clashed under {196} water. When they were hauled
in, the Prince found the shank of his bent, and a gouge, fresh and
bright, deep in the shank at the point of bending; and the edge of
Starbuck’s was dulled and turned.

Mr. Macy’s boat, with George Hall the boat-steerer, had an exactly
similar experience. Mr. Macy had not headed that boat long enough
to overcome entirely the effect of Wallet’s slackness and generally
slipshod way of doing things, and his crew did not respond quite so
quickly or so well. Consequently his whale had just enough warning to
begin to move, but not enough time to get under way, or to find out
definitely what was up. His only escape was to sink from the head of
the boat as quickly as a marlinspike that has been dropped overboard,
or an anchor. Hall, however, had no chance to dart, and he had had
experience enough to know it. We did not see those whales again
except at a distance which was perfectly safe, and then they were
swimming head out, making ten or twelve knots.

Later in the day I came upon a sort of a consolation gathering.
Starbuck and the Prince and George Hall were the central figures,
and there were the other two boatsteerers, Azevedo and Miller, and
all the green hands standing on the fringe of the circle, with two
or three older men. Starbuck was much mortified at his failure,
and offered what excuse he could. The Prince may have been as much
mortified as Starbuck, but he offered no excuse and said little.
Hall was giving comfort, saying that it was not uncommon for
whales to settle in that way, and escape, when they had no time to
round out flukes and sound, although he did not see how they did
it. No harpooner was to be blamed for missing a whale under those
circumstances.

Then there was a babel of voices, each man who had seen it happen and
thought about it at all—a man could hardly help thinking about it if
he had once seen {197} it—giving his own theory of how it was done.
They seemed to run to the idea of interior ballast tanks. Hall smiled.

“It does not seem quite quick enough,” he said. “The whale would have
to take in water ballast pretty sudden to sink as quick as he does.
Besides, water won’t sink in water. If he could take in lead or old
junk into his tanks, it would be different. I know that gannets have
something like that, cells under the skin that they can fill or empty
of air through their lungs; and man-o’-war birds have something of
the kind, I believe, and so have other birds. I ’ve seen ’em and
you ’ve all seen ’em. They seem to contract when they want to get
down pretty quick. But I don’t pretend to know how a whale does it.”

There was more talk which I could not follow. After a while Azevedo
asked Hall about what he called the “slick” or “glip,” and how he
thought that communication was kept up. I did not know what they were
talking about, of course. Hall shook his head, and said he had never
seen any evidence of communication, although he had heard of it, but
he would not commit himself on the subject, and he asked Peter. Peter
said that he did not know anything about it.

“What is that, Peter?” I asked in an undertone. “What ’s glip?” I
knew what a slick was.

“I don’t rightly know, Tim,” he answered. “Whales always leave a
slick—a smooth place, oily-like—on the water when they round out and
sound quietly. It must be something like the oil bags we had over our
bows in that gale off Hatteras. But they say that there ’s a sort of
a telegraph between the whale and his slick—as far as I can make out,
that there ’s a way the whole school has of knowing if a boat so much
as crosses the line between a whale and his slick. So, if a boat gets
into the slick, or crosses that line, the whole school goes tearing
to windward. It may be so,” he added, shaking his head. “I don’t say
it ain’t, for you hear of many curious things at {198} sea that turn
out to be true, but it seems a trifle too much like magic to me. So I
say that I don’t know anything about it, and that ’s true enough. I
don’t.”

I laughed. To me it seemed like a fairy tale; but, as Peter had said,
you hear of many curious things at sea which turn out to be true, and
this might be one of them. If it is true I can think of no possible
explanation. I do not know the truth of the matter to this day.

A few days later we sighted another spout. Mr. Brown and Mr. Baker
lowered for him, for they said that the Prince and Starbuck ought to
have another chance. This was a lone whale, which very obligingly
waited for us to come up with him, and both boats got fast. He put up
no fight at all, and in a quarter of an hour he lay fin out. This was
the sort of thing that disgusted me with whaling, and made it seem
nothing more than a bloody, dirty business, which tended to brutalize
the men who took part in it. A whale should be willing—determined—to
fight for his life, if it was worth anything to him. A fight made
it all worth while, and the better the fight the more worth while
it seemed, to me, at any rate. The prospect of a good fight always
did fill me with elation, in spite of myself. I confess that it does
even now, in spite of my age and experience, which has been acquired
uniformly in the avoidance of fights; but any kind of a fight seems
good to me, in my heart of hearts. It is a reprehensible instinct,
but it is just as surely an instinct as it is reprehensible according
to our modern code.

This whale may not have regarded his life as of sufficient value
to be worth fighting for. At any rate, his actions and appearance
aroused suspicions, and when he was cut-in the suspicions were
apparently confirmed, for the blubber was light and dry. Accordingly,
instead of cutting the carcass adrift, they cut into it, and
proceeded to investigate his internal economy with spades and knives.
I hung over the rail and watched the operation with much {199}
interest. It reminded me of the occasion, five or six years before,
when Jimmy Appleby and I had dissected two rats, with rather dull
knives, on the top of his high back fence. We got thoroughly smeared
with blood and gurry, but found nothing of value, and did not add to
our information on the subject of rats. The whale was much the same,
so far as I could see. The men got very thoroughly smeared, but they
found nothing of value.

While we were in the midst of this bloody business, and most of the
men who were not engaged in it were hanging over the rail, as I was,
I felt a tap upon my shoulder. I turned and saw Peter, who took me to
the port side.

“Look there, Timmie,” he said, pointing.

I had no trouble in seeing what he was pointing at. It was the Annie
Battles, only three or four miles off, and headed directly for us.
There was a brisk breeze, which she had just forward of the beam,
very nearly her best point of sailing. She was coming fast, and was a
pretty sight, I thought. Peter had the same thought. We watched her
in silence for some minutes, and then he sighed and shook his head.

“A pretty sight,” he said, “and an able boat. There ’s none better,
and it ’s a pity.”

“A pity that there ’s none better?” I asked.

“A pity that it should mean trouble every time she heaves in sight. I
don’t know what kind of mischief she ’s up to this time, but look at
our officers, lad. They don’t know either, but they expect trouble of
some kind. Would n’t you think so yourself?”

Captain Nelson, with Mr. Baker, Mr. Brown and Mr. Macy, was standing
just forward of the after house, his glass at his eye. None of
the four were saying anything, but all were gazing soberly at the
Battles, which held her course as if she meant to run us down. The
captain said something in a low tone to Mr. Baker, who nodded and
started leisurely forward. {200}

“I wish,” said Peter, “that she ’d leave us alone, and get about her
business. It ’s over two months since we ’ve seen her, and I hoped
that was the last. But she seems to be keeping tabs on us, and to
know just where to find us. She ’ll keep turning up, like enough, all
through our voyage, just when we ’ve begun to forget her. I ’d give
something to know what they ’re up to. What does she want, anyway?
What is she doing it for?”

It is very likely, even in the light of our later knowledge of the
Annie Battles, that they were not up to anything in particular, and
did not want anything except to plague us, and exasperate us, and
set us all to wondering just as they were doing. At sea, on a long
voyage, with a faster vessel, and the certainty of being able to
sail around us in any weather, that exasperation could be carried to
a high pitch. We had no means of knowing what was going on in the
Battles; but, all this granted, I could not guess their motive. It
was possible that they were after our whales, but Captain Coffin was
an able whaling master, and if that was the explanation—I put the
question to Peter.

“Oh, no, lad,” he replied quickly. “If that was the reason, they ’d
just stay with us—dog us about. They don’t do that, but—Aye, aye,
sir.”

For Mr. Baker had come up to us, and was telling Peter to go to his
boat, but not to hurry. They did not want any stir on the decks. Then
he passed on to tell others of his crew the same thing. Mr. Macy
was strolling about the deck on a similar errand. One by one the
men drifted down to their boats, cast off the lashings, and stood
with the falls in their hands, ready to lower. The Battles was still
coming on, headed directly for us. She was a mile away, and the
men stood like statues by their boats; the distance diminished to
a half-mile and then to a quarter. There was a deep silence on the
ship, while the noise of the surgeons at the operating-table rose to
us over the starboard rail. They knew nothing of the Battles. When
the schooner {201} was a cable’s length away she was still heading
directly for us, and seemed likely to strike us amidships.

It was too much for Mr. Baker. “Ahoy, there!” he roared. “Damn you,
do you want to run us down?”

“Are you there?” cried a jeering voice from the Battles. “Why don’t
you lower?”

As the sound of the voice reached us, however, the Battles kept off
a little, so that she would just clear our stern. Captain Nelson
nodded, and Mr. Macy lowered instantly, cast off, and the men pulled
hard to intercept her. They did not quite succeed in doing that, and
the Battles swept by with her main chains about six inches beyond
the utmost reach of Hall’s boathook. Hall made an instant decision.
Throwing down the boathook, he grabbed a harpoon, to which the whale
line was already bent, and darted with all his force at the chains
of the Battles. The harpoon stuck in the hull and quivered there for
a moment, between the chains; then, as strain came on it, it pulled
out, having nothing to hold it, the barb caught on the chains, and
there they were towing as comfortably as ever they did behind a whale.

From the deck of the Battles there came a roar for a sharp spade,
while Mr. Macy was exhorting his men to heave and heave hearty. There
were only a few feet to gain, for the whaleboat was almost lapping
the hull of the schooner. What they would have done when they had
gained a place under her quarter I could not imagine. I wondered. Mr.
Macy might have been in the same predicament, but it was not likely.
He was not the man to go ahead without plan, and he was working as
if for a definite end. What that plan was we were not to know, for
the spades succeeded in severing the line before the hulls lapped,
and the frayed end dropped into the water. It was fortunate, perhaps.
What chance would six men have had against twenty or more?

In the brief struggle the Battles had gone on farther {202} than she
meant to, and was now some distance astern of us; but as soon as she
had succeeded in dropping Mr. Macy she stood up along our starboard
beam, a short distance away. Meanwhile, Mr. Baker’s boat had been
lowered, taking the captain, and had pulled out a few boat’s lengths,
and lay there, waiting for the Battles. The men who had been working
on the carcass of the whale had stopped work, and stood watching to
see what would happen.

The Battles came on until she was nearly abeam of us, then she
slacked off her sheets, spilling the wind from her sails. Her crew
seemed interested in the surgical operation on the whale.

“Did you find any?” hailed the man who seemed to be in command.

Captain Nelson paid no attention to this question, but his men pulled
toward the schooner.

“What do you want?” the man demanded sharply. “Keep off! Stay where
you are, and let’s settle it.”

“I ’m coming aboard of you,” Captain Nelson said. “I ’m coming to see
Cap’n Coffin. There are some matters to be settled between us.”

The Battles was shooting ahead, losing way slowly, and the men in the
captain’s boat again began pulling.

“You can’t see Cap’n Coffin,” the man began impatiently. “You ’ve
been told that often enough. Damn it,” he added, almost changing
his mind, “if I should let you come aboard and see Cap’n Coffin,
I ’d warrant you ’d have all the time you wanted to settle any
matters that ’re on your mind. It ’d serve you right, and if the
consequences ’d be all on your own head, I ’d do it. But they
would n’t and I won’t. I never will. Understand?”

We heard the conversation plainly, and I was curious to know what
he meant by his remark about consequences. It did not seem to give
Captain Nelson any concern. He made no reply, and the boat continued
to pull toward the {203} schooner. Mr. Macy had been coming up
quietly while the Battles was busy with Captain Nelson, and he was
not far astern, his men pulling strongly and easily. We heard the
order to trim in the sheets, and at the same time several men took
their places at the side, holding spades in their hands. It was their
old trick. The captain’s boat was only a few strokes off.

“Keep off!” was the warning.

For answer Starbuck grabbed for the chains with the boathook. A spade
smashed down upon it and knocked it out of his hand. The sheets of
the Battles had been trimmed in, she heeled to the breeze, began to
gather speed, and was slowly passing the bow of the boat. Starbuck
leaped, landed on her wales, and had one leg over the rail before the
men on the Battles knew what he was after. Before he could get the
other leg over, three men seized him; I saw them struggle with him
for an instant, break his hold on the rail, and throw him into the
sea.

The Battles was now well under way, the boat was fast dropping
astern, and Starbuck was in the water. Mr. Macy was not quite up,
and it was a hopeless chase from the start, but both boats tried to
make a race of it for a quarter of a mile. When they gave it up, and
stopped rowing, I saw Wallet come out from behind the quarter boat,
where he had been standing, hidden from us, and take his place at
the topsail. It was too far to see clearly without a glass what he
was doing there, but he seemed to put his thumb to his nose at Mr.
Baker and the captain. That was too much for me, and I laughed until
I nearly had hysterics, it was so like him.

The boats lay there for some time, the men all watching the Battles
fast disappearing in the distance. Then they pulled slowly back
to the ship. Starbuck had swum to the ship, and stood dripping
beside me, watching the Battles with sober eyes. When I laughed so
immoderately, he turned his eyes upon me with disapproval, but he
{204} took the contagion, and, much against his will, he was forced
to smile.

“But it ’s no laughing matter, Tim,” he said. “I ’d like to know
what ’s wrong on that vessel. There ’s something wrong. I know Fred
Coffin well. We live only a few doors apart—only two houses between
us, and we were at school together. He is n’t so much older than me;
three years, about. I hope nothing ’s happened to him.”

“Why,” I said, “what could happen to him—on his own vessel?”

“Anything,” Starbuck answered. “Anything at all. Ever hear the story
of the ship Junior and Cap’n Arch Mellen? It happened in fifty-eight,
or fifty-seven, but it ’s all true, and it might happen now—any time,
unless men’s hearts are changed.”

“Tell me,” I said eagerly. “I never heard of it; I never even heard
of the ship Junior.”

He smiled down at me; after all, not so much down, for I was nearly
as tall as he.

“There ’s a good many ships you never heard of, I guess. I ’ll tell
you the story of the ship Junior, the first chance I get. The boats
are coming back now, and I want to get into dry clothes.”

By the time the boats were on the davits the Battles was more than
hull down to the southward, and was fast sinking her topsails.

{205}




CHAPTER XXI


We cleared up our whale as soon as we could. He made only
thirty-three barrels, and we laid our course for the Cape with a
total of three hundred and thirty-five barrels of oil in the hold.
That seemed very little to show for nine months’ work, but Peter
comforted me somewhat. He did not seem to mind. It was all in the
day’s work to him.

“I know, Timmie, lad,” he said. “Whales have got scarce as hen’s
teeth in the Atlantic Ocean. But the whaling fleet ’s not what it was
fifteen years ago when there were over three hundred vessels hailing
from New Bedford. Give the whales thirty years or so, and they ’ll
be back there. We ’ll find plenty on the New Zealand grounds or off
Japan, or some other nice quiet place. We ’ll have a full ship yet,
but it may take us three years more.”

The fact that we had little oil to show did not bother me very much.
I would have kept on with a contented spirit if we had not had any
oil. It was not for a few barrels of oil that I had embarked on this
cruise.

We followed the course of the Battles, not because it was her course,
but because it was the quickest way to get to the Cape. The wind
held for some days in the southeast, so that we headed a little west
of south; then it hauled to the westward, and into the northwest,
blowing hard. That was just what we wanted, and we laid our course
straight for Cape Town. The northwest wind did not stay with us long,
but we had made enough southing to be able to hold our course when
the wind changed to the southeast again, which it did very soon.
There are few gales in this part of the ocean at this season, and we
were lucky enough not to get any; but for two days we drifted about
in calms and light, variable airs, and there was a {206} current or
ocean drift to the northward, which set us back about a mile an hour
while we held our southerly course.

Starbuck told us the story of the ship Junior while we were on that
southerly course. Our crew was much impressed by the story, old as
it was. Some of them—most of the white men in the crew—had heard it
before, but many had not. One by one they drifted into the circle
about Starbuck, drawn by the lure of a yarn being spun. They did not
interrupt him, and their faces were serious as they listened. Peter
was one of those who had not heard the story.

“Mutiny never pays,” he said when Starbuck had finished, “does it,
mates?”

There were some muttered objections.

“No,” said Peter again. “It never pays. If a mutiny is successful
it only means that the men never dare show themselves in civilized
parts again. If it is unsuccessful—well, who wants to die in prison?
And, for my part, I ’d rather be shot than hanged. ’T would be
interesting, now, to know what became of the men who were n’t taken.
They may have made some island in the South Seas, and have lived
in some bodily comfort for two or three years. But ’t is much more
likely that they found themselves on the beach at one port after
another, and could n’t ship in anything, even if they got the chance,
without fear in their hearts. Probably they died in jail, after all,
or had their throats cut by Chinese or Malay pirates. You don’t
happen to know, Starbuck?”

Starbuck shook his head.

“If a man is unlucky enough to find himself in a ship where there ’s
hard usage,” Peter went on, “the best thing he can do is to put up
with it until he gets ashore again. Then he can make a call on the
American consul. Even life in a South Sea island gets tedious after
a while. A sailorman gets tired of lying on a mat and having his
breadfruit and yams and chickens and coconuts brought {207} to him.
If he ’s got the spirit of the sailor he can’t stand that very long,
even if they don’t make their kings cut their throats in public every
twelve years, which used to be the vile custom in Malabar. There was
a shipmate of mine, thirty years back, that deserted somewhere in the
South Seas, and got to one o’ these islands, and got to be king of
it. He was glad to get away after two years of it—had to sneak out.”

There was clamor for the yarn. Just as Peter had cleared his throat,
and was about to begin it, his watch was called.

“Aye, aye, sir,” he said. Then he turned to the others with a twinkle
in his eye. “You see. Hard usage, I call it, to give a man no chance
to spin a good yarn. Downright oppression, that ’s what it is.”

I never heard that yarn of Peter’s.

{208}




CHAPTER XXII


The day before we got into Cape Town I wrote a short letter home, and
enclosed my journal. We came to in Table Bay the next morning, with
the mass of Table Mountain looming to the eastward, and Devil’s Peak
and the Lion’s Head and Signal Hill enclosing the town. The crew had
liberty ashore, in relays, and the first boatload of liberty men were
off within an hour. I do not know how the men spent their precious
liberty.

We laid in a stock of fresh provisions, and got off our mail, and
found some mail for the ship, but there was nothing for me. The
captain attended to some other business, but I do not know what. He
did not ship a man to take the vacant place, and we had two vacant
places when we left in the afternoon of the second day, for a green
hand, a Portuguese named Silvia from Mr. Macy’s boat, turned up
missing. Mr. Tilton made a brief search for him, but did not find
him, and we could not wait. Most of the other men were rounded up
drunk, or just recovering from that happy state, and really not
responsible.

Mr. Snow, our fourth mate since the promotions after Mr. Wallet’s
defection, a nervous, irascible little man, became very much
enraged at one of the men from his own boat. The man’s name was
Silver—perhaps unfortunately resembling Silvia, the name of the man
who was missing. He was a green hand too, if a man is still green
after eight months at sea. Mr. Snow addressed a sarcastic remark to
Silver—or Silva—bearing upon that resemblance of names, and Silver,
as might have been expected, answered him in a surly manner, calling
him a fussy little busybody, or less agreeable words to the same
effect. Of {209} course it was no fault of Silver’s that his name
was like Silvia’s, or that Silvia was not to be found, but he would
not have answered Mr. Snow as he did if he had been feeling like
himself, or if he had been to sea long enough to know the unwisdom of
it.

Mr. Snow hesitated and sputtered and got red in the face, but said
nothing after all, and fumed off aft. The rest of the men rather
expected that Silver might be put in irons, but nothing came of the
matter then, except that Silver had the permanent ill-will of his
boatheader. That is not a state of affairs generally cultivated.

We stood around the Cape, keeping well out to sea to avoid the
current which sets to the southwest and west along the shore of the
African continent and for about a hundred and fifty miles from it,
more or less. The surface currents all through the Indian Ocean
are strong and tricky. Off Durban or Port Natal the current runs
southwesterly at very nearly three or four knots at this season, and
it was worth while not to get into it, especially for a ship like the
Clearchus, which could not be depended upon to sail faster than five
or six knots. By keeping a couple of hundred miles to the southward
we got into the easterly drift and the west wind, and we held that
course to about 35° east longitude, gradually turning to the north
for the Mozambique Channel.

The mastheads were kept manned all this time, but it was hardly
expected that we would sight any whales, and I suspect that there was
little desire to see any. The wind held generally strong from the
westward until we were on our way north. We sighted the southwest
coast of Madagascar, but it got no nearer than a low-lying purple
line, and we swung away to the northwest until we sunk it.

Madagascar is nearly a thousand miles long, and from three to five
hundred miles from the coast of Africa, the narrowest part of the
Mozambique Channel, opposite Mozambique, being about two hundred and
sixty miles broad. {210} We were therefore well out of sight of
land almost all the time that we cruised in those waters. Although
the wind was southerly—the southeast trades—and by all the rules we
should have run directly through the Channel and beat slowly back
again, we did not do so, but steered a zigzag course, wearing ship as
we approached either side of the Channel. The captain was so certain
of seeing whales there that he did not want to miss the first chance,
and that chance was as likely to come one way as another.

The chance came when we had been in the Channel four days and were
on the second leg of our zigzag. I was busy in the cabin, but I
heard the faint musical cry, “Ah—bl-o-ows!” I dropped everything,
and ran on deck. It was early, breakfast being just over. There they
were to the east of us, three beautiful plumes rising together,
shining in the sun, drifting for a moment, and dissolving gradually
into nothing. We manœuvred for position—if it is proper to speak of
anything as clumsy as the Clearchus as manœuvring—and waited for the
whales to sound. They took their time about it, at which I did not
wonder. It was very pleasant at the surface in the sun, and they lay
lazily at their length, spouting now and then. We got to windward of
them, and as near as the captain thought was safe—a gallied whale is
hard to get. Still they did not go down, and we lowered four boats;
all but Mr. Macy’s. The boats were put into the water carefully, so
as not to make a splash that the whales would hear, they cast off in
silence, and the men took to their paddles. I counted as a man, for I
was at what was getting to be my usual place in Mr. Brown’s boat.

We were next to Mr. Snow in the circle in which the boats were
spreading, and a little ahead of him. I did not look at Mr. Snow,
for my eyes were otherwise occupied. I was aware of him, however,
and knew that he was alternately looking briefly at the whales and
glaring {211} malevolently at the back of Silver, who rowed tub
oar. Silver, although he wielded his paddle industriously, was aware
of it too, and it made him nervous, so that he became awkward.
Mr. Snow had put in his time since leaving Cape Town largely in
gazing malevolently at Silver. He was a little thunder-cloud,
threatening always, but doing no damage, except to haze Silver—haze
meaning to punish by hard work, unnecessary usually, and as hard as
possible—whenever he had the chance. This attitude had resulted in
his becoming overbearing to the rest of his crew, and he was fast
getting to be the most unpopular officer on the ship. Silver was not
a little frightened, for he did not know what he might have said or
done to Mr. Snow. He had been in a condition of irresponsibility at
the time, and he could not remember. I had overheard him asking one
man after another what it was, but they were in no better case for
remembering, and could give him no comfort.

Silver now became so awkward with his paddle that he missed the water
altogether—caught a crab—and fell forward on his knees, striking the
oars and making a tremendous rattling and rumbling. We were not far
from the whales, and no respectable whale could avoid hearing that
noise of wood on wood, like beating a great tom-tom. They cocked up
their ears for an instant, but the oars were still rolling about,
Silver frantically grabbing at them, and the whales simultaneously
raised their flukes high, and went down. Mr. Baker, on the other side
of Mr. Snow, launched a string of curses at Mr. Snow’s boat for his
carelessness, for he had been on the point of signalling Starbuck to
stand up, he was so near his whale. Mr. Snow, in turn, cursed Silver
up and down. It was rather startling to hear such a flow of language
from such a man. Mr. Snow, just to see him in his usual state, made
you think of a Sunday-School teacher.

Mr. Brown looked up wearily. I knew him well enough to be sure that
he was thinking that cursing would not {212} get them anywhere. Mr.
Snow appeared to be of the same opinion, for he stopped his cursing
abruptly. We lay on our oars, which we had taken as soon as Silver
caught his crab, and waited for the whales.

We were near the middle of the arc, which was not very wide, not
above an eighth of a mile for the four boats, for the whales had been
bunched. We lay still, but the outer boats pulled hard to make the
arc wider. In about twenty minutes the whales came up, just beyond
the outermost boat to the westward. That happened to be Mr. Tilton’s.
Then came our own, then Mr. Snow’s, and Mr. Baker on the eastward
end. Mr. Tilton was an experienced whaleman, and he felt sure enough
that we should not get any of those whales, for he saw that they were
gallied just enough to be very wary, and not to lose track of the
boats for a second. There was a chance, however, and he took it, as
he was in duty bound to do. He could not get near enough to dart,
and the whales went under again, not deep, but swimming under water.
They came up at the opposite end of the line, and Mr. Baker thought
that he had a chance, but he did not have any better success than Mr.
Tilton. Then the whales rose again between us and Mr. Snow. We pulled
hard for them, but they easily got through to windward, lay there and
waited for us.

Those three whales seemed to enjoy the sport. They had us where they
wanted us, to leeward of them, and they gave us the hardest kind of
work for four hours. We were in the region of the southeast trades,
which drew in from the southward, and there was a combing sea, hard
to pull against. We all knew that the whales had all the best of it,
but they would bring to just out of reach, tantalizing us, egging us
on with the thought that this time we had them; but before any boat
had got near enough to dart, they would up flukes or settle out of
reach, only to come up again just near enough to tempt us afresh. I
have no doubt it was fun for the whales, but it was no {213} fun
for the men. My muscles and my hands were sore and aching when we
were signalled from the ship to give it up and come aboard. Mr. Baker
did not want to give it up even then. He was fighting mad—it did not
take very much to make Mr. Baker fighting mad, and the thought that
three common, ordinary whales could have fun with him was almost too
much. I think that he would have liked to make mince-meat of them.
Fortunately, the ship was well to leeward, and we sailed back. Those
three whales followed us back almost to the ship. They seemed to feel
hurt because we would not play any longer. I had, and I still have, a
great admiration for those whales. There was no malice in them, and
they had only been indulging in a game of tag. I was glad to think
that we had left them unhurt in their element, instead of drifting
carcasses to be stripped bare by birds and sharks.

We saw several whales on our way up the Channel, but they were wild,
and we got none of them. We did not even get fast, but had a good
many hours of heartbreaking pulling. Opposite Mozambique, about a
hundred miles offshore, more or less, the Prince got an iron into
one, but it drew, and the whale got away. I overheard Captain Nelson
talking to Mr. Baker, one day, about the wildness of the whales. He
seemed to think it evidence that they had been chased a good deal,
and to be inclined to abandon the Channel at once, and keep right
on to the northward to the Seychelles. Mr. Baker did not combat the
captain’s opinion openly, but he was so obviously disappointed and
so confident that we should do better on the return trip through
the Channel that the captain did not insist upon it. We had seen no
whalers.

I had been having my lessons—my hours with Mr. Brown—pretty
regularly, right along. When we had to chase, or had a whale
alongside, of course we had to give it up, but we had not been
interrupted by cutting-in and trying-out for about two months. I
had added the study {214} of geography to the curriculum. I wanted
to know more about the regions which we visited, and although there
was usually nothing to be seen but a vast expanse of ocean, I knew
that there was some land near, and the fact was a stimulus to the
acquisition of knowledge about it, whatever it was. There was not a
geography on the ship, but it was no loss worth mentioning. I got
what I could from the maps and charts we had, and Mr. Brown supplied
the rest, for he highly approved the broadening of the curriculum,
although it gave him more work. Already I could almost put my finger
on some islands which I had never heard of at school, and Mauritius
and Réunion were as definite as Nashawena and Cuttyhunk. I had seen
Bazaruta from a distance, although my geography authority at school—a
gentle, modest girl, who probably had very little more definite
ideas on the subject than I had—had never heard of such an island.
Almost every whaling captain knew it pretty well, for it was a place
to get wood. It was a different thing actually to see the low-lying
coast of Africa, south of Mozambique, or the bold shores north of
it, with a glimpse of the high table-land behind, from what it was
to read vaguely about them all, quietly seated at my desk in North
Street. I knew the general shape of Madagascar, and thought of it as
a good enough island of moderate size, with the Mozambique Channel
perhaps thirty miles wide. It came to me with somewhat of a shock to
find that the Channel was five times as wide as from New Bedford to
Nantucket, and that Madagascar was about as long as from New Bedford
to Chicago. Chicago was less important in 1872 than it is now, and it
was less than a year since Mrs. Kelly’s cow had kicked over the lamp,
the beacon that led to greatness.

On our beat south through the Channel, we had better luck. We had
many unsuccessful chases, but we got three whales ranging from sixty
to seventy barrels each. There {215} was no excitement in it; about
as much as there would have been in slaughtering three mild-eyed
cows. That was just what it was, simple slaughter. But we had our
excitement before we got out of the Channel.

It was as we were getting to the southern mouth of the Channel. I
remember that we were not far from Bazaruta Island, for Peter had
just been pointing out to me the place where it was. He said that he
could see it, but I could not. He looked away for a moment, and was
giving me some further information, when he saw the spout. At the
instant the cry came down from the masthead. It was a lone spout, the
spout of a lone whale, so far as we could see.

We lowered two boats for him, Mr. Brown’s and Mr. Macy’s. Largely
by good luck Mr. Macy got to the whale first, and Hall sunk his two
irons in him. It was a good strike, and the irons were sunk to the
hafts. The whale showed ugly right away. He went down a little, and
ran under water, taking out nearly two tubs of line. They had just
managed to snub the line somewhat, and were beginning their ride
after him, with the line still smoking around the loggerhead, when
suddenly he stopped, turned quickly, and came back at them. He came
at full speed, head out, his jaw hanging down at nearly a right
angle, meaning mischief with it. Mr. Macy saw it, of course, and so
did Hall. Hall tried to lay the boat around with the steering oar,
out of the course of the whale, but the great length of line hanging
over the bow was almost like an anchor. The men were heaving it in as
fast as they could. Macy ordered them to their oars, and with oars
and steering oar together Hall just managed to get them partly out
of the way of the whale. He turned half over, and struck the boat
a glancing blow with his jaw, however, stove a couple of planks,
and rolled her over. We saw her rise—she did not really leave the
water—and come down bottom side up. While she was coming down we
heard the crash of the splintering planks. {216}

Most of the men had jumped out just before the whale struck them, and
one or two had been thrown out, but we could not be sure, from where
we were, whether all were accounted for or not. We pulled hard for
them, and when we had come up Mr. Brown counted heads.

“Where ’s Macy?” he asked sharply.

Before anybody could answer Mr. Macy’s head popped up, beside the
overturned boat. The boat had come down over him, and he had dived
out. The men were grabbing oars and pieces of plank—anything that
would keep them afloat—and were swimming away from the wreck as fast
as they could. Mr. Brown saw that they all had something to hang on
to, and that another boat had been lowered from the ship, and was
coming up fast.

“You ’re all right,” he said. “Hold on, and I ’ll try to coax him
away.”

Macy laughed. “You ’re welcome to it,” he said.

The whale had been lying a short distance away, thrashing his flukes
about truculently, and moving from side to side. In the course of
his movements he caught sight of the wrecked boat, and it seemed
to excite his rage afresh. He at once came down for it, his jaw
down, and struck at it with his jaw; but he did but little damage,
only smashing another plank, as the boat rolled away. The men were
swimming away as fast as they could. The whale came to a short
distance from the wreck, turned, and again came down viciously.

He had not seen our boat, although it was in plain sight; at any
rate, he had taken no notice of it. Perhaps his mind was so occupied
with the immediate object of his wrath that it had no room for
anything else. Before he reached the wrecked boat, we struck, the
Prince darting both irons, one after the other, with great rapidity,
and with all his strength. They almost disappeared in his body, just
behind his side fin. This distracted his attention from the wreck
completely. He was clearly {217} astonished, and striking the water
two tremendous blows with his flukes, and drenching everybody in the
boat, he put away to windward at a great pace.

He went so fast, and made so much play with his flukes, that we could
not haul alongside. He seemed to be rolling a little as he swam, and
the play of the flukes covered the course the boat would have to
take. There was nothing to do but the best we could. We hauled up
with great difficulty just astern of the great flukes, and Mr. Brown
tried pitch-poling the boat spade into his small, to cut the fluke
tendons. This was a difficult matter, in a rolling, jumping boat,
and in three trials Mr. Brown succeeded only in wounding the flukes,
which served to increase the speed. We simply had to haul up close,
and we did it somehow, the Prince keeping us clear of the flukes by
great exertion at the steering oar. I do not see how he did it, and
I did not see at the time, for my back was toward him, and I was
putting my whole heart into heaving, to gain a few inches at a time.
I very nearly put the flesh of my hands into it, too. By the time
the flukes were astern of us, I felt as if all my fingers had been
stripped to the bone; as if they were in the same condition they were
in the day Jimmy and I got John Appleby’s boat aground on Fort Phœnix
shoal.

The line now broke the pin in the chocks, I suppose at a leap of the
boat and a heave on the steering oar, and jumped out of the chocks.
It brought up on the kicking-strap, pulling over the port bow at a
slight angle with the boat, which kept clear automatically. A few
inches of clear water showed between the boat and the body of the
running whale, whose speed had not slackened in the least. I remember
that the wave from the boat and that from the whale, meeting at such
close quarters, resulted in a nearly vertical sheet of water, which
came steadily over the side, making a nearly continuous cataract down
my back until I moved over. {218}

Mr. Brown looked around apprehensively; but seeing that the boat
was all right, and that the arrangement would give him an excellent
chance to lance, he ordered Kane to take the line and heave a little.
That would put him where he wanted to be. Kane, the bow oar, took the
line all right, but was unable to heave us any farther forward, and I
took hold. Together, we heaved the boat up before any of the others
could get hold. Once there, my only idea was to hold us there, close
to that whale. Before the Prince had a chance to take in the slack
of the line and hold around the loggerhead, out of the depths of my
ignorance and thoughtlessness, I did it. I might have known better
if I had stopped to think, but I might not, and there was no time to
stop and think. I took a couple of turns with the slack around the
thwart, and pulled the bight of the line through. It was a slipknot,
and could be released by a yank upon the line held in my hand.

We were now holding our position close to the irons—naturally
enough—and Mr. Brown seemed to be pleased. He was unaware of my
device. He lanced the whale again and again, but was unable to reach
the life. The whale was spouting thin blood, but did not seem to be
much distressed; not as much as we were, for the boat was taking
over the side a plentiful spray, and the bloody vapor of his spout
enveloped us. It was like an acid.

Suddenly he turned—so quickly that the boat ran plump into him,
and a little way upon his body, so close to the irons that I could
have reached them by leaning out a little. Mr. Brown seized his
opportunity, and drove his lance twice into the life.

“Slack your line, quick,” he said, “and stern all!”

Then he looked around, and saw my knot, of which I had been so proud.
I was yanking desperately at the line to release the knot, but it
would not come. I was not strong enough, it seemed.

Mr. Brown’s face expressed the most utter disgust. He said nothing,
but seized the hatchet to cut. {219}

It was not necessary, for Kane had seen my trouble, had sprung and
grabbed the line with me. We yanked together, and the knot came loose
with a noise like an explosion. Never in my life have I felt more
relief than I felt at that sound. We backed off instantly, and the
flukes came down on the water, just missing the boat. I did not mind
it, and was really not aware of it. I did not mind anything now that
that confounded knot was loose.

The whale was going into his flurry, but we got well clear of him. In
ten or fifteen minutes more he lay fin out. The ship was hull down to
leeward.

That evening, after we had towed the whale to the ship, and had
made it fast alongside, Mr. Brown found me and gave me a serious
overhauling. It was not long, and it was kindly, but I never forgot
it. The gist of it was that a whale line should NEVER _be made fast_.

{220}




CHAPTER XXIII


When we had the trying-out finished—the whale made about sixty-three
barrels—we were not far from Bazaruta Island, and the captain thought
it a good chance to lay in some wood. Two boats were sent ashore, the
men taking axes, while the Clearchus lay near, and the rest of the
crew were busy with their cleaning and scrubbing. I was sent ashore
with the boats. The island, or at any rate the part of it which we
saw, was uninhabited, and was covered with a dense jungle of woods
and vines and creepers. There was an abundance of wood, but it was
rather hard to get, and we were there for two days, the boats taking
off the wood as fast as we got it cut. The second day I got lost in
the jungle, and I might be there yet if it had not been for Peter.

There were a good many snakes in the jungle, the cobra among them. I
did not know much about snakes, did not recognize the cobra, and did
not appreciate its quality. I had become separated from the others in
my pursuit of trees which I could tackle alone, and which would be of
any value as fuel. When at last I looked up, I realized that I was
lost. I had stepped so thoroughly around the tree that my trail in
had become obliterated, and I could not tell which way to go. I tried
several ways, but they all ended in a tangle of vegetation, and I
began to get really scared, but I did not like to yell. I stopped and
looked about me, and I saw a snake crawling sluggishly away.

My only experience with snakes had been with these little green or
mottled-brown grass snakes, about two feet long or less, or with
adders, and a couple of big blacksnakes. The blacksnakes I let alone,
but I was accustomed {221} to catch the grass snakes and treat them
as pets. I had a box in our back yard, covered with wire netting, in
which I put them, and kept them until my mother made too strenuous
objection to the practice. Then, although I could not understand
why she should object so strongly, I bowed to the inevitable. They
were pretty things, and quite harmless; even useful, but she neither
knew nor cared about that. So, when I saw that snake in the jungle,
instead of letting him go peaceably, as anybody else would have done,
and glad that he was going, I leaped after him. It was not so very
big, perhaps three or four feet long.

The snake hurried when I jumped, but I kept on, and it stopped and
faced me, rearing its head erect, some distance from the ground. Its
hood puffed out, and its head waved slowly from side to side. I began
to be scared then, and backed away. There was a slight movement in
the vines and bushes back of the snake, they parted silently, and I
saw Peter looking at me. I did not speak, but pointed at the snake.
Peter did not delay. His axe fell upon the snake, and cut it cleanly
in two parts.

“Come, lad,” said Peter. “We missed you, and nobody knew which way
you ’d gone. They ’re about done.”

I remonstrated. “But, Peter, my tree.” And I pointed at the fallen
monarch of the forest, which was about six inches through at the
butt, and twenty-five feet long.

Peter smiled. “Aye, lad, I heard it fall. It was by that I found you.
Maybe we ’ll get it, and maybe not. I think they ’re ready to put off
to the ship and are waiting for us.”

So I followed him, leaving my precious tree, and leaving the pieces
of the snake still writhing about on the ground. According to all my
lore, they would continue to writhe until sunset, which was not far
off. I determined to add to my curriculum a brief course upon snakes.
I felt sure that the course would meet Mr. Brown’s approval, and that
he was qualified to give it. {222}

We made sail on the Clearchus, and stood for the southern end of
Madagascar; rounded it, and stood northerly. There was rather
a strong current against us, but the wind held strong from the
east and southeast, and we made nearly four knots in spite of the
current. Peter was occupied with the stove boat. He had little help,
but he did not want any. There was a fascination in watching his
deliberate movements, every one of which was to the certain end; the
same kind of fascination which I used to feel in watching Oman, a
cabinet-maker, at work. Oman seemed slow, and his manner of working
would not have been approved by a modern efficiency expert, but he
knew his trade from top to bottom, and was a master workman. He loved
his work, as any master workman must. Not one of his deliberate
movements was wasted, and the beautiful end was reached with
surprising ease and quickness; and what an end it was! Peter was no
cabinet-maker, but his method of working was the same.

When we had made about half the length of Madagascar without even
raising a spout, we fell in with another New Bedford whaler, the
Apollo, and Captain Nelson went aboard of her for a gam with Captain
Hendrickson. I did not go. They gammed from early morning to late
in the afternoon, and then I saw Captain Nelson’s boat coming back.
The mate of the Apollo, who had been visiting us, hurried away with
his men. As far as I could gather from what I overheard, the master
of the Apollo had not communicated anything of value. She was a full
ship, however, on her way home, and the old man—Captain Nelson—felt
sure that she had found some new cruising ground, either in the
Indian Ocean or in the Pacific, he thought more likely the Indian
Ocean. He had spent the day in detective work, trying to find some
clue to its location, but without result. Whaling captains, when
they have happened upon a new field, guard the secret as carefully
as they can, but it leaks out in a year or two. {223} No doubt
Captain Hendrickson was laughing at him at that moment. He said this,
standing on deck, looking back at the Apollo sinking into the sea
behind us. She was hull down already, enveloped in a purple haze,
for the sun was near its setting. The captain stood for some time
silently gazing, until the old-fashioned square topsails of the
Apollo were lost in the haze. Then he turned, smiling, to go below.

“I ’ll find it, by Godfrey,” he muttered to himself, “if I have to
comb these seas with a fine-toothed comb.”

Two days later we raised a spout nearly in sight of Tamatave.
Tamatave is on the east coast of Madagascar, in about 18° south
latitude. It was a calm morning, and the whale was about three miles
off. He was lying lazily on the surface, and we watched him for an
hour and a half, waiting for him to go down. At last he decided to
go. His flukes went straight up into the air, and he went down in a
very leisurely manner, as if it was almost too much trouble to eat.
It was as if he sighed and said, “Well, here goes. I suppose I must
get to work.” That was the way I felt on that morning, and I had no
doubt the whale felt much the same. Why should n’t whales feel so?

We lowered two boats, and pulled to the spot. There was a gentle
little breeze, and both boats put up their sails and sailed to and
fro, waiting for him to come up. I was enjoying myself thoroughly,
and did not care if he never came up. Indeed, we began to think he
never would. It got to be an hour since he had gone down, and there
was no sign of him. Then an hour and five minutes, and we lowered the
sail and unstepped the mast. This was hardly done when he appeared
silently, an eighth of a mile away, heading toward us. We were in an
excellent situation, for as he was coming on, and could not see us,
there was nothing for us to do but wait for him.

He continued to forge ahead slowly, Mr. Baker’s boat, half a mile or
more astern of him, pulling up as hard as the {224} men could pull.
The whale was to windward of us, and we could hear his spout plainly,
loud and hoarse and deep-toned. It sounded like the exhaust of the
Monohanset, the boat that ran between New Bedford and the Vineyard.
We waited, our oars out, and still he came on blindly, steering a
somewhat zigzag course, to enlarge his field of vision, and stopping
now and then, with his head out of water, to listen.

He was pretty near us now, and the Prince was getting excited and
impatient. He signalled Mr. Brown with his lips moving silently, to
have the men pull a few strokes to lay us on, but Mr. Brown shook
his head. Again the whale heaved his head out, almost within darting
distance.

“Now, pull! A good stroke!”

We pulled with all our might. It was only about thirty feet that we
had to go. We ranged alongside of his head, and he was very plainly
trying to make out what the noise was, and where it came from. The
moment we came within his field of sight he began to settle. There
was no other possible escape; but he was not quick enough, and the
Prince planted one iron deep in his shoulder, just above his fin. The
whale had settled too deep for the second iron, which did not bite at
all. By the time both irons had been let go we were backing off.

That whale immediately lost all signs of leisureliness and laziness,
and went down so fast that it was all we could do to keep the line
whipping clear out of the tub. The end of that tub was approaching
rapidly, and the other tub was bent on as fast as a man could work.
Still there was no sign of slackening in the speed of sounding, and
the end of the second tub, too, was not far off.

“The drug!” was the cry. “Drug, there! Hurry!”

The drug, or drag, was hastily passed. Our drags were of two pieces
of plank, crossed, and bolted securely together, with a loop of whale
line through the centre. On the opposite side from the loop a strong,
stubby staff {225} projected about a foot. It was meant that a piece
of canvas should be fastened to the staff. The canvas might survive
dragging through the water, and would make the drag more conspicuous
on the surface; but there was none on our drags that day. There
seldom was any.

The end of the line in a tub is always exposed for just such
occasions, and our second tub of line was hastily bent on to the
loop of the drag, and the drag held clear, ready to go overboard.
This was scarcely done when the last coil of line snapped out of the
tub, and the drug made a bee line for the bottom of the sea. We lay
there helpless, without a foot of whale line in the boat, and our
whale—nobody knew where he was exactly, but somewhere under us, from
one to two hundred fathoms deep. A line will follow all the windings
of its course under water, very nearly, and the whale might have
turned at some depth, and the line still go straight down.

That must have been just what this whale did, as it turned out, for
he rose soon after, about a quarter of a mile away, and made off just
a little faster than the boats could go, although we tried hard. The
drug appeared some minutes after the whale had shown himself, and
went skittering off after him, jumping from sea to sea, or from one
side to the other, tantalizingly near. Both boats followed it. It
did not go very much faster than we did, pulling our hearts out for
an hour dead to windward; but it gained on us very slowly, and we
gave it up at last, and lay on our oars, while we watched that drug
flash in the sun, farther and farther away. It flashed its last,
and we turned and pulled back to the ship, leaving the whale in
possession of two good harpoons, almost two hundred fathoms of nearly
new whale line, and a perfectly good drug, a work of art. I hoped he
would enjoy their use. We never heard anything more of any of them.
Possibly, even now, there is a whale, fairly old, swimming the seas
somewhere, with an old rusty harpoon {226} encysted in his shoulder,
the remains of a frayed old line trailing from it, fringed with
green or brown trailing weed along its whole length, encrusted with
barnacles, and alive with little crabs and sea-horses. I am confident
that he has never been taken.

After our exploit with that whale we cruised to the eastward to the
north of Mauritius, but did not raise a spout. Captain Nelson seemed
to have made up his mind that there were no more whales to be found
in those waters, for he stood away to the northwest, for the northern
end of Madagascar. We passed within sight of it, but did not stop.

There was a good deal of speculation among the crew as to where we
were going, for although the mastheads were kept manned, the routine
of cruising grounds was abandoned, and the Clearchus was under a
press of sail for a whaler. The men insisted that she was bound
for some definite port on the east coast, and when we had passed
Madagascar, and the course was changed by a point or so, many of them
said that it was Zanzibar. In the forecastle they had long disputes
upon the matter, and I listened, but took no part in them. I was
often there.

My own position on the ship was somewhat unusual. I was still cabin
boy, but I was one of Mr. Brown’s crew too, and had been for some
months. I had grown nearly a foot in the past year, was a great,
overgrown sixteen-year-old boy, with more muscle than I knew how to
manage. I must have been a raw, red, awkward chap, but fortunately
for me I did not know it. In virtue of my place in the boat I had
acknowledged right in the forecastle, and I availed myself of it as
often as I could. I loved to be there, sitting on the deck, perhaps,
under the flaring tin lamp, or on a sea-chest which stood in a dark
corner, and listening to the talk of the men. That talk, I suppose,
was not edifying, but I did not join in it, and I heard there many
yarns of whales and whaling, to which {227} I listened with open
ears and open mouth—and open nose. The smells of that forecastle!

I found out where we were probably bound by the simple expedient of
looking on the chart. I had been rather neglecting my privileges in
that respect. The course which was being pricked there led straight
to Zanzibar or very near it, although there was no certainty that
the course might not be changed. There was no other port of any
consequence but Zanzibar. There was elation among most of the old
sailors when I told them of it, but Peter shook his head doubtfully.

“Zanzibar,” he said thoughtfully. “I know it well enough. It ’s full
of wickedness, and that of no white man’s sort. Sodom and Gomorrah
were nothing to it.”

Three days later we dropped our anchor in the harbor of Zanzibar.

{228}




CHAPTER XXIV


I stood at the rail, gazing at the harbor and the town. My eyes were
half closed, my chin rested on my hands, which clasped the rail, and
I was lost in a dream of the East. Small boats plied the near waters,
the boatmen crying out shrilly now and then, but my ears were deaf
to their cries. The spacious harbor lay before me, with many vessels
of all kinds and nationalities lying at anchor, from large steamers
flying the British flag to Arab dhows. Life was there. I did not see
the filth washing to and fro along the shore, I saw only the boats
lying thickly there enveloped in golden light, their sails of all
colors swinging lazily. I did not see the narrow, dirty streets,
swarming with the life of all Asia and Africa; I saw only the mass
of light and shadow, the white walls of houses showing pink in the
light of the setting sun, the mosques, the forts, the palace of the
Sultan; and, to the left of it as I stood, what appeared to be a
ship, standing out clearly.

Peter’s voice broke in upon my dream. He had come up silently, and
was at my shoulder.

“It ’s a pretty town, lad,” he said, “from this distance. It looks
nice—but it ain’t.”

I said nothing for a little while. “What do they do here, Peter?” I
asked then.

“Do? In Zanzibar? Most everything that they do in such a port.
They ’ll stick you in the back if you don’t keep your eyes open. But
they run to cloves, mostly.”

“Cloves!”

“Aye, lad, cloves. They may not do so much as they did in that
line, for they had a hurricane here last year, and lost most of the
trees—or bushes, or whatever they are that bear ’em. It was a terror,
that hurricane. I ’ve just {229} heard of it. But you can smell
cloves if you take a good sniff. When we go ashore to-morrow we can
see some of their storehouses, mebbe, if you want to. For myself,
I ’m not much interested in cloves.”

I was not greatly interested in cloves, either. When the boat took us
ashore the next morning, Peter and me, and a crowd of liberty men, I
saw the filth at the harbor’s edge, and the crooked, dirty streets,
hardly wide enough to be called alleys; and crowds of Hindus, Malays,
Chinamen, negroes, and half-castes, with an Arab or a white man here
and there—very few whites. I lost what little interest I had felt in
cloves.

The other men went up one of the streets arm in arm, as many abreast
as the street would hold, with a second rank behind. Peter stood
looking after them until they had disappeared around a corner.

“I wonder,” he said reflectively, “how they ’ll come back.” Then he
turned to me. “Well, lad, up anchor.”

We wandered about the town all day; toward the palace, to get a
nearer view of the stone ship, which is a water-tank, or tanks,
curiously carved; then back again through the narrow streets to the
bazaars. I wondered at the heavy and massive wooden doors, almost
black and all carved more or less, conspicuous in the white walls of
the houses. We got hungry, and managed to find something to eat: a
concoction of rice and various other things—I don’t know what there
was in it, but Peter seemed to know it, and spiced it rather highly.
Then we loafed from shop to shop, looking in at the things for sale,
but buying nothing, although I was tempted two or three times. Peter
restrained me. The shops had open fronts, and the proprietor was
usually to be seen sitting fatly among the shadows. At last we came
to a place where the street widened a little. Peter was hot and
perspiring. So was I. The climate of Zanzibar is not all that could
be desired. Peter proposed that we find a shady place {230} where
they sold something harmless to drink. He found it, and we sat in a
shady corner, screened from the street, and sipped our drinks slowly.
Mine, I remember, was coffee, but I should not have known it for the
drink that went by that name on the ship, or even at home, although I
was rarely allowed coffee at home. My mother had an idea that it was
stunting.

A man came sauntering down the street from the direction of the
palace. I noticed him particularly, for there was something queer
about him; the silent, furtive way of walking, perhaps. I thought
him a Hindu or a Malay, and Peter said that he was from the hills
of India. There were many hillmen at the palace. The man seemed to
be talking or muttering to himself, and he stopped in the middle of
the open place, or square, and the sun beat down upon his head as he
looked about him with fierce and melancholy eyes. They looked as if
he had been a long time in hell, and saw no chance of getting out.

Our proprietor had settled himself on some cushions, and was dozing
quietly, his hands clasped across his fat stomach. Something made him
open his eyes, and he found the melancholy, desperate eyes of the man
fixed upon his. He cried out in terror, and started up, but he was
not quick enough. The man’s eyes flamed, he drew from his girdle a
wicked-looking knife, made two bounds, and plunged the knife into the
fat stomach.

Instantly all was confusion among the shops. Men, women, and children
scuttled like hares. By the time the man had turned around, the
square was utterly deserted except for a shopkeeper on the other
side, who was hastily putting up his shutters, and for a little boy
who was pounding desperately on a massive, carved black door, begging
those behind it to let him in. I had just seen the door close quietly
on the keeper of one of the bazaars and two women. The man had not
noticed Peter and me sitting behind our screen in the darkness. {231}


The man leaped across the square, and settled the shopkeeper who had
been putting up the shutters. He was relieved of that duty forever.
The little boy was still pounding on the door, and the man turned
toward him. The boy began to scream.

“Here!” Peter growled. “This won’t do.” He got up hastily, upsetting
the stand, with cups and glasses. They made a great crashing and
ringing. Peter snatched away the screen. “Hey you! Ahoy!” he yelled.
“ ’Vast there!”

The man’s head had turned at the crash. He abandoned his pursuit of
the little boy, and with a smile of frightfulness he launched himself
at Peter. Peter had reached in his belt for his knife, but it was no
match at all for the knife coming for him. I knew it, and I freed
myself and sprang out. I should have done so before, but my mind
seemed paralyzed, and I incapable of movement. It was like a dream in
its effect, and in its quickness. The whole thing had not taken half
a minute; hardly a quarter.

The man was almost upon Peter—I had not reached him—when there was
a hiss at my ear, a flash in the sun, a streak of light shot past
me, and for an instant I saw the handle of a knife quivering at his
throat. It was just above the breast bone—a fair bulls-eye—and the
blade was buried. To this day I remember exactly how it looked,
quivering rapidly for an instant with the force of the blow; an ivory
handle, stained and polished with much grasping, one point of its
curved surface reflecting the sunlight in a fierce flicker, which
hurt my eyes. Then the man made a lunge at Peter, missed, and fell
sprawling.

Peter and I stood still, staring at him. He squirmed a little.

“It was well thrown,” said Peter thoughtfully; “a’most too well.”

“Did for him,” said a voice right behind us. “May as well take my
knife.” {232}

The owner of the voice stepped forward, bent, and coolly drew the
knife from the throat. It was followed by a gush of blood. He moved
his foot quickly, so that it should not be stained by the blood; then
wiped the blade deliberately and carefully on the gaudy sash around
the body on the ground. Then he stood straight again, slipping the
knife into its sheath on his hip.

“Better fade away, mates,” he said. “Follow me. I know the town.”

The massive black door was opening cautiously. The boy lay upon the
ground, overcome with fright. The knife-thrower moved away silently
and swiftly, and Peter and I followed him. With twistings and
turnings and doublings that would have done credit to the craftiest
old fox, we came, at last, to the water-front, and to the boat
landing. We saw the boat just putting off from the ship. I turned
to our companion, for I had had no chance to see what he was like,
and we had been too busy to observe anyway; but his back was not
prepossessing, as he threaded those narrow lanes with swiftness
and certainty. I saw Peter looking him over too, with his air of
detachment, and a half smile of amusement on his face.

The man was a crafty old fox. That was sure. He showed no particular
age, but might have been anywhere from thirty to fifty. He was of
medium height, spare and lean and thin, with the leanness of an
animal forced to forage for a scanty living—a pariah dog, and with
the furtive air of such an animal. His face was seamed and crossed
with lines, probably due to his manner of life rather than marking
his age in any way. His eyes were a light china blue—they looked like
pieces of china set into his head. There was absolutely no depth to
them, and they were as hard as stones. The man might have been blind.
He made me think of a cat I had known; a large striped yellow cat
with one blue eye and one yellow one; a very still, calculating cat,
contemplating the world {233} calmly out of its cruel, painted eyes;
a cat absolutely without affection, ready to take any action which
promised success; a cat without remorse and without shame. It may be
inferred that I do not like cats. In general, perhaps, I do not; I
did not take to this man either.

It is not unlikely that the man felt what was passing in my mind,
much as a dog feels such things. With a dog there is no need for
acts, or even for a change of the expression of your face. He feels
what is passing in your mind; smells it, perhaps. This knife-thrower,
who threw a knife almost too well to suit Peter’s fastidious temper,
had been looking me over, much as I had been appraising him, each of
us after his manner. Now he smiled faintly and disdainfully—perhaps
he had had many such experiences—and looked away at our boat.

“Much obliged,” said Peter.

The man seemed surprised. “For what?” he asked.

“The knife,” Peter replied.

“Oh, that,” the man said carelessly. “He would have come at me next.
I was behind you, and no place to slip away to. I do not like to run
from a thing like that, so I stopped him.”

“You throw a knife well,” said Peter.

“I do,” said the man with cool and impersonal candor, as though he
was telling the simple truth—which he undoubtedly was. “Practice,
you know, makes perfect. But the man was running amok. Anybody could
have killed him and been thanked for it. I have seen several of them,
Malays mostly. It seemed wiser to slip away. He was from the palace.”

Neither Peter nor I made any reply.

“Your ship ’s a whaler, I take it,” the man resumed presently. “I
spotted you for whalemen. Sperm?”

Peter nodded.

“To Australia, Sunda Strait, China Sea, Japan, and New Zealand?”
{234}

“I s’pose so,” said Peter, “but I can’t say for certain.”

“I wonder,” said the man slowly, “if your vessel needs another hand?
Are you a boatsteerer?” he asked, looking at Peter.

Peter smiled and shook his head.

“You ought to be,” the man said, “or one of the mates. Been to sea
all your life, have n’t you?”

“Forty years, and over.”

“I thought so. Know a ship from truck to keelson. More real
seamanship than the rest of the crew put together. Old navy man and
merchant service, too, eh?”

“Yes,” said Peter, modestly. “How did you know?”

“I know the signs.”

“Well,” said Peter, “you might speak to the mate. That ’s Mr. Baker
in charge of that boat—chief mate.”

How Peter could have told so certainly was beyond my comprehension;
but he had good eyes. We stood silently until the boat came in. Then
the man spoke to Mr. Baker, who received his application well enough.
He looked the man over.

“What have you sailed in?”

“Almost everything, sir, from dhows to whalers, for the last ten
years.”

“Whalers? What vessels?”

“Only one, the Apollo.”

“Apollo, eh? How long were you in the Apollo? And when?”

“The last year, sir.”

Mr. Baker grunted. “Deserted, eh? We left her near Mauritius about a
week ago, bound home.”

The man hesitated. “Well, no, sir. She sailed without me.”

“Drunk, eh? Going to let it go at that?”

He hesitated again. “Well, the truth is, sir, I was n’t sorry. I ’m
not ready to go home yet.”

“Think you ’ll be ready to go home in a couple of years? Where do you
hail from?” {235}

“Near Boston.”

Mr. Baker grunted again, and was silent for a little. Then he
directed a piercing look at the man.

“Where has the Apollo been in the last year?”

“Over New Zealand way, Samoa and Kingsmill—South Seas.”

“Know those waters?”

“Very well, sir.”

Mr. Baker had been standing beside the boat. Now he turned away.

“All right. Wait here for me. I ’ll be back in half an hour. I ’ll
take you aboard, and I have no doubt the captain will sign you. Any
dunnage?”

“No, sir. It ’s all on the Apollo but what I stand in.”

Mr. Baker looked at Peter. “You want to go aboard, Peter?”

“The sooner the better, sir. We ’ve seen all we want of the town.”

“Liberty is n’t up, you know. Muss, eh? Better get in the boat if
anybody comes.”

Mr. Baker was back in half an hour, followed by porters with baskets
of fresh provisions. Three or four more of our men had drifted down.
When we were halfway to the ship Mr. Baker spoke.

“You—what ’s your name?”

“John Brown, sir,” answered the knife-thrower, with half a second’s
hesitation.

“John Brown, eh? We ’ve got one John Brown on the ship. Would n’t
John Smith do you just as well?”

The man smiled. “If you prefer it, sir, I ’ll make it do.”

Mr. Brown was on deck when we came aboard, I just ahead of the man
who was to call himself John Smith. Mr. Brown looked kindly at me;
then I saw a curious expression pass across his face, and his eyes
hardened. It passed in an instant, like a cat’s-paw over water, but
I {236} could not help noting it. There was surprise in it, and no
gratification. I remember that I was disappointed, for I had thought
Mr. Brown above those sudden dislikes.

Mr. Baker went into the cabin, and pretty soon Smith was sent for.
In a quarter of an hour he came out again and went forward to the
forecastle. There was no fault to be found with him, but I had an
uneasy feeling that all was not right, and I went below to find
Captain Nelson and to tell him of our adventure. I thought he ought
to know it.

I found Mr. Baker still with him. They paid no attention to me, but
talked in low tones, and I could not help hearing scraps of their
talk, although I stood well back. The cabin was not very large.

“Seems an educated beggar,” Mr. Baker was remarking. “Knocked about
. . . my guess . . . beach-comber . . . can’t tell what . . . may be
good seaman.”

Captain Nelson sat silent for nearly a minute. “Hendrickson spoke of
him,” he said at last. “Glad to get rid of him. Trouble-maker. Don’t
much like his cut, but that Apollo business settled it. He may know
something about it. If he does, no reason why he should n’t tell.” He
turned to me. “What is it, Tim?”

I told him my story, a matter of ten minutes, perhaps.

“H’m!” the captain grunted. “H’m! You see, Mr. Baker. Peter ’s right
enough. Throws a knife too well. Lucky he does, though, or where ’d
Peter be—and you, too, Tim? Can’t have him carrying a knife like that
here, though. Gently, now, if you can, but get that knife off him.”

To my great surprise, and to Mr. Baker’s surprise, Smith made no
objection whatever to depositing his knife, upon the captain’s
conditions. It was the same knife. I was ready to swear to it when
Captain Nelson showed it to me for identification. Mr. Baker, I know,
distrusted his readiness, and thought he must have another, probably
the mate of it, but we never saw it. {237}

That evening I was standing by the rail, in the dark, looking at the
occasional lights which marked the town, and listening to sounds
which came faintly across the water. My chin was on the back of my
two hands resting on the rail, and I was dreaming. When you are at
anchor in harbor, and the darkness makes outlines dim, it is not
difficult to imagine that Zanzibar is New Bedford—or that any place
is any other place, as long as it has a harbor and a water front;
especially if that other place shines like a star in your memory.
I have got much pleasure, all my life, from giving my imagination
free rein. It is a harmless diversion. I was doing so then, standing
without motion by the main rigging, and I must have been but one of
the shadows of rigging, and coils of rope hanging from belaying pins,
and davits.

Another man was not far from me, not as still as I, but moving softly
and slowly to and fro. I thought it was one of the officers. If it
was, it must be Mr. Brown, and I watched him covertly.

Presently a voice came out of the darkness, a voice speaking low,
cultivated and courteous, as one gentleman to another.

“Does this remind you of Batavia, Mr. Brown?” It was a casual
question, pleasantly put, and I saw no harm in it. It was the new
man, Smith, who asked it. Why had he hit upon Batavia?

Judging by his reception of it, Mr. Brown saw nothing pleasant in the
question, or in the seemingly harmless manner of the questioner. He
turned sharply, and his voice was like ice.

“Batavia? No. Why should it?”

“I thought,” Smith replied, his voice showing that he was smiling,
“that perhaps you might remember a pleasant evening—something like
this one—that you spent there some years ago.”

Mr. Brown turned completely around toward Smith. He did not reply for
an instant, but when he did― {238}

“My man,” he said, “I do not know you. But you may as well understand
me clearly. I am the second mate of this ship, and I shall do
whatever seems to me necessary to maintain my position and enforce my
authority. Remember that; anything whatever. Go forward.”

“Yes, sir,” said Smith. He was actually laughing, but silently. I
could tell by his voice, and so could Mr. Brown, of course; but the
man’s manner was perfectly respectful. “Of course you will. In your
place I would do the same. You would be a fool not to, and I should
say that you were never a fool.”

“Go forward,” Mr. Brown repeated curtly, “and go now.”

He went without further words. I could hear him chuckling as he went.
Mr. Brown stood looking after him; then he moved slowly aft, while I
mused upon what I had heard. It did not take long for me to put two
and two together. Smith, or whatever his name was, must have been
with Mr. Brown in Batavia on that night when he got those scars I
had seen; it was not so very unlikely that he was the man who had
inflicted them. They had recognized each other, but Mr. Brown chose
not to admit it. If I was right, there was the basis for a pretty
quarrel, but such quarrels are not pretty when they are on your own
ship. I did not like to think of it and of what might come of it.

{239}




CHAPTER XXV


Our liberty men appeared in various stages of dejection from their
Oriental haunts of infamy, but none were missing, and we sailed
for the eastward, to cruise about the Seychelles. Smith had been
assigned to Mr. Brown’s boat, to take my oar, for I was nothing but a
substitute. I was chagrined, but there was nothing to be done about
it. Mr. Brown was sorry, but again there was nothing to be done about
it. He could not object unless he wanted to open the matter which he
had resolutely kept closed—to everybody but me, as I believed—and
Smith was a thorough seaman, as far as there had been opportunity
to tell. He started out, in fact, as a model, his only fault being
that he was a little too much of a gentleman for the forecastle. The
men were suspicious of him, and held off at first. Mr. Baker was
suspicious of him too. He said it was too good to be true; that a man
with his history behind him for the past ten years—he was convinced
of the truth of his inferences in that matter—would be as good as
that only if he was up to some trick. Smith was a man to watch, and
he proposed to keep his eye on him.

I tried to sound Mr. Brown on the subject of Smith, but met with no
success. He turned his quiet smile upon me. “He ’s a pretty good shot
with a knife,” he said, “is n’t he, Tim? It must have taken a great
deal of practice. And he seems to be a quiet sort of man, and a good
sailor. We have n’t lowered yet, but I ’ve no’ doubt that he ’ll
prove as good in the boat.”

He did. We got no whales on the Seychelles grounds, but we saw
several, and Mr. Brown’s boat was down nearly every time. Smith
pulled an oar in perfect form, and he pulled a strong oar, rather to
everybody’s surprise, {240} for he was very thin, and did not seem
muscular. I suppose he was wiry, and I knew that he was not burdened
with any kind of tissue that he did not need. He was pleasant to
everybody, respectful to the officers, and he did not seem surly and
disgruntled at having to pull for hours after a whale which finally
got away. He soon won the confidence of the men. The confidence of
the officers was not so easy. Mr. Brown could feel no confidence, I
was sure, and I was almost equally sure of Mr. Baker. Mr. Snow was
surly and irritable, and getting worse. He was on bad terms with his
crew, and seemed determined to haze Silver, who had been subjected to
that process ever since leaving Cape Town.

I was sorry for Silver, but I could do nothing. None of the men could
do anything for him. Captain Nelson could have stopped it, but he
did not, for some reason or other. Silver was getting more and more
desperate and morose, and was looking for a chance to get away. The
Seychelles might have offered him a chance, but we did not enter a
port there, nor send a boat ashore. Even if his boat had gone ashore
his chance of escaping would have been slim, for Mr. Snow was aware
that Silver would desert if he got a chance, and would have kept
an eye on him. For that matter, none of Mr. Snow’s crew were to be
trusted now, with the exception of Miller, the boatsteerer. All the
officers and all the men knew that, and Mr. Snow’s boat would have
been the last one chosen to go ashore.

We were often within sight of land, about eight or ten miles from it.
One day, after a morning of light and variable airs, and an afternoon
of flat calm, the ship had drifted in until darkness found us not
more than four miles from shore. I think the officers were a little
worried about it. An anchor was got ready, and chain overhauled, but
the anchor was not put over. It was a hot night, the only really
hot night we had in that neighborhood; moonless, {241} with light
clouds overspreading the sky. Practically the whole crew were on
deck throughout the evening. They made rather a crowd about the fore
part of the ship, from knightheads to try-works. I was aware of a
subtle stir among them, and I drifted forward to see what it meant,
or whether it meant anything. Mr. Macy passed me, probably on the
same errand; but he could find nothing, and after a turn about the
windlass, he passed me again, on his way back. I sat down by the
windlass, and pretty soon I heard a hoarse whisper.

“ ’D he get away clear?”

“Ye’,” another voice replied in a low growl, “all clear. Hope the
sharks don’t get him. Water ’s swarmin’ with ’em. Tried to persuade
him to wait, but he would n’t. Said they might ’s well ’s that fourth
mate. He ’s to light a fire if he gets ashore—matches sealed up with
grease in a tin. We ’re to watch for it.”

“How soon?”

“Dunno. How long ’ll it take to swim four miles? Two hours or better,
I should think—if he makes it at all.”

The whispering drifted away. Within half an hour we saw lightning at
a great distance to the northwest. It came nearer, and a little air
puffed in our faces; increased to a gentle breeze. The thunder-storm
did not strike us, but the breeze continued long enough for us to get
away from the immediate neighborhood of the land. By the time the
two hours were up, we were too far away to see a fire kindled on the
beach, and I never knew whether poor Silver got safely to shore or
not. I never saw him or heard of him again.

There was not the slightest effort made to get Silver back. Indeed,
there was no chance unless the ship had been delayed for some days,
for that was our last sight of the Seychelles. We stood away to the
northward for the Arabian Sea, to cruise around there for some weeks,
mostly in the northern part. One thing that Silver’s desertion {242}
did for me was to restore me to Mr. Brown’s boat. Smith was given
Silver’s oar in Mr. Snow’s boat, whether at Mr. Brown’s request or
not I did not know, but I thought not. It was not like Mr. Brown to
make such a request, although he must have been glad of the change,
even if Smith did pull a better oar than I. The vacancy in Mr. Macy’s
boat ever since Silvia’s desertion at Cape Town had been filled by
the sailmaker, who continued to fill it without much grumbling.

It was hot up there in the Arabian Sea, with the wind mostly from
the northward—from the land—and many days of calm weather. There
was no bad weather to speak of. We sighted spouts some half-dozen
times, chased without result every time but two, hard pulling in a
temperature that made the sweat pour off the men in rivers—except
Smith. He seemed to be immune to any temperature that could be
raised, and laughed at the men for sweating so. Mr. Snow’s opinion of
him could only be guessed, but he seemed to have a great and growing
respect for him, and he did not so much as bat an eyelid at him. This
may have been due in part to his reputation as a thrower of a knife;
a reputation which clung to him and which could not be ignored.
You thought of it at once whenever you thought of Smith; could not
dissociate the man from his reputation.

He rapidly became a favorite, and there was no reason why he should
not. He was a superlatively good man in a boat, especially in that
climate; he was always respectful, and while he was no boot-licker,
he never forgot the deference which Snow liked. Snow was a little
man, little in nature as in stature; and I have found little men to
be generally more rigidly insistent upon the outward observance of
forms than bigger men. There seems to be something in mere size which
tends to a greater serenity, and to a scorn for such forms. So Snow
was quite satisfied with outward observance. {243}

We got three whales there, of moderate size. There was nothing
remarkable about their capture, and they were put fin out with no
more trouble than shooting a steer in a stall at Brighton. Two of
them were alongside at one time, and sharks were so plentiful and so
voracious—they are always that—that it was all we could do to save
any of the blubber from the second whale. They had it almost stripped
before we could get at it, in spite of our best efforts.

Our third whale was the cause of an incident which greatly amused
everybody on board. We were in about latitude 12° N., longitude 60°
E., nearly in the track of steamers to Bombay from the east coast
of Africa. Our try-works was going full blast, sending up a huge
column of black and oily smoke, which rose to a great height in the
still air. It was very hot and quite calm, and the men, clad in
nothing but shirts and old trousers—many of them had dispensed with
the shirt—were sweating, cursing, and grumbling at the foul, sticky
smoke, which choked them and made them look like coal-heavers or
worse. Suddenly there was a cry of “Sail ho!” All, without stopping
their work, followed the direction of the lookout, and gazed off to
the southward. Pretty soon the smoke of a steamer appeared; then her
stack, and then her upper works rose out of the sea. She was heading
straight for us, and the belching smoke from her stack showed that
she was crowding her furnaces. She continued to come on, straight for
us, until she was perhaps four miles away, and we could see that she
was no tramp, but a regular passenger steamer which ran to Bombay
and ports farther east. At that distance she could see us clearly,
without the possibility of making a mistake as to our character. She
seemed to be seized with sudden disgust, made as quick a turn as she
could, and stood off on her course to the northeast.

Many of the crew guffawed. “Thought we were afire,” {244} one man
said, “and found that we were nothing but a damned whaler. Could n’t
be any worse,” he added, “if we were afire. That ’s the way I feel
now.”

Peter was sorry. “Too bad that she made that mistake,” he said to
me later. “Whalers do get afire sometimes, Timmie, and the smoke
would n’t be very different. Other ships, too, as I know well, though
the smoke of it ’s apt to be different. When her officers see a good
deal of smoke again, they ’ll probably say it ’s only another damned
whaler, and hold their course. There was a ship I sailed in once,
carrying grain. It got afire somehow and smouldered for weeks.”

He seemed to have finished. I was impatient.

“What did you do, Peter?”

“Do, lad?” he asked, with his quiet smile. “We did n’t do anything
but batten down the hatches tighter ’n ever, and try to smother
it. We made our port, but the decks were too hot to stand on with
comfort.”

“Why did n’t you put any water on the fire? That would have put it
out, would n’t it?”

He smiled again. “Aye, I s’pose it would. But wet down grain?
’T would have split her wide open.”

We left the Arabian Sea with seven hundred and fifty barrels of
oil in our hold, and stood to the eastward, as far as the Maldive
Islands. Fifteen months out, and seven hundred and fifty barrels, and
it would take nearly twenty-four hundred barrels to fill us up. If we
did no better than that, on the average, it meant three years more of
it before we could be sailing into Buzzards Bay, a full ship. But I
did not know that I cared greatly.

We had good weather, on the whole, to the Maldives. There were a
good many days of calm or light airs, and we ran into one gale that
continued for a little more than a day, and blew itself out. It did
not seem so very bad, although it kept the men busy and wet. For the
greater part of the time it was very pleasant sailing, with the {245}
wind dead astern or on the port quarter, and not too hot if I could
lie on my back in the shadow of a sail, and look up at the sky and
the foretruck describing a slow ellipse against it. The heel of the
bowsprit was my favorite place, but on our present point of sailing
that was fairly in the sun until the afternoon was half gone, even
with the staysails out to starboard; and nobody—no white man—could
bear the sun beating down upon him long with any comfort. I could
stand the smell of the ship, which blew over me as I lay there.
Indeed, I liked the smell of the ship. It was chiefly of oil and tar
and rope and general hotness, and it brought back vividly to my mind
the wharves of New Bedford on a summer noon.

When I had any time in the mornings I used to stand just abaft the
foremast on the port side. It was wiser, of course, not to be caught
loafing, although the officers would usually fail to see me when I
was in plain sight. Standing so, I gazed off at the dimpling sea—on
two occasions I saw a smudge of smoke on the horizon, and once I saw
a sail—or, looking down, I watched the little wave, continuously
breaking, which our bows pushed aside. We often had schools of flying
fish about us, and sometimes I could see great numbers of albacore
about the ship, a fish not unlike our horse-mackerel. The albacore
chased the flying fish—not into the air, although they would often
leap clear of the water—and caught them, too, by being on hand when
they struck the water again. The albacore had their enemies. One
morning I noticed that the albacore were huddled close to the ship,
swimming in close ranks. Suddenly they disappeared—they had gone to
the other side of the hull, I found—and I saw a swift shadow pass
where they had been. It looked much like a shark swimming fast, at a
considerable depth. Then the albacore were back again, and the shadow
returned. The albacore scattered and fled, and the pursuer, a great
swordfish, was among them, slashing with his {246} sword, killing
three or four. When they were gone, the swordfish returned from the
pursuit, I suppose, and ate those he had killed. I did not see that
part of it. We saw swordfish more than once, big fellows, twelve feet
long or more, apparently basking on the surface. The men called them
sail-fish. They have an enormous back fin, folded down on the back
when they swim fast, but often erect above the water when they lie at
the surface. It acts like a sail, and carries them along at a very
fair speed.

We were to see another phase of the activities of the swordfish. We
had got nearly to the Maldives, about 72° east longitude, when the
hail came down from aloft: “There she breaches! And white waters!”

Everybody looked. It was a lone whale, rather a small one as far as
we could judge at that distance, about three miles off on the weather
bow. It was kicking up extraordinary antics, sounding briefly, then
coming up on a half breach; lobtailing; running for a short distance,
when it would give it up, and begin all over again.

The officers watched the whale while we stood toward it. At last Mr.
Baker was satisfied.

“Swordfish,” he said.

The whale remained nearly in the same spot while we came up. His
attention was so completely taken up by the swordfish that we did not
lower until the ship was considerably less than a quarter of a mile
away. Then we put down two boats, Mr. Baker’s and Mr. Brown’s, which
ran down under both sail and oars. We did not think it necessary to
avoid making a noise, for the whale could not get away if he wanted
to. By the time we had got nearly within darting distance, he had
almost ceased struggling, and seemed about ready to give up the
ghost. The Prince was just standing up and reaching for his iron,
and Mr. Baker’s boat was approaching from the other side. Out of the
corner of my eye I could see Starbuck taking his harpoon from the
crotch. {247}

Suddenly the Prince gave a yell: “Swordfish! Look out!”

Mr. Brown heaved mightily on the steering oar, to lay the boat
around, but it was too late. There was a sharp crack, we felt the
boat rise under us, and Kane cried out in surprise and pain. I turned
my head around quickly—I had no business to do so, and I knew it as
soon as I had time to think. I saw the point of the sword sticking
up beside Kane’s thigh. Kane had dropped his oar, grabbed the sword
point with both hands, and was yelling for the iron. The sword had
gone through the thin planking—the garboard strake—and through the
thwart, and had given Kane a flesh wound in the thigh. It was a
narrow escape for Kane, but he was not thinking of that. His whole
mind was upon holding the sword without cutting his hands too badly.
The swordfish was thrashing about viciously, shaking the boat, and
threatening to break out the bottom planking. It all happened more
quickly than I can tell it. The Prince was alert, and he reached
over, and jabbed the harpoon clear through the fish. Then he seized
a lance, and churned it up and down through the heart of the fish,
turning it as he churned. He could not reach the gills, where
swordfish are usually lanced. The violent struggles of the swordfish
ceased, he quivered once, and lay still; but his sword remained
sticking through the thwart even after Kane had let go of it, and
Kane’s thigh was bleeding freely.

“Badly hurt, Kane?” Mr. Brown asked.

“No, sir,” said Kane, hammering on the end of the sword with his
paddle, which he had taken from its place for the purpose. “If I can
only get this bloody sword out—but it ’s stuck tight.”

“All the better,” said Mr. Brown. “Heave on the line, boys, and break
it off.”

At the second heave a heavy strain came on the line, and at the third
there was another sharp crack, and the {248} sword broke off at the
nose. The broken sword remained sticking through the planking and the
thwart, and the body of the fish came up alongside the boat. It was a
big fish, two thirds the length of the boat.

While we were having it out with the swordfish, Mr. Baker had
fastened to the whale, which was already dead, and we lay there and
waited for the ship. There had been at least four swordfish attacking
the whale, and nobody knew how many more. The whale, a small bull
of thirty-seven barrels as he afterward tried out, stood no chance
at all against half a dozen big swordfish, which were of a kind
fairly common in the Indian Ocean, about twice as long as those
I was familiar with. We got our prize on deck, and ate it within
the next few days. The flesh was a little coarser than that of the
smaller ones, but very good. We got others from time to time, as
chances offered, as long as we were in their waters, and dolphins and
porpoises occasionally.

Attacks by swordfish upon boats are not uncommon. It seems likely
enough that they mistake the hull of the boat for the body of a
whale. Attacks on the hull of a ship, however, seem to me to be due
to accident. The fish which are the common prey of the swordfish
often huddle close to the hull of a vessel, and the swordfish, in its
attack upon them, may run its sword into the hull, although there
have been instances where several swordfish have made a concerted
attack upon the hull. We had a sword penetrate the planking of the
Clearchus later on, before we had got out of the Indian Ocean, which
I was convinced was due to accident. The sword went cleanly through
the copper, the sheathing, a three-inch oak plank, and an oak rib,
and stuck four inches into the hold; then it broke off. I saw, many
years ago, in New Bedford, the Morning Star, a whaler, with a sword
which had been driven clear through her keel, eighteen inches of
solid oak, and the point of the sword still sticking a good eight
inches beyond it.

{249}




CHAPTER XXVI


From the point where the swordfish killed the whale we laid a course
southwesterly to the westward of Réunion. We had the southeast trades
all the way, and did not touch a brace until we were between Réunion
and Madagascar. There the trades left us, and we laid a southerly
course, with shifting winds. We were getting into the “horse
latitudes,” and the wind was generally strong, at first from the east
and northeast; still farther south it held usually from the westward,
stronger yet, and gales were frequent.

I had taken an unreasoning dislike to Smith. I could not account for
it, and I do not remember that I tried to. It was much like that of
a dog, and may have been due to the same cause. His outward behavior
was unexceptionable. He was always pleasant, properly deferential to
the officers, with due regard to each man’s taste in degree and kind
of deference. He was a diplomat. Even to Mr. Brown his manner was
perfect: silent, brief when words were needed, quite respectful and
pleasant. I think that Mr. Brown was wondering whether he had done
Smith entire justice. But the men were less alive and willing. Nobody
could help seeing it, although few would have ascribed the change to
Smith.

One day, when we were off the southern end of Madagascar, Peter spoke
to me of it.

“It ’s that Smith,” he said. “It ’s his doing.”

“Why don’t you report it to the old man?” I asked. “Or tell one of
the officers—Mr. Brown, if you like.”

“What ’d I report?” he said. “Smith has n’t said anything or done
anything. They ’d ask me what, and I ’d say he laughed at the men,
and they ’d laugh at me—and I ’d fall off the topsail yardarm, with a
knife in my back, as {250} like as not, in one o’ these gales we ’ll
be running into. And what good ’d that do to anybody?”

“Does Smith carry a knife?” I asked quickly.

“I ’ve never seen it; and he ’s one of the pleasantest-spoken men I
ever saw—always at my elbow when I ’m at my scrimshawing, admiring.
But he ’s a trouble-maker. He ’ll have the men ready for mutiny,
the first thing you know, with his laughing at them, and making fun
of them, and despising them for doing what they have to do. There
ain’t anything else will do it so quick or so sure. And there ain’t
anything he says or does ’t you can put your finger on. I ’ve been to
sea a good many years, and I know a beach-comber when I see one—full
of all kinds of hard drink that would burn out the insides of a
better man, and filled with disease and evil. Smith must have been a
good man to stand it so long—and come out no worse.”

At that moment Smith passed us, and Peter began to talk of something
else.

When we reached the latitude of the Crozets we began the regular
cruising programme at once. We were far enough south to see ice
occasionally, although it was a little late in the season for that;
but the water was very cold, and the wind, almost without exception
while we were in those waters, was very strong from the westward,
blowing a gale about half the time. We had a good deal of fog. I did
get sight of the Crozets once, distant, dark mountain peaks, cold and
forbidding. We had about us, most of the time, an albatross or two,
and gannets, boobies, petrels, and Cape pigeons in plenty. I suppose
they must nest on the islands.

Sperm whales are not to be found in these latitudes, although right
whales are.

We got no whales here; indeed, our actions led me to think that the
captain did not expect any, or want any. He took no great pains, at
any rate, and we quartered the grounds only once. Then we wore ship,
and ran down {251} to leeward. When we had reached the easterly
limit of our cruising ground, we did not come about and beat up, as I
expected, but continued to run to the eastward before a gale of wind,
with alternations of fog and rain, three hundred miles farther, more
or less. It was very disagreeable weather.

At last we found ourselves, one morning, in the midst of great
numbers of birds, some in the air, and many others in the water:
teals, giant petrels, gulls, terns, cormorants, Cape pigeons, and
albatrosses; and an abundance of penguins. The cormorants and
penguins were new to me. We knew, of course, that we must be very
near to some land, but the weather was so thick that we could not see
above half a mile. Sail was reduced, and we ran cautiously. We could
feel the nearness of land. Even I could do that. About the middle of
the day the fog lifted somewhat, and became a thick mist. Through it
we saw the mass of Kerguelen, or Desolation Island, its peaks lost in
the rolling clouds of fog. A little later we rounded a promontory,
and entered a bay with many little islands dotted over it. Of course
I compared the bay with Buzzard’s Bay, for that was my standard of
comparison always, especially the part from New Bedford to Cuttyhunk.
This bay seemed not very different in size, but the shores were as
different from the shores of Buzzard’s Bay as they well could be. The
land was steep and high and rugged, making the bay more like my idea
of a Norwegian fiord, although I know the fiords of Norway only as my
imagination pictures them. On that first day the land seemed to run
right up without limit beyond the clouds, which hung low. There were
days, later, when we saw the fields of perpetual snow on the summits
of the mountains, and caught glimpses of the glaciers running down
the valleys.

There was fresh water here in plenty, and some days were spent in
filling our casks and in giving the men a {252} run ashore. There
was no danger of desertion, and absolutely no chance of harm of the
sort usually connected with shore liberty. Indeed, it was funny to
see how afraid the men were that the ship would sail without them.
They went about in clumps, and Smith attached himself closely to
Peter and me. It was good to feel solid earth under our feet once
more.

We saw here some fur seals in the water, and a very few
sea-elephants, which had been left behind by the herd in its
southward migration a short time before, much as an occasional
robin is left in the north, into November or even December. The
sea-elephant is a strange beast. It has a snout somewhat prolonged,
and as flexible as an elephant’s, but this snout or trunk is short,
about the length of a tapir’s, I should guess. I never measured a
sea-elephant, but I should think they were from ten to twenty feet
long, and that they weighed from one to three tons, the bulls being
larger than the cows. They look much like huge leather water-bottles,
filled to bursting with water, and dumped on the ground by tired
porters.

As we saw them there, they were lying on the grass-covered slopes,
between the rocks. When we came too near, the beast would raise its
head, wrinkle its nose, contract its proboscis until it lay flat
on its face, and open its disgusting mouth, emitting what probably
passed, among sea-elephants, for a growl or a hiss. As I remember
them, the lower lip was very full and split, and they had a way of
thrusting it forward, as if pouting. I may be wrong, for it is a long
time to remember such details, and I was not engaged in a scientific
investigation. I am sure only that the expression of their faces was
very disgusting and expressed the most utter disgust. No doubt it
represented rage or alarm, perhaps both. When we advanced cautiously
nearer still, the beast would bestir itself, rise up on its flippers,
and go lumbering off with astonishing speed. {253}

After one of these excursions, as Peter and Smith and I were
approaching the shore where our boat lay, we saw a party of our men
coming out of a ravine loaded to the gunwales with some sort of a
plant.

“What ’s that they ’ve got?” asked Smith.

“It ’s likely to be Kerguelen cabbage,” Peter answered.

“I ’ve heard of it,” said Smith. “Sort of medicine, is n’t it?”

Peter shook his head. “I ’ve never eaten any. You ’re like to find
out. It seems early in the season to pick cabbages.”

Smith laughed, and started running to meet the men with the cabbages.
He was just the build for a runner, tall and lean, and he ran well
and easily. To tell the truth, I admired the man, while I disliked
him heartily; admired his physical qualities, which seemed unimpaired
by his mode of life, while I disliked his attitude toward everything,
and the kind of thoughts which seemed to occupy his mind—his mental
attributes, or rather the attributes of the heart, as we are apt to
put it.

The captain was glad to get the cabbages, immature as they must have
been, and they were fed to the crew in the next few days. There was a
sort of oily essence in them, and they had a peculiar taste; but it
was not unpleasant, once you were used to it, and the men had been
without green vegetables for so long that they would have welcomed
anything. The effect upon their health was marked. Whenever we landed
upon Desolation we laid in a supply of cabbages, and as long as we
were in that neighborhood the crew were in the best of condition.

We sailed before sunrise the next morning, and began our long beat to
the westward. The weather was still bad, with half a gale of wind,
and fog, mist, or rain. In fact, the weather in the neighborhood of
Kerguelen is uniformly bad, as far as my experience goes. We did not
have a dozen days of clear sunshine in all the time we were there.
{254}

Not long after this Captain Nelson got into a towering rage against
Smith for insubordination, and against Mr. Snow for permitting it.
Smith’s insubordination was, in itself, a small matter. He had
failed to carry out some order of Mr. Snow’s, but had done something
else instead. What he had done was just as good as what he had been
ordered to do—it may have been better—but on a ship orders are
orders, and must be obeyed. Mr. Snow, instead of insisting that
his orders be obeyed, had first stormed and blustered, and then
weakly pleaded with Smith. As far as I could gather, Smith had paid
no attention to his storming, had smiled at his blustering, and
disregarded his pleading, but had gone on with whatever he was doing.
He had done it very well, and in a smart and seamanlike manner. There
was no fault to be found with him on that count, but no shipmaster
can pass over such rank and obvious disobedience.

I had never seen Captain Nelson in a towering rage before, and I
witnessed it but once again. Twice is once too many. When he was in
such a rage he was quiet—ominously quiet, although he was always a
quiet man; his mouth became a straight, thin line half hidden by
his beard, and his eyes were cold and hard. He summoned Smith to
the cabin and asked him what he had to say for himself. I was not
present, but the quarters on a whaleship are not large, and the
partitions are not sound-proof. I could imagine, easily enough, the
captain’s eyes boring through Smith, and Smith’s opaque, china-blue
eyes gazing innocently at the captain; for Smith, in such an
encounter, was Captain Nelson’s equal. In education and breeding he
was superior, and I had no doubt that his experience of clashes of
the kind was far greater than the captain’s; but Captain Nelson’s
mental processes were not devious, as Smith’s were. He knew where he
was going, and went by the most direct path. If he found anything in
his way he smashed it. His intentions were good, and he {255} had
the authority, and he meant to maintain it; this above all things.

At first Smith pretended not to know what the captain was talking
about, but the captain cut him short. Then he proceeded to explain
why what he had done—I did not know just what it was—was better than
what he had been ordered to do; that it was dark, and they were in
some hurry, and it saved time. Smith was a thorough seaman—he would
have been good at anything he undertook—and the seamanship shown in
his explanation impressed Captain Nelson, and somewhat softened the
rebuke which came. But it came. Smith was dismissed with the warning
that his first duty was to obey orders, and never to let it happen
again. I had no difficulty in picturing his respectful, pleasant
smile, and his bow, as he withdrew with a “Thank you, sir.”

Mr. Snow’s interview was different. I did not hear him say anything.
Captain Nelson’s low voice said various cutting things very briefly.
I could not hear all of it, but the gist of the captain’s remarks
was that one of the first duties of an officer was to maintain his
authority; that he owed it to the ship, to his superiors, and to
the owners, and that any officer who was unable to do so would be
broken—deprived of his rank. Then I heard the murmur of Mr. Snow’s
voice as he asked a question. Captain Nelson’s answer came like a
bomb, with a blow of his fist upon the table.

“Shoot him, sir! Shoot him! I ’d do it in a second.”

Then Mr. Snow faded out of the cabin.

In the course of time we turned once more to leeward, and ran for
Desolation. This time we did not land in the great bay to which
we had first gone, but in a comparatively small harbor farther to
the westward. Nobody knew why we had come—at least, nobody but the
captain and perhaps some of the officers, and they said nothing. I
ventured to ask Captain Nelson. {256}

He smiled at my question. “May be something worth while, Tim,” he
said rather gruffly. “Never can tell.”

I said nothing more. There seemed to be nothing there that we wanted,
and we got up our anchor, ran along the coast a little way, and
poked our nose into the next harbor. There are a great many of these
natural harbors along the coast of Kerguelen, deep, with mountainous
sides, except on the western end. The prevailing winds are westerly,
and in the course of ages the sea has eaten into the shore of the
windward end, and smoothed it out.

We called at a number of these fiords. In one or two of them we
anchored, and the men were given a chance to stretch their legs,
only the officer in charge knowing his errand; into others we merely
sailed, and then sailed out again. At last we struck one that seemed
to be to the captain’s liking, and a large party went ashore, headed
by the captain.

The captain carried a Spencer carbine, and so did Mr. Brown.
Mr. Baker preferred a lance. There were but two of the Spencers
available, and we had no ammunition to waste, although there was
enough for ordinary occasions on a long voyage. The Spencer was a
short, repeating rifle, rather heavy, but an extremely handy gun. Its
magazine carried seven cartridges, with a lead projectile half an
inch in diameter, or thereabouts, and the rifle was sighted for half
a mile, to the best of my recollection. It was a gun which had done
good work in the Civil War, and there were a good many of them in New
Bedford.

When we had got away from the beach I was so glad to feel the springy
turf under my feet that I ran ahead at the top of my speed, which was
good enough to distance everybody, although several of the men were
running clumsily. That is, I distanced everybody but Smith. He could
outrun me easily, and kept ahead, flinging back over his shoulder
good-natured taunts. Somewhat stung by his taunts, I went after him,
and he led me off to one {257} side, up a slope covered thickly
with huge boulders, or perhaps outcroppings of rock. He ran up the
steep sides of these rocks—as I thought, to show off—and I followed,
struggling up where he had leaped, and jumping from the tops, as he
had done. At last we came to a rock steeper and higher than any other
that we had been over. Smith leaped lightly up its side, and jumped
from its top. My breath was gone, and I was tired, but I managed to
get up; my foot slipped as I was about to jump, and I fell instead,
striking my head.

When I came to myself Smith was on the top of the great rock from
which I had fallen, bending over, his hands busy with a big round
stone which rested on the rock, very near the edge. Even in my dazed
condition I knew enough to spring out of the way, for the stone would
have fallen upon me in a few seconds more.

“What are you doing?” I cried angrily.

Smith smiled pleasantly, and kept on tugging at the stone. “Only
trying to move this stone. I was afraid it would fall on you.”

My head was clearing—and aching. I was sure the stone had not been
there when I fell. And why, if his object was to save me, had Smith
not dragged me out of its way? It would have been easier, and
simpler, and the natural thing to do. Was he trying to kill me, and
in a way which would make my death seem a regrettable accident? It
was not to be borne. A great rage filled my heart as the question
seemed to answer itself.

Upon landing, I had provided myself with a club, as a boy will
naturally pick up any handy stick. That club lay where I had fallen;
but I staggered to my feet, and got it. In that moment I became as
mad as any Berserker. Nothing could hurt me, nothing could stop me.
I would kill Smith. I was no longer small, but fairly grown, and I
was strong. I heaved up my club, and I suppose I glared at Smith. He
stood there, on top of the {258} rock, and laughed; and I walked
around the rock, looking for a place to mount, where it would be less
like storming a citadel. Smith laughed as if he would split; and
there came a call for me, and Peter and Mr. Brown hove in sight.

I did not kill Smith. As I stood there, breathing hard, my rage left
me suddenly, as my rages always did. Smith jumped down off the rock,
and came to me, smiling, as though to say something, but I turned
away. In my heart I was sure of him now. He went to Mr. Brown, and
said something about my fall, and about its having put me out of my
head for a time. Mr. Brown listened, but made no reply.

After spending nearly the whole day in tramping over hills, we went
back to the ship empty-handed. I did not know what we had been
looking for.

It was February, 1874, before we left Desolation behind us, and
headed northerly for warmer seas. There was not a man aboard who was
not glad to see the last of this home of gales and wet and cold.

{259}




CHAPTER XXVII


For five days the wind held from the westward, and we held a course
a little east of north. I saw the chart every day, and sometimes
pricked the position of the ship on it. I took an occasional
observation, and worked out that position, checking up my observation
and the position worked out from it by the captain’s. I really think
that I knew more of the mathematics of the matter than he did. In
another respect Captain Nelson had an immense advantage. That was in
dead reckoning, which was very important where we had clear skies,
either by day or by night, only about half the time or less.

The prickings on the chart pointed straight for Amsterdam Island,
with St. Paul possibly rising above the horizon to leeward. Then we
ran into head winds and a gale, which lasted for two days. That gale
lost me completely. I tried dead reckoning, and I was so mortified
about it that I did not mention it to anybody. I spent all my spare
time, for the first day after we ran out of the bad weather, in
trying to reconcile my reckoning with the captain’s.

It was nearly sunset when I gave it up finally, and went on deck,
feeling rather low in my mind, for the observation on that day had
shown the official reckoning to be only a few miles out. I stood at
the rail, under the stern of the waist boat, and gazed out moodily
over the water, cursing myself; for I had got into the way of the
ship long before, and could curse fluently, although I was no expert
at it, as Mr. Baker was.

I must have been muttering my curses aloud, for I heard a voice at my
shoulder. It was Peter. {260}

“What ’s gone wrong, lad?” he asked, half laughing. “Cussing won’t
mend it.”

I turned to him. “I don’t know about that, Peter,” I said. “It
relieves my mind. I feel better already.”

He laughed. “Do you so? Well, mebbe. But, Timmie, I ’ll have
something for you to-morrow.”

“Got your model done, Peter?” I asked eagerly. I had been but little
in the forecastle for months. I did not want to have to speak to
Smith, or even to see him.

“Mebbe I have,” he answered, smiling. “Mebbe I have. I could be
tinkering at it longer, but I don’t believe ’t would better it. I ’ll
give it to you to-morrow.”

“Can’t you give it to me now, Peter? You might as well. You won’t do
anything more to it.”

“Well,” said Peter, almost coyly. “Well, I might get it now. But come
up for’ard, or into the fo’c’s’le. I ought not to be standing here,
gamming.”

I hesitated. I was reluctant to go into the forecastle. “I don’t like
to, Peter. I—you see—Smith—”

“Aye,” said Peter soberly, “I know. Smith—well he ’ll get the lance
the first thing he knows. He ’s worse and worse, as independent as a
clerk; fair reckless. The old man gave him another dressing-down a
few days ago, a stiff one. Did you know it?”

I nodded. I knew it, although I did not hear it.

“And he bragged of it,” Peter went on; “came back to us, and bragged
of it, and laughed at the old man and the officers. Said he ’d been
threatened, and he ’d show the old man yet. Mr. Snow ’s afraid of
him, to speak plainly, and he ’s got the idea that the others are
too, at heart. And he ’s got the men discontented and grumbling.
It ’s my idea that he thinks they ’ll be ready soon for anything he
proposes. I don’t know why the old man don’t do something about it.
He must know.”

I checked the reply which was on my lips, for Smith was approaching
at that moment. He always contrived to {261} pass when Peter and I
were talking. He was suspicious, very likely, but did not show it. He
gave us a smile and a pleasant word.

“Come on, then,” said Peter, turning to go forward, “and I ’ll get
it.”

I followed, and waited by the foremast while Peter dived below. He
emerged in a minute, holding the model in his hand.

“I hope you ’ll like it, lad,” he said, “and it may give you some
pleasure to look at it now and again, and remind you of the years you
spent in the old ship.”

“Oh, Peter!” I said. “Oh, Peter! Like it!” It was a fairy thing, with
its ivory sails so thin that you could almost see through them, and
the tiny boats complete down to the smallest thing in them, every
oar, lance, harpoon, and keg in its proper place. There were even
ivory knives on the cleats. And the model of the ship itself had
every rope and block, and every ring-bolt in the deck; and the deck
showed each plank, even to the worn places in the actual deck.

I had not seen the model for some time, and had not expected that it
would be so faithful; but I should have known Peter better.

He was smiling with gratification. “It ’s not likely that it ’ll give
you the pleasure it has me,” he said. “I ’ve been slow at it, but
I ’ve been doing a thing or two along with it, and what ’s a little
time? Take it along, Timmie. I ’ll make you a case for it, so ’s you
can pack it in your chest.”

“Thank you, Peter,” I began. “I ’ll keep it always.” So I have kept
it. The ivory is now much yellowed by time, but it is the same
delicate, fairy-like thing, and as perfect as ever. I should have
said more, and was smiling and hesitating, not knowing what to say,
when the watch was sent aloft to shorten sail.

“What ’s that for, Peter?” I asked in surprise. We {262} were not
cruising, and normally we should not have shortened sail.

“I don’t know, lad. It ’s breezing up a bit, and it ’s like enough
the old man ’s afraid he ’ll overrun whatever he ’s aiming for. He
did n’t say anything to me about it. You might ask him what he means
by it.”

I laughed. Captain Nelson was on deck, standing just forward of the
after house, where he had a clear view of all that went on aloft. In
view of what happened, I think he had a definite purpose in being
there.

When the men were sent aloft to handle sail it was the established
custom for the boatsteerers to take the yardarms. The other men would
lay out along the yard in accordance with their speed and activity,
the fattest and the laziest getting the bunt of the sail; but however
good a man might be, it was his duty to give way to the boatsteerers.
The yardarms were the places of honor, as the duties there called for
the greatest skill and quickness. Joe Miller was good, but he was
neither as skilful nor as quick as Smith. Smith knew it, as we all
did. He may have craved the chance to show off before the men, or it
may have been only a part of his scheme to exalt Smith and to bring
into disrepute all in authority; but he reached the crosstrees two
jumps ahead of Miller, and was on the footropes before him.

Miller stopped for a moment and ordered Smith to come in and let
him pass. Smith paid no attention to the order. Miller repeated
it, but Smith was already at the lee yardarm, and he looked back
at Miller and snarled silently—like a cat—fixing him with those
opaque china-blue eyes of his. A fight on a yard with Smith was
not to Miller’s liking, and he looked down on deck, where Mr. Snow
stood. Mr. Snow bravely bellowed out the order once more, but Smith
paid no attention, affecting not to hear. Mr. Snow had turned away
immediately, and after a moment’s hesitation, Miller went to work
next {263} to Smith. The other men on the yard had hard work to
suppress their snickers.

Captain Nelson had observed it, as he observed almost everything. He
told Mr. Snow to send Smith aft.

The Clearchus was an old ship, and had single topsails—not divided
into upper and lower topsails, as they were on all of the later
vessels. It made an enormous sail, clumsy and hard to handle. When
they had the foretopsail reefed and the men had come down, Smith came
aft. Captain Nelson was waiting for him.

“My man,” he said very sternly and quietly, “you have disobeyed
orders again. I warn you for the third time—and the last time. The
next time I shall act, and suddenly. You ’ll do well not to let the
next time happen. Not a word from you!” he added, for Smith was about
to speak. “Go forward!”

Smith turned—smiling, I guessed, when his back was turned to the
captain—and went forward. My heart was in my throat for a few
minutes. Anything might have happened. I had dim forebodings as
I turned in that night, picturing to myself a repetition of what
happened on the Junior, and I lay awake for some time. I do not know
that I was frightened; rather, I think, it was the elation with which
I anticipated a fight, and it was excitement which kept me awake. I
had my mind made up to stay awake all night, but it takes a good deal
to keep a healthy boy awake all night when he is in the open air all
day, with the wind from thousands of miles of ocean blowing upon him,
and when I awoke with a start it was daylight.

Everything was serene when I got on deck. The wind was high from the
southwest, with an occasional screeching gust; but the sky was clear,
the sun showed bright, and the Clearchus slogged along, pitching and
rolling. I had my model with me, for I was as anxious to show it and
have it admired as a child with a new toy. Indeed, that was exactly
what I was. {264}

In these various exhibitions two hours passed. At the end of that
time I found myself with Starbuck and the Prince standing by the
starboard rail, just forward of the gangway. They saw Peter, called
to him, and he joined us. Starbuck had the model in his hand, turning
it from side to side, and gazing at it soberly.

“ ’T would have more beauty,” Peter observed, “if ’t was a model of
the Annie Battles. I should like to carve one of the Battles.”

“It has beauty enough,” said Starbuck thoughtfully. “How long is it
since we ’ve seen the Battles?”

“Nigh on to a year,” Peter replied, counting up the months. “We ’d
almost forgotten her. Most of the crew ’s clean forgotten.”

“I have n’t,” said Starbuck. “I ’ve always wondered what happened
on the Battles—what happened to Fred Coffin. I ’m sure enough that
something did.”

Peter agreed with him, and the Prince grunted. I, for a wonder, said
nothing. At that instant the cry came down from the masthead, “Land,
ho!” It took a sailor to understand that cry; to others it would have
been as unintelligible as a brakeman’s cry of the name of a station.

Landfall must have been expected, for Captain Nelson was on deck with
his glass. He did not even ask the usual question, “Where away?” but
went at once up the main rigging and searched the horizon on the lee
bow. Presently he came down and spoke to the officer of the watch.

“Well as she goes.”

“Well as she goes,” the officer repeated; and repeated the order to
the man at the wheel, who was within easy hearing of the captain.

“Well as she goes,” said the man at the wheel, and kept her on her
course.

“What is it, Peter?” I asked. “Amsterdam?”

Peter nodded. “Yes, lad.” We had passed St. Paul early in the night
before. It would have been well out of sight, anyway. {265}

Amsterdam soon rose within sight from the deck, and I went down and
got my glass and left my precious model. I found a secluded spot
where I should not be likely to be seen, and watched the island as
we drew nearer. I saw steep slopes, densely wooded, rising from the
sea to a great height, but nothing else was to be distinguished, even
when we were pretty near. At last we had the island abeam, not over
three miles away. I had the glass at my eyes, and was slowly sweeping
over the surface, up and down, and to and fro. Nothing appeared but
the green of the tops of trees or bushes, I could not tell which, but
they looked like trees. As I moved the glass systematically, so that
I could see the whole of the island and lose nothing, suddenly I came
again to the sea; but there had seemed to be something like a little
spot of color, and it fluttered. It had shown on the silhouette of
the island, against the sky, and I could not be sure of the color. I
had passed it by, and lost it, before it had impressed itself on my
attention; but I hunted for it again, and I found it at last.

The ship had advanced enough to show the green of tree-tops beyond
the fluttering thing by the time I had found it again. I looked a
long time before I could make out what it was, but I finally made it
out. About halfway up the long slope a tree had been stripped of its
upper branches, so that it made a tolerable pole. To this pole had
been fastened a sailor’s common red woolen undershirt; that was what
it was—what it had been. It had been there for a long time, for it
showed but a faint trace of its color, and it had whipped to a rag in
the winds. The instant I knew it for what it was, my heart jumped up
into my throat, and I jumped up and raced aft.

Captain Nelson listened to the brief tale which I poured out
hurriedly, the words tumbling over each other in my eagerness.

He nodded. “All right, Tim,” he said. “We ’re going in there, and
we ’ll see what it means.” {266}

Amsterdam Island is an ancient volcano. On the northeast, or leeward
side of the island, the old crater walls have crumbled somewhat,
making a harbor of a sort, and it was there we were bound. Soon after
I spoke to the captain the yards were braced around, and we changed
our course to the eastward. Then the men were sent aloft to take
in sail. It happened once more that it was Smith’s watch, and the
captain watched him narrowly. He sprang up the fore rigging—again
ahead of Miller—and took his station at the foretopsail yardarm—the
lee yardarm.

Mr. Snow was not on deck. I found afterward that he had been
suspended from duty.

Captain Nelson was in the second of his cold rages,—the last I ever
saw. He said nothing to Smith, however, but he turned to me.

“Tim,” he said distinctly, “go below and get my Spencer and a clip of
cartridges, and bring them to me. Hurry.”

I remember very clearly how mixed my feelings were as I dived into
the cabin and got down the captain’s Spencer. I did not dream that
Smith would not obey orders when the captain had his rifle in his
hands—if he knew the captain. It did not occur to me that perhaps he
did not know the captain.

I put the loaded rifle in Captain Nelson’s hands, and stood to one
side.

“Foretopsail yard, there!” he hailed. “You Smith!”

Smith looked up.

“Lay in off that yard!”

Smith insolently put his hand behind his ear, as if he had not heard.
His hearing was particularly good, and the captain knew it.

“Lay in off that yard!” the captain roared. There could be no excuse
for not understanding that.

I do not know whether Smith was simply crazy, or whether he thought
no captain would dare to shoot a man. I did not really believe it
would come to that, but when I {267} saw Smith deliberately put his
thumb to his nose, and wiggle his fingers at the captain, I knew that
it was the end of him. And the captain raised his rifle, and shot
Smith through the head. What else could he do? It was a flagrant case
of mutiny. All pretense of discipline, all authority would have been
at an end if he had not. To many it may seem like murder. I never
knew the rights of the matter, but nothing was ever done about it.

The crew had stopped work for the moment, to see how the contest was
coming out. When the shot rang out—Spencers did not ring out; it
was more like a blow of a sledge—and through the smoke I saw Smith
throw up his hands, I gasped. As the body fell like lead into the
sea, a gasp went up from the men; then I heard a sort of murmuring
from them. They were thrown into consternation. Some went to work
again with shaking hands, others stopped work entirely. Those on deck
stirred and moved about uncertainly. I was reminded of the ripples
which cross and recross when a stone is thrown into a corner of a
dock.

Captain Nelson called to them sharply. “To your duty, men! In with
that topsail!” He tapped his rifle as he spoke.

“Are n’t you going to lower a boat for him?” The question came from
the group of men about the foremast.

“No. He ’s a dead man, and a mutineer. I lower no boat for him.”

The men on the yard were at their work again, and the murmurings
quickly died out. In five minutes more they were all as busy as
though nothing had happened. Captain Nelson surprised everybody by
ordering a boat lowered. Mr. Baker gave the captain a curious look,
but said nothing, and proceeded to lower.

“Poor devil!” said the captain, whose burst of anger had exhausted
itself. “I had to do it. Follow us in to anchorage, Mr. Baker, and if
you find the body we ’ll attend to it.” {268}

On my wall above the model, as I sit here now, hangs Smith’s
knife: the one to which Peter owed his life. I got possession of
it—honestly—later, and I kept it for—well, because I wanted to keep
it. There are associations connected with that knife. The idea of
getting possession of it seized me as Mr. Baker lowered and dropped
astern to search for Smith’s body.

We left him quartering the water carefully in the search, and drifted
down to our anchorage less than a half-mile from a little beach.
Three scarecrows stood upon that beach, and watched us come to
anchor. They were clad in rags, and had ragged, bushy beards. I was
looking at them through my glass, but I did not know them, and did
not expect to. They stood quite still on the beach waiting for our
boat, which had been dropped as soon as we rounded to, and before the
anchor was let go.

Captain Nelson stood by the after house, looking after the boat, and
waiting for it to come back. It came at last, and the three men came
easily over the side. The first was a big man, as big as my father,
with a smile like his. He advanced toward the captain, with his hand
out, and the captain went to meet him.

“Glad to see you, Cap’n,” he said in a big, gentle voice.

“How are you, Fred?” said Captain Nelson, with a hearty grip of his
hand. “Kind o’ thought I might find you somewhere about.”

It was Captain Coffin of the Annie Battles.

{269}




CHAPTER XXVIII


Mr. Baker came back to the ship about a couple of hours after the
marooned men had come aboard. He had spent more than an hour in going
to and fro, looking for Smith’s body, but had seen no sign of it, and
had concluded that it had sunk at once. That seemed strange, for the
lungs must have been full of air, but nobody gave it a second thought
unless some of the most disaffected of the crew did; none of them,
in all probability, gave so much as a first thought to the fact.
I do not really doubt that Smith was dead, and that his body was
swaying about in the ooze at the bottom of the sea, unless the sharks
got it first. But I remember that soon after I got home, I saw an
account—merely an item of a few lines in a shipping paper—of a man’s
having been taken off Amsterdam Island, and the description of the
man might have been the description of Smith. He had forgotten who
he was and how he got there, and he had been badly hurt, but he had
managed to live alone for two years on the island. However, whether
that was Smith or not, he passed out of our lives when he dropped
from the yard.

Captain Coffin was in the cabin with Captain Nelson when Mr. Baker’s
boat’s crew came over the side. Mr. Baker showed no surprise when he
heard of it, but Starbuck did. He immediately sought out the two men
who had come aboard with Captain Coffin, and I suppose he got their
story. I was not free, as I was wanted to wait upon the two captains;
but that was no disadvantage, for I got the story as Captain Coffin
told it to Captain Nelson. They sat at the cabin table, leaning back
in their chairs at their ease, with a pitcher of hot rum and water
between them. I remember the pitcher exactly. It was a rather {270}
small white crockery pitcher, with a bluish tinge, such as they used
to serve water in at country hotels, only smaller. They sat there
quietly, and the hot rum and water steamed gently between them; and
Captain Coffin had his fingers clasped loosely about his glass, but
he drank little, and that in little sips. Between times he either
gazed contentedly out of the cabin window, saying nothing, or he
spoke briefly of his experiences in the Battles or on Amsterdam. His
utterances were never long at any one time, but always punctuated by
a sip and a long look out of the window. Captain Nelson said nothing
at all. I stuck around rather more closely than was necessary.

It was the old story of mutiny, but in this case for no reason
whatever except that the mutineers saw a good chance of taking
the vessel. The ringleaders must have laid their plans before the
Battles sailed, Captain Coffin thought, and have enlisted some of
the crew in the scheme. Possibly Wallet knew about it also. They met
the Clearchus at every opportunity, until Wallet went aboard of the
Battles, where he was at the time when Captain Coffin told the story,
so far as he knew; but he had turned out to be such a pusillanimous
cuss that he had not been able to maintain himself in the position
first given him. The bothering of the Clearchus was but incidental;
but the crew got so much fun out of their sport with us—or Drew did,
which was more to the point—that they could not resist the temptation
to try it whenever they had the chance.

Sam Drew was the leader in the mutiny. At the name Captain Nelson
grunted, and said that he knew Sam Drew, and had never known any
good of him. Captain Coffin nodded, and went on with the story. It
had all happened before they got to Fayal. Drew was a boatsteerer.
One morning, as Captain Coffin came on deck, six men fell upon him
at once, pinioning his hands, his arms and his legs, and throttling
him. They must have rehearsed their {271} parts pretty thoroughly,
for each man seized some particular member, and clung to it; he was
seized around the knees, as in a tackle at football—football had
hardly developed the tackle at that time—and thrown to the deck,
while the sixth man choked him. Captain Coffin is a tough customer
to attack, and the men knew it. With two men on each arm, and choked
by another, while the man who had tackled him took a turn about his
ankles with the slack of the main sheet, he still put up a stiff
fight, and almost got the two men on his right arm overboard. The
odds were too great, however. He was soon bound hand and foot, tied
to a stanchion, gasping for breath.

He had been aware of a struggle going on forward. He now saw Mr.
Mayhew, his first mate, beheaded by a single stroke of a spade, and
Jim Carter, the second mate, badly wounded by a lance. The third
mate was not to be seen, but he was soon brought up from below. Then
Drew called a council of a few of his cronies—a Council of State,
perhaps—and spoke briefly to them. Captain Coffin could not hear what
he said to them, but he heard plainly what he said afterward.

“Over with him, men,” he said, indicating the body of poor Mayhew.

The body was unceremoniously pitched into the sea, and the head after
it. Then the men hesitated.

“Over with him!” said Drew impatiently. “You know what happens to the
man who refuses to obey orders.”

The men laid hold of the wounded Carter and began dragging him to
the rail. He was too badly wounded to resist, but Captain Coffin
struggled and roared at them. The men hesitated again, but Drew
smiled.

“Never mind him,” he said. “He can’t do anything. I ’m in command of
this vessel now. Over with him!”

They got Carter up on the rail, and pitched him into the sea. Then
Drew turned to the third mate. He, poor fellow, was not wounded. He
saw that his fate was to be left {272} swimming in the middle of the
Atlantic, and he tried to meet that fate like a man. It was too much.
He could not; and when Drew offered him the choice of joining them or
of going over the side, he joined. It is hard to blame him for his
choice.

Captain Coffin then saw the men start for him; but it was only to
carry him below and to throw him on his bunk, bound as he was. He lay
there until the next morning.

Drew came to him about the middle of the forenoon, at just about four
bells, and sat down beside him and said he wanted to have a talk. He
said that, unfortunately, the third mate had fallen overboard during
the night. This may have been true, or he may have been distrusted
and have been thrown overboard, or his conscience may have tortured
him so that he jumped overboard. Captain Coffin never knew which
was the truth, but the fact was that he was no longer there, and
the vessel was without a navigator excepting the captain. Drew,
therefore, had a proposition to make, and the captain could take it
or leave it. It was this: that the captain should navigate, under
guard in his cabin, coming out only at night for observations. If he
would not consent to that he would follow his three mates.

That was rather a hard choice; but Captain Coffin could see no gain
to anybody by his being thrown overboard, while, if he accepted,
there might be a chance of getting his vessel back. He did not see
how, and he had no plans, but there would be time enough to make
them. So he accepted Drew’s offer, on condition that he was to be
free in his cabin, and that he was not to be compelled to speak to
any of them. Drew smilingly agreed to those conditions; and it had
been strictly true that he was “confined to his cabin,” and that
he left written instructions on the cabin table every morning.
Thereafter, he saw nothing except the view obtained from his
stateroom port, and a brief nightly view of the starlit heavens and a
wide, dark sea. {273} Drew himself told him where they wanted to go,
and he did the rest.

This state of affairs continued until he had navigated, according
to instructions, to Amsterdam Island, and had come to anchor there.
He knew nothing of what had taken place on the schooner since the
mutiny, as he was at all times closely guarded. Then he was told
briefly to come along, and was taken ashore with the two other
men—both foremast hands—and left there, with nothing but what they
had on their persons. Why they did not simply throw all three of them
overboard he could not imagine, unless they had had enough of murder;
and why he had been permitted to navigate so long, when they had a
competent navigator in Wallet, he did not see. But so it was. No
doubt Wallet had been navigator since; the nine months that they had
been on Amsterdam. His plans—he had made many—had come to nothing,
but what could he have done, and why was the situation not better as
it was than it would have been if he had allowed himself to be thrown
overboard? Tell him that.

To that Captain Nelson growled assent. “Where ’d you get your flag?”
he asked.

Captain Coffin straightened in his chair, and brought his fist down
on the table. “Gorry!” he cried. “I forgot that flag. I ’ll have to
go ashore and take it down. It ’s my undershirt.”

“Only one you had?”

“ ’Course. ’D you think I wore two?”

“Cold?”

“Sometimes. But that ’s nothing, and it ’s over and done with.”

The two captains sat silent for a while, Captain Coffin gazing out of
the cabin window.

“I aimed,” he said at last, “to wreck her, if nothing better turned
up, when we got where there were some people, and my chance would
be as good as the next man’s. {274} I guess Drew knew it, and
thought he ’d better get rid of me. I had the Keelings in mind, or
Sunda Strait”—he called it Sunday—“or some parts thereabouts, if
the weather turned favorable for wrecking. Pretty bad gales at the
Keelings in the season. Well—that ’s all, I guess. I ’d like to come
across the Battles again. Maybe I ’ll be able to get some fast little
schooner, and some kind of a crew, at Batavia, and go after her. I ’d
spend my last cent on it.”

Captain Nelson grunted again. “I ’d give you a berth here if I had
one. Better make up your mind to stay on this ship, Fred, and we ’ll
see what turns up. I ’ll ship your two men. We ’re two men short.”
Then he told about Smith.

“Good!” cried Captain Coffin. “Good! Just right, and just like you,
Cap’n. I ’d have given something to have the chance on the Battles,
but there was never a suspicion. Drew was too smart. He ’s a damned
smart man.”

“H’m!” Captain Nelson was noncommittal. “Now that we ’re here, we may
as well lay in some wood. I ’ll have the men take down that shirt of
yours.”

Then he turned to me, and told me that I might as well go on deck,
for they would not need my services right away. I took the hint, and
went. After all, stories of mutinies are much alike; they differ only
in details. But the two captains sat there a couple of hours longer,
with the fresh pitcher of hot rum and water which I had brought just
before I came up.

Something turned up sooner than they could have expected. We were
only a day at Amsterdam laying in wood, for we did not really need
wood. Our anchor was up the next afternoon and we sailed to the
northeast, bound either to Sunda Strait, or for a cruise along the
south coast of Java, as circumstances might determine. We had been
out about a week, and were getting into more comfortable weather,
when I was awakened, very early one morning, {275} by a rumpus on
deck. There were shouts, a tramping of feet, and a heavy report,
like that of a Spencer gun. My heart jumped up into my throat, I
was completely awake, there was that prickling sensation at the
roots of my hair, my breath came short and hard, and I found that
I was smiling. It was no use, I was always taken that way when any
kind of a fight promised. I could no more help it than I could help
breathing; not so easily. I scrambled into some clothes and ran up
the ladder.

I came out into the gray, melancholy half-light of early dawn. I was
conscious of it and of the whispering sea about us. If I had ever
contemplated suicide, I am sure it would have been at just that time
of day, for that is the time when a man’s fortitude is at the lowest
ebb, everything looks black, and the future holds no promise. The
darkest night is not nearly so bad. That gray loneliness of early
dawn is an equally fitting time to choose for going insane, and Mr.
Snow seemed to have chosen it for that purpose. He was standing in
the same spot that Captain Nelson occupied when he dropped Smith from
the yard, and was living over that experience, with himself in the
captain’s place. A Spencer was in his right hand, the barrel in the
hollow of his left arm, and a long, sharp lance leaned against the
after house. Now and then he bellowed an order at an imaginary man
on the yard, and that was apparently what he had shot at. Spencer
bullets, however, are not imaginary, and nothing was to be seen of
the men of the watch. They had run forward and taken refuge behind
the foremast, the try-works, and anything that offered shelter. I
caught a glimpse of one poor fellow who had taken refuge behind the
mainmast, almost directly in front of Mr. Snow, and who was trying
his level best to make himself small. Mr. Snow did not notice him;
did not see him. All his attention was directed to that foretopsail
yard.

Less than half a minute had gone since the report of {276} the
Spencer had startled me into full wakefulness. I had my trousers
on, but I had not stopped to button them, trusting to one suspender
to hold them in place. I had come up the booby-hatch, a very few
feet behind Mr. Snow, and although I was barefoot, I must have
made considerable noise; but he was so taken up with his bellowing
and flourishing that he did not hear me. I think I might have come
through the deck at his very feet and run into him without his being
aware of it. I heard quiet stirrings on the cabin ladder and down the
booby-hatch, and I knew that the mates and boatsteerers would be on
hand in a few seconds; and noises in the cabin told me that Captain
Nelson would not be far behind. Mr. Snow’s attention had at last been
attracted by a movement behind the mainmast—the man there was so
scared that he could not keep still—and he raised his rifle. It was
like shooting point-blank at the side of a barn. He might easily hit
the man, who had not sense enough to keep behind the mast, but kept
popping out. I was upon him in one jump, had him about the body from
behind, and was grabbing for the rifle.

I was much taller and stronger than when I had tackled Lupo, and Mr.
Snow was not the man that Lupo was. Still, I was not prepared for
the strength that he showed. Although I succeeded in deflecting the
rifle, he managed to discharge it, catching the flesh of my thumb
partly under the hammer, making a wound that bothered me for weeks.
The bullet ploughed up the deck. Then another pair of arms enveloped
him. It was Mr. Macy, and in his arms Mr. Snow was helpless. Then
the boatsteerers and the other mates appeared, with the captain just
behind them, and I let go my hold and fell back.

Mr. Snow was violently insane, there was no doubt about that. He
struggled, shouted, and foamed at the mouth. They took him below,
and he was kept locked in his cabin for two days, but he made such
a row there that nobody could get much sleep. On the second day
he {277} succeeded in setting fire to his mattress, which made a
great smoke and almost smothered him. The fire was put out and he
was resuscitated; but Captain Nelson was forced, for the safety of
the ship, to put him in irons and remove him from the cabin. I used
to hear his cries and shouts for days, issuing from the bowels of
the Clearchus somewhere. Finally they stopped, and I was afraid
that he had died; but the steward told me that he was only sulking,
and would not say a word, or take any notice of him when he carried
food to him. I did not blame Mr. Snow for that, and thought it might
be a symptom of returning sanity. The steward was a thoroughly
obnoxious little pest and had a special animosity toward Mr. Snow for
continuing to live and adding to his work. Poor fellow! I refer to
Mr. Snow, and not to the steward. What an unhappy time he must have
had ever since we left Cape Town!

We were standing to the northeast, for the Keeling Islands, hoping
to find some homeward-bound whaler there to which we could transfer
our crazy man. Imagine having such a passenger foisted upon you; but
nobody seemed to have any doubt that any whaler going home would
take him. It seemed to be his only chance—and ours. It was wearing
upon the nerves of every one in the ship to hear the noises that
he made, and then to have the noises stop. I used to listen for
them, and Peter said that the men used to; and the men were highly
superstitious, as ignorant sailors are apt to be. I have no shame in
acknowledging that I was superstitious myself. The men maintained
that nothing but bad luck would come from it, and I found myself
of their opinion, although I knew well enough that it was foolish
and had no sense or reason in it, unless the very belief of the
men should bring on the thing they feared. Nevertheless, I was in
suspense—waiting for it.

The bad luck came soon enough. We had got about halfway to the
Keelings, and had not seen a single spout. That {278} did not bother
Captain Nelson, for I have no reason to think he was expecting to see
any; but one afternoon we raised a solitary spout to leeward. We had
struck the southeast trades two days before, and were then bowling
along merrily, the ship making a great fuss, but not so much headway
as anybody would be led to think who did not know her ways. The wind
was strong from a little south of east, which made it as nearly
close-hauled as was comfortable for the Clearchus, and it was typical
trade-wind weather. The whale was about three or four miles off the
lee bow when we first saw his spout.

We did not lower at once; indeed, there was doubt whether we should
lower at all. I saw Captain Nelson gazing at the spout for a long
time, evidently in doubt what to do. Obviously, he hated to lose
the time, for he was anxious to get Mr. Snow started home as soon
as possible, and any delay might mean that he would miss the ship
which otherwise he would catch. I could almost see the arguments
which passed through his mind. Captain Nelson was a tender-hearted
man under his crust, and I believe his anxiety was entirely for Mr.
Snow, and that he was thinking of getting him started home as soon as
possible rather than contemplating the relief it would be to get rid
of him. But obviously, too, he was out for whales, and there was one
within easy reach; “she blows and she breaches, and sparm at that,”
to quote the immortal classic of Captain Simmons. “Ile is sceerce,
and ile is money.” That settled it. Captain Nelson began to move
slowly to and fro, and I knew that we should lower as soon as we got
into a favorable position.

Soon after Mr. Snow’s collapse Captain Coffin had been offered the
fourth mate’s berth until there should be something better. He took
it at once, like the good sport he was. The two men who came with him
relieved the sailmaker and me, so that I was now nothing but cabin
boy. I did not {279} like being unceremoniously pushed out of my
boat in that way, but there was nothing to do or say about it, so I
held my peace, and tried to be contented.

Mr. Baker and Captain Coffin lowered—I suppose I should not speak of
him as Captain Coffin now, as he was temporarily fourth mate, and
plain Mr. Coffin. The whale was travelling about as fast as the ship,
and had not sounded since we had sighted him. There was something
a little odd about the way he travelled, but it was nothing very
extraordinary, and it was only after we had been watching him for a
good while that it was forced upon our attention. It turned out that
the whale was blind. Mr. Tilton was the first man to say what was the
matter, and it dawned upon him only when he saw how the whale acted
while the boats were pulling up to strike.

They approached from the rear, where the whale could not have seen
them in any case. Mr. Baker was to starboard of him, and about a
boat’s length ahead of Mr. Coffin, who was to port. The wash of the
seas under the strong trade wind was enough to nearly drown the
noise of the oars, and the men were pulling hard. Mr. Baker was
just drawing past the flukes, when the whale seemed to feel that
everything was not as it should be. The slow, steady, pumping motion
of the flukes ceased, and the great flukes moved from side to side,
feeling, as delicately and gently as the antennæ of an insect,
for whatever they might find. Mr. Baker pulled ahead, and avoided
them. Mr. Coffin tried to avoid them, but could not, for they were
just abeam of him, and the men felt the gentle touch upon the keel
amidships. At that moment Starbuck planted his first iron near the
side fin, and at that touch upon the keel, Miller, knowing instantly
that something would happen, hastily seized a harpoon, and darted.
The harpoon struck just under the hump. There was no chance for a
second iron, for the flukes lifted convulsively, staving in {280}
two planks, and rolling the boat over; then came down in a smashing
blow upon the water, and the whale started to run.

The men of Captain Coffin’s boat were swimming about the wreck. I
was watching through my old glass, and counted heads. There was one
missing, although I could not tell, at that distance, who it was.
Mr. Baker was fast disappearing, to the eastward, in the foaming
wake of the whale. Still watching, I thought I saw a head suddenly
bob up in the sea behind the whale. I lost it, and, after a long
search, I found it again. The man, whoever he was, seemed to be
having difficulty in swimming. I dropped the glass to the end of its
lanyard, where it swung and bumped against my chest at every jump,
while I ran to tell Captain Nelson. Mr. Brown lowered at once, and
went after him.

Mr. Brown was soon back with Captain Coffin, who had torn a tendon in
his ankle. He had been caught under his boat when it rolled over, and
a tub of line had been emptied over him, entangling him completely.
The coils of line were wound about his body, arms, and legs, and
the whale was running. He fought desperately to get clear of the
line, and thought he was clear, when a bight of the line tightened
about his ankle. He was jerked under water when the line came taut,
but managed to get hold of the line, pull himself forward, and cut.
Captain Coffin was a powerful man, never lost his head, and was
resourceful; but most whalemen who survive—and many who do not—are
that. He was helped into the cabin, and spent most of the next three
weeks with his bandaged ankle up on the lounge there, fretting
because he could not return to his duty.

[Illustration: THE MATE]

Mr. Brown had made another trip, and brought back the stove boat and
its crew. That was a job for Peter. Mr. Baker had gone off dead to
windward. It was almost hopeless to stand after him in the Clearchus,
but we did so, making short tacks so that he might not lose us. He
{281} came back about dark, rather crestfallen, without his whale.
After running ten or twelve miles, the whale had sounded out all his
line. He waited more than an hour for the whale to come up, in the
hope that he could, at least, get hold of the line again; but nothing
had been seen of the whale. He must have run for miles under water.

{282}




CHAPTER XXIX


We reached the Keelings late in April, having taken no whales since
leaving Desolation. Captain Nelson found that the Bartholomew Gosnold
had left a few hours before we arrived. This was unfortunate. I have
no doubt that the fact made the captain regret more than ever that he
had stopped to lower for the blind whale. He had had a boat stove,
Captain Coffin had been laid up, he had missed the Gosnold, and he
did not get the whale. Still, probably he would do the same thing
again under the same circumstances, and probably he ought to. I was
especially sorry that we had missed the Gosnold, for she was going
directly home and would have taken letters. It was some months since
I had written home, and I had a large instalment of my journal ready
to send; but I could send it from Batavia.

For the few days that we were at the Keelings we had exceptionally
good weather, and we visited North Keeling Island, which is not often
possible. The island is uninhabited except by birds and some other
things, among which is a monstrous land crab which climbs trees and
feeds on coconuts. Between the coconut palms and ironwood trees there
is a dense forest covering the island, which is only about a mile
long. We saw literally myriads of frigate-birds, boobies, terns, and
other sea-birds, all of which nest there. I was especially interested
in the frigate-birds and their nests. The birds would rise from their
nests and sail in spirals to great heights, apparently very angry,
inflating the red pouches on their necks as they rose. I was for
seeing whether I could not find a few good eggs for my collection,
but Peter dissuaded me. He thought that the birds would not take it
well. As for my collection of eggs, {283} I had not begun it yet,
but I thought that frigate-birds’ eggs would be a good thing to begin
with.

I still think so, and regret my failure to get an egg or two. No
doubt, if I had got them, they would now be adorning the loft of my
barn, where various collections of my son’s ornament the walls, in
various stages of desiccation or decay. There are a collection of
eggs, some of them rare; a collection of seaweeds and mosses, dried
and mounted on cards, and lettered very beautifully; shells of crabs,
likewise mounted on cards, among which are two or three shells of
young horseshoe crabs about an inch or two long, very delicate and
perfect; a collection of wild-flowers, dried, pressed, and mounted; a
collection of lichens; and collections of various other kinds, which
I forget at this moment. These collections represent different phases
in my son’s development which he very promptly forgot as soon as they
were past, but each of which was absorbing while it lasted. I do not
look at them often, but I would not have them touched, and neither
would Ann McKim.

I should have been glad to stay longer, but the voyage was neither
for my health, which was disgustingly rugged, nor for my pleasure,
and Captain Nelson sailed for Sunda Strait without consulting me. It
is not a long stretch from the Keelings to the Strait, but we were
delayed and turned aside by whales, of which we saved two, both of
which lay fin out within an hour from lowering. They were fairly
large, and made more than one hundred and fifty barrels, and raised
our stock of sperm oil on board to about twelve hundred barrels.

We finished our trying-out late one afternoon, and kept off for Sunda
Strait, making a beginning at our scrubbing of the ship. We were
directly in the track of sailing vessels bound through the Strait to
China and Japan, and very nearly in the track of steamers both ways.
Sunda Strait is the narrow throat of the highway between the Indian
Ocean and all the seas and ports to the east, and it is almost busy
enough to need a traffic policeman. {284}

That night was a very dark night; pitch-black, moonless and clouded
over, so that there was not even the little light from the stars. The
blackness of the night seemed thick, oppressive. I could not catch
even a gleam from the water, and it is very rarely the case that you
cannot see the water now and then, even on a dark night. It seems
much lighter at sea than it does on shore. Everybody aft had turned
in, and there was no light showing from the stern ports, for I looked
over the stern to see. I could not bring myself to turn in, for I was
half afraid, to tell the whole truth, although I do not know what I
was afraid of. The thick blackness of the night seemed ominous.

I stood at the stern, looking out over the wake—which glowed dully
with swirling phosphorescence—for a long time. Then I wandered
forward, and stood under the fore rigging, on the weather side.
The wind was fresh, and I heard the noise the Clearchus made going
through the water, with an occasional muffled cluck of a block, the
regular slatting of some slack rope against a sail, or perhaps the
reef points. I looked along the deck, or where the deck ought to be,
and I could see nothing. I felt as I used to feel on the infrequent
occasions when my mother had shut me in a closet, except that there
was no paroxysm of temper to make me forget the darkness, and that
there was a feeling of utter loneliness, as though I were perched
on nothing, all alone in the midst of a sea of blackness. I became
almost afraid to move my feet for fear that there would be nothing
under them. When Peter and the Prince spoke to me gently, at my
shoulder, I very nearly cried out.

If I had not heard the Prince I should not have known he was there.
I could see no sign of him. Peter’s face was but a dim blur, and
nothing of his body was visible. Your true whaleman does not go about
his business clad in a natty white duck suit, like a navy sailorman,
and with a teacup of a white hat perched upon his head; but he {285}
wears old civilian clothes, which look—by daylight—as though they
had been boiled in oil, and then, while still wet with it, had been
dragged through all the dust of the wharves. Such clothes make him
practically invisible on an ordinarily dark night.

In a very low voice that was scarcely more than a whisper,
Peter remarked that it was a black night. I agreed with him
enthusiastically, and the Prince grunted his assent. We stood there
by the fore rigging for some time in silence. None of us seemed to
feel like talking, or to know what to say.

“You can hardly see the fo’c’s’le lamp,” Peter observed at last. “It
looks as if it was in a thick cloud of smoke. It won’t burn bright,
whatever we do to it, and there ’s some that say there ’s a sort of
halo around the flame, like the halos they put around the heads of
their saints—like a sort of sun-dog. It may be so, though I did n’t
see it. Something ’s going to happen, I ’m thinking. I never saw a
darker night.”

I tried to reply lightly, but I could not, and did not reply at all.
The Prince said nothing, and in a few minutes they had faded away
into the darkness. I went back to the stern, and stood there for a
long time, peering out, but seeing nothing. The silent man at the
wheel was some comfort, and once in a while Mr. Tilton, who had that
watch, looked in. There was the faint bubbling of the wake, and the
same noises as before, but largely cut off by the roof of the house.
I had glanced at the compass, which was swung just inside the cabin
skylight instead of in a binnacle, and had seen that we were heading
due north. That was not sailing very close, but the Clearchus really
made more if she was not held too close to the wind. I was getting
drowsy in spite of my uneasiness, and was just making up my mind to
turn in. In fact I had taken my elbows from the taffrail, on which I
had been leaning, and raised my eyes. {286}

Suddenly, without my being conscious of it, there broke from my
throat a yell that would have waked the dead; and there loomed out
of the blackness, just at our stern, the flying jibboom of a ship.
It was high over my head, and I could just dimly make out jibs
rising from it which seemed to reach to the heavens. I had no time
to think, but I know I had the impression that our stern was sure
to be cut off, and I yelled again. If I had taken time to think I
should have realized that that other ship was bound for the Strait,
as we were, but sailing a couple of points closer; and that, even
if she was going three knots to our one, our chances of escape were
good. Hindsight is easy; and when I saw the end of the spritsail yard
and some stays within reach of my hand I grabbed them—probably the
flying-jib guys—and hauled myself up and landed in her nettings. I
was still there when the two vessels came together. The yards of the
ship I was on were braced well around, or the damage would have been
greater. As it was, the Clearchus had her spanker carried away, and a
spare boat brushed off the roof of her after house, and she was given
a gentle push on her course. Then she vanished quickly into the night.

The strange ship had apparently put her helm down as soon as it was
known that there was danger of a collision, but was just beginning
to feel it. A big ship—this ship turned out to be about twice the
size of the Clearchus—a big ship like that does not mind her helm
instantly, and she had come up perhaps half a point or less when the
moment had passed, and the helm was put up again, bringing her back
to her course. I do not believe she would have come up much more in
any case, for a moment later showed me that she had everything set,
even to studding-sails on the weather side; and having all those
sails taken suddenly aback in the breeze that was blowing might have
resulted in greater damage—to her, at least—than an actual collision.
{287}

I say that a moment later I saw that she had everything set. I was
just getting to my feet to feel my way aft, when there was a blinding
glare of lightning which illuminated the sea for miles around. It was
brighter than day; and the picture of the Clearchus, pegging along on
our lee quarter, as though nothing had happened, and of the cloud of
sail carried by the ship which carried me, was etched upon my mind
with a precision and permanence which permitted examination at my
leisure. I found that the Clearchus was unhurt; men at work taking in
her spanker, and brailing it, the gaff broken. A spare boat gone, and
some splintered woodwork on the starboard corner of the after house
were the only evidences.

No burst of rain followed that single flash of lightning, but a crash
of thunder, and the giants seemed to be bowling over my head. Then,
after a little, threads of lightning began to chase each other over
the sky, and soon the sky was covered with an interlacing network,
the lines moving incessantly, accompanied by a continuous crackling,
like the cracklings in a gigantic frying-pan. The wind had dropped
almost instantly, and we lay there, rolling gently in the swell, and
flapping that enormous spread of canvas in a flat calm.

It was light enough to see easily where I was going, and I made my
way inboard, where I was met by the lookout. He sent me aft to see
the officer of the watch, who questioned me briefly. I wanted him to
send me aboard the Clearchus at once, but he refused, saying that the
breeze might start up again at any moment, and that, with all that
spread of sail, they would inevitably leave their boat behind; and
that he would not call all hands to reduce sail for anybody. He said
that I had come on his ship of my own accord, and if I did not like
it I could leave. He would not keep me from going; or a boat could be
sent for me from my own ship without much trouble. That was true. I
wondered why they did not send for me, for I {288} thought that the
man at the wheel had seen me go; but I found out afterward that the
man at the wheel had been so completely taken up with other things
that he had not noticed my departure, and they had not yet found that
I was missing.

While I stood talking with the officer the breeze began to come in
again from the same quarter as before. The sails filled gradually,
and the ship heeled a little, and began to forge ahead. He would not
bother with me any longer, and sent me to the steerage, where there
was a spare bunk. By the time I had turned in the breeze had become
strong again, the lightning had withdrawn below the eastern horizon,
the clouds were breaking, and the ship was doing a good fourteen
knots and something to spare.

The ship was the Virginia of London, Marshall, master, last from
Mauritius, bound for Hongkong and Canton. I saw Marshall, master,
in the morning. Captain Marshall was a man between thirty-five and
forty, clean-shaven when that was less the fashion than it is now;
and a man who would take the trouble to shave himself every morning,
at sea, would take a great deal more trouble about more important
matters. He was a well-set man of above the medium height, with brown
hair just beginning to turn gray. I noticed him particularly because
he looked enough like Smith to be his brother, except that his eyes
were not of that opaque china-blue, but a gray that was alive, and
hinted at kindness beneath his crust of silence and sternness. I
wondered whether, by any strange chance, he was Smith’s brother, and
whether he would care to know that we had left his brother sinking
into the ooze off Amsterdam.

I did not tell him. He was not a man who invited confidences, but a
wonderful master of a ship, if I was any judge. He seemed to know
all about me, and about the Clearchus, but that, I suppose, was only
inference and good guessing. He told me that I might consider myself
a {289} passenger on his ship for two or three days, as he had a
full crew; and he told me very particularly what a passenger might do
and what he might not. He would land me at Anjer or at Batavia, as
I preferred; and he would see my captain, if the Clearchus arrived
before he left, and pay for any damage she had suffered. If he did
not see Captain Nelson, I was to tell him that the owners of the
Virginia would be happy to pay for his repairs if he would send them
a bill. Then I was dismissed courteously. I had not said a word
during the interview.

I spent the whole of that day on deck, taking a very simple but an
exquisite pleasure in just watching the ship sail. She did it so
beautifully! There was a smashing breeze from the southeast, but the
Virginia had everything set that she could stand up under,—a cloud
of white canvas reaching up and up, apparently without end; she was
heeled to her channels, and she _sailed_. It was a revelation to me;
the speed, the discipline, which was like that on a war vessel, the
continuous attention to little things like trimming in a sheet six
inches, the haul on bowlines, until each sail drew without a tremor,
pulling and hauling or slacking off a brace by inches, to make the
angle exactly what the officer of the deck thought it should be.
In the minute attention given to details it was like a continuous
yacht race of to-day, but of ten or twelve thousand miles instead of
thirty. The men were alive every minute of the time; they jumped at
an order, and were satisfied and willing and proud of their ship.
Anybody could see that, but who would not be? I had no doubt that
there had been many and many a heartbreaking day of setting up and
tarring down rigging, slushing masts, reeving ropes, and bending
sails,—there must have been, on a ship driven as the Virginia was
driven,—but I saw none of it that day. She was almost into port, and
it was all done until the next time. The discipline was strict, but
sailormen do not object to that. I think that, in their hearts, they
like it. {290} They had a man of iron for master, but they had good
quarters, good food, and good treatment. There would be no desertions
at the next port. And the officers were all proud of the ship and
put their best into her. As for Marshall, master, he loved the ship;
loved her so well that he could not bear to see her not looking her
best and doing her best.

Until late that afternoon I hung over the weather rail, in the space
to which passengers were limited, to use Captain Marshall’s words,
in a condition of unalloyed bliss. I revelled in the breeze, in the
sight of the marching, sunny sea, in the way the ship cut cleanly
through the seas, keeping her bows wet with spray, in the crisp
commands and the way the men responded to them, in the noises of a
ship and the sound of the water, and in the silence. Now and then I
lifted my eyes to the towering pyramid of canvas, and I could not
help echoing the thought of the sailor quoted by Dana: “How quietly
they do their work!”

Captain Marshall was on deck nearly all day, pacing the deck by the
weather rail, but I did not hear him give an order. He scarcely
spoke. I think that he was in much the same condition as I. He
watched the sea and the sky and the sails, and occasionally he smiled
as if he was half ashamed of doing so, but could not help it. On one
of these occasions I spoke to him impulsively.

“Captain Marshall,” I said, “I must thank you for giving me this day.
It has been as happy a day as I ever spent.”

He was puzzled at this outburst, and he hardened. “Just what,” he
began coldly, “do you—”

“The ship,” I interrupted; “she sails so beautifully! I never
expected to have such an experience—never knew there was such to be
had.”

He smiled again at that. “Oh, yes,” he said, “the ship. She ’s a
sweet sailer—a sweet sailer.” He turned on his heel, still murmuring
“sweet sailer.” {291}

I looked out over the water again, and saw Java Head just rising
above the horizon.

Late that night we came to anchor before Anjer, the fourth bay on the
right as you go through the Strait from the Indian Ocean. The captain
went ashore in the morning, but I did not go with him. I would go on
to Batavia. It was just around the corner.

{292}




CHAPTER XXX


At Batavia I stayed on board of the Virginia as long as I could. I
had not a cent of money in my pockets, and I did not like to ask
help of any kind, even of the American consul. The Virginia had some
freight to be unloaded, and I watched the men breaking out that
part of the cargo while Captain Marshall went ashore. The captain
apparently did not see me that morning, which I suppose was his way
of being indulgent. There was a good deal of freight to be taken off,
and when it was out of the way there was as much more to be taken
in and stowed: great quantities of sugar and coffee and spices for
England, and some things for Hongkong and Canton, I could not tell
what. I wondered idly why they took aboard the cargo for England on
the way east, but I never found out. The officers of the Virginia
were not the kind of men one asked idle questions.

The cargo was not all stowed before noon of the next day, and there
was no sign of the Clearchus. I was getting very uneasy, and had
actually made a move to speak to the captain, when he turned to me.

“Here ’s your ship,” he said.

I looked down the bay, and saw her upper masts and dirty, slovenly
looking sails, appearing indistinctly above the islands. It was a
great contrast to the white canvas and shining spars of the Virginia,
and I felt a strange mixture of relief and disappointment.

We had to wait for the Clearchus, for the wind was light, and I
thought that she never would get in. Captain Marshall did not wait
for her to put her anchor over, but was pulled out and met her,
leaving the Virginia with her anchor hove short, her sails loosed
and hanging in the {293} clewlines, and the crew standing by to
make sail. He went over the side of the Clearchus much more easily
and gracefully than I did, and immediately went below with Captain
Nelson. To my astonishment, I was hailed as one raised from the dead.
It seems that nobody had seen me at the moment of my departure, and
I had not been missed until some hours after the collision. Then the
man who had been at the wheel recalled my yells, and they concluded
that I had been knocked overboard. Of course it was then too late to
look for me, as nobody could swim for four or five hours at the rate
the Clearchus was going, small as that rate was. I laughed when I
heard this explanation, but I made no comment. If they did not know,
or had forgotten, that I could not swim at all, I would not bring
up a painful subject. Peter and the Prince said nothing, but I was
afraid that Peter’s smile would crack his leather cheeks.

I was relieved from this embarrassing situation by the return to
the deck of Captain Marshall, accompanied by Captain Nelson. Both
captains looked pleased, especially Captain Nelson. They stopped for
a moment to glance at the damage done, which was trifling, except
for the loss of the boat. As this thought crossed my mind I looked
up at the roof of the after house. There was no boat missing. They
must have picked it up. I asked Peter, and he nodded, saying that
it was unhurt. At that moment Peter and the Prince were called to
their duty, and our anchor was let go. I sidled aft, to be within
plain sight of Captain Marshall when he left. That was all I could
do. He took no notice of me, but disappeared over the side. I was
disappointed, and felt a sinking of the heart; but I had no reason
to expect anything better. To him I was but one of the crew of the
Clearchus, and a whaleman. Smart masters of smart ships have a
profound contempt for whalemen as a class, because of their general
slackness, I suppose, although those of them who really know feel
{294} an equally profound respect for their venturesome spirit.
Captain Marshall was the master of the smartest ship I have ever
come across, and the condition of his vessel reflected the character
of the master, as it always does. The impression I got of Captain
Marshall, and the one I always retained, was that of a kind man—if
you once got under his stiff crust of reserve and custom. I think
that, at heart, he was sentimental, and was afraid that the crust
might break and show his real nature. So he never forgot, but took
every opportunity to harden and stiffen the crust; and he lavished a
wealth of sentiment on his ship in secret.

I found Captain Coffin standing just forward of the house, nursing
his bandaged ankle and gazing at the Virginia. I took my stand beside
him, and we watched while the Virginia got her anchor up smartly, and
got under way smartly, without the smallest mistake or mishap. Her
canvas fell into place swiftly and with the precision of a machine,
and she was soon well on her way to sea under a veritable cloud of
snowy canvas, and going like a race-horse. There was no sound from
Captain Coffin until the Virginia was almost out of sight. Then he
heaved a long sigh, and turned to me, almost with tears in his eyes.

“Well, Tim,” he said, with a smile, “she ’s a great vessel—a great
ship, and as sweet a sailer as I ever saw.”

I grinned in return, from ear to ear. “That ’s what Captain Marshall
says, sir, and he ’s just right. I spent one whole day just watching
her sail.”

“I ’d give a leg,” he said, “to command a vessel like that. But
there ’s the Annie Battles sailing these seas somewhere. She ’s
almost as good, and she ’s mine. Help me below, Tim.”

So I lent him my shoulder until he was deposited on the cabin sofa. A
glance showed me the same blue-white pitcher on the cabin table, with
three empty glasses, and three empty chairs. The pitcher was empty
too, and cold, but it had been neither empty nor cold. I knew. {295}

At Batavia we left poor Mr. Snow in hospital, under the charge of the
American consul. Although we were sorry for him, there was no one
in the ship who was not glad to have him out of it. Soon after we
left, a homeward-bound whaler called whose master was willing to take
him. He was already better, and recovered pretty well before they
reached New Bedford, but he never went to sea again. I remember that
I saw him, more than ten years later. I said a few words to him, but
found that he did not know me, and I had no wish to recall myself to
him. He was night watchman for one or two of the banks then on Water
Street, and was a little “queer,” but not queer enough to prevent his
being a good enough night watchman.

We were in Batavia about a week, although I could see no reason for
our staying more than a couple of days. The two men that we had
picked up at Amsterdam Island with Captain Coffin left us there, and
none were shipped in their places, as the old man did not like the
looks of any of the candidates. This rejoiced me in particular, for
I was practically put back in my boat. It was no cause of rejoicing
to the sailmaker, however, for it put him back in his boat too; but
Captain Nelson, I believe, expected to pick up a man or two later on.
We sailed at last, expecting to look around the Java Sea a bit, and
if there were no whales there, which Captain Nelson hardly expected,
we would stand up the China Sea, past the Philippines, to the Japan
grounds. The captain hoped to do well on the Japan grounds.

In Java Sea we did better than was expected. We saw several small
schools, got fast four times, and saved two whales, one of them a
big bull. This bull was the cause of an adventure which might have
resulted seriously for me. We had got fast to him, and he had run for
a while. Then he sounded. He had taken out quite a little line, when
the strain on the line eased, although the line did {296} not slack
entirely. That was an indication that he had doubled on his course
under water, and Mr. Brown kept a sharp lookout for him over the bow,
for he might be coming to attack the boat. I could not help giving
an occasional glance over the side. I confess that I was nervous.
Mr. Brown did not see me, having his back toward me, but the Prince
did, and held up his hand in warning, although he said nothing. That
was not enough to stop me, and I glanced over again. One glance was
enough. There was the whale coming up like a rocket, belly up and
jaws open. I dropped my oar, and reached past Kane for the boat
spade. As I reached, Mr. Brown gave a yell to stern all. Of course I
could not, having no hold on my oar, but it was too late, anyway.

At that instant the lower jaw shot into the air past my head. I had
never thought the teeth of a sperm whale looked very dangerous until
I saw those teeth, looking like a row of gravestones, flashing by
my eyes to twice my height. I did not stop to philosophize on the
matter of whales’ teeth, however, but I jammed the boat spade down
instantly, with all my strength and all my weight behind it. By pure
good luck I hit the jaw muscles on one side, and cut them nearly
through. Probably I saved the life of the tub-oarsman, who would have
been caught between the jaws; or quite possibly I saved my own life,
for I might have been the one to be caught by those jaws. It seemed,
at the time, to be an opening for two young men.

The jaws closed partially, but there was no strength in the bite,
and, although the planks on one side were stove in, between me
and the tub oar, the boat was not bitten in two, which would have
happened if the whale had had the full use of his jaw muscles. He
made no further attack, but sank again into the sea, leaving us with
the water pouring in through the broken planks. In a few minutes we
were completely waterlogged, and the men sat in their places with
the water up to their waists, and the seas {297} breaking into the
boat. Mr. Tilton pulled up and took our line, and killed the whale.
All the fight seemed to have been taken out of him. He cut in over
eighty-five barrels.

By the time we had that whale and our other one—a thirty-barrel cow,
which made no fight—we were about off Macassar, and we held northward
through the Strait of Macassar instead of going back and through the
China Sea. We had head winds until we had got to the east of the
Philippines, but we were in no hurry, and the head winds did not
bother us. It was here that we saw a strange and interesting sight.

We had raised a small school of whales and had lowered four boats.
The whales proved to be cows, most of them with calves accompanying
them closely. I knew too little about whales then—I know no more
now—to be able to tell the age of a whale calf by its appearance;
these calves were not newly born, but yet they were so young that
they had to come up to blow every three or four minutes. Mr. Baker
struck a calf, probably thinking by that manœuvre he would find the
capture of the mother easier.

I know that I was rather shocked at his doing so at the time. There
was nothing sporting about it. It was like murdering a baby. But
there was nothing sporting about whaling—none of the sporting spirit,
and my feeling was only momentary. It did seem short-sighted, at the
least, to destroy an animal that could be of no possible use to us,
and one which might grow up to be of considerable value to somebody.
There should be some sort of international agreement not to kill
calves or any cow under forty barrels or so. It would be in the
interest of the whale fishery as an industry, and would very likely
result, eventually, in making it easier to fill up a ship; like the
restrictions on the seal fishery, or good game laws on land. Nobody
supposes that the game laws exist from sympathy with the game; but
where there is a good buck law, deer are abundant enough. {298}

To come back to Mr. Baker; he knew whales very well, and ought to
have known what would happen. The whole school of a dozen or fifteen
cows brought to at once, and gathered around the wounded calf and Mr.
Baker’s boat. They crowded so closely about the boat that Mr. Baker
did not dare to use his lance, and had all he could do to keep his
boat from being stove by the loose cows. The three other boats were
at some distance when he struck. We pulled up as fast as we could,
but could do nothing to help him. On the way over I heard Mr. Macy
call to Mr. Tilton to look. I could see nothing, of course, having my
back to whatever it was that he was calling attention to, but on our
arrival on the outskirts of the school I saw what it was.

There were a great many more than fifteen whales there, and more
were arriving every minute. In self-defense, Mr. Baker had lanced
two of the nearest, and he could have reached two or three more from
the boat. The whales seemed to have lost their wits, but were none
the less dangerous on that account, they were so tightly packed.
The small school which we had attacked had been, apparently, but an
offshoot of a much larger school, all cows and calves. Their spouts
covered the sea for some distance. No doubt they seemed more numerous
than they were; but we found our boat gradually getting enclosed, and
we backed out, after lancing two without putting an iron into either.
So did Mr. Tilton and Mr. Macy, leaving Mr. Baker closely surrounded
by crazy whales; probably only gallied and not knowing what to do.
There was nothing for Mr. Baker to do but to do nothing, and he
did it. His men took in their oars, and there they sat waiting for
something to turn up, their boat not so very unlike one of the bodies
that surrounded it.

Presently Mr. Baker’s patience was rewarded. The poor little calf
which he had struck turned on its side, fin out, and the whales
scattered very soon, the whole school gradually resuming its orderly
progress. {299}

Just before we backed out of the mess, the whales of the main school
had come so close to our boat that I had only to look over the side
to see the small calves swimming close alongside their mothers,
almost concealed from view. One of the calves I saw must have
been born a very little time before, for its flukes were scarcely
unfolded. I have no means of knowing how long it takes for that
process, but the calf could not have been more than a few days old.
The mother seemed very anxious and solicitous for its safety. I saw
her turn partly on her side, and put her side fin over it, holding it
close against her, as you would take a small child under your arm.
She had it so when we backed away, and lost sight of the pair.

The school left us in such semblance of order that we could not have
struck again without risking a repetition of Mr. Baker’s experience;
and we had about as many whales as we could take care of at one time.
Each boat had got one or two. They were all small, none over thirty
barrels, and some much smaller.

When the trying-out was over we made for the Japan grounds as
straight as we could with the northeast trades directly ahead. Peter
was still engaged in repairing the boat stove in the Java Sea. It was
stove rather badly, every plank on the port side from the gunwale
nearly to the garboard strake having to be replaced, and two broken
ribs. Although Peter’s workmanship left a repaired boat almost as
good as new—it would be better in some cases, but our boats had been
made by Beetle, and were good boats—in spite of Peter’s workmanship,
we had a good many cripples. If the rate of damage to boats
increased, it seemed to me that we might find ourselves short. One
fighting whale will sometimes reduce two or three boats to matchwood,
quite beyond Peter’s skill. We were going where there was no source
of supply, for what whale boats were scattered among the islands of
the Pacific were mostly old boats, patched and painted over to hide
the {300} patches; boats that the whalemen, who traded them to the
natives, had no further use for. Still, I do not remember that I
worried about it at the time. It is only since I got home—since I
became middle-aged and timid, I suppose whalemen would say—that it
has seemed to me short-sighted.

We stood in fairly close to Formosa, and in that neighborhood we got
one whale, a lone bull, which made no fight to speak of, although it
was not like slaughtering a steer at Green’s or Pike’s. A pot of hot
oil from him may have saved us; or, at any rate, it may have saved us
a nasty fight. While we were trying-out, a small junk appeared from
the direction of Formosa or the Chinese coast beyond. Nobody gave it
a thought until it was close aboard, when it suddenly occurred to
Captain Nelson, who happened to be on deck, that its actions were
suspicious. I saw nothing suspicious about it except that it was
almost near enough to throw a biscuit aboard—if anybody had wanted
to waste a biscuit. The old junk was going along after the manner of
junks, with six or seven men loafing on deck. We were hove to, and a
great volume of black smoke was pouring from our try-works. As far as
working the ship was concerned, we were helpless. If they wanted to
board us, they could do it a dozen times over before we could get the
Clearchus going.

Captain Nelson watched the junk for a minute, then he spoke to Mr.
Baker, who went at once among the men. The men left their work, and
armed themselves with lances, harpoons, spades, and boarding-knives,
but did not range themselves along the rail, for the captain was not
sure, and he did not want to make himself a laughing-stock among
other captains. I was watching the men, feeling little pricklings all
over and my hair rising. Captain Nelson turned to me.

“What ’you grinning about, Tim?” I had not been aware that I was
grinning, but I was, from ear to ear. “Get the guns and revolvers
from the cabin.” {301}

“All of them, sir?” I asked, my voice shaking with excitement.

“All you can carry.”

I jumped for the cabin stairs, and clanked up again, making a noise
like an arsenal. The captain could not help laughing to see me. I had
the Spencers, of course, three of the heavy bomb guns, two revolvers,
and some ammunition. I distributed my arsenal among the officers.

“Here she comes,” said Mr. Baker—with satisfaction, I thought.

The junk had gone by us, until she was almost directly to windward,
had turned, and was coming down before the wind, her men, who had
been hidden below, swarming out upon deck. They were armed mostly
with long knives.

I looked at our own men. They were taking their places at the rail
according to their nature; some slowly, some quickly. I saw Peter go
with business-like rapidity, and take his place by the fore rigging.
He had a boarding-knife. The Prince, with a harpoon in his hand, and
two more leaning against the rail at his side, leaped upon the rail
beside Peter. I ran to Peter’s other side, seizing a boarding-knife
as I ran, and there we were, the three of us together, the Prince,
Peter, and I. Peter took it all quietly, as if it were a regular part
of his duty to meet a junk-load of Chinese pirates; I was a little
afraid, I think, but at the same time I was pleased, and I was wildly
excited; and the Prince stood on the rail, looking down with the
utmost contempt upon the Chinese. He was stripped to the waist—most
of our men were half-stripped—and looked like an ebony statue, the
gold hoops in his ears shining out against his shining black skin.

The junk was very near now, and one of their men crawled up with a
great bronze hook on the end of a cable. He was going to try to hook
fast to us, but he never did make the trial. He had to rise, for a
moment, and expose himself. That moment was enough for the Prince,
who {302} was directly opposite him, and only a few feet away. The
Prince raised his harpoon, and darted quickly. The sharp weapon
struck the man full in the chest, went clean through him as if his
body had been made of paper, and the barbs stuck a good three inches
behind his back.

The Prince smiled at that. “Ha!” he cried. “You want come aboard?
Come on, then.”

He jerked the body over the rail of the junk, and it fell with a thud
against our side. Then, still standing erect, he hauled it over our
rail, and dumped it on the deck at my very feet. It turned me sick
and faint for an instant.

I was roused out of my faintness by a shout from Kane, who had
been standing not far from me. He threw down his spade, ran to the
try-works, seized one of the long-handled copper dippers, and dipped
it into one of the kettles of oil. The oil was unusually hot, and
the drops that fell from the dipper, as he ran back with it, smoked
fiercely, and threatened to start fires.

“Look out, boys!” he shouted, swinging his dipper of hot oil. “I ’ll
give them a drink.”

We drew away from the swing of the dipper. With a last swing at the
full length of the long handle he let them have it.

“Have a doughnut,” he roared, “you dhirty chinks!”

He had thrown with all his strength, and with considerable skill,
so that the contents of the dipper were dashed upon a good many of
the men, and scattered into drops. The drops fell upon the bare
bodies like a rain of fire, and every drop sizzled where it struck,
literally frying the Chinese in spots. There was a yell from our men
at Kane’s success, and frenzied yells of pain came from the junk.
Kane had turned at once, and ran back to fill his dipper again. Many
men followed him, to grab whatever they could lay hands upon which
would hold oil.

I was among the first to turn and run, thrusting my boarding-knife
into Peter’s hands, and bidding him hold it. {303} The decks, of
course, were almost swimming in oil and greasy dirt, as we had been
in the middle of trying-out. As I ran I heard a shout from Peter to
duck. At the same instant I fell flat upon my face on the deck, and
a long knife whistled over my head, striking against the bricks of
the try-works. It was a piece of good luck, with no effort of mine
contributing. I had merely stepped in a puddle of oil, and my foot
had slipped.

By the time I had got to my feet again, there was nothing left to
dip the oil with, and I went back to my post beside Peter. Kane
had thrown a second dipperful of oil, with as great success as the
first, and there was now a continuous shower of hot oil crossing the
widening gulf between the vessels. The junk had given up the attempt
to board us, and was only anxious to get away, her men pushing with
long poles, while exposing their bodies as little as possible. The
junk slowly dropped astern, helped by much pushing and some drifting.
As she had come down upon us from the windward, she could not get off
directly; but the Clearchus was forging ahead a little.

Hot oil was showered upon the junk while she was within range of the
men, but the officers, their guns held ready, withheld their fire,
and at last she cleared us. As she cleared our stern, and her sails
filled and she stood to leeward, her men were still shouting in
agony, some of the worst burned clawing at their bodies. Presently a
man jumped overboard. He sank from sight, and I did not see him come
up again. Then another jumped, and another; and then two together.
All four came up again, but the junk made no attempt to pick them up,
and the men made no attempt to swim, so far as I could see. They just
lay there, bobbing on the surface or under it, now in plain sight,
now out of sight, until they disappeared.

We had made no move to pick them up, which worried me somewhat, and
finally I spoke to Mr. Baker, who passed near. Two of the Chinese
were still afloat. {304}

“Are n’t we going to pick up those men, Mr. Baker?”

“What men?” he asked. “Any of our men overboard? Don’t seem so. If
any of those yellow pirates are overboard, the junk can pick ’em up
if she wants to. What we do is the Cap’n’s business, not yours or
mine, Tim.”

I looked at Captain Nelson. He was standing under the after house,
gazing forward absently, as if nothing had happened. _He_ did not see
any men overboard, nor did Mr. Baker, nor any other of the officers.
At that moment Captain Nelson called me, and I went to him.

“Take the guns below,” he said.

When I came up there was nothing to be seen except a junk, a quarter
of a mile to leeward, going before the wind.

{305}




CHAPTER XXXI


We reached the Japan grounds in May of 1874, and cruised thereabouts
until August. Then we stood to the southward, loafing past the
Volcano Islands, the Ladrones, Carolines, Solomon and Fiji Islands,
always on the lookout for whales, and taking a number of them. We
were on the New Zealand grounds early in November. We had only
average success on the Japan grounds and our cruise to the southward;
pulled in many a fruitless chase, and most of the whales we did get
made no fight worth mentioning, for which the men were thankful. Two
of the whales, however, did seem to think their lives worth fighting
for, and one of the two fights was successful from the whale’s point
of view.

The first of these fights occurred about the middle of the northern
summer. We were off the coast of Japan a hundred miles or so, and it
was blowing hard from the southwest, when we raised this lone spout
to windward. I was standing by the weather fore rigging, having
escaped work in the cabin—the officers were rather lenient as to my
duties in the cabin in view of my work in the boat, but I tried not
to be conspicuous when I was loafing—I stood by the fore rigging,
with arms folded upon the rail. So far as I can recollect, I was
thinking of nothing at all, but letting the wind blow on my face, and
enjoying myself. Suddenly there came a spout about a mile off, and
just before my eyes, a perfect plume. I had not seen the whale rise,
and even after the spout I saw nothing of his body. The cry came down
from the masthead immediately, and I moved, expecting that my boat
might be called upon.

The call did not come, however. We were to leeward of the whale, and
the ship was manœuvred for half an hour, {306} trying to get to
windward of him, and waiting for him to sound. We did not succeed in
getting a windward berth, for he was moving slowly to windward, and
kept his advantage. He did go down when he got good and ready, his
flukes going into the air until he seemed to be standing on his head,
half submerged, and he disappeared, apparently going straight down.

Mr. Brown and Mr. Tilton then lowered, but they did not hurry about
it, for the whale had gone down less than a mile from the ship, and
it was likely that he would stay down for an hour. We pulled to the
spot we had chosen as the most likely, and waited, occasionally
pulling a few strokes to hold our position. Mr. Tilton was a quarter
of a mile away. While we waited, the ship worked up past us, and got
about a quarter of a mile directly to windward of us. Mr. Tilton
guessed nearer than Mr. Brown. The whale rose beyond Mr. Tilton’s
boat, coming up on a half-breach. We heard the tremendous splash of
it, and saw Mr. Tilton’s men begin to pull; then we began to pull,
and I saw no more of what was going on except the oars and the backs
of the men directly before my eyes, and Mr. Brown’s unexpressive
face, as he stood at the steering oar.

We chased that whale for nearly two hours before Azevedo had a chance
to strike. Then I saw Mr. Brown’s face light up.

“White water!” he said. “He ’s fast.”

I, for one, was glad. It is no play to pull a whaleboat into the
teeth of such a sea and wind as there was then.

“She spouts thin blood,” he added, a moment later. “Sounded.”

We took it easy after that, and soon came up with Mr. Tilton. The
whale had sounded out all his line before we got there, and the ship
was hull down to leeward, but coming as fast as she could.

There was nothing to do but to wait. The whale must have gone down
at a terrific rate, and he had gone straight {307} down, for he
came up in fifteen or twenty minutes, and a short distance ahead of
us. We pulled frantically. Just as I saw the huge body beginning to
show at the corner of my eye, half awash, the Prince darted with
all his strength, both irons, with great rapidity. At the same
moment Mr. Brown hove mightily upon the steering oar, to lay the
boat around, crying out to the Prince to take the lance to him. The
boat responded, and for a brief interval we ran with the whale, the
starboard oars against the gunwale, and I trying my best to get in
the slack of the line before we began to fall astern, while Kane held
my oar for me. The Prince had seized a lance almost before Mr. Brown
had got the words out of his mouth, and had plunged it twice into the
whale. Mr. Brown had given another twist to the steering oar, and we
sheered off just as the flukes struck the water with a noise like
a big gun and the effect of a cataract. I had let go the line and
grabbed my oar again, and we just did get out of the way as the whale
sounded, with a side cut of flukes.

He did not go deep enough to take out all our line, although he came
near it; but we held him there, with the bow of the boat pulled down
within a foot of the water, the stern raised a little, and every
other sea breaking into the boat, which kept Kane and me bailing.
Mr. Tilton came up, and he and Mr. Brown thought the whale done for;
virtually dead. The whale did not rise, and at last Mr. Tilton pulled
for the ship, which was coming up pretty fast, to get a new line.

Still we waited. The whale did not move. Mr. Tilton had boarded the
ship, got his line, and shoved off again. We began to wonder if it
was a dead whale that we had at the end of that line, and we all
relaxed. The whale had been down an hour, and Mr. Tilton was not
halfway to us, when the bow was suddenly released, and the stern fell
back gently, with a little splash. The strain on the line had eased,
and he was coming up. How fast he was coming, and {308} where he
would rise were questions of some interest, but no more than that. He
was a dead whale, or as good as dead.

I was aroused to something more than interest by the rasp of the
whale’s teeth against the boat, and his jaw shot into the air, it
seemed to me for fifty feet. As it passed me, I saw the tip of the
jaw was curled around into a tight spiral. That spiral jaw fascinated
me. I could not keep my eyes off it, and I did not think of the boat
spade. There was no time to use it, anyway, even if I had thought of
it. The whale had the boat fairly in his mouth, between the tub and
the after oar, and he lost no time in closing, biting it cleanly in
two. The water rushed in upon me, still sitting at my oar. I saw the
stern sheets fall square with the whale’s snout, and Mr. Brown step
off upon it and dive. Then the water closed over me for an instant;
but I had not let go my oar, and I came to the surface, sputtering,
and hugging the oar close. I do not remember that I was frightened,
but my whole attention was occupied, and I did not know what was
happening to the others, nor to myself, until I found myself on the
bottom of the forward half of the boat. I have often wondered just
how I got there.

As soon as I was in a condition to observe anything, I saw the whale
feebly butting the stern of the boat from side to side, about fifteen
feet away, while Black Man’el and Mr. Brown were swimming, Man’el as
if he were hurt. I saw Mr. Brown help Man’el to the steering oar,
which still swung there, and then the whale turned to our half of the
boat. His butts were so feeble—no more than gentle pushes—that we had
no difficulty in holding on; and, after pushing us about for two or
three minutes, he very simply rolled over upon his side, fin out.

Mr. Tilton’s crew had seen our predicament, and had been pulling
hard for us, and Mr. Macy had lowered from the ship. Mr. Tilton took
us off. Black Man’el was the only {309} one hurt. He had an ugly
wound in his arm, which the whale’s teeth had caught and ripped from
shoulder to elbow, but no bones were broken. I thought the boat
was hopelessly stove, and of no further use to anybody, except for
firewood; but Captain Nelson had Mr. Macy pick up the pieces, and
Peter afterward made another boat of them.

The whale made seventy-three barrels. His deformed jaw was saved
and cleaned, and when the Clearchus got home, it was added to the
collection of such curiosities. It is now in the Whaling Museum.

The outcome of the other fight was different. The officers were at
breakfast when we heard the cry from the masthead, and we all ran on
deck at once. There were many spouts, quite a large school, four or
five miles to leeward. We ran down for them, getting the boats and
their gear ready as we went; and at a distance of about a mile we
lowered four boats, all but Captain Coffin’s. His ankle was still
giving him some trouble, although he used it. I have no doubt that
that was just the reason it troubled him, for he had used it too soon
and too much, and he was a great heavy man.

The whales in the school were, most of them, rather small cows; but
there were two bulls of good size, about eighty or ninety barrels,
Mr. Brown guessed. The boats devoted their attention to them. There
was sea enough to make it easy to approach the whales, and they were
to leeward, which made it easier still. Mr. Baker and Mr. Macy took
one, while Mr. Tilton and Mr. Brown took the other. Mr. Baker struck
his whale first, and Mr. Macy did not get fast to him at all, for he
immediately ran to windward, not very fast, towing Mr. Baker, with
Mr. Macy in pursuit. I did not see much of it, naturally; but Mr.
Macy failed to catch him, and when he had taken Mr. Baker five miles
to windward of the ship, the whale increased his speed, and the line
parted. Starbuck had not been able to {310} get both irons into him,
and the second harpoon, skittering along on the top of the water, had
cut and frayed the line. I could imagine Mr. Baker’s flow of language
at that accident, which is one of the regular risks of the business.
There was nothing for the two boats to do but to get back and try to
find the rest of the school, but the school had gone. So had we.

Meanwhile we had struck our whale. We approached him from behind.
I heard the hoarse bellow of his spout getting nearer—he was the
loudest spouter I ever heard; we passed his flukes, which worked
slowly and lazily, for he had not seen us, and the sea made too much
noise for him to hear us; then we passed his small and his hump. Then
Mr. Brown nodded to the Prince, and he stood up, I suppose, although
I saw nothing of him. Then Mr. Brown laid the boat around, and we
ran spang into the whale’s body just aft of his fin, and the Prince
darted both of his irons as Mr. Brown yelled to us, “Stern all!” The
whale gave one convulsive leap ahead, his flukes went into the air,
and came down again, drenching everybody in the boat, and he sounded
instantly and rapidly. He took out line very fast, one tub and half
of the other; then he turned, and came up again as fast as he went
down. The line went out very nearly as fast when he was coming up as
when he went down, but it was held on the loggerhead, so that it did
not all go out. He breached a short distance from the boat, almost
his whole length out, falling back with a great noise and a splash
which filled us half full of water.

[Illustration: A NANTUCKET SLEIGH-RIDE]

Mr. Tilton, meanwhile, had been coming up as fast as he could, but
he was not yet up with us. The whale obligingly lay still, looking
about him with a malevolent eye, while we heaved in the slack of our
line. We had it almost in when he caught sight of Mr. Tilton’s boat,
and made for it instantly. Mr. Tilton withdrew a little, and the
whale changed his mind and sounded again, but not deep. {311} The
cows of the school had come up, and were hovering near, but not near
enough for Mr. Tilton to get any of them easily, and he had his eye
on our bull. The cows seemed to have lost their wits. They reminded
me of a flock of hens crossing the road, and they were as hard to
get. Our bull came up, and we managed to give Mr. Brown one chance
with the lance. The thrust had not reached any vital spot, and that
was all we could do, for the whale made up his mind to run.

He ran to leeward, but he ran under water, and we went off on our
sleigh-ride, accompanied by the whole school of cows. Now and then
he came up to spout, but we were slowly distancing Mr. Tilton. We
made several unavailing attempts, to pull up and lance, but the
only effect was to increase the speed of the whale. The ship was
hull down, and Mr. Tilton soon out of sight. That was early in the
forenoon. That whale ran until late in the afternoon before we were
able to pull up. As soon as he felt Mr. Brown’s lance, the whale
sounded, head first, his flukes grazing the bottom of the boat as he
went, and setting her to rolling, but not rolling her over. When he
felt her, he turned like a flash, and came up again, obliquely at us,
mouth open and belly up, thrusting and striking with his jaw. Most
fortunately he did not stove the boat, but rolled it over, merely
chipping the gunwale with his teeth.

Then he seemed to think that he had done damage enough—in which
matter I agreed with him—probably settled us; and he lay about fifty
feet away, snapping his spout hole and snapping his jaws, giving
every evidence of extreme irritation, but not attacking. We should
have been helpless if he had, and should have had to take to the
water, and scatter. He was spouting thin blood, and probably in no
great distress. I remember that several of the men, clinging to the
bottom of the overturned boat, coolly discussed the color of the
spout, and concluded that the whale was not seriously hurt, even with
two harpoons in him, and two thrusts of the lance. {312}

We slowly drifted nearer, until we rose and fell side by side, the
boat occasionally rubbing against him, but he gave us no attention.
The cows had disappeared. He lay there for over an hour, until we saw
Mr. Tilton coming up under sail. When the whale caught sight of Mr.
Tilton’s boat, he made for it at once, snapping his jaws. Mr. Tilton
then had his sail down, and he backed away, evading the rush of the
whale, and putting an iron into him. Upon feeling the iron, the whale
ran again. He had not gone far, however,—not above a quarter of a
mile,—when the line went slack, showing that the iron had drawn. We
did not see that whale again, nor our two harpoons and tub of line.
It was long after dark when we got aboard the ship, pretty well worn
out.

The experience with that whale rankled in my mind for a long time. To
think that any whale could do about as he pleased with two boats and
twelve men, keep the men working hard for about ten hours, and then
get away with harpoons and line, was almost too much. It exasperated
me. Even when we were off the Solomon Islands, well on our way to New
Zealand, I was thinking of it, and complained of it to Peter, for
about the hundredth time.

He laughed comfortably. “Still thinking o’ that, lad?” he asked.
“You ’d best forget it. It ’s all in the day’s work. The others
have forgot it long ago. Whales ’d be poor sort o’ critters if they
did n’t get the better of us some o’ the time. When you come to think
of it, it ’s a wonder we ever get a whale. Why, they ought to kill us
all, and they would if they had any brains in that monstrous head of
theirs.”

{313}




CHAPTER XXXII


For some time Captain Coffin was excited and restless; even more
restless than usual, and he was always a restless and active man.
Although he would sometimes sit still for long periods, he left
you with the impression of activity, of tension, as though he was
prepared instantly for anything. At such times his eyes were very
bright, and from time to time his head turned alertly. I had no doubt
that he was hatching possible plans for the recapture of the Battles,
or, at any rate, that his brain was seething with ideas, probably
chaotic, which he was trying to reduce to something like order. We
were in the seas for which he was certain that she was bound, the one
refuge of every mutinous or piratical crew.

All of us had been thinking more or less of the Battles. My own
thoughts, I remember, were about equally divided between her and
cannibalism. Cannibalism always has a peculiar fascination for the
minds of young and old, although we older people pretend that it
is the scientific side, the history of the race, and the origin of
the practice that fascinates us. For a boy it is the gruesomeness
that fascinates, and I made no pretense about it. We had passed the
Solomons, about which I had heard various horrible tales, and were
passing the Fijis. We did not even see the Fijis, although I stood at
the rail for about two hours, straining my eyes to the eastward for a
possible sight of them, while the brisk trade wind blew in my face. I
got something out of it: dreams of coral islands, and of breadfruit
and coconuts, and the soothing of that great, steady wind upon my
spirit. I do not know what Captain Coffin got out of it. I saw him
standing at the main rigging, doing the same thing. {314}

When we got to the New Zealand grounds we began at once the regular
routine of cruising, but saw no whales for three days. We did see two
whalers, one of them from home, having sailed a week or two after we
did, and come around the Horn. This was the Henry, Captain Jefferson.
We lay to for the whole of that day, while we had a good gam, Captain
Nelson going aboard her for the forenoon, and their first mate coming
aboard of us. In the afternoon the two captains adjourned to the
Clearchus, and the Henry’s mate went back, followed by Mr. Baker in
his boat. The Henry had no mail for us—none for me, at least—and I
did not send any of my journal by her, only a brief letter to my
mother, for the chances were that we should get home as soon as she.
Each captain had whaling news of value to the other, and possibly
the rum on the Clearchus was different from the Henry’s, and they
wanted to compare them. Captain Jefferson put off about sunset, and
Mr. Baker came back. Much to the disappointment of Captain Nelson,
Captain Jefferson knew nothing about any new cruising ground, the
place where the Apollo had filled up.

A couple of days later we raised the spouts of a small pod of fairly
large whales, and got one of fifty barrels, which Mr. Macy killed.
The other boats chased for three hours in a heavy combing sea, but
the whales got away. After that we had the usual luck, nothing
extraordinary. We chased a good many times with no result, and got
three whales which gave up their lives quietly. The whales on the New
Zealand grounds were rather big fellows, for the most part, sixty
barrels and upward; and some have been taken there which ran well
over one hundred barrels—one of one hundred and thirty-seven barrels,
I believe, although we took none over eighty. Several of these large
whales gave us trouble.

The first of these was met when we had been there about three weeks.
The weather was boisterous, as it was {315} apt to be while we were
on those grounds. We raised a lone spout, very full and powerful, on
the lee bow. The whale was not feeding, but was coming to windward,
and we lowered three boats at once, Mr. Brown’s, Mr. Macy’s, and
Captain Coffin’s. Captain Coffin was hardly in condition yet to be
of the most service, but he was so eager to go that Captain Nelson
let him. All three boats pulled out ahead of the whale to cut him
off, and waited. When we first sighted the spout it was above three
miles distant, the whale swimming in a business-like way and making
five or six knots. We had plenty of time, therefore, to get into good
positions, and we drifted down before the wind directly upon his
course.

As he was approaching us head on, and as we were drifting without the
use of sail or oars—although the men had their oars in their hands
and held them in place, ready to use—there was nothing to give the
whale warning of our presence, and he came on quite unalarmed. When
he was a short distance away, he changed his course slightly, and it
looked, for some seconds, as though he would hit the boat, head on,
but Mr. Brown laid the boat around a bit, and we pulled a couple of
strokes. The next moment his old head, like a cliff of black granite,
weather-seamed and scarred, rose just beyond the bow oar. He spouted
and pitched under like a flash; but the Prince drove one iron into
him just above the fin. There was no chance for the second. The boat
whirled around quickly, and we were off, with the thrashing flukes
almost abeam. The next spout was thin blood.

The Prince and Mr. Brown changed places, and Mr. Brown called to
us to pull him up close so that he could put in another iron. No
sooner had we dropped our oars and laid hold of the line to pull,
than the whale milled short around, brought his nose accurately to
the stem of the boat without giving Mr. Brown a chance, and pushed
us fast astern. It was a delicate job for the Prince to hold {316}
us straight with the steering oar, and not to let the boat swing
around broadside, but for a boat length he did it. Mr. Brown, during
that time, was pushing with all his strength on the harpoon, the
sharp point against the whale’s rubber-like snout, but the barb
did not enter. We heard and saw the whale’s jaw snap up twice, but
of course it did not reach the boat. He spouted, sending the acrid
vapor, thinly mixed with blood, over us, setting us all to choking,
and almost turning me inside out. Then he withdrew a little, and
lay there wallowing in the seas, snapping his jaw, and snapping his
spout-hole with loud cracks. Sperm whales can snap the spout-hole,
which is shaped much like the _f_-hole of a violin, with tremendous
force. Meanwhile he was eyeing us with a malevolent eye, and no
wonder.

The other boats were coming up; they were nearly there. Mr. Brown
thought he saw a chance, and ordered us to pull up close. We did,
and the whale still lay there wallowing. We grounded on his back,
and Mr. Brown pumped his lance up and down twice. There was no time
for more, for the whale went down suddenly, with a flourish of his
flukes, barely missing us. He did not go deep, however, for while we
were watching the line and the sea, he floated up under us, belly up,
with his jaw almost at right angles with his body. There was no time
to escape. That jaw came down with a quick snap, cutting the boat
cleanly in two between the tub-and the after-oar, spilling the men
into the sea, and getting a tubful of line entangled in his teeth. I
saw him spout thick blood just as I went over, clinging to my oar.

When I had come to the surface, and had cleared the water out of my
eyes, the whale was trying to get rid of that tub of whale line. I
could hardly help laughing, although my situation was not one for
laughter, the whale reminded me so strongly of a person who had got
a mouthful of hair, or of the bristles from an old toothbrush. He
{317} seemed to feel almost the same disgust. The two other boats,
coming up, were almost at his flukes, and the ship had come very
near. The whale caught sight of her, and instantly made for her with
a vigor unexpected in a whale that spouts thick blood. The ship was
broadside on, and her sails were already aback, so that she could do
nothing. The whale struck her with his head amidships. If he had been
merely angry, and not hurt, that butting might very well have been
a catastrophe for us. But the vigor with which he had started had
ebbed rapidly away, and his butt was feeble, although I saw the upper
masts quiver, and the masthead man was rattled about like a die in a
box. Then he drew off and rammed again. That second attempt was more
feeble yet. He could do no more than rub against the hull; and he
passed under her, and floated to the surface on the other side, fin
out, with no flurry, unless his feeble buttings had been his flurry.

Mr. Macy and Captain Coffin were picking us up. The tub-oarsman was
found floating amid the wreckage, his arm over his oar, unconscious.
He did not recover consciousness for an hour, but then seemed to be
all right. He must have been hit on the head by something, nobody
could guess what. They would have thought it the teeth of the whale,
except that the lower jaw, which contains all the teeth, is too
narrow to reach both the tub-and the after-oarsman; and Black Man’el
was again severely mauled by the teeth of the whale, on the same
side that was so recently healed. This time it was not his arm, but
his back. On that ebony surface there were three or four bloody
wipes, where the teeth had ripped it in the process of closing. Black
Man’el, however, did not miss a day’s duty on account of it, taking
his regular place in the boat when it was called away, although his
back must have been lame and sore for days.

That whale made eighty-five barrels. As I was watching the mates
cutting off the head, Peter stopped for a moment beside me. {318}

“He’s a scarred old lad,” he said, “is n’t he, Timmie? Do you see the
marks of teeth he ’s carried around for many a year?”

I did see them; old scars of the teeth of some other bull, running
up diagonally from his mouth. That other bull must have bitten deep,
for each tooth-mark was separate, and still formed a little hollow,
like the little weathered hollows in a rock, where water gathers, or
the regular marks of a drill. There were other scars, too, of wounds
where the teeth seemed to have ripped and torn their way viciously.

“How do they get those scars, Peter? Fighting, I suppose; but how do
they fight?”

“I ’ve never seen them fighting, lad. But those who have seen it tell
me that they draw off from each other a little way, and go at each
other full tilt. They turn on their side, like, to give their jaws
play, and bite and wrench and tear. Sometimes they ’ll use their jaws
like fencing foils, without drawing off; but however they do it, they
must be savage at it. If they fence, they don’t wear masks.”

“Shall we see fighting whales, Peter?”

He smiled. “We may see ’most anything, lad. It ’s hard to tell. I ’ve
never seen ’em, but perhaps my turn is due for that this voyage.”

I wished fervently that we might see it. I watched for it with new
interest, and whenever we raised a pod I hoped that they might take
it into their heads to fight—fight among themselves, not us. I told
Peter of my hope one day.

“Bless your heart, lad,” he said, unsmiling, which was good of him,
“they won’t fight. They ’re in the same school. Wait until you see a
schoolmaster take on a fellow of about the same size that ’s trying
to get his job. Then you may see it.”

I knew nothing about schoolmasters, but I was ashamed {319} to ask,
and I said nothing. We were trying-out at the time, and the air was
filled with the acrid black smoke of scrap, and the deck covered with
oil mixed with soot. Only the day before we had raised a pod of large
whales, and I had had great hopes, for they were of a size to make a
good fight if they took a notion to. But nothing seemed farther from
their intention than to fight among themselves. They led us a very
pretty chase—from their point of view. We were pulling hard after
them from sunrise until noon. Mr. Macy had the only chance. George
Hall got an iron well into one, but it twisted off near the head, and
all got away.

We had scarcely got the boats on the davits when a whale rose and
spouted, not a hundred yards from the ship. Mr. Baker bellowed out
for a crew on the instant, and I ran to his boat, the first one
there. The Prince, Peter, Kane, and the Admiral were the others. We
had the boat in the water, tumbled in, and were pulling for the whale
in less than a minute. The Prince struck with both irons, and the
whale sounded at once, with a grand flourish of flukes. He sounded
out very nearly all our line; so nearly all of it that we bent on a
drug, while Mr. Baker hailed the ship for more. Mr. Tilton’s boat was
already in the water, beginning to pull toward us, but we held the
whale at that depth, with but two flakes of line left in the tub.

Although that whale had not nearly had his spoutings out, he stayed
down over an hour. Mr. Tilton stood by, his line bent to the end of
ours, but Mr. Baker would not give up the whale until he had to. When
the whale rose at last, he did not come up with a rush, on a breach,
or half-breach, but he floated up, and came to the surface like an
old waterlogged timber, plainly exhausted. There was nothing for Mr.
Baker to do but to pull up and lance him at his leisure. Within ten
minutes the whale was in his flurry, and in a short time after he was
fast alongside the {320} ship. Mr. Baker estimated him at eighty
barrels, but by hard work we had him cut-in and on board by dark, and
the carcass cut adrift.

It was now past the middle of the season, and we put into Wellington
to fill our water-casks, to give the men a run ashore, and to get our
mail. There was no mail for me, but I sent home another instalment
of my journal, and I saw the town, which had little interest for me.
There was only one town which I cared about seeing, and that was more
than a year away, almost exactly on the other side of the world. I
had a great desire to see at least one of the Marquesas Islands, but
Wellington is not the Marquesas.

When we got back to our cruising grounds, whales were getting scarce
and wild and difficult of approach. The big whales seemed to have
gone. We did get one forty-barrel bull, one of a small school that
was running to leeward from another ship. We saw the ship in the
distance, and we saw her boats; but the whales were running faster
than the boats could go. Our one bull we intercepted, but the rest
ran away from us, straight to leeward, head out. It was useless to
chase them. The strange boats did not get nearer to us than a mile
and a half; then they gave it up, and went back to their ship, which
bore away to the southward without an attempt to speak us.

Captain Nelson must have made up his mind very suddenly to get out of
those waters. As soon as the trying-out of the forty-barrel bull was
finished we stood away to the northward, for the Ellices, Gilberts,
and Kingsmill; but most of all, I thought, to find those mysterious
grounds where the Apollo had filled up. Just after we had filled
away, Peter found me, and pointed in silence to the horizon. There
was a faint haze, but I made out a pair of topmasts, with yards on
them.

“A brig?” I asked, with but faint interest.

“A schooner,” Peter answered. “I saw her from aloft.” {321}

It dawned upon me then; it was the Battles, going the same way we
were. I watched her draw away from us. Then I saw Captain Coffin
watching, too.

{322}




CHAPTER XXXIII


As we ran to the northward, we had the wind on the beam or aft of
that, most of the time, usually brisk to strong, as fair a wind
as we could have wished for. The hurricane season was about to
begin. Hurricanes are most frequent in March and April, although
occasionally there is a severe one toward the last of February;
and their tracks most commonly cross the Fiji or Samoan Islands
in a general southerly direction, then curving more and more to
the eastward. We stood well to the west of Fiji, and were past the
Ellices before the end of the southern summer, so that we escaped
them entirely—if there were any—and were usually running about as
fast as the old Clearchus was able, under the southeast trades, and
under a regular trade-wind sky.

It was seldom necessary to touch a brace or a halliard, and our
crew had very little to do. The mastheads were kept manned, but I
soon came to the conclusion that that was done merely as a matter
of form, or from habit, and not for any practical purpose, for we
raised spouts on two occasions on our way up without lowering or even
changing the course. Each time Captain Nelson came on deck, looked at
the spoutings for a couple of minutes, and turned away without saying
anything. And each time Mr. Baker asked him, “Lower, sir?” rather
wistfully, and the old man shook his head, and went below again. I
did not know what to make of it, and Mr. Baker did not seem to know
either. He appeared to be dumbfounded—completely flabbergasted—and he
looked after the captain, and, on the second occasion, I heard him
mutter that he ’d be eternally damned to hell-fire, or words to that
effect—with sundry embellishments—if he knew what the captain was up
to. I made up my mind that the idea of finding the {323} mythical
Apollo island obsessed him. We had over two thousand barrels on
board, and needed only three or four hundred to fill us up. Think of
the disappointment of finding a gold mine, with nowhere to put the
gold! Easy money, for the mere picking up, and no way of carrying it
off.

I had always been in the habit of standing by the bulwarks, when I
had the chance, or sitting curled up in some favorable spot with an
unobstructed view, and watching the water and the sky. There was
more chance now than usually, and I would stand by the main rigging,
or lie in a coil of rope by the heel of the bowsprit, for an hour
at a time, and watch the Southern Ocean slip by. I generally had
the “Navigators” in my hand, held open by my thumb, but I read very
little. It is fine print, and it was much more interesting to watch
the trade wind clouds, or to glance at the swaying masthead men, or
at the birds which accompanied us. There was usually a frigate-bird
or two, or a tropic-bird, although these birds were rare; gannets
and boobies and terns and many others. It was my delight to see a
frigate-bird rise majestically in great circles, higher and higher,
without a motion of his wings or his body that I could detect, until
he was a mere speck in the blue. At sight of flying fish rising in
flight, perhaps before albacore, or of a gannet or a booby that had
been successful in fishing, he begins to drop, at first in circles;
when still at a considerable height, he closes his wings, makes his
body miraculously small, falls like a stone or a bullet, and comes
up before the poor gannet, threatening, the robber that he is! The
gannet instantly drops the fish, the frigate dives through the air,
and, getting it before it has fallen far, rises to eat. He did not
always get his fish by robbery, but caught flying fish at the height
of their flight in the air. I never saw one dive into the sea, and
the men said they were unable to rise from the water, but must keep
on the wing, waking or sleeping, from land to land. {324} I never
saw one rob a tropic-bird either, but they used sometimes to threaten
the masthead men.

One morning I was standing by the rail, Captain Coffin pacing the
deck behind me, although it was not his watch. I should not speak of
him as Captain, for he was not captain on the Clearchus, although I
suppose still captain of the Battles. We had run out of the trades,
and we were trying to make an easterly course, but we were not making
out very well. We had frequent showers, some of which were almost of
the proportions of deluges; and calms and light airs from any point
of the compass about a quarter of the time. When the wind did come,
it was mostly ahead, and we made little progress. On the night before
this morning, I remember, there was a great deal of phosphorescence
in the water. The ship was scarcely moving, but the little ripples
at her bow glowed brightly; her wake was a luminous road, stretching
out far astern, every whirl and eddy a vortex of living light. I saw
a shark clearly outlined in greenish light, and a sudden burst of
fireworks at a little distance showed where a school of flying fish
had been disturbed and driven from the water like the balls of a
roman candle.

I was thinking of those flying fish as I stood by the rail that
morning, and I had brought my old battered glass along. It was a
calm morning, hot and sticky, the sea fairly quiet. Suddenly I saw
what I thought must be a school of flying fish break the water about
a quarter of a mile away and take their flight. They looked too big
for flying fish, their flight in the air too short, and I brought my
glass to bear. I soon caught them again, and they certainly did not
look like fish, but I was not ready to believe they were what they
looked like. I turned to Captain Coffin, and asked him.

He stopped by my side, waving the glass away when I offered it to
him. The creatures soon appeared again, coming out of the water in a
spurt or gust. {325}

“Oh,” he said, “flying squid.”

“But,” I asked, “do squid fly?”

He laughed. “No,” he said, “no more than flying fish fly—nor so much.
As you see. There must be something chasing them.”

At this moment the musical, quavering cry of the Admiral came down to
us: “Bl-o-o-ows!”

The spout was dead to windward, about five or six miles off. I, at
any rate, could not see it from the deck, even with my glass, there
was such a quiver of heated air at the horizon. Captain Nelson came
on deck, went up to the main crosstrees, and stayed there for some
time, watching. When he came down Captain Coffin asked him what he
made of it.

“Can’t make out,” he answered. “Something queer going on. May be
swordfish, or perhaps those big sharks; or killers, except for the
latitude. We ’ll stand up that way as fast as we can.”

“Lower, sir?” Mr. Baker asked, knowing well what the answer was
likely to be.

Captain Nelson shook his head. “Not yet.”

It took us a long time to get up anywhere near, but the spout
remained very nearly stationary, and there was considerable white
water raised about it. The light breeze, nearly dead ahead, died out,
and we wallowed there for a quarter of an hour, in a flat calm. But
we were near enough to see what was going on, and I watched through
my glass. There were two whales instead of one, very different
in size. The smaller of the two seemed to be the centre of the
commotion, and I caught several glimpses of bodies, gleaming brightly
as they broke the surface for an instant. There must have been five
or six of them, but I could not tell certainly whether they were
sharks or swordfish or what. I had never seen a killer. The larger
whale was making short, savage dashes at the attacking fish, but
without any marked result, so far as I could see. {326}

I handed the glass to Captain Coffin. “Won’t you look, sir, and tell
me what they are?”

“I don’t really need the glass, boy,” he said, “to tell me that
they ’re sharks.” But he took it, and held it to his eyes. “Sharks;
big devils, twenty-five or thirty feet long. That whale ’s a small
cow, and she must have a small calf under her fin. That ’s what the
sharks are after, and they ’ll get it, too, if we don’t get a breeze
pretty quick.”

Small difference it could make to the whale what got it! They were
still keeping up the fight vigorously when a cooler breath came out
of the southeast. It was only a puff, but soon there was another,
which lasted longer; and before many minutes the breath of cooler air
was steady, and growing stronger. We were just on the northern edge
of the southeast trades, and had edged into them, or they had passed
us, which amounted to the same thing. Captain Nelson had been edging
to the southward for some days, with just that in view.

We gathered way again, and when we had got near enough, Captain
Nelson ordered Mr. Baker and Mr. Brown to lower. The order he gave,
however, reduced Mr. Baker to a stupefied silence.

“I don’t want you should hurt the whales,” he said quietly, as if
it were the most natural thing in the world for a whaler not to
want to hurt whales. “Drive off those sharks, and kill them if you
can. I ’m going to try to keep those spouts in sight,” he went on,
probably thinking that some explanation was necessary, or his mates
might think he was losing his mind. “I ’m going to keep those spouts
in sight, and see if they don’t lead us to something worth while.”
And he turned away, muttering that it should be hereabouts if it was
anywhere.

We lowered, and pulled hard for the scene of combat. It was full
time, for the cow was bitten and torn in many places, and could
not have kept up the fight much longer. The larger whale—a bull, I
thought—seemed {327} about ready to give it up, and take himself
off. There were six of the big sharks, but one of them was so badly
hurt by one of the whales that he could barely drag himself off, and
all of them had been marked. The insensibility of sharks to pain
or injury is an extraordinary thing. This one had been cut nearly
in two, but he had kept up the fight, his viscera trailing behind
him in a long festoon, until one of the others had relieved him of
them. The other sharks did not molest him further, being too intent
on getting the more delicate morsel, which we could see by the side
of its mother. Nearly the whole of one side of its flukes had been
bitten off, and it was somewhat torn in several places, although not
seriously injured.

We put the sharks to flight, killing three, after one of them, in his
thrashings, had got his tail into the boat, and wiped me across the
cheek. It was like a wipe with a rasp, or coarse sandpaper, and took
the outer skin completely off my right cheek. It was a long time in
healing, and I had to be at my duties for nearly a month, with half
my head tied up as if I had the toothache.

The whales were going, swimming slowly, probably because of the
injuries to the cow, and to the reduced speed of the calf, owing to
the loss of one fluke. The bull was at some distance, but he seemed
to regulate his speed by that of the cow. We got back to the ship,
one side of my face a mass of blood, and blood which had dripped into
my shirt. I must have been a frightful-looking object. Such a hurt
makes a great show, and always looks much worse than it is. I do not
remember that I felt anything more than the inconvenience of it, and
of having my head tied up for so long. Nobody thought it necessary to
put anything on it—iodine or alcohol, or anything of the kind. I drew
a bucket of sea-water, and washed most of the blood off, but that was
all.

We stood off at once after the whales. Fortunately, they did not
swim directly to windward, and the ship was able {328} to make the
course, and to keep up with them. They seemed to be making for some
definite place, and at nightfall we were not far behind them. Even
Mr. Baker appeared to think that the old man knew what he was about.
We reduced sail for the night, although it could have been no better
than a guess on Captain Nelson’s part how far he should reduce speed.
With the first gleam of light—a little before six o’clock, or four
bells, for we were not many degrees south of the equator—our best
men were sent to the mastheads. Our best lookout was the Admiral, a
Kanaka. There were no spouts to be seen. We had lost the whales. Sail
was crowded on, and the Clearchus was soon making good speed under
the steady trades, which had grown much stronger since the day before.

We held on the course on which we had been sailing for nearly three
hours. Then the Admiral’s quavering cry came down to us, for he was
the first to see it.

“Ah bl-o-o-ows!”

It was a musical cry, but given with indifference. He had seen
too many spouts to become excited over two and a half; for he had
detected the little spout of the calf, close alongside its mother.
There was no doubt that there was our quarry, although still miles
away. We kept on after them, and continued to gain slowly, for
another hour, the officers keeping an eye on the spouts, which we
could now see from the deck, and occasionally glancing up at the
Admiral. We had had breakfast, and I was doing the same thing as the
officers, from my perch on the heel of the bowsprit. Suddenly I saw
the Admiral straighten up. He looked far out ahead as if he could not
believe his eyes. Then he gave an excited cry.

“Bl-o-ws! Ah bl-o-ws!” It was not as musical as we were used to hear
from the Admiral. “Blows! Big school! Hunnud whale! All over!” And he
waved his arm to include a wide arc.

I could not see the new spouts, of course, from my place {329} on
deck, and I sprang into the fore rigging, clasping my old glass,
which I had brought up with me after breakfast. Many others of the
men swarmed up, but I was first, and I went rapidly up as far as I
could get, and put the glass to my eyes.

I did not see them at first, for it was about four bells—ten o’clock
in the forenoon—I was looking to the eastward, directly into the
glare, and I was expecting to see them nearer than they were; but at
last I saw them. There were many spouts in the air at once over a
wide arc of the sea; and the sun shining on them all, and glorifying
them into tiny ostrich plumes, each on Ann McKim’s hat.

Every time that I saw a sperm whale’s spout with the sun shining
upon it, I thought of that hat of Ann McKim. Ann McKim was a few
months older than I—she is yet, although that fact is not generally
published—and when I left home she had just got her first plumed hat.
It was a big, broad-brimmed hat of dark blue satin—or velvet, I do
not know which—with a generous white ostrich plume sticking up from
the brim at just the angle of a sperm whale’s spout. I know she had
bought it with her own money, and had trimmed it herself, for she
told me so. No doubt such a hat was absurd, especially on a girl of
fifteen, but it did not seem absurd to her, nor to me when I saw her
with it on, the Sunday before I came away. But Ann McKim was sweet
and lovely, and she would have lent beauty to any hat she chose to
wear.

The large school of whales did not seem to be going anywhere in
particular as a body, although the individuals of the school
continually moved about, or sounded, or came up again. They may have
been feeding. The bull and the wounded cow and calf which we had been
chasing were evidently meaning to join the school, and we followed
them, getting all the boats ready for lowering as we went. We were
now getting the full sweep of the trades, steady and strong, and we
gained on the three whales, so {330} that we were in a position to
see well what happened when they neared the school.

A big bull swam out from the school to inspect the newcomers. He was
not old and scarred, as most of the lone whales were, but as big as
any of them, and in his prime. Although we were not far off, that
means perhaps half a mile; and as but little of the whales was out
of water, I could not see with any certainty what went on. The big
bull at once joined the cow, and swam beside her for some distance,
apparently trying to persuade her to leave her lord and come with
him; an unnecessary proceeding, as that was just what she was doing.
He seemed to pay no attention to the calf. It was no concern of his.
The cow swam on, and took no notice of him, so far as I could see,
but the other bull did not like it. He was not so very much smaller
than the big one, and before I realized that there was anything on
the programme, here he was, coming for the big bull, fire in his eye,
I could imagine, and jaw dropped. When he was a hundred feet away,
he turned over, nearly on his back, apparently, for I saw his jaw
projecting above the surface of the water.

The big bull was aware of the other just in time to slip out of the
way, but not in time to escape entirely. The jaw closed on his small,
and I saw the wounds made by the teeth, which tore out great pieces
of blubber and flesh. By what seemed agreement, the two big whales
turned about as soon as they could and went at each other full tilt.
Their jaws locked, and they wrestled there for a minute, each seeming
to try to break the jaw of the other, and tearing and thrashing the
water into boiling fountains of spray. As we found out later, great
gobs of flesh were torn from the sides of their heads. After a while
they broke their hold, I could not see how, and they backed off and
went at it again.

This time the fight was fiercer than before, and it was impossible to
see what was happening, or to see anything {331} but white water.
This round was a little longer than the first. The performance was
repeated two or three times, and then I saw the boiling white water
gradually become quiet. The two great bodies lay there for a few
seconds, head to head; then the smaller of the whales moved off
slowly away from the school. He seemed to have lost all interest in
the cow, and the bigger one, satisfied that the other had definitely
given up the fight, let him go in peace. Both whales seemed to be in
distress. I saw the big one, as he swam to join the school, raise his
head completely out of water two or three times, and his jaw seemed
to be slewed around so that it would not close properly. He had
difficulty in moving it at all.

Up to this point it had not seemed to be a propitious time for
lowering, but when the fight was over, Mr. Tilton lowered at once,
and went after the vanquished bull. He was still moving slowly, and
the boat easily overtook him, and got fast. He made no fight at all,
but lay fin out in fifteen minutes. His jaw was hanging down queerly,
and when we got him alongside and began to cut-in, we found that it
had been broken short off, and was hanging by the flesh. Many of his
teeth were stove out, and he had terrible wounds in the head.

Meanwhile the ship had kept off after the school, which began to show
signs of moving along. We got pretty near it, however, and lowered
three more boats, but we did not succeed in getting whales of any
size. The school consisted principally of rather small cows, under
the charge of two or three bulls as schoolmasters. We could not find
the bull which had been fighting, and did not look for the others,
for schoolmasters are always pugnacious devils. They have to be.
We managed to get three small cows of about twenty barrels apiece
before the school was well under way and left us. One of these cows
was lost during the night, stripped by sharks and broken adrift, and
much of another fell a prey to the sharks. Four whales at once {332}
alongside is almost too much to take care of. We got the blubber all
hove in by sunset of the next day, and the carcasses cut adrift. They
made only a hundred and twelve barrels altogether, only about as much
as we might have expected to get from one really big whale in those
waters.

{333}




CHAPTER XXXIV


As soon as the trying-out was finished, we stood off to the
southeast, or a little southerly of that. The trades here were
blowing strong from the east, and that was as close as the Clearchus
would sail. After a day of this, we came about on the other tack. We
could none of us understand why, unless some of the officers did,
but the large school of whales had disappeared almost directly to
windward, and Captain Nelson may have been trying to see where they
had gone. There was a fairly rapid drift of the surface water, also
from the east, as would be expected. Although I knew practically
nothing about it, I had formed the theory that whales generally
travelled against the warmer ocean currents. I had not carried my
theory so far as to account for their doing so, but I supposed it had
to do with the food supply. That seems reasonable now, for it is at
the bottom of all migrations; not comfort, nor pleasure, but food,
and the ease of getting it.

We did not see that school again, but early in the morning of the
second day, being then in longitude 162° W., latitude 8° S., by the
captain’s—and my own—observations, we came upon three islands. They
were very small islands, roughly about a mile long and half a mile
wide, each a sort of crescent, and forming, as I now think, parts of
the rim of a crater but recently elevated above the surface. They
were not shown on any of our charts, and could not have been exposed
to the sun and winds and waves for many years, for they were almost
utterly bare; perhaps a hundred feet high at the highest point, and
showing nothing but rock and dried mud and ooze from the bed of the
sea. We did not land on them, but at only one place could I make
out with my glass a spot of {334} green, and that was only about a
couple of feet square. Possibly some bird had dropped a seed there,
or a coconut had drifted ashore, or the seeds of beach grass in a
mass of drifting seaweed. Beaches had begun to form, especially on
the windward side.

The captain having satisfied himself about the waters, we began
cruising for whales in earnest, for we had seen a couple of pods
earlier in the day. We had almost sunk the islands below the horizon
before we raised another spout. While we were in this neighborhood
a day rarely passed without our seeing any. There were two spouts
this time. We worked the ship to windward of them, and lowered three
boats, leaving Mr. Tilton and Captain Coffin aboard the ship. Before
we reached them, the whales sounded, without having seen us, and we
waited, tossing on the seas, for them to rise.

When we had waited for nearly an hour, they suddenly spouted near Mr.
Baker and Mr. Macy, at the other end of the line from us. We had not
seen them rise. All three boats started for them. We had a long way
to go, and it was hard pulling, for the sea was heavy. The ship was
well to windward, and the whales had spread out. None of us could see
what was going on ahead of us, but we were putting our last ounce of
strength into pulling—at least, I was—when Mr. Brown told us to take
it easy, for they had sounded again. I was glad that they had shown
so much sense.

Those whales kept up that sort of thing for five risings, always
working to windward slowly, and the ship working to windward ahead of
us. It got to be nearly sunset, and the ship showed a little white
flag at her peak, recalling us. We did not know it, however, as we
were keeping head to the sea, and the ship was behind our backs. Mr.
Brown knew it. At that moment one of the whales rounded out directly
astern, and head on. As it was a good chance, Mr. Brown ignored the
signal, heaving on the steering oar, and laying the boat around.
{335}

“Now,” he said, “a dozen good strokes, boys.”

We gave him a dozen, and then a dozen more. He nodded to the Prince,
who took in his oar swiftly and silently, and stood up. The black
head of the whale shot by, and Mr. Brown threw all his weight on the
oar, bringing the boat’s head around.

“Give it to him!” he cried. “Stern all!”

The Prince had darted; he threw his second iron just as we bumped
terrifically into the body of the whale. Then we backed off as the
flukes went into the air, came down on the surface thunderously, and
swept from side to side. Again his flukes went up, and the whale
sounded. He sounded at great speed and the line whistled out of the
tub. I confess that I was afraid of it as the coils writhed past my
hands and pounded a tattoo on my oar. One tub was out. There had been
no time for Mr. Brown and the Prince to change places, and a “drug”
was being bent on to the end of the line in the second tub, as fast
as the men could work. It was no sooner fast than it was whisked out
of their hands and overboard.

Mr. Brown smiled slowly. “Well,” he said, “that was soon settled.
Looks as if the joke was on us. Guess we ’d better have let him
alone.”

The whale had gone off with two irons, two tubs of line, and a drug.
The chance was that we should never see any of them again, for it
was almost too dark to see anything, and it would be pitch-black in
half an hour. We turned and pulled easily toward the ship, which was
showing a light, two miles to windward. The boat lanterns were set
before we had gone far.

We had made perhaps half the distance to the ship when we heard, out
of the darkness ahead, shouts and commands and a commotion in the
water that was more than the wash of the sea. Mr. Brown peered ahead.

He could not make out much. “Stand up, Tony,” he said, “and see what
you make it. By the sounds it ’s Mr. Baker, and he ’s fast.” {336}

The Prince stood up. Those black men have a strange faculty of seeing
in the dark. He reported that it was Mr. Baker fast to a whale, and
he thought it was our whale.

By this time we were almost up with the commotion. Mr. Brown headed
us over that way, and we pulled harder. As soon as we were within
hail he called out, asking if the whale had irons in him. I could not
see what the state of affairs was, for I had to keep my eyes astern;
but I judged from the sounds that Mr. Baker was close alongside, and
was lancing, or just about to. The answer was that the whale had
irons in him.

“Those irons are mine,” Mr. Brown shouted, “and I want to kill him!”

I was surprised, for I did not see then, and I do not see now, why it
should be any pleasure to a man like Mr. Brown to pump a lance up and
down in the in’ards of a whale. If it had been Mr. Baker I could have
understood it.

Between grunts and curses Mr. Baker replied that it was too late, for
he had just attended to that matter, and we had better go astern a
little, as the whale was going into his flurry.

Mr. Brown said nothing—there was nothing to say—and the whale
proceeded to turn fin out without any flurry at all.

Mr. Baker then set his lights to signal the ship, and she bore down
upon us. It was a long, hard job getting that whale alongside in
the pitch darkness and the heavy sea, and it was not done and the
men on board until very late in the evening. Even then it was not
done, we found. Lying hove to, as we were, the ship forging ahead a
little, with a very heavy sea running, she would bring up, at every
roll, with a tremendous jerk on the fluke chain. At last the chain
parted—shackle pin snapped—and the carcass began to drift away. It
was Mr. Macy’s watch, and he sprang quickly into the quarter boat,
bent the line {337} to an iron, and struck as the body drifted
beneath him. He checked it with the line, and managed to get another
iron in, fast to a second line, before it had drifted out of reach.
Then the lines were paid out to their whole length, and the spring of
the lines held the carcass until sunrise. In the morning we had all
our work to do over again, but we got the blubber hove aboard before
sunset. The whale made sixty-five barrels.

While we were trying-out that whale we raised another pod or small
school. It was early in the afternoon. The wind had gone down
somewhat, but was still strong, and the whales were basking lazily
on the surface, laying flukes and fins. That sounds as if they were
a flock of hens, curiously occupied. They were pretty near, although
not close aboard, and it was too much for the captain, for these
were large whales. Captain Nelson was getting more excited as the
ship got more nearly filled up, and as he saw the abundance of large
whales. It seemed to give him a physical pain to realize that here
was a fortune at his hand, and he could not take it away. He could be
depended upon to come to the same place the next voyage, but somebody
else might get there first. In this case he called away every man
that could be spared, and lowered two boats.

We got none of those whales. We took every precaution to avoid
scaring them, even to the prohibition of talking as we ran down
under sail. There was plenty of sea to drown any noise that we might
have made, but we were a silent company. In spite of all our care,
however, we could not get nearer than a quarter of a mile. At about
that distance the nearest rounded out flukes, and went under; and
the others followed slowly and solemnly, without fuss, merely going
under the surface and swimming. We rounded to, not knowing whether
they had gone deep, or where they might come up again; but there they
were, almost immediately, spouting lazily, half a mile away, {338}
basking on the surface, and keeping exact run of the boats. We kept
up that game of hide-and-seek all the afternoon. We could not get
near them, whatever we did, although they did not run away. Toward
sunset we pulled back to the ship, rather crestfallen, and left that
pod of seventy-barrel whales to go to bed in peace or to indulge in
dissipation, as they pleased. There were enough whales there to fill
us up entirely and one or two over. Five or six such whales would
have filled us up, and more.

We finished our trying-out without seeing any more whales, but
before the cleaning-up was more than begun, we raised a lone spout.
We lowered three boats for him, but mine was not among them, and I
watched the proceedings through my glass. They caught up with him
about a mile from the ship. Perhaps it is more exact to say that he
caught them there, for he attacked the first boat as soon as he got
a sight of it, driving at it at once with his mouth open. It was Mr.
Baker’s boat, and Starbuck had no chance to do anything, for the
whale went a little under, a short distance from the boat, came up
under it, belly up, and like lightning, and caught it fairly forward
of amidships. He came up so hard that he carried it into the air, bow
first, and the men all fell out. Then he gave it a little shake, as a
terrier shakes a rat, but he did not close hard, although he sprung
all the planks. The boat then slipped out of his jaws and into the
water, where it lay for a few moments, leaking like a sieve.

The whale nosed about among the debris, butting the boat from side
to side, cutting with his flukes at every floating thing that
touched them, mast, sail, oars, tubs, and water-kegs. Mr. Tilton
came up while he was so engaged, and Azevedo put two irons into him;
whereupon he turned upon Mr. Tilton’s boat, and before they could do
anything toward making their escape, he served it as he had served
Mr. Baker’s, but stove it completely.

There were now two boats’ crews swimming about in {339} the sea,
and making away, as fast as they could, from the neighborhood of the
stove boats. I tried to count heads, and although I could not be
certain, because of their continual bobbing out of sight behind seas,
I thought that they were all there. The truculent whale was having
a good time, cutting about amid the floating wreckage, knocking
the parts of the boats out of the way with his head, and instantly
slamming anything that he felt with his flukes. In this process he
succeeded in getting himself thoroughly entangled in the line, so
that he appeared almost as if he were enclosed in a net. Mr. Brown’s
boat was then called away to help, and I could not follow the fight
closely, but was to get into it instead.

Meanwhile Mr. Macy had been trying to get into it. It was inviting
disaster to go in and put an iron into the whale, but Mr. Macy would
have done it if he could. He simply could not do it, the whale
thrashed about so. At last, in his ragings, the whale saw Mr. Macy’s
boat just beyond the circle of wreckage, and made for it. By skilful
use of the steering oar Mr. Macy avoided his rush, and Hall, the
boatsteerer, seizing the whaling gun, fired a bomb into him as he
passed just beyond darting distance. That was twice repeated before
we came up, without noticeable effect upon the whale, and Mr. Macy
had all he could do to keep the boat out of those jaws, for the whale
had taken the offensive, and was doing well. I had this part of the
story from George Hall, himself, after we got back to the ship.

We had been taking down an empty cask, with one of our canvas flags,
such as we used on our drugs, stuck in the bung-hole. When we got as
near as we could, we left this cask floating, and retired a little,
putting the cask between us and the whale. The light cask, as large
as a hogshead, floating high, soon drew the attention of the whale,
which left Mr. Macy, and went for it. The antics of the cask under
the repeated buttings of the whale were {340} comical. It was
nearly as light, in comparison with the strength of the whale, as a
football. When he struck it with his nose it gave out a resounding
_Ping-g!_ and leaped into the air. This exasperated him further. He
could see nothing, think of nothing, but that resounding cask. He
chased it, and butted it again. Again the loud, deep _Ping-g!_ He
butted it again and again; chased it and knocked it from side to
side, made frantic by its elastic resistance. Our whole crew went
into spasms of laughter, regardless of the fact that we had something
else to do than to laugh at the antics of a crazy whale, and that, at
any instant, he might transfer his attention to us. The loaded boat
would not act as the cask did.

We edged cautiously toward the whale, Mr. Brown keeping out of
his range of vision, and Mr. Macy creeping up on his other side.
Mr. Macy fired another bomb into him before the Prince could dart
or lance. He was prepared to do either, but at the report of Mr.
Macy’s gun, Mr. Brown told him to use our gun. The whale had given
a little convulsive shiver on receiving the bomb, but there was no
other result, although the bomb must have exploded in his in’ards
somewhere, as must the other three that Hall had sent into him. The
Prince fired twice, and Mr. Macy once more, which exhausted his stock
of bombs; but the whale did not relax his attentions to the cask,
which seemed to exert a peculiar fascination. All this time he was
butting it, and it was responding with a _Ping-g!_ and a leap into
the air.

Suddenly he caught sight of the ship, which had borne down upon us,
and was pretty near. He left the cask, headed for her, and went
under. We could do nothing but watch. After butting the ship, the
whale must have come up on the other side of her, for the men on deck
ran over to that side. A few seconds later I heard the reports of
whaling guns—they are not to be mistaken—and then more, and Mr. Brown
and Mr. Macy proceeded quietly to {341} gathering in the swimming
crews, who had been in the water about an hour. We did not take the
stove boats and their gear on that trip, but pulled at once to the
ship.

On getting to her we found the whale dead alongside, right in
position, and the men getting the fluke chain ready. He had had
eleven bombs exploded in him; but what finished him was the thorough
lancing by Captain Coffin, who had got out on the wales, held on by
the main chains, leaned out and pumped his lance up and down in his
life. The bombs must have done their work after a fashion, for before
he was lanced the whale had vomited up a great number of pieces of
cuttle fish. Among the pieces of squid were the remnants of a shark
of good size. All the fragments had not disappeared when we got there.

Poor Peter, wet as he was, and the sailmaker had to go at once into
the hold to see what damage had been done. They were down there three
hours, but could find no damage, and the ship was not leaking more
than she did before, which was but a few strokes a day, and just
enough to keep her sweet—if a whaler can be called sweet. The whale
must have struck square upon the keel, not with full force. Meanwhile
we pulled back again, got the stove boats and their gear, and pulled
to the ship. More work for Peter. But that whale tried out over
ninety barrels.

That was the last fighting whale that we met. We were very nearly
filled up, but Captain Nelson could not seem to let well enough
alone. We kept on taking whales, easily taken and of a good size,
until the ship would not have held another bucket of oil anywhere.
Even the try-pots were full, and the cooling-tank, and the spare pots
on deck, and every receptacle that he could think of. He went so far
as to get some of our water-casks on deck, empty out the water, and
fill them with oil, saying that there were plenty of places where we
could get water on the way home. He was going home by Cape Horn. I
only wonder {342} that he did not fill the copper dippers and the
tin cans with oil. No doubt he would have done so if they had held
enough to make any appreciable difference. We had over twenty-six
hundred barrels of oil on board, and twenty-four hundred was all we
were supposed to hold.

He went back to take a last look at the islands, and make more
careful observations. It did not take long, only a few hours, for
it happened that they were in sight at our last trying-out. In all
our cruising in that neighborhood we had never been far from them,
often within thirty miles or so, their barren heights in plain sight
on a fairly dear day. I never saw a figure of greater dejection and
melancholy than Captain Nelson when we came in sight of the leeward
side. There was a school of large whales, perhaps twenty-five or
thirty of them basking on the surface. They were very tame, so tame
that we nearly ran into two of them before they would move out of the
course of the ship. They seemed to know that we were a full ship,
and that we could not take any more if we wanted to. Captain Nelson
almost groaned aloud.

We bore away to the southward, intending to make Tahiti, to get more
water-casks, and a fresh supply of water. Tahiti lies about southeast
from our point of departure, but we were obliged to start to the
south to take advantage of the trades. Peter was busy in making new
boats out of the remains of the two which had been stove two or three
weeks before. He did not hurry at his work, for he was pretty tired,
as we all were. The rest of us did nothing to speak of, merely such
patching of rigging as was necessary.

{343}




CHAPTER XXXV


There was no incident until we got within sight of Tahiti. I was
leaning against the bench, watching Peter’s leisurely progress with
the boat. This boat was the one which had been cut in two by the
whale. The other one was finished, painted, and bottom up on the
after house. Captain Nelson meant to trade all his spare boats,
which had been stove, among the islands. Not that those boats were
not good and seaworthy—Peter’s workmanship could not be other than
that; but the captain seemed to think that they were more desirable
for trading purposes than for chasing whales. I did not know about
that, but there was no more chasing whales to be done on that voyage.
Whaleboats were much in demand in all the islands, and would bring
a good price in trade. So these boats, glistening in their coats of
fresh paint, were put on the after house, and covered with an old
sail to keep them from blistering in the hot sun.

Peter had been saying nothing, but pottering pleasantly about his
pleasant work, a half-smile on his leathery face. There was a
fascination for me in watching Peter, and I had said nothing either.
There is always a fascination in watching a thoroughgoing workman,
but especially a boatbuilder or a shipbuilder or a blacksmith; a
real smith, not merely a shoer of horses. It is so with me, at
least, although there is almost as much in watching a really skilful
cabinet-maker like Oman. I suppose the cabinet-maker’s work should
possess more fascination, as such a man has progressed several grades
beyond the others. Perhaps it is a little beyond me, or it may be
because of my contempt for glue. A cabinet-maker uses a deal of glue.

Peter looked up at last, and glanced ahead. When he {344} looked
down at his work again his half-smile had broadened into a grin.

“There ’s Tahiti, lad,” he said.

I nodded. “Yes, I know. There ’s nothing to see yet.”

Peter was bending over his work, and he gave a queer chuckle.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “You never can tell what you may see
until you look. You might see an old friend, Timmie. A real sailor
always knows what shows above the horizon, and sometimes what ’s
beyond, if it ain’t too far.”

This speech of Peter’s nettled me a little, for I thought I was a
real sailor by this time. I looked around carefully. It was pretty
clear, with occasional heavy clouds, and deep shadows under them.
There was one such cloud away down to the northward, and I thought
that I saw a vessel in its shadow. The clouds were moving briskly,
and as I watched, the sun suddenly shone there, and illumined the
topsail yards of a schooner and the upper half of her lower sails. It
was like a spotlight in a theatre, suddenly shoving the vessel into
plain view against the shadows which surrounded her. There was but
one such rig in all the seven seas. It was the Annie Battles. She
had left Papeete within an hour, probably, and was standing to the
northward.

I sighed. “Just our luck,” I said. “If she had only been a few hours
later!”

“Would you call it good luck, or bad, Timmie?”

“I should call it hard luck, Peter. Would n’t you?”

“Well,” he answered slowly, “she ain’t mine, and I don’t believe in
looking for trouble. I suppose Cap’n Coffin calls it hard luck. You
can see for yourself.” And he jerked his head in the direction of the
after house.

There stood Captain Coffin, a glass glued to his eye. He said
nothing, but he had no need to. Anybody could tell from his face what
his thoughts were. {345}

At Papeete we got our water, and our extra casks, although some of
them had to be lashed on deck, as the hold was full. It took several
days to get this done, for extra casks were not plentiful, and the
men could not be denied some liberty ashore. The pleasures that
Papeete offered to our shore-famished men were alluring, and it was
hard to get them back. I could understand this, for I went ashore
too. I managed to resist the allurements of the place, thanks more
to Peter than to any tendency on my own part to asceticism, and I
had a thoroughly good time. When I got back to the ship I found
that Captain Coffin had been making inquiries, and had found that
the Annie Battles, under the name of the Seafoam, had sailed on a
trading trip among the islands to the eastward, the Paumotus and the
Marquesas. He was as excited as a boy, and full of eagerness and glee.

We got our men back at last, and sailed to the northward. I was
surprised at this, for we were bound home, and for the most rapid
passage around the Horn we should have started out to the southward;
but I thought it likely that Captain Coffin had persuaded Captain
Nelson to have a last try at the Battles. If she stopped at the
islands, as she would, making frequent stops, we should be close on
her heels, and might reasonably hope to catch her. At one of the
Marquesas Islands, too, there was a well-known spring of very good
water, emptying on the beach. Whalers often touched there for water,
and it might have been in Captain Nelson’s mind to fill up his casks
there for the long run around the Horn.

The days passed, and nothing happened. Whatever eagerness I had
felt oozed away; but Captain Coffin’s did not, I judged. He was
silent, restless, tense with it, especially as we began to raise the
Paumotus, one after another. These are atolls, with the usual coral
reefs, sea-beach, and lagoon, none of them more than a few feet
above sea level. The topmasts of the Battles would be {346} easily
seen above them, unless some unusually tall coconut trees were in
the way. We did not go far into the archipelago, for it is dangerous
navigation there for a vessel as large as the Clearchus, and one no
more easily manageable. The passages are filled with hidden dangers,
and the currents swift and treacherous.

We had been searching, in a superficial way, for a week or more,
when, one morning, dawn showed us a small atoll, a few miles long.
We heard the dull boom of the surf, and with the growing light
we saw a long white beach, crowned with green vegetation. A few
stunted coco-palms showed their green tufts, and beyond the palms
the familiar topsail yards of the Battles. There was no sign of
habitation, and we found out later that this atoll was uninhabited,
and visited only occasionally by canoe parties from some other atoll,
in search of eggs, or fish, or adventure. At the time it seemed
strange to me that somebody from the crew of the Battles had not seen
us. The Clearchus must have been as familiar to them as the Battles
was to us. Then I concluded that they had not seen us because they
were close under the palms, and had had no lookout to seaward, and
perhaps had been asleep. I was right in one thing: they had been
asleep. They were not asleep now, for, as we worked around to find
the opening into the lagoon, we heard faint noises, as if they were
shouting to one another.

When we reached a point from which we could see into the lagoon, we
saw that the schooner was plainly aground; there were a number of
large canoes drawn up on the shore; and there on the beach was the
crew of the Battles, surrounded by natives, and fighting for their
lives. I heard no guns, and supposed that they must have been lured
ashore by the prospect of trade, and then attacked.

Captain Nelson did nothing immediately, but turned to Captain Coffin.
I chanced to be near them at the time.

“What do you think, Fred?” he asked. “Shall we try {347} to help
your crew there? They ’re no better than pirates, and I ’ve no doubt
the Kanakas have the right of it.” Some particularly villainous
example of thievery on the part of the Battles was probably at the
bottom of the quarrel. “But I suppose we ’ve got to.”

Captain Coffin nodded. “I want to settle their hash myself.”

I was on tiptoe with that laughing exhilaration that always came upon
me before a fight of any kind, and I found that I had been afraid
that Captain Nelson would stay out of it.

I dived below, where I gathered all the arms from the cabin; and,
the steward helping me, I got them on deck. I found three boats
down. They were Mr. Macy’s, Captain Coffin’s, and mine, in which the
captain was going in place of Mr. Brown. There was some danger to
the ship in leaving her so lightly manned, for the islanders might
take it into their heads to attack her; but he took the chance. I
had an oak wagon-spoke in addition to a spade. I had found it among
the firewood taken on at New Bedford. A wagon-spoke is an excellent
weapon, and that was not the only time I used one.

It took us some time to find the opening in the reef. There were
several false leads, and we found the break narrow when we hit upon
it. I wondered that the Battles had been able to get through.

The fighting was going on at the head of the lagoon, a little over
half a mile from the point where we entered, too far off to see
what had been happening. All we could see from that distance was a
confused mass of men, and all we heard was a confused shouting. After
we had straightened out on the course to the beach, I saw nothing but
the backs and the oars of the men before me, Captain Nelson at the
steering oar, and the other boats out of the tail of my eye. We were
a little in advance.

The shouting grew in volume as we approached the {348} shore, but
I heard no white man’s shout. They had no breath to waste. We were
perhaps an eighth of a mile from shore when Captain Nelson spoke
quietly, saying that some twenty of the islanders were swimming out
to meet us.

“Be ready with your knives and spades, boys,” he said. “Don’t let
them get hold of your oars.”

The men were not supposed to have knives—at least, not with sharp
points, but two or three of the Portuguese produced them, and took
them between their teeth; and there were two knives in each boat, and
the hatchet.

However, we pulled away from them and grounded on the beach. The
shock of it very nearly sent me on my back in the bottom of the boat.
I saw Captain Nelson covering our landing with his Spencer, and I
saw him raise it to his shoulder and fire once. Then we tumbled
out, I with my spade and my wagon-spoke. A spear whistled over my
shoulder, making a flesh wound, and I gave a roar, and rushed upon
the irregular line of islanders. As I ran, I remember vaguely that I
laughed and shouted.

I have no clear recollection of what happened, but I do know that
I had no fear of anything, I had an utter insensibility to pain,
and a fierce joy in mere fighting. My wagon-spoke was a more handy
weapon than the spade, which I used to ward off blows aimed at me,
while I wielded the wagon-spoke as a club. It was a very good club,
well-balanced and heavy, with sharp corners on the hub end. I was
pretty strong then, and could swing it to some purpose. The natives—I
do not like to call them savages—had been armed with spears of hard
wood, as dangerous as steel-pointed spears, and with a war-club of
peculiar shape, made of ironwood. Most of them had cast their spears
by this time, and fought with their clubs, much as I did.

I do not know just how many islanders there were, but there must
have been well over a hundred altogether. {349} There were eighteen
of us, and about twenty in the crew of the Battles; but many of the
Battles’ men had been killed or disabled before we got there. There
could not have been more than a half a dozen left on their feet. I
saw Mr. Wallet transfixed by a spear within six feet of me, the spear
in the hands of a gigantic islander. I cannot remember that I felt a
pang of pity when I saw Mr. Wallet go down. I do not think that I had
any feeling whatever, or that I should have had whoever it had been.

The man next to Mr. Wallet was evidently of a different calibre. He
was bleeding from many wounds, and fighting like a fiend. The man
with the spear wrenched it free from Wallet’s body, and lunged at
this man. He leaped forward, tore the spear from the other’s grasp,
and like lightning he plunged it into his body. It went clear through
and came out at the back. It could not be got out again, as there
were deep cuts upon it, making a series of saw-teeth on the edge
of the long blade, and these teeth stuck on the ribs. He left it
sticking there, looked quickly around, and caught sight of Captain
Coffin. Apparently he had not seen him before.

I found out a little later that the man was Drew, but I guessed
as much then. He stood still for a moment, and I saw the changing
expressions chase each other across his face. There was despair—for
an instant—and then a hardening, and the fierce light came back to
his eyes, and a scornful smile curled his lips, but hope was gone.
Here was Coffin. That meant that he would be carried back and hanged
if he survived this fight. He had to die, anyway, and he preferred to
die fighting; but there were two or three of us that he meant to take
with him. His first move was against Captain Coffin, who was engaged
in a hand-to-hand fight with two natives. These natives, I think,
were not much given to hand-to-hand work. They preferred to stand off
at a safe distance from their enemies and call names. In this case
they had depended upon their {350} numbers, and had been drawn into
the close work and could not get out; but they were brave, although
they preferred the method of ambush and massacre.

Up to this time I had been in a condition of exaltation with the
pure love of fighting. Man is a fighting animal. If he were not he
would never have got so far. Whether right or wrong, it seems to me
hopeless to try to crush out that instinct—but that is by the way.
The events just described had made their impression on my eye, but at
the time they made none on my brain. Now I roused from my daze, my
brain resumed its activity with a rush, and I yelled a warning.

Captain Coffin either did not hear me or did not dare to turn his
head. Drew had grabbed up a war-club lying beside a dead savage, and
was trying to get at him, but his way was not clear. I leaped for him
and yelled again. Other islanders were coming to the help of those
engaged with Captain Coffin, and he was becoming the centre of the
fighting. He was much the biggest white man there. Macy was nearly
as tall, but did not give the impression of bigness and power that
Captain Coffin did. I caught a glimpse of Mr. Macy coming up on the
other side of Captain Coffin, and remember wondering what had become
of the Prince. It was the kind of a fight that I had imagined he
would love. At the risk of my life I glanced about, and saw him just
behind me, as if he was following to see that no harm came to me.
There was the gleam of battle in his eye, his face was set, his lips
drawn back in a tiger-snarl, showing his white teeth. They shone in
his ebony face like a light at sea on a dark night.

Captain Coffin might have heard my warning yells, but he gave no
sign. It would have been death for him to look back. Drew was slowly
making his way toward him, striking at the natives who got in his
way. A big native disputed the way, and I got almost within reach.
The islander gave before Drew’s ferocious assault. Drew let {351}
him go, and pressed on toward Captain Coffin. I leaped again, and
got within reach as he was in the act of bringing his club down on
Captain Coffin’s head. I struck with all my might, and the blow went
true. Drew’s wrist was broken, his head was laid open in a long
line, and he tottered. At that instant I heard the dull report of a
Spencer. Drew’s body whirled about, and crumpled in a heap. Captain
Nelson had done it, and the bullet had gone through Drew’s body,
striking down one of the natives.

Relieved of the anxiety of the moment, I dropped my hands, and
drew a long breath. That was no time for dropping my hands, and I
was brought quickly back to the present by the prick of a spear. I
squirmed away, and looked up to see a club descending. There was
no time to use my club, or to raise my spade, which hung in my
left hand. There was a rush beside me, and the Prince, apparently
empty-handed, launched himself at my assailant. My head was saved,
and both went down, just out of my reach. The Prince had broken his
lance, but had saved the blade, which he plunged into the throat of
the islander. At the same instant an ironwood war-club crashed down
on his head.

At that sight my fury returned. I have no knowledge of what followed
in the next half-hour. I knew that not one of the Battles’ crew was
left on his feet, and I knew dimly that Kane was on one side of
me, fighting with a wild joy, and that on the other Mr. Macy was
fighting with equal fury. I have no doubt that he saved my life many
times, for I knew no caution, and my only thought was to avenge the
Prince. Mr. Macy’s fury was of the cold kind—a cool head and a hot
heart—which does so much more damage than a mere blind rage like
mine. At last I realized that the islanders were trying to get at our
boats.

There were five or six times as many of them as of us, but Captain
Nelson managed to keep his force between {352} them and our boats.
None of his men was killed except the Prince, but nearly all were
wounded more or less seriously, and all were weary. I know that, at
last, with returning sanity, I found myself hardly able to lift my
club, and utterly unable to strike again with my reddened spade. We
were being forced back to the boats. It looked like a day for the
islanders, and if they would have let us we would have withdrawn. I
heard nothing but a tumult of sound, and I could not see well.

Suddenly there was a great shout from behind the natives, and I saw
a considerable body of men break through the sparse vegetation which
crowned the beach. It happened before my eyes; a crowd of men—white
men, twenty-five or thirty of them—armed with lances, spades, and
knives, issuing from that tangle to seaward, and rushing down on the
rear of the islanders. They, poor chaps, gave one glance, then broke
and ran. Some of them ran to their canoes, others ran directly into
the water, and swam away, full tilt. The canoes followed, and we let
them go.

I knew we ought to put after them and see that they did no harm to
the ship, but I could not have pulled a pound. Neither could most of
the others. I could only stand there, my hands hanging limp at my
sides, and gaze after the canoes. I watched them out of sight through
the passage to the sea. I was dimly conscious of a young chap who
walked around me, looking me over, but I paid him no attention. At
last he stood still before me, grinning. He poked me in the ribs. I
squirmed, for my ribs were sore.

“Hello, Tim,” he said.

I looked at him then; looked at him long and hard, while he stood and
grinned. It was Jimmy Appleby.

{353}




CHAPTER XXXVI


Of that meeting with Jimmy Appleby the less said the better. I
believe that, in my wearied and weakened state, I broke down and
cried, but I have no clear recollection. The first thing that I
remember clearly is being well down the lagoon, a passenger in my own
boat. Our new shipmates were doing the pulling, although those of the
regular crew who were able sat on the thwarts beside the fresh men,
and bent their backs with them. Two of our men, severely wounded, lay
on the bottom of the boat, half under the thwarts, and there, too,
was the body of the Prince, covered with the sail. Captain Nelson
stood at the steering oar, his face grave and set, looking out ahead.
I crawled up to my place on the midship thwart beside a stranger, and
got my hands on my oar; and the stranger turned his head and gave me
a smile.

We got safely out of the lagoon to sea, and on board the ship. The
canoes were far down to leeward. They had given the ship a wide
berth, but might come back again, after we had gone, to pick up their
dead. I did not know what customs they practised in that respect. I
know I was surprised to find that it was not yet noon. It seemed to
me that almost a lifetime had passed since we had left the ship that
morning. The wounded were cared for at once. Then the body of the
Prince was passed up, and laid on the hatch cover. I drew near to it,
and found Peter beside me. I had forgotten Jimmy Appleby.

Peter said nothing, but he laid his arm across my shoulders, and we
saw the sailmaker come with a piece of old canvas, and his palm, and
stitch the Prince up carefully, a few links of old chain cable at his
feet. I saw the crew gathering with bared heads, and Captain Nelson
standing {354} with a little book, but I did not hear what he read.
The man in that long white bundle—it shone dazzlingly in the hot
sunshine—would not have been there except for me. I hid my face in my
arm against the rigging, hot tears burned my eyes, and my shoulders
shook; there was a gentle noise of canvas slipping on wood, a splash,
and I raised my head to see Captain Nelson clapping his book shut,
and the men as they turned away.

Peter patted my shoulder. “Don’t ye grieve, lad,” he said. “He ’d
have liked this way of it better. He was a good shipmate, if his skin
was black. Come now, you ’re wanted. A bite of dinner ’ll do you a
world of good.”

At that I am afraid I laughed. It was hysterical, but I was quieted
somewhat, and I went below.

I had not yet had a chance to hear Jimmy’s story. It had to wait
still longer, for the boats were sent ashore again in the afternoon,
with all the new men, and some of ours. They buried the men of the
Battles as well as they could. It was almost impossible to dig in
that beach, for it was all coral below the very surface. Then they
carried their boats across from the ocean side to the lagoon, not
more than three or four hundred feet, but the low summit thickly
grown up with coconut-palms and low bushes and vines. It must have
reminded Captain Coffin of the “haulover” at Nantucket, except for
the growth. The “haulover” is nothing but bare sand, and I believe
the sea had not broken through at that time. These boats which I
speak of were those in which our new friends had come. I should not
speak of them as our new friends, for many of them were old friends.

Captain Coffin, with a boat’s crew, stayed on the Battles that
night, looking her over. Jimmy did not, and I got his story. He was
bursting with it. His ship was the John and Alice. After I left New
Bedford his desire for the same sort of life, always strong, had
become intense. He gave his parents no peace for nearly two years,
finally {355} threatening to run away if they would not let him go.
They gave in at that, and in the summer of 1874 he shipped before
the mast on the John and Alice. They had been out just about a year,
had cruised off the River Plate, doubled the Horn, and covered the
On Shore and Off Shore grounds. They were making their leisurely way
toward Japan when the John and Alice was sunk by a whale in 145° W.,
7° S., carrying their five hundred barrels of oil down with her.
The crew took to the boats. There had been time to stow plenty of
provisions and water in the boats, and they were making for Tahiti,
which they would have reached safely, without doubt. But they sighted
some of these low-lying islands, and went in among them. They had
been sailing through the passages of the archipelago for two days.
At daylight on that morning they saw the topmasts of the Clearchus
showing dimly in the distance, and the topmasts of the Battles and
the coco-palms soon rose. They were making for the ship, passing just
outside the line of surf which fringed the island, when they heard
our tumult, and landed the best way they could. They managed it,
but lost one of their boats in the surf, capsized and pretty badly
stove. The surf had not been heavy, or they would have lost more, and
possibly some men. Captain Nelson had the stove boat brought aboard
for Peter’s surgery.

Of course Jimmy’s narrative was not so briefly told as I have given
it. He was discursive and conversational, and given to embellishment.
I kept him up until late that night, telling me all he knew of
my mother, my father, my brothers, Tom and Josh; and I asked him
about all my friends, ending up with Ann McKim. About Ann he was
enthusiastic, speaking of her in the slang of the day. I forget what
expression he used, but it corresponded to “perfect peach.” I could
well believe it.

Captain Coffin had found the Annie Battles pretty firmly aground, and
the coral had punched a hole in her. {356} It was not a hopeless
hole, although enough to justify any master in abandoning his vessel.
Captain Coffin was not that kind. All the stuff was taken out of her,
and spread on the beach. Then she was hastily patched on the inside,
and pumped out. That was very nearly enough to float her, but not
quite, for the rise of the tide at this point is small. Still there
was that little peak of hard, sharp coral, which they were afraid
would tear out more of her planking when eight boats were fast, with
forty oars pulling at her. Our Kanakas had to go down and cut away
the coral. Then she was beached, and hove down by our cutting-tackles
from her mastheads to coconut-trunks. Her cutting-tackles had
disappeared—probably thrown overboard.

We all helped in this work, and I found that I had more bruises and
unimportant wounds than I had believed possible; but the condition
was common to all who had been in the fight, and I was interested in
the work, which was familiar. We simply had to dispose of the corpses
within a couple of days of beginning the work. That was an unpleasant
job. We took them far down to leeward, and buried them hastily in a
cavern we found in the coral, but that did not entirely get rid of
the stench at the beach. It was probably from the bodies of the white
men buried there—in very shallow graves.

It took two weeks to get the Battles beached and repaired. Then we
got her afloat again, the topmasts and yards sent up, sails bent and
everything shipshape. With all her cargo—mostly trading stuff—piled
on deck, we towed her out through the pass in the reef, and she
was at sea again, where she belonged. She tied up alongside the
Clearchus, and there began a wholesale transfer of cargo.

The Battles first stowed eight hundred barrels of our oil, greatly
relieving us. Most of her cargo of trading stuff had been taken
on the Clearchus, indicating that we were likely to stop at the
Marquesas, and possibly at {357} some other islands. I was gratified
at that, for I wanted to see the Marquesas. The division of water and
provisions was unequal, the Battles being given enough to carry her
home, while the Clearchus would be obliged to fill her water-casks,
at least. At last she was ready to go. She cast off, for the sea,
which had been unusually quiet all through the transfer, began to
roughen. She did not go far, however, but lay hove to, not far from
us. Captain Coffin was in the cabin with Captain Nelson, and I was
sent for.

I had watched the transfer of cargo and the selection of a crew
for the Battles, with a mind at ease. I had taken it for granted
that she would take the new men, and most of their boats. Jimmy was
going, I knew, and I accepted the fact with small regret, for I found
that a separation of three years had severed many of the ties which
had bound us together. I went into the cabin with no small wonder
what they could want of me; probably nothing more than the same old
bluish-white pitcher, with something hot in it.

That was not what they wanted. I was hardly in the cabin when Captain
Coffin asked me whether I wanted to go with him. He added that he was
going aboard the Battles within a few minutes, and if I wished, he
would take me along. I was too dumbfounded to answer immediately, and
Captain Nelson, taking my answer for granted, sent me out again at
once, saying that I had only time to get my things together, and to
hurry, at that. So I found myself outside the cabin door, stumbling
up the stairs, without having uttered a word. I hurried and got my
belongings into my chest, carried the chest out, and went to bid a
hasty good-bye to Peter, without having come to a decision. There was
a certain reluctance in my actions. I wanted more time; yes, more
time, at least. But still I went. I said half a dozen words to Peter,
and half a dozen words to Mr. Brown, whom I met on my way aft.

If I had known the truth—and been willing to tell it, {358} which
is quite a different matter—and if it had been a question merely
of choosing between Mr. Brown and Jimmy, I should have chosen Mr.
Brown. Of course I was glad to see Jimmy, but he was only a boy, with
a boy’s interest in things, and that did not satisfy me, possibly
because I had been so long without companions of my own age. Mr.
Brown seemed much more of a real companion, with interests which had
come to be my own. I never saw him again.

It is a curious thing how people go out of your life. Here was Mr.
Brown, who, alone of the officers, had admitted me to intimacy. I
had become very fond of him; and he dropped out as suddenly and as
completely as if he had fallen overboard. I do not like it. It is not
right, I cannot reconcile myself to it, and I have never been able to
understand it. For years I kept expecting to see him, but it is not
likely now, for he would be nearly eighty, and probably he is dead
long ago. He left the ship at once upon her arrival in New Bedford,
and vanished. Why? I wish I knew. I found, upon inquiry, that his
share of the voyage—his lay—was sent to an address in New York. I
wrote, but nothing was known of him, and that ended the chapter.

Peter I did see again. He became a frequent and welcome visitor at my
father’s house, and later at my own. Ann McKim liked him, and she,
my father, my mother, and Peter spent many an evening in going over
the events of the voyage, a chart spread out, and all four heads bent
over it. I sat back in the shadows and watched them. But I am getting
ahead of my story. There is not much more to tell, so have a little
patience, and it will be over.

I was still in a sort of daze when I got aboard of the Battles, and
she began to drop the Clearchus. I watched the old ship, with all
sail set, sink below the horizon. When I could no longer make out
even her topgallant yards, I turned, and went slowly below. I was
to bunk in the cabin, I found, as Assistant Navigator, a totally
{359} unnecessary berth. Captain Coffin had two of the mates of the
John and Alice, both good navigators, and he was a good navigator,
of course; but there was room in the cabin for four, and he, in the
kindness of his heart, gave the fourth berth to me. Before we got
home I was made third mate, which was simply ridiculous. Probably
Captain Coffin wished to make it easy for me to get a third mate’s
berth on another voyage, which was kind and thoughtful. The Annie
Battles was much overmanned, with a total of twenty-eight men,
leaving forty-two on the Clearchus. With so many men there was not
much for any one to do, although we managed to keep the men busy
enough.

The run home was without incident worthy of remark. We reached Cape
Horn in January, the middle of the southern summer, and had no great
difficulty and no more bad weather than is always met there. In the
cabin, as I was, although not yet a mate, I could not chum with
Jimmy, who was before the mast, and I found it rather a lonesome
berth. There was nothing for me to do but attend to my duties, which
were light, and watch the schooner sail. She was a very fast and easy
vessel, and very wet in a sea; but she was not in the same class as
the Virginia, Marshall, master. If I had not had that experience I
should have enjoyed the Battles more. But I missed the discipline,
the trimness, the everlasting rightness of the Virginia. Having seen
that, nothing less would ever satisfy me completely.

It was when we crossed the line that I was made third mate. Not
long after, in the latitude of about 15° N., we ran into a gale,
which started the seams of the patch on the bottom. No doubt Cape
Horn weather had something to do with it, but we had had no proper
planking to mend it with, and it was rather weak. That started a
leak which increased from day to day. With our extra men, Captain
Coffin hoped that we could pump her home; but by the time we were
off Hatteras it had increased so much that {360} the men were kept
steadily at the pumps, and we put into Norfolk.

I left the Battles at Norfolk. I was anxious to get home, and could
not even wait for the boat, which would have been cheaper. I went by
train, and got in at the old wooden station on Pearl Street—“deepo’ ”
we called it, early Egyptian architecture—with less than a dollar in
my pocket. It was only a few blocks from my home, however, and what
use had I for money? I ran all the way.

As I turned the last corner, I stopped with a gasp. I had barely
escaped running into a girl—and such a girl! I knew her at once,
although she had blossomed since I went away, and she was wearing no
ostrich plume in her hat. Jimmy had not exaggerated.

She had stopped, too. She had to, for I brought to directly in front
of her.

“Oh,” she said, with a little smile, “I beg your pardon.”

“Ann!” I said breathlessly. “Ann McKim, don’t you know me?”

I put out my hand, and her hand came slowly forward to meet it, while
she looked up at me doubtfully. I watched the changing expression of
her eyes. Recognition came into them suddenly, and she clasped my
hand warmly.

“Goody gracious!” she cried. “It ’s Tim, I do believe! It ’s not
strange that I did n’t know you! How you ’ve grown and broadened! I
might have taken you for your father. You ’re as big as he is.”

“Am I?” I grinned, holding to her hand as if it were my mooring. “Am
I, Ann?”

“And you ’re the color of new copper,” she added. “Have you been home
yet?”

I shook my head. “I was just going there when I nearly ran you down.”

“Well, go along, Timmie, for mercy’s sake, and let your mother get a
sight of you.” She freed her hand {361} gently, and gave me a little
push. “Do they expect you?”

“No, I came by train. It ’ll be a surprise.”

“Why did n’t you let them know?”

“Did n’t think of it. We—but I ’ll tell you all about it—”

“To-night. I ’ll come in pretty late—nearly nine o’clock. Good-bye.”

She was gone around the corner before I could say a word. I gaped at
the corner, then ran on again. Our house was only a little way up the
street. Nobody locked their doors in those days, and dashing up the
steps without stopping, I threw open the front door. I stood for a
moment, with my hand on the doorknob, listening for a sound to let
me know where anybody was. How often I had done just that! My mother
might be in the kitchen, or upstairs in her room, sewing. I heard
nothing but a faint humming.

“Mother!” I called.

The humming continued. “Who ’s that?” my mother answered, as if she
was busy. “Tom or Josh? I never can tell you apart by your voices.
What are you home for now? Is anything the matter?”

I snickered nervously. “It ’s me, mother. It ’s Tim.”

The humming stopped suddenly. “What! It ’s who?”

I snickered again. I knew so well just how she looked, stopping her
sewing, her foot on the treadle, and her head up, listening.

“It ’s Tim. I ’m coming up.”

There was a shriek, and the sound of a chair falling. I bounded up
the stairs, and met her. At sight of me she stopped for an instant.

“Mercy!” she cried. “Is that my little Tim?”

Then her arms were around me, and she was laughing and crying on my
shoulder.


THE END




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

Original spelling and grammar have been generally retained, with
some exceptions noted below. Original printed page numbers are shown
like this {52} in the text edition, and are hidden in the html,
epub, and mobi editions. Original small caps are now uppercase.
Italics look _like this_. Illustrations have been moved from within
paragraphs to nearby locations between paragraphs. The transcriber
produced the cover image and hereby assigns it to the public domain.
Original page images are available from archive.org—search for
“sheblowssparmatt00hopk”.


Page 103. A full stop was added after _beat out and disgusted_.

Page 123. A full stop was added after _faster than the Clearchus_.

Page 214. Changed _Reunion_ to _Réunion_.

Page 250. Changed _and we quartered the gounds_ to _and we quartered
the grounds_.

Page 310. Changed _lasily_ to _lazily_.

Page 360. Changed ‘“deepo  ” we called it’ to ‘“deepo’ ” we called it’.










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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Southern Derringers of the Mississippi
Valley, by Turner Kirkland

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
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this ebook.



Title: Southern Derringers of the Mississippi Valley

Author: Turner Kirkland

Release Date: October 6, 2018 [EBook #58040]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTHERN DERRINGERS ***




Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









                          Southern Derringers
                                 OF THE
                           MISSISSIPPI VALLEY


                                   By
                            TURNER KIRKLAND
                      Union City, Tennessee 38261


                   {cover image} F. H. Clark See #217




                                FOREWORD


This booklet is not intended to be the last word on Southern Derringers.
I suspect that it is merely intended to be a guide for someone who has
more patience than I to do the research work that is required on a
complete story.

I am listing 29 different makers all of which are authenticated. This
story does not include pocket pistols, which are of a slightly different
shape nor does it include overcoat pistols or duelling pistols. I think
these are of an entirely different category even if these same makers
produced them.

You may debate the excluding of the following:

  G. Erichson, Houston
  E. Schmidt, Houston
  Schmidt & Kosse, Houston
  H. Trotter, Cameron, Texas
  Joseph Labadie, Galveston
  J. H. Happoldt, Charleston, South Carolina
  M. Dickson, Louisville
  Hodgkins & Son, Macon, Georgia
  Wolff and Durringer, Louisville, Kentucky

Because I live in the Mississippi Valley, the guns that I am describing
are of special interest to me and the others that can be called southern
guns do not fit into my scheme of things.

Thus I have narrowed down geographically this story of the derringers of
the Mississippi Valley to an exclusive group. It is sad that so little
research work has been done in this direction in the past. Careful study
of other books shows that only six or eight of these twenty-nine names
and authenticated guns are spoken of in limited terms.

Since I got my first muzzleloading gun when I was 12 years old, I guess
you could say I have been collecting guns for 38 years. In that length
of time I have met many wonderful people and made numerous everlasting
friends. Among these people are Hume Parks, Hal Swann, Cecil Godman, Dr.
Bill Huckaba, Dr. D. R. Moore, Leon Jackson, Robin Hale, Harry G. King
and Charles Elias all of which ably assisted me with this booklet and
without those efforts, it would not have been possible.

    [Illustration: {Trophy Shelf}]

During the 20 months in 1969 and 1970 that we have been displaying our
derringers at gun shows we have won 25 awards. Our derringers have been
displayed from the East Coast to the West Coast and from the North to
the South. Great acclaim was given them at the National Rifle
Association Convention. Considering the point that awards are won not
only on quality or quantity but on the educational value, we believe
that our display is one of the best. Now that the ice has been broken
towards listing and showing all of the different southern makers, let us
hope that our collector friends will come up with more information and
more details of when these little known gunsmiths and dealers operated
and perhaps new makers that are not now recognized or known.

This chart shows the relative rarity of Southern derringers in the
opinion of several knowledgeable collectors. Position #1 is the easiest
to obtain and position #10 is the hardest to find. The text of this book
takes up each maker in this same order.

    1.  Hyde & Goodrich                    1
    2.  F. H. Clark                        2
    3.  Schneider                          3
    4.  F. Glassick                        3
    5.  C. Suter                           5
    6.  H. E. Dimick                       5
    7.  F. J. Bitterlick                   5
    8.  Lullman & Vienna                   6
    9.  Bitterlick & Legler                7
   10.  S. O’Dell                          7
   11.  Schneider & Glassick               8
   12.  W. H. Calhoun                      8
   13.  L. Swett                           9
   14.  J. A. Schafer                      9
   15.  J. R. Trumpler                     9
   16.  J. B. Gilmore                      9
   17.  Linde                             10
   18.  Folsom                            10
   19.  A. Weisgerber                     10
   20.  J. Mirriman                       10
   21.  Louis Hoffman                     10
   22.  J. Conning                        10
   23.  A. R. Mendenhall                  10
   24.  J. Hausmann                       10
   25.  A. J. Millspaugh                  10
   26.  Holyoake-Lownes                   10
   27.  F. S. Schumann                    10
   28.  E. R. Sieber                      10
   29.  H. G. Newcomb                     10




             SOUTHERN DERRINGERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY


Henry Deringer of the famed Philadelphia company believed that the
greatest part of his trade was in the southern states. It was only
proper that many independent makers of derringer type guns would spring
up throughout the area where they were so popular. The line from St.
Louis to New Orleans was the starting point for the westward trade and
many of these guns were carried as a hideout weapon to California during
the most popular period from 1845 through 1870. A casual study shows
great differences between the southern made derringers and those of
Philadelphia, each of which has its own peculiar and particular
characteristics.

In the court case of Henry Deringer vs. Plate, Deringer states that he
started producing his celebrated small gun in 1825. A careful study of
the southern manufactured derringers shows that all of them started
around 1855 or later with some of them continuing production until the
1870s.

There are two kinds of Southern Derringers; those that are made by Henry
Deringer with agent markings and those that are manufactured in the
South.

Henry Deringer pistols bearing agents names and marked with the legend
“MAN^d for” appear to date from the earlier period of his manufacture.

Later pistols omit this stamping and read, for example:

                   WOLF & DURRINGER LOUISE KY AGENTS
                    LULLMAN & VIENNA MEMPHIS, TENN.

Please note that the Calhoun, Hyde & Goodrich, J. B. Gilmore, Lullman &
Vienna and the two F. H. Clarks are marked with the earlier marking,
while the Swett, the one F. H. Clark and the two Lullman & Vienna’s are
marked with the later type of stamping. These are the only guns in my
collection that are genuine Henry Deringers.

Of those southern made derringers that are manufactured in that area,
only a few have the escutcheon plate underneath the forearm with a screw
through the plate holding the barrel. Most of this type did not use a
wedge but one did use a wedge and this screw. Many used a screw through
the trigger plate to the barrel.

A few of the southern made derringers had flat butts particularly those
of Nashville and Memphis.

About half of the southern manufactured guns had octagon barrels and the
other half had those of the Henry Derringer style with a round barrel
and a rib on top.

Never before have I observed a gun photograph using a mirror to show the
underside of a forearm and the guard. Although this innovation is about
1½ inches out of focus, because of the extra light travel, it does show
these features that are otherwise hidden and that are very important in
identification. All of this photography, and for our catalog, is done
with an ancient Polaroid with portrait lenses.

In 1957 I obtained my first specimen of a southern made derringer from
Nathan Swayze, author of “51 Colt Navies”, at the Jackson Mississippi
Gun Show. This was a Glassick Derringer as was my second gun obtained
later that year at another Jackson Mississippi Gun Show.

About one year later from Horace Tolliver of Manchester, Tennessee I
traded for two more derringers, one a Glassick and the other a Schneider
& Glassick.

By 1961 I had six or eight different guns and I cannot now remember in
what order they arrived and who I obtained them from. About 1962 I
stopped buying Yankee. Deringers and still have thirty odd such pieces.
They were too easy to get.

By this time I began to hear rumors of other makers that were not listed
in any of the gun books and I drifted along for a few years until about
1965 or 1966 gathering together perhaps a total of fifteen or eighteen
of the guns.

My appetite was whetted in 1963 when Theodore Dexter, a prominent gun
dealer of that time, offered for sale a pair of Louis Hoffman,
Vicksburg, Mississippi derringers in awfully nice condition. So, another
pair had turned up that I had never heard of nor had anyone ever seen
before. One of these guns is now in Mississippi near Vicksburg and the
other is in a prominent collection in California and someday I would
like to get these two back together and perhaps in my possession. All of
this information made me real warm towards expanding the collection of
Southern Derringers especially after I saw an O’Dell, a Linde and a
Merriman. Slowing somewhat in my collection of military long guns before
1890, my collection of Kentucky Rifles, Colt Pistols, Confederate
Revolvers, Confederate Veterans Reunion Badges and certain other items,
I began to concentrate more on the Southern Derringers until today I
have over fifty of these guns.

Five guns exist that I do not have. They are A. J. Millspaugh,
Shreveport, H. G. Newcomb, Natchez, J. A. Schaffer, Vicksburg, Louis
Hoffman, Vicksburg and Holyoake-Lownes & Co. One other, F. Schumann is
authenticated by newspaper accounts of that period as having made
derringers but not a single specimen has ever turned up according to my
collector friends. Of great importance though is a derringer barrel,
octagon in shape, marked “F. Schumann, Memphis, Tennessee” that has
never been assembled or made into a gun. This specimen is in Dixie’s
collection and was found 30 years ago in an old Memphis gun repair
store.

By no means have I completed my collection. I do look forward to years
of hunting for additional pieces, adding more information to my papers
and if enough of you good readers are interested in this book so that I
can dispose of the first 1000 copies, I will look forward to the time
when it can be reprinted with additional information.


HYDE & GOODRICH

#2 The vast majority of Hyde and Goodrich deringers are usually of a
bulky undesirable style that I do not like. This one follows that
example. Caliber is .410. Has German silver furniture and with ramrod.
The barrel markings on #2, #255, and #284 use the same single stamp.

The barrel is marked in three lines as follows:

                               Man^d for
                           Hyde and Goodrich
                             Agents, N. O.

In a City Directory of 1853 this company was listed as dealers in “guns,
pistols and military goods.” They imported a number of arms just prior
to the war, marked “Hyde & Goodrich, Agents for the United States
South.”

In 1861 the firm was changed into Thomas, Griswold & Company, both
Thomas and Griswold having been former employees of Hyde & Goodrich.

One of the principles of Hyde & Goodrich; A. L. Hyde, withdrew from the
firm on August 23, 1861.


HYDE & GOODRICH

#255 Another Hyde and Goodrich except this one has gold bands at the
breech and sterling silver furniture which makes it somewhat more
desirable. This is one of the fattest and bulkiest Henry Deringer that I
have ever seen. Made without ramrod. Cap box in butt. .380 caliber.

Marked in three lines with one die stamp on the barrel as follows:

                               Man^d for
                           Hyde and Goodrich
                             Agents, N. O.


HYDE & GOODRICH

#284 This is an extremely fine Hyde and Goodrich with 100% original
browning on the barrel and 95% of the original varnish. It has the
excellent quality classic style in the stock contour. Double gold banded
breech. Furniture is German silver. Made with ramrod and capbox in butt.
Muzzle of the barrel is fluted. Caliber is .420.

Remember that all Hyde and Goodrich deringers are genuine Henry Deringer
guns and are not manufactured by Hyde and Goodrich. These four guns and
all that I have ever seen have the pineapple finial on the trigger
guard. Be sure that you note the different kinds of Henry Deringer
barrel markings when the agent’s names is used. For instance, in the
case of Hyde and Goodrich Henry Deringer guns that are in my collection,
there are two different types of barrel stampings.

Marked with one stamp on the barrel only:

                               Man^d for
                           Hyde and Goodrich
                             Agents, N. O.


HYDE & GOODRICH

#3 Still the same is this Hyde and Goodrich gun that is bulky and I do
not think pretty. Made with ramrod and German silver mountings. Caliber
is .390.

Contrary to the other guns, this one is marked with four different hand
stamps as follows:

                               Man^d for
                           Hyde and Goodrich
                           Agents, N. Orleans


HYDE & GOODRICH

This is a fake Hyde & Goodrich, it being a Belgian produced derringer in
what is apparently an original case with accessories. The barrel is
Belgian proofed underneath.

The point in showing this fake gun in this book is that somewhere on the
West Coast someone is running around stamping odd derringers with the
name Hyde & Goodrich as follows in three lines.

                               Man^d for
                           Hyde and Goodrich
                             Agents, N. O.

When the fellow at the Las Vegas Show walked up to my table and showed
me the gun my eyes popped out that here was a cased Hyde & Goodrich and
I did not stop to analyze it. From the contour of the gun and the French
type casing, I should have realized that it was not an American gun. It
was reasonably priced and I shelled out the money within about thirty
seconds after looking at the gun.

Then that night up in the hotel room I got to looking at the gun and
remembered that I had seen the same gun at the Disneyland Show six
months before and it was not marked at that time. Then I examined the
barrel stampings closer and realized that they were new stampings. Upon
my arrival home I compared this stamping with other guns in our
collection and found that this was a good facsimile but the spacing of
the letters was not the same as on the original. And then, there were
other minute differences in the letters that showed it was new.

As in most of these cases, the fellow I bought it from refused to refund
my money and I got stuck with it.

But it is a good lesson to not buy anything too quick or that is rare or
at a high price unless you study it out first to be sure it is not faked
or altered.


F. H. CLARK

#251 This derringer is one of a matched pair manufactured by Henry
Deringer of Philadelphia. The furniture is German silver and the stock
is made without ramrod. Two silver bands at the breech of the barrel add
to their value. This pair is in exceptionally fine condition retaining
nearly all of the varnish and the original smooth brown finish of the
barrels. A desirable small style of an ideal shape. Has pineapple
trigger guard finial. Silver tear shaped inlay at butt. Caliber is .38.

Marked on the top barrel flat in four lines with one hand stamp as
follows:

                               Man^d for
                           F. H. Clark & Co.
                             Memphis, Tenn.
                                 Agents


F. H. CLARK

#276 A very fine F. H. Clark genuine Henry Derringer pistol with two
silver bands at the breech. Typical trigger guard has pineapple finial.
Made without ramrod. This is a desirable small size gun. .43 caliber.

Marked on the barrel in four lines as follows:

                               Man^d for
                           F. H. Clark & Co.
                             Memphis, Tenn.
                                 Agents


F. H. CLARK

#273 Same description as #276 with the exception that this stock is a
little smaller and the grip is slightly different in shape. In general,
a more slender gun. A high quality gun with double silver banded breech
and the same marking on the barrel. Made without ramrod and with a tear
drop for a butt cap. German silver mounted. Caliber is .410.

Apparently one hand stamp was used to mark the four lines on the barrel
as follows:

                               Man^d for
                           F. H. Clark & Co.
                             Memphis, Tenn.
                                 Agents


F. H. CLARK

#229 Now, this gun is a little bit different from a genuine Henry
Deringer in that this one was produced by the F. H. Clark Company in
Memphis. Notice the extra stubby bird head grip. German silver mounted
throughout even to the ramrod thimble. Notice that there is no screw
holding the barrel to the forearm and is held in place with the wedge
only. Very coarse checkering. The caliber is .420.

Marked on the breechblock on the top barrel flat:

                           F. H. Clark & Co.
                                Memphis


F. H. CLARK

#236 Another original F. H. Clark gun but this one has bag grips, steel
trigger guard, and steel thimble with a silver nosecap. Notice that this
one has a screw in the trigger guard finial holding the barrel to the
forearm plus the wedge through the forearm. Made with ramrod and has a
tear drop butt cap. The stock has been broken at the rear of the barrel
and an ancient steel inlay has been placed in the wood each side of the
stock above the triggerguard. Caliber is .430.

Marked on the breechplug in the top flat position:

                           F. H. Clark & Co.
                                Memphis


F. H. CLARK

#280 A fine matched pair of Clark manufactured derringers that I
obtained in 1970 from a gun auction in England. How they got to England,
I don’t know. With them was the original case with all the compartments
broken and loose. The case has been sent to an expert to have it
restored.

Notice that it is a bag grip type of gun. No screw in the trigger guard
finial holding to the barrel. The trigger guard and thimble are steel
and the balance of the inlays are German silver. These are apparently
the original ramrods. A matched pair of guns are very, very rare; and
these two are in very nice condition. Caliber is .440.

Marked on the breechblock at the top barrel flat position as follows:

                           F. H. Clark & Co.
                                Memphis


F. H. CLARK

#217 This is as fine a pair of matched derringers by Clark as money can
buy anywhere. Beautifully browned barrels with 100% of the fine French
varnish on the wood remaining. Has steel trigger guard and thimble, but
does not have a screw in the trigger guard finial holding to the barrel.
A rather large sized derringer. Bag grips have silver tear drop butt
escutcheon.

There is an interesting story about this matched pair of guns and how
they were found. About four years ago a friend from England wrote that
he had these guns in his possession and he had gotten them from a
collection in Norway. How they got to Norway, only Heaven knows. Anyway,
they were so high priced that I passed them up. A friend of mine, Cecil
Godwin, did get the guns and two years later I wanted them so badly that
I paid him a handsome profit so that I could add them to my collection.
They are even so fine that they have the original ramrods intact.
Caliber is .420.

The breechplug of the barrel on the top flat is marked in two lines with
the metal still puffed up around the letters because it is so new and
without any wear. They are marked in two lines as follows:

                           F. H. Clark & Co.
                                Memphis


F. H. CLARK

#268 A Memphis manufactured gun by F. H. Clark with steel trigger guard
and thimble. All other inlays are of German silver. Made without screw
in forearm or trigger guard that goes direct to barrel. Any derringer
such as this one with a barrel 4¾” long is considered to be a large
size. Notice that this gun has bag grips and not bird head style.
Caliber is .430.

Marked on the breechblock at the top barrel flat position as follows:

                           F. H. Clark & Co.
                                Memphis


WILLIAM S. SCHNEIDER

#248 A Schneider and Company derringer that is a medium size for this
brand of gun. Barrel is full octagon. Trigger guard and tear drop
buttcap are made of sterling silver and other inlays are of German
silver. Made without ramrod. The stock forearm at the nose is fluted.
Trigger guard finial has a screw going through to the barrel to hold the
gun together, along with the wedge helping to hold the forearm to the
barrel. Most of the Schneider guns have a definite pronounced curve
shape to the lock. Notice how low the hammer is. The lockplate is very
plain with a simple lined border. The caliber of this specimen is .450.

The serial number of this gun is #122, the highest known. Of all the
Southern made derringers, this is the only maker that serial numbered
his guns. Of course this is an assumption that the number on top of the
breechblock is the serial number, but all that we have ever seen had a
similar number in this position. Assuming that the Schneider Company
manufactured one hundred and twenty-two pieces, and that possibly thirty
of these guns are in existence, this means that the survival rate is one
out of four. Bearing in mind that this survival rate is only an
assumption, consider how few guns some of the lesser known makers must
have produced. At this rate, for instance, Siebert should not have
produced many over six or eight guns.

I have known of this gun’s existence for nearly thirty years. In 1943
when I was taking the train from Union City to Chattanooga, I happened
to sit down by a Mr. Fain Taylor from Greenfield, twenty miles away. We
got to talking and found out that we were both interested in guns, and
he told me that he had this gun. Then after the War was over, I went by
to visit him and see his collection. Of course, this gun was not for
sale. At that time and during the years gone by in the 1930’s he used
this little pistol as a training gun for his bird dogs out in the field.

The years went by and I would see him ever so often and ask him about
his gun. Finally, in 1967 he appeared at the store one day and said,
“Well, I’m going to let you have my gun. You like these Southern
derringers so well that I think the best place for this gun to be is in
your collection.” With that, I paid him the going rate for this type of
gun and of course I don’t think that I will ever dispose of it in my
lifetime.

The barrel is marked on the top flat in two lines with one stamp as
follows:

                            Schneider & Co.
                             Memphis, Tenn.

Schneider was a gunsmith in the 1850’s and later a member of the
revolver making firm of Schneider and Glassick.


SCHNEIDER & COMPANY

#283 All Schneider derringers that I have ever seen were marked with the
same two line one piece stamp. Clearly seen in the photograph is the
screw in the trigger plate holding the stock to the rear of the barrel.
Butt is nicely checkered and is flat with an oval buttcap. In addition
to the screw, the barrel is held in place with a wedge. The deeply
curved lock is very plain with a simple engraved line border. Full
octagon barrel. The serial number 55 is stamped on the top of the
breechplug flat. On the tang is a #1 which leaves some thought that this
might be #1 of a pair. The nose of the forearm is fluted. Of some
importance to me is the fact that this is a sheath trigger pistol, and
the trigger plate and sheath are of German silver. Bitterlick of
Nashville made this type of gun with a sheath trigger and a flat butt.
The caliber is .380.

The top barrel flat is marked in two lines with one hand stamp as
follows:

                            Schneider & Co.
                             Memphis, Tenn.


SCHNEIDER & COMPANY

#275. This Schneider has excellent styling and is typical of many
Memphis & Nashville guns. The screw through the trigger plate extends
into the barrel to hold the gun together. Made with the wedge through
the forearm. The nose of the forearm is fluted. Flat butt with oval
German silver inlay. Deeply curved lock is very plain with simple lined
border. The serial number on the top flat of the breechplug is #8 with a
#1 on the tang which leaves the thought that this might be one of a
pair. Full octagon steel barrel with steel dovetailed front sight. This
is the sheath trigger style with a steel trigger plate and sheath, just
the opposite material from #283.

Marked on the top barrel flat with one hand stamp and two lines as
follows:

                            Schneider & Co.
                             Memphis, Tenn.


SCHNEIDER & COMPANY

#267 This Schneider derringer is the third or fourth Southern made gun
that I obtained fifteen years ago. My good friend Horace Tolliver of
Manchester, Tennessee, had the gun. Remember that this Schneider is made
with a regular trigger guard instead of the sheath trigger guard. The
inlays and guard have no engraving with line engraving only on the
trigger plate. Semi-formed bird head grip with a tear drop German silver
butt plate. Notice how low the hammer is on the gun. Someone in years
gone by attempted to dress up the gun by checkering the forearm; but of
course this hurt it some. The nose of the forearm is fluted. There is no
screw through the trigger plate holding the barrel in place. This barrel
is not octagon, but instead is a round barrel with a rib on top similar
to all those made by Henry Deringer. Steel dovetailed front sight.
Caliber is .440.

Marked on the top barrel flat with one two line hand stamp as follows:

                            Schneider & Co.
                             Memphis, Tenn.


FREDERICK G. GLASSICK

#214 This Glassick derringer is German silver mounted throughout and has
a standard derringer style trigger guard. Through the trigger plate at
the finial is a metal screw that attaches the plate to the barrel which
is doubly held in place by another screw through an escutcheon under the
forearm into the barrel. Made without wedge. The lock has the pronounced
downward curve. Full octagon barrel. Butt is flat with an oval German
silver inlay without capbox. Checkering is rather coarse. The German
silver blade front sight is milled into the barrel. Caliber is .400.

Marked with one hand stamp in one line on the top barrel flat. The
barrel is so short and the one line is so long that part of the name is
on the breech-plug on this particular gun. The same hand stamp was used
to mark #209 as was used on this one and is worded as follows:

                   F. Glassick & Co., Memphis, Tenn.

Glassick was a gunsmith circa 1850, whose name is found stamped on
imitation derringer pistols. About 1859 he entered into a partnership to
form Schneider and Glassick.


FREDERICK G. GLASSICK

#209 Glassick derringers are in high demand like the Griswold and Greer
Confederate revolver, though they are relatively easy to get, but
command a good price. I suppose it is because Glassick and Schneider are
so well known that they will bring more money than some of the lesser
known derringers.

This version is a real work of art in some respects. All inlays are of
sterling silver. This model is made with a ramrod and with an oval
sterling silver butt cap with cap box built in. Although this gun shows
75% original varnish, in the past the grip has been broken into two
pieces and is carefully repaired with an inlay all the way around. To
make this grip inlay required a great deal of efficiency on the part of
the person that did it because it is just absolutely perfect the way
that it is put in with steel screws. Then the forearm apparently is
cracked underneath the wide inlay that is highly engraved. These two
silver inlay repair jobs, in my opinion, add quite a bit of value to the
gun because of their beauty and quality of workmanship. This gun has a
full octagon barrel and its breech is gold banded. The front sight has a
steel dovetailed base with a sterling silver blade. The lock may not be
curved as much as other Memphis guns, but it does have the low profile
hammer. Glassick derringers are not serial numbered. This beautifully
executed piece is a real man stopper in that its caliber is .510. I
obtained this gun from Bernie Braverman of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
about 1959 at a Columbus, Ohio gun show.

Marked on the top barrel flat with one hand stamp as follows:

                   F. Glassick & Co., Memphis, Tenn.


FREDERICK G. GLASSICK

#210 This is the second Southern made derringer that I had in my
collection and this is one that I obtained in Jackson, Mississippi.
Notice that it has a bag type grip and the lock plate is not very deeply
curved. Has standard trigger guard and the nose of the forearm is
fluted. The full octagon barrel is not serial numbered and has a dove
tailed steel base front sight with a German silver blade. Hammer sets
rather high. Through the trigger guard plate is attached one screw that
holds the barrel in place and then on the forearm forward is another
screw plate holding the screw in position that attaches the forearm to
the barrel in the second position. Caliber is .510.

The markings on this top flat of the barrel on this gun are in two lines
with letters about the same size as my other specimens. The markings are
as follows:

                           F. Glassick & Co.
                             Memphis, Tenn.


FREDERICK G. GLASSICK

#211 My first Southern derringer was this Glassick derringer that I
obtained at one of the early Jackson, Mississippi gun shows about
fifteen or sixteen years ago. My good friend Nathan Swazy brought the
gun in and I traded him two old Civil War swords and a Colt pistol. You
cannot tell it now, but the forearm was shattered and my good friend
Frank Hitchings of Memphis replaced the forearm in such a manner that
the joint in the new wood cannot be distinguished from the old. This gun
is German silver mounted throughout and has a fluted forearm nose. There
are two screws holding the barrel in position through the trigger plate
and the nice escutcheon under the forearm. Flat butts are rather common
to many of the Memphis and Nashville guns. Full octagon barrel with a
brass front sight milled into the steel barrel. Its caliber is a
tremendous .510.

The barrel markings on this gun are made in one line, but contrary to
#209 and #214 in which case one stamp was used, two stamps were used on
this one. “F. Glassick & Co.” is a different stamp from “Memphis, Tenn.”
The same stamps were used on #210 as are used on this one with exception
that #210 has the stamps in two lines and this one is in one line as
follows:

                   F. Glassick & Co., Memphis, Tenn.


C. SUTER

#274 Little is known about this maker, Suter. No guns made by Henry
Deringer with Suter’s name on the barrel are known.

This particular piece is a small size and has characteristics of styling
that make it desirable. It is German silver mounted throughout with a
pineapple finial on the trigger plate. There is no screw through the
trigger plate holding the barrel in position. The wedge and the tang
screw are the only attachments to the barrel. No provision for ramrod.
Round barrel has rib at top flat. The front sight is German silver
dovetailed and the rear of the barrel has two gold bands which enhances
its value. The condition of the gun is extra nice with real sharp
original checkering. The extra thin barrel at the muzzle is caliber .42.

The barrel is marked on the right hand side below the top flat “steel.”
The top flat of the barrel is marked in two lines with two different
hand stamps as follows:

                               C. Suter,
                              Selma, Ala.


C. SUTER

#4 This is a photograph of a genuine Wurfflein Deringer made in
Philadelphia. The sideplate of German silver is absolutely identical to
those of most Suter Deringers. This will leave some room for thought
that Suter Deringers are made by Wurfflein. Notice there is some
similarity in the shape and contour of this Suter #274 and the
illustrated Wurfflein. Both of these guns are often but not always
marked with the word “steel” on the right hand barrel flat immediately
below the top flat but always with different size stamps.

                               C. Suter,
                              Selma, Ala.


C. SUTER

#264 I have seen Suter derringers in many sizes and this is about as
large as they come. Although the barrel is slightly over 4”, other
derringer makers made them even longer. The stock is German silver
mounted and has provision for a ramrod. The buttcap is a German silver
rosette held in place by a steel wood screw. Typical derringer German
silver trigger guard with pineapple finial. Suter was good at copying
Henry Deringer’s trigger guard. Two gold bands are at the breech of the
barrel and the front sight is completely made of German silver that is
dovetailed into the flat. Barrel is round with a rib at the top. Caliber
is .410.

All markings of Suter guns that I have seen appear to be marked with the
same two hand stamps with the name and the town in different stamps.
This specimen is marked in one line with two different stamps as
follows:

                         C. Suter, Selma, Ala.


C. SUTER

#243 Again we have an extra small derringer by Suter of Alabama. German
silver mounted throughout and there is no screw through the trigger
plate holding the barrel to the stock. No provision for ramrod. Round
barrel has two bands at the breech in gold and in silver with a
dovetailed German silver front sight.

The barrel is marked on the right hand side below the top flat “steel.”
The barrel is marked in two lines on the top flat as follows:

                               C. Suter,
                              Selma, Ala.


HORACE E. DIMICK & CO.

#272 H. E. Dimick of course is so well known that a description of his
history of operations is not necessarily of interest in this little book
but we are going to use it anyway. In the course of several years of
collecting, I have seen no less than 10 or 12 H. E. Dimick derringers,
all with the same type of small markings on the top barrel flat.
Invariably the lock plates are not marked but do have a floral pattern
engraved in place. They are always long and slender and are not large
guns and are not heavy. This piece is made without ramrod and with
German silver mountings throughout. The trigger plate finial is in the
shape of a pineapple. The barrel has a brown twist steel imitation
finish. The German silver front sight is milled into the barrel and is
not dovetailed. Caliber is .390.

The barrel is marked on the top flat at a slight angle showing hand
stampings with one die stamp and one line as follows:

                              H. E. Dimick

This name will be noted in all of the 1859 Saint Louis City Directories.
Dimick was probably the best known and prolific of all the secondary St.
Louis riflemakers and his guns stood on their own reputation. He came
from Kentucky to establish the St. Louis Gun Shop at 38 North Main
Street in 1849. From 1849 through 1864, the firm was known as H. E.
Dimick & Co. From 1865 until Mr. Dimick’s death in 1873 the listing was
simply H. E. Dimick. Thus, here is a clue towards dating your guns with
this mark.

There has been a great deal of confusion about the associates in the H.
E. Dimick & Co. plant. Henry Folsom may have been a partner for a few
years; he was at least important enough in the firm to be listed along
with H. E. Dimick in a City Directory.


F. J. BITTERLICK

#261 Contrary to most derringers made in the South, Bitterlick marked
his on both the barrel and the lock. All furniture is of plain, not
engraved, German silver and the escutcheon plate under the forearm
embraces the screw that attaches the forearm to the barrel. The forearm
nose is fluted. The barrel is full octagon, and its caliber is .400.

The markings are to be found identically on the lock and the barrel in
two lines with one hand stamp marked as follows:

                           Fr. J. Bitterlick
                            Nashville, Tenn.

Franz J. Bitterlick was born July 16, 1829 and died July 12, 1880 at 51
years and 6 days old. His daughter Ann Elizabeth married Charles Evers
and their descendents and great grandchildren are living in Nashville
today, 1971.

Joseph Legler was born October 21, 1837 and died June 15, 1931 at the
age of 93 years and 8 months. His descendents by the name of Legler
still live in Nashville today.

Franz Bitterlick and Joseph Legler were brothers-in-law, having married
sisters Mary and Helen Lochmann respectively.

There is no record of when Bitterlick first started operating but if he
was born in 1829 and started the business when he was 25 years old, that
would mean that the Bitterlick Company started about 1854.

The first record of a business using either of these two names is found
in King’s City Directory of 1867, the earliest available, and is listed
as Bitterlick & Legler, Gunsmiths, 22 Deaderich Street. No City
Directories are available before 1867 so it is entirely possible that
the combination of the two names originated before that date.

Considering that in 1867, Legler was 30 years old and considering the
point that he could have been a partner of Bitterlick as early as 25
years of age means that the Bitterlick & Legler Company could have
started around 1862.

In an interview in 1970 with Mr. Bernard Evers, Sr., the grandson of
Bitterlick, he stated he believed the gunsmith business started in 1854,
give or take a year, and that Bitterlick made himself scarce during the
War Between the States by taking a four year “Round the World” trip.

All in all it would average up that the company of Bitterlick operated
from perhaps 1854 to 1862 or 1865.

Bitterlick and Legler without a doubt operated from 1862-65 til the last
listing of the combination company in the King’s City Directory of 1879.

In 1880 Joseph Legler is listed as a gunsmith and Frank Bitterlick as a
grocer at two different addresses.

Thus from these dates that we have accumulated here you can tell
approximately when your gun was made according to the name on the
barrel, and that no derringers were produced after 1879 because none are
known marked “Legler.”

According to a news clipping dated March 1, 1963 of the Nashville
Tennessean newspaper, the J. Legler, Gunsmith business was sold on that
date and it is noted that the operation was started 95 years ago on
Deaderich Street which would make the business starting in 1868. To me
this does not quite add up since the City Directories state that they
were operating in 1867. I would say that the business started sometime
between 1854 and 1867.

Joseph Legler is buried in the Mt. Olive Cemetery near Nashville,
Tennessee.

It is interesting to note that the Legler descendents with the same name
operated this business as a gunsmith at 321 Deaderich Street until
December 31, 1962 when the business was closed out. The building was
sold to a real estate agent on March 1, 1963.

All their pistols were high quality. In addition to derringer type
pieces it is known that Bitterlick produced and manufactured shotguns
and a few target rifles marked “FR. J. Bitterlick & Co., Nashville,
Tenn.”. Early double breechloading shotguns with outside hammers are
known that are marked “J. Leghler, Nashville, Tenn.” and will you please
note the new spelling of Legler in this later breechloading period.


F. BITTERLICK

#285 This is a small sized derringer by any standards and is made by
Bitterlick. I have never seen a Bitterlick smaller than this one. This
gun also has the escutcheon screw plate underneath the forearm attaching
that part to the full octagon barrel. The forearm nose is fluted as is
common to many of these Nashville and Memphis guns. All furniture is of
German silver and is plain, not engraved.

The barrel markings are slightly different from #261 in that the
expression “& Co.” has been added as follows:

                        Fr. J. Bitterlick & Co.
                            Nashville, Tenn.


{FOOT-POWERED LATHE}

#285A This is a real old foot powered metal turning lathe that is in our
collection here at Dixie Gun Works. It was obtained from the current
Snodgrass Gun Shop in Nashville and Mr. Snodgrass states that many, many
years ago he got it from the old Legler Gun Shop. There is an awfully
good chance that parts such as screws for the Bitterlick or Bitterlick &
Legler Derringers were made on this same lathe. Incidentally, Hal Swann
of Nashville has a large quantity of Bitterlick or Bitterlick & Legler
tools such as files, bullet mould cherries, screwdrivers and even a die
stamp reading “Bitterlick & Co.” This die stamp is not the same one that
is used on the derringers though. This die stamp has never been seen on
a gun.


LULLMAN & VIENNA

#266 Lullman and Vienna apparently was a retail store dealing in guns,
watches, and jewelry. I have never seen a Lullman and Vienna marked gun
except for those that are genuine Henry Deringer guns. Or, in other
words, they did not make their own guns.

This specimen is German silver mounted throughout, without ramrod and
with a tear drop buttcap. Typical round Henry Deringer barrel with a
flat rib on top. Full dovetailed German silver front sight. The breech
of the barrel has two silver bands which enhances its value.

All guns by this maker were invariably marked with the same die stamp
and two lines with one stamp manufactured as one unit. The stampings
reads as follows:

                           Lullman & Vienna,
                             Memphis, Tenn.


LULLMAN & VIENNA

#258 A very desirable sized derringer with a short barrel and many
people call this the Abe Lincoln model which is true except for the
marking on the barrel. This gun is German silver mounted throughout, and
made without ramrod. Solid German silver front sight is dovetailed into
position. The rear of the barrel has two silver bands. Has typical Henry
Deringer markings on the lock and on the breechplug. The caliber is
.410.

The barrel markings are typically as follows:

                           Lullman & Vienna,
                             Memphis, Tenn.


LULLMAN & VIENNA

#254 An even smaller sized Lullman and Vienna derringer is this genuine
Henry Deringer gun that is marked with this agent’s name on the barrel.
German silver throughout and you will notice that this gun does not have
a ramrod like all the others by this same maker in my collection. I
wonder if all were sold to Lullman and Vienna without ramrods? Solid
German silver front sight dovetailed in place along with two silver
barrel bands at the breech. Its caliber is .380.

The barrel markings are typically as follows:

                           Lullman & Vienna,
                             Memphis, Tenn.


BITTERLICK & LEGLER

#262 This Bitterlick specimen is typical of his earlier guns except for
the later markings on the barrel. The full octagon barrel is held in
place by two screws through the forearm and through the trigger plate
directly into the barrel. The escutcheons and furniture are all of plain
German silver with no engraving whatsoever. Has German silver pin type
front sight with gold band at the breech. The breech is marked with the
number “I.” All metal parts show old milling marks and file marks
because of its excellent condition. Caliber is .470.

The identical markings are to be found on both the barrel and the lock
and two different hand stamps are used as follows:

                       Fr. J. Bitterlick & Legler
                            Nashville, Tenn.


STEPHEN O’DELL

#222 O’Dell guns are often times easily recognized by their
characteristic European influence. The grips are a little different in
this shape gun in that they are the flat bag type instead of a rounded
bag type which is more of an English style than American. The round
faced hammer does not follow the characteristics of Southern derringers.
All furniture is of German silver and of the highest quality casting and
are fully engraved with English line scroll engraving. The trigger plate
has a pineapple finial and through the trigger plate is the typical
Southern style screw that attaches the forearm to the barrel along with
the barrel being held in place by a wedge.

I need to mention that there are several known Henry Deringer made guns
that are marked in one line on the barrel and with a hand stamp “S.
O’Dell.” In this specimen that we present here that is marked on the
lock plate, the name is hand engraved in and is not stamped.

This ornate specimen has five gold and silver bands at the breech. The
barrel is rounded with a rib flat on top. The silver front sight is
machined into place. The lockplate is filed down to fit the wood with
more of a cross curve than Henry Deringer guns show. The caliber is
unusually small, it being only .330.

This gun is marked on the lock only as follows:

                               S. O’Dell

O’Dell came from New York State probably in the late 1830’s or early
1840’s and according to newspaper accounts of that period was murdered
in the early 1860’s at Natchez. Although his derringers had bag shaped
grips and not bird head grips, I am classifying them as a derringer
rather than a pocket pistol. Halfstock rifles with his name are known.


SCHNEIDER & GLASSICK

#215 Schneider and Glassick derringers have characteristics of both of
these earlier companies that merged to form this one. All furniture is
very plain German silver without even the least line engraving. There is
a screw through the trigger plate holding the barrel into position along
with the typical wedge. The full octagon barrel is rather plain with no
embellishments at the breech. The caliber is .450.

The markings are in one line with one stamp on the top flat of the
barrel as follows:

                  Schneider & Glassick, Memphis, Tenn.

Schneider & Glassick, gunsmiths, formed about 1859 by William S.
Schneider and Frederick G. Glassick, both of whom had previously
operated independently. They early secured a Confederate contract to
manufacture revolvers, this being in addition to the repairing of other
types of firearms. They advertised in March, 1862, advising persons who
had left “guns or pistols longer than three months” to call, as they
intended delivering all such arms to the Confederate government as of
March 15th.

Shortly after this advertising date of March 7, 1862, Memphis was
evacuated by all Confederate Ordnance activities, and the firm was not
heard from again.


SCHNEIDER & GLASSICK

#6 Although in deplorable condition, this Schneider and Glassick can be
restored and I am going to spend upwards of $200 to have the trigger
guard and the hammer made new. Notice the extra long length of the grip
and of the bird head shape. The barrel is held in place both by a
trigger plate screw and a wedge. The front sight is a brass blade milled
into the steel barrel with no engraving or ornamentation at the breech.
Notice the heavy downward curve of the lock. Caliber is .500.

The barrel markings are done with the same stamp as used on gun #215
which is a one piece stamp in one line as follows:

                  Schneider & Glassick, Memphis, Tenn.


W. H. CALHOUN

#225 W. H. Calhoun was a fancy goods merchant in Nashville, Tennessee
during and well before the Civil War. Fancy goods merchants sold
jewelry, watches, and guns which sort of fitted together in those days
and times. Calhoun never made guns himself as far as I know and was not
a gunsmith. This is a genuine Henry Deringer gun surcharged or marked
with the agent’s name on the barrel. This gun has typical Henry Deringer
characteristics such as German silver furniture and a pineapple finial
on the trigger plate. The stock is made without ramrod. The caliber is
.370.

The barrel markings are in four lines on the top flat and appear to be
marked each line individually as follows:

                               Man^d for
                             W. H. Calhoun
                                 Agent,
                            Nashville, Tenn.


DANIEL L. SWETT & CO.

#282 L. Swett was a dealer of guns and general merchandise in Vicksburg,
Mississippi and as far as I know never made guns himself. The guns that
I have seen by this maker were all Henry Deringer agent marked guns.
This speciment is very typical of a genuine Henry Deringer such as with
ramrod, German silver furniture, and pineapple finial on the trigger
plate.

The barrel markings are in three lines and it appears to be one stamp
because each line is so perfect when compared with the other. The
markings are as follows:

                                Made for
                             L. Swett & Co.
                            Vicksburg, Miss.

This name represents an agent primarily since no guns not of Henry
Deringer manufacture are known. Newspaper advertisements of that period
show he operated in the late 1850’s. It is interesting to notice that
Mrs. Jefferson Davis carried a Swett derringer in her purse. The gun is
now on display in the old capitol museum in Jackson, Mississippi.


J. A. SCHAFER

J. A. Schafer. Vicksburg, Mississippi, is one gun that I do not have and
I would like to obtain. I have heard of three of these guns and they are
always Henry Deringer guns surcharged with this agent’s name and without
a doubt all will be typical of Henry Deringer manufactury.


L. F. TRUMPLER

#204 Trumpler of Little Rock does not make a gun that looks like a Henry
Deringer or a Southern Derringer. His guns are entirely different.
Notice the funny nosecap, the tall hammer, and the extra narrow trigger
guard and trigger plate. Although the trigger plate ends in a finial of
a pineapple, it is not a Henry Deringer type of pineapple. This
derringer has a silver band at the breech with a small amount of
engraving. The barrel is round with a rib on top. Its caliber is .430.

The only markings are on the barrel as follows in one line:

                     L. F. Trumpler, L. Rock, Ark.


#278 J. B. Gilmore, Shreveport, Louisiana, produced guns by his own hand
and he also used Henry Deringer guns that were surcharged with his own
name. This particular gun is rather slender and it has a nice appealing
style, it being manufactured by Gilmore himself. Notice the turned down
forearm nose. The gun is mounted with German silver furniture lightly
engraved. The barrel is round with a flat rib on top. Its caliber is
.380.

The only markings are on the top of the barrel flat as follows:

                             J. B. GILMORE

Jerome Bonaparte Gilmore was born in Jefferson County, Kentucky, in
1827, and came to Shreveport, La. in 1849. There is a strong possibility
that he was the son of J. Gilmore, of the firm J. Gilmore and Moses
Dickson, Gunmakers, of Louisville (1848-1860), as, according to the
census of 1840, J. Gilmore, Sr. had a son of about this age. J. B.
Gilmore worked for David Pobst, gunmaker, until about 1853 when young
Gilmore went into the gun business for himself. The 1850 census lists
both Pobst and Gilmore in the same recorders visit which usually means
that they were members of the same household, possibly roommates.
Advertisements for both Pobst and Gilmore appear in the Caddo Gazette in
1853, and seem to indicate that they are competitors. An ad in the Caddo
Gazette, 3 Feb., 1855 is as follows:

  J. B. Gilmore, Gun Manufacturer,
  Shreveport, La., two doors below the City Hotel on Texas St.

To my friends and customers. After an absence of four months, I am again
at my post, during which time I have visited the best Gun Manufacturers
of the West and South, that I might make myself acquainted with the more
recent and valuable improvements in gunnery. And can now assure my
customers that any work entrusted to me will be finished in the best
style, with such valuable improvements as have been made in the work. I
will keep constantly on hand Shot Guns, Pistols of all kinds, including
Colt’s celebrated repeaters of all sizes, Game and Shot bags, Powder
Flasks and Horns, Bullet bags, Capprimers, Tubes and tube wrenches,
Bullet-moulds, Gun Barrels, Locks, Triggers, Ribbs, Mounting, Baldwin &
Anderson’s Patent Wadding, Eley’s wire Cartridge, Cox & Eley’s caps,
also Colt’s metal lined for his repeating pistols, and a good assortment
of all other kinds. Hazard & Dupont’s powder, both keg and canister of
the finest quality. A few of the celebrated patent-muzzle Rifles for
long shooting, these guns are far ahead of all others that are made, on
account of the great distance as well as the accuracy with which they
can be fired. Rifles of all sizes and qualities made to order. All kinds
of guns and pistols repaired in the neatest manner, and shortest notice,
warranted to stand.

As Gilmore’s shop was located on the trail to Texas (highway 80 today),
it is likely that he furnished many settlers and frontiersmen with guns.

In 1860, Caddo Parish had 1153 registered voters. In 1860 Caddo Parish
sent 1500 men to war. On the 17th day of May 1861, J. B. Gilmore entered
the military service of the Confederate States of America as Captain of
“F” Company, Shreveport Rangers, 3rd Regiment, Louisiana Infantry. His
regiment was transported by the steamer “Grand Duke” to New Orleans and
then proceeded to Fort Smith, Ark., reporting to General Ben McCulloch,
commanding the Army of the West. He served with his command in all the
skermishes and fights including the battles of Oak Hills and Elk Horn in
Ark. and Mo. On the 1st of May 1862, his regiment arrived at Corinth,
Miss., where it was reorganized on the 8th of May. As a result of this
reorganization, Gilmore was elected Lt. Colonel. Lt. Colonel Gilmore
participated in the skermishes at Farmington and other points near
Corinth. Col. F. C. Armstrong was appointed a Brigadier General, and on
6 July took leave of the regiment. Soon after Gilmore was appointed to
full Colonel by President Davis and assumed command of the regiment. At
the battle of Iuka, Miss., on 19 Sept., 1862, Col. Gilmore was severely
wounded and, not being able to withdraw with his regiment, was captured.
He was paroled on the 23rd of Sept., and rejoined his regiment at
Snyder’s Bluff. He was with the regiment during their investment at
Vicksburg, Miss., but being very weak did not assume command. He
resigned his command on 7 July, 1863 and was paroled with his regiment
but never exchanged.

Upon his return from the war he joined a cotton firm as a buyer. It is
probable that his wound prevented him from carrying on his gun business.
In 1860 he had purchased three lots from Leroy M. Nutt for $2300, and in
1872 built a substantial residence on this site. The first City
Directory (1878) lists him as residing at 506 Cotton St.

Gilmore’s wife’s name was Emma and he had a son, Edwin Vincent. During
the carpetbagger era he was Mayor of Shreveport, and was known as a man
of fine character. He was a member of the “General LeRoy Stafford Camp
No. 3, United Confederate Veterans” and it was men from this camp that
served as pall bearers at his funeral in 1900. Jerome Bonaparte
Gilmore’s tombstone lies in lot 22, section 33 of the Greenwood
Cemetery, Shreveport, La., just 20 steps from the graves of his
Confederate comrades in arms.


J. B. GILMORE

#258 This is a Gilmore gun that is manufactured by Henry Deringer. It
has typical derringer markings on the lock plate and the breechplug. It
is mounted in German silver in a typical fashion. The only difference in
this and most Henry Deringers is that the trigger plate finial is not a
pineapple. Made with ramrod. Its caliber is .440.

Marked on the top barrel flat as follows in three lines:

                               Man^d for
                             J. B. Gilmore
                            Shreveport, La.


A. LINDE

#205 Linde is a lesser known gunmaker of Memphis and he is authenticated
through newspaper advertisements of those days. Little is known of his
history. This particular gun has a different shape stock and notice the
turned down forearm nose that is fluted. The furniture is not engraved.
Notice the different shaped hammer. The barrel is round with a top
barrel flat. The front sight is German silver dovetailed into place.

The only markings are on both the barrel and the lock as follows:

                                A. Linde


HENRY FOLSOM

#220 Folsom was a well known manufacturer and dealer of New Orleans,
Memphis, and St. Louis. This particular handsome little gun with its 1⅞”
barrel was manufactured by him and is not a Henry Deringer product
although it has characteristics exactly like old Henry of Philadelphia.
All furniture is of German silver. This is the size of derringer that I
would call a gambler’s vest pocket special. Its caliber is .390.

The only mark is on the lock itself as follows:

                               H. Folsom

He was a gunsmith and military outfitter who in the late 1850’s was
located in St. Louis, Missouri, and who for a time was there connected
with H. E. Dimick, a gunsmith and dealer in imitation Colt Navy
Revolvers.

Folsom was entirely Southern in feeling and about 1859 left St. Louis
for New Orleans, Louisiana. There he opened up a shop at 55 Chartres
Street. Imported revolvers are occasionally found bearing his name.

Also to be found with his name and the St. Louis address are various
types of swords.

Some rifles are known that are marked “H. Folsom & Co., St. Louis.”

He is first listed in 1866 in the St. Louis City Directory and again in
1870 as a dealer and gunsmith.

It is known that Folsom worked in Memphis at some time and it is
possible and reasonable that he made deringers there and in St. Louis
but with a different marking, leaving off the St. Louis in the case of
the Memphis guns.


A. WEISGERBER

#256 Weisgerber was an authenticated maker according to newspapers of
those days of derringers, shotguns, and rifles. To date, I know of one
rifle and two derringer pistols, one of which is in my collection.
Notice the heavy bag grip and the unusual shaped hammer. The forearm
nose is fluted. All parts are German silver, not engraved, and the
inlays are held in place with wood screws which is contrary to the vast
majority of the others in my collection. Its caliber is .440.

The only markings are on the top barrel flat as follows in two lines:

                          A. Weisgerber & Co.
                             Memphis, Tenn.


J. F. MERRIMAN

#219 Again we have a Memphis maker, whose name was Merriman, that little
is known of but he is authenticated as a derringer maker by newspaper
accounts. This gun has a rounded face European style hammer that appears
to be original with the gun and all furniture is German silver. There is
some engraving on the inlays. There is no provision for a ramrod. Its
caliber is .410.

The only markings are on the barrel in two lines as follows:

                          J. F. Merriman & Co.
                                Memphis


LOUIS HOFFMAN

As far as I know Hoffman was a derringer maker himself and did not use
any Henry Deringer guns that were surcharged. I only know of two of
these guns and I am sorry that I am not able to obtain them for
photographing. I can tell you that they are highly ornate similar to the
O’Dell manufactured guns. Hoffman was located in Vicksburg.

Louis Ferdinand Alexander Hoffmann was born in Berlin, Prussia in 1823.
His father was an officer in the Prussian army but died when Louis was
9. His mother died when he was 11, leaving five orphan children. Louis
came to America in 1852 settling for a short time in Patterson, New
Jersey, then moving to St. Louis, Missouri and on to Vicksburg in 1854.

During his early years in Europe he was brought up in the machine shop
of Borsig of Berlin, then the largest of its kind in Europe. This fact
later may explain the heavy European influence on Mr. Hoffmann’s guns.

From 1854 til 1857 he worked in Vicksburg at the Zimmerman and Reading
Foundry, learning the art of metal craft. In 1857 at the age of 34 he
had saved enough money to start his own business.

His first ad in the Vicksburg Daily Whig dated October, 1857 states:
“New gun shop—Louis Hoffmann takes pleasure in informing his community
and the public generally that he will carry on the gunsmith business and
all its branches. It will make rifles to order, stock guns and pistols,
etc.”

The 1860 Vicksburg City Directory list six gunsmiths working for him,
One of these was Adam Schafer who later went into the retail business
himself and Philadelphia Henry Deringers are known to be marked with his
agency’s name.

Hoffmann’s earliest known address was listed in 1857 as China Street and
later on Washington Street. The Washington Street store burned in 1879
and new buildings were erected on Clay Street. This became known as the
famous “Hoffmann Block.”

In 1886 the former Louis Hoffmann or Hoffmann Hardware Company was
incorporated and the name changed to Louis Hoffmann Hardware Company,
Inc., Hoffmann Block, Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Depending of these mentioned names and addresses, you can date your guns
roughly.

The successors of the Hoffmann Hardware & Gun Company is in business
today under the name of O’Neill McNamarra Hardware Company.


JAMES CONNING

#241 Generally this Conning derringer follows the description of a
genuine Henry Deringer gun in both style and makeup but is not a Henry
Deringer. The trigger guard and other furniture is of German silver and
there is no provision for a ramrod. Notice the turned down lip at the
forearm nose. The round barrel is made with a barrel rib at the top. The
only barrel markings underneath the barrel are a cryptic assembly number
cut in Roman numerals so this gun is apparently American made because
there are no proof marks. I have never heard of another such gun. Its
caliber is .410.

The only markings are on the barrel in two lines in script and engraved
as follows:

                                Made for
                           J. Conning, Mobile

This maker advertised that his shop was open for business at Dauphin and
Water Streets in Mobile, Alabama. This will leave the impression that he
operated a retail store but so far no actual proof of this has been
noted except that on October 21, 1862 he advertised “military buttons
just received a few gross of very fine military gold staff buttons, sold
by the gross or the set.”

He had some facilities for manufacturing and is well known for his
Confederate swords. There is a record of an important contract with the
state of Alabama for sabres.


A. R. MENDENHALL

#259 Mendenhall of the little town of DesArc, Arkansas produced
derringers that had no characteristics of either the Mississippi
derringer makers, those of Nashville or of Memphis. His were entirely
different. Notice the heavy walnut stock, the long slender hammer, and
the pewter nosecap. Has provision for the ramrod in the nosecap. The
trigger guard is of steel and all other furniture is of German silver
held in place with pins. There is a screw through the trigger guard that
attaches to the barrel along with a wedge to hold the barrel in place.
The barrel has two bands of gold and silver at the breech and the front
sight is dovetailed German silver. The lockplate is plain with no
engraving whatsoever as is the hammer. The grips are checkered with a
bird head style. The caliber is .500.

The only markings are on the barrel with a one piece machine made hand
stamp in two lines as follows:

                            A. R. Mendenhall
                              DesArc, Ark.

From Charles Elias, North Little Rock, Arkansas comes certain
information on this deringer maker that he has dug out of the U.S.
Census files of Arkansas taken every decade.

In 1836, the year Arkansas became a state in the Union, the present
location of the town of DesArc was known as McNulty’s Bluff and was
nothing more than a ferry crossing the White River at this point—the
most eastern edge of what was then Pulaski County. It wasn’t until the
early 1840’s that the townsite was laid out and became known as DesArc.
Today the population is about 500.

A R. Mendenhall was born in 1836. It is realistic to assume that at the
age of 25, in 1860, this young man could have had the capabilities of
fashioning this type of weapon.

In the year 1860, this man, along with a wagonmaker named John Langford,
resided with the family of William H. Harvey whose occupation was listed
in the U.S. Census of that year as a “grocery keeper.” Mendenhall was 24
years old and single. His native state was Michigan; his occupation,
gunsmith. He owned no real property, but assessed $200.00 in personal
property.

Mendenhall’s name appears again in the U.S. Census of 1870. By this
time, he had married a young Tennessee woman and gave his native state
as Ohio. In both real and personal property, he listed his net worth as
a little less than $1,000.00. Residing with him was another man whose
occupation was listed as “grocery keeper.” William H. Harvey had
disappeared from the scene.

Other sources state that a Mendenhall worked in the “Confederate States
Ordnance Works” at Tyler, Texas which operated from 1862 to 1865.
According to this book in my library, Mendenhall was the best workman in
the armoury and was engaged in some capacity with pistol making. Could
this be the same man?

It is reasonable to assume that any Mendenhall Derringer was produced in
1860 or later.


J. HAUSMANN

#242 J. Hausmann was an arms dealer before the Civil War in New Orleans.
Little is known about him. Notice that this gun has definite Southern
characteristics of some of the Memphis and Nashville guns in the screw
plate under the forearm that holds the barrel to the forearm, the fluted
nose of the forearm, and the full octagon barrel. All furniture is
likewise plain as is characteristic of many of these guns. The grips are
bird head shaped and are protected at the butt with a tear drop inlay.
There is a screw through the trigger plate holding to the barrel. The
caliber is .410.

A friend in Memphis has in his collection an identical gun marked #1 on
the tang. Mine is marked #2. I got my gun from Bob Elz of California and
the #1 was found in Ohio. Neither of us will sell his gun and we are at
a standstill about getting these two identical guns into one collection.
No other derringers by this maker are known.

The only markings are on the lock plate itself, hand engraved, as
follows:

                              J. Hausmann


A. J. MILLSPAUGH

A. J. Millspaugh operated in Shreveport, Louisiana. I have never seen
one of his guns nor heard of anyone that had one except in one book a
mention is made that Philadelphia derringers are known with his name. I
do not personally believe he would be any more scarce than a Linde or a
Weisgerber.


HOLYOAKE-LOWNES

Holyoake-Lownes of Memphis, Tennessee was an importer of English made
derringer type guns with his name surcharged on the barrel. I have heard
of one gun only with this marking and it of course has English proof
marks but has positive features of a genuine Henry Deringer gun.

A description of the only known gun is as follows: The round barrel with
the rib on top is rifled and is caliber .490. Barrel length is 3⅝” and
the overall length is 7¾”. Two silver bands at breech. Oval silver wedge
escutcheons. Monogram plate in the shape of a rectangle with clipped
corners. German silver fore end cap is made for loading rod. Eight
cornered daisy design German silver butt cap.

This company advertised guns for sale in the “Memphis Daily Appeal” of
Wednesday, May 4, 1853.

The top flat of the barrel is marked in one line with one die stamp
“Holyoake-Lownes & Co. Memphis.”


F. SCHUMANN

#201 F. Schumann is identified as a maker of derringers by old newspaper
accounts. None of my collector friends or dealer friends have ever heard
of or seen a genuine Schumann derringer and I am indeed fortunate in
obtaining this specimen of a barrel whose caliber is .410 and is full
octagon. This barrel turned up in Memphis about twenty-five or thirty
years ago in an old gun shop where it was obtained and kept in a
collection thereafter. It has never been on a gun and still shows the
old original file marks.


E. R. SIEBER

#286 Sieber of Nashville, Tennessee is virtually unknown among my gun
collector friends and dealers until this gun turned up in Norman
Flayderman’s catalog in 1970. It is definitely Nashville made with the
characteristics of those guns in the full octagon barrel, the escutcheon
plate under the forearm holding the screw to attach the barrel, and the
lack of engraving. The buttcap, sideplate, nameplate on the wrist, and
escutcheons are of German silver. The trigger guard, believe it or not,
is of brass and appears to be original. The barrel is a little different
in that the bottom half is rounded with the top half octagon. To say
this another way, there are three octagon flats at the top of the barrel
with the other part underneath rounded. There is a gold blow-out plug on
the breechplug. Two bands at the breech are of gold and silver and one
silver band at the muzzle. It is a shame, but someone in the past has
sand-papered the barrel which is in extra fine condition. They saw the
old brown color and thought they were removing rust when actually the
gun had original browning on the barrel and some smart fellow removed
all of it. I would call this a high quality but plain derringer. Its
caliber is .440.

The only markings are on the top barrel flat as follows:

                             E. R. Sieber,
                            Nashville, Tenn.


H. G. NEWCOMB

H. G. Newcomb is a little known maker of Vicksburg, Mississippi who made
his own derringers. I have only heard of two guns by this maker and they
are in a collection in Mississippi and maybe sometime we can obtain this
specimen for photographing and describing.

Apparently Newcomb was active about the same time as O’Dell but he lived
into the early 1870’s. Two of his derringers are known and one is even
more ornate than O’Dell produced guns while the other is very plain. It
is rumored that some genuine Henry Deringers were agent marked with
Newcomb’s name but I have never personally seen one of these guns.


UNKNOWN

#221 Here is an unmarked derringer that could have been made either in
Nashville or in Memphis according to the sheath trigger and the flat
butt. Bitterlick produced guns of this style and marked them but I do
not have one for my collection. Notice that this is made of curly maple
rather than like all the rest of walnut. The full octagon barrel has one
silver band at the breech. The tang is marked with “#1”. There is no way
to determine whether this gun was made in Nashville or Memphis. Its
caliber is .480.


UNKNOWN

#212 Having no characteristics whatsoever of any other known Southern
derringer maker is this specimen from my collection that I have had for
ten or twelve years. The tear drop buttcap, the wedge plate escutcheons,
the silver inlay under the barrel and the left hand sideplate and name
plate over the wrist are all plain with no engraving which is typical of
Southern guns. There is no provision for ramrod. Notice the forearm nose
is fluted and that it is turned downward somewhat. The trigger guard is
steel and does have the Southern type of screw through the trigger plate
attaching to the barrel. The lock plate has a very high radius curve to
make it fit the curve of the wrist. The round barrel is flat on top. The
dovetailed steel base front sight has a German silver blade. Notice that
the hammer is not derringer style in that it has a slightly rounded
face. No proof marks under barrel. This gun is in exceedingly fine
condition, and I would say almost like new. Its caliber is .450.


UNKNOWN

#206 Here is an unidentifiable hand made Southern type derringer with
markings on the barrel that are hand cut and very crude as follows: “J.
E. B.” The wood is curly maple and the trigger guard and trigger plate
are steel with no butt cap on the flat butt. There is a screw through
the trigger plate attaching the forearm to the barrel. This can be seen
in the photograph. The rifled bore is caliber .500.




                                 MEMO:




                          Transcriber’s Notes


—Silently corrected a few typos.

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
  is public-domain in the country of publication.

—Re-ordered text “continued on bottom of next page” into a natural
  flowable order.

—Added text {within curly brackets} to several captions.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Peter Pan, by James M. Barrie

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
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** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook, Details Below **
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Title: Peter Pan
       Peter Pan and Wendy

Author: James M. Barrie

Posting Date: June 25, 2008 [EBook #16]
Release Date: July, 1991
Last Updated: March 10, 2018

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PETER PAN ***










PETER PAN

[PETER AND WENDY]

By J. M. Barrie [James Matthew Barrie]

A Millennium Fulcrum Edition (c)1991 by Duncan Research




Contents:

Chapter 1 PETER BREAKS THROUGH

Chapter 2 THE SHADOW

Chapter 3 COME AWAY, COME AWAY!

Chapter 4 THE FLIGHT

Chapter 5 THE ISLAND COME TRUE

Chapter 6 THE LITTLE HOUSE

Chapter 7 THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND

Chapter 8 THE MERMAID'S LAGOON

Chapter 9 THE NEVER BIRD

Chapter 10 THE HAPPY HOME

Chapter 11 WENDY'S STORY

Chapter 12 THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF

Chapter 13 DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?

Chapter 14 THE PIRATE SHIP

Chapter 15 “HOOK OR ME THIS TIME”

Chapter 16 THE RETURN HOME

Chapter 17 WHEN WENDY GREW UP




Chapter 1 PETER BREAKS THROUGH

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow
up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old
she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with
it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for
Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, “Oh, why can't you
remain like this for ever!” This was all that passed between them on
the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always
know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.

Of course they lived at 14 [their house number on their street], and
until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady,
with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic
mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the
puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and
her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get,
though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.

The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been
boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her,
and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who
took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her,
except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and
in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could
have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off in a
passion, slamming the door.

Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him
but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks
and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know,
and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that
would have made any woman respect him.

Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the books
perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a
Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers dropped
out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces.
She drew them when she should have been totting up. They were Mrs.
Darling's guesses.

Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.

For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would
be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was
frightfully proud of her, but he was very honourable, and he sat on the
edge of Mrs. Darling's bed, holding her hand and calculating expenses,
while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come what
might, but that was not his way; his way was with a pencil and a piece
of paper, and if she confused him with suggestions he had to begin at
the beginning again.

“Now don't interrupt,” he would beg of her.

“I have one pound seventeen here, and two and six at the office; I can
cut off my coffee at the office, say ten shillings, making two nine
and six, with your eighteen and three makes three nine seven, with five
naught naught in my cheque-book makes eight nine seven--who is that
moving?--eight nine seven, dot and carry seven--don't speak, my own--and
the pound you lent to that man who came to the door--quiet, child--dot
and carry child--there, you've done it!--did I say nine nine seven? yes,
I said nine nine seven; the question is, can we try it for a year on
nine nine seven?”

“Of course we can, George,” she cried. But she was prejudiced in Wendy's
favour, and he was really the grander character of the two.

“Remember mumps,” he warned her almost threateningly, and off he went
again. “Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down, but I daresay
it will be more like thirty shillings--don't speak--measles one five,
German measles half a guinea, makes two fifteen six--don't waggle your
finger--whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings”--and so on it went, and
it added up differently each time; but at last Wendy just got through,
with mumps reduced to twelve six, and the two kinds of measles treated
as one.

There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a narrower
squeak; but both were kept, and soon, you might have seen the three of
them going in a row to Miss Fulsom's Kindergarten school, accompanied by
their nurse.

Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a
passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had
a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children
drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had
belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She had
always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had become
acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her
spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by careless
nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of to their
mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse. How thorough
she was at bath-time, and up at any moment of the night if one of her
charges made the slightest cry. Of course her kennel was in the nursery.
She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a thing to have no patience
with and when it needs stocking around your throat. She believed to her
last day in old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of
contempt over all this new-fangled talk about germs, and so on. It was a
lesson in propriety to see her escorting the children to school, walking
sedately by their side when they were well behaved, and butting them
back into line if they strayed. On John's footer [in England soccer
was called football, “footer” for short] days she never once forgot his
sweater, and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of
rain. There is a room in the basement of Miss Fulsom's school where the
nurses wait. They sat on forms, while Nana lay on the floor, but that
was the only difference. They affected to ignore her as of an inferior
social status to themselves, and she despised their light talk. She
resented visits to the nursery from Mrs. Darling's friends, but if they
did come she first whipped off Michael's pinafore and put him into the
one with blue braiding, and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John's
hair.

No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly, and
Mr. Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the
neighbours talked.

He had his position in the city to consider.

Nana also troubled him in another way. He had sometimes a feeling that
she did not admire him. “I know she admires you tremendously, George,”
 Mrs. Darling would assure him, and then she would sign to the children
to be specially nice to father. Lovely dances followed, in which the
only other servant, Liza, was sometimes allowed to join. Such a midget
she looked in her long skirt and maid's cap, though she had sworn, when
engaged, that she would never see ten again. The gaiety of those romps!
And gayest of all was Mrs. Darling, who would pirouette so wildly that
all you could see of her was the kiss, and then if you had dashed at her
you might have got it. There never was a simpler happier family until
the coming of Peter Pan.

Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's
minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children
are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next
morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have
wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you
can't) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it
very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You
would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of
your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up,
making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as
if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight.
When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with
which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom
of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your
prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.

I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person's mind.
Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can
become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a
child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all
the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a
card, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is
always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here
and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and
savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves
through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a
hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose.
It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day
at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders,
hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting
into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth
yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they are
another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially
as nothing will stand still.

Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance, had a
lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while
Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over
it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in
a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no
friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by
its parents, but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance,
and if they stood still in a row you could say of them that they have
each other's nose, and so forth. On these magic shores children at play
are for ever beaching their coracles [simple boat]. We too have been
there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no
more.

Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most
compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between
one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by
day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming,
but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very real. That
is why there are night-lights.

Occasionally in her travels through her children's minds Mrs. Darling
found things she could not understand, and of these quite the most
perplexing was the word Peter. She knew of no Peter, and yet he was
here and there in John and Michael's minds, while Wendy's began to be
scrawled all over with him. The name stood out in bolder letters than
any of the other words, and as Mrs. Darling gazed she felt that it had
an oddly cocky appearance.

“Yes, he is rather cocky,” Wendy admitted with regret. Her mother had
been questioning her.

“But who is he, my pet?”

“He is Peter Pan, you know, mother.”

At first Mrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking back into her
childhood she just remembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with the
fairies. There were odd stories about him, as that when children died he
went part of the way with them, so that they should not be frightened.
She had believed in him at the time, but now that she was married and
full of sense she quite doubted whether there was any such person.

“Besides,” she said to Wendy, “he would be grown up by this time.”

“Oh no, he isn't grown up,” Wendy assured her confidently, “and he is
just my size.” She meant that he was her size in both mind and body; she
didn't know how she knew, she just knew it.

Mrs. Darling consulted Mr. Darling, but he smiled pooh-pooh. “Mark my
words,” he said, “it is some nonsense Nana has been putting into their
heads; just the sort of idea a dog would have. Leave it alone, and it
will blow over.”

But it would not blow over and soon the troublesome boy gave Mrs.
Darling quite a shock.

Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them.
For instance, they may remember to mention, a week after the event
happened, that when they were in the wood they had met their dead
father and had a game with him. It was in this casual way that Wendy one
morning made a disquieting revelation. Some leaves of a tree had been
found on the nursery floor, which certainly were not there when the
children went to bed, and Mrs. Darling was puzzling over them when Wendy
said with a tolerant smile:

“I do believe it is that Peter again!”

“Whatever do you mean, Wendy?”

“It is so naughty of him not to wipe his feet,” Wendy said, sighing. She
was a tidy child.

She explained in quite a matter-of-fact way that she thought Peter
sometimes came to the nursery in the night and sat on the foot of her
bed and played on his pipes to her. Unfortunately she never woke, so she
didn't know how she knew, she just knew.

“What nonsense you talk, precious. No one can get into the house without
knocking.”

“I think he comes in by the window,” she said.

“My love, it is three floors up.”

“Were not the leaves at the foot of the window, mother?”

It was quite true; the leaves had been found very near the window.

Mrs. Darling did not know what to think, for it all seemed so natural to
Wendy that you could not dismiss it by saying she had been dreaming.

“My child,” the mother cried, “why did you not tell me of this before?”

“I forgot,” said Wendy lightly. She was in a hurry to get her breakfast.

Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.

But, on the other hand, there were the leaves. Mrs. Darling examined
them very carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she was sure they
did not come from any tree that grew in England. She crawled about the
floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot. She
rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls. She let down a
tape from the window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of thirty
feet, without so much as a spout to climb up by.

Certainly Wendy had been dreaming.

But Wendy had not been dreaming, as the very next night showed, the
night on which the extraordinary adventures of these children may be
said to have begun.

On the night we speak of all the children were once more in bed. It
happened to be Nana's evening off, and Mrs. Darling had bathed them and
sung to them till one by one they had let go her hand and slid away into
the land of sleep.

All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fears now and
sat down tranquilly by the fire to sew.

It was something for Michael, who on his birthday was getting into
shirts. The fire was warm, however, and the nursery dimly lit by three
night-lights, and presently the sewing lay on Mrs. Darling's lap. Then
her head nodded, oh, so gracefully. She was asleep. Look at the four of
them, Wendy and Michael over there, John here, and Mrs. Darling by the
fire. There should have been a fourth night-light.

While she slept she had a dream. She dreamt that the Neverland had come
too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it. He did not
alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many
women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of
some mothers also. But in her dream he had rent the film that obscures
the Neverland, and she saw Wendy and John and Michael peeping through
the gap.

The dream by itself would have been a trifle, but while she was dreaming
the window of the nursery blew open, and a boy did drop on the floor.
He was accompanied by a strange light, no bigger than your fist, which
darted about the room like a living thing and I think it must have been
this light that wakened Mrs. Darling.

She started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow she knew at once
that he was Peter Pan. If you or I or Wendy had been there we should
have seen that he was very like Mrs. Darling's kiss. He was a lovely
boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees but
the most entrancing thing about him was that he had all his first teeth.
When he saw she was a grown-up, he gnashed the little pearls at her.




Chapter 2 THE SHADOW

Mrs. Darling screamed, and, as if in answer to a bell, the door opened,
and Nana entered, returned from her evening out. She growled and sprang
at the boy, who leapt lightly through the window. Again Mrs. Darling
screamed, this time in distress for him, for she thought he was killed,
and she ran down into the street to look for his little body, but it
was not there; and she looked up, and in the black night she could see
nothing but what she thought was a shooting star.

She returned to the nursery, and found Nana with something in her mouth,
which proved to be the boy's shadow. As he leapt at the window Nana had
closed it quickly, too late to catch him, but his shadow had not had
time to get out; slam went the window and snapped it off.

You may be sure Mrs. Darling examined the shadow carefully, but it was
quite the ordinary kind.

Nana had no doubt of what was the best thing to do with this shadow. She
hung it out at the window, meaning “He is sure to come back for it; let
us put it where he can get it easily without disturbing the children.”

But unfortunately Mrs. Darling could not leave it hanging out at the
window, it looked so like the washing and lowered the whole tone of the
house. She thought of showing it to Mr. Darling, but he was totting up
winter great-coats for John and Michael, with a wet towel around his
head to keep his brain clear, and it seemed a shame to trouble him;
besides, she knew exactly what he would say: “It all comes of having a
dog for a nurse.”

She decided to roll the shadow up and put it away carefully in a drawer,
until a fitting opportunity came for telling her husband. Ah me!

The opportunity came a week later, on that never-to-be-forgotten Friday.
Of course it was a Friday.

“I ought to have been specially careful on a Friday,” she used to say
afterwards to her husband, while perhaps Nana was on the other side of
her, holding her hand.

“No, no,” Mr. Darling always said, “I am responsible for it all. I,
George Darling, did it. MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA.” He had had a classical
education.

They sat thus night after night recalling that fatal Friday, till every
detail of it was stamped on their brains and came through on the other
side like the faces on a bad coinage.

“If only I had not accepted that invitation to dine at 27,” Mrs. Darling
said.

“If only I had not poured my medicine into Nana's bowl,” said Mr.
Darling.

“If only I had pretended to like the medicine,” was what Nana's wet eyes
said.

“My liking for parties, George.”

“My fatal gift of humour, dearest.”

“My touchiness about trifles, dear master and mistress.”

Then one or more of them would break down altogether; Nana at the
thought, “It's true, it's true, they ought not to have had a dog for
a nurse.” Many a time it was Mr. Darling who put the handkerchief to
Nana's eyes.

“That fiend!” Mr. Darling would cry, and Nana's bark was the echo of
it, but Mrs. Darling never upbraided Peter; there was something in the
right-hand corner of her mouth that wanted her not to call Peter names.

They would sit there in the empty nursery, recalling fondly every
smallest detail of that dreadful evening. It had begun so uneventfully,
so precisely like a hundred other evenings, with Nana putting on the
water for Michael's bath and carrying him to it on her back.

“I won't go to bed,” he had shouted, like one who still believed that he
had the last word on the subject, “I won't, I won't. Nana, it isn't six
o'clock yet. Oh dear, oh dear, I shan't love you any more, Nana. I tell
you I won't be bathed, I won't, I won't!”

Then Mrs. Darling had come in, wearing her white evening-gown. She had
dressed early because Wendy so loved to see her in her evening-gown,
with the necklace George had given her. She was wearing Wendy's bracelet
on her arm; she had asked for the loan of it. Wendy loved to lend her
bracelet to her mother.

She had found her two older children playing at being herself and father
on the occasion of Wendy's birth, and John was saying:

“I am happy to inform you, Mrs. Darling, that you are now a mother,”
 in just such a tone as Mr. Darling himself may have used on the real
occasion.

Wendy had danced with joy, just as the real Mrs. Darling must have done.

Then John was born, with the extra pomp that he conceived due to the
birth of a male, and Michael came from his bath to ask to be born also,
but John said brutally that they did not want any more.

Michael had nearly cried. “Nobody wants me,” he said, and of course the
lady in the evening-dress could not stand that.

“I do,” she said, “I so want a third child.”

“Boy or girl?” asked Michael, not too hopefully.

“Boy.”

Then he had leapt into her arms. Such a little thing for Mr. and Mrs.
Darling and Nana to recall now, but not so little if that was to be
Michael's last night in the nursery.

They go on with their recollections.

“It was then that I rushed in like a tornado, wasn't it?” Mr. Darling
would say, scorning himself; and indeed he had been like a tornado.

Perhaps there was some excuse for him. He, too, had been dressing for
the party, and all had gone well with him until he came to his tie. It
is an astounding thing to have to tell, but this man, though he knew
about stocks and shares, had no real mastery of his tie. Sometimes the
thing yielded to him without a contest, but there were occasions when it
would have been better for the house if he had swallowed his pride and
used a made-up tie.

This was such an occasion. He came rushing into the nursery with the
crumpled little brute of a tie in his hand.

“Why, what is the matter, father dear?”

“Matter!” he yelled; he really yelled. “This tie, it will not tie.” He
became dangerously sarcastic. “Not round my neck! Round the bed-post!
Oh yes, twenty times have I made it up round the bed-post, but round my
neck, no! Oh dear no! begs to be excused!”

He thought Mrs. Darling was not sufficiently impressed, and he went on
sternly, “I warn you of this, mother, that unless this tie is round my
neck we don't go out to dinner to-night, and if I don't go out to dinner
to-night, I never go to the office again, and if I don't go to the
office again, you and I starve, and our children will be flung into the
streets.”

Even then Mrs. Darling was placid. “Let me try, dear,” she said, and
indeed that was what he had come to ask her to do, and with her nice
cool hands she tied his tie for him, while the children stood around to
see their fate decided. Some men would have resented her being able to
do it so easily, but Mr. Darling had far too fine a nature for that; he
thanked her carelessly, at once forgot his rage, and in another moment
was dancing round the room with Michael on his back.

“How wildly we romped!” says Mrs. Darling now, recalling it.

“Our last romp!” Mr. Darling groaned.

“O George, do you remember Michael suddenly said to me, 'How did you get
to know me, mother?'”

“I remember!”

“They were rather sweet, don't you think, George?”

“And they were ours, ours! and now they are gone.”

The romp had ended with the appearance of Nana, and most unluckily Mr.
Darling collided against her, covering his trousers with hairs. They
were not only new trousers, but they were the first he had ever had
with braid on them, and he had had to bite his lip to prevent the tears
coming. Of course Mrs. Darling brushed him, but he began to talk again
about its being a mistake to have a dog for a nurse.

“George, Nana is a treasure.”

“No doubt, but I have an uneasy feeling at times that she looks upon the
children as puppies.”

“Oh no, dear one, I feel sure she knows they have souls.”

“I wonder,” Mr. Darling said thoughtfully, “I wonder.” It was an
opportunity, his wife felt, for telling him about the boy. At first he
pooh-poohed the story, but he became thoughtful when she showed him the
shadow.

“It is nobody I know,” he said, examining it carefully, “but it does
look a scoundrel.”

“We were still discussing it, you remember,” says Mr. Darling, “when
Nana came in with Michael's medicine. You will never carry the bottle in
your mouth again, Nana, and it is all my fault.”

Strong man though he was, there is no doubt that he had behaved rather
foolishly over the medicine. If he had a weakness, it was for thinking
that all his life he had taken medicine boldly, and so now, when Michael
dodged the spoon in Nana's mouth, he had said reprovingly, “Be a man,
Michael.”

“Won't; won't!” Michael cried naughtily. Mrs. Darling left the room to
get a chocolate for him, and Mr. Darling thought this showed want of
firmness.

“Mother, don't pamper him,” he called after her. “Michael, when I was
your age I took medicine without a murmur. I said, 'Thank you, kind
parents, for giving me bottles to make me well.'”

He really thought this was true, and Wendy, who was now in her
night-gown, believed it also, and she said, to encourage Michael, “That
medicine you sometimes take, father, is much nastier, isn't it?”

“Ever so much nastier,” Mr. Darling said bravely, “and I would take it
now as an example to you, Michael, if I hadn't lost the bottle.”

He had not exactly lost it; he had climbed in the dead of night to the
top of the wardrobe and hidden it there. What he did not know was that
the faithful Liza had found it, and put it back on his wash-stand.

“I know where it is, father,” Wendy cried, always glad to be of service.
“I'll bring it,” and she was off before he could stop her. Immediately
his spirits sank in the strangest way.

“John,” he said, shuddering, “it's most beastly stuff. It's that nasty,
sticky, sweet kind.”

“It will soon be over, father,” John said cheerily, and then in rushed
Wendy with the medicine in a glass.

“I have been as quick as I could,” she panted.

“You have been wonderfully quick,” her father retorted, with a
vindictive politeness that was quite thrown away upon her. “Michael
first,” he said doggedly.

“Father first,” said Michael, who was of a suspicious nature.

“I shall be sick, you know,” Mr. Darling said threateningly.

“Come on, father,” said John.

“Hold your tongue, John,” his father rapped out.

Wendy was quite puzzled. “I thought you took it quite easily, father.”

“That is not the point,” he retorted. “The point is, that there is
more in my glass than in Michael's spoon.” His proud heart was nearly
bursting. “And it isn't fair: I would say it though it were with my last
breath; it isn't fair.”

“Father, I am waiting,” said Michael coldly.

“It's all very well to say you are waiting; so am I waiting.”

“Father's a cowardly custard.”

“So are you a cowardly custard.”

“I'm not frightened.”

“Neither am I frightened.”

“Well, then, take it.”

“Well, then, you take it.”

Wendy had a splendid idea. “Why not both take it at the same time?”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Darling. “Are you ready, Michael?”

Wendy gave the words, one, two, three, and Michael took his medicine,
but Mr. Darling slipped his behind his back.

There was a yell of rage from Michael, and “O father!” Wendy exclaimed.

“What do you mean by 'O father'?” Mr. Darling demanded. “Stop that row,
Michael. I meant to take mine, but I--I missed it.”

It was dreadful the way all the three were looking at him, just as if
they did not admire him. “Look here, all of you,” he said entreatingly,
as soon as Nana had gone into the bathroom. “I have just thought of a
splendid joke. I shall pour my medicine into Nana's bowl, and she will
drink it, thinking it is milk!”

It was the colour of milk; but the children did not have their father's
sense of humour, and they looked at him reproachfully as he poured the
medicine into Nana's bowl. “What fun!” he said doubtfully, and they did
not dare expose him when Mrs. Darling and Nana returned.

“Nana, good dog,” he said, patting her, “I have put a little milk into
your bowl, Nana.”

Nana wagged her tail, ran to the medicine, and began lapping it. Then
she gave Mr. Darling such a look, not an angry look: she showed him the
great red tear that makes us so sorry for noble dogs, and crept into her
kennel.

Mr. Darling was frightfully ashamed of himself, but he would not give
in. In a horrid silence Mrs. Darling smelt the bowl. “O George,” she
said, “it's your medicine!”

“It was only a joke,” he roared, while she comforted her boys, and Wendy
hugged Nana. “Much good,” he said bitterly, “my wearing myself to the
bone trying to be funny in this house.”

And still Wendy hugged Nana. “That's right,” he shouted. “Coddle her!
Nobody coddles me. Oh dear no! I am only the breadwinner, why should I
be coddled--why, why, why!”

“George,” Mrs. Darling entreated him, “not so loud; the servants
will hear you.” Somehow they had got into the way of calling Liza the
servants.

“Let them!” he answered recklessly. “Bring in the whole world. But I
refuse to allow that dog to lord it in my nursery for an hour longer.”

The children wept, and Nana ran to him beseechingly, but he waved her
back. He felt he was a strong man again. “In vain, in vain,” he cried;
“the proper place for you is the yard, and there you go to be tied up
this instant.”

“George, George,” Mrs. Darling whispered, “remember what I told you
about that boy.”

Alas, he would not listen. He was determined to show who was master in
that house, and when commands would not draw Nana from the kennel, he
lured her out of it with honeyed words, and seizing her roughly, dragged
her from the nursery. He was ashamed of himself, and yet he did it.
It was all owing to his too affectionate nature, which craved for
admiration. When he had tied her up in the back-yard, the wretched
father went and sat in the passage, with his knuckles to his eyes.

In the meantime Mrs. Darling had put the children to bed in unwonted
silence and lit their night-lights. They could hear Nana barking, and
John whimpered, “It is because he is chaining her up in the yard,” but
Wendy was wiser.

“That is not Nana's unhappy bark,” she said, little guessing what was
about to happen; “that is her bark when she smells danger.”

Danger!

“Are you sure, Wendy?”

“Oh, yes.”

Mrs. Darling quivered and went to the window. It was securely fastened.
She looked out, and the night was peppered with stars. They were
crowding round the house, as if curious to see what was to take place
there, but she did not notice this, nor that one or two of the smaller
ones winked at her. Yet a nameless fear clutched at her heart and made
her cry, “Oh, how I wish that I wasn't going to a party to-night!”

Even Michael, already half asleep, knew that she was perturbed, and he
asked, “Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?”

“Nothing, precious,” she said; “they are the eyes a mother leaves behind
her to guard her children.”

She went from bed to bed singing enchantments over them, and little
Michael flung his arms round her. “Mother,” he cried, “I'm glad of you.”
 They were the last words she was to hear from him for a long time.

No. 27 was only a few yards distant, but there had been a slight fall of
snow, and Father and Mother Darling picked their way over it deftly not
to soil their shoes. They were already the only persons in the street,
and all the stars were watching them. Stars are beautiful, but they may
not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever. It
is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no
star now knows what it was. So the older ones have become glassy-eyed
and seldom speak (winking is the star language), but the little
ones still wonder. They are not really friendly to Peter, who had a
mischievous way of stealing up behind them and trying to blow them out;
but they are so fond of fun that they were on his side to-night, and
anxious to get the grown-ups out of the way. So as soon as the door
of 27 closed on Mr. and Mrs. Darling there was a commotion in the
firmament, and the smallest of all the stars in the Milky Way screamed
out:

“Now, Peter!”




Chapter 3 COME AWAY, COME AWAY!

For a moment after Mr. and Mrs. Darling left the house the night-lights
by the beds of the three children continued to burn clearly. They were
awfully nice little night-lights, and one cannot help wishing that they
could have kept awake to see Peter; but Wendy's light blinked and gave
such a yawn that the other two yawned also, and before they could close
their mouths all the three went out.

There was another light in the room now, a thousand times brighter than
the night-lights, and in the time we have taken to say this, it had been
in all the drawers in the nursery, looking for Peter's shadow, rummaged
the wardrobe and turned every pocket inside out. It was not really a
light; it made this light by flashing about so quickly, but when it came
to rest for a second you saw it was a fairy, no longer than your hand,
but still growing. It was a girl called Tinker Bell exquisitely gowned
in a skeleton leaf, cut low and square, through which her figure could
be seen to the best advantage. She was slightly inclined to EMBONPOINT.
[plump hourglass figure]

A moment after the fairy's entrance the window was blown open by the
breathing of the little stars, and Peter dropped in. He had carried
Tinker Bell part of the way, and his hand was still messy with the fairy
dust.

“Tinker Bell,” he called softly, after making sure that the children
were asleep, “Tink, where are you?” She was in a jug for the moment, and
liking it extremely; she had never been in a jug before.

“Oh, do come out of that jug, and tell me, do you know where they put my
shadow?”

The loveliest tinkle as of golden bells answered him. It is the fairy
language. You ordinary children can never hear it, but if you were to
hear it you would know that you had heard it once before.

Tink said that the shadow was in the big box. She meant the chest of
drawers, and Peter jumped at the drawers, scattering their contents to
the floor with both hands, as kings toss ha'pence to the crowd. In a
moment he had recovered his shadow, and in his delight he forgot that he
had shut Tinker Bell up in the drawer.

If he thought at all, but I don't believe he ever thought, it was that
he and his shadow, when brought near each other, would join like drops
of water, and when they did not he was appalled. He tried to stick it
on with soap from the bathroom, but that also failed. A shudder passed
through Peter, and he sat on the floor and cried.

His sobs woke Wendy, and she sat up in bed. She was not alarmed to see
a stranger crying on the nursery floor; she was only pleasantly
interested.

“Boy,” she said courteously, “why are you crying?”

Peter could be exceeding polite also, having learned the grand manner at
fairy ceremonies, and he rose and bowed to her beautifully. She was much
pleased, and bowed beautifully to him from the bed.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Wendy Moira Angela Darling,” she replied with some satisfaction. “What
is your name?”

“Peter Pan.”

She was already sure that he must be Peter, but it did seem a
comparatively short name.

“Is that all?”

“Yes,” he said rather sharply. He felt for the first time that it was a
shortish name.

“I'm so sorry,” said Wendy Moira Angela.

“It doesn't matter,” Peter gulped.

She asked where he lived.

“Second to the right,” said Peter, “and then straight on till morning.”

“What a funny address!”

Peter had a sinking. For the first time he felt that perhaps it was a
funny address.

“No, it isn't,” he said.

“I mean,” Wendy said nicely, remembering that she was hostess, “is that
what they put on the letters?”

He wished she had not mentioned letters.

“Don't get any letters,” he said contemptuously.

“But your mother gets letters?”

“Don't have a mother,” he said. Not only had he no mother, but he had
not the slightest desire to have one. He thought them very over-rated
persons. Wendy, however, felt at once that she was in the presence of a
tragedy.

“O Peter, no wonder you were crying,” she said, and got out of bed and
ran to him.

“I wasn't crying about mothers,” he said rather indignantly. “I was
crying because I can't get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasn't
crying.”

“It has come off?”

“Yes.”

Then Wendy saw the shadow on the floor, looking so draggled, and she was
frightfully sorry for Peter. “How awful!” she said, but she could not
help smiling when she saw that he had been trying to stick it on with
soap. How exactly like a boy!

Fortunately she knew at once what to do. “It must be sewn on,” she said,
just a little patronisingly.

“What's sewn?” he asked.

“You're dreadfully ignorant.”

“No, I'm not.”

But she was exulting in his ignorance. “I shall sew it on for you, my
little man,” she said, though he was tall as herself, and she got out
her housewife [sewing bag], and sewed the shadow on to Peter's foot.

“I daresay it will hurt a little,” she warned him.

“Oh, I shan't cry,” said Peter, who was already of the opinion that he
had never cried in his life. And he clenched his teeth and did not
cry, and soon his shadow was behaving properly, though still a little
creased.

“Perhaps I should have ironed it,” Wendy said thoughtfully, but Peter,
boylike, was indifferent to appearances, and he was now jumping about in
the wildest glee. Alas, he had already forgotten that he owed his bliss
to Wendy. He thought he had attached the shadow himself. “How clever I
am!” he crowed rapturously, “oh, the cleverness of me!”

It is humiliating to have to confess that this conceit of Peter was
one of his most fascinating qualities. To put it with brutal frankness,
there never was a cockier boy.

But for the moment Wendy was shocked. “You conceit [braggart],” she
exclaimed, with frightful sarcasm; “of course I did nothing!”

“You did a little,” Peter said carelessly, and continued to dance.

“A little!” she replied with hauteur [pride]; “if I am no use I can at
least withdraw,” and she sprang in the most dignified way into bed and
covered her face with the blankets.

To induce her to look up he pretended to be going away, and when this
failed he sat on the end of the bed and tapped her gently with his foot.
“Wendy,” he said, “don't withdraw. I can't help crowing, Wendy, when
I'm pleased with myself.” Still she would not look up, though she was
listening eagerly. “Wendy,” he continued, in a voice that no woman has
ever yet been able to resist, “Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty
boys.”

Now Wendy was every inch a woman, though there were not very many
inches, and she peeped out of the bed-clothes.

“Do you really think so, Peter?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I think it's perfectly sweet of you,” she declared, “and I'll get up
again,” and she sat with him on the side of the bed. She also said
she would give him a kiss if he liked, but Peter did not know what she
meant, and he held out his hand expectantly.

“Surely you know what a kiss is?” she asked, aghast.

“I shall know when you give it to me,” he replied stiffly, and not to
hurt his feeling she gave him a thimble.

“Now,” said he, “shall I give you a kiss?” and she replied with a slight
primness, “If you please.” She made herself rather cheap by inclining
her face toward him, but he merely dropped an acorn button into her
hand, so she slowly returned her face to where it had been before, and
said nicely that she would wear his kiss on the chain around her neck.
It was lucky that she did put it on that chain, for it was afterwards to
save her life.

When people in our set are introduced, it is customary for them to
ask each other's age, and so Wendy, who always liked to do the correct
thing, asked Peter how old he was. It was not really a happy question to
ask him; it was like an examination paper that asks grammar, when what
you want to be asked is Kings of England.

“I don't know,” he replied uneasily, “but I am quite young.” He really
knew nothing about it, he had merely suspicions, but he said at a
venture, “Wendy, I ran away the day I was born.”

Wendy was quite surprised, but interested; and she indicated in the
charming drawing-room manner, by a touch on her night-gown, that he
could sit nearer her.

“It was because I heard father and mother,” he explained in a low
voice, “talking about what I was to be when I became a man.” He was
extraordinarily agitated now. “I don't want ever to be a man,” he said
with passion. “I want always to be a little boy and to have fun. So
I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long long time among the
fairies.”

She gave him a look of the most intense admiration, and he thought it
was because he had run away, but it was really because he knew fairies.
Wendy had lived such a home life that to know fairies struck her as
quite delightful. She poured out questions about them, to his surprise,
for they were rather a nuisance to him, getting in his way and so on,
and indeed he sometimes had to give them a hiding [spanking]. Still, he
liked them on the whole, and he told her about the beginning of fairies.

“You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its
laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about,
and that was the beginning of fairies.”

Tedious talk this, but being a stay-at-home she liked it.

“And so,” he went on good-naturedly, “there ought to be one fairy for
every boy and girl.”

“Ought to be? Isn't there?”

“No. You see children know such a lot now, they soon don't believe in
fairies, and every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,'
there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.”

Really, he thought they had now talked enough about fairies, and it
struck him that Tinker Bell was keeping very quiet. “I can't think where
she has gone to,” he said, rising, and he called Tink by name. Wendy's
heart went flutter with a sudden thrill.

“Peter,” she cried, clutching him, “you don't mean to tell me that there
is a fairy in this room!”

“She was here just now,” he said a little impatiently. “You don't hear
her, do you?” and they both listened.

“The only sound I hear,” said Wendy, “is like a tinkle of bells.”

“Well, that's Tink, that's the fairy language. I think I hear her too.”

The sound came from the chest of drawers, and Peter made a merry face.
No one could ever look quite so merry as Peter, and the loveliest of
gurgles was his laugh. He had his first laugh still.

“Wendy,” he whispered gleefully, “I do believe I shut her up in the
drawer!”

He let poor Tink out of the drawer, and she flew about the nursery
screaming with fury. “You shouldn't say such things,” Peter retorted.
“Of course I'm very sorry, but how could I know you were in the drawer?”

Wendy was not listening to him. “O Peter,” she cried, “if she would only
stand still and let me see her!”

“They hardly ever stand still,” he said, but for one moment Wendy saw
the romantic figure come to rest on the cuckoo clock. “O the lovely!”
 she cried, though Tink's face was still distorted with passion.

“Tink,” said Peter amiably, “this lady says she wishes you were her
fairy.”

Tinker Bell answered insolently.

“What does she say, Peter?”

He had to translate. “She is not very polite. She says you are a great
[huge] ugly girl, and that she is my fairy.”

He tried to argue with Tink. “You know you can't be my fairy, Tink,
because I am an gentleman and you are a lady.”

To this Tink replied in these words, “You silly ass,” and disappeared
into the bathroom. “She is quite a common fairy,” Peter explained
apologetically, “she is called Tinker Bell because she mends the pots
and kettles [tinker = tin worker].” [Similar to “cinder” plus “elle” to
get Cinderella]

They were together in the armchair by this time, and Wendy plied him
with more questions.

“If you don't live in Kensington Gardens now--”

“Sometimes I do still.”

“But where do you live mostly now?”

“With the lost boys.”

“Who are they?”

“They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the
nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven
days they are sent far away to the Neverland to defray expenses. I'm
captain.”

“What fun it must be!”

“Yes,” said cunning Peter, “but we are rather lonely. You see we have no
female companionship.”

“Are none of the others girls?”

“Oh, no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their
prams.”

This flattered Wendy immensely. “I think,” she said, “it is perfectly
lovely the way you talk about girls; John there just despises us.”

For reply Peter rose and kicked John out of bed, blankets and all; one
kick. This seemed to Wendy rather forward for a first meeting, and she
told him with spirit that he was not captain in her house. However,
John continued to sleep so placidly on the floor that she allowed him
to remain there. “And I know you meant to be kind,” she said, relenting,
“so you may give me a kiss.”

For the moment she had forgotten his ignorance about kisses. “I thought
you would want it back,” he said a little bitterly, and offered to
return her the thimble.

“Oh dear,” said the nice Wendy, “I don't mean a kiss, I mean a thimble.”

“What's that?”

“It's like this.” She kissed him.

“Funny!” said Peter gravely. “Now shall I give you a thimble?”

“If you wish to,” said Wendy, keeping her head erect this time.

Peter thimbled her, and almost immediately she screeched. “What is it,
Wendy?”

“It was exactly as if someone were pulling my hair.”

“That must have been Tink. I never knew her so naughty before.”

And indeed Tink was darting about again, using offensive language.

“She says she will do that to you, Wendy, every time I give you a
thimble.”

“But why?”

“Why, Tink?”

Again Tink replied, “You silly ass.” Peter could not understand why,
but Wendy understood, and she was just slightly disappointed when he
admitted that he came to the nursery window not to see her but to listen
to stories.

“You see, I don't know any stories. None of the lost boys knows any
stories.”

“How perfectly awful,” Wendy said.

“Do you know,” Peter asked “why swallows build in the eaves of houses?
It is to listen to the stories. O Wendy, your mother was telling you
such a lovely story.”

“Which story was it?”

“About the prince who couldn't find the lady who wore the glass
slipper.”

“Peter,” said Wendy excitedly, “that was Cinderella, and he found her,
and they lived happily ever after.”

Peter was so glad that he rose from the floor, where they had been
sitting, and hurried to the window.

“Where are you going?” she cried with misgiving.

“To tell the other boys.”

“Don't go Peter,” she entreated, “I know such lots of stories.”

Those were her precise words, so there can be no denying that it was she
who first tempted him.

He came back, and there was a greedy look in his eyes now which ought to
have alarmed her, but did not.

“Oh, the stories I could tell to the boys!” she cried, and then Peter
gripped her and began to draw her toward the window.

“Let me go!” she ordered him.

“Wendy, do come with me and tell the other boys.”

Of course she was very pleased to be asked, but she said, “Oh dear, I
can't. Think of mummy! Besides, I can't fly.”

“I'll teach you.”

“Oh, how lovely to fly.”

“I'll teach you how to jump on the wind's back, and then away we go.”

“Oo!” she exclaimed rapturously.

“Wendy, Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be
flying about with me saying funny things to the stars.”

“Oo!”

“And, Wendy, there are mermaids.”

“Mermaids! With tails?”

“Such long tails.”

“Oh,” cried Wendy, “to see a mermaid!”

He had become frightfully cunning. “Wendy,” he said, “how we should all
respect you.”

She was wriggling her body in distress. It was quite as if she were
trying to remain on the nursery floor.

But he had no pity for her.

“Wendy,” he said, the sly one, “you could tuck us in at night.”

“Oo!”

“None of us has ever been tucked in at night.”

“Oo,” and her arms went out to him.

“And you could darn our clothes, and make pockets for us. None of us has
any pockets.”

How could she resist. “Of course it's awfully fascinating!” she cried.
“Peter, would you teach John and Michael to fly too?”

“If you like,” he said indifferently, and she ran to John and Michael
and shook them. “Wake up,” she cried, “Peter Pan has come and he is to
teach us to fly.”

John rubbed his eyes. “Then I shall get up,” he said. Of course he was
on the floor already. “Hallo,” he said, “I am up!”

Michael was up by this time also, looking as sharp as a knife with six
blades and a saw, but Peter suddenly signed silence. Their faces assumed
the awful craftiness of children listening for sounds from the grown-up
world. All was as still as salt. Then everything was right. No, stop!
Everything was wrong. Nana, who had been barking distressfully all the
evening, was quiet now. It was her silence they had heard.

“Out with the light! Hide! Quick!” cried John, taking command for the
only time throughout the whole adventure. And thus when Liza entered,
holding Nana, the nursery seemed quite its old self, very dark, and
you would have sworn you heard its three wicked inmates breathing
angelically as they slept. They were really doing it artfully from
behind the window curtains.

Liza was in a bad temper, for she was mixing the Christmas puddings in
the kitchen, and had been drawn from them, with a raisin still on her
cheek, by Nana's absurd suspicions. She thought the best way of getting
a little quiet was to take Nana to the nursery for a moment, but in
custody of course.

“There, you suspicious brute,” she said, not sorry that Nana was in
disgrace. “They are perfectly safe, aren't they? Every one of the little
angels sound asleep in bed. Listen to their gentle breathing.”

Here Michael, encouraged by his success, breathed so loudly that they
were nearly detected. Nana knew that kind of breathing, and she tried to
drag herself out of Liza's clutches.

But Liza was dense. “No more of it, Nana,” she said sternly, pulling
her out of the room. “I warn you if you bark again I shall go straight
for master and missus and bring them home from the party, and then, oh,
won't master whip you, just.”

She tied the unhappy dog up again, but do you think Nana ceased to bark?
Bring master and missus home from the party! Why, that was just what she
wanted. Do you think she cared whether she was whipped so long as her
charges were safe? Unfortunately Liza returned to her puddings, and
Nana, seeing that no help would come from her, strained and strained at
the chain until at last she broke it. In another moment she had burst
into the dining-room of 27 and flung up her paws to heaven, her most
expressive way of making a communication. Mr. and Mrs. Darling knew at
once that something terrible was happening in their nursery, and without
a good-bye to their hostess they rushed into the street.

But it was now ten minutes since three scoundrels had been breathing
behind the curtains, and Peter Pan can do a great deal in ten minutes.

We now return to the nursery.

“It's all right,” John announced, emerging from his hiding-place. “I
say, Peter, can you really fly?”

Instead of troubling to answer him Peter flew around the room, taking
the mantelpiece on the way.

“How topping!” said John and Michael.

“How sweet!” cried Wendy.

“Yes, I'm sweet, oh, I am sweet!” said Peter, forgetting his manners
again.

It looked delightfully easy, and they tried it first from the floor and
then from the beds, but they always went down instead of up.

“I say, how do you do it?” asked John, rubbing his knee. He was quite a
practical boy.

“You just think lovely wonderful thoughts,” Peter explained, “and they
lift you up in the air.”

He showed them again.

“You're so nippy at it,” John said, “couldn't you do it very slowly
once?”

Peter did it both slowly and quickly. “I've got it now, Wendy!” cried
John, but soon he found he had not. Not one of them could fly an inch,
though even Michael was in words of two syllables, and Peter did not
know A from Z.

Of course Peter had been trifling with them, for no one can fly unless
the fairy dust has been blown on him. Fortunately, as we have mentioned,
one of his hands was messy with it, and he blew some on each of them,
with the most superb results.

“Now just wiggle your shoulders this way,” he said, “and let go.”

They were all on their beds, and gallant Michael let go first. He did
not quite mean to let go, but he did it, and immediately he was borne
across the room.

“I flewed!” he screamed while still in mid-air.

John let go and met Wendy near the bathroom.

“Oh, lovely!”

“Oh, ripping!”

“Look at me!”

“Look at me!”

“Look at me!”

They were not nearly so elegant as Peter, they could not help kicking a
little, but their heads were bobbing against the ceiling, and there is
almost nothing so delicious as that. Peter gave Wendy a hand at first,
but had to desist, Tink was so indignant.

Up and down they went, and round and round. Heavenly was Wendy's word.

“I say,” cried John, “why shouldn't we all go out?”

Of course it was to this that Peter had been luring them.

Michael was ready: he wanted to see how long it took him to do a billion
miles. But Wendy hesitated.

“Mermaids!” said Peter again.

“Oo!”

“And there are pirates.”

“Pirates,” cried John, seizing his Sunday hat, “let us go at once.”

It was just at this moment that Mr. and Mrs. Darling hurried with Nana
out of 27. They ran into the middle of the street to look up at the
nursery window; and, yes, it was still shut, but the room was ablaze
with light, and most heart-gripping sight of all, they could see in
shadow on the curtain three little figures in night attire circling
round and round, not on the floor but in the air.

Not three figures, four!

In a tremble they opened the street door. Mr. Darling would have rushed
upstairs, but Mrs. Darling signed him to go softly. She even tried to
make her heart go softly.

Will they reach the nursery in time? If so, how delightful for them, and
we shall all breathe a sigh of relief, but there will be no story. On
the other hand, if they are not in time, I solemnly promise that it will
all come right in the end.

They would have reached the nursery in time had it not been that the
little stars were watching them. Once again the stars blew the window
open, and that smallest star of all called out:

“Cave, Peter!”

Then Peter knew that there was not a moment to lose. “Come,” he cried
imperiously, and soared out at once into the night, followed by John and
Michael and Wendy.

Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana rushed into the nursery too late. The
birds were flown.




Chapter 4 THE FLIGHT

“Second to the right, and straight on till morning.”

That, Peter had told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland; but even
birds, carrying maps and consulting them at windy corners, could not
have sighted it with these instructions. Peter, you see, just said
anything that came into his head.

At first his companions trusted him implicitly, and so great were the
delights of flying that they wasted time circling round church spires or
any other tall objects on the way that took their fancy.

John and Michael raced, Michael getting a start.

They recalled with contempt that not so long ago they had thought
themselves fine fellows for being able to fly round a room.

Not long ago. But how long ago? They were flying over the sea before
this thought began to disturb Wendy seriously. John thought it was their
second sea and their third night.

Sometimes it was dark and sometimes light, and now they were very cold
and again too warm. Did they really feel hungry at times, or were they
merely pretending, because Peter had such a jolly new way of feeding
them? His way was to pursue birds who had food in their mouths suitable
for humans and snatch it from them; then the birds would follow and
snatch it back; and they would all go chasing each other gaily for
miles, parting at last with mutual expressions of good-will. But Wendy
noticed with gentle concern that Peter did not seem to know that this
was rather an odd way of getting your bread and butter, nor even that
there are other ways.

Certainly they did not pretend to be sleepy, they were sleepy; and that
was a danger, for the moment they popped off, down they fell. The awful
thing was that Peter thought this funny.

“There he goes again!” he would cry gleefully, as Michael suddenly
dropped like a stone.

“Save him, save him!” cried Wendy, looking with horror at the cruel
sea far below. Eventually Peter would dive through the air, and catch
Michael just before he could strike the sea, and it was lovely the way
he did it; but he always waited till the last moment, and you felt it
was his cleverness that interested him and not the saving of human life.
Also he was fond of variety, and the sport that engrossed him one moment
would suddenly cease to engage him, so there was always the possibility
that the next time you fell he would let you go.

He could sleep in the air without falling, by merely lying on his back
and floating, but this was, partly at least, because he was so light
that if you got behind him and blew he went faster.

“Do be more polite to him,” Wendy whispered to John, when they were
playing “Follow my Leader.”

“Then tell him to stop showing off,” said John.

When playing Follow my Leader, Peter would fly close to the water and
touch each shark's tail in passing, just as in the street you may run
your finger along an iron railing. They could not follow him in this
with much success, so perhaps it was rather like showing off, especially
as he kept looking behind to see how many tails they missed.

“You must be nice to him,” Wendy impressed on her brothers. “What could
we do if he were to leave us!”

“We could go back,” Michael said.

“How could we ever find our way back without him?”

“Well, then, we could go on,” said John.

“That is the awful thing, John. We should have to go on, for we don't
know how to stop.”

This was true, Peter had forgotten to show them how to stop.

John said that if the worst came to the worst, all they had to do was to
go straight on, for the world was round, and so in time they must come
back to their own window.

“And who is to get food for us, John?”

“I nipped a bit out of that eagle's mouth pretty neatly, Wendy.”

“After the twentieth try,” Wendy reminded him. “And even though we
became good at picking up food, see how we bump against clouds and things
if he is not near to give us a hand.”

Indeed they were constantly bumping. They could now fly strongly, though
they still kicked far too much; but if they saw a cloud in front of
them, the more they tried to avoid it, the more certainly did they bump
into it. If Nana had been with them, she would have had a bandage round
Michael's forehead by this time.

Peter was not with them for the moment, and they felt rather lonely up
there by themselves. He could go so much faster than they that he would
suddenly shoot out of sight, to have some adventure in which they had no
share. He would come down laughing over something fearfully funny he had
been saying to a star, but he had already forgotten what it was, or he
would come up with mermaid scales still sticking to him, and yet not be
able to say for certain what had been happening. It was really rather
irritating to children who had never seen a mermaid.

“And if he forgets them so quickly,” Wendy argued, “how can we expect
that he will go on remembering us?”

Indeed, sometimes when he returned he did not remember them, at least
not well. Wendy was sure of it. She saw recognition come into his eyes
as he was about to pass them the time of day and go on; once even she
had to call him by name.

“I'm Wendy,” she said agitatedly.

He was very sorry. “I say, Wendy,” he whispered to her, “always if you
see me forgetting you, just keep on saying 'I'm Wendy,' and then I'll
remember.”

Of course this was rather unsatisfactory. However, to make amends he
showed them how to lie out flat on a strong wind that was going their
way, and this was such a pleasant change that they tried it several
times and found that they could sleep thus with security. Indeed they
would have slept longer, but Peter tired quickly of sleeping, and soon
he would cry in his captain voice, “We get off here.” So with occasional
tiffs, but on the whole rollicking, they drew near the Neverland; for
after many moons they did reach it, and, what is more, they had been
going pretty straight all the time, not perhaps so much owing to the
guidance of Peter or Tink as because the island was looking for them. It
is only thus that any one may sight those magic shores.

“There it is,” said Peter calmly.

“Where, where?”

“Where all the arrows are pointing.”

Indeed a million golden arrows were pointing it out to the children, all
directed by their friend the sun, who wanted them to be sure of their
way before leaving them for the night.

Wendy and John and Michael stood on tip-toe in the air to get their
first sight of the island. Strange to say, they all recognized it at
once, and until fear fell upon them they hailed it, not as something
long dreamt of and seen at last, but as a familiar friend to whom they
were returning home for the holidays.

“John, there's the lagoon.”

“Wendy, look at the turtles burying their eggs in the sand.”

“I say, John, I see your flamingo with the broken leg!”

“Look, Michael, there's your cave!”

“John, what's that in the brushwood?”

“It's a wolf with her whelps. Wendy, I do believe that's your little
whelp!”

“There's my boat, John, with her sides stove in!”

“No, it isn't. Why, we burned your boat.”

“That's her, at any rate. I say, John, I see the smoke of the redskin
camp!”

“Where? Show me, and I'll tell you by the way smoke curls whether they
are on the war-path.”

“There, just across the Mysterious River.”

“I see now. Yes, they are on the war-path right enough.”

Peter was a little annoyed with them for knowing so much, but if he
wanted to lord it over them his triumph was at hand, for have I not told
you that anon fear fell upon them?

It came as the arrows went, leaving the island in gloom.

In the old days at home the Neverland had always begun to look a little
dark and threatening by bedtime. Then unexplored patches arose in it
and spread, black shadows moved about in them, the roar of the beasts of
prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost the certainty that
you would win. You were quite glad that the night-lights were on. You
even liked Nana to say that this was just the mantelpiece over here, and
that the Neverland was all make-believe.

Of course the Neverland had been make-believe in those days, but it
was real now, and there were no night-lights, and it was getting darker
every moment, and where was Nana?

They had been flying apart, but they huddled close to Peter now. His
careless manner had gone at last, his eyes were sparkling, and a tingle
went through them every time they touched his body. They were now over
the fearsome island, flying so low that sometimes a tree grazed their
feet. Nothing horrid was visible in the air, yet their progress had
become slow and laboured, exactly as if they were pushing their way
through hostile forces. Sometimes they hung in the air until Peter had
beaten on it with his fists.

“They don't want us to land,” he explained.

“Who are they?” Wendy whispered, shuddering.

But he could not or would not say. Tinker Bell had been asleep on his
shoulder, but now he wakened her and sent her on in front.

Sometimes he poised himself in the air, listening intently, with his
hand to his ear, and again he would stare down with eyes so bright that
they seemed to bore two holes to earth. Having done these things, he
went on again.

His courage was almost appalling. “Would you like an adventure now,” he
said casually to John, “or would you like to have your tea first?”

Wendy said “tea first” quickly, and Michael pressed her hand in
gratitude, but the braver John hesitated.

“What kind of adventure?” he asked cautiously.

“There's a pirate asleep in the pampas just beneath us,” Peter told him.
“If you like, we'll go down and kill him.”

“I don't see him,” John said after a long pause.

“I do.”

“Suppose,” John said, a little huskily, “he were to wake up.”

Peter spoke indignantly. “You don't think I would kill him while he was
sleeping! I would wake him first, and then kill him. That's the way I
always do.”

“I say! Do you kill many?”

“Tons.”

John said “How ripping,” but decided to have tea first. He asked if
there were many pirates on the island just now, and Peter said he had
never known so many.

“Who is captain now?”

“Hook,” answered Peter, and his face became very stern as he said that
hated word.

“Jas. Hook?”

“Ay.”

Then indeed Michael began to cry, and even John could speak in gulps
only, for they knew Hook's reputation.

“He was Blackbeard's bo'sun,” John whispered huskily. “He is the worst
of them all. He is the only man of whom Barbecue was afraid.”

“That's him,” said Peter.

“What is he like? Is he big?”

“He is not so big as he was.”

“How do you mean?”

“I cut off a bit of him.”

“You!”

“Yes, me,” said Peter sharply.

“I wasn't meaning to be disrespectful.”

“Oh, all right.”

“But, I say, what bit?”

“His right hand.”

“Then he can't fight now?”

“Oh, can't he just!”

“Left-hander?”

“He has an iron hook instead of a right hand, and he claws with it.”

“Claws!”

“I say, John,” said Peter.

“Yes.”

“Say, 'Ay, ay, sir.'”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“There is one thing,” Peter continued, “that every boy who serves under
me has to promise, and so must you.”

John paled.

“It is this, if we meet Hook in open fight, you must leave him to me.”

“I promise,” John said loyally.

For the moment they were feeling less eerie, because Tink was flying
with them, and in her light they could distinguish each other.
Unfortunately she could not fly so slowly as they, and so she had to go
round and round them in a circle in which they moved as in a halo. Wendy
quite liked it, until Peter pointed out the drawbacks.

“She tells me,” he said, “that the pirates sighted us before the
darkness came, and got Long Tom out.”

“The big gun?”

“Yes. And of course they must see her light, and if they guess we are
near it they are sure to let fly.”

“Wendy!”

“John!”

“Michael!”

“Tell her to go away at once, Peter,” the three cried simultaneously,
but he refused.

“She thinks we have lost the way,” he replied stiffly, “and she is
rather frightened. You don't think I would send her away all by herself
when she is frightened!”

For a moment the circle of light was broken, and something gave Peter a
loving little pinch.

“Then tell her,” Wendy begged, “to put out her light.”

“She can't put it out. That is about the only thing fairies can't do. It
just goes out of itself when she falls asleep, same as the stars.”

“Then tell her to sleep at once,” John almost ordered.

“She can't sleep except when she's sleepy. It is the only other thing
fairies can't do.”

“Seems to me,” growled John, “these are the only two things worth
doing.”

Here he got a pinch, but not a loving one.

“If only one of us had a pocket,” Peter said, “we could carry her in
it.” However, they had set off in such a hurry that there was not a
pocket between the four of them.

He had a happy idea. John's hat!

Tink agreed to travel by hat if it was carried in the hand. John carried
it, though she had hoped to be carried by Peter. Presently Wendy took
the hat, because John said it struck against his knee as he flew; and
this, as we shall see, led to mischief, for Tinker Bell hated to be
under an obligation to Wendy.

In the black topper the light was completely hidden, and they flew on in
silence. It was the stillest silence they had ever known, broken once by
a distant lapping, which Peter explained was the wild beasts drinking at
the ford, and again by a rasping sound that might have been the branches
of trees rubbing together, but he said it was the redskins sharpening
their knives.

Even these noises ceased. To Michael the loneliness was dreadful. “If
only something would make a sound!” he cried.

As if in answer to his request, the air was rent by the most tremendous
crash he had ever heard. The pirates had fired Long Tom at them.

The roar of it echoed through the mountains, and the echoes seemed to
cry savagely, “Where are they, where are they, where are they?”

Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference between an
island of make-believe and the same island come true.

When at last the heavens were steady again, John and Michael
found themselves alone in the darkness. John was treading the air
mechanically, and Michael without knowing how to float was floating.

“Are you shot?” John whispered tremulously.

“I haven't tried [myself out] yet,” Michael whispered back.

We know now that no one had been hit. Peter, however, had been carried
by the wind of the shot far out to sea, while Wendy was blown upwards
with no companion but Tinker Bell.

It would have been well for Wendy if at that moment she had dropped the
hat.

I don't know whether the idea came suddenly to Tink, or whether she had
planned it on the way, but she at once popped out of the hat and began
to lure Wendy to her destruction.

Tink was not all bad; or, rather, she was all bad just now, but, on the
other hand, sometimes she was all good. Fairies have to be one thing or
the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one
feeling only at a time. They are, however, allowed to change, only it
must be a complete change. At present she was full of jealousy of Wendy.
What she said in her lovely tinkle Wendy could not of course understand,
and I believe some of it was bad words, but it sounded kind, and she
flew back and forward, plainly meaning “Follow me, and all will be
well.”

What else could poor Wendy do? She called to Peter and John and Michael,
and got only mocking echoes in reply. She did not yet know that Tink
hated her with the fierce hatred of a very woman. And so, bewildered,
and now staggering in her flight, she followed Tink to her doom.




Chapter 5 THE ISLAND COME TRUE

Feeling that Peter was on his way back, the Neverland had again woke
into life. We ought to use the pluperfect and say wakened, but woke is
better and was always used by Peter.

In his absence things are usually quiet on the island. The fairies take
an hour longer in the morning, the beasts attend to their young, the
redskins feed heavily for six days and nights, and when pirates and
lost boys meet they merely bite their thumbs at each other. But with the
coming of Peter, who hates lethargy, they are under way again: if you
put your ear to the ground now, you would hear the whole island seething
with life.

On this evening the chief forces of the island were disposed as follows.
The lost boys were out looking for Peter, the pirates were out looking
for the lost boys, the redskins were out looking for the pirates, and
the beasts were out looking for the redskins. They were going round and
round the island, but they did not meet because all were going at the
same rate.

All wanted blood except the boys, who liked it as a rule, but to-night
were out to greet their captain. The boys on the island vary, of course,
in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem
to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out; but
at this time there were six of them, counting the twins as two. Let us
pretend to lie here among the sugar-cane and watch them as they steal by
in single file, each with his hand on his dagger.

They are forbidden by Peter to look in the least like him, and they wear
the skins of the bears slain by themselves, in which they are so round
and furry that when they fall they roll. They have therefore become very
sure-footed.

The first to pass is Tootles, not the least brave but the most
unfortunate of all that gallant band. He had been in fewer adventures
than any of them, because the big things constantly happened just when
he had stepped round the corner; all would be quiet, he would take the
opportunity of going off to gather a few sticks for firewood, and
then when he returned the others would be sweeping up the blood. This
ill-luck had given a gentle melancholy to his countenance, but instead
of souring his nature had sweetened it, so that he was quite the
humblest of the boys. Poor kind Tootles, there is danger in the air for
you to-night. Take care lest an adventure is now offered you, which, if
accepted, will plunge you in deepest woe. Tootles, the fairy Tink, who
is bent on mischief this night is looking for a tool [for doing her
mischief], and she thinks you are the most easily tricked of the boys.
'Ware Tinker Bell.

Would that he could hear us, but we are not really on the island, and he
passes by, biting his knuckles.

Next comes Nibs, the gay and debonair, followed by Slightly, who cuts
whistles out of the trees and dances ecstatically to his own tunes.
Slightly is the most conceited of the boys. He thinks he remembers the
days before he was lost, with their manners and customs, and this has
given his nose an offensive tilt. Curly is fourth; he is a pickle, [a
person who gets in pickles-predicaments] and so often has he had to
deliver up his person when Peter said sternly, “Stand forth the one who
did this thing,” that now at the command he stands forth automatically
whether he has done it or not. Last come the Twins, who cannot be
described because we should be sure to be describing the wrong one.
Peter never quite knew what twins were, and his band were not allowed
to know anything he did not know, so these two were always vague about
themselves, and did their best to give satisfaction by keeping close
together in an apologetic sort of way.

The boys vanish in the gloom, and after a pause, but not a long pause,
for things go briskly on the island, come the pirates on their track. We
hear them before they are seen, and it is always the same dreadful song:

     “Avast belay, yo ho, heave to,
     A-pirating we go,
     And if we're parted by a shot
     We're sure to meet below!”

A more villainous-looking lot never hung in a row on Execution dock.
Here, a little in advance, ever and again with his head to the
ground listening, his great arms bare, pieces of eight in his ears as
ornaments, is the handsome Italian Cecco, who cut his name in letters
of blood on the back of the governor of the prison at Gao. That gigantic
black behind him has had many names since he dropped the one with
which dusky mothers still terrify their children on the banks of the
Guadjo-mo. Here is Bill Jukes, every inch of him tattooed, the same Bill
Jukes who got six dozen on the WALRUS from Flint before he would drop
the bag of moidores [Portuguese gold pieces]; and Cookson, said to
be Black Murphy's brother (but this was never proved), and Gentleman
Starkey, once an usher in a public school and still dainty in his ways
of killing; and Skylights (Morgan's Skylights); and the Irish bo'sun
Smee, an oddly genial man who stabbed, so to speak, without offence,
and was the only Non-conformist in Hook's crew; and Noodler, whose
hands were fixed on backwards; and Robt. Mullins and Alf Mason and many
another ruffian long known and feared on the Spanish Main.

In the midst of them, the blackest and largest in that dark setting,
reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas. Hook, of whom it is
said he was the only man that the Sea-Cook feared. He lay at his ease in
a rough chariot drawn and propelled by his men, and instead of a right
hand he had the iron hook with which ever and anon he encouraged them
to increase their pace. As dogs this terrible man treated and addressed
them, and as dogs they obeyed him. In person he was cadaverous [dead
looking] and blackavized [dark faced], and his hair was dressed in long
curls, which at a little distance looked like black candles, and gave a
singularly threatening expression to his handsome countenance. His eyes
were of the blue of the forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy,
save when he was plunging his hook into you, at which time two red spots
appeared in them and lit them up horribly. In manner, something of the
grand seigneur still clung to him, so that he even ripped you up with
an air, and I have been told that he was a RACONTEUR [storyteller] of
repute. He was never more sinister than when he was most polite,
which is probably the truest test of breeding; and the elegance of his
diction, even when he was swearing, no less than the distinction of his
demeanour, showed him one of a different cast from his crew. A man of
indomitable courage, it was said that the only thing he shied at was
the sight of his own blood, which was thick and of an unusual colour.
In dress he somewhat aped the attire associated with the name of Charles
II, having heard it said in some earlier period of his career that he
bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts; and in his mouth
he had a holder of his own contrivance which enabled him to smoke two
cigars at once. But undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron
claw.

Let us now kill a pirate, to show Hook's method. Skylights will do. As
they pass, Skylights lurches clumsily against him, ruffling his lace
collar; the hook shoots forth, there is a tearing sound and one screech,
then the body is kicked aside, and the pirates pass on. He has not even
taken the cigars from his mouth.

Such is the terrible man against whom Peter Pan is pitted. Which will
win?

On the trail of the pirates, stealing noiselessly down the war-path,
which is not visible to inexperienced eyes, come the redskins, every one
of them with his eyes peeled. They carry tomahawks and knives, and their
naked bodies gleam with paint and oil. Strung around them are scalps, of
boys as well as of pirates, for these are the Piccaninny tribe, and not
to be confused with the softer-hearted Delawares or the Hurons. In
the van, on all fours, is Great Big Little Panther, a brave of so many
scalps that in his present position they somewhat impede his progress.
Bringing up the rear, the place of greatest danger, comes Tiger Lily,
proudly erect, a princess in her own right. She is the most beautiful
of dusky Dianas [Diana = goddess of the woods] and the belle of the
Piccaninnies, coquettish [flirting], cold and amorous [loving] by turns;
there is not a brave who would not have the wayward thing to wife, but
she staves off the altar with a hatchet. Observe how they pass over
fallen twigs without making the slightest noise. The only sound to be
heard is their somewhat heavy breathing. The fact is that they are all a
little fat just now after the heavy gorging, but in time they will work
this off. For the moment, however, it constitutes their chief danger.

The redskins disappear as they have come like shadows, and soon their
place is taken by the beasts, a great and motley procession: lions,
tigers, bears, and the innumerable smaller savage things that flee
from them, for every kind of beast, and, more particularly, all the
man-eaters, live cheek by jowl on the favoured island. Their tongues are
hanging out, they are hungry to-night.

When they have passed, comes the last figure of all, a gigantic
crocodile. We shall see for whom she is looking presently.

The crocodile passes, but soon the boys appear again, for the procession
must continue indefinitely until one of the parties stops or changes its
pace. Then quickly they will be on top of each other.

All are keeping a sharp look-out in front, but none suspects that the
danger may be creeping up from behind. This shows how real the island
was.

The first to fall out of the moving circle was the boys. They flung
themselves down on the sward [turf], close to their underground home.

“I do wish Peter would come back,” every one of them said nervously,
though in height and still more in breadth they were all larger than
their captain.

“I am the only one who is not afraid of the pirates,” Slightly said, in
the tone that prevented his being a general favourite; but perhaps some
distant sound disturbed him, for he added hastily, “but I wish he
would come back, and tell us whether he has heard anything more about
Cinderella.”

They talked of Cinderella, and Tootles was confident that his mother
must have been very like her.

It was only in Peter's absence that they could speak of mothers, the
subject being forbidden by him as silly.

“All I remember about my mother,” Nibs told them, “is that she often
said to my father, 'Oh, how I wish I had a cheque-book of my own!' I
don't know what a cheque-book is, but I should just love to give my
mother one.”

While they talked they heard a distant sound. You or I, not being wild
things of the woods, would have heard nothing, but they heard it, and it
was the grim song:

     “Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate life,
     The flag o' skull and bones,
     A merry hour, a hempen rope,
     And hey for Davy Jones.”

At once the lost boys--but where are they? They are no longer there.
Rabbits could not have disappeared more quickly.

I will tell you where they are. With the exception of Nibs, who has
darted away to reconnoitre [look around], they are already in their home
under the ground, a very delightful residence of which we shall see
a good deal presently. But how have they reached it? for there is no
entrance to be seen, not so much as a large stone, which if rolled away,
would disclose the mouth of a cave. Look closely, however, and you may
note that there are here seven large trees, each with a hole in its
hollow trunk as large as a boy. These are the seven entrances to the
home under the ground, for which Hook has been searching in vain these
many moons. Will he find it tonight?

As the pirates advanced, the quick eye of Starkey sighted Nibs
disappearing through the wood, and at once his pistol flashed out. But
an iron claw gripped his shoulder.

“Captain, let go!” he cried, writhing.

Now for the first time we hear the voice of Hook. It was a black voice.
“Put back that pistol first,” it said threateningly.

“It was one of those boys you hate. I could have shot him dead.”

“Ay, and the sound would have brought Tiger Lily's redskins upon us. Do
you want to lose your scalp?”

“Shall I after him, Captain,” asked pathetic Smee, “and tickle him
with Johnny Corkscrew?” Smee had pleasant names for everything, and his
cutlass was Johnny Corkscrew, because he wiggled it in the wound. One
could mention many lovable traits in Smee. For instance, after killing,
it was his spectacles he wiped instead of his weapon.

“Johnny's a silent fellow,” he reminded Hook.

“Not now, Smee,” Hook said darkly. “He is only one, and I want to
mischief all the seven. Scatter and look for them.”

The pirates disappeared among the trees, and in a moment their Captain
and Smee were alone. Hook heaved a heavy sigh, and I know not why it
was, perhaps it was because of the soft beauty of the evening, but there
came over him a desire to confide to his faithful bo'sun the story of
his life. He spoke long and earnestly, but what it was all about Smee,
who was rather stupid, did not know in the least.

Anon [later] he caught the word Peter.

“Most of all,” Hook was saying passionately, “I want their captain,
Peter Pan. 'Twas he cut off my arm.” He brandished the hook
threateningly. “I've waited long to shake his hand with this. Oh, I'll
tear him!”

“And yet,” said Smee, “I have often heard you say that hook was worth a
score of hands, for combing the hair and other homely uses.”

“Ay,” the captain answered, “if I was a mother I would pray to have my
children born with this instead of that,” and he cast a look of pride
upon his iron hand and one of scorn upon the other. Then again he
frowned.

“Peter flung my arm,” he said, wincing, “to a crocodile that happened to
be passing by.”

“I have often,” said Smee, “noticed your strange dread of crocodiles.”

“Not of crocodiles,” Hook corrected him, “but of that one crocodile.” He
lowered his voice. “It liked my arm so much, Smee, that it has followed
me ever since, from sea to sea and from land to land, licking its lips
for the rest of me.”

“In a way,” said Smee, “it's sort of a compliment.”

“I want no such compliments,” Hook barked petulantly. “I want Peter Pan,
who first gave the brute its taste for me.”

He sat down on a large mushroom, and now there was a quiver in his
voice. “Smee,” he said huskily, “that crocodile would have had me before
this, but by a lucky chance it swallowed a clock which goes tick tick
inside it, and so before it can reach me I hear the tick and bolt.” He
laughed, but in a hollow way.

“Some day,” said Smee, “the clock will run down, and then he'll get
you.”

Hook wetted his dry lips. “Ay,” he said, “that's the fear that haunts
me.”

Since sitting down he had felt curiously warm. “Smee,” he said, “this
seat is hot.” He jumped up. “Odds bobs, hammer and tongs I'm burning.”

They examined the mushroom, which was of a size and solidity unknown
on the mainland; they tried to pull it up, and it came away at once in
their hands, for it had no root. Stranger still, smoke began at once
to ascend. The pirates looked at each other. “A chimney!” they both
exclaimed.

They had indeed discovered the chimney of the home under the ground. It
was the custom of the boys to stop it with a mushroom when enemies were
in the neighbourhood.

Not only smoke came out of it. There came also children's voices, for
so safe did the boys feel in their hiding-place that they were gaily
chattering. The pirates listened grimly, and then replaced the mushroom.
They looked around them and noted the holes in the seven trees.

“Did you hear them say Peter Pan's from home?” Smee whispered, fidgeting
with Johnny Corkscrew.

Hook nodded. He stood for a long time lost in thought, and at last a
curdling smile lit up his swarthy face. Smee had been waiting for it.
“Unrip your plan, captain,” he cried eagerly.

“To return to the ship,” Hook replied slowly through his teeth, “and
cook a large rich cake of a jolly thickness with green sugar on it.
There can be but one room below, for there is but one chimney. The silly
moles had not the sense to see that they did not need a door apiece.
That shows they have no mother. We will leave the cake on the shore
of the Mermaids' Lagoon. These boys are always swimming about there,
playing with the mermaids. They will find the cake and they will gobble
it up, because, having no mother, they don't know how dangerous 'tis to
eat rich damp cake.” He burst into laughter, not hollow laughter now,
but honest laughter. “Aha, they will die.”

Smee had listened with growing admiration.

“It's the wickedest, prettiest policy ever I heard of!” he cried, and in
their exultation they danced and sang:

     “Avast, belay, when I appear,
     By fear they're overtook;
     Nought's left upon your bones when you
     Have shaken claws with Hook.”

They began the verse, but they never finished it, for another sound
broke in and stilled them. There was at first such a tiny sound that a
leaf might have fallen on it and smothered it, but as it came nearer it
was more distinct.

Tick tick tick tick!

Hook stood shuddering, one foot in the air.

“The crocodile!” he gasped, and bounded away, followed by his bo'sun.

It was indeed the crocodile. It had passed the redskins, who were now on
the trail of the other pirates. It oozed on after Hook.

Once more the boys emerged into the open; but the dangers of the night
were not yet over, for presently Nibs rushed breathless into their
midst, pursued by a pack of wolves. The tongues of the pursuers were
hanging out; the baying of them was horrible.

“Save me, save me!” cried Nibs, falling on the ground.

“But what can we do, what can we do?”

It was a high compliment to Peter that at that dire moment their
thoughts turned to him.

“What would Peter do?” they cried simultaneously.

Almost in the same breath they cried, “Peter would look at them through
his legs.”

And then, “Let us do what Peter would do.”

It is quite the most successful way of defying wolves, and as one boy
they bent and looked through their legs. The next moment is the long
one, but victory came quickly, for as the boys advanced upon them in the
terrible attitude, the wolves dropped their tails and fled.

Now Nibs rose from the ground, and the others thought that his staring
eyes still saw the wolves. But it was not wolves he saw.

“I have seen a wonderfuller thing,” he cried, as they gathered round him
eagerly. “A great white bird. It is flying this way.”

“What kind of a bird, do you think?”

“I don't know,” Nibs said, awestruck, “but it looks so weary, and as it
flies it moans, 'Poor Wendy.'”

“Poor Wendy?”

“I remember,” said Slightly instantly, “there are birds called Wendies.”

“See, it comes!” cried Curly, pointing to Wendy in the heavens.

Wendy was now almost overhead, and they could hear her plaintive cry.
But more distinct came the shrill voice of Tinker Bell. The jealous
fairy had now cast off all disguise of friendship, and was darting
at her victim from every direction, pinching savagely each time she
touched.

“Hullo, Tink,” cried the wondering boys.

Tink's reply rang out: “Peter wants you to shoot the Wendy.”

It was not in their nature to question when Peter ordered. “Let us do
what Peter wishes!” cried the simple boys. “Quick, bows and arrows!”

All but Tootles popped down their trees. He had a bow and arrow with
him, and Tink noted it, and rubbed her little hands.

“Quick, Tootles, quick,” she screamed. “Peter will be so pleased.”

Tootles excitedly fitted the arrow to his bow. “Out of the way, Tink,”
 he shouted, and then he fired, and Wendy fluttered to the ground with an
arrow in her breast.




Chapter 6 THE LITTLE HOUSE

Foolish Tootles was standing like a conqueror over Wendy's body when the
other boys sprang, armed, from their trees.

“You are too late,” he cried proudly, “I have shot the Wendy. Peter will
be so pleased with me.”

Overhead Tinker Bell shouted “Silly ass!” and darted into hiding. The
others did not hear her. They had crowded round Wendy, and as they
looked a terrible silence fell upon the wood. If Wendy's heart had been
beating they would all have heard it.

Slightly was the first to speak. “This is no bird,” he said in a scared
voice. “I think this must be a lady.”

“A lady?” said Tootles, and fell a-trembling.

“And we have killed her,” Nibs said hoarsely.

They all whipped off their caps.

“Now I see,” Curly said: “Peter was bringing her to us.” He threw
himself sorrowfully on the ground.

“A lady to take care of us at last,” said one of the twins, “and you
have killed her!”

They were sorry for him, but sorrier for themselves, and when he took a
step nearer them they turned from him.

Tootles' face was very white, but there was a dignity about him now that
had never been there before.

“I did it,” he said, reflecting. “When ladies used to come to me in
dreams, I said, 'Pretty mother, pretty mother.' But when at last she
really came, I shot her.”

He moved slowly away.

“Don't go,” they called in pity.

“I must,” he answered, shaking; “I am so afraid of Peter.”

It was at this tragic moment that they heard a sound which made the
heart of every one of them rise to his mouth. They heard Peter crow.

“Peter!” they cried, for it was always thus that he signalled his
return.

“Hide her,” they whispered, and gathered hastily around Wendy. But
Tootles stood aloof.

Again came that ringing crow, and Peter dropped in front of them.
“Greetings, boys,” he cried, and mechanically they saluted, and then
again was silence.

He frowned.

“I am back,” he said hotly, “why do you not cheer?”

They opened their mouths, but the cheers would not come. He overlooked
it in his haste to tell the glorious tidings.

“Great news, boys,” he cried, “I have brought at last a mother for you
all.”

Still no sound, except a little thud from Tootles as he dropped on his
knees.

“Have you not seen her?” asked Peter, becoming troubled. “She flew this
way.”

“Ah me!” one voice said, and another said, “Oh, mournful day.”

Tootles rose. “Peter,” he said quietly, “I will show her to you,” and
when the others would still have hidden her he said, “Back, twins, let
Peter see.”

So they all stood back, and let him see, and after he had looked for a
little time he did not know what to do next.

“She is dead,” he said uncomfortably. “Perhaps she is frightened at
being dead.”

He thought of hopping off in a comic sort of way till he was out of
sight of her, and then never going near the spot any more. They would
all have been glad to follow if he had done this.

But there was the arrow. He took it from her heart and faced his band.

“Whose arrow?” he demanded sternly.

“Mine, Peter,” said Tootles on his knees.

“Oh, dastard hand,” Peter said, and he raised the arrow to use it as a
dagger.

Tootles did not flinch. He bared his breast. “Strike, Peter,” he said
firmly, “strike true.”

Twice did Peter raise the arrow, and twice did his hand fall. “I cannot
strike,” he said with awe, “there is something stays my hand.”

All looked at him in wonder, save Nibs, who fortunately looked at Wendy.

“It is she,” he cried, “the Wendy lady, see, her arm!”

Wonderful to relate [tell], Wendy had raised her arm. Nibs bent over
her and listened reverently. “I think she said, 'Poor Tootles,'” he
whispered.

“She lives,” Peter said briefly.

Slightly cried instantly, “The Wendy lady lives.”

Then Peter knelt beside her and found his button. You remember she had
put it on a chain that she wore round her neck.

“See,” he said, “the arrow struck against this. It is the kiss I gave
her. It has saved her life.”

“I remember kisses,” Slightly interposed quickly, “let me see it. Ay,
that's a kiss.”

Peter did not hear him. He was begging Wendy to get better quickly, so
that he could show her the mermaids. Of course she could not answer yet,
being still in a frightful faint; but from overhead came a wailing note.

“Listen to Tink,” said Curly, “she is crying because the Wendy lives.”

Then they had to tell Peter of Tink's crime, and almost never had they
seen him look so stern.

“Listen, Tinker Bell,” he cried, “I am your friend no more. Begone from
me for ever.”

She flew on to his shoulder and pleaded, but he brushed her off. Not
until Wendy again raised her arm did he relent sufficiently to say,
“Well, not for ever, but for a whole week.”

Do you think Tinker Bell was grateful to Wendy for raising her arm? Oh
dear no, never wanted to pinch her so much. Fairies indeed are strange,
and Peter, who understood them best, often cuffed [slapped] them.

But what to do with Wendy in her present delicate state of health?

“Let us carry her down into the house,” Curly suggested.

“Ay,” said Slightly, “that is what one does with ladies.”

“No, no,” Peter said, “you must not touch her. It would not be
sufficiently respectful.”

“That,” said Slightly, “is what I was thinking.”

“But if she lies there,” Tootles said, “she will die.”

“Ay, she will die,” Slightly admitted, “but there is no way out.”

“Yes, there is,” cried Peter. “Let us build a little house round her.”

They were all delighted. “Quick,” he ordered them, “bring me each of you
the best of what we have. Gut our house. Be sharp.”

In a moment they were as busy as tailors the night before a wedding.
They skurried this way and that, down for bedding, up for firewood, and
while they were at it, who should appear but John and Michael. As they
dragged along the ground they fell asleep standing, stopped, woke up,
moved another step and slept again.

“John, John,” Michael would cry, “wake up! Where is Nana, John, and
mother?”

And then John would rub his eyes and mutter, “It is true, we did fly.”

You may be sure they were very relieved to find Peter.

“Hullo, Peter,” they said.

“Hullo,” replied Peter amicably, though he had quite forgotten them.
He was very busy at the moment measuring Wendy with his feet to see
how large a house she would need. Of course he meant to leave room for
chairs and a table. John and Michael watched him.

“Is Wendy asleep?” they asked.

“Yes.”

“John,” Michael proposed, “let us wake her and get her to make supper
for us,” but as he said it some of the other boys rushed on carrying
branches for the building of the house. “Look at them!” he cried.

“Curly,” said Peter in his most captainy voice, “see that these boys
help in the building of the house.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“Build a house?” exclaimed John.

“For the Wendy,” said Curly.

“For Wendy?” John said, aghast. “Why, she is only a girl!”

“That,” explained Curly, “is why we are her servants.”

“You? Wendy's servants!”

“Yes,” said Peter, “and you also. Away with them.”

The astounded brothers were dragged away to hack and hew and carry.
“Chairs and a fender [fireplace] first,” Peter ordered. “Then we shall
build a house round them.”

“Ay,” said Slightly, “that is how a house is built; it all comes back to
me.”

Peter thought of everything. “Slightly,” he cried, “fetch a doctor.”

“Ay, ay,” said Slightly at once, and disappeared, scratching his head.
But he knew Peter must be obeyed, and he returned in a moment, wearing
John's hat and looking solemn.

“Please, sir,” said Peter, going to him, “are you a doctor?”

The difference between him and the other boys at such a time was that
they knew it was make-believe, while to him make-believe and true were
exactly the same thing. This sometimes troubled them, as when they had
to make-believe that they had had their dinners.

If they broke down in their make-believe he rapped them on the knuckles.

“Yes, my little man,” Slightly anxiously replied, who had chapped
knuckles.

“Please, sir,” Peter explained, “a lady lies very ill.”

She was lying at their feet, but Slightly had the sense not to see her.

“Tut, tut, tut,” he said, “where does she lie?”

“In yonder glade.”

“I will put a glass thing in her mouth,” said Slightly, and he
made-believe to do it, while Peter waited. It was an anxious moment when
the glass thing was withdrawn.

“How is she?” inquired Peter.

“Tut, tut, tut,” said Slightly, “this has cured her.”

“I am glad!” Peter cried.

“I will call again in the evening,” Slightly said; “give her beef tea
out of a cup with a spout to it;” but after he had returned the hat
to John he blew big breaths, which was his habit on escaping from a
difficulty.

In the meantime the wood had been alive with the sound of axes; almost
everything needed for a cosy dwelling already lay at Wendy's feet.

“If only we knew,” said one, “the kind of house she likes best.”

“Peter,” shouted another, “she is moving in her sleep.”

“Her mouth opens,” cried a third, looking respectfully into it. “Oh,
lovely!”

“Perhaps she is going to sing in her sleep,” said Peter. “Wendy, sing
the kind of house you would like to have.”

Immediately, without opening her eyes, Wendy began to sing:

     “I wish I had a pretty house,
     The littlest ever seen,
     With funny little red walls
     And roof of mossy green.”

They gurgled with joy at this, for by the greatest good luck the
branches they had brought were sticky with red sap, and all the ground
was carpeted with moss. As they rattled up the little house they broke
into song themselves:

     “We've built the little walls and roof
     And made a lovely door,
     So tell us, mother Wendy,
     What are you wanting more?”

To this she answered greedily:

     “Oh, really next I think I'll have
     Gay windows all about,
     With roses peeping in, you know,
     And babies peeping out.”

With a blow of their fists they made windows, and large yellow leaves
were the blinds. But roses--?

“Roses,” cried Peter sternly.

Quickly they made-believe to grow the loveliest roses up the walls.

Babies?

To prevent Peter ordering babies they hurried into song again:

     “We've made the roses peeping out,
     The babes are at the door,
     We cannot make ourselves, you know,
     'cos we've been made before.”

Peter, seeing this to be a good idea, at once pretended that it was his
own. The house was quite beautiful, and no doubt Wendy was very cosy
within, though, of course, they could no longer see her. Peter strode
up and down, ordering finishing touches. Nothing escaped his eagle eyes.
Just when it seemed absolutely finished:

“There's no knocker on the door,” he said.

They were very ashamed, but Tootles gave the sole of his shoe, and it
made an excellent knocker.

Absolutely finished now, they thought.

Not of bit of it. “There's no chimney,” Peter said; “we must have a
chimney.”

“It certainly does need a chimney,” said John importantly. This gave
Peter an idea. He snatched the hat off John's head, knocked out the
bottom [top], and put the hat on the roof. The little house was so
pleased to have such a capital chimney that, as if to say thank you,
smoke immediately began to come out of the hat.

Now really and truly it was finished. Nothing remained to do but to
knock.

“All look your best,” Peter warned them; “first impressions are awfully
important.”

He was glad no one asked him what first impressions are; they were all
too busy looking their best.

He knocked politely, and now the wood was as still as the children, not
a sound to be heard except from Tinker Bell, who was watching from a
branch and openly sneering.

What the boys were wondering was, would any one answer the knock? If a
lady, what would she be like?

The door opened and a lady came out. It was Wendy. They all whipped off
their hats.

She looked properly surprised, and this was just how they had hoped she
would look.

“Where am I?” she said.

Of course Slightly was the first to get his word in. “Wendy lady,” he
said rapidly, “for you we built this house.”

“Oh, say you're pleased,” cried Nibs.

“Lovely, darling house,” Wendy said, and they were the very words they
had hoped she would say.

“And we are your children,” cried the twins.

Then all went on their knees, and holding out their arms cried, “O Wendy
lady, be our mother.”

“Ought I?” Wendy said, all shining. “Of course it's frightfully
fascinating, but you see I am only a little girl. I have no real
experience.”

“That doesn't matter,” said Peter, as if he were the only person present
who knew all about it, though he was really the one who knew least.
“What we need is just a nice motherly person.”

“Oh dear!” Wendy said, “you see, I feel that is exactly what I am.”

“It is, it is,” they all cried; “we saw it at once.”

“Very well,” she said, “I will do my best. Come inside at once, you
naughty children; I am sure your feet are damp. And before I put you to
bed I have just time to finish the story of Cinderella.”

In they went; I don't know how there was room for them, but you can
squeeze very tight in the Neverland. And that was the first of the many
joyous evenings they had with Wendy. By and by she tucked them up in the
great bed in the home under the trees, but she herself slept that night
in the little house, and Peter kept watch outside with drawn sword, for
the pirates could be heard carousing far away and the wolves were on the
prowl. The little house looked so cosy and safe in the darkness, with
a bright light showing through its blinds, and the chimney smoking
beautifully, and Peter standing on guard. After a time he fell asleep,
and some unsteady fairies had to climb over him on their way home from
an orgy. Any of the other boys obstructing the fairy path at night they
would have mischiefed, but they just tweaked Peter's nose and passed on.




Chapter 7 THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND

One of the first things Peter did next day was to measure Wendy and John
and Michael for hollow trees. Hook, you remember, had sneered at the
boys for thinking they needed a tree apiece, but this was ignorance, for
unless your tree fitted you it was difficult to go up and down, and no
two of the boys were quite the same size. Once you fitted, you drew in
[let out] your breath at the top, and down you went at exactly the
right speed, while to ascend you drew in and let out alternately, and so
wriggled up. Of course, when you have mastered the action you are able
to do these things without thinking of them, and nothing can be more
graceful.

But you simply must fit, and Peter measures you for your tree as
carefully as for a suit of clothes: the only difference being that the
clothes are made to fit you, while you have to be made to fit the tree.
Usually it is done quite easily, as by your wearing too many garments
or too few, but if you are bumpy in awkward places or the only available
tree is an odd shape, Peter does some things to you, and after that you
fit. Once you fit, great care must be taken to go on fitting, and this,
as Wendy was to discover to her delight, keeps a whole family in perfect
condition.

Wendy and Michael fitted their trees at the first try, but John had to
be altered a little.

After a few days' practice they could go up and down as gaily as buckets
in a well. And how ardently they grew to love their home under the
ground; especially Wendy. It consisted of one large room, as all houses
should do, with a floor in which you could dig [for worms] if you wanted
to go fishing, and in this floor grew stout mushrooms of a charming
colour, which were used as stools. A Never tree tried hard to grow in
the centre of the room, but every morning they sawed the trunk through,
level with the floor. By tea-time it was always about two feet high, and
then they put a door on top of it, the whole thus becoming a table;
as soon as they cleared away, they sawed off the trunk again, and thus
there was more room to play. There was an enormous fireplace which was
in almost any part of the room where you cared to light it, and across
this Wendy stretched strings, made of fibre, from which she suspended
her washing. The bed was tilted against the wall by day, and let down at
6:30, when it filled nearly half the room; and all the boys slept in it,
except Michael, lying like sardines in a tin. There was a strict rule
against turning round until one gave the signal, when all turned at
once. Michael should have used it also, but Wendy would have [desired]
a baby, and he was the littlest, and you know what women are, and the
short and long of it is that he was hung up in a basket.

It was rough and simple, and not unlike what baby bears would have made
of an underground house in the same circumstances. But there was one
recess in the wall, no larger than a bird-cage, which was the private
apartment of Tinker Bell. It could be shut off from the rest of
the house by a tiny curtain, which Tink, who was most fastidious
[particular], always kept drawn when dressing or undressing. No woman,
however large, could have had a more exquisite boudoir [dressing room]
and bed-chamber combined. The couch, as she always called it, was
a genuine Queen Mab, with club legs; and she varied the bedspreads
according to what fruit-blossom was in season. Her mirror was a
Puss-in-Boots, of which there are now only three, unchipped, known to
fairy dealers; the washstand was Pie-crust and reversible, the chest
of drawers an authentic Charming the Sixth, and the carpet and rugs the
best (the early) period of Margery and Robin. There was a chandelier
from Tiddlywinks for the look of the thing, but of course she lit the
residence herself. Tink was very contemptuous of the rest of the house,
as indeed was perhaps inevitable, and her chamber, though beautiful,
looked rather conceited, having the appearance of a nose permanently
turned up.

I suppose it was all especially entrancing to Wendy, because those
rampagious boys of hers gave her so much to do. Really there were whole
weeks when, except perhaps with a stocking in the evening, she was never
above ground. The cooking, I can tell you, kept her nose to the pot, and
even if there was nothing in it, even if there was no pot, she had to
keep watching that it came aboil just the same. You never exactly
knew whether there would be a real meal or just a make-believe, it all
depended upon Peter's whim: he could eat, really eat, if it was part of
a game, but he could not stodge [cram down the food] just to feel
stodgy [stuffed with food], which is what most children like better than
anything else; the next best thing being to talk about it. Make-believe
was so real to him that during a meal of it you could see him getting
rounder. Of course it was trying, but you simply had to follow his lead,
and if you could prove to him that you were getting loose for your tree
he let you stodge.

Wendy's favourite time for sewing and darning was after they had all
gone to bed. Then, as she expressed it, she had a breathing time for
herself; and she occupied it in making new things for them, and putting
double pieces on the knees, for they were all most frightfully hard on
their knees.

When she sat down to a basketful of their stockings, every heel with a
hole in it, she would fling up her arms and exclaim, “Oh dear, I am sure
I sometimes think spinsters are to be envied!”

Her face beamed when she exclaimed this.

You remember about her pet wolf. Well, it very soon discovered that she
had come to the island and it found her out, and they just ran into each
other's arms. After that it followed her about everywhere.

As time wore on did she think much about the beloved parents she had
left behind her? This is a difficult question, because it is quite
impossible to say how time does wear on in the Neverland, where it is
calculated by moons and suns, and there are ever so many more of them
than on the mainland. But I am afraid that Wendy did not really worry
about her father and mother; she was absolutely confident that they
would always keep the window open for her to fly back by, and this gave
her complete ease of mind. What did disturb her at times was that John
remembered his parents vaguely only, as people he had once known, while
Michael was quite willing to believe that she was really his mother.
These things scared her a little, and nobly anxious to do her duty, she
tried to fix the old life in their minds by setting them examination
papers on it, as like as possible to the ones she used to do at school.
The other boys thought this awfully interesting, and insisted on
joining, and they made slates for themselves, and sat round the table,
writing and thinking hard about the questions she had written on another
slate and passed round. They were the most ordinary questions--“What
was the colour of Mother's eyes? Which was taller, Father or Mother? Was
Mother blonde or brunette? Answer all three questions if possible.”
 “(A) Write an essay of not less than 40 words on How I spent my last
Holidays, or The Characters of Father and Mother compared. Only one of
these to be attempted.” Or “(1) Describe Mother's laugh; (2) Describe
Father's laugh; (3) Describe Mother's Party Dress; (4) Describe the
Kennel and its Inmate.”

They were just everyday questions like these, and when you could not
answer them you were told to make a cross; and it was really dreadful
what a number of crosses even John made. Of course the only boy who
replied to every question was Slightly, and no one could have been more
hopeful of coming out first, but his answers were perfectly ridiculous,
and he really came out last: a melancholy thing.

Peter did not compete. For one thing he despised all mothers except
Wendy, and for another he was the only boy on the island who could
neither write nor spell; not the smallest word. He was above all that
sort of thing.

By the way, the questions were all written in the past tense. What
was the colour of Mother's eyes, and so on. Wendy, you see, had been
forgetting, too.

Adventures, of course, as we shall see, were of daily occurrence; but
about this time Peter invented, with Wendy's help, a new game that
fascinated him enormously, until he suddenly had no more interest in it,
which, as you have been told, was what always happened with his games.
It consisted in pretending not to have adventures, in doing the sort of
thing John and Michael had been doing all their lives, sitting on stools
flinging balls in the air, pushing each other, going out for walks and
coming back without having killed so much as a grizzly. To see Peter
doing nothing on a stool was a great sight; he could not help looking
solemn at such times, to sit still seemed to him such a comic thing to
do. He boasted that he had gone walking for the good of his health. For
several suns these were the most novel of all adventures to him; and
John and Michael had to pretend to be delighted also; otherwise he would
have treated them severely.

He often went out alone, and when he came back you were never absolutely
certain whether he had had an adventure or not. He might have forgotten
it so completely that he said nothing about it; and then when you went
out you found the body; and, on the other hand, he might say a great
deal about it, and yet you could not find the body. Sometimes he came
home with his head bandaged, and then Wendy cooed over him and bathed
it in lukewarm water, while he told a dazzling tale. But she was never
quite sure, you know. There were, however, many adventures which she
knew to be true because she was in them herself, and there were still
more that were at least partly true, for the other boys were in them and
said they were wholly true. To describe them all would require a book as
large as an English-Latin, Latin-English Dictionary, and the most we can
do is to give one as a specimen of an average hour on the island. The
difficulty is which one to choose. Should we take the brush with the
redskins at Slightly Gulch? It was a sanguinary affair, and
especially interesting as showing one of Peter's peculiarities, which
was that in the middle of a fight he would suddenly change sides. At the
Gulch, when victory was still in the balance, sometimes leaning this way
and sometimes that, he called out, “I'm redskin to-day; what are you,
Tootles?” And Tootles answered, “Redskin; what are you, Nibs?” and
Nibs said, “Redskin; what are you Twin?” and so on; and they were all
redskins; and of course this would have ended the fight had not the real
redskins fascinated by Peter's methods, agreed to be lost boys for that
once, and so at it they all went again, more fiercely than ever.

The extraordinary upshot of this adventure was--but we have not decided
yet that this is the adventure we are to narrate. Perhaps a better one
would be the night attack by the redskins on the house under the ground,
when several of them stuck in the hollow trees and had to be pulled out
like corks. Or we might tell how Peter saved Tiger Lily's life in the
Mermaids' Lagoon, and so made her his ally.

Or we could tell of that cake the pirates cooked so that the boys might
eat it and perish; and how they placed it in one cunning spot after
another; but always Wendy snatched it from the hands of her children, so
that in time it lost its succulence, and became as hard as a stone, and
was used as a missile, and Hook fell over it in the dark.

Or suppose we tell of the birds that were Peter's friends, particularly
of the Never bird that built in a tree overhanging the lagoon, and how
the nest fell into the water, and still the bird sat on her eggs, and
Peter gave orders that she was not to be disturbed. That is a pretty
story, and the end shows how grateful a bird can be; but if we tell
it we must also tell the whole adventure of the lagoon, which would
of course be telling two adventures rather than just one. A shorter
adventure, and quite as exciting, was Tinker Bell's attempt, with the
help of some street fairies, to have the sleeping Wendy conveyed on a
great floating leaf to the mainland. Fortunately the leaf gave way and
Wendy woke, thinking it was bath-time, and swam back. Or again, we might
choose Peter's defiance of the lions, when he drew a circle round him
on the ground with an arrow and dared them to cross it; and though he
waited for hours, with the other boys and Wendy looking on breathlessly
from trees, not one of them dared to accept his challenge.

Which of these adventures shall we choose? The best way will be to toss
for it.

I have tossed, and the lagoon has won. This almost makes one wish that
the gulch or the cake or Tink's leaf had won. Of course I could do it
again, and make it best out of three; however, perhaps fairest to stick
to the lagoon.




Chapter 8 THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON

If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a
shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then
if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the
colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire.
But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest
you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there
could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids
singing.

The children often spent long summer days on this lagoon, swimming or
floating most of the time, playing the mermaid games in the water,
and so forth. You must not think from this that the mermaids were on
friendly terms with them: on the contrary, it was among Wendy's lasting
regrets that all the time she was on the island she never had a civil
word from one of them. When she stole softly to the edge of the lagoon
she might see them by the score, especially on Marooners' Rock, where
they loved to bask, combing out their hair in a lazy way that quite
irritated her; or she might even swim, on tiptoe as it were, to within
a yard of them, but then they saw her and dived, probably splashing her
with their tails, not by accident, but intentionally.

They treated all the boys in the same way, except of course Peter, who
chatted with them on Marooners' Rock by the hour, and sat on their tails
when they got cheeky. He gave Wendy one of their combs.

The most haunting time at which to see them is at the turn of the moon,
when they utter strange wailing cries; but the lagoon is dangerous for
mortals then, and until the evening of which we have now to tell, Wendy
had never seen the lagoon by moonlight, less from fear, for of course
Peter would have accompanied her, than because she had strict rules
about every one being in bed by seven. She was often at the lagoon,
however, on sunny days after rain, when the mermaids come up in
extraordinary numbers to play with their bubbles. The bubbles of many
colours made in rainbow water they treat as balls, hitting them gaily
from one to another with their tails, and trying to keep them in the
rainbow till they burst. The goals are at each end of the rainbow, and
the keepers only are allowed to use their hands. Sometimes a dozen of
these games will be going on in the lagoon at a time, and it is quite a
pretty sight.

But the moment the children tried to join in they had to play by
themselves, for the mermaids immediately disappeared. Nevertheless we
have proof that they secretly watched the interlopers, and were not
above taking an idea from them; for John introduced a new way of hitting
the bubble, with the head instead of the hand, and the mermaids adopted
it. This is the one mark that John has left on the Neverland.

It must also have been rather pretty to see the children resting on a
rock for half an hour after their mid-day meal. Wendy insisted on
their doing this, and it had to be a real rest even though the meal was
make-believe. So they lay there in the sun, and their bodies glistened
in it, while she sat beside them and looked important.

It was one such day, and they were all on Marooners' Rock. The rock was
not much larger than their great bed, but of course they all knew how
not to take up much room, and they were dozing, or at least lying with
their eyes shut, and pinching occasionally when they thought Wendy was
not looking. She was very busy, stitching.

While she stitched a change came to the lagoon. Little shivers ran over
it, and the sun went away and shadows stole across the water, turning
it cold. Wendy could no longer see to thread her needle, and when she
looked up, the lagoon that had always hitherto been such a laughing
place seemed formidable and unfriendly.

It was not, she knew, that night had come, but something as dark as
night had come. No, worse than that. It had not come, but it had sent
that shiver through the sea to say that it was coming. What was it?

There crowded upon her all the stories she had been told of Marooners'
Rock, so called because evil captains put sailors on it and leave
them there to drown. They drown when the tide rises, for then it is
submerged.

Of course she should have roused the children at once; not merely
because of the unknown that was stalking toward them, but because it was
no longer good for them to sleep on a rock grown chilly. But she was
a young mother and she did not know this; she thought you simply must
stick to your rule about half an hour after the mid-day meal. So, though
fear was upon her, and she longed to hear male voices, she would not
waken them. Even when she heard the sound of muffled oars, though her
heart was in her mouth, she did not waken them. She stood over them to
let them have their sleep out. Was it not brave of Wendy?

It was well for those boys then that there was one among them who could
sniff danger even in his sleep. Peter sprang erect, as wide awake at
once as a dog, and with one warning cry he roused the others.

He stood motionless, one hand to his ear.

“Pirates!” he cried. The others came closer to him. A strange smile was
playing about his face, and Wendy saw it and shuddered. While that smile
was on his face no one dared address him; all they could do was to stand
ready to obey. The order came sharp and incisive.

“Dive!”

There was a gleam of legs, and instantly the lagoon seemed deserted.
Marooners' Rock stood alone in the forbidding waters as if it were
itself marooned.

The boat drew nearer. It was the pirate dinghy, with three figures in
her, Smee and Starkey, and the third a captive, no other than Tiger
Lily. Her hands and ankles were tied, and she knew what was to be her
fate. She was to be left on the rock to perish, an end to one of her
race more terrible than death by fire or torture, for is it not written
in the book of the tribe that there is no path through water to the
happy hunting-ground? Yet her face was impassive; she was the daughter
of a chief, she must die as a chief's daughter, it is enough.

They had caught her boarding the pirate ship with a knife in her mouth.
No watch was kept on the ship, it being Hook's boast that the wind of
his name guarded the ship for a mile around. Now her fate would help to
guard it also. One more wail would go the round in that wind by night.

In the gloom that they brought with them the two pirates did not see the
rock till they crashed into it.

“Luff, you lubber,” cried an Irish voice that was Smee's; “here's the
rock. Now, then, what we have to do is to hoist the redskin on to it and
leave her here to drown.”

It was the work of one brutal moment to land the beautiful girl on the
rock; she was too proud to offer a vain resistance.

Quite near the rock, but out of sight, two heads were bobbing up and
down, Peter's and Wendy's. Wendy was crying, for it was the first
tragedy she had seen. Peter had seen many tragedies, but he had
forgotten them all. He was less sorry than Wendy for Tiger Lily: it was
two against one that angered him, and he meant to save her. An easy way
would have been to wait until the pirates had gone, but he was never one
to choose the easy way.

There was almost nothing he could not do, and he now imitated the voice
of Hook.

“Ahoy there, you lubbers!” he called. It was a marvellous imitation.

“The captain!” said the pirates, staring at each other in surprise.

“He must be swimming out to us,” Starkey said, when they had looked for
him in vain.

“We are putting the redskin on the rock,” Smee called out.

“Set her free,” came the astonishing answer.

“Free!”

“Yes, cut her bonds and let her go.”

“But, captain--”

“At once, d'ye hear,” cried Peter, “or I'll plunge my hook in you.”

“This is queer!” Smee gasped.

“Better do what the captain orders,” said Starkey nervously.

“Ay, ay,” Smee said, and he cut Tiger Lily's cords. At once like an eel
she slid between Starkey's legs into the water.

Of course Wendy was very elated over Peter's cleverness; but she knew
that he would be elated also and very likely crow and thus betray
himself, so at once her hand went out to cover his mouth. But it was
stayed even in the act, for “Boat ahoy!” rang over the lagoon in Hook's
voice, and this time it was not Peter who had spoken.

Peter may have been about to crow, but his face puckered in a whistle of
surprise instead.

“Boat ahoy!” again came the voice.

Now Wendy understood. The real Hook was also in the water.

He was swimming to the boat, and as his men showed a light to guide him
he had soon reached them. In the light of the lantern Wendy saw his hook
grip the boat's side; she saw his evil swarthy face as he rose dripping
from the water, and, quaking, she would have liked to swim away, but
Peter would not budge. He was tingling with life and also top-heavy with
conceit. “Am I not a wonder, oh, I am a wonder!” he whispered to her,
and though she thought so also, she was really glad for the sake of his
reputation that no one heard him except herself.

He signed to her to listen.

The two pirates were very curious to know what had brought their captain
to them, but he sat with his head on his hook in a position of profound
melancholy.

“Captain, is all well?” they asked timidly, but he answered with a
hollow moan.

“He sighs,” said Smee.

“He sighs again,” said Starkey.

“And yet a third time he sighs,” said Smee.

Then at last he spoke passionately.

“The game's up,” he cried, “those boys have found a mother.”

Affrighted though she was, Wendy swelled with pride.

“O evil day!” cried Starkey.

“What's a mother?” asked the ignorant Smee.

Wendy was so shocked that she exclaimed. “He doesn't know!” and always
after this she felt that if you could have a pet pirate Smee would be
her one.

Peter pulled her beneath the water, for Hook had started up, crying,
“What was that?”

“I heard nothing,” said Starkey, raising the lantern over the waters,
and as the pirates looked they saw a strange sight. It was the nest I
have told you of, floating on the lagoon, and the Never bird was sitting
on it.

“See,” said Hook in answer to Smee's question, “that is a mother. What
a lesson! The nest must have fallen into the water, but would the mother
desert her eggs? No.”

There was a break in his voice, as if for a moment he recalled innocent
days when--but he brushed away this weakness with his hook.

Smee, much impressed, gazed at the bird as the nest was borne past, but
the more suspicious Starkey said, “If she is a mother, perhaps she is
hanging about here to help Peter.”

Hook winced. “Ay,” he said, “that is the fear that haunts me.”

He was roused from this dejection by Smee's eager voice.

“Captain,” said Smee, “could we not kidnap these boys' mother and make
her our mother?”

“It is a princely scheme,” cried Hook, and at once it took practical
shape in his great brain. “We will seize the children and carry them to
the boat: the boys we will make walk the plank, and Wendy shall be our
mother.”

Again Wendy forgot herself.

“Never!” she cried, and bobbed.

“What was that?”

But they could see nothing. They thought it must have been a leaf in the
wind. “Do you agree, my bullies?” asked Hook.

“There is my hand on it,” they both said.

“And there is my hook. Swear.”

They all swore. By this time they were on the rock, and suddenly Hook
remembered Tiger Lily.

“Where is the redskin?” he demanded abruptly.

He had a playful humour at moments, and they thought this was one of the
moments.

“That is all right, captain,” Smee answered complacently; “we let her
go.”

“Let her go!” cried Hook.

“'Twas your own orders,” the bo'sun faltered.

“You called over the water to us to let her go,” said Starkey.

“Brimstone and gall,” thundered Hook, “what cozening [cheating] is
going on here!” His face had gone black with rage, but he saw that they
believed their words, and he was startled. “Lads,” he said, shaking a
little, “I gave no such order.”

“It is passing queer,” Smee said, and they all fidgeted uncomfortably.
Hook raised his voice, but there was a quiver in it.

“Spirit that haunts this dark lagoon to-night,” he cried, “dost hear
me?”

Of course Peter should have kept quiet, but of course he did not. He
immediately answered in Hook's voice:

“Odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, I hear you.”

In that supreme moment Hook did not blanch, even at the gills, but Smee
and Starkey clung to each other in terror.

“Who are you, stranger? Speak!” Hook demanded.

“I am James Hook,” replied the voice, “captain of the JOLLY ROGER.”

“You are not; you are not,” Hook cried hoarsely.

“Brimstone and gall,” the voice retorted, “say that again, and I'll cast
anchor in you.”

Hook tried a more ingratiating manner. “If you are Hook,” he said almost
humbly, “come tell me, who am I?”

“A codfish,” replied the voice, “only a codfish.”

“A codfish!” Hook echoed blankly, and it was then, but not till then,
that his proud spirit broke. He saw his men draw back from him.

“Have we been captained all this time by a codfish!” they muttered. “It
is lowering to our pride.”

They were his dogs snapping at him, but, tragic figure though he had
become, he scarcely heeded them. Against such fearful evidence it was
not their belief in him that he needed, it was his own. He felt his ego
slipping from him. “Don't desert me, bully,” he whispered hoarsely to
it.

In his dark nature there was a touch of the feminine, as in all the
great pirates, and it sometimes gave him intuitions. Suddenly he tried
the guessing game.

“Hook,” he called, “have you another voice?”

Now Peter could never resist a game, and he answered blithely in his own
voice, “I have.”

“And another name?”

“Ay, ay.”

“Vegetable?” asked Hook.

“No.”

“Mineral?”

“No.”

“Animal?”

“Yes.”

“Man?”

“No!” This answer rang out scornfully.

“Boy?”

“Yes.”

“Ordinary boy?”

“No!”

“Wonderful boy?”

To Wendy's pain the answer that rang out this time was “Yes.”

“Are you in England?”

“No.”

“Are you here?”

“Yes.”

Hook was completely puzzled. “You ask him some questions,” he said to
the others, wiping his damp brow.

Smee reflected. “I can't think of a thing,” he said regretfully.

“Can't guess, can't guess!” crowed Peter. “Do you give it up?”

Of course in his pride he was carrying the game too far, and the
miscreants [villains] saw their chance.

“Yes, yes,” they answered eagerly.

“Well, then,” he cried, “I am Peter Pan.”

Pan!

In a moment Hook was himself again, and Smee and Starkey were his
faithful henchmen.

“Now we have him,” Hook shouted. “Into the water, Smee. Starkey, mind
the boat. Take him dead or alive!”

He leaped as he spoke, and simultaneously came the gay voice of Peter.

“Are you ready, boys?”

“Ay, ay,” from various parts of the lagoon.

“Then lam into the pirates.”

The fight was short and sharp. First to draw blood was John, who
gallantly climbed into the boat and held Starkey. There was fierce
struggle, in which the cutlass was torn from the pirate's grasp. He
wriggled overboard and John leapt after him. The dinghy drifted away.

Here and there a head bobbed up in the water, and there was a flash
of steel followed by a cry or a whoop. In the confusion some struck at
their own side. The corkscrew of Smee got Tootles in the fourth rib, but
he was himself pinked [nicked] in turn by Curly. Farther from the rock
Starkey was pressing Slightly and the twins hard.

Where all this time was Peter? He was seeking bigger game.

The others were all brave boys, and they must not be blamed for backing
from the pirate captain. His iron claw made a circle of dead water round
him, from which they fled like affrighted fishes.

But there was one who did not fear him: there was one prepared to enter
that circle.

Strangely, it was not in the water that they met. Hook rose to the rock
to breathe, and at the same moment Peter scaled it on the opposite
side. The rock was slippery as a ball, and they had to crawl rather than
climb. Neither knew that the other was coming. Each feeling for a grip
met the other's arm: in surprise they raised their heads; their faces
were almost touching; so they met.

Some of the greatest heroes have confessed that just before they fell to
[began combat] they had a sinking [feeling in the stomach]. Had it been
so with Peter at that moment I would admit it. After all, he was the
only man that the Sea-Cook had feared. But Peter had no sinking, he had
one feeling only, gladness; and he gnashed his pretty teeth with joy.
Quick as thought he snatched a knife from Hook's belt and was about to
drive it home, when he saw that he was higher up the rock than his foe.
It would not have been fighting fair. He gave the pirate a hand to help
him up.

It was then that Hook bit him.

Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. It made
him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified. Every child is
affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he
has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After
you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but will never
afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first
unfairness; no one except Peter. He often met it, but he always forgot
it. I suppose that was the real difference between him and all the rest.

So when he met it now it was like the first time; and he could just
stare, helpless. Twice the iron hand clawed him.

A few moments afterwards the other boys saw Hook in the water striking
wildly for the ship; no elation on the pestilent face now, only white
fear, for the crocodile was in dogged pursuit of him. On ordinary
occasions the boys would have swum alongside cheering; but now they were
uneasy, for they had lost both Peter and Wendy, and were scouring the
lagoon for them, calling them by name. They found the dinghy and went
home in it, shouting “Peter, Wendy” as they went, but no answer came
save mocking laughter from the mermaids. “They must be swimming back or
flying,” the boys concluded. They were not very anxious, because they
had such faith in Peter. They chuckled, boylike, because they would be
late for bed; and it was all mother Wendy's fault!

When their voices died away there came cold silence over the lagoon, and
then a feeble cry.

“Help, help!”

Two small figures were beating against the rock; the girl had fainted
and lay on the boy's arm. With a last effort Peter pulled her up the
rock and then lay down beside her. Even as he also fainted he saw that
the water was rising. He knew that they would soon be drowned, but he
could do no more.

As they lay side by side a mermaid caught Wendy by the feet, and began
pulling her softly into the water. Peter, feeling her slip from him,
woke with a start, and was just in time to draw her back. But he had to
tell her the truth.

“We are on the rock, Wendy,” he said, “but it is growing smaller. Soon
the water will be over it.”

She did not understand even now.

“We must go,” she said, almost brightly.

“Yes,” he answered faintly.

“Shall we swim or fly, Peter?”

He had to tell her.

“Do you think you could swim or fly as far as the island, Wendy, without
my help?”

She had to admit that she was too tired.

He moaned.

“What is it?” she asked, anxious about him at once.

“I can't help you, Wendy. Hook wounded me. I can neither fly nor swim.”

“Do you mean we shall both be drowned?”

“Look how the water is rising.”

They put their hands over their eyes to shut out the sight. They thought
they would soon be no more. As they sat thus something brushed against
Peter as light as a kiss, and stayed there, as if saying timidly, “Can I
be of any use?”

It was the tail of a kite, which Michael had made some days before. It
had torn itself out of his hand and floated away.

“Michael's kite,” Peter said without interest, but next moment he had
seized the tail, and was pulling the kite toward him.

“It lifted Michael off the ground,” he cried; “why should it not carry
you?”

“Both of us!”

“It can't lift two; Michael and Curly tried.”

“Let us draw lots,” Wendy said bravely.

“And you a lady; never.” Already he had tied the tail round her. She
clung to him; she refused to go without him; but with a “Good-bye,
Wendy,” he pushed her from the rock; and in a few minutes she was borne
out of his sight. Peter was alone on the lagoon.

The rock was very small now; soon it would be submerged. Pale rays of
light tiptoed across the waters; and by and by there was to be heard a
sound at once the most musical and the most melancholy in the world: the
mermaids calling to the moon.

Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A
tremour ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on
the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and
Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock
again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was
saying, “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”




Chapter 9 THE NEVER BIRD

The last sound Peter heard before he was quite alone were the mermaids
retiring one by one to their bedchambers under the sea. He was too far
away to hear their doors shut; but every door in the coral caves where
they live rings a tiny bell when it opens or closes (as in all the
nicest houses on the mainland), and he heard the bells.

Steadily the waters rose till they were nibbling at his feet; and to
pass the time until they made their final gulp, he watched the only
thing on the lagoon. He thought it was a piece of floating paper,
perhaps part of the kite, and wondered idly how long it would take to
drift ashore.

Presently he noticed as an odd thing that it was undoubtedly out upon
the lagoon with some definite purpose, for it was fighting the tide,
and sometimes winning; and when it won, Peter, always sympathetic to
the weaker side, could not help clapping; it was such a gallant piece of
paper.

It was not really a piece of paper; it was the Never bird, making
desperate efforts to reach Peter on the nest. By working her wings, in a
way she had learned since the nest fell into the water, she was able to
some extent to guide her strange craft, but by the time Peter recognised
her she was very exhausted. She had come to save him, to give him her
nest, though there were eggs in it. I rather wonder at the bird, for
though he had been nice to her, he had also sometimes tormented her. I
can suppose only that, like Mrs. Darling and the rest of them, she was
melted because he had all his first teeth.

She called out to him what she had come for, and he called out to her
what she was doing there; but of course neither of them understood
the other's language. In fanciful stories people can talk to the birds
freely, and I wish for the moment I could pretend that this were such a
story, and say that Peter replied intelligently to the Never bird; but
truth is best, and I want to tell you only what really happened. Well,
not only could they not understand each other, but they forgot their
manners.

“I--want--you--to--get--into--the--nest,” the bird called, speaking as
slowly and distinctly as possible, “and--then--you--can--drift--ashore,
but--I--am--too--tired--to--bring--it--any--nearer--so--you--must--try
to--swim--to--it.”

“What are you quacking about?” Peter answered. “Why don't you let the
nest drift as usual?”

“I--want--you--” the bird said, and repeated it all over.

Then Peter tried slow and distinct.

“What--are--you--quacking--about?” and so on.

The Never bird became irritated; they have very short tempers.

“You dunderheaded little jay!” she screamed, “Why don't you do as I tell
you?”

Peter felt that she was calling him names, and at a venture he retorted
hotly:

“So are you!”

Then rather curiously they both snapped out the same remark:

“Shut up!”

“Shut up!”

Nevertheless the bird was determined to save him if she could, and by
one last mighty effort she propelled the nest against the rock. Then up
she flew; deserting her eggs, so as to make her meaning clear.

Then at last he understood, and clutched the nest and waved his thanks
to the bird as she fluttered overhead. It was not to receive his thanks,
however, that she hung there in the sky; it was not even to watch him
get into the nest; it was to see what he did with her eggs.

There were two large white eggs, and Peter lifted them up and reflected.
The bird covered her face with her wings, so as not to see the last of
them; but she could not help peeping between the feathers.

I forget whether I have told you that there was a stave on the rock,
driven into it by some buccaneers of long ago to mark the site of buried
treasure. The children had discovered the glittering hoard, and when in
a mischievous mood used to fling showers of moidores, diamonds, pearls
and pieces of eight to the gulls, who pounced upon them for food, and
then flew away, raging at the scurvy trick that had been played upon
them. The stave was still there, and on it Starkey had hung his hat, a
deep tarpaulin, watertight, with a broad brim. Peter put the eggs into
this hat and set it on the lagoon. It floated beautifully.

The Never bird saw at once what he was up to, and screamed her
admiration of him; and, alas, Peter crowed his agreement with her. Then
he got into the nest, reared the stave in it as a mast, and hung up his
shirt for a sail. At the same moment the bird fluttered down upon the
hat and once more sat snugly on her eggs. She drifted in one direction,
and he was borne off in another, both cheering.

Of course when Peter landed he beached his barque [small ship, actually
the Never Bird's nest in this particular case in point] in a place where
the bird would easily find it; but the hat was such a great success that
she abandoned the nest. It drifted about till it went to pieces, and
often Starkey came to the shore of the lagoon, and with many bitter
feelings watched the bird sitting on his hat. As we shall not see her
again, it may be worth mentioning here that all Never birds now build
in that shape of nest, with a broad brim on which the youngsters take an
airing.

Great were the rejoicings when Peter reached the home under the ground
almost as soon as Wendy, who had been carried hither and thither by
the kite. Every boy had adventures to tell; but perhaps the biggest
adventure of all was that they were several hours late for bed. This so
inflated them that they did various dodgy things to get staying up still
longer, such as demanding bandages; but Wendy, though glorying in having
them all home again safe and sound, was scandalised by the lateness of
the hour, and cried, “To bed, to bed,” in a voice that had to be obeyed.
Next day, however, she was awfully tender, and gave out bandages to
every one, and they played till bed-time at limping about and carrying
their arms in slings.




Chapter 10 THE HAPPY HOME

One important result of the brush [with the pirates] on the lagoon was
that it made the redskins their friends. Peter had saved Tiger Lily from
a dreadful fate, and now there was nothing she and her braves would not
do for him. All night they sat above, keeping watch over the home under
the ground and awaiting the big attack by the pirates which obviously
could not be much longer delayed. Even by day they hung about, smoking
the pipe of peace, and looking almost as if they wanted tit-bits to eat.

They called Peter the Great White Father, prostrating themselves [lying
down] before him; and he liked this tremendously, so that it was not
really good for him.

“The great white father,” he would say to them in a very lordly manner,
as they grovelled at his feet, “is glad to see the Piccaninny warriors
protecting his wigwam from the pirates.”

“Me Tiger Lily,” that lovely creature would reply. “Peter Pan save me,
me his velly nice friend. Me no let pirates hurt him.”

She was far too pretty to cringe in this way, but Peter thought it his
due, and he would answer condescendingly, “It is good. Peter Pan has
spoken.”

Always when he said, “Peter Pan has spoken,” it meant that they must now
shut up, and they accepted it humbly in that spirit; but they were by
no means so respectful to the other boys, whom they looked upon as just
ordinary braves. They said “How-do?” to them, and things like that; and
what annoyed the boys was that Peter seemed to think this all right.

Secretly Wendy sympathised with them a little, but she was far too loyal
a housewife to listen to any complaints against father. “Father knows
best,” she always said, whatever her private opinion must be. Her
private opinion was that the redskins should not call her a squaw.

We have now reached the evening that was to be known among them as the
Night of Nights, because of its adventures and their upshot. The day, as
if quietly gathering its forces, had been almost uneventful, and now the
redskins in their blankets were at their posts above, while, below, the
children were having their evening meal; all except Peter, who had gone
out to get the time. The way you got the time on the island was to find
the crocodile, and then stay near him till the clock struck.

The meal happened to be a make-believe tea, and they sat around the
board, guzzling in their greed; and really, what with their chatter and
recriminations, the noise, as Wendy said, was positively deafening.
To be sure, she did not mind noise, but she simply would not have them
grabbing things, and then excusing themselves by saying that Tootles had
pushed their elbow. There was a fixed rule that they must never hit back
at meals, but should refer the matter of dispute to Wendy by raising
the right arm politely and saying, “I complain of so-and-so;” but what
usually happened was that they forgot to do this or did it too much.

“Silence,” cried Wendy when for the twentieth time she had told them
that they were not all to speak at once. “Is your mug empty, Slightly
darling?”

“Not quite empty, mummy,” Slightly said, after looking into an imaginary
mug.

“He hasn't even begun to drink his milk,” Nibs interposed.

This was telling, and Slightly seized his chance.

“I complain of Nibs,” he cried promptly.

John, however, had held up his hand first.

“Well, John?”

“May I sit in Peter's chair, as he is not here?”

“Sit in father's chair, John!” Wendy was scandalised. “Certainly not.”

“He is not really our father,” John answered. “He didn't even know how a
father does till I showed him.”

This was grumbling. “We complain of John,” cried the twins.

Tootles held up his hand. He was so much the humblest of them, indeed he
was the only humble one, that Wendy was specially gentle with him.

“I don't suppose,” Tootles said diffidently [bashfully or timidly],
“that I could be father.”

“No, Tootles.”

Once Tootles began, which was not very often, he had a silly way of
going on.

“As I can't be father,” he said heavily, “I don't suppose, Michael, you
would let me be baby?”

“No, I won't,” Michael rapped out. He was already in his basket.

“As I can't be baby,” Tootles said, getting heavier and heavier and
heavier, “do you think I could be a twin?”

“No, indeed,” replied the twins; “it's awfully difficult to be a twin.”

“As I can't be anything important,” said Tootles, “would any of you like
to see me do a trick?”

“No,” they all replied.

Then at last he stopped. “I hadn't really any hope,” he said.

The hateful telling broke out again.

“Slightly is coughing on the table.”

“The twins began with cheese-cakes.”

“Curly is taking both butter and honey.”

“Nibs is speaking with his mouth full.”

“I complain of the twins.”

“I complain of Curly.”

“I complain of Nibs.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” cried Wendy, “I'm sure I sometimes think that
spinsters are to be envied.”

She told them to clear away, and sat down to her work-basket, a heavy
load of stockings and every knee with a hole in it as usual.

“Wendy,” remonstrated [scolded] Michael, “I'm too big for a cradle.”

“I must have somebody in a cradle,” she said almost tartly, “and you
are the littlest. A cradle is such a nice homely thing to have about a
house.”

While she sewed they played around her; such a group of happy faces
and dancing limbs lit up by that romantic fire. It had become a very
familiar scene, this, in the home under the ground, but we are looking
on it for the last time.

There was a step above, and Wendy, you may be sure, was the first to
recognize it.

“Children, I hear your father's step. He likes you to meet him at the
door.”

Above, the redskins crouched before Peter.

“Watch well, braves. I have spoken.”

And then, as so often before, the gay children dragged him from his
tree. As so often before, but never again.

He had brought nuts for the boys as well as the correct time for Wendy.

“Peter, you just spoil them, you know,” Wendy simpered [exaggerated a
smile].

“Ah, old lady,” said Peter, hanging up his gun.

“It was me told him mothers are called old lady,” Michael whispered to
Curly.

“I complain of Michael,” said Curly instantly.

The first twin came to Peter. “Father, we want to dance.”

“Dance away, my little man,” said Peter, who was in high good humour.

“But we want you to dance.”

Peter was really the best dancer among them, but he pretended to be
scandalised.

“Me! My old bones would rattle!”

“And mummy too.”

“What,” cried Wendy, “the mother of such an armful, dance!”

“But on a Saturday night,” Slightly insinuated.

It was not really Saturday night, at least it may have been, for
they had long lost count of the days; but always if they wanted to do
anything special they said this was Saturday night, and then they did
it.

“Of course it is Saturday night, Peter,” Wendy said, relenting.

“People of our figure, Wendy!”

“But it is only among our own progeny [children].”

“True, true.”

So they were told they could dance, but they must put on their nighties
first.

“Ah, old lady,” Peter said aside to Wendy, warming himself by the fire
and looking down at her as she sat turning a heel, “there is nothing
more pleasant of an evening for you and me when the day's toil is over
than to rest by the fire with the little ones near by.”

“It is sweet, Peter, isn't it?” Wendy said, frightfully gratified.
“Peter, I think Curly has your nose.”

“Michael takes after you.”

She went to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Dear Peter,” she said, “with such a large family, of course, I have now
passed my best, but you don't want to [ex]change me, do you?”

“No, Wendy.”

Certainly he did not want a change, but he looked at her uncomfortably,
blinking, you know, like one not sure whether he was awake or asleep.

“Peter, what is it?”

“I was just thinking,” he said, a little scared. “It is only
make-believe, isn't it, that I am their father?”

“Oh yes,” Wendy said primly [formally and properly].

“You see,” he continued apologetically, “it would make me seem so old to
be their real father.”

“But they are ours, Peter, yours and mine.”

“But not really, Wendy?” he asked anxiously.

“Not if you don't wish it,” she replied; and she distinctly heard his
sigh of relief. “Peter,” she asked, trying to speak firmly, “what are
your exact feelings to [about] me?”

“Those of a devoted son, Wendy.”

“I thought so,” she said, and went and sat by herself at the extreme end
of the room.

“You are so queer,” he said, frankly puzzled, “and Tiger Lily is just
the same. There is something she wants to be to me, but she says it is
not my mother.”

“No, indeed, it is not,” Wendy replied with frightful emphasis. Now we
know why she was prejudiced against the redskins.

“Then what is it?”

“It isn't for a lady to tell.”

“Oh, very well,” Peter said, a little nettled. “Perhaps Tinker Bell will
tell me.”

“Oh yes, Tinker Bell will tell you,” Wendy retorted scornfully. “She is
an abandoned little creature.”

Here Tink, who was in her bedroom, eavesdropping, squeaked out something
impudent.

“She says she glories in being abandoned,” Peter interpreted.

He had a sudden idea. “Perhaps Tink wants to be my mother?”

“You silly ass!” cried Tinker Bell in a passion.

She had said it so often that Wendy needed no translation.

“I almost agree with her,” Wendy snapped. Fancy Wendy snapping! But she
had been much tried, and she little knew what was to happen before the
night was out. If she had known she would not have snapped.

None of them knew. Perhaps it was best not to know. Their ignorance
gave them one more glad hour; and as it was to be their last hour on the
island, let us rejoice that there were sixty glad minutes in it. They
sang and danced in their night-gowns. Such a deliciously creepy song
it was, in which they pretended to be frightened at their own shadows,
little witting that so soon shadows would close in upon them, from whom
they would shrink in real fear. So uproariously gay was the dance, and
how they buffeted each other on the bed and out of it! It was a pillow
fight rather than a dance, and when it was finished, the pillows
insisted on one bout more, like partners who know that they may never
meet again. The stories they told, before it was time for Wendy's
good-night story! Even Slightly tried to tell a story that night, but
the beginning was so fearfully dull that it appalled not only the others
but himself, and he said gloomily:

“Yes, it is a dull beginning. I say, let us pretend that it is the end.”

And then at last they all got into bed for Wendy's story, the story they
loved best, the story Peter hated. Usually when she began to tell this
story he left the room or put his hands over his ears; and possibly if
he had done either of those things this time they might all still be on
the island. But to-night he remained on his stool; and we shall see what
happened.




Chapter 11 WENDY'S STORY

“Listen, then,” said Wendy, settling down to her story, with Michael at
her feet and seven boys in the bed. “There was once a gentleman--”

“I had rather he had been a lady,” Curly said.

“I wish he had been a white rat,” said Nibs.

“Quiet,” their mother admonished [cautioned] them. “There was a lady
also, and--”

“Oh, mummy,” cried the first twin, “you mean that there is a lady also,
don't you? She is not dead, is she?”

“Oh, no.”

“I am awfully glad she isn't dead,” said Tootles. “Are you glad, John?”

“Of course I am.”

“Are you glad, Nibs?”

“Rather.”

“Are you glad, Twins?”

“We are glad.”

“Oh dear,” sighed Wendy.

“Little less noise there,” Peter called out, determined that she should
have fair play, however beastly a story it might be in his opinion.

“The gentleman's name,” Wendy continued, “was Mr. Darling, and her name
was Mrs. Darling.”

“I knew them,” John said, to annoy the others.

“I think I knew them,” said Michael rather doubtfully.

“They were married, you know,” explained Wendy, “and what do you think
they had?”

“White rats,” cried Nibs, inspired.

“No.”

“It's awfully puzzling,” said Tootles, who knew the story by heart.

“Quiet, Tootles. They had three descendants.”

“What is descendants?”

“Well, you are one, Twin.”

“Did you hear that, John? I am a descendant.”

“Descendants are only children,” said John.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” sighed Wendy. “Now these three children had a
faithful nurse called Nana; but Mr. Darling was angry with her and
chained her up in the yard, and so all the children flew away.”

“It's an awfully good story,” said Nibs.

“They flew away,” Wendy continued, “to the Neverland, where the lost
children are.”

“I just thought they did,” Curly broke in excitedly. “I don't know how
it is, but I just thought they did!”

“O Wendy,” cried Tootles, “was one of the lost children called Tootles?”

“Yes, he was.”

“I am in a story. Hurrah, I am in a story, Nibs.”

“Hush. Now I want you to consider the feelings of the unhappy parents
with all their children flown away.”

“Oo!” they all moaned, though they were not really considering the
feelings of the unhappy parents one jot.

“Think of the empty beds!”

“Oo!”

“It's awfully sad,” the first twin said cheerfully.

“I don't see how it can have a happy ending,” said the second twin. “Do
you, Nibs?”

“I'm frightfully anxious.”

“If you knew how great is a mother's love,” Wendy told them
triumphantly, “you would have no fear.” She had now come to the part
that Peter hated.

“I do like a mother's love,” said Tootles, hitting Nibs with a pillow.
“Do you like a mother's love, Nibs?”

“I do just,” said Nibs, hitting back.

“You see,” Wendy said complacently, “our heroine knew that the mother
would always leave the window open for her children to fly back by; so
they stayed away for years and had a lovely time.”

“Did they ever go back?”

“Let us now,” said Wendy, bracing herself up for her finest effort,
“take a peep into the future;” and they all gave themselves the twist
that makes peeps into the future easier. “Years have rolled by, and who
is this elegant lady of uncertain age alighting at London Station?”

“O Wendy, who is she?” cried Nibs, every bit as excited as if he didn't
know.

“Can it be--yes--no--it is--the fair Wendy!”

“Oh!”

“And who are the two noble portly figures accompanying her, now grown to
man's estate? Can they be John and Michael? They are!”

“Oh!”

“'See, dear brothers,' says Wendy pointing upwards, 'there is the window
still standing open. Ah, now we are rewarded for our sublime faith in a
mother's love.' So up they flew to their mummy and daddy, and pen cannot
describe the happy scene, over which we draw a veil.”

That was the story, and they were as pleased with it as the fair
narrator herself. Everything just as it should be, you see. Off we skip
like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are,
but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when
we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that
we shall be rewarded instead of smacked.

So great indeed was their faith in a mother's love that they felt they
could afford to be callous for a bit longer.

But there was one there who knew better, and when Wendy finished he
uttered a hollow groan.

“What is it, Peter?” she cried, running to him, thinking he was ill. She
felt him solicitously, lower down than his chest. “Where is it, Peter?”

“It isn't that kind of pain,” Peter replied darkly.

“Then what kind is it?”

“Wendy, you are wrong about mothers.”

They all gathered round him in affright, so alarming was his agitation;
and with a fine candour he told them what he had hitherto concealed.

“Long ago,” he said, “I thought like you that my mother would always
keep the window open for me, so I stayed away for moons and moons and
moons, and then flew back; but the window was barred, for mother had
forgotten all about me, and there was another little boy sleeping in my
bed.”

I am not sure that this was true, but Peter thought it was true; and it
scared them.

“Are you sure mothers are like that?”

“Yes.”

So this was the truth about mothers. The toads!

Still it is best to be careful; and no one knows so quickly as a child
when he should give in. “Wendy, let us [let's] go home,” cried John and
Michael together.

“Yes,” she said, clutching them.

“Not to-night?” asked the lost boys bewildered. They knew in what they
called their hearts that one can get on quite well without a mother, and
that it is only the mothers who think you can't.

“At once,” Wendy replied resolutely, for the horrible thought had come
to her: “Perhaps mother is in half mourning by this time.”

This dread made her forgetful of what must be Peter's feelings, and
she said to him rather sharply, “Peter, will you make the necessary
arrangements?”

“If you wish it,” he replied, as coolly as if she had asked him to pass
the nuts.

Not so much as a sorry-to-lose-you between them! If she did not mind the
parting, he was going to show her, was Peter, that neither did he.

But of course he cared very much; and he was so full of wrath against
grown-ups, who, as usual, were spoiling everything, that as soon as he
got inside his tree he breathed intentionally quick short breaths at the
rate of about five to a second. He did this because there is a saying in
the Neverland that, every time you breathe, a grown-up dies; and Peter
was killing them off vindictively as fast as possible.

Then having given the necessary instructions to the redskins he returned
to the home, where an unworthy scene had been enacted in his absence.
Panic-stricken at the thought of losing Wendy the lost boys had advanced
upon her threateningly.

“It will be worse than before she came,” they cried.

“We shan't let her go.”

“Let's keep her prisoner.”

“Ay, chain her up.”

In her extremity an instinct told her to which of them to turn.

“Tootles,” she cried, “I appeal to you.”

Was it not strange? She appealed to Tootles, quite the silliest one.

Grandly, however, did Tootles respond. For that one moment he dropped
his silliness and spoke with dignity.

“I am just Tootles,” he said, “and nobody minds me. But the first who
does not behave to Wendy like an English gentleman I will blood him
severely.”

He drew back his hanger; and for that instant his sun was at noon. The
others held back uneasily. Then Peter returned, and they saw at once
that they would get no support from him. He would keep no girl in the
Neverland against her will.

“Wendy,” he said, striding up and down, “I have asked the redskins to
guide you through the wood, as flying tires you so.”

“Thank you, Peter.”

“Then,” he continued, in the short sharp voice of one accustomed to be
obeyed, “Tinker Bell will take you across the sea. Wake her, Nibs.”

Nibs had to knock twice before he got an answer, though Tink had really
been sitting up in bed listening for some time.

“Who are you? How dare you? Go away,” she cried.

“You are to get up, Tink,” Nibs called, “and take Wendy on a journey.”

Of course Tink had been delighted to hear that Wendy was going; but
she was jolly well determined not to be her courier, and she said so in
still more offensive language. Then she pretended to be asleep again.

“She says she won't!” Nibs exclaimed, aghast at such insubordination,
whereupon Peter went sternly toward the young lady's chamber.

“Tink,” he rapped out, “if you don't get up and dress at once I will
open the curtains, and then we shall all see you in your negligee
[nightgown].”

This made her leap to the floor. “Who said I wasn't getting up?” she
cried.

In the meantime the boys were gazing very forlornly at Wendy, now
equipped with John and Michael for the journey. By this time they were
dejected, not merely because they were about to lose her, but also
because they felt that she was going off to something nice to which they
had not been invited. Novelty was beckoning to them as usual.

Crediting them with a nobler feeling Wendy melted.

“Dear ones,” she said, “if you will all come with me I feel almost sure
I can get my father and mother to adopt you.”

The invitation was meant specially for Peter, but each of the boys was
thinking exclusively of himself, and at once they jumped with joy.

“But won't they think us rather a handful?” Nibs asked in the middle of
his jump.

“Oh no,” said Wendy, rapidly thinking it out, “it will only mean having
a few beds in the drawing-room; they can be hidden behind the screens on
first Thursdays.”

“Peter, can we go?” they all cried imploringly. They took it for granted
that if they went he would go also, but really they scarcely cared. Thus
children are ever ready, when novelty knocks, to desert their dearest
ones.

“All right,” Peter replied with a bitter smile, and immediately they
rushed to get their things.

“And now, Peter,” Wendy said, thinking she had put everything right,
“I am going to give you your medicine before you go.” She loved to give
them medicine, and undoubtedly gave them too much. Of course it was only
water, but it was out of a bottle, and she always shook the bottle and
counted the drops, which gave it a certain medicinal quality. On this
occasion, however, she did not give Peter his draught [portion], for
just as she had prepared it, she saw a look on his face that made her
heart sink.

“Get your things, Peter,” she cried, shaking.

“No,” he answered, pretending indifference, “I am not going with you,
Wendy.”

“Yes, Peter.”

“No.”

To show that her departure would leave him unmoved, he skipped up and
down the room, playing gaily on his heartless pipes. She had to run
about after him, though it was rather undignified.

“To find your mother,” she coaxed.

Now, if Peter had ever quite had a mother, he no longer missed her. He
could do very well without one. He had thought them out, and remembered
only their bad points.

“No, no,” he told Wendy decisively; “perhaps she would say I was old,
and I just want always to be a little boy and to have fun.”

“But, Peter--”

“No.”

And so the others had to be told.

“Peter isn't coming.”

Peter not coming! They gazed blankly at him, their sticks over their
backs, and on each stick a bundle. Their first thought was that if Peter
was not going he had probably changed his mind about letting them go.

But he was far too proud for that. “If you find your mothers,” he said
darkly, “I hope you will like them.”

The awful cynicism of this made an uncomfortable impression, and most
of them began to look rather doubtful. After all, their faces said, were
they not noodles to want to go?

“Now then,” cried Peter, “no fuss, no blubbering; good-bye, Wendy;” and
he held out his hand cheerily, quite as if they must really go now, for
he had something important to do.

She had to take his hand, and there was no indication that he would
prefer a thimble.

“You will remember about changing your flannels, Peter?” she said,
lingering over him. She was always so particular about their flannels.

“Yes.”

“And you will take your medicine?”

“Yes.”

That seemed to be everything, and an awkward pause followed. Peter,
however, was not the kind that breaks down before other people. “Are you
ready, Tinker Bell?” he called out.

“Ay, ay.”

“Then lead the way.”

Tink darted up the nearest tree; but no one followed her, for it was
at this moment that the pirates made their dreadful attack upon the
redskins. Above, where all had been so still, the air was rent with
shrieks and the clash of steel. Below, there was dead silence. Mouths
opened and remained open. Wendy fell on her knees, but her arms were
extended toward Peter. All arms were extended to him, as if suddenly
blown in his direction; they were beseeching him mutely not to desert
them. As for Peter, he seized his sword, the same he thought he had
slain Barbecue with, and the lust of battle was in his eye.




Chapter 12 THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF

The pirate attack had been a complete surprise: a sure proof that the
unscrupulous Hook had conducted it improperly, for to surprise redskins
fairly is beyond the wit of the white man.

By all the unwritten laws of savage warfare it is always the redskin who
attacks, and with the wiliness of his race he does it just before the
dawn, at which time he knows the courage of the whites to be at its
lowest ebb. The white men have in the meantime made a rude stockade on
the summit of yonder undulating ground, at the foot of which a stream
runs, for it is destruction to be too far from water. There they await
the onslaught, the inexperienced ones clutching their revolvers and
treading on twigs, but the old hands sleeping tranquilly until just
before the dawn. Through the long black night the savage scouts wriggle,
snake-like, among the grass without stirring a blade. The brushwood
closes behind them, as silently as sand into which a mole has dived.
Not a sound is to be heard, save when they give vent to a wonderful
imitation of the lonely call of the coyote. The cry is answered by other
braves; and some of them do it even better than the coyotes, who are not
very good at it. So the chill hours wear on, and the long suspense is
horribly trying to the paleface who has to live through it for the first
time; but to the trained hand those ghastly calls and still ghastlier
silences are but an intimation of how the night is marching.

That this was the usual procedure was so well known to Hook that in
disregarding it he cannot be excused on the plea of ignorance.

The Piccaninnies, on their part, trusted implicitly to his honour, and
their whole action of the night stands out in marked contrast to his.
They left nothing undone that was consistent with the reputation of
their tribe. With that alertness of the senses which is at once the
marvel and despair of civilised peoples, they knew that the pirates were
on the island from the moment one of them trod on a dry stick; and in
an incredibly short space of time the coyote cries began. Every foot of
ground between the spot where Hook had landed his forces and the
home under the trees was stealthily examined by braves wearing their
mocassins with the heels in front. They found only one hillock with a
stream at its base, so that Hook had no choice; here he must establish
himself and wait for just before the dawn. Everything being thus mapped
out with almost diabolical cunning, the main body of the redskins folded
their blankets around them, and in the phlegmatic manner that is to
them, the pearl of manhood squatted above the children's home, awaiting
the cold moment when they should deal pale death.

Here dreaming, though wide-awake, of the exquisite tortures to which
they were to put him at break of day, those confiding savages were found
by the treacherous Hook. From the accounts afterwards supplied by such
of the scouts as escaped the carnage, he does not seem even to have
paused at the rising ground, though it is certain that in that grey
light he must have seen it: no thought of waiting to be attacked appears
from first to last to have visited his subtle mind; he would not even
hold off till the night was nearly spent; on he pounded with no policy
but to fall to [get into combat]. What could the bewildered scouts do,
masters as they were of every war-like artifice save this one, but trot
helplessly after him, exposing themselves fatally to view, while they
gave pathetic utterance to the coyote cry.

Around the brave Tiger Lily were a dozen of her stoutest warriors, and
they suddenly saw the perfidious pirates bearing down upon them. Fell
from their eyes then the film through which they had looked at
victory. No more would they torture at the stake. For them the happy
hunting-grounds was now. They knew it; but as their father's sons they
acquitted themselves. Even then they had time to gather in a phalanx
[dense formation] that would have been hard to break had they risen
quickly, but this they were forbidden to do by the traditions of their
race. It is written that the noble savage must never express surprise in
the presence of the white. Thus terrible as the sudden appearance of the
pirates must have been to them, they remained stationary for a moment,
not a muscle moving; as if the foe had come by invitation. Then, indeed,
the tradition gallantly upheld, they seized their weapons, and the air
was torn with the war-cry; but it was now too late.

It is no part of ours to describe what was a massacre rather than a
fight. Thus perished many of the flower of the Piccaninny tribe. Not all
unavenged did they die, for with Lean Wolf fell Alf Mason, to disturb
the Spanish Main no more, and among others who bit the dust were Geo.
Scourie, Chas. Turley, and the Alsatian Foggerty. Turley fell to the
tomahawk of the terrible Panther, who ultimately cut a way through the
pirates with Tiger Lily and a small remnant of the tribe.

To what extent Hook is to blame for his tactics on this occasion is for
the historian to decide. Had he waited on the rising ground till the
proper hour he and his men would probably have been butchered; and in
judging him it is only fair to take this into account. What he should
perhaps have done was to acquaint his opponents that he proposed to
follow a new method. On the other hand, this, as destroying the element
of surprise, would have made his strategy of no avail, so that the whole
question is beset with difficulties. One cannot at least withhold a
reluctant admiration for the wit that had conceived so bold a scheme,
and the fell [deadly] genius with which it was carried out.

What were his own feelings about himself at that triumphant moment?
Fain [gladly] would his dogs have known, as breathing heavily and wiping
their cutlasses, they gathered at a discreet distance from his hook, and
squinted through their ferret eyes at this extraordinary man. Elation
must have been in his heart, but his face did not reflect it: ever a
dark and solitary enigma, he stood aloof from his followers in spirit as
in substance.

The night's work was not yet over, for it was not the redskins he had
come out to destroy; they were but the bees to be smoked, so that he
should get at the honey. It was Pan he wanted, Pan and Wendy and their
band, but chiefly Pan.

Peter was such a small boy that one tends to wonder at the man's hatred
of him. True he had flung Hook's arm to the crocodile, but even this
and the increased insecurity of life to which it led, owing to
the crocodile's pertinacity [persistance], hardly account for a
vindictiveness so relentless and malignant. The truth is that there was
a something about Peter which goaded the pirate captain to frenzy. It
was not his courage, it was not his engaging appearance, it was not--.
There is no beating about the bush, for we know quite well what it was,
and have got to tell. It was Peter's cockiness.

This had got on Hook's nerves; it made his iron claw twitch, and at
night it disturbed him like an insect. While Peter lived, the tortured
man felt that he was a lion in a cage into which a sparrow had come.

The question now was how to get down the trees, or how to get his dogs
down? He ran his greedy eyes over them, searching for the thinnest
ones. They wriggled uncomfortably, for they knew he would not scruple
[hesitate] to ram them down with poles.

In the meantime, what of the boys? We have seen them at the first clang
of the weapons, turned as it were into stone figures, open-mouthed,
all appealing with outstretched arms to Peter; and we return to them as
their mouths close, and their arms fall to their sides. The pandemonium
above has ceased almost as suddenly as it arose, passed like a fierce
gust of wind; but they know that in the passing it has determined their
fate.

Which side had won?

The pirates, listening avidly at the mouths of the trees, heard the
question put by every boy, and alas, they also heard Peter's answer.

“If the redskins have won,” he said, “they will beat the tom-tom; it is
always their sign of victory.”

Now Smee had found the tom-tom, and was at that moment sitting on it.
“You will never hear the tom-tom again,” he muttered, but inaudibly of
course, for strict silence had been enjoined [urged]. To his amazement
Hook signed him to beat the tom-tom, and slowly there came to Smee an
understanding of the dreadful wickedness of the order. Never, probably,
had this simple man admired Hook so much.

Twice Smee beat upon the instrument, and then stopped to listen
gleefully.

“The tom-tom,” the miscreants heard Peter cry; “an Indian victory!”

The doomed children answered with a cheer that was music to the black
hearts above, and almost immediately they repeated their good-byes
to Peter. This puzzled the pirates, but all their other feelings were
swallowed by a base delight that the enemy were about to come up the
trees. They smirked at each other and rubbed their hands. Rapidly and
silently Hook gave his orders: one man to each tree, and the others to
arrange themselves in a line two yards apart.




Chapter 13 DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?

The more quickly this horror is disposed of the better. The first to
emerge from his tree was Curly. He rose out of it into the arms of
Cecco, who flung him to Smee, who flung him to Starkey, who flung him to
Bill Jukes, who flung him to Noodler, and so he was tossed from one to
another till he fell at the feet of the black pirate. All the boys were
plucked from their trees in this ruthless manner; and several of them
were in the air at a time, like bales of goods flung from hand to hand.

A different treatment was accorded to Wendy, who came last. With
ironical politeness Hook raised his hat to her, and, offering her his
arm, escorted her to the spot where the others were being gagged. He
did it with such an air, he was so frightfully DISTINGUE [imposingly
distinguished], that she was too fascinated to cry out. She was only a
little girl.

Perhaps it is tell-tale to divulge that for a moment Hook entranced her,
and we tell on her only because her slip led to strange results. Had she
haughtily unhanded him (and we should have loved to write it of her),
she would have been hurled through the air like the others, and then
Hook would probably not have been present at the tying of the children;
and had he not been at the tying he would not have discovered Slightly's
secret, and without the secret he could not presently have made his foul
attempt on Peter's life.

They were tied to prevent their flying away, doubled up with their knees
close to their ears; and for the trussing of them the black pirate had
cut a rope into nine equal pieces. All went well until Slightly's turn
came, when he was found to be like those irritating parcels that use up
all the string in going round and leave no tags [ends] with which to
tie a knot. The pirates kicked him in their rage, just as you kick the
parcel (though in fairness you should kick the string); and strange
to say it was Hook who told them to belay their violence. His lip was
curled with malicious triumph. While his dogs were merely sweating
because every time they tried to pack the unhappy lad tight in one
part he bulged out in another, Hook's master mind had gone far beneath
Slightly's surface, probing not for effects but for causes; and his
exultation showed that he had found them. Slightly, white to the gills,
knew that Hook had surprised [discovered] his secret, which was this,
that no boy so blown out could use a tree wherein an average man need
stick. Poor Slightly, most wretched of all the children now, for he
was in a panic about Peter, bitterly regretted what he had done. Madly
addicted to the drinking of water when he was hot, he had swelled in
consequence to his present girth, and instead of reducing himself to fit
his tree he had, unknown to the others, whittled his tree to make it fit
him.

Sufficient of this Hook guessed to persuade him that Peter at last lay
at his mercy, but no word of the dark design that now formed in the
subterranean caverns of his mind crossed his lips; he merely signed
that the captives were to be conveyed to the ship, and that he would be
alone.

How to convey them? Hunched up in their ropes they might indeed be
rolled down hill like barrels, but most of the way lay through a morass.
Again Hook's genius surmounted difficulties. He indicated that the
little house must be used as a conveyance. The children were flung into
it, four stout pirates raised it on their shoulders, the others fell in
behind, and singing the hateful pirate chorus the strange procession
set off through the wood. I don't know whether any of the children were
crying; if so, the singing drowned the sound; but as the little house
disappeared in the forest, a brave though tiny jet of smoke issued from
its chimney as if defying Hook.

Hook saw it, and it did Peter a bad service. It dried up any trickle of
pity for him that may have remained in the pirate's infuriated breast.

The first thing he did on finding himself alone in the fast falling
night was to tiptoe to Slightly's tree, and make sure that it provided
him with a passage. Then for long he remained brooding; his hat of ill
omen on the sward, so that any gentle breeze which had arisen might play
refreshingly through his hair. Dark as were his thoughts his blue eyes
were as soft as the periwinkle. Intently he listened for any sound from
the nether world, but all was as silent below as above; the house under
the ground seemed to be but one more empty tenement in the void. Was
that boy asleep, or did he stand waiting at the foot of Slightly's tree,
with his dagger in his hand?

There was no way of knowing, save by going down. Hook let his cloak slip
softly to the ground, and then biting his lips till a lewd blood stood
on them, he stepped into the tree. He was a brave man, but for a moment
he had to stop there and wipe his brow, which was dripping like a
candle. Then, silently, he let himself go into the unknown.

He arrived unmolested at the foot of the shaft, and stood still again,
biting at his breath, which had almost left him. As his eyes became
accustomed to the dim light various objects in the home under the trees
took shape; but the only one on which his greedy gaze rested, long
sought for and found at last, was the great bed. On the bed lay Peter
fast asleep.

Unaware of the tragedy being enacted above, Peter had continued, for
a little time after the children left, to play gaily on his pipes: no
doubt rather a forlorn attempt to prove to himself that he did not care.
Then he decided not to take his medicine, so as to grieve Wendy. Then he
lay down on the bed outside the coverlet, to vex her still more; for she
had always tucked them inside it, because you never know that you may
not grow chilly at the turn of the night. Then he nearly cried; but
it struck him how indignant she would be if he laughed instead; so he
laughed a haughty laugh and fell asleep in the middle of it.

Sometimes, though not often, he had dreams, and they were more painful
than the dreams of other boys. For hours he could not be separated from
these dreams, though he wailed piteously in them. They had to do, I
think, with the riddle of his existence. At such times it had been
Wendy's custom to take him out of bed and sit with him on her lap,
soothing him in dear ways of her own invention, and when he grew calmer
to put him back to bed before he quite woke up, so that he should
not know of the indignity to which she had subjected him. But on this
occasion he had fallen at once into a dreamless sleep. One arm dropped
over the edge of the bed, one leg was arched, and the unfinished part of
his laugh was stranded on his mouth, which was open, showing the little
pearls.

Thus defenceless Hook found him. He stood silent at the foot of the tree
looking across the chamber at his enemy. Did no feeling of compassion
disturb his sombre breast? The man was not wholly evil; he loved flowers
(I have been told) and sweet music (he was himself no mean performer on
the harpsichord); and, let it be frankly admitted, the idyllic nature of
the scene stirred him profoundly. Mastered by his better self he would
have returned reluctantly up the tree, but for one thing.

What stayed him was Peter's impertinent appearance as he slept. The
open mouth, the drooping arm, the arched knee: they were such a
personification of cockiness as, taken together, will never again, one
may hope, be presented to eyes so sensitive to their offensiveness. They
steeled Hook's heart. If his rage had broken him into a hundred pieces
every one of them would have disregarded the incident, and leapt at the
sleeper.

Though a light from the one lamp shone dimly on the bed, Hook stood in
darkness himself, and at the first stealthy step forward he discovered
an obstacle, the door of Slightly's tree. It did not entirely fill the
aperture, and he had been looking over it. Feeling for the catch,
he found to his fury that it was low down, beyond his reach. To his
disordered brain it seemed then that the irritating quality in Peter's
face and figure visibly increased, and he rattled the door and flung
himself against it. Was his enemy to escape him after all?

But what was that? The red in his eye had caught sight of Peter's
medicine standing on a ledge within easy reach. He fathomed what it was
straightaway, and immediately knew that the sleeper was in his power.

Lest he should be taken alive, Hook always carried about his person a
dreadful drug, blended by himself of all the death-dealing rings that
had come into his possession. These he had boiled down into a yellow
liquid quite unknown to science, which was probably the most virulent
poison in existence.

Five drops of this he now added to Peter's cup. His hand shook, but it
was in exultation rather than in shame. As he did it he avoided glancing
at the sleeper, but not lest pity should unnerve him; merely to avoid
spilling. Then one long gloating look he cast upon his victim, and
turning, wormed his way with difficulty up the tree. As he emerged
at the top he looked the very spirit of evil breaking from its hole.
Donning his hat at its most rakish angle, he wound his cloak around him,
holding one end in front as if to conceal his person from the night,
of which it was the blackest part, and muttering strangely to himself,
stole away through the trees.

Peter slept on. The light guttered [burned to edges] and went out,
leaving the tenement in darkness; but still he slept. It must have been
not less than ten o'clock by the crocodile, when he suddenly sat up in
his bed, wakened by he knew not what. It was a soft cautious tapping on
the door of his tree.

Soft and cautious, but in that stillness it was sinister. Peter felt for
his dagger till his hand gripped it. Then he spoke.

“Who is that?”

For long there was no answer: then again the knock.

“Who are you?”

No answer.

He was thrilled, and he loved being thrilled. In two strides he reached
the door. Unlike Slightly's door, it filled the aperture [opening], so
that he could not see beyond it, nor could the one knocking see him.

“I won't open unless you speak,” Peter cried.

Then at last the visitor spoke, in a lovely bell-like voice.

“Let me in, Peter.”

It was Tink, and quickly he unbarred to her. She flew in excitedly, her
face flushed and her dress stained with mud.

“What is it?”

“Oh, you could never guess!” she cried, and offered him three guesses.
“Out with it!” he shouted, and in one ungrammatical sentence, as long as
the ribbons that conjurers [magicians] pull from their mouths, she told
of the capture of Wendy and the boys.

Peter's heart bobbed up and down as he listened. Wendy bound, and on the
pirate ship; she who loved everything to be just so!

“I'll rescue her!” he cried, leaping at his weapons. As he leapt he
thought of something he could do to please her. He could take his
medicine.

His hand closed on the fatal draught.

“No!” shrieked Tinker Bell, who had heard Hook mutter about his deed as
he sped through the forest.

“Why not?”

“It is poisoned.”

“Poisoned? Who could have poisoned it?”

“Hook.”

“Don't be silly. How could Hook have got down here?”

Alas, Tinker Bell could not explain this, for even she did not know the
dark secret of Slightly's tree. Nevertheless Hook's words had left no
room for doubt. The cup was poisoned.

“Besides,” said Peter, quite believing himself, “I never fell asleep.”

He raised the cup. No time for words now; time for deeds; and with one
of her lightning movements Tink got between his lips and the draught,
and drained it to the dregs.

“Why, Tink, how dare you drink my medicine?”

But she did not answer. Already she was reeling in the air.

“What is the matter with you?” cried Peter, suddenly afraid.

“It was poisoned, Peter,” she told him softly; “and now I am going to be
dead.”

“O Tink, did you drink it to save me?”

“Yes.”

“But why, Tink?”

Her wings would scarcely carry her now, but in reply she alighted on his
shoulder and gave his nose a loving bite. She whispered in his ear “You
silly ass,” and then, tottering to her chamber, lay down on the bed.

His head almost filled the fourth wall of her little room as he knelt
near her in distress. Every moment her light was growing fainter; and
he knew that if it went out she would be no more. She liked his tears so
much that she put out her beautiful finger and let them run over it.

Her voice was so low that at first he could not make out what she said.
Then he made it out. She was saying that she thought she could get well
again if children believed in fairies.

Peter flung out his arms. There were no children there, and it was night
time; but he addressed all who might be dreaming of the Neverland, and
who were therefore nearer to him than you think: boys and girls in their
nighties, and naked papooses in their baskets hung from trees.

“Do you believe?” he cried.

Tink sat up in bed almost briskly to listen to her fate.

She fancied she heard answers in the affirmative, and then again she
wasn't sure.

“What do you think?” she asked Peter.

“If you believe,” he shouted to them, “clap your hands; don't let Tink
die.”

Many clapped.

Some didn't.

A few beasts hissed.

The clapping stopped suddenly; as if countless mothers had rushed to
their nurseries to see what on earth was happening; but already Tink was
saved. First her voice grew strong, then she popped out of bed, then
she was flashing through the room more merry and impudent than ever. She
never thought of thanking those who believed, but she would have liked to
get at the ones who had hissed.

“And now to rescue Wendy!”

The moon was riding in a cloudy heaven when Peter rose from his tree,
begirt [belted] with weapons and wearing little else, to set out upon
his perilous quest. It was not such a night as he would have chosen.
He had hoped to fly, keeping not far from the ground so that nothing
unwonted should escape his eyes; but in that fitful light to have
flown low would have meant trailing his shadow through the trees, thus
disturbing birds and acquainting a watchful foe that he was astir.

He regretted now that he had given the birds of the island such strange
names that they are very wild and difficult of approach.

There was no other course but to press forward in redskin fashion, at
which happily he was an adept [expert]. But in what direction, for he
could not be sure that the children had been taken to the ship? A
light fall of snow had obliterated all footmarks; and a deathly silence
pervaded the island, as if for a space Nature stood still in horror of
the recent carnage. He had taught the children something of the forest
lore that he had himself learned from Tiger Lily and Tinker Bell,
and knew that in their dire hour they were not likely to forget it.
Slightly, if he had an opportunity, would blaze [cut a mark in] the
trees, for instance, Curly would drop seeds, and Wendy would leave her
handkerchief at some important place. The morning was needed to search
for such guidance, and he could not wait. The upper world had called
him, but would give no help.

The crocodile passed him, but not another living thing, not a sound, not
a movement; and yet he knew well that sudden death might be at the next
tree, or stalking him from behind.

He swore this terrible oath: “Hook or me this time.”

Now he crawled forward like a snake, and again erect, he darted across
a space on which the moonlight played, one finger on his lip and his
dagger at the ready. He was frightfully happy.




Chapter 14 THE PIRATE SHIP

One green light squinting over Kidd's Creek, which is near the mouth of
the pirate river, marked where the brig, the JOLLY ROGER, lay, low in
the water; a rakish-looking [speedy-looking] craft foul to the hull,
every beam in her detestable, like ground strewn with mangled feathers.
She was the cannibal of the seas, and scarce needed that watchful eye,
for she floated immune in the horror of her name.

She was wrapped in the blanket of night, through which no sound from her
could have reached the shore. There was little sound, and none agreeable
save the whir of the ship's sewing machine at which Smee sat, ever
industrious and obliging, the essence of the commonplace, pathetic Smee.
I know not why he was so infinitely pathetic, unless it were because
he was so pathetically unaware of it; but even strong men had to turn
hastily from looking at him, and more than once on summer evenings he
had touched the fount of Hook's tears and made it flow. Of this, as of
almost everything else, Smee was quite unconscious.

A few of the pirates leant over the bulwarks, drinking in the miasma
[putrid mist] of the night; others sprawled by barrels over games of
dice and cards; and the exhausted four who had carried the little house
lay prone on the deck, where even in their sleep they rolled skillfully
to this side or that out of Hook's reach, lest he should claw them
mechanically in passing.

Hook trod the deck in thought. O man unfathomable. It was his hour of
triumph. Peter had been removed for ever from his path, and all the
other boys were in the brig, about to walk the plank. It was his
grimmest deed since the days when he had brought Barbecue to heel; and
knowing as we do how vain a tabernacle is man, could we be surprised
had he now paced the deck unsteadily, bellied out by the winds of his
success?

But there was no elation in his gait, which kept pace with the action of
his sombre mind. Hook was profoundly dejected.

He was often thus when communing with himself on board ship in the
quietude of the night. It was because he was so terribly alone. This
inscrutable man never felt more alone than when surrounded by his dogs.
They were socially inferior to him.

Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at
this date set the country in a blaze; but as those who read between the
lines must already have guessed, he had been at a famous public school;
and its traditions still clung to him like garments, with which indeed
they are largely concerned. Thus it was offensive to him even now to
board a ship in the same dress in which he grappled [attacked] her, and
he still adhered in his walk to the school's distinguished slouch. But
above all he retained the passion for good form.

Good form! However much he may have degenerated, he still knew that this
is all that really matters.

From far within him he heard a creaking as of rusty portals, and through
them came a stern tap-tap-tap, like hammering in the night when one
cannot sleep. “Have you been good form to-day?” was their eternal
question.

“Fame, fame, that glittering bauble, it is mine,” he cried.

“Is it quite good form to be distinguished at anything?” the tap-tap
from his school replied.

“I am the only man whom Barbecue feared,” he urged, “and Flint feared
Barbecue.”

“Barbecue, Flint--what house?” came the cutting retort.

Most disquieting reflection of all, was it not bad form to think about
good form?

His vitals were tortured by this problem. It was a claw within him
sharper than the iron one; and as it tore him, the perspiration dripped
down his tallow [waxy] countenance and streaked his doublet. Ofttimes he
drew his sleeve across his face, but there was no damming that trickle.

Ah, envy not Hook.

There came to him a presentiment of his early dissolution [death]. It
was as if Peter's terrible oath had boarded the ship. Hook felt a gloomy
desire to make his dying speech, lest presently there should be no time
for it.

“Better for Hook,” he cried, “if he had had less ambition!” It was in
his darkest hours only that he referred to himself in the third person.

“No little children to love me!”

Strange that he should think of this, which had never troubled him
before; perhaps the sewing machine brought it to his mind. For long he
muttered to himself, staring at Smee, who was hemming placidly, under
the conviction that all children feared him.

Feared him! Feared Smee! There was not a child on board the brig that
night who did not already love him. He had said horrid things to them
and hit them with the palm of his hand, because he could not hit with
his fist, but they had only clung to him the more. Michael had tried on
his spectacles.

To tell poor Smee that they thought him lovable! Hook itched to do it,
but it seemed too brutal. Instead, he revolved this mystery in his
mind: why do they find Smee lovable? He pursued the problem like the
sleuth-hound that he was. If Smee was lovable, what was it that made him
so? A terrible answer suddenly presented itself--“Good form?”

Had the bo'sun good form without knowing it, which is the best form of
all?

He remembered that you have to prove you don't know you have it before
you are eligible for Pop [an elite social club at Eton].

With a cry of rage he raised his iron hand over Smee's head; but he did
not tear. What arrested him was this reflection:

“To claw a man because he is good form, what would that be?”

“Bad form!”

The unhappy Hook was as impotent [powerless] as he was damp, and he fell
forward like a cut flower.

His dogs thinking him out of the way for a time, discipline instantly
relaxed; and they broke into a bacchanalian [drunken] dance, which
brought him to his feet at once, all traces of human weakness gone, as
if a bucket of water had passed over him.

“Quiet, you scugs,” he cried, “or I'll cast anchor in you;” and at once
the din was hushed. “Are all the children chained, so that they cannot
fly away?”

“Ay, ay.”

“Then hoist them up.”

The wretched prisoners were dragged from the hold, all except Wendy,
and ranged in line in front of him. For a time he seemed unconscious
of their presence. He lolled at his ease, humming, not unmelodiously,
snatches of a rude song, and fingering a pack of cards. Ever and anon
the light from his cigar gave a touch of colour to his face.

“Now then, bullies,” he said briskly, “six of you walk the plank
to-night, but I have room for two cabin boys. Which of you is it to be?”

“Don't irritate him unnecessarily,” had been Wendy's instructions in
the hold; so Tootles stepped forward politely. Tootles hated the idea
of signing under such a man, but an instinct told him that it would
be prudent to lay the responsibility on an absent person; and though a
somewhat silly boy, he knew that mothers alone are always willing to be
the buffer. All children know this about mothers, and despise them for
it, but make constant use of it.

So Tootles explained prudently, “You see, sir, I don't think my mother
would like me to be a pirate. Would your mother like you to be a pirate,
Slightly?”

He winked at Slightly, who said mournfully, “I don't think so,” as if
he wished things had been otherwise. “Would your mother like you to be a
pirate, Twin?”

“I don't think so,” said the first twin, as clever as the others. “Nibs,
would--”

“Stow this gab,” roared Hook, and the spokesmen were dragged back. “You,
boy,” he said, addressing John, “you look as if you had a little pluck
in you. Didst never want to be a pirate, my hearty?”

Now John had sometimes experienced this hankering at maths. prep.; and
he was struck by Hook's picking him out.

“I once thought of calling myself Red-handed Jack,” he said diffidently.

“And a good name too. We'll call you that here, bully, if you join.”

“What do you think, Michael?” asked John.

“What would you call me if I join?” Michael demanded.

“Blackbeard Joe.”

Michael was naturally impressed. “What do you think, John?” He wanted
John to decide, and John wanted him to decide.

“Shall we still be respectful subjects of the King?” John inquired.

Through Hook's teeth came the answer: “You would have to swear, 'Down
with the King.'”

Perhaps John had not behaved very well so far, but he shone out now.

“Then I refuse,” he cried, banging the barrel in front of Hook.

“And I refuse,” cried Michael.

“Rule Britannia!” squeaked Curly.

The infuriated pirates buffeted them in the mouth; and Hook roared out,
“That seals your doom. Bring up their mother. Get the plank ready.”

They were only boys, and they went white as they saw Jukes and Cecco
preparing the fatal plank. But they tried to look brave when Wendy was
brought up.

No words of mine can tell you how Wendy despised those pirates. To the
boys there was at least some glamour in the pirate calling; but all that
she saw was that the ship had not been tidied for years. There was not
a porthole on the grimy glass of which you might not have written with
your finger “Dirty pig”; and she had already written it on several. But
as the boys gathered round her she had no thought, of course, save for
them.

“So, my beauty,” said Hook, as if he spoke in syrup, “you are to see
your children walk the plank.”

Fine gentlemen though he was, the intensity of his communings had soiled
his ruff, and suddenly he knew that she was gazing at it. With a hasty
gesture he tried to hide it, but he was too late.

“Are they to die?” asked Wendy, with a look of such frightful contempt
that he nearly fainted.

“They are,” he snarled. “Silence all,” he called gloatingly, “for a
mother's last words to her children.”

At this moment Wendy was grand. “These are my last words, dear boys,”
 she said firmly. “I feel that I have a message to you from your real
mothers, and it is this: 'We hope our sons will die like English
gentlemen.'”

Even the pirates were awed, and Tootles cried out hysterically, “I am
going to do what my mother hopes. What are you to do, Nibs?”

“What my mother hopes. What are you to do, Twin?”

“What my mother hopes. John, what are--”

But Hook had found his voice again.

“Tie her up!” he shouted.

It was Smee who tied her to the mast. “See here, honey,” he whispered,
“I'll save you if you promise to be my mother.”

But not even for Smee would she make such a promise. “I would almost
rather have no children at all,” she said disdainfully [scornfully].

It is sad to know that not a boy was looking at her as Smee tied her to
the mast; the eyes of all were on the plank: that last little walk they
were about to take. They were no longer able to hope that they would
walk it manfully, for the capacity to think had gone from them; they
could stare and shiver only.

Hook smiled on them with his teeth closed, and took a step toward Wendy.
His intention was to turn her face so that she should see the boys
walking the plank one by one. But he never reached her, he never heard
the cry of anguish he hoped to wring from her. He heard something else
instead.

It was the terrible tick-tick of the crocodile.

They all heard it--pirates, boys, Wendy; and immediately every head was
blown in one direction; not to the water whence the sound proceeded, but
toward Hook. All knew that what was about to happen concerned him alone,
and that from being actors they were suddenly become spectators.

Very frightful was it to see the change that came over him. It was as if
he had been clipped at every joint. He fell in a little heap.

The sound came steadily nearer; and in advance of it came this ghastly
thought, “The crocodile is about to board the ship!”

Even the iron claw hung inactive; as if knowing that it was no intrinsic
part of what the attacking force wanted. Left so fearfully alone, any
other man would have lain with his eyes shut where he fell: but the
gigantic brain of Hook was still working, and under its guidance he
crawled on the knees along the deck as far from the sound as he could
go. The pirates respectfully cleared a passage for him, and it was only
when he brought up against the bulwarks that he spoke.

“Hide me!” he cried hoarsely.

They gathered round him, all eyes averted from the thing that was coming
aboard. They had no thought of fighting it. It was Fate.

Only when Hook was hidden from them did curiosity loosen the limbs of
the boys so that they could rush to the ship's side to see the crocodile
climbing it. Then they got the strangest surprise of the Night of
Nights; for it was no crocodile that was coming to their aid. It was
Peter.

He signed to them not to give vent to any cry of admiration that might
rouse suspicion. Then he went on ticking.




Chapter 15 “HOOK OR ME THIS TIME”

Odd things happen to all of us on our way through life without our
noticing for a time that they have happened. Thus, to take an instance,
we suddenly discover that we have been deaf in one ear for we don't know
how long, but, say, half an hour. Now such an experience had come that
night to Peter. When last we saw him he was stealing across the island
with one finger to his lips and his dagger at the ready. He had seen the
crocodile pass by without noticing anything peculiar about it, but by
and by he remembered that it had not been ticking. At first he thought
this eerie, but soon concluded rightly that the clock had run down.

Without giving a thought to what might be the feelings of a
fellow-creature thus abruptly deprived of its closest companion, Peter
began to consider how he could turn the catastrophe to his own use;
and he decided to tick, so that wild beasts should believe he was the
crocodile and let him pass unmolested. He ticked superbly, but with one
unforeseen result. The crocodile was among those who heard the sound,
and it followed him, though whether with the purpose of regaining what
it had lost, or merely as a friend under the belief that it was again
ticking itself, will never be certainly known, for, like slaves to a
fixed idea, it was a stupid beast.

Peter reached the shore without mishap, and went straight on, his legs
encountering the water as if quite unaware that they had entered a new
element. Thus many animals pass from land to water, but no other human
of whom I know. As he swam he had but one thought: “Hook or me this
time.” He had ticked so long that he now went on ticking without knowing
that he was doing it. Had he known he would have stopped, for to board
the brig by help of the tick, though an ingenious idea, had not occurred
to him.

On the contrary, he thought he had scaled her side as noiseless as a
mouse; and he was amazed to see the pirates cowering from him, with Hook
in their midst as abject as if he had heard the crocodile.

The crocodile! No sooner did Peter remember it than he heard the
ticking. At first he thought the sound did come from the crocodile,
and he looked behind him swiftly. Then he realised that he was doing it
himself, and in a flash he understood the situation. “How clever of me!”
 he thought at once, and signed to the boys not to burst into applause.

It was at this moment that Ed Teynte the quartermaster emerged from the
forecastle and came along the deck. Now, reader, time what happened by
your watch. Peter struck true and deep. John clapped his hands on the
ill-fated pirate's mouth to stifle the dying groan. He fell forward.
Four boys caught him to prevent the thud. Peter gave the signal, and the
carrion was cast overboard. There was a splash, and then silence. How
long has it taken?

“One!” (Slightly had begun to count.)

None too soon, Peter, every inch of him on tiptoe, vanished into the
cabin; for more than one pirate was screwing up his courage to look
round. They could hear each other's distressed breathing now, which
showed them that the more terrible sound had passed.

“It's gone, captain,” Smee said, wiping off his spectacles. “All's still
again.”

Slowly Hook let his head emerge from his ruff, and listened so intently
that he could have caught the echo of the tick. There was not a sound,
and he drew himself up firmly to his full height.

“Then here's to Johnny Plank!” he cried brazenly, hating the boys more
than ever because they had seen him unbend. He broke into the villainous
ditty:

     “Yo ho, yo ho, the frisky plank,
     You walks along it so,
     Till it goes down and you goes down
     To Davy Jones below!”

To terrorize the prisoners the more, though with a certain loss of
dignity, he danced along an imaginary plank, grimacing at them as he
sang; and when he finished he cried, “Do you want a touch of the cat [o'
nine tails] before you walk the plank?”

At that they fell on their knees. “No, no!” they cried so piteously that
every pirate smiled.

“Fetch the cat, Jukes,” said Hook; “it's in the cabin.”

The cabin! Peter was in the cabin! The children gazed at each other.

“Ay, ay,” said Jukes blithely, and he strode into the cabin. They
followed him with their eyes; they scarce knew that Hook had resumed his
song, his dogs joining in with him:

     “Yo ho, yo ho, the scratching cat,
     Its tails are nine, you know,
     And when they're writ upon your back--”

What was the last line will never be known, for of a sudden the song was
stayed by a dreadful screech from the cabin. It wailed through the ship,
and died away. Then was heard a crowing sound which was well understood
by the boys, but to the pirates was almost more eerie than the screech.

“What was that?” cried Hook.

“Two,” said Slightly solemnly.

The Italian Cecco hesitated for a moment and then swung into the cabin.
He tottered out, haggard.

“What's the matter with Bill Jukes, you dog?” hissed Hook, towering over
him.

“The matter wi' him is he's dead, stabbed,” replied Cecco in a hollow
voice.

“Bill Jukes dead!” cried the startled pirates.

“The cabin's as black as a pit,” Cecco said, almost gibbering, “but
there is something terrible in there: the thing you heard crowing.”

The exultation of the boys, the lowering looks of the pirates, both were
seen by Hook.

“Cecco,” he said in his most steely voice, “go back and fetch me out
that doodle-doo.”

Cecco, bravest of the brave, cowered before his captain, crying “No,
no”; but Hook was purring to his claw.

“Did you say you would go, Cecco?” he said musingly.

Cecco went, first flinging his arms despairingly. There was no more
singing, all listened now; and again came a death-screech and again a
crow.

No one spoke except Slightly. “Three,” he said.

Hook rallied his dogs with a gesture. “'S'death and odds fish,” he
thundered, “who is to bring me that doodle-doo?”

“Wait till Cecco comes out,” growled Starkey, and the others took up the
cry.

“I think I heard you volunteer, Starkey,” said Hook, purring again.

“No, by thunder!” Starkey cried.

“My hook thinks you did,” said Hook, crossing to him. “I wonder if it
would not be advisable, Starkey, to humour the hook?”

“I'll swing before I go in there,” replied Starkey doggedly, and again
he had the support of the crew.

“Is this mutiny?” asked Hook more pleasantly than ever. “Starkey's
ringleader!”

“Captain, mercy!” Starkey whimpered, all of a tremble now.

“Shake hands, Starkey,” said Hook, proffering his claw.

Starkey looked round for help, but all deserted him. As he backed up
Hook advanced, and now the red spark was in his eye. With a despairing
scream the pirate leapt upon Long Tom and precipitated himself into the
sea.

“Four,” said Slightly.

“And now,” Hook said courteously, “did any other gentlemen say mutiny?”
 Seizing a lantern and raising his claw with a menacing gesture, “I'll
bring out that doodle-doo myself,” he said, and sped into the cabin.

“Five.” How Slightly longed to say it. He wetted his lips to be ready,
but Hook came staggering out, without his lantern.

“Something blew out the light,” he said a little unsteadily.

“Something!” echoed Mullins.

“What of Cecco?” demanded Noodler.

“He's as dead as Jukes,” said Hook shortly.

His reluctance to return to the cabin impressed them all unfavourably,
and the mutinous sounds again broke forth. All pirates are
superstitious, and Cookson cried, “They do say the surest sign a ship's
accurst is when there's one on board more than can be accounted for.”

“I've heard,” muttered Mullins, “he always boards the pirate craft last.
Had he a tail, captain?”

“They say,” said another, looking viciously at Hook, “that when he comes
it's in the likeness of the wickedest man aboard.”

“Had he a hook, captain?” asked Cookson insolently; and one after
another took up the cry, “The ship's doomed!” At this the children could
not resist raising a cheer. Hook had well-nigh forgotten his prisoners,
but as he swung round on them now his face lit up again.

“Lads,” he cried to his crew, “now here's a notion. Open the cabin door
and drive them in. Let them fight the doodle-doo for their lives. If
they kill him, we're so much the better; if he kills them, we're none
the worse.”

For the last time his dogs admired Hook, and devotedly they did his
bidding. The boys, pretending to struggle, were pushed into the cabin
and the door was closed on them.

“Now, listen!” cried Hook, and all listened. But not one dared to face
the door. Yes, one, Wendy, who all this time had been bound to the mast.
It was for neither a scream nor a crow that she was watching, it was for
the reappearance of Peter.

She had not long to wait. In the cabin he had found the thing for which
he had gone in search: the key that would free the children of their
manacles, and now they all stole forth, armed with such weapons as they
could find. First signing them to hide, Peter cut Wendy's bonds,
and then nothing could have been easier than for them all to fly off
together; but one thing barred the way, an oath, “Hook or me this time.”
 So when he had freed Wendy, he whispered for her to conceal herself with
the others, and himself took her place by the mast, her cloak around him
so that he should pass for her. Then he took a great breath and crowed.

To the pirates it was a voice crying that all the boys lay slain in the
cabin; and they were panic-stricken. Hook tried to hearten them; but
like the dogs he had made them they showed him their fangs, and he knew
that if he took his eyes off them now they would leap at him.

“Lads,” he said, ready to cajole or strike as need be, but never
quailing for an instant, “I've thought it out. There's a Jonah aboard.”

“Ay,” they snarled, “a man wi' a hook.”

“No, lads, no, it's the girl. Never was luck on a pirate ship wi' a
woman on board. We'll right the ship when she's gone.”

Some of them remembered that this had been a saying of Flint's. “It's
worth trying,” they said doubtfully.

“Fling the girl overboard,” cried Hook; and they made a rush at the
figure in the cloak.

“There's none can save you now, missy,” Mullins hissed jeeringly.

“There's one,” replied the figure.

“Who's that?”

“Peter Pan the avenger!” came the terrible answer; and as he spoke Peter
flung off his cloak. Then they all knew who 'twas that had been undoing
them in the cabin, and twice Hook essayed to speak and twice he failed.
In that frightful moment I think his fierce heart broke.

At last he cried, “Cleave him to the brisket!” but without conviction.

“Down, boys, and at them!” Peter's voice rang out; and in another moment
the clash of arms was resounding through the ship. Had the pirates kept
together it is certain that they would have won; but the onset came
when they were still unstrung, and they ran hither and thither, striking
wildly, each thinking himself the last survivor of the crew. Man to man
they were the stronger; but they fought on the defensive only, which
enabled the boys to hunt in pairs and choose their quarry. Some of the
miscreants leapt into the sea; others hid in dark recesses, where they
were found by Slightly, who did not fight, but ran about with a lantern
which he flashed in their faces, so that they were half blinded and
fell as an easy prey to the reeking swords of the other boys. There was
little sound to be heard but the clang of weapons, an occasional
screech or splash, and Slightly monotonously counting--five--six--seven
eight--nine--ten--eleven.

I think all were gone when a group of savage boys surrounded Hook, who
seemed to have a charmed life, as he kept them at bay in that circle
of fire. They had done for his dogs, but this man alone seemed to be a
match for them all. Again and again they closed upon him, and again and
again he hewed a clear space. He had lifted up one boy with his hook,
and was using him as a buckler [shield], when another, who had just
passed his sword through Mullins, sprang into the fray.

“Put up your swords, boys,” cried the newcomer, “this man is mine.”

Thus suddenly Hook found himself face to face with Peter. The others
drew back and formed a ring around them.

For long the two enemies looked at one another, Hook shuddering
slightly, and Peter with the strange smile upon his face.

“So, Pan,” said Hook at last, “this is all your doing.”

“Ay, James Hook,” came the stern answer, “it is all my doing.”

“Proud and insolent youth,” said Hook, “prepare to meet thy doom.”

“Dark and sinister man,” Peter answered, “have at thee.”

Without more words they fell to, and for a space there was no advantage
to either blade. Peter was a superb swordsman, and parried with dazzling
rapidity; ever and anon he followed up a feint with a lunge that got
past his foe's defence, but his shorter reach stood him in ill stead,
and he could not drive the steel home. Hook, scarcely his inferior in
brilliancy, but not quite so nimble in wrist play, forced him back by
the weight of his onset, hoping suddenly to end all with a favourite
thrust, taught him long ago by Barbecue at Rio; but to his astonishment
he found this thrust turned aside again and again. Then he sought to
close and give the quietus with his iron hook, which all this time had
been pawing the air; but Peter doubled under it and, lunging fiercely,
pierced him in the ribs. At the sight of his own blood, whose peculiar
colour, you remember, was offensive to him, the sword fell from Hook's
hand, and he was at Peter's mercy.

“Now!” cried all the boys, but with a magnificent gesture Peter invited
his opponent to pick up his sword. Hook did so instantly, but with a
tragic feeling that Peter was showing good form.

Hitherto he had thought it was some fiend fighting him, but darker
suspicions assailed him now.

“Pan, who and what art thou?” he cried huskily.

“I'm youth, I'm joy,” Peter answered at a venture, “I'm a little bird
that has broken out of the egg.”

This, of course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy Hook that
Peter did not know in the least who or what he was, which is the very
pinnacle of good form.

“To't again,” he cried despairingly.

He fought now like a human flail, and every sweep of that terrible sword
would have severed in twain any man or boy who obstructed it; but Peter
fluttered round him as if the very wind it made blew him out of the
danger zone. And again and again he darted in and pricked.

Hook was fighting now without hope. That passionate breast no longer
asked for life; but for one boon it craved: to see Peter show bad form
before it was cold forever.

Abandoning the fight he rushed into the powder magazine and fired it.

“In two minutes,” he cried, “the ship will be blown to pieces.”

Now, now, he thought, true form will show.

But Peter issued from the powder magazine with the shell in his hands,
and calmly flung it overboard.

What sort of form was Hook himself showing? Misguided man though he was,
we may be glad, without sympathising with him, that in the end he was
true to the traditions of his race. The other boys were flying around
him now, flouting, scornful; and he staggered about the deck striking up
at them impotently, his mind was no longer with them; it was slouching
in the playing fields of long ago, or being sent up [to the headmaster]
for good, or watching the wall-game from a famous wall. And his shoes
were right, and his waistcoat was right, and his tie was right, and his
socks were right.

James Hook, thou not wholly unheroic figure, farewell.

For we have come to his last moment.

Seeing Peter slowly advancing upon him through the air with dagger
poised, he sprang upon the bulwarks to cast himself into the sea. He
did not know that the crocodile was waiting for him; for we purposely
stopped the clock that this knowledge might be spared him: a little mark
of respect from us at the end.

He had one last triumph, which I think we need not grudge him. As he
stood on the bulwark looking over his shoulder at Peter gliding through
the air, he invited him with a gesture to use his foot. It made Peter
kick instead of stab.

At last Hook had got the boon for which he craved.

“Bad form,” he cried jeeringly, and went content to the crocodile.

Thus perished James Hook.

“Seventeen,” Slightly sang out; but he was not quite correct in his
figures. Fifteen paid the penalty for their crimes that night; but two
reached the shore: Starkey to be captured by the redskins, who made him
nurse for all their papooses, a melancholy come-down for a pirate; and
Smee, who henceforth wandered about the world in his spectacles, making
a precarious living by saying he was the only man that Jas. Hook had
feared.

Wendy, of course, had stood by taking no part in the fight, though
watching Peter with glistening eyes; but now that all was over she
became prominent again. She praised them equally, and shuddered
delightfully when Michael showed her the place where he had killed one;
and then she took them into Hook's cabin and pointed to his watch which
was hanging on a nail. It said “half-past one!”

The lateness of the hour was almost the biggest thing of all. She got
them to bed in the pirates' bunks pretty quickly, you may be sure; all
but Peter, who strutted up and down on the deck, until at last he fell
asleep by the side of Long Tom. He had one of his dreams that night, and
cried in his sleep for a long time, and Wendy held him tightly.




Chapter 16 THE RETURN HOME

By three bells that morning they were all stirring their stumps [legs];
for there was a big sea running; and Tootles, the bo'sun, was among
them, with a rope's end in his hand and chewing tobacco. They all donned
pirate clothes cut off at the knee, shaved smartly, and tumbled up, with
the true nautical roll and hitching their trousers.

It need not be said who was the captain. Nibs and John were first and
second mate. There was a woman aboard. The rest were tars [sailors]
before the mast, and lived in the fo'c'sle. Peter had already lashed
himself to the wheel; but he piped all hands and delivered a short
address to them; said he hoped they would do their duty like gallant
hearties, but that he knew they were the scum of Rio and the Gold Coast,
and if they snapped at him he would tear them. The bluff strident words
struck the note sailors understood, and they cheered him lustily. Then
a few sharp orders were given, and they turned the ship round, and nosed
her for the mainland.

Captain Pan calculated, after consulting the ship's chart, that if this
weather lasted they should strike the Azores about the 21st of June,
after which it would save time to fly.

Some of them wanted it to be an honest ship and others were in favour
of keeping it a pirate; but the captain treated them as dogs, and they
dared not express their wishes to him even in a round robin [one person
after another, as they had to Cpt. Hook]. Instant obedience was the only
safe thing. Slightly got a dozen for looking perplexed when told to take
soundings. The general feeling was that Peter was honest just now to
lull Wendy's suspicions, but that there might be a change when the new
suit was ready, which, against her will, she was making for him out of
some of Hook's wickedest garments. It was afterwards whispered among
them that on the first night he wore this suit he sat long in the cabin
with Hook's cigar-holder in his mouth and one hand clenched, all but for
the forefinger, which he bent and held threateningly aloft like a hook.

Instead of watching the ship, however, we must now return to that
desolate home from which three of our characters had taken heartless
flight so long ago. It seems a shame to have neglected No. 14 all this
time; and yet we may be sure that Mrs. Darling does not blame us. If we
had returned sooner to look with sorrowful sympathy at her, she would
probably have cried, “Don't be silly; what do I matter? Do go back and
keep an eye on the children.” So long as mothers are like this their
children will take advantage of them; and they may lay to [bet on] that.

Even now we venture into that familiar nursery only because its lawful
occupants are on their way home; we are merely hurrying on in advance
of them to see that their beds are properly aired and that Mr. and Mrs.
Darling do not go out for the evening. We are no more than servants. Why
on earth should their beds be properly aired, seeing that they left them
in such a thankless hurry? Would it not serve them jolly well right if
they came back and found that their parents were spending the week-end
in the country? It would be the moral lesson they have been in need
of ever since we met them; but if we contrived things in this way Mrs.
Darling would never forgive us.

One thing I should like to do immensely, and that is to tell her, in the
way authors have, that the children are coming back, that indeed they
will be here on Thursday week. This would spoil so completely the
surprise to which Wendy and John and Michael are looking forward. They
have been planning it out on the ship: mother's rapture, father's shout
of joy, Nana's leap through the air to embrace them first, when what
they ought to be prepared for is a good hiding. How delicious to spoil
it all by breaking the news in advance; so that when they enter grandly
Mrs. Darling may not even offer Wendy her mouth, and Mr. Darling may
exclaim pettishly, “Dash it all, here are those boys again.” However,
we should get no thanks even for this. We are beginning to know Mrs.
Darling by this time, and may be sure that she would upbraid us for
depriving the children of their little pleasure.

“But, my dear madam, it is ten days till Thursday week; so that by
telling you what's what, we can save you ten days of unhappiness.”

“Yes, but at what a cost! By depriving the children of ten minutes of
delight.”

“Oh, if you look at it in that way!”

“What other way is there in which to look at it?”

You see, the woman had no proper spirit. I had meant to say
extraordinarily nice things about her; but I despise her, and not one of
them will I say now. She does not really need to be told to have things
ready, for they are ready. All the beds are aired, and she never leaves
the house, and observe, the window is open. For all the use we are to
her, we might well go back to the ship. However, as we are here we may
as well stay and look on. That is all we are, lookers-on. Nobody really
wants us. So let us watch and say jaggy things, in the hope that some of
them will hurt.

The only change to be seen in the night-nursery is that between nine
and six the kennel is no longer there. When the children flew away, Mr.
Darling felt in his bones that all the blame was his for having chained
Nana up, and that from first to last she had been wiser than he. Of
course, as we have seen, he was quite a simple man; indeed he might have
passed for a boy again if he had been able to take his baldness off;
but he had also a noble sense of justice and a lion's courage to do what
seemed right to him; and having thought the matter out with anxious care
after the flight of the children, he went down on all fours and crawled
into the kennel. To all Mrs. Darling's dear invitations to him to come
out he replied sadly but firmly:

“No, my own one, this is the place for me.”

In the bitterness of his remorse he swore that he would never leave
the kennel until his children came back. Of course this was a pity; but
whatever Mr. Darling did he had to do in excess, otherwise he soon gave
up doing it. And there never was a more humble man than the once proud
George Darling, as he sat in the kennel of an evening talking with his
wife of their children and all their pretty ways.

Very touching was his deference to Nana. He would not let her come into
the kennel, but on all other matters he followed her wishes implicitly.

Every morning the kennel was carried with Mr. Darling in it to a cab,
which conveyed him to his office, and he returned home in the same way
at six. Something of the strength of character of the man will be seen
if we remember how sensitive he was to the opinion of neighbours: this
man whose every movement now attracted surprised attention. Inwardly he
must have suffered torture; but he preserved a calm exterior even when
the young criticised his little home, and he always lifted his hat
courteously to any lady who looked inside.

It may have been Quixotic, but it was magnificent. Soon the inward
meaning of it leaked out, and the great heart of the public was touched.
Crowds followed the cab, cheering it lustily; charming girls scaled it
to get his autograph; interviews appeared in the better class of papers,
and society invited him to dinner and added, “Do come in the kennel.”

On that eventful Thursday week, Mrs. Darling was in the night-nursery
awaiting George's return home; a very sad-eyed woman. Now that we look
at her closely and remember the gaiety of her in the old days, all gone
now just because she has lost her babes, I find I won't be able to say
nasty things about her after all. If she was too fond of her rubbishy
children, she couldn't help it. Look at her in her chair, where she has
fallen asleep. The corner of her mouth, where one looks first, is almost
withered up. Her hand moves restlessly on her breast as if she had a
pain there. Some like Peter best, and some like Wendy best, but I like
her best. Suppose, to make her happy, we whisper to her in her sleep
that the brats are coming back. They are really within two miles of the
window now, and flying strong, but all we need whisper is that they are
on the way. Let's.

It is a pity we did it, for she has started up, calling their names; and
there is no one in the room but Nana.

“O Nana, I dreamt my dear ones had come back.”

Nana had filmy eyes, but all she could do was put her paw gently on her
mistress's lap; and they were sitting together thus when the kennel was
brought back. As Mr. Darling puts his head out to kiss his wife, we see
that his face is more worn than of yore, but has a softer expression.

He gave his hat to Liza, who took it scornfully; for she had no
imagination, and was quite incapable of understanding the motives of
such a man. Outside, the crowd who had accompanied the cab home were
still cheering, and he was naturally not unmoved.

“Listen to them,” he said; “it is very gratifying.”

“Lots of little boys,” sneered Liza.

“There were several adults to-day,” he assured her with a faint flush;
but when she tossed her head he had not a word of reproof for her.
Social success had not spoilt him; it had made him sweeter. For some
time he sat with his head out of the kennel, talking with Mrs. Darling
of this success, and pressing her hand reassuringly when she said she
hoped his head would not be turned by it.

“But if I had been a weak man,” he said. “Good heavens, if I had been a
weak man!”

“And, George,” she said timidly, “you are as full of remorse as ever,
aren't you?”

“Full of remorse as ever, dearest! See my punishment: living in a
kennel.”

“But it is punishment, isn't it, George? You are sure you are not
enjoying it?”

“My love!”

You may be sure she begged his pardon; and then, feeling drowsy, he
curled round in the kennel.

“Won't you play me to sleep,” he asked, “on the nursery piano?” and as
she was crossing to the day-nursery he added thoughtlessly, “And shut
that window. I feel a draught.”

“O George, never ask me to do that. The window must always be left open
for them, always, always.”

Now it was his turn to beg her pardon; and she went into the day-nursery
and played, and soon he was asleep; and while he slept, Wendy and John
and Michael flew into the room.

Oh no. We have written it so, because that was the charming arrangement
planned by them before we left the ship; but something must have
happened since then, for it is not they who have flown in, it is Peter
and Tinker Bell.

Peter's first words tell all.

“Quick Tink,” he whispered, “close the window; bar it! That's right. Now
you and I must get away by the door; and when Wendy comes she will think
her mother has barred her out; and she will have to go back with me.”

Now I understand what had hitherto puzzled me, why when Peter had
exterminated the pirates he did not return to the island and leave Tink
to escort the children to the mainland. This trick had been in his head
all the time.

Instead of feeling that he was behaving badly he danced with glee; then
he peeped into the day-nursery to see who was playing. He whispered to
Tink, “It's Wendy's mother! She is a pretty lady, but not so pretty as
my mother. Her mouth is full of thimbles, but not so full as my mother's
was.”

Of course he knew nothing whatever about his mother; but he sometimes
bragged about her.

He did not know the tune, which was “Home, Sweet Home,” but he knew it
was saying, “Come back, Wendy, Wendy, Wendy”; and he cried exultantly,
“You will never see Wendy again, lady, for the window is barred!”

He peeped in again to see why the music had stopped, and now he saw
that Mrs. Darling had laid her head on the box, and that two tears were
sitting on her eyes.

“She wants me to unbar the window,” thought Peter, “but I won't, not I!”

He peeped again, and the tears were still there, or another two had
taken their place.

“She's awfully fond of Wendy,” he said to himself. He was angry with her
now for not seeing why she could not have Wendy.

The reason was so simple: “I'm fond of her too. We can't both have her,
lady.”

But the lady would not make the best of it, and he was unhappy. He
ceased to look at her, but even then she would not let go of him. He
skipped about and made funny faces, but when he stopped it was just as
if she were inside him, knocking.

“Oh, all right,” he said at last, and gulped. Then he unbarred the
window. “Come on, Tink,” he cried, with a frightful sneer at the laws of
nature; “we don't want any silly mothers;” and he flew away.

Thus Wendy and John and Michael found the window open for them after
all, which of course was more than they deserved. They alighted on the
floor, quite unashamed of themselves, and the youngest one had already
forgotten his home.

“John,” he said, looking around him doubtfully, “I think I have been
here before.”

“Of course you have, you silly. There is your old bed.”

“So it is,” Michael said, but not with much conviction.

“I say,” cried John, “the kennel!” and he dashed across to look into it.

“Perhaps Nana is inside it,” Wendy said.

But John whistled. “Hullo,” he said, “there's a man inside it.”

“It's father!” exclaimed Wendy.

“Let me see father,” Michael begged eagerly, and he took a good look.
“He is not so big as the pirate I killed,” he said with such frank
disappointment that I am glad Mr. Darling was asleep; it would have been
sad if those had been the first words he heard his little Michael say.

Wendy and John had been taken aback somewhat at finding their father in
the kennel.

“Surely,” said John, like one who had lost faith in his memory, “he used
not to sleep in the kennel?”

“John,” Wendy said falteringly, “perhaps we don't remember the old life
as well as we thought we did.”

A chill fell upon them; and serve them right.

“It is very careless of mother,” said that young scoundrel John, “not to
be here when we come back.”

It was then that Mrs. Darling began playing again.

“It's mother!” cried Wendy, peeping.

“So it is!” said John.

“Then are you not really our mother, Wendy?” asked Michael, who was
surely sleepy.

“Oh dear!” exclaimed Wendy, with her first real twinge of remorse [for
having gone], “it was quite time we came back.”

“Let us creep in,” John suggested, “and put our hands over her eyes.”

But Wendy, who saw that they must break the joyous news more gently, had
a better plan.

“Let us all slip into our beds, and be there when she comes in, just as
if we had never been away.”

And so when Mrs. Darling went back to the night-nursery to see if her
husband was asleep, all the beds were occupied. The children waited
for her cry of joy, but it did not come. She saw them, but she did not
believe they were there. You see, she saw them in their beds so often in
her dreams that she thought this was just the dream hanging around her
still.

She sat down in the chair by the fire, where in the old days she had
nursed them.

They could not understand this, and a cold fear fell upon all the three
of them.

“Mother!” Wendy cried.

“That's Wendy,” she said, but still she was sure it was the dream.

“Mother!”

“That's John,” she said.

“Mother!” cried Michael. He knew her now.

“That's Michael,” she said, and she stretched out her arms for the three
little selfish children they would never envelop again. Yes, they did,
they went round Wendy and John and Michael, who had slipped out of bed
and run to her.

“George, George!” she cried when she could speak; and Mr. Darling woke
to share her bliss, and Nana came rushing in. There could not have been
a lovelier sight; but there was none to see it except a little boy who
was staring in at the window. He had had ecstasies innumerable that
other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at
the one joy from which he must be for ever barred.




Chapter 17 WHEN WENDY GREW UP

I hope you want to know what became of the other boys. They were waiting
below to give Wendy time to explain about them; and when they had
counted five hundred they went up. They went up by the stair, because
they thought this would make a better impression. They stood in a row
in front of Mrs. Darling, with their hats off, and wishing they were not
wearing their pirate clothes. They said nothing, but their eyes asked
her to have them. They ought to have looked at Mr. Darling also, but
they forgot about him.

Of course Mrs. Darling said at once that she would have them; but Mr.
Darling was curiously depressed, and they saw that he considered six a
rather large number.

“I must say,” he said to Wendy, “that you don't do things by halves,” a
grudging remark which the twins thought was pointed at them.

The first twin was the proud one, and he asked, flushing, “Do you think
we should be too much of a handful, sir? Because, if so, we can go
away.”

“Father!” Wendy cried, shocked; but still the cloud was on him. He knew
he was behaving unworthily, but he could not help it.

“We could lie doubled up,” said Nibs.

“I always cut their hair myself,” said Wendy.

“George!” Mrs. Darling exclaimed, pained to see her dear one showing
himself in such an unfavourable light.

Then he burst into tears, and the truth came out. He was as glad to
have them as she was, he said, but he thought they should have asked his
consent as well as hers, instead of treating him as a cypher [zero] in
his own house.

“I don't think he is a cypher,” Tootles cried instantly. “Do you think
he is a cypher, Curly?”

“No, I don't. Do you think he is a cypher, Slightly?”

“Rather not. Twin, what do you think?”

It turned out that not one of them thought him a cypher; and he was
absurdly gratified, and said he would find space for them all in the
drawing-room if they fitted in.

“We'll fit in, sir,” they assured him.

“Then follow the leader,” he cried gaily. “Mind you, I am not sure that
we have a drawing-room, but we pretend we have, and it's all the same.
Hoop la!”

He went off dancing through the house, and they all cried “Hoop la!” and
danced after him, searching for the drawing-room; and I forget whether
they found it, but at any rate they found corners, and they all fitted
in.

As for Peter, he saw Wendy once again before he flew away. He did not
exactly come to the window, but he brushed against it in passing so that
she could open it if she liked and call to him. That is what she did.

“Hullo, Wendy, good-bye,” he said.

“Oh dear, are you going away?”

“Yes.”

“You don't feel, Peter,” she said falteringly, “that you would like to
say anything to my parents about a very sweet subject?”

“No.”

“About me, Peter?”

“No.”

Mrs. Darling came to the window, for at present she was keeping a sharp
eye on Wendy. She told Peter that she had adopted all the other boys,
and would like to adopt him also.

“Would you send me to school?” he inquired craftily.

“Yes.”

“And then to an office?”

“I suppose so.”

“Soon I would be a man?”

“Very soon.”

“I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things,” he told her
passionately. “I don't want to be a man. O Wendy's mother, if I was to
wake up and feel there was a beard!”

“Peter,” said Wendy the comforter, “I should love you in a beard;” and
Mrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him, but he repulsed her.

“Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a man.”

“But where are you going to live?”

“With Tink in the house we built for Wendy. The fairies are to put it
high up among the tree tops where they sleep at nights.”

“How lovely,” cried Wendy so longingly that Mrs. Darling tightened her
grip.

“I thought all the fairies were dead,” Mrs. Darling said.

“There are always a lot of young ones,” explained Wendy, who was now
quite an authority, “because you see when a new baby laughs for the
first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there
are always new fairies. They live in nests on the tops of trees; and the
mauve ones are boys and the white ones are girls, and the blue ones are
just little sillies who are not sure what they are.”

“I shall have such fun,” said Peter, with eye on Wendy.

“It will be rather lonely in the evening,” she said, “sitting by the
fire.”

“I shall have Tink.”

“Tink can't go a twentieth part of the way round,” she reminded him a
little tartly.

“Sneaky tell-tale!” Tink called out from somewhere round the corner.

“It doesn't matter,” Peter said.

“O Peter, you know it matters.”

“Well, then, come with me to the little house.”

“May I, mummy?”

“Certainly not. I have got you home again, and I mean to keep you.”

“But he does so need a mother.”

“So do you, my love.”

“Oh, all right,” Peter said, as if he had asked her from politeness
merely; but Mrs. Darling saw his mouth twitch, and she made this
handsome offer: to let Wendy go to him for a week every year to do
his spring cleaning. Wendy would have preferred a more permanent
arrangement; and it seemed to her that spring would be long in coming;
but this promise sent Peter away quite gay again. He had no sense of
time, and was so full of adventures that all I have told you about him
is only a halfpenny-worth of them. I suppose it was because Wendy knew
this that her last words to him were these rather plaintive ones:

“You won't forget me, Peter, will you, before spring cleaning time
comes?”

Of course Peter promised; and then he flew away. He took Mrs. Darling's
kiss with him. The kiss that had been for no one else, Peter took quite
easily. Funny. But she seemed satisfied.

Of course all the boys went to school; and most of them got into Class
III, but Slightly was put first into Class IV and then into Class V.
Class I is the top class. Before they had attended school a week they
saw what goats they had been not to remain on the island; but it was too
late now, and soon they settled down to being as ordinary as you or me
or Jenkins minor [the younger Jenkins]. It is sad to have to say that
the power to fly gradually left them. At first Nana tied their feet to
the bed-posts so that they should not fly away in the night; and one of
their diversions by day was to pretend to fall off buses [the English
double-deckers]; but by and by they ceased to tug at their bonds in bed,
and found that they hurt themselves when they let go of the bus. In time
they could not even fly after their hats. Want of practice, they called
it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.

Michael believed longer than the other boys, though they jeered at him;
so he was with Wendy when Peter came for her at the end of the first
year. She flew away with Peter in the frock she had woven from leaves
and berries in the Neverland, and her one fear was that he might notice
how short it had become; but he never noticed, he had so much to say
about himself.

She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times, but
new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind.

“Who is Captain Hook?” he asked with interest when she spoke of the arch
enemy.

“Don't you remember,” she asked, amazed, “how you killed him and saved
all our lives?”

“I forget them after I kill them,” he replied carelessly.

When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to see
her he said, “Who is Tinker Bell?”

“O Peter,” she said, shocked; but even when she explained he could not
remember.

“There are such a lot of them,” he said. “I expect she is no more.”

I expect he was right, for fairies don't live long, but they are so
little that a short time seems a good while to them.

Wendy was pained too to find that the past year was but as yesterday
to Peter; it had seemed such a long year of waiting to her. But he was
exactly as fascinating as ever, and they had a lovely spring cleaning in
the little house on the tree tops.

Next year he did not come for her. She waited in a new frock because the
old one simply would not meet; but he never came.

“Perhaps he is ill,” Michael said.

“You know he is never ill.”

Michael came close to her and whispered, with a shiver, “Perhaps there
is no such person, Wendy!” and then Wendy would have cried if Michael
had not been crying.

Peter came next spring cleaning; and the strange thing was that he never
knew he had missed a year.

That was the last time the girl Wendy ever saw him. For a little longer
she tried for his sake not to have growing pains; and she felt she was
untrue to him when she got a prize for general knowledge. But the years
came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again
Wendy was a married woman, and Peter was no more to her than a little
dust in the box in which she had kept her toys. Wendy was grown up. You
need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow
up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than other
girls.

All the boys were grown up and done for by this time; so it is scarcely
worth while saying anything more about them. You may see the twins and
Nibs and Curly any day going to an office, each carrying a little bag
and an umbrella. Michael is an engine-driver [train engineer]. Slightly
married a lady of title, and so he became a lord. You see that judge in
a wig coming out at the iron door? That used to be Tootles. The bearded
man who doesn't know any story to tell his children was once John.

Wendy was married in white with a pink sash. It is strange to think
that Peter did not alight in the church and forbid the banns [formal
announcement of a marriage].

Years rolled on again, and Wendy had a daughter. This ought not to be
written in ink but in a golden splash.

She was called Jane, and always had an odd inquiring look, as if from
the moment she arrived on the mainland she wanted to ask questions. When
she was old enough to ask them they were mostly about Peter Pan. She
loved to hear of Peter, and Wendy told her all she could remember in the
very nursery from which the famous flight had taken place. It was
Jane's nursery now, for her father had bought it at the three per cents
[mortgage rate] from Wendy's father, who was no longer fond of stairs.
Mrs. Darling was now dead and forgotten.

There were only two beds in the nursery now, Jane's and her nurse's; and
there was no kennel, for Nana also had passed away. She died of old age,
and at the end she had been rather difficult to get on with; being very
firmly convinced that no one knew how to look after children except
herself.

Once a week Jane's nurse had her evening off; and then it was Wendy's
part to put Jane to bed. That was the time for stories. It was Jane's
invention to raise the sheet over her mother's head and her own, thus
making a tent, and in the awful darkness to whisper:

“What do we see now?”

“I don't think I see anything to-night,” says Wendy, with a feeling that
if Nana were here she would object to further conversation.

“Yes, you do,” says Jane, “you see when you were a little girl.”

“That is a long time ago, sweetheart,” says Wendy. “Ah me, how time
flies!”

“Does it fly,” asks the artful child, “the way you flew when you were a
little girl?”

“The way I flew? Do you know, Jane, I sometimes wonder whether I ever
did really fly.”

“Yes, you did.”

“The dear old days when I could fly!”

“Why can't you fly now, mother?”

“Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the
way.”

“Why do they forget the way?”

“Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only
the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.”

“What is gay and innocent and heartless? I do wish I were gay and
innocent and heartless.”

Or perhaps Wendy admits she does see something.

“I do believe,” she says, “that it is this nursery.”

“I do believe it is,” says Jane. “Go on.”

They are now embarked on the great adventure of the night when Peter
flew in looking for his shadow.

“The foolish fellow,” says Wendy, “tried to stick it on with soap, and
when he could not he cried, and that woke me, and I sewed it on for
him.”

“You have missed a bit,” interrupts Jane, who now knows the story better
than her mother. “When you saw him sitting on the floor crying, what did
you say?”

“I sat up in bed and I said, 'Boy, why are you crying?'”

“Yes, that was it,” says Jane, with a big breath.

“And then he flew us all away to the Neverland and the fairies and the
pirates and the redskins and the mermaids' lagoon, and the home under
the ground, and the little house.”

“Yes! which did you like best of all?”

“I think I liked the home under the ground best of all.”

“Yes, so do I. What was the last thing Peter ever said to you?”

“The last thing he ever said to me was, 'Just always be waiting for me,
and then some night you will hear me crowing.'”

“Yes.”

“But, alas, he forgot all about me,” Wendy said it with a smile. She was
as grown up as that.

“What did his crow sound like?” Jane asked one evening.

“It was like this,” Wendy said, trying to imitate Peter's crow.

“No, it wasn't,” Jane said gravely, “it was like this;” and she did it
ever so much better than her mother.

Wendy was a little startled. “My darling, how can you know?”

“I often hear it when I am sleeping,” Jane said.

“Ah yes, many girls hear it when they are sleeping, but I was the only
one who heard it awake.”

“Lucky you,” said Jane.

And then one night came the tragedy. It was the spring of the year, and
the story had been told for the night, and Jane was now asleep in her
bed. Wendy was sitting on the floor, very close to the fire, so as to
see to darn, for there was no other light in the nursery; and while she
sat darning she heard a crow. Then the window blew open as of old, and
Peter dropped in on the floor.

He was exactly the same as ever, and Wendy saw at once that he still had
all his first teeth.

He was a little boy, and she was grown up. She huddled by the fire not
daring to move, helpless and guilty, a big woman.

“Hullo, Wendy,” he said, not noticing any difference, for he was
thinking chiefly of himself; and in the dim light her white dress might
have been the nightgown in which he had seen her first.

“Hullo, Peter,” she replied faintly, squeezing herself as small as
possible. Something inside her was crying “Woman, Woman, let go of me.”

“Hullo, where is John?” he asked, suddenly missing the third bed.

“John is not here now,” she gasped.

“Is Michael asleep?” he asked, with a careless glance at Jane.

“Yes,” she answered; and now she felt that she was untrue to Jane as
well as to Peter.

“That is not Michael,” she said quickly, lest a judgment should fall on
her.

Peter looked. “Hullo, is it a new one?”

“Yes.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Girl.”

Now surely he would understand; but not a bit of it.

“Peter,” she said, faltering, “are you expecting me to fly away with
you?”

“Of course; that is why I have come.” He added a little sternly, “Have
you forgotten that this is spring cleaning time?”

She knew it was useless to say that he had let many spring cleaning
times pass.

“I can't come,” she said apologetically, “I have forgotten how to fly.”

“I'll soon teach you again.”

“O Peter, don't waste the fairy dust on me.”

She had risen; and now at last a fear assailed him. “What is it?” he
cried, shrinking.

“I will turn up the light,” she said, “and then you can see for
yourself.”

For almost the only time in his life that I know of, Peter was afraid.
“Don't turn up the light,” he cried.

She let her hands play in the hair of the tragic boy. She was not a
little girl heart-broken about him; she was a grown woman smiling at it
all, but they were wet-eyed smiles.

Then she turned up the light, and Peter saw. He gave a cry of pain; and
when the tall beautiful creature stooped to lift him in her arms he drew
back sharply.

“What is it?” he cried again.

She had to tell him.

“I am old, Peter. I am ever so much more than twenty. I grew up long
ago.”

“You promised not to!”

“I couldn't help it. I am a married woman, Peter.”

“No, you're not.”

“Yes, and the little girl in the bed is my baby.”

“No, she's not.”

But he supposed she was; and he took a step towards the sleeping child
with his dagger upraised. Of course he did not strike. He sat down on
the floor instead and sobbed; and Wendy did not know how to comfort him,
though she could have done it so easily once. She was only a woman now,
and she ran out of the room to try to think.

Peter continued to cry, and soon his sobs woke Jane. She sat up in bed,
and was interested at once.

“Boy,” she said, “why are you crying?”

Peter rose and bowed to her, and she bowed to him from the bed.

“Hullo,” he said.

“Hullo,” said Jane.

“My name is Peter Pan,” he told her.

“Yes, I know.”

“I came back for my mother,” he explained, “to take her to the
Neverland.”

“Yes, I know,” Jane said, “I have been waiting for you.”

When Wendy returned diffidently she found Peter sitting on the bed-post
crowing gloriously, while Jane in her nighty was flying round the room
in solemn ecstasy.

“She is my mother,” Peter explained; and Jane descended and stood by his
side, with the look in her face that he liked to see on ladies when they
gazed at him.

“He does so need a mother,” Jane said.

“Yes, I know,” Wendy admitted rather forlornly; “no one knows it so well
as I.”

“Good-bye,” said Peter to Wendy; and he rose in the air, and the
shameless Jane rose with him; it was already her easiest way of moving
about.

Wendy rushed to the window.

“No, no,” she cried.

“It is just for spring cleaning time,” Jane said, “he wants me always to
do his spring cleaning.”

“If only I could go with you,” Wendy sighed.

“You see you can't fly,” said Jane.

Of course in the end Wendy let them fly away together. Our last glimpse
of her shows her at the window, watching them receding into the sky
until they were as small as stars.

As you look at Wendy, you may see her hair becoming white, and her
figure little again, for all this happened long ago. Jane is now a
common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret; and every spring
cleaning time, except when he forgets, Peter comes for Margaret and
takes her to the Neverland, where she tells him stories about himself,
to which he listens eagerly. When Margaret grows up she will have a
daughter, who is to be Peter's mother in turn; and thus it will go on,
so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.


THE END





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Project Gutenberg's Captivity and Restoration, by Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

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Title: Captivity and Restoration

Author: Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

Release Date: March, 1997  [Etext #851]
Posting Date: November 3, 2009

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTIVITY AND RESTORATION ***




Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer





NARRATIVE OF THE CAPTIVITY AND RESTORATION OF MRS. MARY ROWLANDSON

By Mrs. Mary Rowlandson



The sovereignty and goodness of GOD, together with the faithfulness
of his promises displayed, being a narrative of the captivity and
restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, commended by her, to all that
desires to know the Lord's doings to, and dealings with her. Especially
to her dear children and relations. The second Addition [sic] Corrected
and amended. Written by her own hand for her private use, and now made
public at the earnest desire of some friends, and for the benefit of the
afflicted. Deut. 32.39. See now that I, even I am he, and there is no
god with me, I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, neither is
there any can deliver out of my hand.


On the tenth of February 1675, came the Indians with great numbers upon
Lancaster: their first coming was about sunrising; hearing the noise
of some guns, we looked out; several houses were burning, and the smoke
ascending to heaven. There were five persons taken in one house; the
father, and the mother and a sucking child, they knocked on the head;
the other two they took and carried away alive. There were two others,
who being out of their garrison upon some occasion were set upon;
one was knocked on the head, the other escaped; another there was who
running along was shot and wounded, and fell down; he begged of them his
life, promising them money (as they told me) but they would not hearken
to him but knocked him in head, and stripped him naked, and split open
his bowels. Another, seeing many of the Indians about his barn, ventured
and went out, but was quickly shot down. There were three others
belonging to the same garrison who were killed; the Indians getting up
upon the roof of the barn, had advantage to shoot down upon them over
their fortification. Thus these murderous wretches went on, burning, and
destroying before them.

At length they came and beset our own house, and quickly it was the
dolefulest day that ever mine eyes saw. The house stood upon the edge of
a hill; some of the Indians got behind the hill, others into the barn,
and others behind anything that could shelter them; from all which
places they shot against the house, so that the bullets seemed to fly
like hail; and quickly they wounded one man among us, then another,
and then a third. About two hours (according to my observation, in that
amazing time) they had been about the house before they prevailed to
fire it (which they did with flax and hemp, which they brought out of
the barn, and there being no defense about the house, only two flankers
at two opposite corners and one of them not finished); they fired it
once and one ventured out and quenched it, but they quickly fired it
again, and that took. Now is the dreadful hour come, that I have often
heard of (in time of war, as it was the case of others), but now mine
eyes see it. Some in our house were fighting for their lives, others
wallowing in their blood, the house on fire over our heads, and the
bloody heathen ready to knock us on the head, if we stirred out. Now
might we hear mothers and children crying out for themselves, and one
another, "Lord, what shall we do?" Then I took my children (and one of
my sisters', hers) to go forth and leave the house: but as soon as
we came to the door and appeared, the Indians shot so thick that the
bullets rattled against the house, as if one had taken an handful of
stones and threw them, so that we were fain to give back. We had six
stout dogs belonging to our garrison, but none of them would stir,
though another time, if any Indian had come to the door, they were ready
to fly upon him and tear him down. The Lord hereby would make us the
more acknowledge His hand, and to see that our help is always in Him.
But out we must go, the fire increasing, and coming along behind us,
roaring, and the Indians gaping before us with their guns, spears,
and hatchets to devour us. No sooner were we out of the house, but my
brother-in-law (being before wounded, in defending the house, in or near
the throat) fell down dead, whereat the Indians scornfully shouted, and
hallowed, and were presently upon him, stripping off his clothes, the
bullets flying thick, one went through my side, and the same (as would
seem) through the bowels and hand of my dear child in my arms. One of my
elder sisters' children, named William, had then his leg broken, which
the Indians perceiving, they knocked him on [his] head. Thus were we
butchered by those merciless heathen, standing amazed, with the blood
running down to our heels. My eldest sister being yet in the house, and
seeing those woeful sights, the infidels hauling mothers one way, and
children another, and some wallowing in their blood: and her elder son
telling her that her son William was dead, and myself was wounded, she
said, "And Lord, let me die with them," which was no sooner said, but
she was struck with a bullet, and fell down dead over the threshold. I
hope she is reaping the fruit of her good labors, being faithful to the
service of God in her place. In her younger years she lay under much
trouble upon spiritual accounts, till it pleased God to make that
precious scripture take hold of her heart, "And he said unto me, my
Grace is sufficient for thee" (2 Corinthians 12.9). More than twenty
years after, I have heard her tell how sweet and comfortable that place
was to her. But to return: the Indians laid hold of us, pulling me one
way, and the children another, and said, "Come go along with us"; I told
them they would kill me: they answered, if I were willing to go along
with them, they would not hurt me.

Oh the doleful sight that now was to behold at this house! "Come, behold
the works of the Lord, what desolations he has made in the earth." Of
thirty-seven persons who were in this one house, none escaped either
present death, or a bitter captivity, save only one, who might say as
he, "And I only am escaped alone to tell the News" (Job 1.15). There
were twelve killed, some shot, some stabbed with their spears, some
knocked down with their hatchets. When we are in prosperity, Oh the
little that we think of such dreadful sights, and to see our dear
friends, and relations lie bleeding out their heart-blood upon the
ground. There was one who was chopped into the head with a hatchet, and
stripped naked, and yet was crawling up and down. It is a solemn sight
to see so many Christians lying in their blood, some here, and some
there, like a company of sheep torn by wolves, all of them stripped
naked by a company of hell-hounds, roaring, singing, ranting, and
insulting, as if they would have torn our very hearts out; yet the Lord
by His almighty power preserved a number of us from death, for there
were twenty-four of us taken alive and carried captive.

I had often before this said that if the Indians should come, I should
choose rather to be killed by them than taken alive, but when it came
to the trial my mind changed; their glittering weapons so daunted
my spirit, that I chose rather to go along with those (as I may say)
ravenous beasts, than that moment to end my days; and that I may the
better declare what happened to me during that grievous captivity, I
shall particularly speak of the several removes we had up and down the
wilderness.




THE FIRST REMOVE

Now away we must go with those barbarous creatures, with our bodies
wounded and bleeding, and our hearts no less than our bodies. About a
mile we went that night, up upon a hill within sight of the town, where
they intended to lodge. There was hard by a vacant house (deserted by
the English before, for fear of the Indians). I asked them whether I
might not lodge in the house that night, to which they answered, "What,
will you love English men still?" This was the dolefulest night that
ever my eyes saw. Oh the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling
of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively
resemblance of hell. And as miserable was the waste that was there made
of horses, cattle, sheep, swine, calves, lambs, roasting pigs, and fowl
(which they had plundered in the town), some roasting, some lying and
burning, and some boiling to feed our merciless enemies; who were joyful
enough, though we were disconsolate. To add to the dolefulness of the
former day, and the dismalness of the present night, my thoughts ran
upon my losses and sad bereaved condition. All was gone, my husband
gone (at least separated from me, he being in the Bay; and to add to my
grief, the Indians told me they would kill him as he came homeward), my
children gone, my relations and friends gone, our house and home and all
our comforts--within door and without--all was gone (except my life),
and I knew not but the next moment that might go too. There remained
nothing to me but one poor wounded babe, and it seemed at present
worse than death that it was in such a pitiful condition, bespeaking
compassion, and I had no refreshing for it, nor suitable things to
revive it. Little do many think what is the savageness and brutishness
of this barbarous enemy, Ay, even those that seem to profess more than
others among them, when the English have fallen into their hands.

Those seven that were killed at Lancaster the summer before upon a
Sabbath day, and the one that was afterward killed upon a weekday,
were slain and mangled in a barbarous manner, by one-eyed John, and
Marlborough's Praying Indians, which Capt. Mosely brought to Boston, as
the Indians told me.




THE SECOND REMOVE

But now, the next morning, I must turn my back upon the town, and travel
with them into the vast and desolate wilderness, I knew not whither.
It is not my tongue, or pen, can express the sorrows of my heart, and
bitterness of my spirit that I had at this departure: but God was with
me in a wonderful manner, carrying me along, and bearing up my spirit,
that it did not quite fail. One of the Indians carried my poor wounded
babe upon a horse; it went moaning all along, "I shall die, I shall
die." I went on foot after it, with sorrow that cannot be expressed.
At length I took it off the horse, and carried it in my arms till my
strength failed, and I fell down with it. Then they set me upon a horse
with my wounded child in my lap, and there being no furniture upon the
horse's back, as we were going down a steep hill we both fell over
the horse's head, at which they, like inhumane creatures, laughed, and
rejoiced to see it, though I thought we should there have ended our
days, as overcome with so many difficulties. But the Lord renewed my
strength still, and carried me along, that I might see more of His
power; yea, so much that I could never have thought of, had I not
experienced it.

After this it quickly began to snow, and when night came on, they
stopped, and now down I must sit in the snow, by a little fire, and a
few boughs behind me, with my sick child in my lap; and calling much for
water, being now (through the wound) fallen into a violent fever. My own
wound also growing so stiff that I could scarce sit down or rise up; yet
so it must be, that I must sit all this cold winter night upon the cold
snowy ground, with my sick child in my arms, looking that every hour
would be the last of its life; and having no Christian friend near me,
either to comfort or help me. Oh, I may see the wonderful power of God,
that my Spirit did not utterly sink under my affliction: still the Lord
upheld me with His gracious and merciful spirit, and we were both alive
to see the light of the next morning.




THE THIRD REMOVE

The morning being come, they prepared to go on their way. One of the
Indians got up upon a horse, and they set me up behind him, with my poor
sick babe in my lap. A very wearisome and tedious day I had of it; what
with my own wound, and my child's being so exceeding sick, and in a
lamentable condition with her wound. It may be easily judged what a
poor feeble condition we were in, there being not the least crumb of
refreshing that came within either of our mouths from Wednesday night
to Saturday night, except only a little cold water. This day in the
afternoon, about an hour by sun, we came to the place where they
intended, viz. an Indian town, called Wenimesset, northward of Quabaug.
When we were come, Oh the number of pagans (now merciless enemies) that
there came about me, that I may say as David, "I had fainted, unless I
had believed, etc" (Psalm 27.13). The next day was the Sabbath. I then
remembered how careless I had been of God's holy time; how many Sabbaths
I had lost and misspent, and how evilly I had walked in God's sight;
which lay so close unto my spirit, that it was easy for me to see how
righteous it was with God to cut off the thread of my life and cast me
out of His presence forever. Yet the Lord still showed mercy to me, and
upheld me; and as He wounded me with one hand, so he healed me with the
other. This day there came to me one Robert Pepper (a man belonging
to Roxbury) who was taken in Captain Beers's fight, and had been now a
considerable time with the Indians; and up with them almost as far as
Albany, to see King Philip, as he told me, and was now very lately come
into these parts. Hearing, I say, that I was in this Indian town, he
obtained leave to come and see me. He told me he himself was wounded in
the leg at Captain Beer's fight; and was not able some time to go, but
as they carried him, and as he took oaken leaves and laid to his wound,
and through the blessing of God he was able to travel again. Then I took
oaken leaves and laid to my side, and with the blessing of God it cured
me also; yet before the cure was wrought, I may say, as it is in Psalm
38.5-6 "My wounds stink and are corrupt, I am troubled, I am bowed down
greatly, I go mourning all the day long." I sat much alone with a poor
wounded child in my lap, which moaned night and day, having nothing
to revive the body, or cheer the spirits of her, but instead of that,
sometimes one Indian would come and tell me one hour that "your master
will knock your child in the head," and then a second, and then a third,
"your master will quickly knock your child in the head."

This was the comfort I had from them, miserable comforters are ye all,
as he said. Thus nine days I sat upon my knees, with my babe in my lap,
till my flesh was raw again; my child being even ready to depart this
sorrowful world, they bade me carry it out to another wigwam (I suppose
because they would not be troubled with such spectacles) whither I went
with a very heavy heart, and down I sat with the picture of death in my
lap. About two hours in the night, my sweet babe like a lamb departed
this life on Feb. 18, 1675. It being about six years, and five months
old. It was nine days from the first wounding, in this miserable
condition, without any refreshing of one nature or other, except a
little cold water. I cannot but take notice how at another time I could
not bear to be in the room where any dead person was, but now the case
is changed; I must and could lie down by my dead babe, side by side all
the night after. I have thought since of the wonderful goodness of
God to me in preserving me in the use of my reason and senses in that
distressed time, that I did not use wicked and violent means to end my
own miserable life. In the morning, when they understood that my child
was dead they sent for me home to my master's wigwam (by my master in
this writing, must be understood Quinnapin, who was a Sagamore, and
married King Philip's wife's sister; not that he first took me, but I
was sold to him by another Narragansett Indian, who took me when first I
came out of the garrison). I went to take up my dead child in my arms to
carry it with me, but they bid me let it alone; there was no resisting,
but go I must and leave it. When I had been at my master's wigwam, I
took the first opportunity I could get to go look after my dead child.
When I came I asked them what they had done with it; then they told me
it was upon the hill. Then they went and showed me where it was, where I
saw the ground was newly digged, and there they told me they had buried
it. There I left that child in the wilderness, and must commit it, and
myself also in this wilderness condition, to Him who is above all. God
having taken away this dear child, I went to see my daughter Mary, who
was at this same Indian town, at a wigwam not very far off, though we
had little liberty or opportunity to see one another. She was about
ten years old, and taken from the door at first by a Praying Ind. and
afterward sold for a gun. When I came in sight, she would fall aweeping;
at which they were provoked, and would not let me come near her, but
bade me be gone; which was a heart-cutting word to me. I had one child
dead, another in the wilderness, I knew not where, the third they
would not let me come near to: "Me (as he said) have ye bereaved of my
Children, Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin
also, all these things are against me." I could not sit still in this
condition, but kept walking from one place to another. And as I was
going along, my heart was even overwhelmed with the thoughts of my
condition, and that I should have children, and a nation which I knew
not, ruled over them. Whereupon I earnestly entreated the Lord, that He
would consider my low estate, and show me a token for good, and if it
were His blessed will, some sign and hope of some relief. And indeed
quickly the Lord answered, in some measure, my poor prayers; for as I
was going up and down mourning and lamenting my condition, my son came
to me, and asked me how I did. I had not seen him before, since the
destruction of the town, and I knew not where he was, till I was
informed by himself, that he was amongst a smaller parcel of Indians,
whose place was about six miles off. With tears in his eyes, he asked
me whether his sister Sarah was dead; and told me he had seen his
sister Mary; and prayed me, that I would not be troubled in reference
to himself. The occasion of his coming to see me at this time, was this:
there was, as I said, about six miles from us, a small plantation of
Indians, where it seems he had been during his captivity; and at this
time, there were some forces of the Ind. gathered out of our company,
and some also from them (among whom was my son's master) to go to
assault and burn Medfield. In this time of the absence of his master,
his dame brought him to see me. I took this to be some gracious answer
to my earnest and unfeigned desire. The next day, viz. to this, the
Indians returned from Medfield, all the company, for those that belonged
to the other small company, came through the town that now we were at.
But before they came to us, Oh! the outrageous roaring and hooping that
there was. They began their din about a mile before they came to us.
By their noise and hooping they signified how many they had destroyed
(which was at that time twenty-three). Those that were with us at home
were gathered together as soon as they heard the hooping, and every time
that the other went over their number, these at home gave a shout, that
the very earth rung again. And thus they continued till those that had
been upon the expedition were come up to the Sagamore's wigwam; and
then, Oh, the hideous insulting and triumphing that there was over some
Englishmen's scalps that they had taken (as their manner is) and brought
with them. I cannot but take notice of the wonderful mercy of God to
me in those afflictions, in sending me a Bible. One of the Indians that
came from Medfield fight, had brought some plunder, came to me, and
asked me, if I would have a Bible, he had got one in his basket. I was
glad of it, and asked him, whether he thought the Indians would let
me read? He answered, yes. So I took the Bible, and in that melancholy
time, it came into my mind to read first the 28th chapter of
Deuteronomy, which I did, and when I had read it, my dark heart wrought
on this manner: that there was no mercy for me, that the blessings
were gone, and the curses come in their room, and that I had lost my
opportunity. But the Lord helped me still to go on reading till I came
to Chap. 30, the seven first verses, where I found, there was mercy
promised again, if we would return to Him by repentance; and though
we were scattered from one end of the earth to the other, yet the Lord
would gather us together, and turn all those curses upon our enemies. I
do not desire to live to forget this Scripture, and what comfort it was
to me.

Now the Ind. began to talk of removing from this place, some one way,
and some another. There were now besides myself nine English captives
in this place (all of them children, except one woman). I got an
opportunity to go and take my leave of them. They being to go one way,
and I another, I asked them whether they were earnest with God for
deliverance. They told me they did as they were able, and it was some
comfort to me, that the Lord stirred up children to look to Him. The
woman, viz. goodwife Joslin, told me she should never see me again, and
that she could find in her heart to run away. I wished her not to run
away by any means, for we were near thirty miles from any English town,
and she very big with child, and had but one week to reckon, and another
child in her arms, two years old, and bad rivers there were to go over,
and we were feeble, with our poor and coarse entertainment. I had my
Bible with me, I pulled it out, and asked her whether she would read. We
opened the Bible and lighted on Psalm 27, in which Psalm we especially
took notice of that, ver. ult., "Wait on the Lord, Be of good courage,
and he shall strengthen thine Heart, wait I say on the Lord."




THE FOURTH REMOVE

And now I must part with that little company I had. Here I parted from
my daughter Mary (whom I never saw again till I saw her in Dorchester,
returned from captivity), and from four little cousins and neighbors,
some of which I never saw afterward: the Lord only knows the end of
them. Amongst them also was that poor woman before mentioned, who came
to a sad end, as some of the company told me in my travel: she having
much grief upon her spirit about her miserable condition, being so near
her time, she would be often asking the Indians to let her go home; they
not being willing to that, and yet vexed with her importunity, gathered
a great company together about her and stripped her naked, and set her
in the midst of them, and when they had sung and danced about her (in
their hellish manner) as long as they pleased they knocked her on head,
and the child in her arms with her. When they had done that they made
a fire and put them both into it, and told the other children that were
with them that if they attempted to go home, they would serve them in
like manner. The children said she did not shed one tear, but prayed all
the while. But to return to my own journey, we traveled about half a day
or little more, and came to a desolate place in the wilderness, where
there were no wigwams or inhabitants before; we came about the middle
of the afternoon to this place, cold and wet, and snowy, and hungry, and
weary, and no refreshing for man but the cold ground to sit on, and our
poor Indian cheer.

Heart-aching thoughts here I had about my poor children, who were
scattered up and down among the wild beasts of the forest. My head was
light and dizzy (either through hunger or hard lodging, or trouble or
all together), my knees feeble, my body raw by sitting double night
and day, that I cannot express to man the affliction that lay upon my
spirit, but the Lord helped me at that time to express it to Himself. I
opened my Bible to read, and the Lord brought that precious Scripture to
me. "Thus saith the Lord, refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes
from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, and they shall come again
from the land of the enemy" (Jeremiah 31.16). This was a sweet cordial
to me when I was ready to faint; many and many a time have I sat down
and wept sweetly over this Scripture. At this place we continued about
four days.




THE FIFTH REMOVE

The occasion (as I thought) of their moving at this time was the English
army, it being near and following them. For they went as if they had
gone for their lives, for some considerable way, and then they made a
stop, and chose some of their stoutest men, and sent them back to hold
the English army in play whilst the rest escaped. And then, like Jehu,
they marched on furiously, with their old and with their young: some
carried their old decrepit mothers, some carried one, and some another.
Four of them carried a great Indian upon a bier; but going through
a thick wood with him, they were hindered, and could make no haste,
whereupon they took him upon their backs, and carried him, one at a
time, till they came to Banquaug river. Upon a Friday, a little after
noon, we came to this river. When all the company was come up, and were
gathered together, I thought to count the number of them, but they were
so many, and being somewhat in motion, it was beyond my skill. In
this travel, because of my wound, I was somewhat favored in my load; I
carried only my knitting work and two quarts of parched meal. Being very
faint I asked my mistress to give me one spoonful of the meal, but she
would not give me a taste. They quickly fell to cutting dry trees, to
make rafts to carry them over the river: and soon my turn came to go
over. By the advantage of some brush which they had laid upon the raft
to sit upon, I did not wet my foot (which many of themselves at the
other end were mid-leg deep) which cannot but be acknowledged as a favor
of God to my weakened body, it being a very cold time. I was not before
acquainted with such kind of doings or dangers. "When thou passeth
through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they
shall not overflow thee" (Isaiah 43.2). A certain number of us got over
the river that night, but it was the night after the Sabbath before all
the company was got over. On the Saturday they boiled an old horse's
leg which they had got, and so we drank of the broth, as soon as they
thought it was ready, and when it was almost all gone, they filled it up
again.

The first week of my being among them I hardly ate any thing; the second
week I found my stomach grow very faint for want of something; and yet
it was very hard to get down their filthy trash; but the third week,
though I could think how formerly my stomach would turn against this
or that, and I could starve and die before I could eat such things, yet
they were sweet and savory to my taste. I was at this time knitting a
pair of white cotton stockings for my mistress; and had not yet wrought
upon a Sabbath day. When the Sabbath came they bade me go to work. I
told them it was the Sabbath day, and desired them to let me rest, and
told them I would do as much more tomorrow; to which they answered
me they would break my face. And here I cannot but take notice of the
strange providence of God in preserving the heathen. They were many
hundreds, old and young, some sick, and some lame; many had papooses at
their backs. The greatest number at this time with us were squaws, and
they traveled with all they had, bag and baggage, and yet they got over
this river aforesaid; and on Monday they set their wigwams on fire, and
away they went. On that very day came the English army after them to
this river, and saw the smoke of their wigwams, and yet this river put a
stop to them. God did not give them courage or activity to go over after
us. We were not ready for so great a mercy as victory and deliverance.
If we had been God would have found out a way for the English to have
passed this river, as well as for the Indians with their squaws and
children, and all their luggage. "Oh that my people had hearkened to
me, and Israel had walked in my ways, I should soon have subdued their
enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries" (Psalm 81.13-14).




THE SIXTH REMOVE

On Monday (as I said) they set their wigwams on fire and went away. It
was a cold morning, and before us there was a great brook with ice on
it; some waded through it, up to the knees and higher, but others went
till they came to a beaver dam, and I amongst them, where through the
good providence of God, I did not wet my foot. I went along that day
mourning and lamenting, leaving farther my own country, and traveling
into a vast and howling wilderness, and I understood something of Lot's
wife's temptation, when she looked back. We came that day to a great
swamp, by the side of which we took up our lodging that night. When I
came to the brow of the hill, that looked toward the swamp, I thought we
had been come to a great Indian town (though there were none but our own
company). The Indians were as thick as the trees: it seemed as if there
had been a thousand hatchets going at once. If one looked before one
there was nothing but Indians, and behind one, nothing but Indians, and
so on either hand, I myself in the midst, and no Christian soul near me,
and yet how hath the Lord preserved me in safety? Oh the experience that
I have had of the goodness of God, to me and mine!




THE SEVENTH REMOVE

After a restless and hungry night there, we had a wearisome time of it
the next day. The swamp by which we lay was, as it were, a deep dungeon,
and an exceeding high and steep hill before it. Before I got to the top
of the hill, I thought my heart and legs, and all would have broken,
and failed me. What, through faintness and soreness of body, it was
a grievous day of travel to me. As we went along, I saw a place where
English cattle had been. That was comfort to me, such as it was. Quickly
after that we came to an English path, which so took with me, that I
thought I could have freely lyen down and died. That day, a little after
noon, we came to Squakeag, where the Indians quickly spread themselves
over the deserted English fields, gleaning what they could find. Some
picked up ears of wheat that were crickled down; some found ears of
Indian corn; some found ground nuts, and others sheaves of wheat that
were frozen together in the shock, and went to threshing of them out.
Myself got two ears of Indian corn, and whilst I did but turn my back,
one of them was stolen from me, which much troubled me. There came an
Indian to them at that time with a basket of horse liver. I asked him to
give me a piece. "What," says he, "can you eat horse liver?" I told him,
I would try, if he would give a piece, which he did, and I laid it on
the coals to roast. But before it was half ready they got half of it
away from me, so that I was fain to take the rest and eat it as it was,
with the blood about my mouth, and yet a savory bit it was to me:
"For to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet." A solemn sight
methought it was, to see fields of wheat and Indian corn forsaken and
spoiled and the remainders of them to be food for our merciless enemies.
That night we had a mess of wheat for our supper.




THE EIGHTH REMOVE

On the morrow morning we must go over the river, i.e. Connecticut, to
meet with King Philip. Two canoes full they had carried over; the next
turn I myself was to go. But as my foot was upon the canoe to step in
there was a sudden outcry among them, and I must step back, and instead
of going over the river, I must go four or five miles up the river
farther northward. Some of the Indians ran one way, and some another.
The cause of this rout was, as I thought, their espying some English
scouts, who were thereabout. In this travel up the river about noon the
company made a stop, and sat down; some to eat, and others to rest them.
As I sat amongst them, musing of things past, my son Joseph unexpectedly
came to me. We asked of each other's welfare, bemoaning our doleful
condition, and the change that had come upon us. We had husband and
father, and children, and sisters, and friends, and relations, and
house, and home, and many comforts of this life: but now we may say, as
Job, "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return:
the Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the
Lord." I asked him whether he would read. He told me he earnestly
desired it, I gave him my Bible, and he lighted upon that comfortable
Scripture "I shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord:
the Lord hath chastened me sore yet he hath not given me over to death"
(Psalm 118.17-18). "Look here, mother," says he, "did you read this?"
And here I may take occasion to mention one principal ground of my
setting forth these lines: even as the psalmist says, to declare
the works of the Lord, and His wonderful power in carrying us along,
preserving us in the wilderness, while under the enemy's hand, and
returning of us in safety again. And His goodness in bringing to my
hand so many comfortable and suitable scriptures in my distress. But to
return, we traveled on till night; and in the morning, we must go over
the river to Philip's crew. When I was in the canoe I could not but be
amazed at the numerous crew of pagans that were on the bank on the other
side. When I came ashore, they gathered all about me, I sitting alone in
the midst. I observed they asked one another questions, and laughed, and
rejoiced over their gains and victories. Then my heart began to fail:
and I fell aweeping, which was the first time to my remembrance, that
I wept before them. Although I had met with so much affliction, and my
heart was many times ready to break, yet could I not shed one tear in
their sight; but rather had been all this while in a maze, and like one
astonished. But now I may say as Psalm 137.1, "By the Rivers of Babylon,
there we sate down: yea, we wept when we remembered Zion." There one
of them asked me why I wept. I could hardly tell what to say: Yet I
answered, they would kill me. "No," said he, "none will hurt you." Then
came one of them and gave me two spoonfuls of meal to comfort me, and
another gave me half a pint of peas; which was more worth than many
bushels at another time. Then I went to see King Philip. He bade me
come in and sit down, and asked me whether I would smoke it (a usual
compliment nowadays amongst saints and sinners) but this no way suited
me. For though I had formerly used tobacco, yet I had left it ever since
I was first taken. It seems to be a bait the devil lays to make men
lose their precious time. I remember with shame how formerly, when I
had taken two or three pipes, I was presently ready for another, such a
bewitching thing it is. But I thank God, He has now given me power over
it; surely there are many who may be better employed than to lie sucking
a stinking tobacco-pipe.

Now the Indians gather their forces to go against Northampton. Over
night one went about yelling and hooting to give notice of the design.
Whereupon they fell to boiling of ground nuts, and parching of corn (as
many as had it) for their provision; and in the morning away they went.
During my abode in this place, Philip spake to me to make a shirt for
his boy, which I did, for which he gave me a shilling. I offered the
money to my master, but he bade me keep it; and with it I bought a piece
of horse flesh. Afterwards he asked me to make a cap for his boy, for
which he invited me to dinner. I went, and he gave me a pancake, about
as big as two fingers. It was made of parched wheat, beaten, and fried
in bear's grease, but I thought I never tasted pleasanter meat in my
life. There was a squaw who spake to me to make a shirt for her sannup,
for which she gave me a piece of bear. Another asked me to knit a pair
of stockings, for which she gave me a quart of peas. I boiled my peas
and bear together, and invited my master and mistress to dinner; but the
proud gossip, because I served them both in one dish, would eat nothing,
except one bit that he gave her upon the point of his knife. Hearing
that my son was come to this place, I went to see him, and found him
lying flat upon the ground. I asked him how he could sleep so? He
answered me that he was not asleep, but at prayer; and lay so, that they
might not observe what he was doing. I pray God he may remember these
things now he is returned in safety. At this place (the sun now getting
higher) what with the beams and heat of the sun, and the smoke of the
wigwams, I thought I should have been blind. I could scarce discern one
wigwam from another. There was here one Mary Thurston of Medfield, who
seeing how it was with me, lent me a hat to wear; but as soon as I was
gone, the squaw (who owned that Mary Thurston) came running after me,
and got it away again. Here was the squaw that gave me one spoonful
of meal. I put it in my pocket to keep it safe. Yet notwithstanding,
somebody stole it, but put five Indian corns in the room of it; which
corns were the greatest provisions I had in my travel for one day.

The Indians returning from Northampton, brought with them some horses,
and sheep, and other things which they had taken; I desired them that
they would carry me to Albany upon one of those horses, and sell me for
powder: for so they had sometimes discoursed. I was utterly hopeless of
getting home on foot, the way that I came. I could hardly bear to think
of the many weary steps I had taken, to come to this place.




THE NINTH REMOVE

But instead of going either to Albany or homeward, we must go five miles
up the river, and then go over it. Here we abode a while. Here lived a
sorry Indian, who spoke to me to make him a shirt. When I had done it,
he would pay me nothing. But he living by the riverside, where I often
went to fetch water, I would often be putting of him in mind, and
calling for my pay: At last he told me if I would make another shirt,
for a papoose not yet born, he would give me a knife, which he did when
I had done it. I carried the knife in, and my master asked me to give
it him, and I was not a little glad that I had anything that they would
accept of, and be pleased with. When we were at this place, my master's
maid came home; she had been gone three weeks into the Narragansett
country to fetch corn, where they had stored up some in the ground. She
brought home about a peck and half of corn. This was about the time that
their great captain, Naananto, was killed in the Narragansett country.
My son being now about a mile from me, I asked liberty to go and
see him; they bade me go, and away I went; but quickly lost myself,
traveling over hills and through swamps, and could not find the way to
him. And I cannot but admire at the wonderful power and goodness of God
to me, in that, though I was gone from home, and met with all sorts of
Indians, and those I had no knowledge of, and there being no Christian
soul near me; yet not one of them offered the least imaginable
miscarriage to me. I turned homeward again, and met with my master. He
showed me the way to my son. When I came to him I found him not well:
and withall he had a boil on his side, which much troubled him. We
bemoaned one another a while, as the Lord helped us, and then I returned
again. When I was returned, I found myself as unsatisfied as I was
before. I went up and down mourning and lamenting; and my spirit was
ready to sink with the thoughts of my poor children. My son was ill, and
I could not but think of his mournful looks, and no Christian friend was
near him, to do any office of love for him, either for soul or body.
And my poor girl, I knew not where she was, nor whether she was sick, or
well, or alive, or dead. I repaired under these thoughts to my Bible (my
great comfort in that time) and that Scripture came to my hand, "Cast
thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee" (Psalm 55.22).

But I was fain to go and look after something to satisfy my hunger, and
going among the wigwams, I went into one and there found a squaw who
showed herself very kind to me, and gave me a piece of bear. I put it
into my pocket, and came home, but could not find an opportunity to
broil it, for fear they would get it from me, and there it lay all that
day and night in my stinking pocket. In the morning I went to the same
squaw, who had a kettle of ground nuts boiling. I asked her to let me
boil my piece of bear in her kettle, which she did, and gave me some
ground nuts to eat with it: and I cannot but think how pleasant it
was to me. I have sometime seen bear baked very handsomely among the
English, and some like it, but the thought that it was bear made me
tremble. But now that was savory to me that one would think was enough
to turn the stomach of a brute creature.

One bitter cold day I could find no room to sit down before the fire.
I went out, and could not tell what to do, but I went in to another
wigwam, where they were also sitting round the fire, but the squaw laid
a skin for me, and bid me sit down, and gave me some ground nuts, and
bade me come again; and told me they would buy me, if they were able,
and yet these were strangers to me that I never saw before.




THE TENTH REMOVE

That day a small part of the company removed about three-quarters of a
mile, intending further the next day. When they came to the place where
they intended to lodge, and had pitched their wigwams, being hungry, I
went again back to the place we were before at, to get something to eat,
being encouraged by the squaw's kindness, who bade me come again. When I
was there, there came an Indian to look after me, who when he had found
me, kicked me all along. I went home and found venison roasting that
night, but they would not give me one bit of it. Sometimes I met with
favor, and sometimes with nothing but frowns.




THE ELEVENTH REMOVE

The next day in the morning they took their travel, intending a day's
journey up the river. I took my load at my back, and quickly we came to
wade over the river; and passed over tiresome and wearisome hills. One
hill was so steep that I was fain to creep up upon my knees, and to hold
by the twigs and bushes to keep myself from falling backward. My head
also was so light that I usually reeled as I went; but I hope all these
wearisome steps that I have taken, are but a forewarning to me of the
heavenly rest: "I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that
thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me" (Psalm 119.75).




THE TWELFTH REMOVE

It was upon a Sabbath-day-morning, that they prepared for their travel.
This morning I asked my master whether he would sell me to my husband.
He answered me "Nux," which did much rejoice my spirit. My mistress,
before we went, was gone to the burial of a papoose, and returning, she
found me sitting and reading in my Bible; she snatched it hastily out of
my hand, and threw it out of doors. I ran out and catched it up, and put
it into my pocket, and never let her see it afterward. Then they packed
up their things to be gone, and gave me my load. I complained it was
too heavy, whereupon she gave me a slap in the face, and bade me go; I
lifted up my heart to God, hoping the redemption was not far off; and
the rather because their insolency grew worse and worse.

But the thoughts of my going homeward (for so we bent our course) much
cheered my spirit, and made my burden seem light, and almost nothing
at all. But (to my amazement and great perplexity) the scale was soon
turned; for when we had gone a little way, on a sudden my mistress gives
out; she would go no further, but turn back again, and said I must go
back again with her, and she called her sannup, and would have had him
gone back also, but he would not, but said he would go on, and come
to us again in three days. My spirit was, upon this, I confess, very
impatient, and almost outrageous. I thought I could as well have died as
went back; I cannot declare the trouble that I was in about it; but yet
back again I must go. As soon as I had the opportunity, I took my Bible
to read, and that quieting Scripture came to my hand, "Be still, and
know that I am God" (Psalm 46.10). Which stilled my spirit for the
present. But a sore time of trial, I concluded, I had to go through,
my master being gone, who seemed to me the best friend that I had of an
Indian, both in cold and hunger, and quickly so it proved. Down I sat,
with my heart as full as it could hold, and yet so hungry that I could
not sit neither; but going out to see what I could find, and walking
among the trees, I found six acorns, and two chestnuts, which were
some refreshment to me. Towards night I gathered some sticks for my own
comfort, that I might not lie a-cold; but when we came to lie down they
bade me to go out, and lie somewhere else, for they had company (they
said) come in more than their own. I told them, I could not tell where
to go, they bade me go look; I told them, if I went to another wigwam
they would be angry, and send me home again. Then one of the company
drew his sword, and told me he would run me through if I did not go
presently. Then was I fain to stoop to this rude fellow, and to go
out in the night, I knew not whither. Mine eyes have seen that fellow
afterwards walking up and down Boston, under the appearance of a Friend
Indian, and several others of the like cut. I went to one wigwam, and
they told me they had no room. Then I went to another, and they said the
same; at last an old Indian bade me to come to him, and his squaw gave
me some ground nuts; she gave me also something to lay under my head,
and a good fire we had; and through the good providence of God, I had a
comfortable lodging that night. In the morning, another Indian bade me
come at night, and he would give me six ground nuts, which I did. We
were at this place and time about two miles from [the] Connecticut
river. We went in the morning to gather ground nuts, to the river, and
went back again that night. I went with a good load at my back (for they
when they went, though but a little way, would carry all their trumpery
with them). I told them the skin was off my back, but I had no other
comforting answer from them than this: that it would be no matter if my
head were off too.




THE THIRTEENTH REMOVE

Instead of going toward the Bay, which was that I desired, I must go
with them five or six miles down the river into a mighty thicket of
brush; where we abode almost a fortnight. Here one asked me to make a
shirt for her papoose, for which she gave me a mess of broth, which
was thickened with meal made of the bark of a tree, and to make it the
better, she had put into it about a handful of peas, and a few roasted
ground nuts. I had not seen my son a pretty while, and here was an
Indian of whom I made inquiry after him, and asked him when he saw him.
He answered me that such a time his master roasted him, and that himself
did eat a piece of him, as big as his two fingers, and that he was very
good meat. But the Lord upheld my Spirit, under this discouragement; and
I considered their horrible addictedness to lying, and that there is
not one of them that makes the least conscience of speaking of truth.
In this place, on a cold night, as I lay by the fire, I removed a stick
that kept the heat from me. A squaw moved it down again, at which I
looked up, and she threw a handful of ashes in mine eyes. I thought
I should have been quite blinded, and have never seen more, but lying
down, the water run out of my eyes, and carried the dirt with it, that
by the morning I recovered my sight again. Yet upon this, and the like
occasions, I hope it is not too much to say with Job, "Have pity upon
me, O ye my Friends, for the Hand of the Lord has touched me." And
here I cannot but remember how many times sitting in their wigwams, and
musing on things past, I should suddenly leap up and run out, as if I
had been at home, forgetting where I was, and what my condition was;
but when I was without, and saw nothing but wilderness, and woods, and
a company of barbarous heathens, my mind quickly returned to me, which
made me think of that, spoken concerning Sampson, who said, "I will go
out and shake myself as at other times, but he wist not that the Lord
was departed from him." About this time I began to think that all my
hopes of restoration would come to nothing. I thought of the English
army, and hoped for their coming, and being taken by them, but that
failed. I hoped to be carried to Albany, as the Indians had discoursed
before, but that failed also. I thought of being sold to my husband, as
my master spake, but instead of that, my master himself was gone, and I
left behind, so that my spirit was now quite ready to sink. I asked them
to let me go out and pick up some sticks, that I might get alone, and
pour out my heart unto the Lord. Then also I took my Bible to read, but
I found no comfort here neither, which many times I was wont to find. So
easy a thing it is with God to dry up the streams of Scripture comfort
from us. Yet I can say, that in all my sorrows and afflictions, God did
not leave me to have my impatience work towards Himself, as if His ways
were unrighteous. But I knew that He laid upon me less than I deserved.
Afterward, before this doleful time ended with me, I was turning the
leaves of my Bible, and the Lord brought to me some Scriptures, which
did a little revive me, as that [in] Isaiah 55.8: "For my thoughts are
not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord." And
also that [in] Psalm 37.5: "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in
him; and he shall bring it to pass." About this time they came yelping
from Hadley, where they had killed three Englishmen, and brought one
captive with them, viz. Thomas Read. They all gathered about the poor
man, asking him many questions. I desired also to go and see him; and
when I came, he was crying bitterly, supposing they would quickly kill
him. Whereupon I asked one of them, whether they intended to kill him;
he answered me, they would not. He being a little cheered with that, I
asked him about the welfare of my husband. He told me he saw him such
a time in the Bay, and he was well, but very melancholy. By which I
certainly understood (though I suspected it before) that whatsoever the
Indians told me respecting him was vanity and lies. Some of them told
me he was dead, and they had killed him; some said he was married again,
and that the Governor wished him to marry; and told him he should
have his choice, and that all persuaded I was dead. So like were these
barbarous creatures to him who was a liar from the beginning.

As I was sitting once in the wigwam here, Philip's maid came in with the
child in her arms, and asked me to give her a piece of my apron, to make
a flap for it. I told her I would not. Then my mistress bade me give it,
but still I said no. The maid told me if I would not give her a piece,
she would tear a piece off it. I told her I would tear her coat then.
With that my mistress rises up, and take up a stick big enough to have
killed me, and struck at me with it. But I stepped out, and she struck
the stick into the mat of the wigwam. But while she was pulling of it
out I ran to the maid and gave her all my apron, and so that storm went
over.

Hearing that my son was come to this place, I went to see him, and
told him his father was well, but melancholy. He told me he was as much
grieved for his father as for himself. I wondered at his speech, for I
thought I had enough upon my spirit in reference to myself, to make me
mindless of my husband and everyone else; they being safe among their
friends. He told me also, that awhile before, his master (together with
other Indians) were going to the French for powder; but by the way the
Mohawks met with them, and killed four of their company, which made the
rest turn back again, for it might have been worse with him, had he
been sold to the French, than it proved to be in his remaining with the
Indians.

I went to see an English youth in this place, one John Gilbert of
Springfield. I found him lying without doors, upon the ground. I asked
him how he did? He told me he was very sick of a flux, with eating
so much blood. They had turned him out of the wigwam, and with him an
Indian papoose, almost dead (whose parents had been killed), in a bitter
cold day, without fire or clothes. The young man himself had nothing on
but his shirt and waistcoat. This sight was enough to melt a heart of
flint. There they lay quivering in the cold, the youth round like a dog,
the papoose stretched out with his eyes and nose and mouth full of dirt,
and yet alive, and groaning. I advised John to go and get to some fire.
He told me he could not stand, but I persuaded him still, lest he should
lie there and die. And with much ado I got him to a fire, and went
myself home. As soon as I was got home his master's daughter came after
me, to know what I had done with the Englishman. I told her I had got
him to a fire in such a place. Now had I need to pray Paul's Prayer
"That we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men" (2
Thessalonians 3.2). For her satisfaction I went along with her, and
brought her to him; but before I got home again it was noised about that
I was running away and getting the English youth, along with me; that as
soon as I came in they began to rant and domineer, asking me where I had
been, and what I had been doing? and saying they would knock him on the
head. I told them I had been seeing the English youth, and that I would
not run away. They told me I lied, and taking up a hatchet, they came
to me, and said they would knock me down if I stirred out again, and so
confined me to the wigwam. Now may I say with David, "I am in a great
strait" (2 Samuel 24.14). If I keep in, I must die with hunger, and if
I go out, I must be knocked in head. This distressed condition held that
day, and half the next. And then the Lord remembered me, whose mercies
are great. Then came an Indian to me with a pair of stockings that were
too big for him, and he would have me ravel them out, and knit them fit
for him. I showed myself willing, and bid him ask my mistress if I might
go along with him a little way; she said yes, I might, but I was not
a little refreshed with that news, that I had my liberty again. Then I
went along with him, and he gave me some roasted ground nuts, which did
again revive my feeble stomach.

Being got out of her sight, I had time and liberty again to look into
my Bible; which was my guide by day, and my pillow by night. Now that
comfortable Scripture presented itself to me, "For a small moment have I
forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee" (Isaiah 54.7).
Thus the Lord carried me along from one time to another, and made good
to me this precious promise, and many others. Then my son came to see
me, and I asked his master to let him stay awhile with me, that I might
comb his head, and look over him, for he was almost overcome with lice.
He told me, when I had done, that he was very hungry, but I had nothing
to relieve him, but bid him go into the wigwams as he went along, and
see if he could get any thing among them. Which he did, and it seems
tarried a little too long; for his master was angry with him, and beat
him, and then sold him. Then he came running to tell me he had a new
master, and that he had given him some ground nuts already. Then I went
along with him to his new master who told me he loved him, and he should
not want. So his master carried him away, and I never saw him afterward,
till I saw him at Piscataqua in Portsmouth.

That night they bade me go out of the wigwam again. My mistress's
papoose was sick, and it died that night, and there was one benefit in
it--that there was more room. I went to a wigwam, and they bade me come
in, and gave me a skin to lie upon, and a mess of venison and ground
nuts, which was a choice dish among them. On the morrow they buried the
papoose, and afterward, both morning and evening, there came a company
to mourn and howl with her; though I confess I could not much condole
with them. Many sorrowful days I had in this place, often getting alone.
"Like a crane, or a swallow, so did I chatter; I did mourn as a dove,
mine eyes ail with looking upward. Oh, Lord, I am oppressed; undertake
for me" (Isaiah 38.14). I could tell the Lord, as Hezekiah, "Remember
now O Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth." Now
had I time to examine all my ways: my conscience did not accuse me of
unrighteousness toward one or other; yet I saw how in my walk with God,
I had been a careless creature. As David said, "Against thee, thee only
have I sinned": and I might say with the poor publican, "God be merciful
unto me a sinner." On the Sabbath days, I could look upon the sun and
think how people were going to the house of God, to have their souls
refreshed; and then home, and their bodies also; but I was destitute of
both; and might say as the poor prodigal, "He would fain have filled his
belly with the husks that the swine did eat, and no man gave unto him"
(Luke 15.16). For I must say with him, "Father, I have sinned against
Heaven and in thy sight." I remembered how on the night before and after
the Sabbath, when my family was about me, and relations and neighbors
with us, we could pray and sing, and then refresh our bodies with the
good creatures of God; and then have a comfortable bed to lie down on;
but instead of all this, I had only a little swill for the body and
then, like a swine, must lie down on the ground. I cannot express to
man the sorrow that lay upon my spirit; the Lord knows it. Yet that
comfortable Scripture would often come to mind, "For a small moment have
I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee."




THE FOURTEENTH REMOVE

Now must we pack up and be gone from this thicket, bending our course
toward the Baytowns; I having nothing to eat by the way this day, but
a few crumbs of cake, that an Indian gave my girl the same day we were
taken. She gave it me, and I put it in my pocket; there it lay, till it
was so moldy (for want of good baking) that one could not tell what it
was made of; it fell all to crumbs, and grew so dry and hard, that it
was like little flints; and this refreshed me many times, when I was
ready to faint. It was in my thoughts when I put it into my mouth, that
if ever I returned, I would tell the world what a blessing the Lord gave
to such mean food. As we went along they killed a deer, with a young
one in her, they gave me a piece of the fawn, and it was so young and
tender, that one might eat the bones as well as the flesh, and yet I
thought it very good. When night came on we sat down; it rained, but
they quickly got up a bark wigwam, where I lay dry that night. I looked
out in the morning, and many of them had lain in the rain all night, I
saw by their reeking. Thus the Lord dealt mercifully with me many times,
and I fared better than many of them. In the morning they took the blood
of the deer, and put it into the paunch, and so boiled it. I could eat
nothing of that, though they ate it sweetly. And yet they were so nice
in other things, that when I had fetched water, and had put the dish
I dipped the water with into the kettle of water which I brought, they
would say they would knock me down; for they said, it was a sluttish
trick.




THE FIFTEENTH REMOVE

We went on our travel. I having got one handful of ground nuts, for my
support that day, they gave me my load, and I went on cheerfully (with
the thoughts of going homeward), having my burden more on my back than
my spirit. We came to Banquang river again that day, near which we abode
a few days. Sometimes one of them would give me a pipe, another a
little tobacco, another a little salt: which I would change for a little
victuals. I cannot but think what a wolvish appetite persons have in a
starving condition; for many times when they gave me that which was hot,
I was so greedy, that I should burn my mouth, that it would trouble me
hours after, and yet I should quickly do the same again. And after I was
thoroughly hungry, I was never again satisfied. For though sometimes it
fell out, that I got enough, and did eat till I could eat no more, yet
I was as unsatisfied as I was when I began. And now could I see that
Scripture verified (there being many Scriptures which we do not take
notice of, or understand till we are afflicted) "Thou shalt eat and not
be satisfied" (Micah 6.14). Now might I see more than ever before, the
miseries that sin hath brought upon us. Many times I should be ready to
run against the heathen, but the Scripture would quiet me again, "Shall
there be evil in a City and the Lord hath not done it?" (Amos 3.6). The
Lord help me to make a right improvement of His word, and that I might
learn that great lesson: "He hath showed thee (Oh Man) what is good, and
what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and love mercy,
and walk humbly with thy God? Hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed
it" (Micah 6.8-9).




THE SIXTEENTH REMOVAL

We began this remove with wading over Banquang river: the water was up
to the knees, and the stream very swift, and so cold that I thought it
would have cut me in sunder. I was so weak and feeble, that I reeled
as I went along, and thought there I must end my days at last, after
my bearing and getting through so many difficulties. The Indians stood
laughing to see me staggering along; but in my distress the Lord gave
me experience of the truth, and goodness of that promise, "When thou
passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers,
they shall not overflow thee" (Isaiah 43.2). Then I sat down to put
on my stockings and shoes, with the tears running down mine eyes, and
sorrowful thoughts in my heart, but I got up to go along with them.
Quickly there came up to us an Indian, who informed them that I must go
to Wachusett to my master, for there was a letter come from the council
to the Sagamores, about redeeming the captives, and that there would be
another in fourteen days, and that I must be there ready. My heart was
so heavy before that I could scarce speak or go in the path; and yet
now so light, that I could run. My strength seemed to come again, and
recruit my feeble knees, and aching heart. Yet it pleased them to go but
one mile that night, and there we stayed two days. In that time came
a company of Indians to us, near thirty, all on horseback. My heart
skipped within me, thinking they had been Englishmen at the first sight
of them, for they were dressed in English apparel, with hats, white
neckcloths, and sashes about their waists; and ribbons upon their
shoulders; but when they came near, there was a vast difference between
the lovely faces of Christians, and foul looks of those heathens, which
much damped my spirit again.




THE SEVENTEENTH REMOVE

A comfortable remove it was to me, because of my hopes. They gave me a
pack, and along we went cheerfully; but quickly my will proved more than
my strength; having little or no refreshing, my strength failed me, and
my spirits were almost quite gone. Now may I say with David "I am poor
and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. I am gone like the shadow
when it declineth: I am tossed up and down like the locust; my knees
are weak through fasting, and my flesh faileth of fatness" (Psalm
119.22-24). At night we came to an Indian town, and the Indians sat down
by a wigwam discoursing, but I was almost spent, and could scarce speak.
I laid down my load, and went into the wigwam, and there sat an Indian
boiling of horses feet (they being wont to eat the flesh first, and when
the feet were old and dried, and they had nothing else, they would
cut off the feet and use them). I asked him to give me a little of his
broth, or water they were boiling in; he took a dish, and gave me one
spoonful of samp, and bid me take as much of the broth as I would. Then
I put some of the hot water to the samp, and drank it up, and my spirit
came again. He gave me also a piece of the ruff or ridding of the small
guts, and I broiled it on the coals; and now may I say with Jonathan,
"See, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted
a little of this honey" (1 Samuel 14.29). Now is my spirit revived
again; though means be never so inconsiderable, yet if the Lord bestow
His blessing upon them, they shall refresh both soul and body.




THE EIGHTEENTH REMOVE

We took up our packs and along we went, but a wearisome day I had of it.
As we went along I saw an Englishman stripped naked, and lying dead
upon the ground, but knew not who it was. Then we came to another Indian
town, where we stayed all night. In this town there were four English
children, captives; and one of them my own sister's. I went to see how
she did, and she was well, considering her captive condition. I would
have tarried that night with her, but they that owned her would not
suffer it. Then I went into another wigwam, where they were boiling corn
and beans, which was a lovely sight to see, but I could not get a taste
thereof. Then I went to another wigwam, where there were two of the
English children; the squaw was boiling horses feet; then she cut me off
a little piece, and gave one of the English children a piece also. Being
very hungry I had quickly eat up mine, but the child could not bite
it, it was so tough and sinewy, but lay sucking, gnawing, chewing and
slabbering of it in the mouth and hand. Then I took it of the child, and
eat it myself, and savory it was to my taste. Then I may say as Job 6.7,
"The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat."
Thus the Lord made that pleasant refreshing, which another time would
have been an abomination. Then I went home to my mistress's wigwam; and
they told me I disgraced my master with begging, and if I did so any
more, they would knock me in the head. I told them, they had as good
knock me in head as starve me to death.




THE NINETEENTH REMOVE

They said, when we went out, that we must travel to Wachusett this day.
But a bitter weary day I had of it, traveling now three days together,
without resting any day between. At last, after many weary steps, I
saw Wachusett hills, but many miles off. Then we came to a great swamp,
through which we traveled, up to the knees in mud and water, which was
heavy going to one tired before. Being almost spent, I thought I should
have sunk down at last, and never got out; but I may say, as in Psalm
94.18, "When my foot slipped, thy mercy, O Lord, held me up." Going
along, having indeed my life, but little spirit, Philip, who was in the
company, came up and took me by the hand, and said, two weeks more and
you shall be mistress again. I asked him, if he spake true? He answered,
"Yes, and quickly you shall come to your master again; who had been gone
from us three weeks." After many weary steps we came to Wachusett, where
he was: and glad I was to see him. He asked me, when I washed me? I told
him not this month. Then he fetched me some water himself, and bid me
wash, and gave me the glass to see how I looked; and bid his squaw give
me something to eat. So she gave me a mess of beans and meat, and a
little ground nut cake. I was wonderfully revived with this favor showed
me: "He made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them
captives" (Psalm 106.46).

My master had three squaws, living sometimes with one, and sometimes
with another one, this old squaw, at whose wigwam I was, and with whom
my master had been those three weeks. Another was Wattimore [Weetamoo]
with whom I had lived and served all this while. A severe and proud dame
she was, bestowing every day in dressing herself neat as much time as
any of the gentry of the land: powdering her hair, and painting her
face, going with necklaces, with jewels in her ears, and bracelets upon
her hands. When she had dressed herself, her work was to make girdles of
wampum and beads. The third squaw was a younger one, by whom he had two
papooses. By the time I was refreshed by the old squaw, with whom
my master was, Weetamoo's maid came to call me home, at which I fell
aweeping. Then the old squaw told me, to encourage me, that if I wanted
victuals, I should come to her, and that I should lie there in her
wigwam. Then I went with the maid, and quickly came again and lodged
there. The squaw laid a mat under me, and a good rug over me; the first
time I had any such kindness showed me. I understood that Weetamoo
thought that if she should let me go and serve with the old squaw, she
would be in danger to lose not only my service, but the redemption pay
also. And I was not a little glad to hear this; being by it raised in
my hopes, that in God's due time there would be an end of this sorrowful
hour. Then came an Indian, and asked me to knit him three pair of
stockings, for which I had a hat, and a silk handkerchief. Then another
asked me to make her a shift, for which she gave me an apron.

Then came Tom and Peter, with the second letter from the council, about
the captives. Though they were Indians, I got them by the hand, and
burst out into tears. My heart was so full that I could not speak to
them; but recovering myself, I asked them how my husband did, and all
my friends and acquaintance? They said, "They are all very well but
melancholy." They brought me two biscuits, and a pound of tobacco. The
tobacco I quickly gave away. When it was all gone, one asked me to give
him a pipe of tobacco. I told him it was all gone. Then began he to rant
and threaten. I told him when my husband came I would give him some.
Hang him rogue (says he) I will knock out his brains, if he comes here.
And then again, in the same breath they would say that if there should
come an hundred without guns, they would do them no hurt. So unstable
and like madmen they were. So that fearing the worst, I durst not send
to my husband, though there were some thoughts of his coming to redeem
and fetch me, not knowing what might follow. For there was little more
trust to them than to the master they served. When the letter was come,
the Sagamores met to consult about the captives, and called me to them
to inquire how much my husband would give to redeem me. When I came I
sat down among them, as I was wont to do, as their manner is. Then they
bade me stand up, and said they were the General Court. They bid me
speak what I thought he would give. Now knowing that all we had was
destroyed by the Indians, I was in a great strait. I thought if I should
speak of but a little it would be slighted, and hinder the matter; if of
a great sum, I knew not where it would be procured. Yet at a venture I
said "Twenty pounds," yet desired them to take less. But they would not
hear of that, but sent that message to Boston, that for twenty pounds I
should be redeemed. It was a Praying Indian that wrote their letter
for them. There was another Praying Indian, who told me, that he had
a brother, that would not eat horse; his conscience was so tender
and scrupulous (though as large as hell, for the destruction of poor
Christians). Then he said, he read that Scripture to him, "There was a
famine in Samaria, and behold they besieged it, until an ass's head was
sold for four-score pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of
dove's dung for five pieces of silver" (2 Kings 6.25). He expounded this
place to his brother, and showed him that it was lawful to eat that in a
famine which is not at another time. And now, says he, he will eat horse
with any Indian of them all. There was another Praying Indian, who when
he had done all the mischief that he could, betrayed his own father into
the English hands, thereby to purchase his own life. Another Praying
Indian was at Sudbury fight, though, as he deserved, he was afterward
hanged for it. There was another Praying Indian, so wicked and cruel,
as to wear a string about his neck, strung with Christians' fingers.
Another Praying Indian, when they went to Sudbury fight, went with them,
and his squaw also with him, with her papoose at her back. Before they
went to that fight they got a company together to pow-wow. The manner
was as followeth: there was one that kneeled upon a deerskin, with the
company round him in a ring who kneeled, and striking upon the ground
with their hands, and with sticks, and muttering or humming with their
mouths. Besides him who kneeled in the ring, there also stood one with
a gun in his hand. Then he on the deerskin made a speech, and all
manifested assent to it; and so they did many times together. Then they
bade him with the gun go out of the ring, which he did. But when he was
out, they called him in again; but he seemed to make a stand; then they
called the more earnestly, till he returned again. Then they all sang.
Then they gave him two guns, in either hand one. And so he on the
deerskin began again; and at the end of every sentence in his speaking,
they all assented, humming or muttering with their mouths, and striking
upon the ground with their hands. Then they bade him with the two guns
go out of the ring again; which he did, a little way. Then they called
him in again, but he made a stand. So they called him with greater
earnestness; but he stood reeling and wavering as if he knew not whither
he should stand or fall, or which way to go. Then they called him with
exceeding great vehemency, all of them, one and another. After a little
while he turned in, staggering as he went, with his arms stretched out,
in either hand a gun. As soon as he came in they all sang and rejoiced
exceedingly a while. And then he upon the deerskin, made another speech
unto which they all assented in a rejoicing manner. And so they ended
their business, and forthwith went to Sudbury fight. To my thinking they
went without any scruple, but that they should prosper, and gain the
victory. And they went out not so rejoicing, but they came home with as
great a victory. For they said they had killed two captains and almost
an hundred men. One Englishman they brought along with them: and he
said, it was too true, for they had made sad work at Sudbury, as indeed
it proved. Yet they came home without that rejoicing and triumphing over
their victory which they were wont to show at other times; but rather
like dogs (as they say) which have lost their ears. Yet I could not
perceive that it was for their own loss of men. They said they had not
lost above five or six; and I missed none, except in one wigwam. When
they went, they acted as if the devil had told them that they should
gain the victory; and now they acted as if the devil had told them they
should have a fall. Whither it were so or no, I cannot tell, but so it
proved, for quickly they began to fall, and so held on that summer, till
they came to utter ruin. They came home on a Sabbath day, and the Powaw
that kneeled upon the deer-skin came home (I may say, without abuse) as
black as the devil. When my master came home, he came to me and bid me
make a shirt for his papoose, of a holland-laced pillowbere. About that
time there came an Indian to me and bid me come to his wigwam at night,
and he would give me some pork and ground nuts. Which I did, and as I
was eating, another Indian said to me, he seems to be your good friend,
but he killed two Englishmen at Sudbury, and there lie their clothes
behind you: I looked behind me, and there I saw bloody clothes, with
bullet-holes in them. Yet the Lord suffered not this wretch to do me
any hurt. Yea, instead of that, he many times refreshed me; five or six
times did he and his squaw refresh my feeble carcass. If I went to their
wigwam at any time, they would always give me something, and yet they
were strangers that I never saw before. Another squaw gave me a piece of
fresh pork, and a little salt with it, and lent me her pan to fry it in;
and I cannot but remember what a sweet, pleasant and delightful relish
that bit had to me, to this day. So little do we prize common mercies
when we have them to the full.




THE TWENTIETH REMOVE

It was their usual manner to remove, when they had done any mischief,
lest they should be found out; and so they did at this time. We went
about three or four miles, and there they built a great wigwam, big
enough to hold an hundred Indians, which they did in preparation to a
great day of dancing. They would say now amongst themselves, that the
governor would be so angry for his loss at Sudbury, that he would send
no more about the captives, which made me grieve and tremble. My sister
being not far from the place where we now were, and hearing that I was
here, desired her master to let her come and see me, and he was willing
to it, and would go with her; but she being ready before him, told him
she would go before, and was come within a mile or two of the place.
Then he overtook her, and began to rant as if he had been mad, and made
her go back again in the rain; so that I never saw her till I saw her
in Charlestown. But the Lord requited many of their ill doings, for this
Indian her master, was hanged afterward at Boston. The Indians now began
to come from all quarters, against their merry dancing day. Among some
of them came one goodwife Kettle. I told her my heart was so heavy that
it was ready to break. "So is mine too," said she, but yet said, "I hope
we shall hear some good news shortly." I could hear how earnestly my
sister desired to see me, and I as earnestly desired to see her; and yet
neither of us could get an opportunity. My daughter was also now about a
mile off, and I had not seen her in nine or ten weeks, as I had not seen
my sister since our first taking. I earnestly desired them to let me go
and see them: yea, I entreated, begged, and persuaded them, but to let
me see my daughter; and yet so hard-hearted were they, that they would
not suffer it. They made use of their tyrannical power whilst they
had it; but through the Lord's wonderful mercy, their time was now but
short.

On a Sabbath day, the sun being about an hour high in the afternoon,
came Mr. John Hoar (the council permitting him, and his own foreward
spirit inclining him), together with the two forementioned Indians,
Tom and Peter, with their third letter from the council. When they came
near, I was abroad. Though I saw them not, they presently called me in,
and bade me sit down and not stir. Then they catched up their guns, and
away they ran, as if an enemy had been at hand, and the guns went off
apace. I manifested some great trouble, and they asked me what was the
matter? I told them I thought they had killed the Englishman (for they
had in the meantime informed me that an Englishman was come). They said,
no. They shot over his horse and under and before his horse, and they
pushed him this way and that way, at their pleasure, showing what they
could do. Then they let them come to their wigwams. I begged of them to
let me see the Englishman, but they would not. But there was I fain
to sit their pleasure. When they had talked their fill with him, they
suffered me to go to him. We asked each other of our welfare, and how
my husband did, and all my friends? He told me they were all well, and
would be glad to see me. Amongst other things which my husband sent me,
there came a pound of tobacco, which I sold for nine shillings in money;
for many of the Indians for want of tobacco, smoked hemlock, and ground
ivy. It was a great mistake in any, who thought I sent for tobacco; for
through the favor of God, that desire was overcome. I now asked them
whether I should go home with Mr. Hoar? They answered no, one and
another of them, and it being night, we lay down with that answer. In
the morning Mr. Hoar invited the Sagamores to dinner; but when we went
to get it ready we found that they had stolen the greatest part of the
provision Mr. Hoar had brought, out of his bags, in the night. And we
may see the wonderful power of God, in that one passage, in that when
there was such a great number of the Indians together, and so greedy of
a little good food, and no English there but Mr. Hoar and myself, that
there they did not knock us in the head, and take what we had, there
being not only some provision, but also trading-cloth, a part of the
twenty pounds agreed upon. But instead of doing us any mischief, they
seemed to be ashamed of the fact, and said, it were some matchit Indian
that did it. Oh, that we could believe that there is nothing too hard
for God! God showed His power over the heathen in this, as He did over
the hungry lions when Daniel was cast into the den. Mr. Hoar called
them betime to dinner, but they ate very little, they being so busy
in dressing themselves, and getting ready for their dance, which was
carried on by eight of them, four men and four squaws. My master and
mistress being two. He was dressed in his holland shirt, with great
laces sewed at the tail of it; he had his silver buttons, his white
stockings, his garters were hung round with shillings, and he had
girdles of wampum upon his head and shoulders. She had a kersey coat,
and covered with girdles of wampum from the loins upward. Her arms from
her elbows to her hands were covered with bracelets; there were handfuls
of necklaces about her neck, and several sorts of jewels in her ears.
She had fine red stockings, and white shoes, her hair powdered and face
painted red, that was always before black. And all the dancers were
after the same manner. There were two others singing and knocking on a
kettle for their music. They kept hopping up and down one after another,
with a kettle of water in the midst, standing warm upon some embers,
to drink of when they were dry. They held on till it was almost night,
throwing out wampum to the standers by. At night I asked them again, if
I should go home? They all as one said no, except my husband would come
for me. When we were lain down, my master went out of the wigwam, and
by and by sent in an Indian called James the Printer, who told Mr. Hoar,
that my master would let me go home tomorrow, if he would let him have
one pint of liquors. Then Mr. Hoar called his own Indians, Tom and
Peter, and bid them go and see whether he would promise it before them
three; and if he would, he should have it; which he did, and he had it.
Then Philip smelling the business called me to him, and asked me what I
would give him, to tell me some good news, and speak a good word for
me. I told him I could not tell what to give him. I would [give him]
anything I had, and asked him what he would have? He said two coats
and twenty shillings in money, and half a bushel of seed corn, and some
tobacco. I thanked him for his love; but I knew the good news as well
as the crafty fox. My master after he had had his drink, quickly came
ranting into the wigwam again, and called for Mr. Hoar, drinking to him,
and saying, he was a good man, and then again he would say, "hang him
rogue." Being almost drunk, he would drink to him, and yet presently say
he should be hanged. Then he called for me. I trembled to hear him, yet
I was fain to go to him, and he drank to me, showing no incivility. He
was the first Indian I saw drunk all the while that I was amongst them.
At last his squaw ran out, and he after her, round the wigwam, with
his money jingling at his knees. But she escaped him. But having an old
squaw he ran to her; and so through the Lord's mercy, we were no more
troubled that night. Yet I had not a comfortable night's rest; for I
think I can say, I did not sleep for three nights together. The night
before the letter came from the council, I could not rest, I was so full
of fears and troubles, God many times leaving us most in the dark, when
deliverance is nearest. Yea, at this time I could not rest night nor
day. The next night I was overjoyed, Mr. Hoar being come, and that with
such good tidings. The third night I was even swallowed up with the
thoughts of things, viz. that ever I should go home again; and that I
must go, leaving my children behind me in the wilderness; so that sleep
was now almost departed from mine eyes.

On Tuesday morning they called their general court (as they call it) to
consult and determine, whether I should go home or no. And they all
as one man did seemingly consent to it, that I should go home; except
Philip, who would not come among them.

But before I go any further, I would take leave to mention a few
remarkable passages of providence, which I took special notice of in my
afflicted time.

1. Of the fair opportunity lost in the long march, a little after the
fort fight, when our English army was so numerous, and in pursuit of the
enemy, and so near as to take several and destroy them, and the enemy in
such distress for food that our men might track them by their rooting
in the earth for ground nuts, whilst they were flying for their lives.
I say, that then our army should want provision, and be forced to leave
their pursuit and return homeward; and the very next week the enemy came
upon our town, like bears bereft of their whelps, or so many ravenous
wolves, rending us and our lambs to death. But what shall I say? God
seemed to leave his People to themselves, and order all things for His
own holy ends. Shall there be evil in the City and the Lord hath not
done it? They are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph, therefore
shall they go captive, with the first that go captive. It is the Lord's
doing, and it should be marvelous in our eyes.

2. I cannot but remember how the Indians derided the slowness, and
dullness of the English army, in its setting out. For after the
desolations at Lancaster and Medfield, as I went along with them, they
asked me when I thought the English army would come after them? I told
them I could not tell. "It may be they will come in May," said they.
Thus did they scoff at us, as if the English would be a quarter of a
year getting ready.

3. Which also I have hinted before, when the English army with
new supplies were sent forth to pursue after the enemy, and they
understanding it, fled before them till they came to Banquang river,
where they forthwith went over safely; that that river should be
impassable to the English. I can but admire to see the wonderful
providence of God in preserving the heathen for further affliction to
our poor country. They could go in great numbers over, but the English
must stop. God had an over-ruling hand in all those things.

4. It was thought, if their corn were cut down, they would starve and
die with hunger, and all their corn that could be found, was destroyed,
and they driven from that little they had in store, into the woods in
the midst of winter; and yet how to admiration did the Lord preserve
them for His holy ends, and the destruction of many still amongst the
English! strangely did the Lord provide for them; that I did not see
(all the time I was among them) one man, woman, or child, die with
hunger.

Though many times they would eat that, that a hog or a dog would hardly
touch; yet by that God strengthened them to be a scourge to His people.

The chief and commonest food was ground nuts. They eat also nuts and
acorns, artichokes, lilly roots, ground beans, and several other weeds
and roots, that I know not.

They would pick up old bones, and cut them to pieces at the joints, and
if they were full of worms and maggots, they would scald them over the
fire to make the vermine come out, and then boil them, and drink up the
liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar, and so eat
them. They would eat horse's guts, and ears, and all sorts of wild birds
which they could catch; also bear, venison, beaver, tortoise, frogs,
squirrels, dogs, skunks, rattlesnakes; yea, the very bark of trees;
besides all sorts of creatures, and provision which they plundered from
the English. I can but stand in admiration to see the wonderful power
of God in providing for such a vast number of our enemies in the
wilderness, where there was nothing to be seen, but from hand to mouth.
Many times in a morning, the generality of them would eat up all they
had, and yet have some further supply against they wanted. It is said,
"Oh, that my People had hearkened to me, and Israel had walked in my
ways, I should soon have subdued their Enemies, and turned my hand
against their Adversaries" (Psalm 81.13-14). But now our perverse and
evil carriages in the sight of the Lord, have so offended Him, that
instead of turning His hand against them, the Lord feeds and nourishes
them up to be a scourge to the whole land.

5. Another thing that I would observe is the strange providence of God,
in turning things about when the Indians was at the highest, and the
English at the lowest. I was with the enemy eleven weeks and five
days, and not one week passed without the fury of the enemy, and some
desolation by fire and sword upon one place or other. They mourned (with
their black faces) for their own losses, yet triumphed and rejoiced in
their inhumane, and many times devilish cruelty to the English. They
would boast much of their victories; saying that in two hours time they
had destroyed such a captain and his company at such a place; and boast
how many towns they had destroyed, and then scoff, and say they had done
them a good turn to send them to Heaven so soon. Again, they would say
this summer that they would knock all the rogues in the head, or drive
them into the sea, or make them fly the country; thinking surely,
Agag-like, "The bitterness of Death is past." Now the heathen begins to
think all is their own, and the poor Christians' hopes to fail (as
to man) and now their eyes are more to God, and their hearts sigh
heaven-ward; and to say in good earnest, "Help Lord, or we perish."
When the Lord had brought His people to this, that they saw no help in
anything but Himself; then He takes the quarrel into His own hand; and
though they had made a pit, in their own imaginations, as deep as hell
for the Christians that summer, yet the Lord hurled themselves into it.
And the Lord had not so many ways before to preserve them, but now He
hath as many to destroy them.

But to return again to my going home, where we may see a remarkable
change of providence. At first they were all against it, except my
husband would come for me, but afterwards they assented to it, and
seemed much to rejoice in it; some asked me to send them some bread,
others some tobacco, others shaking me by the hand, offering me a hood
and scarfe to ride in; not one moving hand or tongue against it. Thus
hath the Lord answered my poor desire, and the many earnest requests of
others put up unto God for me. In my travels an Indian came to me and
told me, if I were willing, he and his squaw would run away, and go home
along with me. I told him no: I was not willing to run away, but desired
to wait God's time, that I might go home quietly, and without fear. And
now God hath granted me my desire. O the wonderful power of God that I
have seen, and the experience that I have had. I have been in the midst
of those roaring lions, and savage bears, that feared neither God, nor
man, nor the devil, by night and day, alone and in company, sleeping all
sorts together, and yet not one of them ever offered me the least abuse
of unchastity to me, in word or action. Though some are ready to say I
speak it for my own credit; but I speak it in the presence of God, and
to His Glory. God's power is as great now, and as sufficient to save, as
when He preserved Daniel in the lion's den; or the three children in the
fiery furnace. I may well say as his Psalm 107.12 "Oh give thanks unto
the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever." Let the
redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He hath redeemed from the hand of
the enemy, especially that I should come away in the midst of so many
hundreds of enemies quietly and peaceably, and not a dog moving his
tongue. So I took my leave of them, and in coming along my heart melted
into tears, more than all the while I was with them, and I was almost
swallowed up with the thoughts that ever I should go home again. About
the sun going down, Mr. Hoar, and myself, and the two Indians came
to Lancaster, and a solemn sight it was to me. There had I lived many
comfortable years amongst my relations and neighbors, and now not one
Christian to be seen, nor one house left standing. We went on to
a farmhouse that was yet standing, where we lay all night, and a
comfortable lodging we had, though nothing but straw to lie on. The
Lord preserved us in safety that night, and raised us up again in the
morning, and carried us along, that before noon, we came to Concord. Now
was I full of joy, and yet not without sorrow; joy to see such a lovely
sight, so many Christians together, and some of them my neighbors. There
I met with my brother, and my brother-in-law, who asked me, if I knew
where his wife was? Poor heart! he had helped to bury her, and knew it
not. She being shot down by the house was partly burnt, so that
those who were at Boston at the desolation of the town, and came back
afterward, and buried the dead, did not know her. Yet I was not without
sorrow, to think how many were looking and longing, and my own children
amongst the rest, to enjoy that deliverance that I had now received,
and I did not know whether ever I should see them again. Being recruited
with food and raiment we went to Boston that day, where I met with my
dear husband, but the thoughts of our dear children, one being dead, and
the other we could not tell where, abated our comfort each to other. I
was not before so much hemmed in with the merciless and cruel heathen,
but now as much with pitiful, tender-hearted and compassionate
Christians. In that poor, and distressed, and beggarly condition I was
received in; I was kindly entertained in several houses. So much love I
received from several (some of whom I knew, and others I knew not) that
I am not capable to declare it. But the Lord knows them all by name.
The Lord reward them sevenfold into their bosoms of His spirituals,
for their temporals. The twenty pounds, the price of my redemption,
was raised by some Boston gentlemen, and Mrs. Usher, whose bounty and
religious charity, I would not forget to make mention of. Then Mr.
Thomas Shepard of Charlestown received us into his house, where we
continued eleven weeks; and a father and mother they were to us. And
many more tender-hearted friends we met with in that place. We were now
in the midst of love, yet not without much and frequent heaviness of
heart for our poor children, and other relations, who were still in
affliction. The week following, after my coming in, the governor and
council sent forth to the Indians again; and that not without success;
for they brought in my sister, and goodwife Kettle. Their not knowing
where our children were was a sore trial to us still, and yet we were
not without secret hopes that we should see them again. That which was
dead lay heavier upon my spirit, than those which were alive and amongst
the heathen: thinking how it suffered with its wounds, and I was no
way able to relieve it; and how it was buried by the heathen in the
wilderness from among all Christians. We were hurried up and down in our
thoughts, sometime we should hear a report that they were gone this way,
and sometimes that; and that they were come in, in this place or that.
We kept inquiring and listening to hear concerning them, but no certain
news as yet. About this time the council had ordered a day of public
thanksgiving. Though I thought I had still cause of mourning, and being
unsettled in our minds, we thought we would ride toward the eastward,
to see if we could hear anything concerning our children. And as we were
riding along (God is the wise disposer of all things) between Ipswich
and Rowley we met with Mr. William Hubbard, who told us that our son
Joseph was come in to Major Waldron's, and another with him, which was
my sister's son. I asked him how he knew it? He said the major himself
told him so. So along we went till we came to Newbury; and their
minister being absent, they desired my husband to preach the
thanksgiving for them; but he was not willing to stay there that night,
but would go over to Salisbury, to hear further, and come again in the
morning, which he did, and preached there that day. At night, when
he had done, one came and told him that his daughter was come in at
Providence. Here was mercy on both hands. Now hath God fulfilled that
precious Scripture which was such a comfort to me in my distressed
condition. When my heart was ready to sink into the earth (my children
being gone, I could not tell whither) and my knees trembling under me,
and I was walking through the valley of the shadow of death; then the
Lord brought, and now has fulfilled that reviving word unto me: "Thus
saith the Lord, Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from
tears, for thy Work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, and they shall
come again from the Land of the Enemy." Now we were between them, the
one on the east, and the other on the west. Our son being nearest, we
went to him first, to Portsmouth, where we met with him, and with the
Major also, who told us he had done what he could, but could not redeem
him under seven pounds, which the good people thereabouts were pleased
to pay. The Lord reward the major, and all the rest, though unknown
to me, for their labor of Love. My sister's son was redeemed for four
pounds, which the council gave order for the payment of. Having now
received one of our children, we hastened toward the other. Going back
through Newbury my husband preached there on the Sabbath day; for which
they rewarded him many fold.

On Monday we came to Charlestown, where we heard that the governor of
Rhode Island had sent over for our daughter, to take care of her,
being now within his jurisdiction; which should not pass without our
acknowledgments. But she being nearer Rehoboth than Rhode Island, Mr.
Newman went over, and took care of her and brought her to his own house.
And the goodness of God was admirable to us in our low estate, in that
He raised up passionate friends on every side to us, when we had nothing
to recompense any for their love. The Indians were now gone that way,
that it was apprehended dangerous to go to her. But the carts which
carried provision to the English army, being guarded, brought her with
them to Dorchester, where we received her safe. Blessed be the Lord for
it, for great is His power, and He can do whatsoever seemeth Him good.
Her coming in was after this manner: she was traveling one day with the
Indians, with her basket at her back; the company of Indians were got
before her, and gone out of sight, all except one squaw; she followed
the squaw till night, and then both of them lay down, having nothing
over them but the heavens and under them but the earth. Thus she
traveled three days together, not knowing whither she was going; having
nothing to eat or drink but water, and green hirtle-berries. At last
they came into Providence, where she was kindly entertained by several
of that town. The Indians often said that I should never have her under
twenty pounds. But now the Lord hath brought her in upon free-cost, and
given her to me the second time. The Lord make us a blessing indeed,
each to others. Now have I seen that Scripture also fulfilled, "If any
of thine be driven out to the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will
the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee. And
the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on
them which hate thee, which persecuted thee" (Deuteronomy 30.4-7). Thus
hath the Lord brought me and mine out of that horrible pit, and hath set
us in the midst of tender-hearted and compassionate Christians. It is
the desire of my soul that we may walk worthy of the mercies received,
and which we are receiving.

Our family being now gathered together (those of us that were living),
the South Church in Boston hired an house for us. Then we removed from
Mr. Shepard's, those cordial friends, and went to Boston, where we
continued about three-quarters of a year. Still the Lord went along with
us, and provided graciously for us. I thought it somewhat strange to set
up house-keeping with bare walls; but as Solomon says, "Money answers
all things" and that we had through the benevolence of Christian
friends, some in this town, and some in that, and others; and some
from England; that in a little time we might look, and see the house
furnished with love. The Lord hath been exceeding good to us in our
low estate, in that when we had neither house nor home, nor other
necessaries, the Lord so moved the hearts of these and those towards us,
that we wanted neither food, nor raiment for ourselves or ours: "There
is a Friend which sticketh closer than a Brother" (Proverbs 18.24). And
how many such friends have we found, and now living amongst? And truly
such a friend have we found him to be unto us, in whose house we lived,
viz. Mr. James Whitcomb, a friend unto us near hand, and afar off.

I can remember the time when I used to sleep quietly without workings
in my thoughts, whole nights together, but now it is other ways with me.
When all are fast about me, and no eye open, but His who ever waketh, my
thoughts are upon things past, upon the awful dispensation of the
Lord towards us, upon His wonderful power and might, in carrying of us
through so many difficulties, in returning us in safety, and suffering
none to hurt us. I remember in the night season, how the other day I was
in the midst of thousands of enemies, and nothing but death before me.
It is then hard work to persuade myself, that ever I should be satisfied
with bread again. But now we are fed with the finest of the wheat, and,
as I may say, with honey out of the rock. Instead of the husk, we have
the fatted calf. The thoughts of these things in the particulars of
them, and of the love and goodness of God towards us, make it true
of me, what David said of himself, "I watered my Couch with my tears"
(Psalm 6.6). Oh! the wonderful power of God that mine eyes have seen,
affording matter enough for my thoughts to run in, that when others are
sleeping mine eyes are weeping.

I have seen the extreme vanity of this world: One hour I have been in
health, and wealthy, wanting nothing. But the next hour in sickness and
wounds, and death, having nothing but sorrow and affliction.

Before I knew what affliction meant, I was ready sometimes to wish for
it. When I lived in prosperity, having the comforts of the world about
me, my relations by me, my heart cheerful, and taking little care for
anything, and yet seeing many, whom I preferred before myself, under
many trials and afflictions, in sickness, weakness, poverty, losses,
crosses, and cares of the world, I should be sometimes jealous least I
should have my portion in this life, and that Scripture would come to my
mind, "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every Son
whom he receiveth" (Hebrews 12.6). But now I see the Lord had His
time to scourge and chasten me. The portion of some is to have their
afflictions by drops, now one drop and then another; but the dregs of
the cup, the wine of astonishment, like a sweeping rain that leaveth no
food, did the Lord prepare to be my portion. Affliction I wanted, and
affliction I had, full measure (I thought), pressed down and running
over. Yet I see, when God calls a person to anything, and through never
so many difficulties, yet He is fully able to carry them through and
make them see, and say they have been gainers thereby. And I hope I can
say in some measure, as David did, "It is good for me that I have been
afflicted." The Lord hath showed me the vanity of these outward things.
That they are the vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit, that they
are but a shadow, a blast, a bubble, and things of no continuance. That
we must rely on God Himself, and our whole dependance must be upon Him.
If trouble from smaller matters begin to arise in me, I have something
at hand to check myself with, and say, why am I troubled? It was but
the other day that if I had had the world, I would have given it for
my freedom, or to have been a servant to a Christian. I have learned to
look beyond present and smaller troubles, and to be quieted under them.
As Moses said, "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord" (Exodus
14.13).

Finis.






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MY SECRET LIFE
Volume One
By Anonymous

AMSTERDAM
 PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS.
 1888



 This first reprint of "My Secret Life" is for private distribution among connoisseur collectors. It is strictly limited to four hundred and seventy five copies, all of which have been subscribed for prior to publication.






Contents


 INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

SECOND PREFACE

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.





INTRODUCTION

 In 18-- my oldest friend died. We had been at school and college together, and our intimacy had never been broken. I was trustee for his wife and executor at his death. He died of a lingering illness, during which his hopes of living were alternately raised, and depressed. Two years before he died, he gave me a huge parcel carefully tied up and sealed. Take care of, but don't open this he said: if I get better, return it to me, if I die, let no mortal eye but yours see it, and burn it.

His widow died a year after him. I had well nigh forgoten this packet which I had had full three years, when looking for some title deeds I came cross it, and opened it, as it was my duty to do. Its contents astonished me. The more I read it, the more marvellous it seemed. I pondered long on the meaning of his instructions when he gave it to me, and kept the manuscript some years, hesitating what to do with it.

At length I came to the conclusion knowing his idiosyncracy well, that his fear was only lest any one should know who the writer was; and feeling that it would be sinful to destroy such a history, I copied the manuscript and destroyed the original. He died relationless.

No one now can trace the author, no names are mentioned in the book, though they were given freely in the margin of his manuscript, and I alone know to whom the initials refer. If I have done harm in printing it, I have done none to him, have indeed only carried out his evident intention, and given to a few a secret history, which bears the impress of truth on every page, a contribution to psychology.





PREFACE

 I began these memoirs when about twenty-five years old, having from youth kept a diary of some sort, which perhaps from habit made me think of recording my inner and secret life.

When I began it, I had scarcely read a baudy book, none of which excepting "Fanny Hill" appeared to me to be truthful, that did, and it does so still; the others telling of recherche eroticisms, or of inordinate copulative powers, of the strange twists, tricks, and fancies, of matured voluptuousness, and philosophical lewdness, seemed to my comparative ignorance, as baudy imaginings, or lying inventions, not worthy of belief; although I now know by experience, that they may be true enough, however eccentric, and improbable, they may appear to the uninitiated.

Fanny Hill was a woman's experience. Written perhaps by a woman, where was a man's, written with equal truth? That book has no baudy word in it; but baudy acts need the baudy ejaculations; the erotic, full flavored expressions, which even the chastest indulge in, when lust, or love, is in its full tide of performance. So I determined to write my private life freely as to fact, and in the spirit of the lustful acts done by me, or witnessed; it is written therefore with absolute truth, and without any regard whatever for what the world calls decency. Decency and voluptuousness in its fullest acceptance, cannot exist together, one would kill the other; the poetry of copulation I have only experienced with a few women, which however neither prevented them, nor me from calling a spade, a spade.

I began it for my amusement; when many years had been chronicled I tired of it and ceased. Some ten years afterwards I met a woman, with whom, or with those she helped me do; I did, said, saw, and heard, well nigh everything a man and woman could do with their genitals, and began to narrate those events, when quite fresh in my memory, a great variety of incidents extending over four years or more. Then I lost sight of her, and my amorous amusements for a while were simpler, but that part of my history was complete.

After a little while, I set to work to describe the events of the intervening years of my youth, and early middle age; which included most of my gallant intrigues and adventures of a frisky order; but not the more lascivious ones of later years. Then an illness caused me to think seriously of burning the whole. But not liking to destroy my labor, I laid it aside again for a couple of years. Then another illness gave me long uninterrupted leisure; I read my manuscript, and filled in some occurrences which I had forgotten, but which my diary enabled me to place in their proper order. This will account for the difference in style in places, which I now observe; and a very needless repetition, of voluptuous descriptions, which I had forgotten, had been before described; that however is inevitable, for human copulation, vary the incidents leading up to it as you may, is, and must be, at all times, much the same affair.

Then for the first time, I thought I would print my work that had been commenced more than twenty years before, but hesitated. I then had entered my maturity, and on to the most lascivious portion of my life, the events were disjointed, and fragmentary and my amusement was to describe them just after they occurred. Most frequently the next day I wrote all down with much prolixity, since, I have much abbreviated it.

I had from youth an excellent memory, but about sexual matters a wonderful one. Women were the pleasure of my life. I loved cunt, but also she who had it; I like the woman I fucked and not simply the cunt I fucked, and therein is a great difference. I recollect even now in a degree which astonishes me, the face, color, stature, thighs, backside, and cunt, of well nigh every woman I have had, who was not a mere casual; and even of some who were. The clothes they wore, the houses and rooms in which I had them, were before me mentally, as I wrote, the way the bed, and furniture were placed, the side of the room the windows were on, I remembered perfectly; and all the important events I can fix as to time, sufficiently nearly by reference to my diary, in which the contemporaneous circumstances of my life are recorded.

I recollect also largely what we said, and did, and generally our baudy amusements. Where I fail to have done so, I have left description blank, rather than attempt to make a story coherent by inserting what was merely probable. I could not now account for my course of action, nor why I did this, or said that, my conduct seems strange, foolish, absurd, very frequently, that of some women, equally so, but I can but state what did occur.

In a few cases, I have for what even seems to me very strange, suggested reasons, or causes, but only where the facts seem by themselves to be very improbable, but have not exaggerated anything willingly. When I have named the number of times I have fucked a woman in my youth, I may occasionally be in error, it is difficult to be quite accurate on such points after a lapse of time. But as before said in many cases the incidents were written down a few weeks and often within a few days after they occurred. I do not attempt to pose as a Hercules in copulation, there are quite sufficient braggarts on that head, much intercourse with gay women, and doctors, makes me doubt the wonderful feats in coition, some men tell of.

I have one fear about publicity, it is that of having done a few things by curiosity and impulse (temporary abberations), which even professed libertines may cry fie on. There are plenty who will cry fie who have done all and worse than I have and habitually, but crying out at the sins of others was always a way of hiding one's own iniquity. Yet from that cause perhaps no mortal eye but mine, will see this history. The christian name of the servants mentioned are generally the true ones, the other names mostly false, the phonetically resembling the true ones. Initials nearly always the true ones. In most cases the woman they represent are dead or lost to me. Streets and baudy houses named are nearly always correct. Most of the houses named are now closed or pulled down; but any middle aged man about town would recognize them. Where a road, house, room, or garden is described, the description is exactly true; even to the situation of a tree, chair, bed, sofa, pisspot. The district is sometimes given wrongly; but it matters little whether Brompton be substituted for Hackney, or Camden Town for Walworth. Where however owing to the incidents it is needful, the places of amusement are given correctly. The Tower, and Argyle rooms, for example. All this is done to prevent giving pain to some, perhaps still living, for I have no malice to gratify.

I have mystified family affairs, but if I say I had ten cousins, when I had but six, or that one aunt's house was in Surrey instead of Kent, or in Lancashire; it breaks the clue and cannot matter to the reader.

But my doings with man and woman are as true as gospel. If I say that I saw, or did, that with a cousin male, or female, it was with a cousin and no mere acquaintance; if with a servant, it was with a servant; if with a casual acquaintance, it is equally true. Nor if I say I had that woman, and did this or that with her, or felt or did aught else with a man, is there a word of untruth excepting as to the place at which the incidents occurred. But even those are mostly correctly given, this is intended to be a true history, and not a lie.





SECOND PREFACE

 Some years have passed away since I penned the foregoing, and it is not printed. I have since gone through abnormal phases of amatory life, have done and seen things, had tastes and letches which years ago I thought were the dreams of erotic mad-men; these are all described, the manuscript has grown into unmanageable bulk, shall it, can it be printed? What will be said or thought of me, what become of the manuscript if found when I am dead, better to destroy the whole, it has fulfilled its purpose in amusing me, now let it go to the flames!

I have read my manuscript, through what reminiscences I had actually forgotten some of the early ones; how true the detail strikes me as I read of my early experiences; had it not been written then, it never could have been written now, has anybody but myself faithfully made such a record? It would be a sin to burn all this, whatever society may say it is but a narrative of human life, perhaps the every day life of thousands, if the confession could be had.

What strikes me as curious in reading it, is the monotony of the course I have pursued toward women who were not of the gay class; it has been as similar, and repetitive as fucking itself; do all men act so, does every man kiss, coax, hint smuttily, then talk baudily, snatch a feel, smell his fingers, assault, and win, exactly as I have done? Is every woman offended, say no, then oh! blush, be angry, refuse, close her thighs, after a struggle open them, and yield to her lust as mine have done? A conclave of whores telling the truth, and of Romish Priests, could alone settle the point. Have all men had the strange letches which late in life have enraptured me, though in early days the idea of them revolted me? I can never know this, my experience if printed may enable others to compare as I cannot.

Shall it be burnt or printed? How many years have passed in this indecision, why fear; it is for others' good and not my own if preserved.





CHAPTER I.


     Earliest recollections.--An erotic nurse-maid.--Ladies
     abed.--My cock.--A frisky governess.--Cousin Fred.--Thoughts
     on pudend.--A female pedler.--Baudy pictures.--A naked
     baby.

 My earliest recollections of things sexual are of what I think must have occurred some time between my age of five, and eight years. I tell of them just as I recollect them, without attempt to fill in what seems probable.

She was I suppose my nursemaid. I recollect that she sometimes held my little prick when I piddled, was it needful to do so? I don't know. She attempted to pull my prepuce back, when, and how often I know not. But I am clear at seeing the prick tip show, of feeling pain, of yelling out, of her soothing me, and of this occurring more than once. She comes to my memory as a shortish, fattish young female and that she often felt my prick.

One day, it must have been late in the afternoon, for the sun was low, but shining--how strange I should recollect that so clearly--but I have always recollected sunshine.--I had been walking out with her, toys had been bought me, we were both carrying them, she stopped and talked to some men, one caught hold of her and kissed her, I felt frightened, it was near a coach stand, for hackney coaches were there, cabs were not then known, she put what toys she had on to my hands, and went into a house with a man. What house? I don't know. Probably a public-house, for there was one not far from a coach stand, and not far from our house. She came out and we went home.

Then I was in our house in a carpeted room with her; it could not have been the nursery I know, sitting on the floor with my toys, so was she; she played with me and the toys, we rolled over each other on the floor in fun, I have a recollection of having done that with others, and of my father and mother, being in that room at times with me playing.

She kissed me, got out my cock, and played with it, took one of my hands and put it underneath her clothes. It felt rough there, that's all, she moved my little hand violently there then she felt my cock and again hurt me, I recollect seeing the red tip appear as she pulled down the prepuce, and my crying out, and her quieting me.

Then of her being on her back, of my striding across or between her legs, and her heaving me up and down, and my riding cock-horse and that it was not the first time I had done so; then I fell flat on her, she heaved me up and down and squeezed me till I cried. I scrambled off of her, and in doing so, my hand, or foot went through a drum, I had been drumming on, at which I cried.

As I sat crying on the floor besides her, I recollect her naked legs, and one of her hands shaking violently beneath her petticoats, and of my having some vague notion that the woman was ill, I felt timid. All was for a moment quiet, her hand ceased, still she lay on her back, and I saw her thighs, then turning round she drew me to her, kissed me and tranquillised me. As she turned round I saw one side of her backside, I leant over it and laid my face on it, crying about my broken drum, the evening sunbeams made it all bright, it had at some time been raining I recollect.

I expect I must have seen her cunt, as I sat beside her naked thigh. Looking towards her and crying about my broken drum, and when I saw her hand moving no doubt she was frigging. Yet I have not the slightest recollection of her cunt, nor of anything more than I have told. But of having seen her naked thighs, I am certain, I seem often to have seen them, but cannot feel certain of that.

The oddest thing is, that whilst I early recollected more or less clearly what took place two or three years later on, and ever afterwards, on sexual matters; and what I said, heard, and did, and nearly consecutively, this my first recollection of cock, and cunt, escaped my memory for full twenty years.

Then one day talking with the husband of one of my cousins, about infantine incidents he told me something which had occurred to him in his childhood; and suddenly, almost as quickly as a magic lantern throws a picture on to a wall, this which had occurred to me came into my mind. I have since thought over it a hundred times, but cannot recollect one circumstance relating to the adventure more than I have told.

My mother had been giving advice to my cousin about nursemaids. They were not to be trusted. "When Walter was a little fellow, she had dismissed a filthy creature, whom she had detected in abominable practices with one of her children," what they were my mother never disclosed. She hated indelicacies of any sort, and usually cut short allusion to them by saying, "It's not a subject to talk about, let's talk of something else." My cousin told her husband, and when we were together he told me, and his own experiences, and then all the circumstances came into my mind, just as I have told here.

I could not, as the reader will hear, thoroughly uncover my prick tip without pain, till I was sixteen years old nor well then when quite stiff unless it went up a cunt. My nursemaid I expect thought this curious, and tried to remedy the error in my make, and hurt me. My mother, by her extremely delicate feeling, shut herself off from much knowledge of the world, which was the reason why she had such implicit belief in my virtue, until I had seen twenty-two years, and kept, or nearly so, a French harlot.

I imagine I must have slept with this nurse-maid, and certainly I did with some female, in a room called the Chinese room, on account of the color of the wall papers. I recollect a female being there in bed with me, that I awoke one morning feeling very hot, and stifled, and that my head was against flesh; that flesh was all about me, my mouth and nose being embedded in hair, or some thing scrubby, which had a hot peculiar odour. I have a recollection of a pair of hands suddenly clutching, and dragging me up on to the pillow, and of daylight then. I have no recollection of a word being uttered. This incident I could not long have forgoten, having told my cousin Fred, of it before my father died. He used to say it was the governess. I suppose, I must have slipped down in my sleep, till my head laid against her belly, and cunt.

Some years afterwards when I got the smell of another woman's cunt on my fingers, it at once reminded me of the smell I had under my nose in the bed; and I knew at a flash, that I had smelt cunt before, and recollected where, but no more.

How long after, I have no idea, but it seems like two or three years, there was a dance in our house, several relations were to stop the night with us, the house was full, here was bustle, the shifting of beds, the governess going into a servant's room to sleep, and so on. Some female cousins were amongst those stopping with us; going into the drawing-room suddenly, I heard my mother saying to one of my aunts: "Walter is after all but a child, and its only for one night." Hish-hish both said, as they saw me, then my mother sent me out of the room, wondering why they were talking about me, and feeling curious, and annoyed at being sent away.

I had been in the habit then of sleeping in a room, either with another bed in it, or close to a room leading out of it, with another bed, I cannot recollect which; I used to call out to whoever might have been there when I was in bed: for being timid, the door was kept open for me. It could not have been a man who slept there, for the men servants slept on the ground-floor, I have seen their beds there.

The night I speak of, my bed was taken out, and put into the Chinese paper room, one of the maids who helped to move it, sat on the pot and piddled; I heard the rattle, and as far as I can recollect it was the first time I noticed anything of the sort, tho I recollect well seeing women putting on their stockings and feeling the thigh of one of them just above her knee. I was kneeling on the floor at the time, and had a trumpet, which she took angrily out of my hand soon afterwards, because I made a noise.

I recollect the dance, that I danced with a tall lady, that my mother contrary to custom as it seems to me, put me to bed herself, and that it was before the dance was over, for I felt angry and tearful at being put to bed so early. My mother closed the curtains quite tightly all round a small four post bed, and told me, I was to lie quietly, and not get up till she came to me in the morning; not to speak, nor undo my curtains, nor to get out of bed, or I should disturb Mr. and Mrs. ------ who were to sleep in the big bed; that it would make them angry if I did. I am almost certain she named a lady and her husband, who were going to stay with us; but can't be sure. A man then frightened me more than a woman, my mother I dare say knew that.

I dare say, for it was the same the greater part of my life, that I went to sleep directly I laid down, usually never awaking till the morning. Certainly I must have gone fast asleep that night; perhaps I had had a little wine given me, who knows; I have a sudden consciousness of a light, and hear some one say, he is fast asleep, don't make a noise; it seemed like my mother's voice. I rouse myself and listen, the circumstances are strange, the room strange, it excites me, and I rise on my knees, I don't know whether naturally, or cautiously, or how; perhaps cautiously, because I fear angering my mother, and the gentleman, perhaps a sexual instinct makes me curious, though that is not probable. I have not in fact the slightest conception of the actuating motive, but I sat up and listened. There were two females talking, laughing quietly, and moving about, I heard a rattling in the pot, then a rest, then again a rattle and knew the sound of piddling. How long I listened, I don't know, I might have dozed and awakened again, I saw lights moved about; then I crawled on my knees, with fear that I was doing wrong, and pushed a little aside the curtains where they met at the bottom of the bed. I recollect their being quite tight by the tucking in and that I could not easily make an opening to peep through.

There was a girl, or young woman with her back to me, brushing her hair, another was standing by her, one took a night gown off the chair, shook it out, and dropped it over her head, after drawing off her chemise. As this was done I saw some black at the bottom of her belly, a fear came over me, that I was doing wrong and should be punished if found looking, and I laid down wondering at it all, I fancy I again slept.

Then there was a shuffling about, and again it seems as if I heard a noise like piddling, the light was put out, I felt agitated, I heard the women kiss, one say hish! you will wake that brat, then one said listen, then I heard kisses and breathing like some one sighing, I thought some one must be ill and felt alarmed and must then have fallen asleep. I do not know who the women were, they must have been my cousins, or young ladies who had come to the dance. That was the first time I recollect seeing the hair of a cunt, though I must have seen it before, for I recollect at times a female (most likely a nursemaid) stand naked, but don't recollect noticing anything black between her thighs, nor did I think about it at all afterwards.

In the morning my mother came and took me up to her room, where she dressed me, as she left the room, she said to the females in bed, they were not to hurry up, she had only fetched Wattie.

But all this only came vividly to my mind when, a few years after, I began to talk about women with my cousin, and we told each other all we had seen, and heard, about females.

Until I was about twelve years old I never went to school, there was a governess in the house who instructed me, and the other children, my father was nearly always at home. I was carefully kept from the grooms and other men servants; once I recollect getting to the stable yard and seeing a stallion mount a mare, his prick go right out of sight in what appeared to me to be the mares bottom, of father appearing and calling out "What does that boy do there," and my being hustled away. I had scarcely a boy acquaintance excepting among my cousins, and therefore did not learn as much about sexual matters, as boys early do at schools. I did not know what the stallion was doing. I could have had no notion of it then, nor did I think about it.

The next thing I clearly recollected, was one of my male cousins stopping with us, we walked out and when piddling together against a hedge, his saying: "show me your cock, Walter, and I will show you mine." We stood and examined each others cocks, and for the first time, I became conscious, that I could not get my foreskin easily back, like other boys. I pulled his backwards and forwards. He hurt me, laughed and sneered at me, another boy came and I think another, we all compared cocks, and mine was the only one which would not unskin, they jeered me, I burst into tears, and went away, thinking there was something wrong with me, and was ashamed to show my cock again, then I set to work earnestly to try to pull the foreskin back, but always desisted fearing the pain, for I was very sensitive.

My cousin then told me that girls had no cock, but only a hole they piddled out of, we were always talking about them, but I don't recollect the word cunt, nor that I attached any lewd idea to a girl's piddling hole, or to their cocks being flat, an expression heard I think at the same period. It remained only in my mind that my cock and the girl's hole were to piddle out of, and nothing more, I cannot be certain about my age at this time.

Afterwards I went to that uncle's house often, my cousin Fred was to be put to school, and we talked a great deal more about girls' cocks which began to interest me much. He had never seen one he said, but he knew that they had two holes, one for bogging and the other to piddle from. They sit down to piddle said he, they don't piddle against a wall as we do, but that I must have known already, afterwards I felt very curious about the matter.

One day, one of his sisters left the room where we were sitting, she is going to piddle, he said to me. We sneaked into a bed room of one of them one day, and gravely looked into the pot to see what piddle was in it. Whether we expected to find anything different from what there was in our own chamber pot, I do not know. When talking about these things my cousin would twiddle his cock. We wondered how the piddle came out, if they wetted their legs and if the hole was near the bum hole, or where; one day Fred and I pissed against each others cocks, and thought it excellent fun.

I recollect being very curious indeed about the way girls piddled after this, and seeing them piddle became a taste I have kept all my life. I would listen at the bed room doors, if I could get near them unobserved, when my mother, sister, the governess, or a servant went in, hoping to hear the rattle and often succeeded: it was accompanied by no sexual desire, or idea, as far as I can recollect; I had no cockstand, and am sure, that I then did not know that the women had a hole called a cunt, and used it for fucking. I can recall no idea of the sort, it was simple curiosity to know something about those, whom I instinctively felt were made differently from myself. What sort of a hole could it be I wondered. Was it large? Was it round? Why did they squat instead of stand up, like men, my curiosity became intense.

How long after this the following took place, I can't say, but my cock was bigger. I have that impression very distinctly.

One day, there were people in one of the sitting rooms, where my mother and father were I don't know; they were not in the room, and were most likely out. There were one or two of my cousins, some youths, my big sister and one brother, besides others, our governess, and her sister, who was stopping with us, and sleeping in the same room with her. I recollect both going into the bed room together, it was next to mine. It was evening, we had sweet wine, cake, and snap-dragon, and played at something, at which all sat in a circle on the floor. I was very ticklish, it nearly sent me into fits, we tickled each other on the floor. There was much fun, and noise, the governess tickled me, and I tickled her. She said as I was taken to bed, or rather went, as I then did by myself, "I'll go and tickle you." Now at that time when in bed, a servant, or my mother, or the governess took away the light, and closed the door; for I was still frightened to get into bed in the dark, and used to call out, "Mamma, I'm going to get into bed." Then they fetched the light, they wished to stop this timidity, often scolded me about it, and made me undress myself, by myself, to cure me of it.

I expect the other children had been put to bed. My mother keeping all the younger ones in the room near her. The nursery was also upstairs, my room, as said, was next to the governess.

When in bed, I called out for some one to put out the light, up came the governess and her sister. She began to tickle me, so did her sister, I laughed, screeched, and tried to tickle them. One of them closed the door and then came back to tickle me. I kicked all the clothes off, and was nearly naked, I begged them to desist, felt their hands on my naked flesh, and am quite sure, that one of them touched my prick more than once, though it might have been done accidentally. At last I wriggled off the bed, my night-gown up to my armpits, and dropped with my naked bum on to the floor, whilst they tickled me still, and laughed at my wriggling about, and yelling.

Then what induced me, heaven alone knows; it may have been what I had heard about the piddling-hole of a woman, or curiosity, or instinct, I don't know; but I caught hold of the governess' leg as she was trying to get me up on to the bed again, saying, "that will do, my dear boy, get into bed, and let me take away the light." I would not; the other lady helped to lift me, I pushed my hands up the petticoats of the governess, felt the hair of her cunt, and that there was something warm, and moist, between her thighs. She let me drop on to the floor, and jumped away from me. I must have been clinging to her thigh, with both hands up her petticoats, and one between her thighs, she cried out loudly--oh!

Then slap-slap-slap, in quick succession, came her hand against my head, "You...rude...bad...boy," said she slapping me at each word, "I've a good mind to tell your mamma, get into bed this instant," and into bed I got without a word. She blew out the light, and left the room with her sister, leaving me in a dreadful funk. I scarcely knew that I had done wrong, yet had some vague notion, that feeling about her thighs was punishable; the soft hairy place my hand had touched, impressed me with wonder, I kept thinking there was no cock there, and felt a sort of delight at what I had done.

I heard them then talking, and laughing loudly, thru the partition. "They are talking about me, oh if they tell mamma, oh! what did I do it for?" Trembling with fear, I jumped out of bed, opened my door, and went to theirs listening; theirs was ajar,--heard: "right up between my thighs, felt it! he must have felt it; ah! ah! ah! would you ever have thought the little beast would have done such a thing." They both laughed heartily. "Did you see his little thing?" said one. "Shut the door, it's not shut;"--breathless I got back to my room, and into bed, and laying there, heard them through the partition roaring with laughter again.

That is the first time in my life, I recollect passing an all but sleepless night. The dread of being told about, and dread at what I had done, kept me awake. I heard the two women talking for a long time. Mixed with my dread was a wonder at the hair, and the soft, moist feel, I had had for an instant, on some part of my hand. I knew I had felt the hidden part of a female, where the piddle came from, and that is all I did think about it, that I know of, I have no recollection of a lewd sensation, but of a curious sort of delight only.

It must have been from this time, that my curiosity about the female form strengthened, but there was nothing sensual in it. I was fond of kissing, for my mother remarked it; when a female cousin, or any female kissed me, I would throw my arms round them, and keep on kissing. My aunts used to laugh, my mother corrected me, and told me it was rude. I used to say to the servants, kiss me. One day I heard my godfather say: "Walter knows a pretty girl from an ugly one doesn't he?"

I had a dread of meeting the governess, at breakfast, watched her, and saw her laugh at her sister, I watched my mother for some days after, and at length said to the governess, who had punished me for something. "Don't tell mamma." "I have nothing to tell about, Walter," she replied, "and don't know what you mean." I began to tell her what was on my mind. "What's the child talking about, you are dreaming, some stupid boy has been putting things into your head, your papa will thrash you, if you talk like that." "Why you came and tickled me," said I. "I tickled you a little when I put your light out," said she, "be quiet." I felt stupified, and suppose the affair must have passed away from my mind for a time, but I told my cousin Fred about it afterwards. He thought I must have been dreaming, and I began to wonder if it really had occurred, I never thought much about it until I began to recall my childhood for this history.

I must have been twelve years old, when I went to an uncle's in Surrey, and became a close friend of my cousin Fred, a very devil from his cradle, and of whom much more will be told: before then I had only seen him at intervals. We were then allowed, and it seems to me not before that time, to go out by ourselves. We talked boyish baudiness. "Ain't you green," said he, "a girl's hole isn't called a cock, it's a cunt, they fuck with it," and then he told me all he knew. I don't think I had heard that before, but can't be sure.

From that time a new train of ideas came into my head. I had a vague idea, though not a belief, that a cock and cunt, were not made for pissing only. Fred treated me as a simpleton in these matters, and was always calling me an ass; I have quite a painful recollection of my inferiority to him, in such things, and of begging him to instruct me. "They make children that way," said Fred. "You come up and we will ask the old nurse, where children come from, and she'll say 'out of the parsley-bed,' but it's all a lie." We went and asked her in a casual sort of way. She replied, "the parsley-bed," and laughed. The nurse at my house told me the same, when I asked afterwards about my mother's last baby. "Ain't they liars?" Fred remarked to me, "it comes out of their cunts, and it's made by fucking."

We both desired to see women piddling, though both must have before seen them at it often enough. Walking near the market-town with him just at the outskirts, and looking up a side-road, we saw a pedler woman squat down and piss. We stopped short and looked at her: she was a short-petticoated, thick-legged, middle-aged woman; the piss ran off in a copious stream, and there we stood grinning. "Be off, be off, what are you standing grinning at, yer dam'd young fools," cried the woman, "be off, or I'll heave a stone at yer," and she pissed on. We moved a few steps back, but keeping our face towards her, Fred stooped, and put his head down. "I can see it coming," said he jeeringly. He was rude from his infancy, bold in baudiness to the utmost, had the impudence of the devil. The stream ceased, the woman rose up swearing, took up a big flint and threw it at us. "I'll tell on yer," she cried. "I know yer, wait till I see yer again." She had a large basket of crockery for sale, it was put down in the main-road at the angle; she had just turned round into the side lane to piss. We ran off, and when well away, turned round and shouted at her, "I saw your cunt," Fred bawled out;--she flung another stone. Fred took up one, threw it, and it crashed into the crockery, the woman began to chase us, off we bolted across the fields home. She could not follow us that way; it was an eventful day for us. I recollect feeling full of envy at Fred's having seen her cunt. Though writing now, and having in my mind's eye, exactly how the woman squatted, and the way her petticoats hung, I am sure he never did see it; it was brag when he said he had, but we were always talking about girls' cunts, the desire to see one was great, and I then believed that he had seen the pedlar woman's.

Then one of Fred's companions showed us a bawdy picture, it was coloured. I wondered at the cunt being a long sort of gash, I had an idea that it was round, like an arse-hole. Fred told his friend I was an ass, but I could not get the idea of a cunt, not being a round hole quite out of my head, until I had fucked a woman. We were all anxious to get the picture, and tossed up for it, but neither I nor Fred got it, some other boy did.

Soon after that, Fred came to stop with us and our talk was always about women's privates, our curiosity became intense. I had a little sister about nine months old, who was in the nursery. Fred incited me to look at her cunt, if I could manage it. The two nurses came down in turns, to the servants dinner. I was often in the nursery, and soon after Fred's suggestion, was there one day, when the oldest nurse said: "Stop here, master Walter, while I go downstairs, for a couple of minutes, Mary (the other nurse) will be up directly, and don't make a noise." My little sister was lying on the bed asleep. "Yes, I'll wait." Down went nurse, leaving the door open; quick as lightning, I threw up the infant's clothes, saw her little slit, and put my finger quite gently on it, she was laying on her back most conveniently. I pulled one leg away to see better, the child awakened and began crying, I heard footsteps and had barely time to pull down her clothes, when the under nursemaid came in. I only had a momentary glimpse, of the outside of the little quim, for I was not a minute in the room with the child by myself altogether, and was fearful of being caught all the time I was looking.

There must have been something in my face, for the nursemaid said: "What it the matter, what have you been doing to the baby?" Nothing. "Yes, you are coloring up, now tell me." "Nothing. I have done nothing." "You wakened your sister." "No, I have not." The girl laid hold of me, and gave me a little shake. "I'll tell your mamma if you don't tell me, what is it now?" "No, I have done nothing, I was looking out of the window when she began to cry." "You're telling a story, I see you are," said the nursemaid; and off I went, after being impudent to her.

I told Fred and he tried the same dodge, but don't recollect whether he succeeded or not. His sisters were somewhat older, and we began to scheme how to see their cunts, when I was on a visit to his mother's (my aunt) which was to come off in the holidays. The look of the little child's cunt, as I described it, convinced him that the picture was correct, and that a cunt was a long slit, and not a round hole. That cast doubt on males putting their pricks into them, and we clung somehow to the idea of a round hole, and we quarrelled about it.

It must have been about this time, that I was walking with my father, and read something that was written with chalk, on the walls. I asked him what it meant. He said he did not know, that none but low people, and blackguards wrote on walls; and it was not worth while noticing such things. I was conscious that I had done wrong somehow, but did not know exactly what. When I went out, which I was now allowed to do for short distances by myself, I copied what was on the walls, to tell Fred, it was foul, baudy language of some sort, but the only thing we understood at all, was the word cunt.

Just then, being out with some boys, we saw two dogs fucking. I have no recollection of seeing dogs doing that before. We closed round them, yelling with delight as they stuck rump to rump, then one boy said that was what men and women did, and I asked, did they stick together so, a boy replied that they did; others denied it, and all the remainder of the day, some of us discussed this; the impression left on my mind is, that it appeared to be very nasty; but it seemed at the same time to confirm me in the belief, that men put their pricks up into women's holes, about which I seemed at that time to have grave doubts.

After this time my recollection of events is clearer, and I can tell not only what took place, but better what I heard, said, and thought.





CHAPTER II.


     My godfather.--At Hampton-Court.--My aunt's backside.--
     Public baths.--My cousins' cunts.--Haymaking frolics.--
     Family difficulties.--School amusements.--A masturbating
     relative.--Romance and sentiment.

 My godfather (whose fortune I afterwards inherited) was very fond of me; somewhere about this time he used perpetually to be saying, "When you get to school, don't you follow any of the tricks yourself, that other boys do, or you will die in a mad-house; lots of boys do." And he told me some horrible tales; it was done in a mysterious way. I felt there was a hidden meaning, and not having knowledge of what it was, asked him. I should know fast enough, said he, but mark his words. He repeated this so often, that it sunk deeply into my mind, and made me uneasy, something was to happen to me, if I did something--I did not know what--it was intended as a caution against frigging, and it had good effect on me I am sure in various ways in the after time.

One day talking with Fred, I recollected what I had done to the governess. I had kept it to myself all along for fear. "What a lie," said he. "I did really." "Oh! ain't you a liar," he reiterated, "I'll ask Miss Granger." The same governess was with us then.

At this remark of his, an absolute terror came over me, the dread was something so terrible, that the recollection of it is now painful. "Oh don't, pray don't, Fred," I said, "oh if Papa should hear!" He kept on saying he would. I was too young to see the improbability of his doing anything of the sort. "If you do, I'll tell him what we did when the pedler woman piddled." He did not care. "Now, it's a lie, isn't it, you did not feel her cunt?" In fear, I confessed it was a lie. "I know it was," said Fred. He had kept me in a state of terror about the affair for days, till I told a lie, to get quit of the subject.

I was evidently always secret, even then, about anything amorous, excepting with Fred (as will be seen) and have continued so all my life. I rarely bragged, or told anyone of my doings; perhaps this little affair with the governess, was a lesson to me, and confirmed me in a habit natural to me from my infancy. I have kept to myself everything I did with the opposite sex.

We now frequently examined our pricks, and Fred jeered me so about my prepuce being tight, that I resolved that no other boy should see it; and though I did not keep strictly to that intention, it left a deep-seated mortification on me. I used to look at my prick with a sense of shame, and pull the prepuce up and down, as far as I could constantly, to loosen it, and would treat other boys' cocks in the same way, if they would let me, without expecting me to make a return; but the time was approaching when I was to learn much more.

One of my uncles, who lived in London, took a house in the country for the summer near Hampton-Court Palace. Fred and I went to stay there with them. There were several daughters and sons, the sons quite young. People then came down from London in vans, carts, and carriages of all sorts, to see the Palace and grounds (there was no railway), they were principally of the small middle classes, and used to picnic, or else dine at the taverns when they arrived; then full, and frisky, after their early meal, go into the parks and gardens. They do so still, but times were different then, so few people went there comparatively; fewer park-keepers to look after them, and less of what is called delicacy, amongst visitors of the class named.

Our family party used to go into the grounds daily, and all day long nearly, if we were not on the river banks. Fred winked at me one day, "let's lose Bob," said he, "and we'll have such a lark." Bob was one of our little cousins, generally given into our charge. We lost Bob purposely. Said Fred, "if you dodge the gardiners, creep up there, and lay on your belly quietly, some girls will be sure to come, and piss, you'll see them pull their clothes up as they turn round, I saw some before you came to stay with us." So we went pushing our way among shrubs, and evergreens, till a gardiner, who had seen us, called out, "You there, come back, if I catch you going off the walks, you'll be put outside." We were in such a funk, Fred cut off one way, I another, but it only stopped us for that day. Fred so excited me about the girls' arses, as he called them, that we never lost an opportunity of trying for a sight, but were generally baulked. Once or twice only we saw a female squat down, but nothing more, till my mother and Fred's came to stop with us.

Fred's mother, mine, the girls, Fred and I went into the Park gardens, one day after luncheon. A very hot day, for we kept in the shady walks, one of which led to the place where women hid themselves to piss. My aunt said, "Why don't you boys go and play, you don't mind the sun," so off we went, but when about to leave the walk, turned round and saw the women had turned back. Said Fred, "I'm sure they are going to piss, that's why they want to get rid of us." We evaded the gardiners, scrambled through shrubs, on our knees, and at last on our bellies up a little bank, on the other side of which was the vacant place on which dead leaves and sweepings were shot down. As we got there, pushing aside the leaves, we saw the big backside of a woman, who was half standing, half squatting, a stream of piss falling in front of her, and a big hairy gash, as it seemed, under her arse; but only for a second, she had just finished as we got the peep, let her clothes fall, tucked them between her legs, and half turned round. We saw it was Fred's mother, my aunt. Off aunt went. "Isn't it a wopper," said Fred, "lay still, more of them will come."

Two or three did, one said, "you watch if anyone is coming," squatted and piddled, we could not see her cunt, but only part of her legs, and the piddle splashing in front of her. Then came the second, she had her arse towards us, sat so low, that we could not even see the tips of her buttocks. Fred thought it a pity they did not stand half up like his mother. On other occasions, we went to the same place, but though I recollect seeing some females' legs, don't recollect seeing any more. Nevertheless the sights were very delightful to us, and we used to discuss his mother's "wopper" and the hair, and the look of the gash, but I thought there must be some mistake, for it was not the idea I had formed of a cunt.

Fred soon after stopped with us in town, we had been forbidden to go out together, without permission, but we did, and met a boy bigger than either of us, who was going to bathe. "Come and see them bathing," he said. My father had refused to take me to the public baths. Disregarding this, Fred and I paid our six pence each, and in we went with our friend; we did not bathe, but amused ourselves with seeing others, and the pricks of the men. None, as far as I can recollect, wore drawers in those days, they used to walk about hiding their prides generally, with their hands, but not always. I was astonished at the size of some of them, and at the dark hair about them, and on other parts of their bodies. I wondered also at seeing one or two, with the red tip showing fully, so different from mine. All this was much talked over by us afterwards, it was to me an insight into the male make and form. Fred told me, he had often seen men's pricks in their fields, and in those days, living in the country as he did, I dare say it was true, but I don't recollect ever having seen the pricks of full grown men, or a naked man before in my life.

It must have been in the summer of that same year, that I went after this to spend some days at my aunt's at H...ds...e..., Fred's mother. We slept in the some room, and sometimes got up quite at daybreak to go fishing. One morning Fred had left something, in one of his sisters' rooms and went to fetch it, though forbidden to go into the girls' bedrooms. The room in question was opposite to ours. He was only partly dressed, and came back in a second, his face grinning. "Oh! come Wat, come softly, Lucy and Mary are quite naked, you can see their cunts, Lucy has some black hair on hers." I was only half dressed, and much excited by the idea of seeing my cousins' nudity. We both took off our slippers, and crept along through the door half open, then went on our knees! But why we did so, to this day I don't understand, and so crept to the foot of the bed, then raising ourselves, we both looked over the footboard.

Lucy, fifteen years old, was laying half on her side, naked from her knees to her waist, the bed-clothes kicked off (I suppose through heat), were dragging across her feet and partly laying on the floor; we saw her split, till lost in the closed thighs, she had a little dark short hair over the top of her cunt, and that is all I can recollect about it.

Mary-Ann by the side of her, a year younger only, laid on her back, nacked up to her navel, just above which was her night-gown in a heap and ruck; she had scarcely a sign of hair on her cunt, but a vermillion line, lay right through her crack. Projecting more towards the top, where her cunt began, she had what I now know was a strongly developed clitoris; she was a lovely girl and had long chestnut hair.

Whilst we looked she moved one leg up in a restless manner, and we bobbed down, thinking she was awaking; when we looked again, her limbs were more open, and we saw the cunt till it was pinched up, by the closing of her buttocks. In fear of being caught, we soon crept out, closed the door ajar, and regained our bedroom, so delighted that we danced with joy, as we talked about the look of the two cunts; of which, after all, we had only had a most partial, rapid glimpse.

Lucy was a very plain girl, and was so as a woman. She had, I recollect, a very red bloated looking face as she lay (it was so hot); she it was, who in afterlife my mother cautioned about leaving her infant son to a nursemaid.

Mary-Ann was lovely. I used afterwards to look and talk with her, thinking to myself: "Ah! you have but little idea, that I have seen your cunt." She was unfortunate; married a cavalry officer, went to India with him, was left at a station unavoidably by her husband, who was sent on a campaign, for a whole year; could not bear being deprived of cock, and was caught in the act of fucking with a drummer boy, a mere lad. She was separated from him, came back to England, and drank herself to death. She was a salacious young woman, I think from what I recollect of her, and am told, was afterwards fucked by a lot of men; but it was a sore point with the family, and all about her was kept quiet.

One of Lucy's sons, in after years, I saw fucking a maid in a summer-house: both standing up against a big table; I was on the roof. Many years before that, I fucked a nurse-maid, she laying on that table, in the very same summer-house, as I shall presently tell.

Fred and I used to discuss the look of his sisters' and mother's cunts, as if they had belonged to strangers. The redness of the line in Mary-Ann's quim astonished us. I do not recollect having even then, formed any definite notion of what a girl's cunt was, though we had seen the splits, but had still, and till much further on, the notion that the hole was round, and close to where the clitoris is, having no idea then of what a clitoris was, though we had got an Aristotle and used to read it greedily; the glimpse of the two cunts were but momentary, and our excitement confused our recollections.

Fred and I then formed a plot to look at another girl's cunt; who the girl was, I don't know, it may have been another of Fred's sisters, or a cousin by another of my aunts, but I think not; at all events she was stopping in aunt's house, and from her height, which was less than that of Fred and myself, I should think a girl of about eleven or twelve years of age. I scrupulously avoid stating anything positively, unless quite certain. Some years afterwards when we were very young men, we did the same thing with a female cousin (but not his sister), as I shall tell.

There was haymaking. We romped with the girl, buried each other in hay, pulled each other out, and so on. I was buried in the hay and dragged out by my legs by Fred and the girl. Then Fred was: then we buried the girl, and as Fred pulled her out he threw up her clothes, I lay over her head, which was covered with hay. Fred saw, winked and nodded. It came to my turn again to be buried, and then hers; I laid hold of her legs and pulling them from under the hay, saw her thighs, I pushed her knees up, and had a glimpse of the slit, which was quite hairless. My aunt and others were in the very field, but had no idea of the game we were playing, the girl romping with us, had no idea, that we were looking at her cunt, and an instantaneous peep only it was.

What effect sensuously, these glimpses of cunt, had on me, I don't know; but have no recollection of sexual desire, nor of mine nor Fred's cock being stiff. I expect that what with games, and our studies, that after all the time we devoted to thinking about women, was not long, and curiosity our sole motive in doing what we did. I clearly recollect our talking at that time about fucking, and wondering if it were true or a lie. We could repeat what we had read, and heard, but it still seemed improbable to me that a cock should go up a cunt, and the result be a child.

Then a passionate liking for females came over me; I fell in sort of love with a lady who must have been forty, and had a sad feeling about her, that is all I recollect. Then I began to follow servants about, on the hope of seeing their legs, or seeing them piddle, or for some undefined object: but that I was always looking after them, I know very well.

Then (I know now) my father got into difficulties, we moved into a smaller house, the governess went away, I was sent to another school, one of my brothers and sisters died; my father went abroad to look after some plantations, and after a year's absence came back and died, leaving my mother, in what compared with our former condition, were poor circumstances, but this in due course will be more fully told.

I think I went to school, though not long before what I am going to tell of happened, but am not certain, if so, I must have seen boys frigging; yet as far as I can arrange in my mind the order of events, I first saw a boy doing that, in my own bed-room at home.

I was somewhere, I suppose, about thirteen years of age, when a distant relative came from the country, to stay with us, until he was put to some great school. He was the son of a clergyman, and must have been fifteen, or perhaps sixteen years old, and was strongly pitted with the small-pox. I had never seen him before, and took a strong dislike to him; the family were poor, this boy was intended for a clergyman. I was excessively annoyed, that he was to sleep with me, but in our small house, there was just then no other place for him.

How many nights he slept in my bed, I don't recollect, it can have been but few; One evening in bed he felt my prick; repulsing him at first, I nevertheless afterwards felt his, and recollect our hands crossing each other and our thighs being close together. Awaking one morning, I felt his belly up against my rump, and his feeling or pushing his prick against my arse, putting my hand back, I pushed him away; then I found it pushing quickly backwards and forwards between my thighs, and his hand, passed over my hips, was grasping my cock. Turning round, I faced him; he asked me to turn round again, and said I might do it to him afterwards, but nothing more was done. An unpleasant feeling about sleeping with him is in my memory, but as said, I disliked him.

The next night undressing, he showed me his prick, stiff, as he sat naked on a chair; it was an exceedingly long, but thin article; he told me about frigging, and said he would frig me, if I would frig him. He commenced moving his hand quickly up and down, on his prick, which got stiffer and stiffer, he jerked up one leg, then the other, shut his eyes and altogether looked so strange, that I thought he was going to have a fit; then out spurted little pasty lumps, whilst he snorted, as some people do in their sleep, and fell back in the chair with his eyes closed; then I saw stuff running thinner over his knuckles. I was strangely fascinated as I looked at him, and at what was on the carpet, but half thought he was ill; he then told me it was great pleasure, and was eloquent about it. Even now, as it did then, the evening seemed to me a nasty unpleasant one, yet I let him get hold of my prick and frig it, but had no sensation of pleasure, he said, "your skin won't come off, what a funny prick;" that annoyed me, and I would not let him do more; we talked till our candle burnt out; he stamped out the sperm on the carpet, saying the servants would think we had been spitting. Then we got into bed.

Afterwards he frigged himself several times before me, and at his request I frigged him, wondering at the result, and amused, yet at the same time much disgusted. When frigging him one day; he said it was lovely to do it in an arse-hole, that he and his brother took it in turns that way: it was lovely, heavenly! would I let him do it to me. In my innocence I told him, it was impossible and that I thought him a liar. He soon left us and went to college. I saw him once or twice after this, in later years, but at a very early age he drowned himself. I told my cousin Fred about this when I saw him; Fred believed in the frigging, but thought him a liar about the arse-hole business, just as I did. This was the first time I ever saw frigging and male semen, and it opened my eyes.

Though now at a public school, I was shy, and reserved, but greedily listened to all the lewd talk, of which I did not believe a great deal. I became one of a group of boys of the same tastes as myself. One day some of them coaxed me into a privy, and there, in spite of me, pulled out my cock, threw me down, held me, and each one spat upon it, and that initiated me into their society. They had what they called cocks-all-round: anyone admitted to the set, was entitled to feel the others' cocks. I felt theirs, but again to my mortification, the tightness of my prepuce caused jeering at me; I was glad to hear that there was another boy at the school in the same predicament, though I never saw his. This confirmed me in avoiding my companions, when they were playing at cocks-all-round; being a day scholar only, I was not forced at all times into their intimacy, as I should have been had I been a boarder.

We had a very large playground; beyond it were fields, orchards and walks of large extent reserved for the use of the two head-masters' families, many of whom were girls. On Saturday half-holidays only, if the fruit was not ripe, we were allowed to range certain fields, and the long bough-covered paths, which surrounded them. Two or three boys of my set told me mysteriously one afternoon, that when the others had gone ahead, we were to meet in the play-ground privy, in which were seats for three boys of a row, and I was to be initiated into a secret without my asking. I was surprised at what took place, there was usually an usher in the play-ground in play-hours, and if boys were too long at the privy, he went there, and made them come out. On the Saturdays, he went out with the boys into the fields: there was no door to the privy, I should add, it was a largish building.

One by one, from different directions, some dodging among trees which bordered one side of the playground, appeared boys. I think there were five or six together in the privy, then it was cocks-all-round, and every boy frigged himself. I would not, at first. Why? I don't know. At length incited, I tried, my cock would not stand, and vexed and mortified, I withdrew, after swearing not to split on them, on pain of being kicked and cut. I don't think I was one of the party again, though I saw each of the same boys frig himself in the privy when alone with me, at some time or another.

After this a boy asked me to come to a privy with him in school time, and he would show me how to do it. Only two boys were allowed to go to those closets at the same time, during school time. There were two wooden legs with keys hung up on the wall by string: a boy if he wanted to ease himself looked to see if a log and key was hanging up, and if there was, stood out in the centre of the room; by that the master understood what he wanted. If he nodded, the boy took the key and went to the bog-house (no water-closets then), and when he returned, he hung up the log in its place. Those privies were close together, and separate, there were but two of them.

"You wait till there are two logs hanging up, and directly I get one, you get up and come after me." Soon we were both in one privy together. "Let's frig," said he; we were only allowed to be away five minutes. Out he pulled his prick, then out I pulled mine; he tried to pull my skin back, and could only half do it, he frigged himself successfully, but I could not. He had a very small prick compared with mine. How I envied him the ease with which he covered and uncovered the red tip. I frigged that boy one day, but finding my cock was becoming a talk among our set, I shrunk from going to their frigging parties, which I have seen even take place in a field, boys sitting at the edge of a ditch, whilst one stood up to watch if anyone approached. When they were frigging in the privy, a boy always stood in the open door on the watch, and his time for frigging came afterwards.

With this set I began to look through the Bible, and study all the carnal passages; no book ever gave us perhaps such prolonged, studious, baudy amusement; we could not understand much, but guessed a good deal.

Before I had seen anyone frig, I had been permitted to read novels, not a moment of my time when not at studies was I without one. My father used to select them for me at first, but soon left me to myself, and now he was dead, I devoured what books I liked, hunting for the love passages, thinking of the beauty of the women, reading over and over again, the description of their charms, and envying their love meetings. I used to stop at print-shop windows and gaze with delight at the portraits of pretty women, and bought some at six pence each, and stuck them into a scrap-book. Although a big fellow for my age, I would sit on the lap of any woman who would let me, and kiss her. My mother in her innocence called me a great girl, but she neverthless forbid it. I was passionately fond of dancing and annoyed when they indicated a girl of my own age, or younger, to dance with.

These feelings got intensified, when I thought of my aunt's backside, and the cunts of my cousins, but when I thought of the heroines, it seemed strange that such beautiful creatures should have any. The cunt which seemed to have affected my imagination, was that of my aunt, which appeared more like a great parting, or division of her body, than a cunt as I then understood it; as if her buttock parting was continued round towards her belly, and as unlike the young cunts I had seen as possible. Those seemed to be but little indents. That the delicate ladies of the novels should have such divisions seemed curious, ugly, and unromantic. My sensuous temperament was developing, I saw females in all their poetry and beauty, but suppose that my physical forces had not kept pace with my brain, for I have no recollection of a cock-stand, when thinking about ladies; and fucking never entered into my mind, either when I read novels, or kissed women, though the pleasure I had when my lips met theirs, or touched their smooth, soft cheeks was great. I recollect the delight it gave me perfectly.

After having seen frigging, it set me reflecting, but it still seemed to me impossible, that delicate, handsome ladies, should allow pricks to be thrust up them, and nasty stuff ejected into them. I read Aristotle, tried to understand it, and thought I did, with the help of much talk with my schoolfellows; yet I only half believed it. Dogs fucking were pointed out to me; then cocks treading hens, and at last a fuller belief came.

I began then, I recollect, to think of their cunts when I kissed women, and then of my aunt's; I could not keep my eyes off of her, for thinking of her large backside and the gap between her thighs; it was the same with my cousins. Then I began to have cock-stands and suppose a pleasurable feeling about the machine, though I do not recollect that. I then found out that servants were fair game, and soon there was not one in the house whom I had not kissed. I had a soft voice and have heard, an insinuating way, was timorous, feared repulse, and above all being found out; yet I succeeded. Some of the servants must have liked it, who called me a foolish boy at first; for they would stop with me on a landing, or in a room, when we were alone, and let me kiss them for a minute together. There was one, I recollect, who rubbed her lips into mine, till I felt them on my teeth, but of what she was like, I have no recollection, and I did not like her doing that to me.

My curiosity became stronger, I got bolder, told servants I meant to see them wash themselves, and used to wait inside by bed-room, till I heard one of them come up to dress. I knew the time each usually went to her bedroom for that purpose, the person most in my way was the nurse: she after a time left, and mother nursed her own children. "Let's see your neck; do, there is a dear," I would say. "Nonsense, what next?" "Do, dear, there is no harm; I only want to see as much as ladies show at balls." I wheedled one to stand at the door in her petticoats and show her neck across the bedroom lobby. The stays were high and queerly made in those days, the chemises pulled over the top of them like flaps. One or two let me kiss their necks, a girl one day said to my entreaties, "Well, only for a minute," and easing up one breast, she showed me the nipple, I threw my arms around her, buried my face in her neck and kissed it. "I like the smell of your breast and flesh," said I. She was a biggish woman, and I dare say I smelt breasts and armpits together; but whatever the compound, it was delicious to me, it seemed to enervate me. The same woman, when I kissed her on the sly afterwards, let me put my nose down her neck to smell her. We were interrupted. "There is someone coming," said she, moving away.

"What makes ladies smell so nice?" said I to my mother one day. My mother put down her work and laughed to herself. "I don't know that they smell nice."

"Yes, they do, and particularly when they have low dresses on." "Ladies," said mother, "use patchouli and other perfumes." I supposed so, but felt convinced from mother's manner, that I had asked a question which embarrassed her.

I used to lean over the backs of the chairs of ladies, get my face as near to their necks as I could, quietly inhale their odours, and talk all the time. Not every woman smelt nice to me, and when they did, it was not patchouli, for I got patchouli, which I liked, and perfumed myself with it. This delicate sense of smell of a woman I have had throughout life, it was ravishing to me afterwards, when I embraced the naked body of a fresh, healthy young woman.

From about this time of my life, I recollect striking events much more clearly, yet the circumstances which led up to them or succeeded them I often cannot. One day, Miss Granger, our former governess, came to see us. I kissed her. Mother said: "Wattie, you must not kiss ladies in that way, you are too big." I sat Miss Granger on my lap in fun (my mother then in the room), and romped with her. Mother left us in the room, and then seating Miss Granger on my lap again, I pulled her closely to me. "Kiss me, she's gone," I said. "Oh! what a boy," and she kissed me, saying, "let me go now--your mamma is coming." It came into my mind that I had had my hand up her clothes, and had felt hair between her legs. My prick stiffening in thinking of a women. I clutched her hard, put one hand on to her and did something I know not what. She said: "You are rude, Wattie." Then I pinched her and said: "Oh! what a big bosom you have." "Hish! hish!" said she. She was a tallish woman with brown hair; I have heard my mother say she was about thirty years of age.

A memorable episode then occured. There were two sisters, with other female servants, in our house. My father was abroad at that time; I was growing so rapidly, that every month they could see a difference in my height, but was very weak. My godfather used to look at me, and severely ask if I was up to tricks with the boys. I guessed then what he meant, but always said I did not know what he meant. "Yes, you do; yes, you do," he would say, staring hard at me, "you take care, or you'll die in a mad-house, if you do, and I shall know by your face, not a farthing more will I give you." He had been a surgeon-major in the Army, and gave me much pocket-money. I could not bear his looking at me so; he would ask me why I turned down my eyes.

About this time, I had had a fever, had not been to school for a long time, and used to lie on the sofa reading novels all day. Miss Granger had come to stop with my mother. One day I put my hand up her clothes, nearly to her knees; that offended her, and she left off kissing me. One of my little sisters slept with her, in a room adjoining my mother's room; I slept now on the servants floor, at the top of the house. Again I recollect my cock standing when near Miss Granger, but recollect nothing else.

I was then ordered by my mother to cease speaking to the servants, excepting when I wanted anything, though I am sure my mother never suspected my kissing one. I obeyed her hypocritically, and was even at times reprimanded for speaking to them, in too imperious a tone. She told me to speak to servants respectfully. For all that I was after them, my curiosity was unsatiable, I know the time each went up to dress, or for other purposes, and if at home, would get into the lobby, or near the staircase, to see their legs, as they went upstairs. I would listen at their door, trying to hear them piss, and began for the first time to peep through keyholes at them.





CHAPTER III.


     A big servant.--Two sisters.--Armpits.--A quiet feel.--
     Baudy reveries.--Felt by a woman.--Erections.--My prepuce.--
     Seeing and feeling.--Aunt and cousin.--A servant's thighs.--
     Not man enough.

 A big servant, of whom I shall say much, had most of my attention; she went to her room usually when my mother was taking a nap in the afternoon; or when out with my sisters and brother. When I was ill in bed, this big woman usually brought me beef-tea, I used to make her kiss me, and felt so fond of her, would throw my arms around her, and hold her to me, keeping my lips to hers, and saying how I should like to see her breasts; to all which she replied in the softest voice, as if I were a baby. I wonder now if my homage gave the big woman pleasure, or my amatory pressures made her ever feel randy. She was engaged to be married, but I only heard that at a later day, when my mother talked about her; her sister was also with us, as already said.

The sister was handsome, according to my notions then (I now begin to remember faces clearly); both had bright, clear complexions. I kissed both, each used to say, "Don't tell my sister," and ask, "Have you kissed my sister?" I was naturally cunning about women, and my mother said, she must get rid of them.

The youngest was often dancing my little sister round in the room, then swinging herself round, and making cheeses with her petticoats. As I got better, I would lay on the rug with a pillow, and my back to the light reading, and say it rested me better, to be on the floor, but in hope of seeing her legs as she made cheeses. I often did, and have no doubt now that she meant me to do so, for she would swing round, quite close to my head, so that I could see to her knees, and make her petticoat's edge as she squatted, just over my head, immediately snatching her petticoats back and saying: "Oh! you'll see more than is good for you."

It used to excite me. One day as she did it, and squatted, I put out my hand and pulled her clothes, she rolled on to her back, threw up her legs quite high, and for a second I saw her thighs; she recovered herself, laughing. "I saw your thighs," said I. "That you didn't." One day she let me put my hand into her bosom; I sniffed. "What's there to smell?" said she. I have some idea that she used to watch me closely, when I was with her sister, as she was always looking after her, and before she kissed me, would open the door suddenly or go out of the room, and then return. I've seen the other sister just outside the door of the room, when suddenly opened.

The big sister must have been five feet nine high, and large in proportion; the impression on my mind, is that she was two and twenty: that age dwells in my recollection, and that my mother remarked it. She had brown hair and eyes, I recollect well the features of the woman. Her lower lip was like a cherry, having a distinct cut down the middle, caused she said by the bite of a parrot, which nearly severed her lip when a girl. This feature I recollect more clearly than anything else. My mother remarked that though so big, she was lighter in tread, than anyone in the house, her voice was so soft, it was like a whisper or a flute; her name was I think Betsy.

I had none of the dash, and determination towards females, which I had in after life; was hesitating, fearful of being repulsed, or found out, but was coaxing and wheedling. Betsy used to take charge of my two little sisters (there was no regular nursery then), and used to sit with them in a room adjoining our dining room; it had a settee, and a large sofa in it, we usually breakfasted there. She waited also at table, and did miscellaneous work. I am pretty certain that we had then no man in the house. I used to lie down on the sofa in this room. One day I talked with her about her lip, put my head up and said: "Do let me kiss it." She put her lips to mine, and soon after if I was not kissing her sister, I was kissing her regularly, when my mother was out of the way.

One day when she went up to her bed-room, I went softly after her, as I often did, hoping to hear her piddling. Her door was ajar, one of my little sisters was in the room with her, I expect I must have had incipient randiness on me. She taught the child to walk up stairs in front of her, holding her up, and in stooping to do so, I had glimpses of her fat calves. At the door, I could not see her wash, that was done at the other side of the room, but I heard the splash of water, and to my delight, the pot moved, and her piddle rattle. The looking-glass was near the window. Then she moved to the glass, and brushed her hair, her gown off, and now I saw her legs, and most of her breast, which looked to me enormous.

Then I noticed hair in her armpits; it must have been the first time I noticed any thing of the sort, for I told a boy afterwards, that grown women had hair under their armpits; he said every fool knew that. When she had done brushing, she turned round, and passing the door, shut it: she had not seen me.

I fell in love with this woman, an undefined want took possession of me, I was always kissing her, and she returned it without hesitation. "Hush! your mamma's coming"; then she would work, or do something with the children if there, as demurely as possible. I declare positively as I write this, that I believe I gave that woman a lewd pleasure in kissing me, her kisses were so much like those I have had from women, I have fucked in after years, so long, and soft, and squeezing.

One day, I was in the sitting-room laying on the sofa reading, she sitting and working; where the children were, where my mother was, I can't say: they must have been out, why this servant was in the room with me alone, I don't know. On a table was something the doctor had ordered me to sip, from time to time. "Come and sit near me, I like to touch you, dear" (I used to say dear to her). She drew her chair to the sofa, so that her thighs were near my head, she handed me my medicine, I turned on one side, put my head on her lap, and then my hand on her knee. "Kiss me." "I can't." I moved my head up and she bent forward and kissed. "Keep your face to mine, I want to tell you something." Then I told her I had seen her brushing her hair, her breasts, her armpits. "Oh! you sly boy! you naughty boy! you must not do it again, will you?" "Won't I, if I get the chance; put your head down, I've something more to tell you." "What?" "I can't if you look at me; put your ear to my mouth."

I was longing to tell her, and could not do it whilst she looked at me. I recollect my bashfulness perfectly, and more than that, my fear of saying what I wanted to say.

She bent her ear to my mouth. "I heard you piddle." "Oh! you naughty!" and she burst into a quiet laugh. "I'll take care to shut the door in future." I let my hand drop by the side of the sofa, laid hold of her ankle, then the calve of her leg (without resistance); then up I slid it gently, and gradually above her garter, and felt the flesh; she was threading a needle. As I touched the thigh, she pressed both hands down on to her thighs, barring further investigation. "Now, Wattie, you're taking too much liberty, because I've let you feel my ankles." I whined, I moaned. "Oh do dear, do, kiss me dear; only for a minute." I tried very gently to push my hand (it was my left hand) further. "What do you want?" "I want to feel it, oh! kiss me--let me,--do,--Betsy, do," and I raised my head.

Sitting bent forward towards me as I lay, until she was nearly double, she put her lips to mine and kissing me said: "What a rude, boy you are, what do you expect to find?" "I know what it's called, and it's hairy, isn't it, dear?" Her hands relaxed, she laughed, my left hand slid up, until I felt the bottom of her belly. I could only twiddle my fingers in the hair, could feel no split, or hole, was too excited to think, too ignorant of the nature of the female article; but oh the intense delight I felt at the touch of the warm thighs, and the hair, which now I knew was outside the cunt, somewhere, I recollect my delight perfectly.

She kept on kissing me, saying in a whisper, "what a rude boy you are." Then I whispered modestly, all I had read, told of the Aristotle I had hidden in my cupboard, and she asked me to lend her the book. I touched nothing but hair, her thighs must have been quite closed, and a big stay-bone dug into my hand and hurt it, as I moved it about. I have felt that obstacle to my enterprise in years later on, with other women.

Then came over me a voluptuous sensation, as if I was fainting with pleasure, I seem to have a dream of her lips meeting mine, of her saying oh! for shame I of the tips of my fingers entangling in hair, of the warmth of the flesh of her thighs upon my hand, of a sense of moisture on it, but I recollect nothing more distinctly.

Afterwards she seems to have absorbed me. I ceased speaking to her sister, and could think of nothing but her neck, legs and the hair at the bottom of her belly. I was several times in the same room with her, and was permitted the same liberties, but no others. I lent her Aristotle, which I had borrowed, and one day recollect my prick stiffening, and a strange overwhelming, utterly indescribable feeling coming over me, of my desire to say to her "cunt," and to make her feel me, and at the same time a fear and a dread overtook me, that my cock was not like other cocks, and that she might laugh at me. After that, I used to pull the skin down violently every day, I bled, but succeeded; it became slightly easier to do so, yet I have no recollection of having a desire to fuck that woman, all that I recollect of my sensations I have here described.

I was still ill, for there was brought me to my bed at nights, a cup of arrowroot. My mother usually did this, but sometimes the big woman did, I was so glad, when my mother did not. Then I would kiss her as if I never wanted to part with her, put my hand out of bed, scramble it up her clothes, till I could feel the hair. Then she would jut her bum back, so that I could not touch more. One night my prick stood, "Take the light outside," I said, "I've something to say to you." The door was half open when she had complied; the gleam of the light struck across the room, my bed was in the shade, "do let me feel you further, dear and kiss me." "You naughty boy!" but we kissed. Again I felt her thighs, belly and hair. "What good does it do you, doing that," she said. I took hold of her hand, and put it under the bed-clothes on to my prick. She bent over me, kissing and saying "naughty boy," but feeling the cock, and all round it, how long, I can't say, "oh! I'd like to feel your hole," I said. "Hish!" said she, going out of the room, and closing the door.

She felt me several times afterwards. When my mother brought me the arrowroot, she having an idea, that I liked her to do so, I would not take it, saying it was too hot. She said, "I can't wait, Wattie, while it cools." "Don't care, mamma, I don't want it." "But you must take it." "Put it down then." "Well, don't go to sleep, and I'll send Betsy up with it in a few minutes." Up Betsy would come, and quickly and voluptuously kissing, keeping her lips on mine for two or three minutes at a time, she would glide her hand down and feel my cock, whilst my fingers were on her motte, her thighs closed, then she would glide out of the room. I never got my hand between her thighs, I am sure.

I used to long to talk to her about all I had heard, but don't think I ever did more than I have told, for I had a fear about using baudy words to a woman, though I already used them freely enough among boys.

I used to talk only of her hole, my thing, of doing it, and so forth; but what made her laugh was my calling it pudendum, a word I had got out of Aristotle and my latin dictionary. In spite of all this, and of the voluptuous sensations, which used to creep over me, I have no clear, defined, recollection of wishing to fuck her, nor did I ever say anything smutty, if I could see her face.

I got better. Then she refused either to feel me, or let me feel her, on account of my boldness. One day, just at dusk, she was closing the dining-room shutters, I went behind her, and after pulling her head back to kiss me, stooped and pulled up her clothes to her waist; it exposed her entire backside. Oh how white and huge it seemed to me. She moved quickly round not hollowing out, but saying quietly: "What are you doing? don't, now!" As she turned round, so did I, gloating over her bum, then laid both hands on it, slid them round her thighs, and rapidly kneeling down, put my lips on to the flesh, her petticoats fell over my head. She dislodged me, saying she would never speak with me again. She never either felt me, or permitted me, any liberties afterwards, and soon left. One or two years after that, she came to see my mother with her baby. She smiled at me. I don't recollect what became of her sister, but think she soon left us also.

My physique could not then have been strong, nor my sexual organs in finished condition, because I am sure that up to that time, I had not had a spend; perhaps my growing fast and the fever, may have had something to do with it. My father came home broken hearted I have heard, and ill. Soon after we only kept two female servants, a man outside the house, and a gardener. Father was ordered to the sea-side, my mother went with him, taking the children and one servant (all went by coach then). One of father's sisters, my aunt, a widow, came to take charge of our new house, and brought her daughter, a fair, slim girl, about 16 years old.

I remained at home, so as to go to school; the servant left in the house was a pleasant, plump young woman, dark haired, and was always laughing; she was to do all the work. My godfather who lived a mile or two away from us, and whose maiden sister kept house for him, was to see me frequently, and did so till I was sick of him. Every half-holiday, he made me spend with him in walking, and riding; he insisted on my boating, cricketting and keeping at athletic games, when not at my studies. The old doctor I expect guessed my temperament, and thought by thoroughly occupying, and fatiguing me, to prevent erotic thoughts. He wanted me to stay at his house, but I refused, and it being a longer way from my school, it was not persisted in.

My aunt slept in my parents bed-room, my cousin in the next room. I was taken down, during my parents' absence, from the upper floor, to sleep on the same floor as my aunt. They had not been in the house a week before I had heard my cousin piddle, and stood listening outside her bed-room door, night after night, in my bed-gown, trying to get a glimpse of her charms through the key-hole, but was not successful.

I made up to the servant, beginning when she was kneeling, by putting myself on her back. It made her laugh, she gave her back a buck up, and threw me over; then I kissed her, and she kissed me. She and my aunt quarrelled, my aunt was very poor and proud, and wanted a hot dinner at seven o'clock, I my dinner in the middle of the day. The servant said she could not do it all. The girl said quietly to me, "I'll cook for you, don't you go without, let her do without anything hot at night." She did not like her. My aunt said she was saucy and would write to my mother and complain that she wasted her time with the gardener. Godfather then renewed his offer for me to stay with him, but I would not, for I was getting on very comfortably with the servant in kissing, and things settled themselves somehow. I learnt the ways of my aunt, and tried to get home when she was out, so as to be alone with the servant; but to escape both aunt and godfather was difficult. I did so at times by saying I was going out with the boys somewhere, on my half-holidays, or something of the sort, but was rarely successful.

The servant went to her bed-room, one afternoon; with palpitating heart I followed her, and pushed her on to the bed. She was a cheeky, chaffing, woman, and I guess knew better than I did, what I was about. I recollect her falling back on to the bed, and showing to her knees. "Oh I what legs!" said I, "Nothing to be ashamed of," said she. Whatever my wishes or intentions might have been, I went no further. My relations were of course cut.

Another day we romped, and pelted each other with the pillows from her bed, she stood on the landing, I half way down the stairs, and kept when I could, my head just level with the top of the landing on which she was, so that as she whisked backwards and forwards, picking up the pillows to heave at me, I saw up to her knees. She knew what she was about, though I thought myself very cunning to manage to get such glimpses. On the landing I grappled with her for a pillow, and we rolled on the floor. I got my hand up her clothes, to her thighs, and felt the hair. "That's your thing," said I with a burst of courage. "Oh! oh!" she laughed, "what did you say?" "Your thing!" "My thing! what's that?" "The hole at the bottom of your belly," said I, ashamed at what I uttered. "What do you mean? who told you that? I've no hole." It is strange but a fact, that I had no courage to say any more, but left off playing, and went down stairs.

On occasions afterwards, I played more roughly with her, and felt her thighs; but fear prevented me from going further up. She gave me lots of opportunities, which my timidity, prevented me from availing myself of. One day she said: "you are not game for much, although you are so big," and then kissed me long and furiously, but I never saw her wants, nor my chances that I know of, though I see now plainly enough, that boy as I was, she wanted me to mount her.

About that time,--how I got it, I know not,--I had a book describing the diseases caused by sacrificing to Venus. The illustrations in the book, of faces covered with scabs, blotches, and eruptions, took such hold of my mind, that for twenty years afterwards, the fear was not quite eradicated. I showed them to some friends, and we all got scared. I had no definite idea of what syphilis, and gonorrhea were, but that both were something awful, we all made up our minds. My godfather also used to hint now to me about ailments men got, by acquaintance with loose, bad, women; perhaps he put the book in my way. Frigging also was treated of, and the terrible accounts of people dying through it, and being put into straight waistcoats, etc., I have no doubt was useful to me. Several of us boys were days in finding out what the book meant, by masturbation, ononism, or whatever, the language may have been. We used dictionaries and other books to help us, and at last one of the biggest boys explained the meaning to us.

One evening my aunt being out (it was not I think any plan on my part), I had something to eat, and then went into the kitchen, where the servant was sitting at needle-work by candle-light. I talked, kissed, coaxed her, began to pull up her clothes, and it ended in her running round the kitchen, and my chasing her; both laughing, stopping at intervals, to hear if my aunt knocked. "I'll go and lock the outer gate," said she, "then your aunt must ring, if she comes up to the door, she will hear us, for you make such a noise." She locked it and came back again.

The kitchen was on the ground-floor, separated from the body of the house by a short passage. I got her on to my knees, I was now a big fellow, and though but a boy, my voice was changing, she chaffed me about that; then my hand went up her petticoats, and she gave me such a violent pinch on my cock (outside the clothes), that I yelled. Whenever I was getting the better of her in our amatory struggles, she said "oh! hush! there is your aunt knocking," and frightened me away, but at last she was sitting on my knees, my hand touching her thighs, she feeling my prick, she felt all round it and under. "You have no hair," she said. That annoyed me, for I had just a little growing. Then how it came about I don't recollect, but she consented to go into the parlor with me, after we had sat together feeling each other for a time, if mine could be called feeling, when my lingers only touched the top of the notch. I took up the candle. "I won't go if you bring a light," said she, so I put down the candle, and holding her by the arm, we walked through the passage across the little hall, to the front parlour; she closed the door, and we were in the dark. And now I only recollect generally what took place, it seems as if it all could but have occupied a minute, or two, though experience tells me it must have been longer.

We sat on a settee or sofa, she had hold of my prick, and I her cunt, for she now sat with thighs quite wide open. It was my first real feel of a woman, and she meant me to feel well. How large and hairy, and wet it seemed; its size overwhelmed me with astonishment, I did not find the hole, don't recollect feeling for that, am sure I never put my finger in it, all seemed cunt below her belly, wet, and warm, and slippery. "Make haste, your aunt will be in soon," said she softly, but I was engrossed with the cunt, in twiddling it and feeling it in delighted wonder at its size, and other qualities. "Your aunt will be in," and leaving off feeling my cock, she laid half on, half off the settee. "No, no, not so," I recollect the words, but what I was doing, know not; then I was standing by her side, my cock stiff, and still feeling her cunt in bewilderment. "I can't... stop..., get on to the sofa." I laid half over her, my prick touched something--her cunt of course. Whether it went in or not, God knows, I pushed, it felt smooth to my prick, then suddenly came over me, a fear of some horrible disease, and I ceased whatever I was doing. "Go on, go on," said she, moving her belly up. I could not, said nothing, but sat down by her side, she rose up, "You're not man enough," said she, laying hold of my prick. It was not stiff, I put my hand down, and again the great size--as it seemed to me--of her cunt, made me wonder.

What then she did with me, I know not, she may have frigged it, I think she did, but can't say, a sense of disgrace had come over me, as she said I was not man enough, disgrace mixed with fear of disease. "Let me try," said I; again she laid back, I have a faint recollection of my finger going in somewhere deep, again of my prick touching her thighs and rubbing in something smooth, but nothing more. "You're not man enough" said she again. A ring... "Hark! it's your aunt, go!" and it was.

I went into the adjoining room, where my books were and a lamp, she went to the street-door. My aunt and cousin came in, and went up to their bed-rooms, I sat smelling my fingers; the full smell of cunt that I had for the first time. I smelt and smelt almost out of my senses, sat poring over a book, seeming to read, but with my fingers to my nose and thinking of cunt, its wonderful size and smell. Aunt came down. "Have you got a cold, Wattie?" "No, aunt." "Your eyes look quite inflamed, child." Soon after again, she said: "You have a cold." "No, aunt." "Why are you sniffing so, and holding your hand to your mouth?" Suddenly the fear of the pox came over me, I went up to the bedroom, soaped and washed my prick, and had a terrible fear on me.

I was overwhelmed with a mixed feeling of pride, at having had my prick either touch or go up a cunt, fear that I had caught disease, and shame at not being man enough. Instinct told me, I had lost, in the eyes of the woman; and my pride was hurt in a woeful manner. I tried to avoid seeing her, instead of as before getting excitedly into a room, where she was likely to be alone for a minute. I did that for three days, then fear of disease vanished, and my hopes of feeling her cunt again, or of poking--I don't know which--impelled me towards her.

During those three days, I washed my prick at every possible opportunity, and thought of nothing else but the incident; all seemed to me hurry, confusion, impossible, I wondered, and wonder still, whether my prick went into her or not; but above all, the largeness of the cunt filled me with wonder; for though I had had rapid glimpses of cunts as told, and had now seen a few pictures of the long slit, I never could realise that that was only the outside of the cunt, until I had had a woman. My fingers had no doubt slipped over the surface of hers, from clitoris to arse-hole; the space my hand covered filled me with astonishment, as well as the smell it left on my fingers, I thought of that more than anything else. This seems to me now laughable, but it was a marvel to me then.

When I sneaked into the kitchen again, I was ashamed to look at her, and left almost directly, but one day I felt her again, laughing she put her hand outside my trousers, gave my doodle a gentle pinch and kissed me. "Let's do it!" I said. "Lor! you ain't man enough," and again I slunk away ashamed.





CHAPTER IV.


     My first frig.--My godfather.--Meditations on copulation.--
     Male and female aromas.--Maid and gardener.--My father
     dies.--A wet dream.--Bilked by a whore.

 The frequency of my cock-stands, up to this time I don't know. Voluptuous sensation, I have no clear recollection of; but no doubt during that half swooning delight, which I had when big Betsy allowed me to lay my head on her lap and feel her limbs, that impulse towards the woman was accompanied by sensuous pleasure, though I don't recollect the fact, but soon my manhood was to declare itself.

Some time after I had felt this servant's quim, I noticed a strong smelling, whitish stuff inside my foreskin, making the underside of the tip of the prick sore. At first I thought it disease, then pulling the foreskin up, I made it into a sort of cup, dropped warm water into it, and working it about, washed all round the nut, and let the randy smelling infusion escape. This marked my need for a woman, I did not know what the exudation was, it made me in a funk at first. One day I had been toying with the girl, had a cockstand, and felt again my prick sore, and was washing it with warm water, when it swelled up. I rubbed it through my hand, which gave me unusual pleasure, then a voluptuous sensation came over me quickly so thrilling and all pervading that I shall never forget it. I sunk on to a chair, feeling my cock gently, the next instant spunk jotted out in large drops, a full yard in front of me, and a thinner liquid rolled over my knuckles. I had frigged myself, without intending it.

Then came astonishment, mingled with disgust, I examined the viscid gruelly fluid with the greatest curiosity, smelt it, and I think tasted it. Then came fear of my godfather, and of being found out; for all that, after wiping up my sperm from the floor, I went up to my bed-room, and locking the door, frigged myself until I could do it no more from exhaustion.

I wanted a confidant and told two schoolfellows who were brothers, I could not keep it to myself, and was indeed proud though ashamed to speak of the pleasure. They both had bigger pricks than mine, and never had jeered at me because I could not retract my prepuce easily. Soon after they came to see me, we all went into the garden, each pulled my prepuce back, I theirs, and then we all frigged ourselves in an out-house.

Then I wrote to Fred, who was at a large public school, about my frigging. He replied that some fellows at his school had been caught at it, and flogged; that a big boy just going to Oxford had had a woman and got the pox badly. He begged me to burn his letter, or throw it down the shit-house directly I had read it, adding that he was in such a funk for he had lost mine; and that I was never to write to him such things at the school, because the master opened every day indiscriminately one or two letters of the boys. He knew my mother was away and so did not mind writing to me. When I heard that he had lost my letter, I also was in a funk; the letter never was found. Whether the master got it, or sent it to my godfather, or not, I can't say, but it is certain that just after I had one night exhausted myself by masturbation, my godfather came to see me.

He stared hard at me. "You look ill." "No, I'm not." "Yes, you are, look me full in the face, you've been frigging yourself," said he just in so many words. He had never used an improper word to me before. I denied it. He raved out, "No denial, sir, no lies, you have sir; don't add lying to your bestiality, you've been at that filthy trick, I can see it in your face, you'll die in a mad-house, or of consumption, you shall never have a farthing more pocket-money from me, and I won't buy your commission, nor leave you any money at my death." I kept denying it, brazening it out. "Hold your tongue, you young beast, or I'll write to your mother." That reduced me to a sullen state, only at times perking out: "I haven't!" He put on his hat angrily, and left me in a very uncomfortable state of mind.

I knew that my father was not so well off as he had been, my mother always impressed upon me not to offend my godfather, and now I had done it. I wrote Fred all about it, he said the old beggar was a doctor, and it was very unfortunate; he wondered if he really did see any signs in my face, or whether it was a bounce; that I was not to be a fool, and give in, and still say I hadn't, but had better leave off frigging.

From that time my godfather was always at my heels, he waited for me at the schooldoor, spent my half-holidays with me, sat with me and my aunt of an evening till bed-time, made me ride and drive out with him, stopped giving me pocket-money altogether, and no one else did; so that I was not very happy.

The pleasure of frigging, now I had tasted it (and not before), opened my eyes more fully to the mystery of the sexes, I seemed at once to understand why women and men got together, and yet was full of wonder about it. Spunking seemed a nasty business, the smell of cunt an extraordinary thing in a woman, whose odour generally to me was so sweet and intoxicating. I read novels harder than ever, liked being near females and to look at them more than ever, and whether young or old, common or gentle, was always looking at them and thinking that they had cunts which had a strong odour, and wondering if they had been fucked; I used to stare at aunt and cousins, and wonder the same. It seemed to me scarcely possible, that the sweet, well dressed, smooth-spoken ladies who came to our house, could let men put the spunk up their cunts. Then came the wonder if, and how, women spent; what pleasure they had in fucking, and so on; in all ways was I wondering about copulation, the oddity of the gruelly, close smelling sperm being ejected into the hole between a woman's thighs so astonished me. I often thought the whole business must be a dream of mine; then that there could be no doubt about it. Among other doubts, was whether the servant's quim, which had made by fingers smell, was diseased, or not. Fear of detection perhaps kept me from frigging, but I was weak and growing fast, and have no recollection of much desire, though mad to better understand a cunt. It does not dwell in my mind now that I had a desire to fuck one, but to see it, and above all, to smell it; the recollection of its aroma seems to have had a strange effect on me. I did not like it much, yet yearned to smell it again. Watching my opportunity one day, I managed to feel the servant; it was dusk, she stood with her back up against the wall, and felt my prick whilst I felt her; it was an affair of a second or two, and again we were scared. I went to the sitting-room, and passed the evening in smelling my fingers and looking at my cousin. This occurred once again, and I think now, that the servant must just have been on the point of letting me fuck her, for she had been feeling my prick and in a jeering way saying, "You are not man enough if I let you," I emboldened, blurted out that I had spent, I recollect her saying "oh! you story," and then something put us to flight, I don't now know what. I certainly was not up to my opportunities, that I see now plainly.

I had a taste for chemistry, which served my purpose, as will be seen further on, and used to experimentalize in what was called a washhouse, just outside the kitchen, with my acids and alkalis; that enabled me to slip into the kitchen on the sly, but the plan of the house rendered it easy, for my aunt to come suddenly into the kitchen.

My bed-room window overlooked the kitchen yard, in which was this wash-house, a knife-house and a servant's privy, etc., etc., the whole surrounded by a wall, with a door in it, leading into the garden. Just outside on the garden side, was a gardener's shed; the servant in the morning, used to let the gardener in at the kitchen entrance; and he passed through this kitchen yard into the garden. I was pissing in the pot in my bedroom early one morning, and peeping through the blind, when I saw the servant's head just coming out of the gardener's shed, she passed through the kitchen yard into the kitchen in great haste, looking up at the house, as if to see if anyone was at the windows. Then it occurred to me, that if I got quite early to the kitchen, I could play my little baudy tricks without fear, for my relatives never went down till half-past eight to breakfast, whilst the servant went down at six.

The next morning, I went down early to the kitchen, did not see the wench, and thinking she might be in the privy in the kitchen yard, waited. The shutters were not down, after some minutes delay, in she came; she started. "Hulloh! what are you up for?" I don't think I spoke, but making a dash, got my hand up her clothes and on to her cunt. She pushed me away, then caught hold of the hand with which I had touched her cunt, and squeezed it hard with a rubbing motion, looking at me as I recollected (but long afterwards), in a funny way. "Hish! hish! here is the old woman," said she. "It is not." "I'm sure I heard the wires of her bell," and sure enough there came a ring. Up I went without shoes, like a shot to my bedroom, began to smell my fingers, found they were sticky, and the smell not the same. I recollect thinking it strange that her cunt should be so sticky, I had heard of dirty cunts,--it was a joke among us boys, and thought hers must have been so, which was the cause, that the smell and feel were different.

Two or three days afterwards my mother came to town by herself, there was a row with the servant, I was told to leave the room; the servant and gardener were both turned off that day and hour, a char-woman was had in, a temporary gardener got, and my mother went back to my sick father. Years passed away, and when I had greater experience and thought of all this, concluded that my aunt had found the gardener and the servant amusing themselves too freely, had had them dismissed, and that the morning I found my fingers sticky, the girl had just come in from fucking in the gardener's shed.

With all the opportunities I had, both with big Betsy and with this woman, I was still virgin.

When I saw Fred next, he told me he had felt the cunt of one of their servants. I told him partly what I had done, but kept to myself how I had failed to poke when I had the opportunity, fearing his jeers; and as I was obliged to name some woman, mentioned one of my godfather's servants. He went there to try his chances of groping her as well, but got his head slapped. We talked much about the smell of cunt, and he told me that one day after he had felt their servant, he went into the room where his sisters were, and said, "oh what a funny smell there is on my fingers, what can it be, smell them." Two of his sisters smelt, said they could not tell what it was, but it was not nice. Fred used to say, that he thought they knew it was like the smell of a cunt, because they colored up so.

I had noticed a strong smell on my prick, whenever the curdy exudation had to be washed out. Fred's talk made me imitative, so I saturated my fingers with the masculine essence one evening, and going to my female cousin, "oh what a queer smell there is on my fingers," said I, "smell them." The girl did. "It's nasty, you've got it from your chemicals," said she. "I don't think I have, smell them again, I can't think what it can be, what's it like?" "I don't think it's like anything I ever smelt, but it is not so nasty, if you smell it close, it's like southern wood," she replied. I wonder if that young lady when she married, ever smelt it afterwards, and recognized it. I did this more than once, it gave me great delight to think my slim cousin had smelt my prick, through smelling my fingers; what innate lubricity comes out early in the male.

Misfortunes of all sort came upon us, the family came back to town, another brother died, then my father who had been long ill, died, and was found to be nearly bankrupt; then my godfather died, and left me a fortune, all was trouble and change, but I only mention these family matters briefly.

My physique still could not have been strong, for though more than ever intensely romantic, and passionately fond of female society, I don't recollect being much troubled with cock-standings, and think I should, had I been so. My two intimate school-friends left off frigging, the elder brother, who had a very long red nose, having come to the conclusion with me, that frigging made people mad, and worse, prevented them afterwards from fucking and having a family. Fred, my favorite cousin, arrived at the same conclusion--by what mental process, we all arrived at it, I don't know.

When I was approaching my sixteenth year, I awakened one night with a voluptuous dream, and found my night-shirt saturated with semen, it was my first wet-dream; that set me frigging again for a time, but I either restrained myself, or did not naturally require much spending at that time, for I certainly did not often do so.

But our talk was always about cunt and woman, I was always trying to smell their flesh, look up their petticoats, watch to see them going to piddle; and the wonder to me now is, that I did not frig myself incessantly; and can only account for it on the grounds, that though my imagination was very ripe, my body was not. The fact of hair under the arms of women had a secret charm for me about that time. I don't recollect thinking much about it before, though it had astonished me when I first saw it; and why it came to my imagination so much now, do not know, but it did. I have told of the woman under whose arms I first saw hair.

One afternoon after my father's death, and that of my godfather, Fred was with me, we went to the house of a friend, and were to return home about nine o'clock. It was dark, we saw a woman standing by a wall. "She is a whore," said Fred, "and will let us feel her if we pay her." "You go and ask her." "No, you." "I don't like to." "How much money have you got?" We ascertained what we had, and after a little hesitation, walked on, passed her, then turned round and stopped. "What are you staring at, kiddy," said the woman. I was timid, and walked away, Fred stopped with her. "Wattie, come here," said he in a half whisper. I walked back. "How much have you got?" the woman said. We both gave her money. "You'll let us both feel?" said Fred. "Why of course, have you felt a woman before?" Both of us said we had, feeling bolder. "Was it a woman about here?" "No." "Did you both feel the same woman?" "No." "Give me another shilling then, you shall both feel my cunt well, I've such a lot of hair on it." We gave what he had, and then she walked off without letting us. "I'll tell your mothers, if you come after me," she cried out.

We were sold; I was once sold again in a similar manner afterwards, when by myself.

These are the principal baudy incidents of my early youth, which I recollect, and have not told to friends; many other amusing incidents told them, are omitted here, for the authorship would be disclosed, if I did. One or two were peculiar and most amusing, yet I dare not narrate them; but all show how soon sexual desires developed in me, and what pleasure early in life even these gave me and others.

I now had arrived at the age of puberty, when male nature asserts itself in the most timid, and finds means of getting its legitimate pleasure with women. I did, and then my recollection of things became more perfect, not only as to the consummations, but of what led to them; yet nothing seems to me so remarkable as the way I recollect matters which occurred when I was almost an infant.





CHAPTER V.


     Our house.--Charlotte and brother Tom.--Kissing and
     groping.--Both in rut.--My first fuck.--A virginity taken.--
     At a baudy house.--In a privy.--Tribulations.--Charlotte
     leaves.--My despair.

 After father's death, our circumstances were further reduced, at the time I am going to speak of, we had come to a small house nearer London; one sister went to boarding-school, an aunt (I had many) took another, I went to a neighboring great school or college, as it was termed, my little brother Tom was at home; but reference henceforth to members of my family will be but slight, for they had but little to do with the incidents of this private life, and unless they were part actors in it, none will be mentioned.

Our house had on the ground-floor a dining-room, a drawing-room, and a small room called the garden parlor, with steps leading into a large garden. On the first floor my mother's bed-room and two others; above were the servants' room, mine, and another much used as a lumber-room; the kitchens were in the basement, beside them a long covered way led to a servants' privy, and close to it a flight of stairs leading up into the garden; at the top of the stairs was a garden-door leading into the fore-court, on to which opened the street-door of the house. This description of plan is needful to understand what follows.

I was about sixteen years old, tall, with slight whiskers and moustache, altogether manly and looking seventeen or eighteen, yet my mother thought me a mere child, and most innocent; she told our friends so. I had developed without her having noticed it, love of women, and the intensest desire to understand the secrets of their nature had taken possession of me; the incessant talk of fucking with which the youths I knew beguiled their leisure, the stories they told of having seen their servants, or other girls half, or quite naked, the tricks by which they managed this, the dodges they were up to, inflamed me, sharpened my instinctive acuteness in such matters, and set me seeking every opportunity to know women naked, and sexually. Frigging was now hateful to me; I had never done so more than the times related, that is as far as I now can recollect, frightened as said, by my godfather telling me, that it sent men mad, and made them hateful to women. So although boiling with sensuality, I was still all but a virgin, and actually so in fucking.

A housemaid arrived just as I came home from college, the cook stood at the door, she was a lovely woman about twenty-five or six years old, fresh as a daisy, her name was Mary. The housemaid was in a cart, driven by her father, a small market gardener living a few miles from us. I saw a fresh, comely girl about seventeen years old in the fore-court, turned round to look, she was getting down, the horse moved, she hesitated. "Get down," said her father angrily. Down she stepped, her clothes caught on the edge of the cart, or step, or somehow; and I saw rapidly appear white stockings, garters, thighs, and a patch of dark hair between them by her belly; it was instantaneous, and down the clothes came, hiding all. I stood fascinated, knowing I had seen her cunt hair. She, without any idea of having been exposed, helped down with her box, I went into the parlor ashamed of having as I thought, been seen looking.

I could think of nothing else, and when she brought in tea, could not take my eyes off her, it was the same at supper (we lead a simple life, dining early and having supper). In the evening my mother remarked, "that girl will do," I recollect feeling glad at heart.

I went to bed, thinking of what I had seen, and stared whenever I saw her the next day, until by a sort of fascination, she used to stare at me; in a day or two I fancied myself desperately in love with her, and indeed was. I recollect now her features, as if I had only seen her yesterday, and after the scores and scores of women I have fucked since, recollect every circumstance attending my having her, as distinctly, as if it only occurred last week; yet very many years have passed away.

She was a little over seventeen years, had ruddy lips, beautiful teeth, darkish hair, hazel eyes, and a slightly turn-up nose, large shoulders and breast, was plump, generally of fair height, and looked eighteen or nineteen, her name was Charlotte.

I soon spoke to her kindly, by degrees became free in manner, at length chucked her under her chin, pincher her arm, and used the familiarities which nature teaches a man to use towards a woman. It was her business to open the door, and help me off with my coat and boots if needful; one day as she did so, her bum projecting upset me so, that as she rose from stooping I caught and pinched her. All this was done with risk, for my mother was then nearly always at home, and the house being small, a noise was easily heard.

I was soon kissing her constantly. In a few days got a kiss in return, that drove me wild, her cunt came constantly into my mind, all sorts of wants, notions, and vague possibilities came across me; girls do let fellows feel them I said to myself, I had already succeeded in that. What if I tell that I have seen it outside? Will she tell my mother? Will she let me feel her? What madness! Yet girls do let men, girls like it so all my friends say. Wild with hopes and anticipations, coming in doors one day, I caught her tightly in my arms, pulled her belly close to mine, rubbed up against hers saying, "Charlotte, what would I give, if you would..." it was all I dare say. Then I heard my mother's bed-room door open, and I stopped.

Hugging and kissing a woman never stopped there, I told her I loved her, which she said was nonsense. We now used regularly to kiss each other when we got the chance; little by little I grasped her closer to me, put my hands round her waist, then cunningly round to her bum, then my prick used to stand and I was mad to say more to her, but had not the courage. I knew not how to set to work, indeed scarce knew what my desires lead me to hope, and think at that time, putting my hand on to her cunt, and seeing it, was perhaps the utmost; fucking her seemed a hopelessly mad idea, if I had the expectation of doing so at all very clearly.

I told a friend one or two years older than myself how matters stood, carefully avoiding telling him who the girl was. His advice was short. Tell her you have seen her cunt, and make a snatch up her petticoats when no one is near; keep at it, and you will be sure to get a feel, and some day, pull out your prick, say straight you want to fuck her, girls like to see a prick, she will look, even if she turns her head away. This advice he dinned into my ears continually, but for a long time, I was not bold enough to put it into practice.

One day, my mother was out, the cook upstairs dressing, we had kissed in the garden parlour, I put my hand round her bum, and sliding my face over her shoulder half ashamed, said, "I wish my prick was against your naked belly, instead of outside your clothes." She with an effort disengaged herself, stood amazed, and said, "I never will speak to you again."

I had committed myself, but went on, though in fear, prompted by love or lust. My friend's advice was in my ears. "I saw your cunt as you got down from your father's cart," said I, "look at my prick (pulling it out), how stiff it is, it's longing to go into you, 'cock and cunt will come together'." It was part of a smutty chorus the fellows sang at my college; she stared, turned round, went out of the room, through the garden, and down to the kitchen by the garden stairs, without uttering a word.

The cook was at the top of the house, I went into the kitchen reckless, and repeated all I had said. She threatened to call the cook. "She must have seen your cunt, as well as me," said I; then she began to cry. Just as I was begging pardon, my friend's advice again rang in my ears, I stooped and swiftly ran both hands up her clothes, got one full on to her bum, the other on her motte; she gave a loud scream, and I rushed off upstairs in a fright.

The cook did not hear her, being up three pairs of stairs; down I went again, and found Charlotte crying, told her again all I had seen in the court yard, which made her cry more. She would ask the cook, and would tell my mother--then hearing the cook coming downstairs, I cut off through the passage up into the garden.

The ice was quite broken now, she could not avoid me, I promised not to repeat what I had said and done, was forgiven, we kissed, and the same day I broke my promise; this went on day after day, making promises and breaking them, talking smuttily as well as I knew how, getting a slap on my head, but no further, my chances were few. My friend, whom I made a half confidant of, was always taunting me with my want of success, and boasting of what he would have done, had he had my opportunities.

My mother just at that time began to resume her former habits, leaving the house frequently for walks and visits. One afternoon she being out for the remainder of the day, I went home unexpectedly; the cook was going out, I was to fetch my mother home in the evening; Charlotte laid the dinner for me; we had the usual kissing, I was unusually bold and smutty. Charlotte finding me not to be going out, seemed anxious. All the dinner things had been taken away, when out went the cook, and there were Charlotte, my little brother and I alone. It was her business to sit with him in the garden parlor when mother was out, so as to be able to open the street-door readily, as well as go into the garden if the weather was fine. It was a fine day of Autumn, she went into the parlor and was sitting on the huge old sofa, Tom playing on the floor, when I sat myself down by her side; we kissed and toyed, and then with heart beating, I began my talk and waited my opportunity.

The cook would be back in a few minutes, said she. I knew better, having heard mother tell cook she need not be home until eight o'clock. Although I knew this, I was fearful, but at length mustered courage to sing my cock and cunt song. She was angry, but it was made up. She went to give something to Tom, and stepping back put her foot on the lace of one boot which was loose, sat down on the sofa and put up one leg over the other, to relace it. I undertook to do it for her, saw her neat ankle, and a bit of a white stocking. "Snatch at her cunt," rang in my ears. I had never attempted it since the afternoon in the kitchen.

Lacing the boot, I managed to push the clothes up so as to see more of the leg, but resting as the foot did on one knee, the clothes tightly between, a snatch was useless: lust made me cunning, I praised the foot (though I knew not at that time how vain some women are of their feet). "What a nice ankle," I said putting my hand further on. She was off her guard; with my left arm, I pushed her violently back on to the large sofa, her foot came off her knee, at the same moment, my right hand went up between her thighs, on to her cunt; I felt the slit, the hair, the moisture.

She got up to a sitting posture, crying "you wretch, you beast, you blackguard," but still I kept my fingers on the cunt; she closed her legs, so as to shut my hand between her thighs, and keep it motionless, and tried to push me off; but I clung round her. "Take your hand away," said she, "or I will scream." "I shant!" Then followed two or three loud, very loud screams. "No one can hear," said I, which brought her to supplication. My friend's advice came again to me: pushing my right hand still between her thighs, with my left I pulled out my prick, as stiff as a poker. She could not do otherwise than see it; and then I drew my left hand round her neck, pulled her hand to me, and covered it with kisses.

She tried to get up and nearly dislodged my right hand, but I pushed her back, and got my hand still further on to the cunt. I never thought of pressing, under towards the bum, was in fact too ignorant of female anatomy to do it, but managed to get one of the lips with the hair between my fingers, and pinch it; then dropped on to my knees in front of her, and remained kneeling, preventing her getting back further on the sofa, as well as I could by holding her waist, or her clothes.

There was a pause from our struggles, then more entreaties, then more attempts to get my right hand away; suddenly she put out one hand, seized me by the hair of my head, and pushed me backwards by it. I thought my skull was coming off, but kept my hold and pinched or pulled the cunt lip till she yelled and called me a brute. I told her I would hurt her as much as I could, if she hurt me; so that game she gave up; the pain of pulling my hair made me savage, and more determined and brutal, than before.

We went on struggling at intervals, I kneeling with prick out, she crying, begging me to desist; I entreating her to let me see and feel her cunt, using all the persuasion, and all the baudy talk I could, little Tom sitting on the floor playing contentedly. I must have been half an hour on my knees, which became so painful, that I could scarcely bear it; we were both panting, I was sweating; an experienced man would perhaps have had her then; I was a boy inexperienced, and without her consent almost in words, would not have thought of attempting it; the novelty, the voluptuousness of my game was perhaps sufficient delight to me; at last I became conscious that my fingers on her cunt were getting wet; telling her so, she became furious and burst into such a flood of tears, that it alarmed me. It was impossible to remain on my knees longer, in rising, I knew I should be obliged to take my hand from her cunt, so withdrawing my left hand from her waist, I put it also suddenly up her clothes, and round her bum, and lifted them up, showing both her thighs, whilst I attempted to rise. She got up at the same instant, pushing down her clothes, I fell over on one side,--my knees were so stiff and painful--and she rushed out of the room upstairs.

It was getting dusk, I sat on the sofa in a state of pleasure, smelling my fingers. Tom began to howl, she came down and took him up to pacify him, I followed her down to the kitchen, she called me an insolent boy (an awful taunt to me then), threatened to tell my mother, to give notice and leave, and left the kitchen, followed by me about the house; talking baudily,

telling her how I liked the smell of my fingers, attempting to put my hand up her clothes, sometimes succeeding, pulling out my ballocks, and never ceasing until the cook came home, having been at this game for hours. In a sudden funk, I begged Charlotte to tell my mother, that I had only come home just before the cook, and had got to be unwell; she replying she would tell my mother the truth, and nothing else. I was in my bed-room before cook was let in.

Mother came home later, I was in a fright having laid in bed cooling down, and thinking of possible consequences; heard the street-door knocker, got out of bed, and in my night-shirt went half way downstairs listening. To my relief, I heard Charlotte in answer to my mother's enquiry, say I had come home about an hour before, and had gone to bed unwell. My mother came to my room, saying how sorry she was.

For a few days I was in fear, but it gradually wore off, as I found she had not told; our kissing recommenced, my boldness increased, my talk ran now freely on her legs, her bum, and her cunt, she ceased to notice it, beyond saying she hated such talk, and at length she smiled in spite of herself. Our kissing grew more fervid, she resisted improper action of my hand, but we used to stand with our lips close together for minutes at a time, when we got the chance, I holding her to me as close as wax. One day cook was upstairs, mother in her bed-room, I pushed Charlotte up against the wall in the kitchen, and pulled up her clothes, scarcely with resistance; just then my mother rang, I skipped up into the garden, and got into the parlour that way, soon heard my mother calling to me to fetch water, Charlotte was in hysterics at the foot of the stairs--after that, she frequently had hysterics, till a certain event occurred.

My chances were chiefly on Saturdays, a day I did not go to college; soon I was to cease going there, and was to prepare for the army.

I came home one day, when I knew Charlotte would be alone--the cook was upstairs--I got her on to the sofa in the garden parlour, knelt and put my hands between her thighs, with less resistance than before, she struggled slightly but made no noise. She kissed me as she asked me to take away my hand; I could move it more easily on her quim, which I did not fail to do; she was wonderfully quiet. Suddenly I became conscious that she was looking me full in the face, with a peculiar expression, her eyes very wide open, then shutting them. "Oho--oho," she said with a prolonged sigh, "do--oh take away--oh--your hand, Walter dear,--oh I shall be ill,--oho,--oho," then her head dropped down over my shoulder as I knelt in front of her; at the same moment, her thighs seemed to open slightly, then shut, then with a quivering, shuddering motion, as it then seemed to me, and then she was quite quiet.

I pushed my hand further in, or rather on, for although I thought I had it up the cunt, I really was only between the lips--I know that now. With a sudden start she rose up, pushed me off, snatched up Tom from the floor, and rushed upstairs. My fingers were quite wet. For two or three days afterwards, she avoided my eyes and looked bashful, I could not make it out, and it was only months afterwards, that I knew, that the movement of my fingers on her clitoris had made her spend. Without knowing indeed then that such a thing was possible, I had frigged her.

Although for about three months, I had been thus deliciously amusing myself, anxious to feel, and see her cunt, and though I had at last asked her to let me fuck her; I really don't think I had any definite expectation of doing it to her. I guessed now at its mutual pleasures, and so forth, yet my doing it to her appeared beyond me; but urged on by my love for the girl--for I did love her--as well as by sexual instinct, I determined to try. I also was quickened by my college friend, who had seen Charlotte at our house and not knowing it was the girl I had spoken to him about, said to me, "What a nice girl that maid of yours is, I mean to get over her, I shall wait for her after church next Sunday, she sits in your pew I know." I asked him some questions,--his opinion was that most girls would let a young fellow fuck them, if pressed and that she would (this youth was but about eighteen years old), and I left him fearing what he said was true, hating and jealous of him to excess. He set me thinking, why should not I do it if he could, and if what he said about girls was true,--so I determined to try it on, and by luck did so earlier than I expected.

About one hour's walk from us, was the town house of an aunt, the richest of our family, and one of my mother's sisters. She alone now supplied me with what money I had, my mother gave me next to nothing. I went to see aunt, who asked me to tell my mother, to come and spend a day with her, the next week, and named the day. I forgot this until three days afterwards, when hearing my mother tell the cook, she could go out for a whole holiday! I said, that my aunt particularly wished to see mother on that day. My mother scolded me for not having told her sooner, but wrote and arranged to go, forgetting the cook's holiday. To my intense joy, on that day she took brother Tom with her, saying to Charlotte, "You will have nothing to think of, but the house, shut it up early, and do not be frightened." I was as usual to fetch my mother home.

In what an agitated state I passed that morning at school, and in the afternoon went home, trembling at my intentions. Charlotte's eyes opened with astonishment at seeing me. Was I not going to fetch my mother? I was not going till night. There was no food in the house, and I had better go to my aunt's for dinner. I knew there was cold meat, and made her lay the cloth in the kitchen. To make sure, I asked if cook was out,--yes, she was, but would be home soon. I knew that she stopped out till ten o'clock on her holidays. The girl was agitated with some undefined idea of what might take place, we kissed and hugged, but she did not like even that, I saw.

I restrained myself whilst eating, she sat quietly beside me; when I had finished she began to remove the things, the food gave me courage, her moving about stimulated me, I began to feel her breasts, then got my hands on to her thighs, we had the usual struggles, but it seems to me as I now think of it, that her resistance was less, and that she prayed me to desist more lovingly than was usual. We had toyed for an hour, she had let a dish fall and smashed it, the baker rang, she took in the bread, and declared she would not shut the door unless I promised to leave off. I promised, and so soon as she had closed it, pulled her into the garden parlour, having been thinking when in the kitchen, how I could get her upstairs. Down tumbled the bread on the floor, on to the sofa, I pushed her, and after a struggle she was sitting down, I kissing her, one arm round her waist, one hand between her thighs, close up to her cunt. Then I told her I wanted to fuck her, said all in favour of it I knew, half ashamed, half frightened as I said it. She said she did not know what I meant, resisted less and less as I tried to pull her back on the sofa, when another ring came: it was the milkman.

I was obliged to let her go, and she ran down stairs with the milk. I followed, she went out, and slammed the door which led to the garden, in my face; for the instant, I thought she was going to the privy, but opened and followed on; she ran up the steps, into the garden, through the garden parlor, and upstairs to her bed-room just opposite to mine, closed and locked the door in my face, I begged her to let me in.

She said she would not come out, till she heard the knocker or bell ring; there was no one called usually after the milkman, so my game was up, but nothing makes man or woman so crafty as lust. In half an hour or so, in anger, I said I should go to my aunt's, went downstairs, moved noisily about, opened and slammed the street-door violently, as if I had gone out, then pulled off my boots, and crept quietly up to my bed-room.

There I sat expectantly a long time, had almost given up hope, began to think about consequences if she told my mother, when I heard the door softly open and she came to the edge of the stairs. "Wattie!" she said loudly, "Wattie!" much louder, "he has," said she in a subdued tone to herself, as much as to say that worry is over. I opened my door, she gave a loud shriek and retreated to her room, I close to her; in a few minutes more, hugging, kissing, begging, threatening, I know not how; she was partly on the bed, her clothes up in a heap, I on her with my prick in my hand, I saw the hair, I felt the slit, and not knowing then where the hole was or much about it, excepting that it was between her legs, shoved my prick there with all my might. "Oh! you hurt, I shall be ill," said she, "pray don't." Had she said she was dying, I should not have stopped. The next instant a delirium of my senses came, my prick throbbing and as if hot lead was jetting from it, at each throb; pleasure mingled with light pain in it, and my whole frame quivering with emotion; my sperm left me for a virgin cunt, but fell outside it, though on to it.

How long I was quiet I don't know; probably but a short time; for a first pleasure does not tranquillize at that age; I became conscious that she was pushing me off of her, and rose up, she with me, to a half-sitting posture; she began to laugh, then to cry, and fell back in hysterics, as I had seen her before.

I had seen my mother attend to her in those fits, but little did I then know, that sexual excitement causes them in women, and that probably in her I had been the cause. I got brandy and water, and made her drink a lot, helping myself at the same time, for I was frightened, and made her lay on the bed. Then ill as she was, frightened as I was, I yet took the opportunity her partial insensibility gave me, lifted her clothes quietly, and saw her cunt and spunk on it. Roused by that, she pushed her clothes half down feebly and got to the side of the bed. I loving, begging pardon, kissing her, told her of my pleasure, and asked about hers, all in snatches, for I thought I had done her. Not a word could I get, but she looked me in the face beseechingly, begging me to go. I had no such intention, my prick was again stiffened, I pulled it out, the sight of her cunt had stimulated me, she looked with languid eyes at me, her cap was off, her hair hanging about her head, her dress torn near her breast.

More so than she had ever looked, was she beautiful to me, success made me bold, on I went insisting, she seemed too weak to withstand me. "Don't, oh pray, don't," was all she said as pushing her well on the bed, I threw myself on her, and again put my doodle on to the slit now wet with my sperm. I was though cooler, stiff as a poker, but my sperm was not so ready to flow, as it was in after days, at a second poke, for I was very young; but nature did all for me; my prick went to the proper channel, there stopped by something it battered furiously. "Oh, you hurt, oh!" she cried aloud. The next instant something seemed to tighten round its knob, another furious thrust,--another,--a sharp cry of pain (resistance was gone), and my prick was buried up her, I felt that it was done, and that before I had spent outside of her. I looked at her, she was quiet, her cunt seemed to close on my prick, I put my hand down, and felt round. What rapture to find my machine buried; nothing but the balls to be touched, and her cunt hair wetted with my sperm, mingling and clinging to mine; in another minute nature urged a crisis, and I spent in a virgin cunt, my prick virgin also. Thus ended my first fuck.

My prick was still up her, when we heard a loud knock; both started up in terror, I was speechless. "My God; it is your mamma!" Another loud knock. What a relief, it was the postman. To rush downstairs, and open the door was the work of a minute. "I thought you were all out," said he angrily, "I have knocked three times." "We were in the garden," said I. He looked queerly at me and said, "With your boots off!" and grinning went away. I went up again, found her sitting on the side of the bed, and there we sat together. I told her what the postman had said, she was sure he would tell her mistress. For a short time, there never was a couple who had just fucked, in more of a foolish funk than we were; I have often thought of our not hearing the thundering knocks of a postman, whilst we were fucking, though the bed-room door was wide open; what engrossing work it is so to deafen people. Then after unsuccessfully struggling to see her cunt, and kissing, and feeling each others' genitals, and talking of our doings and our sensations for an hour, we fucked again.

It was getting dark, which brought us to reason, we both helped to remake the bed, went downstairs, shut the shutters, lighted the fire which was out, and got lights. I then having nothing to do, began thinking of my doodle which was sticking to my shirt, and pulling it out to see its condition, found my shirt covered with sperm smears, and spots of blood, my prick was dreadfully sore. I said to her that she had been bleeding, she begged me to go out of the kitchen for a minute, I did, and almost directly she came out, and passed me saying, she must change her things before the cook came home. She would not let me stay in the room whilst she did it, nor did I see her chemise, though I had followed her upstairs; then the idea flashed across me that I had taken a virginity; that had never occurred to me before. She got hot water to wash herself. I did not know what to do with my shirt; we arranged I should wash it before I went to bed. We thought it best to say, I had not been home at all, and that I should go and fetch my mother. After much kissing, hugging, and tears on her part, off I went, hatching an excuse for not having fetched mother earlier, and we came home with Tom in my aunt's carriage I recollect.

Before going to bed, I ordered hot water for a footbath. How we looked at each other as I ordered it. I washed my shirt as well as I could, and looked sadly at my sore prick, I could not pull the skin back, so much as usual, it was torn, raw, and slightly bleeding.

Awake nearly all night, thinking of my pleasure and proud of my success; I rose early, and looking at my shirt, found stains still visible, and that I had so mucked it in washing, that an infant could have guessed what I had been doing. I knew that my mother who now did household duties herself, selected the things for the laundress; and in despair hit on a plan: I filled the chamber-pot with piss and soap-suds, making it as dirty as I could, put it near a chair and my shirt hanging over it carelessly, so as to look as if it had dropped into the pot by accident; left it there, and put on a clean shirt. After breakfast my mother who usually helped to make my bed, and her own as well, called out to me; up I went with my heart in my mouth, to hear her say, she hoped I would be a little more careful, and remember that we had no longer my poor father's purse. "Look," said she, "a disgraceful state you left your shirt in, I am ashamed to have it sent to the laundress, have been obliged to tell the housemaid to partly wash it first, you are getting very careless." Charlotte afterwards told me, that when mother gave her the shirt to rough wash, she felt as if she should faint.

I need not repeat about my prepuce, which as said I could now pull down with a little less difficulty. Lacerated and painful over night, it was much more swollen and sore the next morning, when I pissed it smarted, the thinking and smarting made me randy: risking all, whilst my mother was actually in the adjoining room, the poor girl in horrid fear and looking shockingly ill, I thrust my hand up her clothes and on to her split. She whispered, "What a wretch you are!" I went to college, came back at three o'clock, thinking always on the same subject; my prick got worse, I took it into my head, that Charlotte had given me some disease, and was in a dreadful state of mind. I washed it with warm water, and greased it, having eased it thus a little, got the skin down, then could not get it back again, it got stiff; as it did so sexual pleasures came into my mind, and worse got the pain. I greased it more, my pain grew less, I touched the tip with my finger, it gave a throb of pleasure, I went on without meaning, almost without knowing, the pleasure came and spunk shot out. I had frigged myself unintentionally again.

I watched my penis shrink, its tension lessen, its high colour go, then came the feeling of disgust at myself that I have always felt after frigging, a disgust not quite absent even when done by the little hands of fair friends, to whose quims I was paying similar delicate attentions. I was able to pull up the skin again, but the soreness got worse, I told the poor girl that my prick was very sore, and that I thought it strange. It did not wound her feelings, for she did not know my suspicions. The next morning being no better, I with much hesitation told a college friend, he looked at my prick, and thought it either clap or pox. Frightened to go to our own doctor, I at his advice went to a chemist, who did a little business in such matters; we dealt there, but my friend assured me that the man never opened his mouth to any one, if youths consulted him, and many he knew had.

With quaking I said to the chemist, that I had something the matter with my thing. "What?" said he. "I don't know." "Let me see it." I began to beg him not to mention it to my mother, or anyone. "Don't waste my time," said he, "show it to me, if you want my advice." Out I pulled it as small as could be, but still with the skin over it. "Have you been with a woman?" said he. "Yes." He looked at my shirt, there was no discharge, then he laid hold of my prick with both hands, and with force pulled the skin right down, I howled. He told me there was nothing the matter with me, that the skin was too tight, that a snip would set me to rights, and advised me soon to have it done, saying, "it will save you trouble and money if you do, and add to your pleasure." I declined. "Another day then." "No." He laughed and said, "Well, time will cure you, if you go on as you have began," gave me a lotion, and in three days I was pretty right: warm water I expect would have had the same effect. I had simply torn the skin in taking the virginity.

Of course I wanted Charlotte again, she seemed in no way to help me, and used to cry, still there was a wonderful difference between then, and before the happy consummation: she tried to prevent my hands going up her petticoats, but once up objections ceased, and my hands would rove about on the outside and inside of all, we stood and kissed at every opportunity. "When shall we do it again?" she replied "Never!" for she was sure it would bring punishment on us both.

I neglected my studies absolutely; all I thought about was her, and how to get at her, it must have been a week or more before I did. Ready for any risk, that day my mother was out, I came home, had the early dinner; the cook after that always went up to dress, or as she said, clean herself, and there she always was an hour. Waiting till I heard her go up, I went into the garden parlour, where as usual Charlotte was with my little brother. Going at her directly, I was refused, but now how different, once she would not rest until my hand was altogether away from her. Now I begged and besought her, with my hand up her clothes, my fingers on her quim. No--if we had not been found out before, we were fortunate, but never, never, would she do it again; was I mad? did I wish to ruin her? was not the cook upstairs? might she not come down, whilst we did it? how light the room was (the sun was coming in). I dropped the blinde, her resistance grew less, as her cunt felt my twiddling. "No--now no--oh what a plague you are; hush! it is the cook." I open the door, listen, there is no one stirring. "What will she think if she finds you here?" "What does it matter; now do--let me,--I'll bolt the door, if she comes I will get under the sofa, you say you don't know how it got bolted." Such was my innocent device, but it sufficed, for both were hot in lust. I bolted it. My prick is out, I pull her reluctant hand on to it, my hands are groping now, but too impatient for dallying, I push her down on the sofa--that dear cunt. "Don't hurt me so much again, oh don't push so hard." Oh! what delight! in a minute we are spending, together this time.

I unlock the door, go back to the dining-room, she strolls out into the garden, cook speaks to her out of the window. "Where is master Wattie?" "In the dining-room I suppose." Soon out I stroll into the garden, play with Tommy of course, she can scarcely look me in the face, she is blushing like a rose. "Was it not lovely, Charlotte, is not your thing wet?" In she rushes with Tom, soon I follow, cook is still upstairs. "Come, be quick." Again the bolt, again we fuck, she walks off into the garden with Tommy, and her cunt full, and cook and she chat from the window. How we laughed about it afterwards.

Modesty retired after this, we gave way to our inclinations, she refusing but always letting me if we got a chance! We were still green and timid, at the end of three weeks we only had done it a dozen times or so, always with the cook in the house, always with fear. I was longing for complete enjoyment of all my senses, had never yet seen her cunt, except for a minute at a time, was mad for "the naked limb entwined with limb," and all I had read of in amatory poetry. I had gained years in boldness and manhood, and although nervous, began to practice what I had heard.

I heard of accommodation houses, where people could have bed-rooms and no questions were asked; and found one not far from my aunt's, although she lived in the best quarter of London. Just before Charlotte's day out, I went to my aunt, complained of my mother's meanness, and she gave me a sovereign. On my way home, I loitered a full hour in the street with the baudy house, marked it so as to know it in the day, and saw couples go in, as my knowing friend who had told said I should. The next day instead of going to college, and risking discovery, I waited till Charlotte joined me, took a hackney coach to the street, and telling Charlotte it was a tavern walked to the door with her, to my astonishment it was closed. Disconcerted I nearly turned back, but rang the bell. Charlotte said she would not go in. The door opened, a woman said, "Why did you not push the door?" Oh! the shame I felt as I went into that baudy house with Charlotte; the woman seemed to hesitate, or so I fancied, before she gave us a room.

It was a gentleman's house, although the room cost but five shillings: red curtains, looking-glasses, wax lights, clean linen, a huge chair, a large bed, and a cheval-glass, large enough for the biggest couple to be reflected in, were all there. I examined all with the greatest curiosity, but my curiosity was greater for other things, of all the delicious voluptuous recollections, that day stands among the brightest; for the first time in my life I saw all a womans' charms, and exposed my own manhood to one; both of us knew but little of the opposite sex. With difficulty I got her to undress to her chemise, then with but my shirt on, how I revelled in her nakedness, feeling from her neck to her ankles, lingering with my fingers in every crack and cranny of her body; from armpits to cunt, all was new to me. With what fierce eyes after modest struggles, and objections to prevent, and I had forced open her reluctant thighs, did I gloat on her cunt; wondering at its hairy outer covering and lips, its red inner flaps, at the hole so closed up, and so much lower down and hidden, then I thought it to be; soon at its look and feel, impatience got the better of me; hurriedly I covered it with my body and shed my sperm in it. Then with what curiosity I paddled my fingers in it afterwards, again to stiffen, thrust, wriggle, and spend. All this I recollect as if it occurred but yesterday, I shall recollect it to the last day of my life, for it was a honey-moon of novelty, years afterwards I often thought of it when fucking other women.

We fell asleep, and must have been in the room some hours, when we awakened about 3 o'clock. We had eaten nothing that day, and both were hungry; she objected to wash before me, or to piddle; how charming it was to overcome that needless modesty, what a treat to me to see that simple operation. We dressed and left, went to a quietish public-house, and had some simple food and beer, which set me up, I was ready to do all over again, and so was she. We went back to the house and again to bed, the woman smiled when she saw us, the feeling, looking, tittillating, baudy inciting and kissing recommenced. With what pleasure she felt and handled my prick, nor did she make objection to my investigations into her privates, though saying she would not let me. Her thighs opened, showing the red-lipped, hairy slit, I kissed it, she kissed my cock, nature taught us both what to do. Again we fucked, I found it a longish operation, and when I tried later again, was surprised to find that it would not stiffen for more than a minute, and an insertion failed. I found out that day that there were limits to my powers. Both tired out, our day's pleasure over, we rose and took a hackney coach towards home, I went in first, she a quarter of an hour afterwards, and everything passed off as I could have wished.

From that day lust seized us both; we laid our plans to have each other frequently, but it was difficult: my mother was mostly at home, the cook nearly always at home if mother was out; but quite twice a week we managed to copulate, and sometimes oftener. We arranged signals. If when she opened the door, she gave a shake of the head, I knew mother was in; if she smiled and pointed down with her fingers, mother was out, but cook downstairs; if it pointed up, cook was upstairs; in the latter case, to go into the garden parlour and fuck, all this was done off hand. If cook was known to be going out, Charlotte told me beforehand, and if mother was to be out, I got home, letting college and tutors go to the devil. Then there was lip kissing, cunt kissing, feeling and looking, tickling and rubbing each others articles, all the preliminary delights of copulation, and but one danger in the way: my little brother could talk in a broken way, we used to give him some favorite toy, and put him on the floor, whilst we indulged voluptuously. On the sofa one day, I had just spent in her, when I felt a little hand tickling between our bellies, and Tommy who had tottered up to us said, "Don'ty hurt Lotty, der's a good Wattie." We settled that Tom was too young to notice or recollect, what he saw, but I now think differently.

Winter was coming on, she used to be sent to a circulating library to fetch books, the shop was some distance off, a few houses, long garden-walls and hedges were on the road. I used to keep out, or go out just before she went, and we fucked up against the walls. I took to going to church in the evening also, to the intense delight of my mother, but it was to fuck on the road home. One day hot in lust, we fucked standing on the lobby near my bed-room, my mother being in the room below, the cook in the kitchen. We got bold, reckless, and whenever we met alone, if only for an instant, we felt each others genitals.

At last we found the servant's privy one of the best places. I have described its situation near to a flight of steps, at the end of a covered passage, which could be seen from one point only in the garden; down there, anyone standing was out of sight. If all was clear I used to ring the parlour bell, ask for something, and make a sign; when she thought it safe, there she would go, I into the garden, to where I could see into the passage by the side of the garden stairs. If I saw her, or heard "ahem," down I went into the privy, and was up her cunt in a second, standing against the wall, and shoving to get our spent over, as if my life depended on it; this was uncomfortable, but it had its charm. We left off doing it in the privy, being nearly caught one day there.

We thought cook was upstairs mother was out, I was fucking her, when the cook knocked saying, "make haste Charlotte, I want to come." We had just spent, she was so frightened I thought she was fainting, but she managed to say "I cannot." "Do," said cook, "I am ill." "So am I," said Charlotte. Said cook, "I can sit on the little seat." "Go to misses's closet, she's out." Off cook went, out we came, and never fucked in that place again; one day I did her on the kitchen table, and several times on the dining-room table.

We in fact did it everywhere else, and often enough for my health, for I was young, weak and growing, and it was the same with her. The risks we ran were awful, but we loved each other with all our souls. Both young, both new at the work, both liking it, it was rarely we got more than just time to get our fucking over, and clothes arranged before we had to separate, for her to get to her duties. Many times I have seen her about the house, cunt full and with the heightened colour, and brilliant eyes, of a woman who had just been satisfied. I used to feel pleasure in knowing she was bringing in the dinner, or tea, with my spunk in her cunt; not having had the opportunity to wash, or piddle it out.

When she had another holiday, we went to the baudy house, and stayed so long in it, that we had a scare; just asleep, we heard a knocking at the door. My first idea was that my mother had found me out, and although I ruled her in one way, I was in great subjection to her, from not having any money. She thought her father was after her. What a relief it was to hear a voice say: "Shall you be long sir, we want the room." I was having too much accommodation for my money. That night we walked home, for I had no money for a coach, and barely enough to get us a glass of beer and a biscuit; we were famished and fucked out, my mother had refused to give me money, and another aunt whom I had asked, said I was asking too often, and refused also.

Although we went to this baudy house, I always felt as if I was going to be hanged when I did, and it was with difficulty I could make her go; she called it a bad house, and it cost money. Something then occured which helped me, penniless as I was.

At the extreme end of our village were a few little houses, one stood with its side entrance up a road only partially formed, and without thoroughfare; its owner was a pew-opener, her daughter a dressmaker, who worked for servants and such like; they cut out things for servants, who in those days largely made their own dresses. Charlotte had things made there. At a fair held every year near us of which I shall have to tell more, my fast friend, who had put me up to so much, and whom I forgot to say tried to get hold of Charlotte, I saw with the dressmaker's daughter. Said he, talking to me next day, "She is jolly ugly, but she's good enough for a feel, I felt her cunt last night, and think she has been fucked (he thought that of every girl), her mother's a rum old gal too, she will let you meet a girl at her cottage, not whores, you know, but if they are respectable." "Is it a baudy house?" I asked. "Oh no, it's quite respectable, but if you walk in with a lady, she leaves you in the room together, and when you come out, if you just give her half a crown, she drops a curtesy, just as she does when she opens the pew-doors and anyone gives her six pence, but she is quite respectable--the clergyman goes to see her sometimes."

Charlotte asked to go out to a dressmaker, I met her as if by chance at the door, the old pew-opener asked if I would like to walk in and wait. I did. Charlotte came in after she had arranged about her dress. There was a sofa in the room, and she was soon on it; we left together, I have two or three shillings (money went much further then), and the pew-opener said, "You can always wait here when your young lady comes to see my daughter."

When we went a second time, she asked me if I went to St. Mary's Chapel (her Chapel). We went to her house in the day that time. When going away she said, "Perhaps you wont mind always going out first, for neighbours are so ill-natured." The old woman was really a pew-opener, her daughter really a dressmaker, but she was glad to earn a few shillings, by letting her house be used for assignations of a quiet sort; she would not have let gay women in, from what I heard.

She had lived for years in the parish, and was thought respectable. She had not much use of her house in that way, wealthy people going to town for their frolics,--town only being an hour's journey--and no gay women being in the village that I know of.

At this house, I spent Charlotte's third holiday with her, in a comfortable bed-room. We stopped from eleven in the morning, till nine at night, having mutton chops and ale, and being as jolly as we could be. We did nothing the whole day long, but look at each other's privates, kiss, fuck and sleep outside the bed. It was there she expressed curiosity about male emissions. I told her how the sperm spurted out, then discussing women's, she told me of the pleasure I had given her when fingering her in the manner described already; we completed our explanations by my frigging myself to show her, and then my doing the same to her with my finger. I bungled at that, and think I hear her now saying, "No, just where you were is nicest." "Does it give you pleasure?" "Oh yes, but I don't like it that way, oh!--oh!--I am doing it--oh!" I had no money that day, Charlotte had her wages, and paid for everything, giving me her money to do so.

One day we laughed at having nearly been caught fucking in the privy. "She must have a big bum, must Mary," said I, "to sit on that little seat at the privy." Said Charlotte, "She is a big woman, twice as big as me, her bottom would cover the whole seat." This set us talking about the cook, and as what I then heard affected me much at a future day, I will tell all Charlotte said as nearly as I can recollect.

"Of course I have seen her naked bit by bit--when two women are together they can't help it, why should they mind--if you sit down to pee, you show your legs, and if you put on your stockings you show your thighs, then we both wash down to our waists, and if you slip off your chemise or night-gown you show yourself all over. Mary's beautiful from head to foot, one morning in the summer, we sleeping in the same bed, were very hot. I got out to pee, we had kicked all the clothes off, Mary was laying on her back with night-clothes above her waist fast asleep, I could not help looking at her thighs, which were so large and white--white as snow." "Had she much hair on her cunt?" said I. "What's that to you?" said she laughing, but went on: "Oh! twice as much as I have, and of a light brown." "I suppose her cunt is bigger than yours?" said I reflectively. "Well, perhaps it is," said Charlotte, "she is a much bigger woman than me, what do you think?" I inclined to the opinion it must be, but had no experience to guide me; on the whole we agreed that it was likely to be bigger.

"Then," said she, "I suppose some men have smaller things than yours?" I told her that as far as I knew they varied slightly, but only had knowledge of youthful pricks, and could not be certain whether they varied much when full grown or not. We went on about Mary. "I know I should like to be such a big, fine woman." "But" said I, "I don't like light hair, I like dark hair on a cunt, light hair can't look well, I should think." "I like her," said Charlotte, "she is a nice woman, but often dull, she has no relatives in London, never says anything about them or herself, she used to have letters, and then often cried, she has none now; the other night she took me in her arms, gave me a squeeze and said, 'Oh! if you were a nice young man now', then laughed and said, 'perhaps we would put our things together and make babies.' I was frightened to say anything, for fear she would find out I knew too much; I think she has been crossed in love."

I was twiddling Charlotte's quim as I was never tired of doing, something in the sensation I suppose reminded her, for laughing she went on: "You know what you did to me the other night." "What?" said I not recollecting. "You know, with your finger." "Oh! frig." "Yes, well Mary does that; I was awake one night, and was quite quiet, when I heard Mary breathing hard, and felt her elbow go jog, jog, just touching my side, then she gave a sigh, and all was quiet. I went to sleep, and have only just thought of it." She had heard or felt this jog from the cook before, so we both concluded, that she frigged herself, Charlotte knew what frigging was.

"Do you recollect your mamma's birthday?" said Charlotte, "she sent us down a bottle of sherry, the gardener was to have some, but did not; so we were both a little fuddled when we went to bed. When Mary was undressed she pulled up her clothes to her hips, and looking at herself said, 'my legs are twice as big as yours.' Then we made a bet on it and measured; she lost, but her thigh was half as big again round as mine; then she thew herself on her back and cocked up her legs, opening them for a minute. I said 'Lor, Mary, what ever are you doing?' 'Ah I' said she, 'women's legs were made to open', and there it ended. I never heard her before say or do anything improper, she is most particular." If Charlotte had been older or wiser, she would not have extolled the naked beauties of a fellow servant to her lover, for the description of the big bum, white thighs and hairy belly bottom, the jog, jog, of the elbow, and all the other particulars sunk deep into my mind.

We fucked more than ever, recklessly--it is a wonder we were not found out, for one evening, it being dark, I fucked her in the forecourt, outside our street-door; but troubles were coming.

Her father wrote to know why she had not been home at her holidays, she got an extra holiday to go and pacify him; then we had a fright because her courses stopped, but they came on all right again. One of my sisters came home, and diminished our opportunities, still we managed to fuck somehow, most of the times they were uprighters. The next holiday she went home by coach (the only way), I met her on the return, and we fucked up against the garden wall of our house. A month slipped away, again we spent her holiday at the pew-opener's; no man and woman could have liked each other more, or more enjoyed each other's bodies, without thinking of the rest of the world. I disguised nothing from her, she told me all she knew of herself, the liking she took for me, her pleasure yet fear and shame when first I felt her cunt, the shock of delight and confusion when on my twiddling it, she had spent; how she made up her mind to run out of the house when the milkman came, the hysterical faint when I first laid my prick between her slit and spent, the sensation of relief when I had not done, an instinct told her I should, in spending outside, the sort of feeling of "poor fellow, he wants me, he may do as he likes," which she had; I told my sensations. All these we told each other over and over again, and never tired of the conversation; we were an innocent, reckless, randy couple.

We had satisfied our lusts in simple variety, but I, never put my tongue in her mouth, nor do I know that I had heard of that form of lovemaking--but more of that hereafter. I did her on her belly, and something incited me to do it to her dog fashion, but it was never repeated; we examined as said each others appendages, but once satisfied, having seen mine get from flaccid to stiff, the piddle issue, the spunk squirt, she never wanted to see it again, and could not understand my insatiable curiosity about hers. She knew I think less than most girls of her age about the males, having never I recollect nursed male children, and I don't think she had brothers.

How is it that scarcely any woman will let you willingly look at her cunt after fucking, till it is washed; most say it is beastly, gay or quiet, it is the same. Is it more beastly to have it spurted up, to turn and go to sleep with the spunk oosing on to a thigh, or an hour afterwards to let a man paddle in what has not dried? They don't mind that, but won't let you look at it after your operations, willingly--why?

A modest girl lays quietly after fucking, and does not wash till you are away. A young girl who has let you see her cunt and take her virginity, won't wash it at all, until you point out the necessity. A gay woman often tries to shove back her bum just as you spend, gets the discharge near the outlet, uncunts you quickly and at once washes and pisses at the same time. A quiet young girl wipes her cunt on the outside only. A working man's wife does the same. I have fucked several, and not one washed before me. I incline to the opinion that poor women rarely wash their cunts inside, their piddle does all the washing. "What's the good of washing it?" said a poor, but not a gay girl to me, "it's always clean, and feels just the same an hour afterwards, whether washed or not." Is the unwashed cunt less healthy than one often soaped and syringed? I doubt it. An old roue said to me he would not give a damn to fuck a cunt at night, which has been washed since the morning.

About sexual matters each of us knew about as much as the other, and we had much to learn. A girl however in the sphere of life of Charlotte usually knows more about a man's sex, than a youth of the same age does of a woman's; they have nursed children, and know what a cock is; a girl is never thought too young to nurse a male child, no one would trust a boy after ten years of age to nurse a female child; but she had never nursed. From Charlotte I had my first knowledge of menstruation, and of other mysteries of her sex. Ah! that menstruation was a wonder to me, it was marvellous, but all was really a wonder to me then.

After Christmas my sister went back to school, our chances seemed improving, we spent another holiday at the pew-opener's. I had got money, and we were indiscreet enough to go to see some wax-works. Next day her father came to see her; he ordered her to tell where she had been. She refused, he got angry, and made such a noise, that mother rang to know what it was. He asked to see her, apologized, and said his daughter had been out several holidays, without his knowing where she had been. My mother said it was very improper, and that he ought. A friend was with us in the room, and I sat there reading and trembling. My mother remarked to the lady, "I hope that girl is not going wrong, she is very good looking." Mother asked me to go out of the room, then had Charlotte up, and lectured her; afterwards Charlotte told me for the first time, that her father was annoyed because she would not marry a young man.

A young man had called at our house several times to see her; she saw him once and evaded doing so afterwards. He was the son of a well-to-do baker, a few miles from Charlotte's home, and wished to marry her; his father was not expected to live, and the young man said he would marry her directly the father died. Her mother was mad at her refusing such a chance. Charlotte showed me his letters, which then came, and we arranged together the replies.

She went home, and came back with eyes swollen with crying, some one had written anonymously, to say she had been seen at the wax-works with a young man, evidently of position above her, and had been seen walking with a young man. The mother threatened to have a doctor examine her to see if she had been doing anything wrong, no one seemed to have suspected me; her father would have her home, her mother had had suspicion of her for some time, "The sooner you marry young Brown the better, he will have a good business, and keeps a horse and chaise, you will never have such a chance again, and it will prevent you going wrong, even if you have not already gone wrong," said her mother.

It was a rainy night, I had met her on her return, and we both stood an hour under an umbrella, talking and crying, she saying, "I knew I should be ruined; if I marry he will find me out, if I don't they will lead me such a life; oh! what shall I do!" We fucked twice in the rain against a wall, putting down the umbrella to do it. Afterwards we met at the dressmaker's, talked over our misery and cried, and fucked, and cried again. Then it was nothing but worry, she crying at her future, I wondering if I should be found out; still with all our misery, we never failed to fuck if there was a clear five minutes before us. Then her mother wrote to say that old Brown was dead, and her father meant to take her away directly; she refused, the father came, saw my mother, and settled the affair by taking back Charlotte's box of clothes. I had not a farthing; at her age a father had absolute control, and nothing short of running away would have been of use. We talked of drowning ourselves, or of her taking work in the fields. I projected things equally absurd for myself. It ended in her agreeing to go home,--she could not help that,--but refusing to marry.

Charlotte wrote me almost directly after her return. My mother had reserved the right of opening my letters, although she had ceased to do so. That morning seeing she had one addressed to me, in fear I snatched it out of her hand. She insisted on having it back, I refused, and we had a row. "How dare you sir? give it me." "I won't, you shant open my letter." "I will, a boy like you!" "I am not a boy, I am a man, if you ever open a letter of mine, I will go for a common soldier, instead of being an officer." "I will tell your guardian." "I mean to tell him how shamefully short of money I am, uncle says it's a shame, so does aunt." my mother sunk down in tears, it was my first rebellion; she spoke to my guardian, never touched my letters again, and gave me five times the money I used to have; but to make sure, I had letters enclosed to a friend, and fetched them.

Charlotte was not allowed to go out alone, and was harassed in every way; for all that, I managed to meet her at a local school, one Saturday afternoon when it was empty; some friendly teacher let her in, and she let me in. We fucked on a hard form, in a nearly dark room, about the most difficult poke I ever had, it was a ridiculous posture. But our meeting was full of tears, despondency, and dread of being with child. She told me I had ruined her, even fucking did not cheer her. A week or so afterwards, having no money, I walked all the way to try to see her, and failed. Afterwards in her letters, she begged me never to tell anyone about what had passed between us. Her father sent her away to his brother's, where she was to help as a servant; for somehow it had got wind that she had met some one at the school-house. There she fell ill and was sent home again. Then she wrote that she should marry, or have no peace, wished I was older, and then she could marry me; she did not write much common sense, although it did not strike me so then. She was coming to London to buy things, would say she would call on my mother on the road, but would meet me instead. How she humbugged the young woman who came to town with her, I don't know, but we met at the baudy house, cried nearly the whole time, but fucked for all that till my cock would stand no longer; then vowing to see each other after she was married, we parted.

She married soon, my mother told me of it; she lived twelve miles from us, and did not write to me. I went there one day, but although I lingered long near their shop, I never saw her. I did that a second time, she saw me looking in, and staggered into a back room. I dared not go in for fear of injuring her. Afterwards came a letter not signed, breathing love, but praying me not to injure her, as might be if I was seen near her house. Money, distance, time was all against me; I felt all was over, took to frigging, which, added to my vexation, made me ill. What the doctor thought I don't know, he said I was suffering from nervous exhaustion, asked my mother if I was steady, and kept good hours. My mother said I was the quietest, and best of sons, as innocent as a child, and that I was suffering from severe study--she had long thought I should; the fact being that for four months I had scarcely looked at a book, excepting when she was near me, and had when not thinking of Charlotte, spent my time in writing baudy words, and sketching cunts and pricks with pen and ink.

Thus I lost my virginity, and took one, thus ended my first love or lust; which will you call it? I call it love, for I was fond of the girl, and she of me. Some might call it a seduction, but thinking of it after this lapse of years, I do not. It was only the natural result of two people being thrown together, both young, full of hot blood, and eager to gratify their sexual curiosity; there was no blame to either, we were made to do it, and did but illustrate the truth of the old song, "Cock and cunt will come together, check them as you may," and point to the wisdom, of never leaving a young male and female alone together, if they were not wanted to copulate.

In all respects we were as much like man and wife as circumstances would let us be. We poked and poked, whenever we got a chance; we divided our money, if I had none, she spent her wages; when I had it, I paid for her boots and clothes--a present in the usually sense of the term I never gave her; our sexual pleasures were of the simplest, the old fashioned way was what we followed, and altogether it was a natural, virtuous, wholesome, connection, but the world will not agree with me on that point.

One thing strikes me as remarkable now: the audacity with which I went to a baudy house; all the rest seems to have began, and followed as naturally as possible. What a lovely recollection it is! nothing in my career since is so lovely as our life then was; scarce a trace of what may be called lasciviousness was in it, had the priest blest it by the bands of matrimony, it would have been called the chaste pleasure of love and affection--as the priest had nothing to do with it, it will be called I suppose beastly immorality. I have often wondered if her husband found out that she was not a virgin, and if not whether it was owing to some skill of hers, or to his ignorance; I heard afterwards that they lived happily.





CHAPTER VI.


     Mary the cook.--A bloody nose and broken piss-pot.--An
     involuntary spend.--A feel and a poke.--A new sensation.--At
     a baudy house.--Mary's history.--She leaves.

 As the certainty that all was finished between us came to me, I got better, my grief moderated, my prick expected occupation, I was horrified at having frigged myself, and ceased doing it. Then naturally I looked at the servants. The new housemaid was ugly as sin, so I turned to Mary the cook. I was then about seventeen years old.

She was now I think twenty-six or eight years old, big, stout, but as it seemed to me then, symmetrical; she had exquisite teeth, blue eyes, and a fine complexion--so fine that my mother remarked it. She was quiet in a remarkable degree, and treated me as a boy. Nine months before this I should as soon have dared to think of fucking my aunt, but experience had altered me. I thought of the light hair on her cunt, and of all I could not see, which Charlotte had innocently described to me; and the conclusions we had arrived at, that she frigged herself. Then I thought that after all, old as she was, and young as I was, she might like Charlotte, let me do her. I had once kissed her when Charlotte was with us, and she had taken it as if she was letting a child kiss her; I now tried it again, and got a quiet kiss in return; it was done with the air and manner of "There, there, you troublesome boy," which mortified me much.

I had now special tutors at home, and was at home when I liked, yet my chances with the cook were fewer than they had been with Charlotte, owing to her occupations. I was studying elementary chemistry, and when making some experiments in the garden parlour, burnt a table cover. My mother angry, said I had better experiment in the back kitchen again, so under that pretence, I managed to be downstairs frequently.

I used to watch Mary, slipping out into the outside passage leading to the servant's privy, and take pleasure in the idea of her piddling there. One day, I watched her coming back, she gave her clothes a tuck between her legs, and I knew it was to dry her cunt; opened the door just as she did it, she knew that I saw the action by my grin, and her face turned scarlet. I kissed her that day, asked her timidly if she had dried it properly that morning. "Dried what?" said she innocently. "What I saw you drying when you came from the closet." She turned away without saying a word.

A day or two after as she went upstairs to the parlour, I stopped, saw her legs, and told her she had jolly fat legs. She wished I would go upstairs, for I was in the way with my chemicals, and after that ceased talking to me. But it was difficult to avoid me, I got rude, would tuck my coat between my legs, laugh and make believe to stoop down to see her ankles, but she took no notice. Begging her to kiss me one day; she gave me two or three at once saying, "There now, go on with your chemicals," in such a motherly way, that it mortified me excessively; making me feel the difference in our ages, as a barrier to my hopes.

But if discouraged one day, I got courage the next; impelled by a cock-stand, and my mother being out, I said, "Should I not like to see your legs." For a wonder she answered, "Look at your own." "Oh!" I replied, "they are not the same, you have got a slit between them, I have got something hanging, and ready to put into the slit." "I wish you would go upstairs," said she, "you are always down here now." Then she told mother I was in her way,--I promised only to go to the back kitchen when it suited the cook, but did not keep my word.

She was alone one evening, I went home and downstairs, kissed and fondled, and would not be repulsed. At some time every woman is more yielding than at others, they always are if randy. Getting my courage up I said I wished she would let me feel her thing, then said, "Let me do you," in a whisper. It was quite dusk down there when I said it. She was speechless for a full minute, whilst I kept repeating my demand. At length she replied, "How dare a boy like you, speak like that to a woman like me." "I--am not a boy," said I in anger; "I have had many women, I know all about a woman's pleasure, I know where your thing is; I know why you tuck your hand outside your clothes after you have piddled." Then she pushed me out of the kitchen, but I thought she smiled.

Our family habits were much as they had been, but the weather getting finer, mother often took both Tom and the housemaid with her out for a walk; but not until the cook had dressed herself after our early dinner. Unless she took the housemaid out, I was worse off than ever. Yet my chances came.

Cook one day was alone in the kitchen darning a stocking; it was cold--the beginning of March--her feet were on the old fashioned iron fender, I sat myself down on the fender, and we talked, I laid my hand on her lap, and tried quietly without letting her know it, to feel where she gartered. I felt the knot distinctly above her knee, thought how near it was to the cunt I was burning to feel, then put my hand up her clothes, and felt her naked leg under the knee.

She told me to leave off, my prick was standing, "Have you not jolly big white thighs, I have heard of them," said I. "Heard?" said she. "Yes, and a good lot of hair between them." "Who, to look at you would believe you were such a liar, such a young monkey; get out of the kitchen." She arose, drew some water, took it in one hand, some clean clothes in the other, and went upstairs, taking no further notice of me. I followed her a few steps up, then pushed my hands up her clothes on to her thighs, just beneath her backside; round she swung facing me, and sat down on the stairs; in swinging round my hand came just into contact with the hair of her cunt; then with a push she sent me downstairs tumbling. As I got up she said quite quietly, "It's your fault if you are hurt; if you follow me, I will push you down again," "I am stronger than you." I sung out, "I don't care, so long as I can feel you." "If I was not so comfortable here in many ways, I would leave to-morrow," said she, continuing to go upstairs, and thinking she had settled me; but I followed, tried again, and she threw the whole jug of water over me. "Now tell your mamma," said she, "and I'll surprise her, she don't know her son," and again she pushed me down. That did not stop my tongue, for I had now got angry and reckless, sang out my wants, bawling out about her cunt, and said, "Did you ever sit on the little privy seat Mary, tell me." She went up, and locked herself in her bed-room, till I was tired of waiting.

I had been a month at this fun, and as in Charlotte's case seemed not getting on at all, my experience was confined to one woman, and naturally I used to compare everything taking place, with what had taken place with her. To my inexperienced mind, there was a difference between the two women which I could not understand: when I first got my hand up Charlotte's clothes, she was as quick as me, struggled, screeched, and got my hand away, seemed in dread and astonished. When I got my hand on Mary's flesh, which I did repeatedly afterwards, she would turn round quite quietly, remove my hand with force, look at me as if she were collecting her thoughts, did not seem at all alarmed, but gave me a lecture. When she kissed me afterwards, it seemed to be upon reflection, but she did it with force, looked me full in the face, then turned away. One day she said, "I would not leave a sister of mine here, if she were young, for five times my wages, but I am old enough to keep you in your place."

Soon after mother was one day out, I at home, housemaid and Tom in the garden; it was a clear, bright day, there was a fire in the garden parlour, the garden window-door was shut, and I bolted it; it was about half-past three o'clock, the cook was dressing, I burning with lust, went to my bed-room, opposite then to her door and listened. I heard the rattle of piddle, excitement got the better of my fears, I knocked. "It's not locked," she called out, thinking it was the housemaid; I opened the door, went in and closed it.

She was standing before the glass brushing her hair, with but stays on; over her chemise, I saw at a glance big white breasts, and big white legs up to her knees. She turned round, and seeing me, put her hands up to cover her breasts, stepped backwards till the bedstead stopped her, and said, "Go out, mister Walter," but I threw my arms round her, clasping her tightly and kissing her on her breasts before she could repeat her request, and said, "Oh! do Mary, do let me."

She did not answer, but disengaged herself from my arms. Crafty with lust and doubtless thinking of former experience, I dropped on my knees, in an instant had her chemise up, both hands round her great bum, and my mouth buried in the hair, kissing the outside of her cunt; she sat down nearly crushing my hands, between her bum and the bedstead, I withdrew them with a cry of pain.

She pushed me away; being on my knees, back I tumbled; as I did so, caught her chemise and lifted it; she put her hands down to prevent it; I kept my hold tightly, and it tore up with a noise, to where her stays stopped it from going further; but the rent disclosed thighs belly and motte simultaneously. She rose, tried to hide her nakedness, and stop the chemise going further, her legs got somehow entangled with mine, I fell back, and she fell clean over me. As I fell, my head struck the pot and overturned it, I felt the warm piddle round my neck and head, and at the same instant a heavy sort of blow on my nose, and hair on my lips--it was her naked belly and motte which struck me as she fell on me. We rolled over, and struggled for a second, I saw white thighs, a huge bum, and then we were both up. She opened the window and shouted out, "Eliza, Eliza, I want you."

Then she turned to me with her eyes wide open, her bosom palpitating, and said, "Get out, you are a nice young blackguard, I would not have believed it, had I not found you out." And in the same breath hurriedly, "Oh! my God, Wattie, what is the matter?" I felt a funny trickling sensation on my upper lip, and putting my hand up to feel, removed it covered with blood, the result of the blow of her motte on my nose, which was pouring down blood copiously, and dropping on to my shirt. The sight of blood always made me furious, "It's a blow from your belly," said I, "you did it purposely." She saw by that time it was not serious and said, "it serves you right, and directly your mamma comes in I will tell her." "Do," said I. She repeated, "You are a young blackguard."

In the excitement of opening the window, calling out, and seeing my nose bleeding, she had forgotten her torn chemise; and I had thought about nothing but my bleeding nose. Standing by the table to open the window, her form had been hidden, but she moved, disclosed the torn chemise, partly one of her hips, thigh, leg, and partially the hair of her cunt. "I can see your cunt," said I staunching my nose. She snatched up the torn chemise, hiding herself with it. "Oh! go, go," said she, "oh! that mess, what shall I do!" and she stopped to set up the piss-pot which was laying on one side; I rushed forward, nose still bleeding, and tried to feel the half naked thigh. "For God's sake go," said she, "here is Eliza coming." I heard Tom lumping up step by step slowly, assisted by the housemaid, and bolted into my room.

I held the door ajar and listened. "Where is Master Walter?" said the housemaid as she got to the top landing. "I don't know," said Mary, "is he not in the drawing-room?" "I don't know," replied Eliza, "what do you want?" The door closed, I heard no more, but felt sure that Mary did not mean to tell. My nose left off bleeding, I washed it, and crept quietly downstairs.

Eliza and Tommy went down again into the garden; shortly afterwards down went cook into the kitchen, five minutes after down I went. It was always dullish in the afternoon there. I had thought that I might risk, and as I passed the door from the kitchen leading into the garden, shot the bolt so that, had the housemaid come down that way, she could not get in also.

Mary was sitting close to the fire. "No more nonsense I hope," said she. There was a kiss and forgiveness soon given me, in her tranquil way.

Again I sat down on the huge kitchen fender, and the next instant was thinking what I had best do. I had seen those wonderfully large, white thighs, seen the thicket of lightish hair between them, had felt no cunt fully for weeks, and was dying with lust. She was as serene as if nothing had happened, and kissed me, but in the usual motherly sort of way. She rose up saying, "I must begin to shut up; what is Eliza staying out so late in the garden with that child for?" That instant I thrust my hand up her clothes, got it on to the motte, and clutched the hair between my fingers; it was easy enough, for it was about the longest and thickest motte thatch I have yet felt. Down she sat, and tried to push me away, but I had firm hold of the hair, and as I did on a similar occasion with Charlotte, pulled and hurt her; she ceased to push me off, and there I stopped, my prick throbbing, and every fibre in me, palpitating with the lust of long continence. Then I pulled and hurt her again, threatening to hurt her more still unless she let me feel her; knowing the housemaid must knock before she could get in suddenly, I was bold.

She bore my tugs with a little flinching and never answered my entreaties. I had found my courage, and used the words cunt and fuck; it was getting dark; looking at me steadily, she said, "So young and yet so cruel, five minutes ago you were saying you were so fond of me, and now you are trying to hurt me; you promised you would not touch me again, now you are doing it; you are all alike, young and old, cruel and liars." I felt ashamed, but was mad with lust. "A youth like you, and so quiet as you look." "Youth! I am a man, have had women, feel me, let me feel you, oh! do feel me." I had my prick out. To get better at her, go from the fender on to my knees, and was pushing my hand between her thighs with energy. Pulling her bum back, she stooped, and her face came near mine. "Kiss me, feel me, and I will indeed leave off, I have seen your belly, let me feel it, and I will leave off." "You will break your word again," said she. "I swear not." She put her face to mine and kissed me, her right hand dropped, and gently laid hold of my prick, her thighs just so little opened that my fingers passed the hair and felt the smooth inner face of the lips; it was too much for me, for some hours my prick had been standing off and on, I had been pulling it about, longing and hoping to use it, and for a long time no emission had left it.

I felt my sperm coming, and could not stop it, my arse jogged and pushed my prick involuntarily between her fingers, pleasure suddenly overwhelmed me, and kissing her I spent in her hand--all the work of half a minute. Then burning shame came over me, I could kiss her no longer, dared not look her in the face, nor keep my hand between her thighs, but rose quickly and without a word rushed upstairs to my bed-room.

I have done for myself I thought, what a beast she will think me, I shall never dare to speak to her again, and was ready to cry; little knowing then that every step in baudiness, is a step towards the end, and that my spunk on her hand, would help me to shed some in her elsewhere.

Feeling so uncomfortable I went out; calling out to the housemaid, that I should be home about eight o'clock, went to a friend's, had dinner, but could not talk nor scarcely eat. My friend joked and asked if I was in love. My prick was standing again after I had eaten, I went home, making up my mind to go to bed early, preferring solitude and my own thoughts; it was about seven P. M., to my astonishment Mary opened the door. I felt my face hot, and could scarcely look at her; she was as tranquil as ever, nothing ever seemed to disturb that woman. This tranquility reassured me, the more so when I found mother was still out. The housemaid had gone out to make a few purchases, leaving Mary alone with Tommy, who she was just going to put to bed, and upstairs she went with him for that purpose, without speaking to me.

What a chance! oh! if I had not been such a beast. My prick rose stiff, the afternoon's spend was the first I had had for a long time, a stiff prick gives courage, and darkness helps. We are alone, she said nothing as I spent in her hand, indeed went on kissing me when spending, what if I ask her again? What an age she seemed putting Tommy to bed, at last I heard her say, "Go to sleep, mamma will be home soon," and she went up to her bed-room. She is going thought I to sit there till Eliza knocks, and did not dare go up, but stood listening in the hall, feeling my prick and longing; at last I heard her coming down with slow, measured steps. In the hall, I flung my arms around her, kissing and begging her to forgive me. "I could not help it," said I in a whisper, "you do not know how I longed for you." "Let me go downstairs," said she.

The garden parlour door was open. "Come in here and talk." I pulled her in with but little difficulty, pushed her down on the sofa, and put both arms round her. The door closed, leaving a small opening; there was no light, but the gleam which shot from the hall-lamp through the door ajar; I could barely see her face, and sat by her begging forgiveness and kissing, but got no reply. My prick was more than stiff, I put my hand down on her lap, on to her knees, then down to her feet, waiting a second at each advance--no movement. My hand slipped up bit by bit, it passed her ankle, her garter, and was on the flesh above--still no movement. I hesitated and begged--no reply. Up further went my hand, the thighs were not closed, but let my hand slip between them, a long drawn sigh came from her as my fingers buried themselves in a fat, warm quim. I pushed her back gently, and put her hand on to my prick; she held it tight, and in a whisper said, "Will you never tell anyone?" By my body and soul I swore it; the thighs opened wider, her body fell back and disposed itself on the sofa, my hands roved over a large expanse of flesh, I could see the white mass only, the rest seemed dark. I kissed the hair on her cunt which I could not see, felt the smooth velvety haunches, and threw myself on one of the finest, whitest and broadest bellies I ever yet have had close to mine. The thighs opened to receive me, and the next moment my prick was gliding up her cunt--she was not a virgin.

What a heavenly sense of satisfaction at being up a cunt again. I could scarcely realize my success; my hands felt between the fat lips, to ensure my being in all right. I was conscious of a difference between her and Charlotte, the way she lay, the size of the thighs, the quantity of hair, and a quiescent manner, made her as different as possible from my former sweetheart. Novelty made me think this one more delicious, but nature would not postpone, and was impelling her as well as me; was tightening her cunt round my prick, her body was thrilling for a spend. I pushed as her cunt tightening, roused me, tighter was my prick grasped within her; her arms folded across me, drew me towards her like a vice; her belly moved up quite slowly to mine, as if to throw me off, then moved twice or thrice as if in a spasm--a sigh, and her belly sunk down as slowly as it had risen up, drawing my sperm into her, as she spent.

We lay without stirring, or uttering a word for a long time, supremely happy; my prick lingered as if it intended to stop permanently in its trap, she made no effort to dislodge it; at last it began to shrink, then curiosity began, down went my hand between our bellies, wet as if from a bath of gruel was my doodle and her quim. Then she spoke--the first words uttered--"No--no--." The feel had such an effect on me, that my prick began again to stiffen. I had with Charlotte failed ignominiously two or three times, in a third fuck on the same day, and feared a failure now. I kissed and felt her, as far as my hands and our clothes would let me, she moved her bum up gently to let my hand under it, but not a word could I get from her. "Can I do it again?" thought I, and began pushing--yes it was stiffening, and again was that cunt tightening. I push harder,--with a gentle heave the belly comes up, I am off on the ride without having withdrawn; was this the fist time I had ever been man enough to do it twice without uncunting? I think so.

The passage of privates was longer, I felt more movement in her buttocks, her sighs were stronger, her hand moved more restlessly over my back, our mouths got glued together. Her lips are wet, or it is mine which are getting wet? There is a new, voluptuous sensation I never experienced before, it delights me; I glued my lips tighter to hers, our heaves are quicker, our sighs shorter, I feel the least bit of her tongue touching my lips. I had never heard of that voluptuous accompaniment of fucking, and it was to me an inspiration; shooting out my tongue into her mouth,--hers comes out to meet it; they are exchanging liquids,--the delight spreads electrically through our bodies,--up comes her belly,--shorter are my shoves,--a quivering wriggle to get deeper up her--and we both spend together, as it seems with more pleasure than I ever did before. How strange I should recollect this all so clearly.

The delights of the wet kisses are new to me; although not able to see them, I thought of her exquisite teeth, and rolled my tongue over them. She kisses me, still holds me, again my hand goes down to feel the parts now separating, slobbered, and sticky with past joy; out comes my prick, and then she speaks. "No-no," she sits up, I by her side, my hand on her naked thighs for a minute. She gets up, gives me a long kiss, goes to her room, and soon after comes down, her eyes wet with crying, "Don't come near me, don't be unkind, let me alone," she says. Her manner was so commanding, that I let her go to the kitchen without following her. Shortly Eliza and then my mother came home.

Mad for her again, I took to my chemistry in the back kitchen constantly, you may be sure. When I got the chance, spoke of our pleasures and my hopes. "We ought," said she, "both to be ashamed of ourselves, but I especially who am so many years older than you, ought to have known better; if I am punished it will serve me right. Oh! if you don't hold your tongue! My risk is more than you have any idea of." All was said in a way as if she were preaching, and looking me full in the face.

She refused what I wanted and avoided me, but it was impossible for her altogether to escape me. Risking everything, emboldened by impunity with Charlotte, I used to clutch her knees, and put my head up her clothes, kissing and smelling her motte, I began to love the smell of it. She used to dislodge me, and neither made a noise, nor uttered a word in doing so--indeed she rarely spoke at any time. But it is difficult for a woman who has been fucked by a man to refuse him again; I watched my opportunities, my conversation broken as it was, and rarely but for a minute at a time, was one repetition of lustful wants and prayers; I used to pull my prick out, beg her to see and feel it. At length she did, saying, "May God forgive me for my weakness." That day I fucked her again standing in the kitchen, and a second time a few hours afterwards in the dusk, which experience began to show me was the time she was most accessible; the other servant was somewhere in the house at the time I recollect.

After that her manner changed, she ceased to resist; but when I asked her to go to a house with me, she said, "No, no, I am not coming to that." Now, though tranquil, she was more capricious, sometimes letting me feel her, or do it to her with impatience; at other times with evident desire to please; but I was so often baulked, and I plagued her so incessantly to meet me somewhere, that at length she did, saying, "Well, it little matters, as I have made my bed, so I must lie on it." I did not know then what she meant by that.

She got a holiday, we had food at a tavern, went to the house to which I first took Charlotte, and into the same room; what a reminiscence! As I got to the door, she looked nervously round and said, "I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb." It was a joyous day for me. Once in the house she became gay and amatory, threw off all restraint, and abandoned herself to sexual enjoyment in a way she never did but twice again.

She was simply dressed as was customary with servants in those days. Soon I had her standing naked before me with but boots and stockings on. And what a sight she was. Quite five feet eight high, stout, yet as it seemed to me then, without a single part of her body either flabby or shapeless, her skin was of such dazzling whiteness that her white stockings looked dull by contrast, very light brown hair, which when pulled out nearly hung to her waist, the hair of her cunt and arm-pits in quantity of a lighter golden brown; all looked much darker than their true colour, against the dazzling whiteness of the skin. Ample calves and thighs, breasts firm as ivory, her arms to match in plumpness and whiteness, her hands alone discoloured by work, looked dark against the rest of her glorious person. I recollect this all well, and that at that time I disliked light-haired women: but in her suddenly, the light hair appeared to me lovely.

She changed in manner that day from a condescending matron, to a lover of my own age; had the complacency of a gay woman, tempered with modesty. I had no notion of baudily posturing women which I learned in after life, but had an innate love and perception of all that was beautiful, and began placing her in attitudes favorable to the contemplation of her charms. She complied with all; from belly to side, from side to back I turned her; she smiled as if pleased, curious, and astonished; and when I turned to quench my passion in her, she met me with an ardour less demonstrative, but more stifling and satisfying than Charlotte; it was a worry to think that I had twice fucked her, and seemed to have finished each time before I had began fucking.

The firmness of her flesh impressed me, whether I put my finger between the cheeks of her arse or between her thighs, I could with difficulty get it away; she could have cracked a nut between either. The next wonder was the hair of her cunt, which was long but curly; I now see that she could not have pissed without wetting it, which accounted for her always what we youths used to call mopping it, after she had piddled. The cunt looked twice as big as Charlotte's, but the prick-hole seemed to me smaller; and whether my finger or my prick was in it, seemed to grasp it tightly. My prepuce used to give me then at times pain just before, or when I spent in Charlotte; in Mary I scarcely seemed to feel it, and afterwards a quiet sort of grinding of her cunt, prolonged my pleasure until my penis left it. I was so new to the work, that all those differences impressed me, I compared and thought of them constantly.

She gave no violent writhes, nor twists, nor jerked her arse, nor wriggled as she spent, but just as my short thrusts came on, her belly used gradually to heave up and grow into mine; her cunt almost seemed to be sucking my prick, whilst it throbbed and jetted its sperm into her; my hardest thrusts never hurt; Charlotte used to complain if my prick was too vigorous in her. Then when her pleasure was over; lolling her tongue against mine, and sucking my very breath from me, she quietly subsided; leaving me to lay in her, until with a kiss, she would gently doze off with me in her arms.

A taste had developed as said, which I have retained to the present time. I loved to see a woman piddle, used to make Charlotte do it as often as I could, to place my hand under the stream, and feel its splash on my fingers; and if chance let me hear the rattle in a pot, or see a woman rising up from the attitude, my prick used to stand. I did this with her greatly to her astonishment, she resented it so much that I never repeated it: singular that a woman who would let me lay and kiss her cunt, or put finger and prick up it; should refuse to let me see the water come from it--but so it was.

Charlotte I loved, and used to feel as if she were part and parcel of me for life, when I was up her, with Mary I thought of thighs, backside, cunt, and her other parts, without much liking her beyond the desire of spending in her. My impression is that I must have fucked that day, as much as I ever did in my life on one day; my mother remarked that I looked ill and worn out when I got home, and again fell on her favorite belief that I was overstudying. How she could have permitted a young man to be so often in the kitchen, and near to female servants, seems to me a marvel of stupidity,--but she did.

Nothing opens a man and woman's heart to each other like fucking. A woman laying satisfied by your side, her cunt bedewed with your spunk, with fingers touching your prick, and mouth fresh from contact with yours; will tell you more than she will at any other time. She did that day. She had thought me a mere boy, getting baudy with coming manhood, and had liked me. My quiet, demure manner, made her imagine that such an attack from me, was among the most improbable things; when I began she made up her mind to leave, but then came the mystery,--there were circumstances which rendered it needful for her to stay where she was, if possible--what they were she would not say. My assault on her in the bed-room and all that followed upset all her ideas, filled her mind with images of lust and pleasure, and left that undefined sensation and unsatisfied longing which is known as randiness. I suddenly seemed a man to her. My spending in her hand upset her still more. I asked if that had made her let me have her. She replied, "I gave up the self denial of years, abandoned my intentions, and let you do it; when you pushed me into the garden parlour I intended to let you as I went in, I had not quite intended before."

There was the greatest difficulty after that day in getting her, for my mother seemed always in my way, and objected to my being in the kitchen. Mary never helped me as Charlotte used, as cook indeed she could not. She ran no risks, and was never in a hurry, so where I had Charlotte half a dozen times, I could scarcely get Mary once.

She met me out again, and in a fortnight asked for another holiday. It astonished my mother, for more than a year she scarcely had gone out, and never had taken a whole holiday. What another day of ballock-ing it was, in that old, snug, baudy house--but we had a quarrel there.

Even with my inexperience, I knew she was different from Charlotte at the first poke. I used in my mind to compare the differences. Charlotte's curiosity, the manifest novelty of fucking to her, even for a couple of months after her splitting and bleeding; was so different from the steady, quiet, well satisfied way with which Mary copulated. Pondering over this, I wondered if she had been done before, how often, and by how many, or had I been the first? The idea of asking her was always floating through my brain. That day I said to her as her face was towards mine on the pillow, and I was toying with her bubbies, "I wonder who had you before me." She sat up, looked me steadily in the face, and replied, "You have no right to ask me, you are not my husband." "But tell me." "I shall not, it is an impertinence; how can a youth like you know anything about first or second." I blurted out, "Because when first I did it to Char--" the name was almost out of my mouth, but I stopped in time, "when I first had a young woman (correcting myself), I could not easily get into her, it tore my prick, and she bled." "Who was it?" said she. "Oh! a young woman." "But who was it?" I did not reply. "Was it Charlotte?" and she looked me hard and full in the face. "No," said I. "Now was it? Tell me," said she bending over, kissing and coaxing me. "No, it was not." "I believe it was, you once said she was young, and had dark brown hair--it was she." In vain I denied it. "I felt sure it was, and with a youth like you! Is it possible you can have harmed that nice girl! What a wretched, wicked lot you all are, you will be as bad as the others." Then she suddenly said, "Mind, you have sworn solemnly never to mention to any living soul about me; oh! once forget yourself, and it's all up with a woman." Then she laid down, again her manner became quiet and voluptuous--another fuck followed. I again tried the question. She settled me by saying, "If ever you ask me that question again, I will not let you have me afterwards," and I never did ask her that I can recollect until just before she felt us.

But she for some time after asked ME questions about my first woman, "was she tall? were her teeth as good as hers?" and so on. How far she satisfied herself that it was Charlotte, she never said; for I don't recollect that she mentioned her name again, and I gave wrong descriptions; but may have got more information than I meant her to have, as she asked me at odd times when I was off my guard.

A third time, to the still greater surprise of my mother, she took a holiday. We spent it at the house, and she exhausted me and herself. For a day or two afterwards she gave me every chance at home, and we fucked furiously. She took to calling me a dear fellow, when her tongue was not against mine, but which was always the case when our mouths got together; and I imagine now, must have been a greater luxury to her than it was then to me. Soon after she received several letters which I said were from her lover. "I wish they were," said she. Then she took ill, and when better, refused me altogether. I had opportunities, but she would not. I said I wished I had never seen her; she said she wished so too, for she was fond of me, although it was ridiculous at her age and mine. Afterwards when mother was one evening at the bottom of the garden, Eliza gone out to the library. I seized Mary as she closed the shutters; kissing and begging her. She opened her thighs, my fingers were on her clitoris; she kissing me at intervals said: "Oh! no, oh! I can't, dear--I dare not--Walter, Walter, you must not; I am a married woman, and am going home to my husband most likely."

Soon afterwards she told me her history. Married seven years previously, her husband became dissipated and unfaithful; and from being a well-to-do tradesman, brought himself to the condition of a labourer. She forgave him until he gave her a disease, then she left him as she had threatened to do. Nothing he could say would induce her to have anything more to do with him. "Is there anything about me that a man could not be satisfied with for years?" she asked, as if I were a judge.

She went home to her mother. He appears to have been fond of her. Love of women was his great fault; but the disease so set her against him, that all his entreaties were useless. Nevertheless she was his wife, and getting into the mother's house one day, when she was alone (Mary), he fucked her with violence--and violent it must have been, for she was as strong as a horse. Directly afterwards she left and went to service in London, confiding only her address to her mother, taking a false name, and writing him, that if ever he found her out and annoyed her, she would go abroad. Her husband made the mother a sort of promise to keep steady for three months, but failed in doing so, went to America, had never ceased to write affectionate letters which came to her through her mother, and had recently written to say he had made a large sum of money, and was coming home. He had sent money home to the mother with instructions to settle it on Mary how she liked, provided she would come back to him. Afterwards she showed me his letters; they were well written, and in a style above a man of his position in life.

She had lived in service ever since; with us she had then been a year and a half, and had had but two other places. One she left because a grown up son began to pay her too much attention. At the other the master--a married man--made love to her, and one day tried to force her. I know the last place, it was about three miles from us.

This news came like a cold bath on me. It suited my taste to have a woman in the house. The idea of losing her was terrible. She refused me my pleasures. I doubted her truth at times, but whenever I did, she would fetch a letter as proof saying, "Now will you believe me?" She refused to say where her home had been, and what her real name was. I used to try to make out the postmark on her letters, but could not. They were negligent in those days in such matters, and postage was dear.

And now I again asked if she had had any other but her husband and me; by all that was holy she declared she had not. "How came you to let me?" "God in heaven knows!" said she, "months ago if anyone had said such a thing was possible, I should have said it was ridiculous; I only thought of you as a tall boy, but that day I felt that my life was passing away without the pleasures of a woman; what you did kneeling down in the kitchen upset me, then I let you; though I thought I should ruin myself by doing so."

She cared but little for her husband, for he had caused her to lead the life of a widow for years. "Suppose I had done anything wrong," said she, "and he had found it out, he would have cast me away; but you men can do what you like, and we poor women have to submit." "But why go back?" "Four months ago I would not have done so, but you have made me find out I am a woman after all; you will understand that better as you grow older. Not many would have kept chaste as I have done until that night. Now I mistrust myself. I am getting fond of you, but what could come of it? And if anything came to the ears of my mother and friends, who are respectable, I should drown myself. I have got plenty of will of my own, although I am quiet."

"You don't care much about poking?"

"I have had my wants, but suppressed them," she replied. "What did you do?" "Oh!" said she in an off hand way, "what other unmarried women do, I suppose." "Frigged yourself." She gave a nod and said, "And not often that." I thought of what Charlotte had told me, but held my tongue.

I tried to get at her at intervals, but it was no use. "It's caprice," said I with my prick out, "you let me when I wanted it three weeks ago, why not now?" "I can't,--I dare not,--it might be certain ruin now." "What does a fellow care about ruin, when his hand is outside a cunt, and his prick is like an iron rod?" Twice as strong as me, she could at all times have escaped me, unless sexual desire was strong on her; desire gives a man force, but it takes away a woman's force. She rose up, nor would she continue talking, until I had buttoned up my prick and promised not to touch her; that done, she said, "Would you wish to ruin me? You might if I let you, I have been very ill as you know, was in the family way, my monthlies stopped, and I have brought them on. When I was in trouble that way, I let you do what you like, now I am going home, what would become of me if I were in the family way then?" This explained all.

I had never given her a present, I never gave Charlotte one; having then so little money. I never thought about it. I had now more, and offered to give her some if she wanted any. She showed me a saving-bank's book. She had got nearly fifty pounds. I bought a pair of gold earrings for her, it was the first present I had even given a woman, and she was much pleased. I had I think some vague notion, that it would induce her to let me have her; but if so, I was deceived.

Mother seemed to be keeping at home to baulk me. My chemicals had been taken back into the garden parlour. I knew she wanted to go to my aunt's; but one morning it was too hot, then it rained, and so on. How I restrained myself from frigging I don't know, for I used to walk up and down my bed-room with my prick out stiff, and looking at it; at length a chance came--my last.

Mother went to aunt's, the ugly housemaid said, "As Master Tom wont be at home, do you mind my going out for a couple of hours?" "No," said my mother, "when the cook is ready." "Please will you tell the cook Mamm," said she, "or she wont let me go." I had then a tutor in mathematics who came on that day, but promised to fetch mother home. I had many times broken my promises to do so, to enable me to get at Mary. Mother said, "I hope you mean what you say, you are getting a man, and should never break your word." Anxious to know when the housemaid would go; I asked her. "I am not going till five o'clock, sir," said she, "unless you particularly want the books," "That will be too late, for I am to fetch mamma home,--never mind."

I finished with my tutor, and out I went. But at about five o'clock came home near to the house, wondering if the housemaid had gone, (Mary I had not spoken a word to), waited in sight of the house, and at last saw a form I guessed to be the housemaid's, going off fast towards the village; five minutes afterwards I knocked, and Mary opened the door. Said she, "What brings you home?" I said I was unwell, had a bad cold, could not go for my mother, would go to bed, would she fetch me a foot-bath, and went to my bed-room. I had been two days planning the thing, an old dodge it was though.

It was hot and quite light, but I drew down the blinds, undressed and put on my nightgown; she brought the bath, we talked. She had not heard from her mother again, it was strange,--was she being played with? It took weeks then to get to America. I kissed and got closer to her, we were on the edge of the bed; I spoke of our meetings and our pleasures, she avoided the subject, said I should take cold, prayed me to have the foot-bath and go to bed. Gradually I got my hand on her thighs, how could she help it?--a woman who had been fucked by me a lot of times. But she was firm in refusing me. I lifted my night-shirt, my prick stood up, the shirt hanging at the back of it like clothes on the hook of a prop. Finding that useless, I threatened to frig myself and began the operation. She said I ought to be ashamed of myself, that she would leave if I did not desist, and turned to go, when I pulled her on to the bed. Soon my fingers were on her slit, her fingers on my prick. "I dare not let you,--oh! pray!" she said, but she was vanquished, silent, and tranquilly laid down on the bed; nature was too strong for her.

I lifted her chemise, had a glimpse of the lovely plump calves, and large, fleshy thighs, as I threw myself impetuously upon her. My belly closed with hers, and pushing my knuckles through the hairs, I guided my prick towards her cunt, but alas! too late. The long abstinence and the excitement were too much for me; just as my fingers opened the cunt-lips, and my prick touched her cunt, throb--throb--gush--gush, and over my fingers, over her thighs, into the thicket of hair, on to the clitoris, on to the smooth, round bum-cheeks below--anywhere--everywhere excepting the right place, my sperm spurted out: and only the last drop remained just as I buried my prick in her. Then instead of meeting her humid tongue with mine, I sank on her breast kissing, yet damning and cursing like a dragoon, at my spoiled pleasure,--I had spent out of sheer copiousness of spunk, and excitement.

Said she, "It is as well as it is, get off." I made no reply, hoping my sexual force would return, for my prick was in her sheath. She moved to release herself. Stronger far than me, she could in any other attitude have easily done so; but the most difficult position for a woman to disengage herself from a man, is when he is on the top of her, well between her thighs, and clasping her backside tightly. As she moved there was no strong will in it; how could it be otherwise? She in the prime of life had been without it for weeks, nature was pleading for me, my prick was in her, my spunk all about her. To gain time I promised to get off in a minute. "Kiss me." Our mouths and tongues met. It was like magic. A voluptuous throb passed through both of us, my prick stiffened to the full, a sympathetic grind of her cunt responded; again we were in the full tide of pleasure, fucking and spending together, the future was forgotten as we sunk quietly down. I had spent twice without uncunting; scarcely was it over than she pushed me off, and washed out her cunt in my foot-bath.

We sat on the side of the bed kissing and feeling each other, it was like the old time, the door wide open to hear the street door knocks. When the housemaid knocked, into bed I got; an hour afterwards home came my mother and into my bed-room. She approved of the hot foot-bath, but insisted on my taking a febrifuge. To keep up the sham, I took it, Mary brought it and stood by, whilst my mother gave it to me; my prick was again standing like a prop at the sight of Mary, and as my mother pulled the bed-clothes over me, she might, if she had had eyes, seen my prick pushing them almost up.

Next morning she gave notice to leave. I never had her again. On one or two occasions I felt her, and if there had been more time might perhaps have had her. At the end of a fortnight she told me that her monthlies were all right. From that day she resolutely refused to even let me feel her. "I don't much care about going back," said she; "I don't think I shall be happy, but I do it for the best; at all events I shall have a home." The day before she went she said, "Goodbye, God bless you, you are a good fellow," but you will play mischief with many a poor girl here before you have done. "I like you very much, and shall always think of you." I never heard of her after, and with her, passed from me the woman who is still in my recollection as one of the most beautiful, and perfect in form; as one who gave me the greatest sexual pleasure,--but I was of course very young and inexperienced.

My mother remarked that she was the most trustworthy servant she ever had; but that there was a mystery about her. Her boxes were labelled for a place that the coach would not take her to, and her boxes were not like a servant's. "I think she has been crossed in love and ran away," said mother. Said I, "Perhaps she had gone off with a bobby," it was a current joke then, policemen not having been long invented. My mother said in her severe way, "She is a virtuous woman, a youth like you should not utter ignorant jokes about women, especially about the humbler classes, to whom good reputation is everything." I began to see plainer than ever, that I could humbug mother after that.

Many of our conversations are told here in her very words, others as nearly as I can recollect them. I have often wondered at the way this woman behaved to me, talked to me, and all about her. The circumstances as they occurred, even at the time seemed peculiar; I felt as if I was wicked in getting into her, almost as if I was going to poke my mother; but I cannot attempt to analyze motives or sensations, I simply narrate facts. Certain it is, that I never have had a woman who in behaviour resembled Mary, in manner, conversation, and general behaviour,--I always felt as if she were a superior person to me, as if she were obliging me and not herself, and was putting me under an obligation, by letting me fuck her.

Again lonely, I not only wanted cunt, but also the society of a woman, it was so sweet to see and talk, to some one I fucked; to do so secretly, was an additional charm, and I used to feel quite sad. I was then about in my eighteenth year.





CHAPTER VII.


     At the Manor house.--Fred's amours.--Sarah and Mary.--What
     drink and money does.--My second virgin.--My first whore.--
     Double fucking.--Gamahucking.--Minette.--A belly up and
     down.

 One aunt as said lived in H...shire, a widow; her son, my cousin Fred, was preparing for the Army. I wanted a change, and went by advice to stay there. Fred was a year older than me, wild and baudy to the day of his death, he talked from boyhood incessantly about women. I had not seen him for some time, and he told me of his amours, asking me about mine. I let him know all, without disclosing names; he told me in nearly the words, that it was "a lie," for he had heard my mother say, that I was the steadiest young fellow possible, and she could trust me anywhere. This, coupled with my quiet look, and the care I took not to divulge names, made him disbelieve me; but I disclosed so many facts about women's nature, that he was somewhat astonished. He told me what he had done, about having had the clap, and what to do if I got it; then he had seduced a cottager's daughter on the estate; but his description of the taking, did not accord with my limited experience. One day he pointed the girl out to me at the cottage door, and said he now had her whenever he wanted.

She was a great coarse wench, whom he had seen in my aunt's fields. He had caught her piddling on one side of a hedge; she saw him looking at the operation from a ditch, and abused him roundly for it; it ended in an acquaintance, and his taking her virginity one evening on a hay-cock,--that was his account of it.

Her father was a labourer on my aunt's estate, the girl lived with him and a younger sister, her name was Sarah; he expatiated on her charm from backside to bubbies, but it was soon evident to me, that with this woman it was no money, no cunt; for he borrowed money of me to give her. I had squeezed money out of my aunt, my guardian and mother, and had about ten pounds,--a very large sum for me then, so I lent him a few shillings.

He had his shove as he called it, and triumphantly gave me again such account of his operations, and the charms of the lady, that I who had been some time without poking, wondered if the girl would let me; arguing to myself, he gives her money--my girls never wanted money,--why should his? He had been dinning into my ears, that all women would let men for money, or presents, or else from lust. "Kiss and grope, and if they don't cry out, show them your prick and go at them." These maxims much impressed me.

"Fred," said my aunt at breakfast, "ride over to Brown about his rent, you will be sure to find him at the corn market," and she gave him other commissions at the market town. I promised to ride with him, but had been tortured with randiness about this great wench of his; so made some excuse, and as soon as he was well off, sauntered towards the cottage, which was about half a mile from the Hall.

It was one of a pair in a lane. Scarcely anyone passed them excepting people on my aunt's lands. One was empty. The girl was sweeping in front of the cottage, the door was wide open. I gave her a nod, she dropped a respectful curtsey. Looking round and seeing no one, I said, "May I come in and rest, for it is hot and I am tired?" "Yes sir," said she, and in I went, she giving me a chair; then she finished her sweeping. Meanwhile I had determined to try it on. "Father at home?" "No sir, he be working in the Seven-Acre field." "Where is your sister?" "At mill, sir"--meaning a paper mill. I thought of Fred. It was my first offer, and scarcely knew how to make it, but chucking her under the chin said, "I wish you would let me--" "What, sir?" "Do it to you," said I boldly, "and I will give you five shillings," producing the money; I knew it was what Fred gave her usually.

She looked at me and the five shillings, which was then more than her wages for a week's work in the fields, burst into laughter and said, "Why, who would have thought a gentleman from the Hall would say that to a poor girl like me." "Let me do it," said I hurredly, "if you wont I must go--I will give you seven and six pence." "You wont tell the young squire?" said she--meaning Fred. "Of course not." She went to the door, looked both ways, then at the clock, shut the door and bolted it without another word.

The house consisted of a kitchen, a bed-room, leading out of it, and a wash-house. She opened the bedroom door, there were two beds which almost filled the room; at the foot of one was a window, by its side a wash-stand. She got on to the largest bed saying, "Make haste." I pulled up her clothes to her navel and looked. "Oh! make haste," said she. But I could not, it was the third cunt I had seen, and I paused to contemplate her. Before me lay a pair of thick, round thighs, a large belly, and a cunt covered with thick brown hair, a dirty chemise round her waist, coarse woolen blue stockings darned with black, and tied below the knees with list, thick hob-nailed boots. The bed beneath was white and clean, which made her things look dirtier; it was different to what I had been accustomed to. I looked too long, "Better make haste, for father will be home to dinner," said she.

I put my hand to her cunt, she opened her thighs, and I saw the cleft, with a pair of lips on each side like sausages, a dark vermillion strong clitoris sloped down and hid itself between the lips, in the recesses of the cock-trap; the strong light from the window enabled me to see it as plainly as if under a microscope. I pushed my finger up, then my cock knocked against my belly, asking to take the place of my finger, and so up I let it go. No sooner was I lodged in her, than arse, cunt, thighs and belly, all worked energetically, and in a minute I spent. Just as I pulled out, her cunt closed round my prick with a strong muscular action, as if it did not wish the warm pipe withdrawn, a movement of the muscles of the cunt alone, and it drew the last drop of lingering sperm out of me.

I got on my knees, contemplating the sausage lips half open, from which my sperm was oozing, and then got off sorry it had been so quick a business. She laid without moving and looking kindly at me said, "Ye may ha me agin an yer loike." "But your father will be home?" "In half an hour," said she. "I don't think I can," said I. Such coolness in a woman was new to me, I scarcely knew what to make of it. She got hold of my tool, I had not had a woman for some time, soon felt lust entering my rod again, and sought her cunt with my hands. She opened her legs wider in a most condescending manner and I began feeling it. I was soon fit, which she very well knew, for immediately with a broad grin on her face she pulled me on to her and put my prick in her cunt herself, lodging it with a clever jerk of her bum, a squeeze, and a wriggle.

I fucked quietly, but it was now her turn; she heaved and wriggled so that once she threw my prick out of her, but soon had it in again. "Shove, shove," said she suddenly, and I shoved with all my might, she clipped my arse so tightly that she must have left the marks of her fingers on it, then with a close wriggle and a deep sigh, she lay still, her face as red as fire, and left me to finish by my own exertions.

I felt the same squeeze of the cunt as I withdrew, one of those delicious contraction which women of strong muscular power in their privates can give; not all can do it. Those who cannot never can understand it. Those who can, will make a finger sensible of its grip, if put up their cunts.

She got up, and tucked her chemise between her legs to dry her split, she did not wash it. "I am always alone," said she, "between eight and twelve just now," and as any woman just then answered my wants, I made opportunities, and I had her again two or three times, till a rare bit of luck occurred to me.

We were in the bed-room one hot day; to make it cooler I took off trousers and drawers, laid them on a chair, carefully rolled my shirt up round my waist, so as to prevent spunk falling upon it, and thus naked from my boots to waist, laid myself on the top of my rollicking, belly-heaving, rump-wriggling country lass.

I always gave her five shillings before I began; she had taken a letch for me, or else being hot cunted, and not getting it done to her often, dearly liked my poking her; and seeming to want it that day unusually, began her heaving and wriggling energetically. We were well on towards our spend, when with a loud cry of "Oh! my God!" she pushed me off, and wriggled to the bedside. I got off, and saw a sturdy country girl of about fifteen or sixteen years, standing in the bed-room door looking at us with a broad grin, mixed with astonishment, upon her face.

For an instant nobody spoke. Then the girl said with a malicious grin, "pretty goings on Sarah, if fearther knowed un--" "How dare you stand looking at me?" said Sarah. "It's my room as well as yourn," said Martha, for that was her name; and nothing further was said then. But Martha's eyes fixed on me as I sat naked up to my waist with my prick wet, rigid, red, throbbing, and all but involuntarily jerking out its sperm. I was in that state of lust, that I could have fucked anything in the shape of a cunt, and scarcely knew in the confusion of the moment, where I was, and what it was all about. Sarah saw my state, and began pulling down my shirt. "Go out of the room," said she to her sister. "Damn it I will finish, I will fuck you," said I making a snatch at her cunt again. "Oh! for God's sake, don't sir," said she. With a grin out went young sister Martha into the kitchen, and then Sarah began to blubber, "If she tells fearther, he will turn me out into the streets."

"Don't be a fool," said I, "why should she tell?" "Because we are bad friends." "Has she not done it?" "No, she is not sixteen." "How do you know she has not?" "Why we sleep together and I know." "Who sleeps in the other bed?" "Fearther." "In the same room?" "Yes." "Don't you know anything against her?" "No, last hay-making I seed a young man trying to put his hands up her clothes, that's all; she has only been a woman a few months." If she tells of her, she will tell of me, I thought. It might come to my aunt's ears, Fred would know, and I should get into a scrape.

"It is a pity she has not done it," said I, "for then she would not tell." "I wish she had," she replied. One thing suggested another. "She knows all about what we were doing?" Sarah nodded. "Get her to promise not to tell, and get her to let me do it to her, and I will give you two pounds," said I, taking the money out of my purse.

It was more money than she had ever had in her life at one time, her eyes glistened; she was silent a minute as if reflecting, then said, "She has always been unkind to me, and she shant get me turned out if I can help it." Then after farther talk, some hesitation, and asking me if I was sure I would give her the money, she said, "I'll try, let's have a jolly good drink, then I'll leave you together," and we went into the kitchen. I saw her dodge.

Martha was leaning, looking out of the window, her bum sticking out, her short petticoats showing a sturdy pair of legs; she turned round to us, it was about eleven o'clock in the day, the old man was at work far off and had taken his dinner with him that day, Sarah had told me.

"You won't tell father," said Sarah in a smooth tone. No reply but a grin. "If you do, I will tell him I saw young Smith's hand up your clothes." "It's a lie."

"Yes, he did, and you know you have seen all he has got to show." "You are a liar," said Martha. Sarah turned to me and said, "Yes, she did, we both saw him leaking, and a dozen more chaps." "She saw their cocks?" said I. "Yes." "You took me to see them, you bitch," said Martha bursting out in a rage. "You did not want much taking, what did you say, and what did you do in bed that night, when we talked about it?" "You are a wicked wretch, to talk like that before a strange young man," said Martha and bounced out of the cottage.

In a short time she came in again, the oldest told me scandals she knew about her sister, and made her so wild, that they nearly fought. I stopped them, they made it up, and I sent off the eldest to fetch shrub, gin and peppermint; it was a good mile to the tavern in the village.

When she had gone I told Martha I hoped she would do no mischief. She was nothing loath to let me kiss her, so there was soon acquaintance between us. She had seen me half naked, how long she had been watching I knew not, but it was certain she had seen me shoving as hard as I could between the naked thighs of her sister, and that was well calculated to make her randy and ready for the advances of a man. "Here is five shillings, don't say anything my dear." "I won't say nothing," said she taking the money. Then I kissed her again, and we talked on.

"How did you like him feeling you?" I asked, "was he stiff?" No reply. "Was it not nice when he got his hand on your thigh?" Still no reply. "You thought it nice when in bed, Sarah says." "Sarah tells a wicked story," she burst out. "What does she tell?" "I don't know." "I will tell you my dear; you talked about Smith's doodle and the other men's you saw pissing." "You are the gentleman from London stopping at the Hall," she replied, "so you had better go back and leave us poor girls alone," and she looked out of the window again.

"I am at the Hall," said I putting my hand round her waist, "and like pretty girls," and I kissed her until she seemed mollified and said, "What can you want in troubling poor girls like us?" "You are as handsome as a duchess, and I want you to do the same as they do." "What is that?" said she innocently. "Fuck," said I boldly. She turned away looking very confused. "You saw me on your sister, between her thighs, that was fucking; and you saw this," at the same time pulling out my prick, "and now I am going to feel your cunt."

I put my hand up her clothes and tried to feel, but she turned round, and after a struggle half squatted on the floor to prevent me. The position was favorable, I pushed her sharply half on to her back on the floor, got my fingers on to her slit, and in a moment we were struggling on the floor, she screaming loudly as we rolled about.

She was nimble, got up and escaped me, but by the time her sister came back, I had felt her bum, pulled her clothes up, and talked enough baudiness; she had hollowed, cried, laughed, abused and forgiven me, for I had promised her a new bonnet, and had given her more silver.

Sarah brought back the liquors, there was but one tumbler and a mug, we did with those; the weather was hot, the liquor nice, the girls drank freely. In a short time they were both frisky, it got slightly into my head; then the girls began quarrelling again, and let out all about each other, the elder's object being to upset the younger one's virtue and make her lewd. I began to get awfully randy, and told Sarah I had felt her sister's cunt whilst she had been out. She laughed and said, "All right, she will have it well felt some day, she's a fool if she don't." We joked about my disappointment in the morning, I asked Sarah to give me my pleasure then. "Aye," said she, "and it is pleasure, when Martha has once tasted it, she will like it again." Martha very much fuddled, laughed aloud saying, "How you two do go on." Then I put my hands up Sarah's clothes. "Lord how stiff my prick is, look," and I pulled it out, Martha saying, "I won't stand this," rushed from the room. I thought she had gone, and wanted to have Sarah; but she thought of the two pounds, and shutting Martha's mouth, "Try her," said she, "she must have it some day, she'll come in soon." When the girl did, we went on drinking. What with mixing gin, peppermint and rum shrub, both got groggy, and Martha the worst. Then out went Sarah saying she must go to the village to buy something, and she winked at me.

She had whilst the girl was outside told me to bolt the front door, and if by any chance her father came home, which was not likely; to get out of the bed-room window,and through a hedge, which would put me out of sight in a minute. Directly she was gone I bolted the door and commenced the assault. Martha was so fuddled, that she could not much resist my feeling her bum and thighs, yet I could not get her to go and lie down; she finished the liquor, staggered, and then I felt her clitoris.

I was not too steady, but sober enough to try craft where force failed. I wanted to piss, and did, holding the pot so that she could see my cock at the door, but she would not come into the bed-room. Then I dropped a sovereign, and pretending I could not find it, asked her to help me; she staggered into the bed-room laughing a drunken laugh. The bed was near, I embraced her, said I would give her two sovereigns if she would get on the bed with me. "Two shiners?" said she. "There they are," said I laying them down. "No--no," but she kept looking at them. I put them into her hand, she clutched them saying, "No--no," and biting one of her fingers, whilst I began again tittillating her clitoris, she letting me. From that moment I knew what money would do with a woman. Then I lifted her up on to the bed, and lay down besides her. All her resistance was over, she was drunk.

I pulled up her clothes, she lay with eyes shut, breathing heavily, holding the gold in her hand. I pulled open her legs, with scarcely any resistance, and saw a mere trifle of hair on the cunt; the novelty so pleased me, that I kissed it; then for the first time in my life I licked a cunt, the spittle from my mouth ran on to it, I pulled open the lips, it looked different from the cunts I had seen, the hole was smaller. "Surely," thought I, "she is a virgin." She seemed fast asleep, and let me do all I wanted.

In after life, I should have revelled in the enjoyment of anticipation before I had destroyed the hymen; but youth, want, liquor, drove me on, and I don't remember thinking much about the virginity, only that the cunt looked different from the two others I had known. The next instant I laid my belly on hers. "Oh! you are heavy, you smother me," said she rousing herself, "you're going to hurt me,--don't sir, it hurts," all in a groggy tone and in one breath. I inserted a finger between the lips of her quim, and tried gently to put it up, but felt an impediment. She had never been opened by man. I then put my prick carefully in the nick, and gave the gentlest possible movement (as far as I can recollect) to it.

Her cunt was wet with spittle, I well wetted my prick, grasped her round her bum, whilst I finally settled the knob of my tool against it, then putting my other hand round her bum, grasped her as if in a vice, nestled my belly to hers, and trembling with lust, gave a hinge,--another,--and another. I was entering. In another minute it would be all over with me, my sperm was moving. She gave a sharp "oh!" A few more merciless shoves, a loud cry from her, my prick was up her, and her cunt was for the first time wetted with a man's sperm; with short, quiet thrusts I fell into the dreamy pleasure, laying on the top of her.

Soon I rolled over to her side, to my astonishment she lay quite still with mouth open, snoring, and holding the two sovereigns in her hand. I gently moved to look at her; her legs were wide open, her gown and chemise (all the clothing she had on) up to her navel, her cunt showed a red streak, my spunk was slowly oozing out streaked with blood, a little was on her chemise; but I looked in vain for the sanguinary effusion which I saw on Charlotte's chemise, and on my shirt, when I first had her; and from later experience, think that young girls do not bleed as much as full grown women, when they lose their virginity.

Her cunt as I found from ample inspection afterwards, was lipped like her sister's, the hair, about half an inch long, scarcely covered the mons, and only slightly came down the outer lips, her thighs were plump and round, her calves big for her age; she was clean in her flesh, but alas! thick blue stockings with holes and darns, big boots with holes at the sides, a dirty ragged chemise, dark garters below the knees, made an ugly spectacle compared with the clean whiteness of Charlotte's and Mary's linen.

But the sight took effect, my prick had her blood on it, quietly I slid my finger up her cunt, it made her restless, she moved her legs together, shutting my hand in them; she turned on her side, and showed a plump white bum, over one side of which a long streak of bloody sperm had run. I pulled her on to her back, then she awakened struggling and called out loudly, but I was heavy on her, my prick at her cunt's mouth, and I pushed it up until it could go no further, whilst she kept calling out, I was hurting her.

"Be quiet, I can't hurt you, my prick is right up you," said I beginning the exercise. She made no reply, her cunt seemed deliriously small, whenever I pushed deep, she winced as if in pain, I tried to thrust my tongue into her mouth, but she resisted it. Suddenly she said, "Oh! go away, Sarah will be home and find us." I had my second emission, and went to sleep with my prick up her,--I was groggy. She slept also.

I awakened, got up tired with heat, excitement, drink and fucking. She got up, and sat on the side of the bed half sobered, but stupid; dropped a sovereign, and did not attempt to pick it up. I did, and put it back into her hands; she took it without saying a word. When buttoned up, I asked her what she was going to do, but all the reply I could get was, "You go now." I went into the kitchen, banged the door, but held the latch, the door remained ajar, and I peeped through.

She sat perfectly still so long, that I thought she was never going to move; then sat down on the chair and laid her head against the bed, looking at the sovereigns at intervals; then put them down, put her hand up her petticoats carefully feeling her cunt, looked at her fingers, burst into tears, sat crying for a minute or two, then put a basin with water on to the floor, and unsteady, partially upset it, but managed to wash, and got back on to the chair, leaving the basin where it was. Then she pulled up the front of her chemise and looked at it, again put her fingers to her cunt, looked at them, again began crying, and leaned her head against the bed, all in a drowsy, tipsy manner. Whilst so engaged, her sister knocked and I let her in; she looked at me in a funny way; I nodded; she went into the bed-room and closed the door, but I heard most of what was said.

"What are you sitting there for?" No reply. "What's that basin there for?" No reply. "You have been washing your grummit?" No reply. "What have you been washing it for?" "I was hot." "Why, you have been on the bed!" "No, I ain't." "You have, with he." "No, I ain't." "I know he have, and been atop a you, just as he were atop on me this morning." "No, he ain't." Then was a long crying fit. Sarah said, "What's the good of crying you fool, no one ain't going to tell, I shant, and the old man won't know."

Then their voices dropped, they stood together, but I guessed she was asking what I had given her.

Then I went in. "You have done it to my sister," said Sarah. "No," said I. "Yes, you have," and to Martha crying, "Never mind, its better to be done by a gent, than by one of them mill-hands, I can't abear 'em; leave off, don't be a fool." I went out of the room, Sarah followed me, and I gave her the two sovereigns. "You know," she said, "some one would ha done it to her; one of them mill-hands, or Smith would, he's alius after her, and I knows he got his hands upon her."

Fred went up to London next day, and I was at the cottage soon after; the girls were there, the elder grinned, the younger looked queer, and would not go to the bed-room. "Don't be a fool," said the elder, and soon we were alone together there. Half force, half entreaty got her on to the bed, I pulled up her clothes, forced open her legs, and lay for a minute with my belly to hers in all the pleasure of anticipation, then rose on my knees for a close look. My yesterday's letch seized me, I put my mouth to her cunt and licked it, then put my prick up the tight little slit and finished my enjoyment.

Afterwards when I had her she was neat and clean underneath, although with her every day's clothes on. She was frightened to put on her Sunday clothes. She was a nice plump round girl, with a large bum for her size, with pretty young breasts, and a fat-lipped little slit, the lining of it instead of being a full red like Charlotte's, Mary's, and Sarah's cunts, was of a delicate pink. I suppose is was that which attracted me. Certain it is that I had never licked a cunt before, never had heard of such a thing, though "lick my arse" was a frequent and insulting invitation for boys to each other.

I saw her nearly every day for a week, and her modesty was soon broken. Sleeping in the same room with her father, accustomed to being in the fields or at a mill, such girls soon lose it; but she seemed indifferent to my embraces, and all the enjoyment was on my side. "I've not much pleasure in that," said she, "but more when you put your tongue there." I could not believe that was so in a young and healthy lass, but being always in a hurry to get my poking done lest her father came home, used to lick, put up her, spend quickly and leave; but she soon got to rights. I licked so hard and long the next time I had her, at the side of the bed; that all at once I felt her cunt moving, her thighs closed, then relaxed, and she did not answer me. I looked up, she was laying with eyes closed and said, that what I had done was nicer than anything. I had gamahuched her till she spent.

After that she spent like other women, when I had her. I tell this exactly as I recollect it, and can't attempt to explain. She worked at a paper mill, slack work was the reason of her being at home, now she was going back to work; I feared a mill hand would get her, and offered to pay her what she earned; but if she did not go to the mill, her father would make her work in the fields, and she dare not let him see she had money.

Indeed the two sisters did not dare to buy the finery they wanted, because they could not say how they got the money. So back to the mill she went, it being arranged that she should stay away now and then, for me to have her. "Oh! won't she," said Sarah "she takes to ruddling natoral, I can tell you." Sarah said she told her everything I had done to her, including the licking, and I felt quite ashamed of Sarah knowing that I was so green, as I shall tell presently.

Fred returned, and I had difficulty in getting her often. My cousins walked out in the cool of the evening, I with them; often we passed the cottage, and I made signs if I saw the girls. I sometimes then had her upright in a small shed or by a hay-stack in the dark, where the hay pricked my knuckles.

Fred was soon to join his regiment, was always borrowing money of me "for a shove," and never repaid me; but he was a liberal, good-hearted fellow; and when in after life I was without money and he kept a woman, he said, "You get a shove out of ------," meaning his woman, "she likes you, and I shant mind, but don't tell me." I actually did fuck her; nor did he ever ask me,--but that tale will be told hereafter. Nothing till his death pleased him more than referring to our having looked at the backside of his mother and at his sister's quims, he would roar with laughter at it. He was an extraordinary man.

One day we rode to the market-town; and putting up our horses, strolled about. Fred said, "Let's both go and have a shove." "Where are the girls?" said I. "Oh! I know, lend me some money." "I only have ten shillings." "That is more than we shall want." We went down a lane past the Town-Hall, by white-washed little cottages, at which girls were sitting or standing at the doors making a sort of lace. "Do you see a girl you like?" said he. "Why, they are lace-makers." "Yes, but some of them fuck for all that; there is the one I had with the last half-a-crown you lent me." Two girls were standing together; they nodded. "Let's try them," said Fred. We went into the cottage; it was a new experience to me. He took one girl, leaving me the other, I felt so nervous; she laughed as Fred (who had never in his life a spark of modesty), put his hands up her companion's clothes. That girl asked what he was going to give her, and it was settled at half-a-crown each. Fred then went into the back-room with his woman.

I never had had a gay woman. A fear of disease came over me. She made no advances, and at length feeling my quietness was ridiculous, I got my hands up her clothes, pulling them up and looking at her legs. "Lord! I am quite clean, sir," said she in a huff, lifting her clothes well up. That gave me courage, I got her on to an old couch, and looked at her cunt, but my prick refused to stand; her being gay upset me. She laid hold of my prick, but it was of no use. "What is the matter with you?" said she, "don't you like me?" "Yes, I do." "Have you ever had a girl?" I said I had. Fred who had finished, bawled out, "Can't we come in?" This upset me still more, and I gave it up. In Fred and his girl came, and he said, "There is water in the other room." I went in and feigned to wash myself, and hearing them all laughing, felt ashamed to come out, thinking they were laughing about me; though such was not the case, it was because Fred was beginning to pull about my woman.

I had more money than I had told Fred, and when he said he was thirsty, offered to send for drink, thinking my liberality would make amends for my impotence. Gin and ale was got; then I began to feel as if I could do it. "She's got a coal-black cunt," said Fred, and I seemed to fancy his woman; then he said to mine, "What colour is yours?" and began to lift her clothes; "let's change and have them together," and we went at once into the back room, whither the two girls had gone. One was piddling, Fred pulled her up from the pot, shoved her against the side of the bed, bawling out, "You get the other," and pulled out his prick stiff and ready. An electric thrill seemed to go through me at this sight, I pulled the other into the same position by the side of Fred's; then the girls objected, but Fred hoisted up his girl and plunged his prick into her. Mine got on to the bed, leaving me to pull up her clothes. The same fear came over me, and I hesitated; Fred looked and laughed, I pulled up her clothes, saw her cunt; fear vanished, the next moment I was into her, and Fred and I, side by side, were fucking.

All four were fucking away like a mill, then we paused and looked at our pricks, as they alternately were hidden and came into sight from the cunts. Fred put out his hand to my prick, I felt his, but I was coming; my girl said, "Don't hurry." It was too late, I spent, laid my head upon her bosom, and opening my eyes, saw Fred in the short shoves. The next instant he lay his head down.

I believe now that really all four felt ashamed for directly after we were all so quiet, one of the girls remarked, "Blest if I ever heard of such a thing afore, you Lunnon chaps are a bad lot." A long time afterwards I again had the girl for two and sixpence, Fred was then in Canada; she recollected me well, and asked me, whether gals and chaps usually did such things together in London.

Fred and I used to examine our pricks for a few days after, to see if there were any pimples on them. Fred soon forgot his fear and shame, and offered to bet me the fee of the gals, that he would finish first, if we went and repeated the affair, but we did not.

Martha became very curious about me and my doings with Sarah. New to fucking as she was; she got jealous at the idea of anyone sharing my cock with her. She was curious too to know about her sister's pleasure; the elder had I think got all she wanted to know from the younger, and had made but little return for it in information.

Then my amatory knowledge was increased by an event unlooked for, unthought of, unpremeditated; I am quite sure I had neither heard, nor read of such a thing before; and should at that period of my life have scouted the idea, as beastly and abominable, though I had done it. How I came to lick Martha's cunt even then astonished me, I thought that it was the small size, the slight hair, and youthfulness of the article; but I used to lick it very daintily, wiping my mouth, spitting frequently, and never venturing beyond the clitoris. It occurred to me one day instead of kneeling, to lay down and lick; so I laid on the bed, my head between her thighs, my cock not far from her mouth, and indulging her in the luxury; for it was much the idea of pleasing her that made me do it. She played with my cock and wriggled as my tongue played over her clitoris, then grasped my prick hard, which gave me a premonitory throb of pleasure. "Do to me what I am doing to you," said I, "put it in your mouth," scarcely knowing what I said and without any ulterior intention. She with her pleasure getting intense, impelled by curiosity, or by the fascination of the cock, or by impulse, the result of my tongue on her cunt, took it in her mouth instantly. How far my prick went in, whether she sucked, licked, or simply let it enter, I know not, and I expect she did not either; but as she spent I felt a sensation resembling the soft friction of a cunt, and instantly shot my sperm into her mouth and over her face. Up she got, calling me a beast. I was surprised and ashamed of this unlooked for termination, and said so to her.

I had as said arranged signs as I passed the cottage about our meetings, yet had difficulty now in getting at her without being found out, and never should, excepting for the elder sister, to whom I gave every now and then money. She took care of the house, rarely went out, but worked at a coarse of lace, and earned money that way. She used to sit outside the cottage door if fine; working, and curtseying when we, who were called the Hall folks, passed. My aunt said one day, "What a strapping wench that is, don't you think so Walt? you always look at her as you pass." I might have replied, "Yes she is, and her arse is remarkably like yours," but I did not, and was after that more on my guard. Fred had not had the girl for a long time, that freed me a little. Then Martha shammed ill two days to stay from the mill and let me have her, and I spent a good many hours with her. As I turned my head quickly one day, I thought I saw the bed-room door close, and it occurred to me, that the elder had been watching; she looked letcherously at me as I came out.

I went one day soon after, and found Sarah alone. She made some excuse about her sister being obliged to go to work. I was going away angry, when she asked me to look at her new boots and stockings. Amused at her vanity, I looked and she put them on. "Them fits fine," said she, showing her legs amply. I was not excited about it, and was going. "Ain't you never going to ha me agin?" said she. "I've no money." "We are old friends, never mind money, if I hadn't got you Martha we moight ha been good friends still,--ar wish a hadn't." "You did it to save us," said I. "Ah, but yer shouldn't leave old friends, and I ha watched and made yer both comfortable." Well, thought I, this is an invitation to fucking,--she had a wonderful slip in her cunt, and I began to rise. "You have lots of friends," said I. "I take my oath, that no friend has seen me since the day you got my sister; ain't I been allus on watch for yer, did yer ever pass without seeing me?"

A woman who wants fucking is not easy to resist, even if she is ugly and middle-aged. There she sat, the picture of health, her petticoats nearly up to her knees; I had never before seen them excepting in coarse blue woolen stockings. I rolled her clothes up, saw the big thighs, the next instant had my fingers in the slit; up knocked my doodle. She shut the shutter, locked the door, and with a pleased look got on to the bed. Her cunt struck me as quite a novelty, and I got ready for insertion.

"You like her better than me," said she. It was a poser, but a man always likes the woman he is going to poke better than any other, and so I denied it. "Why don't you do to me what you do to she then?" "What is that?" "You knows." "No." "Yes you do." "I feel it like this." "More than that." "What?" "You know." "I don't, tell me." There was a pause. It came into my head that she knew I had licked Martha's quim, and it had such an effect on me, that down went my doodle, and I was almost ashamed to look at her; for as said, until I licked Martha, I had never done such an act, and did it with a sort of belief that I was a great beast, and should have said so of any man who did anything of the sort. Indeed after spending in her mouth, I had felt so very much disgusted with myself, that I left off the licking altogether, and had made the girl promise she would never tell her sister, nor refer to the matter again. So I was silent, standing with one hand on her belly just above her split, and in an uncomfortable state of mind.

She broke the silence. "Do it as you do it to she." "I don't know what you mean," I again stammered. "Yes yer do now." "What has Martha told you?" "Nothing, but I knows." And finding I was about to get on the bed, "Naw, naw, kiss it." So I put my mouth down on to the hair and gave a loud kiss. "Naw," said she, "do it as you do it to she, I am a finer woman than she by long chalks; what is't yer sees to take to her so? you knows you tickles her with yer tongue." The murder was out. I wanted to mount her, she baulked me, and kept repeating in a jockular, playful, manner her request. So I got her to the side of the bed, her large thighs wide open, and legs hanging down in a favorable position, intending to please her; she gave her cunt a dry rub with her chemise.

I began with dislike, but there was something in the novelty which warmed me. What a difference between her and her sister. I could lick the younger one's all but hairless orifice with comfort, and she always laid quiet; but I had to pull open this one's sausage lips and hold back the dark thick fringe, which got into my eyes and tickled my nose. No sooner had my tongue touched her clitoris, than the lips closed round my mouth, and as my saliva worked up on to the cunt-hair by her movement, it wetted my nose and face, she heaved and bounced her arse so much. Then her thighs closed round my head tightly enough to squeeze it off, she buried her hands in the hair of my head, and up went cunt again, bringing my nose into the hole, then with a jerk she got her cunt away from me. I was not at all sorry to desist.

"Oh! do it natural,--do it natural," said she, and her thighs opened and hung down, showing a slobbered cunt. I went into her just as she lay at the side of the bed, and in a minute her cunt was wetter than ever.

I have no doubt that the wench spent almost directly I licked her, but I did not know it. When I asked her if she liked it, she said, "The old fashioned way be the best, but I have done the same as she." I questioned her, but never knew whether her sister had told her or not, or whether she had peeped and seen us together at it.

I made her promise she would never tell her sister what I had done. She hoped I would see her again, but having promised Martha that I would not have Sarah again, told her so. She said she was tired of watching for us. The sisters were often quarrelling, and I believe out of jealousy about me, yet I fucked her again.

I may mention about the risks I ran, that I was once with Martha on the bed, when I heard my cousin's voice asking Sarah who was at the door, if she had seen me pass.

I could not get the younger readily enough, had been long from home, and was about returning. I had spent all my money, and told Sarah one day after I had poked her, that I was going away. Her sister was then at the mill. Said she, "What will Martha do?" I supposed she would get another sweetheart. She shook her head, "Martha be poisoned." "What?" "Don't be afraid," said she, "she be in the family way, we call it poisoned in these parts, when a girl be'nt married." It was true. The girl had only menstruated once or twice before I first had her, and now her courses had stopped. There was no attempt at making a market of me, all needed was to get her right again. The elder took Martha to a fortune-teller, and she got better of her difficulty. I borrowed money of my aunt and giving Martha all I could, went back to London. She left the neighbourhood.

I saw Martha two years afterwards, when visiting again my aunt; she was in house-hold service, and was out for the day. I waylaid her, hoping to have her again; we kissed and fondled, and with difficulty I felt her quim, but could not accomplish my wishes; she was going to be married, and soon after I heard that she was.

Sarah also was going to be married to a farm labourer, and when I joked her about his finding her out, she laughed and said, "Lord, he war my first sweetheart," from which I inferred that cousin Fred was mistaken about taking her virginity.

My first cunt-licking, and cock-sucking took place with Martha; I had never before played such amatory pranks, and all came about by instinct. For a long time I was ashamed of myself, and never breathed a word on such subjects to anyone; I don't think I should have done so even to Fred, but he was then away. Gradually I was learning by instinct the whole art of love. What made me offer money to get Martha I can't say, I don't think that I had ever heard of tempting women's virtue by money, but I never forgot the lesson, and much improved on it as time went on.

I now had had four women. The difficulties in the way of getting at them, were very useful in preventing excesses; and kept me in health. It seems surprising to me now, how little I seemed to have thought of baudy attitudes, and lascivious varieties; for belly-to-belly poking on the bed, was nearly all I did. I had still the modest, demure, demeanour which deceived my mother (coupled with her ignorance of life generally) and relations, and though very proud of my achievements, kept them much to myself, never disclosing the names of my women, and only telling one or two intimate friends of what I had done; who reciprocated by telling me their achievements. Fucking had eased my prepuce. I made a practice of pulling it backward and forward several times a day; in fact whenever I piddled. My prick had grown bigger in the two years, which pleased me much, but about the size of it I had a curious doubt, which will be told of further on.

I was though demure, quite a man in manner and looks, and with women behaved in a way which one or two of my relatives remarked. I used to think to myself when talking to them, "Ah! I know what sort of opening you have at the bottom of your belly." The cousins whose cunts I had had a partial glimpse of, I used to like to dance with, wondering how much the hair had grown on them. I used also to think about my sister's cunt that I had seen when in the cradle, but just then she died. My experience indeed much increased the charm of female society to me.

Chance had given me two virgins out of four women, that was a luxury unthought of, uncared for, and in no way appreciated; the virgins were no more liked by me than the others.

Cousin Fred will appear at less frequent intervals, he was away sometimes for months, then for years, but he is named whenever he played an important part in my adventures,--he was participator in others which will never be written about here.





CHAPTER VIII.


     Fanny Hill.--Masturbation.--Friend Henry.--Under street-
     gratings at the gunmaker's.--A frigging match.--Sights from
     below.--In a back street.--A prick in petticoats.--
     Evacuations.--Ladies scared.

 I went back to London, and resumed my preparations. Penniless, I tried to get money from my mother, but could not. I tried to feel our ugly housemaid, who threatened to tell. Just then a friend lent me Fanny Hill, how well I recollect that day, it was a sunshiny afternoon, I devoured the book and its luscious pictures, and although I never contemplated masturbation, lost all command of myself, frigged, and spent over a picture as it lay before me. I did not know how to clean the book and the table-cover.

Fascinated although annoyed with myself, I repeated the act till not a drop of sperm would come; and the skin of my prick was sore. The next day I had a splitting headache but read at intervals, and again frigged; and did this for a week, till my eyes were all but dropping into my head. In a fever and worn out; the doctor said I was growing too fast, and ordered strong nourishment; but I used to take the infernal book with me to bed, and lay reading it, twiddling my prick, and fearing to consummate, knowing the state I was in. It was indeed almost impossible to do it, and when emission came, it was accompanied by a fearful aching in my testicles.

My friend had his book back, my erotic excitement ceased, I grew stronger, felt ashamed of myself, and soon found a new excitement.

I had a friend who like me was intended for the Army, his father was a gun manufacturer. The eldest son died, and the old man saying that five thousand a year should not be lost to the family, made his other son--my friend--go into the business. He resisted, but had no alternative but to consent. Their dwelling-house was just by ours, but the old man now insisted on his son residing largely at the manufactory where he invited me to stay at times with him, which I did.

Several houses adjoining belonged to the old man, at the East-End of London, where the manufactory was. Some faced an important thoroughfare, the rest faced two other streets, and at the back, a place with out a thoroughfare, on one side of which was the manufactory and workmen's entrance; on the other side stables. The whole property formed a large block.

The house faced the better street, the family had for forty years lived in it before they became rich, and it was replete with comfort. The old man had since lived there principally, for his love was in his business, and he had made all arrangements for his convenience. He had a private staircase leading from a sitting-room into the manufactory, and could go into the warehouse, or the back street, or out of the front door of the house unnoticed. The people employed, never knew when to expect him. He was a regular Tartar, but for all that a kind-hearted man.

There now lived in the house an old servant with her sister, who had been many years in the family. One was married to a foreman in whom his master had much confidence; these three were in fact in charge of the premises, although nominally the keyes were given up to my friend whom we will call Henry. The old man wished his son to be happy, allowed friends to visit him, there was good wine, put out by the old man in small quantities from time to time, good food, good attendance, and all to make things comfortable; but the old man resolutely forbade his son to be out later than eleven o'clock, and kept him as my mother kept me, almost without money. I expect that the old servants were told to keep an eye on the doings of Henry.

The basement was used as store-room for muskets, put into wooden boxes which stood in long rows upon each other like coffins. It was a large place and originally only went under the factory, but the old gentleman gradually as he acquired the adjacent houses, let them, but retained most of the basements, so that his stores ran not only under the premises he occupied, but largely under half a dozen other houses of which he only let the shops and upper portions. On four sides this large basement had glimpses of light let into it, by gratings in the footways of the streets.

At one end and on the principal street was a row of windows, beneath what was then a first class linen-draper's shop--first class I mean for the East-End--a large place for those days, and always full. Women used to stand by dozens at a time, looking into the shop windows which were of large plate-glass--a great novelty in those days--people waiting for omnibusses used also to stand up against the shop.

Henry and I were old school friends, I had seen and felt his cock, he mine; I had not been with him an hour before he said, "When the workmen go to dinner, I will show you more legs than your ever saw in your life." "Girls?" said I. "Yes, I saw up above the garters of a couple of dozen yesterday in an hour." "Could you see their cunts?" "I did not quite, but nearly of one," said he. I thought he was bragging, and was glad when twelve o'clock came.

At that hour down we went, through the basement stored with muskets; it seemed dark as we entered, but soon we saw streams of light coming through the windows at the end; they had not been cleaned for years. We rubbed the glass and looked up. Above us was a flock of women's legs of all sizes and shapes flashing before us, thick and thin in wonderful variety. We could see them by looking up, it being bright above; but dark and dusty below, they could not by looking down see us, through the half cleaned windows; or notice round clean spots on the glass, through which two pairs of young eyes almost devoured the limbs of those who stood over them.

As our only way lay through the work-shop and we did not wish it known that we were there (there was no business done there, unless arms were being stored or taken out), we went back before the workmen returned from their meals; but for several days did we go into the place, gloating over such of the women's charms as we could discern; legs we saw by the hundreds, garters and parts of the thighs we saw by scores: quite enough to make young blood randy to madness, but the shadowy mass between the thighs we could not get a glimpse of.

"There are vaults," said I, "if there, we could see right up, and be at the back of the women." We tried unused keys to find one to open the door, and at length to our intense delight it unclosed. We stepped across the little open space under the gratings into the empty vaults, and there arranging to take our turns of looking up at the most likely spots, we put out our heads and took our fill at gazing. We were right under the women, who as they looked into the shop windows, jutting out their bums in stooping, tilted their petticoats exactly over our heads. If there was no carriage passing, we could at times hear what they said, but that was rarely the case.

In those days even ladies wore no drawers. Their dresses rarely came below their ankles, they wore bustles, and standing over a grating, anyone below them, saw much more, and more easily, than they can in these days of draggling dresses, and cunt swabbing breeches, which the commonest girl wears round her rump. For all that, so close to the thighs, do chemise and petticoats cling, that it was difficult to see the hairy slits, which it was our great desire to look at. Garters and thighs well above the knees, we saw by scores. Every now and then either by reason of scanty clothing, or short dresses, or by a woman's stooping and opening her legs to look more easily low down at the window, we had a glimpse of the cunt; and great was our randiness and delight when we did. On the whole we were well rewarded. Many as the legs and thighs are, that I have since seen, I doubt whether I have seen so many pairs of legs half-way up the thighs, and all but to the split, as I saw in the times we stood under that big linendraper's shop window. Old and young, thin and fat, dirty and clean, ragged and neat, there was every possible variety and number of legs and their coverings.

There were two states of the weather which favoured us: if muddy, women lifted their clothes up high. Having no modern squeamishness, all they cared about was to prevent them getting muddy; and then with the common classes, we got many a glimpse of the split. But a brilliant day was the best. Then the reflected light being strong, we could see higher up if the lady was in a favourable position. We could see if they had clouts round their cunts, and had some strange sights of which I will only tell one or two. One day, quite at the end of the gratings, two women,

neat, clean, plump, and of the poorer classes (for we could soon tell the poorer classes from their legs and under-clothings), stood close together. It was my five minutes. Henry was at my back. They had been standing talking, close together, not seeming to be looking at the shop, in fact they were at the spot where the shop window finished. One put her leg up against a ledge, keeping the other on the grating; it was a bright day, and I saw the dark hair of her cunt as plainly as if she were standing to show it me. The next minute she gathered up her clothes a little high, and squatted down on her heels as if to piddle, her bum came down within four or five inches of the grating, and I saw through the bars, her cunt open just as a woman does when she pisses. I thought she was going to do so, when a plantive cry explained it all; she had a baby, and all the movements were to enable her to do something to it conveniently. At the same time her companion dropped on one knee, pulling her clothes a little up, and arranging them so as to prevent soiling them, she put the other leg out in front, and sat back on the heel of the kneeling leg. Then was another split, younger and lighter-haired, partly visible from below, but not so plainly as the dark-haired one; and they did something in that position for five minutes to the squalling child.

I lost all prudence, whispered to Henry; and together we stood looking, till they moved away. "My prick will burst," said I. "So will mine," said he. The next instant both our pricks were out, and looking up at the legs, stood we two young men, frigging till two jets of spunk spurted across the area. It would have been a fine sight for the women had they looked down, but women rarely did. They stood over the gratings usually with the greatest unconcern, looking at the shop windows, or only glanced below for an instant, at the dark, uninhabitated looking area.

This was the beginning of a new state of things. We got reckless; Henry had business to attend to, I none, I ceased to think about what might be said of our being so much in the store-house; and used to go by myself, and stay there two or three hours at a time. Then I gave way to erotic excesses. My prick would stand as I went down the stairs. I used to wait prick in hand, playing with it, looking up and longing for a poke until I saw a pair of thighs plainly, then able to stand it no longer, frigged; hating myself even whilst I did it, and longing to put my spunk in the right place. I used to catch it in one hand, whilst I frigged with the other, then fling the spunk up towards the girls' legs. It was madness; for although the feet of the women were not three feet above my head, yet the smallness of the quantity thrown (after what stuck to my fingers), and the iron bars above, seemed to make it impossible that any of it should reach its intended destination; but I think it did one day. A youngish female was stooping, and showing part of her thighs. I flung up what I had just discharged; suddenly her legs closed, she stepped quickly aside, looked down and went away. I am still under the impression that a drop of my sperm, must have hit her naked legs.

We both also grew more lascivious, having frigged before each other, we took to frigging each other. I went to my home, on going back, found he had taken other young men to see the legs. One night five of us had dinner, we smoked and drank, our talk grew baudier; we had mostly been schoolfellows, and dare say we had all seen each other's doodles, but I cannot assert that positively. We finished by showing them to each other now, betting on their length and size, and finished up by a frigging sweep-stakes for him who spent first.

At a signal, five young men (none I am sure nineteen years old) seated on chairs in the middle of the room began frigging themselves, amidst noise and laughter. The noise soon subsided, the voices grew quiet, then ceased, and was succeeded by convulsive breathing sighs and long-drawn breaths, the legs of some writhed, and stretched out, their backsides wriggled on the chairs, one suddenly stood up. Five hands were frigging as fast as they could, the prick-knobs standing out of a bright vermillion tint looking as if they must burst away from the hands which held them. Suddenly one cried "f-fi-fir-first," as some drops of gruelly fluid flew across the room, and the frigger sunk back in the chair. At the same instant almost the other jets spurted, and all five men were directly sitting down, some with eyes closed, others with eyes wide open, all quiet and palpitating, gently frigging, squeezing, and tittillating their pricks until pleasure had ceased.

Afterwards we were quiet, then came more grog, more allusion to the legs of women, their cunts and pleasures, more baudiness, more showing of pricks and ballocks, another sweep-stakes, another frigging match, and then we separated.

I do not think that excepting to Henry, that baudy evening ever was referred to by me.

I got up I recollect next day ashamed of myself, and felt worse, when he remarked, "What beasts we made ourselves last night." What changes since then. Two of the five found graves in the Crimea, the third is dead also; Henry and I alone alive. He with a big family, with sons nearly as old as he was at the time of the frigging matches. I wonder if he ever thinks of them, wonder if he ever has told his wife.

I spent much time now in this leg inspection and frigging myself, till I could scarcely get semen out of me. I hated myself for it, yet went on doing it, when luckily I lost the exciting sights. Some women happened to look down and saw us. A man without a hat came several times and looked down the gratings. Henry's father came to the manufactory, as he often did, went into the stores, asked who had opened the area-door, locked it up, had a new lock put on, and forbad anyone to go into the stores excepting to get out the guns, and so we lost our game. We never asked a question, nor made a remark on the matter; and came to the conclusion, that some one had complained to the linendraper that persons were looking up the women's legs, and that he had written to Henry's father on the matter.

I went home used up, and in a state of indescribable disgust with myself, entirely ceased masturbation, and in a month went again to visit my friend,--he had found out another grating.

The back of the manufactory as said was in a cul-de-sac. There were but the manufactory and stables in it. The workmen entered that side. There were gratings, and coal-vaults beneath the street similar to those beneath the linendraper's shop. Workmen's wives bringing their husbands' dinners, used to stand and sometimes sit down over the gratings, but their legs when seen were rarely worth the seeing; it was usually but a sight of dingy petticoats, and dirty stockings. We were however content to look up at them, for they belonged to women, but soon tired of doing so.

One night (we had never been there at night before), for some reason or the other which I don't recollect we went down and found two women pissing down the grating, then a man and woman together, and discovered it to be the pissing-place of the gay women, in the main thoroughfare; and where if the nights were dark, couples used to come for a grope, a frig, or even for a fuck at times. The pissing often took place over a grating, we could hear, and feel, but not see.

Then we got a common dark lantern, had the top shade taken off, and a funnel, or short chimney put with a slide, so that when we pushed the slide off, the light shot up through the chimney, and throw a strong light on a circle about one foot across. With this we went down waiting till we heard some one above, then opened the light and saw what was to be seen. Sometimes we waited for hours without seeing anything, but it is astonishing what cunt-loving, baudy young men will go through for the sake of seeing a woman's privates. At other times we saw a good deal. If it were a light night, we saw nothing. No one knew we went down at those hours, the workmen had gone, and the private staircase from the dwelling house at any time let us into the factory; from the factory we could go anywhere on the premises.

When we heard feet, or a rustle of petticoats over the grating, taking up the light we sometimes saw a white bum, a split gaping like a dog with its throat cut, and a stream of water splashing from it. We never used to move, but sooner than not see it all and as well as possible, let the stream come over us. Sometimes two women came together; sometimes we could hear to our mortification that they were pissing on the pavement close by, without coming over the grating. We could often hear their conversation. Now and then a woman shit down the grating, we used to watch the turds squeeze out with a fart or two, with great amusement. Once a man did the same, we saw prick, balls, and turd, all hanging down together, we could not help laughing, and off he shuffled as if he had been shot. He must have heard us.

There was one woman whose face we never saw, but who came and pissed over a grating so regularly every evening, and sometimes twice; that we knew her arse perfectly. We lost sight of her and used to wonder if she had found us out, for she finished one night with such a loud fart, that we laughed out,--and she must have heard us.

One night half a dozen ladies came, we knew they were ladies by their manner and conversation, which we could hear perfectly, there being no carriage traffic in the street. "Can anyone see?" said one. "No," said another, "make haste." We heard the usual leafy rustle, and immediately a tremendous stream was heard; then two more sat down close together. I turned on the light at all risks, there were two pretty white little bums above us, with the gaping cunts, they were of quite young girls, without a hair on them; the women then were scared I suppose, for they moved. One said, "Make haste, don't be foolish, nobody is coming." A rustle again, off went the slide, up went the light; what a big round bum, what a great black-haired open cunt did we see, and a stream of water as if from a fire-engine. "Oh! there is a light down there," said one. Up went the bum, piss still straining down, down went the clothes, and all were off like lightening.

Another night we heard two pairs of feet above us, one was the heavy footstep of a man. "Don't be foolish, he won't know," said a man in a very low tone. "Oh I no,--no, I dare not," said a female voice, and the feet with a little rustling moved to another grating. Henry and I moved on also. "You shall, no one comes here, no one can see us," said the man in a still lower tone. "Oh! I am so frightened," said the female. A little gentle scuffling now took place, and then all seemed quiet but a slight movement of the feet. "Are they there?" whispered Henry from the vault. I nudged him to quiet, and putting the light as high up as I could, pushed aside the slide a little only.

We were well rewarded. Just above our heads were two pairs of feet, one pair wide apart; and hanging only partly at her back the garments of a female; in front the trousers of a man with the knees projecting slightly forward between the female's legs, and higher up a bag of balls were hanging down hiding nearly the belly and channel, which the prick was taking. The distended legs between which the balls moved, enabled us however to get a glimpse of the arse-hole and of a cunt. The movement of the ballocks showed the vigor with which the man was fucking, but there must have been some inequality in height; and either he was very tall, or she very short; for his knees and feet moved out at times into different positions. He then ceased for an instant his shoving, as if to arrange himself in a fresh and more convenient posture, and then the lunges recommenced. He must have had his hands on her naked rump, from the way her clothes hung, showing her legs up to her belly, or to where his breeches hid it, or where the clothes fell down which were over his arm.

Once I imagine, the lady's clothes were in his way, for there was a pause, his prick came quite out, her feet moved, her legs opened wider. He did not need his fingers to find his mark again, his long, stiff, red-tipped article had slidden in the direction of her bum-hole; but no sooner had they readjusted their legs, then it moved backwards, and again it was hidden from sight in her cunt. The balls wagged more vigorously than ever, quicker, quicker; the lady's legs seemed to shake, we heard a sort of mixed cry, like a short groan and cry together, and a female voice say, "Oh! don't make such a noise," then a quiver and a shiver of the legs, and all seemed quiet.

When I first had removed the slide, I did so in a small degree, fearing they might look below and see it; but if the sun had shone from below, I believe now they must have been in that state of excitement, that they would not have noticed it. To see better I opened the slide more, and gradually held the lantern higher and higher, until the chimney through which the light issued was near to the grating. I was holding it by the bottom at arms length; and naturally, so as to best see myself. Henry could not see as well, although standing close to me, and our heads nearly touching. "Hold it more this way," said he in an excited whisper. I did not. Just then the lady said, "Oh! make haste now, I am so frightened." Out slipped the prick,--I saw it. At that very instant, Henry pulled my hand, to get the lantern placed so as to enable him to see better. I was holding it between the very tips of my fingers, just below the feet of the copulating couple. His jerk pulled it over, and down it went with a smash, just as the lady said, "Make haste, I am so frightened." A huge prick as it seemed to me drew out, and flopped down, a hand grasped it, the petticoats were falling round the legs, when the crash of the lantern came. With a loud shriek from the lady, off the couple moved, and I dare say it was many a day before she had her privates moistened up against a wall again, and over a grating.

Henry and I laughing picked up the lantern and got back to the house; I went to my bed-room in a state of indescribable randiness. I had for some time broken myself of frigging, and now resisted the desire, tried to read but could not, undressed and went to bed. My prick would stand. If it went down for a minute and my thoughts were diverted, the very instant my mind recurred to those balls wagging above my head, up it went again. I tried to piss, the piss would not run. At that time when my prick was stiff, I used to pull the prepuce back, so as to loosen it. I laid down on the bed, prick stiff. If it could have spoken, it would have said, "Frig or fuck, you shall, before I give you rest." So I pulled the prepuce slowly back,--only once,--and as the knob came handsomely into view, out shot my spunk all over the bed-clothes.

Getting up to wipe and make things clean, I saw something on the brim of my cap which I had worn; the cap was on the table. I took it up and found a large spot of sperm which had come from the happy couple, it must have followed the withdrawal of the prick; and had my head been a little more turned up, it must have tumbled on my face. I did not mind wiping up my own sperm, but doing so to theirs seemed beastly. Yet what was the difference?

We heard one night some one squat down, and turned up the light; there were petticoats, legs and an arse, but instead of the usual slit, we saw to our astonishment a prick and balls hanging down between the legs, it was a man in woman's clothes, and he was shitting. The sight alarmed us, we talked over it for many a day afterwards, for we did not then know that some men are fond of amusing themselves with other men.

I never saw but that one couple fucking, but we could hear groping and frigging going on close by. We heard women say, "Oh! don't!" Gay women, we heard say, "Here is a good place," but they did not often select the gratings, why? I cannot tell, for they were partly in recesses in the wall which enabled people to get more hidden. The bars were wide apart, and I suppose the regulars did not like that, yet they often used the gratings for pissing down.

These sights did not occur all at once, I went home, stopped, returned, and so on; in the meanwhile not having women, I then frigged, left off, then took to it again, and so time went on. Fewer women came at last up the street, we imagined that with all our care, they had found out that people were beneath the gratings, and avoided them. The favorite place was the recess at the workmen's door to the factory at which were two steps; we could hear but not see when a couple was there, we used then to go up into the factory and listen at the door. Generally, feeling and frigging was only going on, bargaining for money first. "Give me another shilling. Oh! your nails hurt. What a lot of hair you have. What a big one! Oh! I am coming! Don't spend over my clothes," and so on, we heard at times.

Meanwhile there was either no servant at my home worthy of a stiff one, or those who would not take one; and I had no alternative but to frig. Money my mother again kept from me. What I got, I sent to the poor girl Martha, who then had not got rid of her big belly; gay women I had fear of; devoured by desire to get into a woman again, I even looked longingly at the wife of the foreman who took charge of the house in which Henry lived, although she was fifty. I recollect seeing her making my bed one morning, and getting a cock-stand at the sight of the woman so near a place to lay down on.





CHAPTER IX.


     Mrs. Smith.--A brutal husband.--My second adultery.--A
     chaste servant.--Road harlots.--A poke in the open.--Use for
     a silk handkerchief.--A shilling a tail.--Clapped.

 Henry had now much business to attend to, I had none. I used to wander into the back street just as the men's wives brought them their dinners, so as to look at them. They were not allowed inside, but if the men chose to eat inside they could do so, their wives waiting outside. Six or eight men had their dinners brought, the rest went away. The women most frequently sat on a door-step, or loitered over the gratings up which we used to look at night; or squatted down against the wall. I had once or twice looked up their clothes, but found little inviting, with the exception of a plump little pair of legs which belonged to a Mrs. Smith. She looked about twenty-six years of age, her husband twenty years older, a good workman but a brutal fellow. He bore a bad character among his fellows, and was thought a brute to his wife. Some said his wife drank; there was often a row in the street between them at dinner-time, he used to sit on the door-step and eat his dinner outside, she standing near him, and her legs came at times over a grating. I used to dodge downstairs at times at the workmen's dinner-hour, and have a look up, and that is how I saw, and began to think of the legs of Mrs. Smith.

I took a sort of fancy to her, or rather her legs, so plump and clean. I saw she had a nice clean face with bright brown eyes, and then had a desire to fuck her. I again had desisted from frigging, had sworn to myself not to do so again, and now getting strength wanted a woman badly. Our eyes had often met, I had even got out of her way when passing her, a courtesy not often then shown by gentlemen to workpeople. I used to stare at her so, that she began to look confused when I did. The husband never seemed to notice anything but his dinner, at which he usually swore. Sometimes I spoke to him about gun-making. I wanted to poke Mrs. Smith, but there did not seem to be the remotest chance, nor had I any intention of attempting it, but used to look at her with my cock standing, and wondering what sort of cunt she had. I had been brought up religiously, and the idea of having a married woman seemed shocking. I was shocked when I found that Mary was married. At length I nodded, smiled, and established a sort of intimacy in that way without speaking, managing to meet her as it were, quite casually when going to, or leaving the workshop.

One day the man dined on the step, his wife standing by his side; down I went to peep up her clothes and heard him rowing. "Why the hell had she not got him beef instead of mutton; God damn her, why were there no potatoes!" That was his style. Angry words passed, the voices grew louder, I heard a loud smack and a strong oath, he had hit his wife and gone back into the work-shop.

There was a great gabbling of female voices over the grating round Mrs. Smith. "I would not stand it," said one. "It is a shame," said another. "He ought to be proud of such a wife, an old beast," said another. The husband came out again. "I have done my best," said she, "you are not a man anyhow, or anywhere, for two pins I would run away from you." A loud oath, and another smack followed.

I heard Mrs. Smith sobbing. "I have had a little drink," said she, "I told him so. He makes me so unhappy, I must; but I spend scarce a trifle and it's what I earns myself. Ain't I clean? don't I bring him good meals?" "You do, you do," said they. "It's a shame," she went on, "he is not a man, not in bed, not anywhere, not anyhow, I don't aggravate him, I put up with everything, it's full six months since he's been a husband to me, although we sleeps in the same bed," she added in a significant way, "yes, six months full." "Lor," said half a dozen voices together, then said one, "Don't he do anything to you then?" Things quieted, off went Mrs. Smith with some of the women, two remained waiting for their husbands' platters, they squatted down on the step.

"They're a miserable couple," said one. "Yes, and likely, he is never at home, no wonder she do take a drop of comfort." "No, it ain't." "She is a nice little woman, and no man gets his meals nicer." "No, that they don't." "He's too old for her, but he ain't jealous." "No, in course not." "Why he ain't done it to her for six months," said one. They both chuckled then. "Why, my old man don't forget me like that, and he is ten years older than Smith," said the other. "Ah!" said the first, "he's a bad 'up altogether, men be a bad lot, the best on 'em." The time-bell rang, their husbands brought out their dinner-cans, and off the women went.

I can scarcely tell what followed exactly or how it came about, for even now to me it seems astonishing. I was but between eighteen and nineteen, and had not had the remotest idea of getting Mrs. Smith, though I longed for her lewdly when my cock stood. I was timid with women until I knew them well, I could never begin with our own servants until they had been in the house a few days; yet directly I heard this conversation, a chance seemed in my way, and without meaning it I followed it up.

With but little idea of married life or habits, I saw that not only were they a wretched couple, but that for months Smith had never touched his wife. I imagined then that married people were always doing it, that women were randier than men,--a common belief of young people. I thought: how she must want a poke! how she would enjoy it! Out I went to see if Mrs. Smith was about, and saw her walking off with a group of sympathizers, who dropped off gradually, until she was left with one, with whom she went into a public-house. In a few minutes they came out and parted. On she went alone, and went into another public-house, and then wiping her eyes as she came out, went her way alone; I after her, lewd and thinking to myself, "she has not had it for six months," and so on. She went into a public-house now by herself. I waited till she came out, and saw she had been taking too many drops of comfort.

Without any definite intention as far as I can remember, but simply for lewd gratification, I went up to, and addressed her. She recognized me and stood stock still. She had a small bottle of what I found afterwards to be gin in her hand, which she put into her husband's dinner can. I told her I was sorry for her, having heard the row and all she had said. The reference to her wrongs roused her, and she said vehemently, "He is not a man anyhow or anywhere," and then was silent. I did not know what to say more, and walked on by her side. After a time she said, "Why are you walking with me sir?" The only reply I made was that I liked it, and was sorry she had such a bad husband. She said she would rather be alone, but I walked on with her she carrying the little tin can with a cover. I not knowing what to do, offered to carry it for her, but she would not let me.

Then she remarked, "You are very good, but don't come any further, it won't look well for a poor woman to be walking with a gentleman; neighbors make mischief, and God knows, I have enough to bear already." My boldness having quite left me, I shook hands with her, which seemed to astonish her, and off she went. I followed her at a distance, to her house, which was one of a row of small cottages fronting a ditch, and a field, on which carpets were beaten, and boys played, a scrubby poor place as you may be sure.

I turned back hesitating. One moment wondering at my boldness, and wickedness in thinking of a married woman; the next, thinking I was a fool for not having asked her to let me; when I saw in the path, the top of the tin can she had been carrying. Here was a chance. I walked about for half an hour before I mustered up courage to go to the house. She opened her eyes wide when she saw me. "What do you want?" "Here is the top of the dinner-can," said I innocently. "Oh!" said she, "I am so glad, he would have hit me if I had lost it." As she took it I entered and closed the door.

She had finished the gin, for the empty bottle was on the table. She may have been more than fuddled, I cannot say; for I was so excited that I recollect only the most prominent circumstances. I was in a funk, but my cock was stiff, and that overcame all scruples. The house had but two rooms: a kitchen I was standing in, the street-door opened on to it. An open door showed a neat bed in a clean white-washed bed-room. How I began I know not, but recollect telling what I had heard, and that for months he had not been a husband to her. That set her off talking wildly, and she said it all over again. She was sure he was spending his money on some dolly, hoped she might catch her, then cried, wiped her eyes and said, "Well, that is no business of yours, I am a fool for talking to a young gentleman like you, I don't know what you are doing here."

"Let me do it to you," said I, "I have seen up your clothes, let me,--you are so nice, and I want you so badly; why should you not, he is no husband to you, and you such a nice woman." That was my artless beginning, or something like it. Fright at my impudence was struggling against my cock-stand. For a second she seemed speechless, then replied, "Well sir, you ought to be ashamed,--a married woman like me." "He is no husband to you, he never does it to you, you know,--I heard you tell the women so; they laughed, and said he had some hussy whom he did it to." "That's no business of yours, but he is a bad one," and she began crying again. "Now go sir go,--if he came home, he would murder me, if he found you here."

I don't know how the next came off, but I know I was kissing her, that I got my hand up her clothes, on to her cunt, that I pulled out my prick, that the struggling ceased, that I edged her to the bed-room, and that up against the bed she made a stand. "Oh! my God sir, I am a married woman, pray don't." Paying no heed, I got her clothes up and as she stood, was bending and trying to get my cock up her; but she was little, and I could not; it shoved up against her navel, and motte. That I suppose stirring her lust, overcame her, for she got on the bed, I got on her, and up her in a second.

I was in a bursting state of randiness, and she must have been the same. I was ready to spend, she readier; for I had no sooner entered her than her breath shortened, she clasped me tight, quivered and wriggled, and we both spent. I lay up her, cock ready for further work. Up to that time I had not properly felt her, nor seen her body. I began fumbling about, put my hand down feeling cautiously round the stem of my cock and my ballocks. All was wet, I slid my finger below her cunt (feeling even near to an arse-hole was then beyond me), there it felt wetter; that stimulated me, and on I went grinding. She lay with her eyes closed without speaking. Soon we both went again, I had fucked her twice without uncunting.

The quiet dreamy enjoyment had barely began, when she pushed me off and sat up saying, "What have I done? what have I done? I am a married woman!" Then comes tears, then a kiss from me, then talk, then tears, and at intervals she told me a story of a bad, brutal, morose husband, who had not fucked her for months. Half frightened, half hysterical, it seemed as much pleasure to her to tell me her misery, as it had been to have me doing her husband's work. We moved off the bed. "Oh! my God," said she, "look at the bed." I saw one wet patch as large as a tea-cup, and another as large as a crown at the spot where her bum had laid on the counterpaine. "What shall I do?" "Wash it." "But I have no other." It was a bore no doubt. I left without being able to get permission to see her again, but only tears, and an expression of her conviction that she was a wicked woman.

Although she had not asked me not to tell anyone, which women so often do who commit these little slips, I did not mention it to Henry. For three or four days afterwards she did not come to the factory. I went to her cottage. She was out. At length at the dinner-hour I met her face to face by the factory. She looked ready to drop. An hour afterwards seeing her burly husband at work, off to her house I went, and gave a single knock. She opened the door, nearly fell back with surprise, and before she could recover herself I was indoors. I had an altercation, a refusal, almost a fight, but I conquered. Again she was fucked on the bed, and now for the first time I had a look at her charms, her cunt unwashed.

She was a plump little woman, dark-haired on head and tail, her quim was neither large or small, her thighs round and white, she was an ordinary person, neither handsome nor plain, and my curiosity was soon satisfied. She kept exclaiming, "Oh! if he should come home!" I fell to work again with vigor, and soon again spent. As I got off I observed under her bum again a large wet place, but now on her chemise. "What a lot of spending you have done," said I. "I can't help it," said she. My experience was small, but I knew that from no other woman whom I had stroked, had such an effusion taken place. Before I had spent I had felt her wetness on my fingers. I had her on another occasion, and the same thing occurred. I notice this because I only recollect meeting one other such case since; Mrs. Smith, like the other to whom I refer, used after a few pushes up her to squeeze her cunt, shiver, and discharge quite copiously, to be followed with a second pleasure and discharge when I spent. I only reflected on Mrs. Smith's peculiarity some years afterwards.

In about a week I had her again at her cottage. Then she said if I came any more she would have trouble, for neighbors had already remarked a gentlemen at the house. I disregarded this, went and knocked. She opened the door cautiously with the chain up, and seeing me, shut it in my face. I was then about going to my own home, and feared I should not have her again, but found out that the husband spent his evenings at a tavern (I had a strange pleasure in looking at him after I had had his wife), that he was to be at some workman's carousal, watched him go to the public-house, then ran to his cottage, gave a single loud knock at the door, which was this time opened unsuspiciously, and in I pushed before she could scarcely see who it was.

I had difficulty in persuading her to let me, she was more timid than ever, but promised that I would never come again.

Then she got on to the bed. The crisis was just over when we heard a knock. With a shriek she pushed me off and got up. "He will murder me, he will murder me," said she. I stood blank with bewilderment, relieved by another knock and a voice crying "beer." She fell on the floor fainting, and so alarmed me, that I nearly called in the neighbours. I put a pillow under her head. I don't know what induced me, for not three minutes before I was frightened out of my life, but as she laid there close by the fire (at the knock we had rushed into the kitchen), I pulled up her clothes. The flickering of the fire showed her thighs and cunt in a strange light to me. As I pulled her legs asunder, I felt ashamed, but lust was strong. I looked at the cunt, the novelty of an insensible woman on the floor excited me, the next instant in spite of her, for she recovered just as I laid on her, my prick was up her, and my knuckles on the hard bit of dingy carpet, and as I grasped her bum, it seemed that my poke was most delicious. So much for novelty and imagination. I left immediately afterwards.

Then I went home to my mother. In about three weeks, went to see Henry, again as I said, but really to get to Mrs. Smith, and found her husband had been discharged. I went off to the cottage, it was empty. They had gone no one knew where, and he had half murdered his wife. I wondered if it had been about me. Then my conscience upbraided me with having committed adultery. I took to going to church more regularly, and repeated the commandments emphatically.

I was now approaching nineteen years, was at home doing nothing but study, and with scarcely a farthing of money. I tried to get into one of our servant's unsuccessfully, she was a plain lass, but had a cunt, which was all I wanted. I began to kiss and fondle her, which she submitted to demurely. Then by surprise one day got my hand up her clothes, and between her cunt-lips. She loudly screamed, which luckily was unheard, for my mother was out. Her cunt felt wet, and I found from my fingers afterwards that she was poorly built. She rushed downstairs crying violently, the next day gave warning and left, much to my relief. She never I am sure told my mother, but I was in a fright until she had left.

I restrained myself from frigging, although sorely tempted to do so, and luckily found cheaper and better relief. Having had but one gay woman, and having a dread of them, neverthless, my mind involuntarily turned to them, especially as I now defied my mother, stopped out of nights latish, and consequently saw more of them. But I had no money.

Between London and our suburb, there were some lengths of road bounded by fields, and only lighted by oil-lamps. At places small houses were being built in side-roads, which were altogether without light. Gay women of a poor class, were then of an evening about the darkest parts, or they used to walk where the roads were lighter. They were of that class who go with labouring men, and were not attractive, although cleaner and better-looking than the same class now is.

One evening I worried an aunt out of two pounds, which I had with a solitary shilling besides; and was returning, when a woman accosted me. She walked by my side and talked, but I could not afford a soverign, which was a much larger sum then than it now is, and a shilling seemed to me a ridiculous sum, so I determined to run, for fear I should be fool enough to let her have a soverign. "I can't," said, "good night, I only have a shilling." "Make it two," said she. "I have not got more." "Give it me then." I stopped in astonishment at the idea of her taking such a trifle. "She is going to take it and go off," thought I, for I had known such a thing, but I gave her the shilling and then stood still. "Well, are you not going to have it?" said she, "make haste." It was a dark night, but I saw from a white gleam that her clothes were up, felt where the nick was, and in much agitation thrust my tool up it.

Having a woman in the open up against a field fence, and without seeing her cunt, or even her face, was a novelty to me. For a long time I had been bottling up my sperm. All fear left me, and it seemed the most delicious fuck I ever had had. In a few pushes I spent, and kept my belly up against hers in silent delight, till I felt sperm trickling down over my balls. Telling me to take care of my shirt she drew her bum back. Scarcely recovered from my pleasure and still wondering how I had such pleasure with so poor a woman, I suppose I must have said something of the sort, for she remarked, "Why not? we are all made the same way, and if some of us had more cheek, we might have as good clothes as the best, but there are plenty of real gents glad enough to have us," and so we talked for a minute. I had not felt her and now longed to do so, but was too timid to ask her. She turned away. I had been wiping my cock with a silk pocket-handkerchief, to prevent any sperm getting on to my shirt. A happy idea came. "Let me feel you, and do it again and I will give you this silk handkerchief, for I have no more money." Laughing and saying, "I suppose it is silk," she accepted it. I think now of the exquisite delight, with which I felt the thighs and bum of that poor woman, who might for all I could see, have had the great, or the small pox, or have been as ugly as the devil; but I stroked her belly, twiddled her wet cunt-hair (she had pissed), plunged my fingers into her wet cunt, and at length spent again in it, with more delight, than I have had with some of the most dashing women since that time.

After funking about pox and clap, for a few days, out I sped one evening to try to get her again, delighted at the economical rate at which I found it now possible to have women. But I always was liberal, and gave her three or four shillings. Several times I had had her afterwards and never saw her face. At length I insisted on going when I could see her. She refused until tempted by an offer, then agreed to meet me at a place which she named; saying, "And I will put on a clean chemise and stockings." I met her, and found her to be about thirty-five years old, and one of the ugliest women I ever saw.

She was so plain that all desire left me. I looked her all over, to which she made no objection, remarking as she pulled up her clothes, "Ah, you may look, I am as clean as any woman although I am what I am." I went on looking at, and fiddling her about, but no erection came. She gave an uneasy motion with her bum and said, "Oh! you are tickling me so, why don't you get on?" I said I did not want it yet, which so astonished her, that she sat upright, and looked at me and at my tool. Then she made me lay down on the poor bed, and mutual feeling soon brought me to a proper state. "Don't you be quick or you will spoil me," said she. Her manner was quite different from what it had been on the high road, it was amorous. I forgot her ugliness, and fucking with all my heart, spent when her hard breathing, tightening cunt, and clasping arms, told me she enjoyed it also.

Then the miserable room, and her ugliness revolted me. I moved to get off, but she retained me, asking me to talk. Somewhat against my inclination I did. She laid hold of my prick, pinching it. The gentle pleasure returned, and it ended in my doing her again, as much to her delight as mine. She said so. Instead of feeling pleased, it made her seem to me ugly. I went away, and although I argued with myself, especially when I only had a shilling or two, yet I never could bring myself to have her again. When I saw her on the road, I went the other side of the way, and soon lost sight of her.

Finding that I had not suffered by my indiscretion, I got bolder, took the run of the road, and must have had a dozen girls at a shilling a tail. One night as I fumbled a girl, she frigged me vigorously. "I will do it this way," said she, "you will like it so." But I refused. "I will give you such pleasure," said she again, "all the gents say I do it better than any girl." But again I refused. "I am afraid my monthlies are just coming on," said she. But up I put it, and went home satisfied. Two or three mornings afterwards I felt a slight itching at the tip of my prick, but took no notice of it; the next morning piddling, to my horror I saw a little yellowish fluid oozing, and sat down in consternation. I had got a clap.

This laid me up for weeks, I went to a strange doctor and managed to keep it from my mother, but was in anxiety as to how I was to pay the doctor. Fortune and misfortune often follow each other. My long promised appointment came from the W... Office just as I was getting well. With overwhelming joy I saw some chance of a little money, beyond what I got by begging from relatives; and then also my mother, at the advice of an uncle, who pointed out that in a year and a half I could not be kept out of my property, allowed me a fair monthly stipend.

I now found out that women of a superior class, were to be had much cheaper, than my great friends used to talk of; but at the time I write of, a sovereign would get any woman, and ten shillings as nice a one as you needed. Two good furnished rooms near the Clubs, could be had by women for from fifteen to twenty shillings per week, a handsome silk dress for five or ten pounds, and other things in proportion. So cunt was a more reasonable article than it now is, and I got quite nice girls at from five to ten shillings a poke, and had several in their own rooms, but sometimes paying half-a-crown extra for a room elsewhere.

When with but little money, I used to take out my best silk handkerchiefs, and give them with money, and once or twice I gave nothing else. One night to a nice-looking girl I said I could give her nothing but a handkerchief. "All right," said she without a murmur. When I had fucked her, she laid still on the bed and before she washed her cunt examined the handkerchief very carefully. "It's a rare good new one, it will pop for half-a-crown where I am known, where did you prig it?" looking at me as she spoke, and then added, "Yet you look like a gentleman too." I recollect it as well as if it were yesterday. I at that time used to take pleasure in laying as long as I could after I had spent, then getting up and kneeling between the girl's legs opening her cunt and watching the spunk at the mouth, or the big drops rolling down between the cheeks of her bum. I was kneeling so then, and was not a little shocked at her remark. That girl was young, handsome, well made, and in the Hay-market would now get anything from one to five pounds, yet I had her several times for three and four shillings a time.





CHAPTER X.


     A big cunted one.--Sister Mary.--A wet dream.--Charlotte
     reappears.--Consequences.--My first child.--Cook Brown, and
     housemaid Harriet.--Masturbation and foolscap.--A deaf
     relative.--An uncomfortable pudendum.--A lacerated penis.--
     Sudden dismissals.

 Just at this time the following incident occurred. Going one Saturday night up Granby street, Waterloo road, then full of women who used to sit at the windows half naked; two or three together at times in the same room on the ground-floor, with the bed visible from the street, and which street I often walked in for the pleasure of looking at the women. A woman standing at a door seized my hand, asking me in, and at the same time pulling me quite violently into the little passage. I had barely seen her, and upon her saying, "Come and have me," replied that I had scarcely any money. "Never mind," said she, "we will have a fuck for all that." She shut the door, closed rapidly the outer wooden shutters, which all the ground-floor windows had in that street, and began to kiss me and feel my prick. I then saw she was half drunk. Quickly she pulled me towards the bed, threw herself on it, pulled up her clothes to her navel, and cried aloud, "Fuck me,--fuck me,--fuck me.--oh! how I want a fuck, make haste." She was a tall woman with dark hair on her cunt, neither very long nor thick. As I looked at it, I saw the inner lips hanging out a full inch, I put my finger, two, then three fingers up her cunt easily. It was enormous. It shocked me, having never seen such a cunt before I am quite sure. She meanwhile did nothing but jerk, and wriggle her arse about, shouting out, "Fuck me,--put your prick in,--fuck me,--fuck me."

The look of her thing, its size, and her manner so shocked me, that my prick refused its work, and I told her so. She jumped off of the bed, fell on her knees, and began sucking my prick violently, made it stiff in spite of me, got on to the bed again, and recommenced crying out for me to do it to her. With a feeling of disgust I got on her, slipped my prick up and began, but it felt nowhere. I could not make out that it was up a cunt at all, so loose was it. If it had been in a wet bladder, it could not have felt looser, and it shrunk up again to nothing. "I can't do it," said I in a fright, for her manner was so lewd, and became so ferocious, that it quite upset me. "What! a fine young man like you can't do it," said she. "No" (and as an apology), "I often can't do it." Again she got it stiff by sucking it. That quite disgusted me, but on to the bed and into her again I got. My doodle in a minute began to shrink, but whilst in her, she wriggled and jerked away so hard, that I think she must have got a pleasure, for she laid quiet for a time. I was very glad to get off; but was not to be let off so easy. "I will give you a pleasure," said she, "I can if anyone can," and although it disgusted me, for such a thing had never been done to me before, and I tried to stop her, she dropped upon her knees saying, "You will come to see me again I know, for a man can always do it one way or another," put my prick in her mouth and sucked and palated it. I was too young and too full not to feel it. Spite of myself I spent, and just as I did, grasping my balls with one hand and frigging the stem with the other, she drew back her mouth about two inches, kept it wide open, went on frigging, and the sperm squirted out into her mouth and on to her face; then she resumed sucking it until every drop was out of me.

That over, she rose and said, "You will come to me again, won't you? I will always do that to you, and anything else you like." I gave her a shilling and promised, but never felt so sick and disgusted with a woman before. Everything about the woman was repulsive. I have since met four or five woman with very large cunt-holes, but hers was the largest. I am perfectly certain I could have put my fist up it. I avoided the street for some months, which was a great loss to me, for I often used to go through it, to gloat on the charms of the women as they lolled out of the windows. When I thought of my prick being sucked, it used to disgust me awfully, and it was many years before I knew what pleasure it was to a man, at times; but it never has been done to me again, in the manner that woman did it.

Then I saw the woman in taking whose virtue I lost my own,--Charlotte.

Our cook married. A new cook and housemaid came, the latter a pretty dark-eyed girl of about eighteen years of age, named Mary. Directly I set eyes upon her I liked her, and thought I would try to get her. My clap and cheap pokes, had not made me much in love with gay women; whose free-and-easy ways somewhat shocked my timidity. Some time had elapsed since I had had any others, and my mind naturally reverted to the nice pokes I had had with servants. My chances were fewer than ever. One of my sisters was now frequently at home, Tom no longer needed a servant to be with him, and the housemaid was less frequently away from the kitchen. But I felt myself more a man, my good fortunes made me feel more sure of success, more prompt and determined in attack.

At first I watched her closely and thought I must have seen her before. A resemblance struck me, and I remarked to my mother, "How like that girl is to Charlotte, who lived with us." "She is her sister," said she. I was startled, for a feeling came over me that I ought not to try her.

But it brought my liason with Charlotte vividly to my recollection. The first meeting, the glimpse of her cunt as she got down from the cart, my first grope, our first poke, were now constantly before me; and I longed with all my heart to have her again, though I knew it was hopeless.

Gradually my mind centered itself on Mary, and as I saw the resemblance to her sister, I used to wonder how far the resemblance extended. Whether her haunches were as large, her thighs as round, her cunt so made, fringed, and dark, and so on; until I desired to have her, as much for her resemblance to Charlotte, as for herself. Yet I had fear and reluctance to make advances, because she was Charlotte's sister.

Meanwhile I was chaste, was in good health and wanted a woman awfully. Then I had a wet dream; dreamed I had Charlotte in my arms, that she ran away and left me with Mary, who pulled up her clothes, and invited me to fuck her. Before I could get in to her, I awakened, found that I was on my back and was spending on my night-gown.

I had heard much of these dreams, had had one partially, and now had experienced a complete one. It threw me into a state of irritation, but seemed to fix the hidden charms of Mary strongly in my imagination. Desire so carried me away, that from gently rubbing and titillating myself, I passed to frigging a discharge, whilst thinking of Mary's cunt.

In the morning I had the enervation I have always since felt after these dreams, and my usual disgust at having frigged myself; a feeling which was not allayed when I looked at my night-shirt. I had a dread of letting it be seen, but left things as they were. Mary and the cook made my bed, and must have seen it. Servants see funny things on beds often. I wonder what they say, and what they think about it. It can't be easy for a young woman to see sheets, and night-gowns, spunk-stained; without its effecting her imagination baudily, and paving the way for somebody to stain sheets and linen with herself.

I gave up all idea of attacking Mary, but "cock and cunt will try to get together." There is no use in resisting it. So again with no fixed intention, but simply from pleasure for the time being, and impelled by desire (all my silk handkerchiefs were gone and I was again without money), and by opportunity, I got to courting, and we soon kissed. I had pressed her belly against mine, got my hand on to the calf of her leg, and was on the high road to the snatch at her cunt, which my experience now told me was the right thing to do, when all came to an end.

I went daily to the W---- Office returning about half-past four. One day when about half-a-mile from home, a lady in black silk and with a dark veil approached me; but as if she had made a mistake, when close to me, turned on one side and passed on. I looked back and saw she was standing still, then on she went, and so did I, and had nearly forgotten her, when I heard quick footsteps in the rear, and some one saying, "Mister Walter, don't you know me?" I turned round, stopped and tried to see who it was, but the veil prevented it. She hesitated an instant, then lifted it, and I saw Charlotte.

With flushed face, bright eyes and a gentle smile, she looked exquisite. My heart beat tumultuously, my love returned in an instant. I put my arm round her, and regardless of the publicity of the place, gave a kiss. There was it is true scarcely anyone about, but she as well as me when I had done it, saw the impropriety. "Don't, for God's sake," said she, "what will people think?" "Let us walk," said I, and pulling her arm through mine, on we went; I looking into her face all the way, noticing how much the time which had passed had improved her, and overwhelming her with questions. I felt overjoyed, as if again I should possess her, and old times had returned. She for a few minutes seemed to give way to similar elation. Just then I saw a gentleman named Courtauld approaching, he was our next-door neighbour. We nodded as we passed, but the incident altered the current of our thoughts. I led her down a turning where there were scarcely any people, and saying, "I am so glad old Courtauld did not see me, for his brother lives just by us, and his old servant is often there and knows me." She relapsed into silence. I went on chatting of the happy times we had had, and the pleasures we had tasted together. She remarked, "Oh! pray don't talk of that any more, recollect I am married, let me say what I have come to say, and then I must go."

"To say to me?" said I. "Pray don't misunderstand me, I thought you would excuse it," said she getting confused, "besides it is my duty, and of course knowing what I do about you, I was so afraid of something." "What do you mean?" "Well if I had known where she was going to I would have made mother stop it, now I come at once to ask you not to hurt her." I proposed going into a small half-country ale-house close by, but she refused saying, that if seen to do so, and it became known to her husband, it might cause much harm. "Oh! no," said she in a hurry again, "I must go, I must get back, I came to ask you not to hurt her, promise you won't for my sake." All this time I was in a fog. "Who--who,--what do you mean?" said I. "Oh you know,--Mary, I mean Mary, she is my favorite sister, pray don't harm her." The whole affair was clear to me at once. "Is that what you came about?" I asked disappointed. "Yes, I have been coming for a fortnight, but could not make up my mind; her last letter made me determine at any risk to do so, and now dear, promise me not to hurt her, and I will go."

I was annoyed and wounded in vanity, for I had almost brought myself to think she had come for the pleasure of meeting me. I had no intention of quitting her so soon, felt as if I could not, so chaffed her, "What do you mean by hurting her?" "Don't talk nonsense, you know what I mean." "Another case of cock and cunt coming together." "If you talk like that, you insult me, and I did not think you would." "Well, I love you and would not like to hurt your feelings, what you really mean is, that I am not to try to do it to her." "Why of course, don't ruin her, that is what I mean."

We had walked without any intention on my part to the outskirts of our village, where the pew-opener's house was in which Charlotte and I had spent many an hour in love's frolics. The house was in sight, the hope of again having her came to my mind. In her excitement, which was as great if not greater than mine, she had not noticed where we were, until quite at the angle. The pew-opener was at the door, gave me a nod, and thinking it possible I might be coming in I suppose, left the door ajar. "Come in," said I. "Never! oh! no, you have brought me here purposely." I saw there would be difficulty. "Here is that old Courtauld's house-maid, damn her," said I. "Where,--where,--which way?" said she looking in alarm in all directions, but unable to see clearly through her veil. "There,--there," "just step inside the door till she has past." She stepped in quickly, the next instant I half pulled, half hustled her through the little door into the bed-room, slammed the door, locked it, and stood still, half afraid of my own boldness. She went to the window and began to peer through the blinds to see the old housemaid.

"I can't see her," said she, "she must have passed, tell me which way she went, and let me go." "Not yet. What do you want about Mary?" "Promise for my sake, you won't try to ruin her." "Well, let us have a longer talk, how do you know I want to do so?" "I know you do." "Sit down." "I cannot." "Then I won't promise, why should I?" "Oh! don't be a blackguard, don't oh! don't,--you shant have her, I will take care," and then she burst out crying.

I loved her so that I felt I would do anything to please her; but wanted her so much, that I could be cruel enough to do or say anything to have her again. Desire was the stronger. The sofa, the bed, the room, her beauty, all made me feel savage with lust, so I temporized. "I am so excited," said I, "I scarcely know what to say, what to do, tell me more, what you know, what you want, for all this stems so strange to me,--sit down." "No." "Sit down only while you tell me." "No." But I laid hold of her and pushed her on to the sofa, and there I held her, and after beseeching her to be quiet and kiss me, she did so. Then she sat for a minute, drying her tears, and began her tale and her request.

"Mary is my favourite sister, she lived with us for a year after I married, but mother wanted her and she went home. She grew tired of being at home, went to service, did not like it and went home again; again grew weary; and to my astonishment, the last time I went to see the old people, found she had gone to live with your mother. I was frightened for her sake, for I love her dearly." "Why frightened?" I asked. "Why frightened? don't I know you, do you think I have forgotten all?" "I never thought of doing her harm." "Perhaps not," she replied, "but I would not trust my sister near you, if she had the least liking for you, or you for her." I protested I was indifferent to her. "Why kiss her and squeeze her so?" I began denying it, and she stopped me saying vehemently, "Now don't tell stories, you never did to me, I know all, I know you do, you mean her harm, or if you don't, harm will come of it. Look, here is her letter," and she put it into my hands. To my astonishment I found Mary had told her sister all, mixed with warm encomiums of me. I was shut up, and could only say I meant no harm. "Perhaps! but harm must come of it. It nearly brought me to ruin, for I would have done anything, lived anyhow to keep near you; but I have escaped it. Poor Mary may not, for you are older now and may do more harm! she is a different temper from me, and in despair will go wrong altogether; so I pray you if you loved me, not to injure her for my sake. If she came to harm, I should break my heart," and she broke again into tears, getting up at the same time to go.

I pulled her back and kissed her tears away. "Charlotte, we cannot meet and part like this, I love you still, I have never ceased to love and think of you, oh! let me." I could say no more, for in my eyes then there was a sanctity about a married woman which stilled my tongue. "Oh! let me," was all I could say.

She understood what I wanted, and replied, "I am married and cannot, let me go." At my entreaties she kissed me freely, yet all the time struggled to get up.

I thought to myself, "You have had her. She loves you still. Think of the pleasure you have had with her. Here she is in your power, and cannot escape without a riot, which she will fear." Kissing her fiercely, stifling her voice with my mouth, "I must, I will have you again," I pulled her violently back on the sofa, and had my hand on her thighs in an instant.

"Oh! don't, for the love of God, think I am married, don't make me afraid of myself; oh! take care, you crush my bonnet, what shall I do, how shall I get home?" Holding her tight, I dragged the bonnet off her head, and recommenced. We made such a noise, that the old pew-opener knocked at the door and asked if anything was the matter.

"By God," said I, "either I will have you, or you shant go out of this house this night," and so I struggled on through tears and entreaties, threats, kissings and promises, till with broken voice her head sunk back, her struggles ceased, her legs opened, my hand slipped over her smooth thighs, and nestled in the warm moist slit it had so often toyed with in time gone by. It is nigh fifteen years since that delicious afternoon, but I recollect my sensations as I touched her cunt, as well as if it had been but yesterday.

Resistance had ceased, for a moment in silent enjoyment I laid with my fingers in their warm lodging, then too impatient to get to the bed, or take the full luxury of my fortune, I arranged her on the sofa as well as its size permitted, with her petticoats up in a heap, and with my trousers half unbuttoned, flung myself upon her, and entered the smooth channel in which I first had spent my virginity. Frantic with excitement, the pleasure came on ere I was in full up her. She, excited and loving, clutched me tightly in her arms, whilst her cunt and belly moved sympathetically. In too short a time we spent together.

My position was a fatiguing one, I was half on, half off the sofa; hers was but little less so, yet as long as our privates would keep together, we kept them so. I poured out my love to her, and joyed to hear from her that she loved me still. But our position could not last for ever; gradually I slipped off. My prolonged embrace, my sensuous imagination, and my love for her had told so upon me; that I was already contemplating the pleasure of another poke, a desire to see her charms came over me, I went on to my knees and had a glimpse between the open thighs, of the half open cunt, from which a love-drop was rolling. She pushed down her clothes, and sat up, looking at me, and blushing like the most modest of maidens.

It is extraordinary what objection so many women have to a man's looking closely at their cunts. A woman will stand naked, lay naked on her belly, or bum, stand with one leg on a chair, kneel with one leg on the bed, be looked at frontways, backways, sideways, and be pleased with the admiration. You may lay and kiss the outside, put your fingers up and probe it, rub your knuckles into it, tickle or frig it; but directly you want to pull the lips open, to see the hole which lays hidden by the hairy outer lips, to see where your prick is longing to hide its head; they object, put their thighs together, say, "No, it is not to be looked at." Or if angrily pressed, reluctantly half yield, throw themselves down, so as to put their back to the light, lifting one leg so as to hide the light, and using every manoeuvre to prevent you looking closely at it; and if you desire to look when it's laden with the efforts of your love, they will struggle to prevent you. Gay or modest, it is the same among the English; although a gay lady will yield to please her friend. With the French the objection is less, a French gay woman will pull open her cunt with her own hands, and let you pull open her arse-hole if you can and like it. I have known a few women of other nations and even of my own as free and easy, but the rule is as I say. This cannot be modesty. I rather imagine it results from a fear that some discharge will show itself, and sicken the man's appetite.

Up jumped Charlotte, and went into the adjoining room. I heard her splashing away a long time at her cunt, and went to her. I had no desire to wash away from my person, anything which had come from hers. She pushed me back. I had a glimpse of her, naked to her waist, washing something. She said, "My linen is in such a mess I have been obliged to wash it." She had found much spunk upon it, and washed it for fear of being found out. She put a petticoat over her neck to hide her charms, the chemise was so wet that it was almost impossible for her to put it on, and she did not know what to do.

"Good God, you will catch your death of cold." I rang the bell and gave it to the old woman to dry. "Now," said I, "you cannot go, it is of no use, I must have you again, and will see all your charms, I had you first, I have had you again, and again I will have you; don't be foolish, all harm is done."

Crying, entreating and saying she was married, I got her on to the bed, and stripping myself was soon folded in her arms. My prick was ready, she had struggled hard, now saw it was useless, and lay in all her beauty before me, her head on the pillow and her eyes closed, leaving me to work my will.

I saw her as leisurely as my throbbing prick would let me from head to foot, that she had grown stouter, taller, and was now a splendid woman. Her breasts were full and hard, her buttock large and solid, her thighs more rounded, the hair of her cunt thicker. Curiously I opened its lips and put my finger in, to see if marriage had made any difference, but was far too young and inexperienced to find it out, if there had been any. It seemed the dear old split which had so often given me pleasure before; that look and feel finished me, in another second my ballocks were bang-iny away against her bum, and she met my embraces with fervour which too soon came to an end. Repose followed, the luscious tongue-kisses ceased, our sighs stopped, and we fell asleep.

But not for long. The wet chemise was brought back. That off her mind into bed I got with her. The coach by which she now could go home did not leave until eight o'clock, hurry was of no use; with my finger in her quim, side by side, mouth to mouth, we laid and talked.

Her anxiety was about her sister, whom I swore I never would attempt. That settled her. She wanted to know all about me, that was soon told. I never mentioned Mary's name, although she asked after her. Then I was curious about her married life, how she got over her marriage night, how often he poked her, and so on. I got but little out of her, beyond that he had not discovered that she had been fucked before, and that he was a good husband to her; my other questions she said were disgraceful. I felt mad to think that another man should put his prick where my fingers then were, so I asked if she enjoyed it with him, whereupon she burst into a passionate flood of tears, and it closed with her saying, "Whether I love him or not, he is a good fellow to me, and if I am found out and disgraced it will serve me right." Would she meet me again? "Never, never, I love you still, but never again." It ended in another fuck.

And so it went on till the time for going. Never in my life up to that time had desire been so strong in me. When I knew she must go I insisted on again doing it, but could not come up to the scratch, until with a sharp frig it stiffened and again it was put up her. What a long hard poke it was, what a test of my manhood, how proud was I when with a sharp and sudden pleasure I felt my spunk squirting up her dear quim, and a spasmodic clutch, a sharp sob and "dear Walter," escaping from her told me she had spent with me.

She washed, I dressed, swearing I would never wash my prick again till I saw her. "I have poked you darling, five times," said I in triumph. It was the first time I think I ever had done so, but am not sure, and proud enough I felt. We soon relapsed into sadness and tears, and telling our love to each other, parted at the coach-stand.

I was mad again for her; had now money, and twice went down to the place to get a glimpse at her and failed, but saw her husband in the shop. We stared at each other. I wonder if he felt that I should have liked-to throttle him, for so I did. I wrote and got no reply. I pumped her sister, to see if I could learn where she walked or went, and got no information; indeed soon lost opportunity for suddenly her sister left us. Her father came to ask my mother to excuse her on account of his wife's illness, and she never came back. I have but little doubt it was only to get her away from our house, and that it was Charlotte's doings. I never saw Charlotte again, though I still may do so; but to this day I have an affection for her, and although she must be forty, should like to poke her.

Next year, one day my mother opened a letter, it was from the E------ family; and read aloud little scraps of it to me, and my sisters who were in the room. "That family is all doing very well," said she; "Mary who was with us but three months last year is married." She went on reading, "And Charlotte's husband has taken a large shop and is making money.--Ah! I am very glad of it, for she was a nice respectable girl. Oh! here,--and has just been confined with a fine boy.--I am very glad," said mother. I looked and found it was nine months after Tom's birthday, and that that day nine months some one had fucked Charlotte five times. I was delighted.

My appointment now made it needful to dine late, so we reverted to a six o'clock dinner. This neither suited the cook nor housemaid; both left, and two new servants came. I was about nineteen years old.

The cook whose name was Brown was clean, fat, and wholesome to look at, and I should say forty-five years old. She must have weighed sixteen stone. The width across her arse as I eyed it outside her dress, looked greater than that of Mary the cook; there was a roguish twinkle in her eye, which made her look like a good-tempered monthly nurse, her eyes were blue and her hair brown.

Harriet the housemaid was very tall, and very sallow, had jet-black hair and black eyes, with the expression of a serpent in them. She showed splendid teeth when she laughed, and then looked half cat, half hyena. She never looked you in the face long, was so quiet in her movements that the cat moved less noiselessly; she startled you by being close to you when you did not know she was near, and had a sneering laugh. After a day or two my mother remarked she did not like the pair, and was sorry she had engaged them.

Up to this time I had only poked two servants, Charlotte and Mary. Others had not been to my taste. With one I tried it on and failed, and when randy now could not help thinking of the couple in the house. I tried it on with Harriet, but she so snubbed me, that I set her down as an impregnable virgin. Then I turned my eyes to Brown, though it seemed absurd to think of such a fat middle-aged woman; but I one day chanced to see that she had a very fat pair of calves, and I knew she must have a big arse; and as fat legs had an irresistible attraction for me, I tried to see more of them, but without the thought of taking liberties with their owner.

I saw her legs again, from thinking of them and her rump, my mind naturally went to her cunt, which I pictured must be very thick-lipped and hairy like that of Sarah's, whose cunt had made a great impression on me. Her age then seemed to fade from my mind, and I used to follow her when going upstairs, trying to see her legs, and flattering myself she did not see what I was after, but she knew it as well as I did.

One day going upstairs she stumbled upon her dress, and as if to prevent doing it again, held it up, so as to show nearly to her knees. When she got on the top stair she turned round, and as if she had only just seen me, dropped her dress quickly. Another time she stooped and jutted out her bum, so that I saw a good deal up the clothes, whilst she pretended to be doing something to her boot. It seemed to me accidental, but it was all intentional.

Then my prick used to stand when I saw her. About nine o'clock one morning she came into the garden when I was there, and gathered some herbs. Her stooping posture gave me a cock-stand, and under its influence I joked her about her legs and my seeing them. She gave a suppressed laugh and saying, "Lawd! did you sir?" went down into the kitchen. What made me go down I do not know, but five minutes afterwards I did so; and just by the kitchen door, saw her with one leg on a chair, putting up her garter.

I stood stock still and silent. She adjusted one garter neatly, then put up her other leg, unrolled the garter, pulled up the stocking and put on the garter quite deliberately. I saw the flesh of her large thighs, for her garters were tied above the knees, and she pulled up her petticoats freely. Putting down her clothes she turned round, saw me, then with a grin said, "Lawd sir, how you startled me."

Bursting with randiness I lost all prudence. Mother, sister, Tom, and the other servant were about the house, but up to the cook I went, whispering, "I saw your legs, what jolly ones, what thighs, what a cunt you must have, let's have a feel," and got one hand up her clothes. She pushed me away saying, "Hish! here is missis." It was a lie, but it frightened me away.

The same evening I went downstairs after our dinner. The housemaid had been sent to the circulating library. Mother, sister and Tom were, as they usually were after dinner, when the weather was warm; sitting in the summer-house at the bottom of the garden. I usually sat with them, but slinked into the house, and down into the kitchen; which being underground was darkish, although then it was light until eight o'clock. Cook when she saw me, grinned and became familiar, for she was a regular old stager, and knew well, that when a man wanted to take liberties with her, she might safely take them with him. "What do you want?" "To feel your cunt," said I, "see your legs, feel that crummy rump of yours, cookey." "Then you won't," said she laughing, and lifting a heavy saucepan off the fire with both hands, she carried it towards the sink in the back kitchen. Randy and ready, I saw my opportunity; and as she neared the sink, thrust both hands up her clothes, grasped her arse, and was fumbling for her slit; when putting down the saucepan with a bang, she flung round, and hit me such a slap on the head as knocked me over, saying, "Why, you young devilskin, it would serve you right to tell your mother of your capers," and then she stood and laughed at me.

I persisted, kissed the old party, and told her how I wanted her, for indeed at that moment I would have fucked her, if she had been eighty. She repulsed me saying in a whisper, "Harriet is upstairs." "She is going out," said I. "Wait till she has, if she hears you, she will make mischief." As I felt this might be true, I desisted.

I went back to the garden thinking, and hoping mother and sister would not go indoors. When Harriet had gone oft, I went back into the garden parlour quite leisurely (for mother could see me do that), then down to the cook. It was nearly dark. In a minute I had pushed her up against the dresser, was groping her, and she was feeling my prick and ballocks with seemingly hearty enjoyment. She opened her legs to give me every facility. I attempted to get into her, but her clothes and big belly prevented me. She held my prick against her cunt, so that it pushed against her orifice, but did not go up it; and such was my state, that I spent against it. She kept hold of the prick, rubbing it, and gently squeezing it, until not a drop of sperm was left in it. Then for fear of being found out, upstairs I went again. The whole business, had not occupied five minutes.

I had once spent by accident in Mary's hand, and had fear lest it should disgust her. There was something about this affair, which seemed quite different. I could scarcely make out how, with a cunt close to my prick, I had spent as I had done. The next night came, I tried it on at the same hour with the same result. She not only let me feel her, but put my fingers to her cunt, at a place where she wished me to rub her, she meanwhile frigging away at my prick. But I wanted more than this, and just as it was too late, she let me put my prick in. At the first spurt of my spunk, she by a twist threw my prick out, and caught hold of it with her fingers, letting me spend over her thighs and linen, but squeezing and frigging at my doodle until it had shrunk thoroughly down.

For a month the same thing occasionally happened. She would let me finger, feel, rub her (in the nearly darkened kitchen), putting one leg on a chair, or stooping down, or any way to let me feel both inside and outside well. When I got my prick out, she immediately began to frig it. I used to have quiet rows with her, for not letting me put it into her; and when at length she did, I was always near spending; and do not think that more than once, I spent up her completely, so did she manage to throw me out just as my sperm began to flow. All was done standing up.

She treated me like some one she had known for years, did everything before me, talked both baudily, and beastly, called my balls, my cods, and used to say, "Hish! let me piss first." Then she would sit down on a pail in the back kitchen and piss, sometimes farting, and saying, "oh!" with a laugh, when she did so. She would belch without ceremony, blow her nose through her fingers, and I noticed she never washed her hands (whilst I was present at all events), when I had spent upon them. She would say, "How are your cods off for starch to-night?" She was complaisant enough in letting me feel, would turn her backside round and let me fumble about it anyhow, but although want made me do what I did, it never seemed quite pleasant to me, and I disliked her. I never got a glimpse of her belly or cunt. If the front-kitchen was not dark enough, she moved to the back, before we began our pranks, and scrupulously avoided light. Her cunt I felt was a large one, but so far from having the quantity of hair I expected, she seemed scarcely to have any. One thing she did which annoyed me. After feeling my cock, she would slide her hands under the balls to my arse-hole which she would press hard with her middle-finger, giving a "tchick" with her tongue, at the same time.

All this took place in about six weeks. "Hush!" said she one night, "some one is listening." I could hear nothing, but she whispered, "Go up to the garden." I did. It was dusk, and I thought I saw a figure enter the garden parlour, just as I got up the garden stairs. All were out but me and the two servants. Cook at the same time went up the kitchen-stairs, calling out loudly, "Harriet, is Master at home, do you know?"

A few days afterwards when at our fun, we stood in the door jamb; Harriet was at the top of the house. Said cook, "If I push you hard by the shoulders, go out into the garden at once, without saying a word." It was nearly dark. The kitchen garden-door was shut, but she opened it wide, before we went to work. I had my prick against her cunt, when a push came; off I went buttoning up, and after a time across the garden, into the parlor. Afterwards Harriet brought up lights, her eyes cast down as usual. The next day the cook whispered to me, "It was that bitch Harriet watching, I found her coming downstairs with her shoes off, saying she wanted a candle;--but I will be even with her."

I never had the cook but once after that. She would not let me. The two servants quarrelled so, that my mother threatened to dismiss both. When I tried it on with Brown, she said, "Why don't you ask Harriet, you young devilskin?" I told her there was no chance. She said she was quite sure that I should not be the first. Another day she repeated it saying, "I bet she will let you, the baker has had her I believe." Then she put me up to watching the baker with Harriet. The man came in the afternoon. Just when I returned one afternoon, I posted myself at the garden entrance-gate from the fore-court, from which door ajar, I could see the street-door. The baker after giving her a kiss, made a poke at her quim outside her clothes, which she returned by knocking a loaf against his trousers just by his tool, and laughing. This I told the cook, who said, "She will let you, if you try, young devilskin, she has seen you and your cods naked." "Seen me naked?" "Both of us have," and then she told me how.

Opposite my bed-room door at the end of the room, was a cheval-glass, between it and the door was my sponging bath, then a big tub. Any one looking through the key-hole could see me naked, when I was in it. I took the bath directly I was up, which was at about the time the servants went down. Many a time have I looked at myself naked in the glass, making my prick stand, to see how I looked in that condition. Both servants had seen me so. They had sometimes arranged the key so as to leave the hole clear. Never had it occurred to me that I should be so looked at, although I had often looked through a key-hole myself, at women. The cook made this clear to me, by standing in the tub and requesting me to look at her through the keyhole.

We arranged that I should bathe the next morning and suddenly open the door. "Pull your cods about well, and I warrant Harriet will look as long as she can," she said. I did so, heard the servants door carefully open, and then frigged my cock, till it was as stiff as a poker. Stepping out of the bath with a towel, as if to dry myself, I opened the door suddenly, and found Harriet just rising from a stooping position. She rushed downstairs but quietly for fear of awaking my mother. For all that I could not make up my mind to try Harriet, but tried to get Brown again. "No thank you, young devilskin," said she "not with that bitch of Harriet about."

Then I had a strange erotic fancy. Randy with abstinence and fearful of Harriet, I took to frigging and spending against a piece of paper pinned against the wall of my room, opposite to the glass, and when standing in the tub.

Autumn was coming. As I could not then get leave of absence, my mother with my sister from school, and little brother, went without me on a visit to my aunt in H--f--shire, leaving an old female relative who was very deaf, to take charge in her absence. Cautioning her especially to make me comfortable, and look sharp after the servants, she said that she could not bear them and would perhaps dismiss them on her return; for she had heard them using foul language to each other. I heard this.

Cook gave me unasked her opinion, that Harriet would let me sleep with her. Instigated by her, I asked Harriet how I looked naked. She did not reply, and went downstairs. I overheard them quarrelling. Afterwards I asked her before the cook. She did not know what I meant, she said. I then asked the cook if she had not been looking at me through the key-hole. Cook laughed saying, "He caught you, Harriet once, he caught you." "You are a liar," said Harriet. "Oh! if it comes to that," said cook, "we have both seen you naked a dozen times." There was a row interrupted by my deaf relative coming home. The same afternoon cook whispered to me, "Come to our room when we are both in bed."

That night with candle in my hand and in my nightshirt I crept stealthily into their room; both were awake, Harriet sat up in bed staring at me. When I entered cook asked me what I wanted. I replied, "To see as much of them as they had seen of me," and pulled up my night-gown to my waist. Cook laughed, Harriet said, "Now leave the room." "If you are a fool and make a row," said cook, "we shall be both sent off." Just then we did hear some sort of noise, cook sat up and listened. "It is nothing," said she, and with a grin laid down. I drew off my night-shirt, standing then naked, and Harriet laying down with a modest look; I felt encouraged, extinguished the light, and jumped into bed by the side of Harriet. The bed was so small I was obliged to hold on to her, to prevent myself falling out. She turned round her bum towards me and got close to the cook, which gave me more room; and for a minute we all three lay as close as three herrings in a barrel.

Darkness encourages baudiness. Harriet had tucked her clothes tight round her, but I could feel her bum outside, and there did not seem much of it. I tried to push my fingers between its cheeks, and there was much struggling and quiet complaining on her part, and joking on mine. Harriet appealed to the cook to help her, but she only chaffed and chuckled. At length putting my hand towards the bottom of the bed, I got hold of her night-gown end, gave it a pull, and it came clean up, the next moment my naked body met hers from her heels to her waist. She gave a howl, cook said, "I'll go into young devilskin's room, and leave you to take care of him," got up and went across to my room, and into my bed; and there was Harriet and I in bed alone.

She seemed furious, I felt her over, she was powerless, I dared her to call out, and at last in one of her writhings to escape my fingers, getting on her back; I rolled on to her and pinned her under me with my weight; but her legs were tightly closed, and so for a moment I laid my stiff prick between the shelving of her thighs, the tip just laying buried in the hair of her cunt.

"I can feel your cunt with my prick, I am on it, let me do it," said I, and struggled to force her limbs open with my knees.

"No," said she. Again I asked and got a request to get off. "Not if I lay here all night," said I. I did lay for some minutes, she complaining of my being heavy, and hot; I every minute trying to wriggle my prick between her legs, coaxing and kissing, and begging. "What made you think of coming here with both of us in bed?" said she at length. "Wanting you." "It's funny," said she, "and Mrs. ------ downstairs." "You know," said I, "that unless you bawl she cannot hear." At length I told her that if I did not do it inside, I must do it outside, and began shoving my prick up and down, which made her restless. She asked me if I would tell the cook. "No." Gradually her thighs opened, I slipped down between them, and felt my prick at the portals of her cunt.

The rest was quick enough. I felt my way through a mass of hair to a low-down slit, a hole which seemed tight, and as I guided my tool, fancied for an instant I was again going to have a virgin. I was mistaken, but the entry needed a hard, sharp, and painful push to me, and a comparatively easy passage followed. No sooner did I feel up, than all came to an end, spending copiously I sunk on her, long before the strokes could have told on her sensations, for in a savage voice she said, "Now, get off, I hope you are satisfied, and that beast Brown has got me as she thinks. Now, I suppose you are going."

I rolled off, but let her know I meant to stay. There seemed something odd about her which awakened my curiosity. The knob of my tool seemed to catch as it came out and hurt me, so I began feeling, which I had not done before, nor did she want much solicitation to feel me, and as she did so, it struck me she was not unaccustomed to the feel; but her cunt was a wonder, it was so small and tight on the outside. The feeling had a good effect, and in half-an-hour I got up her again. And what a difference! After a few thrusts she gripped me like a vice, she did not heave, but writhed and wriggled in a way which in my young experience I never had noticed before; she threw her long legs round me and with her equally long arms tried to feel my balls from behind. Then a certain feeling of constriction in her cunt seemed to hurt, but it brought me to the crisis just as with a last wriggle and sigh her limbs relaxed, and she became quiet. I laid for some time in her, but although gradually reducing, my prick did not come out. I attempted to withdraw it, and it seemed sore and as if something caught the knob and kept it back. At length out it came, and we both fell asleep.

Some one pushed me. It was the cook. "Now young devilskin," said she, "be off, or you will be found out." It was broad daylight. She pulled the clothes off us. I was on my back with my privates visible. There lay Harriet on her back also, with everything visible from her knees to her breasts, and I saw for the first time her black cunt-fringe. The cook grined and awakened her. Up she got, off I went to my room, and found my prepuce torn at the top, raw and all but bleeding.

When I saw them the next day Harriet was savage, for the cook was chaffing her. The next night I again turned the cook out and had Harriet. On the third night the cook was restive. "You may do what you like together, I shant take any notice of you," said she, "but I am not going to be turned out of my own bed." When I began to fumble about her, with the view to annoy her into leaving, she struck out right at my ballocks saying, "If you annoy me, I will soon settle you for the night," and it ended in Harriet coming into my bed-room.

I examined every part of her body much against her will, nor did she fail when she warmed under my overhauling to look at me. But a woman is soon satisfied, and when she has squeezed the balls, and looked at the tip, she has done. Some men--and I am one--are insatiable and could look at a cunt without taking their eyes off for a month. So I satisfied myself well, and at times afterwards,--for she was a peculiar, and an unpleasant woman in every way, one of the out-of-the-way ones not often met with, and one I never want to meet again.

She was quite five feet ten high, her face was sallow and nearly white, her eyes sloe black, but with the look of a dull serpent in them, her mouth large, long, and straight, teeth white and large, and the whole were shown when she laughed, and then she had half the look of a wild beast. Whenever she smiled baudily, her look was still more unpleasant; when thoroughly lewd, her eyes opened on you with a still worse stare; often just before she spent I have seen them, and they startled me.

Her hair was jet black and magnificent, it fell nearly to her waist; her shoulders were broad, but there was scarcely more breast than on a girl of fourteen, and seen sideways she looked more like a man than a woman. Her ribs you could count as she lay; she was very wide across her hips, but she had almost as little flesh on her buttocks, as on her shoulders; her belly was flat, and as she laid down seemed to fall in, and the sides rose to the two projecting hip-bones; in fact she seemed to want filling up all over, and yet she was not like a skeleton.

Her legs were thin, her thighs seemed closer than in other women's. I used to say when fucking her, "Open your thighs." "They are open," she'd reply, "they are the same as other women's." She had a huge conceit of herself, and if I said other women's seem to open more, used to reply, "What do you know about it?"

Her cunt was set in a quantity of longish black hair, strong but not very curly. I didn't much like the look of that. The slit quite hidden by the hair was long and the lips thin; of inner lips she had none, and the first idea as I pulled aside the hair was that the cunt was large; instead of that, low down, and near to her arse-hole was a hole not bigger than that of a girl's of ten years; you saw both holes quite close together. Her cunt was in fact a study. Something seemed to bar the passage; for about an inch further up it seemed smaller. The whole thing seemed out of proportion, yet I could not say how, or where that deformity was, with the experience I then had.

Her arse being so flat, her cunt-hole so low, and her thighs so close, my prick as it entered seemed to bend under in some way and hurt me; my tight prepuce was often torn rudely down, and frequently bled. When I probed her cunt with my finger it never seemed to have the soft buttery feel I had been accustomed to, but to be harsh; so I found it best to wet my prick copiously with spittle when I had her. Then off we used to go; she raising her long legs until her heels were above my buttocks, writhing and wriggling under me and finishing her pleasure with a sort of snort. Then my prick would be up her until quite small, when with pain at the knob, I pulled it out, making a sucking noise as it came away; nor do I think till pulled out, that any spunk left her, such a fit it was at the mouth.

I had much opportunity with her for a few weeks, and she took good care that she would have her fill of me. She took sleeping with me as a matter of course. I used to awaken and find her twiddling it up. If I went up to my room in the middle of the day and Mrs. ------ was out, she came up directly, and I had her, for I felt ashamed to say I did not want it. I am not sure, and at that time did not know much about the thing, and how little a woman really lascivious will stop at, but believe that in the night when I was asleep, she used to suck me up; for I have awakened and found her with her face upon my doodle kissing it. She asked me to kiss her black pussy, and now think she must have wanted me to lick it, but did not then see what she wanted. There was one thing I did with her which I had not done before, and which the flatness of her backside favored doing, fuck her from behind, both laying on our sides, and it became my favorite way. I used to go to sleep after my spend with my prick up her in that fashion; she with her long arm put between her thighs clutching by balls.

I was constantly at her, and more by her randiness than mine. The cook used to grin and say, "Well young devilskin, you seem jolly well knocked up," and made Harriet savage by saying, "Have a little mercy on him." The cook now took no notice of me, she was a coarse beast, would go to the servants' closet leaving the door wide open, and begin to talk with me as I passed; Harriet called her a beast one day for doing so.

I found that the cook after going to her room used to go down again. Harriet would let her out and she stayed out all night, Harriet letting her in in the morning. One night Harriet did the same, saying her mother was ill. I spoke to the cook about it; she said, "Her mother! pugh--she goes to see the baker." I began to feel very uncomfortable about these tricks in case it came to my mother's ears, and that I knew of them.

The cook asked me to look carefully at Harriet's belly, and explained to me that I should find certain marks of her having had a child, and to tell her (cook) if I did. I could not find them. "I am sure she has had one for all that," said cook. I never told Harriet what I had looked for. The cook one day said, "If you tell Harriet what we have done together I will split on you both and tell your mother. I don't care a dam for the place and am tired of service," so I held my tongue. Harriet always declared she was a virgin until she had me, and that the cook had had two or three children. I did not tell Brown that, for fear of a row between them. Another night that Harriet stopped out, the cook said, "You may come to me if you are frightened to sleep alone." I went. She undressed, pissed and farted; but seeing her fat form, into the bed I got. When I was stiff she said if I would tell all about my doings with Harriet I might poke her as I liked. I told her most that she asked me; but she threw my prick out just as I spent for all that.

Things were now uncomfortable, they quarreled so. One night I asked Harriet who was frigging me up, whether the baker did not do it enough to her. She dropped my tool, rushed across to the cook, said that she had been telling about her, and made such a row, that even my deaf relative was awakened, and came out of her bed-room asking from below if anything was the matter. I was on the landing when I saw the light and hopped across to my own room in a fright. Up came the old lady, the cook came out and said, "Harriet is very unwell Maam, can you give her a little brandy?" I had no fuck that night. The next night she began about the baker. I would answer nothing. She said, "If I have had him it's my affair; at all events it's an insult to a woman whom you never gave the slightest present to yet."

I was struck with that. My allowance was due, and I took her home some article of jewelry. She made me for the ensuing week fuck her till I was as dry as a bone, and my very arse-hole ached the last time I did it,--it was the day before my mother returned. She sat on the side of my bed and frigged me for a quarter of an hour before she got it stiff, saying that I did not seem to like her as I used to.

My mother and sister came back. I never got a poke for a fortnight. When mother returned nothing would get it out of her head, that I had not been out late of night; it never could be got out of her head that it was late at night that did the harm. Not being able to get Harriet now, I waited for her one night as she went to the library. As I got near a wall by our house, I saw a man and a woman standing close up against it together; the man went away directly I approached, and I saw Harriet. "There was a man with you?" said I. "Yes," said she, "it was the baker, whom you have heard such stories about, I am going to marry him." I pulled up her clothes, and to my surprise she resisted, for the first time saying, "I want to piddle," which she did, and then I had her. Her height made an uprighter easy, her quim did not seem to need so much wetting as usual.

A day or two after this event I came home, my deaf relative opened the door. Finding that she was laying the cloth, I asked, "Where is the servant?" My mother said, she had turned both the hussies away, and the people who gave their characters ought to be prosecuted. With heart beating I asked what was the matter. "It's not needful for you to know," she replied, "they are a bad couple." I saw at once I was not implicated, so asked no more, nor did I ever see them again; though about ten years after, I met in the streets a tall gaunt haggard woman who stared at me, and I think it was Harriet.

For some years this episode seemed a funny one, especially the cook's uncunting me just as I began to spend, but of course I know now why she did it, or fancy I do.

Her inciting me to get Harriet also astonished me, but I have since found girls anxious to get others into the same way as themselves. Many I am sure like doing that, and all girls who have been fucked illicitly like other girls to do the same.

Harriet was a lewd bitch. I never liked her, and her cunt always gave me pain as well as pleasure, but she was at hand, and so I got into her of course. I can't even now make out what was the matter with her cunt; for though she would let me look at it at times, she always hindered a quiet inspection, besides I could not at that time of life look at a cunt for a minute without my cock standing. Then I rushed it up the machine and had done for a time. I had seen one virginity, but that was but for a minute, for I pricked it directly. All I recollect afterwards was that it did not look as open as other cunts, I could not describe it. I did not care about virginities and never thought about them. I liked best a good, large, fat-lipped, hairy hole into which my prick glided easily. When Harriet said I took her virginity, somehow I felt sure she was lying, but had it been true I should not have noticed it, as far as my pleasure was concerned.





CHAPTER XI.


     Charwoman and daughter.--At a key-hole.--Cutting corns.--A
     shower and a barn.--A fat rumped Devonian.--Suggestive
     pictures.--A bum-hole offered.--Erotic madness.--Remorse.

 We could not get servants for some time. A middle-aged charwoman came to assist, and one of her daughters came from time to time, stopping generally the night. Their cottage was not far off, I had seen the girl from an infant, she was then about eighteen years old. I had often smiled when I met her, of course I smiled now. She was quite a slim little girl, there was nothing of her, but I was at an age when anything having a cunt attracted me.

Profiting by experience, I now used key-holes; fortune favored me, for some reason instead of one large bed, two small ones were put into the servant's room; between them a wash-stand and a chair on each side of it were nearly opposite the key-hole. How I chuckled at this, for unless the key-hole was covered, I could see nearly all one bed and both chairs and wash-stand. I saw the old woman wash and use the pot, put on her stockings and other things, the other bed was a little out of range. I could not so often see the girl, but did at times.

One evening the girl only stopped. So soon as I heard mother's door closed, out I went in my nightshirt, and through the key-hole saw the girl naked. She put the light on the floor, one leg on the chair, and with a small hand-glass looked at her quim, her bum was towards me. Not satisfied she turned round, sat down facing me, putting the candle on the floor and with legs so wide open as she could went on with her investigation. I had a reasonably good look at her, and her cunt. As said; she was nothing to look at, but I got in a fearfully excited state and made some noise at the door which alarmed her, for up she got and stood still listening. I went to my room, looking through the half-closed door, hers opened and out came her head. I nodded and back she went.

The next day she was going home, and as I now (although having rows with mother about it) went out when I liked, just before she left I went out and walked. It was dark. In two or three minutes out she came. After walking by her side for a time I asked her point blank how she liked the look of it last night. "What do you mean?" I told her all I had done. "Oh!" she said with intense surprise, "what a mean thing to do." I told her how one of our former servants used to look at me naked. After a minute she did not appear to be at all disconcerted at having been seen naked; from my description she could have had no doubt what ever that I had seen all. "What did you look at your quim for?" asked I. "Ah! that's my business; what did you look at me for?" "To see your cunt." Being at a dark part of the road I began kissing her, and got my fingers on to her belly. She made no row, but crossed her legs; and small and seemingly weak as she was, succeeded in preventing me feeling. I was out with her an hour, kissing, coaxing, attempting; I got my fingers and hand over her bum and belly, but not on to her slit. At each failure she laughed and said, "done again." I swore I would some day. "No you won't, you're not the first that has tried," said she, and I went home without having felt her quim properly.

I attempted it the next day and at every opportunity in the house and out of it, till new servants came. She felt my prick, would look at it, squeeze the balls, talk about fucking and baudiness to any extent, tell me what she had seen, and what she had heard about such matters. She at length scarcely resisted my feeling her bum, belly and legs, yet I never got my finger on to her slit, so as to feel the moisture; for she closed her little legs and wriggled, or got away from me somehow. Once or twice when I got a little rough, she set up a squeal, and I desisted. I offered her money. She replied, "No thank you, I am not going to spoil my chance that way." Our conversation used to begin by my saying, "How is your duff?" "Oh! nicely, thank you; how is your jock?" "All right and stiff, waiting for your duff." "Then it will wait a long time," and so on. It always ending in my trying to feel her, and getting no further. At length they left, new servants coming.

I frequently saw her afterwards, and always began the same game. My mother was told I had been seen talking to her, so after that I only spoke to her at dusk. Some time afterwards she married a gardener, and I occasionally saw her, but recognition came to a knowing nod and smile, which she always returned. Meanwhile I had got my fortune, as I shall tell; had no end of women, and had forgotten her, when walking across a field not far from our house, I overtook a short woman with a little child, and it was she. A shower came on, and we went into a barn, no one was in it. She told me I was said to be a "dreadful chap after the gals." "You know all about that now," said I. "Yes," she replied with a grin, and gradually talking baudier, we went on, until in a few minutes I had laid her down and fucked her on the hay. "I told you I would do it," said I. "But you didn't when you said you would,--now it won't matter." That was her notion. The rain continuing, she said she must go, whether wet or dry. Neither of us had an umbrella. She pulled her gown over her head, and saying, "You won't tell anyone, will you," took the child by the hand and was going, when my appetite came again. I pulled her back, and with little persuasion, again went up her. She enjoyed the fuck greatly. As I lay on the top of her we heard a bang, and the barn grew dark; a man was shutting the door. "Ulloh!" said he, "I didn't know any one was there; I hope I ain't disturbed you." We made no reply, but out we went. "You will have a boy out of this," said I. "I hope I shall," said she. That was the end of my adventure, for I never had her again, and she soon left the neighborhood. It was her own little child that was with her.

Though I have (as I shall in other cases) told all I had to do with her consecutively, yet between the time when she was in our house, and the time of meeting her at the barn, three or four years must have elapsed; and didn't we talk baudy in the barn before I got into her. That may have warmed her up, yet I believe she wanted me, as soon as she found herself alone with me. Her little child witnessed the business.

Just at this time or a little later, an adventure of a serious kind occurred to me.

The streets leading out of the Waterloo road were then occupied much by gay women. Some were absolutely full of them; they were mostly of a class to be had for a few shillings if they could not get more (my Granby street adventure has been already told), but many a swell I have noticed lingering about there. My mother now took nearly all my money for my board, but with the little remaining, I had a knock off occasionally. It was one of my pleasures to walk up those streets when dark and talk with the women at the windows, which were always open whatever the weather, unless some one as within engaged with the ladies.

Each woman had generally but one room, but two or three used to sit together in the front room in their chemises. There was the bed, wash-stand, chamberpot and all complete. Perhaps one lolled out of the window, showing her breasts, and if you gave such a one a shilling, she would stoop so that you could see right down past her belly to her knees, and have a glimpse of her cunt-fringe. Sometimes one would pull up her garter, or another sit down and piddle, or pretend to do so, or have recourse to other exciting devices when men peeped in.

I used to look in and long. Sometimes had a shilling peep, and then bashfully asked for a feel of the cunt for it. I so often succeeded, that ever since then I wanted that amusement, have offered a shilling for a feel, and met with but few refusals in any part of London. Sometimes it ended in a fuck. Once or twice to my astonishment they took mere trifles, and as I think of it, there is wonderfully little difference between the woman you have for five shillings, and the one you pay five pounds, excepting in the silk, linen, and manners.

One night I saw a woman with very fat breasts looking out of the window (I was then fond of stout women); and after talking a minute, asked her if she would let me feel her cunt for a shilling. "Yes," said she. In I went, down she shut the window, and in another minute I was groping her. She did not let me feel her long. I had not felt such a bum since Mary's (already told of), and it so wetted my appetite, that I struck a bargain for a fuck. She was soon stripped, and all I now recollect about her is, that her cunt was large and covered with hair of a brownish colour; that her eyes were dark; and that she seemed full twenty-five years of age. I fucked her on a sofa.

When I had buttoned up she produced a book full of baudy pictures of which I then had seen but few; and I went a second time to see the book, rather than her. Looking over it, she pointed out to me with a laugh, several pictures of men putting their pricks into women's arse-holes, and into the rumps of other men. Having never before seen such pictures, and having no idea of the operation, I felt modest, and turned to others; but she so regularly as we turned over the leaves pointed out this class, that my sense of shame gave way to curiosity; and not believing, asked if it was possible to do it so. "Lord yes," said she. "Does it not hurt?" said I. "Not if properly done," she replied, and went on to say it was delicious some men thought; and she talked altogether in a very knowing way about it; told me how it was best to grease the hole first, then the prick, and to shove gently, and went on so, that I said on a sudden, "Why, you have done it, I think." "Yes, but only with a particular friend of mine who is very fond of it,--and so am I; it is better than the other."

I felt shocked, bewildered, and excited. The subject dropped, but she sat feeling me, slipping her finger under my balls, and pressing my arse-hole with her finger. I prepared to fuck. She suggested she should kneel with her buttocks towards me, so that she could feel my balls when my prick was up her. I assented, and her bum-cheeks were presented to me. Excited by her conversation and her hints, I looked curiously at her large slit, and then at her bum-hole; I touched the latter, and she drove her bum back upon my finger with a laugh. I did not take her hint, but drove my prick into her quim and pushed in the regular fashion. Thinking of the pictures excited me and without knowing what I said, I suddenly pulled it out saying, "Let me put it into the other." "Not tonight," said she, "put your thumb a little way in, your nail is quite short" (she had noticed that I used to bite my thumbnails short). I instantly did, the next moment spent, and dropped over her back, waiting for the last drop of sperm to run off into her.

Her hints, her pictures, of which she had actually scores, stirred my curiosity, her manner disgusted me, yet my brain seemed affected. Is it possible, thought I, that a man's prick can go in there?--impossible. And yet she says she has had it done to her, and my thumb went in easily enough. The more I thought, and the more I reflected how a hard turd hurt me sometimes in passing it, the more I was puzzled about the intense pleasure which she said the operation gave! To solve my doubts (although I had determined not), I went to her again, and saw the pictures. She again talked about them, until scarcely knowing what I was doing, "Will you let me?" I asked. "Don't talk loud," said she, "it will never do to let any one know what we are at." Our voices dropped to a whisper, whilst by her advice I pulled off trousers and drawers, and she stripped stark naked.

Then she carefully greased my prick with pomatum, and put some on her arse-hole; it was the work of a minute, not a word was said. She then stark naked, sat by the side of me on the sofa, began fondling and kissing me, took my hand in hers and rubbed my fingers on her clitoris, half frigged herself with my fingers, I let her do what she liked. Then she turned round. "Put it in," she said when her rump was towards me, "then give me your hand, and don't push till I tell you." Her arse-hole was at the level of my prick as I stood by the side of the sofa, my machine was like a rod of iron, my brains seemed on fire, I felt I was going to do something wrong, dreaded it, yet determined to do it. "Put it in, slowly," said she in a whisper. The hole opened, felt tight, but to my astonishment almost directly my whole prick was hidden in it without pain to me or any difficulty. "Give me your hand." I did. Again she began frigging herself with my fingers. "Rub, rub, push gently," she said, and I tried, but was getting past myself. "Now," said she with a spasmodic sort of half cry, half grunt. I felt my prick squeezed as in a vice, I shoved or rather scarcely began to do so when I discharged a week's reserve up her rectum. My brain whirled with excitement, whilst she leaning over the pillows on the sofa, kept breathing hard and half snorting like a pig, still frigging herself with my fingers.

As my sense returned, I could scarcely believe where my prick was, excitement still kept it stiff, but desire had left me. I pulled it out with an indescribable horror of myself.

"Wasn't it delicious?" said she. "I like it, don't you? You may always do it so." What I replied I know not; I washed, dressed and got out of the house as soon as I could. When in the street, I was sick. I ran off fearing some one would see me, got into a Hackney-coach and drove in the wrong direction; then got out and went a round-about way home, fearing some one was following to upbraid or expose me. I scarcely slept that night for horror of myself, never went up the street again for years, and never passed its end without shuddering, have no recollection of having had pleasure, or of any sensation whatever; all was dread to me. And so ended that debauch; one I was deliberately let into by that woman, having never thought of such doings before as possible, or at all, as far as I can recollect.





CHAPTER XII.


     Sarah and Susan.--At the key-hole.--A village fair.--Up
     against a wall.--An unknown woman.--Clapped again.--My deaf
     relative.--Some weeks felicity.--Sarah's secret.--Susan's
     history.--Sarah with child.--Amidst black-berries.--
     Susan's virginity.--Susan with child.--Sisters'
     disclosures.--A row.--A child born.--Emigration.

 I had now passed my twentieth year. The new servants were sisters (how many times have sisters fallen to me!); the eldest who was cook was named Sarah; the youngest, Susan. Sarah was about twenty-six, Susan nineteen or twenty. I carefully arranged the key in the key-hole of their door the first night, but saw nothing for two or three nights. Then oh! fortune again. They rose later than my mother liked; she came up to their room one morning and found them locked in, so she took away the key. Now I had as far as the key-hole permitted, a fair field, but then clothes hanging upon pegs on the door were often in my way; yet I was so persistent in looking when they went to bed, and arose, that I saw a great deal. How cunning I had got; I had filed and oiled the lock and hinges of my door and theirs, so that I could close and open them noiselessly, used to stoop daily with my eye to their key-hole, stepping from my room with naked feet. I was nearly caught several times, but never quite. It now seems wonderful that I was not.

I was so demure and quiet in talk about women always, and had kept myself so circumspectly, that my mother never had the least suspicion of me,--but in all matters of love and intrigue, mother always seemed to me as innocent as the babe unborn.

For all that, my mother just then, and to my dismay, seeing that my little games would be much interfered with, said I better change my room, and have one on the first floor. Mrs. ------ had remarked, that being a man now I ought not to sleep on the servants' floor. "As you please,--it's one flight of stairs less for me, but Mrs. ------ is a fool," I cried. "And which room?" "Your sister's. Annie will always be with her aunt adopted, and Jane is only at home in the holidays." But I would not be pushed into a small room; where was my tub to stand? Where my books? I must have the spare room. There was much altercation, I made my mother cry by saying that when of age I would get chambers away from her, and into the spare room I moved.

It was next to my mother's. Installed there I did nothing but complain of its inconvenience. I smoked incessantly in it. The smell got into mother's bedroom, and she could not bear tobacco smoke. I made a noise when she was in bed,--that annoyed her. I did all in a quiet way to make her as uncomfortable as possible. An uncle and aunt who stopped with us when in town, just then came from the country; and not liking my sister's room, went to an hotel, which wounded mother considerably, so she said I had better go upstairs again. I refused point blank; being down there I would remain, and so managed, that she thought I went back as a favour to her, and much against my will; but was I not glad!--and got to my spying immediately.

Within a month I had seen them both stark naked, for being sisters they had not hesitated to strip. I had seen the cook piddle, wash her cunt, and put on her napkin. Susan's bed was not on the right side for me, but nevertheless I saw enough of her to compare her with her sister. Sarah was demure in manner, stout, with a splendid bum, and with little hair of a lightish brown at the bottom of her belly; she wore black stockings of which I then had a horror. Susan had a wicked, merry face, and a splendid bunch of dark hair on her motte which attracted me largely. It struck me that I should have a better chance with her than with her sister, and began making approaches; when one Saturday night seeing Sarah wash herself from head to foot, I got such glimpses of her round fine haunches, and the split between them, that I fell into a fit of randy adoration, which settled the direction of my attentions to her instead of Susan.

I feared to go on with either, because they were sisters, but lust got the better of my fears. I began kissing cook Sarah; who returned it saying, she would not have her sister know it on any account. Shortly after I kissed Susan, who made nearly the same remark; and I found that each was careful not to tell the other; which was just what had occurred with two sisters, of whom I have already written. This was very jolly. Meanwhile I once or twice had a cheap poke on the road, but always with fear of disease.

I had but little chance of the cook having now no pretext for going into the kitchen, and the sisters were not much separated; but I looked up my chances indefatigably, and finding Sunday favorable, to the horror of my mother, left off going to church in the morning because the cook was then alone. After our early Sunday dinner, I used to go to my bed-room nominally to lay down, but really to look through the key-hole at the cook who on that day only, dressed and washed herself in the middle of the day, her sister being downstairs. I got on but slowly; in two months only having taken outside liberties; till meeting Susan coming away from the privy one day, I saw her press her clothes against her belly to dry her cunt, and she saw me. Whenever I met her afterwards I used to tuck my frock-coat between my legs and smile at her. It was an old dodge.

I had then bought a Fanny Hill which I kept in my bed-room locked up. One morning I forgot to put it by, thought of it and rushed upstairs, entered the room where the servants had been making the bed, and saw Sarah intently looking at the book. I had feared that my mother had entered my room, and seen the book. I stood for an instant motionless, she turned round, gave a cry, dropped the book, and rushed out of the room, her face like blood. I locked the book up feeling somewhat uneasy, but afterwards joked her about it and the smutty pictures, and this took effect.

There was a fair held not far from us at that time, the girls were to go there each on separate evenings. Before Sarah went out, I went out, she had agreed to meet me at the fair; it was dusk, she had a female friend with her. We went into a dancing booth and had drink, then into the long room of stalls in which was a dance mob, shouting, crying, pushing each other, scratching backs, blowing trumpets, and speaking baudily to the women. As it got later, the men used to feel outside the women's cunts, and many a so-called modest girl felt a man's prick outside, and passing in the mob without being found out. Many a grab have I had at my prick which could only have been done by a woman, who looked quite demure whilst she did it. I got excited, put Sarah in front of me, and in the first rush, put my hand round and gave her cunt outside her clothes a grab. She upbraided me, rushing out of the crowd at the side to escape me, I after her, into a dark passage, between the backs of the booths, where men were pissing. They hailed her with laughter, asking her if she had come to piddle. Back into the crowd she rushed, I with her, and did the same thing, talking baudily, and kept this up until it was time for her to go home.

I said I should walk home with her. The village-road had but occasional oil-lamps; at places it was quite dark, loving couples were walking or turning off into dark bye-places by hedges and fences to satisfy their amatory wants. This I pointed out to her, and talked of the prints she had seen in Fanny Hill that morning. Altogether she had gone through enough that day and night to make a female randy. Suddenly a girl in the dark squealed, and a masculine voice in the dark shouted up, "That's right, shove your prick well up her, old boy." I tried it on with Sarah on the way home, but it was no go. I felt her bum and thighs, got her hand on to my prick, but she would not let me have her.

Next night I was at the fair, and met her sister Susan there by chance. I got excited and tried the same dodge with her, she had also a female friend with her. I pressed their bellies and pinched their bums when in the crowd; her friend went off with her young man, then I had Susan alone and tried pushing my hand against her belly, more than ever; she took no notice. Her friend and we then met again face to face in the mob. I had an impression that a feel at my balls must have come from her friend. We all went to a public-house and had drink; there suddenly she bid me good-bye, saying it was late, and she must get home, set off running and was out of sight in a minute.

I had no intention of going home, but after thinking an instant ran after her, saw a woman squatting who got up as I neared her; it was she. "You have been piddling," said I. There was some joking on this. The same sort of couples were to be seen cuddling about as on the previous night; the same whispering, squealing ad scuffling a little way off in the dark lanes. She was more frisky than her sister, and more talkative. "Ain't they larking!" said she as a girl gave a half giggle, half cry in the dark. Said I, "They are fucking." She stood stock still for a minute, and then walked on quietly without saying another word. I had not before said a baudy word to her.

Having got the word fuck out, I was game for anything, rattled on baudily; at last after a long silence, something I said made her laugh. I began kissing her, at length she returned it, and next instant I thrust her up against a wall, pushed my hand up her clothes, and my fingers on to her slit, which was as wet as a slop-pail. She cried, "Oh! you vagabond," got my hand away, took to her Heels, and ran off. I after her, till we both stopped breathless.

I tried again, her resistance grew feebler, she was silent, I had her against a wall, one hand holding her cunt, with the other I was guiding my prick to it, it was sliding in, in an instant it would have been up her, when putting down both hands she pushed it away saying, "Oh! gracious God, what am I about again," ran off, and never stopped until she had rang our house-bell.

I went back to the fair and later on met outside it a very short girl, who seemed too respectable to be by herself and had her veil down. I spoke with her, found she was going my way, and walked with her. She knew my name, and where I lived. Two nights scrambling had not got me a poke, that I suppose made me bold enough to make advances to this modest, quiet girl; I stole a kiss, then another, then a hug, then a feel, and finally with scarcely any hindrance fucked her. We walked and talked when it was over, she would not tell me her name or address, nor give me a glimpse of her face; I fucked her again up against our own garden-wall, insisted on knowing where she lived, said I would walk till I saw, and did walk with her for about an hour. She said, "If you walk about all night you shall never know where I live, but you may do it again if you like, or I will meet you to-morrow, but I dare not let you see where I go." I feared I could not poke again, so stopped to piss. She modestly walked on a little; I frigged my prick until the steam was up, then in her well moistened cunt consummated, and parted, promising to meet her the next night.

I looked at Sarah and Susan the next morning, took opportunity of reminding each of them that I had felt their cunts, bragged to each, that a young lady who lived close by had let me do it to her. The next night came, the unknown girl did not keep her appointment, and the following morning found I had the clap. I never saw or heard of her again, nor know who the young lady who gave it to me. She was not a common domestic, I am sure.

This stopped me for a month, but the time was not all lost, for I indulged in baudy talk, and familiarized both servants with it, and the fact that they had felt me, and I them. The eldest used to look uncomfortable, Susan used to brazen it out with a bright roguish eye, that I then almost turned to her, especially as Sarah still wore black stockings; but then Sarah had such fat white thighs, and a larger bum.

When better and I was again alone with Sarah on a Sunday morning, I got her on to a chair, pulled up her clothes all round, exposed her legs, showed her my prick, showed her the pictures in Fanny Hill, got her excited, but did nothing more. Another Sunday I tried it on unsuccessfully. The third Sunday going upstairs just after mother and Tom had gone to church, she said she was not going to be worried with me, and Susan would be at home. Susan had not I found gone to church as usual. Baulked, I was going out, but catching her in the hall, tried to pull up her clothes. She cried, "For God's sake don't, I would not let Susan hear for the world." This confirmed me in what I had felt nearly certain of; the sisters did not tell each other of my games. I heard Susan say to her sister who had gone to the top of the house, "I shan't lose my outing, there is nothing the matter with you," and out she went. The next minute down came Sarah; I stopped her on the landing, by my mother's room.

"Now don't," she began in a coaxing way, but I had not spent for weeks, and as I looked into her bright eyes and flushed face, meant that day to do so if I could. She must herself have wanted it, there was such a soft look about her. My reply was to try to pull up her clothes. We struggled, pushed against the door of mother's bed-room, and we staggered into the room together. Nothing could have been more favorable. I got her up against the bed, her clothes up, my prick against her belly, and there for a minute we struggled.

Opposite my mother's was a small low sort of bedstead called a child's, I don't know why. It was covered with a large skin on a mattress. Mother used it as a sofa. My prick was actually up against Sarah's belly, my balls nestling in the hair of her cunt, my hands tightly round her bum, but her legs were so close together, that I could not get into her; I put one hand down to open the road to her cunt, but could not manage it, though her resistance was growing less. She ceased praying me to leave off, but tried by putting her hands down, to dislodge me from her belly, withdrawing her hands as they touched my prick. The blinds were down, no one but us in the house, I saw the child's bed, pulled her towards it, I going backwards. We fell on it together, she more than half on the top of me; another struggle, and her petticoats were flung up as I rolled her round on to her back. She tried to pull them down, bringing her knees half up to meet them; I saw her buttocks beneath and recklessly pushing with my hand, a finger went half-way up her cunt. Down went her legs quite straight, the next instant I was on the top of her.

I weighted her down, she lay panting. "Now do Sarah dear, be quiet." She said not a word, nor looked at me. I pressed my knees, and with difficulty opened her thighs, and we were belly to belly; with one or two vigorous shoves, in went my prick without difficulty and spending as it entered. So did abstinence, desire, and excitement tell on me. It has often behaved in the same way.

I was now at a time of life when I could do more fucking, and after long abstinence if I liked a woman, could sometimes do it twice before withdrawing. The first words she uttered were, "Oh! let me go downstairs, the dinner will be spoiled." But what did that matter to a man whose prick was stiff up a cunt! So I waited my second enjoyment; and if I know anything about the matter, you my dear Sarah, brought your liquor out to mix with mine.

Scarcely was my prick out of her, before the street bell rang; downstairs she ran, I went upstairs. I recollect how wet my hair and my balls were as I ran, wrapping them up. It was her sister. Directly afterwards home came mother. Dinner was served, what a row there was, the meat was not done, the vegetables smashed. "It is disgraceful," said mother, "has she been upstairs Walter?" How queer I felt at that question, and wonder my confusion was not noticed. I said I did not know. "I will be bound she has," said mother, "and been trying on her finery before going out to-night, Sundays and dress are the ruin of servants now-a-days." "I have been out," said I to mother. "You would have done yourself more good had you been to church," said she.

After dinner mother went up to her bed-room as was her custom, to doze on the small bed; the next minute her bell rang violently. "Send up Sarah," said she angrily to Susan, and up she went, I went into the hall listening in a funk. "Why don't you keep my bed-room door closed?" said she, "as I tell you." "I am almost sure it was closed when I went out." "Have you been in here?" "No m'am," stammered the poor woman, "the nasty cat has been up here on this bed (luckily the cat had done that once before), and been scratching up the skins." "You must have opened the door,--and oh! the beast has made some mess upon it." Mother told Sarah to wipe up the place, it was only marks of what Sarah's overflowing cunt and my prick had dropped in our hurry. A little more blowing up, and mothers' anger was over. Sarah came down, looking more dead than alive, when I saw her in the hall.

In the evening Sarah went out, and I to church,--so mother thought,--but in reality to meet Sarah. For an hour we walked about, then as it grew dark began kissing. What a difference the morning had made. No resistance now, my hand roved over the smooth bum and belly, a slight objection on the part of the thighs as my hand touched the hairy covering, but for an instant only, then as of a right the fingers felt the moist lapels, which were soon opened by my prick, as I fucked her up against the wall of the garden, at the very spot where some weeks previously I had fucked the unknown lady, and caught the clap.

Good and bad luck come in heaps. I was now in for the good. Next Sunday and others afterwards, we had a nice half-hour on her bed, or my bed, or on the sofa in the parlour; but we left no signs of the cat anywhere.

My mother then went on a long visit to my aunt in H--tf--dshire, wanted me to go, but I could not get away, so she took my sister from my aunt's and Tom, and to my delight took Susan. Sarah was left as servant, the deaf female relative came again to take charge of the house, and we three were alone in it. My mother's last words were, "Give as little trouble as you can, and I hope Walter, you will keep out of bad society, and not be out late." I was mostly to dine with my guardian's executor, an old family friend.

That night and for several weeks, Sarah and I slept together, it was a honey-moon. My old relative, deaf and timid, used to lock her door; I used to go across to Sarah's and lock it, mother having put back the key. We had fear of being found out, but not much. In those weeks we gave way so to our passions, that we were worn out. I taught her all I knew; she was willing, docile, and did all I told her: love's amusements in every variety which I then knew of did we try; never had I had such continuous fucking. The first thing mother on her return noticed, was that I was pale, and then great was her astonishment when told by my old deaf relative, that I had scarcely been out one night after seven o'clock, and up early most days; so my mother put it down to close attention to my studies, for I was preparing.

I told Sarah in confidence I had had a virgin, and that there had been difficulty with her, but none in getting into Sarah. She swore by all that was solemn that she never had had a man, that although she had been kissed and tried, no man had put his hands on her naked thighs until I had. From what she had heard of girl's virginities, she thought she must have been different from them; she could always easily put a finger up her cunt, and I believed her. She spent the second time I did it to her.

Talking excitedly about her virginity and her not having bled when first pierced, she remarked, "Susan told me that when she--" Then she stopped and turned the conversation, but my curiosity was whetted. I pressed her to tell more, she got confused, said it was her cousin Susan, would not go on to say what Susan had said, at last refused to say more. I did not forget it, and one night as I lay kissing her and fingering her clitoris, she told me under promise of the greatest secrecy, that her sister Susan bled when her young man first put it up her, and with this, that Susan had been seduced and had a child; so her father had sent her to service in London, and the better to get her taken care of, had arranged that her sister Sarah should always take service in the same house with her; hence at my mothers. "And, oh!" she concluded, "if Susan or father should ever know what I have done, I should die." The family trusted her.

This accounted for the somewhat forward manner of Susan, for her exclamation when I got up against her belly on the night of the fair, "Gracious God, what am I about again!" Sarah believed Susan could have had no one else but her first sweetheart, and that was more than a year before. All this set me thinking, and more than once when twiddling Sarah's cunt, I thought of Susan's with the thicker and darker hair, and wondered in what other respects it differed from that of her sister.

Now came trouble. Sarah said she was two months gone with child; she had kept it to herself hoping her courses might come on. She got with child she thought the first day I fucked her. We were both in great anxiety, but did nothing to help it. Sunday morning usually passed this way. Directly they had all gone to church, up came Sarah to mother's room or into the garden parlour, there I looked at her belly to see if it was bigger, then she had a crying fit, then we fucked, then she went down to see after the meat roasting, then generally we had another fuck, and all was over for that day; for my prick usually came out of her not long before Susan rang the bell to be let in.

At length her state began to show, her mother just then was very ill and wrote to her, she made this an excuse for asking to go home, intending to try when there to get rid of her encumbrance. My mother with great objection let her go, for she liked her. For one or two weeks before she left someone or other had stopped at home on Sundays, so I was balked in getting at her, and only did it once to her in nearly a month. I gave her what money I could to help her; a charwoman came to work in her absence; it was arranged that her sister should do most of her work as well as her own, as far as she could.

My mind reverted to what Sarah had told me about her sister. Would she not like a doodle up her again, how she must long for a man I used to think. She nearly let me coming from the fair, what if I tried again. Then I thought how wrong it was, seeing what I had done to her sister. But back again the desire came, I grew randier. "I won't try her on account of her sister," thought I, "but there will be no harm in larking with her."

So I began and reminded her of the night of the fair, told her I knew that the hair of her motte was dark, by degrees got her to kiss me, to leave off chaffing her, felt her outside, but went no further. About the fourth day after her sister had left, I got my hands on her thigh. On Sunday when all were at church: to blind my mother I had gone out, but went home directly, and into the kitchen to resume my baudy chaff, I forgot all about her sister, got to kissing and trying to feel her. I was long in the kitchen with my prick out, sometimes hanging, sometimes standing stiff, trying to induce her to let me, but it was of no use. Her cap was off, her hair dishevelled. I had got her clothes once up to her hips, had seen her motte, felt it, got my prick up against it, knocked it about all over her belly, but no more; time was short, and at last with a sort of guilty fear I went out before church was over, and came back in time for our early dinner, telling my mother I had been to ------ church. Then I reflected and thought it was as well I had not done it to Susan.

When mother returned she left my sister and little brother in the country. My old deaf relative remained with us and slept in the room adjoining my mother's. That same Sunday night, I waited until Susan came up to bed, pounced upon her on the top landing and tried to feel her; she dropped her candle-stick and made such a noise, that back I sneaked to bed, and was asleep, when I heard the bell ringing violently in the servants' room. Out I rushed saw Susan on the landing with but a petticoat over her night-dress, and old Mrs. ------ going into my mother's room who was taken very ill.

Down to the kitchen went Susan and I to get boiling water, I heaped wood and coals on the fire, she blew it with the bellows, old Mrs. ------ was upstairs getting brandy and other things ready. What followed I recollect as well as if it were yesterday. Susan was half squatting, half kneeling and blowing the fire furiously. Standing by her my randiness came on, I pulled out my prick, and pushed it right in her face. "For shame!" said she, "I will hit you with the bellows, think of your mother." It did shame me for a moment, I hid my prick, and knelt by her side stirring the blazing wood. But just then I saw her breasts through the half-tied night-gown; it was too much for me; that and the attitude she was in together; losing all prudence, I pushed one hand on to her breast, and the other up her clothes, between her legs,--which were very conveniently opened quite wide,--and on the slit of her cunt. With a suppressed cry she dropped the bellows, attempted to rise, and repulse my hand, and in doing so we both rolled backwards ( for I had stooped) on to the floor among the black-beetles of which there were dozens about. "You wretch," she cried in a suppressed voice, "oh! don't,--and your poor mother so ill,--oh! don't,--you shant!--and wanting hot water,--you shant!" in a still louder tone as I got my hand full on her cunt. "Oh! my God, here is Mrs. ------."

Had Mrs. ------ not been as deaf as a post, she must have heard our scuffling, as she neared the kitchen. In an hour or so my mother was better, and Mrs. ------ stopped in the room with her for the night. My mother was asleep when I left, Mrs. ------ had had a good dose of brandy and water, and I knew she would sleep well enough. I went to my room excited by the continual trying it on with Susan; Mrs. ------ had given her a glass of brandy and water, "to keep the cold out," as she said, and she went to her room. I listened, heard her moving about longer than I expected. I had come up some minutes before to deceive all, and was shivering in my night-shirt. I thought how unfair it was to her sister who was in the family way by me, of the risk I ran with my mother in the house; but a standing prick stifles all conscience. I crossed the landing, opened her door, shut it rapidly, and there I was in the room with her, both of us in our night-dresses. She was doing up her hair as I entered, she wore a night-cap.

"I won't let you come in here." "Hush! mother will hear you," said I. Her voice dropped to a whining, "Pray go, I shall lose my character, if any one supposes anything of this; it's very hard on me." Such was my state, that I believe if my mother had come in just then, I should have tried Susan. My reply was to strip my night-gown right off and stand naked; then I caught her in my arms and forced her into a sitting posture on the bed-side, sitting myself down beside her. "Let me do it,--let us fuck, I have felt your cunt,--seen it;--look at my prick,--let me put it in,--let me do it,--you did nearly once,--let me now." "For God's sake go." "I won't." "Oh! don't,--oh I go,--if Misses should hear us, what will become of me." "Don't make a noise then, or she will." "Well go, there is a dear,--not now,--perhaps some other day I will." She was defenceless, I hitched up her nightgown, saw a pair of nice white thighs. "You shant,--you shant," she cried in a louder tone, pushing down her night-gown. I gave it a violent tug, and pulled it up to her belly, saw thighs, navel, and dark brown hair between her thighs, that I had looked at in glimpses through the key-hole. There was my thigh close to hers, my stiff prick within a few inches of her cunt; considering all she had gone through that day with me, it was a position which would have upset the frigidity of an angel, had she not frigged away some of her passion in the interim.

But her passions were conquering on my behalf, for she was a woman who had known love's pleasures; her voice was quiet as she said, "Oh! pray don't, oh I pray now." I pulled her back and slid my naked limbs between her thighs, then in a moment I was on her, but in an uncomfortable position; two of our legs on the bed, two off, my belly touched hers and pressed her down; with my right hand I guided my prick to her slit. Her hour had come, "Oh! for God's sake, leave me, I will let you another day,--I will,--not now,--oh! if you knew!--oh! now!--oh!..."

It was all but over, my fingers were feeling their way, my prick between them, every motion she made to help herself, helped me; I held her down with force until I felt my penis was on the notch, but as it touched the slippery sides of the red orifice, the first pang of pleasure came and my sperm spat on to it. With a furious thrust I plunged up her and threw my whole body over her, grasping her bum, quivering, wriggling, and pushing. The deed was done, she knew it, and was as quiet as the grave.

The position was painful to both of us, I felt it in both my legs; she moved uneasily saying, "I hope you will go." I had no such intention, kept her down, and my prick in her as long as I could; then got up quickly, hoping to see her spunk-trap whilst her thighs were open. A woman seems always up to this, how quickly they shut them. She did, but the light though feeble was close by, and I saw sperm outside; then she sat at the side of the bed with her limbs uncovered, I stood naked with doodle wet, flabby and shrunken, not a pretty picture at all. She begged me to go, was tranquil, sat twisting up her hair, scarcely made attempt to hide her limbs, all her anxiety was about her mistress finding me in her room; but after a few minutes altercation, I was in bed with her cuddling, and promising to leave directly I had fucked again.

I got into bed without my night-gown, hers was rolled up so that she was all but naked, our naked bodies touched at all points, my hands were free to rove everywhere. How she must have wanted it, only a woman with twelve months abstinence from cock can tell; and when after feeling her cunt well, and putting her unresisting hands round my pego, I pushed her on to her back; there was no difficulty about her thighs, they opened at once as I turned on to her, her frame thrilled, her tongue sought mine, her hand clutched my naked back; she spent I verily believe before I had began, and finished again with me a few minutes afterwards. About day-break neither of us having closed our eyes, I went back to my room, tired out.

My mother kept her bed the next day, so Susan and I had time to talk. "I don't know what to do," said she, "we have made the sheet in such a dreadful mess"; and that night before she went to bed, she took it down and did something to it. I fucked her that day on the kitchen table.

Her sister did not return for a fortnight, and during that time we had plenty of fucking; a few nights after I first had her, she was excessively quiet; on questioning her she said, "I think I got in the family way last night." "Nonsense," but she told me she had heard that women sometimes had a sort of consciousness of getting with child, and added, "I somehow feel certain that I shall have a child from last Sunday." This will be a pretty go, thought I, and asked, "Did you ever have your belly up before, for I don't think you were a virgin when I had you." She denied it, and there the matter ended, but I never could get to see the lower part of her belly; she would let me see up to her cunt, and down to her navel, but never more. My experience might not have taught me much if I had, but I guessed something from what old Brown had told me, and knew that woman had marks of some sort on their-bellies after child-birth.

As the time came for Sarah's return I felt trouble could come with her. The day before she did, Susan cried, said she was certain she was in the family way, and expressed great dread of her sister knowing it. "Surely you don't mind your own sister." "Oh! you don't know how hard she is upon poor girls who get into trouble," she replied. "Here is a mess!" I thought.

Sarah returned, had tried to get a miscarriage and failed, she grew bigger, all her fear was lest Susan should find it out before she left, and on plea of her mother's health, she gave notice. Both girls were afraid of each other, both seemed determined to get as much fucking as possible. Sarah got hers on Sundays, and sometimes on week days. Susan who was more about and could often get five minutes with me slyly, threw herself in my way, got it when and where she could, and had it once or twice daily. I was not loth. The excitement of two cunts and a certain pungency in the position stimulated me. I have seen the two standing side by side, each at the same moment with my spunk in them, yet neither knowing the other's condition. At times before I had washed my prick after one sister, I was wetting it in the cunt of the other, which delighted me.

Things got desperate. Sarah said I ought to marry her, spoke of committing suicide, and at length unable to hide her belly, left. I was anxious to do what I could to help her, so disclosed my case to a friend; who advised me to borrow, as I was so near coming into my property. I borrowed fifty pounds of a Jew, promising to pay him a hundred pounds for it six months afterwards; and got her lodgings a few miles from our house. Susan also got bigger, and made no disguise of her intention of getting abortion.

No disclosure of the sisters to each other had yet taken place, yet I felt it would be done. One morning Susan's eyes followed me whilst waiting at table in a most unpleasant manner. I felt all was found out, so to face it, and get the worst over, threw myself in her way. "You wretch, you scoundrel, you blackguard," she whispered to me on the staircase, "it is you who have seduced my poor sister." Soon a better opportunity was found, and we had a scene; it took place in my bed-room, when the other servant who had replaced Sarah, and my mother were out. I could only say I was sorry. She blazed out worse than ever then, and spoke so violently about my behaviour to herself, that I told her, whatever her sister had to complain of, I thought she had but little, for that mine was not the first prick which had been up her, I was sure. My words and manner staggered and quieted her and after making me take a solemn oath (which I did holding a Bible) I would never tell her sister that she was in the family way by me, she got tranquil, and I fucked her before she left the room.

Susan was dreadfully ill a few days afterwards, she had got a miscarriage; my mother attended to her, thinking she had inflammation of her bowels. I went to see Sarah, who told me some fellow had got her sister Susan in the family way, she could not tell who, for Susan quite refused to say. She was soon after confined with a fine child. Troubles then came apace, the mother of the two women died, Susan left my mother at once to take charge of the old man's house, and never let me have her again after her miscarriage. Then the father came to grief, failed and was sold up. Sarah went home with her child, and after a time, acting on the advice of a friend, I advanced money out of my property which I had then come into, and sent the whole lot to Canada. After a year my child died, and Susan got married. What became of Sarah, I don't know, for all letters soon after ceased; but to the last I believe that Sarah never knew that I had had her sister as well as herself, although Susan knew I had had both of them and was father of both children, or what would have been both children.

This ended my intrigues with servants for some time, for my fucking took quite another direction. Harlots of small degrees amused me till I came into what was a pretty fortune in those days.





CHAPTER XIII.


     Of age.--Camille my first French woman.--Lascivious
     delights.--Harlots by the dozen.--Baudy books.--Tribades.--
     A grey-haired cunt.

 I came into my property, and to the great horror of my mother and family, soon gave up my post at the ------ and my intended career and determined to live and enjoy myself. I had been all but posted to a regiment, that commission I resigned, though all my youth desiring it. I lost much money by doing so. What I did between the time that I had the two sisters, until I went regularly to the town, is not worth telling of more than already done. Frig myself, I did not, gay women since my last clap I was shy of, but I used to shag a servant of a family close by, and rather think one of our own servants; but if so, all circumstances made small impression on me, and nearly escaped my mind, excepting those of a comely woman of about thirty with black curls, of a wall not far from a church, and of fucking her up against it, of her being so anxious to get indoors by nine o'clock, and scuffling off with her wetted cunt directly she had finished with me. Her name or who she was I quite forget.

This I know, that I had no other woman at home, and had no liking for gay women, nor is it to be wondered at, since my experience with them was confined to one I had with my cousin Fred, women by the roadside who would take a shilling, and others of a queer class in the confines of the Waterloo road (two debauches there told of) then filled me with horror, and three claps; yet I was to leave off giving my passion to quiet women, and bestow all my attention for a time on gay women.

Walking up Waterloo place one evening, with plenty of money in my purse, and lust in my body, I met a fine, clear complexioned woman, full twenty-five years of age, who addressed me in French, and then in broken English. She had an eye, and manner which fascinated me, her dress was quite elegant, as unlike the French women of Regen street of the present day, as a duchess is to a milkmaid; but she was the ordinary French whore of the day, of whom there were but few in London (there was no railway to Paris); and who were exclusively supported by gentlemen at the West-End. I went home with her to a house at the corner of G-l-n square, after fearing and hesitating.

As I got to the door my fear returned, and but for shame I would not have gone in. "I have but little money," said I, "Have you not a Victoria?" said she. "No." "You will find one, I am sure." By that time the door was opened, and in I went. "You will find one Victoria," said she in broken English as she closed the room-door, "but if not, shall you not give me what you shall find." The room was nicely furnished, out of it was a nice large bed-room and a smaller one (she paid twenty shillings a week for all, as you will soon hear). Four wax candles were lighted, down she sat, so did I, and we looked at each other. I could say nothing.

"Shall I undress?" said she at length. "Yes," I replied, and she began. Never had I seen a woman take off such fine linen before, never such legs in handsome silk stockings, and beautiful boots. I had had the cleanest, nicest women, but they were servants, with the dress and manners of servants. This woman seemed elegance itself to them. A nice pair of arms were disclosed, a big pair of breasts flashed out, a glimpse of a fine thigh was shown, and as her things dropped off, and she stopped to pick them up, with her face towards me; her laced chemise dropped, opened, and I saw darkness at the end of the vista between her two breasts.

A pull up of the stockings and garters, disclosed other glimpses of the thighs and surroundings. Then she sat on the pot, pissed and looked at me, whilst I sat in fear, saying nothing, doing nothing, my cock shrivelled to the size of a gooseberry, and longing to go away. The whole affair was unlike anything I had seen or dreamed of, a quiet business-like, yet voluptuous air was about it, which confused me; it affected my senses deliciously in one way, but all the horrors about gay women were conjured up in my imagination at the same time. I was intensely nervous.

She seeing me so quiet, sat herself on my knee, and began unbuttoning my trousers. I declined it. "Are you ill?" said she. I told her no, scarcely knowing what she meant. Then she unbuttoned me in spite of my objection, laid hold of my little doodle, and satisfied herself that it was all right I suppose; for she hurt me; I could not tell why she squeezed it, for I did not know then the ways of gay women. The squeeze gave me a voluptuous sensation, although fear had still hold of me; then she kissed, and fondled me, but it was useless. Then she said, "You have never had a woman before I see." My pride was wounded, and I told her I had many.

"Are always you like this with them?" she asked. "No, but I really did not want it." "Oh! yes you shall. Come to the bed." She got off my knee, went to the bed, laid down on one side, one leg on, one dropping down to the floor, drew up her chemise above her navel, and lay with beautiful large limbs clad in stainless stockings and boots, her thighs of the slightly brown color seen in Southern women, between them a wide thicket of jet-black hair, through which a carmine streak just showed. She raised one of her naked arms above her head, and under a laced chemise showed the jet-black hair in the arm-pit. I had never seen such a luscious sight, nor any woman put herself unasked into such a seductive attitude.

"Come," she said. I obeyed and went to the side of the bed, my prick not yet standing. She took my hand and put the finger on to her clitoris, pulled my prick towards her and kissed it, and at the double touch up it rose like a horn. "Ah!" said she moving on to the middle of the bed, "take off your clothes." I was on to her without uttering a word and had plugged her almost before I had said "no," which I had meant to say.

What a cunt! what movement! what manner! I had till then never known what a high-class, well practised professional fucker could do. How well they understand the nature and wants of the man who is up them; hers was the manner of a quiet woman, who had been some time without a prick, it was so like baudy nature in a lady, that I was in the seventh Heaven, "don't hurry"; but the wriggle and heave, and the tightening of the cunt kept hurrying me, as well she knew.

I had scarcely finished my spend, when curiosity took possession of me. She yielded in the way a French woman does to all a man wishes; almost anticipating them. The black hair under her arm-pits first came in for my admiration, then her eyes, her bubbies came in for their share, as raising myself on an elbow, my prick still up her, I looked and felt all over her, I even opened her mouth and felt her teeth which were splendid. Then rising on my knees, I looked between her legs, at the splendid thicket of black hair. Far from attempting to get up, or prevent me, she opened her thighs wider, I pulled aside the cunt-lips, there rolling out from a dark carmine orifice was my essence. At the sight of it, up came my prick, still dripping, and up it went into the sperm-lined passage.

My second fuck over, she washed. No sooner was that done, than I wanted to see it all over again. "You are very fond of women," she said, "I thought you had never had a woman before." Then I explained, gave her the Victoria, and scarcely daring said (for she was dressed again), "How I should like to do it again." "You take up much time of me, but you may, if you like, at side of de bed." Out came my prick, up it went, her duff and belly in sight now, till I spent in her, and promising to see her again I left. One does not get silk stockings, laced chemise, four wax lights and three fucks for a pound now, if rooms be well furnished, or not.

I saw her the next day, then saw her almost daily. Little by little I took to calling at all times, and sleeping with her. The more I had her, the more I liked her. She was a very nice woman in most ways, I scarcely ever found her untidy, dirty, or slammerkin. If not dressed, she had a clean wrapper on, had nearly always silk stockings on, and a clean chemise; and therefore call when I might she was ready to be fucked at a minute's notice. She was a good cook, and would cook omelettes and nice things in her room. I used to fuck, get out of bed, eat, and fuck again with the food almost in my mouth. I used to have little dinners in her room, sent in by a French cook, which were excellent, and then with stomach full and with nice wine, would spend the evening in baudy joys.

What astonished and delighted me at the same time, was the freedom and the way she lent herself to all my voluptuous inclinations. The gay women I had had, I had fucked so fast, and got away from them as soon as I could; my spend even scarcely finished at times. With my mother's servants (my first love Charlotte excepted, and for a time with Susan), my enjoyments were mostly hurried, a fingerstink, a frig on their cunt, and a hurried look were all my amatory preliminaries for the most part; because I was too impatient for the spend, was mostly obliged to seize opportunities in a hurry, or because the girls were impatient at being pulled about. When I had tried with them, some of the little amatory amusements, which were beginning to suggest themselves to my voluptuous imagination, they resisted, or only half lent themselves to my will. With Susan I had tried the most, because I knew she had had a bumbasting before, and she had been more willing; she liked pulling my prick about, but even she made a fuss one night, when I wanted to fuck her with her bum towards my belly, and never let me look at her belly. Thus my baudy longings had never been satisfied. With Charlotte I did a little variety, from curiosity; now I began to want it from voluptuousness. The natural impatience of my age, and my few opportunities, had led me to bring my women to the bed, throw up their clothes, pull open their legs, give a rapid glance at their thighs, belly and cunt-fringe, by which time my prick was nodding and throbbing. Then followed a grope, and the next minute I was fucking as hard as I could.

With Camille all came like new to me. She even anticipated me. If I pushed her to the side of the bed, she fell on her back and opened her legs gently, disclosing her slit in the most voluptuous manner, without speaking. If I strove to open her thighs, open they went as wide as she could make them, leaving me to open, and shut, pinch, frig, or probe her cunt, as I listed. At a hint, she with two fingers would spread open the lips to enable the fullest inspection. If I turned her round, she would fall on the bed arse upwards, like a tumbler. If I cocked up a leg, there she kept it till I pulled it down. I scarcely ever said what I wanted, she guessed my desires from the way I turned her about. It was only at a later time when my baudiness grew whimsical, and invented strange attitudes, or singular caprices of love, that I had to tell her what I wanted; but at first I was too timid for that. She once said to me laughing, "I am a born whore, for I like it, and like to see a man amuse himself with me."

Her every movement, even when I was tranquil, was exciting. If she sat down, her limbs were in some position which by contemplation stirred my lust, and made me rush to stroke her, and was gratified in any form and manner I liked. With her all forms of copulation were wholesome and natural, so that I had enough variety.

I was constantly with her until pretty well fucked out, then I stayed away a while. When I recommenced she I expect thought I was weary of her, and set to work to keep me, by putting into my head things I had not heard, or thought of, asking if I would like to sate my lust in such, and such ways; and then procuring for me what she had suggested.

I was indeed worth treating so, for though I only gave her a sovereign at first, my money quickly began to go into her pocket from mine. The more variety I had, the more I paid, which was but natural, and fair.

She had a book full of the baudiest French pictures; there was not an attitude depicted in it that I did not fuck her in. That done, she asked me one day if I would like another woman to feel whilst I had her. She came, and I fucked Camille feeling the other's cunt, longing to fuck it, but fearing to propose it. Camille guessed what I wanted, and proposed it herself. With what joy my prick entered the stranger's split, Camille looking on, holding her cunt open for inspection at the same time, and going through the motions of frigging herself whilst I was shoving. Then came endless variety. I had two other French ladies, and fingered their cunts whilst I fucked a third, then two more, laying cunt upwards, legs in the air, and arses meeting over Camille's head. At last I had six altogether at once, and spent the evening with them naked, fucking, frigging, spending up or over them, making them feel each other's cunts, shove up dildoes, and play the devil's delight with their organs of generation, as they are modestly called.

Then came other suggestions. "I know such a little girl, not above this high," she said. I ballocked that little girl. Then she knew one six feet high. She also I had. Then she knew one with an immense duff of hair on her cunt. Of course I had her. Then one with none at all; and mightily pleased was I, as my doodle rubbed in and out of that hairless cunt, the owner laying at the side of the bed, I standing up, and Camille holding a candle over the hairless quim, to enable me fully to see and enjoy the novelty, I was pushing up.

At intervals when worn out with spending, or disinclined to find the money needed for this endless variety of women and cunt-hunting, I frequently spent evenings quietly in Camille's society. I got from her information about habits of women, in a way which is not often given to young men by gay women; learned that women thrust sponges up their cunts, to prevent men finding out they had their courses on. For the first time with her, I understood that women could, and did frig themselves; and on her own cunt, placing herself my finger there, I first knew the exact spot where a women rubs for her solitary pleasure. She told me of women rubbing their clitoris together so as to spend,--what the French call tribadism,--and two women of her acquaintance did this. All of us half spoony with champagne after a jolly little supper; she set the two girls rubbing their cunts together. The two girls on the top of each other, I thought a baudy amusement, and did not believe until after years, that flat fucking was practicable, and practised, with sexual pleasure.

Then should I like to see a man? Now it was not many years since I had frigged two or three, and declined it. Yet one night she expatiated so much about the wonderful size of a young man's prick, and what a lot he spent, and how respectable he was, and what gentlemen had him, etc.; that I who had a dislike to men being near me, consented, and a fine young Frenchman came. I could not for half-an-hour go near him, but my temptress meant I should, and I frigged one of the largest pricks I have ever seen, and saw his spunk squirt over Camille's arse, which the Frenchman requested her to turn upwards for him to spend on; indeed he said he could not make his cock stand until he saw her arse. Directly afterwards I had the most ineffable disgust at him, myself and all, and never saw him again.

I would not again be in the room with a man, but she arranged to let me see through a hole made in the door, herself fucked by another man, which I immensely enjoyed, but had not the sight repeated. I even used to hate the idea of her being fucked by any one but myself; not that I had anything in the way of love or liking for her, which might have been termed affection.

So time went on, I paying handsomely, trying to see and do anything she suggested, and glorifying myself at being in the lucky way of doing and knowing everything. I told much to some special friends, some of whom wanted to find out my sources of such enjoyments; others thought I was a mere braggart.

Nearly a year ran away, and four thousand pounds, leaving me with infinite knowledge and a frame pretty well worn; but I never had a love ailment, nor have I ever taken one from a French woman yet.

She never suggested arse-hole work. In her book were pictures of buggering, and she asked me if I would like such a thing. I frightened at what I knew, which seemed like a horrible dream, said, "certainly not," and asked if it was possible. She told me it was, but was "villaine," and the matter was never again referred to.

With much fucking I got done up, and one night could get no cock-stand. She asked me if I had ever played at minette. I did not know what it meant. She told me it was having my prick sucked. I told her no. I have already narrated my licking the slightly haired cunt of young Martha, and how when doing so, she having my prick in her hand close to her mouth, and was playing with it, when scarce thinking of consequences, "Kiss it," I said, "put it in your mouth"; and that the young girl randy with my licking, put it to her mouth or tongue, and that I immediately shot out my spunk without meaning it. That remained in my recollection as a nasty subject. The big-cunted woman also sucked me against my will. So when Camille suggested it I refused. There was another French woman with her; they were both naked on the bed, and I had been fumbling both, and baudily amusing myself, with no cock-stiff or fucking desire about me. After a while I laid down on the bed with them, the other French woman told me, that some men never did anything else, and that she would like doing it to me. She had found out I was pretty liberal, and I dare say counted on my being so now, if I could get by her a new sensation; but I declined. The two women were laying in the reverse direction to me on the bed, so that I could see and play with both their cunts, a favorite posture with me then. After extolling the sensation of minette, she without my consent turned over me, and getting me between her knees back up, and so that her bum-hole and cunt were within a few inches of my nose, she began; whilst Camille who knew what would fetch me better than I knew myself, moved up her backside, so that I might grope her more freely. The double cunt feeling, the suction and sight generally, was too much for me, and the mouth soon drew my sperm with long lingering and half painful pleasure. My tender-tipped prick suffered, as it often did indeed when not in the proper receptacle.

The act made some impression on me, for I soon after had it repeated by the same woman, and she did it that time so that I saw the prick in her mouth. I expect it upset me instead of giving me pleasure, for I stopped her, and my doodle dropped; but I permitted her to recommence; then I felt something press my arse-hole, it tickled and hurt me, I called out, "What are you doing?" at the same instant spent. "What have you done?" said I. "Nothing," said she winking at me, for Camille was in the room. I did not like the business; she had shoved her finger or thumb up my bum-hole. I was too young to appreciate that luxury, took a horror at her, and never would have her again, nor would I have my prick sucked any more. Many years elapsed before I either had my arse-hole felt or felt a woman's, after that night.

Then I had an old woman. Those she had brought me had mostly dark-haired cunts, and her own was black. As cunt was an inexhaustable subject with me, we were always talking about it. She said she knew a woman whose hair was quite grey. "Is she very old?" "No not above fifty." That was older than my mother, and I could not think of it; but the conversation was renewed. "She has got as much hair as me, but quite grey, nearly white, and she is a nice clean woman; have us both, and you can see the black and white together." So a fattish middle-aged woman certainly fifty and who seemed to me sixty, came; her hair was nearly white, Camille lent her stockings and chemise to make her decent I suppose, and the old woman who spoke scarcely a word, but drank furiously, turned up to me. She made some objection to showing her grummit, remarking she did not know it was to such a young man, but being told if she did not, she might go without pay, the sight came off; the cunt-fringe was nearly white. She was an English woman. Camille suggested I should have her; the old woman demurred, but Camille settled (and I really used to do almost what she advised), that I should have her and look at the grey cunt at the same time. So it came about; but when half up to spunking time, Camille said, "Take it out of me and put it into her." When a prick stands and novelty is in the way it rushes at it. Out I pulled my prick, and put it up the grey cunt, spent in it, and pulled it out almost before I had finished. I never saw the old lady again.





CHAPTER XIV.


     Piddlings.--Posturings.--Breast and arm-pit.--A turn over.--
     Used up.--Wanting a virgin.--Camille departs.--The Major's
     opinion.--Camille returns.--Louise.

 I have told the most novel fucking bouts I had with, or through Camille, excepting the final one; but should say that whatever women she got me I turned to her with pleasure again. Sometimes when I had one or two to amuse me, I used to give her the preference for the fuck, and she always had one of the gruellings, for she was very handsome, understood everything, was sensuousness itself, but not vulgar. When I had a fit of extra lewdness she got me other women. Of course she got profit out of all, a thing I knew nothing about then. Often I had no want but for her, and she used to strip herself, or dress just as I wished, put her body into some attitude, then lay and read the paper whilst I used to sit and read as well, looking up from time to time at her. Then I would put her in a new attitude, and go on so for a time; then would make her piss, catch it in the pot, piss at the same time in it, stick a dildo up her cunt, and have every variety of amusement I could think of. She was always willing, never in a hurry, never refused. A charming harlot.

Making her piss was a favorite amusement with me, I would keep her a whole day without doing it, so that I might have a good long stream out of her when looking on.

I was most curious about the way a cunt opened and shut in squatting. It was the subject of my earnest investigation. I used to put two chairs so that they would not slip, nearly close together, and lay down with my head between them. Then Camille naked all but boots and stockings would stand up on the chairs, one foot on each; the legs naturally a little open as the chairs were a little apart, just disclosed the cunt. Then she would sit down slowly, so that I could gradually see the gap widen, the red nymphoe show, the clitoris jut out, and at length the whole cunt-gape ready for the piss. Then she would rise slowly and repeat it till I was tired; then still laying down I used to hold a large basin on my breast and belly, and squatting above my head she would piss into the basin. I would feel the cunt, and if very wet, dry it. In all this she was obedience itself; she never moved from one posture till I told her to get to another, would answer any question with frankness.

I have never lost this pleasure in seeing a woman piss, but at that time was too impatient to vary the amusements which a man and a woman can have with their piddle. It was reserved to me with other women, notably a French woman named Gabriell, and Sarah F--r, to have the fullest variety and enjoyment in that particular.

I had fucked Camille in every way excepting her arse-hole, I had spent between her bum-cheeks, but without the slightest intention of invading the bum-hole between them,--indeed then had a great dislike to looking at a woman's arse-hole. At last fucked her arm-pits; she had a splendid arm, and an unusually large quantity of black hair beneath it which I much admired. One day she was poorly, I began fucking between her breasts, she suggested another woman, I would not have one; from her breasts I got to shoving between her arm and her breasts; then she wetted her arm-pit with Castile soap, which is of a soft slimy nature, and I fucked and spent between it. After a time we improved on this; she would lie in a convenient posture, I would lay a sheet of clean white paper on the bed, and just as I was coming, protrude the tip of my prick so as to free the pit, and shoot my spunk on to the sheet of white paper; or would catch the spunk in my own hand, and before my frensy of pleasure was over rub it on her cunt, then fling myself on the bed and go to sleep.

I used to have her at the side of the bed with her bum towards me; then she would gradually twist herself round, and cocking one leg over my head, get herself with her back on the bed without uncunting my prick. This had to be done very gradually, for a jerk, and my prick used to slip out. I used to bet with her about this, and she generally managed to twist round and win. "Now push,--keep it well in,--hold on, I am going to lift my leg," she would cry at the difficult point, which was when she had got her bum sideways to me, and was about to lift her leg; then putting my hands well on her hips, I used to draw my belly to her, and prick into her, as tightly as I could, whilst she gradually raised a leg, and pressing her bum up to meet my pressure, gradually got on to her back, with her limbs in a natural easy posture on either side of my hips. By that time I had got steam well up, and a shove or two usually let me off.

At last having done as great a variety of ballocking, and learn more baudiness than most men of my age, I was knocked up, fucked out. My mother with whom I still nominally lived, was in despair. My guardian alarmed at the rate I was spending my money remonstrated, so I left Camille and her bevy of women, and went to the sea-side. There I renovated, and then spent my time on the sands, trying to see the women in the water. As I grew better my randiness returned, I got hold of gay women, but my old timidity clung to me, I used to pay them to piss, and had a grope up them; but do not recollect having anything more. I came back to London, and for two or three days afterwards Camille's cunt had no rest. Then I temporarily got into another servant, and ceased to see Camille much. She tried all sorts of inducements to continue it on the old footing.

Then although she knew every incident of my life, she took to asking if I had ever had a virgin, saying, "Are you sure, did you see her cunt before you had her? Would you not like one again, if I can get you one, a young virgin French girl, one sure to be a virgin?"--and so on until she made me doubt if I had ever had one. At last I thought that I should like to have another. Well, she could get me a young French girl, but would have to go to France, it would cost a large sum of money. This talk went on for some time, and little by little I agreed to give her fifty pounds to pay her journey, and also to keep her lodgings on. She postponed the journey for a long time, but at length she went. She made me promise to do something for the girl besides paying her,--which meant something or nothing,--but I promised to pay the journey of the virgin back to France, should she want to go; and also whenever I had the girl, to pay Camille a "Victoria," "because," said she, "you will have my rooms and prevent my bringing friends home."

So I came down with fifty pounds. Off she went in quiet dress, and looked a quiet lady or middle-class woman. She advised me to keep myself steady, and the very moment before she left, whilst the cab was at the door, I turned her with bonnet and travelling dress on, bum outwards, and fucked her; she hurrying me all the time for fear she should lose the coach, she had not time to piss, or wipe or wash. "It will give me good fortune perhaps," said she laughing, "or make you wish me back, it is lucky for me."

There was but a slow rail to Dover then, nothing but tidal boats, and to Paris, the way I thought she was going, no rail at all, and it was a long journey. Whether she went to Paris or not I don't know, but from later experience think not, that she was a Southern woman, and went straight home. She was to be back in a month. It came, but not she; another week, another, and I began to think I had been sold; another, and I gave her up altogether, and experienced a little relief, for the habit of seeing her had so got hold of me, that I could not shake it off, and yet I was tired of her, but I wanted the virgin.

There was a middle-aged man with whom I chummed much at my Club, a major retired, and a most debauched individual. He borrowed money of me, and did not repay it. His freedom of talk about women made him much liked by the younger men; the older said it was discreditable to help younger men to ruin. Ordinarily very careful how I spoke about women (for my loves having lain much in my mother's house, caution had become habitual to me). I one night talked about virgins and of getting them. He said such things were done; that Harridans got a young lass, if well paid for it, but that they generally sold the girls half-a-dozen times over, "and," said he, "they train the young bitches so, there is no finding them out; you may pay for one who was first fucked by a butcher boy, and then her virginity sold to a dandy; you may pay for it my boy, and not find out you have been done." I pondered much over this, and the next night returned to the subject. His opinion was that an old stager like him was not to be done; but that any randy young beggar would go up the girl, and flatter himself he had had a virgin, if the girl was cunning. "When you see the tight covered hole with your eye, find it tight to your little finger, and then tight to your cock, my boy; when you have satisfied your eye, your finger, and your cucumber, and seen blood on it, you may be sure you have had one,--and not otherwise."

Thought I, "I am going to be humbugged." Another week, no letter, I went to her lodgings, and found she had taken away everything she had with her. That night I told a little of my hopes to the Major, not telling him who the kind lady was, or where she was gone; but it made him laugh. "You are done brown my boy, done brown; that woman will never turn up again." He joked me so, that I avoided him, and kept the subject to myself afterwards.

Again to the lodgings; the landlady could not keep them vacant any longer; I paid the rent, but she got no parquisites, I increased the allowance. Then again I went; the landlady said she did not expect to see her again. I had now set my heart on having this virgin; ten weeks nearly had gone; I said if Camille was not back next week she might let the rooms. It passed; a bill was put up in the window, and the next morning calling as a forlorn hope, there was a letter for me,--she would be back in a week. I was in a state of excitement that week, and kept myself chaste, with the idea of the virgin cunt, and Camille's well paced roger-ing in anticipation.

The day came. I was so impatient, that I was there quite early; she arrived some hours earlier than she had said, and seemed surprised at finding me; my impression is that she did not want me to be there when she came back. She came in a hackney-coach; a stoutish full-sized young woman with a funny bonnet and long cloak on, got out of the coach with her, and in a free-and-easy way helped the things upstairs. She called her Louise. The wench put down a big box, and on my turning round after giving Camille a kiss, I saw she had seated herself on it, and hands on her knees was looking at me. "Uncord the box," said Camille. Said the girl, "I am tired." She uncorded it, again sitting down, and looking at me said, "Is that your young man?--he's a good-looking fellow." Camille told her to hold her tongue, to go on unpacking, and that I understood French, eying her at the same time in a savage way, and looking at me at times very uneasily. She was a rough sort of girl, she said, a relative of a friend of hers, had come as her servant, and in a short time would understand her place; smiling at me in a knowing way as she said that. Camille always addressed her servant in French, me in English; but I understood French tolerably well.

Louise did as she was told, but bounced about in an independent way, threw off her cloak and bonnet, and putting her hands on her hips stared at me again. I stared at her, thinking of the virginity I was destined to break up. Certainly she was appetizing; her cloak off showed a thick woolen dress of dark brown striped with blue, a fine big figure, a couple of big breasts; her arms naked nearly to her shoulders, as French peasants usually wore them, were large, fleshy, and brown; the petticoats were half-way up to her knees, and showed the thickest woolen black stockings on a stout pair of legs, and feet in thick shoes with brass buckles; she had immense gilt earrings, and was in fact in the dress of a Bordeaux peasant woman.

I did nothing but stare at her, Camille nothing but scold her, talking to me at intervals. The girl got the boxes ready for opening, then walked about, taking up poker and tongs, chimney ornaments and everything in the room with curiosity. Camille and I had so much to say, that we took little notice of her; then she threw up the window and looked out. As she bent forward her short petticoats showed her legs up to her knee-backs; Camille was about to stop her looking out, when I winked, and stooping saw a thick roll of stockings just beneath the knees, and the flesh just above. Camille understood. "Madame, madame," said the girl, "come here, here is fun." I heard Punch squeaking in the streets; she was delighted; her mistress went to the window giving me a knowing look, and looking out of the window with the girl, put her hands over the girl's petticoats and lifted them slightly. Louise took no heed of this being so engrossed with Punch; I dropped on my knees and saw half-way up the girl's thighs. I had been chaste for a few weeks, or nearly so, the sight of Camille had fired me, the thighs finished me; I shoved my hands up Camille's petticoats on to her arse, got her into her bed-room, and with her clothes in a lump on her belly, drove up my prick, spending directly I got up her cunt.

With half my spendings outside, half inside I lay with throbbing prick, which only came out when it had spent again. Camille vowed she had not had a man for weeks, and took it out of me, perhaps fearing if I went away with stiffening left, some other cunt would take it out. The ballocking over I went home.

I was early there the next day; Louise had been installed in the little room leading out of the sitting-room. Camille told me a great deal about the distance she had gone, and the trouble and expense she had been put to in getting the girl's relatives to let her come; she hoped I would pay the additional expenses; and that I did at a cost of about twenty pounds. What with that and paying for her journey, and for lodgings while absent, Louise had cost me nearly ninety pounds already. Then I undertook to pay for the additional room, in which a bed having been put, an extra was charged; cooking now being done downstairs. Then Louise must have a new gown; then Camille thought I ought to give her something for herself, because whilst away for me she had made no money. That I refused and blazed up about it; for all that agreed to pay for a new silk dress for her, and a lot of little odds and ends on the second day of Camille's return, for all of which outlays I had only had a peep up the girl's petticoats.

Then I had a talk about her. The girl was the daughter of a small grape-grower, a friend of Camille's; they thought Camille was in London as a dressmaker, making a lot of money, because she sent money home to her father. Camille offered to take her, saying she would be sure to get on, if not in one way, then in another; that good-looking girls always did well in London. The girl was mad to come, and persuaded her parents to let her do so; believing that Camille got her living honestly; she was to be her servant until she could be put in the way of doing well.

"What are you going to tell her now? what are you going to do with her? what will she say when she finds out?" I asked.

Camille did not know. The girl would find out, and then she must excuse herself as well as she could, would say it was better, and jollier, and more money making than to make dresses. Besides, the girl could not help herself, and would have to make the best of it.

When was I to have her? I asked. As soon as I could get her; there she was, and I might try when and how I liked; help me more she could not, she could not insist on Louise letting me; but no doubt she would in time, no one else should have her.

I was not so sure of that. Camille was gay, and although I had for more than a year excluded most men from the house, yet she did have other men there, and I knew they would see the girl, might like her, might pay Camille; all the remarks of the retired major came strongly before me, and I thought I was going to be sold, and said so.

She replied that I was not; she would leave me with the girl when I liked; if the girl spoke to her she would advise her to let me, but would have nothing to do with influencing her beyond that; and when the event came off, she meant to be out, so that Louise's friends could not say anything. If she went gay it was no fault of hers, young women would have it done to them, it was natural. That was the game she meant to play.

I saw that I had paid her only for bringing a girl, and must take my chance of getting into her; all she would do was to keep the coast clear. I don't know what I really did expect Camille to do, but think I imagined that she would have got the girl in bed with her some night, let me get into bed with them, and helped to make her fuck, if she would not. This was dissipated, I was to have the chance I should have had with a servant in my mother's house, or less, for this girl I should not see so often, and could not be sure she would be so well looked after.

So Camille went out, leaving me alone with the servant whenever I wished. I expect she went with other men at houses of friends, and so got her time paid for twice over, and made a good thing of it; perhaps she thought, the longer this lasted the better it would be for her. I think now that that was her game.

FINIS VOLUME ONE






MY SECRET LIFE
Volume Two

By Anonymous
 AMSTERDAM
 PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS
 1888



 This first reprint of "My Secret Life" is for private distribution among connoisseur collectors. It is strictly limited to four hundred and seventy five copies, all of which have been subscribed for prior to publication.






Contents


 CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.





DETAILED CONTENTS.

  CHAPTER I.--Louise sapped.--Suspicions.--Lectures on virginity with live
 illustrations.--Drugged for inspection.--Camille's hesitation.--Absents
 herself.--The house in G.. d. n s.... e.--Baudy prints.--A feel, a
 sniff, and a kiss.--Out shopping.--Garters.--Dinner, and after.

 CHAPTER II.--Undressing.--Silk stockings and garters.--The
 attack.--Foiled on the outside.--A battery.--A breech.--A tough
 virginity.--Triumphant.--Sanguinary proofs.--The second entry.--My
 foreskin.--Twenty-four hours fucking.--Gamahuching.--Six days
 pleasure.--Camille returns.

 CHAPTER III.--Camille at home.--Her little game.--My greenness.--The
 house in O.. d. n street.--The glove-shop.--Louise fatigues me.--Fred
 on the scent.--A cigar-shop.--Three into one.--A clap.--Serious
 reflexions.--The sisters disappear.

 CHAPTER IV.--Enforced chastity.--A stricture.--Health restored.--Mrs.
 Pender.--A peep from a hay-stack.--In a cowhouse.---Stable and
 barn.--Mother's satisfaction.

 CHAPTER V.--Aunt at the dairy.--Morning amusements with Pender.--Female
 haymakers.--Mrs. Whiteteeth.--An exhibition of cock.--Against a field
 gate.--A night on the grass.--A sight from the barn-loft.--Robert the
 page.--Molly.

 CHAPTER VI.--Joey and nursemaid.--The privy in the
 laurel-walk.--Scared.--Whiteteeth in the ditch.--The nursemaid's
 bed-room.--Robert amusing her.--A lost virginity.--Aunt and
 Joey.--Nearly caught.--Amatory instructions to nursemaid.

 CHAPTER VII.--Molly and Giles.--A country ale-house.--Pender's
 history.--How her virginity was taken.--White-teeth's ailment.--Molly in
 the loft.--Interrupted.--Molly tailed.

 CHAPTER VIII.--Field-women.--Fred at home.--Smith, the field-foreman.--A
 rape of a juvenile.--Fucking consequences.--Nelly consents.--Fred looks
 on.

 CHAPTER IX.--Laura and Fred.--Vauxhall amusements.--A juvenile
 harlot.--A linen stopper.--The hairless and the hairy.--Ten and
 forty.--A snub.--At my aunt's.--Nursemaid and page missing.--Pender with
 child.--Molly and Giles caught.--Mr. Pendler's letch.

 CHAPTER X.--Nelly and Sophy.--The beer-house again.--Sophy's belly.--On
 the road.--Against a tree.--At the baudy house with Sophy.--Her
 narrative. Tom and the three sisters.--Fred on the scent.--Pendler's
 troubles.

 CHAPTER XI.--Out shooting.--A female carter.--A feel in the
 train.--Molly in London.--Giles in town.--Fred on the scene.--Molly at
 the Hall.--Copulation in uniform.--A sham illness.--An afternoon with
 Molly.--She turns harlot.--Gets clapped.--Her baby.

 CHAPTER XII.--Nelly and Sophy.--Nelly at the Argyle.--In town
 with Fred.--On the sofa with Mabel.--The effect of black
 stockings.--Interference.--In bed.--Mabel's bad habits.--A ladies'
 school.--The bath-room.--My cousins naked.--Marie the curate's
 wife.--Cunt inspections.--Servants washing.--Flat-fucking.

 CHAPTER XIII.--Fred on flat-fucking.--In town with Laura.--Back at
 the school.--Pictures for young ladies.--Fred's ankle.--Mrs. Maria's
 weakness.--To London alone.--Laura and Mabel.--Three in a bed.--A risky
 poke.--Groping for the pot.--Nearly caught.--Fred joins us.

 CHAPTER XIV.--My cousin at home.--Pender's belly.--A lawyer's
 letter.--Action for crim-con threatened.--Suspicions.--A
 compensation.--The Penders leave.--Wholesale whorings.--A frolic at Lord
 A...'s.--After dinner.--Newspaper readings.--A strange rape.--Bets
 on pricks.--Pricks felt.--Fred on his head.--Beds on the
 floor.--Free-fucking.--End of the orgie.

 CHAPTER XV.--Morning headaches.--An indignant housekeeper.--A
 saucy valet.--Consequences.--Fred leaves England.--Lady A... 's
 invitation.--Laura a widow.--Farewell Laura.--Adieu Mabel.--My
 guardian's remonstrances.--Parental advice.--Ruined.--Reflexions.--My
 relations.

 CHAPTER XVI.--Married, and miserable.--Virtuous
 intentions.--Consequences.--Mary Davis--A virtuous child.--Low-class
 fucksters.--A concupiscent landlady.--Reflexions on my career.--the
 sizes of pricks.--My misconception.

 CHAPTER XVII.--Irish Kate.--Drink, heat, fleas, and French letters.--The
 bricklayer afterwards.--I give luck.--The lost breast-pin.--The
 cholera's victim.

 CHAPTER XVIII.--Costermonger's children.--A small girl, mother, and
 mangle.--A French letter fetched.--Young Callow's exploits.--The
 customers' linen.--A hard-fleshed bum.--Invitation to anus.--A strange
 letch.--One big with child.--Fucked for a sovereign, and pleasure.--A
 Creole.--My misery.--Reflexions.

 CHAPTER XIX.--My home life.--Heartbroken.--In the parlour.--Maid Mary's
 sympathy.--Don't cry Master.--On the sofa.--Both in lust.--Impotent.

 CHAPTER XX.--The next day.--On the door-mat.--On the sofa.--On her
 belly.--Eight hours fucking.--At a brothel.--An afternoon's amusement.

 CHAPTER XXI.--Preliminary.--Mary's
 seduction.--Flight.--Desertion.--Going to the post-office.--A halfpenny
 signal.--Against an arm chair.--The privy watched.--Nearly caught.--Mary
 suspected.--Dismissed.--In lodgings.--Service again.--My cousin
 sir.--Letters lost.--Mary disappears.--Seven years afterwards.--Sequel.





CHAPTER I.


     Louise sapped.--Suspicions.--Lectures on virginity with live
     illustrations.--Drugged for inspection.--Camille's
     hesitation.--Absents herself.--The house in G..d.n Sq..e.--
     Baudy prints.--A feel, a sniff and a kiss.--Out shopping.--
     Garters.--Dinner and after.

 I went to work to get into Louise, having no compunctions, it seemed to me the most natural thing in the world. I had read about the naughtiness of seduction, but my associates had taught me, that every girl wanted fucking, and was longing secretly for it, high, or low, rich or poor, it was the same. As to servants, and women of the humbler class, that they all took cock on the quiet, and were proud of having a gentleman to cover them. Such was the opinion of men in my class of life and of my age. My experience with my mother's servants corroborated it; and so to get into Louise seemed both natural and proper.

I suppose there is but one way ordinarily of beginning with a woman. A man must first make himself agreeable, then successively familiar, endearing, coaxing, loose, bold, baudy, determined, then if needs be fierce, or even violent. This order comes naturally to man cunt-hunting, and ends in fucking. It does not follow that if the early stages pass easily, that the last shall ensure success. Occasionally the woman is scared, put on her guard against herself, and the man, and the chance is lost.

This course had become familiar to me at home, and I began. No person in the house except Camille and Madame Boileau spoke French; there was no other to speak at all, so my conversation was acceptable. At the end of a week I had kissed her to her contentment. No strong, healthy woman of eighteen is otherwise than gratified by the kisses of a young man. Money I knew now told much, and I gave to her who had never perhaps had five shillings to call her own. She gave me a kiss in the dark passage, I hugged her and pushed outside at her cunt, she ran upstairs angry, but had forgot it the next day.

Looking at her and longing used to make me randy, then if near, Camille's cunt got the benefit of it. The girl used to eye us when we went into the bed-room. She had a quarrel with her mistress, and said she should go home. Camille said she might; but speaking only French, and without money, how could she? Just then, through change of climate and living, she fell ill.

We were very kind to her. I got her everything. When asleep one day, Camille partly uncovered her, and showed me her limbs naked; they were so fine, and so excited me, that but for Camille, I think I should have ravished her. She soon got well, and I said, that if I did not soon have her, I should cease seeing her. "Who hindered?" Camille asked. There she was, I might have her.

Then I had a suspicious fit. All the old Major had told me about fellows being sold, and taken in by women who were not virgins came to my mind. The girl was never out but for a few minutes at a time to fetch things, yet other men saw Camille, and some might have seen and had the girl. Camille had once taken her out in a cab; she might have been to some man's. So I said I would not give the money unless I saw her virgin cunt first. After a day or two, Camille agreed to it if I would give her ten pounds down, and would swear never to disclose it to the girl.

I thought still I was to be fooled, so I called upon my old schoolfellow, who used to say, "Snatch at her cunt, and show her your cucumber." He had been one at the frigging match, and had just been appointed assistant-surgeon at a hospital; he was a bachelor and baudy-minded as ever. "M...," said I, "have you ever seen a virginity?" "Many," he replied, "I have dissected them, and if girls have anything the matter with their wombs, or cunts, we get a look, they don't mind a doctor. If a girl has piles, I make her turn up, and have opened several fine women's virgin cunts, asking questions all the while, if they feel this or feel that. They say yes or no, which of course I knew they would say, but they think I am very clever for asking. Some like a young doctor's fingers on their privates, though they say they object. Assistants only get the chance with the poor, the better classes have older married men."

I asked him to explain one to me on a woman, and he did. We went home with the same women; they were astonished, for instead of pulling our pricks out, we both merely felt and looked at them, and he gave me a full lecture. It was an odd sight to see him explaining the situation of a virginity, I holding a candle to see better. One of the girls roared with laughter, the others fancied they had some ailments, when they found out he was a doctor, and he gave them advice.

I don't mean ailments of their cunts. We did not fuck either of the women.

From reading, his descriptions, his sketches and what he pointed out on three different cunts, I felt satisfied that I should know a virgin, and told Camille what I had done. She was then good enough to point out to me on her own cunt, where her virginity had been, as far as she could recollect it. She was quite sure about Louise, and explained that girls being with their parents in France were well watched; that the loose pricks about a town were all taken by the married women,--which I did not believe.

One night I was to see it, I waited for a signal from a window, of two lights, rushed across the road and was let in by Camille. We went into Louise's bedroom. There the girl lay in her night-dress on the bed, insensible. "We must be quick," said Camille. Then she threw the girl's clothes rapidly up above her navel, gently pulled apart her legs, and held open the lips of the girl's cunt. It was such as had been described to me. My excitement was fearful. She was a splendid limbed woman, looked twenty-five instead of eighteen years old. Her cunt-hair jet-black, crisp and thick as on a negress' head, grew up her mens and down besides the lips. The vermillion stripe in the midst of it was enough to drive any man mad. I put out my hand to touch it, but Camille pulled it back. "No, no," she said in a suppressed voice, "you must go, you promised me." "Let me fuck then." "No, go at once." She pulled me towards the door, the girl was breathing heavily. Wild with lust, I pulled out my prick. "Come away, you promised, she must see neither of us." "One look more then." Again Camille opened the cunt-lips.

As she did so, Louise gave a groan, and turned round on one side opening her eyes wide. Camille blew out the light, and pulled me into the sitting-room. "You must go," she said. I wanted to fuck her, but she would not let me.

I met a woman in Regent street, it was raining hard. Much as I still hesitated at going with strange, gay women, I went home with her, threw her down with her clothes on. The instant I saw her cunt, and almost before I could get my prick out I spent over her bum and thighs. She remarked, "You did want it, and no mistake." I left, got down to the Italian Opera. Crowds of women walked under the Colonade, they often then wore low dresses walking. I went to a baudy house with one, and fucked her thinking of the black-haired motte and lips between the thighs of the unconscious Louise.

I never knew what Camille had given the girl. She said she had made her drunk with champagne. Louise on a subsequent day said she had got drunk with champagne, but she never knew that I had seen her on that night. I believe that something else had been given to her to make her insensible. There was a convulsive movement in her body as she turned round; her limbs before she did so seemed dead, her breathing resembled a groan, her breast heaved distressingly, she opened her eyes, but saw nothing. The more I reflected, the less I understood the agitation of Camille, who usually was so calm.

I had seen the girl's virgin cunt, and recollect the look of pussy, belly, thighs, and slit. The cunt-hole as I held the candle near it seemed to be covered, excepting a little perforation just big enough to put a little finger through, corresponding with my surgical friend's description; yet I seemed to have less recollection of it than of all the rest of her body. It was confused, strange, like the remains of a dream on my mind. So much had suspicion taken possession of me, that I was by no means now sure I was not being done. I paid Camille the ten pounds. When she had got them, she said she expected the fifty pounds all the same, that the cunt inspection was a preliminary she had not bargained for. I thought I was being cheated, and said so. We had a row, but such a fool was I, so much desire had I to get into this girl,--simply because she was a virgin,--that at last I agreed to it.

The girl could not get up the next day. I saw her in her bed by myself; she said she had been ill through eating something, and had had champagne. I caressed her, and in spite of her struggles, got my hands on her breasts and half-way down her belly, spoke baudy, pulled out my prick, was repulsed, and gave her a sovereign. Camille came back and I fucked her. I recollect telling Camille, that there was a wonderful likeness in face, colour of hair, eyes, limbs, and even in cunt, between her and her servant. Camille laughed and said, the two families had always been thought to be much alike, and were related.

Louise became inquisitive about my intimacy with Camille. "Was I her lover? Was I fond of her?" "Yes I had been, but was not now." "Why did I come there?" "To see you, my dear."

When Louise first arrived Camille was particular in not exposing her own legs or breast to me. Before that she used in warm weather to be with naked breasts, a chemise and slippers often being her only garments. Now she got into slipshot dressing again, and began to talk baudy. She had told Louise how she got her living, and talked about making money by fucking, so she told me; but she would not let me take any liberties with her before Louise. She went out leaving me alone with her, taking my money when she returned. It is a wonder to me now how I stood all this, felt I was being humbugged, played with, and yet things went on as I describe. Three weeks had elapsed, or more, and yet I had never felt Louise's cunt. So I told Camille she was humbugging me. Louise got funny in her behaviour to Camille, said she would or wouldn't, and one day they had a quarrel, in which Louise insolently remarked about something she wanted, that Camille would do well not to show the point of her nose in the village any more. When alone I said to Camille, I was not to have the girl I supposed. Who hindered me? "Help me." "How?" Being in a blackguard humour I said, "Make her drunk, and then I will have her." No, it should never be said that that happened in her rooms; if a woman let a man of her own free will, well and good; if he got into her fair and square, good; a woman might do what she liked,--it was natural to have a man;--if Louise liked it, it was not her business; but she would not have her made drunk.

I said she was always in the way. She said she must live there. "You would like me to go out of town for a fortnight." Said I, "That is the best thing you can do." She said she could not.

I insisted, and at length she agreed to go for ten days, I paying her I think fifteen pounds for her lodgings. Off she went, and I dare say went to a friend's close by, I never knew. She said she was sorry she had brought the girl to London. Louise was not to know that I was aware of her departure. The last words she said to me were, "I suppose when you have her you will leave me." I replied I had no such intention, nor had I; but a gay woman is a good judge of the future.

I must now describe the lodgings more closely. The ground-floor was occupied by a cloth merchant; there was no shop, but in the windows were some bales of cloth, a brass name-plate was on the inner door, the top of the house was the cloth-dealer's store. The man was rarely in England, the entrance to the shop from the hall was always locked, and I never saw more than one man enter it.

The first floor Camille had. On the second floor was a grumpy old woman named Boileau; she took charge of the house. I scarcely ever saw the old woman excepting when she opened the door, and then she neither spoke or looked at me. Until Louise came, Camille had had a French servant. Some years afterwards it turned out that the woolen shop was used by the foreigners for forging foreign notes; the cloth business was but a mask. Camille had been there two years.

Off Camille went. That same day I was at the house. Madame, Louise said, had gone for ten days into the country, and had left word that no one was to be let in. I went upstairs saying I should come when I liked, that as Camille had gone, we could do as we liked. She looked hard at me.

"I expect Madame has gone off with some man," said I, "she will get a good lot of fucking." She had heard me talking baudy, and knew that word in English and French. Then we had breakfast together, and I made love to her.

Louise was as vain as a peacock, and excessively fond of her stomach. When she had a glass of champagne, she used to swallow it as fast as she could. This weakness and inclination in any woman places her at the mercy of a man who will spend his money; and though I did not then see the advantages of money as plainly as I see it now, I instinctively used it.

"This is jolly," said I, "we will go and have dinner, then go to the theatre, do what we like afterwards." Her eyes sparkled, but she feared to go, for "Madame was such a demon when offended." "Who would know? The people in the house would not know what we did," I replied.

It was yet only mid-day. "Nobody can interrupt us, let's have luncheon here, I will get the wine." A french restaurateur sent in a hot luncheon. I fetched champagne, then bethought myself of something which had not occurred to me before.

Camille had as said a big album full of voluptuous pictures. When she went to fetch Louise I asked her to leave it with me till her return. She said, "I will pawn it to you for ten pounds." I lent that sum. Since her return she had not asked for it, maybe thinking I would ask for my ten pounds. I knew now well the effect of baudy pictures in exciting lust, so I fetched it. We had luncheon and champagne, she laughed, talked, objected to sit down with me, but at last was thoroughly at home with me, and for the first time talked freely of her mistress, whom she feared. She disclosed a deal of simplicity and a very great deal of vulgarity, for she was an utter vulgar peasant girl; but I didn't mind anything to get up her cunt.

Good living heats the body and stimulates randi-ness; there is fifty times as much danger in leaving a young couple together with their stomachs full of good food, than when they are empty. A gentle heat, a sense of fullness, a gentle swelling, creeps up the stem of the man's prick, the knob feels tender and voluptuous; a gentle moisture distills in the woman's cunt, heat and an alloverish feeling, from clitoris to arse-hole overcomes her. Both are then ready for fucking, and only restrained from going at it by various social reasons, which determine our actions in every-day life. Such was our state when kissing and laughing we put away the things. Then we sat side by side on the sofa, with my arm round her waist.

I produced the book, which I had brought with me. I recollected how, poring over it with Sarah or Susan, the pictures in my "Fanny Hill" used to throw them into a state of randiness which it was left me to appease. Susan used to say, that she only had to look at the pictures for a minute, to make her want "to forget herself." I took the book out of the paper; it was a large square book, which immediately attracted her attention. "What is that?" she asked. "Pictures." "Oh! show me." "Come on then." She sat on my knee, I put my left arm round her waist. "Give me a kiss." She gave it. "Now let me look." I had placed my right hand on her thigh outside her clothes, and was thinking, what a nice chance I had for throwing her back on the sofa, but I opened the first page. It was a fine, large coloured print (how well I remember it) of a bed-room. On the bed knelt two young women side by side, their petticoats thrown over their backs, and showing their backsides to their waists. Close by stood a middle-aged woman looking at them; through the door were the heads of two men peeping at the posterings, lust was on their faces. One of the girls had a much fatter bum than the other, both cunts were visible, the hair of one black, the other, light. It was a bet as to who had the handsomest posterior, the woman to decide was saying, "Marie a gagne, ell a la plus vonde et la plus belle."

Louise gave a loud "oh!" as if taken by surprise, her face changed blood-red, she turned the cover over and burst into a fit of laughter, tried to get away from me, but I held her fast, so she put her head over my shoulder and laughed, I laughing with her. "You have as nice a bum as the dark one," said I. "There is nothing more like that, look through it." I opened the book again; under her eyes was a picture of a woman undressed, laying at the edge of the bed, her legs open, her middle finger on her cunt; by her side a man with trousers down, his prick out stiff and crimson-tipped, one hand on the woman's thigh, and intensely looking at her cunt.

"I want to do that with you," I said. "Fi donc! c'est villain," said she, and pushed the book violently away. It fell on the floor, and at the same instant she attempted to rise. I held her tightly, and pulling her back on to the big sofa, her legs flying up, I threw up her clothes in front, showing her fine pair of thighs, and the next minute I had my mouth and nose buried in the hair, kissing and sniffing it, my hands roving about wherever I could feel warm flesh.

With a shriek,--then another,--she twisted round (in doing so my nose rubbed on her clitoris), her petticoats fell down, she got across the room to her bedroom, and bolted the door.

I stood shouting, "What a beautiful form, what thighs, how dark the hair on your cunt, how lovely my nose has rubbed on it; let me see it again, let me fuck you, have pity on me." All that suggested itself to a man whose prick was ready to discharge in his breeches did I say, but fruitlessly, she made no reply. I went back to the sofa and considered what to do. Soon I heard her moving, crept to the door, and heard the rattle of piddle. "You're piddling out of that dear cunt," said I, "how I wish I could feel it." The rattle stopped, and again I went back to the sofa.

I had told her that I would take her out, and called to her to get ready, she never answered. A few minutes afterwards I wanted to shit; it was needful to go down-stairs into a yard. Thought I, "If she hears me go down she will come out;--ah! if she does, there is the book, I wonder if she will look at it." I opened it at a picture she had not seen, tearing up little bits of newspaper, I placed them between adjoining pages, so that if opened the bits must fall out, then said, "I am going downstairs; if you won't go out, I will go without you."

I stayed at the shit-house some time, went up quietly, and heard her door close as I went up the stairs. When I entered the room I looked at the book; it was just as I had placed it, but two of the bits of paper had dropped out. "Louise, Louise, you have been looking at the book." "You lie," said she quickly. "You have, I put bits of paper in, and they have fallen out, so you must have." "I have not," said she.

"I wanted to take you to see the shops, to the theatre, if you won't answer I shall go alone, and dine alone." "I shan't come then." "Don't," said I in a huff, then went to Camille's bed-room and washed. "I am going, will you come? In another minute I shall be gone without you".

"Will you promise not to be méchant" (the French term). "I have not been wicked," said I. She was yielding; I knew she was wild to go out with me. "Will you promise to leave off talking so." "Not for ever; how can I when I have seen what I have." "I have no boots, only my thick shoes." "Come in those." "Camille has left a pair they are too big, and there is a hole in them." But it ended in her putting them on. Dressed, she looked an odd mixture of a peasant and a servant, who had got on some of her mistress' things. I was ashamed to walk out with her; she saw something in the expression of my face which wounded her pride. "You don't like walking out with me," she said, and sitting down big tears came into her eyes, "but I am handsomer than Madame, my feet are smaller although my leg is bigger; my shoes are shameful, she would not let me have boots like hers, she said she would send me home; she won't go home again, if I tell them about her." Thus she jabbered on in a fume, till she had exhausted herself, her pride wounded, excited much by feasting, by the baudy book and my kiss on her cunt. She talked so fast in her provincial French, that I could scarcely understand what she said.

I did not care what I spent, so that I could spend up Louise. "I am proud to walk with you, and I will buy you a pair of boots." She jumped up with delight. "But you shall let me do one thing." "What?" "Let me feel your leg, which you say is so big." "Volontiers," said she, "there is no harm in feeling a leg; in my country our clothes only just come below our knees," and so with joking, kissing, and a promise to let me put the boots on, out we went in a cab.

I took her to a boot-maker's, and fitted her to perfection; she was delighted, and in the cab did nothing but put up her feet to look at them. She let me feel her legs, after she had pulled her petticoats tight round the knee; I wanted to go higher, "No, no," she said; but I pushed up, on to her thighs.

I bought her a bonnet, but it had to be altered and was to be sent home in the evening; I got out of the cab and going into a shop without her, bought (guessing the size) white silk stockings and showy garters, without telling her. Then I bought her gloves, a collar, and one or two other things, and then we went to dine.

As I bought each successive article I told my wants coarsely enough. I felt her in the cab, and got so excited, that I pulled my cock out, keeping it covered with my handkerchief, removing it from time to time as I thought the sight of the cock would excite her. "The omnibus, the omnibus" she cried out suddenly. Forgetting myself and all but my wants, I had exposed my randy doodle just as an omnibus passed, and as I looked up, there was the conductor laughing at me. I went to the N.... n hotel, then just opened, and ordered a dinner; there the collars, cuffs, gloves, and other things, she fitted on and looked at, and laid them down, so that she could see them when dining. Gloves she had never put on in her life before. The anticipation of the bonnet filled her with delight; it was handsomer she was sure, than any one she ever saw Madame wear; did I not think she would be handsomer than Madame, if as well dressed? she was wild with conceit, and told me again how Madame had refused to buy her things she wished; saying, that a servant could not be allowed to wear them. This grievance had sunk deeply into her mind. Meanwhile talking, laughing, joking, sometimes saying, "fi! fi! donc," sometimes, "oh! villain!" sometimes giving me a kiss, sometimes saying, "be quiet," she ate a good dinner, drank more champagne than she was aware of, got more and more talkative, whilst I got more and more lewd.





CHAPTER II.


     Undressing.--Silk stockings and garters.--The attack.--
     Foiled on the outside.--A battery.--A breech.--A tough
     virginity.--Triumphant.--Sanguinary proofs.--The second
     entry.--My foreskin.--Twenty-four hours fucking.--
     Gamahuching.--Six days pleasure.--Camille returns.

 "The bonnet will be home," said I, "let us go." "Allons, allons," so off we went. It was dusk when we got in the cab. "I am to put on the stockings if I give you a pair, and to feel," I said. "No man has, c'est trop fort, you ask too much; you may put on garters below the knee." "Why not above?" "Oh! quite different," said she, "in the fields no girl minds putting her garter on before all the world below knee; but above, sh! that is disgrace." Such is fashion, I have seen an Italian market-woman stoop forward and piss whilst talking to a man (a neighbouring stall-keeper): she saw no harm. An English woman would burst first; yet if the Italian had put his hand rudely up her legs, that man might have been stabbed by the woman. Louise saw no indecency up to the knees, but above was a disgrace. "Put your boots up," I said, up they went. "I may put garter to there?" said I feeling outside. "Yes." I shoved my hand up her petticoats on to her thighs, they closed, and down went the legs: a squeal, a struggle, but on her thighs I kept it until I got to the house.

We let ourselves in, the bonnet had not come, Louise opened the window to look out for it, although it was dark. A ring came, it was the bonnet; down she rushed for it. "Bring lights, bring lights," said she taking one in her hand herself, the bonnet in the other; and rushing into Camille's room where there were large glasses; she put on the bonnet, clapped her hands for joy, and kissed me saying, I was so good. She put on her gloves, and collar, turning round to me each time, and asking how she looked. "Let me sleep with you, and I will buy you a dress to-morrow morning," said I. "Impossible, impossible, was I not going now," said she thoughtfully on a sudden. "No," I meant to sleep there; and as I had fetched a valise, I pulled out my things, took off my boots, put on a dressing-gown. "There," said I, "I shall sleep here till Camille comes home." "There will be a row then, and what will I do? Madame Boileau (the old woman upstairs) must know, and will tell Madame," and she looked hard at me.

Then she was attracted by my dressing-gown which was showy, but soon began looking at herself again, and took off all her finery with a sigh. "I am so hot and thirsty," said she. It was not wonderful, for she had fed twice heavily, and been champagning off and on for hours, her hands were burning, heat was throughout her frame. "Let's have some more champagne," said I, and opened a bottle; I pulled my trousers off,--it was so hot,--being then in dressing-gown, drawers, and slippers, I made up my mind to force her, if I could do it no other way. Then my eye caught sight of a white muslin wrapper which Camille wore, it was tied down the front with blue bows.

"Put on Madame's wrapper, if you are hot, you will look handsomer than she does." She went into Camille's room, bolted herself in, and came out looking splendid, and had only on beneath the wrapper, her coarse chemise, which I could see (as indeed I knew before) just reached below her knees. My heart palpitated, I was in my dressing-gown, she with but the thinnest garments on.

The champagne was before us, we were on the sofa, my arm was round her waist; through the thin folds of her light dress I could feel her firm haunches and well-moulded body; I talked baudy, squeezed her to me, pressed her thighs with one hand, and put the other down her bosom. Every now and then there was a scuffle, a cry, and forgiveness; then resistance grew fainter, another glass of champagne, and her head dropped on my shoulder, subdued by amourousness, and when I asked her to let me sleep with her, she only said, "Oh! I dare not. I must not." I slipped my hand up to her thighs, she put her hand down stopping its progress. "If I could only get her into the bed-room, and on to the bed," I thought and went to Camille's room, the candles were still burning. "Would you like silk stockings? here they are." "Is it so?" said she bounding up. I held them up before her. "Let me put them on." "The garters above knee, mind." "Yes, yes," said she impatiently, "Give them me".

She sat down on the side of the bed, and let me put them on, putting one leg up after the other, pulled off her new boots and old stockings, I saw her thighs, but she never heeded, so anxious was she to get the silk stockings on. I had thrown off my dressing-gown, and knelt in front of her as a boot-maker does in fitting on boots. I was so slow, that impatiently she said, "Give it me, give it me," pulled it on herself, and then put on the boot. I sat down on the floor, lowering my head and looking. Her silks and boots engrossed her. My prick came out from under my shirt, stiff, standing, and pointing up to her; she never saw it, but got up directly one garter was on, contemplated one leg in the cheval-glass, laughed with delight, turned round, kissed me; then on went the other. As I put that garter on, I kissed the thigh just above it, up she got, lifted her robe to see her legs, strutted up and down in front of the glass until tired of looking. Her fine limbs looked exquisite in the silks and boots.

I cuddled and kissed her, put my arm round her. "Do let me dear," I said. I got my hand up her clothes and between her thighs, she crossed her legs without replying. "I will fuck you, I swear I will," said I as I forced my hand still closer in. "Oh! oh!" she said, and nothing more. I pulled her backwards on the bed, my cock stiff, standing, was under her eyes, drew her lips close to mine kissing rapidly: my fingers rubbed the warm slit, her bum began to move uneasily, her breathing was short, her thighs unclosed, my finger slipped farther. "Oh! don't hurt me," she said sharply. Pressing her backwards on the bed, I lifted her limbs, she was yielding, meant fucking. I ripped open at once the slight blue bows which fastened the muslin gown, threw up the chemise, saw the well-rounded limbs in silk, the bright red garters, the thighs above, the black hair of her cunt, rolled on to her, was between her thighs, my naked belly on hers, my prick touching the cunt-lips.

The accumulators of my ballocks must have been gorged with sperm. Off and on all day my prick had been on the stand, I had feared to touch it lest it should go off, nor had I put the girl's hand on to it; the last-hour my prick had been erect without subsiding. As my belly met hers a tremor shook my whole frame. "My God, shall I spend outside?" thought I; my prick like an iron rod touched the top of the wet slit and slid right down on its passage. Is she virgin? a sharp cry, "Oh! don't hurt me," I felt an obstacle, pushed violently again and again, "oh! oh! don't," and then throb, throb, throb, with each throb a jet of sperm shot out against the mouth of the orifice I had not penetrated, I lost my power in the contentment of a copious emission, and the pleasurable certainty, that no prick had yet been up the hole against which mine had been battering.

Next was fear lest she should get up, so rapid had the spend overtaken me, that I had not got my hands under her, they were on the side of her smooth haunches. To keep her under me until my powers returned, I slid one hand under her bum, the other under her waist, and squeezed her to me, then gently loosening my belly a little from hers I pushed again where my prick laid. With what delight I found it still stiff, with an obstacle in its front; I nestled gently in the spermy lips, the heat, the smoothness gave me a titillation as if a spend was again not far off, and that I need not have feared my manhood. With pride and power I clasped her, feeling sure she was virgin. There she lay in all her beauty, submitting to my will, I enjoying my sense of power, wriggling gently for a minute, till my prick demanded its right of entry. I pushed, a sharp "oh!" a harder push, a louder cry, the obstacle was tight and hard indeed, I had never had such difficulty before; my lust grew fierce, her cry of pain gave me inexpressable pleasure, and saying I would not hurt, yet wishing to hurt her and glorying in it, I thrust with all the violence my buttocks could give, till my prick seemed to bleed, and pained me. "Oh! mon Dieu! ne faites pas ca, get away, you shan't," she cried, "oh! o-o-oh!". My prick moved forward, something which had tightened round, and clipped it gave way; suddenly it glided up her cunt, still tighter I clasped her, as she moved with pain beneath me, my balls were dangling on her bum, my sperm shooting against the neck of her womb, and I had finished the toughest virginity I ever had yet.

The job was done, months of anticipation, hopes, fears, and desire, were over; my prick was in the cunt of a French virgin, at a cost of two hundred pounds. After my second poke, I had a feeling of pleasure and tranquillity, a weight off my mind, a future of voluptuousness before me. My cock still lingered in her cunt, I moved it about, excited and full of lusty vigor could have gone on fucking; but letting my penis withdraw, I lay thinking about her cunt, then with a kiss lifted myself off the beautiful creature who lay under me with eyes closed. I saw the gauzy dressing-gown lying open, the blue bows torn, a coarse white chemise in a well pressed heap, above a navel, an ample belly, finely formed thighs, of a slightly brown tint, and on the chemise beneath large spots of sperm, patches of blood, and spunk streaked with blood in quantity filling and covering the space between the cunt-hole, getting off I seated myself by the side of the bed; Louise seemed to awaken to consciousness, and with the instinct of a modest woman covered herself by drawing down her chemise, carelessly, half-sleepily and unconsciously; more as if from habit than of thought to hide her charms. Then she drew herself to the edge of the bed, put one leg higher up than the other, resting her elbow on it, her head upon her hand, she looked at me wistfully without uttering a word.

A newly fucked woman rarely looks at the man, sometimes turns away, rarely speaks, but avoids a man's eyes. Louise did not speak, but she looked as if she was collecting her senses, looked so long and in such manner, that it made me uncomfortable, until her fine legs, in an attitude I had not yet seen them in recalled me to myself. "What lovely legs," said I. She pulled the chemise down lower, but the chemise was short, and she was sitting on it; she never took her dark eyes off me, but with her head still leaning on her hand, said slowly, "You have promised me never to go into the bed-room with my sister again!"

"Your sister!" What a revelation! the likeness to Camille. I wondered it had not struck me more completely before, the hesitation of Camille to let me get the girl, her wish that she had never fetched her, her half intention to send her home, the oath she made me take not to disclose my having seen Louise's cunt when she was insensible: all struck me at once.

Louise jumped off the bed in a fright, "No, no, no," she said, "not my sister, my mistress; did I say sister? I didn't mean it, it's my mistress, don't say I said sister."

I was certain she had spoken the truth: the likeness, Camille's anger when I suggested making Louise drunk, her desire to be out of the house when her virginity was taken, and other things crowded on my mind. "Deny it as you like, ma chere, but you are her sister, the very image of her."

"Don't say so." I swore I would never tell. "She will murder me if she knows. She is a demon, you don't know her,--mon Dieu! mon Dieu! what shall I do? I must run away."

I calmed her, told her no one need know, I would never tell. She believed me, seemed comforted, but still kept assuring me she had made a mistake: she meant to say mistress.

This was a funny episode, a funny conversation between a woman carrying her first male spunk in a bloody cunt, and a man with a cock still dripping with cunt-juices on to his shirt, sitting by her side.

We talked by the side of the bed; then for a minute she put her head on my shoulder and cried; it was over-excitement, nothing else, no regret.

Was I going? My reply was to put on my nightgown, say I meant to sleep all night with her; I showed her my shirt, dabbed with bloody semen, and gloried in it, told her her chemise was in the same state. She begged me to leave her, and pushed me into the sitting-room, wiped her bloody quim, and changed her things. She could not find Camille's night-gowns, her own were dirty, so she put on one of Camille's beautiful chemises, and over it the white robe. What a difference that entry of my prick had made: twelve hours before, a refusal to let me put on a garter, a struggle, a fight to do it; now my hand rested tranquilly on the smooth thighs, whilst she listened to the pleasures I meant to have with her. I drew her towards the bedroom, pulled off her boots and stockings, her robe, then her chemise, and she got into bed naked, and I with her. It was a hot night, cuddling was close work; lying by her side, my mouth to hers, my belly to hers, my doodle pressed close into her thighs, my hand on her bum, our legs touching their whole length, I was talking of fucking, and she listening lewdly. What a difference! I guided her hand to my prick; oh! my delight in that, and hers! how quietly it laid where I placed it.--then under my balls, her hand was quite full of them, and there it lay, then again round my pego. Again it was beginning to swell, she lay with her long black hair floating on the pillow, her eyes closed in baudy reverie. "You have got my prick in your hand, it has been in your cunt and spent in it." She moved her head close to mine and kissed, my cock stood stiff at once.

I closed to her, feeling every part of her body, excepting that which I had just injured. That came in now for its share: thrusting one knee between her legs I lifted hers so as to leave room for my hand between them. She prayed me not, she was sore, ill, it hurt her. Hurt her? I longed to hurt her, knew I was going to give her pain whilst I lied saying that no pain more would she feel, and then with a little gentle force, my finger slipping over her clitoris, I felt the cunt-hole gently, went up it, she wincing and moving her bum in an inciting manner, then up her orifice went my cock again, amidst murmurs and prayers to leave her alone, a glorious fuck.

Then I dozed, dropping off on one side from her sweet firm body; but excitement would not let me sleep, I kept awaking as fast as I fell asleep, a burning heat pervaded my penis, my mind dwelt on the day's work, her limbs were close to mine, cunt in reach of my fingers, smell of her body in my nostrils. The lights were out, she was slumbering with quiet regular breath. Up came my prick again, my fingers slid between the cunt-lips, felt the signs of my last pleasure, she awakened. "Oh! don't." She was ill, sore, very sore, I was unkind; but what woman can refuse the cock which has just wetted her. Now was a prolonged fuck; then overcome with fucking, worn with excitement, I fell sound asleep.

When I awakened the sun-light struggling through the red curtains cast a pink tint over every thing. We had slept eight hours, were laying rump to rump, naked and touching, for after much fucking, the fondest lovers turn their arses to each other. What a sight she was as she lay on one side, as sound asleep as a top, there had been but a sheet over us, that was off, and she was naked. She had a pretty foot, the leg was perfect, thighs and bum thinner than Camille's back-side, and thighs taken on fullness at later age, or after one or two years good fucking which serves quite as well; her breasts were superb, firmer and handsomer than Camille's. On one side I saw the black crisp hair which shaded her seat of pleasure; on the other I could, by putting my head on the bed, just see the dark hair creeping between her bum-cheeks, her flesh had the slightly brown tint common to French women; on the bed lay rounds of spunk mixed with blood, a smear of it was on her thigh on the bum-side. My prick rose again to stiffness at the sight, I wanted to piss violently, but could scarcely accomplish it. I looked at my shirt tail. Spunk and blood were thick on it, I found under the bed her chemise; on it profusely were the bloody seminal marks of her virginity. I felt a pain in my prick, and found the foreskin a little raw. I had paid for hurting her by hurting myself; but what did that matter; I was the first that had been up that cunt, had torn it open, my spunk was in her then, the bloody indications were all around me. I awakened her.

She looked at me, then conscious that she was naked, clawed up the sheet; in a minute I was close to her. She went across to her own room to piddle, then into bed again she got, and in spite of her I put it into her. I felt the cunt tightening, looked at her: her manner was different, I felt her clasping me, she was doing it involuntarily, her breath came quickly, she was spending as my spunk came, her first pleasure with me; all before had been pain,--I knew that.

Then was more fucking, then she made coffee, we had eggs, bread and butter, again to bed, and more fucking. We went without luncheon, spending the entire day in bed, feeling, kissing, cuddling, fucking, and sleeping. We were both worn out, and perhaps might not have got up, excepting that I had to dress, to go downstairs, and then felt hungry, so we both dressed, went to the same place as the day previously, had a jolly good dinner as fast as we could and directly it was over went back. I kept my finger on her cunt when in the cab, both going and coming; the instant we returned we went to bed (it had not been made), and fucked, and fucked, and fucked, and then slept a dozen hours without awaking. A lovely time it was.

Next day I was used up, I never could accomplish the wonderful fucking bouts I have heard men brag about, but dare say in those thirty hours I had fucked her twelve times. She was very tired with it, and was so sore; I was also sore, my prick had slightly bled, the foreskin was torn, and through that fucking bout my prepuce was easier ever afterwards, I could pull it down better than I could before I had torn open her virginity.

The difference between the ways of a woman and man towards each other after they have fucked is wonderful. On a previous night a woman may have refused his kisses, and his embraces, and revolted at his hands touching her quim. He although longing for her, eager to join his body to hers, may have been timid, cautious in his language, hesitating in action, and until passion got full sway, might as soon of thought of putting out his doodle, and attempting to force it up her, as of trying it on his aunt. But what a change a night has made: they sit at breakfast he with satisfaction on his face as he looks at her and thinks, that her most secret parts have not been strangers to him, has felt between her thighs, the lips hitherto untouched by man, has been up her cunt, and spent inside it the essence of his blood. "She has given me pleasure, I have given her pleasure." She looks at him wondering how she came to allow it, how she forgot her resolves, there need be no more disguise, nor hindrance in the way of their pleasures, of the pleasures she first tasted with him; all that she has been taught to hold most sacred from man he has seen, felt, kissed, pierced, violated, and wetted in. The virginity she prided herself on he has destroyed, she no longer shuns him, but is ready to comply with all his wishes, hopes he will compel her soon to yield again. This is the work of a few hours, and as she sits drinking her coffee opposite to him she thinks with him, what a change has taken place.

That was my state of mind with Louise. I had had virgins before without pride in having them, they came in my way, but never had I sought them. Two certainly had never been breached before, but it gave me no pride nor special gratification. This woman I had thought and thought about for months, coveted and paid for the sole pleasure of piercing her hymen. I had now the delight of experience, of leaving my sperm where man had never left it before. This girl of sufficient age, growth and form, I had bored with difficulty and pain, to her and myself, she had bled, I had bled, I had torn up her cuntal diaphragm, had given her sexual pleasure, had revelled in her body. Shirt, and chemise, spunk and blood slobbered lay there. I was rested, she was fresh, and I sat at breakfast with as much complacency and jollity as a man could; yet beyond fucking, I felt that I did not care one damn about her, and even felt sorry. I cannot explain why I felt that, but recollect it.

We had seven days before Camille would return, in those days I more than fulfilled my word to the girl, bought dresses, a ring, brooch, umbrella, parasol, in fact I don't know what I did not give, and must have paid fifty pounds; we dined out, went to theatres, ate, drank, and fucked like blazes.

French women when they have given themselves up to a man, do so with all their heart and soul. One day as luncheon began to operate on her, she nothing loth, she strong, healthy, and with passions roused, feeding daily in a way she had been unaccustomed to, yielded freely to my wishes. I placed her on the bed-side, threw up her chemise, kissed the dark crisp hair of her motte; her thighs separated, her limbs went up, and I saw the adorable vermillion gap, the ragged tear my penis had made. It was a small cunt for so fine a woman. What enticed, and incited me I don't know, I never shall know why dozens of women I have had I never have done it to, but I was taken with the feeling now. I looked, fingered, titillated, kissed it, out went my tongue; it played lightly over the clitoris, then baudy frenzy seized me, and I licked and sucked her cunt. She wriggled, scarce knowing what I was about, when pushing my head away she cried out, "oh! mon Dieu, ah! quelle bete! aho!"

I had never done it willingly but to Martha, now the letch seized me furiously, every day afterwards I had my mouth to her, and when I was so fucked out, that I could come no more, would lay and lick her till she was worn out too with spending.

We had indeed no other amusement than fucking, talking about it, eating, drinking, and sleeping, which was to us all the charm of a honey-moon. I think I see her now, making my cock stiff under my direction, her amusement at pulling the prepuce up and down was great, I almost feel her bum now as she used to sit on my knee, looking at the pictures in the baudy book; we used to talk it over until we went to bed, and eased our passions, what fun when we did not mind washing each other's privates, as we did.

We used to lay on the bed with my head between her thighs, licking her quim, she playing with my prick, but I never put my pego into her mouth, nor did she ever do more than kiss it.

On the day but one before Camille returned, we went to bed, had a fuck, then a second, her cunt felt funny, and I found her courses had come on, or as she called them, her periods. There was an end of my fun, nor was I sorry. Not having left her day or night, nor been to my lodgings, nor to my mother's, I was fucked out, and so was she,--so that her reds came on most opportunely.

Next day we were duller, there was nothing in her to make her a companion when not in amorous amusements. She became tiresome, and annoyed me by putting on her things one after the other, all day long, and asking me, how she looked in them, if she did not look better than Madame. Then how to tell her mistress she had got the things? what to do, if her mistress refused to let her wear them? how was I to see her again? At length we resolved to tell rousing lies about everything,--my behaviour was in fact most absurd.

The following day, a letter came to say Camille would be home that night. I took away my trunk and clothes, went to my virtuous lodgings; it was a relief to be away from cunt for twenty-four hours, and I could not bear a woman with her courses on.





CHAPTER III.


     Camille at home.--Her little game.--My greenness.--The
     house in O.. d. n street.--The glove shop.--Louise fatigues
     me.--Fred on the scent.--A cigar shop.--Three into one.--A
     clap.--Serious reflexions.--The sisters disappear.

 A day or two recruited me, I wrote to Camille who met me in the street, she had sent the girl to the theatre with a friend, so I went indoors with her. "Have you done it to her?" was the first question, as if she did not know, I told her all. She questioned me with strong interest. I gave her the fifty pounds. Then she asked me if Louise had told me where she came from, and other questions, which I saw were put to see, if Louise had told about their relationship. As we talked I looked at her, comparing her with Louise, and saw the likeness stronger than ever. "Why stare so?" she asked. When she had heard of all our bum frolics she gave a sigh and said, "Well, if I had not brought her to London, she would have gone to Paris with A------ (mentioning some French name), and have had it done to her there,--so it comes to the same thing."

Then suddenly, "Are you never going to have me again?" "No," I had promised Louise. She looked amorously fascinating. "She won't know it, I have never had it since I left." She was half reclining on the sofa, by intention or chance her legs raised up on the sofa, one flat, the other foot on its heel, exposing the recumbent limbs from foot to knee. "Do now," said she. "No," but I moved from the chair to the end of the sofa, and began stroking her leg with my hand.

She lifted the clothes just above the knee. I saw the large thigh nearly up to her quim, my hand involuntarily slipped higher, and began smoothing the flesh just above the garter. "Do it now," said she falling right on to her back.

I thought of Louise, of my promise; I knew the look of both their cunts,--of Camille's the best,--desired to see, to compare it. I had been feeling Louise's cunt eight days, now thought I should like to feel Camille's to feel the difference, I knew her cunt was looser, and more hairy, her bum and thighs bigger, yet was I right in my comparison? my cock got uneasy, I helped it to rise in my trousers by giving it a push outside.

"I won't have her," I thought, "but there is no harm in feeling," and began playing with the hair of her motte. "Your hair is longer than Louise's." She laughed, "Do it, baisez-moi," said she.

My fingers touched the slippery cunt, it was irresistible, the next instant they were groping and feeling. "Your bum is bigger than Louise's," I said. She laughed again.

Sitting where I was, and playing at stink-finger, my position was inconvenient. "Come up closer," said she. Then I sat by her hips, on the sofa-edge, she lifted her clothes right up: there was the quim, the jet-black bush, the fine round thighs, my cock was restive, my hands wandering, she unbuttoned my trousers, gave my prick a squeeze, sending up the blood and completed my randiness.

"Louise won't know, you shall kiss me," and she raised herself to throw her arm over my shoulder. Like a young virgin who says, "no, no," whilst she yields, I kept repeating "no, no". The thighs had opened, I was pulling open the lips and trying to see the red inside; and still saying "no," slid on to her, on to it, up it, and spent before I well knew what I was about. "Oh! you are so quick," said she, "you have spoiled me, I was just coming."

She did not mean to be spoiled, trying her most baudy endearments, she held me tight, caressed me, as a French woman knows how,--better than any other. Forgetting Louise, my mind fell into its baudy dreams, I fucked her again, and then she let me get up.

And then to business. "What are you going to do for the girl?" she asked. "Nothing, I have given her money and things worth about a hundred pounds, and have paid you, when I have her again I shall give her money." "You promised to do something more, if not what will become of her?" I did then recollect, that she had made me promise, but had attached no definite ideas to it.

"I relied on you, or would never have brought her; are you going to keep her, or let her be gay like me?"

I did not like either; to keep her I had no intention, did not even like the girl, though I liked plugging her. Said Camille, "We have had a row already, she won't work, and says she will wear the clothes she has got, although I have only seen a few of them." "What do you expect?" I asked. "Set her up in business, selling gloves or perfumes, a small shop somewhere."

Not liking the aspect of affairs, I left, it was the first time such propositions had been made to me. I felt inclined never to go near the house again, but had promised Louise to be with her soon, and always kept my word, so thought over the matter.

Keeping her was out of the question, I had heard that men who kept women, did so for other men; besides I had no idea of tieing myself up that way. I was not pleased with her: a fine girl, a fine fuck, a fresh woman who shivered with delight the instant the prick entered her, who was randy-arsed enough to learn anything in the way of copulation; she had been delightful to me eight days, and might for more; but she was coarse, vulgar, and had not two ideas in her head, was evidently violent tempered, and excessively vain. Set her up in business! why she had cost me hundreds to get her, why should I?

I could not make up my mind, and resolved never to go near her again; but two days afterwards, that funny sense of fullness came over my cock-knob, then the tingling, then the desire for cunt, then for Louise's cunt, the ragged slit made by my cock was before my eyes, and instead of quenching my wants in the channel of some other woman, I went there. Camille was just outside the door, and we conversed together in G.. d.n Sq....

She suggested my seeing Louise alone, and paying her (Camille) as I had done before. I did not mean to submit to that restraint, nor to keep her, but let her go her own way. "What does it matter, she must know you will find it all out, so why not at once?" I said.

"If she knows that I know it, I must turn her out" ("I don't think you would turn your sister out," I thought), "then I must put her into lodgings, and she will be gay." "I can't help that." We came to no conclusion, I left her, went to the door, rang, and Louise opened it. She kissed and hugged me in the passage, a minute afterwards she was on my knee grasping my prick, my fingers were on her cunt, our lips together; in another with tongues lapping together I was up her; in two or three minutes more we were quiet.

(I should so like to experience the feeling a woman has as she sits and talks with her cunt full of sperm, does it feel so very pleasant sitting so?) She poured out her griefs, Camille had asked questions, who had been there? how did she get the bonnet, the new boots? she had refused to tell anything, Camille had said she had better go. "Why not tell Camille?" I said, "if she did not like it she might lump it, as far as I was concerned;" but the girl was evidently afraid,--or was it sham?

Next day I wrote to Louise who met me, and I took her to a house into which I had never been before. For three weeks I met her on writing to her, and we spent hours together. She now had frequent rows with Camille, each time she came to meet me she put on more of her new things; at first she only came with a dress, then with the bonnet and something else, and at last with all the finery; she looked a handsome swell, but a vulgar one. I ceased paying Camille.

One night she said Madame had had no one visit her for a long time, nor was she much out but often was all night, where she went she did not know; there was one man who came, a gentleman, she thought he was a lover of Camille's.

We came out of the house in -------- street one night after a surfeit of voluptuous pleasures, when a woman stepped across the road, and lifted up her veil. "Oh! my God, it's Madame," said Louise, and she got right at the back of me where I stood. "So," said Camille, "I have found you out, you have been in a baudy house with my old friend." She burst into a laugh, turned, and went away without saying another word.

I don't know what actuated me in my course of conduct, at that time I knew well what I did, but my reasons are not so clear, I cared nothing whether Louise knew that her mistress or sister knew I had had her, yet I did not go to the house, firstly because Camille wished me not, unless she was out, and it did not suit me to be waiting for a girl who was burning to let me have her, and also because Louise was in a funk when I was with her in the house, and Camille was out. I was convinced they were sisters, and had a glimmering, that Camille would not like Louise to know she had been got for me by her; yet I thought that it must be found out.

As Camille walked away Louise began to cry, I could not get a word from her; we walked up and down A... street, she was frightened to go home, we went back to the baudy house, and there we slept. The next day we stopped there, and I went home with her,--Camille was within.

"So you have been to a baudy house?" said she, "so you have been fucked, fucked by my friend; you are a nice one to speak ill of other people." "I am not a whore," said Louise taking cheek. "Ain't you?" said Camille, "I don't know that." "Say I am a whore, and I'll hit you," said Louise going up to her. "Have it out by yourselves, I am not going to stop for a row," said I, "Camille be good to the girl." "If I had not brought her from France she would not be what she is." What was I going to do with her? "Nothing." "Then the sooner Louise went out the better."

Louise sat down, and began silently crying. I hate to see a woman cry, and always had one remedy,--could champagne be fetched? Mother Boileau condescended to fetch some. We drank, I got communicative, and began to tell Camille. She cut me short, wanted to know nothing, we had been in a baudy house together, it was enough. What was I going to do? the girl would no longer work, and she was going into other lodgings, I might take hers for Louise if I liked.

It gradually shaped itself to this: I was to take the lodgings, Camille to stay rent free, a servant to be got, but one particular friend only was ever to visit Camille there; Louise took Camille's bed-room, Camille Louise's, I had in fact the pleasure of keeping both. The next night I slept with Louise in Camille's bed, slept there several times, and one morning Camille said, "You have got the girl with child, I quite expected it."

This annoyed me. I had been getting tired for some time, did not like the girl, who became so jealous of Camille, wanted so much admiration, that she quite fatigued me. She wanted to walk in the streets to be admired. I had given her more clothes, she got careless, wanted to go to theatres, and I took her. The Argyle was just opened, and I took her there, she wanted me to go there often. I had seen one or two other women I lusted for, but above all wanted to go to France with Fred who had returned from India; so her being in the family way bothered me. I got it into my head, that it was a plant, and took her to my friend the doctor who said it was a fact.

Camille asked me to meet her in G.. d. n Sq.. e, for convenience I took her to the baudy house; she had got mighty particular, made me go in first, and came in afterwards with her veil down,--she always now wore a veil. She again asked me what I was going to do. She had got the girl, and was sorry for it, at length she said, "I am going to be married, go into business, and will take her with me, if you will help, or I will get her home again to France, if you will give her money." I agreed to think of it.

We sat on a sofa. As I looked at her I began to feel a desire for her. "Let us have a kiss," said I, "for old acquaintance sake." "No," said she, "I am going to be married, am perhaps watched, am frightened of being here. I expect my friend back from abroad daily, he may have come back now. Madame Boileau knows him, I must be careful."

But how can a woman resist a man who has had her often, who knows every crack and cranny of her body, has looked at her motte long enough to count every hair on it, a few rubs on her clitoris, and back she fell on the sofa. We were both dressed, but plunging up her, and grasping her ample rump, I was soon enjoying her; when thinking of Louise, and I suppose comparing her mentally, I said in the height of my pleasure, "Oh! I like fucking you better than your sister after all," or something to that effect.

"What?" said she with a start as her cunt clipped, and jerked my prick out. Cursing, and damning at my interruption I drove it up again, and consummated.

"What did you say about being like my sister?" said she as I still lay with my doodle up her, "what sister?" I replied she looked so like Louise, that she must be her sister. "But she is not, although she is like me." Then the matter dropped, and she slopped her cunt clean. I used to like a woman whom I knew not to wash it, when I was going to fuck her again, Camille had humored me in this, and as my lust came on for my second poke, used to bring my amatory pastime by looking at the cunt with my pleasure signs on it. So Camille washing astonished me. "I am going to be married, and must," said she.

We had more fucking before we left. She was all anxiety about Louise, for I would say nothing. "You will never see me here again," said she, "nor have me again, and may do with Louise what you like, I shan't be here, you will throw her on the town". Then she veiled closely, and made me go out first. I waited at the top of the street ten minutes, out she came, veil down, and shot off in the direction of G..d.n sq..e like an arrow.

I now with perversity longed for Camille, instead of Louise, but never had her afterwards, never sent my tallow up her, although I tried once or twice.

I began going about elsewhere, sleeping with Louise at times; but she was always pestering me about being in the family way, which annoyed me; and wanted such a lot of ballocking, that that annoyed me also. My cousin Fred wanted me to go to Paris with him, Louise said I was going to forsake her. One night after dining with her, coming out we met my cousin Fred, nothing put him off, and he would walk with us. The next day he said in his old unchaste way, which some years in India had not improved, "So that is the woman your mother says she fears has got hold of you." It was the first time I had heard, that my mother had any such suspicion, for although she had spoken to me about my wildness, she had never referred to a woman; but she had told my aunt, who told my cousin my mother was awfully astonished. For that six years I had shagged all our servants under her very nose, yet she had not the faintest suspicion of it, my pranks now coming to her ears, shocked her extremely. I told Fred, that I had had Louise's first, to which he replied, that he should like to rattle his stones against her arse. "Is she a good fuck? where does she live?" I did not mean his stones to knock against her arse as long as mine did, I replied, "Oh! you are fond of her then?" "No, but I preferred her to myself." "Lord, what does it matter?" said he, "white women are scarce in India, there was one that all in my regiment were fond of, there was not an officer who did not stroke her, none of us minded; we say 'the more a cunt's buttered, the better it grinds.'" I did not see it in that light, so with the remark from him, that she was a damned fine piece, we parted.

Two or three days afterwards he spoke of her again, said he knew where she lived, so I thought he was hunting after her which annoyed me; not seeing that if he had got into her, I could have left her with good excuse.

I had tried to learn from Louise if she knew where Camille went all day, but could learn nothing, one night in bed with her however, whilst handling each other's privates, and under the sympathy generated by the rub of my fingers on her clitoris; she on my solemn promise of secrecy, told me that an old friend of Camille's had opened a glove and lace shop in O. f..d street. I saw a small shop, there was a Frenchman in it whose face I seemed to know. I waited near it one night, and saw Camille leave the shop closely veiled, and take the best way towards G..d.n sq..e. Madame Boileau was like an oyster I could get nothing out of her, although she took my money. I was sure that Camille went to the shop daily, or nearly so, and as no man came to the house, suppose she got her cunt plugged in the shop parlour.

Afterwards Fred talked so much about Louise, that I said I kept her. "There are two there, do you keep both?" "Yes." "Then you are a fool, you can't be sure of one woman's cunt if you are not with her always, but two together are sure to make a couple of whores,--no wonder your tin goes so fast."

Meanwhile I went out with him of a night, and we had different women. One night three of us went to a cigar-shop kept by two women just by ------ it was not an unusual thing then for two to have a cigar-shop, with a big sofa in a back parlour, one keeping shop whilst the other fucked. From talking we got to business without intending it. Fred began joking the girls, we went into the back parlour, and had wine, one asked my cousin if he did not want to lie down and rest himself. He said "yes," but wanted warmth to his belly when he rested. "You may have my belly to warm you," said she. "What here?" "Oh! they can wait," said the girl, "and your quiet friend can find his tongue with my sister" (the other girl). I had not spoken, being at times timid at first with a woman, and especially a gay one.

We said jokingly, that we had no money. "I will take you all for a sovereign," said she, "and the one who I say is the best poke shall give me another half-sovereign." It was agreed, we tossed up for the order of the fucking, two went outside while the other had his pleasure. My turn came last, the excitement in thinking of what was going on made me in such a state, that I was no sooner up her than I spent; when I went out the other girl said. "You have been in a hurry." My cousin was pronounced the best fucker. Whilst the strumming was going on in the parlour, people bought cigars, and tobacco--for it was really sold there,--little did they guess the fun going on behind that rod curtain of the shop-parlour.

A night or so after I slept with Louise, I felt uneasy in the tip of my prick, and saw unmistakably that it was the clap. It was not Louise's gift, for great was her surprise when I saw her twice afterwards, and never attempted to have her. She was annoyed, and said she supposed I had another friend, and put herself in such luscious attitudes, that I got a cock-stand, and could scarcely resist putting it up her, but saying I was ill went away. Fred said he should go to Paris without me, I was to join him in a fortnight. What with being indifferent to Louise, annoyed with her randiness, her vulgarity, and temper, being in fact tired of her and the expense, and now having the clap, I determined to break off; so wrote to Camille to meet me.

I told her I had the clap. "I thought there was something wrong," said she, "but Louise I can swear has never had any other man than you, take her to any doctor you like." Then she told me, that in three weeks she meant to leave England, and Louise must do the best she could, she had taken means to bring on the girl's courses, would I send her back to France, or must she go gay in London.

I could not bear the idea of the girl being gay, so agreed to give her money to take her abroad with her, and she accepted. By her advice I wrote to Louise, said I had the clap, and feared I had given it to her, that she would not forgive me I was sure, and so never meant to see her again.

I sent a cheque to Louise, it passed through my bankers, and suppose the girl had it. Then went to Paris, my illness kept to me, so returned to London, got a little better, longed for Louise, stood opposite the house one night, nearly crossed over to have her, but resisted, and seeing a nice woman in Regent street went home with her. I was so impatient, that I pushed her to the side of the bed directly I was in the room, felt for her cunt, and spent in her in a minute, she had not taken her bonnet off. My spending hurt me, my doctor had told me I could go with a woman without fear of injuring her, but that for my own sake I had better abstain. She got up, and took off her bonnet, to see if lying down had hurt it. "I'll have you again," said I. "Let me wash, you've spent such a lot, it's all running down my thighs." Again I fucked her; and next morning my ailment came back. My doctor said it served me right.

Shortly after "lodgings to let" was posted up in Camille's windows, on calling, Madame Boileau came to the door. The two women had left, the shop in Oxford street was shut up, and I never heard of the women afterwards.

I am astonished now, that I was wheedled out of so much money for a French virgin. How I could have done much that I did makes me now laugh, I must have been very green, and Camille very cunning; but I was also rich, and generous, which accounts for much. I see now how largely I was humbugged, but cannot explain or reason about it. I am telling facts as they occurred, as far as I recollect them, it is all I can do. Certainly I had a splendid full-grown virgin for my money, the toughest virginity I yet have taken, a regular cock-bender, and had an uninterrupted honey-moon. Camille was a most superior harlot, genteel, clever, and voluptuous, such as are not usually found; with her and her findings I had a year's enjoyment, leaving me lav, blaze, and a half-cured clap. What with women, horses, carriages, cards, dinners, and other items, I was a few thousands poorer than at the beginning of my acquaintance with Camille.

It's my fate to have sisters,--how curious I--and thrice to have had the clap, and yet not three-and-twenty,--how hard!

I was very much used up, and needed rest for body and mind; never had I been so much so before. Up to the time of getting my fortune want of money curbed my lascivious tastes, and although I had servant after servant in my mother's house, the difficulties of getting them, gave me frequent rests, and prevented me generally from exhausting myself; perhaps I got just enough fucking to keep me in health. The year's rioting with Camille and her troupe, would have tried a strong man; I never counted them, but think, that in that year I must have poked something like sixty, or seventy different women, I poked everyone of Camille's acquaintances, I am sure,--so it was time I had a rest.





CHAPTER IV.


     Enforced chastity.--A stricture.--Health restored.--Mrs.
     Pender.--A peep from a hay-stack.--In a cow-house.--Stable
     and barn.--Mother's satisfaction.

 My clap brought on a stricture, obliging me to have a bougie passed every other day to stretch the pipe often, and causing me to piss clots of gruelly blood, about an hour afterwards. I dared not fuck, but once frigged, and it brought on the inflammatory stage again. At length I got better, but with a gleet which wetted the tail of my shirt through daily; doctors advised me to get a change of air, I went to my aunt's place in H..tf..dshire where I took cold baths, and did all I could to get myself well,--I was forbidden to touch a woman until permitted by the doctor.

Touch women I did not, think of them I did eternally, and deplored the time that I was wasting. I used to look at my female cousins, and long for them; my aunt whose flabby, brown-haired, thick-lipped furrow I glanced at in my boyhood I used to think about and should not have hesitated in getting a pleasure up it, had no other cunt been ready for me. I eyed the farm-women (coarse, strong, healthy bitches) with lust that made them look beauties in my longing eyes, I was boiling over with spunk, at the closet one day my turds were hard, and hurt me; the irritation affected my ballocks, my prick stiffened rigidly, I could not piss for it, the tip looked dry, as if gleet had ceased, I merely touched the top (not frigged), and out shot my sperm as I sat on the privy seat. What a relief! but what a loss of pleasure not to have injected into some dear little cunt nicked in some smooth white bum! My prick seemed quite well, and I wanted to go into the fields to get hold of some girl doing field-work, or any woman, old or young, who had a cunt available; so I went to town to see my medical man about it. He pointed out to me how needful it was to restrain myself, I followed his advice, in two weeks was much better, and had determined to go to town to see him again about it, when I got well without him.

Some years before I had seen a farm-girl whose name was Pender, a fine lass with a merry face, and lightish brown hair; she must then I suppose have been about seventeen years old. From ogling and laughing, I got to kissing, with that she was pleased enough, and often I think put herself in my way to get it; a pinch on the bum she did not resent. Thinking all safe, I one day poked her near to her notch, and she only saying, "Adun now sir, do," my hand went up her petticoats, I struggled with her, and we both fell on the grass near a barn, when my fingers touched her cunt. She set up a yell, my fingers were stained with her monthlies (not the only time that has occured in my life), she sat for a minute crying, then walked away, leaving me in fear lest she should tell my aunt. She never did, but avoided me, and would not look me in the face. When older, I only thought of her when there, or when my memory ran back on the quims I had touched in my then short career.

Having now nothing to do, but to read, and idle about, I was wandering in the farm, fields, stable, cow-houses, everywhere, and soon knew all the faces on the estate. Among them was Pender, still so named, she having then been married about a year to a man bearing her own maiden name, and was then about twenty-three years old; a tall, strapping woman, with a bum as big as a washing-tub; brown she was from working in the sun, but fucking regularly as I supposed had cleared her complexion, she was a good, comely country-woman. Our eyes met, both at the instant thought of the day when I got my fingers red up her petticoats; she curtsied, and blushed, I laughed with a baudy look I expect, and said, "Well you still here."

I spoke to her again on other days, her husband worked on the farm, and she was dairy-woman. Whenever I saw her my prick stood, and I avoided her, for fear of an erection increasing my gleet.

There was hay-making,--lolling about with a book I went to look on, it was at one or two fields off from a large rick-yard which was near to the farm buildings. There was a half-made hay-stack with a ladder against it, up which without any object I went idly, and laying down went on reading. It became cloudy, the headman calling out said, "We'll have rain, cut off all on yer, and get the hay up into cocks, yes you,--you,--yes you too" (I did not know who he was talking to.) Men and women crossed the rick-yard, and went off in the distance, Pender was one, and was well ahead, when he called out, "You had better get the dairy-work done though." She turned, and coming slowly back stood still a moment, then comfortably squatted, and pissed.

I laying half buried in the hay was not visible to her, but seeing her piddling, raised myself, and looked.

As she finished she gave her clothes that usual hitch against her cunt, looked up, and saw me, turned round quickly, went away from the yard, and then as if she had forgotten, turned round with her head hanging down, and came through the rick-yard. I slipped from the stack, and met her at the foot of it,--we were surrounded with stacks.

Her face was red. "A comfortable piddle you had," said I stopping her. "Adun sir," said she. "A kiss, for old acquaintance," snatching one. "I am married," said she. "Don't care, so much the merrier, it's not so wet as it was, when I felt it some years ago?" "Oh I lawk don't, I'm married."

We had moved a little, were by the hay-stack then making, a heap of hay had fallen as they had lifted it from cart to the stack. I closed with her, kissing and hugging, gave her a push, and we both tumbled into a sitting position together on the heap, she half laughing, half resisting; then kissing her, suggesting pleasure, pulling out my prick, seeing a thick pair of legs in dark stockings, big thighs, a belly, some brown hair at the bottom of it, I felt cool flesh, a wet warm split, and was on her, up her, and spent in her.

I came to myself with a tingling aching sensation inside my prick, the stiffness, and spending had hurt the urethra which had been split by the bougie. I had a notion that blood must be coming, and still stiff pulled it out of her; the little lingering sperm on the tip looked all right, she had not spent, for I don't think I could have shoved more than once before I had emitted my semen. I threw myself on her to put into her again, but she baulked me. "Oh! now for God's sake if my husband caught us there would be murder," but I was burning with want, it was more than two months since I had clutched a woman's backside, and spent up a cunt. Furiously I pulled her back, rolled over her, and fingered her; she rose spite of me, and went off. "Pray don't come with me, we may be seen, I wouldn't for the world we were seen coming out the rick-yard together."

A minute's reflection made me wiser. I got upon the hay-rick again, saw men and women in the hay-field a long distance off, I called out names of one or two I knew,--no one answered, went into the farm-yard, hollowed there, no one answered, thence went into the cow-house,--there was she milking.

I stood by the cows, pulled my prick out, begged her to let me do it again, talked all the baudiness I could, reminded her of when first I wetted my fingers in her red-stained cunt, lifted up the cow's tail, swore if she did not let me I would put my prick up the cow. It was funny to see a woman whose cunt was full of sperm pulling vigorously at a cow's teats, whilst a man with his prick exposed was holding up a cow's tail showing its cacked arse, and not too clean cunt. What absurdity will not a lewd man do?

"I must get this done, I am frightened, we shall be seen, we shall be caught," said she. I dropped on my knees, and as she went on milking, put my fingers up her petticoats, the slit was wet with my leavings. I pulled her face towards me to kiss, whilst she kept tugging at the cow's teats.

When the cow was dry she took the pail across the yard to the dairy, emptied it, and came back, looking in all directions, called out some name, but all were at the hay-making, heavy drops of rain were falling.

"Come to the stable," said I, and laying hold of her pulled her in that direction.

I partly coaxed, partly pulled her, she looked uneasily round the farm-yard, and we entered the cowshed. At one end of it was a cart-horse stable, close to that a large barn. With arm round her I led her towards the barn, there was straw and hay there; but in the stable in the first empty stall was a heap of fresh straw. I pushed her down on to it, the next instant I was fucking her, and what a fuck! I shall recollect it to the last day of my life, it was delicious. It was two months since I had had a woman; here was a stout, fat-arsed, hard-fleshed, healthy country woman; rough, dirty with work, but whose thighs were white, and whose cunt was a clipper, who was randy, had every capability of giving a man delight. No highly fed woman clad in silks and satins, could have ministered to me as she did, as replying to my thrusts her cunt sucked my prick up her, and we spent together.

I raised myself up without uncunting; the straw rustling and crushing under us, too excited to lay still, after I had spent. She lay in quiet enjoyment, till putting down one hand to feel round our bellies, I roused her, then she wriggled, and out slipped my cock. "I must get up, for God's sake let me."

We got up. I don't suppose that more than twenty minutes had passed between my first, and my second poke, still my prick remained stiff. She went quickly to the cow-shed, put down the milking-stool, sat down and began again tugging at a cow's teats, I again standing by her side with my privates hanging outside my trousers.

I wanted to see her limbs, to feel her breasts. The idea of her cunt squeezing out its moisture on to her chemise as she sat on the stool, the desire to see every part of her, that irresistible want to see all, feel all, and satisfy every sense which springs up in the mind of a man when a woman has satisfied his voluptuousness for the first time overcame me. She tugged at the teats. "Oh! go, pray do,--I won't,--you shant,--ye've done me over.--oh! if you are seen here what will be said?--don't now get a poor woman into trouble, the milking must be done, if it's not what shall I say?" and tug, tug, went both hands milking.

Said I, No one would come back until they had raked up the hay out of harm from the rain. She knew better. "Yes they will if they are kept late, some one will go to the Hall for beer, and they come back through the rick-yard for cans; go away for God's sake." I went back to the rick-yard, and saw a man coming as she had said, did not know which way to make off, but the hay-stacks helped me, and I dodged up to the Hall; it was about three minutes only from the farm-yard, and led to it by a lovely shady walk.

Female servants only were in the house, even my aunt and cousins had gone to the hay-meadow; soon a man emerged from the Hall with two huge cans in his hands: it was Pender's husband. He went off with them filled I suppose. I walked across the lawn and pleasure-gardens which the fields surrounded, saw him in the distance, then made my way to the cow-house again. "He's gone." "I have been so frightened," said she,--but did not say it was her husband. She was still at the cows teats.

I would not be repulsed, nearly upset a pail of milk, and swore I would have her again. She refused, prayed me, then promised she would, if I would let her take the milk into the dairy. Permitting it, she stayed a few minutes, then out she came, looked all round, again called out a name before entering the stable. The next minute we were on the straw, my hand between her thighs. "You have washed your cunt," said I. "I did it in the dairy," said she.

I had a grope, tickled her clitoris, got my mouth on to her belly, my lips outside her cunt, we fucked, and again she went to her cow's teats. All this was in broad day-light, although evening was coming on.

She finished milking. "I ought to go to the hay," said she; but I would not let her, held her back, and swore if she went I would follow her. "What have I done?" said she, "I must be mad." Then she took as was her custom, milk up to the Hall, I awaited her return, looking at my cock from which to my delight, all signs of gleet had gone.

For some time I had had mostly gay women, this was a return to old times. It was pleasant to have a fuck on the sly, with a woman who showed real pleasure, who shivered with delight, and grasped me like a vice. Besides there was the stinging element of adultery. I laughed to myself at the idea of her husband's prick going up where I had been three times; my prick began to stiffen, and then droop, then rise again. I felt sure that, at the feel of her quim I should be all right. "If I can once get it up her, once feel her cunt-lips closing round it, get a good clip round her buttocks, I am sure I can fuck her again before they come back from the hay-field," thought I gently frigging my cock, and looking through a crack in the door.

She came back. I went at her in the cow-house; the only immediate fear now was that a servant might come from the Hall. To make the story short, I got her into the barn, where the light was less; and she let me do more as I liked. I had a look at a thick brown-haired motte, a belly, and a pair of white round thighs a duchess might have been proud of, I kissed her cunt, and fumbling about from her navel to her arse-hole, fucking her with a long lingering fuck which left us both silent, and enervated. My cock lingered up her as I lay quiet, squeezing my belly up to hers, my lips still against her rosy mouth, and said, "You will have a boy this day nine months."

And she did have a boy that day nine months. A second time that prophecy had come true alas!

With a kiss we parted; men were returning from the fields. I got to the Hall. At dinner my aunt said, "Walter you should have given us help, all should help hay-making, when rain comes on; but you are too lazy; what have you been doing?" "Dear aunt, I have been reading steadily ever since." Said she, "How fond of reading you are for a young man of your age; how you can like to be so much alone, as you have been lately I cannot imagine, it would be better if you took more exercise." She did not know the condition my cock had been in. And my mother was delighted at my being in the country, thinking I was getting steadier, and away from bad company.





CHAPTER V.


     Aunt at the dairy.--Morning amusements with Pender.--Female
     hay-makers.--Mrs. Whiteteeth.--An exhibition of cock.--
     Against a field-gate.--A night on the grass.--A sight from
     the barn-loft.--Robert the page.--Molly.

 I could scarcely sleep that night. Pender seemed to me the most delicious woman I had ever poked. What if excitement had brought back the clap! what if I had clapped her! I had never after the clap had a woman until the doctor said I might. When I awakened, to my joy my prick was as dry as a bone; a woman was what I had wanted to complete my cure. The next minute my prick was stiff as I thought of Pender's charms.

It was a lovely morning, every available hand in house and farm was sent off to scatter the hay which on the previous night had been heaped up, Mrs. Pender excepted, whose dairy duty kept her at the farm. I caught her in the cow-house to her astonishment, for it could not have been more than six A.M. To rush up to her, and kiss her was instantaneous. She repulsed my wandering hands. "Oh! sir, don't now,--no never, never again (married women always say that), Missus will be coming,--no never,--I'm a married woman,--now pray,--you shant." I got her back up against a wall, my hand on her fringe, my mouth pressed to hers; how was it possible to resist? At ten paces was the stable, and the friendly hay. What a ballocking I gave her, with the summer sun shining through a window on to us, as we lay together in the early morning.

She sat down to milking with her cunt full of me. "They be all up at the hay," said she, "but Missus comes every fine morning to the dairy (that was true), she won't be here for an hour; but if she were, what would I do? my husband will be back, he'll take breakfast to the fields, to save time, in chance of wet again coming on. Oh! do go." There was certainly all those chances. Off I went across the rick-yard, round the belt of trees which skirted the house and gardens, so that I seemed to enter from the opposite side to that where Pender sat milking.

"Is my aunt up?" "No sir, she won't be down till seven o'clock when she goes to the dairy." I took a book, sat down till the servant disappeared, then running by the path soon to be described, was in two minutes in the farm-yard. Pender was in the dairy, resistance was vain, and with her back up against the dairy wall we fucked. I cut back to the house, and sat outside reading. Soon after aunt appeared.

Said she, "What is the matter, that you are up so early?" (I usually was asleep at that hour.) "I could not sleep, dear aunt." "It would do you good if you always got up early, come with me to the dairy." In five minutes aunt and I were there. Lord, how Pender looked when she saw us together!

Aunt took pleasure in her farm. Every morning if well she walked down to it, saw how many eggs had been laid, and if butter-making, etc., went on rightly. Pender attended, whilst aunt with spectacles on was looking at the cream-pans, and asking questions, I looking as if deeply interested in the matter, was pinching Pender's bum as she stood besides my aunt. "How hot you are Pender," said my aunt looking at the woman. "It is hot ma'am," she replied, perspiration streaming down her face. How very uncomfortable she looked.

At breakfast aunt said, "What do you think Walter has been to the dairy with me." "Lor'!" said my lady cousins, "that is wonderful; he to get up so early!" "Have you had that dairy-maid long, aunt?" "Why don't you recollect she was housemaid here once?" "No." Then aunt told the history, which till then I did not know.

At the time of my unsuccessful attempt at a feel, she was engaged to a young man; they quarrelled, he left the village to go for a soldier, came back; again a quarrel, and again off he went. After a time he wrote to say, he meant to marry another girl. Pender was in great grief. Just then a head-man on the estate, about fifty-five years old, offered her marriage, and in a reckless state of mind, she accepted him. Directly afterwards her sweetheart came back, his statement was a false-hood, told to try her. It was too late, and he went to America. "She is a very nice, steady woman," said aunt, "they lead a quiet life, but I don't think she is very happy, twenty-three and fifty-five are not a good match."

Food was sent to some of the farm-laborers at a meadow half-a-mile off. I had the pleasure of seeing my cousins, aunt, and two of the female servants in big straw hats, go off to the field. They thought haymaking good fun. I promised to join them, and directly they were out of sight cut off to Pender, dodged all round the rick-yard to see if I was alone, and found her tranquilly churning butter. The stable still appeared the best place. Thither we went, and for the first time quietly, so to speak, I saw the article, and all its surroundings, which had given me several pleasures; and after fucking her I went to join my aunt, as I had promised her.

I had soon enough of hay-making myself, so laid down in the shade watching the hay-makers (nearly all women). As they moved along in rows, lewd thoughts occupied my mind. One biggish woman attracted my notice by her magnificent white teeth; looking at her short petticoats, and thick legs, lewdness increased to a cock-stand. I stared so as she approached me, that she could not fail to notice it. "It's hot," said I. "It be sir." She stooped with her bum towards me, and lying down as I was, I saw nearly to her knees. "What would I give," I thought, "to be close up to your bum-cheeks." Dirty linen, dirty clothes, sweaty flesh, none of those objections occured to me. Then I moved farther up the field to get nearer, for working along the ridges, they had got away from my resting place, and again laid down reading a newspaper. I covered my lap with it, feeling my prick beneath it, then I pulled my prick out (what risk!), and just as she heading the file of women came towards me, and began turning round; I again spoke to her. She stopped, the others went on; I lifted the newspaper; there stood my prick, red-tipped as a berry. She looked at it, at me, and putting one hand up to her mouth as if to stop her laughter, turned and followed on the others with her work. Soon returning she was again facing me, I saw her white teeth as she smiled, and her eyes fixed on me; the other women turned round, she stopped for a moment, off went the newspaper, and she gazed at my doodle for a second or two again. She was further off then, and I saw her speaking to the woman just in front of her, who looked round; I thought she had told, and in a funk left the hay-field.

In the afternoon in the farm-yard, there were people about, and no chance of having Pender. My desire to have her was intense. After dinner I went to the farm, Pender had gone home, so I strolled into the lane which the farm-buildings abutted on.

Between the Hall and farm-yard was a shrubbery path; laurels, hollies and evergreens nearly met over head. It joined a belt of walk and plantation which skirted the lawns, gardens and a small paddock, and hid the farm-yard from the house. It took two or three minutes to walk from the farm to the house. The farmyard on the other side opened on to a lovely village lane running between fields for a mile or so; on one side the land belonged to my aunt, the other to another proprietor. No one scarcely went along it but farm people. At one end were the two cottages in which I had fucked the two sisters years before; lower down past the farm-gates, were one or two other cottages in which lived farm-labourers, and in one of them the Pender's. The lane then joined the high-road, which led by a half-a-mile to the front of my aunt's house, and to the village. The farm-gates were always closed at dark. A great bell which when pulled set a dog barking was the way of getting in, after dark.

Leaving the wicket-gate ajar, I went down the lane, it was darkish, a fine summer night, but no moon. I knew where Pender lived, and by cunt attraction strolled in front of the cottage, though fearing to be seen.

As I left the farm-gate, female hay-makers who had worked till dark, passed, curtsying as they recognized me. I thought of Whiteteeth but saw her not. Turning back from Pender's after I had strolled past the cottage, I went up the lane languishing with lust, and leaned against a field-gate. I heard a step,--it was the woman with white teeth.

"Good night." "Good night sir." "Come here." She stopped, came close, I laid hold of her arm, and drew her close to the gate. "Come into the field with me, I will give you five shillings."

A slight chuckle, the white teeth show. "I dare not." But as she spoke I had got her back up against the gate, and my hand on her grummit.

"My old man will be waiting me,--I can't." Lifting her clothes I tried to impale her as she stood. "No, no,--some one will pass," said she in a whisper. I put my hand on the latch, the gate opened, and we were in the field; the gate closed with a snap. I led her along by a ditch to a turn in the hedge; she made no resistance, in a minute we were buried in deep grass, my doodle buried in her cunt, we had spoken in whispers, all was silent excepting the insects which chirped in the hot summer's night.

How delightful these chance pokes are; there was my prick which had not been washed since it had left Pender's cunt, now wetting to its roots in the cunt of an unknown woman,--and I'd only just recovered from a clap. Not a word had we spoken from the moment we entered the field. We copulated in quietness. My prick did not uncunt, but I moved my arse outwards, when with tightening grasps, a heave up, and a tightening of her cunt, she whispered, "Go on doing it"

I could see the white teeth, but indistinctly, there was just sufficient light to see outlines, and anything white, but no colour. "I don't think I can, I have been doing it all day," I said.

"You've had one of the other women," said she in a whisper, "if I'd knowed it, you should not have had me," and with a jerk she uncunted me.

"No," said I, "it's a joke." She raised herself slightly-to look me in the face, but it was too dark. "I thought not," said she; then she caught hold of my prick, fell on her back again, I saw indistinctly a broad expanse of thigh and belly. "Let's feel,--let's look." Wide open were her legs in a minute, I felt a great, cool belly, strong, thick crisp hair, my fingers moved easily up the buttered love-trap, I could not see the opening.

"Hush!" said she, "there is a footstep." Quiet on the grass we lay; tramp, tramp it came, past, and died away. "I wonder who it be," said she.

She had kept hold of my prick, and soon our bellies met. When done she hurried me not out of her, seemed to like my indulgence, till she whispered, "I must go, keep here till you can't hear my footsteps before you come out, we be near the yard, and if I be seen I don't know what they will say."

"My old man's at the 'Lion,' but I'll go straight home." "Perhaps he'll have gone home." "Not he,--they allus sticks at the Public late, when they works late." And with her cunt reeking, off she went.

I followed, intending to walk round to the front of the Hall. Passing Pender's house, to my astonishment she was standing at the door. I went up to her. "Oh!" said she, "Pender will be home, I expect him every minute." She could hear his footsteps a mile off, but she would not let me into the house.

Opposite to Pender's was also a field-gate, I persuaded her to come out and stand there with me; the hedge hid anyone coming along the lane. "At the first sound of a footstep," said I, "I will go into the field, and you can cross to your house." I was longing for the woman, but scarcely thought I could do it after my day's fucking. The idea of putting my prick still wet with Whiteteeth's juices, into Pender's quim, stimulated me; my cock stood (in those days if it stood it was sure of doing duty). I closed up to her whispering love, and frigging her, she gradually getting besides herself with pleasure. At length up went my prick into her, and after a quarter of an hour's lamming, finished.

Meeting her husband in the lane might have caused suspicion, so into the field I went, intending to wait till he passed, laid down, fell asleep, awaking when it was broad daylight. I then waited two hours, walked round to the Hall, waited in the front till the door was opened, then went up to my room, and to bed. The servant saw me go in, and I imagine thought I had been out in the grounds without her knowing it,--certainly it never was known that I had been out all night.

I went to bed to rumple it, then down to breakfast, all the time thinking of some lie as an excuse for being out all night. "You were tired, and went to bed early I expect," said aunt. "Yes," said I. My limbs were aching from exposure to night-air, as I spoke.

Three days had made a great change in me. My prolonged abstinence from women, and now my recovery, my taking more to animal food, wine, and my usual mode of living, the quiet life I was leading, all my physical forces at their highest. My cock stood from morning till night, not a woman passed me, young or old, without my desiring them. I thought of nothing else, and to this perhaps is due the variety of poking I got. Luck usually falls to those who look out for it.

I have said there was a shrubbery round the grounds connecting with that from the Hall to the farm; quite on the other side of the Hall were the stables, and the gardener's house. None of the stablemen or gardeners were on the farm-side. The servants of the Hall slipped down to the farm to gossip, but it was not allowed. The only person who regularly traversed the shrubbery was Mrs. Pender, who twice a day took milk, and dairy produce to the Hall.

Half-way down this shrubbery-path was a path connecting with that which went quite round the grounds. Cunningly contrived, and leading out of it was one to a large privy, usual in such grounds as my aunt's. A large octagonal house covered with ivy, with a door and two glass windows, a house devoted to shitting, but large enough to hold a dozen people.

One or two days after I had had Whiteteeth and Pender, I dodged about after the latter, but there were people about. I went off to the hay-making, but there were only men carting hay; so I went sniffing about the servants in the house, but nothing came of that. In the afternoon I went to the farm-yard, and prowled about to find some chance, and place to get Pender, and went up into the big loft in the barn over the cart-shed. Why I went up there I don't know, and had not been there a minute before I heard a scuffle, and a kiss. "I shant, now--you saucy boy," said a female voice. Another kiss, and a scuffle. "I must go to the house," said the female. I peeped: it was a nursemaid, and my aunt's page. The girl ran off, leaving the page. They did not see me.

My aunt's male in-door servants consisted but of a middle-aged butler who had been in her service many years, a slow, solemn man, a widower, and a page taken on when small, who had recently grown rapidly, and was a heavy, stupid, gawky lad, between fifteen and sixteen years old, too big for his place. My aunt, although always intending to dismiss him, kept him on out of kindness, but at length had said, "Page must go, I shall not give him a new suit, it will be waste of money." He looked stupid as an owl, and as if an idea about cunt would never have entered his mind.

This boy stood still reflecting, then unbuttoned his trousers, pulled out a stiff, big prick, and after pulling the prepuce down once or twice, buttoned it up again; stood still, again unbuttoned, sat down on some straw, reflected, and then frigged himself. After wiping his fingers on the straw he went off, leaving me wondering at his lust, the size of his doodle, and the quantity of spunk he shot. "That lumpish boy to do that!" forgetting what I did, when only a little older than him.

"Hullo! what are you doing here?" said a voice.--it was Pender's. He made no reply. "You'd better be off to the Hall, you've no business here." "I was fetching the nurse-maid." "Well she's no business here; you cut, they will be ringing for you." When the voices ceased I descended, and went to the Hall.

The head farm-man had recently died, he, his wife and daughter, had lived in the cottage in the farmyard. Pender's husband had taken his place, but still lived in his cottage in the lane. The woman whose husband had died attended to things in general, the daughter assisted in the dairy, and worked very often up at the Hall. A pretty girl of a common, rustic style of beauty, and about sixteen years old; she used to curtsy to me when she met me, but I had never cast my eyes at her. As I skulked out through the rick-yard into the shrubbery-walk leading to the Hall I met her, stopped, and had a chat, a joke, and finished by a kiss, which she took in very bad part, and wiped away with her hand, as if I was quite disgusting. She was an only child, her name Molly.





CHAPTER VI.


     Joey and nursemaid.--The privy in the laurel-walk.--Scared.--
     Whiteteeth in the ditch.--The nursemaid's bed-room.--Robert
     amusing her.--A lost virginity.--Aunt and Joey.--Nearly
     caught.--Amatory instructions to nursemaid.

 Lusting worse after the kiss, I went to the house. My cousins were out, my aunt taking her afternoon's nap. I rang my bed-room bell for something, simply to get a woman near me, in the shape of a housemaid who was as ugly as sin. I pulled out my cock when she left, and thought of imitating the page, but did not; from my window saw the nursemaid was out with the child, and strolled out to meet her. I must mention that the child (about four years old), was a married cousin's child who had gone to India with her husband; leaving the infant in charge of her mother, my aunt.

Nursemaid was a dry, plainish little woman whom I had scarcely noticed until the previous three days. I talked to the infant, and played with him, asked her if she would like a child, if she would let me be the father, and got a chaffing reply. Suddenly it struck me from the scuffle I had heard in the barn, that she and the page were very intimate, and said as a random shot, "You would not mind Robert cuddling you, would you now?" She coloured up, looked confused, then said, as if she did not recollect, "Robert?--who is Robert?" "Fat Robert the page." "Pough." said she, "that big boy!" She took up the child, and walked off,--not to the house, but a long way away from it. After a time I followed her; she entered a grotto, or very large summer-house which formed part of an artificial ruin in the grounds, and which was the scene of an amusing adventure with this very child some years later on in my life. There she sat down.

I saw what a good blind the child was, so went into the grotto to talk to him. He was sitting in her lap. In a minute said he, "I want to pee-wee." "Hush!" said she, "I will take you for a walk." "I will pee-wee," said he, scuffling down from her lap, running outside the summer-house; turning round, lifting his petticoats, and pissing in front of us.

"You naughty boy," said she. "What a little cock he has," said I. She snatched up the child, went towards the house, and there was an end for the time of my talk with her.

I dodged from hay-field to farm-yard, thence to the house, saw Pender, saw the young wench (Molly) I have named, looked out for Whiteteeth; it was all no go. I had dinner, then strolled down to the village, saw Whiteteeth outside the public with her husband. Back to the house, saw nursemaid, said in a whisper. "I shall come and sleep with you to-night." "That you won't," said she, "Master Joe always sleeps in my room." Randy and weary I went to bed, after nearly spending in my trousers as I looked at my cousins' white necks in the drawing-room, and thought to myself, "I will go to ------ (the market-town a few miles off to which I have before alluded), and have a woman to-morrow." During the hot night thought of cunt, cunt, cunt, would not frig myself, slept. Awakened again with a stiff one, frigged, and then got repose.

The next morning I increased my acquaintance with the young wench Molly, chaffed the nursemaid, and besought her to let me sleep with her. Again went to the hay-field, but hay-making was finished, the weather dull, and further hay-making postponed till finer weather.

Keeping a sharp eye on page Robert, I soon saw he was spooning nursemaid; detected him kissing her, and putting his hand on her belly outside her clothes. She seeing me, gave him a violent slap on the head; when I chaffed her, turned up her nose again and said, "A boy like that indeed; I beg you won't talk like that to me sir."

She slept in a room which was properly entered from the servant's corridor, which connected with the best part of the house through folding doors. But a door had been made in the room from best part of the house, so that my aunt, who had had a large family could more easily see how the children when there, were being looked after. This door was just by a lobby which led to the W.C; any one going there might seem to be either going towards the W.C, or towards the servants' staircase, the nursemaid's room therefore could be entered from either door, and on two sides.

By the door on the servants' side was a house-maid's W.C and the servants' staircase which led also to the attics, where some slept, and to a lobby with rooms mostly used for lumber, and where the page had been put to sleep, away from females, or anyone else. The butler slept in a little room adjoining the pantry and plate-room, on the ground-floor.

Several days passed, I did not get a gay woman, but hunted incessantly in hopes of getting Pender, or Whiteteeth, or the nursemaid. Young Molly I did not much think of; she seemed too young, so chaste, so looked after, that I had no expectation, but do not recollect what my views about her exactly were. Then I did not care about young ones. A full-grown woman, large-arsed, with a full-sized and fully-haired cunt was my greatest delight; above all I liked room inside it for my cock to swell out, a tight cunt had no delights to me.

After a few days my luck came as it mostly has. I went again with my aunt to the dairy. Whilst she was talking to Pender a notion occurred to me. I did not go into breakfast, but waited in the turning leading out of the shrubbery between the Hall and farmyard; and hiding, saw Pender take up the milk; a few minutes later heard her returning, and stepped out. I had made up my mind to have her in the privy; have had women in similar places before and since, and daresay that other men have.

She gave a start. "Come here." "No." But I clutched her. "Oh! now pray,--if anyone comes?" "But there won't you know that,--come this way," and I pulled her out of the main-walk. "Oh! don't, there's a dear gentleman,--hush! perhaps some one is near." "Why they are all at breakfast." "I don't know where my husband is."

I had edged her down the path, and pushed her into the large privy. Pender was randy, that I see now. A woman in fear yields reluctantly, but she yields when she wants a man.

I locked the door and pressed her up against the wall. "Oh! I am so frightened," said she, "later on I'll let you,--oh! if we should be found." She was in a funk, but what can any woman do, who feels a man's warm prick outside her belly, and his hands fumbling at her clitoris? the sensuous touch goes through her like lightning. Soon we were both spending.

My head was on her shoulder, my prick oozing its last drop of sperm, when she clutched me violently with a stare of terror in her face, it scared me. "It is he, it's he!" she said in a screaming whisper, "oh! my God!" Tramp,--tramp, went a heavy male step in the shrubbery. "Oh! my God, I know his step!"

My prick flopped down, her petticoats dropped, but we stood close against the wall breathless. Tramp,--tramp, nearer, nearer it came, it passed the door, and died away in the distance. As he passed I peeped through the little red curtains over the window, and saw it was her husband's cap.

She sat down on the privy-seat, and buried her face in her hands. "My God," said she, "What would have happened, if he had found me here? But what does he do up this path? he has no business here," she added.

After a few seconds I went off in one direction, she as she told me, to her cottage, where she found her husband, and they had breakfast together; the good man not suspecting, that his wife's cunt was full of sperm. Such are the chances of me.

I went into breakfast. My aunt was annoyed at my being so late. A female cousin,--a pretty girl,--whom it was wished I should marry, poured out my tea. I thought, "Ah! my dear girl, if you knew where my prick has been a few minutes ago, it would astonish you."

I went through the farm-yard a little before midday into the lane, and passed Pender without speaking. I met Whiteteeth carrying a mug and other things in a basket in the lane. She smiled, I followed to the memorable gate, then stopped. "Come into the field," said I. "I can't, I'm taking my good man his dinner, some of the women may come this way." "I owe you five shillings, I'll make it ten shilling,--come." "I don't want your money." "Come for love then." "We must be quick," said she following me, and cautiously she looked round. We passed through the gates to the place where we had laid down before; now in broad day it seemed dangerously near the lane. There was a sinking in the surface a little further on where cows had trodden the ground down to get to a ditch; there she put down her dinner-basket. Throwing up her petticoats, I saw her cunt was dark-haired. We fucked rapidly, no fumbling, stink-fingering, or frigging. I gave her ten shillings. "Give it me in silver," said she, "if I change it in the village it will be known." I took it back, gave her all the silver I had, owing her some. She said she would meet me again in the evening, unless her husband was working in the same field with her; he was mowing then.

I had luncheon, and a cock-stand again, walked round the grounds, and saw the nursemaid with the child. A cunning little bitch she was,--I did not see that plainly then,--she was rolling on the lawn playing with the child, her clothes went up to her knees; it was carelessness, she believing herself alone with the boy. She had a thin pair of limbs in nice boots. I peeped out from the shrubs, expecting to see higher, but did not. The little boy again wanted to piddle, she pulled out his cock, and held it. Whilst so interestingly engaged I advanced, she put his clothes down. I walked by her side. "You like holding that?" said I. She turned away. "Let me sleep with you." "This is my bedfellow," said she laughing, and went towards the house, I in the opposite direction of course.

I waited in the lane in the evening. Whiteteeth came along with others, eyeing me with a smile, and there was no opportunity. It was lightish. I thought to get Pender in the privy again next morning. It was not probable that her husband would pass that way again at that time. I went to bed. In the middle of the night was obliged to go to the water-closet, and sitting there thought of the housemaid, recollected that my aunt had said she would have Joey, who was not well, sleep with her that night. "Why, she will be alone that nursemaid, she is a randy one," I thought; but was by no means sure I should succeed, having known others who would go a long way, but stop short at fucking. If she resisted and there was a row, I should be obliged to leave my aunt's. All this ran through my mind whilst sitting on the water-closet. Water-closets had not long been known, they were quite proud of having them in my aunt's house.

My cock rose up, as the girl's neat thin legs came before my eyes. Cock stiffer I went towards my bedroom, passed her door, heard her moving inside, and that settled me. Going to my room I put in the candle, and in my dressing-gown went softly back, turned the handle, and pushed her door. It opened, and a sight met my astonished eyes.

She was lying on the bed, leaning on her elbow, in her chemise which was just above her knees, her legs partly up and open, her back turned partially from me as I entered. By the bed-side stood page Robert with his breeches opened, she was frigging, or feeling his great cock as she lay; the page's hand was between her knees, either on her cunt, or trying to get at it. They were in the enjoyment of mutual investigation. Whether it was going further I can't say. I believe she was frigging him, although she always denied that afterwards.

I had fairly entered the room before they (so engrossed were they with their pleasures) saw me; when with a shriek of, "Oh! my God I am ruined!--go (turning to the page), go out sir, or I will scream (to me), what's he here for?--what do you here sir?" Without a word the page turned and bolted, pulling up his trousers which fell down to his arse as he shuffled out of the room. She turned on one side without attempting to hide her legs, or breast, and hid her face crying, "Oh! what shall I do?--what shall I do?--go sir go,--I don't know what he did here," and other excited, incoherent phrases.

I do not recollect saying a word, but bolted the door by which the page had gone out, then that by which I had entered; the bolts of that had been shot, only they had not quite closed the door before locking. "Be quiet, don't be a fool, I'll fuck you,--let's be comfortable," said I.

She refused. "Robert has fucked you." "No he ain't." "You were frigging him." "No I wasn't,--oh! I don't know what you mean, or what you are saying." In her fear, and agitation she had been betrayed into answering my assertions. "Oh! dear,--oh! dear!--but you won't tell, will you sir?--it will be worse for you if you do," said she with a sort of threat, and altering her tone.

"I won't tell if you let me,--don't be a fool,--I will have you. If there is a row I will say I found you with Robert, and you and he will go out neck and crop. If they think badly of me I don't care; I shall leave, and in a few months they will overlook it; but you will have no character: you have been seen in the cart-shed with Robert." She started at that. "It's a story," said she, "who saw me?" and then she began to cry.

I pulled up my night-shirt, threw myself besides her, and pulled up her night-gown. My hand in an instant was on her cunt, her thin thighs closed to prevent me, but she was silent. "I will have you," said I laying on her, and forcing open her knees with mine. Her resistance grew less. "I can't help myself", said she, "you are a blackguard, all the women say you are,---don't,--oh! don't hurt me." "Nonsense, you have had a prick up it before." "No man has ever touched me." "Let me feel then." Her thighs slightly opened, I put a finger on it. "You have a very little cunt." "Don't be rough," said she. At length my belly met hers, my hand was round her slender bum, my prick on the slit. I pushed, it did not enter as I expected, then I felt her cunt roughly, and made her cry out. "What a small cunt you have," I said, and with a violent lunge pushed up it. She gave a suppressed gasp. "Oh! you hurt, oho." I pushed home, fucked and finished triumphantly, for I had had her in spite of herself. We had spoken in whispers till she split, and then her cry was sharp, and loud.

I drew my prick out and myself upon my knees, to see how the cunt looked. She did not close her legs. By the light of the small candle I could see she had not much more hair on her cunt than a girl of sixteen years old. I laid by her side talking to her, then noticing my night-shirt said, "You are poorly." "Nothing of the sort." To put my fingers up to verify that, and look at them was the work of a moment. "Then I have made you bleed." "You have hurt me very much, you brute."

I did not like the girl nor her manner, didn't feel kind as I always do towards a woman I have had. "You little devil, to hear you talk one would think you had never had a man before." "Think what you like, but I never have,--go away now."

Her tight cunt, her freedom in permitting me to feel it, her sulky submission to all I wanted astonished me. I fucked her again, and found her cunt very tight still.

She was taciturn, and when I said, "I had better go." "Go," she replied, "I suppose we shall be kicked out,--what will Robert say?" We agreed that she was to tell Robert, that unless he held his tongue he would be kicked out without a character; that I was to tell him, that hearing conversation I had opened the door; that out of consideration for the poor girl would not tell my aunt; but that I should notice him, and if I found him misbehaving himself, would tell my aunt that he was not a proper person to be in the house. Then I went to my bed-room.

I slept but a short time, awakened with a cock-stand, and slipping on my dressing-gown sneaked without slippers to her room again; knocked gently, heard a sleepy voice say, "Yes ma'am," and the door was opened. Spite of her opposition I got into bed with her, another fuck, she spent, and we both fell asleep.

A violent push awakened me. A knock at the door. "My God it's Missus." We were in the dark. Pulling my dressing-gown off the chair I slipped with it under the bed, forgetting the door thru which I might have escaped. "Let her in," I whispered. Trembling she opened it. It was my aunt. "Here," said she, "take Master Joey, he has kept me awake all night." The nursemaid put him into the bed, my aunt standing by the side, her feet actually against my slippers. "What did you lock this door for?" said she, "have I not told you always to keep this door unlocked?" "I felt frightened," said the girl. Away my aunt went, the girl sunk on the chair. There was now a light. In a whisper from under the bed I said, "Play with the child." She got into bed, took the boy in her arms, cuddled and talked to him, whilst I slipped out and regained my room. It was not day-light.

I had had three women the same day, had washed after neither, their lubrications had mixed with mine on my prick-stem and balls. A day or two following I had a stock of crabs; were they Pender's, or White-teeth's, or nursemaid's, or did I breed them? I had all three women afterwards, and never got the crabs again whilst at my aunt's. At the market-town I got a remedy, and was soon cured, but had to leave off fucking for a little while.

I had had the three women at a cost of five shillings; such luck never occurred to me before, or since.

I don't know when I have had such a jolly month's amusement as then followed, in getting first one, and then another of the women. All three met my wishes, but there were many difficulties, dodges, manoeuvres to get either of them. Nursemaid moving about with the child in all sorts of places, came in for the most cock. She was small-boned, skinny, and her face had the expression that people have when they have just taken medicine. Under other circumstances I should never have noticed her, but the extreme smallness of her cunt was a novelty. I thought at first she was a regular intriguer, but came to the conclusion that I had had the first of her; and that until then she had been a masturbatrix, and frigged her flesh off her bones. Rub her clitoris for a second, her eyes would open wide and roll with such intense voluptuousness that for a moment her face looked beautiful. I used to tell her, that she frigged herself thin.

I took you may be sure a great fancy to my little cousin Joey, for that gave me an opportunity of getting near the nurse. She was always out in the grounds with him in fine weather. I would throw the ball for the child to run after in the direction of the grotto, then walked round to see if any gardener was near, and tip her the wink. In we would go, and either against seat, or up against the wall, or more frequently laying her with back on the big rustic table, and her legs round my hips, I poked her. Once she laid the little child on the table, and played with him there, whilst I threw her clothes up behind, and fucked her dog-fashion. "Lay hold of his cock," said I as bum-wagging indications told me she was coming, and she kissed his little cock rapturously till she spent. The little beggar! I wonder if in later years he recollected anything he saw. Years afterwards it was my fortune to see him fucking a servant in that very summer-house.

Whether the child was old enough, or not to notice what he saw, was a subject of talk with us. We came to the conclusion, that we were safe. After luncheon, when my aunt took a nap, and my cousins went out driving (if I could avoid driving out with them, and what lies I told to do that), was my most fortunate time; for the servants were lazy after their dinner, and the garden excepting from gardeners, quite free.

The summer-house, called the grotto, was a big one, there were wide seats nearly all round, chairs, and a big table in the middle capable of dining a dozen people. I was once frigged in it by a young lady, and two different servants did I fuck in it. These adventures will be told in their place. There were several summer-houses about the grounds, and I had the nursemaid in most of them.

Once only I slept with her the whole night, or rather lay fucking her, we were frightened to sleep, for fear of being caught. Joey was away. She told me the page had been showing her his prick for nearly a year; and she let him come to her room that night just to see what he would do. "You were frigging him, were you not?" "I was feeling it about." Then I told her I had seen him frig himself in the barn. "The servants at the Hall wonder at your being so much at the farm," said she. "How the devil can they know that?" I thought to myself. It put me on my guard.

She swore no man had ever touched her before me. "You forced me, and made me bleed; I would not have let you, only I feared you would tell what you had seen, and I should lose my character." She however took now to fucking, and was insatiable in getting me up her; her little thin form clung to me in a wonderful way and she loved my penis to push to the utmost up her tight little cunt.

"So my Fanny's small?" she asked several times, "tell me about other women's; are they much larger than mine? I know I have very little hair on mine." What nice talk we had.

She had been always nursemaid, had frigged herself as long as she could recollect, had nursed a girl eight years old who frigged herself incessantly, she had to slap her, and tie her hands to prevent it. "Now tell me truly, did you ever frig any boy?" "Never," but she had made their cocks stiff. She had frigged a girl, and been frigged in return. So much for nursemaids. She said she was 27.

The morning after I first had her, I told Robert to come to the garden directly the breakfast was cleared away. He came. "I heard a noise last night as I was passing, opened the door, and caught you; I have a good mind to tell your mistress, but the nursemaid has begged, and prayed me not; but if I hear you have ever mentioned this, or see you near her again, I will have you kicked out the next five minutes, and she too.--Be off." Away he went, without a word.





CHAPTER VII.


     Molly and Giles.--A country ale-house.--Pender's history.--
     How her virginity was taken.--White-teeth's ailment.--Molly
     in the loft.--Interrupted. Molly tailed.

 I fucked Whiteteeth in the meadow one night again. We selected a field further off, which led to another bit of luck. She had left me, and I was stepping quietly, so that if met, no one might suppose we had been together; when I heard on the other side of a hedge, movements, and the voices of a male and female. They sat down within a few feet of where I was. I only heard imperfectly, and tell as well as I could gather what was said.

"I can't stay," said she, "mother will be after me,--she don't know I am out of the yard." A kiss,--many kisses,--a scuffle,--"be quiet,"--then all was a mumble. Then "I won't,--I won't,--never again,--you shant." "Hush!" said he, "suppose some one is near." "Do let's feel it,--let's do it," said the male, "do it once, do it twice, it's all the same once done." I kept as quiet as death.

"No" (here something I could not catch),--"no,--it warn't no pleasure to me,--I've been crying ever since,--you won't marry me after all I dare say, though I let you do it." "So help me God I will, I'll marry you." He swore quite loudly. "Hish!" "Mother won't let us, she hates you." The female whimpered, then was mumbling, kissing, soothing, quietness, then all of a sudden, "Oh! you're hurting me with your fingers." "Hish!--hish!--be quiet!" Then I could hear nothing;--then, "No, I'll be getting in a mess like Bess." Said the man half angrily, "She were a fool, she needn't a had a child; I knows a mother who can stop any gal having a child." "Now don't,--oh! it hurts,--no,--oh!--hoe!" The voices sank; kisses came a slight rustling, and all was quiet.

Then I heard broken words from both, but in a subdued voice "I'll never let you no more," said the female, "you go that way." Kiss, kiss, and the cut off, the female towards the gate I had entered the field by, he across the fields. She piddled, and waited till he had gone. Dodging her I moved after her, and saw her enter the farm-yard, but could not identify her. It must be Molly I was sure, no other female at that time was likely to enter there. Why Molly has been fucked!

Next day I asked nursemaid about Molly. "Oh! that's why you go to the farm so often," said she laughing jealously. "She's a good girl, her mother looks after her sharp."

I had most difficulty in getting Pender. She would not go into the privy again. I fucked her once or so in the barn, but at railroad pace; both anxious, the fuck barely worth having. "I'll go to mother's next Sunday," said she. "If P go to the Red Lion on Saturday night, I'll be outside in the lane." We met in the lane, but I could only get a feel, and arrange about Sunday. "I'll go to mother's at ------" (the market-town), "if the day be fine; P. won't come, he don't like mother, or he'll only come in the evening."

On Sunday I rode to the town, passing Pender on the road in her Sunday finery, went to a lane where was an ale-house and bakery below, a baudy house above, and took a room (Fred told me of the place years before). Pender went to her mother's, and so soon as people were in church came to the appointed corner. I kept well ahead of her, entered the house, and after hesitating at the door in she came after me.

"How could you be such a fool as to walk about outside like that?" said I angrily, for I had feared she would not enter. "I was frightened," she replied, "and oh! I must get back to mother's by dinner-time at one, when the Publics and the bake-houses open."

It was a delicious day, and beats in my recollection many others of fevered enjoyment. Little by little I stropped a tall, fine, stout, healthy, country woman, a regular spanker; with white flesh, firm, soft satiny and smelling like new milk. She was bashful without affection, ashamed to expose her charms, yet proud to do so to me. She was clad in snow-white coarse linen, neat and clean from her boots to her head. What enjoyment we had! how we spent! I fucked her three times before the dinner-hour, my prick or my finger was in her cunt for an hour and a half.

At half-past twelve off she went; in less than two hours back she came. She had said that a friend of hers was ill, and she had promised to sit with her (a woman cocking is never at loss for a lie). It was raining. The umbrella helped to hide her, but she was nervous about being seen. I had dinner at the house, the woman cooked well; the keepers were really small traders who did not mind their rooms being used for love-making, and had none of the dirty tricks of a London baudy house keeper. He fetched me a bottle of good sherry.

I got as lewd as could be, and to her astonishment turned her face against the bed, threw up her clothes and had her with my belly against her rump. I shall never forget the comicality of that fuck, her protesting against it, and her wonderment at such an attitude. The novelty upset her.

I don't recollect much more what I did, but it was an afternoon of baudy teaching on my part, of confidences on hers; it was the first time we had a chat together on general matters. Speaking of her husband she said, "Why you have done it as much almost as he has done since we have been married." "What in a year?" "Yes, we were married several weeks afore he did it at all, so I told mother, and that's why he don't like her."

She was warmed with wine, we were on the bed cuddling, my fingers at work on her clitoris, we were enjoying each other's nakedness. I pressed her to tell me more, and now narrate briefly what I heard of her first fuck, her grievances and troubles.

"After I spoke to mother, mother said to him, 'You don't want a wife much Mr. Pender, I think.' 'Why of course I do, I should not have married had I not.' 'Well it don't seem like it', said mother. Then Pender said, 'You mind your own business mother, or you'll make it hot for your daughter', and with that he went out, and slammed the door. Mother did not like to say any more, for fear he would ill-treat me. Soon after he said, 'What have you been saying to your mother?' 'Nothing', I answered. He looked queer, and still he did not do anything to me for some time.'

"When I was in bed I used to lay and cry, he'd say, 'What are you crying about woman?' but I never told.

"After that one night he took my hand, put it on his thing and said, 'Feel that lass.' Then he felt all round me you know', said Mrs. P. laughing, 'and he had never done that before,--and with no more ado he got atop and said, 'Now don't be a fool', and then he did it,--and that's all," said Mrs. Pender describing her first marital poke,--the real beginning of her married life,--as she laid side by side by me, with my prick in her hand.

I was curious,--a man always is in such matters. "Did it hurt you?--did he get up you quick?" "I'm sure it was pretty quick, I cried out, and it hurt. I was all in a tremble; then he said, 'Well you were all right and tight five minutes ago.' I bled a lot."

"Perhaps your old sweetheart had done it before?" "He never laid hand on me, but to kiss me." "Nor any one?" "Oh! yes, they have tried all round I think," said she laughing, "you have,--so has the squire, and lots of 'em, you can't help that,--if a girl's taken unawares a man can get his hand on her thighs, but he won't get more; and I always slapped their heads, and there was an end of it." I recollect certainly her slapping at mine hard enough.

Then she relieved her mind. "He's not a bad man, he don't get drunk, and we don't quarrel; but I don't care for him, and never did." "Ah! you lost your young man, and thought you would be fucked by some one." "I did not think at all about it, but in a sort of spiteful fit, when he asked me to marry him, I said yes. I didn't think about his not doing it to me much, till a woman asked me how I liked it, and how often he did it; but I told her he did it a lot. Then I talked, and found men did it often to their wives, and he does not do it to me once in three weeks. So I fretted." "What do you do?" said I. She laughed, I gave her clitoris a rub. "That's what you do?" "Yes," said she. "Do you often want fucking?" "Every day," said Mrs. Pender frankly and openly. "Did you want it the day I had you by the hay-stack?" "I just did." Then she added that her husband knew she frigged herself, and usually said to her when she intimated that she should like him up her, "Oh! do it yourself, if your cunt's so hot, I'm tired."

She had married a man much more than double her own age, who poked her once in three weeks; this healthy, well-fed woman of twenty-three who wanted a nightly roger, and could have spent half-a-dozen times daily with ease. She now had got me, liked me, was ready to do anything with me or for me as I found out, and was sorry for it.

At six o'clock she was obliged to leave. We were both fucked out, and parted regretting that a month must pass before she could venture to go to her mother's again. I had left her enough to think about, for I fucked her in several attitudes. It gave me pleasure to teach her.

Next day Molly ran in my head, so I fished about to hook her. She had seemed to me so young, that I had taken but little notice of her; liking the fat-cunted, biggish-arsed females best. Now I noticed her being so plump and fresh, and wondered I had never noticed her previously. When I met her, I looked in her face thinking, "Innocent as you look, your cunt's been wetted by a man." I longed for her, but she was nearly always in the farm-yard, either with her mother or Pender, when not assisting up at the Hall; but when a man hunts a woman he is sure to get a chance, as will be seen I did.

Just after I had Pender on the Sunday, an annoying thing occurred to me. Whiteteeth worked in all parts of the parish, and she just now came to do something on my aunt's grounds,--weeding I think. Catching her one day alone I took some liberty. She resisted sullenly, looked up, and nodding her head said, "You gave me a bad illness." "What!" said I. "Did you not?" said she. I swore I had not; did she think me such a blackguard?--would she see my prick? "Then my damned old man's given it me, and he swears I gave it him," said she. She had a clap. I never had her afterwards, and was told that lots of men had had her. Fred told me soon afterwards, that he had, but that she had been quite steady since her marriage, he believed. I didn't undeceive him.

When the farm-work was over Molly stood sometimes at the lane-gate. Loitering about I saw a man named Giles there, who when he saw me moved off. I laid hold of her once or twice, kissed and made the usual approaches, at last got a hot fit of lust for her, and felt I would do anything to get her once. After two women with well-haired cunts I did nothing but picture to myself that she had a small cunt, and but little hair on it, like nursemaid's,--and the idea excited me.

I have already described the barn, step-ladder, and loft; the chickens sometimes flew up the ladder into the loft. I had seen Pender go up, and whisk them down. Looking about one afternoon (hay-making was again going on), no one seemed about, though Pender was in the dairy. I entered the barn from the brickyard side, just as Molly was going up the ladder, showing her legs innocently enough.

"What pretty legs," I cried. The girl scuffled up as hard as she could to get out of sight, I after her. She was chasing some chickens, and was as red as a turkey-cock in the face. I caught hold of her, prick standing, heart beating, and kissed her. She resisted, I put my hand up her clothes, and in the struggle we both rolled on to a heap of loose hay; I had felt the flesh of her thighs. "Leave off," said she, "or I'll call mother." Her mother was then ill in the farm-house.

"Don't be a fool," said I attempting it again. "Don't you do such things sir,--I'll call mother,--it's wrong of you" "If you do," said I brutally, "I'll tell your mother Giles fucked you in the field last week."

Never shall I forget the look of the poor girl's face. "Oh!--oh!" said she breathless, "you didn't,--it's a story, oh! now pray,--oh! it's a shocking story,--I warn't in the field." "Don't.--oh! it hurts," said I repeating other words which had been wandering through my brain ever since I heard them. "I heard you and the man say that."

She began to cry, putting her head in her hands. "Let me do it, and I won't tell,--no one will know, and you won't tell Giles, that's certain." She ceased crying, and fixed her eyes on me wildly, I got my hand up her clothes, her thighs were closed, she kept pushing me away, "No,--no,--no." Forgetting where I was, or that anyone might come up the ladder, I had my prick out, and with a struggle got my hand on her cunt. "You won't tell, really now?" "Not if you let me." A little more scuffling, and I had her down. She was quiet, and I was fucking with all the delight and energy which a fresh woman gives a man, when I heard "Molly, Molly" shouted out. With a violent start she uncunted me, and I spent over her motte. "Where are you such a long time Molly?" "There is a hen up here," said Molly who had started up, "and I think she has laid, but can't find the egg." And Molly disappeared down the ladder. "You're wanted up in the Hall," said the voice,--it was Pender's;--their voices died away. How pleased Pender would have been had she known the condition of Molly's motte!

Nothing is so irritating as spending outside a long coveted cunt, when another thrust or two would have left the sperm up it,--it is maddening. I could think of nothing but the girl; although I had barely felt, and had seen nothing of her charms, she seemed to me perfection. For a day or two I got no chance, so I wrote on a bit of paper, "You will get into a mess, unless you meet me to-night; I'll be in the barn at eight o'clock; come in through the wicket,"--or something to that effect. It was intended to frighten her, for she avoided me. I pushed the note into her hands at the Hall.

I walked through the farm-yard, afterwards and saw her, she shook her head as I passed. I said rapidly,--Pender was in sight,--"You had better." In the evening I hid myself in the loft, allowed the barndoors to be closed, and should have had to stay all night there if some one had not undone one of the wickets; they fastened them outside.

I had been there a long time, it was dark. "I am in here till to-morrow morning," I thought, and walked up and down barely restraining myself from frigging, such was my state of lust. It was possible that circumstances might prevent her from coming, and I had given up hope, when the wicket opened, It was she; she came up into the loft; I caught her in my arms.

"What do you want?--you ain't a going to tell?--you ain't heard anybody say anything?" said she. I could not see, but felt her tears, reassured her, told her I loved her: who would know but us two? "What harm have I done you?" said the poor girl, "Giles is going to marry me, that's different,--oh I don't know." I had pushed her on to some hay, threatening her one minute, coaxing her the next.

I was feeling her. My hand was roving over a plump little bum and belly, my finger entered a tight little split on which was a little crisp hair, my prick followed my finger, and on the new sweet hay, belly to belly, but not mouth to mouth (she would not kiss), my prick revelled in a cunt which seemed divine, and was soon drowned in a pond of its own making.

"Mother's better, and has gone down the lane to Pender's," said she, "if she comes back she will wonder where I am,--let me go." I would not, until I had again enjoyed her; and then the lass enjoyed me. She unclosed the wicket in the rick-yard which let me out. I got across a field into the lane, went past the farm-gates, and there stood Molly with her mother. "Good night," said I to the mother, then passing Pender's cottage, I went round, and up to the Hall.

I thought that having fucked Molly I should be contented; but the little cunt, the little hair, the small bum, made me want Molly again. I could not get her, she evidently did not wish for me; I had had her against her will, and so had her again afterwards. Perhaps only seemingly against her will, for though she resisted, and accused me of breaking my word, she had spent with me, and was to spend again, perhaps in spite of herself.

I cannot recollect the name of Molly's swain, though I have tried hard, so call him Giles,--it is a bumpkin's name.





CHAPTER VIII.


     Field women.--Fred at home.--Smith, the field foreman.--A
     rape of a juvenile.--Funking consequences.--Nelly consents.--
     Fred looks on.

 Strolling into the fields one day, idly smoking my cigar later on in the year, groups of girls and women were at work. I talked to the field foreman and looked at the girls, especially the younger ones, and wondered if they had smaller cunts than Molly; of one whether she had any hair on her cunt at all. Some were apparently not more than twelve years of age. I longed to see their cunts, and joked with one or two of the larger girls; but a decided longing for young cunts had set in on me. "Pender," said I one day, "what a lot of fast-looking chits there are in the fields." "They are a bad lot," said she, "there is one gal there only just fourteen in the family way." I was just going to fuck Pender, and daresay finished quickly enough, for at that age if I was fucking, and thought of anything very baudy; with a sudden spasm I spent right off, even if I had only just got my cock up. Indeed women used to say to me, "How quick you are; why did you not wait for me?"

What with Molly, Pender, and nursemaid I was so well kept in cunt, that I only occasionally went back to London. I had dissipated a large part of my fortune; fucking here had not then cost me five pounds, so that besides the novelty and delight of the intrigues and the risks I ran, it was economical; and things might have gone on so, when back came my cousin Fred.

A wide-awake fellow was Fred. When my aunt said how delighted they all were to see me so steady, and had never seen me enjoy myself so much at the Hall before, he stared. "He goes often," said aunt, "with me to the dairy." "Yes and pats the cows," said a cousin. Fred winked at me, and when we were alone said, "What's your little game Walter, where are you cunting now old fellow?" "Cunt," said I, "is of no use, my clap's not gone; but thank God I think it's getting all right again." He was quite taken in. "You have done the best thing you could," said he "there is nothing here much to excite you, no woman worth having, is there?"

We wandered daily over the farm and grounds, smoking and talking; he had been so much away, that faces were unfamiliar to him. "What a skinny bitch that is with Joey." said he (that was nursemaid). "That's a fine woman," said I indicating Pender. "Yes," said he, "I recollect before she was married trying to grope her, and she nearly knocked me over." "I would not mind having her." "No chance for you my boy. Ah! has not that little Molly grown," said he with a laugh, "I have often seen the little devil's arse, and her cunt too when a child, playing about the place,--she is nice: I think I'll have a try on her." "Aunt's partial to her," said I. "Don't care." "She is very young." "Tighter cunt, and more to teach," replied he,--and I noticed he began to be very sweet to Molly afterwards.

One morning we walked into the fields, the foreman came up and saluted us. He had been on the farm before Fred and I were born. "Well Smith," said Fred, "still at the old games,--any bastards lately?" "Oi am tow ould for that now Master." "Perhaps the girls don't like poking now?" "Oi they do, but they doon't like me as they did." Smith (my cousin told me), had had the credit all his life of poking all the agricultural laborers, and had been threatened with dismissal on account of it. "He might have had a worse berth," said I, "there are half-a-dozen girls in the field I would not mind sleeping with." "Why don't you have them?" said Fred. "I don't want to lose my character here." "That be damned, you can always have a field-girl, nobody cares,--I have had a dozen or two."

I turned this over in my mind. We were again in the fields, on the way there he gave me a long account of how old Sarah used to wink at his having the field-girls; and indeed I had often heard him tell it. "You tell him you would like any one, and see what will come of it." There was a pretty sun-burnt girl about fifteen years of age that had given me a cock-stand. "That's a pretty girl Smith, I'd give a sovereign to have her,--is she loose?" "Don't think so yet squire, she be skittish; her sister's not fourteen, and they say she be in the family way, when one sister takes to it squire, the others generally do." "Where do you pay their wages?" I asked. The old fellow leered at me. "Why you be a taken a leaf out of young squire's book sir (it was Fred's advice); I pays them next at the root-stores," a shed about a quarter of a mile from the farm-yard, and in which he had a desk. The women waited outside the shed, each being called in and paid in succession. They were paid every night, excepting in hay-making times.

At pay time I strolled into the shed. One by one he paid. The girl I wanted came last. He told her he wanted her to take a parcel to the village. "Yes sir," said she. Off old Smith went to fetch the parcel,--it was the dodge, Fred told me so afterwards, the old goat always adopted to get a girl left alone with him.

Very randy but nervous I went out with Smith, then strolled back into the shed. The girl had seated herself on some loose straw, she got up and curtsied. "Sit down my dear," said I, "you may have some time to wait," and talked to her. "You are very pretty,--you will keep your sweetheart waiting." Smiling she said. "I ain't got no sweetheart sir." Another look or two, and my randiness getting the better of me, I began chaffing suggestively, she sat down besides me, then I talked for a quarter of an hour warmer and warmer, then kissing, tickling, and pinching her legs. This did not seem to affect her, she enjoyed it; then out I pulled my prick, and all changed at once. "Oh!" said she rising up scared to go. I pulled her back.

"Let's do it to you." "I won't." "You've been fucked." "I ain't,--I am only fifteen years old (she did not affect ignorance of my meaning),--leave me alone." I threw her down, and got my hand up her clothes. She loudly screamed, and that is all I recollect clearly; I know that I struggled with her, offered her money, told her I knew her sister had been fucked, and a lot more. I was so much stronger that she had no chance, I rolled over her, she screamed, and screamed again (there was no one nearer than the Hall), I exposed her bum, her thighs, her cunt, and all she had. I was furious with lust, determined to have her; at last she was under me, panting, breathless, crying, and saying, "Now don't,--oh! pray don't," but I lunged fast, furiously, brutally, and all I heard was, "oh! pray,--pray now,--oh!--oh!--oh! pray," as I was spending in her holding her tight, kissing her after I had forced her. Her tears ran down. If I had not committed a rape it looked uncommonly like one, and began to think so as I lay with my prick up her.

I got off her, saw for an instant her legs wide open, cunt and thighs wet and bloody, she crying, sobbing, rubbing her eyes. I was now in a complete funk, I had heard field-women so light spoken of, that they were so accessible, that I expected only to go up a road that had often been travelled. This resistance and crying upset me, the more so when at length rising, she said, "I'll tell my sister, and go to the magistrate, and tell how you have served me out."

I really had violated her, saw that it would bear that complexion before a magistrate, so would not let her go, but retained her, coaxed, begged, and promised her money. I would love her, longed for her again, would take her from the fields, and every other sort of nonsense a man would utter under the circumstances. She ceased crying, and stood in sullen mood as I held her, asking me to let her go. I took out my purse, and offered her money which she would not take, but eyed wishfully as I kept chinking the gold in my hand. What a temptation bright sovereigns must have been to a girl who earned ninepence a day, and often was without work at all.

In an hour and a half I suppose, old Smith came back, he had really got a parcel for her to take. She began to cry, and blurted out that the gentleman had insulted her. "What, has he kissed you?" "More than that,--boo hoo." "What has he done?" "Been dirty with me,--and I'll tell my sister, and go to the justice."

"Pough child," said Smith, "he arn't done you any harm,--a gent like him,--don't make a fuss,--make it up,--it's all fair yer know twixt a young man, and a maid,--daresay yer wanted him to be dirty with you,--a gent like him, you ought to be proud of sich a one making love to you,--here, take this parcel, and be off."

"Take the sovereign (she had refused it before), I'll give you more another day; it will help to keep you a while,--hold your tongue, and no one will know," said I. She hesitated, pouted, wriggled her shoulders, but at last took the sovereign, and took up the parcel, saying she would tell her sister. Then said the foreman, "None o' that gal, an' I hears more on that, you won't work here any more, nor anywheres else in this parish,--I knows the whole lot on you, I knows who got yer sister's belly up,--she at her age, she ought to be ashamed on her-self, and I knows summut about you too,--now take care gal." "I've done nothing to be ashamed on," said the girl, "you're a hard man to the women, they all say so,--ohe!--ohe!" "Well there," said he dropping his bullying tone, "the squire won't harm you; I think you be in luck if he loikes you, say you nought;--that be my advice". The girl muttering went her way.

I followed her (it was getting dark), was so kind and coaxing, promised her so many fine things (I'm not sure I didn't say I'd marry her), that as we neared the village, the little lass let me pull her into a convenient grassy corner, and fuck her again. She promised she'd say nothing to anyone about it.

Next morning I had a fear, and was annoyed with myself. If the girl said anything it would be all over the parish in the afternoon, and in my aunt's ears the next day; all that for a dirty little farm-laborer. I had had none of that sensuous delight which both mentally and physically is found in getting into a virgin, had never thought of having her as one, nor did I recollect much cunt resistance to my penetration; but she certainly was a virgin. In my furious lust, and with my unbendable stiff prick I must have hit the mark, and burst through it at one or two cunt-rending shoves. She had given a loud cry in the midst of it, "Oh! pray now,--oh! pray,"--but I had heeded it not. What excited me was her youth, her size, and the idea of having a little cunt with but little hair on it, something smaller than Molly's. In bed, thinking of, and funking consequences, I longed for a girl still smaller, for one with no hair on her cunt at all. On further reflection I calmed. She had taken the money, and let me do it a second time; it was all right, and I rose, and went to the scene of my exploit.

The girl was not at work in the fields, and my funk returned. "Smith," said I, "is Nelly (let's call her Nelly) here?" "No, nor her sisters," "Sisters?" "Yes there are two; one a woman called ------ very much older, the other younger than Nelly, and the young un they says be with kid."

I went to the farm-yard, there saw Fred talking to Molly, "Ulloh, you have taken a letch there." "I'll have her," said he. Pender went across the yard. "I would sooner have her," said I. "Aye, a damned fine woman, but coarse, smells strong I should say when she sweats, or is randy, and I like them younger." I was jealous about Molly, and walked away. Fred joined me, and after dinner, I like a fool told him all about the girl ravished in the root-shed in the Twelve-Acre field.

"Was she a virgin?--she is a plump little bitch,--you were in luck,--oh! never fear there will be no row; the saying down here is, 'They all take it by the time they have half-an-inch of hair on their cunts.' She will be rather proud you have fucked her than otherwise. Has she much hair there?--has she any bubbies?" I told him all I knew, which was but little, not recollecting even if she had any cunt-wig at all.

Next day the two sisters were at work again. I told Smith that after his dinner I wished to speak to the girl. The old cock-bawd told me to wait at the root-shed; and the girl came there to fetch his handkerchief which he left purposely. When she saw me how she started. No, she had told no one, but was not going to let me do what I liked. A kiss. "I don't like your hand on my legs,--oh! now you said you would not,--take your hand away."

My finger was on her cunt, I was feeling what little hair she had, my finger went up it, oh! how tight it was! "Now darling let me, I won't let you go till you do,--there, what a dear little belly,--let me kiss it." "They will wonder why I am gone so long,--my sister will be asking questions,--do let me go." "No." "Oh!" I had her on the straw. "Be quiet dear,--my prick's up you,--be quiet,--a--h!--ah!"

With her cunt well buttered off she ran. I buttoned up. Just then at the door appeared Fred holding his sides and laughing. "What's up Fred?" "Oh I--oh!--oh!" "What's the fun?" "Oh!--oh!--I've been looking at you fuck the little bitch. I saw her go in, and you go to the shed an hour ago, but did not know you were there then, so thought I would like the young one; it's five days since I've had a woman, and as I was going in heard your two voices, listened and looked till you had done the job."

"It's a damned unhandsome thing," said I in a rage. "You would have looked at me if you had caught me," said Fred. "You leave the girl alone, it's my manor." "All right, but I'll have little Molly, I have given her a kiss." Off he went, leaving me jealous about that one as well. He was treading on my heels a little too much to please me.

Four women I had poked now, being like a cock among hens, cared about neither, but could not bear the idea of Fred going up them, though I knew it was useless to try to prevent the young squire, the future master, a fine officer. Pender said to me one day, "The squire means harm to Molly; it's a shame for an officer like him to harm a poor girl; I caught him kissing her, and putting his hands up her petticoats. I'll tell Missus if I see any more of it." "Do," said I, "you tell my aunt."

So she did, and aunt requested Fred not to go to the farm-yard, and Molly was all but locked up. In a few days Fred said it was damned slow, and went to London. I for a change went with him.

My departure put Pender in tears, she did all she could to get me up her, and before I left I got Molly into the loft on promising never to ask her again, and there had my first good look at her belly and cunt, and fucked her. Nursemaid I advised to avoid the page, or I would never have anything to do with her more. She grinned and said, "What a loss". Nelly I caught in the lane, fucked her and she promised to be chaste and never let any other man put his finger on her. Then I departed with Fred to virtuous London.

Before leaving, Mrs. Pender said, "I'm afeard I'm in trouble, my poorliness ain't come on for two months now."





CHAPTER IX.


     Laura and Fred.--Vauxhall amusements.--A juvenile harlot--A
     linen stopper.--The hairless and the hairy.--Ten and forty.--
     A snub.--At my aunt's.--Nursemaid and page missing.--
     Pender with child.--Molly and Giles caught.--Mr. Pender's
     letch.

 Theatre every night, heavy lunches, heavy dinners, much wine, and cigars never out of my mouth, that was the first few days proceedings. Fred was keeping a woman named Laura of whom I shall say more; she was always with us. I don't recollect having a woman for a few days, but it may have been otherwise. On the fifth or sixth night we went to Vauxhall Gardens to a masquerade. It was a rare lark in those days. A great fun of mine was getting into a shady walk, tipping the watchman to let me hide in the shrubs, and crouching down to hear the women piss. I have heard a couple of hundred do so on one evening, and much of what they said. Such a mixture of dull and crisp baudiness I never heard in short sentences elsewhere. Although I had heard a few similar remarks when I waited in the cellars of the gun-factory, it was nothing like those at Vauxhall, and it amused me very much. There were one or two darkish walks where numbers of women on masquerade nights went to piss, and many on other nights.

At supper Laura said, "Where have you been the last hour?" I laughed. "Tell us." "Hiding in the shrubs where ladies go by ones, twos, and threes without men." Laura understood. "Serves them right, they should go to the women's closets; but you are dirty." "Well it was such a lark hearing them piddle and talk." Fred always coarse said he never knew a woman piss off so quickly as Laura. Laura slapped his head. She had not been gay, and was very modest in manner and expression; but loved a baudy joke not told in coarse language.

The signal sounded for fireworks. Off we ran to get good places. I cared more about women than fireworks, and lagged behind, seeing the masquers and half-dressed women running and yelling (fun was fast and loose then). I passed a woman leading a little girl dressed like a ballet-girl, and looked at the girl who seemed about ten years old, then at the woman, who winked. I stopped, she came up and said, "Is she not a nice little girl?" I don't recollect having had any distinct intention at the time I stopped; but at her words ideas came into my head. She,--what a small cunt,--no hair on that. "Yes a nice little girl," I replied. "Would you like to see her undressed?" "Can I fuck her?" I whispered. The little girl kept tugging the woman's hand and saying, "Oh! do come to the fireworks." "Yes if you like,--what will you give?" I agreed to give I think three sovereigns, a good round sum for a common-place poke then.

She told me to go out of the gardens first, get a cab, and stop at a little way from the entrance. In three minutes the woman and child joined me. At about five minutes drive from Vauxhall we stopped, walked a little way, turned down a street, and after telling me to wait one or two minutes, she opened the door of a respectable little house with a latch-key, went in and closed it. A minute afterwards she opened the door, and treading lightly as she told me, I found myself in a parlour out of which led a bed-room, both well furnished. Enjoining me to speak in a low tone I sat down, and contemplated the couple.

The woman was stout, full-sized, good-looking, dark, certainly forty, and dressed like a well-to-do tradeswoman. The girl's head was but a few inches above my waist, and she certainly was not more than ten years, but for such age as nice and fleshy as could be expected. She had an anxious look as she stared at me, and I stared at her. The last month's constant desire to have a cunt absolutely without any hair on it was to be realized, I was impatient but noticed and remarked, "Why you have gas!"--a rare thing then in houses. "Beautiful, is it not?" said the woman, and in a voluptuous and enticing manner began undressing, until she stood in a fine chemise, a pair of beautiful boots, and silk stockings. Engrossed with the girl whom I was caressing, I scarcely had noticed the woman; but as she pulled up her chemise to tighten her garter, and showed much of a very white thigh, I said, "I've made a mistake, I did not mean you." "No," said she, "but it's all the same." She came to me, pinched my cock outside saying "oho" as she found it stiff, and then undressed the child to her chemise. I had white trousers and waistcoat on, and was anxious about rumpling them; At my request she drew my white trousers off over my boots with great care; then divesting myself of coat and waistcoat I stood up with prick spouting. "Look there,--feel it Mary." The girl not obeying she took her little hand, and made her feel it. Sitting down I lifted the girl on to my knees, and put my hand between her little thigh.

"Give me the three pounds," said the woman. All my life I have willingly paid women before my pleasure; but thought I was going to be done so demurred, and asked if she supposed I was not a gentleman, took out my purse, showed I had plenty of money gave her one sovereign, and promised the others directly I had the child,--and then pulled off my boots.

We went into the bed-room, she lighted candles, the gas streamed in through the open door. "Lay down Mary," said she. "Oh! he ain't going to do it like the other man,--you said no one should again", said the girl whimpering. "Be quiet you little fool, he won't hurt you,--open your legs." Pushing her back, or rather lifting her up, there I saw a little light-pink slit between a pair of thighs somewhat bigger than a full-sized man's calves; the little cunt had not a sign of hair on it. To pull open the lips, to push up my finger, to frig it, smell it, then lick it was the work of a minute. I was wild, it was realization of the baudy dreamy longings of the last few weeks. I was scarcely conscious that the old one had laid hold of my prick, and was fast bringing me to a crisis.

Pushing her hand away I placed my prick against the little cunt which seemed scarcely big enough for my thumb, and with one hand was placing it under the little bum, when the girl slipped off the bed crying. "Oh! don't let him,--the other did hurt so,--he shan't put it in."

"Don't do it to her, she is so young," said the woman in a coaxing tone. "Why that is what I came for." "Never mind, it hurts her, have me, I am a fine woman, look," and she flung herself on the bed, and pulled up her chemise, disclosing a fine form, and to a randy man much that was enticing. "Look at my hair, how black it is,--do you like tassels?" said she, and throwing up her arms out of her chemise, she showed such a mass of black hair on her arm-pits, as I have rarely seen in other women, and rarely in an English woman at all.

"What the devil did you bring me here for,--it was for her, not you, I hate hair,--I like a cunt without hair."

"Have me, and look at her cunt whilst you do it,--here Mary," and she pulled the young one to the bed cunt upwards. But disappointed, lewd, and savage, I swore till she begged me not to make a noise, and saying, "Well,--well,--well,--so you shall,--hold your tongue (to the girl), he won't hurt you,--look his cock is not big." She pulled the girl on to the edge of the bed again, and brought her cunt up to the proper level with the bolster and pillows. Then said the woman, "Let me hold your cock, you must not put it far in, she is so young." I promised I would only sheath the tip; but she declared I should not unless she held it. "Wrap your handkerchief round it," said she. I did so, and that left only half its length uncovered. Impetuously I tore the white handkerchief into pieces, wrapped round about an inch of the stem of my prick with it, which then looked as if it was wounded, and bound up; then hitting the little pink opening I drove up it. I doubted whether I should enter so small it was. It held my prick like a vise, but up her cunt I was, the woman promising the child money, to take her to Vauxhall again, and so on, and then put her hand over her mouth to prevent her hollowing,--she did not hollow at all really.

I spent almost instantly, and coming to my senses held her close up to my prick by her thighs,--there was no difficulty so light a weight was she. There I stood for a minute or two. "My prick is small now," said I, "unroll the handkerchief." "No," said the woman. "I will give you ten shillings extra if you do, my prick can't hurt now." The oddity of a woman attempting to unroll from a prick a slip of white rag, whilst the prick was up a cunt; but out came my prick from the little hole before she could accomplish it.

Desire had not left me, holding the thighs open I dropped on my knees, my prick flopping, and saw the little cunt covered with thick sperm. There lay the girl, there stood the woman, neither speaking nor moving, till my eyes had had their voluptuous enjoyment. "I will give you another sovereign now, and then fuck her again." "All right," said the woman. "But she must not wash." "All right". I gave it, then took the girl up like a baby, one hand just under the bum, so that the spunk might fall on my hand if it dropped out, and laid her on the sofa in the parlour, where the gas flared brightly, opened her thighs wide, gloated, and talked baudily till my prick stood again.

Then I lifted her back on to the bed, and rolled the strip of handkerchief round the stem again; but I longed to hurt her, to make her cry with the pain my tool caused her, I would have made her bleed if I could; so wrapped it round in such a manner, that with a tug I could unroll it. The woman did not seem so anxious now about my hurting her.

Sperm is a splendid cunt-lubricator, my prick went in easier, but still she cried out. Now I measured my pleasure. With gentle lingering pushes I moved up and down in her. Under pretense of feeling my prick, I had loosened the handkerchief, then tore the rag quite away, and afterwards lifted her up, and then with her cunt stuck tight and full with my pego, and both hands round her bum tightly, I walked holding her so into the sitting-room to a large glass. There seeing my balls hanging down under her little arse, I shoved and wriggled, holding her like a baby on me, her hands round my neck, she whining that I was hurting her, the woman hushing, and praying me to be gentle, till I spent again. I held her tight to me in front of the glass, her thighs wide apart, my balls showing under her little buttocks, till my prick again shrunk, and my sperm ran from her cunt down my balls. Then I un-cunted, and sat down on a chair. We were both stark naked.

The girl sat down on a foot-stool, the woman sat in her chemise. I gave her the remaining money, and to the little one some silver. Although I had had her twice, I scarcely had looked at her; both fucks must have been done in ten minutes. Now I longed to see the little cunt tranquilly. "Let me wash her cunt," said I. "You can," said the old one. I took the girl into the bed-room, she left a large gobbet of sperm on the stool, which the old one wiped off. I washed her cunt, threw her on the bed, and looked at the little quim. It seemed impossible I could have been up it; but from that day I knew a cunt to be the most elastic article in the world, and believed the old woman's saying, that a prick can always go up where a finger can.

Then after cuddling her, straddling between her legs and feeling my balls hanging between her thighs by passing my hand round her arse, I laid her on the bed, took a glance at the little cunt from a slight distance, and saw the old one in an exciting posture. She had thrown herself on the bed, and resting her head on one hand was watching me. Her chemise had slipped from her shoulders showing big white breasts, and the black thicket of hair in one arm-pit. Her chemise was up to her waist, one leg was bent up, the fat calf pressed against a fat thigh, the other extended along the bed, the thighs wide open, the middle finger of her left hand on her cunt, whose mass of black hair creeping up her belly and along the line of junction with the thighs could not be hidden by her hand. She was frigging her clitoris with her middle-finger, and she smiled invitingly. "Come and do it to me, I do want it so,--I have not had a poke for a fortnight."

My love of a fat arse, and a big hairy cunt returned suddenly. I stood turning my eyes, first to the little hairless orifice, then to the full-lipped split, then to the little pink cunt, and then back again to the matured cunt. "Come, do me." "I must go." "Why?" "I came to have her." "So you have,--now have me,--you can have her again if you like after." "Can I?" "Yes,--oh! come, I am so randy." "It's late." "Stop all night." I said I would. Off the bed she got, put a nightgown on the child, laid her on the sofa, told her to go to sleep, and throwing off her boots and stockings, got on to the bed again.

I threw off my socks. "Shall I be naked?" said she. "Yes, it is very hot." Off went her chemise, and the next instant cuddling up to me, she was tugging at my prick, kissing me, and using every salacious stimulant. Though a hot night, naked as we both were we felt a chill, so covered ourselves with a sheet.

"How old are you?" said I. "Guess." "More than forty." "I am not thirty-eight, although I am so stout,--feel how firm my flesh is,--how my breasts keep up." I threw down the sheet to see her fully. She was delighted, turned round and round, opened her thighs, pulled open her cunt, exposed herself with the freedom of a French whore, and by the time I had seen all my prick was at fever heat, and I fucked her. Our nakedness was delightful.

We talked afterwards. She was not the mother, nor the aunt, though the child called her so; the child was parentless, she had taken charge of her and prevented her going to the work-house. She was in difficulties, she must live, the child would be sure to have it done to her some day, why not make a little money by her? Some one else would, if she did not. So spoke the fat middle-aged woman.

I was sleepless. After an hour or two I longed to see them side by side, that strange contrast in age and size, to try the difference with my finger as I had with my prick. She brought in the child, sleepy and peevish, I plunged my prick in the little one, took it out, and put it into the woman. It was a delight to feel the difference,--the room in one, the confinement in the other's cunt.

The aunt annoyed me by putting her hand between our bellies to prevent my penetrating too far. It was not the stretching, nor the plugging, it was the boring too deeply which hurt the little one, she said.

I laid on my back and put the little one's belly upon me; stretching her little thighs, I felt round them; and guided my prick up her, then the aunt put her fingers round my prick and squeezed my balls. How funny to have that little creature on the top of me; how funny to be able to feel at the same time a big hairy cunt at my side. Such thoughts and emotions finished me, and after spending in the little one, she again went to the sofa, then with my arse to the aunt's arse we went to sleep.

She was the youngest I ever yet have had, or have wished to have. We laid abed till about mid-day. I fucked as much as I ever did in my life, and found that a tiny cunt although it might satisfy a letch, could not give the pleasure that a full developed woman could. Tight as it was, it had not that peculiar suction, embrace, and grind, that a full-grown woman's or girl's has. When I was getting drier and drier, the old one stiffened my prick, and I put it into the child; but oscillate my arse as I might, I could not get a spend out of me; then in the aunt's clipping though well stretched cunt, I got my pleasure in no time. A fuck is barely a fuck if a man's prick is but half up a girl, it wants engulfing. A very young girl never has the true jerk of her arse, nor the muscular clip in her cunt; so if a languid prick be put up it, it will slip out, unless the letch be strong; whereas a flabby, done-for prick, once in the cunt of a grown women may be resuscitated, and made to give pleasure to both, if she uses the muscular power which nature has given her between bum-hole, buttocks, and navel.

We eat and drank, I paid liberally, and with empty ballocks and a flabby tool went away. White trousers and a black tail-coat were then full evening dress at Vauxhall; but ludicrous in the day. I recollect feeling ashamed as I walked out in that dress in the sun-shine. She would not fetch a cab as she was most anxious about noise. She gave me full instructions where to write and have the girl again. About a fortnight afterwards I made an appointment, but she did not keep it. I went to the house and asked for her; a woman opened the door. "Do you know her?" said she. "Yes." "She is not here, and I don't know where she has gone,--perhaps you're as bad as she is," and she slammed the door in my face. A few years passed away before I took a letch for a hairless cunt again,--and then I was a poor man.

We went to Vauxhall on an ordinary night, and I showed Fred where I had heard and seen the girls make water. Laura I got to like, and she to like me which led to something at a later date. In about three weeks or more I went back to my aunt's, through an indefinable longing to poke in a quiet intriguing way, the women I had had there. In London I had changed my women twice a day, and fucked every nice French women who walked in Regent Street.

My mother was again going to see my aunt, and was delighted that I would go with her. Fred had gone to Paris with Laura, and wanted me to go, but money was getting short with me, for I had been heavily robbed, and as ten pounds a day (a large sum then) was the usual cost of Paris to me, I declined, and to the old Hall went with mother.

I did not see nursemaid or page. "You have a new nursemaid for Joey," said I to my aunt. "We dismissed the other, we found her to be an improper character,--and Robert has gone,--he was too big," said she. For two or three days I could not get Pender, who looked miserable when I met her, shook her head, and looked up to the skies. I went with my mother and aunt to the farm one day, Pender for a second stopped behind, and said to me in a hurried whisper, "I am in the family way," and then ran after my aunt.

Next day I saw her for a second. "Meet me next Sunday at------." "I must," said she. We had no opportunity of speaking before, for her husband or some one was always in the way. To make sure I next day slipped an envelope into her hand, in which was one addressed to myself, and a scribble asking her to say where I was to meet her. It came back by post containing in execrable writing the words, "My dear, same time, and place, if he be out, on Saturday night." I did not comprehend, but waited outside her cottage that night. She did not show. On Sunday I went to ------, and long after eleven she appeared. Soon we were in the room over the beer-shop.

"I am in the family way, whatever shall I do?" I had thought over this, and replied, "Well, you have a husband, so it does not matter." "I don't think he will believe it's his." "He can't say it is not, and will be proud of it." "That may be true, I did not think of that," said she, and until I had fucked her I learn't no more.

I referred to the change in the servants at the Hall. "Oh!" said Pender eagerly, "there has been a row; do you recollect the nursemaid?--well they saw her feeling--hoh! hoh!"--she burst out laughing,--"feeling the page's thing,--hoh! ho! ho!" "Feeling his prick?" "Yes,--ho! ho! ho!--and Missus turned her and page out the same night,--ho! ho! ho!" laughed Pender. "She was a dirty hussy." "Why?" "Why a woman like that to be taking liberties with a boy like that, a hobble-de-hoy; poor Molly told me that one day when he came here he pulled out his thing before her." "What, Molly?" said I, thinking the young girl had had manifold temptations. "Yes, poor thing." "Why poor thing?" "Well I am sorry for her; I told Missus about the young squire as you told me, and Missus told her mother to look sharp after her,--and so she did, and found that she used to get out of a night and meet Giles,--you know Giles?" "No I don't," said I lying. "He works here sometimes, you must have seen him," said Pender. "No." "Well he works here, is a likely young chap, but Molly's mother hates him,--well she watched and watched, till one night she caught them, and him on top of her in the large barn,--he had got through the wicket on the far-yard wicket." "How could she do that?" Pender explained to me what I knew perfectly well.

"On the top of her?" "Yes they were a doing it.--and she hit him hard on the head with a stick, and nearly stunned him before they knew she were there." "Who hit?" "Why her mother, he were nearly insensible."

"Then Mrs. Brown asked me what to do, and I said he had better marry her, and she said he should not. So she went to Missus, asked her advice, and on account of Molly's character to say nothing about finding Giles taking liberties with her daughter. Missus said Giles at the end of the week was to be sent off,--and he's gone. Mrs. Brown scarcely lets Molly out of the house, and when I sees her I laughs to myself. That a young thing like that has had it done to her. Her mother told me you know,--I have sworn to tell nobody, but I don't mind telling you." "She has seen two pricks," said I, "page Robert's and Giles' ". "Yes she has."

I wondered whether he had spent when he felt the stick on his head. "I think he had," said she, "for Mrs. Brown said she found his stuff on her child's chemise. Every day there is a row between them, Molly says she will go to service, her mother says she shan't, and that she will turn out a bunter, and bring her in her age with sorrow to the grave. Poor thing."

"Pugh," said I, "why make such a fuss about such a natural action?" "Well it be natural," said Pender, "but she might have waited, she is very young."

In the family way Pender was, and by me,--of that I had no doubt. Pender thought it was done the first time I had her in the rick-yard. "Did he not do it about that time?" I asked. Pender hesitated, and on being pressed to reply at length said, "It's funny, I am always thinking about it, but it is a fact that he did it that very night; and when you have done it, he generally do it also that night. I can't account for it,--can't abear him to do it when you have,--can't abear his doing it at all now, and he does it more than he used." "You spend with him?" "I don't,--I hate him then, I hate him altogether since I have known you."

Now for a bit of experience which I write now, and years after I wrote this chapter of my narrative. I had a married woman who was fond of me. She assured me that whenever I had her, it was perfectly certain that her husband would do it to her that night. She thought that my fucking acted as a charm to fetch the other man. He neglected her for other women, and used, although a young vigorous man, to do it but rarely to her; but whenever my sperm had suffused itself in her cunt, his went there the same night. "You spend too then?" said I. "I do," said she, "I think so much of you, so much of the coincidence and go home so wondering whether he will do it or not, that directly he pulls me about I think of you, and then fancy it is you doing it to me, not him, and I spend. I am angry with myself afterwards, but can't help it."

Pender had said her mother was unwell as an excuse to get to------, so must be back quickly. She was lying speechless, with eyes closed and my prick up her, I silently reposing on her, when the clock struck. Up she jumped, uncunting me, saying, "I must go, I am to fetch the dinner from the bake-house, then I must get back home, unless P. comes," and rapidly off she went scarcely dressed, and without washing her cunt.





CHAPTER X.


     Nelly and Sophy.--The beer-house again.--Sophy's belly.--On
     the road.--Against a tree.--At the baudy house with Sophy.--
     Her narrative.--Tom and the three sisters.--Fred on the
     scent.--Pender's troubles.

 I had some food at an hotel, then returning on foot saw at the end of the lane two peasant girls in their Sunday finery. I looked at first without recognizing them, but as I got close saw one was Nelly, the girl I had raped. She stopped, I smiled. "You here, why?" "Taking a walk sir." "Come with me." She hesitated, looked at the other girl. "Never mind," said I, "bring your friend with you." Two minutes brought us to the beer-house again. "Stay here," said I. I went to the side entrance which was up a yard, told the woman who stared when she opened the door to me to show the girls up the other way. They came through the shop, and stood curtsying when they came into the little sitting room.

I wanted Nelly when I saw her, and hence what I did; but was embarrassed now, for with the other in the room I did not know how to proceed without compromising her; so sent for some spirits. They sat sheepishly. I said to Nelly with the view of getting rid of the other, "Perhaps your friend would like to call for you presently." "She is my sister," said Nelly. Impulsively I cried, "Your sister?"--"why she is the girl who was in the family way before she was fourteen."

"Oo--h!" said Nelly's sister, "what a lie,--what a shame to say such things of a girl,--who said so?" I was disconcerted. "I heard it, but can't recollect who." Nelly never spoke, but sat looking at me with her tongue out on one side, and a funny expression in her eye. "I'll go," said her sister. "Don't go," said Nelly, "the gent's asked us in, and will be offended,--won't you sir?" "Yes," I replied.

The liquor came, I dosed them with it, and a letch for the sister came over me. "She in family way, that young thing,--is it so?--how I should like to see her belly." My conversation got warm, then baudy, the girls got warm, and laughed at my smut. From kissing one, I got to kiss the other, then to pinch, poke and feel their legs, I spoke about women being in the family way, made light of it, wished I was so myself, and so on, and they let out as the liquor worked, and I questioned.

The younger was a little over fourteen years old, Nelly only eleven months older. Said I, "A girl can't be in the family way before she is fourteen." "Oh! yes she can," said Nelly. "How do you know?" She laughed. I plied the liquor, got the young one on to my knee, and my hand up her clothes. A yell, a threat to go, "nonsense," from Nelly. Then I shoved my hand up Nelly's petticoats,--which she permitted quietly. Then I had a strange whim.

"Stand close together with your backs to me, and put your hands behind you, and I will give you something before you go; then each shall ask the other to guess what I have put in her hand." They did, and expected money. I pulled out my prick and balls, one girl's hand I guided under my balls, the other's round my prick. They touched at the same time and knew what it was, and turning round, "It's his thing," said the youngest.

"You knew it was a man's prick," said I. "you have felt one, and one has been into you,--let's feel your cunt, do,--you are in the family way, I know you are."

Then I sat between them, talking outrageous baudiness with my prick out. "Come into the other room," said I, "and let me see if you are in the family way, and I will give you this (producing a sovereign); if you are, or are not, you shall have it." She refused, but eyed the sovereign. Said Nelly, "Well, I wish he would ask me." "So I do, but she shall come first, you afterwards." The girl asked, "How will you tell?" "My dear I shall lay you on the bed, throw up your clothes, look at your belly, and feel your cunt." "I shan't then." "Then you won't get a sovereign," and I put it bye. "I'll go with you," said Nelly, but I would not accept her offer. There was a pause, the sister sat reflecting, her gaiety was gone.

Soon afterwards I renewed the request. "Let him," said Nelly, "he won't talk, he don't know people in the village." The girl shook her head sullenly, Nelly looked at me nodded her head, and put her tongue out. I did not know what it meant, at last guessed. "Is she?" I asked. Nelly kept on nodding. "Well Nelly says you are in the family way." The girl began to cry. "What's the good of crying?" said Nelly, "you can't hide it long." The girl kept silently crying. I persuaded, Nelly persuaded, and at last she came into the bed-room. I could feel the poor little girl's hard belly, lifting her clothes I opened her thighs and looked; then she resisted, but a little only. I frigged her, kissed her a little, coaxed her, and then fucked her. She spent freely. It's my luck to get sisters.

"Tell me Sophy all about it,--how long since you were got in the family way?--your sister will wait."

She counted on her fingers and said, "Four months and about a week." "Are you sure?" "Yes." "How can you tell?" "I have never been done but on one day." "Nonsense." "It's true." "Do you mean that once putting it up you got you in the family way?" "I didn't mean that," said she, "he were only once with me, but he did it all night, and nearly all the next day." "A dozen times?" "Don't know, I was so ill, so sleepy." "Who is the father?" She shook her head. "I can't say,--dare not,--it would be worse for me if I did." "What are you going to do?" "Go to the work-house if they won't keep me," said the poor girl crying again. She was rather watery headed.

It was an exciting termination to the day. After frigging her till she was in the seventh heaven, I fucked her again. It was the same bed I had fucked Pender on.

"You've been an hour," said Nelly when we went in, "what have you been doing?" "Nothing but examining." The girl stuck to that also. "Oh! gammon," said Nelly.

"You come now," said I. She would not, was sulky, and another hour went away. It was getting late, I pulled Nelly into an open-legged posture over mine as I sat on the chair, and lifted her clothes. Her back was to her sister. I got my cock between her legs, it rubbed her thighs, but she slipped away, turned sulky, and would not let me fuck her, though I felt her. They left, and I directly after.

When clear of the town, and on the road it got dark, I joined them and learnt where Sophy lived, and could be met. Because Nelly would not let me I felt a want for her and made baudy requests. She got randy, and told Sophy to go ahead. Then I got her up against a large tree, and straddling my legs wide to get into her, found it difficult as she was short, but was poking her with vigor when we heard footsteps and voices. "Oh!" said she, "let me go, it's so and so." Although I held her on my peg, grasping her bum, and hoping to spend before they came up, I being empty was long about it, so she uncunted me, and slipped away just in time. It was two or three men she knew, who seeing girls ahead ran after them, I dodging round the tree as they ran past. They over-took the girls, I followed at a distance sufficiently near to hear their low chaff, their attempts to kiss the girls, and the yells of the sluts when they attempted more.

When I saw Pender again I heard that her husband had for some reason gone to ------ on the Sunday she was there with me. He stayed, and took his wife home. "Did he do you?" said I. She colored up. "It be a fact he did,--it be most curious. I were hot with running, and fetched the meat from the bake-house. After dinner he said, 'Well you do look comely, you do today, where 'as you been?', and he pulled me on his knees, and put his hands up my clothes,--and in all my life he never had done such a thing afore in daytime. Says he, 'Lass we'll have a game at mother and father.' Said I, 'Why P., you must have been drinking,' He pulls me down on to sister's bed which were in the corner of the room, and I would not let him. He says, 'Don't make a row, for I means it', and so I let him do it"

Such games went on until full Autumn, I was always after one or the other as fancy led, or opportunity offered; but was obliged to be more and more cunning, for fear I should be found out. Although I had heavy fucking at times, yet had good rests between. It was a jolly time, but mainly with three of the four women now. Nelly got the most of my cock at first, Sophy very soon after.

The little one in the family way had taken my fancy. I fucked her in the lane and fields, but mainly upright, the grass being now damp. One evening we went to the baudy house. I had pleasure in fucking her, but she was always crying. "Why do you meet me?" said I. "To get money to help me if they turn me out." "When?" "When they find I am in the family way." At last but with difficulty, I got out of her much about her seducer and give the narrative as near as I can in its order.

"Yes it is a big man, a fine, tall man, and quite a man, not old, not young.--Oh! I dare not say who, it would be worse for me (a cry),--you won't tell Nelly,--how came you to know my sister?--do you do anything to her?--now do tell me." "Well tell me your history, and perhaps I will tell you about Nelly."

"Well he got into bed with me saying, 'It's cold,--and it were,--let's lay here, it will be no harm, no one will know.' I said I would hollow, but there was no one in the house--Now I am letting out, and I won't." She stopped, and would not tell more.

Persuasion, kisses, promises, and she answered my questions again. "He cuddled me, he was big and strong, and I could not help it; and then he pulled up my shimmy, and his shirt was up, and he put his belly close to mine." "Then his prick was up against your belly?" "I shan't say," said she with a modest fit, no sham. "Was it?--was it just as my prick now is?" Her story was exciting me, I pulled her belly up to mine, and my prick, a right good stiff one was between us. "I suppose it were," said she, "I don't recollect, all seems in a muddle, he hurt me dreadful, I screamed, he put something over my mouth, and I don't know no more; but he was doing it right up, and I were hollowing,--and then I cried."

"Are you sure you cried out?" "I hollowed I know, but I knowed there was no one to hear." "Then you were in the house alone?" "Yes." "What house?" "I shan't say,--Nelly is always asking, and I won't say,--you won't tell her, will you now sir, what I have told you?"

"I don't recollect more," she went on, "but he lay on me, oh! a long, long time." "Not up you?" "Yes oh! a long time." "Did he keep on fucking?" "He kept on a doing it and stopping,--no he never pulled it out, at last I fainted or slept I suppose, for when I recollect more he was out of bed. Then he got into bed, and he did the same I can't say how many times. When it were day I said, 'Ain't you going to work?' and he said, 'No. If any one comes they will think I am gone, and if you say a word if anyone knocks I will murder you.' Then he got up, and showed me his razor, and said, 'Do you see that?--I bloody well mean it, mind.' Then he got into bed again, and he did it again."

"Did you like it?" "I don't know, I was all pain, but I think I must at last; I was so muddled like and ill I could not move. Then he dressed and says, says he, 'If ever you tell I'll cut your bloody throat; now you say you were ill, and stopped at home from work', and he went away to his work." I guessed she had been raped.

Another day I had Nelly, and questioned her. She said she wanted to know, but did not; she guessed, but dared not say. Sophy had said there would be murder if she told who the father was, but she guessed. She was only eleven months older than Sophy, who must have been in the family way just before she was fourteen, had had her courses when thirteen years old, and was "hankering after the chaps" quite early. "Mother used to slap her for it." Nelly's courses had only recently come on, she said.

Sophy although younger and slighter built, had more hair on her cunt than Nelly, and gave me the idea of being older. Neither were tall, both were larger in their thighs, haunches, and bubbies, than town girls of the same age, as far as I can recollect.

I can't recollect the order, but only the broader features of this part of my amorous history. I think that after the Sunday when I had Pender and Sophy I could not get to Pender, for the farm-yard from morning to night was full of laborers; so busied myself with Sophy, who two or three times the same week met me at ------ and what I have narrated was told me there. It delighted me to hear about her virgin offering, it made my cock stand. Then I would fuck the little wench, and make her arse wag like the tail of a duck that had a thwack with a stone, then would question her again. If she said she should say no more, I used to remind her of what she had let out on the previous night. What delighted my sensuous imagination, was the evident fact that the man was big, and with a big prick, and must have kept it up with her without uncunting till he had fucked her three times. Her praying him to go, trying to get from under him his grasping her to him so that she could not move, his laying quiet on her, then commencing his shoves,--all proved it. He seems to have began his assault on her about nine o'clock one night, and never went out of the bed till two o'clock the next afternoon.

"Has he ever done it since?" "Never, he has never had a chance; he has tried to catch me coming home, but I always come with some one else; he has asked me, but I never would." "I dare say you egged him on; had he never made a baudy sign? Never shown you his prick?" "Both Nelly and I had seen that," said she, "we looked through the key-hole if we heard--." Here she stopped short, and nothing would make her go on, she saw she was on the point of giving the key to the riddle.

I advised her to get as much money as she could, and then if unkind she might snap her fingers at them. She had kept all I had given her. I had a feast with her of rump-steak and onions one night; she eat till she could eat no longer. I toppled her up with hot spirits and water, and then tumbled on to the bed with her. She was very communicative, I frigged her about till with a sigh she said, "Oh! let's do it."

"Tell me who did it to you then, and I'll give you another sovereign to keep you through your confinement; feel my prick, and tell me." She reflected, she was so lewd, I knelt on the bed, my prick standing stiff in front of her face. "You won't ever tell anybody" said she, "will you?" I swore I would not.

Rubbing her eyes she hesitated, then said, "Tom." "Who is Tom?" "Hester's husband." "Who is Hester?" "My sister,--oh! don't tell, or he will murder me." I saw the whole story at once. In another minute we were fucking. Afterwards she told me all.

There were three sisters, Hester married Tom, a laborer; Sophy lived with them, Nelly lived with their mother. Tom and Hester had a two-roomed cottage, in one they slept, in the other, which was sitting-room and kitchen, was a bed in the corner, where slept Sophy. The mother was dangerously ill, Hester went to assist Nelly attending her; so Sophy was alone in the house with big Tom, who took the opportunity to put his big prick into Sophy's little cunt, get her in the family way, threaten to murder her if she ever told, to turn Hester into the streets, and do any other amount of deviltry. Sophy was frightened of Tom and at first of her sisters knowing about her swelling belly, till it was found out. All was quite probable. I believed it implicitly. The size of Tom's prick, and the number of times he had done her were all described with modesty. I pitied the girl, and resolved to help her. Tom bore I found a bad character, and Hester no better, had been confined soon after she was married. The child was dead. All three sisters now lived with Tom since the mother's death.

"You knew all about fucking long before he did it to you." "Of course we did. Nelly and I often talked about it, Hester told us what pleasure it was; we could hear Tom and Hester doing it. Nelly if sleeping with me used to listen. They used to hang a cloth before the door,--there were cracks in it,--if they did not, we could see through if there were light, and sometimes they forgot. Nelly and I have both seen Tom's cock that way. Once he showed it to me as it were by accident; he was in the privy, and he called out to me to bring him a leaf. When I took it him his cock was out and stiff; he grinned, I looked, he took the leaf, and ran a hole in it with his finger, and put his cock through the hole, then he said, 'If you tell Hester that, she will turn you out.' So I never told, but I told Nelly. He did the same to Nelly one day, but we held our tongues."

That is all I have to say about Sophy here. I had her from time to time until within three months of her confinement, for simple curiosity. I had no pleasure in it when her belly got big, but I kept her in money.

Nelly I also had. She came a saucy, lewd, low-tongued little bitch; but I liked her fuck. I found her larking with men, and stroked her more than once in the lanes. One night I caught her by surprise, and saw some male going off in the dark as I thought. "That was a fellow with you," said I. "No it was not." But her cunt had a most unusual wetness. I hesitated, and said that some one I thought had just wetted her. She was confused, denied it, and whimpered at my suspicion. I again felt her, and putting my fingers and thumb together was sure it was spunk, and turned away; but felt so randy, that I turned back after her, wiped her cunt with my handkerchief, made her piss, and then fucked her up against a fence.

As I relinquished my hold of her bum I heard something fall with a chink. "Oh!" said she, "I have lost some money." It was very dark, I picked up the money, could not see what it was, but was sure from the feel it was gold, and said so. She had got it back before I made the remark, and would not let me feel it again. "You told me you hid the money I gave you." "I've been carrying it about for fear of its being found." I told her she was lying.

I had been out that day with my gun. On returning found Fred had come down from town, and been there all day; he had had a quarrel with Laura. I don't know how it struck me, but I asked, and found he had only just come in and said to myself, "He has fucked Nelly, it was his money she dropped, it was his sperm." I did not tell him so then.

The farm-yard now was never empty, they were thrashing in the barn. Molly was scarcely visible, and if in the yard her mother was at her back. When I did see her I winked at her and she laughed. She was growing wonderfully, and my desires turned to her. I had Pender one night or so; but a few hurried words, a smooth of the buttocks, a hurried grope with the finger, a silent kiss or two, shove, shove, shove like a steam-engine, and a pull out of my prick almost before the spunk was well out, was all I could get.

I was out shooting most days, and would walk across the farm-yard just to see if the coast was clear. After several Sundays had passed I got Pender again at the baudy house. P. took her being in the family way rather grumpily, and she hated him since she had been with child. She loved me, begged me to take her away, where, how, she cared not, so long as she knew that I alone could have her; she would live alone if I only came to see her once a month, she said.

I was sorry for this. What had been pastime to me was going to be misery to her. I had to show her the impossibility of my keeping her; then she said she would drown herself. Altogether it was not a very comfortable meeting apart from the fucking, which was as good as usual I dare say, though I don't recollect much about it.

Fred went backwards and forwards to London, I did occasionally, but not on his days, for he was in my way. I did not tell him now much about my little games, and got most of my women when he was absent. My mother and sister also went home, and I was glad of that, but it made it more needful for me to walk and drive out with aunt and cousins. I was constantly scheming and dodging how to get one or the other of the women, and that seemed to give zest to the affair; but I think now that the pleasure I gave the girls when I had them had much to do with it. Sophy and Nelly now came after me, as much as I went after them. Each now knew that I fucked the other. "When did you do it to my sister?" was a frequent question put by both of them to me.





CHAPTER XI.


     Out shooting.--A female carter.--A feel in the train.--
     Molly in London.--Giles in town.--Fred on the scene.--Molly
     at the Hall.--Copulation in uniform.--A sham illness.--An
     afternoon with Molly.--She turns harlot.--Gets clapped.--Her
     baby.

 I was in wonderful condition. Early to bed, out-of-door exercise, good plain living, everything to make me so. I felt as if I could fuck all day. If one day I had neither of the women, the next day my prick stood from morning till I got to sleep at night. When standing quietly in the woods waiting for the driving of the game, I used if alone to pull out my prick and look at it, and thinking of cunt forgot to fire at the rabbits. Once I recollect shooting at a rabbit with my prick out of my trousers.

Among the laborers I had seen was a strapping woman with big legs, withered face, and parchment skin, middle-aged, yet not actually bad-looking. The old foreman had said to me, "She ha been the biggest whore in the parish, I bet that there beant a man but what have had she when she were young. The first chap as had she, were the banker; she say it herself. I be sworn she likes a bit yet when she can get it." She was as strong as a horse, if no one were handy, she would groom a horse, was often driving a farm-cart, and had the reputation of having whored since she was fifteen years of age.

Waiting with my gun by a ride one day, my prick throbbing in my trousers; I pulled it out, and felt it, laid down my gun, and in the trembling state of erection I was in had determined to frig myself; when I heard the wheels of a cart which soon came in sight. I saw it was driven by this woman who sat on a shaft with her legs dangling, and showing her big calves. Lust made me indifferent to consequences, had it been my grandmother I think I should have done the same. There was a cunt between those legs, that was enough. I forgot her age, position, the risk I ran of beaters coming, and everything else; I only thought of how to ease myself.

I nodded, "Good morning mother, come and help us a bit," and out stood my cock in front of her. She laughed, and jumped off the cart which stopped. "Come here." "No," said she standing still and grinning. I winked and turned to the left out of the ride, she did the same. Without preliminary, almost without a word, I laid her on some grass drier than the rest, and had as good a pleasure out of her as I ever had in my life, or thought so. She went off with her cunt full, I tipped her. In a few minutes I was banging at the rabbits again. I don't think I was three minutes about it, and never had her again nor spoke to her, though I occasionally saw her and winked.

"I hait heard much of your gun squire," said one of the game-keepers, "there ought to have been lots o' rabbits pass you in this beat." I said I had scarcely seen any,--how could I?

Rainy weather set in, Nelly and Sophy were available but al-fresco, copulation impossible, and the long tramp or ride to ------ to the baudy house not to my taste. I had now no excuse for going to the farm, and no Pender. So one morning I set off for London. Just as the train started Molly and her mother appeared; she put the girl into a third-class carriage. At the first station the train stopped at I got into the carriage with Molly, who opened her eyes wide when she saw me. We were soon in conversation. Molly was going to an aunt's in London who was to meet her at the Terminus. You may guess which way my talk ran. I kept whispering lewd things in her ear. An elderly stern-faced woman got in at a station, fixed her eyes on us, especially on me, and at length said, "Do you know that young woman?" Her coolness nearly settled me, but I said I did, kept on talking, and was delighted when about two or three stations further on she left with the remark to Molly, "Take care of yourself my gal, and don't have anything to say to strange men or women."

There are tunnels on that line. There were no lights then in third-class carriages. In one tunnel I kissed her, and on my kiss being returned, got my fingers on her cunt, and kept them there till approaching light made me withdraw them. It was a cold foggy day. I sat close to her wrapped in a travelling-cloak, and partially covered her with it and with my rug. I got her hand under my cloak and with the pretense of warming it, gradually introduced my prick into her hand, and there I kept it a quarter of an hour, she looking in such a fright all round at the people every now and then, but enjoying the warmth of the feel. Just before entering London is another tunnel, I had another grope at her warm quim, and arranged my clothes.

I got her London address, and entered a cab, determined to follow her, and see if she was deceiving me. She waited, no one appeared to meet her, one or two men spoke to her, and as she told me later asked her to go and have drink. Then I got out. "No one is here," said I. "Come and have some wine, you can say you waited ever so long should they come,--there is some error about meeting you."

How could she refuse? Already had her fingers been playing round my cock, mine still smelt of her cunt. Telling the cab to wait, and putting her bag inside it, in three minutes I had her in a baudy house close by the Terminus (I dare say it's there now), and Molly's little cunt was again moistened by me. If her mother had known the risks, she never would have allowed her the journey to London.

When our heat was cooled by two hours dallying, kissing and fucking, she got uneasy about being found out. We put our heads together for an excuse. The address was Paddington, she was to say she waited an hour at the station, then made a mistake, and went to Islington, and not finding the street there came to Paddington. The excuse turned out good, Paddington and Islington looked much alike on the scrawl.

I have often wondered at the rapid success I had with country women at that time. With women whom I saw daily, and with whom I had much opportunity, such as mother's servants, I was a long time getting my aim; but at that period of my life I was often diffident; even with gay women, a slight thing would at times make me cease speaking to them. But here I no sooner attacked than the females fell to me. I attribute it to the suddenness and impetuosity with which I made at times my advances, and the boldness with which I proceeded to baudy extremities. When I was once lanced, I was so strong, so lewd, that I am sure I communicated my lewdness to them by some subtle magnetism, even before I spoke. Then I was a London swell, a relative of the lady of the Manor, there was the pride which women of the humble class have, in being singled out for notice by a London gent, all these told. But my baudy, rapid assaults, lustful cunning and an innate power of stirring up voluptuous sensations in women when once I spoke, got me them more than anything else. When in the country, I was thinking of nothing else, and had nothing else to do but to hunt down cunts, and feed myself up for fucking them. When in London the game was different.

Molly's aunt was a greengrocer. Molly did not keep her promise to meet me, so I went to the place, saw her standing in the shop, and beckoned; she shook her head. I passed and repassed, on foot, then in a cab, till I thought the whole street would know me. At length she came out and said, "Aunt won't let me out alone, mother's told her not; I can only stay five minutes." She wanted a post-office,--could I find her one? I did close by. She slipped a letter into the box, and begging me not to come near the shop, went back. I asked her to write me, and arranged to send my letters to this post-office. I wrote twice, and got no reply. Angry I wrote that I must see her, and had something to tell her; then I got a scrawl in reply. She met me, and I took her to a house near her aunt's.

Molly did not like me. When I got her into the room, she refused to let me have her, and begged me to tell her what I had heard. I invented some nonsense; and she said that was not what I had to say, she was sure. I recollect sitting and talking with my prick out, and she looked at it sulkily; but she resisted me. I said, "How is Giles' head?" "What," said she, "who told you?" "Nobody knows but me," said I. (It was one of the most blackguardly things I did in my life, and am ashamed of it.) She shed tears, but no longer refused me. I gave her a sovereign saying, "That will be useful when you marry."

I made her meet me again, and then she told me she would go to service. She went after a good many situations I know. I fucked her whenever she went out. She was getting hot-arsed, and she liked the poking. One morning I passed the shop, and saw loitering about in the streets in a velveteen costume. Giles. She had written to him I was sure.

I dodged them in a cab, saw her come out, and as fast as they could they went to a low coffee-shop where there were beds. I daresay my money paid for their refreshments.

Going to the street one day, there to my astonishment I saw my cousin Fred walking about. I was in a cab, and he did not see me. I asked Molly the next time if she knew if Fred was in town. She said no, seemed astonished, and I believed her; but I was sure Fred was after her, and could not imagine how he had found out her address. Laura perhaps took the starch out of him, for I never saw him in the street again. Molly now got fond of money. One day I took her to a baudy house near the Haymarket, feasted her, and fucked her till I was empty, and she full. Then I went back to the country to see my aunt, and soon again I got Pender. Said she among other gossip, "That gal Molly Brown will give her mother trouble, she has been after a situation in London, and her aunt says has been seen going into a house with a man, Giles has left the village, her mother believes he is after her, so she has sent for her back." Sure enough in two or three days there was Molly, looking as fresh as a daisy, and as modest as a whore at a christening.

The mother told no one anything except Pender, and Pender told me. Molly then went to the Hall assisting whilst a servant was ill, and then I saw her every hour or so. Then Fred came back, and I saw he was making up to her, and told him of it. He acknowledged it, remarking it was a pity such a nice young girl should not taste the sugar-stick. "Perhaps she has," said I. He thought not, there was a country lout she wanted to marry, and the mother looked after her closely. "I would give a ten-pound note to have her," he said to me one day.

Shortly Molly appeared ill and pining; her face lost its bloom, I could not understand it. The bad weather keeping people at home had given me no chance of having her; if I saw her alone it was only for a minute, but I used to pull my prick out and show it to her. I have done it in the corridor, my aunt walking in front of me. I tried to get her to come out, but she would not, besides Fred always appeared on the scene. My delight was to get in the way when I knew there was the best chance of his seeing her alone. So we baulked each other.

There was some military inspection not far from us, Fred was going in his uniform, with my aunt, cousins and self, and all but two servants were allowed to go. The carriage was at the door when I was taken short, and being in my bed-room ran to the W.C. As I came out, I saw Fred at the end of the corridor near the stairs, walking quickly but quietly, and heard his footsteps descending to the Hall. "What's up?" thought I. He has been dressed a long time, why on the first-floor now? He passed his bed-room without going in. A suspicion crossed my mind, and being close to it, I put my ear to the nursemaid's door (the one with two doors in which I had had the skinny nursemaid), heard a rustling, and quickly opening the lobby-door connecting with the servants' stairs, I saw Molly looking hot, flushed, adjusting her collar and hair, and going downstairs rapidly, she didn't see me. Instinct told me she had been fucked by Fred.

I rushed downstairs, Fred and all were in the carriage, aunt angry at waiting so long for me. I told her my ailment, said I would ride after them directly I felt better, so off they drove. The butler and Molly were in the Hall, they and the cook the only people in the house. I sent off the butler to the village to get me some medicine, and said to Molly in a stern way before him, as if I had never seen her, "Are you doing the housemaid's work young woman?" "Yes sir." "Arrange my room as quickly as you can, for I am not well, and shall lay down there." "Yes sir," said she looking so hard at me. "Do the room at once," said the old butler. Off she went. I saw him go off on his errand, and ran upstairs to my bed-room. There was Molly. I bolted the door, and pulled out my prick. Never had Molly resisted me more, she struggled, fought. What would happen if some one came? She would be ruined. "No one can come my darling, all are out but cook, and if she misses you she will think you have run down to your mothers." But she struggled on, begged, implored, she would meet me; she would do anything if I would desist then, she was poorly and could not. It was useless. I had been against my will chaste for some days. The fascination of the prick overcame her, she yielded, I threw her at length on the bed, mounted, fucked, and in half-a-dozen thrusts the job was done.

I recollect keeping her under me, and with my dawning senses what I had seen a quarter of an hour before came through my mind. Prick up her, and leaning on one elbow, I looked at her long; the possibility of my prick then laying in Fred's spunk mixed with my own, instead of horrifying me as it would have done, had I thought about the matter before in a cool state of mind, sent a delightful titillation through me. I grasped her firmly, drove my prick home again, and said looking her in the face, "Fred has just fucked you."

"Oh!" said she with such a start that she uncunted me, "oh I what a wicked story,--let me go." But I was flat on her, she writhed, said I was insulting her; but my prick drove on, it hit, and went up. "I am sure he has,--shove, shove,--I saw him--shove--leave the room--shove--and you came out the other door,--shove, shove, shove,--lay quiet,--shove, shove, shove." "Oh! let me go." "I shan't,--shove,--wriggle,--shove,--oh! my love,--ah!--ah.--a! oh--o!--ah!" Our wet lips met, and the final wriggle settled our movements, sighs and conversation. She was quiet enough now, tranquillized by her pleasure.

"Oh! if some one comes." "I will say you are not here, and no one can enter. Fred has just fucked you."

"It's a lie," said she rolling off the bed, and going off quickly with her cunt full.

The butler came back with the medicine, I threw it down the closet, and went down to the dining-room. In an hour or so, I rang for some tea (how was I to get him out of the way again?). I went to my bedroom, rang; up came Molly. "Let us do it again." "I won't, you have insulted me." "Bring me a great can of hot water." Then I rang for all sorts of odd things, making believe I had a bad attack of colic, showing her my prick each time, till she let me do it at the edge of the bed. Her cunt had been well washed. We were quiet, afraid of being overheard, a woman knows how to avoid being compromised when she has once intrigued,--but the poor girl was in an agony of fear.

"I've been into the nursemaid's room," said I, "and there is the mark of some one having been on the bed-edge." "Well it's not me." She stuck out that she had been in the room alone. "Why there at all?" She had only passed through the room to piddle.

In the afternoon I called the butler, and sent him to the village again, to get me another mixture. In the dining-room I rang, and Molly answered. "I am going to ring in my room again," said I, "you come." No she would not. I went up and rang.

The cook answered my bell. What a baulk! but I was equal to it,--the cook had no business to come up, it was Molly's place. "Do you think that Mrs. Brown or Pender, or some one on the farm has got anything good for diarrhoea?" "I'll go and see," said she good-naturedly. I knew she must be gone ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour.

I followed her downstairs, soon rushed into the kitchen, bolted the kitchen-garden entrance, laid hold of Molly, whose horror was extreme at the idea of being caught, and I fucked her in the butler's pantry, where he slept. With my cock dripping as I pulled it out, I ran up to my room. She had just had time to unbolt the door before the cook appeared, and she brought me some medicine from Mrs. Pender, which of course went down the closet.

I went to my bed-room, revelling in the intrigue of the day, and wondering how often Fred had had her, and whether that day was the first time. Whenever my cock grew stiff I rang for Molly, and showed it to her. She grew demoralized at the constant sight of the cock, but there was no time for a fuck; I promised her a new bonnet to get me another opportunity. In a couple of hours she came, I had a voluptuous caprice, turned her belly on the bed, her rump towards me, for a fuck from behind. She objected, "What are you going to do? You can't do anything like that." "Yes my love, easily." "I don't like my clothes up like that." Two or three times I had to turn her round before she was quiet, and then we consummated. Molly was astonished. She had never been tailed in that attitude before I am sure.

It was about eleven o'clock when Fred and the others had set forth; they returned to a late dinner. I had fucked Molly five or six times. Then I went to bed, my aunt and cousins came up to me, and were so kind. So was Fred, who told me all about the inspection, and never suspected my game in the least, nor any one else. The last words I said to Molly that day were, "Fred has fucked you." Again she swore that he never had. To keep up the deception and excuse my staying at home, I had eaten scarcely anything all day, and felt I recollect awfully hungry when a bed.

The empty pleasure of occasionally showing my doodle to Molly was all I could get afterwards. Nelly or Sophy--I forget which--I got to the baudy house at------; whichever of the two it was, came half wet through with muddy boots and under-linen which so upset me that I did not poke. The servant who had been ill came back to the Hall, and Molly left. I had Pender (whose belly was then showing its intentions awfully) up against the gate opposite her cottage one wet night (but "cock and cunt will come together"). Said she in the slight interval between our meeting, fucking, and parting, "If that gal Molly is not in the family way,--her mother's found it out,--oh! such a row." That accounted for Molly looking depressed.

Soon Molly went again to London, and I did the same day, but not in the third-class carriage. We spoke at the station. "For God's sake go," said she, "aunt's coming." "I'll write to the post-office," said I, and did. Then she met me, she got a situation directly, but I tempted the girl. "Tell your aunt you are wanted a week earlier than you are, and come and stop with me." The devil was with me, Molly got into a cab with her box, and was set down at a station; there I got her into another, and we drove to a small hotel where I had taken a room. She only stayed with me five days; I took her to theatres and other places, but not out in the day; fed her up, and fucked her and myself out. The sheets were always slobbered with spunk and once or twice I made the woman change them. Molly had become lecherous, and no doubt reckless, and I had the delight of teaching her baudiness (which is the main pleasure a virgin gives you over a gay women), but she did not care about me. She was often crying, but a little friction on her clitoris usually cured that. On the last day I asked her if she was in the family way? She admitted it, and went to her situation. "I think it's you who have done it," said she to me. I told her it must be Giles.

She stopped a fortnight in her situation, then went no one knew where. Pender told me when I went back. I was sorry, went to town hoping to find her, and wrote to the post-office. By some chance--perhaps to get a letter from Giles--she went there. A week afterwards my landlady said a young woman had called on me. "A lady?" said I. "Not at all, an overdressed young woman." It was Molly, who called again. I went to her poor lodgings, she fenced my questions, said she meant to go back to her mother's. Pressing her as to how she lived, she said she had the money I had given her. "But your bonnet, your clothes,--what do you do of a night?" She could not evade it, Molly had turned whore. I never knew who had put her up to getting her living by her cunt; but a fellow-servant had left with her, and had got the next room to hers.

A woman who takes to whoring takes to lying. I could not learn exactly how long she had stayed at her situation, or much about her movements. I stayed with her the night, she let me pull up her clothes, and open her thighs with a freedom she never had done before; from which I inferred she had had more than one prick in her split since I had been up her last; she was voluptuous, and her cunt was unusually juicy.

I went back to my aunt's sorry, for I seemed to have been largely the cause of Molly going astray, and did not know then that a gay life is as happy as that of the wife of a farm-laborer. Restless I went again to London, saw Molly who looked fearfully wretched, would neither let me fuck, nor feel her, and then broke out in an agony of tears, saying she was ill, something was the matter with her. "With your cunt?" "Yes," said she, "do look." Poor Molly opened her plump thighs, stretched open her cunt, and gave me every facility. Her quim was in a high state of inflammation, and it had a discharge. A medical student who saw her said she had the clap, and gave her medicine. "Oh! do look again, tell me if I am very bad,--shall I be worse?--oh! I am so sorry I did not keep at my situation," said she.

Once in my life since, another girl made me a similar confession, and those are the only two who confessed to an illness at the time they had the illness on them.

I told her she could be cured, but horrified her with the description of the disease to which she might be subject, took her to a doctor, paid her lodgings, counselled her to go home, to hold her tongue, and refuse to tell any one anything, excepting that she had left her situation. She promised, but was frightened of her mother.

She said she had never been into the streets since I had left her. I had a fear of the clap, and did not intend any commerce with her; but lust overcame me, and we fucked all that night to the damage of the sheets again. I wrote an anonymous letter to her mother, telling where the girl could be found. She came up to town and took her back. Molly's cunt proved to be all right.

A woman is such a fool that she must tell some one everything. Mrs. Brown told Pender about the anonymous letter, and Mrs. P. told me; but I don't think any of them knew the girl had been on the streets. Molly's belly soon afterwards showed, Mrs. Brown thought better of Giles, he married her and they went to live a few miles off. She had a child, and every one thought it was Giles' begetting. I suppose he knew nothing of the girl's pranks, for luckily a cunt cannot speak. Then Mrs. Brown left aunt, and Pender and his wife came to live in the farm-yard.

When it became known that Molly Brown was delivered of a child, my aunt remarked (Fred told me) that she was not married a bit too soon. "I had that little devil two or three times," said Fred, "and on the first day I was in uniform. Do you recollect Walter, the day you were ill?" And he told me how it came about; but I never told him that I had had her; I never spoke of having had a woman, if I thought I should injure her, whatever my desire or vanity might have been.





CHAPTER XII.


     Nelly and Sophy.--Nelly at the Argyle.--In town with Fred.--
     On the sofa with Mabel.--The effect of black stockings.--
     Interference.--In bed.--Mabel's bad habits.--A ladies'
     school.--The bathroom.--My cousins naked.--Maria the
     curate's wife.--Cunt inspection.--Servants washing.--Flat
     fucking.

 I may as well finish about Nelly and Sophy, although the occurrences I now narrate happened some time afterwards. Nelly got in the family way, told me I was the father, and told Fred he was, for he had had her. We both cheeked her, and said that half a dozen might claim the honor. She and Sophy left the village. Sophy I never heard of or saw again, that I recollect. Two or three years afterwards, I was at the Argyle Rooms. A woman looked at me, smiled, and pointed me out to another woman, then came up smiling and said, "Don't you know me?" It was Nelly, who had become harlot by profession. I was then a poor man, but slept with her at Brompton. She had heard I had ruined myself. I had her afterwards once or twice, but soon gave her up. Harlotry was successful with her, and I could not pay her price. Though she was a swell woman, she did not want me to pay at all, but I was proud. She always declared that I had had the first of her, but could not say I was the father of the child. Mrs. Pender now had a chance. At night there was often no one in the farm-yard but her, she could therefore go into the barn when she liked. Her husband finding the dark nights dull went frequently to the village Public; then I used to enter the big barn from the rick-yard, she having left the wicket open, and she had a good bombasting on the straw and hay. But I grew tired of her big belly, liked a bed and nakedness, and to see and feel in comfort the cunt I was to bestow my attention on. Fucking on straw was all very well with a new piece. I could generally not tell her face from her arse, excepting by feel, for of course we had no light in the barn; so I grew tired, and gave it up.

Then Fred and I went to town, he to see Laura, I to get promiscuous fucking, and other amusements. Laura who was one of the few women of her class whom I have found to be well educated, had a female friend stopping with her from her native place Plymouth. Her name was Mabel, a pretty modest-looking girl. Laura had given out that she had married Fred, and this girl had been entrusted to keep her company. I tell the tale as it was told me. I dined with them daily, and in fact all but lived there.

One night we went to the theatre, and back to Fred's, had a jolly supper, and got as merry as sandboys. It was a cold foggy night, I said I would not go home as it was about three A.M., and would sleep on the sofa. Our conversation had been pretty warm. Fred remarked that I had better sleep with Mabel. Laura was surprised at Fred. Mabel laughed, and baudy insinuations passed without baudy words. Fred said he should go to bed, and off he went. Laura expected Mabel to go to bed, but she put it off laughing and joking. Laura got angry, Fred came out in his night-gown swearing if Laura did not come, he would go out, and get a woman; and off Laura went. Fred wanted a fuck before he went to sleep.

Mabel and I sat talking, both heated and randy. It got colder, she got sleepy, I would not let her go, so she laid on the sofa. I drew a chair to her side, and both drinking whiskey and water time rolled on. "Oh! I wish I were Fred," said I. "Why?" "Because he is between Laura's thighs, belly to belly, how warm, how delicious this cold night." "Oh! for shame!" "Nonsense my dear, quite natural and proper, we are made to keep each other warm, and give each other pleasure." "When we're married," said she. "Married,--pough!--then millions would never taste the pleasure." My words grew warmer, I kissed, and was kissed, edged myself on to the sofa, little by little felt my way from her ankles to her thighs, and behold me smothering her with kisses, with my hand on her cunt, her hand on my prick.

A modest woman will let you take liberties much more readily if you kiss her whilst taking them. Sit at the foot of a girl on a sofa, and try to force your hand up her clothes, she may resist you; sit close by her side, bend over her, kiss her, and at the same time your hand may find its way to her cunt, almost without hindrance.

So was it now. Mabel was scarcely modest. I recollect the conviction coming over me that she was no virgin, and if I had doubts before, the way my finger slipped from her clitoris up the love-pit and plugged it, confirmed them. She lay with her eyes fixed on me, palpitating gently with voluptuousness. Her petticoats up to her knees, I saw legs in black stockings, one in wrinkles, the other half-way bagging down the calf, and her feet in shabby slippers.

I had at that time a horror of black stockings, which affected me at times so much as to deprive me of all desire. Once with a gay woman who had black stockings I was unable to poke her, spite of her blandishment, till she put white ones on. As I now saw Mabel's legs a disgust came over me, desire left me, and my prick began to shrink; I may have been tired, or had had my sperm drawn too much the night previously; that is likely enough, I don't recollect; but know I got nervous, a fear lest she should doubt my manhood, a sense of shame overcame me. I tried to rally, but in vain, for once that nervousness on me, it vanquished me. I ceased to probe her quim with my finger, my prick shrunk out of her hand, and the titillation ceasing, Mabel turned away her eyes, repulsed my hands, and drew her clothes down, looking at me full. I sat speechless.

"Are you ill?" said she. "Yes," said I overjoyed with the suggestion, "a faintness came over me, and a giddyness,--I shall be better directly."

She believed it, gave me cold water, and we sat for a time. I looked at her beautifully white neck, thought how white her bum must be, tried to get the black stockings out of my head, but could not. It must have been past four o'clock in the morning when I asked her to lie down again, but she refused; the spell had been broken, the weakness gone, and she said she should go to bed.

"Is your bum as white as your neck?" said I. "Laura says I am the whitest fleshed women she ever saw, all the girls at school used to say so."

In my mind's eye I saw the white bum and thighs, my lust came back at a rush. "Let me see it," I said, and I laid hold of her. The flood-gates of my baudiness were loosened, and as she afterwards told me, I let fly a torrent of voluptuous words, enough to have excited the passions of all the women in London. I had forgotten the stockings. She kept refusing, denying and evading me. "Hish! hish! Laura will hear you." Laura did, and came in her night-gown. "I came to see if you had gone to bed," said she. "You need not have troubled yourself," said Mabel. "As long as you're here I shall look after you; when you're at home you can do as you like." "I'm quite old enough to take care of myself." They quarrelled. Mabel resented her interference. Fred roared out from his bed-room, "What the devil are you going in there for?" and Laura not replying, came in in his night-shirt. After an altercation Fred and Laura went back to bed.

Then Mabel said she should go to bed, must go up for five minutes, but would be down again. "To piddle eh?" Taking off my boots I blew out one candle, took the other, followed her, and opened the door. She was on the piss-pot. I closed the door, and locked it. Five minutes afterwards I was on the bed fucking her with her legs in black stockings, and five minutes afterwards uncunting, the first words I said were, "I loathe black stockings."

"I can't bear them myself," said she, "but I am in mourning." People in mourning wore black stockings then.

She was anxious for me to go, so that Laura could say nothing positive, whatever she might think. I would directly I had her again. We got into the bed together, and I had her, and then again. That is all I recollect, and that after the fuck we both fell asleep, and were awakened by a knock at the door. It was late in the morning, and broad daylight, Laura was knocking. I opened the door. Laura looked at me, and then at Mabel, and said, "Well the sooner I send you back the better." There was a somewhat bitter row between them, short but sharp, in which Mabel gave as good as she got. Laura went away. Mabel turned round and wept; then we fucked, and went to sleep again.

This is the only point in my history with Mabel much worth noting, except that when I knew her from top to bottom, and found she got out of bed, and washed her cunt after my sperming it, I asked her, "Why did you not wash the first night?" "Because it's unlucky," said she, and I never got any more out of her; but she had known the sensation of a prick in her cunt before mine, that I found out the first night.

She was a well-arsed, well-made, plump girl about twenty-one years old, and had a wonderfully white skin. She had been fucked before, but I believed from all I learnt from her, Laura and Fred, that for two years a prick had not entered her. A man who had paid his addresses to her had deceived her, then cleared off, I expect after tailing her.

I did not profess to keep Mabel after this, but paid for the second-floor rooms (Fred had taken the upper part of the house, three bed- and one sitting-room), and my share of the living, and slept with her almost regularly for a short time, gave her money, dressed her, and did all a man does who keeps a woman; but I never cared much about her, and was not constant.

She like Laura was fairly educated. A few months afterwards she went back to her native town, and although she wrote to me, I never saw her again, and had some idea that Lord A.... kept her, why I shall tell further on. One reason of my being indifferent to her was that she never properly washed herself. Her beautiful white flesh never seemed to need it, but I did not like a woman who just smeared her face and neck, and never below. I told her of it, and she was offended.

About three weeks after I first had Mabel, Fred and I went to shoot with some friends at----shire; it was towards the end of November, all the leaves were well off the trees.

As said I had female cousins by several aunts, two of them about seventeen or eighteen years of age were at a finishing-school for young ladies. It was a large old-fashioned house kept by three ladies of whom one had been married a year, although then forty years old, to a curate about sixty-five years old. The sisters unmarried were between fifty and sixty years old, stern and stiff-rumped. Maris the married one, fat and forty, with jet-black hair and merry hazel eyes, had been disappointed in her youth, and when this clergyman, whom she had known all her life, proposed, she accepted I suppose for companionship, and because it gave her consideration in the neighbourhood.

The house was originally a very big old mansion, large enough for two schools, and had been roughly divided by walls and partitions into two houses. The smaller was inhabited by Maria and her husband, and the kitchen-garden was attached to it. All access to the pleasure-grounds of the other, or school-part of the house, was bricked up. In an establishment for young ladies, all of a fuckable age, and none without hair on their cunts, it would never have done to leave male access, not even to a curate sixty-five years old. The gardeners were elderly men, they came round by the house to go to the kitchen-garden, which supplied both houses. Mrs. Maria used to go round to the school daily.

The air of the neighbourhood was fine, and although not professing to lodge people, if any of the female relatives of the young ladies at the school desired it, they could go and stop for a week or two at the curate's, of course paying for so doing.

Fred and I had invitations to shooting not far off, just as my aunt went to stay a week at Mrs. Maria's and to see her girl. Our friends could accommodate Fred only, and sooner than be separated, and for other reasons, we wrote to the old curate to know if he could receive us two men,--and my aunt as well,--which he did. We took up our quarters there. I had unpacked, and went into Fred's room. "Here is a jolly cupboard," said he opening the door of one big enough for four people to stand in. "If a woman were sleeping here, she would always be thinking some one was hidden in it; it's a jolly place for boxes and clothes." He was hanging up something, when he stopped and listened. "Damned if there are not women laughing," said he, "hish!" But he heard nothing more.

Two or three minutes afterwards he said, "Here Walter," and both listening heard the voices of women, but very indistinctly. Fred lighted a candle. Said he, "Here is an old door screwed up, it leads into a room. What a lark to get it, open, or a hole through it; nothing I so like as to hear what women say, when they think no one hears them."

I suggested it was unfair, it might be his sisters' room. "It don't matter," said he, "it's all in the family." He went to dinner, and then back to his room. He at once got to the closet, undid his gun-case, and taking out the gun-screw, tried to loosen the screws of the door, but could not. Off he went to the village, came back with a screwdriver, and with some labor opened the door. Then we found ourselves in another empty place nearly as big, and at the end of it rough boards nailed across a frame horizontally, and as we supposed covered over on the other side. It evidently had been a passage, and when they separated the house, they had screwed up the door into the room of which we did not yet know the use, leaving the door at the end next Fred's room as it was, and had fixed up some woodwork across the end of the passage, thus making the large closet at one end, and the empty space at the other. We were dusty with our job.

After breakfast next day, aunt, Fred and I went round to see his sister and cousin. We saw their bedrooms accompanied by them and aunt. We were in fact shown over the house. Fred had previously looked well at the outside, to see how the windows ran. "What is that room which is shut off?" "Oh!" said his sister, "that is a bath-room; look, such a nice one." We entered it; it was the room up to which the passage at the back of the closet led. Fred winked at me, and when we got back he roared. "Oh! lord, we shall see them naked,--the boards have twisted, there are cracks next the bath-room,--we'll run a knife between one, and through the canvas and paper; then we will see through,--oho! ho! we shall see the girls bathing,--there are two or three damned fine girls."

Had it been servants, I should have been delighted at a peep; but to rip a hole to spy on young ladies, and one of those his sister, revolted me. "Damn it Fred, it's not the thing, one is your own sister." "Pough! you have seen their cunts." (It was not the two I had seen.) "Ah! those were children." "Well ------ and ------ are only larger, and have hair on their cunts, and you need not look." "But if we are found out, we are disgraced; if it were at an hotel or elsewhere, I would not mind." "It won't be found out." "They will see the crack in the paper." "They won't, they will think it split by the boards warping, if they do; besides there are cracks and some shelves up, I know exactly the place."

Nothing stopped him, and after boring, prodding, and getting a chair to stand on to find the right place, he at length made some cracks a few inches long with a knife, and we saw day light through the bath, towels, clothes-pegs, and a large cane settee or sofa. I would not look at first, but so weak is man's nature concerning a woman, that at length I did, and a thrill of pleasure shot through me as I thought of seeing the naked girls, and strange enough I recollect a feeling of curiosity about the figures my two cousin's would cut if they were naked. I thought of the quims of his sisters some years before, and wondered what difference between these and those.

Carefully locking the closet we went out. When we returned Fred peeped at every opportunity, but saw nothing that day. The next morning Fred awakened me. "Get up, they are going to bathe, a servant is filling the baths." It was a cold dark morning. "I shan't." "Don't," and off he went. In a minute or two however I was by his side. We saw two young ladies enter, strip, and take their baths; the candle-light was imperfect, but we saw them rub their bodies dry, and scrub the wet off their cunts; we saw their hair above and below, and all their little secrets. They were, we afterwards knew, sisters.

"I shall burst," said Fred, "how do you feel Walter?" I was maddened by desire like him at the sight of the fresh, modest, naked girls cleaning themselves so unsuspectingly; all this in whispers.

Another girl or two came in, they hurried through the operation as if they did not like it. "Here is Carry," said Fred. I peeped and in came my two cousins. "Lord what a lot of hair she has got on her cunt," said my shameless cousin. "It's a damned ungentlemanly thing Fred." "Well don't look then," said he. But I did,--I could not help it; my sense of honor was strong, my lust stronger, and I saw both naked. "Holloa! here is Mrs. Maria,"--it was. She stripped. A fine round, plump, middle-aged woman with a mess of black hair between her thighs, that would have sufficed to stuff a sofa-squab. Fred was smitten. "I'll be damned," said he, "if I would not sooner have her than all the others." I could not get his eyes away to let me have a full look, so much was he taken with her. Indeed when she put one leg on the chair, and rubbed the towel well round her cunt and arse, showing two big, well-set globes, and round arms and thighs, the black hair in her arm-pits, the black hair below, she looked in the feeble light not more than thirty years old, and as fine an arm-full as a man could desire. "What a pity she has never been fucked," said Fred, "I'll swear old ------ can't do it to her,--he can only frig her."

Only four or five ladies took a morning bath; we saw the same on two or three mornings. We were shooting all day. Fred then went to shoot with a friend some miles off, I stopped with my aunt at the Rev.------'s house till his return, and walked out with them. Fred went away on a Saturday afternoon, I went to my bed-room, thought I would have a peep into the next house, and went to Fred's room (he had left me the closet key), and saw the bath-room quite bright with a large fire. I asked for a fire to be lighted in Fred's room which was bigger than mine, observing that it was so much better to write in than mine; then making a great display, I sat down to write letters, locked the bed-room door, and stationed myself at the crack in the closet.

Oh! what an evening! It soon became evident that the whole household would wash that night. The young ladies came in mostly one at a time, sometimes in pairs, the mistress came in from time to time. The ladies came in, in loose gowns, a chemise and slippers, all but undressed. Everything was quite decorous, the mistress mostly present. Each girl would deposit her gown and chemise on a chair, turning her rump to the other, and get into the bath. When they left it, they stepped out, and came straight to the spot where I could best see them, their cunts towards me, and began to dry themselves. Servants came in and emptied the baths. Some used only a foot-bath. All was done so quietly and demurely that I could scarcely hear a word they said; no girl was supposed I think to see either the bum or belly of the other.

Once when the mistress left, a pair of girls were together, and threw off reserve. One time they got into the bath together, and smacked each other's bums. The younger girls had come in first in the evening, the elder ones later. The mistress did not come in with the elder ones. This pair talked about my cousin and me. They stood in front of the fire; one tripped across the room, and bolted the door, then each one in succession put a leg on the chair, and they looked at each other's cunts. Able to bear it no longer, I frigged myself, and may as well say at once that having begun so, I went on. From half-past eight till about ten o'clock did bathing go on. I looking, and frigging myself as often as my cock stood. I saw in succession nearly all the ladies, and four female servants.

Most of the girls who took cold baths in the morning did not come in at night, my cousins excepted. Every one had hair on her cunt. I knew and recollected some for years afterwards, and when I saw them walking out, or in the ground from our bed-room window, and when my cousins came in to dine with us at the Reverend's house, bringing two of the other young ladies with them; I recollected the look of their bums and bubbies, the quantity and colour of the hair on their cunts as well as if it had been my own prick. I could not converse, my eyes went from one to the other of the girls as their charms rose up in my mind, my prick throbbing. Aunt noticed my silence, and joking me asked if I was falling in love.

It was difficult to hear the conversation; what I did was for the most part chaste, and about trifles, the only exception was the two girls who looked at each other's quims, and stood near me, half facing the fire. It ran something like this: "I wonder if men look at each other's things." "I dare say they do." "Boys do, Miss Y.... said she saw two of her brothers rubbing each other's things hard." "Law!" "Yes." "Is it not funny that the man's things should be put right up ours?" "Lor yes." "It seems nasty." "I wish you could ask ------ to let us see that book again." "I have, and she has not got it now." "It was fun." "Yes,"--and they both laughed. "Make haste, they will wonder why we are so long." "Ring the bell." "Yes." "Open the bolt." "Hish! here is some one.".

The servants came in two by two, the mistress came in with the first pair, and told them to put the fire out, When she had gone, "The old skinflint," said one servant, and put coals on after saying 'yes' to her mistress. To me it was always more exciting to see a woman in stockings and boots, than quite naked. The young ladies had come in undressed from their rooms; the servants came dressed, bringing candles with them. They were full-grown women, I felt more pleasure in seeing them gradually undress and uncover. One, a middle-aged woman, said aloud, "I shall only wash my feet, it's so cold." She took water out of the big bath, put it into a hip-bath, pulled off her shoes and stockings, tucked her petticoats up to her thighs, and washed her feet by the fire. She was a big-limbed woman, I could not see her cunt. I had seen a dozen that night, yet because I could not see this one's cunt I seemed to long for it. The other had stripped, and got into the bath, and I could see her naked. She was ugly and middle-aged. I would sooner have fucked any one of the young women than her, and yet I recollect feeling the most furious baudiness about her, and frigged looking at her.

Then in came two strong-looking women, but much younger, "Stir the fire,--don't make a noise, or there will be a row about coals," said one. "They are all a bed," said the other. Both stripped to their chemises, one went to the bath. "I shan't wash after cook," said she, and she let off the water. "The water won't be warm, they have drawn off so much." "Then I won't wash." she replied. Then one woman stood by the fire with her back to it, and lifted up her chemise to warm her arse. I saw it sideways as she stood, boots and stockings on.

The other came to the fire. "It will take five minutes to run clean out," said she. Both drew chairs in front of the fire, sat down and raised their chemises, one edged closer to the other, inclined her head to the other's thighs, and kissed it, then looked, and placed her hand on the cunt. I could not see the cunt, her back hid it, for she had turned her back to me; then the other one's hand crossed and the two women sat feeling each other. I don't think they said a word, if so I could not hear it; their heads were from me. They sat for three or four minutes, kissing and feeling each other.

"Is the door locked?" said one quite aloud, and getting up went to the door, and tried it. Then one laid her clothes on the big settee, and laid down on her back, the other threw up her chemise, kissed, and perhaps licked her cunt. I only know her head covered the cunt, and then she mounted her. I thought it must be fun, for although I had once seen a woman on the top of another, and had heard of such things, I was incredulous. Now I saw them together like man and woman, sometimes between each other's thighs, sometimes with legs interlaced, and hands grasping each other's buttocks, the thighs of one raised up round the other's limbs, the mouths meeting, the backsides wriggling and twisting without ceasing. If they laid so one minute, they remained in each other's embraces nearly half-an-hour, sometimes quiet, then wriggling again. I heard not a sound, don't recollect hearing kisses, or anything; but it was difficult to hear, unless they talked loud.

The light went out, there was a glimmer from the hot fire. Said one getting off, "Is there no other candle?" "No." "You must get down to the kitchen for one, we can't go up without light." Off went one, slipping her gown on first. The other gently stirred the fire, sat down, put her hand on her cunt, and frigged it. I can't say if she had pleasure, but her head fell back, and one side her face was then towards me. I saw it all by the flame of the fire, which she had poked. The other came back with two bits of candle, and they went away, having put on their gowns, carrying their other clothes with them, neither having bathed. Then I went off to my own bed-room, frigged out. The loudness with which the servants talked, compared with the young ladies, was very noticeable, though when on the top of each other on the settee at the end of the room, I could not hear a word.





CHAPTER XIII.


     Fred on flat-fucking.--In town with Laura.--Back at the
     school.--Pictures for young ladies.--Fred's ankle.--Mrs.
     Maria's weakness.--To London alone.--Laura and Mabel.--Three
     in a bed.--A risky poke.--Groping for the pot.--Nearly
     caught.--Fred joins us.

 When I awakened on Sunday, I thought I had been dreaming, the images of a dozen and more modest naked women passed through my brain. I could think of nothing else, waited at the gate to see the young ladies go off to church, and followed at a distance, walking with Mrs. Maria. I tried to guess from the backs of the ladies which was which, every now and then looked at Mrs. Maria, thinking of the hirsute charms of her cunt and arm-pits. At church in an old-fashioned square pew, I could see many of the young ladies' faces, and looked at them during the whole service, thought at times that I mistook one for the other;--but no, although each had a bonnet on, and was in full dress, I recognized each face, recollected, bum, bubby, and motte of each. My well-frigged cock stood from Psalms to Sermon. I went to church in the afternoon, because a few pious girls liked two services. My cousins, and two other young ladies dined at the Reverend's, it always was an early dinner, to let him get to church. In the evening I again went to church, because the servants went; and sat close to the two women who had played at flat-fucking. The astonishment of my aunt at my going to church three times was so great, that although I told her I went because I did not know what to do with myself, she wrote to my mother about it.

On Sunday night Fred returned. You may guess we saw on the Monday the morning bathings. I told him all excepting that his sister had come to bathe. "Did ------ and ------ come?" (naming her and cousin). "No." He was satisfied. I told him about the two servants. Why I lied about my cousins I cannot think, but was half ashamed of looking at all, and it seemed more sinful to have seen my cousins than any one else.

Afterwards Fred told me that in India he kept three young girls all together in a bungalow; had bought them from their parents as virgins at about twenty shillings each. He was conversant with female life there, and explained how the women satisfied their leches with each other in harems, if they could not get men. His girls, he said, did it, and did it before him. I was amazed and wondered, and half thought him lying. All my knowledge of women extended to their relations with men, and although I had seen twice women on the top of each other, and seen one gamahuche another, I still regarded them as baudy tricks got up for my amusement; and had never realized the idea of women having leches for each other, as men have for frigging each other. The latter had indeed passed away from my mind as a boyish habit, no desire to feel a prick then entered my mind, I even disliked touching a man. So I heard what Fred told me, but remained incredulous, and was approaching middle-age before I realized the fact that frigging another fellow's doodle was agreeable, and that some women find similar pleasures with their own sex. The flat-cocking of the two if they were at it, which I now don't doubt, left no agreeable or voluptuous impression on me.

After breakfast having no shooting, Fred and I went to town to see our women. Five minutes after our arrival, both were being fucked. We found sitting with Mabel and Laura, the mistress of Lord A------, and will call her Lady A.... After we had pumped our sperm out, we all went into the sitting-room, Lady A.... was there still. Fred asked me what I had been doing, I asked him the same, there was a general warm talk without coarse language. Lady A.... told the girls they were lucky, for she had not seen Lord A.... for a month, and had not had anything done to her for that length of time.

Fred then went out, and returned in an hour. Taking me a side he showed me baudy engravings, which he meant to throw into the garden of the school, where the young ladies walked daily after breakfast if fine. I objected that his sister and cousin might find them. He did not care. "It will make them all so damned randy, that they won't know whether their arses are at their backs or fronts." This was all through my telling him what I had heard the two girls in the bathroom say to each other; and he actually that night got over the wall, into the pleasure-grounds, and laid the prints in a long building, half shed half summer-house. From his bed-room window we could see over the wall which separated the Reverend's garden from the school-garden. I suggested sending them to a young lady by post. "No, she would keep them to herself." I must mention that each lady had a separate bedroom; they were not allowed to go to each other's bed-room, they met only at meals, or in the class-room, or drawing-room, or when out of doors. No,--the prints had better be seen by several, they would tell each other, and thus all see them. The idea of the girls seeing baudy pictures tickled us immensely. I had then wondered why the school-mistresses made it a rule that no lady should go into another's bed-room, and once asked my female cousin. She said she did not know.

Directly after breakfast we saw the ladies in the garden, pulled down our blind, and peeped. "There is Carry," said Fred laughing as his sister showed among them. We saw a group approach the spot, the next instant all their heads were close together, looking at something. Every now and then one would stealthily look up towards the house, then another would, as if they feared being seen. On being joined by two or three others, they all moved out of sight into the shed, and we saw no more.

Fred was delighted, he did nothing but suggest how such and such a one felt at that moment. "I dare say their cunts are as hot as fire, their thighs squeeze, their arses wriggle as they walk; they will all frig themselves to-night."

Fred soon afterwards said he must go to town by the next train. I would go too. "I must go to so and so," said he, "so can't be with you much." I resolved to stay. Going into the house I saw Mrs. Maria dressed, she was going to town. "I will walk with you," said Fred, "to the station, we shall go up together." Mrs. Maria went to London to make purchases, and do all the business for the school. Neither came back till the latest train; I was sitting smoking with the Reverend when his wife returned, she looked worn out. Soon afterwards in came Fred, who looked as if he had been out all night. Said he to Mrs. Maria in a surprised manner, "Have you only just returned?" "Yes," said she in an innocent way. "We have both come by the same train then without knowing it," he replied.

I don't know what thoughts led to it, but the conviction came over me that he had seen Maria's thighs closer than he did through the cracks in the bath-room partition. I noticed his manner next morning, saw him look at her, and she at him at breakfast, and said to myself, "He has fucked her."

Next day we had shooting. At night Fred went to town. Next day Mrs. Maria went, and came home late, Fred not returning till the following morning. Mrs. Maria looked so tired that her husband noticed it. "She has had her belly-full again," I said to myself. As she took her bath next morning (Fred not with me), she rubbed herself dry, put on her chemise, and felt her cunt; it was a prolonged feel. I told Fred of that. His remarks were evidently intended to mislead me.

We wanted to see the Saturday night bathing, though my aunt wanted to return home; but as we had shooting on Saturday, she consented to remain over Sunday. My cousins again dined with us at the Reverend's, and two of my cousins' special friends. What pleasure I had in looking at them, knowing the looks of their backs and bellies as well as their faces, wondering what they thought of the baudy pictures, at the way in which women continue to look so modest, talk softly, look in a man's face, and keep a demure demeanor, even if lust be stinging their cunts. It is the training in hypocrisy, which is so large a part of female education.

On Friday Fred sprained his leg, on the Saturday it was too stiff to go out shooting. I did, and returned to dinner. Mrs. Maria had attended to him, her husband was at church nearly all Saturday, so perhaps she had rubbed a little higher than his ankle. My aunt spent all the time she could at the school, or walking out with her daughter and niece.

Fred's sprain was an excuse for going to his bedroom whither I accompanied him. In the dusty closet Fred's lameness was better. In came the young ladies, the younger ones first. It was a pretty sight, a decently voluptuous one, to see the dainty white-fleshed creatures throw off their dresses, and stand naked, one by one entering the bath, rub their flesh dry, and their cunt-wigs free from moisture; to see one with her bum towards you, rubbing her back vigorously with a towel pulled straight with both hands, whilst her bum-cheeks, loins, and thighs quivered with the motion and friction. Another put one leg on a chair whilst she rubbed her quim dry. Then came the servants. Again I recollect having my lust more stirred at seeing the fuller grown women strip, and stand with boots and stockings on; than at seeing the virgin ladies naked. I can't account for this at all. I write exactly what I recollect.

When we saw Fred's sister, he whispered that all his family had a good deal of hair on their privates. I saw his prick soon afterwards. He spoke as if he were intimately acquainted with the cunts and pricks of the whole family. The two young ladies who looked at each other's privates did not do so again, the flat-fuckers took no pleasure in each other's arms, they soaped each other's backs, and helped to dry each other; both rubbed themselves in front of the fire,--a fine couple of women. "I want to piddle so," said one just as she finished bathing. "Piddle in the bath," said the other, "there is no one else going into it." And she did so standing up, then jumped rapidly out, and they both laughed.

I have seen before and since through key-holes and peep-holes women and men wash, but it was with difficulty. Here all was fairly clear. The crevice admitted enough sight, to distinguish form, face, feature, and colour of hair and eyes. I thought of it for years, but never told a man. Oftentimes when fucking, the bathing spectacle came into my mind, and fetched my sperm out of me in a moment.

The next morning we jabbed a few more holes between other boards, so as to make it look as if the shrinking of the wood had cracked the paper in more than one place, carefully closed the door and dipped the heads of the screws in vinegar to darken them. The whole looked rusty, and as we hoped when we had done no one would ever guess the game we had been up to. We swept up dust from the carpet, and pushed it under the bottom of the door, and I think our prank never was known. The old house is pulled down now.

I went to church again for the pleasure of staring at the ladies, it was rapture to look at them, and think of their virgin cunts, think they had seen the baudy prints. My cousin Fred had gone out somewhere, Mrs. Maria, who usually went to church with her husband, was ill. In the middle of the service a thought came into my head. Feeling sure that Fred was after the middle-aged plump lady, I left the church, and went back, knocked at the door twice before it was opened, and then by Mrs. Maria. Said she, "I let both servants go out." She told me this without my asking her anything, her hair seemed a little rough, her manner excited. I sat down, told her I had felt faint, and had a cholic in church, and so had come home. "Fred has been unwell too," said she. "Indeed?--I thought he was out." "He returned, and has been in bed this hour." "Oh!" said I. It was clear to me why her hair was rough. Fred was abed, but awake. Had Mrs. Maria been fucked on that bed?

My aunt and I left the next day, and went to the Manor-House; Fred to my astonishment could not get out of bed, so bad was his sprain; so we left him there. At the Hall I got so lewd that I went up to London, and rushed to Laura's lodgings the next night.

"Both abed sir," said the servant who let me in. Finding no one in Mabel's room, I went down to the first floor. The women were in bed together. Laura opened the door to me, and got into bed again in the dark; for company sake they slept together when we men were both away, she said.

Lewd with prolonged chastity, the two servants in the bath-room ran in my mind as I sat chatting in the dark room. After having slipped my hand under the clothing on to Mabel's cunt, "Have you been amusing each other?--which was man, which woman?" were questions put and answered with real or assumed ignorance, but with some giggling. Laura as I have said never allowed a baudy word, so I ceased; and Laura I suppose savage at Mabel having all the groping to herself, said, "You go first, and warm the bed, and Mabel will come up to you." "No, you go and warm it for me Mabel." "I won't." "Then I won't." Mabel seemed to me thick in speech, muddled in manner, and half asleep.

I fetched my candle. The women looked so fresh and handsome. "I'll sleep with you both," said I beginning to undress.

A slight altercation,--what would Fred say?--the servants think?--no she would not permit it,--she knew the games we should be up to. Mabel said, "No,--no, it wouldn't do." The more they said no, the quicker I undressed, and with prick lifting up my shirt, forced myself into bed, by the side of Mabel. Laura jumped out the other side, her white legs showing half-way up her thighs as she did so.

She stood by the bed-side wrangling, and looking at me as randy as possible, spite of herself. I should not stay,--she would not go to bed. "Well my dear Laura, go up to our bed." "I shant." Tired of standing in the cold she said, "Well will you promise to keep quiet?" "Perfectly." "Come on," said Mabel, "Fred won't know." So putting out the light into bed got Laura. Perhaps she thought she would like on the quiet to hear the amatory talk of Mabel and myself,--hear if she could not see or feel our tricks,--who knows?

"Turn your back to Mabel,--go to sleep Laura,--now you won't see or hear." "You know your promise,--don't you let him Mabel." "How can I help it?" said Mabel in a muddled manner. "You are a couple of dirty beasts," said Laura turning her rump towards us. We heeded not, for we were fucking. Laura spoke not another word, she lay as if asleep. Then I fell fast asleep on the edge of the bed cuddling Mabel. It was close packing.

I awakened cold on one side, hot on the other next Mabel, who lay snoring profoundly. The regular breathing of Laura told me she was asleep. My prick was stiff, and as I thought of the two women by the side of me, it got ungovernable.

"How I should like a put into Laura," I thought, but had a high sense of honor, and checked the desire. "What, Fred's woman?--for shame Walter.--Well (reflecting) he took my two women in the country.--Yes," replied my conscience, "but nothing made them yours,--not completely at least, one had had another man, but Laura is his woman, his temporary wife, he is fond of her, he keeps her." But my prick kept throbbing with desire to be up her.

I thought of Fred's description of the thick hair on her cunt, of the quickness with which she pissed, of all he had foolishly told me of her perfections, until my brain whirled. "There can't be any harm in just feeling her flesh,--no one will know." I could only guess where she was in the darkness; but carefully stretching my hand over Mabel quite slowly, it touched a bunch of night-gown, and then warm flesh. She was lying on her back, Mabel had her rump towards her. I raised myself gently up to feel further, touched the hips, the thighs, then the smooth belly, further on, and my hand laid in the thick hair of her cunt.

Up to that time I had my reason, could reflect, pause, control myself; the woman of any friend of mine was safe from attack from me, but I had had a fancy that there had been once or twice in Laura's look and manner towards me, a slight gleam of desire; yet the idea of having her never had entered my head, I should have chased it instantly. But from the moment my hand lighted on the crisp thicket, reason left me, voluptuous desire overwhelmed me: I forgot Fred, almost forgot Mabel.

Slowly, inch by inch, I moved myself half up and my arm over Mabel as she lay, fearing it would wake her, and slid my finger down between Laura's cunt-lips, and gently frigged, listening to Mabel's snoring, and Laura's breathing. At length I must have produced a voluptuous sensation, she got restless, and opened her thighs, moved, clasped my hand, and in a peevish sleepy tone said, "Don't Mabel,--what are you doing?"

"It's I"; I whispered frigging on. "Oh!" said she pushing my hand away. "Oh! if you wake Mabel." She kept repulsing my hand saying "don't," I replacing it. My hand frigging her clitoris.

She turned her backside towards Mabel, I then fumbled between her bum-cheeks; but she was too far off. Slowly I got out of bed, and feeling my way round the foot in the dark, I got to Laura's side. She heard me. I put my mouth to her ear, "Let me dear," and thrusting my hand under the clothes felt her cunt from motte to bum-hole. "Oh! no, if Mabel--" Mabel's snoring reassured me. Little by little I uncovered her, lifting off the clothes, got on to her, up her, and without a word, without a whisper, without resistance or denial we fucked gently, pausing at intervals to listen, hiding our emotions and pleasures as we spent, Laura's flanks and my hand close to Mabel's rump, my leg almost touching Mabel's leg, she still snoring like a pig.

"Go," said Laura, her mouth to my ear, and un-cunting me. Quietly, without reply, I got off, and back again crept stealthily to Mabel's side, and at the very moment that I was lifting the bed-clothes Mabel awoke, and said directly, "what are you getting up for?--where are you going?"

I was for a moment at my wits' end. "Where is the pot?" said I. "Under the bed," said Mabel. "Laura!" Laura did not answer, and breathed heavily. I pissed, and got into bed. It was a close fit. Mabel took hold of my prick. "It's wet," said she drowsily. Down went my hand, the hairs were wet and sticky. Mabel was too sleepy to notice what the wet was, yet I feared. "Turn on your back dear," said I. She did. I got on her, and put my prick in though not stiff. "Don't,--I'm tired,--wait till morning,--get off, Laura will hear." "Here is a lark," thought I, and got off her, turning my bum towards Mabel's belly, as the best way to economize room, and I was soon asleep again. She snored off instantly.

Excitement wakened me early. The house was quiet, it was quite dark, we all three talked. Laura laid sulking, I reminded her of Fred's remark at Vauxhall about her pissing quickly; that only made her sulkier. At length upstairs I went with Mabel to our bed-room, to prevent the servants knowing anything. When we came down to breakfast, Laura and I looked at each other hard. When I got a chance of speaking to her privately, she would not hear the deed alluded to; reminded me that Fred was my cousin, and a good fellow. After that I never spoke to her on the subject for weeks, I felt ashamed of myself; but for all that my cock would often tingle, and raise its head when I looked at her. One day there she being alone, we fell talking about that night. I had never known her so warm; we wondered Mabel had not heard. "And the hair of my prick was wet with our spending Laura." "No it was yours." "No yours." "Let's try again." She rushed out of the room.

The night after poking Laura I took them to the play, at supper Mabel drinking rather freely, Laura said that she had better not take as much as she had the last night. Then I found she had lushed rather freely, which accounted for her sleeping so soundly. She had a strong liking for liquors of all sorts.

A day or two afterwards Fred arrived, looking as if his prick had never left a cunt for a month. I asked him how Mrs. Maria was, he laughed, and repeated that he should not mind having her; but said no more. Soon after we went back to the country, to spend Christmas at my aunt's. My mother, Tom, and one of my sisters also came. They were much in my way.

For brevity I compress the events of the next few months; it is a pity, but it would print to three the length otherwise. Briefly I was obliged to get back once or twice to my aunt's to see Pender privately, though I did not want to have her. I was mostly in London. One or two funny whoring incidents I must leave out altogether, and for the same reason: brevity.





CHAPTER XIV.

 My cousin at home.--Pender's belly.--A lawyer's letter.--Action for crim-con threatened.--Suspicions.--A compensation.--The Penders leave.--Wholesale whorings.--A frolic at Lord A...'s.--After dinner.--Newspaper readings.--A strange rape.--Bets on pricks.--Pricks felt.--Fred on his head.--Beds on the floor.--Free fucking.--End of the orgie.

My cousin came home from school, and when dancing or talking with her, I used to think of the look of her bum. One young lady from the school whose posteriors I also knew came to stay. Fred and I used to laugh about the adventure, and about his sister and cousin as much as about the others.

Mrs. Pender's belly was like a mountain, her husband I fancied scowled at me. Mrs. P. looked scared, and whisking past me in the farm-yard one day with a milk-pail, said in a low voice as she passed, "For God's sake keep away," and I did, feeling uneasy, In cold weather my aunt ceased to go to the farm-yard, our own shooting was over, and I had no reason for crossing the farm-yard; but at the end of a week my cock was so much in want of amusement, that I made up my mind to have a poke up Pender if I could, and way-laid her in the shrubbery-walk. She told me that on a particular day her man would go some distance to buy cattle, and she would try to meet me in the barn. Chance favored us, we fucked, and talked at intervals for two or three hours, she having a poke, then going out for a time, coming back again, and so on.

I heard that her husband suspected her and me, he was sure it was not his child. Some one had seen me and her together in the lane, he would not say who. Said Mrs. P., "I don't know what, but I am sure he is up to something bad to you or me, and I live in a fright; I can scarcely eat, drink, or sleep for thinking about what's to happen."

About a month after this, I received a letter from a lawyer in London saying he wished to see me. I went, and found that he was instructed to bring an action against me for seducing Mrs. Pender. I denied all, but it was of no use. I at once went to my solicitor, who after a time feared the case could be proved against me. The action would be brought for damages (there was no divorce possible then), and there would be the scandal, the annoyance to my aunt, and the horror of my mother. The only chance of getting a word with Mrs. P. was way-laying her in the laurel-walk. When I saw her she looked the picture of misery, her husband had refused to sleep in the same bed with her. At about five o'clock one evening, it being quite dark, she had given me a signal during the day, I went to the privy. There I fucked her, she said how utterly miserable she was, and asked me to take her away. Uprighters were never to my taste, and now her big belly made it far from pleasurable. I got worried, and at length after much legal annoyance, agreed to give five hundred pounds, on condition that I had a letter from Pender saying that he was very sorry for what he had done, that he was convinced he had made a mistake, and was then sure of his wife's fidelity, or something to that effect.

Before this was quite settled, Mr. Pender got leave of absence, and went away somewhere. My solicitor asked me whether I had any reason to suspect that Mrs. P. had told her husband. Immediately I became savagely suspicious, went to the cottage under pretense of asking for Pender himself, although I knew he was away, and insisted she should meet me at the town. I thought of nothing until we met, but how I should entrap her into a confession, and worked myself up into a belief that the couple were making a market of me.

She undressed, I caressed her, with hand on her cunt, looked at her and said, "Your husband means to make a fortune out of me." "What he,--ho, ho, ho," she cried, "the wretch,--oh! I shall be exposed,--ho, ho," and was as white as a sheet. When she got better, I told her all, she knew nothing about what her husband had done, and begged I would pay nothing,--she would drown herself.--and I left, convinced that the poor woman was true to me.

Pender gave notice to leave, and forfeiting wages left his place, and went to the North of England. Months afterwards I received a scrawl saying that the child was exactly like me, that P. was not unkind, but she was unhappy, would like to see me; and if I wished it she would run away, and be as good as a wife to me. There was no name or address to it, and I never heard of her afterwards.

I thought all settled, and that no one would know about it; but for all that it leaked out. Months afterwards being at my aunt's, I got into one of her servants, and after giving her a good fucking one night, and telling her after a fuck not to wash, she said, "I don't want you to get me in the family way like Mrs. Pender." She had heard that. How the devil did it leak out?

After Christmas Fred and I went to see our women, he wanted more than I did. I had some harlotting; not being at all faithful to Mabel, I had fits of great incontinence, and as many as three different women on the same day, at times.

Exceedingly nice women were then to be met in the Quadrant from eleven to one in the morning, and three till five in the afternoon. I would have one before luncheon, get another after luncheon, dine, and have a third woman. I would at other times go under the Opera colonade, where they used to assemble in the summer evenings with low dresses showing shoulders and breasts; to see them, even if I did not want a fuck. I had an insatiable desire to look at their nudity, would strip them, make them piss, feel them all over, leave, and in an hour perhaps have another. I had no leches for fancy postures. To see their thighs and cunts in free but graceful attitudes was sufficient pleasure. During this time the following occurred.

An intimate friend of Fred's was Lord A-----he lived with a lady who was called Lady A.... I don't think she had been gay, and in that respect resembled Laura and Mabel. The three women were much together. We often saw Lord A...., and all became friends. Lord A.... was not very true to his lady. He lived in B.t.n street, where he had at that time the whole of a handsomely furnished house, but only could half occupy it. His indoor servants were a middle-aged woman who cooked, a maid who was her niece, and his valet, who waited at table as well. A woman who did not sleep in the house came daily. He had grooms and a coachman, but not in the house. Lord A.... had quarrelled with his father. He had been in the Guards, and drank very freely.

He invited us one night to dinner, and gave a splendid one. By the time we had finished, we were all noisy. It was never our custom to use baudy language when in each other's company. Laura had a great aversion to it. Mabel liked me to talk baudy to her, but did not talk it herself. Fred always after dinner would let out a warm word or so, and was at once snubbed by Laura. For all that our conversation after dinner was generally warm with double entente.

On the night in question our conversation got to open voluptuousness. Fred and Lord A.... went in for it, Mabel laughed, Laura hished and hished, said she would leave, but at last gave way, as did Lady A....; then we men got to lewdness. Whenever any sensuous allusion was made, my eyes sought Laura's, hers seeking mine; we were both thinking of the quiet and quick fuck we had, with Mabel snoring by our side. We compared our thoughts on that night, but at a future day.

Just at that time a case filled the public journals. It was a charge of rape on a married woman, against a man lodging in the same house. She was the wife of a printer on the staff of a daily paper, who came home extremely late; she always went to be leaving her door unlocked, so that her husband might get in directly he came home. The lodger was a friend of her husband's, and knew the custom of leaving the door unlocked,--in fact he was a fellow-printer.

She awakened in the night with the man between her thighs, had opened them readily, thinking it was her husband. It appears to have been her habit, and such her husband's custom on returning home, or so she said. The lodger had actually all but finished his fuck, before she awakened sufficiently to find out that it was not the legitimate prick which was probing her. Then she alarmed the house, and gave the man in charge for committing a rape. The papers delicately hinted that the operation was complete before the woman discovered the mistake,--but of course it left much to the reader's imagination.

Fred read this aloud. I knew more, for the counsel of the prisoner was my intimate friend. He had told me that the prisoner had had her twice, that she had spent with him; that he had often said he meant to go in, and have her, that she had dared him to do it, and that she only made a row when she thought she heard her husband at the door on the landing, although it was two hours before his usual time of return. His prick was in her when she began her outcry.

With laughter and smutty allusions we discussed the case. "Absurd," said Laura, "she must have known it was not her husband." "Why?" "Why because--," and Laura stopped. "If you were asleep, and suddenly felt a man on you of about my size, and his prick up you, very likely you would not tell if it were mine or not," said Fred. Laura threw an apple at his head. Decency was banished from that moment, a spade was called a spade, and unveiled baudiness reigned.

"I should know if it were not you," said Lady A... looking at Lord A... "How?" "Ah! I should,--should you not know another woman from Laura, if you got into bed with two women in the dark?" said she to Fred. "I am not sure for the moment if with a woman just her size, and as much hair on her cunt," said he. "I tell you what Fred, I won't have it," said Laura ill-tempered, "talk about some one else, I won't have beastly talk about me." "I'll bet," said I, "that if the ladies were to feel our pricks in the dark, they would not tell whose they each had hold of." Roars of laughter followed. "I should like to try," said Mabel. "So would I," said another. "Would you know, if you felt us?" said one women. "If I felt all your cunts in the dark, I'll bet I should know Marie's," said Lord A.... "That is if you felt all round and about," said Fred, "but not if she opened her legs, and you only felt the notch." "I think I should."

"Why?--is she different from others?" Lord A----

was going to say something, when Marie told him to shut up.

So we went on, the men in lascivious language, the women in more disguised terms, discussing the probabilities of distinguishing cunts or pricks by a simple feel in the dark. Each remark caused roars of laughter, the women whispered to each other, and laughed at their own sayings. Lewdness had seized us all, the women's eyes were brilliant with voluptuous desire. More wine was drunk, "Call it by its proper name," said Lord A.... when Marie remarked that a woman must know her own man's thing. "Prick then." "I will bet five pounds that Mabel would not guess my prick in the dark, if she felt all of us," said I. "And I'll bet," said another. "Shall we try?" said Fred. "Yes," said Mabel more fuddled than the rest. Baudier and baudier, we talked, laughed, and drank, and at length set to work to make rules for trying, all talking at once.

One proposed one way, one another. "I can't tell unless I feel balls as well," said a woman. "Will they be stiff when we feel?" said another. "Mine will," said Fred, "it's stiff already." "So is mine," added I.

"How shall we know where to put our hands, if we are in the dark?" said Lady A.... "If a man is in front of you, you will find it fast enough," answered some one. Laura had now yielded to the baudy contagion, and made no objection, though Mabel and Lady A.... were the most forward. Then Lord A... rang the bell, and told his valet he might go out for the night, and his house-keeper and maid they might go to bed, which they did at the top of the house, as we supposed. The sequel proved that to be doubtful, and that they must have had a most edifying night.

After lewd squabbles, we arranged that each man was to give the woman if she guessed the prick right, ten pounds; the men were to be naked, the women to feel all the men's cocks, and give a card to him whose prick she thought she knew. The room was to be dark. No man was to speak, or give any indication by laughing, coughing, or any other way, under penalty of paying all the bets. The women were to lose if they spoke, or gave indications of who they were.

I took three cards, and wrote the name of a lady on each of them. Then each lady took her card, and they went upstairs to the bed-room pell-mell and laughing. The women were to stand of a row in a certain order against a side of the room, we to follow in an order they did not know. They were to feel all pricks twice, each giving her card to the man at the second feel, if she knew the prick. We undressed to our shirts, took off our rings, so as to leave no indications, and in that condition entered the room. The dining-room door we closed, there was no light on the first-floor lobby, nor in the bed-room, for we had put out the fire there. So holding each other by the shoulder, we entered, closed the door, and we were all in the room together in the dark.

We lifted our shirts, and closed on the women, each of whom in her turn felt our pricks. One felt mine as if she meant to pull it off. On the second feeling, we got somehow mixed, a slight tittering of women began, some one hished, and the tittering ceased. Two hands touched me at the same time, but one withdrew directly she touched the other's hand. A card was put into my hand, afterwards another card touched me, and was withdrawn. After waiting a minute I nudged the man next me. "Have you all given cards?" shouted out the man. "Yes," shouted the three women at once. Then we all burst out laughing, and the men went downstairs, leaving the women all talking at once like Bedlam broke loose.

Looking at our cards, we found that each women had guessed rightly her man's prick; but we changed our cards, and called out to the women who came rushing down like mad. "Not one of you has guessed right," said I, "you have all lost your bets." "I'll swear I'm right," said Lady A..., "it's Adolphus that I gave my card to." This set us all questioning at once. "What makes you so sure?" "She says it's very long and thin," said Mabel, "and so it is." "Hold your tongue," said Marie. "I felt it," said Mabel. "They all seemed the same to me," said Laura, "and one of you pushed my hand away." "It was I," said Fred, "you wanted to feel too much, you nearly frigged me," "Oh! what a lie." Then we told the truth, and that each women had won, which caused much noisy satisfaction, then we had more wine, we men still with naked legs.

I have told all I can recollect with exactitude, but there was lots more said and done. Fred pulled up Lord A...'s shirt, his cock was not stiff. "That's not as it was when I felt it," said Mabel. "You've guessed pricks, but for all that you would not know who fucked you in the dark." "We should," cried out all the women. "Let's try," said Lord A... "All right," said Mabel. "We are not prostitutes," said Laura. "A little free fucking will be jolly, let's take turns about all round," said Fred. Then the room resounded with our laughter, all spoke baudily at once, every second, "prick," "cunt," "fuck," was heard from both men and women,--it was a perfect Babel of lasciviousness.

"I'll bet ten pounds a women doesn't guess who fucks her," said Lord A... We echoed him. The women laughed, but led by Laura refused, and squabbled. All wanted the bet to come off, but did not like to admit it. We had more champagne, the men put on their trousers, we kissed all round, and talked over the way of deciding such a bet, the women got randier, one showed her leg to another, and at length all the women agreed to take part in the orgie.

The rest I shall tell as truthfully as I can. The drink and excitement I was under makes it difficult; but I will tell nothing I am not quite sure of. We arranged a plan with such noise and talking, that God knows how it was arranged at all. Where were we to poke?--in the bed-room? Impossible, there was but one large bed in Lady A... 's room, and one in the back-room.

How were we to fuck all together? We all rushed upstairs, took all the beds and pillows from both rooms, and from the upper rooms, and put them on the floor in the large room, making one long bed, after moving aside the furniture. The fire had been put out. All this was done with shouts and yells, a fearful lascivious riot.

The women were to lie down in an order known to us, Lady A... nearest to the door, and so on. There was to be absolute silence. Each man as he knelt between the woman's legs was to put a card with a number on it under her pillow. We men knew which number each had, the women were not to know which man was to have her, directly we had fucked we were to return, each woman was to produce her card, and guess who had been up her, they were to be in their chemises, we in our shirts. I never shall forget the looks of the women as they went upstairs to arrange themselves for the fucking, but think that they scarcely knew the rules of what they were to do.

The women undressed quickly enough, for we had scarcely had time to tie up our faces in napkins to prevent our whiskers being noticed (Lord A.... had none), before a voice shouted out, "We are ready." Then with shirts on only, up we men went. I only recollect kneeling down between Lady A... 's legs (we had agreed among ourselves how to change our women), giving a card, feeling a cunt, and putting my prick into it, then hearing the rustling of limbs, hard breathing, sighing, and moans of pleasure of the couples fucking fast and furiously; of my brain whirling, of a maddening sensuality delighting me as I clasped the buttocks of Lady A..., and fucked her.

We must have spent nearly all together, none when we compared after, recollected more than his own performance. All were quiet. I was feeling round my prick which was still in Lady A... 's cunt, when a light flashed powerfully through the room. That devil Fred had risen, and lighted several lucifers, which then was done by dipping them in a bottle,--they were expensive. What a sight was disclosed at a glance!

All three women lay with chemises up to their navels, Lady A... on her back, I on the top of her (rising rapidly at the light). Next to her Mabel seemingly asleep with thighs wide open. Fred kneeling between them, holding the lighted matches, Laura on her back with open thighs, eyes closed, Lord A... cuddling, but nearly off of her by her side, and his prick laying on her thigh. The women shrieked, and began pulling down their chemises. I swore at Fred, the women joined chorus. "Most ungentlemanly," said Laura getting up. That got up Lord A... Mabel lay still on her back as if ready to be stroked again. But all was said. In a minute the lucifers burnt out, and it was dark again. Scuffling up we men went downstairs, leaving the women chattering. Soon after down they came, looking screwed, lewd, and annoyed that the bets were off, and all chattering at once.

Mabel was quarrelsome. "You," said she turning to Lady A..., "said that your husband's thing was long and thin, you tried to mislead me in the bet, you wanted to make me lose." They had evidently been discussing their men's pricks.

"So you have been telling how each of us fucks," said Fred. Laura denied it. "We did," said Mabel. "It's a lie Mabel, if you say it again, I'll tell something more than you will like to hear about yourself." Mabel retorted, Lady A... chimed in. It was a Babel of quarrelsome lewd women, with their cunts full.

I feared a row, and that Mabel might after all know more about my having had Laura, the night we all three slept in the same bed, than I cared for; so I pacified them. Fred said we had better try again, Laura objected. "Oh! yes Mrs. Modest," said Mabel, "when you found it was not Fred, why didn't you cry out?" "I didn't know," said Laura. "Ah! ah! the printer's wife," we shouted, then more baudy talk, recriminations, and squabbling. Laura said she should go home, Fred said she might go by herself. Lord A... who had half fallen asleep, said it was too late, and we had better stop. Some one said we could soon again make the beds comfortable in the upper rooms. "That be damned," said Fred, "we will all sleep on the floor as they are now." "Free fucking for ever," said I. Laura said I was a blackguard, Mabel said she should like it, Lady A... said she didn't care, if Adolphus didn't, Adolphus said any cunt would suit him. He was reeling drunk as he spoke.

All this time we were in shirts and chemises. One woman had thrown a shawl over her, one a petticoat, but their breasts flashed out, their arms were naked, their legs showing to their knees, the men were naked to their knees in their shirts. The scene was exciting, the women hadn't washed their cunts, Fred said so. Mabel asked him if he was sure of it. No, he would feel. Laura told him he must be drunk, and was a beast. "Drunk?" said he, "look here." He turned a sommersault, and stood on his hands and head, his heels against the wall, his backside in the air, his prick and cods falling downwards over his belly, his shirt over his head. Lady A... took up a bunch of grapes, and dashed it on his ballocks. Then we chased the women round the room, tried to feel them, and they us. It was like hell broke loose, till we agreed to sleep on the floor together, any how.

No lights; lights and piss-pots were put in the back bed-room,--a woman suggested that. "You're frightened of farting," said some one. The women went up to make the beds more comfortable, whilst we men fetched candles from the kitchen, the others being well nigh burned out. The women had washed their cunts, we had more wine, and then we all were pretty well screwed, and Lord A... pretty drunk when we went up to them.

Up to that time I was sufficiently sober to know all I have written, and plenty more. Surely I could tell a lot more of our conversation, but it would prolong the tale too much. After the last bottle of champagne I was groggy, recollect less clearly, was in a half-sleepy, feverish, excited, and baudy state, my sleep was broken by others, but when awake my prick stood immediately, and I moved all night from one woman to another, fucking, and then dozing.

To satisfy Laura, and keep up a sort of appearance, we had said we would only have our own women, who were again to lay in a certain order. Directly they had left the room, we agreed to change. A... doggedly insisted in having Mabel, so I was to take Laura, and Fred Lady A... It was such a lark. My prick was up Laura, when she cried, "It's not you Fred." Then were simultaneous exclamations, "I'm not Mabel,"--"What a lovely cunt!"--"Leave me alone,"--"Feel my big prick," "Damn, a cunt's a cunt," hiccupped Lord A... "Oh!--ah!"--"Ha! my love fuck,--my darling, oh!"--kiss, kiss,--spending,--"Aha!"--sighs of delight, "cunt,"--"fuck,"--"oh!"--"ah! ah!" And I fell asleep on Laura amidst this.

Awake again. By my side a wet cunt, a heavy sleeper. Turning round, my legs met naked legs. I stretched out my hand, and felt a prick, perhaps Fred's, I don't know. Getting up I felt my way stumbling over legs to the wall to the furthest woman, and laid myself on her. "Don't Adolphus, I'm so sleepy," said she. The next instant we were fucking. Others awakened. "Where are you?" said some one. Then all moved, one man swore, a hand felt my balls from behind. I was spending, and rolled off the lady; turning my bum to her. Then I touched Mabel, and put my hand on her cunt. A man dropped on her, and touched my hand with his prick. Ejaculations burst out on all sides, the couples were meeting again, then all was quiet, and the fucking done. Then all talked. All modesty was gone, both men and women told their sensations and wants, "You fuck me,--Feel me.--No, I want so and so," Laura as lewd as the rest.

Again awaking. A hand was feeling my prick. "Is it you Laura?" "Yes." I felt her cunt. "Oh! let me go and piddle." But I turned on to her, and we fucked. "How wet your cunt is." "No wonder."

Again I awakened, some one got up, and fell down. "Hulloa! who is that?" "I want to piss, and can't get up," said Lord A... in a drunken voice. Some one opened the door, a feeble light came across from the back room, we helped him up and he stumbled along with us men to piss. Then he insisted on going downstairs. He could scarcely stand, so we helped him to the dining-room, we lighted more candles, he swilled more wine, tumbled on to the sofa, where we left him drunk and snoring, and found him snoring the next morning with the heath-rug over him. We two went back to the women. "I've fucked all three," said Fred. "So have I." "Laura's a damned fine fuck, ain't she?" Some one shut the room-door opposite, as we reached the landing. We pushed it open. Two ladies were pissing: Marie and Laura. "Where is Mabel?" "Drunk," replied one. The two were past caring for anything, pissed and went back with us to the bed-room. I took a light there. Mabel was on her back nearly naked, we covered her up, for it was cold. Then I fucked Laura, and Fred Lady A... The light we left now on the wash-hand stand, as we looked at each other fucking and enjoyed it, and then we changed women. There was no cunt-washing, we fucked in each other's sperm, no one cared, all liked it, all were screwed, baudy, reckless, Mabel snoring.

I awakened after a heavy sleep, chilly, feverish, headaching, and thirsty. I drew aside the curtains; it was late, light, but foggy; a nasty winter's morning. Fred and the three ladies lay snoring, some covered, others partially so, the floor looking as if every article of bed-furniture had been thrown down with a pitchfork. I drank water, and fucked out as I was, my lubricity was unsatiated. I could not resist gratifying it.

Moving stealthily I uncovered the sleepers one by one. It was easy enough, as the clothes lay loose and in shapeless heaps. I saw Fred's prick touching Mabel's haunch, contemplated Laura's thick-haired quim, saw spunk on her chemise. She looked lovely. Lady A... on her back, her hand over her cunt, red stains about her, and on the sheet which I pulled off of her,--her poorliness had come on. Mabel on her back looked ready for a man. My cock stiffened, I laid myself on Laura, and awakened her. That awakened Fred who mounted Mabel. Both couples took to the exercise in the foggy day-light, and a long time we were in consummating. "Oh! do leave off," said Laura, "I'm so sore." My prick was excoriated, it had not been so for many a day.

Never have I been in such an orgie before, never since, and perhaps never shall be; but it was one of the most delicious nights I ever spent. So said Fred, so said Mabel; and Laura admitted to me at a future day that she thought the same, and that since, when she frigged herself, she always thought of it, and nothing else.

I thought of nothing else for a long time. Nothing has ever yet fixed itself in my mind so vividly, so enduringly, except my doings with my first woman, Charlotte. At the beginning of my writing these memoirs, this was among the first described. The narrative as then written was double its present length, and I am sorry that I have abbreviated it, for the occurrences as I correct this proof seem to come on too quickly. Whereas we dined at seven o'clock, and it was one o'clock I guess before we all went to bed together, and the stages from simple voluptuousness to riotous baudiness and free-fucking were gradual. At eight o'clock not one of us would have dared to think of, still less to suggest, what we all did freely at midnight.





CHAPTER XV.


     Morning headaches.--An indignant housekeeper.--A saucy
     valet.--Consequences.--Fred leaves England.--Lady A...'s
     invitation.--Laura a widow.--Farewell Laura.--Adieu Mabel.--
     My guardian's remonstrances.--Parental advice.--Ruined.--
     Reflexions.--My relations.

 With headaches, heated, irritable, thirsty, worn out, we arose; the men quiet, the women quarrelsome. The women began to dress, some where they had slept, some in the other room. We went down to Lord A..., and awakened him. He went upstairs, and bawled out to the housekeeper (he had rang the bell violently several times without her appearing). "Make us some tea directly," said he. She answered, "I shant,--make it yourself." "I'll dismiss you if you don't." "I ain't going to make tea for prostitutes," said she, "and we are not going to keep in such a house." Fred said the wine was bad, or his head would not ache so. A... said Fred knew nothing about wine. Mabel who had heard what the housekeeper said, bawled out that she would go up, and tear her eyes out. The free-fucking tone was gone, each man seemed jealous, and spoke harshly to his woman. At a remark of Marie's, Lord A... told her to go to another room. No, she should not till Mabel was out of the house. Mabel not quite sober, told me I had better go home with Laura. Fred said Laura would go home with him. Laura was quiet, and tried to get Fred to leave with her, and told Mabel she would be better if she took less liquor. At length we separated. We four were going to the same house, but went in separate cabs, then to our own rooms, and had breakfast separately there,--a thing we never had done before. We always lived in Laura's apartments, and shared the expenses.

After breakfast Mabel and I went to bed, late in the day we awakened. I was refreshed, for then a long sleep restored me from any excess. Although I did not like Mabel's behaviour, and did not care about her having had the other men as I thought, yet it annoyed me; but it had the effect of giving me a strong lech for her for some time. I used to think as I fucked her, of my prick rubbing where Fred's and Lord A... 's had rubbed. It delighted me to say, "Should you know it was my prick if you had just awakened?"--"Did his hurt you, when he pushed like this?"--shove, shove,--"Tell me how Fred goes just before he spends." We used to fetch each other by talking over that night; but she did not recollect very clearly, and declared she was sure I had not had her, although I certainly had her once that night, and when the spunk of Lord A... and Fred's was in her. It used to horrify me when I thought of that, such was my masculine inconsistency then.

We all four dined together, but were a little reserved until wine was in us, then we laughed about the night; but Laura saying we had better forget it, we agreed not to talk about it again, nor did we with the women. Fred and I used often to do so, he never seemed so happy as when he was asking me, if Laura was not a damned fine fuck, but directly I said yes, he was silent.

The frolic brought about a great deal of mischief. Lord A...'s housekeeper and maid left that day, they would not stop. I dare say they had seen and heard enough to tell them the games we were up to, for we were not particular about shutting doors. Lord A... regretted the cook, because she was such a good one. She told the valet, and soon after he was insolent to Lady A..., so Lord A... kicked him out. He summoned A... before a magistrate for an assault, and A... was fool enough not to compromise it. The man told a lot. The owner of the house gave Lord A... notice to quit, he and Lady A... went to lodgings, and the publicity embroiled Lord A... still more with his family.

Neither was the friendship between us all quite the same. Laura and Mabel quarrelled. Lord A... would not let his mistress visit them unless he was with her, Laura would never leave Mabel in the room alone with Fred. Occasionally we still dined together, and went to the theatre. One night when we had had much wine, we joked about the night, and the women got quarrelling. Laura said the affair was disgraceful, and had it not been for Mabel, it never would have happened. Mabel bounced off to her own rooms. Soon after I took separate lodgings for Mabel. There she was always in tears, if I left her long, and if away a day or two, she wanted to know if I had been with Laura. Lady A... visited Mabel, and was frightened to let her Lord know it. Then Lord and Lady A... quarrelled, he had the clap, and gave it to his mistress. Fred and I were always excellent friends, and at some annoyance through the women, suggested we should go to Paris, and leave them alone in London.

Before going I met Lady A... walking out, who asked me in, in saying Lord A... would be glad to see me. As I had not quarrelled with him, I thought a chat might heal our coolness. When indoors, she called out to him, and professed to be surprised at his not being there. If I would wait, he would be in soon. We got nearer and nearer to each other on the sofa, began talking about the free-fucking night, of the good aim she had made with the bunch of grapes on Fred's balls, as he stood on his head. We got very lewd, I kissed her, she me. Would she know it was I who was up her, if I came in in the dark to her? She could not say, but should know it was not A..,--a beast. "Beast, why?--have you quarrelled?" Then she told me that A... was often drunk, and stayed away from her for days. "He has got a disease from a beastly gay woman, and hasn't slept with me for weeks." "And not had you?" "Of course not." "Oh! don't you want it?" "No wonder if I do." At once I put my hands up her petticoats, felt her nice plump thighs, my fingers rubbed on the smooth quim. "Oh! don't--I can't bear it." I pulled out a stiff prick, and put it into her hand, we toyed with each other's genitals for a minute, then she sunk back on the sofa, I on her, and we copulated.

I stayed the whole evening with her, fucking at intervals. A... did not come back. I am sure she knew he would not, and had asked me in because she wanted me to have her. She did not tell me she had had the clap, nor I her,--it was Mabel who had told me.

She hinted she should like to meet me again, and I made some half-sort of promise, but never did. Mabel became more and more expensive, discontented, lusty, and quarrelsome, and she was not clean. She would feel my wet prick after it had left her cunt, and then cut bread and butter without washing her hands. We had rows, and I left her, giving her a handsome sum of money. Laura said she had gone back to Plymouth with Lord A..., who had left Lady A... Then Fred, I and Laura were just as we used to be. He seemed to have forgotten everything, and I never presumed on having poked Laura. We went to Paris, leaving Laura in London with her sister, who came up to stay with her,--a nice girl.

Though short of money now, Fred and I at Paris took no heed, but rattled away as if our purses were inexhaustable. His furlough was nearly up. We had no end of women. "Old ------ (naming a relative) will leave you all his money," said he, "he's fond of you, and has no one else to leave it to." I and all my family thought that; my mother had repeatedly warned me that he was discontented with my goings on; but I counted on his love for me, love since I was a baby; so I played at Paris a jolly game, regardless of money.

When I came back from Paris, I tried to retrench, but found it all but impossible. I got rid of Mabel, spent five shillings for my dinner, where I used to spend twenty, went to live with my mother, put down my horses and carriage, and discharged my man and grooms. But as I diminished my amusements and extravagances generally, so I seemed more and more to need women. My cock stood all day, and half the night. Women I had by dozens. I tried to reduce their fees, and did to a little extent, but for some years I had been accustomed to a liberal expenditure in that article and though to a country girl I could give five shillings, to a Londoner I could only give gold, and never refused more if they pleased me, and were not satisfied.

Fred then went abroad to his regiment. He made arrangements for Laura to have a small income, not a tenth of what she had had, but enough to keep her in a quiet way. I at first was to pay it to her. She was to have it as long as she remained steady, and he hoped she would go home, hoped she would keep steady till his return,--his return which was not probable in less than seven years at the least.

One night when together, we laughed at the absurdity of expecting it. "Walter, is it probable that a fine woman like that will be content with frigging herself?" "No." "She will be fucked,--I would if I were she,--it's a shame to wish her to go without fucking. If I were married to her, she would go with me, but a man can't take a mistress to India, he could not live with her, and all the regiment would be smelling at her tail,--she will be fucked, and I can't help it." Tears stood in his eyes. "You give her a grind old boy, if she must have it, I'd rather you did it than any one, and it will keep her quiet. You have had her,--do you recollect that night?--oh! God, what a spree! I never had such a spree before in my life, and never shall again." I said I would take care of her as if a sister, as to having her, he might dismiss such an idea from his head, and I meant what I said. He went abroad, and was killed in battle. I loved him.

Laura went into humbler lodgings, I saw her often, but never made the slightest advances. Soon she could not make her money do. Her mother came up to stay with her, and she had then partly two to keep. She dressed plainer, sold or pawned her best things, told me all, and how it was impossible to make the money do. Then I made her a present, she kissed me, and that set my blood boiling. Her mother wanted her to go back to the country, I advised it also; it was agreed she should, and her mother went back. A day or two afterwards I called on her, she got me a chop for dinner, and sent for wine. We talked about Fred, she cried about him, I kissed her to comfort her, she kissed me again as we sat on the sofa, my arm went round her, I pulled her hand on to my shoulders; and that spree at Lord A... 's came into my head.

"You miss a bed-fellow Laura, don't you?" "Oh! no, but I miss poor Fred, he was so kind." "Do you recollect that night?" "Don't mention it, I am ashamed of it,--oh! don't look at my boots, they are so shabby now." I had began at the ankles, as I always did, it was on the road. "You are not so stout as you were my dear." "There is not any difference in me." I pinched her thighs outside her clothes. "Ah! I'm no thinner there I'm sure." "Let me feel." "Oh! now don't,--it's a shame." "My darling, you are as smooth and plump as ever,--I know the feel of those beautiful thighs, I've laid on them." Soon my hand was between them, my finger on the clitoris. "Poor Fred," said she still crying, her head on my shoulder. In another instant her hand was round my prick, her thighs open, my hand restless, and roving all about her cunt. "Lay down." "I won't." "It won't hurt him poor fellow, he is far away." For a few minutes we coaxed and fondled, kissed and cried, saying it was not fair, and we never would. Then cock and cunt getting hotter and more sensitive, I pushed her flat on the sofa, and we fucked ecstatically. Rising she sat looking at me, her clothes half-way up her thighs, I looking at her with my wet prick hanging its head. Then we hugged, kissed, and did it again.

"It was to be," said she (as if poking her was fate). "Quite true dear, but let's go to the bed, the sin is no greater if we do it ever so many times." Into bed we got, and there I think we laid for sixteen hours. Laura was a lovely bed-fellow. I had a good look at the hair on her cunt, it was very long, curled round, and completely hid her cunt, even when standing with her legs slightly open; and when she pissed, she left drops of piddle on the hair. On her that bush was handsome, but very long hair is not generally handsome on a cunt, and I have disliked, it on others; but it is not often found. I am describing here what I saw more coolly, and often on future occasions rather than what I saw and recollect of her cunt, on that night of exhausting pleasure.

I had now but little money to spare, but gave her a little from time to time, and a great deal of bum-basting. One day she said, "I'm in misfortune again." She was in the family way, had been so before by Fred, but had managed a miscarriage. She now got one, but was seriously ill, and sent for her mother, and when she got better she went home. I sent Fred's money to her there for some time, then she wrote me to send it to a post-office, and afterwards to send no more, as she was going to be married. She hoped I would never tell Fred, that I would burn her letters, and if I ever saw her, would not notice her. I never saw her again. She wrote to Fred about her marriage, and he was delighted at it, as well as at saving his money. I have finished her history, so far as it was connected with me; and must now take up my narrative at a time before this.

Friends were going to Paris, I went with them, and a jolly loose time we had for a few weeks. I made acquaintance with six or eight of the best baudy houses, and had women galore. Theatres, excursions, high-feasting, unlimited whoring were the characteristics of my trip. I returned empty in pocket, and knocked up with copulating, yet had had none of the excitants, with women that I have had there since. I rushed at cunt directly I saw it; my physical enjoyment was so intense, that I could not dally with my prick, but let it satisfy itself as soon as it liked. The varieties that Camille had given me left no taste for them. Cunt, belly, and thighs, seen, felt, and fucked in regular fashion, was my delight. Heaps of bills met me on my return. The thought of becoming bankrupt horrified me. I disposed of my remaining property, paid all, and was left with a few hundred pounds. I pass now over a short time of which there is nothing to be said, but that I was economical in all but women.

My remaining guardian and my mother had been always at me with advice, which I entirely disregarded, and flung away money in all directions. Had I only spent it on women it would have lasted years longer. That which women had I do not regret, they have been the greatest joy of my life, and are so to every true man, from infancy to old age. Copulation is the highest pleasure, both to the body and mind, and is worth all other human pleasures put together. A woman sleeping or waking is a paradise to a man, if he be happy with her, and he cannot spend his money on anything better, or so good.

Soon after, almost dependent again on my mother, who did nothing but upbraid me, my hopes centered in my old relative, who had promised to make me his heir. He was not so gracious to me as he used to be; he murmured at my extravagance, and supposed that any money I had would go down the same sink, by which he meant women. He died suddenly, just as he was in greatest wrath with me, and left me nothing.

All hopes were dashed to the ground. Laura was my consolation till she left. For a year of my life I was needy and discontented, but not so miserable as I was fated to be. I pass over that period, there was not much in the amatory line to tell of. Fucking is a commonplace thing, the prince and the beggar do it the same way, it is only the incidents connected with it that are exciting. Voluptuous, reckless, youth and beauty together, make the vulgar shoving, arse-wagging business poetical for the time, but it is animalism.

Then I committed a more fatal error than spending a fortune in jollity; what it was will be guessed, it is only referred to here to connect my history. I was then in my twenty-sixth year.

I add a few observations which on reading this written many years ago, seems now needful to explain even to myself.

Most of my relatives lived in the provinces, and were wealthy. We visited each other periodically, but distance (there were few railways then) prevented them from entering into my daily life, still less my secret life. Fred's mother was nearest to us, and as the episodes show, she and her family were most mixed up with my affairs. An aunt in London, childless and rich, gave me most money, and afterwards left me a good sum. I cared but little about those living at a distance. With a cousin from the North I had some rousing debauches, which were at the time known too many of my family. He is still alive, but pious, and with a large family, and would not like to know I am writing this. Jolly old Ben, I won't narrate our sprees, for you may live to read this,--who knows?





CHAPTER XVI.


     Married, and miserable.--Virtuous intentions.--
     Consequences.--Mary Davis.--A virtuous child.--Low class
     fucksters.--A concupiscent landlady.--Reflexions on my
     career.--On the sizes of pricks.--My misconception.

 My life was now utterly changed; married. I was quite needy, with a yearly income (and that not my own) not more than I used to spend in a month, sometimes in a fortnight. Every shilling I had to look at, walked miles where I used to ride, and to save a six pence, amusements were beyond me, my food was the simplest, wine I scarcely tasted, all habits of luxury were gone, but worse than all I was utterly wretched. I tried to make the best of my life and could when by myself be cheerful, even in the recollection of the past fun; but there was that about me now which brought sorrow over to me. The instant I saw her, she checked my smile, sneered at my past, moaned over my future, was a nightmare to me, a very spectre.

I tried to like, to love her. It was impossible. Hateful in day, she was loathsome to me in bed. Long I strove to do my duty, and be faithful, yet to such a pitch did my disgust at length go, that laying by her side, I had wet dreams nightly, sooner than relieve myself in her. I have frigged myself in the streets before entering my house, sooner than fuck her. I loving women, and naturally kind and affectionate to them, ready to be kind and loving to her, was driven to avoid her as I would a corpse. I have followed a woman for miles with my prick stiff, yet went to my wretched home pure, because I had vowed to be chaste. My heart was burning to have an affectionate kiss, a voluptuous sight from some woman, yet I avoided obtaining it. My health began to give way, sleepless nights, weary days made me contemplate suicide. It seemed as if I never could have happiness again, yet my physical forces, or so much of them as lay in my generative organs, seemed unimpaired. I neither drank nor debauched, and my prick stood incessantly; neither random frigs nor night-dreams stopped it.

My only relief from misery was in thinking over the pleasures I had had, yet all seemed such a long time past, that it was like a dream. Then a desire to have other women became invincible. I had no means to get those I had been accustomed to, and seemed to have no idea of going economically to work for my pleasures, but at length began to walk through streets inhabited by very poor gay women, in a neighbourhood I had known in my early youth. Then I found out other poor quarters, and one night with but a few shillings in my pocket, after thinking of throwing myself into a canal, I found myself at a spot where women of a somewhat better class lived in its centre, and on its outskirts very poor harlots.

"I will,--have I the money?--can't help it,--if one won't another will," and I slunk into a street, half ashamed of entering it. Saw girls standing at doors, never paused for selection, nor to see if one looked nicer than another, it was cunt I wanted. The moment I turned the corner of the street, I cared not who or what, as long as she had a petticoat and what it hid from sight. I took the nearest.

"Will you let me have you for five shillings?" was all I uttered. I recollect it as well as possible, hanging my head, ashamed of my offer, and not looking at the girl, ashamed of being seen in the neighbourhood.

"All right," said she turning round. I followed her through the little narrow passage of a four-roomed house into a little room with a bed on one side of it. I looked at her, and she at me for an instant only. "Here are the five shillings," said I. "Shall I undress?" "No." "Shall we get on the bed?" "No, at the side,"--and whilst speaking I had half lifted her on to it. Laughing with a peculiar chuckle she fell back, pulling up her clothes. I saw plump thighs, dark hair, felt giddy, could not see, recollect opening the lips, and began to spend as the tip of my prick touched her cunt. Following the spunk as it shot up the passage as it opened its way, with one thrust I was up her, and had finished. Fifty times in my life up to the time I pen this, has a similar rapid ejaculation occurred to me when randy.

"Didn't you want it!" said she. They were the first words I recollect being uttered as I bent over her. How divine she seemed. "Let me do it again." "Oh! you ought to give me a little more." "I'll give you a shilling, it's all I have I fear; but more if I have it." "Very well then," said a soft voice. Oh! what a heavenly few minutes they seemed to me,--they still seem to me,--as I fucked her again. First and second fuck must have been all over in five minutes. I had not un-cunted.

"Pull it out," said she after an interval, my cock still keeping in her; but I kept close to her, and up her. "Be still dear, do pray,--I'll see what money I have." My hat and my great-coat were on, it was cold, I had only unbuttoned my trousers enough to get out my prick. Keeping still up her, I thrust my hand into my trousers pocket, pulled out all the money I had, and put it on the bed beside her. "See, it is all I have, every farthing, a little more than I said,--let me do it again,--there is more than seven shillings,"--and pressing well on to her haunches, I began wriggling my prick.

She turned her head, looked at the money, but did not touch it. "Very well," said she in a low voice, "but take it out,--don't make my chemise in a mess, I have not another clean,--don't make a mess on the bed if you can help it." "I shan't." "Yes you will, you have spent such a lot, it's running out now."

I withdrew. She took a towel which was close at hand, wiped her cunt and spread another for her bum. I threw off hat and coat. Soon now we were both on the bed, I up her, and leaning on my elbow for the first time really looked at her. Up to that moment cunt, cunt, nothing but cunt was in my mind. Now I saw that her eyes were blueish, her hair dark and wavy, I recollect our staring in each other's faces for a minute or two without speaking. A candle on a little table close to the bed showed a strong light on us sideways; then we both fucked with vigor, and Mary Davis spent with me,--she spent with me, that poor little gay woman.

"You are a nice poke," said the girl. I got off the bed, sat on a chair by the fire, and looked at the merry face of the little gay woman as she smiled at me whilst washing her quim. The pleasure I had just had, the entrancement of the carnal pleasure contrasted so strongly with my misery at home, that I burst into tears, and sobbed like a child. She rubbed her quim dry, then silently came up to me, put her hand on my shoulder, and stood without uttering a word till my passion was over. "Are you unhappy?" said she in a gentle tone. Yes I was. "Never mind, I dare say it will be over some day--we have all got unhappiness."

Her kind voice and manner--she a gay woman who owed me no kindness--so contrasted with the coldness elsewhere, that it made me worse and again I sat sobbing, and taking no notice of her; she still standing with her hand on my shoulder.

"Have something to drink," said she. "Yes,"--but recollecting myself, "No, I have no money, I have given you every farthing I have." "Never mind,--do you like gin?--I do." "Yes." She called out to the landlady, "Fetch me a shilling's worth of gin, and mind you don't take any,--mind a shilling's worth fills this bottle to here (giving the landlady a large medicine bottle), don't take any, and I will give you a little. I'll pay for the gin," said she turning to me.

I sat looking at the fire. "You have not washed yourself," said she. "No, are you unwell?" "No, I think I am all right, but we can't always say you know, and it's best to wash after us,"--and I washed.

I took hot gin and water, and got cheered, even began to smile when she said, "You are a gentleman, ain't you?" "Yes I think so." "I am sure you are by your manner, but you are poor I suppose." I told her the entire truth, my heart was so full, I told this strange gay woman all my trouble, all my misery, wanted more gin and water, and having in my pocket a gold pencil-case, a gift of an aunt's, "Get some more gin," said I, "take this and pawn it, for I have no money." She would not. "I am sure, if you say you will bring me the money, that you will. I will pay for more gin."

So sitting, talking, and drinking gin and water, she sitting opposite to me listening whilst I told my troubles, and my burst of troubles over, relieved by my confidences, I became aware that she was plump, fleshy, good-looking, and had a mild sympathetic eye. Up to that time cunt alone had fascinated me, now I thought of the woman, and a liking for her because she seemed kind stole over me; desire to have her, caress her, spend in her on that account, rather than a desire for her cunt alone, thrilled through me as I looked at her sitting half facing me by the fire; her clothes slightly raised, that the warmth might reach her limbs, one elbow on her knee, the hand supporting her face turned towards me full of interest. And so an hour or more ran away.

"I want you again so, but I have no more money." "Never mind, you may have me,--shall I undress?" "Oh! do,--do,--how round and plump you are,--but I have no more money." "Never mind,--give me more when you see me again. Come into the bed,--see the sheets are quite clean,--no one has slept in them, I take the clean ones off every night, and put on others before I go to bed,--stop with me all night." We both undressed, and jumped into bed together. I was frantic with pleasure as I cuddled up to her plump warm body, and felt her from her neck to her knees; rolled over her, and kissed her, till I settled down between her thighs; and then Mary Davis and I fucked, and laid still, and then fucked again, and so on, till I could do it no longer.

It was three in the morning. "Stop all night," said she, "I will give you a nice breakfast in the morning." I would not, had a strong desire to keep up appearances of propriety and happiness at home, if I had not the reality; so with a sigh rose, and dressed, borrowed a shilling of her, and went out into the street. Silent and dirty it was, and raining hard as I walked home to my miserable bed.

At dusk next day with impatience I went off to Mary Davis', gave her what I had promised, and money for that evening besides, and when I had had her, we sat down and talked again.

She was a short woman about nineteen years old, plump without fat, but as nicely covered as any woman I ever saw; had a big bum, large thighs, plenty of room between them, and dark hair on her cunt which had strongly developed lips, it was large outside in proportion to her size. She had a soft, kind face, beautiful grey eyes, nearly black hair which draped naturally, and was altogether as nice a little woman as one could have wanted. I have wondered often how she could have settled down in a neighbourhood of coster-mongers, and taken five shillings for her person, when she might as well have been a two-sovereign woman, had she tried elsewhere. I put her up to trying at a future day, but she never would.

Her room was about twelve feet square. A large bed took up one third of it, a table next the only window, two chairs (one easy), little cupboards in the recesses by the fire-place, on which stood china and glasses, a small wash-hand stand, a chest of drawers, with slop-pail, coal-scuttle, and looking-glass completed the furniture. All was scrupulously clean, the bed-linen white.

Having broken my virtuous resolution, I never regained it, and for a week fucked Mary from six in the evening till two the next morning. My week's amusement cost me about two pounds, but then that modest sum was too much for my pocket, so I left off for a while, and gave Mary a chance of keeping her other friends. They were mostly poor clerks, she told me, and married men better off, who gave her a pound, or at times paid her rent if in arrear. She paid I think but twenty-five shillings a week for her board and lodging together. My too exclusive attentions for a week had prevented her regulars from coming. There was lots of cheaper cunt in the neighbourhood so to send them away with full balls was dangerous.

The house was kept by an old man and woman, he a carpenter almost too old, yet who went to daily work. He used to fetch gin and beer for us. There was no lodger in the house. They were a decent couple, and after a time I used to talk to the old woman, and when Mary once went away ill, she got me a beautifully shaped girl, I had offered her money to get me a girl of about fourteen years of age, a virgin. The streets about there swarmed with girls and boys who played about at night, I could hear their smutty language as they ran after each other yelling, laughing and quarrelling. She tried, but never could; she was not a woman who undertook that sort of thing, but the money tempted her. "There are lots of girls about," said she, "their mothers don't care what they do, but you want a virgin,--Lor! where's she to be found?--when they's about thirteen or fourteen years old they won't be kept in, they is about the dark streets at night, and Lor! if you heard what I have in the streets where the costers' barrows is, of a night!" And so the old woman intimated that all the young girls of that select neighbourhood, were got into by the coster boys, and that a virginity was a rarety at fourteen years old. I afterwards groped several young girls in those dark streets, and there was certainly no obstacle to my fingers searching their cunts.

"I thinks I knows a steady little gal, whose mother's just died, her father ain't no good, and you and Mary must ask her in; I can't have nothin to do with it except gettin her here." One day afterwards she told me she had asked the girl to tea, and that she was as curious as could be to know all about it (meaning fucking). "She knows as much as we do," said the old woman with a chuckle. "Was far as talking goes and she would like to know as much as them as does it as well, but she is timid; there is three of them, she is the eldest, the father leaves her in charge, you shall see her." Mary Davis had gone home ill. The girl was brought in, I sent out for gin, a nice little girl she was, and she drank some of it. The old woman then left with a wink. The girl took my kisses very well, never said a word, so getting on by degrees I talked to her about naked people, and getting children, felt her ankles and legs, then told her I would give her a shilling if she would feel my cock. She did not say a word, but stood still, my arm round her waist, whilst I pulled out my stiff prick. Then she bent forward curiously, whilst I put her little hand round it, and guiding it, pulled the foreskin down from the tip. Then I put my hand up her clothes, and felt her thighs and bum; but on bringing my hand to the cunt, she broke away in tears saying, "Oh! no sir,--I would rather not sir,--I'm much obliged to you sir for showing it me, and the shilling; but I would rather not sir,--oh! let me go, let me go,--Mrs. Smith,--Mrs. Smith." The old woman was listening, and came in instantly. "Oh! what are you doing to her?" said she in a whining tone, "what is the matter my dear?--don't cry,--oh! you should not sir,"--and winking at me, away she went with the girl; then came back, said the girl was scared, and she feared it was no go. "But if you heared her talk, you would think she would let any man do anything with her."

Half-an-hour afterwards the girl had composed herself, and came back. I had more gin, the old woman again left us, the girl had another shilling, and again she felt me. I began talking to her about the parsley-bed out of which children come, and generally on the subject of generation and its working tools. "Now dear don't be alarmed (she seemed as timid as a hare), you know what a cunt is?" "Yes," said she, "it's a nasty word,--poor mother told father he was a beast cause he said it when drunk." "Well my dear, something comes out of a man if he puts this up a cunt, and that gets children,--lay hold of my prick, and you will see,"--and guiding her little hand I frigged myself with it. But she cried out when I attempted to feel her cunt, and I never had her. The old woman said she was frightened to bring her again, that she and Mary Davis might manage it together, and when Davis came back I wished her to try, but she refused to have anything to do with it. The lech passed away, for it was but a whim. At that time I liked large well-haired cunts.

I am anticipating, for this took place nearly two years after I first had Mary Davis. That girl got fond of me, and I liked her. I got a little better off, and used to give her more money; but she always took what I gave her contentedly. The only thing I can remember out of the common course of lecherous events in such acquaintances, is that I took one for spending over her, used to fuck up to spending-point, then pull out my prick, and frigging it, emit my semen on to her belly, breasts, or thighs; then I began fucking again, almost directly I had discharged and looking at my spunk lying on her flesh. When my pleasure came on again, I would put her hand on to my spunk; and directly her fingers touched it, it fetched me, and she as well, although she always said it was a dirty trick. But I only did this a few times. I began also to use French letters, for reasons she advised me to do so.

The neighbouring streets were full of poor gay women. She heard that I had been seen going into a house in the neighbourhood, and cried about it. Her health got bad, her womb began to fall, and the doctor said she was not strong enough for a gay life. She told me she was the daughter of an under game-keeper, that a young tradesman kept company with her, she liked him, and he said he meant to marry her. Bringing her home one evening when she had got out on the sly, they felt each other's privates on the road. Very soon after she and one of her sisters were allowed to go to some village-dance. Her sister walked off with her sweetheart; Mary's young man took her to some cottage, did it to her twice, and then walked home with her. She did not know whose fault it was; his or hers, for from the night they had felt each other, she thought of nothing else till she had his prick up her. Her father found it out, she ran away to London, became gay, and had never lived in any other house but the one I visited her in. "Whenever I saw him after he had felt me" (her lover) she would say, "I felt in a flurry all over, and could think of nothing else, I longed to feel his hand on my thing again,--she soon did."

She went home ill, came back, her womb got worse, she went to a hospital, got thin and fretted, again went home, and I never heard more of her. I had great pleasure in her society, it was my greatest solace to tell her all my misery, for she was a complacent kind creature. It was wonderful to see how clean everything was in that little square room, yet with the exception of the fire-place, she cleaned everything herself. At about two o'clock in the day she was dressed, and standing at the door, to catch passers by. She never spoke to them unless they spoke to her. She was to me at first a novel experience but I soon had plenty of experience of the poor class of women in adjacent streets.

I found it not wise to go into the streets well dressed, so put on old things, drew my hat over my eyes, assumed a slouching gait, and walked along slowly, talking to the women till I found one I liked. Their salutation usually was, "Come here dear,--come and see what I have got to show you." "What?" "Such a nice cunt,--such a lot of hair." "Such a fat arse," would say another. "How much will you let me for?" "What you like,--come in." "I have not much money,--let me look at your cunt for a shilling." "Come in then." Another would say, "Make it two, and I'll strip." Many a cunt I have seen for a shilling. If I did not like it, I went further on, or into the next street.

The street-doors were usually open, the women when dressed lolling just inside them, with head out, but dropping back if they saw a likely man, and addressing him as he passed in loud or low tones, according to their cheek. If a woman I had had and expected to see was not visible, my way was to step inside the passage, and listen at the door; if through the key-hole I saw a light, or heard voices, there was business on. If in the evening the outside shutters of the room were closed, I knew the woman was engaged for a long time, perhaps her own man, a cab-man, a costermonger, or some man of similar class was with her, if late. The women there though about the same price, or cheaper, had quite different manners from the Waterlow road ones. There were rarely more than one woman in a house, and always on the ground floor, the landlord or lady living in the back room, or upstairs. The rooms were mostly let to working people, who seemed quiet enough.

Lots of children were about, who played in the streets at day, but disappeared if quite young towards dusk. If a man stopped and talked to a gay woman at the door, the children of the house usually went in, always did if more than about ten years old. They drew back as if they knew that a bargain for fucking was to be struck, and I believe knew all about it. They were mostly girls who sleeping in the same room with their parents, I dare say had seen the game of mother and father played often enough. The bigger girls frisked about the streets of an evening with boys of the same age, or not much older.

If a woman could get you to enter the passage, she almost pulled you into her room. "Come in,--don't stand there,--come out of the way of the lodgers,--I'll tell you if you come in,--well make it half-a-crown,--I've got such a nice cunt,--such a fat arse,--feel my bubbies,--look here,--come in, and let me feel your prick."

This was all said rapidly, and according to the inducements the woman had to offer. It generally ended in my going in, and the bargain was completed inside. "I'll frig you,--do anything you like,--look here (showing rapidly her breasts, and covering them up again),--here is a big pair of legs (pulling her clothes up),--yes you may fuck me how you like,--oh I yes I want to piss bad." I have heard this hundreds of times. Once inside I never came out without paying something. The women always said or did just enough to wet my appetite for knowing or seeing a little more, so I paid, and often enough was disappointed, and left; but saw a lot.

In these streets about seven in number, during a period of two or three years, I had many women, even whilst I visited Mary Davis. I dare say fifty women I fucked, and felt as many more before I ceased going to the neighbourhood. Two or three of the adventures there are alone worth writing. At one house I was robbed of a pin whilst actually fucking the woman.

A tall broad-built woman of about thirty, was lolling at a door one night. I do not recollect having seen her before, for I knew many women by sight, even though I had not had them. She looked like a coster's wife. I should have passed on, but for the lewd way in which her eyes met mine. I stopped, she instantly looked rapidly up and down the street, went back inside the door-way saying very loudly, "You want my lodger, but she has left here," but as she said this, she stepped inside the front room, and beckoned me in both with hand and head, her eyes wide open, and looking anxious. Slowly I followed in. She was so big that I thought I should like a feel, and if I liked that would pay more, and have more. "I'll give you a shilling to feel your cunt." "Very well," said she standing still, and not attempting to lift her clothes slightly as most of the women used to do. I got my hand on her thighs, she pushed it away, retreated towards the bed and sat on it. I took out a shilling, and as usual put it on the mantel-piece. "There is the money,--let me now." She no longer resisted, I felt her, and she opened her legs to facilitate my groping. She put her hand on my shoulder. "Is your cock standing?" said she in a whisper. "Yes feel it," said I unbuttoning. She grabbed at it as if she meant to pull it off.

Her manners struck me as uncommon, and I began to feel uncomfortable; but under the squeezing of my cock, and the feeling of her cunt the usual desire to leave one's sperm up her came over me. "Let me fuck you,--I'll give you two shillings more." Without reply she fell back on the bed, I began to throw up her clothes. "Oh! no I can't let you do that." I had when with strange women just then been using French letters, and the fear of infection came over me when she would not submit herself to my inspection. "You have got something the matter with you, and I shan't," I said.

"Nothing of the sort," said she angrily, "I'm not gay,--I'm the landlady,--I am married, and have three children,--they are abed in the next room,--you may see them if you like. My lodger's gone,--you've been here afore to see her,--I've seen you afore,--but I'm not gay, and can't have anything the matter with me,--it's impossible." All this nearly in a whisper. Astonished I laughed. "Don't make a noise," said she, "I don't want the lodgers to know I am in this room, they know it's empty,--come on," and grasping my prick again, she surrendering herself more freely to my investigations.

"Where is your husband?" "Away on a job in the country; I haven't seen him for three months, and have not been touched for that time, so help me God; you may do it without fear,--there then look, if you must," said she, letting me throw up her clothes, and look well at her cunt, which I opened. "I'm a quiet woman." Then she turned round, twisting herself so that she could get hold of my cock as I stood pulling her about. "Come on my dear." The next minute I was spending up her.

"Go on, you were so quick,--go on," said she in spasmodic utterances, jerking her bum, clutching me to her, and using the same endearments as any other woman,--women are all the same, from the princess to the peasant. I had spent quickly, but shoved on as well as I could, and in a second or two with a sigh, her cunt relaxed.

I moved out of her quickly, for fear of the ladies' fever haunted me a little. She lay with her clothes up to her navel, till I had washed myself. "There is no towel or soap," I said. Then she moved. "I'll get you some,--but don't afear me,--hush!--don't make a noise,--wait five minutes for me, lock the door, and put out the light." I stood aghast at this request; it was in a low neighbourhood, costermongers, tramps, and even a nest of thieves I had heard was not far off. "What the devil does she mean?--what game is up?" came across my mind. "I won't put out the light," I said. "Well hide it in the cupboard, lock the door, and if any one knocks don't answer,--perhaps my late lodger's friends may come, not knowing she has gone,--I don't want any one to know any one is in the room." This was all said in a whisper; she went out, shut the door gently, and walked to the back of the house, leaving her three shillings. I heard her footsteps, and faintly afterwards the sounds of talking in the back room,--the partitions in the poor houses were thin.

I dried my tool with my shirt and sat on the bed, looking round at the poor room, wondering what dodge was up. She did not return, and thinking over the incidents, came to the conclusion that she was not a gay woman. There was just that difference in manners, in getting on to the bed, in taking her pleasures, and in her whole behaviour about the fucking, which there always is between a woman however loose she may be, but who does not fuck professionally, and the regular trader in her charms. I saw it then, and I see it still clearer writing about it now.

Nevertheless I began to think of leaving, feeling uneasy as she did not return for more than ten minutes. With my hat on, I was just about to run off, after hearing a man's footsteps pass along the passage, when I heard a voice cry up the stairs, "Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Brown, I'm going out to get a mouthful of fresh air,--if the children cry, will you see to them?" A shrill voice replied, a female step passed my door, into the street. A second afterwards the door slowly opened (I had unlocked it as I heard what I supposed were her footsteps going along the passage). In she came, holding up her finger for silence, then quietly closing and locking the door, she stood smiling at me. "Don't make a noise, they think I am out," she said.

I looked fully at her now, my lust satisfied. She was a big woman of say thirty years of age, coarse, common, but clean; she had a dress on which opened in front like that of a woman who suckles, and some sort of cap on her head. I did not know what to make of it, for she stood as if waiting for me to speak. I did not, and taking the candle, she put it down on the floor by the side of the drawers, or something of the sort, and remarked, "They won't see the light through the crack of the door now." Again a man's heavy footstep was heard. "That's my upstairs lodger," said she when she noticed my listening.

"You are really not gay?" said I. Then she repeated what she had said before, and sat on the side of the bed by me. "You have big breasts," I remarked. "Yes I was a fine woman, every one said before I married." It is impossible to be near a woman without wishing to ascertain her hidden charms. In the hurried embrace with her I had thought of nothing but cunt. At that time of my life, to see a woman, to long for her, to make my bargain, and to fuck her, was often an affair of not much more than ten minutes; it was only after the fuck that I looked well at the female I had pierced.

"Let me feel them," I said. She hesitated, but I undid the dress, and felt two breasts large and white, and pulled one out. "My nipple is spoilt with suckling," said she, "I've not yet done giving milk." "Let's have you again." "Yes,"--and she got on to the bed. "Let me see your cunt." "Oh! no,--don't,--I won't." My suspicion came back; with my prick out I still hesitated. "I've not washed myself since you did me," said she. "Well wash your cunt." She took my basin, and washed herself. Then I had a look at her cunt, and again fucked her. Lord how she enjoyed it, and so did I, that big coarse woman; but she would not let me look long at her belly, perhaps marked through child-birth. She had thickish, lightish brown hair on her quim; it was a cock-squeezer too, and how wet it got in our copulation. I remarked it to her. She said, "I'm wet, and no mistake."

I lay on her afterwards, my prick dangling against her cunt, and talked. Her husband was an artizan away on a job, she kept the house, and let lodgings; her husband was half his time away. "You've seen the girl who was in this room,--I recollect you,--I've seen you in the street more than once,--You've been with the woman opposite. I didn't mean anything till you spoke and stopped, but I'd been dying for it, been wishing almost I were gay; the gal opposite had just gone in with a man, and I was wondering what my husband was doing, and just then you stopped and looked, and I thought I'd let you. Do it again," said she slipping her hand between our bellies, and grasping my ballocks. And I did it again, as soon as I could.

"I've never had another man but you and my own man I'll swear,--ask in the street, they will all say I'm respectable,--but don't tell on me. I frig myself almost every day, if you must know, but that don't satisfy me, a woman who's had three children,--if I'm in the family way now, I'm in a mess, but I'm not so much to blame, am I?--think, three months away from your own man I--but I tell you as you spoke to me I was a dying for it,--the girl who was here in this room used to say, 'Well Mrs. ------ you are a fool to pass your life almost without a you know what.' Well I was a dying for it, and she and lodgers would always tell me what the men did to them; and yet I never have had but you." So we lay talking for a time, she answering my questions, and sometimes volunteering remarks; but never leaving go of my prick, and every now and then saying, "Ain't you a fine man!--you just are a fine young man!"

There were noises at the street-door, men were talking, a smell of tobacco reached us. "It's the upstairs back," said she, "he will stop there till he have smoked two pipes, so for God's sake don't leave,"--and she sunk her voice lower. "Oh! I must put out the light." Saying so, off the bed she got, blew it out, and got on to the bed again. There we lay quite another hour, speaking in whispers, feeling each other's privates, never washing, the spunk drying up as our hands fumbled about each other, I talking baudy, and telling her what gay women would do, she telling me she knew all about it, for her ground-floor lodgers were always gay. I asking questions about herself, heard that my cock was about the same size as her husband's. Wondering at the tightness of her cunt, as she had had three children, she said that the size was the same as before she had had a man. If she got in the family way she would be in a mess; she did not think she should, as she had not quite done suckling. She did not know how she managed to keep so firm and plump, for she had meat only twice a week. "What then?" "Potatoes and herrings,"--did not know what she would do, if she did not get another lodger soon to pay the rent,--she often could not pay for a meal.

About two o'clock in the morning there were lumping boots going upstairs. The lodger had gone to bed. We lighted the candle, I washed (there was still no towel), and no sooner had I washed than she laid hold of, and kissed my prick, stooping to do so,--and then we fucked again.

We parted, she took my money. "I will keep this," she said, "it will help me." I said it was for her. She let me quietly out, begging me never to mention what had taken place between us to any gal in the street. "Though they won't believe you if you do, for I have a good character. I've seed you often go in with them." I had fancied no one ever saw me in that low street, and wondered if any other person had recognized me there.

I never had her again. Once or twice I saw her at the street-door, but so soon as she saw me she rushed in-doors, and I had too many fresh and younger women at hand to care about her. Here was a case of a woman who could not restrain herself, owing to the long absence of her legitimate doodle, and gave way to her uncontrollable passions for that night. That was the only conclusion I could come to.

Then soon afterwards I had the clap. Mary cried, and declared she had not given it me, and I am sure she had not. Then almost for the first time I began to use cundums, or French letters, as they are called. I did not like them, but had suffered so much from gonorrhoea, that I carried them in my purse in readiness.

My experience with this poor class of women was soon considerable. Satiated, sick of them, yet I continued to frequent them for the simple carnal pleasure of coition. There was no sentiment about it, no liking for the women, for though their manners sometimes amused me, they more frequently shocked me, and the poverty of some distressed me; but I had no money for choicer entertainment. My vigor was great, my pleasure in copulation almost maddening, a cunt was a cunt, and I got my pleasure and relief up it, whatever its owner might have been. A sensuous imagination aided me. When once my prick was up a woman she was for the time more or less invested with charms, and her imperfections forgotten. I used to shut my eyes, and fancy I was stroking a houri with the finest limbs and ivory flesh, and could fancy all this up to the moment of ejaculation, I fancied thighs and cunt which were not those of the woman who was at that moment doing her best to please me.

There were occasions when the women when naked revolted me, my prick refused to stand, and I departed without copulating, but those occasions with this class of women are not worth noting. I have been subject to this sudden revolt and prostration, sometimes even when the woman was most beautiful. Nervousness, fear, some sudden dislike, and even most ridiculous reasons have caused it.

I should have mentioned that gradually it had taken hold of my mind that my prick was a very small one. How this notion first arose I cannot quite trace, I certainly had it in a degree when a youth, and it became stronger owing to the remarks of some French women. The men I saw fucking at Camille's had very large pricks, and no doubt they were selected on that account for exhibition; but I did not know that then, and used mentally to compare mine with theirs, and also with those of some of my former schoolfellows, and to my disadvantage.

With many harlots of both high and low class I had talked about size; each told me of men who had big pricks, rarely of those who had small ones. Experience has since taught me that harlots like talking about big pricks, for size affects their imagination agreeably. Of ridiculously small ones they make mention for a laugh, the average sizes pass without their notice. I used to ask them how mine compared with the big ones they spoke of, and got at last into my head the erroneous opinion about my own machine. At times I would produce it with an apologetic remark. "My prick's not a very big one, is it?"--and was much pleased when the woman's reply was complimentary. I know now from the inspection of many men's, that mine compares very favorably with the average, and is larger than most; but for many years I was of a very different opinion, and at times was almost ashamed of my prick, so much so that when a woman said it was as large as most, and many said that. I did not believe them, still less did I believe them when they said it was a handsome prick; then I thought they were hum-bugging me.

Now as I add these few words written years after the foregoing, and after having seen some dozens of pricks, both languid and erect, I know what they said was true, and I know that there is a size, a form, a curve, and a colour in pricks which makes some handsomer than others, just as undoubtedly there are ugly and handsome cunts.





CHAPTER XVII.


     Irish Kate.--Drink, heat, fleas, and French letters.--The
     bricklayer afterwards.--I give luck.--The lost breast-pin.--
     The cholera's victim.

 One hot night in summer I slouched along one of the streets, and stopped in front of a woman who stood lolling against the door-post. I recollect her and my first sensations perfectly well, her white face, and dark hair hanging behind her in a net, her low dress, low in front,--showing a luscious neck and bust as white as her face. Her dress was of a very light colour, so her neck and face must have been white indeed to look so white by contrast. The street-door was close to a street-lamp, which shed a strong light on her face as it was turned upwards, and with her hand and arms folded behind her she lolled, her back against the doorpost. She was a full-sized woman, but young, and exactly what pleased me then; black and white, young and full of flesh. I stopped, and gazed at her. She fixed her eyes vacantly on me, but neither moved nor spoke to me.

There were gay women standing at doors not far off, common men also at some stood smoking. They understood the habits of the neighbourhood, and never took any notice when a strange man and woman talked together at a door. I did not like to speak to a woman if others, or men were near, and would at times walk about till the coast was clearer. But this girl struck me with strong lust suddenly. "I'll give you a shilling to feel," said I. No answer, but she kept staring at me. "Half-a-crown then," thinking my offer too small, and stepping inside the passage to get out of sight. "Come in," I said. She made no reply, never took her back quite from the wall; but turning herself round, continued looking at me, her head slightly moving about as if she did not understand.

Staggered at this behaviour I was coming out again to leave, but her lovely look fixed me. "I'll give you five shillings," said I, "to have you." "Have me," said she, "have me what?" Her voice was thick and broken. She turned into the passage. "Will you let me have you?" "Come and fuck," said the husky, thick voice. She passed me, stepped heavily into the room, staggered to the bed, and then I saw she was drunk. I had not noticed it before, being absorbed in her fleshy beauty, and the desire to see her cunt, and all of her, and join my body to hers.

There was a single candle in the room, fluttering, and needing snuffing, but no snuffers. I snuffed it with my fingers. The room was in disorder, the pot full, water in the basin, the bed unmade, the whole place the picture of disorderly, drunken, harlotry. A nightgown was, lying on the floor, clean linen on a little table. It looked so miserable, that I thought I would go away at once, so took out five shillings, and laid it down. "There is the money," I said, "I shant stop." "Come and fuck," said she in reply, rolling on to the bed, and pulling up her clothes. She had but a gown on, nothing else. Thighs and legs as white and fat as her neck came into sight, and a thicket of hair at the bottom of her belly as dark as the hair on her head. The sight altered my intention, I walked to the bed, and placed my hand on her cunt. "Fuck me," she blurted out in her drunken voice again. I felt wild with voluptuous delight, as my eyes gloated on the big breasts and thighs to where her garters and stockings hid the flesh from view. All was dazzling white except a nearly crispy-haired cunt in the middle of it. The contrast was exquisite, was absolutely dazzling.

A strange train of ideas (how oddly they spring up at such times) came into my head. "You've just had a man," I said, "your cunt's wet,--you've just been fucked." "He ain't fucked me for three days,--we have been a drinking gin, we have,--he paid, he hain't fucked me,--you fuck me," said she making a grab at my prick which was buttoned up yet,--"fuck me,--you shall fuck me." All this was said in a hoarse, drunken, incoherent manner, but the "fuck me" with a sudden violent energy, as if she suddenly felt a stinging desire to have her cunt stretched. "Fuck,--I'm bloody randy,--where's your prick?"

I took the light, pulled open her thighs, almost put the candle in her cunt. She let me do just as I liked repeating, "Fuck me." She was beautiful, her white firm flesh, her big round thighs, the lovely globes of her arse would have excited the dead. "Pull off your gown." "I shant." "You shall." I helped her up into a sitting posture, and pulled it off in an instant. Then she fell back naked, showing peeps of black-haired armpits. The next instant I was up her, and injected her. How beautiful she seemed as I moved my prick up and down in that cunt, spite of the drunken manner, and the miserable surroundings.

A most violent letch for her took hold of me. The women in the streets I have described had fine women among them, but for the most part they were plain in face, indifferent in form somewhere, and hideously coarse in manner; but the beauty of this woman was so great, I forgot all her coarseness. When I came to myself after my pleasures, she was fast asleep. She had perhaps spent, that and the liquor called gin overpowered her, and she forgot her business. Then the biting of fleas worried me for half-an-hour, I spent my time in hunting for them, and scratching myself, snuffing with my fingers the only tallow candle, and now and then holding it over her to look at her beautiful face, naked body, and unwashed cunt. The heat was intolerable. To be cool I gradually took off all clothing but my shirt, at last took off that, and then sat at the edge of the bed naked. I pulled open her legs, each lay just as I placed them, wide apart. I held the candle between her thighs, and opened her cunt-lips. Masses of thick sperm lay over her cunt, and hid the entrance of the prick-hole. I played with it as my baudy fancy dictated, frigged her, dipping my finger in the spunk below, and then rubbing it on to her clitoris till it was dry, twisted down her cunt-hair till it was wetter, and played every trick which a lascivious fancy dictated. Gradually I stiffened under this exciting amusement, and throwing my naked body on to hers, fucked her again. God only knows if she knew I was fucking her, or not,--I don't. She awakened after I had spent, turned on her side, and when I tried to get her on her back again, she swore.

Whether the slight dozing had relieved her brain, or whether the fumes of the liquor had evaporated, I don't know, but she soon became more conscious, and though stupid, yet more awake. Her voice had still the thick utterance, her answers still those of a person only partially understanding what was said to her. I expect I had excited her passions by my fingers, and not by what I said, for after awaking she again blurted out, "Fuck me,--I want a fuck." A grab at my prick showed that she knew where to find the means of giving herself pleasure, and I gave it her. Then I dozed.

Knocks at the door aroused me, and a shrill voice cried out, "Kate, Kate." I listened, "Are you alone?" said the voice. I shook Kate, and awakened her a little. "Some one is knocking at your door," said I. "Oh! damn,--arseholes," said she turning on her side, and dozing again.

"Kate,--knock, knock,--Kate, are you alone?--I'm going to bolt the door,--they are all in," said the voice.

Kate made no reply, I was dressing, so opened the door. "I'm here, and am going directly." "Is she drunk?" said the woman. "I think she is." "Do you know her?" "No." "Well I will leave the door open." "I'm going,--wait." There lay Kate dozing. When dressed I said, "I have left five shillings on the table." "Awake her," said the woman (for I heard and saw it was one). "You had better." "Kate, Kate", sung out the woman. I shook Kate, who turned, opened her eyes, and said, "Oh I damn,--don't." "Come in," said I to the woman. She did, and shook Kate. "Oh! arse-holes. She's been lushing for three days," said the woman. "Mind there are five shillings," said I, and disgusted I left, resolving never to go near the drunken beast again.

But the woman had made a great impression on me. I was always, even quite early in life, taken with a crummy woman, quite as much as with a pretty face; and although so low a woman, I longed for her again, and before many days sought her. It was on a blazing hot afternoon of a summer's day, the sun shone brightly on the front of the houses on one side of the street, the other was in shade. A street with perhaps a dozen carts and wheel-barrows through it in a day, where children played in the roadway, and women sat on the footways. I went along slouching on the shady side, slowly looking, and not quite recollecting the number of the house, and saw Kate sitting on a chair on the footway by her door.

She looked up vacantly as I got close to the house, with that look which a low-class woman has who thinks the man above her, and not likely to take her. "Come in," I said turning into the open door, and she followed me, bringing her chair. "I'll give you five shillings," said I. "All right." "Take off your dress." "All right, but give me the five shillings first." I gave it her. She began undressing, her gown off left but her chemise. "You don't want my chemise off?" "No,--lay at the side of the bed." She laid herself down, threw up her chemise, and the lovliest pair of thighs, belly, and cunt that ever man saw were disclosed. To look, to open its lips, and thrust my prick up her were the work of a minute. I roared as I touched her. I am told by women that at that time of my life, when thoroughly randy and I saw the cunt I liked that I gave a low roar as I closed on it with my pego. Kate told me that I did so this time, when my prick first neared her thighs. I did not then talk when in a woman's embraces; but fucked in silence.

I pulled out my prick, "Lay still,--keep your thighs open,--let's see your cunt," said I trying to keep her in her position. "Oh! arseholes," said she closing her thighs, and getting up, and looking at me.

"Did you get your five shillings the other night?" said I, "you were drunk." "Lor! are you the gent?" said she breaking out in a laugh, "I didn't know you,--now I see you are like him,--yes I was lushy,--so you've come agin.--Lor!" and she laughed. "How often did you fuck me?" I told her. "Sit down, and talk," said she, and we both sat down on her little cane-bottomed chairs.

"So you fucked me four or five times,--I don't know if I spent or not, damned if I do,--think of your lying there, and being bitten by the fleas,--the room was washed out yesterday, there ain't no fleas now. So you pulled me about,--what a beast, rubbing your spunk about on my cunt.--but Lor! a cunt's the proper place for it." After a few minutes similar conversation she suddenly said, "Let's fuck agin." "Well let's strip," Off went her chemise without reply. Gloating over her I stripped naked, and was soon on her, and up her. She had not washed. She enjoyed it. How we hugged each other's nakedness! The first words she uttered afterwards were, "You are a bloody fine fucker,--where did you learn to fuck so well?" giving me a vigorous kiss, and squeezing her cunt up to me as she said it.

I washed, and wanting soap (she had none), she went to the door, and called out for some. The woman brought it. Then there was no towel, and again standing naked at the half-opened door, she called out to the landlady to lend her one "I shant," said a voice, "you have now got two of mine." "Oh! arseholes," bawled out Kate slamming the door, "the bugger won't let me have one,--here dry your prick with my chemise, it's quite clean."

Kate stood naked looking at me as I rubbed myself dry with her chemise, bending slightly forward, holding her fingers under her cunt. "What a lot you've spent," said she putting down the basin with my water in it, and beginning to wash. "That's not clean," I remarked. "Oh! it's all the same spunk," she replied, and afterwards, "You may look at my cunt if you like," and she threw herself on the side of the bed, thighs wide open. She was faultless. I pulled a chair to the side of the bed, and contemplated her cunt at my leisure. The dirty white blind down in the window only just mellowed the light, it was as light as day, I could have hunted crabs, had there been any in her motte-thatch.

She asked me to give her gin. Some was sent for, then we sat drinking, she taking it neat, I mixed with water. "Let's fuck," said she again, and we fucked. More gin, more fucking, she was quicker to want fucking than I was. It was getting dusk, then she said, "You're going, ain't you? I want to make a few shillings to-night,--my rent's due to-morrow." I gave her another five shillings, made her piss in the basin, and we fucked again. I was fucked out, and at last she spent twice to my once, our bodies were sticking together with sweat as we fucked. Then for a few minutes we went to sleep. "You are a gent," said she, "I likes you,--I hopes you'll come agin, and see me,--I likes a real gent."

As I went out I saw a man standing on the other side of the road looking like a bricklayer. Turning back after I had gone a hundred feet or so, I saw him cross the road, and go into the house. I went back, the street-door was as it always was, open. Stepping inside I heard a male voice through Kate's door, a woman came out from the back. "Who do you want?" said she. "Kate." "Oh! she has got a friend with her,--shall I knock?" "No," I replied, and went my way. I didn't like the idea of her having a working-man after me, or before me. I was not then a philosopher, "But what does it matter?" said I, "a man's a man."

I saw Kate next day, and told her she had had a man after me. "Yes directly,--a chap I knows had been awaitin an hour, and he come in in a hurry. 'I'm done', says I, but he would,--he's a rough un, and he'd fucked me before you was at the end of the street." "Why you had not washed your cunt." "No," she laughed, "the bugger went right into your spendings,--he never knowed, and I had a good un of a cove after him,--you brought me luck. I've got two new chemises, and four towels,--let's fuck,--let's fuck," said she laying hold of me, and unbuttoning my trousers. My balls hung over her bum in no time.

I visited her at intervals for about a year. She had the whitest flesh I ever saw, and was very beautiful in face; the hair grew exceedingly low on her forehead, yet it did not disfigure her, from her neck to her calves her form was perfectly voluptuous, but she had big feet, and her hands were large. I could not bear to see her feet in great boots, and when looking at her lovely form used to keep my eyes from them. Her cunt was perfectly beautiful and small; black, white, and carmine were never more exquisitely blended.

She was revoltingly coarse in her talk, and even when sober her voice was rough. That I did not like, but her language disgusted me. To anything she did not like she said "arseholes," said it more frequently than any other word until I stopped her. "Give me some gin," she would say. "No you have had enough." "Oh! arseholes." Every body also was a bloody bugger, or a bloody shit. She was lewd on me for a time, and made me fuck her more than I wanted, but as I checked her foul language she became indifferent to me. "Oh! I'm obliged to hold my tongue I suppose," then she would sulk, and then, "Well let's have another fuck," and all would be right till I stopped her foul tongue again.

Half her time she was drunk. I would go there, not see her at the door, then call out to the woman, "Is Kate in?" "Yes she's drunk, I ain't seen her since the morning." Sometimes her door was locked, nothing then roused her, and away I went. At other times she was in the bed, or on it, and all but insensible. Several times I fucked her, put five shillings in her pocket, and left without her knowing I had had her until afterwards.

I had now fits of timidity, and used French letters at times, even when she was quite sure she was all right. One day when she was very drunk, I had her with a letter on, and as my cock dwindled out I eased the letter off it, and with my finger pushed it well up her cunt, and went away without paying her. I should like to have known what she thought when she found the French letter up her. I never alluded to it, and she never did. Why I behaved so I don't know, it is a wonder to myself. That night I had entered her room, and left unobserved by any one.

When she was a little drunk only, she got spoony, and I could not get away from her, she would lay hold of my prick, and keep to it. "I can't do it again Kate." "Get on me, and I'll make you,"--and she usually did. Then as liquor overtook her she ceased to wash her cunt after fucking, would turn on her side, and go to sleep. I left her often snoring with her cunt full, the money on the table.

It always was a wonder that she kept such a beautiful skin and look, but she did; and always was cool, fresh, and healthy-looking, even if she had been drunk for twenty-four hours previously. Her breath and body were as sweet as milk, yet she never had a bath as far as I know, but performed all her ablutions in a little basin, throwing the water into the street when she had done with it. I have seen her wash from head to foot that way in a quart of water, and a wet rag, and when done she looked like ivory.

She was called Irish Kate, why?--I never knew, nor did she. She was not Irish.

I had words with her one day, having lost a diamond pin. She had been pulling me about that night, but the same night I had been into a house with two women, and had felt their quims. I offered more than the value of the pin, but never got it back. After that I did not go near her again for a long time, but at length so longed for her that I did. She cried with joy, and kept me fucking till my back was well nigh broken.

Then I was for some time out of England. On my return, burning with desire, I went one night to her house. She had died of cholera, which was then raging.





CHAPTER XVIII.

 Costermongers' children.--A small girl, mother, and mangie.--A French letter fetched.--Young Gallows' exploits.--The customers' linen.--A hard-fleshed bum.--Invitation to anus.--A strange letch.--One big with child.--Fucked for a sovereign and pleasure.--A creole.--My misery.--Reflections.

Close by Kate's was a street with a carriage way, at one end narrowing to a footway only. On one side a row of small houses, on the other a very high blank wall. Costermongers' barrows and carts stood in the carriage way at night; clothes-lines with ragged garments hung across the street in the day. One dark night prowling about, cunt-feeling young girls and baudying generally, I went up this street. I had been up it before, and loved to hear the boys and girls chivying each other among the carts, hinting baudiness as they caught the girls, and kissed them, the girls squealing when liberties were taken with them. Occasionally standing in the shadow of the carts, I listened whilst a man would stealthily go up against the blank wall, a woman follow him. I would stand feeling my prick till I saw them come away (in two or three minutes usually), and rush into Mary Davis' or Kate's to get a relief for my excited ballocks. There was but a feeblish light in the street, and in one part of it none.

As I passed I saw a small girl standing inside the door of a house, and thought I would like the little one. Sometimes I wanted the biggest woman I could get, sometimes the smallest. She took no notice of me, I repassed, and there she still stood. "Is she gay?" I wondered, "she does not look it." Lots of girls and women not gay stood in a similar manner in those streets. Again I passed, and stopped. "Will you let me come in, and give you a kiss?" "Yes sir," said she stepping back.

I stepped in after her, one or two steps down. The room was below, and entered direct from the street. A miserable place; on one side a mangle, on another a poor dirty bed, a tile floor, dirty walls, wooden furniture, all miserable. Had I known, I should have been horrified at entering such a hole, but in my lust I thought of nothing but the young girl, of the probable hairless cunt, of her little bum, her smallness and freshness. She looked fifteen years of age, and was quite short.

She closed the door, and looked. I looked at her. "I'll give you five shillings." "All right sir." "Let me look at your quim." "All right sir," said she getting on the bed. I pulled up her clothes, and saw the little thighs, and the little cunt with a very small quantity of lightish brown hair on it. How tight it was to my finger! I took the guttering candle. "I'd like to fuck, but am frightened,--let me look well at your cunt." "I'm all right," said she putting her fingers down, and stretching open the lips, "quite clean indeed sir." "When were you fucked last?" "It must be a week." "Arn't you every night?" "I don't get the chance," still laying on her back, and stretching her cunt-lips open, "I only go to the door quite late, when the neighbours have gone in, cause they ain't gay close here." The house was the last in the street where it narrowed to a footway.

I raised her up, laid her lengthways on the bed, and put my pego into her hand, but fear came over me, and it would not stand. "I must do it to you, but play with it a little." She laid hold of my prick. "It's not stiff." "No my dear, frig it." She began. "Do you like feeling a prick?" "I likes feeling men's things," she replied, "they are such funny things, first little, then big, then little again."

"How old are you?" "Over fifteen, mother says." "Where is your mother?" "In the back room,--look it's getting bigger, I did not think it would be so big,--don't hurt me with your nail sir please," said she frigging away clumsily, and when it was stiff leaving off, but looking earnestly at my pego. I kept probing her cunt with my fingers, wondering at its smallness.

A desire came to make her youthful mouth utter baudiness. "Say cunt dear." "Cunt." "Say fuck." "Fuck." "You know what fucking is?" "Putting that into this," said she with a chuckle, "ain't you going to do it?--I'm quite clean." "Let me look again." Again the little hand down, and stretched the lips. I prepared for action, again fear seized me, and down my doodle drooped. "No dear, lay still, and I'll frig myself over you,--turn on your belly,--let me see your bum,--there that will do." I put some spittle on her bum, and rubbed my prick against it, but longed for the hole between her thighs. "Have you got a French letter?" "I'll ask mother," said she going into the adjoining room.

In came a woman of middle age suckling a baby. "She will fetch one, give her the money,--make haste now,--never mind your bonnet,--run,--run. She won't be long," said the woman to me.

"Your daughter?" I said to the woman who stood suckling her baby, and staring at me. "Yes sir." The baby took to howling. Swinging it about to quiet it, she went on in a whining tone, "We are so poor, we are almost starved, we are,--what was I to do for a living?--I've nearly lost all since my husband's left me, and can't afford to keep a big gal like that; if she will go wrong I can't help it, I can't send her out,--I catched her with a young Gallows, and the mischief were done, it were, I knowed it, and I knowed it would be, so I did,--I could not keep her in, and the chap were allus arter her,--she must live, and she's better at home doing that, than doing it away from me,"--and much of the same sort in a whining, apologetic tone without stopping, without my asking.

"Has she been gay long?" "Bless you sir, it ain't more nor two months since I catched her with young Gallows,--he is in qued,--serve him right; but he'll be after her agin when he is out, he will." "Where is your husband?" "Oh! the vagabond's gone off with a hussey, and left me with three children,--this here's the last. Drat you," said she shaking the infant which would not leave off howling. "Oh! here she is." The girl entered the house with the cundum, and the mother and baby disappeared.

The affair was not enticing, my cock was flabby again, but the little wench's naked belly stirred and stiffened me. I prepared the letter. "Did you ever see one before?" "Yes a gent had one here one night, but he did not put his thing into it." "What did he do then?" "He blew it out, and popped it off," said the girl. "Oh! you wet it,--let me see how you do it,--does it not feel cold?--it's a nasty thing. Indeed I'm all right,--gals has diseases from doing it I know, but I ain't,--look,"--and again the girl distended her cunt-lips without any modesty or affectation.

Fearful, but (as often was the case with me and French letters), my cock and the letter would not agree. My cock stiff without it, drooped its head directly the wet flabby sheep's-gut touched its tip. At length it was over my doodle, and shoved up the little cunt after much trouble. "It don't feel nice," said the girl. A few shoves more, and I lost all prudence, pulled it off, and drove my naked prick with such a thrust up her little quim, that she cried out. Her cry of pain gave me pleasure, and fetched me.

No one can lay so close up to you as a thin girl, two stout people can't stick together like two lean ones. As I came to myself the little girl was wriggling under me. "Oh! dear, just as it was beginning to feel nice,--why did you do it so quick?" "Do you want it?" "Oh! I do,--do shove a little,"--and the little cunt squeezed itself up to my belly, and wriggled my doodle in her. I accepted the invitation, the girl spent, and I had a second pleasure up her, after I had pulled my prick out for a minute or two, to inspect it.

She brought me a basin, soap, and a napkin of beautiful quality and white. "Ulloh! is this yours?" "It's something we had to wash and mangle," said the girl. "It's a table napkin." "Yes sir."

"Don't you make a living by washing and mangling?" "No," said she, "we have lost our business, father ran away, took linen, and sold it,--people won't trust us,--none of those who lost their linen,--others don't know us. Thank you sir," as I gave her the five shillings, "we don't have as much sometimes in two days." "Wash your cunt my dear." She went out of the room, and came back saying she had washed it. I felt it, and she had. Then I talked for an hour with her.

I was curious. "Tell me who first did it to you." "I shant." "It was a coster lad, your mother has told me." "She has not." "She has." "Yes it was a coster I knowed, he's been locked up for a row, and breaking windows,--he is seventeen." "When did he first do it to you?" "I shant tell you," said the girl laughing, "mother's listening, I know she is." I had the poor girl on my knee, was pulling her pretty tight little cunt about. "I'd like to do it again," said I. "You may, and welcome," said the girl. "Ain't you fucked every night?" "No, I wish I were,--to get money." "Where is the five shillings?" "Mother's taken it, she always does." I fucked her again, gave her a trifle more, left, and never had her after.

Then I had a woman of a singular build: she was shortish, and had the hardest flesh on her bum I ever felt, it was impossible to pinch it. She was a very large bummed woman, it was quite out of proportion to her size, so were her breasts. She was as near as I can recollect about twenty, but had the form of a woman of thirty, her cunt was almost hairless, and had no lips, the lappels and clitoris showed when she was standing up with thighs closed; when her thighs were open her cunt looked as if the lips had been cut off, she had lightish brown hair and almost colourless eyes. Her room was ragged, and I always found her cooking, she wore garters of ragged ribbon below her knees, and ragged slippers. For all that I went to see her I suppose a dozen times, and nearly always fucked her from behind, dog-fashion. The arse-cheeks were so firm, that I delighted to feel, and slap them as I fucked; and spite of her big bum I recollect no woman whose cunt I got further up in that position, as I did hers.

One day she said whilst I was fucking her, "I thought you were going to try the other hole." I looked, and her arsehole was as plainly visible in the rear as her split was visible in the front. I can't tell now how it came about, but know we began talking about that hole, and its pleasures. One night from talking I got to action, she said she would like her bum-hole broached. Such things were not to my taste, but egged on by her talk I tried; then she said she was afraid it would hurt, and although we talked more than once about it, and she always asked me to try, it always ended in nothing, and I avoided her soon after.

In the next street a woman after I had done her said, "You have got me in the family way." Something led to my remarking that I should like to fuck a woman in the family way, and her saying that she knew one who would be confined in a fortnight, a nice woman, a fine woman, her sister, the wife of a mechanic, but badly off just now. I can't tell what had made me take such a desire, but I said I would give a sovereign to see her cunt and big belly, and fuck her, and would give five shillings if she would get this for me, not believing she was a married woman, or her sister, although the wench said so.

Asserting that it was no gay woman, and that a sovereign would be a great help; she would go and see about it, if I would wait. Returning she said that if I would really give a sovereign her sister would let me, but that I could not stop long, for fear of her husband. We went into an adjacent street of poor houses, but evidently with a different class of tenants. She entered one, I waited close by till she beckoned me in, then I found a decent young woman with an enormous belly who asked me to show her the sovereign first, then to give it to her first, which I would not. She dallied, and put off the affair, and I thought I was hum-bugged. At length she got on to a clean although humble bed, the other woman pulled up her clothes, I smoothed her belly, and with much trouble got her legs open, and tried to see her cunt.

She resisted, but gave way under the persuasion of the other woman who kept saying, "Do now,--what did you say yes for, if you meant no?--a bargain is a bargain,--don't make a fool of me,--well if you are ashamed now, you should abin afore," and so forth. At length I had had a good look at her cunt.

Then I longed for a fuck, indeed took a letch for it, pulled out my prick, and asked her to let me have her. "Not she," said the sister, "you have seen all, and must be off, her man may come home at any minute." The big-bellied one was much more quiet, laughed, I took out my sovereign, wetted it with my spittle, and balancing it on the top of my prick, told her to take it off, which she did in a very clever way; for instead of taking it off with one hand, she shut one hand against the other, enclosing my prick and the sovereign too in her hands. Both women laughed, and the gay one said, "Well Mary, you've had more than one man's in your hand now at all events,--you'll never tell Jack I'll swear,--now go sir,--her man don't like me here, and he won't like you, I'll swear."

My letch overcame me, I forgot how poor I was, and would have given my clothes off my back for a poke up the cunt beneath that hard big belly, so asked her again, and stood with my prick out, both women laughing. I prayed her to let me again feel, and she consented. She was then sitting down, I had to put my hands up her clothes, and stoop to do it, my back was to her so-called sister. She laughed, and looking at her sister whilst I felt her, caught hold of my prick, gave it a grasp, and immediately relinquished it. Her sister did not see this done.

I dallied a few minutes with her cunt, and fancied that if the other woman was out of the way the big-bellied one would be complaisant. So I asked if there was good gin to be had. It was a bait that the sister took at once. Yes there was. I gave her money to fetch gin, and to buy a bun and a bottle of ginger-beer; a move to keep her out of the way as long as I could.

I had buttoned my trousers up, and ceased feeling and asking; but the instant she was gone, out I pulled my stiff-stander. "Let me fuck you." "Oh! she won't be long." "I won't be a minute." I flew to the door, and locked it, the woman got up from the chair; made no resistance, raised her bum with difficulty on to the bed, opened her thighs and we fucked in a jiffy. It seemed that I no sooner was cunted than we both spent. I unlocked the door, and by the time the other woman returned, not six minutes had passed. The two sat gin-drinking a few minutes, and then the harlot and I left together.

As I uncunted I whispered, "When your sister is gone I'll come back." "Very well." The gay woman made off at the end of the street in the direction of her house. Waiting a minute I returned to the big-bellied one, who was at the door, we went in, and I locked the door. "My man may be home at any minute," said she, "so we must be quick." I threw her on the edge of the bed again, her cunt was still covered with my sperm, and turning her arse towards me we fucked dog-fashion. She enjoyed it. The instant my prick was out I was off. I never saw her, or her sister again.

Both women were tallish, and spoke with a strong Northern accent. I quite believe the one with the swollen belly was not gay.

These are the most noticeable events which occurred during the period of my narrowest means. In that time I must have seen the privates of fifty women, and copulated with nearly that number. Had it not been for their pleasures, coarse as they were, I think I should have made away with myself, so miserable was I. How I accommodated myself to the class I can't imagine; for although a few were nice, prettyish, healthy women, the majority were low coarse creatures, living in poor single rooms which were often not clean; but both rooms and women were as good as could be expected for the few shillings I gave for their pleasures.

My strong animal wants carried me through, and added to that perhaps was a certain amusement in noticing the difference in manner between them, and the highly paid Bonarobas, whose silks, satins, and laces I had helped to pay for at the rate of a sovereign an hour, and often higher. Besides as already said, my imagination helped me. When my prick was up one of the ill-favored ones, and I was clasping a flabby backside, I used to shut my eyes, and fancy some charming creature whom I had had elsewhere. I cultivated these dreams in copulating.

Up to this period I had tailed a neighbourhood of free cunts, as far as trifling sums would get them me. A shilling a feel, or a look at the nudity, and for half-a-crown to five shillings at the outside for complete enjoyment was a tariff generally accepted.

Then a remnant of my former fortune which had been in litigation was settled in my favour, and I had a little ready money. Immediately I left off frequenting the poor Doxies of whom I have told, and went to a higher class, in a better neighbourhood. My money was soon gone, for I had debts among other things to settle out of it. Whilst it lasted I had some very nice women, among whom I shall always recollect a tall, superbly shaped creole, with dazzling white teeth (a feature in women which always has had a great attraction for me), and who was one of the most voluptuous women in her embraces I ever yet have had; but she was plain almost to ugliness. In the rest of my amours there was nothing to need special notice, they were all fugitive, and the women were changed frequently.

It is difficult to narrate more without divulging my outer life. I would fain keep that hidden, but it is impossible, I shall however tell as little as may be and obscure it, but without falsifying or distorting any facts relating to my amorous pranks, some of which were not sought by me. I fain would have led a steadier life, and wished a home with a woman I could love; but I had an unquiet home, and a woman there whom I hated in bed and at board. I tried at times to overcome my antipathy, abstained from women for weeks at a time, so that sexual want might generate a sort of love, but it was useless, without reward, and a life of misery was before me. I broke out under it, wonder I did not break down, and should have done so, had it not been for whores. Cunt came to my rescue, and alone gave me forgetfulness, a relief far better than gambling or drinking, the only other alternatives I could have had recourse to.

And now I pass over a short period, in which I did much the same as I have just written of, until a lucky sympathy brought me a happier change in my amours.





CHAPTER XIX.


     My home life.--Heart-broken.--In the parlour.--Maid Mary's
     sympathy.--Don't cry master.--On the sofa.--Both in lust.--
     Impotent.

 I was still poor, but had got into an employment, and was living in a small eight-roomed house. I kept one servant only, but was pinched to keep up appearances. None of the outside world could have known how much I was pinched. I went home regularly, sat for hours by myself reading, brooding, fretting, and even crying bitter tears, at the time I take up my narrative.

Our servant was named Mary. A tall woman about twenty-one years of age, splendidly built, stout of form, and with big breasts and haunches. Her face was lovely, her eyes almost the most beautiful hazel I ever saw, its expression dove-like, her complexion as clear and bright as a rose. She looked as if she ate three meals a day, shit regularly, slept eight hours, and was fucked nightly, and was in brief a most lovely creature, and the picture of health. She had a mouth filled with lovely teeth, one of which was missing, and showed its absence when she laughed, it was the only defect visible about her. Another handsome woman whom I have had since, had also lost two front-teeth, which showed in a similar manner, but that lady always smiled, and rarely laughed, so as to avoid showing the defect. False teeth were a rarity in those days, and quite beyond the means of poor people.

She had been with us about three months. There was mystery about her, like a former servant of my mother's, she scarcely ever wanted to go out. At times we heard her singing, at others sobbing, and it used to be remarked that she was moping. I thought my wife knew more about her than she said, but to her I spoke as little as possible about anything. Mary was an indifferent but willing servant, was said to have come from the country, to have been living with an aunt a short time in London, and that ours was her first place. She was with us pretty well worked and scolded, but not by me.

I had been struck by her beauty and her ways, which were winning, friendly, and unlike a servant's, yet without being presuming, and I was as kind to her, both in manner and word as I dared to be; but I had been annoyed and suspected for speaking kindly to servants, and to avoid strife was cold, even harsh to them in manner. Mary was witness of the sullen domestic misery in which I lived. I had seen a pained, sympathetic glance at me at times when she heard our wrangles, and was confident that she pitied me.

Nevertheless I had no sensual intentions towards her, holding it as fitting carefully to respect my home, whatever I did out of it. I might have thought about her hidden charms and probably had had that tingling in my prick which a pretty woman often gives a man however virtuous he may be. But it went no further.

My last clap may have made me abstinent, or want of money had, or perhaps other motives which beset a man who wished a different order of things in his home affected me, for I know that for weeks I had barely had an emission, excepting by nocturnal dreams; and though dying for a genial fuck, yet avoided it, and worked at my occupation to get money and forget my troubles. This woman changed all my resolves, and launched me again into sexual pleasures. I may remark also, curious as it may seem, that instead of fattening, and getting strong by abstinence, I got just the reverse. Every time I spent involuntarily on my night-shirt, I awaked fatigued, agitated, nervous. I lost appetite, got thinner and thinner, and more and more miserable the less I had women.

One fine summer's afternoon I came home before my usual time, it was about four o'clock P.M. Mary opened the door, she was alone in the house. I went to my room, then came down into the parlours, and for a time sat there looking into my garden and smoking. Grief overcame me as I looked round at the home in which there was no one to welcome me, so I walked into the garden, and saw the maid doing some work at the back kitchen door. "Your mistress is out?" I had never on any day asked that before, as far as I can recollect, not caring to know; and she might have been upstairs. "Yes sir." "Did she say when she would return?" "No sir, but it will be I dare say about the usual time." "When is that?" "Half-past five, or six o'clock, perhaps later." I again turned down the garden, and as that did not relieve my dullness, returned to the house. I could not read though I tried, sat down on a chair by the dining-room table, laid my head on my hands upon it, and thought of my unhappy home till I cried bitterly.

A hand laid on my shoulder, a voice said, "Don't you take on so Master,--don't you now,--she's not worth it,--cheer up,--don't you take on so." I looked up, it was Mary looking full at me, her eyes full of tears.

I started up astonished. "I beg your pardon," said she looking uncomfortable, "I couldn't bear to see you so unhappy." Her interest in me struck me to the heart, without premeditation I threw my arms round her, pressed her mouth to mine, it unresistingly met it, and we passionately kissed for two or three minutes; kissed till I recovered my senses, my tears still running down, and then said, "Mary you are kind,--you are a dear, good girl,--a good, affectionate, loving creature,--I am unhappy, miserable, but how do you know that?" "How could I be off of knowing?--how could you be anything else with her?--but don't take on so Master,--she beant worth it,--and you so good, and so kind,--I hate her when I look at her, and then look at you. Oh! I beg your pardon sir,--don't say anything,"--and as if astonished at herself, she disengaged herself, and stood looking at me. I closed with her again, folding her tightly to me, and we kissed till we could kiss no longer. My tears fell on her face, and hers ran down my cheeks, so close were they together.

The parlours divided by folding doors mostly open, ran from back to front. A sofa was close by the dining-table. "Sit down," said I. She did. I put my arm round her neck, pulled her face to mine, and kissed again that divinely pink and velvety cheek. Then her arm went round my waist, and lips to lips, each instant we kissed, and sat and talked of my miseries; yet as far as I recollect not the slightest desire to have her had then come into my head, all was delight at my trouble being shared, at a kind, soft, pretty woman commiserating me.

After long talking and kissing, and looking at her, a sense of her great beauty suddenly struck me, just as if I had never noticed it before. I recollect telling her so.

Then a thrill of desire shot through me and staggered me. I trembled as the want overtook me, and drew her closer to me, kissed more fervently, and sighed. She sighed. My lust had kindled hers, and yet I had not spoken of it. My hand went on to her knees, I felt the thighs gently, felt their plumpness through the summer clothing, slowly my hand dropped lower kissing her all the while, and bending her forward with me, as I bent forward, with my dropping hand.

A long pause. I scarcely knew why, and then my hand went still lower, till it touched her ankles, still kissing her, and bending her with me (oh! how well I recollect it), then my right hand went quite slowly up her clothes to her knees, and there I stopped, frightened at my advances. Opening her eyes she gently repulsed me, and murmured, "Oh! Master,--Master,--what are you doing,--pray don't." Her eyes were filled with soft passion, her resistance physically would not have moved a butterfly, but morally she affected me. I became conscious of what I was driving on to un-premeditatingly.

I desisted, removed my hand, but passion now controlled me. I kissed again. "Let me feel, oh! let me dear feel you," bending her forward with me, I replaced my hand. "Oh! Master pray don't,--think what you are doing,--of who I am," said she lovingly. "Oh! I won't," said she sharply,--but too late, my fingers were on her clitoris, I had begun that gentle twiddling which always ends in fucking. "Oh!--no,--oh!-- pray." Voluptuousness had overcome her, her mouth was glued to mine, her eyes fixed on mine; gently they closed, then opened, always looking into mine. Her breathing was short, she was past thought, she was mine. Gently pressing her back on the sofa, she raised her limbs, I lifted her clothes, and tearing open my trousers threw myself on her. My fingers for an instant touched her cunt, a rapid probe, and then my prick! My God! it was not standing, not a bit of swell or stiffness was in it, it was as a sucked gooseberry, a mere bit of dwindling, flexible, skinny gristle, a piece of loose, flabby flesh, and nothing more.

I had been occasionally, but rarely suddenly unequal to love's duty as already told, had gone home with gay women, my prick standing as I entered their houses, then suddenly it had shrunk, something about them having upset me. Occasionally it was a sudden fear of the ladies' fever, or something looked less inviting when their petticoats were off, than I had imagined when drapery hid their charms, or else the fear that my prick would be thought small. At other times I could not account for it at all. I told my doctor of it. He said that it was nervousness, but the knowledge that I had once been so affected, affected me often afterwards when I went indoors with girls. "Shall I be able to fuck?" I used to think, I who had already fucked two hundred women. But so it was, a fear of inability brought on inability. The power often returned to me a few minutes afterwards, yet sometimes not for hours.

There was nothing to account for it now, I had more or less abstained for weeks, there lay one of the choicest female forms ever presented to man's eyes, a dark-brown crispy-haired cunt with a tiny bit of pink clitoris showing between a large pair of thighs like ivory, and a sweet face above turned on one side with eyes closed, and blushing and yielding up to me. And I liked the woman, felt mad for her, yet as my prick rubbed against her pleasure-pit, it became useless. I got up, looked at her as she lay motionless with thighs extended, stood almost frantic, frigged my prick, probed her, and again threw myself on her as I stiffened; but no sooner had my prick touched her beautiful cunt, than as if bewitched, it shrunk from entering it, I could not even thumb it up.

I broke into a sweat. "My God what will she think of me?" I dreaded to get off, and look her in the face, feeling so ashamed, I kissed her taking her head in my hands, again got off, kissed all round her cunt, and smelt its inciting aroma, asked her to be still, said I should be all right directly. So time wore on, she never moving excepting to push her clothes down as I rose and exposed her, nor opening her eyes, nor uttering a word. "My God what is the matter with me, I don't know but I can't," I said at last. Then she put quite down her clothes, and sitting up on the sofa gave me a kiss, said, "I must go, and see about laying the things for dinner," and off she went.

I did not stop her, but was glad when she left the room, being so ashamed that I could not look at her. It was a relief not to have to speak, to excuse, to explain. I was reeking with sweat from exertion and nervous anxiety sat thinking and frigging, felt sensation of pleasure without stiffness, and only stiffened after half-an-hour's rubbing. With prick out and in hand, downstairs then I went, she was boiling potatoes.

"Mary come up, come, I am all right,--let me." She would not. "I can't Master, I can't,--what will Missus think if she finds nothing ready?" Nor could I induce her. I incited her by talk, she kept on ejaculating "oh!" to my baudy remarks, and blushing like a rose; but I could get no more. "If Missus comes home, and sees you through the area, what will she say?--Pray go up Master." Yielding under the fear of being surprised, at length up I went to the parlour.

I knew she would be up to lay the cloth, waited in the parlour till she did, keeping my prick in hand, and trembling with anxiety. When she had laid it, "Now," said I, "look here." "No,--no,--no,--Missus may be home,--pray think of me." But a stiff prick close to a randy woman is a great persuader. "Come dear, come," and I pulled her. Again she was down on the sofa, again that divine belly was under me, again as I opened the lips of her cunt my prick dwindled to nothing. "Hush! there's Mistress' step,--there is the front-gate slamming. Get up,--get up, oh! let me get up." Upstairs I rushed to my own sitting-room as I heard a knock at the door, and had only time to button up my disgraced doodle before I heard the woman tramping upstairs to our bed-room above. How I loathed her!

Half-an-hour after that I sat down to dinner, having composed myself. Mary brought up the dishes. The instant I saw her my cock stiffened, it kept stiff all the evening, I could not sleep for it, was tempted to fuck, or frig myself, but did neither, feeling sure I should have Mary, and would not spend a drop of my sperm till I did. "What does she think of me?--will she believe I am a man?--will she let me again?--when shall I get the chance?--what enervated me so at the critical moment?--oh! my God if she lets me, and I am seized so again, what shall I do then?"--and so on ran my thoughts. I lay planning how to get her the whole night, and awakened haggard and unrefreshed in the morning.

Then I reflected less nervously. "My finger has been up her cunt," I thought, "no pain, no recoil,--how quiet she laid,--then she has been fucked before,--then what must she think of me?" and so on ran my thoughts till I was in an agony of disgrace. My haggard look was noticed. I was worried, and should not be home to dinner. "Why?" That was my business. Well then she would spend the afternoon with Mrs. -------- would I fetch her? Yes at half-past ten o'clock. She wanted to come home earlier. Then she might come by herself. Well then she would wait for me till half-past ten.





CHAPTER XX.


     The next day.--On the door-mat.--On the sofa.--On her
     belly.--Eight hours fucking.--At a brothel.--An afternoon's
     amusement.

 Instead of being late I went home about two P.M., just after luncheon time. "Is Mary alone, or not?" I thought, and had arranged for that. I waited in a cab, told a boy to take a letter to No.----but not to give it unless the lady was at home; if she were not, to bring it back to me, and he should have a shilling when he returned to me. If asked, he was to say he had been told to leave it, but not to say by whom. The letter was properly addressed, but inside was a sheet of blank paper only. Back he came with the letter,--the lady was out.

Even then I was not sure, so drove up and down two or three times in front of my house, to see if I could discover any signs of Mary not being alone, and then I dismissed the cab. My prick had been standing on and off all day, I was in a fearful state of nervous erotic excitement. When I thought of her beautiful belly my prick nearly lifted me off the seat, the next minute I had fears of being taken as I had been the day previously. Would she let me now?--would she be in the mood?--would she not laugh at me, instead of putting her arms around my neck, and her eyes fill with tears? My heart beat audibly with these tumultuous thoughts as I knocked at the door. To my horror I felt my prick shrinking as I stood on the landing feeling it through my trousers pocket.

Mary opened the door, surprise in her eyes, and a slight look of fear. "You sir!" "Is your Mistress in?" "No sir." To step inside, close the door, place my arms round her, and kiss her rapturously was the work of an instant. She kissed me, and I her for a minute, and glory to God my prick was like a rod of hot iron standing up against my belly, and throbbing to emit its juices up the dear girl's cunt, against which its poor little tip not twenty-four hours before had dangled and rubbed so uselessly.

A stoop, a struggle. "Adun now--Master,--you shant,--oh! you musn't," and again I was upright, my lips on her sweet lips, my finger on her clitoris, her face scarlet with modesty, her eyes closed. What woman can long withstand that irritating, voluptuous, restless movement, of the male finger on her cunt? Soft words now, "Oh! don't," as I stooped down to lift her petticoats, and she pushed them over my hand. Another slight struggle, again our lips meet, again my finger rubs the smooth clitoris, now her hand grasps a hot prick, and with her lips to mine she stands with her back up against the wall of the passage close to the street-door on the door-mat. So we stand kissing and feeling, I don't know how long, for who can count time in such delights.

"Come to the parlour, come." "No, no,--oh I pray." I edged her along, one hand still up her petticoats, she trying to push them down. "No I won't,--there now." "Do Mary dear,--let's do it,--I'm a man,--let's do it,--look, look how my prick throbs for you,--it will spend." Removing my hand from her cunt, I seized hold of both her hands with mine, and began gently dragging her along the passage to the parlour, she leaning back gently resisting, I leaning back tugging her, my prick red-tipped, stiff, and throbbing standing out in its randy glory between us.

I got her into the parlour, a flood of sunshine struck full on us from the back window as we did so (windows both back and front in the long room). There she seemed half unconscious. Kind of heart, pitying, liking me, her splendid healthy physique, her fully-developed passions, passions of which she had tasted the full pleasure, but which had been for a long time ungratified, were roused to intensity by the feel of my prick, by my groping her cunt, by the excitement of the position; all had relazed her nervous system, and absorbed her in voluptuousness. What did she think? Did she think at all?--did she ever know? How can I recollect what I thought in that maddening moment of fierce desire to have her? I grasped her round the waist, and pushed her to the sofa. No resistance, not a word was said. My arse knocked hard against the table, and hurt me. She is down on the sofa, her petticoats up, I see the creamy flesh, large round thighs, the dark hair on her cunt for a second, I am on her, up her, a slight sob as my prick goes up with the thrust of a giant, and we are spending in each other's embraces, mouth to mouth, belly to belly, prick to cunt, ballocks to bum-cheeks, almost the instant I had covered her, and grasped her smooth fat buttocks. I have no sense of time, all is oblivium and elysium at the same time.

Our sighs of pleasure are over, there is no uncunt-ing, no stopping; but with rigid prick still up to its roots in her cunt, on again we go fucking in earnest. Now is the higher pleasure. The first was a maddening desire for each other, a fuck finished before it was begun. Now we are fucking with soft pleasure, and the thoughts of the greater pleasure to come, of my spunk to spurt, of her juices to ooze to meet it, in a cunt already flooded. I recollect smoothing her hair back from her forehead as I fucked, of kissing and meeting her tongue with mine, and spending with rapture, then waking from a doze, and finding her half asleep, I on the top of her, my cock still up her. My trousers not let down had ridden up, and were cutting me tightly under my balls with a painful sensation, and all this was on a narrowish sofa, a modern cheap bit of furniture unlike the grand big one in mother's house, on which many a servant had had her cunt basted by me.

She lay with her beautiful head on one side, with eyes closed, with her long hair falling loose, and her cap tumbled off. As I lay I loosened my braces, and little by little took the strain off my testicles, and my balls fell down into their natural position. I put my hand down to feel how my prick lay, the sperm was oozing out all round it. I wanted to see her quim, and pulled out, then putting my hands against the sofa-squab, I pushed myself gently up, rose on to my knees between her thighs, and looking down saw the sperm between her cunt-lips.

She opened her eyes, pushing gently down her clothes; but the glance had been enough. With prick still stiffish down I fell on her, and was up her again in the twinkling of an eye, lodging my prick in preparation for another fuck.

Now all is clear, our lust assuaged. "I've fucked you,--I'm a man you see," I cried triumphantly. She closed her eyes, my prick came out, I pushed it back, again out, again up, and so on for a time. A long business was fucking now, long friction, no result, then a long rest, our genitals joined, their hairs glued together, yet no fear of a failure. My machine went on ramming, moans of pleasure at length came from her, her hands clasped me tightly, and with a heave and cry of "Oh! my darling," she again spent with me, my prick aching with its labour of love.

Then I dozed an instant on her, she seemed asleep, I was squeezed uncomfortably next the wall, my prick satisfied with its duty, at the first movement left her cunt. I moved her to get off, my trousers had dropped to my knees, entangled my legs, and I gently fell on to the floor, catching at her outer thigh, and pulling it off the sofa as I did so to break my tumble. Up she sat dazed, her petticoats above her knees, I at her feet, looking intently where her closing thighs hid the seat of our pleasures from me.

"Oh! my gracious!" said she starting up, and letting down one front-blind quite, and half of the other (there were two windows that side of the room). The brilliant sun had lowered, and came into the room in a flood of radiance from the back-window, and the room was light and bright throughout its long and narrow length. Although in a very wide street, the neighbours from the houses opposite could easily have seen right into our room, could have seen us on the sofa. Usually when sitting in the room at that hour of the day, we kept down the blind of the back-window to prevent this. Worse than that, the steps to the street-door were so close to one front-window, that by stretching forward (very much it is true, but I had done it), any one could see into the room, even on to half of the sofa on which Mary and I had been amusing ourselves. What an awful risk we had run.

We looked at each other anxiously. "Oh!" said she, "if any one saw us!" I looked through our blind. Every blind in the houses opposite was drawn down to shut out the sun. Then I sat by her side, did nothing but look at her for a time, so delighted and satisfied was I at having vindicated my manhood, until she rose to go. That aroused me, and I stopped her.

"Let me go." "No." "If Mistress comes home--" "She won't." "She may." "No,--I've fucked you,--you thought I was not a man, did you not?" "Do let me go." "Come up again then." "Well presently." "You are going to wash your cunt." "Hush Master." "You shant go." "Now let me." "Kiss me then." We kissed and kissed. Could I do it again? The idea of her moistened cunt inflamed me, I pulled her back, thrust my fingers on to her cunt spite of her resistance, and never shall I forget the feel of that and her thighs. "It's dirty of you," said Mary, and disengaged herself she rushed downstairs. I followed her into the back-kitchen, were she washed her quim in a wooden bowl, but did not dry it. I chaffed her, then we went into the front-kitchen, sat down, and looked at each other without speaking, like two amorous cats, she blushing, and turning down her eyes as if she guessed what was in my mind. At length I blurted out what was there, I always did it till much later in life, and I had grown wiser. "You've had it done to you before to-day." "Oh!" said she starting up, then sitting down again, and bursting into tears, "Of course I have,--poor fellow,--poor fellow,--why did he leave me!"

Embarrassed and sorry at such a consequence of my speech, I tried a few words of comfort. She dried up her tears, and began her household work. I followed her about, talking, kissing, and putting my hand up her clothes, until in due time we adjourned to the parlour, and then again I fucked her, this time on the hearth-rug, the sofa-squab under her head, the sofa was too small for comfort.

Time was before us, all seemed delicious, the domesticity of the amorous amusements, the passion with which she returned my embraces, her modesty and enjoyment were all so like the days when I fucked my mother's servants. The difference between her sensuous embraces and the matter of fact fucking at five shillings a head I had been so long accustomed to, overwhelmed me with gratification. We had tea. Then as I had had no dinner, and there was none for me, I ate bread and cheese, and opened a bottle of port-wine, and in an hour we fucked again, and again. At nine o'clock she had supper, and we fucked after it. She sat on my lap, I played with her cunt, she with my prick, and we kissed till our lips were sore. But nothing would induce her to let me see her limbs, nor do more than feel her cunt, and take my pleasure in it.

From two in the afternoon till ten at night was I feeling her quim, kissing, and fucking. We were both exhausted. I got into bed intending to say I had come home ill, took a pill to open my bowels, and begged in a pot that night to keep up the sham (there was no closet in the house). As the street-door bell rang I was in my night-shirt, standing by her side, trying to frig my prick up to standpoint. In bed I jumped, downstairs bolted she. In ten minutes it was, "Don't make that noise, I have a billious headache." I never closed my eyes that night, could scarcely believe what had occurred, and tossed and tumbled, thinking of the pleasure I had had. Though we had been nearly eight hours doing nothing else, it seemed not an hour. How often I fucked her I don't know, it seemed as if I was at least half of the eight hours up her cunt, which is absurd; but it was one of my greatest feats in the fucking line, the longest and most pleasureable.

Next morning, haggard, jaded, worn out, the billious attack got the credit of it, I laid abed all the morning, and went out late. When at business I fell asleep, unable to work, came home at about the same time as on the previous day with no idea of chance favouring me, but it did. Mary was alone, and we fucked as hard as we could. She laid the cloth and dinner-things my sperm dripping from her cunt. I had just spent up her as the street-door bell rang, buttoned up my trousers, turned on my side on the sofa, and shammed sleep. "Is your Master home?" "Yes Mamm, he seems quite ill." "Where is he?" "On the sofa, fast asleep I think Mamm." Again the billious attack had all the credit of it. I had pulled down the blinds which covered the window through which the room could be partly seen from the landing outside. Five minutes after I was sitting at dinner with the smell of Mary's cunt on my fingers, my prick sticking to my shirt, for I had never washed it, nor piddled since it had left Mary's body.

Luck helped me for a day or two. The illness of a relative took the other person interested in this out of the house at unusual times, and Mary and I did all we could in an hour or two. It was more exciting now than ever to see a woman bolt downstairs directly she had been fucked, to cook potatoes, or to eject me from her cunt, and leave the fuck undone, because there was a ring at the bell. It was old times come again, but with greater risk, more serious consequences if found out, yet with greater zest and enjoyment.

Then luck ceased, the house was never left, and all I could get was a stray kiss, and a slight feel of her quim. But oh! the delight of that rapid feel round the warm, smooth bum and thighs, and the push up between the warm, moist cunt-lips when I got it.

Then came her holiday. We went to a baudy house in E.. t. r street. She had a large paper parcel in her hand when I met her. "What's that?" "Cherries,--I know you are fond of them, so bought some."

What a jolly afternoon we spent. Although I had had her many times, she had not willingly let me see her person, I had had glimpses, and no more now. In a trice she had stripped to her chemise, I to my shirt. What lovely breasts, what splendid limbs, what thighs and arse-globes. In an instant I was on the bed with her. After a fuck we fell fast asleep, she had done so similarly at my house on the sofa, and on the floor. She always did after a spend. I never met such a woman in that respect. As regularly as she copulated she went to sleep after, and said she could not help it. When awakened she asked for cherries, and we lay and dallied, and ate cherries at intervals. There was now no reticence, all her charms were open to my sight and touch. "Why did you not let me at home Mary?" "My linen warnt clean," I remember that well. "How many times did we fuck that first day." "Don't you know? I've been trying to recollect, and can't," she replied laughing.

She was a lovely woman, had firm, smooth, creamy flesh, was as plump as a sucking-pig, a fat cunt of my favorite style then, and the loveliest coloured hair on it I ever saw; but it was ample, both inside and outside, I had experience enough to know that even then, though its grip of the prick was heavenly. Her form and figure was if anything, what may be called thick, the ankles and wrists were thick, but neither feet or hands were large, her breasts and bum were faultless. Take her all in all she was a superb creature, and had such a complexion!

I sent for wine and biscuits, for we got thirsty and hungry, and then amidst amorous dalliance we chatted. She astonished me not a little about her career. I was always curious with a woman whom I had poked, and till I had heard something about her was not satisfied. Whether lies or truth I always got a history of some sort out of a woman of Mary's class, and usually got the main facts truly. I have tested them. But not so with gay women, they mostly lie heavily.

"Master (she always addressed me so in country fashion and dialect), you know." "I?" "Yes." "No." "You do." "What nonsense." "Ain't she told you?" "No." "Why she knows all about me, she caught me crying one day, spoke kindly, it made me open my heart, and I told her all!--yet she has never told you?" "Never, and if you have told her anything about yourself that you had better have kept to yourself, you will regret it." "I fear I shall." Then little by little, amidst tears and caresses, she told me her history, and again did on future days, and I saw her letters, rings, jewellery, silks, and other proofs, I knew the town she lived in, know some of the people in it whom she mentioned, and was satisfied with the truth of every part of her story. One gentleman she named was to have married one of my sisters--how strange!





CHAPTER XXI.


     Preliminary.--Maid Mary's seduction.--Flight.--Desertion.--
     Going to the post-office.--A halfpenny signal.--Against an
     arm-chair.--The privy watched.--Nearly caught.--Mary
     suspected.--Dismissed.--In lodgings.--Service again.--My
     cousin sir.--Letters lost.--Mary disappears.--Seven years
     afterwards.--Sequel.

 The daughter of a small inn-keeper at the town of B.. t. n, she was at a public hall. A young gentleman danced with her, afterwards paid attentions to her, and induced her to run off with him. "Oh! I was just as bad as him, poor fellow! When he got me into the room I felt sure what he was after, knew it was wrong, knew he would want me, and that I should let him. I wanted to let him do it, to be all to him, I did not want it done to me for myself, not that I recollect, I dare say I might, but don't recollect that; but I wanted him to do with me what he liked, anything he liked, anything he wanted to do me. I would have let him do anything that would make him happy, and seem as if I belonged to him entirely, and he to me for ever."

"And he did it?" "Yes. I stopped out all night and next day, and then went home frightened. I was father's favorite, he had been hunting for me like mad all over the town, and letting people know I was not at home. He hit me,--there was such a row!--my sister spat at me, and called me a whore. I never slept all night, and hadn't slept the night before, what with his a pulling me about and doing it, and my fear of being found out. I was ill, and father kept me locked up in my room a week, because I would not tell him where I had been and with who. I said I had been to an aunt's, he went to her, and found I had fibbed. At length he let me out, because he wanted me to attend to his business, and the first man I saw in the bar was my dear boy,--I nearly fainted."--These were as nearly as possible her own words describing her seduction, they are so unlike the confessions I have had from other women, that the very words sank deep into my mind.

After that he used to go and drink at the bar, her father talked with him, not knowing he was the man who had broached his daughter. She was watched till life was unbearable, her sister worried her (she had no mother), neighbours who had thought well of her began to sneer, a country swain who liked her was saucy to her, one or two swells in the neighbourhood who had been accustomed to see her about, and admired her beauty, were now free in their behaviour. One took liberties with her, and in the public-house began asking her smutty questions. Weary with all this, liking the man whose sperm had wetted her virgin cunt, perhaps longing to have more (although she always declared to me that she had no recollection of that desire affecting her), one night she ran away to London with him.

They lived in London nine months. Then came grief. He was the son of a West-India planter who had sent him to London to pass as barrister. His father's agents found out the connection with Mary, and wrote to the father that he was spending his money, but not advancing his career. His father objected, then threatened, and then his allowance was stopped. They lived on what they had, until penniless. He wrote that he was going to marry Mary, and his father replied that if he did he need never return and might starve. He was a gentleman, and could not get his living, he tried but failed. Then the father wrote, requesting him to return, and saying he would provide for Mary. Misery stared them in the face, and he consented to go home.

His father remitted money. The first thing he did was to take all Mary's jewelry and clothes out of pawn, and then to arrange for her to live. He promised to come back, and marry her, and some sort of such promise was made by his father's agents. He begged her to go home, but she would not. Then he put her to lodge with a small middle-class woman whom he bribed to give Mary a character as a servant, for he declared he would remain, and ruin himself for ever, if she neither would go home, nor go to service. Mary remained there a couple of months, dressing plainly, and only going to see him in his lodgings at night, or to meet him at places where it would not be known. Then he went to India. Repeated threats of his father, and his want of money would let him stay no longer.

The father arranged that Mary should be paid fifteen shillings a week, and they paid it for some time. She wanted to write to her lover, but had mislaid his address, the agents said that their instructions were to stop the weekly payment if she corresponded with him; but he wrote to her, she replied, and then their payments ceased. Her lover then sent her money; but his father found that out, and kept him penniless. She was in London now alone, knowing not a person, again he sent her trifling sums, but begged her to go out to service, or she would become a gay woman (I have seen his letters). She used to go out, sit down on a green close by, and cry all day. One day a middle-aged woman accosted her, she told a little of her grief to her, it was something to tell her grief, even to a stranger. The woman told some plausible story, and she went to see her (I had the address). There the woman asked to see her partly undressed, and told her that with such legs and breasts she might have silk dresses and jewelry galore, in fact incited her to be a gay woman. True to her lover, she did as he advised. The female with whom she lived gave her a character as a servant, and with that she came into our house.

The way in which the old bawd got to see her legs was amusing, I often thought of it; not knowing a bawd's dodges then. She asked her if she wanted to piddle, took her to a bed-room, and as in sitting down she showed a little leg, the woman broke out into ecstacies, and asked her to show more. Much flattered she did, and then came the old woman's suggestions.

"From the time he left you till the other day, had you never been poked?" "Never, by all that is good.--I would not have injured him,--I was shocked when the old woman told me about getting money by my legs. I hoped he would come back, and always thought he would. But he never answers my letters now, although some money came for me the other day, and I know it must be from him, although the writing is not his; even when you threw me on the sofa that day, I thought I was wronging him for a moment, till I forgot everything but you.

"But oh! I have had a weary life since he left, father I hear has failed, what sister's doing I don't know,--sister I heard tells everybody it was all my fault, and that the old man never held up his head after I ran away,--perhaps it's true," said she with a flood of tears, "but I was a good gal to him, till my poor Alfred took me away."

I have never before or since heard anything more simple or touching than that girl's tale, as told me in the baudy house. I could almost swear that every word was true. We stopped at the house till time for Mary to leave. I had paid for the rooms two or three times over, being still inexperienced. When we came out we were famished, having eaten nothing but cherries and biscuits nearly all day. I bought buns, and we ate in the cab, I feeling her cunt at intervals, and once making a fruitless attempt at a fuck. The smell of her cunt on my fingers at that time I dare say gave a relish to the buns, for I liked her. She went in first, ten minutes afterwards I did. What a look we gave each other as she opened the door! Old times again, and this time as charming as those in every particular.

For some time afterwards it was impossible to have her, for we never were alone, our only chance of exchanging whispers or a kiss was on the stairs, or when the other woman went to the privy. In those few minutes we used to stand whispering, kissing and feeling each other. Then at table I used to feel her legs with my toes, putting my feet out of my slippers as she put things on the breakfast or dinner-table, and looking the other woman in the face all the time. This was so pleasant to me, that I came down in the morning without socks, saying the weather was so hot, and when I could get the naked toe up just to touch her thigh, my prick would stand at the instant. But this was poor pleasure, and I resolved on a course which I had actually to write to tell her of, so little opportunity had I of conversing with her for the time.

Our old-fashioned house was one of a row with a narrow frontage, and four stories high, had a long narrow garden, and a privy about thirty feet from the back-door, hidden by some evergreens, the common mode of building in London at that time. On the first floor was my own little sitting-room and a drawing-room, and above two bed-rooms, the back one serving as a dressing-room for me, above those a servant's attic. With one servant only we helped ourselves a good deal as may be supposed. One bath sufficed, one of us took it first, the other using the same water, it was a not very big flat tub. I usually took it first, then went downstairs, and read till breakfast-time, and so got my five or ten minutes opportunity. But she began to take her bath irregularly, or not at all, and came down at times so quickly after me, that I was cautious, and so the opportunities with Mary were lost. She was probably suspicious, but I never knew.

The scullery or back kitchen-door led up to the garden by a little flight of steps, and in the summer it was always wide open. Anything let fall out of the back-window would fall just in the doorway. This gave me the means of signalling. It was arranged that if Mary heard a penny drop on to the stones by the door, she was at once to go up quietly to the parlour, the ground-floor room as said, was divided by folding doors, in the front was the dining-table and the auspicious sofa, in the back a small table where we breakfasted.

One morning dressed I waited till the woman stepped into the bath, and then looking out of the window, dropped a penny. It fell just where Mary stood cleaning my boots. Then downstairs I cut, and there was Mary in the parlour waiting. She resisted me, but she wanted it as badly as I did, and sticking her back against the partition close to the door, so that we could catch the first sound of any one coming downstairs, we fucked. My God what a rapid fuck it was, but what enjoyment! it was the old trick again of but a very few years before in mother's house. Mother still lived there.

This we did several mornings, then I lost even that opportunity, after being nearly caught in the act, and with prick throbbing to let out its sperm, I had barely time to subside into a chair, and take up a newspaper. That so scared Mary that she would not come up again when I dropped a penny out of the window.

Then she asked to go out to buy some things, which being granted, again we spent a jolly hour or so at the baudy house in E.. t. r street. That night I sat her on my prick, and did her in the cab, I never did so to her but once. I put her up to asking to go to the post-office with a letter, it was at about five minutes walk from our house. Close by was a lane leading to large vegetable market-gardens, and there we took our pleasure, and were nearly caught at it by a man passing by. I went home first, and when the door was opened was answered, "The girl has gone to the post-office, she must have gone somewhere else, for she has been a long time." Then in came Mary. "Where have you been such a long time? Your Mistress says you have been half an hour." She got a scolding, and the Mistress went up to bed. I told Mary to come into the garden, it was a dark night and cloudy, and half-way down the garden I put into her, up against the wall, then she went in, and upstairs to bed. I followed soon, and said, "What keeps that girl up so? I have been walking in the garden, and she has only just gone upstairs." "She ought to have come up directly I did," said the other. I locked all the doors of the house at night, and was the last up.

Several other risky incidents occurred in a few weeks, and then from some suspicion I imagine, I never got a chance of having her. When I came down to break-fast the girl was rang for to go upstairs, going out was refused her, she was told in the middle of the day, "If you have any letter to post, go out now, you can't go out this evening." The Mistress seemed to stay a shorter time even in the privy than usual, and often on some pretext sent the girl upstairs or somewhere just before she went to the poopery. I was evidently suspected.

One day she did not. No sooner had she gone out of the back-door than I called up Mary. "Let's do it." "I will." "I don't care if she does catch us," said I furiously, "lean forward, look out into the garden, I will do it dog-fashion." There was a lowish-backed easy-chair which I usually sat in by the breakfast-table, up against which I pushed it. Anyone stooping over it, and looking could just see through the window the head of any one coming away from the privy. My impetuousity prevailed, I threw up her clothes over her backside, and plugging her cunt, was soon in ecstacies, Mary in a funk, submitting, and with me looking whilst we fucked, out of the window for her Mistress' head, which as I have said, we could not fail to see. But our pleasure came on, and in our joint delight we only thought of the lubricity of our position. "Look out darling." "Yes--I am." "Oh!--a--h!--are." "You're loo--k--look--ing?" "Yes--oh!--ah I--be--qu--quick,--ah!--a--h!" I had spent, my belly was still squeezed up against her bum, my prick still up her, my hands rubbing her flesh, when I heard a footstep at the back-door. To pull out my prick, drop my dressing-gown over it, let fall the clothes over Mary's posteriors was the work of an instant. Rushing towards the door I met her Mistress just as she entered it. Passing her I rushed out towards the privy saying, as if ready to shit myself, "What a time you have been there. I thought you were going to stay there all day." It had been raining, the ground was wet, and just inside the back-door she had paused to wipe her feet on the mat. Had she not done so she would have caught us in the posture, for we had both spent, and lost all consciousness for the minute, I was dreaming leaning over Mary when I heard the feet rubbing on the doormat.

I stopped a sufficient time at the privy to show that I really wanted to go there. When I went back to the house I found Mary had fainted right off in the parlour, and dropped a tray. The shock of fear at being caught had been too much for her nerves, and she rolled on the floor showing her legs. My wife jealously told me to leave. I did, but in a funk for I saw on one of her stockings unmistakeable stains of spunk mixed with poorliness.

We talked over it afterwards, wondering if it had been noticed; but I never knew. Mary recovered and got up just as I went out of the room. Her Mistress afterwards remarked that she was a fine-made, but coarse, strong woman, she called all stout, well-filled women coarse.

Her Mistress asked her what she had bought the day she had gone out shopping, and she showed her some things, which most unfortunately she had shown before, then her Mistress said it had been merely a pretext to get out. She told me of it, and when Mary's regular holiday came she refused to let her go. Mary insisted, there were words, I was consulted, and said she ought to be allowed to go. "You always take a servant's part." "It's a lie," said I. "and I won't come home till time to go to bed." "I shall be alone in the house then.". "Serve you right"--and off I went. Mary met me an hour or two after the proper time whilst I kept anxiously waiting and fuming, either under the portico of the lyceum, or about there. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in voluptuous delight.

I kept out for an hour after Mary's return that night, and had a row for the Mistress was sitting up. Next day I had a latch-key put on the door, and told her she need not sit up, then went home at three in the morning, and found her sitting up. Then I told her if she did that again I would stop out all night. Again she sat up awaiting me, so I went off and did not go home till the next night. That settled it.

"I'm in the family way," said Mary with a sigh. "My God are you?--how unfortunate!--are you sure?" "Yes, I knew I should be." "What is to be done?" "What I have done before." "You have been in the family way then?" "Yes twice, he wanted me to have the child, but I would not unless I were married."

Mary took medicine and was ill, another monthly holiday came, and was spent at the house. A few days afterwards Mary was looking blank. Her Mistress told me she had dismissed her. "Why?" I asked. "She was no good, and not a good servant." Mary was sacked at the end of the week, I could not of course interfere without injuring the poor woman, and implicating myself,--no good to either of us.

So soon as she had left our house I was told all that Mary had told me of herself, the Mistress evidently feared that Mary might seduce me, or go astray somehow. That is what the poor girl got for telling her true history to her. Said she also, "She has been taking strong medicine, and I believe it was to bring on her courses." She knew they had stopped. Her sister had advised her not to keep a female in the house who had diamond rings, a gold watch and chain, and silk dresses. It was evident to me that the poor girl's history had been told to more than one person.

Mary broken-hearted took lodgings in a cottage close by, and did needle-work. "Nothing," said she, "shall make me go to service again, I only did it to please him, hoping he would come back to me, but I hate service, and don't care what becomes of me." She was always at home. I visited her regularly for two or three months, giving her what little money I could, but she was reckless and would spend money in comfort, though not in show. She came out with me not in her silk dresses, but her plainest ones, and little by little pawned her dresses, rings, and all her finery. Then she worked harder and harder, besought me to give her just enough to keep her, however humbly, for go to service she would not again. Again she got with child.

All this time of course our fucking was regular, but although I liked her, and more than liked her, I never had a strong affection for her. When her money-was gone, and she was poor in clothes, she was still cheerful. I gave what I could, but could with difficulty keep out of debt, and insisted on her going to service. "Then we shall never see each other," said she, and begged me to go on, allowing a trifle; I did so, being content with her, never finding her out, never having a suspicion of her having another man, and feeling much anxiety about her.

But none of my money was my own, and what use as a beggar could I be to her?--so yielding to my solicitations at last she again went to service at a short distance from my house. Then I found out a convenient house close by, she got out as often as she could, and we had stealthy meetings and pokings in a hurry. The old lady and her middle-aged son with whom she lived liked her, and indulged her; so we often got two or three hours together, yet the difficulty of meeting became irksome, she got restless, would go as a bar-maid (she understood the business), go to America, go anywhere so as to get away from service. Then circumstances prevented my meeting her for two or three weeks; when I did again she reproached me, and hoped I had not got any one else.

Soon after she told me her sister was in the family way, having been seduced by the young man who was to have married her, I saw the letter describing this. "I am glad of it," said Mary, "for she was hard on me." The sister came to town, I wanted to see her, but Mary would never arrange it, though I saw her letters frequently. Then I made one or two appointments with Mary which were not kept, went to the house one evening, and whilst Mary was whispering to me at the street door, her Master appeared, and asked who I was. Mary said I was her cousin. Then he ordered her in-doors, saying they did not allow their servants callers.

Then her Mistress began to treat her harshly; and we thought some of my letters had been intercepted. I was obliged to go abroad for a time, and wrote to tell her. On my return I found letter after letter from her at the post-office. She was about to leave, wanted my advice, would I allow her ten shillings a week, she would make it do; be faithful to me, and live close by me; go to service again she would not, she would sooner go on the streets, her sister had done so. Again an upbraiding letter,--she never thought I would have neglected her so, I who was so kind and affectionate, I whom she loved so much,--if I did not reply it was the last I would hear of her.

I dressed myself up shabbily, and at dusk went to the place she lived at. The Master opened the door but did not know me again. She had left, had gone he knew not where. "Why?" did I ask. Then I tried all possible places, but I never heard of her for years, and greatly feared she had gone gay; but although I haunted gay places to find her, I never saw her there.

Some seven years afterwards I met her. She had gone to service again, and had written to tell me where. I never had that letter. There was again a bachelor son in the house, who made advances to her, and finally kept her. Meanwhile I had moved my residence, and oddly enough opposite to the house in which her protector had lived for many years with his mother. Mary actually knew everything about my domestic affairs almost as well as if she had lived opposite to me herself, for my neighbours knew a good deal about me. He kept her at a nice little house some miles off.

It was opposite the National Gallery that we met in the dusk of the evening. I went to J... s' street with her, and to bed, and fucked her with rapture till I brought on her poorliness in floods.

Her protector had just married, parted with her, and given her money. She was going home to her native place,--what to do I don't recollect,--she was still lovely, although somewhat broken. I never saw her after that night. About five years afterwards she wrote to say she was badly off, would I send her a trifle. I sent her two pounds, she thanked me in a letter, and said in it, that she often cried when she thought of me, and past time,--and I never heard of her afterwards.

I could tell a lot more about my doings with this lovely creature, for everything connected with her is as fresh in my memory as possible; but must go back to that time when coming back to England I found she had left her last situation, and I could not find her whereabouts.

But I must add something which was omitted when I abbreviated the manuscript for printing. I revelled as said in the smell of a nice woman; with the poor cheap women I had for some time had, their smell offended me, I avoided kissing them even, why I can't say. With Mary this delight returned, her aroma overpowered me, and added to my voluptuous delight in her embraces. On every possible opportunity I used to lift her petticoats, and smell her flesh, it intoxicated me, and instantly made me wild with lewdness.

FINIS, VOLUME TWO





MY SECRET LIFE
Volume Three
By Anonymous

AMSTERDAM
 PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS. 1888

 This first reprint of "My Secret Life" is for private distribution among connoisseur collectors. It is strictly limited to four hundred and seventy five copies, all of which have been subscribed for prior to publication.






Contents


 DETAILED CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XL.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII.

CHAPTER XXIII.





DETAILED CONTENTS:

  CHAPTER I.--Straightened circumstances.--Promiscuous whorings.--The
 garden privies.--Our neighbor's daughters.--Effects of a hard
 turd.--Masturbation.--Bum-trumpeting.--Seeing and hearing too much.--A
 pock-marked strumpet.--A neighbour's servant.--Don't wet inside.---On
 the road home.--Cheap amusements.--Bargains.--Watching brothels.--Cunt
 in the open. Clapped again.--French letters, and effects.--Income
 improved.--Piddle in the bye-streets.--An uprighter.--My pencil-case.--A
 female bilker.--A savage frig.--A silk dress soiled.

 CHAPTER II.--Preliminary remarks.--A dress-lodger.--Lucy.--Sweet
 seventeen.--An impudent demand.--A row.--The bawd.--My watch
 requisitioned.--Exit barred.--Bill.--Funking.--Determination.--The
 poker and window.--Vici.--Apologies.--A cautious retreat.--My
 revenge.--Lucy scared away.--Brighton Bessie.--Washing by
 fire-light.--Friendly intimacy.--The house in B..w Street.--Lascivious
 evenings.

 CHAPTER III.--A change in taste.--A small cunt longed for.--Hunting
 in the Strand.--Yellow-haired Kitty.--Her little companion.--Oh!
 you foule.--The house in E.. t. r Street.--Double
 fees.--Kitty's pleasure.--Objections to washing.--Have the other
 gal.--Cleanliness.--Home occupations.--I ain't gay.--Kitty's males.

 CHAPTER IV.--Little Pol consents.--Arsy-versy.--Broached, and howling.
 --Kitty's vocalization.--A cheap virginity.--Two hours after.--Love's
 money lost.--The street-gully.--Kitty pleases. Pol tires.--Kitty's
 habits.--Friendliness and frankness.--Sausage rolls.--Confessions of
 lust.

 CHAPTER V.--Kitty's antecedents.--The fishmonger's.--Jim the shopman.
 --Betty the maid.--Females in bed.--Mutual curiosity.--Letchery and
 frigging.--Educated in coition.--Against the kitchen-wall.--Jim in
 bed.--Betty's cunt washed out.--A look in the basin.--Cousin Grace,
 and cousin Bob.--Bob on the spree.--A scuffle.--Topsy-turvy.
 --Arsy-versy.--Bob's semen.--A masturbating duet.--Caught in the
 act.--Kicked out.

 CHAPTER VI.--Sausage-rolls, and consequences.--Kitty's home.--The
 little ones.--A saucy cabman.--Catamenia.--Fucking economies.--Changing
 money.--Pol and the bargee.--Kit implicated.--A black eye and
 bruised rump.--A little boy's cock.--Preparation for travel.--Kit's
 regret.--Bessie in tears.--Amusements abroad.--Home again.--Kitty a
 strumpet.--An evening at B.. w Street.--Kitty's eight months doings.

 CHAPTER VII.--Brighton Bessie.--Change irresistible.--Bessie
 in quod.--Lewd effects.--Spooning.--Her home.--Her
 cabman.--Reflexions.--Two years after.--Five years later on.--The
 mouse's promenade.--Bessie disappears.

 CHAPTER VIII.--Washerwomen.--Matilda and Esther.--A peep over a wall.--4
 Eaves dropping.--A girl's wants.--Shaking a tooleywag.--A promenade by
 a barrow.--Disclosures.--A snatch and a scuffle.--An assignation.

 CHAPTER IX.--Returning home.--In the churchyard.--Two female
 laborers.--Among the tombs.--A sudden piss.--An arse on the weeds.--Torn
 trousers and a turd.--In front of the public house.

 CHAPTER X.--The washerwoman's lane.--An intention frustrated.--A slap on
 the face.--Choice language and temper.--A dinner in the Haymarket.--The
 rocking-chair.--A lucky shove.--Up, and out in a second.--A quarrel, and
 flight.--An enticing laugh.--The house in O...d.n Street.

 CHAPTER XL--Esther meets me.--Vaux-hall.--Ex-harlot Sarah.--Esther
 succumbs.--Big-arsed and bandy-legged.--Periodic fucking.--Matilda
 invincible.--I part with Esther.--Her fortune.

 CHAPTER XII.--Preliminary.--My taste for beauty of form.--Sarah
 Mavis.--Midday in the Quadrant.--No. 13 J..s Street.--A bargain in
 the hall.--A woman with a will.--Fears about my size.
 Muck.--Cold-blooded.--Tyranny.--My temper.--Submission.--A revolt.--A
 half-gay lady.--Sarah watches me.--A quarrel.--Reconciliation.

 CHAPTER XIII.--Sarah's complaisance.--Mistress Hannah.--About
 Sarah.--Sexual indifference.--After dinner.--Stark naked at last.--Her
 form.--The scar.--Hannah's friendship.--The baudy house
 parlour.--The Guardsman.--Sarah's greed.--A change in her manner.--A
 miscarriage.--Going abroad.--I am madly in love.--Sarah's history.

 CHAPTER XIV.--Poses plastiques.--Sarah departs.--My despair.--Hannah's
 comfort.--Foolscap and masturbation.--Cheap cunt.--A mulatto.--The
 baudy house accounts.--Concerning Sarah.--The parlour.--The gay ladies
 there.--My virtue.--Louisa Fisher.--A show of legs.--The consequence on
 me.--Effect on Mrs. Z.

 CHAPTER XV.--Louisa Fisher.--Chaffing.--Her form and fucking.--A
 supper in bed.--A lascivious night.--Meeting
 afterwards.--Hannah's legs.--Intruders in the bed-room.--Louisa's
 voluptuousness.--Enciente.--Her husband.--Her gentleman friend.--About
 herself.--Illness.--Mrs. A.

 CHAPTER XVI.--A friend's maid-servant.--Jenny.--Initial familiarity.--A
 bum pinched.--Jenny communicative.--Her young man.--An attempt, a
 failure, a faint, a look and a sniff.--Restoratives.

 CHAPTER XVII.--When are women most lewd.--Garters, money and
 promises.----About my servant.--The neckerchief. Armpits felt.--Warm
 hints.--Lewd suggestions.--Baudy language.--Tickling.--Fanny
 Hill.--Garters tried.--Red fingers.--Struggle, and escape.--Locked
 out.--I leave.--Baudy predictions, and verification.233

 CHAPTER XVIII.--Fanny Hill sent to Jenny.--My next visit.--Thunder,
 lightning, sherry, and lust.--A chase round a table.--The money
 takes.--Tickling and micturating.--A search for Fanny Hill.--A chase
 up the stairs.--In the bed-room.--Thunder, funk, and
 lewdness.--Intimidation and coaxing.--Over and under.--A rapid
 spender.--Virginity doubtful.--Fears, tears, and fucking.

 CHAPTER XIX.--My soiled shirt.--Jenny's account of herself.--Fucking
 and funking.--Poor John!--Of her pudenda.--Its sensitiveness.--Erotic
 chat.--Startled by a caller.--Her married sister's unsatisfied
 cunt.--How she prevented having children.--Doubts her husbands
 fidelity.--Jenny taught the use of a French letter.--Hickery-pickery and
 catamenial irregularities.

 CHAPTER XX.--A Saturday afternoon.--Copulation interrupted.--Retreat
 cut off.--Under the bed.--Enter sister.--The new dress.--Heat
 and sweat.--Undressing.--Jenny's anxiety.--Sweating much,
 and stripping.--Nature in its simplicity.--Nature in its
 vulgarity.--Delicious peeps.--A cunt near my nose. Erotic
 recklessness.--Fist-fucking.

 CHAPTER XXI.--Further undressing.--Slippers wanted.--Toilet
 operations.--The effects of hash and beer.--A windy escape.--Feeling for
 the pot.--Sisters exeunt.--A crushed hat, and soiled trousers.--A narrow
 escape.--My benevolent intentions towards Jenny's sister.

 CHAPTER XXII.--The Sunday following.--Chaste calculations.--The sister
 alone.--My embarrassment.--Ale fetched.--Warm conversation.--Stiffening.
 --Bolder talk.--An exhibition of masculinity.--A golden promise.--Lust
 creeping.--Baudy dalliance.--Cock and cunt in conjunction.

 CHAPTER XXIII.--Jenny's bed-room.--The money hidden.--On the bed.--Fears
 of maternity.--Inspection of sex.--The use of a husband.--Another
 Sunday.--Regrets and refusals.--Resistance overcome.--Jenny's
 ignorance.--Her Master returns.--Difficulty in getting at Jenny.--Her
 sister waylaid.--Against a fence.--Jenny's marriage, and rise in life.





CHAPTER I.


     Straightened circumstances.--Promiscuous whorings.--The
     garden privies.--Our neighbour's daughters.--Effects of a
     hard turd.--Masturbation.--Bum-trumpeting.--Seeing and
     hearing too much.--A pock-marked strumpet.--A neighbour's
     servant.--Don't wet inside.--On the road home.--Cheap
     amusements.--Bargains.--Watching brothels.--Cunt in the
     open.--Clapped again.--French letters, and effects.--Income
     improved.--Piddle in the bye-streets.--An uprighter.--My
     pencil-case.--A female bilker.--A savage frig.--A silk dress
     soiled.

 I felt such a void, that I came to the conclusion that I had fondly loved Mary, and missed greatly her kind, sympathetic association. For a long time I could think of nothing but her, even when I fucked other women, and got so miserable about her, that I rushed into indiscriminate cheap whoring again. I had still not money for the best class of women, and did not like baudy houses; but there was no help for it, and so whoring I went, and largely in the Strand, for at that time in E..t.r and C. t...e Streets there were many and nice brothels at all prices.

But I for some time abstained from women, and had wet dreams. My mind ran constantly on Mary, and when I saw a nice girl, used to wonder if her cunt was like Mary's, and this specially of two girls about nineteen and twenty years of age, daughters of one of our next-door neighbours.

The privies of the houses in our terrace were built in pairs, the garden wall divided them and partly the cess-pool which was common to the two. I used to take pleasure in watching to see these girls go to the privy, and although the idea of a female evacuating revolted me, yet used to try to get to our privy when one of the girls went to theirs, and would stand smoking just inside the passage by the back-steps of my house, tip-toeing to catch a glance of their heads, and stopping myself from bogging sometimes, so that I might get there at the same time. Directly I saw a head off I followed quietly, and if the weather was quite still we could hear footsteps in each other's gardens too well.

The cess-pool had at the time I write of just been emptied, the turds dropping and flopping down could be heard, it was not nice, but it did not shock me. I liked to hear the girls' piddle splashing, and used to push my prick back, and sit back on the seat, so that my piddle might drop straight, and make much noise. It pleased me to hear the joint rattle and splash we made if we pissed at the same time. I did this so constantly, that I could tell which girl was there, for the piddle of one always made twice as much splash as the other's. Up would stand my prick, and often I could not piss for its stiffness, directly I heard the girls splashing.

One day I had a hardish motion, and was randy that morning almost to pain. One of the girls was there. I strained, my cock got stiff, and began to throb violently, and shot out its spunk as I strained. I went back to the house, and just entering it saw the other daughter go towards the privy. Back I went and sitting down frigged myself as I heard her evacuations drop, so randy and charged with sperm was I.

After that I occasionally frigged myself at the privy, and used to picture to myself the girls sitting there, their clothes up round their rumps, and slightly up in front showing their limbs, and piddle squirting, but I always thought of both girls as having cunts like Mary's. After a time we knew a little of the girls, and when talking to them I used to think of the same thing. The idea used to fascinate me, and they used to say (I am told), that I was a strange man, for I always stared at them as if I had never seen a woman before. They little knew what was in my mind when I was staring.

Just after the emptying I could not only see their wax as it fell to the bottom, but the paper with which they wiped their bums, and could hear them fart. Sometimes the two came together. One day by a sudden whim I let a fart as loud as I could, and heard a suppressed titter, they I think never knew I could hear, for usually I tried to be as silent as possible. I never coughed when there, and used to pull open my arse-hole to lessen the noise of my trumpet, and singular as it may seem did this out of a feeling of delicacy. Soon the cess-pool was half-filled, with water, and I could only indistinctly hear. Then I grew tired of the game, and again let off my sperm up cunts instead of spilling it on the privy-floor, for sorrow always came over me as I saw it on the floor. A few months after this I took a dislike to the girls through thinking of what I had seen and heard of them, it seemed to shock my sentiment of the beauty and delicacy of a woman.

A confused number of random whorings and miscellaneous fuckings took place about this time, I cannot tell to a month or two, but it began directly after Mary had gone. I tell of one or two of them.

At the back of the Lowther Arcade one night I took a poor little girl seemingly about sixteen years old to a house. She had a nice but thin form, and was as white as driven snow. When I had had her, I wanted to see her face more clearly, but she held a handkerchief to it, and half turned it away from the light, her privates she allowed to be inspected as I liked.

She was marked badly with the small-pox, and was nevertheless handsome, but with that sad expression which the pock-marks often give. Gents did not like it, she said. It was a dreadfully sloppy, snowy night. "Don't go yet", said she, "it is so warm here." So I sat a while feeling her quim and talking. "Do me again, I want it now, I did not when you did it before." So we fucked again. "Do I please you?" said the girl putting her hand to my face. "Yes my dear." "Will you see me again?--do." I was always careful about promising that, and hesitated; but at length said yes. Again I rose to go, again the girl asked me to stay, it was so warm. "Pay the woman again and say you are going to stay till ten o'clock." There was such simplicity about her that I consented. The woman put coals on the fire, and we sat by it warming ourselves.

After a time she said, "I don't think you like me." "Why?" "Because you don't feel me about." I laughed, and said I had been feeling her. Time ran on. "Won't you do it again?" "I can't dear." "Let me try to make you." "You may, but I can't." She came to me, knelt down, played funnily, but awkwardly with my cock till it stiffened, and again we fucked. "You won't see me again, though you say you will." "Why not?" asked I wondering at her sad manner. "They all say they will, but they never do,--it's the small-pox marks they can't bear, I know it is,--I'm tired of this life." Then suddenly she laughed and said she was only joking.

I never did see her again. Such a young, white-fleshed girl, and so fond of the cock, or else she had had but little of it, I have rarely met with. She said she had only been out two months. "The other girls tell me what to do with men, and the old woman where I live tells me; but I always does what a gentleman asks me, I can't do more, can I?" said she. "Other gals say they have regular friends, I haven't." I shall never forget that poor little girl.

On a cold evening a week or two after this, I saw a shortish, dark-eyed girl going along the Strand. She walked slowly, and looked in at almost every shop. I could not make up my mind if she were gay or not. She was warmly wrapped up, her style that of a well-to-do servant. I passed and repassed her, looked her in the face; her eyes met mine and dropped, then she stopped and looked round several times after unmistakeable gay women as they passed her, then went on again. Opposite the Adelphi she paused and looked at the theatre for a long time, a gentleman spoke to her, and seemed to importune her, she took no notice of him, and he left her. After walking on for a minute quickly she loitered and looked in the shops again.

Near Exeter Hall my cock which was in want of relief giving me impudence, and liking her looks I spoke to her about the things in the windows. At first I got no reply, and she walked on. "Come with me, and I'll give you a sovereign." "You can buy it then." What it was I don't recollect. She seemed uneasy and wavering, yet made no reply. I repeated my offer (it was just then money beyond my means, but I had hot desire on me). She looked up the street in both directions, and asked, "Will it be far?" I took her at the instant for a sly gay one. "You know I am sure, it's close bye." "It's getting late, I'm in a hurry." Looking both ways quickly and uneasily she placed her arm in mine, and hanging her head down pressed close to me. We walked quickly, and soon were in a snug room in a house at the back of Exeter Hall.

"This is not a public-house", said she looking round. "No, but you can have a drink if you like." "A little warm brandy and water then." I ordered it. "Take off your bonnet and cloak." She hesitated. "Tell me the exact time." I did, and then she took them off, sat down, and soon sipped brandy and water looking at me. Thought I, "You must be a servant after all."

I began to caress her, and got my hand on her thighs asking her to come to the bed. "I must go soon, let me go soon." "I will, but let me see your legs, and feel them." She let me pull the clothes up to her knees, then pushed away my hand but I thrust one up, and just felt the cunt. She gave me a shove, and nearly pushed me over, for I had dropped on to my knees, a favorite attitude of mine at such times.

Savagely I got up. "Don't be a fool; if you mean to let me do it come to the bed." She hesitated. "Give me the money first." "Oh!" thought I, "she is a whore diseased, and a bilk," so I refused. "You really will give it to me, won't you?" "Of course, but I'm not to be done that way." Then I got her on to the bed, and threw up her clothes. She resisted. "What do you take me for?" "Why a whore", said I savagely. It was a word I rarely used of a woman, still rarer to a woman. She pushed my hand angrily away and sat up.

"I am not, and wish I had not come here, and would not, only I want money for my poor mother, I thought you a gentleman,--I'm not the sort of a woman you say, I'm a servant, I am indeed." "Well if you are, you have been fucked." "That's neither here nor there, but I'm not what you call me",--and she pouted. "Lay down dear,--let's fuck if you mean it, if not let's go,--let me feel you, and you feel me." I pulled her back on to the bed, laying down by the side of her, and put my prick into her hand. It was persuasive, for soon I was having that delicious rub, probe, and twiddle. Then I got a sight of all but the cunt itself, the inspection of that she resisted. A fine pair of limbs, a fat backside, lots of hair on her split I could feel. My friction told, she began grasping my prick like a vise,--she was going to spend.

Nice to her that, but I wanted my pleasure. Again I got savage. At length quietly, and feeling my prick all the time she said, "Promise me something." "What?" "Don't you wet inside if I let you." I promised, and turning on to her belly fucked her, and forgot my promise, even if I ever meant to keep it. We were soon near the crisis. "Don't--now,--oh!--wet."

"No dear." "T--aake--care." "I'll pull it out just as it comes dear." "Don't--we--wet, oh!--ah!--wet", she gasped out as clutching her arse my prick went fiercely up her, and spent every drop against her womb-tube, my spend made doubly pleasurable, because she did not wish it in her cunt.

Said she with a long-drawn sigh, "You've done it all inside,--you should not." "I could not help it, you are so charming, I could not pull it out and make your clothes or bum wet", said I ramming on, and keeping my prick tight up her lubricated cunt, "Let me get up." "Not yet." "Oh! do, I'm in a hurry." "Lay still dear." "No, I'm in such a hurry,--what o'clock is it?--do tell me what o'clock it is,--it will make me lose my place if I'm very late."

I uncunted, told her the time, and she washed her cunt. "Let us do it again." She was wanting it. "I've such a long way to go." "Where?" She told me, and it was on my way home. "I will take you home in a cab." On the bed she got, I overcame her scruples, kissed her knees, her thighs, all the way up to her cunt. The thighs opened widely, a second's inspection of a cunt at that time of my life made me think of immediate pleasure, and after promising not to wet in her again, she reminding me of that, till she lost all care or heed in her pleasures. I spent up her as before.

We went home in a cab, and felt each other all the way, she said she was keeping her mother who was poor, she feared dying. At the end of the road she got out begging me not to follow her. I did not, and never saw her again. She had hazel eyes, spoke with a country accent, and I quite believe was a servant.

Although soon after this a little better off, I had difficulty in keeping out of debt, and the cost of amatory amusements prevented my having women as often as I otherwise should have done. I used to try the cheap women at times, and often successfully. Would walk backwards and forwards between Temple-Bar and Charing Cross for hours, looking at the women, thinking which I should like, and whether I could afford one. Sometimes I would follow the same woman, stop when she stopped if a man spoke to her, cross over, and wait till she moved off by herself, or if with the man, would follow them to a brothel, return to watch for her coming out, and wait 'till she did so. This pleased me much.

Then I began to feel women in the streets; they frequently came out of the E.. t. r Street-houses, and round by the side-entrance to Exeter-Hall. That end of the street then was all but dark.

Stopping a woman. This was a frequent dialogue. "A nice night dear." "Yes." "Been taking a walk?" "Yes." "Been to piddle?" "Yes." They usually when I knew they had come out of a house, said they had been to piddle if I asked them. "A shilling to feel your cunt." "All right, give it me." With the left hand I gave the shilling with the right I fingered their quims. "Open your legs dear,--a little wider,--let me feel up,--have you been fucked to-night?" "No." It was always no. I delighted in hearing them tell that lie. "Come with me." "How much?" "Give me a sovereign." "No." "Ten shillings then." "I can't afford more than five shillings." "No, not for that"; but they more often said yes. Sometimes I went with them, more frequently not. The lesson I learned was that most woman denied that they had fucked more recently than the day before, (it was always the day before), and that a little bargaining reduced the price of their pleasures.

If intending to have a poke I waited for a girl known by sight, and then often could not find her, then I saw those so dressed that I could not offer them a small sum. On other nights I went up to the girl with the fattest legs, and made advances. In this way I shagged many of all sorts and sizes, many of them poor creatures, others plump, fine, strong, healthy women, whom I was surprised took the small sum for their professional exertions. The end of this promiscuity was that again I took the clap, which laid me up some weeks, and made it again needful to open my piss-pipe by surgical tubes.

Then I was timid, used French letters, and took to carrying them in my purse again, but always hated them. Often my cock stiff as a boring-iron would shrink directly the wet gut touched it, and compelled me to frig up to near the crisis before I could insert it in the skin. Sometimes it would not stiffen completely till up the women. I used to drop my tool in a state of partial rigidity into the letter, then thumb it slowly up the lady's orifice; then the warmth, the clip, the buttocks wagging, and the look at the belly and thighs between which I was working brought it to the proper stiffness. I usually had the ladies at the side of the bed, when wearing these cundums.

Sometimes my passions overcame my prudence, and a fair lady for her favors got her price. Then I was filled with regrets, and had to content myself with a feel for some time, or wait days till I could afford the full gratification of my senses with another woman, because I had not the money. Then I fell again on my five shilling offers. About this cunt-feeling there was something very peculiar in me: unless I liked the look of the woman I did not like to feel up her cunt, and after I had been groping used to spit on my fingers, and rub them dry, and the smell off of them on to my handkerchief.

Some little time after my clap however I came into a better income through the death of a relative. It was small, but made a difference to me of great importance. I spent it all on myself, that is to say on cunt, and although some of my country relatives must have known I had come into the property, those most interested in knowing it I believe never did. I now longed for nice women whom I could talk and spend the money with. The rapid business-like fucking in the baudy houses was not to my taste, I had scarcely gone to the Argyle Rooms, then not many years opened, for fear that my taste for nicety of manner and something more than mere cunt might lead me into an expenditure still far beyond my means.

It used to wound my pride to hear a woman jeer at my offer, or say, "What the devil do you take me for", or walk away wagging her rump with offended dignity when she heard five shillings named, or say she would frig me for the money. Now I could offer more I was more happy in my mind; but there are a few adventures to be told before the time when an easier pocket enabled me to have better female companions.

The angle of the street named as leading out of the Strand was dark of a night and a favorite place for doxies to go to relieve their bladders. The police took no notice of such trifles, provided it was not done in the greater thoroughfares (although I have seen at night women do it openly in the gutters in the Strand), in the particular street I have seen them pissing almost in rows, yet they mostly went in twos to do that job, for a woman likes a screen, one usually standing up till the other has finished, and then taking her turn. Indeed the pissing in all bye-streets of the Strand was continuous, for although the population of London was only half what it now is, the number of gay ladies seemed double there. The theatre-side of the street from Trafalgar-Square to Temple-Bar was nightly for some hours one large flock of them, and there was not a street or court on the whole line named, and on both sides of the Strand in which there was not a baudy house. I have been in a dozen.

I used to prowl about to see the girls pissing, and when I had cheek enough, stand and piss by the side of them. That delighted me much. One night I saw two women go up a court, one directly squatted, and I followed. When one had done I asked her to let me feel her. She did. Randy but poor that night the feel of her wet cunt made me reckless. As I gave her a shilling I remarked how I should like to have her, but that I had but five shillings to give.

"You won't have me for five shillings, but you will get some one who will,--you have lots of cheek to offer it." "I am sorry, but I can't help it if I have not more." Had I not ten shillings? No, only enough for the room. All this time I was feeling her. Then her hand went outside my trousers, feeling at my cock. I slipped it out, she took it in her hand. "Have you not been a long time in the Strand to-night?" said she. I had, and wanted a woman, only I had so little money. I did not know the form or face of this woman, for we were in the darkest place, and the night was dark and cold, but I felt that she had a silk dress on, lots of hair on her cunt, and a large arse. "You may do it here for five shillings", said she. I had never done it in the open in such a place, but consented. Groping in my pocket I found and gave the money, and then she stepped away from me,--a bilk I thought.

It was not so. She went up to the other woman who was standing at the corner, and telling her to look out for the police, came back to me, and again placing her back up against the wall, I fucked her. "Wasn't it nice!" said she dropping her petticoats. And then we stood and talked.

"Stand a drink", said she, "you've got some silver." I did not mind, and was curious to see her. She called her friend, and all three went to a public-house, the lady with all my emission in her cunt. I found she was a full-grown woman of about thirty with dark hair, dark eyes, and with a bold expression in them. We had mulled port-wine, then something else, and stood drinking till all my money was gone. Her companion left us saying she had not gained a farthing that night, and must do so.

My woman then got pleasanter, and wanted more liquor, my money was gone, but I had a pencil-case, and asked the bar-man if he would lend me a few shillings on it. He did, and I then spent more on liquor, then we went out together again into the cold street; she pissed, saying the cold and the liquor had made her leaky. "I wish you would let me again", said I. Well she would, and up against a wall again we fucked heartily. With my spunk in her we walked together into the Strand. She said she would like to see me again, but I never did. Whilst fucking her the second time she shoved her tongue almost down my throat, and breathed so hard. I never fucked a woman in the street who did so, either before or since. A few nights after I got my pencil-case back from the beer-man.

One night a nice, strong-built woman about thirty years of age seemingly, took my five shillings, and went to a house with me. She was dressed in black silk, neat but shabby. She sat down on a chair, and pulling up her clothes rearranged both her garters, showing what I expected, and what I had engaged her for; a pair of fat legs. Then down went her clothes. I began feeling her, she pushed her bum back on the chair, but her thighs and the hairy ornaments I could feel. I was awfully randy, my prick was raging. "Let's feel you", said she. Willingly I let her grasp it, then she moved her arse forward, and I had the pleasure of just feeling a moist clitoris from which I was diverted by a painful squeeze she gave my prick. She was squeezing no doubt to see if I had any ailment. The effect of the squeeze, which made me call out, was to make me mad with randiness. "Take off your things, and let me do it." "Where is the five shillings?" I placed them in her hands, she pocketed them, and got up. Lifting her petticoats I pressed her towards the bed where she was standing when she had spoken, but she pushed down her petticoats, and moved away.

"Not likely I'm going to take off my things for five shillings", said she as the money slipped down into her pocket, "give me fifteen shillings more, and I will,--I'm a fine-built woman",--and she pulled her clothes clean up to her waist, turned round like a tetotum, and after showing both arse and belly, slowly dropped her clothes again.

"Come to the side of the bed." "No I shan't, you've had a feel for five shillings, give me fifteen shillings more, and I'll give you pleasure I know,--I'll do all you want me."

"I can't." "Then I can't." I had not a pound in my pocket, but if I had, am sure indeed I should have given it to her, but I could not. "Give me ten shillings, and I'll pay for the room then", said she. "I didn't know what house I was at, but generally they asked at those places the price of the room first.

"Just as you like", though I was dying for a fuck. "Then I will go." "I have paid you,--if you choose to bilk me I can't help it." "I don't want to bilk you, but I never let a man have me for five shillings, and I never will,--give me five shillings more."

"Let me feel you, if you won't let me poke you." "You may do that." Leaning her bum against the side of the bed, I began groping; she complaisantly moving one leg up on to a chair, so as to open her thighs well, got hold of my prick, and began frigging it. "Give me another five shillings", said she coaxingly, and under the influence of the masturbating process I gave it to her. She gave my penis the most delicate titillation whilst I was searching in my pocket for the money, but she would not let me after she had got the five shillings. She went on frigging me, repeating that she never let any one have her unless she had a pound given her.

I was annoyed, and hated frigging. Here was a well-formed woman, a cunt at hand, and yet I was to spunk out on to the floor, was being made a fool of. Stopping I said, "You don't mean to let me, whatever I give you." "Yes I do, for a sovereign." "Frig me then." She took my tool in her hand, and frigged. "Let me spend against your cunt." "No." "Against your thighs." "No." "Oh!--ah!" Finding it was coming she left off. "Give me five shillings, and I will", said she, but I would not, began frigging myself, and spite of her pushed one hand up on to her thighs, and frigged away with the other. "Take care of my dress", said she. The savage delight of doing what she wished me not, came over me. Turning my prick I shot my sperm copiously over her silk dress, and finished by flinging from my fingers what remained of it towards her face. "You damned dirty beast, you did it on purpose." "Serve you right, you cheating whore", said I putting on my hat, and leaving her with a towel wiping off my sperm, and cursing me as she did it. I don't know when I felt so spiteful against a woman as I did against her. My discharge was quick and copious, I saw it on her waist downwards. I have been bilked before and since, but have mostly pardoned the woman, for sometimes I have thought the poor things had their courses on, or some ailment or deformity; but I still seem to hate this one.

I may add that at the time these doings took place there were but three theatres in the Strand.





CHAPTER II.


     Preliminary remarks.--A dress-lodger.--Lucy.--Sweet
     seventeen.--An impudent demand.--A row.--The bawd.--My watch
     requisitioned.--Exit barred.--Bill.--Funking.--
     Determination.--The poker and window.--Vice.--Apologies.--A
     cautious retreat.--My revenge.--Lucy scared away.--Brighton
     Bessie.--Washing by fire-light.--Friendly intimacy.--The
     house in B.w Street.--Lascivious evenings.

 I have read through the two volumes in print. There are typographical errors, the names of women and places are once or twice wrongly given or spelt, but the context corrects that, and it matters not. What is important is; that owing to the brevity with which some occurrences are told, they almost seem improbable; this is the result of not printing my narrative all through exactly as I wrote it. In the manuscript, items of conversation, and numerous details of the behaviour of myself and female partners in my amours, were written down just as they occurred, and showed how the climax was reached; how little by little man and woman inclined to each other, how one pressed, and the other yielded, how from modest talk and chaste kisses our chastity gradually was lost, how by touch and sighs and yielding to the swooning lust which coursed stronger and stronger through our veins, our genitals inflamed, swollen, and sweating, drove us to contact with each other, till the carnal coupling ensued, and prick and cunt revelling and wallowing in each other's juices, drowned both wants and senses in voluptuous oblivion.

These details also gave studies of character, and specially of my own character, and as I now read the narratives in print after the lapse of so many years they seem to me to be needed to explain myself, even to myself. It is too late. The manuscript is burnt, that printed in its stead must be taken as truth or not, as scepticism or faith prevails in the reader, if ever there be one but myself.

Nor can I less abbreviate even now and in the future I fear, for the full narrative would entail too much expense in printing, and prolong the time of completion. Yet what pleasure I had in the wordy veracities as I wrote them, childish, fantastic, ludicrous, as some of the doings and sayings now seem! How unlike the doings of the couples in erotic books which I since have read, books written with no other object but to stimulate the passions,--no object that of mine in writing this.

The narratives were written in the present tense, but in print have been altered to the past, which gives them an air of a studied composition, written as a man might write a novel; but the writing extended over well nigh forty years, and barely a word has been altered, excepting those due to omissions.

There are however a few remarks added here and there to explain the circumstances and connect the incidents; these are needful to explain lapses of time, and to show the continuity of the history, for all the amours were written separately; yet often I had two or three women in hand at the same period. So in arranging them chronologically a few additions and observations were needful to explain, and these are of them.

One muddy night in the Strand there was an exceedingly well-dressed and very short-petticoated (they all wore them then) girl of about seventeen years of age; her legs especially pleased me, they were so plump and neat, and her feet so well shod. After my offer had been accepted, we went to a house in a court just by Drury-Lane Theatre, and to a top-floor front-room very handsomely furnished. She lived there, and was a dress-lodger as I found afterwards. She was beautifully clean, had fine linen, and was no sham in any way; a fresh, strong, plump, well-made young girl with lovely firm breasts, and a small quantity of brown hair on her cunt. Cunt and breasts looked only seventeen years, backside, thighs, arms, calves looked twenty. She stripped, and with but one feel and a stretch of her pretty cunt-lips, and a moment's glance I plugged her, and recollect now my enjoyment of her. Then I dressed, and so did she. Though so young, she was a well trained whore, had much pleased me by her freedom in manner, even to the way in which she washed her cunt and pissed after her fuck. I was not with her I should say twenty minutes if so long; my lust for her had been so strong.

"What's this?" said she disdainfully as I gave her half-a-sovereign. "What I promised you." "Oh! no you did not, I expect five pounds." I expostulated. "Look at this room, look at my dress,--do you expect me to let a man come here with me for ten shillings?" "Its all I promised, had you refused I should not have come with you." Then I put on my hat, and moved towards the door; she placed her back against it. "You don't go out of here till you give me three sovereigns." It must be added that I had paid for the room what appeared to me then a large sum.

I was in for a row, had not as much as two pounds about me, and was fearful of exposure, just then a row in a baudy house would have injured me if known.

I gave her ten shillings more, she took it, but refused to let me go, she did not believe I had so little money,--I was a gentleman, let me behave as such,--no I should not go till I gave her what she asked. I tried to pull her from the door, but could not, then sat down on the chair, saying that if I must wait, why so I must.

She tried coaxing, I told her I was entitled to another fuck for my other ten shillings. Well I might if I gave her another twenty shillings. I put hands up her petticoats, and fingers up her quim, thinking she was giving way,--but no. I had forgotten my fears in my randiness which came on again by fumbling about her rump and cunt, and pulled out my prick stiff again. She bent over me, and gave it two or three frigs. That so excited me, that verily I believe I should have given her the money if I had had it, for the pleasure of having her again; but putting my hand into my trousers, found silver only to something like a pound in value, and told her that. Then losing her gentility she said, "I'm damned if you do go, you bugger, till you have paid me properly."

Fear of exposure came over me, but I hid it, and sitting down looked at her as she stood against the door in her petticoats, her handsome limbs showing bright in their silks, and her plump breasts just squeezing the bubbies over the top of the stays. Laying hold of my tool I pulled it out. "Stand there as long as you like, you look lovely,--as you won't let me fuck you, I'll frig myself." Suiting the action to the word I began fist-fucking, not meaning however to finish so. It was but chaff, for indeed I was funky.

She stood looking till I said, "I'm coming,--I'm spending,--lift up your petticoats, and let me see your cunt." Then unlocking the door and opening it quickly she bawled out, "Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Smith, come up, here's a bilk, come up quickly."

I was now near spending as may be guessed, but buttoning up, went towards the door. She heard me, turned round, came in, shut the door, and stood with her back to it till a woman came in; and then she told her I had given her ten shillings.

The woman was incensed, was I a gent? she was sure I was, why not pay properly then?--a beautiful young girl like that,--just out,--look at her shape, and her face,--she had written to a dozen gents who knew her house, and they had all come to see this beauty,--all had given her five pounds, some ten pounds, they were so delighted with her,--and much of the same talk. The girl began to whimper, saying she never had been so insulted in her life before.

I told her that I had only promised ten shillings, but had given more; that the girl was certainly beautiful, and the room elegant; but I was poor, and would not have come at all had I known the cost. I had not the money, and therefore could not pay. Then the bawd's tone changed. She was not going to have the poor girl insulted in that manner, she knew better about my means of paying, and I should not go till I paid more.

We went on wrangling until the bawd said, "Well if you have not money give us your watch and chain, we will pawn it, and give you the ticket, and you can get it out of pawn."

I had hidden my watch,--nearly always did so then when I went with whores whom I did not know,--but saw in this a threat, and was getting more funky, yet determined to resist whatever came of it; so said I had no watch, and if I had, that I would see her damned first, before I gave it up. "Oh! won't you", said she, "we will see if you won't,--we don't allow a poor girl to be robbed by chaps like you in our house,--call up Bill", said she to the girl. I saw that a bully was about to be let on me, and my heart beat hard and fast; but give up my watch I made up my mind I would not unless they murdered me. I had an undefined suspicion that they would illtreat and rob me, and prepared for the worst,--my pluck got up then.

But fear of exposure was before me. "Look", said I, "I have no watch, I have given her twenty shillings, here is every farthing I have about me", and emptied my purse (there was but a shilling or two in it) before them, and put all the money I had loose in my pocket on to the chimney-piece. There was I think about seventeen shillings in all. "Look it is every farthing I have,--you may have that you damned thieves,--take it and let me go,--see my pockets are empty",--and I turned them inside out.

"You've got more", said she, "be a gent, give her three pounds, she never has less,--look at her, poor thing!" The girl stood whimpering, she and the woman stood with their backs to the door, I with my back to the two windows of the room which looked out on to the public court; the fire-place was between us, the foot of the bed towards it; the fire was burning brightly, the room was quite light. There they stood, the clean, fresh, wholesome-looking lass, and besides her a shortish, thick, hooked-nosed, tawney-colored, evil-looking woman,--the bawd,--she looked like a bilious Jewess.

The woman kept repeating this, for a minute or two. I refused to give any more, and grew collected. "Come now, what are you going to do?" said the woman, "you are wasting all her evening." I took up half-a-crown off the mantle-shelf, and pushing the rest along it, "I must keep this", said I, "but take all the rest, I have no more,--I have no watch,--let me go." The woman laughed sneeringly, and did not touch the money, turned round, opened the door, and called out "Bill, Bill, come up." "Halloh!" said a loud male voice from below.

I turned round, and with a violent pull, tore aside the red window-curtains, and throwing up the window, and putting my head out beneath the white blind, I screamed out, "Police!--police!--murder!--murder!--police!--police!"

Beneath the very window stalked a policeman; heard me he must, the whole alley must have heard me, but the policeman took no notice, and stalking on turned round the corner out of sight. Then the fear came over me that he was bribed, I feared they might be coming behind me, and turned round; the woman was close to me, the girl at her back. "What are you doing?" yelled the woman, "what are you kicking up a row for?--shut the window,--go if you want, who is keeping you?--this is a respectable house, this is."

A tumult of ideas and fears rushed through my mind, I feared Bill was close at hand, and pushing the woman back with one hand I seized the poker with the right one. "Keep back, or I will smash you", said I flourishing it, and again I shouted out, "Police!--police!" but not with my head out of the window this time.

The old woman backed and shut the door again, the young one came forwards speaking in a hurried tone, the old one dropped her voice to a whine; she did not want to keep me if I wanted to go. "Shut the window,--let her shut it,--give the poor girl two pounds then, and go." Her house was a respectable house, the police knew it, why did I come to such a house if I had no money? The girl cried, I blustered, swore, and all three were speaking at the same time for two or three minutes.

"Let me go." "Who stops you?" said the old woman, "give me the money." "Open the door, and go out first then." "I shan't", said the woman with a snap and a look like a demon. I turned round, and with the poker made a smash at the window. The curtains had swung, the white blind was down, but I heard the glass shiver and crash, a shout of "Hulloh!" from some one in the court. I raised the poker again against the looking-glass. "Get out, or I'll smash this, and you, and everything else in the room", striking a chair violently, and breaking it. I now did not care what I did, but was determined to fight Bill, or any one else, and not be robbed.

The women were cowed, they cried out, Pray drop the poker,--they meant no harm,--the girl always had three pounds at least,--if I would not,--why I would not,--they never have had such a row in the house before,--to have her twice, and give her ten shillings was shameful. "A lie you bloody bawd, I have only had her once, and she has had twenty shillings." "Well, there's a good gentleman, go, and don't make a noise as you go downstairs,--look at her, poor thing, how you have frightened her,--she will let you have her again, if you like,--won't you Lucy?"--"well come along then, but don't make a row,--leave the poker, --what do you want that for?" whined the woman. I would not relinquish the poker, they should go out first. The woman went, the girl waited behind to put on her frock. As she did so the little bitch lifted her petticoats to her thighs, showed her cunt, jerked her belly, winked and nodded her head in the direction of the old woman. I did not know nor heed what she meant by her nod and wink. "Get out,--get on,--get out,--I won't have you behind me." She made a farting noise with her mouth, and dropping her clothes went out. I followed her, looked at the doors on each landing as I passed, fearing some one might come out behind me, and edged downstairs sideways, looking both up and down. One door slightly opened and closed again; at the street-door the old woman said she was so sorry, it was all a mistake, and hoped to see me again. My blood was roused, I would have smashed woman or man who stood in my way, and eyeing the girl said, "Look at me well, if you meet me in the Strand again, cut away at once, get out of my sight, or I'll give you in charge for annoying me, or robbing me, you bloody bitch, look out for yourself." Then dropping the poker on the mat I went out, glad enough to be away from the den.

About a fortnight afterwards I saw the girl in the Strand, followed her for a quarter of an hour, saw her speak to various men, saw that an old, common, low servant followed her at a distance, occasionally stopping to speak with her, and turning up a street for that purpose. There was a fascination about looking at the girl; she was showily but handsomely dressed, her legs looked lovely. I longed to fuck her again, but without any intention of gratifying my lust, for I loathed her whilst lusting for her. She turned up C. t...e Street, stood over the gutter and pissed standing, the old woman talking to her and partly hiding her whilst she emptied her bladder. I waited till she had done. It was only about half-past nine o'clock.

She came towards me thinking I wanted her. I moved back close to a lamp, and raised my hat. "Look at me you damned whore, you attempted to rob me the other night, go out of the Strand, or I'll tell the next policeman you have picked my pocket." She turned on her heels and bolted without uttering a word, the old woman after her, cursing.

A month or two afterwards I saw her again, she was speaking to a group of gay women. Said I, "That bitch attempted to rob me the other night at ------ Court." "It's a lie", said she, but again turned round, and ran up a side-street as fast as she could. I don't recollect seeing her afterwards.

I often used to go and look at the house when that way, it was such a needy-looking house outside with a narrow steep staircase starting close to the street-door. No one would have imagined it was so handsomely furnished inside (although I only saw the top-room). Two or three years afterwards there was a row there, a man tumbled down the stairs (or was pitched down), and was picked up dead. The owner of the house was transported. I don't know if it was the same man who was called Bill, but suspect it was, and that many a visitor had been bullied out of his money in that house.

One night about this time I saw a well-grown, stout woman who looked four-and-twenty. "What a thigh she must have," thought I, "can I afford her?" and I felt in my pocket. Ten shillings with the room besides was too much for me that night. I passed her again looking her in the face, and longing for her, until she knew me and smiled. She had a bright laughing eye. Summoning courage I gave her a signal, and she followed me up a bye-street.

"I have only five shillings." "Lord! you do want it cheap,--make it ten shillings." "I can't." "Well I can't." "Three half-crowns, and then with the room I shan't have a shilling in my pocket." I used to speak in that frank way to them. She laughed. "You are an odd sort of chap,--well come along,--what house are you going to take me to?" "Where you like,--I don't know them." "Oh! yes you do," said she, "you know well enough with that eye of yours." We turned into a house which we both knew, not one of the most expensive.

I was exceedingly pleased with her manner, and in her house still more pleased with her face. Her eye was one of the merriest, she was bright, and fresh-colored, yet the general color of her flesh was slightly brown. Her plumpness made me so randy I could scarcely wait to feel or look at her, I wanted to push on to the fullest pleasures at once.

She eyed me pleasantly, and made some remark about the smallness of the sum, which made me uncomfortable. She saw it, and laughing showed a set of beautiful small white teeth. I gave her her money at once, and then began preliminaries. The room I recollect well. There was a large four-post bed, a large wire screen three feet high all round the fire-place, like those in nurseries. The house-woman flattened the fire down, and took away the poker,--to prevent the fire being stirred I suppose. There was but one candle, and the room was dark, there was scarcely gas in any of the houses in those days.

I drew her to me, my hand roved about her bum, belly, and notch, I asked her to undress, desire increasing by the feel of her thighs made me inquisitive. She would not undress, was in a hurry, some other night perhaps, not now. Impatient so that I might begin, I placed her on the edge of the bed, putting a chair for one of her feet. She lifted up her clothes freely, and I saw her cunt.

It was surrounded, though not in great quantity, with fine chestnut brown, soft, thick hair, her thighs were large, round, fat, and firm, the split looked small, was small outside, and I found it to be small inside as well. A large bum squeezed together by the position in which she was lying closed up almost the cuntal opening, so that just where the prick must intrude itself, the hole could scarcely be seen, her flesh had the slightly brown tint of her face. How is it that at a glance all this was seen, and remembered ever since? What fascination a cunt has! Strange that a mere gap close to an arse-hole should have such power.

In admiration of her cunt and its surroundings I held a candle for a moment between her thighs. "Hold your quim open,--do,--do." Her hand came down, the fore and middle-finger went on either side of the split, and distended the lips, showed the red lining, a clitoris, small, and nice-looking, and small nymphae sloping down to the narrow carmine darkness, closing up gradually and tightly between her bum-cheeks, squeezed up and closed by the weight of her body pressing up her bum the bed.

"I can bear being looked at", said she. "Then open your legs wider,--wider dear." Wider they went. Candle in one hand I pushed the finger of the other up her cunt. Then all delight of the eye was merged in the maddening desire to fuck. Putting the candle somewhere it fell down, and was extinguished; at the same moment slipping my prick to the opening, with a smooth glide up it went. Before I had moved my prick half a minute I was spending, before I had had a wriggle in her, before I had well clasped her buttocks, I was leaning over her sighing, and had finished before I had well began. I now think I feel my sensation up her as I write this, of the rapturous smoothing of her buttocks as I finished. Some women make me recollect them thus.

"What a bore", said I squeezing my belly close up to hers, "I hate to be quick." I heard her laugh, but could not see her face. She did not hurry me out of her, but at length nature caused me to withdraw, and we got the candle lighted.

Washing herself whilst I stood talking and regretting my haste, holding my unwashed prick in front of her, she laughing and saying I must take my time another day, emptied the basin, and turning round asked if she should wash me. Years had elapsed I think since a woman had done so to me, then it was by a French woman. The offer comes to me now as having been an unusual one. Delighted I let her. Delicately handling my doodle she soaped and washed it, making complimentary remarks about it as she did so.

The operation excited me, I stiffened. "Oh! I do so want you again,--let me." "No its late,--if I don't make money before twelve I never do afterwards,--see me another night,--besides you can't do it again yet." "Let me feel you then only for a minute." She approached me, one hand I put to her cunt, the other thrusting between her fat bum-cheeks met the tip of the fingers on the other hand. "My prick's standing so." "It's not." "Feel it." She put her hand down and felt, I stiff to the utmost kept asking her to let me again. "Well get on the bed then", said she after feeling me quietly for a minute,--"see the candle has burnt down, it won't last long." By the time she had said this she was lying down with her clothes up above her navel.

We were fucking with intensity, the candle went out, I felt her kisses. "Oh! what a lovely cunt you have." "You've a nice prick,--who taught you to poke so nicely?" Our tongues met,--silence, sighs, short shoves, spunk,--and all was over. "Let me wash your cunt." "Very well." "You wash my prick." "Yes." The mutual washing over we separated, I promising to see her again. We had washed by the fire-light alone.

Next night at the same time we fucked again. I stripped her, and was enamoured of her body if not of herself. She made no sign of wanting to leave me, but rather wanted to keep me. I had not since I lost Mary tasted a woman's mouth, with this woman I was delighted in doing so, though with the ordinary gay women I could not bear their tongues. Whilst we were fucking they knocked at the door saying they wanted the room. Bessie swore, "Damn her", said she, "for interrupting us,--and the money I have brought her." This increased my pleasure, and Bessie participated in it. After fucking her twice we sat by the fire and talked, she warming her bum, her petticoats up to her knees, my hand on her quim, and airing my balls. "If you want me another night, and can't see me, ask the woman about,--ask for Brighton Bessie,--there are two Bessies, so mind,--Brighton Bessie", said she as we parted.

I found I could talk to this woman. Whilst doing so she would sit on my knees and feel my prick, and I feel her privates. I had long wanted such a free-and-easy acquaintance, for nothing annoyed me like the sham modesty of doxies, their shuffling out of showing me their cunts, their hurry to get me up them, and away afterwards. Bessie had none of this. Like Camille, Mary, and all women I ever kept to long, she let me do absolutely as I pleased, and without hurry would copulate, then sit and talk till we were ready again

for the exercise. But they did not at the house in------

Street fancy our staying so long at their busy time; so she arranged to meet me at B. w Street one night, and took me to a house there which was dearer, but where she said they rarely interrupted couples.

It was nearly opposite to the Opera-House, since built. It had a very large frontage, six or seven windows of a row I think, a dingy-looking building that most people would have passed without noticing, or would have thought it a dwelling-house of poorish people. The knowing ones would have guessed that it meant something hidden and convenient. There was no light outside, but if you pushed the door by night or by day, it opened into a darkish lobby, then passing through a glass door with a glimmer of light at the back, a woman met you, and conducted you to a chamber, big or small, handsomely or poorly furnished according to price. In it there must have been twenty rooms, and there was more bum-wagging, more seed spent, more sighs of pleasure in that house nightly, than in any other house in London I should think.

It was dearer; but if you stayed for hours no one ever interrupted you. There were in Winter good large fires, the rooms were a good size, there was no gas, two candles were given, if you wanted more you paid extra. Wine and liquor of fair quality was got for you. The furniture was somewhat dingy, but all the rooms had sofas on which two could lie, and beds large enough for three with clean linen always. It was one of the most quiet, comfortable accommodation-shops I ever was in, and with Brighton Bessie, I passed there many voluptuous evenings.

I took a bottle of champagne with me there one night, the first time I ever did so to a baudy house when I met a gay woman; but I wanted that night a long, quiet evening with a free woman, and had one with her quite after my own fashion.

I had Bessie often for about two years, and at intervals for two or three years after that, the last was about ten years after I had first met her. I never had a passion for her, nor did I keep only to her; but through the Winter of this year, as nearly as I can recollect, I had few but her. After next hot weather my lust ran riot, I got also better off, and treated my pego to variety, but we then frequently met at B.w Street. Poor Bessie fell in love with me, and was fond of liquor as I shall tell, now will only tell of the way our evenings, and at times afternoons were passed together.

If warm enough we used to strip, and lay outside the bed; if not got into bed. As she was beautifully shaped I first took my delight in contemplating her, then I laid along the bed, my head near her knees, she the reverse way, and again I inspected. Sometimes she twiddled my cock, and I her clitoris, but generally the time was spent in putting her in every voluptuous posture, and fucking in all sorts of positions. She liked it. "It's all my eye", she used to remark when we talked on the subject saying, "I don't like it,--I like fucking and baudiness, it's the best thing in life,--a short life and lots of fucking is my motto,--women who say they never spend with men are liars,--they all like it as much as I do." She was but twenty-one years old, although her stoutness made her look older. And now I leave her for a time.





CHAPTER III.


     A change in taste.--A small cunt longed for.--Hunting in the
     Strand.--Yellow-haired Kitty.--Her little companion.--Oh!
     you foule.--The house in E...t.r Street.--Double fees.--
     Kitty's pleasure.--Objections to washing.--Have the other
     gal.--Cleanliness.--Home occupations.--I ain't gay.--Kitty's
     males.

 I don't know why my erotic fancies took the desire for a young lass, but they did. My taste had for the most part run upon the big, fleshy, fat-cunted, and large-arsed; now perhaps for contrast, perhaps from sheer curiosity, the letch took possession of me. A small cunt, tight and hairless perhaps,--I wondered how it looked, felt, and if pleasure would be increased by it, and though my prick swelled when spending until I have groaned under the grip, even of a large cunt, I longed for quite a little one. I had never had a very young girl,--excepting the little child,--Nelly and Sophy had both a little hair on their mottes, so I would try for a youthful quim and one if possible with no hair on it.

I was not versed in the walks and ways of little ones, and looking about at night saw none. Talking about it at my Club, I heard they were to be seen mostly in the day-time, so I looked out in the Strand for what I wanted, and during day-light.

On a blazing hot afternoon in June I walked about a long time thinking of youthful harlots, but saw none, or if I did could not distinguish them. At length I saw two young girls idling about, looking in at the shop windows on the other side of the way. One was dressed all in black, and was taller and stouter than the other. They were not got up in any showy way, but looked like the children of decent mechanics.

They took no notice of any one, nor any one of them, they stopped at a shop, and I noticed that the biggest had the largest legs. A plump form had as said attractions to me almost superior to face. Crossing to the other side of the way I passed them, looking them full in the face. The taller one was good-looking, white-faced, and had goldenish hair, a colour I could not bear. They looked at me, but there was nothing to indicate fastness. Returning I met them again, the same stare, the same indifference. Thinking of their little cunts, and getting randy and reckless I determined to try. They stopped at a sweetmeat-shop; going to the side of them, and looking into the shop, not at them, so as to prevent my being noticed, "I'll buy you whatever you want if you will come with me", I said. The bigger of the two edged away from me, after looking up in my face, whispered something to her companion, and they both moved along the street without noticing me further.

I was disconcerted, and went over to the opposite side of the way again watching them, they went to a print-shop, and looked in; the big one looked in the direction of a lolly-pop shop, and up and down the street. She was looking after me evidently, so I crossed over, met them full-face, and as I passed said without stopping, "Come with me, and I'll give you money."

I turned a corner, and looked, they were at another shop, the bigger girl with her arm round the smaller one's neck. I again passed them, going back to do so, and saying, "I'll give you three and sixpence." That was the exact sum, and then turned up a street which led to baudy houses, and waited at the turning into the street.

The two girls turned the corner, stopped, and talked, the bigger laid hold of, and slightly pulled the smaller, and seemed to be persuading her. Failing apparently she left her, but turned back, spoke to her again, and both came on together. Then I turned into the back-street, the two girls appeared at the corner of that, and then stopped and talked for a minute. Tired of waiting I thought I had made a mistake, and going slowly back heard the bigger one say, "You are a foule." "Oh! you foule." "Come he wants us." "You foule."

"I don't want her," said I, "but you,--come,"--and returning entered a baudy house, the outer-door of which stood open, thinking the bigger one would follow, and sure now that she was a harlot. I then passed through the inner door which as usual then had a glass window covered with a red curtain.

A minute elapsed, the baudy house-keeper had been spoken to, but the girl not coming, I opened the door to look out. The bigger girl was just inside the outer door, and was pulling in the other one. "Come you foule,--you said you would,--he'll give you money as well as me, and I'll give you some of mine too,--well you are a foule," quite bawling it out. There was not much secrecy needed in such things at those times, in those streets.

"I don't want her," said I hurriedly, "it's you,--come in, or I won't wait." She came in, the other girl disappeared, and we were soon in a bed-room together.

It was the first house at that end of the street, had been newly opened, and was furnished in a style not like a baudy house; no show, neat and clean, but cheaply; no bed-hangings (and in those days most baudy houses had bed-hangings), the blinds were new and white, the beds quite clean. The top-floor room where I went for economy was two shillings and sixpence. The woman of the house was tall, comely, and middle-aged. As I paid her I noticed she had fat red cheeks. How curious that I should recollect those red cheeks. She had a white apron on, and was a civil sort of creature.

The girl stood still staring at me. Sitting on the edge of the bed I stared at her, filled with baudy curiosity and the appreciation of novelty. "Why won't you have the other gal?" said she. "I don't want her, nor want two,--and she is a dirty little imp." "No she ain't dirty, she washes herself like me,--let her come up." "No,--come you here." "She is quite clean,--I wash her myself sometimes." "No, come here I tell you."

The girl came to me dawling. I put my hands up her clothes. A fleshy little bum met my hand, then in the front a smooth belly, a motte almost hairless as it seemed. She said not a word, but gave a sort of jerk of her body, and as my hand touched her bum it jutted forwards, and as I drew my hand round to her belly she drew her belly back. It did not seem like shame. She did not utter a word. "Take off your things", said I.

She drew away from me, and took off her bonnet, then stood still. "Off with your things," I said throwing off some of mine. "I can't take them off,--if I do I can't fasten them again, they are in a knot." "Take them off." "If I do you will have to fasten me." "So I will." Slowly she stripped to her chemise. "Take that off." "I won't." "Come here then." She came. Laying hold of her I lifted her bodily, and threw her with her back on the bed, throwing up her chemise and stretching open her legs quickly. She gave a suppressed "hoh!" put her hand down to her cunt, and felt her mons nervously.

"Take away your hand dear." She took it away, then I pulled open her little thing. Such a delicious little gap it was, with the smallest possible quantity of golden hair just showing on it; such a smooth white belly and thighs, and all so plump, that I was wonder-struck at a young girl being so round and fine. I had not expected under that shabby black clothing anything so nice. I was charmed with her head also; in a big black and shabby bonnet I had seen nothing but a white face and large blue eyes. Her hair was golden in tone, bright and flowing.

Whilst pulling off my trousers she sat up and asked, "Is it big?" For the instant I did not quite know what she meant. "What's big?" "Your thing,--measure it." I went up to her pulling out my pego. "It is big," said she. "It's little," said I. "It ain't,--it's big." "No." "Yes,--don't push hard sir,--will you now?" "No my dear I won't,--Is it bigger than other men's pricks?" "I shan't tell you." "Well lay down and open your thighs,"--again I lifted her on to the bed. "Don't you do it hard," said she getting up again, "or I won't let you." "Then I won't pay you." Back she fell, I wetted my prick, put it to the notch, and with a shove or two was well up her. She gave a "oh,--oooh!" and then laid quiet. Grasping her fat little bum I fucked, then stopping pulled out my prick, and looked at her cunt. "What are you a going to do?" said she in an astonished way.

"Get quite on to the bed dear." Slow at obeying I helped her into the posture, and got on to her, and brought my pleasure to an end, lying on the top of the pretty little girl.

I lay on her long afterwards, and tried by the muscular contraction of my arse-cheeks and ballock-roots to stiffen my pego again. She laid quiet all the time with my prick up her, but I could not manage it, my prick shrunk.

A second erection without uncunting being impossible, I got into a kneeling posture between her open legs, and checked a slight movement on her part saying, "Now lie quiet,--don't move." There was I kneeling between her thighs; looking down I saw her half-opened cunt with the gruelly tide issuing from it, took my prick in hand half its potential size, flabby and wet, pulled back the skin, and out rolled a large drop of sperm on to her thigh. She lay quite quiet, looking at me, her yellow hair falling all around her head as it lay on the pillow. Now I was astonished at her beauty, I had not noticed it fully before.

"You are very handsome,--how old are you?" "Fifteen and a little." "You must be more." "I don't know, but mother says so." I looked at her cunt, the hair on it was not an eighth of an inch long, scarcely any of it, and of course showing no intention of curling, but her form was so round that I could not believe she was so young. "Fifteen and a little," she repeated, her aunt and her mother had been disputing the day of her birth; her mother was out of her mind when she gave birth to her. "Aunt says I ain't fifteen."

"Give the other gal a shilling,--do," she broke in whilst I was questioning her about age, and kneeling between her thighs. "What are you so anxious about the other girl for?" "She lives over us, and is my friend,--will you give her a shilling?--do." "Why?" "Do,--if you don't I shall give her a shilling of mine, and give her some of mine anyhow,--you said you'd give me three and sixpence, didn't you?"

Curiously amused I laughed. "I'll give you a shilling for her, if you let me do it to you again." "Oh! do," said she.

It was hot, I had not reposed after my pleasure, so quitting my kneeling position I laid down besides her, and began feeling her breasts. She turned her head towards me. "You have not washed yourself," said I after a minute's amusement with her bubbles. "It ain't no good if yer ar going to make a mess in it agin,--when you've done it I'll wash it all out together." I thought from that speech she was not an old one at the game, yet after all she only behaved as every young girl I have had usually behaved, they have mostly objected to washing their cunts directly after a poke, I think they rarely wash it until requested. There must be some sweet tranquillizing pleasure which a man's sperm gives to a woman's cunt, and makes her undesirous of washing it out. It is only when a woman knows it is good for her health if she be gay, that she ever does it. No married woman washes the sperm out of her cunt, yet in the morning after a night's fucking you never find the sperm if you feel in the cunt for it,--where does it go?--it is absorbed I suppose.

We lay thus and talked. "How old are you really?" "Fifteen and two months, as I told yer,--I always was fat, but ain't so fat as I was though,--father used to say I should get fat on gruel." I should have guessed her full sixteen had it not been for the little hair there was on her motte, and the delicate pink small cut, and tight prick-hole. "How long have you been gay?" "I ain't gay," said she astonished. "Yes you are." "No I ain't." "You let men fuck you, don't you?" "Yes, but I ain't gay." "What do you call gay?" "Why the gals who come out regular of a night dressed up, and gets their livings by it." I was amused.

"Don't you?" "No, mother keeps me." "What is your father?" "Got none, he's dead three months back,--mother works, and keeps us.--she is a charwoman, and goes out on odd jobs." "Don't you work?" "Not now," said she in a confused way, "mother does not want me to, I takes care of the others." "What others?" "The young ones." "How many?" "Two,--one's a boy, and one's a gal." "How old?" "Sister's about six, and brother's nearly eight,--but what do you ask me all this for?" "Only for amusement,--then you are in mourning for your father?" "Yes, it's shabby, ain't it?--I wish I could have nice clothes, I've got nice boots,--ain't they?"--cocking up one leg, "a lady gived em me when father died,--they are my best."

"Are you often in the Strand?" "When I gets out I likes walking in it, and looking at the shops,--I do if mother's out for the day." "Does she know you are out?" The girl who had been lying on her back with her head full towards me, turned on her side, and giggling said in a sort of confidential way, "Bless you no,--she'd beat me if she knew,--when she be out I locks them up, and takes the key, and then I goes back to them,--I've got the key in my pocket, and shall be home before mother,--she is out for the whole day."

"Do the children know you're out?" "No, I says to them, 'You be quiet now, I'm going to the yard.'" "What's the yard?" said I not reflecting. The girl thought a minute, chuckled, turned her head, and was silent, she was actually blushing. "What's the yard?" Suddenly it struck me, "Going to the privy?" She burst out laughing. "Yes that's it, I say I'm going to the privy, and then I comes out with her, and they can't get out, so they are all right, and we go back together if she's with me; if she ain't I go back by myself,--there,"--and she stopped satisfied with her explanation. "They may set fire to themselves," said I. "There ain't no fire after we have had breakfast, I puts it out, and lights it at night if mother wants hot water."

"What do you do with yourself all day?" "I washed both of them, I gives them food if we've got any, then washes the floor and everything, and then washes myself, then I looks out of the winer." "Wash yourself." "Yes I washes from head to foot allus." "Have you a tub?" "No we've only got a pail and a bowl, but I'm beautiful clean,--mother tells every one I'm the beautifullest clean gal a mother ever had,--I wash everything, mother's too tired. Sometimes we all go out and walk, but that's at night; sometime I lays abed nearly all day."

She was beautifully clean in her flesh, her linen was clean, its color awful; but what could be expected from a pail, a bowl, and one room to dry things in. "You can't always be washing." "No, I do all the mending and making,--look how my finger is pricked," said she showing it.

I had been smoothing and feeling her all over, her unwashed cunt had come in for its share of my attentions, I had been twiddling it till outside it was dry. Recurring to the never-failing, and always charming theme, I got close to her, kissed her, my fingers sought the innermost recesses of her tight little orifice. "Don't you like fucking?--does it give you pleasure?" "It never gived me much pleasure that I know on," she replied. "But you don't dislike it?" "Not if they don't hurt me." "Do they ever?" "One or two have, if they push hard,--but I shan't say no more,--there."

There was a frankness, openness, and freshness about this girl which delighted me. Question after question I put, and would be answered; if evaded I put it in another shape, but she seemed willing mostly to reply. I put into her little head things she had never dreamed of, and all the time kept rubbing her clitoris, probing her little quim, distending it, tickling it, and exciting her till she wriggled her little fat bum.

"Do I hurt you?" "Oh! no,"--"let me then,"--"oh! don't sir,--I wish you would not." "Did you never enjoy the prick up you?--never enjoy a fuck! --you shall enjoy it with me." "Don't now," said she turning herself round as I frigged on. "Feel my prick dear." She did not need a second invitation. "Is it not stiff?" "Yes, and big." "Yes,--yes,--but oh! don't sir,--take away your hand,--ah!" I talked on, frigging and tickling, my prick throbbing, but restraining myself, for instinct told me she was about to enjoy a pleasure she had never enjoyed yet. All at once she relinquished my prick, a slight heaving of her belly, and her eyes closed, then I knew she was ready to discharge.

I ceased to frig, her eyes opened, her thighs which had closed opened again. I joined my body to hers, and we were one, I fucked,--we fucked now, for the little lass in a minute or two was dissolving in pleasure whilst I was pissing my sperm up her, groaning as the tightness of her little cunt squeezed my sensitive prick. If Kitty was not a harlot before, she was from that minute she had her spend with me.

She laid quite quiet till nature dissolved our fleshy union by uncunting me, then I laid by her side, she on her back, her thighs wide open, her eyes closed.

"Don't it give you pleasure?" After repeating that half-a-dozen times she said, "I don't know." "Yes you do,--did you spend?" "I don't know what a girl's spending is," said she. "Did my prick give you pleasure,--tell me Kitty?" At length she said yes, and she had never had pleasure with men before. (Two years afterwards she repeated that the first pleasure she ever had with a man was with me.) "Wash yourself." "I'll wash when I go home." "Wash now you little beast." "What does it matter to you?" "Wash you little devil." She washed carefully, and whilst doing so, "Piddle," said I. "I can't abear to piddle before a man,--what a funny man you are." "Piddle my dear," and the little dear piddled.

Wiping herself dry she stopped in the middle of the operation and asked, "Why wouldn't you have the other gal?" "What do you want me to have her for?" "She's very poor." "What do you do with your money?" "Buy things to eat,--mother's very poor, we often ain't got enough to eat." "Then you get a little money by being gay." "I ain't gay I tell you." "Well your friend is I suppose, and gets money." "No she doesn't,--she isn't gay either,--no man ain't ever done it to her, she's such a foule,--but she would a come in to-day with you, she said she would, and she were just a comin when you sent her off,--she promised me, she'd let yer if you wanted,--but she is a foule though."

"I don't believe that." "It's God's truth though, she ain't, she says she ain't; she knows what men want gals for, but she's never let any one,--I know she ain't, she is frightened." "Have you looked at her cunt?" "Often," said Kitty. "And she's looked at yours?" "Of course she has,--she lives over us I tell you, I go up to her, and she comes down to me when mother's out,--I wash her." "You seem fond of washing." "I likes things clean." I thought for an instant, "It may be true, I should like to see her cunt if she's never been poked,--what object has this little lass in pressing this so?" Then said I, "Tell me the truth, and I'll give you another shilling,--don't lie,--I shall soon tell whether you're lying or not," and getting up, "here is three and six (I had it on the mantle-piece), here's a shilling for her, and there is another. If you answer truly, I'll see you again; but I'll never see you again if I find you are making up lies,--come here." And I sat down.

She came forward, I pulled her between my naked legs, her naked thighs met mine, her little cunt was close to my prick, I put my hand round her fat little bum, and looked her in the face, pressing her belly close to mine.

"What do you want me to have her for?" "Only cos she's so poor,--why she only gets sixpence a day,--she works at sack-making,--oh! isn't it hard!--and her hands if you seed em, are hard and brown, stained with the string, and what the works with,--mother wants me to work at them at home, but I won't--I tells her I'd run away first,--she is so little she can't carry the sacks home as other gals do; so a strong young woman who works at sacks carries them home for her, and charges her twopence for it,--they carries them home on the top of their heads; but she is too little, she is." (At that time women worked at sack-making, and carried them home on their heads.)

"Can she put her finger up her cunt?" "I shan't tell you all that," said she turning nasty. "Is her cunt as open as yours?" "No it ain't." "Then she can't get her finger up." "Oh! you are a rum cove, you are," said she breaking away from me, "I never seed the like of you. I must go,--tell me what time it is." "Half-past four." "I'll go,--I give the children something to eat about this time." "Come here, or I won't give you the shillings." We resumed our positions. "Are you sure she has never had a man?" "Never, she's such a foule,--she says she'd like to, and she'd like the money, and yet she won't,--she is such a foule." "How long have you done it?" "Only since we have lived this side of the water, after father died." "How many men have you had?" "I shan't say,--I don't recollect,--it arn't no business of yourn,--you don't like me." "Yes I like you, but I won't tell,--no it isn't a dozen,--I shan't say who first did it,--I shan't then,--it isn't a dozen,--yes I am quite sure, I don't think it's ten, but it may be about that, I think it's eight,--they didn't all do it to me, no they didn't,--one on em only put his hands up my clothes, and went off in a minute; another pulled up my clothes, and looked at me, and then he--" She stopped, and I could not get her to say what, so promised her another shilling. "I don't know what he did." "Frig himself?" "I don't know what you call it,--yes he did that," said the girl bursting into a roar of laughter when I showed her the operation. "I looked at him, and he went away without speaking,--he only gave me half-a-crown; but an old gentleman one day gave me a gold bit of ten shillings." She began counting on her fingers. I thought she was reckoning her gains, she was a long time at it, doing it over and over again; at length, "It's seven," said she. "What?" "Gentlemen,--you make eight."

"Your little friend is too young," said I. "She is fourteen, but shorter than me." "Has she any hair on her cunt?" "You can just see some coming, and it's black." "She is dirty." "No she ain't, but she was till she knew me,--she can't help her clothes being dirty, but she mends em,--how I wish I had nice clothes like the gals about at night, and like gentlefolks!" said Kitty in a sort of ecstacy, and then tossed up half-a-crown, and caught it.

I began to long for the other girl, and told her she might bring her the next day, that she should have three and sixpence, and her friend the same, and more if I did it. Kitty went off agreeing to meet me with her if their mothers were out, but if not, the day after, all depended on their mothers' absence. She would listen to the church-clock, and as it struck three she would leave; it was only by listening that she knew the time. She would put by a penny for the bridge-toll; generally she went round by Westminster bridge to avoid paying the penny. Then we left. Her little friend I found was loitering close by. They went into a pastry-cook's, and I watched them both eating together as they went along towards Waterloo bridge, Kitt and Pol.





CHAPTER IV.


     Little Pol consents.--Arsy-versy.--Broached, and howling.--
     Kitty's vocalization.--A cheap virginity.--Two hours after.--
     Love's money lost.--The street-gully.--Kitty pleases.--Pol
     tires.--Kitty's habits.--Friendliness and frankness.--
     Sausage rolls.--Confessions of lust.

 On the appointed day I saw Kitty but alone, she followed me to the house, and soon by my pego her sweet little cunt was distended. I had her all the afternoon, and tailed her to the extent of my powers. The girl was delighted, her eyes sparkled with lewdness. Was fucking nice? "Oh! yes, yes," she replied, it was nicer than she thought, nicer than gals told her it would be. This was after I had called her at our meeting a little humbug, for not bringing her friend. The excuse was that Pol's mother was at home. I did not believe it, but was so content with her sweet little form, the ease with which I handled her, the enticing look of the cunt, its tightness, and her pleasant, frank manners, that I forgot all about the other little one, till going away, then said, "Mind you bring your friend, and I'll give you five shillings, but you know you won't, you little storyteller." "I will,--I shall,--I'll make her come,--she wants, but she is such a foule,--and she's frightened of her mother."

Another blazing hot day. The two were looking in at the pastry-cook's, the taller with her arm round the neck of the other. I watched them for a minute, Kit often looked around anxiously, and seeing me, moved off quickly towards the street. I followed on the opposite side of the way, then stopped. The small one stood with her back against a wall, Kitty was gesticulating. I went on passing without noticing them. As I passed I heard, "You are a foule,--you're a liar,--you said you would." "I shan't then." Turning the corner I looked back. There they still were standing as on the first day I saw them. Thought I, "She can't persuade the little one," so walked on to W..l....n Street, to the Lyceum portico, and back again in a fever of expectancy. As I got near the house they both turned the corner, so in I went and waited till both girls appeared, and soon heard two pairs of feet after me on the same staircase, two young voices whispering, the Mistress following us all.

"Why five shillings?" "You have two young ladies to-day, double price you know sir." I did not know, for it was the first time I had had two women together in a house. Excited and anxious I had got to fucking-heat in anticipation of a small unprobed cunt, paid the money, and there was I with the two little ones face to face, two young cunts at my disposal, a novelty, and a charming one. The woman closed the door, casting a queer look at the girls and me. I locked it.

I put my hand up Kitty's clothes, the other girl, an ugly little imp in a bonnet as big as a coal-scuttle, and with boots which looked as if they were her mother's, stood and stared with eyes wide open,--they were dark, and her hair nearly black. "Come here my dear." "Come to him," said Kitty. The girl drew near, I took her on my knee. "So you are the friend of Kitty, and we are going to play with each other naked, aren't we?--I'm going to look at your cunt, and you are going to feel my cock." She made no reply. "I'm going to look where your piddle comes out, aren't I?" "No," said the girl sullenly after reflecting a minute, and hanging her head on one side, "I shan't."

"Yes he is you foule,--oh! you are a foule," burst out Kitty, "I wish I didn't know you, you are such a foule,--she said she would sir, she knows all about it, she does, she knows what she has comed for, she does,--now don't be a foule (in a threatening manner), I won't speak to you agin, nor gi yer nothink (Kitty's English was awful),--you may get yer belly filled, I won't help fill it." All this over and over again, in anger.

The girl looked at Kitty humbly. "Well I will then." I put my hands up her petticoats on to a lean pair of thighs. "Take off your things." "Yes take them off," said Kitty helping her off with her bonnet, and to undress. "Are you going to take off yours Kitty?" said she. "Yes when you have," and without more ado she stripped the girl to her chemise, and herself likewise. I took off all but my shirt and socks. It was a sweating hot day.

The girl was not very inviting, was heavy and lubberly, and looked as if she had not enough to eat; but there was in her a virgin cunt, so I was told, although even then a little sceptical about what a female told me on that point. My tooleywag was standing at the idea, I shook it before them, and calling both to me held them round their naked bums, and made them feel me. The pair of little fists anxiously feeling from the root of my balls to the tip of the piercer soon rendered me impatient for action. I was near the side of the bed facing the windows, and through the white blinds came the strong light of a summer's afternoon. Lifting the fresh one from my knee I put her on her back on the bed, and lifted her scanty chemise. Close went her legs together, I opened them, she resisted, I grew angry, Kitty called her a foule. Coaxed and bullied at the same time she yielded, I pulled the legs wide open, and kneeling threw one over my shoulder, the other I pressed outwards, and with my other hand opened her cunt-lips wide; then she kicked her legs over me, and turning arse upwards got up. A little row, again she yielded, again served me the same trick. I damned her for a bitch, and Kitty reviled her. "She is a fool Kitty,--show her what I want." Kitty hesitated a moment, then throwing herself on to the bed opened her thighs, and pulled her cunt-lips apart. The young one gradually persuaded let me do for her what Kitty did for herself, after she had carefully studied Kitty's quim for a minute.

I saw with speechless excitement the girl's cunt, which seemed at first glance as if a prick had entered it; but looking more closely saw that the perforation was too small. I thrust gently my finger up it,--a cry,--a howl. "Don't,--you're a hurting," and again the little devil was arse upwards on the bed. Again I coaxed, promised, lied, and Kitty bullied; again I saw the cunt, that it was not like cunts that had been fucked: the hairless lips, a little black tint just above the notch, a little hole. My eyesight failed me, the demon of desire said, "It's fresh, it's virgin,--bore it,--bung it,--plug it,--stretch it,--split it,--spunk in it," and I laid hold of her thin backside mad with lust, kissing and sniffling at her cunt.

"Let's lay on the bed, and all strip quite naked,--it's so hot." "Yes do," said Kitty. She stripped the girl of her pea-soup coloured rag, and we both stripped. There we were in a minute all three naked, close together, with but little room, the girl in the middle. I pressed to her, put her hand round my prick, talked baudy. Kitty said, "Now let him." The girl said no. I put one leg over, and worked myself between her little thighs, partly holding myself up on my elbow and pattering baudy which Kitty kept repeating. "It won't hurt dear." "No it won't hurt," said Kitty. "Just let me touch it with his prick." Kitty in her anxiety slipped right off the bed, and getting herself up stood by the bedside repeating the baudy words I uttered.

The girl lay quiet, Kitty telling her not to be a fool; but I was a fool, for the notch being small I did not hit it well. Putting my prick down to where my fingers underlied the split, I pushed towards the goal, not pressing her with my body, but keeping my weight off by leaning on my right elbow, for it seemed that if I laid on her I should crush and frighten her, the girl seemed so slim. My tool struck hard at the orifice, she howled. Fearing to miss my game I then fell with the full weight of my body on her, grasping her thin buttocks, and nearly stifling her on that hot afternoon, determined to have her if I killed her. The girl gave howl after howl, and I rammed with all my might the more. "Hish!--hold your tongue you foule," said Kitty. As the girl wriggled violently, and cried.

"Damn you, if you are not quiet I'll rip your dress into ribbons, and you may go home, and tell your mother what you like,--damn you I'll murder you,--I'll give you ten shillings." "You fool he'll give you ten shillings." I heard no more, oscillating my arse, and driving with all my force between her legs, I knew not how, I knew not where. Still the girl howled, and Kitty kept hushing.

"The woman will turn us out of the house you foule,--she won't let me come in again,--oh! you foule," said Kitty. In my blind battering I at last lodged the tip well between the lips. The next instant with a cunt-splitting thrust I was up the howling little bitch who wriggled like an eel; but I held her skinny arse up to me like a vice, kept my peg fixed and un-moveably up her in spite of her. Her wriggles alone would have kept it stiff enough, and fetched me. "Be quiet,--I am up you,--I can't h--hurt--you--now,--ah!"--and my spunk was up the virgin quim of the ugly little devil.

She laid quiet, but whinning, "Oh! you said you would not hurt me,--ho!--hho!" she sobbed, then laid quite still with my prick up her, snottily whimpering, "o--oho!"--and all was tranquil, I nearly asleep.

"Is it in her?" said Kitty in a whisper, "is it in yer Pol?" Having got no answer from me. "Oh! what a foule you are." "I've done it," said I. "Let her get up," said Kit. I don't recollect having been up such a tight cunt, not that it gave me pleasure, but the extreme tightness was such a novelty. "I will do it again." "Have you done it really?" said Kitty. "Put your hand and feel," said I opening my legs a little to let Kitty feel under my testicles, "my prick's right up her cunt now,--feel."

"Have you done it really?" "Yes,--feel." "Ri--tol--lural--li--do!" said Kitty setting off in a happy dance all round the room. I went on fucking, keeping the girl quiet, I could pull her little form up to me as tight as wax, and coaxing and promising all sorts of things I fucked her again without uncunting.

"Have you really done it?" said Kitty again. "Yes twice,--put your hand up under my balls and feel." Kitty thinking better of the suggestion this time did so, and satisfying herself that my prick was out of her touch, set off dancing again with a "ri--too--ralooral--ledo!" I got off the girl, the hair of my prick saturated with blood and spunk. "She is bleeding." The girl began snivelling worse than ever when she heard that, and began feeling her cunt.

"What are you crying for you foule?--did he hurt you much?--let's look at it,"--and Kitty looked at the little quim bunged up with sperm mixed with blood. "Oh! ain't he done it!--ritollooralado, ritolloolra-lado," and she capered again. "What are you dancing and singing for?" I asked. "She's had it done,--oh! look what a mess is on the bed, the woman will kick up a row."

"Get up and wash it you fool, and don't cry." "It hurts." "Wash it." "It will hurt." "No it won't you foule." Here Kitty put a basin on the floor, pushed the girl towards it, and made her wash. Then we got her on to the bed, and both of us took a long, long look at her split. It was bleeding freely, I saw the ragged edge my intrusion had made, and not feeling inclined for more fucking gave the girl half-a-sovereign in gold, Kitty five shillings, and went off leaving them still naked, Kitty from time to time looking at her friend's wounded orifice, and saying it would soon be all right, that her thing had bled also. I had fear that I might be in trouble through my voluptuousness, although a girl of twelve years is competent to judge of her own fitness for fucking, and many not a month over that age are plugged daily in London.

I had to go to the Temple that afternoon, returning along the Strand an hour afterwards, not thinking of my afternoon's amusement, for I had had a disagreeable interview with solicitors, when just at the end of C----- Street was a slight crowd, in the middle of it the two girls, and the one I had fucked an hour before crying. Some man gave her money. "Oh! Lord," thought I, "here is a row about what I have been doing," so got into a cab, and drove off. When a mile away I began to reflect, and felt more comfortable, but still uneasy, and determined not to meet them the next day as I had promised. The day after I saw Kitty walking by herself, that funked me again, so I cut away without her seeing me. Thought I, "There will be a row about that ugly little lump having been pierced, I will go no more." But the letch was so strong that I could not resist, and on the third day driving past in a cab I saw the two girls as usual looking in at shops. Alighting I winked as I passed, heard one say, "Here he is," and three minutes afterwards we were all in the house again.

To strip the two, and examine their cunts was an affair of five minutes, then laying the little one open-legged I looked at hers tranquilly, and saw how the slit was completed. The girl whose name I forget, but will call Pol, put her finger down, and indicated where, she felt a difference had been made in the shape. I fucked the lass at the side of the bed, propping up her skinny rump with pillows, Kitty with her face about a foot off admiring the prick as it shoved in and out the little red orifice. It was a novelty to her to see it done.

Kitty was an odd girl. "Don't hurt her now," she kept saying. The little one had objected to my probing her again with my prick, but saying I should otherwise not give her a farthing she consented. My delight was increased by the power I found I had of making her howl whenever I shoved vigorously, and I nearly knocked my prick through into her womb I imagine. The more she howled the more I banged my prick up her, the more I enjoyed her.

When it was over I asked how she had spent her money. Out burst the little animal into tears. "She made me drop it, I didn't spend any of it sir, I lost it." "You dropped it yourself," said Kitty. "You lie." "I don't." "She does,"--and so on, and I got at the facts when Kitty had vigorously slapped the face of her friend, and called her fifty times a foule.

Going into the Strand the girl had the money in her hand, Kitty told her to put it into her pocket. She refused. Kitty said she would lose it, and just then she dropped it close by a sewer-grating, down which the half-sovereign went. The girl cried, the two quarrelled, and there was soon a crowd round them. Kitty said that the girl's mother had given her a half-sovereign to buy some bread with, and she had lost it. Some one gave the girl sixpence, the crowd dispersed, and Pol lost the fruits of her first fucking. Never was lost a virginity so poorly rewarded. I did not make up her loss, but gave her half-a-crown with which she was well contented. I certainly was in luck to get all this fun for such trifling sums, I being still in poorish circumstances. Five years before I would have given thirty pounds for the same, and had paid two hundred for Louise.

Giving Kitty three and six, and beginning to put on my drawers she said, "Oh! do it to me, you have done it to her." "Do you want it?" "Yes." "Feel my cock." Kitty grasped it eagerly, we got on to the bed, Pol watched now the graceful manipulation, insertion, and wriggles of pleasure of her friend, for Kitty was fast learning fucking, though quite innocent of the art of frigging. I never knew such a bungler as she was at her first attempt at that.

I grew tired of ugly little Pol when I had bored her a few times, and would not have her again. Kitty I continued to see, she was a most amusing girl. Too young on the town to have learnt the tricks and cunning of a harlot, naturally frank and truthful, with some liking for me (for she looked forward to our voluptuous dallyings), she gave me for a long time much amusement, and I heard the incidents of her short life. She would jabber like a magpie about them when she knew me well, which she soon did, and began to look to me regularly for her supply of money.

She used directly she caught sight of me, to walk as fast as possible towards the house, and get in before me. She was in the room waiting and grinning when I got there. "Shall I take off my things?" "Yes." Off they went, and on to the bed the plump white-skinned little girl rolled whilst I undressed at leisure. "Open your legs Kit, and let's see your cunt." How she clutched my prick the moment I was by the side of her. It really was very nice.

She said, "I buy things to eat, I can't eat what mother gives us, she is poor, and works very hard, she'd give us more, but she can't; so I buys food, and gives the others what mother gives me, they don't know better,--if mother's there I eat some, sometimes we have only gruel and salt; if we have a fire we toast the bread, but I can't eat it if I am not dreadful hungry." "What do you like?" "Pies and sausage-rolls," said the girl smacking her lips and laughing, "oh! my eye ain't they prime,--oh!" "That's what you went gay for?" "I'm not gay," said she sulkily. "Well what you let men fuck you for." "Yes." "Sausage-rolls?" "Yes, meat-pies and pastry too."

"What did you let the first man do it to you for?" "I don't know, he came up to me and told me he'd give me some money, if I would go to a house with him,--he only wanted to talk with me, and I was then so hungry. He took me to No. 4, just opposite here, and did it to me." "What did he give you?" "Five shillings." "You had never had it before?" "Never." "I don't believe you." "I never had, I'm only fifteen and a little,--he met me in the Strand near where you did," she cried indignantly. "Did he hurt you?" "Yes, and made me bleed,--I was upset, and didn't think much about it till I got home and found my shemmy bloody. I washed it, and put it on again quite wet, so that mother mightn't know."

As she talked she would feel my cock, every now and then raise her head to look at it, fall back again as if satisfied, and go on feeling it and talking.

She was intensely curious about my prick, would lay and examine it for half-an-hour at a time silently. One day after feeling it she asked if she might do what she liked with it. Certainly. She moved on to her knees (we were both stark naked on the bed, and had fucked not long before), and began feeling it, skinning, then covering the tip, looking under the balls and smelling it. "How smooth and red it is," said she,--"Does that hurt?" and she rubbed her finger over the tip orifice. "A little,--wet your finger," She did. "Shall I wet it with my tongue?" "Do." She licked it, and bit by bit put it into her mouth, asking me occasionally if she hurt me. I laid amused with the sexual promptings of her nature. She took it out of her mouth, put it in again, then it got stiff, then she laughed. "Isn't it funny?" said she, "how smooth and red it is,--first it's flabby, then it's stiff,"--and she relinquished it, laying down across me, and contemplating it quite silently.

"Did you do that to the other gentleman?" I asked. "Oh! no, never,--I didn't think about it,--only one on em stopped long,"--and she told me about all of their doings. She could never make out but seven, though she always asserted there were eight who had had her before me.

I did not like either cock-sucking or cunt-licking at that epoch, and stopped Kitty who was bent on stiffening it with her mouth. She had no idea however of giving me a pleasure that way, it was simply curiosity and novelty. Often she did the same thing, indeed always had a quarter of an hour at it.

I saw her about twice a week, sometimes more, it was all she could manage "in dodging her mother." I gave her three and sixpence each time, which made her quite happy and contented, and it was a very economical pleasure to me. She learnt much from me, in six weeks blushed at nothing, and was impatient to be fucked. "Do that afterwards," would she say if I dallied long in the preliminaries, then quietly, "Oh! ain't it pleasure!" she added in an artless satisfied way. Then somehow she persuaded her mother that she might go out if fine for a little time in the afternoon, and she was let out occasionally when the mother was at home, but which rarely was the case; and then I saw the pretty lass almost daily, but always in the afternoon; and her impatience to have the pleasure of fucking became almost comical.





CHAPTER V.


     Kitty's antecedents.--The fishmonger's.--Jim the shopman.--
     Betty the maid.--Females in bed.--Mutual curiosity.--
     Letchery and frigging.--Educated in coition.--Against the
     kitchen-wall.--Jim in bed.--Betty's cunt washed out.--A look
     in the basin.--Cousin Grace, and cousin Bob.--Bob on the
     spree.--A scuffle.--Topsy-turvy.--Arsy-versy.--Bob's semen.--
     A masturbating duet.--Caught in the act.--Kicked out.

 I questioned her many a time, and put together here consecutively what she said. She was as much pleased to gossip about it as I was.

She was the daughter of a carpenter, had been kept at home to help her mother, till six months previously to my meeting her, when growing restive, and I dare say her animal vigor inciting her to go forth into the world, she went into a situation at a fishmonger's who wanted some girl to nurse a little child, his wife being ill.

I believed she had told me most things about herself from the time the doodle had first penetrated her: yet why had not such a big girl been put to earn her living? she said that her mother was always in the family way, or a child was ill, so she being the biggest helped at home.

But she had been in service, about all of which she told me one hot afternoon. Ice was then a luxury, they charged two pence extra for a bottle of gingerbeer iced. She was fond of gingerbeer, we had some iced with sherry, and lay on the bed drinking it as she told me her story bit by bit. This is an account of my doings, and not of tales told me by others, but I must tell her tale, for I believed every bit of it, and it is almost part of my own, and this is how it came out.

"If you never spent with a man till you did with me, you had frigged yourself." "I never did till the gal at the fishmonger's did it to me,--we slept together." "Then you had been in service?" "Only two months, I went to mind a little child."

The fishmonger was a little struggling tradesman, in a house with a shop on the ground-floor, and a little back-parlour, and kitchens, and a cellar below where they kept fish-baskets.

Over the shop were two rooms, one was the fishmonger's bed-room, and two bed-rooms above. The wife was confined to her bed, and her husband slept alone in the back-room which was usually the female servant's; so the servant was put into a bed on the top-floor. This maid cooked, cleaned, did everything, and had an eye as well to the shop if her Mistress was ill, and when Master and his man were out; but she could not mind the child as well. The fishmonger asked the carpenter if he knew of a strong steady lass, the carpenter named his own girl, and Kitty went for grub, lodging, and one and six a week. She was to sleep with the maid on the top-floor over the rooms where Master and Mistress slept. The servant's name was Betty.

The fishmonger drank. A young man named Jim went with him to market, and sometimes without him if he had been very drunk over night. Jim opened the shop, harnessed the horse and cart, and every night when the Master went to bed, Jim went to the underground kitchen, opened a cupboard, pulled down something called a bed, and slept there.

Jim was up first, and to bed but last, could not go to bed till the maid-of-all-work was out of the kitchen. Jim pissed in the sink, and made his own bed every morning as soon as he got up, which was done by turning it up somehow into the cupboard, and then he called up his Master and the maid. The privy was in the yard.

Kitty took charge of the child, and the first night as she was going to bed and took her things off Betty said, "Where is your night-gown?" "I ain't got none," said Kitty, "I sleep in my shemmy." Betty tossed up her head. Kitty cried. "Father's a poor man," said she, "but he's respectable, and though I sleeps in my shemmy I am very clean, I washes all over every day,--look at my legs and my neck,--but with my first week's wages I'll buy a night-gown."

"Never mind," said Betty, "you are clean, and you're fat,--your dad gives you lots of grub,--don't cry, I only said, 'where's your night-gown?'--Lord you are fat for your age!--how old did you say you were?--why what a big bum you've got for your age!"

Kitty had been staring at Betty, and the hair on the bottom of her belly. "She was so hairy," said Kitty to me, "I had never seen a woman naked before, and the hair on her belly made me look." "Say on her cunt Kitty." "Well on her cunt,--such lots, and so black,--I had seen gals' things, my cousins used to show me theirs, and I showed them mine to see how our hair was coming; but I did not think a woman could grow such a lot there."

It was a cold night, the girl and the woman were in bed. "Come closer, we will be warmer." Kitty got closer, then Bet began feeling Kitty. How smooth, how soft she was, how plump, and not quite fifteen?--what a bum,--why her thighs were quite large. "Oh! don't mind I want to warm my hand, between your thighs, put your hand between mine,--there,--you've just a little hair coming on your thing,--feel mine, it's like the hair on your head, isn't it?--I am only twenty-five,--but when you are twenty you will have as much Kitty. Your hand is cold, put it between my thighs, we will warm each other there. What a nice little thing your cunt is," said Betty feeling the little one's.

Soon the very first night they felt each other's flesh, Kitty wondering at the cunt and hair of the grown woman, Betty thinking perhaps of what I can only guess at. Kitty went to sleep with one hand between Betty's thighs, and awaking in the night felt Betty again who was asleep and snoring. She was a stout, big-built, fat-arsed, black-bristle-cunted woman (that is from Kitty's description), but she must have been older than she said, for the hair was thick and black in her armpits, and she had slight hair on her lips besides.

Betty got more free next night. "You've a sweetheart, and you let him feel this little thing,--the men call it cunt." Kitty said she had not, and had not been felt. "I know better, you let him put his cock up it." Kitty did not. "What never been fucked?--that is what men call it,--let me feel." "No." Betty felt Kitty's cunt, and hurt her. "Well I don't believe you have,--you are a stupid,--it's half the pleasure of life,--feel my cunt,--give me your hand,--there your fingers are on it,--oh! it don't hurt, you may feel right up."

Kitty was overwhelmed and ashamed. "I did not like it, but yet I felt so curious that I let my fingers go where she placed them, and I felt all about her thing." "Cunt Kitty." "Well about her cunt."

So gradually at night the elder led on the younger, by talking, feeling, and telling the little one all she knew, explaining the pleasures of fucking, the male mysteries, and male tastes and habits, although she was what was called respectable, and worked hard for her living as maid-of-all-work.

Betty pushed matters further. "I don't quite believe you are a maid,--let me look,--would you not like to look at me?--show me yours, I'll show you mine." Curiosity to see the cunt of a full-grown woman took possession of Kit.

On Sunday Jim had a holiday, the shop was shut, Allwork cooked the dinner, then the fishmonger had grog, and went to lie down, Betty went up to clean herself, Kitty and the child went up with her then Kitty showed her cunt, and Betty showed hers. "It was big, and such lots of hair,--I'd never seen one before," said Kitty, "she pulled it open wide, afterwards she pulled mine open, and we looked at each other over and over again. I'd seen my little sister's and cousin's, and two or three other gals' things, but they were all young; I'd never seen a big woman's."

Kitty getting bolder asked if she had ever let a man do it to her. Yes, she had been married, and knew all about it. "You never had a child?" "Never you little fool, there are lots of ways of stopping that,--oh! I love it, I wish I had a nice young man with a big prick here.--I wish you were a man." She took Kitty in her arms, and put her on the bed. "There, lay still on your back, open your legs, and I'll show you how a man gets on." Kitty did. Then she pulled Kitty on to her, and made her play the man. "There, move,--push your cunt up against mine,--up and down,--quick,--there, that's how the man moves when he is fucking till he spends,--then Lord! ain't he quiet!"

Within a week the experienced woman talking to the girl about fucking, had described its pleasures, explained its mysteries, acted and the mode and manner of the doing, until Kitty felt wild to see, feel, and act it for herself.

"Don't you ever frig yourself?" said Bet. "No." "You know what it is?" "Yes." Betty told of the pleasure a finger could bring her, but Kitty was not forward in sexual wants, and she had not frigged herself or known sexual pleasure in her cunt up to that time, though she had fingered herself.

"I'll frig you," said she. Kitty objected, but the talk of prick, of the delight of the male and female in feeling and rubbing each other upset Kitty, who was growing older, and whose animalism was perhaps rampant that night. She feft a lovely sensation all over her as Bet rubbed her cunt, and she spent. Betty then took Kit's fingers, and rubbed her own cunt. "What with your fingers?" "Yes Kitty's fingers," and rubbed them on her clitoris, and frigged herself with them, Kit supposed.

That same night alying sleepless under the excitement of the novel pleasure whilst Allwork snored, Kitty frigged herself. The next night they frigged together. Betty said, "It's poor pleasure,--I likes a man, and you'll like a chap,--some one will fancy you soon,--you let him do it. When you have a great stiff cock up your cunt poking and poking, and poking away,--oh! it's delicious, and you won't like frigging after that."

One night the fishmonger was out, Kitty put the child to bed (he had the child to sleep in his bed usually). Bet and Kit were in the shop-parlour, and Jim in the shop. Betty went down to the kitchen, Jim soon afterwards told Kit to give an eye to the shop, and call him if wanted, and down he went. Kitty who had been sharpened in three weeks, who had seen Jim kissing Betty, and giving her funny pokes when he thought no one was looking, went to the kitchen-stairs, and going down a few steps slowly and peeping; saw Betty with her back up against the wall, Jim close up to her and his hands round her, and his bum moving in a funny way. She knew they were fucking, and fearful of being detected came softly into the shop again; but she made a noise. Up came Betty, the Master came home, and told Betty to go to bed, and Jim to shut up. Soon after Betty washed her cunt. That seems to have been an operation that Kitty never had seen her perform excepting on Sundays. Kitty then felt sure that she had caught Bet at the pleasant exercise, for she had heard how something thick and white came out of the man's cock, and how it was wise to wash the cunt out afterwards.

Betty seems to have been suspicious, for she began asking why she had come down the stairs. To call Jim, a customer having come--but he had gone away she replied. Betty was too clever to take that in. Did she see her, she asked. Kitty had seen her and Jim standing close up in front of her, "and he was moving about, and I told her," said Kitty.

Kitty on being pressed said she thought they were doing what Betty had said men and women did. "Fucking me?" "Yes." He was doing nothing of the sort, that she would swear; but they did it sometimes, for he was going to marry her soon, and after making Kitty promise not to tell, they went to sleep. "If you tell," said the knowing older one, "you will lose your place."

Next night Betty said, "You be quiet, Jim is going to marry me soon, only he don't wish it known, he is coming up when Master's asleep, and going to lay down by the side of me,--you sham to be asleep." Kitty remarked, "He can't lay here all night." No, when he had had his pleasure he would go. Kitty had fear come over her, but promised, then fell asleep, but awakened, and heard Jim say in a whisper, "She sleeps like a top." Then was a rustling and rumpling about, and Jim cried, "Oh! cunt," Betty said, "hush!" they kissed, sighed, and Jim crept softly away, Betty got out and washed her cunt in the dark, and found Kit was awake.

This went on for several nights, Betty had oiled the lock and hinges of the door, and when she heard the Master go up to bed, would softly open the door, and leave it ajar. When Jim had emptied his ballocks he would leave and close the door gently, Bet would light the candle, and wash her cunt. One night she said to Kitty, "Come and see the stuff that comes out of a man's prick." Kitty jumped out of bed, saw the seminal sediment that Betty had washed out of her, and stood looking at Jim's spendings at the bottom of the wash-stand basin. "Look how thick it is," said Bet. "We have no thick stuff, have we?" Then she felt it. "You are a beast," said Kit. "Wait till you have a sweetheart," said Bet.

"Why," said I to Kit, "I asked you before if you had seen any one frig, and you said only your cousin." "Yes," replied she, "my cousin Grace, you didn't ask me about any one else, but I did see a young man once do it to himself," added Kitty, "it was my cousin Bob."

I made her tell me all about that. She had cousins male and female, one named Grace her friend, and a cousin Bob, who used to go and see them; he was a favorite of Kitty's mother, a lad of sixteen, a carpenter. Grace must have been about a year older than Kitty.

Kitty's parents lived in two rooms, and had the right to use a wash-house. I am sure from all she said they were steady working-people. The mother went out sometimes charring, leaving Kitty at home to mind the children. She was useful at home, mended and made their linen. Grace often used to help her at needle-work.

Before Kit went to the fishmonger's she was at home one day mending, and Grace with her. Grace was always talking about what she knew, and had frigged herself before Kit. Kit had tried to frig, but got nothing but a pleasant sort of feeling, nothing approaching the luscious crisis that she felt when Betty tried her middle-finger on her clitoris.

A knock at the door. "Who is there?" "Bob." Kitty had been forbidden under pain of having her ears boxed, to let Bob or any one else in when her parents were out. "You can't come in," she cried. "Let's in for a minute, I've got something to tell you." "Tell me through the door." "No they will hear upstairs." "No." Bob began rapping a tune with his fists on the door. Grace said, "The lodgers will tell your mother." Bob who seems to have been a little fresh said, "Oh! won't you be sorry," and tramped downstairs.

A noise outside. "Why there he is again." "Is that you Bob?" No reply. "See if it's some one else." There was a shuffling outside. Grace got up and cautiously opened the door peeping. A big foot was thrust in, and she couldn't close it, then pushing the door wide open, and himself into the room comes Bob. Probably with the instinct of what might follow Kit had thrust the two children into the bed-room. Females are strange and cunning animals; even at an early age, cunt is always ready, always inciting, and preparing them for cock; knowing or unknowingly, whether for intrigue, or objectless, or for the delight of doing what is forbidden; cunt is always inciting the female to help the male, for "cock and cunt must come together," as poor Fred said.

Bob was making a half-holiday, had had enough beer to elevate him, and was of an age at which a prick has a habit of getting inconveniently stiff. If you can't afford to pay for cunt, or don't know a cunt which will take you up it for love, your prick is a restless article, which will insist on the buttocks pushing it somewhere or somehow, till the stiffness is taken out of it.

A frisky youth with restless cods was in the room with two girls, one of whom was also frisky, and the younger inquisitive. They got joking, he kissed them, they tickled him, till he threw himself on the floor, and rolled about as the girls tormented him, and thought they were getting the best of him. He suddenly caught hold of them both, pulled them on to the floor in a heap, one on the top of him one by his side, and holding one one way, and the second another way, managed to put his hand on to one's cunt, turned the other over, and lifting up her clothes slapped her naked backside; they struggling and crying out at the attack on their sacred privates, he fighting, overturning, and exposing the limbs of the lasses, until, as Kitty said, "he's seed all we'd got to be seen over and over again."

This quieted Kitty and Grace. When released they called him a blackguard, and told him to go out of their room. "I'll tell my mother," said Kitty. "Tell her," said Bob, "tell her you saw this," pulling out a stiff prick, "as stiff as yours," said Kitty, who was laying at the side of the bed feeling my cock about whilst telling me.

"We turned away, then turned round, it was still out, he had got it in his hand, and was grinning. Grace said, 'Let's go to the children', and burst out laughing, so did I, because she did." Kitty stopped her, saying, "Don't let the children see him, they may tell mother." After a time they turned round again, the fascination of the prick was on them, both wanted to see it. Grace winked at Kitty. "Go away Bob," said Grace, "you'll get Kitty's ears boxed if it's known you have come in." "Don't care," said Bob, "show me your cunts, and I will. Cocky, cunty, cocky, cunty," he sang out, "look here,--come and feel it."

"I don't know what you mean," said Grace turning round again. (Kitty said that Grace told her afterwards she wanted to see as much of his thing as she could.) "Show us the crack between your thighs." "You beast, I've a good mind to hit you," said Grace. "Come on," said he. "You go." "Feel my prick first." "I won't." "You Kitty." "I won't you beast." "But," said she, "I was curious like to feel it for all I said 'no' to him, and so was Grace."

Bob ran at Grace, and catching her, pulled up her clothes, and felt her; then running after Kit, he did the same, the whole three were yelling, Bob with his prick out promising to go if they felt him, they frightened of the mother coming home.

They were much agitated now, the children in the bed-room were crying at the row, and both girls threatening to call the lodger upstairs. "Let me," said he, "let me put my cock just on your naked thighs,--do, --do,--do,--only for a minute." "Shan't you beast." "Oh! I must do it," said Bob, "I must,--hooo," and then sitting down on a chair, Bob closed his eyes, frigged away, and saying, "Oh! it ought to be in your ck--ck--cunt," spent, the two girls looking at him and at the sperm jetting out on to the floor.

They stood looking, never uttered a word, and fear came over them lest Kitty's mother should come home, and catch him there with his cock out, and his sperm on the floor. "Go, there is a good young man,--mother will be home directly,--oh! that's her footstep,--run upstairs, and wait till she's in." Bob whose nervous system was I dare say a little shaken by his frig, buttoned up his trousers, and ran out of the room. The girls locked the door and listened,--it was not the mother, then they began to talk.

"That's it on the floor,--that's what comes out of a man's cock when he puts it up a woman's thing," said Grace,--"it's that which gets a woman in the family way,--it's that which gives them both pleasure when they do it together, when his thing is up her thing."

Grace told all she knew, that when her mother was "lying in," she once peeped through a key-hole, and saw her father frig himself. They talked of the pleasure they had heard it gave the woman to have that warm injection up her. Grace frigged herself, Kitty tried but got no pleasure, they sat opposite each other on chairs, Bob's spunk still on the floor. That was the only time she had ever seen spunk till she saw Jim's in the wash-hand basin. "Should you like to see mine Kitty?" "Shouldn't I!" said she. "You shall some day,"--and one day she frigged me.

Kitty was quite artless when she told me this, she had taken a liking to me, though I did not then know it, and was delighted to tell me all, it seemed quite a relief to her to do so. She had never spoken to any one else about it. To a man? she should think not,--it was not likely, and though I asked her often and often about it at times she never varied the account. I believed it implicitly, and that is why I narrate it here.

Several nights Jim served Betty so, till one night Kitty sneezed. "The girl's awake," said Jim. "Who is that?" said Kitty shamming, though she knew full well. "It's Jim,--you won't tell, will you?" said Betty. "I have told her you are going to marry me,--have I not Kit?" Jim went on tailing his mistress, but now that he knew Kit was awake he put out his hand and felt Kitty's bum whilst fucking. "Did you tell Betty that?" said I. "No," said Kit laughing.

Next night Betty who seems to have taken delight in debauching Kit, made her feel Jim's prick, she pulled her hand to it. "I thought I liked to feel, but I shammed that I did not." "Was it big?" "It seemed bigger than yours, but I didn't see it."

This went on for a fortnight or so, Kitty feeling always afraid that they would be found out, and so it came to pass. Illicit fucking in a house not your own is sure to bring trouble.

The Mistress' sister came to nurse her, and slept in her room. Betty said the sister gave a lot of trouble, and was always poking her nose where she had not business to poke it. Jim did not come up for one or two nights, he had heard some one moving either in the Master's, or in the sick woman's room. Kitty was glad of it. Jim I suppose at last randied out of his prudence one night, and Betty reckless for want of fucking, told him to come, and up he came. Then a violent knock at the door came just as he was fucking Betty.

"Who is that?" "Me." "Wait a minute sir." "Open it, or I will break the door open." "Wait sir, I'm not dressed." In came the door with a crash. Jim was just by the bed, Kitty standing by Betty, for both got up. At the door was the Master and his sister-in-law. "You damned whoring bitch," said the Master to Betty, "at day-light out you go from my house."

The sister-in-law turned down the bed, looked at it, and then at Kitty. "Please Maam it's no fault of mine," said Kit. "You dirty little hussy, why did you not tell what was going on,--your father shall hear of this." "Dress yourself," said the fishmonger to Betty. "Leave them alone till the morning," said the sister-in-law,"--and both left the room. Jim half-dressed, without speaking a word, had crept downstairs whilst the talk was going on. The Master did not speak to him at all.

"They will sack us both," said Betty. Kitty began to cry. "You are a fool, there are lots of places. I hope old Vinegar-Chops liked the look of it," said Betty lifting up the towel (there were the drippings from Betty's cunt on it),--"I dare say the sour-faced beast knows what it is,---don't you cry, you will get a living if your father does turn you out, any girl can so long as she has a good face, and something warm between her thighs." That was Betty's comfort to Kitty.

After breakfast the Master put Betty outside the door, Kitty's mother was sent for, who boxed her ears all the way home, and the father knocked her down when he came home. "If I thought you'd turn a whore," said he, "I'd murder you." She told her mother the truth entirely, but only got her ears boxed still more,--she should have told her Master, the mother said. After this she was again kept at home, a short time after her father died, her mother changed her quarters, keeping her indoors to take care of the children, and had no idea that her daughter was getting fucked to enable her to buy sausage-rolls, as well as for the pleasure of having a male.





CHAPTER VI.


     Sausage-rolls, and consequences.--Kitty's home.--The little
     ones.--A saucy cabman.--Catamenia.--Fucking economies.--
     Changing money.--Pol and the bargee.--Kit implicated.--A
     black eye and bruised rump.---A little boy's cock.--
     Preparation for travel.--'Kit's regret.--Bessie in tears.--
     Amusements abroad.--Home again.--Kitty a strumpet.--An
     evening at B.w Street.--Kitty's eight months doings.

 One day I took some sausage-rolls to the baudy house, she clawed hold of one directly. "Ain't they prime!" said she, and never ceased till she had finished them all--such a lot,--then she turned pale. "I must go home," she said. "Why?" She began putting on her things. "What is your hurry?" "I can't wait." "Are you ill?" "Yes,--yes,--I must go." "Then I won't pay you." "I'm not well." "How,--you want to go to the privy!" "I do," said the girl hanging her head. I rang the bell, told the woman to show the lass where to ease herself. When she came back I could not get her to look me in the face, and thinking of her operation gave me a distaste for her that day, so I let her go without doing anything. Ridiculous that of course, but I tell things just as they occurred.

When it rained, and she could not meet me, how angry she was. "If I buy an umbrella mother will wonder where I got it." Once she nearly got wet through, and I did not see her that time, because I did not expect her to be out.

She told me where she lived, and I arranged that if it rained I would go to the front of the house in a cab. I did that once only, and the cabman insolently demanded about five times his fare when I got down at E----r Street, saying I had enticed a young girl into the cab. "Yer haught to be glad to be let orf with ten bob," said cabby, "think yerself lucky a peeler don't drop on you for taking a young gal like that,--yah! you're a swell, ain't yer?--yah!--yah!--poop!"--and off he drove.

She began to deplore her poor dress, bought a pair of white stockings, and I kept them for her, because she was afraid of taking them home. "Oh! ain't I kept under," said she, "I hate it,--I have a good mind to bolt." "Then you will turn gay." "Well I would like to dress nice, and do as I like, instead of minding children and working." I persuaded her not.

"Have you had no other man but me for the last two months?" "Only one," she said, "but I'm never out if it rains, and I can't get out of nights cause of mother, and I wash and mend,--so how can I?" "I'll go and ask for some one else at your room, to see if you're in or not." "Do,--if I don't open the door, mother will, on Monday I'll take the brats into the Waterloo road for a walk." She did, and I saw her. How short her clothes were! a carman as he passed stooped down, and gave her legs a pinch. Her mother was at home.

The girl grew fast, each week she seemed bigger than the week previously, the sausage-rolls agreed with her, the hair on her cunt lengthened,--she was so pleased when I remarked it,--her desire was to have as much hair on her quim as Betty had. Then she began to get heavy, dull, and drooping. One day I had her on the side of the bed, just for variety sake, for sometimes I found it delightful to see my prick up to its roots in her, and the next instant its tip. Her cunt felt very wet, looking at my half-uncunted prick it was covered with blood. I pulled it out, a red stream followed running all over her chemise. I had never seen such a sight before when fucking, and only once I think since, though I have poked women in that state.

"What is the matter?" said I startled for the moment, "you're poorly?"

"Oh!" cried out the girl, "I must go to mother,--ohl let me go." I tried to comfort her, she took no notice of me, but dressed and ran out of the house quickly, white with terror and without her money. That night I had Brighton Bessie, and told her about it. Bessie said the dirty little bitch ought to be flogged by the hangman; if she had her way all such young bitches should be sent to prison, and the men who had them ought to be punished as well.

Kit's first poorliness had come on, that accounted for her dullness, she had no idea of what was taking place in her, her mother had not warned her. Of course, the girl knew of the ailment common to her sex, but her monthlies had taken her by surprise. I never knew a girl more unaffectedly modest than Kitty was the next time she met me after her accident, as we called it.

Said she one day, "Give me a sovereign for this silver (savings out of the money I had given her), I don't know where to put it, it jingles in my pocket,--I am afraid of dropping it, and mother finding it out."

She had put it in a crack between the skirting and the inside of a cupboard lining as near as I could make out, until it was a pound's worth. "What a pity I can't buy some nice clothes, is it not?" said she. Poor Kitty was amusing, but I saw she was brewing mischief after she had had her monthlies, or was what she called "a full woman." Several times as she took my money she said it was no good to her, as she could only buy things to eat. She was getting restless. When I told her I should be in the Strand one day, if it were not wet. "Oh! do come, if it's wet or not,--I will meet you." "But your mother?" "Don't care,--if she says anything I'll tell her I'll run away."

Said she one day, "Hasn't Pol got it? her mother has nearly murdered her,--oh! Lor she is bruised all over." Then she told me that the little dark girl I had had was caught in the privy with a man,--"oh! such a big un, he is much taller than you,--she was standing on the privy-seat with her legs wide open, and he was trying to do it to her." The mother had suspected, had the little imp watched, and caught the man in the act. "How he could do it I don't know," said Kit, "but he is a bargeman,--such a big man!--and the little beast stood on the privy-seat too." Kitty was scandalized at that.

It was some days before I saw her again, then she was slovenly and had a black eye, and began to cry. "It's mother," she sobbed, "look here." She pulled off her things, and showed me wales and bruises. "Mother did it," said she sobbing, "my bottom's bruised,--she held me down, and hit me with a brush,--look," said Kitty turning up her lily-white arse for me to see.

Her young friend who had not long before had my prick up her cunt, and then the bargeman's, had sought to excuse herself by saying Kitty was as bad. Mother told mother, Kitty was battered by her mother, and had been locked up, there had been row after row, till Kitty would not eat, nor wash, nor mend,--she fought her mother, she threatened to run away, and to turn gay. Said the mother, "Your father always said you would, he would turn round in his grave if he knew what you are saying.

"I made my brother's cock stiff," said she one day as she was playing what we called cherry-bob with my prick, i.e. taking the tip in her mouth when it was limp, and shooting it out again, just as you see children do with cherries. "Your little brother?" "Yes,--I washed him, pulled it backwards and forwards, as if I were washing him, so that he should not know what I was about." "Did it get stiff?" "Quite, and he seemed to like it," said she, "he asked me to go on doing it."

During all this time I had occasionally seen Bessie, for a youthful cunt never did give me full physical enjoyment, nor fetch me like a full-grown one, although as an occasional letch it was delicious. After her monthlies had arranged themselves I fancied Kitty was more luscious, and her discharge more copious, yet I often used to think of the spanking posteriors and full crisp-haired cunt of Bessie whilst operating on Kit. A light-haired quim I also never liked, it was the artlessness, frankness, and freshness of Kitty which kept me to her so long.

I was going abroad. When I told Kitty this she broke into tears. "Oh! what shall I do!--don't go," said she. The little lass was fond of me; a thing I never had dreamed of. She promised me to go to service, and leave off fucking; but she never did.

Then I told Bessie, and she began to cry, and said, "It's always the way,--directly I like a man I lose him." I thought she was shamming, but the last night I had her, she would take no money, said if I gave it to her, she would throw it into the streets.

Glad to be from England, alone,--alone, I hoped to be sent to------, but got no further than------. There I had women enough. All women there were examined by medical men weekly, just as they are at------, and many a fine Spanish woman, and coarse but well-built English woman I had for half-a-crown a piece. I was recalled after seven months, and within a few days was in the Strand, but saw no Kitty until one night in early Summer. "Oh! it's you,--I'm so glad," said a female. It was Kitty, delighted. I did not know her for the instant, but in ten minutes we were fucking. How glad she was to see me; she was a well grown young woman, and lovely, her breasts were well developed, her calves and bum as well, although she was not seventeen.

She had quarrelled with her mother, left, and set up as harlot. It was wonderful what harlotry had done in giving her taste in dress, deportment, style of walking, and even in language. She had learned the value of her cunt, it was no longer three and six, but twenty shillings. "I don't want your money," said she, "let's talk of old times." We spent several evenings together. One man almost kept her, she thought he was going to keep her altogether, and hoped so.

I had taken her to the house in B.w Street, quietly there we talked all things over; we laughed over the affair of Pol and the coal-heaver, the sausage-rolls, the lost ten shillings, the afternoon her poorliness came on. "So you are gay,--do you like the life?" She really did, got lots of money, and now kept her mother who had been disabled by rheumatic fever. I saw her daily for a week or two afterwards, and we fucked to our hearts' content. Her motte was delicately hairy now, and of dark golden colour, slightly brownish. Then I went to the sea-side. When I came back to London, looking for her everywhere, I could not find her, and though I longed for her very much, was obliged to render myself happy with others.

To complete her history I must go forward two or three years when I had been madly in love with a gay woman as I shall tell, but had quarrelled with her for presuming on my love, and resolutely abstained from seeing her, doing however great violence to my affection and inclination. I used to go to the baudy house in J...s Street (not yet mentioned), and cry to its Mistress who would ask me to let her send to the lady of my affection (Miss M...s),--but of this more presently.

After reading over this part of my narrative relating to Kitty written full thirty years ago, I add these few words.

My secret life was written for my own pleasure, and to be a narrative of what I myself saw and did, and nothing else. I have pretty well adhered to that, but my fun with Kitty took place within a few years after I began to write, and describe the amatory episodes as leisure inclined me, and as they seemed to me unusually amusing or illustrative. I arranged them in order afterwards. Nothing at that time had been so piquant in my acquaintance with harlots as Kitty's had been. I had not then had much to do with lasses as young as she was, the novelty therefore I suppose made me write out her narrative intermixed with my own, at the length it has reached.

Besides Kitty was really quite original, her freshness, frankness, and truthfulness impressed me much, and after much experience since in the ways of frail ones, I believe now that what she told me was mainly true, and am sure she was delighted to get a confidant in me, to whom she could unbosom herself unreservedly.





CHAPTER VII.


     Brighton Bessie.--Change irresistible.--Bessie in quod.--
     Lewd effects.--Spooning.--Her home.--Her cabman.--
     Reflexions.--Two years after.--Five years later on.--The
     mouse's promenade.--Bessie disappears.

 I met in the Strand one night Bessie, who put her arms round me. I repulsed her, she saw her mistake, and followed me to a baudy house. Inside she began kissing me excitedly, and said she was so glad to see me back, that she did not know what she was about. It was not our usual house, I was in a hurry, so after I had fucked her was going away. "What one fuck only!--you have not had me for a year nearly,--I'm damned if you go till you have given me another,--that dear old prick, I've thought of it fifty times when I have been poked." So I fucked her again, and afterwards resumed seeing her, for she was much to my taste sexually. I had many voluptuous amusements with her which she liked and invited, although I have no recollection of playing any of those curious erotic tricks which gratified me later on in life, nice attitudes being then for the most part enough for me. My balls were running over with sperm in those days, and if I could control myself for a few minutes when my prick was stiff, it was as much as I could do. Bessie was full-blooded, and loved to take her fucking with me, kissing me furiously as her pleasure came on. We used again to pass hours at the house in B.w Street, reading, drinking, talking, and copulating at intervals.

Yet I went after other women for all that, for fresh cunt was irresistible. Once when I had been away I missed her for a few days, then I saw her coming out of a public-house. "Oh! I'm so glad,--I've been locked up,--it's a damned shame," she cried out, "I was marched off without having said a word by a police-man,--blast him!--and all because I would not let the bugger fuck me one night up in ------ Street,--I'd never let a policeman touch me,--damn them all." She spoke loud to a man and two or three sympathizing women, a mob began to gather round her, so noisy was she.

I turned as quickly as I could up a side-street, she following me. "Oh! come my dear, come,--how glad I am to see you,--I did nothing but think of you whilst I was locked up,--oh! God I'm dying for a fuck,--a whole fortnight I've not had it, and I did nothing but think of you when I frigged myself." There was a roar of laughter from half-a-dozen women who had followed her. "Shut up," said some one. "Ain't she a letting out!" said another. "Ain't you ashamed of yourself?" said a third. "It's one of her men," said another. "She is a nice woman," said some one else. "It was a damned shame," said another. "I know him," said a voice, "he wants every woman in the Strand, and if he don't get them he walks them off." "Yes the bugger." "She is just out." "Yes, and he quodded Mary Summers last night." "And he is a married man with a large family,"--and so on. I felt overwhelmed, and inclined to run away. She turned into the first house which had a door open, and I was glad when the friendly red-curtained door closed behind me, she galloping upstairs in front of me, showing her fat calves. I followed Bessie into a bed-room.

"Five shillings," said the woman to me. "It's all right,--you go,--he's an old friend of mine,--don't bother," said Bessie pushing the servant out of the room, and slamming the door, then throwing her bonnet on a chair she caught hold of me, gluing her lips to mine, feeling at my trousers front she cried out, "Let's fuck,--come and fuck me,--I'm dying for you,--a fuck from you,--oh! put your prick up." She had got it out, threw herself on the bed opening her thighs wide, and showing her cuntal beauties, calling on me to fuck her. I mounted her immediately, it was impossible to withstand her randy impetuousity; contagious lewdness coursed through my veins.

"Oh! my God," said she as my prick drove home, "I'm coming,--oh! my God,--fuck,--fuck,--oh! I'm spending,--oh! my darling,--fuck,--spend,--oh!--oooh!" I never had a woman in a higher state of randiness, she would not let me go till I had fully eased her passions, she lavished expressions of love and tenderness on me. "Don't pull it out,--there dear, there,--lay still on me, I'll keep it up, it will be stiff again,--there it's stiff now." I stopped with her some hours. A policeman on the beat she said, had taken a fancy to her, had asked her to let him do it to her up against the dark wall at the back of E.... r H.. l. She would not, he threatened, still she refused, so he took her to the station one night on the plea of her annoying gentlemen, and the magistrate gave her a fortnight in prison. She had come out that very day, and was rather tight.

In a few weeks Bessie got more and more friendly. I was the first to leave, and she to ask what was my hurry. When I thought I had been detaining her too long for my moderate compliment, she would say, "Oh! never mind, I'll make ten shillings do,--I'm not in debt,--before the theatres are over I dare say I'll get engaged." It was impossible to avoid seeing she was getting affectionate. She would sit or lay talking, feeling, or kissing me for hours, whilst her expressions of pleasure when I was stirring up her vitals equalled those of any woman who has ever loved me or enjoyed my embraces.

One night I was charged twice for the room, for stopping long, and said something about not being able to afford it. That brought forth a proposition, one of the most curious I ever had in my life.

Said she, "It's a lot of money to spend on the rooms,--come to my rooms; they would be too humble for you, but they are clean and nice,--drop me a line, and I will always be at home,--and you would be more comfortable than at these houses, and have nothing to pay." Then after hesitation, and as if reflecting, she said she lived in the New North road where she had either a small house or rooms in one, I don't quite recollect which. "It's paid for by a friend of mine, he gives me ten shillings a week. Now don't think little of me because I tell you this,--he is only a cabman, he sleeps with me nearly always, he's a nice clean, steady man, and behaves well to me; but I don't like him since I've known you. You can come when you like, and sleep with me when you like,--I'll give him up, he shall never come near me again, and I'll always be there for you,--you will see what a large comfortable bed I've got,--but you must pay for the rooms, I must feel sure of a roof over me,--I don't care about anything else,--then you can see me when you like, give me what you like,--nothing if you have not got it,--I don't want your money, I'll get that as I now do."

She said all this in a humble way looking at me, tears half filled her eyes, her tone was sad; it was in its way a clear but simple declaration of affection for me. I saw it, felt it, but shunned it; for a strange dislike to a gay woman loving me came over me, some sort of undefined idea that I should be a species of fancy-man, a man whom I always thought at that time was a baudy house bully; and the offer of Bessie oppressed me.

I told her she was very kind, that I appreciated it, but it was a long way off,--I would not think of it,--I did not wish her to give up a friend for me,--that there were obstacles to my accepting which I could not tell her of, and so on. I scarcely knew what to say in refusing without wounding her feelings.

"I am sorry I told you, for you won't think as much of me as you did,--it's the simple truth,--you don't believe me?--only come up and see me." But I could not then think of displacing a cabman, I did not even like to think of my prick having taken its pleasure in the cunt which had wriggled the prick of a cabman. My experience in life might have told me, had I thought about it, that the possibility was that my prick might have rubbed up the same channel that a burglar's had. I only saw that I was asked to displace a common man in the affection of a street-doxy, I appreciated the affection which prompted the offer of exchange, felt gratified and sorry at the same time, especially when I saw tears in the poor woman's eyes.

I again said I would if it were not such a long way off, but perhaps I would, and so on. I never did go to her house, but saw her from time to time, until I fell madly in love with a lady of pleasure and would have given almost my life for her to have loved me. So Bessie was avenged, for I had fallen in love with a doxy after all.

When this infatuation occurred I ceased seeing Bessie. Then in my trouble a year or two afterwards I sought her again, and told her my trouble. "Ah! you would not love me when I was fond of you, but you love her, and she plays on it,--don't you let her fool you," said Bessie, "she has got a man,--all you give her he will get, I know it from what you tell me." Bessie was right, but Sarah after a time as I shall tell, did not deceive me about the matter.

Then I missed Bessie for a year or two, then found her again in the Strand, she was much altered. "I don't think I ever liked a man to fuck me as I do you," said she one night as she enjoyed me, "if you had but come up to my little home you would have saved me a lot of trouble." But I could not get out of her what she meant by that.

Full five years afterwards, when roaming about not far from the Haymarket one night I met her, and scarcely knew her. She stopped short, "You Bessie!" "Ah! yes it's Brighton Bessie, but I'm sadly altered, sure enough." "And you knew me?" "Know you!--I should know you by your eyes, if I saw nothing more of your face but your eyes,--I should know you to the last day of your life," said she. She was always talking about my eyes. She had seen me several times, but had not dared to accost me she said. I told her she always might.

I took her to what had become my favorite baudy house. It was a hot night, and we fucked on the sofa. She had become flabby, and said she had ill health, but I could glean nothing from her about her career, excepting that for some years she had not been gay. We stripped naked, and had just finished fucking her on the sofa when I felt something running over my legs, bum and back over my shoulder, on to hers. It was instantaneous. Then I saw a mouse which had run over us, and went fast up the wall into some red curtains where it was lost,--it made her shudder, and me too. That is one of the odd events by which I shall always recollect the last time I had Brighton Bessie. "You won't see me again I dare say," said she in a plaintive tone, and a tear in her eye as we parted. I said I dare say I should. "No you won't,--good bye dear." With a sigh the poor woman left me, and I never saw her again.

It was whilst I was frequenting Bessie, and occasionally other doxies that the following adventure occurred.

I was frequently now at my mother's house, my brother was away, and both my sisters married. I used to stop with her for days together, finding that a relief from home misery, and also agreeable company to her, who was now so much alone. I also at times stopped with one of my sisters whose husband I liked; the other lived some distance from London.





CHAPTER VIII.


     Washerwomen.--Matilda and Esther.--A peep over a wall.--
     Eaves dropping.--A girl's wants.--Shaking a tooleywag.--A
     promenade by a barrow.--Disclosures.--A snatch and a
     scuffle.--An assignation.

 I went to see my mother one day in Summer, and after luncheon walked to the end of the garden often mentioned. At one side of it was a road which gave access to a gentleman's house, and on the other to my mother's. There the carriage-road stopped, and a foot-path began. At the junction was a mews wide enough for a cart, which ran at the end of our garden and those adjoining. Our entrance to it had been disused, we having one in the side-wall opening on to the road, and the neighbours rarely used their back-entrances. The mews was grass-grown. On the opposite side to our garden-walls was the wall of very large grounds. A gate not locked, formed of open bars was at the end of the mews next to the road.

The footpath mentioned passed between walls of large gardens, and the between fields, until it joined a road on the other side of which was the village church-yard, through which the footway passage continued till again a high-road intervened. This continuous footway formed a short cut to a distant part of the parish. It was not much used excepting on Sundays, and by lovers who walked there on summer nights. I had found out years before that the mews at the back of our house was an occasional pissing-place, it being round the corner, and out of sight. I used to peep over the wall in hopes of seeing a female at that operation, mounting to do so by the gardener's ladder. When I saw a woman piddle it was great delight to me, but I more frequently saw men whose cocks had no attraction for me. On Sunday nights after church, the splash and rustle of petticoats could be heard, but not seen; the sight was however rare at any time, for few people had the boldness to push open the gate, and enter the mews.

I never saw copulation, the greatest fun I had was once seeing a female bogging, who turned round and gathered two or three of the largest leaves from the lime-trees in our gardens which overhung the wall, wiped her arse with them, and left them sticking on the top of her turds; but she never noticed a youth peeping just over her head. One reason why I was never detected watching was that women always turned their bums to our wall, and so I was at the back of them. Charlotte and I have both looked over the wall.

The wall was mostly covered with our ivy, which fell down in thick masses on the mews side; lime-trees at intervals completed the screen. Any one peeping down from above could be sufficiently hidden if he put his head carefully above the wall at places, and pushed aside the boughs. On the day I speak of, I walked round the garden thinking of old times, of how Charlotte and I used to see if the cook was talking to the gardener before we began our amourous play, of the pranks Fred and others played there, and all the occurrences of my youth, which had taken place in the house and garden.

The gardener was away. I thought I would look over the wall; so placing the ladder got up, and looking down saw two girls sitting on the handles of a barrow on which were baskets filled with linen. One looked about sixteen, the other a little older. It was a dreadfully hot day, the barrow was at the angle of the mews. They were talking, and I moved the ladder to get a place nearer to them and not to be seen; for to watch and hear women who thought themselves unobserved and unheard, was always a delight to me. If you ever hear two women talking on amorous subjects, their disclosures you will find are always charming to a man.

At the angle of our garden, and just where the road joined the mews, a large notice-board had been put up for some purpose since I had lived there; it was just outside and higher than our wall. Between the back of it and the wall was a space of a few inches. Our ivy had grown up it at places, and filled up most of the space, but enough was left at the angle to let me look down on the barrow which was just outside the mews-gate, out of the way of what small traffic there was, the gate of the mews being wide open. Then of all my eaves dropping I have never yet heard anything so amusing as I did then. The air was solemnly quiet in the hot summer's afternoon and though the girls spoke quite softly, I heard them well.

"I should like to feel what it is like," said the youngest whose face was towards me. There was a mixture of fun, audacity, curiosity and lewdness on that girl's face. "Hish! some one will hear you," and something else I could not hear, said the other. "Fuck--there then," said the young one saucily and laughing. The older gave her a slap. "Now you may take the things home alone,--I won't help." "If you don't I'll tell mother." "Don't care." "Yes you do,--what did you say it for?" "Didn't you say it?" "I didn't bawl it out you fool." "Fuck,--there,--there," said the younger going off. "There it may stay then," said the older angrily, and she moved also off round the corner. They were both out of sight in a second, but I heard their voices quarrelling, the barrow and clothes-baskets were unattended just outside the mews-gate.

A labouring man came along in the opposite direction. Seeing the barrow he stood and looked round in all directions, turned into the mews, and I think he was going to steal, but thought better of it. I had peeped quite round the board, but had dropped into the old place again, the man turned to the wall, and pissed just under me, his head turned, and looking at the clothes-baskets all the time, then he drew the foreskin backwards and forwards when he had finished, till his prick was standing, an article any man might have been proud of; he played with it, and might have been going to frig himself had he not been interrupted.

The girls came back round the corner just then still wrangling, they stopped as they came on the man, who turning round shook his tooleywag at them, and moved out of sight, but not out of my hearing. "This is the sort of thing that would please you," said he wagging it. "Go along you beast, I'll call a policeman." "You wouldn't call out if it was up your cunt,"--and he walked off laughing. The girls were quiet for an instant, and then laughed. "Hish!" said one, "he is not gone." The other looked round the corner, and said he had; then they laughed loudly.

"Was it not big!" "Did you see it?" "Yes, and stiff,--ha--ha--ha." "He--he--he." "It looked as if it would split any one," said the little one who sat down on the barrow-handle again. "Sarah says the bigger it is the better it is," said the other, and then they laughed. "Hush!" said the bigger one, "some one may hear us." Turning her rump to the wall she pissed just where the man had. The little one did the same, then off they went, one trundling, the other holding the baskets steady. They took the heavy work in turns I found.

I rushed to the house, then out, and followed the girls, a desire to show them my prick was on me. As I followed my intentions cooled, fearing they might tell a policeman. I had not the experience then that I now have, or should have feared nothing of the sort, for girls tell no one but each other if they see a man's prick. I overtook them in the church-yard (they were resting again on the barrow-handles), and entered into conversation with them, delighted at their demure faces, knowing that they had just seen a prick, that one had said "fuck," and that I had seen both piss. A notion of getting the younger one by herself restrained me from blurting out what was in my mind, but my delight really was in looking at, and talking with them, thinking that fucking might and probably was in their mind at the moment I accosted them.

They were coarse, middle-sized, well-fed, sturdy-limbed, dark-eyed wenches, unmistakeably sisters. Excepting for one being shorter than the other you would scarcely have known there was a difference in their ages; both had bare arms, one had her frock well pinned up behind over her petticoats, both had short petticoats, thick ankles and strong boots, a washerwoman was then not ashamed of showing what she was, and they always wore dazzling white stockings,--and these girls did. I asked where they lived, they answered readily. I knew the lane well, all the washerwomen in the village were there.

In my lewdness I forgot everything but the pleasure of speaking to the girls. A middle-aged lady passed us accompanied by two or three very young women, who stared hard at me. The barrow-girls stood up and curtsied as they passed, and naming them. I knew them, and a few years before had romped and played with the young ladies, then children. The last time I had seen them there was not a hair on any one of their cunts; I expect that now their cunts were full-wigged, and well frigged into the bargain. They had recognized me, as I heard from my mother afterwards, I did not recognize them, they having grown from children to women. I was seated on the barrow-handle as they passed.

"So you wash?" No, their mother did, they ironed, took home, and fetched the things. What was their name?--would they meet me? and so on. They would perhaps,--where did I live?--they did not know me. Getting friendlier and friendlier I learned all about them, it was done in a joking, chaffing way. I told them I lived far off, and was only on a visit at a house close by.

They must go on really,--would I get up? No, unless they gave me a kiss. I chivied one after the other, and caught and kissed both, they were not difficult to catch. Then they trundled on the barrow, I walking with them, the people we met (very few) staring at a dandy walking by the side of two washgirls; but I took no heed then of any one who passed us, nor cared.

We crossed the high-road into another part of the lane, and again we stopped; more and more randy got I. "What do you think of, when you iron the tail of a man's shirt?" "Nothing." "You know it wraps round something different from that which a chemise does." "Does it?" said the little one who had twice the cheek of the elder. "Yes,--it makes you think when you iron them." No it did not,--what did I mean?--they did not know in the least.

(What delight some girls have in their randiness in declaring they don't understand a man's baudy chaff, the "What do you mean?" "I don't understand" are only incitements to the man to declare his meaning in broad, strong, baudy words; and then it's, "Oh! oh! the beast!" but their cunts tighten with a squeeze of lust, they go off and think of it all, and perhaps frig themselves under the recollection. But this is a reflection the result of matured experience, and was not written at the time this part of my narrative was.)

They turned up the high-road, and at their earnest request I fell behind, they left the linen at a house, and brought back other baskets, then I recommenced chaffing. When we were in the lane bounded on one side by a wall, on the other by a ditch and corn-field. They stopped and begged me to go, for so many people knew them on the road. Prudence told me we had better separate, but my mind full of the idea of getting the younger girl, I asked them to have a drink. No,--they would be seen. Would they meet me? Yes. When? They could not say,--but I had their address.

I am not clear why, but up till then I had not said what I had heard and seen, but I kept it to myself, although dying to let it out. I again sat at the edge of the barrow, and refused to get up till they both kissed me. They could not go without the barrow, and after a little sham I kissed them both. Then the devil took all control off of me, and as I kissed one I felt outside her till she wriggled away from me. This in the open lane.

"Now," said she, "Mr. Impudence, I've a good mind to slap your head for doing of that." "I'm sure you liked it,"--and I went towards her. She ran ahead, and took up a stone. "I'll heave this at you," said she looking as if she meant it. I desisted, and went back to the barrow, "What's he done?" said the sister who had been standing a little distance off. "I'll tell you bye and bye,--come on." The younger began to handle the barrow, but I sat down on a handle, some one came along. "You will do us harm," said one of the girls.

"Tell your sister what I did." "Shan't,--get up." I then, forgetful of my intention, blurted all out, imitating their voice and manner. "Fuck,--hish! some one will hear,"--a slap. "Fuck,--there then."

The younger stood like a statue, her mouth opened wide, her lower jaw almost seemed dropping off; the elder stared at me, her eyes nearly out of her head. "Sarah says the bigger it is the better she likes it." Their faces got blood-red, they stared at each other, then one said, "I wish you'd get up, and let me have my barrow."

"I saw you both piddle," then I looked up and down the lane in both directions, I was bursting. "Look," said I pulling out my prick, "it's as thick and stiff as his, isn't it?" No one was in sight still.

"I wish there was a policeman," said the elder, "oh! you beast,--we'll tell the police." One appeared just then in the lane, but the girls appeared to be in no hurry to tell him, but I rose, they wheeled off the barrow as fast as they could, I walking with them. I was a little afraid of the policeman.

We had got to a spot where the lane was crossed by a village-road in which were many good houses. "Oh! pray leave us, we go down here, we have customers in the road." "Will you meet me?" "Yes,--but don't follow us." I did not want to be seen, so we parted, after some arrangements about meeting.





CHAPTER IX.


     Returning home.--In the church-yard.--Two female laborers.--
     Among the tombs.--A sudden piss.--An arse on the weeds.--
     Torn trousers, and a turd.--In front of the public-house.

 They went off, I crossed the road into the churchyard, through its posts at the entrance to prevent cattle passing, and over which with difficulty the girls had got their barrow and baskets. It was a huge churchyard, half of it mere field; at one end the rich were buried, and there were rows of tombs and monuments, the rest was only partially filled with tomb-stones of all sizes. As I entered it two women passed me; they were tall, stout, and dusty, had very short petticoats, and thick hob-nailed boots, dark-blue dresses hung over big haunches, little black shawls no larger than handkerchiefs over their backs. They had big black bonnets cocked right upon the tops of their heads, and seemed women who worked out of doors, agricultural laborers perhaps, or perhaps the wives of bargemen, for there was a canal through the village. They had the strong steady walk, and the body well balanced from the hips that you see in woman engaged in outdoor occupations; perhaps they carried strawberries to the London markets in large baskets on their heads, and they walked as firmly as soldiers.

They went past me towards the monuments, both looked at me, and they quickened their pace as they went off. I was dying with want of a fuck. "They are going to piss," I thought. I knew the spot. We when boys, and I when a youth years before, had laid in wait to see nursemaids and their little charges turn up among the tombs to ease themselves, so I stopped and looked after them.

They heard my footsteps cease, turned round, looked at me, and walked on again. I followed slowly, they walked slower, so did I; they stopped, so did I; one turned round. "Well young man, what do you want following us?" This abashed me for the instant, but my prick standing gave me confidence.

"You are going to piddle, and so am I." They burst out laughing, then checked themselves, and one said, "Well I'm blessed if you ain't well cheeked young man." "Arn't you?" "It's no business of yourn what we're a going to do,--go your way, and we'll go ours." "I'll piddle by the side of you,--I like doing it where a woman does it," I replied. I was baudily reckless now.

"I'm damned!--did you ever hear such cheek!--go on young man,--or let us." On they went, I followed; they stopped, so did I; they muttered together half-laughing, and turning their heads round every minute,--and I went on chaffing about piddling.

They had got to a spot where there was a break in the row of tombs, and a length of turf with grass a foot high, burnt up, and almost made hay in the summer sun. "I'd give each of you a shilling to piss before me", said I. They had turned into this cross-passage between the tombs, and one could see them from the footpath through the church-yard.

"Oh! Lord," said one before I had got the words out of my mouth, "I can't wait",--and squatting she began pissing whilst I made my offer, and laughing said, "Well if ever I heard the like,--well young man, give it,--I'll never be paid again for getting rid of my water, I'll bet,--you do it Sarah." Sarah said, "I shan't." "Don't be a fool, take his bob." The other looked at me, the splash of the other woman's piddle fell on her ear. When any one wants to piss, and hears another doing it, the desire to piss becomes strong. Down Sarah squatted laughing, and her splash began, before the other had finished pissing.

I wanted to piss, but the rigidity of my prick prevented me; it wanted to evacuate its sperm before it got rid of the thinner liquid. I pulled it out in front of their faces as they squatted side by side, stiff and red-tipped; it throbbed, and knocked up and down in its randiness under every effort I made to turn on the water. One said I was a blackguard. "I want a fuck so bad,--let me have you,--I'll give you five shillings." To which of the two I don't know, for I had no choice, one cunt was as good as another to me at that moment, and I pushed my prick towards one of them, who laughing put it aside with her hand.

"There is a chance for you," said one to the other (they were both up then). "What do you take me for young man?" said the other, "if my man were here he'd knock your bloody head off." But both stood looking at my prick and me. I kept on asking, and offering the money,--no one would see us,--one could watch,--and so on.

"Do you live about here?" said one. "No, I am going to see a friend at ------" (naming a place about two miles off.) "Weren't you never up here before?" "Never in my life,--here is your shilling,"--and I gave it her. "Here is yours." She would not take it. "Take it Molly." She took it. "Oh! let me have you," said I selecting that one now for my addresses.

"This is a bloody lark," said she, "what do you take us for young man?" "Let me fuck you." Both stood still looking at me and my prick. "Some one will catch us," said one moving out from the tombs, and looking up and down the pathway to see if any one was near, and then came back. I had got close to the other. "Now Molly," said one anxiously, "what are you about?" "Oh! he's made me all overish." "Well if you'd been three months away from your old man as I have, there would be some excuse." "Never mind,--you won't blab,--you stand there, and call if you see any one." "The grave-digger will catch you." "No I saw him right over by the church." "Come away." "No,--you go and watch." And so we talked for a few seconds, but I never put my prick out of sight.

"Well," said the other moving out of sight into the narrow path between the monuments, "you'll get into a mess." "No I shan't,--I'll let him for the lark of the thing."

The instant she had gone round the corner the selected one laid hold of my prick. "Do it quick,--some one may come," said she as she grasped it. "Lie down". "No I won't,--it's dirty." "No it's dry,--the grass is quite hay." I stripped off my coat, made it into a bundle, and placed it for her head. "There,--there," I said, and pulled her down. She made no resistance. I saw white thighs and belly, black hair on her cunt; and the next minute I was spending up her.

"Shove on," said she, "I was just coming,"--and she was wriggling and heaving, "go on." I could always go on pushing after a spend in those days, my prick would not lose its stiffness for minutes afterwards; so I pushed till I thought of doing her a second time; but her pleasure came on, her cunt contracted, and with the usual wriggle and sigh she was over, and there were we laying in copulation, with the dead all around us; another living creature might that moment have been begotten, in its turn to eat, drink, fuck, die, be buried and rot. Suddenly she jerked up her arse, and pushed me.

"Oh!" said she uncunting me, "there is some one,"--and up she jumped. There stood the other woman. "How you frightened me," said she. "There was no one coming,--well it's a rum afternoon's job this," said she. "Don't you blab." "Not I."

I had hidden my prick, but now my bladder insisted on its requirements being attended to, and I went to the spot which the two ladies had moistened, and pissed on it. The woman who had watched us fucking had dark eyes, she had looked at me without ceasing from the time I had got off from the other, and began pissing. My prick nearly at fucking size still, was pouring forth a copious stream whilst I was feeling its stem which the moisture from the other's cunt had saturated. Seeing her looking I pulled out balls and all, and finished by shaking my tooleywag. She laughed a low laugh. "I feel all overish myself now." Her eyes looked like fire at me, fierce, lewd. "I'll give you five shillings,--let me fuck you too,--she will wait and watch for us."

"Oh!--o!" said the one whom I just had fucked, twitching about, and suddenly pulling up her petticoats, and looking up them, "there is something crawling up me." She felt up her petticoats, shaking them, and flourishing them about. "Oh!--oh!--just lift them up, and look Sarah."

Her companion lifted her clothes. "Go away young man, you've had your game I think." "Oh! not there,--oh! it's biting." "Don't make that noise." "Oh! it's here,--there,--just there." Slowly the companion lifted the petticoats, first one side, then the other, showing thighs and rump, and a great ugly crawling black thing dropped; it had crawled up her petticoats whilst she was lying on the ground. I had drawn near, and was gloating over the display of charms. "Ain't he had a treat Molly!" said she.

This sight finished me by making me as stiff as I had been five minutes before; the other one still kept looking at me. "I'll give you five shillings," said I. "I've a good mind" said she. "Lor let him,--who'll know?" "How stiff it is!" "Let him." "Feel it," said I. The woman put her hand on it. "I'll go and watch," said the other moving away. "I shan't." "Don't be a fool,"--and she moved out of sight, leaving us two alone.

Not a word more was said, I pushed her up against the upright railings enclosing a monument; a slight stone-lodge going all round the monument put her about an inch above me, I lifted her clothes, for an instant only saw another dark-haired cunt, and drove my prick up it. She felt pleasure the very first shove that I gave her. "Oh!--oh!--did she do it with you?--did she spend?" she gasped in whispers, looking me full in the face. "Yes she spent."

That fetched her. "Oh! I'm coming,--oh! it's a coming," she gasped, and laid her head over my shoulder. I felt her bum and belly wagging, and a perfect torrent of cunt-liquor ran down on to my balls. I had not long began my fuck, so was slower than with the first woman, and had fetched her a second time before I had finished her standing up against the railings. Then we stood, pressing our bellies together, keeping our genitals coupled, and looking in each other's faces without speaking, one or two minutes.

"You don't know these parts?" said she whilst we still were coupled. "I've never been here in my life before," I replied. "How hard your bum is,--are you married?" "Yes." "Is she?" "No,--let me go, she is coming." Down flopped my tool, and down fell her petticoats.

The first-fucked came round the corner, then we talked. I had given the first woman her five shillings directly after I had done her, and before she found the reptile in her petticoats; I forgot to pay the other. "Well young man, you've made a pair of us go crooked," said one. "Aye that he have,--we've played high jinks." "Give us a kiss," said one. I kissed them both, and off they walked. "Hulloh!" said I, "I forgot the five shillings." "Lord so had I," said my creditor,--and I gave it her.

"Don't come our way, the grave-digger knows us,--go straight across there, and round the church." I watched them going along with their steady step; who could have known from their look and manner, that both had just been fucked! Who can tell the state of any woman's cunt, whom you may meet anywhere!

I went to my mother's, the hair on my prick was gummed flat on my belly and balls, I found I had torn a hole in the knee of my trousers, and a lump of turd was sticking to my coat, that I had made her a pillow with, the ground must have been hard and flinty, and some one had shit in the high grass.

What were the women?--certainly not gay. Did they fuck with me for fun, for letch, or for money? I often have thought of it, and came to the conclusion that both were lewd, that my baudy suggestions made them worse, my prick upset them, and the money finished it; but that wanting a fuck was the main cause; that one whose old man had been away three months, how she looked at me and at my doodle, after I had fucked the first one!

Towards dusk I went to meet my washerwomen. Near the corner of the lane in which they lived was an old-fashioned public-house well back from the road, in front of it were two large elm-trees, beneath them seats where poor people sat drinking and enjoying themselves in Summer. I stopped and looked. Quite at the back sat the two women whom I had fucked; they had pewter pots in front of them, and recognized me at once. Both got up, and rushed inside the public-house rapidly. Funk was on their faces, they seemed to struggle who should get inside the door first. I never saw them afterwards, but at the sight of them my cock stood rigidly, and I would have had them again had it been possible. Many a time since I have been to that churchyard to look at the place among the tombs where we three had our pleasures, and my prick always stiffened when I was there. Such impromptu copulations have a wonderful charm.





CHAPTER X.


     The washerwoman's lane.--An intention frustrated.--A slap in
     the face.--Choice language and temper.--A dinner in the
     Haymarket.--The rocking-chair.--A lucky shove.--Up, and out
     in a second.--A quarrel, and flight.--An enticing laugh.--
     The house in O... d. Street.

 Down the lane was the washerwoman's cottage, it had a little garden in front of it. Through the window I saw the girls ironing by candle-light, I walked about till quite dark, then knocked at the door. The short one opened it, and seeing me shut the door saying, "Oh! you musn't call." So I went away.

Then I wrote asking them to meet me, and got no reply; but I persevered. I was constantly thinking of the girls' baudy talk when sitting on the barrow. I went to the house again, after writing to say when I would be at the end of the lane, and found them standing there,--by accident they said, they declared they had not had my letter. That was a lie I knew. I began smutty talk, which they cut short by both going to their cottage.

I wrote letters to the short one again, asking her to meet me, but nothing came of that. At the end of their lane were market-gardens, I saw Esther one evening at that end which joined the high-road, and was close to the public-house where I had seen the women sitting whom I had poked in the village church-yard. It was dark. I asked her to come for a walk, she promised in a few minutes to come to me by the market-garden. "If I don't," said she, "it will be because mother is at the door." But she came.

I swore I was in love with her, which was true to the extent of her cunt, and wanted her to meet me elsewhere,--we would dine, and go to the theatre together. No she could not be out late without a row. I kissed her, which she took to in the darkness kindly enough. I whispered, "I should like to fuck." "If you say that again," said she, "I'll slap your chops." I did, and she gave me a slap in the face, and ran off. I was hurt, and so annoyed, that I did not follow her, but bawled out, "You'll split your cunt into your arse-hole if you run like that." Directly afterwards a voice like as of an oldish female in the darkness said, "Get along you drunken blackguard, the likes of you ought to be locked up." Insulting the girl by foul-mouthed remarks had not improved I feared my chance of broaching her, and for a while I desisted.

But the letch was strong on me, I went to stay with my mother to be nearer my game, and passed my time in playing billiards at the public-house, and nightly I hunted the girl; so that at length under promise to take her to Vauxhall she agreed to come and dine with me, or as she said, have supper at eight o'clock with me. I usually then went to Vauxhall at ten o'clock.

I went to a French restaurant in the Haymarket, ordered a sitting and bed-room, and a good supper. Thought I, "With a feast and champagne with you by myself for a couple of hours, my cock and your cunt will make acquaintance."

To my annoyance she came with her sister. "I could not stop out late without her," said she. I made the best of it, though very angry on the quiet at seeing my game baulked.

"I'll kiss you at once because you have brought your sister unasked, and you Matilda because you came unasked,"--and I kissed both to my heart's content. They liked it. They were dressed in the vulgarest style of their class, and I felt ashamed of going to Vauxhall with them,--and did not they gorge! Champagne they had never tasted before and they lapped it up like milk. "It gets into your head, don't it?" said one. "No my dear, champagne gets into your tail,--you'll want to piddle soon." "Oh! for shame!" "Never mind there are plenty of chamber-pots in the bed-room." "If you talk that way we'll go," said they laughing, but we went on talking and drinking.

Supper over, the waiter out of the room, both girls half-screwed, half-screwed myself and wholly lewd, they both came and sat by me on the sofa. Sisters again,--what fatality!

The conversation was soon suggestive. Which did they like best, washing a shirt or a chemise? They let out, checked themselves, checked each other. "Lord Esther what are you saying?" "Well Matilda I'm ashamed of you." "Well that's pretty conversation for a gentleman,--let's go,--promise you won't say anything like it again." "I won't,--but tell me one thing,--how did you feel Esther, when you sat on the barrow and said, 'fuck'?" "You're a blackguard, I never said anything of the sort,--did I Matilda?" "We'll go if you keep on so."

Matilda got jealous. "It's my turn now," said she after I had been kissing Esther. The wine got more into all our heads, and we laughed and shouted. "Why did you come Matilda?" "Mother don't let Esther out alone,--besides I didn't know what you two might be up to alone." "What did you think we might be up to?" "Oh! that's tellings." This talk went on for a time, gradually getting warmer and more suggestive; all were thinking about fucking, though no one said so.

By the sofa was an American rocking-chair, the first I ever recollect having seen. Matilda began rocking herself in it, I rocked the chair violently for her and then as far as it would go, back and held it there, then rapidly I pushed one hand up her petticoats. Her legs were distended somewhat as legs usually are when people are rocking, and my fingers went on to her cunt. She lay back for the moment, helpless, then managed to close her legs, but being almost on her back she could not get free; she struggled to get up, and yelled out, "Oh! pull him off Esther,---don't you beast."

Esther was on the sofa. She got up, pulled me back, and the chair came forwards, but not till I had lifted Matilda's clothes far above her knees. She sulked, my blood was up, and pulling Esther down on the sofa kissing her, I pushed my hand up her clothes, and on to her cunt. She screeched, then Matilda pulled me away. There had been much laughing and yelling, but now they sulked. "We will go," said they. "I've felt both your cunts," said I.

Their bonnets were in the bed-room, and I would not let them get them, put both fingers to my mouth, and kissed them saying, "That's touched your cunt Matilda, that's touched yours Esther." Then I pulled out my prick, and putting both fingers on it's tip said, "That's nearly the same as if my prick had touched your cunt.

"Call the waiter Esther," said Matilda angrily. I had gone too far, so I desisted, begged pardon, promised never to do it again, to give them both new bonnets, and I dare say anything else, and they sat down, but for a long time sulking, and almost silent.

But my humility and regrets overcame them, there was more chatting, more laughing, more champagne. I got smutty again and now, they laughed at it. "What nice legs, and what beautiful white linen you have Matilda." "Mine is as white," said Esther. "Your legs are not as plump." "Yes they are." I pinched their arms, then their legs, we all kissed, they were both as randy as the devil, and incited me to smutty talk, though affecting not to understand me. Then the champagne overcame us all.

"You want to piddle?" "Ooh!--oh! no." "Really? then you want to see if your bonnets are all right, that's all,--I want to piddle though." Saying that I went into the bed-room, pissed, and came back, taking the key out of the door. Laughing the girls then went into the bed-room, and closed the door. They were very noisy, and groggy, the eldest worse than the other.

I listened at the door. "Lock the door Ess." "There's no key." "Stand there, and hold it,--I'm bursting." "Don't he go on!--make haste, or I'll pee myself." I pushed open the door suddenly, one was pushing her clothes against her quim to dry it, the other on the pot, she let a loud fart just as I opened the door. "Oh!" said she rising with difficulty. "I'll wait till the music is over," said I going out,--but I returned the next minute, and pulled out my prick again. "I'll fuck you both," said I, and tried to put my hands up their clothes; when I got one the other pulled me off, then I turned to her, and so on. We upset chairs, we shrieked with laughter, it was Bedlam broke loose. I caught Matilda, and threw her on her back on the bed. "Leave off now,--pull him away Essie,--you're a going on too far,--oh! don't tickle,--oh! I can't bear tickling." But I kept on.

The tickling made her screech. I threw up her clothes, for she was still on her back on the bed, I didn't see her cunt, for I was between her legs, and bent over her, lifted her legs, and pressed hard down on her belly, her clothes on it which met mine, I gave a shove, having no thought of doing anything but lewd mimickry of the act of copulation, whilst Esther was tugging at my coat. Matilda shrieked, for my prick went up her cunt, and out again before I knew where it was,--another furious shriek. Frightened I had let go of her, she rolled off the bed, and sat on the chair maudlin, and crying.

"What's the matter?" said Esther, "what's he done?" "Oh!" sobbed Matilda, "where's my bonnet?--let's go,--I will go." "Stay,--be quiet." "I won't,--I will go." The waiter just then came into the room begging us not to make so much noise, as people were noticing it. Matilda crying and angry, Esther questioning, Matilda telling Esther to put on her things, or she would go without her, whilst there stood the French waiter and a chamber-maid, wondering what the row was all about,--if they had not heard, and did not guess it.

The girls were frightened, and I could not stop them. They had their things on, and were out of the house in a few minutes, I went down with them saying we would go to Vauxhall. The landlord stopped me. "Your bill sir." I paid it, and when I got out could see the two girls nowhere. I took a cab, drove here, there, and everywhere, but they were gone.

I came back towards the Haymarket, took the first woman I met, and went to a house in C... d. n Street. Half-an-hour afterwards I went with another; whilst with her I heard a merry-voiced woman in an adjoining room, and without seeing her took a fancy to her. I dismissed my second woman after fucking her, and enquired of the servant how long the lady who was laughing had been in the adjoining room. She knew nothing, so I waited door ajar, till I saw the woman leave, followed, and brought her back, fucked her, and had not enough money to pay for riding home.

The more I think of that adventure the more extraordinary it seems; from the time I threw Matilda on to the bed, till my prick had entered her cunt, and got out again, I don't believe it could have occupied more than a few seconds. She was heavy, I only just could lift her, and her petticoats seemed but half-way up. She laughed loudly as I did so, and when I leant over her with my prick out, I had not the remotest idea of broaching her, nor that my prick might touch even her thighs; but she must have been in the exact position, and her struggles brought her notch down to the level, and my prick by mere chance drove a little way up the hole; then her bum-wriggle threw me out instantly, and her yell frightened me. Whether she was a virgin or not, or whether I hurt her or not, I cannot say; could not even swear that my prick had entered her cunt, but it felt like it; and why did she yell, then sulk, and go away in a temper, if I had not somehow touched that slippery orifice?





CHAPTER XL.


     Esther meets me.--Vauxhall.--Ex-harlot Sarah.--Esther
     succumbs.--Big-arsed and bandy-legged.--Periodic fucking.--
     Matilda invincible.--I part with Esther.--Her fortune.

 I wrote to Esther, who met me in the lane, she was in her airs. I had quite forgotten myself she said, and had made them both drunk purposely,--it was not like a gentleman,--I had acted very improper; she would not recollect where my hand had been, did not believe I had felt her thighs, she was tipsy. That was the line the cunning jade took in a dark lane. "Now don't be foolish, and run away when I tell you." "Well I won't." Then I said something suggestive, and she got cosy with me. "What was it you really did to Tilda?" "Nothing." "You did." "Ask her," "She won't tell me, and she will never speak with you again." Truthfully or not Esther declared she did not know what I had done to make her sister holler out so.

"I'll give you a bonnet, and we will go to Vauxhall,--don't let your sister know." I gave her the money, she agreed to meet me again, and did, and again asked me what I had done to her sister. I would tell some night when I slept with her. Then she would never know, for she would never be in bed with me, or any one else, till she was married.

I progressed in the usual way, praised her big bum, guessed she had fat thighs, etc. "You know I did feel them." No, she did not recollect. After talking thus one night my prick was in stiffish form, and I put her hand round it. She laid hold of it innocently, then snatched her hand away violently. Then I did the old, old trick, promised a pair of garters, if she would let me put them on,--in the dark of course. "No,--no." "So help me God, I won't do more than put them on." Two minutes after that my finger was on her split. This was all in the dark lane.

I wonder what a girl of that class thinks of, hopes, expects when she meets a gentleman on the sly. Does she expect he will fall in love, and marry her?--does she know that he wants to fuck her?--does she like to meet a man who has that intention, and long to hear smutty suggestions, and baudy talk?--does she like the lustful feeling creeping over her, as she stands by a randy man who is making lewd remarks? I imagine that like the man, she is randy and wants to hear his baudy talk, to feel his lips on hers, to hug him, to feel his hand wandering about her hidden parts, that she meets him really for that purpose, just as much as he meets her for the purpose. But they differ in this: he means to get her if possible; she has made up her mind that whatever she may permit, he shan't fuck her,--but she generally makes a mistake in that.

We went to Vauxhall, she told her mother she was going to the theatre with Sarah and her husband (the woman who had said the bigger it was the nicer it was), I was to take her to Sarah's when Vauxhall was over. I gave her a lobster and champagne supper, she got spoony, I talked baudy, she said it was abominable, this was all the Gardens. At length her modesty broke. "Don't you want to piddle?" "I really do bad," said she without hesitation. I took her to the ladies' place, and soon we left. There were nice little houses not far from Vauxhall. I had been in the afternoon, and paid for a room for the night to be sure of it, and took her there. She would not go in till I said it was only to have another glass of wine; but I believe she guessed what she was going in for. Then I persuaded her to stop all night, the woman of the house was to call us at six o'clock, so that she might get home early. She had made up her mind to consent, and had no sham about it. I undressed her, tore my own things off, threw myself on her, and with the first shove or two had finished her virginity,--my prick went up with little difficulty.

We fucked all night, I revelled in her cunt. She was healthy, full-blooded, randy-arsed, and spent like fun; we did it several times before sleeping, then in the night, and awakened about eleven o'clock next day. "Oh! my God," said she, "what will mother say,--I'm ruined." "Well it's no use crying, you are in for it." A few tears, then a fuck, a piddle, a wash,--and then refreshed we go through the ceremony, of inspecting privates, and so fucking, looking, smelling, frigging, and finger-stinking we lay till devilish hungry. Then we got up, and after going to a chop-house and having food, I put her into a cab to go home. I enjoyed myself much that night, a fresh cunt is always charming, and there is such delight in killing modesty in a woman who has never been fucked before; the struggle to get her to open her thighs to let you see her cunt is in itself a delicious treat.

On the bed spunk lay in all directions, and over her chemise as well, and there was the least smear of blood. I had pushed through something tight to get into her, but it was an easy business, so easy that I thought she had had cock before; but she was large cunted, the very jagged, ragged tear was full size; her cunt-hair was dark, her bum was one of the biggest for her height I have seen, it was out of proportion. Her privates did not fascinate me, and when I had had her two or three dozen times I grew tired of her. She was also bandy-legged, a thing I never could bear in a woman.

She went to Sarah's that day, and remained there, her mother sent to know why. Sarah said that Esther had had bowel attack after they came home from the theatre, and her mother then went to see her. A girl always looks ill after her first poking, and Esther had been fucked out, so her mother was taken in. Her sister Matilda said she did not believe it.

Sarah I found had been gay, and said she now was married; they did not believe that, though they kept their disbelief to themselves, and only Esther knew she had been gay, although all knew she had run away from home. Sarah got her living by washing for Esther's mother. I heard some funny things about her afterwards.

I could not get Esther to stop out again all night, but she met me often enough, and became a baudy little bitch whose cunt much wanted feeding. She told me the awful state of mind she and her sister were in at my first overhearing them with the barrow; they had been talking of fucking all that day, Sarah had begun it. Taking hold of some linen, "Oh! my," she said, "look here, ain't they been a doing it!---here is waste." There was spunk on the linen. I heard a good deal of choice washerwoman's talk from Esther afterwards, and found that it was not an unusual thing for laundresses to joke about the semen they found on the linen of their customers, and that if they found suspicious signs on the man's linen, to give the lady of the house a hint to look after her husband. Many a husband has I am sure been discovered to have had illicit pleasure, or to have the ladies' favor through the hints of an officious laundress.

I made Esther liberal presents, but didn't take her much to Vauxhall or theatres, although she was constantly asking me to do so. I had taken her to Vauxhall one night after I had first had her, and saw some one there whom I should have been sorry to have seen me with Esther. We went to the little snug, quiet accommodation house which had been the scene of the slaughter of her virginity, and there fucked; sometimes we walked instead of riding home, and when near the village, turning down a secluded street, or lane, I set her back up against a fence, and had her; then with her cunt buttered home she went alone. I took her once or twice to the theatre, and for fear of being seen had a box; but I could not afford those extravagances. Although not a bad-looking girl, and one who would stir up sensations in a man's ballocks when he looked at her, she was vulgar in appearance; and neither bonnets nor dress made any improvement in her,--she was a washerwoman all over.

After she was well acquainted with two or three baudy houses I grew tired of her, and quarrelled with her. One night I went to my mother's who was ill; and as I passed the end of the lane where Esther lived saw one or two young men and women larking. She and her sister sometimes came to the end of the lane when their work was done, to see the people going along the high-road, and to chat there with neighbours. The men were chivying the girls, and Esther was one of them. I watched them from a safe distance, heard laughing and screeching, and every now and then one of the girls chased by a man darted down the dark lane, and I heard a shriek. There was no light in the lane, and not much even in the high-road from the feeble oil-lamps. I thought also that I saw Esther kissed, she yelled and got away, but it seemed to me she much liked it. For some reason all the wenches suddenly disappeared, and the men, who were of the laboring class, leaned against the railings of the public-house, and talked. I walked slowly by them, and heard one say, "I felt her cunt the other night, so help me Gor." I did not know who he spoke of, but I made up my mind it was Esther.

I wrote Esther to meet me, and then told her she had let a man feel her cunt, and what I had seen and heard. She denied all cheekily, but got confused when I told her what the man said. "I was in the lane," said I afterwards, "and quite towards that end where I have felt you often,--I hid, and I know he was feeling you there." It was a bare-faced lie of mine, because I had gone away; but it was a hit. "He didn't," said she, "though he tried." "I heard him say you felt his prick," said I lying away again, "he went up the lane, and told that tall young man that, 'so help his God', you had." "He wanted to make me, but I didn't,--he is the greatest liar in the place. It was sneaking of you to be hiding like that, and watching me," said she.

I wanted to fuck her, but she would not let me. She slanged me, said I had deceived her, had said I would keep her, and lots of other things,--and off she went. I took no notice for a fortnight, then went to the lodgings of Sarah, and had a talk with her. Sarah said that Esther was mad with me for not writing nor going to see her, and blamed me for not "behaving handsome". "No other man has ever touched Esther," said she, "you don't seem to care about her,--but there's plenty who do,--there are two or three gents about who would be glad to be in your place."

I had her again, then had a desire to get into her sister, and tried several times to see Matilda, caught her standing with Esther in the lane once or twice, but she bolted off directly I went up to her. Once she opened the door to me at her cottage, and slammed it in my face. I had not told Esther what had made Matilda cry out till that day, and then I did. "It's a lie," said she, "you went up my sister Matilda?--what a crammer!" "She might tell her sister," and she did. Matilda said I was a liar, and that what I had done was to shove my finger violently up her, and hurt her very much. Esther believed her sister. Matilda was going to be married to the potman at the public-house close by, I then heard.

After that Esther met me a few times, and her sister seemed much on her mind; for she invariably after she had felt my prick for a minute would say, "And you mean to tell me it went right into Tilda?" "Yes right in." "Oh! what a story,--it could not have been." I grew tired of her, and she of me,--probably some other man had taken a fancy to her, so I gave her ten pounds one night, told her I was going abroad, and would see her on my return, but I never did. I saw her near my mother's house two years afterwards with quite a genteel well-dressed young man, she looking nice and fresh, but very vulgar. She saw me. Her eyes had a painful expression in them, partly like fear, partly as if she were going to cry; and then she dropped them. They passed me, I of course not taking the slightest notice, but had a cock-stand, and felt jealous, --such a funny thing is male nature. I never saw her afterwards, but saw Sarah the washerwoman and ex-harlot, and gave her five shillings for a chat about the two girls. Esther had gone off with a gent, Matilda had married the potman, who had taken to drink, and used to "whop her." And that is the end of my acquaintance with the two girls.

I had great difficulty in keeping Esther from knowing too much about me, and used a false name, had letters sent to a post-office, and had to do much lying. The oddest thing was that though so near my mother's house, and though I passed her one day when walking with one of my married sisters, she did not know I was often living there, and close by her home; but she found it out just before I parted with her. She knew quite well that the conversation when sitting on the barrow could only have been heard from one of the garden-walls close by the barrow; but I would not at first tell her which. My real name I don't think she ever knew, though I am not sure of that.

Curiosity made me call on ex-harlot Sarah, who lived in one room, and whilst talking I put my hand up her petticoats, on to her cunt. She laughed, opened her thighs wide, and said, "I knowed yer would," and she looked as if a fuck would have gratified her,--but I did not attempt it.





CHAPTER XII.


     Preliminary.--My taste for beauty of form.--Sarah Mavis.--
     Midday in the Quadrant.--No. 13 J... s Street.--A bargain in
     the hall.--A woman with a will.--Fears about my size.--
     Muck.--Cold-blooded.--Tyranny.--My temper.--Submission.--A
     revolt.--A half-gay lady.--Sarah watches me.--A quarrel.--
     Reconciliation.

 I must go back a year or more before the night when I last had Kitty with the yellow hair and yellow motte, to tell the story of my acquaintance with a woman of whom I have little to tell, considering that she more or less is included in the history of my amours for nearly four years, and who will appear more than once some years after that. A word about my sensuous temperament first.

I had early a taste for beauty of female form. Face had for me of course the usual attraction, for beauty of expression always speaks to the soul of a man first. A woman's eyes speak to him before she opens her mouth, and instinctively (for actual knowledge only comes to him in his maturer years) he reads in them liking, dislike, indifference, voluptuousness, desire, sensuous abandonment, or fierce reckless lust.

All these feelings can be seen in a woman's eyes alone, for they express and move with every feeling, every passion, pure or sensual. They can beget in the male pure love as it is called, which is believed to be so till experience teaches that however pure it may be, it cannot exist without the occasional help of a burning throbbing, stiff prick, up a hot, wide-stretched cunt, and a simultaneous discharge of spermatic juices from both organs. The rest of a woman's body, the breasts and limbs, can move lust unaccompanied by love, and if once admiration of them begins lust follows instantly. A small foot, a round, plump leg and thigh, and a fat backside speak to the prick straight. Form is in fact to most, more enticing, and creates a more enduring attachment in men of mature years, than the sweetest face. A plain woman with fine limbs and bum, and firm, full breasts will (unless her cunt be an ugly gash) draw a man to her where the prettiest-faced Miss will fail. Few men, unless their bellies be very big, or they be very old, will keep long to a bony lady whose skinny buttocks can be held in one hand. I early had a taste for female form, it was born with me. Even when a boy I selected partners for dancing because they were what I called crummy, and admired even at one time a fat-arsed middle-aged woman who sold us bull's eyes, because I had caught her exhibiting large legs when squatting down to piss. For years I had had at the period named, two friends, one of whom was a sculptor, who alas! drank himself to death; and one a painter still living as I write this. I had been in their studios, seen their naked models, heard their opinions on both male and female beauty, and had the various points of female perfection shown me on the lady-sitters. I had them explained in two instances by the ladies themselves, in private sittings, and with them I had sexual pleasures which they said the artists had neither got out of them nor given them. I had myself sketched from the nude, and was thought a not bad hand at it, and had therefore by training, instinct, and a most voluptuous temperament become a good judge of beauty of female form.

I did not write the above paragraphs, when I wrote what follows about Sarah Mavis, they are added now many years afterwards, when I am wondering at what I did in those early days, marvelling at my judgment in selection, and seeking the reasons which guided me then in getting for my sexual embraces, as many modes of female beauty of form, as perhaps any one Englishman ever had,--short of a prince.

One Summer's morning about midday, I was in the Quadrant. It had been raining, and the streets were dirty. In front of me I saw a well-grown woman walking with that steady, solid, well-balanced step which I even then knew indicated fleshy limbs, and a fat backside. She was holding her petticoats well up out of the dirt, the common habit of even respectable women then. With gay ladies the habit was to hold them up just a little higher. I saw a pair of feet in lovely boots which seemed perfection, and calves which were exquisite. I fired directly. Just by Beak Street she stopped, and looked into a shop. "Is she gay?" I thought. "No." I followed on, passed her, then turned round, and met her eye. She looked at me, but the look was so steady, indifferent, and with so little of the gay woman in her expression, that I could not make up my mind as to whether she was accessible or not.

She turned back and went on without looking round. Crossing Tichborne Street she raised her petticoats higher, it was very muddy there. I then saw more of both legs, my prick stood at the sight of her limbs, and settled me. I followed quickly, saying as I came close, "Will you come with me?" She made no reply, and I fell behind. Soon she stopped again at a shop, and looked in, and again I said, "May I go with you?" "Yes,--where to?" "Where you like,---I will follow you." Without replying a word, and without looking at me, without hurrying, she walked steadily on till she entered the house No. 13 J...s Street, which I entered that day for the first time, but many hundreds of times since. Her composure, and the way she stopped from time to time to look at the shops as she went along astonished me: she seemed in no hurry, nor indeed conscious that I was close at her heels, though she knew it.

Inside the house she stopped at the foot of the staircase, and turning round said in a low tone, "What are you going to give me?" "Ten shillings." "I won't go upstairs then, so tell you at once." "What do you want?" "I won't let any one come with me unless they give me a sovereign at least." "I will give you that." Then she mounted, nothing more being said. Asking me the question at the foot of the stairs astonished me, I had been asked it in a room often before, and in the street; but at the foot of a staircase,--never.

We entered a handsome bed-room. Turning round after paying for it, and locking the door, I saw her standing with her back to the light (the curtains were down, but the room was nevertheless light), one arm resting on the mantle-piece. She looked at me fixedly, and I did at her. Then I recollect noticing that her mouth was slightly open, and that she looked seemingly vacantly at me (it always was so), that she had a black silk dress on, and a dark-colored bonnet. Then desire impelled; I went close to her, and began to lift her clothes. She pushed them down in a commanding way saying, "Now none of that."

"Oh! here is your money," said I putting down a sovereign on the mantle-piece. She broke into a quiet laugh. "I did not mean that," she remarked. "Let me feel you." "Get away," said she impatiently, and turning she took off her bonnet. I then saw she had thick and nearly if not quite black hair, and recollect that I noticed these points just in the order I have narrated them. Then she leaned her arm on the mantle-piece again, and looked at me quietly, her mouth slightly open, and I stood looking at her without speaking, my sperm fermenting in my balls; but I was slightly bothered, almost intimidated by her cold manner,---a manner so unlike what I usually met with in strumpets.

"You have beautiful legs." "So they say." "Let me see them." She laid down on the sofa, her back to the light, without uttering a word. I threw off coat and waistcoat, and sitting at the foot of the sofa threw up her dress to her knees; higher I tried, but she resisted. Then my fingers felt her cunt, and the delight of the feel and sight of her beautiful limbs overwhelmed me. "Take off your things,--let me see you undressed,--you must be exquisite." My hands roved all about her bum, belly and thighs, and just seeing the flesh above her garters I fell to kissing it, and kissed upwards till the aroma of her cunt met my nostrils, and its thicket met my lips and mingled with my moustache, which I then wore, though so few men then did. I fell on my knees by the side of her, kissing, feeling, and smelling; but she kept her thighs close together, and pushed her petticoats over my head whilst I kissed, so that I saw but little of her beauties.

Then excited almost to madness by my amusement I rose up. "Oh! come to the bed,--come." She lay quite still. "No,--do it here,--leave me alone,--I won't have my clothes pulled up,--I won't be pulled about,--if you want it have me, and have done." "Well get on to the bed." "I shan't." "I can't do it on the sofa." "Well I'm going then." "You shan't till I have had you,--only let me see your thighs." "There then,"--and up went her clothes half-way. "Higher," "I shan't." Now my prick was out. "Get on the bed,--I won't do it here,--take your things off." "I shan't." "You shall." All was said by her in a determined way, but without signs of temper.

She rose without saying another word, I think I see now as I write, her exquisite legs in beautiful silk stockings as they showed when getting off the sofa, and getting on to the bed. "But I want your clothes off." "I won't take them off, I'm in a hurry,--I never do." "Oh! you must." "I won't,--now come and do what you want to do,--I'm in a hurry." She lifted her clothes just high enough to show the fringe of her cunt, and opened her thighs a little. I thrilled with lewd delight as I saw them, and mounted her, laid between them, and inserted my prick. Ah! at my first shove almost I was spending in her.

"Oh! lay quiet dear, I've only been up you a second." "No,--get off, and let me wash." I resisted, but she uncunted me, and got off the bed quickly. "Now don't come near while I wash,--I can't bear a man looking at me washing myself." I insisted, for I was longing to see the form I had scarcely yet had a glimpse of. Putting down the basin she pulled the bed-curtains round her to hide her whilst she slopped her quim. I would not be rude, and saw nothing. Then on went her bonnet. "Are you going first, or I?" said she. "I shall wait as long as you will." "Then I will go first,"--and she was going away when I stopped her.

"When will you again meet me?" "Oh! when out at all, I am up to one o'clock in Regent Street." "Where do you live?" "I shan't say,--good bye." "No,--wait,--come to me this afternoon." "I can't." "This evening." She hesitated. "I can't stay long if I do." "Well an hour and a half." "Perhaps." "Will you take off your clothes then?" "No,--good bye, I am in a hurry." "Meet me at seven o'clock to-night.--do." "No." "At eight then." "Well I will be here expecting you,--but I shan't stop long." "Will you let me see your form up to your waist?" "Oh! I hate being looked at,"--and off she went, leaving me in the room.

I dined at my Club, and was in a fever of lust all day. "Will she come?" for she had only half promised. Half-an-hour before the time I was at the house, and had the same room again. It was handsome throughout, had a big four-post bed with handsome hangings (this was thirty years ago mind) on one side of the room on another side by a partition was a wash-hand stand of marble, against the wall on the opposite side a large glass just at the level of the bed; at the foot of the bed a large sofa opposite to the fire; over the chimney-piece a big glass sloping forwards, so that those sitting or lying on the sofa could see themselves reflected in it; in the angle of the room by the windows a big cheval-glass which could be turned in any direction, two easy-chairs and a bidet, the hangings were of red damask, two large gas-burners were over the chimney-piece angles. It was the most compact, comfortable baudy house bed-room I have perhaps ever been in, although by no means a large room. They charged seven and six for its use, and twenty shillings for the night. Scores of times I have paid both fees. I noticed all this, and that a couple could see their amatory amusements on the bed, on the sofa, or anyhow in fact, by aid of the cheval and other glasses. I was delighted with the room, but in a fever of anxiety lest the lady should not come. I walked about with my prick out, seeing how I looked in the glasses, laid on the bed, and noticed how it looked in the side-glass, squatted on the sofa, glorying in the sight of my balls and stiff-stander. Then I had a sudden fear that she would think my prick small; what put it into my head I never could exactly say, I used when at school to fancy mine was smaller than that of other boys, and some remark of a gay woman about its size made me most sensitive on the topic. I was constantly asking the women if my prick was not smaller than other men's. When they said it was a very good size,--as big as most,--I did not believe them, and I used when I pulled it out, to say in an apologetic tone, "Let's put it up, there's not much of it." "Oh! it's quite big enough," one would say. "I've seen plenty smaller," would say another. But still the idea clung to me, that it was not a prick to be in any way proud of,--which was a great error. But I have told of this weakness more than once before, I think.

I recollect well that night fearing she would think my prick contemptible, and it pained me much, for I was hooked, although I did not know it. I brushed my hair, and made myself inviting with a desire to please her, without thinking that I was taking the trouble to do so for a woman who was going to be fucked for twenty shillings, and whom I now know did not then care how I looked, or who I was, long as she got her money as soon as she could, and got rid of me to make way for another man, or to go and spend what she had earned.

She did not keep her time. I kept listening, and peeping out as I heard footsteps and saw couples bent on sexual pleasure going up the stairs, and heard them overhead walking about. This and the excitement at the recollection of my instantaneous spend between her magnificent thighs, my pulling about my prick and contemplating it in the glass, the moving about of the various couples made me in such a state of randiness that I could scarcely keep from frigging. A servant who had noticed my peeping came in, and begged I would not look out, for customers did not like it. Did they know where my lady lived? and would they send for her? They did not. Then the servant came to say I had been an hour in the room,--did I mean to wait any longer? I knew what that meant, and was about to say I would pay for the room twice, when I heard a heavy, slow tread, and the lady's face appeared.

I grumbled at her delay, she took my complaints quietly, she could not come earlier, was all she said. She pulled off her bonnet, put it on the chair, turned round, leaned her arm on the mantle-piece, and stared at me again in a half-vacant way with her mouth slightly open, just as in the morning. I gave her very little time to stare, for I had my hand on her cunt in no time, and nearly spent in my trousers as I touched it. She tried the same game,--she would not be pulled about,--she would not let her cunt be looked at,--if I meant to do it, do it, and have done with it. My blood rose. "I'd be damned if I would,--nor pay, nor anything else unless she took her gown off. So she took it off laughing, and laid down on the sofa. Not on the bed. No she would not. Then damned if I would do it (though I was nearly bursting). Again she laughed, and then got on to the bed. I saw breasts of spotless purity, and exquisite shape, bursting out over the corset, threw up the petticoats, saw the dark hair at the bottom of the belly, and the next instant a thrust, a moment's heaving,--quietness,--another thrust,--a sigh,--a gush of sperm,--and again I had finished with but a minute's complete sexual enjoyment only.

"Get up." "I won't" "Let me wash the muck out." "No."--and I pinned her down, squeezed to her belly, grasped her haunches. "I've not done spending." "Yes you have." A wriggle and a jerk, and I was uncunted and swearing. She sat down on the basin, I stooped down, tore aside the curtains, and put my hand on to her gaping cunt. She tried to rise, and pushed me,--I pushed her. She tilted on one side, her bum caught the edge of the basin, and upset the water.

"Damn you," said she,--then she laughed and got up. I pushed her against the side of the bed, and again got my fingers on the cunt,--slippery enough it was. "You're one of those beasts, are you?" said she.

"I've never felt your cunt properly, and I will." "Well let me wash it, and you shall." She did so, I felt it, and then begged for another fuck.

"You are not in a hurry." "Yes I am." "You said you would give me an hour and a half." "Yes, but you have done me, and what is the good of keeping me?" "I mean to do it again." "Double journey double pay." "Nonsense,--you so excited me, that I've never had a proper poke yet." "Well that is no fault of mine." She laughed, and turned questioner. "Do you often have the women from Regent Street?" "Yes." "Do you know many?" "Yes, I vary so." "Ah! you are fond of change,--I thought so,"--and she got talkative after that. I had thought her almost a dummy.

Meanwhile I was gloating over her charms, her beautiful arms, the lovely breasts I now played with, the lovely limbs I saw, for she had sat down in the most enticing position with the ankle of one foot resting on the knee of the other leg. I wanted to pull the clothes higher up the thighs, she resisted, but I saw the beautiful ankles, the tiny boots and feet, the creamy flesh of the thigh just above the garter, thighs thickening, folding over, squeezing together, and hiding her cunt from view when I tried to look up.

I had hid my prick, the fear had come over me of her thinking it small, and that prevented it standing again. An hour ran away. "I'm going," said she rising. My prick stood at the instant. "Let me." "Make haste then." As she stood up I put my hand up her petticoats. She put her hand down, and gave my prick a hard squeeze. I hollowed,--she laughed.

"I've a good mind not to let you,--you've been so long,--but you may do it." She got on to the bedside. "Oh! for God's sake don't move,--that attitude is exquisite." One leg was well on the bed, the petticoats were squeezed up, and the leg on the ground from the boot-heel to about four inches above her garter was visible. She was half turning round, her lovely breasts, or rather one of them showed half-front, and with her head looking round at me as she was moving, it altogether made a ravishingly luscious picture. I put my hands up from behind between her thighs. That broke the spell, she moved on to the bed directly,--I on to her.

"Oh! God you are heavenly, lovely,--oh! God my darling,--oh!" I was spending and kissing her too quickly again; lust almost deprived me of my pleasure. In a dozen shoves I was empty. It was all over.

"How quietly you stood in that attitude," said I. "I can stand in an attitude nearly five minutes without moving, almost without showing that I am breathing, without winking an eye." I thought nothing of this at the time, excepting that it was brag.

"Give me five shillings, for I have been a long time with you,--I've a reason,--I won't ask you again." I gave it her. "Shall you be in Regent Street to-morrow morning?" "Yes."

I was in Regent Street, met her, and had her you may be sure, and repeated these meetings for a week daily, and sometimes twice a day; but got no more than the shortest time with her, the quickest fuck, a rapid uncunting. She did not spend with me, and showed no signs of pleasure, scarcely took the trouble to move her bum, would not undress, would not let me look at her cunt. I submitted to it, for I was caught, but did not know that then,--she did. That is she knew that I was damnably lewd upon her, and used that knowledge to suit her convenience. I had no right to grumble at it. I need not have had her, had I not liked upon those terms. But I did. At length I grumbled, and at last almost had a quarrel. "I won't see you again," said I. "No one asks you," said she.

As my means were not large, and my purse grew rather empty, I was glad to keep away a few days. Then again I saw her in Regent Street; and after giving her the wink followed her. She walked on, but instead of going to the house, passed the end of the street. On she went, I went close to her, it was the second time I had spoken to her in the street. "Oh! I did not understand you," she said, "besides I'm in a hurry." "Oh! do come." "Well I can't stop five minutes." "Nonsense." "Well then I can't,"--and she went on walking. My prick got the better of my temper. "Well come back." She turned round, and bent her way to J...s Street, saying, "Don't let us go in together."

When in the house she got on to the bed without a moment's delay. I had her, and she was out of the house again in less than ten minutes, leaving me in a very angry state of mind; but she promised to meet me the following night if she could, and to stay longer with me.

She came an hour late, and found me fretting and fuming in the bed-room. They did not hurry me now at that house, I being already known there, and gave me whenever they could the same chamber. "I'm in a great hurry," were the first words Sarah said. "Why you told me you would stay longer." "Yes,--I am sorry, but I can't." "You never can,--but take off your gown." "I really can't,--have me at the side of the bed,--you wanted it so the other day." "No I won't." "Then I'll get on the bed,"--and on she got.

I tried to open her legs, to turn her round to see her bum (I had never seen it yet properly). No she would not undress, she would do nothing,--I might have it her way, or leave it alone and go. How green it was to submit to all this.

I lost my temper, for my delight I saw was in her lovely form, in her physical beauty; whilst she seemed to think that the only joy I could have was to spend in her cunt as fast as I could. "I won't have you at all," said I getting resolute at last. "All right," said she getting off the bed, "I'm really in a hurry,--another night I will." "Another night be damned--you are nearly a bilk,--there,"--and I threw the sovereign on a table, and put on my hat. "Are you going?" "Yes, I'm going to get some woman who is not ashamed of her cunt." "Go along then." Off I went. When halfway down the stairs I heard her calling to me to come back, but savage I went off.

I walked up Regent Street savage with her, and with myself too, for not having had my fuck, even if she had gone away a minute afterwards. Randy as the devil I saw a woman at the corner of the Circus, and accosted her, she turned away, I accosted her again. "Will you come with me?" "Yes if you like." "Do you know a house about here?" "No I'm a stranger." Then I took her to J... s Street, had her two or three times and toyed with her a long time, stopping till she would stop no longer, saying she should be locked out if she was not off. She was only half-gay I think, and wanted a fuck. I had just offered myself in time. She was a biggish woman of about thirty years of age. After I had fucked her the first time, we laid on the bed together; she played with my prick till it was stiff again, and then turning on to her back said, "Come on,--let's have it again."

I thought much of my fine-limbed Sarah Mavis, but it was with anger. A fuck for ten shillings was all very well when randy, but even when in a hurry I never was satisfied till I had pulled the cunt open, and given it a general inspection, although it was generally but a rapid one in those days. If I had the same woman again another day, it was because I liked her and liked to talk to her, for I always found them more complaisant the longer I knew them. But here had I been having a woman daily, and sometimes twice a day, mainly because she was so exquisite in form (for I had some idea even then that her cunt was not a good fit to my prick) yet I had never seen her cunt; nor her backside, nor her bubbies, nor her arm-pits,' nor her navel, nor anything properly, and so I determined not to have her again, and to dismiss her from my mind. But I was hooked.

To economize I again went with cheap women, and seemed to get just as nice women for ten shillings as I did for twenty; but I had taken a liking for the house in J...s Street, which was an expensive one, and liked the best room, and took my cheap women to my dear room. One woman said, "Well you might give me a little more, and have a cheaper room,--the room gets nearly as much as you give me." And I saw a woman there one night pocket the comb, and a piece of soap,--she stole them. I heard in pleasant conversation afterwards, that soap and combs were often stolen by women,--especially soap.

About a fortnight afterwards I saw my Venus again, and again was closetted with her. I could resist my desire for her no longer, for having never ceased thinking of her even when fucking other women. She was just as calm, but there was a little, quiet spite about her. When she had taken off her bonnet, and looked at me for a minute with her mouth open as usual, she said, "I suppose you have been having other women." I can't tell why it was, but I lied, and said "no." "What did you go upstairs with one for?" said she, "the night after you left me,--I was in the parlour, and peeping through the door saw you and the woman who stumbled at the foot of the stairs" (which was the fact). "Well I did," I replied, "and saw her cunt,--and that's more than I ever saw of yours." "You've seen as much as you will." Putting on my hat in rage, "Then I may as well go,--here is your money,"--and I turned towards the door. "Don't be a fool," said she, "what do you want?--what do all you men want?--you are all beasts alike,--you're never satisfied." She was angry. "Don't be in a hurry, and let's see your precious cunt." I recollect saying that very distinctly, being angry,--and that up to that time I had been chaste in my remarks. I was at that time of my life not at all lewd or strong in word with women when we first met, but was somewhat less so so soon as I warmed, and only when randy to the highest degree or by fits and starts, spiced my conversation highly with lewd expressions.





CHAPTER XIII.


     Sarah's complaisance.--Mistress Hannah.--About Sarah.--
     Sexual indifference.--After dinner.--Stark naked at last.--
     Her form.--The scar.--Hannah's friendship.--The baudy house
     parlour.--The Guardsman.--Sarah's greed.--A change in her
     manner.--A miscarriage.--Going abroad.--I am madly in
     love.--Sarah's history.

 She laughed. "Well I will,--but don't make me undress,--I'm in a hurry." "Of course,--you always are." She laid on the sofa, and pulled up her clothes,--she was yielding. "No,--come here." She came, and laid on the side of the bed. At length I saw those glorious thighs open wider, the dark-shaded crack with the swelling lips showed itself more freely than I had ever seen it before. I dropped on my knees, and propping up one of her feet with my hand, lifted the leg so that the thighs distended, and a large bit of crimson nymphae began to show, the faint but delicious odour of her cunt stole up my nostrils, my lips closed on her gap, and kissed it lecherously, my brain whirled as my nose rubbed in the thicket of dark hair, and my lip touched her clitoris. I know nothing more excepting that I was up her as she laid there, and spending as quickly as ever, before I had in fact well plugged her. "Are you satisfied?" said she as she looked up from washing her cunt by the side of me. "No, it's so quick,--you fetch me so quickly." "That is no fault of mine." She had said so often before. I recollect all these apparently trivial, these various feelings and circumstances, as well as if it were yesterday, for she had made her mark on me.

I had partly conquered, and saw my victory. "I like seeing you so," said I, "but won't see you, or any other woman who won't let me see her charms, and who is always in such a hurry,--it would be all very well if I saw you for the first time--(why you have a new black silk dress on." "Yes, I bought it with your money," said she),--"but for a regular friend as I am, it is unsupportable." I conquered more, and subsequently, told her that I might be in Regent Street one day, but I did not go there (I had made no promise). She said she went out against her will to see me,--could I write to say when she was to meet me? No,--but I could write to the baudy house, and they would send on the letter. I called there one morning, and left a letter. The Mistress was a shortish sandy-haired woman about thirty years old, with a white face; she looked very fixedly at me, and smiled. She would send on the letter to Miss Sarah Mavis which I found was the name she went by; but Sarah never came to my letter, and I paid for the room for nothing. Then I sent for the Mistress; had a bottle of champagne with her, and she opened her heart a little, she was soon a little screwed, and this was what she told me. Her name was Hannah.

She had not known Miss Mavis long,--only a month or so before she had come in with me,--did not often see her now excepting with me. Mavis had been asking if I had been seen in the house with any other woman, "and of course I did not tell her," said Sandyhead. She thought her a nice woman, and had struck up acquaintance with her. Now she often came into the parlour to chat with her when I had left, or before she came upstairs to me, when I was at the house before my appointed time.

Things went on thus for a little time longer, Sarah doing much as she liked, but certainly becoming more complaisant. She stopped longer, we began to talk; I was of course curious about her, she about me, I dare say she got much out of me, I but little out of her. What I mainly learned was that she only came on the streets occasionally, and from about eleven to one o'clock in the day,--never afterwards; and when she had sufficient money to "go on with," as she said, she came not out at all. "I hate it," said she, "hate you men,--you are all beasts,--you're never satisfied unless you are pulling a woman about in all manner of ways." "It pleases us," said I, "we admire you so." "Well it does not please me,--I want them to do what they have to do, and let me go." "Why don't you go out in the afternoon or evening?" "No, I get my money in the morning, and have other things to do the rest of the day."

She had not been gay long,--not more than a month before I had met her,--was taken to the house in J... s Street by the first man who met her in the streets, and had been there often since. No she never had been gay before, she would swear, and often wished she were dead rather than have to come out, and let men pull her about, and put their nasty muck into her,--"nasty muck" was always the pleasant way in which she spoke of a man's sperm.

"One would think you never cared about a poke,--I wonder how often you spend." "Oh! it's all the same to me whether I have it, or whether I don't,--if I do it once a fortnight it's as much as I care about,--you beasts of men seem to think of nothing else, and you leave us poor women all the trouble that comes from putting your muck into us." "What the devil do you care about?" said I after a chat with her one day, in which she had just said what I have narrated. "Oh! I don't care about anything much."

Another day she said, "I like a nice dinner, and then a read in an arm-chair, till I go to sleep, or a nice bit of supper, and to get into bed,--I'm so tired of a night, I like to get to bed early if I can." We went on talking about eating and drinking; she told me what she liked, and what she disliked with much gusto and earnestness. "I'll give you a good dinner", said I, "and we will come here afterwards." "Will you?" "Yes,--but I won't unless I have you three hours here." "Impossible,--I dare not be out after half-past ten." "Come early." "I can't come very early, for I must be home in the afternoon." There were all sorts of obstacles,--so many that I gave it up, not going to be humbugged. But she would not give it up, and it was arranged that if she might name the evening, she would be with me at six o'clock, and stay with me till ten,--an immense concession,--it was the dinner that did it. I saw she was fond of her stomach, and that made me offer the dinner as a bait.

She would not come in after me to the restaurant, I was to meet her at the corner of St. Martin's lane in a cab, and go with her,--and so it came off. We went to the Cafe de P..v...e in Leicester square, I had already ordered a private room, and a nice dinner. My God how she enjoyed it! "It's a long time since I've had such a good dinner", said she, "but never mind, better times are coming again for me, I feel sure." She ate largely, she drank well, and to my astonishment when I got up to kiss her, she kissed me in return, and gave my piercer the slightest possible pinch outside my trousers. "Let's feel you," said I. Equally astonished was I when she said, "Bolt the door, the waiter may be in,"--and then I had a grope, and she felt my prick. "Let's go--let's go,--I am dying for you." Off we went arm in arm. Directly we were well away from the Cafe she let go my arm. "You go first, and I will follow." I thought she was going to cheat me. "I dare not be seen walking arm in arm with a man,--but I will follow." In five minutes we were in the room together. Sarah Mavis was just in the slightest degree elevated, and perhaps more than slightly lewd.

To pull off my things, to help her off with hers partially was the work of a minute. "I must piddle first,--champagne always makes me want to piddle so." "Does it make you randy?" "Oh! Lord it does sometimes; but it's such a time since I tasted it before tonight, I almost forget." "Are you so now?" "Oh! I don't know,--come on the bed," said she. She opened her thighs wide, she let me grope and smell, and kiss, and see. "Come on,--do." Instinct told me she wanted it, I embraced her, and was enjoying her, when she clasped me firmly, sought my mouth. "Oh! my darling, I'm co---com--h--hing," said she spending as she cried out, and fetched me at the same instant. It was the first time she had ever spent with me.

We laid in heavenly quietness, prick and cunt in holy junction, distilling, slobbering, and bedewing each other's mouths and privates, whilst the soft voluptuous pleasure was creeping through our limbs, bodies, and senses. She was in no hurry to wash out the muck. "Oh! I'm choking," said she after a time, "get off." "I won't." "Oh! do,--my stays choke me when I lie down after food,--I'm almost suffocated." I held fast. "If I get off, you won't let me do it again." "Yes,--yes I will." She jerked my prick out of her cunt, I got to the side of the bed, she sat up, and was about to get off, when I stopped her, and together we undid her stays, and took them off. "Let me wash now." "No you shan't,--I've never yet fucked with my first sperm in you,--let me now, there is a darling." She laughed, and fell back; then for a few minutes we kissed and toyed. Her magnificent breasts were now free, I buried my face between them, and kissed them rapturously; her moistened quim I felt, and it drove me wild with desire; so gluing my mouth to hers I mounted her, and we were soon in Elysium again, Sarah enjoying her fuck in a way I thought from her cold-blooded manner previously she was quite incapable of,--and there we laid, nestling cock and cunt together, till a slight sleep or doze overtook both of us.

In a minute or two Sarah sprang up, and rushed to the basin. I lay still, contemplating her, and saying I would not wash my prick for a week, so that I might retain in the roots and its moistened fringe our mixed juices, the remnants of our first spend together. When she had washed she laid down by the side of me. "Let's have a nap," said she. The wine seemed to be getting into her head more and more, though she was but in the slightest degree fuddled.

I could not sleep. The sight of her breasts relieved from her stays, the free manner in which she let her petticoats lay half up her thighs, the delight at finding her take pleasure in my embraces, exulted me beyond measure. I joked and tickled her. "Let's see you naked." "You shan't." "Well stand up, and let me see your limbs naked,--take off your petticoats, even if you keep your chemise on." She was yielding, took petticoats off, but would do no more. I had seen more than any other man, and she would do no more, she said. The wine had evaporated, and she was herself again, quiet, composed.

Maddened with desire. "I'll give you a sovereign," I said, "to take the chemise off." "Will you!" "Yes." "No I won't." "I'll give you two." "What can you want to see more for?" "Hang it, take the money, and let me, or I'll rip it off without paying." I closed with her, and struggled, pulled the chemise up above her haunches, pulled it down below her breasts, tore it. "Now don't,--I won't have it," said she getting angry, "it won't please you if I do,--you will not like to see me half as well afterwards, I tell you." "Yes I shall,--here is the money,--now let me see you naked, I'll give you three sovereigns."

She pushed me away, and sat down. "Where is the money?" said she. I gave it her. "I've got an ugly scar,--I don't like it seen." "Never mind,--show it." Slowly she dropped the chemise, and stood in all her naked beauty, and pointing to a scar just below her breasts, and about four inches above her navel, "There," said she, "is it not ugly?--does it not spoil me!--how I hate it!"

I told her no,--that she was so beautiful, that it mattered not. Yet ugly it was. A seam looking like a piece of parchment which had been held close to a fire and crinkled, and then glazed, star-shaped, white, and as big as a large egg lay between her breasts and her navel. It was the only defect on one of the most perfect and beautiful forms that God ever had created.

"There," said she covering it up, "you won't want me naked again,--now I dare say you don't like me as much." Yes I did. "Do you?" "Yes." She came and kissed me. I often had her as naked as she was born afterwards.

"What is the time?" "Ten o'clock." "I must go." "Another poke." "Make haste then." We had it. "Oh! now don't keep me,--if I'm not home by half-past ten I shall be half murdered." She had let expressions like that drop more than once; but I got no explanation excepting that she lived with her father and mother,--and at that time I believed it.

At the next meeting she had her old quiet manner, her old "keep your distance" was attempted; but it was impossible. A woman must always give again what she has once given, she cannot help it. Then came more dinners, but she was more cautious now in what she ate and drank, less reckless in her embraces of me; but we were closer acquaintances than we had been; she let me pull her about more freely and as a matter of course, washed her quim without hiding herself for that operation, and so on,--yet still she held me at a great distance, and was reserved. She conquered me, in a degree.

In fact she did pretty well what she liked with me; saw me when she liked, stopped with me as long as she thought proper, let me fuck her just as often as she liked, and no more (and it was rarely she let me do that more than once a day), see to her knees, or to her cunt, or pull her about just in the degree she for the time thought fit to permit. I grumbled, said I would see more complaisant women. "Well I might if I liked,"--but I did not. Her indifference to sexual pleasure chilled and annoyed me and for a reason I never could understand, her cunt never seemed quite to fit me, nor fetch me with the voluptuousness that scores of other women have done. Yet I saw her almost exclusively for three years, and when she gave herself up to pleasure with me, my delight was unbounded; when she let me have her with her cunt unwashed after our first copulation, I thought of it for days afterwards. Altogether she had her way with me in a manner I did not see, and have only comprehended since.

This went on for some months. Whether she had other male friends or not I don't know, but I never found her in Regent Street or other places where I had once been able to find her, after I began to see her regularly, and have reason to think that she ceased casuals after she had me, and perchance another, that is all. Hannah said often at a future day that I was her only friend.

I have not yet described her. She was of perfect height for a woman, say five feet seven, her form from her chin to her toe-nails was faultless, if anything inclining to too much flesh, and to too great a backside; but then I liked flesh, and a woman's bum could not be too big for me. I used to rub my lips and cheeks over her bum for a quarter of an hour at a time, when she condescended to turn it upwards for so long a time for that worship. Handsome her face certainly was, but it was of a somewhat heavy character: her eyes were dark, soft, and vague in expression which together with the habit of leaving her lips slightly open, gave her a thoughtful, and at times half-vacant look. Her nose was charming and retroussé, her mouth small, with full lips, and a delicious set of very small white teeth, her hair was nearly black, long, thick, and coarsish dark hair in large quantity was in her armpits, and showed slightly when her arms were down, her arms and breasts were superb. Her cunt was thick-lipped, and with largish inner lips which showed well in nearly the whole length of the split; her mons was very plump, and covered well, but not widely with crisp black hair. She looked twenty-six, yet was not more than twenty-two, and she looked most handsome when lying asleep.

If I were asked the most perfect thing about her, I should say her feet and legs up to her notch--they were simply perfect; I have seen them as handsome in smaller women, never in one of her height. I must add that her cunt was large both outside and inside, and that she was not a voluptuous poke to me, but why I can only guess at now; I did not know it whilst I was acquainted with her.

"A little of that satisfies me," she would say of poking, "once a week,--once a fortnight, excepting at times,--you men are beasts, all of you." She at first refused my mouth, never moved her bum, and laid like a log. "Here I am,--do what you like,--do it, and get it over,--or leave it," was her common mode of meeting my grumbling. Her first sexual pleasure with me was I believe the night she dined with me; afterwards she took pleasure with me more frequently, but un-cunting me, and rushing out of bed to wash the instant I had spent, before I had indeed done spending; until a sudden change in her took place which I shall tell of, and then she was kinder, more lustful, or perhaps I might say more loving, and more reckless; letting me enjoy her after my own fashion, and abandoning herself to enjoyment as much as it was perhaps in her nature to do so.

I found that she often now was with the keeper of the house, or rather she who represented her,--Hannah. So I got acquainted more closely with Hannah, would go into her parlour, and talk with her before Sarah came. This began one day when I was awaiting Sarah by her asking me if I would cast up a column of figures, nearly the whole of which was in five shillings and seven and sixes. I did it once, then I did it a second time. Going in one day just afterwards she stepped out from her parlour, and thanked me. I stepped into the parlour, and got into the custom of doing so,--if ladies were not in there,--but there was a good introduction business done, as will be seen, and oftentimes ladies were waiting there till their swains arrived.

One day she cooked a luncheon for me, once a breakfast, the latter was during the time I had quarrelled with Sarah, and took another woman to sleep with me there. I complimented her on her cooking, she was half groggy (as she often was), and was very talkative. "Lord," said she, "you have tasted my dinners many a times." "Nonsense." "Yes you have."

"Where?" "Do you recollect a ball at------, where all the servants were allowed to look at the table before supper, and your coming down with Mr.------, and we all scuffling back?" "Perfectly." "Well I cooked that supper." Then it turned out that she had been cook at a house where I was a constant visitor, she had recognized me at once, but did not recollect my name, or so she said,--indeed it was not probable that she knew it. She had been caught with a soldier in the house, and had been kicked out.

Now by chance of fortune she was keeper of a baudy house, and her soldier visited her there when in London,--he was a Guardsman,--and she supplied him with money, and lots he had, for she robbed her Mistress wholesale of the baudy house profits.

Hannah had two sisters; one a married woman with a bad husband, and several children. She often came and assisted at J.... s Street, sometimes acting as chambermaid,--and about two years after this period of my history, a second one appeared who had been a housemaid, and who had I suppose also lost her character. A pretty blue-eyed girl about twenty years old with a cast in her eye, and a lovely leg up to within a few inches of her cunt. I never saw higher, and shall have more to say about her hereafter. Her name was, Susan--a sailor was said to be in love with her.

Sarah at the end of some months asked me to give her five pounds, and soon afterwards ten pounds. She was going to make up a sum of money to buy a business for her father. She had been dressing very shabbily I noticed, and said she knew I did not mind that, and it was all because she was trying to save money,--to quit that life she hoped,--and I believed it. I could not get her for several days, yet could have sworn I had heard her voice one day in loud altercation with a man in the parlour when I was waiting for her upstairs. I rang and asked for her; the servant came, and asserted that Miss Mavis was not there, and I never saw her that night. Next day I made an appointment (through Hannah) for eleven a.m., and waited a long time before she came up. She looked ill. "You've been crying." "I have not." "Yes you have,--your eyes are red,--aye, and wet now." She asserted she had not, and then burst out sobbing saying she was unwell. I was distressed, and sent for wine, Hannah came up and comforted her (I saw Hannah knew all about it). Then we were left to ourselves. "I've never been abed all night," said Sarah. "Come to bed now." To my extreme astonishment into bed she came, after looking at me in a very earnest manner.

I had often asked her before, and she never would; saying she never had been in bed but with one man, and never meant. I was enraptured, stripped to my skin, and was soon pressing every part of her body to mine. She gave herself up to me entirely, her tongue met mine as we spent. "Don't throw me out now dear." "Very well." Oh! miracle, I thought, and there we lay, prick and cunt soaking together, till we had another fuck, then she dozed off in my arms, and I soon afterwards. We slept more than two hours, then my fingers sought her cunt directly; and awakened her. I told her the time, she sighed saying, "It's no matter,--it serves them right." It was a day of miracles, Hannah sent up food, we ate it in bed, we fucked again and again. I was delighted with the spunk we left on the sheets; then we dined at the Café, and went back to the baudy house,--more fucking, no cunt-washing, all was free baudy abandonment.

Hannah came up to us about the time Sarah usually left me, and told her it was time to go. Sarah said she did not care a damn, Hannah begged her to go,--she would go home with her. She agreed to go, kissed me, and said I was a kind fellow. I waited outside, and tried to dodge her home; but was unsuccessful; the two discovered me, stopped, and upbraided me, and came back to the baudy house. Then she made me promise not to follow her, and went out to piddle as she said. Hannah followed, I waited five minutes for them, and then called to the servant. She came in with a demure face, and said "Lor sir they have both gone out five minutes ago."

For weeks after that Sarah was changed, and with the exception of not stripping entirely did as freely as I wished, she did everything I wanted, but sleep with me all night; she kept out later, but away at night she went; she embraced me, enjoyed her fucking, and in fact treated me like a husband. Then she said one day, "I'm some months gone in the family way." "Who's the dad?" "You perhaps." "No I'm not,--it's some man you are fond of, not me." "I am fond of no man," said she. Then she was ill, and away for three weeks, she had had a miscarriage. I was in despair, and sent her money all the time of her illness, but could learn nothing from Hannah, excepting that Sarah was a dear good woman, and too good for him. That was said before the sister, who cried out, "You shut up Hannah." So I came to the conclusion there was some other man in the way.

Another day I pumped Hannah, but she was an old bird, and not easily caught. "She is fond of a man," I said. "She is not a fond sort,--if she is fond of any man at all it's you,--but she has got her duty to do." "What's that?" "Ask her,--I don't know her business. Now you get out, there are some ladies coming here directly, and Miss Mavis won't like your being here with them." "I'm not her property." "Pretty nearly you are,--at all events go, there is a good gentleman. Whilst Sarah was away I did get acquainted with three or four ladies, and two of them I had. Sarah had then either gone abroad or I had had a desperate quarrel with her.

When Sarah met me again she was still miserably ill, and thanked me for my kindness warmly. We resumed our meetings, and again she was cautious, but no longer bounced me. She spent with me, enjoyed me, but entreated me. "Oh! let me wash out the muck,--now do pull it out,--I am so frightened of being ill again." So I let her have her way. She refused to say anything about her illness, excepting that it was I who had caused it; but I did not believe her. She usually now gave way to pleasure with me; at the end of the month I gave her twenty pounds to make up a sum, then she got still more exacting about money. "Oh! I do stop a long time with you,--give me more money,--do,--I want to make up a sum," etc., etc.,--and then of course came a lie. At length she said one bright sunny morning it was, I had poked her, and was laying on the sofa afterwards, she sitting on the easy-chair, her lovely breasts out, one beautiful leg over the other showing slightly the flesh of her thighs, "You won't see much more of me,--we are going abroad."

I started as if I had been shot at. "You?--nonsense,--never." "I am indeed,--I'm sick of this life, and will go anywhere, do anything to get out of it."

I sank back on the sofa sobbing, it came home to me all at once that I was madly in love with her. I was dazed with my own discovery,--I in love with a gay woman! one whose cunt might have had a thousand pricks up it! who might have sprung from any dung-hill!--impossible! I felt mad with myself,--degraded!--impossible,--it could not be,--and for a time I conquered myself. I tried then to draw her out about herself. It was useless. Her quiet way of asserting that she was going at length brought home the conviction that she spoke the truth. Then I laid and sobbed on the sofa for half-an-hour. "Oh! you will soon get another friend," said she. "No, no,--I can get a woman, but not one I shall like,--Sarah my darling, Sarah I love you,--I dote on you,--oh! for God's sake don't leave,--come with me,--you shan't lead this life,--we will go abroad together."

"That is impossible,--if I did you would leave me, and then what should I do?--come back to this life,--no." "You are going with somebody else,--who?" "I can't say,--I'll tell you when I am gone." "When are you going?" "Perhaps in a fortnight, perhaps a little later on."

I calmed for a time, a fortnight might give me a chance of persuading her, and I began it at once; but it was all, "No,--no,--no,--it's all for the best for both of us,"--and again I fell into deep despair, my heart felt breaking, I had been so happy with this woman for months, she had so filled my thoughts, so occupied my spare time, that I had half forgotten my home life. Now I felt alone again, I had told her some of my troubles,--not all,--now I poured them all out, and offered everything,--all I had,--to go that next day abroad, and never return; that I would make her love me though she did not now, I promised all men could promise,--and meant it.

"No,--no,--impossible,"--and again I fell back on the sofa sobbing like an infant, I have almost the deadly heart-ache now as I write this. She sat looking at me for some time, then she arose, stooped over me, and kissed me. I turned round, and--how strange that in my despair I noticed it, and now recollect noticing it!--as she stooped her chemise opened, and as I put my arm round her, her breasts touched my face, and as I moved to kiss them I saw her whole lovely form down to her feet, the dark hair of her motte, the bright white scar; and all in the soft subdued light which is on a woman's body when enveloped in a thin chemise,--and my prick stood whilst kissing her and sobbing, and she was soothing me.

"It's of no use your loving me," she said, "and it's of no use my loving you,--don't take on so,--perhaps when I am gone you will be happier at home,--I can't love you, although I like you very much, for you have been a good, kind man to me,--I nearly do love you I think,--if I were with you I'm sure I should,--but it's of no use, for I am a married woman, and have two children, and am going with them and my husband."

I was amazed, and doubted it. "I'll bring you my children to see," said she, "it was to get them their dinners and tea that I always left you at times as I have." "And at night?" "I always go home before he comes home." "You always go home to your husband?" "Yes."

How I loathed that man!--my loathing rose to my lips. "That miserable contemptible cur lives by your body,--a dirty vagabond." "No he's not,--poor fellow, he would earn our living if he could, but he can't." "I don't believe it,--a man who lives by a woman is barely a man,--I would empty cesspools to keep a woman I loved, rather than another man should stroke her,--no good can come of it,--he'll leave you for some other woman some day." Sarah turned nasty, said she was sorry she had told me so much, that all I said against him only made her like him the more; and so leaving me in sorrow she went away.

Now that I felt sure she was going away, I could not see too much of her; morning, noon, and night I had her. She brought her two children to me, and very proud she was of them. How it was I never noticed the marks of childbirth on her before I know not, but I never had. I spoke of that now. "I took good care you should not," said she smiling, and I recollected that when I had her by the side of the bed, when I looked at her on the sofa, it was nearly always with her back to the light; when laying on the bed, and I tried to gratify my passion by opening her thighs, and gazing on her hidden charms, she nearly always half-turned towards the window, and her belly was in shadow. "I don't like to be pulled about,--I won't have it,--if you want me have me, and have done with it,--get another woman if you like who will do it, or allow it,--I won't." These and similar answers always settled me, and I submitted, for I was under her domination, and in my folly I had actually feared that if I persisted, she would not come to see me.

She brought her children in the morning to me at J...s Street, and I had her that afternoon. Now she was free enough, pointed herself to the marks of childbirth (very slight they were), and voluptuously held her cunt-lips open,--she had never done so before. From that day and afterwards she allowed me to see her in every way or manner, if not to let me do what I wished. The mystery was over, I knew most if not all,--certainly all about her person.





CHAPTER XIV.


     Poses plastiques.--Sarah departs.--My despair.--Hannah's
     comfort.--Foolscap and masturbation.--Cheap cunt.--A
     Mulatto.--The baudy house accounts.--Concerning Sarah.--The
     parlour.--The gay ladies there.--My virtue.--Louisa Fisher.--
     A show of legs.--The consequence on me.--Effect on Mrs. X..i.

 I dined with Sarah repeatedly until her departure, she was now often in low spirits, and drank very freely of champagne; then would fuck with a passion and energy which did not seem natural to her, for by look and general manner one would have sworn she was even tempered, and without much passion,--had I not found that out by experience? One night soon after she had brought her children to me, she seemed wild with lust. What was the matter with me I don't know, but I had no desire for her, and could scarcely stiffen for the embrace; yet she was in ecstacies with me as I fucked her. "Do it again," said she. "I can't." "You must do it,--I've not washed." "I can't." "Yes,--yes.--I'm mad for you," said she,--and we kept on fucking till early the next morning. "I am in the family way again I think," said she as she left, "and if so will jump over Westminster Bridge." But she was not, and after that night she persuaded me not to spend in her, but to withdraw just as my emission took place. "It will spoil all my plans if I am in the family way," said she, "all I have done will be of no use if I cannot act." "Act?" "Yes, I am an actress." "Does not your husband spend in you?" "No one has spent in me but you, since my miscarriage,--I won't let him, and he doesn't want me in the family way."

"You an actress!" "Yes,--have you never seen me?" "No." "Are you sure?" "Yes." "Did you ever see the Poses plastiques and Madame W...t.n?" "Yes, two or three years ago." "Well I was one of her troupe." "Good God!--and what do you do now?" "Nothing,--but we have a troupe going on the Continent,--I am the principal--I am Madame W...t.n now."

Then she told me she had in her youth been a model for artists, had sat to Etty and Frost, hers was the form which had been painted in many of their pictures,--and then she would say no more.

I grew sadder and sadder as the time came for her departure; so did she. She said I worried and unsettled her; she wondered sometimes if she were doing the best thing for herself and children or not. She was so frightened lest she should get in the family way, that as already said she made me withdraw before the critical moment, spending my sperm on her thighs or on the crisp hair of her motte. I got an idea into my head (a stupid one enough), that if she were to get in the family way by me she would stay in London; and one night after we had dined, and she had had pleasure in my groping, and as usual had said, "Now don't do it in me," I plunged my prick up, and spent a full stream in her cunt. "I hope to God that sperm's all up your womb," said I. Her own pleasure had so overcome her, that she could not move for a minute; then jumping up she washed herself with a sponge,--she recently had used one. I never had a spend in her again for months afterwards.

Then for hours I used to look her over and over from head to foot, as if I wished to recollect every part of her person for ever afterwards: the roots of her hair, the ears, the way the hair grew on the nape of her neck; the way it grew on her cunt, and in her arm-pits, and every other part I used to look over as if searching for something; the only part of her which escaped my investigations was the bum-furrow, which was to me an uncomfortable part in all women, and in my wildest sexual ecstacies and aberrations I neither felt it nor saw it, and don't know whether the hole was round or square; red or brown.

After she had told me she had sat as a model, she brought me a small oil-painting of herself made by an artist of some rank. She was proud of it, and so was her husband. I offered such a price for it, that placed as she was she could not resist, and I bought it. She gave me one day a photograph of herself; both had the characteristic opening of the lips well shown. It is only recently that I have destroyed these mementos of a dead affection.

When I saw that nothing would keep her in England I did my best to help her enterprise, gave her money freely, paid for dresses, boots, travelling cloaks, children's dresses, and in brief for everything. During the nine months I had known her she in fact ran me dry, and in debt. I spent upon her more than I could have lived on for four years at the rate I lived at just before I met her. But I was now in better circumstances than I had been for years, and the money was my own.

As the time approached, I could neither sleep nor eat, and used to be at J... s Street hours before I knew she could come; would wait any time for her, treating Hannah and the ladies, and doing nothing but talk about Sarah. Sometimes I used to think about following her abroad. When she came to the house, I used to spend my time in crying, and she after telling me not to be foolish, would cry too. Then, "Oh! let me see you naked." "There then." Then came kisses all over her body. "Oh! now for God's sake don't spend in me." Then came a delicious fuck; then crying and moaning recommenced. She left a week at least before she had said she should, and did so to prevent me the pain of parting with her,--I must give her that credit. Hannah told me so.

I had arranged to see her one morning, and was as usual there before my time. Hannah stepped out from the parlour. "Has Sarah come?" She beckoned me into the parlour. "Why they all sailed this morning,--my sister went to see them off,--did you not know?" I staggered to the sofa dizzy, speechless, then senseless. When I came to myself Hannah was standing besides me with brandy and water and a spoon with which she was putting it into my mouth.

"Don't take on so," said she, "don't think any more about Sarah,--she is a fine woman, but there are lots as good,--I know a dozen, and any one would be glad to know a man like you,--have some brandy and water,"--and she took a great gulp herself. "There now," said she bending over me. "would you like to see Mrs.------, she who met you the other night in here with Sarah,--she has taken quite a fancy to you,--don't cry. Sarah will come back, and if she don't you'll get another woman whom you will like as well. There is Mrs.------, a splendid shaped woman who only sees one gentleman here,--she took quite a fancy to you, though she only saw you once." But I was desperate, and rushed out of the house. Where I went to, I don't even recollect, but went home at last very drunk,--an extraordinary occurence for me.

For some days I was prostrate in mind, and almost in body, but at length recovered sufficiently to attend a little to my affairs which had gone altogether to the bad for a month, and had been going bad for many months. I resolutely set myself against going to J... s Street, and would not have women; indeed scarcely knew where to lay my hand on a shilling, so necessity had perhaps as much to do with my virtue as anything else; but I was generally in a weak, low state of health, and really believe, though it seems to me almost incredible now, that it was well nigh three weeks before I touched or saw a cunt after Sarah left.

Then one Sunday I had erections all day long. After dinner lust drove me nearly mad; so I went to my room, took a clean sheet of white paper, and frigged myself over it. My prick only slightly subsided, I frigged again, and then as the paper lay before me covered with sperm-pools I cried, because it was not up my dear Sarah's vagina, laid my head on the table where the paper lay, and sobbed with despair, jealousy, and regrets, for I thought some one would fuck her if I did not, that it would be her hateful husband whom she had helped to keep with my money.

I may say here that on several occasions of my life I have frigged myself over a clean sheet of foolscap paper; it was mostly done for curiosity, to see what my sperm was like, whether it was as thin, or as thick, or as large in quantity as at the last time I previously had masturbated.

I could not after that Sunday keep away from J...s Street, and went there the next day. "I don't expect she'll write to you," said Hannah, "even if she said she would,--what will be the use?--it will only make you miserable." But I felt sure she would, and kept away from women still for some time after that,--I was stumped for money among other reasons. Then I began to spend involuntarily in the night, which to me was more hateful than frigging myself; so one night I went out for a bit of cheap quim. Whether I saw Brighton Bessie or not I can't say, but I think I did, and did later on.

I went first into the streets near a large well-known tavern at a spot where several big thoroughfares meet, and where there is a large traffic, and picked up my cheap women there. But the women, their chemises and petticoats, and their rooms shocked me more than they used, and kept me chaster than I otherwise might have been.

One night I went home with a tall straight woman who would not take my fee. "No," said she, "I've got two nice little rooms of my own." If you get a woman for five shillings you have to pay for the room besides, and ten shillings is only a small sum; so I went with her for ten shillings, and saw her at intervals for a few months.

She was about five feet nine high, was not stout, was as straight as a lath, yet not thin, had very firm but quite small breasts, and a biggish bum. She had Mulatto blood in her veins she told me, and was brown-skinned, had a large mouth and very thick lips, the Negro blood showed there plainly; her hair was dark, and so were her eyes; her cunt was a pouter: it was small, but the lips pouted out more thickly I think than those of any woman I ever yet saw, yet they were not flabby, but protruded largely like two halves of a sausage; the hair was black, short, and intensely crisp and curly; it felt like curled horse-hair. I used to think her a plain woman, one of the plainest, but she was a glorious fuckster; her cunt was tight inside, and yet so elastic as not to hurt or pinch (and I was at that time when just at spunking point as often said before tender-pricked). The hair of her head was coarse yet straight, her large mouth was filled with teeth of a splendid whiteness, and when she smiled she showed the whole set. It was seeing her large white teeth that first attracted me before I could distinguish any other feature of her face; you could see them at night right across a road, they were dazzling, and almost made one forget the great thick-lipped orifice which opened to expose them. I have before told of women who attracted me by their teeth, and particularly of a Creole.

This Mulatto as I called her, amused me with her letcherous postures; she was as lithe as a willow branch, and was willing to please. I was fond of making her kneel on the bed with bum towards me, and her legs nearly close together, and then the backward pout of her cunt was charming to me, so much so that I took to poking her dog-fashion.

One night when I was full of sperm I made her remain in the exact posture until all my spunk had run out of her cunt, and sat holding a candle towards her rump till I was satisfied with the sight; and more than once I kept her in that position, looking at the gruelly lips until I fucked her a second time.

She had such a very remarkable steady walk that she scarcely seemed to move, she glided; her feet were so nicely carried forward, and her body so evenly balanced from her hips. In this respect she resembled a tall dark woman named Fletcher, whom I knew quite recently. There must have been something in the arrangement of their thighs and hips which caused this. Women who are accustomed to carry heavy loads on their heads always walk straight, and never roll from side to side as most people more or less do; but I don't know that either of the women named had carried baskets on their heads,--I knew the walk of that class of women, having been born in the neighbourhood where they worked.

She I imagine had a liking for my doing it naked with her, for she was always suggesting that we should strip; but she could not bear my fucking her dog-fashion. When I stripped and got into her on her belly, she would twist her legs right into mine in quite a snaky fashion, and sometimes lift her legs up till her heels were almost up to my blade-bones. She also like a few others I have poked seemed to have the power of holding my prick in her cunt quite tightly after I had spent,--perhaps because she had not spent herself, for about her pleasures in the copulation I am not sure, though she always impressed me as being a hot-cunted one.

After I had once been to J... s Street again I went more and more frequently. Hannah was always nearly screwed,--champagne or brandy pleased her best.

When she was so, she would at times gradually let out much that she knew,--and this is what she let out one day.

"Bah! her husband indeed!--she is not married,--he's got a wife besides, and Sarah knows it,--he's blackened his wife's eyes more than once when she has been annoying them; but that don't pay, for she is his lawful wife; so he allows her something, and it keeps her quiet, and she won't last long, for she is drunk from daybreak till night. Sarah's a real good one to keep the lazy beggar,--she keeps them all poor thing, ever since he could not get any engagement; there's she, and their children, and her sister, who lives with them, and then there is her old mother who she keeps, and his wife as well,--she has enough to do poor thing." This came out one day after Hannah had dined; I had brought her a bottle of specially fine brandy, and we were sitting in the parlour drinking it together mixed with water.

I had long been getting into Hannah's good graces. I stood wine and brandy, was always respectful to her and the gay ladies I met in her parlour, and never used coarse, rude language to them, nor in speaking of them or of ladies of their class. Hannah told me I was a great favorite with several of them, as indeed I found to be the case. I may say that all my life I never spoke disrespectfully to, or of gay ladies, so long as they behaved themselves; they have been mostly throughout my life, kind and true to me after their fashion, they gave me pleasure, and I treated them as if I was grateful for it.

But I was moreover serviceable to Hannah. Once or twice as told she had brought me some figures to cast up, and when Sarah had left, she brought me others on various little scraps of paper. She asked me never to mention my having done so to her sister, and I did not. I became curious at finding the items were all in five shillings, seven and sixpence, ten and twenty shillings; at last it struck me what it was, and taxing her with it found it was the takings of the baudy house, she told me so with a laugh. She could not write herself.

The takings were put on slips of paper by the servants, and by some process of her own which she could not explain, she got a rough sort of check on the servants to prevent them robbing her. She had to account to the real owner of the house,--and how she did it she alone knows. This is certain (she once admitted it), that from the takings she put a pound a day into her own pocket. Whether she robbed the owner to that extent, or whether it was her admitted share I never knew. She was well dressed, had excellent food, allowed her Guardsman money, her sister's husband money, and others too I rather think. But after she'd taken her three or four hundred pounds a year, there was a splendid income handed over to some one. This house had but eight rooms, and two more closets to let out for fucking; they often took twenty pounds a day, and sometimes much more.

I did this arithmetic pretty regularly, and she became my fast friend. She told me all about Sarah that she knew (what Sarah at a future day told me agreed with it), and much about the habits of other loose ladies which will be partially narrated in due time, and a good deal about baudy house management.

And now more about Sarah's antecedents. A new species of entertainment had sprung into existence a few years before this time, called "Poses plastiques," in which men and women covered with silk fitting tightly to their naked limbs and made quite white, placed themselves on stages in classical groups to the sound of music. Women and men of great physical beauty formed these groups, they were in fact actors of that class. Madame W...t.n known as a splendid model first got them up; her husband was a splendid man, Sarah was her niece, and also had a beautiful form which ran in the family; she was poor, and Madame W...t.n took her to live with them, and at seventeen years of age she appeared as Venus.

At nineteen she had a child by Madame W...t.n's husband, at twenty a second. Madame found out the father, and kicked Sarah out. Mr. W...t.n then kicked Madame out, and went to live with Sarah, rows ensued, other companies of "Poses plastiques" came into competition, the thing got overdone, he could not get his living; he knew a trade, but was I expect too lazy to work at it; so Sarah took to letting herself out as model, and that being poor pay, to letting out her cunt to get their bread; she had just began it when I first met her. They seem during a year or more to have parted with all their goods, before she took to showing her belly-parting for money.

So beautiful a form of course succeeded, and for a time I became the principal milk-cow. Then a proposition was made to form a troupe to go to the Continent; there seemed to be a grand opening, and with Sarah's money (most of it got from me), the apparatus, costumes, properties, and troupe were got together.

Off they had gone. She and her husband were the exhibition-managers, speculators, and chief actors.

Hannah made a mouth when I asked what sort of a man Mavis was. She did not think much of him,--why did he not work--he had a trade?--no, because he was no longer able to get on as an actor, he preferred to let Sarah get the living for the whole of them. "Ah! you'll see her back, mark my words,--they won't succeed,--and then what will take place? --you'll see,--is she poor thing to work and do everything, that he may lay a bed, dress as a gentleman, and do nothing but take her out for a walk on a Sunday; she is as proud of his taking her out for a walk on a Sunday as if he kept her a carriage." After much reflexion I came to the conclusion that Sarah had only just turned harlot about the time I had first met her that she did it to keep her man and her family, and he got accustomed to his woman getting his living for him.

I kept on calling at J... s Street, always expecting to hear of Sarah. Hannah was glad to see me, for now I cast up her accounts weekly. I got acquainted with two or three ladies there who came at intervals to meet their friends. They were very nice women, none were ever to be seen in the streets, they had either their own acquaintances whom they met at J... s Street, or Hannah had introduced them to gentlemen there. They were not a bit like whores in dress, appearance or manner, and my acquaintance with them opened my mind to the fact, that there is a large amount of occult fucking going on with needy, middle-class women, whose mode of living and dressing, is a mystery to their friends, and who mingle with their own class of society without its being suspected; that their cunts are ever wetted by sperm which lawfully may not be put there.

I began to stand wine when I met them, and was introduced as a friend of Miss Mavis who had gone abroad. I was I found well known by name and a character for kindness, and I expect also for being a fool. All the women were shy at first, Hannah's sister (the servant) I overheard telling Hannah that the ladies did not like my being in the parlour. Hannah at times would ask me to leave, as a lady wanted to come into the parlour and wait there, and so on. But gradually Hannah would say, "Who is it?--oh! she knows him,"--or "Oh! she won't mind,--let her come in." So by degrees I became intimate with these privately gay ladies, and several of them on more than one occasion joined their sweet bodies to mine in the game of under and over.

I had never had a woman in the house since Sarah had gone; firstly because I did not then pay more for the girls than I did for the room alone at J... s Street, and because, I feared if Sarah came back Hannah would tell her,--as if it would have mattered to Sarah in any way excepting that another woman would get the money she might have had. Still I had that stupid idea about the matter, and although I had longed for one or two of the other ladies, and although they had looked languishingly at me, I never had then proposed a private interview upstairs.

One day Hannah said she had heard from Sarah who had asked after me. "They are (Sarah and the troupe) getting on well," said Hannah, "if she says so I suppose they are,--but we shall see." Suddenly, "Have you had another woman since she left?" The question startled me. "No." "Oh! I don't believe it,--if you haven't you're a nasty man." Then I confessed, and told her what I had done. "Why don't you have Mrs. Fisher?" said she. "I'm poor, and can't,--I'm not going to do what I did with Sarah." "Lord she won't mind,--she'd like you I know,--but don't say I said so,--she's got a lovely leg,--she's a fine woman,--nearly as fine made as Sarah Mavis, and she is taller,--she never gets it done at home." Hannah was unusually muddled with liquor that day, and let out; her sister was not there to check her with, "Now then Hannah you'd better shut up,"--and Hannah described Mrs. Fisher's hidden charms till my cock stood.

I would pass hours sketching from recollection Sarah Mavis' limbs and form, her bum and cunt being the most favorite subjects; then so randy that I did not know what to do with myself, I would rush out into the streets to prevent my frigging myself,--and erotic night-dreams were frequent.

"Why don't you see Mrs. X.. i," said Hannah to me, "she likes you, and would come up any day if I wrote to her (I had supped two or three times with that lady),--I would not fret about Sarah, although she is a fine woman,--you let her see you have another woman, and she will come round if she comes back." But I did not for a time.

One afternoon however being in the parlour, Mrs. X.. i was there, a splendid woman about twenty-six years old. Also there was a young woman who had two children by a man with whom she was about to go abroad, and she was a lovely woman. The two ladies had just had a two o'clock dinner with Hannah, I had just come from my Club after luncheon, and sent for champagne. All our talk got frisky,--all knew Sarah, my love. If I could get any one to talk with me about her, I was delighted, and began at it. Said the Mistress, "Well she is a splendid-formed woman certainly,--splendid, but there are lots of others,--I've got a good leg to my knee, so has Mrs. X.. i, and Mrs.------," (meaning the other whose name I forget).

"Show us your leg," said one. "There," said Hannah pulling up her clothes, "now show yours." They all showed their limbs, one after another. "You might fancy you had Sarah's legs round your thighs, if you had Mrs. X...i's there," said Hannah. I was nigh bursting for a fuck. Mrs. X...i pulled her clothes up higher, and stood up to show the leg better; the other ladies did the same. I felt my pleasure coming, and objecting to wet my shirt, began to unbutton. "Oh I can't bear it," I cried, "oh! my God I'm coming,"--and the instant my prick was free from my trousers I spent copiously, the three women their petticoats still up nearly to their cunts, looking and laughing. I had not frigged, it was fullness, and the voluptuous delight at seeing the limbs of the three fine women which fetched me. "There is lots of stuff in him," said one. Ashamed of myself I begged their pardons, and sent for more wine. "He had better have given one of you ladies that good spunk," said the Mistress. I overcame my bash fulness, they laughed about what Sarah Mavis had missed, one professed to feel annoyed at my behaviour. "Oh! you are damned modest," said Hannah.

Mrs. X...i soon afterwards went upstairs into the bed-room to a gentleman she had come to meet. The Mistress said she should lay down,--she always did after her dinner, and slept for two hours,--she was fuddled, and indeed always was. The mother of the two children and I were alone; from the instant I had spent she had never taken her eyes off me,--never. I recollect the look of her dark eyes and their expression quite well. Hannah snored almost directly. "Let us have a kiss," said the lady to me, "I know you are fond of a well-formed woman,"--and she pulled up her clothes a little. She was sitting on the sofa, my prick rose, I bolted the door, and we fucked whilst the Mistress kept snoring.

Mrs. X... i came down. "What you here still?--what have you been doing?" The mother replied, "He has been smoking, and talking about his dear Sarah." The woman was actually sitting at that very moment with a flood of my sperm up her cunt, for she had neither wiped, nor washed, nor pissed since I had fucked her. Then they talked about X... i's friend who was a clergyman. X... i was the wife of a man who lived with her, but never had her (so she said); she hated him, he had clapped her once.

The mother went out of the room, and came back, Hannah awoke, we had tea, I paid, it was my rule then to pay for everything for the ladies whenever I was in the baudy house parlour. I rose to go, shaking hands with the two ladies. The one whom I had embraced put a bit of paper privately into my hand. Outside the house I read it. "Wait outside," it said. I had been delighted with her pleasure, and did so. She came out, we walked quickly off. "You go to the top of the next street," said she, "and I'll meet you,"--and she went another way, and met me at the top. "I did that in case X... i came out," said she, "let us go and have dinner together." "I have not enough money," said I. "Never mind, I have." We went to the Café de P..v...e, and dined; I fucked her again and again on a sofa. She was a charming woman. As we sat on a little sofa dallying after dinner, she said she had not had it for a month, her friend had gone to Germany, where they were going to live, to make arrangements, he would return in a few days; then he, she, and the children were going to Germany with him. "I liked you," said she, "but when I saw what you did before us this afternoon, I could scarcely stop myself, I wanted it so badly,--I dare say I'm in the family way,--oh! don't look,--it's full,--it's dirty,--you shan't." The next instant I was up her again; afterwards she washed, and I saw her cunt. I paid for the dinner partly, she the rest,--I had not a sixpence left. "I'm sorry," I said to her, "that I have no more money." "I did not come here for money," said she. "Let me leave you half a dozen pair of gloves at No. 11." "No, I've lots of gloves." "Then give me a kiss." She stood putting her tongue in my mouth for a minute, then giving me a hearty kiss off she went. I never saw her, nor had her again. Hannah told me she was in Germany, and very happy there.





CHAPTER XV.


     Louisa Fisher.--Chaffing.--Her form and fucking.--A supper
     in bed.--A lascivious night.--Meetings afterwards.--Hannah's
     legs.--Intruders in the bed-room.--Louisa's voluptuousness.--
     Enceinte.--Her husband.--Her gentleman friend.--About
     herself.--Illness.--Mrs. A... y.

 I began to meet a Mrs. Fisher at the house very frequently; why she was more frequently there I did not know, and knew it was but of little use asking questions why.

I rather liked this lady. She came usually at one o'clock, and had dinner with Hannah. At three o'clock she went upstairs, was there about two hours, then came down and went away. At times she waited, had tea, and sometimes early supper; this was when she was expecting some one who did not come. I was told confidentially by Hannah it was a rich middle-aged clergyman. The lady's name was Mrs. Louisa Fisher,--her christian name I have written truly, the surname is not. I do this lest she be alive still, and should read somehow this result of my doings with her at J...s Street; she can't mistake if she reads these pages who it was.

After what Hannah had told me I could not help taking a great deal of notice of this lady, and began to lust for her, and of course took to talking to her about Sarah. She was nothing loth, and asked me curious, and at last down right indecent questions about her, but not in smutty language. Hannah when there used to laugh at the questions and my replies; they made my cock stand, which perhaps was what Louisa intended, or it may only have been curiosity without any hidden intention.

I imagine that the erotic incident in the parlour had been told to a good many gay ladies; it certainly had to Louisa Fisher, for one night after that I had been to enquire if Hannah had heard again from Sarah, and Hannah had mentioned Louisa, the following occurred. I had dined early, it was about half-past six, Louisa Fisher was there. "Stand us a glass of wine," said she. "Do," said Hannah. "Do," said another lady. "Have you had dinner Mrs. Fisher?" said I. "No, my friend's not been,--I'm hungry, and Hannah is just going to cook me a chop." I myself fetched a bottle of sherry, the chop came, Louisa ate it, and drank sherry; then I sent for brandy, we drank it mixed with water, and Hannah took some neat. I had began about Sarah as I always did. "Well she was a beautiful model," said Hannah, "but Mrs. X... i's leg was better to my mind." "Look how he's blushing," said Louisa. "Why should I blush?" They both laughed. "Oh! oh! oh! don't I know what you did when you saw her legs." I was then that odd mixture of baudiness and modesty, that I was just as likely to be bold as to be shame-faced, when a woman spoke to me about anything carnal; and now was confused and half-ashamed. "Lord how he's blushing," said Hannah, and she left the room to look after business, she usually put her head out when the street-door opened, if a servant was not in the way on the ground-floor.

Louisa laughed. "I know all bout it," said she, "she was a fine woman." After I had got over the stupid bashfulness which I had for the moment, I went (as usual with me) to the extreme of baudy boldness. "Yes," said I laughing, "I wish it had been spilt in her cunt, instead of on the carpet." "Oh! for shame," said Louisa, "well it was waste, was it not,--it might have made two people happy,--did you really spend without frigging it?" "Yes I did."

I got close to Louisa on the sofa to speak with her about the event, to hear from her lips what had been told her. She said not a word, but my face was close to hers, we looked into each other's eyes for a minute, lust was on both. I put my arm round her, pulled her towards me, and kissed her. She returned it, our lips were glued together. "You've got a fine leg Hannah says." "Does she?" "Yes,--let me see it." "No." "Yes." "You only care about Sarah." I made no reply, but went on kissing letcherously, put one hand down, and going on kissing pulled her clothes up to her knees. She stopped me there. "Oh! how round, how nice, how lovely your leg is." "Now be quiet, Hannah will be in." I ceased looking, but my hand slipped higher up, my fingers were inside the satiny wet lips, and my mouth was glued to hers, as Hannah came back.

We resumed a decent posture. Hannah laughed, "Lord why don't you two go upstairs?" said she, "you want each other,--why don't you go?--the first-floor front's empty." "Come," said I to Louisa pulling her. She rose instantly. Hannah was a really good soul, she liked to make people happy, and to set them fucking; I have seen it in a dozen instances.

Without another word we went upstairs, I threw her on the bedside, pulled up her clothes, and opened a magnificent pair of thighs. "Let's go to bed," said she. "Very well." We both undressed like lightning without a word passing, and stood, she in chemise, I in shirt in a trice. "Let's get in naked." Without reply she drew off her chemise as I pulled off my shirt, and the next minute naked in each other's arms we were fucking in a warm bed, not a word of conversation passing till we had spent, those moments are so soul-absorbing in their lasciviousness.

"Oh! how quick we've been,--lay still." With mutual consent we kept together in fleshy conjunction, I nestled my balls up her, she tightened her cunt to stimulate my shrinking organ. But little stimulus was needed, our spend had only made us want it again, we had scarcely rested ere we recommenced fucking, and again we spent before my prick had uncunted. How lovely, how exquisite is the reminiscence! What equals the pleasure of a man and woman pleased with each other, thrilling with lust, when prick and cunt are joined, and they spend in each other's arms!

Still she would not let me out of her, crossing her limbs over my thighs, drawing me closer to her by her hands, grasping my arse-cheeks, pulling the cheeks almost open, squeezing her cunt up to me, she kept me up her, kissing me, shoving her tongue towards mine, and saying I was a lovely poke, the first baudy words that dropped from her, I rubbing my belly up against hers till my balls almost lay between her fat cunt-lips, swabbing up the oozings of the sperm which ran out from her. And so we lay, kissing, tongue-sucking, and talking the stinging words of love and lust.

Then as repose became a pleasure, and nature severed us. "Oh! my God how wet you have made me," she said, "it's all on the sheet." "Let me feel." I felt on my side, she turned on hers towards me, and threw one leg over my haunch, I placed my hand on her cunt, and felt the sperm, wetting my hand, whilst she grasped my slippery prick. "Feel how wet your prick is," I put my hand there, and every hair on my prick was plastered against my belly; then hand on cunt, and hand on prick we both dozed off.

When I awakened we were still face to face, Louisa asleep with a hand under my balls. I pulled down the clothes to look at her naked body: the gas was burning brightly, I saw splendid breasts; down went my hand to her cunt, I groped it, she awoke, and without a word turned on to her back, and I on to her belly. Whilst couched easily on to that broad belly, and lying between her ample breasts, and steadied by her large thighs, my prick lying down against her gap, kissing and sucking each other's mouths, she glided her hand down, and introduced my pendulous doodle to her randy cunt, and again we fucked. We were mad for it, neither of us uttered a word, till she cried out, "Oh! I'm coming,--my God,--ah!" And then we spent, and went fast asleep again, exhausted with the pleasure.

We were awakened by a knock. "Who's there?" "Hannah." "What do you want?" "Are you going to stop all night?" "No," said I jumping out of bed, "what o'clock is it?" "It's half-past twelve." "Come to bed," said Louisa. In I jumped. "Oh! I'm so hungry," said she, "how I should like some oysters." "So should I,--get up, and we'll go and have some before the shop closes." "No, stop here, Hannah will get them." I agreed, ordered them, and we went on twiddling each other's privates, I recollect the feel of hers at this very moment,--it was like a paste-pot.

I had never seen her person yet. The throwing her on to the bed, and lifting her clothes, her stripping, and jumping into bed had been so rapid, and so randy had both of us been, so anxious to copulate, that I had had no time to look, to contemplate, to enjoy her with my eyesight. Now off went the bed clothes. "Let's look at your cunt." "I won't till I've washed." "No now." I pulled one thigh. "No you dirty dog,--it's not nice." She jumped out of bed, and washed her quim, I my prick, we pissed, and then she threw herself on the bed, and delivered her body up to me. When I had had a quarter of an hour's investigation, she amused herself with looking and pulling my prick about, waiting for our supper.

She was a very fine tall woman, stout and well-built. She said she was twenty-four, but I believe she was thirty. She looked less stout with her clothes on than when she was undressed, for I was much surprised to see how very big she was when naked. She had a very big arm, her thighs and legs were very big as well. Hannah was right about it, the entire legs were grand, but had not the exquisite curves of Sarah Mavis'. Her bum was proportionate to her thighs, her waist was not nearly small enough, her breasts were very large, and beautifully placed, and beautifully solid; her face was large and common-place, she had grey eyes, and lightest auburn hair,--immense in quantity, which was pleasing, though not handsome; it was not a face which in the streets would have attracted me. Her teeth were good.

The hair on her cunt, which was thick-lipped and pouting, was also of a lightish auburn, not by any means a colour to my taste when between the thighs,--so many women's cunts are furnished with that colour. It was thick, longish, soft in feel, large in quantity, and spread half-way up to her navel, and square across her belly to the line of her thighs. I guessed it a thirty year old cunt from that. She was a lovely fucker, and though her cunt was a large one inside and out; the prick was well clipped by it, and kept in when its business was done. There was such room to lie on her between her thighs, and all seemed so well placed to hold a man, that I often thought of her in after time when fucking Sarah, who was the very reverse; who always made me bend my back when fucking, and from whose quim my prick would always slip, unless we both made some effort to retain it after I had spent. Sarah rarely did that, hating the muck. Indeed when Sarah was randy, and wagged her arse as she did violently, all of a sudden just before she spent, she often threw my stiff prick out, which set me off damning and cursing till it was up her again.

The oysters came, and champagne with them, we went to bed again, and sat in chemise and shirt to eat them, said I, "let's have another fuck naked again," for the touch of her large fleshy body to mine had entranced me, and thus we fucked. Another doze. "Ulloh! why it's three o'clock,--I must be off." "Don't go dear,--stop all night." "I can't,--they will think I am ill." "So they will me, but I can't go home, I live too far off,--do stop all night with me, there's a darling," said she.

Instead of a doze we had slept two hours. I at times stopped out all night, and never without saying I intended to do so, but I was tired and sleepy. "Oh! don't go." I put on my shirt. "Well let's have another poke before you go,--the champagne has made me so randy." It had also operated on me. I looked, there were her breasts naked just peeping above the bedclothes, one arm out, the hand under her head, the big white fleshy arm, and the thick sandy brown hair in the armpits. "Come," said she uncovering to her knees. Off went my shirt, and jumping into bed the thighs received me, the voluptuous tongue and round, soft, wet lips glued themselves on to mine again, and heaving gently we were already on the way to another spend. My God what work, what prolonged pleasure!--I forgot Sarah Mavis, and every other woman that night in the arms of Louisa. In baudy amusement we passed the whole night together, and I awakened at ten the next morning with the need of going as fast as I could to shit.

I came back, washed, and we fucked again; then she went as she said to speak to Hannah, whom I knew was a bed at that time; she went I knew to empty herself, but I asked no questions. We had ham and coffee in bed, and more fucking, and about one o'clock we rose and left. My finger must have smelt of cunt I should think for twenty-four hours afterwards, for I had scarcely left Louisa's cunt for eighteen hours; if my prick was not up her my fingers were, when not asleep. Whether spunk was in it or not was all the same, there was no objecting, she gave way to my insistance, and we lay at intervals, she feeling my prick, one of her legs placed over mine, and my hand between her thighs, both of us kissing, tongue-sucking, and scarcely talking. I barely recollect our talk at all,--it was one long baudy night; how many times we fucked I can't say, but it was one of my great exercises. She was tired, and so was I, yet at the last moment, "Let's try it again," I said: "No, I'm sore, and in pain," said she. I sometimes think my prick must have been nearly a dozen times up her, and when ramming stiff for a long time without spending she murmured, "Oh! pray dear leave off."

We fucked in no other fashion than belly to belly, we were naked the whole night, and did nothing outside the bed. When I had paid for the room, supper and breakfast, I only had a few shillings left. I told her. "Never mind," said she, "you shall give me some money some day when I am hard up;" so I paid her nothing then.

I recollect all this distinctly, I always do the incidents of a first night with a female. When I am accustomed to them, the more striking circumstances of our acquaintance remain in my memory. It seems to me that first night's incidents will always remain fresh in my recollection, excepting the number of fucks; I recollect up to about half-a-dozen, then I lose count, there my memory of a first night alone fails me.

I took a liking for Louisa. For nearly a year I had borne with the frigidity of Sarah and her tyranny, "You shall only do it once,--I won't,--I can't wait,--well go," were commands I had got accustomed to obey, had bowed to refusals to allow her secret charms to be looked at time after time, to have my prick ejected before the last injecting throb had been given. I liked the woman, doted on her exquisite form, liked the domesticity of sitting and reading to her, and at the same time just feeling her cunt whilst she laid on the sofa, because I liked her conversation, and because I was at times rewarded by rapturous delight when she abandoned herself body and soul to me, I submitted to all this. But I often rebelled, wished it was otherwise, and made up my mind to leave her for other women, yet did not. I have said all this before.

Now to have a splendidly made woman, who had as much pleasure with me as I had with her, was overwhelming. I forgot Sarah for a time, and longed for the repetition of the baudy, voluptuous hours I had had with the big-armed, big-thighed Louisa, and counted the days till we met again. The instant I set eyes upon her we went upstairs. "Let's get into bed." Then it was a race who undressed the first. "Naked?" "Yes naked." She laughed. "Look at your thing," said she as sitting down she pissed. It was stiff as a poker; the next minute I was laying bedded on that soft fleshy form, and we were spending. What a fat, luscious, and grand cunt she had, though three fingers went up it easily.

Then to my delight she threw up her limbs a little, and crossing them over me pressed her cunt close up to my willing cock-roots; and there we lay, my prick in her, my balls covering her arse-hole; whilst now and then she gripped my prick by muscular cuntal action. When her tongue touched mine, she sometimes ran her lithsome tongue over my teeth, or under my lips, and along my gums,--it was a peculiarity of hers. Then she would glue her wet lips to my wet lips, till our salivas mingled, and ran profusely, stimulating our lusts. Thus we enjoyed each other's bodies, till another fuck dissolved us, and separated our spunk-soaked genitals; and she got up, washed, and went away sometimes in a great hurry.

Soon I grumbled at her going so, and she promised to stop a longer time. "Have a shoulder of mutton," said she, "and onion sauce,--I love it,--Hannah will cook it beautifully,--we will dine at two o'clock, Hannah with us." So it came about; we three sat down to a shoulder. Louisa liked sherry, Hannah brandy; I brought both of fine quality, we gorged, Hannah got slightly tight, observing Louisa and I caressing. "Ah!" said she, "I envy you, you two going to bed." "Why where is Jack?" "Oh! at Windsor, and I shan't have a bit for a month at least." "You'll have to frig yourself," said I joking. "That's better than nothing, but I like the wetting best." Louisa laughed, and used afterwards to say to Hannah, "Has Jack given you a wetting?" Later on some other free ladies took up the joke, and Hannah's "wetting" became a bye-word among the circle of free, mercenary lovers.

Dinner over we hurried upstairs, and we went naked to bed. This was about half-past three; there we lay till eleven o'clock at night, and had an oyster supper in bed. Hannah came up, and ate oysters with us whilst we were in bed together. We ate them out of the shells, and drank champagne, heard happy couples over head, and joked about it, talked about fine limbs, about Sarah's fine legs. "Show us yours Hannah," said Louisa. Hannah without a word cocked one leg up against the bed, and drew up her petticoats to the top of one thigh. "There," said she, "I am not ashamed of it." She had a fine leg, but was a very plain woman. She had shown her leg to me on the day of the leg-show, when I had spent involuntarily, as I have already told. We laughed and praised her leg. "Oh! I'm ashamed of you both," said Hannah dropping her petticoats, laughing, and hurrying out of the room. "I know where his fingers are." She was right, Louisa was sitting up in bed, her legs half up, but covered, I half reclining by the side of her, had thrust my hand under the thighs, and was feeling her cunt.

Hannah left the room. We began fucking, I was on the top operating when the door opened, and a couple showed themselves. We heard a voice crying out, "Not there Ma'am, it's occupied," and Hannah's sister rushing in ejected a man and woman who had entered before they saw a couple were in the bed. We were too far advanced to mind, I uncunted with the object of closing the door, but the servants having done so, we consumated and dozed off; nor was it till the servant came to say we ought to be careful, that I got up and bolted the door.

Then began a regular meeting once a week, and sometimes twice. Money seemed no object to Louisa, she took what I gave, and never asked for more; once or twice she said, "I want a bonnet dear,--give me one,"--or a new pair of boots, or was hard up for a trifle, and then I gave her all I could; but she had not in a couple of months as much as at the last period of my acquaintance with her, Sarah had from me in three days. But she let me spend money in oysters and champagne suppers, and early dinners, Guardsman Jack who had come back from Windsor, used often to get his fill. I once saw Jack in bed with Hannah, and his scarlet uniform on the chair; he turned himself round with his face to the wall when I entered. He had a thick head of black hair, which is all I saw.

Louisa was a voluptuous poke, and enjoyed the fun as much as a woman could. I think, (but recollection on that point is not clear, when I come to comparison), that she was the nicest woman to lay on I ever had. I was slim, though far from a skeleton, and as I laid naked on her between her large breasts, and between her thighs slightly elevated (for she usually raised her legs, after we had fucked and she had recovered from her pleasure, or when I mounted her for preliminary dalliance), I could scarcely roll off of her without an effort. She had also when her pleasure was increasing, a movement of her whole body, and not of her cunt and backside alone; her breasts quivered with a gentle, perfectly natural motion, and I could feel her flesh moving and rubbing against mine from belly to neck in a way which stirred lust in me from the hair of my head to the soles of my feet; I seemed to feel all over her body at once, and it was most delicious. She had a lovely lasciviousness with her tongue. If my tongue was in her mouth when she spent, she almost sucked it out of me, and the clipping of her cunt after my prick had been relieved from its stiffness I have already mentioned. Her length of arm enabled her to squeeze my balls when in various positions, and no woman ever let me pull her about and look at her cunt, whether it was clean or spunky, more freely than she did. With many it is evidently business, with her it seemed pleasure. She took a delight in all I did, even when I washed her cunt.

(My pleasures however with her were of a simple kind. I had none of the varied erotic pleasures that I now know, the bum-hole and mouth were reserved for the enjoyment of my more matured years.) I should have seen her more frequently, but she would only come at the outside twice a week. No it was impossible,--she lived too far off. I tried to get out of Hannah some knowledge about her, but could not. One day only when fuddled she asked if I had heard she was married. "You mean," said I, "living with a man." "No really married, and been so for years,--oh! don't you tell her,--she'll cut the house if you do."

At the end of perhaps three months I was in bed with her; we had poked, reposed, and were in amorous dalliance, lying face to face, she with one limb over my haunch, so that I could feel her cunt well, she twiddling my somewhat exhausted prick. "I have a surprise for you," she said. "For me,--what?" "I'm in the family way." "The devil,--whose fault is that?" "No one's fault, and perhaps no misfortune,--would you like a child?" "I?--why?" (I had a presentiment of what was coming.) "Because it is yours." "Nonsense." "It is my dear,--I have felt certain of it for some time past, but waited to be quite sure before telling you." "Are you quite sure?" "As certain as I am that I shall die."

I was flabbergasted, felt distressed, as if I had done her some harm that I could not repair, that I had injured her, and should cause her pain and annoyance. It was succeeded by a fear that I should have trouble through it, and expense that I could not afford. Then came the idea that she was selling me, putting a plant on me; that if she were with child it was another man's, not mine. Then came a belief over me that what she said was true, that her pleasure in my embraces was so real, so unlike that of the ordinary gay women, that the result might be due to me. Overwhelmed I lay quiet, confused with the tumultuous thoughts and feelings which rushed through my brain.

At length I said, "Are you sure?" "Yes." "It may be your husband's" (for Hannah's hints came to my mind). "He!--he!--the miserable, contemptible little wretch!--he?" She left off feeling my cock, raised herself on her elbow, and looking at me said, "Who told you I was married?" "No one." "Some one has." "No one,--but I have more than once fancied you were married by the difficulty I have in getting you to come to meet me when I want." "Some one has told you." "No one has." "I'm a damned fool," said she, "I dare say you know more than you say,--what do you know?" "Nothing." "It's your child, and no one else's,--I'm sorry I have told you,--say nothing more about it,"--and she turned on her back. "Are you married?" "Of course not, or I should not be in bed with you." "Some man is keeping you perhaps." "No one is keeping me either," said she.

I could not keep quiet, so much was I excited, and thought of the man she met at J... s Street still, although she tried to hide that. I did not like to suggest it, for I had found out that any reference to him annoyed her, and I always avoided giving pain to any woman I had connection with; but the matter seemed so grave that I could not keep what was on my mind to myself, and as delicately as I could suggested him.

"It's not," said she fiercely, "it can't be." "Why?" "You are the only man who has spent in me for years." "What," said I incredulously, "no one had you?" "No one has spent in me but you for years,--no one." I was staggered, but returned to the subject. "Nonsense Louisa,--how can you tell?" "I've told you why." "Why if you've a husband, and if you have a friend who meets you, how can you be sure it's me?"

"I have no husband, and it's no friend,--if you don't believe it, I tell you on my oath, on my body and soul, and may I go to hell when I die, if it be not true, that no man has spent in me for years but you." "No man has fucked you!--what do they do then?" "That's no concern of yours,--but no man's stuff has ever been up me for quite two years but yours,--I'm not going to say any more about it,--my business is not yours,--nobody has asked you to keep the child,--you need not trouble yourself,--I'm sorry I told you." She turned her bum to me, and began to cry; I tried to comfort her.

"That will do," said she, "give me some oysters and champagne." I ordered them, then wanted another fuck. "No you shan't have it,"--nor would she let me. The oysters and champagne made her more complaisant, but she was angry and snappish. After another fuck she got up and left me before her usual time, and I went away wondering at this, and at the number of women who had been, or who said they had been with child by me.

Soon after she was loving, sad, and serious, was sorry I would not have liked the child, for it was certainly mine, but she would get rid of it. Then in the familiarity of a lewd man and woman naked in bed together, she told me a lot about herself.

She was married, she lived with him and her mother, but loathed her husband. "He,--he the miserable wretch,--he touch me, the dirty beast!--I'd sooner die than let him," she cried, "if he wanted even,--but he does not want me,--what he wants he gets elsewhere, not with me," said she with strong emphasis. If she left him, she would have to support her mother alone,--perhaps it would come to that some day,--she was quite prepared for it. They ate and drank together when he was at home, but had not slept together for years. He kept the house comfortably enough,--perhaps he would so long as she took trouble about it, for he did not care so long as he got his food good. Yes she did meet a friend. It got her luxuries she could not get any other way; her husband knew she got money elsewhere, for she dressed in a way he must know his money would not enable her to do. He asked no questions, and did not care nor heed, nor seem to notice. That was pretty well all I ever got out of her. Hannah drunk, and talking to me one day said he was a very little man, and a brewer's clerk, "a hop o' my thumb," she called him. "Never mind what my friend does," said Louisa, "I've known him some years,--he does something of course, he does not meet me for nothing, but I tell you he has never spent in me,--no man has spent in me for years but you." "Do you frig your friend?" "If you like, anything else you like, it's all the same,--I'm not going to say; but neither he nor any one else has spent in me,--no man's seed has been up me for two years or more. The first night you had me I spent first, you spent after; the next time as your seed touched me, I felt a shiver run right through me, and I got in the family way at that very instant, I'm sure." Louisa was particular in her language, she never said "spunk,"--thought it a nasty word,--she always said "seed," or "stuff" when she spoke of my sperm,--Sarah called it "muck".

Though I had had such lots of women, and had heard of most things, yet simple, straightforward fucking had engrossed me, I rarely had out-of-the-way lusts and letches, and I never thought to ask if her friend buggered or sucked her, or if she sucked him, or what little amusements they were up to. At all events she must have satisfied him some way, for he had known her she said some years. A man was likely to stick to Louisa, for she was a magnificent piece of flesh, from her neck to her ankles.

So I believed Louisa, and felt interested in her belly beginning to swell, but did not want the young one, or the troubles of paternity, or to get her into trouble; besides I had no affection for her, though I liked fucking her better and better.

Louisa then was away ill; I saw her again when her womb was cleared out, and we took to fucking as usual. One day in baudy vagaries we had been posturing, and she straddled across my face, bringing her cunt right on to my mouth, and my nose to her bum, she had been asking me if I ever kissed Sarah in any way but the straight one. She began kissing my peg as she lay on the top of me, I kissed her buttocks, but took no hint, if any were intended. She was very heavy, and I noticed for the first time a strongish odour from her cunt which annoyed me; afterwards I used often to fancy she had a strong smell about her quim, and was fool enough to tell her so, which offended her? but we made it up.

After a little time she began asking me if I had not forgotten Sarah,--did I love her as much?--did I long to have her again?--did she (Louisa) not give me as much pleasure as Sarah? I had then got over my desolation a little, and only thought of Sarah and her exquisite form with a sigh, was annoyed that she had not written to me, and I began to confess to myself, that for fucking, Sarah was not to be compared with Louisa. Then I began to wonder at my having been so infatuated, and let it out to Louisa one night. She said she wished I would keep her,--three pounds a week, and she would make it do, and so on; and I began to think seriously about the matter, for the expenses at the baudy house were nearly that amount; and although my delicate senses had began to revolt at the strong smell of Louisa, yet her voluptuousness was enticing, and was making me actually constant to her. I had quite left off my Mulatto, Brighton Bessie, and one or two others of my queens.

Louisa was again taken ill,--the consequence of her miscarriage, and of the measures taken to bring that on I was told. She got worse and worse, and was in great danger; she never wrote to me, but often to Hannah, and her letters which I saw always referred to me affectionately; above all she wanted to know what ladies I had at J...s Street. Hannah winking at me used to say, "I'd like to know where you put it away now,--it's put somewhere." I had taken no women to that house; but laughing said I was chaste. Hannah did not believe that, so I said I frigged myself. "You don't spill it about in that way," said she, "let me feel it,"--and she put her hand outside my clothes on to my tool. "Oho!--oho!--oho!" said she, for I stiffened. Then she brought me her accounts to cast up, and when it was done, "I shall take a nap," said she, "you go now, for I expect Mrs. ------ and a strange lady" (I had looked in casually that morning),--and getting on to the bed she laid down showing her legs liberally, and looking at me all the time. "Good bye," I said, and left; but have thought since that Hannah wanted me to have her. She never before or since looked at me in that way, nor behaved with such freedom when we were alone.

Her bed was as I have I think already told, in the front-parlour in J...s Street, and in an alcove, as many beds are in French hotels and houses; and when the curtains were drawn across it, the bed was entirely hidden.

And then when without a woman at my command, and with a frequent need for one, another piece of luck befell me. The way had been paved for it before Louisa was so ill.





CHAPTER XVI.


     A friend's maid-servant.--Jenny.--Initial familiarity.--A
     bum pinched.--Jenny communicative.--Her young man.--An
     attempt, a failure, a faint, a look, and a sniff.--
     Restoratives.

 I knew an elderly couple who were childless, and lived in a nice little house in the suburbs with a long garden in front, and one at the back as well; they were in comfortable but moderate circumstances, and kept two servants only. Every year they went to the seaside, taking one servant with them, and leaving the other at home to look after the house; and usually some one to take charge of it with her. This year they asked if I would when I passed the house (as I frequently did) call in, and see if all was going properly, for the housemaid left in charge was young, and her sister, a married woman, usually only stopped the night with her, leaving early each morning for work in which she was daily engaged. She was an upholstress.

I knew the servant whose name was Jane. She had been with the family some months. I often dined at the house; and once or twice when she had opened the garden-gate (always locked at nightfall), to let me out, I had kissed her, and tipped her shillings. She was a shortish, fat-bummed wench. Not long before this time I gave her bum such a hard pinch one night, that she cried out. A day or two afterwards I said, "Was it not black and blue?" "I don't know." "Let me see." "It's like your impertinance," she replied.

After that I used to ask her when I got the chance, to let me see if the finger-marks were there, at which she would blush a little, and turn away her head, but nothing further had come of the liberty.

When I called at the house I had no intention about the girl, as far as I can recollect. She opened the door, and heard my errand and questions. Yes all was right. Did her sister come and sleep there? Yes. Was she there now? No, she would not be there till nearly dark. I stepped inside, for then I thought of larking with her. "I am tired, and will rest a little," and stepped into the parlour, sat down on a sofa, began questioning her about a lot of trifles, and in doing so thought of the pinch I had given her bum, and my cock began to tingle. Then I thought she was alone in the house. "Oh! if she would let me fuck her!--has she been broached?--she is nice and plump." Curiosity increased my lust, and unpremeditatingly I began the approaches for the attack, though I only meant a little amatory chaffing.

"Is it black and blue yet Jenny?" She did not for the instant seem to recollect, for she asked me innocently enough, "What sir?" "Your bum where I pinched it." She laughed, checked herself, coloured up, and said, "Oh! don't begin that nonsense sir." I went on chaffing. "How I should like to have pinched it under your clothes,--but no I would sooner kiss it than pinch it." "Oh! if you're a going on like that I'll go to the kitchen." I stood before the door, and stopped her going out. "Now give me a kiss." I caught and kissed her, then gave a lot, and got a return from her. "I won't--Lor there then,--what a one you are,"--and so on. "Well Jenny one kiss, and you may afterwards kiss whenever you want you know." And so she seemed to think, for I got her to sit down on the sofa, and we gossiped and kissed at intervals, till my cock got unruly. "What a fat bum you have," said I. Then she attempted to rise, I pulled her back, we went on gossiping, and kissing at intervals. She got quite interested in my talk as I sat with one arm round her waist, and another on her thigh, outside her clothes of course.

So for a while; but I was approaching another stage, was getting randy, and reckless. "Lord how I'd like to be in bed with you, to feel that fat bum of yours, to feel your c--u--n--t," spelling it, "to f--u---c--k it I'd give a five-pound note," said I all in a burst, and stooping, got my hand up her clothes on to her thigh. She gave a howl. "Oh! I say now,--what a shame!--oh! you beast." I shoved her back on the sofa upsetting her, got my lips on her thighs, and kissed them. Then she escaped me, and breathing hard, stood up looking at me after her struggle. "Oh! I wouldn't have believed it," said she panting with the exertion. What a lot of women I have heard say, they would not have believed it, when I first made a snatch at their privates. I suppose they say what they mean.

Begging her pardon, "I could not help it," I said, "you are so pretty and nice,--I'd give ten pounds to be in bed with you an hour." "Well I'm sure." "Think what it is not to have a woman you like." "Well I'm sure sir, you are a married man,--you've got a partner, and ought to know better,--Missus would not have asked you to call if she'd a know'd you,--she thinks there's no gent like you,--what would she say if I tell her?" "But you won't my dear." "She thinks you a perfect gentleman, and most unlucky," the girl went on to say, "and she is sorry for you too."

"Oh! she does not know all, but you've heard, have you Jenny?" I tried to make her sit on the sofa again, and promising that I would not forget myself any more she did so. We kissed and made it up, and talking I soon relapsed into baudiness.

The quarrelsome life I led with the oldish woman at home was I knew well understood by the old couple. "I lead a miserable life," said I. "Oh! yes I know all about it," said the girl, "Master and Missus often talk about you,--but you're very gay, ain't you?" Then I told this girl a lot. "Think my dear what it is not even to sleep with a woman for two months,--for two months we have never slept together,--I've never seen her undressed,--never touched her flesh,--you know what people marry for,--I want a woman,--you know what I mean don't you,--every night what am I to do?--I love laying belly to belly naked with a nice woman, and taking my pleasure with her,--so of course I can't keep from having other women at times,--you don't know what an awful thing it is to have a stiff prick, and not a nice woman to relieve it." She gave me a push, got up, and made for the door at the word prick. Again I stopped her. She had sat staring at me with her mouth wide open, without saying a word, all the time I had been telling the baudy narrative of domestic trouble, as if she were quite stupefied by my plain language until she suddenly jumped up, and made for the door without saying a word.

I was as quick as she, caught her, put my back against the door, and would not let her go, but could not get her to look me in the face, I had so upset her. There we stood, I begging her to sit down, and promising not to talk so again, she saying, "Now let me go,--let me out." "No,--sit down." "No." But in about a quarter of an hour she did, and then again I told her of my trouble, avoided all straighforward allusion to my wanting other women, but hinted it enough. She got interested, and asked me no end of questions. "Lord why don't you separate,--if I quarrel with my husband so, I'm sure I will,--I tell my young man so." "Oh! you have a sweetheart." Yes she had,--a grocer's shopman,--he lived at Brighton, came up third class to see her every fortnight, starting early, and going back late. She was flattered by my enquiries, told me all about him and herself, their intention to get married in a year; and I sat and listened with one hand outside her clothes on her thigh, and thinking how I could best manage to get into her.

"He goes with women," said I to make her jealous. "He don't I'm sure,--if he did, and I found it out, I'd tear his eyes out, and break off with him, though he says Brighton is a dreadful place for them hussies." She got quite excited at the idea. "When he comes up, you and he enjoy yourselves,--his hands have been where mine have to-night." "No he hasn't,--if he dared I'd--now I don't like this talk,--you said you wouldn't,--leave me alone,--you keep breaking your word." Another little scuffle, a kiss, and a promise. "Why should you not enjoy yourselves?--who would know anything about it but yourselves,--it's so delicious to feel yourselves naked in each other's arms, your bellies close together." "Get away now,"--and she tried to get up. I got my hand up her clothes, pulled her on to the sofa, and holding her down with one hand, pressed myself sideways on her, and kissed her, pulling out my prick with the other.

Then she cried out so loudly that I was alarmed, for the window at the back was open. "Hush,--be quiet,--there,--I've touched your cunt." I pulled one of her hands on to my prick. "Oh! for shame Jenny you touched my prick." Again she got up, and made for the door; so did I, and stood there with my back to it, and my poker out in front of me. "Come and open the door my dear, and you will run against this." She turned her head away, and would not look. "Why don't you come on?--if you run up against it, it won't hurt you,--it's soft though it's stiff." "I'll write to my Mistress to-night," said she, and turned away. "Do my pet,--tell her how stiff it was, and the old lady will want to see it when she comes back." "It's disgraceful." "No my dear, it's to be proud of,--why you're looking at it I can see."

Then she turned quite away. "That's right dear,--now I can see where I pinched your bum,--it was not far from your little quim,--oh! if that could talk, it would ask to be introduced to this,--it's hot, isn't it Jenny?" I said, this and a lot more. She had walked to the back-window, and stood looking into the garden whilst I rattled on. "You're laughing Jenny." "It's a story," said she, "I'm insulted,"--and turned round with a stern face. I shook my tooleywagger. "How ill-tempered you look,--come and feel this, and you'll be sweet-tempered at once." She turned round to the window again.

"I will write my Missus,--that I will." "Do dear."

"My sister will be here directly." "You said she comes at dusk,--it won't be dark for three hours." "I wish you would go,--what will people say if they know you're here?" "Don't be uneasy,--they will know no more than they know of your doings with your young man." "There is nothing to know about, but what is quite proper."

So we stood. She looking out of the window, and turning round from time to time. I standing by the door with my prick out; then I approached her quietly. "Feel it Jenny,--take pity on it." "Oh! for God's sake sir, what are you doing?" She turned and pushed me back, then retreated herself, keeping her face to the window as she stepped backwards. "Oh! there is Miss and Mrs. Brown walking in the next garden." Sure enough there were two ladies there; they could have seen everything close to the window over the low wall which separated the gardens; and had they been looking, must have seen Jenny, me, and my prick. "Oh! if they have seen, they will tell my Missus, and she'll tell my young man, and I shall be ruined,--oh!--oh!--oh!" said she sinking back into an arm-chair with a flood of tears,--half funk and shock, and perhaps randiness, causing it.

I was alarmed. "Oh!" she sobbed, "if they saw you,--hoh!--ho!--and it was no fault of mine,--you're a bad man,--oho! oho!" She sat with her hands to her face, her elbows on her knees. I dropped on my knees imploring her to be quiet, was sure no one had seen me, and tried to kiss her. The position was inviting, I slid my hands up her clothes between her thighs, she took no notice, was evidently in distress, not even conscious of the invasion. A bold push, and my fingers touched her cunt. I forgot all in the intensity of my enjoyment, at feeling my fingers on the edge of the soft, warm nick. No repulse, I looked up, she sank back in the chair, seemingly unconscious and deadly white.

I withdrew my hand, then came a mental struggle; my first impulse was to get cold water, the next to look at her cunt. I went towards the door, turned round to look at her. Her calves were visible, I ran back, and lifted her clothes, so that I could just see her cunt-hair, gave her thighs a kiss, and then rushed downstairs, got water, and as I entered the room she was recovering. She knew nothing or next to nothing of what had occured, nor that my fingers had touched her clitoris, though she had not actually fainted.

"I wish I had some brandy," she said, "I feel so weak." "Is there any in the side-board?" "No." "I'll go and get a little." A few hundred feet from the house down a side-door, was a public-house. As I was going, "You will let me in again?" I said. "If you promise not to touch me." She looked so pale that I fetched brandy, but put the street-door key in my pocket as I went. "If she don't let me in," I thought, "she shan't have the key,--and what will she tell her sister about that?" It was a key almost as big as a shovel; she never noticed that I had taken it away. She thought by her dodge that she had got rid of me, and told me so afterwards.

I brought back the brandy and knocked. "Let me in." "I won't." "Then you shan't have the street-door key." This was spoken to each other through the closed door. A pause, then the door opened. "You are coming Jenny." We went downstairs into the kitchen, she had brandy and water, and so had I. It was a hot day, the pump-water was deliriously cool, I made hers as strong as she would take it,--it was an instinct of mine. She got her colour back, and became talkative, we talked about her fainting, but she tried to avoid talking about it, and did not want me to refer to what had led to it. I did, and was delighted to think that it was owing to what is called "exposing my person."

"I don't think the ladies saw it, so you need not have been so frightened Jenny,--but you saw it, did you not?" No reply. "I saw you looking at it." "It's a story." "Why did you faint?" "I always feel faint if I am startled." "What startled you?" "Nothing." "You saw it, and you put your hand over it to hide it, and you touched it." "It's a story,--I wish you'd go." "You ungrateful little devil, when I've just fetched you brandy." "It's through you that I felt ill." "Why?" No reply. "Don't be foolish,--it was for fear that the ladies should have seen my prick so near you,--now look at it,"--and I pulled it out, it was not stiff. "It was twice the size when you saw it,--feel it, and it will soon be bigger."

The girl rose saying she would go and remain in the forecourt till her sister came, if I did not leave, but I prevented her going out of the kitchen. She began to cry again, and had a little more brandy and water. My talk took its old channel.

"Do you know how long you were fainting?" "I didn't faint, but only a minute or so." "Do you know what I did?" She was sitting down, then got upright, looked at me full in the face, her eyes almost starting out of her head. "What did you do!--what?--what?--what?" She spoke hurriedly, anxiously, in an agitated manner. "I threw up your clothes, kissed your cunt, and felt it."

"It's a lie,--it's a lie." "It's true,--and the hair is short, and darker than the hair of your head,--and your thighs are so white,--and your garters are made of blue cloth,--and I felt it, the dear little split,--how I wish my belly had been up against it I--what a lovely smell it has!" (putting my fingers to my nose).

"Oho!--oho!--oho!" said she bursting into tears, "what a shame to take liberties with a poor girl when she can't help herself,--oho!--oho!--you must be a bad man,--Missus had no business to send you to look after me, as if she could not trust me,--she don't know what sort of man you are,--and a gentleman too,--oho!--and married too,--it's a shame,--oho! --oho! I don't believe you though,--oho--o--o." And when I told her again the colour and the make of her garters, she nearly howled. "You mean man to do such a thing when I was ill."

I kissed her, she let me, but went on blubbering. "I've a good mind to tell my young man." "That will be foolish, because you and I mean to have more pleasure than we have had,--and he'll never be any the wiser but if you tell him, he'll think it's your fault."

This had occupied some hours, it was getting dark, but it seemed only as if I had been there some minutes, so deliriously exciting are lascivious acts and words. The charm of talking baudily to a woman for the first time, is such, that hours fly away just like minutes.

I got her on to my lap and kissed her. She was so feeble that I put my hands up her clothes nearly to her knees before she repulsed them. Then I feared her sister coming home; she promised to hide the brandy, and we parted. She kissed me, and let me feel to her knees to induce me to go. "Oh! for God's sake sir, do go before my sister comes." My last words were. "Mind you've felt my cock, and I've felt your cunt." "Pray go"--and I departed, leaving her tearful, excited, and in a state of exhaustion which seemed to me unaccountable.

Probably had I persisted a little longer I should have had her, such was the lassitude into which she had fallen; but I felt that I had made progress, and went home rejoicing, and forming plans for the future. When I had had some food, and thought over the matter, I came to the conclusion that I had been a fool in leaving her, and that had I pushed matters more determinate at the last moment, I should have certainly fucked her before I had left. I was mad with myself when I reflected on that, and the opportunity lost, which might not occur again.

Jenny had not fainted quite, but though unable to speak, resist, or indeed move, she must have been partially conscious. I think this from what I know of her nature afterwards.





CHAPTER XVII.


     When are women most lewd.--Garters, money, and promises.--
     About my servant.--The neckerchief.--Armpits felt.--Warm
     hints.--Lewd suggestions.--Baudy language.--Tickling.--
     "Fanny Hill".--Garters tried.--Red fingers.--Struggle, and
     escape.--Locked out.--I leave.--Baudy predictions, and
     verifications.

 I have a confused recollection of thinking myself the next day an ass, for having missed a good opportunity of spermatizing a fresh cunt; yet for some reason or another it must have been three days before I went to try my luck again.

I had about this time of my life began to frame intentions, and calculate my actions towards women; although still mostly ruled by impulse and opportunity in love matters. My philosophy was owing to experience, and also in a degree to my friend the Major, to whom some years before I had confided my having commissioned a French woman to get me a virgin. He was older, poorer, and more dissolute than ever, "He is the baudiest old rascal that ever I heard tell a story," was the remark of a man at our Club one night. Ask him to dinner in a quiet way by himself, give him unlimited wine, and he would in an hour or two begin his confidential advice in the amatory line, and in a wonderful manner tell of his own adventures, and give reasons why he did this or that, why he succeeded with this woman, or missed that girl, in a way as amusing, and instructive to a young listener, as could be imagined.

"If you want to get over a girl," he would say, "never flurry her till her belly's full of meat and wine; let the grub work. As long as she is worth fucking, it's sure to make a woman randy at some time. If she is not twenty-five she'll be randy directly her belly is filled,--then go at her. If she's thirty, give her half-an-hour. If she's thirty-five let her digest an hour, she won't feel the warmth of the dinner in her cunt till then. Then she'll want to piss, and directly after that she'll be ready for you without her knowing it. But don't flurry your young un,--talk a little quiet smut whilst feeding, just to make her laugh and think of baudy things; then when she has left table, get at her. But it's well," the old Major would say, "to leave a woman alone in a room for a few minutes after she has dined, perhaps then she will let slip a fart or two, perhaps she'll piss,--she'll be all the better for the wind and water being out. A woman's cunt doesn't get piss-proud like a man's prick you know, they're differently made from us my boy,--but show any one of them your prick as soon as you can, it's a great persuader. Once they have seen it they can't forget it, it will keep in their minds. And a baudy book, they won't ever look at till you've fucked them!--oh! won't they!--they would at church if you left them alone with it." And so the Major instructed us.

About three days afterwards, taking a pair of garters, two small showy neckerchiefs, and Fanny Hill with me, I knocked at the door. "Oh! you!" said she colouring up. "Yes,--is everything right?" "Yes! all right, what should be the matter sir?" She stood at the street-door holding it open, though I had entered the hall. I turned, closed the door, and caught hold of her.

"Now none of that pray sir, you insulted me enough last time." "I could not help it, you're so lovely, it's your fault,--forgive me, and I won't do so any more,--here is a sovereign, take it, kiss me, and make it up." "I don't want your money," said she sulkily. "Take it, I give it with real pleasure,--what I had the other day was worth double."

"I won't be paid for your rudeness, if that's what you mean." "Lord my dear I've no occasion to pay for that, I took it without pay,--I wish I could get what I told you yesterday,--I'd give ten times the sum." "You are going on again." "Don't be foolish,--take it, buy a pair of silk stockings." "Your plump legs would look so nice in them,"--and I forced her to put the money into her pocket.

Then I got her to the parlour, to sit down, to allow me to kiss her, and then to talk about me and my "Missus," as she called her, a subject which seemed to excite her, for she began asking me question after question, and listened to all I said with breathless attention about my daily habits, rows, and fast doings. Once I stopped at some question. "I won't tell you that." "Oh! do,--do." "No it's curious." "Do,--do." It was about a pretty servant-girl whom I had noticed in my house. "It will offend you if I do." "No it won't." "Well give me a kiss then."

She kissed me. She had stood up a moment, now she sat down again by me on the sofa. I went on with my story, every now and then I stopped till she kissed me, it came to a kiss every minute, as I sat with my arm round her waist, talking.

Said I, "It was a servant whom my wife turned out at a day's notice,--a pretty girl,--I had taken to kissing her, and then I nudged her somewhere you know. One night when she opened the door, I saw by the light that my wife was in our bed-room. 'Is your Mistress upstairs?' 'Yes sir.' 'And the cook?' 'Yes.' Then I closed with her. 'Don't sir, Missus will hear.' I hugged her closer, shoved her up against the wall, got my hand on to her cunt, felt her, and gave her half-a-sovereign. How delicious it was to get the fingers on to the wet nick of that pretty girl, and say, 'How I should like to fuck that Mary.'" I told it in words like that to Jenny, and she sat listening. At the word "fuck" up she got.

"You are a going on rude again." "You asked me." "Not for that." "But that's what I had to tell, what you kissed me to tell." "I didn't think you would say rude things." "Sit down, and I'll tell you without rude words." And so I did, telling all over again with additions, but instead of saying "cunt," "fuck," and so on, said, "I got my hand you know where,"--"and then she let me you know what,"--"she was frightened to let me do, you guess what I wanted."

"Luckily though she foolishly told her fellow-servant, she did not say who had been feeling her. That sneak told my wife, who told me about it, or all she knew, and said she could not keep such an improper girl in the house as that. 'But the other servant may have told a lie to spite her.' 'Perhaps, but I'll turn her out too',--and so she did, both left."

Thus I talked to Jenny till I expect her quim was hot enough; then said I, "Here is a pretty neckerchief,--put it on." "Oh! how pretty." "I won't give it you unless you put it on." She went to the glass and unbuttoned the top of her dress, which was made to button on the front. I saw her white fat bosom, she threw the kerchief round the neck, and tried to push it down the back. "Let me put it down,--it's difficult." She let me. "You are not unbuttoned enough,--it's too tight." She undid another button, I pushed down the kerchief, and releasing my hand as I stood at the back of her, put it over her shoulder, and down in front, pushing it well under her left breast. "Oh! what a lovely breast you have,--let me kiss it."

A shriek, a scuffle; in the scuffle I burst off a button or two, which exposed her breast, and getting my hand on to one of the globes began feeling and kissing it. Then I slid my hand further down, and under her armpit. "Oh! what a shame,--don't,--I don't like it." "How lovely,--kiss, kiss,--oh! Jenny what a lot of hair I can feel under here." "Oh!--screach,--screach,--oh! don't tickle me,--oh!--oh!,"--and she crouched as women do who can't bear tickling. I saw my advantage. "Are you ticklish?" "Yes,--oh!--(screach,--screach),--oh! leave off."

Instead of leaving off I tickled harder than ever. She got my hand out, but I closed on her, tickling her under her arm, pinching her sides, and got her into such a state of excitement, that directly I touched her she screached with wild laughter; the very idea of being touched made her shiver. We were on the sofa, she yelling struggling whilst I pinched her, she trying to get away from me, but fruitlessly; I buried my face in her breasts which were now largely exposed, and she fell back I with my face on her, and holding her tight. Then I put one hand down, feeling outside for her notch; that stopped her screeching, and she pushed me off as she got up.

I soothed her, begged pardon, spoke of the hair in her armpits, wondered if it was the same colour that it was lower down. Now she shammed anger, boxed my ears, and we make it up. I produced the garters. "Oh! what a lovely pair." "They're yours if you let me put them on." "I won't." "Let me put on halfway up." "No." "Just above the ankle." "No, my stockings are dirty." "Never mind." "No." Then she made an excuse, said she must see to something, and left the room. I thought she was going to piddle.

She came back. I found afterwards she had been out to lace up her boots, they were untidy. It was coquettishness, female instinct, for she wanted the garters, and meant to let me try them on, though refusing. "Where do you garter, about knee?" "I shan't tell you." "I've seen,--let me put them on below the knees." "No." "Then I'll give them to another woman who will let me." "I don't care." I threw the garters on to the table after some fruitless attempts. I was getting awfully lewd with our conversation.

"Do you like reading?" "Yes." "Pictures?" "Yes." "I've a curious book here." "What is it?" I took the book out. "The Adventures of Fanny Hill." "Who was she?" "A gay lady,--it tells how she was seduced, how she had lots of lovers, was caught in bed with men,--would you like to read it?" "I should." "We will read it together,--but look at the pictures,"--this the fourth or fifth time in my life I have tried this manoeuvre with women.

I opened the book at a picture of a plump, leering, lecherous-looking woman squatting, and pissing on the floor, and holding a dark-red, black-haired, thick-lipped cunt open with her fingers. All sorts of little baudy sketches were round the margin of the picture. The early editions of Fanny Hill had that frontispiece.

She was flabbergasted, silent. Then she burst out laughing, stopped and said, "What a nasty book,--such books ought to be burnt." "I like them, they're so funny." I turned over a page. "Look, here is she with a boy who sold her watercresses, is not his prick a big one?" She looked on silently, I heard her breathing hard. I turned over picture after picture. Suddenly she knocked the book out of my hand to the other side of the room. "I won't see such things," said she. "Won't you look at it by yourself?" "If you leave it here I'll burn it." "No you won't, you'll take it to bed with you." There I left the book lying, it was open and the frontispiece showing. "Look at her legs," said I, for we could see the picture as we sat on the sofa; and I began to kiss and tickle her again.

She shrieked, laughed, got away, and rushed to the door. I brought her back, desisted from tickling and lewd talking, though I was getting randier than ever. "Now have the garters,--let me put one round the leg, just to see how it looks,--just half-way up the calf." After much persuasion, after pulling up my trousers, and showing how a garter looked round my calf, she partly consented. "Promise me you won't tickle me." I promised everything.

I dropped on one knee, she sat on the sofa. "Put one foot on my leg." She put one foot there, and carefully raised her clothes an inch or two above the boot-top. "A little higher." She raised it holding her petticoats tight round the leg, and I slipped the garter round it. "It's too loose, raise a little more." "I won't any higher,--I can see how it looks." "Won't they look nice when they are above the knee? and won't your young man be pleased when he sees them there." "My young man won't see them any more than you will." "Let me slip on the other." The same process, the same care on her part. She bestowed all her care on the limb I was gartering, lest I should slip the garter higher up. The remainder of her clothes were loose round her other leg. Then I pushed my hand up her clothes and herself back on the sofa, relinquishing the leg I was gartering.

Rapidly my hand felt thighs, hair, cunt, How wet! What is this which catches my fingers?--what is it they are gliding between? With a yell she pushed me away, and got up as I withdrew my fingers. She had a napkin on, my fingers were stained red. "Oh, you beast," said she bursting into tears. I caught hold of her, and began to tickle her; she pushed me violently away, and escaping, rushed downstairs, slammed the kitchen-door in my face, and locked herself in. I have been accustomed to this behaviour on similar occasions.

I stood outside begging pardon, talking baudiness, I tried to burst open the door, and could not. I was not fond of poorliness in women, had a keen nose, and oftentimes could smell a woman if poorly, even with her clothes down; how it was I did not smell her, considering how near my nose had been to her split and her breasts, I can't say, but suppose randiness overcame my other senses. I played with my prick which was in an inflammatory state, feeling it made me much randier, I called through the door how I wanted to fuck her, how my prick was bursting, how I would frig myself if she did not let me. "What a hard-hearted girl,--I'll give you ten pounds to let me,--who will know it, but you and me?" and a lot more; but it was of no use, and at length I went upstairs, determining to wait, and thinking that in time she might follow me.

On the sofa I sat thinking of what I had done. There lay one garter, I took it up, and rolled it round my pego. I rubbed the tip with it, thinking it might be a spell. I took up Fanny Hill, got more excited reading the book, looking at its salacious pictures, and feeling my prick at the same time. Then the sense of pleasure got beyond control, and laying down the book on the floor just beneath me, where I could see a baudy picture, I turned on my side on the sofa, and frigged till a shower of spunk shot out.

Then down I went. The door was still locked, my senses were calmed, but I talked baudy, and offered her money without a reply; growing tired, I bawled out, "I'm going,--you will let me in a day or two, and get the ten pounds towards the new shop,--you won't be so unkind when I come again." "I'll take good care never to let you in," said she. They were the only words I could get out of her. I went upstairs, took a slip of paper, and wrote on it, "I have wrapped the garter round my prick, it is a charm. Directly you put it on I shall know, for my prick will stiffen,--you will put it on I am sure; and directly my prick stiffens, your cunt will long to have it up it, even if I am miles away. You will put the garter on, for you can't help doing so,--I'm sure to fuck you, neither you nor I could avoid it if we would. Why should we deny ourselves the pleasure,--no one will know it, and you will be ten pounds the richer." I wrote that or something nearly like it, and charmed with my own wit, rubbed the garter over the top of my prick till I left the smell on it, then laid it on the table over the paper I had written, and went away, taking Fanny Hill with me.

It is a positive fact, that about two hours afterwards I had a violent randy throbbing in my prick, and found out later on that just at that very time she had put that garter on.

(And now for the complete understanding of what follows, it must be stated that the house was in plan nearly like that which I inhabited when I had my beautiful servant Mary. Kitchens in the basement, two parlours with folding doors between them, nearly always open; and rooms back and front over the parlours; and that my absent friend did with those rooms whilst absent at the seaside, what was not unusual with people of their class in those days, lock most of them up, leaving only sufficient for the servant, or caretaker, to inhabit.)





CHAPTER XVIII.


     "Fanny Hill" sent to Jenny.--My next visit.--Thunder,
     lightning, sherry, and lust.--A chase round a table.--The
     money taken.--Tickling and micturating.--A search for "Fanny
     Hill".--A chase upstairs.--In the bed-room.--Thunder, funk,
     and lewdness.--Intimidation and coaxing.--Over and under.--A
     rapid spender.--Virginity doubtful.--Fears, tears, and
     fucking.

 I waited a few days to ensure her poorliness being over. I had not left her Fanny Hill, but why I cannot tell, for I knew how baudy books excited a woman. The night before my next attack, I wrapped up the book, directed it to her, gave a boy sixpence to deliver it, hid myself by a lilac which was in the front-garden close to the road, and saw the boy give it to her, and go off quickly as I had told him. It was just dark, and too dark inside the passage of the house to see; for Jenny stepped outside the house so as to get light, and stripped off the envelope. I saw also that she opened the book, closed it, looked rapidly on both sides, then stepped inside, and closed the door. I expect that her cunt got hot enough that night. I saw her sister who slept with her nightly, going through the front-garden soon afterwards, and Jenny open the door for her. I had then moved off to a safe distance, the other side of the road.

Jenny was fond of finery, and I had heard the old lady of the house declaiming about it. Her pleasure at the showy neckerchief and garters was great, so I bought a pretty broach, and filling my purse with sovereigns determined to have her at any cost, for my letch for her had got violent. The next day I had a good luncheon, went to the house just after her dinnertime, and took with me a bottle of sherry. I recollect the morning well. It was a sultry day, reeking with moisture; it had been thundering, the clouds were dark and threatening, the air charged with electricity. Such a day makes all creation randy, and you may see every monkey at the Zoological Gardens frigging or fucking. I was resolute with lustful heat, the girl was I expected under the same influence, and taking her as I did after a lazy meal, everything was propitious to me. "How shall I get in?--if I knock she may not open; and if she sees me go up the front-garden she won't open." But I had to try, so walked up to the door, and gave one single loud tradesman's knock.

There was a little porch and a shelter over the street-door. Standing flat up against the door, so that I might be hidden from her sight if peeping, I heard an upper window open. She looked out, but where I was she could not see me. There was delay, so again I knocked, and soon the door began to open, I pushed it and stepped in. The front-shutters on the ground-floor to my wonder were closed.

"Hoh! sir--you," said Jenny amazed, "what do you want?" I pushed the door to, and caught hold of her. "I've come to have a chat and a kiss." She struggled, but I got her tight, and kissed as a randy man then kisses a woman, it is a magnetizing thing. "Oh! there it is again," she cried as a loud thunder-clap was heard; "oh! let me go,--oh! it do frighten me so."

"Where are you going?" "Oh I into the parlour,--I've closed the shutters." The girl was in a panic, and did not know what she said. The parlour-door was open, the room nearly dark, which suited me. She went just in, and then turned round to go out, but I pulled her to the sofa. A flash of lightning showed even in the darkened room, the girl cowered and hid her face with her hands. I took her round the waist. "Shut your eyes, and lean your head against me." Mechanically she did, she was utterly unnerved. I felt down with my right hand the form of her thighs and haunches through her clothes. My prick began to stand, pulling it out, and taking her near hand I put it round my prick just as the thunder roared. She kept her hand unconsciously on it for a time, then with a start took it away and jumped up. "Oh! it's wicked," said she, "when God Almighty is so angry,"--and just as she got to the door a terrific flash made her turn round again. I caught her, and sitting down on a chair pulled her on to my knee; she hid at once her face on my shoulder in terror.

Coaxing and soothing, and exciting her, in her fear she listened at times twitching and oh-ing. I was sorry I had touched her cunt the other day I said. "Oh! now don't." "Feel my prick again,--do dear." "Let me go,--you've no business here." Another flash came, I put my hand up her clothes, the tip of my fingers just touched her quim. She struggled and got away, and in doing so upset the chair which fell down and broke. "Oh! now what will my Missus say!" said she. Then a screech, and she got to the other side of the table.

This went on a little longer, a gleam of sunshine came through the shutters. Then she opened one shutter, and said if I did not go she would open the window and call out. The light showed my pego, stiff, red-tipped and ready. "Look what your feeling has done for this Jenny," said I shaking my tooleywag at her.

But her resoluteness daunted me, so I promised not to do so again. "Here is some sherry that I was taking home to taste,--let's have a glass,--it will do both of us good after this thunder,--you look white, and as if you wanted a glass." I had got out of her on a previous day that she liked sherry. "I'll go and get you a glass," said she. "No you shan't,--you will lock the door," said I,--I know that was in her mind. No she would not. "We will go together then."

We did, and returning to the parlour under my most solemn promise of good behaviour, down she sat, and we began drinking sherry. One glass,--two, then another she swallowed. "No I dare not, it will get into my head,--no more." "Nonsense,--after your fright it will do you good." "Well half a glass." "Isn't it nice Jenny?" "It is." "Does not your sweetheart give it you?" "At Christmas, but only one glass." The sherry began to work. "Only another half-glass,"--and I poured it out nearly full. Soon after I got up after filling my own, and standing before her again filled up hers which she had sipped without her seeing me. "Finish your glass dear." "No I can't,--it's making me so hot." "Just another half-glass." "I won't." But she began to chatter and told me again all about her young man, of their intending to open a grocer's shop when they had two hundred pounds; that he had saved a certain sum, and when he had a little more his father was to put fifty pounds to it. She also had put money in the savings bank. I got closer to her, and asked for a kiss. "Well I'll kiss you if you promise not to be rude again." A kiss and a promise. She was one of the simplest and most open girls I have ever met with, and once a half-feeling of remorse came over me about my intentions, whilst she was talking on quite innocently about her future; but my randy prick soon stopped that.

"What nonsense dear, your young man won't know that I have felt your thighs, and you my thing, nor any one else what we do,--I have thought of nothing else since I touched you,--kiss;--now let me do it again,--just feel it,--only where my hand's been before,--I swear I won't put my hand up higher, just above your garters,--have you got those garters on?" "No." "Oh! you have." "Well I have." "Let me just see." "I shan't." "I'll give you a sovereign to let me." "Shan't." I pulled out the sovereign, put it on the table and spite of her resistance pulled up her clothes just high enough to see one garter; then clutching her round the waist I pushed my hands up, and touched a well-developed clitoris. She struggled, but I kept my hand there, kissed her rapturously, and frigged her; her cap fell off in her struggle. "Oh I--can't--bear--it--now--sir;--I don't--oh!--like it,--oh!" Then with a violent effort she got my hand away, but I held her fast to me.

"What a lovely smell your cunt has," said I putting the fingers just withdrawn from her thighs up to my nose. I had always noticed that nothing helps to make a woman more randy than that action; it seems to overwhelm them with modest confusion; I have always done that instinctively to a woman whom I was trying.

"Oh! what a man,--oh! let me pick up my cap." Just then I noticed her hair was short, and remarked it. She was annoyed, her vanity hurt, turned her thoughts entirely. "Yes," she said, "I had a fever two years ago,---but it's growing again." "Well it has grown enough on your cunt dear,--did it fall off there?" "Oh! what a man!--oh! now what a shame!" My hand was on her thighs again, and I managed another minute's frig, and kept her close to me.

The heat had become excessive. What with struggling, and the excitement, sweat was on both our faces. Her thighs by her crack were as wet as if she had pissed them, her backside began to wriggle with pleasure, which I knew I was giving her; but again with a violent effort she freed herself from me, and as I put my hand to my nose she violently pulled it away. The sherry was upsetting her wisdom.

"There is the sovereign," said I as she stood looking at me, "that will help you." "Don't want it." Seeing where her pocket-hole was I pushed it into it. "Oh! what a lucky sovereign, to lay so close to your cunt Jenny,"--and pushing my hand into her pocket I touched the bottom of her belly through the linen. Again a struggle, a repulse, then she put her hand into her pocket. "You're feeling your cunt Jenny," said I. "O--oh!" said she taking it out quickly, "I was feeling for the money,--I won't have it."

Then I kissed her till the sweat ran off my face on to hers. "Oh! my goodness," said she as it grew darker, "it's going to thunder again." "Have another glass." "No it's gone into my head already." But she took a gulp of mine. "Let's fuck you Jenny dear." "What?" "Fuck." "Shan't." "Oh! you know what I mean." "No I don't, but it's something bad if it's from you." I pulled out my prick, and tried to push her on the sofa. She got away, and then with my prick out I chased her round the table. "Leave off," said she, "a joke's a joke, but this is going too far." She was getting lewd, and was staring at my prick which showed above the table as I chased her. Quick as me she managed to keep just on the side of it opposite to me.

"I'll swear I won't touch you again if you will sit down." "I won't trust you,--you've been swearing all the afternoon." "So help me God I will," said I, and meant it. "Well then not when you are like that." I pushed my prick inside my trousers, and then she sat down. What a long time this takes to tell, what repetition! but there are not many incidents I recollect more clearly.

Then I took out ten sovereigns, all bright, new ones, laid them on the table, and then the broach. "Do you like that Jenny?" "Yes." "It is for you if you will let me, and those ten sovereigns also." "You are a bad man," said the girl, "and would make me forget myself and be ruined, and without caring a bit,"--and she began rocking her head about, and rolling her body as she sat beside me, and looking at the money. "Who will know?--you won't tell your young man,--I shan't tell my wife,--let me." "I shan't,--never,--never,--never,--never, if it was fifty pounds," said she almost furiously. "He won't find it out." "Yes he would." "Nonsense,--half the servants do it, yet marry,"--and then I told her of some I had who had married. "No,--no,--no," she kept repeating, almost bawling it out, as I told of Mary So-and-so who married a butler, and Sarah So-and-so who married my greengrocer, though I'd fucked them over and over again. "No,--no," looking at the money; then suddenly she took up the broach, and laid it down again.

Before running round the table after her, I had thrown off my coat and waistcoat. "It's so hot, I've a good mind to take off my trousers," I had said; but I had another motive. She seemed weaker, and was so, for gradually she had got inflamed and lewd by heat, the electrical condition of the atmosphere, the titillation of my finger on her seat of pleasure, and the sight of my stiff penis. She had I expect, got to that weak, yielding, voluptuous condition of mind and body, when a woman knows she is wrong, yet cannot make up her mind to resist. Just then it came into my mind to tickle her; and then followed a scene which is one of the most amusing in my reminiscences.

She shrieked, and wriggled down on to the floor. I tried to mount her there. She kicked, fought, so that though once my prick touched her cunt-wig, I could not keep on the saddle. She forgot all propriety in her fuddled excitement, and whilst screaching from my tickling, repeated incoherently baudy words as I uttered them. "Let me fuck you." "You shan't fuck me." "Let's put it just to your cunt." "You shan't,--you're a blackguard,--oh! don't,--leave me alone,--wee I will feel it, if you'll let me get up,--oh!--he! hi! hi!--for God's sake don't tickle,--hi!--I shall go mad,--you shan't,--oh! don't,--oh I if you don't leave off." "I shall,--I must." "Oh! pray,--you shall if you leave off tickling then,--oh! don't pray,--oh! I shall piddle myself,--he! he!" She was rolling on the floor, her thighs exposed, sometimes backside, sometimes belly upwards with all its trimmings visible. "Oh! it's your fault," and as she spoke actually piddle began to issue. I had my hand on her thigh, and felt and saw it.

Randy as I was I burst out laughing; and she managed to get up, began to push in her neckerchief which I had torn out of the front of her dress, and arranged her hair.

"Oh! look at me,--if any one came, what a state I am in," said she looking in the glass, and there she stood her breast heaving, her eyes swollen, her mouth open, and breathing as if she had just run a mile, but attempting nothing, saying nothing further, awaiting my attack. What randy, pleasureable excitement she must have been in, though unconscious of it, whilst only thinking of how to prevent my fucking her against her will.

"You began piddling." "Didn't." "I felt the piddle on my hand." She made no reply, but passed on, and wiped her face. When I said more she merely tossed her head. "Don't be a fool Jenny,--let us,--you want it as bad as me." Then I rattled out my whole baudy vocabulary, "prick," "cunt," "fuck," "spunk," "pleasure," "belly to belly," "my balls over your arse," "let my stiff prick stretch your cunt,"--everything which could excite a woman; to all of which she merely said, "Oho!--oh!" and tossed her head, and never took her staring eyes off me, nor ceased swabbing up her perspiring face, and at the same time looking at my throbbing, rigid cunt-stretcher.

Finding she took to yelling, and even hitting me, I desisted a moment. "Where is the book I sent you last night?" I had till then forgotten it. That opened her mouth. "Have not had a book." "I saw the boy give it you, and you open it." "He didn't." "He did." "I burnt it,--a nasty thing,--I would not let my sister see it." An angry feeling came over me for the moment, for I thought it probable, and should have had difficulty in replacing it. Then came an inspiration to help me,--a man always gets somehow on the right track to get into a woman if he has opportunity. Nature wills it. The woman was made to be fucked, and the sooner for them, the better for them.

"You have not burnt it,--I'll bet it's in your bedroom,--in your box." "It isn't." "I'll swear it's there,--you have been reading it all night,--I'll go up and see." She started as if electrified into life as I made for the door. She got there before me, and stood before me. "You shan't go,--you've no business up there,--I've burnt it,--it's not there." "It's in the kitchen then." "No, I've burnt it," she went on rapidly and confusedly. "I'll go and see," said I pulling her from the door, she screeching out, "No you shan't go up,--that you shan't,--you've no business there." Then I pulled up her clothes to her belly, she got them down, but still she kept her back to the door. I kept pulling her till her cap was off again, and felt sure she was getting weaker and weaker.

Then she turned round suddenly, opened the door, and ran up the stairs rapidly like a lapwing, I after her. Once she turned round, "You shan't come up," said she, and tried to push me back; and then again on she went, I following. I stumbled, that gave her a few steps ahead; I sprang up three steps at a time, recovered the lost distance, and just as she got into the bed-room, and slammed the door to, I put my foot in it,--it hurt me much. "Damn it, how you hurt my foot,--I will come in"--and pushing the door my strength prevailed; the door flew open, I saw her running round the bed, and there on the very pillow of the unmade bed lay Fanny Hill, open at one of the pictures. I threw myself across the bed, and clutched the book. She then stood motionless, panting and staring at me, she had clutched at it, and failed just as I caught it. She would have got it, but for having to go round the bed.

I laughed. "Have you not had a treat Jenny dear!" Her face was a picture of confusion. I was stretched half across the bed, and now went right across. Then to escape me she ran away, and had nearly reached the door when throwing myself over the bed again, I grasped her petticoats under her arse, and managed to pull her back. "Damned if I don't fuck you," said I, "by God I'll shove my prick up your cunt if I'm hanged for it,"--and pushing a hand up behind I clasped her naked buttocks. She turned round, I pulled her petticoats clean up, she yelling, struggling, panting, imploring. I dropped on my knees, kissed her belly, and buried my nose between her thighs. The petticoats dropped over my head, her belly kept bumping up against my nose and lips, which were covered with her cunt-moisture.

I rose up, pushed and rolled her against the bed, my hand still up her clothes. "Oh! don't, don't now,--you are a great gentleman they say, and ought to think of a poor girl's ruin,--oh! if it was found out I should be ruined." "It won't darling." I had got my fingers well over the whole slit. "Pray don't,--well I'll kiss you,--there." "Feel it." "Will you let me get up if I do?" "Yes." "There then," and she felt me.

"Oh! I must fuck you." "Oh! pray don't,--oh! let me go now, and I'll let you another day,--I will indeed sir,--oh! you hurt,--don't push your fingers like that." "Kiss me my darling." "You shan't." "There there." Another struggle. "Oh! I can't--be--bear it." Her arse began to twist again, her head sank on my shoulder, her thighs opened; then with a start, "Oh! my God it's lightning (it began to thunder and lighten badly),--oh! I'm so frightened,--oh! don't,--another day,--it's wicked when it's lightning so,--oh! God almighty will strike us dead if you are so wicked,--oh! let me go into the dark,--oh! don't,--I can't--be--bear it." Her arse was shaking with my groping and frigging.

"Now don't be a fool,--damned if I don't murder you if you are not quiet!" "Oh! oh!" I had got her somehow on to the bed, she was helpless; with fear, liquor, and cunt-heat. I threw myself on to her. A feel between thighs reeking with sweat, with her cunt in a lather, with the sweat dropping in great drops from my face, with sweat running down my belly on to my prick and my balls; I shoved. One loud "aha!" and my prick-tip was up against her womb-door. A mighty straight thrust; and the virginity was gone at that one effort.

Right up there with but a shove or two as far as I recollect, and without trouble, my sperm spouted directly my tool rubbed through the wet, warm cunt-muscles. Then I came to my senses; where was I? has she let me, or had I forced her violently.

She laid quietly under me with closed eyes and open mouth, panting; I was upon her, up her, pressing heavily upon her rather than holding her; then thrusting my hands under her fat bottom I recommenced thrusting and fucking. She lay still, in the enjoyment of a lubricated cunt, distended by a stiff, hot prick. Soon she was sensitive to my movements, her cunt constricted, a visible pleasure overtook her, her frame began to quiver, and the soft murmurs of spermatic effusion came from her lips. She spent. On I went driving as if I meant to send my prick into her womb, fell into a half dreaminess, and became conscious of a great wetness on my ballocks; it was her discharge more than mine, the most copious I recollect, excepting from one woman. Then I dropped off on her side. She lay still as death, the thunder rolled over us unheeded by her in the delirious excitement and delight of her first fuck.

She turned on her side slightly, her thighs and backside were naked, she hid her face, and shuddered at the thunder unheeding her nakedness, then buried her face in a pillow, and so we both dozed for a minute or two. Her backside was still naked, when I looked at her in all ways as she lay, and saw traces of sperm on her thighs and chemise. A little lay on the bed, but no trace of red, no signs of a bloody rupture of a virgin cunt. My shirt and drawers were spermed, but had not a trace of blood. The light fell full on her backside, I could see lightish brown hair in the crack of the parting of her buttocks; a smear of shit on her chemise. Her flesh was beautifully white. She had on nice white stockings, and the flashy garters; she had a tolerable quantity of hair on her quim on the belly side. I sat at the side of the bed, got off boots, trousers, and drawers; then laying down gently inserted my longest finger and delicately began rubbing her clitoris which I could see protruding of a fine crimson color. Then she moved; she was not asleep, but dazed by the fuck, fear of the lightning, the excitement, the heat, and the fumes of the wine combined.

She stared at me, pulled down her clothes, and tears began to run down her cheeks. What a lot of women I have had cry at such times. "Don't cry my darling." She turned on to her face, and hid it. For a quarter of an hour, I talked, but she did not answer. I told her she had spent, that I knew she had had pleasure. Then I pushed my fingers up her cunt; still she did not speak, but let me do just what I liked, keeping her eyes shut. So soon as my rammer was up to the mark, up her it went fucking, and again I felt its stem well wetted. She was a regular streaming spunker.

After that, "I am going downstairs," said she. "I'll come." "No don't." "You only want to piddle." "Yes," said she faintly. "Piddle here,--what will it matter?" "I can't." "I'll go out if you won't bolt the door." "It's no good bolting the door,--you have ruined me." I went outside, closed the door, and heard the rattle in the pot. When I re-entered she was sitting at the side of the bed crying quietly; she did nothing but look at me, but without speaking. "Arrange yourself in case any one comes to the door." "No one will come." "The milkman?" "He will put it down inside the porch." She sat down the picture of despair. Never had I felt more lewd, I was mad that day with lewdness. "Let's feel your cunt," said I. "I have spent in it three times." "I don't care what you do, you may do what you like,--it's of no consequence." I felt up her cunt, she hung her head over my shoulders whilst I paddled my fingers in the wet. "Don't hurt me," said she. "I have not hurt you."

"Yes you have." "Let's look." That roused her. "Oh! no,--no,--no,--you shan't." "Wash your cunt." I fetched the sherry, but she had not washed her cunt. "You should wash it out." "Oh?--oh!" said she, "if I should be with child I shall never be married."

She drank more sherry, and promised to wash. Then I went downstairs, fetched up the broach and the ten sovereigns, and gave them to her. "How shall I say I got it?" "Does he know how much you have saved?" "Yes." "Is it a year's wages?" "Yes,"--and she began to cry again. "What shall I say about the broach?" "That you bought it,--let's lay down and talk." She yielded instantly, I threw up her clothes, she pushed them down. Then I lay feeling her quim, and got out her bubbies, she submitted, laying with her eyes closed, till my rubbing on her clitoris made her sigh. Then up her, I felt her wetting my prick-stem, and shot my sperm into her at that intimation of her pleasure.

It was about seven o'clock, I had been nearly five hours at my amusements, and was tired; but had that day an irrepressible prick. It began to stiffen almost directly it left her cunt. I went down with her to tea, there I pulled her on to my lap, and we began to look at Fanny Hill. I could not get a word out of her, but she looked intently at the pictures. I explained their salacity. "Hold the book dear, and turn over as I tell you." Then I put my fingers on her cunt again. How sensitive she was. "Let's come upstairs." "No," said she, reluctantly, but up we went, and fucked again. Then she groaned, "Oh! pray leave off,--I'm almost dead,--I shall have one of my fainting fits." "Lay still darling, I shall come soon,"--but it was twenty minutes hard grinding before my sperm rose.

Then she laid motionless and white through nervous exhaustion, excitement, and loss of her spermatic liquid, which I kept fetching and fetching in my long grinding. She told me afterwards that she could not tell how often she spent. I had never been randier or stronger, nor enjoyed the first of a woman more.

She was a most extraordinary girl. After the first fuck she was like a well-broken horse; she obeyed me in everything, blushed, was modest, humbled, indifferent, conquered, submissive; but I could get no conversation out of her excepting what I have narrated. She cried every ten minutes, and looked at me. After each fuck she laid with her eyes closed, and mouth open, and turned on her side directly, putting her hand over her quim, and pulling her clothes just over her buttocks. Then after I had recovered and began to talk, a tear would roll down her cheek.

About nine o'clock she said. "Do go, my sister will be here,--and the bed wants making." At the door I put her against the wall and rubbed as well as I could my flabby cock between her cunt-lips. She made no resistance. "We'll fuck again to-morrow Jenny." "I'll never let you again," said she, "for you shan't come in,"--and she shut the door on me with a slam.





CHAPTER XIX.


     My soiled shirt.--Jenny's account of herself.--Fucking and
     funking.--Poor John!---Of her pudenda.--Its
     sensitiveness.--Erotic chat.--Startled by a caller.--Her
     married sister's unsatisfied cunt.--How she prevented having
     children.--Doubts her husband's fidelity.--Jenny taught the
     use of a French letter.--Hickery-pickery, and catamenial
     irregularities.

 When I got home I looked at my linen; never had it been in such a mess after female embraces. I had taken no care about it, it was be-spunked in an unusual degree, and lots of thinnish stains were on the tail which made me think that one or both of us must have spent copiously. Then I recollected that Jenny's cunt seemed very wet to me when I felt it after I had spermatized her. There were no signs of blood, and taking stock of the sensations I had experienced, "Jenny has had it before," I said to myself. Then came a fear that her discharge was from a clap, but I dismissed that from my mind. I had only once had the clap from a woman not gay.

So I washed the tail of my shirt, laid it under my arse to dry, gave it a natural stain of piss, and went to bed reflecting and wondering who had first penetrated Jenny's privates.

A day or two afterwards I went to see her and shammed a knock. She opened the door. "Oh!" she exclaimed as I entered, "now you shan't,--you shan't again." "I shan't what my dear?" "I know why you came here,--but you shan't." "I want a chat,---don't be foolish,--come here,--I won't do anything,--I don't want anything,--but come here."

I got her into the parlour, and on to the sofa, then talked, then got baudy. "Do just let me feel your thighs,--what harm can it do when I have been between them." "No". "Just a feel,--there I won't put my finger further,--oh! Jenny you like my finger,--be quiet dear,--just let me feel it." Half an hour after she had said, "Now you shan't," my prick was in her. No woman can refuse the cock which has once stretched her cunt, she is at its mercy. We spent another afternoon in talking and fucking, and she partly in crying and bemoaning her evil deeds.

I had not only opened her cunt, but opened her heart and mouth at the same time. She was the funniest, frankest little woman I ever knew. She told me all her past life, her future expectations, asked my advice, deplored her wickedness to her young man, and all in an hour. She spoke the same incessantly afterwards. In a fortnight I knew everything about her from her birth, and about all her family; it was as if for the first time in her life she had had a confidant.

"What shall I do with your money?" "Put it with the rest." "But he knows what I've got,--we always tell each other." "Keep it to get a good stock of clothes before you are married." "But he knows all about my clothes." "Put it in a little at a time, or don't tell him till you are married; then say you kept him in ignorance for a pleasant surprise, or tell him nothing at all about it,--you will have more than that." "I don't want your money, I fear it will bring me harm."

"Well give it back to me Jenny." But Jenny did not seem to see the advantage of that; so she kept it, and had more besides in time.

"What will become of me and poor John?--he'd die if he knew how ill I behave to him,--now don't,--you do upset a body so a talking, and putting your fingers there,--oh! leave me alone,--no no more." "Once more dear,--how hot your little cunt is,--it's longing for a prick." "Oh I take care of my cap, you will tear it,--I'll take it off." "What a fat backside you've got Jenny,--how wet your cunt is,--shove, shove, fuck,--where is my prick Jenny now?" But Jenny became speechless always after three cock-shoves, and began moistening the intruder with all her cunt-power.

After fucking she was tranquil for a time; sperm seemed to soothe her, but then she had funks. "Oh! dear what have you made me do? oh! if I am in the family way!--oh! if he finds it out, he won't marry me! and he is such a good young man, and so fond of me,--o--o---ho--ho!--I've behaved very bad to him,--and I didn't mean,--oho!--it's all your fault, oho! --I didn't know what I was about,--I never do when it lightens,--oho! Do you think he will find it out when we are married?" she would ask in her calmer moments, after she had cried herself out. This scene occurred every day I fucked her for a time, then less frequently.

I tried to comfort her, told facts, and many inventions of my own, of how I had had women, who afterwards married and whose husbands had never known that they had been broached.

"Is it true really!--oh! do tell me the truth,--if he finds it out I will drown myself, I'm sure he will,--it's all your fault,--you must be a bad man to take advantage of a poor girl in the house alone." "But if you're not in the family way, he can't find out until you are married, and then it will be too late. You won't tell him, and your cunt can't speak." "Oh! sir you do say such funny things."

This went on for weeks. "Oh! it's my time, and it's not come on." Then with joy, "Oh! I'm all right, but you can't do anything to-day,--oh! if my Mistress should find out, or if my sister should come home and catch you here,--oh! if the next-door neighbours should see you come here so often, and tell my Mistress." One or another of these fears was always upon her, but did not prevent our fucking. At that time Sarah was away, and Louisa Fisher still ill, so Jenny had all my essence; and later on as much as Louisa and Sarah spared me. As to my home, I had pretty well done with fucking there.

Jenny's cunt was well-haired, and had rather large inner lips; not so large as I have seen in many women, but larger than I liked. Her tube was easy. What a fight I had when first I saw it. "I won't be pulled about like that,--no it's shameful." "I dare say your John has seen it." That always sent her off howling, and when she had subsided she let me do as I liked. "It's a nasty thing to pull me about like that." But it came soon to the old world-wide habit: a feel and a look before the entry. The same woman who won't let you see the bottom of her belly at first, will hold her cunt open for your inspection in a month. It is breaking in a woman to baudiness which is the happiness of the honeymoon, not the hard burst through a bit of gristle.

It had weighted on my mind ever since I had had her, and about three weeks afterwards I told her my doubts of her then being a virgin. She swore that no man had even put his hands on it till I did. "Am I different from other women?" She was indignant at the doubt, and honestly and truly I believe. A schoolfellow used to look at her quim, she at her schoolfellow's, she always thought hers was the most open of the two, she always could put her finger up easily, "but you did hurt me through, though I did not bleed. My sister says she did bleed a little when she first had her husband,"--and Jenny now described her sister's first night, and her sister's form, and rather wetted my lust for her sister.

I came to the conclusion that she was born loose at her inlet, or had broken through the cover when quite young, and that no prick had rubbed her but mine; but her organ was a peculiar one in its habit of distilling its liquids.

I have told how my shirt was stained at first, and soon found that Jenny was one of those women who spend rapidly, frequently, and copiously. I have met I think two like her in my career, to the time I correct this.

On the second day's poking I noticed this and became fully aware of it afterwards. When I put my prick up her, and began my movements; a shiver and a sigh escaped her almost directly, her bum gave a heave, a discharge came from her, and if I pulled my prick out then, it was perfectly wet. It used in fact to run out a little, and if pushing one hand well under her arse (which was not so easy, for she had a fine backside), I felt the root of my prick, or rather the end of the stem, I could feel her moisture running down one of her bum-cheeks, or between them. That over by the time I spent we usually discharged simultaneously. Her voluptuousness was greater when we spent together, than on her preliminary discharge. She said she could not account for it, but that a delicious sensation crept over her the moment the prick entered; that her cunt tightened and seemed to wet itself copiously; that her spend at the climax was longer, more thrilling, voluptuous, satisfying, and exhausting; that when our spunks had mingled her whole body was satisfied; but that her first spend seemed only to confine its pleasure to her cunt. It is difficult to describe these sensations.

I frigged her several times, and got a copious discharge from her, thin, milky, and barely sticky, yet it left a strong stain on linen. She was astonished when I told her of her peculiarity. Perhaps she wondered what her poor John would think of it. I can't say I altogether admired her wetness; I took a dislike to a tall thin girl who was much of the same sort as Jenny, but that girl was quite slippy-cunted, though not with the whites. This was since.

(Another woman who had this sensitive and sensuous [for it was both] organization, was the sister of an intimate friend, and whom I have fucked since the above was written. I don't know that I shall say anything more about the lady, so tell of her cuntal peculiarity here. She was plump, fair-faced, had a fine complexion, and in face strongly resembled the queen. She was to be married.)

When her young man came to town, and Jenny went out with him, the girl upbraided herself. When I next saw her after his visit she felt herself a deceiving wretch, and cried. Now would I please desist, and not make her sin any more. But the persuasion was too great, the recollection of her pleasure too strong, and never did I go away without having plugged her.

Did she love her young man? Yes she supposed she did; he was kind, attentive, and would make a good husband. She wanted to get married, to have a home of her own; besides he was not a workman, but a tradesman, and when married they would have a shop, and be in a higher position. She always spoke more of the house and shop, and her liberty, than of her young man.

She was of a highly nervous organization, and through me she was to be shocked severely. She half fainted the first day I took liberties with her, thunder and lightning gave her an inclination that way, twice afterwards she nearly fainted, any sudden thing annoyed her and turned her white. One occasion I'll tell of now, the other in due course.

We fucked on the sofa after the first day; but though large, it was not like a bed, so afterwards we used to go to her bed-room. I used to leave my hat and stick downstairs, so that in case of surprise I might stand in the hall, and say I had called to enquire. It was a stupid thing to do as I found out, and then I used to take it into the bed-room. I had fucked her one afternoon, when a double knock came at the street-door, I knew it. "It's my wife," I said. Down I rushed for my hat, and returned to the bed-room; and then Jenny opened the door. She had called to make some enquiry, and went away. I heard the door close, but no further noise or movement, then crept downstairs.

There sat Jenny on a chair, just recovering from a half faint. "Oh!" said she, "I nearly dropped down." "Ah! she would have knocked you down my dear, if your cunt could have spoken and said what was inside it." But Jenny never could joke. It was always dreadful, and she was to be punished in some way for her evil deeds with me. A few tears, and then a little baudy chaffing brought smiles again on her face.

I delighted in talking baudy to her, told her smutty stories about the women I had had, described their charms, and any special lasciviousness connected with them. Her astonishment was great; her curiosity intense; she in return told me all she knew about every other woman, and all her own little baudy doings. Never was a woman so frank about such matters. When I left her I doubt whether her dear John could have told her half what she could have told him about fucking, and the two articles that copulation is done with.

Her talk was all about her sisters, and principally of the married one who came to sleep with her; a woman about twenty-eight years of age, who had been married some years, and had two children, the last one four years old. She, or rather he, did not mean to have any more, they could not afford to keep them. "How did they stop it?" I asked Jenny. She did not know. But one night the sister wanted particularly to sleep at home, and had asked Jenny if for once she would sleep in the house alone. She consented though frightened. I proposed sleeping with her, and we passed a very delicious night together: a man and woman fresh to each other, always do in bed. What a night of feeling, frigging, sniffing, inspecting, and fucking it was!

At all times, no matter what we began talking about, cunt and cock were sure to become the subject. That night I learned that her sister had slept away, expecting to catch her husband out in some infidelities. Since he had determined to have no more children, he made her frig him instead of fucking; so the sister went short of cock and had to frig herself. That annoyed her. Then when he fucked her he did not do it properly, he cheated her sister, Jenny said. I was a long time in getting out of Jenny what the man did, at length she said, that just as the stuff was coming, he pulled it out, and it went all over her sister's thighs or her belly, and often before she had had her own pleasure. Her sister thought it was just as well not to be married, as to go on like that.

That was not all. He used at first to do it every night, and now not once a week, said he could do without it, that he did not care about it, and so on. She believed that he had other women, and that was more aggravating because she wanted it herself more than ever. She was not so well, she told Jenny for want of fucking, she liked it, and would willingly have more children though she was so poor. I asked cautiously if she had heard of the skins which people put over their pricks, and into which they spent their seed? Jenny had not. I explained what they where. She said she would ask her sister about it. I cautioned her about showing that she knew too much. A few days afterwards Jenny told me her sister had tried them, but they did not like them, besides they could not afford them. What Jenny's sister paid for French letters I don't know, I used to pay nine pence each. I fucked Jenny with one on just to instruct her.

These two women talked often about such matters; and each day Jenny told me what her sister had said. Soon I knew all about her sister's doings, from the night she lost her virginity to the birth of her last child. The little fucking that the sister had, and her longing for more affected me considerably; I quite longed to see this hot-bummed, cunt-neglected wife, and soon my curiosity was to be gratified in a way I little expected.

Jenny and I settled down quite matrimonially, I saw her certainly four days a week, or else every day excepting Sundays. At times I spent the whole day there, took wine, and meat, and newspapers. She cooked, and very badly. We ate and drank together, and fucked, she cried about John and her wickedness, and her fears of being found out. Then I read to her the news, and also every baudy book I could get hold of, and explained to her every use that could be made of our tools, both male and female, from flat-cocking to buggery, so far as I knew,--but I did not know so much as I do now.

To prevent its being known I was there, we got quite cunning. I was not to come at eleven o'clock, because then the butcher came; nor at twelve, because the girls were always at the window next door; between one and two o'clock I was safe, because the family was always at dinner at that time; at three the milkman came, and I avoided him. So with a little trouble I pretty well escaped observation, during the eight or ten weeks which I did husband duty, and perhaps as much as some two husbands would have done.

Once she was awfully uneasy, for her courses had not come on, and shed flood of tears. She would lose her John, poor fellow! When in that way she was always pitying him, but she was always irregular in her menstruation, which rendered it difficult to judge of her condition. Oh! she was sure she was now in the family way, she had symptoms; she had asked her sister how she had felt when she had conceived, and her own symptoms were the same. "My God what shall I do!--I'll drown myself, I will,--I shall never be able to face him,--poor fellow!" "Go and get something, go and see some one." She went, took a dose of what she called "hikery-pikery," and the ugly red stream came on. I don't believe she was in the family way. Years after I heard she had never had a child, though long married.





CHAPTER XX.


     A Saturday afternoon.--Copulation interrupted.--Retreat cut
     off.--Under the bed.--Enter sister.--The new dress.--Heat
     and sweat.--Undressing.--Jenny's anxiety.--Sweating much,
     and stripping.--Nature in its simplicity.--Nature in its
     vulgarity.--Delicious peeps.--A cunt near my nose.--Erotic
     recklessness.--Fist-fucking.

 And now I was to become acquainted with her sister,--the married one. Jenny had no brother, had none of that knowledge about boy's cocks which girls of the humbler classes have when they have brothers. I sometimes think that boys in the humbler classes show their cocks to their sisters; I don't recollect a girl I have fucked who did not say she had seen her brother's cock.

My knowledge of her sister's dissatisfaction with the small amount of fucking she got, her disappointment at having her husband's sperm on her thighs instead of up her cunt, and her very reasonable fears that at times it went into other receptacles besides her own, came forcibly to my mind. It would have been odd if it had not, for every time I poked Jenny we talked about her sister, indeed all our talk, unless about her sweetheart, and her fears was about fucking. I don't recollect any woman I have had who was so anxious to know all, and delighted to hear of my amours, and the descriptions I gave of my various women. If I described their cunts she was amused beyond measure; and to tell all this suited me exactly. For all that she thought it wicked, and that they and I, and she, would be punished by the Almighty (her ideas about the action of Providence were peculiar).

It was the good fortune of her married sister to give me one of the most laughable, but yet natural, salacious, voluptuous treats I ever had, without her knowing she had done so,--and from that came consequences which affected that lady herself.

I have always been highly delighted to see modest women naked or undress, or doing their toilet and little affairs, when they had no idea that any one saw them. I have looked through dozens of key-holes, bored holes in doors, waited breathless and half-naked for hours at night, have risen by day-light to enable me to get these treats. I had seen as already said, the cunts of my aunt and cousins, young ladies and others bathing, etc. (and as I shall tell of, have since seen a noble lady frig herself.) I have seen in fact modest ladies at their most decent, as well as the most indelicate of their toilet performances, and think I prefer looking at them under such circumstances, rather than at the beautiful voluptuous creatures who undress willingly in my presence, for those are so intent on displaying their charms to the best advantage, to get a male erection and its crisis, as soon as possible, make much too evident what they do it for.

Jenny's sister gave me one of those natural displays. Had the lady been drilled in the art of unfolding her charms for the excitement of a male, and driving him into erotic fury, she could not have more effectually done so. Of the many displays of female charms (of modest females) I have seen, I never had one so gradual, natural, voluptuous, and cock-stiffening, as she unconsciously gave me.

I called on Jenny one Saturday afternoon, she had said I had better go quite early, but I did not. It was another sultry day, thunder had been heard, the atmosphere was heavy, but no rain had fallen; and the sun was bright and blazing hot. Said Jenny, "I'm frightened to let you stop, my sister is going to leave off work early, and she will be here about five o'clock,--don't come in." I would. "We shan't be half-an-hour,--it's not half-past three." A kiss, and a twiddle on her cunt settled the matter, and we went to her bed-room. She was on the bed, I between her thighs, ready to drop into her, indeed I'm not sure that my prick had not touched her cunt, when a knock and a ring came at the street-door.

To fully understand what follows it should be known that the old lady my friend, for fear that the rooms should be used; had locked up all the rooms but the parlours and a little closet overlooking the street, and the servants' bed-room, and had taken away the keys. I did not know that then, I knew it that day.

"Oh! my God it's my sister,--what shall I do?--I shall be ruined." Pale as death, I thought she was going to faint again.

"Don't be nervous, I'll go and hide in the room below, and when she is downstairs or up here, go out quietly, and leave the street-door ajar." "Oh! all the rooms are locked up." "I'll go into the parlours then, --you get her downstairs." "Oh! she always goes into the parlour first, and sits down a minute, and talks." There was no time for us to talk, more, for the woman knocked again. "Fetch my hat and stick (it was in the parlour),--you get her into the kitchen, then I'll slip out leaving the street-door ajar." Down we both went, three stairs at a time, up I went again with hat and umbrella, and had only got to the top when I heard poor trembling Jenny opening the street-door. I leant over the banisters, and listened.

"I've knocked twice Jenny." "Did you?--I was dozing,--the thundery weather makes me so queer.--Have a cup of tea, and take a table out into the garden,--it will be fresher there to have tea."

"No I've got my new dress, it will rumple it if it's long in the bundle, I must open it. Such a pretty one,--you will like it I think.--Tom did when I showed him the pattern,--I'll take it up to the bed-room, and hang it up."

Jenny's voice rose almost to a shriek. "Oh! no, no, don't,--come and have tea first,--I'm so thirsty, so tired,--come downstairs." "Well you go and make it, I'll only just hang it up in the bed-room, and come down directly," said her sister.

Jenny objecting, the sister answered angrily, "What are you in such a hurry for tea for?--it's not time,--well have it by yourself, I can't drink it,--I had a lot of beer at dinner, and Tom gave me nearly a pint before I left him,--it was so hot, I was so thirsty,--it's on my chest now,--I can't put tea on the top of it yet." "Well if you won't, I may as well go up with you," said Jenny. Footsteps came nearer, and hat, stick, and self, I threw under the bed. Jenny came in looking like death. "She won't find me here,--get her down soon," was all I had time to say in a whisper before the sister following Jenny entered the room. I had quite hidden myself.

The bed had been a good one, the old gentleman and lady had slept on it for years; it was large and handsome, but being shabby and worn out, had that very month only been put to servants' use. Round it were old red valances hanging to the floor, things not given to servants. No sooner was I under the bed, than I saw there were little openings at the seams, and some moth-holes, which permitted me to see through them. At one spot near to my shoulder as I lay crouching and doubled up, was a long slit where the valance had been torn down. By raising myself on my elbow, and squeezing my head against the mattress I could see perfectly, but no person in the room would have noticed me, even though the room was as bright as day, for the thick red hangings hid me in darkness under the bed, and I was on the side away from the window. I gazed earnestly at Jenny's sister through this opening and others.

She was a well-grown, strong woman, with a handsome round face, and dark hair and eyes; she had shortish petticoats, and thickish ankles in good lace-up boots which, made much noise as she walked about. She had a huge paper parcel in her hands, which she placed on the bed; then for a moment she rested her bum on the bed-side, and Jenny did the same by the side of her. The parcel was between them, her ankles were within a few inches of my nose; I gently lifted the valance, and saw up the calf of her legs, her petticoats cut as they were in those days, being drawn up by sitting down. I remember almost every word, every action which took place on that memorable afternoon, and not a movement escaped me.

"I can't untie it,--cut it." "The scissors are downstairs." "I'll go and fetch them." "Oh! no,--where is the knife that I cut my corns with?" "Oh I never mind,--there, I've done it,--I've broken it,"--and she rose up as did Jenny from the bed, and both now stood standing facing the side of the bed where I lay.

I heard the rustling of paper, the rustling of a dress, the noise of feet paddling about. "Oh! it is nice,--what did it cost?--who made it?" "I made the skirt, and Miss Skinner the body,--she charged me seven and six,--it's not dear, is it?--I'll hang it up, then the creases will come out." "Let's hang it up first." And then on a peg at the back of the door the dress was hung up, and for a moment, both women stood admiring it, their backs towards me and the bed.

"Look," said the sister, "it just wants a little something done to the sleeves,--she said it was not finished there,--oh! yes here it is,--I would not wait for her, I can easily do it myself,--I was glad to get it, and half feared I should not get it for Sunday,--the old beast never keeps her promise, but she has this time,--I gave her sixpence extra. Oh! my gracious how hot it is,--I'm sweating all over,--it's awful,--I'll pull off my frock, then I'll finish the sleeves as it hangs up,--get us the needle and thread Jenny,--just thread a needle dear, while I pull off my frock."

"Don't," said Jenny in an agitated manner, "let's have tea first." "No I must finish it," and as she spoke she undid her dress, and slipped it off. A beautiful handsome pair of breasts came in view. "Oh! Lord look at my chemise,--look how I've sweated--see how the stain from the dress has gone through under my arms,--I stink of sweat,--how glad I shall be when the weather is cooler." As she said that with a slight effort she drew her arms through the sleeves of her chemise, and lifting her freed arms showed a pair of black hairy armpits. I began to thrill and cock-stiffen. She lifted her fine arms up, and looked at the stained chemise as it hung over her stays, then with a heave and a push she freed her breasts, so that they were right over the top of her stays showing the nipples; then with naked arms, she began to work at the sleeves of the dress hanging up behind the door.

Jenny was all this time moving about in a restless manner, taking every now and then a hurried glance at the valance of the bed which concealed me; and as it seemed to me placing herself in such a position, as to prevent my seeing her sister's upper nakedness; but it was quite useless, I could see all she had exposed.

She worked a few minutes talking to Jenny, who was making as much noise with her feet as she could. Then the sister looked up, and leaving off her needlework said, "This will make Tom want to do it to me,--a new dress always does, when he sees me in it,--he ain't done it lately, he will to-morrow." They both laughed, and she went to work again.

Again she stopped, Jenny then seated herself at the edge of the bed over me. "Oh! how awfully hot I am,--what a bore petticoats are,--I declare I've a good mind to leave them off this weather." She stepped forwards. "I'll take them off, I can slammack about to-night,--no one will see me." "Oh! no don't," said Jenny in an excited way; but she quickly unlaced her stays, untied her petticoats, and slipped them down to her ankles. Her chemise which was no longer held up to her shoulders by the arms, slipped down with them, and she stood naked before me excepting her boots and stockings. She seemed to have forgotten that her chemise was no longer held up, for just as the petticoats fell below her cunt, she made a slight grasp as if to hold them up, then she gave a laugh, "That's cool enough," said she.

"Don't,--what are you doing?" shrieked Jenny, "put on your chemise,--you're naked,--you're naked,"--and she tried to pull up the chemise; but the woman stepped away from the clothes as they lay on the floor, caught up the chemise, threw it on the bed, and placed petticoats and stays on a chair by the washhand stand. I saw large hips, a mass of dark hair at her cunt, a large white backside, fine round thighs, and limbs; in brief a fine, plump, well-fed woman, a splendid sight. The innocence of the action was beautiful. "Oh! isn't it nice and cool," she said, "I've got so hot walking."

"Put on your things,--what are you doing?" said Jenny. "Oh! isn't it nice!--I wish one could go in one's skin this weather," she replied. She scratched her motte-hair, and felt her arse, and seemed so pleased with herself. Then she looked under each of her armpits. "Oh! Lord how hot I am,--where is a towel?" She took one, and began gently rubbing herself with it under her armpits, put it down, and again scratched the hair of her motte.

"I'm surprised at you," said Jenny walking about, and I'm sure trying to prevent me from seeing her sister, though she always declared to me afterwards that she had no such intention. "Cover yourself, you'll catch cold." "Catch cold?--nonsense,--and you have the window shut also,--what do you shut it for?" "Oh! I can't bear it open in thundering weather." The fact was we always shut it when we went to the bed to exclude noise, and left the door open, to hear if any one knocked at the street-door. "Put something on you at all events," said Jenny, "it's not decent." "Decent?--you are modest all of a sudden."

"It's delicious!" She walked round the bed to the window, opened it, came back naked as she was, and went on working at her dress; and so for a quarter of an hour did I see this handsomely-made woman naked, first her side, then her belly, then her bum came in view, till I was driven mad by the state of my penis which was throbbing with excitement, and urging me to frig it.

"Well that will do," she said as she finished, "the creases will never be noticed where they are,"--and she walked backwards to the bed, the short distance she was from it, and sat down at the edge just where the valance had dropped. With care I pulled the valance, and the seam opened more, but not much. I raised myself on my elbow, my eyes to the opening. There were the thighs and legs stretching out to the floor, her bum was at the mere edge of the bed, her cunt but about six inches above my nose. I had a wonderfully keen scent for the aroma of a woman, and swear I smelt her cunt distinctly, though I could not see it. She sat there for full five minutes, talking to Jenny about the dress, whilst I kept sniffing up the aroma from her flesh and her love-orifice, and feeling my quivering prick, whilst my greedy eyes gloated on the fat thighs, so far as I could see them.

At length she turned round. "I'll put my slippers on,"--and sitting down opposite the bed on the chair on which she had placed her petticoats, she put one leg up, and began unlacing the boot, then between and under the thighs I saw the dark hairy notch. She had scarcely put herself in that attitude before putting her foot down, she came to the bed, put one foot up, and there continued unlacing it,--and there was her cunt just visible, and within a foot of my greedy eyes, whilst she leisurely unlaced the boot on the bed, the other foot on the floor. Had I placed her there for the purpose I could not have done it better.

"Oh! don't," said Jenny, "take your foot off." "What's the matter?" replied she as if just noticing Jenny's excitement, "you've got one of your foolish fits on I think." "You will dirty the bed,--take your foot off." "Nonsense it's quite dry, besides it's on my chemise,--I wish you'd go and make tea, if you are in such a hurry,--one would think you had got St. Vitus' dance,"--for Jenny in her agitation, and also to make noise to prevent any indiscreet movement of mine being noticed, had kept moving about noisily and restlessly the whole time.

Silenced, she said no more, but still walked restlessly about, went at the back of her sister, and glared at the valance where she guessed my eyes were peeping. Her face was the picture of anxiety. But I did not look at that long, I was rivetted on her sister's form and dark-haired cunt; that cunt was at times slightly opened by the attitude she was in, and altered its shape as she moved. I saw the thick dark hair curling away until I lost sight of it in the direction of her arse-hole, and I could smell her cunt again I swear, my excitement grew intense, I could not keep my hand from my prick, I knew the delicate position I was in, the injury I should do the poor girl if found out;--but a spend in sight of that cunt and splendid pair of thighs I must have. I just touched myself, holding my breath restraining all emotion, gave one or two frigs, and a shower of sperm fell over my trousers. If any man might be pardoned for having a solitary pleasure, it was I, placed in such a lust-stirring situation.





CHAPTER XXI.


     Further undressing.--Slippers wanted.--Toilet operations.--
     The effects of hash and beer.--A windy escape.--Feeling for
     the pot.--Sisters exeunt.--A crushed hat, and soiled
     trousers.--A narrow escape.--My benevolent intentions
     towards Jenny's sister.

 I thought I had had my pleasure in silence, but I was wrong, I was heard, I had given a slight sigh. The anxious ears of poor Jenny heard it. She made increased noise whilst her sister went tranquilly on, and unlaced her boots without taking any notice or hearing me, whilst the last drop of sperm was running over, and I was still looking at her cunt, and sniffing.

Then she stood looking at her boots. "Ah! this one wants soling,--where are my slippers?--where did I put them?" They were just under the bed, close by me. "Here they are," said Jenny rushing to the side, and pulling them out she gave them to her sister who took them, but instead of putting them on pulled off both her stockings. "I'll wash these to-night," said she, "and darn them the first thing to-morrow,--I'll cut my corns." "Oh! do come down and have tea,--you can cut your corns after you have washed your feet to-night,--oh! put something on, and come." "I won't be long,--you go and make tea." "No I shan't, I know you'll be an hour,--it will be spoiled." "I can cut them so much better by daylight,--I cut my toe last Saturday night you know," and without more ado she walked round the foot of the bed to the other side, where in front of the window was a small dressing-table, a looking-glass, and a chair by the side of it. She was now absolutely naked from head to foot. As she neared the window she said, "Oh! how delicious the air is blowing upon one's skin,--I quite hate putting on my chemise again." Jenny still kept moving about, and shuffling her feet; but the sister engrossed in herself, kept on talking about her dress, her Tom, the place she was going to on the morrow, and seemed to notice nothing. At length she placed one foot on the chair by the window, and began cutting her corns. And now I had a view of her backside and naked form from that side of the bed.

When she had finished one foot, she put it down, and sat on the edge of the bed. "Poof! how hot it makes me stooping,--it makes me sweat,--but I'll do the other,--drat the tight boots, they make corns,"--and up went the other foot. Out went my head, and up went the valance, but I was fearful of being seen, so took out my pen-knife, and cut a long slit in the valance. Then my eye was never still to her buttocks, but I could not see her seat of pleasure so well, so I took to the floor again, and saw her cunt better.

Then she stood for a minute looking over a little white blind into the gardens. "There is Mrs. B----- and her daughter walking." "Oh! pray put something on,--if they should see you." "Impossible they can't,"--and she stooped down, and began operating on the other corn. The cunt opened a little and so did something else, for out popped a pretty loud, short, sharp fart.

"You beast," said Jenny. "I beg your pardon," said the sister, "I'm always windy when I have eaten hash, and drank beer,--I could not help it." "It's dirty," growled Jenny. "You're far enough off, and it's better out than in,"--and ceasing to chuckle, and as if half ashamed of herself she went on corn-cutting without speaking, but that did not suit Jenny who soon began a conversation, and shuffling about. She made no further allusion to the fart.

When she had finished it only seemed as if I had been looking at her there for a few seconds, but on that side of the bed she must have given me ten minutes of that lascivious gratification. I was so engrossed, so delighted that even the fart did not amuse me; it annoyed me; for it made her alter her position, and withdraw from my lustful gaze, that charm which perhaps no one but her husband had ever gazed upon so long and so earnestly.

Then she went back again to the other side of the bed, put on stockings and slippers, and getting up, "Where is the pot" said she, "is it this side or the other?" and began feeling under the valance within a few inches of me, but it was not there. Evidently it was usually there, indeed I know it was, but Jenny and I both pissed before we began to think of fucking, and I had put the pot under the washing-stand.

"Not there," shrieked Jenny rushing to the pot. The sister turned round and saw it, I peeped just in time to see her thighs open as she squatted, then came a heavy thump on the bed. The sister said, "What's the matter?---don't give way,--don't be a fool now." Then without pissing she got up, and came to the bedside. Poor Jenny excited beyond bearing by anxiety, had fainted on seeing her sister on the point of discovering me in searching for the pot.

She shook Jenny, threw water on her face, and Jenny soon recovered. "What on earth's the matter?--you give way, you do,--a woman need not faint like that, I'm sure," said she angrily, "you scared me dreadful." Jenny said nothing, but repeated that she wanted her tea, that thundery weather always made her feel sick and faint.

"Well we will go down at once,--I did not think you were ill." "You might have seen I was." "I did not, but I'll be ready in a minute." Again she squatted on the pot, thighs wide open, belly towards me, pissed like a water-spout, and let one or two little farts of which no notice was taken, whilst I with cock stiff was looking on, and again frigging myself. I could not help it, for every turn, every movement she made was such as if done expressly to show off her naked charms, and drive me randy-mad.

"Give me my night-gown Jenny, it's at the foot of the bed, and I'll only put my dress over it,--it's so hot." Jenny turned to take the night-gown from the bed. "I'll just wash a bit," said her sister, "I'm almost in a lather with heat and sweat." Pouring out water in the basin she placed it on the floor, and turning towards the bed squatted, and sluiced her cunt, then rubbed it dry with the towel. "That has made me comfortable," she remarked, and began putting on her frock.

As she did so she remarked, "You have not emptied the pot to-day,--you should, it smells this hot weather." "Yes I did," said Jenny innocently. "Well then you've peed a lot." "I've done it once or twice since morning," said Jenny hastily.

Then the sister went out first. When half-way downstairs I emerged from my hiding-place and listened, heard Jenny say, "I may as well empty the slops, you go and see if the water boils." Up came Jenny. "Oh! I'm ready to die,--hish!--be quiet." She emptied the pot and waters into a slop-pail, and went downstairs quickly whilst I followed her silently. I was covered with flue, and had managed to crush my hat; my trousers were partly unbuttoned, and one leg covered with spunk. We got to the ground-floor almost together, and there I stopped. So soon as I heard she was in the kitchen I moved along the passage, and slipped out, leaving the street-door ajar. Luckily a cab was close by, and I jumped into it. The first thing I did was to button up properly. I bolted past my servant as she opened the door to me, took another hat, wrapped the old one up in paper, and the same night tore out the lining, and threw both away in a bye-road.

I was in an indescribable state of excitement after this delicious afternoon, and was seized with an almost delirious letch for the woman. I was sleepless for a night or two, scheming how to possess her.

Early on the Monday I got to Jenny's, and spent the rest of the day fucking, and talking of the sight I had seen. My imagination helped to allay my excitement, for the form of her sister though more beautiful than Jenny's had still a family likeness to her, and as I clasped Jenny in my arms I pictured her as her sister, and enjoyed her as such.

I was cautious in my disclosures, for I found that Jenny who had been most inquisitive about other women, and delighted to hear about how they talked, and walked, and pissed, and fucked; was annoyed when I talked of her sister's nakedness. I ought not to have looked,--why I had seen more than she, her own sister,--a poor woman, and married, and she to have her thing looked at by a strange man,--her husband could not have seen more,--and so on. So though I described her sister's charms I took care not to express any admiration of them, nor to say I had frigged myself, and felt desire for her. Jenny had not noticed that my trousers were undone, and sperm-soiled. I had not noticed that myself till I got out of the house on that eventful afternoon.

On the Monday when I saw Jenny, she declared that another hour's anxiety would have killed her. We found that the time from the minute the sister came into the bed-room, to the time she went downstairs was two hours. Jenny thought that she must have been half-an-hour working at her dress. Jenny had walked round the room trying if she could see me, or if I was looking, but could only do so once or twice at the holes, or fancy she did; but the long tear in the valance through which I could see with both eyes at once, and just above which her sister had put up her legs, she had never noticed; nor did she believe me when I said that I could see the cunt when her sister's backside was towards me, when near the window. So I made her lie down, and look from the floor whilst I stood naked, pretending to cut my corns. Then she said it was a shame of me to be peeping. She had a clear inspection from my bum-hole to my ballocks, and knew I had seen the cunt.

She did not contend any longer. "Do you mean to say, that if you had been under the bed, and had known a naked man was cutting his corns, you would not have peeped out?" No she would not; but had it been a naked woman perhaps she would, Jenny replied. So after she had heard from me how much I had seen of her sister's body, between her back-bone and her navel, and I had told her something which made her say, "Lar has she!" though I can't recollect what it was, the subject dropped. Then I learnt from her more about her sister's wages, mode of life, and where she worked; for although the thing seemed ridiculous, I had a letch, and meant to try to put into that young woman if possible, though I had not then stroked Jenny many weeks. I liked variety.





CHAPTER XXII.


     The Sunday following.--Chaste calculations.--The sister
     alone.--My embarrassement.--Ale fetched.--Warm
     conversation.--Stiffening.--Bolder talk.--An exhibition of
     masculinity.--A golden promise.--Lust creeping.--Baudy
     dalliance.--Cock and cunt in conjunction.

 On the following Sunday her young man was coming to London, and she was to spend the day with him at his relatives. Her sister was to keep the house, the husband was going elsewhere, so the sister would be alone,--all provided it was fine weather. Jenny had promised her Mistress that until her return she would never go out with her young man, and that is how Jenny kept her word. She knew I would not tell, would I?--I felt her cunt, and kissed her. "It's not very likely, is it my pet?" Then she snivelled, said she was very wicked, and hoped God would not punish her.

When I heard of this arrangement I lusted strongly. In vain I said to myself, "What again a married woman! in comfortable circumstances for her class, with two children,--a woman you have never spoken to,--can you expect to get her!" I did not expect it, but had a burning desire to see and speak to her, to look closely at, and have a chat with a woman whose privates I had seen so nakedly. It seemed to me to promise a titillating treat. Besides I had been so successful with women,--gay women had even been anxious to get me,--that a half-belief came over me, that if I had time, I could persuade even her to let me. Time was the difficulty, for she did not yet even know me by face (so I thought, but was wrong). At all events see her I would,--she was dissatisfied with her fucking, that I knew; she might be randy, and then be much less impregnable than she seemed; so I determined to see her on the Sunday that Jenny went out.

I could think only of one powerful means of getting her, if anything encouraged a hope, and that was by money. I had not too much then, though getting better off, but determined if ten pounds would tempt her, that she should have it. I was a long time I recollect pondering over the sum. The Sunday turned out fine, I put the gold in my purse, and went to the house just after their dinner-time, and after my luncheon, at which I fed myself up well, and to give me courage took an extra glass, for I had one of my nervous fits of funking come on, mixed with doubts about the morality of deliberately trying a married woman.

She opened the door, I walked straight in. "Who are you?" "Where is the housemaid?" said I, "I have promised Mrs. W-----to call and see from time to time." "Oh! I'm her sister sir, my name is-----, I sleep here every night sir, Mrs. W----- pays me to do so sir,--my sister is out sir,--I'm very sorry, but she is not at all well from being confined to the house so much,--I told her she might go to church,--it would be a change, and give her a little fresh air;--she will be back at half-past four sir." "Oh! so you are Mr. So-and-So?" "Yes I am." I walked into the parlours. There was a large beer-jug and two tumblers on the table, and ale in one glass. She rushed to take them away. "I beg pardon sir, but Mrs. W------ said we might sit in the parlours, when we have done work, and on Sundays besides, cause it's so dull in the kitchens." The woman was agitated at her sister being out, and at being caught drinking beer in the parlour; she thought I might make mischief, I suppose.

I told her that she need not disturb herself, for I should not stay long, and kept looking with cock already stiffening into her face, then at her arms, then at the bottom of her belly, and in my mind's eye seeing the dark hair down there. I had planned conversation, but forgot what to say, through thinking of her nakedness and sexual charms; and stood staring at her till she turned her eyes away confused, and colored up.

I continued to be embarrassed, and so lost recollection of all I had intended to say and do, that I was actually going away. I asked one or two stupid questions: if letters had come, if any one had been, and so on; all the time thinking that I was looking through her clothes at her naked charms. I was in a sort of a trance of baudiness which muddled me; when noticing the ale-glass I asked, "What are you drinking?" "Fourpenny ale sir." That reply broke the spell, my senses returned, I thought of an excuse for stopping. "Give me a glass,--I'm thirsty." "That's the last of it sir." "Can't you get some?" "The pot-boy brought that,--it's Sunday, and the public is not always open." I looked at my watch. "It's not church-time yet, send some one to fetch some,--I'm so thirsty, and hot, and so tired,"--and I sat down. "I'm alone." "Is not your husband here?" "No, no one." "Do you mind fetching me some?" "If you don't mind waiting sir." "No." I gave her money. "How much?" "Oh! fill the jug,--not with fourpenny,--with the best ale,--ask them to draw it mild, and get me two bottles of ginger-beer". In a few minutes she was back,--I had given her a five shilling piece. "You may keep the change." "Thank you sir", said she quite touched and delighted. I always gave the change to girls whom I wanted to poke.

In her absence I went all over the house that was not locked up, even to the privy and coal-cellar, had satisfied myself that she was alone, and was getting quite myself again when she came back.

"Have a glass." "Thank you sir." "So you are Jenny's sister,--Jane's her name I think." Yes it was. "Aren't you afraid to be in the house of a night?" No she was not. "Sit down." "Thank you sir,"--but she stood. "So you are an upholstress,--sit down,"--and after a little pressure down she sat. We took ale together, and no doubt I spoke with all that kindness which a man shows towards a woman whom he desires to poke, I have heard women say that I have a winning, persuasive manner.

Gradually the conversation became about herself. "You've two children,--why not more?" "Oh! quite enough for poor people." "Well you see I can't get any." "Poor people are sure to have lots." "Two is not a lot,--how manage to stop at two?" "Oh! it's all chance." "Is not another coming?" She was getting flushed and excited. "Lord no, I hope not." "Don't you know?" "I don't." "Yes you do,--how old is your last?" "Four years." "If I were your husband I'd have a dozen." "Well you say you haven't any yet sir," said she. "No I can't get any." "Ah! if we had your money!--but with we poor people is different,--it's hard enough to fill the bellies of two." "And so you won't have your belly filled with another little one,--won't you, eh!"

"Oh! Lord," said she laughing spite of herself, "you are plain-spoken." I was in the vein now, did not say an improper word, but gave baudy hints, smutty suggestions about the dullness of sleeping alone, of the results of wives being away from husbands, etc., till her eyes twinkled, and she laughed much. I had now broken down the barrier, had brought myself to her level, and she as every other woman would have done, took advantage of it, and began to return my chaffing and banter, every woman feels instinctively that when a man is chaffing her (be it ever so decently veiled), about fucking, that she may safely return it: both are at once on a common level. A washerwoman would banter a prince, if the subject was cunt, without the prince being offended. To talk of fucking with a woman is to remove all social distinctions, and I had done it without uttering at first a smutty word.

Jenny's sister went on chaffing, and drank ale freely. "Oh! I dare say, but why don't you have children?" "I can't get any I tell you, but I try." "Not much at home," said she, "from all I have heard." "No I try out as well, and get none,--I'm a safe man." Then I found she knew a lot about me and my affairs; She had actually worked at my house on some curtains, had seen me once, and knew my voice, though for the moment she had not recollected my face with my hat on when I entered the door that afternoon. But I had never seen her at my house to my knowledge, though if I had I was not likely to have noticed a common upholstress.

We went on chaffing, looking in each other's faces, each knowing we were talking about fucking. "Well Mrs.------ playing at mother and father's a delicious amusement, is it not?" "I don't know." "If you don't know we'd better try,--I'd give five pounds to be your husband for an hour,--and five pounds would buy you a new dress." "It would buy me three," said she without noticing the other part of my remark. "Three?" "Yes three,--I can't afford more than thirty shillings for a best dress." "Really!--such a beautiful creature as you ought to have plenty of dress, for I have rarely seen a more lovely woman, and so well grown,--I'll bet you have fine limbs." She was flattered, the praise upset her, her eyes tinkled. Yes she might have done better she knew, but it was to be. I went close to her, caught and kissed her. She made not too strong a resistance, but got away. "That's going a little too far." "That's the beginning of a game at mother and father, and you are going to have the three dresses." She laughed in a funny way. "I don't want to be a mother any more, so I don't want any games." But she seemed to me to look as if she did.

What did she get for stopping at the house? Five shillings a week, and her supper and breakfast,--that was an object. "Five shillings?--why my kiss was worth that,--let me give you another, and I'll give you ten shillings for the two." "You don't mean that," said she with a low laugh. "On my soul yes,--but you must give me a kiss as well." She shook her head. "It's going too far," said she. "There it is, I'll trust you,--you won't take it without letting me." She was then sitting. I put the half sovereign into her hand. "Thank you sir," said she softly. I kissed her rapturously, she let me kiss half-a-dozen times, and whilst doing I so took hold of her hand, and pressed it as if by accident against my cock. She a married woman knew the hard line her hand pressed against, for she moved her hand away. "Now your promise,--kiss me." "I didn't promise." "You took the money." "There then," said she giving me a kiss, and jumping up sharply, "we are going too far,--we really are now,--we don't either of us know what we are about I think." "I don't think I do," said I, "for though I never saw you before, I've never been so struck with a woman in my life, I'd give ten pounds to be in bed with you an hour."

I had been putting my cock straight in my trousers, feeling and squeezing my balls whenever I saw her looking at me. I fancied she kept looking askant at that part of my person. She was getting red in face, hot, and confused in manner. Just then I observed a bed pillow on the sofa, she had I guessed been laying down after dinner. "Why here is a pillow,--you've been on the sofa with your husband,--you have been playing at mother and father here." She burst out into laughter. "Why I've not seen him for a week." "Then you've been tickling by yourself." "Tickling?" (it was said quite innocently.) "Yes between your legs." "Oh! really now you are a going too far sir," said she jumping up again, "you speak too freely,--I don't like it." Then she laughed, and said, "Well--this--really is,--oh!"

"Not at all,--you are lovely, exquisite, delicious,--if you've really not seen your husband for a week, let me,--who will know?--we are in the house alone,--let us,"--and standing close to her I put my arms round her, but I felt afraid of going too far.

"You must not talk like that." "Oh! nonsense,--I'll give you six pounds." "Oh! no, you don't mean what you say,--it's wild talk." I took out my purse, and putting six pounds on the table in gold, just as I had done to her sister the ten pounds; there said I, "That is yours,"--and pulled out my prick. She got up, and ran to the other side of the room as if I had pulled out a pistol. "You're talking too plain sir,--it's going too far,--if you expose yourself like that I'll go to the street-door." I'm at a loss to know why I pitched upon six pounds, I had intended ten, but cannot tell why I offered that particular sum. I have often thought since, of what made me take that economical figure.

"Sit down." "I won't if you expose yourself,--it's not gentlemanlike." I put my cock into my trousers, then kissed her again, resistance was not so strong. "Now sir don't." "Sit down my darling,"--and getting her to the sofa we went on talking. "How foolish,--who would know,--why not delight me,--why not take the money." "No." "Do now." "No." "Won't you?" "Of course not,--no,--no." "Well kiss me." "There then." "Do let me dear." "I won't,--I won't,--I shan't,--there."

Just then I noticed one of her garters was hanging down by her foot. "Your garter's undone," said I. I stooped forwards, and took it up. "Give it me." I kissed it. "No,--it's been so near where I want to go, --I shall keep it till I've been there." "You will keep it a long time then."

She drank more ale, it was sweet and strong, and I went on talking. Thought I, "She must want it if she has not seen her husband for a week." Where did she garter.--below or above knee? "Let me feel?" I felt outside, then pinched the leg, then higher up. She began looking me full in the face, and laughing at my smutty insinuations. I pulled her back on the sofa, kissed her, and let her rise up again. I repeated the pull and the kiss more than once, and then as she was rising up and saying, "Now don't pull me about like that," I put her hand on my prick which I had slipped out again. "Oh!"--and she let it go. Quick as lightning I slipped a hand up her clothes to her cunt. "Let me now,--there's a darling." "I shan't." "Do." "I shan't." She repulsed my hand, but did not get away from me. I thought from the way she looked at me, and the quiet manner in which she pushed away my hand, that she was hot with lust, and could scarcely refuse me. I pulled her to me, and got my finger on her clitoris. "Do let me feel your cunt, and fuck,--put my prick in there,--let us,--do darling," said I twiddling like mad, and rattling out a volume of baudiness.

She bore it all for a minute quietly, wriggling and saying, "I shan't,--I won't,--no, now take your hand away." Then with a sudden impulse she pushed me off, got up, and sat down further from me on the sofa. "Oh! now be quiet,--let me think a minute,--I don't know whether I'm on my heels or my head." She picked up something which had fallen at her feet, as she had doubled herself down when my finger was stimulating her randiness.

Then catching her by her waist I pulled her back on to the sofa, and threw myself on her. "You shan't" were the last words I recollect her uttering; as I threw up her clothes and felt the wet gash. My prick the next instant was buried in it, and we were fucking.

"Don't,--oh.--take it out,--do,--oh!--oh!--ohoe!" she murmured. She had fetched me, and pump; pump, pump, pump, went my spunk up her. Then delicious oblivion. As I came to myself I found her arse still moving. "Oh! do" she murmured. She was besides herself, with desire to spend.

But my prick instead of obeying me as it usually did on such exciting occasions, refused, and shrinking left her cunt, to my intense vexation. "I haven't done it," said she softly, and with disappointment as her bum ceased its labors, and my tool lay droopping outside her quim.

We spoke no more, but I lay trying to squeeze it up again. To stiffen it I felt up and round her, rubbed the tip on her spermy nymphoe, she made gentle efforts to second me, but it was of no use, so I rolled off. She sat up, and after looking at me for a minute with eyes filled with baudiness, began like all women, to feel if her hair was all right. "Were you just coming my dear?" She made no reply.

She had not taken any care to arrange her dress, it had dragged up behind her bum, and the petticoats were up to her knees, the leg which had lost its garter was half naked. Taking her round the waist I put my hand on to her cunt, and titillated the clitoris. She let me go on, and continued feeling about her hair. Then looking me full in the face, looking as if she were ready to spend, she pushed me away. "Don't,--don't,--I don't like it done that way." "You can do it that way yourself, can't you?" "Of course I can." "I shall soon fuck again." "Oh! I dare say," and she walked to the looking-glass, then went to the window, and looked out into the garden without paying any heed to my exciting remarks. I sat on the sofa feeling my cock, and trying to stiffen it, but it was useless; so I tried to interest her in something else, feeling annoyed, though I had nothing to be ashamed of.





CHAPTER XXIII.


     Jenny's bed-room.--The money hid.--On the bed.--Fears of
     maternity.--Inspection of sex.--The use of a husband.--
     Another Sunday.--Regrets and refusal.--Resistance overcome.--
     Jenny's ignorance.--Her Master returns.--Difficulty in
     getting at Jenny.--Her sister waylaid.--Against a fence.--
     Jenny's marriage, and rise in life.

 "Why don't you take the money?" said I. "You really mean it?" "Of course." She took it up. "It's a real God-send,--it comes just in time,--who'd have thought it?" said she as if to herself. "I must put it where it can't be found, and take it home to-morrow." She went to the door. "Aren't you going?" "No I'm going to do it again soon." "But you're not." "But I am." Without reply she went upstairs. I had meant to have ready a stiff-stander, when she came back, but changed my mind, and followed her. She was nearly at the top when hearing me she waited, and said, "What do you want?"

"I'm coming to see what you do." "You won't." "I will." "I'll come down and wait till you are gone." "I'll stop till your sister comes home." "Do go down sir," said she in a coaxing tone. "No." She sat down on the top-stairs, I did the same a few stairs below her. Her knees were wide apart, my mind went to the afternoon when I had seen her naked. That glorious two hours. I stared in a voluptuous reverie, her cunt was as visible to me through her clothes, as if she were naked, and my cock began to swell. I stared on without uttering a word.

"What are you staring at?" said she at last, "go down, and I'll be down in a minute." "I'm looking at your cunt, it's open slightly, I can see my spunk in it." "Oh!" said she jumping up, "I never heard such a man in my life." (She had the gold still in her hand.) "You have upset me so, I don't know what I am about." She then turned her bum round towards me, and I put my hand quickly up her clothes, as she went up the stairs. "Oh! you frighten me so I don't know what I'm doing." I followed her into the room, and she locked up the money in a bag that was in a drawer. Turning round she saw my prick out, and as stiff as ever. It was the recollection of what had taken place in that room on the Saturday week previous, which had rendered me capable again. I closed on her, kissing and inciting her, pulled her to the bed, and began feeling her. "I don't like that done,--you know you can't,--leave me alone,--go down,--oh! don't."

I coaxed her for a second. She got on to the bed, and opened her thighs wide like a well-trained fuckster to help me, I inserted my penis, and she met me with passion. I was not so rapid, the want of a spend was not now overpowering my senses; whilst she had had two hours baudy talk, been fucked, but cheated of her pleasure, and been left at the critical moment, unsatisfied, with my spunk in her. She was dying for a spend, wanting it like a woman who has been for a week unsatisfied. Her cunt was hungry for prick, throbbing and tightening to pour out it's amatory juices, her backside's movements became quick and fierce. "Oh! it's big," she gasped whilst I was still sensible, "oh!--I'm--com--coming,"--and gluing her mouth to mine she spent copiously ere I'd well nigh began to feel the full urging of lust.

The constriction of her cunt, the delight of feeling her pleasure increased my stiffness. "Let me wash,--do." "You won't come on the bed again." "Yes I will, but let me wash." I clutched her like a vise. "NO I'm coming,--you'll spend again." My prick stiffer and stiffer drove with fury up against her womb. "Oh! don't push so hard." "Fuck my darling,--there,--the tip's only in,--it's in your spunk, and mine together." "Oh! you hurt." On I drove. Her backside's play began, her lips were glued to mine, our tongues played against each other, and we spent together with ejaculations. "Oh!--don't,--you hurt,--oh! oh!--I'm coming." Then we lay palpitating, my prick throbbing and soaking, her cunt squeezing and sucking.

"Let me get up,--let me wash,--pray do." I laid on her heavy, nestled my balls up to her arse, held her as long as I could; but uncunting me she got off the bed, and washed her cunt. I still lay playing with my prick. "You'll have a child this day nine months my dear." "Oh! my God don't say so,--but I believe I shall." "You are all right, I don't get them you know." "Have you never had any children!" "None at home." "Oh! that's nothing,--have you any out, for you are a gay man?"

I got up to piss, and saw my thick sperm in the basin. "You've washed it all out my dear,--you are safe." She shook her head. "This is a strange business," she remarked, "I scarce know where I am,--what I'm about,--it's impossible,"--and she stood staring at me playing with my cock. Then she went to the drawer and looked at the money, as if she doubted its being there. "It's a fact," she said locking it up again, "are you not going down?" "No." "I wish you would,--I want to be by myself." "You want to piddle." "You are a strange man," and taking the pot she pissed. "You'd better empty all," said I, "if your sister Jenny comes back and sees it, she will think your husband's been doing it to you." "She won't think or know anything if she does see," said Mrs. ------"Well I declare I'm a talking to you just like my husband,--I don't seem to know whether I am on my head or my heels."

"Church must be over,--Jenny has not come back." "She won't be back till nine o'clock, she is out with her young man." "Oh! not at church?" "No I told you so because Mrs. W-----told her not to go out on Sunday;--but you won't tell?" "Of course not my dear, I dare say Jenny and her young man have done what we have been doing." "Lord sir, he is a most respectable young man, and far above her,--they are going to be married,--she is lucky, luckier than I am,--she'd knock his head off if he laid hand upon her improperly,--that she would, she! Lor bless you,"--and Mrs. ------ laughed with incredulity. I laughed also. "Ah! she looks a quiet young woman." "So she is, and so is he,--his family is well off,"--and then she told me all that Jenny had told me.

"I wish you would let me make the bed." "I'm going to have you again." "Oh! likely." "I am." "No you're not,--please go." "No." "Then I shall go downstairs," "Go my dear." She took me at my word, her manner had quite changed, she had been laughing and chaffing, she had blushed, looked at me with fun and lust in her eyes, and at last with full open eyes one moment, followed by the half-dosed eye and languishing manner of a randy woman. Now she was quiet, almost sullen, and if she looked at me her eyes fell directly, the randiness had been taken out of her. "I must rouse it up well if I am to have her again," said I, to myself as I lay thinking about her, and the delicious sight I had seen in that room, the sight I never dare disclose to her,--but how I longed to tell her.

Up she came looking glum. "Are you not going?" "No." "Let me make the bed then." "Not until I have had you again." "Then it will go unmade." "That won't matter to me." "But it will to me,--what will my sister say if she sees the bed's been laid upon like that?" "Perhaps she will think a man has been with you." "Well you take it mighty cool,--I do hope you're going." "Not till I've had you." "Now you are a talking nonsense,--you know you can't do it," said she with an incredulous look, and the tone of a woman who knew what a prick could do and what not. "Look at this," I uncovered my prick which was nearly at a full-stand. She smiled when she saw it. "Nonsense I am ashamed." "My dear I'm proud, and not ashamed,--come." "I shan't." "Then here I'll lay,"--and I fell back, and pulled balls and cod well out of my trousers.

I had always a lust stirring tongue, fifty women have told me so. "You'd talk any women randy," said a gay woman once to me. Brighton Bessie said, that in five minutes I could talk her into a lewd state. Others have given me similar compliments. I was not specially conscious of that power that I recollect, but instinctively used it when I had got over fits of modesty, which sometimes prevented my uttering even veiled allusions for a time.

Mrs. ------ like Jenny was easily flattered. What lovely limbs she had I said; had she much hair on her cunt? my excitement had prevented me feeling or seeing it. "Come and let me feel,--let me look." She colored and blushed, and at every lascivious remark, "Oh! I never,--no I never did,--oh!" Then she again went to the drawer where the money was, looked in it as if to make sure it was there, and locked the drawer now. "Mine's bigger than your husband's, isn't it?" "Well if I ever heard such remarks." "You said it was big when it was up you." "Oh! you story." "You did my dear, you said when you were just coming, 'Oh! it's big.'" "I didn't." "Yes you did, you know you did,--look how stiff it is now,--come." "I won't."

I moved off the bed, caught her, and pushed her against the side of the bed. "Let's see your cunt." "You shan't." "How foolish,--I've fucked it twice,--let me feel it, and you feel my cock,--let me look at it,--I'm sure it's lovely." She got on to the bed after a little resistance, took my pego in her fist, and I got my fingers in her crack. "A delicious fuck you are,"--then she let me pull up her clothes and look. "My God what a lovely cunt,--how deliciously you join your wet lips to mine,--how you move,--I shall never forget it to the last moment of my life,--oh! let me." "I musn't,--I would, but I'm frightened." "How foolish,--it's not an hour since my prick was in you,--what is the harm of doing it another time?" "Will you go then?" "Yes." Gently Mrs.------ opened her thighs. Our backsides were soon at the short wriggles. "It's big, isn't it?" "Oh! don't," said she, "I shall spend." My remark, tallying perhaps with something which was passing in her own mind fetched her, and me with her instantly.

When it was over I would not go. "No I'll do it again." "That's nonsense," said she, "you know you can't, even if you try, and you're only making me anxious." We laid side by side talking, for she liked the subject. I had a most buttock-stirring letch on me, and to her astonishment in about an hour I produced another stiff one. One persuasion is very much like another with the same woman; each time I had less difficulty, for she liked the poking. Dusk was coming on, she got lights, she fetched some liquor, and after the liquor I got her to lay on the sofa (for we then had gone downstairs), and on pretence of kissing her quim I got her to open her thighs wide, and saw in the twilight what I had seen before, large and ugly inner-lips. For all that I fucked her again, after frigging myself up gently to stiffness, and fucked as if it was the last bout with a woman I was ever going to have. Then I left at her earnest entreaties before her sister returned. I had been there six hours.

I called on Jenny next day. She was in a way. Her sister directly she had returned home said she must go and see her husband; and spite of Jenny's entreaties not to leave her alone, had gone and never returned all night. Jenny could not make out the reason, but thought that she went away expecting to find her husband with a woman. She returned to sleep as usual on the Monday night with Jenny, I found subsequently.

That day I went off without poking Jenny, and slunk away ashamed. I was done up with poking her sister. Jenny seemed astonished, but said nothing.

Afterwards I got out of Jenny cautiously all I wanted to know about her sister. The result was, that finding on the next Sunday fortnight, Jenny was again going out with her young man, and the sister again would be left in the house, I went there. The woman's astonishment was great, and I believe she was genuinely distressed at seeing me. I attacked her for a time fruitlessly, she would not move from the street-door. "Did you not swear when I let you do it the last time, you would never come near me again, and never tell any one?" said she.

I could not deny it, had great difficulty with her, and thought I never should succeed. For full an hour with her back against the wall of the passage did she stand, refusing to move. I pulled up her clothes, felt her cunt, knelt on the mat, got my head up her petticoats, my nose on her motte, my mouth on her thighs and cunt, my hand round her marbly buttocks, and held her kissing, sniffing, and groping my fingers between her bum-cheeks, and the red orifice which I wanted to plug. In her struggles to prevent me she once nearly fell, but she got away.

But what woman who has been fucked by a man could withstand an hour's persistent feeling, cunt-kissing, baudy talk, and beseeching. I conquered, and fucked her on the sofa. She did not rush out to wash her cunt as she had done at our first meeting, there was no water near. I had her again and again. At each assault when the pleasure overtook her, she had the same mouth-sucking and arse-wagging. When our love-making was over, I gave her two pounds. I had offered it her before in the passage, but she had knocked it out of my hand. When she took it she said, "Ah! it's an awful thing to be poor!" I shall tell of another woman who made the same excuse to herself for getting her lust satisfied, or yielding.

That satisfied me, and I never had her again in the house. A letch for her came again about two months afterwards,--why? God only knows, for then at times I was having her sister, another woman, Louisa Fisher, and lastly Sarah Mavis. The old couple had returned, Jenny had a fellow-servant; I could only get a poke up her with difficulty on the Sundays, which her young man did not see her. I took her to a baudy house for an hour or so, then she went to church, and heard the text, because her Mistress always asked her what the text was when she went home. It was a supposition that she went to church on a Sunday.

I knew where Jenny's sister lived, and the place where she worked. It was now dark about six o'clock. I waylaid her on her way home on the high-road which was well lighted and full of people. I walked with her, but she prayed me not to do so, for her husband came partly the same road, and sometimes met her. What would happen if he met her with a swell walking by her side. I could not persuade her to go to a house. No,--she was not a loose woman, though she knew what she had done,--I had done her more harm than I had any idea of, already,--why injure her?

The more she objected, the more I longed for her. At last under solemn promise that I would go away after, we turned up a short street leading into a lane by garden-grounds, and there up a fence I fucked her. Away she went, and I never saw her afterwards to speak to, though I have passed her without taking notice. I think that in that parting fuck I had all the pleasure, she none.

Jenny's Mistress had been taken ill at the seaside, and kept there a month longer than was intended. Owing to this my complete enjoyment of Jenny's charms was prolonged, and to that I owed the second Sunday's fucking of Jenny's sister. Old Mr. W----- came up to London twice, and once nearly caught me in the house. I had written to say I had called at their home, and had never found their servant out. The lady wrote to thank me, and in writing to my mother, said how much obliged they were for my calling; but my wife said she thought the servant (Jenny) was a sly sort of minx, and wondered how they could be so foolish as to leave her in the house by herself.

When they came to town I was for a time very intimate with them, which pleased them much. Jenny used to let me out at the garden-gate, and leave the gate unlocked. Instead of going away, I used to hide in the shrubs, Jenny would come back, close the street-door ajar, and a few minutes afterwards come out again very quietly. Then up against an ivy covered wall we poked, and she went indoors with wetted privates. Sometimes after waiting I had to go away unsatisfied, she not appearing, sometimes rain prevented us,--all of which was very annoying.

Fucking her in fact became a matter of anxiety. She had to dodge her fellow-servant as well as her Master and Mistress, and we copulated in fear and trembling. In the midst of the work she has left me because of some scare; once she went off saying, "Oh! there is Missus' bell ringing,--oh!"--and uncunting me, off she ran. One night we went on to the flower-beds between two large trees, and the next day the old gentleman remarked that some man had got over the wall into his garden, and he should tell the police. If there was moonlight we were done. One night latish she was sent to fetch some butter. I waited, and we fucked up against some palings. Unfortunately the butter was let fall out of the basket on to the gravel. We went back for more, but the shop was then shut, so she had to take home the dirty butter, and make the best story she could about it. On Sundays when at the baudy house, the girl was awfully frightened lest she should be seen, and we used to walk there on opposite sides of the way, I going in first. Then we went away with similar precautions,--but I began to get very tired of this, having indeed had enough of her.

Jenny had lost all fear of being in the family way, and poked freely, but she never ceased bewailing her poor young man; though at length my tool had become to her a thing to be longed for. The young man had money left him, quitted his place, and Jenny left to be married. I heard of them for many years afterwards, they opened a shop, then a larger one, and so on, till at length he became (I found this quite recently) the mayor of the town,--if not it was some one of the same name, and in the same line of business. He was much respected, and Jenny his wife was equally so. They had no children up to the time when the old lady her former Mistress, died; and for aught I know they may still be living in the town of------.

One night some time before she left her situation, we spoke of her sister. "She is in the family way again," said she, "and in such a way about it, and so is he,--the night she left me to sleep by myself, she went home to her husband, because she suspected there was another woman there;--well that night she declared he did not let his stuff go outside,--he says he did,--they quarrel, he says it's her fault, and she says it's his."

Then it seemed evident to me that after the heavy fucking I gave her that day, that she feared being in the family way; so went home, and incited her man to fuck her, and enable her to say that the child was his, and of course it might have been, though it might have been mine.

FINIS VOLUME THREE

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net


Title: Little Women

Author: Louisa May Alcott

Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #514]
Release Date: May, 1996
[This file last updated on August 19, 2010]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE WOMEN ***




LITTLE WOMEN


by

Louisa May Alcott




CONTENTS


PART 1

          ONE  PLAYING PILGRIMS
          TWO  A MERRY CHRISTMAS
        THREE  THE LAURENCE BOY
         FOUR  BURDENS
         FIVE  BEING NEIGHBORLY
          SIX  BETH FINDS THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL
        SEVEN  AMY'S VALLEY OF HUMILIATION
        EIGHT  JO MEETS APOLLYON
         NINE  MEG GOES TO VANITY FAIR
          TEN  THE P.C. AND P.O.
       ELEVEN  EXPERIMENTS
       TWELVE  CAMP LAURENCE
     THIRTEEN  CASTLES IN THE AIR
     FOURTEEN  SECRETS
      FIFTEEN  A TELEGRAM
      SIXTEEN  LETTERS
    SEVENTEEN  LITTLE FAITHFUL
     EIGHTEEN  DARK DAYS
     NINETEEN  AMY'S WILL
       TWENTY  CONFIDENTIAL
   TWENTY-ONE  LAURIE MAKES MISCHIEF, AND JO MAKES PEACE
   TWENTY-TWO  PLEASANT MEADOWS
 TWENTY-THREE  AUNT MARCH SETTLES THE QUESTION


PART 2

  TWENTY-FOUR  GOSSIP
  TWENTY-FIVE  THE FIRST WEDDING
   TWENTY-SIX  ARTISTIC ATTEMPTS
 TWENTY-SEVEN  LITERARY LESSONS
 TWENTY-EIGHT  DOMESTIC EXPERIENCES
  TWENTY-NINE  CALLS
       THIRTY  CONSEQUENCES
   THIRTY-ONE  OUR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
   THIRTY-TWO  TENDER TROUBLES
 THIRTY-THREE  JO'S JOURNAL
  THIRTY-FOUR  FRIEND
  THIRTY-FIVE  HEARTACHE
   THIRTY-SIX  BETH'S SECRET
 THIRTY-SEVEN  NEW IMPRESSIONS
 THIRTY-EIGHT  ON THE SHELF
  THIRTY-NINE  LAZY LAURENCE
        FORTY  THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
    FORTY-ONE  LEARNING TO FORGET
    FORTY-TWO  ALL ALONE
  FORTY-THREE  SURPRISES
   FORTY-FOUR  MY LORD AND LADY
   FORTY-FIVE  DAISY AND DEMI
    FORTY-SIX  UNDER THE UMBRELLA
  FORTY-SEVEN  HARVEST TIME



CHAPTER ONE

PLAYING PILGRIMS

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying
on the rug.

"It's so dreadful to be poor!" sighed Meg, looking down at her old
dress.

"I don't think it's fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty
things, and other girls nothing at all," added little Amy, with an
injured sniff.

"We've got Father and Mother, and each other," said Beth contentedly
from her corner.

The four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the
cheerful words, but darkened again as Jo said sadly, "We haven't got
Father, and shall not have him for a long time." She didn't say
"perhaps never," but each silently added it, thinking of Father far
away, where the fighting was.

Nobody spoke for a minute; then Meg said in an altered tone, "You know
the reason Mother proposed not having any presents this Christmas was
because it is going to be a hard winter for everyone; and she thinks we
ought not to spend money for pleasure, when our men are suffering so in
the army.  We can't do much, but we can make our little sacrifices, and
ought to do it gladly.  But I am afraid I don't," and Meg shook her
head, as she thought regretfully of all the pretty things she wanted.

"But I don't think the little we should spend would do any good.  We've
each got a dollar, and the army wouldn't be much helped by our giving
that.  I agree not to expect anything from Mother or you, but I do want
to buy _Undine and Sintran_ for myself.  I've wanted it so long," said
Jo, who was a bookworm.

"I planned to spend mine in new music," said Beth, with a little sigh,
which no one heard but the hearth brush and kettle-holder.

"I shall get a nice box of Faber's drawing pencils; I really need
them," said Amy decidedly.

"Mother didn't say anything about our money, and she won't wish us to
give up everything.  Let's each buy what we want, and have a little
fun; I'm sure we work hard enough to earn it," cried Jo, examining the
heels of her shoes in a gentlemanly manner.

"I know I do--teaching those tiresome children nearly all day, when I'm
longing to enjoy myself at home," began Meg, in the complaining tone
again.

"You don't have half such a hard time as I do," said Jo. "How would you
like to be shut up for hours with a nervous, fussy old lady, who keeps
you trotting, is never satisfied, and worries you till you're ready to
fly out the window or cry?"

"It's naughty to fret, but I do think washing dishes and keeping things
tidy is the worst work in the world.  It makes me cross, and my hands
get so stiff, I can't practice well at all." And Beth looked at her
rough hands with a sigh that any one could hear that time.

"I don't believe any of you suffer as I do," cried Amy, "for you don't
have to go to school with impertinent girls, who plague you if you
don't know your lessons, and laugh at your dresses, and label your
father if he isn't rich, and insult you when your nose isn't nice."

"If you mean libel, I'd say so, and not talk about labels, as if Papa
was a pickle bottle," advised Jo, laughing.

"I know what I mean, and you needn't be statirical about it. It's
proper to use good words, and improve your vocabilary," returned Amy,
with dignity.

"Don't peck at one another, children.  Don't you wish we had the money
Papa lost when we were little, Jo?  Dear me! How happy and good we'd
be, if we had no worries!" said Meg, who could remember better times.

"You said the other day you thought we were a deal happier than the
King children, for they were fighting and fretting all the time, in
spite of their money."

"So I did, Beth.  Well, I think we are.  For though we do have to work,
we make fun of ourselves, and are a pretty jolly set, as Jo would say."

"Jo does use such slang words!" observed Amy, with a reproving look at
the long figure stretched on the rug.

Jo immediately sat up, put her hands in her pockets, and began to
whistle.

"Don't, Jo.  It's so boyish!"

"That's why I do it."

"I detest rude, unladylike girls!"

"I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits!"

"Birds in their little nests agree," sang Beth, the peacemaker, with
such a funny face that both sharp voices softened to a laugh, and the
"pecking" ended for that time.

"Really, girls, you are both to be blamed," said Meg, beginning to
lecture in her elder-sisterly fashion. "You are old enough to leave off
boyish tricks, and to behave better, Josephine.  It didn't matter so
much when you were a little girl, but now you are so tall, and turn up
your hair, you should remember that you are a young lady."

"I'm not!   And if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two
tails till I'm twenty," cried Jo, pulling off her net, and shaking down
a chestnut mane.  "I hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss
March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China Aster!  It's
bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boy's games and work and
manners!  I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy.  And
it's worse than ever now, for I'm dying to go and fight with Papa. And
I can only stay home and knit, like a poky old woman!"

And Jo shook the blue army sock till the needles rattled like
castanets, and her ball bounded across the room.

"Poor Jo!  It's too bad, but it can't be helped.  So you must try to be
contented with making your name boyish, and playing brother to us
girls," said Beth, stroking the rough head with a hand that all the
dish washing and dusting in the world could not make ungentle in its
touch.

"As for you, Amy," continued Meg, "you are altogether too particular
and prim.  Your airs are funny now, but you'll grow up an affected
little goose, if you don't take care. I like your nice manners and
refined ways of speaking, when you don't try to be elegant.  But your
absurd words are as bad as Jo's slang."

"If Jo is a tomboy and Amy a goose, what am I, please?" asked Beth,
ready to share the lecture.

"You're a dear, and nothing else," answered Meg warmly, and no one
contradicted her, for the 'Mouse' was the pet of the family.

As young readers like to know 'how people look', we will take this
moment to give them a little sketch of the four sisters, who sat
knitting away in the twilight, while the December snow fell quietly
without, and the fire crackled cheerfully within.  It was a comfortable
room, though the carpet was faded and the furniture very plain, for a
good picture or two hung on the walls, books filled the recesses,
chrysanthemums and Christmas roses bloomed in the windows, and a
pleasant atmosphere of home peace pervaded it.

Margaret, the eldest of the four, was sixteen, and very pretty, being
plump and fair, with large eyes, plenty of soft brown hair, a sweet
mouth, and white hands, of which she was rather vain. Fifteen-year-old
Jo was very tall, thin, and brown, and reminded one of a colt, for she
never seemed to know what to do with her long limbs, which were very
much in her way.  She had a decided mouth, a comical nose, and sharp,
gray eyes, which appeared to see everything, and were by turns fierce,
funny, or thoughtful.  Her long, thick hair was her one beauty, but it
was usually bundled into a net, to be out of her way.  Round shoulders
had Jo, big hands and feet, a flyaway look to her clothes, and the
uncomfortable appearance of a girl who was rapidly shooting up into a
woman and didn't like it. Elizabeth, or Beth, as everyone called her,
was a rosy, smooth-haired, bright-eyed girl of thirteen, with a shy
manner, a timid voice, and a peaceful expression which was seldom
disturbed.  Her father called her 'Little Miss Tranquility', and the
name suited her excellently, for she seemed to live in a happy world of
her own, only venturing out to meet the few whom she trusted and loved.
Amy, though the youngest, was a most important person, in her own
opinion at least.  A regular snow maiden, with blue eyes, and yellow
hair curling on her shoulders, pale and slender, and always carrying
herself like a young lady mindful of her manners.  What the characters
of the four sisters were we will leave to be found out.

The clock struck six and, having swept up the hearth, Beth put a pair
of slippers down to warm.  Somehow the sight of the old shoes had a
good effect upon the girls, for Mother was coming, and everyone
brightened to welcome her.  Meg stopped lecturing, and lighted the
lamp, Amy got out of the easy chair without being asked, and Jo forgot
how tired she was as she sat up to hold the slippers nearer to the
blaze.

"They are quite worn out.  Marmee must have a new pair."

"I thought I'd get her some with my dollar," said Beth.

"No, I shall!" cried Amy.

"I'm the oldest," began Meg, but Jo cut in with a decided, "I'm the man
of the family now Papa is away, and I shall provide the slippers, for
he told me to take special care of Mother while he was gone."

"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Beth, "let's each get her something
for Christmas, and not get anything for ourselves."

"That's like you, dear!  What will we get?" exclaimed Jo.

Everyone thought soberly for a minute, then Meg announced, as if the
idea was suggested by the sight of her own pretty hands, "I shall give
her a nice pair of gloves."

"Army shoes, best to be had," cried Jo.

"Some handkerchiefs, all hemmed," said Beth.

"I'll get a little bottle of cologne.  She likes it, and it won't cost
much, so I'll have some left to buy my pencils," added Amy.

"How will we give the things?" asked Meg.

"Put them on the table, and bring her in and see her open the bundles.
Don't you remember how we used to do on our birthdays?" answered Jo.

"I used to be so frightened when it was my turn to sit in the chair
with the crown on, and see you all come marching round to give the
presents, with a kiss.  I liked the things and the kisses, but it was
dreadful to have you sit looking at me while I opened the bundles,"
said Beth, who was toasting her face and the bread for tea at the same
time.

"Let Marmee think we are getting things for ourselves, and then
surprise her.  We must go shopping tomorrow afternoon, Meg. There is so
much to do about the play for Christmas night," said Jo, marching up
and down, with her hands behind her back, and her nose in the air.

"I don't mean to act any more after this time.  I'm getting too old for
such things," observed Meg, who was as much a child as ever about
'dressing-up' frolics.

"You won't stop, I know, as long as you can trail round in a white gown
with your hair down, and wear gold-paper jewelry. You are the best
actress we've got, and there'll be an end of everything if you quit the
boards," said Jo.  "We ought to rehearse tonight.  Come here, Amy, and
do the fainting scene, for you are as stiff as a poker in that."

"I can't help it.  I never saw anyone faint, and I don't choose to make
myself all black and blue, tumbling flat as you do.  If I can go down
easily, I'll drop.  If I can't, I shall fall into a chair and be
graceful.  I don't care if Hugo does come at me with a pistol,"
returned Amy, who was not gifted with dramatic power, but was chosen
because she was small enough to be borne out shrieking by the villain
of the piece.

"Do it this way.  Clasp your hands so, and stagger across the room,
crying frantically, 'Roderigo! Save me! Save me!'" and away went Jo,
with a melodramatic scream which was truly thrilling.

Amy followed, but she poked her hands out stiffly before her, and
jerked herself along as if she went by machinery, and her "Ow!" was
more suggestive of pins being run into her than of fear and anguish.
Jo gave a despairing groan, and Meg laughed outright, while Beth let
her bread burn as she watched the fun with interest. "It's no use!  Do
the best you can when the time comes, and if the audience laughs, don't
blame me.  Come on, Meg."

Then things went smoothly, for Don Pedro defied the world in a speech
of two pages without a single break.  Hagar, the witch, chanted an
awful incantation over her kettleful of simmering toads, with weird
effect.  Roderigo rent his chains asunder manfully, and Hugo died in
agonies of remorse and arsenic, with a wild, "Ha! Ha!"

"It's the best we've had yet," said Meg, as the dead villain sat up and
rubbed his elbows.

"I don't see how you can write and act such splendid things, Jo.
You're a regular Shakespeare!" exclaimed Beth, who firmly believed that
her sisters were gifted with wonderful genius in all things.

"Not quite," replied Jo modestly.  "I do think _The Witches Curse, an
Operatic Tragedy_ is rather a nice thing, but I'd like to try
_Macbeth_, if we only had a trapdoor for Banquo.  I always wanted to do
the killing part.  'Is that a dagger that I see before me?" muttered
Jo, rolling her eyes and clutching at the air, as she had seen a famous
tragedian do.

"No, it's the toasting fork, with Mother's shoe on it instead of the
bread.  Beth's stage-struck!" cried Meg, and the rehearsal ended in a
general burst of laughter.

"Glad to find you so merry, my girls," said a cheery voice at the door,
and actors and audience turned to welcome a tall, motherly lady with a
'can I help you' look about her which was truly delightful. She was not
elegantly dressed, but a noble-looking woman, and the girls thought the
gray cloak and unfashionable bonnet covered the most splendid mother in
the world.

"Well, dearies, how have you got on today?  There was so much to do,
getting the boxes ready to go tomorrow, that I didn't come home to
dinner.  Has anyone called, Beth?  How is your cold, Meg?  Jo, you look
tired to death.  Come and kiss me, baby."

While making these maternal inquiries Mrs. March got her wet things
off, her warm slippers on, and sitting down in the easy chair, drew Amy
to her lap, preparing to enjoy the happiest hour of her busy day.  The
girls flew about, trying to make things comfortable, each in her own
way.  Meg arranged the tea table, Jo brought wood and set chairs,
dropping, over-turning, and clattering everything she touched.  Beth
trotted to and fro between parlor kitchen, quiet and busy, while Amy
gave directions to everyone, as she sat with her hands folded.

As they gathered about the table, Mrs. March said, with a particularly
happy face, "I've got a treat for you after supper."

A quick, bright smile went round like a streak of sunshine. Beth
clapped her hands, regardless of the biscuit she held, and Jo tossed up
her napkin, crying, "A letter!  A letter!  Three cheers for Father!"

"Yes, a nice long letter.  He is well, and thinks he shall get through
the cold season better than we feared.  He sends all sorts of loving
wishes for Christmas, and an especial message to you girls," said Mrs.
March, patting her pocket as if she had got a treasure there.

"Hurry and get done!  Don't stop to quirk your little finger and simper
over your plate, Amy," cried Jo, choking on her tea and dropping her
bread, butter side down, on the carpet in her haste to get at the treat.

Beth ate no more, but crept away to sit in her shadowy corner and brood
over the delight to come, till the others were ready.

"I think it was so splendid in Father to go as chaplain when he was too
old to be drafted, and not strong enough for a soldier," said Meg
warmly.

"Don't I wish I could go as a drummer, a vivan--what's its name?  Or a
nurse, so I could be near him and help him," exclaimed Jo, with a groan.

"It must be very disagreeable to sleep in a tent, and eat all sorts of
bad-tasting things, and drink out of a tin mug," sighed Amy.

"When will he come home, Marmee?" asked Beth, with a little quiver in
her voice.

"Not for many months, dear, unless he is sick.  He will stay and do his
work faithfully as long as he can, and we won't ask for him back a
minute sooner than he can be spared.  Now come and hear the letter."

They all drew to the fire, Mother in the big chair with Beth at her
feet, Meg and Amy perched on either arm of the chair, and Jo leaning on
the back, where no one would see any sign of emotion if the letter
should happen to be touching.  Very few letters were written in those
hard times that were not touching, especially those which fathers sent
home.  In this one little was said of the hardships endured, the
dangers faced, or the homesickness conquered. It was a cheerful,
hopeful letter, full of lively descriptions of camp life, marches, and
military news, and only at the end did the writer's heart over-flow
with fatherly love and longing for the little girls at home.

"Give them all of my dear love and a kiss.  Tell them I think of them
by day, pray for them by night, and find my best comfort in their
affection at all times.  A year seems very long to wait before I see
them, but remind them that while we wait we may all work, so that these
hard days need not be wasted.  I know they will remember all I said to
them, that they will be loving children to you, will do their duty
faithfully, fight their bosom enemies bravely, and conquer themselves
so beautifully that when I come back to them I may be fonder and
prouder than ever of my little women." Everybody sniffed when they came
to that part.  Jo wasn't ashamed of the great tear that dropped off the
end of her nose, and Amy never minded the rumpling of her curls as she
hid her face on her mother's shoulder and sobbed out, "I am a selfish
girl!  But I'll truly try to be better, so he mayn't be disappointed in
me by-and-by."

"We all will," cried Meg.  "I think too much of my looks and hate to
work, but won't any more, if I can help it."

"I'll try and be what he loves to call me, 'a little woman' and not be
rough and wild, but do my duty here instead of wanting to be somewhere
else," said Jo, thinking that keeping her temper at home was a much
harder task than facing a rebel or two down South.

Beth said nothing, but wiped away her tears with the blue army sock and
began to knit with all her might, losing no time in doing the duty that
lay nearest her, while she resolved in her quiet little soul to be all
that Father hoped to find her when the year brought round the happy
coming home.

Mrs. March broke the silence that followed Jo's words, by saying in her
cheery voice, "Do you remember how you used to play Pilgrims Progress
when you were little things?  Nothing delighted you more than to have
me tie my piece bags on your backs for burdens, give you hats and
sticks and rolls of paper, and let you travel through the house from
the cellar, which was the City of Destruction, up, up, to the housetop,
where you had all the lovely things you could collect to make a
Celestial City."

"What fun it was, especially going by the lions, fighting Apollyon, and
passing through the valley where the hob-goblins were," said Jo.

"I liked the place where the bundles fell off and tumbled downstairs,"
said Meg.

"I don't remember much about it, except that I was afraid of the cellar
and the dark entry, and always liked the cake and milk we had up at the
top.  If I wasn't too old for such things, I'd rather like to play it
over again," said Amy, who began to talk of renouncing childish things
at the mature age of twelve.

"We never are too old for this, my dear, because it is a play we are
playing all the time in one way or another.  Our burdens are here, our
road is before us, and the longing for goodness and happiness is the
guide that leads us through many troubles and mistakes to the peace
which is a true Celestial City.  Now, my little pilgrims, suppose you
begin again, not in play, but in earnest, and see how far on you can
get before Father comes home."

"Really, Mother?  Where are our bundles?" asked Amy, who was a very
literal young lady.

"Each of you told what your burden was just now, except Beth. I rather
think she hasn't got any," said her mother.

"Yes, I have.  Mine is dishes and dusters, and envying girls with nice
pianos, and being afraid of people."

Beth's bundle was such a funny one that everybody wanted to laugh, but
nobody did, for it would have hurt her feelings very much.

"Let us do it," said Meg thoughtfully.  "It is only another name for
trying to be good, and the story may help us, for though we do want to
be good, it's hard work and we forget, and don't do our best."

"We were in the Slough of Despond tonight, and Mother came and pulled
us out as Help did in the book.  We ought to have our roll of
directions, like Christian.  What shall we do about that?" asked Jo,
delighted with the fancy which lent a little romance to the very dull
task of doing her duty.

"Look under your pillows Christmas morning, and you will find your
guidebook," replied Mrs. March.

They talked over the new plan while old Hannah cleared the table, then
out came the four little work baskets, and the needles flew as the
girls made sheets for Aunt March.  It was uninteresting sewing, but
tonight no one grumbled.  They adopted Jo's plan of dividing the long
seams into four parts, and calling the quarters Europe, Asia, Africa,
and America, and in that way got on capitally, especially when they
talked about the different countries as they stitched their way through
them.

At nine they stopped work, and sang, as usual, before they went to bed.
No one but Beth could get much music out of the old piano, but she had
a way of softly touching the yellow keys and making a pleasant
accompaniment to the simple songs they sang.  Meg had a voice like a
flute, and she and her mother led the little choir.  Amy chirped like a
cricket, and Jo wandered through the airs at her own sweet will, always
coming out at the wrong place with a croak or a quaver that spoiled the
most pensive tune.  They had always done this from the time they could
lisp...

    Crinkle, crinkle, 'ittle 'tar,

and it had become a household custom, for the mother was a born singer.
The first sound in the morning was her voice as she went about the
house singing like a lark, and the last sound at night was the same
cheery sound, for the girls never grew too old for that familiar
lullaby.



CHAPTER TWO

A MERRY CHRISTMAS

Jo was the first to wake in the gray dawn of Christmas morning. No
stockings hung at the fireplace, and for a moment she felt as much
disappointed as she did long ago, when her little sock fell down
because it was crammed so full of goodies.  Then she remembered her
mother's promise and, slipping her hand under her pillow, drew out a
little crimson-covered book.  She knew it very well, for it was that
beautiful old story of the best life ever lived, and Jo felt that it
was a true guidebook for any pilgrim going on a long journey.  She woke
Meg with a "Merry Christmas," and bade her see what was under her
pillow.  A green-covered book appeared, with the same picture inside,
and a few words written by their mother, which made their one present
very precious in their eyes.  Presently Beth and Amy woke to rummage
and find their little books also, one dove-colored, the other blue, and
all sat looking at and talking about them, while the east grew rosy
with the coming day.

In spite of her small vanities, Margaret had a sweet and pious nature,
which unconsciously influenced her sisters, especially Jo, who loved
her very tenderly, and obeyed her because her advice was so gently
given.

"Girls," said Meg seriously, looking from the tumbled head beside her
to the two little night-capped ones in the room beyond, "Mother wants
us to read and love and mind these books, and we must begin at once.
We used to be faithful about it, but since Father went away and all
this war trouble unsettled us, we have neglected many things.  You can
do as you please, but I shall keep my book on the table here and read a
little every morning as soon as I wake, for I know it will do me good
and help me through the day."

Then she opened her new book and began to read.  Jo put her arm round
her and, leaning cheek to cheek, read also, with the quiet expression
so seldom seen on her restless face.

"How good Meg is!  Come, Amy, let's do as they do.  I'll help you with
the hard words, and they'll explain things if we don't understand,"
whispered Beth, very much impressed by the pretty books and her
sisters' example.

"I'm glad mine is blue," said Amy.  and then the rooms were very still
while the pages were softly turned, and the winter sunshine crept in to
touch the bright heads and serious faces with a Christmas greeting.

"Where is Mother?" asked Meg, as she and Jo ran down to thank her for
their gifts, half an hour later.

"Goodness only knows.  Some poor creeter came a-beggin', and your ma
went straight off to see what was needed.  There never was such a woman
for givin' away vittles and drink, clothes and firin'," replied Hannah,
who had lived with the family since Meg was born, and was considered by
them all more as a friend than a servant.

"She will be back soon, I think, so fry your cakes, and have everything
ready," said Meg, looking over the presents which were collected in a
basket and kept under the sofa, ready to be produced at the proper
time.  "Why, where is Amy's bottle of cologne?" she added, as the
little flask did not appear.

"She took it out a minute ago, and went off with it to put a ribbon on
it, or some such notion," replied Jo, dancing about the room to take
the first stiffness off the new army slippers.

"How nice my handkerchiefs look, don't they?  Hannah washed and ironed
them for me, and I marked them all myself," said Beth, looking proudly
at the somewhat uneven letters which had cost her such labor.

"Bless the child!  She's gone and put 'Mother' on them instead of 'M.
March'.  How funny!" cried Jo, taking one up.

"Isn't that right?  I thought it was better to do it so, because Meg's
initials are M.M., and I don't want anyone to use these but Marmee,"
said Beth, looking troubled.

"It's all right, dear, and a very pretty idea, quite sensible too, for
no one can ever mistake now.  It will please her very much, I know,"
said Meg, with a frown for Jo and a smile for Beth.

"There's Mother.  Hide the basket, quick!" cried Jo, as a door slammed
and steps sounded in the hall.

Amy came in hastily, and looked rather abashed when she saw her sisters
all waiting for her.

"Where have you been, and what are you hiding behind you?" asked Meg,
surprised to see, by her hood and cloak, that lazy Amy had been out so
early.

"Don't laugh at me, Jo!  I didn't mean anyone should know till the time
came.  I only meant to change the little bottle for a big one, and I
gave all my money to get it, and I'm truly trying not to be selfish any
more."

As she spoke, Amy showed the handsome flask which replaced the cheap
one, and looked so earnest and humble in her little effort to forget
herself that Meg hugged her on the spot, and Jo pronounced her 'a
trump', while Beth ran to the window, and picked her finest rose to
ornament the stately bottle.

"You see I felt ashamed of my present, after reading and talking about
being good this morning, so I ran round the corner and changed it the
minute I was up, and I'm so glad, for mine is the handsomest now."

Another bang of the street door sent the basket under the sofa, and the
girls to the table, eager for breakfast.

"Merry Christmas, Marmee!  Many of them!  Thank you for our books.  We
read some, and mean to every day," they all cried in chorus.

"Merry Christmas, little daughters!  I'm glad you began at once, and
hope you will keep on.  But I want to say one word before we sit down.
Not far away from here lies a poor woman with a little newborn baby.
Six children are huddled into one bed to keep from freezing, for they
have no fire.  There is nothing to eat over there, and the oldest boy
came to tell me they were suffering hunger and cold.  My girls, will
you give them your breakfast as a Christmas present?"

They were all unusually hungry, having waited nearly an hour, and for a
minute no one spoke, only a minute, for Jo exclaimed impetuously, "I'm
so glad you came before we began!"

"May I go and help carry the things to the poor little children?" asked
Beth eagerly.

"I shall take the cream and the muffings," added Amy, heroically giving
up the article she most liked.

Meg was already covering the buckwheats, and piling the bread into one
big plate.

"I thought you'd do it," said Mrs. March, smiling as if satisfied. "You
shall all go and help me, and when we come back we will have bread and
milk for breakfast, and make it up at dinnertime."

They were soon ready, and the procession set out.  Fortunately it was
early, and they went through back streets, so few people saw them, and
no one laughed at the queer party.

A poor, bare, miserable room it was, with broken windows, no fire,
ragged bedclothes, a sick mother, wailing baby, and a group of pale,
hungry children cuddled under one old quilt, trying to keep warm.

How the big eyes stared and the blue lips smiled as the girls went in.

"Ach, mein Gott!  It is good angels come to us!" said the poor woman,
crying for joy.

"Funny angels in hoods and mittens," said Jo, and set them to laughing.

In a few minutes it really did seem as if kind spirits had been at work
there.  Hannah, who had carried wood, made a fire, and stopped up the
broken panes with old hats and her own cloak.  Mrs. March gave the
mother tea and gruel, and comforted her with promises of help, while
she dressed the little baby as tenderly as if it had been her own.  The
girls meantime spread the table, set the children round the fire, and
fed them like so many hungry birds, laughing, talking, and trying to
understand the funny broken English.

"Das ist gut!"  "Die Engel-kinder!" cried the poor things as they ate
and warmed their purple hands at the comfortable blaze. The girls had
never been called angel children before, and thought it very agreeable,
especially Jo, who had been considered a 'Sancho' ever since she was
born.  That was a very happy breakfast, though they didn't get any of
it.  And when they went away, leaving comfort behind, I think there
were not in all the city four merrier people than the hungry little
girls who gave away their breakfasts and contented themselves with
bread and milk on Christmas morning.

"That's loving our neighbor better than ourselves, and I like it," said
Meg, as they set out their presents while their mother was upstairs
collecting clothes for the poor Hummels.

Not a very splendid show, but there was a great deal of love done up in
the few little bundles, and the tall vase of red roses, white
chrysanthemums, and trailing vines, which stood in the middle, gave
quite an elegant air to the table.

"She's coming!  Strike up, Beth!  Open the door, Amy!  Three cheers for
Marmee!" cried Jo, prancing about while Meg went to conduct Mother to
the seat of honor.

Beth played her gayest march, Amy threw open the door, and Meg enacted
escort with great dignity.  Mrs. March was both surprised and touched,
and smiled with her eyes full as she examined her presents and read the
little notes which accompanied them.  The slippers went on at once, a
new handkerchief was slipped into her pocket, well scented with Amy's
cologne, the rose was fastened in her bosom, and the nice gloves were
pronounced a perfect fit.

There was a good deal of laughing and kissing and explaining, in the
simple, loving fashion which makes these home festivals so pleasant at
the time, so sweet to remember long afterward, and then all fell to
work.

The morning charities and ceremonies took so much time that the rest of
the day was devoted to preparations for the evening festivities.  Being
still too young to go often to the theater, and not rich enough to
afford any great outlay for private performances, the girls put their
wits to work, and necessity being the mother of invention, made
whatever they needed.  Very clever were some of their productions,
pasteboard guitars, antique lamps made of old-fashioned butter boats
covered with silver paper, gorgeous robes of old cotton, glittering
with tin spangles from a pickle factory, and armor covered with the
same useful diamond shaped bits left in sheets when the lids of
preserve pots were cut out.  The big chamber was the scene of many
innocent revels.

No gentleman were admitted, so Jo played male parts to her heart's
content and took immense satisfaction in a pair of russet leather boots
given her by a friend, who knew a lady who knew an actor.  These boots,
an old foil, and a slashed doublet once used by an artist for some
picture, were Jo's chief treasures and appeared on all occasions.  The
smallness of the company made it necessary for the two principal actors
to take several parts apiece, and they certainly deserved some credit
for the hard work they did in learning three or four different parts,
whisking in and out of various costumes, and managing the stage
besides.  It was excellent drill for their memories, a harmless
amusement, and employed many hours which otherwise would have been
idle, lonely, or spent in less profitable society.

On Christmas night, a dozen girls piled onto the bed which was the
dress circle, and sat before the blue and yellow chintz curtains in a
most flattering state of expectancy.  There was a good deal of rustling
and whispering behind the curtain, a trifle of lamp smoke, and an
occasional giggle from Amy, who was apt to get hysterical in the
excitement of the moment.  Presently a bell sounded, the curtains flew
apart, and the _operatic tragedy_ began.

"A gloomy wood," according to the one playbill, was represented by a
few shrubs in pots, green baize on the floor, and a cave in the
distance.  This cave was made with a clothes horse for a roof, bureaus
for walls, and in it was a small furnace in full blast, with a black
pot on it and an old witch bending over it.  The stage was dark and the
glow of the furnace had a fine effect, especially as real steam issued
from the kettle when the witch took off the cover.  A moment was
allowed for the first thrill to subside, then Hugo, the villain,
stalked in with a clanking sword at his side, a slouching hat, black
beard, mysterious cloak, and the boots.  After pacing to and fro in
much agitation, he struck his forehead, and burst out in a wild strain,
singing of his hatred for Roderigo, his love for Zara, and his pleasing
resolution to kill the one and win the other. The gruff tones of Hugo's
voice, with an occasional shout when his feelings overcame him, were
very impressive, and the audience applauded the moment he paused for
breath.  Bowing with the air of one accustomed to public praise, he
stole to the cavern and ordered Hagar to come forth with a commanding,
"What ho, minion! I need thee!"

Out came Meg, with gray horsehair hanging about her face, a red and
black robe, a staff, and cabalistic signs upon her cloak.  Hugo
demanded a potion to make Zara adore him, and one to destroy Roderigo.
Hagar, in a fine dramatic melody, promised both, and proceeded to call
up the spirit who would bring the love philter.

    Hither, hither, from thy home,
    Airy sprite, I bid thee come!
    Born of roses, fed on dew,
    Charms and potions canst thou brew?
    Bring me here, with elfin speed,
    The fragrant philter which I need.
    Make it sweet and swift and strong,
    Spirit, answer now my song!

A soft strain of music sounded, and then at the back of the cave
appeared a little figure in cloudy white, with glittering wings, golden
hair, and a garland of roses on its head.  Waving a wand, it sang...

    Hither I come,
    From my airy home,
    Afar in the silver moon.
    Take the magic spell,
    And use it well,
    Or its power will vanish soon!

And dropping a small, gilded bottle at the witch's feet, the spirit
vanished.  Another chant from Hagar produced another apparition, not a
lovely one, for with a bang an ugly black imp appeared and, having
croaked a reply, tossed a dark bottle at Hugo and disappeared with a
mocking laugh.  Having warbled his thanks and put the potions in his
boots, Hugo departed, and Hagar informed the audience that as he had
killed a few of her friends in times past, she had cursed him, and
intends to thwart his plans, and be revenged on him.  Then the curtain
fell, and the audience reposed and ate candy while discussing the
merits of the play.

A good deal of hammering went on before the curtain rose again, but
when it became evident what a masterpiece of stage carpentery had been
got up, no one murmured at the delay.  It was truly superb. A tower
rose to the ceiling, halfway up appeared a window with a lamp burning
in it, and behind the white curtain appeared Zara in a lovely blue and
silver dress, waiting for Roderigo.  He came in gorgeous array, with
plumed cap, red cloak, chestnut lovelocks, a guitar, and the boots, of
course.  Kneeling at the foot of the tower, he sang a serenade in
melting tones.  Zara replied and, after a musical dialogue, consented
to fly.  Then came the grand effect of the play.  Roderigo produced a
rope ladder, with five steps to it, threw up one end, and invited Zara
to descend.  Timidly she crept from her lattice, put her hand on
Roderigo's shoulder, and was about to leap gracefully down when "Alas!
Alas for Zara!" she forgot her train.  It caught in the window, the
tower tottered, leaned forward, fell with a crash, and buried the
unhappy lovers in the ruins.

A universal shriek arose as the russet boots waved wildly from the
wreck and a golden head emerged, exclaiming, "I told you so!  I told
you so!"  With wonderful presence of mind, Don Pedro, the cruel sire,
rushed in, dragged out his daughter, with a hasty aside...

"Don't laugh!  Act as if it was all right!" and, ordering Roderigo up,
banished him from the kingdom with wrath and scorn. Though decidedly
shaken by the fall from the tower upon him, Roderigo defied the old
gentleman and refused to stir.  This dauntless example fired Zara.  She
also defied her sire, and he ordered them both to the deepest dungeons
of the castle.  A stout little retainer came in with chains and led
them away, looking very much frightened and evidently forgetting the
speech he ought to have made.

Act third was the castle hall, and here Hagar appeared, having come to
free the lovers and finish Hugo.  She hears him coming and hides, sees
him put the potions into two cups of wine and bid the timid little
servant, "Bear them to the captives in their cells, and tell them I
shall come anon."  The servant takes Hugo aside to tell him something,
and Hagar changes the cups for two others which are harmless.
Ferdinando, the 'minion', carries them away, and Hagar puts back the
cup which holds the poison meant for Roderigo. Hugo, getting thirsty
after a long warble, drinks it, loses his wits, and after a good deal
of clutching and stamping, falls flat and dies, while Hagar informs him
what she has done in a song of exquisite power and melody.

This was a truly thrilling scene, though some persons might have
thought that the sudden tumbling down of a quantity of long red hair
rather marred the effect of the villain's death.  He was called before
the curtain, and with great propriety appeared, leading Hagar, whose
singing was considered more wonderful than all the rest of the
performance put together.

Act fourth displayed the despairing Roderigo on the point of stabbing
himself because he has been told that Zara has deserted him. Just as
the dagger is at his heart, a lovely song is sung under his window,
informing him that Zara is true but in danger, and he can save her if
he will.  A key is thrown in, which unlocks the door, and in a spasm of
rapture he tears off his chains and rushes away to find and rescue his
lady love.

Act fifth opened with a stormy scene between Zara and Don Pedro. He
wishes her to go into a convent, but she won't hear of it, and after a
touching appeal, is about to faint when Roderigo dashes in and demands
her hand.  Don Pedro refuses, because he is not rich. They shout and
gesticulate tremendously but cannot agree, and Rodrigo is about to bear
away the exhausted Zara, when the timid servant enters with a letter
and a bag from Hagar, who has mysteriously disappeared.  The latter
informs the party that she bequeaths untold wealth to the young pair
and an awful doom to Don Pedro, if he doesn't make them happy.  The bag
is opened, and several quarts of tin money shower down upon the stage
till it is quite glorified with the glitter.  This entirely softens the
stern sire.  He consents without a murmur, all join in a joyful chorus,
and the curtain falls upon the lovers kneeling to receive Don Pedro's
blessing in attitudes of the most romantic grace.

Tumultuous applause followed but received an unexpected check, for the
cot bed, on which the dress circle was built, suddenly shut up and
extinguished the enthusiastic audience.  Roderigo and Don Pedro flew to
the rescue, and all were taken out unhurt, though many were speechless
with laughter.  The excitement had hardly subsided when Hannah
appeared, with "Mrs. March's compliments, and would the ladies walk
down to supper."

This was a surprise even to the actors, and when they saw the table,
they looked at one another in rapturous amazement.  It was like Marmee
to get up a little treat for them, but anything so fine as this was
unheard of since the departed days of plenty.  There was ice cream,
actually two dishes of it, pink and white, and cake and fruit and
distracting French bonbons and, in the middle of the table, four great
bouquets of hot house flowers.

It quite took their breath away, and they stared first at the table and
then at their mother, who looked as if she enjoyed it immensely.

"Is it fairies?" asked Amy.

"Santa Claus," said Beth.

"Mother did it." And Meg smiled her sweetest, in spite of her gray
beard and white eyebrows.

"Aunt March had a good fit and sent the supper," cried Jo, with a
sudden inspiration.

"All wrong.  Old Mr. Laurence sent it," replied Mrs. March.

"The Laurence boy's grandfather! What in the world put such a thing
into his head?  We don't know him!" exclaimed Meg.

"Hannah told one of his servants about your breakfast party. He is an
odd old gentleman, but that pleased him.  He knew my father years ago,
and he sent me a polite note this afternoon, saying he hoped I would
allow him to express his friendly feeling toward my children by sending
them a few trifles in honor of the day.  I could not refuse, and so you
have a little feast at night to make up for the bread-and-milk
breakfast."

"That boy put it into his head, I know he did!  He's a capital fellow,
and I wish we could get acquainted.  He looks as if he'd like to know
us but he's bashful, and Meg is so prim she won't let me speak to him
when we pass," said Jo, as the plates went round, and the ice began to
melt out of sight, with ohs and ahs of satisfaction.

"You mean the people who live in the big house next door, don't you?"
asked one of the girls.  "My mother knows old Mr. Laurence, but says
he's very proud and doesn't like to mix with his neighbors. He keeps
his grandson shut up, when he isn't riding or walking with his tutor,
and makes him study very hard.  We invited him to our party, but he
didn't come.  Mother says he's very nice, though he never speaks to us
girls."

"Our cat ran away once, and he brought her back, and we talked over the
fence, and were getting on capitally, all about cricket, and so on,
when he saw Meg coming, and walked off.  I mean to know him some day,
for he needs fun, I'm sure he does," said Jo decidedly.

"I like his manners, and he looks like a little gentleman, so I've no
objection to your knowing him, if a proper opportunity comes. He
brought the flowers himself, and I should have asked him in, if I had
been sure what was going on upstairs.  He looked so wistful as he went
away, hearing the frolic and evidently having none of his own."

"It's a mercy you didn't, Mother!" laughed Jo, looking at her boots.
"But we'll have another play sometime that he can see.  Perhaps he'll
help act.  Wouldn't that be jolly?"

"I never had such a fine bouquet before!  How pretty it is!" And Meg
examined her flowers with great interest.

"They are lovely.  But Beth's roses are sweeter to me," said Mrs.
March, smelling the half-dead posy in her belt.

Beth nestled up to her, and whispered softly, "I wish I could send my
bunch to Father.  I'm afraid he isn't having such a merry Christmas as
we are."



CHAPTER THREE

THE LAURENCE BOY

"Jo!  Jo!  Where are you?" cried Meg at the foot of the garret stairs.

"Here!" answered a husky voice from above, and, running up, Meg found
her sister eating apples and crying over the Heir of Redclyffe, wrapped
up in a comforter on an old three-legged sofa by the sunny window.
This was Jo's favorite refuge, and here she loved to retire with half a
dozen russets and a nice book, to enjoy the quiet and the society of a
pet rat who lived near by and didn't mind her a particle.  As Meg
appeared, Scrabble whisked into his hole.  Jo shook the tears off her
cheeks and waited to hear the news.

"Such fun!  Only see!  A regular note of invitation from Mrs. Gardiner
for tomorrow night!" cried Meg, waving the precious paper and then
proceeding to read it with girlish delight.

"'Mrs. Gardiner would be happy to see Miss March and Miss Josephine at
a little dance on New Year's Eve.' Marmee is willing we should go, now
what shall we wear?"

"What's the use of asking that, when you know we shall wear our
poplins, because we haven't got anything else?" answered Jo with her
mouth full.

"If I only had a silk!" sighed Meg.  "Mother says I may when I'm
eighteen perhaps, but two years is an everlasting time to wait."

"I'm sure our pops look like silk, and they are nice enough for us.
Yours is as good as new, but I forgot the burn and the tear in mine.
Whatever shall I do?  The burn shows badly, and I can't take any out."

"You must sit still all you can and keep your back out of sight. The
front is all right.  I shall have a new ribbon for my hair, and Marmee
will lend me her little pearl pin, and my new slippers are lovely, and
my gloves will do, though they aren't as nice as I'd like."

"Mine are spoiled with lemonade, and I can't get any new ones, so I
shall have to go without," said Jo, who never troubled herself much
about dress.

"You must have gloves, or I won't go," cried Meg decidedly. "Gloves are
more important than anything else.  You can't dance without them, and
if you don't I should be so mortified."

"Then I'll stay still.  I don't care much for company dancing. It's no
fun to go sailing round.  I like to fly about and cut capers."

"You can't ask Mother for new ones, they are so expensive, and you are
so careless.  She said when you spoiled the others that she shouldn't
get you any more this winter.  Can't you make them do?"

"I can hold them crumpled up in my hand, so no one will know how
stained they are.  That's all I can do.  No!  I'll tell you how we can
manage, each wear one good one and carry a bad one.  Don't you see?"

"Your hands are bigger than mine, and you will stretch my glove
dreadfully," began Meg, whose gloves were a tender point with her.

"Then I'll go without.  I don't care what people say!" cried Jo, taking
up her book.

"You may have it, you may!  Only don't stain it, and do behave nicely.
Don't put your hands behind you, or stare, or say 'Christopher
Columbus!' will you?"

"Don't worry about me.  I'll be as prim as I can and not get into any
scrapes, if I can help it.  Now go and answer your note, and let me
finish this splendid story."

So Meg went away to 'accept with thanks', look over her dress, and sing
blithely as she did up her one real lace frill, while Jo finished her
story, her four apples, and had a game of romps with Scrabble.

On New Year's Eve the parlor was deserted, for the two younger girls
played dressing maids and the two elder were absorbed in the
all-important business of 'getting ready for the party'.  Simple as the
toilets were, there was a great deal of running up and down, laughing
and talking, and at one time a strong smell of burned hair pervaded the
house.  Meg wanted a few curls about her face, and Jo undertook to
pinch the papered locks with a pair of hot tongs.

"Ought they to smoke like that?" asked Beth from her perch on the bed.

"It's the dampness drying," replied Jo.

"What a queer smell!  It's like burned feathers," observed Amy,
smoothing her own pretty curls with a superior air.

"There, now I'll take off the papers and you'll see a cloud of little
ringlets," said Jo, putting down the tongs.

She did take off the papers, but no cloud of ringlets appeared, for the
hair came with the papers, and the horrified hairdresser laid a row of
little scorched bundles on the bureau before her victim.

"Oh, oh, oh! What have you done?  I'm spoiled!  I can't go!  My hair,
oh, my hair!" wailed Meg, looking with despair at the uneven frizzle on
her forehead.

"Just my luck!  You shouldn't have asked me to do it.  I always spoil
everything.  I'm so sorry, but the tongs were too hot, and so I've made
a mess," groaned poor Jo, regarding the little black pancakes with
tears of regret.

"It isn't spoiled.  Just frizzle it, and tie your ribbon so the ends
come on your forehead a bit, and it will look like the last fashion.
I've seen many girls do it so," said Amy consolingly.

"Serves me right for trying to be fine.  I wish I'd let my hair alone,"
cried Meg petulantly.

"So do I, it was so smooth and pretty.  But it will soon grow out
again," said Beth, coming to kiss and comfort the shorn sheep.

After various lesser mishaps, Meg was finished at last, and by the
united exertions of the entire family Jo's hair was got up and her
dress on.  They looked very well in their simple suits, Meg's in
silvery drab, with a blue velvet snood, lace frills, and the pearl pin.
Jo in maroon, with a stiff, gentlemanly linen collar, and a white
chrysanthemum or two for her only ornament. Each put on one nice light
glove, and carried one soiled one, and all pronounced the effect "quite
easy and fine".  Meg's high-heeled slippers were very tight and hurt
her, though she would not own it, and Jo's nineteen hairpins all seemed
stuck straight into her head, which was not exactly comfortable, but,
dear me, let us be elegant or die.

"Have a good time, dearies!" said Mrs. March, as the sisters went
daintily down the walk.  "Don't eat much supper, and come away at
eleven when I send Hannah for you."  As the gate clashed behind them, a
voice cried from a window...

"Girls, girls!  Have you you both got nice pocket handkerchiefs?"

"Yes, yes, spandy nice, and Meg has cologne on hers," cried Jo, adding
with a laugh as they went on, "I do believe Marmee would ask that if we
were all running away from an earthquake."

"It is one of her aristocratic tastes, and quite proper, for a real
lady is always known by neat boots, gloves, and handkerchief," replied
Meg, who had a good many little 'aristocratic tastes' of her own.

"Now don't forget to keep the bad breadth out of sight, Jo. Is my sash
right?  And does my hair look very bad?" said Meg, as she turned from
the glass in Mrs. Gardiner's dressing room after a prolonged prink.

"I know I shall forget.  If you see me doing anything wrong, just
remind me by a wink, will you?" returned Jo, giving her collar a twitch
and her head a hasty brush.

"No, winking isn't ladylike.  I'll lift my eyebrows if any thing is
wrong, and nod if you are all right.  Now hold your shoulder straight,
and take short steps, and don't shake hands if you are introduced to
anyone.  It isn't the thing."

"How do you learn all the proper ways?  I never can.  Isn't that music
gay?"

Down they went, feeling a trifle timid, for they seldom went to
parties, and informal as this little gathering was, it was an event to
them.  Mrs. Gardiner, a stately old lady, greeted them kindly and
handed them over to the eldest of her six daughters. Meg knew Sallie
and was at her ease very soon, but Jo, who didn't care much for girls
or girlish gossip, stood about, with her back carefully against the
wall, and felt as much out of place as a colt in a flower garden.  Half
a dozen jovial lads were talking about skates in another part of the
room, and she longed to go and join them, for skating was one of the
joys of her life.  She telegraphed her wish to Meg, but the eyebrows
went up so alarmingly that she dared not stir.  No one came to talk to
her, and one by one the group dwindled away till she was left alone.
She could not roam about and amuse herself, for the burned breadth
would show, so she stared at people rather forlornly till the dancing
began.  Meg was asked at once, and the tight slippers tripped about so
briskly that none would have guessed the pain their wearer suffered
smilingly.  Jo saw a big red headed youth approaching her corner, and
fearing he meant to engage her, she slipped into a curtained recess,
intending to peep and enjoy herself in peace.  Unfortunately, another
bashful person had chosen the same refuge, for, as the curtain fell
behind her, she found herself face to face with the 'Laurence boy'.

"Dear me, I didn't know anyone was here!" stammered Jo, preparing to
back out as speedily as she had bounced in.

But the boy laughed and said pleasantly, though he looked a little
startled, "Don't mind me, stay if you like."

"Shan't I disturb you?"

"Not a bit.  I only came here because I don't know many people and felt
rather strange at first, you know."

"So did I.  Don't go away, please, unless you'd rather."

The boy sat down again and looked at his pumps, till Jo said, trying to
be polite and easy, "I think I've had the pleasure of seeing you
before.  You live near us, don't you?"

"Next door."  And he looked up and laughed outright, for Jo's prim
manner was rather funny when he remembered how they had chatted about
cricket when he brought the cat home.

That put Jo at her ease and she laughed too, as she said, in her
heartiest way, "We did have such a good time over your nice Christmas
present."

"Grandpa sent it."

"But you put it into his head, didn't you, now?"

"How is your cat, Miss March?" asked the boy, trying to look sober
while his black eyes shone with fun.

"Nicely, thank you, Mr. Laurence.  But I am not Miss March, I'm only
Jo," returned the young lady.

"I'm not Mr. Laurence, I'm only Laurie."

"Laurie Laurence, what an odd name."

"My first name is Theodore, but I don't like it, for the fellows called
me Dora, so I made them say Laurie instead."

"I hate my name, too, so sentimental!  I wish every one would say Jo
instead of Josephine.  How did you make the boys stop calling you Dora?"

"I thrashed 'em."

"I can't thrash Aunt March, so I suppose I shall have to bear it."  And
Jo resigned herself with a sigh.

"Don't you like to dance, Miss Jo?" asked Laurie, looking as if he
thought the name suited her.

"I like it well enough if there is plenty of room, and everyone is
lively.  In a place like this I'm sure to upset something, tread on
people's toes, or do something dreadful, so I keep out of mischief and
let Meg sail about.  Don't you dance?"

"Sometimes.  You see I've been abroad a good many years, and haven't
been into company enough yet to know how you do things here."

"Abroad!" cried Jo.  "Oh, tell me about it!  I love dearly to hear
people describe their travels."

Laurie didn't seem to know where to begin, but Jo's eager questions
soon set him going, and he told her how he had been at school in Vevay,
where the boys never wore hats and had a fleet of boats on the lake,
and for holiday fun went on walking trips about Switzerland with their
teachers.

"Don't I wish I'd been there!" cried Jo.  "Did you go to Paris?"

"We spent last winter there."

"Can you talk French?"

"We were not allowed to speak anything else at Vevay."

"Do say some!  I can read it, but can't pronounce."

"Quel nom a cette jeune demoiselle en les pantoufles jolis?"

"How nicely you do it!  Let me see ... you said, 'Who is the young lady
in the pretty slippers', didn't you?"

"Oui, mademoiselle."

"It's my sister Margaret, and you knew it was!  Do you think she is
pretty?"

"Yes, she makes me think of the German girls, she looks so fresh and
quiet, and dances like a lady."

Jo quite glowed with pleasure at this boyish praise of her sister, and
stored it up to repeat to Meg.  Both peeped and criticized and chatted
till they felt like old acquaintances.  Laurie's bashfulness soon wore
off, for Jo's gentlemanly demeanor amused and set him at his ease, and
Jo was her merry self again, because her dress was forgotten and nobody
lifted their eyebrows at her.  She liked the 'Laurence boy' better than
ever and took several good looks at him, so that she might describe him
to the girls, for they had no brothers, very few male cousins, and boys
were almost unknown creatures to them.

"Curly black hair, brown skin, big black eyes, handsome nose, fine
teeth, small hands and feet, taller than I am, very polite, for a boy,
and altogether jolly.  Wonder how old he is?"

It was on the tip of Jo's tongue to ask, but she checked herself in
time and, with unusual tact, tried to find out in a round-about way.

"I suppose you are going to college soon?  I see you pegging away at
your books, no, I mean studying hard."  And Jo blushed at the dreadful
'pegging' which had escaped her.

Laurie smiled but didn't seem shocked, and answered with a shrug.  "Not
for a year or two.  I won't go before seventeen, anyway."

"Aren't you but fifteen?" asked Jo, looking at the tall lad, whom she
had imagined seventeen already.

"Sixteen, next month."

"How I wish I was going to college!  You don't look as if you liked it."

"I hate it!  Nothing but grinding or skylarking.  And I don't like the
way fellows do either, in this country."

"What do you like?"

"To live in Italy, and to enjoy myself in my own way."

Jo wanted very much to ask what his own way was, but his black brows
looked rather threatening as he knit them, so she changed the subject
by saying, as her foot kept time, "That's a splendid polka!  Why don't
you go and try it?"

"If you will come too," he answered, with a gallant little bow.

"I can't, for I told Meg I wouldn't, because..." There Jo stopped, and
looked undecided whether to tell or to laugh.

"Because, what?"

"You won't tell?"

"Never!"

"Well, I have a bad trick of standing before the fire, and so I burn my
frocks, and I scorched this one, and though it's nicely mended, it
shows, and Meg told me to keep still so no one would see it.  You may
laugh, if you want to.  It is funny, I know."

But Laurie didn't laugh.  He only looked down a minute, and the
expression of his face puzzled Jo when he said very gently, "Never mind
that.  I'll tell you how we can manage.  There's a long hall out there,
and we can dance grandly, and no one will see us. Please come."

Jo thanked him and gladly went, wishing she had two neat gloves when
she saw the nice, pearl-colored ones her partner wore.  The hall was
empty, and they had a grand polka, for Laurie danced well, and taught
her the German step, which delighted Jo, being full of swing and
spring.  When the music stopped, they sat down on the stairs to get
their breath, and Laurie was in the midst of an account of a students'
festival at Heidelberg when Meg appeared in search of her sister.  She
beckoned, and Jo reluctantly followed her into a side room, where she
found her on a sofa, holding her foot, and looking pale.

"I've sprained my ankle.  That stupid high heel turned and gave me a
sad wrench.  It aches so, I can hardly stand, and I don't know how I'm
ever going to get home," she said, rocking to and fro in pain.

"I knew you'd hurt your feet with those silly shoes.  I'm sorry.  But I
don't see what you can do, except get a carriage, or stay here all
night," answered Jo, softly rubbing the poor ankle as she spoke.

"I can't have a carriage without its costing ever so much.  I dare say
I can't get one at all, for most people come in their own, and it's a
long way to the stable, and no one to send."

"I'll go."

"No, indeed!  It's past nine, and dark as Egypt.  I can't stop here,
for the house is full.  Sallie has some girls staying with her. I'll
rest till Hannah comes, and then do the best I can."

"I'll ask Laurie.  He will go," said Jo, looking relieved as the idea
occurred to her.

"Mercy, no!  Don't ask or tell anyone.  Get me my rubbers, and put
these slippers with our things.  I can't dance anymore, but as soon as
supper is over, watch for Hannah and tell me the minute she comes."

"They are going out to supper now.  I'll stay with you.  I'd rather."

"No, dear, run along, and bring me some coffee.  I'm so tired I can't
stir."

So Meg reclined, with rubbers well hidden, and Jo went blundering away
to the dining room, which she found after going into a china closet,
and opening the door of a room where old Mr. Gardiner was taking a
little private refreshment.  Making a dart at the table, she secured
the coffee, which she immediately spilled, thereby making the front of
her dress as bad as the back.

"Oh, dear, what a blunderbuss I am!" exclaimed Jo, finishing Meg's
glove by scrubbing her gown with it.

"Can I help you?" said a friendly voice.  And there was Laurie, with a
full cup in one hand and a plate of ice in the other.

"I was trying to get something for Meg, who is very tired, and someone
shook me, and here I am in a nice state," answered Jo, glancing
dismally from the stained skirt to the coffee-colored glove.

"Too bad!   I was looking for someone to give this to.  May I take it
to your sister?"

"Oh, thank you!  I'll show you where she is.  I don't offer to take it
myself, for I should only get into another scrape if I did."

Jo led the way, and as if used to waiting on ladies, Laurie drew up a
little table, brought a second installment of coffee and ice for Jo,
and was so obliging that even particular Meg pronounced him a 'nice
boy'.  They had a merry time over the bonbons and mottoes, and were in
the midst of a quiet game of _Buzz_, with two or three other young
people who had strayed in, when Hannah appeared.  Meg forgot her foot
and rose so quickly that she was forced to catch hold of Jo, with an
exclamation of pain.

"Hush!  Don't say anything," she whispered, adding aloud, "It's
nothing.  I turned my foot a little, that's all," and limped upstairs
to put her things on.

Hannah scolded, Meg cried, and Jo was at her wits' end, till she
decided to take things into her own hands.  Slipping out, she ran down
and, finding a servant, asked if he could get her a carriage. It
happened to be a hired waiter who knew nothing about the neighborhood
and Jo was looking round for help when Laurie, who had heard what she
said, came up and offered his grandfather's carriage, which had just
come for him, he said.

"It's so early!  You can't mean to go yet?" began Jo, looking relieved
but hesitating to accept the offer.

"I always go early, I do, truly!  Please let me take you home. It's all
on my way, you know, and it rains, they say."

That settled it, and telling him of Meg's mishap, Jo gratefully
accepted and rushed up to bring down the rest of the party.  Hannah
hated rain as much as a cat does so she made no trouble, and they
rolled away in the luxurious close carriage, feeling very festive and
elegant.  Laurie went on the box so Meg could keep her foot up, and the
girls talked over their party in freedom.

"I had a capital time.  Did you?" asked Jo, rumpling up her hair, and
making herself comfortable.

"Yes, till I hurt myself.  Sallie's friend, Annie Moffat, took a fancy
to me, and asked me to come and spend a week with her when Sallie does.
She is going in the spring when the opera comes, and it will be
perfectly splendid, if Mother only lets me go," answered Meg, cheering
up at the thought.

"I saw you dancing with the red headed man I ran away from.  Was he
nice?"

"Oh, very!  His hair is auburn, not red, and he was very polite, and I
had a delicious redowa with him."

"He looked like a grasshopper in a fit when he did the new step. Laurie
and I couldn't help laughing.  Did you hear us?"

"No, but it was very rude.  What were you about all that time, hidden
away there?"

Jo told her adventures, and by the time she had finished they were at
home.  With many thanks, they said good night and crept in, hoping to
disturb no one, but the instant their door creaked, two little
nightcaps bobbed up, and two sleepy but eager voices cried out...

"Tell about the party!  Tell about the party!"

With what Meg called 'a great want of manners' Jo had saved some
bonbons for the little girls, and they soon subsided, after hearing the
most thrilling events of the evening.

"I declare, it really seems like being a fine young lady, to come home
from the party in a carriage and sit in my dressing gown with a maid to
wait on me," said Meg, as Jo bound up her foot with arnica and brushed
her hair.

"I don't believe fine young ladies enjoy themselves a bit more than we
do, in spite of our burned hair, old gowns, one glove apiece and tight
slippers that sprain our ankles when we are silly enough to wear them."
And I think Jo was quite right.



CHAPTER FOUR

BURDENS

"Oh, dear, how hard it does seem to take up our packs and go on,"
sighed Meg the morning after the party, for now the holidays were over,
the week of merrymaking did not fit her for going on easily with the
task she never liked.

"I wish it was Christmas or New Year's all the time. Wouldn't it be
fun?" answered Jo, yawning dismally.

"We shouldn't enjoy ourselves half so much as we do now. But it does
seem so nice to have little suppers and bouquets, and go to parties,
and drive home, and read and rest, and not work.  It's like other
people, you know, and I always envy girls who do such things, I'm so
fond of luxury," said Meg, trying to decide which of two shabby gowns
was the least shabby.

"Well, we can't have it, so don't let us grumble but shoulder our
bundles and trudge along as cheerfully as Marmee does.  I'm sure Aunt
March is a regular Old Man of the Sea to me, but I suppose when I've
learned to carry her without complaining, she will tumble off, or get
so light that I shan't mind her."

This idea tickled Jo's fancy and put her in good spirits, but Meg
didn't brighten, for her burden, consisting of four spoiled children,
seemed heavier than ever. She had not heart enough even to make herself
pretty as usual by putting on a blue neck ribbon and dressing her hair
in the most becoming way.

"Where's the use of looking nice, when no one sees me but those cross
midgets, and no one cares whether I'm pretty or not?" she muttered,
shutting her drawer with a jerk.  "I shall have to toil and moil all my
days, with only little bits of fun now and then, and get old and ugly
and sour, because I'm poor and can't enjoy my life as other girls do.
It's a shame!"

So Meg went down, wearing an injured look, and wasn't at all agreeable
at breakfast time.  Everyone seemed rather out of sorts and inclined to
croak.

Beth had a headache and lay on the sofa, trying to comfort herself with
the cat and three kittens.  Amy was fretting because her lessons were
not learned, and she couldn't find her rubbers.  Jo would whistle and
make a great racket getting ready.

Mrs. March was very busy trying to finish a letter, which must go at
once, and Hannah had the grumps, for being up late didn't suit her.

"There never was such a cross family!" cried Jo, losing her temper when
she had upset an inkstand, broken both boot lacings, and sat down upon
her hat.

"You're the crossest person in it!" returned Amy, washing out the sum
that was all wrong with the tears that had fallen on her slate.

"Beth, if you don't keep these horrid cats down cellar I'll have them
drowned," exclaimed Meg angrily as she tried to get rid of the kitten
which had scrambled up her back and stuck like a burr just out of reach.

Jo laughed, Meg scolded, Beth implored, and Amy wailed because she
couldn't remember how much nine times twelve was.

"Girls, girls, do be quiet one minute!  I must get this off by the
early mail, and you drive me distracted with your worry," cried Mrs.
March, crossing out the third spoiled sentence in her letter.

There was a momentary lull, broken by Hannah, who stalked in, laid two
hot turnovers on the table, and stalked out again. These turnovers were
an institution, and the girls called them 'muffs', for they had no
others and found the hot pies very comforting to their hands on cold
mornings.

Hannah never forgot to make them, no matter how busy or grumpy she
might be, for the walk was long and bleak. The poor things got no other
lunch and were seldom home before two.

"Cuddle your cats and get over your headache, Bethy. Goodbye, Marmee.
We are a set of rascals this morning, but we'll come home regular
angels.  Now then, Meg!"  And Jo tramped away, feeling that the
pilgrims were not setting out as they ought to do.

They always looked back before turning the corner, for their mother was
always at the window to nod and smile, and wave her hand to them.
Somehow it seemed as if they couldn't have got through the day without
that, for whatever their mood might be, the last glimpse of that
motherly face was sure to affect them like sunshine.

"If Marmee shook her fist instead of kissing her hand to us, it would
serve us right, for more ungrateful wretches than we are were never
seen," cried Jo, taking a remorseful satisfaction in the snowy walk and
bitter wind.

"Don't use such dreadful expressions," replied Meg from the depths of
the veil in which she had shrouded herself like a nun sick of the world.

"I like good strong words that mean something," replied Jo, catching
her hat as it took a leap off her head preparatory to flying away
altogether.

"Call yourself any names you like, but I am neither a rascal nor a
wretch and I don't choose to be called so."

"You're a blighted being, and decidedly cross today because you can't
sit in the lap of luxury all the time.  Poor dear, just wait till I
make my fortune, and you shall revel in carriages and ice cream and
high-heeled slippers, and posies, and red-headed boys to dance with."

"How ridiculous you are, Jo!"  But Meg laughed at the nonsense and felt
better in spite of herself.

"Lucky for you I am, for if I put on crushed airs and tried to be
dismal, as you do, we should be in a nice state. Thank goodness, I can
always find something funny to keep me up.  Don't croak any more, but
come home jolly, there's a dear."

Jo gave her sister an encouraging pat on the shoulder as they parted
for the day, each going a different way, each hugging her little warm
turnover, and each trying to be cheerful in spite of wintry weather,
hard work, and the unsatisfied desires of pleasure-loving youth.

When Mr. March lost his property in trying to help an unfortunate
friend, the two oldest girls begged to be allowed to do something
toward their own support, at least.  Believing that they could not
begin too early to cultivate energy, industry, and independence, their
parents consented, and both fell to work with the hearty good will
which in spite of all obstacles is sure to succeed at last.

Margaret found a place as nursery governess and felt rich with her
small salary.  As she said, she was 'fond of luxury', and her chief
trouble was poverty.  She found it harder to bear than the others
because she could remember a time when home was beautiful, life full of
ease and pleasure, and want of any kind unknown.  She tried not to be
envious or discontented, but it was very natural that the young girl
should long for pretty things, gay friends, accomplishments, and a
happy life.  At the Kings' she daily saw all she wanted, for the
children's older sisters were just out, and Meg caught frequent
glimpses of dainty ball dresses and bouquets, heard lively gossip about
theaters, concerts, sleighing parties, and merrymakings of all kinds,
and saw money lavished on trifles which would have been so precious to
her.  Poor Meg seldom complained, but a sense of injustice made her
feel bitter toward everyone sometimes, for she had not yet learned to
know how rich she was in the blessings which alone can make life happy.

Jo happened to suit Aunt March, who was lame and needed an active
person to wait upon her.  The childless old lady had offered to adopt
one of the girls when the troubles came, and was much offended because
her offer was declined.  Other friends told the Marches that they had
lost all chance of being remembered in the rich old lady's will, but
the unworldly Marches only said...

"We can't give up our girls for a dozen fortunes.  Rich or poor, we
will keep together and be happy in one another."

The old lady wouldn't speak to them for a time, but happening to meet
Jo at a friend's, something in her comical face and blunt manners
struck the old lady's fancy, and she proposed to take her for a
companion.  This did not suit Jo at all, but she accepted the place
since nothing better appeared and, to every one's surprise, got on
remarkably well with her irascible relative.  There was an occasional
tempest, and once Jo marched home, declaring she couldn't bear it
longer, but Aunt March always cleared up quickly, and sent for her to
come back again with such urgency that she could not refuse, for in her
heart she rather liked the peppery old lady.

I suspect that the real attraction was a large library of fine books,
which was left to dust and spiders since Uncle March died.  Jo
remembered the kind old gentleman, who used to let her build railroads
and bridges with his big dictionaries, tell her stories about queer
pictures in his Latin books, and buy her cards of gingerbread whenever
he met her in the street.  The dim, dusty room, with the busts staring
down from the tall bookcases, the cozy chairs, the globes, and best of
all, the wilderness of books in which she could wander where she liked,
made the library a region of bliss to her.

The moment Aunt March took her nap, or was busy with company, Jo
hurried to this quiet place, and curling herself up in the easy chair,
devoured poetry, romance, history, travels, and pictures like a regular
bookworm.  But, like all happiness, it did not last long, for as sure
as she had just reached the heart of the story, the sweetest verse of a
song, or the most perilous adventure of her traveler, a shrill voice
called, "Josy-phine! Josy-phine!" and she had to leave her paradise to
wind yarn, wash the poodle, or read Belsham's Essays by the hour
together.

Jo's ambition was to do something very splendid.  What it was, she had
no idea as yet, but left it for time to tell her, and meanwhile, found
her greatest affliction in the fact that she couldn't read, run, and
ride as much as she liked.  A quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless
spirit were always getting her into scrapes, and her life was a series
of ups and downs, which were both comic and pathetic. But the training
she received at Aunt March's was just what she needed, and the thought
that she was doing something to support herself made her happy in spite
of the perpetual "Josy-phine!"

Beth was too bashful to go to school.  It had been tried, but she
suffered so much that it was given up, and she did her lessons at home
with her father.  Even when he went away, and her mother was called to
devote her skill and energy to Soldiers' Aid Societies, Beth went
faithfully on by herself and did the best she could.  She was a
housewifely little creature, and helped Hannah keep home neat and
comfortable for the workers, never thinking of any reward but to be
loved.  Long, quiet days she spent, not lonely nor idle, for her little
world was peopled with imaginary friends, and she was by nature a busy
bee.  There were six dolls to be taken up and dressed every morning,
for Beth was a child still and loved her pets as well as ever.  Not one
whole or handsome one among them, all were outcasts till Beth took them
in, for when her sisters outgrew these idols, they passed to her
because Amy would have nothing old or ugly. Beth cherished them all the
more tenderly for that very reason, and set up a hospital for infirm
dolls.  No pins were ever stuck into their cotton vitals, no harsh
words or blows were ever given them, no neglect ever saddened the heart
of the most repulsive, but all were fed and clothed, nursed and
caressed with an affection which never failed. One forlorn fragment of
dollanity had belonged to Jo and, having led a tempestuous life, was
left a wreck in the rag bag, from which dreary poorhouse it was rescued
by Beth and taken to her refuge.  Having no top to its head, she tied
on a neat little cap, and as both arms and legs were gone, she hid
these deficiencies by folding it in a blanket and devoting her best bed
to this chronic invalid.  If anyone had known the care lavished on that
dolly, I think it would have touched their hearts, even while they
laughed. She brought it bits of bouquets, she read to it, took it out
to breathe fresh air, hidden under her coat, she sang it lullabies and
never went to bed without kissing its dirty face and whispering
tenderly, "I hope you'll have a good night, my poor dear."

Beth had her troubles as well as the others, and not being an angel but
a very human little girl, she often 'wept a little weep' as Jo said,
because she couldn't take music lessons and have a fine piano.  She
loved music so dearly, tried so hard to learn, and practiced away so
patiently at the jingling old instrument, that it did seem as if
someone (not to hint Aunt March) ought to help her.  Nobody did,
however, and nobody saw Beth wipe the tears off the yellow keys, that
wouldn't keep in tune, when she was all alone. She sang like a little
lark about her work, never was too tired for Marmee and the girls, and
day after day said hopefully to herself, "I know I'll get my music some
time, if I'm good."

There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners
till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the
sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and
the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow
behind.

If anybody had asked Amy what the greatest trial of her life was, she
would have answered at once, "My nose."  When she was a baby, Jo had
accidently dropped her into the coal hod, and Amy insisted that the
fall had ruined her nose forever.  It was not big nor red, like poor
'Petrea's', it was only rather flat, and all the pinching in the world
could not give it an aristocratic point.  No one minded it but herself,
and it was doing its best to grow, but Amy felt deeply the want of a
Grecian nose, and drew whole sheets of handsome ones to console herself.

"Little Raphael," as her sisters called her, had a decided talent for
drawing, and was never so happy as when copying flowers, designing
fairies, or illustrating stories with queer specimens of art.  Her
teachers complained that instead of doing her sums she covered her
slate with animals, the blank pages of her atlas were used to copy maps
on, and caricatures of the most ludicrous description came fluttering
out of all her books at unlucky moments.  She got through her lessons
as well as she could, and managed to escape reprimands by being a model
of deportment.  She was a great favorite with her mates, being
good-tempered and possessing the happy art of pleasing without effort.
Her little airs and graces were much admired, so were her
accomplishments, for besides her drawing, she could play twelve tunes,
crochet, and read French without mispronouncing more than two-thirds of
the words.  She had a plaintive way of saying, "When Papa was rich we
did so-and-so," which was very touching, and her long words were
considered 'perfectly elegant' by the girls.

Amy was in a fair way to be spoiled, for everyone petted her, and her
small vanities and selfishnesses were growing nicely. One thing,
however, rather quenched the vanities.  She had to wear her cousin's
clothes.  Now Florence's mama hadn't a particle of taste, and Amy
suffered deeply at having to wear a red instead of a blue bonnet,
unbecoming gowns, and fussy aprons that did not fit.  Everything was
good, well made, and little worn, but Amy's artistic eyes were much
afflicted, especially this winter, when her school dress was a dull
purple with yellow dots and no trimming.

"My only comfort," she said to Meg, with tears in her eyes, "is that
Mother doesn't take tucks in my dresses whenever I'm naughty, as Maria
Parks's mother does.  My dear, it's really dreadful, for sometimes she
is so bad her frock is up to her knees, and she can't come to school.
When I think of this _deggerredation_, I feel that I can bear even my
flat nose and purple gown with yellow sky-rockets on it."

Meg was Amy's confidant and monitor, and by some strange attraction of
opposites Jo was gentle Beth's.  To Jo alone did the shy child tell her
thoughts, and over her big harum-scarum sister Beth unconsciously
exercised more influence than anyone in the family.  The two older
girls were a great deal to one another, but each took one of the
younger sisters into her keeping and watched over her in her own way,
'playing mother' they called it, and put their sisters in the places of
discarded dolls with the maternal instinct of little women.

"Has anybody got anything to tell?  It's been such a dismal day I'm
really dying for some amusement," said Meg, as they sat sewing together
that evening.

"I had a queer time with Aunt today, and, as I got the best of it, I'll
tell you about it," began Jo, who dearly loved to tell stories.  "I was
reading that everlasting Belsham, and droning away as I always do, for
Aunt soon drops off, and then I take out some nice book, and read like
fury till she wakes up.  I actually made myself sleepy, and before she
began to nod, I gave such a gape that she asked me what I meant by
opening my mouth wide enough to take the whole book in at once."

"I wish I could, and be done with it," said I, trying not to be saucy.

"Then she gave me a long lecture on my sins, and told me to sit and
think them over while she just 'lost' herself for a moment. She never
finds herself very soon, so the minute her cap began to bob like a
top-heavy dahlia, I whipped the _Vicar of Wakefield_ out of my pocket,
and read away, with one eye on him and one on Aunt. I'd just got to
where they all tumbled into the water when I forgot and laughed out
loud.  Aunt woke up and, being more good-natured after her nap, told me
to read a bit and show what frivolous work I preferred to the worthy
and instructive Belsham. I did my very best, and she liked it, though
she only said...

"'I don't understand what it's all about.  Go back and begin it,
child.'"

"Back I went, and made the Primroses as interesting as ever I could.
Once I was wicked enough to stop in a thrilling place, and say meekly,
'I'm afraid it tires you, ma'am.  Shan't I stop now?'"

"She caught up her knitting, which had dropped out of her hands, gave
me a sharp look through her specs, and said, in her short way, 'Finish
the chapter, and don't be impertinent, miss'."

"Did she own she liked it?" asked Meg.

"Oh, bless you, no!  But she let old Belsham rest, and when I ran back
after my gloves this afternoon, there she was, so hard at the Vicar
that she didn't hear me laugh as I danced a jig in the hall because of
the good time coming.  What a pleasant life she might have if only she
chose!  I don't envy her much, in spite of her money, for after all
rich people have about as many worries as poor ones, I think," added Jo.

"That reminds me," said Meg, "that I've got something to tell. It isn't
funny, like Jo's story, but I thought about it a good deal as I came
home.  At the Kings' today I found everybody in a flurry, and one of
the children said that her oldest brother had done something dreadful,
and Papa had sent him away.  I heard Mrs. King crying and Mr. King
talking very loud, and Grace and Ellen turned away their faces when
they passed me, so I shouldn't see how red and swollen their eyes were.
I didn't ask any questions, of course, but I felt so sorry for them and
was rather glad I hadn't any wild brothers to do wicked things and
disgrace the family."

"I think being disgraced in school is a great deal try_inger_ than
anything bad boys can do," said Amy, shaking her head, as if her
experience of life had been a deep one.  "Susie Perkins came to school
today with a lovely red carnelian ring.  I wanted it dreadfully, and
wished I was her with all my might.  Well, she drew a picture of Mr.
Davis, with a monstrous nose and a hump, and the words, 'Young ladies,
my eye is upon you!' coming out of his mouth in a balloon thing.  We
were laughing over it when all of a sudden his eye _was_ on us, and he
ordered Susie to bring up her slate.  She was _parry_lized with fright,
but she went, and oh, what _do_ you think he did?  He took her by the
ear--the ear!  Just fancy how horrid!--and led her to the recitation
platform, and made her stand there half an hour, holding the slate so
everyone could see."

"Didn't the girls laugh at the picture?" asked Jo, who relished the
scrape.

"Laugh? Not one! They sat still as mice, and Susie cried quarts, I know
she did.  I didn't envy her then, for I felt that millions of carnelian
rings wouldn't have made me happy after that. I never, never should
have got over such a agonizing mortification." And Amy went on with her
work, in the proud consciousness of virtue and the successful utterance
of two long words in a breath.

"I saw something I liked this morning, and I meant to tell it at
dinner, but I forgot," said Beth, putting Jo's topsy-turvy basket in
order as she talked.  "When I went to get some oysters for Hannah, Mr.
Laurence was in the fish shop, but he didn't see me, for I kept behind
the fish barrel, and he was busy with Mr. Cutter the fish-man. A poor
woman came in with a pail and a mop, and asked Mr. Cutter if he would
let her do some scrubbing for a bit of fish, because she hadn't any
dinner for her children, and had been disappointed of a day's work.
Mr. Cutter was in a hurry and said 'No', rather crossly, so she was
going away, looking hungry and sorry, when Mr. Laurence hooked up a big
fish with the crooked end of his cane and held it out to her.  She was
so glad and surprised she took it right into her arms, and thanked him
over and over.  He told her to 'go along and cook it', and she hurried
off, so happy!  Wasn't it good of him?  Oh, she did look so funny,
hugging the big, slippery fish, and hoping Mr. Laurence's bed in heaven
would be 'aisy'."

When they had laughed at Beth's story, they asked their mother for one,
and after a moments thought, she said soberly, "As I sat cutting out
blue flannel jackets today at the rooms, I felt very anxious about
Father, and thought how lonely and helpless we should be, if anything
happened to him.  It was not a wise thing to do, but I kept on worrying
till an old man came in with an order for some clothes.  He sat down
near me, and I began to talk to him, for he looked poor and tired and
anxious.

"'Have you sons in the army?' I asked, for the note he brought was not
to me."

"Yes, ma'am.  I had four, but two were killed, one is a prisoner, and
I'm going to the other, who is very sick in a Washington hospital.' he
answered quietly."

"'You have done a great deal for your country, sir,' I said, feeling
respect now, instead of pity."

"'Not a mite more than I ought, ma'am.  I'd go myself, if I was any
use.  As I ain't, I give my boys, and give 'em free.'"

"He spoke so cheerfully, looked so sincere, and seemed so glad to give
his all, that I was ashamed of myself.  I'd given one man and thought
it too much, while he gave four without grudging them.  I had all my
girls to comfort me at home, and his last son was waiting, miles away,
to say good-by to him, perhaps!  I felt so rich, so happy thinking of
my blessings, that I made him a nice bundle, gave him some money, and
thanked him heartily for the lesson he had taught me."

"Tell another story, Mother, one with a moral to it, like this. I like
to think about them afterward, if they are real and not too preachy,"
said Jo, after a minute's silence.

Mrs. March smiled and began at once, for she had told stories to this
little audience for many years, and knew how to please them.

"Once upon a time, there were four girls, who had enough to eat and
drink and wear, a good many comforts and pleasures, kind friends and
parents who loved them dearly, and yet they were not contented." (Here
the listeners stole sly looks at one another, and began to sew
diligently.) "These girls were anxious to be good and made many
excellent resolutions, but they did not keep them very well, and were
constantly saying, 'If only we had this,' or 'If we could only do
that,' quite forgetting how much they already had, and how many things
they actually could do.  So they asked an old woman what spell they
could use to make them happy, and she said, 'When you feel
discontented, think over your blessings, and be grateful.'" (Here Jo
looked up quickly, as if about to speak, but changed her mind, seeing
that the story was not done yet.)

"Being sensible girls, they decided to try her advice, and soon were
surprised to see how well off they were.  One discovered that money
couldn't keep shame and sorrow out of rich people's houses, another
that, though she was poor, she was a great deal happier, with her
youth, health, and good spirits, than a certain fretful, feeble old
lady who couldn't enjoy her comforts, a third that, disagreeable as it
was to help get dinner, it was harder still to go begging for it and
the fourth, that even carnelian rings were not so valuable as good
behavior.  So they agreed to stop complaining, to enjoy the blessings
already possessed, and try to deserve them, lest they should be taken
away entirely, instead of increased, and I believe they were never
disappointed or sorry that they took the old woman's advice."

"Now, Marmee, that is very cunning of you to turn our own stories
against us, and give us a sermon instead of a romance!" cried Meg.

"I like that kind of sermon.  It's the sort Father used to tell us,"
said Beth thoughtfully, putting the needles straight on Jo's cushion.

"I don't complain near as much as the others do, and I shall be more
careful than ever now, for I've had warning from Susie's downfall,"
said Amy morally.

"We needed that lesson, and we won't forget it.  If we do so, you just
say to us, as old Chloe did in _Uncle Tom_, 'Tink ob yer marcies,
chillen!' 'Tink ob yer marcies!'" added Jo, who could not, for the life
of her, help getting a morsel of fun out of the little sermon, though
she took it to heart as much as any of them.



CHAPTER FIVE

BEING NEIGHBORLY

"What in the world are you going to do now, Jo?" asked Meg one snowy
afternoon, as her sister came tramping through the hall, in rubber
boots, old sack, and hood, with a broom in one hand and a shovel in the
other.

"Going out for exercise," answered Jo with a mischievous twinkle in her
eyes.

"I should think two long walks this morning would have been enough!
It's cold and dull out, and I advise you to stay warm and dry by the
fire, as I do," said Meg with a shiver.

"Never take advice!  Can't keep still all day, and not being a
pussycat, I don't like to doze by the fire.  I like adventures, and I'm
going to find some."

Meg went back to toast her feet and read _Ivanhoe_, and Jo began to dig
paths with great energy.  The snow was light, and with her broom she
soon swept a path all round the garden, for Beth to walk in when the
sun came out and the invalid dolls needed air.  Now, the garden
separated the Marches' house from that of Mr. Laurence.  Both stood in
a suburb of the city, which was still country-like, with groves and
lawns, large gardens, and quiet streets.  A low hedge parted the two
estates.  On one side was an old, brown house, looking rather bare and
shabby, robbed of the vines that in summer covered its walls and the
flowers, which then surrounded it.  On the other side was a stately
stone mansion, plainly betokening every sort of comfort and luxury,
from the big coach house and well-kept grounds to the conservatory and
the glimpses of lovely things one caught between the rich curtains.

Yet it seemed a lonely, lifeless sort of house, for no children
frolicked on the lawn, no motherly face ever smiled at the windows, and
few people went in and out, except the old gentleman and his grandson.

To Jo's lively fancy, this fine house seemed a kind of enchanted
palace, full of splendors and delights which no one enjoyed.  She had
long wanted to behold these hidden glories, and to know the Laurence
boy, who looked as if he would like to be known, if he only knew how to
begin.  Since the party, she had been more eager than ever, and had
planned many ways of making friends with him, but he had not been seen
lately, and Jo began to think he had gone away, when she one day spied
a brown face at an upper window, looking wistfully down into their
garden, where Beth and Amy were snow-balling one another.

"That boy is suffering for society and fun," she said to herself. "His
grandpa does not know what's good for him, and keeps him shut up all
alone.  He needs a party of jolly boys to play with, or somebody young
and lively.  I've a great mind to go over and tell the old gentleman
so!"

The idea amused Jo, who liked to do daring things and was always
scandalizing Meg by her queer performances.  The plan of 'going over'
was not forgotten.  And when the snowy afternoon came, Jo resolved to
try what could be done.  She saw Mr. Lawrence drive off, and then
sallied out to dig her way down to the hedge, where she paused and took
a survey.  All quiet, curtains down at the lower windows, servants out
of sight, and nothing human visible but a curly black head leaning on a
thin hand at the upper window.

"There he is," thought Jo, "Poor boy!  All alone and sick this dismal
day.  It's a shame!  I'll toss up a snowball and make him look out, and
then say a kind word to him."

Up went a handful of soft snow, and the head turned at once, showing a
face which lost its listless look in a minute, as the big eyes
brightened and the mouth began to smile.  Jo nodded and laughed, and
flourished her broom as she called out...

"How do you do?  Are you sick?"

Laurie opened the window, and croaked out as hoarsely as a raven...

"Better, thank you.  I've had a bad cold, and been shut up a week."

"I'm sorry.  What do you amuse yourself with?"

"Nothing.  It's dull as tombs up here."

"Don't you read?"

"Not much.  They won't let me."

"Can't somebody read to you?"

"Grandpa does sometimes, but my books don't interest him, and I hate to
ask Brooke all the time."

"Have someone come and see you then."

"There isn't anyone I'd like to see.  Boys make such a row, and my head
is weak."

"Isn't there some nice girl who'd read and amuse you?  Girls are quiet
and like to play nurse."

"Don't know any."

"You know us," began Jo, then laughed and stopped.

"So I do!  Will you come, please?" cried Laurie.

"I'm not quiet and nice, but I'll come, if Mother will let me. I'll go
ask her.  Shut the window, like a good boy, and wait till I come."

With that, Jo shouldered her broom and marched into the house,
wondering what they would all say to her.  Laurie was in a flutter of
excitement at the idea of having company, and flew about to get ready,
for as Mrs. March said, he was 'a little gentleman', and did honor to
the coming guest by brushing his curly pate, putting on a fresh color,
and trying to tidy up the room, which in spite of half a dozen
servants, was anything but neat.  Presently there came a loud ring,
than a decided voice, asking for 'Mr. Laurie', and a surprised-looking
servant came running up to announce a young lady.

"All right, show her up, it's Miss Jo," said Laurie, going to the door
of his little parlor to meet Jo, who appeared, looking rosy and quite
at her ease, with a covered dish in one hand and Beth's three kittens
in the other.

"Here I am, bag and baggage," she said briskly.  "Mother sent her love,
and was glad if I could do anything for you.  Meg wanted me to bring
some of her blanc mange, she makes it very nicely, and Beth thought her
cats would be comforting.  I knew you'd laugh at them, but I couldn't
refuse, she was so anxious to do something."

It so happened that Beth's funny loan was just the thing, for in
laughing over the kits, Laurie forgot his bashfulness, and grew
sociable at once.

"That looks too pretty to eat," he said, smiling with pleasure, as Jo
uncovered the dish, and showed the blanc mange, surrounded by a garland
of green leaves, and the scarlet flowers of Amy's pet geranium.

"It isn't anything, only they all felt kindly and wanted to show it.
Tell the girl to put it away for your tea.  It's so simple you can eat
it, and being soft, it will slip down without hurting your sore throat.
What a cozy room this is!"

"It might be if it was kept nice, but the maids are lazy, and I don't
know how to make them mind.  It worries me though."

"I'll right it up in two minutes, for it only needs to have the hearth
brushed, so--and the things made straight on the mantelpiece, so--and
the books put here, and the bottles there, and your sofa turned from
the light, and the pillows plumped up a bit.  Now then, you're fixed."

And so he was, for, as she laughed and talked, Jo had whisked things
into place and given quite a different air to the room.  Laurie watched
her in respectful silence, and when she beckoned him to his sofa, he
sat down with a sigh of satisfaction, saying gratefully...

"How kind you are!  Yes, that's what it wanted.  Now please take the
big chair and let me do something to amuse my company."

"No, I came to amuse you.  Shall I read aloud?" and Jo looked
affectionately toward some inviting books near by.

"Thank you!  I've read all those, and if you don't mind, I'd rather
talk," answered Laurie.

"Not a bit.  I'll talk all day if you'll only set me going. Beth says I
never know when to stop."

"Is Beth the rosy one, who stays at home good deal and sometimes goes
out with a little basket?" asked Laurie with interest.

"Yes, that's Beth.  She's my girl, and a regular good one she is, too."

"The pretty one is Meg, and the curly-haired one is Amy, I believe?"

"How did you find that out?"

Laurie colored up, but answered frankly, "Why, you see I often hear you
calling to one another, and when I'm alone up here, I can't help
looking over at your house, you always seem to be having such good
times.  I beg your pardon for being so rude, but sometimes you forget
to put down the curtain at the window where the flowers are. And when
the lamps are lighted, it's like looking at a picture to see the fire,
and you all around the table with your mother.  Her face is right
opposite, and it looks so sweet behind the flowers, I can't help
watching it.  I haven't got any mother, you know." And Laurie poked the
fire to hide a little twitching of the lips that he could not control.

The solitary, hungry look in his eyes went straight to Jo's warm heart.
She had been so simply taught that there was no nonsense in her head,
and at fifteen she was as innocent and frank as any child.  Laurie was
sick and lonely, and feeling how rich she was in home and happiness,
she gladly tried to share it with him. Her face was very friendly and
her sharp voice unusually gentle as she said...

"We'll never draw that curtain any more, and I give you leave to look
as much as you like.  I just wish, though, instead of peeping, you'd
come over and see us.  Mother is so splendid, she'd do you heaps of
good, and Beth would sing to you if I begged her to, and Amy would
dance.  Meg and I would make you laugh over our funny stage properties,
and we'd have jolly times.  Wouldn't your grandpa let you?"

"I think he would, if your mother asked him.  He's very kind, though he
does not look so, and he lets me do what I like, pretty much, only he's
afraid I might be a bother to strangers," began Laurie, brightening
more and more.

"We are not strangers, we are neighbors, and you needn't think you'd be
a bother.  We want to know you, and I've been trying to do it this ever
so long.  We haven't been here a great while, you know, but we have got
acquainted with all our neighbors but you."

"You see, Grandpa lives among his books, and doesn't mind much what
happens outside.  Mr. Brooke, my tutor, doesn't stay here, you know,
and I have no one to go about with me, so I just stop at home and get
on as I can."

"That's bad.  You ought to make an effort and go visiting everywhere
you are asked, then you'll have plenty of friends, and pleasant places
to go to.  Never mind being bashful.  It won't last long if you keep
going."

Laurie turned red again, but wasn't offended at being accused of
bashfulness, for there was so much good will in Jo it was impossible
not to take her blunt speeches as kindly as they were meant.

"Do you like your school?" asked the boy, changing the subject, after a
little pause, during which he stared at the fire and Jo looked about
her, well pleased.

"Don't go to school, I'm a businessman--girl, I mean.  I go to wait on
my great-aunt, and a dear, cross old soul she is, too," answered Jo.

Laurie opened his mouth to ask another question, but remembering just
in time that it wasn't manners to make too many inquiries into people's
affairs, he shut it again, and looked uncomfortable.

Jo liked his good breeding, and didn't mind having a laugh at Aunt
March, so she gave him a lively description of the fidgety old lady,
her fat poodle, the parrot that talked Spanish, and the library where
she reveled.

Laurie enjoyed that immensely, and when she told about the prim old
gentleman who came once to woo Aunt March, and in the middle of a fine
speech, how Poll had tweaked his wig off to his great dismay, the boy
lay back and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, and a maid
popped her head in to see what was the matter.

"Oh!  That does me no end of good.  Tell on, please," he said, taking
his face out of the sofa cushion, red and shining with merriment.

Much elated with her success, Jo did 'tell on', all about their plays
and plans, their hopes and fears for Father, and the most interesting
events of the little world in which the sisters lived.  Then they got
to talking about books, and to Jo's delight, she found that Laurie
loved them as well as she did, and had read even more than herself.

"If you like them so much, come down and see ours.  Grandfather is out,
so you needn't be afraid," said Laurie, getting up.

"I'm not afraid of anything," returned Jo, with a toss of the head.

"I don't believe you are!" exclaimed the boy, looking at her with much
admiration, though he privately thought she would have good reason to
be a trifle afraid of the old gentleman, if she met him in some of his
moods.

The atmosphere of the whole house being summerlike, Laurie led the way
from room to room, letting Jo stop to examine whatever struck her
fancy.  And so, at last they came to the library, where she clapped her
hands and pranced, as she always did when especially delighted.  It was
lined with books, and there were pictures and statues, and distracting
little cabinets full of coins and curiosities, and Sleepy Hollow
chairs, and queer tables, and bronzes, and best of all, a great open
fireplace with quaint tiles all round it.

"What richness!" sighed Jo, sinking into the depth of a velour chair
and gazing about her with an air of intense satisfaction. "Theodore
Laurence, you ought to be the happiest boy in the world," she added
impressively.

"A fellow can't live on books," said Laurie, shaking his head as he
perched on a table opposite.

Before he could more, a bell rang, and Jo flew up, exclaiming with
alarm, "Mercy me!  It's your grandpa!"

"Well, what if it is?  You are not afraid of anything, you know,"
returned the boy, looking wicked.

"I think I am a little bit afraid of him, but I don't know why I should
be.  Marmee said I might come, and I don't think you're any the worse
for it," said Jo, composing herself, though she kept her eyes on the
door.

"I'm a great deal better for it, and ever so much obliged. I'm only
afraid you are very tired of talking to me.  It was so pleasant, I
couldn't bear to stop," said Laurie gratefully.

"The doctor to see you, sir," and the maid beckoned as she spoke.

"Would you mind if I left you for a minute?  I suppose I must see him,"
said Laurie.

"Don't mind me.  I'm happy as a cricket here," answered Jo.

Laurie went away, and his guest amused herself in her own way. She was
standing before a fine portrait of the old gentleman when the door
opened again, and without turning, she said decidedly, "I'm sure now
that I shouldn't be afraid of him, for he's got kind eyes, though his
mouth is grim, and he looks as if he had a tremendous will of his own.
He isn't as handsome as my grandfather, but I like him."

"Thank you, ma'am," said a gruff voice behind her, and there, to her
great dismay, stood old Mr. Laurence.

Poor Jo blushed till she couldn't blush any redder, and her heart began
to beat uncomfortably fast as she thought what she had said.  For a
minute a wild desire to run away possessed her, but that was cowardly,
and the girls would laugh at her, so she resolved to stay and get out
of the scrape as she could.  A second look showed her that the living
eyes, under the bushy eyebrows, were kinder even than the painted ones,
and there was a sly twinkle in them, which lessened her fear a good
deal.  The gruff voice was gruffer than ever, as the old gentleman said
abruptly, after the dreadful pause, "So you're not afraid of me, hey?"

"Not much, sir."

"And you don't think me as handsome as your grandfather?"

"Not quite, sir."

"And I've got a tremendous will, have I?"

"I only said I thought so."

"But you like me in spite of it?"

"Yes, I do, sir."

That answer pleased the old gentleman.  He gave a short laugh, shook
hands with her, and, putting his finger under her chin, turned up her
face, examined it gravely, and let it go, saying with a nod, "You've
got your grandfather's spirit, if you haven't his face.  He was a fine
man, my dear, but what is better, he was a brave and an honest one, and
I was proud to be his friend."

"Thank you, sir," And Jo was quite comfortable after that, for it
suited her exactly.

"What have you been doing to this boy of mine, hey?" was the next
question, sharply put.

"Only trying to be neighborly, sir."  And Jo told how her visit came
about.

"You think he needs cheering up a bit, do you?"

"Yes, sir, he seems a little lonely, and young folks would do him good
perhaps.  We are only girls, but we should be glad to help if we could,
for we don't forget the splendid Christmas present you sent us," said
Jo eagerly.

"Tut, tut, tut!  That was the boy's affair.  How is the poor woman?"

"Doing nicely, sir."  And off went Jo, talking very fast, as she told
all about the Hummels, in whom her mother had interested richer friends
than they were.

"Just her father's way of doing good.  I shall come and see your mother
some fine day.  Tell her so.  There's the tea bell, we have it early on
the boy's account.  Come down and go on being neighborly."

"If you'd like to have me, sir."

"Shouldn't ask you, if I didn't."  And Mr. Laurence offered her his arm
with old-fashioned courtesy.

"What would Meg say to this?" thought Jo, as she was marched away,
while her eyes danced with fun as she imagined herself telling the
story at home.

"Hey!  Why, what the dickens has come to the fellow?" said the old
gentleman, as Laurie came running downstairs and brought up with a
start of surprise at the astounding sight of Jo arm in arm with his
redoubtable grandfather.

"I didn't know you'd come, sir," he began, as Jo gave him a triumphant
little glance.

"That's evident, by the way you racket downstairs.  Come to your tea,
sir, and behave like a gentleman."  And having pulled the boy's hair by
way of a caress, Mr. Laurence walked on, while Laurie went through a
series of comic evolutions behind their backs, which nearly produced an
explosion of laughter from Jo.

The old gentleman did not say much as he drank his four cups of tea,
but he watched the young people, who soon chatted away like old
friends, and the change in his grandson did not escape him.  There was
color, light, and life in the boy's face now, vivacity in his manner,
and genuine merriment in his laugh.

"She's right, the lad is lonely.  I'll see what these little girls can
do for him," thought Mr. Laurence, as he looked and listened.  He liked
Jo, for her odd, blunt ways suited him, and she seemed to understand
the boy almost as well as if she had been one herself.

If the Laurences had been what Jo called 'prim and poky', she would not
have got on at all, for such people always made her shy and awkward.
But finding them free and easy, she was so herself, and made a good
impression.  When they rose she proposed to go, but Laurie said he had
something more to show her, and took her away to the conservatory,
which had been lighted for her benefit.  It seemed quite fairylike to
Jo, as she went up and down the walks, enjoying the blooming walls on
either side, the soft light, the damp sweet air, and the wonderful
vines and trees that hung about her, while her new friend cut the
finest flowers till his hands were full.  Then he tied them up, saying,
with the happy look Jo liked to see, "Please give these to your mother,
and tell her I like the medicine she sent me very much."

They found Mr. Laurence standing before the fire in the great drawing
room, but Jo's attention was entirely absorbed by a grand piano, which
stood open.

"Do you play?" she asked, turning to Laurie with a respectful
expression.

"Sometimes," he answered modestly.

"Please do now.  I want to hear it, so I can tell Beth."

"Won't you first?"

"Don't know how.  Too stupid to learn, but I love music dearly."

So Laurie played and Jo listened, with her nose luxuriously buried in
heliotrope and tea roses.  Her respect and regard for the 'Laurence'
boy increased very much, for he played remarkably well and didn't put
on any airs.  She wished Beth could hear him, but she did not say so,
only praised him till he was quite abashed, and his grandfather came to
his rescue.

"That will do, that will do, young lady.  Too many sugarplums are not
good for him.  His music isn't bad, but I hope he will do as well in
more important things.  Going?  well, I'm much obliged to you, and I
hope you'll come again.  My respects to your mother. Good night, Doctor
Jo."

He shook hands kindly, but looked as if something did not please him.
When they got into the hall, Jo asked Laurie if she had said something
amiss.  He shook his head.

"No, it was me.  He doesn't like to hear me play."

"Why not?"

"I'll tell you some day.  John is going home with you, as I can't."

"No need of that.  I am not a young lady, and it's only a step.  Take
care of yourself, won't you?"

"Yes, but you will come again, I hope?"

"If you promise to come and see us after you are well."

"I will."

"Good night, Laurie!"

"Good night, Jo, good night!"

When all the afternoon's adventures had been told, the family felt
inclined to go visiting in a body, for each found something very
attractive in the big house on the other side of the hedge. Mrs. March
wanted to talk of her father with the old man who had not forgotten
him, Meg longed to walk in the conservatory, Beth sighed for the grand
piano, and Amy was eager to see the fine pictures and statues.

"Mother, why didn't Mr. Laurence like to have Laurie play?" asked Jo,
who was of an inquiring disposition.

"I am not sure, but I think it was because his son, Laurie's father,
married an Italian lady, a musician, which displeased the old man, who
is very proud.  The lady was good and lovely and accomplished, but he
did not like her, and never saw his son after he married.  They both
died when Laurie was a little child, and then his grandfather took him
home.  I fancy the boy, who was born in Italy, is not very strong, and
the old man is afraid of losing him, which makes him so careful.
Laurie comes naturally by his love of music, for he is like his mother,
and I dare say his grandfather fears that he may want to be a musician.
At any rate, his skill reminds him of the woman he did not like, and so
he 'glowered' as Jo said."

"Dear me, how romantic!" exclaimed Meg.

"How silly!" said Jo.  "Let him be a musician if he wants to, and not
plague his life out sending him to college, when he hates to go."

"That's why he has such handsome black eyes and pretty manners, I
suppose.  Italians are always nice," said Meg, who was a little
sentimental.

"What do you know about his eyes and his manners?  You never spoke to
him, hardly," cried Jo, who was not sentimental.

"I saw him at the party, and what you tell shows that he knows how to
behave.  That was a nice little speech about the medicine Mother sent
him."

"He meant the blanc mange, I suppose."

"How stupid you are, child!  He meant you, of course."

"Did he?" And Jo opened her eyes as if it had never occurred to her
before.

"I never saw such a girl!  You don't know a compliment when you get
it," said Meg, with the air of a young lady who knew all about the
matter.

"I think they are great nonsense, and I'll thank you not to be silly
and spoil my fun.  Laurie's a nice boy and I like him, and I won't have
any sentimental stuff about compliments and such rubbish.  We'll all be
good to him because he hasn't got any mother, and he may come over and
see us, mayn't he, Marmee?"

"Yes, Jo, your little friend is very welcome, and I hope Meg will
remember that children should be children as long as they can."

"I don't call myself a child, and I'm not in my teens yet," observed
Amy.  "What do you say, Beth?"

"I was thinking about our '_Pilgrim's Progress_'," answered Beth, who
had not heard a word.  "How we got out of the Slough and through the
Wicket Gate by resolving to be good, and up the steep hill by trying,
and that maybe the house over there, full of splendid things, is going
to be our Palace Beautiful."

"We have got to get by the lions first," said Jo, as if she rather
liked the prospect.



CHAPTER SIX

BETH FINDS THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL

The big house did prove a Palace Beautiful, though it took some time
for all to get in, and Beth found it very hard to pass the lions.  Old
Mr. Laurence was the biggest one, but after he had called, said
something funny or kind to each one of the girls, and talked over old
times with their mother, nobody felt much afraid of him, except timid
Beth.  The other lion was the fact that they were poor and Laurie rich,
for this made them shy of accepting favors which they could not return.
But, after a while, they found that he considered them the benefactors,
and could not do enough to show how grateful he was for Mrs. March's
motherly welcome, their cheerful society, and the comfort he took in
that humble home of theirs.  So they soon forgot their pride and
interchanged kindnesses without stopping to think which was the greater.

All sorts of pleasant things happened about that time, for the new
friendship flourished like grass in spring.  Every one liked Laurie,
and he privately informed his tutor that "the Marches were regularly
splendid girls."  With the delightful enthusiasm of youth, they took
the solitary boy into their midst and made much of him, and he found
something very charming in the innocent companionship of these
simple-hearted girls.  Never having known mother or sisters, he was
quick to feel the influences they brought about him, and their busy,
lively ways made him ashamed of the indolent life he led. He was tired
of books, and found people so interesting now that Mr. Brooke was
obliged to make very unsatisfactory reports, for Laurie was always
playing truant and running over to the Marches'.

"Never mind, let him take a holiday, and make it up afterward," said
the old gentleman.  "The good lady next door says he is studying too
hard and needs young society, amusement, and exercise.  I suspect she
is right, and that I've been coddling the fellow as if I'd been his
grandmother.  Let him do what he likes, as long as he is happy. He
can't get into mischief in that little nunnery over there, and Mrs.
March is doing more for him than we can."

What good times they had, to be sure.  Such plays and tableaux, such
sleigh rides and skating frolics, such pleasant evenings in the old
parlor, and now and then such gay little parties at the great house.
Meg could walk in the conservatory whenever she liked and revel in
bouquets, Jo browsed over the new library voraciously, and convulsed
the old gentleman with her criticisms, Amy copied pictures and enjoyed
beauty to her heart's content, and Laurie played 'lord of the manor' in
the most delightful style.

But Beth, though yearning for the grand piano, could not pluck up
courage to go to the 'Mansion of Bliss', as Meg called it.  She went
once with Jo, but the old gentleman, not being aware of her infirmity,
stared at her so hard from under his heavy eyebrows, and said "Hey!" so
loud, that he frightened her so much her 'feet chattered on the floor',
she never told her mother, and she ran away, declaring she would never
go there any more, not even for the dear piano.  No persuasions or
enticements could overcome her fear, till, the fact coming to Mr.
Laurence's ear in some mysterious way, he set about mending matters.
During one of the brief calls he made, he artfully led the conversation
to music, and talked away about great singers whom he had seen, fine
organs he had heard, and told such charming anecdotes that Beth found
it impossible to stay in her distant corner, but crept nearer and
nearer, as if fascinated.  At the back of his chair she stopped and
stood listening, with her great eyes wide open and her cheeks red with
excitement of this unusual performance.  Taking no more notice of her
than if she had been a fly, Mr. Laurence talked on about Laurie's
lessons and teachers.  And presently, as if the idea had just occurred
to him, he said to Mrs. March...

"The boy neglects his music now, and I'm glad of it, for he was getting
too fond of it.  But the piano suffers for want of use.  Wouldn't some
of your girls like to run over, and practice on it now and then, just
to keep it in tune, you know, ma'am?"

Beth took a step forward, and pressed her hands tightly together to
keep from clapping them, for this was an irresistible temptation, and
the thought of practicing on that splendid instrument quite took her
breath away.  Before Mrs. March could reply, Mr. Laurence went on with
an odd little nod and smile...

"They needn't see or speak to anyone, but run in at any time. For I'm
shut up in my study at the other end of the house, Laurie is out a
great deal, and the servants are never near the drawing room after nine
o'clock."

Here he rose, as if going, and Beth made up her mind to speak, for that
last arrangement left nothing to be desired.  "Please, tell the young
ladies what I say, and if they don't care to come, why, never mind."
Here a little hand slipped into his, and Beth looked up at him with a
face full of gratitude, as she said, in her earnest yet timid way...

"Oh sir, they do care, very very much!"

"Are you the musical girl?" he asked, without any startling "Hey!" as
he looked down at her very kindly.

"I'm Beth.  I love it dearly, and I'll come, if you are quite sure
nobody will hear me, and be disturbed," she added, fearing to be rude,
and trembling at her own boldness as she spoke.

"Not a soul, my dear.  The house is empty half the day, so come and
drum away as much as you like, and I shall be obliged to you."

"How kind you are, sir!"

Beth blushed like a rose under the friendly look he wore, but she was
not frightened now, and gave the hand a grateful squeeze because she
had no words to thank him for the precious gift he had given her. The
old gentleman softly stroked the hair off her forehead, and, stooping
down, he kissed her, saying, in a tone few people ever heard...

"I had a little girl once, with eyes like these.  God bless you, my
dear!  Good day, madam."  And away he went, in a great hurry.

Beth had a rapture with her mother, and then rushed up to impart the
glorious news to her family of invalids, as the girls were not home.
How blithely she sang that evening, and how they all laughed at her
because she woke Amy in the night by playing the piano on her face in
her sleep.  Next day, having seen both the old and young gentleman out
of the house, Beth, after two or three retreats, fairly got in at the
side door, and made her way as noiselessly as any mouse to the drawing
room where her idol stood.  Quite by accident, of course, some pretty,
easy music lay on the piano, and with trembling fingers and frequent
stops to listen and look about, Beth at last touched the great
instrument, and straightway forgot her fear, herself, and everything
else but the unspeakable delight which the music gave her, for it was
like the voice of a beloved friend.

She stayed till Hannah came to take her home to dinner, but she had no
appetite, and could only sit and smile upon everyone in a general state
of beatitude.

After that, the little brown hood slipped through the hedge nearly
every day, and the great drawing room was haunted by a tuneful spirit
that came and went unseen.  She never knew that Mr. Laurence opened his
study door to hear the old-fashioned airs he liked.  She never saw
Laurie mount guard in the hall to warn the servants away. She never
suspected that the exercise books and new songs which she found in the
rack were put there for her especial benefit, and when he talked to her
about music at home, she only thought how kind he was to tell things
that helped her so much.  So she enjoyed herself heartily, and found,
what isn't always the case, that her granted wish was all she had
hoped.  Perhaps it was because she was so grateful for this blessing
that a greater was given her.  At any rate she deserved both.

"Mother, I'm going to work Mr. Laurence a pair of slippers.  He is so
kind to me, I must thank him, and I don't know any other way. Can I do
it?" asked Beth, a few weeks after that eventful call of his.

"Yes, dear.  It will please him very much, and be a nice way of
thanking him.  The girls will help you about them, and I will pay for
the making up," replied Mrs. March, who took peculiar pleasure in
granting Beth's requests because she so seldom asked anything for
herself.

After many serious discussions with Meg and Jo, the pattern was chosen,
the materials bought, and the slippers begun.  A cluster of grave yet
cheerful pansies on a deeper purple ground was pronounced very
appropriate and pretty, and Beth worked away early and late, with
occasional lifts over hard parts.  She was a nimble little needlewoman,
and they were finished before anyone got tired of them.  Then she wrote
a short, simple note, and with Laurie's help, got them smuggled onto
the study table one morning before the old gentleman was up.

When this excitement was over, Beth waited to see what would happen.
All day passed and a part of the next before any acknowledgement
arrived, and she was beginning to fear she had offended her crochety
friend.  On the afternoon of the second day, she went out to do an
errand, and give poor Joanna, the invalid doll, her daily exercise.  As
she came up the street, on her return, she saw three, yes, four heads
popping in and out of the parlor windows, and the moment they saw her,
several hands were waved, and several joyful voices screamed...

"Here's a letter from the old gentleman!  Come quick, and read it!"

"Oh, Beth, he's sent you..." began Amy, gesticulating with unseemly
energy, but she got no further, for Jo quenched her by slamming down
the window.

Beth hurried on in a flutter of suspense.  At the door her sisters
seized and bore her to the parlor in a triumphal procession, all
pointing and all saying at once, "Look there!  Look there!"  Beth did
look, and turned pale with delight and surprise, for there stood a
little cabinet piano, with a letter lying on the glossy lid, directed
like a sign board to "Miss Elizabeth March."

"For me?" gasped Beth, holding onto Jo and feeling as if she should
tumble down, it was such an overwhelming thing altogether.

"Yes, all for you, my precious!  Isn't it splendid of him?  Don't you
think he's the dearest old man in the world?  Here's the key in the
letter.  We didn't open it, but we are dying to know what he says,"
cried Jo, hugging her sister and offering the note.

"You read it!  I can't, I feel so queer!  Oh, it is too lovely!" and
Beth hid her face in Jo's apron, quite upset by her present.

Jo opened the paper and began to laugh, for the first words she saw
were...

"Miss March: "Dear Madam--"

"How nice it sounds!  I wish someone would write to me so!" said Amy,
who thought the old-fashioned address very elegant.

"'I have had many pairs of slippers in my life, but I never had any
that suited me so well as yours,'" continues Jo.  "'Heart's-ease is my
favorite flower, and these will always remind me of the gentle giver.
I like to pay my debts, so I know you will allow 'the old gentleman' to
send you something which once belonged to the little grand daughter he
lost.  With hearty thanks and best wishes, I remain "'Your grateful
friend and humble servant, 'JAMES LAURENCE'."

"There, Beth, that's an honor to be proud of, I'm sure! Laurie told me
how fond Mr. Laurence used to be of the child who died, and how he kept
all her little things carefully.  Just think, he's given you her piano.
That comes of having big blue eyes and loving music," said Jo, trying
to soothe Beth, who trembled and looked more excited than she had ever
been before.

"See the cunning brackets to hold candles, and the nice green silk,
puckered up, with a gold rose in the middle, and the pretty rack and
stool, all complete," added Meg, opening the instrument and displaying
its beauties.

"'Your humble servant, James Laurence'.  Only think of his writing that
to you.  I'll tell the girls.  They'll think it's splendid," said Amy,
much impressed by the note.

"Try it, honey.  Let's hear the sound of the baby pianny," said Hannah,
who always took a share in the family joys and sorrows.

So Beth tried it, and everyone pronounced it the most remarkable piano
ever heard.  It had evidently been newly tuned and put in apple-pie
order, but, perfect as it was, I think the real charm lay in the
happiest of all happy faces which leaned over it, as Beth lovingly
touched the beautiful black and white keys and pressed the bright
pedals.

"You'll have to go and thank him," said Jo, by way of a joke, for the
idea of the child's really going never entered her head.

"Yes, I mean to.  I guess I'll go now, before I get frightened thinking
about it." And, to the utter amazement of the assembled family, Beth
walked deliberately down the garden, through the hedge, and in at the
Laurences' door.

"Well, I wish I may die if it ain't the queerest thing I ever see!  The
pianny has turned her head!  She'd never have gone in her right mind,"
cried Hannah, staring after her, while the girls were rendered quite
speechless by the miracle.

They would have been still more amazed if they had seen what Beth did
afterward.  If you will believe me, she went and knocked at the study
door before she gave herself time to think, and when a gruff voice
called out, "come in!" she did go in, right up to Mr. Laurence, who
looked quite taken aback, and held out her hand, saying, with only a
small quaver in her voice, "I came to thank you, sir, for..." But she
didn't finish, for he looked so friendly that she forgot her speech
and, only remembering that he had lost the little girl he loved, she
put both arms round his neck and kissed him.

If the roof of the house had suddenly flown off, the old gentleman
wouldn't have been more astonished.  But he liked it. Oh, dear, yes, he
liked it amazingly!  And was so touched and pleased by that confiding
little kiss that all his crustiness vanished, and he just set her on
his knee, and laid his wrinkled cheek against her rosy one, feeling as
if he had got his own little granddaughter back again.  Beth ceased to
fear him from that moment, and sat there talking to him as cozily as if
she had known him all her life, for love casts out fear, and gratitude
can conquer pride.  When she went home, he walked with her to her own
gate, shook hands cordially, and touched his hat as he marched back
again, looking very stately and erect, like a handsome, soldierly old
gentleman, as he was.

When the girls saw that performance, Jo began to dance a jig, by way of
expressing her satisfaction, Amy nearly fell out of the window in her
surprise, and Meg exclaimed, with up-lifted hands, "Well, I do believe
the world is coming to an end."



CHAPTER SEVEN

AMY'S VALLEY OF HUMILIATION

"That boy is a perfect cyclops, isn't he?" said Amy one day, as Laurie
clattered by on horseback, with a flourish of his whip as he passed.

"How dare you say so, when he's got both his eyes?  And very handsome
ones they are, too," cried Jo, who resented any slighting remarks about
her friend.

"I didn't say anything about his eyes, and I don't see why you need
fire up when I admire his riding."

"Oh, my goodness!  That little goose means a centaur, and she called
him a Cyclops," exclaimed Jo, with a burst of laughter.

"You needn't be so rude, it's only a 'lapse of lingy', as Mr. Davis
says," retorted Amy, finishing Jo with her Latin.  "I just wish I had a
little of the money Laurie spends on that horse," she added, as if to
herself, yet hoping her sisters would hear.

"Why?" asked Meg kindly, for Jo had gone off in another laugh at Amy's
second blunder.

"I need it so much.  I'm dreadfully in debt, and it won't be my turn to
have the rag money for a month."

"In debt, Amy?  What do you mean?" And Meg looked sober.

"Why, I owe at least a dozen pickled limes, and I can't pay them, you
know, till I have money, for Marmee forbade my having anything charged
at the shop."

"Tell me all about it.  Are limes the fashion now?  It used to be
pricking bits of rubber to make balls."  And Meg tried to keep her
countenance, Amy looked so grave and important.

"Why, you see, the girls are always buying them, and unless you want to
be thought mean, you must do it too.  It's nothing but limes now, for
everyone is sucking them in their desks in schooltime, and trading them
off for pencils, bead rings, paper dolls, or something else, at recess.
If one girl likes another, she gives her a lime.  If she's mad with
her, she eats one before her face, and doesn't offer even a suck.  They
treat by turns, and I've had ever so many but haven't returned them,
and I ought for they are debts of honor, you know."

"How much will pay them off and restore your credit?" asked Meg, taking
out her purse.

"A quarter would more than do it, and leave a few cents over for a
treat for you.  Don't you like limes?"

"Not much.  You may have my share.  Here's the money.  Make it last as
long as you can, for it isn't very plenty, you know."

"Oh, thank you!  It must be so nice to have pocket money!  I'll have a
grand feast, for I haven't tasted a lime this week.  I felt delicate
about taking any, as I couldn't return them, and I'm actually suffering
for one."

Next day Amy was rather late at school, but could not resist the
temptation of displaying, with pardonable pride, a moist brown-paper
parcel, before she consigned it to the inmost recesses of her desk.
During the next few minutes the rumor that Amy March had got
twenty-four delicious limes (she ate one on the way) and was going to
treat circulated through her 'set', and the attentions of her friends
became quite overwhelming.  Katy Brown invited her to her next party on
the spot.  Mary Kingsley insisted on lending her her watch till recess,
and Jenny Snow, a satirical young lady, who had basely twitted Amy upon
her limeless state, promptly buried the hatchet and offered to furnish
answers to certain appalling sums.  But Amy had not forgotten Miss
Snow's cutting remarks about 'some persons whose noses were not too
flat to smell other people's limes, and stuck-up people who were not
too proud to ask for them', and she instantly crushed 'that Snow
girl's' hopes by the withering telegram, "You needn't be so polite all
of a sudden, for you won't get any."

A distinguished personage happened to visit the school that morning,
and Amy's beautifully drawn maps received praise, which honor to her
foe rankled in the soul of Miss Snow, and caused Miss March to assume
the airs of a studious young peacock.  But, alas, alas!  Pride goes
before a fall, and the revengeful Snow turned the tables with
disastrous success.  No sooner had the guest paid the usual stale
compliments and bowed himself out, than Jenny, under pretense of asking
an important question, informed Mr. Davis, the teacher, that Amy March
had pickled limes in her desk.

Now Mr. Davis had declared limes a contraband article, and solemnly
vowed to publicly ferrule the first person who was found breaking the
law.  This much-enduring man had succeeded in banishing chewing gum
after a long and stormy war, had made a bonfire of the confiscated
novels and newspapers, had suppressed a private post office, had
forbidden distortions of the face, nicknames, and caricatures, and done
all that one man could do to keep half a hundred rebellious girls in
order.  Boys are trying enough to human patience, goodness knows, but
girls are infinitely more so, especially to nervous gentlemen with
tyrannical tempers and no more talent for teaching than Dr. Blimber.
Mr. Davis knew any quantity of Greek, Latin, algebra, and ologies of
all sorts so he was called a fine teacher, and manners, morals,
feelings, and examples were not considered of any particular
importance.  It was a most unfortunate moment for denouncing Amy, and
Jenny knew it.  Mr. Davis had evidently taken his coffee too strong
that morning, there was an east wind, which always affected his
neuralgia, and his pupils had not done him the credit which he felt he
deserved.  Therefore, to use the expressive, if not elegant, language
of a schoolgirl, "He was as nervous as a witch and as cross as a bear".
The word 'limes' was like fire to powder, his yellow face flushed, and
he rapped on his desk with an energy which made Jenny skip to her seat
with unusual rapidity.

"Young ladies, attention, if you please!"

At the stern order the buzz ceased, and fifty pairs of blue, black,
gray, and brown eyes were obediently fixed upon his awful countenance.

"Miss March, come to the desk."

Amy rose to comply with outward composure, but a secret fear oppressed
her, for the limes weighed upon her conscience.

"Bring with you the limes you have in your desk," was the unexpected
command which arrested her before she got out of her seat.

"Don't take all." whispered her neighbor, a young lady of great
presence of mind.

Amy hastily shook out half a dozen and laid the rest down before Mr.
Davis, feeling that any man possessing a human heart would relent when
that delicious perfume met his nose.  Unfortunately, Mr. Davis
particularly detested the odor of the fashionable pickle, and disgust
added to his wrath.

"Is that all?"

"Not quite," stammered Amy.

"Bring the rest immediately."

With a despairing glance at her set, she obeyed.

"You are sure there are no more?"

"I never lie, sir."

"So I see.  Now take these disgusting things two by two, and throw them
out of the window."

There was a simultaneous sigh, which created quite a little gust, as
the last hope fled, and the treat was ravished from their longing lips.
Scarlet with shame and anger, Amy went to and fro six dreadful times,
and as each doomed couple, looking oh, so plump and juicy, fell from
her reluctant hands, a shout from the street completed the anguish of
the girls, for it told them that their feast was being exulted over by
the little Irish children, who were their sworn foes.  This--this was
too much.  All flashed indignant or appealing glances at the inexorable
Davis, and one passionate lime lover burst into tears.

As Amy returned from her last trip, Mr. Davis gave a portentous "Hem!"
and said, in his most impressive manner...

"Young ladies, you remember what I said to you a week ago.  I am sorry
this has happened, but I never allow my rules to be infringed, and I
never break my word.  Miss March, hold out your hand."

Amy started, and put both hands behind her, turning on him an imploring
look which pleaded for her better than the words she could not utter.
She was rather a favorite with 'old Davis', as, of course, he was
called, and it's my private belief that he would have broken his word
if the indignation of one irrepressible young lady had not found vent
in a hiss.  That hiss, faint as it was, irritated the irascible
gentleman, and sealed the culprit's fate.

"Your hand, Miss March!" was the only answer her mute appeal received,
and too proud to cry or beseech, Amy set her teeth, threw back her head
defiantly, and bore without flinching several tingling blows on her
little palm.  They were neither many nor heavy, but that made no
difference to her.  For the first time in her life she had been struck,
and the disgrace, in her eyes, was as deep as if he had knocked her
down.

"You will now stand on the platform till recess," said Mr. Davis,
resolved to do the thing thoroughly, since he had begun.

That was dreadful.  It would have been bad enough to go to her seat,
and see the pitying faces of her friends, or the satisfied ones of her
few enemies, but to face the whole school, with that shame fresh upon
her, seemed impossible, and for a second she felt as if she could only
drop down where she stood, and break her heart with crying.  A bitter
sense of wrong and the thought of Jenny Snow helped her to bear it,
and, taking the ignominious place, she fixed her eyes on the stove
funnel above what now seemed a sea of faces, and stood there, so
motionless and white that the girls found it hard to study with that
pathetic figure before them.

During the fifteen minutes that followed, the proud and sensitive
little girl suffered a shame and pain which she never forgot.  To
others it might seem a ludicrous or trivial affair, but to her it was a
hard experience, for during the twelve years of her life she had been
governed by love alone, and a blow of that sort had never touched her
before.  The smart of her hand and the ache of her heart were forgotten
in the sting of the thought, "I shall have to tell at home, and they
will be so disappointed in me!"

The fifteen minutes seemed an hour, but they came to an end at last,
and the word 'Recess!' had never seemed so welcome to her before.

"You can go, Miss March," said Mr. Davis, looking, as he felt,
uncomfortable.

He did not soon forget the reproachful glance Amy gave him, as she
went, without a word to anyone, straight into the anteroom, snatched
her things, and left the place "forever," as she passionately declared
to herself.  She was in a sad state when she got home, and when the
older girls arrived, some time later, an indignation meeting was held
at once.  Mrs. March did not say much but looked disturbed, and
comforted her afflicted little daughter in her tenderest manner. Meg
bathed the insulted hand with glycerine and tears, Beth felt that even
her beloved kittens would fail as a balm for griefs like this, Jo
wrathfully proposed that Mr. Davis be arrested without delay, and
Hannah shook her fist at the 'villain' and pounded potatoes for dinner
as if she had him under her pestle.

No notice was taken of Amy's flight, except by her mates, but the
sharp-eyed demoiselles discovered that Mr. Davis was quite benignant in
the afternoon, also unusually nervous.  Just before school closed, Jo
appeared, wearing a grim expression as she stalked up to the desk, and
delivered a letter from her mother, then collected Amy's property, and
departed, carefully scraping the mud from her boots on the door mat, as
if she shook the dust of the place off her feet.

"Yes, you can have a vacation from school, but I want you to study a
little every day with Beth," said Mrs. March that evening. "I don't
approve of corporal punishment, especially for girls.  I dislike Mr.
Davis's manner of teaching and don't think the girls you associate with
are doing you any good, so I shall ask your father's advice before I
send you anywhere else."

"That's good!  I wish all the girls would leave, and spoil his old
school.  It's perfectly maddening to think of those lovely limes,"
sighed Amy, with the air of a martyr.

"I am not sorry you lost them, for you broke the rules, and deserved
some punishment for disobedience," was the severe reply, which rather
disappointed the young lady, who expected nothing but sympathy.

"Do you mean you are glad I was disgraced before the whole school?"
cried Amy.

"I should not have chosen that way of mending a fault," replied her
mother, "but I'm not sure that it won't do you more good than a bolder
method.  You are getting to be rather conceited, my dear, and it is
quite time you set about correcting it.  You have a good many little
gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit
spoils the finest genius.  There is not much danger that real talent or
goodness will be overlooked long, even if it is, the consciousness of
possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of
all power is modesty."

"So it is!" cried Laurie, who was playing chess in a corner with Jo.
"I knew a girl once, who had a really remarkable talent for music, and
she didn't know it, never guessed what sweet little things she composed
when she was alone, and wouldn't have believed it if anyone had told
her."

"I wish I'd known that nice girl.  Maybe she would have helped me, I'm
so stupid," said Beth, who stood beside him, listening eagerly.

"You do know her, and she helps you better than anyone else could,"
answered Laurie, looking at her with such mischievous meaning in his
merry black eyes that Beth suddenly turned very red, and hid her face
in the sofa cushion, quite overcome by such an unexpected discovery.

Jo let Laurie win the game to pay for that praise of her Beth, who
could not be prevailed upon to play for them after her compliment. So
Laurie did his best, and sang delightfully, being in a particularly
lively humor, for to the Marches he seldom showed the moody side of his
character.  When he was gone, Amy, who had been pensive all evening,
said suddenly, as if busy over some new idea, "Is Laurie an
accomplished boy?"

"Yes, he has had an excellent education, and has much talent. He will
make a fine man, if not spoiled by petting," replied her mother.

"And he isn't conceited, is he?" asked Amy.

"Not in the least.  That is why he is so charming and we all like him
so much."

"I see.  It's nice to have accomplishments and be elegant, but not to
show off or get perked up," said Amy thoughtfully.

"These things are always seen and felt in a person's manner and
conversations, if modestly used, but it is not necessary to display
them," said Mrs. March.

"Any more than it's proper to wear all your bonnets and gowns and
ribbons at once, that folks may know you've got them," added Jo, and
the lecture ended in a laugh.



CHAPTER EIGHT

JO MEETS APOLLYON

"Girls, where are you going?" asked Amy, coming into their room one
Saturday afternoon, and finding them getting ready to go out with an
air of secrecy which excited her curiosity.

"Never mind.  Little girls shouldn't ask questions," returned Jo
sharply.

Now if there is anything mortifying to our feelings when we are young,
it is to be told that, and to be bidden to "run away, dear" is still
more trying to us.  Amy bridled up at this insult, and determined to
find out the secret, if she teased for an hour. Turning to Meg, who
never refused her anything very long, she said coaxingly, "Do tell me!
I should think you might let me go, too, for Beth is fussing over her
piano, and I haven't got anything to do, and am so lonely."

"I can't, dear, because you aren't invited," began Meg, but Jo broke in
impatiently, "Now, Meg, be quiet or you will spoil it all.  You can't
go, Amy, so don't be a baby and whine about it."

"You are going somewhere with Laurie, I know you are.  You were
whispering and laughing together on the sofa last night, and you
stopped when I came in.  Aren't you going with him?"

"Yes, we are.  Now do be still, and stop bothering."

Amy held her tongue, but used her eyes, and saw Meg slip a fan into her
pocket.

"I know!  I know!  You're going to the theater to see the _Seven
Castles!_" she cried, adding resolutely, "and I shall go, for Mother
said I might see it, and I've got my rag money, and it was mean not to
tell me in time."

"Just listen to me a minute, and be a good child," said Meg soothingly.
"Mother doesn't wish you to go this week, because your eyes are not
well enough yet to bear the light of this fairy piece.  Next week you
can go with Beth and Hannah, and have a nice time."

"I don't like that half as well as going with you and Laurie. Please
let me.  I've been sick with this cold so long, and shut up, I'm dying
for some fun.  Do, Meg!  I'll be ever so good," pleaded Amy, looking as
pathetic as she could.

"Suppose we take her.  I don't believe Mother would mind, if we bundle
her up well," began Meg.

"If she goes I shan't, and if I don't, Laurie won't like it, and it
will be very rude, after he invited only us, to go and drag in Amy.  I
should think she'd hate to poke herself where she isn't wanted," said
Jo crossly, for she disliked the trouble of overseeing a fidgety child
when she wanted to enjoy herself.

Her tone and manner angered Amy, who began to put her boots on, saying,
in her most aggravating way, "I shall go.  Meg says I may, and if I pay
for myself, Laurie hasn't anything to do with it."

"You can't sit with us, for our seats are reserved, and you mustn't sit
alone, so Laurie will give you his place, and that will spoil our
pleasure.  Or he'll get another seat for you, and that isn't proper
when you weren't asked.  You shan't stir a step, so you may just stay
where you are," scolded Jo, crosser than ever, having just pricked her
finger in her hurry.

Sitting on the floor with one boot on, Amy began to cry and Meg to
reason with her, when Laurie called from below, and the two girls
hurried down, leaving their sister wailing.  For now and then she
forgot her grown-up ways and acted like a spoiled child.  Just as the
party was setting out, Amy called over the banisters in a threatening
tone, "You'll be sorry for this, Jo March, see if you ain't."

"Fiddlesticks!" returned Jo, slamming the door.

They had a charming time, for _The Seven Castles Of The Diamond Lake_
was as brilliant and wonderful as heart could wish. But in spite of the
comical red imps, sparkling elves, and the gorgeous princes and
princesses, Jo's pleasure had a drop of bitterness in it.  The fairy
queen's yellow curls reminded her of Amy, and between the acts she
amused herself with wondering what her sister would do to make her
'sorry for it'.  She and Amy had had many lively skirmishes in the
course of their lives, for both had quick tempers and were apt to be
violent when fairly roused.  Amy teased Jo, and Jo irritated Amy, and
semioccasional explosions occurred, of which both were much ashamed
afterward. Although the oldest, Jo had the least self-control, and had
hard times trying to curb the fiery spirit which was continually
getting her into trouble.  Her anger never lasted long, and having
humbly confessed her fault, she sincerely repented and tried to do
better. Her sisters used to say that they rather liked to get Jo into a
fury because she was such an angel afterward.  Poor Jo tried
desperately to be good, but her bosom enemy was always ready to flame
up and defeat her, and it took years of patient effort to subdue it.

When they got home, they found Amy reading in the parlor. She assumed
an injured air as they came in, never lifted her eyes from her book, or
asked a single question.  Perhaps curiosity might have conquered
resentment, if Beth had not been there to inquire and receive a glowing
description of the play.  On going up to put away her best hat, Jo's
first look was toward the bureau, for in their last quarrel Amy had
soothed her feelings by turning Jo's top drawer upside down on the
floor.  Everything was in its place, however, and after a hasty glance
into her various closets, bags, and boxes, Jo decided that Amy had
forgiven and forgotten her wrongs.

There Jo was mistaken, for next day she made a discovery which produced
a tempest.  Meg, Beth, and Amy were sitting together, late in the
afternoon, when Jo burst into the room, looking excited and demanding
breathlessly, "Has anyone taken my book?"

Meg and Beth said, "No." at once, and looked surprised.  Amy poked the
fire and said nothing.  Jo saw her color rise and was down upon her in
a minute.

"Amy, you've got it!"

"No, I haven't."

"You know where it is, then!"

"No, I don't."

"That's a fib!" cried Jo, taking her by the shoulders, and looking
fierce enough to frighten a much braver child than Amy.

"It isn't.  I haven't got it, don't know where it is now, and don't
care."

"You know something about it, and you'd better tell at once, or I'll
make you."  And Jo gave her a slight shake.

"Scold as much as you like, you'll never see your silly old book
again," cried Amy, getting excited in her turn.

"Why not?"

"I burned it up."

"What!  My little book I was so fond of, and worked over, and meant to
finish before Father got home?  Have you really burned it?" said Jo,
turning very pale, while her eyes kindled and her hands clutched Amy
nervously.

"Yes, I did!  I told you I'd make you pay for being so cross yesterday,
and I have, so..."

Amy got no farther, for Jo's hot temper mastered her, and she shook Amy
till her teeth chattered in her head, crying in a passion of grief and
anger...

"You wicked, wicked girl!  I never can write it again, and I'll never
forgive you as long as I live."

Meg flew to rescue Amy, and Beth to pacify Jo, but Jo was quite beside
herself, and with a parting box on her sister's ear, she rushed out of
the room up to the old sofa in the garret, and finished her fight alone.

The storm cleared up below, for Mrs. March came home, and, having heard
the story, soon brought Amy to a sense of the wrong she had done her
sister.  Jo's book was the pride of her heart, and was regarded by her
family as a literary sprout of great promise.  It was only half a dozen
little fairy tales, but Jo had worked over them patiently, putting her
whole heart into her work, hoping to make something good enough to
print.  She had just copied them with great care, and had destroyed the
old manuscript, so that Amy's bonfire had consumed the loving work of
several years.  It seemed a small loss to others, but to Jo it was a
dreadful calamity, and she felt that it never could be made up to her.
Beth mourned as for a departed kitten, and Meg refused to defend her
pet.  Mrs. March looked grave and grieved, and Amy felt that no one
would love her till she had asked pardon for the act which she now
regretted more than any of them.

When the tea bell rang, Jo appeared, looking so grim and unapproachable
that it took all Amy's courage to say meekly...

"Please forgive me, Jo.  I'm very, very sorry."

"I never shall forgive you," was Jo's stern answer, and from that
moment she ignored Amy entirely.

No one spoke of the great trouble, not even Mrs. March, for all had
learned by experience that when Jo was in that mood words were wasted,
and the wisest course was to wait till some little accident, or her own
generous nature, softened Jo's resentment and healed the breach.  It
was not a happy evening, for though they sewed as usual, while their
mother read aloud from Bremer, Scott, or Edgeworth, something was
wanting, and the sweet home peace was disturbed.  They felt this most
when singing time came, for Beth could only play, Jo stood dumb as a
stone, and Amy broke down, so Meg and Mother sang alone.  But in spite
of their efforts to be as cheery as larks, the flutelike voices did not
seem to chord as well as usual, and all felt out of tune.

As Jo received her good-night kiss, Mrs. March whispered gently, "My
dear, don't let the sun go down upon your anger.  Forgive each other,
help each other, and begin again tomorrow."

Jo wanted to lay her head down on that motherly bosom, and cry her
grief and anger all away, but tears were an unmanly weakness, and she
felt so deeply injured that she really couldn't quite forgive yet.  So
she winked hard, shook her head, and said gruffly because Amy was
listening, "It was an abominable thing, and she doesn't deserve to be
forgiven."

With that she marched off to bed, and there was no merry or
confidential gossip that night.

Amy was much offended that her overtures of peace had been repulsed,
and began to wish she had not humbled herself, to feel more injured
than ever, and to plume herself on her superior virtue in a way which
was particularly exasperating.  Jo still looked like a thunder cloud,
and nothing went well all day.  It was bitter cold in the morning, she
dropped her precious turnover in the gutter, Aunt March had an attack
of the fidgets, Meg was sensitive, Beth would look grieved and wistful
when she got home, and Amy kept making remarks about people who were
always talking about being good and yet wouldn't even try when other
people set them a virtuous example.

"Everybody is so hateful, I'll ask Laurie to go skating.  He is always
kind and jolly, and will put me to rights, I know," said Jo to herself,
and off she went.

Amy heard the clash of skates, and looked out with an impatient
exclamation.

"There!  She promised I should go next time, for this is the last ice
we shall have.  But it's no use to ask such a crosspatch to take me."

"Don't say that.  You were very naughty, and it is hard to forgive the
loss of her precious little book, but I think she might do it now, and
I guess she will, if you try her at the right minute," said Meg.  "Go
after them.  Don't say anything till Jo has got good-natured with
Laurie, than take a quiet minute and just kiss her, or do some kind
thing, and I'm sure she'll be friends again with all her heart."

"I'll try," said Amy, for the advice suited her, and after a flurry to
get ready, she ran after the friends, who were just disappearing over
the hill.

It was not far to the river, but both were ready before Amy reached
them.  Jo saw her coming, and turned her back.  Laurie did not see, for
he was carefully skating along the shore, sounding the ice, for a warm
spell had preceded the cold snap.

"I'll go on to the first bend, and see if it's all right before we
begin to race," Amy heard him say, as he shot away, looking like a
young Russian in his fur-trimmed coat and cap.

Jo heard Amy panting after her run, stamping her feet and blowing on
her fingers as she tried to put her skates on, but Jo never turned and
went slowly zigzagging down the river, taking a bitter, unhappy sort of
satisfaction in her sister's troubles. She had cherished her anger till
it grew strong and took possession of her, as evil thoughts and
feelings always do unless cast out at once.  As Laurie turned the bend,
he shouted back...

"Keep near the shore.  It isn't safe in the middle." Jo heard, but Amy
was struggling to her feet and did not catch a word.  Jo glanced over
her shoulder, and the little demon she was harboring said in her ear...

"No matter whether she heard or not, let her take care of herself."

Laurie had vanished round the bend, Jo was just at the turn, and Amy,
far behind, striking out toward the smoother ice in the middle of the
river.  For a minute Jo stood still with a strange feeling in her
heart, then she resolved to go on, but something held and turned her
round, just in time to see Amy throw up her hands and go down, with a
sudden crash of rotten ice, the splash of water, and a cry that made
Jo's heart stand still with fear.  She tried to call Laurie, but her
voice was gone.  She tried to rush forward, but her feet seemed to have
no strength in them, and for a second, she could only stand motionless,
staring with a terror-stricken face at the little blue hood above the
black water. Something rushed swiftly by her, and Laurie's voice cried
out...

"Bring a rail.  Quick, quick!"

How she did it, she never knew, but for the next few minutes she worked
as if possessed, blindly obeying Laurie, who was quite self-possessed,
and lying flat, held Amy up by his arm and hockey stick till Jo dragged
a rail from the fence, and together they got the child out, more
frightened than hurt.

"Now then, we must walk her home as fast as we can.  Pile our things on
her, while I get off these confounded skates," cried Laurie, wrapping
his coat round Amy, and tugging away at the straps which never seemed
so intricate before.

Shivering, dripping, and crying, they got Amy home, and after an
exciting time of it, she fell asleep, rolled in blankets before a hot
fire.  During the bustle Jo had scarcely spoken but flown about,
looking pale and wild, with her things half off, her dress torn, and
her hands cut and bruised by ice and rails and refractory buckles. When
Amy was comfortably asleep, the house quiet, and Mrs. March sitting by
the bed, she called Jo to her and began to bind up the hurt hands.

"Are you sure she is safe?" whispered Jo, looking remorsefully at the
golden head, which might have been swept away from her sight forever
under the treacherous ice.

"Quite safe, dear.  She is not hurt, and won't even take cold, I think,
you were so sensible in covering and getting her home quickly," replied
her mother cheerfully.

"Laurie did it all.  I only let her go.  Mother, if she should die, it
would be my fault."  And Jo dropped down beside the bed in a passion of
penitent tears, telling all that had happened, bitterly condemning her
hardness of heart, and sobbing out her gratitude for being spared the
heavy punishment which might have come upon her.

"It's my dreadful temper!  I try to cure it, I think I have, and then
it breaks out worse than ever.  Oh, Mother, what shall I do?  What
shall I do?" cried poor Jo, in despair.

"Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is
impossible to conquer your fault," said Mrs. March, drawing the blowzy
head to her shoulder and kissing the wet cheek so tenderly that Jo
cried even harder.

"You don't know, you can't guess how bad it is!  It seems as if I could
do anything when I'm in a passion.  I get so savage, I could hurt
anyone and enjoy it.  I'm afraid I shall do something dreadful some
day, and spoil my life, and make everybody hate me. Oh, Mother, help
me, do help me!"

"I will, my child, I will.  Don't cry so bitterly, but remember this
day, and resolve with all your soul that you will never know another
like it.  Jo, dear, we all have our temptations, some far greater than
yours, and it often takes us all our lives to conquer them.  You think
your temper is the worst in the world, but mine used to be just like
it."

"Yours, Mother?  Why, you are never angry!"  And for the moment Jo
forgot remorse in surprise.

"I've been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded
in controlling it.  I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo, but I
have learned not to show it, and I still hope to learn not to feel it,
though it may take me another forty years to do so."

The patience and the humility of the face she loved so well was a
better lesson to Jo than the wisest lecture, the sharpest reproof.  She
felt comforted at once by the sympathy and confidence given her.  The
knowledge that her mother had a fault like hers, and tried to mend it,
made her own easier to bear and strengthened her resolution to cure it,
though forty years seemed rather a long time to watch and pray to a
girl of fifteen.

"Mother, are you angry when you fold your lips tight together and go
out of the room sometimes, when Aunt March scolds or people worry you?"
asked Jo, feeling nearer and dearer to her mother than ever before.

"Yes, I've learned to check the hasty words that rise to my lips, and
when I feel that they mean to break out against my will, I just go away
for a minute, and give myself a little shake for being so weak and
wicked," answered Mrs. March with a sigh and a smile, as she smoothed
and fastened up Jo's disheveled hair.

"How did you learn to keep still?  That is what troubles me, for the
sharp words fly out before I know what I'm about, and the more I say
the worse I get, till it's a pleasure to hurt people's feelings and say
dreadful things.  Tell me how you do it, Marmee dear."

"My good mother used to help me..."

"As you do us..." interrupted Jo, with a grateful kiss.

"But I lost her when I was a little older than you are, and for years
had to struggle on alone, for I was too proud to confess my weakness to
anyone else.  I had a hard time, Jo, and shed a good many bitter tears
over my failures, for in spite of my efforts I never seemed to get on.
Then your father came, and I was so happy that I found it easy to be
good.  But by-and-by, when I had four little daughters round me and we
were poor, then the old trouble began again, for I am not patient by
nature, and it tried me very much to see my children wanting anything."

"Poor Mother!  What helped you then?"

"Your father, Jo.  He never loses patience, never doubts or complains,
but always hopes, and works and waits so cheerfully that one is ashamed
to do otherwise before him.  He helped and comforted me, and showed me
that I must try to practice all the virtues I would have my little
girls possess, for I was their example.  It was easier to try for your
sakes than for my own. A startled or surprised look from one of you
when I spoke sharply rebuked me more than any words could have done,
and the love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest
reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them
copy."

"Oh, Mother, if I'm ever half as good as you, I shall be satisfied,"
cried Jo, much touched.

"I hope you will be a great deal better, dear, but you must keep watch
over your 'bosom enemy', as father calls it, or it may sadden, if not
spoil your life.  You have had a warning. Remember it, and try with
heart and soul to master this quick temper, before it brings you
greater sorrow and regret than you have known today."

"I will try, Mother, I truly will.  But you must help me, remind me,
and keep me from flying out.  I used to see Father sometimes put his
finger on his lips, and look at you with a very kind but sober face,
and you always folded your lips tight and went away.  Was he reminding
you then?" asked Jo softly.

"Yes.  I asked him to help me so, and he never forgot it, but saved me
from many a sharp word by that little gesture and kind look."

Jo saw that her mother's eyes filled and her lips trembled as she
spoke, and fearing that she had said too much, she whispered anxiously,
"Was it wrong to watch you and to speak of it?  I didn't mean to be
rude, but it's so comfortable to say all I think to you, and feel so
safe and happy here."

"My Jo, you may say anything to your mother, for it is my greatest
happiness and pride to feel that my girls confide in me and know how
much I love them."

"I thought I'd grieved you."

"No, dear, but speaking of Father reminded me how much I miss him, how
much I owe him, and how faithfully I should watch and work to keep his
little daughters safe and good for him."

"Yet you told him to go, Mother, and didn't cry when he went, and never
complain now, or seem as if you needed any help," said Jo, wondering.

"I gave my best to the country I love, and kept my tears till he was
gone.  Why should I complain, when we both have merely done our duty
and will surely be the happier for it in the end?  If I don't seem to
need help, it is because I have a better friend, even than Father, to
comfort and sustain me.  My child, the troubles and temptations of your
life are beginning and may be many, but you can overcome and outlive
them all if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your
Heavenly Father as you do that of your earthly one.  The more you love
and trust Him, the nearer you will feel to Him, and the less you will
depend on human power and wisdom.  His love and care never tire or
change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of
lifelong peace, happiness, and strength.  Believe this heartily, and go
to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as
freely and confidingly as you come to your mother."

Jo's only answer was to hold her mother close, and in the silence which
followed the sincerest prayer she had ever prayed left her heart
without words.  For in that sad yet happy hour, she had learned not
only the bitterness of remorse and despair, but the sweetness of
self-denial and self-control, and led by her mother's hand, she had
drawn nearer to the Friend who always welcomes every child with a love
stronger than that of any father, tenderer than that of any mother.

Amy stirred and sighed in her sleep, and as if eager to begin at once
to mend her fault, Jo looked up with an expression on her face which it
had never worn before.

"I let the sun go down on my anger.  I wouldn't forgive her, and today,
if it hadn't been for Laurie, it might have been too late!  How could I
be so wicked?" said Jo, half aloud, as she leaned over her sister
softly stroking the wet hair scattered on the pillow.

As if she heard, Amy opened her eyes, and held out her arms, with a
smile that went straight to Jo's heart.  Neither said a word, but they
hugged one another close, in spite of the blankets, and everything was
forgiven and forgotten in one hearty kiss.



CHAPTER NINE

MEG GOES TO VANITY FAIR

"I do think it was the most fortunate thing in the world that those
children should have the measles just now," said Meg, one April day, as
she stood packing the 'go abroady' trunk in her room, surrounded by her
sisters.

"And so nice of Annie Moffat not to forget her promise.  A whole
fortnight of fun will be regularly splendid," replied Jo, looking like
a windmill as she folded skirts with her long arms.

"And such lovely weather, I'm so glad of that," added Beth, tidily
sorting neck and hair ribbons in her best box, lent for the great
occasion.

"I wish I was going to have a fine time and wear all these nice
things," said Amy with her mouth full of pins, as she artistically
replenished her sister's cushion.

"I wish you were all going, but as you can't, I shall keep my
adventures to tell you when I come back.  I'm sure it's the least I can
do when you have been so kind, lending me things and helping me get
ready," said Meg, glancing round the room at the very simple outfit,
which seemed nearly perfect in their eyes.

"What did Mother give you out of the treasure box?" asked Amy, who had
not been present at the opening of a certain cedar chest in which Mrs.
March kept a few relics of past splendor, as gifts for her girls when
the proper time came.

"A pair of silk stockings, that pretty carved fan, and a lovely blue
sash.  I wanted the violet silk, but there isn't time to make it over,
so I must be contented with my old tarlaton."


"It will look nice over my new muslin skirt, and the sash will set it
off beautifully.  I wish I hadn't smashed my coral bracelet, for you
might have had it," said Jo, who loved to give and lend, but whose
possessions were usually too dilapidated to be of much use.

"There is a lovely old-fashioned pearl set in the treasure chest, but
Mother said real flowers were the prettiest ornament for a young girl,
and Laurie promised to send me all I want," replied Meg.  "Now, let me
see, there's my new gray walking suit, just curl up the feather in my
hat, Beth, then my poplin for Sunday and the small party, it looks
heavy for spring, doesn't it?  The violet silk would be so nice.  Oh,
dear!"

"Never mind, you've got the tarlaton for the big party, and you always
look like an angel in white," said Amy, brooding over the little store
of finery in which her soul delighted.

"It isn't low-necked, and it doesn't sweep enough, but it will have to
do.  My blue housedress looks so well, turned and freshly trimmed, that
I feel as if I'd got a new one.  My silk sacque isn't a bit the
fashion, and my bonnet doesn't look like Sallie's.  I didn't like to
say anything, but I was sadly disappointed in my umbrella.  I told
Mother black with a white handle, but she forgot and bought a green one
with a yellowish handle.  It's strong and neat, so I ought not to
complain, but I know I shall feel ashamed of it beside Annie's silk one
with a gold top," sighed Meg, surveying the little umbrella with great
disfavor.

"Change it," advised Jo.

"I won't be so silly, or hurt Marmee's feelings, when she took so much
pains to get my things.  It's a nonsensical notion of mine, and I'm not
going to give up to it.  My silk stockings and two pairs of new gloves
are my comfort.  You are a dear to lend me yours, Jo.  I feel so rich
and sort of elegant, with two new pairs, and the old ones cleaned up
for common."  And Meg took a refreshing peep at her glove box.

"Annie Moffat has blue and pink bows on her nightcaps. Would you put
some on mine?" she asked, as Beth brought up a pile of snowy muslins,
fresh from Hannah's hands.

"No, I wouldn't, for the smart caps won't match the plain gowns without
any trimming on them.  Poor folks shouldn't rig," said Jo decidedly.

"I wonder if I shall ever be happy enough to have real lace on my
clothes and bows on my caps?" said Meg impatiently.

"You said the other day that you'd be perfectly happy if you could only
go to Annie Moffat's," observed Beth in her quiet way.

"So I did!  Well, I am happy, and I won't fret, but it does seem as if
the more one gets the more one wants, doesn't it?  There now, the trays
are ready, and everything in but my ball dress, which I shall leave for
Mother to pack," said Meg, cheering up, as she glanced from the
half-filled trunk to the many times pressed and mended white tarlaton,
which she called her 'ball dress' with an important air.

The next day was fine, and Meg departed in style for a fortnight of
novelty and pleasure.  Mrs. March had consented to the visit rather
reluctantly, fearing that Margaret would come back more discontented
than she went.  But she begged so hard, and Sallie had promised to take
good care of her, and a little pleasure seemed so delightful after a
winter of irksome work that the mother yielded, and the daughter went
to take her first taste of fashionable life.

The Moffats were very fashionable, and simple Meg was rather daunted,
at first, by the splendor of the house and the elegance of its
occupants.  But they were kindly people, in spite of the frivolous life
they led, and soon put their guest at her ease. Perhaps Meg felt,
without understanding why, that they were not particularly cultivated
or intelligent people, and that all their gilding could not quite
conceal the ordinary material of which they were made.  It certainly
was agreeable to fare sumptuously, drive in a fine carriage, wear her
best frock every day, and do nothing but enjoy herself.  It suited her
exactly, and soon she began to imitate the manners and conversation of
those about her, to put on little airs and graces, use French phrases,
crimp her hair, take in her dresses, and talk about the fashions as
well as she could.  The more she saw of Annie Moffat's pretty things,
the more she envied her and sighed to be rich.  Home now looked bare
and dismal as she thought of it, work grew harder than ever, and she
felt that she was a very destitute and much-injured girl, in spite of
the new gloves and silk stockings.

She had not much time for repining, however, for the three young girls
were busily employed in 'having a good time'.  They shopped, walked,
rode, and called all day, went to theaters and operas or frolicked at
home in the evening, for Annie had many friends and knew how to
entertain them.  Her older sisters were very fine young ladies, and one
was engaged, which was extremely interesting and romantic, Meg thought.
Mr. Moffat was a fat, jolly old gentleman, who knew her father, and
Mrs. Moffat, a fat, jolly old lady, who took as great a fancy to Meg as
her daughter had done.  Everyone petted her, and 'Daisey', as they
called her, was in a fair way to have her head turned.

When the evening for the small party came, she found that the poplin
wouldn't do at all, for the other girls were putting on thin dresses
and making themselves very fine indeed.  So out came the tarlatan,
looking older, limper, and shabbier than ever beside Sallie's crisp new
one.  Meg saw the girls glance at it and then at one another, and her
cheeks began to burn, for with all her gentleness she was very proud.
No one said a word about it, but Sallie offered to dress her hair, and
Annie to tie her sash, and Belle, the engaged sister, praised her white
arms.  But in their kindness Meg saw only pity for her poverty, and her
heart felt very heavy as she stood by herself, while the others
laughed, chattered, and flew about like gauzy butterflies.  The hard,
bitter feeling was getting pretty bad, when the maid brought in a box
of flowers.  Before she could speak, Annie had the cover off, and all
were exclaiming at the lovely roses, heath, and fern within.

"It's for Belle, of course, George always sends her some, but these are
altogether ravishing," cried Annie, with a great sniff.

"They are for Miss March, the man said.  And here's a note," put in the
maid, holding it to Meg.

"What fun!  Who are they from?  Didn't know you had a lover," cried the
girls, fluttering about Meg in a high state of curiosity and surprise.

"The note is from Mother, and the flowers from Laurie," said Meg
simply, yet much gratified that he had not forgotten her.

"Oh, indeed!" said Annie with a funny look, as Meg slipped the note
into her pocket as a sort of talisman against envy, vanity, and false
pride, for the few loving words had done her good, and the flowers
cheered her up by their beauty.

Feeling almost happy again, she laid by a few ferns and roses for
herself, and quickly made up the rest in dainty bouquets for the
breasts, hair, or skirts of her friends, offering them so prettily that
Clara, the elder sister, told her she was 'the sweetest little thing
she ever saw', and they looked quite charmed with her small attention.
Somehow the kind act finished her despondency, and when all the rest
went to show themselves to Mrs. Moffat, she saw a happy, bright-eyed
face in the mirror, as she laid her ferns against her rippling hair and
fastened the roses in the dress that didn't strike her as so very
shabby now.

She enjoyed herself very much that evening, for she danced to her
heart's content.  Everyone was very kind, and she had three
compliments.  Annie made her sing, and some one said she had a
remarkably fine voice.  Major Lincoln asked who 'the fresh little girl
with the beautiful eyes' was, and Mr. Moffat insisted on dancing with
her because she 'didn't dawdle, but had some spring in her', as he
gracefully expressed it.  So altogether she had a very nice time, till
she overheard a bit of conversation, which disturbed her extremely.
She was sitting just inside the conservatory, waiting for her partner
to bring her an ice, when she heard a voice ask on the other side of
the flowery wall...

"How old is he?"

"Sixteen or seventeen, I should say," replied another voice.

"It would be a grand thing for one of those girls, wouldn't it?  Sallie
says they are very intimate now, and the old man quite dotes on them."

"Mrs. M.  has made her plans, I dare say, and will play her cards well,
early as it is.  The girl evidently doesn't think of it yet," said Mrs.
Moffat.

"She told that fib about her momma, as if she did know, and colored up
when the flowers came quite prettily.  Poor thing! She'd be so nice if
she was only got up in style.  Do you think she'd be offended if we
offered to lend her a dress for Thursday?" asked another voice.

"She's proud, but I don't believe she'd mind, for that dowdy tarlaton
is all she has got.  She may tear it tonight, and that will be a good
excuse for offering a decent one."

Here Meg's partner appeared, to find her looking much flushed and
rather agitated.  She was proud, and her pride was useful just then,
for it helped her hide her mortification, anger, and disgust at what
she had just heard.  For, innocent and unsuspicious as she was, she
could not help understanding the gossip of her friends.  She tried to
forget it, but could not, and kept repeating to herself, "Mrs. M.  has
made her plans," "that fib about her mamma," and "dowdy tarlaton," till
she was ready to cry and rush home to tell her troubles and ask for
advice.  As that was impossible, she did her best to seem gay, and
being rather excited, she succeeded so well that no one dreamed what an
effort she was making. She was very glad when it was all over and she
was quiet in her bed, where she could think and wonder and fume till
her head ached and her hot cheeks were cooled by a few natural tears.
Those foolish, yet well meant words, had opened a new world to Meg, and
much disturbed the peace of the old one in which till now she had lived
as happily as a child.  Her innocent friendship with Laurie was spoiled
by the silly speeches she had overheard.  Her faith in her mother was a
little shaken by the worldly plans attributed to her by Mrs. Moffat,
who judged others by herself, and the sensible resolution to be
contented with the simple wardrobe which suited a poor man's daughter
was weakened by the unnecessary pity of girls who thought a shabby
dress one of the greatest calamities under heaven.

Poor Meg had a restless night, and got up heavy-eyed, unhappy, half
resentful toward her friends, and half ashamed of herself for not
speaking out frankly and setting everything right.  Everybody dawdled
that morning, and it was noon before the girls found energy enough even
to take up their worsted work.  Something in the manner of her friends
struck Meg at once.  They treated her with more respect, she thought,
took quite a tender interest in what she said, and looked at her with
eyes that plainly betrayed curiosity.  All this surprised and flattered
her, though she did not understand it till Miss Belle looked up from
her writing, and said, with a sentimental air...

"Daisy, dear, I've sent an invitation to your friend, Mr. Laurence, for
Thursday.  We should like to know him, and it's only a proper
compliment to you."

Meg colored, but a mischievous fancy to tease the girls made her reply
demurely, "You are very kind, but I'm afraid he won't come."

"Why not, Cherie?" asked Miss Belle.

"He's too old."

"My child, what do you mean?  What is his age, I beg to know!" cried
Miss Clara.

"Nearly seventy, I believe," answered Meg, counting stitches to hide
the merriment in her eyes.

"You sly creature!  Of course we meant the young man," exclaimed Miss
Belle, laughing.

"There isn't any, Laurie is only a little boy."  And Meg laughed also
at the queer look which the sisters exchanged as she thus described her
supposed lover.

"About your age," Nan said.

"Nearer my sister Jo's; I am seventeen in August," returned Meg,
tossing her head.

"It's very nice of him to send you flowers, isn't it?" said Annie,
looking wise about nothing.

"Yes, he often does, to all of us, for their house is full, and we are
so fond of them.  My mother and old Mr. Laurence are friends, you know,
so it is quite natural that we children should play together," and Meg
hoped they would say no more.

"It's evident Daisy isn't out yet," said Miss Clara to Belle with a nod.

"Quite a pastoral state of innocence all round," returned Miss Belle
with a shrug.

"I'm going out to get some little matters for my girls.  Can I do
anything for you, young ladies?" asked Mrs. Moffat, lumbering in like
an elephant in silk and lace.

"No, thank you, ma'am," replied Sallie.  "I've got my new pink silk for
Thursday and don't want a thing."

"Nor I..." began Meg, but stopped because it occurred to her that she
did want several things and could not have them.

"What shall you wear?" asked Sallie.

"My old white one again, if I can mend it fit to be seen, it got sadly
torn last night," said Meg, trying to speak quite easily, but feeling
very uncomfortable.

"Why don't you send home for another?" said Sallie, who was not an
observing young lady.

"I haven't got any other."  It cost Meg an effort to say that, but
Sallie did not see it and exclaimed in amiable surprise, "Only that?
How funny..."  She did not finish her speech, for Belle shook her head
at her and broke in, saying kindly...

"Not at all.  Where is the use of having a lot of dresses when she
isn't out yet?  There's no need of sending home, Daisy, even if you had
a dozen, for I've got a sweet blue silk laid away, which I've outgrown,
and you shall wear it to please me, won't you, dear?"

"You are very kind, but I don't mind my old dress if you don't, it does
well enough for a little girl like me," said Meg.

"Now do let me please myself by dressing you up in style. I admire to
do it, and you'd be a regular little beauty with a touch here and
there.  I shan't let anyone see you till you are done, and then we'll
burst upon them like Cinderella and her godmother going to the ball,"
said Belle in her persuasive tone.

Meg couldn't refuse the offer so kindly made, for a desire to see if
she would be 'a little beauty' after touching up caused her to accept
and forget all her former uncomfortable feelings toward the Moffats.

On the Thursday evening, Belle shut herself up with her maid, and
between them they turned Meg into a fine lady.  They crimped and curled
her hair, they polished her neck and arms with some fragrant powder,
touched her lips with coralline salve to make them redder, and Hortense
would have added 'a soupcon of rouge', if Meg had not rebelled.  They
laced her into a sky-blue dress, which was so tight she could hardly
breathe and so low in the neck that modest Meg blushed at herself in
the mirror.  A set of silver filagree was added, bracelets, necklace,
brooch, and even earrings, for Hortense tied them on with a bit of pink
silk which did not show.  A cluster of tea-rose buds at the bosom, and
a ruche, reconciled Meg to the display of her pretty, white shoulders,
and a pair of high-heeled silk boots satisfied the last wish of her
heart.  A lace handkerchief, a plumy fan, and a bouquet in a shoulder
holder finished her off, and Miss Belle surveyed her with the
satisfaction of a little girl with a newly dressed doll.

"Mademoiselle is charmante, tres jolie, is she not?" cried Hortense,
clasping her hands in an affected rapture.

"Come and show yourself," said Miss Belle, leading the way to the room
where the others were waiting.

As Meg went rustling after, with her long skirts trailing, her earrings
tinkling, her curls waving, and her heart beating, she felt as if her
fun had really begun at last, for the mirror had plainly told her that
she was 'a little beauty'.  Her friends repeated the pleasing phrase
enthusiastically, and for several minutes she stood, like a jackdaw in
the fable, enjoying her borrowed plumes, while the rest chattered like
a party of magpies.

"While I dress, do you drill her, Nan, in the management of her skirt
and those French heels, or she will trip herself up.  Take your silver
butterfly, and catch up that long curl on the left side of her head,
Clara, and don't any of you disturb the charming work of my hands,"
said Belle, as she hurried away, looking well pleased with her success.

"You don't look a bit like yourself, but you are very nice. I'm nowhere
beside you, for Belle has heaps of taste, and you're quite French, I
assure you.  Let your flowers hang, don't be so careful of them, and be
sure you don't trip," returned Sallie, trying not to care that Meg was
prettier than herself.

Keeping that warning carefully in mind, Margaret got safely down stairs
and sailed into the drawing rooms where the Moffats and a few early
guests were assembled.  She very soon discovered that there is a charm
about fine clothes which attracts a certain class of people and secures
their respect.  Several young ladies, who had taken no notice of her
before, were very affectionate all of a sudden.  Several young
gentlemen, who had only stared at her at the other party, now not only
stared, but asked to be introduced, and said all manner of foolish but
agreeable things to her, and several old ladies, who sat on the sofas,
and criticized the rest of the party, inquired who she was with an air
of interest.  She heard Mrs. Moffat reply to one of them...

"Daisy March--father a colonel in the army--one of our first families,
but reverses of fortune, you know; intimate friends of the Laurences;
sweet creature, I assure you; my Ned is quite wild about her."

"Dear me!" said the old lady, putting up her glass for another
observation of Meg, who tried to look as if she had not heard and been
rather shocked at Mrs. Moffat's fibs. The 'queer feeling' did not pass
away, but she imagined herself acting the new part of fine lady and so
got on pretty well, though the tight dress gave her a side-ache, the
train kept getting under her feet, and she was in constant fear lest
her earrings should fly off and get lost or broken.  She was flirting
her fan and laughing at the feeble jokes of a young gentleman who tried
to be witty, when she suddenly stopped laughing and looked confused,
for just opposite, she saw Laurie.  He was staring at her with
undisguised surprise, and disapproval also, she thought, for though he
bowed and smiled, yet something in his honest eyes made her blush and
wish she had her old dress on. To complete her confusion, she saw Belle
nudge Annie, and both glance from her to Laurie, who, she was happy to
see, looked unusually boyish and shy.

"Silly creatures, to put such thoughts into my head.  I won't care for
it, or let it change me a bit," thought Meg, and rustled across the
room to shake hands with her friend.

"I'm glad you came, I was afraid you wouldn't." she said, with her most
grown-up air.

"Jo wanted me to come, and tell her how you looked, so I did," answered
Laurie, without turning his eyes upon her, though he half smiled at her
maternal tone.

"What shall you tell her?" asked Meg, full of curiosity to know his
opinion of her, yet feeling ill at ease with him for the first time.

"I shall say I didn't know you, for you look so grown-up and unlike
yourself, I'm quite afraid of you," he said, fumbling at his glove
button.

"How absurd of you!  The girls dressed me up for fun, and I rather like
it.  Wouldn't Jo stare if she saw me?" said Meg, bent on making him say
whether he thought her improved or not.

"Yes, I think she would," returned Laurie gravely.

"Don't you like me so?" asked Meg.

"No, I don't," was the blunt reply.

"Why not?" in an anxious tone.

He glanced at her frizzled head, bare shoulders, and fantastically
trimmed dress with an expression that abashed her more than his answer,
which had not a particle of his usual politeness in it.

"I don't like fuss and feathers."

That was altogether too much from a lad younger than herself, and Meg
walked away, saying petulantly, "You are the rudest boy I ever saw."

Feeling very much ruffled, she went and stood at a quiet window to cool
her cheeks, for the tight dress gave her an uncomfortably brilliant
color.  As she stood there, Major Lincoln passed by, and a minute after
she heard him saying to his mother...

"They are making a fool of that little girl.  I wanted you to see her,
but they have spoiled her entirely.  She's nothing but a doll tonight."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Meg.  "I wish I'd been sensible and worn my own
things, then I should not have disgusted other people, or felt so
uncomfortable and ashamed of myself."

She leaned her forehead on the cool pane, and stood half hidden by the
curtains, never minding that her favorite waltz had begun, till some
one touched her, and turning, she saw Laurie, looking penitent, as he
said, with his very best bow and his hand out...

"Please forgive my rudeness, and come and dance with me."

"I'm afraid it will be too disagreeable to you," said Meg, trying to
look offended and failing entirely.

"Not a bit of it, I'm dying to do it.  Come, I'll be good. I don't like
your gown, but I do think you are just splendid." And he waved his
hands, as if words failed to express his admiration.

Meg smiled and relented, and whispered as they stood waiting to catch
the time, "Take care my skirt doesn't trip you up.  It's the plague of
my life and I was a goose to wear it."

"Pin it round your neck, and then it will be useful," said Laurie,
looking down at the little blue boots, which he evidently approved of.

Away they went fleetly and gracefully, for having practiced at home,
they were well matched, and the blithe young couple were a pleasant
sight to see, as they twirled merrily round and round, feeling more
friendly than ever after their small tiff.

"Laurie, I want you to do me a favor, will you?" said Meg, as he stood
fanning her when her breath gave out, which it did very soon though she
would not own why.

"Won't I!" said Laurie, with alacrity.

"Please don't tell them at home about my dress tonight. They won't
understand the joke, and it will worry Mother."

"Then why did you do it?" said Laurie's eyes, so plainly that Meg
hastily added...

"I shall tell them myself all about it, and 'fess' to Mother how silly
I've been.  But I'd rather do it myself.  So you'll not tell, will you?"

"I give you my word I won't, only what shall I say when they ask me?"

"Just say I looked pretty well and was having a good time."

"I'll say the first with all my heart, but how about the other?  You
don't look as if you were having a good time.  Are you?" And Laurie
looked at her with an expression which made her answer in a whisper...

"No, not just now.  Don't think I'm horrid.  I only wanted a little
fun, but this sort doesn't pay, I find, and I'm getting tired of it."

"Here comes Ned Moffat.  What does he want?" said Laurie, knitting his
black brows as if he did not regard his young host in the light of a
pleasant addition to the party.

"He put his name down for three dances, and I suppose he's coming for
them.  What a bore!" said Meg, assuming a languid air which amused
Laurie immensely.

He did not speak to her again till suppertime, when he saw her drinking
champagne with Ned and his friend Fisher, who were behaving 'like a
pair of fools', as Laurie said to himself, for he felt a brotherly sort
of right to watch over the Marches and fight their battles whenever a
defender was needed.

"You'll have a splitting headache tomorrow, if you drink much of that.
I wouldn't, Meg, your mother doesn't like it, you know," he whispered,
leaning over her chair, as Ned turned to refill her glass and Fisher
stooped to pick up her fan.

"I'm not Meg tonight, I'm 'a doll' who does all sorts of crazy things.
Tomorrow I shall put away my 'fuss and feathers' and be desperately
good again," she answered with an affected little laugh.

"Wish tomorrow was here, then," muttered Laurie, walking off,
ill-pleased at the change he saw in her.

Meg danced and flirted, chattered and giggled, as the other girls did.
After supper she undertook the German, and blundered through it, nearly
upsetting her partner with her long skirt, and romping in a way that
scandalized Laurie, who looked on and meditated a lecture.  But he got
no chance to deliver it, for Meg kept away from him till he came to say
good night.

"Remember!" she said, trying to smile, for the splitting headache had
already begun.

"Silence a la mort," replied Laurie, with a melodramatic flourish, as
he went away.

This little bit of byplay excited Annie's curiosity, but Meg was too
tired for gossip and went to bed, feeling as if she had been to a
masquerade and hadn't enjoyed herself as much as she expected.  She was
sick all the next day, and on Saturday went home, quite used up with
her fortnight's fun and feeling that she had 'sat in the lap of luxury'
long enough.

"It does seem pleasant to be quiet, and not have company manners on all
the time.  Home is a nice place, though it isn't splendid," said Meg,
looking about her with a restful expression, as she sat with her mother
and Jo on the Sunday evening.

"I'm glad to hear you say so, dear, for I was afraid home would seem
dull and poor to you after your fine quarters," replied her mother, who
had given her many anxious looks that day.  For motherly eyes are quick
to see any change in children's faces.

Meg had told her adventures gayly and said over and over what a
charming time she had had, but something still seemed to weigh upon her
spirits, and when the younger girls were gone to bed, she sat
thoughtfully staring at the fire, saying little and looking worried.
As the clock struck nine and Jo proposed bed, Meg suddenly left her
chair and, taking Beth's stool, leaned her elbows on her mother's knee,
saying bravely...

"Marmee, I want to 'fess'."

"I thought so.  What is it, dear?"

"Shall I go away?" asked Jo discreetly.

"Of course not.  Don't I always tell you everything?  I was ashamed to
speak of it before the younger children, but I want you to know all the
dreadful things I did at the Moffats'."

"We are prepared," said Mrs. March, smiling but looking a little
anxious.

"I told you they dressed me up, but I didn't tell you that they
powdered and squeezed and frizzled, and made me look like a
fashion-plate.  Laurie thought I wasn't proper.  I know he did, though
he didn't say so, and one man called me 'a doll'.  I knew it was silly,
but they flattered me and said I was a beauty, and quantities of
nonsense, so I let them make a fool of me."

"Is that all?" asked Jo, as Mrs. March looked silently at the downcast
face of her pretty daughter, and could not find it in her heart to
blame her little follies.

"No, I drank champagne and romped and tried to flirt, and was
altogether abominable," said Meg self-reproachfully.

"There is something more, I think."  And Mrs. March smoothed the soft
cheek, which suddenly grew rosy as Meg answered slowly...

"Yes.  It's very silly, but I want to tell it, because I hate to have
people say and think such things about us and Laurie."

Then she told the various bits of gossip she had heard at the Moffats',
and as she spoke, Jo saw her mother fold her lips tightly, as if ill
pleased that such ideas should be put into Meg's innocent mind.

"Well, if that isn't the greatest rubbish I ever heard," cried Jo
indignantly.  "Why didn't you pop out and tell them so on the spot?"

"I couldn't, it was so embarrassing for me.  I couldn't help hearing at
first, and then I was so angry and ashamed, I didn't remember that I
ought to go away."

"Just wait till I see Annie Moffat, and I'll show you how to settle
such ridiculous stuff.  The idea of having 'plans' and being kind to
Laurie because he's rich and may marry us by-and-by!  Won't he shout
when I tell him what those silly things say about us poor children?"
And Jo laughed, as if on second thoughts the thing struck her as a good
joke.

"If you tell Laurie, I'll never forgive you!  She mustn't, must she,
Mother?" said Meg, looking distressed.

"No, never repeat that foolish gossip, and forget it as soon as you
can," said Mrs. March gravely.  "I was very unwise to let you go among
people of whom I know so little, kind, I dare say, but worldly,
ill-bred, and full of these vulgar ideas about young people.  I am more
sorry than I can express for the mischief this visit may have done you,
Meg."

"Don't be sorry, I won't let it hurt me.  I'll forget all the bad and
remember only the good, for I did enjoy a great deal, and thank you
very much for letting me go.  I'll not be sentimental or dissatisfied,
Mother.  I know I'm a silly little girl, and I'll stay with you till
I'm fit to take care of myself.  But it is nice to be praised and
admired, and I can't help saying I like it," said Meg, looking half
ashamed of the confession.

"That is perfectly natural, and quite harmless, if the liking does not
become a passion and lead one to do foolish or unmaidenly things.
Learn to know and value the praise which is worth having, and to excite
the admiration of excellent people by being modest as well as pretty,
Meg."

Margaret sat thinking a moment, while Jo stood with her hands behind
her, looking both interested and a little perplexed, for it was a new
thing to see Meg blushing and talking about admiration, lovers, and
things of that sort.  And Jo felt as if during that fortnight her
sister had grown up amazingly, and was drifting away from her into a
world where she could not follow.

"Mother, do you have 'plans', as Mrs. Moffat said?" asked Meg bashfully.

"Yes, my dear, I have a great many, all mothers do, but mine differ
somewhat from Mrs. Moffat's, I suspect.  I will tell you some of them,
for the time has come when a word may set this romantic little head and
heart of yours right, on a very serious subject.  You are young, Meg,
but not too young to understand me, and mothers' lips are the fittest
to speak of such things to girls like you.  Jo, your turn will come in
time, perhaps, so listen to my 'plans' and help me carry them out, if
they are good."

Jo went and sat on one arm of the chair, looking as if she thought they
were about to join in some very solemn affair. Holding a hand of each,
and watching the two young faces wistfully, Mrs. March said, in her
serious yet cheery way...

"I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good. To be
admired, loved, and respected.  To have a happy youth, to be well and
wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with as little care
and sorrow to try them as God sees fit to send. To be loved and chosen
by a good man is the best and sweetest thing which can happen to a
woman, and I sincerely hope my girls may know this beautiful
experience.  It is natural to think of it, Meg, right to hope and wait
for it, and wise to prepare for it, so that when the happy time comes,
you may feel ready for the duties and worthy of the joy.  My dear
girls, I am ambitious for you, but not to have you make a dash in the
world, marry rich men merely because they are rich, or have splendid
houses, which are not homes because love is wanting.  Money is a
needful and precious thing, and when well used, a noble thing, but I
never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for.
I'd rather see you poor men's wives, if you were happy, beloved,
contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace."

"Poor girls don't stand any chance, Belle says, unless they put
themselves forward," sighed Meg.

"Then we'll be old maids," said Jo stoutly.

"Right, Jo.  Better be happy old maids than unhappy wives, or
unmaidenly girls, running about to find husbands," said Mrs. March
decidedly.  "Don't be troubled, Meg, poverty seldom daunts a sincere
lover.  Some of the best and most honored women I know were poor girls,
but so love-worthy that they were not allowed to be old maids. Leave
these things to time.  Make this home happy, so that you may be fit for
homes of your own, if they are offered you, and contented here if they
are not.  One thing remember, my girls.  Mother is always ready to be
your confidant, Father to be your friend, and both of us hope and trust
that our daughters, whether married or single, will be the pride and
comfort of our lives."

"We will, Marmee, we will!" cried both, with all their hearts, as she
bade them good night.



CHAPTER TEN

THE P.C. AND P.O.

As spring came on, a new set of amusements became the fashion, and the
lengthening days gave long afternoons for work and play of all sorts.
The garden had to be put in order, and each sister had a quarter of the
little plot to do what she liked with.  Hannah used to say, "I'd know
which each of them gardings belonged to, ef I see 'em in Chiny," and so
she might, for the girls' tastes differed as much as their characters.
Meg's had roses and heliotrope, myrtle, and a little orange tree in it.
Jo's bed was never alike two seasons, for she was always trying
experiments.  This year it was to be a plantation of sun flowers, the
seeds of which cheerful and aspiring plant were to feed Aunt
Cockle-top and her family of chicks.  Beth had old-fashioned fragrant
flowers in her garden, sweet peas and mignonette, larkspur, pinks,
pansies, and southernwood, with chickweed for the birds and catnip for
the pussies.  Amy had a bower in hers, rather small and earwiggy, but
very pretty to look at, with honeysuckle and morning-glories hanging
their colored horns and bells in graceful wreaths all over it, tall
white lilies, delicate ferns, and as many brilliant, picturesque plants
as would consent to blossom there.

Gardening, walks, rows on the river, and flower hunts employed the fine
days, and for rainy ones, they had house diversions, some old, some
new, all more or less original.  One of these was the 'P.C.', for as
secret societies were the fashion, it was thought proper to have one,
and as all of the girls admired Dickens, they called themselves the
Pickwick Club.  With a few interruptions, they had kept this up for a
year, and met every Saturday evening in the big garret, on which
occasions the ceremonies were as follows:  Three chairs were arranged
in a row before a table on which was a lamp, also four white badges,
with a big 'P.C.' in different colors on each, and the weekly newspaper
called, The Pickwick Portfolio, to which all contributed something,
while Jo, who reveled in pens and ink, was the editor. At seven
o'clock, the four members ascended to the clubroom, tied their badges
round their heads, and took their seats with great solemnity.  Meg, as
the eldest, was Samuel Pickwick, Jo, being of a literary turn, Augustus
Snodgrass, Beth, because she was round and rosy, Tracy Tupman, and Amy,
who was always trying to do what she couldn't, was Nathaniel Winkle.
Pickwick, the president, read the paper, which was filled with original
tales, poetry, local news, funny advertisements, and hints, in which
they good-naturedly reminded each other of their faults and short
comings.  On one occasion, Mr. Pickwick put on a pair of spectacles
without any glass, rapped upon the table, hemmed, and having stared
hard at Mr. Snodgrass, who was tilting back in his chair, till he
arranged himself properly, began to read:

    _________________________________________________

    "THE PICKWICK PORTFOLIO"



    MAY 20, 18--

    POET'S CORNER

    ANNIVERSARY ODE


    Again we meet to celebrate
    With badge and solemn rite,
    Our fifty-second anniversary,
    In Pickwick Hall, tonight.

    We all are here in perfect health,
    None gone from our small band:
    Again we see each well-known face,
    And press each friendly hand.

    Our Pickwick, always at his post,
    With reverence we greet,
    As, spectacles on nose, he reads
    Our well-filled weekly sheet.

    Although he suffers from a cold,
    We joy to hear him speak,
    For words of wisdom from him fall,
    In spite of croak or squeak.

    Old six-foot Snodgrass looms on high,
    With elephantine grace,
    And beams upon the company,
    With brown and jovial face.

    Poetic fire lights up his eye,
    He struggles 'gainst his lot.
    Behold ambition on his brow,
    And on his nose, a blot.

    Next our peaceful Tupman comes,
    So rosy, plump, and sweet,
    Who chokes with laughter at the puns,
    And tumbles off his seat.

    Prim little Winkle too is here,
    With every hair in place,
    A model of propriety,
    Though he hates to wash his face.

    The year is gone, we still unite
    To joke and laugh and read,
    And tread the path of literature
    That doth to glory lead.

    Long may our paper prosper well,
    Our club unbroken be,
    And coming years their blessings pour
    On the useful, gay 'P.  C.'.
    A.  SNODGRASS

    ________

    THE MASKED MARRIAGE
    (A Tale Of Venice)

    Gondola after gondola swept up to the marble
    steps, and left its lovely load to swell the
    brilliant throng that filled the stately halls of Count
    Adelon.  Knights and ladies, elves and pages, monks
    and flower girls, all mingled gaily in the dance.
    Sweet voices and rich melody filled the air, and so
    with mirth and music the masquerade went on.
    "Has your Highness seen the Lady Viola tonight?"
    asked a gallant troubadour of the fairy queen who
    floated down the hall upon his arm.

    "Yes, is she not lovely, though so sad!  Her
    dress is well chosen, too, for in a week she weds
    Count Antonio, whom she passionately hates."

    "By my faith, I envy him.  Yonder he comes,
    arrayed like a bridegroom, except the black mask.
    When that is off we shall see how he regards the
    fair maid whose heart he cannot win, though her
    stern father bestows her hand," returned the troubadour.

    "Tis whispered that she loves the young English
    artist who haunts her steps, and is spurned by the
    old Count," said the lady, as they joined the dance.
    The revel was at its height when a priest
    appeared, and withdrawing the young pair to an alcove,
    hung with purple velvet, he motioned them to kneel.
    Instant silence fell on the gay throng, and not a
    sound, but the dash of fountains or the rustle of
    orange groves sleeping in the moonlight, broke the
    hush, as Count de Adelon spoke thus:

    "My lords and ladies, pardon the ruse by which
    I have gathered you here to witness the marriage of
    my daughter.  Father, we wait your services."
    All eyes turned toward the bridal party, and a
    murmur of amazement went through the throng, for
    neither bride nor groom removed their masks.  Curiosity
    and wonder possessed all hearts, but respect restrained
    all tongues till the holy rite was over.  Then the
    eager spectators gathered round the count, demanding
    an explanation.

    "Gladly would I give it if I could, but I only
    know that it was the whim of my timid Viola, and I
    yielded to it.  Now, my children, let the play end.
    Unmask and receive my blessing."

    But neither bent the knee, for the young bridegroom
    replied in a tone that startled all listeners
    as the mask fell, disclosing the noble face of Ferdinand
    Devereux, the artist lover, and leaning on the
    breast where now flashed the star of an English earl
    was the lovely Viola, radiant with joy and beauty.

    "My lord, you scornfully bade me claim your
    daughter when I could boast as high a name and vast a
    fortune as the Count Antonio.  I can do more, for even
    your ambitious soul cannot refuse the Earl of Devereux
    and De Vere, when he gives his ancient name and boundless
    wealth in return for the beloved hand of this fair lady,
    now my wife."

    The count stood like one changed to stone, and
    turning to the bewildered crowd, Ferdinand added, with
    a gay smile of triumph, "To you, my gallant friends, I
    can only wish that your wooing may prosper as mine has
    done, and that you may all win as fair a bride as I have
    by this masked marriage."
    S.  PICKWICK


    Why is the P.  C.  like the Tower of Babel?
    It is full of unruly members.

    _________

    THE HISTORY OF A SQUASH


    Once upon a time a farmer planted a little seed
    in his garden, and after a while it sprouted and became
    a vine and bore many squashes.  One day in October,
    when they were ripe, he picked one and took it
    to market.  A grocerman bought and put it in his shop.
    That same morning, a little girl in a brown hat
    and blue dress, with a round face and snub nose, went
    and bought it for her mother.  She lugged it home, cut
    it up, and boiled it in the big pot, mashed some of it
    with salt and butter, for dinner.  And to the rest she added
    a pint of milk, two eggs, four spoons of sugar, nutmeg,
    and some crackers, put it in a deep dish, and baked it
    till it was brown and nice, and next day it was eaten
    by a family named March.
    T.  TUPMAN

    _________

    Mr. Pickwick, Sir:--
    I address you upon the subject of sin the sinner
    I mean is a man named Winkle who makes trouble in his
    club by laughing and sometimes won't write his piece in
    this fine paper I hope you will pardon his badness and
    let him send a French fable because he can't write out
    of his head as he has so many lessons to do and no brains
    in future I will try to take time by the fetlock and
    prepare some work which will be all commy la fo that
    means all right I am in haste as it is nearly school
    time.
    Yours respectably,
    N.  WINKLE

    [The above is a manly and handsome acknowledgment of past
    misdemeanors.  If our young friend studied punctuation, it
    would be well.]

    _________

    A SAD ACCIDENT

    On Friday last, we were startled by a violent shock
    in our basement, followed by cries of distress.
    On rushing in a body to the cellar, we discovered our beloved
    President prostrate upon the floor, having tripped and
    fallen while getting wood for domestic purposes.  A perfect
    scene of ruin met our eyes, for in his fall Mr. Pickwick
    had plunged his head and shoulders into a tub of water,
    upset a keg of soft soap upon his manly form,  and torn
    his garments badly.  On being removed from this perilous
    situation, it was discovered that he had suffered
    no injury but several bruises, and we are happy to add,
    is now doing well.
    ED.

    _________

    THE PUBLIC BEREAVEMENT

    It is our painful duty to record the sudden and
    mysterious disappearance of our cherished friend, Mrs.
    Snowball Pat Paw.  This lovely and beloved cat was the
    pet of a large circle of warm and admiring friends; for
    her beauty attracted all eyes, her graces and virtues
    endeared her to all hearts, and her loss is deeply felt
    by the whole community.

    When last seen, she was sitting at the gate, watching
    the butcher's cart, and it is feared that some villain,
    tempted by her charms, basely stole her.  Weeks have passed,
    but no trace of her has been discovered, and we relinquish
    all hope, tie a black ribbon to her basket, set aside her
    dish, and weep for her as one lost to us forever.

    _________

    A sympathizing friend sends the following gem:


    A LAMENT
    (FOR S.  B.  PAT PAW)

    We mourn the loss of our little pet,
    And sigh o'er her hapless fate,
    For never more by the fire she'll sit,
    Nor play by the old green gate.

    The little grave where her infant sleeps
    Is 'neath the chestnut tree.
    But o'er her grave we may not weep,
    We know not where it may be.

    Her empty bed, her idle ball,
    Will never see her more;
    No gentle tap, no loving purr
    Is heard at the parlor door.

    Another cat comes after her mice,
    A cat with a dirty face,
    But she does not hunt as our darling did,
    Nor play with her airy grace.

    Her stealthy paws tread the very hall
    Where Snowball used to play,
    But she only spits at the dogs our pet
    So gallantly drove away.

    She is useful and mild, and does her best,
    But she is not fair to see,
    And we cannot give her your place dear,
    Nor worship her as we worship thee.
    A.S.

    _________

    ADVERTISEMENTS

    MISS ORANTHY BLUGGAGE, the accomplished
    strong-minded lecturer, will deliver her
    famous lecture on "WOMAN AND HER POSITION"
    at Pickwick Hall, next Saturday Evening,
    after the usual performances.


    A WEEKLY MEETING will be held at Kitchen
    Place, to teach young ladies how to cook.
    Hannah Brown will preside, and all are
    invited to attend.

    The DUSTPAN SOCIETY will meet on Wednesday
    next, and parade in the upper story of the
    Club House.  All members to appear in uniform
    and shoulder their brooms at nine precisely.

    Mrs. BETH BOUNCER will open her new
    assortment of Doll's Millinery next week.
    The latest Paris fashions have arrived,
    and orders are respectfully solicited.

    A NEW PLAY will appear at the Barnville
    Theatre, in the course of a few weeks, which
    will surpass anything ever seen on the American stage.
    "The Greek Slave, or Constantine the Avenger," is the name
    of this thrilling drama!!!



    HINTS

    If S.P.  didn't use so much soap on his hands,
    he wouldn't always be late at breakfast.  A.S.
    is requested not to whistle in the street.  T.T.
    please don't forget Amy's napkin.  N.W.  must
    not fret because his dress has not nine tucks.



    WEEKLY REPORT

    Meg--Good.
    Jo--Bad.
    Beth--Very Good.
    Amy--Middling.

    _________________________________________________


As the President finished reading the paper (which I beg leave to
assure my readers is a bona fide copy of one written by bona fide girls
once upon a time), a round of applause followed, and then Mr. Snodgrass
rose to make a proposition.

"Mr. President and gentlemen," he began, assuming a parliamentary
attitude and tone, "I wish to propose the admission of a new
member--one who highly deserves the honor, would be deeply grateful for
it, and would add immensely to the spirit of the club, the literary
value of the paper, and be no end jolly and nice.  I propose Mr.
Theodore Laurence as an honorary member of the P.  C.  Come now, do
have him."

Jo's sudden change of tone made the girls laugh, but all looked rather
anxious, and no one said a word as Snodgrass took his seat.

"We'll put it to a vote," said the President.  "All in favor of this
motion please to manifest it by saying, 'Aye'."

A loud response from Snodgrass, followed, to everybody's surprise, by a
timid one from Beth.

"Contrary-minded say, 'No'."

Meg and Amy were contrary-minded, and Mr. Winkle rose to say with great
elegance, "We don't wish any boys, they only joke and bounce about.
This is a ladies' club, and we wish to be private and proper."

"I'm afraid he'll laugh at our paper, and make fun of us afterward,"
observed Pickwick, pulling the little curl on her forehead, as she
always did when doubtful.

Up rose Snodgrass, very much in earnest.  "Sir, I give you my word as a
gentleman, Laurie won't do anything of the sort.  He likes to write,
and he'll give a tone to our contributions and keep us from being
sentimental, don't you see?  We can do so little for him, and he does
so much for us, I think the least we can do is to offer him a place
here, and make him welcome if he comes."

This artful allusion to benefits conferred brought Tupman to his feet,
looking as if he had quite made up his mind.

"Yes; we ought to do it, even if we are afraid.  I say he may come, and
his grandpa, too, if he likes."

This spirited burst from Beth electrified the club, and Jo left her
seat to shake hands approvingly.  "Now then, vote again. Everybody
remember it's our Laurie, and say, 'Aye!'" cried Snodgrass excitedly.

"Aye!  Aye!  Aye!" replied three voices at once.

"Good!  Bless you!  Now, as there's nothing like 'taking time by the
fetlock', as Winkle characteristically observes, allow me to present
the new member."  And, to the dismay of the rest of the club, Jo threw
open the door of the closet, and displayed Laurie sitting on a rag bag,
flushed and twinkling with suppressed laughter.

"You rogue!  You traitor!  Jo, how could you?" cried the three girls,
as Snodgrass led her friend triumphantly forth, and producing both a
chair and a badge, installed him in a jiffy.

"The coolness of you two rascals is amazing," began Mr. Pickwick,
trying to get up an awful frown and only succeeding in producing an
amiable smile.  But the new member was equal to the occasion, and
rising, with a grateful salutation to the Chair, said in the most
engaging manner, "Mr. President and ladies--I beg pardon,
gentlemen--allow me to introduce myself as Sam Weller, the very humble
servant of the club."

"Good!  Good!" cried Jo, pounding with the handle of the old warming
pan on which she leaned.

"My faithful friend and noble patron," continued Laurie with a wave of
the hand, "who has so flatteringly presented me, is not to be blamed
for the base stratagem of tonight.  I planned it, and she only gave in
after lots of teasing."

"Come now, don't lay it all on yourself.  You know I proposed the
cupboard," broke in Snodgrass, who was enjoying the joke amazingly.

"Never mind what she says.  I'm the wretch that did it, sir," said the
new member, with a Welleresque nod to Mr. Pickwick.  "But on my honor,
I never will do so again, and henceforth devote myself to the interest
of this immortal club."

"Hear!  Hear!" cried Jo, clashing the lid of the warming pan like a
cymbal.

"Go on, go on!" added Winkle and Tupman, while the President bowed
benignly.

"I merely wish to say, that as a slight token of my gratitude for the
honor done me, and as a means of promoting friendly relations between
adjoining nations, I have set up a post office in the hedge in the
lower corner of the garden, a fine, spacious building with padlocks on
the doors and every convenience for the mails, also the females, if I
may be allowed the expression.  It's the old martin house, but I've
stopped up the door and made the roof open, so it will hold all sorts
of things, and save our valuable time.  Letters, manuscripts, books,
and bundles can be passed in there, and as each nation has a key, it
will be uncommonly nice, I fancy.  Allow me to present the club key,
and with many thanks for your favor, take my seat."

Great applause as Mr. Weller deposited a little key on the table and
subsided, the warming pan clashed and waved wildly, and it was some
time before order could be restored.  A long discussion followed, and
everyone came out surprising, for everyone did her best.  So it was an
unusually lively meeting, and did not adjourn till a late hour, when it
broke up with three shrill cheers for the new member.

No one ever regretted the admittance of Sam Weller, for a more devoted,
well-behaved, and jovial member no club could have. He certainly did
add 'spirit' to the meetings, and 'a tone' to the paper, for his
orations convulsed his hearers and his contributions were excellent,
being patriotic, classical, comical, or dramatic, but never
sentimental.  Jo regarded them as worthy of Bacon, Milton, or
Shakespeare, and remodeled her own works with good effect, she thought.

The P.  O.  was a capital little institution, and flourished
wonderfully, for nearly as many queer things passed through it as
through the real post office.  Tragedies and cravats, poetry and
pickles, garden seeds and long letters, music and gingerbread, rubbers,
invitations, scoldings, and puppies.  The old gentleman liked the fun,
and amused himself by sending odd bundles, mysterious messages, and
funny telegrams, and his gardener, who was smitten with Hannah's
charms, actually sent a love letter to Jo's care.  How they laughed
when the secret came out, never dreaming how many love letters that
little post office would hold in the years to come.



CHAPTER ELEVEN

EXPERIMENTS

"The first of June!  The Kings are off to the seashore tomorrow, and
I'm free.  Three months' vacation--how I shall enjoy it!" exclaimed
Meg, coming home one warm day to find Jo laid upon the sofa in an
unusual state of exhaustion, while Beth took off her dusty boots, and
Amy made lemonade for the refreshment of the whole party.

"Aunt March went today, for which, oh, be joyful!" said Jo. "I was
mortally afraid she'd ask me to go with her.  If she had, I should have
felt as if I ought to do it, but Plumfield is about as gay as a
churchyard, you know, and I'd rather be excused. We had a flurry
getting the old lady off, and I had a fright every time she spoke to
me, for I was in such a hurry to be through that I was uncommonly
helpful and sweet, and feared she'd find it impossible to part from me.
I quaked till she was fairly in the carriage, and had a final fright,
for as it drove of, she popped out her head, saying, 'Josyphine, won't
you--?' I didn't hear any more, for I basely turned and fled.  I did
actually run, and whisked round the corner where I felt safe."

"Poor old Jo!  She came in looking as if bears were after her," said
Beth, as she cuddled her sister's feet with a motherly air.

"Aunt March is a regular samphire, is she not?" observed Amy, tasting
her mixture critically.

"She means vampire, not seaweed, but it doesn't matter.  It's too warm
to be particular about one's parts of speech," murmured Jo.

"What shall you do all your vacation?" asked Amy, changing the subject
with tact.

"I shall lie abed late, and do nothing," replied Meg, from the depths
of the rocking chair.  "I've been routed up early all winter and had to
spend my days working for other people, so now I'm going to rest and
revel to my heart's content."

"No," said Jo, "that dozy way wouldn't suit me.  I've laid in a heap of
books, and I'm going to improve my shining hours reading on my perch in
the old apple tree, when I'm not having l----"

"Don't say 'larks!'" implored Amy, as a return snub for the 'samphire'
correction.

"I'll say 'nightingales' then, with Laurie.  That's proper and
appropriate, since he's a warbler."

"Don't let us do any lessons, Beth, for a while, but play all the time
and rest, as the girls mean to," proposed Amy.

"Well, I will, if Mother doesn't mind.  I want to learn some new songs,
and my children need fitting up for the summer.  They are dreadfully
out of order and really suffering for clothes."

"May we, Mother?" asked Meg, turning to Mrs. March, who sat sewing in
what they called 'Marmee's corner'.

"You may try your experiment for a week and see how you like it.  I
think by Saturday night you will find that all play and no work is as
bad as all work and no play."

"Oh, dear, no!  It will be delicious, I'm sure," said Meg complacently.

"I now propose a toast, as my 'friend and pardner, Sairy Gamp', says.
Fun forever, and no grubbing!" cried Jo, rising, glass in hand, as the
lemonade went round.

They all drank it merrily, and began the experiment by lounging for the
rest of the day.  Next morning, Meg did not appear till ten o'clock.
Her solitary breakfast did not taste good, and the room seemed lonely
and untidy, for Jo had not filled the vases, Beth had not dusted, and
Amy's books lay scattered about.  Nothing was neat and pleasant but
'Marmee's corner', which looked as usual.  And there Meg sat, to 'rest
and read', which meant to yawn and imagine what pretty summer dresses
she would get with her salary.  Jo spent the morning on the river with
Laurie and the afternoon reading and crying over _The Wide, Wide
World_, up in the apple tree.  Beth began by rummaging everything out
of the big closet where her family resided, but getting tired before
half done, she left her establishment topsy-turvy and went to her
music, rejoicing that she had no dishes to wash. Amy arranged her
bower, put on her best white frock, smoothed her curls, and sat down to
draw under the honeysuckle, hoping someone would see and inquire who
the young artist was.  As no one appeared but an inquisitive
daddy-longlegs, who examined her work with interest, she went to walk,
got caught in a shower, and came home dripping.

At teatime they compared notes, and all agreed that it had been a
delightful, though unusually long day.  Meg, who went shopping in the
afternoon and got a 'sweet blue muslin', had discovered, after she had
cut the breadths off, that it wouldn't wash, which mishap made her
slightly cross.  Jo had burned the skin off her nose boating, and got a
raging headache by reading too long.  Beth was worried by the confusion
of her closet and the difficulty of learning three or four songs at
once, and Amy deeply regretted the damage done her frock, for Katy
Brown's party was to be the next day and now like Flora McFlimsey, she
had 'nothing to wear'.  But these were mere trifles, and they assured
their mother that the experiment was working finely.  She smiled, said
nothing, and with Hannah's help did their neglected work, keeping home
pleasant and the domestic machinery running smoothly.  It was
astonishing what a peculiar and uncomfortable state of things was
produced by the 'resting and reveling' process.  The days kept getting
longer and longer, the weather was unusually variable and so were
tempers; an unsettled feeling possessed everyone, and Satan found
plenty of mischief for the idle hands to do.  As the height of luxury,
Meg put out some of her sewing, and then found time hang so heavily,
that she fell to snipping and spoiling her clothes in her attempts to
furbish them up a la Moffat.  Jo read till her eyes gave out and she
was sick of books, got so fidgety that even good-natured Laurie had a
quarrel with her, and so reduced in spirits that she desperately wished
she had gone with Aunt March.  Beth got on pretty well, for she was
constantly forgetting that it was to be all play and no work, and fell
back into her old ways now and then.  But something in the air affected
her, and more than once her tranquility was much disturbed, so much so
that on one occasion she actually shook poor dear Joanna and told her
she was 'a fright'.  Amy fared worst of all, for her resources were
small, and when her sisters left her to amuse herself, she soon found
that accomplished and important little self a great burden.  She didn't
like dolls, fairy tales were childish, and one couldn't draw all the
time.  Tea parties didn't amount to much, neither did picnics, unless
very well conducted.  "If one could have a fine house, full of nice
girls, or go traveling, the summer would be delightful, but to stay at
home with three selfish sisters and a grown-up boy was enough to try
the patience of a Boaz," complained Miss Malaprop, after several days
devoted to pleasure, fretting, and ennui.

No one would own that they were tired of the experiment, but by Friday
night each acknowledged to herself that she was glad the week was
nearly done.  Hoping to impress the lesson more deeply, Mrs. March, who
had a good deal of humor, resolved to finish off the trial in an
appropriate manner, so she gave Hannah a holiday and let the girls
enjoy the full effect of the play system.

When they got up on Saturday morning, there was no fire in the kitchen,
no breakfast in the dining room, and no mother anywhere to be seen.

"Mercy on us!  What has happened?" cried Jo, staring about her in
dismay.

Meg ran upstairs and soon came back again, looking relieved but rather
bewildered, and a little ashamed.

"Mother isn't sick, only very tired, and she says she is going to stay
quietly in her room all day and let us do the best we can.  It's a very
queer thing for her to do, she doesn't act a bit like herself.  But she
says it has been a hard week for her, so we mustn't grumble but take
care of ourselves."

"That's easy enough, and I like the idea, I'm aching for something to
do, that is, some new amusement, you know," added Jo quickly.

In fact it was an immense relief to them all to have a little work, and
they took hold with a will, but soon realized the truth of Hannah's
saying, "Housekeeping ain't no joke."  There was plenty of food in the
larder, and while Beth and Amy set the table, Meg and Jo got breakfast,
wondering as they did why servants ever talked about hard work.

"I shall take some up to Mother, though she said we were not to think
of her, for she'd take care of herself," said Meg, who presided and
felt quite matronly behind the teapot.

So a tray was fitted out before anyone began, and taken up with the
cook's compliments.  The boiled tea was very bitter, the omelet
scorched, and the biscuits speckled with saleratus, but Mrs. March
received her repast with thanks and laughed heartily over it after Jo
was gone.

"Poor little souls, they will have a hard time, I'm afraid, but they
won't suffer, and it will do them good," she said, producing the more
palatable viands with which she had provided herself, and disposing of
the bad breakfast, so that their feelings might not be hurt, a motherly
little deception for which they were grateful.

Many were the complaints below, and great the chagrin of the head cook
at her failures.  "Never mind, I'll get the dinner and be servant, you
be mistress, keep your hands nice, see company, and give orders," said
Jo, who knew still less than Meg about culinary affairs.

This obliging offer was gladly accepted, and Margaret retired to the
parlor, which she hastily put in order by whisking the litter under the
sofa and shutting the blinds to save the trouble of dusting.  Jo, with
perfect faith in her own powers and a friendly desire to make up the
quarrel, immediately put a note in the office, inviting Laurie to
dinner.

"You'd better see what you have got before you think of having
company," said Meg, when informed of the hospitable but rash act.

"Oh, there's corned beef and plenty of potatoes, and I shall get some
asparagus and a lobster, 'for a relish', as Hannah says. We'll have
lettuce and make a salad.  I don't know how, but the book tells.  I'll
have blanc mange and strawberries for dessert, and coffee too, if you
want to be elegant."

"Don't try too many messes, Jo, for you can't make anything but
gingerbread and molasses candy fit to eat.  I wash my hands of the
dinner party, and since you have asked Laurie on your own
responsibility, you may just take care of him."

"I don't want you to do anything but be civil to him and help to the
pudding.  You'll give me your advice if I get in a muddle, won't you?"
asked Jo, rather hurt.

"Yes, but I don't know much, except about bread and a few trifles.  You
had better ask Mother's leave before you order anything," returned Meg
prudently.

"Of course I shall.  I'm not a fool."  And Jo went off in a huff at the
doubts expressed of her powers.

"Get what you like, and don't disturb me.  I'm going out to dinner and
can't worry about things at home," said Mrs. March, when Jo spoke to
her.  "I never enjoyed housekeeping, and I'm going to take a vacation
today, and read, write, go visiting, and amuse myself."

The unusual spectacle of her busy mother rocking comfortably and
reading early in the morning made Jo feel as if some unnatural
phenomenon had occurred, for an eclipse, an earthquake, or a volcanic
eruption would hardly have seemed stranger.

"Everything is out of sorts, somehow," she said to herself, going
downstairs.  "There's Beth crying, that's a sure sign that something is
wrong in this family.  If Amy is bothering, I'll shake her."

Feeling very much out of sorts herself, Jo hurried into the parlor to
find Beth sobbing over Pip, the canary, who lay dead in the cage with
his little claws pathetically extended, as if imploring the food for
want of which he had died.

"It's all my fault, I forgot him, there isn't a seed or a drop left.
Oh, Pip!  Oh, Pip!  How could I be so cruel to you?" cried Beth, taking
the poor thing in her hands and trying to restore him.

Jo peeped into his half-open eye, felt his little heart, and finding
him stiff and cold, shook her head, and offered her domino box for a
coffin.

"Put him in the oven, and maybe he will get warm and revive," said Amy
hopefully.

"He's been starved, and he shan't be baked now he's dead.  I'll make
him a shroud, and he shall be buried in the garden, and I'll never have
another bird, never, my Pip! for I am too bad to own one," murmured
Beth, sitting on the floor with her pet folded in her hands.

"The funeral shall be this afternoon, and we will all go.  Now, don't
cry, Bethy.  It's a pity, but nothing goes right this week, and Pip has
had the worst of the experiment.  Make the shroud, and lay him in my
box, and after the dinner party, we'll have a nice little funeral,"
said Jo, beginning to feel as if she had undertaken a good deal.

Leaving the others to console Beth, she departed to the kitchen, which
was in a most discouraging state of confusion.  Putting on a big apron,
she fell to work and got the dishes piled up ready for washing, when
she discovered that the fire was out.

"Here's a sweet prospect!" muttered Jo, slamming the stove door open,
and poking vigorously among the cinders.

Having rekindled the fire, she thought she would go to market while the
water heated.  The walk revived her spirits, and flattering herself
that she had made good bargains, she trudged home again, after buying a
very young lobster, some very old asparagus, and two boxes of acid
strawberries.  By the time she got cleared up, the dinner arrived and
the stove was red-hot.  Hannah had left a pan of bread to rise, Meg had
worked it up early, set it on the hearth for a second rising, and
forgotten it.  Meg was entertaining Sallie Gardiner in the parlor, when
the door flew open and a floury, crocky, flushed, and disheveled figure
appeared, demanding tartly...

"I say, isn't bread 'riz' enough when it runs over the pans?"

Sallie began to laugh, but Meg nodded and lifted her eyebrows as high
as they would go, which caused the apparition to vanish and put the
sour bread into the oven without further delay.  Mrs. March went out,
after peeping here and there to see how matters went, also saying a
word of comfort to Beth, who sat making a winding sheet, while the dear
departed lay in state in the domino box.  A straLanguage cannot describe
nge sense of
helplessness fell upon the girls as the gray bonnet vanished round the
corner, and despair seized them when a few minutes later Miss Crocker
appeared, and said she'd come to dinner.  Now this lady was a thin,
yellow spinster, with a sharp nose and inquisitive eyes, who saw
everything and gossiped about all she saw. They disliked her, but had
been taught to be kind to her, simply because she was old and poor and
had few friends.  So Meg gave her the easy chair and tried to entertain
her, while she asked questions, criticized everything, and told stories
of the people whom she knew.

Language cannot describe the anxieties, experiences, and exertions
which Jo underwent that morning, and the dinner she served up became a
standing joke.  Fearing to ask any more advice, she did her best alone,
and discovered that something more than energy and good will is
necessary to make a cook.  She boiled the asparagus for an hour and was
grieved to find the heads cooked off and the stalks harder than ever.
The bread burned black; for the salad dressing so aggravated her that
she could not make it fit to eat.  The lobster was a scarlet mystery to
her, but she hammered and poked till it was unshelled and its meager
proportions concealed in a grove of lettuce leaves.  The potatoes had
to be hurried, not to keep the asparagus waiting, and were not done at
the last.  The blanc mange was lumpy, and the strawberries not as ripe
as they looked, having been skilfully 'deaconed'.

"Well, they can eat beef and bread and butter, if they are hungry, only
it's mortifying to have to spend your whole morning for nothing,"
thought Jo, as she rang the bell half an hour later than usual, and
stood, hot, tired, and dispirited, surveying the feast spread before
Laurie, accustomed to all sorts of elegance, and Miss Crocker, whose
tattling tongue would report them far and wide.

Poor Jo would gladly have gone under the table, as one thing after
another was tasted and left, while Amy giggled, Meg looked distressed,
Miss Crocker pursed her lips, and Laurie talked and laughed with all
his might to give a cheerful tone to the festive scene.  Jo's one
strong point was the fruit, for she had sugared it well, and had a
pitcher of rich cream to eat with it.  Her hot cheeks cooled a trifle,
and she drew a long breath as the pretty glass plates went round, and
everyone looked graciously at the little rosy islands floating in a sea
of cream.  Miss Crocker tasted first, made a wry face, and drank some
water hastily.  Jo, who refused, thinking there might not be enough,
for they dwindled sadly after the picking over, glanced at Laurie, but
he was eating away manfully, though there was a slight pucker about his
mouth and he kept his eye fixed on his plate.  Amy, who was fond of
delicate fare, took a heaping spoonful, choked, hid her face in her
napkin, and left the table precipitately.

"Oh, what is it?" exclaimed Jo, trembling.

"Salt instead of sugar, and the cream is sour," replied Meg with a
tragic gesture.

Jo uttered a groan and fell back in her chair, remembering that she had
given a last hasty powdering to the berries out of one of the two boxes
on the kitchen table, and had neglected to put the milk in the
refrigerator.  She turned scarlet and was on the verge of crying, when
she met Laurie's eyes, which would look merry in spite of his heroic
efforts.  The comical side of the affair suddenly struck her, and she
laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.  So did everyone else, even
'Croaker' as the girls called the old lady, and the unfortunate dinner
ended gaily, with bread and butter, olives and fun.

"I haven't strength of mind enough to clear up now, so we will sober
ourselves with a funeral," said Jo, as they rose, and Miss Crocker made
ready to go, being eager to tell the new story at another friend's
dinner table.

They did sober themselves for Beth's sake.  Laurie dug a grave under
the ferns in the grove, little Pip was laid in, with many tears by his
tender-hearted mistress, and covered with moss, while a wreath of
violets and chickweed was hung on the stone which bore his epitaph,
composed by Jo while she struggled with the dinner.

    Here lies Pip March,
    Who died the 7th of June;
    Loved and lamented sore,
    And not forgotten soon.

At the conclusion of the ceremonies, Beth retired to her room, overcome
with emotion and lobster, but there was no place of repose, for the
beds were not made, and she found her grief much assuaged by beating up
the pillows and putting things in order.  Meg helped Jo clear away the
remains of the feast, which took half the afternoon and left them so
tired that they agreed to be contented with tea and toast for supper.

Laurie took Amy to drive, which was a deed of charity, for the sour
cream seemed to have had a bad effect upon her temper.  Mrs. March came
home to find the three older girls hard at work in the middle of the
afternoon, and a glance at the closet gave her an idea of the success
of one part of the experiment.

Before the housewives could rest, several people called, and there was
a scramble to get ready to see them.  Then tea must be got, errands
done, and one or two necessary bits of sewing neglected until the last
minute.  As twilight fell, dewy and still, one by one they gathered on
the porch where the June roses were budding beautifully, and each
groaned or sighed as she sat down, as if tired or troubled.

"What a dreadful day this has been!" began Jo, usually the first to
speak.

"It has seemed shorter than usual, but so uncomfortable," said Meg.

"Not a bit like home," added Amy.

"It can't seem so without Marmee and little Pip," sighed Beth, glancing
with full eyes at the empty cage above her head.

"Here's Mother, dear, and you shall have another bird tomorrow, if you
want it."

As she spoke, Mrs. March came and took her place among them, looking as
if her holiday had not been much pleasanter than theirs.

"Are you satisfied with your experiment, girls, or do you want another
week of it?" she asked, as Beth nestled up to her and the rest turned
toward her with brightening faces, as flowers turn toward the sun.

"I don't!" cried Jo decidedly.

"Nor I," echoed the others.

"You think then, that it is better to have a few duties and live a
little for others, do you?"

"Lounging and larking doesn't pay," observed Jo, shaking her head. "I'm
tired of it and mean to go to work at something right off."

"Suppose you learn plain cooking.  That's a useful accomplishment,
which no woman should be without," said Mrs. March, laughing inaudibly
at the recollection of Jo's dinner party, for she had met Miss Crocker
and heard her account of it.

"Mother, did you go away and let everything be, just to see how we'd
get on?" cried Meg, who had had suspicions all day.

"Yes, I wanted you to see how the comfort of all depends on each doing
her share faithfully.  While Hannah and I did your work, you got on
pretty well, though I don't think you were very happy or amiable.  So I
thought, as a little lesson, I would show you what happens when
everyone thinks only of herself.  Don't you feel that it is pleasanter
to help one another, to have daily duties which make leisure sweet when
it comes, and to bear and forbear, that home may be comfortable and
lovely to us all?"

"We do, Mother, we do!" cried the girls.

"Then let me advise you to take up your little burdens again, for
though they seem heavy sometimes, they are good for us, and lighten as
we learn to carry them.  Work is wholesome, and there is plenty for
everyone.  It keeps us from ennui and mischief, is good for health and
spirits, and gives us a sense of power and independence better than
money or fashion."

"We'll work like bees, and love it too, see if we don't," said Jo.
"I'll learn plain cooking for my holiday task, and the next dinner
party I have shall be a success."

"I'll make the set of shirts for father, instead of letting you do it,
Marmee.  I can and I will, though I'm not fond of sewing. That will be
better than fussing over my own things, which are plenty nice enough as
they are." said Meg.

"I'll do my lessons every day, and not spend so much time with my music
and dolls.  I am a stupid thing, and ought to be studying, not
playing," was Beth's resolution, while Amy followed their example by
heroically declaring, "I shall learn to make buttonholes, and attend to
my parts of speech."

"Very good!  Then I am quite satisfied with the experiment, and fancy
that we shall not have to repeat it, only don't go to the other extreme
and delve like slaves.  Have regular hours for work and play, make each
day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth
of time by employing it well.  Then youth will be delightful, old age
will bring few regrets, and life become a beautiful success, in spite
of poverty."

"We'll remember, Mother!" and they did.



CHAPTER TWELVE

CAMP LAURENCE

Beth was postmistress, for, being most at home, she could attend to it
regularly, and dearly liked the daily task of unlocking the little door
and distributing the mail.  One July day she came in with her hands
full, and went about the house leaving letters and parcels like the
penny post.

"Here's your posy, Mother!  Laurie never forgets that," she said,
putting the fresh nosegay in the vase that stood in 'Marmee's corner',
and was kept supplied by the affectionate boy.

"Miss Meg March, one letter and a glove," continued Beth, delivering
the articles to her sister, who sat near her mother, stitching
wristbands.

"Why, I left a pair over there, and here is only one," said Meg,
looking at the gray cotton glove.  "Didn't you drop the other in the
garden?"

"No, I'm sure I didn't, for there was only one in the office."

"I hate to have odd gloves!  Never mind, the other may be found.  My
letter is only a translation of the German song I wanted.  I think Mr.
Brooke did it, for this isn't Laurie's writing."

Mrs. March glanced at Meg, who was looking very pretty in her gingham
morning gown, with the little curls blowing about her forehead, and
very womanly, as she sat sewing at her little worktable, full of tidy
white rolls, so unconscious of the thought in her mother's mind as she
sewed and sang, while her fingers flew and her thoughts were busied
with girlish fancies as innocent and fresh as the pansies in her belt,
that Mrs. March smiled and was satisfied.

"Two letters for Doctor Jo, a book, and a funny old hat, which covered
the whole post office and stuck outside," said Beth, laughing as she
went into the study where Jo sat writing.

"What a sly fellow Laurie is!  I said I wished bigger hats were the
fashion, because I burn my face every hot day.  He said, 'Why mind the
fashion?  Wear a big hat, and be comfortable!' I said I would if I had
one, and he has sent me this, to try me.  I'll wear it for fun, and
show him I don't care for the fashion."  And hanging the antique
broad-brim on a bust of Plato, Jo read her letters.

One from her mother made her cheeks glow and her eyes fill, for it said
to her...


My Dear:

I write a little word to tell you with how much satisfaction I watch
your efforts to control your temper.  You say nothing about your
trials, failures, or successes, and think, perhaps, that no one sees
them but the Friend whose help you daily ask, if I may trust the
well-worn cover of your guidebook.  I, too, have seen them all, and
heartily believe in the sincerity of your resolution, since it begins
to bear fruit.  Go on, dear, patiently and bravely, and always believe
that no one sympathizes more tenderly with you than your loving...

Mother


"That does me good!  That's worth millions of money and pecks of
praise.  Oh, Marmee, I do try!  I will keep on trying, and not get
tired, since I have you to help me."

Laying her head on her arms, Jo wet her little romance with a few happy
tears, for she had thought that no one saw and appreciated her efforts
to be good, and this assurance was doubly precious, doubly encouraging,
because unexpected and from the person whose commendation she most
valued.  Feeling stronger than ever to meet and subdue her Apollyon,
she pinned the note inside her frock, as a shield and a reminder, lest
she be taken unaware, and proceeded to open her other letter, quite
ready for either good or bad news.  In a big, dashing hand, Laurie
wrote...

Dear Jo, What ho!

Some English girls and boys are coming to see me tomorrow and I want to
have a jolly time.  If it's fine, I'm going to pitch my tent in
Longmeadow, and row up the whole crew to lunch and croquet--have a
fire, make messes, gypsy fashion, and all sorts of larks.  They are
nice people, and like such things.  Brooke will go to keep us boys
steady, and Kate Vaughn will play propriety for the girls.  I want you
all to come, can't let Beth off at any price, and nobody shall worry
her.  Don't bother about rations, I'll see to that and everything else,
only do come, there's a good fellow!

In a tearing hurry, Yours ever, Laurie.

"Here's richness!" cried Jo, flying in to tell the news to Meg.

"Of course we can go, Mother?  It will be such a help to Laurie, for I
can row, and Meg see to the lunch, and the children be useful in some
way."

"I hope the Vaughns are not fine grown-up people.  Do you know anything
about them, Jo?" asked Meg.

"Only that there are four of them.  Kate is older than you, Fred and
Frank (twins) about my age, and a little girl (Grace), who is nine or
ten.  Laurie knew them abroad, and liked the boys.  I fancied, from the
way he primmed up his mouth in speaking of her, that he didn't admire
Kate much."

"I'm so glad my French print is clean, it's just the thing and so
becoming!" observed Meg complacently.  "Have you anything decent, Jo?"

"Scarlet and gray boating suit, good enough for me.  I shall row and
tramp about, so I don't want any starch to think of.  You'll come,
Betty?"

"If you won't let any boys talk to me."

"Not a boy!"

"I like to please Laurie, and I'm not afraid of Mr. Brooke, he is so
kind.  But I don't want to play, or sing, or say anything. I'll work
hard and not trouble anyone, and you'll take care of me, Jo, so I'll
go."

"That's my good girl.  You do try to fight off your shyness, and I love
you for it.  Fighting faults isn't easy, as I know, and a cheery word
kind of gives a lift.  Thank you, Mother," And Jo gave the thin cheek a
grateful kiss, more precious to Mrs. March than if it had given back
the rosy roundness of her youth.

"I had a box of chocolate drops, and the picture I wanted to copy,"
said Amy, showing her mail.

"And I got a note from Mr. Laurence, asking me to come over and play to
him tonight, before the lamps are lighted, and I shall go," added Beth,
whose friendship with the old gentleman prospered finely.

"Now let's fly round, and do double duty today, so that we can play
tomorrow with free minds," said Jo, preparing to replace her pen with a
broom.

When the sun peeped into the girls' room early next morning to promise
them a fine day, he saw a comical sight.  Each had made such
preparation for the fete as seemed necessary and proper. Meg had an
extra row of little curlpapers across her forehead, Jo had copiously
anointed her afflicted face with cold cream, Beth had taken Joanna to
bed with her to atone for the approaching separation, and Amy had
capped the climax by putting a clothespin on her nose to uplift the
offending feature.  It was one of the kind artists use to hold the
paper on their drawing boards, therefore quite appropriate and
effective for the purpose it was now being put.  This funny spectacle
appeared to amuse the sun, for he burst out with such radiance that Jo
woke up and roused her sisters by a hearty laugh at Amy's ornament.

Sunshine and laughter were good omens for a pleasure party, and soon a
lively bustle began in both houses.  Beth, who was ready first, kept
reporting what went on next door, and enlivened her sisters' toilets by
frequent telegrams from the window.

"There goes the man with the tent!  I see Mrs. Barker doing up the
lunch in a hamper and a great basket.  Now Mr. Laurence is looking up
at the sky and the weathercock.  I wish he would go too.  There's
Laurie, looking like a sailor, nice boy!  Oh, mercy me!  Here's a
carriage full of people, a tall lady, a little girl, and two dreadful
boys.  One is lame, poor thing, he's got a crutch. Laurie didn't tell
us that.  Be quick, girls!  It's getting late. Why, there is Ned
Moffat, I do declare.  Meg, isn't that the man who bowed to you one day
when we were shopping?"

"So it is.  How queer that he should come.  I thought he was at the
mountains.  There is Sallie.  I'm glad she got back in time. Am I all
right, Jo?" cried Meg in a flutter.

"A regular daisy.  Hold up your dress and put your hat on straight, it
looks sentimental tipped that way and will fly off at the first puff.
Now then, come on!"

"Oh, Jo, you are not going to wear that awful hat?  It's too absurd!
You shall not make a guy of yourself," remonstrated Meg, as Jo tied
down with a red ribbon the broad-brimmed, old-fashioned leghorn Laurie
had sent for a joke.

"I just will, though, for it's capital, so shady, light, and big. It
will make fun, and I don't mind being a guy if I'm comfortable." With
that Jo marched straight away and the rest followed, a bright little
band of sisters, all looking their best in summer suits, with happy
faces under the jaunty hatbrims.

Laurie ran to meet and present them to his friends in the most cordial
manner.  The lawn was the reception room, and for several minutes a
lively scene was enacted there.  Meg was grateful to see that Miss
Kate, though twenty, was dressed with a simplicity which American girls
would do well to imitate, and who was much flattered by Mr. Ned's
assurances that he came especially to see her.  Jo understood why
Laurie 'primmed up his mouth' when speaking of Kate, for that young
lady had a standoff-don't-touch-me air, which contrasted strongly with
the free and easy demeanor of the other girls.  Beth took an
observation of the new boys and decided that the lame one was not
'dreadful', but gentle and feeble, and she would be kind to him on that
account.  Amy found Grace a well-mannered, merry, little person, and
after staring dumbly at one another for a few minutes, they suddenly
became very good friends.

Tents, lunch, and croquet utensils having been sent on beforehand, the
party was soon embarked, and the two boats pushed off together, leaving
Mr. Laurence waving his hat on the shore.  Laurie and Jo rowed one
boat, Mr. Brooke and Ned the other, while Fred Vaughn, the riotous
twin, did his best to upset both by paddling about in a wherry like a
disturbed water bug.  Jo's funny hat deserved a vote of thanks, for it
was of general utility.  It broke the ice in the beginning by producing
a laugh, it created quite a refreshing breeze, flapping to and fro as
she rowed, and would make an excellent umbrella for the whole party, if
a shower came up, she said.  Miss Kate decided that she was 'odd', but
rather clever, and smiled upon her from afar.

Meg, in the other boat, was delightfully situated, face to face with
the rowers, who both admired the prospect and feathered their oars with
uncommon 'skill and dexterity'.  Mr. Brooke was a grave, silent young
man, with handsome brown eyes and a pleasant voice.  Meg liked his
quiet manners and considered him a walking encyclopedia of useful
knowledge.  He never talked to her much, but he looked at her a good
deal, and she felt sure that he did not regard her with aversion.  Ned,
being in college, of course put on all the airs which freshmen think it
their bounden duty to assume.  He was not very wise, but very
good-natured, and altogether an excellent person to carry on a picnic.
Sallie Gardiner was absorbed in keeping her white pique dress clean and
chattering with the ubiquitous Fred, who kept Beth in constant terror
by his pranks.

It was not far to Longmeadow, but the tent was pitched and the wickets
down by the time they arrived.  A pleasant green field, with three
wide-spreading oaks in the middle and a smooth strip of turf for
croquet.

"Welcome to Camp Laurence!" said the young host, as they landed with
exclamations of delight.

"Brooke is commander in chief, I am commissary general, the other
fellows are staff officers, and you, ladies, are company. The tent is
for your especial benefit and that oak is your drawing room, this is
the messroom and the third is the camp kitchen.  Now, let's have a game
before it gets hot, and then we'll see about dinner."

Frank, Beth, Amy, and Grace sat down to watch the game played by the
other eight.  Mr. Brooke chose Meg, Kate, and Fred. Laurie took Sallie,
Jo, and Ned.  The English played well, but the Americans played better,
and contested every inch of the ground as strongly as if the spirit of
'76 inspired them.  Jo and Fred had several skirmishes and once
narrowly escaped high words. Jo was through the last wicket and had
missed the stroke, which failure ruffled her a good deal.  Fred was
close behind her and his turn came before hers.  He gave a stroke, his
ball hit the wicket, and stopped an inch on the wrong side.  No one was
very near, and running up to examine, he gave it a sly nudge with his
toe, which put it just an inch on the right side.

"I'm through!  Now, Miss Jo, I'll settle you, and get in first," cried
the young gentleman, swinging his mallet for another blow.

"You pushed it.  I saw you.  It's my turn now," said Jo sharply.

"Upon my word, I didn't move it.  It rolled a bit, perhaps, but that is
allowed.  So, stand off please, and let me have a go at the stake."

"We don't cheat in America, but you can, if you choose," said Jo
angrily.

"Yankees are a deal the most tricky, everybody knows.  There you go!"
returned Fred, croqueting her ball far away.

Jo opened her lips to say something rude, but checked herself in time,
colored up to her forehead and stood a minute, hammering down a wicket
with all her might, while Fred hit the stake and declared himself out
with much exultation.  She went off to get her ball, and was a long
time finding it among the bushes, but she came back, looking cool and
quiet, and waited her turn patiently.  It took several strokes to
regain the place she had lost, and when she got there, the other side
had nearly won, for Kate's ball was the last but one and lay near the
stake.

"By George, it's all up with us!  Goodbye, Kate.  Miss Jo owes me one,
so you are finished," cried Fred excitedly, as they all drew near to
see the finish.

"Yankees have a trick of being generous to their enemies," said Jo,
with a look that made the lad redden, "especially when they beat them,"
she added, as, leaving Kate's ball untouched, she won the game by a
clever stroke.

Laurie threw up his hat, then remembered that it wouldn't do to exult
over the defeat of his guests, and stopped in the middle of the cheer
to whisper to his friend, "Good for you, Jo!  He did cheat, I saw him.
We can't tell him so, but he won't do it again, take my word for it."

Meg drew her aside, under pretense of pinning up a loose braid, and
said approvingly, "It was dreadfully provoking, but you kept your
temper, and I'm so glad, Jo."

"Don't praise me, Meg, for I could box his ears this minute. I should
certainly have boiled over if I hadn't stayed among the nettles till I
got my rage under control enough to hold my tongue. It's simmering now,
so I hope he'll keep out of my way," returned Jo, biting her lips as
she glowered at Fred from under her big hat.

"Time for lunch," said Mr. Brooke, looking at his watch. "Commissary
general, will you make the fire and get water, while Miss March, Miss
Sallie, and I spread the table?  Who can make good coffee?"

"Jo can," said Meg, glad to recommend her sister.  So Jo, feeling that
her late lessons in cookery were to do her honor, went to preside over
the coffeepot, while the children collected dry sticks, and the boys
made a fire and got water from a spring near by.  Miss Kate sketched
and Frank talked to Beth, who was making little mats of braided rushes
to serve as plates.

The commander in chief and his aides soon spread the tablecloth with an
inviting array of eatables and drinkables, prettily decorated with
green leaves.  Jo announced that the coffee was ready, and everyone
settled themselves to a hearty meal, for youth is seldom dyspeptic, and
exercise develops wholesome appetites. A very merry lunch it was, for
everything seemed fresh and funny, and frequent peals of laughter
startled a venerable horse who fed near by.  There was a pleasing
inequality in the table, which produced many mishaps to cups and
plates, acorns dropped in the milk, little black ants partook of the
refreshments without being invited, and fuzzy caterpillars swung down
from the tree to see what was going on.  Three white-headed children
peeped over the fence, and an objectionable dog barked at them from the
other side of the river with all his might and main.

"There's salt here," said Laurie, as he handed Jo a saucer of berries.

"Thank you, I prefer spiders," she replied, fishing up two unwary
little ones who had gone to a creamy death.  "How dare you remind me of
that horrid dinner party, when yours is so nice in every way?" added
Jo, as they both laughed and ate out of one plate, the china having run
short.

"I had an uncommonly good time that day, and haven't got over it yet.
This is no credit to me, you know, I don't do anything.  It's you and
Meg and Brooke who make it all go, and I'm no end obliged to you.  What
shall we do when we can't eat anymore?" asked Laurie, feeling that his
trump card had been played when lunch was over.

"Have games till it's cooler.  I brought Authors, and I dare say Miss
Kate knows something new and nice.  Go and ask her.  She's company, and
you ought to stay with her more."

"Aren't you company too?  I thought she'd suit Brooke, but he keeps
talking to Meg, and Kate just stares at them through that ridiculous
glass of hers.  I'm going, so you needn't try to preach propriety, for
you can't do it, Jo."

Miss Kate did know several new games, and as the girls would not, and
the boys could not, eat any more, they all adjourned to the drawing
room to play Rig-marole.

"One person begins a story, any nonsense you like, and tells as long as
he pleases, only taking care to stop short at some exciting point, when
the next takes it up and does the same.  It's very funny when well
done, and makes a perfect jumble of tragical comical stuff to laugh
over.  Please start it, Mr. Brooke," said Kate, with a commanding air,
which surprised Meg, who treated the tutor with as much respect as any
other gentleman.

Lying on the grass at the feet of the two young ladies, Mr. Brooke
obediently began the story, with the handsome brown eyes steadily fixed
upon the sunshiny river.

"Once on a time, a knight went out into the world to seek his fortune,
for he had nothing but his sword and his shield. He traveled a long
while, nearly eight-and-twenty years, and had a hard time of it, till
he came to the palace of a good old king, who had offered a reward to
anyone who could tame and train a fine but unbroken colt, of which he
was very fond.  The knight agreed to try, and got on slowly but surely,
for the colt was a gallant fellow, and soon learned to love his new
master, though he was freakish and wild.  Every day, when he gave his
lessons to this pet of the king's, the knight rode him through the
city, and as he rode, he looked everywhere for a certain beautiful
face, which he had seen many times in his dreams, but never found.  One
day, as he went prancing down a quiet street, he saw at the window of a
ruinous castle the lovely face.  He was delighted, inquired who lived
in this old castle, and was told that several captive princesses were
kept there by a spell, and spun all day to lay up money to buy their
liberty.  The knight wished intensely that he could free them, but he
was poor and could only go by each day, watching for the sweet face and
longing to see it out in the sunshine.  At last he resolved to get into
the castle and ask how he could help them.  He went and knocked.  The
great door flew open, and he beheld..."

"A ravishingly lovely lady, who exclaimed, with a cry of rapture, 'At
last!  At last!'" continued Kate, who had read French novels, and
admired the style.  "'Tis she!' cried Count Gustave, and fell at her
feet in an ecstasy of joy.  'Oh, rise!' she said, extending a hand of
marble fairness.  'Never! Till you tell me how I may rescue you,' swore
the knight, still kneeling. 'Alas, my cruel fate condemns me to remain
here till my tyrant is destroyed.' 'Where is the villain?' 'In the
mauve salon.  Go, brave heart, and save me from despair.' 'I obey, and
return victorious or dead!' With these thrilling words he rushed away,
and flinging open the door of the mauve salon, was about to enter, when
he received..."

"A stunning blow from the big Greek lexicon, which an old fellow in a
black gown fired at him," said Ned.  "Instantly, Sir What's-his-name
recovered himself, pitched the tyrant out of the window, and turned to
join the lady, victorious, but with a bump on his brow, found the door
locked, tore up the curtains, made a rope ladder, got halfway down when
the ladder broke, and he went headfirst into the moat, sixty feet
below.  Could swim like a duck, paddled round the castle till he came
to a little door guarded by two stout fellows, knocked their heads
together till they cracked like a couple of nuts, then, by a trifling
exertion of his prodigious strength, he smashed in the door, went up a
pair of stone steps covered with dust a foot thick, toads as big as
your fist, and spiders that would frighten you into hysterics, Miss
March.  At the top of these steps he came plump upon a sight that took
his breath away and chilled his blood..."

"A tall figure, all in white with a veil over its face and a lamp in
its wasted hand," went on Meg.  "It beckoned, gliding noiselessly
before him down a corridor as dark and cold as any tomb.  Shadowy
effigies in armor stood on either side, a dead silence reigned, the
lamp burned blue, and the ghostly figure ever and anon turned its face
toward him, showing the glitter of awful eyes through its white veil.
They reached a curtained door, behind which sounded lovely music.  He
sprang forward to enter, but the specter plucked him back, and waved
threateningly before him a..."

"Snuffbox," said Jo, in a sepulchral tone, which convulsed the
audience.  "'Thankee,' said the knight politely, as he took a pinch and
sneezed seven times so violently that his head fell off.  'Ha! Ha!'
laughed the ghost, and having peeped through the keyhole at the
princesses spinning away for dear life, the evil spirit picked up her
victim and put him in a large tin box, where there were eleven other
knights packed together without their heads, like sardines, who all
rose and began to..."

"Dance a hornpipe," cut in Fred, as Jo paused for breath, "and, as they
danced, the rubbishy old castle turned to a man-of-war in full sail.
'Up with the jib, reef the tops'l halliards, helm hard alee, and man
the guns!' roared the captain, as a Portuguese pirate hove in sight,
with a flag black as ink flying from her foremast. 'Go in and win, my
hearties!' says the captain, and a tremendous fight began.  Of course
the British beat--they always do."

"No, they don't!" cried Jo, aside.

"Having taken the pirate captain prisoner, sailed slap over the
schooner, whose decks were piled high with dead and whose lee scuppers
ran blood, for the order had been 'Cutlasses, and die hard!' 'Bosun's
mate, take a bight of the flying-jib sheet, and start this villain if
he doesn't confess his sins double quick,' said the British captain.
The Portuguese held his tongue like a brick, and walked the plank,
while the jolly tars cheered like mad.  But the sly dog dived, came up
under the man-of-war, scuttled her, and down she went, with all sail
set, 'To the bottom of the sea, sea, sea' where..."

"Oh, gracious!  What shall I say?" cried Sallie, as Fred ended his
rigmarole, in which he had jumbled together pell-mell nautical phrases
and facts out of one of his favorite books. "Well, they went to the
bottom, and a nice mermaid welcomed them, but was much grieved on
finding the box of headless knights, and kindly pickled them in brine,
hoping to discover the mystery about them, for being a woman, she was
curious.  By-and-by a diver came down, and the mermaid said, 'I'll give
you a box of pearls if you can take it up,' for she wanted to restore
the poor things to life, and couldn't raise the heavy load herself.  So
the diver hoisted it up, and was much disappointed on opening it to
find no pearls.  He left it in a great lonely field, where it was found
by a..."

"Little goose girl, who kept a hundred fat geese in the field," said
Amy, when Sallie's invention gave out.  "The little girl was sorry for
them, and asked an old woman what she should do to help them.  'Your
geese will tell you, they know everything.' said the old woman.  So she
asked what she should use for new heads, since the old ones were lost,
and all the geese opened their hundred mouths and screamed..."

"'Cabbages!'" continued Laurie promptly.  "'Just the thing,' said the
girl, and ran to get twelve fine ones from her garden. She put them on,
the knights revived at once, thanked her, and went on their way
rejoicing, never knowing the difference, for there were so many other
heads like them in the world that no one thought anything of it.  The
knight in whom I'm interested went back to find the pretty face, and
learned that the princesses had spun themselves free and all gone and
married, but one.  He was in a great state of mind at that, and
mounting the colt, who stood by him through thick and thin, rushed to
the castle to see which was left.  Peeping over the hedge, he saw the
queen of his affections picking flowers in her garden.  'Will you give
me a rose?' said he.  'You must come and get it.  I can't come to you,
it isn't proper,' said she, as sweet as honey.  He tried to climb over
the hedge, but it seemed to grow higher and higher.  Then he tried to
push through, but it grew thicker and thicker, and he was in despair.
So he patiently broke twig after twig till he had made a little hole
through which he peeped, saying imploringly, 'Let me in!  Let me in!'
But the pretty princess did not seem to understand, for she picked her
roses quietly, and left him to fight his way in.  Whether he did or
not, Frank will tell you."

"I can't.  I'm not playing, I never do," said Frank, dismayed at the
sentimental predicament out of which he was to rescue the absurd
couple.  Beth had disappeared behind Jo, and Grace was asleep.

"So the poor knight is to be left sticking in the hedge, is he?" asked
Mr. Brooke, still watching the river, and playing with the wild rose in
his buttonhole.

"I guess the princess gave him a posy, and opened the gate after a
while," said Laurie, smiling to himself, as he threw acorns at his
tutor.

"What a piece of nonsense we have made!  With practice we might do
something quite clever.  Do you know Truth?"

"I hope so," said Meg soberly.

"The game, I mean?"

"What is it?" said Fred.

"Why, you pile up your hands, choose a number, and draw out in turn,
and the person who draws at the number has to answer truly any question
put by the rest.  It's great fun."

"Let's try it," said Jo, who liked new experiments.

Miss Kate and Mr. Brooke, Meg, and Ned declined, but Fred, Sallie, Jo,
and Laurie piled and drew, and the lot fell to Laurie.

"Who are your heroes?" asked Jo.

"Grandfather and Napoleon."

"Which lady here do you think prettiest?" said Sallie.

"Margaret."

"Which do you like best?" from Fred.

"Jo, of course."

"What silly questions you ask!"  And Jo gave a disdainful shrug as the
rest laughed at Laurie's matter-of-fact tone.

"Try again.  Truth isn't a bad game," said Fred.

"It's a very good one for you," retorted Jo in a low voice. Her turn
came next.

"What is your greatest fault?" asked Fred, by way of testing in her the
virtue he lacked himself.

"A quick temper."

"What do you most wish for?" said Laurie.

"A pair of boot lacings," returned Jo, guessing and defeating his
purpose.

"Not a true answer.  You must say what you really do want most."

"Genius.  Don't you wish you could give it to me, Laurie?" And she
slyly smiled in his disappointed face.

"What virtues do you most admire in a man?" asked Sallie.

"Courage and honesty."

"Now my turn," said Fred, as his hand came last.

"Let's give it to him," whispered Laurie to Jo, who nodded and asked at
once...

"Didn't you cheat at croquet?"

"Well, yes, a little bit."

"Good!  Didn't you take your story out of _The Sea Lion?_" said Laurie.

"Rather."

"Don't you think the English nation perfect in every respect?" asked
Sallie.

"I should be ashamed of myself if I didn't."

"He's a true John Bull.  Now, Miss Sallie, you shall have a chance
without waiting to draw.  I'll harrrow up your feelings first by asking
if you don't think you are something of a flirt," said Laurie, as Jo
nodded to Fred as a sign that peace was declared.

"You impertinent boy!  Of course I'm not," exclaimed Sallie, with an
air that proved the contrary.

"What do you hate most?" asked Fred.

"Spiders and rice pudding."

"What do you like best?" asked Jo.

"Dancing and French gloves."

"Well, I think Truth is a very silly play.  Let's have a sensible game
of Authors to refresh our minds," proposed Jo.

Ned, Frank, and the little girls joined in this, and while it went on,
the three elders sat apart, talking.  Miss Kate took out her sketch
again, and Margaret watched her, while Mr. Brooke lay on the grass with
a book, which he did not read.

"How beautifully you do it!  I wish I could draw," said Meg, with
mingled admiration and regret in her voice.

"Why don't you learn?  I should think you had taste and talent for it,"
replied Miss Kate graciously.

"I haven't time."

"Your mamma prefers other accomplishments, I fancy.  So did mine, but I
proved to her that I had talent by taking a few lessons privately, and
then she was quite willing I should go on.  Can't you do the same with
your governess?"

"I have none."

"I forgot young ladies in America go to school more than with us.  Very
fine schools they are, too, Papa says.  You go to a private one, I
suppose?"

"I don't go at all.  I am a governess myself."

"Oh, indeed!" said Miss Kate, but she might as well have said, "Dear
me, how dreadful!" for her tone implied it, and something in her face
made Meg color, and wish she had not been so frank.

Mr. Brooke looked up and said quickly, "Young ladies in America love
independence as much as their ancestors did, and are admired and
respected for supporting themselves."

"Oh, yes, of course it's very nice and proper in them to do so.  We
have many most respectable and worthy young women who do the same and
are employed by the nobility, because, being the daughters of
gentlemen, they are both well bred and accomplished, you know," said
Miss Kate in a patronizing tone that hurt Meg's pride, and made her
work seem not only more distasteful, but degrading.

"Did the German song suit, Miss March?" inquired Mr. Brooke, breaking
an awkward pause.

"Oh, yes!  It was very sweet, and I'm much obliged to whoever
translated it for me." And Meg's downcast face brightened as she spoke.

"Don't you read German?" asked Miss Kate with a look of surprise.

"Not very well.  My father, who taught me, is away, and I don't get on
very fast alone, for I've no one to correct my pronunciation."

"Try a little now.  Here is Schiller's Mary Stuart and a tutor who
loves to teach."  And Mr. Brooke laid his book on her lap with an
inviting smile.

"It's so hard I'm afraid to try," said Meg, grateful, but bashful in
the presence of the accomplished young lady beside her.

"I'll read a bit to encourage you." And Miss Kate read one of the most
beautiful passages in a perfectly correct but perfectly expressionless
manner.

Mr. Brooke made no comment as she returned the book to Meg, who said
innocently, "I thought it was poetry."

"Some of it is.  Try this passage."

There was a queer smile about Mr. Brooke's mouth as he opened at poor
Mary's lament.

Meg obediently following the long grass-blade which her new tutor used
to point with, read slowly and timidly, unconsciously making poetry of
the hard words by the soft intonation of her musical voice.  Down the
page went the green guide, and presently, forgetting her listener in
the beauty of the sad scene, Meg read as if alone, giving a little
touch of tragedy to the words of the unhappy queen.  If she had seen
the brown eyes then, she would have stopped short, but she never looked
up, and the lesson was not spoiled for her.

"Very well indeed!" said Mr. Brooke, as she paused, quite ignoring her
many mistakes, and looking as if he did indeed love to teach.

Miss Kate put up her glass, and, having taken a survey of the little
tableau before her, shut her sketch book, saying with condescension,
"You've a nice accent and in time will be a clever reader.  I advise
you to learn, for German is a valuable accomplishment to teachers.  I
must look after Grace, she is romping." And Miss Kate strolled away,
adding to herself with a shrug, "I didn't come to chaperone a
governess, though she is young and pretty.  What odd people these
Yankees are.  I'm afraid Laurie will be quite spoiled among them."

"I forgot that English people rather turn up their noses at governesses
and don't treat them as we do," said Meg, looking after the retreating
figure with an annoyed expression.

"Tutors also have rather a hard time of it there, as I know to my
sorrow.  There's no place like America for us workers, Miss Margaret."
And Mr. Brooke looked so contented and cheerful that Meg was ashamed to
lament her hard lot.

"I'm glad I live in it then.  I don't like my work, but I get a good
deal of satisfaction out of it after all, so I won't complain. I only
wished I liked teaching as you do."

"I think you would if you had Laurie for a pupil.  I shall be very
sorry to lose him next year," said Mr. Brooke, busily punching holes in
the turf.

"Going to college, I suppose?" Meg's lips asked the question, but her
eyes added, "And what becomes of you?"

"Yes, it's high time he went, for he is ready, and as soon as he is
off, I shall turn soldier.  I am needed."

"I am glad of that!" exclaimed Meg.  "I should think every young man
would want to go, though it is hard for the mothers and sisters who
stay at home," she added sorrowfully.

"I have neither, and very few friends to care whether I live or die,"
said Mr. Brooke rather bitterly as he absently put the dead rose in the
hole he had made and covered it up, like a little grave.

"Laurie and his grandfather would care a great deal, and we should all
be very sorry to have any harm happen to you," said Meg heartily.

"Thank you, that sounds pleasant," began Mr. Brooke, looking cheerful
again, but before he could finish his speech, Ned, mounted on the old
horse, came lumbering up to display his equestrian skill before the
young ladies, and there was no more quiet that day.

"Don't you love to ride?" asked Grace of Amy, as they stood resting
after a race round the field with the others, led by Ned.

"I dote upon it.  My sister, Meg, used to ride when Papa was rich, but
we don't keep any horses now, except Ellen Tree," added Amy, laughing.

"Tell me about Ellen Tree.  Is it a donkey?" asked Grace curiously.

"Why, you see, Jo is crazy about horses and so am I, but we've only got
an old sidesaddle and no horse.  Out in our garden is an apple tree
that has a nice low branch, so Jo put the saddle on it, fixed some
reins on the part that turns up, and we bounce away on Ellen Tree
whenever we like."

"How funny!" laughed Grace.  "I have a pony at home, and ride nearly
every day in the park with Fred and Kate.  It's very nice, for my
friends go too, and the Row is full of ladies and gentlemen."

"Dear, how charming!  I hope I shall go abroad some day, but I'd rather
go to Rome than the Row," said Amy, who had not the remotest idea what
the Row was and wouldn't have asked for the world.

Frank, sitting just behind the little girls, heard what they were
saying, and pushed his crutch away from him with an impatient gesture
as he watched the active lads going through all sorts of comical
gymnastics.  Beth, who was collecting the scattered Author cards,
looked up and said, in her shy yet friendly way, "I'm afraid you are
tired.  Can I do anything for you?"

"Talk to me, please.  It's dull, sitting by myself," answered Frank,
who had evidently been used to being made much of at home.

If he asked her to deliver a Latin oration, it would not have seemed a
more impossible task to bashful Beth, but there was no place to run to,
no Jo to hide behind now, and the poor boy looked so wistfully at her
that she bravely resolved to try.

"What do you like to talk about?" she asked, fumbling over the cards
and dropping half as she tried to tie them up.

"Well, I like to hear about cricket and boating and hunting," said
Frank, who had not yet learned to suit his amusements to his strength.

My heart!  What shall I do?  I don't know anything about them, thought
Beth, and forgetting the boy's misfortune in her flurry, she said,
hoping to make him talk, "I never saw any hunting, but I suppose you
know all about it."

"I did once, but I can never hunt again, for I got hurt leaping a
confounded five-barred gate, so there are no more horses and hounds for
me," said Frank with a sigh that made Beth hate herself for her
innocent blunder.

"Your deer are much prettier than our ugly buffaloes," she said,
turning to the prairies for help and feeling glad that she had read one
of the boys' books in which Jo delighted.

Buffaloes proved soothing and satisfactory, and in her eagerness to
amuse another, Beth forgot herself, and was quite unconscious of her
sisters' surprise and delight at the unusual spectacle of Beth talking
away to one of the dreadful boys, against whom she had begged
protection.

"Bless her heart!  She pities him, so she is good to him," said Jo,
beaming at her from the croquet ground.

"I always said she was a little saint," added Meg, as if there could be
no further doubt of it.

"I haven't heard Frank laugh so much for ever so long," said Grace to
Amy, as they sat discussing dolls and making tea sets out of the acorn
cups.

"My sister Beth is a very fastidious girl, when she likes to be," said
Amy, well pleased at Beth's success.  She meant 'facinating', but as
Grace didn't know the exact meaning of either word, fastidious sounded
well and made a good impression.

An impromptu circus, fox and geese, and an amicable game of croquet
finished the afternoon.  At sunset the tent was struck, hampers packed,
wickets pulled up, boats loaded, and the whole party floated down the
river, singing at the tops of their voices. Ned, getting sentimental,
warbled a serenade with the pensive refrain...

    Alone, alone, ah! Woe, alone,

and at the lines...

    We each are young, we each have a heart,
    Oh, why should we stand thus coldly apart?

he looked at Meg with such a lackadiasical expression that she laughed
outright and spoiled his song.

"How can you be so cruel to me?" he whispered, under cover of a lively
chorus.  "You've kept close to that starched-up Englishwoman all day,
and now you snub me."

"I didn't mean to, but you looked so funny I really couldn't help it,"
replied Meg, passing over the first part of his reproach, for it was
quite true that she had shunned him, remembering the Moffat party and
the talk after it.

Ned was offended and turned to Sallie for consolation, saying to her
rather pettishly, "There isn't a bit of flirt in that girl, is there?"

"Not a particle, but she's a dear," returned Sallie, defending her
friend even while confessing her shortcomings.

"She's not a stricken deer anyway," said Ned, trying to be witty, and
succeeding as well as very young gentlemen usually do.

On the lawn where it had gathered, the little party separated with
cordial good nights and good-byes, for the Vaughns were going to Canada.
As the four sisters went home through the garden, Miss Kate looked
after them, saying, without the patronizing tone in her voice, "In
spite of their demonstrative manners, American girls are very nice when
one knows them."

"I quite agree with you," said Mr. Brooke.



CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CASTLES IN THE AIR

Laurie lay luxuriously swinging to and fro in his hammock one warm
September afternoon, wondering what his neighbors were about, but too
lazy to go and find out.  He was in one of his moods, for the day had
been both unprofitable and unsatisfactory, and he was wishing he could
live it over again.  The hot weather made him indolent, and he had
shirked his studies, tried Mr. Brooke's patience to the utmost,
displeased his grandfather by practicing half the afternoon, frightened
the maidservants half out of their wits by mischievously hinting that
one of his dogs was going mad, and, after high words with the stableman
about some fancied neglect of his horse, he had flung himself into his
hammock to fume over the stupidity of the world in general, till the
peace of the lovely day quieted him in spite of himself. Staring up
into the green gloom of the horse-chestnut trees above him, he dreamed
dreams of all sorts, and was just imagining himself tossing on the
ocean in a voyage round the world, when the sound of voices brought him
ashore in a flash. Peeping through the meshes of the hammock, he saw
the Marches coming out, as if bound on some expedition.

"What in the world are those girls about now?" thought Laurie, opening
his sleepy eyes to take a good look, for there was something rather
peculiar in the appearance of his neighbors.  Each wore a large,
flapping hat, a brown linen pouch slung over one shoulder, and carried
a long staff.  Meg had a cushion, Jo a book, Beth a basket, and Amy a
portfolio.  All walked quietly through the garden, out at the little
back gate, and began to climb the hill that lay between the house and
river.

"Well, that's cool," said Laurie to himself, "to have a picnic and
never ask me!  They can't be going in the boat, for they haven't got
the key.  Perhaps they forgot it.  I'll take it to them, and see what's
going on."

Though possessed of half a dozen hats, it took him some time to find
one, then there was a hunt for the key, which was at last discovered in
his pocket, so that the girls were quite out of sight when he leaped
the fence and ran after them.  Taking the shortest way to the
boathouse, he waited for them to appear, but no one came, and he went
up the hill to take an observation.  A grove of pines covered one part
of it, and from the heart of this green spot came a clearer sound than
the soft sigh of the pines or the drowsy chirp of the crickets.

"Here's a landscape!" thought Laurie, peeping through the bushes, and
looking wide-awake and good-natured already.

It was a rather pretty little picture, for the sisters sat together in
the shady nook, with sun and shadow flickering over them, the aromatic
wind lifting their hair and cooling their hot cheeks, and all the
little wood people going on with their affairs as if these were no
strangers but old friends.  Meg sat upon her cushion, sewing daintily
with her white hands, and looking as fresh and sweet as a rose in her
pink dress among the green.  Beth was sorting the cones that lay thick
under the hemlock near by, for she made pretty things with them.  Amy
was sketching a group of ferns, and Jo was knitting as she read aloud.
A shadow passed over the boy's face as he watched them, feeling that he
ought to go away because uninvited; yet lingering because home seemed
very lonely and this quiet party in the woods most attractive to his
restless spirit.  He stood so still that a squirrel, busy with its
harvesting, ran down a pine close beside him, saw him suddenly and
skipped back, scolding so shrilly that Beth looked up, espied the
wistful face behind the birches, and beckoned with a reassuring smile.

"May I come in, please?  Or shall I be a bother?" he asked, advancing
slowly.

Meg lifted her eyebrows, but Jo scowled at her defiantly and said at
once, "Of course you may.  We should have asked you before, only we
thought you wouldn't care for such a girl's game as this."

"I always like your games, but if Meg doesn't want me, I'll go away."

"I've no objection, if you do something.  It's against the rules to be
idle here," replied Meg gravely but graciously.

"Much obliged.  I'll do anything if you'll let me stop a bit, for it's
as dull as the Desert of Sahara down there.  Shall I sew, read, cone,
draw, or do all at once? Bring on your bears. I'm ready."  And Laurie
sat down with a submissive expression delightful to behold.

"Finish this story while I set my heel," said Jo, handing him the book.

"Yes'm." was the meek answer, as he began, doing his best to prove his
gratitude for the favor of admission into the 'Busy Bee Society'.

The story was not a long one, and when it was finished, he ventured to
ask a few questions as a reward of merit.

"Please, ma'am, could I inquire if this highly instructive and charming
institution is a new one?"

"Would you tell him?" asked Meg of her sisters.

"He'll laugh," said Amy warningly.

"Who cares?" said Jo.

"I guess he'll like it," added Beth.

"Of course I shall!  I give you my word I won't laugh.  Tell away, Jo,
and don't be afraid."

"The idea of being afraid of you!  Well, you see we used to play
Pilgrim's Progress, and we have been going on with it in earnest, all
winter and summer."

"Yes, I know," said Laurie, nodding wisely.

"Who told you?" demanded Jo.

"Spirits."

"No, I did.  I wanted to amuse him one night when you were all away,
and he was rather dismal.  He did like it, so don't scold, Jo," said
Beth meekly.

"You can't keep a secret.  Never mind, it saves trouble now."

"Go on, please," said Laurie, as Jo became absorbed in her work,
looking a trifle displeased.

"Oh, didn't she tell you about this new plan of ours?  Well, we have
tried not to waste our holiday, but each has had a task and worked at
it with a will.  The vacation is nearly over, the stints are all done,
and we are ever so glad that we didn't dawdle."

"Yes, I should think so," and Laurie thought regretfully of his own
idle days.

"Mother likes to have us out-of-doors as much as possible, so we bring
our work here and have nice times.  For the fun of it we bring our
things in these bags, wear the old hats, use poles to climb the hill,
and play pilgrims, as we used to do years ago.  We call this hill the
Delectable Mountain, for we can look far away and see the country where
we hope to live some time."

Jo pointed, and Laurie sat up to examine, for through an opening in the
wood one could look cross the wide, blue river, the meadows on the
other side, far over the outskirts of the great city, to the green
hills that rose to meet the sky.  The sun was low, and the heavens
glowed with the splendor of an autumn sunset.  Gold and purple clouds
lay on the hilltops, and rising high into the ruddy light were silvery
white peaks that shone like the airy spires of some Celestial City.

"How beautiful that is!" said Laurie softly, for he was quick to see
and feel beauty of any kind.

"It's often so, and we like to watch it, for it is never the same, but
always splendid," replied Amy, wishing she could paint it.

"Jo talks about the country where we hope to live sometime--the real
country, she means, with pigs and chickens and haymaking. It would be
nice, but I wish the beautiful country up there was real, and we could
ever go to it," said Beth musingly.

"There is a lovelier country even than that, where we shall go,
by-and-by, when we are good enough," answered Meg with her sweetest
voice.

"It seems so long to wait, so hard to do.  I want to fly away at once,
as those swallows fly, and go in at that splendid gate."

"You'll get there, Beth, sooner or later, no fear of that," said Jo.
"I'm the one that will have to fight and work, and climb and wait, and
maybe never get in after all."

"You'll have me for company, if that's any comfort.  I shall have to do
a deal of traveling before I come in sight of your Celestial City.  If
I arrive late, you'll say a good word for me, won't you, Beth?"

Something in the boy's face troubled his little friend, but she said
cheerfully, with her quiet eyes on the changing clouds, "If people
really want to go, and really try all their lives, I think they will
get in, for I don't believe there are any locks on that door or any
guards at the gate.  I always imagine it is as it is in the picture,
where the shining ones stretch out their hands to welcome poor
Christian as he comes up from the river."

"Wouldn't it be fun if all the castles in the air which we make could
come true, and we could live in them?" said Jo, after a little pause.

"I've made such quantities it would be hard to choose which I'd have,"
said Laurie, lying flat and throwing cones at the squirrel who had
betrayed him.

"You'd have to take your favorite one.  What is it?" asked Meg.

"If I tell mine, will you tell yours?"

"Yes, if the girls will too."

"We will.  Now, Laurie."

"After I'd seen as much of the world as I want to, I'd like to settle
in Germany and have just as much music as I choose.  I'm to be a famous
musician myself, and all creation is to rush to hear me.  And I'm never
to be bothered about money or business, but just enjoy myself and live
for what I like.  That's my favorite castle. What's yours, Meg?"

Margaret seemed to find it a little hard to tell hers, and waved a
brake before her face, as if to disperse imaginary gnats, while she
said slowly, "I should like a lovely house, full of all sorts of
luxurious things--nice food, pretty clothes, handsome furniture,
pleasant people, and heaps of money.  I am to be mistress of it, and
manage it as I like, with plenty of servants, so I never need work a
bit.  How I should enjoy it!  For I wouldn't be idle, but do good, and
make everyone love me dearly."

"Wouldn't you have a master for your castle in the air?" asked Laurie
slyly.

"I said 'pleasant people', you know," and Meg carefully tied up her
shoe as she spoke, so that no one saw her face.

"Why don't you say you'd have a splendid, wise, good husband and some
angelic little children?  You know your castle wouldn't be perfect
without," said blunt Jo, who had no tender fancies yet, and rather
scorned romance, except in books.

"You'd have nothing but horses, inkstands, and novels in yours,"
answered Meg petulantly.

"Wouldn't I though?  I'd have a stable full of Arabian steeds, rooms
piled high with books, and I'd write out of a magic inkstand, so that
my works should be as famous as Laurie's music.  I want to do something
splendid before I go into my castle, something heroic or wonderful that
won't be forgotten after I'm dead.  I don't know what, but I'm on the
watch for it, and mean to astonish you all some day.  I think I shall
write books, and get rich and famous, that would suit me, so that is my
favorite dream."

"Mine is to stay at home safe with Father and Mother, and help take
care of the family," said Beth contentedly.

"Don't you wish for anything else?" asked Laurie.

"Since I had my little piano, I am perfectly satisfied.  I only wish we
may all keep well and be together, nothing else."

"I have ever so many wishes, but the pet one is to be an artist, and go
to Rome, and do fine pictures, and be the best artist in the whole
world," was Amy's modest desire.

"We're an ambitious set, aren't we?  Every one of us, but Beth, wants
to be rich and famous, and gorgeous in every respect. I do wonder if
any of us will ever get our wishes," said Laurie, chewing grass like a
meditative calf.

"I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the
door remains to be seen," observed Jo mysteriously.

"I've got the key to mine, but I'm not allowed to try it. Hang
college!" muttered Laurie with an impatient sigh.

"Here's mine!" and Amy waved her pencil.

"I haven't got any," said Meg forlornly.

"Yes, you have," said Laurie at once.

"Where?"

"In your face."

"Nonsense, that's of no use."

"Wait and see if it doesn't bring you something worth having," replied
the boy, laughing at the thought of a charming little secret which he
fancied he knew.

Meg colored behind the brake, but asked no questions and looked across
the river with the same expectant expression which Mr. Brooke had worn
when he told the story of the knight.

"If we are all alive ten years hence, let's meet, and see how many of
us have got our wishes, or how much nearer we are then than now," said
Jo, always ready with a plan.

"Bless me!  How old I shall be, twenty-seven!" exclaimed Meg, who felt
grown up already, having just reached seventeen.

"You and I will be twenty-six, Teddy, Beth twenty-four, and Amy
twenty-two.  What a venerable party!" said Jo.

"I hope I shall have done something to be proud of by that time, but
I'm such a lazy dog, I'm afraid I shall dawdle, Jo."

"You need a motive, Mother says, and when you get it, she is sure
you'll work splendidly."

"Is she?  By Jupiter, I will, if I only get the chance!" cried Laurie,
sitting up with sudden energy.  "I ought to be satisfied to please
Grandfather, and I do try, but it's working against the grain, you see,
and comes hard.  He wants me to be an India merchant, as he was, and
I'd rather be shot.  I hate tea and silk and spices, and every sort of
rubbish his old ships bring, and I don't care how soon they go to the
bottom when I own them.  Going to college ought to satisfy him, for if
I give him four years he ought to let me off from the business.  But
he's set, and I've got to do just as he did, unless I break away and
please myself, as my father did.  If there was anyone left to stay with
the old gentleman, I'd do it tomorrow."

Laurie spoke excitedly, and looked ready to carry his threat into
execution on the slightest provocation, for he was growing up very fast
and, in spite of his indolent ways, had a young man's hatred of
subjection, a young man's restless longing to try the world for himself.

"I advise you to sail away in one of your ships, and never come home
again till you have tried your own way," said Jo, whose imagination was
fired by the thought of such a daring exploit, and whose sympathy was
excited by what she called 'Teddy's Wrongs'.

"That's not right, Jo.  You mustn't talk in that way, and Laurie
mustn't take your bad advice.  You should do just what your grandfather
wishes, my dear boy," said Meg in her most maternal tone. "Do your best
at college, and when he sees that you try to please him, I'm sure he
won't be hard on you or unjust to you.  As you say, there is no one
else to stay with and love him, and you'd never forgive yourself if you
left him without his permission.  Don't be dismal or fret, but do your
duty and you'll get your reward, as good Mr. Brooke has, by being
respected and loved."

"What do you know about him?" asked Laurie, grateful for the good
advice, but objecting to the lecture, and glad to turn the conversation
from himself after his unusual outbreak.

"Only what your grandpa told us about him, how he took good care of his
own mother till she died, and wouldn't go abroad as tutor to some nice
person because he wouldn't leave her.  And how he provides now for an
old woman who nursed his mother, and never tells anyone, but is just as
generous and patient and good as he can be."

"So he is, dear old fellow!" said Laurie heartily, as Meg paused,
looking flushed and earnest with her story.  "It's like Grandpa to find
out all about him without letting him know, and to tell all his
goodness to others, so that they might like him. Brooke couldn't
understand why your mother was so kind to him, asking him over with me
and treating him in her beautiful friendly way.  He thought she was
just perfect, and talked about it for days and days, and went on about
you all in flaming style.  If ever I do get my wish, you see what I'll
do for Brooke."

"Begin to do something now by not plaguing his life out," said Meg
sharply.

"How do you know I do, Miss?"

"I can always tell by his face when he goes away.  If you have been
good, he looks satisfied and walks briskly.  If you have plagued him,
he's sober and walks slowly, as if he wanted to go back and do his work
better."

"Well, I like that?  So you keep an account of my good and bad marks in
Brooke's face, do you?  I see him bow and smile as he passes your
window, but I didn't know you'd got up a telegraph."

"We haven't.  Don't be angry, and oh, don't tell him I said anything!
It was only to show that I cared how you get on, and what is said here
is said in confidence, you know," cried Meg, much alarmed at the
thought of what might follow from her careless speech.

"I don't tell tales," replied Laurie, with his 'high and mighty' air,
as Jo called a certain expression which he occasionally wore. "Only if
Brooke is going to be a thermometer, I must mind and have fair weather
for him to report."

"Please don't be offended.  I didn't mean to preach or tell tales or be
silly.  I only thought Jo was encouraging you in a feeling which you'd
be sorry for by-and-by.  You are so kind to us, we feel as if you were
our brother and say just what we think. Forgive me, I meant it kindly."
And Meg offered her hand with a gesture both affectionate and timid.

Ashamed of his momentary pique, Laurie squeezed the kind little hand,
and said frankly, "I'm the one to be forgiven.  I'm cross and have been
out of sorts all day.  I like to have you tell me my faults and be
sisterly, so don't mind if I am grumpy sometimes.  I thank you all the
same."

Bent on showing that he was not offended, he made himself as agreeable
as possible, wound cotton for Meg, recited poetry to please Jo, shook
down cones for Beth, and helped Amy with her ferns, proving himself a
fit person to belong to the 'Busy Bee Society'.  In the midst of an
animated discussion on the domestic habits of turtles (one of those
amiable creatures having strolled up from the river), the faint sound
of a bell warned them that Hannah had put the tea 'to draw', and they
would just have time to get home to supper.

"May I come again?" asked Laurie.

"Yes, if you are good, and love your book, as the boys in the primer
are told to do," said Meg, smiling.

"I'll try."

"Then you may come, and I'll teach you to knit as the Scotchmen do.
There's a demand for socks just now," added Jo, waving hers like a big
blue worsted banner as they parted at the gate.

That night, when Beth played to Mr. Laurence in the twilight, Laurie,
standing in the shadow of the curtain, listened to the little David,
whose simple music always quieted his moody spirit, and watched the old
man, who sat with his gray head on his hand, thinking tender thoughts
of the dead child he had loved so much. Remembering the conversation of
the afternoon, the boy said to himself, with the resolve to make the
sacrifice cheerfully, "I'll let my castle go, and stay with the dear
old gentleman while he needs me, for I am all he has."



CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SECRETS

Jo was very busy in the garret, for the October days began to grow
chilly, and the afternoons were short.  For two or three hours the sun
lay warmly in the high window, showing Jo seated on the old sofa,
writing busily, with her papers spread out upon a trunk before her,
while Scrabble, the pet rat, promenaded the beams overhead, accompanied
by his oldest son, a fine young fellow, who was evidently very proud of
his whiskers. Quite absorbed in her work, Jo scribbled away till the
last page was filled, when she signed her name with a flourish and
threw down her pen, exclaiming...

"There, I've done my best!  If this won't suit I shall have to wait
till I can do better."

Lying back on the sofa, she read the manuscript carefully through,
making dashes here and there, and putting in many exclamation points,
which looked like little balloons.  Then she tied it up with a smart
red ribbon, and sat a minute looking at it with a sober, wistful
expression, which plainly showed how earnest her work had been.  Jo's
desk up here was an old tin kitchen which hung against the wall.  In it
she kept her papers, and a few books, safely shut away from Scrabble,
who, being likewise of a literary turn, was fond of making a
circulating library of such books as were left in his way by eating the
leaves.  From this tin receptacle Jo produced another manuscript, and
putting both in her pocket, crept quietly downstairs, leaving her
friends to nibble on her pens and taste her ink.

She put on her hat and jacket as noiselessly as possible, and going to
the back entry window, got out upon the roof of a low porch, swung
herself down to the grassy bank, and took a roundabout way to the road.
Once there, she composed herself, hailed a passing omnibus, and rolled
away to town, looking very merry and mysterious.

If anyone had been watching her, he would have thought her movements
decidedly peculiar, for on alighting, she went off at a great pace till
she reached a certain number in a certain busy street.  Having found
the place with some difficulty, she went into the doorway, looked up
the dirty stairs, and after standing stock still a minute, suddenly
dived into the street and walked away as rapidly as she came.  This
maneuver she repeated several times, to the great amusement of a
black-eyed young gentleman lounging in the window of a building
opposite.  On returning for the third time, Jo gave herself a shake,
pulled her hat over her eyes, and walked up the stairs, looking as if
she were going to have all her teeth out.

There was a dentist's sign, among others, which adorned the entrance,
and after staring a moment at the pair of artificial jaws which slowly
opened and shut to draw attention to a fine set of teeth, the young
gentleman put on his coat, took his hat, and went down to post himself
in the opposite doorway, saying with a smile and a shiver, "It's like
her to come alone, but if she has a bad time she'll need someone to
help her home."

In ten minutes Jo came running downstairs with a very red face and the
general appearance of a person who had just passed through a trying
ordeal of some sort.  When she saw the young gentleman she looked
anything but pleased, and passed him with a nod.  But he followed,
asking with an air of sympathy, "Did you have a bad time?"

"Not very."

"You got through quickly."

"Yes, thank goodness!"

"Why did you go alone?"

"Didn't want anyone to know."

"You're the oddest fellow I ever saw.  How many did you have out?"

Jo looked at her friend as if she did not understand him, then began to
laugh as if mightily amused at something.

"There are two which I want to have come out, but I must wait a week."

"What are you laughing at?  You are up to some mischief, Jo," said
Laurie, looking mystified.

"So are you.  What were you doing, sir, up in that billiard saloon?"

"Begging your pardon, ma'am, it wasn't a billiard saloon, but a
gymnasium, and I was taking a lesson in fencing."

"I'm glad of that."

"Why?"

"You can teach me, and then when we play _Hamlet_, you can be Laertes,
and we'll make a fine thing of the fencing scene."

Laurie burst out with a hearty boy's laugh, which made several
passers-by smile in spite of themselves.

"I'll teach you whether we play _Hamlet_ or not.  It's grand fun and
will straighten you up capitally.  But I don't believe that was your
only reason for saying 'I'm glad' in that decided way, was it now?"

"No, I was glad that you were not in the saloon, because I hope you
never go to such places.  Do you?"

"Not often."

"I wish you wouldn't."

"It's no harm, Jo.  I have billiards at home, but it's no fun unless
you have good players, so, as I'm fond of it, I come sometimes and have
a game with Ned Moffat or some of the other fellows."

"Oh, dear, I'm so sorry, for you'll get to liking it better and better,
and will waste time and money, and grow like those dreadful boys.  I
did hope you'd stay respectable and be a satisfaction to your friends,"
said Jo, shaking her head.

"Can't a fellow take a little innocent amusement now and then without
losing his respectability?" asked Laurie, looking nettled.

"That depends upon how and where he takes it.  I don't like Ned and his
set, and wish you'd keep out of it.  Mother won't let us have him at
our house, though he wants to come.  And if you grow like him she won't
be willing to have us frolic together as we do now."

"Won't she?" asked Laurie anxiously.

"No, she can't bear fashionable young men, and she'd shut us all up in
bandboxes rather than have us associate with them."

"Well, she needn't get out her bandboxes yet.  I'm not a fashionable
party and don't mean to be, but I do like harmless larks now and then,
don't you?"

"Yes, nobody minds them, so lark away, but don't get wild, will you?
Or there will be an end of all our good times."

"I'll be a double distilled saint."

"I can't bear saints.  Just be a simple, honest, respectable boy, and
we'll never desert you.  I don't know what I should do if you acted
like Mr. King's son.  He had plenty of money, but didn't know how to
spend it, and got tipsy and gambled, and ran away, and forged his
father's name, I believe, and was altogether horrid."

"You think I'm likely to do the same?  Much obliged."

"No, I don't--oh, dear, no!--but I hear people talking about money
being such a temptation, and I sometimes wish you were poor. I
shouldn't worry then."

"Do you worry about me, Jo?"

"A little, when you look moody and discontented, as you sometimes do,
for you've got such a strong will, if you once get started wrong, I'm
afraid it would be hard to stop you."

Laurie walked in silence a few minutes, and Jo watched him, wishing she
had held her tongue, for his eyes looked angry, though his lips smiled
as if at her warnings.

"Are you going to deliver lectures all the way home?" he asked
presently.

"Of course not.  Why?"

"Because if you are, I'll take a bus.  If you're not, I'd like to walk
with you and tell you something very interesting."

"I won't preach any more, and I'd like to hear the news immensely."

"Very well, then, come on.  It's a secret, and if I tell you, you must
tell me yours."

"I haven't got any," began Jo, but stopped suddenly, remembering that
she had.

"You know you have--you can't hide anything, so up and 'fess, or I
won't tell," cried Laurie.

"Is your secret a nice one?"

"Oh, isn't it!  All about people you know, and such fun!  You ought to
hear it, and I've been aching to tell it this long time. Come, you
begin."

"You'll not say anything about it at home, will you?"

"Not a word."

"And you won't tease me in private?"

"I never tease."

"Yes, you do.  You get everything you want out of people.  I don't know
how you do it, but you are a born wheedler."

"Thank you.  Fire away."

"Well, I've left two stories with a newspaperman, and he's to give his
answer next week," whispered Jo, in her confidant's ear.

"Hurrah for Miss March, the celebrated American authoress!" cried
Laurie, throwing up his hat and catching it again, to the great delight
of two ducks, four cats, five hens, and half a dozen Irish children,
for they were out of the city now.

"Hush!  It won't come to anything, I dare say, but I couldn't rest till
I had tried, and I said nothing about it because I didn't want anyone
else to be disappointed."

"It won't fail.  Why, Jo, your stories are works of Shakespeare
compared to half the rubbish that is published every day. Won't it be
fun to see them in print, and shan't we feel proud of our authoress?"

Jo's eyes sparkled, for it is always pleasant to be believed in, and a
friend's praise is always sweeter than a dozen newspaper puffs.

"Where's your secret?  Play fair, Teddy, or I'll never believe you
again," she said, trying to extinguish the brilliant hopes that blazed
up at a word of encouragement.

"I may get into a scrape for telling, but I didn't promise not to, so I
will, for I never feel easy in my mind till I've told you any plummy
bit of news I get.  I know where Meg's glove is."

"Is that all?" said Jo, looking disappointed, as Laurie nodded and
twinkled with a face full of mysterious intelligence.

"It's quite enough for the present, as you'll agree when I tell you
where it is."

"Tell, then."

Laurie bent, and whispered three words in Jo's ear, which produced a
comical change.  She stood and stared at him for a minute, looking both
surprised and displeased, then walked on, saying sharply, "How do you
know?"

"Saw it."

"Where?"

"Pocket."

"All this time?"

"Yes, isn't that romantic?"

"No, it's horrid."

"Don't you like it?"

"Of course I don't.  It's ridiculous, it won't be allowed.  My
patience!  What would Meg say?"

"You are not to tell anyone.  Mind that."

"I didn't promise."

"That was understood, and I trusted you."

"Well, I won't for the present, anyway, but I'm disgusted, and wish you
hadn't told me."

"I thought you'd be pleased."

"At the idea of anybody coming to take Meg away? No, thank you."

"You'll feel better about it when somebody comes to take you away."

"I'd like to see anyone try it," cried Jo fiercely.

"So should I!" and Laurie chuckled at the idea.

"I don't think secrets agree with me, I feel rumpled up in my mind
since you told me that," said Jo rather ungratefully.

"Race down this hill with me, and you'll be all right," suggested
Laurie.

No one was in sight, the smooth road sloped invitingly before her, and
finding the temptation irresistible, Jo darted away, soon leaving hat
and comb behind her and scattering hairpins as she ran. Laurie reached
the goal first and was quite satisfied with the success of his
treatment, for his Atlanta came panting up with flying hair, bright
eyes, ruddy cheeks, and no signs of dissatisfaction in her face.

"I wish I was a horse, then I could run for miles in this splendid air,
and not lose my breath.  It was capital, but see what a guy it's made
me.  Go, pick up my things, like a cherub, as you are," said Jo,
dropping down under a maple tree, which was carpeting the bank with
crimson leaves.

Laurie leisurely departed to recover the lost property, and Jo bundled
up her braids, hoping no one would pass by till she was tidy again.
But someone did pass, and who should it be but Meg, looking
particularly ladylike in her state and festival suit, for she had been
making calls.

"What in the world are you doing here?" she asked, regarding her
disheveled sister with well-bred surprise.

"Getting leaves," meekly answered Jo, sorting the rosy handful she had
just swept up.

"And hairpins," added Laurie, throwing half a dozen into Jo's lap.
"They grow on this road, Meg, so do combs and brown straw hats."

"You have been running, Jo.  How could you?  When will you stop such
romping ways?" said Meg reprovingly, as she settled her cuffs and
smoothed her hair, with which the wind had taken liberties.

"Never till I'm stiff and old and have to use a crutch.  Don't try to
make me grow up before my time, Meg.  It's hard enough to have you
change all of a sudden.  Let me be a little girl as long as I can."

As she spoke, Jo bent over the leaves to hide the trembling of her
lips, for lately she had felt that Margaret was fast getting to be a
woman, and Laurie's secret made her dread the separation which must
surely come some time and now seemed very near.  He saw the trouble in
her face and drew Meg's attention from it by asking quickly, "Where
have you been calling, all so fine?"

"At the Gardiners', and Sallie has been telling me all about Belle
Moffat's wedding.  It was very splendid, and they have gone to spend
the winter in Paris.  Just think how delightful that must be!"

"Do you envy her, Meg?" said Laurie.

"I'm afraid I do."

"I'm glad of it!" muttered Jo, tying on her hat with a jerk.

"Why?" asked Meg, looking surprised.

"Because if you care much about riches, you will never go and marry a
poor man," said Jo, frowning at Laurie, who was mutely warning her to
mind what she said.

"I shall never '_go_ and marry' anyone," observed Meg, walking on with
great dignity while the others followed, laughing, whispering, skipping
stones, and 'behaving like children', as Meg said to herself, though
she might have been tempted to join them if she had not had her best
dress on.

For a week or two, Jo behaved so queerly that her sisters were quite
bewildered.  She rushed to the door when the postman rang, was rude to
Mr. Brooke whenever they met, would sit looking at Meg with a
woe-begone face, occasionally jumping up to shake and then kiss her in
a very mysterious manner.  Laurie and she were always making signs to
one another, and talking about 'Spread Eagles' till the girls declared
they had both lost their wits.  On the second Saturday after Jo got out
of the window, Meg, as she sat sewing at her window, was scandalized by
the sight of Laurie chasing Jo all over the garden and finally
capturing her in Amy's bower.  What went on there, Meg could not see,
but shrieks of laughter were heard, followed by the murmur of voices
and a great flapping of newspapers.

"What shall we do with that girl?  She never _will_ behave like a young
lady," sighed Meg, as she watched the race with a disapproving face.

"I hope she won't.  She is so funny and dear as she is," said Beth, who
had never betrayed that she was a little hurt at Jo's having secrets
with anyone but her.

"It's very trying, but we never can make her _commy la fo_," added Amy,
who sat making some new frills for herself, with her curls tied up in a
very becoming way, two agreeable things that made her feel unusually
elegant and ladylike.

In a few minutes Jo bounced in, laid herself on the sofa, and affected
to read.

"Have you anything interesting there?" asked Meg, with condescension.

"Nothing but a story, won't amount to much, I guess," returned Jo,
carefully keeping the name of the paper out of sight.

"You'd better read it aloud.  That will amuse us and keep you out of
mischief," said Amy in her most grown-up tone.

"What's the name?" asked Beth, wondering why Jo kept her face behind
the sheet.

"The Rival Painters."

"That sounds well.  Read it," said Meg.

With a loud "Hem!" and a long breath, Jo began to read very fast.  The
girls listened with interest, for the tale was romantic, and somewhat
pathetic, as most of the characters died in the end. "I like that about
the splendid picture," was Amy's approving remark, as Jo paused.

"I prefer the lovering part.  Viola and Angelo are two of our favorite
names, isn't that queer?" said Meg, wiping her eyes, for the lovering
part was tragical.

"Who wrote it?" asked Beth, who had caught a glimpse of Jo's face.

The reader suddenly sat up, cast away the paper, displaying a flushed
countenance, and with a funny mixture of solemnity and excitement
replied in a loud voice, "Your sister."

"You?" cried Meg, dropping her work.

"It's very good," said Amy critically.

"I knew it!  I knew it! Oh, my Jo, I am so proud!"  and Beth ran to hug
her sister and exult over this splendid success.

Dear me, how delighted they all were, to be sure!  How Meg wouldn't
believe it till she saw the words.  "Miss Josephine March," actually
printed in the paper.  How graciously Amy criticized the artistic parts
of the story, and offered hints for a sequel, which unfortunately
couldn't be carried out, as the hero and heroine were dead.  How Beth
got excited, and skipped and sang with joy.  How Hannah came in to
exclaim, "Sakes alive, well I never!" in great astonishment at 'that
Jo's doin's'.  How proud Mrs. March was when she knew it.  How Jo
laughed, with tears in her eyes, as she declared she might as well be a
peacock and done with it, and how the 'Spread Eagle' might be said to
flap his wings triumphantly over the House of March, as the paper
passed from hand to hand.

"Tell us about it."  "When did it come?" "How much did you get for it?"
"What will Father say?" "Won't Laurie laugh?" cried the family, all in
one breath as they clustered about Jo, for these foolish, affectionate
people made a jubilee of every little household joy.

"Stop jabbering, girls, and I'll tell you everything," said Jo,
wondering if Miss Burney felt any grander over her Evelina than she did
over her 'Rival Painters'.  Having told how she disposed of her tales,
Jo added, "And when I went to get my answer, the man said he liked them
both, but didn't pay beginners, only let them print in his paper, and
noticed the stories.  It was good practice, he said, and when the
beginners improved, anyone would pay.  So I let him have the two
stories, and today this was sent to me, and Laurie caught me with it
and insisted on seeing it, so I let him.  And he said it was good, and
I shall write more, and he's going to get the next paid for, and I am
so happy, for in time I may be able to support myself and help the
girls."

Jo's breath gave out here, and wrapping her head in the paper, she
bedewed her little story with a few natural tears, for to be
independent and earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest
wishes of her heart, and this seemed to be the first step toward that
happy end.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A TELEGRAM

"November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year," said
Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the
frostbitten garden.

"That's the reason I was born in it," observed Jo pensively, quite
unconscious of the blot on her nose.

"If something very pleasant should happen now, we should think it a
delightful month," said Beth, who took a hopeful view of everything,
even November.

"I dare say, but nothing pleasant ever does happen in this family,"
said Meg, who was out of sorts.  "We go grubbing along day after day,
without a bit of change, and very little fun.  We might as well be in a
treadmill."

"My patience, how blue we are!" cried Jo.  "I don't much wonder, poor
dear, for you see other girls having splendid times, while you grind,
grind, year in and year out.  Oh, don't I wish I could manage things
for you as I do for my heroines!  You're pretty enough and good enough
already, so I'd have some rich relation leave you a fortune
unexpectedly.  Then you'd dash out as an heiress, scorn everyone who
has slighted you, go abroad, and come home my Lady Something in a blaze
of splendor and elegance."

"People don't have fortunes left them in that style nowadays, men have
to work and women marry for money.  It's a dreadfully unjust world,"
said Meg bitterly.

"Jo and I are going to make fortunes for you all.  Just wait ten years,
and see if we don't," said Amy, who sat in a corner making mud pies, as
Hannah called her little clay models of birds, fruit, and faces.

"Can't wait, and I'm afraid I haven't much faith in ink and dirt,
though I'm grateful for your good intentions."

Meg sighed, and turned to the frostbitten garden again.  Jo groaned and
leaned both elbows on the table in a despondent attitude, but Amy
spatted away energetically, and Beth, who sat at the other window,
said, smiling, "Two pleasant things are going to happen right away.
Marmee is coming down the street, and Laurie is tramping through the
garden as if he had something nice to tell."

In they both came, Mrs. March with her usual question, "Any letter from
Father, girls?" and Laurie to say in his persuasive way, "Won't some of
you come for a drive?  I've been working away at mathematics till my
head is in a muddle, and I'm going to freshen my wits by a brisk turn.
It's a dull day, but the air isn't bad, and I'm going to take Brooke
home, so it will be gay inside, if it isn't out.  Come, Jo, you and
Beth will go, won't you?"

"Of course we will."

"Much obliged, but I'm busy."  And Meg whisked out her workbasket, for
she had agreed with her mother that it was best, for her at least, not
to drive too often with the young gentleman.

"We three will be ready in a minute," cried Amy, running away to wash
her hands.

"Can I do anything for you, Madam Mother?" asked Laurie, leaning over
Mrs. March's chair with the affectionate look and tone he always gave
her.

"No, thank you, except call at the office, if you'll be so kind, dear.
It's our day for a letter, and the postman hasn't been.  Father is as
regular as the sun, but there's some delay on the way, perhaps."

A sharp ring interrupted her, and a minute after Hannah came in with a
letter.

"It's one of them horrid telegraph things, mum," she said, handling it
as if she was afraid it would explode and do some damage.

At the word 'telegraph', Mrs. March snatched it, read the two lines it
contained, and dropped back into her chair as white as if the little
paper had sent a bullet to her heart.  Laurie dashed downstairs for
water, while Meg and Hannah supported her, and Jo read aloud, in a
frightened voice...

    Mrs. March:
    Your husband is very ill.  Come at once.
    S.  HALE
    Blank Hospital, Washington.

How still the room was as they listened breathlessly, how strangely the
day darkened outside, and how suddenly the whole world seemed to
change, as the girls gathered about their mother, feeling as if all the
happiness and support of their lives was about to be taken from them.

Mrs. March was herself again directly, read the message over, and
stretched out her arms to her daughters, saying, in a tone they never
forgot, "I shall go at once, but it may be too late.  Oh, children,
children, help me to bear it!"

For several minutes there was nothing but the sound of sobbing in the
room, mingled with broken words of comfort, tender assurances of help,
and hopeful whispers that died away in tears.  Poor Hannah was the
first to recover, and with unconscious wisdom she set all the rest a
good example, for with her, work was panacea for most afflictions.

"The Lord keep the dear man!  I won't waste no time a-cryin', but git
your things ready right away, mum," she said heartily, as she wiped her
face on her apron, gave her mistress a warm shake of the hand with her
own hard one, and went away to work like three women in one.

"She's right, there's no time for tears now.  Be calm, girls, and let
me think."

They tried to be calm, poor things, as their mother sat up, looking
pale but steady, and put away her grief to think and plan for them.

"Where's Laurie?" she asked presently, when she had collected her
thoughts and decided on the first duties to be done.

"Here, ma'am.  Oh, let me do something!" cried the boy, hurrying from
the next room whither he had withdrawn, feeling that their first sorrow
was too sacred for even his friendly eyes to see.

"Send a telegram saying I will come at once.  The next train goes early
in the morning.  I'll take that."

"What else?  The horses are ready.  I can go anywhere, do anything," he
said, looking ready to fly to the ends of the earth.

"Leave a note at Aunt March's.  Jo, give me that pen and paper."

Tearing off the blank side of one of her newly copied pages, Jo drew
the table before her mother, well knowing that money for the long, sad
journey must be borrowed, and feeling as if she could do anything to
add a little to the sum for her father.

"Now go, dear, but don't kill yourself driving at a desperate pace.
There is no need of that."

Mrs. March's warning was evidently thrown away, for five minutes later
Laurie tore by the window on his own fleet horse, riding as if for his
life.

"Jo, run to the rooms, and tell Mrs. King that I can't come. On the way
get these things.  I'll put them down, they'll be needed and I must go
prepared for nursing.  Hospital stores are not always good.  Beth, go
and ask Mr. Laurence for a couple of bottles of old wine.  I'm not too
proud to beg for Father.  He shall have the best of everything.  Amy,
tell Hannah to get down the black trunk, and Meg, come and help me find
my things, for I'm half bewildered."

Writing, thinking, and directing all at once might well bewilder the
poor lady, and Meg begged her to sit quietly in her room for a little
while, and let them work.  Everyone scattered like leaves before a gust
of wind, and the quiet, happy household was broken up as suddenly as if
the paper had been an evil spell.

Mr. Laurence came hurrying back with Beth, bringing every comfort the
kind old gentleman could think of for the invalid, and friendliest
promises of protection for the girls during the mother's absence, which
comforted her very much.  There was nothing he didn't offer, from his
own dressing gown to himself as escort.  But the last was impossible.
Mrs. March would not hear of the old gentleman's undertaking the long
journey, yet an expression of relief was visible when he spoke of it,
for anxiety ill fits one for traveling. He saw the look, knit his heavy
eyebrows, rubbed his hands, and marched abruptly away, saying he'd be
back directly.  No one had time to think of him again till, as Meg ran
through the entry, with a pair of rubbers in one hand and a cup of tea
in the other, she came suddenly upon Mr. Brooke.

"I'm very sorry to hear of this, Miss March," he said, in the kind,
quiet tone which sounded very pleasantly to her perturbed spirit.  "I
came to offer myself as escort to your mother.  Mr. Laurence has
commissions for me in Washington, and it will give me real satisfaction
to be of service to her there."

Down dropped the rubbers, and the tea was very near following, as Meg
put out her hand, with a face so full of gratitude that Mr. Brooke
would have felt repaid for a much greater sacrifice than the trifling
one of time and comfort which he was about to take.

"How kind you all are!  Mother will accept, I'm sure, and it will be
such a relief to know that she has someone to take care of her.  Thank
you very, very much!"

Meg spoke earnestly, and forgot herself entirely till something in the
brown eyes looking down at her made her remember the cooling tea, and
lead the way into the parlor, saying she would call her mother.

Everything was arranged by the time Laurie returned with a note from
Aunt March, enclosing the desired sum, and a few lines repeating what
she had often said before, that she had always told them it was absurd
for March to go into the army, always predicted that no good would come
of it, and she hoped they would take her advice the next time.  Mrs.
March put the note in the fire, the money in her purse, and went on
with her preparations, with her lips folded tightly in a way which Jo
would have understood if she had been there.

The short afternoon wore away.  All other errands were done, and Meg
and her mother busy at some necessary needlework, while Beth and Amy
got tea, and Hannah finished her ironing with what she called a 'slap
and a bang', but still Jo did not come.  They began to get anxious, and
Laurie went off to find her, for no one knew what freak Jo might take
into her head.  He missed her, however, and she came walking in with a
very queer expression of countenance, for there was a mixture of fun
and fear, satisfaction and regret in it, which puzzled the family as
much as did the roll of bills she laid before her mother, saying with a
little choke in her voice, "That's my contribution toward making Father
comfortable and bringing him home!"

"My dear, where did you get it?  Twenty-five dollars!  Jo, I hope you
haven't done anything rash?"

"No, it's mine honestly.  I didn't beg, borrow, or steal it.  I earned
it, and I don't think you'll blame me, for I only sold what was my own."

As she spoke, Jo took off her bonnet, and a general outcry arose, for
all her abundant hair was cut short.

"Your hair!  Your beautiful hair!"  "Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one
beauty."  "My dear girl, there was no need of this."  "She doesn't look
like my Jo any more, but I love her dearly for it!"

As everyone exclaimed, and Beth hugged the cropped head tenderly, Jo
assumed an indifferent air, which did not deceive anyone a particle,
and said, rumpling up the brown bush and trying to look as if she liked
it, "It doesn't affect the fate of the nation, so don't wail, Beth.  It
will be good for my vanity, I was getting too proud of my wig.  It will
do my brains good to have that mop taken off.  My head feels
deliciously light and cool, and the barber said I could soon have a
curly crop, which will be boyish, becoming, and easy to keep in order.
I'm satisfied, so please take the money and let's have supper."

"Tell me all about it, Jo.  I am not quite satisfied, but I can't blame
you, for I know how willingly you sacrificed your vanity, as you call
it, to your love.  But, my dear, it was not necessary, and I'm afraid
you will regret it one of these days," said Mrs. March.

"No, I won't!" returned Jo stoutly, feeling much relieved that her
prank was not entirely condemned.

"What made you do it?" asked Amy, who would as soon have thought of
cutting off her head as her pretty hair.

"Well, I was wild to do something for Father," replied Jo, as they
gathered about the table, for healthy young people can eat even in the
midst of trouble.  "I hate to borrow as much as Mother does, and I knew
Aunt March would croak, she always does, if you ask for a ninepence.
Meg gave all her quarterly salary toward the rent, and I only got some
clothes with mine, so I felt wicked, and was bound to have some money,
if I sold the nose off my face to get it."

"You needn't feel wicked, my child! You had no winter things and got
the simplest with your own hard earnings," said Mrs. March with a look
that warmed Jo's heart.

"I hadn't the least idea of selling my hair at first, but as I went
along I kept thinking what I could do, and feeling as if I'd like to
dive into some of the rich stores and help myself.  In a barber's
window I saw tails of hair with the prices marked, and one black tail,
not so thick as mine, was forty dollars.  It came to me all of a sudden
that I had one thing to make money out of, and without stopping to
think, I walked in, asked if they bought hair, and what they would give
for mine."

"I don't see how you dared to do it," said Beth in a tone of awe.

"Oh, he was a little man who looked as if he merely lived to oil his
hair.  He rather stared at first, as if he wasn't used to having girls
bounce into his shop and ask him to buy their hair.  He said he didn't
care about mine, it wasn't the fashionable color, and he never paid
much for it in the first place.  The work put into it made it dear, and
so on.  It was getting late, and I was afraid if it wasn't done right
away that I shouldn't have it done at all, and you know when I start to
do a thing, I hate to give it up.  So I begged him to take it, and told
him why I was in such a hurry.  It was silly, I dare say, but it
changed his mind, for I got rather excited, and told the story in my
topsy-turvy way, and his wife heard, and said so kindly, 'Take it,
Thomas, and oblige the young lady.  I'd do as much for our Jimmy any
day if I had a spire of hair worth selling."

"Who was Jimmy?" asked Amy, who liked to have things explained as they
went along.

"Her son, she said, who was in the army.  How friendly such things make
strangers feel, don't they?  She talked away all the time the man
clipped, and diverted my mind nicely."

"Didn't you feel dreadfully when the first cut came?" asked Meg, with a
shiver.

"I took a last look at my hair while the man got his things, and that
was the end of it.  I never snivel over trifles like that. I will
confess, though, I felt queer when I saw the dear old hair laid out on
the table, and felt only the short rough ends of my head. It almost
seemed as if I'd an arm or leg off.  The woman saw me look at it, and
picked out a long lock for me to keep.  I'll give it to you, Marmee,
just to remember past glories by, for a crop is so comfortable I don't
think I shall ever have a mane again."

Mrs. March folded the wavy chestnut lock, and laid it away with a short
gray one in her desk.  She only said, "Thank you, deary," but something
in her face made the girls change the subject, and talk as cheerfully
as they could about Mr. Brooke's kindness, the prospect of a fine day
tomorrow, and the happy times they would have when Father came home to
be nursed.

No one wanted to go to bed when at ten o'clock Mrs. March put by the
last finished job, and said, "Come girls."  Beth went to the piano and
played the father's favorite hymn.  All began bravely, but broke down
one by one till Beth was left alone, singing with all her heart, for to
her music was always a sweet consoler.

"Go to bed and don't talk, for we must be up early and shall need all
the sleep we can get.  Good night, my darlings," said Mrs. March, as
the hymn ended, for no one cared to try another.

They kissed her quietly, and went to bed as silently as if the dear
invalid lay in the next room.  Beth and Amy soon fell asleep in spite
of the great trouble, but Meg lay awake, thinking the most serious
thoughts she had ever known in her short life.  Jo lay motionless, and
her sister fancied that she was asleep, till a stifled sob made her
exclaim, as she touched a wet cheek...

"Jo, dear, what is it?  Are you crying about father?"

"No, not now."

"What then?"

"My... My hair!" burst out poor Jo, trying vainly to smother her
emotion in the pillow.

It did not seem at all comical to Meg, who kissed and caressed the
afflicted heroine in the tenderest manner.

"I'm not sorry," protested Jo, with a choke.  "I'd do it again
tomorrow, if I could.  It's only the vain part of me that goes and
cries in this silly way.  Don't tell anyone, it's all over now.  I
thought you were asleep, so I just made a little private moan for my
one beauty.  How came you to be awake?"

"I can't sleep, I'm so anxious," said Meg.

"Think about something pleasant, and you'll soon drop off."

"I tried it, but felt wider awake than ever."

"What did you think of?"

"Handsome faces--eyes particularly," answered Meg, smiling to herself
in the dark.

"What color do you like best?"

"Brown, that is, sometimes.  Blue are lovely."

Jo laughed, and Meg sharply ordered her not to talk, then amiably
promised to make her hair curl, and fell asleep to dream of living in
her castle in the air.

The clocks were striking midnight and the rooms were very still as a
figure glided quietly from bed to bed, smoothing a coverlet here,
settling a pillow there, and pausing to look long and tenderly at each
unconscious face, to kiss each with lips that mutely blessed, and to
pray the fervent prayers which only mothers utter.  As she lifted the
curtain to look out into the dreary night, the moon broke suddenly from
behind the clouds and shone upon her like a bright, benignant face,
which seemed to whisper in the silence, "Be comforted, dear soul!
There is always light behind the clouds."



CHAPTER SIXTEEN

LETTERS

In the cold gray dawn the sisters lit their lamp and read their chapter
with an earnestness never felt before.  For now the shadow of a real
trouble had come, the little books were full of help and comfort, and
as they dressed, they agreed to say goodbye cheerfully and hopefully,
and send their mother on her anxious journey unsaddened by tears or
complaints from them.  Everything seemed very strange when they went
down, so dim and still outside, so full of light and bustle within.
Breakfast at that early hour seemed odd, and even Hannah's familiar
face looked unnatural as she flew about her kitchen with her nightcap
on.  The big trunk stood ready in the hall, Mother's cloak and bonnet
lay on the sofa, and Mother herself sat trying to eat, but looking so
pale and worn with sleeplessness and anxiety that the girls found it
very hard to keep their resolution.  Meg's eyes kept filling in spite
of herself, Jo was obliged to hide her face in the kitchen roller more
than once, and the little girls wore a grave, troubled expression, as
if sorrow was a new experience to them.

Nobody talked much, but as the time drew very near and they sat waiting
for the carriage, Mrs. March said to the girls, who were all busied
about her, one folding her shawl, another smoothing out the strings of
her bonnet, a third putting on her overshoes, and a fourth fastening up
her travelling bag...

"Children, I leave you to Hannah's care and Mr. Laurence's protection.
Hannah is faithfulness itself, and our good neighbor will guard you as
if you were his own.  I have no fears for you, yet I am anxious that
you should take this trouble rightly.  Don't grieve and fret when I am
gone, or think that you can be idle and comfort yourselves by being
idle and trying to forget.  Go on with your work as usual, for work is
a blessed solace.  Hope and keep busy, and whatever happens, remember
that you never can be fatherless."

"Yes, Mother."

"Meg, dear, be prudent, watch over your sisters, consult Hannah, and in
any perplexity, go to Mr. Laurence.  Be patient, Jo, don't get
despondent or do rash things, write to me often, and be my brave girl,
ready to help and cheer all.  Beth, comfort yourself with your music,
and be faithful to the little home duties, and you, Amy, help all you
can, be obedient, and keep happy safe at home."

"We will, Mother!  We will!"

The rattle of an approaching carriage made them all start and listen.
That was the hard minute, but the girls stood it well.  No one cried,
no one ran away or uttered a lamentation, though their hearts were very
heavy as they sent loving messages to Father, remembering, as they
spoke that it might be too late to deliver them. They kissed their
mother quietly, clung about her tenderly, and tried to wave their hands
cheerfully when she drove away.

Laurie and his grandfather came over to see her off, and Mr. Brooke
looked so strong and sensible and kind that the girls christened him
'Mr. Greatheart' on the spot.

"Good-by, my darlings!  God bless and keep us all!" whispered Mrs.
March, as she kissed one dear little face after the other, and hurried
into the carriage.

As she rolled away, the sun came out, and looking back, she saw it
shining on the group at the gate like a good omen.  They saw it also,
and smiled and waved their hands, and the last thing she beheld as she
turned the corner was the four bright faces, and behind them like a
bodyguard, old Mr. Laurence, faithful Hannah, and devoted Laurie.

"How kind everyone is to us!" she said, turning to find fresh proof of
it in the respectful sympathy of the young man's face.

"I don't see how they can help it," returned Mr. Brooke, laughing so
infectiously that Mrs. March could not help smiling. And so the journey
began with the good omens of sunshine, smiles, and cheerful words.

"I feel as if there had been an earthquake," said Jo, as their
neighbors went home to breakfast, leaving them to rest and refresh
themselves.

"It seems as if half the house was gone," added Meg forlornly.

Beth opened her lips to say something, but could only point to the pile
of nicely mended hose which lay on Mother's table, showing that even in
her last hurried moments she had thought and worked for them.  It was a
little thing, but it went straight to their hearts, and in spite of
their brave resolutions, they all broke down and cried bitterly.

Hannah wisely allowed them to relieve their feelings, and when the
shower showed signs of clearing up, she came to the rescue, armed with
a coffeepot.

"Now, my dear young ladies, remember what your ma said, and don't fret.
Come and have a cup of coffee all round, and then let's fall to work
and be a credit to the family."

Coffee was a treat, and Hannah showed great tact in making it that
morning.  No one could resist her persuasive nods, or the fragrant
invitation issuing from the nose of the coffee pot.  They drew up to
the table, exchanged their handkerchiefs for napkins, and in ten
minutes were all right again.

"'Hope and keep busy', that's the motto for us, so let's see who will
remember it best.  I shall go to Aunt March, as usual. Oh, won't she
lecture though!" said Jo, as she sipped with returning spirit.

"I shall go to my Kings, though I'd much rather stay at home and attend
to things here," said Meg, wishing she hadn't made her eyes so red.

"No need of that.  Beth and I can keep house perfectly well," put in
Amy, with an important air.

"Hannah will tell us what to do, and we'll have everything nice when
you come home," added Beth, getting out her mop and dish tub without
delay.

"I think anxiety is very interesting," observed Amy, eating sugar
pensively.

The girls couldn't help laughing, and felt better for it, though Meg
shook her head at the young lady who could find consolation in a sugar
bowl.

The sight of the turnovers made Jo sober again; and when the two went
out to their daily tasks, they looked sorrowfully back at the window
where they were accustomed to see their mother's face.  It was gone,
but Beth had remembered the little household ceremony, and there she
was, nodding away at them like a rosyfaced mandarin.

"That's so like my Beth!" said Jo, waving her hat, with a grateful
face.  "Goodbye, Meggy, I hope the Kings won't strain today.  Don't
fret about Father, dear," she added, as they parted.

"And I hope Aunt March won't croak.  Your hair is becoming, and it
looks very boyish and nice," returned Meg, trying not to smile at the
curly head, which looked comically small on her tall sister's shoulders.

"That's my only comfort." And, touching her hat a la Laurie, away went
Jo, feeling like a shorn sheep on a wintry day.

News from their father comforted the girls very much, for though
dangerously ill, the presence of the best and tenderest of nurses had
already done him good.  Mr. Brooke sent a bulletin every day, and as
the head of the family, Meg insisted on reading the dispatches, which
grew more cheerful as the week passed.  At first, everyone was eager to
write, and plump envelopes were carefully poked into the letter box by
one or other of the sisters, who felt rather important with their
Washington correspondence.  As one of these packets contained
characteristic notes from the party, we will rob an imaginary mail, and
read them.

My dearest Mother:

It is impossible to tell you how happy your last letter made us, for
the news was so good we couldn't help laughing and crying over it.  How
very kind Mr. Brooke is, and how fortunate that Mr. Laurence's business
detains him near you so long, since he is so useful to you and Father.
The girls are all as good as gold.  Jo helps me with the sewing, and
insists on doing all sorts of hard jobs.  I should be afraid she might
overdo, if I didn't know her 'moral fit' wouldn't last long.  Beth is
as regular about her tasks as a clock, and never forgets what you told
her.  She grieves about Father, and looks sober except when she is at
her little piano.  Amy minds me nicely, and I take great care of her.
She does her own hair, and I am teaching her to make buttonholes and
mend her stockings. She tries very hard, and I know you will be pleased
with her improvement when you come.  Mr. Laurence watches over us like
a motherly old hen, as Jo says, and Laurie is very kind and neighborly.
He and Jo keep us merry, for we get pretty blue sometimes, and feel
like orphans, with you so far away.  Hannah is a perfect saint.  She
does not scold at all, and always calls me Miss Margaret, which is
quite proper, you know, and treats me with respect.  We are all well
and busy, but we long, day and night, to have you back.  Give my
dearest love to Father, and believe me, ever your own...

MEG

This note, prettily written on scented paper, was a great contrast to
the next, which was scribbled on a big sheet of thin foreign paper,
ornamented with blots and all manner of flourishes and curly-tailed
letters.

My precious Marmee:

Three cheers for dear Father!  Brooke was a trump to telegraph right
off, and let us know the minute he was better.  I rushed up garret when
the letter came, and tried to thank god for being so good to us, but I
could only cry, and say, "I'm glad!  I'm glad!" Didn't that do as well
as a regular prayer?  For I felt a great many in my heart.  We have
such funny times, and now I can enjoy them, for everyone is so
desperately good, it's like living in a nest of turtledoves.  You'd
laugh to see Meg head the table and try to be motherish.  She gets
prettier every day, and I'm in love with her sometimes.  The children
are regular archangels, and I--well, I'm Jo, and never shall be
anything else.  Oh, I must tell you that I came near having a quarrel
with Laurie.  I freed my mind about a silly little thing, and he was
offended.  I was right, but didn't speak as I ought, and he marched
home, saying he wouldn't come again till I begged pardon.  I declared I
wouldn't and got mad. It lasted all day.  I felt bad and wanted you
very much.  Laurie and I are both so proud, it's hard to beg pardon.
But I thought he'd come to it, for I was in the right.  He didn't come,
and just at night I remembered what you said when Amy fell into the
river.  I read my little book, felt better, resolved not to let the sun
set on my anger, and ran over to tell Laurie I was sorry.  I met him at
the gate, coming for the same thing.  We both laughed, begged each
other's pardon, and felt all good and comfortable again.

I made a 'pome' yesterday, when I was helping Hannah wash, and as
Father likes my silly little things, I put it in to amuse him.  Give
him my lovingest hug that ever was, and kiss yourself a dozen times for
your...

TOPSY-TURVY JO


    A SONG FROM THE SUDS

    Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,
    While the white foam rises high,
    And sturdily wash and rinse and wring,
    And fasten the clothes to dry.
    Then out in the free fresh air they swing,
    Under the sunny sky.

    I wish we could wash from our hearts and souls
    The stains of the week away,
    And let water and air by their magic make
    Ourselves as pure as they.
    Then on the earth there would be indeed,
    A glorious washing day!

    Along the path of a useful life,
    Will heart's-ease ever bloom.
    The busy mind has no time to think
    Of sorrow or care or gloom.
    And anxious thoughts may be swept away,
    As we bravely wield a broom.

    I am glad a task to me is given,
    To labor at day by day,
    For it brings me health and strength and hope,
    And I cheerfully learn to say,
    "Head, you may think, Heart, you may feel,
    But, Hand, you shall work alway!"


Dear Mother,

There is only room for me to send my love, and some pressed pansies
from the root I have been keeping safe in the house for Father to see.
I read every morning, try to be good all day, and sing myself to sleep
with Father's tune.  I can't sing 'LAND OF THE LEAL' now, it makes me
cry.  Everyone is very kind, and we are as happy as we can be without
you.  Amy wants the rest of the page, so I must stop.  I didn't forget
to cover the holders, and I wind the clock and air the rooms every day.

Kiss dear Father on the cheek he calls mine.  Oh, do come soon to your
loving...

LITTLE BETH


Ma Chere Mamma,

We are all well I do my lessons always and never corroberate the
girls--Meg says I mean contradick so I put in both words and you can
take the properest.  Meg is a great comfort to me and lets me have
jelly every night at tea its so good for me Jo says because it keeps me
sweet tempered.  Laurie is not as respeckful as he ought to be now I am
almost in my teens, he calls me Chick and hurts my feelings by talking
French to me very fast when I say Merci or Bon jour as Hattie King
does.  The sleeves of my blue dress were all worn out, and Meg put in
new ones, but the full front came wrong and they are more blue than the
dress.  I felt bad but did not fret I bear my troubles well but I do
wish Hannah would put more starch in my aprons and have buckwheats
every day.  Can't she?  Didn't I make that interrigation point nice?
Meg says my punchtuation and spelling are disgraceful and I am
mortyfied but dear me I have so many things to do, I can't stop.
Adieu, I send heaps of love to Papa.  Your affectionate daughter...

AMY CURTIS MARCH


Dear Mis March,

I jes drop a line to say we git on fust rate.  The girls is clever and
fly round right smart.  Miss Meg is going to make a proper good
housekeeper.  She hes the liking for it, and gits the hang of things
surprisin quick.  Jo doos beat all for goin ahead, but she don't stop
to cal'k'late fust, and you never know where she's like to bring up.
She done out a tub of clothes on Monday, but she starched 'em afore
they was wrenched, and blued a pink calico dress till I thought I
should a died a laughin.  Beth is the best of little creeters, and a
sight of help to me, bein so forehanded and dependable.  She tries to
learn everything, and really goes to market beyond her years, likewise
keeps accounts, with my help, quite wonderful.  We have got on very
economical so fur.  I don't let the girls hev coffee only once a week,
accordin to your wish, and keep em on plain wholesome vittles.  Amy
does well without frettin, wearin her best clothes and eatin sweet
stuff. Mr. Laurie is as full of didoes as usual, and turns the house
upside down frequent, but he heartens the girls, so I let em hev full
swing.  The old gentleman sends heaps of things, and is rather wearin,
but means wal, and it aint my place to say nothin.  My bread is riz, so
no more at this time.  I send my duty to Mr. March, and hope he's seen
the last of his Pewmonia.

Yours respectful,

Hannah Mullet


Head Nurse of Ward No. 2,


All serene on the Rappahannock, troops in fine condition, commisary
department well conducted, the Home Guard under Colonel Teddy always on
duty, Commander in Chief General Laurence reviews the army daily,
Quartermaster Mullet keeps order in camp, and Major Lion does picket
duty at night.  A salute of twenty-four guns was fired on receipt of
good news from Washington, and a dress parade took place at
headquarters.  Commander in chief sends best wishes, in which he is
heartily joined by...

COLONEL TEDDY


Dear Madam:

The little girls are all well.  Beth and my boy report daily. Hannah is
a model servant, and guards pretty Meg like a dragon. Glad the fine
weather holds.  Pray make Brooke useful, and draw on me for funds if
expenses exceed your estimate.  Don't let your husband want anything.
Thank God he is mending.

Your sincere friend and servant, JAMES LAURENCE



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

LITTLE FAITHFUL

For a week the amount of virtue in the old house would have supplied
the neighborhood.  It was really amazing, for everyone seemed in a
heavenly frame of mind, and self-denial was all the fashion.  Relieved
of their first anxiety about their father, the girls insensibly relaxed
their praiseworthy efforts a little, and began to fall back into old
ways.  They did not forget their motto, but hoping and keeping busy
seemed to grow easier, and after such tremendous exertions, they felt
that Endeavor deserved a holiday, and gave it a good many.

Jo caught a bad cold through neglect to cover the shorn head enough,
and was ordered to stay at home till she was better, for Aunt March
didn't like to hear people read with colds in their heads.  Jo liked
this, and after an energetic rummage from garret to cellar, subsided on
the sofa to nurse her cold with arsenicum and books.  Amy found that
housework and art did not go well together, and returned to her mud
pies.  Meg went daily to her pupils, and sewed, or thought she did, at
home, but much time was spent in writing long letters to her mother, or
reading the Washington dispatches over and over.  Beth kept on, with
only slight relapses into idleness or grieving.

All the little duties were faithfully done each day, and many of her
sisters' also, for they were forgetful, and the house seemed like a
clock whose pendulum was gone a-visiting.  When her heart got heavy
with longings for Mother or fears for Father, she went away into a
certain closet, hid her face in the folds of a dear old gown, and made
her little moan and prayed her little prayer quietly by herself.
Nobody knew what cheered her up after a sober fit, but everyone felt
how sweet and helpful Beth was, and fell into a way of going to her for
comfort or advice in their small affairs.

All were unconscious that this experience was a test of character, and
when the first excitement was over, felt that they had done well and
deserved praise.  So they did, but their mistake was in ceasing to do
well, and they learned this lesson through much anxiety and regret.

"Meg, I wish you'd go and see the Hummels.  You know Mother told us not
to forget them." said Beth, ten days after Mrs. March's departure.

"I'm too tired to go this afternoon," replied Meg, rocking comfortably
as she sewed.

"Can't you, Jo?" asked Beth.

"Too stormy for me with my cold."

"I thought it was almost well."

"It's well enough for me to go out with Laurie, but not well enough to
go to the Hummels'," said Jo, laughing, but looking a little ashamed of
her inconsistency.

"Why don't you go yourself?" asked Meg.

"I have been every day, but the baby is sick, and I don't know what to
do for it.  Mrs. Hummel goes away to work, and Lottchen takes care of
it.  But it gets sicker and sicker, and I think you or Hannah ought to
go."

Beth spoke earnestly, and Meg promised she would go tomorrow.

"Ask Hannah for some nice little mess, and take it round, Beth, the air
will do you good," said Jo, adding apologetically, "I'd go but I want
to finish my writing."

"My head aches and I'm tired, so I thought maybe some of you would go,"
said Beth.

"Amy will be in presently, and she will run down for us," suggested Meg.

So Beth lay down on the sofa, the others returned to their work, and
the Hummels were forgotten.  An hour passed.  Amy did not come, Meg
went to her room to try on a new dress, Jo was absorbed in her story,
and Hannah was sound asleep before the kitchen fire, when Beth quietly
put on her hood, filled her basket with odds and ends for the poor
children, and went out into the chilly air with a heavy head and a
grieved look in her patient eyes.  It was late when she came back, and
no one saw her creep upstairs and shut herself into her mother's room.
Half an hour after, Jo went to 'Mother's closet' for something, and
there found little Beth sitting on the medicine chest, looking very
grave, with red eyes and a camphor bottle in her hand.

"Christopher Columbus!  What's the matter?" cried Jo, as Beth put out
her hand as if to warn her off, and asked quickly. . .

"You've had the scarlet fever, haven't you?"

"Years ago, when Meg did.  Why?"

"Then I'll tell you.  Oh, Jo, the baby's dead!"

"What baby?"

"Mrs. Hummel's.  It died in my lap before she got home," cried Beth
with a sob.

"My poor dear, how dreadful for you!  I ought to have gone," said Jo,
taking her sister in her arms as she sat down in her mother's big
chair, with a remorseful face.

"It wasn't dreadful, Jo, only so sad!  I saw in a minute it was sicker,
but Lottchen said her mother had gone for a doctor, so I took Baby and
let Lotty rest.  It seemed asleep, but all of a sudden if gave a little
cry and trembled, and then lay very still. I tried to warm its feet,
and Lotty gave it some milk, but it didn't stir, and I knew it was
dead."

"Don't cry, dear!  What did you do?"

"I just sat and held it softly till Mrs. Hummel came with the doctor.
He said it was dead, and looked at Heinrich and Minna, who have sore
throats.  'Scarlet fever, ma'am.  Ought to have called me before,' he
said crossly.  Mrs. Hummel told him she was poor, and had tried to cure
baby herself, but now it was too late, and she could only ask him to
help the others and trust to charity for his pay.  He smiled then, and
was kinder, but it was very sad, and I cried with them till he turned
round all of a sudden, and told me to go home and take belladonna right
away, or I'd have the fever."

"No, you won't!" cried Jo, hugging her close, with a frightened look.
"Oh, Beth, if you should be sick I never could forgive myself! What
shall we do?"

"Don't be frightened, I guess I shan't have it badly.  I looked in
Mother's book, and saw that it begins with headache, sore throat, and
queer feelings like mine, so I did take some belladonna, and I feel
better," said Beth, laying her cold hands on her hot forehead and
trying to look well.

"If Mother was only at home!" exclaimed Jo, seizing the book, and
feeling that Washington was an immense way off.  She read a page,
looked at Beth, felt her head, peeped into her throat, and then said
gravely, "You've been over the baby every day for more than a week, and
among the others who are going to have it, so I'm afraid you are going
to have it, Beth.  I'll call Hannah, she knows all about sickness."

"Don't let Amy come.  She never had it, and I should hate to give it to
her.  Can't you and Meg have it over again?" asked Beth, anxiously.

"I guess not.  Don't care if I do.  Serve me right, selfish pig, to let
you go, and stay writing rubbish myself!" muttered Jo, as she went to
consult Hannah.

The good soul was wide awake in a minute, and took the lead at once,
assuring that there was no need to worry; every one had scarlet fever,
and if rightly treated, nobody died, all of which Jo believed, and felt
much relieved as they went up to call Meg.

"Now I'll tell you what we'll do," said Hannah, when she had examined
and questioned Beth, "we will have Dr. Bangs, just to take a look at
you, dear, and see that we start right.  Then we'll send Amy off to
Aunt March's for a spell, to keep her out of harm's way, and one of you
girls can stay at home and amuse Beth for a day or two."

"I shall stay, of course, I'm oldest," began Meg, looking anxious and
self-reproachful.

"I shall, because it's my fault she is sick.  I told Mother I'd do the
errands, and I haven't," said Jo decidedly.

"Which will you have, Beth?  There ain't no need of but one," aid
Hannah.

"Jo, please." And Beth leaned her head against her sister with a
contented look, which effectually settled that point.

"I'll go and tell Amy," said Meg, feeling a little hurt, yet rather
relieved on the whole, for she did not like nursing, and Jo did.

Amy rebelled outright, and passionately declared that she had rather
have the fever than go to Aunt March.  Meg reasoned, pleaded, and
commanded, all in vain.  Amy protested that she would not go, and Meg
left her in despair to ask Hannah what should be done.  Before she came
back, Laurie walked into the parlor to find Amy sobbing, with her head
in the sofa cushions.  She told her story, expecting to be consoled,
but Laurie only put his hands in his pockets and walked about the room,
whistling softly, as he knit his brows in deep thought.  Presently he
sat down beside her, and said, in his most wheedlesome tone, "Now be a
sensible little woman, and do as they say. No, don't cry, but hear what
a jolly plan I've got.  You go to Aunt March's, and I'll come and take
you out every day, driving or walking, and we'll have capital times.
Won't that be better than moping here?"

"I don't wish to be sent off as if I was in the way," began Amy, in an
injured voice.

"Bless your heart, child, it's to keep you well.  You don't want to be
sick, do you?"

"No, I'm sure I don't, but I dare say I shall be, for I've been with
Beth all the time."

"That's the very reason you ought to go away at once, so that you may
escape it.  Change of air and care will keep you well, I dare say, or
if it does not entirely, you will have the fever more lightly.  I
advise you to be off as soon as you can, for scarlet fever is no joke,
miss."

"But it's dull at Aunt March's, and she is so cross," said Amy, looking
rather frightened.

"It won't be dull with me popping in every day to tell you how Beth is,
and take you out gallivanting.  The old lady likes me, and I'll be as
sweet as possible to her, so she won't peck at us, whatever we do."

"Will you take me out in the trotting wagon with Puck?"

"On my honor as a gentleman."

"And come every single day?"

"See if I don't!"

"And bring me back the minute Beth is well?"

"The identical minute."

"And go to the theater, truly?"

"A dozen theaters, if we may."

"Well--I guess I will," said Amy slowly.

"Good girl!  Call Meg, and tell her you'll give in," said Laurie, with
an approving pat, which annoyed Amy more than the 'giving in'.

Meg and Jo came running down to behold the miracle which had been
wrought, and Amy, feeling very precious and self-sacrificing, promised
to go, if the doctor said Beth was going to be ill.

"How is the little dear?" asked Laurie, for Beth was his especial pet,
and he felt more anxious about her than he liked to show.

"She is lying down on Mother's bed, and feels better.  The baby's death
troubled her, but I dare say she has only got cold. Hannah says she
thinks so, but she looks worried, and that makes me fidgety," answered
Meg.

"What a trying world it is!" said Jo, rumpling up her hair in a fretful
way.  "No sooner do we get out of one trouble than down comes another.
There doesn't seem to be anything to hold on to when Mother's gone, so
I'm all at sea."

"Well, don't make a porcupine of yourself, it isn't becoming. Settle
your wig, Jo, and tell me if I shall telegraph to your mother, or do
anything?" asked Laurie, who never had been reconciled to the loss of
his friend's one beauty.

"That is what troubles me," said Meg.  "I think we ought to tell her if
Beth is really ill, but Hannah says we mustn't, for Mother can't leave
Father, and it will only make them anxious.  Beth won't be sick long,
and Hannah knows just what to do, and Mother said we were to mind her,
so I suppose we must, but it doesn't seem quite right to me."

"Hum, well, I can't say.  Suppose you ask Grandfather after the doctor
has been."

"We will.  Jo, go and get Dr. Bangs at once," commanded Meg. "We can't
decide anything till he has been."

"Stay where you are, Jo.  I'm errand boy to this establishment," said
Laurie, taking up his cap.

"I'm afraid you are busy," began Meg.

"No, I've done my lessons for the day."

"Do you study in vacation time?" asked Jo.

"I follow the good example my neighbors set me," was Laurie's answer,
as he swung himself out of the room.

"I have great hopes for my boy," observed Jo, watching him fly over the
fence with an approving smile.

"He does very well, for a boy," was Meg's somewhat ungracious answer,
for the subject did not interest her.

Dr. Bangs came, said Beth had symptoms of the fever, but he thought she
would have it lightly, though he looked sober over the Hummel story.
Amy was ordered off at once, and provided with something to ward off
danger, she departed in great state, with Jo and Laurie as escort.

Aunt March received them with her usual hospitality.

"What do you want now?" she asked, looking sharply over her spectacles,
while the parrot, sitting on the back of her chair, called out...

"Go away.  No boys allowed here."

Laurie retired to the window, and Jo told her story.

"No more than I expected, if you are allowed to go poking about among
poor folks.  Amy can stay and make herself useful if she isn't sick,
which I've no doubt she will be, looks like it now.  Don't cry, child,
it worries me to hear people sniff."

Amy was on the point of crying, but Laurie slyly pulled the parrot's
tail, which caused Polly to utter an astonished croak and call out,
"Bless my boots!" in such a funny way, that she laughed instead.

"What do you hear from your mother?" asked the old lady gruffly.

"Father is much better," replied Jo, trying to keep sober.

"Oh, is he?  Well, that won't last long, I fancy.  March never had any
stamina," was the cheerful reply.

"Ha, ha!  Never say die, take a pinch of snuff, goodbye, goodbye!"
squalled Polly, dancing on her perch, and clawing at the old lady's cap
as Laurie tweaked him in the rear.

"Hold your tongue, you disrespectful old bird!  And, Jo, you'd better
go at once.  It isn't proper to be gadding about so late with a
rattlepated boy like..."

"Hold your tongue, you disrespectful old bird!" cried Polly, tumbling
off the chair with a bounce, and running to peck the 'rattlepated' boy,
who was shaking with laughter at the last speech.

"I don't think I can bear it, but I'll try," thought Amy, as she was
left alone with Aunt March.

"Get along, you fright!" screamed Polly, and at that rude speech Amy
could not restrain a sniff.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DARK DAYS

Beth did have the fever, and was much sicker than anyone but Hannah and
the doctor suspected.  The girls knew nothing about illness, and Mr.
Laurence was not allowed to see her, so Hannah had everything her own
way, and busy Dr. Bangs did his best, but left a good deal to the
excellent nurse.  Meg stayed at home, lest she should infect the Kings,
and kept house, feeling very anxious and a little guilty when she wrote
letters in which no mention was made of Beth's illness.  She could not
think it right to deceive her mother, but she had been bidden to mind
Hannah, and Hannah wouldn't hear of 'Mrs. March bein' told, and worried
just for sech a trifle.'

Jo devoted herself to Beth day and night, not a hard task, for Beth was
very patient, and bore her pain uncomplainingly as long as she could
control herself.  But there came a time when during the fever fits she
began to talk in a hoarse, broken voice, to play on the coverlet as if
on her beloved little piano, and try to sing with a throat so swollen
that there was no music left, a time when she did not know the familiar
faces around her, but addressed them by wrong names, and called
imploringly for her mother.  Then Jo grew frightened, Meg begged to be
allowed to write the truth, and even Hannah said she 'would think of
it, though there was no danger yet'.  A letter from Washington added to
their trouble, for Mr. March had had a relapse, and could not think of
coming home for a long while.

How dark the days seemed now, how sad and lonely the house, and how
heavy were the hearts of the sisters as they worked and waited, while
the shadow of death hovered over the once happy home. Then it was that
Margaret, sitting alone with tears dropping often on her work, felt how
rich she had been in things more precious than any luxuries money could
buy--in love, protection, peace, and health, the real blessings of
life.  Then it was that Jo, living in the darkened room, with that
suffering little sister always before her eyes and that pathetic voice
sounding in her ears, learned to see the beauty and the sweetness of
Beth's nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all
hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of Beth's unselfish ambition to
live for others, and make home happy by that exercise of those simple
virtues which all may possess, and which all should love and value more
than talent, wealth, or beauty.  And Amy, in her exile, longed eagerly
to be at home, that she might work for Beth, feeling now that no
service would be hard or irksome, and remembering, with regretful
grief, how many neglected tasks those willing hands had done for her.
Laurie haunted the house like a restless ghost, and Mr. Laurence locked
the grand piano, because he could not bear to be reminded of the young
neighbor who used to make the twilight pleasant for him.  Everyone
missed Beth.  The milkman, baker, grocer, and butcher inquired how she
did, poor Mrs. Hummel came to beg pardon for her thoughtlessness and to
get a shroud for Minna, the neighbors sent all sorts of comforts and
good wishes, and even those who knew her best were surprised to find
how many friends shy little Beth had made.

Meanwhile she lay on her bed with old Joanna at her side, for even in
her wanderings she did not forget her forlorn protege.  She longed for
her cats, but would not have them brought, lest they should get sick,
and in her quiet hours she was full of anxiety about Jo.  She sent
loving messages to Amy, bade them tell her mother that she would write
soon, and often begged for pencil and paper to try to say a word, that
Father might not think she had neglected him. But soon even these
intervals of consciousness ended, and she lay hour after hour, tossing
to and fro, with incoherent words on her lips, or sank into a heavy
sleep which brought her no refreshment. Dr. Bangs came twice a day,
Hannah sat up at night, Meg kept a telegram in her desk all ready to
send off at any minute, and Jo never stirred from Beth's side.

The first of December was a wintry day indeed to them, for a bitter
wind blew, snow fell fast, and the year seemed getting ready for its
death.  When Dr. Bangs came that morning, he looked long at Beth, held
the hot hand in both his own for a minute, and laid it gently down,
saying, in a low voice to Hannah, "If Mrs. March can leave her husband
she'd better be sent for."

Hannah nodded without speaking, for her lips twitched nervously, Meg
dropped down into a chair as the strength seemed to go out of her limbs
at the sound of those words, and Jo, standing with a pale face for a
minute, ran to the parlor, snatched up the telegram, and throwing on
her things, rushed out into the storm.  She was soon back, and while
noiselessly taking off her cloak, Laurie came in with a letter, saying
that Mr. March was mending again.  Jo read it thankfully, but the heavy
weight did not seem lifted off her heart, and her face was so full of
misery that Laurie asked quickly, "What is it?  Is Beth worse?"

"I've sent for Mother," said Jo, tugging at her rubber boots with a
tragic expression.

"Good for you, Jo!  Did you do it on your own responsibility?" asked
Laurie, as he seated her in the hall chair and took off the rebellious
boots, seeing how her hands shook.

"No.  The doctor told us to."

"Oh, Jo, it's not so bad as that?" cried Laurie, with a startled face.

"Yes, it is.  She doesn't know us, she doesn't even talk about the
flocks of green doves, as she calls the vine leaves on the wall. She
doesn't look like my Beth, and there's nobody to help us bear it.
Mother and father both gone, and God seems so far away I can't find
Him."

As the tears streamed fast down poor Jo's cheeks, she stretched out her
hand in a helpless sort of way, as if groping in the dark, and Laurie
took it in his, whispering as well as he could with a lump in his
throat, "I'm here.  Hold on to me, Jo, dear!"

She could not speak, but she did 'hold on', and the warm grasp of the
friendly human hand comforted her sore heart, and seemed to lead her
nearer to the Divine arm which alone could uphold her in her trouble.

Laurie longed to say something tender and comfortable, but no fitting
words came to him, so he stood silent, gently stroking her bent head as
her mother used to do.  It was the best thing he could have done, far
more soothing than the most eloquent words, for Jo felt the unspoken
sympathy, and in the silence learned the sweet solace which affection
administers to sorrow.  Soon she dried the tears which had relieved
her, and looked up with a grateful face.

"Thank you, Teddy, I'm better now.  I don't feel so forlorn, and will
try to bear it if it comes."

"Keep hoping for the best, that will help you, Jo.  Soon your mother
will be here, and then everything will be all right."

"I'm so glad Father is better.  Now she won't feel so bad about leaving
him.  Oh, me!  It does seem as if all the troubles came in a heap, and
I got the heaviest part on my shoulders," sighed Jo, spreading her wet
handkerchief over her knees to dry.

"Doesn't Meg pull fair?" asked Laurie, looking indignant.

"Oh, yes, she tries to, but she can't love Bethy as I do, and she won't
miss her as I shall.  Beth is my conscience, and I can't give her up.
I can't!  I can't!"

Down went Jo's face into the wet handkerchief, and she cried
despairingly, for she had kept up bravely till now and never shed a
tear.  Laurie drew his hand across his eyes, but could not speak till
he had subdued the choky feeling in his throat and steadied his lips.
It might be unmanly, but he couldn't help it, and I am glad of it.
Presently, as Jo's sobs quieted, he said hopefully, "I don't think she
will die.  She's so good, and we all love her so much, I don't believe
God will take her away yet."

"The good and dear people always do die," groaned Jo, but she stopped
crying, for her friend's words cheered her up in spite of her own
doubts and fears.

"Poor girl, you're worn out.  It isn't like you to be forlorn. Stop a
bit.  I'll hearten you up in a jiffy."

Laurie went off two stairs at a time, and Jo laid her wearied head down
on Beth's little brown hood, which no one had thought of moving from
the table where she left it.  It must have possessed some magic, for
the submissive spirit of its gentle owner seemed to enter into Jo, and
when Laurie came running down with a glass of wine, she took it with a
smile, and said bravely, "I drink-- Health to my Beth!  You are a good
doctor, Teddy, and such a comfortable friend.  How can I ever pay you?"
she added, as the wine refreshed her body, as the kind words had done
her troubled mind.

"I'll send my bill, by-and-by, and tonight I'll give you something that
will warm the cockles of your heart better than quarts of wine," said
Laurie, beaming at her with a face of suppressed satisfaction at
something.

"What is it?" cried Jo, forgetting her woes for a minute in her wonder.

"I telegraphed to your mother yesterday, and Brooke answered she'd come
at once, and she'll be here tonight, and everything will be all right.
Aren't you glad I did it?"

Laurie spoke very fast, and turned red and excited all in a minute, for
he had kept his plot a secret, for fear of disappointing the girls or
harming Beth.  Jo grew quite white, flew out of her chair, and the
moment he stopped speaking she electrified him by throwing her arms
round his neck, and crying out, with a joyful cry, "Oh, Laurie!  Oh,
Mother!  I am so glad!"  She did not weep again, but laughed
hysterically, and trembled and clung to her friend as if she was a
little bewildered by the sudden news.

Laurie, though decidedly amazed, behaved with great presence of mind.
He patted her back soothingly, and finding that she was recovering,
followed it up by a bashful kiss or two, which brought Jo round at
once.  Holding on to the banisters, she put him gently away, saying
breathlessly, "Oh, don't!  I didn't mean to, it was dreadful of me, but
you were such a dear to go and do it in spite of Hannah that I couldn't
help flying at you.  Tell me all about it, and don't give me wine
again, it makes me act so."

"I don't mind," laughed Laurie, as he settled his tie.  "Why, you see I
got fidgety, and so did Grandpa.  We thought Hannah was overdoing the
authority business, and your mother ought to know. She'd never forgive
us if Beth...  Well, if anything happened, you know.  So I got grandpa
to say it was high time we did something, and off I pelted to the
office yesterday, for the doctor looked sober, and Hannah most took my
head off when I proposed a telegram.  I never can bear to be 'lorded
over', so that settled my mind, and I did it. Your mother will come, I
know, and the late train is in at two A.M. I shall go for her, and
you've only got to bottle up your rapture, and keep Beth quiet till
that blessed lady gets here."

"Laurie, you're an angel!  How shall I ever thank you?"

"Fly at me again.  I rather liked it," said Laurie, looking
mischievous, a thing he had not done for a fortnight.

"No, thank you.  I'll do it by proxy, when your grandpa comes. Don't
tease, but go home and rest, for you'll be up half the night. Bless
you, Teddy, bless you!"

Jo had backed into a corner, and as she finished her speech, she
vanished precipitately into the kitchen, where she sat down upon a
dresser and told the assembled cats that she was "happy, oh, so happy!"
while Laurie departed, feeling that he had made a rather neat thing of
it.

"That's the interferingest chap I ever see, but I forgive him and do
hope Mrs. March is coming right away," said Hannah, with an air of
relief, when Jo told the good news.

Meg had a quiet rapture, and then brooded over the letter, while Jo set
the sickroom in order, and Hannah "knocked up a couple of pies in case
of company unexpected".  A breath of fresh air seemed to blow through
the house, and something better than sunshine brightened the quiet
rooms.  Everything appeared to feel the hopeful change.  Beth's bird
began to chirp again, and a half-blown rose was discovered on Amy's
bush in the window. The fires seemed to burn with unusual cheeriness,
and every time the girls met, their pale faces broke into smiles as
they hugged one another, whispering encouragingly, "Mother's coming,
dear! Mother's coming!"  Every one rejoiced but Beth.  She lay in that
heavy stupor, alike unconscious of hope and joy, doubt and danger. It
was a piteous sight, the once rosy face so changed and vacant, the once
busy hands so weak and wasted, the once smiling lips quite dumb, and
the once pretty, well-kept hair scattered rough and tangled on the
pillow.  All day she lay so, only rousing now and then to mutter,
"Water!" with lips so parched they could hardly shape the word.  All
day Jo and Meg hovered over her, watching, waiting, hoping, and
trusting in God and Mother, and all day the snow fell, the bitter wind
raged, and the hours dragged slowly by.  But night came at last, and
every time the clock struck, the sisters, still sitting on either side
of the bed, looked at each other with brightening eyes, for each hour
brought help nearer.  The doctor had been in to say that some change,
for better or worse, would probably take place about midnight, at which
time he would return.

Hannah, quite worn out, lay down on the sofa at the bed's foot and fell
fast asleep, Mr. Laurence marched to and fro in the parlor, feeling
that he would rather face a rebel battery than Mrs. March's countenance
as she entered.  Laurie lay on the rug, pretending to rest, but staring
into the fire with the thoughtful look which made his black eyes
beautifully soft and clear.

The girls never forgot that night, for no sleep came to them as they
kept their watch, with that dreadful sense of powerlessness which comes
to us in hours like those.

"If God spares Beth, I never will complain again," whispered Meg
earnestly.

"If god spares Beth, I'll try to love and serve Him all my life,"
answered Jo, with equal fervor.

"I wish I had no heart, it aches so," sighed Meg, after a pause.

"If life is often as hard as this, I don't see how we ever shall get
through it," added her sister despondently.

Here the clock struck twelve, and both forgot themselves in watching
Beth, for they fancied a change passed over her wan face. The house was
still as death, and nothing but the wailing of the wind broke the deep
hush.  Weary Hannah slept on, and no one but the sisters saw the pale
shadow which seemed to fall upon the little bed.  An hour went by, and
nothing happened except Laurie's quiet departure for the station.
Another hour, still no one came, and anxious fears of delay in the
storm, or accidents by the way, or, worst of all, a great grief at
Washington, haunted the girls.

It was past two, when Jo, who stood at the window thinking how dreary
the world looked in its winding sheet of snow, heard a movement by the
bed, and turning quickly, saw Meg kneeling before their mother's easy
chair with her face hidden.  A dreadful fear passed coldly over Jo, as
she thought, "Beth is dead, and Meg is afraid to tell me."

She was back at her post in an instant, and to her excited eyes a great
change seemed to have taken place.  The fever flush and the look of
pain were gone, and the beloved little face looked so pale and peaceful
in its utter repose that Jo felt no desire to weep or to lament.
Leaning low over this dearest of her sisters, she kissed the damp
forehead with her heart on her lips, and softly whispered, "Good-by, my
Beth.  Good-by!"

As if awaked by the stir, Hannah started out of her sleep, hurried to
the bed, looked at Beth, felt her hands, listened at her lips, and
then, throwing her apron over her head, sat down to rock to and fro,
exclaiming, under her breath, "The fever's turned, she's sleepin'
nat'ral, her skin's damp, and she breathes easy.  Praise be given!  Oh,
my goodness me!"

Before the girls could believe the happy truth, the doctor came to
confirm it.  He was a homely man, but they thought his face quite
heavenly when he smiled and said, with a fatherly look at them, "Yes,
my dears, I think the little girl will pull through this time.  Keep
the house quiet, let her sleep, and when she wakes, give her..."

What they were to give, neither heard, for both crept into the dark
hall, and, sitting on the stairs, held each other close, rejoicing with
hearts too full for words.  When they went back to be kissed and
cuddled by faithful Hannah, they found Beth lying, as she used to do,
with her cheek pillowed on her hand, the dreadful pallor gone, and
breathing quietly, as if just fallen asleep.

"If Mother would only come now!" said Jo, as the winter night began to
wane.

"See," said Meg, coming up with a white, half-opened rose, "I thought
this would hardly be ready to lay in Beth's hand tomorrow if she--went
away from us.  But it has blossomed in the night, and now I mean to put
it in my vase here, so that when the darling wakes, the first thing she
sees will be the little rose, and Mother's face."

Never had the sun risen so beautifully, and never had the world seemed
so lovely as it did to the heavy eyes of Meg and Jo, as they looked out
in the early morning, when their long, sad vigil was done.

"It looks like a fairy world," said Meg, smiling to herself, as she
stood behind the curtain, watching the dazzling sight.

"Hark!" cried Jo, starting to her feet.

Yes, there was a sound of bells at the door below, a cry from Hannah,
and then Laurie's voice saying in a joyful whisper, "Girls, she's come!
She's come!"



CHAPTER NINETEEN

AMY'S WILL

While these things were happening at home, Amy was having hard times at
Aunt March's.  She felt her exile deeply, and for the first time in her
life, realized how much she was beloved and petted at home.  Aunt March
never petted any one; she did not approve of it, but she meant to be
kind, for the well-behaved little girl pleased her very much, and Aunt
March had a soft place in her old heart for her nephew's children,
though she didn't think it proper to confess it.  She really did her
best to make Amy happy, but, dear me, what mistakes she made. Some old
people keep young at heart in spite of wrinkles and gray hairs, can
sympathize with children's little cares and joys, make them feel at
home, and can hide wise lessons under pleasant plays, giving and
receiving friendship in the sweetest way.  But Aunt March had not this
gift, and she worried Amy very much with her rules and orders, her prim
ways, and long, prosy talks.  Finding the child more docile and amiable
than her sister, the old lady felt it her duty to try and counteract,
as far as possible, the bad effects of home freedom and indulgence.  So
she took Amy by the hand, and taught her as she herself had been taught
sixty years ago, a process which carried dismay to Amy's soul, and made
her feel like a fly in the web of a very strict spider.

She had to wash the cups every morning, and polish up the old-fashioned
spoons, the fat silver teapot, and the glasses till they shone.  Then
she must dust the room, and what a trying job that was.  Not a speck
escaped Aunt March's eye, and all the furniture had claw legs and much
carving, which was never dusted to suit.  Then Polly had to be fed, the
lap dog combed, and a dozen trips upstairs and down to get things or
deliver orders, for the old lady was very lame and seldom left her big
chair.  After these tiresome labors, she must do her lessons, which was
a daily trial of every virtue she possessed.  Then she was allowed one
hour for exercise or play, and didn't she enjoy it?

Laurie came every day, and wheedled Aunt March till Amy was allowed to
go out with him, when they walked and rode and had capital times.
After dinner, she had to read aloud, and sit still while the old lady
slept, which she usually did for an hour, as she dropped off over the
first page.  Then patchwork or towels appeared, and Amy sewed with
outward meekness and inward rebellion till dusk, when she was allowed
to amuse herself as she liked till teatime.  The evenings were the
worst of all, for Aunt March fell to telling long stories about her
youth, which were so unutterably dull that Amy was always ready to go
to bed, intending to cry over her hard fate, but usually going to sleep
before she had squeezed out more than a tear or two.

If it had not been for Laurie, and old Esther, the maid, she felt that
she never could have got through that dreadful time.  The parrot alone
was enough to drive her distracted, for he soon felt that she did not
admire him, and revenged himself by being as mischievous as possible.
He pulled her hair whenever she came near him, upset his bread and milk
to plague her when she had newly cleaned his cage, made Mop bark by
pecking at him while Madam dozed, called her names before company, and
behaved in all respects like an reprehensible old bird.  Then she could
not endure the dog, a fat, cross beast who snarled and yelped at her
when she made his toilet, and who lay on his back with all his legs in
the air and a most idiotic expression of countenance when he wanted
something to eat, which was about a dozen times a day.  The cook was
bad-tempered, the old coachman was deaf, and Esther the only one who
ever took any notice of the young lady.

Esther was a Frenchwoman, who had lived with 'Madame', as she called her
mistress, for many years, and who rather tyrannized over the old lady,
who could not get along without her. Her real name was Estelle, but
Aunt March ordered her to change it, and she obeyed, on condition that
she was never asked to change her religion.  She took a fancy to
Mademoiselle, and amused her very much with odd stories of her life in
France, when Amy sat with her while she got up Madame's laces.  She
also allowed her to roam about the great house, and examine the curious
and pretty things stored away in the big wardrobes and the ancient
chests, for Aunt March hoarded like a magpie.  Amy's chief delight was
an Indian cabinet, full of queer drawers, little pigeonholes, and
secret places, in which were kept all sorts of ornaments, some
precious, some merely curious, all more or less antique. To examine and
arrange these things gave Amy great satisfaction, especially the jewel
cases, in which on velvet cushions reposed the ornaments which had
adorned a belle forty years ago.  There was the garnet set which Aunt
March wore when she came out, the pearls her father gave her on her
wedding day, her lover's diamonds, the jet mourning rings and pins, the
queer lockets, with portraits of dead friends and weeping willows made
of hair inside, the baby bracelets her one little daughter had worn,
Uncle March's big watch, with the red seal so many childish hands had
played with, and in a box all by itself lay Aunt March's wedding ring,
too small now for her fat finger, but put carefully away like the most
precious jewel of them all.

"Which would Mademoiselle choose if she had her will?" asked Esther,
who always sat near to watch over and lock up the valuables.

"I like the diamonds best, but there is no necklace among them, and I'm
fond of necklaces, they are so becoming.  I should choose this if I
might," replied Amy, looking with great admiration at a string of gold
and ebony beads from which hung a heavy cross of the same.

"I, too, covet that, but not as a necklace.  Ah, no!  To me it is a
rosary, and as such I should use it like a good catholic," said Esther,
eyeing the handsome thing wistfully.

"Is it meant to use as you use the string of good-smelling wooden beads
hanging over your glass?" asked Amy.

"Truly, yes, to pray with.  It would be pleasing to the saints if one
used so fine a rosary as this, instead of wearing it as a vain bijou."

"You seem to take a great deal of comfort in your prayers, Esther, and
always come down looking quiet and satisfied.  I wish I could."

"If Mademoiselle was a Catholic, she would find true comfort, but as
that is not to be, it would be well if you went apart each day to
meditate and pray, as did the good mistress whom I served before
Madame.  She had a little chapel, and in it found solacement for much
trouble."

"Would it be right for me to do so too?" asked Amy, who in her
loneliness felt the need of help of some sort, and found that she was
apt to forget her little book, now that Beth was not there to remind
her of it.

"It would be excellent and charming, and I shall gladly arrange the
little dressing room for you if you like it.  Say nothing to Madame,
but when she sleeps go you and sit alone a while to think good
thoughts, and pray the dear God preserve your sister."

Esther was truly pious, and quite sincere in her advice, for she had an
affectionate heart, and felt much for the sisters in their anxiety.
Amy liked the idea, and gave her leave to arrange the light closet next
her room, hoping it would do her good.

"I wish I knew where all these pretty things would go when Aunt March
dies," she said, as she slowly replaced the shining rosary and shut the
jewel cases one by one.

"To you and your sisters.  I know it, Madame confides in me. I
witnessed her will, and it is to be so," whispered Esther smiling.


"How nice!  But I wish she'd let us have them now. Procrastination is
not agreeable," observed Amy, taking a last look at the diamonds.

"It is too soon yet for the young ladies to wear these things. The
first one who is affianced will have the pearls, Madame has said it,
and I have a fancy that the little turquoise ring will be given to you
when you go, for Madame approves your good behavior and charming
manners."

"Do you think so?  Oh, I'll be a lamb, if I can only have that lovely
ring!  It's ever so much prettier than Kitty Bryant's.  I do like Aunt
March after all." And Amy tried on the blue ring with a delighted face
and a firm resolve to earn it.

From that day she was a model of obedience, and the old lady
complacently admired the success of her training.  Esther fitted up the
closet with a little table, placed a footstool before it, and over it a
picture taken from one of the shut-up rooms.  She thought it was of no
great value, but, being appropriate, she borrowed it, well knowing that
Madame would never know it, nor care if she did.  It was, however, a
very valuable copy of one of the famous pictures of the world, and
Amy's beauty-loving eyes were never tired of looking up at the sweet
face of the Divine Mother, while her tender thoughts of her own were
busy at her heart.  On the table she laid her little testament and
hymnbook, kept a vase always full of the best flowers Laurie brought
her, and came every day to 'sit alone' thinking good thoughts, and
praying the dear God to preserve her sister.  Esther had given her a
rosary of black beads with a silver cross, but Amy hung it up and did
not use it, feeling doubtful as to its fitness for Protestant prayers.

The little girl was very sincere in all this, for being left alone
outside the safe home nest, she felt the need of some kind hand to hold
by so sorely that she instinctively turned to the strong and tender
Friend, whose fatherly love most closely surrounds His little children.
She missed her mother's help to understand and rule herself, but having
been taught where to look, she did her best to find the way and walk in
it confidingly.  But, Amy was a young pilgrim, and just now her burden
seemed very heavy. She tried to forget herself, to keep cheerful, and
be satisfied with doing right, though no one saw or praised her for it.
In her first effort at being very, very good, she decided to make her
will, as Aunt March had done, so that if she did fall ill and die, her
possessions might be justly and generously divided.  It cost her a pang
even to think of giving up the little treasures which in her eyes were
as precious as the old lady's jewels.

During one of her play hours she wrote out the important document as
well as she could, with some help from Esther as to certain legal
terms, and when the good-natured Frenchwoman had signed her name, Amy
felt relieved and laid it by to show Laurie, whom she wanted as a
second witness.  As it was a rainy day, she went upstairs to amuse
herself in one of the large chambers, and took Polly with her for
company.  In this room there was a wardrobe full of old-fashioned
costumes with which Esther allowed her to play, and it was her favorite
amusement to array herself in the faded brocades, and parade up and
down before the long mirror, making stately curtsies, and sweeping her
train about with a rustle which delighted her ears.  So busy was she on
this day that she did not hear Laurie's ring nor see his face peeping
in at her as she gravely promenaded to and fro, flirting her fan and
tossing her head, on which she wore a great pink turban, contrasting
oddly with her blue brocade dress and yellow quilted petticoat.  She
was obliged to walk carefully, for she had on high-heeled shoes, and, as
Laurie told Jo afterward, it was a comical sight to see her mince along
in her gay suit, with Polly sidling and bridling just behind her,
imitating her as well as he could, and occasionally stopping to laugh
or exclaim, "Ain't we fine? Get along, you fright!  Hold your tongue!
Kiss me, dear!  Ha! Ha!"

Having with difficulty restrained an explosion of merriment, lest it
should offend her majesty, Laurie tapped and was graciously received.

"Sit down and rest while I put these things away, then I want to
consult you about a very serious matter," said Amy, when she had shown
her splendor and driven Polly into a corner.  "That bird is the trial
of my life," she continued, removing the pink mountain from her head,
while Laurie seated himself astride a chair.

"Yesterday, when Aunt was asleep and I was trying to be as still as a
mouse, Polly began to squall and flap about in his cage, so I went to
let him out, and found a big spider there.  I poked it out, and it ran
under the bookcase.  Polly marched straight after it, stooped down and
peeped under the bookcase, saying, in his funny way, with a cock of his
eye, 'Come out and take a walk, my dear.' I couldn't help laughing,
which made Poll swear, and Aunt woke up and scolded us both."

"Did the spider accept the old fellow's invitation?" asked Laurie,
yawning.

"Yes, out it came, and away ran Polly, frightened to death, and
scrambled up on Aunt's chair, calling out, 'Catch her! Catch her! Catch
her!' as I chased the spider."

"That's a lie!  Oh, lor!" cried the parrot, pecking at Laurie's toes.

"I'd wring your neck if you were mine, you old torment," cried Laurie,
shaking his fist at the bird, who put his head on one side and gravely
croaked, "Allyluyer! bless your buttons, dear!"

"Now I'm ready," said Amy, shutting the wardrobe and taking a piece of
paper out of her pocket.  "I want you to read that, please, and tell me
if it is legal and right.  I felt I ought to do it, for life is
uncertain and I don't want any ill feeling over my tomb."

Laurie bit his lips, and turning a little from the pensive speaker,
read the following document, with praiseworthy gravity, considering the
spelling:

MY LAST WILL AND TESTIMENT

I, Amy Curtis March, being in my sane mind, go give and bequeethe all
my earthly property--viz. to wit:--namely

To my father, my best pictures, sketches, maps, and works of art,
including frames.  Also my $100, to do what he likes with.

To my mother, all my clothes, except the blue apron with pockets--also
my likeness, and my medal, with much love.

To my dear sister Margaret, I give my turkquoise ring (if I get it),
also my green box with the doves on it, also my piece of real lace for
her neck, and my sketch of her as a memorial of her 'little girl'.

To Jo I leave my breastpin, the one mended with sealing wax, also my
bronze inkstand--she lost the cover--and my most precious plaster
rabbit, because I am sorry I burned up her story.

To Beth (if she lives after me) I give my dolls and the little bureau,
my fan, my linen collars and my new slippers if she can wear them being
thin when she gets well.  And I herewith also leave her my regret that
I ever made fun of old Joanna.

To my friend and neighbor Theodore Laurence I bequeethe my paper mashay
portfolio, my clay model of a horse though he did say it hadn't any
neck.  Also in return for his great kindness in the hour of affliction
any one of my artistic works he likes, Noter Dame is the best.

To our venerable benefactor Mr. Laurence I leave my purple box with a
looking glass in the cover which will be nice for his pens and remind
him of the departed girl who thanks him for his favors to her family,
especially Beth.

I wish my favorite playmate Kitty Bryant to have the blue silk apron
and my gold-bead ring with a kiss.

To Hannah I give the bandbox she wanted and all the patchwork I leave
hoping she 'will remember me, when it you see'.

And now having disposed of my most valuable property I hope all will be
satisfied and not blame the dead.  I forgive everyone, and trust we may
all meet when the trump shall sound.  Amen.

To this will and testiment I set my hand and seal on this 20th day of
Nov.  Anni Domino 1861.

Amy Curtis March

Witnesses:

Estelle Valnor, Theodore Laurence.


The last name was written in pencil, and Amy explained that he was to
rewrite it in ink and seal it up for her properly.

"What put it into your head?  Did anyone tell you about Beth's giving
away her things?" asked Laurie soberly, as Amy laid a bit of red tape,
with sealing wax, a taper, and a standish before him.

She explained and then asked anxiously, "What about Beth?"

"I'm sorry I spoke, but as I did, I'll tell you.  She felt so ill one
day that she told Jo she wanted to give her piano to Meg, her cats to
you, and the poor old doll to Jo, who would love it for her sake.  She
was sorry she had so little to give, and left locks of hair to the rest
of us, and her best love to Grandpa.  She never thought of a will."

Laurie was signing and sealing as he spoke, and did not look up till a
great tear dropped on the paper.  Amy's face was full of trouble, but
she only said, "Don't people put sort of postscripts to their wills,
sometimes?"

"Yes, 'codicils', they call them."

"Put one in mine then, that I wish all my curls cut off, and given
round to my friends.  I forgot it, but I want it done though it will
spoil my looks."

Laurie added it, smiling at Amy's last and greatest sacrifice. Then he
amused her for an hour, and was much interested in all her trials.  But
when he came to go, Amy held him back to whisper with trembling lips,
"Is there really any danger about Beth?"

"I'm afraid there is, but we must hope for the best, so don't cry,
dear."  And Laurie put his arm about her with a brotherly gesture which
was very comforting.

When he had gone, she went to her little chapel, and sitting in the
twilight, prayed for Beth, with streaming tears and an aching heart,
feeling that a million turquoise rings would not console her for the
loss of her gentle little sister.



CHAPTER TWENTY

CONFIDENTIAL

I don't think I have any words in which to tell the meeting of the
mother and daughters.  Such hours are beautiful to live, but very hard
to describe, so I will leave it to the imagination of my readers,
merely saying that the house was full of genuine happiness, and that
Meg's tender hope was realized, for when Beth woke from that long,
healing sleep, the first objects on which her eyes fell were the little
rose and Mother's face.  Too weak to wonder at anything, she only
smiled and nestled close in the loving arms about her, feeling that the
hungry longing was satisfied at last.  Then she slept again, and the
girls waited upon their mother, for she would not unclasp the thin hand
which clung to hers even in sleep.

Hannah had 'dished up' an astonishing breakfast for the traveler,
finding it impossible to vent her excitement in any other way, and Meg
and Jo fed their mother like dutiful young storks, while they listened
to her whispered account of Father's state, Mr. Brooke's promise to
stay and nurse him, the delays which the storm occasioned on the
homeward journey, and the unspeakable comfort Laurie's hopeful face had
given her when she arrived, worn out with fatigue, anxiety, and cold.

What a strange yet pleasant day that was.  So brilliant and gay
without, for all the world seemed abroad to welcome the first snow.  So
quiet and reposeful within, for everyone slept, spent with watching,
and a Sabbath stillness reigned through the house, while nodding Hannah
mounted guard at the door.  With a blissful sense of burdens lifted
off, Meg and Jo closed their weary eyes, and lay at rest, like
storm-beaten boats safe at anchor in a quiet harbor.  Mrs. March would
not leave Beth's side, but rested in the big chair, waking often to
look at, touch, and brood over her child, like a miser over some
recovered treasure.

Laurie meanwhile posted off to comfort Amy, and told his story so well
that Aunt March actually 'sniffed' herself, and never once said "I told
you so".  Amy came out so strong on this occasion that I think the good
thoughts in the little chapel really began to bear fruit.  She dried
her tears quickly, restrained her impatience to see her mother, and
never even thought of the turquoise ring, when the old lady heartily
agreed in Laurie's opinion, that she behaved 'like a capital little
woman'.  Even Polly seemed impressed, for he called her a good girl,
blessed her buttons, and begged her to "come and take a walk, dear", in
his most affable tone.  She would very gladly have gone out to enjoy
the bright wintry weather, but discovering that Laurie was dropping
with sleep in spite of manful efforts to conceal the fact, she
persuaded him to rest on the sofa, while she wrote a note to her
mother.  She was a long time about it, and when she returned, he was
stretched out with both arms under his head, sound asleep, while Aunt
March had pulled down the curtains and sat doing nothing in an unusual
fit of benignity.

After a while, they began to think he was not going to wake up till
night, and I'm not sure that he would, had he not been effectually
roused by Amy's cry of joy at sight of her mother. There probably were
a good many happy little girls in and about the city that day, but it
is my private opinion that Amy was the happiest of all, when she sat in
her mother's lap and told her trials, receiving consolation and
compensation in the shape of approving smiles and fond caresses.  They
were alone together in the chapel, to which her mother did not object
when its purpose was explained to her.

"On the contrary, I like it very much, dear," looking from the dusty
rosary to the well-worn little book, and the lovely picture with its
garland of evergreen.  "It is an excellent plan to have some place
where we can go to be quiet, when things vex or grieve us.  There are a
good many hard times in this life of ours, but we can always bear them
if we ask help in the right way.  I think my little girl is learning
this."

"Yes, Mother, and when I go home I mean to have a corner in the big
closet to put my books and the copy of that picture which I've tried to
make.  The woman's face is not good, it's too beautiful for me to draw,
but the baby is done better, and I love it very much.  I like to think
He was a little child once, for then I don't seem so far away, and that
helps me."

As Amy pointed to the smiling Christ child on his Mother's knee, Mrs.
March saw something on the lifted hand that made her smile.  She said
nothing, but Amy understood the look, and after a minute's pause, she
added gravely, "I wanted to speak to you about this, but I forgot it.
Aunt gave me the ring today.  She called me to her and kissed me, and
put it on my finger, and said I was a credit to her, and she'd like to
keep me always. She gave that funny guard to keep the turquoise on, as
it's too big.  I'd like to wear them Mother, can I?"

"They are very pretty, but I think you're rather too young for such
ornaments, Amy," said Mrs. March, looking at the plump little hand,
with the band of sky-blue stones on the forefinger, and the quaint
guard formed of two tiny golden hands clasped together.

"I'll try not to be vain," said Amy.  "I don't think I like it only
because it's so pretty, but I want to wear it as the girl in the story
wore her bracelet, to remind me of something."

"Do you mean Aunt March?" asked her mother, laughing.

"No, to remind me not to be selfish."  Amy looked so earnest and
sincere about it that her mother stopped laughing, and listened
respectfully to the little plan.

"I've thought a great deal lately about my 'bundle of naughties', and
being selfish is the largest one in it, so I'm going to try hard to
cure it, if I can.  Beth isn't selfish, and that's the reason everyone
loves her and feels so bad at the thoughts of losing her.  People
wouldn't feel so bad about me if I was sick, and I don't deserve to
have them, but I'd like to be loved and missed by a great many friends,
so I'm going to try and be like Beth all I can.  I'm apt to forget my
resolutions, but if I had something always about me to remind me, I
guess I should do better.  May we try this way?"

"Yes, but I have more faith in the corner of the big closet. Wear your
ring, dear, and do your best.  I think you will prosper, for the
sincere wish to be good is half the battle.  Now I must go back to
Beth.  Keep up your heart, little daughter, and we will soon have you
home again."

That evening while Meg was writing to her father to report the
traveler's safe arrival, Jo slipped upstairs into Beth's room, and
finding her mother in her usual place, stood a minute twisting her
fingers in her hair, with a worried gesture and an undecided look.

"What is it, deary?" asked Mrs. March, holding out her hand, with a
face which invited confidence.

"I want to tell you something, Mother."

"About Meg?"

"How quickly you guessed!  Yes, it's about her, and though it's a
little thing, it fidgets me."

"Beth is asleep.  Speak low, and tell me all about it.  That Moffat
hasn't been here, I hope?" asked Mrs. March rather sharply.

"No.  I should have shut the door in his face if he had," said Jo,
settling herself on the floor at her mother's feet.  "Last summer Meg
left a pair of gloves over at the Laurences' and only one was returned.
We forgot about it, till Teddy told me that Mr. Brooke owned that he
liked Meg but didn't dare say so, she was so young and he so poor.
Now, isn't it a dreadful state of things?"

"Do you think Meg cares for him?" asked Mrs. March, with an anxious
look.

"Mercy me!  I don't know anything about love and such nonsense!" cried
Jo, with a funny mixture of interest and contempt. "In novels, the
girls show it by starting and blushing, fainting away, growing thin,
and acting like fools.  Now Meg does not do anything of the sort.  She
eats and drinks and sleeps like a sensible creature, she looks straight
in my face when I talk about that man, and only blushes a little bit
when Teddy jokes about lovers.  I forbid him to do it, but he doesn't
mind me as he ought."

"Then you fancy that Meg is not interested in John?"

"Who?" cried Jo, staring.

"Mr. Brooke.  I call him 'John' now.  We fell into the way of doing so
at the hospital, and he likes it."

"Oh, dear!  I know you'll take his part.  He's been good to Father, and
you won't send him away, but let Meg marry him, if she wants to.  Mean
thing!  To go petting Papa and helping you, just to wheedle you into
liking him." And Jo pulled her hair again with a wrathful tweak.

"My dear, don't get angry about it, and I will tell you how it
happened.  John went with me at Mr. Laurence's request, and was so
devoted to poor Father that we couldn't help getting fond of him.  He
was perfectly open and honorable about Meg, for he told us he loved
her, but would earn a comfortable home before he asked her to marry
him.  He only wanted our leave to love her and work for her, and the
right to make her love him if he could. He is a truly excellent young
man, and we could not refuse to listen to him, but I will not consent
to Meg's engaging herself so young."

"Of course not.  It would be idiotic!  I knew there was mischief
brewing.  I felt it, and now it's worse than I imagined. I just wish I
could marry Meg myself, and keep her safe in the family."

This odd arrangement made Mrs. March smile, but she said gravely, "Jo,
I confide in you and don't wish you to say anything to Meg yet.  When
John comes back, and I see them together, I can judge better of her
feelings toward him."

"She'll see those handsome eyes that she talks about, and then it will
be all up with her.  She's got such a soft heart, it will melt like
butter in the sun if anyone looks sentimentlly at her.  She read the
short reports he sent more than she did your letters, and pinched me
when I spoke of it, and likes brown eyes, and doesn't think John an
ugly name, and she'll go and fall in love, and there's an end of peace
and fun, and cozy times together. I see it all!  They'll go lovering
around the house, and we shall have to dodge.  Meg will be absorbed and
no good to me any more. Brooke will scratch up a fortune somehow, carry
her off, and make a hole in the family, and I shall break my heart, and
everything will be abominably uncomfortable.  Oh, dear me!  Why weren't
we all boys, then there wouldn't be any bother."

Jo leaned her chin on her knees in a disconsolate attitude and shook
her fist at the reprehensible John.  Mrs. March sighed, and Jo looked
up with an air of relief.

"You don't like it, Mother?  I'm glad of it.  Let's send him about his
business, and not tell Meg a word of it, but all be happy together as
we always have been."

"I did wrong to sigh, Jo.  It is natural and right you should all go to
homes of your own in time, but I do want to keep my girls as long as I
can, and I am sorry that this happened so soon, for Meg is only
seventeen and it will be some years before John can make a home for
her.  Your father and I have agreed that she shall not bind herself in
any way, nor be married, before twenty.  If she and John love one
another, they can wait, and test the love by doing so.  She is
conscientious, and I have no fear of her treating him unkindly.  My
pretty, tender hearted girl!  I hope things will go happily with her."

"Hadn't you rather have her marry a rich man?" asked Jo, as her
mother's voice faltered a little over the last words.

"Money is a good and useful thing, Jo, and I hope my girls will never
feel the need of it too bitterly, nor be tempted by too much.  I should
like to know that John was firmly established in some good business,
which gave him an income large enough to keep free from debt and make
Meg comfortable.  I'm not ambitious for a splendid fortune, a
fashionable position, or a great name for my girls.  If rank and money
come with love and virtue, also, I should accept them gratefully, and
enjoy your good fortune, but I know, by experience, how much genuine
happiness can be had in a plain little house, where the daily bread is
earned, and some privations give sweetness to the few pleasures.  I am
content to see Meg begin humbly, for if I am not mistaken, she will be
rich in the possession of a good man's heart, and that is better than a
fortune."

"I understand, Mother, and quite agree, but I'm disappointed about Meg,
for I'd planned to have her marry Teddy by-and-by and sit in the lap of
luxury all her days.  Wouldn't it be nice?" asked Jo, looking up with a
brighter face.

"He is younger than she, you know," began Mrs. March, but Jo broke in...

"Only a little, he's old for his age, and tall, and can be quite
grown-up in his manners if he likes.  Then he's rich and generous and
good, and loves us all, and I say it's a pity my plan is spoiled."

"I'm afraid Laurie is hardly grown-up enough for Meg, and altogether
too much of a weathercock just now for anyone to depend on.  Don't make
plans, Jo, but let time and their own hearts mate your friends.  We
can't meddle safely in such matters, and had better not get 'romantic
rubbish' as you call it, into our heads, lest it spoil our friendship."

"Well, I won't, but I hate to see things going all crisscross and
getting snarled up, when a pull here and a snip there would straighten
it out.  I wish wearing flatirons on our heads would keep us from
growing up.  But buds will be roses, and kittens cats, more's the pity!"

"What's that about flatirons and cats?" asked Meg, as she crept into
the room with the finished letter in her hand.

"Only one of my stupid speeches.  I'm going to bed.  Come, Peggy," said
Jo, unfolding herself like an animated puzzle.

"Quite right, and beautifully written.  Please add that I send my love
to John," said Mrs. March, as she glanced over the letter and gave it
back.

"Do you call him 'John'?" asked Meg, smiling, with her innocent eyes
looking down into her mother's.

"Yes, he has been like a son to us, and we are very fond of him,"
replied Mrs. March, returning the look with a keen one.

"I'm glad of that, he is so lonely.  Good night, Mother, dear.  It is
so inexpressibly comfortable to have you here," was Meg's answer.

The kiss her mother gave her was a very tender one, and as she went
away, Mrs. March said, with a mixture of satisfaction and regret, "She
does not love John yet, but will soon learn to."



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

LAURIE MAKES MISCHIEF, AND JO MAKES PEACE

Jo's face was a study next day, for the secret rather weighed upon her,
and she found it hard not to look mysterious and important.  Meg
observed it, but did not trouble herself to make inquiries, for she had
learned that the best way to manage Jo was by the law of contraries, so
she felt sure of being told everything if she did not ask.  She was
rather surprised, therefore, when the silence remained unbroken, and Jo
assumed a patronizing air, which decidedly aggravated Meg, who in turn
assumed an air of dignified reserve and devoted herself to her mother.
This left Jo to her own devices, for Mrs. March had taken her place as
nurse, and bade her rest, exercise, and amuse herself after her long
confinement.  Amy being gone, Laurie was her only refuge, and much as
she enjoyed his society, she rather dreaded him just then, for he was
an incorrigible tease, and she feared he would coax the secret from her.

She was quite right, for the mischief-loving lad no sooner suspected a
mystery than he set himself to find it out, and led Jo a trying life of
it.  He wheedled, bribed, ridiculed, threatened, and scolded; affected
indifference, that he might surprise the truth from her; declared he
knew, then that he didn't care; and at last, by dint of perseverance,
he satisfied himself that it concerned Meg and Mr. Brooke.  Feeling
indignant that he was not taken into his tutor's confidence, he set his
wits to work to devise some proper retaliation for the slight.

Meg meanwhile had apparently forgotten the matter and was absorbed in
preparations for her father's return, but all of a sudden a change
seemed to come over her, and, for a day or two, she was quite unlike
herself.  She started when spoken to, blushed when looked at, was very
quiet, and sat over her sewing, with a timid, troubled look on her
face.  To her mother's inquiries she answered that she was quite well,
and Jo's she silenced by begging to be let alone.

"She feels it in the air--love, I mean--and she's going very fast.
She's got most of the symptoms--is twittery and cross, doesn't eat,
lies awake, and mopes in corners.  I caught her singing that song he
gave her, and once she said 'John', as you do, and then turned as red
as a poppy.  Whatever shall we do?" said Jo, looking ready for any
measures, however violent.

"Nothing but wait.  Let her alone, be kind and patient, and Father's
coming will settle everything," replied her mother.

"Here's a note to you, Meg, all sealed up.  How odd! Teddy never seals
mine," said Jo next day, as she distributed the contents of the little
post office.

Mrs. March and Jo were deep in their own affairs, when a sound from Meg
made them look up to see her staring at her note with a frightened face.

"My child, what is it?" cried her mother, running to her, while Jo
tried to take the paper which had done the mischief.

"It's all a mistake, he didn't send it.  Oh, Jo, how could you do it?"
and Meg hid her face in her hands, crying as if her heart were quite
broken.

"Me!  I've done nothing!  What's she talking about?" cried Jo,
bewildered.

Meg's mild eyes kindled with anger as she pulled a crumpled note from
her pocket and threw it at Jo, saying reproachfully, "You wrote it, and
that bad boy helped you.  How could you be so rude, so mean, and cruel
to us both?"

Jo hardly heard her, for she and her mother were reading the note,
which was written in a peculiar hand.


"My Dearest Margaret,

"I can no longer restrain my passion, and must know my fate before I
return.  I dare not tell your parents yet, but I think they would
consent if they knew that we adored one another.  Mr. Laurence will
help me to some good place, and then, my sweet girl, you will make me
happy.  I implore you to say nothing to your family yet, but to send
one word of hope through Laurie to,

"Your devoted John."


"Oh, the little villain!  That's the way he meant to pay me for keeping
my word to Mother.  I'll give him a hearty scolding and bring him over
to beg pardon," cried Jo, burning to execute immediate justice.  But
her mother held her back, saying, with a look she seldom wore...

"Stop, Jo, you must clear yourself first.  You have played so many
pranks that I am afraid you have had a hand in this."

"On my word, Mother, I haven't!  I never saw that note before, and
don't know anything about it, as true as I live!" said Jo, so earnestly
that they believed her.  "If I had taken part in it I'd have done it
better than this, and have written a sensible note.  I should think
you'd have known Mr. Brooke wouldn't write such stuff as that," she
added, scornfully tossing down the paper.

"It's like his writing," faltered Meg, comparing it with the note in
her hand.

"Oh, Meg, you didn't answer it?" cried Mrs. March quickly.

"Yes, I did!" and Meg hid her face again, overcome with shame.

"Here's a scrape!  Do let me bring that wicked boy over to explain and
be lectured.  I can't rest till I get hold of him." And Jo made for the
door again.

"Hush!  Let me handle this, for it is worse than I thought. Margaret,
tell me the whole story," commanded Mrs. March, sitting down by Meg,
yet keeping hold of Jo, lest she should fly off.

"I received the first letter from Laurie, who didn't look as if he knew
anything about it," began Meg, without looking up. "I was worried at
first and meant to tell you, then I remembered how you liked Mr.
Brooke, so I thought you wouldn't mind if I kept my little secret for a
few days.  I'm so silly that I liked to think no one knew, and while I
was deciding what to say, I felt like the girls in books, who have such
things to do.  Forgive me, Mother, I'm paid for my silliness now.  I
never can look him in the face again."

"What did you say to him?" asked Mrs. March.

"I only said I was too young to do anything about it yet, that I didn't
wish to have secrets from you, and he must speak to father.  I was very
grateful for his kindness, and would be his friend, but nothing more,
for a long while."

Mrs. March smiled, as if well pleased, and Jo clapped her hands,
exclaiming, with a laugh, "You are almost equal to Caroline Percy, who
was a pattern of prudence!  Tell on, Meg. What did he say to that?"

"He writes in a different way entirely, telling me that he never sent
any love letter at all, and is very sorry that my roguish sister, Jo,
should take liberties with our names.  It's very kind and respectful,
but think how dreadful for me!"

Meg leaned against her mother, looking the image of despair, and Jo
tramped about the room, calling Laurie names.  All of a sudden she
stopped, caught up the two notes, and after looking at them closely,
said decidedly, "I don't believe Brooke ever saw either of these
letters.  Teddy wrote both, and keeps yours to crow over me with
because I wouldn't tell him my secret."

"Don't have any secrets, Jo.  Tell it to Mother and keep out of
trouble, as I should have done," said Meg warningly.

"Bless you, child!  Mother told me."

"That will do, Jo.  I'll comfort Meg while you go and get Laurie.  I
shall sift the matter to the bottom, and put a stop to such pranks at
once."

Away ran Jo, and Mrs. March gently told Meg Mr. Brooke's real feelings.
"Now, dear, what are your own?  Do you love him enough to wait till he
can make a home for you, or will you keep yourself quite free for the
present?"

"I've been so scared and worried, I don't want to have anything to do
with lovers for a long while, perhaps never," answered Meg petulantly.
"If John doesn't know anything about this nonsense, don't tell him, and
make Jo and Laurie hold their tongues.  I won't be deceived and plagued
and made a fool of. It's a shame!"

Seeing Meg's usually gentle temper was roused and her pride hurt by
this mischievous joke, Mrs. March soothed her by promises of entire
silence and great discretion for the future.  The instant Laurie's step
was heard in the hall, Meg fled into the study, and Mrs. March received
the culprit alone. Jo had not told him why he was wanted, fearing he
wouldn't come, but he knew the minute he saw Mrs. March's face, and
stood twirling his hat with a guilty air which convicted him at once.
Jo was dismissed, but chose to march up and down the hall like a
sentinel, having some fear that the prisoner might bolt.  The sound of
voices in the parlor rose and fell for half an hour, but what happened
during that interview the girls never knew.

When they were called in, Laurie was standing by their mother with such
a penitent face that Jo forgave him on the spot, but did not think it
wise to betray the fact.  Meg received his humble apology, and was much
comforted by the assurance that Brooke knew nothing of the joke.

"I'll never tell him to my dying day, wild horses shan't drag it out of
me, so you'll forgive me, Meg, and I'll do anything to show how
out-and-out sorry I am," he added, looking very much ashamed of himself.

"I'll try, but it was a very ungentlemanly thing to do, I didn't think
you could be so sly and malicious, Laurie," replied Meg, trying to hide
her maidenly confusion under a gravely reproachful air.

"It was altogether abominable, and I don't deserve to be spoken to for
a month, but you will, though, won't you?" And Laurie folded his hands
together with such and imploring gesture, as he spoke in his
irresistibly persuasive tone, that it was impossible to frown upon him
in spite of his scandalous behavior.

Meg pardoned him, and Mrs. March's grave face relaxed, in spite of her
efforts to keep sober, when she heard him declare that he would atone
for his sins by all sorts of penances, and abase himself like a worm
before the injured damsel.

Jo stood aloof, meanwhile, trying to harden her heart against him, and
succeeding only in primming up her face into an expression of entire
disapprobation.  Laurie looked at her once or twice, but as she showed
no sign of relenting, he felt injured, and turned his back on her till
the others were done with him, when he made her a low bow and walked
off without a word.

As soon as he had gone, she wished she had been more forgiving, and
when Meg and her mother went upstairs, she felt lonely and longed for
Teddy.  After resisting for some time, she yielded to the impulse, and
armed with a book to return, went over to the big house.

"Is Mr. Laurence in?" asked Jo, of a housemaid, who was coming
downstairs.

"Yes, Miss, but I don't believe he's seeable just yet."

"Why not?  Is he ill?"

"La, no Miss, but he's had a scene with Mr. Laurie, who is in one of
his tantrums about something, which vexes the old gentleman, so I
dursn't go nigh him."

"Where is Laurie?"

"Shut up in his room, and he won't answer, though I've been a-tapping.
I don't know what's to become of the dinner, for it's ready, and
there's no one to eat it."

"I'll go and see what the matter is.  I'm not afraid of either of them."

Up went Jo, and knocked smartly on the door of Laurie's little study.

"Stop that, or I'll open the door and make you!" called out the young
gentleman in a threatening tone.

Jo immediately knocked again.  The door flew open, and in she bounced
before Laurie could recover from his surprise.  Seeing that he really
was out of temper, Jo, who knew how to manage him, assumed a contrite
expression, and going artistically down upon her knees, said meekly,
"Please forgive me for being so cross.  I came to make it up, and can't
go away till I have."

"It's all right.  Get up, and don't be a goose, Jo," was the cavalier
reply to her petition.

"Thank you, I will.  Could I ask what's the matter?  You don't look
exactly easy in your mind."

"I've been shaken, and I won't bear it!" growled Laurie indignantly.

"Who did it?" demanded Jo.

"Grandfather.  If it had been anyone else I'd have..." And the injured
youth finished his sentence by an energetic gesture of the right arm.

"That's nothing.  I often shake you, and you don't mind," said Jo
soothingly.

"Pooh!  You're a girl, and it's fun, but I'll allow no man to shake me!"

"I don't think anyone would care to try it, if you looked as much like
a thundercloud as you do now.  Why were you treated so?"

"Just because I wouldn't say what your mother wanted me for. I'd
promised not to tell, and of course I wasn't going to break my word."

"Couldn't you satisfy your grandpa in any other way?"

"No, he would have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth.  I'd have told my part of the scrape, if I could without
bringing Meg in.  As I couldn't, I held my tongue, and bore the
scolding till the old gentleman collared me.  Then I bolted, for fear I
should forget myself."

"It wasn't nice, but he's sorry, I know, so go down and make up.  I'll
help you."

"Hanged if I do!  I'm not going to be lectured and pummelled by
everyone, just for a bit of a frolic.  I was sorry about Meg, and
begged pardon like a man, but I won't do it again, when I wasn't in the
wrong."

"He didn't know that."

"He ought to trust me, and not act as if I was a baby.  It's no use,
Jo, he's got to learn that I'm able to take care of myself, and don't
need anyone's apron string to hold on by."

"What pepper pots you are!" sighed Jo.  "How do you mean to settle this
affair?"

"Well, he ought to beg pardon, and believe me when I say I can't tell
him what the fuss's about."

"Bless you!  He won't do that."

"I won't go down till he does."

"Now, Teddy, be sensible.  Let it pass, and I'll explain what I can.
You can't stay here, so what's the use of being melodramatic?"

"I don't intend to stay here long, anyway.  I'll slip off and take a
journey somewhere, and when Grandpa misses me he'll come round fast
enough."

"I dare say, but you ought not to go and worry him."

"Don't preach.  I'll go to Washington and see Brooke.  It's gay there,
and I'll enjoy myself after the troubles."

"What fun you'd have!  I wish I could run off too," said Jo, forgetting
her part of mentor in lively visions of martial life at the capital.

"Come on, then!  Why not?  You go and surprise your father, and I'll
stir up old Brooke.  It would be a glorious joke.  Let's do it, Jo.
We'll leave a letter saying we are all right, and trot off at once.
I've got money enough.  It will do you good, and no harm, as you go to
your father."

For a moment Jo looked as if she would agree, for wild as the plan was,
it just suited her.  She was tired of care and confinement, longed for
change, and thoughts of her father blended temptingly with the novel
charms of camps and hospitals, liberty and fun.  Her eyes kindled as
they turned wistfully toward the window, but they fell on the old house
opposite, and she shook her head with sorrowful decision.

"If I was a boy, we'd run away together, and have a capital time, but
as I'm a miserable girl, I must be proper and stop at home. Don't tempt
me, Teddy, it's a crazy plan."

"That's the fun of it," began Laurie, who had got a willful fit on him
and was possessed to break out of bounds in some way.

"Hold your tongue!" cried Jo, covering her ears.  "'Prunes and prisms'
are my doom, and I may as well make up my mind to it.  I came here to
moralize, not to hear things that make me skip to think of."

"I know Meg would wet-blanket such a proposal, but I thought you had
more spirit," began Laurie insinuatingly.

"Bad boy, be quiet!  Sit down and think of your own sins, don't go
making me add to mine.  If I get your grandpa to apologize for the
shaking, will you give up running away?" asked Jo seriously.

"Yes, but you won't do it," answered Laurie, who wished to make up, but
felt that his outraged dignity must be appeased first.

"If I can manage the young one, I can the old one," muttered Jo, as she
walked away, leaving Laurie bent over a railroad map with his head
propped up on both hands.

"Come in!" and Mr. Laurence's gruff voice sounded gruffer than ever, as
Jo tapped at his door.

"It's only me, Sir, come to return a book," she said blandly, as she
entered.

"Want any more?" asked the old gentleman, looking grim and vexed, but
trying not to show it.

"Yes, please.  I like old Sam so well, I think I'll try the second
volume," returned Jo, hoping to propitiate him by accepting a second
dose of Boswell's Johnson, as he had recommended that lively work.

The shaggy eyebrows unbent a little as he rolled the steps toward the
shelf where the Johnsonian literature was placed.  Jo skipped up, and
sitting on the top step, affected to be searching for her book, but was
really wondering how best to introduce the dangerous object of her
visit.  Mr. Laurence seemed to suspect that something was brewing in
her mind, for after taking several brisk turns about the room, he faced
round on her, speaking so abruptly that Rasselas tumbled face downward
on the floor.

"What has that boy been about?  Don't try to shield him.  I know he has
been in mischief by the way he acted when he came home.  I can't get a
word from him, and when I threatened to shake the truth out of him he
bolted upstairs and locked himself into his room."

"He did wrong, but we forgave him, and all promised not to say a word
to anyone," began Jo reluctantly.

"That won't do.  He shall not shelter himself behind a promise from you
softhearted girls.  If he's done anything amiss, he shall confess, beg
pardon, and be punished.  Out with it, Jo. I won't be kept in the dark."

Mr. Laurence looked so alarming and spoke so sharply that Jo would have
gladly run away, if she could, but she was perched aloft on the steps,
and he stood at the foot, a lion in the path, so she had to stay and
brave it out.

"Indeed, Sir, I cannot tell.  Mother forbade it.  Laurie has confessed,
asked pardon, and been punished quite enough.  We don't keep silence to
shield him, but someone else, and it will make more trouble if you
interfere.  Please don't.  It was partly my fault, but it's all right
now.  So let's forget it, and talk about the _Rambler_ or something
pleasant."

"Hang the _Rambler!_  Come down and give me your word that this
harum-scarum boy of mine hasn't done anything ungrateful or
impertinent.  If he has, after all your kindness to him, I'll thrash
him with my own hands."

The threat sounded awful, but did not alarm Jo, for she knew the
irascible old gentleman would never lift a finger against his grandson,
whatever he might say to the contrary.  She obediently descended, and
made as light of the prank as she could without betraying Meg or
forgetting the truth.

"Hum... ha... well, if the boy held his tongue because he promised, and
not from obstinacy, I'll forgive him. He's a stubborn fellow and hard
to manage," said Mr. Laurence, rubbing up his hair till it looked as if
he had been out in a gale, and smoothing the frown from his brow with
an air of relief.

"So am I, but a kind word will govern me when all the king's horses and
all the king's men couldn't," said Jo, trying to say a kind word for
her friend, who seemed to get out of one scrape only to fall into
another.

"You think I'm not kind to him, hey?" was the sharp answer.

"Oh, dear no, Sir.  You are rather too kind sometimes, and then just a
trifle hasty when he tries your patience.  Don't you think you are?"

Jo was determined to have it out now, and tried to look quite placid,
though she quaked a little after her bold speech. To her great relief
and surprise, the old gentleman only threw his spectacles onto the
table with a rattle and exclaimed frankly, "You're right, girl, I am!
I love the boy, but he tries my patience past bearing, and I know how
it will end, if we go on so."

"I'll tell you, he'll run away." Jo was sorry for that speech the
minute it was made.  She meant to warn him that Laurie would not bear
much restraint, and hoped he would be more forebearing with the lad.

Mr. Laurence's ruddy face changed suddenly, and he sat down, with a
troubled glance at the picture of a handsome man, which hung over his
table.  It was Laurie's father, who had run away in his youth, and
married against the imperious old man's will. Jo fancied he remembered
and regretted the past, and she wished she had held her tongue.

"He won't do it unless he is very much worried, and only threatens it
sometimes, when he gets tired of studying.  I often think I should like
to, especially since my hair was cut, so if you ever miss us, you may
advertise for two boys and look among the ships bound for India."

She laughed as she spoke, and Mr. Laurence looked relieved, evidently
taking the whole as a joke.

"You hussy, how dare you talk in that way?  Where's your respect for
me, and your proper bringing up?  Bless the boys and girls!  What
torments they are, yet we can't do without them," he said, pinching her
cheeks good-humoredly.  "Go and bring that boy down to his dinner, tell
him it's all right, and advise him not to put on tragedy airs with his
grandfather.  I won't bear it."

"He won't come, Sir.  He feels badly because you didn't believe him
when he said he couldn't tell.  I think the shaking hurt his feelings
very much."

Jo tried to look pathetic but must have failed, for Mr. Laurence began
to laugh, and she knew the day was won.

"I'm sorry for that, and ought to thank him for not shaking me, I
suppose.  What the dickens does the fellow expect?" and the old
gentleman looked a trifle ashamed of his own testiness.

"If I were you, I'd write him an apology, Sir.  He says he won't come
down till he has one, and talks about Washington, and goes on in an
absurd way.  A formal apology will make him see how foolish he is, and
bring him down quite amiable.  Try it.  He likes fun, and this way is
better than talking.  I'll carry it up, and teach him his duty."

Mr. Laurence gave her a sharp look, and put on his spectacles, saying
slowly, "You're a sly puss, but I don't mind being managed by you and
Beth.  Here, give me a bit of paper, and let us have done with this
nonsense."

The note was written in the terms which one gentleman would use to
another after offering some deep insult.  Jo dropped a kiss on the top
of Mr. Laurence's bald head, and ran up to slip the apology under
Laurie's door, advising him through the keyhole to be submissive,
decorous, and a few other agreeable impossibilities. Finding the door
locked again, she left the note to do its work, and was going quietly
away, when the young gentleman slid down the banisters, and waited for
her at the bottom, saying, with his most virtuous expression of
countenance, "What a good fellow you are, Jo! Did you get blown up?" he
added, laughing.

"No, he was pretty mild, on the whole."

"Ah!  I got it all round.  Even you cast me off over there, and I felt
just ready to go to the deuce," he began apologetically.

"Don't talk that way, turn over a new leaf and begin again, Teddy, my
son."

"I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil
my copybooks, and I make so many beginnings there never will be an
end," he said dolefully.

"Go and eat your dinner, you'll feel better after it.  Men always croak
when they are hungry," and Jo whisked out at the front door after that.

"That's a 'label' on my 'sect'," answered Laurie, quoting Amy, as he
went to partake of humble pie dutifully with his grandfather, who was
quite saintly in temper and overwhelmingly respectful in manner all the
rest of the day.

Everyone thought the matter ended and the little cloud blown over, but
the mischief was done, for though others forgot it, Meg remembered.
She never alluded to a certain person, but she thought of him a good
deal, dreamed dreams more than ever, and once Jo, rummaging her
sister's desk for stamps, found a bit of paper scribbled over with the
words, 'Mrs. John Brooke', whereat she groaned tragically and cast it
into the fire, feeling that Laurie's prank had hastened the evil day
for her.



CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

PLEASANT MEADOWS

Like sunshine after a storm were the peaceful weeks which followed.
The invalids improved rapidly, and Mr. March began to talk of returning
early in the new year.  Beth was soon able to lie on the study sofa all
day, amusing herself with the well-beloved cats at first, and in time
with doll's sewing, which had fallen sadly behind-hand.  Her once
active limbs were so stiff and feeble that Jo took her for a daily
airing about the house in her strong arms.  Meg cheerfully blackened
and burned her white hands cooking delicate messes for 'the dear',
while Amy, a loyal slave of the ring, celebrated her return by giving
away as many of her treasures as she could prevail on her sisters to
accept.

As Christmas approached, the usual mysteries began to haunt the house,
and Jo frequently convulsed the family by proposing utterly impossible
or magnificently absurd ceremonies, in honor of this unusually merry
Christmas.  Laurie was equally impracticable, and would have had
bonfires, skyrockets, and triumphal arches, if he had had his own way.
After many skirmishes and snubbings, the ambitious pair were considered
effectually quenched and went about with forlorn faces, which were
rather belied by explosions of laughter when the two got together.

Several days of unusually mild weather fitly ushered in a splendid
Christmas Day.  Hannah 'felt in her bones' that it was going to be an
unusually fine day, and she proved herself a true prophetess, for
everybody and everything seemed bound to produce a grand success.  To
begin with, Mr. March wrote that he should soon be with them, then Beth
felt uncommonly well that morning, and, being dressed in her mother's
gift, a soft crimson merino wrapper, was borne in high triumph to the
window to behold the offering of Jo and Laurie.  The Unquenchables had
done their best to be worthy of the name, for like elves they had
worked by night and conjured up a comical surprise.  Out in the garden
stood a stately snow maiden, crowned with holly, bearing a basket of
fruit and flowers in one hand, a great roll of music in the other, a
perfect rainbow of an Afghan round her chilly shoulders, and a
Christmas carol issuing from her lips on a pink paper streamer.

    THE JUNGFRAU TO BETH

    God bless you, dear Queen Bess!
    May nothing you dismay,
    But health and peace and happiness
    Be yours, this Christmas day.

    Here's fruit to feed our busy bee,
    And flowers for her nose.
    Here's music for her pianee,
    An afghan for her toes,

    A portrait of Joanna, see,
    By Raphael No. 2,
    Who laboured with great industry
    To make it fair and true.

    Accept a ribbon red, I beg,
    For Madam Purrer's tail,
    And ice cream made by lovely Peg,
    A Mont Blanc in a pail.

    Their dearest love my makers laid
    Within my breast of snow.
    Accept it, and the Alpine maid,
    From Laurie and from Jo.

How Beth laughed when she saw it, how Laurie ran up and down to bring
in the gifts, and what ridiculous speeches Jo made as she presented
them.

"I'm so full of happiness, that if Father was only here, I couldn't
hold one drop more," said Beth, quite sighing with contentment as Jo
carried her off to the study to rest after the excitement, and to
refresh herself with some of the delicious grapes the 'Jungfrau' had
sent her.

"So am I," added Jo, slapping the pocket wherein reposed the
long-desired _Undine and Sintram_.

"I'm sure I am," echoed Amy, poring over the engraved copy of the
Madonna and Child, which her mother had given her in a pretty frame.

"Of course I am!" cried Meg, smoothing the silvery folds of her first
silk dress, for Mr. Laurence had insisted on giving it. "How can I be
otherwise?" said Mrs. March gratefully, as her eyes went from her
husband's letter to Beth's smiling face, and her hand caressed the
brooch made of gray and golden, chestnut and dark brown hair, which the
girls had just fastened on her breast.

Now and then, in this workaday world, things do happen in the
delightful storybook fashion, and what a comfort it is.  Half an hour
after everyone had said they were so happy they could only hold one
drop more, the drop came.  Laurie opened the parlor door and popped his
head in very quietly.  He might just as well have turned a somersault
and uttered an Indian war whoop, for his face was so full of suppressed
excitement and his voice so treacherously joyful that everyone jumped
up, though he only said, in a queer, breathless voice, "Here's another
Christmas present for the March family."

Before the words were well out of his mouth, he was whisked away
somehow, and in his place appeared a tall man, muffled up to the eyes,
leaning on the arm of another tall man, who tried to say something and
couldn't.  Of course there was a general stampede, and for several
minutes everybody seemed to lose their wits, for the strangest things
were done, and no one said a word.

Mr. March became invisible in the embrace of four pairs of loving arms.
Jo disgraced herself by nearly fainting away, and had to be doctored by
Laurie in the china closet.  Mr. Brooke kissed Meg entirely by mistake,
as he somewhat incoherently explained.  And Amy, the dignified, tumbled
over a stool, and never stopping to get up, hugged and cried over her
father's boots in the most touching manner.  Mrs. March was the first
to recover herself, and held up her hand with a warning, "Hush!
Remember Beth."

But it was too late.  The study door flew open, the little red wrapper
appeared on the threshold, joy put strength into the feeble limbs, and
Beth ran straight into her father's arms.  Never mind what happened
just after that, for the full hearts overflowed, washing away the
bitterness of the past and leaving only the sweetness of the present.

It was not at all romantic, but a hearty laugh set everybody straight
again, for Hannah was discovered behind the door, sobbing over the fat
turkey, which she had forgotten to put down when she rushed up from the
kitchen.  As the laugh subsided, Mrs. March began to thank Mr. Brooke
for his faithful care of her husband, at which Mr. Brooke suddenly
remembered that Mr. March needed rest, and seizing Laurie, he
precipitately retired.  Then the two invalids were ordered to repose,
which they did, by both sitting in one big chair and talking hard.

Mr. March told how he had longed to surprise them, and how, when the
fine weather came, he had been allowed by his doctor to take advantage
of it, how devoted Brooke had been, and how he was altogether a most
estimable and upright young man.  Why Mr. March paused a minute just
there, and after a glance at Meg, who was violently poking the fire,
looked at his wife with an inquiring lift of the eyebrows, I leave you
to imagine.  Also why Mrs. March gently nodded her head and asked,
rather abruptly, if he wouldn't like to have something to eat.  Jo saw
and understood the look, and she stalked grimly away to get wine and
beef tea, muttering to herself as she slammed the door, "I hate
estimable young men with brown eyes!"

There never was such a Christmas dinner as they had that day. The fat
turkey was a sight to behold, when Hannah sent him up, stuffed,
browned, and decorated.  So was the plum pudding, which melted in one's
mouth, likewise the jellies, in which Amy reveled like a fly in a
honeypot.  Everything turned out well, which was a mercy, Hannah said,
"For my mind was that flustered, Mum, that it's a merrycle I didn't
roast the pudding, and stuff the turkey with raisins, let alone bilin'
of it in a cloth."

Mr. Laurence and his grandson dined with them, also Mr. Brooke, at whom
Jo glowered darkly, to Laurie's infinite amusement. Two easy chairs
stood side by side at the head of the table, in which sat Beth and her
father, feasting modestly on chicken and a little fruit.  They drank
healths, told stories, sang songs, 'reminisced', as the old folks say,
and had a thoroughly good time. A sleigh ride had been planned, but the
girls would not leave their father, so the guests departed early, and
as twilight gathered, the happy family sat together round the fire.

"Just a year ago we were groaning over the dismal Christmas we expected
to have.  Do you remember?" asked Jo, breaking a short pause which had
followed a long conversation about many things.

"Rather a pleasant year on the whole!" said Meg, smiling at the fire,
and congratulating herself on having treated Mr. Brooke with dignity.

"I think it's been a pretty hard one," observed Amy, watching the light
shine on her ring with thoughtful eyes.

"I'm glad it's over, because we've got you back," whispered Beth, who
sat on her father's knee.

"Rather a rough road for you to travel, my little pilgrims, especially
the latter part of it.  But you have got on bravely, and I think the
burdens are in a fair way to tumble off very soon," said Mr. March,
looking with fatherly satisfaction at the four young faces gathered
round him.

"How do you know?  Did Mother tell you?" asked Jo.

"Not much.  Straws show which way the wind blows, and I've made several
discoveries today."

"Oh, tell us what they are!" cried Meg, who sat beside him.

"Here is one." And taking up the hand which lay on the arm of his
chair, he pointed to the roughened forefinger, a burn on the back, and
two or three little hard spots on the palm.  "I remember a time when
this hand was white and smooth, and your first care was to keep it so.
It was very pretty then, but to me it is much prettier now, for in this
seeming blemishes I read a little history.  A burnt offering has been
made to vanity, this hardened palm has earned something better than
blisters, and I'm sure the sewing done by these pricked fingers will
last a long time, so much good will went into the stitches.  Meg, my
dear, I value the womanly skill which keeps home happy more than white
hands or fashionable accomplishments.  I'm proud to shake this good,
industrious little hand, and hope I shall not soon be asked to give it
away."

If Meg had wanted a reward for hours of patient labor, she received it
in the hearty pressure of her father's hand and the approving smile he
gave her.

"What about Jo?  Please say something nice, for she has tried so hard
and been so very, very good to me," said Beth in her father's ear.

He laughed and looked across at the tall girl who sat opposite, with an
unusually mild expression in her face.

"In spite of the curly crop, I don't see the 'son Jo' whom I left a
year ago," said Mr. March.  "I see a young lady who pins her collar
straight, laces her boots neatly, and neither whistles, talks slang,
nor lies on the rug as she used to do.  Her face is rather thin and
pale just now, with watching and anxiety, but I like to look at it, for
it has grown gentler, and her voice is lower.  She doesn't bounce, but
moves quietly, and takes care of a certain little person in a motherly
way which delights me.  I rather miss my wild girl, but if I get a
strong, helpful, tenderhearted woman in her place, I shall feel quite
satisfied. I don't know whether the shearing sobered our black sheep,
but I do know that in all Washington I couldn't find anything beautiful
enough to be bought with the five-and-twenty dollars my good girl sent
me."

Jo's keen eyes were rather dim for a minute, and her thin face grew
rosy in the firelight as she received her father's praise, feeling that
she did deserve a portion of it.

"Now, Beth," said Amy, longing for her turn, but ready to wait.

"There's so little of her, I'm afraid to say much, for fear she will
slip away altogether, though she is not so shy as she used to be,"
began their father cheerfully.  But recollecting how nearly he had lost
her, he held her close, saying tenderly, with her cheek against his
own, "I've got you safe, my Beth, and I'll keep you so, please God."

After a minute's silence, he looked down at Amy, who sat on the cricket
at his feet, and said, with a caress of the shining hair...

"I observed that Amy took drumsticks at dinner, ran errands for her
mother all the afternoon, gave Meg her place tonight, and has waited on
every one with patience and good humor.  I also observe that she does
not fret much nor look in the glass, and has not even mentioned a very
pretty ring which she wears, so I conclude that she has learned to
think of other people more and of herself less, and has decided to try
and mold her character as carefully as she molds her little clay
figures.  I am glad of this, for though I should be very proud of a
graceful statue made by her, I shall be infinitely prouder of a lovable
daughter with a talent for making life beautiful to herself and others."

"What are you thinking of, Beth?" asked Jo, when Amy had thanked her
father and told about her ring.

"I read in _Pilgrim's Progress_ today how, after many troubles,
Christian and Hopeful came to a pleasant green meadow where lilies
bloomed all year round, and there they rested happily, as we do now,
before they went on to their journey's end," answered Beth, adding, as
she slipped out of her father's arms and went to the instrument, "It's
singing time now, and I want to be in my old place.  I'll try to sing
the song of the shepherd boy which the Pilgrims heard.  I made the
music for Father, because he likes the verses."

So, sitting at the dear little piano, Beth softly touched the keys, and
in the sweet voice they had never thought to hear again, sang to her
own accompaniment the quaint hymn, which was a singularly fitting song
for her.


    He that is down need fear no fall,
    He that is low no pride.
    He that is humble ever shall
    Have God to be his guide.

    I am content with what I have,
    Little be it, or much.
    And, Lord!  Contentment still I crave,
    Because Thou savest such.

    Fulness to them a burden is,
    That go on pilgrimage.
    Here little, and hereafter bliss,
    Is best from age to age!



CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

AUNT MARCH SETTLES THE QUESTION

Like bees swarming after their queen, mother and daughters hovered
about Mr. March the next day, neglecting everything to look at, wait
upon, and listen to the new invalid, who was in a fair way to be killed
by kindness.  As he sat propped up in a big chair by Beth's sofa, with
the other three close by, and Hannah popping in her head now and then
'to peek at the dear man', nothing seemed needed to complete their
happiness.  But something was needed, and the elder ones felt it,
though none confessed the fact.  Mr. and Mrs. March looked at one
another with an anxious expression, as their eyes followed Meg.  Jo had
sudden fits of sobriety, and was seen to shake her fist at Mr. Brooke's
umbrella, which had been left in the hall.  Meg was absent-minded, shy,
and silent, started when the bell rang, and colored when John's name
was mentioned.  Amy said, "Everyone seemed waiting for something, and
couldn't settle down, which was queer, since Father was safe at home,"
and Beth innocently wondered why their neighbors didn't run over as
usual.

Laurie went by in the afternoon, and seeing Meg at the window, seemed
suddenly possessed with a melodramatic fit, for he fell down on one
knee in the snow, beat his breast, tore his hair, and clasped his hands
imploringly, as if begging some boon. And when Meg told him to behave
himself and go away, he wrung imaginary tears out of his handkerchief,
and staggered round the corner as if in utter despair.

"What does the goose mean?" said Meg, laughing and trying to look
unconscious.

"He's showing you how your John will go on by-and-by. Touching, isn't
it?" answered Jo scornfully.

"Don't say my John, it isn't proper or true," but Meg's voice lingered
over the words as if they sounded pleasant to her.  "Please don't
plague me, Jo, I've told you I don't care much about him, and there
isn't to be anything said, but we are all to be friendly, and go on as
before."

"We can't, for something has been said, and Laurie's mischief has
spoiled you for me.  I see it, and so does Mother.  You are not like
your old self a bit, and seem ever so far away from me.  I don't mean
to plague you and will bear it like a man, but I do wish it was all
settled.  I hate to wait, so if you mean ever to do it, make haste and
have it over quickly," said Jo pettishly.

"I can't say anything till he speaks, and he won't, because Father said
I was too young," began Meg, bending over her work with a queer little
smile, which suggested that she did not quite agree with her father on
that point.

"If he did speak, you wouldn't know what to say, but would cry or
blush, or let him have his own way, instead of giving a good, decided
no."

"I'm not so silly and weak as you think.  I know just what I should
say, for I've planned it all, so I needn't be taken unawares.  There's
no knowing what may happen, and I wished to be prepared."

Jo couldn't help smiling at the important air which Meg had
unconsciously assumed and which was as becoming as the pretty color
varying in her cheeks.

"Would you mind telling me what you'd say?" asked Jo more respectfully.

"Not at all.  You are sixteen now, quite old enough to be my confidant,
and my experience will be useful to you by-and-by, perhaps, in your own
affairs of this sort."

"Don't mean to have any.  It's fun to watch other people philander, but
I should feel like a fool doing it myself," said Jo, looking alarmed at
the thought.

"I think not, if you liked anyone very much, and he liked you."  Meg
spoke as if to herself, and glanced out at the lane where she had often
seen lovers walking together in the summer twilight.

"I thought you were going to tell your speech to that man," said Jo,
rudely shortening her sister's little reverie.

"Oh, I should merely say, quite calmly and decidedly, 'Thank you, Mr.
Brooke, you are very kind, but I agree with Father that I am too young
to enter into any engagement at present, so please say no more, but let
us be friends as we were.'"

"Hum, that's stiff and cool enough!  I don't believe you'll ever say
it, and I know he won't be satisfied if you do.  If he goes on like the
rejected lovers in books, you'll give in, rather than hurt his
feelings."

"No, I won't.  I shall tell him I've made up my mind, and shall walk
out of the room with dignity."

Meg rose as she spoke, and was just going to rehearse the dignified
exit, when a step in the hall made her fly into her seat and begin to
sew as fast as if her life depended on finishing that particular seam
in a given time.  Jo smothered a laugh at the sudden change, and when
someone gave a modest tap, opened the door with a grim aspect which was
anything but hospitable.

"Good afternoon.  I came to get my umbrella, that is, to see how your
father finds himself today," said Mr. Brooke, getting a trifle confused
as his eyes went from one telltale face to the other.

"It's very well, he's in the rack.  I'll get him, and tell it you are
here."  And having jumbled her father and the umbrella well together in
her reply, Jo slipped out of the room to give Meg a chance to make her
speech and air her dignity.  But the instant she vanished, Meg began to
sidle toward the door, murmuring...

"Mother will like to see you.  Pray sit down, I'll call her."

"Don't go.  Are you afraid of me, Margaret?" and Mr. Brooke looked so
hurt that Meg thought she must have done something very rude.  She
blushed up to the little curls on her forehead, for he had never called
her Margaret before, and she was surprised to find how natural and
sweet it seemed to hear him say it.  Anxious to appear friendly and at
her ease, she put out her hand with a confiding gesture, and said
gratefully...

"How can I be afraid when you have been so kind to Father? I only wish
I could thank you for it."

"Shall I tell you how?" asked Mr. Brooke, holding the small hand fast
in both his own, and looking down at Meg with so much love in the brown
eyes that her heart began to flutter, and she both longed to run away
and to stop and listen.

"Oh no, please don't, I'd rather not," she said, trying to withdraw her
hand, and looking frightened in spite of her denial.

"I won't trouble you.  I only want to know if you care for me a little,
Meg.  I love you so much, dear," added Mr. Brooke tenderly.

This was the moment for the calm, proper speech, but Meg didn't make
it.  She forgot every word of it, hung her head, and answered, "I don't
know," so softly that John had to stoop down to catch the foolish
little reply.

He seemed to think it was worth the trouble, for he smiled to himself
as if quite satisfied, pressed the plump hand gratefully, and said in
his most persuasive tone, "Will you try and find out?  I want to know
so much, for I can't go to work with any heart until I learn whether I
am to have my reward in the end or not."

"I'm too young," faltered Meg, wondering why she was so fluttered, yet
rather enjoying it.

"I'll wait, and in the meantime, you could be learning to like me.
Would it be a very hard lesson, dear?"

"Not if I chose to learn it, but. . ."

"Please choose to learn, Meg.  I love to teach, and this is easier than
German," broke in John, getting possession of the other hand, so that
she had no way of hiding her face as he bent to look into it.

His tone was properly beseeching, but stealing a shy look at him, Meg
saw that his eyes were merry as well as tender, and that he wore the
satisfied smile of one who had no doubt of his success.  This nettled
her.  Annie Moffat's foolish lessons in coquetry came into her mind,
and the love of power, which sleeps in the bosoms of the best of little
women, woke up all of a sudden and took possession of her.  She felt
excited and strange, and not knowing what else to do, followed a
capricious impulse, and, withdrawing her hands, said petulantly, "I
don't choose.  Please go away and let me be!"

Poor Mr. Brooke looked as if his lovely castle in the air was tumbling
about his ears, for he had never seen Meg in such a mood before, and it
rather bewildered him.

"Do you really mean that?" he asked anxiously, following her as she
walked away.

"Yes, I do.  I don't want to be worried about such things. Father says
I needn't, it's too soon and I'd rather not."

"Mayn't I hope you'll change your mind by-and-by?  I'll wait and say
nothing till you have had more time.  Don't play with me, Meg.  I
didn't think that of you."

"Don't think of me at all.  I'd rather you wouldn't," said Meg, taking
a naughty satisfaction in trying her lover's patience and her own power.

He was grave and pale now, and looked decidedly more like the novel
heroes whom she admired, but he neither slapped his forehead nor
tramped about the room as they did.  He just stood looking at her so
wistfully, so tenderly, that she found her heart relenting in spite of
herself.  What would have happened next I cannot say, if Aunt March had
not come hobbling in at this interesting minute.

The old lady couldn't resist her longing to see her nephew, for she had
met Laurie as she took her airing, and hearing of Mr. March's arrival,
drove straight out to see him.  The family were all busy in the back
part of the house, and she had made her way quietly in, hoping to
surprise them.  She did surprise two of them so much that Meg started
as if she had seen a ghost, and Mr. Brooke vanished into the study.

"Bless me, what's all this?" cried the old lady with a rap of her cane
as she glanced from the pale young gentleman to the scarlet young lady.

"It's Father's friend.  I'm so surprised to see you!" stammered Meg,
feeling that she was in for a lecture now.

"That's evident," returned Aunt March, sitting down.  "But what is
Father's friend saying to make you look like a peony? There's mischief
going on, and I insist upon knowing what it is," with another rap.

"We were only talking.  Mr. Brooke came for his umbrella," began Meg,
wishing that Mr. Brooke and the umbrella were safely out of the house.

"Brooke?  That boy's tutor?  Ah! I understand now.  I know all about
it.  Jo blundered into a wrong message in one of your Father's letters,
and I made her tell me.  You haven't gone and accepted him, child?"
cried Aunt March, looking scandalized.

"Hush! He'll hear.  Shan't I call Mother?" said Meg, much troubled.

"Not yet.  I've something to say to you, and I must free my mind at
once.  Tell me, do you mean to marry this Cook?  If you do, not one
penny of my money ever goes to you.  Remember that, and be a sensible
girl," said the old lady impressively.

Now Aunt March possessed in perfection the art of rousing the spirit of
opposition in the gentlest people, and enjoyed doing it.  The best of
us have a spice of perversity in us, especially when we are young and
in love.  If Aunt March had begged Meg to accept John Brooke, she would
probably have declared she couldn't think of it, but as she was
preemptorily ordered not to like him, she immediately made up her mind
that she would.  Inclination as well as perversity made the decision
easy, and being already much excited, Meg opposed the old lady with
unusual spirit.

"I shall marry whom I please, Aunt March, and you can leave your money
to anyone you like," she said, nodding her head with a resolute air.

"Highty-tighty!  Is that the way you take my advice, Miss? You'll be
sorry for it by-and-by, when you've tried love in a cottage and found
it a failure."

"It can't be a worse one than some people find in big houses," retorted
Meg.

Aunt March put on her glasses and took a look at the girl, for she did
not know her in this new mood.  Meg hardly knew herself, she felt so
brave and independent, so glad to defend John and assert her right to
love him, if she liked.  Aunt March saw that she had begun wrong, and
after a little pause, made a fresh start, saying as mildly as she
could, "Now, Meg, my dear, be reasonable and take my advice.  I mean it
kindly, and don't want you to spoil your whole life by making a mistake
at the beginning.  You ought to marry well and help your family.  It's
your duty to make a rich match and it ought to be impressed upon you."

"Father and Mother don't think so.  They like John though he is poor."

"Your parents, my dear, have no more worldly wisdom than a pair of
babies."

"I'm glad of it," cried Meg stoutly.

Aunt March took no notice, but went on with her lecture. "This Rook is
poor and hasn't got any rich relations, has he?"

"No, but he has many warm friends."

"You can't live on friends, try it and see how cool they'll grow.  He
hasn't any business, has he?"

"Not yet.  Mr. Laurence is going to help him."

"That won't last long.  James Laurence is a crotchety old fellow and
not to be depended on.  So you intend to marry a man without money,
position, or business, and go on working harder than you do now, when
you might be comfortable all your days by minding me and doing better?
I thought you had more sense, Meg."

"I couldn't do better if I waited half my life!  John is good and wise,
he's got heaps of talent, he's willing to work and sure to get on, he's
so energetic and brave.  Everyone likes and respects him, and I'm proud
to think he cares for me, though I'm so poor and young and silly," said
Meg, looking prettier than ever in her earnestness.

"He knows you have got rich relations, child.  That's the secret of his
liking, I suspect."

"Aunt March, how dare you say such a thing?  John is above such
meanness, and I won't listen to you a minute if you talk so," cried Meg
indignantly, forgetting everything but the injustice of the old lady's
suspicions.  "My John wouldn't marry for money, any more than I would.
We are willing to work and we mean to wait.  I'm not afraid of being
poor, for I've been happy so far, and I know I shall be with him
because he loves me, and I..."

Meg stopped there, remembering all of a sudden that she hadn't made up
her mind, that she had told 'her John' to go away, and that he might be
overhearing her inconsistent remarks.

Aunt March was very angry, for she had set her heart on having her
pretty niece make a fine match, and something in the girl's happy young
face made the lonely old woman feel both sad and sour.

"Well, I wash my hands of the whole affair!  You are a willful child,
and you've lost more than you know by this piece of folly. No, I won't
stop.  I'm disappointed in you, and haven't spirits to see your father
now.  Don't expect anything from me when you are married.  Your Mr.
Brooke's friends must take care of you.  I'm done with you forever."

And slamming the door in Meg's face, Aunt March drove off in high
dudgeon.  She seemed to take all the girl's courage with her, for when
left alone, Meg stood for a moment, undecided whether to laugh or cry.
Before she could make up her mind, she was taken possession of by Mr.
Brooke, who said all in one breath, "I couldn't help hearing, Meg.
Thank you for defending me, and Aunt March for proving that you do care
for me a little bit."

"I didn't know how much till she abused you," began Meg.

"And I needn't go away, but may stay and be happy, may I, dear?"

Here was another fine chance to make the crushing speech and the
stately exit, but Meg never thought of doing either, and disgraced
herself forever in Jo's eyes by meekly whispering, "Yes,  John," and
hiding her face on Mr. Brooke's waistcoat.

Fifteen minutes after Aunt March's departure, Jo came softly
downstairs, paused an instant at the parlor door, and hearing no sound
within, nodded and smiled with a satisfied expression, saying to
herself, "She has seen him away as we planned, and that affair is
settled.  I'll go and hear the fun, and have a good laugh over it."

But poor Jo never got her laugh, for she was transfixed upon the
threshold by a spectacle which held her there, staring with her mouth
nearly as wide open as her eyes.  Going in to exult over a fallen enemy
and to praise a strong-minded sister for the banishment of an
objectionable lover, it certainly was a shock to behold the aforesaid
enemy serenely sitting on the sofa, with the strongminded sister
enthroned upon his knee and wearing an expression of the most abject
submission.  Jo gave a sort of gasp, as if a cold shower bath had
suddenly fallen upon her, for such an unexpected turning of the tables
actually took her breath away.  At the odd sound the lovers turned and
saw her.  Meg jumped up, looking both proud and shy, but 'that man', as
Jo called him, actually laughed and said coolly, as he kissed the
astonished newcomer, "Sister Jo, congratulate us!"

That was adding insult to injury, it was altogether too much, and
making some wild demonstration with her hands, Jo vanished without a
word.  Rushing upstairs, she startled the invalids by exclaiming
tragically as she burst into the room, "Oh, do somebody go down quick!
John Brooke is acting dreadfully, and Meg likes it!"

Mr. and Mrs. March left the room with speed, and casting herself upon
the bed, Jo cried and scolded tempestuously as she told the awful news
to Beth and Amy.  The little girls, however, considered it a most
agreeable and interesting event, and Jo got little comfort from them,
so she went up to her refuge in the garret, and confided her troubles
to the rats.

Nobody ever knew what went on in the parlor that afternoon, but a great
deal of talking was done, and quiet Mr. Brooke astonished his friends
by the eloquence and spirit with which he pleaded his suit, told his
plans, and persuaded them to arrange everything just as he wanted it.

The tea bell rang before he had finished describing the paradise which
he meant to earn for Meg, and he proudly took her in to supper, both
looking so happy that Jo hadn't the heart to be jealous or dismal. Amy
was very much impressed by John's devotion and Meg's dignity, Beth
beamed at them from a distance, while Mr. and Mrs. March surveyed the
young couple with such tender satisfaction that it was perfectly
evident Aunt March was right in calling them as 'unworldly as a pair of
babies'.  No one ate much, but everyone looked very happy, and the old
room seemed to brighten up amazingly when the first romance of the
family began there.

"You can't say nothing pleasant ever happens now, can you, Meg?" said
Amy, trying to decide how she would group the lovers in a sketch she
was planning to make.

"No, I'm sure I can't.  How much has happened since I said that! It
seems a year ago," answered Meg, who was in a blissful dream lifted far
above such common things as bread and butter.

"The joys come close upon the sorrows this time, and I rather think the
changes have begun," said Mrs. March.  "In most families there comes,
now and then, a year full of events.  This has been such a one, but it
ends well, after all."

"Hope the next will end better," muttered Jo, who found it very hard to
see Meg absorbed in a stranger before her face, for Jo loved a few
persons very dearly and dreaded to have their affection lost or
lessened in any way.

"I hope the third year from this will end better.  I mean it shall, if
I live to work out my plans," said Mr. Brooke, smiling at Meg, as if
everything had become possible to him now.

"Doesn't it seem very long to wait?" asked Amy, who was in a hurry for
the wedding.

"I've got so much to learn before I shall be ready, it seems a short
time to me," answered Meg, with a sweet gravity in her face never seen
there before.

"You have only to wait, I am to do the work," said John beginning his
labors by picking up Meg's napkin, with an expression which caused Jo
to shake her head, and then say to herself with an air of relief as the
front door banged, "Here comes Laurie.  Now we shall have some sensible
conversation."

But Jo was mistaken, for Laurie came prancing in, overflowing with good
spirits, bearing a great bridal-looking bouquet for 'Mrs. John Brooke',
and evidently laboring under the delusion that the whole affair had
been brought about by his excellent management.

"I knew Brooke would have it all his own way, he always does, for when
he makes up his mind to accomplish anything, it's done though the sky
falls," said Laurie, when he had presented his offering and his
congratulations.

"Much obliged for that recommendation.  I take it as a good omen for
the future and invite you to my wedding on the spot," answered Mr.
Brooke, who felt at peace with all mankind, even his mischievous pupil.

"I'll come if I'm at the ends of the earth, for the sight of Jo's face
alone on that occasion would be worth a long journey. You don't look
festive, ma'am, what's the matter?" asked Laurie, following her into a
corner of the parlor, whither all had adjourned to greet Mr. Laurence.

"I don't approve of the match, but I've made up my mind to bear it, and
shall not say a word against it," said Jo solemnly.  "You can't know
how hard it is for me to give up Meg," she continued with a little
quiver in her voice.

"You don't give her up.  You only go halves," said Laurie consolingly.

"It can never be the same again.  I've lost my dearest friend," sighed
Jo.

"You've got me, anyhow.  I'm not good for much, I know, but I'll stand
by you, Jo, all the days of my life.  Upon my word I will!" and Laurie
meant what he said.

"I know you will, and I'm ever so much obliged.  You are always a great
comfort to me, Teddy," returned Jo, gratefully shaking hands.

"Well, now, don't be dismal, there's a good fellow.  It's all right you
see.  Meg is happy, Brooke will fly round and get settled immediately,
Grandpa will attend to him, and it will be very jolly to see Meg in her
own little house.  We'll have capital times after she is gone, for I
shall be through college before long, and then we'll go abroad on some
nice trip or other.  Wouldn't that console you?"

"I rather think it would, but there's no knowing what may happen in
three years," said Jo thoughtfully.

"That's true.  Don't you wish you could take a look forward and see
where we shall all be then?  I do," returned Laurie.

"I think not, for I might see something sad, and everyone looks so
happy now, I don't believe they could be much improved." And Jo's eyes
went slowly round the room, brightening as they looked, for the
prospect was a pleasant one.

Father and Mother sat together, quietly reliving the first chapter of
the romance which for them began some twenty years ago. Amy was drawing
the lovers, who sat apart in a beautiful world of their own, the light
of which touched their faces with a grace the little artist could not
copy.  Beth lay on her sofa, talking cheerily with her old friend, who
held her little hand as if he felt that it possessed the power to lead
him along the peaceful way she walked. Jo lounged in her favorite low
seat, with the grave quiet look which best became her, and Laurie,
leaning on the back of her chair, his chin on a level with her curly
head, smiled with his friendliest aspect, and nodded at her in the long
glass which reflected them both.


So the curtain falls upon Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.  Whether it ever
rises again, depends upon the reception given the first act of the
domestic drama called _Little Women_.







LITTLE WOMEN PART 2

In order that we may start afresh and go to Meg's wedding...



CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

GOSSIP

In order that we may start afresh and go to Meg's wedding with free
minds, it will be well to begin with a little gossip about the Marches.
And here let me premise that if any of the elders think there is too
much 'lovering' in the story, as I fear they may (I'm not afraid the
young folks will make that objection), I can only say with Mrs. March,
"What can you expect when I have four gay girls in the house, and a
dashing young neighbor over the way?"

The three years that have passed have brought but few changes to the
quiet family.  The war is over, and Mr. March safely at home, busy with
his books and the small parish which found in him a minister by nature
as by grace, a quiet, studious man, rich in the wisdom that is better
than learning, the charity which calls all mankind 'brother', the piety
that blossoms into character, making it august and lovely.

These attributes, in spite of poverty and the strict integrity which
shut him out from the more worldly successes, attracted to him many
admirable persons, as naturally as sweet herbs draw bees, and as
naturally he gave them the honey into which fifty years of hard
experience had distilled no bitter drop.  Earnest young men found the
gray-headed scholar as young at heart as they; thoughtful or troubled
women instinctively brought their doubts to him, sure of finding the
gentlest sympathy, the wisest counsel.  Sinners told their sins to the
pure-hearted old man and were both rebuked and saved.  Gifted men found
a companion in him.  Ambitious men caught glimpses of nobler ambitions
than their own, and even worldlings confessed that his beliefs were
beautiful and true, although 'they wouldn't pay'.

To outsiders the five energetic women seemed to rule the house, and so
they did in many things, but the quiet scholar, sitting among his
books, was still the head of the family, the household conscience,
anchor, and comforter, for to him the busy, anxious women always turned
in troublous times, finding him, in the truest sense of those sacred
words, husband and father.

The girls gave their hearts into their mother's keeping, their souls
into their father's, and to both parents, who lived and labored so
faithfully for them, they gave a love that grew with their growth and
bound them tenderly together by the sweetest tie which blesses life and
outlives death.

Mrs. March is as brisk and cheery, though rather grayer, than when we
saw her last, and just now so absorbed in Meg's affairs that the
hospitals and homes still full of wounded 'boys' and soldiers' widows,
decidedly miss the motherly missionary's visits.

John Brooke did his duty manfully for a year, got wounded, was sent
home, and not allowed to return.  He received no stars or bars, but he
deserved them, for he cheerfully risked all he had, and life and love
are very precious when both are in full bloom.  Perfectly resigned to
his discharge, he devoted himself to getting well, preparing for
business, and earning a home for Meg.  With the good sense and sturdy
independence that characterized him, he refused Mr. Laurence's more
generous offers, and accepted the place of bookkeeper, feeling better
satisfied to begin with an honestly earned salary than by running any
risks with borrowed money.

Meg had spent the time in working as well as waiting, growing womanly
in character, wise in housewifely arts, and prettier than ever, for
love is a great beautifier.  She had her girlish ambitions and hopes,
and felt some disappointment at the humble way in which the new life
must begin.  Ned Moffat had just married Sallie Gardiner, and Meg
couldn't help contrasting their fine house and carriage, many gifts,
and splendid outfit with her own, and secretly wishing she could have
the same.  But somehow envy and discontent soon vanished when she
thought of all the patient love and labor John had put into the little
home awaiting her, and when they sat together in the twilight, talking
over their small plans, the future always grew so beautiful and bright
that she forgot Sallie's splendor and felt herself the richest,
happiest girl in Christendom.

Jo never went back to Aunt March, for the old lady took such a fancy to
Amy that she bribed her with the offer of drawing lessons from one of
the best teachers going, and for the sake of this advantage, Amy would
have served a far harder mistress.  So she gave her mornings to duty,
her afternoons to pleasure, and prospered finely. Jo meantime devoted
herself to literature and Beth, who remained delicate long after the
fever was a thing of the past.  Not an invalid exactly, but never again
the rosy, healthy creature she had been, yet always hopeful, happy, and
serene, and busy with the quiet duties she loved, everyone's friend,
and an angel in the house, long before those who loved her most had
learned to know it.

As long as _The Spread Eagle_ paid her a dollar a column for her
'rubbish', as she called it, Jo felt herself a woman of means, and spun
her little romances diligently.  But great plans fermented in her busy
brain and ambitious mind, and the old tin kitchen in the garret held a
slowly increasing pile of blotted manuscript, which was one day to
place the name of March upon the roll of fame.

Laurie, having dutifully gone to college to please his grandfather, was
now getting through it in the easiest possible manner to please
himself.  A universal favorite, thanks to money, manners, much talent,
and the kindest heart that ever got its owner into scrapes by trying to
get other people out of them, he stood in great danger of being
spoiled, and probably would have been, like many another promising boy,
if he had not possessed a talisman against evil in the memory of the
kind old man who was bound up in his success, the motherly friend who
watched over him as if he were her son, and last, but not least by any
means, the knowledge that four innocent girls loved, admired, and
believed in him with all their hearts.

Being only 'a glorious human boy', of course he frolicked and flirted,
grew dandified, aquatic, sentimental, or gymnastic, as college fashions
ordained, hazed and was hazed, talked slang, and more than once came
perilously near suspension and expulsion.  But as high spirits and the
love of fun were the causes of these pranks, he always managed to save
himself by frank confession, honorable atonement, or the irresistible
power of persuasion which he possessed in perfection.  In fact, he
rather prided himself on his narrow escapes, and liked to thrill the
girls with graphic accounts of his triumphs over wrathful tutors,
dignified professors, and vanquished enemies.  The 'men of my class',
were heroes in the eyes of the girls, who never wearied of the exploits
of 'our fellows', and were frequently allowed to bask in the smiles of
these great creatures, when Laurie brought them home with him.

Amy especially enjoyed this high honor, and became quite a belle among
them, for her ladyship early felt and learned to use the gift of
fascination with which she was endowed.  Meg was too much absorbed in
her private and particular John to care for any other lords of
creation, and Beth too shy to do more than peep at them and wonder how
Amy dared to order them about so, but Jo felt quite in her own element,
and found it very difficult to refrain from imitating the gentlemanly
attitudes, phrases, and feats, which seemed more natural to her than
the decorums prescribed for young ladies.  They all liked Jo immensely,
but never fell in love with her, though very few escaped without paying
the tribute of a sentimental sigh or two at Amy's shrine.  And speaking
of sentiment brings us very naturally to the 'Dovecote'.

That was the name of the little brown house Mr. Brooke had prepared for
Meg's first home.  Laurie had christened it, saying it was highly
appropriate to the gentle lovers who 'went on together like a pair of
turtledoves, with first a bill and then a coo'.  It was a tiny house,
with a little garden behind and a lawn about as big as a pocket
handkerchief in the front.  Here Meg meant to have a fountain,
shrubbery, and a profusion of lovely flowers, though just at present
the fountain was represented by a weather-beaten urn, very like a
dilapidated slopbowl, the shrubbery consisted of several young larches,
undecided whether to live or die, and the profusion of flowers was
merely hinted by regiments of sticks to show where seeds were planted.
But inside, it was altogether charming, and the happy bride saw no
fault from garret to cellar.  To be sure, the hall was so narrow it was
fortunate that they had no piano, for one never could have been got in
whole, the dining room was so small that six people were a tight fit,
and the kitchen stairs seemed built for the express purpose of
precipitating both servants and china pell-mell into the coalbin.  But
once get used to these slight blemishes and nothing could be more
complete, for good sense and good taste had presided over the
furnishing, and the result was highly satisfactory.  There were no
marble-topped tables, long mirrors, or lace curtains in the little
parlor, but simple furniture, plenty of books, a fine picture or two, a
stand of flowers in the bay window, and, scattered all about, the
pretty gifts which came from friendly hands and were the fairer for the
loving messages they brought.

I don't think the Parian Psyche Laurie gave lost any of its beauty
because John put up the bracket it stood upon, that any upholsterer
could have draped the plain muslin curtains more gracefully than Amy's
artistic hand, or that any store-room was ever better provided with
good wishes, merry words, and happy hopes than that in which Jo and her
mother put away Meg's few boxes, barrels, and bundles, and I am morally
certain that the spandy new kitchen never could have looked so cozy and
neat if Hannah had not arranged every pot and pan a dozen times over,
and laid the fire all ready for lighting the minute 'Mis.  Brooke came
home'.  I also doubt if any young matron ever began life with so rich a
supply of dusters, holders, and piece bags, for Beth made enough to
last till the silver wedding came round, and invented three different
kinds of dishcloths for the express service of the bridal china.

People who hire all these things done for them never know what they
lose, for the homeliest tasks get beautified if loving hands do them,
and Meg found so many proofs of this that everything in her small nest,
from the kitchen roller to the silver vase on her parlor table, was
eloquent of home love and tender forethought.

What happy times they had planning together, what solemn shopping
excursions, what funny mistakes they made, and what shouts of laughter
arose over Laurie's ridiculous bargains.  In his love of jokes, this
young gentleman, though nearly through college, was a much of a boy as
ever.  His last whim had been to bring with him on his weekly visits
some new, useful, and ingenious article for the young housekeeper.  Now
a bag of remarkable clothespins, next, a wonderful nutmeg grater which
fell to pieces at the first trial, a knife cleaner that spoiled all the
knives, or a sweeper that picked the nap neatly off the carpet and left
the dirt, labor-saving soap that took the skin off one's hands,
infallible cements which stuck firmly to nothing but the fingers of the
deluded buyer, and every kind of tinware, from a toy savings bank for
odd pennies, to a wonderful boiler which would wash articles in its own
steam with every prospect of exploding in the process.

In vain Meg begged him to stop.  John laughed at him, and Jo called him
'Mr. Toodles'.  He was possessed with a mania for patronizing Yankee
ingenuity, and seeing his friends fitly furnished forth. So each week
beheld some fresh absurdity.

Everything was done at last, even to Amy's arranging different colored
soaps to match the different colored rooms, and Beth's setting the
table for the first meal.

"Are you satisfied?  Does it seem like home, and do you feel as if you
should be happy here?" asked Mrs. March, as she and her daughter went
through the new kingdom arm in arm, for just then they seemed to cling
together more tenderly than ever.

"Yes, Mother, perfectly satisfied, thanks to you all, and so happy that
I can't talk about it," with a look that was far better than words.

"If she only had a servant or two it would be all right," said Amy,
coming out of the parlor, where she had been trying to decide whether
the bronze Mercury looked best on the whatnot or the mantlepiece.

"Mother and I have talked that over, and I have made up my mind to try
her way first.  There will be so little to do that with Lotty to run my
errands and help me here and there, I shall only have enough work to
keep me from getting lazy or homesick," answered Meg tranquilly.

"Sallie Moffat has four," began Amy.

"If Meg had four, the house wouldn't hold them, and master and missis
would have to camp in the garden," broke in Jo, who, enveloped in a big
blue pinafore, was giving the last polish to the door handles.

"Sallie isn't a poor man's wife, and many maids are in keeping with her
fine establishment.  Meg and John begin humbly, but I have a feeling
that there will be quite as much happiness in the little house as in
the big one.  It's a great mistake for young girls like Meg to leave
themselves nothing to do but dress, give orders, and gossip.  When I
was first married, I used to long for my new clothes to wear out or get
torn, so that I might have the pleasure of mending them, for I got
heartily sick of doing fancywork and tending my pocket handkerchief."

"Why didn't you go into the kitchen and make messes, as Sallie says she
does to amuse herself, though they never turn out well and the servants
laugh at her," said Meg.

"I did after a while, not to 'mess' but to learn of Hannah how things
should be done, that my servants need not laugh at me.  It was play
then, but there came a time when I was truly grateful that I not only
possessed the will but the power to cook wholesome food for my little
girls, and help myself when I could no longer afford to hire help.  You
begin at the other end, Meg, dear, but the lessons you learn now will
be of use to you by-and-by when John is a richer man, for the mistress
of a house, however splendid, should know how work ought to be done, if
she wishes to be well and honestly served."

"Yes, Mother, I'm sure of that," said Meg, listening respectfully to
the little lecture, for the best of women will hold forth upon the all
absorbing subject of house keeping.  "Do you know I like this room most
of all in my baby house," added Meg, a minute after, as they went
upstairs and she looked into her well-stored linen closet.

Beth was there, laying the snowy piles smoothly on the shelves and
exulting over the goodly array.  All three laughed as Meg spoke, for
that linen closet was a joke.  You see, having said that if Meg married
'that Brooke' she shouldn't have a cent of her money, Aunt March was
rather in a quandary when time had appeased her wrath and made her
repent her vow.  She never broke her word, and was much exercised in
her mind how to get round it, and at last devised a plan whereby she
could satisfy herself.  Mrs. Carrol, Florence's mamma, was ordered to
buy, have made, and marked a generous supply of house and table linen,
and send it as her present, all of which was faithfully done, but the
secret leaked out, and was greatly enjoyed by the family, for Aunt
March tried to look utterly unconscious, and insisted that she could
give nothing but the old-fashioned pearls long promised to the first
bride.

"That's a housewifely taste which I am glad to see.  I had a young
friend who set up housekeeping with six sheets, but she had finger
bowls for company and that satisfied her," said Mrs. March, patting the
damask tablecloths, with a truly feminine appreciation of their
fineness.

"I haven't a single finger bowl, but this is a setout that will last me
all my days, Hannah says."  And Meg looked quite contented, as well she
might.

A tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a cropped head, a felt
basin of a hat, and a flyaway coat, came tramping down the road at a
great pace, walked over the low fence without stopping to open the
gate, straight up to Mrs. March, with both hands out and a hearty...

"Here I am, Mother!  Yes, it's all right."

The last words were in answer to the look the elder lady gave him, a
kindly questioning look which the handsome eyes met so frankly that the
little ceremony closed, as usual, with a motherly kiss.

"For Mrs. John Brooke, with the maker's congratulations and
compliments.  Bless you, Beth!  What a refreshing spectacle you are,
Jo.  Amy, you are getting altogether too handsome for a single lady."

As Laurie spoke, he delivered a brown paper parcel to Meg, pulled
Beth's hair ribbon, stared at Jo's big pinafore, and fell into an
attitude of mock rapture before Amy, then shook hands all round, and
everyone began to talk.

"Where is John?" asked Meg anxiously.

"Stopped to get the license for tomorrow, ma'am."

"Which side won the last match, Teddy?" inquired Jo, who persisted in
feeling an interest in manly sports despite her nineteen years.

"Ours, of course.  Wish you'd been there to see."

"How is the lovely Miss Randal?" asked Amy with a significant smile.

"More cruel than ever.  Don't you see how I'm pining away?" and Laurie
gave his broad chest a sounding slap and heaved a melodramatic sigh.

"What's the last joke?  Undo the bundle and see, Meg," said Beth, eying
the knobby parcel with curiosity.

"It's a useful thing to have in the house in case of fire or thieves,"
observed Laurie, as a watchman's rattle appeared, amid the laughter of
the girls.

"Any time when John is away and you get frightened, Mrs. Meg, just
swing that out of the front window, and it will rouse the neighborhood
in a jiffy.  Nice thing, isn't it?" and Laurie gave them a sample of
its powers that made them cover up their ears.

"There's gratitude for you!  And speaking of gratitude reminds me to
mention that you may thank Hannah for saving your wedding cake from
destruction.  I saw it going into your house as I came by, and if she
hadn't defended it manfully I'd have had a pick at it, for it looked
like a remarkably plummy one."

"I wonder if you will ever grow up, Laurie," said Meg in a matronly
tone.

"I'm doing my best, ma'am, but can't get much higher, I'm afraid, as
six feet is about all men can do in these degenerate days," responded
the young gentleman, whose head was about level with the little
chandelier.

"I suppose it would be profanation to eat anything in this
spick-and-span bower, so as I'm tremendously hungry, I propose an
adjournment," he added presently.

"Mother and I are going to wait for John.  There are some last things
to settle," said Meg, bustling away.

"Beth and I are going over to Kitty Bryant's to get more flowers for
tomorrow," added Amy, tying a picturesque hat over her picturesque
curls, and enjoying the effect as much as anybody.

"Come, Jo, don't desert a fellow.  I'm in such a state of exhaustion I
can't get home without help.  Don't take off your apron, whatever you
do, it's peculiarly becoming," said Laurie, as Jo bestowed his especial
aversion in her capacious pocket and offered her arm to support his
feeble steps.

"Now, Teddy, I want to talk seriously to you about tomorrow," began Jo,
as they strolled away together.  "You must promise to behave well, and
not cut up any pranks, and spoil our plans."

"Not a prank."

"And don't say funny things when we ought to be sober."

"I never do.  You are the one for that."

"And I implore you not to look at me during the ceremony.  I shall
certainly laugh if you do."

"You won't see me, you'll be crying so hard that the thick fog round
you will obscure the prospect."

"I never cry unless for some great affliction."

"Such as fellows going to college, hey?" cut in Laurie, with suggestive
laugh.

"Don't be a peacock.  I only moaned a trifle to keep the girls company."

"Exactly.  I say, Jo, how is Grandpa this week?  Pretty amiable?"

"Very.  Why, have you got into a scrape and want to know how he'll take
it?" asked Jo rather sharply.

"Now, Jo, do you think I'd look your mother in the face and say 'All
right', if it wasn't?" and Laurie stopped short, with an injured air.

"No, I don't."

"Then don't go and be suspicious.  I only want some money," said
Laurie, walking on again, appeased by her hearty tone.

"You spend a great deal, Teddy."

"Bless you, I don't spend it, it spends itself somehow, and is gone
before I know it."

"You are so generous and kind-hearted that you let people borrow, and
can't say 'No' to anyone.  We heard about Henshaw and all you did for
him.  If you always spent money in that way, no one would blame you,"
said Jo warmly.

"Oh, he made a mountain out of a molehill.  You wouldn't have me let
that fine fellow work himself to death just for want of a little help,
when he is worth a dozen of us lazy chaps, would you?"

"Of course not, but I don't see the use of your having seventeen
waistcoats, endless neckties, and a new hat every time you come home. I
thought you'd got over the dandy period, but every now and then it
breaks out in a new spot.  Just now it's the fashion to be hideous, to
make your head look like a scrubbing brush, wear a strait jacket,
orange gloves, and clumping square-toed boots.  If it was cheap
ugliness, I'd say nothing, but it costs as much as the other, and I
don't get any satisfaction out of it."

Laurie threw back his head, and laughed so heartily at this attack,
that the felt hat fell off, and Jo walked on it, which insult only
afforded him an opportunity for expatiating on the advantages of a
rough-and-ready costume, as he folded up the maltreated hat, and
stuffed it into his pocket.

"Don't lecture any more, there's a good soul!  I have enough all
through the week, and like to enjoy myself when I come home. I'll get
myself up regardless of expense tomorrow and be a satisfaction to my
friends."

"I'll leave you in peace if you'll only let your hair grow. I'm not
aristocratic, but I do object to being seen with a person who looks
like a young prize fighter," observed Jo severely.

"This unassuming style promotes study, that's why we adopt it,"
returned Laurie, who certainly could not be accused of vanity, having
voluntarily sacrificed a handsome curly crop to the demand for
quarter-inch-long stubble.

"By the way, Jo, I think that little Parker is really getting desperate
about Amy.  He talks of her constantly, writes poetry, and moons about
in a most suspicious manner.  He'd better nip his little passion in the
bud, hadn't he?" added Laurie, in a confidential, elder brotherly tone,
after a minute's silence.

"Of course he had.  We don't want any more marrying in this family for
years to come.  Mercy on us, what are the children thinking of?" and Jo
looked as much scandalized as if Amy and little Parker were not yet in
their teens.

"It's a fast age, and I don't know what we are coming to, ma'am. You
are a mere infant, but you'll go next, Jo, and we'll be left
lamenting," said Laurie, shaking his head over the degeneracy of the
times.

"Don't be alarmed.  I'm not one of the agreeable sort.  Nobody will
want me, and it's a mercy, for there should always be one old maid in a
family."

"You won't give anyone a chance," said Laurie, with a sidelong glance
and a little more color than before in his sunburned face. "You won't
show the soft side of your character, and if a fellow gets a peep at it
by accident and can't help showing that he likes it, you treat him as
Mrs. Gummidge did her sweetheart, throw cold water over him, and get so
thorny no one dares touch or look at you."

"I don't like that sort of thing.  I'm too busy to be worried with
nonsense, and I think it's dreadful to break up families so. Now don't
say any more about it.  Meg's wedding has turned all our heads, and we
talk of nothing but lovers and such absurdities.  I don't wish to get
cross, so let's change the subject;"  and Jo looked quite ready to
fling cold water on the slightest provocation.

Whatever his feelings might have been, Laurie found a vent for them in
a long low whistle and the fearful prediction as they parted at the
gate, "Mark my words, Jo, you'll go next."



CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE FIRST WEDDING

The June roses over the porch were awake bright and early on that
morning, rejoicing with all their hearts in the cloudless sunshine,
like friendly little neighbors, as they were.  Quite flushed with
excitement were their ruddy faces, as they swung in the wind,
whispering to one another what they had seen, for some peeped in at the
dining room windows where the feast was spread, some climbed up to nod
and smile at the sisters as they dressed the bride, others waved a
welcome to those who came and went on various errands in garden, porch,
and hall, and all, from the rosiest full-blown flower to the palest
baby bud, offered their tribute of beauty and fragrance to the gentle
mistress who had loved and tended them so long.

Meg looked very like a rose herself, for all that was best and sweetest
in heart and soul seemed to bloom into her face that day, making it
fair and tender, with a charm more beautiful than beauty. Neither silk,
lace, nor orange flowers would she have.  "I don't want a fashionable
wedding, but only those about me whom I love, and to them I wish to
look and be my familiar self."

So she made her wedding gown herself, sewing into it the tender hopes
and innocent romances of a girlish heart.  Her sisters braided up her
pretty hair, and the only ornaments she wore were the lilies of the
valley, which 'her John' liked best of all the flowers that grew.

"You do look just like our own dear Meg, only so very sweet and lovely
that I should hug you if it wouldn't crumple your dress," cried Amy,
surveying her with delight when all was done.

"Then I am satisfied.  But please hug and kiss me, everyone, and don't
mind my dress.  I want a great many crumples of this sort put into it
today,"  and Meg opened her arms to her sisters, who clung about her
with April faces for a minute, feeling that the new love had not
changed the old.

"Now I'm going to tie John's cravat for him, and then to stay a few
minutes with Father quietly in the study,"  and Meg ran down to perform
these little ceremonies, and then to follow her mother wherever she
went, conscious that in spite of the smiles on the motherly face, there
was a secret sorrow hid in the motherly heart at the flight of the
first bird from the nest.

As the younger girls stand together, giving the last touches to their
simple toilet, it may be a good time to tell of a few changes which
three years have wrought in their appearance, for all are looking their
best just now.

Jo's angles are much softened, she has learned to carry herself with
ease, if not grace.  The curly crop has lengthened into a thick coil,
more becoming to the small head atop of the tall figure.  There is a
fresh color in her brown cheeks, a soft shine in her eyes, and only
gentle words fall from her sharp tongue today.

Beth has grown slender, pale, and more quiet than ever.  The beautiful,
kind eyes are larger, and in them lies an expression that saddens one,
although it is not sad itself.  It is the shadow of pain which touches
the young face with such pathetic patience, but Beth seldom complains
and always speaks hopefully of 'being better soon'.

Amy is with truth considered 'the flower of the family', for at sixteen
she has the air and bearing of a full-grown woman, not beautiful, but
possessed of that indescribable charm called grace. One saw it in the
lines of her figure, the make and motion of her hands, the flow of her
dress, the droop of her hair, unconscious yet harmonious, and as
attractive to many as beauty itself.  Amy's nose still afflicted her,
for it never would grow Grecian, so did her mouth, being too wide, and
having a decided chin.  These offending features gave character to her
whole face, but she never could see it, and consoled herself with her
wonderfully fair complexion, keen blue eyes, and curls more golden and
abundant than ever.

All three wore suits of thin silver gray (their best gowns for the
summer), with blush roses in hair and bosom, and all three looked just
what they were, fresh-faced, happy-hearted girls, pausing a moment in
their busy lives to read with wistful eyes the sweetest chapter in the
romance of womanhood.

There were to be no ceremonious performances, everything was to be as
natural and homelike as possible, so when Aunt March arrived, she was
scandalized to see the bride come running to welcome and lead her in,
to find the bridegroom fastening up a garland that had fallen down, and
to catch a glimpse of the paternal minister marching upstairs with a
grave countenance and a wine bottle under each arm.

"Upon my word, here's a state of things!" cried the old lady, taking
the seat of honor prepared for her, and settling the folds of her
lavender moire with a great rustle.  "You oughtn't to be seen till the
last minute, child."

"I'm not a show, Aunty, and no one is coming to stare at me, to
criticize my dress, or count the cost of my luncheon.  I'm too happy to
care what anyone says or thinks, and I'm going to have my little
wedding just as I like it.  John, dear, here's your hammer."  And away
went Meg to help 'that man' in his highly improper employment.

Mr. Brooke didn't even say, "Thank you," but as he stooped for the
unromantic tool, he kissed his little bride behind the folding door,
with a look that made Aunt March whisk out her pocket handkerchief with
a sudden dew in her sharp old eyes.

A crash, a cry, and a laugh from Laurie, accompanied by the indecorous
exclamation, "Jupiter Ammon!  Jo's upset the cake again!" caused a
momentary flurry, which was hardly over when a flock of cousins
arrived, and 'the party came in', as Beth used to say when a child.

"Don't let that young giant come near me, he worries me worse than
mosquitoes," whispered the old lady to Amy, as the rooms filled and
Laurie's black head towered above the rest.

"He has promised to be very good today, and he can be perfectly elegant
if he likes," returned Amy, and gliding away to warn Hercules to beware
of the dragon, which warning caused him to haunt the old lady with a
devotion that nearly distracted her.

There was no bridal procession, but a sudden silence fell upon the room
as Mr. March and the young couple took their places under the green
arch.  Mother and sisters gathered close, as if loath to give Meg up.
The fatherly voice broke more than once, which only seemed to make the
service more beautiful and solemn.  The bridegroom's hand trembled
visibly, and no one heard his replies.  But Meg looked straight up in
her husband's eyes, and said, "I will!" with such tender trust in her
own face and voice that her mother's heart rejoiced and Aunt March
sniffed audibly.

Jo did not cry, though she was very near it once, and was only saved
from a demonstration by the consciousness that Laurie was staring
fixedly at her, with a comical mixture of merriment and emotion in his
wicked black eyes.  Beth kept her face hidden on her mother's shoulder,
but Amy stood like a graceful statue, with a most becoming ray of
sunshine touching her white forehead and the flower in her hair.

It wasn't at all the thing, I'm afraid, but the minute she was fairly
married, Meg cried, "The first kiss for Marmee!" and turning, gave it
with her heart on her lips.  During the next fifteen minutes she looked
more like a rose than ever, for everyone availed themselves of their
privileges to the fullest extent, from Mr. Laurence to old Hannah, who,
adorned with a headdress fearfully and wonderfully made, fell upon her
in the hall, crying with a sob and a chuckle, "Bless you, deary, a
hundred times!  The cake ain't hurt a mite, and everything looks
lovely."

Everybody cleared up after that, and said something brilliant, or tried
to, which did just as well, for laughter is ready when hearts are
light.  There was no display of gifts, for they were already in the
little house, nor was there an elaborate breakfast, but a plentiful
lunch of cake and fruit, dressed with flowers. Mr. Laurence and Aunt
March shrugged and smiled at one another when water, lemonade, and
coffee were found to be to only sorts of nectar which the three Hebes
carried round.  No one said anything, till Laurie, who insisted on
serving the bride, appeared before her, with a loaded salver in his
hand and a puzzled expression on his face.

"Has Jo smashed all the bottles by accident?" he whispered, "or am I
merely laboring under a delusion that I saw some lying about loose this
morning?"

"No, your grandfather kindly offered us his best, and Aunt March
actually sent some, but Father put away a little for Beth, and
dispatched the rest to the Soldier's Home.  You know he thinks that
wine should be used only in illness, and Mother says that neither she
nor her daughters will ever offer it to any young man under her roof."

Meg spoke seriously and expected to see Laurie frown or laugh, but he
did neither, for after a quick look at her, he said, in his impetuous
way, "I like that!  For I've seen enough harm done to wish other women
would think as you do."

"You are not made wise by experience, I hope?" and there was an anxious
accent in Meg's voice.

"No.  I give you my word for it.  Don't think too well of me, either,
this is not one of my temptations.  Being brought up where wine is as
common as water and almost as harmless, I don't care for it, but when a
pretty girl offers it, one doesn't like to refuse, you see."

"But you will, for the sake of others, if not for your own. Come,
Laurie, promise, and give me one more reason to call this the happiest
day of my life."

A demand so sudden and so serious made the young man hesitate a moment,
for ridicule is often harder to bear than self-denial. Meg knew that if
he gave the promise he would keep it at all costs, and feeling her
power, used it as a woman may for her friend's good. She did not speak,
but she looked up at him with a face made very eloquent by happiness,
and a smile which said, "No one can refuse me anything today."

Laurie certainly could not, and with an answering smile, he gave her
his hand, saying heartily, "I promise, Mrs. Brooke!"

"I thank you, very, very much."

"And I drink 'long life to your resolution', Teddy," cried Jo,
baptizing him with a splash of lemonade, as she waved her glass and
beamed approvingly upon him.

So the toast was drunk, the pledge made and loyally kept in spite of
many temptations, for with instinctive wisdom, the girls seized a happy
moment to do their friend a service, for which he thanked them all his
life.

After lunch, people strolled about, by twos and threes, through the
house and garden, enjoying the sunshine without and within.  Meg and
John happened to be standing together in the middle of the grass plot,
when Laurie was seized with an inspiration which put the finishing
touch to this unfashionable wedding.

"All the married people take hands and dance round the new-made husband
and wife, as the Germans do, while we bachelors and spinsters prance in
couples outside!" cried Laurie, promenading down the path with Amy,
with such infectious spirit and skill that everyone else followed their
example without a murmur.  Mr. and Mrs. March, Aunt and Uncle Carrol
began it, others rapidly joined in, even Sallie Moffat, after a
moment's hesitation, threw her train over her arm and whisked Ned into
the ring.  But the crowning joke was Mr. Laurence and Aunt March, for
when the stately old gentleman chasseed solemnly up to the old lady,
she just tucked her cane under her arm, and hopped briskly away to join
hands with the rest and dance about the bridal pair, while the young
folks pervaded the garden like butterflies on a midsummer day.

Want of breath brought the impromptu ball to a close, and then people
began to go.

"I wish you well, my dear, I heartily wish you well, but I think you'll
be sorry for it," said Aunt March to Meg, adding to the bridegroom, as
he led her to the carriage, "You've got a treasure, young man, see that
you deserve it."

"That is the prettiest wedding I've been to for an age, Ned, and I
don't see why, for there wasn't a bit of style about it," observed Mrs.
Moffat to her husband, as they drove away.

"Laurie, my lad, if you ever want to indulge in this sort of thing, get
one of those little girls to help you, and I shall be perfectly
satisfied," said Mr. Laurence, settling himself in his easy chair to
rest after the excitement of the morning.

"I'll do my best to gratify you, Sir," was Laurie's unusually dutiful
reply, as he carefully unpinned the posy Jo had put in his buttonhole.

The little house was not far away, and the only bridal journey Meg had
was the quiet walk with John from the old home to the new. When she
came down, looking like a pretty Quakeress in her dove-colored suit and
straw bonnet tied with white, they all gathered about her to say
'good-by', as tenderly as if she had been going to make the grand tour.

"Don't feel that I am separated from you, Marmee dear, or that I love
you any the less for loving John so much," she said, clinging to her
mother, with full eyes for a moment.  "I shall come every day, Father,
and expect to keep my old place in all your hearts, though I am
married.  Beth is going to be with me a great deal, and the other girls
will drop in now and then to laugh at my housekeeping struggles. Thank
you all for my happy wedding day.  Good-by, good-by!"

They stood watching her, with faces full of love and hope and tender
pride as she walked away, leaning on her husband's arm, with her hands
full of flowers and the June sunshine brightening her happy face--and
so Meg's married life began.



CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

ARTISTIC ATTEMPTS

It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and
genius, especially ambitious young men and women.  Amy was learning
this distinction through much tribulation, for mistaking enthusiasm for
inspiration, she attempted every branch of art with youthful audacity.
For a long time there was a lull in the 'mud-pie' business, and she
devoted herself to the finest pen-and-ink drawing, in which she showed
such taste and skill that her graceful handiwork proved both pleasant
and profitable.  But over-strained eyes caused pen and ink to be laid
aside for a bold attempt at poker-sketching. While this attack lasted,
the family lived in constant fear of a conflagration, for the odor of
burning wood pervaded the house at all hours, smoke issued from attic
and shed with alarming frequency, red-hot pokers lay about
promiscuously, and Hannah never went to bed without a pail of water and
the dinner bell at her door in case of fire.  Raphael's face was found
boldly executed on the underside of the moulding board, and Bacchus on
the head of a beer barrel.  A chanting cherub adorned the cover of the
sugar bucket, and attempts to portray Romeo and Juliet supplied
kindling for some time.

From fire to oil was a natural transition for burned fingers, and Amy
fell to painting with undiminished ardor.  An artist friend fitted her
out with his castoff palettes, brushes, and colors, and she daubed
away, producing pastoral and marine views such as were never seen on
land or sea.  Her monstrosities in the way of cattle would have taken
prizes at an agricultural fair, and the perilous pitching of her
vessels would have produced seasickness in the most nautical observer,
if the utter disregard to all known rules of shipbuilding and rigging
had not convulsed him with laughter at the first glance.  Swarthy boys
and dark-eyed Madonnas, staring at you from one corner of the studio,
suggested Murillo; oily brown shadows of faces with a lurid streak in
the wrong place, meant Rembrandt; buxom ladies and dropiscal infants,
Rubens; and Turner appeared in tempests of blue thunder, orange
lightning, brown rain, and purple clouds, with a tomato-colored splash
in the middle, which might be the sun or a bouy, a sailor's shirt or a
king's robe, as the spectator pleased.

Charcoal portraits came next, and the entire family hung in a row,
looking as wild and crocky as if just evoked from a coalbin. Softened
into crayon sketches, they did better, for the likenesses were good,
and Amy's hair, Jo's nose, Meg's mouth, and Laurie's eyes were
pronounced 'wonderfully fine'.  A return to clay and plaster followed,
and ghostly casts of her acquaintances haunted corners of the house, or
tumbled off closet shelves onto people's heads.  Children were enticed
in as models, till their incoherent accounts of her mysterious doings
caused Miss Amy to be regarded in the light of a young ogress.  Her
efforts in this line, however, were brought to an abrupt close by an
untoward accident, which quenched her ardor.  Other models failing her
for a time, she undertook to cast her own pretty foot, and the family
were one day alarmed by an unearthly bumping and screaming and running
to the rescue, found the young enthusiast hopping wildly about the shed
with her foot held fast in a pan full of plaster, which had hardened
with unexpected rapidity.  With much difficulty and some danger she was
dug out, for Jo was so overcome with laughter while she excavated that
her knife went too far, cut the poor foot, and left a lasting memorial
of one artistic attempt, at least.

After this Amy subsided, till a mania for sketching from nature set her
to haunting river, field, and wood, for picturesque studies, and
sighing for ruins to copy.  She caught endless colds sitting on damp
grass to book 'a delicious bit', composed of a stone, a stump, one
mushroom, and a broken mullein stalk, or 'a heavenly mass of clouds',
that looked like a choice display of featherbeds when done. She
sacrificed her complexion floating on the river in the midsummer sun to
study light and shade, and got a wrinkle over her nose trying after
'points of sight', or whatever the squint-and-string performance is
called.

If 'genius is eternal patience', as Michelangelo affirms, Amy had some
claim to the divine attribute, for she persevered in spite of all
obstacles, failures, and discouragements, firmly believing that in time
she should do something worthy to be called 'high art'.

She was learning, doing, and enjoying other things, meanwhile, for she
had resolved to be an attractive and accomplished woman, even if she
never became a great artist.  Here she succeeded better, for she was
one of those happily created beings who please without effort, make
friends everywhere, and take life so gracefully and easily that less
fortunate souls are tempted to believe that such are born under a lucky
star.  Everybody liked her, for among her good gifts was tact.  She had
an instinctive sense of what was pleasing and proper, always said the
right thing to the right person, did just what suited the time and
place, and was so self-possessed that her sisters used to say, "If Amy
went to court without any rehearsal beforehand, she'd know exactly what
to do."

One of her weaknesses was a desire to move in 'our best society',
without being quite sure what the best really was.  Money, position,
fashionable accomplishments, and elegant manners were most desirable
things in her eyes, and she liked to associate with those who possessed
them, often mistaking the false for the true, and admiring what was not
admirable.  Never forgetting that by birth she was a gentlewoman, she
cultivated her aristocratic tastes and feelings, so that when the
opportunity came she might be ready to take the place from which
poverty now excluded her.

"My lady," as her friends called her, sincerely desired to be a genuine
lady, and was so at heart, but had yet to learn that money cannot buy
refinement of nature, that rank does not always confer nobility, and
that true breeding makes itself felt in spite of external drawbacks.

"I want to ask a favor of you, Mamma," Amy said, coming in with an
important air one day.

"Well, little girl, what is it?" replied her mother, in whose eyes the
stately young lady still remained 'the baby'.

"Our drawing class breaks up next week, and before the girls separate
for the summer, I want to ask them out here for a day.  They are wild
to see the river, sketch the broken bridge, and copy some of the things
they admire in my book.  They have been very kind to me in many ways,
and I am grateful, for they are all rich and I know I am poor, yet they
never made any difference."

"Why should they?" and Mrs. March put the question with what the girls
called her 'Maria Theresa air'.

"You know as well as I that it does make a difference with nearly
everyone, so don't ruffle up like a dear, motherly hen, when your
chickens get pecked by smarter birds.  The ugly duckling turned out a
swan, you know."  and Amy smiled without bitterness, for she possessed
a happy temper and hopeful spirit.

Mrs. March laughed, and smoothed down her maternal pride as she asked,
"Well, my swan, what is your plan?"

"I should like to ask the girls out to lunch next week, to take them
for a drive to the places they want to see, a row on the river,
perhaps, and make a little artistic fete for them."

"That looks feasible.  What do you want for lunch?  Cake, sandwiches,
fruit, and coffee will be all that is necessary, I suppose?"

"Oh, dear, no!  We must have cold tongue and chicken, French chocolate
and ice cream, besides.  The girls are used to such things, and I want
my lunch to be proper and elegant, though I do work for my living."

"How many young ladies are there?" asked her mother, beginning to look
sober.

"Twelve or fourteen in the class, but I dare say they won't all come."

"Bless me, child, you will have to charter an omnibus to carry them
about."

"Why, Mother, how can you think of such a thing?  Not more than six or
eight will probably come, so I shall hire a beach wagon and borrow Mr.
Laurence's cherry-bounce." (Hannah's pronunciation of char-a-banc.)

"All of this will be expensive, Amy."

"Not very.  I've calculated the cost, and I'll pay for it myself."

"Don't you think, dear, that as these girls are used to such things,
and the best we can do will be nothing new, that some simpler plan
would be pleasanter to them, as a change if nothing more, and much
better for us than buying or borrowing what we don't need, and
attempting a style not in keeping with our circumstances?"

"If I can't have it as I like, I don't care to have it at all. I know
that I can carry it out perfectly well, if you and the girls will help
a little, and I don't see why I can't if I'm willing to pay for it,"
said Amy, with the decision which opposition was apt to change into
obstinacy.

Mrs. March knew that experience was an excellent teacher, and when it
was possible she left her children to learn alone the lessons which she
would gladly have made easier, if they had not objected to taking
advice as much as they did salts and senna.

"Very well, Amy, if your heart is set upon it, and you see your way
through without too great an outlay of money, time, and temper, I'll
say no more.  Talk it over with the girls, and whichever way you
decide, I'll do my best to help you."

"Thanks, Mother, you are always so kind." and away went Amy to lay her
plan before her sisters.

Meg agreed at once, and promised her aid, gladly offering anything she
possessed, from her little house itself to her very best saltspoons.
But Jo frowned upon the whole project and would have nothing to do with
it at first.

"Why in the world should you spend your money, worry your family, and
turn the house upside down for a parcel of girls who don't care a
sixpence for you?  I thought you had too much pride and sense to
truckle to any mortal woman just because she wears French boots and
rides in a coupe," said Jo, who, being called from the tragic climax of
her novel, was not in the best mood for social enterprises.

"I don't truckle, and I hate being patronized as much as you do!"
returned Amy indignantly, for the two still jangled when such questions
arose. "The girls do care for me, and I for them, and there's a great
deal of kindness and sense and talent among them, in spite of what you
call fashionable nonsense.  You don't care to make people like you, to
go into good society, and cultivate your manners and tastes.  I do, and
I mean to make the most of every chance that comes.  You can go through
the world with your elbows out and your nose in the air, and call it
independence, if you like.  That's not my way."

When Amy had whetted her tongue and freed her mind she usually got the
best of it, for she seldom failed to have common sense on her side,
while Jo carried her love of liberty and hate of conventionalities to
such an unlimited extent that she naturally found herself worsted in an
argument.  Amy's definition of Jo's idea of independence was such a
good hit that both burst out laughing, and the discussion took a more
amiable turn.  Much against her will, Jo at length consented to
sacrifice a day to Mrs. Grundy, and help her sister through what she
regarded as 'a nonsensical business'.

The invitations were sent, nearly all accepted, and the following
Monday was set apart for the grand event.  Hannah was out of humor
because her week's work was deranged, and prophesied that "ef the
washin' and ironin' warn't done reg'lar, nothin' would go well
anywheres".  This hitch in the mainspring of the domestic machinery had
a bad effect upon the whole concern, but Amy's motto was 'Nil
desperandum', and having made up her mind what to do, she proceeded to
do it in spite of all obstacles.  To begin with, Hannah's cooking
didn't turn out well.  The chicken was tough, the tongue too salty, and
the chocolate wouldn't froth properly.  Then the cake and ice cost more
than Amy expected, so did the wagon, and various other expenses, which
seemed trifling at the outset, counted up rather alarmingly afterward.
Beth got a cold and took to her bed.  Meg had an unusual number of
callers to keep her at home, and Jo was in such a divided state of mind
that her breakages, accidents, and mistakes were uncommonly numerous,
serious, and trying.

If it was not fair on Monday, the young ladies were to come on Tuesday,
an arrangement which aggravated Jo and Hannah to the last degree.  On
Monday morning the weather was in that undecided state which is more
exasperating than a steady pour.  It drizzled a little, shone a little,
blew a little, and didn't make up its mind till it was too late for
anyone else to make up theirs.  Amy was up at dawn, hustling people out
of their beds and through their breakfasts, that the house might be got
in order.  The parlor struck her as looking uncommonly shabby, but
without stopping to sigh for what she had not, she skillfully made the
best of what she had, arranging chairs over the worn places in the
carpet, covering stains on the walls with homemade statuary, which gave
an artistic air to the room, as did the lovely vases of flowers Jo
scattered about.

The lunch looked charming, and as she surveyed it, she sincerely hoped
it would taste well, and that the borrowed glass, china, and silver
would get safely home again.  The carriages were promised, Meg and
Mother were all ready to do the honors, Beth was able to help Hannah
behind the scenes, Jo had engaged to be as lively and amiable as an
absent mind, and aching head, and a very decided disapproval of
everybody and everything would allow, and as she wearily dressed, Amy
cheered herself with anticipations of the happy moment when, lunch
safely over, she should drive away with her friends for an afternoon of
artistic delights, for the 'cherry bounce' and the broken bridge were
her strong points.

Then came the hours of suspense, during which she vibrated from parlor
to porch, while public opinion varied like the weathercock.  A smart
shower at eleven had evidently quenched the enthusiasm of the young
ladies who were to arrive at twelve, for nobody came, and at two the
exhausted family sat down in a blaze of sunshine to consume the
perishable portions of the feast, that nothing might be lost.

"No doubt about the weather today, they will certainly come, so we must
fly round and be ready for them," said Amy, as the sun woke her next
morning.  She spoke briskly, but in her secret soul she wished she had
said nothing about Tuesday, for her interest like her cake was getting
a little stale.

"I can't get any lobsters, so you will have to do without salad today,"
said Mr. March, coming in half an hour later, with an expression of
placid despair.

"Use the chicken then, the toughness won't matter in a salad," advised
his wife.

"Hannah left it on the kitchen table a minute, and the kittens got at
it.  I'm very sorry, Amy," added Beth, who was still a patroness of
cats.

"Then I must have a lobster, for tongue alone won't do," said Amy
decidedly.

"Shall I rush into town and demand one?" asked Jo, with the magnanimity
of a martyr.

"You'd come bringing it home under your arm without any paper, just to
try me.  I'll go myself," answered Amy, whose temper was beginning to
fail.

Shrouded in a thick veil and armed with a genteel traveling basket, she
departed, feeling that a cool drive would soothe her ruffled spirit and
fit her for the labors of the day.  After some delay, the object of her
desire was procured, likewise a bottle of dressing to prevent further
loss of time at home, and off she drove again, well pleased with her
own forethought.

As the omnibus contained only one other passenger, a sleepy old lady,
Amy pocketed her veil and beguiled the tedium of the way by trying to
find out where all her money had gone to.  So busy was she with her
card full of refractory figures that she did not observe a newcomer,
who entered without stopping the vehicle, till a masculine voice said,
"Good morning, Miss March," and, looking up, she beheld one of Laurie's
most elegant college friends.  Fervently hoping that he would get out
before she did, Amy utterly ignored the basket at her feet, and
congratulating herself that she had on her new traveling dress,
returned the young man's greeting with her usual suavity and spirit.

They got on excellently, for Amy's chief care was soon set at rest by
learning that the gentleman would leave first, and she was chatting
away in a peculiarly lofty strain, when the old lady got out. In
stumbling to the door, she upset the basket, and--oh horror!--the
lobster, in all its vulgar size and brilliancy, was revealed to the
highborn eyes of a Tudor!

"By Jove, she's forgotten her dinner!" cried the unconscious youth,
poking the scarlet monster into its place with his cane, and preparing
to hand out the basket after the old lady.

"Please don't--it's--it's mine," murmured Amy, with a face nearly as
red as her fish.

"Oh, really, I beg pardon.  It's an uncommonly fine one, isn't it?"
said Tudor, with great presence of mind, and an air of sober interest
that did credit to his breeding.

Amy recovered herself in a breath, set her basket boldly on the seat,
and said, laughing, "Don't you wish you were to have some of the salad
he's going to make, and to see the charming young ladies who are to eat
it?"

Now that was tact, for two of the ruling foibles of the masculine mind
were touched.  The lobster was instantly surrounded by a halo of
pleasing reminiscences, and curiosity about 'the charming young ladies'
diverted his mind from the comical mishap.

"I suppose he'll laugh and joke over it with Laurie, but I shan't see
them, that's a comfort," thought Amy, as Tudor bowed and departed.

She did not mention this meeting at home (though she discovered that,
thanks to the upset, her new dress was much damaged by the rivulets of
dressing that meandered down the skirt), but went through with the
preparations which now seemed more irksome than before, and at twelve
o'clock all was ready again.  Feeling that the neighbors were
interested in her movements, she wished to efface the memory of
yesterday's failure by a grand success today, so she ordered the
'cherry bounce', and drove away in state to meet and escort her guests
to the banquet.

"There's the rumble, they're coming!  I'll go onto the porch and meet
them.  It looks hospitable, and I want the poor child to have a good
time after all her trouble," said Mrs. March, suiting the action to the
word.  But after one glance, she retired, with an indescribable
expression, for looking quite lost in the big carriage, sat Amy and one
young lady.

"Run, Beth, and help Hannah clear half the things off the table. It
will be too absurd to put a luncheon for twelve before a single girl,"
cried Jo, hurrying away to the lower regions, too excited to stop even
for a laugh.

In came Amy, quite calm and delightfully cordial to the one guest who
had kept her promise.  The rest of the family, being of a dramatic
turn, played their parts equally well, and Miss Eliott found them a
most hilarious set, for it was impossible to control entirely the
merriment which possessed them.  The remodeled lunch being gaily
partaken of, the studio and garden visited, and art discussed with
enthusiasm, Amy ordered a buggy (alas for the elegant cherry-bounce),
and drove her friend quietly about the neighborhood till sunset, when
'the party went out'.

As she came walking in, looking very tired but as composed as ever, she
observed that every vestige of the unfortunate fete had disappeared,
except a suspicious pucker about the corners of Jo's mouth.

"You've had a loverly afternoon for your drive, dear," said her mother,
as respectfully as if the whole twelve had come.

"Miss Eliott is a very sweet girl, and seemed to enjoy herself, I
thought," observed Beth, with unusual warmth.

"Could you spare me some of your cake?  I really need some, I have so
much company, and I can't make such delicious stuff as yours," asked
Meg soberly.

"Take it all.  I'm the only one here who likes sweet things, and it
will mold before I can dispose of it," answered Amy, thinking with a
sigh of the generous store she had laid in for such an end as this.

"It's a pity Laurie isn't here to help us," began Jo, as they sat down
to ice cream and salad for the second time in two days.

A warning look from her mother checked any further remarks, and the
whole family ate in heroic silence, till Mr. March mildly observed,
"salad was one of the favorite dishes of the ancients, and Evelyn..."
Here a general explosion of laughter cut short the 'history of salads',
to the great surprise of the learned gentleman.

"Bundle everything into a basket and send it to the Hummels.  Germans
like messes.  I'm sick of the sight of this, and there's no reason you
should all die of a surfeit because I've been a fool," cried Amy,
wiping her eyes.

"I thought I should have died when I saw you two girls rattling about
in the what-you-call-it, like two little kernels in a very big
nutshell, and Mother waiting in state to receive the throng," sighed
Jo, quite spent with laughter.

"I'm very sorry you were disappointed, dear, but we all did our best to
satisfy you," said Mrs. March, in a tone full of motherly regret.

"I am satisfied.  I've done what I undertook, and it's not my fault
that it failed.  I comfort myself with that," said Amy with a little
quiver in her voice.  "I thank you all very much for helping me, and
I'll thank you still more if you won't allude to it for a month, at
least."

No one did for several months, but the word 'fete' always produced a
general smile, and Laurie's birthday gift to Amy was a tiny coral
lobster in the shape of a charm for her watch guard.



CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

LITERARY LESSONS

Fortune suddenly smiled upon Jo, and dropped a good luck penny in her
path.  Not a golden penny, exactly, but I doubt if half a million would
have given more real happiness then did the little sum that came to her
in this wise.

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her
scribbling suit, and 'fall into a vortex', as she expressed it, writing
away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was
finished she could find no peace.  Her 'scribbling suit' consisted of a
black woolen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a
cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which
she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action.  This cap
was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these
periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads
semi-occasionally to ask, with interest, "Does genius burn, Jo?" They
did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an
observation of the cap, and judged accordingly.  If this expressive
article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that
hard work was going on, in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly
askew, and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off,
and cast upon the floor.  At such times the intruder silently withdrew,
and not until the red bow was seen gaily erect upon the gifted brow,
did anyone dare address Jo.

She did not think herself a genius by any means, but when the writing
fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a
blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat
safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real
and dear to her as any in the flesh.  Sleep forsook her eyes, meals
stood untasted, day and night were all too short to enjoy the happiness
which blessed her only at such times, and made these hours worth
living, even if they bore no other fruit.  The divine afflatus usually
lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her 'vortex', hungry,
sleepy, cross, or despondent.

She was just recovering from one of these attacks when she was
prevailed upon to escort Miss Crocker to a lecture, and in return for
her virtue was rewarded with a new idea.  It was a People's Course, the
lecture on the Pyramids, and Jo rather wondered at the choice of such a
subject for such an audience, but took it for granted that some great
social evil would be remedied or some great want supplied by unfolding
the glories of the Pharaohs to an audience whose thoughts were busy
with the price of coal and flour, and whose lives were spent in trying
to solve harder riddles than that of the Sphinx.

They were early, and while Miss Crocker set the heel of her stocking,
Jo amused herself by examining the faces of the people who occupied the
seat with them.  On her left were two matrons, with massive foreheads
and bonnets to match, discussing Women's Rights and making tatting.
Beyond sat a pair of humble lovers, artlessly holding each other by the
hand, a somber spinster eating peppermints out of a paper bag, and an
old gentleman taking his preparatory nap behind a yellow bandanna.  On
her right, her only neighbor was a studious looking lad absorbed in a
newspaper.

It was a pictorial sheet, and Jo examined the work of art nearest her,
idly wondering what fortuitous concatenation of circumstances needed
the melodramatic illustration of an Indian in full war costume,
tumbling over a precipice with a wolf at his throat, while two
infuriated young gentlemen, with unnaturally small feet and big eyes,
were stabbing each other close by, and a disheveled female was flying
away in the background with her mouth wide open.  Pausing to turn a
page, the lad saw her looking and, with boyish good nature offered half
his paper, saying bluntly, "want to read it? That's a first-rate story."

Jo accepted it with a smile, for she had never outgrown her liking for
lads, and soon found herself involved in the usual labyrinth of love,
mystery, and murder, for the story belonged to that class of light
literature in which the passions have a holiday, and when the author's
invention fails, a grand catastrophe clears the stage of one half the
dramatis personae, leaving the other half to exult over their downfall.

"Prime, isn't it?" asked the boy, as her eye went down the last
paragraph of her portion.

"I think you and I could do as well as that if we tried," returned Jo,
amused at his admiration of the trash.

"I should think I was a pretty lucky chap if I could.  She makes a good
living out of such stories, they say." and he pointed to the name of
Mrs. S.L.A.N.G.  Northbury, under the title of the tale.

"Do you know her?" asked Jo, with sudden interest.

"No, but I read all her pieces, and I know a fellow who works in the
office where this paper is printed."

"Do you say she makes a good living out of stories like this?" and Jo
looked more respectfully at the agitated group and thickly sprinkled
exclamation points that adorned the page.

"Guess she does!  She knows just what folks like, and gets paid well
for writing it."

Here the lecture began, but Jo heard very little of it, for while
Professor Sands was prosing away about Belzoni, Cheops, scarabei, and
hieroglyphics, she was covertly taking down the address of the paper,
and boldly resolving to try for the hundred-dollar prize offered in its
columns for a sensational story.  By the time the lecture ended and the
audience awoke, she had built up a splendid fortune for herself (not
the first founded on paper), and was already deep in the concoction of
her story, being unable to decide whether the duel should come before
the elopement or after the murder.

She said nothing of her plan at home, but fell to work next day, much
to the disquiet of her mother, who always looked a little anxious when
'genius took to burning'.  Jo had never tried this style before,
contenting herself with very mild romances for _The Spread Eagle_.  Her
experience and miscellaneous reading were of service now, for they gave
her some idea of dramatic effect, and supplied plot, language, and
costumes.  Her story was as full of desperation and despair as her
limited acquaintance with those uncomfortable emotions enabled her to
make it, and having located it in Lisbon, she wound up with an
earthquake, as a striking and appropriate denouement.  The manuscript
was privately dispatched, accompanied by a note, modestly saying that
if the tale didn't get the prize, which the writer hardly dared expect,
she would be very glad to receive any sum it might be considered worth.

Six weeks is a long time to wait, and a still longer time for a girl to
keep a secret, but Jo did both, and was just beginning to give up all
hope of ever seeing her manuscript again, when a letter arrived which
almost took her breath away, for on opening it, a check for a hundred
dollars fell into her lap.  For a minute she stared at it as if it had
been a snake, then she read her letter and began to cry.  If the
amiable gentleman who wrote that kindly note could have known what
intense happiness he was giving a fellow creature, I think he would
devote his leisure hours, if he has any, to that amusement, for Jo
valued the letter more than the money, because it was encouraging, and
after years of effort it was so pleasant to find that she had learned
to do something, though it was only to write a sensation story.

A prouder young woman was seldom seen than she, when, having composed
herself, she electrified the family by appearing before them with the
letter in one hand, the check in the other, announcing that she had won
the prize.  Of course there was a great jubilee, and when the story
came everyone read and praised it, though after her father had told her
that the language was good, the romance fresh and hearty, and the
tragedy quite thrilling, he shook his head, and said in his unworldly
way...

"You can do better than this, Jo.  Aim at the highest, and never mind
the money."

"I think the money is the best part of it.  What will you do with such
a fortune?" asked Amy, regarding the magic slip of paper with a
reverential eye.

"Send Beth and Mother to the seaside for a month or two," answered Jo
promptly.

To the seaside they went, after much discussion, and though Beth didn't
come home as plump and rosy as could be desired, she was much better,
while Mrs. March declared she felt ten years younger.  So Jo was
satisfied with the investment of her prize money, and fell to work with
a cheery spirit, bent on earning more of those delightful checks. She
did earn several that year, and began to feel herself a power in the
house, for by the magic of a pen, her 'rubbish' turned into comforts
for them all.  The Duke's Daughter paid the butcher's bill, A Phantom
Hand put down a new carpet, and the Curse of the Coventrys proved the
blessing of the Marches in the way of groceries and gowns.

Wealth is certainly a most desirable thing, but poverty has its sunny
side, and one of the sweet uses of adversity is the genuine
satisfaction which comes from hearty work of head or hand, and to the
inspiration of necessity, we owe half the wise, beautiful, and useful
blessings of the world.  Jo enjoyed a taste of this satisfaction, and
ceased to envy richer girls, taking great comfort in the knowledge that
she could supply her own wants, and need ask no one for a penny.

Little notice was taken of her stories, but they found a market, and
encouraged by this fact, she resolved to make a bold stroke for fame
and fortune.  Having copied her novel for the fourth time, read it to
all her confidential friends, and submitted it with fear and trembling
to three publishers, she at last disposed of it, on condition that she
would cut it down one third, and omit all the parts which she
particularly admired.

"Now I must either bundle it back in to my tin kitchen to mold, pay for
printing it myself, or chop it up to suit purchasers and get what I can
for it.  Fame is a very good thing to have in the house, but cash is
more convenient, so I wish to take the sense of the meeting on this
important subject," said Jo, calling a family council.

"Don't spoil your book, my girl, for there is more in it than you know,
and the idea is well worked out.  Let it wait and ripen," was her
father's advice, and he practiced what he preached, having waited
patiently thirty years for fruit of his own to ripen, and being in no
haste to gather it even now when it was sweet and mellow.

"It seems to me that Jo will profit more by taking the trial than by
waiting," said Mrs. March.  "Criticism is the best test of such work,
for it will show her both unsuspected merits and faults, and help her
to do better next time.  We are too partial, but the praise and blame
of outsiders will prove useful, even if she gets but little money."

"Yes," said Jo, knitting her brows, "that's just it.  I've been fussing
over the thing so long, I really don't know whether it's good, bad, or
indifferent.  It will be a great help to have cool, impartial persons
take a look at it, and tell me what they think of it."

"I wouldn't leave a word out of it.  You'll spoil it if you do, for the
interest of the story is more in the minds than in the actions of the
people, and it will be all a muddle if you don't explain as you go on,"
said Meg, who firmly believed that this book was the most remarkable
novel ever written.

"But Mr. Allen says, 'Leave out the explanations, make it brief and
dramatic, and let the characters tell the story'," interrupted Jo,
turning to the publisher's note.

"Do as he tells you.  He knows what will sell, and we don't. Make a
good, popular book, and get as much money as you can. By-and-by, when
you've got a name, you can afford to digress, and have philosophical
and metaphysical people in your novels," said Amy, who took a strictly
practical view of the subject.

"Well," said Jo, laughing, "if my people are 'philosophical and
metaphysical', it isn't my fault, for I know nothing about such things,
except what I hear father say, sometimes.  If I've got some of his wise
ideas jumbled up with my romance, so much the better for me.  Now,
Beth, what do you say?"

"I should so like to see it printed soon," was all Beth said, and
smiled in saying it.  But there was an unconscious emphasis on the last
word, and a wistful look in the eyes that never lost their childlike
candor, which chilled Jo's heart for a minute with a forboding fear,
and decided her to make her little venture 'soon'.

So, with Spartan firmness, the young authoress laid her first-born on
her table, and chopped it up as ruthlessly as any ogre.  In the hope of
pleasing everyone, she took everyone's advice, and like the old man and
his donkey in the fable suited nobody.

Her father liked the metaphysical streak which had unconsciously got
into it, so that was allowed to remain though she had her doubts about
it.  Her mother thought that there was a trifle too much description.
Out, therefore it came, and with it many necessary links in the story.
Meg admired the tragedy, so Jo piled up the agony to suit her, while
Amy objected to the fun, and, with the best intentions in life, Jo
quenched the spritly scenes which relieved the somber character of the
story.  Then, to complicate the ruin, she cut it down one third, and
confidingly sent the poor little romance, like a picked robin, out into
the big, busy world to try its fate.

Well, it was printed, and she got three hundred dollars for it,
likewise plenty of praise and blame, both so much greater than she
expected that she was thrown into a state of bewilderment from which it
took her some time to recover.

"You said, Mother, that criticism would help me.  But how can it, when
it's so contradictory that I don't know whether I've written a
promising book or broken all the ten commandments?" cried poor Jo,
turning over a heap of notices, the perusal of which filled her with
pride and joy one minute, wrath and dismay the next.  "This man says,
'An exquisite book, full of truth, beauty, and earnestness.' 'All is
sweet, pure, and healthy.'" continued the perplexed authoress.  "The
next, 'The theory of the book is bad, full of morbid fancies,
spiritualistic ideas, and unnatural characters.' Now, as I had no
theory of any kind, don't believe in Spiritualism, and copied my
characters from life, I don't see how this critic can be right.
Another says, 'It's one of the best American novels which has appeared
for years.' (I know better than that), and the next asserts that
'Though it is original, and written with great force and feeling, it is
a dangerous book.' 'Tisn't!  Some make fun of it, some overpraise, and
nearly all insist that I had a deep theory to expound, when I only
wrote it for the pleasure and the money.  I wish I'd printed the whole
or not at all, for I do hate to be so misjudged."

Her family and friends administered comfort and commendation liberally.
Yet it was a hard time for sensitive, high-spirited Jo, who meant so
well and had apparently done so ill.  But it did her good, for those
whose opinion had real value gave her the criticism which is an
author's best education, and when the first soreness was over, she
could laugh at her poor little book, yet believe in it still, and feel
herself the wiser and stronger for the buffeting she had received.

"Not being a genius, like Keats, it won't kill me," she said stoutly,
"and I've got the joke on my side, after all, for the parts that were
taken straight out of real life are denounced as impossible and absurd,
and the scenes that I made up out of my own silly head are pronounced
'charmingly natural, tender, and true'.  So I'll comfort myself with
that, and when I'm ready, I'll up again and take another."



CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

DOMESTIC EXPERIENCES

Like most other young matrons, Meg began her married life with the
determination to be a model housekeeper.  John should find home a
paradise, he should always see a smiling face, should fare sumptuously
every day, and never know the loss of a button.  She brought so much
love, energy, and cheerfulness to the work that she could not but
succeed, in spite of some obstacles.  Her paradise was not a tranquil
one, for the little woman fussed, was over-anxious to please, and
bustled about like a true Martha, cumbered with many cares.  She was
too tired, sometimes, even to smile, John grew dyspeptic after a course
of dainty dishes and ungratefully demanded plain fare.  As for buttons,
she soon learned to wonder where they went, to shake her head over the
carelessness of men, and to threaten to make him sew them on himself,
and see if his work would stand impatient and clumsy fingers any better
than hers.

They were very happy, even after they discovered that they couldn't
live on love alone.  John did not find Meg's beauty diminished, though
she beamed at him from behind the familiar coffee pot.  Nor did Meg
miss any of the romance from the daily parting, when her husband
followed up his kiss with the tender inquiry, "Shall I send some veal
or mutton for dinner, darling?" The little house ceased to be a
glorified bower, but it became a home, and the young couple soon felt
that it was a change for the better.  At first they played keep-house,
and frolicked over it like children.  Then John took steadily to
business, feeling the cares of the head of a family upon his shoulders,
and Meg laid by her cambric wrappers, put on a big apron, and fell to
work, as before said, with more energy than discretion.

While the cooking mania lasted she went through Mrs. Cornelius's
Receipt Book as if it were a mathematical exercise, working out the
problems with patience and care.  Sometimes her family were invited in
to help eat up a too bounteous feast of successes, or Lotty would be
privately dispatched with a batch of failures, which were to be
concealed from all eyes in the convenient stomachs of the little
Hummels.  An evening with John over the account books usually produced
a temporary lull in the culinary enthusiasm, and a frugal fit would
ensue, during which the poor man was put through a course of bread
pudding, hash, and warmed-over coffee, which tried his soul, although
he bore it with praiseworthy fortitude.  Before the golden mean was
found, however, Meg added to her domestic possessions what young
couples seldom get on long without, a family jar.

Fired with a housewifely wish to see her storeroom stocked with
homemade preserves, she undertook to put up her own currant jelly. John
was requested to order home a dozen or so of little pots and an extra
quantity of sugar, for their own currants were ripe and were to be
attended to at once.  As John firmly believed that 'my wife' was equal
to anything, and took a natural pride in her skill, he resolved that
she should be gratified, and their only crop of fruit laid by in a most
pleasing form for winter use.  Home came four dozen delightful little
pots, half a barrel of sugar, and a small boy to pick the currants for
her.  With her pretty hair tucked into a little cap, arms bared to the
elbow, and a checked apron which had a coquettish look in spite of the
bib, the young housewife fell to work, feeling no doubts about her
success, for hadn't she seen Hannah do it hundreds of times?  The array
of pots rather amazed her at first, but John was so fond of jelly, and
the nice little jars would look so well on the top shelf, that Meg
resolved to fill them all, and spent a long day picking, boiling,
straining, and fussing over her jelly.  She did her best, she asked
advice of Mrs. Cornelius, she racked her brain to remember what Hannah
did that she left undone, she reboiled, resugared, and restrained, but
that dreadful stuff wouldn't 'jell'.

She longed to run home, bib and all, and ask Mother to lend her a hand,
but John and she had agreed that they would never annoy anyone with
their private worries, experiments, or quarrels.  They had laughed over
that last word as if the idea it suggested was a most preposterous one,
but they had held to their resolve, and whenever they could get on
without help they did so, and no one interfered, for Mrs. March had
advised the plan.  So Meg wrestled alone with the refractory sweetmeats
all that hot summer day, and at five o'clock sat down in her
topsy-turvey kitchen, wrung her bedaubed hands, lifted up her voice and
wept.

Now, in the first flush of the new life, she had often said, "My
husband shall always feel free to bring a friend home whenever he
likes.  I shall always be prepared.  There shall be no flurry, no
scolding, no discomfort, but a neat house, a cheerful wife, and a good
dinner.  John, dear, never stop to ask my leave, invite whom you
please, and be sure of a welcome from me."

How charming that was, to be sure!  John quite glowed with pride to
hear her say it, and felt what a blessed thing it was to have a
superior wife.  But, although they had had company from time to time,
it never happened to be unexpected, and Meg had never had an
opportunity to distinguish herself till now.  It always happens so in
this vale of tears, there is an inevitability about such things which
we can only wonder at, deplore, and bear as we best can.

If John had not forgotten all about the jelly, it really would have
been unpardonable in him to choose that day, of all the days in the
year, to bring a friend home to dinner unexpectedly.  Congratulating
himself that a handsome repast had been ordered that morning, feeling
sure that it would be ready to the minute, and indulging in pleasant
anticipations of the charming effect it would produce, when his pretty
wife came running out to meet him, he escorted his friend to his
mansion, with the irrepressible satisfaction of a young host and
husband.

It is a world of disappointments, as John discovered when he reached
the Dovecote.  The front door usually stood hospitably open. Now it was
not only shut, but locked, and yesterday's mud still adorned the steps.
The parlor windows were closed and curtained, no picture of the pretty
wife sewing on the piazza, in white, with a distracting little bow in
her hair, or a bright-eyed hostess, smiling a shy welcome as she
greeted her guest.  Nothing of the sort, for not a soul appeared but a
sanginary-looking boy asleep under the current bushes.

"I'm afraid something has happened.  Step into the garden, Scott, while
I look up Mrs. Brooke," said John, alarmed at the silence and solitude.

Round the house he hurried, led by a pungent smell of burned sugar, and
Mr. Scott strolled after him, with a queer look on his face.  He paused
discreetly at a distance when Brooke disappeared, but he could both see
and hear, and being a bachelor, enjoyed the prospect mightily.

In the kitchen reigned confusion and despair.  One edition of jelly was
trickled from pot to pot, another lay upon the floor, and a third was
burning gaily on the stove.  Lotty, with Teutonic phlegm, was calmly
eating bread and currant wine, for the jelly was still in a hopelessly
liquid state, while Mrs. Brooke, with her apron over her head, sat
sobbing dismally.

"My dearest girl, what is the matter?" cried John, rushing in, with
awful visions of scalded hands, sudden news of affliction, and secret
consternation at the thought of the guest in the garden.

"Oh, John, I am so tired and hot and cross and worried!  I've been at
it till I'm all worn out.  Do come and help me or I shall die!" and the
exhausted housewife cast herself upon his breast, giving him a sweet
welcome in every sense of the word, for her pinafore had been baptized
at the same time as the floor.

"What worries you dear?  Has anything dreadful happened?" asked the
anxious John, tenderly kissing the crown of the little cap, which was
all askew.

"Yes," sobbed Meg despairingly.

"Tell me quick, then.  Don't cry.  I can bear anything better than
that.  Out with it, love."

"The... The jelly won't jell and I don't know what to do!"

John Brooke laughed then as he never dared to laugh afterward, and the
derisive Scott smiled involuntarily as he heard the hearty peal, which
put the finishing stroke to poor Meg's woe.

"Is that all?  Fling it out of the window, and don't bother any more
about it.  I'll buy you quarts if you want it, but for heaven's sake
don't have hysterics, for I've brought Jack Scott home to dinner,
and..."

John got no further, for Meg cast him off, and clasped her hands with a
tragic gesture as she fell into a chair, exclaiming in a tone of
mingled indignation, reproach, and dismay...

"A man to dinner, and everything in a mess!  John Brooke, how could you
do such a thing?"

"Hush, he's in the garden!  I forgot the confounded jelly, but it can't
be helped now," said John, surveying the prospect with an anxious eye.

"You ought to have sent word, or told me this morning, and you ought to
have remembered how busy I was," continued Meg petulantly, for even
turtledoves will peck when ruffled.

"I didn't know it this morning, and there was no time to send word, for
I met him on the way out.  I never thought of asking leave, when you
have always told me to do as I liked.  I never tried it before, and
hang me if I ever do again!" added John, with an aggrieved air.

"I should hope not!  Take him away at once.  I can't see him, and there
isn't any dinner."

"Well, I like that!  Where's the beef and vegetables I sent home, and
the pudding you promised?" cried John, rushing to the larder.

"I hadn't time to cook anything.  I meant to dine at Mother's. I'm
sorry, but I was so busy," and Meg's tears began again.

John was a mild man, but he was human, and after a long day's work to
come home tired, hungry, and hopeful, to find a chaotic house, an empty
table, and a cross wife was not exactly conducive to repose of mind or
manner.  He restrained himself however, and the little squall would
have blown over, but for one unlucky word.

"It's a scrape, I acknowledge, but if you will lend a hand, we'll pull
through and have a good time yet.  Don't cry, dear, but just exert
yourself a bit, and fix us up something to eat.  We're both as hungry
as hunters, so we shan't mind what it is.  Give us the cold meat, and
bread and cheese.  We won't ask for jelly."

He meant it to be a good-natured joke, but that one word sealed his
fate.  Meg thought it was too cruel to hint about her sad failure, and
the last atom of patience vanished as he spoke.

"You must get yourself out of the scrape as you can.  I'm too used up
to 'exert' myself for anyone.  It's like a man to propose a bone and
vulgar bread and cheese for company.  I won't have anything of the sort
in my house.  Take that Scott up to Mother's, and tell him I'm away,
sick, dead, anything.  I won't see him, and you two can laugh at me and
my jelly as much as you like.  You won't have anything else here."  and
having delivered her defiance all on one breath, Meg cast away her
pinafore and precipitately left the field to bemoan herself in her own
room.

What those two creatures did in her absence, she never knew, but Mr.
Scott was not taken 'up to Mother's', and when Meg descended, after
they had strolled away together, she found traces of a promiscuous
lunch which filled her with horror.  Lotty reported that they had eaten
"a much, and greatly laughed, and the master bid her throw away all the
sweet stuff, and hide the pots."

Meg longed to go and tell Mother, but a sense of shame at her own
short-comings, of loyalty to John, "who might be cruel, but nobody
should know it," restrained her, and after a summary cleaning up, she
dressed herself prettily, and sat down to wait for John to come and be
forgiven.

Unfortunately, John didn't come, not seeing the matter in that light.
He had carried it off as a good joke with Scott, excused his little
wife as well as he could, and played the host so hospitably that his
friend enjoyed the impromptu dinner, and promised to come again, but
John was angry, though he did not show it, he felt that Meg had
deserted him in his hour of need.  "It wasn't fair to tell a man to
bring folks home any time, with perfect freedom, and when he took you
at your word, to flame up and blame him, and leave him in the lurch, to
be laughed at or pitied.  No, by George, it wasn't! And Meg must know
it."

He had fumed inwardly during the feast, but when the flurry was over
and he strolled home after seeing Scott off, a milder mood came over
him.  "Poor little thing!  It was hard upon her when she tried so
heartily to please me.  She was wrong, of course, but then she was
young.  I must be patient and teach her."  He hoped she had not gone
home--he hated gossip and interference.  For a minute he was ruffled
again at the mere thought of it, and then the fear that Meg would cry
herself sick softened his heart, and sent him on at a quicker pace,
resolving to be calm and kind, but firm, quite firm, and show her where
she had failed in her duty to her spouse.

Meg likewise resolved to be 'calm and kind, but firm', and show him his
duty.  She longed to run to meet him, and beg pardon, and be kissed and
comforted, as she was sure of being, but, of course, she did nothing of
the sort, and when she saw John coming, began to hum quite naturally,
as she rocked and sewed, like a lady of leisure in her best parlor.

John was a little disappointed not to find a tender Niobe, but feeling
that his dignity demanded the first apology, he made none, only came
leisurely in and laid himself upon the sofa with the singularly
relevant remark, "We are going to have a new moon, my dear."

"I've no objection," was Meg's equally soothing remark.  A few other
topics of general interest were introduced by Mr. Brooke and
wet-blanketed by Mrs. Brooke, and conversation languished.  John went
to one window, unfolded his paper, and wrapped himself in it,
figuratively speaking.  Meg went to the other window, and sewed as if
new rosettes for slippers were among the necessaries of life. Neither
spoke.  Both looked quite 'calm and firm', and both felt desperately
uncomfortable.

"Oh, dear," thought Meg, "married life is very trying, and does need
infinite patience as well as love, as Mother says."  The word 'Mother'
suggested other maternal counsels given long ago, and received with
unbelieving protests.

"John is a good man, but he has his faults, and you must learn to see
and bear with them, remembering your own.  He is very decided, but
never will be obstinate, if you reason kindly, not oppose impatiently.
He is very accurate, and particular about the truth--a good trait,
though you call him 'fussy'. Never deceive him by look or word, Meg,
and he will give you the confidence you deserve, the support you need.
He has a temper, not like ours--one flash and then all over--but the
white, still anger that is seldom stirred, but once kindled is hard to
quench.  Be careful, be very careful, not to wake his anger against
yourself, for peace and happiness depend on keeping his respect.  Watch
yourself, be the first to ask pardon if you both err, and guard against
the little piques, misunderstandings, and hasty words that often pave
the way for bitter sorrow and regret."

These words came back to Meg, as she sat sewing in the sunset,
especially the last.  This was the first serious disagreement, her own
hasty speeches sounded both silly and unkind, as she recalled them, her
own anger looked childish now, and thoughts of poor John coming home to
such a scene quite melted her heart.  She glanced at him with tears in
her eyes, but he did not see them.  She put down her work and got up,
thinking, "I will be the first to say, 'Forgive me'", but he did not
seem to hear her.  She went very slowly across the room, for pride was
hard to swallow, and stood by him, but he did not turn his head.  For a
minute she felt as if she really couldn't do it, then came the thought,
"This is the beginning. I'll do my part, and have nothing to reproach
myself with," and stooping down, she softly kissed her husband on the
forehead. Of course that settled it.  The penitent kiss was better than
a world of words, and John had her on his knee in a minute, saying
tenderly...

"It was too bad to laugh at the poor little jelly pots. Forgive me,
dear.  I never will again!"

But he did, oh bless you, yes, hundreds of times, and so did Meg, both
declaring that it was the sweetest jelly they ever made, for family
peace was preserved in that little family jar.

After this, Meg had Mr. Scott to dinner by special invitation, and
served him up a pleasant feast without a cooked wife for the first
course, on which occasion she was so gay and gracious, and made
everything go off so charmingly, that Mr. Scott told John he was a
lucky fellow, and shook his head over the hardships of bachelorhood all
the way home.

In the autumn, new trials and experiences came to Meg.  Sallie Moffat
renewed her friendship, was always running out for a dish of gossip at
the little house, or inviting 'that poor dear' to come in and spend the
day at the big house.  It was pleasant, for in dull weather Meg often
felt lonely.  All were busy at home, John absent till night, and
nothing to do but sew, or read, or potter about.  So it naturally fell
out that Meg got into the way of gadding and gossiping with her friend.
Seeing Sallie's pretty things made her long for such, and pity herself
because she had not got them.  Sallie was very kind, and often offered
her the coveted trifles, but Meg declined them, knowing that John
wouldn't like it, and then this foolish little woman went and did what
John disliked even worse.

She knew her husband's income, and she loved to feel that he trusted
her, not only with his happiness, but what some men seem to value
more--his money.  She knew where it was, was free to take what she
liked, and all he asked was that she should keep account of every
penny, pay bills once a month, and remember that she was a poor man's
wife.  Till now she had done well, been prudent and exact, kept her
little account books neatly, and showed them to him monthly without
fear.  But that autumn the serpent got into Meg's paradise, and tempted
her like many a modern Eve, not with apples, but with dress.  Meg
didn't like to be pitied and made to feel poor.  It irritated her, but
she was ashamed to confess it, and now and then she tried to console
herself by buying something pretty, so that Sallie needn't think she
had to economize.  She always felt wicked after it, for the pretty
things were seldom necessaries, but then they cost so little, it wasn't
worth worrying about, so the trifles increased unconsciously, and in
the shopping excursions she was no longer a passive looker-on.

But the trifles cost more than one would imagine, and when she cast up
her accounts at the end of the month the sum total rather scared her.
John was busy that month and left the bills to her, the next month he
was absent, but the third he had a grand quarterly settling up, and Meg
never forgot it.  A few days before she had done a dreadful thing, and
it weighed upon her conscience.  Sallie had been buying silks, and Meg
longed for a new one, just a handsome light one for parties, her black
silk was so common, and thin things for evening wear were only proper
for girls.  Aunt March usually gave the sisters a present of
twenty-five dollars apiece at New Year's.  That was only a month to
wait, and here was a lovely violet silk going at a bargain, and she had
the money, if she only dared to take it.  John always said what was his
was hers, but would he think it right to spend not only the prospective
five-and-twenty, but another five-and-twenty out of the household fund?
That was the question. Sallie had urged her to do it, had offered to
lend the money, and with the best intentions in life had tempted Meg
beyond her strength. In an evil moment the shopman held up the lovely,
shimmering folds, and said, "A bargain, I assure, you, ma'am." She
answered, "I'll take it," and it was cut off and paid for, and Sallie
had exulted, and she had laughed as if it were a thing of no
consequence, and driven away, feeling as if she had stolen something,
and the police were after her.

When she got home, she tried to assuage the pangs of remorse by
spreading forth the lovely silk, but it looked less silvery now, didn't
become her, after all, and the words 'fifty dollars' seemed stamped
like a pattern down each breadth.  She put it away, but it haunted her,
not delightfully as a new dress should, but dreadfully like the ghost
of a folly that was not easily laid.  When John got out his books that
night, Meg's heart sank, and for the first time in her married life,
she was afraid of her husband.  The kind, brown eyes looked as if they
could be stern, and though he was unusually merry, she fancied he had
found her out, but didn't mean to let her know it.  The house bills
were all paid, the books all in order. John had praised her, and was
undoing the old pocketbook which they called the 'bank', when Meg,
knowing that it was quite empty, stopped his hand, saying nervously...

"You haven't seen my private expense book yet."

John never asked to see it, but she always insisted on his doing so,
and used to enjoy his masculine amazement at the queer things women
wanted, and made him guess what piping was, demand fiercely the meaning
of a hug-me-tight, or wonder how a little thing composed of three
rosebuds, a bit of velvet, and a pair of strings, could possibly be a
bonnet, and cost six dollars.  That night he looked as if he would like
the fun of quizzing her figures and pretending to be horrified at her
extravagance, as he often did, being particularly proud of his prudent
wife.

The little book was brought slowly out and laid down before him. Meg
got behind his chair under pretense of smoothing the wrinkles out of
his tired forehead, and standing there, she said, with her panic
increasing with every word...

"John, dear, I'm ashamed to show you my book, for I've really been
dreadfully extravagant lately.  I go about so much I must have things,
you know, and Sallie advised my getting it, so I did, and my New Year's
money will partly pay for it, but I was sorry after I had done it, for
I knew you'd think it wrong in me."

John laughed, and drew her round beside him, saying goodhumoredly,
"Don't go and hide.  I won't beat you if you have got a pair of killing
boots.  I'm rather proud of my wife's feet, and don't mind if she does
pay eight or nine dollars for her boots, if they are good ones."

That had been one of her last 'trifles', and John's eye had fallen on
it as he spoke.  "Oh, what will he say when he comes to that awful
fifty dollars!" thought Meg, with a shiver.

"It's worse than boots, it's a silk dress," she said, with the calmness
of desperation, for she wanted the worst over.

"Well, dear, what is the 'dem'd total', as Mr. Mantalini says?"

That didn't sound like John, and she knew he was looking up at her with
the straightforward look that she had always been ready to meet and
answer with one as frank till now.  She turned the page and her head at
the same time, pointing to the sum which would have been bad enough
without the fifty, but which was appalling to her with that added.  For
a minute the room was very still, then John said slowly--but she could
feel it cost him an effort to express no displeasure--. . .

"Well, I don't know that fifty is much for a dress, with all the
furbelows and notions you have to have to finish it off these days."

"It isn't made or trimmed," sighed Meg, faintly, for a sudden
recollection of the cost still to be incurred quite overwhelmed her.

"Twenty-five yards of silk seems a good deal to cover one small woman,
but I've no doubt my wife will look as fine as Ned Moffat's when she
gets it on," said John dryly.

"I know you are angry, John, but I can't help it.  I don't mean to
waste your money, and I didn't think those little things would count up
so.  I can't resist them when I see Sallie buying all she wants, and
pitying me because I don't.  I try to be contented, but it is hard, and
I'm tired of being poor."

The last words were spoken so low she thought he did not hear them, but
he did, and they wounded him deeply, for he had denied himself many
pleasures for Meg's sake.  She could have bitten her tongue out the
minute she had said it, for John pushed the books away and got up,
saying with a little quiver in his voice, "I was afraid of this.  I do
my best, Meg."  If he had scolded her, or even shaken her, it would not
have broken her heart like those few words.  She ran to him and held
him close, crying, with repentant tears, "Oh, John, my dear, kind,
hard-working boy.  I didn't mean it!  It was so wicked, so untrue and
ungrateful, how could I say it! Oh, how could I say it!"

He was very kind, forgave her readily, and did not utter one reproach,
but Meg knew that she had done and said a thing which would not be
forgotten soon, although he might never allude to it again.  She had
promised to love him for better or worse, and then she, his wife, had
reproached him with his poverty, after spending his earnings
recklessly.  It was dreadful, and the worst of it was John went on so
quietly afterward, just as if nothing had happened, except that he
stayed in town later, and worked at night when she had gone to cry
herself to sleep.  A week of remorse nearly made Meg sick, and the
discovery that John had countermanded the order for his new greatcoat
reduced her to a state of despair which was pathetic to behold.  He had
simply said, in answer to her surprised inquiries as to the change, "I
can't afford it, my dear."

Meg said no more, but a few minutes after he found her in the hall with
her face buried in the old greatcoat, crying as if her heart would
break.

They had a long talk that night, and Meg learned to love her husband
better for his poverty, because it seemed to have made a man of him,
given him the strength and courage to fight his own way, and taught him
a tender patience with which to bear and comfort the natural longings
and failures of those he loved.

Next day she put her pride in her pocket, went to Sallie, told the
truth, and asked her to buy the silk as a favor.  The good-natured Mrs.
Moffat willingly did so, and had the delicacy not to make her a present
of it immediately afterward.  Then Meg ordered home the greatcoat, and
when John arrived, she put it on, and asked him how he liked her new
silk gown.  One can imagine what answer he made, how he received his
present, and what a blissful state of things ensued.  John came home
early, Meg gadded no more, and that greatcoat was put on in the morning
by a very happy husband, and taken off at night by a most devoted
little wife.  So the year rolled round, and at midsummer there came to
Meg a new experience, the deepest and tenderest of a woman's life.

Laurie came sneaking into the kitchen of the Dovecote one Saturday,
with an excited face, and was received with the clash of cymbals, for
Hannah clapped her hands with a saucepan in one and the cover in the
other.

"How's the little mamma?  Where is everybody?  Why didn't you tell me
before I came home?" began Laurie in a loud whisper.

"Happy as a queen, the dear!  Every soul of 'em is upstairs a
worshipin'.  We didn't want no hurrycanes round.  Now you go into the
parlor, and I'll send 'em down to you," with which somewhat involved
reply Hannah vanished, chuckling ecstatically.

Presently Jo appeared, proudly bearing a flannel bundle laid forth upon
a large pillow.  Jo's face was very sober, but her eyes twinkled, and
there was an odd sound in her voice of repressed emotion of some sort.

"Shut your eyes and hold out your arms," she said invitingly.

Laurie backed precipitately into a corner, and put his hands behind him
with an imploring gesture.  "No, thank you.  I'd rather not.  I shall
drop it or smash it, as sure as fate."

"Then you shan't see your nevvy," said Jo decidedly, turning as if to
go.

"I will, I will!  Only you must be responsible for damages." and
obeying orders, Laurie heroically shut his eyes while something was put
into his arms.  A peal of laughter from Jo, Amy, Mrs. March, Hannah,
and John caused him to open them the next minute, to find himself
invested with two babies instead of one.

No wonder they laughed, for the expression of his face was droll enough
to convulse a Quaker, as he stood and stared wildly from the
unconscious innocents to the hilarious spectators with such dismay that
Jo sat down on the floor and screamed.

"Twins, by Jupiter!" was all he said for a minute, then turning to the
women with an appealing look that was comically piteous, he added,
"Take 'em quick, somebody!  I'm going to laugh, and I shall drop 'em."

Jo rescued his babies, and marched up and down, with one on each arm,
as if already initiated into the mysteries of babytending, while Laurie
laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.

"It's the best joke of the season, isn't it?  I wouldn't have told you,
for I set my heart on surprising you, and I flatter myself I've done
it," said Jo, when she got her breath.

"I never was more staggered in my life.  Isn't it fun?  Are they boys?
What are you going to name them? Let's have another look.  Hold me up,
Jo, for upon my life it's one too many for me," returned Laurie,
regarding the infants with the air of a big, benevolent Newfoundland
looking at a pair of infantile kittens.

"Boy and girl.  Aren't they beauties?" said the proud papa, beaming
upon the little red squirmers as if they were unfledged angels.

"Most remarkable children I ever saw.  Which is which?" and Laurie bent
like a well-sweep to examine the prodigies.

"Amy put a blue ribbon on the boy and a pink on the girl, French
fashion, so you can always tell.  Besides, one has blue eyes and one
brown.  Kiss them, Uncle Teddy," said wicked Jo.

"I'm afraid they mightn't like it," began Laurie, with unusual timidity
in such matters.

"Of course they will, they are used to it now.  Do it this minute,
sir!" commanded Jo, fearing he might propose a proxy.

Laurie screwed up his face and obeyed with a gingerly peck at each
little cheek that produced another laugh, and made the babies squeal.

"There, I knew they didn't like it!  That's the boy, see him kick, he
hits out with his fists like a good one.  Now then, young Brooke, pitch
into a man of your own size, will you?" cried Laurie, delighted with a
poke in the face from a tiny fist, flapping aimlessly about.

"He's to be named John Laurence, and the girl Margaret, after mother
and grandmother.  We shall call her Daisey, so as not to have two Megs,
and I suppose the mannie will be Jack, unless we find a better name,"
said Amy, with aunt-like interest.

"Name him Demijohn, and call him Demi for short," said Laurie.

"Daisy and Demi, just the thing!  I knew Teddy would do it," cried Jo
clapping her hands.

Teddy certainly had done it that time, for the babies were 'Daisy' and
'Demi' to the end of the chapter.



CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CALLS

"Come, Jo, it's time."

"For what?"

"You don't mean to say you have forgotten that you promised to make
half a dozen calls with me today?"

"I've done a good many rash and foolish things in my life, but I don't
think I ever was mad enough to say I'd make six calls in one day, when
a single one upsets me for a week."

"Yes, you did, it was a bargain between us.  I was to finish the crayon
of Beth for you, and you were to go properly with me, and return our
neighbors' visits."

"If it was fair, that was in the bond, and I stand to the letter of my
bond, Shylock.  There is a pile of clouds in the east, it's not fair,
and I don't go."

"Now, that's shirking.  It's a lovely day, no prospect of rain, and you
pride yourself on keeping promises, so be honorable, come and do your
duty, and then be at peace for another six months."

At that minute Jo was particularly absorbed in dressmaking, for she was
mantua-maker general to the family, and took especial credit to herself
because she could use a needle as well as a pen. It was very provoking
to be arrested in the act of a first trying-on, and ordered out to make
calls in her best array on a warm July day. She hated calls of the
formal sort, and never made any till Amy compelled her with a bargain,
bribe, or promise.  In the present instance there was no escape, and
having clashed her scissors rebelliously, while protesting that she
smelled thunder, she gave in, put away her work, and taking up her hat
and gloves with an air of resignation, told Amy the victim was ready.

"Jo March, you are perverse enough to provoke a saint!  You don't
intend to make calls in that state, I hope," cried Amy, surveying her
with amazement.

"Why not?  I'm neat and cool and comfortable, quite proper for a dusty
walk on a warm day.  If people care more for my clothes than they do
for me, I don't wish to see them.  You can dress for both, and be as
elegant as you please.  It pays for you to be fine.  It doesn't for me,
and furbelows only worry me."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Amy, "now she's in a contrary fit, and will drive me
distracted before I can get her properly ready. I'm sure it's no
pleasure to me to go today, but it's a debt we owe society, and there's
no one to pay it but you and me.  I'll do anything for you, Jo, if
you'll only dress yourself nicely, and come and help me do the civil.
You can talk so well, look so aristocratic in your best things, and
behave so beautifully, if you try, that I'm proud of you.  I'm afraid
to go alone, do come and take care of me."

"You're an artful little puss to flatter and wheedle your cross old
sister in that way.  The idea of my being aristocratic and well-bred,
and your being afraid to go anywhere alone!  I don't know which is the
most absurd.  Well, I'll go if I must, and do my best.  You shall be
commander of the expedition, and I'll obey blindly, will that satisfy
you?" said Jo, with a sudden change from perversity to lamblike
submission.

"You're a perfect cherub!  Now put on all your best things, and I'll
tell you how to behave at each place, so that you will make a good
impression.  I want people to like you, and they would if you'd only
try to be a little more agreeable.  Do your hair the pretty way, and
put the pink rose in your bonnet.  It's becoming, and you look too
sober in your plain suit.  Take your light gloves and the embroidered
handkerchief.  We'll stop at Meg's, and borrow her white sunshade, and
then you can have my dove-colored one."

While Amy dressed, she issued her orders, and Jo obeyed them, not
without entering her protest, however, for she sighed as she rustled
into her new organdie, frowned darkly at herself as she tied her bonnet
strings in an irreproachable bow, wrestled viciously with pins as she
put on her collar, wrinkled up her features generally as she shook out
the handkerchief, whose embroidery was as irritating to her nose as the
present mission was to her feelings, and when she had squeezed her
hands into tight gloves with three buttons and a tassel, as the last
touch of elegance, she turned to Amy with an imbecile expression of
countenance, saying meekly...

"I'm perfectly miserable, but if you consider me presentable, I die
happy."

"You're highly satisfactory.  Turn slowly round, and let me get a
careful view." Jo revolved, and Amy gave a touch here and there, then
fell back, with her head on one side, observing graciously, "Yes,
you'll do.  Your head is all I could ask, for that white bonnet with
the rose is quite ravishing.  Hold back your shoulders, and carry your
hands easily, no matter if your gloves do pinch.  There's one thing you
can do well, Jo, that is, wear a shawl.  I can't, but it's very nice to
see you, and I'm so glad Aunt March gave you that lovely one.  It's
simple, but handsome, and those folds over the arm are really artistic.
Is the point of my mantle in the middle, and have I looped my dress
evenly? I like to show my boots, for my feet are pretty, though my nose
isn't."

"You are a thing of beauty and a joy forever," said Jo, looking through
her hand with the air of a connoisseur at the blue feather against the
golden hair.  "Am I to drag my best dress through the dust, or loop it
up, please, ma'am?"

"Hold it up when you walk, but drop it in the house.  The sweeping
style suits you best, and you must learn to trail your skirts
gracefully.  You haven't half buttoned one cuff, do it at once.  You'll
never look finished if you are not careful about the little details,
for they make up the pleasing whole."

Jo sighed, and proceeded to burst the buttons off her glove, in doing
up her cuff, but at last both were ready, and sailed away, looking as
'pretty as picters', Hannah said, as she hung out of the upper window
to watch them.

"Now, Jo dear, the Chesters consider themselves very elegant people, so
I want you to put on your best deportment.  Don't make any of your
abrupt remarks, or do anything odd, will you?  Just be calm, cool, and
quiet, that's safe and ladylike, and you can easily do it for fifteen
minutes," said Amy, as they approached the first place, having borrowed
the white parasol and been inspected by Meg, with a baby on each arm.

"Let me see.  'Calm, cool, and quiet', yes, I think I can promise that.
I've played the part of a prim young lady on the stage, and I'll try it
off.  My powers are great, as you shall see, so be easy in your mind,
my child."

Amy looked relieved, but naughty Jo took her at her word, for during
the first call she sat with every limb gracefully composed, every fold
correctly draped, calm as a summer sea, cool as a snowbank, and as
silent as the sphinx.  In vain Mrs. Chester alluded to her 'charming
novel', and the Misses Chester introduced parties, picnics, the opera,
and the fashions.  Each and all were answered by a smile, a bow, and a
demure "Yes" or "No" with the chill on.  In vain Amy telegraphed the
word 'talk', tried to draw her out, and administered covert pokes with
her foot.  Jo sat as if blandly unconscious of it all, with deportment
like Maud's face, 'icily regular, splendidly null'.

"What a haughty, uninteresting creature that oldest Miss March is!" was
the unfortunately audible remark of one of the ladies, as the door
closed upon their guests.  Jo laughed noiselessly all through the hall,
but Amy looked disgusted at the failure of her instructions, and very
naturally laid the blame upon Jo.

"How could you mistake me so?  I merely meant you to be properly
dignified and composed, and you made yourself a perfect stock and
stone.  Try to be sociable at the Lambs'.  Gossip as other girls do,
and be interested in dress and flirtations and whatever nonsense comes
up.  They move in the best society, are valuable persons for us to
know, and I wouldn't fail to make a good impression there for anything."

"I'll be agreeable.  I'll gossip and giggle, and have horrors and
raptures over any trifle you like.  I rather enjoy this, and now I'll
imitate what is called 'a charming girl'.  I can do it, for I have May
Chester as a model, and I'll improve upon her.  See if the Lambs don't
say, 'What a lively, nice creature that Jo March is!"

Amy felt anxious, as well she might, for when Jo turned freakish there
was no knowing where she would stop.  Amy's face was a study when she
saw her sister skim into the next drawing room, kiss all the young
ladies with effusion, beam graciously upon the young gentlemen, and
join in the chat with a spirit which amazed the beholder. Amy was taken
possession of by Mrs. Lamb, with whom she was a favorite, and forced to
hear a long account of Lucretia's last attack, while three delightful
young gentlemen hovered near, waiting for a pause when they might rush
in and rescue her.  So situated, she was powerless to check Jo, who
seemed possessed by a spirit of mischief, and talked away as volubly as
the lady.  A knot of heads gathered about her, and Amy strained her
ears to hear what was going on, for broken sentences filled her with
curiosity, and frequent peals of laughter made her wild to share the
fun.  One may imagine her suffering on overhearing fragments of this
sort of conversation.

"She rides splendidly.  Who taught her?"

"No one.  She used to practice mounting, holding the reins, and sitting
straight on an old saddle in a tree.  Now she rides anything, for she
doesn't know what fear is, and the stableman lets her have horses cheap
because she trains them to carry ladies so well.  She has such a
passion for it, I often tell her if everything else fails, she can be a
horsebreaker, and get her living so."

At this awful speech Amy contained herself with difficulty, for the
impression was being given that she was rather a fast young lady, which
was her especial aversion.  But what could she do?  For the old lady
was in the middle of her story, and long before it was done, Jo was off
again, making more droll revelations and committing still more fearful
blunders.

"Yes, Amy was in despair that day, for all the good beasts were gone,
and of three left, one was lame, one blind, and the other so balky that
you had to put dirt in his mouth before he would start. Nice animal for
a pleasure party, wasn't it?"

"Which did she choose?" asked one of the laughing gentlemen, who
enjoyed the subject.

"None of them.  She heard of a young horse at the farm house over the
river, and though a lady had never ridden him, she resolved to try,
because he was handsome and spirited.  Her struggles were really
pathetic.  There was no one to bring the horse to the saddle, so she
took the saddle to the horse.  My dear creature, she actually rowed it
over the river, put it on her head, and marched up to the barn to the
utter amazement of the old man!"

"Did she ride the horse?"

"Of course she did, and had a capital time.  I expected to see her
brought home in fragments, but she managed him perfectly, and was the
life of the party."

"Well, I call that plucky!" and young Mr. Lamb turned an approving
glance upon Amy, wondering what his mother could be saying to make the
girl look so red and uncomfortable.

She was still redder and more uncomfortable a moment after, when a
sudden turn in the conversation introduced the subject of dress.  One
of the young ladies asked Jo where she got the pretty drab hat she wore
to the picnic and stupid Jo, instead of mentioning the place where it
was bought two years ago, must needs answer with unnecessary frankness,
"Oh, Amy painted it.  You can't buy those soft shades, so we paint ours
any color we like.  It's a great comfort to have an artistic sister."

"Isn't that an original idea?" cried Miss Lamb, who found Jo great fun.

"That's nothing compared to some of her brilliant performances. There's
nothing the child can't do.  Why, she wanted a pair of blue boots for
Sallie's party, so she just painted her soiled white ones the loveliest
shade of sky blue you ever saw, and they looked exactly like satin,"
added Jo, with an air of pride in her sister's accomplishments that
exasperated Amy till she felt that it would be a relief to throw her
cardcase at her.

"We read a story of yours the other day, and enjoyed it very much,"
observed the elder Miss Lamb, wishing to compliment the literary lady,
who did not look the character just then, it must be confessed.

Any mention of her 'works' always had a bad effect upon Jo, who either
grew rigid and looked offended, or changed the subject with a brusque
remark, as now.  "Sorry you could find nothing better to read.  I write
that rubbish because it sells, and ordinary people like it.  Are you
going to New York this winter?"

As Miss Lamb had 'enjoyed' the story, this speech was not exactly
grateful or complimentary.  The minute it was made Jo saw her mistake,
but fearing to make the matter worse, suddenly remembered that it was
for her to make the first move toward departure, and did so with an
abruptness that left three people with half-finished sentences in their
mouths.

"Amy, we must go.  Good-by, dear, do come and see us.  We are pining
for a visit.  I don't dare to ask you, Mr. Lamb, but if you should
come, I don't think I shall have the heart to send you away."

Jo said this with such a droll imitation of May Chester's gushing style
that Amy got out of the room as rapidly as possible, feeling a strong
desire to laugh and cry at the same time.

"Didn't I do well?" asked Jo, with a satisfied air as they walked away.

"Nothing could have been worse," was Amy's crushing reply. "What
possessed you to tell those stories about my saddle, and the hats and
boots, and all the rest of it?"

"Why, it's funny, and amuses people.  They know we are poor, so it's no
use pretending that we have grooms, buy three or four hats a season,
and have things as easy and fine as they do."

"You needn't go and tell them all our little shifts, and expose our
poverty in that perfectly unnecessary way.  You haven't a bit of proper
pride, and never will learn when to hold your tongue and when to
speak," said Amy despairingly.

Poor Jo looked abashed, and silently chafed the end of her nose with
the stiff handkerchief, as if performing a penance for her misdemeanors.

"How shall I behave here?" she asked, as they approached the third
mansion.

"Just as you please.  I wash my hands of you," was Amy's short answer.

"Then I'll enjoy myself.  The boys are at home, and we'll have a
comfortable time.  Goodness knows I need a little change, for elegance
has a bad effect upon my constitution," returned Jo gruffly, being
disturbed by her failure to suit.

An enthusiastic welcome from three big boys and several pretty children
speedily soothed her ruffled feelings, and leaving Amy to entertain the
hostess and Mr. Tudor, who happened to be calling likewise, Jo devoted
herself to the young folks and found the change refreshing.  She
listened to college stories with deep interest, caressed pointers and
poodles without a murmur, agreed heartily that "Tom Brown was a brick,"
regardless of the improper form of praise, and when one lad proposed a
visit to his turtle tank, she went with an alacrity which caused Mamma
to smile upon her, as that motherly lady settled the cap which was left
in a ruinous condition by filial hugs, bearlike but affectionate, and
dearer to her than the most faultless coiffure from the hands of an
inspired Frenchwoman.

Leaving her sister to her own devices, Amy proceeded to enjoy herself
to her heart's content.  Mr. Tudor's uncle had married an English lady
who was third cousin to a living lord, and Amy regarded the whole
family with great respect, for in spite of her American birth and
breeding, she possessed that reverence for titles which haunts the best
of us--that unacknowledged loyalty to the early faith in kings which
set the most democratic nation under the sun in ferment at the coming
of a royal yellow-haired laddie, some years ago, and which still has
something to do with the love the young country bears the old, like
that of a big son for an imperious little mother, who held him while
she could, and let him go with a farewell scolding when he rebelled.
But even the satisfaction of talking with a distant connection of the
British nobility did not render Amy forgetful of time, and when the
proper number of minutes had passed, she reluctantly tore herself from
this aristocratic society, and looked about for Jo, fervently hoping
that her incorrigible sister would not be found in any position which
should bring disgrace upon the name of March.

It might have been worse, but Amy considered it bad.  For Jo sat on the
grass, with an encampment of boys about her, and a dirty-footed dog
reposing on the skirt of her state and festival dress, as she related
one of Laurie's pranks to her admiring audience.  One small child was
poking turtles with Amy's cherished parasol, a second was eating
gingerbread over Jo's best bonnet, and a third playing ball with her
gloves, but all were enjoying themselves, and when Jo collected her
damaged property to go, her escort accompanied her, begging her to come
again, "It was such fun to hear about Laurie's larks."

"Capital boys, aren't they?  I feel quite young and brisk again after
that." said Jo, strolling along with her hands behind her, partly from
habit, partly to conceal the bespattered parasol.

"Why do you always avoid Mr. Tudor?" asked Amy, wisely refraining from
any comment upon Jo's dilapidated appearance.

"Don't like him, he puts on airs, snubs his sisters, worries his
father, and doesn't speak respectfully of his mother.  Laurie says he
is fast, and I don't consider him a desirable acquaintance, so I let
him alone."

"You might treat him civilly, at least.  You gave him a cool nod, and
just now you bowed and smiled in the politest way to Tommy Chamberlain,
whose father keeps a grocery store.  If you had just reversed the nod
and the bow, it would have been right," said Amy reprovingly.

"No, it wouldn't," returned Jo, "I neither like, respect, nor admire
Tudor, though his grandfather's uncle's nephew's niece was a third
cousin to a lord.  Tommy is poor and bashful and good and very clever.
I think well of him, and like to show that I do, for he is a gentleman
in spite of the brown paper parcels."

"It's no use trying to argue with you," began Amy.

"Not the least, my dear," interrupted Jo, "so let us look amiable, and
drop a card here, as the Kings are evidently out, for which I'm deeply
grateful."

The family cardcase having done its duty the girls walked on, and Jo
uttered another thanksgiving on reaching the fifth house, and being
told that the young ladies were engaged.

"Now let us go home, and never mind Aunt March today.  We can run down
there any time, and it's really a pity to trail through the dust in our
best bibs and tuckers, when we are tired and cross."

"Speak for yourself, if you please.  Aunt March likes to have us pay
her the compliment of coming in style, and making a formal call. It's a
little thing to do, but it gives her pleasure, and I don't believe it
will hurt your things half so much as letting dirty dogs and clumping
boys spoil them.  Stoop down, and let me take the crumbs off of your
bonnet."

"What a good girl you are, Amy!" said Jo, with a repentant glance from
her own damaged costume to that of her sister, which was fresh and
spotless still.  "I wish it was as easy for me to do little things to
please people as it is for you.  I think of them, but it takes too much
time to do them, so I wait for a chance to confer a great favor, and
let the small ones slip, but they tell best in the end, I fancy."

Amy smiled and was mollified at once, saying with a maternal air,
"Women should learn to be agreeable, particularly poor ones, for they
have no other way of repaying the kindnesses they receive. If you'd
remember that, and practice it, you'd be better liked than I am,
because there is more of you."

"I'm a crotchety old thing, and always shall be, but I'm willing to own
that you are right, only it's easier for me to risk my life for a
person than to be pleasant to him when I don't feel like it.  It's a
great misfortune to have such strong likes and dislikes, isn't it?"

"It's a greater not to be able to hide them.  I don't mind saying that
I don't approve of Tudor any more than you do, but I'm not called upon
to tell him so.  Neither are you, and there is no use in making
yourself disagreeable because he is."

"But I think girls ought to show when they disapprove of young men, and
how can they do it except by their manners? Preaching does not do any
good, as I know to my sorrow, since I've had Teddie to manage.  But
there are many little ways in which I can influence him without a word,
and I say we ought to do it to others if we can."

"Teddy is a remarkable boy, and can't be taken as a sample of other
boys," said Amy, in a tone of solemn conviction, which would have
convulsed the 'remarkable boy' if he had heard it.  "If we were belles,
or women of wealth and position, we might do something, perhaps, but
for us to frown at one set of young gentlemen because we don't approve
of them, and smile upon another set because we do, wouldn't have a
particle of effect, and we should only be considered odd and
puritanical."

"So we are to countenance things and people which we detest, merely
because we are not belles and millionaires, are we? That's a nice sort
of morality."

"I can't argue about it, I only know that it's the way of the world,
and people who set themselves against it only get laughed at for their
pains.  I don't like reformers, and I hope you never try to be one."

"I do like them, and I shall be one if I can, for in spite of the
laughing the world would never get on without them.  We can't agree
about that, for you belong to the old set, and I to the new. You will
get on the best, but I shall have the liveliest time of it. I should
rather enjoy the brickbats and hooting, I think."

"Well, compose yourself now, and don't worry Aunt with your new ideas."

"I'll try not to, but I'm always possessed to burst out with some
particularly blunt speech or revolutionary sentiment before her.  It's
my doom, and I can't help it."

They found Aunt Carrol with the old lady, both absorbed in some very
interesting subject, but they dropped it as the girls came in, with a
conscious look which betrayed that they had been talking about their
nieces.  Jo was not in a good humor, and the perverse fit returned, but
Amy, who had virtuously done her duty, kept her temper and pleased
everybody, was in a most angelic frame of mind.  This amiable spirit
was felt at once, and both aunts 'my deared' her affectionately,
looking what they afterward said emphatically, "That child improves
every day."

"Are you going to help about the fair, dear?" asked Mrs. Carrol, as Amy
sat down beside her with the confiding air elderly people like so well
in the young.

"Yes, Aunt.  Mrs. Chester asked me if I would, and I offered to tend a
table, as I have nothing but my time to give."

"I'm not," put in Jo decidedly.  "I hate to be patronized, and the
Chesters think it's a great favor to allow us to help with their highly
connected fair.  I wonder you consented, Amy, they only want you to
work."

"I am willing to work.  It's for the freedmen as well as the Chesters,
and I think it very kind of them to let me share the labor and the fun.
Patronage does not trouble me when it is well meant."

"Quite right and proper.  I like your grateful spirit, my dear. It's a
pleasure to help people who appreciate our efforts.  Some do not, and
that is trying," observed Aunt March, looking over her spectacles at
Jo, who sat apart, rocking herself, with a somewhat morose expression.

If Jo had only known what a great happiness was wavering in the balance
for one of them, she would have turned dove-like in a minute, but
unfortunately, we don't have windows in our breasts, and cannot see
what goes on in the minds of our friends.  Better for us that we cannot
as a general thing, but now and then it would be such a comfort, such a
saving of time and temper.  By her next speech, Jo deprived herself of
several years of pleasure, and received a timely lesson in the art of
holding her tongue.

"I don't like favors, they oppress and make me feel like a slave.  I'd
rather do everything for myself, and be perfectly independent."

"Ahem!" coughed Aunt Carrol softly, with a look at Aunt March.

"I told you so," said Aunt March, with a decided nod to Aunt Carrol.

Mercifully unconscious of what she had done, Jo sat with her nose in
the air, and a revolutionary aspect which was anything but inviting.

"Do you speak French, dear?" asked Mrs. Carrol, laying a hand on Amy's.

"Pretty well, thanks to Aunt March, who lets Esther talk to me as often
as I like," replied Amy, with a grateful look, which caused the old
lady to smile affably.

"How are you about languages?" asked Mrs. Carrol of Jo.

"Don't know a word.  I'm very stupid about studying anything, can't
bear French, it's such a slippery, silly sort of language," was the
brusque reply.

Another look passed between the ladies, and Aunt March said to Amy,
"You are quite strong and well now, dear, I believe?  Eyes don't
trouble you any more, do they?"

"Not at all, thank you, ma'am.  I'm very well, and mean to do great
things next winter, so that I may be ready for Rome, whenever that
joyful time arrives."

"Good girl!  You deserve to go, and I'm sure you will some day," said
Aunt March, with an approving pat on the head, as Amy picked up her
ball for her.

    Crosspatch, draw the latch,
    Sit by the fire and spin,

squalled Polly, bending down from his perch on the back of her chair to
peep into Jo's face, with such a comical air of impertinent inquiry
that it was impossible to help laughing.

"Most observing bird," said the old lady.

"Come and take a walk, my dear?" cried Polly, hopping toward the china
closet, with a look suggestive of a lump of sugar.

"Thank you, I will.  Come Amy." and Jo brought the visit to an end,
feeling more strongly than ever that calls did have a bad effect upon
her constitution.  She shook hands in a gentlemanly manner, but Amy
kissed both the aunts, and the girls departed, leaving behind them the
impression of shadow and sunshine, which impression caused Aunt March
to say, as they vanished...

"You'd better do it, Mary.  I'll supply the money." and Aunt Carrol to
reply decidedly, "I certainly will, if her father and mother consent."



CHAPTER THIRTY

CONSEQUENCES

Mrs. Chester's fair was so very elegant and select that it was
considered a great honor by the young ladies of the neighborhood to be
invited to take a table, and everyone was much interested in the
matter.  Amy was asked, but Jo was not, which was fortunate for all
parties, as her elbows were decidedly akimbo at this period of her
life, and it took a good many hard knocks to teach her how to get on
easily.  The 'haughty, uninteresting creature' was let severely alone,
but Amy's talent and taste were duly complimented by the offer of the
art table, and she exerted herself to prepare and secure appropriate
and valuable contributions to it.

Everything went on smoothly till the day before the fair opened, then
there occurred one of the little skirmishes which it is almost
impossible to avoid, when some five-and-twenty women, old and young,
with all their private piques and prejudices, try to work together.

May Chester was rather jealous of Amy because the latter was a greater
favorite than herself, and just at this time several trifling
circumstances occurred to increase the feeling.  Amy's dainty
pen-and-ink work entirely eclipsed May's painted vases--that was one
thorn.  Then the all conquering Tudor had danced four times with Amy at
a late party and only once with May--that was thorn number two.  But
the chief grievance that rankled in her soul, and gave an excuse for
her unfriendly conduct, was a rumor which some obliging gossip had
whispered to her, that the March girls had made fun of her at the
Lambs'. All the blame of this should have fallen upon Jo, for her
naughty imitation had been too lifelike to escape detection, and the
frolicsome Lambs had permitted the joke to escape.  No hint of this had
reached the culprits, however, and Amy's dismay can be imagined, when,
the very evening before the fair, as she was putting the last touches
to her pretty table, Mrs. Chester, who, of course, resented the
supposed ridicule of her daughter, said, in a bland tone, but with a
cold look...

"I find, dear, that there is some feeling among the young ladies about
my giving this table to anyone but my girls.  As this is the most
prominent, and some say the most attractive table of all, and they are
the chief getters-up of the fair, it is thought best for them to take
this place.  I'm sorry, but I know you are too sincerely interested in
the cause to mind a little personal disappointment, and you shall have
another table if you like."

Mrs. Chester fancied beforehand that it would be easy to deliver this
little speech, but when the time came, she found it rather difficult to
utter it naturally, with Amy's unsuspicious eyes looking straight at
her full of surprise and trouble.

Amy felt that there was something behind this, but could not guess
what, and said quietly, feeling hurt, and showing that she did,
"Perhaps you had rather I took no table at all?"

"Now, my dear, don't have any ill feeling, I beg.  It's merely a matter
of expediency, you see, my girls will naturally take the lead, and this
table is considered their proper place.  I think it very appropriate to
you, and feel very grateful for your efforts to make it so pretty, but
we must give up our private wishes, of course, and I will see that you
have a good place elsewhere. Wouldn't you like the flower table? The
little girls undertook it, but they are discouraged.  You could make a
charming thing of it, and the flower table is always attractive you
know."

"Especially to gentlemen," added May, with a look which enlightened Amy
as to one cause of her sudden fall from favor.  She colored angrily,
but took no other notice of that girlish sarcasm, and answered with
unexpected amiability...

"It shall be as you please, Mrs. Chester.  I'll give up my place here
at once, and attend to the flowers, if you like."

"You can put your own things on your own table, if you prefer," began
May, feeling a little conscience-stricken, as she looked at the pretty
racks, the painted shells, and quaint illuminations Amy had so
carefully made and so gracefully arranged.  She meant it kindly, but
Amy mistook her meaning, and said quickly...

"Oh, certainly, if they are in your way," and sweeping her
contributions into her apron, pell-mell, she walked off, feeling that
herself and her works of art had been insulted past forgiveness.

"Now she's mad.  Oh, dear, I wish I hadn't asked you to speak,  Mama,"
said May, looking disconsolately at the empty spaces on her table.

"Girls' quarrels are soon over," returned her mother, feeling a trifle
ashamed of her own part in this one, as well she might.

The little girls hailed Amy and her treasures with delight, which
cordial reception somewhat soothed her perturbed spirit, and she fell
to work, determined to succeed florally, if she could not artistically.
But everything seemed against her.  It was late, and she was tired.
Everyone was too busy with their own affairs to help her, and the
little girls were only hindrances, for the dears fussed and chattered
like so many magpies, making a great deal of confusion in their artless
efforts to preserve the most perfect order.  The evergreen arch
wouldn't stay firm after she got it up, but wiggled and threatened to
tumble down on her head when the hanging baskets were filled.  Her best
tile got a splash of water, which left a sepia tear on the Cupid's
cheek.  She bruised her hands with hammering, and got cold working in a
draft, which last affliction filled her with apprehensions for the
morrow.  Any girl reader who has suffered like afflictions will
sympathize with poor Amy and wish her well through her task.

There was great indignation at home when she told her story that
evening.  Her mother said it was a shame, but told her she had done
right.  Beth declared she wouldn't go to the fair at all, and Jo
demanded why she didn't take all her pretty things and leave those mean
people to get on without her.

"Because they are mean is no reason why I should be.  I hate such
things, and though I think I've a right to be hurt, I don't intend to
show it.  They will feel that more than angry speeches or huffy
actions, won't they, Marmee?"

"That's the right spirit, my dear.  A kiss for a blow is always best,
though it's not very easy to give it sometimes," said her mother, with
the air of one who had learned the difference between preaching and
practicing.

In spite of various very natural temptations to resent and retaliate,
Amy adhered to her resolution all the next day, bent on conquering her
enemy by kindness.  She began well, thanks to a silent reminder that
came to her unexpectedly, but most opportunely. As she arranged her
table that morning, while the little girls were in the anteroom filling
the baskets, she took up her pet production, a little book, the antique
cover of which her father had found among his treasures, and in which
on leaves of vellum she had beautifully illuminated different texts.
As she turned the pages rich in dainty devices with very pardonable
pride, her eye fell upon one verse that made her stop and think.
Framed in a brilliant scrollwork of scarlet, blue and gold, with little
spirits of good will helping one another up and down among the thorns
and flowers, were the words, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

"I ought, but I don't," thought Amy, as her eye went from the bright
page to May's discontented face behind the big vases, that could not
hide the vacancies her pretty work had once filled.  Amy stood a
minute, turning the leaves in her hand, reading on each some sweet
rebuke for all heartburnings and uncharitableness of spirit. Many wise
and true sermons are preached us every day by unconscious ministers in
street, school, office, or home.  Even a fair table may become a
pulpit, if it can offer the good and helpful words which are never out
of season.  Amy's conscience preached her a little sermon from that
text, then and there, and she did what many of us do not always do,
took the sermon to heart, and straightway put it in practice.

A group of girls were standing about May's table, admiring the pretty
things, and talking over the change of saleswomen.  They dropped their
voices, but Amy knew they were speaking of her, hearing one side of the
story and judging accordingly.  It was not pleasant, but a better
spirit had come over her, and presently a chance offered for proving
it.  She heard May say sorrowfully...

"It's too bad, for there is no time to make other things, and I don't
want to fill up with odds and ends.  The table was just complete then.
Now it's spoiled."

"I dare say she'd put them back if you asked her," suggested someone.

"How could I after all the fuss?" began May, but she did not finish,
for Amy's voice came across the hall, saying pleasantly...

"You may have them, and welcome, without asking, if you want them.  I
was just thinking I'd offer to put them back, for they belong to your
table rather than mine.  Here they are, please take them, and forgive
me if I was hasty in carrying them away last night."

As she spoke, Amy returned her contribution, with a nod and a smile,
and hurried away again, feeling that it was easier to do a friendly
thing than it was to stay and be thanked for it.

"Now, I call that lovely of her, don't you?" cried one girl.

May's answer was inaudible, but another young lady, whose temper was
evidently a little soured by making lemonade, added, with a
disagreeable laugh, "Very lovely, for she knew she wouldn't sell them
at her own table."

Now, that was hard.  When we make little sacrifices we like to have
them appreciated, at least, and for a minute Amy was sorry she had done
it, feeling that virtue was not always its own reward. But it is, as
she presently discovered, for her spirits began to rise, and her table
to blossom under her skillful hands, the girls were very kind, and that
one little act seemed to have cleared the atmosphere amazingly.

It was a very long day and a hard one for Amy, as she sat behind her
table, often quite alone, for the little girls deserted very soon.  Few
cared to buy flowers in summer, and her bouquets began to droop long
before night.

The art table was the most attractive in the room.  There was a crowd
about it all day long, and the tenders were constantly flying to and
fro with important faces and rattling money boxes.  Amy often looked
wistfully across, longing to be there, where she felt at home and
happy, instead of in a corner with nothing to do.  It might seem no
hardship to some of us, but to a pretty, blithe young girl, it was not
only tedious, but very trying, and the thought of Laurie and his
friends made it a real martyrdom.

She did not go home till night, and then she looked so pale and quiet
that they knew the day had been a hard one, though she made no
complaint, and did not even tell what she had done.  Her mother gave
her an extra cordial cup of tea.  Beth helped her dress, and made a
charming little wreath for her hair, while Jo astonished her family by
getting herself up with unusual care, and hinting darkly that the
tables were about to be turned.

"Don't do anything rude, pray Jo; I won't have any fuss made, so let it
all pass and behave yourself," begged Amy, as she departed early,
hoping to find a reinforcement of flowers to refresh her poor little
table.

"I merely intend to make myself entrancingly agreeable to every one I
know, and to keep them in your corner as long as possible. Teddy and
his boys will lend a hand, and we'll have a good time yet." returned
Jo, leaning over the gate to watch for Laurie.  Presently the familiar
tramp was heard in the dusk, and she ran out to meet him.

"Is that my boy?"

"As sure as this is my girl!" and Laurie tucked her hand under his arm
with the air of a man whose every wish was gratified.

"Oh, Teddy, such doings!" and Jo told Amy's wrongs with sisterly zeal.

"A flock of our fellows are going to drive over by-and-by, and I'll be
hanged if I don't make them buy every flower she's got, and camp down
before her table afterward," said Laurie, espousing her cause with
warmth.

"The flowers are not at all nice, Amy says, and the fresh ones may not
arrive in time.  I don't wish to be unjust or suspicious, but I
shouldn't wonder if they never came at all.  When people do one mean
thing they are very likely to do another," observed Jo in a disgusted
tone.

"Didn't Hayes give you the best out of our gardens? I told him to."

"I didn't know that, he forgot, I suppose, and, as your grandpa was
poorly, I didn't like to worry him by asking, though I did want some."

"Now, Jo, how could you think there was any need of asking? They are
just as much yours as mine.  Don't we always go halves in everything?"
began Laurie, in the tone that always made Jo turn thorny.

"Gracious, I hope not!  Half of some of your things wouldn't suit me at
all.  But we mustn't stand philandering here.  I've got to help Amy, so
you go and make yourself splendid, and if you'll be so very kind as to
let Hayes take a few nice flowers up to the Hall, I'll bless you
forever."

"Couldn't you do it now?" asked Laurie, so suggestively that Jo shut
the gate in his face with inhospitable haste, and called through the
bars, "Go away, Teddy, I'm busy."

Thanks to the conspirators, the tables were turned that night, for
Hayes sent up a wilderness of flowers, with a loverly basket arranged
in his best manner for a centerpiece.  Then the March family turned out
en masse, and Jo exerted herself to some purpose, for people not only
came, but stayed, laughing at her nonsense, admiring Amy's taste, and
apparently enjoying themselves very much.  Laurie and his friends
gallantly threw themselves into the breach, bought up the bouquets,
encamped before the table, and made that corner the liveliest spot in
the room.  Amy was in her element now, and out of gratitude, if nothing
more, was as spritely and gracious as possible, coming to the
conclusion, about that time, that virtue was its own reward, after all.

Jo behaved herself with exemplary propriety, and when Amy was happily
surrounded by her guard of honor, Jo circulated about the Hall, picking
up various bits of gossip, which enlightened her upon the subject of
the Chester change of base.  She reproached herself for her share of
the ill feeling and resolved to exonerate Amy as soon as possible.  She
also discovered what Amy had done about the things in the morning, and
considered her a model of magnanimity.  As she passed the art table,
she glanced over it for her sister's things, but saw no sign of them.
"Tucked away out of sight, I dare say," thought Jo, who could forgive
her own wrongs, but hotly resented any insult offered her family.

"Good evening, Miss Jo.  How does Amy get on?" asked May with a
conciliatory air, for she wanted to show that she also could be
generous.

"She has sold everything she had that was worth selling, and now she is
enjoying herself.  The flower table is always attractive, you know,
'especially to gentlemen'." Jo couldn't resist giving that little slap,
but May took it so meekly she regretted it a minute after, and fell to
praising the great vases, which still remained unsold.

"Is Amy's illumination anywhere about?  I took a fancy to buy that for
Father," said Jo, very anxious to learn the fate of her sister's work.

"Everything of Amy's sold long ago.  I took care that the right people
saw them, and they made a nice little sum of money for us," returned
May, who had overcome sundry small temptations, as well as Amy had,
that day.

Much gratified, Jo rushed back to tell the good news, and Amy looked
both touched and surprised by the report of May's word and manner.

"Now, gentlemen, I want you to go and do your duty by the other tables
as generously as you have by mine, especially the art table," she said,
ordering out 'Teddy's own', as the girls called the college friends.

"'Charge, Chester, charge!' is the motto for that table, but do your
duty like men, and you'll get your money's worth of art in every sense
of the word," said the irrepressible Jo, as the devoted phalanx
prepared to take the field.

"To hear is to obey, but March is fairer far than May," said little
Parker, making a frantic effort to be both witty and tender, and
getting promptly quenched by Laurie, who said...

"Very well, my son, for a small boy!" and walked him off, with a
paternal pat on the head.

"Buy the vases," whispered Amy to Laurie, as a final heaping of coals
of fire on her enemy's head.

To May's great delight, Mr. Laurence not only bought the vases, but
pervaded the hall with one under each arm.  The other gentlemen
speculated with equal rashness in all sorts of frail trifles, and
wandered helplessly about afterward, burdened with wax flowers, painted
fans, filigree portfolios, and other useful and appropriate purchases.

Aunt Carrol was there, heard the story, looked pleased, and said
something to Mrs. March in a corner, which made the latter lady beam
with satisfaction, and watch Amy with a face full of mingled pride and
anxiety, though she did not betray the cause of her pleasure till
several days later.

The fair was pronounced a success, and when May bade Amy goodnight, she
did not gush as usual, but gave her an affectionate kiss, and a look
which said 'forgive and forget'.  That satisfied Amy, and when she got
home she found the vases paraded on the parlor chimney piece with a
great bouquet in each.  "The reward of merit for a magnanimous March,"
as Laurie announced with a flourish.

"You've a deal more principle and generosity and nobleness of character
than I ever gave you credit for, Amy.  You've behaved sweetly, and I
respect you with all my heart," said Jo warmly, as they brushed their
hair together late that night.

"Yes, we all do, and love her for being so ready to forgive.  It must
have been dreadfully hard, after working so long and setting your heart
on selling your own pretty things.  I don't believe I could have done
it as kindly as you did," added Beth from her pillow.

"Why, girls, you needn't praise me so.  I only did as I'd be done by.
You laugh at me when I say I want to be a lady, but I mean a true
gentlewoman in mind and manners, and I try to do it as far as I know
how.  I can't explain exactly, but I want to be above the little
meannesses and follies and faults that spoil so many women.  I'm far
from it now, but I do my best, and hope in time to be what Mother is."

Amy spoke earnestly, and Jo said, with a cordial hug, "I understand now
what you mean, and I'll never laugh at you again. You are getting on
faster than you think, and I'll take lessons of you in true politeness,
for you've learned the secret, I believe. Try away, deary, you'll get
your reward some day, and no one will be more delighted than I shall."

A week later Amy did get her reward, and poor Jo found it hard to be
delighted.  A letter came from Aunt Carrol, and Mrs. March's face was
illuminated to such a degree when she read it that Jo and Beth, who
were with her, demanded what the glad tidings were.

"Aunt Carrol is going abroad next month, and wants..."

"Me to go with her!" burst in Jo, flying out of her chair in an
uncontrollable rapture.

"No, dear, not you.  It's Amy."

"Oh, Mother!  She's too young, it's my turn first.  I've wanted it so
long.  It would do me so much good, and be so altogether splendid.  I
must go!"

"I'm afraid it's impossible, Jo.  Aunt says Amy, decidedly, and it is
not for us to dictate when she offers such a favor."

"It's always so.  Amy has all the fun and I have all the work. It isn't
fair, oh, it isn't fair!" cried Jo passionately.

"I'm afraid it's partly your own fault, dear.  When Aunt spoke to me
the other day, she regretted your blunt manners and too independent
spirit, and here she writes, as if quoting something you had said--'I
planned at first to ask Jo, but as 'favors burden her', and she 'hates
French', I think I won't venture to invite her.  Amy is more docile,
will make a good companion for Flo, and receive gratefully any help the
trip may give her."

"Oh, my tongue, my abominable tongue!  Why can't I learn to keep it
quiet?" groaned Jo, remembering words which had been her undoing.  When
she had heard the explanation of the quoted phrases, Mrs. March said
sorrowfully...

"I wish you could have gone, but there is no hope of it this time, so
try to bear it cheerfully, and don't sadden Amy's pleasure by
reproaches or regrets."

"I'll try," said Jo, winking hard as she knelt down to pick up the
basket she had joyfully upset.  "I'll take a leaf out of her book, and
try not only to seem glad, but to be so, and not grudge her one minute
of happiness.  But it won't be easy, for it is a dreadful
disappointment," and poor Jo bedewed the little fat pincushion she held
with several very bitter tears.

"Jo, dear, I'm very selfish, but I couldn't spare you, and I'm glad you
are not going quite yet," whispered Beth, embracing her, basket and
all, with such a clinging touch and loving face that Jo felt comforted
in spite of the sharp regret that made her want to box her own ears,
and humbly beg Aunt Carrol to burden her with this favor, and see how
gratefully she would bear it.

By the time Amy came in, Jo was able to take her part in the family
jubilation, not quite as heartily as usual, perhaps, but without
repinings at Amy's good fortune.  The young lady herself received the
news as tidings of great joy, went about in a solemn sort of rapture,
and began to sort her colors and pack her pencils that evening, leaving
such trifles as clothes, money, and passports to those less absorbed in
visions of art than herself.

"It isn't a mere pleasure trip to me, girls," she said impressively, as
she scraped her best palette.  "It will decide my career, for if I have
any genius, I shall find it out in Rome, and will do something to prove
it."

"Suppose you haven't?" said Jo, sewing away, with red eyes, at the new
collars which were to be handed over to Amy.

"Then I shall come home and teach drawing for my living," replied the
aspirant for fame, with philosophic composure. But she made a wry face
at the prospect, and scratched away at her palette as if bent on
vigorous measures before she gave up her hopes.

"No, you won't.  You hate hard work, and you'll marry some rich man,
and come home to sit in the lap of luxury all your days," said Jo.

"Your predictions sometimes come to pass, but I don't believe that one
will.  I'm sure I wish it would, for if I can't be an artist myself, I
should like to be able to help those who are," said Amy, smiling, as if
the part of Lady Bountiful would suit her better than that of a poor
drawing teacher.

"Hum!" said Jo, with a sigh.  "If you wish it you'll have it, for your
wishes are always granted--mine never."

"Would you like to go?" asked Amy, thoughtfully patting her nose with
her knife.

"Rather!"

"Well, in a year or two I'll send for you, and we'll dig in the Forum
for relics, and carry out all the plans we've made so many times."

"Thank you.  I'll remind you of your promise when that joyful day
comes, if it ever does," returned Jo, accepting the vague but
magnificent offer as gratefully as she could.

There was not much time for preparation, and the house was in a ferment
till Amy was off.  Jo bore up very well till the last flutter of blue
ribbon vanished, when she retired to her refuge, the garret, and cried
till she couldn't cry any more. Amy likewise bore up stoutly till the
steamer sailed.  Then just as the gangway was about to be withdrawn, it
suddenly came over her that a whole ocean was soon to roll between her
and those who loved her best, and she clung to Laurie, the last
lingerer, saying with a sob...

"Oh, take care of them for me, and if anything should happen..."

"I will, dear, I will, and if anything happens, I'll come and comfort
you," whispered Laurie, little dreaming that he would be called upon to
keep his word.

So Amy sailed away to find the Old World, which is always new and
beautiful to young eyes, while her father and friend watched her from
the shore, fervently hoping that none but gentle fortunes would befall
the happy-hearted girl, who waved her hand to them till they could see
nothing but the summer sunshine dazzling on the sea.



CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

OUR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

London

Dearest People, Here I really sit at a front window of the Bath Hotel,
Piccadilly.  It's not a fashionable place, but Uncle stopped here years
ago, and won't go anywhere else.  However, we don't mean to stay long,
so it's no great matter.  Oh, I can't begin to tell you how I enjoy it
all!  I never can, so I'll only give you bits out of my notebook, for
I've done nothing but sketch and scribble since I started.

I sent a line from Halifax, when I felt pretty miserable, but after
that I got on delightfully, seldom ill, on deck all day, with plenty of
pleasant people to amuse me.  Everyone was very kind to me, especially
the officers.  Don't laugh, Jo, gentlemen really are very necessary
aboard ship, to hold on to, or to wait upon one, and as they have
nothing to do, it's a mercy to make them useful, otherwise they would
smoke themselves to death, I'm afraid.

Aunt and Flo were poorly all the way, and liked to be let alone, so
when I had done what I could for them, I went and enjoyed myself.  Such
walks on deck, such sunsets, such splendid air and waves!  It was
almost as exciting as riding a fast horse, when we went rushing on so
grandly.  I wish Beth could have come, it would have done her so much
good.  As for Jo, she would have gone up and sat on the maintop jib, or
whatever the high thing is called, made friends with the engineers, and
tooted on the captain's speaking trumpet, she'd have been in such a
state of rapture.

It was all heavenly, but I was glad to see the Irish coast, and found
it very lovely, so green and sunny, with brown cabins here and there,
ruins on some of the hills, and gentlemen's countryseats in the
valleys, with deer feeding in the parks. It was early in the morning,
but I didn't regret getting up to see it, for the bay was full of
little boats, the shore so picturesque, and a rosy sky overhead.  I
never shall forget it.

At Queenstown one of my new acquaintances left us, Mr. Lennox, and when
I said something about the Lakes of Killarney, he sighed, and sung,
with a look at me...

    "Oh, have you e'er heard of Kate Kearney?
    She lives on the banks of Killarney;
    From the glance of her eye,
    Shun danger and fly,
    For fatal's the glance of Kate Kearney."

Wasn't that nonsensical?

We only stopped at Liverpool a few hours.  It's a dirty, noisy place,
and I was glad to leave it.  Uncle rushed out and bought a pair of
dogskin gloves, some ugly, thick shoes, and an umbrella, and got shaved
_à la_ mutton chop, the first thing. Then he flattered himself that he
looked like a true Briton, but the first time he had the mud cleaned
off his shoes, the little bootblack knew that an American stood in
them, and said, with a grin, "There yer har, sir.  I've given 'em the
latest Yankee shine."  It amused Uncle immensely.  Oh, I must tell you
what that absurd Lennox did!  He got his friend Ward, who came on with
us, to order a bouquet for me, and the first thing I saw in my room was
a lovely one, with "Robert Lennox's compliments," on the card.  Wasn't
that fun, girls? I like traveling.

I never shall get to London if I don't hurry.  The trip was like riding
through a long picture gallery, full of lovely landscapes. The
farmhouses were my delight, with thatched roofs, ivy up to the eaves,
latticed windows, and stout women with rosy children at the doors.  The
very cattle looked more tranquil than ours, as they stood knee-deep in
clover, and the hens had a contented cluck, as if they never got
nervous like Yankee biddies.  Such perfect color I never saw, the grass
so green, sky so blue, grain so yellow, woods so dark, I was in a
rapture all the way.  So was Flo, and we kept bouncing from one side to
the other, trying to see everything while we were whisking along at the
rate of sixty miles an hour.  Aunt was tired and went to sleep, but
Uncle read his guidebook, and wouldn't be astonished at anything. This
is the way we went on.  Amy, flying up--"Oh, that must be Kenilworth,
that gray place among the trees!"  Flo, darting to my window--"How
sweet!  We must go there sometime, won't we Papa?" Uncle, calmly
admiring his boots--"No, my dear, not unless you want beer, that's a
brewery."

A pause--then Flo cried out, "Bless me, there's a gallows and a man
going up."  "Where, where?" shrieks Amy, staring out at two tall posts
with a crossbeam and some dangling chains.  "A colliery," remarks
Uncle, with a twinkle of the eye.  "Here's a lovely flock of lambs all
lying down," says Amy.  "See, Papa, aren't they pretty?" added Flo
sentimentally.  "Geese, young ladies," returns Uncle, in a tone that
keeps us quiet till Flo settles down to enjoy the _Flirtations of
Captain Cavendish_, and I have the scenery all to myself.

Of course it rained when we got to London, and there was nothing to be
seen but fog and umbrellas.  We rested, unpacked, and shopped a little
between the showers.  Aunt Mary got me some new things, for I came off
in such a hurry I wasn't half ready. A white hat and blue feather, a
muslin dress to match, and the loveliest mantle you ever saw.  Shopping
in Regent Street is perfectly splendid.  Things seem so cheap, nice
ribbons only sixpence a yard.  I laid in a stock, but shall get my
gloves in Paris.  Doesn't that sound sort of elegant and rich?

Flo and I, for the fun of it, ordered a hansom cab, while Aunt and
Uncle were out, and went for a drive, though we learned afterward that
it wasn't the thing for young ladies to ride in them alone.  It was so
droll!  For when we were shut in by the wooden apron, the man drove so
fast that Flo was frightened, and told me to stop him, but he was up
outside behind somewhere, and I couldn't get at him.  He didn't hear me
call, nor see me flap my parasol in front, and there we were, quite
helpless, rattling away, and whirling around corners at a breakneck
pace. At last, in my despair, I saw a little door in the roof, and on
poking it open, a red eye appeared, and a beery voice said...

"Now, then, mum?"

I gave my order as soberly as I could, and slamming down the door, with
an "Aye, aye, mum," the man made his horse walk, as if going to a
funeral.  I poked again and said, "A little faster," then off he went,
helter-skelter as before, and we resigned ourselves to our fate.

Today was fair, and we went to Hyde Park, close by, for we are more
aristocratic than we look.  The Duke of Devonshire lives near.  I often
see his footmen lounging at the back gate, and the Duke of Wellington's
house is not far off.  Such sights as I saw, my dear!  It was as good
as Punch, for there were fat dowagers rolling about in their red and
yellow coaches, with gorgeous Jeameses in silk stockings and velvet
coats, up behind, and powdered coachmen in front.  Smart maids, with
the rosiest children I ever saw, handsome girls, looking half asleep,
dandies in queer English hats and lavender kids lounging about, and
tall soldiers, in short red jackets and muffin caps stuck on one side,
looking so funny I longed to sketch them.

Rotten Row means 'Route de Roi', or the king's way, but now it's more
like a riding school than anything else.  The horses are splendid, and
the men, especially the grooms, ride well, but the women are stiff, and
bounce, which isn't according to our rules.  I longed to show them a
tearing American gallop, for they trotted solemnly up and down, in
their scant habits and high hats, looking like the women in a toy
Noah's Ark.  Everyone rides--old men, stout ladies, little
children--and the young folks do a deal of flirting here, I saw a pair
exchange rose buds, for it's the thing to wear one in the button-hole,
and I thought it rather a nice little idea.

In the P.M.  to Westminster Abbey, but don't expect me to describe it,
that's impossible, so I'll only say it was sublime! This evening we are
going to see Fechter, which will be an appropriate end to the happiest
day of my life.

It's very late, but I can't let my letter go in the morning without
telling you what happened last evening.  Who do you think came in, as
we were at tea?  Laurie's English friends, Fred and Frank Vaughn!  I
was so surprised, for I shouldn't have known them but for the cards.
Both are tall fellows with whiskers, Fred handsome in the English
style, and Frank much better, for he only limps slightly, and uses no
crutches.  They had heard from Laurie where we were to be, and came to
ask us to their house, but Uncle won't go, so we shall return the call,
and see them as we can.  They went to the theater with us, and we did
have such a good time, for Frank devoted himself to Flo, and Fred and I
talked over past, present, and future fun as if we had known each other
all our days.  Tell Beth Frank asked for her, and was sorry to hear of
her ill health.  Fred laughed when I spoke of Jo, and sent his
'respectful compliments to the big hat'. Neither of them had forgotten
Camp Laurence, or the fun we had there.  What ages ago it seems,
doesn't it?

Aunt is tapping on the wall for the third time, so I must stop.  I
really feel like a dissipated London fine lady, writing here so late,
with my room full of pretty things, and my head a jumble of parks,
theaters, new gowns, and gallant creatures who say "Ah!" and twirl
their blond mustaches with the true English lordliness.  I long to see
you all, and in spite of my nonsense am, as ever, your loving...

AMY


PARIS

Dear girls,

In my last I told you about our London visit, how kind the Vaughns
were, and what pleasant parties they made for us.  I enjoyed the trips
to Hampton Court and the Kensington Museum more than anything else, for
at Hampton I saw Raphael's cartoons, and at the Museum, rooms full of
pictures by Turner, Lawrence, Reynolds, Hogarth, and the other great
creatures.  The day in Richmond Park was charming, for we had a regular
English picnic, and I had more splendid oaks and groups of deer than I
could copy, also heard a nightingale, and saw larks go up.  We 'did'
London to our heart's content, thanks to Fred and Frank, and were sorry
to go away, for though English people are slow to take you in, when
they once make up their minds to do it they cannot be outdone in
hospitality, I think.  The Vaughns hope to meet us in Rome next winter,
and I shall be dreadfully disappointed if they don't, for Grace and I
are great friends, and the boys very nice fellows, especially Fred.

Well, we were hardly settled here, when he turned up again, saying he
had come for a holiday, and was going to Switzerland. Aunt looked sober
at first, but he was so cool about it she couldn't say a word.  And now
we get on nicely, and are very glad he came, for he speaks French like
a native, and I don't know what we should do without him.  Uncle
doesn't know ten words, and insists on talking English very loud, as if
it would make people understand him.  Aunt's pronunciation is
old-fashioned, and Flo and I, though we flattered ourselves that we
knew a good deal, find we don't, and are very grateful to have Fred do
the '_parley vooing_', as Uncle calls it.

Such delightful times as we are having!  Sight-seeing from morning till
night, stopping for nice lunches in the gay _cafes_, and meeting with
all sorts of droll adventures.  Rainy days I spend in the Louvre,
revelling in pictures.  Jo would turn up her naughty nose at some of
the finest, because she has no soul for art, but I have, and I'm
cultivating eye and taste as fast as I can.  She would like the relics
of great people better, for I've seen her Napoleon's cocked hat and
gray coat, his baby's cradle and his old toothbrush, also Marie
Antoinette's little shoe, the ring of Saint Denis, Charlemagne's sword,
and many other interesting things.  I'll talk for hours about them when
I come, but haven't time to write.

The Palais Royale is a heavenly place, so full of _bijouterie_ and
lovely things that I'm nearly distracted because I can't buy them.
Fred wanted to get me some, but of course I didn't allow it.  Then the
Bois and Champs Elysees are _tres magnifique_. I've seen the imperial
family several times, the emperor an ugly, hard-looking man, the
empress pale and pretty, but dressed in bad taste, I thought--purple
dress, green hat, and yellow gloves. Little Nap is a handsome boy, who
sits chatting to his tutor, and kisses his hand to the people as he
passes in his four-horse barouche, with postilions in red satin jackets
and a mounted guard before and behind.

We often walk in the Tuileries Gardens, for they are lovely, though the
antique Luxembourg Gardens suit me better. Pere la Chaise is very
curious, for many of the tombs are like small rooms, and looking in,
one sees a table, with images or pictures of the dead, and chairs for
the mourners to sit in when they come to lament.  That is so Frenchy.

Our rooms are on the Rue de Rivoli, and sitting on the balcony, we look
up and down the long, brilliant street.  It is so pleasant that we
spend our evenings talking there when too tired with our day's work to
go out.  Fred is very entertaining, and is altogether the most
agreeable young man I ever knew--except Laurie, whose manners are more
charming.  I wish Fred was dark, for I don't fancy light men, however,
the Vaughns are very rich and come of an excellent family, so I won't
find fault with their yellow hair, as my own is yellower.

Next week we are off to Germany and Switzerland, and as we shall travel
fast, I shall only be able to give you hasty letters.  I keep my diary,
and try to 'remember correctly and describe clearly all that I see and
admire', as Father advised. It is good practice for me, and with my
sketchbook will give you a better idea of my tour than these scribbles.

Adieu, I embrace you tenderly. _"Votre Amie."_


HEIDELBERG

My dear Mamma,

Having a quiet hour before we leave for Berne, I'll try to tell you
what has happened, for some of it is very important, as you will see.

The sail up the Rhine was perfect, and I just sat and enjoyed it with
all my might.  Get Father's old guidebooks and read about it.  I
haven't words beautiful enough to describe it. At Coblentz we had a
lovely time, for some students from Bonn, with whom Fred got acquainted
on the boat, gave us a serenade. It was a moonlight night, and about
one o'clock Flo and I were waked by the most delicious music under our
windows.  We flew up, and hid behind the curtains, but sly peeps showed
us Fred and the students singing away down below.  It was the most
romantic thing I ever saw--the river, the bridge of boats, the great
fortress opposite, moonlight everywhere, and music fit to melt a heart
of stone.

When they were done we threw down some flowers, and saw them scramble
for them, kiss their hands to the invisible ladies, and go laughing
away, to smoke and drink beer, I suppose.  Next morning Fred showed me
one of the crumpled flowers in his vest pocket, and looked very
sentimental.  I laughed at him, and said I didn't throw it, but Flo,
which seemed to disgust him, for he tossed it out of the window, and
turned sensible again.  I'm afraid I'm going to have trouble with that
boy, it begins to look like it.

The baths at Nassau were very gay, so was Baden-Baden, where Fred lost
some money, and I scolded him.  He needs someone to look after him when
Frank is not with him.  Kate said once she hoped he'd marry soon, and I
quite agree with her that it would be well for him.  Frankfurt was
delightful.  I saw Goethe's house, Schiller's statue, and Dannecker's
famous 'Ariadne.'  It was very lovely, but I should have enjoyed it
more if I had known the story better.  I didn't like to ask, as
everyone knew it or pretended they did.  I wish Jo would tell me all
about it.  I ought to have read more, for I find I don't know anything,
and it mortifies me.

Now comes the serious part, for it happened here, and Fred has just
gone.  He has been so kind and jolly that we all got quite fond of him.
I never thought of anything but a traveling friendship till the
serenade night.  Since then I've begun to feel that the moonlight
walks, balcony talks, and daily adventures were something more to him
than fun.  I haven't flirted, Mother, truly, but remembered what you
said to me, and have done my very best.  I can't help it if people like
me.  I don't try to make them, and it worries me if I don't care for
them, though Jo says I haven't got any heart.  Now I know Mother will
shake her head, and the girls say, "Oh, the mercenary little wretch!",
but I've made up my mind, and if Fred asks me, I shall accept him,
though I'm not madly in love.  I like him, and we get on comfortably
together.  He is handsome, young, clever enough, and very rich--ever so
much richer than the Laurences.  I don't think his family would object,
and I should be very happy, for they are all kind, well-bred, generous
people, and they like me.  Fred, as the eldest twin, will have the
estate, I suppose, and such a splendid one it is!  A city house in a
fashionable street, not so showy as our big houses, but twice as
comfortable and full of solid luxury, such as English people believe
in.  I like it, for it's genuine.  I've seen the plate, the family
jewels, the old servants, and pictures of the country place, with its
park, great house, lovely grounds, and fine horses.  Oh, it would be
all I should ask!  And I'd rather have it than any title such as girls
snap up so readily, and find nothing behind.  I may be mercenary, but I
hate poverty, and don't mean to bear it a minute longer than I can
help.  One of us _must_ marry well.  Meg didn't, Jo won't, Beth can't
yet, so I shall, and make everything okay all round.  I wouldn't marry
a man I hated or despised.  You may be sure of that, and though Fred is
not my model hero, he does very well, and in time I should get fond
enough of him if he was very fond of me, and let me do just as I liked.
So I've been turning the matter over in my mind the last week, for it
was impossible to help seeing that Fred liked me.  He said nothing, but
little things showed it.  He never goes with Flo, always gets on my
side of the carriage, table, or promenade, looks sentimental when we
are alone, and frowns at anyone else who ventures to speak to me.
Yesterday at dinner, when an Austrian officer stared at us and then
said something to his friend, a rakish-looking baron, about '_ein
wonderschones Blondchen'_, Fred looked as fierce as a lion, and cut his
meat so savagely it nearly flew off his plate.  He isn't one of the
cool, stiff Englishmen, but is rather peppery, for he has Scotch blood
in him, as one might guess from his bonnie blue eyes.

Well, last evening we went up to the castle about sunset, at least all
of us but Fred, who was to meet us there after going to the Post
Restante for letters.  We had a charming time poking about the ruins,
the vaults where the monster tun is, and the beautiful gardens made by
the elector long ago for his English wife.  I liked the great terrace
best, for the view was divine, so while the rest went to see the rooms
inside, I sat there trying to sketch the gray stone lion's head on the
wall, with scarlet woodbine sprays hanging round it.  I felt as if I'd
got into a romance, sitting there, watching the Neckar rolling through
the valley, listening to the music of the Austrian band below, and
waiting for my lover, like a real storybook girl.  I had a feeling that
something was going to happen and I was ready for it.  I didn't feel
blushy or quakey, but quite cool and only a little excited.

By-and-by I heard Fred's voice, and then he came hurrying through the
great arch to find me.  He looked so troubled that I forgot all about
myself, and asked what the matter was.  He said he'd just got a letter
begging him to come home, for Frank was very ill.  So he was going at
once on the night train and only had time to say good-by.  I was very
sorry for him, and disappointed for myself, but only for a minute
because he said, as he shook hands, and said it in a way that I could
not mistake,  "I shall soon come back, you won't forget me, Amy?"

I didn't promise, but I looked at him, and he seemed satisfied, and
there was no time for anything but messages and good-byes, for he was
off in an hour, and we all miss him very much. I know he wanted to
speak, but I think, from something he once hinted, that he had promised
his father not to do anything of the sort yet a while, for he is a rash
boy, and the old gentleman dreads a foreign daughter-in-law.  We shall
soon meet in Rome, and then, if I don't change my mind, I'll say "Yes,
thank you," when he says "Will you, please?"

Of course this is all _very private_, but I wished you to know what was
going on.  Don't be anxious about me, remember I am your 'prudent Amy',
and be sure I will do nothing rashly. Send me as much advice as you
like.  I'll use it if I can.  I wish I could see you for a good talk,
Marmee.  Love and trust me.

Ever your AMY



CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

TENDER TROUBLES

"Jo, I'm anxious about Beth."

"Why, Mother, she has seemed unusually well since the babies came."

"It's not her health that troubles me now, it's her spirits. I'm sure
there is something on her mind, and I want you to discover what it is."

"What makes you think so, Mother?"

"She sits alone a good deal, and doesn't talk to her father as much as
she used.  I found her crying over the babies the other day.  When she
sings, the songs are always sad ones, and now and then I see a look in
her face that I don't understand. This isn't like Beth, and it worries
me."

"Have you asked her about it?"

"I have tried once or twice, but she either evaded my questions or
looked so distressed that I stopped.  I never force my children's
confidence, and I seldom have to wait for long."

Mrs. March glanced at Jo as she spoke, but the face opposite seemed
quite unconscious of any secret disquietude but Beth's, and after
sewing thoughtfully for a minute, Jo said, "I think she is growing up,
and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets,
without knowing why or being able to explain them.  Why, Mother, Beth's
eighteen, but we don't realize it, and treat her like a child,
forgetting she's a woman."

"So she is.  Dear heart, how fast you do grow up," returned her mother
with a sigh and a smile.

"Can't be helped, Marmee, so you must resign yourself to all sorts of
worries, and let your birds hop out of the nest, one by one.  I promise
never to hop very far, if that is any comfort to you."

"It's a great comfort, Jo.  I always feel strong when you are at home,
now Meg is gone.  Beth is too feeble and Amy too young to depend upon,
but when the tug comes, you are always ready."

"Why, you know I don't mind hard jobs much, and there must always be
one scrub in a family.  Amy is splendid in fine works and I'm not, but
I feel in my element when all the carpets are to be taken up, or half
the family fall sick at once. Amy is distinguishing herself abroad, but
if anything is amiss at home, I'm your man."

"I leave Beth to your hands, then, for she will open her tender little
heart to her Jo sooner than to anyone else.  Be very kind, and don't
let her think anyone watches or talks about her.  If she only would get
quite strong and cheerful again, I shouldn't have a wish in the world."

"Happy woman!  I've got heaps."

"My dear, what are they?"

"I'll settle Bethy's troubles, and then I'll tell you mine. They are
not very wearing, so they'll keep." and Jo stitched away, with a wise
nod which set her mother's heart at rest about her for the present at
least.

While apparently absorbed in her own affairs, Jo watched Beth, and
after many conflicting conjectures, finally settled upon one which
seemed to explain the change in her.  A slight incident gave Jo the
clue to the mystery, she thought, and lively fancy, loving heart did
the rest.  She was affecting to write busily one Saturday afternoon,
when she and Beth were alone together.  Yet as she scribbled, she kept
her eye on her sister, who seemed unusually quiet.  Sitting at the
window, Beth's work often dropped into her lap, and she leaned her head
upon her hand, in a dejected attitude, while her eyes rested on the
dull, autumnal landscape.  Suddenly some one passed below, whistling
like an operatic blackbird, and a voice called out, "All serene! Coming
in tonight."

Beth started, leaned forward, smiled and nodded, watched the passer-by
till his quick tramp died away, then said softly as if to herself, "How
strong and well and happy that dear boy looks."

"Hum!" said Jo, still intent upon her sister's face, for the bright
color faded as quickly as it came, the smile vanished, and presently a
tear lay shining on the window ledge.  Beth whisked it off, and in her
half-averted face read a tender sorrow that made her own eyes fill.
Fearing to betray herself, she slipped away, murmuring something about
needing more paper.

"Mercy on me, Beth loves Laurie!" she said, sitting down in her own
room, pale with the shock of the discovery which she believed she had
just made.  "I never dreamed of such a thing. What will Mother say?  I
wonder if her..."  there Jo stopped and turned scarlet with a sudden
thought.  "If he shouldn't love back again, how dreadful it would be.
He must.  I'll make him!" and she shook her head threateningly at the
picture of the mischievous-looking boy laughing at her from the wall.
"Oh dear, we are growing up with a vengeance.  Here's Meg married and a
mamma, Amy flourishing away at Paris, and Beth in love.  I'm the only
one that has sense enough to keep out of mischief." Jo thought intently
for a minute with her eyes fixed on the picture, then she smoothed out
her wrinkled forehead and said, with a decided nod at the face
opposite, "No thank you, sir, you're very charming, but you've no more
stability than a weathercock.  So you needn't write touching notes and
smile in that insinuating way, for it won't do a bit of good, and I
won't have it."

Then she sighed, and fell into a reverie from which she did not wake
till the early twilight sent her down to take new observations, which
only confirmed her suspicion.  Though Laurie flirted with Amy and joked
with Jo, his manner to Beth had always been peculiarly kind and gentle,
but so was everybody's. Therefore, no one thought of imagining that he
cared more for her than for the others.  Indeed, a general impression
had prevailed in the family of late that 'our boy' was getting fonder
than ever of Jo, who, however, wouldn't hear a word upon the subject
and scolded violently if anyone dared to suggest it. If they had known
the various tender passages which had been nipped in the bud, they
would have had the immense satisfaction of saying, "I told you so."
But Jo hated 'philandering', and wouldn't allow it, always having a
joke or a smile ready at the least sign of impending danger.

When Laurie first went to college, he fell in love about once a month,
but these small flames were as brief as ardent, did no damage, and much
amused Jo, who took great interest in the alternations of hope,
despair, and resignation, which were confided to her in their weekly
conferences.  But there came a time when Laurie ceased to worship at
many shrines, hinted darkly at one all-absorbing passion, and indulged
occasionally in Byronic fits of gloom.  Then he avoided the tender
subject altogether, wrote philosophical notes to Jo, turned studious,
and gave out that he was going to 'dig', intending to graduate in a
blaze of glory.  This suited the young lady better than twilight
confidences, tender pressures of the hand, and eloquent glances of the
eye, for with Jo, brain developed earlier than heart, and she preferred
imaginary heroes to real ones, because when tired of them, the former
could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter
were less manageable.

Things were in this state when the grand discovery was made, and Jo
watched Laurie that night as she had never done before.  If she had not
got the new idea into her head, she would have seen nothing unusual in
the fact that Beth was very quiet, and Laurie very kind to her.  But
having given the rein to her lively fancy, it galloped away with her at
a great pace, and common sense, being rather weakened by a long course
of romance writing, did not come to the rescue.  As usual Beth lay on
the sofa and Laurie sat in a low chair close by, amusing her with all
sorts of gossip, for she depended on her weekly 'spin', and he never
disappointed her.  But that evening Jo fancied that Beth's eyes rested
on the lively, dark face beside her with peculiar pleasure, and that
she listened with intense interest to an account of some exciting
cricket match, though the phrases, 'caught off a tice', 'stumped off
his ground', and 'the leg hit for three', were as intelligible to her
as Sanskrit.  She also fancied, having set her heart upon seeing it,
that she saw a certain increase of gentleness in Laurie's manner, that
he dropped his voice now and then, laughed less than usual, was a
little absent-minded, and settled the afghan over Beth's feet with an
assiduity that was really almost tender.

"Who knows?  Stranger things have happened," thought Jo, as she fussed
about the room.  "She will make quite an angel of him, and he will make
life delightfully easy and pleasant for the dear, if they only love
each other.  I don't see how he can help it, and I do believe he would
if the rest of us were out of the way."

As everyone was out of the way but herself, Jo began to feel that she
ought to dispose of herself with all speed.  But where should she go?
And burning to lay herself upon the shrine of sisterly devotion, she
sat down to settle that point.

Now, the old sofa was a regular patriarch of a sofa--long, broad,
well-cushioned, and low, a trifle shabby, as well it might be, for the
girls had slept and sprawled on it as babies, fished over the back,
rode on the arms, and had menageries under it as children, and rested
tired heads, dreamed dreams, and listened to tender talk on it as young
women.  They all loved it, for it was a family refuge, and one corner
had always been Jo's favorite lounging place.  Among the many pillows
that adorned the venerable couch was one, hard, round, covered with
prickly horsehair, and furnished with a knobby button at each end.
This repulsive pillow was her especial property, being used as a weapon
of defense, a barricade, or a stern preventive of too much slumber.

Laurie knew this pillow well, and had cause to regard it with deep
aversion, having been unmercifully pummeled with it in former days when
romping was allowed, and now frequently debarred by it from the seat he
most coveted next to Jo in the sofa corner.  If 'the sausage' as they
called it, stood on end, it was a sign that he might approach and
repose, but if it lay flat across the sofa, woe to man, woman, or child
who dared disturb it!  That evening Jo forgot to barricade her corner,
and had not been in her seat five minutes, before a massive form
appeared beside her, and with both arms spread over the sofa back, both
long legs stretched out before him, Laurie exclaimed, with a sigh of
satisfaction...

"Now, this is filling at the price."

"No slang," snapped Jo, slamming down the pillow.  But it was too late,
there was no room for it, and coasting onto the floor, it disappeared
in a most mysterious manner.

"Come, Jo, don't be thorny.  After studying himself to a skeleton all
the week, a fellow deserves petting and ought to get it."

"Beth will pet you.  I'm busy."

"No, she's not to be bothered with me, but you like that sort of thing,
unless you've suddenly lost your taste for it.  Have you? Do you hate
your boy, and want to fire pillows at him?"

Anything more wheedlesome than that touching appeal was seldom heard,
but Jo quenched 'her boy' by turning on him with a stern query, "How
many bouquets have you sent Miss Randal this week?"

"Not one, upon my word.  She's engaged.  Now then."

"I'm glad of it, that's one of your foolish extravagances, sending
flowers and things to girls for whom you don't care two pins,"
continued Jo reprovingly.

"Sensible girls for whom I do care whole papers of pins won't let me
send them 'flowers and things', so what can I do? My feelings need a
'vent'."

"Mother doesn't approve of flirting even in fun, and you do flirt
desperately, Teddy."

"I'd give anything if I could answer, 'So do you'.  As I can't, I'll
merely say that I don't see any harm in that pleasant little game, if
all parties understand that it's only play."

"Well, it does look pleasant, but I can't learn how it's done. I've
tried, because one feels awkward in company not to do as everybody else
is doing, but I don't seem to get on", said Jo, forgetting to play
mentor.

"Take lessons of Amy, she has a regular talent for it."

"Yes, she does it very prettily, and never seems to go too far.  I
suppose it's natural to some people to please without trying, and
others to always say and do the wrong thing in the wrong place."

"I'm glad you can't flirt.  It's really refreshing to see a sensible,
straightforward girl, who can be jolly and kind without making a fool
of herself.  Between ourselves, Jo, some of the girls I know really do
go on at such a rate I'm ashamed of them. They don't mean any harm, I'm
sure, but if they knew how we fellows talked about them afterward,
they'd mend their ways, I fancy."

"They do the same, and as their tongues are the sharpest, you fellows
get the worst of it, for you are as silly as they, every bit.  If you
behaved properly, they would, but knowing you like their nonsense, they
keep it up, and then you blame them."

"Much you know about it, ma'am," said Laurie in a superior tone. "We
don't like romps and flirts, though we may act as if we did sometimes.
The pretty, modest girls are never talked about, except respectfully,
among gentleman. Bless your innocent soul!  If you could be in my place
for a month you'd see things that would astonish you a trifle. Upon my
word, when I see one of those harum-scarum girls, I always want to say
with our friend Cock Robin...

    "Out upon you, fie upon you,
     Bold-faced jig!"

It was impossible to help laughing at the funny conflict between
Laurie's chivalrous reluctance to speak ill of womankind, and his very
natural dislike of the unfeminine folly of which fashionable society
showed him many samples.  Jo knew that 'young Laurence' was regarded as
a most eligible parti by worldly mamas, was much smiled upon by their
daughters, and flattered enough by ladies of all ages to make a coxcomb
of him, so she watched him rather jealously, fearing he would be
spoiled, and rejoiced more than she confessed to find that he still
believed in modest girls.  Returning suddenly to her admonitory tone,
she said, dropping her voice, "If you must have a 'vent', Teddy, go and
devote yourself to one of the 'pretty, modest girls' whom you do
respect, and not waste your time with the silly ones."

"You really advise it?" and Laurie looked at her with an odd mixture of
anxiety and merriment in his face.

"Yes, I do, but you'd better wait till you are through college, on the
whole, and be fitting yourself for the place meantime.  You're not half
good enough for--well, whoever the modest girl may be." and Jo looked a
little queer likewise, for a name had almost escaped her.

"That I'm not!" acquiesced Laurie, with an expression of humility quite
new to him, as he dropped his eyes and absently wound Jo's apron tassel
round his finger.

"Mercy on us, this will never do," thought Jo, adding aloud, "Go and
sing to me.  I'm dying for some music, and always like yours."

"I'd rather stay here, thank you."

"Well, you can't, there isn't room.  Go and make yourself useful, since
you are too big to be ornamental.  I thought you hated to be tied to a
woman's apron string?" retorted Jo, quoting certain rebellious words of
his own.

"Ah, that depends on who wears the apron!" and Laurie gave an audacious
tweak at the tassel.

"Are you going?" demanded Jo, diving for the pillow.

He fled at once, and the minute it was well, "Up with the bonnets of
bonnie Dundee," she slipped away to return no more till the young
gentleman departed in high dudgeon.

Jo lay long awake that night, and was just dropping off when the sound
of a stifled sob made her fly to Beth's bedside, with the anxious
inquiry, "What is it, dear?"

"I thought you were asleep," sobbed Beth.

"Is it the old pain, my precious?"

"No, it's a new one, but I can bear it," and Beth tried to check her
tears.

"Tell me all about it, and let me cure it as I often did the other."

"You can't, there is no cure."  There Beth's voice gave way, and
clinging to her sister, she cried so despairingly that Jo was
frightened.

"Where is it?  Shall I call Mother?"

"No, no, don't call her, don't tell her.  I shall be better soon.  Lie
down here and 'poor' my head.  I'll be quiet and go to sleep, indeed I
will."

Jo obeyed, but as her hand went softly to and fro across Beth's hot
forehead and wet eyelids, her heart was very full and she longed to
speak.  But young as she was, Jo had learned that hearts, like flowers,
cannot be rudely handled, but must open naturally, so though she
believed she knew the cause of Beth's new pain, she only said, in her
tenderest tone, "Does anything trouble you, deary?"

"Yes, Jo," after a long pause.

"Wouldn't it comfort you to tell me what it is?"

"Not now, not yet."

"Then I won't ask, but remember, Bethy, that Mother and Jo are always
glad to hear and help you, if they can."

"I know it.  I'll tell you by-and-by."

"Is the pain better now?"

"Oh, yes, much better, you are so comfortable, Jo."

"Go to sleep, dear.  I'll stay with you."

So cheek to cheek they fell asleep, and on the morrow Beth seemed quite
herself again, for at eighteen neither heads nor hearts ache long, and
a loving word can medicine most ills.

But Jo had made up her mind, and after pondering over a project for
some days, she confided it to her mother.

"You asked me the other day what my wishes were.  I'll tell you one of
them, Marmee," she began, as they sat along together.  "I want to go
away somewhere this winter for a change."

"Why, Jo?" and her mother looked up quickly, as if the words suggested
a double meaning.

With her eyes on her work Jo answered soberly, "I want something new.
I feel restless and anxious to be seeing, doing, and learning more than
I am.  I brood too much over my own small affairs, and need stirring
up, so as I can be spared this winter, I'd like to hop a little way and
try my wings."

"Where will you hop?"

"To New York.  I had a bright idea yesterday, and this is it.  You know
Mrs. Kirke wrote to you for some respectable young person to teach her
children and sew.  It's rather hard to find just the thing, but I think
I should suit if I tried."

"My dear, go out to service in that great boarding house!" and Mrs.
March looked surprised, but not displeased.

"It's not exactly going out to service, for Mrs. Kirke is your
friend--the kindest soul that ever lived--and would make things
pleasant for me, I know.  Her family is separate from the rest, and no
one knows me there.  Don't care if they do. It's honest work, and I'm
not ashamed of it."

"Nor I.  But your writing?"

"All the better for the change.  I shall see and hear new things, get
new ideas, and even if I haven't much time there, I shall bring home
quantities of material for my rubbish."

"I have no doubt of it, but are these your only reasons for this sudden
fancy?"

"No, Mother."

"May I know the others?"

Jo looked up and Jo looked down, then said slowly, with sudden color in
her cheeks.  "It may be vain and wrong to say it, but--I'm
afraid--Laurie is getting too fond of me."

"Then you don't care for him in the way it is evident he begins to care
for you?" and Mrs. March looked anxious as she put the question.

"Mercy, no!  I love the dear boy, as I always have, and am immensely
proud of him, but as for anything more, it's out of the question."

"I'm glad of that, Jo."

"Why, please?"

"Because, dear, I don't think you suited to one another.  As friends
you are very happy, and your frequent quarrels soon blow over, but I
fear you would both rebel if you were mated for life. You are too much
alike and too fond of freedom, not to mention hot tempers and strong
wills, to get on happily together, in a relation which needs infinite
patience and forbearance, as well as love."

"That's just the feeling I had, though I couldn't express it. I'm glad
you think he is only beginning to care for me.  It would trouble me
sadly to make him unhappy, for I couldn't fall in love with the dear
old fellow merely out of gratitude, could I?"

"You are sure of his feeling for you?"

The color deepened in Jo's cheeks as she answered, with the look of
mingled pleasure, pride, and pain which young girls wear when speaking
of first lovers, "I'm afraid it is so, Mother.  He hasn't said
anything, but he looks a great deal. I think I had better go away
before it comes to anything."

"I agree with you, and if it can be managed you shall go."

Jo looked relieved, and after a pause, said, smiling, "How Mrs. Moffat
would wonder at your want of management, if she knew, and how she will
rejoice that Annie may still hope."

"Ah, Jo, mothers may differ in their management, but the hope is the
same in all--the desire to see their children happy. Meg is so, and I
am content with her success.  You I leave to enjoy your liberty till
you tire of it, for only then will you find that there is something
sweeter.  Amy is my chief care now, but her good sense will help her.
For Beth, I indulge no hopes except that she may be well.  By the way,
she seems brighter this last day or two.  Have you spoken to her?'

"Yes, she owned she had a trouble, and promised to tell me by-and-by.
I said no more, for I think I know it," and Jo told her little story.

Mrs. March shook her head, and did not take so romantic a view of the
case, but looked grave, and repeated her opinion that for Laurie's sake
Jo should go away for a time.

"Let us say nothing about it to him till the plan is settled, then I'll
run away before he can collect his wits and be tragic. Beth must think
I'm going to please myself, as I am, for I can't talk about Laurie to
her.  But she can pet and comfort him after I'm gone, and so cure him
of this romantic notion.  He's been through so many little trials of
the sort, he's used to it, and will soon get over his lovelornity."

Jo spoke hopefully, but could not rid herself of the foreboding fear
that this 'little trial' would be harder than the others, and that
Laurie would not get over his 'lovelornity' as easily as heretofore.

The plan was talked over in a family council and agreed upon, for Mrs.
Kirke gladly accepted Jo, and promised to make a pleasant home for her.
The teaching would render her independent, and such leisure as she got
might be made profitable by writing, while the new scenes and society
would be both useful and agreeable.  Jo liked the prospect and was
eager to be gone, for the home nest was growing too narrow for her
restless nature and adventurous spirit.  When all was settled, with
fear and trembling she told Laurie, but to her surprise he took it very
quietly.  He had been graver than usual of late, but very pleasant, and
when jokingly accused of turning over a new leaf, he answered soberly,
"So I am, and I mean this one shall stay turned."

Jo was very much relieved that one of his virtuous fits should come on
just then, and made her preparations with a lightened heart, for Beth
seemed more cheerful, and hoped she was doing the best for all.

"One thing I leave in your especial care," she said, the night before
she left.

"You mean your papers?" asked Beth.

"No, my boy.  Be very good to him, won't you?"

"Of course I will, but I can't fill your place, and he'll miss you
sadly."

"It won't hurt him, so remember, I leave him in your charge, to plague,
pet, and keep in order."

"I'll do my best, for your sake," promised Beth, wondering why Jo
looked at her so queerly.

When Laurie said good-by, he whispered significantly, "It won't do a
bit of good, Jo.  My eye is on you, so mind what you do, or I'll come
and bring you home."



CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

JO'S JOURNAL

New York, November

Dear Marmee and Beth,

I'm going to write you a regular volume, for I've got heaps to tell,
though I'm not a fine young lady traveling on the continent. When I
lost sight of Father's dear old face, I felt a trifle blue, and might
have shed a briny drop or two, if an Irish lady with four small
children, all crying more or less, hadn't diverted my mind, for I
amused myself by dropping gingerbread nuts over the seat every time
they opened their mouths to roar.

Soon the sun came out, and taking it as a good omen, I cleared up
likewise and enjoyed my journey with all my heart.

Mrs. Kirke welcomed me so kindly I felt at home at once, even in that
big house full of strangers.  She gave me a funny little sky
parlor--all she had, but there is a stove in it, and a nice table in a
sunny window, so I can sit here and write whenever I like.  A fine view
and a church tower opposite atone for the many stairs, and I took a
fancy to my den on the spot. The nursery, where I am to teach and sew,
is a pleasant room next Mrs. Kirke's private parlor, and the two little
girls are pretty children, rather spoiled, I fancy, but they took to me
after telling them The Seven Bad Pigs, and I've no doubt I shall make a
model governess.

I am to have my meals with the children, if I prefer it to the great
table, and for the present I do, for I am bashful, though no one will
believe it.

"Now, my dear, make yourself at home," said Mrs. K.  in her motherly
way, "I'm on the drive from morning to night, as you may suppose with
such a family, but a great anxiety will be off my mind if I know the
children are safe with you.  My rooms are always open to you, and your
own shall be as comfortable as I can make it.  There are some pleasant
people in the house if you feel sociable, and your evenings are always
free.  Come to me if anything goes wrong, and be as happy as you can.
There's the tea bell, I must run and change my cap."  And off she
bustled, leaving me to settle myself in my new nest.

As I went downstairs soon after, I saw something I liked. The flights
are very long in this tall house, and as I stood waiting at the head of
the third one for a little servant girl to lumber up, I saw a gentleman
come along behind her, take the heavy hod of coal out of her hand,
carry it all the way up, put it down at a door near by, and walk away,
saying, with a kind nod and a foreign accent, "It goes better so.  The
little back is too young to haf such heaviness."

Wasn't it good of him?  I like such things, for as Father says, trifles
show character.  When I mentioned it to Mrs. K., that evening, she
laughed, and said, "That must have been Professor Bhaer, he's always
doing things of that sort."

Mrs. K.  told me he was from Berlin, very learned and good, but poor as
a church mouse, and gives lessons to support himself and two little
orphan nephews whom he is educating here, according to the wishes of
his sister, who married an American.  Not a very romantic story, but it
interested me, and I was glad to hear that Mrs. K.  lends him her
parlor for some of his scholars. There is a glass door between it and
the nursery, and I mean to peep at him, and then I'll tell you how he
looks.  He's almost forty, so it's no harm, Marmee.

After tea and a go-to-bed romp with the little girls, I attacked the
big workbasket, and had a quiet evening chatting with my new friend.  I
shall keep a journal-letter, and send it once a week, so goodnight, and
more tomorrow.

Tuesday Eve

Had a lively time in my seminary this morning, for the children acted
like Sancho, and at one time I really thought I should shake them all
round.  Some good angel inspired me to try gymnastics, and I kept it up
till they were glad to sit down and keep still.  After luncheon, the
girl took them out for a walk, and I went to my needlework like little
Mabel 'with a willing mind'.  I was thanking my stars that I'd learned
to make nice buttonholes, when the parlor door opened and shut, and
someone began to hum, Kennst Du Das Land, like a big bumblebee. It was
dreadfully improper, I know, but I couldn't resist the temptation, and
lifting one end of the curtain before the glass door, I peeped in.
Professor Bhaer was there, and while he arranged his books, I took a
good look at him.  A regular German--rather stout, with brown hair
tumbled all over his head, a bushy beard, good nose, the kindest eyes I
ever saw, and a splendid big voice that does one's ears good, after our
sharp or slipshod American gabble.  His clothes were rusty, his hands
were large, and he hadn't a really handsome feature in his face, except
his beautiful teeth, yet I liked him, for he had a fine head, his linen
was very nice, and he looked like a gentleman, though two buttons were
off his coat and there was a patch on one shoe.  He looked sober in
spite of his humming, till he went to the window to turn the hyacinth
bulbs toward the sun, and stroke the cat, who received him like an old
friend.  Then he smiled, and when a tap came at the door, called out in
a loud, brisk tone, "Herein!"

I was just going to run, when I caught sight of a morsel of a child
carrying a big book, and stopped, to see what was going on.

"Me wants me Bhaer," said the mite, slamming down her book and running
to meet him.

"Thou shalt haf thy Bhaer.  Come, then, and take a goot hug from him,
my Tina," said the Professor, catching her up with a laugh, and holding
her so high over his head that she had to stoop her little face to kiss
him.

"Now me mus tuddy my lessin," went on the funny little thing.  So he
put her up at the table, opened the great dictionary she had brought,
and gave her a paper and pencil, and she scribbled away, turning a leaf
now and then, and passing her little fat finger down the page, as if
finding a word, so soberly that I nearly betrayed myself by a laugh,
while Mr. Bhaer stood stroking her pretty hair with a fatherly look
that made me think she must be his own, though she looked more French
than German.

Another knock and the appearance of two young ladies sent me back to my
work, and there I virtuously remained through all the noise and
gabbling that went on next door.  One of the girls kept laughing
affectedly, and saying, "Now Professor," in a coquettish tone, and the
other pronounced her German with an accent that must have made it hard
for him to keep sober.

Both seemed to try his patience sorely, for more than once I heard him
say emphatically, "No, no, it is not so, you haf not attend to what I
say," and once there was a loud rap, as if he struck the table with his
book, followed by the despairing exclamation, "Prut!  It all goes bad
this day."

Poor man, I pitied him, and when the girls were gone, took just one
more peep to see if he survived it.  He seemed to have thrown himself
back in his chair, tired out, and sat there with his eyes shut till the
clock struck two, when he jumped up, put his books in his pocket, as if
ready for another lesson, and taking little Tina who had fallen asleep
on the sofa in his arms, he carried her quietly away.  I fancy he has a
hard life of it.  Mrs. Kirke asked me if I wouldn't go down to the five
o'clock dinner, and feeling a little bit homesick, I thought I would,
just to see what sort of people are under the same roof with me.  So I
made myself respectable and tried to slip in behind Mrs. Kirke, but as
she is short and I'm tall, my efforts at concealment were rather a
failure.  She gave me a seat by her, and after my face cooled off, I
plucked up courage and looked about me.  The long table was full, and
every one intent on getting their dinner, the gentlemen especially, who
seemed to be eating on time, for they bolted in every sense of the
word, vanishing as soon as they were done.  There was the usual
assortment of young men absorbed in themselves, young couples absorbed
in each other, married ladies in their babies, and old gentlemen in
politics.  I don't think I shall care to have much to do with any of
them, except one sweetfaced maiden lady, who looks as if she had
something in her.

Cast away at the very bottom of the table was the Professor, shouting
answers to the questions of a very inquisitive, deaf old gentleman on
one side, and talking philosophy with a Frenchman on the other.  If Amy
had been here, she'd have turned her back on him forever because, sad
to relate, he had a great appetite, and shoveled in his dinner in a
manner which would have horrified 'her ladyship'.  I didn't mind, for I
like 'to see folks eat with a relish', as Hannah says, and the poor man
must have needed a deal of food after teaching idiots all day.

As I went upstairs after dinner, two of the young men were settling
their hats before the hall mirror, and I heard one say low to the
other, "Who's the new party?"

"Governess, or something of that sort."

"What the deuce is she at our table for?"

"Friend of the old lady's."

"Handsome head, but no style."

"Not a bit of it.  Give us a light and come on."

I felt angry at first, and then I didn't care, for a governess is as
good as a clerk, and I've got sense, if I haven't style, which is more
than some people have, judging from the remarks of the elegant beings
who clattered away, smoking like bad chimneys.  I hate ordinary people!


Thursday

Yesterday was a quiet day spent in teaching, sewing, and writing in my
little room, which is very cozy, with a light and fire.  I picked up a
few bits of news and was introduced to the Professor.  It seems that
Tina is the child of the Frenchwoman who does the fine ironing in the
laundry here.  The little thing has lost her heart to Mr. Bhaer, and
follows him about the house like a dog whenever he is at home, which
delights him, as he is very fond of children, though a 'bacheldore'.
Kitty and Minnie Kirke likewise regard him with affection, and tell all
sorts of stories about the plays he invents, the presents he brings,
and the splendid tales he tells.  The younger men quiz him, it seems,
call him Old Fritz, Lager Beer, Ursa Major, and make all manner of
jokes on his name.  But he enjoys it like a boy, Mrs. Kirke says, and
takes it so good-naturedly that they all like him in spite of his
foreign ways.

The maiden lady is a Miss Norton, rich, cultivated, and kind.  She
spoke to me at dinner today (for I went to table again, it's such fun
to watch people), and asked me to come and see her at her room.  She
has fine books and pictures, knows interesting persons, and seems
friendly, so I shall make myself agreeable, for I do want to get into
good society, only it isn't the same sort that Amy likes.

I was in our parlor last evening when Mr. Bhaer came in with some
newspapers for Mrs. Kirke.  She wasn't there, but Minnie, who is a
little old woman, introduced me very prettily. "This is Mamma's friend,
Miss March."

"Yes, and she's jolly and we like her lots," added Kitty, who is an
'enfant terrible'.

We both bowed, and then we laughed, for the prim introduction and the
blunt addition were rather a comical contrast.

"Ah, yes, I hear these naughty ones go to vex you, Mees Marsch.  If so
again, call at me and I come," he said, with a threatening frown that
delighted the little wretches.

I promised I would, and he departed, but it seems as if I was doomed to
see a good deal of him, for today as I passed his door on my way out,
by accident I knocked against it with my umbrella.  It flew open, and
there he stood in his dressing gown, with a big blue sock on one hand
and a darning needle in the other.  He didn't seem at all ashamed of
it, for when I explained and hurried on, he waved his hand, sock and
all, saying in his loud, cheerful way...

"You haf a fine day to make your walk.  Bon voyage, Mademoiselle."

I laughed all the way downstairs, but it was a little pathetic, also to
think of the poor man having to mend his own clothes. The German
gentlemen embroider, I know, but darning hose is another thing and not
so pretty.


Saturday

Nothing has happened to write about, except a call on Miss Norton, who
has a room full of pretty things, and who was very charming, for she
showed me all her treasures, and asked me if I would sometimes go with
her to lectures and concerts, as her escort, if I enjoyed them.  She
put it as a favor, but I'm sure Mrs. Kirke has told her about us, and
she does it out of kindness to me.  I'm as proud as Lucifer, but such
favors from such people don't burden me, and I accepted gratefully.

When I got back to the nursery there was such an uproar in the parlor
that I looked in, and there was Mr. Bhaer down on his hands and knees,
with Tina on his back, Kitty leading him with a jump rope, and Minnie
feeding two small boys with seedcakes, as they roared and ramped in
cages built of chairs.

"We are playing nargerie," explained Kitty.

"Dis is mine effalunt!" added Tina, holding on by the Professor's hair.

"Mamma always allows us to do what we like Saturday afternoon, when
Franz and Emil come, doesn't she, Mr. Bhaer?" said Minnie.

The 'effalunt' sat up, looking as much in earnest as any of them, and
said soberly to me, "I gif you my wort it is so, if we make too large a
noise you shall say Hush! to us, and we go more softly."

I promised to do so, but left the door open and enjoyed the fun as much
as they did, for a more glorious frolic I never witnessed.  They played
tag and soldiers, danced and sang, and when it began to grow dark they
all piled onto the sofa about the Professor, while he told charming
fairy stories of the storks on the chimney tops, and the little
'koblods', who ride the snowflakes as they fall.  I wish Americans were
as simple and natural as Germans, don't you?

I'm so fond of writing, I should go spinning on forever if motives of
economy didn't stop me, for though I've used thin paper and written
fine, I tremble to think of the stamps this long letter will need.
Pray forward Amy's as soon as you can spare them.  My small news will
sound very flat after her splendors, but you will like them, I know.
Is Teddy studying so hard that he can't find time to write to his
friends?  Take good care of him for me, Beth, and tell me all about the
babies, and give heaps of love to everyone.  From your faithful Jo.

P.S.  On reading over my letter, it strikes me as rather Bhaery, but I
am always interested in odd people, and I really had nothing else to
write about.  Bless you!

DECEMBER

My Precious Betsey,

As this is to be a scribble-scrabble letter, I direct it to you, for it
may amuse you, and give you some idea of my goings on, for though
quiet, they are rather amusing, for which, oh, be joyful!  After what
Amy would call Herculaneum efforts, in the way of mental and moral
agriculture, my young ideas begin to shoot and my little twigs to bend
as I could wish.  They are not so interesting to me as Tina and the
boys, but I do my duty by them, and they are fond of me.  Franz and
Emil are jolly little lads, quite after my own heart, for the mixture
of German and American spirit in them produces a constant state of
effervescence.  Saturday afternoons are riotous times, whether spent in
the house or out, for on pleasant days they all go to walk, like a
seminary, with the Professor and myself to keep order, and then such
fun!

We are very good friends now, and I've begun to take lessons.  I really
couldn't help it, and it all came about in such a droll way that I must
tell you.  To begin at the beginning, Mrs. Kirke called to me one day
as I passed Mr. Bhaer's room where she was rummaging.

"Did you ever see such a den, my dear?  Just come and help me put these
books to rights, for I've turned everything upside down, trying to
discover what he has done with the six new handkerchiefs I gave him not
long ago."

I went in, and while we worked I looked about me, for it was 'a den' to
be sure.  Books and papers everywhere, a broken meerschaum, and an old
flute over the mantlepiece as if done with, a ragged bird without any
tail chirped on one window seat, and a box of white mice adorned the
other.  Half-finished boats and bits of string lay among the
manuscripts.  Dirty little boots stood drying before the fire, and
traces of the dearly beloved boys, for whom he makes a slave of
himself, were to be seen all over the room.  After a grand rummage
three of the missing articles were found, one over the bird cage, one
covered with ink, and a third burned brown, having been used as a
holder.

"Such a man!" laughed good-natured Mrs. K., as she put the relics in
the rag bag.  "I suppose the others are torn up to rig ships, bandage
cut fingers, or make kite tails.  It's dreadful, but I can't scold him.
He's so absent-minded and goodnatured, he lets those boys ride over him
roughshod.  I agreed to do his washing and mending, but he forgets to
give out his things and I forget to look them over, so he comes to a
sad pass sometimes."

"Let me mend them," said I.  "I don't mind it, and he needn't know.
I'd like to, he's so kind to me about bringing my letters and lending
books."

So I have got his things in order, and knit heels into two pairs of the
socks, for they were boggled out of shape with his queer darns.
Nothing was said, and I hoped he wouldn't find it out, but one day last
week he caught me at it.  Hearing the lessons he gives to others has
interested and amused me so much that I took a fancy to learn, for Tina
runs in and out, leaving the door open, and I can hear.  I had been
sitting near this door, finishing off the last sock, and trying to
understand what he said to a new scholar, who is as stupid as I am.
The girl had gone, and I thought he had also, it was so still, and I
was busily gabbling over a verb, and rocking to and fro in a most
absurd way, when a little crow made me look up, and there was Mr. Bhaer
looking and laughing quietly, while he made signs to Tina not to betray
him.

"So!" he said, as I stopped and stared like a goose, "you peep at me, I
peep at you, and this is not bad, but see, I am not pleasanting when I
say, haf you a wish for German?"

"Yes, but you are too busy.  I am too stupid to learn," I blundered
out, as red as a peony.

"Prut!  We will make the time, and we fail not to find the sense.  At
efening I shall gif a little lesson with much gladness, for look you,
Mees Marsch, I haf this debt to pay."  And he pointed to my work 'Yes,'
they say to one another, these so kind ladies, 'he is a stupid old
fellow, he will see not what we do, he will never observe that his sock
heels go not in holes any more, he will think his buttons grow out new
when they fall, and believe that strings make theirselves.' "Ah!  But I
haf an eye, and I see much.  I haf a heart, and I feel thanks for this.
Come, a little lesson then and now, or--no more good fairy works for me
and mine."

Of course I couldn't say anything after that, and as it really is a
splendid opportunity, I made the bargain, and we began.  I took four
lessons, and then I stuck fast in a grammatical bog.  The Professor was
very patient with me, but it must have been torment to him, and now and
then he'd look at me with such an expression of mild despair that it
was a toss-up with me whether to laugh or cry.  I tried both ways, and
when it came to a sniff or utter mortification and woe, he just threw
the grammar on to the floor and marched out of the room. I felt myself
disgraced and deserted forever, but didn't blame him a particle, and
was scrambling my papers together, meaning to rush upstairs and shake
myself hard, when in he came, as brisk and beaming as if I'd covered
myself in glory.

"Now we shall try a new way.  You and I will read these pleasant little
_marchen_ together, and dig no more in that dry book, that goes in the
corner for making us trouble."

He spoke so kindly, and opened Hans Anderson's fairy tales so
invitingly before me, that I was more ashamed than ever, and went at my
lesson in a neck-or-nothing style that seemed to amuse him immensely.
I forgot my bashfulness, and pegged away (no other word will express
it) with all my might, tumbling over long words, pronouncing according
to inspiration of the minute, and doing my very best.  When I finished
reading my first page, and stopped for breath, he clapped his hands and
cried out in his hearty way, "Das ist gut! Now we go well!  My turn.  I
do him in German, gif me your ear."  And away he went, rumbling out the
words with his strong voice and a relish which was good to see as well
as hear.  Fortunately the story was _The Constant Tin Soldier_, which
is droll, you know, so I could laugh, and I did, though I didn't
understand half he read, for I couldn't help it, he was so earnest, I
so excited, and the whole thing so comical.

After that we got on better, and now I read my lessons pretty well, for
this way of studying suits me, and I can see that the grammar gets
tucked into the tales and poetry as one gives pills in jelly.  I like
it very much, and he doesn't seem tired of it yet, which is very good
of him, isn't it?  I mean to give him something on Christmas, for I
dare not offer money. Tell me something nice, Marmee.

I'm glad Laurie seems so happy and busy, that he has given up smoking
and lets his hair grow.  You see Beth manages him better than I did.
I'm not jealous, dear, do your best, only don't make a saint of him.
I'm afraid I couldn't like him without a spice of human naughtiness.
Read him bits of my letters.  I haven't time to write much, and that
will do just as well.  Thank Heaven Beth continues so comfortable.

JANUARY

A Happy New Year to you all, my dearest family, which of course
includes Mr. L.  and a young man by the name of Teddy. I can't tell you
how much I enjoyed your Christmas bundle, for I didn't get it till
night and had given up hoping.  Your letter came in the morning, but
you said nothing about a parcel, meaning it for a surprise, so I was
disappointed, for I'd had a 'kind of feeling' that you wouldn't forget
me. I felt a little low in my mind as I sat up in my room after tea,
and when the big, muddy, battered-looking bundle was brought to me, I
just hugged it and pranced.  It was so homey and refreshing that I sat
down on the floor and read and looked and ate and laughed and cried, in
my usual absurd way.  The things were just what I wanted, and all the
better for being made instead of bought.  Beth's new 'ink bib' was
capital, and Hannah's box of hard gingerbread will be a treasure.  I'll
be sure and wear the nice flannels you sent, Marmee, and read carefully
the books Father has marked.  Thank you all, heaps and heaps!

Speaking of books reminds me that I'm getting rich in that line, for on
New Year's Day Mr. Bhaer gave me a fine Shakespeare. It is one he
values much, and I've often admired it, set up in the place of honor
with his German Bible, Plato, Homer, and Milton, so you may imagine how
I felt when he brought it down, without its cover, and showed me my own
name in it, "from my friend Friedrich Bhaer".

"You say often you wish a library.  Here I gif you one, for between
these lids (he meant covers) is many books in one.  Read him well, and
he will help you much, for the study of character in this book will
help you to read it in the world and paint it with your pen."

I thanked him as well as I could, and talk now about 'my library', as
if I had a hundred books.  I never knew how much there was in
Shakespeare before, but then I never had a Bhaer to explain it to me.
Now don't laugh at his horrid name.  It isn't pronounced either Bear or
Beer, as people will say it, but something between the two, as only
Germans can give it. I'm glad you both like what I tell you about him,
and hope you will know him some day.  Mother would admire his warm
heart, Father his wise head.  I admire both, and feel rich in my new
'friend Friedrich Bhaer'.

Not having much money, or knowing what he'd like, I got several little
things, and put them about the room, where he would find them
unexpectedly.  They were useful, pretty, or funny, a new standish on
his table, a little vase for his flower, he always has one, or a bit of
green in a glass, to keep him fresh, he says, and a holder for his
blower, so that he needn't burn up what Amy calls 'mouchoirs'.  I made
it like those Beth invented, a big butterfly with a fat body, and black
and yellow wings, worsted feelers, and bead eyes. It took his fancy
immensely, and he put it on his mantlepiece as an article of virtue, so
it was rather a failure after all. Poor as he is, he didn't forget a
servant or a child in the house, and not a soul here, from the French
laundrywoman to Miss Norton forgot him.  I was so glad of that.

They got up a masquerade, and had a gay time New Year's Eve.  I didn't
mean to go down, having no dress.  But at the last minute, Mrs. Kirke
remembered some old brocades, and Miss Norton lent me lace and
feathers.  So I dressed up as Mrs. Malaprop, and sailed in with a mask
on.  No one knew me, for I disguised my voice, and no one dreamed of
the silent, haughty Miss March (for they think I am very stiff and
cool, most of them, and so I am to whippersnappers) could dance and
dress, and burst out into a 'nice derangement of epitaphs, like an
allegory on the banks of the Nile'.  I enjoyed it very much, and when
we unmasked it was fun to see them stare at me.  I heard one of the
young men tell another that he knew I'd been an actress, in fact, he
thought he remembered seeing me at one of the minor theaters.  Meg will
relish that joke.  Mr. Bhaer was Nick Bottom, and Tina was Titania, a
perfect little fairy in his arms.  To see them dance was 'quite a
landscape', to use a Teddyism.

I had a very happy New Year, after all, and when I thought it over in
my room, I felt as if I was getting on a little in spite of my many
failures, for I'm cheerful all the time now, work with a will, and take
more interest in other people than I used to, which is satisfactory.
Bless you all!  Ever your loving...  Jo



CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

FRIEND

Though very happy in the social atmosphere about her, and very busy
with the daily work that earned her bread and made it sweeter for the
effort, Jo still found time for literary labors.  The purpose which now
took possession of her was a natural one to a poor and ambitious girl,
but the means she took to gain her end were not the best.  She saw that
money conferred power, money and power, therefore, she resolved to
have, not to be used for herself alone, but for those whom she loved
more than life.  The dream of filling home with comforts, giving Beth
everything she wanted, from strawberries in winter to an organ in her
bedroom, going abroad herself, and always having more than enough, so
that she might indulge in the luxury of charity, had been for years
Jo's most cherished castle in the air.

The prize-story experience had seemed to open a way which might, after
long traveling and much uphill work, lead to this delightful chateau en
Espagne.  But the novel disaster quenched her courage for a time, for
public opinion is a giant which has frightened stouter-hearted Jacks on
bigger beanstalks than hers. Like that immortal hero, she reposed
awhile after the first attempt, which resulted in a tumble and the
least lovely of the giant's treasures, if I remember rightly.  But the
'up again and take another' spirit was as strong in Jo as in Jack, so
she scrambled up on the shady side this time and got more booty, but
nearly left behind her what was far more precious than the moneybags.

She took to writing sensation stories, for in those dark ages, even
all-perfect America read rubbish.  She told no one, but concocted a
'thrilling tale', and boldly carried it herself to Mr. Dashwood, editor
of the Weekly Volcano.  She had never read Sartor Resartus, but she had
a womanly instinct that clothes possess an influence more powerful over
many than the worth of character or the magic of manners.  So she
dressed herself in her best, and trying to persuade herself that she
was neither excited nor nervous, bravely climbed two pairs of dark and
dirty stairs to find herself in a disorderly room, a cloud of cigar
smoke, and the presence of three gentlemen, sitting with their heels
rather higher than their hats, which articles of dress none of them
took the trouble to remove on her appearance.  Somewhat daunted by this
reception, Jo hesitated on the threshold, murmuring in much
embarrassment...

"Excuse me, I was looking for the Weekly Volcano office. I wished to
see Mr. Dashwood."

Down went the highest pair of heels, up rose the smokiest gentleman,
and carefully cherishing his cigar between his fingers, he advanced
with a nod and a countenance expressive of nothing but sleep.  Feeling
that she must get through the matter somehow, Jo produced her
manuscript and, blushing redder and redder with each sentence,
blundered out fragments of the little speech carefully prepared for the
occasion.

"A friend of mine desired me to offer--a story--just as an
experiment--would like your opinion--be glad to write more if this
suits."

While she blushed and blundered, Mr. Dashwood had taken the manuscript,
and was turning over the leaves with a pair of rather dirty fingers,
and casting critical glances up and down the neat pages.

"Not a first attempt, I take it?" observing that the pages were
numbered, covered only on one side, and not tied up with a ribbon--sure
sign of a novice.

"No, sir.  She has had some experience, and got a prize for a tale in
the _Blarneystone Banner_."

"Oh, did she?" and Mr. Dashwood gave Jo a quick look, which seemed to
take note of everything she had on, from the bow in her bonnet to the
buttons on her boots.  "Well, you can leave it, if you like.  We've
more of this sort of thing on hand than we know what to do with at
present, but I'll run my eye over it, and give you an answer next week."

Now, Jo did _not_ like to leave it, for Mr. Dashwood didn't suit her at
all, but, under the circumstances, there was nothing for her to do but
bow and walk away, looking particularly tall and dignified, as she was
apt to do when nettled or abashed. Just then she was both, for it was
perfectly evident from the knowing glances exchanged among the
gentlemen that her little fiction of 'my friend' was considered a good
joke, and a laugh, produced by some inaudible remark of the editor, as
he closed the door, completed her discomfiture.  Half resolving never
to return, she went home, and worked off her irritation by stitching
pinafores vigorously, and in an hour or two was cool enough to laugh
over the scene and long for next week.

When she went again, Mr. Dashwood was alone, whereat she rejoiced.  Mr.
Dashwood was much wider awake than before, which was agreeable, and Mr.
Dashwood was not too deeply absorbed in a cigar to remember his
manners, so the second interview was much more comfortable than the
first.

"We'll take this (editors never say I), if you don't object to a few
alterations.  It's too long, but omitting the passages I've marked will
make it just the right length," he said, in a businesslike tone.

Jo hardly knew her own MS.  again, so crumpled and underscored were its
pages and paragraphs, but feeling as a tender parent might on being
asked to cut off her baby's legs in order that it might fit into a new
cradle, she looked at the marked passages and was surprised to find
that all the moral reflections--which she had carefully put in as
ballast for much romance--had been stricken out.

"But, Sir, I thought every story should have some sort of a moral, so I
took care to have a few of my sinners repent."

Mr. Dashwoods's editorial gravity relaxed into a smile, for Jo had
forgotten her 'friend', and spoken as only an author could.

"People want to be amused, not preached at, you know.  Morals don't
sell nowadays."  Which was not quite a correct statement, by the way.

"You think it would do with these alterations, then?"

"Yes, it's a new plot, and pretty well worked up--language good, and so
on," was Mr. Dashwood's affable reply.

"What do you--that is, what compensation--" began Jo, not exactly
knowing how to express herself.

"Oh, yes, well, we give from twenty-five to thirty for things of this
sort.  Pay when it comes out," returned Mr. Dashwood, as if that point
had escaped him.  Such trifles do escape the editorial mind, it is said.

"Very well, you can have it," said Jo, handing back the story with a
satisfied air, for after the dollar-a-column work, even twenty-five
seemed good pay.

"Shall I tell my friend you will take another if she has one better
than this?" asked Jo, unconscious of her little slip of the tongue, and
emboldened by her success.

"Well, we'll look at it.  Can't promise to take it.  Tell her to make
it short and spicy, and never mind the moral.  What name would your
friend like to put on it?" in a careless tone.

"None at all, if you please, she doesn't wish her name to appear and
has no nom de plume," said Jo, blushing in spite of herself.

"Just as she likes, of course.  The tale will be out next week. Will
you call for the money, or shall I send it?" asked Mr. Dashwood, who
felt a natural desire to know who his new contributor might be.

"I'll call.  Good morning, Sir."

As she departed, Mr. Dashwood put up his feet, with the graceful
remark, "Poor and proud, as usual, but she'll do."

Following Mr. Dashwood's directions, and making Mrs. Northbury her
model, Jo rashly took a plunge into the frothy sea of sensational
literature, but thanks to the life preserver thrown her by a friend,
she came up again not much the worse for her ducking.

Like most young scribblers, she went abroad for her characters and
scenery, and banditti, counts, gypsies, nuns, and duchesses appeared
upon her stage, and played their parts with as much accuracy and spirit
as could be expected.  Her readers were not particular about such
trifles as grammar, punctuation, and probability, and Mr. Dashwood
graciously permitted her to fill his columns at the lowest prices, not
thinking it necessary to tell her that the real cause of his
hospitality was the fact that one of his hacks, on being offered higher
wages, had basely left him in the lurch.

She soon became interested in her work, for her emaciated purse grew
stout, and the little hoard she was making to take Beth to the
mountains next summer grew slowly but surely as the weeks passed.  One
thing disturbed her satisfaction, and that was that she did not tell
them at home.  She had a feeling that Father and Mother would not
approve, and preferred to have her own way first, and beg pardon
afterward.  It was easy to keep her secret, for no name appeared with
her stories.  Mr. Dashwood had of course found it out very soon, but
promised to be dumb, and for a wonder kept his word.

She thought it would do her no harm, for she sincerely meant to write
nothing of which she would be ashamed, and quieted all pricks of
conscience by anticipations of the happy minute when she should show
her earnings and laugh over her well-kept secret.

But Mr. Dashwood rejected any but thrilling tales, and as thrills could
not be produced except by harrowing up the souls of the readers,
history and romance, land and sea, science and art, police records and
lunatic asylums, had to be ransacked for the purpose.  Jo soon found
that her innocent experience had given her but few glimpses of the
tragic world which underlies society, so regarding it in a business
light, she set about supplying her deficiencies with characteristic
energy. Eager to find material for stories, and bent on making them
original in plot, if not masterly in execution, she searched newspapers
for accidents, incidents, and crimes.  She excited the suspicions of
public librarians by asking for works on poisons.  She studied faces in
the street, and characters, good, bad, and indifferent, all about her.
She delved in the dust of ancient times for facts or fictions so old
that they were as good as new, and introduced herself to folly, sin,
and misery, as well as her limited opportunities allowed.  She thought
she was prospering finely, but unconsciously she was beginning to
desecrate some of the womanliest attributes of a woman's character.
She was living in bad society, and imaginary though it was, its
influence affected her, for she was feeding heart and fancy on
dangerous and unsubstantial food, and was fast brushing the innocent
bloom from her nature by a premature acquaintance with the darker side
of life, which comes soon enough to all of us.

She was beginning to feel rather than see this, for much describing of
other people's passions and feelings set her to studying and
speculating about her own, a morbid amusement in which healthy young
minds do not voluntarily indulge. Wrongdoing always brings its own
punishment, and when Jo most needed hers, she got it.

I don't know whether the study of Shakespeare helped her to read
character, or the natural instinct of a woman for what was honest,
brave, and strong, but while endowing her imaginary heroes with every
perfection under the sun, Jo was discovering a live hero, who
interested her in spite of many human imperfections.  Mr. Bhaer, in one
of their conversations, had advised her to study simple, true, and
lovely characters, wherever she found them, as good training for a
writer.  Jo took him at his word, for she coolly turned round and
studied him--a proceeding which would have much surprised him, had he
known it, for the worthy Professor was very humble in his own conceit.

Why everybody liked him was what puzzled Jo, at first.  He was neither
rich nor great, young nor handsome, in no respect what is called
fascinating, imposing, or brilliant, and yet he was as attractive as a
genial fire, and people seemed to gather about him as naturally as
about a warm hearth.  He was poor, yet always appeared to be giving
something away; a stranger, yet everyone was his friend; no longer
young, but as happy-hearted as a boy; plain and peculiar, yet his face
looked beautiful to many, and his oddities were freely forgiven for his
sake.  Jo often watched him, trying to discover the charm, and at last
decided that it was benevolence which worked the miracle.  If he had
any sorrow, 'it sat with its head under its wing', and he turned only
his sunny side to the world.  There were lines upon his forehead, but
Time seemed to have touched him gently, remembering how kind he was to
others.  The pleasant curves about his mouth were the memorials of many
friendly words and cheery laughs, his eyes were never cold or hard, and
his big hand had a warm, strong grasp that was more expressive than
words.

His very clothes seemed to partake of the hospitable nature of the
wearer.  They looked as if they were at ease, and liked to make him
comfortable.  His capacious waistcoat was suggestive of a large heart
underneath.  His rusty coat had a social air, and the baggy pockets
plainly proved that little hands often went in empty and came out full.
His very boots were benevolent, and his collars never stiff and raspy
like other people's.

"That's it!" said Jo to herself, when she at length discovered that
genuine good will toward one's fellow men could beautify and dignify
even a stout German teacher, who shoveled in his dinner, darned his own
socks, and was burdened with the name of Bhaer.

Jo valued goodness highly, but she also possessed a most feminine
respect for intellect, and a little discovery which she made about the
Professor added much to her regard for him. He never spoke of himself,
and no one ever knew that in his native city he had been a man much
honored and esteemed for learning and integrity, till a countryman came
to see him. He never spoke of himself, and in a conversation with Miss
Norton divulged the pleasing fact.  From her Jo learned it, and liked
it all the better because Mr. Bhaer had never told it.  She felt proud
to know that he was an honored Professor in Berlin, though only a poor
language-master in America, and his homely, hard-working life was much
beautified by the spice of romance which this discovery gave it.
Another and a better gift than intellect was shown her in a most
unexpected manner.  Miss Norton had the entree into most society, which
Jo would have had no chance of seeing but for her.  The solitary woman
felt an interest in the ambitious girl, and kindly conferred many
favors of this sort both on Jo and the Professor.  She took them with
her one night to a select symposium, held in honor of several
celebrities.

Jo went prepared to bow down and adore the mighty ones whom she had
worshiped with youthful enthusiasm afar off.  But her reverence for
genius received a severe shock that night, and it took her some time to
recover from the discovery that the great creatures were only men and
women after all.  Imagine her dismay, on stealing a glance of timid
admiration at the poet whose lines suggested an ethereal being fed on
'spirit, fire, and dew', to behold him devouring his supper with an
ardor which flushed his intellectual countenance.  Turning as from a
fallen idol, she made other discoveries which rapidly dispelled her
romantic illusions.  The great novelist vibrated between two decanters
with the regularity of a pendulum; the famous divine flirted openly
with one of the Madame de Staels of the age, who looked daggers at
another Corinne, who was amiably satirizing her, after outmaneuvering
her in efforts to absorb the profound philosopher, who imbibed tea
Johnsonianly and appeared to slumber, the loquacity of the lady
rendering speech impossible.  The scientific celebrities, forgetting
their mollusks and glacial periods, gossiped about art, while devoting
themselves to oysters and ices with characteristic energy; the young
musician, who was charming the city like a second Orpheus, talked
horses; and the specimen of the British nobility present happened to be
the most ordinary man of the party.

Before the evening was half over, Jo felt so completely disillusioned,
that she sat down in a corner to recover herself. Mr. Bhaer soon joined
her, looking rather out of his element, and presently several of the
philosophers, each mounted on his hobby, came ambling up to hold an
intellectual tournament in the recess.  The conversations were miles
beyond Jo's comprehension, but she enjoyed it, though Kant and Hegel
were unknown gods, the Subjective and Objective unintelligible terms,
and the only thing 'evolved from her inner consciousness' was a bad
headache after it was all over.  It dawned upon her gradually that the
world was being picked to pieces, and put together on new and,
according to the talkers, on infinitely better principles than before,
that religion was in a fair way to be reasoned into nothingness, and
intellect was to be the only God.  Jo knew nothing about philosophy or
metaphysics of any sort, but a curious excitement, half pleasurable,
half painful, came over her as she listened with a sense of being
turned adrift into time and space, like a young balloon out on a
holiday.

She looked round to see how the Professor liked it, and found him
looking at her with the grimmest expression she had ever seen him wear.
He shook his head and beckoned her to come away, but she was fascinated
just then by the freedom of Speculative Philosophy, and kept her seat,
trying to find out what the wise gentlemen intended to rely upon after
they had annihilated all the old beliefs.

Now, Mr. Bhaer was a diffident man and slow to offer his own opinions,
not because they were unsettled, but too sincere and earnest to be
lightly spoken.  As he glanced from Jo to several other young people,
attracted by the brilliancy of the philosophic pyrotechnics, he knit
his brows and longed to speak, fearing that some inflammable young soul
would be led astray by the rockets, to find when the display was over
that they had only an empty stick or a scorched hand.

He bore it as long as he could, but when he was appealed to for an
opinion, he blazed up with honest indignation and defended religion
with all the eloquence of truth--an eloquence which made his broken
English musical and his plain face beautiful.  He had a hard fight, for
the wise men argued well, but he didn't know when he was beaten and
stood to his colors like a man.  Somehow, as he talked, the world got
right again to Jo.  The old beliefs, that had lasted so long, seemed
better than the new.  God was not a blind force, and immortality was
not a pretty fable, but a blessed fact.  She felt as if she had solid
ground under her feet again, and when Mr. Bhaer paused, outtalked but
not one whit convinced, Jo wanted to clap her hands and thank him.

She did neither, but she remembered the scene, and gave the Professor
her heartiest respect, for she knew it cost him an effort to speak out
then and there, because his conscience would not let him be silent.
She began to see that character is a better possession than money,
rank, intellect, or beauty, and to feel that if greatness is what a
wise man has defined it to be, 'truth, reverence, and good will', then
her friend Friedrich Bhaer was not only good, but great.

This belief strengthened daily.  She valued his esteem, she coveted his
respect, she wanted to be worthy of his friendship, and just when the
wish was sincerest, she came near to losing everything.  It all grew
out of a cocked hat, for one evening the Professor came in to give Jo
her lesson with a paper soldier cap on his head, which Tina had put
there and he had forgotten to take off.

"It's evident he doesn't look in his glass before coming down," thought
Jo, with a smile, as he said "Goot efening," and sat soberly down,
quite unconscious of the ludicrous contrast between his subject and his
headgear, for he was going to read her the Death of Wallenstein.

She said nothing at first, for she liked to hear him laugh out his big,
hearty laugh when anything funny happened, so she left him to discover
it for himself, and presently forgot all about it, for to hear a German
read Schiller is rather an absorbing occupation.  After the reading
came the lesson, which was a lively one, for Jo was in a gay mood that
night, and the cocked hat kept her eyes dancing with merriment.  The
Professor didn't know what to make of her, and stopped at last to ask
with an air of mild surprise that was irresistible. . .

"Mees Marsch, for what do you laugh in your master's face? Haf you no
respect for me, that you go on so bad?"

"How can I be respectful, Sir, when you forget to take your hat off?"
said Jo.

Lifting his hand to his head, the absent-minded Professor gravely felt
and removed the little cocked hat, looked at it a minute, and then
threw back his head and laughed like a merry bass viol.

"Ah!  I see him now, it is that imp Tina who makes me a fool with my
cap.  Well, it is nothing, but see you, if this lesson goes not well,
you too shall wear him."

But the lesson did not go at all for a few minutes because Mr. Bhaer
caught sight of a picture on the hat, and unfolding it, said with great
disgust, "I wish these papers did not come in the house.  They are not
for children to see,  nor young people to read. It is not well, and I
haf no patience with those who make this harm."

Jo glanced at the sheet and saw a pleasing illustration composed of a
lunatic, a corpse, a villain, and a viper.  She did not like it, but
the impulse that made her turn it over was not one of displeasure but
fear, because for a minute she fancied the paper was the Volcano.  It
was not, however, and her panic subsided as she remembered that even if
it had been and one of her own tales in it, there would have been no
name to betray her.  She had betrayed herself, however, by a look and a
blush, for though an absent man, the Professor saw a good deal more
than people fancied.  He knew that Jo wrote, and had met her down among
the newspaper offices more than once, but as she never spoke of it, he
asked no questions in spite of a strong desire to see her work.  Now it
occurred to him that she was doing what she was ashamed to own, and it
troubled him.  He did not say to himself, "It is none of my business.
I've no right to say anything," as many people would have done.  He
only remembered that she was young and poor, a girl far away from
mother's love and father's care, and he was moved to help her with an
impulse as quick and natural as that which would prompt him to put out
his hand to save a baby from a puddle.  All this flashed through his
mind in a minute, but not a trace of it appeared in his face, and by
the time the paper was turned, and Jo's needle threaded, he was ready
to say quite naturally, but very gravely...

"Yes, you are right to put it from you.  I do not think that good young
girls should see such things.  They are made pleasant to some, but I
would more rather give my boys gunpowder to play with than this bad
trash."

"All may not be bad, only silly, you know, and if there is a demand for
it, I don't see any harm in supplying it. Many very respectable people
make an honest living out of what are called sensation stories," said
Jo, scratching gathers so energetically that a row of little slits
followed her pin.

"There is a demand for whisky, but I think you and I do not care to
sell it.  If the respectable people knew what harm they did, they would
not feel that the living was honest.  They haf no right to put poison
in the sugarplum, and let the small ones eat it.  No, they should think
a little, and sweep mud in the street before they do this thing."

Mr. Bhaer spoke warmly, and walked to the fire, crumpling the paper in
his hands.  Jo sat still, looking as if the fire had come to her, for
her cheeks burned long after the cocked hat had turned to smoke and
gone harmlessly up the chimney.

"I should like much to send all the rest after him," muttered the
Professor, coming back with a relieved air.

Jo thought what a blaze her pile of papers upstairs would make, and her
hard-earned money lay rather heavily on her conscience at that minute.
Then she thought consolingly to herself, "Mine are not like that, they
are only silly, never bad, so I won't be worried," and taking up her
book, she said, with a studious face, "Shall we go on, Sir? I'll be
very good and proper now."

"I shall hope so," was all he said, but he meant more than she
imagined, and the grave, kind look he gave her made her feel as if the
words Weekly Volcano were printed in large type on her forehead.

As soon as she went to her room, she got out her papers, and carefully
reread every one of her stories.  Being a little shortsighted, Mr.
Bhaer sometimes used eye glasses, and Jo had tried them once, smiling
to see how they magnified the fine print of her book.  Now she seemed
to have on the Professor's mental or moral spectacles also, for the
faults of these poor stories glared at her dreadfully and filled her
with dismay.

"They are trash, and will soon be worse trash if I go on, for each is
more sensational than the last.  I've gone blindly on, hurting myself
and other people, for the sake of money.  I know it's so, for I can't
read this stuff in sober earnest without being horribly ashamed of it,
and what should I do if they were seen at home or Mr. Bhaer got hold of
them?"

Jo turned hot at the bare idea, and stuffed the whole bundle into her
stove, nearly setting the chimney afire with the blaze.

"Yes, that's the best place for such inflammable nonsense. I'd better
burn the house down, I suppose, than let other people blow themselves
up with my gunpowder," she thought as she watched the Demon of the Jura
whisk away, a little black cinder with fiery eyes.

But when nothing remained of all her three month's work except a heap
of ashes and the money in her lap, Jo looked sober, as she sat on the
floor, wondering what she ought to do about her wages.

"I think I haven't done much harm yet, and may keep this to pay for my
time," she said, after a long meditation, adding impatiently, "I almost
wish I hadn't any conscience, it's so inconvenient.  If I didn't care
about doing right, and didn't feel uncomfortable when doing wrong, I
should get on capitally. I can't help wishing sometimes, that Mother
and Father hadn't been so particular about such things."

Ah, Jo, instead of wishing that, thank God that 'Father and Mother were
particular', and pity from your heart those who have no such guardians
to hedge them round with principles which may seem like prison walls to
impatient youth, but which will prove sure foundations to build
character upon in womanhood.

Jo wrote no more sensational stories, deciding that the money did not
pay for her share of the sensation, but going to the other extreme, as
is the way with people of her stamp, she took a course of Mrs.
Sherwood, Miss Edgeworth, and Hannah More, and then produced a tale
which might have been more properly called an essay or a sermon, so
intensely moral was it.  She had her doubts about it from the
beginning, for her lively fancy and girlish romance felt as ill at ease
in the new style as she would have done masquerading in the stiff and
cumbrous costume of the last century.  She sent this didactic gem to
several markets, but it found no purchaser, and she was inclined to
agree with Mr. Dashwood that morals didn't sell.

Then she tried a child's story, which she could easily have disposed of
if she had not been mercenary enough to demand filthy lucre for it.
The only person who offered enough to make it worth her while to try
juvenile literature was a worthy gentleman who felt it his mission to
convert all the world to his particular belief.  But much as she liked
to write for children, Jo could not consent to depict all her naughty
boys as being eaten by bears or tossed by mad bulls because they did
not go to a particular Sabbath school, nor all the good infants who did
go as rewarded by every kind of bliss, from gilded gingerbread to
escorts of angels when they departed this life with psalms or sermons
on their lisping tongues.  So nothing came of these trials, and Jo
corked up her inkstand, and said in a fit of very wholesome humility...

"I don't know anything.  I'll wait until I do before I try again, and
meantime, 'sweep mud in the street' if I can't do better, that's
honest, at least."  Which decision proved that her second tumble down
the beanstalk had done her some good.

While these internal revolutions were going on, her external life had
been as busy and uneventful as usual, and if she sometimes looked
serious or a little sad no one observed it but Professor Bhaer.  He did
it so quietly that Jo never knew he was watching to see if she would
accept and profit by his reproof, but she stood the test, and he was
satisfied, for though no words passed between them, he knew that she
had given up writing.  Not only did he guess it by the fact that the
second finger of her right hand was no longer inky, but she spent her
evenings downstairs now, was met no more among newspaper offices, and
studied with a dogged patience, which assured him that she was bent on
occupying her mind with something useful, if not pleasant.

He helped her in many ways, proving himself a true friend, and Jo was
happy, for while her pen lay idle, she was learning other lessons
besides German, and laying a foundation for the sensation story of her
own life.

It was a pleasant winter and a long one, for she did not leave Mrs.
Kirke till June.  Everyone seemed sorry when the time came.  The
children were inconsolable, and Mr. Bhaer's hair stuck straight up all
over his head, for he always rumpled it wildly when disturbed in mind.

"Going home?  Ah, you are happy that you haf a home to go in," he said,
when she told him, and sat silently pulling his beard in the corner,
while she held a little levee on that last evening.

She was going early, so she bade them all goodbye overnight, and when
his turn came, she said warmly, "Now, Sir, you won't forget to come and
see us, if you ever travel our way, will you? I'll never forgive you if
you do, for I want them all to know my friend."

"Do you?  Shall I come?" he asked, looking down at her with an eager
expression which she did not see.

"Yes, come next month.  Laurie graduates then, and you'd enjoy
commencement as something new."

"That is your best friend, of whom you speak?" he said in an altered
tone.

"Yes, my boy Teddy.  I'm very proud of him and should like you to see
him."

Jo looked up then, quite unconscious of anything but her own pleasure
in the prospect of showing them to one another. Something in Mr.
Bhaer's face suddenly recalled the fact that she might find Laurie more
than a 'best friend', and simply because she particularly wished not to
look as if anything was the matter, she involuntarily began to blush,
and the more she tried not to, the redder she grew.  If it had not been
for Tina on her knee.  She didn't know what would have become of her.
Fortunately the child was moved to hug her, so she managed to hide her
face an instant, hoping the Professor did not see it. But he did, and
his own changed again from that momentary anxiety to its usual
expression, as he said cordially...

"I fear I shall not make the time for that, but I wish the friend much
success, and you all happiness.  Gott bless you!"  And with that, he
shook hands warmly, shouldered Tina, and went away.

But after the boys were abed, he sat long before his fire with the
tired look on his face and the 'heimweh', or homesickness, lying heavy
at his heart.  Once, when he remembered Jo as she sat with the little
child in her lap and that new softness in her face, he leaned his head
on his hands a minute, and then roamed about the room, as if in search
of something that he could not find.

"It is not for me, I must not hope it now," he said to himself, with a
sigh that was almost a groan.  Then, as if reproaching himself for the
longing that he could not repress, he went and kissed the two tousled
heads upon the pillow, took down his seldom-used meerschaum, and opened
his Plato.

He did his best and did it manfully, but I don't think he found that a
pair of rampant boys, a pipe, or even the divine Plato, were very
satisfactory substitutes for wife and child at home.

Early as it was, he was at the station next morning to see Jo off, and
thanks to him, she began her solitary journey with the pleasant memory
of a familiar face smiling its farewell, a bunch of violets to keep her
company, and best of all, the happy thought, "Well, the winter's gone,
and I've written no books, earned no fortune, but I've made a friend
worth having and I'll try to keep him all my life."



CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

HEARTACHE

Whatever his motive might have been, Laurie studied to some purpose
that year, for he graduated with honor, and gave the Latin oration with
the grace of a Phillips and the eloquence of a Demosthenes, so his
friends said.  They were all there, his grandfather--oh, so proud--Mr.
and Mrs. March, John and Meg, Jo and Beth, and all exulted over him
with the sincere admiration which boys make light of at the time, but
fail to win from the world by any after-triumphs.

"I've got to stay for this confounded supper, but I shall be home early
tomorrow.  You'll come and meet me as usual, girls?" Laurie said, as he
put the sisters into the carriage after the joys of the day were over.
He said 'girls', but he meant Jo, for she was the only one who kept up
the old custom. She had not the heart to refuse her splendid,
successful boy anything, and answered warmly...

"I'll come, Teddy, rain or shine, and march before you, playing 'Hail
the conquering hero comes' on a jew's-harp."

Laurie thanked her with a look that made her think in a sudden panic,
"Oh, deary me!  I know he'll say something, and then what shall I do?"

Evening meditation and morning work somewhat allayed her fears, and
having decided that she wouldn't be vain enough to think people were
going to propose when she had given them every reason to know what her
answer would be, she set forth at the appointed time, hoping Teddy
wouldn't do anything to make her hurt his poor feelings.  A call at
Meg's, and a refreshing sniff and sip at the Daisy and Demijohn, still
further fortified her for the tete-a-tete, but when she saw a stalwart
figure looming in the distance, she had a strong desire to turn about
and run away.

"Where's the jew's-harp, Jo?" cried Laurie, as soon as he was within
speaking distance.

"I forgot it." And Jo took heart again, for that salutation could not
be called lover-like.

She always used to take his arm on these occasions, now she did not,
and he made no complaint, which was a bad sign, but talked on rapidly
about all sorts of faraway subjects, till they turned from the road
into the little path that led homeward through the grove.  Then he
walked more slowly, suddenly lost his fine flow of language, and now
and then a dreadful pause occurred.  To rescue the conversation from
one of the wells of silence into which it kept falling, Jo said
hastily, "Now you must have a good long holiday!"

"I intend to."

Something in his resolute tone made Jo look up quickly to find him
looking down at her with an expression that assured her the dreaded
moment had come, and made her put out her hand with an imploring, "No,
Teddy.  Please don't!"

"I will, and you must hear me.  It's no use, Jo, we've got to have it
out, and the sooner the better for both of us," he answered, getting
flushed and excited all at once.

"Say what you like then.  I'll listen," said Jo, with a desperate sort
of patience.

Laurie was a young lover, but he was in earnest, and meant to 'have it
out', if he died in the attempt, so he plunged into the subject with
characteristic impetuousity, saying in a voice that would get choky now
and then, in spite of manful efforts to keep it steady...

"I've loved you ever since I've known you, Jo, couldn't help it, you've
been so good to me.  I've tried to show it, but you wouldn't let me.
Now I'm going to make you hear, and give me an answer, for I can't go
on so any longer."

"I wanted to save you this.  I thought you'd understand..." began Jo,
finding it a great deal harder than she expected.

"I know you did, but the girls are so queer you never know what they
mean.  They say no when they mean yes, and drive a man out of his wits
just for the fun of it," returned Laurie, entrenching himself behind an
undeniable fact.

"I don't.  I never wanted to make you care for me so, and I went away
to keep you from it if I could."

"I thought so.  It was like you, but it was no use.  I only loved you
all the more, and I worked hard to please you, and I gave up billiards
and everything you didn't like, and waited and never complained, for I
hoped you'd love me, though I'm not half good enough..." Here there was
a choke that couldn't be controlled, so he decapitated buttercups while
he cleared his 'confounded throat'.

"You, you are, you're a great deal too good for me, and I'm so grateful
to you, and so proud and fond of you, I don't know why I can't love you
as you want me to.  I've tried, but I can't change the feeling, and it
would be a lie to say I do when I don't."

"Really, truly, Jo?"

He stopped short, and caught both her hands as he put his question with
a look that she did not soon forget.

"Really, truly, dear."

They were in the grove now, close by the stile, and when the last words
fell reluctantly from Jo's lips, Laurie dropped her hands and turned as
if to go on, but for once in his life the fence was too much for him.
So he just laid his head down on the mossy post, and stood so still
that Jo was frightened.

"Oh, Teddy, I'm sorry, so desperately sorry, I could kill myself if it
would do any good!  I wish you wouldn't take it so hard, I can't help
it.  You know it's impossible for people to make themselves love other
people if they don't," cried Jo inelegantly but remorsefully, as she
softly patted his shoulder, remembering the time when he had comforted
her so long ago.

"They do sometimes," said a muffled voice from the post. "I don't
believe it's the right sort of love, and I'd rather not try it," was
the decided answer.

There was a long pause, while a blackbird sung blithely on the willow
by the river, and the tall grass rustled in the wind. Presently Jo said
very soberly, as she sat down on the step of the stile, "Laurie, I want
to tell you something."

He started as if he had been shot, threw up his head, and cried out in
a fierce tone, "Don't tell me that, Jo, I can't bear it now!"

"Tell what?" she asked, wondering at his violence.

"That you love that old man."

"What old man?" demanded Jo, thinking he must mean his grandfather.

"That devilish Professor you were always writing about. If you say you
love him, I know I shall do something desperate;" and he looked as if
he would keep his word, as he clenched his hands with a wrathful spark
in his eyes.

Jo wanted to laugh, but restrained herself and said warmly, for she
too, was getting excited with all this, "Don't swear, Teddy!  He isn't
old, nor anything bad, but good and kind, and the best friend I've got,
next to you.  Pray, don't fly into a passion.  I want to be kind, but I
know I shall get angry if you abuse my Professor.  I haven't the least
idea of loving him or anybody else."

"But you will after a while, and then what will become of me?"

"You'll love someone else too, like a sensible boy, and forget all this
trouble."

"I can't love anyone else, and I'll never forget you, Jo, Never!
Never!" with a stamp to emphasize his passionate words.

"What shall I do with him?" sighed Jo, finding that emotions were more
unmanagable than she expected.  "You haven't heard what I wanted to
tell you.  Sit down and listen, for indeed I want to do right and make
you happy," she said, hoping to soothe him with a little reason, which
proved that she knew nothing about love.

Seeing a ray of hope in that last speech, Laurie threw himself down on
the grass at her feet, leaned his arm on the lower step of the stile,
and looked up at her with an expectant face. Now that arrangement was
not conducive to calm speech or clear thought on Jo's part, for how
could she say hard things to her boy while he watched her with eyes
full of love and longing, and lashes still wet with the bitter drop or
two her hardness of heart had wrung from him?  She gently turned his
head away, saying, as she stroked the wavy hair which had been allowed
to grow for her sake--how touching that was, to be sure! "I agree with
Mother that you and I are not suited to each other, because our quick
tempers and strong wills would probably make us very miserable, if we
were so foolish as to..." Jo paused a little over the last word, but
Laurie uttered it with a rapturous expression.

"Marry--no we shouldn't!  If you loved me, Jo, I should be a perfect
saint, for you could make me anything you like."

"No, I can't.  I've tried and failed, and I won't risk our happiness by
such a serious experiment.  We don't agree and we never shall, so we'll
be good friends all our lives, but we won't go and do anything rash."

"Yes, we will if we get the chance," muttered Laurie rebelliously.

"Now do be reasonable, and take a sensible view of the case," implored
Jo, almost at her wit's end.

"I won't be reasonable.  I don't want to take what you call 'a sensible
view'.  It won't help me, and it only makes it harder.  I don't believe
you've got any heart."

"I wish I hadn't."

There was a little quiver in Jo's voice, and thinking it a good omen,
Laurie turned round, bringing all his persuasive powers to bear as he
said, in the wheedlesome tone that had never been so dangerously
wheedlesome before, "Don't disappoint us, dear!  Everyone expects it.
Grandpa has set his heart upon it, your people like it, and I can't get
on without you.  Say you will, and let's be happy.  Do, do!"

Not until months afterward did Jo understand how she had the strength
of mind to hold fast to the resolution she had made when she decided
that she did not love her boy, and never could.  It was very hard to
do, but she did it, knowing that delay was both useless and cruel.

"I can't say 'yes' truly, so I won't say it at all.  You'll see that
I'm right, by-and-by, and thank me for it..." she began solemnly.

"I'll be hanged if I do!" and Laurie bounced up off the grass, burning
with indignation at the very idea.

"Yes, you will!" persisted Jo.  "You'll get over this after a while,
and find some lovely accomplished girl, who will adore you, and make a
fine mistress for your fine house.  I shouldn't. I'm homely and awkward
and odd and old, and you'd be ashamed of me, and we should quarrel--we
can't help it even now, you see--and I shouldn't like elegant society
and you would, and you'd hate my scribbling, and I couldn't get on
without it, and we should be unhappy, and wish we hadn't done it, and
everything would be horrid!"

"Anything more?" asked Laurie, finding it hard to listen patiently to
this prophetic burst.

"Nothing more, except that I don't believe I shall ever marry.  I'm
happy as I am, and love my liberty too well to be in a hurry to give it
up for any mortal man."

"I know better!" broke in Laurie.  "You think so now, but there'll come
a time when you will care for somebody, and you'll love him
tremendously, and live and die for him.  I know you will, it's your
way, and I shall have to stand by and see it," and the despairing lover
cast his hat upon the ground with a gesture that would have seemed
comical, if his face had not been so tragic.

"Yes, I will live and die for him, if he ever comes and makes me love
him in spite of myself, and you must do the best you can!" cried Jo,
losing patience with poor Teddy.  "I've done my best, but you won't be
reasonable, and it's selfish of you to keep teasing for what I can't
give.  I shall always be fond of you, very fond indeed, as a friend,
but I'll never marry you, and the sooner you believe it the better for
both of us--so now!"

That speech was like gunpowder.  Laurie looked at her a minute as if he
did not quite know what to do with himself, then turned sharply away,
saying in a desperate sort of tone, "You'll be sorry some day, Jo."

"Oh, where are you going?" she cried, for his face frightened her.

"To the devil!" was the consoling answer.

For a minute Jo's heart stood still, as he swung himself down the bank
toward the river, but it takes much folly, sin or misery to send a
young man to a violent death, and Laurie was not one of the weak sort
who are conquered by a single failure.  He had no thought of a
melodramatic plunge, but some blind instinct led him to fling hat and
coat into his boat, and row away with all his might, making better time
up the river than he had done in any race.  Jo drew a long breath and
unclasped her hands as she watched the poor fellow trying to outstrip
the trouble which he carried in his heart.

"That will do him good, and he'll come home in such a tender, penitent
state of mind, that I shan't dare to see him," she said, adding, as she
went slowly home, feeling as if she had murdered some innocent thing,
and buried it under the leaves.  "Now I must go and prepare Mr.
Laurence to be very kind to my poor boy.  I wish he'd love Beth,
perhaps he may in time, but I begin to think I was mistaken about her.
Oh dear!  How can girls like to have lovers and refuse them?  I think
it's dreadful."

Being sure that no one could do it so well as herself, she went
straight to Mr. Laurence, told the hard story bravely through, and then
broke down, crying so dismally over her own insensibility that the kind
old gentleman, though sorely disappointed, did not utter a reproach.
He found it difficult to understand how any girl could help loving
Laurie, and hoped she would change her mind, but he knew even better
than Jo that love cannot be forced, so he shook his head sadly and
resolved to carry his boy out of harm's way, for Young Impetuosity's
parting words to Jo disturbed him more than he would confess.

When Laurie came home, dead tired but quite composed, his grandfather
met him as if he knew nothing, and kept up the delusion very
successfully for an hour or two.  But when they sat together in the
twilight, the time they used to enjoy so much, it was hard work for the
old man to ramble on as usual, and harder still for the young one to
listen to praises of the last year's success, which to him now seemed
like love's labor lost.  He bore it as long as he could, then went to
his piano and began to play.  The windows were open, and Jo, walking
in the garden with Beth, for once understood music better than her
sister, for he played the '_Sonata Pathetique_', and played it as he
never did before.

"That's very fine, I dare say, but it's sad enough to make one cry.
Give us something gayer, lad," said Mr. Laurence, whose kind old heart
was full of sympathy, which he longed to show but knew not how.

Laurie dashed into a livelier strain, played stormily for several
minutes, and would have got through bravely, if in a momentary lull
Mrs. March's voice had not been heard calling, "Jo, dear, come in.  I
want you."

Just what Laurie longed to say, with a different meaning! As he
listened, he lost his place, the music ended with a broken chord, and
the musician sat silent in the dark.

"I can't stand this," muttered the old gentleman.  Up he got, groped
his way to the piano, laid a kind hand on either of the broad
shoulders, and said, as gently as a woman, "I know, my boy, I know."

No answer for an instant, then Laurie asked sharply, "Who told you?"

"Jo herself."

"Then there's an end of it!"  And he shook off his grandfather's hands
with an impatient motion, for though grateful for the sympathy, his
man's pride could not bear a man's pity.

"Not quite.  I want to say one thing, and then there shall be an end of
it," returned Mr. Laurence with unusual mildness. "You won't care to
stay at home now, perhaps?"

"I don't intend to run away from a girl.  Jo can't prevent my seeing
her, and I shall stay and do it as long as I like," interrupted Laurie
in a defiant tone.

"Not if you are the gentleman I think you.  I'm disappointed, but the
girl can't help it, and the only thing left for you to do is to go away
for a time.  Where will you go?"

"Anywhere.  I don't care what becomes of me," and Laurie got up with a
reckless laugh that grated on his grandfather's ear.

"Take it like a man, and don't do anything rash, for God's sake.  Why
not go abroad, as you planned, and forget it?"

"I can't."

"But you've been wild to go, and I promised you should when you got
through college."

"Ah, but I didn't mean to go alone!" and Laurie walked fast through the
room with an expression which it was well his grandfather did not see.

"I don't ask you to go alone.  There's someone ready and glad to go
with you, anywhere in the world."

"Who, Sir?" stopping to listen.

"Myself."

Laurie came back as quickly as he went, and put out his hand, saying
huskily, "I'm a selfish brute, but--you know--Grandfather--"

"Lord help me, yes, I do know, for I've been through it all before,
once in my own young days, and then with your father. Now, my dear boy,
just sit quietly down and hear my plan.  It's all settled, and can be
carried out at once," said Mr. Laurence, keeping hold of the young man,
as if fearful that he would break away as his father had done before
him.

"Well, sir, what is it?" and Laurie sat down, without a sign of
interest in face or voice.

"There is business in London that needs looking after.  I meant you
should attend to it, but I can do it better myself, and things here
will get on very well with Brooke to manage them.  My partners do
almost everything, I'm merely holding on until you take my place, and
can be off at any time."

"But you hate traveling, Sir.  I can't ask it of you at your age,"
began Laurie, who was grateful for the sacrifice, but much preferred to
go alone, if he went at all.

The old gentleman knew that perfectly well, and particularly desired to
prevent it, for the mood in which he found his grandson assured him
that it would not be wise to leave him to his own devices.  So,
stifling a natural regret at the thought of the home comforts he would
leave behind him, he said stoutly, "Bless your soul, I'm not
superannuated yet.  I quite enjoy the idea.  It will do me good, and my
old bones won't suffer, for traveling nowadays is almost as easy as
sitting in a chair."

A restless movement from Laurie suggested that his chair was not easy,
or that he did not like the plan, and made the old man add hastily, "I
don't mean to be a marplot or a burden. I go because I think you'd feel
happier than if I was left behind.  I don't intend to gad about with
you, but leave you free to go where you like, while I amuse myself in
my own way.  I've friends in London and Paris, and should like to visit
them.  Meantime you can go to Italy, Germany, Switzerland, where you
will, and enjoy pictures, music, scenery, and adventures to your
heart's content."

Now, Laurie felt just then that his heart was entirely broken and the
world a howling wilderness, but at the sound of certain words which the
old gentleman artfully introduced into his closing sentence, the broken
heart gave an unexpected leap, and a green oasis or two suddenly
appeared in the howling wilderness.  He sighed, and then said, in a
spiritless tone, "Just as you like, Sir.  It doesn't matter where I go
or what I do."

"It does to me, remember that, my lad.  I give you entire liberty, but
I trust you to make an honest use of it.  Promise me that, Laurie."

"Anything you like, Sir."

"Good," thought the old gentleman.  "You don't care now, but there'll
come a time when that promise will keep you out of mischief, or I'm
much mistaken."

Being an energetic individual, Mr. Laurence struck while the iron was
hot, and before the blighted being recovered spirit enough to rebel,
they were off.  During the time necessary for preparation, Laurie bore
himself as young gentleman usually do in such cases.  He was moody,
irritable, and pensive by turns, lost his appetite, neglected his dress
and devoted much time to playing tempestuously on his piano, avoided
Jo, but consoled himself by staring at her from his window, with a
tragic face that haunted her dreams by night and oppressed her with a
heavy sense of guilt by day.  Unlike some sufferers, he never spoke of
his unrequited passion, and would allow no one, not even Mrs. March, to
attempt consolation or offer sympathy.  On some accounts, this was a
relief to his friends, but the weeks before his departure were very
uncomfortable, and everyone rejoiced that the 'poor, dear fellow was
going away to forget his trouble, and come home happy'.  Of course, he
smiled darkly at their delusion, but passed it by with the sad
superiority of one who knew that his fidelity like his love was
unalterable.

When the parting came he affected high spirits, to conceal certain
inconvenient emotions which seemed inclined to assert themselves.  This
gaiety did not impose upon anybody, but they tried to look as if it did
for his sake, and he got on very well till Mrs. March kissed him, with
a whisper full of motherly solicitude.  Then feeling that he was going
very fast, he hastily embraced them all round, not forgetting the
afflicted Hannah, and ran downstairs as if for his life.  Jo followed a
minute after to wave her hand to him if he looked round.  He did look
round, came back, put his arms about her as she stood on the step above
him, and looked up at her with a face that made his short appeal
eloquent and pathetic.

"Oh, Jo, can't you?"

"Teddy, dear, I wish I could!"

That was all, except a little pause.  Then Laurie straightened himself
up, said, "It's all right, never mind," and went away without another
word.  Ah, but it wasn't all right, and Jo did mind, for while the
curly head lay on her arm a minute after her hard answer, she felt as
if she had stabbed her dearest friend, and when he left her without a
look behind him, she knew that the boy Laurie never would come again.



CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

BETH'S SECRET

When Jo came home that spring, she had been struck with the change in
Beth.  No one spoke of it or seemed aware of it, for it had come too
gradually to startle those who saw her daily, but to eyes sharpened by
absence, it was very plain and a heavy weight fell on Jo's heart as she
saw her sister's face. It was no paler and but littler thinner than in
the autumn, yet there was a strange, transparent look about it, as if
the mortal was being slowly refined away, and the immortal shining
through the frail flesh with an indescribably pathetic beauty.  Jo saw
and felt it, but said nothing at the time, and soon the first
impression lost much of its power, for Beth seemed happy, no one
appeared to doubt that she was better, and presently in other cares Jo
for a time forgot her fear.

But when Laurie was gone, and peace prevailed again, the vague anxiety
returned and haunted her.  She had confessed her sins and been
forgiven, but when she showed her savings and proposed a mountain trip,
Beth had thanked her heartily, but begged not to go so far away from
home.  Another little visit to the seashore would suit her better, and
as Grandma could not be prevailed upon to leave the babies, Jo took
Beth down to the quiet place, where she could live much in the open
air, and let the fresh sea breezes blow a little color into her pale
cheeks.

It was not a fashionable place, but even among the pleasant people
there, the girls made few friends, preferring to live for one another.
Beth was too shy to enjoy society, and Jo too wrapped up in her to care
for anyone else.  So they were all in all to each other, and came and
went, quite unconscious of the interest they excited in those about
them, who watched with sympathetic eyes the strong sister and the
feeble one, always together, as if they felt instinctively that a long
separation was not far away.

They did feel it, yet neither spoke of it, for often between ourselves
and those nearest and dearest to us there exists a reserve which it is
very hard to overcome.  Jo felt as if a veil had fallen between her
heart and Beth's, but when she put out her hand to lift it up, there
seemed something sacred in the silence, and she waited for Beth to
speak.  She wondered, and was thankful also, that her parents did not
seem to see what she saw, and during the quiet weeks when the shadows
grew so plain to her, she said nothing of it to those at home,
believing that it would tell itself when Beth came back no better. She
wondered still more if her sister really guessed the hard truth, and
what thoughts were passing through her mind during the long hours when
she lay on the warm rocks with her head in Jo's lap, while the winds
blew healthfully over her and the sea made music at her feet.

One day Beth told her.  Jo thought she was asleep, she lay so still,
and putting down her book, sat looking at her with wistful eyes, trying
to see signs of hope in the faint color on Beth's cheeks.  But she
could not find enough to satisfy her, for the cheeks were very thin,
and the hands seemed too feeble to hold even the rosy little shells
they had been collecting. It came to her then more bitterly than ever
that Beth was slowly drifting away from her, and her arms instinctively
tightened their hold upon the dearest treasure she possessed. For a
minute her eyes were too dim for seeing, and when they cleared, Beth
was looking up at her so tenderly that there was hardly any need for
her to say, "Jo, dear, I'm glad you know it.  I've tried to tell you,
but I couldn't."

There was no answer except her sister's cheek against her own, not even
tears, for when most deeply moved, Jo did not cry.  She was the weaker
then, and Beth tried to comfort and sustain her, with her arms about
her and the soothing words she whispered in her ear.

"I've known it for a good while, dear, and now I'm used to it, it isn't
hard to think of or to bear.  Try to see it so and don't be troubled
about me, because it's best, indeed it is."

"Is this what made you so unhappy in the autumn, Beth? You did not feel
it then, and keep it to yourself so long, did you?" asked Jo, refusing
to see or say that it was best, but glad to know that Laurie had no
part in Beth's trouble.

"Yes, I gave up hoping then, but I didn't like to own it. I tried to
think it was a sick fancy, and would not let it trouble anyone.  But
when I saw you all so well and strong and full of happy plans, it was
hard to feel that I could never be like you, and then I was miserable,
Jo."

"Oh, Beth, and you didn't tell me, didn't let me comfort and help you?
How could you shut me out, bear it all alone?"

Jo's voice was full of tender reproach, and her heart ached to think of
the solitary struggle that must have gone on while Beth learned to say
goodbye to health, love, and life, and take up her cross so cheerfully.

"Perhaps it was wrong, but I tried to do right.  I wasn't sure, no one
said anything, and I hoped I was mistaken.  It would have been selfish
to frighten you all when Marmee was so anxious about Meg, and Amy away,
and you so happy with Laurie--at least I thought so then."

"And I thought you loved him, Beth, and I went away because I
couldn't," cried Jo, glad to say all the truth.

Beth looked so amazed at the idea that Jo smiled in spite of her pain,
and added softly, "Then you didn't, dearie? I was afraid it was so, and
imagined your poor little heart full of lovelornity all that while."

"Why, Jo, how could I, when he was so fond of you?" asked Beth, as
innocently as a child.  "I do love him dearly.  He is so good to me,
how can I help It?  But he could never be anything to me but my
brother.  I hope he truly will be, sometime."

"Not through me," said Jo decidedly.  "Amy is left for him, and they
would suit excellently, but I have no heart for such things, now.  I
don't care what becomes of anybody but you, Beth. You must get well."

"I want to, oh, so much!  I try, but every day I lose a little, and
feel more sure that I shall never gain it back.  It's like the tide,
Jo, when it turns, it goes slowly, but it can't be stopped."

"It shall be stopped, your tide must not turn so soon, nineteen is too
young, Beth.  I can't let you go.  I'll work and pray and fight against
it.  I'll keep you in spite of everything.  There must be ways, it
can't be too late.  God won't be so cruel as to take you from me,"
cried poor Jo rebelliously, for her spirit was far less piously
submissive than Beth's.

Simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety.  It shows
itself in acts rather than in words, and has more influence than
homilies or protestations.  Beth could not reason upon or explain the
faith that gave her courage and patience to give up life, and
cheerfully wait for death.  Like a confiding child, she asked no
questions, but left everything to God and nature, Father and Mother of
us all, feeling sure that they, and they only, could teach and
strengthen heart and spirit for this life and the life to come.  She
did not rebuke Jo with saintly speeches, only loved her better for her
passionate affection, and clung more closely to the dear human love,
from which our Father never means us to be weaned, but through which He
draws us closer to Himself.  She could not say, "I'm glad to go," for
life was very sweet for her.  She could only sob out, "I try to be
willing," while she held fast to Jo, as the first bitter wave of this
great sorrow broke over them together.

By and by Beth said, with recovered serenity, "You'll tell them this
when we go home?"

"I think they will see it without words," sighed Jo, for now it seemed
to her that Beth changed every day.

"Perhaps not.  I've heard that the people who love best are often
blindest to such things.  If they don't see it, you will tell them for
me.  I don't want any secrets, and it's kinder to prepare them.  Meg
has John and the babies to comfort her, but you must stand by Father
and Mother, won't you Jo?"

"If I can.  But, Beth, I don't give up yet.  I'm going to believe that
it is a sick fancy, and not let you think it's true." said Jo, trying
to speak cheerfully.

Beth lay a minute thinking, and then said in her quiet way, "I don't
know how to express myself, and shouldn't try to anyone but you,
because I can't speak out except to my Jo.  I only mean to say that I
have a feeling that it never was intended I should live long.  I'm not
like the rest of you.  I never made any plans about what I'd do when I
grew up.  I never thought of being married, as you all did.  I couldn't
seem to imagine myself anything but stupid little Beth, trotting about
at home, of no use anywhere but there.  I never wanted to go away, and
the hard part now is the leaving you all.  I'm not afraid, but it seems
as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven."

Jo could not speak, and for several minutes there was no sound but the
sigh of the wind and the lapping of the tide.  A white-winged gull flew
by, with the flash of sunshine on its silvery breast.  Beth watched it
till it vanished, and her eyes were full of sadness.  A little
gray-coated sand bird came tripping over the beach 'peeping' softly to
itself, as if enjoying the sun and sea.  It came quite close to Beth,
and looked at her with a friendly eye and sat upon a warm stone,
dressing its wet feathers, quite at home.  Beth smiled and felt
comforted, for the tiny thing seemed to offer its small friendship and
remind her that a pleasant world was still to be enjoyed.

"Dear little bird!  See, Jo, how tame it is.  I like peeps better than
the gulls.  They are not so wild and handsome, but they seem happy,
confiding little things.  I used to call them my birds last summer, and
Mother said they reminded her of me--busy, quaker-colored creatures,
always near the shore, and always chirping that contented little song
of theirs.  You are the gull, Jo, strong and wild, fond of the storm
and the wind, flying far out to sea, and happy all alone.  Meg is the
turtledove, and Amy is like the lark she writes about, trying to get up
among the clouds, but always dropping down into its nest again.  Dear
little girl!  She's so ambitious, but her heart is good and tender, and
no matter how high she flies, she never will forget home.  I hope I
shall see her again, but she seems so far away."

"She is coming in the spring, and I mean that you shall be all ready to
see and enjoy her.  I'm going to have you well and rosy by that time,"
began Jo, feeling that of all the changes in Beth, the talking change
was the greatest, for it seemed to cost no effort now, and she thought
aloud in a way quite unlike bashful Beth.

"Jo, dear, don't hope any more.  It won't do any good.  I'm sure of
that.  We won't be miserable, but enjoy being together while we wait.
We'll have happy times, for I don't suffer much, and I think the tide
will go out easily, if you help me."

Jo leaned down to kiss the tranquil face, and with that silent kiss,
she dedicated herself soul and body to Beth.

She was right.  There was no need of any words when they got home, for
Father and Mother saw plainly now what they had prayed to be saved from
seeing.  Tired with her short journey, Beth went at once to bed, saying
how glad she was to be home, and when Jo went down, she found that she
would be spared the hard task of telling Beth's secret.  Her father
stood leaning his head on the mantelpiece and did not turn as she came
in, but her mother stretched out her arms as if for help, and Jo went
to comfort her without a word.



CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

NEW IMPRESSIONS

At three o'clock in the afternoon, all the fashionable world at Nice
may be seen on the Promenade des Anglais--a charming place, for the
wide walk, bordered with palms, flowers, and tropical shrubs, is
bounded on one side by the sea, on the other by the grand drive, lined
with hotels and villas, while beyond lie orange orchards and the hills.
Many nations are represented, many languages spoken, many costumes
worn, and on a sunny day the spectacle is as gay and brilliant as a
carnival.  Haughty English, lively French, sober Germans, handsome
Spaniards, ugly Russians, meek Jews, free-and-easy Americans, all
drive, sit, or saunter here, chatting over the news, and criticizing
the latest celebrity who has arrived--Ristori or Dickens, Victor
Emmanuel or the Queen of the Sandwich Islands.  The equipages are as
varied as the company and attract as much attention, especially the low
basket barouches in which ladies drive themselves, with a pair of
dashing ponies, gay nets to keep their voluminous flounces from
overflowing the diminutive vehicles, and little grooms on the perch
behind.

Along this walk, on Christmas Day, a tall young man walked slowly, with
his hands behind him, and a somewhat absent expression of countenance.
He looked like an Italian, was dressed like an Englishman, and had the
independent air of an American--a combination which caused sundry pairs
of feminine eyes to look approvingly after him, and sundry dandies in
black velvet suits, with rose-colored neckties, buff gloves, and orange
flowers in their buttonholes, to shrug their shoulders, and then envy
him his inches. There were plenty of pretty faces to admire, but the
young man took little notice of them, except to glance now and then at
some blonde girl in blue.  Presently he strolled out of the promenade
and stood a moment at the crossing, as if undecided whether to go and
listen to the band in the Jardin Publique, or to wander along the beach
toward Castle Hill.  The quick trot of ponies' feet made him look up,
as one of the little carriages, containing a single young lady, came
rapidly down the street.  The lady was young, blonde, and dressed in
blue.  He stared a minute, then his whole face woke up, and, waving his
hat like a boy, he hurried forward to meet her.

"Oh, Laurie, is it really you?  I thought you'd never come!" cried Amy,
dropping the reins and holding out both hands, to the great
scandalization of a French mamma, who hastened her daughter's steps,
lest she should be demoralized by beholding the free manners of these
'mad English'.

"I was detained by the way, but I promised to spend Christmas with you,
and here I am."

"How is your grandfather?  When did you come?  Where are you staying?"

"Very well--last night--at the Chauvain.  I called at your hotel, but
you were out."

"I have so much to say, I don't know where to begin!  Get in and we can
talk at our ease.  I was going for a drive and longing for company.
Flo's saving up for tonight."

"What happens then, a ball?"

"A Christmas party at our hotel.  There are many Americans there, and
they give it in honor of the day.  You'll go with us, of course?  Aunt
will be charmed."

"Thank you.  Where now?" asked Laurie, leaning back and folding his
arms, a proceeding which suited Amy, who preferred to drive, for her
parasol whip and blue reins over the white ponies' backs afforded her
infinite satisfaction.

"I'm going to the bankers first for letters, and then to Castle Hill.
The view is so lovely, and I like to feed the peacocks. Have you ever
been there?"

"Often, years ago, but I don't mind having a look at it."

"Now tell me all about yourself.  The last I heard of you, your
grandfather wrote that he expected you from Berlin."

"Yes, I spent a month there and then joined him in Paris, where he has
settled for the winter.  He has friends there and finds plenty to amuse
him, so I go and come, and we get on capitally."

"That's a sociable arrangement," said Amy, missing something in
Laurie's manner, though she couldn't tell what.

"Why, you see, he hates to travel, and I hate to keep still, so we each
suit ourselves, and there is no trouble.  I am often with him, and he
enjoys my adventures, while I like to feel that someone is glad to see
me when I get back from my wanderings.  Dirty old hole, isn't it?" he
added, with a look of disgust as they drove along the boulevard to the
Place Napoleon in the old city.

"The dirt is picturesque, so I don't mind.  The river and the hills are
delicious, and these glimpses of the narrow cross streets are my
delight.  Now we shall have to wait for that procession to pass.  It's
going to the Church of St.  John."

While Laurie listlessly watched the procession of priests under their
canopies, white-veiled nuns bearing lighted tapers, and some
brotherhood in blue chanting as they walked, Amy watched him, and felt
a new sort of shyness steal over her, for he was changed, and she could
not find the merry-faced boy she left in the moody-looking man beside
her.  He was handsomer than ever and greatly improved, she thought, but
now that the flush of pleasure at meeting her was over, he looked tired
and spiritless--not sick, nor exactly unhappy, but older and graver
than a year or two of prosperous life should have made him.  She
couldn't understand it and did not venture to ask questions, so she
shook her head and touched up her ponies, as the procession wound away
across the arches of the Paglioni bridge and vanished in the church.

"Que pensez-vous?" she said, airing her French, which had improved in
quantity, if not in quality, since she came abroad.

"That mademoiselle has made good use of her time, and the result is
charming," replied Laurie, bowing with his hand on his heart and an
admiring look.

She blushed with pleasure, but somehow the compliment did not satisfy
her like the blunt praises he used to give her at home, when he
promenaded round her on festival occasions, and told her she was
'altogether jolly', with a hearty smile and an approving pat on the
head.  She didn't like the new tone, for though not blase, it sounded
indifferent in spite of the look.

"If that's the way he's going to grow up, I wish he'd stay a boy," she
thought, with a curious sense of disappointment and discomfort, trying
meantime to seem quite easy and gay.

At Avigdor's she found the precious home letters and, giving the reins
to Laurie, read them luxuriously as they wound up the shady road
between green hedges, where tea roses bloomed as freshly as in June.

"Beth is very poorly, Mother says.  I often think I ought to go home,
but they all say 'stay'.  So I do, for I shall never have another
chance like this," said Amy, looking sober over one page.

"I think you are right, there.  You could do nothing at home, and it is
a great comfort to them to know that you are well and happy, and
enjoying so much, my dear."

He drew a little nearer, and looked more like his old self as he said
that, and the fear that sometimes weighed on Amy's heart was lightened,
for the look, the act, the brotherly 'my dear', seemed to assure her
that if any trouble did come, she would not be alone in a strange land.
Presently she laughed and showed him a small sketch of Jo in her
scribbling suit, with the bow rampantly erect upon her cap, and issuing
from her mouth the words, 'Genius burns!'.

Laurie smiled, took it, put it in his vest pocket 'to keep it from
blowing away', and listened with interest to the lively letter Amy read
him.

"This will be a regularly merry Christmas to me, with presents in the
morning, you and letters in the afternoon, and a party at night," said
Amy, as they alighted among the ruins of the old fort, and a flock of
splendid peacocks came trooping about them, tamely waiting to be fed.
While Amy stood laughing on the bank above him as she scattered crumbs
to the brilliant birds, Laurie looked at her as she had looked at him,
with a natural curiosity to see what changes time and absence had
wrought.  He found nothing to perplex or disappoint, much to admire and
approve, for overlooking a few little affectations of speech and
manner, she was as sprightly and graceful as ever, with the addition of
that indescribable something in dress and bearing which we call
elegance.  Always mature for her age, she had gained a certain aplomb
in both carriage and conversation, which made her seem more of a woman
of the world than she was, but her old petulance now and then showed
itself, her strong will still held its own, and her native frankness
was unspoiled by foreign polish.

Laurie did not read all this while he watched her feed the peacocks,
but he saw enough to satisfy and interest him, and carried away a
pretty little picture of a bright-faced girl standing in the sunshine,
which brought out the soft hue of her dress, the fresh color of her
cheeks, the golden gloss of her hair, and made her a prominent figure
in the pleasant scene.

As they came up onto the stone plateau that crowns the hill, Amy waved
her hand as if welcoming him to her favorite haunt, and said, pointing
here and there, "Do you remember the Cathedral and the Corso, the
fishermen dragging their nets in the bay, and the lovely road to Villa
Franca, Schubert's Tower, just below, and best of all, that speck far
out to sea which they say is Corsica?"

"I remember.  It's not much changed," he answered without enthusiasm.

"What Jo would give for a sight of that famous speck!" said Amy,
feeling in good spirits and anxious to see him so also.

"Yes," was all he said, but he turned and strained his eyes to see the
island which a greater usurper than even Napoleon now made interesting
in his sight.

"Take a good look at it for her sake, and then come and tell me what
you have been doing with yourself all this while," said Amy, seating
herself, ready for a good talk.

But she did not get it, for though he joined her and answered all her
questions freely, she could only learn that he had roved about the
Continent and been to Greece.  So after idling away an hour, they drove
home again, and having paid his respects to Mrs. Carrol, Laurie left
them, promising to return in the evening.

It must be recorded of Amy that she deliberately prinked that night.
Time and absence had done its work on both the young people. She had
seen her old friend in a new light, not as 'our boy', but as a handsome
and agreeable man, and she was conscious of a very natural desire to
find favor in his sight.  Amy knew her good points, and made the most
of them with the taste and skill which is a fortune to a poor and
pretty woman.

Tarlatan and tulle were cheap at Nice, so she enveloped herself in them
on such occasions, and following the sensible English fashion of simple
dress for young girls, got up charming little toilettes with fresh
flowers, a few trinkets, and all manner of dainty devices, which were
both inexpensive and effective.  It must be confessed that the artist
sometimes got possession of the woman, and indulged in antique
coiffures, statuesque attitudes, and classic draperies. But, dear
heart, we all have our little weaknesses, and find it easy to pardon
such in the young, who satisfy our eyes with their comeliness, and keep
our hearts merry with their artless vanities.

"I do want him to think I look well, and tell them so at home," said
Amy to herself, as she put on Flo's old white silk ball dress, and
covered it with a cloud of fresh illusion, out of which her white
shoulders and golden head emerged with a most artistic effect. Her hair
she had the sense to let alone, after gathering up the thick waves and
curls into a Hebe-like knot at the back of her head.

"It's not the fashion, but it's becoming, and I can't afford to make a
fright of myself," she used to say, when advised to frizzle, puff, or
braid, as the latest style commanded.

Having no ornaments fine enough for this important occasion, Amy looped
her fleecy skirts with rosy clusters of azalea, and framed the white
shoulders in delicate green vines.  Remembering the painted boots, she
surveyed her white satin slippers with girlish satisfaction, and
chasseed down the room, admiring her aristocratic feet all by herself.

"My new fan just matches my flowers, my gloves fit to a charm, and the
real lace on Aunt's mouchoir gives an air to my whole dress. If I only
had a classical nose and mouth I should be perfectly happy," she said,
surveying herself with a critical eye and a candle in each hand.

In spite of this affliction, she looked unusually gay and graceful as
she glided away.  She seldom ran--it did not suit her style, she
thought, for being tall, the stately and Junoesque was more appropriate
than the sportive or piquante.  She walked up and down the long saloon
while waiting for Laurie, and once arranged herself under the
chandelier, which had a good effect upon her hair, then she thought
better of it, and went away to the other end of the room, as if ashamed
of the girlish desire to have the first view a propitious one.  It so
happened that she could not have done a better thing, for Laurie came
in so quietly she did not hear him, and as she stood at the distant
window, with her head half turned and one hand gathering up her dress,
the slender, white figure against the red curtains was as effective as
a well-placed statue.

"Good evening, Diana!" said Laurie, with the look of satisfaction she
liked to see in his eyes when they rested on her.

"Good evening, Apollo!" she answered, smiling back at him, for he too
looked unusually debonair, and the thought of entering the ballroom on
the arm of such a personable man caused Amy to pity the four plain
Misses Davis from the bottom of her heart.

"Here are your flowers.  I arranged them myself, remembering that you
didn't like what Hannah calls a 'sot-bookay'," said Laurie, handing her
a delicate nosegay, in a holder that she had long coveted as she daily
passed it in Cardiglia's window.

"How kind you are!" she exclaimed gratefully.  "If I'd known you were
coming I'd have had something ready for you today, though not as pretty
as this, I'm afraid."

"Thank you.  It isn't what it should be, but you have improved it," he
added, as she snapped the silver bracelet on her wrist.

"Please don't."

"I thought you liked that sort of thing."

"Not from you, it doesn't sound natural, and I like your old bluntness
better."

"I'm glad of it," he answered, with a look of relief, then buttoned her
gloves for her, and asked if his tie was straight, just as he used to
do when they went to parties together at home.

The company assembled in the long salle a manger, that evening, was
such as one sees nowhere but on the Continent.  The hospitable
Americans had invited every acquaintance they had in Nice, and having
no prejudice against titles, secured a few to add luster to their
Christmas ball.

A Russian prince condescended to sit in a corner for an hour and talk
with a massive lady, dressed like Hamlet's mother in black velvet with
a pearl bridle under her chin.  A Polish count, aged eighteen, devoted
himself to the ladies, who pronounced him, 'a fascinating dear', and a
German Serene Something, having come to supper alone, roamed vaguely
about, seeking what he might devour.  Baron Rothschild's private
secretary, a large-nosed Jew in tight boots, affably beamed upon the
world, as if his master's name crowned him with a golden halo.  A stout
Frenchman, who knew the Emperor, came to indulge his mania for dancing,
and Lady de Jones, a British matron, adorned the scene with her little
family of eight.  Of course, there were many light-footed,
shrill-voiced American girls, handsome, lifeless-looking English ditto,
and a few plain but piquante French demoiselles, likewise the usual set
of traveling young gentlemen who disported themselves gaily, while
mammas of all nations lined the walls and smiled upon them benignly
when they danced with their daughters.

Any young girl can imagine Amy's state of mind when she 'took the
stage' that night, leaning on Laurie's arm.  She knew she looked well,
she loved to dance, she felt that her foot was on her native heath in a
ballroom, and enjoyed the delightful sense of power which comes when
young girls first discover the new and lovely kingdom they are born to
rule by virtue of beauty, youth, and womanhood.  She did pity the Davis
girls, who were awkward, plain, and destitute of escort, except a grim
papa and three grimmer maiden aunts, and she bowed to them in her
friendliest manner as she passed, which was good of her, as it
permitted them to see her dress, and burn with curiosity to know who
her distinguished-looking friend might be.  With the first burst of the
band, Amy's color rose, her eyes began to sparkle, and her feet to tap
the floor impatiently, for she danced well and wanted Laurie to know
it.  Therefore the shock she received can better be imagined than
described, when he said in a perfectly tranquil tone, "Do you care to
dance?"

"One usually does at a ball."

Her amazed look and quick answer caused Laurie to repair his error as
fast as possible.

"I meant the first dance.  May I have the honor?"

"I can give you one if I put off the Count.  He dances divinely, but he
will excuse me, as you are an old friend," said Amy, hoping that the
name would have a good effect, and show Laurie that she was not to be
trifled with.

"Nice little boy, but rather a short Pole to support...

    A daughter of the gods,
    Devinely tall, and most divinely fair,"

was all the satisfaction she got, however.

The set in which they found themselves was composed of English, and Amy
was compelled to walk decorously through a cotillion, feeling all the
while as if she could dance the tarantella with relish.  Laurie
resigned her to the 'nice little boy', and went to do his duty to Flo,
without securing Amy for the joys to come, which reprehensible want of
forethought was properly punished, for she immediately engaged herself
till supper, meaning to relent if he then gave any signs penitence. She
showed him her ball book with demure satisfaction when he strolled
instead of rushed up to claim her for the next, a glorious polka
redowa.  But his polite regrets didn't impose upon her, and when she
galloped away with the Count, she saw Laurie sit down by her aunt with
an actual expression of relief.

That was unpardonable, and Amy took no more notice of him for a long
while, except a word now and then when she came to her chaperon between
the dances for a necessary pin or a moment's rest.  Her anger had a
good effect, however, for she hid it under a smiling face, and seemed
unusually blithe and brilliant.  Laurie's eyes followed her with
pleasure, for she neither romped nor sauntered, but danced with spirit
and grace, making the delightsome pastime what it should be.  He very
naturally fell to studying her from this new point of view, and before
the evening was half over, had decided that 'little Amy was going to
make a very charming woman'.

It was a lively scene, for soon the spirit of the social season took
possession of everyone, and Christmas merriment made all faces shine,
hearts happy, and heels light.  The musicians fiddled, tooted, and
banged as if they enjoyed it, everybody danced who could, and those who
couldn't admired their neighbors with uncommon warmth.  The air was
dark with Davises, and many Joneses gamboled like a flock of young
giraffes.  The golden secretary darted through the room like a meteor
with a dashing French-woman who carpeted the floor with her pink satin
train.  The serene Teuton found the supper-table and was happy, eating
steadily through the bill of fare, and dismayed the garcons by the
ravages he committed.  But the Emperor's friend covered himself with
glory, for he danced everything, whether he knew it or not, and
introduced impromptu pirouettes when the figures bewildered him.  The
boyish abandon of that stout man was charming to behold, for though he
'carried weight', he danced like an India-rubber ball.  He ran, he
flew, he pranced, his face glowed, his bald head shown, his coattails
waved wildly, his pumps actually twinkled in the air, and when the
music stopped, he wiped the drops from his brow, and beamed upon his
fellow men like a French Pickwick without glasses.

Amy and her Pole distinguished themselves by equal enthusiasm but more
graceful agility, and Laurie found himself involuntarily keeping time
to the rhythmic rise and fall of the white slippers as they flew by as
indefatigably as if winged. When little Vladimir finally relinquished
her, with assurances that he was 'desolated to leave so early', she was
ready to rest, and see how her recreant knight had borne his punishment.

It had been successful, for at three-and-twenty, blighted affections
find a balm in friendly society, and young nerves will thrill, young
blood dance, and healthy young spirits rise, when subjected to the
enchantment of beauty, light, music, and motion.  Laurie had a waked-up
look as he rose to give her his seat, and when he hurried away to bring
her some supper, she said to herself, with a satisfied smile, "Ah, I
thought that would do him good!"

"You look like Balzac's '_Femme Peinte Par Elle-Meme_'," he said, as he
fanned her with one hand and held her coffee cup in the other.

"My rouge won't come off." and Amy rubbed her brilliant cheek, and
showed him her white glove with a sober simplicity that made him laugh
outright.

"What do you call this stuff?" he asked, touching a fold of her dress
that had blown over his knee.

"Illusion."

"Good name for it.  It's very pretty--new thing, isn't it?"

"It's as old as the hills.  You have seen it on dozens of girls, and
you never found out that it was pretty till now--stupide!"

"I never saw it on you before, which accounts for the mistake, you see."

"None of that, it is forbidden.  I'd rather take coffee than
compliments just now.  No, don't lounge, it makes me nervous."

Laurie sat bold upright, and meekly took her empty plate feeling an odd
sort of pleasure in having 'little Amy' order him about, for she had
lost her shyness now, and felt an irrestible desire to trample on him,
as girls have a delightful way of doing when lords of creation show any
signs of subjection.

"Where did you learn all this sort of thing?" he asked with a quizzical
look.

"As 'this sort of thing' is rather a vague expression, would you kindly
explain?" returned Amy, knowing perfectly well what he meant, but
wickedly leaving him to describe what is indescribable.

"Well--the general air, the style, the self-possession,
the--the--illusion--you know", laughed Laurie, breaking down and
helping himself out of his quandary with the new word.

Amy was gratified, but of course didn't show it, and demurely answered,
"Foreign life polishes one in spite of one's self.  I study as well as
play, and as for this"--with a little gesture toward her dress--"why,
tulle is cheap, posies to be had for nothing, and I am used to making
the most of my poor little things."

Amy rather regretted that last sentence, fearing it wasn't in good
taste, but Laurie liked her better for it, and found himself both
admiring and respecting the brave patience that made the most of
opportunity, and the cheerful spirit that covered poverty with flowers.
Amy did not know why he looked at her so kindly, nor why he filled up
her book with his own name, and devoted himself to her for the rest of
the evening in the most delightful manner; but the impulse that wrought
this agreeable change was the result of one of the new impressions
which both of them were unconsciously giving and receiving.



CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

ON THE SHELF

In France the young girls have a dull time of it till they are married,
when 'Vive la liberte!' becomes their motto.  In America, as everyone
knows, girls early sign the declaration of independence, and enjoy
their freedom with republican zest, but the young matrons usually
abdicate with the first heir to the throne and go into a seclusion
almost as close as a French nunnery, though by no means as quiet.
Whether they like it or not, they are virtually put upon the shelf as
soon as the wedding excitement is over, and most of them might exclaim,
as did a very pretty woman the other day, "I'm as handsome as ever, but
no one takes any notice of me because I'm married."

Not being a belle or even a fashionable lady, Meg did not experience
this affliction till her babies were a year old, for in her little
world primitive customs prevailed, and she found herself more admired
and beloved than ever.

As she was a womanly little woman, the maternal instinct was very
strong, and she was entirely absorbed in her children, to the utter
exclusion of everything and everybody else.  Day and night she brooded
over them with tireless devotion and anxiety, leaving John to the
tender mercies of the help, for an Irish lady now presided over the
kitchen department.  Being a domestic man, John decidedly missed the
wifely attentions he had been accustomed to receive, but as he adored
his babies, he cheerfully relinquished his comfort for a time,
supposing with masculine ignorance that peace would soon be restored.
But three months passed, and there was no return of repose.  Meg looked
worn and nervous, the babies absorbed every minute of her time, the
house was neglected, and Kitty, the cook, who took life 'aisy', kept
him on short commons.  When he went out in the morning he was
bewildered by small commissions for the captive mamma, if he came gaily
in at night, eager to embrace his family, he was quenched by a "Hush!
They are just asleep after worrying all day."  If he proposed a little
amusement at home, "No, it would disturb the babies."  If he hinted at
a lecture or a concert, he was answered with a reproachful look, and a
decided--"Leave my children for pleasure, never!"  His sleep was broken
by infant wails and visions of a phantom figure pacing noiselessly to
and fro in the watches of the night.  His meals were interrupted by the
frequent flight of the presiding genius, who deserted him, half-helped,
if a muffled chirp sounded from the nest above.  And when he read his
paper of an evening, Demi's colic got into the shipping list and
Daisy's fall affected the price of stocks, for Mrs. Brooke was only
interested in domestic news.

The poor man was very uncomfortable, for the children had bereft him of
his wife, home was merely a nursery and the perpetual 'hushing' made
him feel like a brutal intruder whenever he entered the sacred
precincts of Babyland.  He bore it very patiently for six months, and
when no signs of amendment appeared, he did what other paternal exiles
do--tried to get a little comfort elsewhere.  Scott had married and
gone to housekeeping not far off, and John fell into the way of running
over for an hour or two of an evening, when his own parlor was empty,
and his own wife singing lullabies that seemed to have no end.  Mrs.
Scott was a lively, pretty girl, with nothing to do but be agreeable,
and she performed her mission most successfully.  The parlor was always
bright and attractive, the chessboard ready, the piano in tune, plenty
of gay gossip, and a nice little supper set forth in tempting style.

John would have preferred his own fireside if it had not been so
lonely, but as it was he gratefully took the next best thing and
enjoyed his neighbor's society.

Meg rather approved of the new arrangement at first, and found it a
relief to know that John was having a good time instead of dozing in
the parlor, or tramping about the house and waking the children.  But
by-and-by, when the teething worry was over and the idols went to sleep
at proper hours, leaving Mamma time to rest, she began to miss John,
and find her workbasket dull company, when he was not sitting opposite
in his old dressing gown, comfortably scorching his slippers on the
fender.  She would not ask him to stay at home, but felt injured
because he did not know that she wanted him without being told,
entirely forgetting the many evenings he had waited for her in vain.
She was nervous and worn out with watching and worry, and in that
unreasonable frame of mind which the best of mothers occasionally
experience when domestic cares oppress them.  Want of exercise robs
them of cheerfulness, and too much devotion to that idol of American
women, the teapot, makes them feel as if they were all nerve and no
muscle.

"Yes," she would say, looking in the glass, "I'm getting old and ugly.
John doesn't find me interesting any longer, so he leaves his faded
wife and goes to see his pretty neighbor, who has no incumbrances.
Well, the babies love me, they don't care if I am thin and pale and
haven't time to crimp my hair, they are my comfort, and some day John
will see what I've gladly sacrificed for them, won't he, my precious?"

To which pathetic appeal Daisy would answer with a coo, or Demi with a
crow, and Meg would put by her lamentations for a maternal revel, which
soothed her solitude for the time being. But the pain increased as
politics absorbed John, who was always running over to discuss
interesting points with Scott, quite unconscious that Meg missed him.
Not a word did she say, however, till her mother found her in tears one
day, and insisted on knowing what the matter was, for Meg's drooping
spirits had not escaped her observation.

"I wouldn't tell anyone except you, Mother, but I really do need
advice, for if John goes on much longer I might as well be widowed,"
replied Mrs. Brooke, drying her tears on Daisy's bib with an injured
air.

"Goes on how, my dear?" asked her mother anxiously.

"He's away all day, and at night when I want to see him, he is
continually going over to the Scotts'.  It isn't fair that I should
have the hardest work, and never any amusement. Men are very selfish,
even the best of them."

"So are women.  Don't blame John till you see where you are wrong
yourself."

"But it can't be right for him to neglect me."

"Don't you neglect him?"

"Why, Mother, I thought you'd take my part!"

"So I do, as far as sympathizing goes, but I think the fault is yours,
Meg."

"I don't see how."

"Let me show you.  Did John ever neglect you, as you call it, while you
made it a point to give him your society of an evening, his only
leisure time?"

"No, but I can't do it now, with two babies to tend."

"I think you could, dear, and I think you ought.  May I speak quite
freely, and will you remember that it's Mother who blames as well as
Mother who sympathizes?"

"Indeed I will!  Speak to me as if I were little Meg again. I often
feel as if I needed teaching more than ever since these babies look to
me for everything."

Meg drew her low chair beside her mother's, and with a little
interruption in either lap, the two women rocked and talked lovingly
together, feeling that the tie of motherhood made them more one than
ever.

"You have only made the mistake that most young wives make--forgotten
your duty to your husband in your love for your children. A very
natural and forgivable mistake, Meg, but one that had better be
remedied before you take to different ways, for children should draw
you nearer than ever, not separate you, as if they were all yours, and
John had nothing to do but support them.  I've seen it for some weeks,
but have not spoken, feeling sure it would come right in time."

"I'm afraid it won't.  If I ask him to stay, he'll think I'm jealous,
and I wouldn't insult him by such an idea.  He doesn't see that I want
him, and I don't know how to tell him without words."

"Make it so pleasant he won't want to go away.  My dear, he's longing
for his little home, but it isn't home without you, and you are always
in the nursery."

"Oughtn't I to be there?"

"Not all the time, too much confinement makes you nervous, and then you
are unfitted for everything.  Besides, you owe something to John as
well as to the babies.  Don't neglect husband for children, don't shut
him out of the nursery, but teach him how to help in it.  His place is
there as well as yours, and the children need him.  Let him feel that
he has a part to do, and he will do it gladly and faithfully, and it
will be better for you all."

"You really think so, Mother?"

"I know it, Meg, for I've tried it, and I seldom give advice unless
I've proved its practicability.  When you and Jo were little, I went on
just as you are, feeling as if I didn't do my duty unless I devoted
myself wholly to you.  Poor Father took to his books, after I had
refused all offers of help, and left me to try my experiment alone.  I
struggled along as well as I could, but Jo was too much for me.  I
nearly spoiled her by indulgence.  You were poorly, and I worried about
you till I fell sick myself.  Then Father came to the rescue, quietly
managed everything, and made himself so helpful that I saw my mistake,
and never have been able to get on without him since.  That is the
secret of our home happiness.  He does not let business wean him from
the little cares and duties that affect us all, and I try not to let
domestic worries destroy my interest in his pursuits.  Each do our part
alone in many things, but at home we work together, always."

"It is so, Mother, and my great wish is to be to my husband and
children what you have been to yours.  Show me how, I'll do anything
you say."

"You always were my docile daughter.  Well, dear, if I were you, I'd
let John have more to do with the management of Demi, for the boy needs
training, and it's none too soon to begin. Then I'd do what I have
often proposed, let Hannah come and help you.  She is a capital nurse,
and you may trust the precious babies to her while you do more
housework.  You need the exercise, Hannah would enjoy the rest, and
John would find his wife again. Go out more, keep cheerful as well as
busy, for you are the sunshine-maker of the family, and if you get
dismal there is no fair weather.  Then I'd try to take an interest in
whatever John likes--talk with him, let him read to you, exchange
ideas, and help each other in that way.  Don't shut yourself up in a
bandbox because you are a woman, but understand what is going on, and
educate yourself to take your part in the world's work, for it all
affects you and yours."

"John is so sensible, I'm afraid he will think I'm stupid if I ask
questions about politics and things."

"I don't believe he would.  Love covers a multitude of sins, and of
whom could you ask more freely than of him?  Try it, and see if he
doesn't find your society far more agreeable than Mrs. Scott's suppers."

"I will.  Poor John!  I'm afraid I have neglected him sadly, but I
thought I was right, and he never said anything."

"He tried not to be selfish, but he has felt rather forlorn, I fancy.
This is just the time, Meg, when young married people are apt to grow
apart, and the very time when they ought to be most together, for the
first tenderness soon wears off, unless care is taken to preserve it.
And no time is so beautiful and precious to parents as the first years
of the little lives given to them to train.  Don't let John be a
stranger to the babies, for they will do more to keep him safe and
happy in this world of trial and temptation than anything else, and
through them you will learn to know and love one another as you should.
Now, dear, good-by.  Think over Mother's preachment, act upon it if it
seems good, and God bless you all."

Meg did think it over, found it good, and acted upon it, though the
first attempt was not made exactly as she planned to have it.  Of
course the children tyrannized over her, and ruled the house as soon as
they found out that kicking and squalling brought them whatever they
wanted.  Mamma was an abject slave to their caprices, but Papa was not
so easily subjugated, and occasionally afflicted his tender spouse by
an attempt at paternal discipline with his obstreperous son. For Demi
inherited a trifle of his sire's firmness of character, we won't call
it obstinacy, and when he made up his little mind to have or to do
anything, all the king's horses and all the king's men could not change
that pertinacious little mind.  Mamma thought the dear too young to be
taught to conquer his prejudices, but Papa believed that it never was
too soon to learn obedience.  So Master Demi early discovered that when
he undertook to 'wrastle' with 'Parpar', he always got the worst of it,
yet like the Englishman, baby respected the man who conquered him, and
loved the father whose grave "No, no," was more impressive than all
Mamma's love pats.

A few days after the talk with her mother, Meg resolved to try a social
evening with John, so she ordered a nice supper, set the parlor in
order, dressed herself prettily, and put the children to bed early,
that nothing should interfere with her experiment.  But unfortunately
Demi's most unconquerable prejudice was against going to bed, and that
night he decided to go on a rampage.  So poor Meg sang and rocked, told
stories and tried every sleep-prevoking wile she could devise, but all
in vain, the big eyes wouldn't shut, and long after Daisy had gone to
byelow, like the chubby little bunch of good nature she was, naughty
Demi lay staring at the light, with the most discouragingly wide-awake
expression of countenance.

"Will Demi lie still like a good boy, while Mamma runs down and gives
poor Papa his tea?" asked Meg, as the hall door softly closed, and the
well-known step went tip-toeing into the dining room.

"Me has tea!" said Demi, preparing to join in the revel.

"No, but I'll save you some little cakies for breakfast, if you'll go
bye-bye like Daisy.  Will you, lovey?"

"Iss!" and Demi shut his eyes tight, as if to catch sleep and hurry the
desired day.

Taking advantage of the propitious moment, Meg slipped away and ran
down to greet her husband with a smiling face and the little blue bow
in her hair which was his especial admiration.  He saw it at once and
said with pleased surprise, "Why, little mother, how gay we are
tonight.  Do you expect company?"

"Only you, dear."

"Is it a birthday, anniversary, or anything?"

"No, I'm tired of being dowdy, so I dressed up as a change.  You always
make yourself nice for table, no matter how tired you are, so why
shouldn't I when I have the time?"

"I do it out of respect for you, my dear," said old-fashioned John.

"Ditto, ditto, Mr. Brooke," laughed Meg, looking young and pretty
again, as she nodded to him over the teapot.

"Well, it's altogether delightful, and like old times.  This tastes
right.  I drink your health, dear." and John sipped his tea with an air
of reposeful rapture, which was of very short duration however, for as
he put down his cup, the door handle rattled mysteriously, and a little
voice was heard, saying impatiently...

"Opy doy.  Me's tummin!"

"It's that naughty boy.  I told him to go to sleep alone, and here he
is, downstairs, getting his death a-cold pattering over that canvas,"
said Meg, answering the call.

"Mornin' now," announced Demi in joyful tone as he entered, with his
long nightgown gracefully festooned over his arm and every curl bobbing
gayly as he pranced about the table, eyeing the 'cakies' with loving
glances.

"No, it isn't morning yet.  You must go to bed, and not trouble poor
Mamma.  Then you can have the little cake with sugar on it."

"Me loves Parpar," said the artful one, preparing to climb the paternal
knee and revel in forbidden joys.  But John shook his head, and said to
Meg...

"If you told him to stay up there, and go to sleep alone, make him do
it, or he will never learn to mind you."

"Yes, of course.  Come, Demi,"  and Meg led her son away, feeling a
strong desire to spank the little marplot who hopped beside her,
laboring under the delusion that the bribe was to be administered as
soon as they reached the nursery.

Nor was he disappointed, for that shortsighted woman actually gave him
a lump of sugar, tucked him into his bed, and forbade any more
promenades till morning.

"Iss!" said Demi the perjured, blissfully sucking his sugar, and
regarding his first attempt as eminently successful.

Meg returned to her place, and supper was progressing pleasantly, when
the little ghost walked again, and exposed the maternal delinquencies
by boldly demanding, "More sudar, Marmar."

"Now this won't do," said John, hardening his heart against the
engaging little sinner.  "We shall never know any peace till that child
learns to go to bed properly.  You have made a slave of yourself long
enough.  Give him one lesson, and then there will be an end of it.  Put
him in his bed and leave him, Meg."

"He won't stay there, he never does unless I sit by him."

"I'll manage him.  Demi, go upstairs, and get into your bed, as Mamma
bids you."

"S'ant!" replied the young rebel, helping himself to the coveted
'cakie', and beginning to eat the same with calm audacity.

"You must never say that to Papa.  I shall carry you if you don't go
yourself."

"Go 'way, me don't love Parpar." and Demi retired to his mother's
skirts for protection.

But even that refuge proved unavailing, for he was delivered over to
the enemy, with a "Be gentle with him, John," which struck the culprit
with dismay, for when Mamma deserted him, then the judgment day was at
hand.  Bereft of his cake, defrauded of his frolic, and borne away by a
strong hand to that detested bed, poor Demi could not restrain his
wrath, but openly defied Papa, and kicked and screamed lustily all the
way upstairs.  The minute he was put into bed on one side, he rolled
out on the other, and made for the door, only to be ignominiously
caught up by the tail of his little toga and put back again, which
lively performance was kept up till the young man's strength gave out,
when he devoted himself to roaring at the top of his voice.  This vocal
exercise usually conquered Meg, but John sat as unmoved as the post
which is popularly believed to be deaf.  No coaxing, no sugar, no
lullaby, no story, even the light was put out and only the red glow of
the fire enlivened the 'big dark' which Demi regarded with curiosity
rather than fear.  This new order of things disgusted him, and he
howled dismally for 'Marmar', as his angry passions subsided, and
recollections of his tender bondwoman returned to the captive autocrat.
The plaintive wail which succeeded the passionate roar went to Meg's
heart, and she ran up to say beseechingly...

"Let me stay with him, he'll be good now, John."

"No, my dear.  I've told him he must go to sleep, as you bid him, and
he must, if I stay here all night."

"But he'll cry himself sick," pleaded Meg, reproaching herself for
deserting her boy.

"No, he won't, he's so tired he will soon drop off and then the matter
is settled, for he will understand that he has got to mind.  Don't
interfere, I'll manage him."

"He's my child, and I can't have his spirit broken by harshness."

"He's my child, and I won't have his temper spoiled by indulgence.  Go
down, my dear, and leave the boy to me."

When John spoke in that masterful tone, Meg always obeyed, and never
regretted her docility.

"Please let me kiss him once, John?"

"Certainly.  Demi, say good night to Mamma, and let her go and rest,
for she is very tired with taking care of you all day."

Meg always insisted upon it that the kiss won the victory, for after it
was given, Demi sobbed more quietly, and lay quite still at the bottom
of the bed, whither he had wriggled in his anguish of mind.

"Poor little man, he's worn out with sleep and crying.  I'll cover him
up, and then go and set Meg's heart at rest," thought John, creeping to
the bedside, hoping to find his rebellious heir asleep.

But he wasn't, for the moment his father peeped at him, Demi's eyes
opened, his little chin began to quiver, and he put up his arms, saying
with a penitent hiccough, "Me's dood, now."

Sitting on the stairs outside Meg wondered at the long silence which
followed the uproar, and after imagining all sorts of impossible
accidents, she slipped into the room to set her fears at rest.  Demi
lay fast asleep, not in his usual spreadeagle attitude, but in a
subdued bunch, cuddled close in the circle of his father's arm and
holding his father's finger, as if he felt that justice was tempered
with mercy, and had gone to sleep a sadder and wiser baby.  So held,
John had waited with a womanly patience till the little hand relaxed
its hold, and while waiting had fallen asleep, more tired by that
tussle with his son than with his whole day's work.

As Meg stood watching the two faces on the pillow, she smiled to
herself, and then slipped away again, saying in a satisfied tone, "I
never need fear that John will be too harsh with my babies.  He does
know how to manage them, and will be a great help, for Demi is getting
too much for me."

When John came down at last, expecting to find a pensive or reproachful
wife, he was agreeably surprised to find Meg placidly trimming a
bonnet, and to be greeted with the request to read something about the
election, if he was not too tired.  John saw in a minute that a
revolution of some kind was going on, but wisely asked no questions,
knowing that Meg was such a transparent little person, she couldn't
keep a secret to save her life, and therefore the clue would soon
appear.  He read a long debate with the most amiable readiness and then
explained it in his most lucid manner, while Meg tried to look deeply
interested, to ask intelligent questions, and keep her thoughts from
wandering from the state of the nation to the state of her bonnet.  In
her secret soul, however, she decided that politics were as bad as
mathematics, and that the mission of politicians seemed to be calling
each other names, but she kept these feminine ideas to herself, and
when John paused, shook her head and said with what she thought
diplomatic ambiguity, "Well, I really don't see what we are coming to."

John laughed, and watched her for a minute, as she poised a pretty
little preparation of lace and flowers on her hand, and regarded it
with the genuine interest which his harangue had failed to waken.

"She is trying to like politics for my sake, so I'll try and like
millinery for hers, that's only fair," thought John the Just, adding
aloud, "That's very pretty.  Is it what you call a breakfast cap?"

"My dear man, it's a bonnet!   My very best go-to-concert-and-theater
bonnet."

"I beg your pardon, it was so small, I naturally mistook it for one of
the flyaway things you sometimes wear. How do you keep it on?"

"These bits of lace are fastened under the chin with a rosebud, so,"
and Meg illustrated by putting on the bonnet and regarding him with an
air of calm satisfaction that was irresistible.

"It's a love of a bonnet, but I prefer the face inside, for it looks
young and happy again," and John kissed the smiling face, to the great
detriment of the rosebud under the chin.

"I'm glad you like it, for I want you to take me to one of the new
concerts some night.  I really need some music to put me in tune.  Will
you, please?"

"Of course I will, with all my heart, or anywhere else you like.  You
have been shut up so long, it will do you no end of good, and I shall
enjoy it, of all things.  What put it into your head, little mother?"

"Well, I had a talk with Marmee the other day, and told her how nervous
and cross and out of sorts I felt, and she said I needed change and
less care, so Hannah is to help me with the children, and I'm to see to
things about the house more, and now and then have a little fun, just
to keep me from getting to be a fidgety, broken-down old woman before
my time.  It's only an experiment, John, and I want to try it for your
sake as much as for mine, because I've neglected you shamefully lately,
and I'm going to make home what it used to be, if I can.  You don't
object, I hope?"

Never mind what John said, or what a very narrow escape the little
bonnet had from utter ruin.  All that we have any business to know is
that John did not appear to object, judging from the changes which
gradually took place in the house and its inmates.  It was not all
Paradise by any means, but everyone was better for the division of
labor system.  The children throve under the paternal rule, for
accurate, steadfast John brought order and obedience into Babydom, while
Meg recovered her spirits and composed her nerves by plenty of
wholesome exercise, a little pleasure, and much confidential
conversation with her sensible husband.  Home grew homelike again, and
John had no wish to leave it, unless he took Meg with him.  The Scotts
came to the Brookes' now, and everyone found the little house a
cheerful place, full of happiness, content, and family love.  Even
Sallie Moffatt liked to go there.  "It is always so quiet and pleasant
here, it does me good, Meg," she used to say, looking about her with
wistful eyes, as if trying to discover the charm, that she might use it
in her great house, full of splendid loneliness, for there were no
riotous, sunny-faced babies there, and Ned lived in a world of his own,
where there was no place for her.

This household happiness did not come all at once, but John and Meg had
found the key to it, and each year of married life taught them how to
use it, unlocking the treasuries of real home love and mutual
helpfulness, which the poorest may possess, and the richest cannot buy.
This is the sort of shelf on which young wives and mothers may consent
to be laid, safe from the restless fret and fever of the world, finding
loyal lovers in the little sons and daughters who cling to them,
undaunted by sorrow, poverty, or age, walking side by side, through
fair and stormy weather, with a faithful friend, who is, in the true
sense of the good old Saxon word, the 'house-band', and learning, as
Meg learned, that a woman's happiest kingdom is home, her highest honor
the art of ruling it not as a queen, but as a wise wife and mother.



CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

LAZY LAURENCE

Laurie went to Nice intending to stay a week, and remained a month.  He
was tired of wandering about alone, and Amy's familiar presence seemed
to give a homelike charm to the foreign scenes in which she bore a
part.  He rather missed the 'petting' he used to receive, and enjoyed a
taste of it again, for no attentions, however flattering, from
strangers, were half so pleasant as the sisterly adoration of the girls
at home.  Amy never would pet him like the others, but she was very
glad to see him now, and quite clung to him, feeling that he was the
representative of the dear family for whom she longed more than she
would confess.  They naturally took comfort in each other's society and
were much together, riding, walking, dancing, or dawdling, for at Nice
no one can be very industrious during the gay season.  But, while
apparently amusing themselves in the most careless fashion, they were
half-consciously making discoveries and forming opinions about each
other.  Amy rose daily in the estimation of her friend, but he sank in
hers, and each felt the truth before a word was spoken.  Amy tried to
please, and succeeded, for she was grateful for the many pleasures he
gave her, and repaid him with the little services to which womanly
women know how to lend an indescribable charm.  Laurie made no effort
of any kind, but just let himself drift along as comfortably as
possible, trying to forget, and feeling that all women owed him a kind
word because one had been cold to him.  It cost him no effort to be
generous, and he would have given Amy all the trinkets in Nice if she
would have taken them, but at the same time he felt that he could not
change the opinion she was forming of him, and he rather dreaded the
keen blue eyes that seemed to watch him with such half-sorrowful,
half-scornful surprise.

"All the rest have gone to Monaco for the day.  I preferred to stay at
home and write letters.  They are done now, and I am going to Valrosa
to sketch, will you come?" said Amy, as she joined Laurie one lovely
day when he lounged in as usual, about noon.

"Well, yes, but isn't it rather warm for such a long walk?" he answered
slowly, for the shaded salon looked inviting after the glare without.

"I'm going to have the little carriage, and Baptiste can drive, so
you'll have nothing to do but hold your umbrella, and keep your gloves
nice," returned Amy, with a sarcastic glance at the immaculate kids,
which were a weak point with Laurie.

"Then I'll go with pleasure." and he put out his hand for her
sketchbook.  But she tucked it under her arm with a sharp...

"Don't trouble yourself.  It's no exertion to me, but you don't look
equal to it."

Laurie lifted his eyebrows and followed at a leisurely pace as she ran
downstairs, but when they got into the carriage he took the reins
himself, and left little Baptiste nothing to do but fold his arms and
fall asleep on his perch.

The two never quarreled.  Amy was too well-bred, and just now Laurie
was too lazy, so in a minute he peeped under her hatbrim with an
inquiring air.  She answered him with a smile, and they went on
together in the most amicable manner.

It was a lovely drive, along winding roads rich in the picturesque
scenes that delight beauty-loving eyes.  Here an ancient monastery,
whence the solemn chanting of the monks came down to them.  There a
bare-legged shepherd, in wooden shoes, pointed hat, and rough jacket
over one shoulder, sat piping on a stone while his goats skipped among
the rocks or lay at his feet.  Meek, mouse-colored donkeys, laden with
panniers of freshly cut grass passed by, with a pretty girl in a
capaline sitting between the green piles, or an old woman spinning with
a distaff as she went. Brown, soft-eyed children ran out from the
quaint stone hovels to offer nosegays, or bunches of oranges still on
the bough. Gnarled olive trees covered the hills with their dusky
foliage, fruit hung golden in the orchard, and great scarlet anemones
fringed the roadside, while beyond green slopes and craggy heights, the
Maritime Alps rose sharp and white against the blue Italian sky.

Valrosa well deserved its name, for in that climate of perpetual summer
roses blossomed everywhere.  They overhung the archway, thrust
themselves between the bars of the great gate with a sweet welcome to
passers-by, and lined the avenue, winding through lemon trees and
feathery palms up to the villa on the hill. Every shadowy nook, where
seats invited one to stop and rest, was a mass of bloom, every cool
grotto had its marble nymph smiling from a veil of flowers and every
fountain reflected crimson, white, or pale pink roses, leaning down to
smile at their own beauty. Roses covered the walls of the house, draped
the cornices, climbed the pillars, and ran riot over the balustrade of
the wide terrace, whence one looked down on the sunny Mediterranean,
and the white-walled city on its shore.

"This is a regular honeymoon paradise, isn't it?  Did you ever see such
roses?" asked Amy, pausing on the terrace to enjoy the view, and a
luxurious whiff of perfume that came wandering by.

"No, nor felt such thorns," returned Laurie, with his thumb in his
mouth, after a vain attempt to capture a solitary scarlet flower that
grew just beyond his reach.

"Try lower down, and pick those that have no thorns," said Amy,
gathering three of the tiny cream-colored ones that starred the wall
behind her.  She put them in his buttonhole as a peace offering, and he
stood a minute looking down at them with a curious expression, for in
the Italian part of his nature there was a touch of superstition, and
he was just then in that state of half-sweet, half-bitter melancholy,
when imaginative young men find significance in trifles and food for
romance everywhere. He had thought of Jo in reaching after the thorny
red rose, for vivid flowers became her, and she had often worn ones
like that from the greenhouse at home.  The pale roses Amy gave him
were the sort that the Italians lay in dead hands, never in bridal
wreaths, and for a moment he wondered if the omen was for Jo or for
himself, but the next instant his American common sense got the better
of sentimentality, and he laughed a heartier laugh than Amy had heard
since he came.

"It's good advice, you'd better take it and save your fingers," she
said, thinking her speech amused him.

"Thank you, I will," he answered in jest, and a few months later he did
it in earnest.

"Laurie, when are you going to your grandfather?" she asked presently,
as she settled herself on a rustic seat.

"Very soon."

"You have said that a dozen times within the last three weeks."

"I dare say, short answers save trouble."

"He expects you, and you really ought to go."

"Hospitable creature!  I know it."

"Then why don't you do it?"

"Natural depravity, I suppose."

"Natural indolence, you mean.  It's really dreadful!" and Amy looked
severe.

"Not so bad as it seems, for I should only plague him if I went, so I
might as well stay and plague you a little longer, you can bear it
better, in fact I think it agrees with you excellently," and Laurie
composed himself for a lounge on the broad ledge of the balustrade.

Amy shook her head and opened her sketchbook with an air of
resignation, but she had made up her mind to lecture 'that boy' and in
a minute she began again.

"What are you doing just now?"

"Watching lizards."

"No, no.  I mean what do you intend and wish to do?"

"Smoke a cigarette, if you'll allow me."

"How provoking you are!  I don't approve of cigars and I will only
allow it on condition that you let me put you into my sketch.  I need a
figure."

"With all the pleasure in life.  How will you have me, full length or
three-quarters, on my head or my heels?  I should respectfully suggest
a recumbent posture, then put yourself in also and call it 'Dolce far
niente'."

"Stay as you are, and go to sleep if you like.  I intend to work hard,"
said Amy in her most energetic tone.

"What delightful enthusiasm!" and he leaned against a tall urn with an
air of entire satisfaction.

"What would Jo say if she saw you now?" asked Amy impatiently, hoping
to stir him up by the mention of her still more energetic sister's name.

"As usual, 'Go away, Teddy.  I'm busy!'" He laughed as he spoke, but
the laugh was not natural, and a shade passed over his face, for the
utterance of the familiar name touched the wound that was not healed
yet.  Both tone and shadow struck Amy, for she had seen and heard them
before, and now she looked up in time to catch a new expression on
Laurie's face--a hard bitter look, full of pain, dissatisfaction, and
regret.  It was gone before she could study it and the listless
expression back again. She watched him for a moment with artistic
pleasure, thinking how like an Italian he looked, as he lay basking in
the sun with uncovered head and eyes full of southern dreaminess, for
he seemed to have forgotten her and fallen into a reverie.

"You look like the effigy of a young knight asleep on his tomb," she
said, carefully tracing the well-cut profile defined against the dark
stone.

"Wish I was!"

"That's a foolish wish, unless you have spoiled your life. You are so
changed, I sometimes think--" there Amy stopped, with a half-timid,
half-wistful look, more significant than her unfinished speech.

Laurie saw and understood the affectionate anxiety which she hesitated
to express, and looking straight into her eyes, said, just as he used
to say it to her mother, "It's all right, ma'am."

That satisfied her and set at rest the doubts that had begun to worry
her lately.  It also touched her, and she showed that it did, by the
cordial tone in which she said...

"I'm glad of that!  I didn't think you'd been a very bad boy, but I
fancied you might have wasted money at that wicked Baden-Baden, lost
your heart to some charming Frenchwoman with a husband, or got into
some of the scrapes that young men seem to consider a necessary part of
a foreign tour.  Don't stay out there in the sun, come and lie on the
grass here and 'let us be friendly', as Jo used to say when we got in
the sofa corner and told secrets."

Laurie obediently threw himself down on the turf, and began to amuse
himself by sticking daisies into the ribbons of Amy's hat, that lay
there.

"I'm all ready for the secrets." and he glanced up with a decided
expression of interest in his eyes.

"I've none to tell.  You may begin."

"Haven't one to bless myself with.  I thought perhaps you'd had some
news from home.."

"You have heard all that has come lately.  Don't you hear often?  I
fancied Jo would send you volumes."

"She's very busy.  I'm roving about so, it's impossible to be regular,
you know.  When do you begin your great work of art, Raphaella?" he
asked, changing the subject abruptly after another pause, in which he
had been wondering if Amy knew his secret and wanted to talk about it.

"Never," she answered, with a despondent but decided air. "Rome took
all the vanity out of me, for after seeing the wonders there, I felt
too insignificant to live and gave up all my foolish hopes in despair."

"Why should you, with so much energy and talent?"

"That's just why, because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy
can make it so.  I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a
common-place dauber, so I don't intend to try any more."

"And what are you going to do with yourself now, if I may ask?"

"Polish up my other talents, and be an ornament to society, if I get
the chance."

It was a characteristic speech, and sounded daring, but audacity
becomes young people, and Amy's ambition had a good foundation.  Laurie
smiled, but he liked the spirit with which she took up a new purpose
when a long-cherished one died, and spent no time lamenting.

"Good!  And here is where Fred Vaughn comes in, I fancy."

Amy preserved a discreet silence, but there was a conscious look in her
downcast face that made Laurie sit up and say gravely, "Now I'm going
to play brother, and ask questions.  May I?"

"I don't promise to answer."

"Your face will, if your tongue won't.  You aren't woman of the world
enough yet to hide your feelings, my dear.  I heard rumors about Fred
and you last year, and it's my private opinion that if he had not been
called home so suddenly and detained so long, something would have come
of it, hey?"

"That's not for me to say," was Amy's grim reply, but her lips would
smile, and there was a traitorous sparkle of the eye which betrayed
that she knew her power and enjoyed the knowledge.

"You are not engaged, I hope?" and Laurie looked very elder-brotherly
and grave all of a sudden.

"No."

"But you will be, if he comes back and goes properly down on his knees,
won't you?"

"Very likely."

"Then you are fond of old Fred?"

"I could be, if I tried."

"But you don't intend to try till the proper moment? Bless my soul,
what unearthly prudence!  He's a good fellow, Amy, but not the man I
fancied you'd like."

"He is rich, a gentleman, and has delightful manners," began Amy,
trying to be quite cool and dignified, but feeling a little ashamed of
herself, in spite of the sincerity of her intentions.

"I understand.  Queens of society can't get on without money, so you
mean to make a good match, and start in that way?  Quite right and
proper, as the world goes, but it sounds odd from the lips of one of
your mother's girls."

"True, nevertheless."

A short speech, but the quiet decision with which it was uttered
contrasted curiously with the young speaker.  Laurie felt this
instinctively and laid himself down again, with a sense of
disappointment which he could not explain.  His look and silence, as
well as a certain inward self-disapproval, ruffled Amy, and made her
resolve to deliver her lecture without delay.

"I wish you'd do me the favor to rouse yourself a little," she said
sharply.

"Do it for me, there's a dear girl."

"I could, if I tried." and she looked as if she would like doing it in
the most summary style.

"Try, then.  I give you leave," returned Laurie, who enjoyed having
someone to tease, after his long abstinence from his favorite pastime.

"You'd be angry in five minutes."

"I'm never angry with you.  It takes two flints to make a fire. You are
as cool and soft as snow."

"You don't know what I can do.  Snow produces a glow and a tingle, if
applied rightly.  Your indifference is half affectation, and a good
stirring up would prove it."

"Stir away, it won't hurt me and it may amuse you, as the big man said
when his little wife beat him.  Regard me in the light of a husband or
a carpet, and beat till you are tired, if that sort of exercise agrees
with you."

Being decidedly nettled herself, and longing to see him shake off the
apathy that so altered him, Amy sharpened both tongue and pencil, and
began.

"Flo and I have got a new name for you.  It's Lazy Laurence. How do you
like it?"

She thought it would annoy him, but he only folded his arms under his
head, with an imperturbable, "That's not bad. Thank you, ladies."

"Do you want to know what I honestly think of you?"

"Pining to be told."

"Well, I despise you."

If she had even said 'I hate you' in a petulant or coquettish tone, he
would have laughed and rather liked it, but the grave, almost sad,
accent in her voice made him open his eyes, and ask quickly...

"Why, if you please?"

"Because, with every chance for being good, useful, and happy, you are
faulty, lazy, and miserable."

"Strong language, mademoiselle."

"If you like it, I'll go on."

"Pray do, it's quite interesting."

"I thought you'd find it so.  Selfish people always like to talk about
themselves."

"Am I selfish?" the question slipped out involuntarily and in a tone of
surprise, for the one virtue on which he prided himself was generosity.

"Yes, very selfish," continued Amy, in a calm, cool voice, twice as
effective just then as an angry one.  "I'll show you how, for I've
studied you while we were frolicking, and I'm not at all satisfied with
you.  Here you have been abroad nearly six months, and done nothing but
waste time and money and disappoint your friends."

"Isn't a fellow to have any pleasure after a four-year grind?"

"You don't look as if you'd had much.  At any rate, you are none the
better for it, as far as I can see.  I said when we first met that you
had improved.  Now I take it all back, for I don't think you half so
nice as when I left you at home.  You have grown abominably lazy, you
like gossip, and waste time on frivolous things, you are contented to
be petted and admired by silly people, instead of being loved and
respected by wise ones.  With money, talent, position, health, and
beauty, ah you like that old Vanity!  But it's the truth, so I can't
help saying it, with all these splendid things to use and enjoy, you
can find nothing to do but dawdle, and instead of being the man you
ought to be, you are only..."  there she stopped, with a look that had
both pain and pity in it.

"Saint Laurence on a gridiron," added Laurie, blandly finishing the
sentence.  But the lecture began to take effect, for there was a
wide-awake sparkle in his eyes now and a half-angry, half-injured
expression replaced the former indifference.

"I supposed you'd take it so.  You men tell us we are angels, and say
we can make you what we will, but the instant we honestly try to do you
good, you laugh at us and won't listen, which proves how much your
flattery is worth." Amy spoke bitterly, and turned her back on the
exasperating martyr at her feet.

In a minute a hand came down over the page, so that she could not draw,
and Laurie's voice said, with a droll imitation of a penitent child, "I
will be good, oh, I will be good!"

But Amy did not laugh, for she was in earnest, and tapping on the
outspread hand with her pencil, said soberly, "Aren't you ashamed of a
hand like that?  It's as soft and white as a woman's, and looks as if
it never did anything but wear Jouvin's best gloves and pick flowers
for ladies.  You are not a dandy, thank Heaven, so I'm glad to see
there are no diamonds or big seal rings on it, only the little old one
Jo gave you so long ago.  Dear soul, I wish she was here to help me!"

"So do I!"

The hand vanished as suddenly as it came, and there was energy enough
in the echo of her wish to suit even Amy.  She glanced down at him with
a new thought in her mind, but he was lying with his hat half over his
face, as if for shade, and his mustache hid his mouth.  She only saw
his chest rise and fall, with a long breath that might have been a
sigh, and the hand that wore the ring nestled down into the grass, as
if to hide something too precious or too tender to be spoken of. All in
a minute various hints and trifles assumed shape and significance in
Amy's mind, and told her what her sister never had confided to her.
She remembered that Laurie never spoke voluntarily of Jo, she recalled
the shadow on his face just now, the change in his character, and the
wearing of the little old ring which was no ornament to a handsome
hand.  Girls are quick to read such signs and feel their eloquence.
Amy had fancied that perhaps a love trouble was at the bottom of the
alteration, and now she was sure of it.  Her keen eyes filled, and when
she spoke again, it was in a voice that could be beautifully soft and
kind when she chose to make it so.

"I know I have no right to talk so to you, Laurie, and if you weren't
the sweetest-tempered fellow in the world, you'd be very angry with me.
But we are all so fond and proud of you, I couldn't bear to think they
should be disappointed in you at home as I have been, though, perhaps
they would understand the change better than I do."

"I think they would," came from under the hat, in a grim tone, quite as
touching as a broken one.

"They ought to have told me, and not let me go blundering and scolding,
when I should have been more kind and patient than ever.  I never did
like that Miss Randal and now I hate her!" said artful Amy, wishing to
be sure of her facts this time.

"Hang Miss Randal!" and Laurie knocked the hat off his face with a look
that left no doubt of his sentiments toward that young lady.

"I beg pardon, I thought..." and there she paused diplomatically.

"No, you didn't, you knew perfectly well I never cared for anyone but
Jo," Laurie said that in his old, impetuous tone, and turned his face
away as he spoke.

"I did think so, but as they never said anything about it, and you came
away, I supposed I was mistaken.  And Jo wouldn't be kind to you?  Why,
I was sure she loved you dearly."

"She was kind, but not in the right way, and it's lucky for her she
didn't love me, if I'm the good-for-nothing fellow you think me.  It's
her fault though, and you may tell her so."

The hard, bitter look came back again as he said that, and it troubled
Amy, for she did not know what balm to apply.

"I was wrong, I didn't know.  I'm very sorry I was so cross, but I
can't help wishing you'd bear it better, Teddy, dear."

"Don't, that's her name for me!" and Laurie put up his hand with a
quick gesture to stop the words spoken in Jo's half-kind,
half-reproachful tone.  "Wait till you've tried it yourself," he added
in a low voice, as he pulled up the grass by the handful.

"I'd take it manfully, and be respected if I couldn't be loved," said
Amy, with the decision of one who knew nothing about it.

Now, Laurie flattered himself that he had borne it remarkably well,
making no moan, asking no sympathy, and taking his trouble away to live
it down alone.  Amy's lecture put the matter in a new light, and for
the first time it did look weak and selfish to lose heart at the first
failure, and shut himself up in moody indifference.  He felt as if
suddenly shaken out of a pensive dream and found it impossible to go to
sleep again.  Presently he sat up and asked slowly, "Do you think Jo
would despise me as you do?"

"Yes, if she saw you now.  She hates lazy people.  Why don't you do
something splendid, and make her love you?"

"I did my best, but it was no use."

"Graduating well, you mean?  That was no more than you ought to have
done, for your grandfather's sake.  It would have been shameful to fail
after spending so much time and money, when everyone knew that you
could do well."

"I did fail, say what you will, for Jo wouldn't love me," began Laurie,
leaning his head on his hand in a despondent attitude.

"No, you didn't, and you'll say so in the end, for it did you good, and
proved that you could do something if you tried. If you'd only set
about another task of some sort, you'd soon be your hearty, happy self
again, and forget your trouble."

"That's impossible."

"Try it and see.  You needn't shrug your shoulders, and think, 'Much
she knows about such things'.  I don't pretend to be wise, but I am
observing, and I see a great deal more than you'd imagine.  I'm
interested in other people's experiences and inconsistencies, and
though I can't explain, I remember and use them for my own benefit.
Love Jo all your days, if you choose, but don't let it spoil you, for
it's wicked to throw away so many good gifts because you can't have the
one you want.  There, I won't lecture any more, for I know you'll wake
up and be a man in spite of that hardhearted girl."

Neither spoke for several minutes.  Laurie sat turning the little ring
on his finger, and Amy put the last touches to the hasty sketch she had
been working at while she talked. Presently she put it on his knee,
merely saying, "How do you like that?"

He looked and then he smiled, as he could not well help doing, for it
was capitally done, the long, lazy figure on the grass, with listless
face, half-shut eyes, and one hand holding a cigar, from which came the
little wreath of smoke that encircled the dreamer's head.

"How well you draw!" he said, with a genuine surprise and pleasure at
her skill, adding, with a half-laugh, "Yes, that's me."

"As you are.  This is as you were." and Amy laid another sketch beside
the one he held.

It was not nearly so well done, but there was a life and spirit in it
which atoned for many faults, and it recalled the past so vividly that
a sudden change swept over the young man's face as he looked.  Only a
rough sketch of Laurie taming a horse.  Hat and coat were off, and
every line of the active figure, resolute face, and commanding attitude
was full of energy and meaning.  The handsome brute, just subdued,
stood arching his neck under the tightly drawn rein, with one foot
impatiently pawing the ground, and ears pricked up as if listening for
the voice that had mastered him.  In the ruffled mane, the rider's
breezy hair and erect attitude, there was a suggestion of suddenly
arrested motion, of strength, courage, and youthful buoyancy that
contrasted sharply with the supine grace of the '_Dolce far Niente_'
sketch.  Laurie said nothing but as his eye went from one to the other,
Amy saw him flush up and fold his lips together as if he read and
accepted the little lesson she had given him.  That satisfied her, and
without waiting for him to speak, she said, in her sprightly way...

"Don't you remember the day you played Rarey with Puck, and we all
looked on?  Meg and Beth were frightened, but Jo clapped and pranced,
and I sat on the fence and drew you.  I found that sketch in my
portfolio the other day, touched it up, and kept it to show you."

"Much obliged.  You've improved immensely since then, and I
congratulate you.  May I venture to suggest in 'a honeymoon paradise'
that five o'clock is the dinner hour at your hotel?"

Laurie rose as he spoke, returned the pictures with a smile and a bow
and looked at his watch, as if to remind her that even moral lectures
should have an end.  He tried to resume his former easy, indifferent
air, but it was an affectation now, for the rousing had been more
effacious than he would confess.  Amy felt the shade of coldness in his
manner, and said to herself...

"Now, I've offended him.  Well, if it does him good, I'm glad, if it
makes him hate me, I'm sorry, but it's true, and I can't take back a
word of it."

They laughed and chatted all the way home, and little Baptiste, up
behind, thought that monsieur and madamoiselle were in charming
spirits.  But both felt ill at ease.  The friendly frankness was
disturbed, the sunshine had a shadow over it, and despite their
apparent gaiety, there was a secret discontent in the heart of each.

"Shall we see you this evening, mon frere?" asked Amy, as they parted
at her aunt's door.

"Unfortunately I have an engagement.  Au revoir, madamoiselle," and
Laurie bent as if to kiss her hand, in the foreign fashion, which
became him better than many men.  Something in his face made Amy say
quickly and warmly...

"No, be yourself with me, Laurie, and part in the good old way. I'd
rather have a hearty English handshake than all the sentimental
salutations in France."

"Goodbye, dear," and with these words, uttered in the tone she liked,
Laurie left her, after a handshake almost painful in its heartiness.

Next morning, instead of the usual call, Amy received a note which made
her smile at the beginning and sigh at the end.

My Dear Mentor, Please make my adieux to your aunt, and exult within
yourself, for 'Lazy Laurence' has gone to his grandpa, like the best of
boys.  A pleasant winter to you, and may the gods grant you a blissful
honeymoon at Valrosa!  I think Fred would be benefited by a rouser.
Tell him so, with my congratulations.

Yours gratefully, Telemachus


"Good boy!  I'm glad he's gone," said Amy, with an approving smile. The
next minute her face fell as she glanced about the empty room, adding,
with an involuntary sigh, "Yes, I am glad, but how I shall miss him."



CHAPTER FORTY

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

When the first bitterness was over, the family accepted the inevitable,
and tried to bear it cheerfully, helping one another by the increased
affection which comes to bind households tenderly together in times of
trouble.  They put away their grief, and each did his or her part
toward making that last year a happy one.

The pleasantest room in the house was set apart for Beth, and in it was
gathered everything that she most loved, flowers, pictures, her piano,
the little worktable, and the beloved pussies.  Father's best books
found their way there, Mother's easy chair, Jo's desk, Amy's finest
sketches, and every day Meg brought her babies on a loving pilgrimage,
to make sunshine for Aunty Beth.  John quietly set apart a little sum,
that he might enjoy the pleasure of keeping the invalid supplied with
the fruit she loved and longed for.  Old Hannah never wearied of
concocting dainty dishes to tempt a capricious appetite, dropping tears
as she worked, and from across the sea came little gifts and cheerful
letters, seeming to bring breaths of warmth and fragrance from lands
that know no winter.

Here, cherished like a household saint in its shrine, sat Beth,
tranquil and busy as ever, for nothing could change the sweet,
unselfish nature, and even while preparing to leave life, she tried to
make it happier for those who should remain behind.  The feeble fingers
were never idle, and one of her pleasures was to make little things for
the school children daily passing to and fro, to drop a pair of mittens
from her window for a pair of purple hands, a needlebook for some small
mother of many dolls, penwipers for young penmen toiling through
forests of pothooks, scrapbooks for picture-loving eyes, and all manner
of pleasant devices, till the reluctant climbers of the ladder of
learning found their way strewn with flowers, as it were, and came to
regard the gentle giver as a sort of fairy godmother, who sat above
there, and showered down gifts miraculously suited to their tastes and
needs.  If Beth had wanted any reward, she found it in the bright
little faces always turned up to her window, with nods and smiles, and
the droll little letters which came to her, full of blots and gratitude.

The first few months were very happy ones, and Beth often used to look
round, and say "How beautiful this is!" as they all sat together in her
sunny room, the babies kicking and crowing on the floor, mother and
sisters working near, and father reading, in his pleasant voice, from
the wise old books which seemed rich in good and comfortable words, as
applicable now as when written centuries ago, a little chapel, where a
paternal priest taught his flock the hard lessons all must learn,
trying to show them that hope can comfort love, and faith make
resignation possible.  Simple sermons, that went straight to the souls
of those who listened, for the father's heart was in the minister's
religion, and the frequent falter in the voice gave a double eloquence
to the words he spoke or read.

It was well for all that this peaceful time was given them as
preparation for the sad hours to come, for by-and-by, Beth said the
needle was 'so heavy', and put it down forever.  Talking wearied her,
faces troubled her, pain claimed her for its own, and her tranquil
spirit was sorrowfully perturbed by the ills that vexed her feeble
flesh.  Ah me! Such heavy days, such long, long nights, such aching
hearts and imploring prayers, when those who loved her best were forced
to see the thin hands stretched out to them beseechingly, to hear the
bitter cry, "Help me, help me!" and to feel that there was no help.  A
sad eclipse of the serene soul, a sharp struggle of the young life with
death, but both were mercifully brief, and then the natural rebellion
over, the old peace returned more beautiful than ever.  With the wreck
of her frail body, Beth's soul grew strong, and though she said little,
those about her felt that she was ready, saw that the first pilgrim
called was likewise the fittest, and waited with her on the shore,
trying to see the Shining Ones coming to receive her when she crossed
the river.

Jo never left her for an hour since Beth had said "I feel stronger when
you are here."  She slept on a couch in the room, waking often to renew
the fire, to feed, lift, or wait upon the patient creature who seldom
asked for anything, and 'tried not to be a trouble'.  All day she
haunted the room, jealous of any other nurse, and prouder of being
chosen then than of any honor her life ever brought her.  Precious and
helpful hours to Jo, for now her heart received the teaching that it
needed.  Lessons in patience were so sweetly taught her that she could
not fail to learn them, charity for all, the lovely spirit that can
forgive and truly forget unkindness, the loyalty to duty that makes the
hardest easy, and the sincere faith that fears nothing, but trusts
undoubtingly.

Often when she woke Jo found Beth reading in her well-worn little book,
heard her singing softly, to beguile the sleepless night, or saw her
lean her face upon her hands, while slow tears dropped through the
transparent fingers, and Jo would lie watching her with thoughts too
deep for tears, feeling that Beth, in her simple, unselfish way, was
trying to wean herself from the dear old life, and fit herself for the
life to come, by sacred words of comfort, quiet prayers, and the music
she loved so well.

Seeing this did more for Jo than the wisest sermons, the saintliest
hymns, the most fervent prayers that any voice could utter.  For with
eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest
sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister's life--uneventful,
unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which 'smell sweet, and
blossom in the dust', the self-forgetfulness that makes the humblest on
earth remembered soonest in heaven, the true success which is possible
to all.

One night when Beth looked among the books upon her table, to find
something to make her forget the mortal weariness that was almost as
hard to bear as pain, as she turned the leaves of her old favorite,
Pilgrims's Progress, she found a little paper, scribbled over in Jo's
hand.  The name caught her eye and the blurred look of the lines made
her sure that tears had fallen on it.

"Poor Jo!  She's fast asleep, so I won't wake her to ask leave.  She
shows me all her things, and I don't think she'll mind if I look at
this", thought Beth, with a glance at her sister, who lay on the rug,
with the tongs beside her, ready to wake up the minute the log fell
apart.

    MY BETH

    Sitting patient in the shadow
    Till the blessed light shall come,
    A serene and saintly presence
    Sanctifies our troubled home.
    Earthly joys and hopes and sorrows
    Break like ripples on the strand
    Of the deep and solemn river
    Where her willing feet now stand.

    O my sister, passing from me,
    Out of human care and strife,
    Leave me, as a gift, those virtues
    Which have beautified your life.
    Dear, bequeath me that great patience
    Which has power to sustain
    A cheerful, uncomplaining spirit
    In its prison-house of pain.

    Give me, for I need it sorely,
    Of that courage, wise and sweet,
    Which has made the path of duty
    Green beneath your willing feet.
    Give me that unselfish nature,
    That with charity divine
    Can pardon wrong for love's dear sake--
    Meek heart, forgive me mine!

    Thus our parting daily loseth
    Something of its bitter pain,
    And while learning this hard lesson,
    My great loss becomes my gain.
    For the touch of grief will render
    My wild nature more serene,
    Give to life new aspirations,
    A new trust in the unseen.

    Henceforth, safe across the river,
    I shall see forever more
    A beloved, household spirit
    Waiting for me on the shore.
    Hope and faith, born of my sorrow,
    Guardian angels shall become,
    And the sister gone before me
    By their hands shall lead me home.

Blurred and blotted, faulty and feeble as the lines were, they brought
a look of inexpressible comfort to Beth's face, for her one regret had
been that she had done so little, and this seemed to assure her that
her life had not been useless, that her death would not bring the
despair she feared.  As she sat with the paper folded between her
hands, the charred log fell asunder.  Jo started up, revived the blaze,
and crept to the bedside, hoping Beth slept.

"Not asleep, but so happy, dear.  See, I found this and read it. I knew
you wouldn't care.  Have I been all that to you, Jo?" she asked, with
wistful, humble earnestness.

"_Oh_, Beth, so much, so much!" and Jo's head went down upon the pillow
beside her sister's.

"Then I don't feel as if I'd wasted my life.  I'm not so good as you
make me, but I have tried to do right.  And now, when it's too late to
begin even to do better, it's such a comfort to know that someone loves
me so much, and feels as if I'd helped them."

"More than any one in the world, Beth.  I used to think I couldn't let
you go, but I'm learning to feel that I don't lose you, that you'll be
more to me than ever, and death can't part us, though it seems to."

"I know it cannot, and I don't fear it any longer, for I'm sure I shall
be your Beth still, to love and help you more than ever.  You must take
my place, Jo, and be everything to Father and Mother when I'm gone.
They will turn to you, don't fail them, and if it's hard to work alone,
remember that I don't forget you, and that you'll be happier in doing
that than writing splendid books or seeing all the world, for love is
the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the
end so easy."

"I'll try, Beth." and then and there Jo renounced her old ambition,
pledged herself to a new and better one, acknowledging the poverty of
other desires, and feeling the blessed solace of a belief in the
immortality of love.

So the spring days came and went, the sky grew clearer, the earth
greener, the flowers were up fairly early, and the birds came back in
time to say goodbye to Beth, who, like a tired but trustful child,
clung to the hands that had led her all her life, as Father and Mother
guided her tenderly through the Valley of the Shadow, and gave her up
to God.

Seldom except in books do the dying utter memorable words, see visions,
or depart with beatified countenances, and those who have sped many
parting souls know that to most the end comes as naturally and simply
as sleep.  As Beth had hoped, the 'tide went out easily', and in the
dark hour before dawn, on the bosom where she had drawn her first
breath, she quietly drew her last, with no farewell but one loving
look, one little sigh.

With tears and prayers and tender hands, Mother and sisters made her
ready for the long sleep that pain would never mar again, seeing with
grateful eyes the beautiful serenity that soon replaced the pathetic
patience that had wrung their hearts so long, and feeling with reverent
joy that to their darling death was a benignant angel, not a phantom
full of dread.

When morning came, for the first time in many months the fire was out,
Jo's place was empty, and the room was very still.  But a bird sang
blithely on a budding bough, close by, the snowdrops blossomed freshly
at the window, and the spring sunshine streamed in like a benediction
over the placid face upon the pillow, a face so full of painless peace
that those who loved it best smiled through their tears, and thanked
God that Beth was well at last.



CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

LEARNING TO FORGET

Amy's lecture did Laurie good, though, of course, he did not own it
till long afterward.  Men seldom do, for when women are the advisers,
the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded
themselves that it is just what they intended to do.  Then they act
upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the
credit of it.  If it fails, they generously give her the whole.  Laurie
went back to his grandfather, and was so dutifully devoted for several
weeks that the old gentleman declared the climate of Nice had improved
him wonderfully, and he had better try it again. There was nothing the
young gentleman would have liked better, but elephants could not have
dragged him back after the scolding he had received.  Pride forbid, and
whenever the longing grew very strong, he fortified his resolution by
repeating the words that had made the deepest impression--"I despise
you." "Go and do something splendid that will make her love you."

Laurie turned the matter over in his mind so often that he soon brought
himself to confess that he had been selfish and lazy, but then when a
man has a great sorrow, he should be indulged in all sorts of vagaries
till he has lived it down.  He felt that his blighted affections were
quite dead now, and though he should never cease to be a faithful
mourner, there was no occasion to wear his weeds ostentatiously.  Jo
wouldn't love him, but he might make her respect and admire him by
doing something which should prove that a girl's 'No' had not spoiled
his life.  He had always meant to do something, and Amy's advice was
quite unnecessary.  He had only been waiting till the aforesaid
blighted affections were decently interred. That being done, he felt
that he was ready to 'hide his stricken heart, and still toil on'.

As Goethe, when he had a joy or a grief, put it into a song, so Laurie
resolved to embalm his love sorrow in music, and to compose a Requiem
which should harrow up Jo's soul and melt the heart of every hearer.
Therefore the next time the old gentleman found him getting restless
and moody and ordered him off, he went to Vienna, where he had musical
friends, and fell to work with the firm determination to distinguish
himself.  But whether the sorrow was too vast to be embodied in music,
or music too ethereal to uplift a mortal woe, he soon discovered that
the Requiem was beyond him just at present.  It was evident that his
mind was not in working order yet, and his ideas needed clarifying, for
often in the middle of a plaintive strain, he would find himself
humming a dancing tune that vividly recalled the Christmas ball at
Nice, especially the stout Frenchman, and put an effectual stop to
tragic composition for the time being.

Then he tried an opera, for nothing seemed impossible in the beginning,
but here again unforeseen difficulties beset him.  He wanted Jo for his
heroine, and called upon his memory to supply him with tender
recollections and romantic visions of his love.  But memory turned
traitor, and as if possessed by the perverse spirit of the girl, would
only recall Jo's oddities, faults, and freaks, would only show her in
the most unsentimental aspects--beating mats with her head tied up in a
bandanna, barricading herself with the sofa pillow, or throwing cold
water over his passion a la Gummidge--and an irresistable laugh spoiled
the pensive picture he was endeavoring to paint.  Jo wouldn't be put
into the opera at any price, and he had to give her up with a "Bless
that girl, what a torment she is!" and a clutch at his hair, as became
a distracted composer.

When he looked about him for another and a less intractable damsel to
immortalize in melody, memory produced one with the most obliging
readiness.  This phantom wore many faces, but it always had golden
hair, was enveloped in a diaphanous cloud, and floated airily before
his mind's eye in a pleasing chaos of roses, peacocks, white ponies,
and blue ribbons.  He did not give the complacent wraith any name, but
he took her for his heroine and grew quite fond of her, as well he
might, for he gifted her with every gift and grace under the sun, and
escorted her, unscathed, through trials which would have annihilated
any mortal woman.

Thanks to this inspiration, he got on swimmingly for a time, but
gradually the work lost its charm, and he forgot to compose, while he
sat musing, pen in hand, or roamed about the gay city to get some new
ideas and refresh his mind, which seemed to be in a somewhat unsettled
state that winter.  He did not do much, but he thought a great deal and
was conscious of a change of some sort going on in spite of himself.
"It's genius simmering, perhaps.  I'll let it simmer, and see what
comes of it," he said, with a secret suspicion all the while that it
wasn't genius, but something far more common.  Whatever it was, it
simmered to some purpose, for he grew more and more discontented with
his desultory life, began to long for some real and earnest work to go
at, soul and body, and finally came to the wise conclusion that
everyone who loved music was not a composer.  Returning from one of
Mozart's grand operas, splendidly performed at the Royal Theatre, he
looked over his own, played a few of the best parts, sat staring at the
busts of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Bach, who stared benignly back
again.  Then suddenly he tore up his music sheets, one by one, and as
the last fluttered out of his hand, he said soberly to himself...

"She is right!  Talent isn't genius, and you can't make it so.  That
music has taken the vanity out of me as Rome took it out of her, and I
won't be a humbug any longer.  Now what shall I do?"

That seemed a hard question to answer, and Laurie began to wish he had
to work for his daily bread.  Now if ever, occurred an eligible
opportunity for 'going to the devil', as he once forcibly expressed it,
for he had plenty of money and nothing to do, and Satan is proverbially
fond of providing employment for full and idle hands.  The poor fellow
had temptations enough from without and from within, but he withstood
them pretty well, for much as he valued liberty, he valued good faith
and confidence more, so his promise to his grandfather, and his desire
to be able to look honestly into the eyes of the women who loved him,
and say "All's well," kept him safe and steady.

Very likely some Mrs. Grundy will observe, "I don't believe it, boys
will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats, and women must not
expect miracles."  I dare say you don't, Mrs. Grundy, but it's true
nevertheless.  Women work a good many miracles, and I have a persuasion
that they may perform even that of raising the standard of manhood by
refusing to echo such sayings.  Let the boys be boys, the longer the
better, and let the young men sow their wild oats if they must.  But
mothers, sisters, and friends may help to make the crop a small one,
and keep many tares from spoiling the harvest, by believing, and
showing that they believe, in the possibility of loyalty to the virtues
which make men manliest in good women's eyes.  If it is a feminine
delusion, leave us to enjoy it while we may, for without it half the
beauty and the romance of life is lost, and sorrowful forebodings would
embitter all our hopes of the brave, tenderhearted little lads, who
still love their mothers better than themselves and are not ashamed to
own it.

Laurie thought that the task of forgetting his love for Jo would absorb
all his powers for years, but to his great surprise he discovered it
grew easier every day.  He refused to believe it at first, got angry
with himself, and couldn't understand it, but these hearts of ours are
curious and contrary things, and time and nature work their will in
spite of us.  Laurie's heart wouldn't ache.  The wound persisted in
healing with a rapidity that astonished him, and instead of trying to
forget, he found himself trying to remember.  He had not foreseen this
turn of affairs, and was not prepared for it.  He was disgusted with
himself, surprised at his own fickleness, and full of a queer mixture
of disappointment and relief that he could recover from such a
tremendous blow so soon.  He carefully stirred up the embers of his
lost love, but they refused to burst into a blaze.  There was only a
comfortable glow that warmed and did him good without putting him into
a fever, and he was reluctantly obliged to confess that the boyish
passion was slowly subsiding into a more tranquil sentiment, very
tender, a little sad and resentful still, but that was sure to pass
away in time, leaving a brotherly affection which would last unbroken
to the end.

As the word 'brotherly' passed through his mind in one of his reveries,
he smiled, and glanced up at the picture of Mozart that was before
him...

"Well, he was a great man, and when he couldn't have one sister he took
the other, and was happy."

Laurie did not utter the words, but he thought them, and the next
instant kissed the little old ring, saying to himself, "No, I won't!  I
haven't forgotten, I never can.  I'll try again, and if that fails, why
then..."

Leaving his sentence unfinished, he seized pen and paper and wrote to
Jo, telling her that he could not settle to anything while there was
the least hope of her changing her mind. Couldn't she, wouldn't
she--and let him come home and be happy? While waiting for an answer he
did nothing, but he did it energetically, for he was in a fever of
impatience.  It came at last, and settled his mind effectually on one
point, for Jo decidedly couldn't and wouldn't.  She was wrapped up in
Beth, and never wished to hear the word love again.  Then she begged
him to be happy with somebody else, but always keep a little corner of
his heart for his loving sister Jo.  In a postscript she desired him
not to tell Amy that Beth was worse, she was coming home in the spring
and there was no need of saddening the remainder of her stay.  That
would be time enough, please God, but Laurie must write to her often,
and not let her feel lonely, homesick or anxious.

"So I will, at once.  Poor little girl, it will be a sad going home for
her, I'm afraid," and Laurie opened his desk, as if writing to Amy had
been the proper conclusion of the sentence left unfinished some weeks
before.

But he did not write the letter that day, for as he rummaged out his
best paper, he came across something which changed his purpose.
Tumbling about in one part of the desk among bills, passports, and
business documents of various kinds were several of Jo's letters, and
in another compartment were three notes from Amy, carefully tied up
with one of her blue ribbons and sweetly suggestive of the little dead
roses put away inside.  With a half-repentant, half-amused expression,
Laurie gathered up all Jo's letters, smoothed, folded, and put them
neatly into a small drawer of the desk, stood a minute turning the ring
thoughtfully on his finger, then slowly drew it off, laid it with the
letters, locked the drawer, and went out to hear High Mass at Saint
Stefan's, feeling as if there had been a funeral, and though not
overwhelmed with affliction, this seemed a more proper way to spend the
rest of the day than in writing letters to charming young ladies.

The letter went very soon, however, and was promptly answered, for Amy
was homesick, and confessed it in the most delightfully confiding
manner.  The correspondence flourished famously, and letters flew to
and fro with unfailing regularity all through the early spring.  Laurie
sold his busts, made allumettes of his opera, and went back to Paris,
hoping somebody would arrive before long.  He wanted desperately to go
to Nice, but would not till he was asked, and Amy would not ask him,
for just then she was having little experiences of her own, which made
her rather wish to avoid the quizzical eyes of 'our boy'.

Fred Vaughn had returned, and put the question to which she had once
decided to answer, "Yes, thank you," but now she said, "No, thank you,"
kindly but steadily, for when the time came, her courage failed her,
and she found that something more than money and position was needed to
satisfy the new longing that filled her heart so full of tender hopes
and fears.  The words, "Fred is a good fellow, but not at all the man I
fancied you would ever like," and Laurie's face when he uttered them,
kept returning to her as pertinaciously as her own did when she said in
look, if not in words, "I shall marry for money."  It troubled her to
remember that now, she wished she could take it back, it sounded so
unwomanly. She didn't want Laurie to think her a heartless,  worldly
creature.  She didn't care to be a queen of society now half so much as
she did to be a lovable woman.  She was so glad he didn't hate her for
the dreadful things she said, but took them so beautifully and was
kinder than ever.  His letters were such a comfort, for the home
letters were very irregular and not half so satisfactory as his when
they did come.  It was not only a pleasure, but a duty to answer them,
for the poor fellow was forlorn, and needed petting, since Jo persisted
in being stonyhearted.  She ought to have made an effort and tried to
love him.  It couldn't be very hard, many people would be proud and
glad to have such a dear boy care for them.  But Jo never would act
like other girls, so there was nothing to do but be very kind and treat
him like a brother.

If all brothers were treated as well as Laurie was at this period, they
would be a much happier race of beings than they are.  Amy never
lectured now.  She asked his opinion on all subjects, she was
interested in everything he did, made charming little presents for him,
and sent him two letters a week, full of lively gossip, sisterly
confidences, and captivating sketches of the lovely scenes about her.
As few brothers are complimented by having their letters carried about
in their sister's pockets, read and reread diligently, cried over when
short, kissed when long, and treasured carefully, we will not hint that
Amy did any of these fond and foolish things.  But she certainly did
grow a little pale and pensive that spring, lost much of her relish for
society, and went out sketching alone a good deal.  She never had much
to show when she came home, but was studying nature, I dare say, while
she sat for hours, with her hands folded, on the terrace at Valrosa, or
absently sketched any fancy that occurred to her, a stalwart knight
carved on a tomb, a young man asleep in the grass, with his hat over
his eyes, or a curly haired girl in gorgeous array, promenading down a
ballroom on the arm of a tall gentleman, both faces being left a blur
according to the last fashion in art, which was safe but not altogether
satisfactory.

Her aunt thought that she regretted her answer to Fred, and finding
denials useless and explanations impossible, Amy left her to think what
she liked, taking care that Laurie should know that Fred had gone to
Egypt.  That was all, but he understood it, and looked relieved, as he
said to himself, with a venerable air...

"I was sure she would think better of it.  Poor old fellow! I've been
through it all, and I can sympathize."

With that he heaved a great sigh, and then, as if he had discharged his
duty to the past, put his feet up on the sofa and enjoyed Amy's letter
luxuriously.

While these changes were going on abroad, trouble had come at home.
But the letter telling that Beth was failing never reached Amy, and
when the next found her at Vevay, for the heat had driven them from
Nice in May, and they had travelled slowly to Switzerland, by way of
Genoa and the Italian lakes.  She bore it very well, and quietly
submitted to the family decree that she should not shorten her visit,
for since it was too late to say goodbye to Beth, she had better stay,
and let absence soften her sorrow.  But her heart was very heavy, she
longed to be at home, and every day looked wistfully across the lake,
waiting for Laurie to come and comfort her.

He did come very soon, for the same mail brought letters to them both,
but he was in Germany, and it took some days to reach him.  The moment
he read it, he packed his knapsack, bade adieu to his fellow
pedestrians, and was off to keep his promise, with a heart full of joy
and sorrow, hope and suspense.

He knew Vevay well, and as soon as the boat touched the little quay, he
hurried along the shore to La Tour, where the Carrols were living en
pension.  The garcon was in despair that the whole family had gone to
take a promenade on the lake, but no, the blonde mademoiselle might be
in the chateau garden.  If monsieur would give himself the pain of
sitting down, a flash of time should present her.  But monsieur could
not wait even a 'flash of time', and in the middle of the speech
departed to find mademoiselle himself.

A pleasant old garden on the borders of the lovely lake, with chestnuts
rustling overhead, ivy climbing everywhere, and the black shadow of the
tower falling far across the sunny water.  At one corner of the wide,
low wall was a seat, and here Amy often came to read or work, or
console herself with the beauty all about her.  She was sitting here
that day, leaning her head on her hand, with a homesick heart and heavy
eyes, thinking of Beth and wondering why Laurie did not come.  She did
not hear him cross the courtyard beyond, nor see him pause in the
archway that led from the subterranean path into the garden.  He stood
a minute looking at her with new eyes, seeing what no one had ever seen
before, the tender side of Amy's character. Everything about her mutely
suggested love and sorrow, the blotted letters in her lap, the black
ribbon that tied up her hair, the womanly pain and patience in her
face, even the little ebony cross at her throat seemed pathetic to
Laurie, for he had given it to her, and she wore it as her only
ornament. If he had any doubts about the reception she would give him,
they were set at rest the minute she looked up and saw him, for
dropping everything, she ran to him, exclaiming in a tone of
unmistakable love and longing...

"Oh, Laurie, Laurie, I knew you'd come to me!"

I think everything was said and settled then, for as they stood
together quite silent for a moment, with the dark head bent down
protectingly over the light one, Amy felt that no one could comfort and
sustain her so well as Laurie, and Laurie decided that Amy was the only
woman in the world who could fill Jo's place and make him happy.  He
did not tell her so, but she was not disappointed, for both felt the
truth, were satisfied, and gladly left the rest to silence.

In a minute Amy went back to her place, and while she dried her tears,
Laurie gathered up the scattered papers, finding in the sight of sundry
well-worn letters and suggestive sketches good omens for the future.
As he sat down beside her, Amy felt shy again, and turned rosy red at
the recollection of her impulsive greeting.

"I couldn't help it, I felt so lonely and sad, and was so very glad to
see you.  It was such a surprise to look up and find you, just as I was
beginning to fear you wouldn't come," she said, trying in vain to speak
quite naturally.

"I came the minute I heard.  I wish I could say something to comfort
you for the loss of dear little Beth, but I can only feel, and..."  He
could not get any further, for he too turned bashful all of a sudden,
and did not quite know what to say.  He longed to lay Amy's head down
on his shoulder, and tell her to have a good cry, but he did not dare,
so took her hand instead, and gave it a sympathetic squeeze that was
better than words.

"You needn't say anything, this comforts me," she said softly.  "Beth
is well and happy, and I mustn't wish her back, but I dread the going
home, much as I long to see them all. We won't talk about it now, for
it makes me cry, and I want to enjoy you while you stay.  You needn't
go right back, need you?"

"Not if you want me, dear."

"I do, so much.  Aunt and Flo are very kind, but you seem like one of
the family, and it would be so comfortable to have you for a little
while."

Amy spoke and looked so like a homesick child whose heart was full that
Laurie forgot his bashfulness all at once, and gave her just what she
wanted--the petting she was used to and the cheerful conversation she
needed.

"Poor little soul, you look as if you'd grieved yourself half sick!
I'm going to take care of you, so don't cry any more, but come and walk
about with me, the wind is too chilly for you to sit still," he said,
in the half-caressing, half-commanding way that Amy liked, as he tied
on her hat, drew her arm through his, and began to pace up and down the
sunny walk under the new-leaved chestnuts.  He felt more at ease upon
his legs, and Amy found it pleasant to have a strong arm to lean upon,
a familiar face to smile at her, and a kind voice to talk delightfully
for her alone.

The quaint old garden had sheltered many pairs of lovers, and seemed
expressly made for them, so sunny and secluded was it, with nothing but
the tower to overlook them, and the wide lake to carry away the echo of
their words, as it rippled by below.  For an hour this new pair walked
and talked, or rested on the wall, enjoying the sweet influences which
gave such a charm to time and place, and when an unromantic dinner bell
warned them away, Amy felt as if she left her burden of loneliness and
sorrow behind her in the chateau garden.

The moment Mrs. Carrol saw the girl's altered face, she was illuminated
with a new idea, and exclaimed to herself, "Now I understand it
all--the child has been pining for young Laurence.  Bless my heart, I
never thought of such a thing!"

With praiseworthy discretion, the good lady said nothing, and betrayed
no sign of enlightenment, but cordially urged Laurie to stay and begged
Amy to enjoy his society, for it would do her more good than so much
solitude.  Amy was a model of docility, and as her aunt was a good deal
occupied with Flo, she was left to entertain her friend, and did it
with more than her usual success.

At Nice, Laurie had lounged and Amy had scolded.  At Vevay, Laurie was
never idle, but always walking, riding, boating, or studying in the
most energetic manner, while Amy admired everything he did and followed
his example as far and as fast as she could.  He said the change was
owing to the climate, and she did not contradict him, being glad of a
like excuse for her own recovered health and spirits.

The invigorating air did them both good, and much exercise worked
wholesome changes in minds as well as bodies. They seemed to get
clearer views of life and duty up there among the everlasting hills.
The fresh winds blew away desponding doubts, delusive fancies, and
moody mists.  The warm spring sunshine brought out all sorts of
aspiring ideas, tender hopes, and happy thoughts.  The lake seemed to
wash away the troubles of the past, and the grand old mountains to look
benignly down upon them saying, "Little children, love one another."

In spite of the new sorrow, it was a very happy time, so happy that
Laurie could not bear to disturb it by a word.  It took him a little
while to recover from his surprise at the cure of his first, and as he
had firmly believed, his last and only love.  He consoled himself for
the seeming disloyalty by the thought that Jo's sister was almost the
same as Jo's self, and the conviction that it would have been
impossible to love any other woman but Amy so soon and so well.  His
first wooing had been of the tempestuous order, and he looked back upon
it as if through a long vista of years with a feeling of compassion
blended with regret.  He was not ashamed of it, but put it away as one
of the bitter-sweet experiences of his life, for which he could be
grateful when the pain was over. His second wooing, he resolved, should
be as calm and simple as possible.  There was no need of having a
scene, hardly any need of telling Amy that he loved her, she knew it
without words and had given him his answer long ago.  It all came about
so naturally that no one could complain, and he knew that everybody
would be pleased, even Jo.  But when our first little passion has been
crushed, we are apt to be wary and slow in making a second trial, so
Laurie let the days pass, enjoying every hour, and leaving to chance
the utterance of the word that would put an end to the first and
sweetest part of his new romance.

He had rather imagined that the denoument would take place in the
chateau garden by moonlight, and in the most graceful and decorous
manner, but it turned out exactly the reverse, for the matter was
settled on the lake at noonday in a few blunt words. They had been
floating about all the morning, from gloomy St.  Gingolf to sunny
Montreux, with the Alps of Savoy on one side, Mont St.  Bernard and the
Dent du Midi on the other, pretty Vevay in the valley, and Lausanne
upon the hill beyond, a cloudless blue sky overhead, and the bluer lake
below, dotted with the picturesque boats that look like white-winged
gulls.

They had been talking of Bonnivard, as they glided past Chillon, and of
Rousseau, as they looked up at Clarens, where he wrote his Heloise.
Neither had read it, but they knew it was a love story, and each
privately wondered if it was half as interesting as their own.  Amy had
been dabbling her hand in the water during the little pause that fell
between them, and when she looked up, Laurie was leaning on his oars
with an expression in his eyes that made her say hastily, merely for
the sake of saying something...

"You must be tired.  Rest a little, and let me row.  It will do me
good, for since you came I have been altogether lazy and luxurious."

"I'm not tired, but you may take an oar, if you like.  There's room
enough, though I have to sit nearly in the middle, else the boat won't
trim," returned Laurie, as if he rather liked the arrangement.

Feeling that she had not mended matters much, Amy took the offered
third of a seat, shook her hair over her face, and accepted an oar.
She rowed as well as she did many other things, and though she used
both hands, and Laurie but one, the oars kept time, and the boat went
smoothly through the water.

"How well we pull together, don't we?" said Amy, who objected to
silence just then.

"So well that I wish we might always pull in the same boat. Will you,
Amy?" very tenderly.

"Yes, Laurie," very low.

Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a pretty little
tableau of human love and happiness to the dissolving views reflected
in the lake.



CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

ALL ALONE

It was easy to promise self-abnegation when self was wrapped up in
another, and heart and soul were purified by a sweet example.  But when
the helpful voice was silent, the daily lesson over, the beloved
presence gone, and nothing remained but loneliness and grief, then Jo
found her promise very hard to keep.  How could she 'comfort Father and
Mother' when her own heart ached with a ceaseless longing for her
sister, how could she 'make the house cheerful' when all its light and
warmth and beauty seemed to have deserted it when Beth left the old
home for the new, and where in all the world could she 'find some
useful, happy work to do', that would take the place of the loving
service which had been its own reward?  She tried in a blind, hopeless
way to do her duty, secretly rebelling against it all the while, for it
seemed unjust that her few joys should be lessened, her burdens made
heavier, and life get harder and harder as she toiled along.  Some
people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow.  It was not
fair, for she tried more than Amy to be good, but never got any reward,
only disappointment, trouble and hard work.

Poor Jo, these were dark days to her, for something like despair came
over her when she thought of spending all her life in that quiet house,
devoted to humdrum cares, a few small pleasures, and the duty that
never seemed to grow any easier.  "I can't do it. I wasn't meant for a
life like this, and I know I shall break away and do something
desperate if somebody doesn't come and help me," she said to herself,
when her first efforts failed and she fell into the moody, miserable
state of mind which often comes when strong wills have to yield to the
inevitable.

But someone did come and help her, though Jo did not recognize her good
angels at once because they wore familiar shapes and used the simple
spells best fitted to poor humanity.  Often she started up at night,
thinking Beth called her, and when the sight of the little empty bed
made her cry with the bitter cry of unsubmissive sorrow, "Oh, Beth,
come back!  Come back!" she did not stretch out her yearning arms in
vain.  For, as quick to hear her sobbing as she had been to hear her
sister's faintest whisper, her mother came to comfort her, not with
words only, but the patient tenderness that soothes by a touch, tears
that were mute reminders of a greater grief than Jo's, and broken
whispers, more eloquent than prayers, because hopeful resignation went
hand-in-hand with natural sorrow. Sacred moments, when heart talked to
heart in the silence of the night, turning affliction to a blessing,
which chastened grief and strengthened love.  Feeling this, Jo's burden
seemed easier to bear, duty grew sweeter, and life looked more
endurable, seen from the safe shelter of her mother's arms.

When aching heart was a little comforted, troubled mind likewise found
help, for one day she went to the study, and leaning over the good gray
head lifted to welcome her with a tranquil smile, she said very humbly,
"Father, talk to me as you did to Beth.  I need it more than she did,
for I'm all wrong."

"My dear, nothing can comfort me like this," he answered, with a falter
in his voice, and both arms round her, as if he too, needed help, and
did not fear to ask for it.

Then, sitting in Beth's little chair close beside him, Jo told her
troubles, the resentful sorrow for her loss, the fruitless efforts that
discouraged her, the want of faith that made life look so dark, and all
the sad bewilderment which we call despair.  She gave him entire
confidence, he gave her the help she needed, and both found consolation
in the act.  For the time had come when they could talk together not
only as father and daughter, but as man and woman, able and glad to
serve each other with mutual sympathy as well as mutual love.  Happy,
thoughtful times there in the old study which Jo called 'the church of
one member', and from which she came with fresh courage, recovered
cheerfulness, and a more submissive spirit. For the parents who had
taught one child to meet death without fear, were trying now to teach
another to accept life without despondency or distrust, and to use its
beautiful opportunities with gratitude and power.

Other helps had Jo--humble, wholesome duties and delights that would
not be denied their part in serving her, and which she slowly learned
to see and value.  Brooms and dishcloths never could be as distasteful
as they once had been, for Beth had presided over both, and something
of her housewifely spirit seemed to linger around the little mop and
the old brush, never thrown away.  As she used them, Jo found herself
humming the songs Beth used to hum, imitating Beth's orderly ways, and
giving the little touches here and there that kept everything fresh and
cozy, which was the first step toward making home happy, though she
didn't know it till Hannah said with an approving squeeze of the hand...

"You thoughtful creeter, you're determined we shan't miss that dear
lamb ef you can help it.  We don't say much, but we see it, and the
Lord will bless you for't, see ef He don't."

As they sat sewing together, Jo discovered how much improved her sister
Meg was, how well she could talk, how much she knew about good, womanly
impulses, thoughts, and feelings, how happy she was in husband and
children, and how much they were all doing for each other.

"Marriage is an excellent thing, after all.  I wonder if I should
blossom out half as well as you have, if I tried it?, always
_'perwisin'_ I could," said Jo, as she constructed a kite for Demi in
the topsy-turvy nursery.

"It's just what you need to bring out the tender womanly half of your
nature, Jo.  You are like a chestnut burr, prickly outside, but
silky-soft within, and a sweet kernal, if one can only get at it.  Love
will make you show your heart one day, and then the rough burr will
fall off."

"Frost opens chestnut burrs, ma'am, and it takes a good shake to bring
them down.  Boys go nutting, and I don't care to be bagged by them,"
returned Jo, pasting away at the kite which no wind that blows would
ever carry up, for Daisy had tied herself on as a bob.

Meg laughed, for she was glad to see a glimmer of Jo's old spirit, but
she felt it her duty to enforce her opinion by every argument in her
power, and the sisterly chats were not wasted, especially as two of
Meg's most effective arguments were the babies, whom Jo loved tenderly.
Grief is the best opener of some hearts, and Jo's was nearly ready for
the bag.  A little more sunshine to ripen the nut, then, not a boy's
impatient shake, but a man's hand reached up to pick it gently from the
burr, and find the kernal sound and sweet. If she suspected this, she
would have shut up tight, and been more prickly than ever, fortunately
she wasn't thinking about herself, so when the time came, down she
dropped.

Now, if she had been the heroine of a moral storybook, she ought at
this period of her life to have become quite saintly, renounced the
world, and gone about doing good in a mortified bonnet, with tracts in
her pocket.  But, you see, Jo wasn't a heroine, she was only a
struggling human girl like hundreds of others, and she just acted out
her nature, being sad, cross, listless, or energetic, as the mood
suggested.  It's highly virtuous to say we'll be good, but we can't do
it all at once, and it takes a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all
together before some of us even get our feet set in the right way.  Jo
had got so far, she was learning to do her duty, and to feel unhappy if
she did not, but to do it cheerfully, ah, that was another thing!  She
had often said she wanted to do something splendid, no matter how hard,
and now she had her wish, for what could be more beautiful than to
devote her life to Father and Mother, trying to make home as happy to
them as they had to her?  And if difficulties were necessary to
increase the splendor of the effort, what could be harder for a
restless, ambitious girl than to give up her own hopes, plans, and
desires, and cheerfully live for others?

Providence had taken her at her word.  Here was the task, not what she
had expected, but better because self had no part in it. Now, could she
do it?  She decided that she would try, and in her first attempt she
found the helps I have suggested.  Still another was given her, and she
took it, not as a reward, but as a comfort, as Christian took the
refreshment afforded by the little arbor where he rested, as he climbed
the hill called Difficulty.

"Why don't you write?  That always used to make you happy," said her
mother once, when the desponding fit over-shadowed Jo.

"I've no heart to write, and if I had, nobody cares for my things."

"We do.  Write something for us, and never mind the rest of the world.
Try it, dear.  I'm sure it would do you good, and please us very much."

"Don't believe I can."  But Jo got out her desk and began to overhaul
her half-finished manuscripts.

An hour afterward her mother peeped in and there she was, scratching
away, with her black pinafore on, and an absorbed expression, which
caused Mrs. March to smile and slip away, well pleased with the success
of her suggestion.  Jo never knew how it happened, but something got
into that story that went straight to the hearts of those who read it,
for when her family had laughed and cried over it, her father sent it,
much against her will, to one of the popular magazines, and to her
utter surprise, it was not only paid for, but others requested.
Letters from several persons, whose praise was honor, followed the
appearance of the little story, newspapers copied it, and strangers as
well as friends admired it.  For a small thing it was a great success,
and Jo was more astonished than when her novel was commended and
condemned all at once.

"I don't understand it.  What can there be in a simple little story
like that to make people praise it so?" she said, quite bewildered.

"There is truth in it, Jo, that's the secret.  Humor and pathos make it
alive, and you have found your style at last.  You wrote with no
thoughts of fame and money, and put your heart into it, my daughter.
You have had the bitter, now comes the sweet.  Do your best, and grow
as happy as we are in your success."

"If there is anything good or true in what I write, it isn't mine.  I
owe it all to you and Mother and Beth," said Jo, more touched by her
father's words than by any amount of praise from the world.

So taught by love and sorrow, Jo wrote her little stories, and sent
them away to make friends for themselves and her, finding it a very
charitable world to such humble wanderers, for they were kindly
welcomed, and sent home comfortable tokens to their mother, like
dutiful children whom good fortune overtakes.

When Amy and Laurie wrote of their engagement, Mrs. March feared that
Jo would find it difficult to rejoice over it, but her fears were soon
set at rest, for though Jo looked grave at first, she took it very
quietly, and was full of hopes and plans for 'the children' before she
read the letter twice.  It was a sort of written duet, wherein each
glorified the other in loverlike fashion, very pleasant to read and
satisfactory to think of, for no one had any objection to make.

"You like it, Mother?" said Jo, as they laid down the closely written
sheets and looked at one another.

"Yes, I hoped it would be so, ever since Amy wrote that she had refused
Fred.  I felt sure then that something better than what you call the
'mercenary spirit' had come over her, and a hint here and there in her
letters made me suspect that love and Laurie would win the day."

"How sharp you are, Marmee, and how silent!  You never said a word to
me."

"Mothers have need of sharp eyes and discreet tongues when they have
girls to manage.  I was half afraid to put the idea into your head,
lest you should write and congratulate them before the thing was
settled."

"I'm not the scatterbrain I was.  You may trust me.  I'm sober and
sensible enough for anyone's confidante now."

"So you are, my dear, and I should have made you mine, only I fancied
it might pain you to learn that your Teddy loved someone else."

"Now, Mother, did you really think I could be so silly and selfish,
after I'd refused his love, when it was freshest, if not best?"

"I knew you were sincere then, Jo, but lately I have thought that if he
came back, and asked again, you might perhaps, feel like giving another
answer.  Forgive me, dear, I can't help seeing that you are very
lonely, and sometimes there is a hungry look in your eyes that goes to
my heart.  So I fancied that your boy might fill the empty place if he
tried now."

"No, Mother, it is better as it is, and I'm glad Amy has learned to
love him.  But you are right in one thing.  I am lonely, and perhaps if
Teddy had tried again, I might have said 'Yes', not because I love him
any more, but because I care more to be loved than when he went away."

"I'm glad of that, Jo, for it shows that you are getting on. There are
plenty to love you, so try to be satisfied with Father and Mother,
sisters and brothers, friends and babies, till the best lover of all
comes to give you your reward."

"Mothers are the best lovers in the world, but I don't mind whispering
to Marmee that I'd like to try all kinds.  It's very curious, but the
more I try to satisfy myself with all sorts of natural affections, the
more I seem to want.  I'd no idea hearts could take in so many.  Mine
is so elastic, it never seems full now, and I used to be quite
contented with my family.  I don't understand it."

"I do," and Mrs. March smiled her wise smile, as Jo turned back the
leaves to read what Amy said of Laurie.

"It is so beautiful to be loved as Laurie loves me.  He isn't
sentimental, doesn't say much about it, but I see and feel it in all he
says and does, and it makes me so happy and so humble that I don't seem
to be the same girl I was.  I never knew how good and generous and
tender he was till now, for he lets me read his heart, and I find it
full of noble impulses and hopes and purposes, and am so proud to know
it's mine.  He says he feels as if he 'could make a prosperous voyage
now with me aboard as mate, and lots of love for ballast'.  I pray he
may, and try to be all he believes me, for I love my gallant captain
with all my heart and soul and might, and never will desert him, while
God lets us be together. Oh, Mother, I never knew how much like heaven
this world could be, when two people love and live for one another!"

"And that's our cool, reserved, and worldly Amy!  Truly, love does work
miracles.  How very, very happy they must be!" and Jo laid the rustling
sheets together with a careful hand, as one might shut the covers of a
lovely romance, which holds the reader fast till the end comes, and he
finds himself alone in the workaday world again.

By-and-by Jo roamed away upstairs, for it was rainy, and she could not
walk.  A restless spirit possessed her, and the old feeling came again,
not bitter as it once was, but a sorrowfully patient wonder why one
sister should have all she asked, the other nothing.  It was not true,
she knew that and tried to put it away, but the natural craving for
affection was strong, and Amy's happiness woke the hungry longing for
someone to 'love with heart and soul, and cling to while God let them
be together'. Up in the garret, where Jo's unquiet wanderings ended
stood four little wooden chests in a row, each marked with its owners
name, and each filled with relics of the childhood and girlhood ended
now for all.  Jo glanced into them, and when she came to her own,
leaned her chin on the edge, and stared absently at the chaotic
collection, till a bundle of old exercise books caught her eye.  She
drew them out, turned them over, and relived that pleasant winter at
kind Mrs. Kirke's.  She had smiled at first, then she looked
thoughtful, next sad, and when she came to a little message written in
the Professor's hand, her lips began to tremble, the books slid out of
her lap, and she sat looking at the friendly words, as they took a new
meaning, and touched a tender spot in her heart.

"Wait for me, my friend.  I may be a little late, but I shall surely
come."

"Oh, if he only would!  So kind, so good, so patient with me always, my
dear old Fritz.  I didn't value him half enough when I had him, but now
how I should love to see him, for everyone seems going away from me,
and I'm all alone."

And holding the little paper fast, as if it were a promise yet to be
fulfilled, Jo laid her head down on a comfortable rag bag, and cried,
as if in opposition to the rain pattering on the roof.

Was it all self-pity, loneliness, or low spirits?  Or was it the waking
up of a sentiment which had bided its time as patiently as its
inspirer?  Who shall say?



CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

SURPRISES

Jo was alone in the twilight, lying on the old sofa, looking at the
fire, and thinking.  It was her favorite way of spending the hour of
dusk.  No one disturbed her, and she used to lie there on Beth's little
red pillow, planning stories, dreaming dreams, or thinking tender
thoughts of the sister who never seemed far away.  Her face looked
tired, grave, and rather sad, for tomorrow was her birthday, and she
was thinking how fast the years went by, how old she was getting, and
how little she seemed to have accomplished.  Almost twenty-five, and
nothing to show for it.  Jo was mistaken in that.  There was a good
deal to show, and by-and-by she saw, and was grateful for it.

"An old maid, that's what I'm to be.  A literary spinster, with a pen
for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence
a morsel of fame, perhaps, when, like poor Johnson, I'm old and can't
enjoy it, solitary, and can't share it, independent, and don't need it.
Well, I needn't be a sour saint nor a selfish sinner, and, I dare say,
old maids are very comfortable when they get used to it, but..." and
there Jo sighed, as if the prospect was not inviting.

It seldom is, at first, and thirty seems the end of all things to
five-and-twenty.  But it's not as bad as it looks, and one can get on
quite happily if one has something in one's self to fall back upon.  At
twenty-five, girls begin to talk about being old maids, but secretly
resolve that they never will be.  At thirty they say nothing about it,
but quietly accept the fact, and if sensible, console themselves by
remembering that they have twenty more useful, happy years, in which
they may be learning to grow old gracefully.  Don't laugh at the
spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are
hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns,
and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself,
make the faded faces beautiful in God's sight.  Even the sad, sour
sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the
sweetest part of life, if for no other reason.  And looking at them
with compassion, not contempt, girls in their bloom should remember
that they too may miss the blossom time.  That rosy cheeks don't last
forever, that silver threads will come in the bonnie brown hair, and
that, by-and-by, kindness and respect will be as sweet as love and
admiration now.

Gentlemen, which means boys, be courteous to the old maids, no matter
how poor and plain and prim, for the only chivalry worth having is that
which is the readiest to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble,
and serve womankind, regardless of rank, age, or color.  Just recollect
the good aunts who have not only lectured and fussed, but nursed and
petted, too often without thanks, the scrapes they have helped you out
of, the tips they have given you from their small store, the stitches
the patient old fingers have set for you, the steps the willing old
feet have taken, and gratefully pay the dear old ladies the little
attentions that women love to receive as long as they live.  The
bright-eyed girls are quick to see such traits, and will like you all
the better for them, and if death, almost the only power that can part
mother and son, should rob you of yours, you will be sure to find a
tender welcome and maternal cherishing from some Aunt Priscilla, who
has kept the warmest corner of her lonely old heart for 'the best nevvy
in the world'.

Jo must have fallen asleep (as I dare say my reader has during this
little homily), for suddenly Laurie's ghost seemed to stand before her,
a substantial, lifelike ghost, leaning over her with the very look he
used to wear when he felt a good deal and didn't like to show it.  But,
like Jenny in the ballad...

  "She could not think it he,"

and lay staring up at him in startled silence, till he stooped and
kissed her.  Then she knew him, and flew up, crying joyfully...

"Oh my Teddy!  Oh my Teddy!"

"Dear Jo, you are glad to see me, then?"

"Glad!  My blessed boy, words can't express my gladness. Where's Amy?"

"Your mother has got her down at Meg's.  We stopped there by the way,
and there was no getting my wife out of their clutches."

"Your what?" cried Jo, for Laurie uttered those two words with an
unconscious pride and satisfaction which betrayed him.

"Oh, the dickens!  Now I've done it," and he looked so guilty that Jo
was down on him like a flash.

"You've gone and got married!"

"Yes, please, but I never will again," and he went down upon his knees,
with a penitent clasping of hands, and a face full of mischief, mirth,
and triumph.

"Actually married?"

"Very much so, thank you."

"Mercy on us.  What dreadful thing will you do next?" and Jo fell into
her seat with a gasp.

"A characteristic, but not exactly complimentary, congratulation,"
returned Laurie, still in an abject attitude, but beaming with
satisfaction.

"What can you expect, when you take one's breath away, creeping in like
a burglar, and letting cats out of bags like that? Get up, you
ridiculous boy, and tell me all about it."

"Not a word, unless you let me come in my old place, and promise not to
barricade."

Jo laughed at that as she had not done for many a long day, and patted
the sofa invitingly, as she said in a cordial tone, "The old pillow is
up garret, and we don't need it now.  So, come and 'fess, Teddy."

"How good it sounds to hear you say 'Teddy'! No one ever calls me that
but you," and Laurie sat down with an air of great content.

"What does Amy call you?"

"My lord."

"That's like her.  Well, you look it," and Jo's eye plainly betrayed
that she found her boy comelier than ever.

The pillow was gone, but there was a barricade, nevertheless, a natural
one, raised by time, absence, and change of heart.  Both felt it, and
for a minute looked at one another as if that invisible barrier cast a
little shadow over them.  It was gone directly however, for Laurie
said, with a vain attempt at dignity...

"Don't I look like a married man and the head of a family?"

"Not a bit, and you never will.  You've grown bigger and bonnier, but
you are the same scapegrace as ever."

"Now really, Jo, you ought to treat me with more respect," began
Laurie, who enjoyed it all immensely.

"How can I, when the mere idea of you, married and settled, is so
irresistibly funny that I can't keep sober!" answered Jo, smiling all
over her face, so infectiously that they had another laugh, and then
settled down for a good talk, quite in the pleasant old fashion.

"It's no use your going out in the cold to get Amy, for they are all
coming up presently.  I couldn't wait.  I wanted to be the one to tell
you the grand surprise, and have 'first skim' as we used to say when we
squabbled about the cream."

"Of course you did, and spoiled your story by beginning at the wrong
end.  Now, start right, and tell me how it all happened. I'm pining to
know."

"Well, I did it to please Amy," began Laurie, with a twinkle that made
Jo exclaim...

"Fib number one.  Amy did it to please you.  Go on, and tell the truth,
if you can, sir."

"Now she's beginning to marm it.  Isn't it jolly to hear her?" said
Laurie to the fire, and the fire glowed and sparkled as if it quite
agreed.  "It's all the same, you know, she and I being one. We planned
to come home with the Carrols, a month or more ago, but they suddenly
changed their minds, and decided to pass another winter in Paris.  But
Grandpa wanted to come home.  He went to please me, and I couldn't let
him go alone, neither could I leave Amy, and Mrs. Carrol had got
English notions about chaperons and such nonsense, and wouldn't let Amy
come with us.  So I just settled the difficulty by saying, 'Let's be
married, and then we can do as we like'."

"Of course you did.  You always have things to suit you."

"Not always," and something in Laurie's voice made Jo say hastily...

"How did you ever get Aunt to agree?"

"It was hard work, but between us, we talked her over, for we had heaps
of good reasons on our side.  There wasn't time to write and ask leave,
but you all liked it, had consented to it by-and-by, and it was only
'taking time by the fetlock', as my wife says."

"Aren't we proud of those two words, and don't we like to say them?"
interrupted Jo, addressing the fire in her turn, and watching with
delight the happy light it seemed to kindle in the eyes that had been
so tragically gloomy when she saw them last.

"A trifle, perhaps, she's such a captivating little woman I can't help
being proud of her.  Well, then Uncle and Aunt were there to play
propriety.  We were so absorbed in one another we were of no mortal use
apart, and that charming arrangement would make everything easy all
round, so we did it."

"When, where, how?" asked Jo, in a fever of feminine interest and
curiosity, for she could not realize it a particle.

"Six weeks ago, at the American consul's, in Paris, a very quiet
wedding of course, for even in our happiness we didn't forget dear
little Beth."

Jo put her hand in his as he said that, and Laurie gently smoothed the
little red pillow, which he remembered well.

"Why didn't you let us know afterward?" asked Jo, in a quieter tone,
when they had sat quite still a minute.

"We wanted to surprise you.  We thought we were coming directly home,
at first, but the dear old gentleman, as soon as we were married, found
he couldn't be ready under a month, at least, and sent us off to spend
our honeymoon wherever we liked. Amy had once called Valrosa a regular
honeymoon home, so we went there, and were as happy as people are but
once in their lives. My faith!  Wasn't it love among the roses!"

Laurie seemed to forget Jo for a minute, and Jo was glad of it, for the
fact that he told her these things so freely and so naturally assured
her that he had quite forgiven and forgotten. She tried to draw away
her hand, but as if he guessed the thought that prompted the
half-involuntary impulse, Laurie held it fast, and said, with a manly
gravity she had never seen in him before...

"Jo, dear, I want to say one thing, and then we'll put it by forever.
As I told you in my letter when I wrote that Amy had been so kind to
me, I never shall stop loving you, but the love is altered, and I have
learned to see that it is better as it is. Amy and you changed places
in my heart, that's all.  I think it was meant to be so, and would have
come about naturally, if I had waited, as you tried to make me, but I
never could be patient, and so I got a heartache.  I was a boy then,
headstrong and violent, and it took a hard lesson to show me my
mistake.  For it was one, Jo, as you said, and I found it out, after
making a fool of myself. Upon my word, I was so tumbled up in my mind,
at one time, that I didn't know which I loved best, you or Amy, and
tried to love you both alike.  But I couldn't, and when I saw her in
Switzerland, everything seemed to clear up all at once.  You both got
into your right places, and I felt sure that it was well off with the
old love before it was on with the new, that I could honestly share my
heart between sister Jo and wife Amy, and love them dearly. Will you
believe it, and go back to the happy old times when we first knew one
another?"

"I'll believe it, with all my heart, but, Teddy, we never can be boy
and girl again.  The happy old times can't come back, and we mustn't
expect it.  We are man and woman now, with sober work to do, for
playtime is over, and we must give up frolicking.  I'm sure you feel
this.  I see the change in you, and you'll find it in me.  I shall miss
my boy, but I shall love the man as much, and admire him more, because
he means to be what I hoped he would.  We can't be little playmates any
longer, but we will be brother and sister, to love and help one another
all our lives, won't we, Laurie?"

He did not say a word, but took the hand she offered him, and laid his
face down on it for a minute, feeling that out of the grave of a boyish
passion, there had risen a beautiful, strong friendship to bless them
both.  Presently Jo said cheerfully, for she didn't want the coming
home to be a sad one, "I can't make it true that you children are
really married and going to set up housekeeping. Why, it seems only
yesterday that I was buttoning Amy's pinafore, and pulling your hair
when you teased.  Mercy me, how time does fly!"

"As one of the children is older than yourself, you needn't talk so
like a grandma.  I flatter myself I'm a 'gentleman growed' as Peggotty
said of David, and when you see Amy, you'll find her rather a
precocious infant," said Laurie, looking amused at her maternal air.

"You may be a little older in years, but I'm ever so much older in
feeling, Teddy.  Women always are, and this last year has been such a
hard one that I feel forty."

"Poor Jo!  We left you to bear it alone, while we went pleasuring. You
are older.  Here's a line, and there's another.  Unless you smile, your
eyes look sad, and when I touched the cushion, just now, I found a tear
on it.  You've had a great deal to bear, and had to bear it all alone.
What a selfish beast I've been!" and Laurie pulled his own hair, with a
remorseful look.

But Jo only turned over the traitorous pillow, and answered, in a tone
which she tried to make more cheerful, "No, I had Father and Mother to
help me, and the dear babies to comfort me, and the thought that you
and Amy were safe and happy, to make the troubles here easier to bear.
I am lonely, sometimes, but I dare say it's good for me, and..."

"You never shall be again," broke in Laurie, putting his arm about her,
as if to fence out every human ill.  "Amy and I can't get on without
you, so you must come and teach 'the children' to keep house, and go
halves in everything, just as we used to do, and let us pet you, and
all be blissfully happy and friendly together."

"If I shouldn't be in the way, it would be very pleasant.  I begin to
feel quite young already, for somehow all my troubles seemed to fly
away when you came.  You always were a comfort, Teddy," and Jo leaned
her head on his shoulder, just as she did years ago, when Beth lay ill
and Laurie told her to hold on to him.

He looked down at her, wondering if she remembered the time, but Jo was
smiling to herself, as if in truth her troubles had all vanished at his
coming.

"You are the same Jo still, dropping tears about one minute, and
laughing the next.  You look a little wicked now.  What is it, Grandma?"

"I was wondering how you and Amy get on together."

"Like angels!"

"Yes, of course, but which rules?"

"I don't mind telling you that she does now, at least I let her think
so, it pleases her, you know.  By-and-by we shall take turns, for
marriage, they say, halves one's rights and doubles one's duties."

"You'll go on as you begin, and Amy will rule you all the days of your
life."

"Well, she does it so imperceptibly that I don't think I shall mind
much.  She is the sort of woman who knows how to rule well.  In fact, I
rather like it, for she winds one round her finger as softly and
prettily as a skein of silk, and makes you feel as if she was doing you
a favor all the while."

"That ever I should live to see you a henpecked husband and enjoying
it!" cried Jo, with uplifted hands.

It was good to see Laurie square his shoulders, and smile with
masculine scorn at that insinuation, as he replied, with his "high and
mighty" air, "Amy is too well-bred for that, and I am not the sort of
man to submit to it.  My wife and I respect ourselves and one another
too much ever to tyrannize or quarrel."

Jo liked that, and thought the new dignity very becoming, but the boy
seemed changing very fast into the man, and regret mingled with her
pleasure.

"I am sure of that.  Amy and you never did quarrel as we used to. She
is the sun and I the wind, in the fable, and the sun managed the man
best, you remember."

"She can blow him up as well as shine on him," laughed Laurie. "Such a
lecture as I got at Nice!  I give you my word it was a deal worse than
any of your scoldings, a regular rouser.  I'll tell you all about it
sometime, she never will, because after telling me that she despised
and was ashamed of me, she lost her heart to the despicable party and
married the good-for-nothing."

"What baseness!  Well, if she abuses you, come to me, and I'll defend
you."

"I look as if I needed it, don't I?" said Laurie, getting up and
striking an attitude which suddenly changed from the imposing to the
rapturous, as Amy's voice was heard calling, "Where is she? Where's my
dear old Jo?"

In trooped the whole family, and everyone was hugged and kissed all
over again, and after several vain attempts, the three wanderers were
set down to be looked at and exulted over.  Mr. Laurence, hale and
hearty as ever, was quite as much improved as the others by his foreign
tour, for the crustiness seemed to be nearly gone, and the
old-fashioned courtliness had received a polish which made it kindlier
than ever.  It was good to see him beam at 'my children', as he called
the young pair.  It was better still to see Amy pay him the daughterly
duty and affection which completely won his old heart, and best of all,
to watch Laurie revolve about the two, as if never tired of enjoying
the pretty picture they made.

The minute she put her eyes upon Amy, Meg became conscious that her own
dress hadn't a Parisian air, that young Mrs. Moffat would be entirely
eclipsed by young Mrs. Laurence, and that 'her ladyship' was altogether
a most elegant and graceful woman.  Jo thought, as she watched the
pair, "How well they look together!  I was right, and Laurie has found
the beautiful, accomplished girl who will become his home better than
clumsy old Jo, and be a pride, not a torment to him."  Mrs. March and
her husband smiled and nodded at each other with happy faces, for they
saw that their youngest had done well, not only in worldly things, but
the better wealth of love, confidence, and happiness.

For Amy's face was full of the soft brightness which betokens a
peaceful heart, her voice had a new tenderness in it, and the cool,
prim carriage was changed to a gentle dignity, both womanly and
winning. No little affectations marred it, and the cordial sweetness of
her manner was more charming than the new beauty or the old grace, for
it stamped her at once with the unmistakable sign of the true
gentlewoman she had hoped to become.

"Love has done much for our little girl," said her mother softly.

"She has had a good example before her all her life, my dear," Mr.
March whispered back, with a loving look at the worn face and gray head
beside him.

Daisy found it impossible to keep her eyes off her 'pitty aunty', but
attached herself like a lap dog to the wonderful chatelaine full of
delightful charms.  Demi paused to consider the new relationship before
he compromised himself by the rash acceptance of a bribe, which took
the tempting form of a family of wooden bears from Berne. A flank
movement produced an unconditional surrender, however, for Laurie knew
where to have him.

"Young man, when I first had the honor of making your acquaintance you
hit me in the face.  Now I demand the satisfaction of a gentleman," and
with that the tall uncle proceeded to toss and tousle the small nephew
in a way that damaged his philosophical dignity as much as it delighted
his boyish soul.

"Blest if she ain't in silk from head to foot; ain't it a relishin'
sight to see her settin' there as fine as a fiddle, and hear folks
calling little Amy 'Mis.  Laurence!'" muttered old Hannah, who could
not resist frequent "peeks" through the slide as she set the table in a
most decidedly promiscuous manner.

Mercy on us, how they did talk! first one, then the other, then all
burst out together--trying to tell the history of three years in half
an hour.  It was fortunate that tea was at hand, to produce a lull and
provide refreshment--for they would have been hoarse and faint if they
had gone on much longer.  Such a happy procession as filed away into
the little dining room! Mr. March proudly escorted Mrs. Laurence.  Mrs.
March as proudly leaned on the arm of 'my son'. The old gentleman took
Jo, with a whispered, "You must be my girl now," and a glance at the
empty corner by the fire, that made Jo whisper back, "I'll try to fill
her place, sir."

The twins pranced behind, feeling that the millennium was at hand, for
everyone was so busy with the newcomers that they were left to revel at
their own sweet will, and you may be sure they made the most of the
opportunity.  Didn't they steal sips of tea, stuff gingerbread ad
libitum, get a hot biscuit apiece, and as a crowning trespass, didn't
they each whisk a captivating little tart into their tiny pockets,
there to stick and crumble treacherously, teaching them that both human
nature and a pastry are frail? Burdened with the guilty consciousness
of the sequestered tarts, and fearing that Dodo's sharp eyes would
pierce the thin disguise of cambric and merino which hid their booty,
the little sinners attached themselves to 'Dranpa', who hadn't his
spectacles on.  Amy, who was handed about like refreshments, returned
to the parlor on Father Laurence's arm.  The others paired off as
before, and this arrangement left Jo companionless.  She did not mind
it at the minute, for she lingered to answer Hannah's eager inquiry.

"Will Miss Amy ride in her coop (coupe), and use all them lovely silver
dishes that's stored away over yander?"

"Shouldn't wonder if she drove six white horses, ate off gold plate,
and wore diamonds and point lace every day.  Teddy thinks nothing too
good for her," returned Jo with infinite satisfaction.

"No more there is!  Will you have hash or fishballs for breakfast?"
asked Hannah, who wisely mingled poetry and prose.

"I don't care," and Jo shut the door, feeling that food was an
uncongenial topic just then.  She stood a minute looking at the party
vanishing above, and as Demi's short plaid legs toiled up the last
stair, a sudden sense of loneliness came over her so strongly that she
looked about her with dim eyes, as if to find something to lean upon,
for even Teddy had deserted her.  If she had known what birthday gift
was coming every minute nearer and nearer, she would not have said to
herself, "I'll weep a little weep when I go to bed. It won't do to be
dismal now."  Then she drew her hand over her eyes, for one of her
boyish habits was never to know where her handkerchief was, and had
just managed to call up a smile when there came a knock at the porch
door.

She opened with hospitable haste, and started as if another ghost had
come to surprise her, for there stood a tall bearded gentleman, beaming
on her from the darkness like a midnight sun.

"Oh, Mr. Bhaer, I am so glad to see you!" cried Jo, with a clutch, as
if she feared the night would swallow him up before she could get him
in.

"And I to see Miss Marsch, but no, you haf a party," and the Professor
paused as the sound of voices and the tap of dancing feet came down to
them.

"No, we haven't, only the family.  My sister and friends have just come
home, and we are all very happy.  Come in, and make one of us."

Though a very social man, I think Mr. Bhaer would have gone decorously
away, and come again another day, but how could he, when Jo shut the
door behind him, and bereft him of his hat? Perhaps her face had
something to do with it, for she forgot to hide her joy at seeing him,
and showed it with a frankness that proved irresistible to the solitary
man, whose welcome far exceeded his boldest hopes.

"If I shall not be Monsieur de Trop, I will so gladly see them all.
You haf been ill, my friend?"

He put the question abruptly, for, as Jo hung up his coat, the light
fell on her face, and he saw a change in it.

"Not ill, but tired and sorrowful.  We have had trouble since I saw you
last."

"Ah, yes, I know.  My heart was sore for you when I heard that," and he
shook hands again, with such a sympathetic face that Jo felt as if no
comfort could equal the look of the kind eyes, the grasp of the big,
warm hand.

"Father, Mother, this is my friend, Professor Bhaer," she said, with a
face and tone of such irrepressible pride and pleasure that she might
as well have blown a trumpet and opened the door with a flourish.

If the stranger had any doubts about his reception, they were set at
rest in a minute by the cordial welcome he received. Everyone greeted
him kindly, for Jo's sake at first, but very soon they liked him for
his own.  They could not help it, for he carried the talisman that
opens all hearts, and these simple people warmed to him at once,
feeling even the more friendly because he was poor.  For poverty
enriches those who live above it, and is a sure passport to truly
hospitable spirits.  Mr. Bhaer sat looking about him with the air of a
traveler who knocks at a strange door, and when it opens, finds himself
at home.  The children went to him like bees to a honeypot, and
establishing themselves on each knee, proceeded to captivate him by
rifling his pockets, pulling his beard, and investigating his watch,
with juvenile audacity.  The women telegraphed their approval to one
another, and Mr. March, feeling that he had got a kindred spirit,
opened his choicest stores for his guest's benefit, while silent John
listened and enjoyed the talk, but said not a word, and Mr. Laurence
found it impossible to go to sleep.

If Jo had not been otherwise engaged, Laurie's behavior would have
amused her, for a faint twinge, not of jealousy, but something like
suspicion, caused that gentleman to stand aloof at first, and observe
the newcomer with brotherly circumspection. But it did not last long.
He got interested in spite of himself, and before he knew it, was drawn
into the circle.  For Mr. Bhaer talked well in this genial atmosphere,
and did himself justice. He seldom spoke to Laurie, but he looked at
him often, and a shadow would pass across his face, as if regretting
his own lost youth, as he watched the young man in his prime.  Then his
eyes would turn to Jo so wistfully that she would have surely answered
the mute inquiry if she had seen it.  But Jo had her own eyes to take
care of, and feeling that they could not be trusted, she prudently kept
them on the little sock she was knitting, like a model maiden aunt.

A stealthy glance now and then refreshed her like sips of fresh water
after a dusty walk, for the sidelong peeps showed her several
propitious omens.  Mr. Bhaer's face had lost the absent-minded
expression, and looked all alive with interest in the present moment,
actually young and handsome, she thought, forgetting to compare him
with Laurie, as she usually did strange men, to their great detriment.
Then he seemed quite inspired, though the burial customs of the
ancients, to which the conversation had strayed, might not be
considered an exhilarating topic. Jo quite glowed with triumph when
Teddy got quenched in an argument, and thought to herself, as she
watched her father's absorbed face, "How he would enjoy having such a
man as my Professor to talk with every day!"  Lastly, Mr. Bhaer was
dressed in a new suit of black, which made him look more like a
gentleman than ever.  His bushy hair had been cut and smoothly brushed,
but didn't stay in order long, for in exciting moments, he rumpled it
up in the droll way he used to do, and Jo liked it rampantly erect
better than flat, because she thought it gave his fine forehead a
Jove-like aspect.  Poor Jo, how she did glorify that plain man, as she
sat knitting away so quietly, yet letting nothing escape her, not even
the fact that Mr. Bhaer actually had gold sleeve-buttons in his
immaculate wristbands.

"Dear old fellow!  He couldn't have got himself up with more care if
he'd been going a-wooing," said Jo to herself, and then a sudden
thought born of the words made her blush so dreadfully that she had to
drop her ball, and go down after it to hide her face.

The maneuver did not succeed as well as she expected, however, for
though just in the act of setting fire to a funeral pyre, the Professor
dropped his torch, metaphorically speaking, and made a dive after the
little blue ball.  Of course they bumped their heads smartly together,
saw stars, and both came up flushed and laughing, without the ball, to
resume their seats, wishing they had not left them.

Nobody knew where the evening went to, for Hannah skillfully abstracted
the babies at an early hour, nodding like two rosy poppies, and Mr.
Laurence went home to rest.  The others sat round the fire, talking
away, utterly regardless of the lapse of time, till Meg, whose maternal
mind was impressed with a firm conviction that Daisy had tumbled out of
bed, and Demi set his nightgown afire studying the structure of
matches, made a move to go.

"We must have our sing, in the good old way, for we are all together
again once more," said Jo, feeling that a good shout would be a safe
and pleasant vent for the jubilant emotions of her soul.

They were not all there.  But no one found the words thoughtless or
untrue, for Beth still seemed among them, a peaceful presence,
invisible, but dearer than ever, since death could not break the
household league that love made dissoluble.  The little chair stood in
its old place.  The tidy basket, with the bit of work she left
unfinished when the needle grew 'so heavy', was still on its accustomed
shelf.  The beloved instrument, seldom touched now had not been moved,
and above it Beth's face, serene and smiling, as in the early days,
looked down upon them, seeming to say, "Be happy.  I am here."

"Play something, Amy.  Let them hear how much you have improved," said
Laurie, with pardonable pride in his promising pupil.

But Amy whispered, with full eyes, as she twirled the faded stool, "Not
tonight, dear.  I can't show off tonight."

But she did show something better than brilliancy or skill, for she
sang Beth's songs with a tender music in her voice which the best
master could not have taught, and touched the listener's hearts with a
sweeter power than any other inspiration could have given her.  The
room was very still, when the clear voice failed suddenly at the last
line of Beth's favorite hymn.  It was hard to say...

    Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal;

and Amy leaned against her husband, who stood behind her, feeling that
her welcome home was not quite perfect without Beth's kiss.

"Now, we must finish with Mignon's song, for Mr. Bhaer sings that,"
said Jo, before the pause grew painful.  And Mr. Bhaer cleared his
throat with a gratified "Hem!" as he stepped into the corner where Jo
stood, saying...

"You will sing with me?  We go excellently well together."

A pleasing fiction, by the way, for Jo had no more idea of music than a
grasshopper.  But she would have consented if he had proposed to sing a
whole opera, and warbled away, blissfully regardless of time and tune.
It didn't much matter, for Mr. Bhaer sang like a true German, heartily
and well, and Jo soon subsided into a subdued hum, that she might
listen to the mellow voice that seemed to sing for her alone.

    Know'st thou the land where the citron blooms,

used to be the Professor's favorite line, for 'das land' meant Germany
to him, but now he seemed to dwell, with peculiar warmth and melody,
upon the words...

    There, oh there, might I with thee,
    O, my beloved, go

and one listener was so thrilled by the tender invitation that she
longed to say she did know the land, and would joyfully depart thither
whenever he liked.

The song was considered a great success, and the singer retired covered
with laurels.  But a few minutes afterward, he forgot his manners
entirely, and stared at Amy putting on her bonnet, for she had been
introduced simply as 'my sister', and no one had called her by her new
name since he came.  He forgot himself still further when Laurie said,
in his most gracious manner, at parting...

"My wife and I are very glad to meet you, sir.  Please remember that
there is always a welcome waiting for you over the way."

Then the Professor thanked him so heartily, and looked so suddenly
illuminated with satisfaction, that Laurie thought him the most
delightfully demonstrative old fellow he ever met.

"I too shall go, but I shall gladly come again, if you will gif me
leave, dear madame, for a little business in the city will keep me here
some days."

He spoke to Mrs. March, but he looked at Jo, and the mother's voice
gave as cordial an assent as did the daughter's eyes, for Mrs. March
was not so blind to her children's interest as Mrs. Moffat supposed.

"I suspect that is a wise man," remarked Mr. March, with placid
satisfaction, from the hearthrug, after the last guest had gone.

"I know he is a good one," added Mrs. March, with decided approval, as
she wound up the clock.

"I thought you'd like him," was all Jo said, as she slipped away to her
bed.

She wondered what the business was that brought Mr. Bhaer to the city,
and finally decided that he had been appointed to some great honor,
somewhere, but had been too modest to mention the fact.  If she had
seen his face when, safe in his own room, he looked at the picture of a
severe and rigid young lady, with a good deal of hair, who appeared to
be gazing darkly into futurity, it might have thrown some light upon
the subject, especially when he turned off the gas, and kissed the
picture in the dark.



CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

MY LORD AND LADY

"Please, Madam Mother, could you lend me my wife for half an hour?  The
luggage has come, and I've been making hay of Amy's Paris finery,
trying to find some things I want," said Laurie, coming in the next day
to find Mrs. Laurence sitting in her mother's lap, as if being made
'the baby' again.

"Certainly.  Go, dear, I forgot that you have any home but this," and
Mrs. March pressed the white hand that wore the wedding ring, as if
asking pardon for her maternal covetousness.

"I shouldn't have come over if I could have helped it, but I can't get
on without my little woman any more than a..."

"Weathercock can without the wind," suggested Jo, as he paused for a
simile.  Jo had grown quite her own saucy self again since Teddy came
home.

"Exactly, for Amy keeps me pointing due west most of the time, with
only an occasional whiffle round to the south, and I haven't had an
easterly spell since I was married.  Don't know anything about the
north, but am altogether salubrious and balmy, hey, my lady?"

"Lovely weather so far.  I don't know how long it will last, but I'm
not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.  Come home,
dear, and I'll find your bootjack.  I suppose that's what you are
rummaging after among my things.  Men are so helpless, Mother," said
Amy, with a matronly air, which delighted her husband.

"What are you going to do with yourselves after you get settled?" asked
Jo, buttoning Amy's cloak as she used to button her pinafores.

"We have our plans.  We don't mean to say much about them yet, because
we are such very new brooms, but we don't intend to be idle.  I'm going
into business with a devotion that shall delight Grandfather, and prove
to him that I'm not spoiled.  I need something of the sort to keep me
steady.  I'm tired of dawdling, and mean to work like a man."

"And Amy, what is she going to do?" asked Mrs. March, well pleased at
Laurie's decision and the energy with which he spoke.

"After doing the civil all round, and airing our best bonnet, we shall
astonish you by the elegant hospitalities of our mansion, the brilliant
society we shall draw about us, and the beneficial influence we shall
exert over the world at large.  That's about it, isn't it, Madame
Recamier?" asked Laurie with a quizzical look at Amy.

"Time will show.  Come away, Impertinence, and don't shock my family by
calling me names before their faces," answered Amy, resolving that
there should be a home with a good wife in it before she set up a salon
as a queen of society.

"How happy those children seem together!" observed Mr. March, finding
it difficult to become absorbed in his Aristotle after the young couple
had gone.

"Yes, and I think it will last," added Mrs. March, with the restful
expression of a pilot who has brought a ship safely into port.

"I know it will.  Happy Amy!" and Jo sighed, then smiled brightly as
Professor Bhaer opened the gate with an impatient push.

Later in the evening, when his mind had been set at rest about the
bootjack, Laurie said suddenly to his wife, "Mrs. Laurence."

"My Lord!"

"That man intends to marry our Jo!"

"I hope so, don't you, dear?"

"Well, my love, I consider him a trump, in the fullest sense of that
expressive word, but I do wish he was a little younger and a good deal
richer."

"Now, Laurie, don't be too fastidious and worldly-minded. If they love
one another it doesn't matter a particle how old they are nor how poor.
Women never should marry for money..." Amy caught herself up short as
the words escaped her, and looked at her husband, who replied, with
malicious gravity...

"Certainly not, though you do hear charming girls say that they intend
to do it sometimes.  If my memory serves me, you once thought it your
duty to make a rich match.  That accounts, perhaps, for your marrying a
good-for-nothing like me."

"Oh, my dearest boy, don't, don't say that!  I forgot you were rich
when I said 'Yes'.  I'd have married you if you hadn't a penny, and I
sometimes wish you were poor that I might show how much I love you."
And Amy, who was very dignified in public and very fond in private,
gave convincing proofs of the truth of her words.

"You don't really think I am such a mercenary creature as I tried to be
once, do you?  It would break my heart if you didn't believe that I'd
gladly pull in the same boat with you, even if you had to get your
living by rowing on the lake."

"Am I an idiot and a brute?  How could I think so, when you refused a
richer man for me, and won't let me give you half I want to now, when I
have the right?  Girls do it every day, poor things, and are taught to
think it is their only salvation, but you had better lessons, and
though I trembled for you at one time, I was not disappointed, for the
daughter was true to the mother's teaching.  I told Mamma so yesterday,
and she looked as glad and grateful as if I'd given her a check for a
million, to be spent in charity.  You are not listening to my moral
remarks, Mrs. Laurence," and Laurie paused, for Amy's eyes had an
absent look, though fixed upon his face.

"Yes, I am, and admiring the mole in your chin at the same time.  I
don't wish to make you vain, but I must confess that I'm prouder of my
handsome husband than of all his money. Don't laugh, but your nose is
such a comfort to me," and Amy softly caressed the well-cut feature
with artistic satisfaction.

Laurie had received many compliments in his life, but never one that
suited him better, as he plainly showed though he did laugh at his
wife's peculiar taste, while she said slowly, "May I ask you a
question, dear?"

"Of course, you may."

"Shall you care if Jo does marry Mr. Bhaer?"

"Oh, that's the trouble is it?  I thought there was something in the
dimple that didn't quite suit you.  Not being a dog in the manger, but
the happiest fellow alive, I assure you I can dance at Jo's wedding
with a heart as light as my heels.  Do you doubt it, my darling?"

Amy looked up at him, and was satisfied.  Her little jealous fear
vanished forever, and she thanked him, with a face full of love and
confidence.

"I wish we could do something for that capital old Professor. Couldn't
we invent a rich relation, who shall obligingly die out there in
Germany, and leave him a tidy little fortune?" said Laurie, when they
began to pace up and down the long drawing room, arm in arm, as they
were fond of doing, in memory of the chateau garden.

"Jo would find us out, and spoil it all.  She is very proud of him,
just as he is, and said yesterday that she thought poverty was a
beautiful thing."

"Bless her dear heart!  She won't think so when she has a literary
husband, and a dozen little professors and professorins to support.  We
won't interfere now, but watch our chance, and do them a good turn in
spite of themselves.  I owe Jo for a part of my education, and she
believes in people's paying their honest debts, so I'll get round her
in that way."

"How delightful it is to be able to help others, isn't it? That was
always one of my dreams, to have the power of giving freely, and thanks
to you, the dream has come true."

"Ah, we'll do quantities of good, won't we?  There's one sort of
poverty that I particularly like to help.  Out-and-out beggars get
taken care of, but poor gentle folks fare badly, because they won't
ask, and people don't dare to offer charity. Yet there are a thousand
ways of helping them, if one only knows how to do it so delicately that
it does not offend.  I must say, I like to serve a decayed gentleman
better than a blarnerying beggar.  I suppose it's wrong, but I do,
though it is harder."

"Because it takes a gentleman to do it," added the other member of the
domestic admiration society.

"Thank you, I'm afraid I don't deserve that pretty compliment. But I
was going to say that while I was dawdling about abroad, I saw a good
many talented young fellows making all sorts of sacrifices, and
enduring real hardships, that they might realize their dreams. Splendid
fellows, some of them, working like heros,  poor and friendless, but so
full of courage, patience, and ambition that I was ashamed of myself,
and longed to give them a right good lift.  Those are people whom it's
a satisfaction to help, for if they've got genius, it's an honor to be
allowed to serve them, and not let it be lost or delayed for want of
fuel to keep the pot boiling.  If they haven't, it's a pleasure to
comfort the poor souls, and keep them from despair when they find it
out."

"Yes, indeed, and there's another class who can't ask, and who suffer
in silence.  I know something of it, for I belonged to it before you
made a princess of me, as the king does the beggarmaid in the old
story.  Ambitious girls have a hard time, Laurie, and often have to see
youth, health, and precious opportunities go by, just for want of a
little help at the right minute.  People have been very kind to me, and
whenever I see girls struggling along, as we used to do, I want to put
out my hand and help them, as I was helped."

"And so you shall, like an angel as you are!" cried Laurie, resolving,
with a glow of philanthropic zeal, to found and endow an institution
for the express benefit of young women with artistic tendencies.  "Rich
people have no right to sit down and enjoy themselves, or let their
money accumulate for others to waste.  It's not half so sensible to
leave legacies when one dies as it is to use the money wisely while
alive, and enjoy making one's fellow creatures happy with it.  We'll
have a good time ourselves, and add an extra relish to our own pleasure
by giving other people a generous taste.  Will you be a little Dorcas,
going about emptying a big basket of comforts, and filling it up with
good deeds?"

"With all my heart, if you will be a brave St.  Martin, stopping as you
ride gallantly through the world to share your cloak with the beggar."

"It's a bargain, and we shall get the best of it!"

So the young pair shook hands upon it, and then paced happily on again,
feeling that their pleasant home was more homelike because they hoped
to brighten other homes, believing that their own feet would walk more
uprightly along the flowery path before them, if they smoothed rough
ways for other feet, and feeling that their hearts were more closely
knit together by a love which could tenderly remember those less blest
than they.



CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

DAISY AND DEMI

I cannot feel that I have done my duty as humble historian of the March
family, without devoting at least one chapter to the two most precious
and important members of it.  Daisy and Demi had now arrived at years
of discretion, for in this fast age babies of three or four assert
their rights, and get them, too, which is more than many of their
elders do.  If there ever were a pair of twins in danger of being
utterly spoiled by adoration, it was these prattling Brookes.  Of
course they were the most remarkable children ever born, as will be
shown when I mention that they walked at eight months, talked fluently
at twelve months, and at two years they took their places at table, and
behaved with a propriety which charmed all beholders. At three, Daisy
demanded a 'needler', and actually made a bag with four stitches in it.
She likewise set up housekeeping in the sideboard, and managed a
microscopic cooking stove with a skill that brought tears of pride to
Hannah's eyes, while Demi learned his letters with his grandfather, who
invented a new mode of teaching the alphabet by forming letters with
his arms and legs, thus uniting gymnastics for head and heels.  The boy
early developed a mechanical genius which delighted his father and
distracted his mother, for he tried to imitate every machine he saw,
and kept the nursery in a chaotic condition, with his 'sewinsheen', a
mysterious structure of string, chairs, clothespins, and spools, for
wheels to go 'wound and wound'.  Also a basket hung over the back of a
chair, in which he vainly tried to hoist his too confiding sister, who,
with feminine devotion, allowed her little head to be bumped till
rescued, when the young inventor indignantly remarked, "Why, Marmar,
dat's my lellywaiter, and me's trying to pull her up."

Though utterly unlike in character, the twins got on remarkably well
together, and seldom quarreled more than thrice a day.  Of course, Demi
tyrannized over Daisy, and gallantly defended her from every other
aggressor, while Daisy made a galley slave of herself, and adored her
brother as the one perfect being in the world.  A rosy, chubby,
sunshiny little soul was Daisy, who found her way to everybody's heart,
and nestled there.  One of the captivating children, who seem made to
be kissed and cuddled, adorned and adored like little goddesses, and
produced for general approval on all festive occasions. Her small
virtues were so sweet that she would have been quite angelic if a few
small naughtinesses had not kept her delightfully human.  It was all
fair weather in her world, and every morning she scrambled up to the
window in her little nightgown to look out, and say, no matter whether
it rained or shone, "Oh, pitty day, oh, pitty day!" Everyone was a
friend, and she offered kisses to a stranger so confidingly that the
most inveterate bachelor relented, and baby-lovers became faithful
worshipers.

"Me loves evvybody," she once said, opening her arms, with her spoon in
one hand, and her mug in the other, as if eager to embrace and nourish
the whole world.

As she grew, her mother began to feel that the Dovecote would be
blessed by the presence of an inmate as serene and loving as that which
had helped to make the old house home, and to pray that she might be
spared a loss like that which had lately taught them how long they had
entertained an angel unawares.  Her grandfather often called her
'Beth', and her grandmother watched over her with untiring devotion, as
if trying to atone for some past mistake, which no eye but her own
could see.

Demi, like a true Yankee, was of an inquiring turn, wanting to know
everything, and often getting much disturbed because he could not get
satisfactory answers to his perpetual "What for?"

He also possessed a philosophic bent, to the great delight of his
grandfather, who used to hold Socratic conversations with him, in which
the precocious pupil occasionally posed his teacher, to the undisguised
satisfaction of the womenfolk.

"What makes my legs go, Dranpa?" asked the young philosopher, surveying
those active portions of his frame with a meditative air, while resting
after a go-to-bed frolic one night.

"It's your little mind, Demi," replied the sage, stroking the yellow
head respectfully.

"What is a little mine?"

"It is something which makes your body move, as the spring made the
wheels go in my watch when I showed it to you."

"Open me.  I want to see it go wound."

"I can't do that any more than you could open the watch.  God winds you
up, and you go till He stops you."

"Does I?" and Demi's brown eyes grew big and bright as he took in the
new thought.  "Is I wounded up like the watch?"

"Yes, but I can't show you how, for it is done when we don't see."

Demi felt his back, as if expecting to find it like that of the watch,
and then gravely remarked, "I dess Dod does it when I's asleep."

A careful explanation followed, to which he listened so attentively
that his anxious grandmother said, "My dear, do you think it wise to
talk about such things to that baby?  He's getting great bumps over his
eyes, and learning to ask the most unanswerable questions."

"If he is old enough to ask the question he is old enough to receive
true answers.  I am not putting the thoughts into his head, but helping
him unfold those already there.  These children are wiser than we are,
and I have no doubt the boy understands every word I have said to him.
Now, Demi, tell me where you keep your mind."

If the boy had replied like Alcibiades, "By the gods, Socrates, I
cannot tell," his grandfather would not have been surprised, but when,
after standing a moment on one leg, like a meditative young stork, he
answered, in a tone of calm conviction, "In my little belly," the old
gentleman could only join in Grandma's laugh, and dismiss the class in
metaphysics.

There might have been cause for maternal anxiety, if Demi had not given
convincing proofs that he was a true boy, as well as a budding
philosopher, for often, after a discussion which caused Hannah to
prophesy, with ominous nods, "That child ain't long for this world," he
would turn about and set her fears at rest by some of the pranks with
which dear, dirty, naughty little rascals distract and delight their
parent's souls.

Meg made many moral rules, and tried to keep them, but what mother was
ever proof against the winning wiles, the ingenious evasions, or the
tranquil audacity of the miniature men and women who so early show
themselves accomplished Artful Dodgers?

"No more raisins, Demi.  They'll make you sick," says Mamma to the
young person who offers his services in the kitchen with unfailing
regularity on plum-pudding day.

"Me likes to be sick."

"I don't want to have you, so run away and help Daisy make patty cakes."

He reluctantly departs, but his wrongs weigh upon his spirit, and
by-and-by when an opportunity comes to redress them, he outwits Mamma
by a shrewd bargain.

"Now you have been good children, and I'll play anything you like,"
says Meg, as she leads her assistant cooks upstairs, when the pudding
is safely bouncing in the pot.

"Truly, Marmar?" asks Demi, with a brilliant idea in his well-powdered
head.

"Yes, truly.  Anything you say," replies the shortsighted parent,
preparing herself to sing, "The Three Little Kittens" half a dozen
times over, or to take her family to "Buy a penny bun," regardless of
wind or limb.  But Demi corners her by the cool reply...

"Then we'll go and eat up all the raisins."

Aunt Dodo was chief playmate and confidante of both children, and the
trio turned the little house topsy-turvy.  Aunt Amy was as yet only a
name to them, Aunt Beth soon faded into a pleasantly vague memory, but
Aunt Dodo was a living reality, and they made the most of her, for
which compliment she was deeply grateful.  But when Mr. Bhaer came, Jo
neglected her playfellows, and dismay and desolation fell upon their
little souls.  Daisy, who was fond of going about peddling kisses, lost
her best customer and became bankrupt.  Demi, with infantile
penetration, soon discovered that Dodo like to play with 'the bear-man'
better than she did him, but though hurt, he concealed his anguish, for
he hadn't the heart to insult a rival who kept a mine of chocolate
drops in his waistcoat pocket, and a watch that could be taken out of
its case and freely shaken by ardent admirers.

Some persons might have considered these pleasing liberties as bribes,
but Demi didn't see it in that light, and continued to patronize the
'the bear-man' with pensive affability, while Daisy bestowed her small
affections upon him at the third call, and considered his shoulder her
throne, his arm her refuge, his gifts treasures surpassing worth.

Gentlemen are sometimes seized with sudden fits of admiration for the
young relatives of ladies whom they honor with their regard, but this
counterfeit philoprogenitiveness sits uneasily upon them, and does not
deceive anybody a particle.  Mr. Bhaer's devotion was sincere, however
likewise effective--for honesty is the best policy in love as in law.
He was one of the men who are at home with children, and looked
particularly well when little faces made a pleasant contrast with his
manly one.  His business, whatever it was, detained him from day to
day, but evening seldom failed to bring him out to see--well, he always
asked for Mr. March, so I suppose he was the attraction.  The excellent
papa labored under the delusion that he was, and reveled in long
discussions with the kindred spirit, till a chance remark of his more
observing grandson suddenly enlightened him.

Mr. Bhaer came in one evening to pause on the threshold of the study,
astonished by the spectacle that met his eye.  Prone upon the floor lay
Mr. March, with his respectable legs in the air, and beside him,
likewise prone, was Demi, trying to imitate the attitude with his own
short, scarlet-stockinged legs, both grovelers so seriously absorbed
that they were unconscious of spectators, till Mr. Bhaer laughed his
sonorous laugh, and Jo cried out, with a scandalized face...

"Father, Father, here's the Professor!"

Down went the black legs and up came the gray head, as the preceptor
said, with undisturbed dignity, "Good evening, Mr. Bhaer. Excuse me for
a moment.  We are just finishing our lesson.  Now, Demi, make the
letter and tell its name."

"I knows him!" and, after a few convulsive efforts, the red legs took
the shape of a pair of compasses, and the intelligent pupil
triumphantly shouted, "It's a We, Dranpa, it's a We!"

"He's a born Weller," laughed Jo, as her parent gathered himself up,
and her nephew tried to stand on his head, as the only mode of
expressing his satisfaction that school was over.

"What have you been at today, bubchen?" asked Mr. Bhaer, picking up the
gymnast.

"Me went to see little Mary."

"And what did you there?"

"I kissed her," began Demi, with artless frankness.

"Prut!  Thou beginnest early.  What did the little Mary say to that?"
asked Mr. Bhaer, continuing to confess the young sinner, who stood upon
the knee, exploring the waistcoat pocket.

"Oh, she liked it, and she kissed me, and I liked it.  Don't little
boys like little girls?" asked Demi, with his mouth full, and an air of
bland satisfaction.

"You precocious chick!  Who put that into your head?" said Jo, enjoying
the innocent revelation as much as the Professor.

"'Tisn't in mine head, it's in mine mouf," answered literal Demi,
putting out his tongue, with a chocolate drop on it, thinking she
alluded to confectionery, not ideas.

"Thou shouldst save some for the little friend.  Sweets to the sweet,
mannling," and Mr. Bhaer offered Jo some, with a look that made her
wonder if chocolate was not the nectar drunk by the gods.  Demi also
saw the smile, was impressed by it, and artlessy inquired.  ..

"Do great boys like great girls, to, 'Fessor?"

Like young Washington, Mr. Bhaer 'couldn't tell a lie', so he gave the
somewhat vague reply that he believed they did sometimes, in a tone
that made Mr. March put down his clothesbrush, glance at Jo's retiring
face, and then sink into his chair, looking as if the 'precocious
chick' had put an idea into his head that was both sweet and sour.

Why Dodo, when she caught him in the china closet half an hour
afterward, nearly squeezed the breath out of his little body with a
tender embrace, instead of shaking him for being there, and why she
followed up this novel performance by the unexpected gift of a big
slice of bread and jelly, remained one of the problems over which Demi
puzzled his small wits, and was forced to leave unsolved forever.



CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

UNDER THE UMBRELLA

While Laurie and Amy were taking conjugal strolls over velvet carpets,
as they set their house in order, and planned a blissful future, Mr.
Bhaer and Jo were enjoying promenades of a different sort, along muddy
roads and sodden fields.

"I always do take a walk toward evening, and I don't know why I should
give it up, just because I happen to meet the Professor on his way
out," said Jo to herself, after two or three encounters, for though
there were two paths to Meg's whichever one she took she was sure to
meet him, either going or returning. He was always walking rapidly, and
never seemed to see her until quite close, when he would look as if his
short-sighted eyes had failed to recognize the approaching lady till
that moment.  Then, if she was going to Meg's he always had something
for the babies.  If her face was turned homeward, he had merely
strolled down to see the river, and was just returning, unless they
were tired of his frequent calls.

Under the circumstances, what could Jo do but greet him civilly, and
invite him in?  If she was tired of his visits, she concealed her
weariness with perfect skill, and took care that there should be coffee
for supper, "as Friedrich--I mean Mr. Bhaer--doesn't like tea."

By the second week, everyone knew perfectly well what was going on, yet
everyone tried to look as if they were stone-blind to the changes in
Jo's face.  They never asked why she sang about her work, did up her
hair three times a day, and got so blooming with her evening exercise.
And no one seemed to have the slightest suspicion that Professor Bhaer,
while talking philosophy with the father, was giving the daughter
lessons in love.

Jo couldn't even lose her heart in a decorous manner, but sternly tried
to quench her feelings, and failing to do so, led a somewhat agitated
life.  She was mortally afraid of being laughed at for surrendering,
after her many and vehement declarations of independence.  Laurie was
her especial dread, but thanks to the new manager, he behaved with
praiseworthy propriety, never called Mr. Bhaer 'a capital old fellow'
in public, never alluded, in the remotest manner, to Jo's improved
appearance, or expressed the least surprise at seeing the Professor's
hat on the Marches' table nearly every evening.  But he exulted in
private and longed for the time to come when he could give Jo a piece
of plate, with a bear and a ragged staff on it as an appropriate coat
of arms.

For a fortnight, the Professor came and went with lover-like
regularity.  Then he stayed away for three whole days, and made no
sign, a proceeding which caused everybody to look sober, and Jo to
become pensive, at first, and then--alas for romance--very cross.

"Disgusted, I dare say, and gone home as suddenly as he came. It's
nothing to me, of course, but I should think he would have come and bid
us goodbye like a gentleman," she said to herself, with a despairing
look at the gate, as she put on her things for the customary walk one
dull afternoon.

"You'd better take the little umbrella, dear.  It looks like rain,"
said her mother, observing that she had on her new bonnet, but not
alluding to the fact.

"Yes, Marmee, do you want anything in town?  I've got to run in and get
some paper," returned Jo, pulling out the bow under her chin before the
glass as an excuse for not looking at her mother.

"Yes, I want some twilled silesia, a paper of number nine needles, and
two yards of narrow lavender ribbon.  Have you got your thick boots on,
and something warm under your cloak?"

"I believe so," answered Jo absently.

"If you happen to meet Mr. Bhaer, bring him home to tea. I quite long
to see the dear man," added Mrs. March.

Jo heard that, but made no answer, except to kiss her mother, and walk
rapidly away, thinking with a glow of gratitude, in spite of her
heartache, "How good she is to me! What do girls do who haven't any
mothers to help them through their troubles?"

The dry-goods stores were not down among the counting-houses, banks,
and wholesale warerooms, where gentlemen most do congregate, but Jo
found herself in that part of the city before she did a single errand,
loitering along as if waiting for someone, examining engineering
instruments in one window and samples of wool in another, with most
unfeminine interest, tumbling over barrels, being half-smothered by
descending bales, and hustled unceremoniously by busy men who looked as
if they wondered 'how the deuce she got there'.  A drop of rain on her
cheek recalled her thoughts from baffled hopes to ruined ribbons.  For
the drops continued to fall, and being a woman as well as a lover, she
felt that, though it was too late to save her heart, she might her
bonnet.  Now she remembered the little umbrella, which she had
forgotten to take in her hurry to be off, but regret was unavailing,
and nothing could be done but borrow one or submit to a drenching.  She
looked up at the lowering sky, down at the crimson bow already flecked
with black, forward along the muddy street, then one long, lingering
look behind, at a certain grimy warehouse, with 'Hoffmann, Swartz, &
Co.' over the door, and said to herself, with a sternly reproachful
air...

"It serves me right! what business had I to put on all my best things
and come philandering down here, hoping to see the Professor?  Jo, I'm
ashamed of you!  No, you shall not go there to borrow an umbrella, or
find out where he is, from his friends. You shall trudge away, and do
your errands in the rain, and if you catch your death and ruin your
bonnet, it's no more than you deserve.  Now then!"

With that she rushed across the street so impetuously that she narrowly
escaped annihilation from a passing truck, and precipitated herself
into the arms of a stately old gentleman, who said, "I beg pardon,
ma'am," and looked mortally offended.  Somewhat daunted, Jo righted
herself, spread her handkerchief over the devoted ribbons, and putting
temptation behind her, hurried on, with increasing dampness about the
ankles, and much clashing of umbrellas overhead.  The fact that a
somewhat dilapidated blue one remained stationary above the unprotected
bonnet attracted her attention, and looking up, she saw Mr. Bhaer
looking down.

"I feel to know the strong-minded lady who goes so bravely under many
horse noses, and so fast through much mud.  What do you down here, my
friend?"

"I'm shopping."

Mr. Bhaer smiled, as he glanced from the pickle factory on one side to
the wholesale hide and leather concern on the other, but he only said
politely, "You haf no umbrella.  May I go also, and take for you the
bundles?"

"Yes, thank you."

Jo's cheeks were as red as her ribbon, and she wondered what he thought
of her, but she didn't care, for in a minute she found herself walking
away arm in arm with her Professor, feeling as if the sun had suddenly
burst out with uncommon brilliancy, that the world was all right again,
and that one thoroughly happy woman was paddling through the wet that
day.

"We thought you had gone," said Jo hastily, for she knew he was looking
at her.  Her bonnet wasn't big enough to hide her face, and she feared
he might think the joy it betrayed unmaidenly.

"Did you believe that I should go with no farewell to those who haf
been so heavenly kind to me?" he asked so reproachfully that she felt
as if she had insulted him by the suggestion, and answered heartily...

"No, I didn't.  I knew you were busy about your own affairs, but we
rather missed you, Father and Mother especially."

"And you?"

"I'm always glad to see you, sir."

In her anxiety to keep her voice quite calm, Jo made it rather cool,
and the frosty little monosyllable at the end seemed to chill the
Professor, for his smile vanished, as he said gravely...

"I thank you, and come one more time before I go."

"You are going, then?"

"I haf no longer any business here, it is done."

"Successfully, I hope?" said Jo, for the bitterness of disappointment
was in that short reply of his.

"I ought to think so, for I haf a way opened to me by which I can make
my bread and gif my Junglings much help."

"Tell me, please!  I like to know all about the--the boys," said Jo
eagerly.

"That is so kind, I gladly tell you.  My friends find for me a place in
a college, where I teach as at home, and earn enough to make the way
smooth for Franz and Emil.  For this I should be grateful, should I
not?"

"Indeed you should.  How splendid it will be to have you doing what you
like, and be able to see you often, and the boys!" cried Jo, clinging
to the lads as an excuse for the satisfaction she could not help
betraying.

"Ah!  But we shall not meet often, I fear, this place is at the West."

"So far away!" and Jo left her skirts to their fate, as if it didn't
matter now what became of her clothes or herself.

Mr. Bhaer could read several languages, but he had not learned to read
women yet.  He flattered himself that he knew Jo pretty well, and was,
therefore, much amazed by the contradictions of voice, face, and
manner, which she showed him in rapid succession that day, for she was
in half a dozen different moods in the course of half an hour.  When
she met him she looked surprised, though it was impossible to help
suspecting that she had come for that express purpose.  When he offered
her his arm, she took it with a look that filled him with delight, but
when he asked if she missed him, she gave such a chilly, formal reply
that despair fell upon him.  On learning his good fortune she almost
clapped her hands.  Was the joy all for the boys? Then on hearing his
destination, she said, "So far away!" in a tone of despair that lifted
him on to a pinnacle of hope, but the next minute she tumbled him down
again by observing, like one entirely absorbed in the matter...

"Here's the place for my errands.  Will you come in? It won't take
long."

Jo rather prided herself upon her shopping capabilities, and
particularly wished to impress her escort with the neatness and
dispatch with which she would accomplish the business. But owing to the
flutter she was in, everything went amiss. She upset the tray of
needles, forgot the silesia was to be 'twilled' till it was cut off,
gave the wrong change, and covered herself with confusion by asking for
lavender ribbon at the calico counter.  Mr. Bhaer stood by, watching
her blush and blunder, and as he watched, his own bewilderment seemed
to subside, for he was beginning to see that on some occasions, women,
like dreams, go by contraries.

When they came out, he put the parcel under his arm with a more
cheerful aspect, and splashed through the puddles as if he rather
enjoyed it on the whole.

"Should we no do a little what you call shopping for the babies, and
haf a farewell feast tonight if I go for my last call at your so
pleasant home?" he asked, stopping before a window full of fruit and
flowers.

"What will we buy?" asked Jo, ignoring the latter part of his speech,
and sniffing the mingled odors with an affectation of delight as they
went in.

"May they haf oranges and figs?" asked Mr. Bhaer, with a paternal air.

"They eat them when they can get them."

"Do you care for nuts?"

"Like a squirrel."

"Hamburg grapes.  Yes, we shall drink to the Fatherland in those?"

Jo frowned upon that piece of extravagance, and asked why he didn't buy
a frail of dates, a cask of raisins, and a bag of almonds, and be done
with it?  Whereat Mr. Bhaer confiscated her purse, produced his own,
and finished the marketing by buying several pounds of grapes, a pot of
rosy daisies, and a pretty jar of honey, to be regarded in the light of
a demijohn.  Then distorting his pockets with knobby bundles, and
giving her the flowers to hold, he put up the old umbrella, and they
traveled on again.

"Miss Marsch, I haf a great favor to ask of you," began the Professor,
after a moist promenade of half a block.

"Yes, sir?" and Jo's heart began to beat so hard she was afraid he
would hear it.

"I am bold to say it in spite of the rain, because so short a time
remains to me."

"Yes, sir," and Jo nearly crushed the small flowerpot with the sudden
squeeze she gave it.

"I wish to get a little dress for my Tina, and I am too stupid to go
alone.  Will you kindly gif me a word of taste and help?"

"Yes, sir," and Jo felt as calm and cool all of a sudden as if she had
stepped into a refrigerator.

"Perhaps also a shawl for Tina's mother, she is so poor and sick, and
the husband is such a care.  Yes, yes, a thick, warm shawl would be a
friendly thing to take the little mother."

"I'll do it with pleasure, Mr. Bhaer."  "I'm going very fast, and he's
getting dearer every minute," added Jo to herself, then with a mental
shake she entered into the business with an energy that was pleasant to
behold.

Mr. Bhaer left it all to her, so she chose a pretty gown for Tina, and
then ordered out the shawls.  The clerk, being a married man,
condescended to take an interest in the couple, who appeared to be
shopping for their family.

"Your lady may prefer this.  It's a superior article, a most desirable
color, quite chaste and genteel," he said, shaking out a comfortable
gray shawl, and throwing it over Jo's shoulders.

"Does this suit you, Mr. Bhaer?" she asked, turning her back to him,
and feeling deeply grateful for the chance of hiding her face.

"Excellently well, we will haf it," answered the Professor, smiling to
himself as he paid for it, while Jo continued to rummage the counters
like a confirmed bargain-hunter.

"Now shall we go home?" he asked, as if the words were very pleasant to
him.

"Yes, it's late, and I'm _so_ tired." Jo's voice was more pathetic than
she knew.  For now the sun seemed to have gone in as suddenly as it
came out, and the world grew muddy and miserable again, and for the
first time she discovered that her feet were cold, her head ached, and
that her heart was colder than the former, fuller of pain than the
latter.  Mr. Bhaer was going away, he only cared for her as a friend,
it was all a mistake, and the sooner it was over the better.  With this
idea in her head, she hailed an approaching omnibus with such a hasty
gesture that the daisies flew out of the pot and were badly damaged.

"This is not our omniboos," said the Professor, waving the loaded
vehicle away, and stopping to pick up the poor little flowers.

"I beg your pardon.  I didn't see the name distinctly.  Never mind, I
can walk.  I'm used to plodding in the mud," returned Jo, winking hard,
because she would have died rather than openly wipe her eyes.

Mr. Bhaer saw the drops on her cheeks, though she turned her head away.
The sight seemed to touch him very much, for suddenly stooping down, he
asked in a tone that meant a great deal, "Heart's dearest, why do you
cry?"

Now, if Jo had not been new to this sort of thing she would have said
she wasn't crying, had a cold in her head, or told any other feminine
fib proper to the occasion.  Instead of which, that undignified
creature answered, with an irrepressible sob, "Because you are going
away."

"Ach, mein Gott, that is so good!" cried Mr. Bhaer, managing to clasp
his hands in spite of the umbrella and the bundles, "Jo, I haf nothing
but much love to gif you.  I came to see if you could care for it, and
I waited to be sure that I was something more than a friend.  Am I?
Can you make a little place in your heart for old Fritz?" he added, all
in one breath.

"Oh, yes!" said Jo, and he was quite satisfied, for she folded both
hands over his arm, and looked up at him with an expression that
plainly showed how happy she would be to walk through life beside him,
even though she had no better shelter than the old umbrella, if he
carried it.

It was certainly proposing under difficulties, for even if he had
desired to do so, Mr. Bhaer could not go down upon his knees, on
account of the mud.  Neither could he offer Jo his hand, except
figuratively, for both were full.  Much less could he indulge in tender
remonstrations in the open street, though he was near it.  So the only
way in which he could express his rapture was to look at her, with an
expression which glorified his face to such a degree that there
actually seemed to be little rainbows in the drops that sparkled on his
beard.  If he had not loved Jo very much, I don't think he could have
done it then, for she looked far from lovely, with her skirts in a
deplorable state, her rubber boots splashed to the ankle, and her
bonnet a ruin.  Fortunately, Mr. Bhaer considered her the most
beautiful woman living, and she found him more "Jove-like" than ever,
though his hatbrim was quite limp with the little rills trickling
thence upon his shoulders (for he held the umbrella all over Jo), and
every finger of his gloves needed mending.

Passers-by probably thought them a pair of harmless lunatics, for they
entirely forgot to hail a bus, and strolled leisurely along, oblivious
of deepening dusk and fog.  Little they cared what anybody thought, for
they were enjoying the happy hour that seldom comes but once in any
life, the magical moment which bestows youth on the old, beauty on the
plain, wealth on the poor, and gives human hearts a foretaste of
heaven. The Professor looked as if he had conquered a kingdom, and the
world had nothing more to offer him in the way of bliss.  While Jo
trudged beside him, feeling as if her place had always been there, and
wondering how she ever could have chosen any other lot.  Of course, she
was the first to speak--intelligibly, I mean, for the emotional remarks
which followed her impetuous "Oh, yes!" were not of a coherent or
reportable character.

"Friedrich, why didn't you..."

"Ah, heaven, she gifs me the name that no one speaks since Minna died!"
cried the Professor, pausing in a puddle to regard her with grateful
delight.

"I always call you so to myself--I forgot, but I won't unless you like
it."

"Like it?  It is more sweet to me than I can tell.  Say 'thou', also,
and I shall say your language is almost as beautiful as mine."

"Isn't 'thou' a little sentimental?" asked Jo, privately thinking it a
lovely monosyllable.

"Sentimental? Yes.  Thank Gott, we Germans believe in sentiment, and
keep ourselves young mit it.  Your English 'you' is so cold, say
'thou', heart's dearest, it means so much to me," pleaded Mr. Bhaer,
more like a romantic student than a grave professor.

"Well, then, why didn't thou tell me all this sooner?" asked Jo
bashfully.

"Now I shall haf to show thee all my heart, and I so gladly will,
because thou must take care of it hereafter.  See, then, my Jo--ah, the
dear, funny little name--I had a wish to tell something the day I said
goodbye in New York, but I thought the handsome friend was betrothed to
thee, and so I spoke not.  Wouldst thou have said 'Yes', then, if I had
spoken?"

"I don't know.  I'm afraid not, for I didn't have any heart just then."

"Prut!  That I do not believe.  It was asleep till the fairy prince
came through the wood, and waked it up.  Ah, well, 'Die erste Liebe ist
die beste', but that I should not expect."

"Yes, the first love is the best, but be so contented, for I never had
another.  Teddy was only a boy, and soon got over his little fancy,"
said Jo, anxious to correct the Professor's mistake.

"Good!  Then I shall rest happy, and be sure that thou givest me all.
I haf waited so long, I am grown selfish, as thou wilt find,
Professorin."

"I like that," cried Jo, delighted with her new name.  "Now tell me
what brought you, at last, just when I wanted you?"

"This," and Mr. Bhaer took a little worn paper out of his waistcoat
pocket.

Jo unfolded it, and looked much abashed, for it was one of her own
contributions to a paper that paid for poetry, which accounted for her
sending it an occasional attempt.

"How could that bring you?" she asked, wondering what he meant.

"I found it by chance.  I knew it by the names and the initials, and in
it there was one little verse that seemed to call me.  Read and find
him.  I will see that you go not in the wet."


    IN THE GARRET

    Four little chests all in a row,
    Dim with dust, and worn by time,
    All fashioned and filled, long ago,
    By children now in their prime.
    Four little keys hung side by side,
    With faded ribbons, brave and gay
    When fastened there, with childish pride,
    Long ago, on a rainy day.
    Four little names, one on each lid,
    Carved out by a boyish hand,
    And underneath there lieth hid
    Histories of the happy band
    Once playing here, and pausing oft
    To hear the sweet refrain,
    That came and went on the roof aloft,
    In the falling summer rain.

    "Meg" on the first lid, smooth and fair.
    I look in with loving eyes,
    For folded here, with well-known care,
    A goodly gathering lies,
    The record of a peaceful life--
    Gifts to gentle child and girl,
    A bridal gown, lines to a wife,
    A tiny shoe, a baby curl.
    No toys in this first chest remain,
    For all are carried away,
    In their old age, to join again
    In another small Meg's play.
    Ah, happy mother!  Well I know
    You hear, like a sweet refrain,
    Lullabies ever soft and low
    In the falling summer rain.

    "Jo" on the next lid, scratched and worn,
    And within a motley store
    Of headless dolls, of schoolbooks torn,
    Birds and beasts that speak no more,
    Spoils brought home from the fairy ground
    Only trod by youthful feet,
    Dreams of a future never found,
    Memories of a past still sweet,
    Half-writ poems, stories wild,
    April letters, warm and cold,
    Diaries of a wilful child,
    Hints of a woman early old,
    A woman in a lonely home,
    Hearing, like a sad refrain--
    "Be worthy, love, and love will come,"
    In the falling summer rain.

    My Beth!  the dust is always swept
    From the lid that bears your name,
    As if by loving eyes that wept,
    By careful hands that often came.
    Death canonized for us one saint,
    Ever less human than divine,
    And still we lay, with tender plaint,
    Relics in this household shrine--
    The silver bell, so seldom rung,
    The little cap which last she wore,
    The fair, dead Catherine that hung
    By angels borne above her door.
    The songs she sang, without lament,
    In her prison-house of pain,
    Forever are they sweetly blent
    With the falling summer rain.

    Upon the last lid's polished field--
    Legend now both fair and true
    A gallant knight bears on his shield,
    "Amy" in letters gold and blue.
    Within lie snoods that bound her hair,
    Slippers that have danced their last,
    Faded flowers laid by with care,
    Fans whose airy toils are past,
    Gay valentines, all ardent flames,
    Trifles that have borne their part
    In girlish hopes and fears and shames,
    The record of a maiden heart
    Now learning fairer, truer spells,
    Hearing, like a blithe refrain,
    The silver sound of bridal bells
    In the falling summer rain.

    Four little chests all in a row,
    Dim with dust, and worn by time,
    Four women, taught by weal and woe
    To love and labor in their prime.
    Four sisters, parted for an hour,
    None lost, one only gone before,
    Made by love's immortal power,
    Nearest and dearest evermore.
    Oh, when these hidden stores of ours
    Lie open to the Father's sight,
    May they be rich in golden hours,
    Deeds that show fairer for the light,
    Lives whose brave music long shall ring,
    Like a spirit-stirring strain,
    Souls that shall gladly soar and sing
    In the long sunshine after rain.

"It's very bad poetry, but I felt it when I wrote it, one day when I
was very lonely, and had a good cry on a rag bag.  I never thought it
would go where it could tell tales," said Jo, tearing up the verses the
Professor had treasured so long.

"Let it go, it has done its duty, and I will haf a fresh one when I
read all the brown book in which she keeps her little secrets," said
Mr. Bhaer with a smile as he watched the fragments fly away on the
wind.  "Yes," he added earnestly, "I read that, and I think to myself,
She has a sorrow, she is lonely, she would find comfort in true love.
I haf a heart full, full for her.  Shall I not go and say, 'If this is
not too poor a thing to gif for what I shall hope to receive, take it
in Gott's name?'"

"And so you came to find that it was not too poor, but the one precious
thing I needed," whispered Jo.

"I had no courage to think that at first, heavenly kind as was your
welcome to me.  But soon I began to hope, and then I said, 'I will haf
her if I die for it,' and so I will!" cried Mr. Bhaer, with a defiant
nod, as if the walls of mist closing round them were barriers which he
was to surmount or valiantly knock down.

Jo thought that was splendid, and resolved to be worthy of her knight,
though he did not come prancing on a charger in gorgeous array.

"What made you stay away so long?" she asked presently, finding it so
pleasant to ask confidential questions and get delightful answers that
she could not keep silent.

"It was not easy, but I could not find the heart to take you from that
so happy home until I could haf a prospect of one to gif you, after
much time, perhaps, and hard work.  How could I ask you to gif up so
much for a poor old fellow, who has no fortune but a little learning?"

"I'm glad you are poor.  I couldn't bear a rich husband," said Jo
decidedly, adding in a softer tone, "Don't fear poverty. I've known it
long enough to lose my dread and be happy working for those I love, and
don't call yourself old--forty is the prime of life.  I couldn't help
loving you if you were seventy!"

The Professor found that so touching that he would have been glad of
his handkerchief, if he could have got at it.  As he couldn't, Jo wiped
his eyes for him, and said, laughing, as she took away a bundle or
two...

"I may be strong-minded, but no one can say I'm out of my sphere now,
for woman's special mission is supposed to be drying tears and bearing
burdens.  I'm to carry my share, Friedrich, and help to earn the home.
Make up your mind to that, or I'll never go," she added resolutely, as
he tried to reclaim his load.

"We shall see.  Haf you patience to wait a long time, Jo? I must go
away and do my work alone.  I must help my boys first, because, even
for you, I may not break my word to Minna.  Can you forgif that, and be
happy while we hope and wait?"

"Yes, I know I can, for we love one another, and that makes all the
rest easy to bear.  I have my duty, also, and my work. I couldn't enjoy
myself if I neglected them even for you, so there's no need of hurry or
impatience.  You can do your part out West, I can do mine here, and
both be happy hoping for the best, and leaving the future to be as God
wills."

"Ah! Thou gifest me such hope and courage, and I haf nothing to gif
back but a full heart and these empty hands," cried the Professor,
quite overcome.

Jo never, never would learn to be proper, for when he said that as they
stood upon the steps, she just put both hands into his, whispering
tenderly, "Not empty now," and stooping down, kissed her Friedrich
under the umbrella.  It was dreadful, but she would have done it if the
flock of draggle-tailed sparrows on the hedge had been human beings,
for she was very far gone indeed, and quite regardless of everything
but her own happiness. Though it came in such a very simple guise, that
was the crowning moment of both their lives, when, turning from the
night and storm and loneliness to the household light and warmth and
peace waiting to receive them, with a glad "Welcome home!"  Jo led her
lover in, and shut the door.



CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

HARVEST TIME

For a year Jo and her Professor worked and waited, hoped and loved, met
occasionally, and wrote such voluminous letters that the rise in the
price of paper was accounted for, Laurie said.  The second year began
rather soberly, for their prospects did not brighten, and Aunt March
died suddenly.  But when their first sorrow was over--for they loved
the old lady in spite of her sharp tongue--they found they had cause
for rejoicing, for she had left Plumfield to Jo, which made all sorts
of joyful things possible.

"It's a fine old place, and will bring a handsome sum, for of course
you intend to sell it," said Laurie, as they were all talking the
matter over some weeks later.

"No, I don't," was Jo's decided answer, as she petted the fat poodle,
whom she had adopted, out of respect to his former mistress.

"You don't mean to live there?"

"Yes, I do."

"But, my dear girl, it's an immense house, and will take a power of
money to keep it in order.  The garden and orchard alone need two or
three men, and farming isn't in Bhaer's line, I take it."

"He'll try his hand at it there, if I propose it."

"And you expect to live on the produce of the place?  Well, that sounds
paradisiacal, but you'll find it desperate hard work."

"The crop we are going to raise is a profitable one," and Jo laughed.

"Of what is this fine crop to consist, ma'am?"

"Boys.  I want to open a school for little lads--a good, happy,
homelike school, with me to take care of them and Fritz to teach them."

"That's a truly Joian plan for you!  Isn't that just like her?" cried
Laurie, appealing to the family, who looked as much surprised as he.

"I like it," said Mrs. March decidedly.

"So do I," added her husband, who welcomed the thought of a chance for
trying the Socratic method of education on modern youth.

"It will be an immense care for Jo," said Meg, stroking the head of her
one all-absorbing son.

"Jo can do it, and be happy in it.  It's a splendid idea. Tell us all
about it," cried Mr. Laurence, who had been longing to lend the lovers
a hand, but knew that they would refuse his help.

"I knew you'd stand by me, sir.  Amy does too--I see it in her eyes,
though she prudently waits to turn it over in her mind before she
speaks.  Now, my dear people," continued Jo earnestly, "just understand
that this isn't a new idea of mine, but a long cherished plan.  Before
my Fritz came, I used to think how, when I'd made my fortune, and no
one needed me at home, I'd hire a big house, and pick up some poor,
forlorn little lads who hadn't any mothers, and take care of them, and
make life jolly for them before it was too late.  I see so many going
to ruin for want of help at the right minute, I love so to do anything
for them, I seem to feel their wants, and sympathize with their
troubles, and oh, I should so like to be a mother to them!"

Mrs. March held out her hand to Jo, who took it, smiling, with tears in
her eyes, and went on in the old enthusiastic way, which they had not
seen for a long while.

"I told my plan to Fritz once, and he said it was just what he would
like, and agreed to try it when we got rich.  Bless his dear heart,
he's been doing it all his life--helping poor boys, I mean, not getting
rich, that he'll never be.  Money doesn't stay in his pocket long
enough to lay up any.  But now, thanks to my good old aunt, who loved
me better than I ever deserved, I'm rich, at least I feel so, and we
can live at Plumfield perfectly well, if we have a flourishing school.
It's just the place for boys, the house is big, and the furniture
strong and plain.  There's plenty of room for dozens inside, and
splendid grounds outside. They could help in the garden and orchard.
Such work is healthy, isn't it, sir?  Then Fritz could train and teach
in his own way, and Father will help him.  I can feed and nurse and pet
and scold them, and Mother will be my stand-by.  I've always longed for
lots of boys, and never had enough, now I can fill the house full and
revel in the little dears to my heart's content.  Think what luxury--
Plumfield my own, and a wilderness of boys to enjoy it with me."

As Jo waved her hands and gave a sigh of rapture, the family went off
into a gale of merriment, and Mr. Laurence laughed till they thought
he'd have an apoplectic fit.

"I don't see anything funny," she said gravely, when she could be
heard.  "Nothing could be more natural and proper than for my Professor
to open a school, and for me to prefer to reside in my own estate."

"She is putting on airs already," said Laurie, who regarded the idea in
the light of a capital joke.  "But may I inquire how you intend to
support the establishment? If all the pupils are little ragamuffins,
I'm afraid your crop won't be profitable in a worldly sense, Mrs.
Bhaer."

"Now don't be a wet-blanket, Teddy.  Of course I shall have rich
pupils, also--perhaps begin with such altogether.  Then, when I've got
a start, I can take in a ragamuffin or two, just for a relish. Rich
people's children often need care and comfort, as well as poor. I've
seen unfortunate little creatures left to servants, or backward ones
pushed forward, when it's real cruelty.  Some are naughty through
mismanagment or neglect, and some lose their mothers. Besides, the best
have to get through the hobbledehoy age, and that's the very time they
need most patience and kindness.  People laugh at them, and hustle them
about, try to keep them out of sight, and expect them to turn all at
once from pretty children into fine young men.  They don't complain
much--plucky little souls--but they feel it.  I've been through
something of it, and I know all about it. I've a special interest in
such young bears, and like to show them that I see the warm, honest,
well-meaning boys' hearts, in spite of the clumsy arms and legs and the
topsy-turvy heads.  I've had experience, too, for haven't I brought up
one boy to be a pride and honor to his family?"

"I'll testify that you tried to do it," said Laurie with a grateful
look.

"And I've succeeded beyond my hopes, for here you are, a steady,
sensible businessman, doing heaps of good with your money, and laying
up the blessings of the poor, instead of dollars. But you are not
merely a businessman, you love good and beautiful things, enjoy them
yourself, and let others go halves, as you always did in the old times.
I am proud of you, Teddy, for you get better every year, and everyone
feels it, though you won't let them say so.  Yes, and when I have my
flock, I'll just point to you, and say 'There's your model, my lads'."

Poor Laurie didn't know where to look, for, man though he was,
something of the old bashfulness came over him as this burst of praise
made all faces turn approvingly upon him.

"I say, Jo, that's rather too much," he began, just in his old boyish
way.  "You have all done more for me than I can ever thank you for,
except by doing my best not to disappoint you.  You have rather cast me
off lately, Jo, but I've had the best of help, nevertheless.  So, if
I've got on at all, you may thank these two for it," and he laid one
hand gently on his grandfather's head, and the other on Amy's golden
one, for the three were never far apart.

"I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the
world!" burst out Jo, who was in an unusually up-lifted frame of mind
just then.  "When I have one of my own, I hope it will be as happy as
the three I know and love the best.  If John and my Fritz were only
here, it would be quite a little heaven on earth," she added more
quietly.  And that night when she went to her room after a blissful
evening of family counsels, hopes, and plans, her heart was so full of
happiness that she could only calm it by kneeling beside the empty bed
always near her own, and thinking tender thoughts of Beth.

It was a very astonishing year altogether, for things seemed to happen
in an unusually rapid and delightful manner.  Almost before she knew
where she was, Jo found herself married and settled at Plumfield.  Then
a family of six or seven boys sprung up like mushrooms, and flourished
surprisingly, poor boys as well as rich, for Mr. Laurence was
continually finding some touching case of destitution, and begging the
Bhaers to take pity on the child, and he would gladly pay a trifle for
its support.  In this way, the sly old gentleman got round proud Jo,
and furnished her with the style of boy in which she most delighted.

Of course it was uphill work at first, and Jo made queer mistakes, but
the wise Professor steered her safely into calmer waters, and the most
rampant ragamuffin was conquered in the end. How Jo did enjoy her
'wilderness of boys', and how poor, dear Aunt March would have lamented
had she been there to see the sacred precincts of prim, well-ordered
Plumfield overrun with Toms, Dicks, and Harrys!  There was a sort of
poetic justice about it, after all, for the old lady had been the
terror of the boys for miles around, and now the exiles feasted freely
on forbidden plums, kicked up the gravel with profane boots unreproved,
and played cricket in the big field where the irritable 'cow with a
crumpled horn' used to invite rash youths to come and be tossed.  It
became a sort of boys' paradise, and Laurie suggested that it should be
called the 'Bhaer-garten', as a compliment to its master and
appropriate to its inhabitants.

It never was a fashionable school, and the Professor did not lay up a
fortune, but it was just what Jo intended it to be--'a happy, homelike
place for boys, who needed teaching, care, and kindness'.  Every room
in the big house was soon full.  Every little plot in the garden soon
had its owner.  A regular menagerie appeared in barn and shed, for pet
animals were allowed. And three times a day, Jo smiled at her Fritz
from the head of a long table lined on either side with rows of happy
young faces, which all turned to her with affectionate eyes, confiding
words, and grateful hearts, full of love for 'Mother Bhaer'.  She had
boys enough now, and did not tire of them, though they were not angels,
by any means, and some of them caused both Professor and Professorin
much trouble and anxiety.  But her faith in the good spot which exists
in the heart of the naughtiest, sauciest, most tantalizing little
ragamuffin gave her patience, skill, and in time success, for no mortal
boy could hold out long with Father Bhaer shining on him as
benevolently as the sun, and Mother Bhaer forgiving him seventy times
seven.  Very precious to Jo was the friendship of the lads, their
penitent sniffs and whispers after wrongdoing, their droll or touching
little confidences, their pleasant enthusiasms, hopes, and plans, even
their misfortunes, for they only endeared them to her all the more.
There were slow boys and bashful boys, feeble boys and riotous boys,
boys that lisped and boys that stuttered, one or two lame ones, and a
merry little quadroon, who could not be taken in elsewhere, but who was
welcome to the 'Bhaer-garten', though some people predicted that his
admission would ruin the school.

Yes, Jo was a very happy woman there, in spite of hard work, much
anxiety, and a perpetual racket.  She enjoyed it heartily and found the
applause of her boys more satisfying than any praise of the world, for
now she told no stories except to her flock of enthusiastic believers
and admirers.  As the years went on, two little lads of her own came to
increase her happiness--Rob, named for Grandpa, and Teddy, a
happy-go-lucky baby, who seemed to have inherited his papa's sunshiny
temper as well as his mother's lively spirit.  How they ever grew up
alive in that whirlpool of boys was a mystery to their grandma and
aunts, but they flourished like dandelions in spring, and their rough
nurses loved and served them well.

There were a great many holidays at Plumfield, and one of the most
delightful was the yearly apple-picking.  For then the Marches,
Laurences, Brookes and Bhaers turned out in full force and made a day
of it.  Five years after Jo's wedding, one of these fruitful festivals
occurred, a mellow October day, when the air was full of an
exhilarating freshness which made the spirits rise and the blood dance
healthily in the veins.  The old orchard wore its holiday attire.
Goldenrod and asters fringed the mossy walls. Grasshoppers skipped
briskly in the sere grass, and crickets chirped like fairy pipers at a
feast.  Squirrels were busy with their small harvesting.  Birds
twittered their adieux from the alders in the lane, and every tree
stood ready to send down its shower of red or yellow apples at the
first shake.  Everybody was there. Everybody laughed and sang, climbed
up and tumbled down.  Everybody declared that there never had been such
a perfect day or such a jolly set to enjoy it, and everyone gave
themselves up to the simple pleasures of the hour as freely as if there
were no such things as care or sorrow in the world.

Mr. March strolled placidly about, quoting Tusser, Cowley, and
Columella to Mr. Laurence, while enjoying...

The gentle apple's winey juice.

The Professor charged up and down the green aisles like a stout
Teutonic knight, with a pole for a lance, leading on the boys, who made
a hook and ladder company of themselves, and performed wonders in the
way of ground and lofty tumbling.  Laurie devoted himself to the little
ones, rode his small daughter in a bushel-basket, took Daisy up among
the bird's nests, and kept adventurous Rob from breaking his neck.
Mrs. March and Meg sat among the apple piles like a pair of Pomonas,
sorting the contributions that kept pouring in, while Amy with a
beautiful motherly expression in her face sketched the various groups,
and watched over one pale lad, who sat adoring her with his little
crutch beside him.

Jo was in her element that day, and rushed about, with her gown pinned
up, and her hat anywhere but on her head, and her baby tucked under her
arm, ready for any lively adventure which might turn up.  Little Teddy
bore a charmed life, for nothing ever happened to him, and Jo never
felt any anxiety when he was whisked up into a tree by one lad,
galloped off on the back of another, or supplied with sour russets by
his indulgent papa, who labored under the Germanic delusion that babies
could digest anything, from pickled cabbage to buttons, nails, and
their own small shoes.  She knew that little Ted would turn up again in
time, safe and rosy, dirty and serene, and she always received him back
with a hearty welcome, for Jo loved her babies tenderly.

At four o'clock a lull took place, and baskets remained empty, while
the apple pickers rested and compared rents and bruises.  Then Jo and
Meg, with a detachment of the bigger boys, set forth the supper on the
grass, for an out-of-door tea was always the crowning joy of the day.
The land literally flowed with milk and honey on such occasions, for
the lads were not required to sit at table, but allowed to partake of
refreshment as they liked--freedom being the sauce best beloved by the
boyish soul.  They availed themselves of the rare privilege to the
fullest extent, for some tried the pleasing experiment of drinking milk
while standing on their heads, others lent a charm to leapfrog by
eating pie in the pauses of the game, cookies were sown broadcast over
the field, and apple turnovers roosted in the trees like a new style of
bird.  The little girls had a private tea party, and Ted roved among
the edibles at his own sweet will.

When no one could eat any more, the Professor proposed the first
regular toast, which was always drunk at such times--"Aunt March, God
bless her!"  A toast heartily given by the good man, who never forgot
how much he owed her, and quietly drunk by the boys, who had been
taught to keep her memory green.

"Now, Grandma's sixtieth birthday!  Long life to her, with three times
three!"

That was given with a will, as you may well believe, and the cheering
once begun, it was hard to stop it.  Everybody's health was proposed,
from Mr. Laurence, who was considered their special patron, to the
astonished guinea pig, who had strayed from its proper sphere in search
of its young master.  Demi, as the oldest grandchild, then presented
the queen of the day with various gifts, so numerous that they were
transported to the festive scene in a wheelbarrow.  Funny presents,
some of them, but what would have been defects to other eyes were
ornaments to Grandma's--for the children's gifts were all their own.
Every stitch Daisy's patient little fingers had put into the
handkerchiefs she hemmed was better than embroidery to Mrs. March.
Demi's miracle of mechanical skill, though the cover wouldn't shut,
Rob's footstool had a wiggle in its uneven legs that she declared was
soothing, and no page of the costly book Amy's child gave her was so
fair as that on which appeared in tipsy capitals, the words--"To dear
Grandma, from her little Beth."

During the ceremony the boys had mysteriously disappeared, and when
Mrs. March had tried to thank her children, and broken down, while
Teddy wiped her eyes on his pinafore, the Professor suddenly began to
sing.  Then, from above him, voice after voice took up the words, and
from tree to tree echoed the music of the unseen choir, as the boys
sang with all their hearts the little song that Jo had written, Laurie
set to music, and the Professor trained his lads to give with the best
effect.  This was something altogether new, and it proved a grand
success, for Mrs. March couldn't get over her surprise, and insisted on
shaking hands with every one of the featherless birds, from tall Franz
and Emil to the little quadroon, who had the sweetest voice of all.

After this, the boys dispersed for a final lark, leaving Mrs. March and
her daughters under the festival tree.

"I don't think I ever ought to call myself 'unlucky Jo' again, when my
greatest wish has been so beautifully gratified," said Mrs. Bhaer,
taking Teddy's little fist out of the milk pitcher, in which he was
rapturously churning.

"And yet your life is very different from the one you pictured so long
ago.  Do you remember our castles in the air?" asked Amy, smiling as
she watched Laurie and John playing cricket with the boys.

"Dear fellows!  It does my heart good to see them forget business and
frolic for a day," answered Jo, who now spoke in a maternal way of all
mankind.  "Yes, I remember, but the life I wanted then seems selfish,
lonely, and cold to me now.  I haven't given up the hope that I may
write a good book yet, but I can wait, and I'm sure it will be all the
better for such experiences and illustrations as these," and Jo pointed
from the lively lads in the distance to her father, leaning on the
Professor's arm, as they walked to and fro in the sunshine, deep in one
of the conversations which both enjoyed so much, and then to her
mother, sitting enthroned among her daughters, with their children in
her lap and at her feet, as if all found help and happiness in the face
which never could grow old to them.

"My castle was the most nearly realized of all.  I asked for splendid
things, to be sure, but in my heart I knew I should be satisfied, if I
had a little home, and John, and some dear children like these.  I've
got them all, thank God, and am the happiest woman in the world," and
Meg laid her hand on her tall boy's head, with a face full of tender
and devout content.

"My castle is very different from what I planned, but I would not alter
it, though, like Jo, I don't relinquish all my artistic hopes, or
confine myself to helping others fulfill their dreams of beauty.  I've
begun to model a figure of baby, and Laurie says it is the best thing
I've ever done.  I think so, myself, and mean to do it in marble, so
that, whatever happens, I may at least keep the image of my little
angel."

As Amy spoke, a great tear dropped on the golden hair of the sleeping
child in her arms, for her one well-beloved daughter was a frail little
creature and the dread of losing her was the shadow over Amy's
sunshine.  This cross was doing much for both father and mother, for
one love and sorrow bound them closely together. Amy's nature was
growing sweeter, deeper, and more tender.  Laurie was growing more
serious, strong, and firm, and both were learning that beauty, youth,
good fortune, even love itself, cannot keep care and pain, loss and
sorrow, from the most blessed for ...


    Into each life some rain must fall,
    Some days must be dark and sad and dreary.


"She is growing better, I am sure of it, my dear.  Don't despond, but
hope and keep happy," said Mrs. March, as tenderhearted Daisy stooped
from her knee to lay her rosy cheek against her little cousin's pale
one.

"I never ought to, while I have you to cheer me up, Marmee, and Laurie
to take more than half of every burden," replied Amy warmly.  "He never
lets me see his anxiety, but is so sweet and patient with me, so
devoted to Beth, and such a stay and comfort to me always that I can't
love him enough.  So, in spite of my one cross, I can say with Meg,
'Thank God, I'm a happy woman.'"

"There's no need for me to say it, for everyone can see that I'm far
happier than I deserve," added Jo, glancing from her good husband to
her chubby children, tumbling on the grass beside her.  "Fritz is
getting gray and stout.  I'm growing as thin as a shadow, and am
thirty.  We never shall be rich, and Plumfield may burn up any night,
for that incorrigible Tommy Bangs will smoke sweet-fern cigars under
the bed-clothes, though he's set himself afire three times already.
But in spite of these unromantic facts, I have nothing to complain of,
and never was so jolly in my life.  Excuse the remark, but living among
boys, I can't help using their expressions now and then."

"Yes, Jo, I think your harvest will be a good one," began Mrs. March,
frightening away a big black cricket that was staring Teddy out of
countenance.

"Not half so good as yours, Mother.  Here it is, and we never can thank
you enough for the patient sowing and reaping you have done," cried Jo,
with the loving impetuosity which she never would outgrow.

"I hope there will be more wheat and fewer tares every year," said Amy
softly.

"A large sheaf, but I know there's room in your heart for it, Marmee
dear," added Meg's tender voice.

Touched to the heart, Mrs. March could only stretch out her arms, as if
to gather children and grandchildren to herself, and say, with face and
voice full of motherly love, gratitude, and humility...

"Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a
greater happiness than this!"









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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net


Title: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Author: L. Frank Baum

Release Date: July 1, 2008 [EBook #55]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ ***















The Wonderful Wizard of Oz


by

L. Frank Baum



 Contents

       Introduction
   1.  The Cyclone
   2.  The Council with the Munchkins
   3.  How Dorothy Saved the Scarecrow
   4.  The Road Through the Forest
   5.  The Rescue of the Tin Woodman
   6.  The Cowardly Lion
   7.  The Journey to the Great Oz
   8.  The Deadly Poppy Field
   9.  The Queen of the Field Mice
  10.  The Guardian of the Gates
  11.  The Emerald City of Oz
  12.  The Search for the Wicked Witch
  13.  The Rescue
  14.  The Winged Monkeys
  15.  The Discovery of Oz the Terrible
  16.  The Magic Art of the Great Humbug
  17.  How the Balloon Was Launched
  18.  Away to the South
  19.  Attacked by the Fighting Trees
  20.  The Dainty China Country
  21.  The Lion Becomes the King of Beasts
  22.  The Country of the Quadlings
  23.  Glinda The Good Witch Grants Dorothy's Wish
  24.  Home Again




Introduction


Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood
through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and
instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly
unreal.  The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more
happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.

Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be
classed as "historical" in the children's library; for the time has
come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which the stereotyped
genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible
and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a
fearsome moral to each tale.  Modern education includes morality;
therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales
and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Having this thought in mind, the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"
was written solely to please children of today.  It aspires to being a
modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and
the heartaches and nightmares are left out.


L. Frank Baum

Chicago, April, 1900.




THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ




1.  The Cyclone


Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle
Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife.  Their
house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon
many miles.  There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one
room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for
the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds.  Uncle Henry
and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in
another corner.  There was no garret at all, and no cellar--except a
small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family
could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to
crush any building in its path.  It was reached by a trap door in the
middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark
hole.

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see
nothing but the great gray prairie on every side.  Not a tree nor a
house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of
the sky in all directions.  The sun had baked the plowed land into a
gray mass, with little cracks running through it.  Even the grass was
not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until
they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere.  Once the house
had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed
it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.

When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife.  The sun
and wind had changed her, too.  They had taken the sparkle from her
eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks
and lips, and they were gray also.  She was thin and gaunt, and never
smiled now.  When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt
Em had been so startled by the child's laughter that she would scream
and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy's merry voice
reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder
that she could find anything to laugh at.

Uncle Henry never laughed.  He worked hard from morning till night and
did not know what joy was.  He was gray also, from his long beard to
his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke.

It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray
as her other surroundings.  Toto was not gray; he was a little black
dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on
either side of his funny, wee nose.  Toto played all day long, and
Dorothy played with him, and loved him dearly.

Today, however, they were not playing.  Uncle Henry sat upon the
doorstep and looked anxiously at the sky, which was even grayer than
usual.  Dorothy stood in the door with Toto in her arms, and looked at
the sky too.  Aunt Em was washing the dishes.

From the far north they heard a low wail of the wind, and Uncle Henry
and Dorothy could see where the long grass bowed in waves before the
coming storm.  There now came a sharp whistling in the air from the
south, and as they turned their eyes that way they saw ripples in the
grass coming from that direction also.

Suddenly Uncle Henry stood up.

"There's a cyclone coming, Em," he called to his wife.  "I'll go look
after the stock."  Then he ran toward the sheds where the cows and
horses were kept.

Aunt Em dropped her work and came to the door.  One glance told her of
the danger close at hand.

"Quick, Dorothy!" she screamed.  "Run for the cellar!"

Toto jumped out of Dorothy's arms and hid under the bed, and the girl
started to get him.  Aunt Em, badly frightened, threw open the trap
door in the floor and climbed down the ladder into the small, dark
hole.  Dorothy caught Toto at last and started to follow her aunt.
When she was halfway across the room there came a great shriek from the
wind, and the house shook so hard that she lost her footing and sat
down suddenly upon the floor.

Then a strange thing happened.

The house whirled around two or three times and rose slowly through the
air.  Dorothy felt as if she were going up in a balloon.

The north and south winds met where the house stood, and made it the
exact center of the cyclone.  In the middle of a cyclone the air is
generally still, but the great pressure of the wind on every side of
the house raised it up higher and higher, until it was at the very top
of the cyclone; and there it remained and was carried miles and miles
away as easily as you could carry a feather.

It was very dark, and the wind howled horribly around her, but Dorothy
found she was riding quite easily.  After the first few whirls around,
and one other time when the house tipped badly, she felt as if she were
being rocked gently, like a baby in a cradle.

Toto did not like it.  He ran about the room, now here, now there,
barking loudly; but Dorothy sat quite still on the floor and waited to
see what would happen.

Once Toto got too near the open trap door, and fell in; and at first
the little girl thought she had lost him.  But soon she saw one of his
ears sticking up through the hole, for the strong pressure of the air
was keeping him up so that he could not fall.  She crept to the hole,
caught Toto by the ear, and dragged him into the room again, afterward
closing the trap door so that no more accidents could happen.

Hour after hour passed away, and slowly Dorothy got over her fright;
but she felt quite lonely, and the wind shrieked so loudly all about
her that she nearly became deaf.  At first she had wondered if she
would be dashed to pieces when the house fell again; but as the hours
passed and nothing terrible happened, she stopped worrying and resolved
to wait calmly and see what the future would bring.  At last she
crawled over the swaying floor to her bed, and lay down upon it; and
Toto followed and lay down beside her.

In spite of the swaying of the house and the wailing of the wind,
Dorothy soon closed her eyes and fell fast asleep.




2.  The Council with the Munchkins


She was awakened by a shock, so sudden and severe that if Dorothy had
not been lying on the soft bed she might have been hurt.  As it was,
the jar made her catch her breath and wonder what had happened; and
Toto put his cold little nose into her face and whined dismally.
Dorothy sat up and noticed that the house was not moving; nor was it
dark, for the bright sunshine came in at the window, flooding the
little room.  She sprang from her bed and with Toto at her heels ran
and opened the door.

The little girl gave a cry of amazement and looked about her, her eyes
growing bigger and bigger at the wonderful sights she saw.

The cyclone had set the house down very gently--for a cyclone--in the
midst of a country of marvelous beauty.  There were lovely patches of
greensward all about, with stately trees bearing rich and luscious
fruits.  Banks of gorgeous flowers were on every hand, and birds with
rare and brilliant plumage sang and fluttered in the trees and bushes.
A little way off was a small brook, rushing and sparkling along between
green banks, and murmuring in a voice very grateful to a little girl
who had lived so long on the dry, gray prairies.

While she stood looking eagerly at the strange and beautiful sights,
she noticed coming toward her a group of the queerest people she had
ever seen.  They were not as big as the grown folk she had always been
used to; but neither were they very small.  In fact, they seemed about
as tall as Dorothy, who was a well-grown child for her age, although
they were, so far as looks go, many years older.

Three were men and one a woman, and all were oddly dressed.  They wore
round hats that rose to a small point a foot above their heads, with
little bells around the brims that tinkled sweetly as they moved.  The
hats of the men were blue; the little woman's hat was white, and she
wore a white gown that hung in pleats from her shoulders.  Over it were
sprinkled little stars that glistened in the sun like diamonds.  The
men were dressed in blue, of the same shade as their hats, and wore
well-polished boots with a deep roll of blue at the tops.  The men,
Dorothy thought, were about as old as Uncle Henry, for two of them had
beards.  But the little woman was doubtless much older.  Her face was
covered with wrinkles, her hair was nearly white, and she walked rather
stiffly.

When these people drew near the house where Dorothy was standing in the
doorway, they paused and whispered among themselves, as if afraid to
come farther.  But the little old woman walked up to Dorothy, made a
low bow and said, in a sweet voice:

"You are welcome, most noble Sorceress, to the land of the Munchkins.
We are so grateful to you for having killed the Wicked Witch of the
East, and for setting our people free from bondage."

Dorothy listened to this speech with wonder.  What could the little
woman possibly mean by calling her a sorceress, and saying she had
killed the Wicked Witch of the East?  Dorothy was an innocent, harmless
little girl, who had been carried by a cyclone many miles from home;
and she had never killed anything in all her life.

But the little woman evidently expected her to answer; so Dorothy said,
with hesitation, "You are very kind, but there must be some mistake.  I
have not killed anything."

"Your house did, anyway," replied the little old woman, with a laugh,
"and that is the same thing.  See!" she continued, pointing to the
corner of the house.  "There are her two feet, still sticking out from
under a block of wood."

Dorothy looked, and gave a little cry of fright.  There, indeed, just
under the corner of the great beam the house rested on, two feet were
sticking out, shod in silver shoes with pointed toes.

"Oh, dear!  Oh, dear!" cried Dorothy, clasping her hands together in
dismay.  "The house must have fallen on her.  Whatever shall we do?"

"There is nothing to be done," said the little woman calmly.

"But who was she?" asked Dorothy.

"She was the Wicked Witch of the East, as I said," answered the little
woman.  "She has held all the Munchkins in bondage for many years,
making them slave for her night and day.  Now they are all set free,
and are grateful to you for the favor."

"Who are the Munchkins?" inquired Dorothy.

"They are the people who live in this land of the East
 where the Wicked Witch ruled."

"Are you a Munchkin?" asked Dorothy.

"No, but I am their friend, although I live in the land of the North.
When they saw the Witch of the East was dead the Munchkins sent a swift
messenger to me, and I came at once.  I am the Witch of the North."

"Oh, gracious!" cried Dorothy.  "Are you a real witch?"

"Yes, indeed," answered the little woman.  "But I am a good witch, and
the people love me.  I am not as powerful as the Wicked Witch was who
ruled here, or I should have set the people free myself."

"But I thought all witches were wicked," said the girl, who was half
frightened at facing a real witch.  "Oh, no, that is a great mistake.
There were only four witches in all the Land of Oz, and two of them,
those who live in the North and the South, are good witches.  I know
this is true, for I am one of them myself, and cannot be mistaken.
Those who dwelt in the East and the West were, indeed, wicked witches;
but now that you have killed one of them, there is but one Wicked Witch
in all the Land of Oz--the one who lives in the West."

"But," said Dorothy, after a moment's thought, "Aunt Em has told me
that the witches were all dead--years and years ago."

"Who is Aunt Em?" inquired the little old woman.

"She is my aunt who lives in Kansas, where I came from."

The Witch of the North seemed to think for a time, with her head bowed
and her eyes upon the ground.  Then she looked up and said, "I do not
know where Kansas is, for I have never heard that country mentioned
before.  But tell me, is it a civilized country?"

"Oh, yes," replied Dorothy.

"Then that accounts for it.  In the civilized countries I believe there
are no witches left, nor wizards, nor sorceresses, nor magicians.  But,
you see, the Land of Oz has never been civilized, for we are cut off
from all the rest of the world.  Therefore we still have witches and
wizards amongst us."

"Who are the wizards?" asked Dorothy.

"Oz himself is the Great Wizard," answered the Witch, sinking her voice
to a whisper.  "He is more powerful than all the rest of us together.
He lives in the City of Emeralds."

Dorothy was going to ask another question, but just then the Munchkins,
who had been standing silently by, gave a loud shout and pointed to the
corner of the house where the Wicked Witch had been lying.

"What is it?" asked the little old woman, and looked, and began to
laugh.  The feet of the dead Witch had disappeared entirely, and
nothing was left but the silver shoes.

"She was so old," explained the Witch of the North, "that she dried up
quickly in the sun.  That is the end of her.  But the silver shoes are
yours, and you shall have them to wear." She reached down and picked up
the shoes, and after shaking the dust out of them handed them to
Dorothy.

"The Witch of the East was proud of those silver shoes," said one of
the Munchkins, "and there is some charm connected with them; but what
it is we never knew."

Dorothy carried the shoes into the house and placed them on the table.
Then she came out again to the Munchkins and said:

"I am anxious to get back to my aunt and uncle, for I am sure they will
worry about me.  Can you help me find my way?"

The Munchkins and the Witch first looked at one another, and then at
Dorothy, and then shook their heads.

"At the East, not far from here," said one, "there is a great desert,
and none could live to cross it."

"It is the same at the South," said another, "for I have been there and
seen it.  The South is the country of the Quadlings."

"I am told," said the third man, "that it is the same at the West.  And
that country, where the Winkies live, is ruled by the Wicked Witch of
the West, who would make you her slave if you passed her way."

"The North is my home," said the old lady, "and at its edge is the same
great desert that surrounds this Land of Oz.  I'm afraid, my dear, you
will have to live with us."

Dorothy began to sob at this, for she felt lonely among all these
strange people.  Her tears seemed to grieve the kind-hearted Munchkins,
for they immediately took out their handkerchiefs and began to weep
also.  As for the little old woman, she took off her cap and balanced
the point on the end of her nose, while she counted "One, two, three"
in a solemn voice.  At once the cap changed to a slate, on which was
written in big, white chalk marks:


 "LET DOROTHY GO TO THE CITY OF EMERALDS"


The little old woman took the slate from her nose, and having read the
words on it, asked, "Is your name Dorothy, my dear?"

"Yes," answered the child, looking up and drying her tears.

"Then you must go to the City of Emeralds.  Perhaps Oz will help you."

"Where is this city?" asked Dorothy.

"It is exactly in the center of the country, and is ruled by Oz, the
Great Wizard I told you of."

"Is he a good man?" inquired the girl anxiously.

"He is a good Wizard.  Whether he is a man or not I cannot tell, for I
have never seen him."

"How can I get there?" asked Dorothy.

"You must walk.  It is a long journey, through a country that is
sometimes pleasant and sometimes dark and terrible.  However, I will
use all the magic arts I know of to keep you from harm."

"Won't you go with me?" pleaded the girl, who had begun to look upon
the little old woman as her only friend.

"No, I cannot do that," she replied, "but I will give you my kiss, and
no one will dare injure a person who has been kissed by the Witch of
the North."

She came close to Dorothy and kissed her gently on the forehead.  Where
her lips touched the girl they left a round, shining mark, as Dorothy
found out soon after.

"The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick," said the
Witch, "so you cannot miss it.  When you get to Oz do not be afraid of
him, but tell your story and ask him to help you.  Good-bye, my dear."

The three Munchkins bowed low to her and wished her a pleasant journey,
after which they walked away through the trees.  The Witch gave Dorothy
a friendly little nod, whirled around on her left heel three times, and
straightway disappeared, much to the surprise of little Toto, who
barked after her loudly enough when she had gone, because he had been
afraid even to growl while she stood by.

But Dorothy, knowing her to be a witch, had expected her to disappear
in just that way, and was not surprised in the least.




3.  How Dorothy Saved the Scarecrow


When Dorothy was left alone she began to feel hungry.  So she went to
the cupboard and cut herself some bread, which she spread with butter.
She gave some to Toto, and taking a pail from the shelf she carried it
down to the little brook and filled it with clear, sparkling water.
Toto ran over to the trees and began to bark at the birds sitting
there.  Dorothy went to get him, and saw such delicious fruit hanging
from the branches that she gathered some of it, finding it just what
she wanted to help out her breakfast.

Then she went back to the house, and having helped herself and Toto to
a good drink of the cool, clear water, she set about making ready for
the journey to the City of Emeralds.

Dorothy had only one other dress, but that happened to be clean and was
hanging on a peg beside her bed.  It was gingham, with checks of white
and blue; and although the blue was somewhat faded with many washings,
it was still a pretty frock.  The girl washed herself carefully,
dressed herself in the clean gingham, and tied her pink sunbonnet on
her head.  She took a little basket and filled it with bread from the
cupboard, laying a white cloth over the top.  Then she looked down at
her feet and noticed how old and worn her shoes were.

"They surely will never do for a long journey, Toto," she said.  And
Toto looked up into her face with his little black eyes and wagged his
tail to show he knew what she meant.

At that moment Dorothy saw lying on the table the silver shoes that had
belonged to the Witch of the East.

"I wonder if they will fit me," she said to Toto.  "They would be just
the thing to take a long walk in, for they could not wear out."

She took off her old leather shoes and tried on the silver ones, which
fitted her as well as if they had been made for her.

Finally she picked up her basket.

"Come along, Toto," she said.  "We will go to the Emerald City and ask
the Great Oz how to get back to Kansas again."

She closed the door, locked it, and put the key carefully in the pocket
of her dress.  And so, with Toto trotting along soberly behind her, she
started on her journey.

There were several roads nearby, but it did not take her long to find
the one paved with yellow bricks.  Within a short time she was walking
briskly toward the Emerald City, her silver shoes tinkling merrily on
the hard, yellow road-bed.  The sun shone bright and the birds sang
sweetly, and Dorothy did not feel nearly so bad as you might think a
little girl would who had been suddenly whisked away from her own
country and set down in the midst of a strange land.

She was surprised, as she walked along, to see how pretty the country
was about her.  There were neat fences at the sides of the road,
painted a dainty blue color, and beyond them were fields of grain and
vegetables in abundance.  Evidently the Munchkins were good farmers and
able to raise large crops.  Once in a while she would pass a house, and
the people came out to look at her and bow low as she went by; for
everyone knew she had been the means of destroying the Wicked Witch and
setting them free from bondage.  The houses of the Munchkins were
odd-looking dwellings, for each was round, with a big dome for a roof.
All were painted blue, for in this country of the East blue was the
favorite color.

Toward evening, when Dorothy was tired with her long walk and began to
wonder where she should pass the night, she came to a house rather
larger than the rest.  On the green lawn before it many men and women
were dancing.  Five little fiddlers played as loudly as possible, and
the people were laughing and singing, while a big table near by was
loaded with delicious fruits and nuts, pies and cakes, and many other
good things to eat.

The people greeted Dorothy kindly, and invited her to supper and to
pass the night with them; for this was the home of one of the richest
Munchkins in the land, and his friends were gathered with him to
celebrate their freedom from the bondage of the Wicked Witch.

Dorothy ate a hearty supper and was waited upon by the rich Munchkin
himself, whose name was Boq.  Then she sat upon a settee and watched
the people dance.

When Boq saw her silver shoes he said, "You must be a great sorceress."

"Why?" asked the girl.

"Because you wear silver shoes and have killed the Wicked Witch.
Besides, you have white in your frock, and only witches and sorceresses
wear white."

"My dress is blue and white checked," said Dorothy, smoothing out the
wrinkles in it.

"It is kind of you to wear that," said Boq.  "Blue is the color of the
Munchkins, and white is the witch color.  So we know you are a friendly
witch."

Dorothy did not know what to say to this, for all the people seemed to
think her a witch, and she knew very well she was only an ordinary
little girl who had come by the chance of a cyclone into a strange land.

When she had tired watching the dancing, Boq led her into the house,
where he gave her a room with a pretty bed in it.  The sheets were made
of blue cloth, and Dorothy slept soundly in them till morning, with
Toto curled up on the blue rug beside her.

She ate a hearty breakfast, and watched a wee Munchkin baby, who played
with Toto and pulled his tail and crowed and laughed in a way that
greatly amused Dorothy.  Toto was a fine curiosity to all the people,
for they had never seen a dog before.

"How far is it to the Emerald City?" the girl asked.

"I do not know," answered Boq gravely, "for I have never been there.
It is better for people to keep away from Oz, unless they have business
with him.  But it is a long way to the Emerald City, and it will take
you many days.  The country here is rich and pleasant, but you must
pass through rough and dangerous places before you reach the end of
your journey."

This worried Dorothy a little, but she knew that only the Great Oz
could help her get to Kansas again, so she bravely resolved not to turn
back.

She bade her friends good-bye, and again started along the road of
yellow brick.  When she had gone several miles she thought she would
stop to rest, and so climbed to the top of the fence beside the road
and sat down.  There was a great cornfield beyond the fence, and not
far away she saw a Scarecrow, placed high on a pole to keep the birds
from the ripe corn.

Dorothy leaned her chin upon her hand and gazed thoughtfully at the
Scarecrow.  Its head was a small sack stuffed with straw, with eyes,
nose, and mouth painted on it to represent a face.  An old, pointed
blue hat, that had belonged to some Munchkin, was perched on his head,
and the rest of the figure was a blue suit of clothes, worn and faded,
which had also been stuffed with straw.  On the feet were some old
boots with blue tops, such as every man wore in this country, and the
figure was raised above the stalks of corn by means of the pole stuck
up its back.

While Dorothy was looking earnestly into the queer, painted face of the
Scarecrow, she was surprised to see one of the eyes slowly wink at her.
She thought she must have been mistaken at first, for none of the
scarecrows in Kansas ever wink; but presently the figure nodded its
head to her in a friendly way.  Then she climbed down from the fence
and walked up to it, while Toto ran around the pole and barked.

"Good day," said the Scarecrow, in a rather husky voice.

"Did you speak?" asked the girl, in wonder.

"Certainly," answered the Scarecrow.  "How do you do?"

"I'm pretty well, thank you," replied Dorothy politely.  "How do you
do?"

"I'm not feeling well," said the Scarecrow, with a smile, "for it is
very tedious being perched up here night and day to scare away crows."

"Can't you get down?" asked Dorothy.

"No, for this pole is stuck up my back.  If you will please take away
the pole I shall be greatly obliged to you."

Dorothy reached up both arms and lifted the figure off the pole, for,
being stuffed with straw, it was quite light.

"Thank you very much," said the Scarecrow, when he had been set down on
the ground.  "I feel like a new man."

Dorothy was puzzled at this, for it sounded queer to hear a stuffed man
speak, and to see him bow and walk along beside her.

"Who are you?" asked the Scarecrow when he had stretched himself and
yawned.  "And where are you going?"

"My name is Dorothy," said the girl, "and I am going to the Emerald
City, to ask the Great Oz to send me back to Kansas."

"Where is the Emerald City?" he inquired.  "And who is Oz?"

"Why, don't you know?" she returned, in surprise.

"No, indeed.  I don't know anything.  You see, I am stuffed, so I have
no brains at all," he answered sadly.

"Oh," said Dorothy, "I'm awfully sorry for you."

"Do you think," he asked, "if I go to the Emerald City with you, that
Oz would give me some brains?"

"I cannot tell," she returned, "but you may come with me, if you like.
If Oz will not give you any brains you will be no worse off than you
are now."

"That is true," said the Scarecrow.  "You see," he continued
confidentially, "I don't mind my legs and arms and body being stuffed,
because I cannot get hurt.  If anyone treads on my toes or sticks a pin
into me, it doesn't matter, for I can't feel it.  But I do not want
people to call me a fool, and if my head stays stuffed with straw
instead of with brains, as yours is, how am I ever to know anything?"

"I understand how you feel," said the little girl, who was truly sorry
for him.  "If you will come with me I'll ask Oz to do all he can for
you."

"Thank you," he answered gratefully.

They walked back to the road.  Dorothy helped him over the fence, and
they started along the path of yellow brick for the Emerald City.

Toto did not like this addition to the party at first.  He smelled
around the stuffed man as if he suspected there might be a nest of rats
in the straw, and he often growled in an unfriendly way at the
Scarecrow.

"Don't mind Toto," said Dorothy to her new friend.  "He never bites."

"Oh, I'm not afraid," replied the Scarecrow.  "He can't hurt the straw.
Do let me carry that basket for you.  I shall not mind it, for I can't
get tired.  I'll tell you a secret," he continued, as he walked along.
"There is only one thing in the world I am afraid of."

"What is that?" asked Dorothy; "the Munchkin farmer who made you?"

"No," answered the Scarecrow; "it's a lighted match."




4.  The Road Through the Forest


After a few hours the road began to be rough, and the walking grew so
difficult that the Scarecrow often stumbled over the yellow bricks,
which were here very uneven.  Sometimes, indeed, they were broken or
missing altogether, leaving holes that Toto jumped across and Dorothy
walked around.  As for the Scarecrow, having no brains, he walked
straight ahead, and so stepped into the holes and fell at full length
on the hard bricks.  It never hurt him, however, and Dorothy would pick
him up and set him upon his feet again, while he joined her in laughing
merrily at his own mishap.

The farms were not nearly so well cared for here as they were farther
back.  There were fewer houses and fewer fruit trees, and the farther
they went the more dismal and lonesome the country became.

At noon they sat down by the roadside, near a little brook, and Dorothy
opened her basket and got out some bread.  She offered a piece to the
Scarecrow, but he refused.

"I am never hungry," he said, "and it is a lucky thing I am not, for my
mouth is only painted, and if I should cut a hole in it so I could eat,
the straw I am stuffed with would come out, and that would spoil the
shape of my head."

Dorothy saw at once that this was true, so she only nodded and went on
eating her bread.

"Tell me something about yourself and the country you came from," said
the Scarecrow, when she had finished her dinner.  So she told him all
about Kansas, and how gray everything was there, and how the cyclone
had carried her to this queer Land of Oz.

The Scarecrow listened carefully, and said, "I cannot understand why
you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry,
gray place you call Kansas."

"That is because you have no brains" answered the girl.  "No matter how
dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would
rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful.
There is no place like home."

The Scarecrow sighed.

"Of course I cannot understand it," he said.  "If your heads were
stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the
beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all.  It is
fortunate for Kansas that you have brains."

"Won't you tell me a story, while we are resting?" asked the child.

The Scarecrow looked at her reproachfully, and answered:

"My life has been so short that I really know nothing whatever.  I was
only made day before yesterday.  What happened in the world before that
time is all unknown to me.  Luckily, when the farmer made my head, one
of the first things he did was to paint my ears, so that I heard what
was going on.  There was another Munchkin with him, and the first thing
I heard was the farmer saying, 'How do you like those ears?'

"'They aren't straight,'" answered the other.

"'Never mind,'" said the farmer.  "'They are ears just the same,'"
which was true enough.

"'Now I'll make the eyes,'" said the farmer.  So he painted my right
eye, and as soon as it was finished I found myself looking at him and
at everything around me with a great deal of curiosity, for this was my
first glimpse of the world.

"'That's a rather pretty eye,'" remarked the Munchkin who was watching
the farmer.  "'Blue paint is just the color for eyes.'

"'I think I'll make the other a little bigger,'" said the farmer.  And
when the second eye was done I could see much better than before.  Then
he made my nose and my mouth.  But I did not speak, because at that
time I didn't know what a mouth was for.  I had the fun of watching
them make my body and my arms and legs; and when they fastened on my
head, at last, I felt very proud, for I thought I was just as good a
man as anyone.

"'This fellow will scare the crows fast enough,' said the farmer.  'He
looks just like a man.'

"'Why, he is a man,' said the other, and I quite agreed with him.  The
farmer carried me under his arm to the cornfield, and set me up on a
tall stick, where you found me.  He and his friend soon after walked
away and left me alone.

"I did not like to be deserted this way.  So I tried to walk after
them.  But my feet would not touch the ground, and I was forced to stay
on that pole.  It was a lonely life to lead, for I had nothing to think
of, having been made such a little while before.  Many crows and other
birds flew into the cornfield, but as soon as they saw me they flew
away again, thinking I was a Munchkin; and this pleased me and made me
feel that I was quite an important person.  By and by an old crow flew
near me, and after looking at me carefully he perched upon my shoulder
and said:

"'I wonder if that farmer thought to fool me in this clumsy manner.
Any crow of sense could see that you are only stuffed with straw.'
Then he hopped down at my feet and ate all the corn he wanted.  The
other birds, seeing he was not harmed by me, came to eat the corn too,
so in a short time there was a great flock of them about me.

"I felt sad at this, for it showed I was not such a good Scarecrow
after all; but the old crow comforted me, saying, 'If you only had
brains in your head you would be as good a man as any of them, and a
better man than some of them.  Brains are the only things worth having
in this world, no matter whether one is a crow or a man.'

"After the crows had gone I thought this over, and decided I would try
hard to get some brains.  By good luck you came along and pulled me off
the stake, and from what you say I am sure the Great Oz will give me
brains as soon as we get to the Emerald City."

"I hope so," said Dorothy earnestly, "since you seem anxious to have
them."

"Oh, yes; I am anxious," returned the Scarecrow.  "It is such an
uncomfortable feeling to know one is a fool."

"Well," said the girl, "let us go."  And she handed the basket to the
Scarecrow.

There were no fences at all by the roadside now, and the land was rough
and untilled.  Toward evening they came to a great forest, where the
trees grew so big and close together that their branches met over the
road of yellow brick.  It was almost dark under the trees, for the
branches shut out the daylight; but the travelers did not stop, and
went on into the forest.

"If this road goes in, it must come out," said the Scarecrow, "and as
the Emerald City is at the other end of the road, we must go wherever
it leads us."

"Anyone would know that," said Dorothy.

"Certainly; that is why I know it," returned the Scarecrow.  "If it
required brains to figure it out, I never should have said it."

After an hour or so the light faded away, and they found themselves
stumbling along in the darkness.  Dorothy could not see at all, but
Toto could, for some dogs see very well in the dark; and the Scarecrow
declared he could see as well as by day.  So she took hold of his arm
and managed to get along fairly well.

"If you see any house, or any place where we can pass the night," she
said, "you must tell me; for it is very uncomfortable walking in the
dark."

Soon after the Scarecrow stopped.

"I see a little cottage at the right of us," he said, "built of logs
and branches.  Shall we go there?"

"Yes, indeed," answered the child.  "I am all tired out."

So the Scarecrow led her through the trees until they reached the
cottage, and Dorothy entered and found a bed of dried leaves in one
corner.  She lay down at once, and with Toto beside her soon fell into
a sound sleep.  The Scarecrow, who was never tired, stood up in another
corner and waited patiently until morning came.




5.  The Rescue of the Tin Woodman


When Dorothy awoke the sun was shining through the trees and Toto had
long been out chasing birds around him and squirrels.  She sat up and
looked around her. There was the Scarecrow, still standing patiently in his corner,
waiting for her.

"We must go and search for water," she said to him.

"Why do you want water?" he asked.

"To wash my face clean after the dust of the road, and to drink, so the
dry bread will not stick in my throat."

"It must be inconvenient to be made of flesh," said the Scarecrow
thoughtfully, "for you must sleep, and eat and drink.  However, you
have brains, and it is worth a lot of bother to be able to think
properly."

They left the cottage and walked through the trees until they found a
little spring of clear water, where Dorothy drank and bathed and ate
her breakfast.  She saw there was not much bread left in the basket,
and the girl was thankful the Scarecrow did not have to eat anything,
for there was scarcely enough for herself and Toto for the day.

When she had finished her meal, and was about to go back to the road of
yellow brick, she was startled to hear a deep groan near by.

"What was that?" she asked timidly.

"I cannot imagine," replied the Scarecrow; "but we can go and see."

Just then another groan reached their ears, and the sound seemed to
come from behind them.  They turned and walked through the forest a few
steps, when Dorothy discovered something shining in a ray of sunshine
that fell between the trees.  She ran to the place and then stopped
short, with a little cry of surprise.

One of the big trees had been partly chopped through, and standing
beside it, with an uplifted axe in his hands, was a man made entirely
of tin.  His head and arms and legs were jointed upon his body, but he
stood perfectly motionless, as if he could not stir at all.

Dorothy looked at him in amazement, and so did the Scarecrow, while
Toto barked sharply and made a snap at the tin legs, which hurt his
teeth.

"Did you groan?" asked Dorothy.

"Yes," answered the tin man, "I did.  I've been groaning for more than
a year, and no one has ever heard me before or come to help me."

"What can I do for you?" she inquired softly, for she was moved by the
sad voice in which the man spoke.

"Get an oil-can and oil my joints," he answered.  "They are rusted so
badly that I cannot move them at all; if I am well oiled I shall soon
be all right again.  You will find an oil-can on a shelf in my cottage."

Dorothy at once ran back to the cottage and found the oil-can, and then
she returned and asked anxiously, "Where are your joints?"

"Oil my neck, first," replied the Tin Woodman.  So she oiled it, and as
it was quite badly rusted the Scarecrow took hold of the tin head and
moved it gently from side to side until it worked freely, and then the
man could turn it himself.

"Now oil the joints in my arms," he said.  And Dorothy oiled them and
the Scarecrow bent them carefully until they were quite free from rust
and as good as new.

The Tin Woodman gave a sigh of satisfaction and lowered his axe, which
he leaned against the tree.

"This is a great comfort," he said.  "I have been holding that axe in
the air ever since I rusted, and I'm glad to be able to put it down at
last.  Now, if you will oil the joints of my legs, I shall be all right
once more."

So they oiled his legs until he could move them freely; and he thanked
them again and again for his release, for he seemed a very polite
creature, and very grateful.

"I might have stood there always if you had not come along," he said;
"so you have certainly saved my life.  How did you happen to be here?"

"We are on our way to the Emerald City to see the Great Oz," she
answered, "and we stopped at your cottage to pass the night."

"Why do you wish to see Oz?" he asked.

"I want him to send me back to Kansas, and the Scarecrow wants him to
put a few brains into his head," she replied.

The Tin Woodman appeared to think deeply for a moment.  Then he said:

"Do you suppose Oz could give me a heart?"

"Why, I guess so," Dorothy answered.  "It would be as easy as to give
the Scarecrow brains."

"True," the Tin Woodman returned.  "So, if you will allow me to join
your party, I will also go to the Emerald City and ask Oz to help me."

"Come along," said the Scarecrow heartily, and Dorothy added that she
would be pleased to have his company.  So the Tin Woodman shouldered
his axe and they all passed through the forest until they came to the
road that was paved with yellow brick.

The Tin Woodman had asked Dorothy to put the oil-can in her basket.
"For," he said, "if I should get caught in the rain, and rust again, I
would need the oil-can badly."

It was a bit of good luck to have their new comrade join the party, for
soon after they had begun their journey again they came to a place
where the trees and branches grew so thick over the road that the
travelers could not pass.  But the Tin Woodman set to work with his axe
and chopped so well that soon he cleared a passage for the entire party.

Dorothy was thinking so earnestly as they walked along that she did not
notice when the Scarecrow stumbled into a hole and rolled over to the
side of the road.  Indeed he was obliged to call to her to help him up
again.

"Why didn't you walk around the hole?" asked the Tin Woodman.

"I don't know enough," replied the Scarecrow cheerfully.  "My head is
stuffed with straw, you know, and that is why I am going to Oz to ask
him for some brains."

"Oh, I see," said the Tin Woodman.  "But, after all, brains are not the
best things in the world."

"Have you any?" inquired the Scarecrow.

"No, my head is quite empty," answered the Woodman.  "But once I had
brains, and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much
rather have a heart."

"And why is that?" asked the Scarecrow.

"I will tell you my story, and then you will know."

So, while they were walking through the forest, the Tin Woodman told
the following story:

"I was born the son of a woodman who chopped down trees in the forest
and sold the wood for a living.  When I grew up, I too became a
woodchopper, and after my father died I took care of my old mother as
long as she lived.  Then I made up my mind that instead of living alone
I would marry, so that I might not become lonely.

"There was one of the Munchkin girls who was so beautiful that I soon
grew to love her with all my heart.  She, on her part, promised to
marry me as soon as I could earn enough money to build a better house
for her; so I set to work harder than ever.  But the girl lived with an
old woman who did not want her to marry anyone, for she was so lazy she
wished the girl to remain with her and do the cooking and the
housework.  So the old woman went to the Wicked Witch of the East, and
promised her two sheep and a cow if she would prevent the marriage.
Thereupon the Wicked Witch enchanted my axe, and when I was chopping
away at my best one day, for I was anxious to get the new house and my
wife as soon as possible, the axe slipped all at once and cut off my
left leg.

"This at first seemed a great misfortune, for I knew a one-legged man
could not do very well as a wood-chopper.  So I went to a tinsmith and
had him make me a new leg out of tin.  The leg worked very well, once I
was used to it.  But my action angered the Wicked Witch of the East,
for she had promised the old woman I should not marry the pretty
Munchkin girl.  When I began chopping again, my axe slipped and cut off
my right leg.  Again I went to the tinsmith, and again he made me a leg
out of tin.  After this the enchanted axe cut off my arms, one after
the other; but, nothing daunted, I had them replaced with tin ones.
The Wicked Witch then made the axe slip and cut off my head, and at
first I thought that was the end of me.  But the tinsmith happened to
come along, and he made me a new head out of tin.

"I thought I had beaten the Wicked Witch then, and I worked harder than
ever; but I little knew how cruel my enemy could be.  She thought of a
new way to kill my love for the beautiful Munchkin maiden, and made my
axe slip again, so that it cut right through my body, splitting me into
two halves.  Once more the tinsmith came to my help and made me a body
of tin, fastening my tin arms and legs and head to it, by means of
joints, so that I could move around as well as ever.  But, alas!  I had
now no heart, so that I lost all my love for the Munchkin girl, and did
not care whether I married her or not.  I suppose she is still living
with the old woman, waiting for me to come after her.

"My body shone so brightly in the sun that I felt very proud of it and
it did not matter now if my axe slipped, for it could not cut me.
There was only one danger--that my joints would rust; but I kept an
oil-can in my cottage and took care to oil myself whenever I needed it.
However, there came a day when I forgot to do this, and, being caught
in a rainstorm, before I thought of the danger my joints had rusted,
and I was left to stand in the woods until you came to help me.  It was
a terrible thing to undergo, but during the year I stood there I had
time to think that the greatest loss I had known was the loss of my
heart.  While I was in love I was the happiest man on earth; but no one
can love who has not a heart, and so I am resolved to ask Oz to give me
one.  If he does, I will go back to the Munchkin maiden and marry her."

Both Dorothy and the Scarecrow had been greatly interested in the story
of the Tin Woodman, and now they knew why he was so anxious to get a
new heart.

"All the same," said the Scarecrow, "I shall ask for brains instead of
a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had
one."

"I shall take the heart," returned the Tin Woodman; "for brains do not
make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world."

Dorothy did not say anything, for she was puzzled to know which of her
two friends was right, and she decided if she could only get back to
Kansas and Aunt Em, it did not matter so much whether the Woodman had
no brains and the Scarecrow no heart, or each got what he wanted.

What worried her most was that the bread was nearly gone, and another
meal for herself and Toto would empty the basket.  To be sure, neither
the Woodman nor the Scarecrow ever ate anything, but she was not made
of tin nor straw, and could not live unless she was fed.




6.  The Cowardly Lion


All this time Dorothy and her companions had been walking through the
thick woods.  The road was still paved with yellow brick, but these
were much covered by dried branches and dead leaves from the trees, and
the walking was not at all good.

There were few birds in this part of the forest, for birds love the
open country where there is plenty of sunshine.  But now and then there
came a deep growl from some wild animal hidden among the trees.  These
sounds made the little girl's heart beat fast, for she did not know
what made them; but Toto knew, and he walked close to Dorothy's side,
and did not even bark in return.

"How long will it be," the child asked of the Tin Woodman, "before we
are out of the forest?"

"I cannot tell," was the answer, "for I have never been to the Emerald
City.  But my father went there once, when I was a boy, and he said it
was a long journey through a dangerous country, although nearer to the
city where Oz dwells the country is beautiful.  But I am not afraid so
long as I have my oil-can, and nothing can hurt the Scarecrow, while
you bear upon your forehead the mark of the Good Witch's kiss, and that
will protect you from harm."

"But Toto!" said the girl anxiously.  "What will protect him?"

"We must protect him ourselves if he is in danger," replied the Tin
Woodman.

Just as he spoke there came from the forest a terrible roar, and the
next moment a great Lion bounded into the road.  With one blow of his
paw he sent the Scarecrow spinning over and over to the edge of the
road, and then he struck at the Tin Woodman with his sharp claws.  But,
to the Lion's surprise, he could make no impression on the tin,
although the Woodman fell over in the road and lay still.

Little Toto, now that he had an enemy to face, ran barking toward the
Lion, and the great beast had opened his mouth to bite the dog, when
Dorothy, fearing Toto would be killed, and heedless of danger, rushed
forward and slapped the Lion upon his nose as hard as she could, while
she cried out:

"Don't you dare to bite Toto!  You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a
big beast like you, to bite a poor little dog!"

"I didn't bite him," said the Lion, as he rubbed his nose with his paw
where Dorothy had hit it.

"No, but you tried to," she retorted.  "You are nothing but a big
coward."

"I know it," said the Lion, hanging his head in shame.  "I've always
known it.  But how can I help it?"

"I don't know, I'm sure.  To think of your striking a stuffed man, like
the poor Scarecrow!"

"Is he stuffed?" asked the Lion in surprise, as he watched her pick up
the Scarecrow and set him upon his feet, while she patted him into
shape again.

"Of course he's stuffed," replied Dorothy, who was still angry.

"That's why he went over so easily," remarked the Lion.  "It astonished
me to see him whirl around so.  Is the other one stuffed also?"

"No," said Dorothy, "he's made of tin."  And she helped the Woodman up
again.

"That's why he nearly blunted my claws," said the Lion.  "When they
scratched against the tin it made a cold shiver run down my back.  What
is that little animal you are so tender of?"

"He is my dog, Toto," answered Dorothy.

"Is he made of tin, or stuffed?" asked the Lion.

"Neither.  He's a--a--a meat dog," said the girl.

"Oh!  He's a curious animal and seems remarkably small, now that I look
at him.  No one would think of biting such a little thing, except a
coward like me," continued the Lion sadly.

"What makes you a coward?" asked Dorothy, looking at the great beast in
wonder, for he was as big as a small horse.

"It's a mystery," replied the Lion.  "I suppose I was born that way.
All the other animals in the forest naturally expect me to be brave,
for the Lion is everywhere thought to be the King of Beasts.  I learned
that if I roared very loudly every living thing was frightened and got
out of my way.  Whenever I've met a man I've been awfully scared; but I
just roared at him, and he has always run away as fast as he could go.
If the elephants and the tigers and the bears had ever tried to fight
me, I should have run myself--I'm such a coward; but just as soon as
they hear me roar they all try to get away from me, and of course I let
them go."

"But that isn't right.  The King of Beasts shouldn't be a coward," said
the Scarecrow.

"I know it," returned the Lion, wiping a tear from his eye with the tip
of his tail.  "It is my great sorrow, and makes my life very unhappy.
But whenever there is danger, my heart begins to beat fast."

"Perhaps you have heart disease," said the Tin Woodman.

"It may be," said the Lion.

"If you have," continued the Tin Woodman, "you ought to be glad, for it
proves you have a heart.  For my part, I have no heart; so I cannot
have heart disease."

"Perhaps," said the Lion thoughtfully, "if I had no heart I should not
be a coward."

"Have you brains?" asked the Scarecrow.

"I suppose so.  I've never looked to see," replied the Lion.

"I am going to the Great Oz to ask him to give me some," remarked the
Scarecrow, "for my head is stuffed with straw."

"And I am going to ask him to give me a heart," said the Woodman.

"And I am going to ask him to send Toto and me back to Kansas," added
Dorothy.

"Do you think Oz could give me courage?" asked the Cowardly Lion.

"Just as easily as he could give me brains," said the Scarecrow.

"Or give me a heart," said the Tin Woodman.

"Or send me back to Kansas," said Dorothy.

"Then, if you don't mind, I'll go with you," said the Lion, "for my
life is simply unbearable without a bit of courage."

"You will be very welcome," answered Dorothy, "for you will help to
keep away the other wild beasts.  It seems to me they must be more
cowardly than you are if they allow you to scare them so easily."

"They really are," said the Lion, "but that doesn't make me any braver,
and as long as I know myself to be a coward I shall be unhappy."

So once more the little company set off upon the journey, the Lion
walking with stately strides at Dorothy's side.  Toto did not approve of
this new comrade at first, for he could not forget how nearly he had
been crushed between the Lion's great jaws.  But after a time he became
more at ease, and presently Toto and the Cowardly Lion had grown to be
good friends.

During the rest of that day there was no other adventure to mar the
peace of their journey.  Once, indeed, the Tin Woodman stepped upon a
beetle that was crawling along the road, and killed the poor little
thing.  This made the Tin Woodman very unhappy, for he was always
careful not to hurt any living creature; and as he walked along he wept
several tears of sorrow and regret.  These tears ran slowly down his
face and over the hinges of his jaw, and there they rusted.  When
Dorothy presently asked him a question the Tin Woodman could not open
his mouth, for his jaws were tightly rusted together.  He became
greatly frightened at this and made many motions to Dorothy to relieve
him, but she could not understand.  The Lion was also puzzled to know
what was wrong.  But the Scarecrow seized the oil-can from Dorothy's
basket and oiled the Woodman's jaws, so that after a few moments he
could talk as well as before.

"This will serve me a lesson," said he, "to look where I step.  For if
I should kill another bug or beetle I should surely cry again, and
crying rusts my jaws so that I cannot speak."

Thereafter he walked very carefully, with his eyes on the road, and
when he saw a tiny ant toiling by he would step over it, so as not to
harm it.  The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore
he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything.

"You people with hearts," he said, "have something to guide you, and
need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very
careful.  When Oz gives me a heart of course I needn't mind so much."




7.  The Journey to the Great Oz


They were obliged to camp out that night under a large tree in the
forest, for there were no houses near.  The tree made a good, thick
covering to protect them from the dew, and the Tin Woodman chopped a
great pile of wood with his axe and Dorothy built a splendid fire that
warmed her and made her feel less lonely.  She and Toto ate the last of
their bread, and now she did not know what they would do for breakfast.

"If you wish," said the Lion, "I will go into the forest and kill a
deer for you.  You can roast it by the fire, since your tastes are so
peculiar that you prefer cooked food, and then you will have a very
good breakfast."

"Don't!  Please don't," begged the Tin Woodman.  "I should certainly
weep if you killed a poor deer, and then my jaws would rust again."

But the Lion went away into the forest and found his own supper, and no
one ever knew what it was, for he didn't mention it.  And the Scarecrow
found a tree full of nuts and filled Dorothy's basket with them, so
that she would not be hungry for a long time.  She thought this was
very kind and thoughtful of the Scarecrow, but she laughed heartily at
the awkward way in which the poor creature picked up the nuts.  His
padded hands were so clumsy and the nuts were so small that he dropped
almost as many as he put in the basket.  But the Scarecrow did not mind
how long it took him to fill the basket, for it enabled him to keep
away from the fire, as he feared a spark might get into his straw and
burn him up.  So he kept a good distance away from the flames, and only
came near to cover Dorothy with dry leaves when she lay down to sleep.
These kept her very snug and warm, and she slept soundly until morning.

When it was daylight, the girl bathed her face in a little rippling
brook, and soon after they all started toward the Emerald City.

This was to be an eventful day for the travelers.  They had hardly been
walking an hour when they saw before them a great ditch that crossed
the road and divided the forest as far as they could see on either
side.  It was a very wide ditch, and when they crept up to the edge and
looked into it they could see it was also very deep, and there were
many big, jagged rocks at the bottom.  The sides were so steep that
none of them could climb down, and for a moment it seemed that their
journey must end.

"What shall we do?" asked Dorothy despairingly.

"I haven't the faintest idea," said the Tin Woodman, and the Lion shook
his shaggy mane and looked thoughtful.

But the Scarecrow said, "We cannot fly, that is certain.  Neither can
we climb down into this great ditch.  Therefore, if we cannot jump over
it, we must stop where we are."

"I think I could jump over it," said the Cowardly Lion, after measuring
the distance carefully in his mind.

"Then we are all right," answered the Scarecrow, "for you can carry us
all over on your back, one at a time."

"Well, I'll try it," said the Lion.  "Who will go first?"

"I will," declared the Scarecrow, "for, if you found that you could not
jump over the gulf, Dorothy would be killed, or the Tin Woodman badly
dented on the rocks below.  But if I am on your back it will not matter
so much, for the fall would not hurt me at all."

"I am terribly afraid of falling, myself," said the Cowardly Lion, "but
I suppose there is nothing to do but try it.  So get on my back and we
will make the attempt."

The Scarecrow sat upon the Lion's back, and the big beast walked to the
edge of the gulf and crouched down.

"Why don't you run and jump?" asked the Scarecrow.

"Because that isn't the way we Lions do these things," he replied.
Then giving a great spring, he shot through the air and landed safely
on the other side.  They were all greatly pleased to see how easily he
did it, and after the Scarecrow had got down from his back the Lion
sprang across the ditch again.

Dorothy thought she would go next; so she took Toto in her arms and
climbed on the Lion's back, holding tightly to his mane with one hand.
The next moment it seemed as if she were flying through the air; and
then, before she had time to think about it, she was safe on the other
side.  The Lion went back a third time and got the Tin Woodman, and
then they all sat down for a few moments to give the beast a chance to
rest, for his great leaps had made his breath short, and he panted like
a big dog that has been running too long.

They found the forest very thick on this side, and it looked dark and
gloomy.  After the Lion had rested they started along the road of
yellow brick, silently wondering, each in his own mind, if ever they
would come to the end of the woods and reach the bright sunshine again.
To add to their discomfort, they soon heard strange noises in the
depths of the forest, and the Lion whispered to them that it was in
this part of the country that the Kalidahs lived.

"What are the Kalidahs?" asked the girl.

"They are monstrous beasts with bodies like bears and heads like
tigers," replied the Lion, "and with claws so long and sharp that they
could tear me in two as easily as I could kill Toto.  I'm terribly
afraid of the Kalidahs."

"I'm not surprised that you are," returned Dorothy.  "They must be
dreadful beasts."

The Lion was about to reply when suddenly they came to another gulf
across the road.  But this one was so broad and deep that the Lion knew
at once he could not leap across it.

So they sat down to consider what they should do, and after serious
thought the Scarecrow said:

"Here is a great tree, standing close to the ditch.  If the Tin Woodman
can chop it down, so that it will fall to the other side, we can walk
across it easily."

"That is a first-rate idea," said the Lion.  "One would almost suspect
you had brains in your head, instead of straw."

The Woodman set to work at once, and so sharp was his axe that the tree
was soon chopped nearly through.  Then the Lion put his strong front
legs against the tree and pushed with all his might, and slowly the big
tree tipped and fell with a crash across the ditch, with its top
branches on the other side.

They had just started to cross this queer bridge when a sharp growl
made them all look up, and to their horror they saw running toward them
two great beasts with bodies like bears and heads like tigers.

"They are the Kalidahs!" said the Cowardly Lion, beginning to tremble.

"Quick!" cried the Scarecrow.  "Let us cross over."

So Dorothy went first, holding Toto in her arms, the Tin Woodman
followed, and the Scarecrow came next.  The Lion, although he was
certainly afraid, turned to face the Kalidahs, and then he gave so loud
and terrible a roar that Dorothy screamed and the Scarecrow fell over
backward, while even the fierce beasts stopped short and looked at him
in surprise.

But, seeing they were bigger than the Lion, and remembering that there
were two of them and only one of him, the Kalidahs again rushed
forward, and the Lion crossed over the tree and turned to see what they
would do next.  Without stopping an instant the fierce beasts also
began to cross the tree.  And the Lion said to Dorothy:

"We are lost, for they will surely tear us to pieces with their sharp
claws.  But stand close behind me, and I will fight them as long as I
am alive."

"Wait a minute!" called the Scarecrow.  He had been thinking what was
best to be done, and now he asked the Woodman to chop away the end of
the tree that rested on their side of the ditch.  The Tin Woodman began
to use his axe at once, and, just as the two Kalidahs were nearly
across, the tree fell with a crash into the gulf, carrying the ugly,
snarling brutes with it, and both were dashed to pieces on the sharp
rocks at the bottom.

"Well," said the Cowardly Lion, drawing a long breath of relief, "I see
we are going to live a little while longer, and I am glad of it, for it
must be a very uncomfortable thing not to be alive.  Those creatures
frightened me so badly that my heart is beating yet."

"Ah," said the Tin Woodman sadly, "I wish I had a heart to beat."

This adventure made the travelers more anxious than ever to get out of
the forest, and they walked so fast that Dorothy became tired, and had
to ride on the Lion's back.  To their great joy the trees became
thinner the farther they advanced, and in the afternoon they suddenly
came upon a broad river, flowing swiftly just before them.  On the
other side of the water they could see the road of yellow brick running
through a beautiful country, with green meadows dotted with bright
flowers and all the road bordered with trees hanging full of delicious
fruits.  They were greatly pleased to see this delightful country
before them.

"How shall we cross the river?" asked Dorothy.

"That is easily done," replied the Scarecrow.  "The Tin Woodman must
build us a raft, so we can float to the other side."

So the Woodman took his axe and began to chop down small trees to make
a raft, and while he was busy at this the Scarecrow found on the
riverbank a tree full of fine fruit.  This pleased Dorothy, who had
eaten nothing but nuts all day, and she made a hearty meal of the ripe
fruit.

But it takes time to make a raft, even when one is as industrious and
untiring as the Tin Woodman, and when night came the work was not done.
So they found a cozy place under the trees where they slept well until
the morning; and Dorothy dreamed of the Emerald City, and of the good
Wizard Oz, who would soon send her back to her own home again.




8.  The Deadly Poppy Field


Our little party of travelers awakened the next morning refreshed and
full of hope, and Dorothy breakfasted like a princess off peaches and
plums from the trees beside the river.  Behind them was the dark forest
they had passed safely through, although they had suffered many
discouragements; but before them was a lovely, sunny country that
seemed to beckon them on to the Emerald City.

To be sure, the broad river now cut them off from this beautiful land.
But the raft was nearly done, and after the Tin Woodman had cut a few
more logs and fastened them together with wooden pins, they were ready
to start.  Dorothy sat down in the middle of the raft and held Toto in
her arms.  When the Cowardly Lion stepped upon the raft it tipped
badly, for he was big and heavy; but the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman
stood upon the other end to steady it, and they had long poles in their
hands to push the raft through the water.

They got along quite well at first, but when they reached the middle of
the river the swift current swept the raft downstream, farther and
farther away from the road of yellow brick.  And the water grew so deep
that the long poles would not touch the bottom.

"This is bad," said the Tin Woodman, "for if we cannot get to the land
we shall be carried into the country of the Wicked Witch of the West,
and she will enchant us and make us her slaves."

"And then I should get no brains," said the Scarecrow.

"And I should get no courage," said the Cowardly Lion.

"And I should get no heart," said the Tin Woodman.

"And I should never get back to Kansas," said Dorothy.

"We must certainly get to the Emerald City if we can," the Scarecrow
continued, and he pushed so hard on his long pole that it stuck fast in
the mud at the bottom of the river.  Then, before he could pull it out
again--or let go--the raft was swept away, and the poor Scarecrow was left
clinging to the pole in the middle of the river.

"Good-bye!" he called after them, and they were very sorry to leave
him.  Indeed, the Tin Woodman began to cry, but fortunately remembered
that he might rust, and so dried his tears on Dorothy's apron.

Of course this was a bad thing for the Scarecrow.

"I am now worse off than when I first met Dorothy," he thought.  "Then,
I was stuck on a pole in a cornfield, where I could make-believe scare
the crows, at any rate.  But surely there is no use for a Scarecrow
stuck on a pole in the middle of a river.  I am afraid I shall never
have any brains, after all!"

Down the stream the raft floated, and the poor Scarecrow was left far
behind.  Then the Lion said:

"Something must be done to save us.  I think I can swim to the shore
and pull the raft after me, if you will only hold fast to the tip of my
tail."

So he sprang into the water, and the Tin Woodman caught fast hold of
his tail.  Then the Lion began to swim with all his might toward the
shore.  It was hard work, although he was so big; but by and by they
were drawn out of the current, and then Dorothy took the Tin Woodman's
long pole and helped push the raft to the land.

They were all tired out when they reached the shore at last and stepped
off upon the pretty green grass, and they also knew that the stream had
carried them a long way past the road of yellow brick that led to the
Emerald City.

"What shall we do now?" asked the Tin Woodman, as the Lion lay down on
the grass to let the sun dry him.

"We must get back to the road, in some way," said Dorothy.

"The best plan will be to walk along the riverbank until we come to the
road again," remarked the Lion.

So, when they were rested, Dorothy picked up her basket and they
started along the grassy bank, to the road from which the river had
carried them.  It was a lovely country, with plenty of flowers and
fruit trees and sunshine to cheer them, and had they not felt so sorry
for the poor Scarecrow, they could have been very happy.

They walked along as fast as they could, Dorothy only stopping once to
pick a beautiful flower; and after a time the Tin Woodman cried out:
"Look!"

Then they all looked at the river and saw the Scarecrow perched upon
his pole in the middle of the water, looking very lonely and sad.

"What can we do to save him?" asked Dorothy.

The Lion and the Woodman both shook their heads, for they did not know.
So they sat down upon the bank and gazed wistfully at the Scarecrow
until a Stork flew by, who, upon seeing them, stopped to rest at the
water's edge.

"Who are you and where are you going?" asked the Stork.

"I am Dorothy," answered the girl, "and these are my friends, the Tin
Woodman and the Cowardly Lion;  and we are going to the Emerald City."

"This isn't the road," said the Stork, as she twisted her long neck and
looked sharply at the queer party.

"I know it," returned Dorothy, "but we have lost the Scarecrow, and are
wondering how we shall get him again."

"Where is he?" asked the Stork.

"Over there in the river," answered the little girl.

"If he wasn't so big and heavy I would get him for you," remarked the
Stork.

"He isn't heavy a bit," said Dorothy eagerly, "for he is stuffed with
straw; and if you will bring him back to us, we shall thank you ever
and ever so much."

"Well, I'll try," said the Stork, "but if I find he is too heavy to
carry I shall have to drop him in the river again."

So the big bird flew into the air and over the water till she came to
where the Scarecrow was perched upon his pole.  Then the Stork with her
great claws grabbed the Scarecrow by the arm and carried him up into
the air and back to the bank, where Dorothy and the Lion and the Tin
Woodman and Toto were sitting.

When the Scarecrow found himself among his friends again, he was so
happy that he hugged them all, even the Lion and Toto; and as they
walked along he sang "Tol-de-ri-de-oh!" at every step, he felt so gay.

"I was afraid I should have to stay in the river forever," he said,
"but the kind Stork saved me, and if I ever get any brains I shall find
the Stork again and do her some kindness in return."

"That's all right," said the Stork, who was flying along beside them.
"I always like to help anyone in trouble.  But I must go now, for my
babies are waiting in the nest for me.  I hope you will find the
Emerald City and that Oz will help you."

"Thank you," replied Dorothy, and then the kind Stork flew into the air
and was soon out of sight.

They walked along listening to the singing of the brightly colored
birds and looking at the lovely flowers which now became so thick that
the ground was carpeted with them.  There were big yellow and white and
blue and purple blossoms, besides great clusters of scarlet poppies,
which were so brilliant in color they almost dazzled Dorothy's eyes.

"Aren't they beautiful?" the girl asked, as she breathed in the spicy
scent of the bright flowers.

"I suppose so," answered the Scarecrow.  "When I have brains, I shall
probably like them better."

"If I only had a heart, I should love them," added the Tin Woodman.

"I always did like flowers," said the Lion.  "They seem so helpless
and frail.  But there are none in the forest so bright as these."

They now came upon more and more of the big scarlet poppies, and fewer
and fewer of the other flowers; and soon they found themselves in the
midst of a great meadow of poppies.  Now it is well known that when
there are many of these flowers together their odor is so powerful that
anyone who breathes it falls asleep, and if the sleeper is not carried
away from the scent of the flowers, he sleeps on and on forever.  But
Dorothy did not know this, nor could she get away from the bright red
flowers that were everywhere about; so presently her eyes grew heavy
and she felt she must sit down to rest and to sleep.

But the Tin Woodman would not let her do this.

"We must hurry and get back to the road of yellow brick before dark,"
he said; and the Scarecrow agreed with him.  So they kept walking until
Dorothy could stand no longer.  Her eyes closed in spite of herself and
she forgot where she was and fell among the poppies, fast asleep.

"What shall we do?" asked the Tin Woodman.

"If we leave her here she will die," said the Lion.  "The smell of the
flowers is killing us all.  I myself can scarcely keep my eyes open,
and the dog is asleep already."

It was true; Toto had fallen down beside his little mistress.  But the
Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, not being made of flesh, were not
troubled by the scent of the flowers.

"Run fast," said the Scarecrow to the Lion, "and get out of this deadly
flower bed as soon as you can.  We will bring the little girl with us,
but if you should fall asleep you are too big to be carried."

So the Lion aroused himself and bounded forward as fast as he could go.
In a moment he was out of sight.

"Let us make a chair with our hands and carry her," said the Scarecrow.
So they picked up Toto and put the dog in Dorothy's lap, and then they
made a chair with their hands for the seat and their arms for the arms
and carried the sleeping girl between them through the flowers.

On and on they walked, and it seemed that the great carpet of deadly
flowers that surrounded them would never end.  They followed the bend
of the river, and at last came upon their friend the Lion, lying fast
asleep among the poppies.  The flowers had been too strong for the huge
beast and he had given up at last, and fallen only a short distance
from the end of the poppy bed, where the sweet grass spread in
beautiful green fields before them.

"We can do nothing for him," said the Tin Woodman, sadly; "for he is
much too heavy to lift.  We must leave him here to sleep on forever,
and perhaps he will dream that he has found courage at last."

"I'm sorry," said the Scarecrow.  "The Lion was a very good comrade for
one so cowardly.  But let us go on."

They carried the sleeping girl to a pretty spot beside the river, far
enough from the poppy field to prevent her breathing any more of the
poison of the flowers, and here they laid her gently on the soft grass
and waited for the fresh breeze to waken her.




9.  The Queen of the Field Mice


"We cannot be far from the road of yellow brick, now," remarked the
Scarecrow, as he stood beside the girl, "for we have come nearly as far
as the river carried us away."

The Tin Woodman was about to reply when he heard a low growl, and
turning his head (which worked beautifully on hinges) he saw a strange
beast come bounding over the grass toward them.  It was, indeed, a
great yellow Wildcat, and the Woodman thought it must be chasing
something, for its ears were lying close to its head and its mouth was
wide open, showing two rows of ugly teeth, while its red eyes glowed
like balls of fire.  As it came nearer the Tin Woodman saw that running
before the beast was a little gray field mouse, and although he had no
heart he knew it was wrong for the Wildcat to try to kill such a
pretty, harmless creature.

So the Woodman raised his axe, and as the Wildcat ran by he gave it a
quick blow that cut the beast's head clean off from its body, and it
rolled over at his feet in two pieces.

The field mouse, now that it was freed from its enemy, stopped short;
and coming slowly up to the Woodman it said, in a squeaky little voice:

"Oh, thank you!  Thank you ever so much for saving my life."

"Don't speak of it, I beg of you," replied the Woodman.  "I have no
heart, you know, so I am careful to help all those who may need a
friend, even if it happens to be only a mouse."

"Only a mouse!" cried the little animal, indignantly.  "Why, I am a
Queen--the Queen of all the Field Mice!"

"Oh, indeed," said the Woodman, making a bow.

"Therefore you have done a great deed, as well as a brave one, in
saving my life," added the Queen.

At that moment several mice were seen running up as fast as their
little legs could carry them, and when they saw their Queen they
exclaimed:

"Oh, your Majesty, we thought you would be killed!  How did you manage
to escape the great Wildcat?"  They all bowed so low to the little
Queen that they almost stood upon their heads.

"This funny tin man," she answered, "killed the Wildcat and saved my
life.  So hereafter you must all serve him, and obey his slightest
wish."

"We will!" cried all the mice, in a shrill chorus.  And then they
scampered in all directions, for Toto had awakened from his sleep, and
seeing all these mice around him he gave one bark of delight and jumped
right into the middle of the group.  Toto had always loved to chase
mice when he lived in Kansas, and he saw no harm in it.

But the Tin Woodman caught the dog in his arms and held him tight,
while he called to the mice, "Come back!  Come back!  Toto shall not
hurt you."

At this the Queen of the Mice stuck her head out from underneath a
clump of grass and asked, in a timid voice, "Are you sure he will not
bite us?"

"I will not let him," said the Woodman; "so do not be afraid."

One by one the mice came creeping back, and Toto did not bark again,
although he tried to get out of the Woodman's arms, and would have
bitten him had he not known very well he was made of tin.  Finally one
of the biggest mice spoke.

"Is there anything we can do," it asked, "to repay you for saving the
life of our Queen?"

"Nothing that I know of," answered the Woodman; but the Scarecrow, who
had been trying to think, but could not because his head was stuffed
with straw, said, quickly, "Oh, yes; you can save our friend, the
Cowardly Lion, who is asleep in the poppy bed."

"A Lion!" cried the little Queen.  "Why, he would eat us all up."

"Oh, no," declared the Scarecrow; "this Lion is a coward."

"Really?" asked the Mouse.

"He says so himself," answered the Scarecrow, "and he would never hurt
anyone who is our friend.  If you will help us to save him I promise
that he shall treat you all with kindness."

"Very well," said the Queen, "we trust you.  But what shall we do?"

"Are there many of these mice which call you Queen and are willing to
obey you?"

"Oh, yes; there are thousands," she replied.

"Then send for them all to come here as soon as possible, and let each
one bring a long piece of string."

The Queen turned to the mice that attended her and told them to go at
once and get all her people.  As soon as they heard her orders they ran
away in every direction as fast as possible.

"Now," said the Scarecrow to the Tin Woodman, "you must go to those
trees by the riverside and make a truck that will carry the Lion."

So the Woodman went at once to the trees and began to work; and he soon
made a truck out of the limbs of trees, from which he chopped away all
the leaves and branches.  He fastened it together with wooden pegs and
made the four wheels out of short pieces of a big tree trunk.  So fast
and so well did he work that by the time the mice began to arrive the
truck was all ready for them.

They came from all directions, and there were thousands of them: big
mice and little mice and middle-sized mice; and each one brought a
piece of string in his mouth.  It was about this time that Dorothy woke
from her long sleep and opened her eyes.  She was greatly astonished to
find herself lying upon the grass, with thousands of mice standing
around and looking at her timidly.  But the Scarecrow told her about
everything, and turning to the dignified little Mouse, he said:

"Permit me to introduce to you her Majesty, the Queen."

Dorothy nodded gravely and the Queen made a curtsy, after which she
became quite friendly with the little girl.

The Scarecrow and the Woodman now began to fasten the mice to the
truck, using the strings they had brought.  One end of a string was
tied around the neck of each mouse and the other end to the truck.  Of
course the truck was a thousand times bigger than any of the mice who
were to draw it; but when all the mice had been harnessed, they were
able to pull it quite easily.  Even the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman
could sit on it, and were drawn swiftly by their queer little horses to
the place where the Lion lay asleep.

After a great deal of hard work, for the Lion was heavy, they managed
to get him up on the truck.  Then the Queen hurriedly gave her people
the order to start, for she feared if the mice stayed among the poppies
too long they also would fall asleep.

At first the little creatures, many though they were, could hardly stir
the heavily loaded truck; but the Woodman and the Scarecrow both pushed
from behind, and they got along better.  Soon they rolled the Lion out
of the poppy bed to the green fields, where he could breathe the sweet,
fresh air again, instead of the poisonous scent of the flowers.

Dorothy came to meet them and thanked the little mice warmly for saving
her companion from death.  She had grown so fond of the big Lion she
was glad he had been rescued.

Then the mice were unharnessed from the truck and scampered away
through the grass to their homes.  The Queen of the Mice was the last
to leave.

"If ever you need us again," she said, "come out into the field and
call, and we shall hear you and come to your assistance.  Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!" they all answered, and away the Queen ran, while Dorothy
held Toto tightly lest he should run after her and frighten her.

After this they sat down beside the Lion until he should awaken; and
the Scarecrow brought Dorothy some fruit from a tree near by, which she
ate for her dinner.




10.  The Guardian of the Gate


It was some time before the Cowardly Lion awakened, for he had lain
among the poppies a long while, breathing in their deadly fragrance;
but when he did open his eyes and roll off the truck he was very glad
to find himself still alive.

"I ran as fast as I could," he said, sitting down and yawning, "but the
flowers were too strong for me.  How did you get me out?"

Then they told him of the field mice, and how they had generously saved
him from death; and the Cowardly Lion laughed, and said:

"I have always thought myself very big and terrible; yet such little
things as flowers came near to killing me, and such small animals as
mice have saved my life.  How strange it all is!  But, comrades, what
shall we do now?"

"We must journey on until we find the road of yellow brick again," said
Dorothy, "and then we can keep on to the Emerald City."

So, the Lion being fully refreshed, and feeling quite himself again,
they all started upon the journey, greatly enjoying the walk through
the soft, fresh grass; and it was not long before they reached the road
of yellow brick and turned again toward the Emerald City where the
Great Oz dwelt.

The road was smooth and well paved, now, and the country about was
beautiful, so that the travelers rejoiced in leaving the forest far
behind, and with it the many dangers they had met in its gloomy shades.
Once more they could see fences built beside the road; but these were
painted green, and when they came to a small house, in which a farmer
evidently lived, that also was painted green.  They passed by several
of these houses during the afternoon, and sometimes people came to the
doors and looked at them as if they would like to ask questions; but no
one came near them nor spoke to them because of the great Lion, of
which they were very much afraid.  The people were all dressed in
clothing of a lovely emerald-green color and wore peaked hats like
those of the Munchkins.

"This must be the Land of Oz," said Dorothy, "and we are surely getting
near the Emerald City."

"Yes," answered the Scarecrow.  "Everything is green here, while in the
country of the Munchkins blue was the favorite color.  But the people
do not seem to be as friendly as the Munchkins, and I'm afraid we shall
be unable to find a place to pass the night."

"I should like something to eat besides fruit," said the girl, "and I'm
sure Toto is nearly starved.  Let us stop at the next house and talk to
the people."

So, when they came to a good-sized farmhouse, Dorothy walked boldly up
to the door and knocked.

A woman opened it just far enough to look out, and said, "What do you
want, child, and why is that great Lion with you?"

"We wish to pass the night with you, if you will allow us," answered
Dorothy; "and the Lion is my friend and comrade, and would not hurt you
for the world."

"Is he tame?" asked the woman, opening the door a little wider.

"Oh, yes," said the girl, "and he is a great coward, too.  He will be
more afraid of you than you are of him."

"Well," said the woman, after thinking it over and taking another peep
at the Lion, "if that is the case you may come in, and I will give you
some supper and a place to sleep."

So they all entered the house, where there were, besides the woman, two
children and a man.  The man had hurt his leg, and was lying on the
couch in a corner.  They seemed greatly surprised to see so strange a
company, and while the woman was busy laying the table the man asked:

"Where are you all going?"

"To the Emerald City," said Dorothy, "to see the Great Oz."

"Oh, indeed!" exclaimed the man.  "Are you sure that Oz will see you?"

"Why not?" she replied.

"Why, it is said that he never lets anyone come into his presence.  I
have been to the Emerald City many times, and it is a beautiful and
wonderful place; but I have never been permitted to see the Great Oz,
nor do I know of any living person who has seen him."

"Does he never go out?" asked the Scarecrow.

"Never.  He sits day after day in the great Throne Room of his Palace,
and even those who wait upon him do not see him face to face."

"What is he like?" asked the girl.

"That is hard to tell," said the man thoughtfully.  "You see, Oz is a
Great Wizard, and can take on any form he wishes.  So that some say he
looks like a bird; and some say he looks like an elephant; and some say
he looks like a cat.  To others he appears as a beautiful fairy, or a
brownie, or in any other form that pleases him.  But who the real Oz
is, when he is in his own form, no living person can tell."

"That is very strange," said Dorothy, "but we must try, in some way, to
see him, or we shall have made our journey for nothing."

"Why do you wish to see the terrible Oz?" asked the man.

"I want him to give me some brains," said the Scarecrow eagerly.

"Oh, Oz could do that easily enough," declared the man.  "He has more
brains than he needs."

"And I want him to give me a heart," said the Tin Woodman.

"That will not trouble him," continued the man, "for Oz has a large
collection of hearts, of all sizes and shapes."

"And I want him to give me courage," said the Cowardly Lion.

"Oz keeps a great pot of courage in his Throne Room," said the man,
"which he has covered with a golden plate, to keep it from running
over.  He will be glad to give you some."

"And I want him to send me back to Kansas," said Dorothy.

"Where is Kansas?" asked the man, with surprise.

"I don't know," replied Dorothy sorrowfully, "but it is my home, and
I'm sure it's somewhere."

"Very likely.  Well, Oz can do anything; so I suppose he will find
Kansas for you.  But first you must get to see him, and that will be a
hard task; for the Great Wizard does not like to see anyone, and he
usually has his own way.  But what do YOU want?" he continued, speaking
to Toto.  Toto only wagged his tail; for, strange to say, he could not
speak.

The woman now called to them that supper was ready, so they gathered
around the table and Dorothy ate some delicious porridge and a dish of
scrambled eggs and a plate of nice white bread, and enjoyed her meal.
The Lion ate some of the porridge, but did not care for it, saying it
was made from oats and oats were food for horses, not for lions.  The
Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman ate nothing at all.  Toto ate a little of
everything, and was glad to get a good supper again.

The woman now gave Dorothy a bed to sleep in, and Toto lay down beside
her, while the Lion guarded the door of her room so she might not be
disturbed.  The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman stood up in a corner and
kept quiet all night, although of course they could not sleep.

The next morning, as soon as the sun was up, they started on their way,
and soon saw a beautiful green glow in the sky just before them.

"That must be the Emerald City," said Dorothy.

As they walked on, the green glow became brighter and brighter, and it
seemed that at last they were nearing the end of their travels.  Yet it
was afternoon before they came to the great wall that surrounded the
City.  It was high and thick and of a bright green color.

In front of them, and at the end of the road of yellow brick, was a big
gate, all studded with emeralds that glittered so in the sun that even
the painted eyes of the Scarecrow were dazzled by their brilliancy.

There was a bell beside the gate, and Dorothy pushed the button and
heard a silvery tinkle sound within.  Then the big gate swung slowly
open, and they all passed through and found themselves in a high arched
room, the walls of which glistened with countless emeralds.

Before them stood a little man about the same size as the Munchkins.
He was clothed all in green, from his head to his feet, and even his
skin was of a greenish tint.  At his side was a large green box.

When he saw Dorothy and her companions the man asked, "What do you wish
in the Emerald City?"

"We came here to see the Great Oz," said Dorothy.

The man was so surprised at this answer that he sat down to think it
over.

"It has been many years since anyone asked me to see Oz," he said,
shaking his head in perplexity.  "He is powerful and terrible, and if
you come on an idle or foolish errand to bother the wise reflections of
the Great Wizard, he might be angry and destroy you all in an instant."

"But it is not a foolish errand, nor an idle one," replied the
Scarecrow; "it is important.  And we have been told that Oz is a good
Wizard."

"So he is," said the green man, "and he rules the Emerald City wisely
and well.  But to those who are not honest, or who approach him from
curiosity, he is most terrible, and few have ever dared ask to see his
face.  I am the Guardian of the Gates, and since you demand to see the
Great Oz I must take you to his Palace.  But first you must put on the
spectacles."

"Why?" asked Dorothy.

"Because if you did not wear spectacles the brightness and glory of the
Emerald City would blind you.  Even those who live in the City must
wear spectacles night and day.  They are all locked on, for Oz so
ordered it when the City was first built, and I have the only key that
will unlock them."

He opened the big box, and Dorothy saw that it was filled with
spectacles of every size and shape.  All of them had green glasses in
them.  The Guardian of the Gates found a pair that would just fit
Dorothy and put them over her eyes.  There were two golden bands
fastened to them that passed around the back of her head, where they
were locked together by a little key that was at the end of a chain the
Guardian of the Gates wore around his neck.  When they were on, Dorothy
could not take them off had she wished, but of course she did not wish
to be blinded by the glare of the Emerald City, so she said nothing.

Then the green man fitted spectacles for the Scarecrow and the Tin
Woodman and the Lion, and even on little Toto; and all were locked fast
with the key.

Then the Guardian of the Gates put on his own glasses and told them he
was ready to show them to the Palace.  Taking a big golden key from a
peg on the wall, he opened another gate, and they all followed him
through the portal into the streets of the Emerald City.




11.  The Wonderful City of Oz


Even with eyes protected by the green spectacles, Dorothy and her
friends were at first dazzled by the brilliancy of the wonderful City.
The streets were lined with beautiful houses all built of green marble
and studded everywhere with sparkling emeralds.  They walked over a
pavement of the same green marble, and where the blocks were joined
together were rows of emeralds, set closely, and glittering in the
brightness of the sun.  The window panes were of green glass; even the
sky above the City had a green tint, and the rays of the sun were green.

There were many people--men, women, and children--walking about, and
these were all dressed in green clothes and had greenish skins.  They
looked at Dorothy and her strangely assorted company with wondering
eyes, and the children all ran away and hid behind their mothers when
they saw the Lion; but no one spoke to them.  Many shops stood in the
street, and Dorothy saw that everything in them was green.  Green candy
and green pop corn were offered for sale, as well as green shoes, green
hats, and green clothes of all sorts.  At one place a man was selling
green lemonade, and when the children bought it Dorothy could see that
they paid for it with green pennies.

There seemed to be no horses nor animals of any kind; the men carried
things around in little green carts, which they pushed before them.
Everyone seemed happy and contented and prosperous.

The Guardian of the Gates led them through the streets until they came
to a big building, exactly in the middle of the City, which was the
Palace of Oz, the Great Wizard.  There was a soldier before the door,
dressed in a green uniform and wearing a long green beard.

"Here are strangers," said the Guardian of the Gates to him, "and they
demand to see the Great Oz."

"Step inside," answered the soldier, "and I will carry your message to
him."

So they passed through the Palace Gates and were led into a big room
with a green carpet and lovely green furniture set with emeralds.  The
soldier made them all wipe their feet upon a green mat before entering
this room, and when they were seated he said politely:

"Please make yourselves comfortable while I go to the door of the
Throne Room and tell Oz you are here."

They had to wait a long time before the soldier returned.  When, at
last, he came back, Dorothy asked:

"Have you seen Oz?"

"Oh, no," returned the soldier; "I have never seen him.  But I spoke to
him as he sat behind his screen and gave him your message.  He said he
will grant you an audience, if you so desire; but each one of you must
enter his presence alone, and he will admit but one each day.
Therefore, as you must remain in the Palace for several days, I will
have you shown to rooms where you may rest in comfort after your
journey."

"Thank you," replied the girl; "that is very kind of Oz."

The soldier now blew upon a green whistle, and at once a young girl,
dressed in a pretty green silk gown, entered the room.  She had lovely
green hair and green eyes, and she bowed low before Dorothy as she
said, "Follow me and I will show you your room."

So Dorothy said good-bye to all her friends except Toto, and taking the
dog in her arms followed the green girl through seven passages and up
three flights of stairs until they came to a room at the front of the
Palace.  It was the sweetest little room in the world, with a soft
comfortable bed that had sheets of green silk and a green velvet
counterpane.  There was a tiny fountain in the middle of the room, that
shot a spray of green perfume into the air, to fall back into a
beautifully carved green marble basin.  Beautiful green flowers stood
in the windows, and there was a shelf with a row of little green books.
When Dorothy had time to open these books she found them full of queer
green pictures that made her laugh, they were so funny.

In a wardrobe were many green dresses, made of silk and satin and
velvet; and all of them fitted Dorothy exactly.

"Make yourself perfectly at home," said the green girl, "and if you
wish for anything ring the bell.  Oz will send for you tomorrow
morning."

She left Dorothy alone and went back to the others.  These she also led
to rooms, and each one of them found himself lodged in a very pleasant
part of the Palace.  Of course this politeness was wasted on the
Scarecrow; for when he found himself alone in his room he stood
stupidly in one spot, just within the doorway, to wait till morning.
It would not rest him to lie down, and he could not close his eyes; so
he remained all night staring at a little spider which was weaving its
web in a corner of the room, just as if it were not one of the most
wonderful rooms in the world.  The Tin Woodman lay down on his bed from
force of habit, for he remembered when he was made of flesh; but not
being able to sleep, he passed the night moving his joints up and down
to make sure they kept in good working order.  The Lion would have
preferred a bed of dried leaves in the forest, and did not like being
shut up in a room; but he had too much sense to let this worry him, so
he sprang upon the bed and rolled himself up like a cat and purred
himself asleep in a minute.

The next morning, after breakfast, the green maiden came to fetch
Dorothy, and she dressed her in one of the prettiest gowns, made of
green brocaded satin.  Dorothy put on a green silk apron and tied a
green ribbon around Toto's neck, and they started for the Throne Room
of the Great Oz.

First they came to a great hall in which were many ladies and gentlemen
of the court, all dressed in rich costumes.  These people had nothing
to do but talk to each other, but they always came to wait outside the
Throne Room every morning, although they were never permitted to see
Oz.  As Dorothy entered they looked at her curiously, and one of them
whispered:

"Are you really going to look upon the face of Oz the Terrible?"

"Of course," answered the girl, "if he will see me."

"Oh, he will see you," said the soldier who had taken her message to
the Wizard, "although he does not like to have people ask to see him.
Indeed, at first he was angry and said I should send you back where you
came from.  Then he asked me what you looked like, and when I mentioned
your silver shoes he was very much interested.  At last I told him
about the mark upon your forehead, and he decided he would admit you to
his presence."

Just then a bell rang, and the green girl said to Dorothy, "That is the
signal.  You must go into the Throne Room alone."

She opened a little door and Dorothy walked boldly through and found
herself in a wonderful place.  It was a big, round room with a high
arched roof, and the walls and ceiling and floor were covered with
large emeralds set closely together.  In the center of the roof was a
great light, as bright as the sun, which made the emeralds sparkle in a
wonderful manner.

But what interested Dorothy most was the big throne of green marble
that stood in the middle of the room.  It was shaped like a chair and
sparkled with gems, as did everything else.  In the center of the chair
was an enormous Head, without a body to support it or any arms or legs
whatever.  There was no hair upon this head, but it had eyes and a nose
and mouth, and was much bigger than the head of the biggest giant.

As Dorothy gazed upon this in wonder and fear, the eyes turned slowly
and looked at her sharply and steadily.  Then the mouth moved, and
Dorothy heard a voice say:

"I am Oz, the Great and Terrible.  Who are you, and why do you seek me?"

It was not such an awful voice as she had expected to come from the big
Head; so she took courage and answered:

"I am Dorothy, the Small and Meek.  I have come to you for help."

The eyes looked at her thoughtfully for a full minute.  Then said the
voice:

"Where did you get the silver shoes?"

"I got them from the Wicked Witch of the East, when my house fell on
her and killed her," she replied.

"Where did you get the mark upon your forehead?" continued the voice.

"That is where the Good Witch of the North kissed me when she bade me
good-bye and sent me to you," said the girl.

Again the eyes looked at her sharply, and they saw she was telling the
truth.  Then Oz asked, "What do you wish me to do?"

"Send me back to Kansas, where my Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are," she
answered earnestly.  "I don't like your country, although it is so
beautiful.  And I am sure Aunt Em will be dreadfully worried over my
being away so long."

The eyes winked three times, and then they turned up to the ceiling and
down to the floor and rolled around so queerly that they seemed to see
every part of the room.  And at last they looked at Dorothy again.

"Why should I do this for you?" asked Oz.

"Because you are strong and I am weak; because you are a Great Wizard
and I am only a little girl."

"But you were strong enough to kill the Wicked Witch of the East," said
Oz.

"That just happened," returned Dorothy simply; "I could not help it."

"Well," said the Head, "I will give you my answer.  You have no right
to expect me to send you back to Kansas unless you do something for me
in return.  In this country everyone must pay for everything he gets.
If you wish me to use my magic power to send you home again you must do
something for me first.  Help me and I will help you."

"What must I do?" asked the girl.

"Kill the Wicked Witch of the West," answered Oz.

"But I cannot!" exclaimed Dorothy, greatly surprised.

"You killed the Witch of the East and you wear the silver shoes, which
bear a powerful charm.  There is now but one Wicked Witch left in all
this land, and when you can tell me she is dead I will send you back to
Kansas--but not before."

The little girl began to weep, she was so much disappointed; and the
eyes winked again and looked upon her anxiously, as if the Great Oz
felt that she could help him if she would.

"I never killed anything, willingly," she sobbed.  "Even if I wanted
to, how could I kill the Wicked Witch?  If you, who are Great and
Terrible, cannot kill her yourself, how do you expect me to do it?"

"I do not know," said the Head; "but that is my answer, and until the
Wicked Witch dies you will not see your uncle and aunt again.  Remember
that the Witch is Wicked--tremendously Wicked--and ought to be killed.
Now go, and do not ask to see me again until you have done your task."

Sorrowfully Dorothy left the Throne Room and went back where the Lion
and the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman were waiting to hear what Oz had
said to her.  "There is no hope for me," she said sadly, "for Oz will
not send me home until I have killed the Wicked Witch of the West; and
that I can never do."

Her friends were sorry, but could do nothing to help her; so Dorothy
went to her own room and lay down on the bed and cried herself to sleep.

The next morning the soldier with the green whiskers came to the
Scarecrow and said:

"Come with me, for Oz has sent for you."

So the Scarecrow followed him and was admitted into the great Throne
Room, where he saw, sitting in the emerald throne, a most lovely Lady.
She was dressed in green silk gauze and wore upon her flowing green
locks a crown of jewels.  Growing from her shoulders were wings,
gorgeous in color and so light that they fluttered if the slightest
breath of air reached them.

When the Scarecrow had bowed, as prettily as his straw stuffing would
let him, before this beautiful creature, she looked upon him sweetly,
and said:

"I am Oz, the Great and Terrible.  Who are you, and why do you seek me?"

Now the Scarecrow, who had expected to see the great Head Dorothy had
told him of, was much astonished; but he answered her bravely.

"I am only a Scarecrow, stuffed with straw.  Therefore I have no
brains, and I come to you praying that you will put brains in my head
instead of straw, so that I may become as much a man as any other in
your dominions."

"Why should I do this for you?" asked the Lady.

"Because you are wise and powerful, and no one else can help me,"
answered the Scarecrow.

"I never grant favors without some return," said Oz; "but this much I
will promise.  If you will kill for me the Wicked Witch of the West, I
will bestow upon you a great many brains, and such good brains that you
will be the wisest man in all the Land of Oz."

"I thought you asked Dorothy to kill the Witch," said the Scarecrow, in
surprise.

"So I did.  I don't care who kills her.  But until she is dead I will
not grant your wish.  Now go, and do not seek me again until you have
earned the brains you so greatly desire."

The Scarecrow went sorrowfully back to his friends and told them what
Oz had said; and Dorothy was surprised to find that the Great Wizard
was not a Head, as she had seen him, but a lovely Lady.

"All the same," said the Scarecrow, "she needs a heart as much as the
Tin Woodman."

On the next morning the soldier with the green whiskers came to the Tin
Woodman and said:

"Oz has sent for you.  Follow me."

So the Tin Woodman followed him and came to the great Throne Room.  He
did not know whether he would find Oz a lovely Lady or a Head, but he
hoped it would be the lovely Lady.  "For," he said to himself, "if it
is the head, I am sure I shall not be given a heart, since a head has
no heart of its own and therefore cannot feel for me.  But if it is the
lovely Lady I shall beg hard for a heart, for all ladies are themselves
said to be kindly hearted."

But when the Woodman entered the great Throne Room he saw neither the
Head nor the Lady, for Oz had taken the shape of a most terrible Beast.
It was nearly as big as an elephant, and the green throne seemed hardly
strong enough to hold its weight.  The Beast had a head like that of a
rhinoceros, only there were five eyes in its face.  There were five
long arms growing out of its body, and it also had five long, slim
legs.  Thick, woolly hair covered every part of it, and a more
dreadful-looking monster could not be imagined.  It was fortunate the
Tin Woodman had no heart at that moment, for it would have beat loud
and fast from terror.  But being only tin, the Woodman was not at all
afraid, although he was much disappointed.

"I am Oz, the Great and Terrible," spoke the Beast, in a voice that was
one great roar.  "Who are you, and why do you seek me?"

"I am a Woodman, and made of tin.  Therefore I have no heart, and
cannot love.  I pray you to give me a heart that I may be as other men
are."

"Why should I do this?" demanded the Beast.

"Because I ask it, and you alone can grant my request," answered the
Woodman.

Oz gave a low growl at this, but said, gruffly: "If you indeed desire a
heart, you must earn it."

"How?" asked the Woodman.

"Help Dorothy to kill the Wicked Witch of the West," replied the Beast.
"When the Witch is dead, come to me, and I will then give you the
biggest and kindest and most loving heart in all the Land of Oz."

So the Tin Woodman was forced to return sorrowfully to his friends and
tell them of the terrible Beast he had seen.  They all wondered greatly
at the many forms the Great Wizard could take upon himself, and the
Lion said:

"If he is a Beast when I go to see him, I shall roar my loudest, and so
frighten him that he will grant all I ask.  And if he is the lovely
Lady, I shall pretend to spring upon her, and so compel her to do my
bidding.  And if he is the great Head, he will be at my mercy; for I
will roll this head all about the room until he promises to give us
what we desire.  So be of good cheer, my friends, for all will yet be
well."

The next morning the soldier with the green whiskers led the Lion to
the great Throne Room and bade him enter the presence of Oz.

The Lion at once passed through the door, and glancing around saw, to
his surprise, that before the throne was a Ball of Fire, so fierce and
glowing he could scarcely bear to gaze upon it.  His first thought was
that Oz had by accident caught on fire and was burning up; but when he
tried to go nearer, the heat was so intense that it singed his
whiskers, and he crept back tremblingly to a spot nearer the door.

Then a low, quiet voice came from the Ball of Fire, and these were the
words it spoke:

"I am Oz, the Great and Terrible.  Who are you, and why do you seek me?"

And the Lion answered, "I am a Cowardly Lion, afraid of everything.  I
came to you to beg that you give me courage, so that in reality I may
become the King of Beasts, as men call me."

"Why should I give you courage?" demanded Oz.

"Because of all Wizards you are the greatest, and alone have power to
grant my request," answered the Lion.

The Ball of Fire burned fiercely for a time, and the voice said, "Bring
me proof that the Wicked Witch is dead, and that moment I will give you
courage.  But as long as the Witch lives, you must remain a coward."

The Lion was angry at this speech, but could say nothing in reply, and
while he stood silently gazing at the Ball of Fire it became so
furiously hot that he turned tail and rushed from the room.  He was
glad to find his friends waiting for him, and told them of his terrible
interview with the Wizard.

"What shall we do now?" asked Dorothy sadly.

"There is only one thing we can do," returned the Lion, "and that is to
go to the land of the Winkies, seek out the Wicked Witch, and destroy
her."

"But suppose we cannot?" said the girl.

"Then I shall never have courage," declared the Lion.

"And I shall never have brains," added the Scarecrow.

"And I shall never have a heart," spoke the Tin Woodman.

"And I shall never see Aunt Em and Uncle Henry," said Dorothy,
beginning to cry.

"Be careful!" cried the green girl.  "The tears will fall on your green
silk gown and spot it."

So Dorothy dried her eyes and said, "I suppose we must try it; but I am
sure I do not want to kill anybody, even to see Aunt Em again."

"I will go with you; but I'm too much of a coward to kill the Witch,"
said the Lion.

"I will go too," declared the Scarecrow; "but I shall not be of much
help to you, I am such a fool."

"I haven't the heart to harm even a Witch," remarked the Tin Woodman;
"but if you go I certainly shall go with you."

Therefore it was decided to start upon their journey the next morning,
and the Woodman sharpened his axe on a green grindstone and had all his
joints properly oiled.  The Scarecrow stuffed himself with fresh straw
and Dorothy put new paint on his eyes that he might see better.  The
green girl, who was very kind to them, filled Dorothy's basket with
good things to eat, and fastened a little bell around Toto's neck with
a green ribbon.

They went to bed quite early and slept soundly until daylight, when
they were awakened by the crowing of a green cock that lived in the
back yard of the Palace, and the cackling of a hen that had laid a
green egg.




12.  The Search for the Wicked Witch


The soldier with the green whiskers led them through the streets of the
Emerald City until they reached the room where the Guardian of the
Gates lived.  This officer unlocked their spectacles to put them back
in his great box, and then he politely opened the gate for our friends.

"Which road leads to the Wicked Witch of the West?" asked Dorothy.

"There is no road," answered the Guardian of the Gates.  "No one ever
wishes to go that way."

"How, then, are we to find her?" inquired the girl.

"That will be easy," replied the man, "for when she knows you are in
the country of the Winkies she will find you, and make you all her
slaves."

"Perhaps not," said the Scarecrow, "for we mean to destroy her."

"Oh, that is different," said the Guardian of the Gates.  "No one has
ever destroyed her before, so I naturally thought she would make slaves
of you, as she has of the rest.  But take care; for she is wicked and
fierce, and may not allow you to destroy her.  Keep to the West, where
the sun sets, and you cannot fail to find her."

They thanked him and bade him good-bye, and turned toward the West,
walking over fields of soft grass dotted here and there with daisies
and buttercups.  Dorothy still wore the pretty silk dress she had put
on in the palace, but now, to her surprise, she found it was no longer
green, but pure white.  The ribbon around Toto's neck had also lost its
green color and was as white as Dorothy's dress.

The Emerald City was soon left far behind.  As they advanced the ground
became rougher and hillier, for there were no farms nor houses in this
country of the West, and the ground was untilled.

In the afternoon the sun shone hot in their faces, for there were no
trees to offer them shade; so that before night Dorothy and Toto and
the Lion were tired, and lay down upon the grass and fell asleep, with
the Woodman and the Scarecrow keeping watch.

Now the Wicked Witch of the West had but one eye, yet that was as
powerful as a telescope, and could see everywhere.  So, as she sat in
the door of her castle, she happened to look around and saw Dorothy
lying asleep, with her friends all about her.  They were a long
distance off, but the Wicked Witch was angry to find them in her
country; so she blew upon a silver whistle that hung around her neck.

At once there came running to her from all directions a pack of great
wolves.  They had long legs and fierce eyes and sharp teeth.

"Go to those people," said the Witch, "and tear them to pieces."

"Are you not going to make them your slaves?" asked the leader of the
wolves.

"No," she answered, "one is of tin, and one of straw; one is a girl and
another a Lion.  None of them is fit to work, so you may tear them into
small pieces."

"Very well," said the wolf, and he dashed away at full speed, followed
by the others.

It was lucky the Scarecrow and the Woodman were wide awake and heard
the wolves coming.

"This is my fight," said the Woodman, "so get behind me and I will meet
them as they come."

He seized his axe, which he had made very sharp, and as the leader of
the wolves came on the Tin Woodman swung his arm and chopped the wolf's
head from its body, so that it immediately died.  As soon as he could
raise his axe another wolf came up, and he also fell under the sharp
edge of the Tin Woodman's weapon.  There were forty wolves, and forty
times a wolf was killed, so that at last they all lay dead in a heap
before the Woodman.

Then he put down his axe and sat beside the Scarecrow, who said, "It
was a good fight, friend."

They waited until Dorothy awoke the next morning.  The little girl was
quite frightened when she saw the great pile of shaggy wolves, but the
Tin Woodman told her all.  She thanked him for saving them and sat down
to breakfast, after which they started again upon their journey.

Now this same morning the Wicked Witch came to the door of her castle
and looked out with her one eye that could see far off.  She saw all
her wolves lying dead, and the strangers still traveling through her
country.  This made her angrier than before, and she blew her silver
whistle twice.

Straightway a great flock of wild crows came flying toward her, enough
to darken the sky.

And the Wicked Witch said to the King Crow, "Fly at once to the
strangers; peck out their eyes and tear them to pieces."

The wild crows flew in one great flock toward Dorothy and her
companions.  When the little girl saw them coming she was afraid.

But the Scarecrow said, "This is my battle, so lie down beside me and
you will not be harmed."

So they all lay upon the ground except the Scarecrow, and he stood up
and stretched out his arms.  And when the crows saw him they were
frightened, as these birds always are by scarecrows, and did not dare
to come any nearer.  But the King Crow said:

"It is only a stuffed man.  I will peck his eyes out."

The King Crow flew at the Scarecrow, who caught it by the head and
twisted its neck until it died.  And then another crow flew at him, and
the Scarecrow twisted its neck also.  There were forty crows, and forty
times the Scarecrow twisted a neck, until at last all were lying dead
beside him.  Then he called to his companions to rise, and again they
went upon their journey.

When the Wicked Witch looked out again and saw all her crows lying in a
heap, she got into a terrible rage, and blew three times upon her
silver whistle.

Forthwith there was heard a great buzzing in the air, and a swarm of
black bees came flying toward her.

"Go to the strangers and sting them to death!" commanded the Witch, and
the bees turned and flew rapidly until they came to where Dorothy and
her friends were walking.  But the Woodman had seen them coming, and
the Scarecrow had decided what to do.

"Take out my straw and scatter it over the little girl and the dog and
the Lion," he said to the Woodman, "and the bees cannot sting them."
This the Woodman did, and as Dorothy lay close beside the Lion and held
Toto in her arms, the straw covered them entirely.

The bees came and found no one but the Woodman to sting, so they flew
at him and broke off all their stings against the tin, without hurting
the Woodman at all.  And as bees cannot live when their stings are
broken that was the end of the black bees, and they lay scattered thick
about the Woodman, like little heaps of fine coal.

Then Dorothy and the Lion got up, and the girl helped the Tin Woodman
put the straw back into the Scarecrow again, until he was as good as
ever.  So they started upon their journey once more.

The Wicked Witch was so angry when she saw her black bees in little
heaps like fine coal that she stamped her foot and tore her hair and
gnashed her teeth.  And then she called a dozen of her slaves, who were
the Winkies, and gave them sharp spears, telling them to go to the
strangers and destroy them.

The Winkies were not a brave people, but they had to do as they were
told.  So they marched away until they came near to Dorothy.  Then the
Lion gave a great roar and sprang towards them, and the poor Winkies
were so frightened that they ran back as fast as they could.

When they returned to the castle the Wicked Witch beat them well with a
strap, and sent them back to their work, after which she sat down to
think what she should do next.  She could not understand how all her
plans to destroy these strangers had failed; but she was a powerful
Witch, as well as a wicked one, and she soon made up her mind how to
act.

There was, in her cupboard, a Golden Cap, with a circle of diamonds and
rubies running round it.  This Golden Cap had a charm.  Whoever owned
it could call three times upon the Winged Monkeys, who would obey any
order they were given.  But no person could command these strange
creatures more than three times.  Twice already the Wicked Witch had
used the charm of the Cap.  Once was when she had made the Winkies her
slaves, and set herself to rule over their country.  The Winged Monkeys
had helped her do this.  The second time was when she had fought
against the Great Oz himself, and driven him out of the land of the
West.  The Winged Monkeys had also helped her in doing this.  Only once
more could she use this Golden Cap, for which reason she did not like
to do so until all her other powers were exhausted.  But now that her
fierce wolves and her wild crows and her stinging bees were gone, and
her slaves had been scared away by the Cowardly Lion, she saw there was
only one way left to destroy Dorothy and her friends.

So the Wicked Witch took the Golden Cap from her cupboard and placed it
upon her head.  Then she stood upon her left foot and said slowly:

"Ep-pe, pep-pe, kak-ke!"

Next she stood upon her right foot and said:

"Hil-lo, hol-lo, hel-lo!"

After this she stood upon both feet and cried in a loud voice:

"Ziz-zy, zuz-zy, zik!"

Now the charm began to work.  The sky was darkened, and a low rumbling
sound was heard in the air.  There was a rushing of many wings, a great
chattering and laughing, and the sun came out of the dark sky to show
the Wicked Witch surrounded by a crowd of monkeys, each with a pair of
immense and powerful wings on his shoulders.

One, much bigger than the others, seemed to be their leader.  He flew
close to the Witch and said, "You have called us for the third and last
time.  What do you command?"

"Go to the strangers who are within my land and destroy them all except
the Lion," said the Wicked Witch.  "Bring that beast to me, for I have
a mind to harness him like a horse, and make him work."

"Your commands shall be obeyed," said the leader.  Then, with a great
deal of chattering and noise, the Winged Monkeys flew away to the place
where Dorothy and her friends were walking.

Some of the Monkeys seized the Tin Woodman and carried him through the
air until they were over a country thickly covered with sharp rocks.
Here they dropped the poor Woodman, who fell a great distance to the
rocks, where he lay so battered and dented that he could neither move
nor groan.

Others of the Monkeys caught the Scarecrow, and with their long fingers
pulled all of the straw out of his clothes and head.  They made his hat
and boots and clothes into a small bundle and threw it into the top
branches of a tall tree.

The remaining Monkeys threw pieces of stout rope around the Lion and
wound many coils about his body and head and legs, until he was unable
to bite or scratch or struggle in any way.  Then they lifted him up and
flew away with him to the Witch's castle, where he was placed in a
small yard with a high iron fence around it, so that he could not
escape.

But Dorothy they did not harm at all.  She stood, with Toto in her
arms, watching the sad fate of her comrades and thinking it would soon
be her turn.  The leader of the Winged Monkeys flew up to her, his
long, hairy arms stretched out and his ugly face grinning terribly; but
he saw the mark of the Good Witch's kiss upon her forehead and stopped
short, motioning the others not to touch her.

"We dare not harm this little girl," he said to them, "for she is
protected by the Power of Good, and that is greater than the Power of
Evil.  All we can do is to carry her to the castle of the Wicked Witch
and leave her there."

So, carefully and gently, they lifted Dorothy in their arms and carried
her swiftly through the air until they came to the castle, where they
set her down upon the front doorstep.  Then the leader said to the
Witch:

"We have obeyed you as far as we were able.  The Tin Woodman and the
Scarecrow are destroyed, and the Lion is tied up in your yard.  The
little girl we dare not harm, nor the dog she carries in her arms.
Your power over our band is now ended, and you will never see us again."

Then all the Winged Monkeys, with much laughing and chattering and
noise, flew into the air and were soon out of sight.

The Wicked Witch was both surprised and worried when she saw the mark
on Dorothy's forehead, for she knew well that neither the Winged
Monkeys nor she, herself, dare hurt the girl in any way.  She looked
down at Dorothy's feet, and seeing the Silver Shoes, began to tremble
with fear, for she knew what a powerful charm belonged to them.  At
first the Witch was tempted to run away from Dorothy; but she happened
to look into the child's eyes and saw how simple the soul behind them
was, and that the little girl did not know of the wonderful power the
Silver Shoes gave her.  So the Wicked Witch laughed to herself, and
thought, "I can still make her my slave, for she does not know how to
use her power." Then she said to Dorothy, harshly and severely:

"Come with me; and see that you mind everything I tell you, for if you
do not I will make an end of you, as I did of the Tin Woodman and the
Scarecrow."

Dorothy followed her through many of the beautiful rooms in her castle
until they came to the kitchen, where the Witch bade her clean the pots
and kettles and sweep the floor and keep the fire fed with wood.

Dorothy went to work meekly, with her mind made up to work as hard as
she could; for she was glad the Wicked Witch had decided not to kill
her.

With Dorothy hard at work, the Witch thought she would go into the
courtyard and harness the Cowardly Lion like a horse; it would amuse
her, she was sure, to make him draw her chariot whenever she wished to
go to drive.  But as she opened the gate the Lion gave a loud roar and
bounded at her so fiercely that the Witch was afraid, and ran out and
shut the gate again.

"If I cannot harness you," said the Witch to the Lion, speaking through
the bars of the gate, "I can starve you.  You shall have nothing to eat
until you do as I wish."

So after that she took no food to the imprisoned Lion; but every day
she came to the gate at noon and asked, "Are you ready to be harnessed
like a horse?"

And the Lion would answer, "No.  If you come in this yard, I will bite
you."

The reason the Lion did not have to do as the Witch wished was that
every night, while the woman was asleep, Dorothy carried him food from
the cupboard.  After he had eaten he would lie down on his bed of
straw, and Dorothy would lie beside him and put her head on his soft,
shaggy mane, while they talked of their troubles and tried to plan some
way to escape.  But they could find no way to get out of the castle,
for it was constantly guarded by the yellow Winkies, who were the
slaves of the Wicked Witch and too afraid of her not to do as she told
them.

The girl had to work hard during the day, and often the Witch
threatened to beat her with the same old umbrella she always carried in
her hand.  But, in truth, she did not dare to strike Dorothy, because
of the mark upon her forehead.  The child did not know this, and was
full of fear for herself and Toto.  Once the Witch struck Toto a blow
with her umbrella and the brave little dog flew at her and bit her leg
in return.  The Witch did not bleed where she was bitten, for she was
so wicked that the blood in her had dried up many years before.

Dorothy's life became very sad as she grew to understand that it would
be harder than ever to get back to Kansas and Aunt Em again.  Sometimes
she would cry bitterly for hours, with Toto sitting at her feet and
looking into her face, whining dismally to show how sorry he was for
his little mistress.  Toto did not really care whether he was in Kansas
or the Land of Oz so long as Dorothy was with him; but he knew the
little girl was unhappy, and that made him unhappy too.

Now the Wicked Witch had a great longing to have for her own the Silver
Shoes which the girl always wore.  Her bees and her crows and her
wolves were lying in heaps and drying up, and she had used up all the
power of the Golden Cap; but if she could only get hold of the Silver
Shoes, they would give her more power than all the other things she had
lost.  She watched Dorothy carefully, to see if she ever took off her
shoes, thinking she might steal them.  But the child was so proud of
her pretty shoes that she never took them off except at night and when
she took her bath.  The Witch was too much afraid of the dark to dare
go in Dorothy's room at night to take the shoes, and her dread of water
was greater than her fear of the dark, so she never came near when
Dorothy was bathing.  Indeed, the old Witch never touched water, nor
ever let water touch her in any way.

But the wicked creature was very cunning, and she finally thought of a
trick that would give her what she wanted.  She placed a bar of iron in
the middle of the kitchen floor, and then by her magic arts made the
iron invisible to human eyes.  So that when Dorothy walked across the
floor she stumbled over the bar, not being able to see it, and fell at
full length.  She was not much hurt, but in her fall one of the Silver
Shoes came off; and before she could reach it, the Witch had snatched
it away and put it on her own skinny foot.

The wicked woman was greatly pleased with the success of her trick, for
as long as she had one of the shoes she owned half the power of their
charm, and Dorothy could not use it against her, even had she known how
to do so.

The little girl, seeing she had lost one of her pretty shoes, grew
angry, and said to the Witch, "Give me back my shoe!"

"I will not," retorted the Witch, "for it is now my shoe, and not
yours."

"You are a wicked creature!" cried Dorothy.  "You have no right to take
my shoe from me."

"I shall keep it, just the same," said the Witch, laughing at her, "and
someday I shall get the other one from you, too."

This made Dorothy so very angry that she picked up the bucket of water
that stood near and dashed it over the Witch, wetting her from head to
foot.

Instantly the wicked woman gave a loud cry of fear, and then, as
Dorothy looked at her in wonder, the Witch began to shrink and fall
away.

"See what you have done!" she screamed.  "In a minute I shall melt
away."

"I'm very sorry, indeed," said Dorothy, who was truly frightened to see
the Witch actually melting away like brown sugar before her very eyes.

"Didn't you know water would be the end of me?" asked the Witch, in a
wailing, despairing voice.

"Of course not," answered Dorothy.  "How should I?"

"Well, in a few minutes I shall be all melted, and you will have the
castle to yourself.  I have been wicked in my day, but I never thought
a little girl like you would ever be able to melt me and end my wicked
deeds.  Look out--here I go!"

With these words the Witch fell down in a brown, melted, shapeless mass
and began to spread over the clean boards of the kitchen floor.  Seeing
that she had really melted away to nothing, Dorothy drew another bucket
of water and threw it over the mess.  She then swept it all out the
door.  After picking out the silver shoe, which was all that was left
of the old woman, she cleaned and dried it with a cloth, and put it on
her foot again.  Then, being at last free to do as she chose, she ran
out to the courtyard to tell the Lion that the Wicked Witch of the West
had come to an end, and that they were no longer prisoners in a strange
land.




13.  The Rescue


The Cowardly Lion was much pleased to hear that the Wicked Witch had
been melted by a bucket of water, and Dorothy at once unlocked the gate
of his prison and set him free.  They went in together to the castle,
where Dorothy's first act was to call all the Winkies together and tell
them that they were no longer slaves.

There was great rejoicing among the yellow Winkies, for they had been
made to work hard during many years for the Wicked Witch, who had
always treated them with great cruelty.  They kept this day as a
holiday, then and ever after, and spent the time in feasting and
dancing.

"If our friends, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, were only with us,"
said the Lion, "I should be quite happy."

"Don't you suppose we could rescue them?" asked the girl anxiously.

"We can try," answered the Lion.

So they called the yellow Winkies and asked them if they would help to
rescue their friends, and the Winkies said that they would be delighted
to do all in their power for Dorothy, who had set them free from
bondage.  So she chose a number of the Winkies who looked as if they
knew the most, and they all started away.  They traveled that day and
part of the next until they came to the rocky plain where the Tin
Woodman lay, all battered and bent.  His axe was near him, but the
blade was rusted and the handle broken off short.

The Winkies lifted him tenderly in their arms, and carried him back to
the Yellow Castle again, Dorothy shedding a few tears by the way at the
sad plight of her old friend, and the Lion looking sober and sorry.
When they reached the castle Dorothy said to the Winkies:

"Are any of your people tinsmiths?"

"Oh, yes.  Some of us are very good tinsmiths," they told her.

"Then bring them to me," she said.  And when the tinsmiths came,
bringing with them all their tools in baskets, she inquired, "Can you
straighten out those dents in the Tin Woodman, and bend him back into
shape again, and solder him together where he is broken?"

The tinsmiths looked the Woodman over carefully and then answered that
they thought they could mend him so he would be as good as ever.  So
they set to work in one of the big yellow rooms of the castle and
worked for three days and four nights, hammering and twisting and
bending and soldering and polishing and pounding at the legs and body
and head of the Tin Woodman, until at last he was straightened out into
his old form, and his joints worked as well as ever.  To be sure, there
were several patches on him, but the tinsmiths did a good job, and as
the Woodman was not a vain man he did not mind the patches at all.

When, at last, he walked into Dorothy's room and thanked her for
rescuing him, he was so pleased that he wept tears of joy, and Dorothy
had to wipe every tear carefully from his face with her apron, so his
joints would not be rusted.  At the same time her own tears fell thick
and fast at the joy of meeting her old friend again, and these tears
did not need to be wiped away.  As for the Lion, he wiped his eyes so
often with the tip of his tail that it became quite wet, and he was
obliged to go out into the courtyard and hold it in the sun till it
dried.

"If we only had the Scarecrow with us again," said the Tin Woodman,
when Dorothy had finished telling him everything that had happened, "I
should be quite happy."

"We must try to find him," said the girl.

So she called the Winkies to help her, and they walked all that day and
part of the next until they came to the tall tree in the branches of
which the Winged Monkeys had tossed the Scarecrow's clothes.

It was a very tall tree, and the trunk was so smooth that no one could
climb it; but the Woodman said at once, "I'll chop it down, and then we
can get the Scarecrow's clothes."

Now while the tinsmiths had been at work mending the Woodman himself,
another of the Winkies, who was a goldsmith, had made an axe-handle of
solid gold and fitted it to the Woodman's axe, instead of the old
broken handle.  Others polished the blade until all the rust was
removed and it glistened like burnished silver.

As soon as he had spoken, the Tin Woodman began to chop, and in a short
time the tree fell over with a crash, whereupon the Scarecrow's clothes
fell out of the branches and rolled off on the ground.

Dorothy picked them up and had the Winkies carry them back to the
castle, where they were stuffed with nice, clean straw; and behold!
here was the Scarecrow, as good as ever, thanking them over and over
again for saving him.

Now that they were reunited, Dorothy and her friends spent a few happy
days at the Yellow Castle, where they found everything they needed to
make them comfortable.

But one day the girl thought of Aunt Em, and said, "We must go back to
Oz, and claim his promise."

"Yes," said the Woodman, "at last I shall get my heart."

"And I shall get my brains," added the Scarecrow joyfully.

"And I shall get my courage," said the Lion thoughtfully.

"And I shall get back to Kansas," cried Dorothy, clapping her hands.
"Oh, let us start for the Emerald City tomorrow!"

This they decided to do.  The next day they called the Winkies together
and bade them good-bye.  The Winkies were sorry to have them go, and
they had grown so fond of the Tin Woodman that they begged him to stay
and rule over them and the Yellow Land of the West.  Finding they were
determined to go, the Winkies gave Toto and the Lion each a golden
collar; and to Dorothy they presented a beautiful bracelet studded with
diamonds; and to the Scarecrow they gave a gold-headed walking stick,
to keep him from stumbling; and to the Tin Woodman they offered a
silver oil-can, inlaid with gold and set with precious jewels.

Every one of the travelers made the Winkies a pretty speech in return,
and all shook hands with them until their arms ached.

Dorothy went to the Witch's cupboard to fill her basket with food for
the journey, and there she saw the Golden Cap.  She tried it on her own
head and found that it fitted her exactly.  She did not know anything
about the charm of the Golden Cap, but she saw that it was pretty, so
she made up her mind to wear it and carry her sunbonnet in the basket.

Then, being prepared for the journey, they all started for the Emerald
City; and the Winkies gave them three cheers and many good wishes to
carry with them.




14.  The Winged Monkeys


You will remember there was no road--not even a pathway--between the
castle of the Wicked Witch and the Emerald City.  When the four
travelers went in search of the Witch she had seen them coming, and so
sent the Winged Monkeys to bring them to her.  It was much harder to
find their way back through the big fields of buttercups and yellow
daisies than it was being carried.  They knew, of course, they must go
straight east, toward the rising sun; and they started off in the right
way.  But at noon, when the sun was over their heads, they did not know
which was east and which was west, and that was the reason they were
lost in the great fields.  They kept on walking, however, and at night
the moon came out and shone brightly.  So they lay down among the sweet
smelling yellow flowers and slept soundly until morning--all but the
Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman.

The next morning the sun was behind a cloud, but they started on, as if
they were quite sure which way they were going.

"If we walk far enough," said Dorothy, "I am sure we shall sometime
come to some place."

But day by day passed away, and they still saw nothing before them but
the scarlet fields.  The Scarecrow began to grumble a bit.

"We have surely lost our way," he said, "and unless we find it again in
time to reach the Emerald City, I shall never get my brains."

"Nor I my heart," declared the Tin Woodman.  "It seems to me I can
scarcely wait till I get to Oz, and you must admit this is a very long
journey."

"You see," said the Cowardly Lion, with a whimper, "I haven't the
courage to keep tramping forever, without getting anywhere at all."

Then Dorothy lost heart.  She sat down on the grass and looked at her
companions, and they sat down and looked at her, and Toto found that
for the first time in his life he was too tired to chase a butterfly
that flew past his head.  So he put out his tongue and panted and
looked at Dorothy as if to ask what they should do next.

"Suppose we call the field mice," she suggested.  "They could probably
tell us the way to the Emerald City."

"To be sure they could," cried the Scarecrow.  "Why didn't we think of
that before?"

Dorothy blew the little whistle she had always carried about her neck
since the Queen of the Mice had given it to her.  In a few minutes they
heard the pattering of tiny feet, and many of the small gray mice came
running up to her.  Among them was the Queen herself, who asked, in her
squeaky little voice:

"What can I do for my friends?"

"We have lost our way," said Dorothy.  "Can you tell us where the
Emerald City is?"

"Certainly," answered the Queen; "but it is a great way off, for you
have had it at your backs all this time."  Then she noticed Dorothy's
Golden Cap, and said, "Why don't you use the charm of the Cap, and call
the Winged Monkeys to you?  They will carry you to the City of Oz in
less than an hour."

"I didn't know there was a charm," answered Dorothy, in surprise.
"What is it?"

"It is written inside the Golden Cap," replied the Queen of the Mice.
"But if you are going to call the Winged Monkeys we must run away, for
they are full of mischief and think it great fun to plague us."

"Won't they hurt me?" asked the girl anxiously.

"Oh, no.  They must obey the wearer of the Cap.  Good-bye!" And she
scampered out of sight, with all the mice hurrying after her.

Dorothy looked inside the Golden Cap and saw some words written upon
the lining.  These, she thought, must be the charm, so she read the
directions carefully and put the Cap upon her head.

"Ep-pe, pep-pe, kak-ke!" she said, standing on her left foot.

"What did you say?" asked the Scarecrow, who did not know what she was
doing.

"Hil-lo, hol-lo, hel-lo!"  Dorothy went on, standing this time on her
right foot.

"Hello!" replied the Tin Woodman calmly.

"Ziz-zy, zuz-zy, zik!" said Dorothy, who was now standing on both feet.
This ended the saying of the charm, and they heard a great chattering
and flapping of wings, as the band of Winged Monkeys flew up to them.

The King bowed low before Dorothy, and asked, "What is your command?"

"We wish to go to the Emerald City," said the child, "and we have lost
our way."

"We will carry you," replied the King, and no sooner had he spoken than
two of the Monkeys caught Dorothy in their arms and flew away with her.
Others took the Scarecrow and the Woodman and the Lion, and one little
Monkey seized Toto and flew after them, although the dog tried hard to
bite him.

The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman were rather frightened at first, for
they remembered how badly the Winged Monkeys had treated them before;
but they saw that no harm was intended, so they rode through the air
quite cheerfully, and had a fine time looking at the pretty gardens and
woods far below them.

Dorothy found herself riding easily between two of the biggest Monkeys,
one of them the King himself.  They had made a chair of their hands and
were careful not to hurt her.

"Why do you have to obey the charm of the Golden Cap?" she asked.

"That is a long story," answered the King, with a winged laugh; "but as
we have a long journey before us, I will pass the time by telling you
about it, if you wish."

"I shall be glad to hear it," she replied.

"Once," began the leader, "we were a free people, living happily in the
great forest, flying from tree to tree, eating nuts and fruit, and
doing just as we pleased without calling anybody master.  Perhaps some
of us were rather too full of mischief at times, flying down to pull
the tails of the animals that had no wings, chasing birds, and throwing
nuts at the people who walked in the forest.  But we were careless and
happy and full of fun, and enjoyed every minute of the day.  This was
many years ago, long before Oz came out of the clouds to rule over this
land.

"There lived here then, away at the North, a beautiful princess, who
was also a powerful sorceress.  All her magic was used to help the
people, and she was never known to hurt anyone who was good.  Her name
was Gayelette, and she lived in a handsome palace built from great
blocks of ruby.  Everyone loved her, but her greatest sorrow was that
she could find no one to love in return, since all the men were much
too stupid and ugly to mate with one so beautiful and wise.  At last,
however, she found a boy who was handsome and manly and wise beyond his
years.  Gayelette made up her mind that when he grew to be a man she
would make him her husband, so she took him to her ruby palace and used
all her magic powers to make him as strong and good and lovely as any
woman could wish.  When he grew to manhood, Quelala, as he was called,
was said to be the best and wisest man in all the land, while his manly
beauty was so great that Gayelette loved him dearly, and hastened to
make everything ready for the wedding.

"My grandfather was at that time the King of the Winged Monkeys which
lived in the forest near Gayelette's palace, and the old fellow loved a
joke better than a good dinner.  One day, just before the wedding, my
grandfather was flying out with his band when he saw Quelala walking
beside the river.  He was dressed in a rich costume of pink silk and
purple velvet, and my grandfather thought he would see what he could
do.  At his word the band flew down and seized Quelala, carried him in
their arms until they were over the middle of the river, and then
dropped him into the water.

"'Swim out, my fine fellow,' cried my grandfather, 'and see if the
water has spotted your clothes.'  Quelala was much too wise not to
swim, and he was not in the least spoiled by all his good fortune.  He
laughed, when he came to the top of the water, and swam in to shore.
But when Gayelette came running out to him she found his silks and
velvet all ruined by the river.

"The princess was angry, and she knew, of course, who did it.  She had
all the Winged Monkeys brought before her, and she said at first that
their wings should be tied and they should be treated as they had
treated Quelala, and dropped in the river.  But my grandfather pleaded
hard, for he knew the Monkeys would drown in the river with their wings
tied, and Quelala said a kind word for them also; so that Gayelette
finally spared them, on condition that the Winged Monkeys should ever
after do three times the bidding of the owner of the Golden Cap.  This
Cap had been made for a wedding present to Quelala, and it is said to
have cost the princess half her kingdom.  Of course my grandfather and
all the other Monkeys at once agreed to the condition, and that is how
it happens that we are three times the slaves of the owner of the
Golden Cap, whosoever he may be."

"And what became of them?" asked Dorothy, who had been greatly
interested in the story.

"Quelala being the first owner of the Golden Cap," replied the Monkey,
"he was the first to lay his wishes upon us.  As his bride could not
bear the sight of us, he called us all to him in the forest after he
had married her and ordered us always to keep where she could never
again set eyes on a Winged Monkey, which we were glad to do, for we
were all afraid of her.

"This was all we ever had to do until the Golden Cap fell into the
hands of the Wicked Witch of the West, who made us enslave the Winkies,
and afterward drive Oz himself out of the Land of the West.  Now the
Golden Cap is yours, and three times you have the right to lay your
wishes upon us."

As the Monkey King finished his story Dorothy looked down and saw the
green, shining walls of the Emerald City before them.  She wondered at
the rapid flight of the Monkeys, but was glad the journey was over.
The strange creatures set the travelers down carefully before the gate
of the City, the King bowed low to Dorothy, and then flew swiftly away,
followed by all his band.

"That was a good ride," said the little girl.

"Yes, and a quick way out of our troubles," replied the Lion.  "How
lucky it was you brought away that wonderful Cap!"




  15.  The Discovery of Oz, the Terrible


The four travelers walked up to the great gate of Emerald City and rang
the bell.  After ringing several times, it was opened by the same
Guardian of the Gates they had met before.

"What! are you back again?" he asked, in surprise.

"Do you not see us?" answered the Scarecrow.

"But I thought you had gone to visit the Wicked Witch of the West."

"We did visit her," said the Scarecrow.

"And she let you go again?" asked the man, in wonder.

"She could not help it, for she is melted," explained the Scarecrow.

"Melted!  Well, that is good news, indeed," said the man.  "Who melted
her?"

"It was Dorothy," said the Lion gravely.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed the man, and he bowed very low indeed before
her.

Then he led them into his little room and locked the spectacles from
the great box on all their eyes, just as he had done before.  Afterward
they passed on through the gate into the Emerald City.  When the people
heard from the Guardian of the Gates that Dorothy had melted the Wicked
Witch of the West, they all gathered around the travelers and followed
them in a great crowd to the Palace of Oz.

The soldier with the green whiskers was still on guard before the door,
but he let them in at once, and they were again met by the beautiful
green girl, who showed each of them to their old rooms at once, so they
might rest until the Great Oz was ready to receive them.

The soldier had the news carried straight to Oz that Dorothy and the
other travelers had come back again, after destroying the Wicked Witch;
but Oz made no reply.  They thought the Great Wizard would send for
them at once, but he did not.  They had no word from him the next day,
nor the next, nor the next.  The waiting was tiresome and wearing, and
at last they grew vexed that Oz should treat them in so poor a fashion,
after sending them to undergo hardships and slavery.  So the Scarecrow
at last asked the green girl to take another message to Oz, saying if
he did not let them in to see him at once they would call the Winged
Monkeys to help them, and find out whether he kept his promises or not.
When the Wizard was given this message he was so frightened that he
sent word for them to come to the Throne Room at four minutes after
nine o'clock the next morning.  He had once met the Winged Monkeys in
the Land of the West, and he did not wish to meet them again.

The four travelers passed a sleepless night, each thinking of the gift
Oz had promised to bestow on him.  Dorothy fell asleep only once, and
then she dreamed she was in Kansas, where Aunt Em was telling her how
glad she was to have her little girl at home again.

Promptly at nine o'clock the next morning the green-whiskered soldier
came to them, and four minutes later they all went into the Throne Room
of the Great Oz.

Of course each one of them expected to see the Wizard in the shape he
had taken before, and all were greatly surprised when they looked about
and saw no one at all in the room.  They kept close to the door and
closer to one another, for the stillness of the empty room was more
dreadful than any of the forms they had seen Oz take.

Presently they heard a solemn Voice, that seemed to come from somewhere
near the top of the great dome, and it said:

"I am Oz, the Great and Terrible.  Why do you seek me?"

They looked again in every part of the room, and then, seeing no one,
Dorothy asked, "Where are you?"

"I am everywhere," answered the Voice, "but to the eyes of common
mortals I am invisible.  I will now seat myself upon my throne, that
you may converse with me."  Indeed, the Voice seemed just then to come
straight from the throne itself; so they walked toward it and stood in
a row while Dorothy said:

"We have come to claim our promise, O Oz."

"What promise?" asked Oz.

"You promised to send me back to Kansas when the Wicked Witch was
destroyed," said the girl.

"And you promised to give me brains," said the Scarecrow.

"And you promised to give me a heart," said the Tin Woodman.

"And you promised to give me courage," said the Cowardly Lion.

"Is the Wicked Witch really destroyed?" asked the Voice, and Dorothy
thought it trembled a little.

"Yes," she answered, "I melted her with a bucket of water."

"Dear me," said the Voice, "how sudden!  Well, come to me tomorrow, for
I must have time to think it over."

"You've had plenty of time already," said the Tin Woodman angrily.

"We shan't wait a day longer," said the Scarecrow.

"You must keep your promises to us!" exclaimed Dorothy.

The Lion thought it might be as well to frighten the Wizard, so he gave
a large, loud roar, which was so fierce and dreadful that Toto jumped
away from him in alarm and tipped over the screen that stood in a
corner.  As it fell with a crash they looked that way, and the next
moment all of them were filled with wonder.  For they saw, standing in
just the spot the screen had hidden, a little old man, with a bald head
and a wrinkled face, who seemed to be as much surprised as they were.
The Tin Woodman, raising his axe, rushed toward the little man and
cried out, "Who are you?"

"I am Oz, the Great and Terrible," said the little man, in a trembling
voice.  "But don't strike me--please don't--and I'll do anything you
want me to."

Our friends looked at him in surprise and dismay.

"I thought Oz was a great Head," said Dorothy.

"And I thought Oz was a lovely Lady," said the Scarecrow.

"And I thought Oz was a terrible Beast," said the Tin Woodman.

"And I thought Oz was a Ball of Fire," exclaimed the Lion.

"No, you are all wrong," said the little man meekly.  "I have been
making believe."

"Making believe!" cried Dorothy.  "Are you not a Great Wizard?"

"Hush, my dear," he said.  "Don't speak so loud, or you will be
overheard--and I should be ruined.  I'm supposed to be a Great Wizard."

"And aren't you?" she asked.

"Not a bit of it, my dear; I'm just a common man."

"You're more than that," said the Scarecrow, in a grieved tone; "you're
a humbug."

"Exactly so!" declared the little man, rubbing his hands together as if
it pleased him.  "I am a humbug."

"But this is terrible," said the Tin Woodman.  "How shall I ever get my
heart?"

"Or I my courage?" asked the Lion.

"Or I my brains?" wailed the Scarecrow, wiping the tears from his eyes
with his coat sleeve.

"My dear friends," said Oz, "I pray you not to speak of these little
things.  Think of me, and the terrible trouble I'm in at being found
out."

"Doesn't anyone else know you're a humbug?" asked Dorothy.

"No one knows it but you four--and myself," replied Oz.  "I have fooled
everyone so long that I thought I should never be found out.  It was a
great mistake my ever letting you into the Throne Room.  Usually I will
not see even my subjects, and so they believe I am something terrible."

"But, I don't understand," said Dorothy, in bewilderment.  "How was it
that you appeared to me as a great Head?"

"That was one of my tricks," answered Oz.  "Step this way, please, and
I will tell you all about it."

He led the way to a small chamber in the rear of the Throne Room, and
they all followed him.  He pointed to one corner, in which lay the
great Head, made out of many thicknesses of paper, and with a carefully
painted face.

"This I hung from the ceiling by a wire," said Oz.  "I stood behind the
screen and pulled a thread, to make the eyes move and the mouth open."

"But how about the voice?" she inquired.

"Oh, I am a ventriloquist," said the little man.  "I can throw the
sound of my voice wherever I wish, so that you thought it was coming
out of the Head.  Here are the other things I used to deceive you."  He
showed the Scarecrow the dress and the mask he had worn when he seemed
to be the lovely Lady.  And the Tin Woodman saw that his terrible Beast
was nothing but a lot of skins, sewn together, with slats to keep their
sides out.  As for the Ball of Fire, the false Wizard had hung that
also from the ceiling.  It was really a ball of cotton, but when oil
was poured upon it the ball burned fiercely.

"Really," said the Scarecrow, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself for
being such a humbug."

"I am--I certainly am," answered the little man sorrowfully; "but it
was the only thing I could do.  Sit down, please, there are plenty of
chairs; and I will tell you my story."

So they sat down and listened while he told the following tale.

"I was born in Omaha--"

"Why, that isn't very far from Kansas!" cried Dorothy.

"No, but it's farther from here," he said, shaking his head at her
sadly.  "When I grew up I became a ventriloquist, and at that I was
very well trained by a great master.  I can imitate any kind of a bird
or beast."  Here he mewed so like a kitten that Toto pricked up his
ears and looked everywhere to see where she was.  "After a time,"
continued Oz, "I tired of that, and became a balloonist."

"What is that?" asked Dorothy.

"A man who goes up in a balloon on circus day, so as to draw a crowd of
people together and get them to pay to see the circus," he explained.

"Oh," she said, "I know."

"Well, one day I went up in a balloon and the ropes got twisted, so
that I couldn't come down again.  It went way up above the clouds, so
far that a current of air struck it and carried it many, many miles
away.  For a day and a night I traveled through the air, and on the
morning of the second day I awoke and found the balloon floating over a
strange and beautiful country.

"It came down gradually, and I was not hurt a bit.  But I found myself
in the midst of a strange people, who, seeing me come from the clouds,
thought I was a great Wizard.  Of course I let them think so, because
they were afraid of me, and promised to do anything I wished them to.

"Just to amuse myself, and keep the good people busy, I ordered them to
build this City, and my Palace; and they did it all willingly and well.
Then I thought, as the country was so green and beautiful, I would call
it the Emerald City; and to make the name fit better I put green
spectacles on all the people, so that everything they saw was green."

"But isn't everything here green?" asked Dorothy.

"No more than in any other city," replied Oz; "but when you wear green
spectacles, why of course everything you see looks green to you.  The
Emerald City was built a great many years ago, for I was a young man
when the balloon brought me here, and I am a very old man now.  But my
people have worn green glasses on their eyes so long that most of them
think it really is an Emerald City, and it certainly is a beautiful
place, abounding in jewels and precious metals, and every good thing
that is needed to make one happy.  I have been good to the people, and
they like me; but ever since this Palace was built, I have shut myself
up and would not see any of them.

"One of my greatest fears was the Witches, for while I had no magical
powers at all I soon found out that the Witches were really able to do
wonderful things.  There were four of them in this country, and they
ruled the people who live in the North and South and East and West.
Fortunately, the Witches of the North and South were good, and I knew
they would do me no harm; but the Witches of the East and West were
terribly wicked, and had they not thought I was more powerful than they
themselves, they would surely have destroyed me.  As it was, I lived in
deadly fear of them for many years; so you can imagine how pleased I
was when I heard your house had fallen on the Wicked Witch of the East.
When you came to me, I was willing to promise anything if you would
only do away with the other Witch; but, now that you have melted her, I
am ashamed to say that I cannot keep my promises."

"I think you are a very bad man," said Dorothy.

"Oh, no, my dear; I'm really a very good man, but I'm a very bad
Wizard, I must admit."

"Can't you give me brains?" asked the Scarecrow.

"You don't need them.  You are learning something every day.  A baby
has brains, but it doesn't know much.  Experience is the only thing
that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more
experience you are sure to get."

"That may all be true," said the Scarecrow, "but I shall be very
unhappy unless you give me brains."

The false Wizard looked at him carefully.

"Well," he said with a sigh, "I'm not much of a magician, as I said;
but if you will come to me tomorrow morning, I will stuff your head
with brains.  I cannot tell you how to use them, however; you must find
that out for yourself."

"Oh, thank you--thank you!" cried the Scarecrow.  "I'll find a way to
use them, never fear!"

"But how about my courage?" asked the Lion anxiously.

"You have plenty of courage, I am sure," answered Oz.  "All you need is
confidence in yourself.  There is no living thing that is not afraid
when it faces danger.  The True courage is in facing danger when you
are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty."

"Perhaps I have, but I'm scared just the same," said the Lion.  "I
shall really be very unhappy unless you give me the sort of courage
that makes one forget he is afraid."

"Very well, I will give you that sort of courage tomorrow," replied Oz.

"How about my heart?" asked the Tin Woodman.

"Why, as for that," answered Oz, "I think you are wrong to want a
heart.  It makes most people unhappy.  If you only knew it, you are in
luck not to have a heart."

"That must be a matter of opinion," said the Tin Woodman.  "For my
part, I will bear all the unhappiness without a murmur, if you will
give me the heart."

"Very well," answered Oz meekly.  "Come to me tomorrow and you shall
have a heart.  I have played Wizard for so many years that I may as
well continue the part a little longer."

"And now," said Dorothy, "how am I to get back to Kansas?"

"We shall have to think about that," replied the little man.  "Give me
two or three days to consider the matter and I'll try to find a way to
carry you over the desert.  In the meantime you shall all be treated as
my guests, and while you live in the Palace my people will wait upon
you and obey your slightest wish.  There is only one thing I ask in
return for my help--such as it is.  You must keep my secret and tell no
one I am a humbug."

They agreed to say nothing of what they had learned, and went back to
their rooms in high spirits.  Even Dorothy had hope that "The Great and
Terrible Humbug," as she called him, would find a way to send her back
to Kansas, and if he did she was willing to forgive him everything.




  16.  The Magic Art of the Great Humbug


Next morning the Scarecrow said to his friends:

"Congratulate me.  I am going to Oz to get my brains at last.  When I
return I shall be as other men are."

"I have always liked you as you were," said Dorothy simply.

"It is kind of you to like a Scarecrow," he replied.  "But surely you
will think more of me when you hear the splendid thoughts my new brain
is going to turn out."  Then he said good-bye to them all in a cheerful
voice and went to the Throne Room, where he rapped upon the door.

"Come in," said Oz.

The Scarecrow went in and found the little man sitting down by the
window, engaged in deep thought.

"I have come for my brains," remarked the Scarecrow, a little uneasily.

"Oh, yes; sit down in that chair, please," replied Oz.  "You must
excuse me for taking your head off, but I shall have to do it in order
to put your brains in their proper place."

"That's all right," said the Scarecrow.  "You are quite welcome to take
my head off, as long as it will be a better one when you put it on
again."

So the Wizard unfastened his head and emptied out the straw.  Then he
entered the back room and took up a measure of bran, which he mixed
with a great many pins and needles.  Having shaken them together
thoroughly, he filled the top of the Scarecrow's head with the mixture
and stuffed the rest of the space with straw, to hold it in place.

When he had fastened the Scarecrow's head on his body again he said to
him, "Hereafter you will be a great man, for I have given you a lot of
bran-new brains."

The Scarecrow was both pleased and proud at the fulfillment of his
greatest wish, and having thanked Oz warmly he went back to his friends.

Dorothy looked at him curiously.  His head was quite bulged out at the
top with brains.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"I feel wise indeed," he answered earnestly.  "When I get used to my
brains I shall know everything."

"Why are those needles and pins sticking out of your head?" asked the
Tin Woodman.

"That is proof that he is sharp," remarked the Lion.

"Well, I must go to Oz and get my heart," said the Woodman.  So he
walked to the Throne Room and knocked at the door.

"Come in," called Oz, and the Woodman entered and said, "I have come
for my heart."

"Very well," answered the little man.  "But I shall have to cut a hole
in your breast, so I can put your heart in the right place.  I hope it
won't hurt you."

"Oh, no," answered the Woodman.  "I shall not feel it at all."

So Oz brought a pair of tinsmith's shears and cut a small, square hole
in the left side of the Tin Woodman's breast.  Then, going to a chest
of drawers, he took out a pretty heart, made entirely of silk and
stuffed with sawdust.

"Isn't it a beauty?" he asked.

"It is, indeed!" replied the Woodman, who was greatly pleased.  "But is
it a kind heart?"

"Oh, very!" answered Oz.  He put the heart in the Woodman's breast and
then replaced the square of tin, soldering it neatly together where it
had been cut.

"There," said he; "now you have a heart that any man might be proud of.
I'm sorry I had to put a patch on your breast, but it really couldn't
be helped."

"Never mind the patch," exclaimed the happy Woodman.  "I am very
grateful to you, and shall never forget your kindness."

"Don't speak of it," replied Oz.

Then the Tin Woodman went back to his friends, who wished him every joy
on account of his good fortune.

The Lion now walked to the Throne Room and knocked at the door.

"Come in," said Oz.

"I have come for my courage," announced the Lion, entering the room.

"Very well," answered the little man; "I will get it for you."

He went to a cupboard and reaching up to a high shelf took down a
square green bottle, the contents of which he poured into a green-gold
dish, beautifully carved.  Placing this before the Cowardly Lion, who
sniffed at it as if he did not like it, the Wizard said:

"Drink."

"What is it?" asked the Lion.

"Well," answered Oz, "if it were inside of you, it would be courage.
You know, of course, that courage is always inside one; so that this
really cannot be called courage until you have swallowed it.  Therefore
I advise you to drink it as soon as possible."

The Lion hesitated no longer, but drank till the dish was empty.

"How do you feel now?" asked Oz.

"Full of courage," replied the Lion, who went joyfully back to his
friends to tell them of his good fortune.

Oz, left to himself, smiled to think of his success in giving the
Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman and the Lion exactly what they thought
they wanted.  "How can I help being a humbug," he said, "when all these
people make me do things that everybody knows can't be done?  It was
easy to make the Scarecrow and the Lion and the Woodman happy, because
they imagined I could do anything.  But it will take more than
imagination to carry Dorothy back to Kansas, and I'm sure I don't know
how it can be done."




17.  How the Balloon Was Launched


For three days Dorothy heard nothing from Oz.  These were sad days for
the little girl, although her friends were all quite happy and
contented.  The Scarecrow told them there were wonderful thoughts in
his head; but he would not say what they were because he knew no one
could understand them but himself.  When the Tin Woodman walked about
he felt his heart rattling around in his breast; and he told Dorothy he
had discovered it to be a kinder and more tender heart than the one he
had owned when he was made of flesh.  The Lion declared he was afraid
of nothing on earth, and would gladly face an army or a dozen of the
fierce Kalidahs.

Thus each of the little party was satisfied except Dorothy, who longed
more than ever to get back to Kansas.

On the fourth day, to her great joy, Oz sent for her, and when she
entered the Throne Room he greeted her pleasantly:

"Sit down, my dear; I think I have found the way to get you out of this
country."

"And back to Kansas?" she asked eagerly.

"Well, I'm not sure about Kansas," said Oz, "for I haven't the faintest
notion which way it lies.  But the first thing to do is to cross the
desert, and then it should be easy to find your way home."

"How can I cross the desert?" she inquired.

"Well, I'll tell you what I think," said the little man.  "You see,
when I came to this country it was in a balloon.  You also came through
the air, being carried by a cyclone.  So I believe the best way to get
across the desert will be through the air.  Now, it is quite beyond my
powers to make a cyclone; but I've been thinking the matter over, and I
believe I can make a balloon."

"How?" asked Dorothy.

"A balloon," said Oz, "is made of silk, which is coated with glue to
keep the gas in it.  I have plenty of silk in the Palace, so it will be
no trouble to make the balloon.  But in all this country there is no
gas to fill the balloon with, to make it float."

"If it won't float," remarked Dorothy, "it will be of no use to us."

"True," answered Oz.  "But there is another way to make it float, which
is to fill it with hot air.  Hot air isn't as good as gas, for if the
air should get cold the balloon would come down in the desert, and we
should be lost."

"We!" exclaimed the girl.  "Are you going with me?"

"Yes, of course," replied Oz.  "I am tired of being such a humbug.  If
I should go out of this Palace my people would soon discover I am not a
Wizard, and then they would be vexed with me for having deceived them.
So I have to stay shut up in these rooms all day, and it gets tiresome.
I'd much rather go back to Kansas with you and be in a circus again."

"I shall be glad to have your company," said Dorothy.

"Thank you," he answered.  "Now, if you will help me sew the silk
together, we will begin to work on our balloon."

So Dorothy took a needle and thread, and as fast as Oz cut the strips
of silk into proper shape the girl sewed them neatly together.  First
there was a strip of light green silk, then a strip of dark green and
then a strip of emerald green; for Oz had a fancy to make the balloon
in different shades of the color about them.  It took three days to sew
all the strips together, but when it was finished they had a big bag of
green silk more than twenty feet long.

Then Oz painted it on the inside with a coat of thin glue, to make it
airtight, after which he announced that the balloon was ready.

"But we must have a basket to ride in," he said.  So he sent the
soldier with the green whiskers for a big clothes basket, which he
fastened with many ropes to the bottom of the balloon.

When it was all ready, Oz sent word to his people that he was going to
make a visit to a great brother Wizard who lived in the clouds.  The
news spread rapidly throughout the city and everyone came to see the
wonderful sight.

Oz ordered the balloon carried out in front of the Palace, and the
people gazed upon it with much curiosity.  The Tin Woodman had chopped
a big pile of wood, and now he made a fire of it, and Oz held the
bottom of the balloon over the fire so that the hot air that arose from
it would be caught in the silken bag.  Gradually the balloon swelled
out and rose into the air, until finally the basket just touched the
ground.

Then Oz got into the basket and said to all the people in a loud voice:

"I am now going away to make a visit.  While I am gone the Scarecrow
will rule over you.  I command you to obey him as you would me."

The balloon was by this time tugging hard at the rope that held it to
the ground, for the air within it was hot, and this made it so much
lighter in weight than the air without that it pulled hard to rise into
the sky.

"Come, Dorothy!" cried the Wizard.  "Hurry up, or the balloon will fly
away."

"I can't find Toto anywhere," replied Dorothy, who did not wish to
leave her little dog behind.  Toto had run into the crowd to bark at a
kitten, and Dorothy at last found him.  She picked him up and ran
towards the balloon.

She was within a few steps of it, and Oz was holding out his hands to
help her into the basket, when, crack! went the ropes, and the balloon
rose into the air without her.

"Come back!" she screamed.  "I want to go, too!"

"I can't come back, my dear," called Oz from the basket.  "Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!" shouted everyone, and all eyes were turned upward to where
the Wizard was riding in the basket, rising every moment farther and
farther into the sky.

And that was the last any of them ever saw of Oz, the Wonderful Wizard,
though he may have reached Omaha safely, and be there now, for all we
know.  But the people remembered him lovingly, and said to one another:

"Oz was always our friend.  When he was here he built for us this
beautiful Emerald City, and now he is gone he has left the Wise
Scarecrow to rule over us."

Still, for many days they grieved over the loss of the Wonderful
Wizard, and would not be comforted.




18.  Away to the South


Dorothy wept bitterly at the passing of her hope to get home to Kansas
again; but when she thought it all over she was glad she had not gone
up in a balloon.  And she also felt sorry at losing Oz, and so did her
companions.

The Tin Woodman came to her and said:

"Truly I should be ungrateful if I failed to mourn for the man who gave
me my lovely heart.  I should like to cry a little because Oz is gone,
if you will kindly wipe away my tears, so that I shall not rust."

"With pleasure," she answered, and brought a towel at once.  Then the
Tin Woodman wept for several minutes, and she watched the tears
carefully and wiped them away with the towel.  When he had finished, he
thanked her kindly and oiled himself thoroughly with his jeweled
oil-can, to guard against mishap.

The Scarecrow was now the ruler of the Emerald City, and although he
was not a Wizard the people were proud of him.  "For," they said,
"there is not another city in all the world that is ruled by a stuffed
man."  And, so far as they knew, they were quite right.

The morning after the balloon had gone up with Oz, the four travelers
met in the Throne Room and talked matters over.  The Scarecrow sat in
the big throne and the others stood respectfully before him.

"We are not so unlucky," said the new ruler, "for this Palace and the
Emerald City belong to us, and we can do just as we please.  When I
remember that a short time ago I was up on a pole in a farmer's
cornfield, and that now I am the ruler of this beautiful City, I am
quite satisfied with my lot."

"I also," said the Tin Woodman, "am well-pleased with my new heart;
and, really, that was the only thing I wished in all the world."

"For my part, I am content in knowing I am as brave as any beast that
ever lived, if not braver," said the Lion modestly.

"If Dorothy would only be contented to live in the Emerald City,"
continued the Scarecrow, "we might all be happy together."

"But I don't want to live here," cried Dorothy.  "I want to go to
Kansas, and live with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry."

"Well, then, what can be done?" inquired the Woodman.

The Scarecrow decided to think, and he thought so hard that the pins
and needles began to stick out of his brains.  Finally he said:

"Why not call the Winged Monkeys, and ask them to carry you over the
desert?"

"I never thought of that!" said Dorothy joyfully.  "It's just the
thing.  I'll go at once for the Golden Cap."

When she brought it into the Throne Room she spoke the magic words, and
soon the band of Winged Monkeys flew in through the open window and
stood beside her.

"This is the second time you have called us," said the Monkey King,
bowing before the little girl.  "What do you wish?"

"I want you to fly with me to Kansas," said Dorothy.

But the Monkey King shook his head.

"That cannot be done," he said.  "We belong to this country alone, and
cannot leave it.  There has never been a Winged Monkey in Kansas yet,
and I suppose there never will be, for they don't belong there.  We
shall be glad to serve you in any way in our power, but we cannot cross
the desert.  Good-bye."

And with another bow, the Monkey King spread his wings and flew away
through the window, followed by all his band.

Dorothy was ready to cry with disappointment.  "I have wasted the charm
of the Golden Cap to no purpose," she said, "for the Winged Monkeys
cannot help me."

"It is certainly too bad!" said the tender-hearted Woodman.

The Scarecrow was thinking again, and his head bulged out so horribly
that Dorothy feared it would burst.

"Let us call in the soldier with the green whiskers," he said, "and ask
his advice."

So the soldier was summoned and entered the Throne Room timidly, for
while Oz was alive he never was allowed to come farther than the door.

"This little girl," said the Scarecrow to the soldier, "wishes to cross
the desert.  How can she do so?"

"I cannot tell," answered the soldier, "for nobody has ever crossed the
desert, unless it is Oz himself."

"Is there no one who can help me?" asked Dorothy earnestly.

"Glinda might," he suggested.

"Who is Glinda?" inquired the Scarecrow.

"The Witch of the South.  She is the most powerful of all the Witches,
and rules over the Quadlings.  Besides, her castle stands on the edge
of the desert, so she may know a way to cross it."

"Glinda is a Good Witch, isn't she?" asked the child.

"The Quadlings think she is good," said the soldier, "and she is kind
to everyone.  I have heard that Glinda is a beautiful woman, who knows
how to keep young in spite of the many years she has lived."

"How can I get to her castle?" asked Dorothy.

"The road is straight to the South," he answered, "but it is said to be
full of dangers to travelers.  There are wild beasts in the woods, and
a race of queer men who do not like strangers to cross their country.
For this reason none of the Quadlings ever come to the Emerald City."

The soldier then left them and the Scarecrow said:

"It seems, in spite of dangers, that the best thing Dorothy can do is
to travel to the Land of the South and ask Glinda to help her.  For, of
course, if Dorothy stays here she will never get back to Kansas."

"You must have been thinking again," remarked the Tin Woodman.

"I have," said the Scarecrow.

"I shall go with Dorothy," declared the Lion, "for I am tired of your
city and long for the woods and the country again.  I am really a wild
beast, you know.  Besides, Dorothy will need someone to protect her."

"That is true," agreed the Woodman.  "My axe may be of service to her;
so I also will go with her to the Land of the South."

"When shall we start?" asked the Scarecrow.

"Are you going?" they asked, in surprise.

"Certainly.  If it wasn't for Dorothy I should never have had brains.
She lifted me from the pole in the cornfield and brought me to the
Emerald City.  So my good luck is all due to her, and I shall never
leave her until she starts back to Kansas for good and all."

"Thank you," said Dorothy gratefully.  "You are all very kind to me.
But I should like to start as soon as possible."

"We shall go tomorrow morning," returned the Scarecrow.  "So now let us
all get ready, for it will be a long journey."




19.  Attacked by the Fighting Trees


The next morning Dorothy kissed the pretty green girl good-bye, and
they all shook hands with the soldier with the green whiskers, who had
walked with them as far as the gate.  When the Guardian of the Gate saw
them again he wondered greatly that they could leave the beautiful City
to get into new trouble.  But he at once unlocked their spectacles,
which he put back into the green box, and gave them many good wishes to
carry with them.

"You are now our ruler," he said to the Scarecrow; "so you must come
back to us as soon as possible."

"I certainly shall if I am able," the Scarecrow replied; "but I must
help Dorothy to get home, first."

As Dorothy bade the good-natured Guardian a last farewell she said:

"I have been very kindly treated in your lovely City, and everyone has
been good to me.  I cannot tell you how grateful I am."

"Don't try, my dear," he answered.  "We should like to keep you with
us, but if it is your wish to return to Kansas, I hope you will find a
way."  He then opened the gate of the outer wall, and they walked forth
and started upon their journey.

The sun shone brightly as our friends turned their faces toward the
Land of the South.  They were all in the best of spirits, and laughed
and chatted together.  Dorothy was once more filled with the hope of
getting home, and the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman were glad to be of
use to her.  As for the Lion, he sniffed the fresh air with delight and
whisked his tail from side to side in pure joy at being in the country
again, while Toto ran around them and chased the moths and butterflies,
barking merrily all the time.

"City life does not agree with me at all," remarked the Lion, as they
walked along at a brisk pace.  "I have lost much flesh since I lived
there, and now I am anxious for a chance to show the other beasts how
courageous I have grown."

They now turned and took a last look at the Emerald City.  All they
could see was a mass of towers and steeples behind the green walls, and
high up above everything the spires and dome of the Palace of Oz.

"Oz was not such a bad Wizard, after all," said the Tin Woodman, as he
felt his heart rattling around in his breast.

"He knew how to give me brains, and very good brains, too," said the
Scarecrow.

"If Oz had taken a dose of the same courage he gave me," added the
Lion, "he would have been a brave man."

Dorothy said nothing.  Oz had not kept the promise he made her, but he
had done his best, so she forgave him.  As he said, he was a good man,
even if he was a bad Wizard.

The first day's journey was through the green fields and bright flowers
that stretched about the Emerald City on every side.  They slept that
night on the grass, with nothing but the stars over them; and they
rested very well indeed.

In the morning they traveled on until they came to a thick wood.  There
was no way of going around it, for it seemed to extend to the right and
left as far as they could see; and, besides, they did not dare change
the direction of their journey for fear of getting lost.  So they
looked for the place where it would be easiest to get into the forest.

The Scarecrow, who was in the lead, finally discovered a big tree with
such wide-spreading branches that there was room for the party to pass
underneath.  So he walked forward to the tree, but just as he came
under the first branches they bent down and twined around him, and the
next minute he was raised from the ground and flung headlong among his
fellow travelers.

This did not hurt the Scarecrow, but it surprised him, and he looked
rather dizzy when Dorothy picked him up.

"Here is another space between the trees," called the Lion.

"Let me try it first," said the Scarecrow, "for it doesn't hurt me to
get thrown about."  He walked up to another tree, as he spoke, but its
branches immediately seized him and tossed him back again.

"This is strange," exclaimed Dorothy.  "What shall we do?"

"The trees seem to have made up their minds to fight us, and stop our
journey," remarked the Lion.

"I believe I will try it myself," said the Woodman, and shouldering his
axe, he marched up to the first tree that had handled the Scarecrow so
roughly.  When a big branch bent down to seize him the Woodman chopped
at it so fiercely that he cut it in two.  At once the tree began
shaking all its branches as if in pain, and the Tin Woodman passed
safely under it.

"Come on!" he shouted to the others.  "Be quick!"  They all ran forward
and passed under the tree without injury, except Toto, who was caught
by a small branch and shaken until he howled.  But the Woodman promptly
chopped off the branch and set the little dog free.

The other trees of the forest did nothing to keep them back, so they
made up their minds that only the first row of trees could bend down
their branches, and that probably these were the policemen of the
forest, and given this wonderful power in order to keep strangers out
of it.

The four travelers walked with ease through the trees until they came
to the farther edge of the wood.  Then, to their surprise, they found
before them a high wall which seemed to be made of white china.  It was
smooth, like the surface of a dish, and higher than their heads.

"What shall we do now?" asked Dorothy.

"I will make a ladder," said the Tin Woodman, "for we certainly must
climb over the wall."




20.  The Dainty China Country


While the Woodman was making a ladder from wood which he found in the
forest Dorothy lay down and slept, for she was tired by the long walk.
The Lion also curled himself up to sleep and Toto lay beside him.

The Scarecrow watched the Woodman while he worked, and said to him:

"I cannot think why this wall is here, nor what it is made of."

"Rest your brains and do not worry about the wall," replied the
Woodman.  "When we have climbed over it, we shall know what is on the
other side."

After a time the ladder was finished.  It looked clumsy, but the Tin
Woodman was sure it was strong and would answer their purpose.  The
Scarecrow waked Dorothy and the Lion and Toto, and told them that the
ladder was ready.  The Scarecrow climbed up the ladder first, but he
was so awkward that Dorothy had to follow close behind and keep him
from falling off.  When he got his head over the top of the wall the
Scarecrow said, "Oh, my!"

"Go on," exclaimed Dorothy.

So the Scarecrow climbed farther up and sat down on the top of the
wall, and Dorothy put her head over and cried, "Oh, my!" just as the
Scarecrow had done.

Then Toto came up, and immediately began to bark, but Dorothy made him
be still.

The Lion climbed the ladder next, and the Tin Woodman came last; but
both of them cried, "Oh, my!" as soon as they looked over the wall.
When they were all sitting in a row on the top of the wall, they looked
down and saw a strange sight.

Before them was a great stretch of country having a floor as smooth and
shining and white as the bottom of a big platter.  Scattered around
were many houses made entirely of china and painted in the brightest
colors.  These houses were quite small, the biggest of them reaching
only as high as Dorothy's waist.  There were also pretty little barns,
with china fences around them; and many cows and sheep and horses and
pigs and chickens, all made of china, were standing about in groups.

But the strangest of all were the people who lived in this queer
country.  There were milkmaids and shepherdesses, with brightly colored
bodices and golden spots all over their gowns; and princesses with most
gorgeous frocks of silver and gold and purple; and shepherds dressed in
knee breeches with pink and yellow and blue stripes down them, and
golden buckles on their shoes; and princes with jeweled crowns upon
their heads, wearing ermine robes and satin doublets; and funny clowns
in ruffled gowns, with round red spots upon their cheeks and tall,
pointed caps.  And, strangest of all, these people were all made of
china, even to their clothes, and were so small that the tallest of
them was no higher than Dorothy's knee.

No one did so much as look at the travelers at first, except one little
purple china dog with an extra-large head, which came to the wall and
barked at them in a tiny voice, afterwards running away again.

"How shall we get down?" asked Dorothy.

They found the ladder so heavy they could not pull it up, so the
Scarecrow fell off the wall and the others jumped down upon him so that
the hard floor would not hurt their feet.  Of course they took pains
not to light on his head and get the pins in their feet.  When all were
safely down they picked up the Scarecrow, whose body was quite
flattened out, and patted his straw into shape again.

"We must cross this strange place in order to get to the other side,"
said Dorothy, "for it would be unwise for us to go any other way except
due South."

They began walking through the country of the china people, and the
first thing they came to was a china milkmaid milking a china cow.  As
they drew near, the cow suddenly gave a kick and kicked over the stool,
the pail, and even the milkmaid herself, and all fell on the china
ground with a great clatter.

Dorothy was shocked to see that the cow had broken her leg off, and
that the pail was lying in several small pieces, while the poor
milkmaid had a nick in her left elbow.

"There!" cried the milkmaid angrily.  "See what you have done!  My cow
has broken her leg, and I must take her to the mender's shop and have
it glued on again.  What do you mean by coming here and frightening my
cow?"

"I'm very sorry," returned Dorothy.  "Please forgive us."

But the pretty milkmaid was much too vexed to make any answer.  She
picked up the leg sulkily and led her cow away, the poor animal limping
on three legs.  As she left them the milkmaid cast many reproachful
glances over her shoulder at the clumsy strangers, holding her nicked
elbow close to her side.

Dorothy was quite grieved at this mishap.

"We must be very careful here," said the kind-hearted Woodman, "or we
may hurt these pretty little people so they will never get over it."

A little farther on Dorothy met a most beautifully dressed young
Princess, who stopped short as she saw the strangers and started to run
away.

Dorothy wanted to see more of the Princess, so she ran after her.  But
the china girl cried out:

"Don't chase me!  Don't chase me!"

She had such a frightened little voice that Dorothy stopped and said,
"Why not?"

"Because," answered the Princess, also stopping, a safe distance away,
"if I run I may fall down and break myself."

"But could you not be mended?" asked the girl.

"Oh, yes; but one is never so pretty after being mended, you know,"
replied the Princess.

"I suppose not," said Dorothy.

"Now there is Mr. Joker, one of our clowns," continued the china lady,
"who is always trying to stand upon his head.  He has broken himself so
often that he is mended in a hundred places, and doesn't look at all
pretty.  Here he comes now, so you can see for yourself."

Indeed, a jolly little clown came walking toward them, and Dorothy
could see that in spite of his pretty clothes of red and yellow and
green he was completely covered with cracks, running every which way
and showing plainly that he had been mended in many places.

The Clown put his hands in his pockets, and after puffing out his
cheeks and nodding his head at them saucily, he said:

  "My lady fair,
     Why do you stare
   At poor old Mr. Joker?
     You're quite as stiff
   And prim as if
     You'd eaten up a poker!"


"Be quiet, sir!" said the Princess.  "Can't you see these are
strangers, and should be treated with respect?"

"Well, that's respect, I expect," declared the Clown, and immediately
stood upon his head.

"Don't mind Mr. Joker," said the Princess to Dorothy.  "He is
considerably cracked in his head, and that makes him foolish."

"Oh, I don't mind him a bit," said Dorothy.  "But you are so
beautiful," she continued, "that I am sure I could love you dearly.
Won't you let me carry you back to Kansas, and stand you on Aunt Em's
mantel?  I could carry you in my basket."

"That would make me very unhappy," answered the china Princess.  "You
see, here in our country we live contentedly, and can talk and move
around as we please.  But whenever any of us are taken away our joints
at once stiffen, and we can only stand straight and look pretty.  Of
course that is all that is expected of us when we are on mantels and
cabinets and drawing-room tables, but our lives are much pleasanter
here in our own country."

"I would not make you unhappy for all the world!" exclaimed Dorothy.
"So I'll just say good-bye."

"Good-bye," replied the Princess.

They walked carefully through the china country.  The little animals
and all the people scampered out of their way, fearing the strangers
would break them, and after an hour or so the travelers reached the
other side of the country and came to another china wall.

It was not so high as the first, however, and by standing upon the
Lion's back they all managed to scramble to the top.  Then the Lion
gathered his legs under him and jumped on the wall; but just as he
jumped, he upset a china church with his tail and smashed it all to
pieces.

"That was too bad," said Dorothy, "but really I think we were lucky in
not doing these little people more harm than breaking a cow's leg and a
church.  They are all so brittle!"

"They are, indeed," said the Scarecrow, "and I am thankful I am made of
straw and cannot be easily damaged.  There are worse things in the
world than being a Scarecrow."




21.  The Lion Becomes the King of Beasts


After climbing down from the china wall the travelers found themselves
in a disagreeable country, full of bogs and marshes and covered with
tall, rank grass.  It was difficult to walk without falling into muddy
holes, for the grass was so thick that it hid them from sight.
However, by carefully picking their way, they got safely along until
they reached solid ground.  But here the country seemed wilder than
ever, and after a long and tiresome walk through the underbrush they
entered another forest, where the trees were bigger and older than any
they had ever seen.

"This forest is perfectly delightful," declared the Lion, looking
around him with joy.  "Never have I seen a more beautiful place."

"It seems gloomy," said the Scarecrow.

"Not a bit of it," answered the Lion.  "I should like to live here all
my life.  See how soft the dried leaves are under your feet and how
rich and green the moss is that clings to these old trees.  Surely no
wild beast could wish a pleasanter home."

"Perhaps there are wild beasts in the forest now," said Dorothy.

"I suppose there are," returned the Lion, "but I do not see any of them
about."

They walked through the forest until it became too dark to go any
farther.  Dorothy and Toto and the Lion lay down to sleep, while the
Woodman and the Scarecrow kept watch over them as usual.

When morning came, they started again.  Before they had gone far they
heard a low rumble, as of the growling of many wild animals.  Toto
whimpered a little, but none of the others was frightened, and they
kept along the well-trodden path until they came to an opening in the
wood, in which were gathered hundreds of beasts of every variety.
There were tigers and elephants and bears and wolves and foxes and all
the others in the natural history, and for a moment Dorothy was afraid.
But the Lion explained that the animals were holding a meeting, and he
judged by their snarling and growling that they were in great trouble.

As he spoke several of the beasts caught sight of him, and at once the
great assemblage hushed as if by magic.  The biggest of the tigers came
up to the Lion and bowed, saying:

"Welcome, O King of Beasts!  You have come in good time to fight our
enemy and bring peace to all the animals of the forest once more."

"What is your trouble?" asked the Lion quietly.

"We are all threatened," answered the tiger, "by a fierce enemy which
has lately come into this forest.  It is a most tremendous monster,
like a great spider, with a body as big as an elephant and legs as long
as a tree trunk.  It has eight of these long legs, and as the monster
crawls through the forest he seizes an animal with a leg and drags it
to his mouth, where he eats it as a spider does a fly.  Not one of us
is safe while this fierce creature is alive, and we had called a
meeting to decide how to take care of ourselves when you came among us."

The Lion thought for a moment.

"Are there any other lions in this forest?" he asked.

"No; there were some, but the monster has eaten them all.  And,
besides, they were none of them nearly so large and brave as you."

"If I put an end to your enemy, will you bow down to me and obey me as
King of the Forest?" inquired the Lion.

"We will do that gladly," returned the tiger; and all the other beasts
roared with a mighty roar: "We will!"

"Where is this great spider of yours now?" asked the Lion.

"Yonder, among the oak trees," said the tiger, pointing with his
forefoot.

"Take good care of these friends of mine," said the Lion, "and I will
go at once to fight the monster."

He bade his comrades good-bye and marched proudly away to do battle
with the enemy.

The great spider was lying asleep when the Lion found him, and it
looked so ugly that its foe turned up his nose in disgust.  Its legs
were quite as long as the tiger had said, and its body covered with
coarse black hair.  It had a great mouth, with a row of sharp teeth a
foot long; but its head was joined to the pudgy body by a neck as
slender as a wasp's waist.  This gave the Lion a hint of the best way
to attack the creature, and as he knew it was easier to fight it asleep
than awake, he gave a great spring and landed directly upon the
monster's back.  Then, with one blow of his heavy paw, all armed with
sharp claws, he knocked the spider's head from its body.  Jumping down,
he watched it until the long legs stopped wiggling, when he knew it was
quite dead.

The Lion went back to the opening where the beasts of the forest were
waiting for him and said proudly:

"You need fear your enemy no longer."

Then the beasts bowed down to the Lion as their King, and he promised
to come back and rule over them as soon as Dorothy was safely on her
way to Kansas.




22.  The Country of the Quadlings


The four travelers passed through the rest of the forest in safety, and
when they came out from its gloom saw before them a steep hill, covered
from top to bottom with great pieces of rock.

"That will be a hard climb," said the Scarecrow, "but we must get over
the hill, nevertheless."

So he led the way and the others followed.  They had nearly reached the
first rock when they heard a rough voice cry out, "Keep back!"

"Who are you?" asked the Scarecrow.

Then a head showed itself over the rock and the same voice said, "This
hill belongs to us, and we don't allow anyone to cross it."

"But we must cross it," said the Scarecrow.  "We're going to the
country of the Quadlings."

"But you shall not!" replied the voice, and there stepped from behind
the rock the strangest man the travelers had ever seen.

He was quite short and stout and had a big head, which was flat at the
top and supported by a thick neck full of wrinkles.  But he had no arms
at all, and, seeing this, the Scarecrow did not fear that so helpless a
creature could prevent them from climbing the hill.  So he said, "I'm
sorry not to do as you wish, but we must pass over your hill whether
you like it or not," and he walked boldly forward.

As quick as lightning the man's head shot forward and his neck
stretched out until the top of the head, where it was flat, struck the
Scarecrow in the middle and sent him tumbling, over and over, down the
hill.  Almost as quickly as it came the head went back to the body, and
the man laughed harshly as he said, "It isn't as easy as you think!"

A chorus of boisterous laughter came from the other rocks, and Dorothy
saw hundreds of the armless Hammer-Heads upon the hillside, one behind
every rock.

The Lion became quite angry at the laughter caused by the Scarecrow's
mishap, and giving a loud roar that echoed like thunder, he dashed up
the hill.

Again a head shot swiftly out, and the great Lion went rolling down the
hill as if he had been struck by a cannon ball.

Dorothy ran down and helped the Scarecrow to his feet, and the Lion
came up to her, feeling rather bruised and sore, and said, "It is
useless to fight people with shooting heads; no one can withstand them."

"What can we do, then?" she asked.

"Call the Winged Monkeys," suggested the Tin Woodman.  "You have still
the right to command them once more."

"Very well," she answered, and putting on the Golden Cap she uttered
the magic words.  The Monkeys were as prompt as ever, and in a few
moments the entire band stood before her.

"What are your commands?" inquired the King of the Monkeys, bowing low.

"Carry us over the hill to the country of the Quadlings," answered the
girl.

"It shall be done," said the King, and at once the Winged Monkeys
caught the four travelers and Toto up in their arms and flew away with
them.  As they passed over the hill the Hammer-Heads yelled with
vexation, and shot their heads high in the air, but they could not
reach the Winged Monkeys, which carried Dorothy and her comrades safely
over the hill and set them down in the beautiful country of the
Quadlings.

"This is the last time you can summon us," said the leader to Dorothy;
"so good-bye and good luck to you."

"Good-bye, and thank you very much," returned the girl; and the Monkeys
rose into the air and were out of sight in a twinkling.

The country of the Quadlings seemed rich and happy.  There was field
upon field of ripening grain, with well-paved roads running between,
and pretty rippling brooks with strong bridges across them.  The fences
and houses and bridges were all painted bright red, just as they had
been painted yellow in the country of the Winkies and blue in the
country of the Munchkins.  The Quadlings themselves, who were short and
fat and looked chubby and good-natured, were dressed all in red, which
showed bright against the green grass and the yellowing grain.

The Monkeys had set them down near a farmhouse, and the four travelers
walked up to it and knocked at the door.  It was opened by the farmer's
wife, and when Dorothy asked for something to eat the woman gave them
all a good dinner, with three kinds of cake and four kinds of cookies,
and a bowl of milk for Toto.

"How far is it to the Castle of Glinda?" asked the child.

"It is not a great way," answered the farmer's wife.  "Take the road to
the South and you will soon reach it."

Thanking the good woman, they started afresh and walked by the fields
and across the pretty bridges until they saw before them a very
beautiful Castle.  Before the gates were three young girls, dressed in
handsome red uniforms trimmed with gold braid; and as Dorothy
approached, one of them said to her:

"Why have you come to the South Country?"

"To see the Good Witch who rules here," she answered.  "Will you take
me to her?"

"Let me have your name, and I will ask Glinda if she will receive you."
They told who they were, and the girl soldier went into the Castle.
After a few moments she came back to say that Dorothy and the others
were to be admitted at once.




23.  Glinda The Good Witch Grants Dorothy's Wish


Before they went to see Glinda, however, they were taken to a room of
the Castle, where Dorothy washed her face and combed her hair, and the
Lion shook the dust out of his mane, and the Scarecrow patted himself
into his best shape, and the Woodman polished his tin and oiled his
joints.

When they were all quite presentable they followed the soldier girl
into a big room where the Witch Glinda sat upon a throne of rubies.

She was both beautiful and young to their eyes.  Her hair was a rich
red in color and fell in flowing ringlets over her shoulders.  Her
dress was pure white but her eyes were blue, and they looked kindly
upon the little girl.

"What can I do for you, my child?" she asked.

Dorothy told the Witch all her story: how the cyclone had brought her
to the Land of Oz, how she had found her companions, and of the
wonderful adventures they had met with.

"My greatest wish now," she added, "is to get back to Kansas, for Aunt
Em will surely think something dreadful has happened to me, and that
will make her put on mourning; and unless the crops are better this
year than they were last, I am sure Uncle Henry cannot afford it."

Glinda leaned forward and kissed the sweet, upturned face of the loving
little girl.

"Bless your dear heart," she said, "I am sure I can tell you of a way
to get back to Kansas."  Then she added, "But, if I do, you must give
me the Golden Cap."

"Willingly!" exclaimed Dorothy; "indeed, it is of no use to me now, and
when you have it you can command the Winged Monkeys three times."

"And I think I shall need their service just those three times,"
answered Glinda, smiling.

Dorothy then gave her the Golden Cap, and the Witch said to the
Scarecrow, "What will you do when Dorothy has left us?"

"I will return to the Emerald City," he replied, "for Oz has made me
its ruler and the people like me.  The only thing that worries me is
how to cross the hill of the Hammer-Heads."

"By means of the Golden Cap I shall command the Winged Monkeys to carry
you to the gates of the Emerald City," said Glinda, "for it would be a
shame to deprive the people of so wonderful a ruler."

"Am I really wonderful?" asked the Scarecrow.

"You are unusual," replied Glinda.

Turning to the Tin Woodman, she asked, "What will become of you when
Dorothy leaves this country?"

He leaned on his axe and thought a moment.  Then he said, "The Winkies
were very kind to me, and wanted me to rule over them after the Wicked
Witch died.  I am fond of the Winkies, and if I could get back again to
the Country of the West, I should like nothing better than to rule over
them forever."

"My second command to the Winged Monkeys," said Glinda "will be that
they carry you safely to the land of the Winkies.  Your brain may not
be so large to look at as those of the Scarecrow, but you are really
brighter than he is--when you are well polished--and I am sure you will
rule the Winkies wisely and well."

Then the Witch looked at the big, shaggy Lion and asked, "When Dorothy
has returned to her own home, what will become of you?"

"Over the hill of the Hammer-Heads," he answered, "lies a grand old
forest, and all the beasts that live there have made me their King.  If
I could only get back to this forest, I would pass my life very happily
there."

"My third command to the Winged Monkeys," said Glinda, "shall be to
carry you to your forest.  Then, having used up the powers of the
Golden Cap, I shall give it to the King of the Monkeys, that he and his
band may thereafter be free for evermore."

The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman and the Lion now thanked the Good
Witch earnestly for her kindness; and Dorothy exclaimed:

"You are certainly as good as you are beautiful!  But you have not yet
told me how to get back to Kansas."

"Your Silver Shoes will carry you over the desert," replied Glinda.
"If you had known their power you could have gone back to your Aunt Em
the very first day you came to this country."

"But then I should not have had my wonderful brains!" cried the
Scarecrow.  "I might have passed my whole life in the farmer's
cornfield."

"And I should not have had my lovely heart," said the Tin Woodman.  "I
might have stood and rusted in the forest till the end of the world."

"And I should have lived a coward forever," declared the Lion, "and no
beast in all the forest would have had a good word to say to me."

"This is all true," said Dorothy, "and I am glad I was of use to these
good friends.  But now that each of them has had what he most desired,
and each is happy in having a kingdom to rule besides, I think I should
like to go back to Kansas."

"The Silver Shoes," said the Good Witch, "have wonderful powers.  And
one of the most curious things about them is that they can carry you to
any place in the world in three steps, and each step will be made in
the wink of an eye.  All you have to do is to knock the heels together
three times and command the shoes to carry you wherever you wish to go."

"If that is so," said the child joyfully, "I will ask them to carry me
back to Kansas at once."

She threw her arms around the Lion's neck and kissed him, patting his
big head tenderly.  Then she kissed the Tin Woodman, who was weeping in
a way most dangerous to his joints.  But she hugged the soft, stuffed
body of the Scarecrow in her arms instead of kissing his painted face,
and found she was crying herself at this sorrowful parting from her
loving comrades.

Glinda the Good stepped down from her ruby throne to give the little
girl a good-bye kiss, and Dorothy thanked her for all the kindness she
had shown to her friends and herself.

Dorothy now took Toto up solemnly in her arms, and having said one last
good-bye she clapped the heels of her shoes together three times,
saying:

"Take me home to Aunt Em!"

Instantly she was whirling through the air, so swiftly that all she
could see or feel was the wind whistling past her ears.

The Silver Shoes took but three steps, and then she stopped so suddenly
that she rolled over upon the grass several times before she knew where
she was.

At length, however, she sat up and looked about her.

"Good gracious!" she cried.

For she was sitting on the broad Kansas prairie, and just before her
was the new farmhouse Uncle Henry built after the cyclone had carried
away the old one.  Uncle Henry was milking the cows in the barnyard,
and Toto had jumped out of her arms and was running toward the barn,
barking furiously.

Dorothy stood up and found she was in her stocking-feet.  For the
Silver Shoes had fallen off in her flight through the air, and were
lost forever in the desert.




24.  Home Again


Aunt Em had just come out of the house to water the cabbages when she
looked up and saw Dorothy running toward her.

"My darling child!" she cried, folding the little girl in her arms and
covering her face with kisses.  "Where in the world did you come from?"

"From the Land of Oz," said Dorothy gravely.  "And here is Toto, too.
And oh, Aunt Em!  I'm so glad to be at home again!"








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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, by 
Christoper Marlowe

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus

Author: Christoper Marlowe

Release Date: January, 1997  [Etext #779]
Posting Date: November 3, 2009

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF DR. FAUSTUS ***




Produced by Gary R. Young





THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS

By Christopher Marlowe

From The Quarto of 1604

Edited by The Rev. Alexander Dyce





THE TRAGICALL HISTORY OF D. FAUSTUS.  AS IT HATH BENE ACTED
BY THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE EARLE OF NOTTINGHAM HIS SERUANTS.
WRITTEN BY CH. MARL.

In reprinting this edition, I have here and there amended the text
by means of the later 4tos,--1616, 1624, 1631.--Of 4to 1663, which
contains various comparatively modern alterations and additions,
I have made no use.




DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

     THE POPE.
     CARDINAL OF LORRAIN.
     THE EMPEROR OF GERMANY.
     DUKE OF VANHOLT.
     FAUSTUS.
     VALDES,    ] friends to FAUSTUS.
     CORNELIUS, ]
     WAGNER, servant to FAUSTUS.
     Clown.
     ROBIN.
     RALPH.
     Vintner.
     Horse-courser.
     A Knight.
     An Old Man.
     Scholars, Friars, and Attendants.

     DUCHESS OF VANHOLT

     LUCIFER.
     BELZEBUB.
     MEPHISTOPHILIS.
     Good Angel.
     Evil Angel.
     The Seven Deadly Sins.
     Devils.
     Spirits in the shapes of ALEXANDER THE GREAT, of his Paramour
          and of HELEN.

     Chorus.





THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS

FROM THE QUARTO OF 1604.


          Enter CHORUS.

     CHORUS. Not marching now in fields of Thrasymene,
     Where Mars did mate[1] the Carthaginians;
     Nor sporting in the dalliance of love,
     In courts of kings where state is overturn'd;
     Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds,
     Intends our Muse to vaunt[2] her[3] heavenly verse:
     Only this, gentlemen,--we must perform
     The form of Faustus' fortunes, good or bad:
     To patient judgments we appeal our plaud,
     And speak for Faustus in his infancy.
     Now is he born, his parents base of stock,
     In Germany, within a town call'd Rhodes:
     Of riper years, to Wertenberg he went,
     Whereas[4] his kinsmen chiefly brought him up.
     So soon he profits in divinity,
     The fruitful plot of scholarism grac'd,
     That shortly he was grac'd with doctor's name,
     Excelling all whose sweet delight disputes
     In heavenly matters of theology;
     Till swoln with cunning,[5] of a self-conceit,
     His waxen wings did mount above his reach,
     And, melting, heavens conspir'd his overthrow;
     For, falling to a devilish exercise,
     And glutted now[6] with learning's golden gifts,
     He surfeits upon cursed necromancy;
     Nothing so sweet as magic is to him,
     Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss:
     And this the man that in his study sits.
          [Exit.]

          FAUSTUS discovered in his study.[7]

     FAUSTUS. Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin
     To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess:
     Having commenc'd, be a divine in shew,
     Yet level at the end of every art,
     And live and die in Aristotle's works.
     Sweet Analytics, 'tis thou[8] hast ravish'd me!
     Bene disserere est finis logices.
     Is, to dispute well, logic's chiefest end?
     Affords this art no greater miracle?
     Then read no more; thou hast attain'd that[9] end:
     A greater subject fitteth Faustus' wit:
     Bid Economy[10] farewell, and[11] Galen come,
     Seeing, Ubi desinit philosophus, ibi incipit medicus:
     Be a physician, Faustus; heap up gold,
     And be eterniz'd for some wondrous cure:
     Summum bonum medicinae sanitas,
     The end of physic is our body's health.
     Why, Faustus, hast thou not attain'd that end?
     Is not thy common talk found aphorisms?
     Are not thy bills hung up as monuments,
     Whereby whole cities have escap'd the plague,
     And thousand desperate maladies been eas'd?
     Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man.
     Couldst[12] thou make men[13] to live eternally,
     Or, being dead, raise them to life again,
     Then this profession were to be esteem'd.
     Physic, farewell!  Where is Justinian?

          [Reads.]
     Si una eademque res legatur[14] duobus, alter rem,
     alter valorem rei, &c.

     A pretty case of paltry legacies!

          [Reads.]
     Exhoereditare filium non potest pater, nisi, &c.[15]

     Such is the subject of the institute,
     And universal body of the law:[16]
     This[17] study fits a mercenary drudge,
     Who aims at nothing but external trash;
     Too servile[18] and illiberal for me.
     When all is done, divinity is best:
     Jerome's Bible, Faustus; view it well.

          [Reads.]
     Stipendium peccati mors est.
                                   Ha!
                                        Stipendium, &c.

     The reward of sin is death:  that's hard.

          [Reads.]
     Si peccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla est in nobis veritas;

     If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and
     there's no truth in us.  Why, then, belike we must sin, and so
     consequently die:
     Ay, we must die an everlasting death.
     What doctrine call you this, Che sera, sera,[19]
     What will be, shall be?  Divinity, adieu!
     These metaphysics of magicians,
     And necromantic books are heavenly;
     Lines, circles, scenes,[20] letters, and characters;
     Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.
     O, what a world of profit and delight,
     Of power, of honour, of omnipotence,
     Is promis'd to the studious artizan!
     All things that move between the quiet poles
     Shall be at my command:  emperors and kings
     Are but obeyed in their several provinces,
     Nor can they raise the wind, or rend the clouds;
     But his dominion that exceeds in this,
     Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man;
     A sound magician is a mighty god:
     Here, Faustus, tire[21] thy brains to gain a deity.

          Enter WAGNER.[22]

     Wagner, commend me to my dearest friends,
     The German Valdes and Cornelius;
     Request them earnestly to visit me.

     WAGNER. I will, sir.
          [Exit.]

     FAUSTUS. Their conference will be a greater help to me
     Than all my labours, plod I ne'er so fast.

          Enter GOOD ANGEL and EVIL ANGEL.

     GOOD ANGEL. O, Faustus, lay that damned book aside,
     And gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy soul,
     And heap God's heavy wrath upon thy head!
     Read, read the Scriptures:--that is blasphemy.

     EVIL ANGEL. Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art
     Wherein all Nature's treasure[23] is contain'd:
     Be thou on earth as Jove[24] is in the sky,
     Lord and commander of these elements.[25]
          [Exeunt Angels.]

     FAUSTUS. How am I glutted with conceit of this!
     Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
     Resolve[26] me of all ambiguities,
     Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
     I'll have them fly to India for gold,
     Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
     And search all corners of the new-found world
     For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;
     I'll have them read me strange philosophy,
     And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;
     I'll have them wall all Germany with brass,
     And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg;
     I'll have them fill the public schools with silk,[27]
     Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;
     I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
     And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
     And reign sole king of all the[28] provinces;
     Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war,
     Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp's bridge,[29]
     I'll make my servile spirits to invent.

          Enter VALDES and CORNELIUS.

     Come, German Valdes, and Cornelius,
     And make me blest with your sage conference.
     Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius,
     Know that your words have won me at the last
     To practice magic and concealed arts:
     Yet not your words only,[30] but mine own fantasy,
     That will receive no object; for my head
     But ruminates on necromantic skill.
     Philosophy is odious and obscure;
     Both law and physic are for petty wits;
     Divinity is basest of the three,
     Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile:[31]
     'Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish'd me.
     Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt;
     And I, that have with concise syllogisms[32]
     Gravell'd the pastors of the German church,
     And made the flowering pride of Wertenberg
     Swarm to my problems, as the infernal spirits
     On sweet Musaeus when he came to hell,
     Will be as cunning[33] as Agrippa[34] was,
     Whose shadow[35] made all Europe honour him.

     VALDES. Faustus, these books, thy wit, and our experience,
     Shall make all nations to canonize us.
     As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords,
     So shall the spirits[36] of every element
     Be always serviceable to us three;
     Like lions shall they guard us when we please;
     Like Almain rutters[37] with their horsemen's staves,
     Or Lapland giants, trotting by our sides;
     Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids,
     Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
     Than have the[38] white breasts of the queen of love:
     From[39] Venice shall they drag huge argosies,
     And from America the golden fleece
     That yearly stuffs old Philip's treasury;
     If learned Faustus will be resolute.

     FAUSTUS. Valdes, as resolute am I in this
     As thou to live:  therefore object it not.

     CORNELIUS. The miracles that magic will perform
     Will make thee vow to study nothing else.
     He that is grounded in astrology,
     Enrich'd with tongues, well seen in[40] minerals,
     Hath all the principles magic doth require:
     Then doubt not, Faustus, but to be renowm'd,[41]
     And more frequented for this mystery
     Than heretofore the Delphian oracle.
     The spirits tell me they can dry the sea,
     And fetch the treasure of all foreign wrecks,
     Ay, all the wealth that our forefathers hid
     Within the massy entrails of the earth:
     Then tell me, Faustus, what shall we three want?

     FAUSTUS. Nothing, Cornelius.  O, this cheers my soul!
     Come, shew me some demonstrations magical,
     That I may conjure in some lusty grove,
     And have these joys in full possession.

     VALDES. Then haste thee to some solitary grove,
     And bear wise Bacon's and Albertus'[42] works,
     The Hebrew Psalter, and New Testament;
     And whatsoever else is requisite
     We will inform thee ere our conference cease.

     CORNELIUS. Valdes, first let him know the words of art;
     And then, all other ceremonies learn'd,
     Faustus may try his cunning[43] by himself.

     VALDES. First I'll instruct thee in the rudiments,
     And then wilt thou be perfecter than I.

     FAUSTUS. Then come and dine with me, and, after meat,
     We'll canvass every quiddity thereof;
     For, ere I sleep, I'll try what I can do:
     This night I'll conjure, though I die therefore.
          [Exeunt.]

          Enter two SCHOLARS.[44]

     FIRST SCHOLAR. I wonder what's become of Faustus, that was wont
     to make our schools ring with sic probo.

     SECOND SCHOLAR. That shall we know, for see, here comes his boy.

          Enter WAGNER.

     FIRST SCHOLAR. How now, sirrah! where's thy master?

     WAGNER. God in heaven knows.

     SECOND SCHOLAR. Why, dost not thou know?

     WAGNER. Yes, I know; but that follows not.

     FIRST SCHOLAR. Go to, sirrah! leave your jesting, and tell us
     where he is.

     WAGNER. That follows not necessary by force of argument, that you,
     being licentiates, should stand upon:[45]  therefore acknowledge
     your error, and be attentive.

     SECOND SCHOLAR. Why, didst thou not say thou knewest?

     WAGNER. Have you any witness on't?

     FIRST SCHOLAR. Yes, sirrah, I heard you.

     WAGNER. Ask my fellow if I be a thief.

     SECOND SCHOLAR. Well, you will not tell us?

     WAGNER. Yes, sir, I will tell you:  yet, if you were not dunces,
     you would never ask me such a question; for is not he corpus
     naturale? and is not that mobile? then wherefore should you
     ask me such a question?  But that I am by nature phlegmatic,
     slow to wrath, and prone to lechery (to love, I would say),
     it were not for you to come within forty foot of the place
     of execution, although I do not doubt to see you both hanged
     the next sessions.  Thus having triumphed over you, I will set
     my countenance like a precisian, and begin to speak thus:--
     Truly, my dear brethren, my master is within at dinner,
     with Valdes and Cornelius, as this wine, if it could speak,
     would[46] inform your worships:  and so, the Lord bless you,
     preserve you, and keep you, my dear brethren, my dear brethren![47]
          [Exit.]

     FIRST SCHOLAR. Nay, then, I fear he is fallen into that damned art
     for which they two are infamous through the world.

     SECOND SCHOLAR. Were he a stranger, and not allied to me, yet should
     I grieve for him. But, come, let us go and inform the Rector,
     and see if he by his grave counsel can reclaim him.

     FIRST SCHOLAR. O, but I fear me nothing can reclaim him!

     SECOND SCHOLAR. Yet let us try what we can do.
          [Exeunt.]

          Enter FAUSTUS to conjure.[48]

     FAUSTUS. Now that the gloomy shadow of the earth,
     Longing to view Orion's drizzling look,
     Leaps from th' antartic world unto the sky,
     And dims the welkin with her pitchy breath,
     Faustus, begin thine incantations,
     And try if devils will obey thy hest,
     Seeing thou hast pray'd and sacrific'd to them.
     Within this circle is Jehovah's name,
     Forward and backward anagrammatiz'd,[49]
     Th' abbreviated[50] names of holy saints,
     Figures of every adjunct to the heavens,
     And characters of signs and erring[51] stars,
     By which the spirits are enforc'd to rise:
     Then fear not, Faustus, but be resolute,
     And try the uttermost magic can perform.--
     Sint mihi dei Acherontis propitii!  Valeat numen triplex Jehovoe!
     Ignei, aerii, aquatani spiritus, salvete!  Orientis princeps
     Belzebub, inferni ardentis monarcha, et Demogorgon, propitiamus
     vos, ut appareat et surgat Mephistophilis, quod tumeraris:[52]
     per Jehovam, Gehennam, et consecratam aquam quam nunc spargo,
     signumque crucis quod nunc facio, et per vota nostra, ipse nunc
     surgat nobis dicatus[53] Mephistophilis!

          Enter MEPHISTOPHILIS.

     I charge thee to return, and change thy shape;
     Thou art too ugly to attend on me:
     Go, and return an old Franciscan friar;
     That holy shape becomes a devil best.
          [Exit MEPHISTOPHILIS.]

     I see there's virtue in my heavenly words:
     Who would not be proficient in this art?
     How pliant is this Mephistophilis,
     Full of obedience and humility!
     Such is the force of magic and my spells:
     No, Faustus, thou art conjuror laureat,
     That canst command great Mephistophilis:
     Quin regis Mephistophilis fratris imagine.

          Re-enter MEPHISTOPHILIS like a Franciscan friar.[54]

     MEPHIST. Now, Faustus, what wouldst thou have me do?

     FAUSTUS. I charge thee wait upon me whilst I live,
     To do whatever Faustus shall command,
     Be it to make the moon drop from her sphere,
     Or the ocean to overwhelm the world.

     MEPHIST. I am a servant to great Lucifer,
     And may not follow thee without his leave:
     No more than he commands must we perform.

     FAUSTUS. Did not he charge thee to appear to me?

     MEPHIST. No, I came hither[55] of mine own accord.

     FAUSTUS. Did not my conjuring speeches raise thee? speak.

     MEPHIST. That was the cause, but yet per accidens;[56]
     For, when we hear one rack the name of God,
     Abjure the Scriptures and his Saviour Christ,
     We fly, in hope to get his glorious soul;
     Nor will we come, unless he use such means
     Whereby he is in danger to be damn'd.
     Therefore the shortest cut for conjuring
     Is stoutly to abjure the Trinity,
     And pray devoutly to the prince of hell.

     FAUSTUS. So Faustus hath
     Already done; and holds this principle,
     There is no chief but only Belzebub;
     To whom Faustus doth dedicate himself.
     This word "damnation" terrifies not him,
     For he confounds hell in Elysium:
     His ghost be with the old philosophers!
     But, leaving these vain trifles of men's souls,
     Tell me what is that Lucifer thy lord?

     MEPHIST. Arch-regent and commander of all spirits.

     FAUSTUS. Was not that Lucifer an angel once?

     MEPHIST. Yes, Faustus, and most dearly lov'd of God.

     FAUSTUS. How comes it, then, that he is prince of devils?

     MEPHIST. O, by aspiring pride and insolence;
     For which God threw him from the face of heaven.

     FAUSTUS. And what are you that live with Lucifer?

     MEPHIST. Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer,
     Conspir'd against our God with Lucifer,
     And are for ever damn'd with Lucifer.

     FAUSTUS. Where are you damn'd?

     MEPHIST. In hell.

     FAUSTUS. How comes it, then, that thou art out of hell?

     MEPHIST. Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it:[57]
     Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
     And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
     Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
     In being depriv'd of everlasting bliss?
     O, Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,
     Which strike a terror to my fainting soul!

     FAUSTUS. What, is great Mephistophilis so passionate
     For being deprived of the joys of heaven?
     Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude,
     And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.
     Go bear these[58] tidings to great Lucifer:
     Seeing Faustus hath incurr'd eternal death
     By desperate thoughts against Jove's[59] deity,
     Say, he surrenders up to him his soul,
     So he will spare him four and twenty[60] years,
     Letting him live in all voluptuousness;
     Having thee ever to attend on me,
     To give me whatsoever I shall ask,
     To tell me whatsoever I demand,
     To slay mine enemies, and aid my friends,
     And always be obedient to my will.
     Go and return to mighty Lucifer,
     And meet me in my study at midnight,
     And then resolve[61] me of thy master's mind.

     MEPHIST. I will, Faustus.
          [Exit.]

     FAUSTUS. Had I as many souls as there be stars,
     I'd give them all for Mephistophilis.
     By him I'll be great emperor of the world,
     And make a bridge thorough[62] the moving air,
     To pass the ocean with a band of men;
     I'll join the hills that bind the Afric shore,
     And make that country[63] continent to Spain,
     And both contributory to my crown:
     The Emperor shall not live but by my leave,
     Nor any potentate of Germany.
     Now that I have obtain'd what I desir'd,[64]
     I'll live in speculation of this art,
     Till Mephistophilis return again.
          [Exit.]

          Enter WAGNER[65] and CLOWN.

     WAGNER. Sirrah boy, come hither.

     CLOWN. How, boy! swowns, boy!  I hope you have seen many boys
     with such pickadevaunts[66] as I have:  boy, quotha!

     WAGNER. Tell me, sirrah, hast thou any comings in?

     CLOWN. Ay, and goings out too; you may see else.

     WAGNER. Alas, poor slave! see how poverty jesteth in his nakedness!
     the villain is bare and out of service, and so hungry, that I know
     he would give his soul to the devil for a shoulder of mutton,
     though it were blood-raw.

     CLOWN. How! my soul to the devil for a shoulder of mutton, though
     'twere blood-raw! not so, good friend:  by'r lady,[67] I had need
     have it well roasted, and good sauce to it, if I pay so dear.

     WAGNER. Well, wilt thou serve me, and I'll make thee go like
     Qui mihi discipulus?[68]

     CLOWN. How, in verse?

     WAGNER. No, sirrah; in beaten silk and staves-acre.[69]

     CLOWN. How, how, knaves-acre! ay, I thought that was all the land
     his father left him.  Do you hear?  I would be sorry to rob you of
     your living.

     WAGNER. Sirrah, I say in staves-acre.

     CLOWN. Oho, oho, staves-acre! why, then, belike, if I were your
     man, I should be full of vermin.[70]

     WAGNER. So thou shalt, whether thou beest with me or no.  But,
     sirrah, leave your jesting, and bind yourself presently unto me
     for seven years, or I'll turn all the lice about thee into
     familiars,[71] and they shall tear thee in pieces.

     CLOWN. Do you hear, sir? you may save that labour; they are too
     familiar with me already:  swowns, they are as bold with my flesh
     as if they had paid for their[72] meat and drink.

     WAGNER. Well, do you hear, sirrah? hold, take these guilders.
          [Gives money.]

     CLOWN. Gridirons! what be they?

     WAGNER. Why, French crowns.

     CLOWN. Mass, but for the name of French crowns, a man were as good
     have as many English counters.  And what should I do with these?

     WAGNER. Why, now, sirrah, thou art at an hour's warning, whensoever
     or wheresoever the devil shall fetch thee.

     CLOWN. No, no; here, take your gridirons again.

     WAGNER. Truly, I'll none of them.

     CLOWN. Truly, but you shall.

     WAGNER. Bear witness I gave them him.

     CLOWN. Bear witness I give them you again.

     WAGNER. Well, I will cause two devils presently to fetch thee
     away.--Baliol and Belcher!

     CLOWN. Let your Baliol and your Belcher come here, and I'll
     knock them, they were never so knocked since they were devils:
     say I should kill one of them, what would folks say?  "Do ye see
     yonder tall fellow in the round slop?[73] he has killed the devil."
     So I should be called Kill-devil all the parish over.

          Enter two DEVILS; and the CLOWN runs up and down crying.

     WAGNER. Baliol and Belcher,--spirits, away!
          [Exeunt DEVILS.]

     CLOWN. What, are they gone? a vengeance on them! they have vile[74]
     long nails.  There was a he-devil and a she-devil:  I'll tell you
     how you shall know them; all he-devils has horns, and all
     she-devils has clifts and cloven feet.

     WAGNER. Well, sirrah, follow me.

     CLOWN. But, do you hear? if I should serve you, would you teach
     me to raise up Banios and Belcheos?

     WAGNER. I will teach thee to turn thyself to any thing, to a dog,
     or a cat, or a mouse, or a rat, or any thing.

     CLOWN. How! a Christian fellow to a dog, or a cat, a mouse,
     or a rat! no, no, sir; if you turn me into any thing, let it be
     in the likeness of a little pretty frisking flea, that I may be
     here and there and every where:  O, I'll tickle the pretty wenches'
     plackets!  I'll be amongst them, i'faith.

     WAGNER. Well, sirrah, come.

     CLOWN. But, do you hear, Wagner?

     WAGNER. How!--Baliol and Belcher!

     CLOWN. O Lord!  I pray, sir, let Banio and Belcher go sleep.

     WAGNER. Villain, call me Master Wagner, and let thy left eye be
     diametarily fixed upon my right heel, with quasi vestigiis
     nostris[75] insistere.
          [Exit.]

     CLOWN. God forgive me, he speaks Dutch fustian.  Well, I'll follow
     him; I'll serve him, that's flat.
          [Exit.]

          FAUSTUS discovered in his study.

     FAUSTUS. Now, Faustus, must
     Thou needs be damn'd, and canst thou not be sav'd:
     What boots it, then, to think of God or heaven?
     Away with such vain fancies, and despair;
     Despair in God, and trust in Belzebub:
     Now go not backward; no, Faustus, be resolute:
     Why waver'st thou?  O, something soundeth in mine ears,
     "Abjure this magic, turn to God again!"
     Ay, and Faustus will turn to God again.
     To God? he loves thee not;
     The god thou serv'st is thine own appetite,
     Wherein is fix'd the love of Belzebub:
     To him I'll build an altar and a church,
     And offer lukewarm blood of new-born babes.

          Enter GOOD ANGEL and EVIL ANGEL.

     GOOD ANGEL. Sweet Faustus, leave that execrable art.

     FAUSTUS. Contrition, prayer, repentance--what of them?

     GOOD ANGEL. O, they are means to bring thee unto heaven!

     EVIL ANGEL. Rather illusions, fruits of lunacy,
     That make men foolish that do trust them most.

     GOOD ANGEL. Sweet Faustus, think of heaven and heavenly things.

     EVIL ANGEL. No, Faustus; think of honour and of[76] wealth.
          [Exeunt ANGELS.]

     FAUSTUS. Of wealth!
     Why, the signiory of Embden shall be mine.
     When Mephistophilis shall stand by me,
     What god can hurt thee, Faustus? thou art safe
     Cast no more doubts.--Come, Mephistophilis,
     And bring glad tidings from great Lucifer;--
     Is't not midnight?--come, Mephistophilis,
     Veni, veni, Mephistophile!

          Enter MEPHISTOPHILIS.

     Now tell me[77] what says Lucifer, thy lord?

     MEPHIST. That I shall wait on Faustus whilst he lives,[78]
     So he will buy my service with his soul.

     FAUSTUS. Already Faustus hath hazarded that for thee.

     MEPHIST. But, Faustus, thou must bequeath it solemnly,
     And write a deed of gift with thine own blood;
     For that security craves great Lucifer.
     If thou deny it, I will back to hell.

     FAUSTUS. Stay, Mephistophilis, and tell me, what good will my soul
     do thy lord?

     MEPHIST. Enlarge his kingdom.

     FAUSTUS. Is that the reason why[79] he tempts us thus?

     MEPHIST. Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.[80]

     FAUSTUS. Why,[81] have you any pain that torture[82] others!

     MEPHIST. As great as have the human souls of men.
     But, tell me, Faustus, shall I have thy soul?
     And I will be thy slave, and wait on thee,
     And give thee more than thou hast wit to ask.

     FAUSTUS. Ay, Mephistophilis, I give it thee.

     MEPHIST. Then, Faustus,[83] stab thine arm courageously,
     And bind thy soul, that at some certain day
     Great Lucifer may claim it as his own;
     And then be thou as great as Lucifer.

     FAUSTUS. [Stabbing his arm] Lo, Mephistophilis, for love of thee,
     I cut mine arm, and with my proper blood
     Assure my soul to be great Lucifer's,
     Chief lord and regent of perpetual night!
     View here the blood that trickles from mine arm,
     And let it be propitious for my wish.

     MEPHIST. But, Faustus, thou must
     Write it in manner of a deed of gift.

     FAUSTUS. Ay, so I will [Writes].  But, Mephistophilis,
     My blood congeals, and I can write no more.

     MEPHIST. I'll fetch thee fire to dissolve it straight.
          [Exit.]

     FAUSTUS. What might the staying of my blood portend?
     Is it unwilling I should write this bill?[84]
     Why streams it not, that I may write afresh?
     FAUSTUS GIVES TO THEE HIS SOUL:  ah, there it stay'd!
     Why shouldst thou not? is not thy soul shine own?
     Then write again, FAUSTUS GIVES TO THEE HIS SOUL.

          Re-enter MEPHISTOPHILIS with a chafer of coals.

     MEPHIST. Here's fire; come, Faustus, set it on.[85]

     FAUSTUS. So, now the blood begins to clear again;
     Now will I make an end immediately.
          [Writes.]

     MEPHIST. O, what will not I do to obtain his soul?
          [Aside.]

     FAUSTUS. Consummatum est; this bill is ended,
     And Faustus hath bequeath'd his soul to Lucifer.
     But what is this inscription[86] on mine arm?
     Homo, fuge:  whither should I fly?
     If unto God, he'll throw me[87] down to hell.
     My senses are deceiv'd; here's nothing writ:--
     I see it plain; here in this place is writ,
     Homo, fuge:  yet shall not Faustus fly.

     MEPHIST. I'll fetch him somewhat to delight his mind.
          [Aside, and then exit.]

          Re-enter MEPHISTOPHILIS with DEVILS, who give crowns
          and rich apparel to FAUSTUS, dance, and then depart.

     FAUSTUS. Speak, Mephistophilis, what means this show?

     MEPHIST. Nothing, Faustus, but to delight thy mind withal,
     And to shew thee what magic can perform.

     FAUSTUS. But may I raise up spirits when I please?

     MEPHIST. Ay, Faustus, and do greater things than these.

     FAUSTUS. Then there's enough for a thousand souls.
     Here, Mephistophilis, receive this scroll,
     A deed of gift of body and of soul:
     But yet conditionally that thou perform
     All articles prescrib'd between us both.

     MEPHIST. Faustus, I swear by hell and Lucifer
     To effect all promises between us made!

     FAUSTUS. Then hear me read them.  [Reads] ON THESE CONDITIONS
     FOLLOWING.  FIRST, THAT FAUSTUS MAY BE A SPIRIT IN FORM AND
     SUBSTANCE.  SECONDLY, THAT MEPHISTOPHILIS SHALL BE HIS SERVANT,
     AND AT HIS COMMAND.  THIRDLY, THAT MEPHISTOPHILIS SHALL DO FOR HIM,
     AND BRING HIM WHATSOEVER HE DESIRES.[88]  FOURTHLY, THAT HE SHALL
     BE IN HIS CHAMBER OR HOUSE INVISIBLE.  LASTLY, THAT HE SHALL APPEAR
     TO THE SAID JOHN FAUSTUS, AT ALL TIMES, IN WHAT FORM OR SHAPE
     SOEVER HE PLEASE.  I, JOHN FAUSTUS, OF WERTENBERG, DOCTOR, BY
     THESE PRESENTS, DO GIVE BOTH BODY AND SOUL TO LUCIFER PRINCE OF
     THE EAST, AND HIS MINISTER MEPHISTOPHILIS; AND FURTHERMORE GRANT
     UNTO THEM, THAT,[89] TWENTY-FOUR YEARS BEING EXPIRED, THE ARTICLES
     ABOVE-WRITTEN INVIOLATE, FULL POWER TO FETCH OR CARRY THE SAID
     JOHN FAUSTUS, BODY AND SOUL, FLESH, BLOOD, OR GOODS, INTO THEIR
     HABITATION WHERESOEVER.  BY ME, JOHN FAUSTUS.

     MEPHIST. Speak, Faustus, do you deliver this as your deed?

     FAUSTUS. Ay, take it, and the devil give thee good on't!

     MEPHIST. Now, Faustus, ask what thou wilt.

     FAUSTUS. First will I question with thee about hell.
     Tell me, where is the place that men call hell?

     MEPHIST. Under the heavens.

     FAUSTUS. Ay, but whereabout?

     MEPHIST. Within the bowels of these[90] elements,
     Where we are tortur'd and remain for ever:
     Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib'd
     In one self place; for where we are is hell,
     And where hell is, there[91] must we ever be:
     And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves,
     And every creature shall be purified,
     All places shall be hell that are[92] not heaven.

     FAUSTUS. Come, I think hell's a fable.

     MEPHIST. Ay, think so still, till experience change thy mind.

     FAUSTUS. Why, think'st thou, then, that Faustus shall be damn'd?

     MEPHIST. Ay, of necessity, for here's the scroll
     Wherein thou hast given thy soul to Lucifer.

     FAUSTUS. Ay, and body too:  but what of that?
     Think'st thou that Faustus is so fond[93] to imagine
     That, after this life, there is any pain?
     Tush, these are trifles and mere old wives' tales.

     MEPHIST. But, Faustus, I am an instance to prove the contrary,
     For I am damn'd, and am now in hell.

     FAUSTUS. How! now in hell!
     Nay, an this be hell, I'll willingly be damn'd here:
     What! walking, disputing, &c.[94]
     But, leaving off this, let me have a wife,[95]
     The fairest maid in Germany;
     For I am wanton and lascivious,
     And cannot live without a wife.

     MEPHIST. How! a wife!
     I prithee, Faustus, talk not of a wife.

     FAUSTUS. Nay, sweet Mephistophilis, fetch me one, for I will have
     one.

     MEPHIST. Well, thou wilt have one?  Sit there till I come:  I'll
     fetch thee a wife in the devil's name.
          [Exit.]

          Re-enter MEPHISTOPHILIS with a DEVIL drest like a WOMAN,
          with fire-works.

     MEPHIST. Tell me,[96] Faustus, how dost thou like thy wife?

     FAUSTUS. A plague on her for a hot whore!

     MEPHIST. Tut, Faustus,
     Marriage is but a ceremonial toy;
     If thou lovest me, think no[97] more of it.
     I'll cull thee out the fairest courtezans,
     And bring them every morning to thy bed:
     She whom thine eye shall like, thy heart shall have,
     Be she as chaste as was Penelope,
     As wise as Saba,[98] or as beautiful
     As was bright Lucifer before his fall.
     Hold, take this book, peruse it thoroughly:
          [Gives book.]

     The iterating[99] of these lines brings gold;
     The framing of this circle on the ground
     Brings whirlwinds, tempests, thunder, and lightning;
     Pronounce this thrice devoutly to thyself,
     And men in armour shall appear to thee,
     Ready to execute what thou desir'st.

     FAUSTUS. Thanks, Mephistophilis:  yet fain would I have a book
     wherein I might behold all spells and incantations, that I
     might raise up spirits when I please.

     MEPHIST. Here they are in this book.
          [Turns to them.]

     FAUSTUS. Now would I have a book where I might see all characters
     and planets of the heavens, that I might know their motions and
     dispositions.

     MEPHIST. Here they are too.
          [Turns to them.]

     FAUSTUS. Nay, let me have one book more,--and then I have done,--
     wherein I might see all plants, herbs, and trees, that grow upon
     the earth.

     MEPHIST. Here they be.

     FAUSTUS. O, thou art deceived.

     MEPHIST. Tut, I warrant thee.
          [Turns to them.]

     FAUSTUS. When I behold the heavens, then I repent,
     And curse thee, wicked Mephistophilis,
     Because thou hast depriv'd me of those joys.

     MEPHIST. Why, Faustus,
     Thinkest thou heaven is such a glorious thing?
     I tell thee, 'tis not half so fair as thou,
     Or any man that breathes on earth.

     FAUSTUS. How prov'st thou that?

     MEPHIST. 'Twas made for man, therefore is man more excellent.

     FAUSTUS. If it were made for man, 'twas made for me:
     I will renounce this magic and repent.

          Enter GOOD ANGEL and EVIL ANGEL.

     GOOD ANGEL. Faustus, repent; yet God will pity thee.

     EVIL ANGEL. Thou art a spirit; God cannot pity thee.

     FAUSTUS. Who buzzeth in mine ears I am a spirit?
     Be I a devil, yet God may pity me;
     Ay, God will pity me, if I repent.

     EVIL ANGEL. Ay, but Faustus never shall repent.
          [Exeunt ANGELS.]

     FAUSTUS. My heart's so harden'd, I cannot repent:
     Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven,
     But fearful echoes thunder in mine ears,
     "Faustus, thou art damn'd!" then swords, and knives,
     Poison, guns, halters, and envenom'd steel
     Are laid before me to despatch myself;
     And long ere this I should have slain myself,
     Had not sweet pleasure conquer'd deep despair.
     Have not I made blind Homer sing to me
     Of Alexander's love and Oenon's death?
     And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes
     With ravishing sound of his melodious harp,
     Made music with my Mephistophilis?
     Why should I die, then, or basely despair?
     I am resolv'd; Faustus shall ne'er repent.--
     Come, Mephistophilis, let us dispute again,
     And argue of divine astrology.[100]
     Tell me, are there many heavens above the moon
     Are all celestial bodies but one globe,
     As is the substance of this centric earth?

     MEPHIST. As are the elements, such are the spheres,
     Mutually folded in each other's orb,
     And, Faustus,
     All jointly move upon one axletree,
     Whose terminine is term'd the world's wide pole;
     Nor are the names of Saturn, Mars, or Jupiter
     Feign'd, but are erring[101] stars.

     FAUSTUS. But, tell me, have they all one motion, both situ et
     tempore?

     MEPHIST. All jointly move from east to west in twenty-four hours
     upon the poles of the world; but differ in their motion upon
     the poles of the zodiac.

     FAUSTUS. Tush,
     These slender trifles Wagner can decide:
     Hath Mephistophilis no greater skill?
     Who knows not the double motion of the planets?
     The first is finish'd in a natural day;
     The second thus; as Saturn in thirty years; Jupiter in twelve;
     Mars in four; the Sun, Venus, and Mercury in a year; the Moon in
     twenty-eight days.  Tush, these are freshmen's[102] suppositions.
     But, tell me, hath every sphere a dominion or intelligentia?

     MEPHIST. Ay.

     FAUSTUS. How many heavens or spheres are there?

     MEPHIST. Nine; the seven planets, the firmament, and the empyreal
     heaven.

     FAUSTUS. Well, resolve[103] me in this question; why have we not
     conjunctions, oppositions, aspects, eclipses, all at one time,
     but in some years we have more, in some less?

     MEPHIST. Per inoequalem motum respectu totius.

     FAUSTUS. Well, I am answered.  Tell me who made the world?

     MEPHIST. I will not.

     FAUSTUS. Sweet Mephistophilis, tell me.

     MEPHIST. Move me not, for I will not tell thee.

     FAUSTUS. Villain, have I not bound thee to tell me any thing?

     MEPHIST. Ay, that is not against our kingdom; but this is.  Think
     thou on hell, Faustus, for thou art damned.

     FAUSTUS. Think, Faustus, upon God that made the world.

     MEPHIST. Remember this.
          [Exit.]

     FAUSTUS. Ay, go, accursed spirit, to ugly hell!
     'Tis thou hast damn'd distressed Faustus' soul.
     Is't not too late?

          Re-enter GOOD ANGEL and EVIL ANGEL.

     EVIL ANGEL. Too late.

     GOOD ANGEL. Never too late, if Faustus can repent.

     EVIL ANGEL. If thou repent, devils shall tear thee in pieces.

     GOOD ANGEL. Repent, and they shall never raze thy skin.
          [Exeunt ANGELS.]

     FAUSTUS. Ah, Christ, my Saviour,
     Seek to save[104] distressed Faustus' soul!

          Enter LUCIFER, BELZEBUB, and MEPHISTOPHILIS.

     LUCIFER. Christ cannot save thy soul, for he is just:
     There's none but I have interest in the same.

     FAUSTUS. O, who art thou that look'st so terrible?

     LUCIFER. I am Lucifer,
     And this is my companion-prince in hell.

     FAUSTUS. O, Faustus, they are come to fetch away thy soul!

     LUCIFER. We come to tell thee thou dost injure us;
     Thou talk'st of Christ, contrary to thy promise:
     Thou shouldst not think of God:  think of the devil,
     And of his dam too.

     FAUSTUS. Nor will I henceforth:  pardon me in this,
     And Faustus vows never to look to heaven,
     Never to name God, or to pray to him,
     To burn his Scriptures, slay his ministers,
     And make my spirits pull his churches down.

     LUCIFER. Do so, and we will highly gratify thee.  Faustus, we are
     come from hell to shew thee some pastime:  sit down, and thou
     shalt see all the Seven Deadly Sins appear in their proper shapes.

     FAUSTUS. That sight will be as pleasing unto me,
     As Paradise was to Adam, the first day
     Of his creation.

     LUCIFER. Talk not of Paradise nor creation; but mark this show:
     talk of the devil, and nothing else.--Come away!

          Enter the SEVEN DEADLY SINS.[105]

     Now, Faustus, examine them of their several names and dispositions.

     FAUSTUS. What art thou, the first?

     PRIDE. I am Pride.  I disdain to have any parents.  I am like to
     Ovid's flea; I can creep into every corner of a wench; sometimes,
     like a perriwig, I sit upon her brow; or, like a fan of feathers,
     I kiss her lips; indeed, I do--what do I not?  But, fie, what a
     scent is here!  I'll not speak another word, except the ground
     were perfumed, and covered with cloth of arras.

     FAUSTUS. What art thou, the second?

     COVETOUSNESS. I am Covetousness, begotten of an old churl, in an
     old leathern bag:  and, might I have my wish, I would desire that
     this house and all the people in it were turned to gold, that I
     might lock you up in my good chest:  O, my sweet gold!

     FAUSTUS. What art thou, the third?

     WRATH. I am Wrath.  I had neither father nor mother:  I leapt out
     of a lion's mouth when I was scarce half-an-hour old; and ever
     since I have run up and down the world with this case[106]
     of rapiers, wounding myself when I had nobody to fight withal.
     I was born in hell; and look to it, for some of you shall be
     my father.

     FAUSTUS. What art thou, the fourth?

     ENVY. I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife.
     I cannot read, and therefore wish all books were burnt.  I am lean
     with seeing others eat.  O, that there would come a famine through
     all the world, that all might die, and I live alone! then thou
     shouldst see how fat I would be.  But must thou sit, and I stand?
     come down, with a vengeance!

     FAUSTUS. Away, envious rascal!--What art thou, the fifth?

     GLUTTONY. Who I, sir?  I am Gluttony.  My parents are all dead,
     and the devil a penny they have left me, but a bare pension, and
     that is thirty meals a-day and ten bevers,[107]--a small trifle
     to suffice nature.  O, I come of a royal parentage! my grandfather
     was a Gammon of Bacon, my grandmother a Hogshead of Claret-wine;
     my godfathers were these, Peter Pickle-herring and Martin
     Martlemas-beef; O, but my godmother, she was a jolly gentlewoman,
     and well-beloved in every good town and city; her name was Mistress
     Margery March-beer.  Now, Faustus, thou hast heard all my progeny;
     wilt thou bid me to supper?

     FAUSTUS. No, I'll see thee hanged:  thou wilt eat up all my victuals.

     GLUTTONY. Then the devil choke thee!

     FAUSTUS. Choke thyself, glutton!--What art thou, the sixth?

     SLOTH. I am Sloth.  I was begotten on a sunny bank, where I have
     lain ever since; and you have done me great injury to bring me
     from thence:  let me be carried thither again by Gluttony and
     Lechery.  I'll not speak another word for a king's ransom.

     FAUSTUS. What are you, Mistress Minx, the seventh and last?

     LECHERY. Who I, sir?  I am one that loves an inch of raw mutton
     better than an ell of fried stock-fish; and the first letter
     of my name begins with L.[108]

     FAUSTUS. Away, to hell, to hell![109]
          [Exeunt the SINS.]

     LUCIFER. Now, Faustus, how dost thou like this?

     FAUSTUS. O, this feeds my soul!

     LUCIFER. Tut, Faustus, in hell is all manner of delight.

     FAUSTUS. O, might I see hell, and return again,
     How happy were I then!

     LUCIFER. Thou shalt; I will send for thee at midnight.[110]
     In meantime take this book; peruse it throughly,
     And thou shalt turn thyself into what shape thou wilt.

     FAUSTUS. Great thanks, mighty Lucifer!
     This will I keep as chary as my life.

     LUCIFER. Farewell, Faustus, and think on the devil.

     FAUSTUS. Farewell, great Lucifer.
          [Exeunt LUCIFER and BELZEBUB.]

     Come, Mephistophilis.
          [Exeunt.]

          Enter CHORUS.[111]

     CHORUS. Learned Faustus,
     To know the secrets of astronomy[112]
     Graven in the book of Jove's high firmament,
     Did mount himself to scale Olympus' top,
     Being seated in a chariot burning bright,
     Drawn by the strength of yoky dragons' necks.
     He now is gone to prove cosmography,
     And, as I guess, will first arrive at Rome,
     To see the Pope and manner of his court,
     And take some part of holy Peter's feast,
     That to this day is highly solemniz'd.
          [Exit.]

          Enter FAUSTUS and MEPHISTOPHILIS.[113]

     FAUSTUS. Having now, my good Mephistophilis,
     Pass'd with delight the stately town of Trier,[114]
     Environ'd round with airy mountain-tops,
     With walls of flint, and deep-entrenched lakes,
     Not to be won by any conquering prince;
     From Paris next,[115] coasting the realm of France,
     We saw the river Maine fall into Rhine,
     Whose banks are set with groves of fruitful vines;
     Then up to Naples, rich Campania,
     Whose buildings fair and gorgeous to the eye,
     The streets straight forth, and pav'd with finest brick,
     Quarter the town in four equivalents:
     There saw we learned Maro's golden tomb,
     The way he cut,[116] an English mile in length,
     Thorough a rock of stone, in one night's space;
     From thence to Venice, Padua, and the rest,
     In one of which a sumptuous temple stands,[117]
     That threats the stars with her aspiring top.
     Thus hitherto hath Faustus spent his time:
     But tell me now what resting-place is this?
     Hast thou, as erst I did command,
     Conducted me within the walls of Rome?

     MEPHIST. Faustus, I have; and, because we will not be unprovided,
     I have taken up his Holiness' privy-chamber for our use.

     FAUSTUS. I hope his Holiness will bid us welcome.

     MEPHIST.
     Tut, 'tis no matter; man; we'll be bold with his good cheer.
     And now, my Faustus, that thou mayst perceive
     What Rome containeth to delight thee with,
     Know that this city stands upon seven hills
     That underprop the groundwork of the same:
     Just through the midst[118] runs flowing Tiber's stream
     With winding banks that cut it in two parts;
     Over the which four stately bridges lean,
     That make safe passage to each part of Rome:
     Upon the bridge call'd Ponte[119] Angelo
     Erected is a castle passing strong,
     Within whose walls such store of ordnance are,
     And double cannons fram'd of carved brass,
     As match the days within one complete year;
     Besides the gates, and high pyramides,
     Which Julius Caesar brought from Africa.

     FAUSTUS. Now, by the kingdoms of infernal rule,
     Of Styx, of[120] Acheron, and the fiery lake
     Of ever-burning Phlegethon, I swear
     That I do long to see the monuments
     And situation of bright-splendent Rome:
     Come, therefore, let's away.

     MEPHIST. Nay, Faustus, stay:  I know you'd fain see the Pope,
     And take some part of holy Peter's feast,
     Where thou shalt see a troop of bald-pate friars,
     Whose summum bonum is in belly-cheer.

     FAUSTUS. Well, I'm content to compass then some sport,
     And by their folly make us merriment.
     Then charm me, that I[121]
     May be invisible, to do what I please,
     Unseen of any whilst I stay in Rome.
          [Mephistophilis charms him.]

     MEPHIST. So, Faustus; now
     Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not be discern'd.

          Sound a Sonnet.[122] Enter the POPE and the CARDINAL OF
          LORRAIN to the banquet, with FRIARS attending.

     POPE. My Lord of Lorrain, will't please you draw near?

     FAUSTUS. Fall to, and the devil choke you, an you spare!

     POPE. How now! who's that which spake?--Friars, look about.

     FIRST FRIAR. Here's nobody, if it like your Holiness.

     POPE. My lord, here is a dainty dish was sent me from the Bishop
     of Milan.

     FAUSTUS. I thank you, sir.
          [Snatches the dish.]

     POPE. How now! who's that which snatched the meat from me? will
     no man look?--My lord, this dish was sent me from the Cardinal
     of Florence.

     FAUSTUS. You say true; I'll ha't.
          [Snatches the dish.]

     POPE. What, again!--My lord, I'll drink to your grace.

     FAUSTUS. I'll pledge your grace.
          [Snatches the cup.]

     C. OF LOR. My lord, it may be some ghost, newly crept out of
     Purgatory, come to beg a pardon of your Holiness.

     POPE. It may be so.--Friars, prepare a dirge to lay the fury
     of this ghost.--Once again, my lord, fall to.
          [The POPE crosses himself.]

     FAUSTUS. What, are you crossing of yourself?
     Well, use that trick no more, I would advise you.
          [The POPE crosses himself again.]

     Well, there's the second time.  Aware the third;
     I give you fair warning.
          [The POPE crosses himself again, and FAUSTUS hits him a box
           of the ear; and they all run away.]

     Come on, Mephistophilis; what shall we do?

     MEPHIST. Nay, I know not:  we shall be cursed with bell, book,
     and candle.

     FAUSTUS. How! bell, book, and candle,--candle, book, and bell,--
     Forward and backward, to curse Faustus to hell!
     Anon you shall hear a hog grunt, a calf bleat, and an ass bray,
     Because it is Saint Peter's holiday.

          Re-enter all the FRIARS to sing the Dirge.

     FIRST FRIAR.
     Come, brethren, let's about our business with good devotion.

          They sing.

     CURSED BE HE THAT STOLE AWAY HIS HOLINESS' MEAT FROM THE
     TABLE!  maledicat Dominus!
     CURSED BE HE THAT STRUCK HIS HOLINESS A BLOW ON THE FACE!
     maledicat Dominus!
     CURSED BE HE THAT TOOK FRIAR SANDELO A BLOW ON THE PATE!
     maledicat Dominus!
     CURSED BE HE THAT DISTURBETH OUR HOLY DIRGE!  maledicat
     Dominus!
     CURSED BE HE THAT TOOK AWAY HIS HOLINESS' WINE!  maledicat
     Dominus?  ['?' sic]
          Et omnes Sancti!  Amen!

          [MEPHISTOPHILIS and FAUSTUS beat the FRIARS, and fling
           fire-works among them; and so exeunt.]

          Enter CHORUS.

     CHORUS. When Faustus had with pleasure ta'en the view
     Of rarest things, and royal courts of kings,
     He stay'd his course, and so returned home;
     Where such as bear his absence but with grief,
     I mean his friends and near'st companions,
     Did gratulate his safety with kind words,
     And in their conference of what befell,
     Touching his journey through the world and air,
     They put forth questions of astrology,
     Which Faustus answer'd with such learned skill
     As they admir'd and wonder'd at his wit.
     Now is his fame spread forth in every land:
     Amongst the rest the Emperor is one,
     Carolus the Fifth, at whose palace now
     Faustus is feasted 'mongst his noblemen.
     What there he did, in trial of his art,
     I leave untold; your eyes shall see['t] perform'd.
          [Exit.]

          Enter ROBIN[123] the Ostler, with a book in his hand.

     ROBIN. O, this is admirable! here I ha' stolen one of Doctor
     Faustus' conjuring-books, and, i'faith, I mean to search some
     circles for my own use.  Now will I make all the maidens in our
     parish dance at my pleasure, stark naked, before me; and so
     by that means I shall see more than e'er I felt or saw yet.

          Enter RALPH, calling ROBIN.

     RALPH. Robin, prithee, come away; there's a gentleman tarries
     to have his horse, and he would have his things rubbed and made
     clean:  he keeps such a chafing with my mistress about it; and
     she has sent me to look thee out; prithee, come away.

     ROBIN. Keep out, keep out, or else you are blown up, you are
     dismembered, Ralph:  keep out, for I am about a roaring piece
     of work.

     RALPH. Come, what doest thou with that same book? thou canst
     not read?

     ROBIN. Yes, my master and mistress shall find that I can read,
     he for his forehead, she for her private study; she's born to
     bear with me, or else my art fails.

     RALPH. Why, Robin, what book is that?

     ROBIN. What book! why, the most intolerable book for conjuring
     that e'er was invented by any brimstone devil.

     RALPH. Canst thou conjure with it?

     ROBIN. I can do all these things easily with it; first, I can
     make thee drunk with ippocras[124] at any tabern[125] in Europe
     for nothing; that's one of my conjuring works.

     RALPH. Our Master Parson says that's nothing.

     ROBIN. True, Ralph:  and more, Ralph, if thou hast any mind to
     Nan Spit, our kitchen-maid, then turn her and wind her to thy own
     use, as often as thou wilt, and at midnight.

     RALPH. O, brave, Robin! shall I have Nan Spit, and to mine own
     use?  On that condition I'll feed thy devil with horse-bread as
     long as he lives, of free cost.

     ROBIN. No more, sweet Ralph:  let's go and make clean our boots,
     which lie foul upon our hands, and then to our conjuring in the
     devil's name.
          [Exeunt.]

          Enter ROBIN and RALPH[126] with a silver goblet.

     ROBIN. Come, Ralph:  did not I tell thee, we were for ever made
     by this Doctor Faustus' book? ecce, signum! here's a simple
     purchase[127] for horse-keepers:  our horses shall eat no hay as
     long as this lasts.

     RALPH. But, Robin, here comes the Vintner.

     ROBIN. Hush!  I'll gull him supernaturally.

          Enter VINTNER.

     Drawer,[128] I hope all is paid; God be with you!--Come, Ralph.

     VINTNER. Soft, sir; a word with you.  I must yet have a goblet paid
     from you, ere you go.

     ROBIN. I a goblet, Ralph, I a goblet!--I scorn you; and you are
     but a, &c.  I a goblet! search me.

     VINTNER. I mean so, sir, with your favour.
          [Searches ROBIN.]

     ROBIN. How say you now?

     VINTNER. I must say somewhat to your fellow.--You, sir!

     RALPH. Me, sir! me, sir! search your fill.  [VINTNER searches him.]
     Now, sir, you may be ashamed to burden honest men with a matter
     of truth.

     VINTNER. Well, tone[129] of you hath this goblet about you.

     ROBIN. You lie, drawer, 'tis afore me [Aside].--Sirrah you, I'll
     teach you to impeach honest men;--stand by;--I'll scour you for
     a goblet;--stand aside you had best, I charge you in the name of
     Belzebub.--Look to the goblet, Ralph [Aside to RALPH].

     VINTNER. What mean you, sirrah?

     ROBIN. I'll tell you what I mean.  [Reads from a book] Sanctobulorum
     Periphrasticon--nay, I'll tickle you, Vintner.--Look to the goblet,
     Ralph [Aside to RALPH].--[Reads] Polypragmos Belseborams framanto
     pacostiphos tostu, Mephistophilis, &c.

          Enter MEPHISTOPHILIS, sets squibs at their backs, and then
          exit.  They run about.

     VINTNER. O, nomine Domini! what meanest thou, Robin? thou hast no
     goblet.

     RALPH. Peccatum peccatorum!--Here's thy goblet, good Vintner.
          [Gives the goblet to VINTNER, who exit.]

     ROBIN. Misericordia pro nobis! what shall I do?  Good devil, forgive
     me now, and I'll never rob thy library more.

          Re-enter MEPHISTOPHILIS.

     MEPHIST. Monarch of Hell,[130] under whose black survey
     Great potentates do kneel with awful fear,
     Upon whose altars thousand souls do lie,
     How am I vexed with these villains' charms?
     From Constantinople am I hither come,
     Only for pleasure of these damned slaves.

     ROBIN. How, from Constantinople! you have had a great journey:
     will you take sixpence in your purse to pay for your supper, and
     be gone?

     MEPHIST. Well, villains, for your presumption, I transform thee
     into an ape, and thee into a dog; and so be gone!
          [Exit.]

     ROBIN. How, into an ape! that's brave:  I'll have fine sport with
     the boys; I'll get nuts and apples enow.

     RALPH. And I must be a dog.

     ROBIN. I'faith, thy head will never be out of the pottage-pot.
          [Exeunt.]

          Enter EMPEROR,[131] FAUSTUS, and a KNIGHT, with ATTENDANTS.

     EMPEROR. Master Doctor Faustus,[132] I have heard strange report
     of thy knowledge in the black art, how that none in my empire
     nor in the whole world can compare with thee for the rare effects
     of magic:  they say thou hast a familiar spirit, by whom thou canst
     accomplish what thou list.  This, therefore, is my request, that
     thou let me see some proof of thy skill, that mine eyes may be
     witnesses to confirm what mine ears have heard reported:  and here
     I swear to thee, by the honour of mine imperial crown, that,
     whatever thou doest, thou shalt be no ways prejudiced or endamaged.

     KNIGHT. I'faith, he looks much like a conjurer.
          [Aside.]

     FAUSTUS. My gracious sovereign, though I must confess myself far
     inferior to the report men have published, and nothing answerable
     to the honour of your imperial majesty, yet, for that love and duty
     binds me thereunto, I am content to do whatsoever your majesty
     shall command me.

     EMPEROR. Then, Doctor Faustus, mark what I shall say.
     As I was sometime solitary set
     Within my closet, sundry thoughts arose
     About the honour of mine ancestors,
     How they had won[133] by prowess such exploits,
     Got such riches, subdu'd so many kingdoms,
     As we that do succeed,[134] or they that shall
     Hereafter possess our throne, shall
     (I fear me) ne'er attain to that degree
     Of high renown and great authority:
     Amongst which kings is Alexander the Great,
     Chief spectacle of the world's pre-eminence,
     The bright[135] shining of whose glorious acts
     Lightens the world with his reflecting beams,
     As when I hear but motion made of him,
     It grieves my soul I never saw the man:
     If, therefore, thou, by cunning of thine art,
     Canst raise this man from hollow vaults below,
     Where lies entomb'd this famous conqueror,
     And bring with him his beauteous paramour,
     Both in their right shapes, gesture, and attire
     They us'd to wear during their time of life,
     Thou shalt both satisfy my just desire,
     And give me cause to praise thee whilst I live.

     FAUSTUS. My gracious lord, I am ready to accomplish your request,
     so far forth as by art and power of my spirit I am able to perform.

     KNIGHT. I'faith, that's just nothing at all.
          [Aside.]

     FAUSTUS. But, if it like your grace, it is not in my ability[136]
     to present before your eyes the true substantial bodies of those
     two deceased princes, which long since are consumed to dust.

     KNIGHT. Ay, marry, Master Doctor, now there's a sign of grace in
     you, when you will confess the truth.
          [Aside.]

     FAUSTUS. But such spirits as can lively resemble Alexander and
     his paramour shall appear before your grace, in that manner that
     they both[137] lived in, in their most flourishing estate; which
     I doubt not shall sufficiently content your imperial majesty.

     EMPEROR. Go to, Master Doctor; let me see them presently.

     KNIGHT. Do you hear, Master Doctor? you bring Alexander and his
     paramour before the Emperor!

     FAUSTUS. How then, sir?

     KNIGHT. I'faith, that's as true as Diana turned me to a stag.

     FAUSTUS. No, sir; but, when Actaeon died, he left the horns for
     you.--Mephistophilis, be gone.
          [Exit MEPHISTOPHILIS.]

     KNIGHT. Nay, an you go to conjuring, I'll be gone.
          [Exit.]

     FAUSTUS. I'll meet with you anon for interrupting me so.
     --Here they are, my gracious lord.

          Re-enter MEPHISTOPHILIS with SPIRITS in the shapes of ALEXANDER
          and his PARAMOUR.

     EMPEROR. Master Doctor, I heard this lady, while she lived, had a
     wart or mole in her neck:  how shall I know whether it be so or no?

     FAUSTUS. Your highness may boldly go and see.

     EMPEROR. Sure, these are no spirits, but the true substantial
     bodies of those two deceased princes.
          [Exeunt Spirits.]

     FAUSTUS. Wilt please your highness now to send for the knight
     that was so pleasant with me here of late?

     EMPEROR. One of you call him forth.
          [Exit ATTENDANT.]

          Re-enter the KNIGHT with a pair of horns on his head.

     How now, sir knight! why, I had thought thou hadst been a bachelor,
     but now I see thou hast a wife, that not only gives thee horns,
     but makes thee wear them.  Feel on thy head.

     KNIGHT. Thou damned wretch and execrable dog,
     Bred in the concave of some monstrous rock,
     How dar'st thou thus abuse a gentleman?
     Villain, I say, undo what thou hast done!

     FAUSTUS. O, not so fast, sir! there's no haste:  but, good, are
     you remembered how you crossed me in my conference with the
     Emperor?  I think I have met with you for it.

     EMPEROR. Good Master Doctor, at my entreaty release him:  he hath
     done penance sufficient.

     FAUSTUS. My gracious lord, not so much for the injury he offered
     me here in your presence, as to delight you with some mirth, hath
     Faustus worthily requited this injurious knight; which being all
     I desire, I am content to release him of his horns:--and,
     sir knight, hereafter speak well of scholars.--Mephistophilis,
     transform him straight.[138]  [MEPHISTOPHILIS removes the horns.]
     --Now, my good lord, having done my duty, I humbly take my leave.

     EMPEROR. Farewell, Master Doctor:  yet, ere you go,
     Expect from me a bounteous reward.
          [Exeunt EMPEROR, KNIGHT, and ATTENDANTS.]

     FAUSTUS. Now, Mephistophilis,[139] the restless course
     That time doth run with calm and silent foot,
     Shortening my days and thread of vital life,
     Calls for the payment of my latest years:
     Therefore, sweet Mephistophilis, let us
     Make haste to Wertenberg.

     MEPHIST. What, will you go on horse-back or on foot[?]

     FAUSTUS. Nay, till I'm past this fair and pleasant green,
     I'll walk on foot.

          Enter a HORSE-COURSER.[140]

     HORSE-COURSER. I have been all this day seeking one Master Fustian:
     mass, see where he is!--God save you, Master Doctor!

     FAUSTUS. What, horse-courser! you are well met.

     HORSE-COURSER. Do you hear, sir?  I have brought you forty dollars
     for your horse.

     FAUSTUS. I cannot sell him so:  if thou likest him for fifty, take
     him.

     HORSE-COURSER. Alas, sir, I have no more!--I pray you, speak for
     me.

     MEPHIST. I pray you, let him have him:  he is an honest fellow,
     and he has a great charge, neither wife nor child.

     FAUSTUS. Well, come, give me your money [HORSE-COURSER gives
     FAUSTUS the money]:  my boy will deliver him to you.  But I must
     tell you one thing before you have him; ride him not into the
     water, at any hand.

     HORSE-COURSER. Why, sir, will he not drink of all waters?

     FAUSTUS. O, yes, he will drink of all waters; but ride him not
     into the water:  ride him over hedge or ditch, or where thou wilt,
     but not into the water.

     HORSE-COURSER. Well, sir.--Now am I made man for ever:  I'll not
     leave my horse for forty:[141]  if he had but the quality of
     hey-ding-ding, hey-ding-ding, I'd make a brave living on him:
     he has a buttock as slick as an eel [Aside].--Well, God b'wi'ye,
     sir:  your boy will deliver him me:  but, hark you, sir; if my horse
     be sick or ill at ease, if I bring his water to you, you'll tell
     me what it is?

     FAUSTUS. Away, you villain! what, dost think I am a horse-doctor?
          [Exit HORSE-COURSER.]

     What art thou, Faustus, but a man condemn'd to die?
     Thy fatal time doth draw to final end;
     Despair doth drive distrust into[142] my thoughts:
     Confound these passions with a quiet sleep:
     Tush, Christ did call the thief upon the Cross;
     Then rest thee, Faustus, quiet in conceit.
          [Sleeps in his chair.]

          Re-enter HORSE-COURSER, all wet, crying.

     HORSE-COURSER. Alas, alas!  Doctor Fustian, quoth a? mass, Doctor
     Lopus[143] was never such a doctor:  has given me a purgation, has
     purged me of forty dollars; I shall never see them more.  But yet,
     like an ass as I was, I would not be ruled by him, for he bade me
     I should ride him into no water:  now I, thinking my horse had had
     some rare quality that he would not have had me know of,[144] I,
     like a venturous youth, rid him into the deep pond at the town's
     end.  I was no sooner in the middle of the pond, but my horse
     vanished away, and I sat upon a bottle of hay, never so near
     drowning in my life.  But I'll seek out my doctor, and have my
     forty dollars again, or I'll make it the dearest horse!--O,
     yonder is his snipper-snapper.--Do you hear? you, hey-pass,[145]
     where's your master?

     MEPHIST. Why, sir, what would you? you cannot speak with him.

     HORSE-COURSER. But I will speak with him.

     MEPHIST. Why, he's fast asleep:  come some other time.

     HORSE-COURSER. I'll speak with him now, or I'll break his
     glass-windows about his ears.

     MEPHIST. I tell thee, he has not slept this eight nights.

     HORSE-COURSER. An he have not slept this eight weeks, I'll
     speak with him.

     MEPHIST. See, where he is, fast asleep.

     HORSE-COURSER. Ay, this is he.--God save you, Master Doctor,
     Master Doctor, Master Doctor Fustian! forty dollars, forty dollars
     for a bottle of hay!

     MEPHIST. Why, thou seest he hears thee not.

     HORSE-COURSER. So-ho, ho! so-ho, ho!  [Hollows in his ear.]  No,
     will you not wake?  I'll make you wake ere I go.  [Pulls FAUSTUS
     by the leg, and pulls it away.]  Alas, I am undone! what shall
     I do?

     FAUSTUS. O, my leg, my leg!--Help, Mephistophilis! call the
     officers.--My leg, my leg!

     MEPHIST. Come, villain, to the constable.

     HORSE-COURSER. O Lord, sir, let me go, and I'll give you forty
     dollars more!

     MEPHIST. Where be they?

     HORSE-COURSER. I have none about me:  come to my ostry,[146]
     and I'll give them you.

     MEPHIST. Be gone quickly.
          [HORSE-COURSER runs away.]

     FAUSTUS. What, is he gone? farewell he!  Faustus has his leg again,
     and the Horse-courser, I take it, a bottle of hay for his labour:
     well, this trick shall cost him forty dollars more.

          Enter WAGNER.

     How now, Wagner! what's the news with thee?

     WAGNER. Sir, the Duke of Vanholt doth earnestly entreat your
     company.

     FAUSTUS. The Duke of Vanholt! an honourable gentleman, to whom
     I must be no niggard of my cunning.[147]--Come, Mephistophilis,
     let's away to him.
          [Exeunt.]

          Enter the DUKE OF VANHOLT, the DUCHESS, and FAUSTUS.[148]

     DUKE. Believe me, Master Doctor, this merriment hath much pleased
     me.

     FAUSTUS. My gracious lord, I am glad it contents you so well.
     --But it may be, madam, you take no delight in this.  I have heard
     that great-bellied women do long for some dainties or other:  what
     is it, madam? tell me, and you shall have it.

     DUCHESS. Thanks, good Master Doctor:  and, for I see your courteous
     intent to pleasure me, I will not hide from you the thing my heart
     desires; and, were it now summer, as it is January and the dead
     time of the winter, I would desire no better meat than a dish
     of ripe grapes.

     FAUSTUS. Alas, madam, that's nothing!--Mephistophilis, be gone.
     [Exit MEPHISTOPHILIS.] Were it a greater thing than this, so it
     would content you, you should have it.

          Re-enter MEPHISTOPHILIS with grapes.

     Here they be, madam:  wilt please you taste on them?

     DUKE. Believe me, Master Doctor, this makes me wonder above the
     rest, that being in the dead time of winter and in the month of
     January, how you should come by these grapes.

     FAUSTUS. If it like your grace, the year is divided into two
     circles over the whole world, that, when it is here winter with
     us, in the contrary circle it is summer with them, as in India,
     Saba,[149] and farther countries in the east; and by means of a
     swift spirit that I have, I had them brought hither, as you see.
     --How do you like them, madam? be they good?

     DUCHESS. Believe me, Master Doctor, they be the best grapes that
     e'er I tasted in my life before.

     FAUSTUS. I am glad they content you so, madam.

     DUKE. Come, madam, let us in, where you must well reward this
     learned man for the great kindness he hath shewed to you.

     DUCHESS. And so I will, my lord; and, whilst I live, rest
     beholding[150] for this courtesy.

     FAUSTUS. I humbly thank your grace.

     DUKE. Come, Master Doctor, follow us, and receive your reward.
          [Exeunt.]

          Enter WAGNER.[151]

     WAGNER. I think my master means to die shortly,
     For he hath given to me all his goods:[152]
     And yet, methinks, if that death were near,
     He would not banquet, and carouse, and swill
     Amongst the students, as even now he doth,
     Who are at supper with such belly-cheer
     As Wagner ne'er beheld in all his life.
     See, where they come! belike the feast is ended.
          [Exit.]

          Enter FAUSTUS with two or three SCHOLARS, and MEPHISTOPHILIS.

     FIRST SCHOLAR. Master Doctor Faustus, since our conference about
     fair ladies, which was the beautifulest in all the world, we have
     determined with ourselves that Helen of Greece was the admirablest
     lady that ever lived:  therefore, Master Doctor, if you will do us
     that favour, as to let us see that peerless dame of Greece, whom
     all the world admires for majesty, we should think ourselves much
     beholding unto you.

     FAUSTUS. Gentlemen,
     For that I know your friendship is unfeign'd,
     And Faustus' custom is not to deny
     The just requests of those that wish him well,
     You shall behold that peerless dame of Greece,
     No otherways for pomp and majesty
     Than when Sir Paris cross'd the seas with her,
     And brought the spoils to rich Dardania.
     Be silent, then, for danger is in words.
          [Music sounds, and HELEN passeth over the stage.[153]]

     SECOND SCHOLAR. Too simple is my wit to tell her praise,
     Whom all the world admires for majesty.

     THIRD SCHOLAR. No marvel though the angry Greeks pursu'd
     With ten years' war the rape of such a queen,
     Whose heavenly beauty passeth all compare.

     FIRST SCHOLAR. Since we have seen the pride of Nature's works,
     And only paragon of excellence,
     Let us depart; and for this glorious deed
     Happy and blest be Faustus evermore!

     FAUSTUS. Gentlemen, farewell:  the same I wish to you.
          [Exeunt SCHOLARS.]

          Enter an OLD MAN.[154]

     OLD MAN. Ah, Doctor Faustus, that I might prevail
     To guide thy steps unto the way of life,
     By which sweet path thou mayst attain the goal
     That shall conduct thee to celestial rest!
     Break heart, drop blood, and mingle it with tears,
     Tears falling from repentant heaviness
     Of thy most vile[155] and loathsome filthiness,
     The stench whereof corrupts the inward soul
     With such flagitious crimes of heinous sin[156]
     As no commiseration may expel,
     But mercy, Faustus, of thy Saviour sweet,
     Whose blood alone must wash away thy guilt.

     FAUSTUS. Where art thou, Faustus? wretch, what hast thou done?
     Damn'd art thou, Faustus, damn'd; despair and die!
     Hell calls for right, and with a roaring voice
     Says, "Faustus, come; thine hour is almost[157] come;"
     And Faustus now[158] will come to do thee right.
          [MEPHISTOPHILIS gives him a dagger.]

     OLD MAN. Ah, stay, good Faustus, stay thy desperate steps!
     I see an angel hovers o'er thy head,
     And, with a vial full of precious grace,
     Offers to pour the same into thy soul:
     Then call for mercy, and avoid despair.

     FAUSTUS. Ah, my sweet friend, I feel
     Thy words to comfort my distressed soul!
     Leave me a while to ponder on my sins.

     OLD MAN. I go, sweet Faustus; but with heavy cheer,
     Fearing the ruin of thy hopeless soul.
          [Exit.]

     FAUSTUS. Accursed Faustus, where is mercy now?
     I do repent; and yet I do despair:
     Hell strives with grace for conquest in my breast:
     What shall I do to shun the snares of death?

     MEPHIST. Thou traitor, Faustus, I arrest thy soul
     For disobedience to my sovereign lord:
     Revolt, or I'll in piece-meal tear thy flesh.

     FAUSTUS. Sweet Mephistophilis, entreat thy lord
     To pardon my unjust presumption,
     And with my blood again I will confirm
     My former vow I made to Lucifer.

     MEPHIST. Do it, then, quickly,[159] with unfeigned heart,
     Lest greater danger do attend thy drift.

     FAUSTUS. Torment, sweet friend, that base and crooked age,
     That durst dissuade me from thy Lucifer,
     With greatest torments that our hell affords.

     MEPHIST. His faith is great; I cannot touch his soul;
     But what I may afflict his body with
     I will attempt, which is but little worth.

     FAUSTUS. One thing, good servant,[160] let me crave of thee,
     To glut the longing of my heart's desire,--
     That I might have unto my paramour
     That heavenly Helen which I saw of late,
     Whose sweet embracings may extinguish clean
     Those[161] thoughts that do dissuade me from my vow,
     And keep mine oath I made to Lucifer.

     MEPHIST. Faustus, this,[162] or what else thou shalt desire,
     Shall be perform'd in twinkling of an eye.

          Re-enter HELEN.

     FAUSTUS. Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
     And burnt the topless[163] towers of Ilium--
     Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.--
          [Kisses her.]
     Her lips suck forth my soul:  see, where it flies!--
     Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
     Here will I dwell, for heaven is[164] in these lips,
     And all is dross that is not Helena.
     I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
     Instead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sack'd;
     And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
     And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
     Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
     And then return to Helen for a kiss.
     O, thou art fairer than the evening air
     Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
     Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
     When he appear'd to hapless Semele;
     More lovely than the monarch of the sky
     In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;
     And none but thou shalt[165] be my paramour!
          [Exeunt.]

          Enter the OLD MAN.[166]

     OLD MAN. Accursed Faustus, miserable man,
     That from thy soul exclud'st the grace of heaven,
     And fly'st the throne of his tribunal-seat!

          Enter DEVILS.

     Satan begins to sift me with his pride:
     As in this furnace God shall try my faith,
     My faith, vile hell, shall triumph over thee.
     Ambitious fiends, see how the heavens smile
     At your repulse, and laugh your state to scorn!
     Hence, hell! for hence I fly unto my God.
          [Exeunt,--on one side, DEVILS, on the other, OLD MAN.]

          Enter FAUSTUS,[167] with SCHOLARS.

     FAUSTUS. Ah, gentlemen!

     FIRST SCHOLAR. What ails Faustus?

     FAUSTUS. Ah, my sweet chamber-fellow, had I lived with thee,
     then had I lived still! but now I die eternally.  Look, comes
     he not? comes he not?

     SECOND SCHOLAR. What means Faustus?

     THIRD SCHOLAR. Belike he is grown into some sickness by being
     over-solitary.

     FIRST SCHOLAR. If it be so, we'll have physicians to cure him.
     --'Tis but a surfeit; never fear, man.

     FAUSTUS. A surfeit of deadly sin, that hath damned both body
     and soul.

     SECOND SCHOLAR. Yet, Faustus, look up to heaven; remember God's
     mercies are infinite.

     FAUSTUS. But Faustus' offence can ne'er be pardoned:  the serpent
     that tempted Eve may be saved, but not Faustus.  Ah, gentlemen,
     hear me with patience, and tremble not at my speeches!  Though
     my heart pants and quivers to remember that I have been a student
     here these thirty years, O, would I had never seen Wertenberg,
     never read book! and what wonders I have done, all Germany can
     witness, yea, all the world; for which Faustus hath lost both
     Germany and the world, yea, heaven itself, heaven, the seat of
     God, the throne of the blessed, the kingdom of joy; and must
     remain in hell for ever, hell, ah, hell, for ever!  Sweet friends,
     what shall become of Faustus, being in hell for ever?

     THIRD SCHOLAR. Yet, Faustus, call on God.

     FAUSTUS. On God, whom Faustus hath abjured! on God, whom Faustus
     hath blasphemed!  Ah, my God, I would weep! but the devil draws in
     my tears.  Gush forth blood, instead of tears! yea, life and soul!
     O, he stays my tongue!  I would lift up my hands; but see, they
     hold them, they hold them!

     ALL. Who, Faustus?

     FAUSTUS. Lucifer and Mephistophilis.  Ah, gentlemen, I gave them
     my soul for my cunning![168]

     ALL. God forbid!

     FAUSTUS. God forbade it, indeed; but Faustus hath done it:  for
     vain pleasure of twenty-four years hath Faustus lost eternal joy
     and felicity.  I writ them a bill with mine own blood:  the date
     is expired; the time will come, and he will fetch me.

     FIRST SCHOLAR. Why did not Faustus tell us of this before,[169]
     that divines might have prayed for thee?

     FAUSTUS. Oft have I thought to have done so; but the devil
     threatened to tear me in pieces, if I named God, to fetch both
     body and soul, if I once gave ear to divinity:  and now 'tis too
     late.  Gentlemen, away, lest you perish with me.

     SECOND SCHOLAR. O, what shall we do to save[170] Faustus?

     FAUSTUS. Talk not of me, but save yourselves, and depart.

     THIRD SCHOLAR. God will strengthen me; I will stay with Faustus.

     FIRST SCHOLAR. Tempt not God, sweet friend; but let us into the
     next room, and there pray for him.

     FAUSTUS. Ay, pray for me, pray for me; and what noise soever
     ye hear,[171] come not unto me, for nothing can rescue me.

     SECOND SCHOLAR. Pray thou, and we will pray that God may have
     mercy upon thee.

     FAUSTUS. Gentlemen, farewell:  if I live till morning, I'll visit
     you; if not, Faustus is gone to hell.

     ALL. Faustus, farewell.
          [Exeunt SCHOLARS.--The clock strikes eleven.]

     FAUSTUS. Ah, Faustus,
     Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
     And then thou must be damn'd perpetually!
     Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
     That time may cease, and midnight never come;
     Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
     Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
     A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
     That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
     O lente,[172] lente currite, noctis equi!
     The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
     The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.
     O, I'll leap up to my God!--Who pulls me down?--
     See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
     One drop would save my soul, half a drop:  ah, my Christ!--
     Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
     Yet will I call on him:  O, spare me, Lucifer!--
     Where is it now? 'tis gone:  and see, where God
     Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!
     Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
     And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!
     No, no!
     Then will I headlong run into the earth:
     Earth, gape!  O, no, it will not harbour me!
     You stars that reign'd at my nativity,
     Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
     Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist.
     Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud[s],
     That, when you[173] vomit forth into the air,
     My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,
     So that my soul may but ascend to heaven!
          [The clock strikes the half-hour.]
     Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon
     O God,
     If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,
     Yet for Christ's sake, whose blood hath ransom'd me,
     Impose some end to my incessant pain;
     Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
     A hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd!
     O, no end is limited to damned souls!
     Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
     Or why is this immortal that thou hast?
     Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis, were that true,
     This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'd
     Unto some brutish beast![174] all beasts are happy,
     For, when they die,
     Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements;
     But mine must live still to be plagu'd in hell.
     Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me!
     No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer
     That hath depriv'd thee of the joys of heaven.
          [The clock strikes twelve.]
     O, it strikes, it strikes!  Now, body, turn to air,
     Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!
          [Thunder and lightning.]
     O soul, be chang'd into little water-drops,
     And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found!

          Enter DEVILS.

     My God, my god, look not so fierce on me!
     Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
     Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
     I'll burn my books!--Ah, Mephistophilis!
          [Exeunt DEVILS with FAUSTUS.]  [175]

          Enter CHORUS.

     CHORUS. Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
     And burned is Apollo's laurel-bough,
     That sometime grew within this learned man.
     Faustus is gone:  regard his hellish fall,
     Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise,
     Only to wonder at unlawful things,
     Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
     To practice more than heavenly power permits.
          [Exit.]

     Terminat hora diem; terminat auctor opus.





FOOTNOTES:


[Footnote 1: mate-- i.e. confound, defeat.]

[Footnote 2: vaunt-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "daunt."]

[Footnote 3: her-- All the 4tos "his."]

[Footnote 4: Whereas-- i.e. where.]

[Footnote 5: cunning-- i.e. knowledge.]

[Footnote 6: So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "more."]

[Footnote 7: FAUSTUS discovered in his study-- Most probably, the Chorus,
before going out, drew a curtain, and discovered Faustus sitting.
In B. Barnes's DIVILS CHARTER, 1607, we find; "SCEN. VLTIMA.
ALEXANDER VNBRACED BETWIXT TWO CARDINALLS in his study LOOKING
VPON A BOOKE, whilst a groome draweth the Curtaine."  Sig. L 3.]

[Footnote 8: Analytics, 'tis thou, &c.-- Qy. "Analytic"? (but such
phraseology was not uncommon).]

[Footnote 9: So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "the" (the printer
having mistaken "yt" for "ye").]

[Footnote 10: So the later 4tos (with various spelling).--2to 1604
"Oncaymaeon."]

[Footnote 11: and-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 12: Couldst-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "Wouldst."]

[Footnote 13: men-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "man."]

[Footnote 14: legatur-- All the 4tos "legatus."]

[Footnote 15: &c.-- So two of the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 16: law-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "Church."]

[Footnote 17: This-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "His."]

[Footnote 18: Too servile-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "The deuill."]

[Footnote 19: Che sera, sera-- Lest it should be thought that I am wrong
in not altering the old spelling here, I may quote from Panizzi's
very critical edition of the ORLANDO FURIOSO,
     "La satisfazion ci SERA pronta."  C. xviii. st. 67.]

[Footnote 20: scenes-- "And sooner may a gulling weather-spie
              By drawing forth heavens SCEANES tell certainly," &c.
                   Donne's FIRST SATYRE,--p. 327, ed. 1633.]

[Footnote 21: tire-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "trie."]

[Footnote 22: Enter WAGNER, &c.-- Perhaps the proper arrangement is,]
     "Wagner!
      Enter WAGNER.
      Commend me to my dearest friends," &c.]

[Footnote 23: treasure-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "treasury."]

[Footnote 24: Jove-- So again, p. 84, first col.,[See Note 59]
:
     "Seeing Faustus hath incurr'd eternal death
      By desperate thoughts against JOVE'S deity," &c.:
and I may notice that Marlowe is not singular in applying the name
JOVE to the God of Christians:]
     "Beneath our standard of JOUES powerfull sonne [i.e. Christ--".
          MIR. FOR MAGISTRATES, p. 642, ed. 1610.
     "But see the judgement of almightie JOUE," &c.
          Id. p. 696.
     "O sommo GIOVE per noi crocifisso," &c.
          Pulci,--MORGANTE MAG. C. ii. st. 1.]

[Footnote 25: these elements-- So again, "Within the bowels of THESE
elements," &c., p. 87, first col,[See Note 90----"THESE" being
equivalent to THE.  (Not unfrequently in our old writers THESE
is little more than redundant.)]

[Footnote 26: resolve-- i.e. satisfy, inform.]

[Footnote 27: silk-- All the 4tos "skill" (and so the modern editors!).]

[Footnote 28: the-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "our."]

[Footnote 29: the fiery keel at Antwerp's bridge-- During the blockade
of Antwerp by the Prince of Parma in 1585, "They of Antuerpe
knowing that the bridge and the Stocadoes were finished,
made a great shippe, to be a meanes to breake all this worke
of the prince of Parmaes:  this great shippe was made of masons
worke within, in the manner of a vaulted caue:  vpon the hatches
there were layed myll-stones, graue-stones, and others of great
weight; and within the vault were many barrels of powder, ouer
the which there were holes, and in them they had put matches,
hanging at a thred, the which burning vntill they came vnto
the thred, would fall into the powder, and so blow vp all.
And for that they could not haue any one in this shippe to
conduct it, Lanckhaer, a sea captaine of the Hollanders, being
then in Antuerpe, gaue them counsell to tye a great beame at the
end of it, to make it to keepe a straight course in the middest
of the streame.  In this sort floated this shippe the fourth of
Aprill, vntill that it came vnto the bridge; where (within a
while after) the powder wrought his effect, with such violence,
as the vessell, and all that was within it, and vpon it, flew in
pieces, carrying away a part of the Stocado and of the bridge.
The marquesse of Roubay Vicont of Gant, Gaspar of Robles lord of
Billy, and the Seignior of Torchies, brother vnto the Seignior
of Bours, with many others, were presently slaine; which were
torne in pieces, and dispersed abroad, both vpon the land and vpon
the water."  Grimeston's GENERALL HISTORIE OF THE NETHERLANDS,
p. 875, ed. 1609.]

[Footnote 30: only-- Qy. "alone"?  (This line is not in the later 4tos.)]

[Footnote 31: vile-- Old ed. "vild":  but see note ||, p. 68.--(This line
is not in the later 4tos.)

    [Note || from page 68 (The Second Part of Tamburlaine the
     Great):]

     Vile-- The 8vo "Vild"; the 4to "Wild" (Both eds. a little
     before, have "VILE monster, born of some infernal hag", and,
     a few lines after, "To VILE and ignominious servitude":--the
     fact is, our early writers (or rather transcribers), with
     their usual inconsistency of spelling, give now the one form,
     and now the other:  compare the folio SHAKESPEARE, 1623,
     where we sometimes find "vild" and sometimes "VILE.")--]

[Footnote 32: concise syllogisms-- Old ed. "Consissylogismes."]

[Footnote 33: cunning-- i.e. knowing, skilful.]

[Footnote 34: Agrippa-- i.e. Cornelius Agrippa.]

[Footnote 35: shadow-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "shadowes."]

[Footnote 36: spirits-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "subiects."]

[Footnote 37: Almain rutters-- See note †, p. 43.]

    [Note † from p. 43. (The Second Part of Tamburlaine the
     Great):

     Almains, Rutters-- Rutters are properly--German troopers
     (reiter, reuter).  In the third speech after the present one
     this line is repeated VERBATIM:  but in the first scene of
     our author's FAUSTUS we have,
         "Like ALMAIN RUTTERS with their horsemen's staves."--]

[Footnote 38: have the-- So two of the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "in their."]

[Footnote 39: From-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "For."]

[Footnote 40: in-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 41: renowm'd-- See note ||, p. 11.]

    [Note || from p. 11. (The First Part of Tamburlaine the
     Great):

     renowmed-- i.e. renowned.--So the 8vo.--The 4to "renowned."
     --The form "RENOWMED" (Fr. RENOMME) occurs repeatedly
     afterwards in this play, according to the 8vo.  It is
     occasionally found in writers posterior to Marlowe's
     time.  e.g.
       "Of Constantines great towne RENOUM'D in vaine."
            Verses to King James, prefixed to Lord Stirling's
            MONARCHICKE TRAGEDIES, ed. 1607.--]

[Footnote 42: Albertus'-- i.e. Albertus Magnus.--The correction of I. M.
in Gent. Mag. for Jan. 1841.--All the 4tos "Albanus."]

[Footnote 43: cunning-- i.e. skill.]

[Footnote 44: Enter two SCHOLARS-- Scene, perhaps, supposed to be before
Faustus's house, as Wagner presently says, "My master is within
at dinner."]

[Footnote 45: upon-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "vpon't."]

[Footnote 46: speak, would-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "speake, IT would."]

[Footnote 47: my dear brethren-- This repetition (not found in the later 4tos)
is perhaps an error of the original compositor.]

[Footnote 48: Enter FAUSTUS to conjure-- The scene is supposed to be a grove;
see p. 81, last line of sec. col.
   [Page 81, second column, last line:
    "VALDES. Then haste thee to some solitary grove,"--]

[Footnote 49: anagrammatiz'd-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "and
Agramithist."]

[Footnote 50: Th' abbreviated-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "The breuiated."]

[Footnote 51: erring-- i.e. wandering.]

[Footnote 52: surgat Mephistophilis, quod tumeraris-- The later 4tos have
"surgat Mephistophilis DRAGON, quod tumeraris."--There is a
corruption here, which seems to defy emendation.  For "quod
TUMERARIS," Mr. J. Crossley, of Manchester, would read (rejecting
the word "Dragon") "quod TU MANDARES" (the construction being
"quod tu mandares ut Mephistophilis appareat et surgat"):  but the
"tu" does not agree with the preceding "vos."--The Revd. J. Mitford
proposes "surgat Mephistophilis, per Dragon (or Dagon) quod NUMEN
EST AERIS."]

[Footnote 53: dicatus-- So two of the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "dicatis."]

[Footnote 54: Re-enter Mephistophilis, &c.-- According to THE HISTORY OF
DR. FAUSTUS, on which this play is founded, Faustus raises
Mephistophilis in "a thicke wood neere to Wittenberg, called
in the German tongue Spisser Wolt.....  Presently, not three
fathom above his head, fell a flame in manner of a lightning,
and changed itselfe into a globe.....  Suddenly the globe opened,
and sprung up in the height of a man; so burning a time, in the
end it converted to the shape of a fiery man[?-- This pleasant
beast ran about the circle a great while, and, lastly, appeared
in the manner of a Gray Fryer, asking Faustus what was his
request?" Sigs. A 2, A 3, ed. 1648.  Again; "After Doctor Faustus
had made his promise to the devill, in the morning betimes he
called the spirit before him, and commanded him that he should
alwayes come to him like a fryer after the order of Saint Francis,
with a bell in his hand like Saint Anthony, and to ring it once
or twice before he appeared, that he might know of his certaine
coming."  Id. Sig. A 4.]

[Footnote 55: came hither-- So two of the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "came
NOW hither."]

[Footnote 56: accidens-- So two of the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "accident."]

[Footnote 57: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it-- Compare Milton,
Par. Lost, iv. 75;
    "Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell."]

[Footnote 58: these-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "those."]

[Footnote 59: Jove's-- See note ‡, p. 80. [i.e. Note 24]
: ]

[Footnote 60: four and twenty-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "24."]

[Footnote 61: resolve-- i.e. satisfy, inform.]

[Footnote 62: thorough-- So one of the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "through."]

[Footnote 63: country-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "land."]

[Footnote 64: desir'd-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "desire."]

[Footnote 65: Enter WAGNER, &c.-- Scene, a street most probably.]

[Footnote 66: pickadevaunts-- i.e. beards cut to a point.]

[Footnote 67: by'r lady-- i.e. by our Lady.]

[Footnote 68: Qui mihi discipulus-- The first words of W. Lily's
AD DISCIPULOS CARMEN DE MORIBUS,

    "Qui mihi discipulus, puer, es, cupis atque doceri,
          Huc ades," &c.]

[Footnote 69: staves-acre-- A species of larkspur.]

[Footnote 70: vermin-- Which the seeds of staves-acre were used to destroy.]

[Footnote 71: familiars-- i.e. attendant-demons.]

[Footnote 72: their-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "my."]

[Footnote 73: slop-- i.e. wide breeches.]

[Footnote 74: vile-- Old ed. "vild."  See note || p. 68.

    [Note || from page 68 (The Second Part of Tamburlaine the
     Great):

     Vile-- The 8vo "Vild"; the 4to "Wild" (Both eds. a little
     before, have "VILE monster, born of some infernal hag", and,
     a few lines after, "To VILE and ignominious servitude":--the
     fact is, our early writers (or rather transcribers), with
     their usual inconsistency of spelling, give now the one form,
     and now the other:  compare the folio SHAKESPEARE, 1623,
     where we sometimes find "vild" and sometimes "VILE.")]

[Footnote 75: vestigiis nostris-- All the 4tos "vestigias nostras."]

[Footnote 76: of-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 77: me-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 78: he lives-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "I liue."]

[Footnote 79: why-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 80: Solamen miseris, &c.-- An often-cited line of modern Latin
poetry:  by whom it was written I know not.]

[Footnote 81: Why-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 82: torture-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "tortures."]

[Footnote 83: Faustus-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 84: Bill-- i.e. writing, deed.]

[Footnote 85: Here's fire; come, Faustus, set it on-- This would not
be intelligible without the assistance of THE HISTORY OF
DR. FAUSTUS, the sixth chapter of which is headed,--"How Doctor
Faustus set his blood in a saucer on warme ashes, and writ as
followeth."  Sig. B, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 86: But what is this inscription, &c.-- "He [Faustus-- tooke
a small penknife and prickt a veine in his left hand; and for
certainty thereupon were seen on his hand these words written,
as if they had been written with blood, O HOMO, FUGE."
THE HISTORY OF DR. FAUSTUS, Sig. B, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 87: me-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "thee."]

[Footnote 88: he desires-- Not in any of the four 4tos.  In the tract
just cited, the "3d Article" stands thus,--"That Mephostophiles
should bring him any thing, and doe for him whatsoever."  Sig. A 4,
ed. 1648.  A later ed. adds "he desired."  Marlowe, no doubt,
followed some edition of the HISTORY in which these words,
or something equivalent to them, had been omitted by mistake.
(2to 1661, which I consider as of no authority, has "he
requireth.")]

[Footnote 89: that, &c.-- So all the 4tos, ungrammatically.]

[Footnote 90: these-- See note §, p. 80.[i.e. Note 25]
: ]

[Footnote 91: there-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 92: are-- So two of the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "is."]

[Footnote 93: fond-- i.e. foolish.]

[Footnote 94: What! walking, disputing, &c.-- The later 4tos have "What,
SLEEPING, EATING, walking, AND disputing!" But it is evident
that this speech is not given correctly in any of the old eds.]

[Footnote 95: let me have a wife, &c.-- The ninth chapter of THE HISTORY
OF DR. FAUSTUS narrates "How Doctor Faustus would have married,
and how the Devill had almost killed him for it," and concludes
as follows.  "It is no jesting [said Mephistophilis-- with us:
hold thou that which thou hast vowed, and we will peforme as we
have promised; and more shall that, thou shalt have thy hearts
desire of what woman soever thou wilt, be she alive or dead,
and so long as thou wilt thou shalt keep her by thee.--These
words pleased Faustus wonderfull well, and repented himself that
he was so foolish to wish himselfe married, that might have any
woman in the whole city brought him at his command; the which
he practised and persevered in a long time."  Sig. B 3, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 96: me-- Not in 4to 1604.  (This line is wanting in the later 4tos.)]

[Footnote 97: no-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 98: Saba-- i.e. Sabaea--the Queen of Sheba.]

[Footnote 99: iterating-- i.e. reciting, repeating.]

[Footnote 100: And argue of divine astrology, &c.-- In THE HISTORY OF
DR. FAUSTUS, there are several tedious pages on the subject;
but our dramatist, in the dialogue which follows, has no
particular obligations to them.]

[Footnote 101: erring-- i.e. wandering.]

[Footnote 102: freshmen's-- "A Freshman, tiro, novitius." Coles's DICT.
Properly, a student during his first term at the university.]

[Footnote 103: resolve-- i.e. satisfy, inform.]

[Footnote 104: Seek to save-- Qy. "Seek THOU to save"?  But see note ||,
p. 18.]

    [Note ||, from page 18 (The First Part of Tamburlaine The
     Great):

     Barbarous-- Qy. "O Barbarous"? in the next line but one,
     "O treacherous"? and in the last line of the speech,
     "O bloody"?  But we occasionally find in our early dramatists
     lines which are defective in the first syllable; and in some
     of these instances at least it would almost seem that nothing
     has been omitted by the transcriber or printer.--]

[Footnote 105: Enter the SEVEN DEADLY SINS-- In THE HISTORY OF DR. FAUSTUS,
Lucifer amuses Faustus, not by calling up the Seven Deadly Sins,
but by making various devils appear before him, "one after another,
in forme as they were in hell."  "First entered Beliall in forme
of a beare," &c.--"after him came Beelzebub, in curled haire of
a horseflesh colour," &c.--"then came Astaroth, in the forme of
a worme," &c. &c.  During this exhibition, "Lucifer himselfe sate
in manner of a man all hairy, but of browne colour, like a
squirrell, curled, and his tayle turning upward on his backe as
the squirrels use:  I think he could crack nuts too like a
squirrell."  Sig. D, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 106: case-- i.e. couple.]

[Footnote 107: bevers-- i.e. refreshments between meals.]

[Footnote 108: L.-- All the 4tos "Lechery."--Here I have made the alteration
recommended by Mr. Collier in his Preface to COLERIDGE'S SEVEN
LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE AND MILTON, p. cviii.]

[Footnote 109: Away, to hell, to hell-- In 4to 1604, these words stand
on a line by themselves, without a prefix.  (In the later 4tos,
the corresponding passage is as follows;
    "------ begins with Lechery.

     LUCIFER. Away to hell, away!  On, piper!  [Exeunt the SINS.
     FAUSTUS. O, how this sight doth delight my soul!" &c.)]

[Footnote 110: I will send for thee at midnight-- In THE HISTORY OF DR.
FAUSTUS, we have a particular account of Faustus's visit
to the infernal regions, Sig. D 2, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 111: Enter CHORUS-- Old ed. "Enter WAGNER solus."  That these
lines belong to the Chorus would be evident enough, even if we
had no assistance here from the later 4tos.--The parts of Wagner
and of the Chorus were most probably played by the same actor:
and hence the error.]

[Footnote 112: Learned Faustus,
      To know the secrets of astronomy, &c.-- See the 21st chapter
of THE HISTORY OF DR. FAUSTUS,--"How Doctor Faustus was carried
through the ayre up to the heavens, to see the whole world,
and how the sky and planets ruled," &c.]

[Footnote 113: Enter FAUSTUS and MEPHISTOPHILIS-- Scene, the Pope's
privy-chamber.]

[Footnote 114: Trier-- i.e. Treves or Triers.]

[Footnote 115: From Paris next, &c.-- This description is from THE HISTORY
OF DR. FAUSTUS; "He came from Paris to Mentz, where the river
of Maine falls into the Rhine:  notwithstanding he tarried not
long there, but went into Campania, in the kingdome of Neapol,
in which he saw an innumerable sort of cloysters, nunries, and
churches, and great houses of stone, the streets faire and large,
and straight forth from one end of the towne to the other as a
line; and all the pavement of the city was of bricke, and the
more it rained into the towne, the fairer the streets were:
there saw he the tombe of Virgill, and the highway that he cu[t]
through the mighty hill of stone in one night, the whole length
of an English mile," &c. Sig. E 2, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 116: The way he cut, &c.-- During the middle ages Virgil was
regarded as a great magician, and much was written concerning
his exploits in that capacity.  The LYFE OF VIRGILIUS, however,
(see Thoms's EARLY PROSE ROMANCES, vol. ii.,) makes no mention
of the feat in question.  But Petrarch speaks of it as follows.
"Non longe a Puteolis Falernus collis attollitur, famoso palmite
nobilis.  Inter Falernum et mare mons est saxeus, hominum manibus
confossus, quod vulgus insulsum a Virgilio magicis cantaminibus
factum putant:  ita clarorum fama hominum, non veris contenta
laudibus, saepe etiam fabulis viam facit.  De quo cum me olim
Robertus regno clarus, sed praeclarus ingenio ac literis, quid
sentirem, multis astantibus, percunctatus esset, humanitate fretus
regia, qua non reges modo sed homines vicit, jocans nusquam me
legisse magicarium fuisse Virgilium respondi:  quod ille severissimae
nutu frontis approbans, non illic magici sed ferri vestigia
confessus est.  Sunt autem fauces excavati montis angustae sed
longissimae atque atrae:  tenebrosa inter horrifica semper nox:
publicum iter in medio, mirum et religioni proximum, belli quoque
immolatum temporibus, sic vero populi vox est, et nullis unquam
latrociniis attentatum, patet:  Criptam Neapolitanam dicunt, cujus
et in epistolis ad Lucilium Seneca mentionem fecit.  Sub finem fusci
tramitis, ubi primo videri coelum incipit, in aggere edito, ipsius
Virgilii busta visuntur, pervetusti operis, unde haec forsan ab
illo perforati montis fluxit opinio."  ITINERARIUM SYRIACUM,--OPP.
p. 560, ed. Bas.]

[Footnote 117: From thence to Venice, Padua, and the rest,
      In one of which a sumptuous temple stands, &c.-- So the
later 4tos.--2to 1604 "In MIDST of which," &c.--THE HISTORY
OF DR. FAUSTUS shews WHAT "sumptuous temple" is meant:  "From
thence he came to Venice....He wondred not a little at the
fairenesse of S. Marks Place, and the sumptuous church standing
thereon, called S. Marke, how all the pavement was set with
coloured stones, and all the rood or loft of the church double
gilded over."  Sig. E 2, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 118: Just through the midst, &c.-- This and the next line are
not in 4to 1604.  I have inserted them from the later 4tos, as
being absolutely necessary for the sense.]

[Footnote 119: Ponte-- All the 4tos "Ponto."]

[Footnote 120: of-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 121: Then charm me, that I, &c.-- A corrupted passage.--Compare
THE HISTORY OF DR. FAUSTUS, Sig. E 3, ed. 1648; where, however,
the Cardinal, whom the Pope entertains, is called the Cardinal
of PAVIA.]

[Footnote 122: Sonnet-- Variously written, SENNET, SIGNET, SIGNATE, &c.--A
particular set of notes on the trumpet, or cornet, different from
a flourish.  See Nares's GLOSS. in V. SENNET.]

[Footnote 123: Enter ROBIN, &c.-- Scene, near an inn.]

[Footnote 124: ippocras-- Or HIPPOCRAS,--a medicated drink composed of wine
(usually red) with spices and sugar.  It is generally supposed to
have been so called from HIPPOCRATES (contracted by our earliest
writers to HIPPOCRAS); perhaps because it was strained,--the woollen
bag used by apothecaries to strain syrups and decoctions for
clarification being termed HIPPOCRATES' SLEEVE.]

[Footnote 125: tabern-- i.e. tavern.]

[Footnote 126:      [Exeunt.
      Enter ROBIN and RALPH, &c.-- A scene is evidently wanting
after the Exeunt of Robin and Ralph.]

[Footnote 127: purchase-- i.e. booty--gain, acquisition.]

[Footnote 128: Drawer-- There is an inconsistency here:  the Vintner
cannot properly be addressed as "Drawer."  The later 4tos are
also inconsistent in the corresponding passage:  Dick says, "THE
VINTNER'S BOY follows us at the hard heels," and immediately
the "VINTNER" enters.]

[Footnote 129: tone-- i.e. the one.]

[Footnote 130: MEPHIST-- Monarch of hell, &c.-- Old ed. thus:--]

    "MEPHIST. Vanish vilaines, th' one like an Ape, an other like
     a Beare, the third an Asse, for doing this enterprise.

     Monarch of hell, vnder whose blacke suruey," &c.

What follows, shews that the words which I have omitted ought
to have no place in the text; nor is there any thing equivalent
to them in the corresponding passage of the play as given in
the later 4tos.]

[Footnote 131: Enter EMPEROR, &c.-- Scene--An apartment in the Emperor's
Palace.  According to THE HISTORY OF DR. FAUSTUS, the Emperor
"was personally, with the rest of the nobles and gentlemen, at
the towne of Inzbrack, where he kept his court."  Sig. G, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 132: Master Doctor Faustus, &c-- The greater part of this scene
is closely borrowed from the history just cited:  e.g. "Faustus,
I have heard much of thee, that thou art excellent in the black art,
and none like thee in mine empire; for men say that thou hast a
familiar spirit with thee, and that thou canst doe what thou list;
it is therefore (said the Emperor) my request of thee, that thou
let me see a proofe of thy experience:  and I vow unto thee, by
the honour of my emperiall crowne, none evill shall happen unto
thee for so doing," &c.  Ibid.]

[Footnote 133: won-- May be right:  but qy. "done"?]

[Footnote 134: As we that do succeed, &c.-- A corrupted passage (not found
in the later 4tos).]

[Footnote 135: The bright, &c.-- See note ||, p. 18.]

    [Note ||, from page 18 (The First Part of Tamburlaine The
     Great):

     Barbarous-- Qy. "O Barbarous"? in the next line but one,
     "O treacherous"? and in the last line of the speech,
     "O bloody"?  But we occasionally find in our early dramatists
     lines which are defective in the first syllable; and in
     some of these instances at least it would almost seem that
     nothing has been omitted by the transcriber or printer.--]

[Footnote 136: But, if it like your grace, it is not in my ability, &c.]
"D. Faustus answered, My most excellent lord, I am ready to
accomplish your request in all things, so farre forth as I and
my spirit are able to performe:  yet your majesty shall know that
their dead bodies are not able substantially to be brought before
you; but such spirits as have seene Alexander and his Paramour
alive shall appeare unto you, in manner and form as they both
lived in their most flourishing time; and herewith I hope to
please your Imperiall Majesty.  Then Faustus went a little aside
to speake to his spirit; but he returned againe presently, saying,
Now, if it please your Majesty, you shall see them; yet, upon this
condition, that you demand no question of them, nor speake unto
them; which the Emperor agreed unto.  Wherewith Doctor Faustus opened
the privy-chamber doore, where presently entered the great and mighty
emperor Alexander Magnus, in all things to looke upon as if he
had beene alive; in proportion, a strong set thicke man, of a
middle stature, blacke haire, and that both thicke and curled,
head and beard, red cheekes, and a broad face, with eyes like
a basiliske; he had a compleat harnesse (i.e. suit of armour)
burnished and graven, exceeding rich to look upon:  and so,
passing towards the Emperor Carolus, he made low and reverend
courtesie:  whereat the Emperour Carolus would have stood up to
receive and greet him with the like reverence; but Faustus tooke
hold on him, and would not permit him to doe it.  Shortly after,
Alexander made humble reverence, and went out againe; and comming
to the doore, his paramour met him.  She comming in made the Emperour
likewise reverence:  she was cloathed in blew velvet, wrought and
imbroidered with pearls and gold; she was also excellent faire,
like milke and blood mixed, tall and slender, with a face round
as an apple.  And thus passed [she-- certaine times up and downe
the house; which the Emperor marking, said to himselfe, Now have
I seene two persons which my heart hath long wished to behold;
and sure it cannot otherwise be (said he to himselfe) but that
the spirits have changed themselves into these formes, and have
but deceived me, calling to minde the woman that raised the prophet
Samuel:  and for that the Emperor would be the more satisfied in
the matter, he said, I have often heard that behind, in her neck,
she had a great wart or wen; wherefore he tooke Faustus by the
hand without any words, and went to see if it were also to be
seene on her or not; but she, perceiving that he came to her,
bowed downe her neck, when he saw a great wart; and hereupon she
vanished, leaving the Emperor and the rest well contented."
THE HISTORY OF DR. FAUSTUS, Sig. G, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 137: both-- Old ed. "best."]

[Footnote 138: Mephistophilis, transform him straight-- According to THE
HISTORY OF DR. FAUSTUS, the knight was not present during Faustus's
"conference" with the Emperor; nor did he offer the doctor any
insult by doubting his skill in magic.  We are there told that
Faustus happening to see the knight asleep, "leaning out of a
window of the great hall," fixed a huge pair of hart's horns on
his head; "and, as the knight awaked, thinking to pull in his head,
he hit his hornes against the glasse, that the panes thereof flew
about his eares:  thinke here how this good gentleman was vexed,
for he could neither get backward nor forward."  After the emperor
and the courtiers, to their great amusement, had beheld the poor
knight in this condition, Faustus removed the horns.  When Faustus,
having taken leave of the emperor, was a league and a half from
the city, he was attacked in a wood by the knight and some of his
companions:  they were in armour, and mounted on fair palfreys;
but the doctor quickly overcame them by turning all the bushes
into horsemen, and "so charmed them, that every one, knight and
other, for the space of a whole moneth, did weare a paire of
goates hornes on their browes, and every palfry a paire of oxe
hornes on his head; and this was their penance appointed by
Faustus."  A second attempt of the knight to revenge himself on
Faustus proved equally unsuccessful.  Sigs. G 2, I 3, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 139: FAUSTUS. Now Mephistophilis, &c.-- Here the scene is supposed
to be changed to the "fair and pleasant green" which Faustus
presently mentions.]

[Footnote 140: Horse-courser-- i.e. Horse-dealer.--We are now to suppose the
scene to be near the home of Faustus, and presently that it is the
interior of his house, for he falls asleep in his chair.--"How
Doctor Faustus deceived a Horse-courser" is related in a short
chapter (the 34th) of THE HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS:  "After this
manner he served a horse-courser at a faire called Pheiffering," &c.]

[Footnote 141: for forty-- Qy. "for TWICE forty DOLLARS"?]

[Footnote 142: into-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "vnto."]

[Footnote 143: Doctor Lopus-- i.e. Doctor Lopez, domestic physician
to Queen Elizabeth, who was put to death for having received
a bribe from the court of Spain to destroy her.  He is frequently
mentioned in our early dramas:  see my note on Middleton's WORKS,
iv. 384.]

[Footnote 144: know of-- The old ed. has "KNOWNE of"; which perhaps is right,
meaning--acquainted with.]

[Footnote 145: hey-pass-- Equivalent to--juggler.]

[Footnote 146: ostry-- i.e. inn,--lodging.]

[Footnote 147: cunning-- i.e. skill.]

[Footnote 148:      [Exeunt.
      Enter the DUKE OF VANHOLT, the DUCHESS, and FAUSTUS-- Old ed.;

           "Exeunt.
      Enter to them the DUKE, the DUTCHESS, the DUKE speakes."

In the later 4tos a scene intervenes between the "Exeunt" of
Faustus, Mephistophilis, and Wagner, and the entrance of the Duke
of Vanholt, &c.--We are to suppose that Faustus is now at the court
of the Duke of Vanholt:  this is plain, not only from the later 4tos,
--in which Wagner tells Faustus that the Duke "hath sent some of
his men to attend him, with provision fit for his journey,"--but
from THE HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS, the subjoined portion of which
is closely followed in the present scene.  "Chap. xxxix. HOW DOCTOR
FAUSTUS PLAYED A MERRY JEST WITH THE DUKE OF ANHOLT IN HIS COURT.
Doctor Faustus on a time went to the Duke of Anholt, who welcommed
him very courteously; this was the moneth of January; where sitting
at the table, he perceived the dutchess to be with child; and
forbearing himselfe untill the meat was taken from the table,
and that they brought in the banqueting dishes [i.e. the dessert--,
Doctor Faustus said to the dutchesse, Gratious lady, I have alwayes
heard that great-bellied women doe alwayes long for some dainties;
I beseech therefore your grace, hide not your minde from me, but
tell me what you desire to eat.  She answered him, Doctor Faustus,
now truly I will not hide from you what my heart doth most desire;
namely, that, if it were now harvest, I would eat my bellyfull of
grapes and other dainty fruit.  Doctor Faustus answered hereupon,
Gracious lady, this is a small thing for me to doe, for I can doe
more than this.  Wherefore he tooke a plate, and set open one of
the casements of the window, holding it forth; where incontinent
he had his dish full of all manner of fruit, as red and white
grapes, peares, and apples, the which came from out of strange
countries:  all these he presented the dutchesse, saying, Madam,
I pray you vouchsafe to taste of this dainty fruit, the which
came from a farre countrey, for there the summer is not yet ended.
The dutchesse thanked Faustus highly, and she fell to her fruit
with full appetite.  The Duke of Anholt notwithstanding could not
withhold to ask Faustus with what reason there were such young
fruit to be had at that time of the yeare.  Doctor Faustus told
him, May it please your grace to understand that the year is
divided into two circles of the whole world, that when with us it
is winter, in the contrary circle it is notwithstanding summer;
for in India and Saba there falleth or setteth the sunne, so that
it is so warm that they have twice a yeare fruit; and, gracious
lord, I have a swift spirit, the which can in the twinkling of
an eye fulfill my desire in any thing; wherefore I sent him into
those countries, who hath brought this fruit as you see:  whereat
the duke was in great admiration."]

[Footnote 149: Saba-- i.e. Sabaea.]

[Footnote 150: beholding-- i.e. beholden.]

[Footnote 151: Enter WAGNER-- Scene, a room in the house of Faustus.]

[Footnote 152: he hath given to me all his goods-- Compare chap. lvi. of
THE HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS,--"How Doctor Faustus made his will,
in which he named his servant Wagner to be his heire."]

[Footnote 153: HELEN passeth over the stage-- In THE HISTORY OF DOCTOR
FAUSTUS we have the following description of Helen.  "This lady
appeared before them in a most rich gowne of purple velvet, costly
imbrodered; her haire hanged downe loose, as faire as the beaten
gold, and of such length that it reached downe to her hammes;
having most amorous cole-black eyes, a sweet and pleasant round
face, with lips as red as a cherry; her cheekes of a rose colour,
her mouth small, her neck white like a swan; tall and slender of
personage; in summe, there was no imperfect place in her:  she
looked round about with a rolling hawkes eye, a smiling and
wanton countenance, which neere-hand inflamed the hearts of all
the students; but that they perswaded themselves she was a spirit,
which made them lightly passe away such fancies."  Sig. H 4, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 154: Enter an OLD MAN-- See chap. xlviii of THE HISTORY OF DOCTOR
FAUSTUS,--"How an old man, the neighbour of Faustus, sought to
perswade him to amend his evil life and to fall into repentance,"
--according to which history, the Old Man's exhortation is delivered
at his own house, whither he had invited Faustus to supper.]

[Footnote 155: vild-- Old ed. "vild."  See note ||, p. 68.

    [Note || from page 68 (The Second Part of Tamburlaine the
     Great):

     Vile-- The 8vo "Vild"; the 4to "Wild" (Both eds. a little
     before, have "VILE monster, born of some infernal hag", and,
     a few lines after, "To VILE and ignominious servitude":--the
     fact is, our early writers (or rather transcribers), with
     their usual inconsistency of spelling, give now the one form,
     and now the other:  compare the folio SHAKESPEARE, 1623,
     where we sometimes find "vild" and sometimes "VILE.")--]

[Footnote 156: sin-- Old ed. "sinnes" (This is not in the later 4tos).]

[Footnote 157: almost-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 158: now-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 159: MEPHIST. Do it, then, quickly, &c.-- After this speech,
most probably, there ought to be a stage-direction, "FAUSTUS
STABS HIS ARM, AND WRITES ON A PAPER WITH HIS BLOOD.  Compare
THE HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS, chap. xlix,--"How Doctor Faustus
wrote the second time with his owne blood, and gave it to the
Devill."]

[Footnote 160: One thing, good servant, &c.-- "To the end that this miserable
Faustus might fill the lust of his flesh and live in all manner
of voluptuous pleasure, it came in his mind, after he had slept
his first sleepe, and in the 23 year past of his time, that he
had a great desire to lye with faire Helena of Greece, especially
her whom he had seen and shewed unto the students at Wittenberg:
wherefore he called unto his spirit Mephostophiles, commanding him
to bring to him the faire Helena; which he also did.  Whereupon he
fell in love with her, and made her his common concubine and
bed-fellow; for she was so beautifull and delightfull a peece,
that he could not be one houre from her, if he should therefore
have suffered death, she had so stoln away his heart:  and, to
his seeming, in time she was with childe, whom Faustus named
Justus Faustus.  The childe told Doctor Faustus many things which
were don in forraign countrys; but in the end, when Faustus lost
his life, the mother and the childe vanished away both together."
THE HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS, Sig. I 4, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 161: Those-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "These."]

[Footnote 162: Faustus, this-- Qy. "This, Faustus"?]

[Footnote 163: topless-- i.e. not exceeded in height by any.]

[Footnote 164: is-- So the later 4tos.--2to 1604 "be."]

[Footnote 165: shalt-- So all the 4tos; and so I believe Marlowe wrote,
though the grammar requires "shall."]

[Footnote 166: Enter the OLD MAN-- Scene, a room in the Old Man's house.
--In THE HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS the Old Man makes himself very
merry with the attempts of the evil powers to hurt him.  "About
two dayes after that he had exhorted Faustus, as the poore man
lay in his bed, suddenly there was a mighty rumbling in the
chamber, the which he was never wont to heare, and he heard as
it had beene the groaning of a sow, which lasted long:  whereupon
the good old man began to jest and mocke, and said, Oh, what a
barbarian cry is this?  Oh faire bird, what foul musicke is this?
A[h--, faire angell, that could not tarry two dayes in his place!
beginnest thou now to runne into a poore mans house, where thou
hast no power, and wert not able to keepe thy owne two dayes?
With these and such like words the spirit departed," &c.
Sig. I 2, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 167: Enter Faustus, &c.-- Scene, a room in the house of Faustus.]

[Footnote 168: cunning-- i.e. knowledge, skill.]

[Footnote 169: Why did not Faustus tell us of this before, &c.-- "Wherefore
one of them said unto him, Ah, friend Faustus, what have you done
to conceale this matter so long from us?  We would, by the helpe
of good divines and the grace of God, have brought you out of this
net, and have torne you out of the bondage and chaines of Satan;
whereas now we feare it is too late, to the utter ruine both of
your body and soule.  Doctor Faustus answered, I durst never doe
it, although I often minded to settle my life [myself?-- to godly
people to desire counsell and helpe; and once mine old neighbour
counselled me that I should follow his learning and leave all my
conjurations:  yet, when I was minded to amend and to follow that
good mans counsell, then came the Devill and would have had me
away, as this night he is like to doe, and said, so soone as I
turned againe to God, he would dispatch me altogether."  THE
HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS, Sig. K 3, ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 170: save-- So the later 4tos.--Not in 4to 1604.]

[Footnote 171: and what noise soever ye hear, &c.-- "Lastly, to knit up
my troubled oration, this is my friendly request, that you would
go to rest, and let nothing trouble you; also, if you chance heare
any noyse or rumbling about the house, be not therewith afraid,
for there shall no evill happen unto you," &c.  THE HISTORY OF
DOCTOR FAUSTUS, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 172: O lente, &c.
     "At si, quem malles, Cephalum complexa teneres,
     Clamares, LENTE CURRITE, NOCTIS EQUI."
          Ovid,--AMOR. i. xiii. 39.]

[Footnote 173: That, when you, &c.-- So all the old eds.; and it is certain
that awkward changes of person are sometimes found in passages
of our early poets:  but qy.,

    "That, when THEY vomit forth into the air,
     My limbs may issue from THEIR smoky mouths," &c.?]

[Footnote 174:          and I be chang'd
      Unto some brutish beast-- "Now, thou Faustus, damned wretch,
how happy wert thou, if, as an unreasonable beast, thou mightest
dye without [a-- soule! so shouldst thou not feele any more doubts,"
&c.  THE HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS, Sig. K. ed. 1648.]

[Footnote 175: Exeunt DEVILS with FAUSTUS-- In THE HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS,
his "miserable and lamentable end" is described as follows:  it
took place, we are informed, at "the village called Rimlich,
halfe a mile from Wittenberg."--"The students and the other that
were there, when they had prayed for him, they wept, and so went
forth; but Faustus tarried in the hall; and when the gentlemen
were laid in bed, none of them could sleepe, for that they att[e--nded
to heare if they might be privy of his end.  It happened that
betweene twelve and one a clocke at midnight, there blew a mighty
storme of winde against the house, as though it would have blowne
the foundation thereof out of his place.  Hereupon the students
began to feare and goe out of their beds, comforting one another;
but they would not stirre out of the chamber; and the host of
the house ran out of doores, thinking the house would fall.  The
students lay neere unto the hall wherein Doctor Faustus lay, and
they heard a mighty noyse and hissing, as if the hall had beene
full of snakes and adders.  With that, the hall-doore flew open,
wherein Doctor Faustus was, that he began to cry for helpe,
saying, Murther, murther! but it came forth with halfe a voyce,
hollowly:  shortly after, they heard him no more.  But when it was
day, the students, that had taken no rest that night, arose and
went into the hall, in the which they left Doctor Faustus; where
notwithstanding they found not Faustus, but all the hall lay
sprinkled with blood, his braines cleaving to the wall, for the
devill had beaten him from one wall against another; in one corner
lay his eyes, in another his teeth; a pittifull and fearefull
sight to behold.  Then began the students to waile and weepe for
him, and sought for his body in many places.  Lastly, they came
into the yard, where they found his body lying on the horse-dung,
most monstrously torne and fearefull to behold, for his head and
all his joynts were dashed in peeces.  The fore-named students and
masters that were at his death, have obtained so much, that they
buried him in the village where he was so grievously tormented.
After the which they returned to Wittenberg; and comming into the
house of Faustus, they found the servant of Faustus very sad,
unto whom they opened all the matter, who tooke it exceeding
heavily.  There found they also this history of Doctor Faustus
noted and of him written, as is before declared, all save only
his end, the which was after by the students thereto annexed;
further, what his servant had noted thereof, was made in another
booke.  And you have heard that he held by him in his life the
spirit of faire Helena, the which had by him one sonne, the which
he named Justus Faustus:  even the same day of his death they
vanished away, both mother and sonne.  The house before was so
darke that scarce any body could abide therein.  The same night
Doctor Faustus appeared unto his servant lively, and shewed unto
him many secret things, the which he had done and hidden in his
lifetime.  Likewise there were certaine which saw Doctor Faustus
looke out of the window by night, as they passed by the house."
Sig. K 3, ed. 1648.]



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The Project Gutenberg EBook of On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
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Title: On Liberty

Author: John Stuart Mill

Release Date: January 10, 2011 [EBook #34901]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON LIBERTY ***




Produced by Curtis Weyant, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









On Liberty.

By John Stuart Mill.

With an Introduction by W. L. Courtney, LL.D.

The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.
London and Felling-on-Tyne
New York and Melbourne




_To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in
part the author, of all that is best in my writings--the friend and wife
whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and
whose approbation was my chief reward--I dedicate this volume. Like all
that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me;
but the work as it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the
inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important
portions having been reserved for a more careful re-examination, which
they are now never destined to receive. Were I but capable of
interpreting to the world one-half the great thoughts and noble feelings
which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater
benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can
write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom._




INTRODUCTION.


I.

John Stuart Mill was born on 20th May 1806. He was a delicate child, and
the extraordinary education designed by his father was not calculated to
develop and improve his physical powers. "I never was a boy," he says;
"never played cricket." His exercise was taken in the form of walks with
his father, during which the elder Mill lectured his son and examined
him on his work. It is idle to speculate on the possible results of a
different treatment. Mill remained delicate throughout his life, but was
endowed with that intense mental energy which is so often combined with
physical weakness. His youth was sacrificed to an idea; he was designed
by his father to carry on his work; the individuality of the boy was
unimportant. A visit to the south of France at the age of fourteen, in
company with the family of General Sir Samuel Bentham, was not without
its influence. It was a glimpse of another atmosphere, though the
studious habits of his home life were maintained. Moreover, he derived
from it his interest in foreign politics, which remained one of his
characteristics to the end of his life. In 1823 he was appointed junior
clerk in the Examiners' Office at the India House.

Mill's first essays were written in the _Traveller_ about a year before
he entered the India House. From that time forward his literary work was
uninterrupted save by attacks of illness. His industry was stupendous.
He wrote articles on an infinite variety of subjects, political,
metaphysical, philosophic, religious, poetical. He discovered Tennyson
for his generation, he influenced the writing of Carlyle's _French
Revolution_ as well as its success. And all the while he was engaged in
studying and preparing for his more ambitious works, while he rose step
by step at the India Office. His _Essays on Unsettled Questions in
Political Economy_ were written in 1831, although they did not appear
until thirteen years later. His _System of Logic_, the design of which
was even then fashioning itself in his brain, took thirteen years to
complete, and was actually published before the _Political Economy_. In
1844 appeared the article on Michelet, which its author anticipated
would cause some discussion, but which did not create the sensation he
expected. Next year there were the "Claims of Labour" and "Guizot," and
in 1847 his articles on Irish affairs in the _Morning Chronicle_. These
years were very much influenced by his friendship and correspondence
with Comte, a curious comradeship between men of such different
temperament. In 1848 Mill published his _Political Economy_, to which he
had given his serious study since the completion of his _Logic_. His
articles and reviews, though they involved a good deal of work--as, for
instance, the re-perusal of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ in the
original before reviewing Grote's _Greece_--were recreation to the
student. The year 1856 saw him head of the Examiners' Office in the
India House, and another two years brought the end of his official work,
owing to the transfer of India to the Crown. In the same year his wife
died. _Liberty_ was published shortly after, as well as the _Thoughts on
Parliamentary Reform_, and no year passed without Mill making important
contributions on the political, philosophical, and ethical questions of
the day.

Seven years after the death of his wife, Mill was invited to contest
Westminster. His feeling on the conduct of elections made him refuse to
take any personal action in the matter, and he gave the frankest
expression to his political views, but nevertheless he was elected by a
large majority. He was not a conventional success in the House; as a
speaker he lacked magnetism. But his influence was widely felt. "For the
sake of the House of Commons at large," said Mr. Gladstone, "I rejoiced
in his advent and deplored his disappearance. He did us all good." After
only three years in Parliament, he was defeated at the next General
Election by Mr. W. H. Smith. He retired to Avignon, to the pleasant
little house where the happiest years of his life had been spent in the
companionship of his wife, and continued his disinterested labours. He
completed his edition of his father's _Analysis of the Mind_, and also
produced, in addition to less important work, _The Subjection of Women_,
in which he had the active co-operation of his step-daughter. A book on
Socialism was under consideration, but, like an earlier study of
Sociology, it never was written. He died in 1873, his last years being
spent peacefully in the pleasant society of his step-daughter, from
whose tender care and earnest intellectual sympathy he caught maybe a
far-off reflection of the light which had irradiated his spiritual life.


II.

The circumstances under which John Stuart Mill wrote his _Liberty_ are
largely connected with the influence which Mrs. Taylor wielded over his
career. The dedication is well known. It contains the most extraordinary
panegyric on a woman that any philosopher has ever penned. "Were I but
capable of interpreting to the world one-half the great thoughts and
noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of
a greater benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from anything that
I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled
wisdom." It is easy for the ordinary worldly cynicism to curl a
sceptical lip over sentences like these. There may be exaggeration of
sentiment, the necessary and inevitable reaction of a man who was
trained according to the "dry light" of so unimpressionable a man as
James Mill, the father; but the passage quoted is not the only one in
which John Stuart Mill proclaims his unhesitating belief in the
intellectual influence of his wife. The treatise on _Liberty_ was
written especially under her authority and encouragement, but there are
many earlier references to the power which she exercised over his mind.
Mill was introduced to her as early as 1831, at a dinner-party at Mr.
Taylor's house, where were present, amongst others, Roebuck, W. J. Fox,
and Miss Harriet Martineau. The acquaintance rapidly ripened into
intimacy and the intimacy into friendship, and Mill was never weary of
expatiating on all the advantages of so singular a relationship. In some
of the presentation copies of his work on _Political Economy_, he wrote
the following dedication:--"To Mrs. John Taylor, who, of all persons
known to the author, is the most highly qualified either to originate or
to appreciate speculation on social advancement, this work is with the
highest respect and esteem dedicated." An article on the enfranchisement
of women was made the occasion for another encomium. We shall hardly be
wrong in attributing a much later book, _The Subjection of Women_,
published in 1869, to the influence wielded by Mrs. Taylor. Finally, the
pages of the _Autobiography_ ring with the dithyrambic praise of his
"almost infallible counsellor."

The facts of this remarkable intimacy can easily be stated. The
deductions are more difficult. There is no question that Mill's
infatuation was the cause of considerable trouble to his acquaintances
and friends. His father openly taxed him with being in love with another
man's wife. Roebuck, Mrs. Grote, Mrs. Austin, Miss Harriet Martineau
were amongst those who suffered because they made some allusion to a
forbidden subject. Mrs. Taylor lived with her daughter in a lodging in
the country; but in 1851 her husband died, and then Mill made her his
wife. Opinions were widely divergent as to her merits; but every one
agreed that up to the time of her death, in 1858, Mill was wholly lost
to his friends. George Mill, one of Mill's younger brothers, gave it as
his opinion that she was a clever and remarkable woman, but "nothing
like what John took her to be." Carlyle, in his reminiscences, described
her with ambiguous epithets. She was "vivid," "iridescent," "pale and
passionate and sad-looking, a living-romance heroine of the royalist
volition and questionable destiny." It is not possible to make much of a
judgment like this, but we get on more certain ground when we discover
that Mrs. Carlyle said on one occasion that "she is thought to be
dangerous," and that Carlyle added that she was worse than dangerous,
she was patronising. The occasion when Mill and his wife were brought
into close contact with the Carlyles is well known. The manuscript of
the first volume of the _French Revolution_ had been lent to Mill, and
was accidentally burnt by Mrs. Mill's servant. Mill and his wife drove
up to Carlyle's door, the wife speechless, the husband so full of
conversation that he detained Carlyle with desperate attempts at
loquacity for two hours. But Dr. Garnett tells us, in his _Life of
Carlyle_, that Mill made a substantial reparation for the calamity for
which he was responsible by inducing the aggrieved author to accept half
of the £200 which he offered. Mrs. Mill, as I have said, died in 1858,
after seven years of happy companionship with her husband, and was
buried at Avignon. The inscription which Mill wrote for her grave is too
characteristic to be omitted:--"Her great and loving heart, her noble
soul, her clear, powerful, original, and comprehensive intellect, made
her the guide and support, the instructor in wisdom and the example in
goodness, as she was the sole earthly delight of those who had the
happiness to belong to her. As earnest for all public good as she was
generous and devoted to all who surrounded her, her influence has been
felt in many of the greatest improvements of the age, and will be in
those still to come. Were there even a few hearts and intellects like
hers, this earth would already become the hoped-for Heaven." These lines
prove the intensity of Mill's feeling, which is not afraid of abundant
verbiage; but they also prove that he could not imagine what the effect
would be on others, and, as Grote said, only Mill's reputation could
survive these and similar displays.

Every one will judge for himself of this romantic episode in Mill's
career, according to such experience as he may possess of the
philosophic mind and of the value of these curious but not infrequent
relationships. It may have been a piece of infatuation, or, if we prefer
to say so, it may have been the most gracious and the most human page in
Mill's career. Mrs. Mill may have flattered her husband's vanity by
echoing his opinions, or she may have indeed been an Egeria, full of
inspiration and intellectual helpfulness. What usually happens in these
cases,--although the philosopher himself, through his belief in the
equality of the sexes, was debarred from thinking so,--is the extremely
valuable action and reaction of two different classes and orders of
mind. To any one whose thoughts have been occupied with the sphere of
abstract speculation, the lively and vivid presentment of concrete fact
comes as a delightful and agreeable shock. The instinct of the woman
often enables her not only to apprehend but to illustrate a truth for
which she would be totally unable to give the adequate philosophic
reasoning. On the other hand, the man, with the more careful logical
methods and the slow processes of formal reasoning, is apt to suppose
that the happy intuition which leaps to the conclusion is really based
on the intellectual processes of which he is conscious in his own case.
Thus both parties to the happy contract are equally pleased. The
abstract truth gets the concrete illustration; the concrete illustration
finds its proper foundation in a series of abstract inquiries. Perhaps
Carlyle's epithets of "iridescent" and "vivid" refer incidentally to
Mrs. Mill's quick perceptiveness, and thus throw a useful light on the
mutual advantages of the common work of husband and wife. But it savours
almost of impertinence even to attempt to lift the veil on a mystery
like this. It is enough to say, perhaps, that however much we may
deplore the exaggeration of Mill's references to his wife, we recognise
that, for whatever reason, the pair lived an ideally happy life.

It still, however, remains to estimate the extent to which Mrs. Taylor,
both before and after her marriage with Mill, made actual contributions
to his thoughts and his public work. Here I may be perhaps permitted to
avail myself of what I have already written in a previous work.[1] Mill
gives us abundant help in this matter in the _Autobiography_. When first
he knew her, his thoughts were turning to the subject of Logic. But his
published work on the subject owed nothing to her, he tells us, in its
doctrines. It was Mill's custom to write the whole of a book so as to
get his general scheme complete, and then laboriously to re-write it in
order to perfect the phrases and the composition. Doubtless Mrs. Taylor
was of considerable help to him as a critic of style. But to be a critic
of doctrine she was hardly qualified. Mill has made some clear
admissions on this point. "The only actual revolution which has ever
taken place in my modes of thinking was already complete,"[2] he says,
before her influence became paramount. There is a curiously humble
estimate of his own powers (to which Dr. Bain has called attention),
which reads at first sight as if it contradicted this. "During the
greater part of my literary life I have performed the office in relation
to her, which, from a rather early period, I had considered as the most
useful part that I was qualified to take in the domain of thought, that
of an interpreter of original thinkers, and mediator between them and
the public." So far it would seem that Mill had sat at the feet of his
oracle; but observe the highly remarkable exception which is made in the
following sentence:--"For I had always a humble opinion of my own powers
as an original thinker, _except in abstract science (logic, metaphysics,
and the theoretic principles of political economy and politics.)_"[3] If
Mill then was an original thinker in logic, metaphysics, and the science
of economy and politics, it is clear that he had not learnt these from
her lips. And to most men logic and metaphysics may be safely taken as
forming a domain in which originality of thought, if it can be honestly
professed, is a sufficient title of distinction.

Mrs. Taylor's assistance in the _Political Economy_ is confined to
certain definite points. The purely scientific part was, we are assured,
not learnt from her. "But it was chiefly her influence which gave to the
book that general tone by which it is distinguished from all previous
expositions of political economy that had any pretensions to be
scientific, and which has made it so useful in conciliating minds which
those previous expositions had repelled. This tone consisted chiefly in
making the proper distinction between the laws of the production of
wealth, which are real laws of Nature, dependent on the properties of
objects, and the modes of its distribution, which, subject to certain
conditions, depend on human will.... _I had indeed partially learnt this
view of things from the thoughts awakened in me by the speculations of
St. Simonians_; but it was made a living principle, pervading and
animating the book, by my wife's promptings."[4] The part which is
italicised is noticeable. Here, as elsewhere, Mill thinks out the matter
by himself; the concrete form of the thoughts is suggested or prompted
by the wife. Apart from this "general tone," Mill tells us that there
was a specific contribution. "The chapter which has had a greater
influence on opinion than all the rest, that on the Probable Future of
the Labouring Classes, is entirely due to her. In the first draft of the
book that chapter did not exist. She pointed out the need of such a
chapter, and the extreme imperfection of the book without it; she was
the cause of my writing it." From this it would appear that she gave
Mill that tendency to Socialism which, while it lends a progressive
spirit to his speculations on politics, at the same time does not
manifestly accord with his earlier advocacy of peasant proprietorships.
Nor, again, is it, on the face of it, consistent with those doctrines of
individual liberty which, aided by the intellectual companionship of his
wife, he propounded in a later work. The ideal of individual freedom is
not the ideal of Socialism, just as that invocation of governmental aid
to which the Socialist resorts is not consistent with the theory of
_laisser-faire_. Yet _Liberty_ was planned by Mill and his wife in
concert. Perhaps a slight visionariness of speculation was no less the
attribute of Mrs. Mill than an absence of rigid logical principles. Be
this as it may, she undoubtedly checked the half-recognised leanings of
her husband in the direction of Coleridge and Carlyle. Whether this was
an instance of her steadying influence,[5] or whether it added one more
unassimilated element to Mill's diverse intellectual sustenance, may be
wisely left an open question. We cannot, however, be wrong in
attributing to her the parentage of one book of Mill, _The Subjection of
Women_. It is true that Mill had before learnt that men and women ought
to be equal in legal, political, social, and domestic relations. This
was a point on which he had already fallen foul of his father's essay on
_Government_. But Mrs. Taylor had actually written on this very point,
and the warmth and fervour of Mill's denunciations of women's servitude
were unmistakably caught from his wife's view of the practical
disabilities entailed by the feminine position.


III.

_Liberty_ was published in 1859, when the nineteenth century was half
over, but in its general spirit and in some of its special tendencies
the little tract belongs rather to the standpoint of the eighteenth
century than to that which saw its birth. In many of his speculations
John Stuart Mill forms a sort of connecting link between the doctrines
of the earlier English empirical school and those which we associate
with the name of Mr. Herbert Spencer. In his _Logic_, for instance, he
represents an advance on the theories of Hume, and yet does not see how
profoundly the victories of Science modify the conclusions of the
earlier thinker. Similarly, in his _Political Economy_, he desires to
improve and to enlarge upon Ricardo, and yet does not advance so far as
the modifications of political economy by Sociology, indicated by some
later--and especially German--speculations on the subject. In the tract
on _Liberty_, Mill is advocating the rights of the individual as against
Society at the very opening of an era that was rapidly coming to the
conclusion that the individual had no absolute rights against Society.
The eighteenth century view is that individuals existed first, each with
their own special claims and responsibilities; that they deliberately
formed a Social State, either by a contract or otherwise; and that then
finally they limited their own action out of regard for the interests of
the social organism thus arbitrarily produced. This is hardly the view
of the nineteenth century. It is possible that logically the individual
is prior to the State; historically and in the order of Nature, the
State is prior to the individual. In other words, such rights as every
single personality possesses in a modern world do not belong to him by
an original ordinance of Nature, but are slowly acquired in the growth
and development of the social state. It is not the truth that individual
liberties were forfeited by some deliberate act when men made themselves
into a Commonwealth. It is more true to say, as Aristotle said long ago,
that man is naturally a political animal, that he lived under strict
social laws as a mere item, almost a nonentity, as compared with the
Order, Society, or Community to which he belonged, and that such
privileges as he subsequently acquired have been obtained in virtue of
his growing importance as a member of a growing organisation. But if
this is even approximately true, it seriously restricts that liberty of
the individual for which Mill pleads. The individual has no chance,
because he has no rights, against the social organism. Society can
punish him for acts or even opinions which are anti-social in character.
His virtue lies in recognising the intimate communion with his fellows.
His sphere of activity is bounded by the common interest. Just as it is
an absurd and exploded theory that all men are originally equal, so it
is an ancient and false doctrine to protest that a man has an individual
liberty to live and think as he chooses in any spirit of antagonism to
that larger body of which he forms an insignificant part.

Nowadays this view of Society and of its development, which we largely
owe to the _Philosophie Positive_ of M. Auguste Comte, is so familiar
and possibly so damaging to the individual initiative, that it becomes
necessary to advance and proclaim the truth which resides in an opposite
theory. All progress, as we are aware, depends on the joint process of
integration and differentiation; synthesis, analysis, and then a larger
synthesis seem to form the law of development. If it ever comes to pass
that Society is tyrannical in its restrictions of the individual, if, as
for instance in some forms of Socialism, based on deceptive analogies of
Nature's dealings, the type is everything and the individual nothing, it
must be confidently urged in answer that the fuller life of the future
depends on the manifold activities, even though they may be
antagonistic, of the individual. In England, at all events, we know that
government in all its different forms, whether as King, or as a caste
of nobles, or as an oligarchical plutocracy, or even as trades unions,
is so dwarfing in its action that, for the sake of the future, the
individual must revolt. Just as our former point of view limited the
value of Mill's treatise on _Liberty_, so these considerations tend to
show its eternal importance. The omnipotence of Society means a dead
level of uniformity. The claim of the individual to be heard, to say
what he likes, to do what he likes, to live as he likes, is absolutely
necessary, not only for the variety of elements without which life is
poor, but also for the hope of a future age. So long as individual
initiative and effort are recognised as a vital element in English
history, so long will Mill's _Liberty_, which he confesses was based on
a suggestion derived from Von Humboldt, remain as an indispensable
contribution to the speculations, and also to the health and sanity, of
the world.


What his wife really was to Mill, we shall, perhaps, never know. But
that she was an actual and vivid force, which roused the latent
enthusiasm of his nature, we have abundant evidence. And when she died
at Avignon, though his friends may have regained an almost estranged
companionship, Mill was, personally, the poorer. Into the sorrow of that
bereavement we cannot enter: we have no right or power to draw the veil.
It is enough to quote the simple words, so eloquent of an unspoken
grief--"I can say nothing which could describe, even in the faintest
manner, what that loss was and is. But because I know that she would
have wished it, I endeavour to make the best of what life I have left,
and to work for her purposes with such diminished strength as can be
derived from thoughts of her, and communion with her memory."


W. L. COURTNEY.

LONDON, _July 5th, 1901_.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Life of John Stuart Mill_, chapter vi. (Walter Scott.)

[2] _Autobiography_, p. 190.

[3] _Ibid._, p. 242.

[4] _Autobiography_, pp. 246, 247.

[5] Cf. an instructive page in the _Autobiography_, p. 252.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.
                                            PAGE
INTRODUCTORY                                   1


CHAPTER II.

OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION      28


CHAPTER III.

OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS
OF WELL-BEING                                103


CHAPTER IV.

OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY
OVER THE INDIVIDUAL                          140


CHAPTER V.

APPLICATIONS                                 177




The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument
unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and
essential importance of human development in its richest
diversity.--WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT: _Sphere and Duties of
Government_.




ON LIBERTY.




CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.


The subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so
unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical
Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the
power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the
individual. A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in
general terms, but which profoundly influences the practical
controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely soon to
make itself recognised as the vital question of the future. It is so far
from being new, that in a certain sense, it has divided mankind, almost
from the remotest ages; but in the stage of progress into which the more
civilised portions of the species have now entered, it presents itself
under new conditions, and requires a different and more fundamental
treatment.

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous
feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar,
particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England. But in old times this
contest was between subjects, or some classes of subjects, and the
government. By liberty, was meant protection against the tyranny of the
political rulers. The rulers were conceived (except in some of the
popular governments of Greece) as in a necessarily antagonistic position
to the people whom they ruled. They consisted of a governing One, or a
governing tribe or caste, who derived their authority from inheritance
or conquest, who, at all events, did not hold it at the pleasure of the
governed, and whose supremacy men did not venture, perhaps did not
desire, to contest, whatever precautions might be taken against its
oppressive exercise. Their power was regarded as necessary, but also as
highly dangerous; as a weapon which they would attempt to use against
their subjects, no less than against external enemies. To prevent the
weaker members of the community from being preyed upon by innumerable
vultures, it was needful that there should be an animal of prey
stronger than the rest, commissioned to keep them down. But as the king
of the vultures would be no less bent upon preying on the flock than any
of the minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude
of defence against his beak and claws. The aim, therefore, of patriots,
was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to
exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by
liberty. It was attempted in two ways. First, by obtaining a recognition
of certain immunities, called political liberties or rights, which it
was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe, and
which if he did infringe, specific resistance, or general rebellion, was
held to be justifiable. A second, and generally a later expedient, was
the establishment of constitutional checks; by which the consent of the
community, or of a body of some sort, supposed to represent its
interests, was made a necessary condition to some of the more important
acts of the governing power. To the first of these modes of limitation,
the ruling power, in most European countries, was compelled, more or
less, to submit. It was not so with the second; and to attain this, or
when already in some degree possessed, to attain it more completely,
became everywhere the principal object of the lovers of liberty. And so
long as mankind were content to combat one enemy by another, and to be
ruled by a master, on condition of being guaranteed more or less
efficaciously against his tyranny, they did not carry their aspirations
beyond this point.

A time, however, came, in the progress of human affairs, when men ceased
to think it a necessity of nature that their governors should be an
independent power, opposed in interest to themselves. It appeared to
them much better that the various magistrates of the State should be
their tenants or delegates, revocable at their pleasure. In that way
alone, it seemed, could they have complete security that the powers of
government would never be abused to their disadvantage. By degrees, this
new demand for elective and temporary rulers became the prominent object
of the exertions of the popular party, wherever any such party existed;
and superseded, to a considerable extent, the previous efforts to limit
the power of rulers. As the struggle proceeded for making the ruling
power emanate from the periodical choice of the ruled, some persons
began to think that too much importance had been attached to the
limitation of the power itself. _That_ (it might seem) was a resource
against rulers whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the
people. What was now wanted was, that the rulers should be identified
with the people; that their interest and will should be the interest and
will of the nation. The nation did not need to be protected against its
own will. There was no fear of its tyrannising over itself. Let the
rulers be effectually responsible to it, promptly removable by it, and
it could afford to trust them with power of which it could itself
dictate the use to be made. Their power was but the nation's own power,
concentrated, and in a form convenient for exercise. This mode of
thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, was common among the last
generation of European liberalism, in the Continental section of which
it still apparently predominates. Those who admit any limit to what a
government may do, except in the case of such governments as they think
ought not to exist, stand out as brilliant exceptions among the
political thinkers of the Continent. A similar tone of sentiment might
by this time have been prevalent in our own country, if the
circumstances which for a time encouraged it, had continued unaltered.

But, in political and philosophical theories, as well as in persons,
success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might have
concealed from observation. The notion, that the people have no need to
limit their power over themselves, might seem axiomatic, when popular
government was a thing only dreamed about, or read of as having existed
at some distant period of the past. Neither was that notion necessarily
disturbed by such temporary aberrations as those of the French
Revolution, the worst of which were the work of a usurping few, and
which, in any case, belonged, not to the permanent working of popular
institutions, but to a sudden and convulsive outbreak against
monarchical and aristocratic despotism. In time, however, a democratic
republic came to occupy a large portion of the earth's surface, and made
itself felt as one of the most powerful members of the community of
nations; and elective and responsible government became subject to the
observations and criticisms which wait upon a great existing fact. It
was now perceived that such phrases as "self-government," and "the power
of the people over themselves," do not express the true state of the
case. The "people" who exercise the power are not always the same people
with those over whom it is exercised; and the "self-government" spoken
of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the
rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means, the will of
the most numerous or the most active _part_ of the people; the majority,
or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority: the
people, consequently, _may_ desire to oppress a part of their number;
and precautions are as much needed against this, as against any other
abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of government
over individuals, loses none of its importance when the holders of power
are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest
party therein. This view of things, recommending itself equally to the
intelligence of thinkers and to the inclination of those important
classes in European society to whose real or supposed interests
democracy is adverse, has had no difficulty in establishing itself; and
in political speculations "the tyranny of the majority" is now generally
included among the evils against which society requires to be on its
guard.

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is
still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of
the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when
society is itself the tyrant--society collectively, over the separate
individuals who compose it--its means of tyrannising are not restricted
to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries.
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong
mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which
it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable
than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually
upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape,
penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the
soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the
magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the
tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of
society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas
and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to
fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any
individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to
fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the
legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual
independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against
encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs,
as protection against political despotism.

But though this proposition is not likely to be contested in general
terms, the practical question, where to place the limit--how to make the
fitting adjustment between individual independence and social
control--is a subject on which nearly everything remains to be done. All
that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of
restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of conduct,
therefore, must be imposed, by law in the first place, and by opinion on
many things which are not fit subjects for the operation of law. What
these rules should be, is the principal question in human affairs; but
if we except a few of the most obvious cases, it is one of those which
least progress has been made in resolving. No two ages, and scarcely any
two countries, have decided it alike; and the decision of one age or
country is a wonder to another. Yet the people of any given age and
country no more suspect any difficulty in it, than if it were a subject
on which mankind had always been agreed. The rules which obtain among
themselves appear to them self-evident and self-justifying. This all but
universal illusion is one of the examples of the magical influence of
custom, which is not only, as the proverb says, a second nature, but is
continually mistaken for the first. The effect of custom, in preventing
any misgiving respecting the rules of conduct which mankind impose on
one another, is all the more complete because the subject is one on
which it is not generally considered necessary that reasons should be
given, either by one person to others, or by each to himself. People are
accustomed to believe, and have been encouraged in the belief by some
who aspire to the character of philosophers, that their feelings, on
subjects of this nature, are better than reasons, and render reasons
unnecessary. The practical principle which guides them to their opinions
on the regulation of human conduct, is the feeling in each person's mind
that everybody should be required to act as he, and those with whom he
sympathises, would like them to act. No one, indeed, acknowledges to
himself that his standard of judgment is his own liking; but an opinion
on a point of conduct, not supported by reasons, can only count as one
person's preference; and if the reasons, when given, are a mere appeal
to a similar preference felt by other people, it is still only many
people's liking instead of one. To an ordinary man, however, his own
preference, thus supported, is not only a perfectly satisfactory
reason, but the only one he generally has for any of his notions of
morality, taste, or propriety, which are not expressly written in his
religious creed; and his chief guide in the interpretation even of that.
Men's opinions, accordingly, on what is laudable or blamable, are
affected by all the multifarious causes which influence their wishes in
regard to the conduct of others, and which are as numerous as those
which determine their wishes on any other subject. Sometimes their
reason--at other times their prejudices or superstitions: often their
social affections, not seldom their anti-social ones, their envy or
jealousy, their arrogance or contemptuousness: but most commonly, their
desires or fears for themselves--their legitimate or illegitimate
self-interest. Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of
the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its
feelings of class superiority. The morality between Spartans and Helots,
between planters and negroes, between princes and subjects, between
nobles and roturiers, between men and women, has been for the most part
the creation of these class interests and feelings: and the sentiments
thus generated, react in turn upon the moral feelings of the members of
the ascendant class, in their relations among themselves. Where, on the
other hand, a class, formerly ascendant, has lost its ascendancy, or
where its ascendancy is unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments
frequently bear the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority.
Another grand determining principle of the rules of conduct, both in act
and forbearance, which have been enforced by law or opinion, has been
the servility of mankind towards the supposed preferences or aversions
of their temporal masters, or of their gods. This servility, though
essentially selfish, is not hypocrisy; it gives rise to perfectly
genuine sentiments of abhorrence; it made men burn magicians and
heretics. Among so many baser influences, the general and obvious
interests of society have of course had a share, and a large one, in the
direction of the moral sentiments: less, however, as a matter of reason,
and on their own account, than as a consequence of the sympathies and
antipathies which grew out of them: and sympathies and antipathies which
had little or nothing to do with the interests of society, have made
themselves felt in the establishment of moralities with quite as great
force.

The likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful portion of
it, are thus the main thing which has practically determined the rules
laid down for general observance, under the penalties of law or
opinion. And in general, those who have been in advance of society in
thought and feeling have left this condition of things unassailed in
principle, however they may have come into conflict with it in some of
its details. They have occupied themselves rather in inquiring what
things society ought to like or dislike, than in questioning whether its
likings or dislikings should be a law to individuals. They preferred
endeavouring to alter the feelings of mankind on the particular points
on which they were themselves heretical, rather than make common cause
in defence of freedom, with heretics generally. The only case in which
the higher ground has been taken on principle and maintained with
consistency, by any but an individual here and there, is that of
religious belief: a case instructive in many ways, and not least so as
forming a most striking instance of the fallibility of what is called
the moral sense: for the _odium theologicum_, in a sincere bigot, is one
of the most unequivocal cases of moral feeling. Those who first broke
the yoke of what called itself the Universal Church, were in general as
little willing to permit difference of religious opinion as that church
itself. But when the heat of the conflict was over, without giving a
complete victory to any party, and each church or sect was reduced to
limit its hopes to retaining possession of the ground it already
occupied; minorities, seeing that they had no chance of becoming
majorities, were under the necessity of pleading to those whom they
could not convert, for permission to differ. It is accordingly on this
battle-field, almost solely, that the rights of the individual against
society have been asserted on broad grounds of principle, and the claim
of society to exercise authority over dissentients, openly controverted.
The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it
possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible
right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others
for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in
whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly
anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference,
which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has
added its weight to the scale. In the minds of almost all religious
persons, even in the most tolerant countries, the duty of toleration is
admitted with tacit reserves. One person will bear with dissent in
matters of church government, but not of dogma; another can tolerate
everybody, short of a Papist or a Unitarian; another, every one who
believes in revealed religion; a few extend their charity a little
further, but stop at the belief in a God and in a future state. Wherever
the sentiment of the majority is still genuine and intense, it is found
to have abated little of its claim to be obeyed.

In England, from the peculiar circumstances of our political history,
though the yoke of opinion is perhaps heavier, that of law is lighter,
than in most other countries of Europe; and there is considerable
jealousy of direct interference, by the legislative or the executive
power, with private conduct; not so much from any just regard for the
independence of the individual, as from the still subsisting habit of
looking on the government as representing an opposite interest to the
public. The majority have not yet learnt to feel the power of the
government their power, or its opinions their opinions. When they do so,
individual liberty will probably be as much exposed to invasion from the
government, as it already is from public opinion. But, as yet, there is
a considerable amount of feeling ready to be called forth against any
attempt of the law to control individuals in things in which they have
not hitherto been accustomed to be controlled by it; and this with very
little discrimination as to whether the matter is, or is not, within the
legitimate sphere of legal control; insomuch that the feeling, highly
salutary on the whole, is perhaps quite as often misplaced as well
grounded in the particular instances of its application. There is, in
fact, no recognised principle by which the propriety or impropriety of
government interference is customarily tested. People decide according
to their personal preferences. Some, whenever they see any good to be
done, or evil to be remedied, would willingly instigate the government
to undertake the business; while others prefer to bear almost any amount
of social evil, rather than add one to the departments of human
interests amenable to governmental control. And men range themselves on
one or the other side in any particular case, according to this general
direction of their sentiments; or according to the degree of interest
which they feel in the particular thing which it is proposed that the
government should do, or according to the belief they entertain that the
government would, or would not, do it in the manner they prefer; but
very rarely on account of any opinion to which they consistently adhere,
as to what things are fit to be done by a government. And it seems to me
that in consequence of this absence of rule or principle, one side is
at present as often wrong as the other; the interference of government
is, with about equal frequency, improperly invoked and improperly
condemned.

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as
entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the
individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used
be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion
of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which
mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with
the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That
the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any
member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to
others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it
will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier,
because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even
right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning
with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling
him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify
that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be
calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the
conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which
concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his
independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and
mind, the individual is sovereign.

It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine is meant to
apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties. We are
not speaking of children, or of young persons below the age which the
law may fix as that of manhood or womanhood. Those who are still in a
state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected
against their own actions as well as against external injury. For the
same reason, we may leave out of consideration those backward states of
society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage. The
early difficulties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great, that
there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them; and a ruler
full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any
expedients that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable.
Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with
barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means
justified by actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has
no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind
have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion.
Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar
or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one. But as soon
as mankind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own
improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long since reached in
all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves), compulsion,
either in the direct form or in that of pains and penalties for
non-compliance, is no longer admissible as a means to their own good,
and justifiable only for the security of others.

It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived
to my argument from the idea of abstract right, as a thing independent
of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical
questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the
permanent interests of man as a progressive being. Those interests, I
contend, authorise the subjection of individual spontaneity to external
control, only in respect to those actions of each, which concern the
interest of other people. If any one does an act hurtful to others,
there is a _primâ facie_ case for punishing him, by law, or, where legal
penalties are not safely applicable, by general disapprobation. There
are also many positive acts for the benefit of others, which he may
rightfully be compelled to perform; such as, to give evidence in a court
of justice; to bear his fair share in the common defence, or in any
other joint work necessary to the interest of the society of which he
enjoys the protection; and to perform certain acts of individual
beneficence, such as saving a fellow-creature's life, or interposing to
protect the defenceless against ill-usage, things which whenever it is
obviously a man's duty to do, he may rightfully be made responsible to
society for not doing. A person may cause evil to others not only by his
actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable
to them for the injury. The latter case, it is true, requires a much
more cautious exercise of compulsion than the former. To make any one
answerable for doing evil to others, is the rule; to make him answerable
for not preventing evil, is, comparatively speaking, the exception. Yet
there are many cases clear enough and grave enough to justify that
exception. In all things which regard the external relations of the
individual, he is _de jure_ amenable to those whose interests are
concerned, and if need be, to society as their protector. There are
often good reasons for not holding him to the responsibility; but these
reasons must arise from the special expediencies of the case: either
because it is a kind of case in which he is on the whole likely to act
better, when left to his own discretion, than when controlled in any way
in which society have it in their power to control him; or because the
attempt to exercise control would produce other evils, greater than
those which it would prevent. When such reasons as these preclude the
enforcement of responsibility, the conscience of the agent himself
should step into the vacant judgment seat, and protect those interests
of others which have no external protection; judging himself all the
more rigidly, because the case does not admit of his being made
accountable to the judgment of his fellow-creatures.

But there is a sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from
the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending
all that portion of a person's life and conduct which affects only
himself, or if it also affects others, only with their free, voluntary,
and undeceived consent and participation. When I say only himself, I
mean directly, and in the first instance: for whatever affects himself,
may affect others _through_ himself; and the objection which may be
grounded on this contingency, will receive consideration in the sequel.
This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises,
first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of
conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and
feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects,
practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty
of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different
principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual
which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as
the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same
reasons, is practically inseparable from it. Secondly, the principle
requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life
to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such
consequences as may follow: without impediment from our
fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though
they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly, from
this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same
limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite, for any
purpose not involving harm to others: the persons combining being
supposed to be of full age, and not forced or deceived.

No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected, is
free, whatever may be its form of government; and none is completely
free in which they do not exist absolute and unqualified. The only
freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our
own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or
impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his
own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater
gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves,
than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

Though this doctrine is anything but new, and, to some persons, may have
the air of a truism, there is no doctrine which stands more directly
opposed to the general tendency of existing opinion and practice.
Society has expended fully as much effort in the attempt (according to
its lights) to compel people to conform to its notions of personal, as
of social excellence. The ancient commonwealths thought themselves
entitled to practise, and the ancient philosophers countenanced, the
regulation of every part of private conduct by public authority, on the
ground that the State had a deep interest in the whole bodily and mental
discipline of every one of its citizens; a mode of thinking which may
have been admissible in small republics surrounded by powerful enemies,
in constant peril of being subverted by foreign attack or internal
commotion, and to which even a short interval of relaxed energy and
self-command might so easily be fatal, that they could not afford to
wait for the salutary permanent effects of freedom. In the modern world,
the greater size of political communities, and above all, the separation
between spiritual and temporal authority (which placed the direction of
men's consciences in other hands than those which controlled their
worldly affairs), prevented so great an interference by law in the
details of private life; but the engines of moral repression have been
wielded more strenuously against divergence from the reigning opinion in
self-regarding, than even in social matters; religion, the most powerful
of the elements which have entered into the formation of moral feeling,
having almost always been governed either by the ambition of a
hierarchy, seeking control over every department of human conduct, or by
the spirit of Puritanism. And some of those modern reformers who have
placed themselves in strongest opposition to the religions of the past,
have been noway behind either churches or sects in their assertion of
the right of spiritual domination: M. Comte, in particular, whose social
system, as unfolded in his _Traité de Politique Positive_, aims at
establishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) a despotism
of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the
political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient
philosophers.

Apart from the peculiar tenets of individual thinkers, there is also in
the world at large an increasing inclination to stretch unduly the
powers of society over the individual, both by the force of opinion and
even by that of legislation: and as the tendency of all the changes
taking place in the world is to strengthen society, and diminish the
power of the individual, this encroachment is not one of the evils which
tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrary, to grow more and
more formidable. The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as
fellow-citizens to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule
of conduct on others, is so energetically supported by some of the best
and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is
hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power; and as
the power is not declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of
moral conviction can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in
the present circumstances of the world, to see it increase.

It will be convenient for the argument, if, instead of at once entering
upon the general thesis, we confine ourselves in the first instance to a
single branch of it, on which the principle here stated is, if not
fully, yet to a certain point, recognised by the current opinions. This
one branch is the Liberty of Thought: from which it is impossible to
separate the cognate liberty of speaking and of writing. Although these
liberties, to some considerable amount, form part of the political
morality of all countries which profess religious toleration and free
institutions, the grounds, both philosophical and practical, on which
they rest, are perhaps not so familiar to the general mind, nor so
thoroughly appreciated by many even of the leaders of opinion, as might
have been expected. Those grounds, when rightly understood, are of much
wider application than to only one division of the subject, and a
thorough consideration of this part of the question will be found the
best introduction to the remainder. Those to whom nothing which I am
about to say will be new, may therefore, I hope, excuse me, if on a
subject which for now three centuries has been so often discussed, I
venture on one discussion more.




CHAPTER II.

OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION.


The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be
necessary of the "liberty of the press" as one of the securities against
corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now
be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not
identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them,
and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to
hear. This aspect of the question, besides, has been so often and so
triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, that it need not be
specially insisted on in this place. Though the law of England, on the
subject of the press, is as servile to this day as it was in the time of
the Tudors, there is little danger of its being actually put in force
against political discussion, except during some temporary panic, when
fear of insurrection drives ministers and judges from their
propriety;[6] and, speaking generally, it is not, in constitutional
countries, to be apprehended that the government, whether completely
responsible to the people or not, will often attempt to control the
expression of opinion, except when in doing so it makes itself the organ
of the general intolerance of the public. Let us suppose, therefore,
that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks
of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it
conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to
exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The
power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to
it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in
accordance with public opinion, than when in or opposition to it. If all
mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the
contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that
one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in
silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value
except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were
simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the
injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar
evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing
the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who
dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the
opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging
error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit,
the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its
collision with error.

It is necessary to consider separately these two hypotheses, each of
which has a distinct branch of the argument corresponding to it. We can
never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false
opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.


First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may
possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its
truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the
question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means
of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure
that it is false, is to assume that _their_ certainty is the same thing
as _absolute_ certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption
of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common
argument, not the worse for being common.

Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their
fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgment,
which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows
himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions
against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any
opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of
the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable. Absolute
princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually
feel this complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all
subjects. People more happily situated, who sometimes hear their
opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused to be set right when they
are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their
opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to whom they
habitually defer: for in proportion to a man's want of confidence in his
own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on
the infallibility of "the world" in general. And the world, to each
individual, means the part of it with which he comes in contact; his
party, his sect, his church, his class of society: the man may be
called, by comparison, almost liberal and large-minded to whom it means
anything so comprehensive as his own country or his own age. Nor is his
faith in this collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that
other ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have
thought, and even now think, the exact reverse. He devolves upon his own
world the responsibility of being in the right against the dissentient
worlds of other people; and it never troubles him that mere accident has
decided which of these numerous worlds is the object of his reliance,
and that the same causes which make him a Churchman in London, would
have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin. Yet it is as evident
in itself as any amount of argument can make it, that ages are no more
infallible than individuals; every age having held many opinions which
subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and it is as
certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future
ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.

The objection likely to be made to this argument, would probably take
some such form as the following. There is no greater assumption of
infallibility in forbidding the propagation of error, than in any other
thing which is done by public authority on its own judgment and
responsibility. Judgment is given to men that they may use it. Because
it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to
use it at all? To prohibit what they think pernicious, is not claiming
exemption from error, but fulfilling the duty incumbent on them,
although fallible, of acting on their conscientious conviction. If we
were never to act on our opinions, because those opinions may be wrong,
we should leave all our interests uncared for, and all our duties
unperformed. An objection which applies to all conduct, can be no valid
objection to any conduct in particular. It is the duty of governments,
and of individuals, to form the truest opinions they can; to form them
carefully, and never impose them upon others unless they are quite sure
of being right. But when they are sure (such reasoners may say), it is
not conscientiousness but cowardice to shrink from acting on their
opinions, and allow doctrines which they honestly think dangerous to the
welfare of mankind, either in this life or in another, to be scattered
abroad without restraint, because other people, in less enlightened
times, have persecuted opinions now believed to be true. Let us take
care, it may be said, not to make the same mistake: but governments and
nations have made mistakes in other things, which are not denied to be
fit subjects for the exercise of authority: they have laid on bad taxes,
made unjust wars. Ought we therefore to lay on no taxes, and, under
whatever provocation, make no wars? Men, and governments, must act to
the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty,
but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life. We
may, and must, assume our opinion to be true for the guidance of our own
conduct: and it is assuming no more when we forbid bad men to pervert
society by the propagation of opinions which we regard as false and
pernicious.

I answer that it is assuming very much more. There is the greatest
difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every
opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its
truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty
of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which
justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no
other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance
of being right.

When we consider either the history of opinion, or the ordinary conduct
of human life, to what is it to be ascribed that the one and the other
are no worse than they are? Not certainly to the inherent force of the
human understanding; for, on any matter not self-evident, there are
ninety-nine persons totally incapable of judging of it, for one who is
capable; and the capacity of the hundredth person is only comparative;
for the majority of the eminent men of every past generation held many
opinions now known to be erroneous, and did or approved numerous things
which no one will now justify. Why is it, then, that there is on the
whole a preponderance among mankind of rational opinions and rational
conduct? If there really is this preponderance--which there must be,
unless human affairs are, and have always been, in an almost desperate
state--it is owing to a quality of the human mind, the source of
everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral
being, namely, that his errors are corrigible. He is capable of
rectifying his mistakes, by discussion and experience. Not by experience
alone. There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be
interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and
argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind,
must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell their own
story, without comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength
and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one property, that
it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only
when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at hand. In the
case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how
has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his
opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all
that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just,
and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what
was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human
being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by
hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of
opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every
character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but
this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any
other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own
opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt
and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable
foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognisant of all that
can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his
position against all gainsayers--knowing that he has sought for
objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut out
no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter--he has a
right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any
multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.

It is not too much to require that what the wisest of mankind, those who
are best entitled to trust their own judgment, find necessary to warrant
their relying on it, should be submitted to by that miscellaneous
collection of a few wise and many foolish individuals, called the
public. The most intolerant of churches, the Roman Catholic Church, even
at the canonisation of a saint, admits, and listens patiently to, a
"devil's advocate." The holiest of men, it appears, cannot be admitted
to posthumous honours, until all that the devil could say against him is
known and weighed. If even the Newtonian philosophy were not permitted
to be questioned, mankind could not feel as complete assurance of its
truth as they now do. The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have
no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to
prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted
and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we
have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we
have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching
us: if the lists are kept open, we may hope that if there be a better
truth, it will be found when the human mind is capable of receiving it;
and in the meantime we may rely on having attained such approach to
truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the amount of certainty
attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way of attaining it.

Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for
free discussion, but object to their being "pushed to an extreme;" not
seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are
not good for any case. Strange that they should imagine that they are
not assuming infallibility, when they acknowledge that there should be
free discussion on all subjects which can possibly be _doubtful_, but
think that some particular principle or doctrine should be forbidden to
be questioned because it is _so certain_, that is, because _they are
certain_ that it is certain. To call any proposition certain, while
there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is
not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with
us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other
side.

In the present age--which has been described as "destitute of faith, but
terrified at scepticism"--in which people feel sure, not so much that
their opinions are true, as that they should not know what to do without
them--the claims of an opinion to be protected from public attack are
rested not so much on its truth, as on its importance to society. There
are, it is alleged, certain beliefs, so useful, not to say indispensable
to well-being, that it is as much the duty of governments to uphold
those beliefs, as to protect any other of the interests of society. In a
case of such necessity, and so directly in the line of their duty,
something less than infallibility may, it is maintained, warrant, and
even bind, governments, to act on their own opinion, confirmed by the
general opinion of mankind. It is also often argued, and still oftener
thought, that none but bad men would desire to weaken these salutary
beliefs; and there can be nothing wrong, it is thought, in restraining
bad men, and prohibiting what only such men would wish to practise.
This mode of thinking makes the justification of restraints on
discussion not a question of the truth of doctrines, but of their
usefulness; and flatters itself by that means to escape the
responsibility of claiming to be an infallible judge of opinions. But
those who thus satisfy themselves, do not perceive that the assumption
of infallibility is merely shifted from one point to another. The
usefulness of an opinion is itself matter of opinion: as disputable, as
open to discussion, and requiring discussion as much, as the opinion
itself. There is the same need of an infallible judge of opinions to
decide an opinion to be noxious, as to decide it to be false, unless the
opinion condemned has full opportunity of defending itself. And it will
not do to say that the heretic may be allowed to maintain the utility or
harmlessness of his opinion, though forbidden to maintain its truth. The
truth of an opinion is part of its utility. If we would know whether or
not it is desirable that a proposition should be believed, is it
possible to exclude the consideration of whether or not it is true? In
the opinion, not of bad men, but of the best men, no belief which is
contrary to truth can be really useful: and can you prevent such men
from urging that plea, when they are charged with culpability for
denying some doctrine which they are told is useful, but which they
believe to be false? Those who are on the side of received opinions,
never fail to take all possible advantage of this plea; you do not find
_them_ handling the question of utility as if it could be completely
abstracted from that of truth: on the contrary, it is, above all,
because their doctrine is "the truth," that the knowledge or the belief
of it is held to be so indispensable. There can be no fair discussion of
the question of usefulness, when an argument so vital may be employed on
one side, but not on the other. And in point of fact, when law or public
feeling do not permit the truth of an opinion to be disputed, they are
just as little tolerant of a denial of its usefulness. The utmost they
allow is an extenuation of its absolute necessity, or of the positive
guilt of rejecting it.

In order more fully to illustrate the mischief of denying a hearing to
opinions because we, in our own judgment, have condemned them, it will
be desirable to fix down the discussion to a concrete case; and I
choose, by preference, the cases which are least favourable to me--in
which the argument against freedom of opinion, both on the score of
truth and on that of utility, is considered the strongest. Let the
opinions impugned be the belief in a God and in a future state, or any
of the commonly received doctrines of morality. To fight the battle on
such ground, gives a great advantage to an unfair antagonist; since he
will be sure to say (and many who have no desire to be unfair will say
it internally), Are these the doctrines which you do not deem
sufficiently certain to be taken under the protection of law? Is the
belief in a God one of the opinions, to feel sure of which, you hold to
be assuming infallibility? But I must be permitted to observe, that it
is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call
an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide that
question _for others_, without allowing them to hear what can be said on
the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the
less, if put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions. However
positive any one's persuasion may be, not only of the falsity, but of
the pernicious consequences--not only of the pernicious consequences,
but (to adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the immorality and
impiety of an opinion; yet if, in pursuance of that private judgment,
though backed by the public judgment of his country or his
contemporaries, he prevents the opinion from being heard in its defence,
he assumes infallibility. And so far from the assumption being less
objectionable or less dangerous because the opinion is called immoral or
impious, this is the case of all others in which it is most fatal. These
are exactly the occasions on which the men of one generation commit
those dreadful mistakes, which excite the astonishment and horror of
posterity. It is among such that we find the instances memorable in
history, when the arm of the law has been employed to root out the best
men and the noblest doctrines; with deplorable success as to the men,
though some of the doctrines have survived to be (as if in mockery)
invoked, in defence of similar conduct towards those who dissent from
_them_, or from their received interpretation.

Mankind can hardly be too often reminded that there was once a man named
Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of
his time, there took place a memorable collision. Born in an age and
country abounding in individual greatness, this man has been handed down
to us by those who best knew both him and the age, as the most virtuous
man in it; while _we_ know him as the head and prototype of all
subsequent teachers of virtue, the source equally of the lofty
inspiration of Plato and the judicious utilitarianism of Aristotle, "_i
maëstri di color che sanno_," the two headsprings of ethical as of all
other philosophy. This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers
who have since lived--whose fame, still growing after more than two
thousand years, all but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which
make his native city illustrious--was put to death by his countrymen,
after a judicial conviction, for impiety and immorality. Impiety, in
denying the gods recognised by the State; indeed his accuser asserted
(see the "Apologia") that he believed in no gods at all. Immorality, in
being, by his doctrines and instructions, a "corruptor of youth." Of
these charges the tribunal, there is every ground for believing,
honestly found him guilty, and condemned the man who probably of all
then born had deserved best of mankind, to be put to death as a
criminal.

To pass from this to the only other instance of judicial iniquity, the
mention of which, after the condemnation of Socrates, would not be an
anticlimax: the event which took place on Calvary rather more than
eighteen hundred years ago. The man who left on the memory of those who
witnessed his life and conversation, such an impression of his moral
grandeur, that eighteen subsequent centuries have done homage to him as
the Almighty in person, was ignominiously put to death, as what? As a
blasphemer. Men did not merely mistake their benefactor; they mistook
him for the exact contrary of what he was, and treated him as that
prodigy of impiety, which they themselves are now held to be, for their
treatment of him. The feelings with which mankind now regard these
lamentable transactions, especially the later of the two, render them
extremely unjust in their judgment of the unhappy actors. These were, to
all appearance, not bad men--not worse than men commonly are, but rather
the contrary; men who possessed in a full, or somewhat more than a full
measure, the religious, moral, and patriotic feelings of their time and
people: the very kind of men who, in all times, our own included, have
every chance of passing through life blameless and respected. The
high-priest who rent his garments when the words were pronounced, which,
according to all the ideas of his country, constituted the blackest
guilt, was in all probability quite as sincere in his horror and
indignation, as the generality of respectable and pious men now are in
the religious and moral sentiments they profess; and most of those who
now shudder at his conduct, if they had lived in his time, and been born
Jews, would have acted precisely as he did. Orthodox Christians who are
tempted to think that those who stoned to death the first martyrs must
have been worse men than they themselves are, ought to remember that one
of those persecutors was Saint Paul.

Let us add one more example, the most striking of all, if the
impressiveness of an error is measured by the wisdom and virtue of him
who falls into it. If ever any one, possessed of power, had grounds for
thinking himself the best and most enlightened among his cotemporaries,
it was the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Absolute monarch of the whole
civilised world, he preserved through life not only the most unblemished
justice, but what was less to be expected from his Stoical breeding, the
tenderest heart. The few failings which are attributed to him, were all
on the side of indulgence: while his writings, the highest ethical
product of the ancient mind, differ scarcely perceptibly, if they differ
at all, from the most characteristic teachings of Christ. This man, a
better Christian in all but the dogmatic sense of the word, than almost
any of the ostensibly Christian sovereigns who have since reigned,
persecuted Christianity. Placed at the summit of all the previous
attainments of humanity, with an open, unfettered intellect, and a
character which led him of himself to embody in his moral writings the
Christian ideal, he yet failed to see that Christianity was to be a good
and not an evil to the world, with his duties to which he was so deeply
penetrated. Existing society he knew to be in a deplorable state. But
such as it was, he saw, or thought he saw, that it was held together,
and prevented from being worse, by belief and reverence of the received
divinities. As a ruler of mankind, he deemed it his duty not to suffer
society to fall in pieces; and saw not how, if its existing ties were
removed, any others could be formed which could again knit it together.
The new religion openly aimed at dissolving these ties: unless,
therefore, it was his duty to adopt that religion, it seemed to be his
duty to put it down. Inasmuch then as the theology of Christianity did
not appear to him true or of divine origin; inasmuch as this strange
history of a crucified God was not credible to him, and a system which
purported to rest entirely upon a foundation to him so wholly
unbelievable, could not be foreseen by him to be that renovating agency
which, after all abatements, it has in fact proved to be; the gentlest
and most amiable of philosophers and rulers, under a solemn sense of
duty, authorised the persecution of Christianity. To my mind this is one
of the most tragical facts in all history. It is a bitter thought, how
different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the
Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the
auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine. But it
would be equally unjust to him and false to truth, to deny, that no one
plea which can be urged for punishing anti-Christian teaching, was
wanting to Marcus Aurelius for punishing, as he did, the propagation of
Christianity. No Christian more firmly believes that Atheism is false,
and tends to the dissolution of society, than Marcus Aurelius believed
the same things of Christianity; he who, of all men then living, might
have been thought the most capable of appreciating it. Unless any one
who approves of punishment for the promulgation of opinions, flatters
himself that he is a wiser and better man than Marcus Aurelius--more
deeply versed in the wisdom of his time, more elevated in his intellect
above it--more earnest in his search for truth, or more single-minded in
his devotion to it when found;--let him abstain from that assumption of
the joint infallibility of himself and the multitude, which the great
Antoninus made with so unfortunate a result.

Aware of the impossibility of defending the use of punishment for
restraining irreligious opinions, by any argument which will not justify
Marcus Antoninus, the enemies of religious freedom, when hard pressed,
occasionally accept this consequence, and say, with Dr. Johnson, that
the persecutors of Christianity were in the right; that persecution is
an ordeal through which truth ought to pass, and always passes
successfully, legal penalties being, in the end, powerless against
truth, though sometimes beneficially effective against mischievous
errors. This is a form of the argument for religious intolerance,
sufficiently remarkable not to be passed without notice.

A theory which maintains that truth may justifiably be persecuted
because persecution cannot possibly do it any harm, cannot be charged
with being intentionally hostile to the reception of new truths; but we
cannot commend the generosity of its dealing with the persons to whom
mankind are indebted for them. To discover to the world something which
deeply concerns it, and of which it was previously ignorant; to prove to
it that it had been mistaken on some vital point of temporal or
spiritual interest, is as important a service as a human being can
render to his fellow-creatures, and in certain cases, as in those of the
early Christians and of the Reformers, those who think with Dr. Johnson
believe it to have been the most precious gift which could be bestowed
on mankind. That the authors of such splendid benefits should be
requited by martyrdom; that their reward should be to be dealt with as
the vilest of criminals, is not, upon this theory, a deplorable error
and misfortune, for which humanity should mourn in sackcloth and ashes,
but the normal and justifiable state of things. The propounder of a new
truth, according to this doctrine, should stand, as stood, in the
legislation of the Locrians, the proposer of a new law, with a halter
round his neck, to be instantly tightened if the public assembly did
not, on hearing his reasons, then and there adopt his proposition.
People who defend this mode of treating benefactors, cannot be supposed
to set much value on the benefit; and I believe this view of the subject
is mostly confined to the sort of persons who think that new truths may
have been desirable once, but that we have had enough of them now.

But, indeed, the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is
one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another
till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.
History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not
suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries. To speak only
of religious opinions: the Reformation broke out at least twenty times
before Luther, and was put down. Arnold of Brescia was put down. Fra
Dolcino was put down. Savonarola was put down. The Albigeois were put
down. The Vaudois were put down. The Lollards were put down. The
Hussites were put down. Even after the era of Luther, wherever
persecution was persisted in, it was successful. In Spain, Italy,
Flanders, the Austrian empire, Protestantism was rooted out; and, most
likely, would have been so in England, had Queen Mary lived, or Queen
Elizabeth died. Persecution has always succeeded, save where the
heretics were too strong a party to be effectually persecuted. No
reasonable person can doubt that Christianity might have been extirpated
in the Roman Empire. It spread, and became predominant, because the
persecutions were only occasional, lasting but a short time, and
separated by long intervals of almost undisturbed propagandism. It is a
piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any
inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and
the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for
error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties
will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real
advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is
true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the
course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it,
until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable
circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to
withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.

It will be said, that we do not now put to death the introducers of new
opinions: we are not like our fathers who slew the prophets, we even
build sepulchres to them. It is true we no longer put heretics to death;
and the amount of penal infliction which modern feeling would probably
tolerate, even against the most obnoxious opinions, is not sufficient to
extirpate them. But let us not flatter ourselves that we are yet free
from the stain even of legal persecution. Penalties for opinion, or at
least for its expression, still exist by law; and their enforcement is
not, even in these times, so unexampled as to make it at all incredible
that they may some day be revived in full force. In the year 1857, at
the summer assizes of the county of Cornwall, an unfortunate man,[7]
said to be of unexceptionable conduct in all relations of life, was
sentenced to twenty-one months' imprisonment, for uttering, and writing
on a gate, some offensive words concerning Christianity. Within a month
of the same time, at the Old Bailey, two persons, on two separate
occasions,[8] were rejected as jurymen, and one of them grossly insulted
by the judge and by one of the counsel, because they honestly declared
that they had no theological belief; and a third, a foreigner,[9] for
the same reason, was denied justice against a thief. This refusal of
redress took place in virtue of the legal doctrine, that no person can
be allowed to give evidence in a court of justice, who does not profess
belief in a God (any god is sufficient) and in a future state; which is
equivalent to declaring such persons to be outlaws, excluded from the
protection of the tribunals; who may not only be robbed or assaulted
with impunity, if no one but themselves, or persons of similar opinions,
be present, but any one else may be robbed or assaulted with impunity,
if the proof of the fact depends on their evidence. The assumption on
which this is grounded, is that the oath is worthless, of a person who
does not believe in a future state; a proposition which betokens much
ignorance of history in those who assent to it (since it is historically
true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons
of distinguished integrity and honour); and would be maintained by no
one who had the smallest conception how many of the persons in greatest
repute with the world, both for virtues and for attainments, are well
known, at least to their intimates, to be unbelievers. The rule,
besides, is suicidal, and cuts away its own foundation. Under pretence
that atheists must be liars, it admits the testimony of all atheists who
are willing to lie, and rejects only those who brave the obloquy of
publicly confessing a detested creed rather than affirm a falsehood. A
rule thus self-convicted of absurdity so far as regards its professed
purpose, can be kept in force only as a badge of hatred, a relic of
persecution; a persecution, too, having the peculiarity, that the
qualification for undergoing it, is the being clearly proved not to
deserve it. The rule, and the theory it implies, are hardly less
insulting to believers than to infidels. For if he who does not believe
in a future state, necessarily lies, it follows that they who do believe
are only prevented from lying, if prevented they are, by the fear of
hell. We will not do the authors and abettors of the rule the injury of
supposing, that the conception which they have formed of Christian
virtue is drawn from their own consciousness.

These, indeed, are but rags and remnants of persecution, and may be
thought to be not so much an indication of the wish to persecute, as an
example of that very frequent infirmity of English minds, which makes
them take a preposterous pleasure in the assertion of a bad principle,
when they are no longer bad enough to desire to carry it really into
practice. But unhappily there is no security in the state of the public
mind, that the suspension of worse forms of legal persecution, which has
lasted for about the space of a generation, will continue. In this age
the quiet surface of routine is as often ruffled by attempts to
resuscitate past evils, as to introduce new benefits. What is boasted of
at the present time as the revival of religion, is always, in narrow
and uncultivated minds, at least as much the revival of bigotry; and
where there is the strong permanent leaven of intolerance in the
feelings of a people, which at all times abides in the middle classes of
this country, it needs but little to provoke them into actively
persecuting those whom they have never ceased to think proper objects of
persecution.[10] For it is this--it is the opinions men entertain, and
the feelings they cherish, respecting those who disown the beliefs they
deem important, which makes this country not a place of mental freedom.
For a long time past, the chief mischief of the legal penalties is that
they strengthen the social stigma. It is that stigma which is really
effective, and so effective is it that the profession of opinions which
are under the ban of society is much less common in England, than is, in
many other countries, the avowal of those which incur risk of judicial
punishment. In respect to all persons but those whose pecuniary
circumstances make them independent of the good will of other people,
opinion, on this subject, is as efficacious as law; men might as well be
imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread. Those
whose bread is already secured, and who desire no favours from men in
power, or from bodies of men, or from the public, have nothing to fear
from the open avowal of any opinions, but to be ill-thought of and
ill-spoken of, and this it ought not to require a very heroic mould to
enable them to bear. There is no room for any appeal _ad misericordiam_
in behalf of such persons. But though we do not now inflict so much evil
on those who think differently from us, as it was formerly our custom to
do, it may be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever by our treatment
of them. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy rose
like the sun in heaven, and spread its illumination over the whole
intellectual firmament. Christians were cast to the lions, but the
Christian church grew up a stately and spreading tree, overtopping the
older and less vigorous growths, and stifling them by its shade. Our
merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no opinions, but
induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for
their diffusion. With us, heretical opinions do not perceptibly gain, or
even lose, ground in each decade or generation; they never blaze out far
and wide, but continue to smoulder in the narrow circles of thinking and
studious persons among whom they originate, without ever lighting up the
general affairs of mankind with either a true or a deceptive light. And
thus is kept up a state of things very satisfactory to some minds,
because, without the unpleasant process of fining or imprisoning
anybody, it maintains all prevailing opinions outwardly undisturbed,
while it does not absolutely interdict the exercise of reason by
dissentients afflicted with the malady of thought. A convenient plan for
having peace in the intellectual world, and keeping all things going on
therein very much as they do already. But the price paid for this sort
of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral
courage of the human mind. A state of things in which a large portion of
the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep the
genuine principles and grounds of their convictions within their own
breasts, and attempt, in what they address to the public, to fit as much
as they can of their own conclusions to premises which they have
internally renounced, cannot send forth the open, fearless characters,
and logical, consistent intellects who once adorned the thinking world.
The sort of men who can be looked for under it, are either mere
conformers to commonplace, or time-servers for truth, whose arguments on
all great subjects are meant for their hearers, and are not those which
have convinced themselves. Those who avoid this alternative, do so by
narrowing their thoughts and interest to things which can be spoken of
without venturing within the region of principles, that is, to small
practical matters, which would come right of themselves, if but the
minds of mankind were strengthened and enlarged, and which will never be
made effectually right until then: while that which would strengthen and
enlarge men's minds, free and daring speculation on the highest
subjects, is abandoned.

Those in whose eyes this reticence on the part of heretics is no evil,
should consider in the first place, that in consequence of it there is
never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions; and that
such of them as could not stand such a discussion, though they may be
prevented from spreading, do not disappear. But it is not the minds of
heretics that are deteriorated most, by the ban placed on all inquiry
which does not end in the orthodox conclusions. The greatest harm done
is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is
cramped, and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy. Who can compute
what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined
with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous,
independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something
which would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral? Among
them we may occasionally see some man of deep conscientiousness, and
subtle and refined understanding, who spends a life in sophisticating
with an intellect which he cannot silence, and exhausts the resources of
ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the promptings of his conscience
and reason with orthodoxy, which yet he does not, perhaps, to the end
succeed in doing. No one can be a great thinker who does not recognise,
that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to
whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of
one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the
true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer
themselves to think. Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to form great
thinkers, that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is
as much, and even more indispensable, to enable average human beings to
attain the mental stature which they are capable of. There have been,
and may again be, great individual thinkers, in a general atmosphere of
mental slavery. But there never has been, nor ever will be, in that
atmosphere, an intellectually active people. Where any people has made a
temporary approach to such a character, it has been because the dread
of heterodox speculation was for a time suspended. Where there is a
tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed; where the
discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is
considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high
scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so
remarkable. Never when controversy avoided the subjects which are large
and important enough to kindle enthusiasm, was the mind of a people
stirred up from its foundations, and the impulse given which raised even
persons of the most ordinary intellect to something of the dignity of
thinking beings. Of such we have had an example in the condition of
Europe during the times immediately following the Reformation; another,
though limited to the Continent and to a more cultivated class, in the
speculative movement of the latter half of the eighteenth century; and a
third, of still briefer duration, in the intellectual fermentation of
Germany during the Goethian and Fichtean period. These periods differed
widely in the particular opinions which they developed; but were alike
in this, that during all three the yoke of authority was broken. In
each, an old mental despotism had been thrown off, and no new one had
yet taken its place. The impulse given at these three periods has made
Europe what it now is. Every single improvement which has taken place
either in the human mind or in institutions, may be traced distinctly to
one or other of them. Appearances have for some time indicated that all
three impulses are well-nigh spent; and we can expect no fresh start,
until we again assert our mental freedom.

Let us now pass to the second division of the argument, and dismissing
the supposition that any of the received opinions may be false, let us
assume them to be true, and examine into the worth of the manner in
which they are likely to be held, when their truth is not freely and
openly canvassed. However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion
may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be
moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not
fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead
dogma, not a living truth.

There is a class of persons (happily not quite so numerous as formerly)
who think it enough if a person assents undoubtingly to what they think
true, though he has no knowledge whatever of the grounds of the opinion,
and could not make a tenable defence of it against the most superficial
objections. Such persons, if they can once get their creed taught from
authority, naturally think that no good, and some harm, comes of its
being allowed to be questioned. Where their influence prevails, they
make it nearly impossible for the received opinion to be rejected wisely
and considerately, though it may still be rejected rashly and
ignorantly; for to shut out discussion entirely is seldom possible, and
when it once gets in, beliefs not grounded on conviction are apt to give
way before the slightest semblance of an argument. Waiving, however,
this possibility--assuming that the true opinion abides in the mind, but
abides as a prejudice, a belief independent of, and proof against,
argument--this is not the way in which truth ought to be held by a
rational being. This is not knowing the truth. Truth, thus held, is but
one superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the words which
enunciate a truth.

If the intellect and judgment of mankind ought to be cultivated, a thing
which Protestants at least do not deny, on what can these faculties be
more appropriately exercised by any one, than on the things which
concern him so much that it is considered necessary for him to hold
opinions on them? If the cultivation of the understanding consists in
one thing more than in another, it is surely in learning the grounds of
one's own opinions. Whatever people believe, on subjects on which it is
of the first importance to believe rightly, they ought to be able to
defend against at least the common objections. But, some one may say,
"Let them be _taught_ the grounds of their opinions. It does not follow
that opinions must be merely parroted because they are never heard
controverted. Persons who learn geometry do not simply commit the
theorems to memory, but understand and learn likewise the
demonstrations; and it would be absurd to say that they remain ignorant
of the grounds of geometrical truths, because they never hear any one
deny, and attempt to disprove them." Undoubtedly: and such teaching
suffices on a subject like mathematics, where there is nothing at all to
be said on the wrong side of the question. The peculiarity of the
evidence of mathematical truths is, that all the argument is on one
side. There are no objections, and no answers to objections. But on
every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth
depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting
reasons. Even in natural philosophy, there is always some other
explanation possible of the same facts; some geocentric theory instead
of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen; and it has to be
shown why that other theory cannot be the true one: and until this is
shown, and until we know how it is shown, we do not understand the
grounds of our opinion. But when we turn to subjects infinitely more
complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the
business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed
opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favour some opinion
different from it. The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left
it on record that he always studied his adversary's case with as great,
if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero
practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by
all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth. He who knows
only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be
good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally
unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so
much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either
opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment,
and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by
authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to
which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear
the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they
state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is
not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real
contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who
actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very
utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and
persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which
the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he
will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets
and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called
educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently
for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false
for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the
mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered
what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any
proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves
profess. They do not know those parts of it which explain and justify
the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly
conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two
apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred.
All that part of the truth which turns the scale, and decides the
judgment of a completely informed mind, they are strangers to; nor is it
ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and
impartially to both sides, and endeavoured to see the reasons of both in
the strongest light. So essential is this discipline to a real
understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all
important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and
supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil's
advocate can conjure up.

To abate the force of these considerations, an enemy of free discussion
may be supposed to say, that there is no necessity for mankind in
general to know and understand all that can be said against or for their
opinions by philosophers and theologians. That it is not needful for
common men to be able to expose all the misstatements or fallacies of an
ingenious opponent. That it is enough if there is always somebody
capable of answering them, so that nothing likely to mislead
uninstructed persons remains unrefuted. That simple minds, having been
taught the obvious grounds of the truths inculcated on them, may trust
to authority for the rest, and being aware that they have neither
knowledge nor talent to resolve every difficulty which can be raised,
may repose in the assurance that all those which have been raised have
been or can be answered, by those who are specially trained to the task.

Conceding to this view of the subject the utmost that can be claimed for
it by those most easily satisfied with the amount of understanding of
truth which ought to accompany the belief of it; even so, the argument
for free discussion is no way weakened. For even this doctrine
acknowledges that mankind ought to have a rational assurance that all
objections have been satisfactorily answered; and how are they to be
answered if that which requires to be answered is not spoken? or how can
the answer be known to be satisfactory, if the objectors have no
opportunity of showing that it is unsatisfactory? If not the public, at
least the philosophers and theologians who are to resolve the
difficulties, must make themselves familiar with those difficulties in
their most puzzling form; and this cannot be accomplished unless they
are freely stated, and placed in the most advantageous light which they
admit of. The Catholic Church has its own way of dealing with this
embarrassing problem. It makes a broad separation between those who can
be permitted to receive its doctrines on conviction, and those who must
accept them on trust. Neither, indeed, are allowed any choice as to what
they will accept; but the clergy, such at least as can be fully confided
in, may admissibly and meritoriously make themselves acquainted with the
arguments of opponents, in order to answer them, and may, therefore,
read heretical books; the laity, not unless by special permission, hard
to be obtained. This discipline recognises a knowledge of the enemy's
case as beneficial to the teachers, but finds means, consistent with
this, of denying it to the rest of the world: thus giving to the _élite_
more mental culture, though not more mental freedom, than it allows to
the mass. By this device it succeeds in obtaining the kind of mental
superiority which its purposes require; for though culture without
freedom never made a large and liberal mind, it can make a clever _nisi
prius_ advocate of a cause. But in countries professing Protestantism,
this resource is denied; since Protestants hold, at least in theory,
that the responsibility for the choice of a religion must be borne by
each for himself, and cannot be thrown off upon teachers. Besides, in
the present state of the world, it is practically impossible that
writings which are read by the instructed can be kept from the
uninstructed. If the teachers of mankind are to be cognisant of all that
they ought to know, everything must be free to be written and published
without restraint.

If, however, the mischievous operation of the absence of free
discussion, when the received opinions are true, were confined to
leaving men ignorant of the grounds of those opinions, it might be
thought that this, if an intellectual, is no moral evil, and does not
affect the worth of the opinions, regarded in their influence on the
character. The fact, however, is, that not only the grounds of the
opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the
meaning of the opinion itself. The words which convey it, cease to
suggest ideas, or suggest only a small portion of those they were
originally employed to communicate. Instead of a vivid conception and a
living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote; or, if
any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer
essence being lost. The great chapter in human history which this fact
occupies and fills, cannot be too earnestly studied and meditated on.

It is illustrated in the experience of almost all ethical doctrines and
religious creeds. They are all full of meaning and vitality to those who
originate them, and to the direct disciples of the originators. Their
meaning continues to be felt in undiminished strength, and is perhaps
brought out into even fuller consciousness, so long as the struggle
lasts to give the doctrine or creed an ascendency over other creeds. At
last it either prevails, and becomes the general opinion, or its
progress stops; it keeps possession of the ground it has gained, but
ceases to spread further. When either of these results has become
apparent, controversy on the subject flags, and gradually dies away. The
doctrine has taken its place, if not as a received opinion, as one of
the admitted sects or divisions of opinion: those who hold it have
generally inherited, not adopted it; and conversion from one of these
doctrines to another, being now an exceptional fact, occupies little
place in the thoughts of their professors. Instead of being, as at
first, constantly on the alert either to defend themselves against the
world, or to bring the world over to them, they have subsided into
acquiescence, and neither listen, when they can help it, to arguments
against their creed, nor trouble dissentients (if there be such) with
arguments in its favour. From this time may usually be dated the decline
in the living power of the doctrine. We often hear the teachers of all
creeds lamenting the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of believers
a lively apprehension of the truth which they nominally recognise, so
that it may penetrate the feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the
conduct. No such difficulty is complained of while the creed is still
fighting for its existence: even the weaker combatants then know and
feel what they are fighting for, and the difference between it and other
doctrines; and in that period of every creed's existence, not a few
persons may be found, who have realised its fundamental principles in
all the forms of thought, have weighed and considered them in all their
important bearings, and have experienced the full effect on the
character, which belief in that creed ought to produce in a mind
thoroughly imbued with it. But when it has come to be a hereditary
creed, and to be received passively, not actively--when the mind is no
longer compelled, in the same degree as at first, to exercise its vital
powers on the questions which its belief presents to it, there is a
progressive tendency to forget all of the belief except the
formularies, or to give it a dull and torpid assent, as if accepting it
on trust dispensed with the necessity of realising it in consciousness,
or testing it by personal experience; until it almost ceases to connect
itself at all with the inner life of the human being. Then are seen the
cases, so frequent in this age of the world as almost to form the
majority, in which the creed remains as it were outside the mind,
encrusting and petrifying it against all other influences addressed to
the higher parts of our nature; manifesting its power by not suffering
any fresh and living conviction to get in, but itself doing nothing for
the mind or heart, except standing sentinel over them to keep them
vacant.

To what an extent doctrines intrinsically fitted to make the deepest
impression upon the mind may remain in it as dead beliefs, without being
ever realised in the imagination, the feelings, or the understanding, is
exemplified by the manner in which the majority of believers hold the
doctrines of Christianity. By Christianity I here mean what is accounted
such by all churches and sects--the maxims and precepts contained in the
New Testament. These are considered sacred, and accepted as laws, by all
professing Christians. Yet it is scarcely too much to say that not one
Christian in a thousand guides or tests his individual conduct by
reference to those laws. The standard to which he does refer it, is the
custom of his nation, his class, or his religious profession. He has
thus, on the one hand, a collection of ethical maxims, which he believes
to have been vouchsafed to him by infallible wisdom as rules for his
government; and on the other, a set of every-day judgments and
practices, which go a certain length with some of those maxims, not so
great a length with others, stand in direct opposition to some, and are,
on the whole, a compromise between the Christian creed and the interests
and suggestions of worldly life. To the first of these standards he
gives his homage; to the other his real allegiance. All Christians
believe that the blessed are the poor and humble, and those who are
ill-used by the world; that it is easier for a camel to pass through the
eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven; that
they should judge not, lest they be judged; that they should swear not
at all; that they should love their neighbour as themselves; that if one
take their cloak, they should give him their coat also; that they should
take no thought for the morrow; that if they would be perfect, they
should sell all that they have and give it to the poor. They are not
insincere when they say that they believe these things. They do believe
them, as people believe what they have always heard lauded and never
discussed. But in the sense of that living belief which regulates
conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to the point to which it
is usual to act upon them. The doctrines in their integrity are
serviceable to pelt adversaries with; and it is understood that they are
to be put forward (when possible) as the reasons for whatever people do
that they think laudable. But any one who reminded them that the maxims
require an infinity of things which they never even think of doing,
would gain nothing but to be classed among those very unpopular
characters who affect to be better than other people. The doctrines have
no hold on ordinary believers--are not a power in their minds. They have
a habitual respect for the sound of them, but no feeling which spreads
from the words to the things signified, and forces the mind to take
_them_ in, and make them conform to the formula. Whenever conduct is
concerned, they look round for Mr. A and B to direct them how far to go
in obeying Christ.

Now we may be well assured that the case was not thus, but far
otherwise, with the early Christians. Had it been thus, Christianity
never would have expanded from an obscure sect of the despised Hebrews
into the religion of the Roman empire. When their enemies said, "See how
these Christians love one another" (a remark not likely to be made by
anybody now), they assuredly had a much livelier feeling of the meaning
of their creed than they have ever had since. And to this cause,
probably, it is chiefly owing that Christianity now makes so little
progress in extending its domain, and after eighteen centuries, is still
nearly confined to Europeans and the descendants of Europeans. Even with
the strictly religious, who are much in earnest about their doctrines,
and attach a greater amount of meaning to many of them than people in
general, it commonly happens that the part which is thus comparatively
active in their minds is that which was made by Calvin, or Knox, or some
such person much nearer in character to themselves. The sayings of
Christ coexist passively in their minds, producing hardly any effect
beyond what is caused by mere listening to words so amiable and bland.
There are many reasons, doubtless, why doctrines which are the badge of
a sect retain more of their vitality than those common to all recognised
sects, and why more pains are taken by teachers to keep their meaning
alive; but one reason certainly is, that the peculiar doctrines are more
questioned, and have to be oftener defended against open gainsayers.
Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post, as soon as there
is no enemy in the field.

The same thing holds true, generally speaking, of all traditional
doctrines--those of prudence and knowledge of life, as well as of morals
or religion. All languages and literatures are full of general
observations on life, both as to what it is, and how to conduct oneself
in it; observations which everybody knows, which everybody repeats, or
hears with acquiescence, which are received as truisms, yet of which
most people first truly learn the meaning, when experience, generally of
a painful kind, has made it a reality to them. How often, when smarting
under some unforeseen misfortune or disappointment, does a person call
to mind some proverb or common saying, familiar to him all his life, the
meaning of which, if he had ever before felt it as he does now, would
have saved him from the calamity. There are indeed reasons for this,
other than the absence of discussion: there are many truths of which the
full meaning _cannot_ be realised, until personal experience has brought
it home. But much more of the meaning even of these would have been
understood, and what was understood would have been far more deeply
impressed on the mind, if the man had been accustomed to hear it argued
_pro_ and _con_ by people who did understand it. The fatal tendency of
mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer
doubtful, is the cause of half their errors. A contemporary author has
well spoken of "the deep slumber of a decided opinion."

But what! (it may be asked) Is the absence of unanimity an indispensable
condition of true knowledge? Is it necessary that some part of mankind
should persist in error, to enable any to realise the truth? Does a
belief cease to be real and vital as soon as it is generally
received--and is a proposition never thoroughly understood and felt
unless some doubt of it remains? As soon as mankind have unanimously
accepted a truth, does the truth perish within them? The highest aim and
best result of improved intelligence, it has hitherto been thought, is
to unite mankind more and more in the acknowledgment of all important
truths: and does the intelligence only last as long as it has not
achieved its object? Do the fruits of conquest perish by the very
completeness of the victory?

I affirm no such thing. As mankind improve, the number of doctrines
which are no longer disputed or doubted will be constantly on the
increase: and the well-being of mankind may almost be measured by the
number and gravity of the truths which have reached the point of being
uncontested. The cessation, on one question after another, of serious
controversy, is one of the necessary incidents of the consolidation of
opinion; a consolidation as salutary in the case of true opinions, as it
is dangerous and noxious when the opinions are erroneous. But though
this gradual narrowing of the bounds of diversity of opinion is
necessary in both senses of the term, being at once inevitable and
indispensable, we are not therefore obliged to conclude that all its
consequences must be beneficial. The loss of so important an aid to the
intelligent and living apprehension of a truth, as is afforded by the
necessity of explaining it to, or defending it against, opponents,
though not sufficient to outweigh, is no trifling drawback from, the
benefit of its universal recognition. Where this advantage can no longer
be had, I confess I should like to see the teachers of mankind
endeavouring to provide a substitute for it; some contrivance for making
the difficulties of the question as present to the learner's
consciousness, as if they were pressed upon him by a dissentient
champion, eager for his conversion.

But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have lost
those they formerly had. The Socratic dialectics, so magnificently
exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this
description. They were essentially a negative discussion of the great
questions of philosophy and life, directed with consummate skill to the
purpose of convincing any one who had merely adopted the commonplaces of
received opinion, that he did not understand the subject--that he as yet
attached no definite meaning to the doctrines he professed; in order
that, becoming aware of his ignorance, he might be put in the way to
attain a stable belief, resting on a clear apprehension both of the
meaning of doctrines and of their evidence. The school disputations of
the middle ages had a somewhat similar object. They were intended to
make sure that the pupil understood his own opinion, and (by necessary
correlation) the opinion opposed to it, and could enforce the grounds of
the one and confute those of the other. These last-mentioned contests
had indeed the incurable defect, that the premises appealed to were
taken from authority, not from reason; and, as a discipline to the mind,
they were in every respect inferior to the powerful dialectics which
formed the intellects of the "Socratici viri": but the modern mind owes
far more to both than it is generally willing to admit, and the present
modes of education contain nothing which in the smallest degree supplies
the place either of the one or of the other. A person who derives all
his instruction from teachers or books, even if he escape the besetting
temptation of contenting himself with cram, is under no compulsion to
hear both sides; accordingly it is far from a frequent accomplishment,
even among thinkers, to know both sides; and the weakest part of what
everybody says in defence of his opinion, is what he intends as a reply
to antagonists. It is the fashion of the present time to disparage
negative logic--that which points out weaknesses in theory or errors in
practice, without establishing positive truths. Such negative criticism
would indeed be poor enough as an ultimate result; but as a means to
attaining any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it
cannot be valued too highly; and until people are again systematically
trained to it, there will be few great thinkers, and a low general
average of intellect, in any but the mathematical and physical
departments of speculation. On any other subject no one's opinions
deserve the name of knowledge, except so far as he has either had
forced upon him by others, or gone through of himself, the same mental
process which would have been required of him in carrying on an active
controversy with opponents. That, therefore, which when absent, it is so
indispensable, but so difficult, to create, how worse than absurd is it
to forego, when spontaneously offering itself! If there are any persons
who contest a received opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will
let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them,
and rejoice that there is some one to do for us what we otherwise ought,
if we have any regard for either the certainty or the vitality of our
convictions, to do with much greater labour for ourselves.


It still remains to speak of one of the principal causes which make
diversity of opinion advantageous, and will continue to do so until
mankind shall have entered a stage of intellectual advancement which at
present seems at an incalculable distance. We have hitherto considered
only two possibilities: that the received opinion may be false, and some
other opinion, consequently, true; or that, the received opinion being
true, a conflict with the opposite error is essential to a clear
apprehension and deep feeling of its truth. But there is a commoner
case than either of these; when the conflicting doctrines, instead of
being one true and the other false, share the truth between them; and
the nonconforming opinion is needed to supply the remainder of the
truth, of which the received doctrine embodies only a part. Popular
opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom
or never the whole truth. They are a part of the truth; sometimes a
greater, sometimes a smaller part, but exaggerated, distorted, and
disjoined from the truths by which they ought to be accompanied and
limited. Heretical opinions, on the other hand, are generally some of
these suppressed and neglected truths, bursting the bonds which kept
them down, and either seeking reconciliation with the truth contained in
the common opinion, or fronting it as enemies, and setting themselves
up, with similar exclusiveness, as the whole truth. The latter case is
hitherto the most frequent, as, in the human mind, one-sidedness has
always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in
revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another
rises. Even progress, which ought to superadd, for the most part only
substitutes one partial and incomplete truth for another; improvement
consisting chiefly in this, that the new fragment of truth is more
wanted, more adapted to the needs of the time, than that which it
displaces. Such being the partial character of prevailing opinions, even
when resting on a true foundation; every opinion which embodies somewhat
of the portion of truth which the common opinion omits, ought to be
considered precious, with whatever amount of error and confusion that
truth may be blended. No sober judge of human affairs will feel bound to
be indignant because those who force on our notice truths which we
should otherwise have overlooked, overlook some of those which we see.
Rather, he will think that so long as popular truth is one-sided, it is
more desirable than otherwise that unpopular truth should have one-sided
asserters too; such being usually the most energetic, and the most
likely to compel reluctant attention to the fragment of wisdom which
they proclaim as if it were the whole.

Thus, in the eighteenth century, when nearly all the instructed, and all
those of the uninstructed who were led by them, were lost in admiration
of what is called civilisation, and of the marvels of modern science,
literature, and philosophy, and while greatly overrating the amount of
unlikeness between the men of modern and those of ancient times,
indulged the belief that the whole of the difference was in their own
favour; with what a salutary shock did the paradoxes of Rousseau explode
like bombshells in the midst, dislocating the compact mass of one-sided
opinion, and forcing its elements to recombine in a better form and with
additional ingredients. Not that the current opinions were on the whole
farther from the truth than Rousseau's were; on the contrary, they were
nearer to it; they contained more of positive truth, and very much less
of error. Nevertheless there lay in Rousseau's doctrine, and has floated
down the stream of opinion along with it, a considerable amount of
exactly those truths which the popular opinion wanted; and these are the
deposit which was left behind when the flood subsided. The superior
worth of simplicity of life, the enervating and demoralising effect of
the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial society, are ideas which have
never been entirely absent from cultivated minds since Rousseau wrote;
and they will in time produce their due effect, though at present
needing to be asserted as much as ever, and to be asserted by deeds, for
words, on this subject, have nearly exhausted their power.

In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace, that a party of order
or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary
elements of a healthy state of political life; until the one or the
other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a party equally
of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing what is fit to be
preserved from what ought to be swept away. Each of these modes of
thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other; but it
is in a great measure the opposition of the other that keeps each within
the limits of reason and sanity. Unless opinions favourable to democracy
and to aristocracy, to property and to equality, to co-operation and to
competition, to luxury and to abstinence, to sociality and
individuality, to liberty and discipline, and all the other standing
antagonisms of practical life, are expressed with equal freedom, and
enforced and defended with equal talent and energy, there is no chance
of both elements obtaining their due; one scale is sure to go up and the
other down. Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, is so much a
question of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few
have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment
with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough
process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile
banners. On any of the great open questions just enumerated, if either
of the two opinions has a better claim than the other, not merely to be
tolerated, but to be encouraged and countenanced, it is the one which
happens at the particular time and place to be in a minority. That is
the opinion which, for the time being, represents the neglected
interests, the side of human well-being which is in danger of obtaining
less than its share. I am aware that there is not, in this country, any
intolerance of differences of opinion on most of these topics. They are
adduced to show, by admitted and multiplied examples, the universality
of the fact, that only through diversity of opinion is there, in the
existing state of human intellect, a chance of fair-play to all sides of
the truth. When there are persons to be found, who form an exception to
the apparent unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the world is
in the right, it is always probable that dissentients have something
worth hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something
by their silence.

It may be objected, "But _some_ received principles, especially on the
highest and most vital subjects, are more than half-truths. The
Christian morality, for instance, is the whole truth on that subject,
and if any one teaches a morality which varies from it, he is wholly in
error." As this is of all cases the most important in practice, none can
be fitter to test the general maxim. But before pronouncing what
Christian morality is or is not, it would be desirable to decide what is
meant by Christian morality. If it means the morality of the New
Testament, I wonder that any one who derives his knowledge of this from
the book itself, can suppose that it was announced, or intended, as a
complete doctrine of morals. The Gospel always refers to a pre-existing
morality, and confines its precepts to the particulars in which that
morality was to be corrected, or superseded by a wider and higher;
expressing itself, moreover, in terms most general, often impossible to
be interpreted literally, and possessing rather the impressiveness of
poetry or eloquence than the precision of legislation. To extract from
it a body of ethical doctrine, has ever been possible without eking it
out from the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed, but
in many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people.
St. Paul, a declared enemy to this Judaical mode of interpreting the
doctrine and filling up the scheme of his Master, equally assumes a
pre-existing morality, namely, that of the Greeks and Romans; and his
advice to Christians is in a great measure a system of accommodation to
that; even to the extent of giving an apparent sanction to slavery. What
is called Christian, but should rather be termed theological, morality,
was not the work of Christ or the Apostles, but is of much later origin,
having been gradually built up by the Catholic church of the first five
centuries, and though not implicitly adopted by moderns and Protestants,
has been much less modified by them than might have been expected. For
the most part, indeed, they have contented themselves with cutting off
the additions which had been made to it in the middle ages, each sect
supplying the place by fresh additions, adapted to its own character and
tendencies. That mankind owe a great debt to this morality, and to its
early teachers, I should be the last person to deny; but I do not
scruple to say of it, that it is, in many important points, incomplete
and one-sided, and that unless ideas and feelings, not sanctioned by it,
had contributed to the formation of European life and character, human
affairs would have been in a worse condition than they now are.
Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it
is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative
rather than positive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather than
Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good:
in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt not" predominates
unduly over "thou shalt." In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol
of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of
legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the
appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling
far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to
human morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each
man's feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures,
except so far as a self-interested inducement is offered to him for
consulting them. It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it
inculcates submission to all authorities found established; who indeed
are not to be actively obeyed when they command what religion forbids,
but who are not to be resisted, far less rebelled against, for any
amount of wrong to ourselves. And while, in the morality of the best
Pagan nations, duty to the State holds even a disproportionate place,
infringing on the just liberty of the individual; in purely Christian
ethics, that grand department of duty is scarcely noticed or
acknowledged. It is in the Koran, not the New Testament, that we read
the maxim--"A ruler who appoints any man to an office, when there is in
his dominions another man better qualified for it, sins against God and
against the State." What little recognition the idea of obligation to
the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman
sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life,
whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindedness, personal dignity, even
the sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the religious
part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of
ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognised, is that of
obedience.

I am as far as any one from pretending that these defects are
necessarily inherent in the Christian ethics, in every manner in which
it can be conceived, or that the many requisites of a complete moral
doctrine which it does not contain, do not admit of being reconciled
with it. Far less would I insinuate this of the doctrines and precepts
of Christ himself. I believe that the sayings of Christ are all, that I
can see any evidence of their having been intended to be; that they are
irreconcilable with nothing which a comprehensive morality requires;
that everything which is excellent in ethics may be brought within them,
with no greater violence to their language than has been done to it by
all who have attempted to deduce from them any practical system of
conduct whatever. But it is quite consistent with this, to believe that
they contain, and were meant to contain, only a part of the truth; that
many essential elements of the highest morality are among the things
which are not provided for, nor intended to be provided for, in the
recorded deliverances of the Founder of Christianity, and which have
been entirely thrown aside in the system of ethics erected on the basis
of those deliverances by the Christian Church. And this being so, I
think it a great error to persist in attempting to find in the Christian
doctrine that complete rule for our guidance, which its author intended
it to sanction and enforce, but only partially to provide. I believe,
too, that this narrow theory is becoming a grave practical evil,
detracting greatly from the value of the moral training and instruction,
which so many well-meaning persons are now at length exerting themselves
to promote. I much fear that by attempting to form the mind and feelings
on an exclusively religious type, and discarding those secular
standards (as for want of a better name they may be called) which
heretofore co-existed with and supplemented the Christian ethics,
receiving some of its spirit, and infusing into it some of theirs, there
will result, and is even now resulting, a low, abject, servile type of
character, which, submit itself as it may to what it deems the Supreme
Will, is incapable of rising to or sympathising in the conception of
Supreme Goodness. I believe that other ethics than any which can be
evolved from exclusively Christian sources, must exist side by side with
Christian ethics to produce the moral regeneration of mankind; and that
the Christian system is no exception to the rule, that in an imperfect
state of the human mind, the interests of truth require a diversity of
opinions. It is not necessary that in ceasing to ignore the moral truths
not contained in Christianity, men should ignore any of those which it
does contain. Such prejudice, or oversight, when it occurs, is
altogether an evil; but it is one from which we cannot hope to be always
exempt, and must be regarded as the price paid for an inestimable good.
The exclusive pretension made by a part of the truth to be the whole,
must and ought to be protested against, and if a reactionary impulse
should make the protestors unjust in their turn, this one-sidedness,
like the other, may be lamented, but must be tolerated. If Christians
would teach infidels to be just to Christianity, they should themselves
be just to infidelity. It can do truth no service to blink the fact,
known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary
history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral
teaching has been the work, not only of men who did not know, but of men
who knew and rejected, the Christian faith.

I do not pretend that the most unlimited use of the freedom of
enunciating all possible opinions would put an end to the evils of
religious or philosophical sectarianism. Every truth which men of narrow
capacity are in earnest about, is sure to be asserted, inculcated, and
in many ways even acted on, as if no other truth existed in the world,
or at all events none that could limit or qualify the first. I
acknowledge that the tendency of all opinions to become sectarian is not
cured by the freest discussion, but is often heightened and exacerbated
thereby; the truth which ought to have been, but was not, seen, being
rejected all the more violently because proclaimed by persons regarded
as opponents. But it is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the
calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this collision of
opinions works its salutary effect. Not the violent conflict between
parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the
formidable evil: there is always hope when people are forced to listen
to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden
into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by
being exaggerated into falsehood. And since there are few mental
attributes more rare than that judicial faculty which can sit in
intelligent judgment between two sides of a question, of which only one
is represented by an advocate before it, truth has no chance but in
proportion as every side of it, every opinion which embodies any
fraction of the truth, not only finds advocates, but is so advocated as
to be listened to.


We have now recognised the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind
(on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and
freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we
will now briefly recapitulate.

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for
aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own
infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very
commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or
prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it
is only by the collision of adverse opinions, that the remainder of the
truth has any chance of being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole
truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and
earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held
in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of
its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of
the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and
deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma
becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering
the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt
conviction, from reason or personal experience.

Before quitting the subject of freedom of opinion, it is fit to take
some notice of those who say, that the free expression of all opinions
should be permitted, on condition that the manner be temperate, and do
not pass the bounds of fair discussion. Much might be said on the
impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds are to be placed;
for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think
experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is
telling and powerful, and that every opponent who pushes them hard, and
whom they find it difficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows any
strong feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent. But this, though
an important consideration in a practical point of view, merges in a
more fundamental objection. Undoubtedly the manner of asserting an
opinion, even though it be a true one, may be very objectionable, and
may justly incur severe censure. But the principal offences of the kind
are such as it is mostly impossible, unless by accidental self-betrayal,
to bring home to conviction. The gravest of them is, to argue
sophistically, to suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the elements
of the case, or misrepresent the opposite opinion. But all this, even to
the most aggravated degree, is so continually done in perfect good
faith, by persons who are not considered, and in many other respects may
not deserve to be considered, ignorant or incompetent, that it is rarely
possible on adequate grounds conscientiously to stamp the
misrepresentation as morally culpable; and still less could law presume
to interfere with this kind of controversial misconduct. With regard to
what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion, namely invective,
sarcasm, personality, and the like, the denunciation of these weapons
would deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to interdict them
equally to both sides; but it is only desired to restrain the employment
of them against the prevailing opinion: against the unprevailing they
may not only be used without general disapproval, but will be likely to
obtain for him who uses them the praise of honest zeal and righteous
indignation. Yet whatever mischief arises from their use, is greatest
when they are employed against the comparatively defenceless; and
whatever unfair advantage can be derived by any opinion from this mode
of asserting it, accrues almost exclusively to received opinions. The
worst offence of this kind which can be committed by a polemic, is to
stigmatise those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men.
To calumny of this sort, those who hold any unpopular opinion are
peculiarly exposed, because they are in general few and uninfluential,
and nobody but themselves feel much interest in seeing justice done
them; but this weapon is, from the nature of the case, denied to those
who attack a prevailing opinion: they can neither use it with safety to
themselves, nor, if they could, would it do anything but recoil on their
own cause. In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can
only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most
cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from which they hardly ever
deviate even in a slight degree without losing ground: while unmeasured
vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does
deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to
those who profess them. For the interest, therefore, of truth and
justice, it is far more important to restrain this employment of
vituperative language than the other; and, for example, if it were
necessary to choose, there would be much more need to discourage
offensive attacks on infidelity, than on religion. It is, however,
obvious that law and authority have no business with restraining either,
while opinion ought, in every instance, to determine its verdict by the
circumstances of the individual case; condemning every one, on whichever
side of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either
want of candour, or malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling
manifest themselves; but not inferring these vices from the side which
a person takes, though it be the contrary side of the question to our
own: and giving merited honour to every one, whatever opinion he may
hold, who has calmness to see and honesty to state what his opponents
and their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit,
keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their
favour. This is the real morality of public discussion; and if often
violated, I am happy to think that there are many controversialists who
to a great extent observe it, and a still greater number who
conscientiously strive towards it.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] These words had scarcely been written, when, as if to give them an
emphatic contradiction, occurred the Government Press Prosecutions of
1858. That ill-judged interference with the liberty of public discussion
has not, however, induced me to alter a single word in the text, nor has
it at all weakened my conviction that, moments of panic excepted, the
era of pains and penalties for political discussion has, in our own
country, passed away. For, in the first place, the prosecutions were not
persisted in; and, in the second, they were never, properly speaking,
political prosecutions. The offence charged was not that of criticising
institutions, or the acts or persons of rulers, but of circulating what
was deemed an immoral doctrine, the lawfulness of Tyrannicide.

If the arguments of the present chapter are of any validity, there ought
to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter
of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be
considered. It would, therefore, be irrelevant and out of place to
examine here, whether the doctrine of Tyrannicide deserves that title. I
shall content myself with saying, that the subject has been at all times
one of the open questions of morals; that the act of a private citizen
in striking down a criminal, who, by raising himself above the law, has
placed himself beyond the reach of legal punishment or control, has been
accounted by whole nations, and by some of the best and wisest of men,
not a crime, but an act of exalted virtue; and that, right or wrong, it
is not of the nature of assassination, but of civil war. As such, I hold
that the instigation to it, in a specific case, may be a proper subject
of punishment, but only if an overt act has followed, and at least a
probable connection can be established between the act and the
instigation. Even then, it is not a foreign government, but the very
government assailed, which alone, in the exercise of self-defence, can
legitimately punish attacks directed against its own existence.

[7] Thomas Pooley, Bodmin Assizes, July 31, 1857. In December following,
he received a free pardon from the Crown.

[8] George Jacob Holyoake, August 17, 1857; Edward Truelove, July, 1857.

[9] Baron de Gleichen, Marlborough-Street Police Court, August 4, 1857.

[10] Ample warning may be drawn from the large infusion of the passions
of a persecutor, which mingled with the general display of the worst
parts of our national character on the occasion of the Sepoy
insurrection. The ravings of fanatics or charlatans from the pulpit may
be unworthy of notice; but the heads of the Evangelical party have
announced as their principle, for the government of Hindoos and
Mahomedans, that no schools be supported by public money in which the
Bible is not taught, and by necessary consequence that no public
employment be given to any but real or pretended Christians. An
Under-Secretary of State, in a speech delivered to his constituents on
the 12th of November, 1857, is reported to have said: "Toleration of
their faith" (the faith of a hundred millions of British subjects), "the
superstition which they called religion, by the British Government, had
had the effect of retarding the ascendency of the British name, and
preventing the salutary growth of Christianity.... Toleration was the
great corner-stone of the religious liberties of this country; but do
not let them abuse that precious word toleration. As he understood it,
it meant the complete liberty to all, freedom of worship, _among
Christians, who worshipped upon the same foundation_. It meant
toleration of all sects and denominations of _Christians who believed in
the one mediation_." I desire to call attention to the fact, that a man
who has been deemed fit to fill a high office in the government of this
country, under a liberal Ministry, maintains the doctrine that all who
do not believe in the divinity of Christ are beyond the pale of
toleration. Who, after this imbecile display, can indulge the illusion
that religious persecution has passed away, never to return?




CHAPTER III.

OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING.


Such being the reasons which make it imperative that human beings should
be free to form opinions, and to express their opinions without reserve;
and such the baneful consequences to the intellectual, and through that
to the moral nature of man, unless this liberty is either conceded, or
asserted in spite of prohibition; let us next examine whether the same
reasons do not require that men should be free to act upon their
opinions--to carry these out in their lives, without hindrance, either
physical or moral, from their fellow-men, so long as it is at their own
risk and peril. This last proviso is of course indispensable. No one
pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. On the contrary,
even opinions lose their immunity, when the circumstances in which they
are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive
instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn-dealers are
starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be
unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly
incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled
before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same
mob in the form of a placard. Acts, of whatever kind, which, without
justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more important
cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavourable
sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind.
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make
himself a nuisance to other people. But if he refrains from molesting
others in what concerns them, and merely acts according to his own
inclination and judgment in things which concern himself, the same
reasons which show that opinion should be free, prove also that he
should be allowed, without molestation, to carry his opinions into
practice at his own cost. That mankind are not infallible; that their
truths, for the most part, are only half-truths; that unity of opinion,
unless resulting from the fullest and freest comparison of opposite
opinions, is not desirable, and diversity not an evil, but a good,
until mankind are much more capable than at present of recognising all
sides of the truth, are principles applicable to men's modes of action,
not less than to their opinions. As it is useful that while mankind are
imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should
be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to
varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of
different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one
thinks fit to try them. It is desirable, in short, that in things which
do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself.
Where, not the person's own character, but the traditions or customs of
other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the
principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient
of individual and social progress.

In maintaining this principle, the greatest difficulty to be encountered
does not lie in the appreciation of means towards an acknowledged end,
but in the indifference of persons in general to the end itself. If it
were felt that the free development of individuality is one of the
leading essentials of well-being; that it is not only a co-ordinate
element with all that is designated by the terms civilisation,
instruction, education, culture, but is itself a necessary part and
condition of all those things; there would be no danger that liberty
should be under-valued, and the adjustment of the boundaries between it
and social control would present no extraordinary difficulty. But the
evil is, that individual spontaneity is hardly recognised by the common
modes of thinking, as having any intrinsic worth, or deserving any
regard on its own account. The majority, being satisfied with the ways
of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what they are),
cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for
everybody; and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of
the majority of moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with
jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the
general acceptance of what these reformers, in their own judgment, think
would be best for mankind. Few persons, out of Germany, even comprehend
the meaning of the doctrine which Wilhelm von Humboldt, so eminent both
as a _savant_ and as a politician, made the text of a treatise--that
"the end of man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal or immutable
dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires,
is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a
complete and consistent whole;" that, therefore, the object "towards
which every human being must ceaselessly direct his efforts, and on
which especially those who design to influence their fellow-men must
ever keep their eyes, is the individuality of power and development;"
that for this there are two requisites, "freedom, and a variety of
situations;" and that from the union of these arise "individual vigour
and manifold diversity," which combine themselves in "originality."[11]

Little, however, as people are accustomed to a doctrine like that of Von
Humboldt, and surprising as it may be to them to find so high a value
attached to individuality, the question, one must nevertheless think,
can only be one of degree. No one's idea of excellence in conduct is
that people should do absolutely nothing but copy one another. No one
would assert that people ought not to put into their mode of life, and
into the conduct of their concerns, any impress whatever of their own
judgment, or of their own individual character. On the other hand, it
would be absurd to pretend that people ought to live as if nothing
whatever had been known in the world before they came into it; as if
experience had as yet done nothing towards showing that one mode of
existence, or of conduct, is preferable to another. Nobody denies that
people should be so taught and trained in youth, as to know and benefit
by the ascertained results of human experience. But it is the privilege
and proper condition of a human being, arrived at the maturity of his
faculties, to use and interpret experience in his own way. It is for him
to find out what part of recorded experience is properly applicable to
his own circumstances and character. The traditions and customs of other
people are, to a certain extent, evidence of what their experience has
taught _them_; presumptive evidence, and as such, have a claim to his
deference: but, in the first place, their experience may be too narrow;
or they may not have interpreted it rightly. Secondly, their
interpretation of experience may be correct, but unsuitable to him.
Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters:
and his circumstances or his character may be uncustomary. Thirdly,
though the customs be both good as customs, and suitable to him, yet to
conform to custom, merely _as_ custom, does not educate or develop in
him any of the qualities which are the distinctive endowment of a human
being. The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative
feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only
in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes
no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what
is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved
only by being used. The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a
thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a thing
only because others believe it. If the grounds of an opinion are not
conclusive to the person's own reason, his reason cannot be
strengthened, but is likely to be weakened by his adopting it: and if
the inducements to an act are not such as are consentaneous to his own
feelings and character (where affection, or the rights of others, are
not concerned), it is so much done towards rendering his feelings and
character inert and torpid, instead of active and energetic.

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life
for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of
imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his
faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to
foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to
decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to
his deliberate decision. And these qualities he requires and exercises
exactly in proportion as the part of his conduct which he determines
according to his own judgment and feelings is a large one. It is
possible that he might be guided in some good path, and kept out of
harm's way, without any of these things. But what will be his
comparative worth as a human being? It really is of importance, not only
what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. Among the
works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and
beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself. Supposing it
were possible to get houses built, corn grown, battles fought, causes
tried, and even churches erected and prayers said, by machinery--by
automatons in human form--it would be a considerable loss to exchange
for these automatons even the men and women who at present inhabit the
more civilised parts of the world, and who assuredly are but starved
specimens of what nature can and will produce. Human nature is not a
machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work
prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop
itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces
which make it a living thing.

It will probably be conceded that it is desirable people should exercise
their understandings, and that an intelligent following of custom, or
even occasionally an intelligent deviation from custom, is better than a
blind and simply mechanical adhesion to it. To a certain extent it is
admitted, that our understanding should be our own: but there is not the
same willingness to admit that our desires and impulses should be our
own likewise; or that to possess impulses of our own, and of any
strength, is anything but a peril and a snare. Yet desires and impulses
are as much a part of a perfect human being, as beliefs and restraints:
and strong impulses are only perilous when not properly balanced; when
one set of aims and inclinations is developed into strength, while
others, which ought to co-exist with them, remain weak and inactive. It
is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because
their consciences are weak. There is no natural connection between
strong impulses and a weak conscience. The natural connection is the
other way. To say that one person's desires and feelings are stronger
and more various than those of another, is merely to say that he has
more of the raw material of human nature, and is therefore capable,
perhaps of more evil, but certainly of more good. Strong impulses are
but another name for energy. Energy may be turned to bad uses; but more
good may always be made of an energetic nature, than of an indolent and
impassive one. Those who have most natural feeling, are always those
whose cultivated feelings may be made the strongest. The same strong
susceptibilities which make the personal impulses vivid and powerful,
are also the source from whence are generated the most passionate love
of virtue, and the sternest self-control. It is through the cultivation
of these, that society both does its duty and protects its interests:
not by rejecting the stuff of which heroes are made, because it knows
not how to make them. A person whose desires and impulses are his
own--are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and
modified by his own culture--is said to have a character. One whose
desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a
steam-engine has a character. If, in addition to being his own, his
impulses are strong, and are under the government of a strong will, he
has an energetic character. Whoever thinks that individuality of
desires and impulses should not be encouraged to unfold itself, must
maintain that society has no need of strong natures--is not the better
for containing many persons who have much character--and that a high
general average of energy is not desirable.

In some early states of society, these forces might be, and were, too
much ahead of the power which society then possessed of disciplining and
controlling them. There has been a time when the element of spontaneity
and individuality was in excess, and the social principle had a hard
struggle with it. The difficulty then was, to induce men of strong
bodies or minds to pay obedience to any rules which required them to
control their impulses. To overcome this difficulty, law and discipline,
like the Popes struggling against the Emperors, asserted a power over
the whole man, claiming to control all his life in order to control his
character--which society had not found any other sufficient means of
binding. But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and
the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the
deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences. Things are vastly
changed, since the passions of those who were strong by station or by
personal endowment were in a state of habitual rebellion against laws
and ordinances, and required to be rigorously chained up to enable the
persons within their reach to enjoy any particle of security. In our
times, from the highest class of society down to the lowest, every one
lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only in
what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves, the
individual, or the family, do not ask themselves--what do I prefer? or,
what would suit my character and disposition? or, what would allow the
best and highest in me to have fair-play, and enable it to grow and
thrive? They ask themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is
usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances? or
(worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and
circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is
customary, in preference to what suits their own inclination. It does
not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary.
Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for
pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds;
they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of
taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until
by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to
follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become
incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally
without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their
own. Now is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human nature?

It is so, on the Calvinistic theory. According to that, the one great
offence of man is Self-will. All the good of which humanity is capable,
is comprised in Obedience. You have no choice; thus you must do, and no
otherwise: "whatever is not a duty, is a sin." Human nature being
radically corrupt, there is no redemption for any one until human nature
is killed within him. To one holding this theory of life, crushing out
any of the human faculties, capacities, and susceptibilities, is no
evil: man needs no capacity, but that of surrendering himself to the
will of God: and if he uses any of his faculties for any other purpose
but to do that supposed will more effectually, he is better without
them. That is the theory of Calvinism; and it is held, in a mitigated
form, by many who do not consider themselves Calvinists; the mitigation
consisting in giving a less ascetic interpretation to the alleged will
of God; asserting it to be his will that mankind should gratify some of
their inclinations; of course not in the manner they themselves prefer,
but in the way of obedience, that is, in a way prescribed to them by
authority; and, therefore, by the necessary conditions of the case, the
same for all.

In some such insidious form there is at present a strong tendency to
this narrow theory of life, and to the pinched and hidebound type of
human character which it patronises. Many persons, no doubt, sincerely
think that human beings thus cramped and dwarfed, are as their Maker
designed them to be; just as many have thought that trees are a much
finer thing when clipped into pollards, or cut out into figures of
animals, than as nature made them. But if it be any part of religion to
believe that man was made by a good being, it is more consistent with
that faith to believe, that this Being gave all human faculties that
they might be cultivated and unfolded, not rooted out and consumed, and
that he takes delight in every nearer approach made by his creatures to
the ideal conception embodied in them, every increase in any of their
capabilities of comprehension, of action, or of enjoyment. There is a
different type of human excellence from the Calvinistic; a conception of
humanity as having its nature bestowed on it for other purposes than
merely to be abnegated. "Pagan self-assertion" is one of the elements of
human worth, as well as "Christian self-denial."[12] There is a Greek
ideal of self-development, which the Platonic and Christian ideal of
self-government blends with, but does not supersede. It may be better to
be a John Knox than an Alcibiades, but it is better to be a Pericles
than either; nor would a Pericles, if we had one in these days, be
without anything good which belonged to John Knox.

It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in
themselves, but by cultivating it and calling it forth, within the
limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings
become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation; and as the works
partake the character of those who do them, by the same process human
life also becomes rich, diversified, and animating, furnishing more
abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevating feelings, and
strengthening the tie which binds every individual to the race, by
making the race infinitely better worth belonging to. In proportion to
the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable
to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others.
There is a greater fulness of life about his own existence, and when
there is more life in the units there is more in the mass which is
composed of them. As much compression as is necessary to prevent the
stronger specimens of human nature from encroaching on the rights of
others, cannot be dispensed with; but for this there is ample
compensation even in the point of view of human development. The means
of development which the individual loses by being prevented from
gratifying his inclinations to the injury of others, are chiefly
obtained at the expense of the development of other people. And even to
himself there is a full equivalent in the better development of the
social part of his nature, rendered possible by the restraint put upon
the selfish part. To be held to rigid rules of justice for the sake of
others, develops the feelings and capacities which have the good of
others for their object. But to be restrained in things not affecting
their good, by their mere displeasure, develops nothing valuable, except
such force of character as may unfold itself in resisting the restraint.
If acquiesced in, it dulls and blunts the whole nature. To give any
fair-play to the nature of each, it is essential that different persons
should be allowed to lead different lives. In proportion as this
latitude has been exercised in any age, has that age been noteworthy to
posterity. Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as
Individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is
despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes
to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

Having said that Individuality is the same thing with development, and
that it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can
produce, well-developed human beings, I might here close the argument:
for what more or better can be said of any condition of human affairs,
than that it brings human beings themselves nearer to the best thing
they can be? or what worse can be said of any obstruction to good, than
that it prevents this? Doubtless, however, these considerations will not
suffice to convince those who most need convincing; and it is necessary
further to show, that these developed human beings are of some use to
the undeveloped--to point out to those who do not desire liberty, and
would not avail themselves of it, that they may be in some intelligible
manner rewarded for allowing other people to make use of it without
hindrance.

In the first place, then, I would suggest that they might possibly
learn something from them. It will not be denied by anybody, that
originality is a valuable element in human affairs. There is always need
of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when what were
once truths are true no longer, but also to commence new practices, and
set the example of more enlightened conduct, and better taste and sense
in human life. This cannot well be gainsaid by anybody who does not
believe that the world has already attained perfection in all its ways
and practices. It is true that this benefit is not capable of being
rendered by everybody alike: there are but few persons, in comparison
with the whole of mankind, whose experiments, if adopted by others,
would be likely to be any improvement on established practice. But these
few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a
stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did
not before exist; it is they who keep the life in those which already
existed. If there were nothing new to be done, would human intellect
cease to be necessary? Would it be a reason why those who do the old
things should forget why they are done, and do them like cattle, not
like human beings? There is only too great a tendency in the best
beliefs and practices to degenerate into the mechanical; and unless
there were a succession of persons whose ever-recurring originality
prevents the grounds of those beliefs and practices from becoming merely
traditional, such dead matter would not resist the smallest shock from
anything really alive, and there would be no reason why civilisation
should not die out, as in the Byzantine Empire. Persons of genius, it is
true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order
to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow.
Genius can only breathe freely in an _atmosphere_ of freedom. Persons of
genius are, _ex vi termini_, _more_ individual than any other
people--less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without
hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which
society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming
their own character. If from timidity they consent to be forced into one
of these moulds, and to let all that part of themselves which cannot
expand under the pressure remain unexpanded, society will be little the
better for their genius. If they are of a strong character, and break
their fetters, they become a mark for the society which has not
succeeded in reducing them to commonplace, to point at with solemn
warning as "wild," "erratic," and the like; much as if one should
complain of the Niagara river for not flowing smoothly between its banks
like a Dutch canal.

I insist thus emphatically on the importance of genius, and the
necessity of allowing it to unfold itself freely both in thought and in
practice, being well aware that no one will deny the position in theory,
but knowing also that almost every one, in reality, is totally
indifferent to it. People think genius a fine thing if it enables a man
to write an exciting poem, or paint a picture. But in its true sense,
that of originality in thought and action, though no one says that it is
not a thing to be admired, nearly all, at heart, think that they can do
very well without it. Unhappily this is too natural to be wondered at.
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use
of. They cannot see what it is to do for them: how should they? If they
could see what it would do for them, it would not be originality. The
first service which originality has to render them, is that of opening
their eyes: which being once fully done, they would have a chance of
being themselves original. Meanwhile, recollecting that nothing was ever
yet done which some one was not the first to do, and that all good
things which exist are the fruits of originality, let them be modest
enough to believe that there is something still left for it to
accomplish, and assure themselves that they are more in need of
originality, the less they are conscious of the want.

In sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or even paid, to real
or supposed mental superiority, the general tendency of things
throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among
mankind. In ancient history, in the middle ages, and in a diminishing
degree through the long transition from feudality to the present time,
the individual was a power in himself; and if he had either great
talents or a high social position, he was a considerable power. At
present individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it is almost a
triviality to say that public opinion now rules the world. The only
power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while
they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of
masses. This is as true in the moral and social relations of private
life as in public transactions. Those whose opinions go by the name of
public opinion, are not always the same sort of public: in America they
are the whole white population; in England, chiefly the middle class.
But they are always a mass, that is to say, collective mediocrity. And
what is a still greater novelty, the mass do not now take their opinions
from dignitaries in Church or State, from ostensible leaders, or from
books. Their thinking is done for them by men much like themselves,
addressing them or speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment,
through the newspapers. I am not complaining of all this. I do not
assert that anything better is compatible, as a general rule, with the
present low state of the human mind. But that does not hinder the
government of mediocrity from being mediocre government. No government
by a democracy or a numerous aristocracy, either in its political acts
or in the opinions, qualities, and tone of mind which it fosters, ever
did or could rise above mediocrity, except in so far as the sovereign
Many have let themselves be guided (which in their best times they
always have done) by the counsels and influence of a more highly gifted
and instructed One or Few. The initiation of all wise or noble things,
comes and must come from individuals; generally at first from some one
individual. The honour and glory of the average man is that he is
capable of following that initiative; that he can respond internally to
wise and noble things, and be led to them with his eyes open. I am not
countenancing the sort of "hero-worship" which applauds the strong man
of genius for forcibly seizing on the government of the world and making
it do his bidding in spite of itself. All he can claim is, freedom to
point out the way. The power of compelling others into it, is not only
inconsistent with the freedom and development of all the rest, but
corrupting to the strong man himself. It does seem, however, that when
the opinions of masses of merely average men are everywhere become or
becoming the dominant power, the counterpoise and corrective to that
tendency would be, the more and more pronounced individuality of those
who stand on the higher eminences of thought. It is in these
circumstances most especially, that exceptional individuals, instead of
being deterred, should be encouraged in acting differently from the
mass. In other times there was no advantage in their doing so, unless
they acted not only differently, but better. In this age the mere
example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom,
is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as
to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break
through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has
always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and
the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional
to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it
contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger
of the time.

I have said that it is important to give the freest scope possible to
uncustomary things, in order that it may in time appear which of these
are fit to be converted into customs. But independence of action, and
disregard of custom are not solely deserving of encouragement for the
chance they afford that better modes of action, and customs more worthy
of general adoption, may be struck out; nor is it only persons of
decided mental superiority who have a just claim to carry on their lives
in their own way. There is no reason that all human existences should be
constructed on some one, or some small number of patterns. If a person
possesses any tolerable amount of common-sense and experience, his own
mode of laying out his existence is the best, not because it is the best
in itself, but because it is his own mode. Human beings are not like
sheep; and even sheep are not undistinguishably alike. A man cannot get
a coat or a pair of boots to fit him, unless they are either made to his
measure, or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from: and is it easier
to fit him with a life than with a coat, or are human beings more like
one another in their whole physical and spiritual conformation than in
the shape of their feet? If it were only that people have diversities of
taste, that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after
one model. But different persons also require different conditions for
their spiritual development; and can no more exist healthily in the same
moral, than all the variety of plants can in the same physical,
atmosphere and climate. The same things which are helps to one person
towards the cultivation of his higher nature, are hindrances to another.
The same mode of life is a healthy excitement to one, keeping all his
faculties of action and enjoyment in their best order, while to another
it is a distracting burthen, which suspends or crushes all internal
life. Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of
pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of
different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a
corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain
their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and
aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable. Why then should
tolerance, as far as the public sentiment is concerned, extend only to
tastes and modes of life which extort acquiescence by the multitude of
their adherents? Nowhere (except in some monastic institutions) is
diversity of taste entirely unrecognised; a person may, without blame,
either like or dislike rowing, or smoking, or music, or athletic
exercises, or chess, or cards, or study, because both those who like
each of these things, and those who dislike them, are too numerous to be
put down. But the man, and still more the woman, who can be accused
either of doing "what nobody does," or of not doing "what everybody
does," is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had
committed some grave moral delinquency. Persons require to possess a
title, or some other badge of rank, or of the consideration of people of
rank, to be able to indulge somewhat in the luxury of doing as they like
without detriment to their estimation. To indulge somewhat, I repeat:
for whoever allow themselves much of that indulgence, incur the risk of
something worse than disparaging speeches--they are in peril of a
commission _de lunatico_, and of having their property taken from them
and given to their relations.[13]

There is one characteristic of the present direction of public opinion,
peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of any marked demonstration
of individuality. The general average of mankind are not only moderate
in intellect, but also moderate in inclinations: they have no tastes or
wishes strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual, and they
consequently do not understand those who have, and class all such with
the wild and intemperate whom they are accustomed to look down upon.
Now, in addition to this fact which is general, we have only to suppose
that a strong movement has set in towards the improvement of morals,
and it is evident what we have to expect. In these days such a movement
has set in; much has actually been effected in the way of increased
regularity of conduct, and discouragement of excesses; and there is a
philanthropic spirit abroad, for the exercise of which there is no more
inviting field than the moral and prudential improvement of our
fellow-creatures. These tendencies of the times cause the public to be
more disposed than at most former periods to prescribe general rules of
conduct, and endeavour to make every one conform to the approved
standard. And that standard, express or tacit, is to desire nothing
strongly. Its ideal of character is to be without any marked character;
to maim by compression, like a Chinese lady's foot, every part of human
nature which stands out prominently, and tends to make the person
markedly dissimilar in outline to commonplace humanity.

As is usually the case with ideals which exclude one-half of what is
desirable, the present standard of approbation produces only an inferior
imitation of the other half. Instead of great energies guided by
vigorous reason, and strong feelings strongly controlled by a
conscientious will, its result is weak feelings and weak energies, which
therefore can be kept in outward conformity to rule without any strength
either of will or of reason. Already energetic characters on any large
scale are becoming merely traditional. There is now scarcely any outlet
for energy in this country except business. The energy expended in that
may still be regarded as considerable. What little is left from that
employment, is expended on some hobby; which may be a useful, even a
philanthropic hobby, but is always some one thing, and generally a thing
of small dimensions. The greatness of England is now all collective:
individually small, we only appear capable of anything great by our
habit of combining; and with this our moral and religious
philanthropists are perfectly contented. But it was men of another
stamp than this that made England what it has been; and men of another
stamp will be needed to prevent its decline.

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human
advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at
something better than customary, which is called, according to
circumstances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress or
improvement. The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of
liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people;
and the spirit of liberty, in so far as it resists such attempts, may
ally itself locally and temporarily with the opponents of improvement;
but the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty,
since by it there are as many possible independent centres of
improvement as there are individuals. The progressive principle,
however, in either shape, whether as the love of liberty or of
improvement, is antagonistic to the sway of Custom, involving at least
emancipation from that yoke; and the contest between the two constitutes
the chief interest of the history of mankind. The greater part of the
world has, properly speaking, no history, because the despotism of
Custom is complete. This is the case over the whole East. Custom is
there, in all things, the final appeal; justice and right mean
conformity to custom; the argument of custom no one, unless some tyrant
intoxicated with power, thinks of resisting. And we see the result.
Those nations must once have had originality; they did not start out of
the ground populous, lettered, and versed in many of the arts of life;
they made themselves all this, and were then the greatest and most
powerful nations in the world. What are they now? The subjects or
dependants of tribes whose forefathers wandered in the forests when
theirs had magnificent palaces and gorgeous temples, but over whom
custom exercised only a divided rule with liberty and progress. A
people, it appears, may be progressive for a certain length of time, and
then stop: when does it stop? When it ceases to possess individuality.
If a similar change should befall the nations of Europe, it will not be
in exactly the same shape: the despotism of custom with which these
nations are threatened is not precisely stationariness. It proscribes
singularity, but it does not preclude change, provided all change
together. We have discarded the fixed costumes of our forefathers; every
one must still dress like other people, but the fashion may change once
or twice a year. We thus take care that when there is change, it shall
be for change's sake, and not from any idea of beauty or convenience;
for the same idea of beauty or convenience would not strike all the
world at the same moment, and be simultaneously thrown aside by all at
another moment. But we are progressive as well as changeable: we
continually make new inventions in mechanical things, and keep them
until they are again superseded by better; we are eager for improvement
in politics, in education, even in morals, though in this last our idea
of improvement chiefly consists in persuading or forcing other people to
be as good as ourselves. It is not progress that we object to; on the
contrary, we flatter ourselves that we are the most progressive people
who ever lived. It is individuality that we war against: we should think
we had done wonders if we had made ourselves all alike; forgetting that
the unlikeness of one person to another is generally the first thing
which draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own type,
and the superiority of another, or the possibility, by combining the
advantages of both, of producing something better than either. We have a
warning example in China--a nation of much talent, and, in some
respects, even wisdom, owing to the rare good fortune of having been
provided at an early period with a particularly good set of customs, the
work, in some measure, of men to whom even the most enlightened European
must accord, under certain limitations, the title of sages and
philosophers. They are remarkable, too, in the excellence of their
apparatus for impressing, as far as possible, the best wisdom they
possess upon every mind in the community, and securing that those who
have appropriated most of it shall occupy the posts of honour and power.
Surely the people who did this have discovered the secret of human
progressiveness, and must have kept themselves steadily at the head of
the movement of the world. On the contrary, they have become
stationary--have remained so for thousands of years; and if they are
ever to be farther improved, it must be by foreigners. They have
succeeded beyond all hope in what English philanthropists are so
industriously working at--in making a people all alike, all governing
their thoughts and conduct by the same maxims and rules; and these are
the fruits. The modern _régime_ of public opinion is, in an unorganised
form, what the Chinese educational and political systems are in an
organised; and unless individuality shall be able successfully to assert
itself against this yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antecedents
and its professed Christianity, will tend to become another China.

What is it that has hitherto preserved Europe from this lot? What has
made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a
stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them,
which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not as the cause; but their
remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes,
nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a
great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable; and although
at every period those who travelled in different paths have been
intolerant of one another, and each would have thought it an excellent
thing if all the rest could have been compelled to travel his road,
their attempts to thwart each other's development have rarely had any
permanent success, and each has in time endured to receive the good
which the others have offered. Europe is, in my judgment, wholly
indebted to this plurality of paths for its progressive and many-sided
development. But it already begins to possess this benefit in a
considerably less degree. It is decidedly advancing towards the Chinese
ideal of making all people alike. M. de Tocqueville, in his last
important work, remarks how much more the Frenchmen of the present day
resemble one another, than did those even of the last generation. The
same remark might be made of Englishmen in a far greater degree. In a
passage already quoted from Wilhelm von Humboldt, he points out two
things as necessary conditions of human development, because necessary
to render people unlike one another; namely, freedom, and variety of
situations. The second of these two conditions is in this country every
day diminishing. The circumstances which surround different classes and
individuals, and shape their characters, are daily becoming more
assimilated. Formerly, different ranks, different neighbourhoods,
different trades and professions, lived in what might be called
different worlds; at present, to a great degree in the same.
Comparatively speaking, they now read the same things, listen to the
same things, see the same things, go to the same places, have their
hopes and fears directed to the same objects, have the same rights and
liberties, and the same means of asserting them. Great as are the
differences of position which remain, they are nothing to those which
have ceased. And the assimilation is still proceeding. All the political
changes of the age promote it, since they all tend to raise the low and
to lower the high. Every extension of education promotes it, because
education brings people under common influences, and gives them access
to the general stock of facts and sentiments. Improvements in the means
of communication promote it, by bringing the inhabitants of distant
places into personal contact, and keeping up a rapid flow of changes of
residence between one place and another. The increase of commerce and
manufactures promotes it, by diffusing more widely the advantages of
easy circumstances, and opening all objects of ambition, even the
highest, to general competition, whereby the desire of rising becomes no
longer the character of a particular class, but of all classes. A more
powerful agency than even all these, in bringing about a general
similarity among mankind, is the complete establishment, in this and
other free countries, of the ascendency of public opinion in the State.
As the various social eminences which enabled persons entrenched on them
to disregard the opinion of the multitude, gradually become levelled; as
the very idea of resisting the will of the public, when it is positively
known that they have a will, disappears more and more from the minds of
practical politicians; there ceases to be any social support for
non-conformity--any substantive power in society, which, itself opposed
to the ascendency of numbers, is interested in taking under its
protection opinions and tendencies at variance with those of the public.

The combination of all these causes forms so great a mass of influences
hostile to Individuality, that it is not easy to see how it can stand
its ground. It will do so with increasing difficulty, unless the
intelligent part of the public can be made to feel its value--to see
that it is good there should be differences, even though not for the
better, even though, as it may appear to them, some should be for the
worse. If the claims of Individuality are ever to be asserted, the time
is now, while much is still wanting to complete the enforced
assimilation. It is only in the earlier stages that any stand can be
successfully made against the encroachment. The demand that all other
people shall resemble ourselves, grows by what it feeds on. If
resistance waits till life is reduced _nearly_ to one uniform type, all
deviations from that type will come to be considered impious, immoral,
even monstrous and contrary to nature. Mankind speedily become unable to
conceive diversity, when they have been for some time unaccustomed to
see it.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] _The Sphere and Duties of Government_, from the German of Baron
Wilhelm von Humboldt, pp. 11-13.

[12] Sterling's _Essays_.

[13] There is something both contemptible and frightful in the sort of
evidence on which, of late years, any person can be judicially declared
unfit for the management of his affairs; and after his death, his
disposal of his property can be set aside, if there is enough of it to
pay the expenses of litigation--which are charged on the property
itself. All the minute details of his daily life are pried into, and
whatever is found which, seen through the medium of the perceiving and
describing faculties of the lowest of the low, bears an appearance
unlike absolute commonplace, is laid before the jury as evidence of
insanity, and often with success; the jurors being little, if at all,
less vulgar and ignorant than the witnesses; while the judges, with that
extraordinary want of knowledge of human nature and life which
continually astonishes us in English lawyers, often help to mislead
them. These trials speak volumes as to the state of feeling and opinion
among the vulgar with regard to human liberty. So far from setting any
value on individuality--so far from respecting the rights of each
individual to act, in things indifferent, as seems good to his own
judgment and inclinations, judges and juries cannot even conceive that a
person in a state of sanity can desire such freedom. In former days,
when it was proposed to burn atheists, charitable people used to suggest
putting them in a madhouse instead: it would be nothing surprising
nowadays were we to see this done, and the doers applauding themselves,
because, instead of persecuting for religion, they had adopted so humane
and Christian a mode of treating these unfortunates, not without a
silent satisfaction at their having thereby obtained their deserts.




CHAPTER IV.

OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL.


What, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual
over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of
human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?

Each will receive its proper share, if each has that which more
particularly concerns it. To individuality should belong the part of
life in which it is chiefly the individual that is interested; to
society, the part which chiefly interests society.

Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose
is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social
obligations from it, every one who receives the protection of society
owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders
it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of
conduct towards the rest. This conduct consists, first, in not injuring
the interests of one another; or rather certain interests which, either
by express legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be
considered as rights; and secondly, in each person's bearing his share
(to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the labours and sacrifices
incurred for defending the society or its members from injury and
molestation. These conditions society is justified in enforcing, at all
costs to those who endeavour to withhold fulfilment. Nor is this all
that society may do. The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others,
or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the
length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may
then be justly punished by opinion though not by law. As soon as any
part of a person's conduct affects prejudicially the interests of
others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the
general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it,
becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any
such question when a person's conduct affects the interests of no
persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all
the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount of
understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal
and social, to do the action and stand the consequences.

It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine, to suppose that
it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have
no business with each other's conduct in life, and that they should not
concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another,
unless their own interest is involved. Instead of any diminution, there
is need of a great increase of disinterested exertion to promote the
good of others. But disinterested benevolence can find other instruments
to persuade people to their good, than whips and scourges, either of the
literal or the metaphorical sort. I am the last person to undervalue the
self-regarding virtues; they are only second in importance, if even
second, to the social. It is equally the business of education to
cultivate both. But even education works by conviction and persuasion as
well as by compulsion, and it is by the former only that, when the
period of education is past, the self-regarding virtues should be
inculcated. Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the
better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid
the latter. They should be for ever stimulating each other to increased
exercise of their higher faculties, and increased direction of their
feelings and aims towards wise instead of foolish, elevating instead of
degrading, objects and contemplations. But neither one person, nor any
number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of
ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what
he chooses to do with it. He is the person most interested in his own
well-being: the interest which any other person, except in cases of
strong personal attachment, can have in it, is trifling, compared with
that which he himself has; the interest which society has in him
individually (except as to his conduct to others) is fractional, and
altogether indirect: while, with respect to his own feelings and
circumstances, the most ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge
immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else. The
interference of society to overrule his judgment and purposes in what
only regards himself, must be grounded on general presumptions; which
may be altogether wrong, and even if right, are as likely as not to be
misapplied to individual cases, by persons no better acquainted with the
circumstances of such cases than those are who look at them merely from
without. In this department, therefore, of human affairs, Individuality
has its proper field of action. In the conduct of human beings towards
one another, it is necessary that general rules should for the most part
be observed, in order that people may know what they have to expect; but
in each person's own concerns, his individual spontaneity is entitled to
free exercise. Considerations to aid his judgment, exhortations to
strengthen his will, may be offered to him, even obtruded on him, by
others; but he himself is the final judge. All errors which he is likely
to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of
allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.

I do not mean that the feelings with which a person is regarded by
others, ought not to be in any way affected by his self-regarding
qualities or deficiencies. This is neither possible nor desirable. If he
is eminent in any of the qualities which conduce to his own good, he is,
so far, a proper object of admiration. He is so much the nearer to the
ideal perfection of human nature. If he is grossly deficient in those
qualities, a sentiment the opposite of admiration will follow. There is
a degree of folly, and a degree of what may be called (though the
phrase is not unobjectionable) lowness or depravation of taste, which,
though it cannot justify doing harm to the person who manifests it,
renders him necessarily and properly a subject of distaste, or, in
extreme cases, even of contempt: a person could not have the opposite
qualities in due strength without entertaining these feelings. Though
doing no wrong to any one, a person may so act as to compel us to judge
him, and feel to him, as a fool, or as a being of an inferior order: and
since this judgment and feeling are a fact which he would prefer to
avoid, it is doing him a service to warn him of it beforehand, as of any
other disagreeable consequence to which he exposes himself. It would be
well, indeed, if this good office were much more freely rendered than
the common notions of politeness at present permit, and if one person
could honestly point out to another that he thinks him in fault, without
being considered unmannerly or presuming. We have a right, also, in
various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to
the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are
not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it
(though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the
society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty,
to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation
likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We
may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except
those which tend to his improvement. In these various modes a person may
suffer very severe penalties at the hands of others, for faults which
directly concern only himself; but he suffers these penalties only in so
far as they are the natural, and, as it were, the spontaneous
consequences of the faults themselves, not because they are purposely
inflicted on him for the sake of punishment. A person who shows
rashness, obstinacy, self-conceit--who cannot live within moderate
means--who cannot restrain himself from hurtful indulgences--who pursues
animal pleasures at the expense of those of feeling and intellect--must
expect to be lowered in the opinion of others, and to have a less share
of their favourable sentiments; but of this he has no right to complain,
unless he has merited their favour by special excellence in his social
relations, and has thus established a title to their good offices, which
is not affected by his demerits towards himself.

What I contend for is, that the inconveniences which are strictly
inseparable from the unfavourable judgment of others, are the only ones
to which a person should ever be subjected for that portion of his
conduct and character which concerns his own good, but which does not
affect the interests of others in their relations with him. Acts
injurious to others require a totally different treatment. Encroachment
on their rights; infliction on them of any loss or damage not justified
by his own rights; falsehood or duplicity in dealing with them; unfair
or ungenerous use of advantages over them; even selfish abstinence from
defending them against injury--these are fit objects of moral
reprobation, and, in grave cases, of moral retribution and punishment.
And not only these acts, but the dispositions which lead to them, are
properly immoral, and fit subjects of disapprobation which may rise to
abhorrence. Cruelty of disposition; malice and ill-nature; that most
anti-social and odious of all passions, envy; dissimulation and
insincerity; irascibility on insufficient cause, and resentment
disproportioned to the provocation; the love of domineering over others;
the desire to engross more than one's share of advantages (the [Greek:
pleonexia] of the Greeks); the pride which derives gratification from
the abasement of others; the egotism which thinks self and its concerns
more important than everything else, and decides all doubtful questions
in its own favour;--these are moral vices, and constitute a bad and
odious moral character: unlike the self-regarding faults previously
mentioned, which are not properly immoralities, and to whatever pitch
they may be carried, do not constitute wickedness. They may be proofs of
any amount of folly, or want of personal dignity and self-respect; but
they are only a subject of moral reprobation when they involve a breach
of duty to others, for whose sake the individual is bound to have care
for himself. What are called duties to ourselves are not socially
obligatory, unless circumstances render them at the same time duties to
others. The term duty to oneself, when it means anything more than
prudence, means self-respect or self-development; and for none of these
is any one accountable to his fellow-creatures, because for none of them
is it for the good of mankind that he be held accountable to them.

The distinction between the loss of consideration which a person may
rightly incur by defect of prudence or of personal dignity, and the
reprobation which is due to him for an offence against the rights of
others, is not a merely nominal distinction. It makes a vast difference
both in our feelings and in our conduct towards him, whether he
displeases us in things in which we think we have a right to control
him, or in things in which we know that we have not. If he displeases
us, we may express our distaste, and we may stand aloof from a person as
well as from a thing that displeases us; but we shall not therefore feel
called on to make his life uncomfortable. We shall reflect that he
already bears, or will bear, the whole penalty of his error; if he
spoils his life by mismanagement, we shall not, for that reason, desire
to spoil it still further: instead of wishing to punish him, we shall
rather endeavour to alleviate his punishment, by showing him how he may
avoid or cure the evils his conduct tends to bring upon him. He may be
to us an object of pity, perhaps of dislike, but not of anger or
resentment; we shall not treat him like an enemy of society: the worst
we shall think ourselves justified in doing is leaving him to himself,
if we do not interfere benevolently by showing interest or concern for
him. It is far otherwise if he has infringed the rules necessary for the
protection of his fellow-creatures, individually or collectively. The
evil consequences of his acts do not then fall on himself, but on
others; and society, as the protector of all its members, must retaliate
on him; must inflict pain on him for the express purpose of punishment,
and must take care that it be sufficiently severe. In the one case, he
is an offender at our bar, and we are called on not only to sit in
judgment on him, but, in one shape or another, to execute our own
sentence: in the other case, it is not our part to inflict any suffering
on him, except what may incidentally follow from our using the same
liberty in the regulation of our own affairs, which we allow to him in
his.

The distinction here pointed out between the part of a person's life
which concerns only himself, and that which concerns others, many
persons will refuse to admit. How (it may be asked) can any part of the
conduct of a member of society be a matter of indifference to the other
members? No person is an entirely isolated being; it is impossible for a
person to do anything seriously or permanently hurtful to himself,
without mischief reaching at least to his near connections, and often
far beyond them. If he injures his property, he does harm to those who
directly or indirectly derived support from it, and usually diminishes,
by a greater or less amount, the general resources of the community. If
he deteriorates his bodily or mental faculties, he not only brings evil
upon all who depended on him for any portion of their happiness, but
disqualifies himself for rendering the services which he owes to his
fellow-creatures generally; perhaps becomes a burthen on their affection
or benevolence; and if such conduct were very frequent, hardly any
offence that is committed would detract more from the general sum of
good. Finally, if by his vices or follies a person does no direct harm
to others, he is nevertheless (it may be said) injurious by his example;
and ought to be compelled to control himself, for the sake of those whom
the sight or knowledge of his conduct might corrupt or mislead.

And even (it will be added) if the consequences of misconduct could be
confined to the vicious or thoughtless individual, ought society to
abandon to their own guidance those who are manifestly unfit for it? If
protection against themselves is confessedly due to children and persons
under age, is not society equally bound to afford it to persons of
mature years who are equally incapable of self-government? If gambling,
or drunkenness, or incontinence, or idleness, or uncleanliness, are as
injurious to happiness, and as great a hindrance to improvement, as many
or most of the acts prohibited by law, why (it may be asked) should not
law, so far as is consistent with practicability and social convenience,
endeavour to repress these also? And as a supplement to the unavoidable
imperfections of law, ought not opinion at least to organise a powerful
police against these vices, and visit rigidly with social penalties
those who are known to practise them? There is no question here (it may
be said) about restricting individuality, or impeding the trial of new
and original experiments in living. The only things it is sought to
prevent are things which have been tried and condemned from the
beginning of the world until now; things which experience has shown not
to be useful or suitable to any person's individuality. There must be
some length of time and amount of experience, after which a moral or
prudential truth may be regarded as established: and it is merely
desired to prevent generation after generation from falling over the
same precipice which has been fatal to their predecessors.

I fully admit that the mischief which a person does to himself, may
seriously affect, both through their sympathies and their interests,
those nearly connected with him, and in a minor degree, society at
large. When, by conduct of this sort, a person is led to violate a
distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons, the
case is taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to
moral disapprobation in the proper sense of the term. If, for example,
a man, through intemperance or extravagance, becomes unable to pay his
debts, or, having undertaken the moral responsibility of a family,
becomes from the same cause incapable of supporting or educating them,
he is deservedly reprobated, and might be justly punished; but it is for
the breach of duty to his family or creditors, not for the extravagance.
If the resources which ought to have been devoted to them, had been
diverted from them for the most prudent investment, the moral
culpability would have been the same. George Barnwell murdered his uncle
to get money for his mistress, but if he had done it to set himself up
in business, he would equally have been hanged. Again, in the frequent
case of a man who causes grief to his family by addiction to bad habits,
he deserves reproach for his unkindness or ingratitude; but so he may
for cultivating habits not in themselves vicious, if they are painful to
those with whom he passes his life, or who from personal ties are
dependent on him for their comfort. Whoever fails in the consideration
generally due to the interests and feelings of others, not being
compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable
self-preference, is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure,
but not for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to
himself, which may have remotely led to it. In like manner, when a
person disables himself, by conduct purely self-regarding, from the
performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public, he is
guilty of a social offence. No person ought to be punished simply for
being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being
drunk on duty. Whenever, in short, there is a definite damage, or a
definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the public, the
case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in that of
morality or law.

But with regard to the merely contingent, or, as it may be called,
constructive injury which a person causes to society, by conduct which
neither violates any specific duty to the public, nor occasions
perceptible hurt to any assignable individual except himself; the
inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of
the greater good of human freedom. If grown persons are to be punished
for not taking proper care of themselves, I would rather it were for
their own sake, than under pretence of preventing them from impairing
their capacity of rendering to society benefits which society does not
pretend it has a right to exact. But I cannot consent to argue the
point as if society had no means of bringing its weaker members up to
its ordinary standard of rational conduct, except waiting till they do
something irrational, and then punishing them, legally or morally, for
it. Society has had absolute power over them during all the early
portion of their existence: it has had the whole period of childhood and
nonage in which to try whether it could make them capable of rational
conduct in life. The existing generation is master both of the training
and the entire circumstances of the generation to come; it cannot indeed
make them perfectly wise and good, because it is itself so lamentably
deficient in goodness and wisdom; and its best efforts are not always,
in individual cases, its most successful ones; but it is perfectly well
able to make the rising generation, as a whole, as good as, and a little
better than, itself. If society lets any considerable number of its
members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational
consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame for the
consequences. Armed not only with all the powers of education, but with
the ascendency which the authority of a received opinion always
exercises over the minds who are least fitted to judge for themselves;
and aided by the _natural_ penalties which cannot be prevented from
falling on those who incur the distaste or the contempt of those who
know them; let not society pretend that it needs, besides all this, the
power to issue commands and enforce obedience in the personal concerns
of individuals, in which, on all principles of justice and policy, the
decision ought to rest with those who are to abide the consequences. Nor
is there anything which tends more to discredit and frustrate the better
means of influencing conduct, than a resort to the worse. If there be
among those whom it is attempted to coerce into prudence or temperance,
any of the material of which vigorous and independent characters are
made, they will infallibly rebel against the yoke. No such person will
ever feel that others have a right to control him in his concerns, such
as they have to prevent him from injuring them in theirs; and it easily
comes to be considered a mark of spirit and courage to fly in the face
of such usurped authority, and do with ostentation the exact opposite of
what it enjoins; as in the fashion of grossness which succeeded, in the
time of Charles II., to the fanatical moral intolerance of the Puritans.
With respect to what is said of the necessity of protecting society
from the bad example set to others by the vicious or the
self-indulgent; it is true that bad example may have a pernicious
effect, especially the example of doing wrong to others with impunity to
the wrong-doer. But we are now speaking of conduct which, while it does
no wrong to others, is supposed to do great harm to the agent himself:
and I do not see how those who believe this, can think otherwise than
that the example, on the whole, must be more salutary than hurtful,
since, if it displays the misconduct, it displays also the painful or
degrading consequences which, if the conduct is justly censured, must be
supposed to be in all or most cases attendant on it.

But the strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the
public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the
odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. On
questions of social morality, of duty to others, the opinion of the
public, that is, of an overruling majority, though often wrong, is
likely to be still oftener right; because on such questions they are
only required to judge of their own interests; of the manner in which
some mode of conduct, if allowed to be practised, would affect
themselves. But the opinion of a similar majority, imposed as a law on
the minority, on questions of self-regarding conduct, is quite as
likely to be wrong as right; for in these cases public opinion means, at
the best, some people's opinion of what is good or bad for other people;
while very often it does not even mean that; the public, with the most
perfect indifference, passing over the pleasure or convenience of those
whose conduct they censure, and considering only their own preference.
There are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which
they have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings;
as a religious bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious
feelings of others, has been known to retort that they disregard his
feelings, by persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But there
is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and
the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it; no more than
between the desire of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the
right owner to keep it. And a person's taste is as much his own peculiar
concern as his opinion or his purse. It is easy for any one to imagine
an ideal public, which leaves the freedom and choice of individuals in
all uncertain matters undisturbed, and only requires them to abstain
from modes of conduct which universal experience has condemned. But
where has there been seen a public which set any such limit to its
censorship? or when does the public trouble itself about universal
experience? In its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom
thinking of anything but the enormity of acting or feeling differently
from itself; and this standard of judgment, thinly disguised, is held up
to mankind as the dictate of religion and philosophy, by nine-tenths of
all moralists and speculative writers. These teach that things are right
because they are right; because we feel them to be so. They tell us to
search in our own minds and hearts for laws of conduct binding on
ourselves and on all others. What can the poor public do but apply these
instructions, and make their own personal feelings of good and evil, if
they are tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory on all the world?

The evil here pointed out is not one which exists only in theory; and it
may perhaps be expected that I should specify the instances in which the
public of this age and country improperly invests its own preferences
with the character of moral laws. I am not writing an essay on the
aberrations of existing moral feeling. That is too weighty a subject to
be discussed parenthetically, and by way of illustration. Yet examples
are necessary, to show that the principle I maintain is of serious and
practical moment, and that I am not endeavouring to erect a barrier
against imaginary evils. And it is not difficult to show, by abundant
instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police,
until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the
individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.

As a first instance, consider the antipathies which men cherish on no
better grounds than that persons whose religious opinions are different
from theirs, do not practise their religious observances, especially
their religious abstinences. To cite a rather trivial example, nothing
in the creed or practice of Christians does more to envenom the hatred
of Mahomedans against them, than the fact of their eating pork. There
are few acts which Christians and Europeans regard with more unaffected
disgust, than Mussulmans regard this particular mode of satisfying
hunger. It is, in the first place, an offence against their religion;
but this circumstance by no means explains either the degree or the kind
of their repugnance; for wine also is forbidden by their religion, and
to partake of it is by all Mussulmans accounted wrong, but not
disgusting. Their aversion to the flesh of the "unclean beast" is, on
the contrary, of that peculiar character, resembling an instinctive
antipathy, which the idea of uncleanness, when once it thoroughly sinks
into the feelings, seems always to excite even in those whose personal
habits are anything but scrupulously cleanly, and of which the sentiment
of religious impurity, so intense in the Hindoos, is a remarkable
example. Suppose now that in a people, of whom the majority were
Mussulmans, that majority should insist upon not permitting pork to be
eaten within the limits of the country. This would be nothing new in
Mahomedan countries.[14] Would it be a legitimate exercise of the moral
authority of public opinion? and if not, why not? The practice is really
revolting to such a public. They also sincerely think that it is
forbidden and abhorred by the Deity. Neither could the prohibition be
censured as religious persecution. It might be religious in its origin,
but it would not be persecution for religion, since nobody's religion
makes it a duty to eat pork. The only tenable ground of condemnation
would be, that with the personal tastes and self-regarding concerns of
individuals the public has no business to interfere.

To come somewhat nearer home: the majority of Spaniards consider it a
gross impiety, offensive in the highest degree to the Supreme Being, to
worship him in any other manner than the Roman Catholic; and no other
public worship is lawful on Spanish soil. The people of all Southern
Europe look upon a married clergy as not only irreligious, but unchaste,
indecent, gross, disgusting. What do Protestants think of these
perfectly sincere feelings, and of the attempt to enforce them against
non-Catholics? Yet, if mankind are justified in interfering with each
other's liberty in things which do not concern the interests of others,
on what principle is it possible consistently to exclude these cases? or
who can blame people for desiring to suppress what they regard as a
scandal in the sight of God and man? No stronger case can be shown for
prohibiting anything which is regarded as a personal immorality, than
is made out for suppressing these practices in the eyes of those who
regard them as impieties; and unless we are willing to adopt the logic
of persecutors, and to say that we may persecute others because we are
right, and that they must not persecute us because they are wrong, we
must beware of admitting a principle of which we should resent as a
gross injustice the application to ourselves.

The preceding instances may be objected to, although unreasonably, as
drawn from contingencies impossible among us: opinion, in this country,
not being likely to enforce abstinence from meats, or to interfere with
people for worshipping, and for either marrying or not marrying,
according to their creed or inclination. The next example, however,
shall be taken from an interference with liberty which we have by no
means passed all danger of. Wherever the Puritans have been sufficiently
powerful, as in New England, and in Great Britain at the time of the
Commonwealth, they have endeavoured, with considerable success, to put
down all public, and nearly all private, amusements: especially music,
dancing, public games, or other assemblages for purposes of diversion,
and the theatre. There are still in this country large bodies of
persons by whose notions of morality and religion these recreations are
condemned; and those persons belonging chiefly to the middle class, who
are the ascendant power in the present social and political condition of
the kingdom, it is by no means impossible that persons of these
sentiments may at some time or other command a majority in Parliament.
How will the remaining portion of the community like to have the
amusements that shall be permitted to them regulated by the religious
and moral sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and Methodists? Would
they not, with considerable peremptoriness, desire these intrusively
pious members of society to mind their own business? This is precisely
what should be said to every government and every public, who have the
pretension that no person shall enjoy any pleasure which they think
wrong. But if the principle of the pretension be admitted, no one can
reasonably object to its being acted on in the sense of the majority, or
other preponderating power in the country; and all persons must be ready
to conform to the idea of a Christian commonwealth, as understood by the
early settlers in New England, if a religious profession similar to
theirs should ever succeed in regaining its lost ground, as religions
supposed to be declining have so often been known to do.

To imagine another contingency, perhaps more likely to be realised than
the one last mentioned. There is confessedly a strong tendency in the
modern world towards a democratic constitution of society, accompanied
or not by popular political institutions. It is affirmed that in the
country where this tendency is most completely realised--where both
society and the government are most democratic--the United States--the
feeling of the majority, to whom any appearance of a more showy or
costly style of living than they can hope to rival is disagreeable,
operates as a tolerably effectual sumptuary law, and that in many parts
of the Union it is really difficult for a person possessing a very large
income, to find any mode of spending it, which will not incur popular
disapprobation. Though such statements as these are doubtless much
exaggerated as a representation of existing facts, the state of things
they describe is not only a conceivable and possible, but a probable
result of democratic feeling, combined with the notion that the public
has a right to a veto on the manner in which individuals shall spend
their incomes. We have only further to suppose a considerable diffusion
of Socialist opinions, and it may become infamous in the eyes of the
majority to possess more property than some very small amount, or any
income not earned by manual labour. Opinions similar in principle to
these, already prevail widely among the artisan class, and weigh
oppressively on those who are amenable to the opinion chiefly of that
class, namely, its own members. It is known that the bad workmen who
form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry, are
decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as
good, and that no one ought to be allowed, through piecework or
otherwise, to earn by superior skill or industry more than others can
without it. And they employ a moral police, which occasionally becomes a
physical one, to deter skilful workmen from receiving, and employers
from giving, a larger remuneration for a more useful service. If the
public have any jurisdiction over private concerns, I cannot see that
these people are in fault, or that any individual's particular public
can be blamed for asserting the same authority over his individual
conduct, which the general public asserts over people in general.

But, without dwelling upon supposititious cases, there are, in our own
day, gross usurpations upon the liberty of private life actually
practised, and still greater ones threatened with some expectation of
success, and opinions proposed which assert an unlimited right in the
public not only to prohibit by law everything which it thinks wrong, but
in order to get at what it thinks wrong, to prohibit any number of
things which it admits to be innocent.

Under the name of preventing intemperance, the people of one English
colony, and of nearly half the United States, have been interdicted by
law from making any use whatever of fermented drinks, except for medical
purposes: for prohibition of their sale is in fact, as it is intended to
be, prohibition of their use. And though the impracticability of
executing the law has caused its repeal in several of the States which
had adopted it, including the one from which it derives its name, an
attempt has notwithstanding been commenced, and is prosecuted with
considerable zeal by many of the professed philanthropists, to agitate
for a similar law in this country. The association, or "Alliance" as it
terms itself, which has been formed for this purpose, has acquired some
notoriety through the publicity given to a correspondence between its
Secretary and one of the very few English public men who hold that a
politician's opinions ought to be founded on principles. Lord Stanley's
share in this correspondence is calculated to strengthen the hopes
already built on him, by those who know how rare such qualities as are
manifested in some of his public appearances, unhappily are among those
who figure in political life. The organ of the Alliance, who would
"deeply deplore the recognition of any principle which could be wrested
to justify bigotry and persecution," undertakes to point out the "broad
and impassable barrier" which divides such principles from those of the
association. "All matters relating to thought, opinion, conscience,
appear to me," he says, "to be without the sphere of legislation; all
pertaining to social act, habit, relation, subject only to a
discretionary power vested in the State itself, and not in the
individual, to be within it." No mention is made of a third class,
different from either of these, viz. acts and habits which are not
social, but individual; although it is to this class, surely, that the
act of drinking fermented liquors belongs. Selling fermented liquors,
however, is trading, and trading is a social act. But the infringement
complained of is not on the liberty of the seller, but on that of the
buyer and consumer; since the State might just as well forbid him to
drink wine, as purposely make it impossible for him to obtain it. The
Secretary, however, says, "I claim, as a citizen, a right to legislate
whenever my social rights are invaded by the social act of another." And
now for the definition of these "social rights." "If anything invades my
social rights, certainly the traffic in strong drink does. It destroys
my primary right of security, by constantly creating and stimulating
social disorder. It invades my right of equality, by deriving a profit
from the creation of a misery, I am taxed to support. It impedes my
right to free moral and intellectual development, by surrounding my path
with dangers, and by weakening and demoralising society, from which I
have a right to claim mutual aid and intercourse." A theory of "social
rights," the like of which probably never before found its way into
distinct language--being nothing short of this--that it is the absolute
social right of every individual, that every other individual shall act
in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof in
the smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me to
demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous a
principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with
liberty; there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify;
it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatever, except perhaps to that
of holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them: for the
moment an opinion which I consider noxious, passes any one's lips, it
invades all the "social rights" attributed to me by the Alliance. The
doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested interest in each other's
moral, intellectual, and even physical perfection, to be defined by each
claimant according to his own standard.

Another important example of illegitimate interference with the rightful
liberty of the individual, not simply threatened, but long since carried
into triumphant effect, is Sabbatarian legislation. Without doubt,
abstinence on one day in the week, so far as the exigencies of life
permit, from the usual daily occupation, though in no respect
religiously binding on any except Jews, is a highly beneficial custom.
And inasmuch as this custom cannot be observed without a general consent
to that effect among the industrious classes, therefore, in so far as
some persons by working may impose the same necessity on others, it may
be allowable and right that the law should guarantee to each, the
observance by others of the custom, by suspending the greater operations
of industry on a particular day. But this justification, grounded on the
direct interest which others have in each individual's observance of
the practice, does not apply to the self-chosen occupations in which a
person may think fit to employ his leisure; nor does it hold good, in
the smallest degree, for legal restrictions on amusements. It is true
that the amusement of some is the day's work of others; but the
pleasure, not to say the useful recreation, of many, is worth the labour
of a few, provided the occupation is freely chosen, and can be freely
resigned. The operatives are perfectly right in thinking that if all
worked on Sunday, seven days' work would have to be given for six days'
wages: but so long as the great mass of employments are suspended, the
small number who for the enjoyment of others must still work, obtain a
proportional increase of earnings; and they are not obliged to follow
those occupations, if they prefer leisure to emolument. If a further
remedy is sought, it might be found in the establishment by custom of a
holiday on some other day of the week for those particular classes of
persons. The only ground, therefore, on which restrictions on Sunday
amusements can be defended, must be that they are religiously wrong; a
motive of legislation which never can be too earnestly protested
against. "Deorum injuriæ Diis curæ." It remains to be proved that
society or any of its officers holds a commission from on high to
avenge any supposed offence to Omnipotence, which is not also a wrong to
our fellow-creatures. The notion that it is one man's duty that another
should be religious, was the foundation of all the religious
persecutions ever perpetrated, and if admitted, would fully justify
them. Though the feeling which breaks out in the repeated attempts to
stop railway travelling on Sunday, in the resistance to the opening of
Museums, and the like, has not the cruelty of the old persecutors, the
state of mind indicated by it is fundamentally the same. It is a
determination not to tolerate others in doing what is permitted by their
religion, because it is not permitted by the persecutor's religion. It
is a belief that God not only abominates the act of the misbeliever, but
will not hold us guiltless if we leave him unmolested.

I cannot refrain from adding to these examples of the little account
commonly made of human liberty, the language of downright persecution
which breaks out from the press of this country, whenever it feels
called on to notice the remarkable phenomenon of Mormonism. Much might
be said on the unexpected and instructive fact, that an alleged new
revelation, and a religion founded on it, the product of palpable
imposture, not even supported by the _prestige_ of extraordinary
qualities in its founder, is believed by hundreds of thousands, and has
been made the foundation of a society, in the age of newspapers,
railways, and the electric telegraph. What here concerns us is, that
this religion, like other and better religions, has its martyrs; that
its prophet and founder was, for his teaching, put to death by a mob;
that others of its adherents lost their lives by the same lawless
violence; that they were forcibly expelled, in a body, from the country
in which they first grew up; while, now that they have been chased into
a solitary recess in the midst of a desert, many in this country openly
declare that it would be right (only that it is not convenient) to send
an expedition against them, and compel them by force to conform to the
opinions of other people. The article of the Mormonite doctrine which is
the chief provocative to the antipathy which thus breaks through the
ordinary restraints of religious tolerance, is its sanction of polygamy;
which, though permitted to Mahomedans, and Hindoos, and Chinese, seems
to excite unquenchable animosity when practised by persons who speak
English, and profess to be a kind of Christians. No one has a deeper
disapprobation than I have of this Mormon institution; both for other
reasons, and because, far from being in any way countenanced by the
principle of liberty, it is a direct infraction of that principle, being
a mere riveting of the chains of one half of the community, and an
emancipation of the other from reciprocity of obligation towards them.
Still, it must be remembered that this relation is as much voluntary on
the part of the women concerned in it, and who may be deemed the
sufferers by it, as is the case with any other form of the marriage
institution; and however surprising this fact may appear, it has its
explanation in the common ideas and customs of the world, which teaching
women to think marriage the one thing needful, make it intelligible that
many a woman should prefer being one of several wives, to not being a
wife at all. Other countries are not asked to recognise such unions, or
release any portion of their inhabitants from their own laws on the
score of Mormonite opinions. But when the dissentients have conceded to
the hostile sentiments of others, far more than could justly be
demanded; when they have left the countries to which their doctrines
were unacceptable, and established themselves in a remote corner of the
earth, which they have been the first to render habitable to human
beings; it is difficult to see on what principles but those of tyranny
they can be prevented from living there under what laws they please,
provided they commit no aggression on other nations, and allow perfect
freedom of departure to those who are dissatisfied with their ways. A
recent writer, in some respects of considerable merit, proposes (to use
his own words), not a crusade, but a _civilizade_, against this
polygamous community, to put an end to what seems to him a retrograde
step in civilisation. It also appears so to me, but I am not aware that
any community has a right to force another to be civilised. So long as
the sufferers by the bad law do not invoke assistance from other
communities, I cannot admit that persons entirely unconnected with them
ought to step in and require that a condition of things with which all
who are directly interested appear to be satisfied, should be put an end
to because it is a scandal to persons some thousands of miles distant,
who have no part or concern in it. Let them send missionaries, if they
please, to preach against it; and let them, by any fair means (of which
silencing the teachers is not one), oppose the progress of similar
doctrines among their own people. If civilisation has got the better of
barbarism when barbarism had the world to itself, it is too much to
profess to be afraid lest barbarism, after having been fairly got under,
should revive and conquer civilisation. A civilisation that can thus
succumb to its vanquished enemy, must first have become so degenerate,
that neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor anybody else, has
the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up for it. If this be
so, the sooner such a civilisation receives notice to quit, the better.
It can only go on from bad to worse, until destroyed and regenerated
(like the Western Empire) by energetic barbarians.

FOOTNOTE:

[14] The case of the Bombay Parsees is a curious instance in point. When
this industrious and enterprising tribe, the descendants of the Persian
fire-worshippers, flying from their native country before the Caliphs,
arrived in Western India, they were admitted to toleration by the Hindoo
sovereigns, on condition of not eating beef. When those regions
afterwards fell under the dominion of Mahomedan conquerors, the Parsees
obtained from them a continuance of indulgence, on condition of
refraining from pork. What was at first obedience to authority became a
second nature, and the Parsees to this day abstain both from beef and
pork. Though not required by their religion, the double abstinence has
had time to grow into a custom of their tribe; and custom, in the East,
is a religion.




CHAPTER V.

APPLICATIONS.


The principles asserted in these pages must be more generally admitted
as the basis for discussion of details, before a consistent application
of them to all the various departments of government and morals can be
attempted with any prospect of advantage. The few observations I propose
to make on questions of detail, are designed to illustrate the
principles, rather than to follow them out to their consequences. I
offer, not so much applications, as specimens of application; which may
serve to bring into greater clearness the meaning and limits of the two
maxims which together form the entire doctrine of this Essay, and to
assist the judgment in holding the balance between them, in the cases
where it appears doubtful which of them is applicable to the case.

The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to society
for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person
but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other
people if thought necessary by them for their own good, are the only
measures by which society can justifiably express its dislike or
disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such actions as are
prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable
and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishments, if
society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its
protection.

In the first place, it must by no means be supposed, because damage, or
probability of damage, to the interests of others, can alone justify the
interference of society, that therefore it always does justify such
interference. In many cases, an individual, in pursuing a legitimate
object, necessarily and therefore legitimately causes pain or loss to
others, or intercepts a good which they had a reasonable hope of
obtaining. Such oppositions of interest between individuals often arise
from bad social institutions, but are unavoidable while those
institutions last; and some would be unavoidable under any institutions.
Whoever succeeds in an overcrowded profession, or in a competitive
examination; whoever is preferred to another in any contest for an
object which both desire, reaps benefit from the loss of others, from
their wasted exertion and their disappointment. But it is, by common
admission, better for the general interest of mankind, that persons
should pursue their objects undeterred by this sort of consequences. In
other words, society admits no rights, either legal or moral, in the
disappointed competitors, to immunity from this kind of suffering; and
feels called on to interfere, only when means of success have been
employed which it is contrary to the general interest to permit--namely,
fraud or treachery, and force.

Again, trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description
of goods to the public, does what affects the interest of other persons,
and of society in general; and thus his conduct, in principle, comes
within the jurisdiction of society: accordingly, it was once held to be
the duty of governments, in all cases which were considered of
importance, to fix prices, and regulate the processes of manufacture.
But it is now recognised, though not till after a long struggle, that
both the cheapness and the good quality of commodities are most
effectually provided for by leaving the producers and sellers perfectly
free, under the sole check of equal freedom to the buyers for supplying
themselves elsewhere. This is the so-called doctrine of Free Trade,
which rests on grounds different from, though equally solid with, the
principle of individual liberty asserted in this Essay. Restrictions on
trade, or on production for purposes of trade, are indeed restraints;
and all restraint, _quâ_ restraint, is an evil: but the restraints in
question affect only that part of conduct which society is competent to
restrain, and are wrong solely because they do not really produce the
results which it is desired to produce by them. As the principle of
individual liberty is not involved in the doctrine of Free Trade, so
neither is it in most of the questions which arise respecting the limits
of that doctrine: as for example, what amount of public control is
admissible for the prevention of fraud by adulteration; how far sanitary
precautions, or arrangements to protect work-people employed in
dangerous occupations, should be enforced on employers. Such questions
involve considerations of liberty, only in so far as leaving people to
themselves is always better, _cæteris paribus_, than controlling them:
but that they may be legitimately controlled for these ends, is in
principle undeniable. On the other hand, there are questions relating to
interference with trade, which are essentially questions of liberty;
such as the Maine Law, already touched upon; the prohibition of the
importation of opium into China; the restriction of the sale of poisons;
all cases, in short, where the object of the interference is to make it
impossible or difficult to obtain a particular commodity. These
interferences are objectionable, not as infringements on the liberty of
the producer or seller, but on that of the buyer.

One of these examples, that of the sale of poisons, opens a new
question; the proper limits of what may be called the functions of
police; how far liberty may legitimately be invaded for the prevention
of crime, or of accident. It is one of the undisputed functions of
government to take precautions against crime before it has been
committed, as well as to detect and punish it afterwards. The preventive
function of government, however, is far more liable to be abused, to the
prejudice of liberty, than the punitory function; for there is hardly
any part of the legitimate freedom of action of a human being which
would not admit of being represented, and fairly too, as increasing the
facilities for some form or other of delinquency. Nevertheless, if a
public authority, or even a private person, sees any one evidently
preparing to commit a crime, they are not bound to look on inactive
until the crime is committed, but may interfere to prevent it. If
poisons were never bought or used for any purpose except the commission
of murder, it would be right to prohibit their manufacture and sale.
They may, however, be wanted not only for innocent but for useful
purposes, and restrictions cannot be imposed in the one case without
operating in the other. Again, it is a proper office of public authority
to guard against accidents. If either a public officer or any one else
saw a person attempting to cross a bridge which had been ascertained to
be unsafe, and there were no time to warn him of his danger, they might
seize him and turn him back, without any real infringement of his
liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not
desire to fall into the river. Nevertheless, when there is not a
certainty, but only a danger of mischief, no one but the person himself
can judge of the sufficiency of the motive which may prompt him to incur
the risk: in this case, therefore (unless he is a child, or delirious,
or in some state of excitement or absorption incompatible with the full
use of the reflecting faculty), he ought, I conceive, to be only warned
of the danger; not forcibly prevented from exposing himself to it.
Similar considerations, applied to such a question as the sale of
poisons, may enable us to decide which among the possible modes of
regulation are or are not contrary to principle. Such a precaution, for
example, as that of labelling the drug with some word expressive of its
dangerous character, may be enforced without violation of liberty: the
buyer cannot wish not to know that the thing he possesses has poisonous
qualities. But to require in all cases the certificate of a medical
practitioner, would make it sometimes impossible, always expensive, to
obtain the article for legitimate uses. The only mode apparent to me, in
which difficulties may be thrown in the way of crime committed through
this means, without any infringement, worth taking into account, upon
the liberty of those who desire the poisonous substance for other
purposes, consists in providing what, in the apt language of Bentham, is
called "preappointed evidence." This provision is familiar to every one
in the case of contracts. It is usual and right that the law, when a
contract is entered into, should require as the condition of its
enforcing performance, that certain formalities should be observed, such
as signatures, attestation of witnesses, and the like, in order that in
case of subsequent dispute, there may be evidence to prove that the
contract was really entered into, and that there was nothing in the
circumstances to render it legally invalid: the effect being, to throw
great obstacles in the way of fictitious contracts, or contracts made in
circumstances which, if known, would destroy their validity. Precautions
of a similar nature might be enforced in the sale of articles adapted to
be instruments of crime. The seller, for example, might be required to
enter into a register the exact time of the transaction, the name and
address of the buyer, the precise quality and quantity sold; to ask the
purpose for which it was wanted, and record the answer he received. When
there was no medical prescription, the presence of some third person
might be required, to bring home the fact to the purchaser, in case
there should afterwards be reason to believe that the article had been
applied to criminal purposes. Such regulations would in general be no
material impediment to obtaining the article, but a very considerable
one to making an improper use of it without detection.

The right inherent in society, to ward off crimes against itself by
antecedent precautions, suggests the obvious limitations to the maxim,
that purely self-regarding misconduct cannot properly be meddled with
in the way of prevention or punishment. Drunkenness, for example, in
ordinary cases, is not a fit subject for legislative interference; but I
should deem it perfectly legitimate that a person, who had once been
convicted of any act of violence to others under the influence of drink,
should be placed under a special legal restriction, personal to himself;
that if he were afterwards found drunk, he should be liable to a
penalty, and that if when in that state he committed another offence,
the punishment to which he would be liable for that other offence should
be increased in severity. The making himself drunk, in a person whom
drunkenness excites to do harm to others, is a crime against others. So,
again, idleness, except in a person receiving support from the public,
or except when it constitutes a breach of contract, cannot without
tyranny be made a subject of legal punishment; but if either from
idleness or from any other avoidable cause, a man fails to perform his
legal duties to others, as for instance to support his children, it is
no tyranny to force him to fulfil that obligation, by compulsory labour,
if no other means are available.

Again, there are many acts which, being directly injurious only to the
agents themselves, ought not to be legally interdicted, but which, if
done publicly, are a violation of good manners and coming thus within
the category of offences against others may rightfully be prohibited. Of
this kind are offences against decency; on which it is unnecessary to
dwell, the rather as they are only connected indirectly with our
subject, the objection to publicity being equally strong in the case of
many actions not in themselves condemnable, nor supposed to be so.

There is another question to which an answer must be found, consistent
with the principles which have been laid down. In cases of personal
conduct supposed to be blamable, but which respect for liberty precludes
society from preventing or punishing, because the evil directly
resulting falls wholly on the agent; what the agent is free to do, ought
other persons to be equally free to counsel or instigate? This question
is not free from difficulty. The case of a person who solicits another
to do an act, is not strictly a case of self-regarding conduct. To give
advice or offer inducements to any one, is a social act, and may
therefore, like actions in general which affect others, be supposed
amenable to social control. But a little reflection corrects the first
impression, by showing that if the case is not strictly within the
definition of individual liberty, yet the reasons on which the
principle of individual liberty is grounded, are applicable to it. If
people must be allowed, in whatever concerns only themselves, to act as
seems best to themselves at their own peril, they must equally be free
to consult with one another about what is fit to be so done; to exchange
opinions, and give and receive suggestions. Whatever it is permitted to
do, it must be permitted to advise to do. The question is doubtful, only
when the instigator derives a personal benefit from his advice; when he
makes it his occupation, for subsistence or pecuniary gain, to promote
what society and the state consider to be an evil. Then, indeed, a new
element of complication is introduced; namely, the existence of classes
of persons with an interest opposed to what is considered as the public
weal, and whose mode of living is grounded on the counteraction of it.
Ought this to be interfered with, or not? Fornication, for example, must
be tolerated, and so must gambling; but should a person be free to be a
pimp, or to keep a gambling-house? The case is one of those which lie on
the exact boundary line between two principles, and it is not at once
apparent to which of the two it properly belongs. There are arguments on
both sides. On the side of toleration it may be said, that the fact of
following anything as an occupation, and living or profiting by the
practice of it, cannot make that criminal which would otherwise be
admissible; that the act should either be consistently permitted or
consistently prohibited; that if the principles which we have hitherto
defended are true, society has no business, _as_ society, to decide
anything to be wrong which concerns only the individual; that it cannot
go beyond dissuasion, and that one person should be as free to persuade,
as another to dissuade. In opposition to this it may be contended, that
although the public, or the State, are not warranted in authoritatively
deciding, for purposes of repression or punishment, that such or such
conduct affecting only the interests of the individual is good or bad,
they are fully justified in assuming, if they regard it as bad, that its
being so or not is at least a disputable question: That, this being
supposed, they cannot be acting wrongly in endeavouring to exclude the
influence of solicitations which are not disinterested, of instigators
who cannot possibly be impartial--who have a direct personal interest on
one side, and that side the one which the State believes to be wrong,
and who confessedly promote it for personal objects only. There can
surely, it may be urged, be nothing lost, no sacrifice of good, by so
ordering matters that persons shall make their election, either wisely
or foolishly, on their own prompting, as free as possible from the arts
of persons who stimulate their inclinations for interested purposes of
their own. Thus (it may be said) though the statutes respecting unlawful
games are utterly indefensible--though all persons should be free to
gamble in their own or each other's houses, or in any place of meeting
established by their own subscriptions, and open only to the members and
their visitors--yet public gambling-houses should not be permitted. It
is true that the prohibition is never effectual, and that whatever
amount of tyrannical power is given to the police, gambling-houses can
always be maintained under other pretences; but they may be compelled to
conduct their operations with a certain degree of secrecy and mystery,
so that nobody knows anything about them but those who seek them; and
more than this, society ought not to aim at. There is considerable force
in these arguments; I will not venture to decide whether they are
sufficient to justify the moral anomaly of punishing the accessary, when
the principal is (and must be) allowed to go free; or fining or
imprisoning the procurer, but not the fornicator, the gambling-house
keeper, but not the gambler. Still less ought the common operations of
buying and selling to be interfered with on analogous grounds. Almost
every article which is bought and sold may be used in excess, and the
sellers have a pecuniary interest in encouraging that excess; but no
argument can be founded on this, in favour, for instance, of the Maine
Law; because the class of dealers in strong drinks, though interested in
their abuse, are indispensably required for the sake of their legitimate
use. The interest, however, of these dealers in promoting intemperance
is a real evil, and justifies the State in imposing restrictions and
requiring guarantees, which but for that justification would be
infringements of legitimate liberty.

A further question is, whether the State, while it permits, should
nevertheless indirectly discourage conduct which it deems contrary to
the best interests of the agent; whether, for example, it should take
measures to render the means of drunkenness more costly, or add to the
difficulty of procuring them, by limiting the number of the places of
sale. On this as on most other practical questions, many distinctions
require to be made. To tax stimulants for the sole purpose of making
them more difficult to be obtained, is a measure differing only in
degree from their entire prohibition; and would be justifiable only if
that were justifiable. Every increase of cost is a prohibition, to those
whose means do not come up to the augmented price; and to those who do,
it is a penalty laid on them for gratifying a particular taste. Their
choice of pleasures, and their mode of expending their income, after
satisfying their legal and moral obligations to the State and to
individuals, are their own concern, and must rest with their own
judgment. These considerations may seem at first sight to condemn the
selection of stimulants as special subjects of taxation for purposes of
revenue. But it must be remembered that taxation for fiscal purposes is
absolutely inevitable; that in most countries it is necessary that a
considerable part of that taxation should be indirect; that the State,
therefore, cannot help imposing penalties, which to some persons may be
prohibitory, on the use of some articles of consumption. It is hence the
duty of the State to consider, in the imposition of taxes, what
commodities the consumers can best spare; and _à fortiori_, to select in
preference those of which it deems the use, beyond a very moderate
quantity, to be positively injurious. Taxation, therefore, of
stimulants, up to the point which produces the largest amount of revenue
(supposing that the State needs all the revenue which it yields) is not
only admissible, but to be approved of.

The question of making the sale of these commodities a more or less
exclusive privilege, must be answered differently, according to the
purposes to which the restriction is intended to be subservient. All
places of public resort require the restraint of a police, and places of
this kind peculiarly, because offences against society are especially
apt to originate there. It is, therefore, fit to confine the power of
selling these commodities (at least for consumption on the spot) to
persons of known or vouched-for respectability of conduct; to make such
regulations respecting hours of opening and closing as may be requisite
for public surveillance, and to withdraw the licence if breaches of the
peace repeatedly take place through the connivance or incapacity of the
keeper of the house, or if it becomes a rendezvous for concocting and
preparing offences against the law. Any further restriction I do not
conceive to be, in principle, justifiable. The limitation in number, for
instance, of beer and spirit-houses, for the express purpose of
rendering them more difficult of access, and diminishing the occasions
of temptation, not only exposes all to an inconvenience because there
are some by whom the facility would be abused, but is suited only to a
state of society in which the labouring classes are avowedly treated as
children or savages, and placed under an education of restraint, to fit
them for future admission to the privileges of freedom. This is not the
principle on which the labouring classes are professedly governed in any
free country; and no person who sets due value on freedom will give his
adhesion to their being so governed, unless after all efforts have been
exhausted to educate them for freedom and govern them as freemen, and it
has been definitively proved that they can only be governed as children.
The bare statement of the alternative shows the absurdity of supposing
that such efforts have been made in any case which needs be considered
here. It is only because the institutions of this country are a mass of
inconsistencies, that things find admittance into our practice which
belong to the system of despotic, or what is called paternal,
government, while the general freedom of our institutions precludes the
exercise of the amount of control necessary to render the restraint of
any real efficacy as a moral education.

It was pointed out in an early part of this Essay, that the liberty of
the individual, in things wherein the individual is alone concerned,
implies a corresponding liberty in any number of individuals to regulate
by mutual agreement such things as regard them jointly, and regard no
persons but themselves. This question presents no difficulty, so long as
the will of all the persons implicated remains unaltered; but since that
will may change, it is often necessary, even in things in which they
alone are concerned, that they should enter into engagements with one
another; and when they do, it is fit, as a general rule, that those
engagements should be kept. Yet in the laws, probably, of every country,
this general rule has some exceptions. Not only persons are not held to
engagements which violate the rights of third parties, but it is
sometimes considered a sufficient reason for releasing them from an
engagement, that it is injurious to themselves. In this and most other
civilised countries, for example, an engagement by which a person should
sell himself, or allow himself to be sold, as a slave, would be null and
void; neither enforced by law nor by opinion. The ground for thus
limiting his power of voluntarily disposing of his own lot in life, is
apparent, and is very clearly seen in this extreme case. The reason for
not interfering, unless for the sake of others, with a person's
voluntary acts, is consideration for his liberty. His voluntary choice
is evidence that what he so chooses is desirable, or at the least
endurable, to him, and his good is on the whole best provided for by
allowing him to take his own means of pursuing it. But by selling
himself for a slave, he abdicates his liberty; he foregoes any future
use of it, beyond that single act. He therefore defeats, in his own
case, the very purpose which is the justification of allowing him to
dispose of himself. He is no longer free; but is thenceforth in a
position which has no longer the presumption in its favour, that would
be afforded by his voluntarily remaining in it. The principle of freedom
cannot require that he should be free not to be free. It is not freedom,
to be allowed to alienate his freedom. These reasons, the force of which
is so conspicuous in this peculiar case, are evidently of far wider
application; yet a limit is everywhere set to them by the necessities of
life, which continually require, not indeed that we should resign our
freedom, but that we should consent to this and the other limitation of
it. The principle, however, which demands uncontrolled freedom of action
in all that concerns only the agents themselves, requires that those who
have become bound to one another, in things which concern no third
party, should be able to release one another from the engagement: and
even without such voluntary release, there are perhaps no contracts or
engagements, except those that relate to money or money's worth, of
which one can venture to say that there ought to be no liberty whatever
of retractation. Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt, in the excellent essay from
which I have already quoted, states it as his conviction, that
engagements which involve personal relations or services, should never
be legally binding beyond a limited duration of time; and that the most
important of these engagements, marriage, having the peculiarity that
its objects are frustrated unless the feelings of both the parties are
in harmony with it, should require nothing more than the declared will
of either party to dissolve it. This subject is too important, and too
complicated, to be discussed in a parenthesis, and I touch on it only so
far as is necessary for purposes of illustration. If the conciseness and
generality of Baron Humboldt's dissertation had not obliged him in this
instance to content himself with enunciating his conclusion without
discussing the premises, he would doubtless have recognised that the
question cannot be decided on grounds so simple as those to which he
confines himself. When a person, either by express promise or by
conduct, has encouraged another to rely upon his continuing to act in a
certain way--to build expectations and calculations, and stake any part
of his plan of life upon that supposition, a new series of moral
obligations arises on his part towards that person, which may possibly
be overruled, but cannot be ignored. And again, if the relation between
two contracting parties has been followed by consequences to others; if
it has placed third parties in any peculiar position, or, as in the case
of marriage, has even called third parties into existence, obligations
arise on the part of both the contracting parties towards those third
persons, the fulfilment of which, or at all events the mode of
fulfilment, must be greatly affected by the continuance or disruption of
the relation between the original parties to the contract. It does not
follow, nor can I admit, that these obligations extend to requiring the
fulfilment of the contract at all costs to the happiness of the
reluctant party; but they are a necessary element in the question; and
even if, as Von Humboldt maintains, they ought to make no difference in
the _legal_ freedom of the parties to release themselves from the
engagement (and I also hold that they ought not to make _much_
difference), they necessarily make a great difference in the _moral_
freedom. A person is bound to take all these circumstances into account,
before resolving on a step which may affect such important interests of
others; and if he does not allow proper weight to those interests, he is
morally responsible for the wrong. I have made these obvious remarks for
the better illustration of the general principle of liberty, and not
because they are at all needed on the particular question, which, on the
contrary, is usually discussed as if the interest of children was
everything, and that of grown persons nothing.

I have already observed that, owing to the absence of any recognised
general principles, liberty is often granted where it should be
withheld, as well as withheld where it should be granted; and one of the
cases in which, in the modern European world, the sentiment of liberty
is the strongest, is a case where, in my view, it is altogether
misplaced. A person should be free to do as he likes in his own
concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for
another, under the pretext that the affairs of another are his own
affairs. The State, while it respects the liberty of each in what
specially regards himself, is bound to maintain a vigilant control over
his exercise of any power which it allows him to possess over others.
This obligation is almost entirely disregarded in the case of the
family relations, a case, in its direct influence on human happiness,
more important than all others taken together. The almost despotic power
of husbands over wives need not be enlarged upon here because nothing
more is needed for the complete removal of the evil, than that wives
should have the same rights, and should receive the protection of law in
the same manner, as all other persons; and because, on this subject, the
defenders of established injustice do not avail themselves of the plea
of liberty, but stand forth openly as the champions of power. It is in
the case of children, that misapplied notions of liberty are a real
obstacle to the fulfilment by the State of its duties. One would almost
think that a man's children were supposed to be literally, and not
metaphorically, a part of himself, so jealous is opinion of the smallest
interference of law with his absolute and exclusive control over them;
more jealous than of almost any interference with his own freedom of
action: so much less do the generality of mankind value liberty than
power. Consider, for example, the case of education. Is it not almost a
self-evident axiom, that the State should require and compel the
education, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is born
its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid to recognise and
assert this truth? Hardly any one indeed will deny that it is one of the
most sacred duties of the parents (or, as law and usage now stand, the
father), after summoning a human being into the world, to give to that
being an education fitting him to perform his part well in life towards
others and towards himself. But while this is unanimously declared to be
the father's duty, scarcely anybody, in this country, will bear to hear
of obliging him to perform it. Instead of his being required to make any
exertion or sacrifice for securing education to the child, it is left to
his choice to accept it or not when it is provided gratis! It still
remains unrecognised, that to bring a child into existence without a
fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but
instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against
the unfortunate offspring and against society; and that if the parent
does not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at
the charge, as far as possible, of the parent.

Were the duty of enforcing universal education once admitted, there
would be an end to the difficulties about what the State should teach,
and how it should teach, which now convert the subject into a mere
battle-field for sects and parties, causing the time and labour which
should have been spent in educating, to be wasted in quarrelling about
education. If the government would make up its mind to _require_ for
every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of
_providing_ one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where
and how they pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school
fees of the poorer class of children, and defraying the entire school
expenses of those who have no one else to pay for them. The objections
which are urged with reason against State education, do not apply to the
enforcement of education by the State, but to the State's taking upon
itself to direct that education; which is a totally different thing.
That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should
be in State hands, I go as far as any one in deprecating. All that has
been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity
in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable
importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere
contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as
the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant
power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an
aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion
as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the
mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. An education
established and controlled by the State, should only exist, if it exist
at all, as one among many competing experiments, carried on for the
purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain
standard of excellence. Unless, indeed, when society in general is in so
backward a state that it could not or would not provide for itself any
proper institutions of education, unless the government undertook the
task; then, indeed, the government may, as the less of two great evils,
take upon itself the business of schools and universities, as it may
that of joint stock companies, when private enterprise, in a shape
fitted for undertaking great works of industry, does not exist in the
country. But in general, if the country contains a sufficient number of
persons qualified to provide education under government auspices, the
same persons would be able and willing to give an equally good education
on the voluntary principle, under the assurance of remuneration afforded
by a law rendering education compulsory, combined with State aid to
those unable to defray the expense.

The instrument for enforcing the law could be no other than public
examinations, extending to all children, and beginning at an early age.
An age might be fixed at which every child must be examined, to
ascertain if he (or she) is able to read. If a child proves unable, the
father, unless he has some sufficient ground of excuse, might be
subjected to a moderate fine, to be worked out, if necessary, by his
labour, and the child might be put to school at his expense. Once in
every year the examination should be renewed, with a gradually extending
range of subjects, so as to make the universal acquisition, and what is
more, retention, of a certain minimum of general knowledge, virtually
compulsory. Beyond that minimum, there should be voluntary examinations
on all subjects, at which all who come up to a certain standard of
proficiency might claim a certificate. To prevent the State from
exercising, through these arrangements, an improper influence over
opinion, the knowledge required for passing an examination (beyond the
merely instrumental parts of knowledge, such as languages and their use)
should, even in the higher class of examinations, be confined to facts
and positive science exclusively. The examinations on religion,
politics, or other disputed topics, should not turn on the truth or
falsehood of opinions, but on the matter of fact that such and such an
opinion is held, on such grounds, by such authors, or schools, or
churches. Under this system, the rising generation would be no worse off
in regard to all disputed truths, than they are at present; they would
be brought up either churchmen or dissenters as they now are, the state
merely taking care that they should be instructed churchmen, or
instructed dissenters. There would be nothing to hinder them from being
taught religion, if their parents chose, at the same schools where they
were taught other things. All attempts by the state to bias the
conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil; but it may
very properly offer to ascertain and certify that a person possesses the
knowledge, requisite to make his conclusions, on any given subject,
worth attending to. A student of philosophy would be the better for
being able to stand an examination both in Locke and in Kant, whichever
of the two he takes up with, or even if with neither: and there is no
reasonable objection to examining an atheist in the evidences of
Christianity, provided he is not required to profess a belief in them.
The examinations, however, in the higher branches of knowledge should, I
conceive, be entirely voluntary. It would be giving too dangerous a
power to governments, were they allowed to exclude any one from
professions, even from the profession of teacher, for alleged deficiency
of qualifications: and I think, with Wilhelm von Humboldt, that degrees,
or other public certificates of scientific or professional acquirements,
should be given to all who present themselves for examination, and stand
the test; but that such certificates should confer no advantage over
competitors, other than the weight which may be attached to their
testimony by public opinion.

It is not in the matter of education only, that misplaced notions of
liberty prevent moral obligations on the part of parents from being
recognised, and legal obligations from being imposed, where there are
the strongest grounds for the former always, and in many cases for the
latter also. The fact itself, of causing the existence of a human being,
is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life. To
undertake this responsibility--to bestow a life which may be either a
curse or a blessing--unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will
have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime
against that being. And in a country either over-peopled, or threatened
with being so, to produce children, beyond a very small number, with
the effect of reducing the reward of labour by their competition, is a
serious offence against all who live by the remuneration of their
labour. The laws which, in many countries on the Continent, forbid
marriage unless the parties can show that they have the means of
supporting a family, do not exceed the legitimate powers of the state:
and whether such laws be expedient or not (a question mainly dependent
on local circumstances and feelings), they are not objectionable as
violations of liberty. Such laws are interferences of the state to
prohibit a mischievous act--an act injurious to others, which ought to
be a subject of reprobation, and social stigma, even when it is not
deemed expedient to superadd legal punishment. Yet the current ideas of
liberty, which bend so easily to real infringements of the freedom of
the individual, in things which concern only himself, would repel the
attempt to put any restraint upon his inclinations when the consequence
of their indulgence is a life, or lives, of wretchedness and depravity
to the offspring, with manifold evils to those sufficiently within reach
to be in any way affected by their actions. When we compare the strange
respect of mankind for liberty, with their strange want of respect for
it, we might imagine that a man had an indispensable right to do harm
to others, and no right at all to please himself without giving pain to
any one.

I have reserved for the last place a large class of questions respecting
the limits of government interference, which, though closely connected
with the subject of this Essay, do not, in strictness, belong to it.
These are cases in which the reasons against interference do not turn
upon the principle of liberty: the question is not about restraining the
actions of individuals, but about helping them: it is asked whether the
government should do, or cause to be done, something for their benefit,
instead of leaving it to be done by themselves, individually, or in
voluntary combination.

The objections to government interference, when it is not such as to
involve infringement of liberty, may be of three kinds.

The first is, when the thing to be done is likely to be better done by
individuals than by the government. Speaking generally, there is no one
so fit to conduct any business, or to determine how or by whom it shall
be conducted, as those who are personally interested in it. This
principle condemns the interferences, once so common, of the
legislature, or the officers of government, with the ordinary processes
of industry. But this part of the subject has been sufficiently enlarged
upon by political economists, and is not particularly related to the
principles of this Essay.

The second objection is more nearly allied to our subject. In many
cases, though individuals may not do the particular thing so well, on
the average, as the officers of government, it is nevertheless desirable
that it should be done by them, rather than by the government, as a
means to their own mental education--a mode of strengthening their
active faculties, exercising their judgment, and giving them a familiar
knowledge of the subjects with which they are thus left to deal. This is
a principal, though not the sole, recommendation of jury trial (in cases
not political); of free and popular local and municipal institutions; of
the conduct of industrial and philanthropic enterprises by voluntary
associations. These are not questions of liberty, and are connected with
that subject only by remote tendencies; but they are questions of
development. It belongs to a different occasion from the present to
dwell on these things as parts of national education; as being, in
truth, the peculiar training of a citizen, the practical part of the
political education of a free people, taking them out of the narrow
circle of personal and family selfishness, and accustoming them to the
comprehension of joint interests, the management of joint
concerns--habituating them to act from public or semi-public motives,
and guide their conduct by aims which unite instead of isolating them
from one another. Without these habits and powers, a free constitution
can neither be worked nor preserved, as is exemplified by the too-often
transitory nature of political freedom in countries where it does not
rest upon a sufficient basis of local liberties. The management of
purely local business by the localities, and of the great enterprises of
industry by the union of those who voluntarily supply the pecuniary
means, is further recommended by all the advantages which have been set
forth in this Essay as belonging to individuality of development, and
diversity of modes of action. Government operations tend to be
everywhere alike. With individuals and voluntary associations, on the
contrary, there are varied experiments, and endless diversity of
experience. What the State can usefully do, is to make itself a central
depository, and active circulator and diffuser, of the experience
resulting from many trials. Its business is to enable each
experimentalist to benefit by the experiments of others, instead of
tolerating no experiments but its own.

The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of
government, is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government,
causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused,
and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public
into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which aims at
becoming the government. If the roads, the railways, the banks, the
insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities,
and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government;
if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all
that now devolves on them, became departments of the central
administration; if the employés of all these different enterprises were
appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for
every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular
constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country
free otherwise than in name. And the evil would be greater, the more
efficiently and scientifically the administrative machinery was
constructed--the more skilful the arrangements for obtaining the best
qualified hands and heads with which to work it. In England it has of
late been proposed that all the members of the civil service of
government should be selected by competitive examination, to obtain for
those employments the most intelligent and instructed persons
procurable; and much has been said and written for and against this
proposal. One of the arguments most insisted on by its opponents, is
that the occupation of a permanent official servant of the State does
not hold out sufficient prospects of emolument and importance to attract
the highest talents, which will always be able to find a more inviting
career in the professions, or in the service of companies and other
public bodies. One would not have been surprised if this argument had
been used by the friends of the proposition, as an answer to its
principal difficulty. Coming from the opponents it is strange enough.
What is urged as an objection is the safety-valve of the proposed
system. If indeed all the high talent of the country _could_ be drawn
into the service of the government, a proposal tending to bring about
that result might well inspire uneasiness. If every part of the business
of society which required organised concert, or large and comprehensive
views, were in the hands of the government, and if government offices
were universally filled by the ablest men, all the enlarged culture and
practised intelligence in the country, except the purely speculative,
would be concentrated in a numerous bureaucracy, to whom alone the rest
of the community would look for all things: the multitude for direction
and dictation in all they had to do; the able and aspiring for personal
advancement. To be admitted into the ranks of this bureaucracy, and when
admitted, to rise therein, would be the sole objects of ambition. Under
this régime, not only is the outside public ill-qualified, for want of
practical experience, to criticise or check the mode of operation of the
bureaucracy, but even if the accidents of despotic or the natural
working of popular institutions occasionally raise to the summit a ruler
or rulers of reforming inclinations, no reform can be effected which is
contrary to the interest of the bureaucracy. Such is the melancholy
condition of the Russian empire, as is shown in the accounts of those
who have had sufficient opportunity of observation. The Czar himself is
powerless against the bureaucratic body; he can send any one of them to
Siberia, but he cannot govern without them, or against their will. On
every decree of his they have a tacit veto, by merely refraining from
carrying it into effect. In countries of more advanced civilisation and
of a more insurrectionary spirit, the public, accustomed to expect
everything to be done for them by the State, or at least to do nothing
for themselves without asking from the State not only leave to do it,
but even how it is to be done, naturally hold the State responsible for
all evil which befalls them, and when the evil exceeds their amount of
patience, they rise against the government and make what is called a
revolution; whereupon somebody else, with or without legitimate
authority from the nation, vaults into the seat, issues his orders to
the bureaucracy, and everything goes on much as it did before; the
bureaucracy being unchanged, and nobody else being capable of taking
their place.

A very different spectacle is exhibited among a people accustomed to
transact their own business. In France, a large part of the people
having been engaged in military service, many of whom have held at least
the rank of non-commissioned officers, there are in every popular
insurrection several persons competent to take the lead, and improvise
some tolerable plan of action. What the French are in military affairs,
the Americans are in every kind of civil business; let them be left
without a government, every body of Americans is able to improvise one,
and to carry on that or any other public business with a sufficient
amount of intelligence, order, and decision. This is what every free
people ought to be: and a people capable of this is certain to be free;
it will never let itself be enslaved by any man or body of men because
these are able to seize and pull the reins of the central
administration. No bureaucracy can hope to make such a people as this do
or undergo anything that they do not like. But where everything is done
through the bureaucracy, nothing to which the bureaucracy is really
adverse can be done at all. The constitution of such countries is an
organisation of the experience and practical ability of the nation, into
a disciplined body for the purpose of governing the rest; and the more
perfect that organisation is in itself, the more successful in drawing
to itself and educating for itself the persons of greatest capacity from
all ranks of the community, the more complete is the bondage of all, the
members of the bureaucracy included. For the governors are as much the
slaves of their organisation and discipline, as the governed are of the
governors. A Chinese mandarin is as much the tool and creature of a
despotism as the humblest cultivator. An individual Jesuit is to the
utmost degree of abasement the slave of his order, though the order
itself exists for the collective power and importance of its members.

It is not, also, to be forgotten, that the absorption of all the
principal ability of the country into the governing body is fatal,
sooner or later, to the mental activity and progressiveness of the body
itself. Banded together as they are--working a system which, like all
systems, necessarily proceeds in a great measure by fixed rules--the
official body are under the constant temptation of sinking into indolent
routine, or, if they now and then desert that mill-horse round, of
rushing into some half-examined crudity which has struck the fancy of
some leading member of the corps: and the sole check to these closely
allied, though seemingly opposite, tendencies, the only stimulus which
can keep the ability of the body itself up to a high standard, is
liability to the watchful criticism of equal ability outside the body.
It is indispensable, therefore, that the means should exist,
independently of the government, of forming such ability, and furnishing
it with the opportunities and experience necessary for a correct
judgment of great practical affairs. If we would possess permanently a
skilful and efficient body of functionaries--above all, a body able to
originate and willing to adopt improvements; if we would not have our
bureaucracy degenerate into a pedantocracy, this body must not engross
all the occupations which form and cultivate the faculties required for
the government of mankind.

To determine the point at which evils, so formidable to human freedom
and advancement, begin, or rather at which they begin to predominate
over the benefits attending the collective application of the force of
society, under its recognised chiefs, for the removal of the obstacles
which stand in the way of its well-being; to secure as much of the
advantages of centralised power and intelligence, as can be had without
turning into governmental channels too great a proportion of the general
activity, is one of the most difficult and complicated questions in the
art of government. It is, in a great measure, a question of detail, in
which many and various considerations must be kept in view, and no
absolute rule can be laid down. But I believe that the practical
principle in which safety resides, the ideal to be kept in view, the
standard by which to test all arrangements intended for overcoming the
difficulty, may be conveyed in these words: the greatest dissemination
of power consistent with efficiency; but the greatest possible
centralisation of information, and diffusion of it from the centre.
Thus, in municipal administration, there would be, as in the New England
States, a very minute division among separate officers, chosen by the
localities, of all business which is not better left to the persons
directly interested; but besides this, there would be, in each
department of local affairs, a central superintendence, forming a branch
of the general government. The organ of this superintendence would
concentrate, as in a focus, the variety of information and experience
derived from the conduct of that branch of public business in all the
localities, from everything analogous which is done in foreign
countries, and from the general principles of political science. This
central organ should have a right to know all that is done, and its
special duty should be that of making the knowledge acquired in one
place available for others. Emancipated from the petty prejudices and
narrow views of a locality by its elevated position and comprehensive
sphere of observation, its advice would naturally carry much authority;
but its actual power, as a permanent institution, should, I conceive, be
limited to compelling the local officers to obey the laws laid down for
their guidance. In all things not provided for by general rules, those
officers should be left to their own judgment, under responsibility to
their constituents. For the violation of rules, they should be
responsible to law, and the rules themselves should be laid down by the
legislature; the central administrative authority only watching over
their execution, and if they were not properly carried into effect,
appealing, according to the nature of the case, to the tribunal to
enforce the law, or to the constituencies to dismiss the functionaries
who had not executed it according to its spirit. Such, in its general
conception, is the central superintendence which the Poor Law Board is
intended to exercise over the administrators of the Poor Rate throughout
the country. Whatever powers the Board exercises beyond this limit, were
right and necessary in that peculiar case, for the cure of rooted habits
of maladministration in matters deeply affecting not the localities
merely, but the whole community; since no locality has a moral right to
make itself by mismanagement a nest of pauperism, necessarily
overflowing into other localities, and impairing the moral and physical
condition of the whole labouring community. The powers of administrative
coercion and subordinate legislation possessed by the Poor Law Board
(but which, owing to the state of opinion on the subject, are very
scantily exercised by them), though perfectly justifiable in a case of
first-rate national interest, would be wholly out of place in the
superintendence of interests purely local. But a central organ of
information and instruction for all the localities, would be equally
valuable in all departments of administration. A government cannot have
too much of the kind of activity which does not impede, but aids and
stimulates, individual exertion and development. The mischief begins
when, instead of calling forth the activity and powers of individuals
and bodies, it substitutes its own activity for theirs; when, instead of
informing, advising, and, upon occasion, denouncing, it makes them work
in fetters, or bids them stand aside and does their work instead of
them. The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the
individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of
_their_ mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of
administrative skill, or of that semblance of it which practice gives,
in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, in order that
they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial
purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be
accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has
sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the
vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly,
it has preferred to banish.







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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Second Treatise of Government, by John Locke

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Title: Second Treatise of Government

Author: John Locke

Posting Date: July 28, 2010 [EBook #7370]
Release Date: January, 2005
[Last updated: September 5, 2017]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT ***




Produced by Dave Gowan.








SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT by JOHN LOCKE

Digitized by Dave Gowan <dgowan@tfn.net>. John Locke's "Second Treatise of Government"
was published in 1690. The complete unabridged text has been republished
several times in edited commentaries. This text is recovered entire from
the paperback book, "John Locke Second Treatise of Government", Edited,
with an Introduction, By C.B. McPherson, Hackett Publishing Company,
Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1980. None of the McPherson edition is
included in the Etext below; only the original words contained in the
1690 Locke text is included. The 1690 edition text is free of copyright.

       *       *       *       *       *


TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT


BY IOHN LOCKE


SALUS POPULI SUPREMA LEX ESTO

LONDON PRINTED MDCLXXXVIII

REPRINTED, THE SIXTH TIME, BY A. MILLAR, H. WOODFALL, 1. WHISTON AND B.
WHITE, 1. RIVINGTON, L. DAVIS AND C. REYMERS, R. BALDWIN, HAWES CLARKE
AND COLLINS; W. IOHNSTON, W. OWEN, 1. RICHARDSON, S. CROWDER, T.
LONGMAN, B. LAW, C. RIVINGTON, E. DILLY, R. WITHY, C. AND R. WARE, S.
BAKER, T. PAYNE, A. SHUCKBURGH, 1. HINXMAN

MDCCLXIII

TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT. IN THE FORMER THE FALSE PRINCIPLES AND
FOUNDATION OF SIR ROBERT FILMER AND HIS FOLLOWERS ARE DETECTED AND
OVERTHROWN. THE LATTER IS AN ESSAY CONCERNING THE TRUE ORIGINAL EXTENT
AND END OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.


1764 EDITOR'S NOTE The present Edition of this Book has not only been
collated with the first three Editions, which were published during the
Author's Life, but also has the Advantage of his last Corrections and
Improvements, from a Copy delivered by him to Mr. Peter Coste,
communicated to the Editor, and now lodged in Christ College, Cambridge.




PREFACE

Reader, thou hast here the beginning and end of a discourse concerning
government; what fate has otherwise disposed of the papers that should
have filled up the middle, and were more than all the rest, it is not
worth while to tell thee. These, which remain, I hope are sufficient to
establish the throne of our great restorer, our present King William; to
make good his title, in the consent of the people, which being the only
one of all lawful governments, he has more fully and clearly, than any
prince in Christendom; and to justify to the world the people of
England, whose love of their just and natural rights, with their
resolution to preserve them, saved the nation when it was on the very
brink of slavery and ruin. If these papers have that evidence, I flatter
myself is to be found in them, there will be no great miss of those
which are lost, and my reader may be satisfied without them: for I
imagine, I shall have neither the time, nor inclination to repeat my
pains, and fill up the wanting part of my answer, by tracing Sir Robert
again, through all the windings and obscurities, which are to be met
with in the several branches of his wonderful system. The king, and body
of the nation, have since so thoroughly confuted his Hypothesis, that I
suppose no body hereafter will have either the confidence to appear
against our common safety, and be again an advocate for slavery; or the
weakness to be deceived with contradictions dressed up in a popular
stile, and well-turned periods: for if any one will be at the pains,
himself, in those parts, which are here untouched, to strip Sir Robert's
discourses of the flourish of doubtful expressions, and endeavour to
reduce his words to direct, positive, intelligible propositions, and
then compare them one with another, he will quickly be satisfied, there
was never so much glib nonsense put together in well-sounding English.
If he think it not worth while to examine his works all thro', let him
make an experiment in that part, where he treats of usurpation; and let
him try, whether he can, with all his skill, make Sir Robert
intelligible, and consistent with himself, or common sense. I should not
speak so plainly of a gentleman, long since past answering, had not the
pulpit, of late years, publicly owned his doctrine, and made it the
current divinity of the times. It is necessary those men, who taking on
them to be teachers, have so dangerously misled others, should be openly
shewed of what authority this their Patriarch is, whom they have so
blindly followed, that so they may either retract what upon so ill
grounds they have vented, and cannot be maintained; or else justify
those principles which they preached up for gospel; though they had no
better an author than an English courtier: for I should not have writ
against Sir Robert, or taken the pains to shew his mistakes,
inconsistencies, and want of (what he so much boasts of, and pretends
wholly to build on) scripture-proofs, were there not men amongst us,
who, by crying up his books, and espousing his doctrine, save me from
the reproach of writing against a dead adversary. They have been so
zealous in this point, that, if I have done him any wrong, I cannot hope
they should spare me. I wish, where they have done the truth and the
public wrong, they would be as ready to redress it, and allow its just
weight to this reflection, viz. that there cannot be done a greater
mischief to prince and people, than the propagating wrong notions
concerning government; that so at last all times might not have reason
to complain of the Drum Ecclesiastic. If any one, concerned really for
truth, undertake the confutation of my Hypothesis, I promise him either
to recant my mistake, upon fair conviction; or to answer his
difficulties. But he must remember two things.

First, That cavilling here and there, at some expression, or little
incident of my discourse, is not an answer to my book.

Secondly, That I shall not take railing for arguments, nor think either
of these worth my notice, though I shall always look on myself as bound
to give satisfaction to any one, who shall appear to be conscientiously
scrupulous in the point, and shall shew any just grounds for his
scruples.

I have nothing more, but to advertise the reader, that Observations
stands for Observations on Hobbs, Milton, &c. and that a bare quotation
of pages always means pages of his Patriarcha, Edition 1680.




Book II




CHAPTER. I.

AN ESSAY CONCERNING THE TRUE ORIGINAL, EXTENT AND END OF CIVIL
GOVERNMENT


Sect. 1. It having been shewn in the foregoing discourse,

(<i>1</i>). That Adam had not, either by natural right of fatherhood, or by
positive donation from God, any such authority over his children, or
dominion over the world, as is pretended:

(<i>2</i>). That if he had, his heirs, yet, had no right to it:

(<i>3</i>). That if his heirs had, there being no law of nature nor positive
law of God that determines which is the right heir in all cases that may
arise, the right of succession, and consequently of bearing rule, could
not have been certainly determined:

(<i>4</i>). That if even that had been determined, yet the knowledge of which
is the eldest line of Adam's posterity, being so long since utterly
lost, that in the races of mankind and families of the world, there
remains not to one above another, the least pretence to be the eldest
house, and to have the right of inheritance:

All these premises having, as I think, been clearly made out, it is
impossible that the rulers now on earth should make any benefit, or
derive any the least shadow of authority from that, which is held to be
the fountain of all power, Adam's private dominion and paternal
jurisdiction; so that he that will not give just occasion to think that
all government in the world is the product only of force and violence,
and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where
the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder
and mischief, tumult, sedition and rebellion, (things that the followers
of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against) must of necessity find out
another rise of government, another original of political power, and
another way of designing and knowing the persons that have it, than what
Sir Robert Filmer hath taught us.

Sect. 2. To this purpose, I think it may not be amiss, to set down what
I take to be political power; that the power of a MAGISTRATE over a
subject may be distinguished from that of a FATHER over his children, a
MASTER over his servant, a HUSBAND over his wife, and a LORD over his
slave. All which distinct powers happening sometimes together in the
same man, if he be considered under these different relations, it may
help us to distinguish these powers one from wealth, a father of a
family, and a captain of a galley.

Sect. 3. POLITICAL POWER, then, I take to be a RIGHT of making laws with
penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the
regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the
community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the
commonwealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public
good.




CHAPTER. II.

OF THE STATE OF NATURE.


Sect. 4. TO understand political power right, and derive it from its
original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and
that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose
of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds
of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will
of any other man.

A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is
reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more
evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously
born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same
faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without
subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all
should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another,
and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted
right to dominion and sovereignty.

Sect. 5. This equality of men by nature, the judicious Hooker looks upon
as so evident in itself, and beyond all question, that he makes it the
foundation of that obligation to mutual love amongst men, on which he
builds the duties they owe one another, and from whence he derives the
great maxims of justice and charity. His words are,

/#
     The like natural inducement hath brought men to know that it is no
     less their duty, to love others than themselves; for seeing those
     things which are equal, must needs all have one measure; if I
     cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man's hands,
     as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have
     any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to
     satisfy the like desire, which is undoubtedly in other men, being
     of one and the same nature? To have any thing offered them
     repugnant to this desire, must needs in all respects grieve them as
     much as me; so that if I do harm, I must look to suffer, there
     being no reason that others should shew greater measure of love to
     me, than they have by me shewed unto them: my desire therefore to
     be loved of my equals in nature as much as possible may be,
     imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to them-ward fully the
     like affection; from which relation of equality between ourselves
     and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons
     natural reason hath drawn, for direction of life, no man is
     ignorant, Eccl. Pol. Lib. 1.


#/

Sect. 6. But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of
licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to
dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy
himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some
nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature
has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason,
which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that
being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his
life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship
of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one
sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his
business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to
last during his, not one another's pleasure: and being furnished with
like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be
supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to
destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the
inferior ranks of creatures are for our's. Every one, as he is bound to
preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like
reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as
much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it
be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what
tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or
goods of another.

Sect. 7. And that all men may be restrained from invading others rights,
and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of nature be observed,
which willeth the peace and preservation of all mankind, the execution
of the law of nature is, in that state, put into every man's hands,
whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to
such a degree, as may hinder its violation: for the law of nature would,
as all other laws that concern men in this world be in vain, if there
were no body that in the state of nature had a power to execute that
law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders. And if
any one in the state of nature may punish another for any evil he has
done, every one may do so: for in that state of perfect equality, where
naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another,
what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a
right to do.

Sect. 8. And thus, in the state of nature, one man comes by a power over
another; but yet no absolute or arbitrary power, to use a criminal, when
he has got him in his hands, according to the passionate heats, or
boundless extravagancy of his own will; but only to retribute to him, so
far as calm reason and conscience dictate, what is proportionate to his
transgression, which is so much as may serve for reparation and
restraint: for these two are the only reasons, why one man may lawfully
do harm to another, which is that we call punishment. In transgressing
the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule
than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set
to the actions of men, for their mutual security; and so he becomes
dangerous to mankind, the tye, which is to secure them from injury and
violence, being slighted and broken by him. Which being a trespass
against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided for
by the law of nature, every man upon this score, by the right he hath to
preserve mankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary,
destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such evil on any one,
who hath transgressed that law, as may make him repent the doing of it,
and thereby deter him, and by his example others, from doing the like
mischief. And in the case, and upon this ground, EVERY MAN HATH A RIGHT
TO PUNISH THE OFFENDER, AND BE EXECUTIONER OF THE LAW OF NATURE.

Sect. 9. I doubt not but this will seem a very strange doctrine to some
men: but before they condemn it, I desire them to resolve me, by what
right any prince or state can put to death, or punish an alien, for any
crime he commits in their country. It is certain their laws, by virtue
of any sanction they receive from the promulgated will of the
legislative, reach not a stranger: they speak not to him, nor, if they
did, is he bound to hearken to them. The legislative authority, by which
they are in force over the subjects of that commonwealth, hath no power
over him. Those who have the supreme power of making laws in England,
France or Holland, are to an Indian, but like the rest of the world, men
without authority: and therefore, if by the law of nature every man hath
not a power to punish offences against it, as he soberly judges the case
to require, I see not how the magistrates of any community can punish an
alien of another country; since, in reference to him, they can have no
more power than what every man naturally may have over another.

Sect, 10. Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and
varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes
degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature,
and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some
person or other, and some other man receives damage by his
transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has,
besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a
particular right to seek reparation from him that has done it: and any
other person, who finds it just, may also join with him that is injured,
and assist him in recovering from the offender so much as may make
satisfaction for the harm he has suffered.

Sect. 11. From these two distinct rights, the one of punishing the crime
for restraint, and preventing the like offence, which right of punishing
is in every body; the other of taking reparation, which belongs only to
the injured party, comes it to pass that the magistrate, who by being
magistrate hath the common right of punishing put into his hands, can
often, where the public good demands not the execution of the law, remit
the punishment of criminal offences by his own authority, but yet cannot
remit the satisfaction due to any private man for the damage he has
received. That, he who has suffered the damage has a right to demand in
his own name, and he alone can remit: the damnified person has this
power of appropriating to himself the goods or service of the offender,
by right of self-preservation, as every man has a power to punish the
crime, to prevent its being committed again, by the right he has of
preserving all mankind, and doing all reasonable things he can in order
to that end: and thus it is, that every man, in the state of nature, has
a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing the like
injury, which no reparation can compensate, by the example of the
punishment that attends it from every body, and also to secure men from
the attempts of a criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule
and measure God hath given to mankind, hath, by the unjust violence and
slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind,
and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or a tyger, one of those wild
savage beasts, with whom men can have no society nor security: and upon
this is grounded that great law of nature, Whoso sheddeth man's blood,
by man shall his blood be shed. And Cain was so fully convinced, that
every one had a right to destroy such a criminal, that after the murder
of his brother, he cries out, Every one that findeth me, shall slay me;
so plain was it writ in the hearts of all mankind.

Sect. 12. By the same reason may a man in the state of nature punish the
lesser breaches of that law. It will perhaps be demanded, with death? I
answer, each transgression may be punished to that degree, and with so
much severity, as will suffice to make it an ill bargain to the
offender, give him cause to repent, and terrify others from doing the
like. Every offence, that can be committed in the state of nature, may
in the state of nature be also punished equally, and as far forth as it
may, in a commonwealth: for though it would be besides my present
purpose, to enter here into the particulars of the law of nature, or its
measures of punishment; yet, it is certain there is such a law, and that
too, as intelligible and plain to a rational creature, and a studier of
that law, as the positive laws of commonwealths; nay, possibly plainer;
as much as reason is easier to be understood, than the fancies and
intricate contrivances of men, following contrary and hidden interests
put into words; for so truly are a great part of the municipal laws of
countries, which are only so far right, as they are founded on the law
of nature, by which they are to be regulated and interpreted.

Sect. 13. To this strange doctrine, viz. That in the state of nature
every one has the executive power of the law of nature, I doubt not but
it will be objected, that it is unreasonable for men to be judges in
their own cases, that self-love will make men partial to themselves and
their friends: and on the other side, that ill nature, passion and
revenge will carry them too far in punishing others; and hence nothing
but confusion and disorder will follow, and that therefore God hath
certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence
of men. I easily grant, that civil government is the proper remedy for
the inconveniencies of the state of nature, which must certainly be
great, where men may be judges in their own case, since it is easy to be
imagined, that he who was so unjust as to do his brother an injury, will
scarce be so just as to condemn himself for it: but I shall desire those
who make this objection, to remember, that absolute monarchs are but
men; and if government is to be the remedy of those evils, which
necessarily follow from men's being judges in their own cases, and the
state of nature is therefore not to be endured, I desire to know what
kind of government that is, and how much better it is than the state
of nature, where one man, commanding a multitude, has the liberty to be
judge in his own case, and may do to all his subjects whatever he
pleases, without the least liberty to any one to question or controul
those who execute his pleasure? and in whatsoever he doth, whether led
by reason, mistake or passion, must be submitted to? much better it is
in the state of nature, wherein men are not bound to submit to the
unjust will of another: and if he that judges, judges amiss in his own,
or any other case, he is answerable for it to the rest of mankind.

Sect. 14. It is often asked as a mighty objection, where are, or ever
were there any men in such a state of nature? To which it may suffice as
an answer at present, that since all princes and rulers of independent
governments all through the world, are in a state of nature, it is plain
the world never was, nor ever will be, without numbers of men in that
state. I have named all governors of independent communities, whether
they are, or are not, in league with others: for it is not every compact
that puts an end to the state of nature between men, but only this one
of agreeing together mutually to enter into one community, and make one
body politic; other promises, and compacts, men may make one with
another, and yet still be in the state of nature. The promises and
bargains for truck, &c. between the two men in the desert island,
mentioned by Garcilasso de la Vega, in his history of Peru; or between a
Swiss and an Indian, in the woods of America, are binding to them,
though they are perfectly in a state of nature, in reference to one
another: for truth and keeping of faith belongs to men, as men, and not
as members of society.

Sect. 15. To those that say, there were never any men in the state of
nature, I will not only oppose the authority of the judicious Hooker,
Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sect. 10, where he says,

/#
     The laws which have been hitherto mentioned, i.e. the laws of
     nature, do bind men absolutely, even as they are men, although they
     have never any settled fellowship, never any solemn agreement
     amongst themselves what to do, or not to do: but forasmuch as we
     are not by ourselves sufficient to furnish ourselves with competent
     store of things, needful for such a life as our nature doth desire,
     a life fit for the dignity of man; therefore to supply those
     defects and imperfections which are in us, as living single and
     solely by ourselves, we are naturally induced to seek communion and
     fellowship with others: this was the cause of men's uniting
     themselves at first in politic societies.


#/

But I moreover affirm, that all men are naturally in that state, and
remain so, till by their own consents they make themselves members of
some politic society; and I doubt not in the sequel of this discourse,
to make it very clear.




CHAPTER. III.

OF THE STATE OF WAR.


Sect. 16. THE state of war is a state of enmity and destruction: and
therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but a
sedate settled design upon another man's life, puts him in a state of
war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has
exposed his life to the other's power to be taken away by him, or any
one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his quarrel; it
being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which
threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature,
man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be
preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may
destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his
being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because
such men are not under the ties of the commonlaw of reason, have no
other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as
beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure
to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.

Sect. 17. And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into
his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with
him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his
life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his
power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me
there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for no body can
desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by
force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e. make me a
slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my
preservation; and reason bids me look on him, as an enemy to my
preservation, who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it;
so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me, thereby puts himself into
a state of war with me. He that, in the state of nature, would take away
the freedom that belongs to any one in that state, must necessarily be
supposed to have a design to take away every thing else, that freedom
being the foundation of all the rest; as he that, in the state of
society, would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society
or commonwealth, must be supposed to design to take away from them every
thing else, and so be looked on as in a state of war.

Sect. 18. This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in
the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther
than, by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away
his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he
has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretence be what it
will, I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my
liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing
else. And therefore it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put
himself into a state of war with me, i.e. kill him if I can; for to that
hazard does he justly expose himself, whoever introduces a state of war,
and is aggressor in it.

Sect. 19. And here we have the plain difference between the state of
nature and the state of war, which however some men have confounded, are
as far distant, as a state of peace, good will, mutual assistance and
preservation, and a state of enmity, malice, violence and mutual
destruction, are one from another. Men living together according to
reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge
between them, is properly the state of nature. But force, or a declared
design of force, upon the person of another, where there is no common
superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war: and it
is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against
an aggressor, tho' he be in society and a fellow subject. Thus a thief,
whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that
I am worth, I may kill, when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or
coat; because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it
cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which, if lost,
is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defence, and the right of
war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not
time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for
remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common
judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without
right, upon a man's person, makes a state of war, both where there is,
and is not, a common judge.

Sect. 20. But when the actual force is over, the state of war ceases
between those that are in society, and are equally on both sides
subjected to the fair determination of the law; because then there lies
open the remedy of appeal for the past injury, and to prevent future
harm: but where no such appeal is, as in the state of nature, for want
of positive laws, and judges with authority to appeal to, the state of
war once begun, continues, with a right to the innocent party to destroy
the other whenever he can, until the aggressor offers peace, and desires
reconciliation on such terms as may repair any wrongs he has already
done, and secure the innocent for the future; nay, where an appeal to
the law, and constituted judges, lies open, but the remedy is denied by
a manifest perverting of justice, and a barefaced wresting of the laws
to protect or indemnify the violence or injuries of some men, or party
of men, there it is hard to imagine any thing but a state of war: for
wherever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to
administer justice, it is still violence and injury, however coloured
with the name, pretences, or forms of law, the end whereof being to
protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiassed application of it, to
all who are under it; wherever that is not bona fide done, war is made
upon the sufferers, who having no appeal on earth to right them, they
are left to the only remedy in such cases, an appeal to heaven.

Sect. 21. To avoid this state of war (wherein there is no appeal but to
heaven, and wherein every the least difference is apt to end, where
there is no authority to decide between the contenders) is one great
reason of men's putting themselves into society, and quitting the state
of nature: for where there is an authority, a power on earth, from which
relief can be had by appeal, there the continuance of the state of war
is excluded, and the controversy is decided by that power. Had there
been any such court, any superior jurisdiction on earth, to determine
the right between Jephtha and the Ammonites, they had never come to a
state of war: but we see he was forced to appeal to heaven. The Lord the
Judge (says he) be judge this day between the children of Israel and the
children of Ammon, Judg. xi. 27. and then prosecuting, and relying on
his appeal, he leads out his army to battle: and therefore in such
controversies, where the question is put, who shall be judge? It cannot
be meant, who shall decide the controversy; every one knows what Jephtha
here tells us, that the Lord the Judge shall judge. Where there is no
judge on earth, the appeal lies to God in heaven. That question then
cannot mean, who shall judge, whether another hath put himself in a
state of war with me, and whether I may, as Jephtha did, appeal to
heaven in it? of that I myself can only be judge in my own conscience,
as I will answer it, at the great day, to the supreme judge of all men.




CHAPTER. IV.

OF SLAVERY.


Sect. 22. THE natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior
power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of
man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule. The liberty of
man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that
established, by consent, in the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of
any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall
enact, according to the trust put in it. Freedom then is not what Sir
Robert Filmer tells us, Observations, A. 55. a liberty for every one to
do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws:
but freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live
by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative
power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things,
where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant,
uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature
is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.

Sect. 23. This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary
to, and closely joined with a man's preservation, that he cannot part
with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together: for a
man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his
own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the
absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he
pleases. No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that
cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.
Indeed, having by his fault forfeited his own life, by some act that
deserves death; he, to whom he has forfeited it, may (when he has him in
his power) delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and
he does him no injury by it: for, whenever he finds the hardship of his
slavery outweigh the value of his life, it is in his power, by resisting
the will of his master, to draw on himself the death he desires.

Sect. 24. This is the perfect condition of slavery, which is nothing
else, but the state of war continued, between a lawful conqueror and a
captive: for, if once compact enter between them, and make an agreement
for a limited power on the one side, and obedience on the other, the
state of war and slavery ceases, as long as the compact endures: for, as
has been said, no man can, by agreement, pass over to another that which
he hath not in himself, a power over his own life.

I confess, we find among the Jews, as well as other nations, that men
did sell themselves; but, it is plain, this was only to drudgery, not to
slavery: for, it is evident, the person sold was not under an absolute,
arbitrary, despotical power: for the master could not have power to kill
him, at any time, whom, at a certain time, he was obliged to let go free
out of his service; and the master of such a servant was so far from
having an arbitrary power over his life, that he could not, at pleasure,
so much as maim him, but the loss of an eye, or tooth, set him free,
Exod. xxi.




CHAPTER. V.

OF PROPERTY.


Sect. 25. Whether we consider natural reason, which tells us, that men,
being once born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to
meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their
subsistence: or revelation, which gives us an account of those grants
God made of the world to Adam, and to Noah, and his sons, it is very
clear, that God, as king David says, Psal. cxv. 16. has given the earth
to the children of men; given it to mankind in common. But this being
supposed, it seems to some a very great difficulty, how any one should
ever come to have a property in any thing: I will not content myself to
answer, that if it be difficult to make out property, upon a supposition
that God gave the world to Adam, and his posterity in common, it is
impossible that any man, but one universal monarch, should have any
property upon a supposition, that God gave the world to Adam, and his
heirs in succession, exclusive of all the rest of his posterity. But I
shall endeavour to shew, how men might come to have a property in
several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that
without any express compact of all the commoners.

Sect. 26. God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also
given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life, and
convenience. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the
support and comfort of their being. And tho' all the fruits it naturally
produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are
produced by the spontaneous hand of nature; and no body has originally a
private dominion, exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of them, as
they are thus in their natural state: yet being given for the use of
men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or
other, before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any
particular man. The fruit, or venison, which nourishes the wild Indian,
who knows no enclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his,
and so his, i.e. a part of him, that another can no longer have any
right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his life.

Sect. 27. Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all
men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has
any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his
hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of
the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his
labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby
makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state
nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to
it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being
the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a
right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough,
and as good, left in common for others.

Sect. 28. He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak,
or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly
appropriated them to himself. No body can deny but the nourishment is
his. I ask then, when did they begin to be his? when he digested? or
when he eat? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he
picked them up? and it is plain, if the first gathering made them not
his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and
common: that added something to them more than nature, the common mother
of all, had done; and so they became his private right. And will any one
say, he had no right to those acorns or apples, he thus appropriated,
because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a
robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common? If
such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding
the plenty God had given him. We see in commons, which remain so by
compact, that it is the taking any part of what is common, and removing
it out of the state nature leaves it in, which begins the property;
without which the common is of no use. And the taking of this or that
part, does not depend on the express consent of all the commoners. Thus
the grass my horse has bit; the turfs my servant has cut; and the ore I
have digged in any place, where I have a right to them in common with
others, become my property, without the assignation or consent of any
body. The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state
they were in, hath fixed my property in them.

Sect. 29. By making an explicit consent of every commoner, necessary to
any one's appropriating to himself any part of what is given in common,
children or servants could not cut the meat, which their father or
master had provided for them in common, without assigning to every one
his peculiar part. Though the water running in the fountain be every
one's, yet who can doubt, but that in the pitcher is his only who drew
it out? His labour hath taken it out of the hands of nature, where it
was common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath thereby
appropriated it to himself.

Sect. 30. Thus this law of reason makes the deer that Indian's who hath
killed it; it is allowed to be his goods, who hath bestowed his labour
upon it, though before it was the common right of every one. And amongst
those who are counted the civilized part of mankind, who have made and
multiplied positive laws to determine property, this original law of
nature, for the beginning of property, in what was before common, still
takes place; and by virtue thereof, what fish any one catches in the
ocean, that great and still remaining common of mankind; or what
ambergrise any one takes up here, is by the labour that removes it out
of that common state nature left it in, made his property, who takes
that pains about it. And even amongst us, the hare that any one is
hunting, is thought his who pursues her during the chase: for being a
beast that is still looked upon as common, and no man's private
possession; whoever has employed so much labour about any of that kind,
as to find and pursue her, has thereby removed her from the state of
nature, wherein she was common, and hath begun a property.

Sect. 31. It will perhaps be objected to this, that if gathering the
acorns, or other fruits of the earth, &c. makes a right to them, then
any one may ingross as much as he will. To which I answer, Not so. The
same law of nature, that does by this means give us property, does also
bound that property too. God has given us all things richly, 1 Tim. vi.
12. is the voice of reason confirmed by inspiration. But how far has he
given it us? To enjoy. As much as any one can make use of to any
advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his labour fix a
property in: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and
belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy.
And thus, considering the plenty of natural provisions there was a long
time in the world, and the few spenders; and to how small a part of that
provision the industry of one man could extend itself, and ingross it to
the prejudice of others; especially keeping within the bounds, set by
reason, of what might serve for his use; there could be then little room
for quarrels or contentions about property so established.

Sect. 32. But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of
the earth, and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself; as
that which takes in and carries with it all the rest; I think it is
plain, that property in that too is acquired as the former. As much land
as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product
of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, inclose
it from the common. Nor will it invalidate his right, to say every body
else has an equal title to it; and therefore he cannot appropriate, he
cannot inclose, without the consent of all his fellow-commoners, all
mankind. God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded
man also to labour, and the penury of his condition required it of him.
God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth, i.e. improve it
for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was
his own, his labour. He that in obedience to this command of God,
subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it
something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor
could without injury take from him.

Sect. 33. Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving
it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as
good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in
effect, there was never the less left for others because of his
enclosure for himself: for he that leaves as much as another can make
use of, does as good as take nothing at all. No body could think himself
injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught,
who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst:
and the case of land and water, where there is enough of both, is
perfectly the same.

Sect. 34. God gave the world to men in common; but since he gave it them
for their benefit, and the greatest conveniencies of life they were
capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always
remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious
and rational, (and labour was to be his title to it;) not to the fancy
or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. He that had as good
left for his improvement, as was already taken up, needed not complain,
ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another's labour:
if he did, it is plain he desired the benefit of another's pains, which
he had no right to, and not the ground which God had given him in common
with others to labour on, and whereof there was as good left, as that
already possessed, and more than he knew what to do with, or his
industry could reach to.

Sect. 35. It is true, in land that is common in England, or any other
country, where there is plenty of people under government, who have
money and commerce, no one can inclose or appropriate any part, without
the consent of all his fellow-commoners; because this is left common by
compact, i.e. by the law of the land, which is not to be violated. And
though it be common, in respect of some men, it is not so to all
mankind; but is the joint property of this country, or this parish.
Besides, the remainder, after such enclosure, would not be as good to
the rest of the commoners, as the whole was when they could all make use
of the whole; whereas in the beginning and first peopling of the great
common of the world, it was quite otherwise. The law man was under, was
rather for appropriating. God commanded, and his wants forced him to
labour. That was his property which could not be taken from him
where-ever he had fixed it. And hence subduing or cultivating the earth,
and having dominion, we see are joined together. The one gave title to
the other. So that God, by commanding to subdue, gave authority so far
to appropriate: and the condition of human life, which requires labour
and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions.

Sect. 36. The measure of property nature has well set by the extent of
men's labour and the conveniencies of life: no man's labour could
subdue, or appropriate all; nor could his enjoyment consume more than a
small part; so that it was impossible for any man, this way, to intrench
upon the right of another, or acquire to himself a property, to the
prejudice of his neighbour, who would still have room for as good, and
as large a possession (after the other had taken out his) as before it
was appropriated. This measure did confine every man's possession to a
very moderate proportion, and such as he might appropriate to himself,
without injury to any body, in the first ages of the world, when men
were more in danger to be lost, by wandering from their company, in the
then vast wilderness of the earth, than to be straitened for want of
room to plant in. And the same measure may be allowed still without
prejudice to any body, as full as the world seems: for supposing a man,
or family, in the state they were at first peopling of the world by the
children of Adam, or Noah; let him plant in some inland, vacant places
of America, we shall find that the possessions he could make himself,
upon the measures we have given, would not be very large, nor, even to
this day, prejudice the rest of mankind, or give them reason to
complain, or think themselves injured by this man's incroachment, though
the race of men have now spread themselves to all the corners of the
world, and do infinitely exceed the small number was at the beginning.
Nay, the extent of ground is of so little value, without labour, that I
have heard it affirmed, that in Spain itself a man may be permitted to
plough, sow and reap, without being disturbed, upon land he has no other
title to, but only his making use of it. But, on the contrary, the
inhabitants think themselves beholden to him, who, by his industry on
neglected, and consequently waste land, has increased the stock of corn,
which they wanted. But be this as it will, which I lay no stress on;
this I dare boldly affirm, that the same rule of propriety, (viz.) that
every man should have as much as he could make use of, would hold still
in the world, without straitening any body; since there is land enough
in the world to suffice double the inhabitants, had not the invention of
money, and the tacit agreement of men to put a value on it, introduced
(by consent) larger possessions, and a right to them; which, how it has
done, I shall by and by shew more at large.

Sect. 37. This is certain, that in the beginning, before the desire of
having more than man needed had altered the intrinsic value of things,
which depends only on their usefulness to the life of man; or had
agreed, that a little piece of yellow metal, which would keep without
wasting or decay, should be worth a great piece of flesh, or a whole
heap of corn; though men had a right to appropriate, by their labour,
each one of himself, as much of the things of nature, as he could use:
yet this could not be much, nor to the prejudice of others, where the
same plenty was still left to those who would use the same industry. To
which let me add, that he who appropriates land to himself by his
labour, does not lessen, but increase the common stock of mankind: for
the provisions serving to the support of human life, produced by one
acre of inclosed and cultivated land, are (to speak much within compass)
ten times more than those which are yielded by an acre of land of an
equal richness lying waste in common. And therefore he that incloses
land, and has a greater plenty of the conveniencies of life from ten
acres, than he could have from an hundred left to nature, may truly be
said to give ninety acres to mankind: for his labour now supplies him
with provisions out of ten acres, which were but the product of an
hundred lying in common. I have here rated the improved land very low,
in making its product but as ten to one, when it is much nearer an
hundred to one: for I ask, whether in the wild woods and uncultivated
waste of America, left to nature, without any improvement, tillage or
husbandry, a thousand acres yield the needy and wretched inhabitants as
many conveniencies of life, as ten acres of equally fertile land do in
Devonshire, where they are well cultivated?

Before the appropriation of land, he who gathered as much of the wild
fruit, killed, caught, or tamed, as many of the beasts, as he could; he
that so imployed his pains about any of the spontaneous products of
nature, as any way to alter them from the state which nature put them
in, by placing any of his labour on them, did thereby acquire a
propriety in them: but if they perished, in his possession, without
their due use; if the fruits rotted, or the venison putrified, before he
could spend it, he offended against the common law of nature, and was
liable to be punished; he invaded his neighbour's share, for he had no
right, farther than his use called for any of them, and they might serve
to afford him conveniencies of life.

Sect. 38. The same measures governed the possession of land too:
whatsoever he tilled and reaped, laid up and made use of, before it
spoiled, that was his peculiar right; whatsoever he enclosed, and could
feed, and make use of, the cattle and product was also his. But if
either the grass of his enclosure rotted on the ground, or the fruit of
his planting perished without gathering, and laying up, this part of the
earth, notwithstanding his enclosure, was still to be looked on as
waste, and might be the possession of any other. Thus, at the beginning,
Cain might take as much ground as he could till, and make it his own
land, and yet leave enough to Abel's sheep to feed on; a few acres would
serve for both their possessions. But as families increased, and
industry inlarged their stocks, their possessions inlarged with the need
of them; but yet it was commonly without any fixed property in the
ground they made use of, till they incorporated, settled themselves
together, and built cities; and then, by consent, they came in time, to
set out the bounds of their distinct territories, and agree on limits
between them and their neighbours; and by laws within themselves,
settled the properties of those of the same society: for we see, that in
that part of the world which was first inhabited, and therefore like to
be best peopled, even as low down as Abraham's time, they wandered with
their flocks, and their herds, which was their substance, freely up and
down; and this Abraham did, in a country where he was a stranger. Whence
it is plain, that at least a great part of the land lay in common; that
the inhabitants valued it not, nor claimed property in any more than
they made use of. But when there was not room enough in the same place,
for their herds to feed together, they by consent, as Abraham and Lot
did, Gen. xiii. 5. separated and inlarged their pasture, where it best
liked them. And for the same reason Esau went from his father, and his
brother, and planted in mount Seir, Gen. xxxvi. 6.

Sect. 39. And thus, without supposing any private dominion, and property
in Adam, over all the world, exclusive of all other men, which can no
way be proved, nor any one's property be made out from it; but supposing
the world given, as it was, to the children of men in common, we see how
labour could make men distinct titles to several parcels of it, for
their private uses; wherein there could be no doubt of right, no room
for quarrel.

Sect. 40. Nor is it so strange, as perhaps before consideration it may
appear, that the property of labour should be able to over-balance the
community of land: for it is labour indeed that puts the difference of
value on every thing; and let any one consider what the difference is
between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat
or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any
husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour
makes the far greater part of the value. I think it will be but a very
modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth useful to
the life of man nine tenths are the effects of labour: nay, if we will
rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several
expences about them, what in them is purely owing to nature, and what to
labour, we shall find, that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are
wholly to be put on the account of labour.

Sect. 41. There cannot be a clearer demonstration of any thing, than
several nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land, and
poor in all the comforts of life; whom nature having furnished as
liberally as any other people, with the materials of plenty, i.e. a
fruitful soil, apt to produce in abundance, what might serve for food,
raiment, and delight; yet for want of improving it by labour, have not
one hundredth part of the conveniencies we enjoy: and a king of a large
and fruitful territory there, feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a
day-labourer in England.

Sect. 42. To make this a little clearer, let us but trace some of the
ordinary provisions of life, through their several progresses, before
they come to our use, and see how much they receive of their value from
human industry. Bread, wine and cloth, are things of daily use, and
great plenty; yet notwithstanding, acorns, water and leaves, or skins,
must be our bread, drink and cloathing, did not labour furnish us with
these more useful commodities: for whatever bread is more worth than
acorns, wine than water, and cloth or silk, than leaves, skins or moss,
that is wholly owing to labour and industry; the one of these being the
food and raiment which unassisted nature furnishes us with; the other,
provisions which our industry and pains prepare for us, which how much
they exceed the other in value, when any one hath computed, he will then
see how much labour makes the far greatest part of the value of things
we enjoy in this world: and the ground which produces the materials, is
scarce to be reckoned in, as any, or at most, but a very small part of
it; so little, that even amongst us, land that is left wholly to nature,
that hath no improvement of pasturage, tillage, or planting, is called,
as indeed it is, waste; and we shall find the benefit of it amount to
little more than nothing.

This shews how much numbers of men are to be preferred to largeness of
dominions; and that the increase of lands, and the right employing of
them, is the great art of government: and that prince, who shall be so
wise and godlike, as by established laws of liberty to secure protection
and encouragement to the honest industry of mankind, against the
oppression of power and narrowness of party, will quickly be too hard
for his neighbours: but this by the by.

To return to the argument in hand.

Sect. 43. An acre of land, that bears here twenty bushels of wheat, and
another in America, which, with the same husbandry, would do the like,
are, without doubt, of the same natural intrinsic value: but yet the
benefit mankind receives from the one in a year, is worth 5l. and from
the other possibly not worth a penny, if all the profit an Indian
received from it were to be valued, and sold here; at least, I may truly
say, not one thousandth. It is labour then which puts the greatest part
of value upon land, without which it would scarcely be worth any thing:
it is to that we owe the greatest part of all its useful products; for
all that the straw, bran, bread, of that acre of wheat, is more worth
than the product of an acre of as good land, which lies waste, is all
the effect of labour: for it is not barely the plough-man's pains, the
reaper's and thresher's toil, and the baker's sweat, is to be counted
into the bread we eat; the labour of those who broke the oxen, who
digged and wrought the iron and stones, who felled and framed the timber
employed about the plough, mill, oven, or any other utensils, which are
a vast number, requisite to this corn, from its being feed to be sown to
its being made bread, must all be charged on the account of labour, and
received as an effect of that: nature and the earth furnished only the
almost worthless materials, as in themselves. It would be a strange
catalogue of things, that industry provided and made use of, about every
loaf of bread, before it came to our use, if we could trace them; iron,
wood, leather, bark, timber, stone, bricks, coals, lime, cloth, dying
drugs, pitch, tar, masts, ropes, and all the materials made use of in
the ship, that brought any of the commodities made use of by any of the
workmen, to any part of the work; all which it would be almost
impossible, at least too long, to reckon up.

Sect. 44. From all which it is evident, that though the things of nature
are given in common, yet man, by being master of himself, and proprietor
of his own person, and the actions or labour of it, had still in himself
the great foundation of property; and that, which made up the great part
of what he applied to the support or comfort of his being, when
invention and arts had improved the conveniencies of life, was perfectly
his own, and did not belong in common to others.

Sect. 45. Thus labour, in the beginning, gave a right of property,
wherever any one was pleased to employ it upon what was common, which
remained a long while the far greater part, and is yet more than mankind
makes use of. Men, at first, for the most part, contented themselves
with what unassisted nature offered to their necessities: and though
afterwards, in some parts of the world, (where the increase of people
and stock, with the use of money, had made land scarce, and so of some
value) the several communities settled the bounds of their distinct
territories, and by laws within themselves regulated the properties of
the private men of their society, and so, by compact and agreement,
settled the property which labour and industry began; and the leagues
that have been made between several states and kingdoms, either expresly
or tacitly disowning all claim and right to the land in the others
possession, have, by common consent, given up their pretences to their
natural common right, which originally they had to those countries, and
so have, by positive agreement, settled a property amongst themselves,
in distinct parts and parcels of the earth; yet there are still great
tracts of ground to be found, which (the inhabitants thereof not having
joined with the rest of mankind, in the consent of the use of their
common money) lie waste, and are more than the people who dwell on it
do, or can make use of, and so still lie in common; tho' this can scarce
happen amongst that part of mankind that have consented to the use of
money.

Sect. 46. The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man,
and such as the necessity of subsisting made the first commoners of the
world look after, as it doth the Americans now, are generally things of
short duration; such as, if they are not consumed by use, will decay and
perish of themselves: gold, silver and diamonds, are things that fancy
or agreement hath put the value on, more than real use, and the
necessary support of life. Now of those good things which nature hath
provided in common, every one had a right (as hath been said) to as much
as he could use, and property in all that he could effect with his
labour; all that his industry could extend to, to alter from the state
nature had put it in, was his. He that gathered a hundred bushels of
acorns or apples, had thereby a property in them, they were his goods as
soon as gathered. He was only to look, that he used them before they
spoiled, else he took more than his share, and robbed others. And indeed
it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he
could make use of. If he gave away a part to any body else, so that it
perished not uselesly in his possession, these he also made use of. And
if he also bartered away plums, that would have rotted in a week, for
nuts that would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no injury;
he wasted not the common stock; destroyed no part of the portion of
goods that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselesly in
his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal,
pleased with its colour; or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for a
sparkling pebble or a diamond, and keep those by him all his life he
invaded not the right of others, he might heap up as much of these
durable things as he pleased; the exceeding of the bounds of his just
property not lying in the largeness of his possession, but the perishing
of any thing uselesly in it.

Sect. 47. And thus came in the use of money, some lasting thing that men
might keep without spoiling, and that by mutual consent men would take
in exchange for the truly useful, but perishable supports of life.

Sect. 48. And as different degrees of industry were apt to give men
possessions in different proportions, so this invention of money gave
them the opportunity to continue and enlarge them: for supposing an
island, separate from all possible commerce with the rest of the world,
wherein there were but an hundred families, but there were sheep, horses
and cows, with other useful animals, wholsome fruits, and land enough
for corn for a hundred thousand times as many, but nothing in the
island, either because of its commonness, or perishableness, fit to
supply the place of money; what reason could any one have there to
enlarge his possessions beyond the use of his family, and a plentiful
supply to its consumption, either in what their own industry produced,
or they could barter for like perishable, useful commodities, with
others? Where there is not some thing, both lasting and scarce, and so
valuable to be hoarded up, there men will not be apt to enlarge their
possessions of land, were it never so rich, never so free for them to
take: for I ask, what would a man value ten thousand, or an hundred
thousand acres of excellent land, ready cultivated, and well stocked too
with cattle, in the middle of the inland parts of America, where he had
no hopes of commerce with other parts of the world, to draw money to him
by the sale of the product? It would not be worth the enclosing, and we
should see him give up again to the wild common of nature, whatever was
more than would supply the conveniencies of life to be had there for him
and his family.

Sect. 49. Thus in the beginning all the world was America, and more so
than that is now; for no such thing as money was any where known. Find
out something that hath the use and value of money amongst his
neighbours, you shall see the same man will begin presently to enlarge
his possessions.

Sect. 50. But since gold and silver, being little useful to the life of
man in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its value only
from the consent of men, whereof labour yet makes, in great part, the
measure, it is plain, that men have agreed to a disproportionate and
unequal possession of the earth, they having, by a tacit and voluntary
consent, found out, a way how a man may fairly possess more land than he
himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the
overplus gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any
one; these metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the
possessor. This partage of things in an inequality of private
possessions, men have made practicable out of the bounds of society, and
without compact, only by putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly
agreeing in the use of money: for in governments, the laws regulate the
right of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive
constitutions.

Sect. 51. And thus, I think, it is very easy to conceive, without any
difficulty, how labour could at first begin a title of property in the
common things of nature, and how the spending it upon our uses bounded
it. So that there could then be no reason of quarrelling about title,
nor any doubt about the largeness of possession it gave. Right and
conveniency went together; for as a man had a right to all he could
employ his labour upon, so he had no temptation to labour for more than
he could make use of. This left no room for controversy about the title,
nor for encroachment on the right of others; what portion a man carved
to himself, was easily seen; and it was useless, as well as dishonest,
to carve himself too much, or take more than he needed.




CHAPTER. VI.

OF PATERNAL POWER.


Sect. 52. IT may perhaps be censured as an impertinent criticism, in a
discourse of this nature, to find fault with words and names, that have
obtained in the world: and yet possibly it may not be amiss to offer new
ones, when the old are apt to lead men into mistakes, as this of
paternal power probably has done, which seems so to place the power of
parents over their children wholly in the father, as if the mother had
no share in it; whereas, if we consult reason or revelation, we shall
find, she hath an equal title. This may give one reason to ask, whether
this might not be more properly called parental power? for whatever
obligation nature and the right of generation lays on children, it must
certainly bind them equal to both the concurrent causes of it. And
accordingly we see the positive law of God every where joins them
together, without distinction, when it commands the obedience of
children, Honour thy father and thy mother, Exod. xx. 12. Whosoever
curseth his father or his mother, Lev. xx. 9. Ye shall fear every man
his mother and his father, Lev. xix. 3. Children, obey your parents, &c.
Eph. vi. 1. is the stile of the Old and New Testament.

Sect. 53. Had but this one thing been well considered, without looking
any deeper into the matter, it might perhaps have kept men from running
into those gross mistakes, they have made, about this power of parents;
which, however it might, without any great harshness, bear the name of
absolute dominion, and regal authority, when under the title of paternal
power it seemed appropriated to the father, would yet have founded but
oddly, and in the very name shewn the absurdity, if this supposed
absolute power over children had been called parental; and thereby have
discovered, that it belonged to the mother too: for it will but very ill
serve the turn of those men, who contend so much for the absolute power
and authority of the fatherhood, as they call it, that the mother should
have any share in it; and it would have but ill supported the monarchy
they contend for, when by the very name it appeared, that that
fundamental authority, from whence they would derive their government of
a single person only, was not placed in one, but two persons jointly.
But to let this of names pass.

Sect. 54. Though I have said above, Chap. II. That all men by nature are
equal, I cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of equality: age or
virtue may give men a just precedency: excellency of parts and merit may
place others above the common level: birth may subject some, and
alliance or benefits others, to pay an observance to those to whom
nature, gratitude, or other respects, may have made it due: and yet all
this consists with the equality, which all men are in, in respect of
jurisdiction or dominion one over another; which was the equality I
there spoke of, as proper to the business in hand, being that equal
right, that every man hath, to his natural freedom, without being
subjected to the will or authority of any other man.

Sect. 55. Children, I confess, are not born in this full state of
equality, though they are born to it. Their parents have a sort of rule
and jurisdiction over them, when they come into the world, and for some
time after; but it is but a temporary one. The bonds of this subjection
are like the swaddling clothes they are wrapt up in, and supported by,
in the weakness of their infancy: age and reason as they grow up, loosen
them, till at length they drop quite off, and leave a man at his own
free disposal.

Sect. 56. Adam was created a perfect man, his body and mind in full
possession of their strength and reason, and so was capable, from the
first instant of his being to provide for his own support and
preservation, and govern his actions according to the dictates of the
law of reason which God had implanted in him. From him the world is
peopled with his descendants, who are all born infants, weak and
helpless, without knowledge or understanding: but to supply the defects
of this imperfect state, till the improvement of growth and age hath
removed them, Adam and Eve, and after them all parents were, by the law
of nature, under an obligation to preserve, nourish, and educate the
children they had begotten; not as their own workmanship, but the
workmanship of their own maker, the Almighty, to whom they were to be
accountable for them.

Sect. 57. The law, that was to govern Adam, was the same that was to
govern all his posterity, the law of reason. But his offspring having
another way of entrance into the world, different from him, by a natural
birth, that produced them ignorant and without the use of reason, they
were not presently under that law; for no body can be under a law, which
is not promulgated to him; and this law being promulgated or made known
by reason only, he that is not come to the use of his reason, cannot be
said to be under this law; and Adam's children, being not presently as
soon as born under this law of reason, were not presently free: for law,
in its true notion, is not so much the limitation as the direction of a
free and intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no
farther than is for the general good of those under that law: could they
be happier without it, the law, as an useless thing, would of itself
vanish; and that ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us in
only from bogs and precipices. So that, however it may be mistaken, the
end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge
freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where
there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from
restraint and violence from others; which cannot be, where there is no
law: but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do
what he lists: (for who could be free, when every other man's humour
might domineer over him?) but a liberty to dispose, and order as he
lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within
the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be
subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.

Sect. 58. The power, then, that parents have over their children, arises
from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their
off-spring, during the imperfect state of childhood. To inform the mind,
and govern the actions of their yet ignorant nonage, till reason shall
take its place, and ease them of that trouble, is what the children
want, and the parents are bound to: for God having given man an
understanding to direct his actions, has allowed him a freedom of will,
and liberty of acting, as properly belonging thereunto, within the
bounds of that law he is under. But whilst he is in an estate, wherein
he has not understanding of his own to direct his will, he is not to
have any will of his own to follow: he that understands for him, must
will for him too; he must prescribe to his will, and regulate his
actions; but when he comes to the estate that made his father a freeman,
the son is a freeman too.

Sect. 59. This holds in all the laws a man is under, whether natural or
civil. Is a man under the law of nature? What made him free of that law?
what gave him a free disposing of his property, according to his own
will, within the compass of that law? I answer, a state of maturity
wherein he might be supposed capable to know that law, that so he might
keep his actions within the bounds of it. When he has acquired that
state, he is presumed to know how far that law is to be his guide, and
how far he may make use of his freedom, and so comes to have it; till
then, some body else must guide him, who is presumed to know how far the
law allows a liberty. If such a state of reason, such an age of
discretion made him free, the same shall make his son free too. Is a man
under the law of England? What made him free of that law? that is, to
have the liberty to dispose of his actions and possessions according to
his own will, within the permission of that law? A capacity of knowing
that law; which is supposed by that law, at the age of one and twenty
years, and in some cases sooner. If this made the father free, it shall
make the son free too. Till then we see the law allows the son to have
no will, but he is to be guided by the will of his father or guardian,
who is to understand for him. And if the father die, and fail to
substitute a deputy in his trust; if he hath not provided a tutor, to
govern his son, during his minority, during his want of understanding,
the law takes care to do it; some other must govern him, and be a will
to him, till he hath attained to a state of freedom, and his
understanding be fit to take the government of his will. But after that,
the father and son are equally free as much as tutor and pupil after
nonage; equally subjects of the same law together, without any dominion
left in the father over the life, liberty, or estate of his son, whether
they be only in the state and under the law of nature, or under the
positive laws of an established government.

Sect. 60. But if, through defects that may happen out of the ordinary
course of nature, any one comes not to such a degree of reason, wherein
he might be supposed capable of knowing the law, and so living within
the rules of it, he is never capable of being a free man, he is never
let loose to the disposure of his own will (because he knows no bounds
to it, has not understanding, its proper guide) but is continued under
the tuition and government of others, all the time his own understanding
is uncapable of that charge. And so lunatics and ideots are never set
free from the government of their parents;

/#
     children, who are not as yet come unto those years whereat they may
     have; and innocents which are excluded by a natural defect from
     ever having; thirdly, madmen, which for the present cannot possibly
     have the use of right reason to guide themselves, have for their
     guide, the reason that guideth other men which are tutors over
     them, to seek and procure their good for them,
#/

says Hooker, Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sec. 7. All which seems no more than
that duty, which God and nature has laid on man, as well as other
creatures, to preserve their offspring, till they can be able to shift
for themselves, and will scarce amount to an instance or proof of
parents regal authority.

Sect. 61. Thus we are born free, as we are born rational; not that we
have actually the exercise of either: age, that brings one, brings with
it the other too. And thus we see how natural freedom and subjection to
parents may consist together, and are both founded on the same
principle. A child is free by his father's title, by his father's
understanding, which is to govern him till he hath it of his own. The
freedom of a man at years of discretion, and the subjection of a child
to his parents, whilst yet short of that age, are so consistent, and so
distinguishable, that the most blinded contenders for monarchy, by right
of fatherhood, cannot miss this difference; the most obstinate cannot
but allow their consistency: for were their doctrine all true, were the
right heir of Adam now known, and by that title settled a monarch in his
throne, invested with all the absolute unlimited power Sir Robert Filmer
talks of; if he should die as soon as his heir were born, must not the
child, notwithstanding he were never so free, never so much sovereign,
be in subjection to his mother and nurse, to tutors and governors, till
age and education brought him reason and ability to govern himself and
others? The necessities of his life, the health of his body, and the
information of his mind, would require him to be directed by the will of
others, and not his own; and yet will any one think, that this restraint
and subjection were inconsistent with, or spoiled him of that liberty or
sovereignty he had a right to, or gave away his empire to those who had
the government of his nonage? This government over him only prepared him
the better and sooner for it. If any body should ask me, when my son is
of age to be free? I shall answer, just when his monarch is of age to
govern. But at what time, says the judicious Hooker, Eccl. Pol. l. i.
sect. 6. a man may be said to have attained so far forth the use of
reason, as sufficeth to make him capable of those laws whereby he is
then bound to guide his actions: this is a great deal more easy for
sense to discern, than for any one by skill and learning to determine.

Sect. 62. Common-wealths themselves take notice of, and allow, that
there is a time when men are to begin to act like free men, and
therefore till that time require not oaths of fealty, or allegiance, or
other public owning of, or submission to the government of their
countries.

Sect. 63. The freedom then of man, and liberty of acting according to
his own will, is grounded on his having reason, which is able to
instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know
how far he is left to the freedom of his own will. To turn him loose to
an unrestrained liberty, before he has reason to guide him, is not the
allowing him the privilege of his nature to be free; but to thrust him
out amongst brutes, and abandon him to a state as wretched, and as much
beneath that of a man, as their's. This is that which puts the authority
into the parents hands to govern the minority of their children. God
hath made it their business to employ this care on their offspring, and
hath placed in them suitable inclinations of tenderness and concern to
temper this power, to apply it, as his wisdom designed it, to the
children's good, as long as they should need to be under it.

Sect. 64. But what reason can hence advance this care of the parents due
to their off-spring into an absolute arbitrary dominion of the father,
whose power reaches no farther, than by such a discipline, as he finds
most effectual, to give such strength and health to their bodies, such
vigour and rectitude to their minds, as may best fit his children to be
most useful to themselves and others; and, if it be necessary to his
condition, to make them work, when they are able, for their own
subsistence. But in this power the mother too has her share with the
father.

Sect. 65. Nay, this power so little belongs to the father by any
peculiar right of nature, but only as he is guardian of his children,
that when he quits his care of them, he loses his power over them, which
goes along with their nourishment and education, to which it is
inseparably annexed; and it belongs as much to the foster-father of an
exposed child, as to the natural father of another. So little power does
the bare act of begetting give a man over his issue; if all his care
ends there, and this be all the title he hath to the name and authority
of a father. And what will become of this paternal power in that part of
the world, where one woman hath more than one husband at a time? or in
those parts of America, where, when the husband and wife part, which
happens frequently, the children are all left to the mother, follow her,
and are wholly under her care and provision? If the father die whilst
the children are young, do they not naturally every where owe the same
obedience to their mother, during their minority, as to their father
were he alive? and will any one say, that the mother hath a legislative
power over her children? that she can make standing rules, which shall
be of perpetual obligation, by which they ought to regulate all the
concerns of their property, and bound their liberty all the course of
their lives? or can she inforce the observation of them with capital
punishments? for this is the proper power of the magistrate, of which
the father hath not so much as the shadow. His command over his children
is but temporary, and reaches not their life or property: it is but a
help to the weakness and imperfection of their nonage, a discipline
necessary to their education: and though a father may dispose of his own
possessions as he pleases, when his children are out of danger of
perishing for want, yet his power extends not to the lives or goods,
which either their own industry, or another's bounty has made their's;
nor to their liberty neither, when they are once arrived to the
infranchisement of the years of discretion. The father's empire then
ceases, and he can from thence forwards no more dispose of the liberty
of his son, than that of any other man: and it must be far from an
absolute or perpetual jurisdiction, from which a man may withdraw
himself, having license from divine authority to leave father and
mother, and cleave to his wife.

Sect. 66. But though there be a time when a child comes to be as free
from subjection to the will and command of his father, as the father
himself is free from subjection to the will of any body else, and they
are each under no other restraint, but that which is common to them
both, whether it be the law of nature, or municipal law of their
country; yet this freedom exempts not a son from that honour which he
ought, by the law of God and nature, to pay his parents. God having made
the parents instruments in his great design of continuing the race of
mankind, and the occasions of life to their children; as he hath laid on
them an obligation to nourish, preserve, and bring up their offspring;
so he has laid on the children a perpetual obligation of honouring their
parents, which containing in it an inward esteem and reverence to be
shewn by all outward expressions, ties up the child from any thing that
may ever injure or affront, disturb or endanger, the happiness or life
of those from whom he received his; and engages him in all actions of
defence, relief, assistance and comfort of those, by whose means he
entered into being, and has been made capable of any enjoyments of life:
from this obligation no state, no freedom can absolve children. But this
is very far from giving parents a power of command over their children,
or an authority to make laws and dispose as they please of their lives
or liberties. It is one thing to owe honour, respect, gratitude and
assistance; another to require an absolute obedience and submission. The
honour due to parents, a monarch in his throne owes his mother; and yet
this lessens not his authority, nor subjects him to her government.

Sect. 67. The subjection of a minor places in the father a temporary
government, which terminates with the minority of the child: and the
honour due from a child, places in the parents a perpetual right to
respect, reverence, support and compliance too, more or less, as the
father's care, cost, and kindness in his education, has been more or
less. This ends not with minority, but holds in all parts and conditions
of a man's life. The want of distinguishing these two powers, viz. that
which the father hath in the right of tuition, during minority, and the
right of honour all his life, may perhaps have caused a great part of
the mistakes about this matter: for to speak properly of them, the first
of these is rather the privilege of children, and duty of parents, than
any prerogative of paternal power. The nourishment and education of
their children is a charge so incumbent on parents for their children's
good, that nothing can absolve them from taking care of it: and though
the power of commanding and chastising them go along with it, yet God
hath woven into the principles of human nature such a tenderness for
their off-spring, that there is little fear that parents should use
their power with too much rigour; the excess is seldom on the severe
side, the strong byass of nature drawing the other way. And therefore
God almighty when he would express his gentle dealing with the
Israelites, he tells them, that though he chastened them, he chastened
them as a man chastens his son, Deut. viii. 5. i.e. with tenderness and
affection, and kept them under no severer discipline than what was
absolutely best for them, and had been less kindness to have slackened.
This is that power to which children are commanded obedience, that the
pains and care of their parents may not be increased, or ill rewarded.

Sect. 68. On the other side, honour and support, all that which
gratitude requires to return for the benefits received by and from them,
is the indispensable duty of the child, and the proper privilege of the
parents. This is intended for the parents advantage, as the other is for
the child's; though education, the parents duty, seems to have most
power, because the ignorance and infirmities of childhood stand in need
of restraint and correction; which is a visible exercise of rule, and a
kind of dominion. And that duty which is comprehended in the word
honour, requires less obedience, though the obligation be stronger on
grown, than younger children: for who can think the command, Children
obey your parents, requires in a man, that has children of his own, the
same submission to his father, as it does in his yet young children to
him; and that by this precept he were bound to obey all his father's
commands, if, out of a conceit of authority, he should have the
indiscretion to treat him still as a boy?

Sect. 69. The first part then of paternal power, or rather duty, which
is education, belongs so to the father, that it terminates at a certain
season; when the business of education is over, it ceases of itself, and
is also alienable before: for a man may put the tuition of his son in
other hands; and he that has made his son an apprentice to another, has
discharged him, during that time, of a great part of his obedience both
to himself and to his mother. But all the duty of honour, the other
part, remains never the less entire to them; nothing can cancel that: it
is so inseparable from them both, that the father's authority cannot
dispossess the mother of this right, nor can any man discharge his son
from honouring her that bore him. But both these are very far from a
power to make laws, and enforcing them with penalties, that may reach
estate, liberty, limbs and life. The power of commanding ends with
nonage; and though, after that, honour and respect, support and defence,
and whatsoever gratitude can oblige a man to, for the highest benefits
he is naturally capable of, be always due from a son to his parents; yet
all this puts no scepter into the father's hand, no sovereign power of
commanding. He has no dominion over his son's property, or actions; nor
any right, that his will should prescribe to his son's in all things;
however it may become his son in many things, not very inconvenient to
him and his family, to pay a deference to it.

Sect. 70. A man may owe honour and respect to an ancient, or wise man;
defence to his child or friend; relief and support to the distressed;
and gratitude to a benefactor, to such a degree, that all he has, all he
can do, cannot sufficiently pay it: but all these give no authority, no
right to any one, of making laws over him from whom they are owing. And
it is plain, all this is due not only to the bare title of father; not
only because, as has been said, it is owing to the mother too; but
because these obligations to parents, and the degrees of what is
required of children, may be varied by the different care and kindness,
trouble and expence, which is often employed upon one child more than
another.

Sect. 71. This shews the reason how it comes to pass, that parents in
societies, where they themselves are subjects, retain a power over their
children, and have as much right to their subjection, as those who are
in the state of nature. Which could not possibly be, if all political
power were only paternal, and that in truth they were one and the same
thing: for then, all paternal power being in the prince, the subject
could naturally have none of it. But these two powers, political and
paternal, are so perfectly distinct and separate; are built upon so
different foundations, and given to so different ends, that every
subject that is a father, has as much a paternal power over his
children, as the prince has over his: and every prince, that has
parents, owes them as much filial duty and obedience, as the meanest of
his subjects do to their's; and can therefore contain not any part or
degree of that kind of dominion, which a prince or magistrate has over
his subject.

Sect. 72. Though the obligation on the parents to bring up their
children, and the obligation on children to honour their parents,
contain all the power on the one hand, and submission on the other,
which are proper to this relation, yet there is another power ordinarily
in the father, whereby he has a tie on the obedience of his children;
which tho' it be common to him with other men, yet the occasions of
shewing it, almost constantly happening to fathers in
their private families, and the instances of it elsewhere being rare,
and less taken notice of, it passes in the world for a part of paternal
jurisdiction. And this is the power men generally have to bestow their
estates on those who please them best; the possession of the father
being the expectation and inheritance of the children, ordinarily in
certain proportions, according to the law and custom of each country;
yet it is commonly in the father's power to bestow it with a more
sparing or liberal hand, according as the behaviour of this or that
child hath comported with his will and humour.

Sect. 73. This is no small tie on the obedience of children: and there
being always annexed to the enjoyment of land, a submission to the
government of the country, of which that land is a part; it has been
commonly supposed, that a father could oblige his posterity to that
government, of which he himself was a subject, and that his compact held
them; whereas, it being only a necessary condition annexed to the land,
and the inheritance of an estate which is under that government, reaches
only those who will take it on that condition, and so is no natural tie
or engagement, but a voluntary submission: for every man's children
being by nature as free as himself, or any of his ancestors ever were,
may, whilst they are in that freedom, choose what society they will join
themselves to, what commonwealth they will put themselves under. But if
they will enjoy the inheritance of their ancestors, they must take it on
the same terms their ancestors had it, and submit to all the conditions
annexed to such a possession. By this power indeed fathers oblige their
children to obedience to themselves, even when they are past minority,
and most commonly too subject them to this or that political power: but
neither of these by any peculiar right of fatherhood, but by the reward
they have in their hands to inforce and recompence such a compliance;
and is no more power than what a French man has over an English man, who
by the hopes of an estate he will leave him, will certainly have a
strong tie on his obedience: and if, when it is left him, he will enjoy
it, he must certainly take it upon the conditions annexed to the
possession of land in that country where it lies, whether it be France
or England.

Sect. 74. To conclude then, tho' the father's power of commanding
extends no farther than the minority of his children, and to a degree
only fit for the discipline and government of that age; and tho' that
honour and respect, and all that which the Latins called piety, which
they indispensably owe to their parents all their life-time, and in all
estates, with all that support and defence is due to them, gives the
father no power of governing, i.e. making laws and enacting penalties on
his children; though by all this he has no dominion over the property or
actions of his son: yet it is obvious to conceive how easy it was, in
the first ages of the world, and in places still, where the thinness of
people gives families leave to separate into unpossessed quarters, and
they have room to remove or plant themselves in yet vacant habitations,
for the father of the family to become the prince of it;* he had been a
ruler from the beginning of the infancy of his children: and since
without some government it would be hard for them to live together, it
was likeliest it should, by the express or tacit consent of the children
when they were grown up, be in the father, where it seemed without any
change barely to continue; when indeed nothing more was required to it,
than the permitting the father to exercise alone, in his family, that
executive power of the law of nature, which every free man naturally
hath, and by that permission resigning up to him a monarchical power,
whilst they remained in it. But that this was not by any paternal right,
but only by the consent of his children, is evident from hence, that no
body doubts, but if a stranger, whom chance or business had brought to
his family, had there killed any of his children, or committed any other
fact, he might condemn and put him to death, or other-wise have punished
him, as well as any of his children; which it was impossible he should
do by virtue of any paternal authority over one who was not his child,
but by virtue of that executive power of the law of nature, which, as a
man, he had a right to: and he alone could punish him in his family,
where the respect of his children had laid by the exercise of such a
power, to give way to the dignity and authority they were willing should
remain in him, above the rest of his family.

(*It is no improbable opinion therefore, which the archphilosopher was
of, that the chief person in every houshold was always, as it were, a
king: so when numbers of housholds joined themselves in civil societies
together, kings were the first kind of governors amongst them, which is
also, as it seemeth, the reason why the name of fathers continued still
in them, who, of fathers, were made rulers; as also the ancient custom
of governors to do as Melchizedec, and being kings, to exercise the
office of priests, which fathers did at the first, grew perhaps by the
same occasion. Howbeit, this is not the only kind of regiment that has
been received in the world. The inconveniences of one kind have caused
sundry others to be devised; so that in a word, all public regiment, of
what kind soever, seemeth evidently to have risen from the deliberate
advice, consultation and composition between men, judging it convenient
and behoveful; there being no impossibility in nature considered by
itself, but that man might have lived without any public regiment,
Hooker's Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sect. 10.)

Sect. 75. Thus it was easy, and almost natural for children, by a tacit,
and scarce avoidable consent, to make way for the father's authority and
government. They had been accustomed in their childhood to follow his
direction, and to refer their little differences to him, and when they
were men, who fitter to rule them? Their little properties, and less
covetousness, seldom afforded greater controversies; and when any should
arise, where could they have a fitter umpire than he, by whose care they
had every one been sustained and brought up, and who had a tenderness
for them all? It is no wonder that they made no distinction betwixt
minority and full age; nor looked after one and twenty, or any other age
that might make them the free disposers of themselves and fortunes, when
they could have no desire to be out of their pupilage: the government
they had been under, during it, continued still to be more their
protection than restraint; and they could no where find a greater
security to their peace, liberties, and fortunes, than in the rule of a
father.

Sect. 76. Thus the natural fathers of families, by an insensible change,
became the politic monarchs of them too: and as they chanced to live
long, and leave able and worthy heirs, for several successions, or
otherwise; so they laid the foundations of hereditary, or elective
kingdoms, under several constitutions and manners, according as chance,
contrivance, or occasions happened to mould them. But if princes have
their titles in their fathers right, and it be a sufficient proof of the
natural right of fathers to political authority, because they commonly
were those in whose hands we find, de facto, the exercise of government:
I say, if this argument be good, it will as strongly prove, that all
princes, nay princes only, ought to be priests, since it is as certain,
that in the beginning, the father of the family was priest, as that he
was ruler in his own houshold.




CHAPTER. VII.

OF POLITICAL OR CIVIL SOCIETY.


Sect. 77. GOD having made man such a creature, that in his own judgment,
it was not good for him to be alone, put him under strong obligations of
necessity, convenience, and inclination to drive him into society, as
well as fitted him with understanding and language to continue and enjoy
it. The first society was between man and wife, which gave beginning to
that between parents and children; to which, in time, that between
master and servant came to be added: and though all these might, and
commonly did meet together, and make up but one family, wherein the
master or mistress of it had some sort of rule proper to a family; each
of these, or all together, came short of political society, as we shall
see, if we consider the different ends, ties, and bounds of each of
these.

Sect. 78. Conjugal society is made by a voluntary compact between man
and woman; and tho' it consist chiefly in such a communion and right in
one another's bodies as is necessary to its chief end, procreation; yet
it draws with it mutual support and assistance, and a communion of
interests too, as necessary not only to unite their care and affection,
but also necessary to their common off-spring, who have a right to be
nourished, and maintained by them, till they are able to provide for
themselves.

Sect. 79. For the end of conjunction, between male and female, being not
barely procreation, but the continuation of the species; thisconjunction
betwixt male and female ought to last, even after procreation, so long
as is necessary to the nourishment and support of the young ones, who
are to be sustained by those that got them, till they are able to shift
and provide for themselves. This rule, which the infinite wise maker
hath set to the works of his hands, we find the inferior creatures
steadily obey. In those viviparous animals which feed on grass, the
conjunction between male and female lasts no longer than the very act of
copulation; because the teat of the dam being sufficient to nourish the
young, till it be able to feed on grass, the male only begets, but
concerns not himself for the female or young, to whose sustenance he can
contribute nothing. But in beasts of prey the conjunction lasts longer:
because the dam not being able well to subsist herself, and nourish her
numerous off-spring by her own prey alone, a more laborious, as well as
more dangerous way of living, than by feeding on grass, the assistance
of the male is necessary to the maintenance of their common family,
which cannot subsist till they are able to prey for themselves, but by
the joint care of male and female. The same is to be observed in all
birds, (except some domestic ones, where plenty of food excuses the cock
from feeding, and taking care of the young brood) whose young needing
food in the nest, the cock and hen continue mates, till the young are
able to use their wing, and provide for themselves.

Sect. 80. And herein I think lies the chief, if not the only reason, why
the male and female in mankind are tied to a longer conjunction than
other creatures, viz. because the female is capable of conceiving, and
de facto is commonly with child again, and brings forth too a new birth,
long before the former is out of a dependency for support on his parents
help, and able to shift for himself, and has all the assistance is due
to him from his parents: whereby the father, who is bound to take care
for those he hath begot, is under an obligation to continue in conjugal
society with the same woman longer than other creatures, whose young
being able to subsist of themselves, before the time of procreation
returns again, the conjugal bond dissolves of itself, and they are at
liberty, till Hymen at his usual anniversary season summons them again
to chuse new mates. Wherein one cannot but admire the wisdom of the
great Creator, who having given to man foresight, and an ability to lay
up for the future, as well as to supply the present necessity, hath made
it necessary, that society of man and wife should be more lasting, than
of male and female amongst other creatures; that so their industry might
be encouraged, and their interest better united, to make provision and
lay up goods for their common issue, which uncertain mixture, or easy
and frequent solutions of conjugal society would mightily disturb.

Sect. 81. But tho' these are ties upon mankind, which make the conjugal
bonds more firm and lasting in man, than the other species of animals;
yet it would give one reason to enquire, why this compact, where
procreation and education are secured, and inheritance taken care for,
may not be made determinable, either by consent, or at a certain time,
or upon certain conditions, as well as any other voluntary compacts,
there being no necessity in the nature of the thing, nor to the ends of
it, that it should always be for life; I mean, to such as are under no
restraint of any positive law, which ordains all such contracts to be
perpetual.

Sect. 82. But the husband and wife, though they have but one common
concern, yet having different understandings, will unavoidably sometimes
have different wills too; it therefore being necessary that the last
determination, i. e. the rule, should be placed somewhere; it naturally
falls to the man's share, as the abler and the stronger. But this
reaching but to the things of their common interest and property, leaves
the wife in the full and free possession of what by contract is her
peculiar right, and gives the husband no more power over her life than
she has over his; the power of the husband being so far from that of an
absolute monarch, that the wife has in many cases a liberty to separate
from him, where natural right, or their contract allows it; whether that
contract be made by themselves in the state of nature, or by the customs
or laws of the country they live in; and the children upon such
separation fall to the father or mother's lot, as such contract does
determine.

Sect. 83. For all the ends of marriage being to be obtained under
politic government, as well as in the state of nature, the civil
magistrate doth not abridge the right or power of either naturally
necessary to those ends, viz. procreation and mutual support and
assistance whilst they are together; but only decides any controversy
that may arise between man and wife about them. If it were otherwise,
and that absolute sovereignty and power of life and death naturally
belonged to the husband, and were necessary to the society between man
and wife, there could be no matrimony in any of those countries where
the husband is allowed no such absolute authority. But the ends of
matrimony requiring no such power in the husband, the condition of
conjugal society put it not in him, it being not at all necessary to
that state. Conjugal society could subsist and attain its ends without
it; nay, community of goods, and the power over them, mutual assistance
and maintenance, and other things belonging to conjugal society, might
be varied and regulated by that contract which unites man and wife in
that society, as far as may consist with procreation and the bringing up
of children till they could shift for themselves; nothing being
necessary to any society, that is not necessary to the ends for which it
is made.

Sect. 84. The society betwixt parents and children, and the distinct
rights and powers belonging respectively to them, I have treated of so
largely, in the foregoing chapter, that I shall not here need to say any
thing of it. And I think it is plain, that it is far different from a
politic society.

Sect. 85. Master and servant are names as old as history, but given to
those of far different condition; for a freeman makes himself a servant
to another, by selling him, for a certain time, the service he
undertakes to do, in exchange for wages he is to receive: and though
this commonly puts him into the family of his master, and under the
ordinary discipline thereof; yet it gives the master but a temporary
power over him, and no greater than what is contained in the contract
between them. But there is another sort of servants, which by a peculiar
name we call slaves, who being captives taken in a just war, are by the
right of nature subjected to the absolute dominion and arbitrary power
of their masters. These men having, as I say, forfeited their lives, and
with it their liberties, and lost their estates; and being in the state
of slavery, not capable of any property, cannot in that state be
considered as any part of civil society; the chief end whereof is the
preservation of property.

Sect. 86. Let us therefore consider a master of a family with all these
subordinate relations of wife, children, servants, and slaves, united
under the domestic rule of a family; which, what resemblance soever it
may have in its order, offices, and number too, with a little
commonwealth, yet is very far from it, both in its constitution, power
and end: or if it must be thought a monarchy, and the paterfamilias the
absolute monarch in it, absolute monarchy will have but a very shattered
and short power, when it is plain, by what has been said before, that
the master of the family has a very distinct and differently limited
power, both as to time and extent, over those several persons that are
in it; for excepting the slave (and the family is as much a family, and
his power as paterfamilias as great, whether there be any slaves in his
family or no) he has no legislative power of life and death over any of
them, and none too but what a mistress of a family may have as well as
he. And he certainly can have no absolute power over the whole family,
who has but a very limited one over every individual in it. But how a
family, or any other society of men, differ from that which is properly
political society, we shall best see, by considering wherein political
society itself consists.

Sect. 87. Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect
freedom, and an uncontrouled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges
of the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in
the world, hath by nature a power, not only to preserve his property,
that is, his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and attempts
of other men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of that law in
others, as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death itself,
in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires
it. But because no political society can be, nor subsist, without having
in itself the power to preserve the property, and in order thereunto,
punish the offences of all those of that society; there, and there only
is political society, where every one of the members hath quitted this
natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all
cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law
established by it. And thus all private judgment of every particular
member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire, by settled
standing rules, indifferent, and the same to all parties; and by men
having authority from the community, for the execution of those rules,
decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that
society concerning any matter of right; and punishes those offences
which any member hath committed against the society, with such penalties
as the law has established: whereby it is easy to discern, who are, and
who are not, in political society together. Those who are united into
one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to,
with authority to decide controversies between them, and punish
offenders, are in civil society one with another: but those who have no
such common appeal, I mean on earth, are still in the state of nature,
each being, where there is no other, judge for himself, and executioner;
which is, as I have before shewed it, the perfect state of nature.

Sect. 88. And thus the commonwealth comes by a power to set down what
punishment shall belong to the several transgressions which they think
worthy of it, committed amongst the members of that society, (which is
the power of making laws) as well as it has the power to punish any
injury done unto any of its members, by any one that is not of it,
(which is the power of war and peace;) and all this for the preservation
of the property of all the members of that society, as far as is
possible. But though every man who has entered into civil society, and
is become a member of any commonwealth, has thereby quitted his power to
punish offences, against the law of nature, in prosecution of his own
private judgment, yet with the judgment of offences, which he has given
up to the legislative in all cases, where he can appeal to the
magistrate, he has given a right to the commonwealth to employ his
force, for the execution of the judgments of the commonwealth, whenever
he shall be called to it; which indeed are his own judgments, they being
made by himself, or his representative. And herein we have the original
of the legislative and executive power of civil society, which is to
judge by standing laws, how far offences are to be punished, when
committed within the commonwealth; and also to determine, by occasional
judgments founded on the present circumstances of the fact, how far
injuries from without are to be vindicated; and in both these to employ
all the force of all the members, when there shall be need.

Sect. 89. Where-ever therefore any number of men are so united into one
society, as to quit every one his executive power of the law of nature,
and to resign it to the public, there and there only is a political, or
civil society. And this is done, where-ever any number of men, in the
state of nature, enter into society to make one people, one body
politic, under one supreme government; or else when any one joins
himself to, and incorporates with any government already made: for
hereby he authorizes the society, or which is all one, the legislative
thereof, to make laws for him, as the public good of the society shall
require; to the execution whereof, his own assistance (as to his own
decrees) is due. And this puts men out of a state of nature into that of
a commonwealth, by setting up a judge on earth, with authority to
determine all the controversies, and redress the injuries that may
happen to any member of the commonwealth; which judge is the
legislative, or magistrates appointed by it. And where-ever there are
any number of men, however associated, that have no such decisive power
to appeal to, there they are still in the state of nature.

Sect. 90. Hence it is evident, that absolute monarchy, which by some men
is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with
civil society, and so can be no form of civil-government at all: for the
end of civil society, being to avoid, and remedy those inconveniencies
of the state of nature, which necessarily follow from every man's being
judge in his own case, by setting up a known authority, to which every
one of that society may appeal upon any injury received, or controversy
that may arise, and which every one of the society ought to obey;*
where-ever any persons are, who have not such an authority to appeal to,
for the decision of any difference between them, there those persons are
still in the state of nature; and so is every absolute prince, in
respect of those who are under his dominion.

(*The public power of all society is above every soul contained in the
same society; and the principal use of that power is, to give laws unto
all that are under it, which laws in such cases we must obey, unless
there be reason shewed which may necessarily inforce, that the law of
reason, or of God, doth enjoin the contrary, Hook. Eccl. Pol. l. i.
sect. 16.)

Sect. 91. For he being supposed to have all, both legislative and
executive power in himself alone, there is no judge to be found, no
appeal lies open to any one, who may fairly, and indifferently, and with
authority decide, and from whose decision relief and redress may be
expected of any injury or inconviency, that may be suffered from the
prince, or by his order: so that such a man, however intitled, Czar, or
Grand Seignior, or how you please, is as much in the state of nature,
with all under his dominion, as he is with the rest of mankind: for
where-ever any two men are, who have no standing rule, and common judge
to appeal to on earth, for the determination of controversies of right
betwixt them, there they are still in the state of* nature, and under
all the inconveniencies of it, with only this woful difference to the
subject, or rather slave of an absolute prince: that whereas, in the
ordinary state of nature, he has a liberty to judge of his right, and
according to the best of his power, to maintain it; now, whenever his
property is invaded by the will and order of his monarch, he has not
only no appeal, as those in society ought to have, but as if he were
degraded from the common state of rational creatures, is denied a
liberty to judge of, or to defend his right; and so is exposed to all
the misery and inconveniencies, that a man can fear from one, who being
in the unrestrained state of nature, is yet corrupted with flattery, and
armed with power.

(*To take away all such mutual grievances, injuries and wrongs, i.e.
such as attend men in the state of nature, there was no way but only by
growing into composition and agreement amongst themselves, by ordaining
some kind of govemment public, and by yielding themselves subject
thereunto, that unto whom they granted authority to rule and govem, by
them the peace, tranquillity and happy estate of the rest might be
procured. Men always knew that where force and injury was offered, they
might be defenders of themselves; they knew that however men may seek
their own commodity, yet if this were done with injury unto others, it
was not to be suffered, but by all men, and all good means to be
withstood. Finally, they knew that no man might in reason take upon him
to determine his own right, and according to his own determination
proceed in maintenance thereof, in as much as every man is towards
himself, and them whom he greatly affects, partial; and therefore that
strifes and troubles would be endless, except they gave their common
consent, all to be ordered by some, whom they should agree upon, without
which consent there would be no reason that one man should take upon him
to be lord or judge over another, Hooker's Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.)

Sect. 92. For he that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and
corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of
this, or any other age, to be convinced of the contrary. He that would
have been insolent and injurious in the woods of America, would not
probably be much better in a throne; where perhaps learning and religion
shall be found out to justify all that he shall do to his subjects, and
the sword presently silence all those that dare question it: for what
the protection of absolute monarchy is, what kind of fathers of their
countries it makes princes to be and to what a degree of happiness and
security it carries civil society, where this sort of government is
grown to perfection, he that will look into the late relation of Ceylon,
may easily see.

Sect. 93. In absolute monarchies indeed, as well as other governments of
the world, the subjects have an appeal to the law, and judges to decide
any controversies, and restrain any violence that may happen betwixt the
subjects themselves, one amongst another. This every one thinks
necessary, and believes he deserves to be thought a declared enemy to
society and mankind, who should go about to take it away. But whether
this be from a true love of mankind and society, and such a charity as
we owe all one to another, there is reason to doubt: for this is no more
than what every man, who loves his own power, profit, or greatness, may
and naturally must do, keep those animals from hurting, or destroying
one another, who labour and drudge only for his pleasure and advantage;
and so are taken care of, not out of any love the master has for them,
but love of himself, and the profit they bring him: for if it be asked,
what security, what fence is there, in such a state, against the
violence and oppression of this absolute ruler? the very question can
scarce be borne. They are ready to tell you, that it deserves death only
to ask after safety. Betwixt subject and subject, they will grant, there
must be measures, laws and judges, for their mutual peace and security:
but as for the ruler, he ought to be absolute, and is above all such
circumstances; because he has power to do more hurt and wrong, it is
right when he does it. To ask how you may be guarded from harm, or
injury, on that side where the strongest hand is to do it, is presently
the voice of faction and rebellion: as if when men quitting the state of
nature entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one,
should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should still retain
all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with power, and made
licentious by impunity. This is to think, that men are so foolish, that
they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or
foxes; but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.

Sect. 94. But whatever flatterers may talk to amuse people's
understandings, it hinders not men from feeling; and when they perceive,
that any man, in what station soever, is out of the bounds of the civil
society which they are of, and that they have no appeal on earth against
any harm, they may receive from him, they are apt to think themselves in
the state of nature, in respect of him whom they find to be so; and to
take care, as soon as they can, to have that safety and security in
civil society, for which it was first instituted, and for which only
they entered into it. And therefore, though perhaps at first, (as shall
be shewed more at large hereafter in the following part of this
discourse) some one good and excellent man having got a pre-eminency
amongst the rest, had this deference paid to his goodness and virtue, as
to a kind of natural authority, that the chief rule, with arbitration of
their differences, by a tacit consent devolved into his hands, without
any other caution, but the assurance they had of his uprightness and
wisdom; yet when time, giving authority, and (as some men would persuade
us) sacredness of customs, which the negligent, and unforeseeing
innocence of the first ages began, had brought in successors of another
stamp, the people finding their properties not secure under the
government, as then it was, (whereas government has no other end but the
preservation of* property) could never be safe nor at rest, nor think
themselves in civil society, till the legislature was placed in
collective bodies of men, call them senate, parliament, or what you
please. By which means every single person became subject, equally with
other the meanest men, to those laws, which he himself, as part of the
legislative, had established; nor could any one, by his own authority;
avoid the force of the law, when once made; nor by any pretence of
superiority plead exemption, thereby to license his own, or the
miscarriages of any of his dependents.** No man in civil society can be
exempted from the laws of it: for if any man may do what he thinks fit,
and there be no appeal on earth, for redress or security against any
harm he shall do; I ask, whether he be not perfectly still in the state
of nature, and so can be no part or member of that civil society; unless
any one will say, the state of nature and civil society are one and the
same thing, which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of
anarchy as to affirm.

(*At the first, when some certain kind of regiment was once appointed,
it may be that nothing was then farther thought upon for the manner of
goveming, but all permitted unto their wisdom and discretion, which were
to rule, till by experience they found this for all parts very
inconvenient, so as the thing which they had devised for a remedy, did
indeed but increase the sore, which it should have cured. They saw, that
to live by one man's will, became the cause of all men's misery. This
constrained them to come unto laws, wherein all men might see their duty
beforehand, and know the penalties of transgressing them. Hooker's Eccl.
Pol. l. i. sect. 10.)

(**Civil law being the act of the whole body politic, doth therefore
over-rule each several part of the same body. Hooker, ibid.)




CHAPTER. VIII.

OF THE BEGINNING OF POLITICAL SOCIETIES.


Sect. 95. MEN being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and
independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the
political power of another, without his own consent. The only way
whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the
bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite
into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one
amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a
greater security against any, that are not of it. This any number of men
may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as
they were in the liberty of the state of nature. When any number of men
have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby
presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority
have a right to act and conclude the rest.

Sect. 96. For when any number of men have, by the consent of every
individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one
body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and
determination of the majority: for that which acts any community, being
only the consent of the individuals of it, and it being necessary to
that which is one body to move one way; it is necessary the body should
move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent
of the majority: or else it is impossible it should act or continue one
body, one community, which the consent of every individual that united
into it, agreed that it should; and so every one is bound by that
consent to be concluded by the majority. And therefore we see, that in
assemblies, impowered to act by positive laws, where no number is set by
that positive law which impowers them, the act of the majority passes
for the act of the whole, and of course determines, as having, by the
law of nature and reason, the power of the whole.

Sect. 97. And thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body
politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation, to every
one of that society, to submit to the determination of the majority, and
to be concluded by it; or else this original compact, whereby he with
others incorporates into one society, would signify nothing, and be no
compact, if he be left free, and under no other ties than he was in
before in the state of nature. For what appearance would there be of any
compact? what new engagement if he were no farther tied by any decrees
of the society, than he himself thought fit, and did actually consent
to? This would be still as great a liberty, as he himself had before his
compact, or any one else in the state of nature hath, who may submit
himself, and consent to any acts of it if he thinks fit.

Sect. 98. For if the consent of the majority shall not, in reason, be
received as the act of the whole, and conclude every individual; nothing
but the consent of every individual can make any thing to be the act of
the whole: but such a consent is next to impossible ever to be had, if
we consider the infirmities of health, and avocations of business, which
in a number, though much less than that of a commonwealth, will
necessarily keep many away from the public assembly. To which if we add
the variety of opinions, and contrariety of interests, which unavoidably
happen in all collections of men, the coming into society upon such
terms would be only like Cato's coming into the theatre, only to go out
again. Such a constitution as this would make the mighty Leviathan of a
shorter duration, than the feeblest creatures, and not let it outlast
the day it was born in: which cannot be supposed, till we can think,
that rational creatures should desire and constitute societies only to
be dissolved: for where the majority cannot conclude the rest, there
they cannot act as one body, and consequently will be immediately
dissolved again.

Sect. 99. Whosoever therefore out of a state of nature unite into a
community, must be understood to give up all the power, necessary to the
ends for which they unite into society, to the majority of the
community, unless they expresly agreed in any number greater than the
majority. And this is done by barely agreeing to unite into one
political society, which is all the compact that is, or needs be,
between the individuals, that enter into, or make up a commonwealth. And
thus that, which begins and actually constitutes any political society,
is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of a
majority to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is that,
and that only, which did, or could give beginning to any lawful
government in the world.

Sect. 100. To this I find two objections made. First, That there are no
instances to be found in story, of a company of men independent, and
equal one amongst another, that met together, and in this way began and
set up a government.

Secondly, It is impossible of right, that men should do so, because all
men being born under government, they are to submit to that, and are not
at liberty to begin a new one.

Sect. 101. To the first there is this to answer, That it is not at all
to be wondered, that history gives us but a very little account of men,
that lived together in the state of nature. The inconveniences of that
condition, and the love and want of society, no sooner brought any
number of them together, but they presently united and incorporated, if
they designed to continue together. And if we may not suppose men ever
to have been in the state of nature, because we hear not much of them in
such a state, we may as well suppose the armies of Salmanasser or Xerxes
were never children, because we hear little of them, till they were men,
and imbodied in armies. Government is every where antecedent to records,
and letters seldom come in amongst a people till a long continuation of
civil society has, by other more necessary arts, provided for their
safety, ease, and plenty: and then they begin to look after the history
of their founders, and search into their original, when they have
outlived the memory of it: for it is with commonwealths as with
particular persons, they are commonly ignorant of their own births and
infancies: and if they know any thing of their original, they are
beholden for it, to the accidental records that others have kept of it.
And those that we have, of the beginning of any polities in the world,
excepting that of the Jews, where God himself immediately interposed,
and which favours not at all paternal dominion, are all either plain
instances of such a beginning as I have mentioned, or at least have
manifest footsteps of it.

Sect. 102. He must shew a strange inclination to deny evident matter of
fact, when it agrees not with his hypothesis, who will not allow, that
the beginning of Rome and Venice were by the uniting together of several
men free and independent one of another, amongst whom there was no
natural superiority or subjection. And if Josephus Acosta's word may be
taken, he tells us, that in many parts of America there was no
government at all.

There are great and apparent conjectures, says he, that these men,
speaking of those of Peru, for a long time had neither kings nor
commonwealths, but lived in troops, as they do this day in Florida, the
Cheriquanas, those of Brazil, and many other nations, which have no
certain kings, but as occasion is offered, in peace or war, they choose
their captains as they please, 1. i. c. 25.

If it be said, that every man there was born subject to his father, or
the head of his family; that the subjection due from a child to a father
took not away his freedom of uniting into what political society he
thought fit, has been already proved. But be that as it will, these men,
it is evident, were actually free; and whatever superiority some
politicians now would place in any of them, they themselves claimed it
not, but by consent were all equal, till by the same consent they set
rulers over themselves. So that their politic societies all began from a
voluntary union, and the mutual agreement of men freely acting in the
choice of their governors, and forms of government.

Sect. 103. And I hope those who went away from Sparta with Palantus,
mentioned by Justin, 1. iii. c. 4. will be allowed to have been freemen
independent one of another, and to have set up a government over
themselves, by their own consent. Thus I have given several examples,
out of history, of people free and in the state of nature, that being
met together incorporated and began a commonwealth. And if the want of
such instances be an argument to prove that government were not, nor
could not be so begun, I suppose the contenders for paternal empire were
better let it alone, than urge it against natural liberty: for if they
can give so many instances, out of history, of governments begun upon
paternal right, I think (though at best an argument from what has been,
to what should of right be, has no great force) one might, without any
great danger, yield them the cause. But if I might advise them in the
case, they would do well not to search too much into the original of
governments, as they have begun de facto, lest they should find, at the
foundation of most of them, something very little favourable to the
design they promote, and such a power as they contend for.

Sect. 104. But to conclude, reason being plain on our side, that men are
naturally free, and the examples of history shewing, that the
governments of the world, that were begun in peace, had their beginning
laid on that foundation, and were made by the consent of the people;
there can be little room for doubt, either where the right is, or what
has been the opinion, or practice of mankind, about the first erecting
of governments.

Sect. 105. I will not deny, that if we look back as far as history will
direct us, towards the original of commonwealths, we shall generally
find them under the government and administration of one man. And I am
also apt to believe, that where a family was numerous enough to subsist
by itself, and continued entire together, without mixing with others, as
it often happens, where there is much land, and few people, the
government commonly began in the father: for the father having, by the
law of nature, the same power with every man else to punish, as he
thought fit, any offences against that law, might thereby punish his
transgressing children, even when they were men, and out of their
pupilage; and they were very likely to submit to his punishment, and all
join with him against the offender, in their turns, giving him thereby
power to execute his sentence against any transgression, and so in
effect make him the law-maker, and governor over all that remained in
conjunction with his family. He was fittest to be trusted; paternal
affection secured their property and interest under his care; and the
custom of obeying him, in their childhood, made it easier to submit to
him, rather than to any other. If therefore they must have one to rule
them, as government is hardly to be avoided amongst men that live
together; who so likely to be the man as he that was their common
father; unless negligence, cruelty, or any other defect of mind or body
made him unfit for it? But when either the father died, and left his
next heir, for want of age, wisdom, courage, or any other qualities,
less fit for rule; or where several families met, and consented to
continue together; there, it is not to be doubted, but they used their
natural freedom, to set up him, whom they judged the ablest, and most
likely, to rule well over them. Conformable hereunto we find the people
of America, who (living out of the reach of the conquering swords, and
spreading domination of the two great empires of Peru and Mexico)
enjoyed their own natural freedom, though, caeteris paribus, they
commonly prefer the heir of their deceased king; yet if they find him
any way weak, or uncapable, they pass him by, and set up the stoutest
and bravest man for their ruler.

Sect. 106. Thus, though looking back as far as records give us any
account of peopling the world, and the history of nations, we commonly
find the government to be in one hand; yet it destroys not that which I
affirm, viz. that the beginning of politic society depends upon the
consent of the individuals, to join into, and make one society; who,
when they are thus incorporated, might set up what form of government
they thought fit. But this having given occasion to men to mistake, and
think, that by nature government was monarchical, and belonged to the
father, it may not be amiss here to consider, why people in the
beginning generally pitched upon this form, which though perhaps the
father's pre-eminency might, in the first institution of some
commonwealths, give a rise to, and place in the beginning, the power in
one hand; yet it is plain that the reason, that continued the form of
government in a single person, was not any regard, or respect to
paternal authority; since all petty monarchies, that is, almost all
monarchies, near their original, have been commonly, at least upon
occasion, elective.

Sect. 107. First then, in the beginning of things, the father's
government of the childhood of those sprung from him, having accustomed
them to the rule of one man, and taught them that where it was exercised
with care and skill, with affection and love to those under it, it was
sufficient to procure and preserve to men all the political happiness
they sought for in society. It was no wonder that they should pitch
upon, and naturally run into that form of government, which from their
infancy they had been all accustomed to; and which, by experience, they
had found both easy and safe. To which, if we add, that monarchy being
simple, and most obvious to men, whom neither experience had instructed
in forms of government, nor the ambition or insolence of empire had
taught to beware of the encroachments of prerogative, or the
inconveniences of absolute power, which monarchy in succession was apt
to lay claim to, and bring upon them, it was not at all strange, that
they should not much trouble themselves to think of methods of
restraining any exorbitances of those to whom they had given the
authority over them, and of balancing the power of government, by
placing several parts of it in different hands. They had neither felt
the oppression of tyrannical dominion, nor did the fashion of the age,
nor their possessions, or way of living, (which afforded little matter
for covetousness or ambition) give them any reason to apprehend or
provide against it; and therefore it is no wonder they put themselves
into such a frame of government, as was not only, as I said, most
obvious and simple, but also best suited to their present state and
condition; which stood more in need of defence against foreign invasions
and injuries, than of multiplicity of laws. The equality of a simple
poor way of living, confining their desires within the narrow bounds of
each man's small property, made few controversies, and so no need of
many laws to decide them, or variety of officers to superintend the
process, or look after the execution of justice, where there were but
few trespasses, and few offenders. Since then those, who like one
another so well as to join into society, cannot but be supposed to have
some acquaintance and friendship together, and some trust one in
another; they could not but have greater apprehensions of others, than
of one another: and therefore their first care and thought cannot but be
supposed to be, how to secure themselves against foreign force. It was
natural for them to put themselves under a frame of government which
might best serve to that end, and chuse the wisest and bravest man to
conduct them in their wars, and lead them out against their enemies, and
in this chiefly be their ruler.

Sect. 108. Thus we see, that the kings of the Indians in America, which
is still a pattern of the first ages in Asia and Europe, whilst the
inhabitants were too few for the country, and want of people and money
gave men no temptation to enlarge their possessions of land, or contest
for wider extent of ground, are little more than generals of their
armies; and though they command absolutely in war, yet at home and in
time of peace they exercise very little dominion, and have but a very
moderate sovereignty, the resolutions of peace and war being ordinarily
either in the people, or in a council. Tho' the war itself, which admits
not of plurality of governors, naturally devolves the command into the
king's sole authority.

Sect. 109. And thus in Israel itself, the chief business of their
judges, and first kings, seems to have been to be captains in war, and
leaders of their armies; which (besides what is signified by going out
and in before the people, which was, to march forth to war, and home
again in the heads of their forces) appears plainly in the story of
Jephtha. The Ammonites making war upon Israel, the Gileadites in fear
send to Jephtha, a bastard of their family whom they had cast off, and
article with him, if he will assist them against the Ammonites, to make
him their ruler; which they do in these words, And the people made him
head and captain over them, Judg. xi, 11. which was, as it seems, all
one as to be judge. And he judged Israel, judg. xii. 7. that is, was
their captain-general six years. So when Jotham upbraids the Shechemites
with the obligation they had to Gideon, who had been their judge and
ruler, he tells them, He fought for you, and adventured his life far,
and delivered you out of the hands of Midian, Judg. ix. 17. Nothing
mentioned of him but what he did as a general: and indeed that is all is
found in his history, or in any of the rest of the judges. And Abimelech
particularly is called king, though at most he was but their general.
And when, being weary of the ill conduct of Samuel's sons, the children
of Israel desired a king, like all the nations to judge them, and to go
out before them, and to fight their battles, I. Sam viii. 20. God
granting their desire, says to Samuel, I will send thee a man, and thou
shalt anoint him to be captain over my people Israel, that he may save
my people out of the hands of the Philistines, ix. 16. As if the only
business of a king had been to lead out their armies, and fight in their
defence; and accordingly at his inauguration pouring a vial of oil upon
him, declares to Saul, that the Lord had anointed him to be captain over
his inheritance, x. 1. And therefore those, who after Saul's being
solemnly chosen and saluted king by the tribes at Mispah, were unwilling
to have him their king, made no other objection but this, How shall this
man save us? v. 27. as if they should have said, this man is unfit to be
our king, not having skill and conduct enough in war, to be able to
defend us. And when God resolved to transfer the government to David, it
is in these words, But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the Lord hath
sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to
be captain over his people, xiii. 14. As if the whole kingly authority
were nothing else but to be their general: and therefore the tribes who
had stuck to Saul's family, and opposed David's reign, when they came to
Hebron with terms of submission to him, they tell him, amongst other
arguments they had to submit to him as to their king, that he was in
effect their king in Saul's time, and therefore they had no reason but
to receive him as their king now. Also (say they) in time past, when
Saul was king over us, thou wast he that reddest out and broughtest in
Israel, and the Lord said unto thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel,
and thou shalt be a captain over Israel.

Sect. 110. Thus, whether a family by degrees grew up into a
commonwealth, and the fatherly authority being continued on to the
elder son, every one in his turn growing up under it, tacitly submitted
to it, and the easiness and equality of it not offending any one, every
one acquiesced, till time seemed to have confirmed it, and settled a
right of succession by prescription: or whether several families, or the
descendants of several families, whom chance, neighbourhood, or business
brought together, uniting into society, the need of a general, whose
conduct might defend them against their enemies in war, and the great
confidence the innocence and sincerity of that poor but virtuous age,
(such as are almost all those which begin governments, that ever come to
last in the world) gave men one of another, made the first beginners of
commonwealths generally put the rule into one man's hand, without any
other express limitation or restraint, but what the nature of the thing,
and the end of government required: which ever of those it was that at
first put the rule into the hands of a single person, certain it is no
body was intrusted with it but for the public good and safety, and to
those ends, in the infancies of commonwealths, those who had it commonly
used it. And unless they had done so, young societies could not have
subsisted; without such nursing fathers tender and careful of the public
weal, all governments would have sunk under the weakness and infirmities
of their infancy, and the prince and the people had soon perished
together.

Sect. 111. But though the golden age (before vain ambition, and amor
sceleratus habendi, evil concupiscence, had corrupted men's minds into a
mistake of true power and honour) had more virtue, and consequently
better governors, as well as less vicious subjects, and there was then
no stretching prerogative on the one side, to oppress the people; nor
consequently on the other, any dispute about privilege, to lessen or
restrain the power of the magistrate, and so no contest betwixt rulers
and people about governors or government: yet, when ambition and luxury
in future ages* would retain and increase the power, without doing the
business for which it was given; and aided by flattery, taught princes
to have distinct and separate interests from their people, men found it
necessary to examine more carefully the original and rights of
government; and to find out ways to restrain the exorbitances, and
prevent the abuses of that power, which they having intrusted in
another's hands only for their own good, they found was made use of to
hurt them.

(*At first, when some certain kind of regiment was once approved, it may
be nothing was then farther thought upon for the manner of governing,
but all permitted unto their wisdom and discretion which were to rule,
till by experience they found this for all parts very inconvenient, so
as the thing which they had devised for a remedy, did indeed but
increase the sore which it should have cured. They saw, that to live by
one man's will, became the cause of all men's misery. This constrained
them to come unto laws wherein all men might see their duty before hand,
and know the penalties of transgressing them. Hooker's Eccl. Pol. l. i.
sect. 10.)

Sect. 112. Thus we may see how probable it is, that people that were
naturally free, and by their own consent either submitted to the
government of their father, or united together out of different families
to make a government, should generally put the rule into one man's
hands, and chuse to be under the conduct of a single person, without so
much as by express conditions limiting or regulating his power, which
they thought safe enough in his honesty and prudence; though they never
dreamed of monarchy being lure Divino, which we never heard of among
mankind, till it was revealed to us by the divinity of this last age;
nor ever allowed paternal power to have a right to dominion, or to be
the foundation of all government. And thus much may suffice to shew,
that as far as we have any light from history, we have reason to
conclude, that all peaceful beginnings of government have been laid in
the consent of the people. I say peaceful, because I shall have occasion
in another place to speak of conquest, which some esteem a way of
beginning of governments.

The other objection I find urged against the beginning of polities, in
the way I have mentioned, is this, viz.

Sect. 113. That all men being born under government, some or other, it
is impossible any of them should ever be free, and at liberty to unite
together, and begin a new one, or ever be able to erect a lawful
government.

If this argument be good; I ask, how came so many lawful monarchies into
the world? for if any body, upon this supposition, can shew me any one
man in any age of the world free to begin a lawful monarchy, I will be
bound to shew him ten other free men at liberty, at the same time to
unite and begin a new government under a regal, or any other form; it
being demonstration, that if any one, born under the dominion of
another, may be so free as to have a right to command others in a new
and distinct empire, every one that is born under the dominion of
another may be so free too, and may become a ruler, or subject, of a
distinct separate government. And so by this their own principle, either
all men, however born, are free, or else there is but one lawful prince,
one lawful government in the world. And then they have nothing to do,
but barely to shew us which that is; which when they have done, I doubt
not but all mankind will easily agree to pay obedience to him.

Sect. 114. Though it be a sufficient answer to their objection, to shew
that it involves them in the same difficulties that it doth those they
use it against; yet I shall endeavour to discover the weakness of this
argument a little farther. All men, say they, are born under government,
and therefore they cannot be at liberty to begin a new one. Every one is
born a subject to his father, or his prince, and is therefore under the
perpetual tie of subjection and allegiance. It is plain mankind never
owned nor considered any such natural subjection that they were born in,
to one or to the other that tied them, without their own consents, to a
subjection to them and their heirs.

Sect. 115. For there are no examples so frequent in history, both sacred
and profane, as those of men withdrawing themselves, and their
obedience, from the jurisdiction they were born under, and the family or
community they were bred up in, and setting up new governments in other
places; from whence sprang all that number of petty commonwealths in the
beginning of ages, and which always multiplied, as long as there was
room enough, till the stronger, or more fortunate, swallowed the weaker;
and those great ones again breaking to pieces, dissolved into lesser
dominions. All which are so many testimonies against paternal
sovereignty, and plainly prove, that it was not the natural right of the
father descending to his heirs, that made governments in the beginning,
since it was impossible, upon that ground, there should have been so
many little kingdoms; all must have been but only one universal
monarchy, if men had not been at liberty to separate themselves from
their families, and the government, be it what it will, that was set up
in it, and go and make distinct commonwealths and other governments, as
they thought fit.

Sect. 116. This has been the practice of the world from its first
beginning to this day; nor is it now any more hindrance to the freedom
of mankind, that they are born under constituted and ancient polities,
that have established laws, and set forms of government, than if they
were born in the woods, amongst the unconfined inhabitants, that run
loose in them: for those, who would persuade us, that by being born
under any government, we are naturally subjects to it, and have no more
any title or pretence to the freedom of the state of nature, have no
other reason (bating that of paternal power, which we have already
answered) to produce for it, but only, because our fathers or
progenitors passed away their natural liberty, and thereby bound up
themselves and their posterity to a perpetual subjection to the
government, which they themselves submitted to. It is true, that
whatever engagements or promises any one has made for himself, he is
under the obligation of them, but cannot, by any compact whatsoever,
bind his children or posterity: for his son, when a man, being
altogether as free as the father, any act of the father can no more give
away the liberty of the son, than it can of any body else: he may indeed
annex such conditions to the land, he enjoyed as a subject of any
commonwealth, as may oblige his son to be of that community, if he will
enjoy those possessions which were his father's; because that estate
being his father's property, he may dispose, or settle it, as he
pleases.

Sect. 117. And this has generally given the occasion to mistake in this
matter; because commonwealths not permitting any part of their dominions
to be dismembered, nor to be enjoyed by any but those of their
community, the son cannot ordinarily enjoy the possessions of his
father, but under the same terms his father did, by becoming a member of
the society; whereby he puts himself presently under the government he
finds there established, as much as any other subject of that
commonwealth. And thus the consent of freemen, born under government,
which only makes them members of it, being given separately in their
turns, as each comes to be of age, and not in a multitude together;
people take no notice of it, and thinking it not done at all, or not
necessary, conclude they are naturally subjects as they are men.

Sect. 118. But, it is plain, governments themselves understand it
otherwise; they claim no power over the son, because of that they had
over the father; nor look on children as being their subjects, by their
fathers being so. If a subject of England have a child, by an English
woman in France, whose subject is he? Not the king of England's; for he
must have leave to be admitted to the privileges of it: nor the king of
France's; for how then has his father a liberty to bring him away, and
breed him as he pleases? and who ever was judged as a traytor or
deserter, if he left, or warred against a country, for being barely born
in it of parents that were aliens there? It is plain then, by the
practice of governments themselves, as well as by the law of right
reason, that a child is born a subject of no country or government. He
is under his father's tuition and authority, till he comes to age of
discretion; and then he is a freeman, at liberty what government he will
put himself under, what body politic he will unite himself to: for if an
Englishman's son, born in France, be at liberty, and may do so, it is
evident there is no tie upon him by his father's being a subject of this
kingdom; nor is he bound up by any compact of his ancestors. And why
then hath not his son, by the same reason, the same liberty, though he
be born any where else? Since the power that a father hath naturally
over his children, is the same, where-ever they be born, and the ties of
natural obligations, are not bounded by the positive limits of kingdoms
and commonwealths.

Sect. 119. Every man being, as has been shewed, naturally free, and
nothing being able to put him into subjection to any earthly power, but
only his own consent; it is to be considered, what shall be understood
to be a sufficient declaration of a man's consent, to make him subject
to the laws of any government. There is a common distinction of an
express and a tacit consent, which will concern our present case. No
body doubts but an express consent, of any man entering into any
society, makes him a perfect member of that society, a subject of that
government. The difficulty is, what ought to be looked upon as a tacit
consent, and how far it binds, i.e. how far any one shall be looked on
to have consented, and thereby submitted to any government, where he has
made no expressions of it at all. And to this I say, that every man,
that hath any possessions, or enjoyment, of any part of the dominions of
any government, doth thereby give his tacit consent, and is as far
forth obliged to obedience to the laws of that government, during such
enjoyment, as any one under it; whether this his possession be of land,
to him and his heirs for ever, or a lodging only for a week; or whether
it be barely travelling freely on the highway; and in effect, it reaches
as far as the very being of any one within the territories of that
government.

Sect. 120. To understand this the better, it is fit to consider, that
every man, when he at first incorporates himself into any commonwealth,
he, by his uniting himself thereunto, annexed also, and submits to the
community, those possessions, which he has, or shall acquire, that do
not already belong to any other government: for it would be a direct
contradiction, for any one to enter into society with others for the
securing and regulating of property; and yet to suppose his land, whose
property is to be regulated by the laws of the society, should be exempt
from the jurisdiction of that government, to which he himself, the
proprietor of the land, is a subject. By the same act therefore, whereby
any one unites his person, which was before free, to any commonwealth,
by the same he unites his possessions, which were before free, to it
also; and they become, both of them, person and possession, subject to
the government and dominion of that commonwealth, as long as it hath a
being. Whoever therefore, from thenceforth, by inheritance, purchase,
permission, or otherways, enjoys any part of the land, so annexed to,
and under the government of that commonwealth, must take it with the
condition it is under; that is, of submitting to the government of the
commonwealth, under whose jurisdiction it is, as far forth as any
subject of it.

Sect. 121. But since the government has a direct jurisdiction only over
the land, and reaches the possessor of it, (before he has actually
incorporated himself in the society) only as he dwells upon, and enjoys
that; the obligation any one is under, by virtue of such enjoyment, to
submit to the government, begins and ends with the enjoyment; so that
whenever the owner, who has given nothing but such a tacit consent to
the government, will, by donation, sale, or otherwise, quit the said
possession, he is at liberty to go and incorporate himself into any
other commonwealth; or to agree with others to begin a new one, in
vacuis locis, in any part of the world, they can find free and
unpossessed: whereas he, that has once, by actual agreement, and any
express declaration, given his consent to be of any commonwealth, is
perpetually and indispensably obliged to be, and remain unalterably a
subject to it, and can never be again in the liberty of the state of
nature; unless, by any calamity, the government he was under comes to be
dissolved; or else by some public act cuts him off from being any longer
a member of it.

Sect. 122. But submitting to the laws of any country, living quietly,
and enjoying privileges and protection under them, makes not a man a
member of that society: this is only a local protection and homage due
to and from all those, who, not being in a state of war, come within the
territories belonging to any government, to all parts whereof the force
of its laws extends. But this no more makes a man a member of that
society, a perpetual subject of that commonwealth, than it would make a
man a subject to another, in whose family he found it convenient to
abide for some time; though, whilst he continued in it, he were obliged
to comply with the laws, and submit to the government he found there.
And thus we see, that foreigners, by living all their lives under
another government, and enjoying the privileges and protection of it,
though they are bound, even in conscience, to submit to its
administration, as far forth as any denison; yet do not thereby come to
be subjects or members of that commonwealth. Nothing can make any man
so, but his actually entering into it by positive engagement, and
express promise and compact. This is that, which I think, concerning the
beginning of political societies, and that consent which makes any one a
member of any commonwealth.




CHAPTER. IX.

OF THE ENDS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENT.


Sect. 123. IF man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said;
if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the
greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom? why
will he give up this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and
controul of any other power? To which it is obvious to answer, that
though in the state of nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment of
it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others:
for all being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater
part no strict observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of the
property he has in this state is very unsafe, very unsecure. This makes
him willing to quit a condition, which, however free, is full of fears
and continual dangers: and it is not without reason, that he seeks out,
and is willing to join in society with others, who are already united,
or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives,
liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property.

Sect. 124. The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into
commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the
preservation of their property. To which in the state of nature there
are many things wanting.

First, There wants an established, settled, known law, received and
allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the
common measure to decide all controversies between them: for though the
law of nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures; yet
men being biassed by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of
study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to them in the
application of it to their particular cases.

Sect. 125. Secondly, In the state of nature there wants a known and
indifferent judge, with authority to determine all differences according
to the established law: for every one in that state being both judge and
executioner of the law of nature, men being partial to themselves,
passion and revenge is very apt to carry them too far, and with too much
heat, in their own cases; as well as negligence, and unconcernedness, to
make them too remiss in other men's.

Sect. 126. Thirdly, In the state of nature there often wants power to
back and support the sentence when right, and to give it due execution,
They who by any injustice offended, will seldom fail, where they are
able, by force to make good their injustice; such resistance many times
makes the punishment dangerous, and frequently destructive, to those who
attempt it.

Sect. 127. Thus mankind, notwithstanding all the privileges of the state
of nature, being but in an ill condition, while they remain in it, are
quickly driven into society. Hence it comes to pass, that we seldom find
any number of men live any time together in this state. The
inconveniencies that they are therein exposed to, by the irregular and
uncertain exercise of the power every man has of punishing the
transgressions of others, make them take sanctuary under the established
laws of government, and therein seek the preservation of their property.
It is this makes them so willingly give up every one his single power of
punishing, to be exercised by such alone, as shall be appointed to it
amongst them; and by such rules as the community, or those authorized by
them to that purpose, shall agree on. And in this we have the original
right and rise of both the legislative and executive power, as well as
of the governments and societies themselves.

Sect. 128. For in the state of nature, to omit the liberty he has of
innocent delights, a man has two powers.

The first is to do whatsoever he thinks fit for the preservation of
himself, and others within the permission of the law of nature: by which
law, common to them all, he and all the rest of mankind are one
community, make up one society, distinct from all other creatures. And
were it not for the corruption and vitiousness of degenerate men, there
would be no need of any other; no necessity that men should separate
from this great and natural community, and by positive agreements
combine into smaller and divided associations.

The other power a man has in the state of nature, is the power to punish
the crimes committed against that law. Both these he gives up, when he
joins in a private, if I may so call it, or particular politic society,
and incorporates into any commonwealth, separate from the rest of
mankind.

Sect. 129. The first power, viz. of doing whatsoever he thought for the
preservation of himself, and the rest of mankind, he gives up to be
regulated by laws made by the society, so far forth as the preservation
of himself, and the rest of that society shall require; which laws of
the society in many things confine the liberty he had by the law of
nature.

Sect. 130. Secondly, The power of punishing he wholly gives up, and
engages his natural force, (which he might before employ in the
execution of the law of nature, by his own single authority, as he
thought fit) to assist the executive power of the society, as the law
thereof shall require: for being now in a new state, wherein he is to
enjoy many conveniencies, from the labour, assistance, and society of
others in the same community, as well as protection from its whole
strength; he is to part also with as much of his natural liberty, in
providing for himself, as the good, prosperity, and safety of the
society shall require; which is not only necessary, but just, since the
other members of the society do the like.

Sect. 131. But though men, when they enter into society, give up the
equality, liberty, and executive power they had in the state of nature,
into the hands of the society, to be so far disposed of by the
legislative, as the good of the society shall require; yet it being only
with an intention in every one the better to preserve himself, his
liberty and property; (for no rational creature can be supposed to
change his condition with an intention to be worse) the power of the
society, or legislative constituted by them, can never be supposed to
extend farther, than the common good; but is obliged to secure every
one's property, by providing against those three defects above
mentioned, that made the state of nature so unsafe and uneasy. And so
whoever has the legislative or supreme power of any commonwealth, is
bound to govern by established standing laws, promulgated and known to
the people, and not by extemporary decrees; by indifferent and upright
judges, who are to decide controversies by those laws; and to employ the
force of the community at home, only in the execution of such laws, or
abroad to prevent or redress foreign injuries, and secure the community
from inroads and invasion. And all this to be directed to no other end,
but the peace, safety, and public good of the people.




CHAPTER. X.

OF THE FORMS OF A COMMON-WEALTH.


Sect. 132. THE majority having, as has been shewed, upon men's first
uniting into society, the whole power of the community naturally in
them, may employ all that power in making laws for the community from
time to time, and executing those laws by officers of their own
appointing; and then the form of the government is a perfect democracy:
or else may put the power of making laws into the hands of a few select
men, and their heirs or successors; and then it is an oligarchy: or else
into the hands of one man, and then it is a monarchy: if to him and his
heirs, it is an hereditary monarchy: if to him only for life, but upon
his death the power only of nominating a successor to return to them; an
elective monarchy. And so accordingly of these the community may make
compounded and mixed forms of government, as they think good. And if the
legislative power be at first given by the majority to one or more
persons only for their lives, or any limited time, and then the supreme
power to revert to them again; when it is so reverted, the community may
dispose of it again anew into what hands they please, and so constitute
a new form of government: for the form of government depending upon the
placing the supreme power, which is the legislative, it being impossible
to conceive that an inferior power should prescribe to a superior, or
any but the supreme make laws, according as the power of making laws is
placed, such is the form of the commonwealth.

Sect. 133. By commonwealth, I must be understood all along to mean, not
a democracy, or any form of government, but any independent community,
which the Latines signified by the word civitas, to which the word which
best answers in our language, is commonwealth, and most properly
expresses such a society of men, which community or city in English does
not; for there may be subordinate communities in a government; and city
amongst us has a quite different notion from commonwealth: and
therefore, to avoid ambiguity, I crave leave to use the word
commonwealth in that sense, in which I find it used by king James the
first; and I take it to be its genuine signification; which if any body
dislike, I consent with him to change it for a better.




CHAPTER. XI.

OF THE EXTENT OF THE LEGISLATIVE POWER.


Sect. 134. THE great end of men's entering into society, being the
enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety, and the great
instrument and means of that being the laws established in that society;
the first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths is the
establishing of the legislative power; as the first and fundamental
natural law, which is to govern even the legislative itself, is the
preservation of the society, and (as far as will consist with the public
good) of every person in it. This legislative is not only the supreme
power of the commonwealth, but sacred and unalterable in the hands
where the community have once placed it; nor can any edict of any body
else, in what form soever conceived, or by what power soever backed,
have the force and obligation of a law, which has not its sanction from
that legislative which the public has chosen and appointed: for without
this the law could not have that, which is absolutely necessary to its
being a law,* the consent of the society, over whom no body can have a
power to make laws, but by their own consent, and by authority received
from them; and therefore all the obedience, which by the most solemn
ties any one can be obliged to pay, ultimately terminates in this
supreme power, and is directed by those laws which it enacts: nor can
any oaths to any foreign power whatsoever, or any domestic subordinate
power, discharge any member of the society from his obedience to the
legislative, acting pursuant to their trust; nor oblige him to any
obedience contrary to the laws so enacted, or farther than they do
allow; it being ridiculous to imagine one can be tied ultimately to obey
any power in the society, which is not the supreme.

(*The lawful power of making laws to command whole politic societies of
men, belonging so properly unto the same intire societies, that for any
prince or potentate of what kind soever upon earth, to exercise the same
of himself, and not by express commission immediately and personally
received from God, or else by authority derived at the first from their
consent, upon whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere
tyranny. Laws they are not therefore which public approbation hath not
made so. Hooker's Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.

Of this point therefore we are to note, that such men naturally have no
full and perfect power to command whole politic multitudes of men,
therefore utterly without our consent, we could in such sort be at no
man's commandment living. And to be commanded we do consent, when that
society, whereof we be a part, hath at any time before consented,
without revoking the same after by the like universal agreement. Laws
therefore human, of what kind so ever, are available by consent. Ibid.)

Sect. 135. Though the legislative, whether placed in one or more,
whether it be always in being, or only by intervals, though it be the
supreme power in every commonwealth; yet:

First, It is not, nor can possibly be absolutely arbitrary over the
lives and fortunes of the people: for it being but the joint power of
every member of the society given up to that person, or assembly, which
is legislator; it can be no more than those persons had in a state of
nature before they entered into society, and gave up to the community:
for no body can transfer to another more power than he has in himself;
and no body has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any
other, to destroy his own life, or take away the life or property of
another. A man, as has been proved, cannot subject himself to the
arbitrary power of another; and having in the state of nature no
arbitrary power over the life, liberty, or possession of another, but
only so much as the law of nature gave him for the preservation of
himself, and the rest of mankind; this is all he doth, or can give up
to the commonwealth, and by it to the legislative power, so that the
legislative can have no more than this. Their power, in the utmost
bounds of it, is limited to the public good of the society. It is a
power, that hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never
have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the
subjects.* The obligations of the law of nature cease not in society,
but only in many cases are drawn closer, and have by human laws known
penalties annexed to them, to inforce their observation. Thus the law of
nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as
others. The rules that they make for other men's actions, must, as well
as their own and other men's actions, be conformable to the law of
nature, i.e. to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the
fundamental law of nature being the preservation of mankind, no human
sanction can be good, or valid against it.

(*Two foundations there are which bear up public societies; the one a
natural inclination, whereby all men desire sociable life and
fellowship; the other an order, expresly or secretly agreed upon,
touching the manner of their union in living together: the latter is
that which we call the law of a common-weal, the very soul of a politic
body, the parts whereof are by law animated, held together, and set on
work in such actions as the common good requireth. Laws politic,
ordained for external order and regiment amongst men, are never framed
as they should be, unless presuming the will of man to be inwardly
obstinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedience to the sacred laws
of his nature; in a word, unless presuming man to be, in regard of his
depraved mind, little better than a wild beast, they do accordingly
provide, notwithstanding, so to frame his outward actions, that they be
no hindrance unto the common good, for which societies are instituted.
Unless they do this, they are not perfect. Hooker's Eccl. Pol. l. i.
sect. 10.)

Sect. 136. Secondly, The legislative, or supreme authority, cannot
assume to its self a power to rule by extemporary arbitrary decrees, but
is bound to dispense justice, and decide the rights of the subject by
promulgated standing laws, and known authorized judges:* for the law of
nature being unwritten, and so no where to be found but in the minds of
men, they who through passion or interest shall miscite, or misapply it,
cannot so easily be convinced of their mistake where there is no
established judge: and so it serves not, as it ought, to determine the
rights, and fence the properties of those that live under it, especially
where every one is judge, interpreter, and executioner of it too, and
that in his own case: and he that has right on his side, having
ordinarily but his own single strength, hath not force enough to defend
himself from injuries, or to punish delinquents. To avoid these
inconveniences, which disorder men's propperties in the state of nature,
men unite into societies, that they may have the united strength of the
whole society to secure and defend their properties, and may have
standing rules to bound it, by which every one may know what is his. To
this end it is that men give up all their natural power to the society
which they enter into, and the community put the legislative power into
such hands as they think fit, with this trust, that they shall be
governed by declared laws, or else their peace, quiet, and property will
still be at the same uncertainty, as it was in the state of nature.

(*Human laws are measures in respect of men whose actions they must
direct, howbeit such measures they are as have also their higher rules
to be measured by, which rules are two, the law of God, and the law of
nature; so that laws human must be made according to the general laws of
nature, and without contradiction to any positive law of scripture,
otherwise they are ill made. Hooker's Eccl. Pol. l. iii. sect. 9.

To constrain men to any thing inconvenient doth seem unreasonable.
Ibid. l. i. sect. 10.)

Sect. 137. Absolute arbitrary power, or governing without settled
standing laws, can neither of them consist with the ends of society and
government, which men would not quit the freedom of the state of nature
for, and tie themselves up under, were it not to preserve their lives,
liberties and fortunes, and by stated rules of right and property to
secure their peace and quiet. It cannot be supposed that they should
intend, had they a power so to do, to give to any one, or more, an
absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force
into the magistrate's hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily
upon them. This were to put themselves into a worse condition than the
state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right
against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to
maintain it, whether invaded by a single man, or many in combination.
Whereas by supposing they have given up themselves to the absolute
arbitrary power and will of a legislator, they have disarmed themselves,
and armed him, to make a prey of them when he pleases; he being in a
much worse condition, who is exposed to the arbitrary power of one man,
who has the command of 100,000, than he that is exposed to the arbitrary
power of 100,000 single men; no body being secure, that his will, who
has such a command, is better than that of other men, though his force
be 100,000 times stronger. And therefore, whatever form the
commonwealth is under, the ruling power ought to govern by declared and
received laws, and not by extemporary dictates and undetermined
resolutions: for then mankind will be in a far worse condition than in
the state of nature, if they shall have armed one, or a few men with the
joint power of a multitude, to force them to obey at pleasure the
exorbitant and unlimited decrees of their sudden thoughts, or
unrestrained, and till that moment unknown wills, without having any
measures set down which may guide and justify their actions: for all the
power the government has, being only for the good of the society, as it
ought not to be arbitrary and at pleasure, so it ought to be exercised
by established and promulgated laws; that both the people may know their
duty, and be safe and secure within the limits of the law; and the
rulers too kept within their bounds, and not be tempted, by the power
they have in their hands, to employ it to such purposes, and by such
measures, as they would not have known, and own not willingly.

Sect. 138. Thirdly, The supreme power cannot take from any man any part
of his property without his own consent: for the preservation of
property being the end of government, and that for which men enter into
society, it necessarily supposes and requires, that the people should
have property, without which they must be supposed to lose that, by
entering into society, which was the end for which they entered into it;
too gross an absurdity for any man to own. Men therefore in society
having property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the law
of the community are their's, that no body hath a right to take their
substance or any part of it from them, without their own consent:
without this they have no property at all; for I have truly no property
in that, which another can by right take from me, when he pleases,
against my consent. Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or
legislative power of any commonwealth, can do what it will, and dispose
of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at
pleasure. This is not much to be feared in governments where the
legislative consists, wholly or in part, in assemblies which are
variable, whose members, upon the dissolution of the assembly, are
subjects under the common laws of their country, equally with the rest.
But in governments, where the legislative is in one lasting assembly
always in being, or in one man, as in absolute monarchies, there is
danger still, that they will think themselves to have a distinct
interest from the rest of the community; and so will be apt to increase
their own riches and power, by taking what they think fit from the
people: for a man's property is not at all secure, tho' there be good
and equitable laws to set the bounds of it between him and his fellow
subjects, if he who commands those subjects have power to take from any
private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose
of it as he thinks good.

Sect. 139. But government, into whatsoever hands it is put, being, as I
have before shewed, intrusted with this condition, and for this end,
that men might have and secure their properties; the prince, or senate,
however it may have power to make laws, for the regulating of property
between the subjects one amongst another, yet can never have a power to
take to themselves the whole, or any part of the subjects property,
without their own consent: for this would be in effect to leave them no
property at all. And to let us see, that even absolute power, where it
is necessary, is not arbitrary by being absolute, but is still limited
by that reason, and confined to those ends, which required it in some
cases to be absolute, we need look no farther than the common practice
of martial discipline: for the preservation of the army, and in it of
the whole commonwealth, requires an absolute obedience to the command
of every superior officer, and it is justly death to disobey or dispute
the most dangerous or unreasonable of them; but yet we see, that neither
the serjeant, that could command a soldier to march up to the mouth of a
cannon, or stand in a breach, where he is almost sure to perish, can
command that soldier to give him one penny of his money; nor the
general, that can condemn him to death for deserting his post, or for
not obeying the most desperate orders, can yet, with all his absolute
power of life and death, dispose of one farthing of that soldier's
estate, or seize one jot of his goods; whom yet he can command any
thing, and hang for the least disobedience; because such a blind
obedience is necessary to that end, for which the commander has his
power, viz. the preservation of the rest; but the disposing of his goods
has nothing to do with it.

Sect. 140. It is true, governments cannot be supported without great
charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys his share of the protection,
should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it.
But still it must be with his own consent, i.e. the consent of the
majority, giving it either by themselves, or their representatives
chosen by them: for if any one shall claim a power to lay and levy taxes
on the people, by his own authority, and without such consent of the
people, he thereby invades the fundamental law of property, and subverts
the end of government: for what property have I in that, which another
may by right take, when he pleases, to himself?

Sect. 141. Fourthly, The legislative cannot transfer the power of making
laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the
people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others. The people alone
can appoint the form of the commonwealth, which is by constituting the
legislative, and appointing in whose hands that shall be. And when the
people have said, We will submit to rules, and be governed by laws made
by such men, and in such forms, no body else can say other men shall
make laws for them; nor can the people be bound by any laws, but such as
are enacted by those whom they have chosen, and authorized to make laws
for them. The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by
a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what
that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to
make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their
authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.

Sect. 142. These are the bounds which the trust, that is put in them by
the society, and the law of God and nature, have set to the legislative
power of every commonwealth, in all forms of government.

First, They are to govern by promulgated established laws, not to be
varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for rich and poor, for
the favourite at court, and the country man at plough.

Secondly, These laws also ought to be designed for no other end
ultimately, but the good of the people.

Thirdly, They must not raise taxes on the property of the people,
without the consent of the people, given by themselves, or their
deputies. And this properly concerns only such governments where the
legislative is always in being, or at least where the people have not
reserved any part of the legislative to deputies, to be from time to
time chosen by themselves.

Fourthly, The legislative neither must nor can transfer the power of
making laws to any body else, or place it any where, but where the
people have.




CHAPTER. XII.

OF THE LEGISLATIVE, EXECUTIVE, AND FEDERATIVE POWER OF THE
COMMON-WEALTH.


Sect. 143. THE legislative power is that, which has a right to direct
how the force of the commonwealth shall be employed for preserving the
community and the members of it. But because those laws which are
constantly to be executed, and whose force is always to continue, may be
made in a little time; therefore there is no need, that the legislative
should be always in being, not having always business to do. And because
it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at
power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have
also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt
themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both
in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage, and
thereby come to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community,
contrary to the end of society and government: therefore in wellordered
commonwealths, where the good of the whole is so considered, as it
ought, the legislative power is put into the hands of divers persons,
who duly assembled, have by themselves, or jointly with others, a power
to make laws, which when they have done, being separated again, they are
themselves subject to the laws they have made; which is a new and near
tie upon them, to take care, that they make them for the public good.

Sect. 144. But because the laws, that are at once, and in a short time
made, have a constant and lasting force, and need a perpetual execution,
or an attendance thereunto; therefore it is necessary there should be a
power always in being, which should see to the execution of the laws
that are made, and remain in force. And thus the legislative and
executive power come often to be separated.

Sect. 145. There is another power in every commonwealth, which one may
call natural, because it is that which answers to the power every man
naturally had before he entered into society: for though in a
commonwealth the members of it are distinct persons still in reference
to one another, and as such as governed by the laws of the society; yet
in reference to the rest of mankind, they make one body, which is, as
every member of it before was, still in the state of nature with the
rest of mankind. Hence it is, that the controversies that happen between
any man of the society with those that are out of it, are managed by the
public; and an injury done to a member of their body, engages the whole
in the reparation of it. So that under this consideration, the whole
community is one body in the state of nature, in respect of all other
states or persons out of its community.

Sect. 146. This therefore contains the power of war and peace, leagues
and alliances, and all the transactions, with all persons and
communities without the commonwealth, and may be called federative, if
any one pleases. So the thing be understood, I am indifferent as to the
name.

Sect. 147. These two powers, executive and federative, though they be
really distinct in themselves, yet one comprehending the execution of
the municipal laws of the society within its self, upon all that are
parts of it; the other the management of the security and interest of
the public without, with all those that it may receive benefit or damage
from, yet they are always almost united. And though this federative
power in the well or ill management of it be of great moment to the
commonwealth, yet it is much less capable to be directed by antecedent,
standing, positive laws, than the executive; and so must necessarily be
left to the prudence and wisdom of those, whose hands it is in, to be
managed for the public good: for the laws that concern subjects one
amongst another, being to direct their actions, may well enough precede
them. But what is to be done in reference to foreigners, depending much
upon their actions, and the variation of designs and interests, must be
left in great part to the prudence of those, who have this power
committed to them, to be managed by the best of their skill, for the
advantage of the commonwealth.

Sect. 148. Though, as I said, the executive and federative power of
every community be really distinct in themselves, yet they are hardly to
be separated, and placed at the same time, in the hands of distinct
persons: for both of them requiring the force of the society for their
exercise, it is almost impracticable to place the force of the
commonwealth in distinct, and not subordinate hands; or that the
executive and federative power should be placed in persons, that might
act separately, whereby the force of the public would be under different
commands: which would be apt some time or other to cause disorder and
ruin.




CHAPTER. XIII.

OF THE SUBORDINATION OF THE POWERS OF THE COMMON-WEALTH.


Sect. 149. THOUGH in a constituted commonwealth, standing upon its own
basis, and acting according to its own nature, that is, acting for the
preservation of the community, there can be but one supreme power, which
is the legislative, to which all the rest are and must be subordinate,
yet the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for certain
ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or
alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to
the trust reposed in them: for all power given with trust for the
attaining an end, being limited by that end, whenever that end is
manifestly neglected, or opposed, the trust must necessarily be
forfeited, and the power devolve into the hands of those that gave it,
who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and
security. And thus the community perpetually retains a supreme power of
saving themselves from the attempts and designs of any body, even of
their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish, or so wicked, as
to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the
subject: for no man or society of men, having a power to deliver up
their preservation, or consequently the means of it, to the absolute
will and arbitrary dominion of another; when ever any one shall go about
to bring them into such a slavish condition, they will always have a
right to preserve, what they have not a power to part with; and to rid
themselves of those, who invade this fundamental, sacred, and
unalterable law of self-preservation, for which they entered into
society. And thus the community may be said in this respect to be always
the supreme power, but not as considered under any form of government,
because this power of the people can never take place till the
government be dissolved.

Sect. 150. In all cases, whilst the government subsists, the legislative
is the supreme power: for what can give laws to another, must needs be
superior to him; and since the legislative is no otherwise legislative
of the society, but by the right it has to make laws for all the parts,
and for every member of the society, prescribing rules to their actions,
and giving power of execution, where they are transgressed, the
legislative must needs be the supreme, and all other powers, in any
members or parts of the society, derived from and subordinate to it.

Sect. 151. In some commonwealths, where the legislative is not always in
being, and the executive is vested in a single person, who has also a
share in the legislative; there that single person in a very tolerable
sense may also be called supreme: not that he has in himself all the
supreme power, which is that of law-making; but because he has in him
the supreme execution, from whom all inferior magistrates derive all
their several subordinate powers, or at least the greatest part of them:
having also no legislative superior to him, there being no law to be
made without his consent, which cannot be expected should ever subject
him to the other part of the legislative, he is properly enough in this
sense supreme. But yet it is to be observed, that tho' oaths of
allegiance and fealty are taken to him, it is not to him as supreme
legislator, but as supreme executor of the law, made by a joint power of
him with others; allegiance being nothing but an obedience according to
law, which when he violates, he has no right to obedience, nor can claim
it otherwise than as the public person vested with the power of the law,
and so is to be considered as the image, phantom, or representative of
the commonwealth, acted by the will of the society, declared in its
laws; and thus he has no will, no power, but that of the law. But when
he quits this representation, this public will, and acts by his own
private will, he degrades himself, and is but a single private person
without power, and without will, that has any right to obedience; the
members owing no obedience but to the public will of the society.

Sect. 152. The executive power, placed any where but in a person that
has also a share in the legislative, is visibly subordinate and
accountable to it, and may be at pleasure changed and displaced; so that
it is not the supreme executive power, that is exempt from
subordination, but the supreme executive power vested in one, who having
a share in the legislative, has no distinct superior legislative to be
subordinate and accountable to, farther than he himself shall join and
consent; so that he is no more subordinate than he himself shall think
fit, which one may certainly conclude will be but very little. Of other
ministerial and subordinate powers in a commonwealth, we need not speak,
they being so multiplied with infinite variety, in the different customs
and constitutions of distinct commonwealths, that it is impossible to
give a particular account of them all. Only thus much, which is
necessary to our present purpose, we may take notice of concerning them,
that they have no manner of authority, any of them, beyond what is by
positive grant and commission delegated to them, and are all of them
accountable to some other power in the commonwealth.

Sect. 153. It is not necessary, no, nor so much as convenient, that the
legislative should be always in being; but absolutely necessary that the
executive power should, because there is not always need of new laws to
be made, but always need of execution of the laws that are made. When
the legislative hath put the execution of the laws, they make, into
other hands, they have a power still to resume it out of those hands,
when they find cause, and to punish for any maladministration against
the laws. The same holds also in regard of the federative power, that
and the executive being both ministerial and subordinate to the
legislative, which, as has been shewed, in a constituted commonwealth
is the supreme. The legislative also in this case being supposed to
consist of several persons, (for if it be a single person, it cannot but
be always in being, and so will, as supreme, naturally have the supreme
executive power, together with the legislative) may assemble, and
exercise their legislature, at the times that either their original
constitution, or their own adjournment, appoints, or when they please;
if neither of these hath appointed any time, or there be no other way
prescribed to convoke them: for the supreme power being placed in them
by the people, it is always in them, and they may exercise it when they
please, unless by their original constitution they are limited to
certain seasons, or by an act of their supreme power they have adjourned
to a certain time; and when that time comes, they have a right to
assemble and act again.

Sect. 154. If the legislative, or any part of it, be made up of
representatives chosen for that time by the people, which afterwards
return into the ordinary state of subjects, and have no share in the
legislature but upon a new choice, this power of chusing must also be
exercised by the people, either at certain appointed seasons, or else
when they are summoned to it; and in this latter case the power of
convoking the legislative is ordinarily placed in the executive, and has
one of these two limitations in respect of time: that either the
original constitution requires their assembling and acting at certain
intervals, and then the executive power does nothing but ministerially
issue directions for their electing and assembling, according to due
forms; or else it is left to his prudence to call them by new elections,
when the occasions or exigencies of the public require the amendment of
old, or making of new laws, or the redress or prevention of any
inconveniencies, that lie on, or threaten the people.

Sect. 155. It may be demanded here, What if the executive power, being
possessed of the force of the commonwealth, shall make use of that
force to hinder the meeting and acting of the legislative, when the
original constitution, or the public exigencies require it? I say, using
force upon the people without authority, and contrary to the trust put
in him that does so, is a state of war with the people, who have a right
to reinstate their legislative in the exercise of their power: for
having erected a legislative, with an intent they should exercise the
power of making laws, either at certain set times, or when there is need
of it, when they are hindered by any force from what is so necessary to
the society, and wherein the safety and preservation of the people
consists, the people have a right to remove it by force. In all states
and conditions, the true remedy of force without authority, is to oppose
force to it. The use of force without authority, always puts him that
uses it into a state of war, as the aggressor, and renders him liable to
be treated accordingly.

Sect. 156. The power of assembling and dismissing the legislative,
placed in the executive, gives not the executive a superiority over it,
but is a fiduciary trust placed in him, for the safety of the people, in
a case where the uncertainty and variableness of human affairs could not
bear a steady fixed rule: for it not being possible, that the first
framers of the government should, by any foresight, be so much masters
of future events, as to be able to prefix so just periods of return and
duration to the assemblies of the legislative, in all times to come,
that might exactly answer all the exigencies of the commonwealth; the
best remedy could be found for this defect, was to trust this to the
prudence of one who was always to be present, and whose business it was
to watch over the public good. Constant frequent meetings of the
legislative, and long continuations of their assemblies, without
necessary occasion, could not but be burdensome to the people, and must
necessarily in time produce more dangerous inconveniencies, and yet the
quick turn of affairs might be sometimes such as to need their present
help: any delay of their convening might endanger the public; and
sometimes too their business might be so great, that the limited time of
their sitting might be too short for their work, and rob the public of
that benefit which could be had only from their mature deliberation.
What then could be done in this case to prevent the community from being
exposed some time or other to eminent hazard, on one side or the other,
by fixed intervals and periods, set to the meeting and acting of the
legislative, but to intrust it to the prudence of some, who being
present, and acquainted with the state of public affairs, might make use
of this prerogative for the public good? and where else could this be so
well placed as in his hands, who was intrusted with the execution of the
laws for the same end? Thus supposing the regulation of times for the
assembling and sitting of the legislative, not settled by the original
constitution, it naturally fell into the hands of the executive, not as
an arbitrary power depending on his good pleasure, but with this trust
always to have it exercised only for the public weal, as the occurrences
of times and change of affairs might require. Whether settled periods of
their convening, or a liberty left to the prince for convoking the
legislative, or perhaps a mixture of both, hath the least inconvenience
attending it, it is not my business here to inquire, but only to shew,
that though the executive power may have the prerogative of convoking
and dissolving such conventions of the legislative, yet it is not
thereby superior to it.

Sect. 157. Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing
remains long in the same state. Thus people, riches, trade, power,
change their stations, flourishing mighty cities come to ruin, and prove
in times neglected desolate corners, whilst other unfrequented places
grow into populous countries, filled with wealth and inhabitants. But
things not always changing equally, and private interest often keeping
up customs and privileges, when the reasons of them are ceased, it often
comes to pass, that in governments, where part of the legislative
consists of representatives chosen by the people, that in tract of time
this representation becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the
reasons it was at first established upon. To what gross absurdities the
following of custom, when reason has left it, may lead, we may be
satisfied, when we see the bare name of a town, of which there remains
not so much as the ruins, where scarce so much housing as a sheepcote,
or more inhabitants than a shepherd is to be found, sends as many
representatives to the grand assembly of law-makers, as a whole county
numerous in people, and powerful in riches. This strangers stand amazed
at, and every one must confess needs a remedy; tho' most think it hard
to find one, because the constitution of the legislative being the
original and supreme act of the society, antecedent to all positive laws
in it, and depending wholly on the people, no inferior power can alter
it. And therefore the people, when the legislative is once constituted,
having, in such a government as we have been speaking of, no power to
act as long as the government stands; this inconvenience is thought
incapable of a remedy.

Sect. 158. Salus populi suprema lex, is certainly so just and
fundamental a rule, that he, who sincerely follows it, cannot
dangerously err. If therefore the executive, who has the power of
convoking the legislative, observing rather the true proportion, than
fashion of representation, regulates, not by old custom, but true
reason, the number of members, in all places that have a right to be
distinctly represented, which no part of the people however incorporated
can pretend to, but in proportion to the assistance which it affords to
the public, it cannot be judged to have set up a new legislative, but to
have restored the old and true one, and to have rectified the disorders
which succession of time had insensibly, as well as inevitably
introduced: For it being the interest as well as intention of the
people, to have a fair and equal representative; whoever brings it
nearest to that, is an undoubted friend to, and establisher of the
government, and cannot miss the consent and approbation of the
community; prerogative being nothing but a power, in the hands of the
prince, to provide for the public good, in such cases, which depending
upon unforeseen and uncertain occurrences, certain and unalterable laws
could not safely direct; whatsoever shall be done manifestly for the
good of the people, and the establishing the government upon its true
foundations, is, and always will be, just prerogative, The power of
erecting new corporations, and therewith new representatives, carries
with it a supposition, that in time the measures of representation might
vary, and those places have a just right to be represented which before
had none; and by the same reason, those cease to have a right, and be
too inconsiderable for such a privilege, which before had it. 'Tis not a
change from the present state, which perhaps corruption or decay has
introduced, that makes an inroad upon the government, but the tendency
of it to injure or oppress the people, and to set up one part or party,
with a distinction from, and an unequal subjection of the rest.
Whatsoever cannot but be acknowledged to be of advantage to the society,
and people in general, upon just and lasting measures, will always, when
done, justify itself; and whenever the people shall chuse their
representatives upon just and undeniably equal measures, suitable to the
original frame of the government, it cannot be doubted to be the will
and act of the society, whoever permitted or caused them so to do.




CHAPTER. XIV.

OF PREROGATIVE.


Sect. 159. WHERE the legislative and executive power are in distinct
hands, (as they are in all moderated monarchies, and well-framed
governments) there the good of the society requires, that several things
should be left to the discretion of him that has the executive power:
for the legislators not being able to foresee, and provide by laws, for
all that may be useful to the community, the executor of the laws having
the power in his hands, has by the common law of nature a right to make
use of it for the good of the society, in many cases, where the
municipal law has given no direction, till the legislative can
conveniently be assembled to provide for it. Many things there are,
which the law can by no means provide for; and those must necessarily be
left to the discretion of him that has the executive power in his hands,
to be ordered by him as the public good and advantage shall require:
nay, it is fit that the laws themselves should in some cases give way to
the executive power, or rather to this fundamental law of nature and
government, viz. That as much as may be, all the members of the society
are to be preserved: for since many accidents may happen, wherein a
strict and rigid observation of the laws may do harm; (as not to pull
down an innocent man's house to stop the fire, when the next to it is
burning) and a man may come sometimes within the reach of the law, which
makes no distinction of persons, by an action that may deserve reward
and pardon; 'tis fit the ruler should have a power, in many cases, to
mitigate the severity of the law, and pardon some offenders: for the end
of government being the preservation of all, as much as may be, even the
guilty are to be spared, where it can prove no prejudice to the
innocent.

Sect. 160. This power to act according to discretion, for the public
good, without the prescription of the law, and sometimes even against
it, is that which is called prerogative: for since in some governments
the lawmaking power is not always in being, and is usually too numerous,
and so too slow, for the dispatch requisite to execution; and because
also it is impossible to foresee, and so by laws to provide for, all
accidents and necessities that may concern the public, or to make such
laws as will do no harm, if they are executed with an inflexible rigour,
on all occasions, and upon all persons that may come in their way;
therefore there is a latitude left to the executive power, to do many
things of choice which the laws do not prescribe.

Sect. 161. This power, whilst employed for the benefit of the community,
and suitably to the trust and ends of the government, is undoubted
prerogative, and never is questioned: for the people are very seldom or
never scrupulous or nice in the point; they are far from examining
prerogative, whilst it is in any tolerable degree employed for the use
it was meant, that is, for the good of the people, and not manifestly
against it: but if there comes to be a question between the executive
power and the people, about a thing claimed as a prerogative; the
tendency of the exercise of such prerogative to the good or hurt of the
people, will easily decide that question.

Sect. 162. It is easy to conceive, that in the infancy of governments,
when commonwealths differed little from families in number of people,
they differed from them too but little in number of laws: and the
governors, being as the fathers of them, watching over them for their
good, the government was almost all prerogative. A few established laws
served the turn, and the discretion and care of the ruler supplied the
rest. But when mistake or flattery prevailed with weak princes to make
use of this power for private ends of their own, and not for the public
good, the people were fain by express laws to get prerogative determined
in those points wherein they found disadvantage from it: and thus
declared limitations of prerogative were by the people found necessary
in cases which they and their ancestors had left, in the utmost
latitude, to the wisdom of those princes who made no other but a right
use of it, that is, for the good of their people.

Sect. 163. And therefore they have a very wrong notion of government,
who say, that the people have encroached upon the prerogative, when they
have got any part of it to be defined by positive laws: for in so doing
they have not pulled from the prince any thing that of right belonged to
him, but only declared, that that power which they indefinitely left in
his or his ancestors hands, to be exercised for their good, was not a
thing which they intended him when he used it otherwise: for the end of
government being the good of the community, whatsoever alterations are
made in it, tending to that end, cannot be an encroachment upon any
body, since no body in government can have a right tending to any other
end: and those only are encroachments which prejudice or hinder the
public good. Those who say otherwise, speak as if the prince had a
distinct and separate interest from the good of the community, and was
not made for it; the root and source from which spring almost all those
evils and disorders which happen in kingly governments. And indeed, if
that be so, the people under his government are not a society of
rational creatures, entered into a community for their mutual good; they
are not such as have set rulers over themselves, to guard, and promote
that good; but are to be looked on as an herd of inferior creatures
under the dominion of a master, who keeps them and works them for his
own pleasure or profit. If men were so void of reason, and brutish, as
to enter into society upon such terms, prerogative might indeed be, what
some men would have it, an arbitrary power to do things hurtful to the
people.

Sect. 164. But since a rational creature cannot be supposed, when free,
to put himself into subjection to another, for his own harm; (though,
where he finds a good and wise ruler, he may not perhaps think it either
necessary or useful to set precise bounds to his power in all things)
prerogative can be nothing but the people's permitting their rulers to
do several things, of their own free choice, where the law was silent,
and sometimes too against the direct letter of the law, for the public
good; and their acquiescing in it when so done: for as a good prince,
who is mindful of the trust put into his hands, and careful of the good
of his people, cannot have too much prerogative, that is, power to do
good; so a weak and ill prince, who would claim that power which his
predecessors exercised without the direction of the law, as a
prerogative belonging to him by right of his office, which he may
exercise at his pleasure, to make or promote an interest distinct from
that of the public, gives the people an occasion to claim their right,
and limit that power, which, whilst it was exercised for their good,
they were content should be tacitly allowed.

Sect. 165. And therefore he that will look into the history of England,
will find, that prerogative was always largest in the hands of our
wisest and best princes; because the people, observing the whole
tendency of their actions to be the public good, contested not what was
done without law to that end: or, if any human frailty or mistake (for
princes are but men, made as others) appeared in some small declinations
from that end; yet 'twas visible, the main of their conduct tended to
nothing but the care of the public. The people therefore, finding reason
to be satisfied with these princes, whenever they acted without, or
contrary to the letter of the law, acquiesced in what they did, and,
without the least complaint, let them inlarge their prerogative as they
pleased, judging rightly, that they did nothing herein to the prejudice
of their laws, since they acted conformable to the foundation and end of
all laws, the public good.

Sect. 166. Such god-like princes indeed had some title to arbitrary
power by that argument, that would prove absolute monarchy the best
government, as that which God himself governs the universe by; because
such kings partake of his wisdom and goodness. Upon this is founded that
saying, That the reigns of good princes have been always most dangerous
to the liberties of their people: for when their successors, managing
the government with different thoughts, would draw the actions of those
good rulers into precedent, and make them the standard of their
prerogative, as if what had been done only for the good of the people
was a right in them to do, for the harm of the people, if they so
pleased; it has often occasioned contest, and sometimes public
disorders, before the people could recover their original right, and get
that to be declared not to be prerogative, which truly was never so;
since it is impossible that any body in the society should ever have a
right to do the people harm; though it be very possible, and reasonable,
that the people should not go about to set any bounds to the prerogative
of those kings, or rulers, who themselves transgressed not the bounds of
the public good: for prerogative is nothing but the power of doing
public good without a rule.

Sect. 167. The power of calling parliaments in England, as to precise
time, place, and duration, is certainly a prerogative of the king, but
still with this trust, that it shall be made use of for the good of the
nation, as the exigencies of the times, and variety of occasions, shall
require: for it being impossible to foresee which should always be the
fittest place for them to assemble in, and what the best season; the
choice of these was left with the executive power, as might be most
subservient to the public good, and best suit the ends of parliaments.

Sect. 168. The old question will be asked in this matter of prerogative,
But who shall be judge when this power is made a right use of one
answer: between an executive power in being, with such a prerogative,
and a legislative that depends upon his will for their convening, there
can be no judge on earth; as there can be none between the legislative
and the people, should either the executive, or the legislative, when
they have got the power in their hands, design, or go about to enslave
or destroy them. The people have no other remedy in this, as in all
other cases where they have no judge on earth, but to appeal to heaven:
for the rulers, in such attempts, exercising a power the people never
put into their hands, (who can never be supposed to consent that any
body should rule over them for their harm) do that which they have not a
right to do. And where the body of the people, or any single man, is
deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without
right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal
to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And
therefore, though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the
constitution of that society, any superior power, to determine and give
effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and
paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate
determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there
lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to
make their appeal to heaven. And this judgment they cannot part with, it
being out of a man's power so to submit himself to another, as to give
him a liberty to destroy him; God and nature never allowing a man so to
abandon himself, as to neglect his own preservation: and since he cannot
take away his own life, neither can he give another power to take it.
Nor let any one think, this lays a perpetual foundation for disorder;
for this operates not, till the inconveniency is so great, that the
majority feel it, and are weary of it, and find a necessity to have it
amended. But this the executive power, or wise princes, never need come
in the danger of: and it is the thing, of all others, they have most
need to avoid, as of all others the most perilous.




CHAPTER. XV.

OF PATERNAL, POLITICAL, AND DESPOTICAL POWER, CONSIDERED TOGETHER.


Sect. 169. THOUGH I have had occasion to speak of these separately
before, yet the great mistakes of late about government, having, as I
suppose, arisen from confounding these distinct powers one with another,
it may not, perhaps, be amiss to consider them here together.

Sect. 170. First, then, Paternal or parental power is nothing but that
which parents have over their children, to govern them for the
children's good, till they come to the use of reason, or a state of
knowledge, wherein they may be supposed capable to understand that rule,
whether it be the law of nature, or the municipal law of their country,
they are to govern themselves by: capable, I say, to know it, as well as
several others, who live as freemen under that law. The affection and
tenderness which God hath planted in the breast of parents towards their
children, makes it evident, that this is not intended to be a severe
arbitrary government, but only for the help, instruction, and
preservation of their offspring. But happen it as it will, there is, as
I have proved, no reason why it should be thought to extend to life and
death, at any time, over their children, more than over any body else;
neither can there be any pretence why this parental power should keep
the child, when grown to a man, in subjection to the will of his
parents, any farther than having received life and education from his
parents, obliges him to respect, honour, gratitude, assistance and
support, all his life, to both father and mother. And thus, 'tis true,
the paternal is a natural government, but not at all extending itself to
the ends and jurisdictions of that which is political. The power of the
father doth not reach at all to the property of the child, which is only
in his own disposing.

Sect. 171. Secondly, Political power is that power, which every man
having in the state of nature, has given up into the hands of the
society, and therein to the governors, whom the society hath set over
itself, with this express or tacit trust, that it shall be employed for
their good, and the preservation of their property: now this power,
which every man has in the state of nature, and which he parts with to
the society in all such cases where the society can secure him, is to
use such means, for the preserving of his own property, as he thinks
good, and nature allows him; and to punish the breach of the law of
nature in others, so as (according to the best of his reason) may most
conduce to the preservation of himself, and the rest of mankind. So that
the end and measure of this power, when in every man's hands in the
state of nature, being the preservation of all of his society, that is,
all mankind in general, it can have no other end or measure, when in the
hands of the magistrate, but to preserve the members of that society in
their lives, liberties, and possessions; and so cannot be an absolute,
arbitrary power over their lives and fortunes, which are as much as
possible to be preserved; but a power to make laws, and annex such
penalties to them, as may tend to the preservation of the whole, by
cutting off those parts, and those only, which are so corrupt, that they
threaten the sound and healthy, without which no severity is lawful. And
this power has its original only from compact and agreement, and the
mutual consent of those who make up the community.

Sect. 172. Thirdly, Despotical power is an absolute, arbitrary power one
man has over another, to take away his life, whenever he pleases. This
is a power, which neither nature gives, for it has made no such
distinction between one man and another; nor compact can convey: for man
not having such an arbitrary power over his own life, cannot give
another man such a power over it; but it is the effect only of
forfeiture, which the aggressor makes of his own life, when he puts
himself into the state of war with another: for having quitted reason,
which God hath given to be the rule betwixt man and man, and the common
bond whereby human kind is united into one fellowship and society; and
having renounced the way of peace which that teaches, and made use of
the force of war, to compass his unjust ends upon another, where he has
no right; and so revolting from his own kind to that of beasts, by
making force, which is their's, to be his rule of right, he renders
himself liable to be destroyed by the injured person, and the rest of
mankind, that will join with him in the execution of justice, as any
other wild beast, or noxious brute, with whom mankind can have neither
society nor security*. And thus captives, taken in a just and lawful
war, and such only, are subject to a despotical power, which, as it
arises not from compact, so neither is it capable of any, but is the
state of war continued: for what compact can be made with a man that is
not master of his own life? what condition can he perform? and if he be
once allowed to be master of his own life, the despotical, arbitrary
power of his master ceases. He that is master of himself, and his own
life, has a right too to the means of preserving it; so that as soon as
compact enters, slavery ceases, and he so far quits his absolute power,
and puts an end to the state of war, who enters into conditions with his
captive.

(*Another copy corrected by Mr. Locke, has it thus, Noxious brute that
is destructive to their being.)

Sect. 173. Nature gives the first of these, viz. paternal power to
parents for the benefit of their children during their minority, to
supply their want of ability, and understanding how to manage their
property. (By property I must be understood here, as in other places, to
mean that property which men have in their persons as well as goods.)
Voluntary agreement gives the second, viz. political power to governors
for the benefit of their subjects, to secure them in the possession and
use of their properties. And forfeiture gives the third despotical power
to lords for their own benefit, over those who are stripped of all
property.

Sect. 174. He, that shall consider the distinct rise and extent, and the
different ends of these several powers, will plainly see, that paternal
power comes as far short of that of the magistrate, as despotical
exceeds it; and that absolute dominion, however placed, is so far from
being one kind of civil society, that it is as inconsistent with it, as
slavery is with property. Paternal power is only where minority makes
the child incapable to manage his property; political, where men have
property in their own disposal; and despotical, over such as have no
property at all.




CHAPTER. XVI.

OF CONQUEST.


Sect. 175. THOUGH governments can originally have no other rise than
that before mentioned, nor polities be founded on any thing but the
consent of the people; yet such have been the disorders ambition has
filled the world with, that in the noise of war, which makes so great a
part of the history of mankind, this consent is little taken notice of:
and therefore many have mistaken the force of arms for the consent of
the people, and reckon conquest as one of the originals of government.
But conquest is as far from setting up any government, as demolishing an
house is from building a new one in the place. Indeed, it often makes
way for a new frame of a commonwealth, by destroying the former; but,
without the consent of the people, can never erect a new one.

Sect. 176. That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war
with another, and unjustly invades another man's right, can, by such an
unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be
easily agreed by all men, who will not think, that robbers and pyrates
have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master;
or that men are bound by promises, which unlawful force extorts from
them. Should a robber break into my house, and with a dagger at my
throat make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give
him any title? Just such a title, by his sword, has an unjust conqueror,
who forces me into submission. The injury and the crime is equal,
whether committed by the wearer of a crown, or some petty villain. The
title of the offender, and the number of his followers, make no
difference in the offence, unless it be to aggravate it. The only
difference is, great robbers punish little ones, to keep them in their
obedience; but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs,
because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world,
and have the power in their own possession, which should punish
offenders. What is my remedy against a robber, that so broke into my
house? Appeal to the law for justice. But perhaps justice is denied, or
I am crippled and cannot stir, robbed and have not the means to do it.
If God has taken away all means of seeking remedy, there is nothing left
but patience. But my son, when able, may seek the relief of the law,
which I am denied: he or his son may renew his appeal, till he recover
his right. But the conquered, or their children, have no court, no
arbitrator on earth to appeal to. Then they may appeal, as Jephtha did,
to heaven, and repeat their appeal till they have recovered the native
right of their ancestors, which was, to have such a legislative over
them, as the majority should approve, and freely acquiesce in. If it be
objected, This would cause endless trouble; I answer, no more than
justice does, where she lies open to all that appeal to her. He that
troubles his neighbour without a cause, is punished for it by the
justice of the court he appeals to: and he that appeals to heaven must
be sure he has right on his side; and a right too that is worth the
trouble and cost of the appeal, as he will answer at a tribunal that
cannot be deceived, and will be sure to retribute to every one according
to the mischiefs he hath created to his fellow subjects; that is, any
part of mankind: from whence it is plain, that he that conquers in an
unjust war can thereby have no title to the subjection and obedience of
the conquered.

Sect. 177. But supposing victory favours the right side, let us consider
a conqueror in a lawful war, and see what power he gets, and over whom.

First, It is plain he gets no power by his conquest over those that
conquered with him. They that fought on his side cannot suffer by the
conquest, but must at least be as much freemen as they were before. And
most commonly they serve upon terms, and on condition to share with
their leader, and enjoy a part of the spoil, and other advantages that
attend the conquering sword; or at least have a part of the subdued
country bestowed upon them. And the conquering people are not, I hope,
to be slaves by conquest, and wear their laurels only to shew they are
sacrifices to their leaders triumph. They that found absolute monarchy
upon the title of the sword, make their heroes, who are the founders of
such monarchies, arrant Draw-can-sirs, and forget they had any officers
and soldiers that fought on their side in the battles they won, or
assisted them in the subduing, or shared in possessing, the countries
they mastered. We are told by some, that the English monarchy is founded
in the Norman conquest, and that our princes have thereby a title to
absolute dominion: which if it were true, (as by the history it appears
otherwise) and that William had a right to make war on this island; yet
his dominion by conquest could reach no farther than to the Saxons and
Britons, that were then inhabitants of this country. The Normans that
came with him, and helped to conquer, and all descended from them, are
freemen, and no subjects by conquest; let that give what dominion it
will. And if I, or any body else, shall claim freedom, as derived from
them, it will be very hard to prove the contrary: and it is plain, the
law, that has made no distinction between the one and the other, intends
not there should be any difference in their freedom or privileges.

Sect. 178. But supposing, which seldom happens, that the conquerors and
conquered never incorporate into one people, under the same laws and
freedom; let us see next what power a lawful conqueror has over the
subdued: and that I say is purely despotical. He has an absolute power
over the lives of those who by an unjust war have forfeited them; but
not over the lives or fortunes of those who engaged not in the war, nor
over the possessions even of those who were actually engaged in it.

Sect. 179. Secondly, I say then the conqueror gets no power but only
over those who have actually assisted, concurred, or consented to that
unjust force that is used against him: for the people having given to
their governors no power to do an unjust thing, such as is to make an
unjust war, (for they never had such a power in themselves) they ought
not to be charged as guilty of the violence and unjustice that is
committed in an unjust war, any farther than they actually abet it; no
more than they are to be thought guilty of any violence or oppression
their governors should use upon the people themselves, or any part of
their fellow subjects, they having empowered them no more to the one
than to the other. Conquerors, it is true, seldom trouble themselves to
make the distinction, but they willingly permit the confusion of war to
sweep all together: but yet this alters not the right; for the
conquerors power over the lives of the conquered, being only because
they have used force to do, or maintain an injustice, he can have that
power only over those who have concurred in that force; all the rest are
innocent; and he has no more title over the people of that country, who
have done him no injury, and so have made no forfeiture of their lives,
than he has over any other, who, without any injuries or provocations,
have lived upon fair terms with him.

Sect. 180. Thirdly, The power a conqueror gets over those he overcomes
in a just war, is perfectly despotical: he has an absolute power over
the lives of those, who, by putting themselves in a state of war, have
forfeited them; but he has not thereby a right and title to their
possessions. This I doubt not, but at first sight will seem a strange
doctrine, it being so quite contrary to the practice of the world; there
being nothing more familiar in speaking of the dominion of countries,
than to say such an one conquered it; as if conquest, without any more
ado, conveyed a right of possession. But when we consider, that the
practice of the strong and powerful, how universal soever it may be, is
seldom the rule of right, however it be one part of the subjection of
the conquered, not to argue against the conditions cut out to them by
the conquering sword.

Sect. 181. Though in all war there be usually a complication of force
and damage, and the aggressor seldom fails to harm the estate, when he
uses force against the persons of those he makes war upon; yet it is the
use of force only that puts a man into the state of war: for whether by
force he begins the injury, or else having quietly, and by fraud, done
the injury, he refuses to make reparation, and by force maintains it,
(which is the same thing, as at first to have done it by force) it is
the unjust use of force that makes the war: for he that breaks open my
house, and violently turns me out of doors; or having peaceably got in,
by force keeps me out, does in effect the same thing; supposing we are
in such a state, that we have no common judge on earth, whom I may
appeal to, and to whom we are both obliged to submit: for of such I am
now speaking. It is the unjust use of force then, that puts a man into
the state of war with another; and thereby he that is guilty of it makes
a forfeiture of his life: for quitting reason, which is the rule given
between man and man, and using force, the way of beasts, he becomes
liable to be destroyed by him he uses force against, as any savage
ravenous beast, that is dangerous to his being.

Sect. 182. But because the miscarriages of the father are no faults of
the children, and they may be rational and peaceable, notwithstanding
the brutishness and injustice of the father; the father, by his
miscarriages and violence, can forfeit but his own life, but involves
not his children in his guilt or destruction. His goods, which nature,
that willeth the preservation of all mankind as much as is possible,
hath made to belong to the children to keep them from perishing, do
still continue to belong to his children: for supposing them not to have
joined in the war, either thro' infancy, absence, or choice, they have
done nothing to forfeit them: nor has the conqueror any right to take
them away, by the bare title of having subdued him that by force
attempted his destruction; though perhaps he may have some right to
them, to repair the damages he has sustained by the war, and the defence
of his own right; which how far it reaches to the possessions of the
conquered, we shall see by and by. So that he that by conquest has a
right over a man's person to destroy him if he pleases, has not thereby
a right over his estate to possess and enjoy it: for it is the brutal
force the aggressor has used, that gives his adversary a right to take
away his life, and destroy him if he pleases, as a noxious creature; but
it is damage sustained that alone gives him title to another man's
goods: for though I may kill a thief that sets on me in the highway, yet
I may not (which seems less) take away his money, and let him go: this
would be robbery on my side. His force, and the state of war he put
himself in, made him forfeit his life, but gave me no title to his
goods. The right then of conquest extends only to the lives of those who
joined in the war, not to their estates, but only in order to make
reparation for the damages received, and the charges of the war, and
that too with reservation of the right of the innocent wife and
children.

Sect. 183. Let the conqueror have as much justice on his side, as could
be supposed, he has no right to seize more than the vanquished could
forfeit: his life is at the victor's mercy; and his service and goods he
may appropriate, to make himself reparation; but he cannot take the
goods of his wife and children; they too had a title to the goods he
enjoyed, and their shares in the estate he possessed: for example, I in
the state of nature (and all commonwealths are in the state of nature
one with another) have injured another man, and refusing to give
satisfaction, it comes to a state of war, wherein my defending by force
what I had gotten unjustly, makes me the aggressor. I am conquered: my
life, it is true, as forfeit, is at mercy, but not my wife's and
children's. They made not the war, nor assisted in it. I could not
forfeit their lives; they were not mine to forfeit. My wife had a share
in my estate; that neither could I forfeit. And my children also, being
born of me, had a right to be maintained out of my labour or substance.
Here then is the case: the conqueror has a title to reparation for
damages received, and the children have a title to their father's estate
for their subsistence: for as to the wife's share, whether her own
labour, or compact, gave her a title to it, it is plain, her husband
could not forfeit what was her's. What must be done in the case? I
answer; the fundamental law of nature being, that all, as much as may
be, should be preserved, it follows, that if there be not enough fully
to satisfy both, viz, for the conqueror's losses, and children's
maintenance, he that hath, and to spare, must remit something of his
full satisfaction, and give way to the pressing and preferable title of
those who are in danger to perish without it.

Sect. 184. But supposing the charge and damages of the war are to be
made up to the conqueror, to the utmost farthing; and that the children
of the vanquished, spoiled of all their father's goods, are to be left
to starve and perish; yet the satisfying of what shall, on this score,
be due to the conqueror, will scarce give him a title to any country he
shall conquer: for the damages of war can scarce amount to the value of
any considerable tract of land, in any part of the world, where all the
land is possessed, and none lies waste. And if I have not taken away the
conqueror's land, which, being vanquished, it is impossible I should;
scarce any other spoil I have done him can amount to the value of mine,
supposing it equally cultivated, and of an extent any way coming near
what I had overrun of his. The destruction of a year's product or two
(for it seldom reaches four or five) is the utmost spoil that usually
can be done: for as to money, and such riches and treasure taken away,
these are none of nature's goods, they have but a fantastical imaginary
value: nature has put no such upon them: they are of no more account by
her standard, than the wampompeke of the Americans to an European
prince, or the silver money of Europe would have been formerly to an
American. And five years product is not worth the perpetual inheritance
of land, where all is possessed, and none remains waste, to be taken up
by him that is disseized: which will be easily granted, if one do but
take away the imaginary value of money, the disproportion being more
than between five and five hundred; though, at the same time, half a
year's product is more worth than the inheritance, where there being
more land than the inhabitants possess and make use of, any one has
liberty to make use of the waste: but there conquerors take little care
to possess themselves of the lands of the vanquished, No damage
therefore, that men in the state of nature (as all princes and
governments are in reference to one another) suffer from one another,
can give a conqueror power to dispossess the posterity of the
vanquished, and turn them out of that inheritance, which ought to be the
possession of them and their descendants to all generations. The
conqueror indeed will be apt to think himself master: and it is the very
condition of the subdued not to be able to dispute their right. But if
that be all, it gives no other title than what bare force gives to the
stronger over the weaker: and, by this reason, he that is strongest will
have a right to whatever he pleases to seize on.

Sect. 185. Over those then that joined with him in the war, and over
those of the subdued country that opposed him not, and the posterity
even of those that did, the conqueror, even in a just war, hath, by his
conquest, no right of dominion: they are free from any subjection to
him, and if their former government be dissolved, they are at liberty to
begin and erect another to themselves.

Sect. 186. The conqueror, it is true, usually, by the force he has over
them, compels them, with a sword at their breasts, to stoop to his
conditions, and submit to such a government as he pleases to afford
them; but the enquiry is, what right he has to do so? If it be said,
they submit by their own consent, then this allows their own consent to
be necessary to give the conqueror a title to rule over them. It remains
only to be considered, whether promises extorted by force, without
right, can be thought consent, and how far they bind. To which I shall
say, they bind not at all; because whatsoever another gets from me by
force, I still retain the right of, and he is obliged presently to
restore. He that forces my horse from me, ought presently to restore
him, and I have still a right to retake him. By the same reason, he that
forced a promise from me, ought presently to restore it, i.e. quit me of
the obligation of it; or I may resume it myself, i.e. chuse whether I
will perform it: for the law of nature laying an obligation on me only
by the rules she prescribes, cannot oblige me by the violation of her
rules: such is the extorting any thing from me by force. Nor does it at
all alter the case to say, I gave my promise, no more than it excuses
the force, and passes the right, when I put my hand in my pocket, and
deliver my purse myself to a thief, who demands it with a pistol at my
breast.

Sect. 187. From all which it follows, that the government of a
conqueror, imposed by force on the subdued, against whom he had no right
of war, or who joined not in the war against him, where he had right,
has no obligation upon them.

Sect. 188. But let us suppose, that all the men of that community, being
all members of the same body politic, may be taken to have joined in
that unjust war wherein they are subdued, and so their lives are at the
mercy of the conqueror.

Sect. 189. I say this concerns not their children who are in their
minority: for since a father hath not, in himself, a power over the life
or liberty of his child, no act of his can possibly forfeit it. So that
the children, whatever may have happened to the fathers, are freemen,
and the absolute power of the conqueror reaches no farther than the
persons of the men that were subdued by him, and dies with them: and
should he govern them as slaves, subjected to his absolute arbitrary
power, he has no such right of dominion over their children. He can have
no power over them but by their own consent, whatever he may drive them
to say or do; and he has no lawfull authority, whilst force, and not
choice, compels them to submission.

Sect. 190. Every man is born with a double right: first, a right of
freedom to his person, which no other man has a power over, but the free
disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, a right, before any other man,
to inherit with his brethren his father's goods.

Sect. 191. By the first of these, a man is naturally free from
subjection to any government, tho' he be born in a place under its
jurisdiction; but if he disclaim the lawful government of the country he
was born in, he must also quit the right that belonged to him by the
laws of it, and the possessions there descending to him from his
ancestors, if it were a government made by their consent.

Sect. 192. By the second, the inhabitants of any country, who are
descended, and derive a title to their estates from those who are
subdued, and had a government forced upon them against their free
consents, retain a right to the possession of their ancestors, though
they consent not freely to the government, whose hard conditions were by
force imposed on the possessors of that country: for the first conqueror
never having had a title to the land of that country, the people who are
the descendants of, or claim under those who were forced to submit to
the yoke of a government by constraint, have always a right to shake it
off, and free themselves from the usurpation or tyranny which the sword
hath brought in upon them, till their rulers put them under such a frame
of government as they willingly and of choice consent to. Who doubts but
the Grecian Christians, descendants of the ancient possessors of that
country, may justly cast off the Turkish yoke, which they have so long
groaned under, whenever they have an opportunity to do it? For no
government can have a right to obedience from a people who have not
freely consented to it; which they can never be supposed to do, till
either they are put in a full state of liberty to chuse their government
and governors, or at least till they have such standing laws, to which
they have by themselves or their representatives given their free
consent, and also till they are allowed their due property, which is so
to be proprietors of what they have, that no body can take away any part
of it without their own consent, without which, men under any government
are not in the state of freemen, but are direct slaves under the force
of war.

Sect. 193. But granting that the conqueror in a just war has a right to
the estates, as well as power over the persons, of the conquered; which,
it is plain, he hath not: nothing of absolute power will follow from
hence, in the continuance of the government; because the descendants of
these being all freemen, if he grants them estates and possessions to
inhabit his country, (without which it would be worth nothing)
whatsoever he grants them, they have, so far as it is granted, property
in. The nature whereof is, that without a man's own consent it cannot be
taken from him.

Sect. 194. Their persons are free by a native right, and their
properties, be they more or less, are their own, and at their own
dispose, and not at his; or else it is no property. Supposing the
conqueror gives to one man a thousand acres, to him and his heirs for
ever; to another he lets a thousand acres for his life, under the rent
of 50_l_. or 500_l_. per ann. has not the one of these a right to his
thousand acres for ever, and the other, during his life, paying the said
rent? and hath not the tenant for life a property in all that he gets
over and above his rent, by his labour and industry during the said
term, supposing it be double the rent? Can any one say, the king, or
conqueror, after his grant, may by his power of conqueror take away all,
or part of the land from the heirs of one, or from the other during his
life, he paying the rent? or can he take away from either the goods or
money they have got upon the said land, at his pleasure? If he can, then
all free and voluntary contracts cease, and are void in the world; there
needs nothing to dissolve them at any time, but power enough: and all
the grants and promises of men in power are but mockery and collusion:
for can there be any thing more ridiculous than to say, I give you and
your's this for ever, and that in the surest and most solemn way of
conveyance can be devised; and yet it is to be understood, that I have
right, if I please, to take it away from you again to morrow?

Sect. 195. I will not dispute now whether princes are exempt from the
laws of their country; but this I am sure, they owe subjection to the
laws of God and nature. No body, no power, can exempt them from the
obligations of that eternal law. Those are so great, and so strong, in
the case of promises, that omnipotency itself can be tied by them.
Grants, promises, and oaths, are bonds that hold the Almighty: whatever
some flatterers say to princes of the world, who all together, with all
their people joined to them, are, in comparison of the great God, but as
a drop of the bucket, or a dust on the balance, inconsiderable, nothing!

Sect. 196. The short of the case in conquest is this: the conqueror, if
he have a just cause, has a despotical right over the persons of all,
that actually aided, and concurred in the war against him, and a right
to make up his damage and cost out of their labour and estates, so he
injure not the right of any other. Over the rest of the people, if there
were any that consented not to the war, and over the children of the
captives themselves, or the possessions of either, he has no power; and
so can have, by virtue of conquest, no lawful title himself to dominion
over them, or derive it to his posterity; but is an aggressor, if he
attempts upon their properties, and thereby puts himself in a state of
war against them, and has no better a right of principality, he, nor any
of his successors, than Hingar, or Hubba, the Danes, had here in
England; or Spartacus, had he conquered Italy, would have had; which is
to have their yoke cast off, as soon as God shall give those under their
subjection courage and opportunity to do it. Thus, notwithstanding
whatever title the kings of Assyria had over Judah, by the sword, God
assisted Hezekiah to throw off the dominion of that conquering empire.
And the lord was with Hezekiah, and he prospered; wherefore he went
forth, and he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not,
2 Kings xviii. 7. Whence it is plain, that shaking off a power, which
force, and not right, hath set over any one, though it hath the name of
rebellion, yet is no offence before God, but is that which he allows and
countenances, though even promises and covenants, when obtained by
force, have intervened: for it is very probable, to any one that reads
the story of Ahaz and Hezekiah attentively, that the Assyrians subdued
Ahaz, and deposed him, and made Hezekiah king in his father's lifetime;
and that Hezekiah by agreement had done him homage, and paid him tribute
all this time.




CHAPTER. XVII.

OF USURPATION.


Sect. 197. AS conquest may be called a foreign usurpation, so usurpation
is a kind of domestic conquest, with this difference, that an usurper
can never have right on his side, it being no usurpation, but where one
is got into the possession of what another has right to. This, so far as
it is usurpation, is a change only of persons, but not of the forms and
rules of the government: for if the usurper extend his power beyond what
of right belonged to the lawful princes, or governors of the
commonwealth, it is tyranny added to usurpation.

Sect. 198. In all lawful governments, the designation of the persons,
who are to bear rule, is as natural and necessary a part as the form of
the government itself, and is that which had its establishment
originally from the people; the anarchy being much alike, to have no
form of government at all; or to agree, that it shall be monarchical,
but to appoint no way to design the person that shall have the power,
and be the monarch. Hence all commonwealths, with the form of government
established, have rules also of appointing those who are to have any
share in the public authority, and settled methods of conveying the
right to them: for the anarchy is much alike, to have no form of
government at all; or to agree that it shall be monarchical, but to
appoint no way to know or design the person that shall have the power,
and be the monarch. Whoever gets into the exercise of any part of the
power, by other ways than what the laws of the community have
prescribed, hath no right to be obeyed, though the form of the
commonwealth be still preserved; since he is not the person the laws
have appointed, and consequently not the person the people have
consented to. Nor can such an usurper, or any deriving from him, ever
have a title, till the people are both at liberty to consent, and have
actually consented to allow, and confirm in him the power he hath till
then usurped.




CHAPTER. XVIII.

OF TYRANNY.


Sect. 199. AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a
right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no
body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one
has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for
his own private separate advantage. When the governor, however intitled,
makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions
are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people,
but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any
other irregular passion.

Sect. 200. If one can doubt this to be truth, or reason, because it
comes from the obscure hand of a subject, I hope the authority of a king
will make it pass with him. King James the first, in his speech to the
parliament, 1603, tells them thus,

/#
     I will ever prefer the weal of the public, and of the whole
     commonwealth, in making of good laws and constitutions, to any
     particular and private ends of mine; thinking ever the wealth and
     weal of the commonwealth to be my greatest weal and worldly
     felicity; a point wherein a lawful king doth directly differ from a
     tyrant: for I do acknowledge, that the special and greatest point
     of difference that is between a rightful king and an usurping
     tyrant, is this, that whereas the proud and ambitious tyrant doth
     think his kingdom and people are only ordained for satisfaction of
     his desires and unreasonable appetites, the righteous and just king
     doth by the contrary acknowledge himself to be ordained for the
     procuring of the wealth and property of his people.
#/

And again, in his speech to the parliament, 1609, he hath these words:

/#
     The king binds himself by a double oath, to the observation of the
     fundamental laws of his kingdom; tacitly, as by being a king, and
     so bound to protect as well the people, as the laws of his kingdom;
     and expressly, by his oath at his coronation, so as every just
     king, in a settled kingdom, is bound to observe that paction made
     to his people, by his laws, in framing his government agreeable
     thereunto, according to that paction which God made with Noah after
     the deluge. Hereafter, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat,
     and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease while the
     earth remaineth. And therefore a king governing in a settled
     kingdom, leaves to be a king, and degenerates into a tyrant, as
     soon as he leaves off to rule according to his laws.
#/

And a little after,

/#
     Therefore all kings that are not tyrants, or perjured, will be glad
     to bound themselves within the limits of their laws; and they that
     persuade them the contrary, are vipers, and pests both against them
     and the commonwealth.
#/

Thus that learned king, who well understood the notion of things, makes
the difference betwixt a king and a tyrant to consist only in this, that
one makes the laws the bounds of his power, and the good of the public,
the end of his government; the other makes all give way to his own will
and appetite.

Sect. 201. It is a mistake, to think this fault is proper only to
monarchies; other forms of government are liable to it, as well as that:
for wherever the power, that is put in any hands for the government of
the people, and the preservation of their properties, is applied to
other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the
arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it; there it
presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or
many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well as one at
Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at Rome was
nothing better.

Sect. 202. Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be
transgressed to another's harm; and whosoever in authority exceeds the
power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his
command, to compass that upon the subject, which the law allows not,
ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be
opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another.
This is acknowledged in subordinate magistrates. He that hath authority
to seize my person in the street, may be opposed as a thief and a
robber, if he endeavours to break into my house to execute a writ,
notwithstanding that I know he has such a warrant, and such a legal
authority, as will impower him to arrest me abroad. And why this should
not hold in the highest, as well as in the most inferior magistrate, I
would gladly be informed. Is it reasonable, that the eldest brother,
because he has the greatest part of his father's estate, should thereby
have a right to take away any of his younger brothers portions? or that
a rich man, who possessed a whole country, should from thence have a
right to seize, when he pleased, the cottage and garden of his poor
neighbour? The being rightfully possessed of great power and riches,
exceedingly beyond the greatest part of the sons of Adam, is so far from
being an excuse, much less a reason, for rapine and oppression, which
the endamaging another without authority is, that it is a great
aggravation of it: for the exceeding the bounds of authority is no more
a right in a great, than in a petty officer; no more justifiable in a
king than a constable; but is so much the worse in him, in that he has
more trust put in him, has already a much greater share than the rest of
his brethren, and is supposed, from the advantages of his education,
employment, and counsellors, to be more knowing in the measures of right
and wrong.

Sect. 203. May the commands then of a prince be opposed? may he be
resisted as often as any one shall find himself aggrieved, and but
imagine he has not right done him? This will unhinge and overturn all
polities, and, instead of government and order, leave nothing but
anarchy and confusion.

Sect. 204. To this I answer, that force is to be opposed to nothing, but
to unjust and unlawful force; whoever makes any opposition in any other
case, draws on himself a just condemnation both from God and man; and so
no such danger or confusion will follow, as is often suggested: for,

Sect. 205. First, As, in some countries, the person of the prince by the
law is sacred; and so, whatever he commands or does, his person is still
free from all question or violence, not liable to force, or any judicial
censure or condemnation. But yet opposition may be made to the illegal
acts of any inferior officer, or other commissioned by him; unless he
will, by actually putting himself into a state of war with his people,
dissolve the government, and leave them to that defence which belongs to
every one in the state of nature: for of such things who can tell what
the end will be? and a neighbour kingdom has shewed the world an odd
example. In all other cases the sacredness of the person exempts him
from all inconveniencies, whereby he is secure, whilst the government
stands, from all violence and harm whatsoever; than which there cannot
be a wiser constitution: for the harm he can do in his own person not
being likely to happen often, nor to extend itself far; nor being able
by his single strength to subvert the laws, nor oppress the body of the
people, should any prince have so much weakness, and ill nature as to be
willing to do it, the inconveniency of some particular mischiefs, that
may happen sometimes, when a heady prince comes to the throne, are well
recompensed by the peace of the public, and security of the government,
in the person of the chief magistrate, thus set out of the reach of
danger: it being safer for the body, that some few private men should be
sometimes in danger to suffer, than that the head of the republic should
be easily, and upon slight occasions, exposed.

Sect. 206. Secondly, But this privilege, belonging only to the king's
person, hinders not, but they may be questioned, opposed, and resisted,
who use unjust force, though they pretend a commission from him, which
the law authorizes not; as is plain in the case of him that has the
king's writ to arrest a man, which is a full commission from the king;
and yet he that has it cannot break open a man's house to do it, nor
execute this command of the king upon certain days, nor in certain
places, though this commission have no such exception in it; but they
are the limitations of the law, which if any one transgress, the king's
commission excuses him not: for the king's authority being given him
only by the law, he cannot impower any one to act against the law, or
justify him, by his commission, in so doing; the commission, or command
of any magistrate, where he has no authority, being as void and
insignificant, as that of any private man; the difference between the
one and the other, being that the magistrate has some authority so far,
and to such ends, and the private man has none at all: for it is not the
commission, but the authority, that gives the right of acting; and
against the laws there can be no authority. But, notwithstanding such
resistance, the king's person and authority are still both secured, and
so no danger to governor or government.

Sect. 207. Thirdly, Supposing a government wherein the person of the
chief magistrate is not thus sacred; yet this doctrine of the lawfulness
of resisting all unlawful exercises of his power, will not upon every
slight occasion indanger him, or imbroil the government: for where the
injured party may be relieved, and his damages repaired by appeal to the
law, there can be no pretence for force, which is only to be used where
a man is intercepted from appealing to the law: for nothing is to be
accounted hostile force, but where it leaves not the remedy of such an
appeal; and it is such force alone, that puts him that uses it into a
state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A man with a sword in
his hand demands my purse in the high-way, when perhaps I have not
twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may lawfully kill. To another I
deliver 100 pounds to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to
restore me, when I am got up again, but draws his sword to defend the
possession of it by force, if I endeavour to retake it. The mischief
this man does me is a hundred, or possibly a thousand times more than
the other perhaps intended me (whom I killed before he really did me
any); and yet I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt
the other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain; because the one using
force, which threatened my life, I could not have time to appeal to the
law to secure it: and when it was gone, it was too late to appeal. The
law could not restore life to my dead carcass: the loss was irreparable;
which to prevent, the law of nature gave me a right to destroy him, who
had put himself into a state of war with me, and threatened my
destruction. But in the other case, my life not being in danger, I may
have the benefit of appealing to the law, and have reparation for my 100
pounds that way.

Sect. 208. Fourthly, But if the unlawful acts done by the magistrate be
maintained (by the power he has got), and the remedy which is due by
law, be by the same power obstructed; yet the right of resisting, even
in such manifest acts of tyranny, will not suddenly, or on slight
occasions, disturb the government: for if it reach no farther than some
private men's cases, though they have a right to defend themselves, and
to recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them; yet the
right to do so will not easily engage them in a contest, wherein they
are sure to perish; it being as impossible for one, or a few oppressed
men to disturb the government, where the body of the people do not think
themselves concerned in it, as for a raving mad-man, or heady malcontent
to overturn a well settled state; the people being as little apt to
follow the one, as the other.

Sect. 209. But if either these illegal acts have extended to the
majority of the people; or if the mischief and oppression has lighted
only on some few, but in such cases, as the precedent, and consequences
seem to threaten all; and they are persuaded in their consciences, that
their laws, and with them their estates, liberties, and lives are in
danger, and perhaps their religion too; how they will be hindered from
resisting illegal force, used against them, I cannot tell. This is an
inconvenience, I confess, that attends all governments whatsoever, when
the governors have brought it to this pass, to be generally suspected of
their people; the most dangerous state which they can possibly put
themselves in, wherein they are the less to be pitied, because it is so
easy to be avoided; it being as impossible for a governor, if he really
means the good of his people, and the preservation of them, and their
laws together, not to make them see and feel it, as it is for the father
of a family, not to let his children see he loves, and takes care of
them.

Sect. 210. But if all the world shall observe pretences of one kind, and
actions of another; arts used to elude the law, and the trust of
prerogative (which is an arbitrary power in some things left in the
prince's hand to do good, not harm to the people) employed contrary to
the end for which it was given: if the people shall find the ministers
and subordinate magistrates chosen suitable to such ends, and favoured,
or laid by, proportionably as they promote or oppose them: if they see
several experiments made of arbitrary power, and that religion underhand
favoured, (tho' publicly proclaimed against) which is readiest to
introduce it; and the operators in it supported, as much as may be; and
when that cannot be done, yet approved still, and liked the better: if a
long train of actions shew the councils all tending that way; how can a
man any more hinder himself from being persuaded in his own mind, which
way things are going; or from casting about how to save himself, than he
could from believing the captain of the ship he was in, was carrying
him, and the rest of the company, to Algiers, when he found him always
steering that course, though cross winds, leaks in his ship, and want of
men and provisions did often force him to turn his course another way
for some time, which he steadily returned to again, as soon as the wind,
weather, and other circumstances would let him?




CHAPTER. XIX.

OF THE DISSOLUTION OF GOVERNMENT.


Sect. 211. HE that will with any clearness speak of the dissolution of
government, ought in the first place to distinguish between the
dissolution of the society and the dissolution of the government. That
which makes the community, and brings men out of the loose state of
nature, into one politic society, is the agreement which every one has
with the rest to incorporate, and act as one body, and so be one
distinct commonwealth. The usual, and almost only way whereby this
union is dissolved, is the inroad of foreign force making a conquest
upon them: for in that case, (not being able to maintain and support
themselves, as one intire and independent body) the union belonging to
that body which consisted therein, must necessarily cease, and so every
one return to the state he was in before, with a liberty to shift for
himself, and provide for his own safety, as he thinks fit, in some other
society. Whenever the society is dissolved, it is certain the government
of that society cannot remain. Thus conquerors swords often cut up
governments by the roots, and mangle societies to pieces, separating the
subdued or scattered multitude from the protection of, and dependence
on, that society which ought to have preserved them from violence. The
world is too well instructed in, and too forward to allow of, this way
of dissolving of governments, to need any more to be said of it; and
there wants not much argument to prove, that where the society is
dissolved, the government cannot remain; that being as impossible, as
for the frame of an house to subsist when the materials of it are
scattered and dissipated by a whirl-wind, or jumbled into a confused
heap by an earthquake.

Sect. 212. Besides this over-turning from without, governments are
dissolved from within.

First, When the legislative is altered. Civil society being a state of
peace, amongst those who are of it, from whom the state of war is
excluded by the umpirage, which they have provided in their legislative,
for the ending all differences that may arise amongst any of them, it is
in their legislative, that the members of a commonwealth are united, and
combined together into one coherent living body. This is the soul that
gives form, life, and unity, to the commonwealth: from hence the
several members have their mutual influence, sympathy, and connexion:
and therefore, when the legislative is broken, or dissolved, dissolution
and death follows: for the essence and union of the society consisting
in having one will, the legislative, when once established by the
majority, has the declaring, and as it were keeping of that will. The
constitution of the legislative is the first and fundamental act of
society, whereby provision is made for the continuation of their union,
under the direction of persons, and bonds of laws, made by persons
authorized thereunto, by the consent and appointment of the people,
without which no one man, or number of men, amongst them, can have
authority of making laws that shall be binding to the rest. When any
one, or more, shall take upon them to make laws, whom the people have
not appointed so to do, they make laws without authority, which the
people are not therefore bound to obey; by which means they come again
to be out of subjection, and may constitute to themselves a new
legislative, as they think best, being in full liberty to resist the
force of those, who without authority would impose any thing upon them.
Every one is at the disposure of his own will, when those who had, by
the delegation of the society, the declaring of the public will, are
excluded from it, and others usurp the place, who have no such authority
or delegation.

Sect. 213. This being usually brought about by such in the commonwealth
who misuse the power they have; it is hard to consider it aright, and
know at whose door to lay it, without knowing the form of government in
which it happens. Let us suppose then the legislative placed in the
concurrence of three distinct persons.

(<i>1</i>). A single hereditary person, having the constant, supreme,
executive power, and with it the power of convoking and dissolving the
other two within certain periods of time.

(<i>2</i>). An assembly of hereditary nobility.

(<i>3</i>). An assembly of representatives chosen, pro tempore, by the
people. Such a form of government supposed, it is evident,

Sect. 214. First, That when such a single person, or prince, sets up his
own arbitrary will in place of the laws, which are the will of the
society, declared by the legislative, then the legislative is changed:
for that being in effect the legislative, whose rules and laws are put
in execution, and required to be obeyed; when other laws are set up, and
other rules pretended, and inforced, than what the legislative,
constituted by the society, have enacted, it is plain that the
legislative is changed. Whoever introduces new laws, not being thereunto
authorized by the fundamental appointment of the society, or subverts
the old, disowns and overturns the power by which they were made, and so
sets up a new legislative.

Sect. 215. Secondly, When the prince hinders the legislative from
assembling in its due time, or from acting freely, pursuant to those
ends for which it was constituted, the legislative is altered: for it is
not a certain number of men, no, nor their meeting, unless they have
also freedom of debating, and leisure of perfecting, what is for the
good of the society, wherein the legislative consists: when these are
taken away or altered, so as to deprive the society of the due exercise
of their power, the legislative is truly altered; for it is not names
that constitute governments, but the use and exercise of those powers
that were intended to accompany them; so that he, who takes away the
freedom, or hinders the acting of the legislative in its due seasons, in
effect takes away the legislative, and puts an end to the government.

Sect. 216. Thirdly, When, by the arbitrary power of the prince, the
electors, or ways of election, are altered, without the consent, and
contrary to the common interest of the people, there also the
legislative is altered: for, if others than those whom the society hath
authorized thereunto, do chuse, or in another way than what the society
hath prescribed, those chosen are not the legislative appointed by the
people.

Sect. 217. Fourthly, The delivery also of the people into the subjection
of a foreign power, either by the prince, or by the legislative, is
certainly a change of the legislative, and so a dissolution of the
government: for the end why people entered into society being to be
preserved one intire, free, independent society, to be governed by its
own laws; this is lost, whenever they are given up into the power of
another.

Sect. 218. Why, in such a constitution as this, the dissolution of the
government in these cases is to be imputed to the prince, is evident;
because he, having the force, treasure and offices of the state to
employ, and often persuading himself, or being flattered by others, that
as supreme magistrate he is uncapable of controul; he alone is in a
condition to make great advances toward such changes, under pretence of
lawful authority, and has it in his hands to terrify or suppress
opposers, as factious, seditious, and enemies to the government: whereas
no other part of the legislative, or people, is capable by themselves to
attempt any alteration of the legislative, without open and visible
rebellion, apt enough to be taken notice of, which, when it prevails,
produces effects very little different from foreign conquest. Besides,
the prince in such a form of government, having the power of dissolving
the other parts of the legislative, and thereby rendering them private
persons, they can never in opposition to him, or without his
concurrence, alter the legislative by a law, his consent being necessary
to give any of their decrees that sanction. But yet, so far as the other
parts of the legislative any way contribute to any attempt upon the
government, and do either promote, or not, what lies in them, hinder
such designs, they are guilty, and partake in this, which is certainly
the greatest crime which men can partake of one towards another.

Sec. 219.There is one way more whereby such a government may be
dissolved, and that is: When he who has the supreme executive power,
neglects and abandons that charge, so that the laws already made can no
longer be put in execution. This is demonstratively to reduce all to
anarchy, and so effectually to dissolve the government: for laws not
being made for themselves, but to be, by their execution, the bonds of
the society, to keep every part of the body politic in its due place and
function; when that totally ceases, the government visibly ceases, and
the people become a confused multitude, without order or connexion.
Where there is no longer the administration of justice, for the securing
of men's rights, nor any remaining power within the community to direct
the force, or provide for the necessities of the public, there certainly
is no government left. Where the laws cannot be executed, it is all one
as if there were no laws; and a government without laws is, I suppose, a
mystery in politics, unconceivable to human capacity, and inconsistent
with human society.

Sect. 220. In these and the like cases, when the government is
dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide for themselves, by
erecting a new legislative, differing from the other, by the change of
persons, or form, or both, as they shall find it most for their safety
and good: for the society can never, by the fault of another, lose the
native and original right it has to preserve itself, which can only be
done by a settled legislative, and a fair and impartial execution of the
laws made by it. But the state of mankind is not so miserable that they
are not capable of using this remedy, till it be too late to look for
any. To tell people they may provide for themselves, by erecting a new
legislative, when by oppression, artifice, or being delivered over to a
foreign power, their old one is gone, is only to tell them, they may
expect relief when it is too late, and the evil is past cure. This is in
effect no more than to bid them first be slaves, and then to take care
of their liberty; and when their chains are on, tell them, they may act
like freemen. This, if barely so, is rather mockery than relief; and men
can never be secure from tyranny, if there be no means to escape it till
they are perfectly under it: and therefore it is, that they have not
only a right to get out of it, but to prevent it.

Sect. 221. There is therefore, secondly, another way whereby governments
are dissolved, and that is, when the legislative, or the prince, either
of them, act contrary to their trust.

First, The legislative acts against the trust reposed in them, when they
endeavour to invade the property of the subject, and to make themselves,
or any part of the community, masters, or arbitrary disposers of the
lives, liberties, or fortunes of the people.

Sect. 222. The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of
their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative,
is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to
the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power,
and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society: for
since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the
legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs
to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted
themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators
endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to
reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a
state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any
farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath
provided for all men, against force and violence. Whensoever therefore
the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and
either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp
themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over
the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust
they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite
contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume
their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative,
(such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and
security, which is the end for which they are in society. What I have
said here, concerning the legislative in general, holds true also
concerning the supreme executor, who having a double trust put in him,
both to have a part in the legislative, and the supreme execution of the
law, acts against both, when he goes about to set up his own arbitrary
will as the law of the society. He acts also contrary to his trust, when
he either employs the force, treasure, and offices of the society, to
corrupt the representatives, and gain them to his purposes; or openly
preengages the electors, and prescribes to their choice, such, whom he
has, by sollicitations, threats, promises, or otherwise, won to his
designs; and employs them to bring in such, who have promised
before-hand what to vote, and what to enact. Thus to regulate candidates
and electors, and new-model the ways of election, what is it but to cut
up the government by the roots, and poison the very fountain of public
security? for the people having reserved to themselves the choice of
their representatives, as the fence to their properties, could do it for
no other end, but that they might always be freely chosen, and so
chosen, freely act, and advise, as the necessity of the commonwealth,
and the public good should, upon examination, and mature debate, be
judged to require. This, those who give their votes before they hear the
debate, and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not capable of
doing. To prepare such an assembly as this, and endeavour to set up the
declared abettors of his own will, for the true representatives of the
people, and the law-makers of the society, is certainly as great a
breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subvert the
government, as is possible to be met with. To which, if one shall add
rewards and punishments visibly employed to the same end, and all the
arts of perverted law made use of, to take off and destroy all that
stand in the way of such a design, and will not comply and consent to
betray the liberties of their country, it will be past doubt what is
doing. What power they ought to have in the society, who thus employ it
contrary to the trust went along with it in its first institution, is
easy to determine; and one cannot but see, that he, who has once
attempted any such thing as this, cannot any longer be trusted.

Sect. 223. To this perhaps it will be said, that the people being
ignorant, and always discontented, to lay the foundation of government
in the unsteady opinion and uncertain humour of the people, is to expose
it to certain ruin; and no government will be able long to subsist, if
the people may set up a new legislative, whenever they take offence at
the old one. To this I answer, Quite the contrary. People are not so
easily got out of their old forms, as some are apt to suggest. They are
hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults in the
frame they have been accustomed to. And if there be any original
defects, or adventitious ones introduced by time, or corruption; it is
not an easy thing to get them changed, even when all the world sees
there is an opportunity for it. This slowness and aversion in the people
to quit their old constitutions, has, in the many revolutions which have
been seen in this kingdom, in this and former ages, still kept us to,
or, after some interval of fruitless attempts, still brought us back
again to our old legislative of king, lords and commons: and whatever
provocations have made the crown be taken from some of our princes
heads, they never carried the people so far as to place it in another
line.

Sect. 224. But it will be said, this hypothesis lays a ferment for
frequent rebellion. To which I answer,

First, No more than any other hypothesis: for when the people are made
miserable, and find themselves exposed to the ill usage of arbitrary
power, cry up their governors, as much as you will, for sons of Jupiter;
let them be sacred and divine, descended, or authorized from heaven;
give them out for whom or what you please, the same will happen. The
people generally ill treated, and contrary to right, will be ready upon
any occasion to ease themselves of a burden that sits heavy upon them.
They will wish, and seek for the opportunity, which in the change,
weakness and accidents of human affairs, seldom delays long to offer
itself. He must have lived but a little while in the world, who has not
seen examples of this in his time; and he must have read very little,
who cannot produce examples of it in all sorts of governments in the
world.

Sect. 225. Secondly, I answer, such revolutions happen not upon every
little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling
part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human
frailty, will be born by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a
long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same
way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel
what they lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be
wondered, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put
the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which
government was at first erected; and without which, ancient names, and
specious forms, are so far from being better, that they are much worse,
than the state of nature, or pure anarchy; the inconveniencies being all
as great and as near, but the remedy farther off and more difficult.

Sect. 226. Thirdly, I answer, that this doctrine of a power in the
people of providing for their safety a-new, by a new legislative, when
their legislators have acted contrary to their trust, by invading their
property, is the best fence against rebellion, and the probablest means
to hinder it: for rebellion being an opposition, not to persons, but
authority, which is founded only in the constitutions and laws of the
government; those, whoever they be, who by force break through, and by
force justify their violation of them, are truly and properly rebels:
for when men, by entering into society and civil-government, have
excluded force, and introduced laws for the preservation of property,
peace, and unity amongst themselves, those who set up force again in
opposition to the laws, do rebellare, that is, bring back again the
state of war, and are properly rebels: which they who are in power, (by
the pretence they have to authority, the temptation of force they have
in their hands, and the flattery of those about them) being likeliest to
do; the properest way to prevent the evil, is to shew them the danger
and injustice of it, who are under the greatest temptation to run into
it.

Sect. 227. In both the fore-mentioned cases, when either the legislative
is changed, or the legislators act contrary to the end for which they
were constituted; those who are guilty are guilty of rebellion: for if
any one by force takes away the established legislative of any society,
and the laws by them made, pursuant to their trust, he thereby takes
away the umpirage, which every one had consented to, for a peaceable
decision of all their controversies, and a bar to the state of war
amongst them. They, who remove, or change the legislative, take away
this decisive power, which no body can have, but by the appointment and
consent of the people; and so destroying the authority which the people
did, and no body else can set up, and introducing a power which the
people hath not authorized, they actually introduce a state of war,
which is that of force without authority: and thus, by removing the
legislative established by the society, (in whose decisions the people
acquiesced and united, as to that of their own will) they untie the
knot, and expose the people a-new to the state of war, And if those, who
by force take away the legislative, are rebels, the legislators
themselves, as has been shewn, can be no less esteemed so; when they,
who were set up for the protection, and preservation of the people,
their liberties and properties, shall by force invade and endeavour to
take them away; and so they putting themselves into a state of war with
those who made them the protectors and guardians of their peace, are
properly, and with the greatest aggravation, rebellantes, rebels.

Sect. 228. But if they, who say it lays a foundation for rebellion, mean
that it may occasion civil wars, or intestine broils, to tell the people
they are absolved from obedience when illegal attempts are made upon
their liberties or properties, and may oppose the unlawful violence of
those who were their magistrates, when they invade their properties
contrary to the trust put in them; and that therefore this doctrine is
not to be allowed, being so destructive to the peace of the world: they
may as well say, upon the same ground, that honest men may not oppose
robbers or pirates, because this may occasion disorder or bloodshed. If
any mischief come in such cases, it is not to be charged upon him who
defends his own right, but on him that invades his neighbours. If the
innocent honest man must quietly quit all he has, for peace sake, to him
who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered, what
a kind of peace there will be in the world, which consists only in
violence and rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit
of robbers and oppressors. Who would not think it an admirable peace
betwix the mighty and the mean, when the lamb, without resistance,
yielded his throat to be torn by the imperious wolf? Polyphemus's den
gives us a perfect pattern of such a peace, and such a government,
wherein Ulysses and his companions had nothing to do, but quietly to
suffer themselves to be devoured. And no doubt Ulysses, who was a
prudent man, preached up passive obedience, and exhorted them to a quiet
submission, by representing to them of what concernment peace was to
mankind; and by shewing the inconveniences might happen, if they should
offer to resist Polyphemus, who had now the power over them.

Sect. 229. The end of government is the good of mankind; and which is
best for mankind, that the people should be always exposed to the
boundless will of tyranny, or that the rulers should be sometimes liable
to be opposed, when they grow exorbitant in the use of their power, and
employ it for the destruction, and not the preservation of the
properties of their people?

Sect. 230. Nor let any one say, that mischief can arise from hence, as
often as it shall please a busy head, or turbulent spirit, to desire the
alteration of the government. It is true, such men may stir, whenever
they please; but it will be only to their own just ruin and perdition:
for till the mischief be grown general, and the ill designs of the
rulers become visible, or their attempts sensible to the greater part,
the people, who are more disposed to suffer than right themselves by
resistance, are not apt to stir. The examples of particular injustice,
or oppression of here and there an unfortunate man, moves them not. But
if they universally have a persuation, grounded upon manifest evidence,
that designs are carrying on against their liberties, and the general
course and tendency of things cannot but give them strong suspicions of
the evil intention of their governors, who is to be blamed for it? Who
can help it, if they, who might avoid it, bring themselves into this
suspicion? Are the people to be blamed, if they have the sense of
rational creatures, and can think of things no otherwise than as they
find and feel them? And is it not rather their fault, who put things
into such a posture, that they would not have them thought to be as they
are? I grant, that the pride, ambition, and turbulency of private men
have sometimes caused great disorders in commonwealths, and factions
have been fatal to states and kingdoms. But whether the mischief hath
oftener begun in the peoples wantonness, and a desire to cast off the
lawful authority of their rulers, or in the rulers insolence, and
endeavours to get and exercise an arbitrary power over their people;
whether oppression, or disobedience, gave the first rise to the
disorder, I leave it to impartial history to determine. This I am sure,
whoever, either ruler or subject, by force goes about to invade the
rights of either prince or people, and lays the foundation for
overturning the constitution and frame of any just government, is highly
guilty of the greatest crime, I think, a man is capable of, being to
answer for all those mischiefs of blood, rapine, and desolation, which
the breaking to pieces of governments bring on a country. And he who
does it, is justly to be esteemed the common enemy and pest of mankind,
and is to be treated accordingly.

Sect. 231. That subjects or foreigners, attempting by force on the
properties of any people, may be resisted with force, is agreed on all
hands. But that magistrates, doing the same thing, may be resisted, hath
of late been denied: as if those who had the greatest privileges and
advantages by the law, had thereby a power to break those laws, by which
alone they were set in a better place than their brethren: whereas their
offence is thereby the greater, both as being ungrateful for the greater
share they have by the law, and breaking also that trust, which is put
into their hands by their brethren.

Sect. 232. Whosoever uses force without right, as every one does in
society, who does it without law, puts himself into a state of war with
those against whom he so uses it; and in that state all former ties are
cancelled, all other rights cease, and every one has a right to defend
himself, and to resist the aggressor. This is so evident, that Barclay
himself, that great assertor of the power and sacredness of kings, is
forced to confess, That it is lawful for the people, in some cases, to
resist their king; and that too in a chapter, wherein he pretends to
shew, that the divine law shuts up the people from all manner of
rebellion. Whereby it is evident, even by his own doctrine, that, since
they may in some cases resist, all resisting of princes is not
rebellion. His words are these. Quod siquis dicat, Ergone populus
tyrannicae crudelitati & furori jugulum semper praebebit? Ergone
multitude civitates suas fame, ferro, & flamma vastari, seque, conjuges,
& liberos fortunae ludibrio & tyranni libidini exponi, inque omnia vitae
pericula omnesque miserias & molestias a rege deduci patientur? Num
illis quod omni animantium generi est a natura tributum, denegari debet,
ut sc. vim vi repellant, seseq; ab injuria, tueantur? Huic breviter
responsum sit, Populo universo negari defensionem, quae juris naturalis
est, neque ultionem quae praeter naturam est adversus regem concedi
debere. Quapropter si rex non in singulares tantum personas aliquot
privatum odium exerceat, sed corpus etiam reipublicae, cujus ipse caput
est, i.e. totum populum, vel insignem aliquam ejus partem immani &
intoleranda saevitia seu tyrannide divexet; populo, quidem hoc casu
resistendi ac tuendi se ab injuria potestas competit, sed tuendi se
tantum, non enim in principem invadendi: & restituendae injuriae
illatae, non recedendi a debita reverentia propter acceptam injuriam.
Praesentem denique impetum propulsandi non vim praeteritam ulciscenti
jus habet. Horum enim alterum a natura est, ut vitam scilicet corpusque
tueamur. Alterum vero contra naturam, ut inferior de superiori
supplicium sumat. Quod itaque populus malum, antequam factum sit,
impedire potest, ne fiat, id postquam factum est, in regem authorem
sceleris vindicare non potest: populus igitur hoc amplius quam privatus
quispiam habet: quod huic, vel ipsis adversariis judicibus, excepto
Buchanano, nullum nisi in patientia remedium superest. Cum ille si
intolerabilis tyrannus est (modicum enim ferre omnino debet) resistere
cum reverentia possit, Barclay contra Monarchom. 1. iii. c. 8.

In English thus:

Sect. 233. But if any one should ask, Must the people then always lay
themselves open to the cruelty and rage of tyranny? Must they see their
cities pillaged, and laid in ashes, their wives and children exposed to
the tyrant's lust and fury, and themselves and families reduced by their
king to ruin, and all the miseries of want and oppression, and yet sit
still? Must men alone be debarred the common privilege of opposing force
with force, which nature allows so freely to all other creatures for
their preservation from injury? I answer: Self-defence is a part of the
law of nature; nor can it be denied the community, even against the king
himself: but to revenge themselves upon him, must by no means be allowed
them; it being not agreeable to that law. Wherefore if the king shall
shew an hatred, not only to some particular persons, but sets himself
against the body of the commonwealth, whereof he is the head, and
shall, with intolerable ill usage, cruelly tyrannize over the whole, or
a considerable part of the people, in this case the people have a right
to resist and defend themselves from injury: but it must be with this
caution, that they only defend themselves, but do not attack their
prince: they may repair the damages received, but must not for any
provocation exceed the bounds of due reverence and respect. They may
repulse the present attempt, but must not revenge past violences: for it
is natural for us to defend life and limb, but that an inferior should
punish a superior, is against nature. The mischief which is designed
them, the people may prevent before it be done; but when it is done,
they must not revenge it on the king, though author of the villany. This
therefore is the privilege of the people in general, above what any
private person hath; that particular men are allowed by our adversaries
themselves (Buchanan only excepted) to have no other remedy but
patience; but the body of the people may with respect resist intolerable
tyranny; for when it is but moderate, they ought to endure it.

Sect. 234. Thus far that great advocate of monarchical power allows of
resistance.

Sect. 235. It is true, he has annexed two limitations to it, to no
purpose:

First, He says, it must be with reverence.

Secondly, It must be without retribution, or punishment; and the reason
he gives is, because an inferior cannot punish a superior. First, How to
resist force without striking again, or how to strike with reverence,
will need some skill to make intelligible. He that shall oppose an
assault only with a shield to receive the blows, or in any more
respectful posture, without a sword in his hand, to abate the confidence
and force of the assailant, will quickly be at an end of his resistance,
and will find such a defence serve only to draw on himself the worse
usage. This is as ridiculous a way of resisting, as juvenal thought it
of fighting; ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum. And the success of the
combat will be unavoidably the same he there describes it:

/*[4]
      -----Libertas pauperis haec est:
    Pulsatus rogat, et pugnis concisus, adorat,
    Ut liceat paucis cum dentibus inde reverti.
*/

This will always be the event of such an imaginary resistance, where men
may not strike again. He therefore who may resist, must be allowed to
strike. And then let our author, or any body else, join a knock on the
head, or a cut on the face, with as much reverence and respect as he
thinks fit. He that can reconcile blows and reverence, may, for aught I
know, desire for his pains, a civil, respectful cudgeling where-ever he
can meet with it.

Secondly, As to his second, An inferior cannot punish a superior; that
is true, generally speaking, whilst he is his superior. But to resist
force with force, being the state of war that levels the parties,
cancels all former relation of reverence, respect, and superiority: and
then the odds that remains, is, that he, who opposes the unjust
agressor, has this superiority over him, that he has a right, when he
prevails, to punish the offender, both for the breach of the peace, and
all the evils that followed upon it. Barclay therefore, in another
place, more coherently to himself, denies it to be lawful to resist a
king in any case. But he there assigns two cases, whereby a king may
un-king himself. His words are,

Quid ergo, nulline casus incidere possunt quibus populo sese erigere
atque in regem impotentius dominantem arma capere & invadere jure suo
suaque authoritate liceat? Nulli certe quamdiu rex manet. Semper enim ex
divinis id obstat, Regem honorificato; & qui potestati resistit, Dei
ordinationi resisit: non alias igitur in eum populo potestas est quam si
id committat propter quod ipso jure rex esse desinat. Tunc enim se ipse
principatu exuit atque in privatis constituit liber: hoc modo populus &
superior efficitur, reverso ad eum sc. jure illo quod ante regem
inauguratum in interregno habuit. At sunt paucorum generum commissa
ejusmodi quae hunc effectum pariunt. At ego cum plurima animo
perlustrem, duo tantum invenio, duos, inquam, casus quibus rex ipso
facto ex rege non regem se facit & omni honore & dignitate regali atque
in subditos potestate destituit; quorum etiam meminit Winzerus. Horum
unus est, Si regnum disperdat, quemadmodum de Nerone fertur, quod is
nempe senatum populumque Romanum, atque adeo urbem ipsam ferro flammaque
vastare, ac novas sibi sedes quaerere decrevisset. Et de Caligula, quod
palam denunciarit se neque civem neque principem senatui amplius fore,
inque animo habuerit interempto utriusque ordinis electissimo quoque
Alexandriam commigrare, ac ut populum uno ictu interimeret, unam ei
cervicem optavit. Talia cum rex aliquis meditator & molitur serio, omnem
regnandi curam & animum ilico abjicit, ac proinde imperium in subditos
amittit, ut dominus servi pro derelicto habiti dominium.

Sect. 236. Alter casus est, Si rex in alicujus clientelam se contulit,
ac regnum quod liberum a majoribus & populo traditum accepit, alienae
ditioni mancipavit. Nam tunc quamvis forte non ea mente id agit populo
plane ut incommodet: tamen quia quod praecipuum est regiae dignitatis
amifit, ut summus scilicet in regno secundum Deum sit, & solo Deo
inferior, atque populum etiam totum ignorantem vel invitum, cujus
libertatem sartam & tectam conservare debuit, in alterius gentis
ditionem & potestatem dedidit; hac velut quadam regni ab alienatione
effecit, ut nec quod ipse in regno imperium habuit retineat, nec in eum
cui collatum voluit, juris quicquam transferat; atque ita eo facto
liberum jam & suae potestatis populum relinquit, cujus rei exemplum unum
annales Scotici suppeditant. Barclay contra Monarchom. 1. iii. c. 16.

Which in English runs thus:

Sect. 237. What then, can there no case happen wherein the people may of
right, and by their own authority, help themselves, take arms, and set
upon their king, imperiously domineering over them? None at all, whilst
he remains a king. Honour the king, and he that resists the power,
resists the ordinance of God; are divine oracles that will never permit
it, The people therefore can never come by a power over him, unless he
does something that makes him cease to be a king: for then he divests
himself of his crown and dignity, and returns to the state of a private
man, and the people become free and superior, the power which they had
in the interregnum, before they crowned him king, devolving to them
again. But there are but few miscarriages which bring the matter to this
state. After considering it well on all sides, I can find but two. Two
cases there are, I say, whereby a king, ipso facto, becomes no king, and
loses all power and regal authority over his people; which are also
taken notice of by Winzerus.

The first is, If he endeavour to overturn the government, that is, if he
have a purpose and design to ruin the kingdom and commonwealth, as it is
recorded of Nero, that he resolved to cut off the senate and people of
Rome, lay the city waste with fire and sword, and then remove to some
other place. And of Caligula, that he openly declared, that he would be
no longer a head to the people or senate, and that he had it in his
thoughts to cut off the worthiest men of both ranks, and then retire to
Alexandria: and he wisht that the people had but one neck, that he might
dispatch them all at a blow, Such designs as these, when any king
harbours in his thoughts, and seriously promotes, he immediately gives
up all care and thought of the commonwealth; and consequently forfeits
the power of governing his subjects, as a master does the dominion over
his slaves whom he hath abandoned.

Sect. 238. The other case is, When a king makes himself the dependent of
another, and subjects his kingdom which his ancestors left him, and the
people put free into his hands, to the dominion of another: for however
perhaps it may not be his intention to prejudice the people; yet because
he has hereby lost the principal part of regal dignity, viz. to be next
and immediately under God, supreme in his kingdom; and also because he
betrayed or forced his people, whose liberty he ought to have carefully
preserved, into the power and dominion of a foreign nation. By this, as
it were, alienation of his kingdom, he himself loses the power he had in
it before, without transferring any the least right to those on whom he
would have bestowed it; and so by this act sets the people free, and
leaves them at their own disposal. One example of this is to be found in
the Scotch Annals.

Sect. 239. In these cases Barclay, the great champion of absolute
monarchy, is forced to allow, that a king may be resisted, and ceases to
be a king. That is, in short, not to multiply cases, in whatsoever he
has no authority, there he is no king, and may be resisted: for
wheresoever the authority ceases, the king ceases too, and becomes like
other men who have no authority. And these two cases he instances in,
differ little from those above mentioned, to be destructive to
governments, only that he has omitted the principle from which his
doctrine flows: and that is, the breach of trust, in not preserving the
form of government agreed on, and in not intending the end of government
itself, which is the public good and preservation of property. When a
king has dethroned himself, and put himself in a state of war with his
people, what shall hinder them from prosecuting him who is no king, as
they would any other man, who has put himself into a state of war with
them, Barclay, and those of his opinion, would do well to tell us. This
farther I desire may be taken notice of out of Barclay, that he says,
The mischief that is designed them, the people may prevent before it be
done: whereby he allows resistance when tyranny is but in design. Such
designs as these (says he) when any king harbours in his thoughts and
seriously promotes, he immediately gives up all care and thought of the
commonwealth; so that, according to him, the neglect of the public good
is to be taken as an evidence of such design, or at least for a
sufficient cause of resistance. And the reason of all, he gives in these
words, Because he betrayed or forced his people, whose liberty he ought
carefully to have preserved. What he adds, into the power and dominion
of a foreign nation, signifies nothing, the fault and forfeiture lying
in the loss of their liberty, which he ought to have preserved, and not
in any distinction of the persons to whose dominion they were subjected.
The peoples right is equally invaded, and their liberty lost, whether
they are made slaves to any of their own, or a foreign nation; and in
this lies the injury, and against this only have they the right of
defence. And there are instances to be found in all countries, which
shew, that it is not the change of nations in the persons of their
governors, but the change of government, that gives the offence. Bilson,
a bishop of our church, and a great stickler for the power and
prerogative of princes, does, if I mistake not, in his treatise of
Christian subjection, acknowledge, that princes may forfeit their power,
and their title to the obedience of their subjects; and if there needed
authority in a case where reason is so plain, I could send my reader to
Bracton, Fortescue, and the author of the Mirrour, and others, writers
that cannot be suspected to be ignorant of our government, or enemies to
it. But I thought Hooker alone might be enough to satisfy those men, who
relying on him for their ecclesiastical polity, are by a strange fate
carried to deny those principles upon which he builds it. Whether they
are herein made the tools of cunninger workmen, to pull down their own
fabric, they were best look. This I am sure, their civil policy is so
new, so dangerous, and so destructive to both rulers and people, that as
former ages never could bear the broaching of it; so it may be hoped,
those to come, redeemed from the impositions of these Egyptian
under-task-masters, will abhor the memory of such servile flatterers,
who, whilst it seemed to serve their turn, resolved all government into
absolute tyranny, and would have all men born to, what their mean souls
fitted them for, slavery.

Sect. 240. Here, it is like, the common question will be made, Who shall
be judge, whether the prince or legislative act contrary to their trust?
This, perhaps, ill-affected and factious men may spread amongst the
people, when the prince only makes use of his due prerogative. To this I
reply, The people shall be judge; for who shall be judge whether his
trustee or deputy acts well, and according to the trust reposed in him,
but he who deputes him, and must, by having deputed him, have still a
power to discard him, when he fails in his trust? If this be reasonable
in particular cases of private men, why should it be otherwise in that
of the greatest moment, where the welfare of millions is concerned, and
also where the evil, if not prevented, is greater, and the redress very
difficult, dear, and dangerous?

Sect. 241. But farther, this question, (Who shall be judge?) cannot
mean, that there is no judge at all: for where there is no judicature on
earth, to decide controversies amongst men, God in heaven is judge. He
alone, it is true, is judge of the right. But every man is judge for
himself, as in all other cases, so in this, whether another hath put
himself into a state of war with him, and whether he should appeal to
the Supreme Judge, as Jeptha did.

Sect. 242. If a controversy arise betwixt a prince and some of the
people, in a matter where the law is silent, or doubtful, and the thing
be of great consequence, I should think the proper umpire, in such a
case, should be the body of the people: for in cases where the prince
hath a trust reposed in him, and is dispensed from the common ordinary
rules of the law; there, if any men find themselves aggrieved, and think
the prince acts contrary to, or beyond that trust, who so proper to
judge as the body of the people, (who, at first, lodged that trust in
him) how far they meant it should extend? But if the prince, or whoever
they be in the administration, decline that way of determination, the
appeal then lies no where but to heaven; force between either persons,
who have no known superior on earth, or which permits no appeal to a
judge on earth, being properly a state of war, wherein the appeal lies
only to heaven; and in that state the injured party must judge for
himself, when he will think fit to make use of that appeal, and put
himself upon it.

Sect. 243. To conclude, The power that every individual gave the
society, when he entered into it, can never revert to the individuals
again, as long as the society lasts, but will always remain in the
community; because without this there can be no community, no
commonwealth, which is contrary to the original agreement: so also when
the society hath placed the legislative in any assembly of men, to
continue in them and their successors, with direction and authority for
providing such successors, the legislative can never revert to the
people whilst that government lasts; because having provided a
legislative with power to continue for ever, they have given up their
political power to the legislative, and cannot resume it. But if they
have set limits to the duration of their legislative, and made this
supreme power in any person, or assembly, only temporary; or else, when
by the miscarriages of those in authority, it is forfeited; upon the
forfeiture, or at the determination of the time set, it reverts to the
society, and the people have a right to act as supreme, and continue the
legislative in themselves; or erect a new form, or under the old form
place it in new hands, as they think good.


FINIS.







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Project Gutenberg's The Awakening and Selected Short Stories, by Kate Chopin

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: The Awakening and Selected Short Stories

Author: Kate Chopin

Release Date: March 11, 2006 [EBook #160]
Last Updated: March 15, 2018

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AWAKENING AND SELECTED ***




Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger





THE AWAKENING

AND SELECTED SHORT STORIES

by Kate Chopin


With an Introduction by Marilynne Robinson




Contents:

     The Awakening
     Beyond The Bayou
     Ma'ame Pelagie
     Desiree's Baby
     A Respectable Woman
     The Kiss
     A Pair Of Silk Stockings
     The Locket
     A Reflection





THE AWAKENING




I


A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept
repeating over and over:

“Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!”

He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody
understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other
side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with
maddening persistence.

Mr. Pontellier, unable to read his newspaper with any degree of comfort,
arose with an expression and an exclamation of disgust.

He walked down the gallery and across the narrow “bridges” which
connected the Lebrun cottages one with the other. He had been seated
before the door of the main house. The parrot and the mockingbird were
the property of Madame Lebrun, and they had the right to make all the
noise they wished. Mr. Pontellier had the privilege of quitting their
society when they ceased to be entertaining.

He stopped before the door of his own cottage, which was the fourth one
from the main building and next to the last. Seating himself in a wicker
rocker which was there, he once more applied himself to the task of
reading the newspaper. The day was Sunday; the paper was a day old. The
Sunday papers had not yet reached Grand Isle. He was already acquainted
with the market reports, and he glanced restlessly over the editorials
and bits of news which he had not had time to read before quitting New
Orleans the day before.

Mr. Pontellier wore eye-glasses. He was a man of forty, of medium height
and rather slender build; he stooped a little. His hair was brown and
straight, parted on one side. His beard was neatly and closely trimmed.

Once in a while he withdrew his glance from the newspaper and looked
about him. There was more noise than ever over at the house. The main
building was called “the house,” to distinguish it from the cottages.
The chattering and whistling birds were still at it. Two young girls,
the Farival twins, were playing a duet from “Zampa” upon the piano.
Madame Lebrun was bustling in and out, giving orders in a high key to a
yard-boy whenever she got inside the house, and directions in an equally
high voice to a dining-room servant whenever she got outside. She was
a fresh, pretty woman, clad always in white with elbow sleeves. Her
starched skirts crinkled as she came and went. Farther down, before
one of the cottages, a lady in black was walking demurely up and down,
telling her beads. A good many persons of the pension had gone over to
the Cheniere Caminada in Beaudelet's lugger to hear mass. Some young
people were out under the wateroaks playing croquet. Mr. Pontellier's
two children were there--sturdy little fellows of four and five. A
quadroon nurse followed them about with a faraway, meditative air.

Mr. Pontellier finally lit a cigar and began to smoke, letting the paper
drag idly from his hand. He fixed his gaze upon a white sunshade that
was advancing at snail's pace from the beach. He could see it plainly
between the gaunt trunks of the water-oaks and across the stretch of
yellow camomile. The gulf looked far away, melting hazily into the blue
of the horizon. The sunshade continued to approach slowly. Beneath its
pink-lined shelter were his wife, Mrs. Pontellier, and young Robert
Lebrun. When they reached the cottage, the two seated themselves with
some appearance of fatigue upon the upper step of the porch, facing each
other, each leaning against a supporting post.

“What folly! to bathe at such an hour in such heat!” exclaimed Mr.
Pontellier. He himself had taken a plunge at daylight. That was why the
morning seemed long to him.

“You are burnt beyond recognition,” he added, looking at his wife as one
looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some
damage. She held up her hands, strong, shapely hands, and surveyed them
critically, drawing up her fawn sleeves above the wrists. Looking at
them reminded her of her rings, which she had given to her husband
before leaving for the beach. She silently reached out to him, and he,
understanding, took the rings from his vest pocket and dropped them
into her open palm. She slipped them upon her fingers; then clasping
her knees, she looked across at Robert and began to laugh. The rings
sparkled upon her fingers. He sent back an answering smile.

“What is it?” asked Pontellier, looking lazily and amused from one to
the other. It was some utter nonsense; some adventure out there in the
water, and they both tried to relate it at once. It did not seem half
so amusing when told. They realized this, and so did Mr. Pontellier. He
yawned and stretched himself. Then he got up, saying he had half a mind
to go over to Klein's hotel and play a game of billiards.

“Come go along, Lebrun,” he proposed to Robert. But Robert admitted
quite frankly that he preferred to stay where he was and talk to Mrs.
Pontellier.

“Well, send him about his business when he bores you, Edna,” instructed
her husband as he prepared to leave.

“Here, take the umbrella,” she exclaimed, holding it out to him. He
accepted the sunshade, and lifting it over his head descended the steps
and walked away.

“Coming back to dinner?” his wife called after him. He halted a moment
and shrugged his shoulders. He felt in his vest pocket; there was a
ten-dollar bill there. He did not know; perhaps he would return for the
early dinner and perhaps he would not. It all depended upon the company
which he found over at Klein's and the size of “the game.” He did not
say this, but she understood it, and laughed, nodding good-by to him.

Both children wanted to follow their father when they saw him starting
out. He kissed them and promised to bring them back bonbons and peanuts.




II


Mrs. Pontellier's eyes were quick and bright; they were a yellowish
brown, about the color of her hair. She had a way of turning them
swiftly upon an object and holding them there as if lost in some inward
maze of contemplation or thought.

Her eyebrows were a shade darker than her hair. They were thick and
almost horizontal, emphasizing the depth of her eyes. She was rather
handsome than beautiful. Her face was captivating by reason of a certain
frankness of expression and a contradictory subtle play of features. Her
manner was engaging.

Robert rolled a cigarette. He smoked cigarettes because he could
not afford cigars, he said. He had a cigar in his pocket which Mr.
Pontellier had presented him with, and he was saving it for his
after-dinner smoke.

This seemed quite proper and natural on his part. In coloring he was
not unlike his companion. A clean-shaved face made the resemblance more
pronounced than it would otherwise have been. There rested no shadow of
care upon his open countenance. His eyes gathered in and reflected the
light and languor of the summer day.

Mrs. Pontellier reached over for a palm-leaf fan that lay on the porch
and began to fan herself, while Robert sent between his lips light puffs
from his cigarette. They chatted incessantly: about the things around
them; their amusing adventure out in the water--it had again assumed its
entertaining aspect; about the wind, the trees, the people who had gone
to the Cheniere; about the children playing croquet under the oaks, and
the Farival twins, who were now performing the overture to “The Poet and
the Peasant.”

Robert talked a good deal about himself. He was very young, and did not
know any better. Mrs. Pontellier talked a little about herself for the
same reason. Each was interested in what the other said. Robert spoke of
his intention to go to Mexico in the autumn, where fortune awaited him.
He was always intending to go to Mexico, but some way never got there.
Meanwhile he held on to his modest position in a mercantile house in
New Orleans, where an equal familiarity with English, French and Spanish
gave him no small value as a clerk and correspondent.

He was spending his summer vacation, as he always did, with his mother
at Grand Isle. In former times, before Robert could remember, “the
house” had been a summer luxury of the Lebruns. Now, flanked by its
dozen or more cottages, which were always filled with exclusive visitors
from the “Quartier Francais,” it enabled Madame Lebrun to maintain the
easy and comfortable existence which appeared to be her birthright.

Mrs. Pontellier talked about her father's Mississippi plantation and her
girlhood home in the old Kentucky bluegrass country. She was an American
woman, with a small infusion of French which seemed to have been lost in
dilution. She read a letter from her sister, who was away in the East,
and who had engaged herself to be married. Robert was interested, and
wanted to know what manner of girls the sisters were, what the father
was like, and how long the mother had been dead.

When Mrs. Pontellier folded the letter it was time for her to dress for
the early dinner.

“I see Leonce isn't coming back,” she said, with a glance in the
direction whence her husband had disappeared. Robert supposed he was
not, as there were a good many New Orleans club men over at Klein's.

When Mrs. Pontellier left him to enter her room, the young man descended
the steps and strolled over toward the croquet players, where,
during the half-hour before dinner, he amused himself with the little
Pontellier children, who were very fond of him.




III


It was eleven o'clock that night when Mr. Pontellier returned from
Klein's hotel. He was in an excellent humor, in high spirits, and very
talkative. His entrance awoke his wife, who was in bed and fast asleep
when he came in. He talked to her while he undressed, telling her
anecdotes and bits of news and gossip that he had gathered during the
day. From his trousers pockets he took a fistful of crumpled bank
notes and a good deal of silver coin, which he piled on the bureau
indiscriminately with keys, knife, handkerchief, and whatever else
happened to be in his pockets. She was overcome with sleep, and answered
him with little half utterances.

He thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object
of his existence, evinced so little interest in things which concerned
him, and valued so little his conversation.

Mr. Pontellier had forgotten the bonbons and peanuts for the boys.
Notwithstanding he loved them very much, and went into the adjoining
room where they slept to take a look at them and make sure that they
were resting comfortably. The result of his investigation was far from
satisfactory. He turned and shifted the youngsters about in bed. One of
them began to kick and talk about a basket full of crabs.



Mr. Pontellier returned to his wife with the information that Raoul had
a high fever and needed looking after. Then he lit a cigar and went and
sat near the open door to smoke it.

Mrs. Pontellier was quite sure Raoul had no fever. He had gone to
bed perfectly well, she said, and nothing had ailed him all day. Mr.
Pontellier was too well acquainted with fever symptoms to be mistaken.
He assured her the child was consuming at that moment in the next room.

He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the
children. If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose
on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage
business. He could not be in two places at once; making a living for
his family on the street, and staying at home to see that no harm befell
them. He talked in a monotonous, insistent way.

Mrs. Pontellier sprang out of bed and went into the next room. She soon
came back and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning her head down on the
pillow. She said nothing, and refused to answer her husband when he
questioned her. When his cigar was smoked out he went to bed, and in
half a minute he was fast asleep.

Mrs. Pontellier was by that time thoroughly awake. She began to cry a
little, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her peignoir. Blowing out
the candle, which her husband had left burning, she slipped her bare
feet into a pair of satin mules at the foot of the bed and went out
on the porch, where she sat down in the wicker chair and began to rock
gently to and fro.

It was then past midnight. The cottages were all dark. A single faint
light gleamed out from the hallway of the house. There was no sound
abroad except the hooting of an old owl in the top of a water-oak, and
the everlasting voice of the sea, that was not uplifted at that soft
hour. It broke like a mournful lullaby upon the night.

The tears came so fast to Mrs. Pontellier's eyes that the damp sleeve of
her peignoir no longer served to dry them. She was holding the back
of her chair with one hand; her loose sleeve had slipped almost to the
shoulder of her uplifted arm. Turning, she thrust her face, steaming and
wet, into the bend of her arm, and she went on crying there, not caring
any longer to dry her face, her eyes, her arms. She could not have told
why she was crying. Such experiences as the foregoing were not uncommon
in her married life. They seemed never before to have weighed much
against the abundance of her husband's kindness and a uniform devotion
which had come to be tacit and self-understood.

An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar
part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish.
It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul's summer day.
It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there
inwardly upbraiding her husband, lamenting at Fate, which had directed
her footsteps to the path which they had taken. She was just having a
good cry all to herself. The mosquitoes made merry over her, biting her
firm, round arms and nipping at her bare insteps.

The little stinging, buzzing imps succeeded in dispelling a mood which
might have held her there in the darkness half a night longer.

The following morning Mr. Pontellier was up in good time to take the
rockaway which was to convey him to the steamer at the wharf. He was
returning to the city to his business, and they would not see him again
at the Island till the coming Saturday. He had regained his composure,
which seemed to have been somewhat impaired the night before. He was
eager to be gone, as he looked forward to a lively week in Carondelet
Street.

Mr. Pontellier gave his wife half of the money which he had brought away
from Klein's hotel the evening before. She liked money as well as most
women, and accepted it with no little satisfaction.

“It will buy a handsome wedding present for Sister Janet!” she
exclaimed, smoothing out the bills as she counted them one by one.

“Oh! we'll treat Sister Janet better than that, my dear,” he laughed, as
he prepared to kiss her good-by.

The boys were tumbling about, clinging to his legs, imploring that
numerous things be brought back to them. Mr. Pontellier was a great
favorite, and ladies, men, children, even nurses, were always on hand to
say goodby to him. His wife stood smiling and waving, the boys shouting,
as he disappeared in the old rockaway down the sandy road.

A few days later a box arrived for Mrs. Pontellier from New Orleans. It
was from her husband. It was filled with friandises, with luscious
and toothsome bits--the finest of fruits, pates, a rare bottle or two,
delicious syrups, and bonbons in abundance.

Mrs. Pontellier was always very generous with the contents of such a
box; she was quite used to receiving them when away from home. The
pates and fruit were brought to the dining-room; the bonbons were passed
around. And the ladies, selecting with dainty and discriminating fingers
and a little greedily, all declared that Mr. Pontellier was the best
husband in the world. Mrs. Pontellier was forced to admit that she knew
of none better.




IV


It would have been a difficult matter for Mr. Pontellier to define to
his own satisfaction or any one else's wherein his wife failed in her
duty toward their children. It was something which he felt rather than
perceived, and he never voiced the feeling without subsequent regret and
ample atonement.

If one of the little Pontellier boys took a tumble whilst at play, he
was not apt to rush crying to his mother's arms for comfort; he would
more likely pick himself up, wipe the water out of his eyes and the
sand out of his mouth, and go on playing. Tots as they were, they pulled
together and stood their ground in childish battles with doubled
fists and uplifted voices, which usually prevailed against the other
mother-tots. The quadroon nurse was looked upon as a huge encumbrance,
only good to button up waists and panties and to brush and part hair;
since it seemed to be a law of society that hair must be parted and
brushed.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. The mother-women
seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them,
fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or
imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized
their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy
privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as
ministering angels.

Many of them were delicious in the role; one of them was the embodiment
of every womanly grace and charm. If her husband did not adore her,
he was a brute, deserving of death by slow torture. Her name was Adele
Ratignolle. There are no words to describe her save the old ones that
have served so often to picture the bygone heroine of romance and the
fair lady of our dreams. There was nothing subtle or hidden about her
charms; her beauty was all there, flaming and apparent: the spun-gold
hair that comb nor confining pin could restrain; the blue eyes that were
like nothing but sapphires; two lips that pouted, that were so red one
could only think of cherries or some other delicious crimson fruit in
looking at them. She was growing a little stout, but it did not seem to
detract an iota from the grace of every step, pose, gesture. One would
not have wanted her white neck a mite less full or her beautiful arms
more slender. Never were hands more exquisite than hers, and it was a
joy to look at them when she threaded her needle or adjusted her gold
thimble to her taper middle finger as she sewed away on the little
night-drawers or fashioned a bodice or a bib.

Madame Ratignolle was very fond of Mrs. Pontellier, and often she took
her sewing and went over to sit with her in the afternoons. She was
sitting there the afternoon of the day the box arrived from New Orleans.
She had possession of the rocker, and she was busily engaged in sewing
upon a diminutive pair of night-drawers.

She had brought the pattern of the drawers for Mrs. Pontellier to cut
out--a marvel of construction, fashioned to enclose a baby's body so
effectually that only two small eyes might look out from the garment,
like an Eskimo's. They were designed for winter wear, when treacherous
drafts came down chimneys and insidious currents of deadly cold found
their way through key-holes.

Mrs. Pontellier's mind was quite at rest concerning the present material
needs of her children, and she could not see the use of anticipating and
making winter night garments the subject of her summer meditations.
But she did not want to appear unamiable and uninterested, so she
had brought forth newspapers, which she spread upon the floor of the
gallery, and under Madame Ratignolle's directions she had cut a pattern
of the impervious garment.

Robert was there, seated as he had been the Sunday before, and Mrs.
Pontellier also occupied her former position on the upper step, leaning
listlessly against the post. Beside her was a box of bonbons, which she
held out at intervals to Madame Ratignolle.

That lady seemed at a loss to make a selection, but finally settled upon
a stick of nougat, wondering if it were not too rich; whether it could
possibly hurt her. Madame Ratignolle had been married seven years. About
every two years she had a baby. At that time she had three babies, and
was beginning to think of a fourth one. She was always talking about her
“condition.” Her “condition” was in no way apparent, and no one would
have known a thing about it but for her persistence in making it the
subject of conversation.

Robert started to reassure her, asserting that he had known a lady who
had subsisted upon nougat during the entire--but seeing the color mount
into Mrs. Pontellier's face he checked himself and changed the subject.

Mrs. Pontellier, though she had married a Creole, was not thoroughly
at home in the society of Creoles; never before had she been thrown so
intimately among them. There were only Creoles that summer at Lebrun's.
They all knew each other, and felt like one large family, among
whom existed the most amicable relations. A characteristic which
distinguished them and which impressed Mrs. Pontellier most forcibly
was their entire absence of prudery. Their freedom of expression was
at first incomprehensible to her, though she had no difficulty in
reconciling it with a lofty chastity which in the Creole woman seems to
be inborn and unmistakable.

Never would Edna Pontellier forget the shock with which she heard Madame
Ratignolle relating to old Monsieur Farival the harrowing story of one
of her accouchements, withholding no intimate detail. She was growing
accustomed to like shocks, but she could not keep the mounting color
back from her cheeks. Oftener than once her coming had interrupted the
droll story with which Robert was entertaining some amused group of
married women.

A book had gone the rounds of the pension. When it came her turn to read
it, she did so with profound astonishment. She felt moved to read the
book in secret and solitude, though none of the others had done so,--to
hide it from view at the sound of approaching footsteps. It was openly
criticised and freely discussed at table. Mrs. Pontellier gave over
being astonished, and concluded that wonders would never cease.




V


They formed a congenial group sitting there that summer
afternoon--Madame Ratignolle sewing away, often stopping to relate a
story or incident with much expressive gesture of her perfect hands;
Robert and Mrs. Pontellier sitting idle, exchanging occasional words,
glances or smiles which indicated a certain advanced stage of intimacy
and camaraderie.

He had lived in her shadow during the past month. No one thought
anything of it. Many had predicted that Robert would devote himself to
Mrs. Pontellier when he arrived. Since the age of fifteen, which was
eleven years before, Robert each summer at Grand Isle had constituted
himself the devoted attendant of some fair dame or damsel. Sometimes
it was a young girl, again a widow; but as often as not it was some
interesting married woman.

For two consecutive seasons he lived in the sunlight of Mademoiselle
Duvigne's presence. But she died between summers; then Robert posed as
an inconsolable, prostrating himself at the feet of Madame Ratignolle
for whatever crumbs of sympathy and comfort she might be pleased to
vouchsafe.

Mrs. Pontellier liked to sit and gaze at her fair companion as she might
look upon a faultless Madonna.

“Could any one fathom the cruelty beneath that fair exterior?” murmured
Robert. “She knew that I adored her once, and she let me adore her. It
was 'Robert, come; go; stand up; sit down; do this; do that; see if the
baby sleeps; my thimble, please, that I left God knows where. Come and
read Daudet to me while I sew.'”

“Par exemple! I never had to ask. You were always there under my feet,
like a troublesome cat.”

“You mean like an adoring dog. And just as soon as Ratignolle appeared
on the scene, then it WAS like a dog. 'Passez! Adieu! Allez vous-en!'”

“Perhaps I feared to make Alphonse jealous,” she interjoined, with
excessive naivete. That made them all laugh. The right hand jealous of
the left! The heart jealous of the soul! But for that matter, the Creole
husband is never jealous; with him the gangrene passion is one which has
become dwarfed by disuse.

Meanwhile Robert, addressing Mrs Pontellier, continued to tell of his
one time hopeless passion for Madame Ratignolle; of sleepless nights,
of consuming flames till the very sea sizzled when he took his
daily plunge. While the lady at the needle kept up a little running,
contemptuous comment:

“Blagueur--farceur--gros bete, va!”

He never assumed this seriocomic tone when alone with Mrs. Pontellier.
She never knew precisely what to make of it; at that moment it was
impossible for her to guess how much of it was jest and what proportion
was earnest. It was understood that he had often spoken words of love
to Madame Ratignolle, without any thought of being taken seriously. Mrs.
Pontellier was glad he had not assumed a similar role toward herself. It
would have been unacceptable and annoying.

Mrs. Pontellier had brought her sketching materials, which she sometimes
dabbled with in an unprofessional way. She liked the dabbling. She felt
in it satisfaction of a kind which no other employment afforded her.

She had long wished to try herself on Madame Ratignolle. Never had that
lady seemed a more tempting subject than at that moment, seated there
like some sensuous Madonna, with the gleam of the fading day enriching
her splendid color.

Robert crossed over and seated himself upon the step below Mrs.
Pontellier, that he might watch her work. She handled her brushes with
a certain ease and freedom which came, not from long and close
acquaintance with them, but from a natural aptitude. Robert followed her
work with close attention, giving forth little ejaculatory expressions
of appreciation in French, which he addressed to Madame Ratignolle.

“Mais ce n'est pas mal! Elle s'y connait, elle a de la force, oui.”

During his oblivious attention he once quietly rested his head against
Mrs. Pontellier's arm. As gently she repulsed him. Once again he
repeated the offense. She could not but believe it to be thoughtlessness
on his part; yet that was no reason she should submit to it. She did not
remonstrate, except again to repulse him quietly but firmly. He
offered no apology. The picture completed bore no resemblance to Madame
Ratignolle. She was greatly disappointed to find that it did not look
like her. But it was a fair enough piece of work, and in many respects
satisfying.

Mrs. Pontellier evidently did not think so. After surveying the sketch
critically she drew a broad smudge of paint across its surface, and
crumpled the paper between her hands.

The youngsters came tumbling up the steps, the quadroon following at the
respectful distance which they required her to observe. Mrs. Pontellier
made them carry her paints and things into the house. She sought to
detain them for a little talk and some pleasantry. But they were greatly
in earnest. They had only come to investigate the contents of the bonbon
box. They accepted without murmuring what she chose to give them, each
holding out two chubby hands scoop-like, in the vain hope that they
might be filled; and then away they went.

The sun was low in the west, and the breeze soft and languorous that
came up from the south, charged with the seductive odor of the sea.
Children freshly befurbelowed, were gathering for their games under the
oaks. Their voices were high and penetrating.

Madame Ratignolle folded her sewing, placing thimble, scissors, and
thread all neatly together in the roll, which she pinned securely. She
complained of faintness. Mrs. Pontellier flew for the cologne water and
a fan. She bathed Madame Ratignolle's face with cologne, while Robert
plied the fan with unnecessary vigor.

The spell was soon over, and Mrs. Pontellier could not help wondering if
there were not a little imagination responsible for its origin, for the
rose tint had never faded from her friend's face.

She stood watching the fair woman walk down the long line of galleries
with the grace and majesty which queens are sometimes supposed to
possess. Her little ones ran to meet her. Two of them clung about her
white skirts, the third she took from its nurse and with a thousand
endearments bore it along in her own fond, encircling arms. Though, as
everybody well knew, the doctor had forbidden her to lift so much as a
pin!

“Are you going bathing?” asked Robert of Mrs. Pontellier. It was not so
much a question as a reminder.

“Oh, no,” she answered, with a tone of indecision. “I'm tired; I think
not.” Her glance wandered from his face away toward the Gulf, whose
sonorous murmur reached her like a loving but imperative entreaty.

“Oh, come!” he insisted. “You mustn't miss your bath. Come on. The water
must be delicious; it will not hurt you. Come.”

He reached up for her big, rough straw hat that hung on a peg outside
the door, and put it on her head. They descended the steps, and walked
away together toward the beach. The sun was low in the west and the
breeze was soft and warm.




VI


Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach with
Robert, she should in the first place have declined, and in the second
place have followed in obedience to one of the two contradictory
impulses which impelled her.

A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,--the light
which, showing the way, forbids it.

At that early period it served but to bewilder her. It moved her to
dreams, to thoughtfulness, to the shadowy anguish which had overcome her
the midnight when she had abandoned herself to tears.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in
the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an
individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a
ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of
twenty-eight--perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased
to vouchsafe to any woman.

But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily
vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever
emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!

The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring,
murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of
solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is
sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.





VII


Mrs. Pontellier was not a woman given to confidences, a characteristic
hitherto contrary to her nature. Even as a child she had lived her
own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had
apprehended instinctively the dual life--that outward existence which
conforms, the inward life which questions.

That summer at Grand Isle she began to loosen a little the mantle of
reserve that had always enveloped her. There may have been--there
must have been--influences, both subtle and apparent, working in their
several ways to induce her to do this; but the most obvious was the
influence of Adele Ratignolle. The excessive physical charm of the
Creole had first attracted her, for Edna had a sensuous susceptibility
to beauty. Then the candor of the woman's whole existence, which every
one might read, and which formed so striking a contrast to her own
habitual reserve--this might have furnished a link. Who can tell what
metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy,
which we might as well call love.

The two women went away one morning to the beach together, arm in arm,
under the huge white sunshade. Edna had prevailed upon Madame Ratignolle
to leave the children behind, though she could not induce her to
relinquish a diminutive roll of needlework, which Adele begged to be
allowed to slip into the depths of her pocket. In some unaccountable way
they had escaped from Robert.

The walk to the beach was no inconsiderable one, consisting as it did
of a long, sandy path, upon which a sporadic and tangled growth that
bordered it on either side made frequent and unexpected inroads. There
were acres of yellow camomile reaching out on either hand. Further away
still, vegetable gardens abounded, with frequent small plantations of
orange or lemon trees intervening. The dark green clusters glistened
from afar in the sun.

The women were both of goodly height, Madame Ratignolle possessing
the more feminine and matronly figure. The charm of Edna Pontellier's
physique stole insensibly upon you. The lines of her body were long,
clean and symmetrical; it was a body which occasionally fell into
splendid poses; there was no suggestion of the trim, stereotyped
fashion-plate about it. A casual and indiscriminating observer, in
passing, might not cast a second glance upon the figure. But with more
feeling and discernment he would have recognized the noble beauty of its
modeling, and the graceful severity of poise and movement, which made
Edna Pontellier different from the crowd.

She wore a cool muslin that morning--white, with a waving vertical line
of brown running through it; also a white linen collar and the big straw
hat which she had taken from the peg outside the door. The hat rested
any way on her yellow-brown hair, that waved a little, was heavy, and
clung close to her head.

Madame Ratignolle, more careful of her complexion, had twined a gauze
veil about her head. She wore dogskin gloves, with gauntlets that
protected her wrists. She was dressed in pure white, with a fluffiness
of ruffles that became her. The draperies and fluttering things which
she wore suited her rich, luxuriant beauty as a greater severity of line
could not have done.

There were a number of bath-houses along the beach, of rough but solid
construction, built with small, protecting galleries facing the water.
Each house consisted of two compartments, and each family at Lebrun's
possessed a compartment for itself, fitted out with all the essential
paraphernalia of the bath and whatever other conveniences the owners
might desire. The two women had no intention of bathing; they had just
strolled down to the beach for a walk and to be alone and near the
water. The Pontellier and Ratignolle compartments adjoined one another
under the same roof.

Mrs. Pontellier had brought down her key through force of habit.
Unlocking the door of her bath-room she went inside, and soon emerged,
bringing a rug, which she spread upon the floor of the gallery, and two
huge hair pillows covered with crash, which she placed against the front
of the building.

The two seated themselves there in the shade of the porch, side by side,
with their backs against the pillows and their feet extended. Madame
Ratignolle removed her veil, wiped her face with a rather delicate
handkerchief, and fanned herself with the fan which she always carried
suspended somewhere about her person by a long, narrow ribbon. Edna
removed her collar and opened her dress at the throat. She took the fan
from Madame Ratignolle and began to fan both herself and her companion.
It was very warm, and for a while they did nothing but exchange remarks
about the heat, the sun, the glare. But there was a breeze blowing, a
choppy, stiff wind that whipped the water into froth. It fluttered the
skirts of the two women and kept them for a while engaged in adjusting,
readjusting, tucking in, securing hair-pins and hat-pins. A few persons
were sporting some distance away in the water. The beach was very still
of human sound at that hour. The lady in black was reading her morning
devotions on the porch of a neighboring bathhouse. Two young lovers were
exchanging their hearts' yearnings beneath the children's tent, which
they had found unoccupied.

Edna Pontellier, casting her eyes about, had finally kept them at rest
upon the sea. The day was clear and carried the gaze out as far as the
blue sky went; there were a few white clouds suspended idly over the
horizon. A lateen sail was visible in the direction of Cat Island, and
others to the south seemed almost motionless in the far distance.

“Of whom--of what are you thinking?” asked Adele of her companion,
whose countenance she had been watching with a little amused attention,
arrested by the absorbed expression which seemed to have seized and
fixed every feature into a statuesque repose.

“Nothing,” returned Mrs. Pontellier, with a start, adding at once: “How
stupid! But it seems to me it is the reply we make instinctively to
such a question. Let me see,” she went on, throwing back her head and
narrowing her fine eyes till they shone like two vivid points of light.
“Let me see. I was really not conscious of thinking of anything; but
perhaps I can retrace my thoughts.”

“Oh! never mind!” laughed Madame Ratignolle. “I am not quite so
exacting. I will let you off this time. It is really too hot to think,
especially to think about thinking.”

“But for the fun of it,” persisted Edna. “First of all, the sight of the
water stretching so far away, those motionless sails against the blue
sky, made a delicious picture that I just wanted to sit and look at. The
hot wind beating in my face made me think--without any connection that I
can trace of a summer day in Kentucky, of a meadow that seemed as big as
the ocean to the very little girl walking through the grass, which was
higher than her waist. She threw out her arms as if swimming when she
walked, beating the tall grass as one strikes out in the water. Oh, I
see the connection now!”

“Where were you going that day in Kentucky, walking through the grass?”

“I don't remember now. I was just walking diagonally across a big field.
My sun-bonnet obstructed the view. I could see only the stretch of green
before me, and I felt as if I must walk on forever, without coming to
the end of it. I don't remember whether I was frightened or pleased. I
must have been entertained.

“Likely as not it was Sunday,” she laughed; “and I was running away from
prayers, from the Presbyterian service, read in a spirit of gloom by my
father that chills me yet to think of.”

“And have you been running away from prayers ever since, ma chere?”
 asked Madame Ratignolle, amused.

“No! oh, no!” Edna hastened to say. “I was a little unthinking child in
those days, just following a misleading impulse without question. On the
contrary, during one period of my life religion took a firm hold upon
me; after I was twelve and until--until--why, I suppose until now, though
I never thought much about it--just driven along by habit. But do you
know,” she broke off, turning her quick eyes upon Madame Ratignolle and
leaning forward a little so as to bring her face quite close to that
of her companion, “sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking
through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking and
unguided.”

Madame Ratignolle laid her hand over that of Mrs. Pontellier, which was
near her. Seeing that the hand was not withdrawn, she clasped it firmly
and warmly. She even stroked it a little, fondly, with the other hand,
murmuring in an undertone, “Pauvre cherie.”

The action was at first a little confusing to Edna, but she soon lent
herself readily to the Creole's gentle caress. She was not accustomed to
an outward and spoken expression of affection, either in herself or in
others. She and her younger sister, Janet, had quarreled a good deal
through force of unfortunate habit. Her older sister, Margaret, was
matronly and dignified, probably from having assumed matronly and
housewifely responsibilities too early in life, their mother having
died when they were quite young, Margaret was not effusive; she
was practical. Edna had had an occasional girl friend, but whether
accidentally or not, they seemed to have been all of one type--the
self-contained. She never realized that the reserve of her own character
had much, perhaps everything, to do with this. Her most intimate friend
at school had been one of rather exceptional intellectual gifts, who
wrote fine-sounding essays, which Edna admired and strove to imitate;
and with her she talked and glowed over the English classics, and
sometimes held religious and political controversies.

Edna often wondered at one propensity which sometimes had inwardly
disturbed her without causing any outward show or manifestation on her
part. At a very early age--perhaps it was when she traversed the ocean
of waving grass--she remembered that she had been passionately enamored
of a dignified and sad-eyed cavalry officer who visited her father in
Kentucky. She could not leave his presence when he was there, nor remove
her eyes from his face, which was something like Napoleon's, with a
lock of black hair failing across the forehead. But the cavalry officer
melted imperceptibly out of her existence.

At another time her affections were deeply engaged by a young gentleman
who visited a lady on a neighboring plantation. It was after they went
to Mississippi to live. The young man was engaged to be married to the
young lady, and they sometimes called upon Margaret, driving over of
afternoons in a buggy. Edna was a little miss, just merging into her
teens; and the realization that she herself was nothing, nothing,
nothing to the engaged young man was a bitter affliction to her. But he,
too, went the way of dreams.

She was a grown young woman when she was overtaken by what she supposed
to be the climax of her fate. It was when the face and figure of a
great tragedian began to haunt her imagination and stir her senses. The
persistence of the infatuation lent it an aspect of genuineness. The
hopelessness of it colored it with the lofty tones of a great passion.

The picture of the tragedian stood enframed upon her desk. Any one
may possess the portrait of a tragedian without exciting suspicion or
comment. (This was a sinister reflection which she cherished.) In the
presence of others she expressed admiration for his exalted gifts, as
she handed the photograph around and dwelt upon the fidelity of the
likeness. When alone she sometimes picked it up and kissed the cold
glass passionately.

Her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident, in this
respect resembling many other marriages which masquerade as the decrees
of Fate. It was in the midst of her secret great passion that she met
him. He fell in love, as men are in the habit of doing, and pressed his
suit with an earnestness and an ardor which left nothing to be desired.
He pleased her; his absolute devotion flattered her. She fancied there
was a sympathy of thought and taste between them, in which fancy she
was mistaken. Add to this the violent opposition of her father and her
sister Margaret to her marriage with a Catholic, and we need seek no
further for the motives which led her to accept Monsieur Pontellier for
her husband.

The acme of bliss, which would have been a marriage with the tragedian,
was not for her in this world. As the devoted wife of a man who
worshiped her, she felt she would take her place with a certain dignity
in the world of reality, closing the portals forever behind her upon the
realm of romance and dreams.

But it was not long before the tragedian had gone to join the cavalry
officer and the engaged young man and a few others; and Edna found
herself face to face with the realities. She grew fond of her husband,
realizing with some unaccountable satisfaction that no trace of passion
or excessive and fictitious warmth colored her affection, thereby
threatening its dissolution.

She was fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way. She would
sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes
forget them. The year before they had spent part of the summer with
their grandmother Pontellier in Iberville. Feeling secure regarding
their happiness and welfare, she did not miss them except with an
occasional intense longing. Their absence was a sort of relief, though
she did not admit this, even to herself. It seemed to free her of a
responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not
fitted her.

Edna did not reveal so much as all this to Madame Ratignolle that summer
day when they sat with faces turned to the sea. But a good part of it
escaped her. She had put her head down on Madame Ratignolle's shoulder.
She was flushed and felt intoxicated with the sound of her own voice and
the unaccustomed taste of candor. It muddled her like wine, or like a
first breath of freedom.

There was the sound of approaching voices. It was Robert, surrounded by
a troop of children, searching for them. The two little Pontelliers were
with him, and he carried Madame Ratignolle's little girl in his arms.
There were other children beside, and two nurse-maids followed, looking
disagreeable and resigned.

The women at once rose and began to shake out their draperies and relax
their muscles. Mrs. Pontellier threw the cushions and rug into the
bath-house. The children all scampered off to the awning, and they stood
there in a line, gazing upon the intruding lovers, still exchanging
their vows and sighs. The lovers got up, with only a silent protest, and
walked slowly away somewhere else.

The children possessed themselves of the tent, and Mrs. Pontellier went
over to join them.

Madame Ratignolle begged Robert to accompany her to the house; she
complained of cramp in her limbs and stiffness of the joints. She leaned
draggingly upon his arm as they walked.




VIII


“Do me a favor, Robert,” spoke the pretty woman at his side, almost as
soon as she and Robert had started their slow, homeward way. She looked
up in his face, leaning on his arm beneath the encircling shadow of the
umbrella which he had lifted.

“Granted; as many as you like,” he returned, glancing down into her eyes
that were full of thoughtfulness and some speculation.

“I only ask for one; let Mrs. Pontellier alone.”

“Tiens!” he exclaimed, with a sudden, boyish laugh. “Voila que Madame
Ratignolle est jalouse!”

“Nonsense! I'm in earnest; I mean what I say. Let Mrs. Pontellier
alone.”

“Why?” he asked; himself growing serious at his companion's
solicitation.

“She is not one of us; she is not like us. She might make the
unfortunate blunder of taking you seriously.”

His face flushed with annoyance, and taking off his soft hat he began
to beat it impatiently against his leg as he walked. “Why shouldn't she
take me seriously?” he demanded sharply. “Am I a comedian, a clown, a
jack-in-the-box? Why shouldn't she? You Creoles! I have no patience with
you! Am I always to be regarded as a feature of an amusing programme? I
hope Mrs. Pontellier does take me seriously. I hope she has discernment
enough to find in me something besides the blagueur. If I thought there
was any doubt--”

“Oh, enough, Robert!” she broke into his heated outburst. “You are
not thinking of what you are saying. You speak with about as little
reflection as we might expect from one of those children down there
playing in the sand. If your attentions to any married women here were
ever offered with any intention of being convincing, you would not be
the gentleman we all know you to be, and you would be unfit to associate
with the wives and daughters of the people who trust you.”

Madame Ratignolle had spoken what she believed to be the law and the
gospel. The young man shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“Oh! well! That isn't it,” slamming his hat down vehemently upon his
head. “You ought to feel that such things are not flattering to say to a
fellow.”

“Should our whole intercourse consist of an exchange of compliments? Ma
foi!”

“It isn't pleasant to have a woman tell you--” he went on, unheedingly,
but breaking off suddenly: “Now if I were like Arobin--you remember Alcee
Arobin and that story of the consul's wife at Biloxi?” And he related
the story of Alcee Arobin and the consul's wife; and another about the
tenor of the French Opera, who received letters which should never
have been written; and still other stories, grave and gay, till Mrs.
Pontellier and her possible propensity for taking young men seriously
was apparently forgotten.

Madame Ratignolle, when they had regained her cottage, went in to take
the hour's rest which she considered helpful. Before leaving her, Robert
begged her pardon for the impatience--he called it rudeness--with which
he had received her well-meant caution.

“You made one mistake, Adele,” he said, with a light smile; “there is
no earthly possibility of Mrs. Pontellier ever taking me seriously. You
should have warned me against taking myself seriously. Your advice might
then have carried some weight and given me subject for some reflection.
Au revoir. But you look tired,” he added, solicitously. “Would you like
a cup of bouillon? Shall I stir you a toddy? Let me mix you a toddy with
a drop of Angostura.”

She acceded to the suggestion of bouillon, which was grateful and
acceptable. He went himself to the kitchen, which was a building apart
from the cottages and lying to the rear of the house. And he himself
brought her the golden-brown bouillon, in a dainty Sevres cup, with a
flaky cracker or two on the saucer.

She thrust a bare, white arm from the curtain which shielded her open
door, and received the cup from his hands. She told him he was a bon
garcon, and she meant it. Robert thanked her and turned away toward “the
house.”

The lovers were just entering the grounds of the pension. They were
leaning toward each other as the wateroaks bent from the sea. There was
not a particle of earth beneath their feet. Their heads might have been
turned upside-down, so absolutely did they tread upon blue ether. The
lady in black, creeping behind them, looked a trifle paler and more
jaded than usual. There was no sign of Mrs. Pontellier and the children.
Robert scanned the distance for any such apparition. They would
doubtless remain away till the dinner hour. The young man ascended to
his mother's room. It was situated at the top of the house, made up of
odd angles and a queer, sloping ceiling. Two broad dormer windows looked
out toward the Gulf, and as far across it as a man's eye might reach.
The furnishings of the room were light, cool, and practical.

Madame Lebrun was busily engaged at the sewing-machine. A little black
girl sat on the floor, and with her hands worked the treadle of the
machine. The Creole woman does not take any chances which may be avoided
of imperiling her health.

Robert went over and seated himself on the broad sill of one of the
dormer windows. He took a book from his pocket and began energetically
to read it, judging by the precision and frequency with which he turned
the leaves. The sewing-machine made a resounding clatter in the room;
it was of a ponderous, by-gone make. In the lulls, Robert and his mother
exchanged bits of desultory conversation.

“Where is Mrs. Pontellier?”

“Down at the beach with the children.”

“I promised to lend her the Goncourt. Don't forget to take it down when
you go; it's there on the bookshelf over the small table.” Clatter,
clatter, clatter, bang! for the next five or eight minutes.

“Where is Victor going with the rockaway?”

“The rockaway? Victor?”

“Yes; down there in front. He seems to be getting ready to drive away
somewhere.”

“Call him.” Clatter, clatter!

Robert uttered a shrill, piercing whistle which might have been heard
back at the wharf.

“He won't look up.”

Madame Lebrun flew to the window. She called “Victor!” She waved a
handkerchief and called again. The young fellow below got into the
vehicle and started the horse off at a gallop.

Madame Lebrun went back to the machine, crimson with annoyance. Victor
was the younger son and brother--a tete montee, with a temper which
invited violence and a will which no ax could break.

“Whenever you say the word I'm ready to thrash any amount of reason into
him that he's able to hold.”

“If your father had only lived!” Clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter,
bang! It was a fixed belief with Madame Lebrun that the conduct of the
universe and all things pertaining thereto would have been manifestly of
a more intelligent and higher order had not Monsieur Lebrun been removed
to other spheres during the early years of their married life.

“What do you hear from Montel?” Montel was a middle-aged gentleman whose
vain ambition and desire for the past twenty years had been to fill
the void which Monsieur Lebrun's taking off had left in the Lebrun
household. Clatter, clatter, bang, clatter!

“I have a letter somewhere,” looking in the machine drawer and finding
the letter in the bottom of the workbasket. “He says to tell you he will
be in Vera Cruz the beginning of next month,”--clatter, clatter!--“and
if you still have the intention of joining him”--bang! clatter, clatter,
bang!

“Why didn't you tell me so before, mother? You know I wanted--” Clatter,
clatter, clatter!

“Do you see Mrs. Pontellier starting back with the children? She will
be in late to luncheon again. She never starts to get ready for luncheon
till the last minute.” Clatter, clatter! “Where are you going?”

“Where did you say the Goncourt was?”




IX


Every light in the hall was ablaze; every lamp turned as high as it
could be without smoking the chimney or threatening explosion. The lamps
were fixed at intervals against the wall, encircling the whole room.
Some one had gathered orange and lemon branches, and with these
fashioned graceful festoons between. The dark green of the branches
stood out and glistened against the white muslin curtains which draped
the windows, and which puffed, floated, and flapped at the capricious
will of a stiff breeze that swept up from the Gulf.

It was Saturday night a few weeks after the intimate conversation held
between Robert and Madame Ratignolle on their way from the beach. An
unusual number of husbands, fathers, and friends had come down to stay
over Sunday; and they were being suitably entertained by their families,
with the material help of Madame Lebrun. The dining tables had all been
removed to one end of the hall, and the chairs ranged about in rows and
in clusters. Each little family group had had its say and exchanged
its domestic gossip earlier in the evening. There was now an apparent
disposition to relax; to widen the circle of confidences and give a more
general tone to the conversation.

Many of the children had been permitted to sit up beyond their usual
bedtime. A small band of them were lying on their stomachs on the floor
looking at the colored sheets of the comic papers which Mr. Pontellier
had brought down. The little Pontellier boys were permitting them to do
so, and making their authority felt.

Music, dancing, and a recitation or two were the entertainments
furnished, or rather, offered. But there was nothing systematic about
the programme, no appearance of prearrangement nor even premeditation.

At an early hour in the evening the Farival twins were prevailed upon to
play the piano. They were girls of fourteen, always clad in the Virgin's
colors, blue and white, having been dedicated to the Blessed Virgin
at their baptism. They played a duet from “Zampa,” and at the earnest
solicitation of every one present followed it with the overture to “The
Poet and the Peasant.”

“Allez vous-en! Sapristi!” shrieked the parrot outside the door. He was
the only being present who possessed sufficient candor to admit that he
was not listening to these gracious performances for the first time that
summer. Old Monsieur Farival, grandfather of the twins, grew indignant
over the interruption, and insisted upon having the bird removed and
consigned to regions of darkness. Victor Lebrun objected; and his
decrees were as immutable as those of Fate. The parrot fortunately
offered no further interruption to the entertainment, the whole venom
of his nature apparently having been cherished up and hurled against the
twins in that one impetuous outburst.

Later a young brother and sister gave recitations, which every one
present had heard many times at winter evening entertainments in the
city.

A little girl performed a skirt dance in the center of the floor.
The mother played her accompaniments and at the same time watched her
daughter with greedy admiration and nervous apprehension. She need have
had no apprehension. The child was mistress of the situation. She had
been properly dressed for the occasion in black tulle and black silk
tights. Her little neck and arms were bare, and her hair, artificially
crimped, stood out like fluffy black plumes over her head. Her poses
were full of grace, and her little black-shod toes twinkled as they shot
out and upward with a rapidity and suddenness which were bewildering.

But there was no reason why every one should not dance. Madame
Ratignolle could not, so it was she who gaily consented to play for the
others. She played very well, keeping excellent waltz time and infusing
an expression into the strains which was indeed inspiring. She was
keeping up her music on account of the children, she said; because she
and her husband both considered it a means of brightening the home and
making it attractive.

Almost every one danced but the twins, who could not be induced to
separate during the brief period when one or the other should be
whirling around the room in the arms of a man. They might have danced
together, but they did not think of it.

The children were sent to bed. Some went submissively; others with
shrieks and protests as they were dragged away. They had been permitted
to sit up till after the ice-cream, which naturally marked the limit of
human indulgence.

The ice-cream was passed around with cake--gold and silver cake arranged
on platters in alternate slices; it had been made and frozen during the
afternoon back of the kitchen by two black women, under the supervision
of Victor. It was pronounced a great success--excellent if it had only
contained a little less vanilla or a little more sugar, if it had been
frozen a degree harder, and if the salt might have been kept out of
portions of it. Victor was proud of his achievement, and went about
recommending it and urging every one to partake of it to excess.

After Mrs. Pontellier had danced twice with her husband, once with
Robert, and once with Monsieur Ratignolle, who was thin and tall and
swayed like a reed in the wind when he danced, she went out on the
gallery and seated herself on the low window-sill, where she commanded a
view of all that went on in the hall and could look out toward the Gulf.
There was a soft effulgence in the east. The moon was coming up, and its
mystic shimmer was casting a million lights across the distant, restless
water.

“Would you like to hear Mademoiselle Reisz play?” asked Robert, coming
out on the porch where she was. Of course Edna would like to hear
Mademoiselle Reisz play; but she feared it would be useless to entreat
her.

“I'll ask her,” he said. “I'll tell her that you want to hear her. She
likes you. She will come.” He turned and hurried away to one of the far
cottages, where Mademoiselle Reisz was shuffling away. She was dragging
a chair in and out of her room, and at intervals objecting to the crying
of a baby, which a nurse in the adjoining cottage was endeavoring to put
to sleep. She was a disagreeable little woman, no longer young, who
had quarreled with almost every one, owing to a temper which was
self-assertive and a disposition to trample upon the rights of others.
Robert prevailed upon her without any too great difficulty.

She entered the hall with him during a lull in the dance. She made an
awkward, imperious little bow as she went in. She was a homely woman,
with a small weazened face and body and eyes that glowed. She had
absolutely no taste in dress, and wore a batch of rusty black lace with
a bunch of artificial violets pinned to the side of her hair.

“Ask Mrs. Pontellier what she would like to hear me play,” she requested
of Robert. She sat perfectly still before the piano, not touching the
keys, while Robert carried her message to Edna at the window. A general
air of surprise and genuine satisfaction fell upon every one as they saw
the pianist enter. There was a settling down, and a prevailing air
of expectancy everywhere. Edna was a trifle embarrassed at being thus
signaled out for the imperious little woman's favor. She would not dare
to choose, and begged that Mademoiselle Reisz would please herself in
her selections.

Edna was what she herself called very fond of music. Musical strains,
well rendered, had a way of evoking pictures in her mind. She sometimes
liked to sit in the room of mornings when Madame Ratignolle played
or practiced. One piece which that lady played Edna had entitled
“Solitude.” It was a short, plaintive, minor strain. The name of the
piece was something else, but she called it “Solitude.” When she heard
it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing beside
a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one
of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its
flight away from him.

Another piece called to her mind a dainty young woman clad in an Empire
gown, taking mincing dancing steps as she came down a long avenue
between tall hedges. Again, another reminded her of children at play,
and still another of nothing on earth but a demure lady stroking a cat.

The very first chords which Mademoiselle Reisz struck upon the piano
sent a keen tremor down Mrs. Pontellier's spinal column. It was not
the first time she had heard an artist at the piano. Perhaps it was the
first time she was ready, perhaps the first time her being was tempered
to take an impress of the abiding truth.

She waited for the material pictures which she thought would gather and
blaze before her imagination. She waited in vain. She saw no pictures
of solitude, of hope, of longing, or of despair. But the very passions
themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the
waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking,
and the tears blinded her.

Mademoiselle had finished. She arose, and bowing her stiff, lofty bow,
she went away, stopping for neither thanks nor applause. As she passed
along the gallery she patted Edna upon the shoulder.

“Well, how did you like my music?” she asked. The young woman was
unable to answer; she pressed the hand of the pianist convulsively.
Mademoiselle Reisz perceived her agitation and even her tears. She
patted her again upon the shoulder as she said:

“You are the only one worth playing for. Those others? Bah!” and she
went shuffling and sidling on down the gallery toward her room.

But she was mistaken about “those others.” Her playing had aroused a
fever of enthusiasm. “What passion!” “What an artist!” “I have always
said no one could play Chopin like Mademoiselle Reisz!” “That last
prelude! Bon Dieu! It shakes a man!”

It was growing late, and there was a general disposition to disband. But
some one, perhaps it was Robert, thought of a bath at that mystic hour
and under that mystic moon.




X


At all events Robert proposed it, and there was not a dissenting voice.
There was not one but was ready to follow when he led the way. He did
not lead the way, however, he directed the way; and he himself loitered
behind with the lovers, who had betrayed a disposition to linger and
hold themselves apart. He walked between them, whether with malicious or
mischievous intent was not wholly clear, even to himself.

The Pontelliers and Ratignolles walked ahead; the women leaning upon the
arms of their husbands. Edna could hear Robert's voice behind them,
and could sometimes hear what he said. She wondered why he did not join
them. It was unlike him not to. Of late he had sometimes held away from
her for an entire day, redoubling his devotion upon the next and the
next, as though to make up for hours that had been lost. She missed him
the days when some pretext served to take him away from her, just as one
misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun
when it was shining.

The people walked in little groups toward the beach. They talked and
laughed; some of them sang. There was a band playing down at Klein's
hotel, and the strains reached them faintly, tempered by the distance.
There were strange, rare odors abroad--a tangle of the sea smell and of
weeds and damp, new-plowed earth, mingled with the heavy perfume of a
field of white blossoms somewhere near. But the night sat lightly upon
the sea and the land. There was no weight of darkness; there were no
shadows. The white light of the moon had fallen upon the world like the
mystery and the softness of sleep.

Most of them walked into the water as though into a native element. The
sea was quiet now, and swelled lazily in broad billows that melted into
one another and did not break except upon the beach in little foamy
crests that coiled back like slow, white serpents.

Edna had attempted all summer to learn to swim. She had received
instructions from both the men and women; in some instances from the
children. Robert had pursued a system of lessons almost daily; and he
was nearly at the point of discouragement in realizing the futility of
his efforts. A certain ungovernable dread hung about her when in the
water, unless there was a hand near by that might reach out and reassure
her.

But that night she was like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching
child, who of a sudden realizes its powers, and walks for the first time
alone, boldly and with over-confidence. She could have shouted for joy.
She did shout for joy, as with a sweeping stroke or two she lifted her
body to the surface of the water.

A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant
import had been given her to control the working of her body and her
soul. She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She
wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.

Her unlooked-for achievement was the subject of wonder, applause, and
admiration. Each one congratulated himself that his special teachings
had accomplished this desired end.

“How easy it is!” she thought. “It is nothing,” she said aloud; “why did
I not discover before that it was nothing. Think of the time I have lost
splashing about like a baby!” She would not join the groups in their
sports and bouts, but intoxicated with her newly conquered power, she
swam out alone.

She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and
solitude, which the vast expanse of water, meeting and melting with the
moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she seemed to be
reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.

Once she turned and looked toward the shore, toward the people she had
left there. She had not gone any great distance--that is, what would
have been a great distance for an experienced swimmer. But to her
unaccustomed vision the stretch of water behind her assumed the aspect
of a barrier which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome.

A quick vision of death smote her soul, and for a second of time
appalled and enfeebled her senses. But by an effort she rallied her
staggering faculties and managed to regain the land.

She made no mention of her encounter with death and her flash of terror,
except to say to her husband, “I thought I should have perished out
there alone.”

“You were not so very far, my dear; I was watching you,” he told her.

Edna went at once to the bath-house, and she had put on her dry clothes
and was ready to return home before the others had left the water. She
started to walk away alone. They all called to her and shouted to her.
She waved a dissenting hand, and went on, paying no further heed to
their renewed cries which sought to detain her.

“Sometimes I am tempted to think that Mrs. Pontellier is capricious,”
 said Madame Lebrun, who was amusing herself immensely and feared that
Edna's abrupt departure might put an end to the pleasure.

“I know she is,” assented Mr. Pontellier; “sometimes, not often.”

Edna had not traversed a quarter of the distance on her way home before
she was overtaken by Robert.

“Did you think I was afraid?” she asked him, without a shade of
annoyance.

“No; I knew you weren't afraid.”

“Then why did you come? Why didn't you stay out there with the others?”

“I never thought of it.”

“Thought of what?”

“Of anything. What difference does it make?”

“I'm very tired,” she uttered, complainingly.

“I know you are.”

“You don't know anything about it. Why should you know? I never was so
exhausted in my life. But it isn't unpleasant. A thousand emotions have
swept through me to-night. I don't comprehend half of them. Don't mind
what I'm saying; I am just thinking aloud. I wonder if I shall ever
be stirred again as Mademoiselle Reisz's playing moved me to-night. I
wonder if any night on earth will ever again be like this one. It is
like a night in a dream. The people about me are like some uncanny,
half-human beings. There must be spirits abroad to-night.”

“There are,” whispered Robert, “Didn't you know this was the
twenty-eighth of August?”

“The twenty-eighth of August?”

“Yes. On the twenty-eighth of August, at the hour of midnight, and if
the moon is shining--the moon must be shining--a spirit that has haunted
these shores for ages rises up from the Gulf. With its own penetrating
vision the spirit seeks some one mortal worthy to hold him
company, worthy of being exalted for a few hours into realms of the
semi-celestials. His search has always hitherto been fruitless, and he
has sunk back, disheartened, into the sea. But to-night he found Mrs.
Pontellier. Perhaps he will never wholly release her from the spell.
Perhaps she will never again suffer a poor, unworthy earthling to walk
in the shadow of her divine presence.”

“Don't banter me,” she said, wounded at what appeared to be his
flippancy. He did not mind the entreaty, but the tone with its delicate
note of pathos was like a reproach. He could not explain; he could not
tell her that he had penetrated her mood and understood. He said
nothing except to offer her his arm, for, by her own admission, she
was exhausted. She had been walking alone with her arms hanging limp,
letting her white skirts trail along the dewy path. She took his arm,
but she did not lean upon it. She let her hand lie listlessly, as though
her thoughts were elsewhere--somewhere in advance of her body, and she
was striving to overtake them.

Robert assisted her into the hammock which swung from the post before
her door out to the trunk of a tree.

“Will you stay out here and wait for Mr. Pontellier?” he asked.

“I'll stay out here. Good-night.”

“Shall I get you a pillow?”

“There's one here,” she said, feeling about, for they were in the
shadow.

“It must be soiled; the children have been tumbling it about.”

“No matter.” And having discovered the pillow, she adjusted it beneath
her head. She extended herself in the hammock with a deep breath of
relief. She was not a supercilious or an over-dainty woman. She was not
much given to reclining in the hammock, and when she did so it was with
no cat-like suggestion of voluptuous ease, but with a beneficent repose
which seemed to invade her whole body.

“Shall I stay with you till Mr. Pontellier comes?” asked Robert, seating
himself on the outer edge of one of the steps and taking hold of the
hammock rope which was fastened to the post.

“If you wish. Don't swing the hammock. Will you get my white shawl which
I left on the window-sill over at the house?”

“Are you chilly?”

“No; but I shall be presently.”

“Presently?” he laughed. “Do you know what time it is? How long are you
going to stay out here?”

“I don't know. Will you get the shawl?”

“Of course I will,” he said, rising. He went over to the house, walking
along the grass. She watched his figure pass in and out of the strips of
moonlight. It was past midnight. It was very quiet.

When he returned with the shawl she took it and kept it in her hand. She
did not put it around her.

“Did you say I should stay till Mr. Pontellier came back?”

“I said you might if you wished to.”

He seated himself again and rolled a cigarette, which he smoked in
silence. Neither did Mrs. Pontellier speak. No multitude of words
could have been more significant than those moments of silence, or more
pregnant with the first-felt throbbings of desire.

When the voices of the bathers were heard approaching, Robert said
good-night. She did not answer him. He thought she was asleep. Again
she watched his figure pass in and out of the strips of moonlight as he
walked away.





XI


“What are you doing out here, Edna? I thought I should find you in bed,”
 said her husband, when he discovered her lying there. He had walked up
with Madame Lebrun and left her at the house. His wife did not reply.

“Are you asleep?” he asked, bending down close to look at her.

“No.” Her eyes gleamed bright and intense, with no sleepy shadows, as
they looked into his.

“Do you know it is past one o'clock? Come on,” and he mounted the steps
and went into their room.

“Edna!” called Mr. Pontellier from within, after a few moments had gone
by.

“Don't wait for me,” she answered. He thrust his head through the door.

“You will take cold out there,” he said, irritably. “What folly is this?
Why don't you come in?”

“It isn't cold; I have my shawl.”

“The mosquitoes will devour you.”

“There are no mosquitoes.”

She heard him moving about the room; every sound indicating impatience
and irritation. Another time she would have gone in at his request. She
would, through habit, have yielded to his desire; not with any sense of
submission or obedience to his compelling wishes, but unthinkingly, as
we walk, move, sit, stand, go through the daily treadmill of the life
which has been portioned out to us.

“Edna, dear, are you not coming in soon?” he asked again, this time
fondly, with a note of entreaty.

“No; I am going to stay out here.”

“This is more than folly,” he blurted out. “I can't permit you to stay
out there all night. You must come in the house instantly.”

With a writhing motion she settled herself more securely in the hammock.
She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant. She
could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted. She
wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if
she had submitted to his command. Of course she had; she remembered that
she had. But she could not realize why or how she should have yielded,
feeling as she then did.

“Leonce, go to bed,” she said, “I mean to stay out here. I don't wish to
go in, and I don't intend to. Don't speak to me like that again; I shall
not answer you.”

Mr. Pontellier had prepared for bed, but he slipped on an extra garment.
He opened a bottle of wine, of which he kept a small and select supply
in a buffet of his own. He drank a glass of the wine and went out on the
gallery and offered a glass to his wife. She did not wish any. He drew
up the rocker, hoisted his slippered feet on the rail, and proceeded
to smoke a cigar. He smoked two cigars; then he went inside and drank
another glass of wine. Mrs. Pontellier again declined to accept a glass
when it was offered to her. Mr. Pontellier once more seated himself with
elevated feet, and after a reasonable interval of time smoked some more
cigars.

Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a
delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities
pressing into her soul. The physical need for sleep began to overtake
her; the exuberance which had sustained and exalted her spirit left her
helpless and yielding to the conditions which crowded her in.

The stillest hour of the night had come, the hour before dawn, when the
world seems to hold its breath. The moon hung low, and had turned from
silver to copper in the sleeping sky. The old owl no longer hooted, and
the water-oaks had ceased to moan as they bent their heads.

Edna arose, cramped from lying so long and still in the hammock. She
tottered up the steps, clutching feebly at the post before passing into
the house.

“Are you coming in, Leonce?” she asked, turning her face toward her
husband.

“Yes, dear,” he answered, with a glance following a misty puff of smoke.
“Just as soon as I have finished my cigar.”




XII


She slept but a few hours. They were troubled and feverish hours,
disturbed with dreams that were intangible, that eluded her, leaving
only an impression upon her half-awakened senses of something
unattainable. She was up and dressed in the cool of the early morning.
The air was invigorating and steadied somewhat her faculties. However,
she was not seeking refreshment or help from any source, either external
or from within. She was blindly following whatever impulse moved her,
as if she had placed herself in alien hands for direction, and freed her
soul of responsibility.

Most of the people at that early hour were still in bed and asleep.
A few, who intended to go over to the Cheniere for mass, were moving
about. The lovers, who had laid their plans the night before, were
already strolling toward the wharf. The lady in black, with her Sunday
prayer-book, velvet and gold-clasped, and her Sunday silver beads, was
following them at no great distance. Old Monsieur Farival was up, and
was more than half inclined to do anything that suggested itself. He
put on his big straw hat, and taking his umbrella from the stand in the
hall, followed the lady in black, never overtaking her.

The little negro girl who worked Madame Lebrun's sewing-machine was
sweeping the galleries with long, absent-minded strokes of the broom.
Edna sent her up into the house to awaken Robert.

“Tell him I am going to the Cheniere. The boat is ready; tell him to
hurry.”

He had soon joined her. She had never sent for him before. She had never
asked for him. She had never seemed to want him before. She did not
appear conscious that she had done anything unusual in commanding
his presence. He was apparently equally unconscious of anything
extraordinary in the situation. But his face was suffused with a quiet
glow when he met her.

They went together back to the kitchen to drink coffee. There was no
time to wait for any nicety of service. They stood outside the window
and the cook passed them their coffee and a roll, which they drank and
ate from the window-sill. Edna said it tasted good.

She had not thought of coffee nor of anything. He told her he had often
noticed that she lacked forethought.

“Wasn't it enough to think of going to the Cheniere and waking you up?”
 she laughed. “Do I have to think of everything?--as Leonce says when
he's in a bad humor. I don't blame him; he'd never be in a bad humor if
it weren't for me.”

They took a short cut across the sands. At a distance they could see
the curious procession moving toward the wharf--the lovers, shoulder to
shoulder, creeping; the lady in black, gaining steadily upon them; old
Monsieur Farival, losing ground inch by inch, and a young barefooted
Spanish girl, with a red kerchief on her head and a basket on her arm,
bringing up the rear.

Robert knew the girl, and he talked to her a little in the boat. No one
present understood what they said. Her name was Mariequita. She had a
round, sly, piquant face and pretty black eyes. Her hands were small,
and she kept them folded over the handle of her basket. Her feet were
broad and coarse. She did not strive to hide them. Edna looked at her
feet, and noticed the sand and slime between her brown toes.

Beaudelet grumbled because Mariequita was there, taking up so much room.
In reality he was annoyed at having old Monsieur Farival, who considered
himself the better sailor of the two. But he would not quarrel with
so old a man as Monsieur Farival, so he quarreled with Mariequita. The
girl was deprecatory at one moment, appealing to Robert. She was saucy
the next, moving her head up and down, making “eyes” at Robert and
making “mouths” at Beaudelet.

The lovers were all alone. They saw nothing, they heard nothing. The
lady in black was counting her beads for the third time. Old Monsieur
Farival talked incessantly of what he knew about handling a boat, and of
what Beaudelet did not know on the same subject.

Edna liked it all. She looked Mariequita up and down, from her ugly
brown toes to her pretty black eyes, and back again.

“Why does she look at me like that?” inquired the girl of Robert.

“Maybe she thinks you are pretty. Shall I ask her?”

“No. Is she your sweetheart?”

“She's a married lady, and has two children.”

“Oh! well! Francisco ran away with Sylvano's wife, who had four
children. They took all his money and one of the children and stole his
boat.”

“Shut up!”

“Does she understand?”

“Oh, hush!”

“Are those two married over there--leaning on each other?”

“Of course not,” laughed Robert.

“Of course not,” echoed Mariequita, with a serious, confirmatory bob of
the head.

The sun was high up and beginning to bite. The swift breeze seemed
to Edna to bury the sting of it into the pores of her face and hands.
Robert held his umbrella over her. As they went cutting sidewise through
the water, the sails bellied taut, with the wind filling and overflowing
them. Old Monsieur Farival laughed sardonically at something as he
looked at the sails, and Beaudelet swore at the old man under his
breath.

Sailing across the bay to the Cheniere Caminada, Edna felt as if she
were being borne away from some anchorage which had held her fast, whose
chains had been loosening--had snapped the night before when the mystic
spirit was abroad, leaving her free to drift whithersoever she chose
to set her sails. Robert spoke to her incessantly; he no longer noticed
Mariequita. The girl had shrimps in her bamboo basket. They were covered
with Spanish moss. She beat the moss down impatiently, and muttered to
herself sullenly.

“Let us go to Grande Terre to-morrow?” said Robert in a low voice.

“What shall we do there?”

“Climb up the hill to the old fort and look at the little wriggling gold
snakes, and watch the lizards sun themselves.”

She gazed away toward Grande Terre and thought she would like to be
alone there with Robert, in the sun, listening to the ocean's roar and
watching the slimy lizards writhe in and out among the ruins of the old
fort.

“And the next day or the next we can sail to the Bayou Brulow,” he went
on.

“What shall we do there?”

“Anything--cast bait for fish.”

“No; we'll go back to Grande Terre. Let the fish alone.”

“We'll go wherever you like,” he said. “I'll have Tonie come over and
help me patch and trim my boat. We shall not need Beaudelet nor any one.
Are you afraid of the pirogue?”

“Oh, no.”

“Then I'll take you some night in the pirogue when the moon shines.
Maybe your Gulf spirit will whisper to you in which of these islands the
treasures are hidden--direct you to the very spot, perhaps.”

“And in a day we should be rich!” she laughed. “I'd give it all to you,
the pirate gold and every bit of treasure we could dig up. I think you
would know how to spend it. Pirate gold isn't a thing to be hoarded or
utilized. It is something to squander and throw to the four winds, for
the fun of seeing the golden specks fly.”

“We'd share it, and scatter it together,” he said. His face flushed.

They all went together up to the quaint little Gothic church of Our Lady
of Lourdes, gleaming all brown and yellow with paint in the sun's glare.

Only Beaudelet remained behind, tinkering at his boat, and Mariequita
walked away with her basket of shrimps, casting a look of childish ill
humor and reproach at Robert from the corner of her eye.




XIII


A feeling of oppression and drowsiness overcame Edna during the service.
Her head began to ache, and the lights on the altar swayed before
her eyes. Another time she might have made an effort to regain her
composure; but her one thought was to quit the stifling atmosphere of
the church and reach the open air. She arose, climbing over Robert's
feet with a muttered apology. Old Monsieur Farival, flurried, curious,
stood up, but upon seeing that Robert had followed Mrs. Pontellier, he
sank back into his seat. He whispered an anxious inquiry of the lady in
black, who did not notice him or reply, but kept her eyes fastened upon
the pages of her velvet prayer-book.

“I felt giddy and almost overcome,” Edna said, lifting her hands
instinctively to her head and pushing her straw hat up from her
forehead. “I couldn't have stayed through the service.” They were
outside in the shadow of the church. Robert was full of solicitude.

“It was folly to have thought of going in the first place, let alone
staying. Come over to Madame Antoine's; you can rest there.” He took her
arm and led her away, looking anxiously and continuously down into her
face.

How still it was, with only the voice of the sea whispering through the
reeds that grew in the salt-water pools! The long line of little gray,
weather-beaten houses nestled peacefully among the orange trees. It must
always have been God's day on that low, drowsy island, Edna thought.
They stopped, leaning over a jagged fence made of sea-drift, to ask
for water. A youth, a mild-faced Acadian, was drawing water from the
cistern, which was nothing more than a rusty buoy, with an opening on
one side, sunk in the ground. The water which the youth handed to them
in a tin pail was not cold to taste, but it was cool to her heated face,
and it greatly revived and refreshed her.

Madame Antoine's cot was at the far end of the village. She welcomed
them with all the native hospitality, as she would have opened her door
to let the sunlight in. She was fat, and walked heavily and clumsily
across the floor. She could speak no English, but when Robert made her
understand that the lady who accompanied him was ill and desired to
rest, she was all eagerness to make Edna feel at home and to dispose of
her comfortably.

The whole place was immaculately clean, and the big, four-posted bed,
snow-white, invited one to repose. It stood in a small side room which
looked out across a narrow grass plot toward the shed, where there was a
disabled boat lying keel upward.

Madame Antoine had not gone to mass. Her son Tonie had, but she supposed
he would soon be back, and she invited Robert to be seated and wait for
him. But he went and sat outside the door and smoked. Madame Antoine
busied herself in the large front room preparing dinner. She was boiling
mullets over a few red coals in the huge fireplace.

Edna, left alone in the little side room, loosened her clothes, removing
the greater part of them. She bathed her face, her neck and arms in
the basin that stood between the windows. She took off her shoes and
stockings and stretched herself in the very center of the high, white
bed. How luxurious it felt to rest thus in a strange, quaint bed,
with its sweet country odor of laurel lingering about the sheets and
mattress! She stretched her strong limbs that ached a little. She ran
her fingers through her loosened hair for a while. She looked at her
round arms as she held them straight up and rubbed them one after the
other, observing closely, as if it were something she saw for the first
time, the fine, firm quality and texture of her flesh. She clasped her
hands easily above her head, and it was thus she fell asleep.

She slept lightly at first, half awake and drowsily attentive to the
things about her. She could hear Madame Antoine's heavy, scraping tread
as she walked back and forth on the sanded floor. Some chickens were
clucking outside the windows, scratching for bits of gravel in the
grass. Later she half heard the voices of Robert and Tonie talking under
the shed. She did not stir. Even her eyelids rested numb and heavily
over her sleepy eyes. The voices went on--Tonie's slow, Acadian drawl,
Robert's quick, soft, smooth French. She understood French imperfectly
unless directly addressed, and the voices were only part of the other
drowsy, muffled sounds lulling her senses.

When Edna awoke it was with the conviction that she had slept long and
soundly. The voices were hushed under the shed. Madame Antoine's step
was no longer to be heard in the adjoining room. Even the chickens had
gone elsewhere to scratch and cluck. The mosquito bar was drawn over
her; the old woman had come in while she slept and let down the bar.
Edna arose quietly from the bed, and looking between the curtains of the
window, she saw by the slanting rays of the sun that the afternoon was
far advanced. Robert was out there under the shed, reclining in the
shade against the sloping keel of the overturned boat. He was reading
from a book. Tonie was no longer with him. She wondered what had become
of the rest of the party. She peeped out at him two or three times as
she stood washing herself in the little basin between the windows.

Madame Antoine had laid some coarse, clean towels upon a chair, and had
placed a box of poudre de riz within easy reach. Edna dabbed the powder
upon her nose and cheeks as she looked at herself closely in the little
distorted mirror which hung on the wall above the basin. Her eyes were
bright and wide awake and her face glowed.

When she had completed her toilet she walked into the adjoining room.
She was very hungry. No one was there. But there was a cloth spread upon
the table that stood against the wall, and a cover was laid for one,
with a crusty brown loaf and a bottle of wine beside the plate. Edna bit
a piece from the brown loaf, tearing it with her strong, white teeth.
She poured some of the wine into the glass and drank it down. Then she
went softly out of doors, and plucking an orange from the low-hanging
bough of a tree, threw it at Robert, who did not know she was awake and
up.

An illumination broke over his whole face when he saw her and joined her
under the orange tree.

“How many years have I slept?” she inquired. “The whole island seems
changed. A new race of beings must have sprung up, leaving only you and
me as past relics. How many ages ago did Madame Antoine and Tonie die?
and when did our people from Grand Isle disappear from the earth?”

He familiarly adjusted a ruffle upon her shoulder.

“You have slept precisely one hundred years. I was left here to guard
your slumbers; and for one hundred years I have been out under the shed
reading a book. The only evil I couldn't prevent was to keep a broiled
fowl from drying up.”

“If it has turned to stone, still will I eat it,” said Edna, moving with
him into the house. “But really, what has become of Monsieur Farival and
the others?”

“Gone hours ago. When they found that you were sleeping they thought
it best not to awake you. Any way, I wouldn't have let them. What was I
here for?”

“I wonder if Leonce will be uneasy!” she speculated, as she seated
herself at table.

“Of course not; he knows you are with me,” Robert replied, as he
busied himself among sundry pans and covered dishes which had been left
standing on the hearth.

“Where are Madame Antoine and her son?” asked Edna.

“Gone to Vespers, and to visit some friends, I believe. I am to take you
back in Tonie's boat whenever you are ready to go.”

He stirred the smoldering ashes till the broiled fowl began to sizzle
afresh. He served her with no mean repast, dripping the coffee anew
and sharing it with her. Madame Antoine had cooked little else than
the mullets, but while Edna slept Robert had foraged the island. He was
childishly gratified to discover her appetite, and to see the relish
with which she ate the food which he had procured for her.

“Shall we go right away?” she asked, after draining her glass and
brushing together the crumbs of the crusty loaf.

“The sun isn't as low as it will be in two hours,” he answered.

“The sun will be gone in two hours.”

“Well, let it go; who cares!”

They waited a good while under the orange trees, till Madame Antoine
came back, panting, waddling, with a thousand apologies to explain
her absence. Tonie did not dare to return. He was shy, and would not
willingly face any woman except his mother.

It was very pleasant to stay there under the orange trees, while the sun
dipped lower and lower, turning the western sky to flaming copper and
gold. The shadows lengthened and crept out like stealthy, grotesque
monsters across the grass.

Edna and Robert both sat upon the ground--that is, he lay upon the
ground beside her, occasionally picking at the hem of her muslin gown.

Madame Antoine seated her fat body, broad and squat, upon a bench beside
the door. She had been talking all the afternoon, and had wound herself
up to the storytelling pitch.

And what stories she told them! But twice in her life she had left the
Cheniere Caminada, and then for the briefest span. All her years she
had squatted and waddled there upon the island, gathering legends of the
Baratarians and the sea. The night came on, with the moon to lighten
it. Edna could hear the whispering voices of dead men and the click of
muffled gold.

When she and Robert stepped into Tonie's boat, with the red lateen sail,
misty spirit forms were prowling in the shadows and among the reeds, and
upon the water were phantom ships, speeding to cover.




XIV


The youngest boy, Etienne, had been very naughty, Madame Ratignolle
said, as she delivered him into the hands of his mother. He had been
unwilling to go to bed and had made a scene; whereupon she had taken
charge of him and pacified him as well as she could. Raoul had been in
bed and asleep for two hours.

The youngster was in his long white nightgown, that kept tripping him
up as Madame Ratignolle led him along by the hand. With the other chubby
fist he rubbed his eyes, which were heavy with sleep and ill humor. Edna
took him in her arms, and seating herself in the rocker, began to coddle
and caress him, calling him all manner of tender names, soothing him to
sleep.

It was not more than nine o'clock. No one had yet gone to bed but the
children.

Leonce had been very uneasy at first, Madame Ratignolle said, and had
wanted to start at once for the Cheniere. But Monsieur Farival had
assured him that his wife was only overcome with sleep and fatigue, that
Tonie would bring her safely back later in the day; and he had thus been
dissuaded from crossing the bay. He had gone over to Klein's, looking
up some cotton broker whom he wished to see in regard to securities,
exchanges, stocks, bonds, or something of the sort, Madame Ratignolle
did not remember what. He said he would not remain away late. She
herself was suffering from heat and oppression, she said. She carried
a bottle of salts and a large fan. She would not consent to remain
with Edna, for Monsieur Ratignolle was alone, and he detested above all
things to be left alone.

When Etienne had fallen asleep Edna bore him into the back room, and
Robert went and lifted the mosquito bar that she might lay the child
comfortably in his bed. The quadroon had vanished. When they emerged
from the cottage Robert bade Edna good-night.

“Do you know we have been together the whole livelong day, Robert--since
early this morning?” she said at parting.

“All but the hundred years when you were sleeping. Goodnight.”

He pressed her hand and went away in the direction of the beach. He did
not join any of the others, but walked alone toward the Gulf.

Edna stayed outside, awaiting her husband's return. She had no desire
to sleep or to retire; nor did she feel like going over to sit with the
Ratignolles, or to join Madame Lebrun and a group whose animated voices
reached her as they sat in conversation before the house. She let her
mind wander back over her stay at Grand Isle; and she tried to discover
wherein this summer had been different from any and every other summer
of her life. She could only realize that she herself--her present
self--was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing
with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new conditions
in herself that colored and changed her environment, she did not yet
suspect.

She wondered why Robert had gone away and left her. It did not occur to
her to think he might have grown tired of being with her the livelong
day. She was not tired, and she felt that he was not. She regretted that
he had gone. It was so much more natural to have him stay when he was
not absolutely required to leave her.

As Edna waited for her husband she sang low a little song that Robert
had sung as they crossed the bay. It began with “Ah! Si tu savais,” and
every verse ended with “si tu savais.”

Robert's voice was not pretentious. It was musical and true. The voice,
the notes, the whole refrain haunted her memory.




XV


When Edna entered the dining-room one evening a little late, as was her
habit, an unusually animated conversation seemed to be going on. Several
persons were talking at once, and Victor's voice was predominating,
even over that of his mother. Edna had returned late from her bath, had
dressed in some haste, and her face was flushed. Her head, set off by
her dainty white gown, suggested a rich, rare blossom. She took her seat
at table between old Monsieur Farival and Madame Ratignolle.

As she seated herself and was about to begin to eat her soup, which
had been served when she entered the room, several persons informed her
simultaneously that Robert was going to Mexico. She laid her spoon down
and looked about her bewildered. He had been with her, reading to her
all the morning, and had never even mentioned such a place as Mexico.
She had not seen him during the afternoon; she had heard some one say he
was at the house, upstairs with his mother. This she had thought nothing
of, though she was surprised when he did not join her later in the
afternoon, when she went down to the beach.

She looked across at him, where he sat beside Madame Lebrun, who
presided. Edna's face was a blank picture of bewilderment, which she
never thought of disguising. He lifted his eyebrows with the pretext
of a smile as he returned her glance. He looked embarrassed and uneasy.
“When is he going?” she asked of everybody in general, as if Robert were
not there to answer for himself.

“To-night!” “This very evening!” “Did you ever!” “What possesses him!”
 were some of the replies she gathered, uttered simultaneously in French
and English.

“Impossible!” she exclaimed. “How can a person start off from Grand Isle
to Mexico at a moment's notice, as if he were going over to Klein's or
to the wharf or down to the beach?”

“I said all along I was going to Mexico; I've been saying so for years!”
 cried Robert, in an excited and irritable tone, with the air of a man
defending himself against a swarm of stinging insects.

Madame Lebrun knocked on the table with her knife handle.

“Please let Robert explain why he is going, and why he is going
to-night,” she called out. “Really, this table is getting to be more and
more like Bedlam every day, with everybody talking at once. Sometimes--I
hope God will forgive me--but positively, sometimes I wish Victor would
lose the power of speech.”

Victor laughed sardonically as he thanked his mother for her holy wish,
of which he failed to see the benefit to anybody, except that it might
afford her a more ample opportunity and license to talk herself.

Monsieur Farival thought that Victor should have been taken out in
mid-ocean in his earliest youth and drowned. Victor thought there would
be more logic in thus disposing of old people with an established claim
for making themselves universally obnoxious. Madame Lebrun grew a trifle
hysterical; Robert called his brother some sharp, hard names.

“There's nothing much to explain, mother,” he said; though he explained,
nevertheless--looking chiefly at Edna--that he could only meet the
gentleman whom he intended to join at Vera Cruz by taking such and such
a steamer, which left New Orleans on such a day; that Beaudelet was
going out with his lugger-load of vegetables that night, which gave him
an opportunity of reaching the city and making his vessel in time.

“But when did you make up your mind to all this?” demanded Monsieur
Farival.

“This afternoon,” returned Robert, with a shade of annoyance.

“At what time this afternoon?” persisted the old gentleman, with nagging
determination, as if he were cross-questioning a criminal in a court of
justice.

“At four o'clock this afternoon, Monsieur Farival,” Robert replied, in
a high voice and with a lofty air, which reminded Edna of some gentleman
on the stage.

She had forced herself to eat most of her soup, and now she was picking
the flaky bits of a court bouillon with her fork.

The lovers were profiting by the general conversation on Mexico to speak
in whispers of matters which they rightly considered were interesting
to no one but themselves. The lady in black had once received a pair
of prayer-beads of curious workmanship from Mexico, with very special
indulgence attached to them, but she had never been able to ascertain
whether the indulgence extended outside the Mexican border. Father
Fochel of the Cathedral had attempted to explain it; but he had not
done so to her satisfaction. And she begged that Robert would interest
himself, and discover, if possible, whether she was entitled to the
indulgence accompanying the remarkably curious Mexican prayer-beads.

Madame Ratignolle hoped that Robert would exercise extreme caution
in dealing with the Mexicans, who, she considered, were a treacherous
people, unscrupulous and revengeful. She trusted she did them no
injustice in thus condemning them as a race. She had known personally
but one Mexican, who made and sold excellent tamales, and whom she would
have trusted implicitly, so soft-spoken was he. One day he was arrested
for stabbing his wife. She never knew whether he had been hanged or not.

Victor had grown hilarious, and was attempting to tell an anecdote
about a Mexican girl who served chocolate one winter in a restaurant in
Dauphine Street. No one would listen to him but old Monsieur Farival,
who went into convulsions over the droll story.

Edna wondered if they had all gone mad, to be talking and clamoring at
that rate. She herself could think of nothing to say about Mexico or the
Mexicans.

“At what time do you leave?” she asked Robert.

“At ten,” he told her. “Beaudelet wants to wait for the moon.”

“Are you all ready to go?”

“Quite ready. I shall only take a hand-bag, and shall pack my trunk in
the city.”

He turned to answer some question put to him by his mother, and Edna,
having finished her black coffee, left the table.

She went directly to her room. The little cottage was close and stuffy
after leaving the outer air. But she did not mind; there appeared to be
a hundred different things demanding her attention indoors. She began
to set the toilet-stand to rights, grumbling at the negligence of the
quadroon, who was in the adjoining room putting the children to bed.
She gathered together stray garments that were hanging on the backs of
chairs, and put each where it belonged in closet or bureau drawer. She
changed her gown for a more comfortable and commodious wrapper. She
rearranged her hair, combing and brushing it with unusual energy. Then
she went in and assisted the quadroon in getting the boys to bed.

They were very playful and inclined to talk--to do anything but lie
quiet and go to sleep. Edna sent the quadroon away to her supper and
told her she need not return. Then she sat and told the children
a story. Instead of soothing it excited them, and added to their
wakefulness. She left them in heated argument, speculating about
the conclusion of the tale which their mother promised to finish the
following night.

The little black girl came in to say that Madame Lebrun would like to
have Mrs. Pontellier go and sit with them over at the house till Mr.
Robert went away. Edna returned answer that she had already undressed,
that she did not feel quite well, but perhaps she would go over to the
house later. She started to dress again, and got as far advanced as to
remove her peignoir. But changing her mind once more she resumed
the peignoir, and went outside and sat down before her door. She was
overheated and irritable, and fanned herself energetically for a while.
Madame Ratignolle came down to discover what was the matter.

“All that noise and confusion at the table must have upset me,” replied
Edna, “and moreover, I hate shocks and surprises. The idea of Robert
starting off in such a ridiculously sudden and dramatic way! As if
it were a matter of life and death! Never saying a word about it all
morning when he was with me.”

“Yes,” agreed Madame Ratignolle. “I think it was showing us all--you
especially--very little consideration. It wouldn't have surprised me in
any of the others; those Lebruns are all given to heroics. But I must
say I should never have expected such a thing from Robert. Are you not
coming down? Come on, dear; it doesn't look friendly.”

“No,” said Edna, a little sullenly. “I can't go to the trouble of
dressing again; I don't feel like it.”

“You needn't dress; you look all right; fasten a belt around your waist.
Just look at me!”

“No,” persisted Edna; “but you go on. Madame Lebrun might be offended if
we both stayed away.”

Madame Ratignolle kissed Edna good-night, and went away, being in truth
rather desirous of joining in the general and animated conversation
which was still in progress concerning Mexico and the Mexicans.

Somewhat later Robert came up, carrying his hand-bag.

“Aren't you feeling well?” he asked.

“Oh, well enough. Are you going right away?”

He lit a match and looked at his watch. “In twenty minutes,” he said.
The sudden and brief flare of the match emphasized the darkness for a
while. He sat down upon a stool which the children had left out on the
porch.

“Get a chair,” said Edna.

“This will do,” he replied. He put on his soft hat and nervously took it
off again, and wiping his face with his handkerchief, complained of the
heat.

“Take the fan,” said Edna, offering it to him.

“Oh, no! Thank you. It does no good; you have to stop fanning some time,
and feel all the more uncomfortable afterward.”

“That's one of the ridiculous things which men always say. I have never
known one to speak otherwise of fanning. How long will you be gone?”

“Forever, perhaps. I don't know. It depends upon a good many things.”

“Well, in case it shouldn't be forever, how long will it be?”

“I don't know.”

“This seems to me perfectly preposterous and uncalled for. I don't like
it. I don't understand your motive for silence and mystery, never saying
a word to me about it this morning.” He remained silent, not offering to
defend himself. He only said, after a moment:

“Don't part from me in any ill humor. I never knew you to be out of
patience with me before.”

“I don't want to part in any ill humor,” she said. “But can't you
understand? I've grown used to seeing you, to having you with me all
the time, and your action seems unfriendly, even unkind. You don't even
offer an excuse for it. Why, I was planning to be together, thinking of
how pleasant it would be to see you in the city next winter.”

“So was I,” he blurted. “Perhaps that's the--” He stood up suddenly
and held out his hand. “Good-by, my dear Mrs. Pontellier; good-by. You
won't--I hope you won't completely forget me.” She clung to his hand,
striving to detain him.

“Write to me when you get there, won't you, Robert?” she entreated.

“I will, thank you. Good-by.”

How unlike Robert! The merest acquaintance would have said something
more emphatic than “I will, thank you; good-by,” to such a request.

He had evidently already taken leave of the people over at the house,
for he descended the steps and went to join Beaudelet, who was out there
with an oar across his shoulder waiting for Robert. They walked away
in the darkness. She could only hear Beaudelet's voice; Robert had
apparently not even spoken a word of greeting to his companion.

Edna bit her handkerchief convulsively, striving to hold back and to
hide, even from herself as she would have hidden from another, the
emotion which was troubling--tearing--her. Her eyes were brimming with
tears.

For the first time she recognized the symptoms of infatuation which she
had felt incipiently as a child, as a girl in her earliest teens, and
later as a young woman. The recognition did not lessen the reality, the
poignancy of the revelation by any suggestion or promise of instability.
The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to
heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate.
The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture her as it was
doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost that which she
had held, that she had been denied that which her impassioned, newly
awakened being demanded.




XVI


“Do you miss your friend greatly?” asked Mademoiselle Reisz one morning
as she came creeping up behind Edna, who had just left her cottage on
her way to the beach. She spent much of her time in the water since she
had acquired finally the art of swimming. As their stay at Grand Isle
drew near its close, she felt that she could not give too much time to a
diversion which afforded her the only real pleasurable moments that she
knew. When Mademoiselle Reisz came and touched her upon the shoulder
and spoke to her, the woman seemed to echo the thought which was ever in
Edna's mind; or, better, the feeling which constantly possessed her.

Robert's going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning
out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed,
but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to
be no longer worth wearing. She sought him everywhere--in others whom
she induced to talk about him. She went up in the mornings to Madame
Lebrun's room, braving the clatter of the old sewing-machine. She sat
there and chatted at intervals as Robert had done. She gazed around
the room at the pictures and photographs hanging upon the wall, and
discovered in some corner an old family album, which she examined with
the keenest interest, appealing to Madame Lebrun for enlightenment
concerning the many figures and faces which she discovered between its
pages.

There was a picture of Madame Lebrun with Robert as a baby, seated in
her lap, a round-faced infant with a fist in his mouth. The eyes alone
in the baby suggested the man. And that was he also in kilts, at the age
of five, wearing long curls and holding a whip in his hand. It made Edna
laugh, and she laughed, too, at the portrait in his first long trousers;
while another interested her, taken when he left for college, looking
thin, long-faced, with eyes full of fire, ambition and great intentions.
But there was no recent picture, none which suggested the Robert who had
gone away five days ago, leaving a void and wilderness behind him.

“Oh, Robert stopped having his pictures taken when he had to pay for
them himself! He found wiser use for his money, he says,” explained
Madame Lebrun. She had a letter from him, written before he left New
Orleans. Edna wished to see the letter, and Madame Lebrun told her to
look for it either on the table or the dresser, or perhaps it was on the
mantelpiece.

The letter was on the bookshelf. It possessed the greatest interest and
attraction for Edna; the envelope, its size and shape, the post-mark,
the handwriting. She examined every detail of the outside before opening
it. There were only a few lines, setting forth that he would leave the
city that afternoon, that he had packed his trunk in good shape, that
he was well, and sent her his love and begged to be affectionately
remembered to all. There was no special message to Edna except a
postscript saying that if Mrs. Pontellier desired to finish the book
which he had been reading to her, his mother would find it in his
room, among other books there on the table. Edna experienced a pang of
jealousy because he had written to his mother rather than to her.

Every one seemed to take for granted that she missed him. Even her
husband, when he came down the Saturday following Robert's departure,
expressed regret that he had gone.

“How do you get on without him, Edna?” he asked.

“It's very dull without him,” she admitted. Mr. Pontellier had seen
Robert in the city, and Edna asked him a dozen questions or more. Where
had they met? On Carondelet Street, in the morning. They had gone
“in” and had a drink and a cigar together. What had they talked about?
Chiefly about his prospects in Mexico, which Mr. Pontellier thought
were promising. How did he look? How did he seem--grave, or gay, or how?
Quite cheerful, and wholly taken up with the idea of his trip, which
Mr. Pontellier found altogether natural in a young fellow about to seek
fortune and adventure in a strange, queer country.

Edna tapped her foot impatiently, and wondered why the children
persisted in playing in the sun when they might be under the trees. She
went down and led them out of the sun, scolding the quadroon for not
being more attentive.

It did not strike her as in the least grotesque that she should be
making of Robert the object of conversation and leading her husband to
speak of him. The sentiment which she entertained for Robert in no way
resembled that which she felt for her husband, or had ever felt, or ever
expected to feel. She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor
thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never
taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own, and
she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and that
they concerned no one but herself. Edna had once told Madame Ratignolle
that she would never sacrifice herself for her children, or for any one.
Then had followed a rather heated argument; the two women did not appear
to understand each other or to be talking the same language. Edna tried
to appease her friend, to explain.

“I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my
life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more
clear; it's only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is
revealing itself to me.”

“I don't know what you would call the essential, or what you mean by the
unessential,” said Madame Ratignolle, cheerfully; “but a woman who would
give her life for her children could do no more than that--your Bible
tells you so. I'm sure I couldn't do more than that.”

“Oh, yes you could!” laughed Edna.

She was not surprised at Mademoiselle Reisz's question the morning that
lady, following her to the beach, tapped her on the shoulder and asked
if she did not greatly miss her young friend.

“Oh, good morning, Mademoiselle; is it you? Why, of course I miss
Robert. Are you going down to bathe?”

“Why should I go down to bathe at the very end of the season when I
haven't been in the surf all summer,” replied the woman, disagreeably.

“I beg your pardon,” offered Edna, in some embarrassment, for she should
have remembered that Mademoiselle Reisz's avoidance of the water had
furnished a theme for much pleasantry. Some among them thought it was
on account of her false hair, or the dread of getting the violets wet,
while others attributed it to the natural aversion for water sometimes
believed to accompany the artistic temperament. Mademoiselle offered
Edna some chocolates in a paper bag, which she took from her pocket,
by way of showing that she bore no ill feeling. She habitually ate
chocolates for their sustaining quality; they contained much nutriment
in small compass, she said. They saved her from starvation, as Madame
Lebrun's table was utterly impossible; and no one save so impertinent a
woman as Madame Lebrun could think of offering such food to people and
requiring them to pay for it.

“She must feel very lonely without her son,” said Edna, desiring to
change the subject. “Her favorite son, too. It must have been quite hard
to let him go.”

Mademoiselle laughed maliciously.

“Her favorite son! Oh, dear! Who could have been imposing such a tale
upon you? Aline Lebrun lives for Victor, and for Victor alone. She has
spoiled him into the worthless creature he is. She worships him and the
ground he walks on. Robert is very well in a way, to give up all the
money he can earn to the family, and keep the barest pittance for
himself. Favorite son, indeed! I miss the poor fellow myself, my dear. I
liked to see him and to hear him about the place the only Lebrun who is
worth a pinch of salt. He comes to see me often in the city. I like
to play to him. That Victor! hanging would be too good for him. It's a
wonder Robert hasn't beaten him to death long ago.”

“I thought he had great patience with his brother,” offered Edna, glad
to be talking about Robert, no matter what was said.

“Oh! he thrashed him well enough a year or two ago,” said Mademoiselle.
“It was about a Spanish girl, whom Victor considered that he had some
sort of claim upon. He met Robert one day talking to the girl, or
walking with her, or bathing with her, or carrying her basket--I don't
remember what;--and he became so insulting and abusive that Robert gave
him a thrashing on the spot that has kept him comparatively in order for
a good while. It's about time he was getting another.”

“Was her name Mariequita?” asked Edna.

“Mariequita--yes, that was it; Mariequita. I had forgotten. Oh, she's a
sly one, and a bad one, that Mariequita!”

Edna looked down at Mademoiselle Reisz and wondered how she could have
listened to her venom so long. For some reason she felt depressed,
almost unhappy. She had not intended to go into the water; but she
donned her bathing suit, and left Mademoiselle alone, seated under the
shade of the children's tent. The water was growing cooler as the season
advanced. Edna plunged and swam about with an abandon that thrilled and
invigorated her. She remained a long time in the water, half hoping that
Mademoiselle Reisz would not wait for her.

But Mademoiselle waited. She was very amiable during the walk back, and
raved much over Edna's appearance in her bathing suit. She talked about
music. She hoped that Edna would go to see her in the city, and wrote
her address with the stub of a pencil on a piece of card which she found
in her pocket.

“When do you leave?” asked Edna.

“Next Monday; and you?”

“The following week,” answered Edna, adding, “It has been a pleasant
summer, hasn't it, Mademoiselle?”

“Well,” agreed Mademoiselle Reisz, with a shrug, “rather pleasant, if it
hadn't been for the mosquitoes and the Farival twins.”




XVII


The Pontelliers possessed a very charming home on Esplanade Street in
New Orleans. It was a large, double cottage, with a broad front veranda,
whose round, fluted columns supported the sloping roof. The house was
painted a dazzling white; the outside shutters, or jalousies, were
green. In the yard, which was kept scrupulously neat, were flowers and
plants of every description which flourishes in South Louisiana. Within
doors the appointments were perfect after the conventional type. The
softest carpets and rugs covered the floors; rich and tasteful draperies
hung at doors and windows. There were paintings, selected with judgment
and discrimination, upon the walls. The cut glass, the silver, the heavy
damask which daily appeared upon the table were the envy of many women
whose husbands were less generous than Mr. Pontellier.

Mr. Pontellier was very fond of walking about his house examining its
various appointments and details, to see that nothing was amiss. He
greatly valued his possessions, chiefly because they were his, and
derived genuine pleasure from contemplating a painting, a statuette, a
rare lace curtain--no matter what--after he had bought it and placed it
among his household gods.

On Tuesday afternoons--Tuesday being Mrs. Pontellier's reception
day--there was a constant stream of callers--women who came in carriages
or in the street cars, or walked when the air was soft and distance
permitted. A light-colored mulatto boy, in dress coat and bearing a
diminutive silver tray for the reception of cards, admitted them. A
maid, in white fluted cap, offered the callers liqueur, coffee, or
chocolate, as they might desire. Mrs. Pontellier, attired in a handsome
reception gown, remained in the drawing-room the entire afternoon
receiving her visitors. Men sometimes called in the evening with their
wives.

This had been the programme which Mrs. Pontellier had religiously
followed since her marriage, six years before. Certain evenings during
the week she and her husband attended the opera or sometimes the play.

Mr. Pontellier left his home in the mornings between nine and ten
o'clock, and rarely returned before half-past six or seven in the
evening--dinner being served at half-past seven.

He and his wife seated themselves at table one Tuesday evening, a few
weeks after their return from Grand Isle. They were alone together.
The boys were being put to bed; the patter of their bare, escaping
feet could be heard occasionally, as well as the pursuing voice of the
quadroon, lifted in mild protest and entreaty. Mrs. Pontellier did not
wear her usual Tuesday reception gown; she was in ordinary house dress.
Mr. Pontellier, who was observant about such things, noticed it, as he
served the soup and handed it to the boy in waiting.

“Tired out, Edna? Whom did you have? Many callers?” he asked. He
tasted his soup and began to season it with pepper, salt, vinegar,
mustard--everything within reach.

“There were a good many,” replied Edna, who was eating her soup with
evident satisfaction. “I found their cards when I got home; I was out.”

“Out!” exclaimed her husband, with something like genuine consternation
in his voice as he laid down the vinegar cruet and looked at her through
his glasses. “Why, what could have taken you out on Tuesday? What did
you have to do?”

“Nothing. I simply felt like going out, and I went out.”

“Well, I hope you left some suitable excuse,” said her husband, somewhat
appeased, as he added a dash of cayenne pepper to the soup.

“No, I left no excuse. I told Joe to say I was out, that was all.”

“Why, my dear, I should think you'd understand by this time that people
don't do such things; we've got to observe les convenances if we ever
expect to get on and keep up with the procession. If you felt that you
had to leave home this afternoon, you should have left some suitable
explanation for your absence.

“This soup is really impossible; it's strange that woman hasn't learned
yet to make a decent soup. Any free-lunch stand in town serves a better
one. Was Mrs. Belthrop here?”

“Bring the tray with the cards, Joe. I don't remember who was here.”

The boy retired and returned after a moment, bringing the tiny silver
tray, which was covered with ladies' visiting cards. He handed it to
Mrs. Pontellier.

“Give it to Mr. Pontellier,” she said.

Joe offered the tray to Mr. Pontellier, and removed the soup.

Mr. Pontellier scanned the names of his wife's callers, reading some of
them aloud, with comments as he read.

“'The Misses Delasidas.' I worked a big deal in futures for their father
this morning; nice girls; it's time they were getting married. 'Mrs.
Belthrop.' I tell you what it is, Edna; you can't afford to snub Mrs.
Belthrop. Why, Belthrop could buy and sell us ten times over. His
business is worth a good, round sum to me. You'd better write her a
note. 'Mrs. James Highcamp.' Hugh! the less you have to do with Mrs.
Highcamp, the better. 'Madame Laforce.' Came all the way from Carrolton,
too, poor old soul. 'Miss Wiggs,' 'Mrs. Eleanor Boltons.'” He pushed the
cards aside.

“Mercy!” exclaimed Edna, who had been fuming. “Why are you taking the
thing so seriously and making such a fuss over it?”

“I'm not making any fuss over it. But it's just such seeming trifles
that we've got to take seriously; such things count.”

The fish was scorched. Mr. Pontellier would not touch it. Edna said she
did not mind a little scorched taste. The roast was in some way not to
his fancy, and he did not like the manner in which the vegetables were
served.

“It seems to me,” he said, “we spend money enough in this house to
procure at least one meal a day which a man could eat and retain his
self-respect.”

“You used to think the cook was a treasure,” returned Edna,
indifferently.

“Perhaps she was when she first came; but cooks are only human. They
need looking after, like any other class of persons that you employ.
Suppose I didn't look after the clerks in my office, just let them
run things their own way; they'd soon make a nice mess of me and my
business.”

“Where are you going?” asked Edna, seeing that her husband arose
from table without having eaten a morsel except a taste of the
highly-seasoned soup.

“I'm going to get my dinner at the club. Good night.” He went into the
hall, took his hat and stick from the stand, and left the house.

She was somewhat familiar with such scenes. They had often made her very
unhappy. On a few previous occasions she had been completely deprived of
any desire to finish her dinner. Sometimes she had gone into the kitchen
to administer a tardy rebuke to the cook. Once she went to her room and
studied the cookbook during an entire evening, finally writing out a
menu for the week, which left her harassed with a feeling that, after
all, she had accomplished no good that was worth the name.

But that evening Edna finished her dinner alone, with forced
deliberation. Her face was flushed and her eyes flamed with some inward
fire that lighted them. After finishing her dinner she went to her
room, having instructed the boy to tell any other callers that she was
indisposed.

It was a large, beautiful room, rich and picturesque in the soft, dim
light which the maid had turned low. She went and stood at an open
window and looked out upon the deep tangle of the garden below. All the
mystery and witchery of the night seemed to have gathered there amid the
perfumes and the dusky and tortuous outlines of flowers and foliage.
She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet,
half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not soothing
that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars. They
jeered and sounded mournful notes without promise, devoid even of hope.
She turned back into the room and began to walk to and fro down its
whole length without stopping, without resting. She carried in her
hands a thin handkerchief, which she tore into ribbons, rolled into a
ball, and flung from her. Once she stopped, and taking off her wedding
ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there, she stamped
her heel upon it, striving to crush it. But her small boot heel did not
make an indenture, not a mark upon the little glittering circlet.

In a sweeping passion she seized a glass vase from the table and flung
it upon the tiles of the hearth. She wanted to destroy something. The
crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear.

A maid, alarmed at the din of breaking glass, entered the room to
discover what was the matter.

“A vase fell upon the hearth,” said Edna. “Never mind; leave it till
morning.”

“Oh! you might get some of the glass in your feet, ma'am,” insisted the
young woman, picking up bits of the broken vase that were scattered upon
the carpet. “And here's your ring, ma'am, under the chair.”

Edna held out her hand, and taking the ring, slipped it upon her finger.




XVIII


The following morning Mr. Pontellier, upon leaving for his office, asked
Edna if she would not meet him in town in order to look at some new
fixtures for the library.

“I hardly think we need new fixtures, Leonce. Don't let us get anything
new; you are too extravagant. I don't believe you ever think of saving
or putting by.”

“The way to become rich is to make money, my dear Edna, not to save it,”
 he said. He regretted that she did not feel inclined to go with him and
select new fixtures. He kissed her good-by, and told her she was not
looking well and must take care of herself. She was unusually pale and
very quiet.

She stood on the front veranda as he quitted the house, and absently
picked a few sprays of jessamine that grew upon a trellis near by. She
inhaled the odor of the blossoms and thrust them into the bosom of her
white morning gown. The boys were dragging along the banquette a small
“express wagon,” which they had filled with blocks and sticks. The
quadroon was following them with little quick steps, having assumed a
fictitious animation and alacrity for the occasion. A fruit vender was
crying his wares in the street.

Edna looked straight before her with a self-absorbed expression upon
her face. She felt no interest in anything about her. The street, the
children, the fruit vender, the flowers growing there under her eyes,
were all part and parcel of an alien world which had suddenly become
antagonistic.

She went back into the house. She had thought of speaking to the cook
concerning her blunders of the previous night; but Mr. Pontellier had
saved her that disagreeable mission, for which she was so poorly fitted.
Mr. Pontellier's arguments were usually convincing with those whom he
employed. He left home feeling quite sure that he and Edna would sit
down that evening, and possibly a few subsequent evenings, to a dinner
deserving of the name.

Edna spent an hour or two in looking over some of her old sketches.
She could see their shortcomings and defects, which were glaring in her
eyes. She tried to work a little, but found she was not in the humor.
Finally she gathered together a few of the sketches--those which she
considered the least discreditable; and she carried them with her when,
a little later, she dressed and left the house. She looked handsome and
distinguished in her street gown. The tan of the seashore had left
her face, and her forehead was smooth, white, and polished beneath her
heavy, yellow-brown hair. There were a few freckles on her face, and a
small, dark mole near the under lip and one on the temple, half-hidden
in her hair.

As Edna walked along the street she was thinking of Robert. She was
still under the spell of her infatuation. She had tried to forget him,
realizing the inutility of remembering. But the thought of him was like
an obsession, ever pressing itself upon her. It was not that she dwelt
upon details of their acquaintance, or recalled in any special or
peculiar way his personality; it was his being, his existence, which
dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the
mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled her
with an incomprehensible longing.

Edna was on her way to Madame Ratignolle's. Their intimacy, begun at
Grand Isle, had not declined, and they had seen each other with some
frequency since their return to the city. The Ratignolles lived at no
great distance from Edna's home, on the corner of a side street, where
Monsieur Ratignolle owned and conducted a drug store which enjoyed a
steady and prosperous trade. His father had been in the business before
him, and Monsieur Ratignolle stood well in the community and bore an
enviable reputation for integrity and clearheadedness. His family lived
in commodious apartments over the store, having an entrance on the side
within the porte cochere. There was something which Edna thought very
French, very foreign, about their whole manner of living. In the large
and pleasant salon which extended across the width of the house, the
Ratignolles entertained their friends once a fortnight with a soiree
musicale, sometimes diversified by card-playing. There was a friend who
played upon the 'cello. One brought his flute and another his violin,
while there were some who sang and a number who performed upon the piano
with various degrees of taste and agility. The Ratignolles' soirees
musicales were widely known, and it was considered a privilege to be
invited to them.

Edna found her friend engaged in assorting the clothes which had
returned that morning from the laundry. She at once abandoned her
occupation upon seeing Edna, who had been ushered without ceremony into
her presence.

“'Cite can do it as well as I; it is really her business,” she explained
to Edna, who apologized for interrupting her. And she summoned a young
black woman, whom she instructed, in French, to be very careful in
checking off the list which she handed her. She told her to notice
particularly if a fine linen handkerchief of Monsieur Ratignolle's,
which was missing last week, had been returned; and to be sure to set to
one side such pieces as required mending and darning.

Then placing an arm around Edna's waist, she led her to the front of the
house, to the salon, where it was cool and sweet with the odor of great
roses that stood upon the hearth in jars.

Madame Ratignolle looked more beautiful than ever there at home, in a
neglige which left her arms almost wholly bare and exposed the rich,
melting curves of her white throat.

“Perhaps I shall be able to paint your picture some day,” said Edna with
a smile when they were seated. She produced the roll of sketches and
started to unfold them. “I believe I ought to work again. I feel as if I
wanted to be doing something. What do you think of them? Do you think it
worth while to take it up again and study some more? I might study for a
while with Laidpore.”

She knew that Madame Ratignolle's opinion in such a matter would be next
to valueless, that she herself had not alone decided, but determined;
but she sought the words of praise and encouragement that would help her
to put heart into her venture.

“Your talent is immense, dear!”

“Nonsense!” protested Edna, well pleased.

“Immense, I tell you,” persisted Madame Ratignolle, surveying the
sketches one by one, at close range, then holding them at arm's length,
narrowing her eyes, and dropping her head on one side. “Surely, this
Bavarian peasant is worthy of framing; and this basket of apples! never
have I seen anything more lifelike. One might almost be tempted to reach
out a hand and take one.”

Edna could not control a feeling which bordered upon complacency at
her friend's praise, even realizing, as she did, its true worth.
She retained a few of the sketches, and gave all the rest to Madame
Ratignolle, who appreciated the gift far beyond its value and proudly
exhibited the pictures to her husband when he came up from the store a
little later for his midday dinner.

Mr. Ratignolle was one of those men who are called the salt of the
earth. His cheerfulness was unbounded, and it was matched by his
goodness of heart, his broad charity, and common sense. He and his wife
spoke English with an accent which was only discernible through its
un-English emphasis and a certain carefulness and deliberation.
Edna's husband spoke English with no accent whatever. The Ratignolles
understood each other perfectly. If ever the fusion of two human beings
into one has been accomplished on this sphere it was surely in their
union.

As Edna seated herself at table with them she thought, “Better a dinner
of herbs,” though it did not take her long to discover that it was no
dinner of herbs, but a delicious repast, simple, choice, and in every
way satisfying.

Monsieur Ratignolle was delighted to see her, though he found her
looking not so well as at Grand Isle, and he advised a tonic. He talked
a good deal on various topics, a little politics, some city news and
neighborhood gossip. He spoke with an animation and earnestness that
gave an exaggerated importance to every syllable he uttered. His wife
was keenly interested in everything he said, laying down her fork the
better to listen, chiming in, taking the words out of his mouth.

Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little
glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no
regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and
she could see in it but an appalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved
by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle,--a pity for that
colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region
of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her
soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium. Edna
vaguely wondered what she meant by “life's delirium.” It had crossed her
thought like some unsought, extraneous impression.




XIX


Edna could not help but think that it was very foolish, very childish,
to have stamped upon her wedding ring and smashed the crystal vase upon
the tiles. She was visited by no more outbursts, moving her to such
futile expedients. She began to do as she liked and to feel as she
liked. She completely abandoned her Tuesdays at home, and did not return
the visits of those who had called upon her. She made no ineffectual
efforts to conduct her household en bonne menagere, going and coming as
it suited her fancy, and, so far as she was able, lending herself to any
passing caprice.

Mr. Pontellier had been a rather courteous husband so long as he met
a certain tacit submissiveness in his wife. But her new and unexpected
line of conduct completely bewildered him. It shocked him. Then her
absolute disregard for her duties as a wife angered him. When Mr.
Pontellier became rude, Edna grew insolent. She had resolved never to
take another step backward.

“It seems to me the utmost folly for a woman at the head of a household,
and the mother of children, to spend in an atelier days which would be
better employed contriving for the comfort of her family.”

“I feel like painting,” answered Edna. “Perhaps I shan't always feel
like it.”

“Then in God's name paint! but don't let the family go to the devil.
There's Madame Ratignolle; because she keeps up her music, she doesn't
let everything else go to chaos. And she's more of a musician than you
are a painter.”

“She isn't a musician, and I'm not a painter. It isn't on account of
painting that I let things go.”

“On account of what, then?”

“Oh! I don't know. Let me alone; you bother me.”

It sometimes entered Mr. Pontellier's mind to wonder if his wife were
not growing a little unbalanced mentally. He could see plainly that she
was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself
and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a
garment with which to appear before the world.

Her husband let her alone as she requested, and went away to his office.
Edna went up to her atelier--a bright room in the top of the house.
She was working with great energy and interest, without accomplishing
anything, however, which satisfied her even in the smallest degree. For
a time she had the whole household enrolled in the service of art. The
boys posed for her. They thought it amusing at first, but the occupation
soon lost its attractiveness when they discovered that it was not a game
arranged especially for their entertainment. The quadroon sat for hours
before Edna's palette, patient as a savage, while the house-maid took
charge of the children, and the drawing-room went undusted. But the
housemaid, too, served her term as model when Edna perceived that the
young woman's back and shoulders were molded on classic lines, and that
her hair, loosened from its confining cap, became an inspiration. While
Edna worked she sometimes sang low the little air, “Ah! si tu savais!”

It moved her with recollections. She could hear again the ripple of the
water, the flapping sail. She could see the glint of the moon upon the
bay, and could feel the soft, gusty beating of the hot south wind. A
subtle current of desire passed through her body, weakening her hold
upon the brushes and making her eyes burn.

There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was
happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one
with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some
perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and
unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned
to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and
unmolested.

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why,--when it did
not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life
appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms
struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She could not work on
such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her blood.




XX


It was during such a mood that Edna hunted up Mademoiselle Reisz. She
had not forgotten the rather disagreeable impression left upon her
by their last interview; but she nevertheless felt a desire to see
her--above all, to listen while she played upon the piano. Quite
early in the afternoon she started upon her quest for the pianist.
Unfortunately she had mislaid or lost Mademoiselle Reisz's card, and
looking up her address in the city directory, she found that the woman
lived on Bienville Street, some distance away. The directory which fell
into her hands was a year or more old, however, and upon reaching the
number indicated, Edna discovered that the house was occupied by a
respectable family of mulattoes who had chambres garnies to let. They
had been living there for six months, and knew absolutely nothing of
a Mademoiselle Reisz. In fact, they knew nothing of any of their
neighbors; their lodgers were all people of the highest distinction,
they assured Edna. She did not linger to discuss class distinctions with
Madame Pouponne, but hastened to a neighboring grocery store, feeling
sure that Mademoiselle would have left her address with the proprietor.

He knew Mademoiselle Reisz a good deal better than he wanted to know
her, he informed his questioner. In truth, he did not want to know her
at all, or anything concerning her--the most disagreeable and unpopular
woman who ever lived in Bienville Street. He thanked heaven she had left
the neighborhood, and was equally thankful that he did not know where
she had gone.

Edna's desire to see Mademoiselle Reisz had increased tenfold since
these unlooked-for obstacles had arisen to thwart it. She was wondering
who could give her the information she sought, when it suddenly occurred
to her that Madame Lebrun would be the one most likely to do so. She
knew it was useless to ask Madame Ratignolle, who was on the most
distant terms with the musician, and preferred to know nothing
concerning her. She had once been almost as emphatic in expressing
herself upon the subject as the corner grocer.

Edna knew that Madame Lebrun had returned to the city, for it was
the middle of November. And she also knew where the Lebruns lived, on
Chartres Street.

Their home from the outside looked like a prison, with iron bars before
the door and lower windows. The iron bars were a relic of the old
regime, and no one had ever thought of dislodging them. At the side
was a high fence enclosing the garden. A gate or door opening upon the
street was locked. Edna rang the bell at this side garden gate, and
stood upon the banquette, waiting to be admitted.

It was Victor who opened the gate for her. A black woman, wiping her
hands upon her apron, was close at his heels. Before she saw them Edna
could hear them in altercation, the woman--plainly an anomaly--claiming
the right to be allowed to perform her duties, one of which was to
answer the bell.

Victor was surprised and delighted to see Mrs. Pontellier, and he made
no attempt to conceal either his astonishment or his delight. He was a
dark-browed, good-looking youngster of nineteen, greatly resembling
his mother, but with ten times her impetuosity. He instructed the
black woman to go at once and inform Madame Lebrun that Mrs. Pontellier
desired to see her. The woman grumbled a refusal to do part of her duty
when she had not been permitted to do it all, and started back to her
interrupted task of weeding the garden. Whereupon Victor administered
a rebuke in the form of a volley of abuse, which, owing to its rapidity
and incoherence, was all but incomprehensible to Edna. Whatever it
was, the rebuke was convincing, for the woman dropped her hoe and went
mumbling into the house.

Edna did not wish to enter. It was very pleasant there on the side
porch, where there were chairs, a wicker lounge, and a small table. She
seated herself, for she was tired from her long tramp; and she began to
rock gently and smooth out the folds of her silk parasol. Victor drew
up his chair beside her. He at once explained that the black woman's
offensive conduct was all due to imperfect training, as he was not there
to take her in hand. He had only come up from the island the morning
before, and expected to return next day. He stayed all winter at the
island; he lived there, and kept the place in order and got things ready
for the summer visitors.

But a man needed occasional relaxation, he informed Mrs. Pontellier, and
every now and again he drummed up a pretext to bring him to the city.
My! but he had had a time of it the evening before! He wouldn't want his
mother to know, and he began to talk in a whisper. He was scintillant
with recollections. Of course, he couldn't think of telling Mrs.
Pontellier all about it, she being a woman and not comprehending such
things. But it all began with a girl peeping and smiling at him through
the shutters as he passed by. Oh! but she was a beauty! Certainly he
smiled back, and went up and talked to her. Mrs. Pontellier did not know
him if she supposed he was one to let an opportunity like that escape
him. Despite herself, the youngster amused her. She must have betrayed
in her look some degree of interest or entertainment. The boy grew more
daring, and Mrs. Pontellier might have found herself, in a little while,
listening to a highly colored story but for the timely appearance of
Madame Lebrun.

That lady was still clad in white, according to her custom of the
summer. Her eyes beamed an effusive welcome. Would not Mrs. Pontellier
go inside? Would she partake of some refreshment? Why had she not been
there before? How was that dear Mr. Pontellier and how were those sweet
children? Had Mrs. Pontellier ever known such a warm November?

Victor went and reclined on the wicker lounge behind his mother's chair,
where he commanded a view of Edna's face. He had taken her parasol from
her hands while he spoke to her, and he now lifted it and twirled it
above him as he lay on his back. When Madame Lebrun complained that it
was so dull coming back to the city; that she saw so few people now;
that even Victor, when he came up from the island for a day or two, had
so much to occupy him and engage his time; then it was that the youth
went into contortions on the lounge and winked mischievously at Edna.
She somehow felt like a confederate in crime, and tried to look severe
and disapproving.

There had been but two letters from Robert, with little in them, they
told her. Victor said it was really not worth while to go inside for
the letters, when his mother entreated him to go in search of them. He
remembered the contents, which in truth he rattled off very glibly when
put to the test.

One letter was written from Vera Cruz and the other from the City
of Mexico. He had met Montel, who was doing everything toward his
advancement. So far, the financial situation was no improvement over the
one he had left in New Orleans, but of course the prospects were vastly
better. He wrote of the City of Mexico, the buildings, the people and
their habits, the conditions of life which he found there. He sent his
love to the family. He inclosed a check to his mother, and hoped she
would affectionately remember him to all his friends. That was about the
substance of the two letters. Edna felt that if there had been a message
for her, she would have received it. The despondent frame of mind in
which she had left home began again to overtake her, and she remembered
that she wished to find Mademoiselle Reisz.

Madame Lebrun knew where Mademoiselle Reisz lived. She gave Edna the
address, regretting that she would not consent to stay and spend the
remainder of the afternoon, and pay a visit to Mademoiselle Reisz some
other day. The afternoon was already well advanced.

Victor escorted her out upon the banquette, lifted her parasol, and held
it over her while he walked to the car with her. He entreated her
to bear in mind that the disclosures of the afternoon were strictly
confidential. She laughed and bantered him a little, remembering too
late that she should have been dignified and reserved.

“How handsome Mrs. Pontellier looked!” said Madame Lebrun to her son.

“Ravishing!” he admitted. “The city atmosphere has improved her. Some
way she doesn't seem like the same woman.”




XXI


Some people contended that the reason Mademoiselle Reisz always chose
apartments up under the roof was to discourage the approach of beggars,
peddlars and callers. There were plenty of windows in her little front
room. They were for the most part dingy, but as they were nearly always
open it did not make so much difference. They often admitted into the
room a good deal of smoke and soot; but at the same time all the light
and air that there was came through them. From her windows could be seen
the crescent of the river, the masts of ships and the big chimneys of
the Mississippi steamers. A magnificent piano crowded the apartment.
In the next room she slept, and in the third and last she harbored a
gasoline stove on which she cooked her meals when disinclined to descend
to the neighboring restaurant. It was there also that she ate, keeping
her belongings in a rare old buffet, dingy and battered from a hundred
years of use.

When Edna knocked at Mademoiselle Reisz's front room door and entered,
she discovered that person standing beside the window, engaged in
mending or patching an old prunella gaiter. The little musician laughed
all over when she saw Edna. Her laugh consisted of a contortion of the
face and all the muscles of the body. She seemed strikingly homely,
standing there in the afternoon light. She still wore the shabby lace
and the artificial bunch of violets on the side of her head.

“So you remembered me at last,” said Mademoiselle. “I had said to
myself, 'Ah, bah! she will never come.'”

“Did you want me to come?” asked Edna with a smile.

“I had not thought much about it,” answered Mademoiselle. The two had
seated themselves on a little bumpy sofa which stood against the wall.
“I am glad, however, that you came. I have the water boiling back there,
and was just about to make some coffee. You will drink a cup with
me. And how is la belle dame? Always handsome! always healthy! always
contented!” She took Edna's hand between her strong wiry fingers,
holding it loosely without warmth, and executing a sort of double theme
upon the back and palm.

“Yes,” she went on; “I sometimes thought: 'She will never come. She
promised as those women in society always do, without meaning it.
She will not come.' For I really don't believe you like me, Mrs.
Pontellier.”

“I don't know whether I like you or not,” replied Edna, gazing down at
the little woman with a quizzical look.

The candor of Mrs. Pontellier's admission greatly pleased Mademoiselle
Reisz. She expressed her gratification by repairing forthwith to the
region of the gasoline stove and rewarding her guest with the promised
cup of coffee. The coffee and the biscuit accompanying it proved very
acceptable to Edna, who had declined refreshment at Madame Lebrun's and
was now beginning to feel hungry. Mademoiselle set the tray which she
brought in upon a small table near at hand, and seated herself once
again on the lumpy sofa.

“I have had a letter from your friend,” she remarked, as she poured a
little cream into Edna's cup and handed it to her.

“My friend?”

“Yes, your friend Robert. He wrote to me from the City of Mexico.”

“Wrote to YOU?” repeated Edna in amazement, stirring her coffee
absently.

“Yes, to me. Why not? Don't stir all the warmth out of your coffee;
drink it. Though the letter might as well have been sent to you; it was
nothing but Mrs. Pontellier from beginning to end.”

“Let me see it,” requested the young woman, entreatingly.

“No; a letter concerns no one but the person who writes it and the one
to whom it is written.”

“Haven't you just said it concerned me from beginning to end?”

“It was written about you, not to you. 'Have you seen Mrs. Pontellier?
How is she looking?' he asks. 'As Mrs. Pontellier says,' or 'as Mrs.
Pontellier once said.' 'If Mrs. Pontellier should call upon you, play
for her that Impromptu of Chopin's, my favorite. I heard it here a day
or two ago, but not as you play it. I should like to know how it affects
her,' and so on, as if he supposed we were constantly in each other's
society.”

“Let me see the letter.”

“Oh, no.”

“Have you answered it?”

“No.”

“Let me see the letter.”

“No, and again, no.”

“Then play the Impromptu for me.”

“It is growing late; what time do you have to be home?”

“Time doesn't concern me. Your question seems a little rude. Play the
Impromptu.”

“But you have told me nothing of yourself. What are you doing?”

“Painting!” laughed Edna. “I am becoming an artist. Think of it!”

“Ah! an artist! You have pretensions, Madame.”

“Why pretensions? Do you think I could not become an artist?”

“I do not know you well enough to say. I do not know your talent or
your temperament. To be an artist includes much; one must possess many
gifts--absolute gifts--which have not been acquired by one's own effort.
And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul.”

“What do you mean by the courageous soul?”

“Courageous, ma foi! The brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.”

“Show me the letter and play for me the Impromptu. You see that I have
persistence. Does that quality count for anything in art?”

“It counts with a foolish old woman whom you have captivated,” replied
Mademoiselle, with her wriggling laugh.

The letter was right there at hand in the drawer of the little table
upon which Edna had just placed her coffee cup. Mademoiselle opened
the drawer and drew forth the letter, the topmost one. She placed it in
Edna's hands, and without further comment arose and went to the piano.

Mademoiselle played a soft interlude. It was an improvisation. She sat
low at the instrument, and the lines of her body settled into ungraceful
curves and angles that gave it an appearance of deformity. Gradually and
imperceptibly the interlude melted into the soft opening minor chords of
the Chopin Impromptu.

Edna did not know when the Impromptu began or ended. She sat in the sofa
corner reading Robert's letter by the fading light. Mademoiselle had
glided from the Chopin into the quivering love notes of Isolde's song,
and back again to the Impromptu with its soulful and poignant longing.

The shadows deepened in the little room. The music grew strange and
fantastic--turbulent, insistent, plaintive and soft with entreaty. The
shadows grew deeper. The music filled the room. It floated out upon the
night, over the housetops, the crescent of the river, losing itself in
the silence of the upper air.

Edna was sobbing, just as she had wept one midnight at Grand Isle when
strange, new voices awoke in her. She arose in some agitation to take
her departure. “May I come again, Mademoiselle?” she asked at the
threshold.

“Come whenever you feel like it. Be careful; the stairs and landings are
dark; don't stumble.”

Mademoiselle reentered and lit a candle. Robert's letter was on the
floor. She stooped and picked it up. It was crumpled and damp with
tears. Mademoiselle smoothed the letter out, restored it to the
envelope, and replaced it in the table drawer.




XXII


One morning on his way into town Mr. Pontellier stopped at the house of
his old friend and family physician, Doctor Mandelet. The Doctor was a
semi-retired physician, resting, as the saying is, upon his laurels.
He bore a reputation for wisdom rather than skill--leaving the active
practice of medicine to his assistants and younger contemporaries--and
was much sought for in matters of consultation. A few families, united
to him by bonds of friendship, he still attended when they required the
services of a physician. The Pontelliers were among these.

Mr. Pontellier found the Doctor reading at the open window of his study.
His house stood rather far back from the street, in the center of
a delightful garden, so that it was quiet and peaceful at the
old gentleman's study window. He was a great reader. He stared up
disapprovingly over his eye-glasses as Mr. Pontellier entered, wondering
who had the temerity to disturb him at that hour of the morning.

“Ah, Pontellier! Not sick, I hope. Come and have a seat. What news do
you bring this morning?” He was quite portly, with a profusion of
gray hair, and small blue eyes which age had robbed of much of their
brightness but none of their penetration.

“Oh! I'm never sick, Doctor. You know that I come of tough fiber--of
that old Creole race of Pontelliers that dry up and finally blow away.
I came to consult--no, not precisely to consult--to talk to you about
Edna. I don't know what ails her.”

“Madame Pontellier not well,” marveled the Doctor. “Why, I saw her--I
think it was a week ago--walking along Canal Street, the picture of
health, it seemed to me.”

“Yes, yes; she seems quite well,” said Mr. Pontellier, leaning forward
and whirling his stick between his two hands; “but she doesn't act well.
She's odd, she's not like herself. I can't make her out, and I thought
perhaps you'd help me.”

“How does she act?” inquired the Doctor.

“Well, it isn't easy to explain,” said Mr. Pontellier, throwing himself
back in his chair. “She lets the housekeeping go to the dickens.”

“Well, well; women are not all alike, my dear Pontellier. We've got to
consider--”

“I know that; I told you I couldn't explain. Her whole attitude--toward
me and everybody and everything--has changed. You know I have a quick
temper, but I don't want to quarrel or be rude to a woman, especially my
wife; yet I'm driven to it, and feel like ten thousand devils after I've
made a fool of myself. She's making it devilishly uncomfortable for
me,” he went on nervously. “She's got some sort of notion in her head
concerning the eternal rights of women; and--you understand--we meet in
the morning at the breakfast table.”

The old gentleman lifted his shaggy eyebrows, protruded his thick nether
lip, and tapped the arms of his chair with his cushioned fingertips.

“What have you been doing to her, Pontellier?”

“Doing! Parbleu!”

“Has she,” asked the Doctor, with a smile, “has she been associating
of late with a circle of pseudo-intellectual women--super-spiritual
superior beings? My wife has been telling me about them.”

“That's the trouble,” broke in Mr. Pontellier, “she hasn't been
associating with any one. She has abandoned her Tuesdays at home, has
thrown over all her acquaintances, and goes tramping about by herself,
moping in the street-cars, getting in after dark. I tell you she's
peculiar. I don't like it; I feel a little worried over it.”

This was a new aspect for the Doctor. “Nothing hereditary?” he asked,
seriously. “Nothing peculiar about her family antecedents, is there?”

“Oh, no, indeed! She comes of sound old Presbyterian Kentucky stock. The
old gentleman, her father, I have heard, used to atone for his weekday
sins with his Sunday devotions. I know for a fact, that his race horses
literally ran away with the prettiest bit of Kentucky farming land
I ever laid eyes upon. Margaret--you know Margaret--she has all the
Presbyterianism undiluted. And the youngest is something of a vixen. By
the way, she gets married in a couple of weeks from now.”

“Send your wife up to the wedding,” exclaimed the Doctor, foreseeing a
happy solution. “Let her stay among her own people for a while; it will
do her good.”

“That's what I want her to do. She won't go to the marriage. She says
a wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth. Nice thing
for a woman to say to her husband!” exclaimed Mr. Pontellier, fuming
anew at the recollection.

“Pontellier,” said the Doctor, after a moment's reflection, “let your
wife alone for a while. Don't bother her, and don't let her bother
you. Woman, my dear friend, is a very peculiar and delicate organism--a
sensitive and highly organized woman, such as I know Mrs. Pontellier to
be, is especially peculiar. It would require an inspired psychologist to
deal successfully with them. And when ordinary fellows like you and me
attempt to cope with their idiosyncrasies the result is bungling. Most
women are moody and whimsical. This is some passing whim of your wife,
due to some cause or causes which you and I needn't try to fathom. But
it will pass happily over, especially if you let her alone. Send her
around to see me.”

“Oh! I couldn't do that; there'd be no reason for it,” objected Mr.
Pontellier.

“Then I'll go around and see her,” said the Doctor. “I'll drop in to
dinner some evening en bon ami.

“Do! by all means,” urged Mr. Pontellier. “What evening will you come?
Say Thursday. Will you come Thursday?” he asked, rising to take his
leave.

“Very well; Thursday. My wife may possibly have some engagement for
me Thursday. In case she has, I shall let you know. Otherwise, you may
expect me.”

Mr. Pontellier turned before leaving to say:

“I am going to New York on business very soon. I have a big scheme on
hand, and want to be on the field proper to pull the ropes and handle
the ribbons. We'll let you in on the inside if you say so, Doctor,” he
laughed.

“No, I thank you, my dear sir,” returned the Doctor. “I leave such
ventures to you younger men with the fever of life still in your blood.”

“What I wanted to say,” continued Mr. Pontellier, with his hand on the
knob; “I may have to be absent a good while. Would you advise me to take
Edna along?”

“By all means, if she wishes to go. If not, leave her here. Don't
contradict her. The mood will pass, I assure you. It may take a month,
two, three months--possibly longer, but it will pass; have patience.”

“Well, good-by, a jeudi,” said Mr. Pontellier, as he let himself out.

The Doctor would have liked during the course of conversation to ask,
“Is there any man in the case?” but he knew his Creole too well to make
such a blunder as that.

He did not resume his book immediately, but sat for a while meditatively
looking out into the garden.




XXIII


Edna's father was in the city, and had been with them several days.
She was not very warmly or deeply attached to him, but they had certain
tastes in common, and when together they were companionable. His coming
was in the nature of a welcome disturbance; it seemed to furnish a new
direction for her emotions.

He had come to purchase a wedding gift for his daughter, Janet, and an
outfit for himself in which he might make a creditable appearance at
her marriage. Mr. Pontellier had selected the bridal gift, as every
one immediately connected with him always deferred to his taste in such
matters. And his suggestions on the question of dress--which too
often assumes the nature of a problem--were of inestimable value to his
father-in-law. But for the past few days the old gentleman had been upon
Edna's hands, and in his society she was becoming acquainted with a new
set of sensations. He had been a colonel in the Confederate army, and
still maintained, with the title, the military bearing which had always
accompanied it. His hair and mustache were white and silky, emphasizing
the rugged bronze of his face. He was tall and thin, and wore his coats
padded, which gave a fictitious breadth and depth to his shoulders
and chest. Edna and her father looked very distinguished together, and
excited a good deal of notice during their perambulations. Upon his
arrival she began by introducing him to her atelier and making a sketch
of him. He took the whole matter very seriously. If her talent had been
ten-fold greater than it was, it would not have surprised him, convinced
as he was that he had bequeathed to all of his daughters the germs of a
masterful capability, which only depended upon their own efforts to be
directed toward successful achievement.

Before her pencil he sat rigid and unflinching, as he had faced the
cannon's mouth in days gone by. He resented the intrusion of the
children, who gaped with wondering eyes at him, sitting so stiff up
there in their mother's bright atelier. When they drew near he motioned
them away with an expressive action of the foot, loath to disturb the
fixed lines of his countenance, his arms, or his rigid shoulders.

Edna, anxious to entertain him, invited Mademoiselle Reisz to meet
him, having promised him a treat in her piano playing; but Mademoiselle
declined the invitation. So together they attended a soiree musicale
at the Ratignolles'. Monsieur and Madame Ratignolle made much of the
Colonel, installing him as the guest of honor and engaging him at
once to dine with them the following Sunday, or any day which he might
select. Madame coquetted with him in the most captivating and naive
manner, with eyes, gestures, and a profusion of compliments, till the
Colonel's old head felt thirty years younger on his padded shoulders.
Edna marveled, not comprehending. She herself was almost devoid of
coquetry.

There were one or two men whom she observed at the soiree musicale;
but she would never have felt moved to any kittenish display to attract
their notice--to any feline or feminine wiles to express herself toward
them. Their personality attracted her in an agreeable way. Her fancy
selected them, and she was glad when a lull in the music gave them
an opportunity to meet her and talk with her. Often on the street the
glance of strange eyes had lingered in her memory, and sometimes had
disturbed her.

Mr. Pontellier did not attend these soirees musicales. He considered
them bourgeois, and found more diversion at the club. To Madame
Ratignolle he said the music dispensed at her soirees was too “heavy,”
 too far beyond his untrained comprehension. His excuse flattered her.
But she disapproved of Mr. Pontellier's club, and she was frank enough
to tell Edna so.

“It's a pity Mr. Pontellier doesn't stay home more in the evenings.
I think you would be more--well, if you don't mind my saying it--more
united, if he did.”

“Oh! dear no!” said Edna, with a blank look in her eyes. “What should I
do if he stayed home? We wouldn't have anything to say to each other.”

She had not much of anything to say to her father, for that matter; but
he did not antagonize her. She discovered that he interested her, though
she realized that he might not interest her long; and for the first time
in her life she felt as if she were thoroughly acquainted with him. He
kept her busy serving him and ministering to his wants. It amused her
to do so. She would not permit a servant or one of the children to do
anything for him which she might do herself. Her husband noticed, and
thought it was the expression of a deep filial attachment which he had
never suspected.

The Colonel drank numerous “toddies” during the course of the day, which
left him, however, imperturbed. He was an expert at concocting strong
drinks. He had even invented some, to which he had given fantastic
names, and for whose manufacture he required diverse ingredients that it
devolved upon Edna to procure for him.

When Doctor Mandelet dined with the Pontelliers on Thursday he could
discern in Mrs. Pontellier no trace of that morbid condition which her
husband had reported to him. She was excited and in a manner radiant.
She and her father had been to the race course, and their thoughts when
they seated themselves at table were still occupied with the events of
the afternoon, and their talk was still of the track. The Doctor had not
kept pace with turf affairs. He had certain recollections of racing
in what he called “the good old times” when the Lecompte stables
flourished, and he drew upon this fund of memories so that he might not
be left out and seem wholly devoid of the modern spirit. But he failed
to impose upon the Colonel, and was even far from impressing him with
this trumped-up knowledge of bygone days. Edna had staked her father
on his last venture, with the most gratifying results to both of them.
Besides, they had met some very charming people, according to the
Colonel's impressions. Mrs. Mortimer Merriman and Mrs. James Highcamp,
who were there with Alcee Arobin, had joined them and had enlivened the
hours in a fashion that warmed him to think of.

Mr. Pontellier himself had no particular leaning toward horseracing, and
was even rather inclined to discourage it as a pastime, especially
when he considered the fate of that blue-grass farm in Kentucky. He
endeavored, in a general way, to express a particular disapproval, and
only succeeded in arousing the ire and opposition of his father-in-law.
A pretty dispute followed, in which Edna warmly espoused her father's
cause and the Doctor remained neutral.

He observed his hostess attentively from under his shaggy brows, and
noted a subtle change which had transformed her from the listless woman
he had known into a being who, for the moment, seemed palpitant with
the forces of life. Her speech was warm and energetic. There was no
repression in her glance or gesture. She reminded him of some beautiful,
sleek animal waking up in the sun.

The dinner was excellent. The claret was warm and the champagne was
cold, and under their beneficent influence the threatened unpleasantness
melted and vanished with the fumes of the wine.

Mr. Pontellier warmed up and grew reminiscent. He told some amusing
plantation experiences, recollections of old Iberville and his youth,
when he hunted 'possum in company with some friendly darky; thrashed
the pecan trees, shot the grosbec, and roamed the woods and fields in
mischievous idleness.

The Colonel, with little sense of humor and of the fitness of things,
related a somber episode of those dark and bitter days, in which he had
acted a conspicuous part and always formed a central figure. Nor was
the Doctor happier in his selection, when he told the old, ever new
and curious story of the waning of a woman's love, seeking strange, new
channels, only to return to its legitimate source after days of fierce
unrest. It was one of the many little human documents which had been
unfolded to him during his long career as a physician. The story did not
seem especially to impress Edna. She had one of her own to tell, of a
woman who paddled away with her lover one night in a pirogue and never
came back. They were lost amid the Baratarian Islands, and no one ever
heard of them or found trace of them from that day to this. It was a
pure invention. She said that Madame Antoine had related it to her.
That, also, was an invention. Perhaps it was a dream she had had. But
every glowing word seemed real to those who listened. They could feel
the hot breath of the Southern night; they could hear the long sweep of
the pirogue through the glistening moonlit water, the beating of birds'
wings, rising startled from among the reeds in the salt-water pools;
they could see the faces of the lovers, pale, close together, rapt in
oblivious forgetfulness, drifting into the unknown.

The champagne was cold, and its subtle fumes played fantastic tricks
with Edna's memory that night.

Outside, away from the glow of the fire and the soft lamplight, the
night was chill and murky. The Doctor doubled his old-fashioned cloak
across his breast as he strode home through the darkness. He knew his
fellow-creatures better than most men; knew that inner life which so
seldom unfolds itself to unanointed eyes. He was sorry he had accepted
Pontellier's invitation. He was growing old, and beginning to need rest
and an imperturbed spirit. He did not want the secrets of other lives
thrust upon him.

“I hope it isn't Arobin,” he muttered to himself as he walked. “I hope
to heaven it isn't Alcee Arobin.”




XXIV


Edna and her father had a warm, and almost violent dispute upon the
subject of her refusal to attend her sister's wedding. Mr. Pontellier
declined to interfere, to interpose either his influence or his
authority. He was following Doctor Mandelet's advice, and letting her do
as she liked. The Colonel reproached his daughter for her lack of
filial kindness and respect, her want of sisterly affection and womanly
consideration. His arguments were labored and unconvincing. He doubted
if Janet would accept any excuse--forgetting that Edna had offered
none. He doubted if Janet would ever speak to her again, and he was sure
Margaret would not.

Edna was glad to be rid of her father when he finally took himself
off with his wedding garments and his bridal gifts, with his padded
shoulders, his Bible reading, his “toddies” and ponderous oaths.

Mr. Pontellier followed him closely. He meant to stop at the wedding
on his way to New York and endeavor by every means which money and love
could devise to atone somewhat for Edna's incomprehensible action.

“You are too lenient, too lenient by far, Leonce,” asserted the Colonel.
“Authority, coercion are what is needed. Put your foot down good and
hard; the only way to manage a wife. Take my word for it.”

The Colonel was perhaps unaware that he had coerced his own wife into
her grave. Mr. Pontellier had a vague suspicion of it which he thought
it needless to mention at that late day.

Edna was not so consciously gratified at her husband's leaving home as
she had been over the departure of her father. As the day approached
when he was to leave her for a comparatively long stay, she grew melting
and affectionate, remembering his many acts of consideration and his
repeated expressions of an ardent attachment. She was solicitous about
his health and his welfare. She bustled around, looking after his
clothing, thinking about heavy underwear, quite as Madame Ratignolle
would have done under similar circumstances. She cried when he went
away, calling him her dear, good friend, and she was quite certain she
would grow lonely before very long and go to join him in New York.

But after all, a radiant peace settled upon her when she at last found
herself alone. Even the children were gone. Old Madame Pontellier had
come herself and carried them off to Iberville with their quadroon. The
old madame did not venture to say she was afraid they would be neglected
during Leonce's absence; she hardly ventured to think so. She was hungry
for them--even a little fierce in her attachment. She did not want them
to be wholly “children of the pavement,” she always said when begging
to have them for a space. She wished them to know the country, with its
streams, its fields, its woods, its freedom, so delicious to the young.
She wished them to taste something of the life their father had lived
and known and loved when he, too, was a little child.

When Edna was at last alone, she breathed a big, genuine sigh of relief.
A feeling that was unfamiliar but very delicious came over her. She
walked all through the house, from one room to another, as if inspecting
it for the first time. She tried the various chairs and lounges, as if
she had never sat and reclined upon them before. And she perambulated
around the outside of the house, investigating, looking to see if
windows and shutters were secure and in order. The flowers were like
new acquaintances; she approached them in a familiar spirit, and made
herself at home among them. The garden walks were damp, and Edna called
to the maid to bring out her rubber sandals. And there she stayed, and
stooped, digging around the plants, trimming, picking dead, dry leaves.
The children's little dog came out, interfering, getting in her way. She
scolded him, laughed at him, played with him. The garden smelled so good
and looked so pretty in the afternoon sunlight. Edna plucked all the
bright flowers she could find, and went into the house with them, she
and the little dog.

Even the kitchen assumed a sudden interesting character which she had
never before perceived. She went in to give directions to the cook, to
say that the butcher would have to bring much less meat, that they would
require only half their usual quantity of bread, of milk and groceries.
She told the cook that she herself would be greatly occupied during
Mr. Pontellier's absence, and she begged her to take all thought and
responsibility of the larder upon her own shoulders.

That night Edna dined alone. The candelabra, with a few candles in the
center of the table, gave all the light she needed. Outside the circle
of light in which she sat, the large dining-room looked solemn and
shadowy. The cook, placed upon her mettle, served a delicious repast--a
luscious tenderloin broiled a point. The wine tasted good; the marron
glace seemed to be just what she wanted. It was so pleasant, too, to
dine in a comfortable peignoir.

She thought a little sentimentally about Leonce and the children, and
wondered what they were doing. As she gave a dainty scrap or two to the
doggie, she talked intimately to him about Etienne and Raoul. He was
beside himself with astonishment and delight over these companionable
advances, and showed his appreciation by his little quick, snappy barks
and a lively agitation.

Then Edna sat in the library after dinner and read Emerson until she
grew sleepy. She realized that she had neglected her reading, and
determined to start anew upon a course of improving studies, now that
her time was completely her own to do with as she liked.

After a refreshing bath, Edna went to bed. And as she snuggled
comfortably beneath the eiderdown a sense of restfulness invaded her,
such as she had not known before.




XXV


When the weather was dark and cloudy Edna could not work. She needed the
sun to mellow and temper her mood to the sticking point. She had reached
a stage when she seemed to be no longer feeling her way, working, when
in the humor, with sureness and ease. And being devoid of ambition, and
striving not toward accomplishment, she drew satisfaction from the work
in itself.

On rainy or melancholy days Edna went out and sought the society of
the friends she had made at Grand Isle. Or else she stayed indoors
and nursed a mood with which she was becoming too familiar for her own
comfort and peace of mind. It was not despair; but it seemed to her as
if life were passing by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled.
Yet there were other days when she listened, was led on and deceived by
fresh promises which her youth held out to her.

She went again to the races, and again. Alcee Arobin and Mrs. Highcamp
called for her one bright afternoon in Arobin's drag. Mrs. Highcamp was
a worldly but unaffected, intelligent, slim, tall blonde woman in the
forties, with an indifferent manner and blue eyes that stared. She had
a daughter who served her as a pretext for cultivating the society of
young men of fashion. Alcee Arobin was one of them. He was a familiar
figure at the race course, the opera, the fashionable clubs. There was
a perpetual smile in his eyes, which seldom failed to awaken a
corresponding cheerfulness in any one who looked into them and listened
to his good-humored voice. His manner was quiet, and at times a little
insolent. He possessed a good figure, a pleasing face, not overburdened
with depth of thought or feeling; and his dress was that of the
conventional man of fashion.

He admired Edna extravagantly, after meeting her at the races with her
father. He had met her before on other occasions, but she had seemed to
him unapproachable until that day. It was at his instigation that Mrs.
Highcamp called to ask her to go with them to the Jockey Club to witness
the turf event of the season.

There were possibly a few track men out there who knew the race horse as
well as Edna, but there was certainly none who knew it better. She sat
between her two companions as one having authority to speak. She laughed
at Arobin's pretensions, and deplored Mrs. Highcamp's ignorance. The
race horse was a friend and intimate associate of her childhood. The
atmosphere of the stables and the breath of the blue grass paddock
revived in her memory and lingered in her nostrils. She did not perceive
that she was talking like her father as the sleek geldings ambled in
review before them. She played for very high stakes, and fortune favored
her. The fever of the game flamed in her cheeks and eyes, and it got
into her blood and into her brain like an intoxicant. People turned
their heads to look at her, and more than one lent an attentive ear to
her utterances, hoping thereby to secure the elusive but ever-desired
“tip.” Arobin caught the contagion of excitement which drew him to
Edna like a magnet. Mrs. Highcamp remained, as usual, unmoved, with her
indifferent stare and uplifted eyebrows.

Edna stayed and dined with Mrs. Highcamp upon being urged to do so.
Arobin also remained and sent away his drag.

The dinner was quiet and uninteresting, save for the cheerful efforts
of Arobin to enliven things. Mrs. Highcamp deplored the absence of her
daughter from the races, and tried to convey to her what she had missed
by going to the “Dante reading” instead of joining them. The girl held
a geranium leaf up to her nose and said nothing, but looked knowing and
noncommittal. Mr. Highcamp was a plain, bald-headed man, who only
talked under compulsion. He was unresponsive. Mrs. Highcamp was full of
delicate courtesy and consideration toward her husband. She addressed
most of her conversation to him at table. They sat in the library after
dinner and read the evening papers together under the droplight; while
the younger people went into the drawing-room near by and talked. Miss
Highcamp played some selections from Grieg upon the piano. She seemed to
have apprehended all of the composer's coldness and none of his poetry.
While Edna listened she could not help wondering if she had lost her
taste for music.

When the time came for her to go home, Mr. Highcamp grunted a lame offer
to escort her, looking down at his slippered feet with tactless concern.
It was Arobin who took her home. The car ride was long, and it was late
when they reached Esplanade Street. Arobin asked permission to enter for
a second to light his cigarette--his match safe was empty. He filled his
match safe, but did not light his cigarette until he left her, after she
had expressed her willingness to go to the races with him again.

Edna was neither tired nor sleepy. She was hungry again, for the
Highcamp dinner, though of excellent quality, had lacked abundance. She
rummaged in the larder and brought forth a slice of Gruyere and some
crackers. She opened a bottle of beer which she found in the icebox.
Edna felt extremely restless and excited. She vacantly hummed a
fantastic tune as she poked at the wood embers on the hearth and munched
a cracker.

She wanted something to happen--something, anything; she did not know
what. She regretted that she had not made Arobin stay a half hour to
talk over the horses with her. She counted the money she had won. But
there was nothing else to do, so she went to bed, and tossed there for
hours in a sort of monotonous agitation.

In the middle of the night she remembered that she had forgotten to
write her regular letter to her husband; and she decided to do so next
day and tell him about her afternoon at the Jockey Club. She lay wide
awake composing a letter which was nothing like the one which she wrote
next day. When the maid awoke her in the morning Edna was dreaming of
Mr. Highcamp playing the piano at the entrance of a music store on Canal
Street, while his wife was saying to Alcee Arobin, as they boarded an
Esplanade Street car:

“What a pity that so much talent has been neglected! but I must go.”

When, a few days later, Alcee Arobin again called for Edna in his drag,
Mrs. Highcamp was not with him. He said they would pick her up. But as
that lady had not been apprised of his intention of picking her up, she
was not at home. The daughter was just leaving the house to attend the
meeting of a branch Folk Lore Society, and regretted that she could not
accompany them. Arobin appeared nonplused, and asked Edna if there were
any one else she cared to ask.

She did not deem it worth while to go in search of any of the
fashionable acquaintances from whom she had withdrawn herself. She
thought of Madame Ratignolle, but knew that her fair friend did not
leave the house, except to take a languid walk around the block with her
husband after nightfall. Mademoiselle Reisz would have laughed at such a
request from Edna. Madame Lebrun might have enjoyed the outing, but for
some reason Edna did not want her. So they went alone, she and Arobin.

The afternoon was intensely interesting to her. The excitement came
back upon her like a remittent fever. Her talk grew familiar and
confidential. It was no labor to become intimate with Arobin. His manner
invited easy confidence. The preliminary stage of becoming acquainted
was one which he always endeavored to ignore when a pretty and engaging
woman was concerned.

He stayed and dined with Edna. He stayed and sat beside the wood fire.
They laughed and talked; and before it was time to go he was telling
her how different life might have been if he had known her years before.
With ingenuous frankness he spoke of what a wicked, ill-disciplined boy
he had been, and impulsively drew up his cuff to exhibit upon his wrist
the scar from a saber cut which he had received in a duel outside of
Paris when he was nineteen. She touched his hand as she scanned the red
cicatrice on the inside of his white wrist. A quick impulse that was
somewhat spasmodic impelled her fingers to close in a sort of clutch
upon his hand. He felt the pressure of her pointed nails in the flesh of
his palm.

She arose hastily and walked toward the mantel.

“The sight of a wound or scar always agitates and sickens me,” she said.
“I shouldn't have looked at it.”

“I beg your pardon,” he entreated, following her; “it never occurred to
me that it might be repulsive.”

He stood close to her, and the effrontery in his eyes repelled the old,
vanishing self in her, yet drew all her awakening sensuousness. He saw
enough in her face to impel him to take her hand and hold it while he
said his lingering good night.

“Will you go to the races again?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I've had enough of the races. I don't want to lose all
the money I've won, and I've got to work when the weather is bright,
instead of--”

“Yes; work; to be sure. You promised to show me your work. What morning
may I come up to your atelier? To-morrow?”

“No!”

“Day after?”

“No, no.”

“Oh, please don't refuse me! I know something of such things. I might
help you with a stray suggestion or two.”

“No. Good night. Why don't you go after you have said good night? I
don't like you,” she went on in a high, excited pitch, attempting
to draw away her hand. She felt that her words lacked dignity and
sincerity, and she knew that he felt it.

“I'm sorry you don't like me. I'm sorry I offended you. How have I
offended you? What have I done? Can't you forgive me?” And he bent and
pressed his lips upon her hand as if he wished never more to withdraw
them.

“Mr. Arobin,” she complained, “I'm greatly upset by the excitement of
the afternoon; I'm not myself. My manner must have misled you in some
way. I wish you to go, please.” She spoke in a monotonous, dull tone.
He took his hat from the table, and stood with eyes turned from her,
looking into the dying fire. For a moment or two he kept an impressive
silence.

“Your manner has not misled me, Mrs. Pontellier,” he said finally. “My
own emotions have done that. I couldn't help it. When I'm near you, how
could I help it? Don't think anything of it, don't bother, please. You
see, I go when you command me. If you wish me to stay away, I shall do
so. If you let me come back, I--oh! you will let me come back?”

He cast one appealing glance at her, to which she made no response.
Alcee Arobin's manner was so genuine that it often deceived even
himself.

Edna did not care or think whether it were genuine or not. When she
was alone she looked mechanically at the back of her hand which he had
kissed so warmly. Then she leaned her head down on the mantelpiece. She
felt somewhat like a woman who in a moment of passion is betrayed into
an act of infidelity, and realizes the significance of the act without
being wholly awakened from its glamour. The thought was passing vaguely
through her mind, “What would he think?”

She did not mean her husband; she was thinking of Robert Lebrun. Her
husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without
love as an excuse.

She lit a candle and went up to her room. Alcee Arobin was absolutely
nothing to her. Yet his presence, his manners, the warmth of his
glances, and above all the touch of his lips upon her hand had acted
like a narcotic upon her.

She slept a languorous sleep, interwoven with vanishing dreams.




XXVI


Alcee Arobin wrote Edna an elaborate note of apology, palpitant with
sincerity. It embarrassed her; for in a cooler, quieter moment it
appeared to her, absurd that she should have taken his action so
seriously, so dramatically. She felt sure that the significance of the
whole occurrence had lain in her own self-consciousness. If she ignored
his note it would give undue importance to a trivial affair. If she
replied to it in a serious spirit it would still leave in his mind
the impression that she had in a susceptible moment yielded to his
influence. After all, it was no great matter to have one's hand kissed.
She was provoked at his having written the apology. She answered in as
light and bantering a spirit as she fancied it deserved, and said she
would be glad to have him look in upon her at work whenever he felt the
inclination and his business gave him the opportunity.

He responded at once by presenting himself at her home with all his
disarming naivete. And then there was scarcely a day which followed
that she did not see him or was not reminded of him. He was prolific in
pretexts. His attitude became one of good-humored subservience and tacit
adoration. He was ready at all times to submit to her moods, which were
as often kind as they were cold. She grew accustomed to him. They became
intimate and friendly by imperceptible degrees, and then by leaps. He
sometimes talked in a way that astonished her at first and brought the
crimson into her face; in a way that pleased her at last, appealing to
the animalism that stirred impatiently within her.

There was nothing which so quieted the turmoil of Edna's senses as
a visit to Mademoiselle Reisz. It was then, in the presence of that
personality which was offensive to her, that the woman, by her divine
art, seemed to reach Edna's spirit and set it free.

It was misty, with heavy, lowering atmosphere, one afternoon, when
Edna climbed the stairs to the pianist's apartments under the roof. Her
clothes were dripping with moisture. She felt chilled and pinched as she
entered the room. Mademoiselle was poking at a rusty stove that smoked a
little and warmed the room indifferently. She was endeavoring to heat
a pot of chocolate on the stove. The room looked cheerless and dingy to
Edna as she entered. A bust of Beethoven, covered with a hood of dust,
scowled at her from the mantelpiece.

“Ah! here comes the sunlight!” exclaimed Mademoiselle, rising from her
knees before the stove. “Now it will be warm and bright enough; I can
let the fire alone.”

She closed the stove door with a bang, and approaching, assisted in
removing Edna's dripping mackintosh.

“You are cold; you look miserable. The chocolate will soon be hot. But
would you rather have a taste of brandy? I have scarcely touched the
bottle which you brought me for my cold.” A piece of red flannel was
wrapped around Mademoiselle's throat; a stiff neck compelled her to hold
her head on one side.

“I will take some brandy,” said Edna, shivering as she removed her
gloves and overshoes. She drank the liquor from the glass as a man would
have done. Then flinging herself upon the uncomfortable sofa she said,
“Mademoiselle, I am going to move away from my house on Esplanade
Street.”

“Ah!” ejaculated the musician, neither surprised nor especially
interested. Nothing ever seemed to astonish her very much. She was
endeavoring to adjust the bunch of violets which had become loose from
its fastening in her hair. Edna drew her down upon the sofa, and taking
a pin from her own hair, secured the shabby artificial flowers in their
accustomed place.

“Aren't you astonished?”

“Passably. Where are you going? to New York? to Iberville? to your
father in Mississippi? where?”

“Just two steps away,” laughed Edna, “in a little four-room house around
the corner. It looks so cozy, so inviting and restful, whenever I pass
by; and it's for rent. I'm tired looking after that big house. It never
seemed like mine, anyway--like home. It's too much trouble. I have to
keep too many servants. I am tired bothering with them.”

“That is not your true reason, ma belle. There is no use in telling me
lies. I don't know your reason, but you have not told me the truth.”
 Edna did not protest or endeavor to justify herself.

“The house, the money that provides for it, are not mine. Isn't that
enough reason?”

“They are your husband's,” returned Mademoiselle, with a shrug and a
malicious elevation of the eyebrows.

“Oh! I see there is no deceiving you. Then let me tell you: It is a
caprice. I have a little money of my own from my mother's estate, which
my father sends me by driblets. I won a large sum this winter on the
races, and I am beginning to sell my sketches. Laidpore is more and more
pleased with my work; he says it grows in force and individuality. I
cannot judge of that myself, but I feel that I have gained in ease
and confidence. However, as I said, I have sold a good many through
Laidpore. I can live in the tiny house for little or nothing, with one
servant. Old Celestine, who works occasionally for me, says she will
come stay with me and do my work. I know I shall like it, like the
feeling of freedom and independence.”

“What does your husband say?”

“I have not told him yet. I only thought of it this morning. He will
think I am demented, no doubt. Perhaps you think so.”

Mademoiselle shook her head slowly. “Your reason is not yet clear to
me,” she said.

Neither was it quite clear to Edna herself; but it unfolded itself as
she sat for a while in silence. Instinct had prompted her to put away
her husband's bounty in casting off her allegiance. She did not know how
it would be when he returned. There would have to be an understanding,
an explanation. Conditions would some way adjust themselves, she felt;
but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another
than herself.

“I shall give a grand dinner before I leave the old house!” Edna
exclaimed. “You will have to come to it, Mademoiselle. I will give you
everything that you like to eat and to drink. We shall sing and laugh
and be merry for once.” And she uttered a sigh that came from the very
depths of her being.

If Mademoiselle happened to have received a letter from Robert
during the interval of Edna's visits, she would give her the letter
unsolicited. And she would seat herself at the piano and play as her
humor prompted her while the young woman read the letter.

The little stove was roaring; it was red-hot, and the chocolate in the
tin sizzled and sputtered. Edna went forward and opened the stove door,
and Mademoiselle rising, took a letter from under the bust of Beethoven
and handed it to Edna.

“Another! so soon!” she exclaimed, her eyes filled with delight. “Tell
me, Mademoiselle, does he know that I see his letters?”

“Never in the world! He would be angry and would never write to me again
if he thought so. Does he write to you? Never a line. Does he send you
a message? Never a word. It is because he loves you, poor fool, and
is trying to forget you, since you are not free to listen to him or to
belong to him.”

“Why do you show me his letters, then?”

“Haven't you begged for them? Can I refuse you anything? Oh! you cannot
deceive me,” and Mademoiselle approached her beloved instrument and
began to play. Edna did not at once read the letter. She sat holding
it in her hand, while the music penetrated her whole being like an
effulgence, warming and brightening the dark places of her soul. It
prepared her for joy and exultation.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, letting the letter fall to the floor. “Why did
you not tell me?” She went and grasped Mademoiselle's hands up from the
keys. “Oh! unkind! malicious! Why did you not tell me?”

“That he was coming back? No great news, ma foi. I wonder he did not
come long ago.”

“But when, when?” cried Edna, impatiently. “He does not say when.”

“He says 'very soon.' You know as much about it as I do; it is all in
the letter.”

“But why? Why is he coming? Oh, if I thought--” and she snatched the
letter from the floor and turned the pages this way and that way,
looking for the reason, which was left untold.

“If I were young and in love with a man,” said Mademoiselle, turning on
the stool and pressing her wiry hands between her knees as she looked
down at Edna, who sat on the floor holding the letter, “it seems to me
he would have to be some grand esprit; a man with lofty aims and ability
to reach them; one who stood high enough to attract the notice of his
fellow-men. It seems to me if I were young and in love I should never
deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.”

“Now it is you who are telling lies and seeking to deceive me,
Mademoiselle; or else you have never been in love, and know nothing
about it. Why,” went on Edna, clasping her knees and looking up into
Mademoiselle's twisted face, “do you suppose a woman knows why she
loves? Does she select? Does she say to herself: 'Go to! Here is a
distinguished statesman with presidential possibilities; I shall proceed
to fall in love with him.' Or, 'I shall set my heart upon this musician,
whose fame is on every tongue?' Or, 'This financier, who controls the
world's money markets?'

“You are purposely misunderstanding me, ma reine. Are you in love with
Robert?”

“Yes,” said Edna. It was the first time she had admitted it, and a glow
overspread her face, blotching it with red spots.

“Why?” asked her companion. “Why do you love him when you ought not to?”

Edna, with a motion or two, dragged herself on her knees before
Mademoiselle Reisz, who took the glowing face between her two hands.

“Why? Because his hair is brown and grows away from his temples; because
he opens and shuts his eyes, and his nose is a little out of drawing;
because he has two lips and a square chin, and a little finger which he
can't straighten from having played baseball too energetically in his
youth. Because--”

“Because you do, in short,” laughed Mademoiselle. “What will you do when
he comes back?” she asked.

“Do? Nothing, except feel glad and happy to be alive.”

She was already glad and happy to be alive at the mere thought of his
return. The murky, lowering sky, which had depressed her a few hours
before, seemed bracing and invigorating as she splashed through the
streets on her way home.

She stopped at a confectioner's and ordered a huge box of bonbons for
the children in Iberville. She slipped a card in the box, on which she
scribbled a tender message and sent an abundance of kisses.

Before dinner in the evening Edna wrote a charming letter to her
husband, telling him of her intention to move for a while into the
little house around the block, and to give a farewell dinner before
leaving, regretting that he was not there to share it, to help out
with the menu and assist her in entertaining the guests. Her letter was
brilliant and brimming with cheerfulness.




XXVII


“What is the matter with you?” asked Arobin that evening. “I never
found you in such a happy mood.” Edna was tired by that time, and was
reclining on the lounge before the fire.

“Don't you know the weather prophet has told us we shall see the sun
pretty soon?”

“Well, that ought to be reason enough,” he acquiesced. “You wouldn't
give me another if I sat here all night imploring you.” He sat close to
her on a low tabouret, and as he spoke his fingers lightly touched the
hair that fell a little over her forehead. She liked the touch of his
fingers through her hair, and closed her eyes sensitively.

“One of these days,” she said, “I'm going to pull myself together for a
while and think--try to determine what character of a woman I am; for,
candidly, I don't know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with,
I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can't
convince myself that I am. I must think about it.”

“Don't. What's the use? Why should you bother thinking about it when
I can tell you what manner of woman you are.” His fingers strayed
occasionally down to her warm, smooth cheeks and firm chin, which was
growing a little full and double.

“Oh, yes! You will tell me that I am adorable; everything that is
captivating. Spare yourself the effort.”

“No; I shan't tell you anything of the sort, though I shouldn't be lying
if I did.”

“Do you know Mademoiselle Reisz?” she asked irrelevantly.

“The pianist? I know her by sight. I've heard her play.”

“She says queer things sometimes in a bantering way that you don't
notice at the time and you find yourself thinking about afterward.”

“For instance?”

“Well, for instance, when I left her to-day, she put her arms around me
and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she
said. 'The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition
and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the
weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.' Whither would
you soar?”

“I'm not thinking of any extraordinary flights. I only half comprehend
her.”

“I've heard she's partially demented,” said Arobin.

“She seems to me wonderfully sane,” Edna replied.

“I'm told she's extremely disagreeable and unpleasant. Why have you
introduced her at a moment when I desired to talk of you?”

“Oh! talk of me if you like,” cried Edna, clasping her hands beneath her
head; “but let me think of something else while you do.”

“I'm jealous of your thoughts tonight. They're making you a little
kinder than usual; but some way I feel as if they were wandering, as if
they were not here with me.” She only looked at him and smiled. His eyes
were very near. He leaned upon the lounge with an arm extended across
her, while the other hand still rested upon her hair. They continued
silently to look into each other's eyes. When he leaned forward and
kissed her, she clasped his head, holding his lips to hers.

It was the first kiss of her life to which her nature had really
responded. It was a flaming torch that kindled desire.




XXVIII


Edna cried a little that night after Arobin left her. It was only one
phase of the multitudinous emotions which had assailed her. There was
with her an overwhelming feeling of irresponsibility. There was the
shock of the unexpected and the unaccustomed. There was her husband's
reproach looking at her from the external things around her which he had
provided for her external existence. There was Robert's reproach making
itself felt by a quicker, fiercer, more overpowering love, which had
awakened within her toward him. Above all, there was understanding. She
felt as if a mist had been lifted from her eyes, enabling her to took
upon and comprehend the significance of life, that monster made up
of beauty and brutality. But among the conflicting sensations which
assailed her, there was neither shame nor remorse. There was a dull pang
of regret because it was not the kiss of love which had inflamed her,
because it was not love which had held this cup of life to her lips.




XXIX


Without even waiting for an answer from her husband regarding his
opinion or wishes in the matter, Edna hastened her preparations for
quitting her home on Esplanade Street and moving into the little house
around the block. A feverish anxiety attended her every action in that
direction. There was no moment of deliberation, no interval of repose
between the thought and its fulfillment. Early upon the morning
following those hours passed in Arobin's society, Edna set about
securing her new abode and hurrying her arrangements for occupying it.
Within the precincts of her home she felt like one who has entered and
lingered within the portals of some forbidden temple in which a thousand
muffled voices bade her begone.

Whatever was her own in the house, everything which she had acquired
aside from her husband's bounty, she caused to be transported to the
other house, supplying simple and meager deficiencies from her own
resources.

Arobin found her with rolled sleeves, working in company with the
house-maid when he looked in during the afternoon. She was splendid and
robust, and had never appeared handsomer than in the old blue gown, with
a red silk handkerchief knotted at random around her head to protect her
hair from the dust. She was mounted upon a high stepladder, unhooking a
picture from the wall when he entered. He had found the front door open,
and had followed his ring by walking in unceremoniously.

“Come down!” he said. “Do you want to kill yourself?” She greeted him
with affected carelessness, and appeared absorbed in her occupation.

If he had expected to find her languishing, reproachful, or indulging in
sentimental tears, he must have been greatly surprised.

He was no doubt prepared for any emergency, ready for any one of the
foregoing attitudes, just as he bent himself easily and naturally to the
situation which confronted him.

“Please come down,” he insisted, holding the ladder and looking up at
her.

“No,” she answered; “Ellen is afraid to mount the ladder. Joe is working
over at the 'pigeon house'--that's the name Ellen gives it, because it's
so small and looks like a pigeon house--and some one has to do this.”

Arobin pulled off his coat, and expressed himself ready and willing to
tempt fate in her place. Ellen brought him one of her dust-caps,
and went into contortions of mirth, which she found it impossible to
control, when she saw him put it on before the mirror as grotesquely as
he could. Edna herself could not refrain from smiling when she fastened
it at his request. So it was he who in turn mounted the ladder,
unhooking pictures and curtains, and dislodging ornaments as Edna
directed. When he had finished he took off his dust-cap and went out to
wash his hands.

Edna was sitting on the tabouret, idly brushing the tips of a feather
duster along the carpet when he came in again.

“Is there anything more you will let me do?” he asked.

“That is all,” she answered. “Ellen can manage the rest.” She kept the
young woman occupied in the drawing-room, unwilling to be left alone
with Arobin.

“What about the dinner?” he asked; “the grand event, the coup d'etat?”

“It will be day after to-morrow. Why do you call it the 'coup d'etat?'
Oh! it will be very fine; all my best of everything--crystal, silver and
gold, Sevres, flowers, music, and champagne to swim in. I'll let Leonce
pay the bills. I wonder what he'll say when he sees the bills.

“And you ask me why I call it a coup d'etat?” Arobin had put on his
coat, and he stood before her and asked if his cravat was plumb. She
told him it was, looking no higher than the tip of his collar.

“When do you go to the 'pigeon house?'--with all due acknowledgment to
Ellen.”

“Day after to-morrow, after the dinner. I shall sleep there.”

“Ellen, will you very kindly get me a glass of water?” asked Arobin.
“The dust in the curtains, if you will pardon me for hinting such a
thing, has parched my throat to a crisp.”

“While Ellen gets the water,” said Edna, rising, “I will say good-by and
let you go. I must get rid of this grime, and I have a million things to
do and think of.”

“When shall I see you?” asked Arobin, seeking to detain her, the maid
having left the room.

“At the dinner, of course. You are invited.”

“Not before?--not to-night or to-morrow morning or tomorrow noon or
night? or the day after morning or noon? Can't you see yourself, without
my telling you, what an eternity it is?”

He had followed her into the hall and to the foot of the stairway,
looking up at her as she mounted with her face half turned to him.

“Not an instant sooner,” she said. But she laughed and looked at him
with eyes that at once gave him courage to wait and made it torture to
wait.




XXX


Though Edna had spoken of the dinner as a very grand affair, it was
in truth a very small affair and very select, in so much as the guests
invited were few and were selected with discrimination. She had counted
upon an even dozen seating themselves at her round mahogany board,
forgetting for the moment that Madame Ratignolle was to the last degree
souffrante and unpresentable, and not foreseeing that Madame Lebrun
would send a thousand regrets at the last moment. So there were only
ten, after all, which made a cozy, comfortable number.

There were Mr. and Mrs. Merriman, a pretty, vivacious little woman in
the thirties; her husband, a jovial fellow, something of a shallow-pate,
who laughed a good deal at other people's witticisms, and had thereby
made himself extremely popular. Mrs. Highcamp had accompanied them. Of
course, there was Alcee Arobin; and Mademoiselle Reisz had consented
to come. Edna had sent her a fresh bunch of violets with black lace
trimmings for her hair. Monsieur Ratignolle brought himself and his
wife's excuses. Victor Lebrun, who happened to be in the city, bent upon
relaxation, had accepted with alacrity. There was a Miss Mayblunt, no
longer in her teens, who looked at the world through lorgnettes and with
the keenest interest. It was thought and said that she was intellectual;
it was suspected of her that she wrote under a nom de guerre. She had
come with a gentleman by the name of Gouvernail, connected with one of
the daily papers, of whom nothing special could be said, except that he
was observant and seemed quiet and inoffensive. Edna herself made the
tenth, and at half-past eight they seated themselves at table, Arobin
and Monsieur Ratignolle on either side of their hostess.

Mrs. Highcamp sat between Arobin and Victor Lebrun. Then came Mrs.
Merriman, Mr. Gouvernail, Miss Mayblunt, Mr. Merriman, and Mademoiselle
Reisz next to Monsieur Ratignolle.

There was something extremely gorgeous about the appearance of the
table, an effect of splendor conveyed by a cover of pale yellow satin
under strips of lace-work. There were wax candles, in massive brass
candelabra, burning softly under yellow silk shades; full, fragrant
roses, yellow and red, abounded. There were silver and gold, as she had
said there would be, and crystal which glittered like the gems which the
women wore.

The ordinary stiff dining chairs had been discarded for the occasion and
replaced by the most commodious and luxurious which could be collected
throughout the house. Mademoiselle Reisz, being exceedingly diminutive,
was elevated upon cushions, as small children are sometimes hoisted at
table upon bulky volumes.

“Something new, Edna?” exclaimed Miss Mayblunt, with lorgnette directed
toward a magnificent cluster of diamonds that sparkled, that almost
sputtered, in Edna's hair, just over the center of her forehead.

“Quite new; 'brand' new, in fact; a present from my husband. It
arrived this morning from New York. I may as well admit that this is my
birthday, and that I am twenty-nine. In good time I expect you to drink
my health. Meanwhile, I shall ask you to begin with this cocktail,
composed--would you say 'composed?'” with an appeal to Miss
Mayblunt--“composed by my father in honor of Sister Janet's wedding.”

Before each guest stood a tiny glass that looked and sparkled like a
garnet gem.

“Then, all things considered,” spoke Arobin, “it might not be amiss
to start out by drinking the Colonel's health in the cocktail which he
composed, on the birthday of the most charming of women--the daughter
whom he invented.”

Mr. Merriman's laugh at this sally was such a genuine outburst and so
contagious that it started the dinner with an agreeable swing that never
slackened.

Miss Mayblunt begged to be allowed to keep her cocktail untouched before
her, just to look at. The color was marvelous! She could compare it to
nothing she had ever seen, and the garnet lights which it emitted were
unspeakably rare. She pronounced the Colonel an artist, and stuck to it.

Monsieur Ratignolle was prepared to take things seriously; the mets, the
entre-mets, the service, the decorations, even the people. He looked
up from his pompano and inquired of Arobin if he were related to the
gentleman of that name who formed one of the firm of Laitner and Arobin,
lawyers. The young man admitted that Laitner was a warm personal friend,
who permitted Arobin's name to decorate the firm's letterheads and to
appear upon a shingle that graced Perdido Street.

“There are so many inquisitive people and institutions abounding,” said
Arobin, “that one is really forced as a matter of convenience these
days to assume the virtue of an occupation if he has it not.” Monsieur
Ratignolle stared a little, and turned to ask Mademoiselle Reisz if she
considered the symphony concerts up to the standard which had been set
the previous winter. Mademoiselle Reisz answered Monsieur Ratignolle in
French, which Edna thought a little rude, under the circumstances, but
characteristic. Mademoiselle had only disagreeable things to say of the
symphony concerts, and insulting remarks to make of all the musicians
of New Orleans, singly and collectively. All her interest seemed to be
centered upon the delicacies placed before her.

Mr. Merriman said that Mr. Arobin's remark about inquisitive people
reminded him of a man from Waco the other day at the St. Charles
Hotel--but as Mr. Merriman's stories were always lame and lacking point,
his wife seldom permitted him to complete them. She interrupted him to
ask if he remembered the name of the author whose book she had bought
the week before to send to a friend in Geneva. She was talking “books”
 with Mr. Gouvernail and trying to draw from him his opinion upon current
literary topics. Her husband told the story of the Waco man privately
to Miss Mayblunt, who pretended to be greatly amused and to think it
extremely clever.

Mrs. Highcamp hung with languid but unaffected interest upon the warm
and impetuous volubility of her left-hand neighbor, Victor Lebrun.
Her attention was never for a moment withdrawn from him after seating
herself at table; and when he turned to Mrs. Merriman, who was prettier
and more vivacious than Mrs. Highcamp, she waited with easy indifference
for an opportunity to reclaim his attention. There was the occasional
sound of music, of mandolins, sufficiently removed to be an agreeable
accompaniment rather than an interruption to the conversation. Outside
the soft, monotonous splash of a fountain could be heard; the sound
penetrated into the room with the heavy odor of jessamine that came
through the open windows.

The golden shimmer of Edna's satin gown spread in rich folds on either
side of her. There was a soft fall of lace encircling her shoulders.
It was the color of her skin, without the glow, the myriad living tints
that one may sometimes discover in vibrant flesh. There was something in
her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against
the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal
woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone.

But as she sat there amid her guests, she felt the old ennui overtaking
her; the hopelessness which so often assailed her, which came upon her
like an obsession, like something extraneous, independent of volition.
It was something which announced itself; a chill breath that seemed to
issue from some vast cavern wherein discords waited. There came over her
the acute longing which always summoned into her spiritual vision the
presence of the beloved one, overpowering her at once with a sense of
the unattainable.

The moments glided on, while a feeling of good fellowship passed around
the circle like a mystic cord, holding and binding these people together
with jest and laughter. Monsieur Ratignolle was the first to break the
pleasant charm. At ten o'clock he excused himself. Madame Ratignolle
was waiting for him at home. She was bien souffrante, and she was filled
with vague dread, which only her husband's presence could allay.

Mademoiselle Reisz arose with Monsieur Ratignolle, who offered to escort
her to the car. She had eaten well; she had tasted the good, rich wines,
and they must have turned her head, for she bowed pleasantly to all
as she withdrew from table. She kissed Edna upon the shoulder, and
whispered: “Bonne nuit, ma reine; soyez sage.” She had been a little
bewildered upon rising, or rather, descending from her cushions, and
Monsieur Ratignolle gallantly took her arm and led her away.

Mrs. Highcamp was weaving a garland of roses, yellow and red. When she
had finished the garland, she laid it lightly upon Victor's black curls.
He was reclining far back in the luxurious chair, holding a glass of
champagne to the light.

As if a magician's wand had touched him, the garland of roses
transformed him into a vision of Oriental beauty. His cheeks were the
color of crushed grapes, and his dusky eyes glowed with a languishing
fire.

“Sapristi!” exclaimed Arobin.

But Mrs. Highcamp had one more touch to add to the picture. She took
from the back of her chair a white silken scarf, with which she had
covered her shoulders in the early part of the evening. She draped it
across the boy in graceful folds, and in a way to conceal his black,
conventional evening dress. He did not seem to mind what she did to him,
only smiled, showing a faint gleam of white teeth, while he continued to
gaze with narrowing eyes at the light through his glass of champagne.

“Oh! to be able to paint in color rather than in words!” exclaimed Miss
Mayblunt, losing herself in a rhapsodic dream as she looked at him.

         “'There was a graven image of Desire
          Painted with red blood on a ground of gold.'”

murmured Gouvernail, under his breath.

The effect of the wine upon Victor was to change his accustomed
volubility into silence. He seemed to have abandoned himself to a
reverie, and to be seeing pleasing visions in the amber bead.

“Sing,” entreated Mrs. Highcamp. “Won't you sing to us?”

“Let him alone,” said Arobin.

“He's posing,” offered Mr. Merriman; “let him have it out.”

“I believe he's paralyzed,” laughed Mrs. Merriman. And leaning over the
youth's chair, she took the glass from his hand and held it to his lips.
He sipped the wine slowly, and when he had drained the glass she laid it
upon the table and wiped his lips with her little filmy handkerchief.

“Yes, I'll sing for you,” he said, turning in his chair toward Mrs.
Highcamp. He clasped his hands behind his head, and looking up at the
ceiling began to hum a little, trying his voice like a musician tuning
an instrument. Then, looking at Edna, he began to sing:

     “Ah! si tu savais!”

“Stop!” she cried, “don't sing that. I don't want you to sing it,”
 and she laid her glass so impetuously and blindly upon the table as to
shatter it against a carafe. The wine spilled over Arobin's legs and
some of it trickled down upon Mrs. Highcamp's black gauze gown. Victor
had lost all idea of courtesy, or else he thought his hostess was not in
earnest, for he laughed and went on:


     “Ah! si tu savais

     Ce que tes yeux me disent”--

“Oh! you mustn't! you mustn't,” exclaimed Edna, and pushing back her
chair she got up, and going behind him placed her hand over his mouth.
He kissed the soft palm that pressed upon his lips.

“No, no, I won't, Mrs. Pontellier. I didn't know you meant it,” looking
up at her with caressing eyes. The touch of his lips was like a pleasing
sting to her hand. She lifted the garland of roses from his head and
flung it across the room.

“Come, Victor; you've posed long enough. Give Mrs. Highcamp her scarf.”

Mrs. Highcamp undraped the scarf from about him with her own hands. Miss
Mayblunt and Mr. Gouvernail suddenly conceived the notion that it was
time to say good night. And Mr. and Mrs. Merriman wondered how it could
be so late.

Before parting from Victor, Mrs. Highcamp invited him to call upon her
daughter, who she knew would be charmed to meet him and talk French and
sing French songs with him. Victor expressed his desire and intention to
call upon Miss Highcamp at the first opportunity which presented itself.
He asked if Arobin were going his way. Arobin was not.

The mandolin players had long since stolen away. A profound stillness
had fallen upon the broad, beautiful street. The voices of Edna's
disbanding guests jarred like a discordant note upon the quiet harmony
of the night.




XXXI


“Well?” questioned Arobin, who had remained with Edna after the others
had departed.

“Well,” she reiterated, and stood up, stretching her arms, and feeling
the need to relax her muscles after having been so long seated.

“What next?” he asked.

“The servants are all gone. They left when the musicians did. I have
dismissed them. The house has to be closed and locked, and I shall trot
around to the pigeon house, and shall send Celestine over in the morning
to straighten things up.”

He looked around, and began to turn out some of the lights.

“What about upstairs?” he inquired.

“I think it is all right; but there may be a window or two unlatched. We
had better look; you might take a candle and see. And bring me my wrap
and hat on the foot of the bed in the middle room.”

He went up with the light, and Edna began closing doors and windows. She
hated to shut in the smoke and the fumes of the wine. Arobin found her
cape and hat, which he brought down and helped her to put on.

When everything was secured and the lights put out, they left through
the front door, Arobin locking it and taking the key, which he carried
for Edna. He helped her down the steps.

“Will you have a spray of jessamine?” he asked, breaking off a few
blossoms as he passed.

“No; I don't want anything.”

She seemed disheartened, and had nothing to say. She took his arm, which
he offered her, holding up the weight of her satin train with the other
hand. She looked down, noticing the black line of his leg moving in and
out so close to her against the yellow shimmer of her gown. There
was the whistle of a railway train somewhere in the distance, and the
midnight bells were ringing. They met no one in their short walk.

The “pigeon house” stood behind a locked gate, and a shallow parterre
that had been somewhat neglected. There was a small front porch, upon
which a long window and the front door opened. The door opened directly
into the parlor; there was no side entry. Back in the yard was a room
for servants, in which old Celestine had been ensconced.

Edna had left a lamp burning low upon the table. She had succeeded in
making the room look habitable and homelike. There were some books on
the table and a lounge near at hand. On the floor was a fresh matting,
covered with a rug or two; and on the walls hung a few tasteful
pictures. But the room was filled with flowers. These were a surprise to
her. Arobin had sent them, and had had Celestine distribute them during
Edna's absence. Her bedroom was adjoining, and across a small passage
were the dining-room and kitchen.

Edna seated herself with every appearance of discomfort.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“Yes, and chilled, and miserable. I feel as if I had been wound up to a
certain pitch--too tight--and something inside of me had snapped.” She
rested her head against the table upon her bare arm.

“You want to rest,” he said, “and to be quiet. I'll go; I'll leave you
and let you rest.”

“Yes,” she replied.

He stood up beside her and smoothed her hair with his soft, magnetic
hand. His touch conveyed to her a certain physical comfort. She could
have fallen quietly asleep there if he had continued to pass his hand
over her hair. He brushed the hair upward from the nape of her neck.

“I hope you will feel better and happier in the morning,” he said. “You
have tried to do too much in the past few days. The dinner was the last
straw; you might have dispensed with it.”

“Yes,” she admitted; “it was stupid.”

“No, it was delightful; but it has worn you out.” His hand had strayed
to her beautiful shoulders, and he could feel the response of her flesh
to his touch. He seated himself beside her and kissed her lightly upon
the shoulder.

“I thought you were going away,” she said, in an uneven voice.

“I am, after I have said good night.”

“Good night,” she murmured.

He did not answer, except to continue to caress her. He did not say good
night until she had become supple to his gentle, seductive entreaties.




XXXII


When Mr. Pontellier learned of his wife's intention to abandon her home
and take up her residence elsewhere, he immediately wrote her a letter
of unqualified disapproval and remonstrance. She had given reasons which
he was unwilling to acknowledge as adequate. He hoped she had not acted
upon her rash impulse; and he begged her to consider first, foremost,
and above all else, what people would say. He was not dreaming of
scandal when he uttered this warning; that was a thing which would never
have entered into his mind to consider in connection with his wife's
name or his own. He was simply thinking of his financial integrity. It
might get noised about that the Pontelliers had met with reverses, and
were forced to conduct their menage on a humbler scale than heretofore.
It might do incalculable mischief to his business prospects.

But remembering Edna's whimsical turn of mind of late, and foreseeing
that she had immediately acted upon her impetuous determination, he
grasped the situation with his usual promptness and handled it with his
well-known business tact and cleverness.

The same mail which brought to Edna his letter of disapproval carried
instructions--the most minute instructions--to a well-known architect
concerning the remodeling of his home, changes which he had long
contemplated, and which he desired carried forward during his temporary
absence.

Expert and reliable packers and movers were engaged to convey the
furniture, carpets, pictures--everything movable, in short--to places
of security. And in an incredibly short time the Pontellier house
was turned over to the artisans. There was to be an addition--a small
snuggery; there was to be frescoing, and hardwood flooring was to be put
into such rooms as had not yet been subjected to this improvement.

Furthermore, in one of the daily papers appeared a brief notice to the
effect that Mr. and Mrs. Pontellier were contemplating a summer sojourn
abroad, and that their handsome residence on Esplanade Street was
undergoing sumptuous alterations, and would not be ready for occupancy
until their return. Mr. Pontellier had saved appearances!

Edna admired the skill of his maneuver, and avoided any occasion to balk
his intentions. When the situation as set forth by Mr. Pontellier was
accepted and taken for granted, she was apparently satisfied that it
should be so.

The pigeon house pleased her. It at once assumed the intimate character
of a home, while she herself invested it with a charm which it reflected
like a warm glow. There was with her a feeling of having descended in
the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the
spiritual. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from
obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She
began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper
undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to “feed upon opinion”
 when her own soul had invited her.

After a little while, a few days, in fact, Edna went up and spent a week
with her children in Iberville. They were delicious February days, with
all the summer's promise hovering in the air.

How glad she was to see the children! She wept for very pleasure when
she felt their little arms clasping her; their hard, ruddy cheeks
pressed against her own glowing cheeks. She looked into their faces with
hungry eyes that could not be satisfied with looking. And what stories
they had to tell their mother! About the pigs, the cows, the mules!
About riding to the mill behind Gluglu; fishing back in the lake with
their Uncle Jasper; picking pecans with Lidie's little black brood, and
hauling chips in their express wagon. It was a thousand times more fun
to haul real chips for old lame Susie's real fire than to drag painted
blocks along the banquette on Esplanade Street!

She went with them herself to see the pigs and the cows, to look at the
darkies laying the cane, to thrash the pecan trees, and catch fish in
the back lake. She lived with them a whole week long, giving them all of
herself, and gathering and filling herself with their young existence.
They listened, breathless, when she told them the house in Esplanade
Street was crowded with workmen, hammering, nailing, sawing, and filling
the place with clatter. They wanted to know where their bed was; what
had been done with their rocking-horse; and where did Joe sleep, and
where had Ellen gone, and the cook? But, above all, they were fired with
a desire to see the little house around the block. Was there any
place to play? Were there any boys next door? Raoul, with pessimistic
foreboding, was convinced that there were only girls next door. Where
would they sleep, and where would papa sleep? She told them the fairies
would fix it all right.

The old Madame was charmed with Edna's visit, and showered all manner
of delicate attentions upon her. She was delighted to know that the
Esplanade Street house was in a dismantled condition. It gave her the
promise and pretext to keep the children indefinitely.

It was with a wrench and a pang that Edna left her children. She carried
away with her the sound of their voices and the touch of their cheeks.
All along the journey homeward their presence lingered with her like the
memory of a delicious song. But by the time she had regained the city
the song no longer echoed in her soul. She was again alone.




XXXIII


It happened sometimes when Edna went to see Mademoiselle Reisz that
the little musician was absent, giving a lesson or making some small
necessary household purchase. The key was always left in a secret
hiding-place in the entry, which Edna knew. If Mademoiselle happened to
be away, Edna would usually enter and wait for her return.

When she knocked at Mademoiselle Reisz's door one afternoon there was
no response; so unlocking the door, as usual, she entered and found the
apartment deserted, as she had expected. Her day had been quite filled
up, and it was for a rest, for a refuge, and to talk about Robert, that
she sought out her friend.

She had worked at her canvas--a young Italian character study--all the
morning, completing the work without the model; but there had been many
interruptions, some incident to her modest housekeeping, and others of a
social nature.

Madame Ratignolle had dragged herself over, avoiding the too public
thoroughfares, she said. She complained that Edna had neglected her
much of late. Besides, she was consumed with curiosity to see the little
house and the manner in which it was conducted. She wanted to hear all
about the dinner party; Monsieur Ratignolle had left so early. What had
happened after he left? The champagne and grapes which Edna sent over
were TOO delicious. She had so little appetite; they had refreshed and
toned her stomach. Where on earth was she going to put Mr. Pontellier in
that little house, and the boys? And then she made Edna promise to go to
her when her hour of trial overtook her.

“At any time--any time of the day or night, dear,” Edna assured her.

Before leaving Madame Ratignolle said:

“In some way you seem to me like a child, Edna. You seem to act without
a certain amount of reflection which is necessary in this life. That is
the reason I want to say you mustn't mind if I advise you to be a little
careful while you are living here alone. Why don't you have some one
come and stay with you? Wouldn't Mademoiselle Reisz come?”

“No; she wouldn't wish to come, and I shouldn't want her always with
me.”

“Well, the reason--you know how evil-minded the world is--some one was
talking of Alcee Arobin visiting you. Of course, it wouldn't matter if
Mr. Arobin had not such a dreadful reputation. Monsieur Ratignolle was
telling me that his attentions alone are considered enough to ruin a
woman's name.”

“Does he boast of his successes?” asked Edna, indifferently, squinting
at her picture.

“No, I think not. I believe he is a decent fellow as far as that goes.
But his character is so well known among the men. I shan't be able to
come back and see you; it was very, very imprudent to-day.”

“Mind the step!” cried Edna.

“Don't neglect me,” entreated Madame Ratignolle; “and don't mind what I
said about Arobin, or having some one to stay with you.

“Of course not,” Edna laughed. “You may say anything you like to me.”
 They kissed each other good-by. Madame Ratignolle had not far to go, and
Edna stood on the porch a while watching her walk down the street.

Then in the afternoon Mrs. Merriman and Mrs. Highcamp had made their
“party call.” Edna felt that they might have dispensed with the
formality. They had also come to invite her to play vingt-et-un one
evening at Mrs. Merriman's. She was asked to go early, to dinner, and
Mr. Merriman or Mr. Arobin would take her home. Edna accepted in a
half-hearted way. She sometimes felt very tired of Mrs. Highcamp and
Mrs. Merriman.

Late in the afternoon she sought refuge with Mademoiselle Reisz, and
stayed there alone, waiting for her, feeling a kind of repose invade her
with the very atmosphere of the shabby, unpretentious little room.

Edna sat at the window, which looked out over the house-tops and across
the river. The window frame was filled with pots of flowers, and she sat
and picked the dry leaves from a rose geranium. The day was warm, and
the breeze which blew from the river was very pleasant. She removed her
hat and laid it on the piano. She went on picking the leaves and
digging around the plants with her hat pin. Once she thought she heard
Mademoiselle Reisz approaching. But it was a young black girl, who
came in, bringing a small bundle of laundry, which she deposited in the
adjoining room, and went away.

Edna seated herself at the piano, and softly picked out with one hand
the bars of a piece of music which lay open before her. A half-hour went
by. There was the occasional sound of people going and coming in the
lower hall. She was growing interested in her occupation of picking out
the aria, when there was a second rap at the door. She vaguely wondered
what these people did when they found Mademoiselle's door locked.

“Come in,” she called, turning her face toward the door. And this time
it was Robert Lebrun who presented himself. She attempted to rise; she
could not have done so without betraying the agitation which mastered
her at sight of him, so she fell back upon the stool, only exclaiming,
“Why, Robert!”

He came and clasped her hand, seemingly without knowing what he was
saying or doing.

“Mrs. Pontellier! How do you happen--oh! how well you look! Is
Mademoiselle Reisz not here? I never expected to see you.”

“When did you come back?” asked Edna in an unsteady voice, wiping her
face with her handkerchief. She seemed ill at ease on the piano stool,
and he begged her to take the chair by the window.

She did so, mechanically, while he seated himself on the stool.

“I returned day before yesterday,” he answered, while he leaned his arm
on the keys, bringing forth a crash of discordant sound.

“Day before yesterday!” she repeated, aloud; and went on thinking to
herself, “day before yesterday,” in a sort of an uncomprehending way.
She had pictured him seeking her at the very first hour, and he had
lived under the same sky since day before yesterday; while only by
accident had he stumbled upon her. Mademoiselle must have lied when she
said, “Poor fool, he loves you.”

“Day before yesterday,” she repeated, breaking off a spray of
Mademoiselle's geranium; “then if you had not met me here to-day you
wouldn't--when--that is, didn't you mean to come and see me?”

“Of course, I should have gone to see you. There have been so many
things--” he turned the leaves of Mademoiselle's music nervously. “I
started in at once yesterday with the old firm. After all there is as
much chance for me here as there was there--that is, I might find it
profitable some day. The Mexicans were not very congenial.”

So he had come back because the Mexicans were not congenial; because
business was as profitable here as there; because of any reason, and not
because he cared to be near her. She remembered the day she sat on the
floor, turning the pages of his letter, seeking the reason which was
left untold.

She had not noticed how he looked--only feeling his presence; but she
turned deliberately and observed him. After all, he had been absent but
a few months, and was not changed. His hair--the color of hers--waved
back from his temples in the same way as before. His skin was not more
burned than it had been at Grand Isle. She found in his eyes, when he
looked at her for one silent moment, the same tender caress, with an
added warmth and entreaty which had not been there before the same
glance which had penetrated to the sleeping places of her soul and
awakened them.

A hundred times Edna had pictured Robert's return, and imagined their
first meeting. It was usually at her home, whither he had sought her out
at once. She always fancied him expressing or betraying in some way his
love for her. And here, the reality was that they sat ten feet apart,
she at the window, crushing geranium leaves in her hand and smelling
them, he twirling around on the piano stool, saying:

“I was very much surprised to hear of Mr. Pontellier's absence; it's a
wonder Mademoiselle Reisz did not tell me; and your moving--mother told
me yesterday. I should think you would have gone to New York with him,
or to Iberville with the children, rather than be bothered here with
housekeeping. And you are going abroad, too, I hear. We shan't have
you at Grand Isle next summer; it won't seem--do you see much of
Mademoiselle Reisz? She often spoke of you in the few letters she
wrote.”

“Do you remember that you promised to write to me when you went away?” A
flush overspread his whole face.

“I couldn't believe that my letters would be of any interest to you.”

“That is an excuse; it isn't the truth.” Edna reached for her hat on the
piano. She adjusted it, sticking the hat pin through the heavy coil of
hair with some deliberation.

“Are you not going to wait for Mademoiselle Reisz?” asked Robert.

“No; I have found when she is absent this long, she is liable not to
come back till late.” She drew on her gloves, and Robert picked up his
hat.

“Won't you wait for her?” asked Edna.

“Not if you think she will not be back till late,” adding, as if
suddenly aware of some discourtesy in his speech, “and I should miss the
pleasure of walking home with you.” Edna locked the door and put the key
back in its hiding-place.

They went together, picking their way across muddy streets and sidewalks
encumbered with the cheap display of small tradesmen. Part of the
distance they rode in the car, and after disembarking, passed the
Pontellier mansion, which looked broken and half torn asunder. Robert
had never known the house, and looked at it with interest.

“I never knew you in your home,” he remarked.

“I am glad you did not.”

“Why?” She did not answer. They went on around the corner, and it seemed
as if her dreams were coming true after all, when he followed her into
the little house.

“You must stay and dine with me, Robert. You see I am all alone, and it
is so long since I have seen you. There is so much I want to ask you.”

She took off her hat and gloves. He stood irresolute, making some excuse
about his mother who expected him; he even muttered something about an
engagement. She struck a match and lit the lamp on the table; it was
growing dusk. When he saw her face in the lamp-light, looking pained,
with all the soft lines gone out of it, he threw his hat aside and
seated himself.

“Oh! you know I want to stay if you will let me!” he exclaimed. All
the softness came back. She laughed, and went and put her hand on his
shoulder.

“This is the first moment you have seemed like the old Robert. I'll
go tell Celestine.” She hurried away to tell Celestine to set an extra
place. She even sent her off in search of some added delicacy which
she had not thought of for herself. And she recommended great care in
dripping the coffee and having the omelet done to a proper turn.

When she reentered, Robert was turning over magazines, sketches,
and things that lay upon the table in great disorder. He picked up a
photograph, and exclaimed:

“Alcee Arobin! What on earth is his picture doing here?”

“I tried to make a sketch of his head one day,” answered Edna, “and
he thought the photograph might help me. It was at the other house. I
thought it had been left there. I must have packed it up with my drawing
materials.”

“I should think you would give it back to him if you have finished with
it.”

“Oh! I have a great many such photographs. I never think of returning
them. They don't amount to anything.” Robert kept on looking at the
picture.

“It seems to me--do you think his head worth drawing? Is he a friend of
Mr. Pontellier's? You never said you knew him.”

“He isn't a friend of Mr. Pontellier's; he's a friend of mine. I always
knew him--that is, it is only of late that I know him pretty well. But
I'd rather talk about you, and know what you have been seeing and doing
and feeling out there in Mexico.” Robert threw aside the picture.

“I've been seeing the waves and the white beach of Grand Isle; the
quiet, grassy street of the Cheniere; the old fort at Grande Terre. I've
been working like a machine, and feeling like a lost soul. There was
nothing interesting.”

She leaned her head upon her hand to shade her eyes from the light.

“And what have you been seeing and doing and feeling all these days?” he
asked.

“I've been seeing the waves and the white beach of Grand Isle; the
quiet, grassy street of the Cheniere Caminada; the old sunny fort at
Grande Terre. I've been working with a little more comprehension than
a machine, and still feeling like a lost soul. There was nothing
interesting.”

“Mrs. Pontellier, you are cruel,” he said, with feeling, closing his
eyes and resting his head back in his chair. They remained in silence
till old Celestine announced dinner.




XXXIV


The dining-room was very small. Edna's round mahogany would have almost
filled it. As it was there was but a step or two from the little table
to the kitchen, to the mantel, the small buffet, and the side door that
opened out on the narrow brick-paved yard.

A certain degree of ceremony settled upon them with the announcement of
dinner. There was no return to personalities. Robert related incidents
of his sojourn in Mexico, and Edna talked of events likely to interest
him, which had occurred during his absence. The dinner was of ordinary
quality, except for the few delicacies which she had sent out to
purchase. Old Celestine, with a bandana tignon twisted about her head,
hobbled in and out, taking a personal interest in everything; and she
lingered occasionally to talk patois with Robert, whom she had known as
a boy.

He went out to a neighboring cigar stand to purchase cigarette papers,
and when he came back he found that Celestine had served the black
coffee in the parlor.

“Perhaps I shouldn't have come back,” he said. “When you are tired of
me, tell me to go.”

“You never tire me. You must have forgotten the hours and hours at
Grand Isle in which we grew accustomed to each other and used to being
together.”

“I have forgotten nothing at Grand Isle,” he said, not looking at her,
but rolling a cigarette. His tobacco pouch, which he laid upon the
table, was a fantastic embroidered silk affair, evidently the handiwork
of a woman.

“You used to carry your tobacco in a rubber pouch,” said Edna, picking
up the pouch and examining the needlework.

“Yes; it was lost.”

“Where did you buy this one? In Mexico?”

“It was given to me by a Vera Cruz girl; they are very generous,” he
replied, striking a match and lighting his cigarette.

“They are very handsome, I suppose, those Mexican women; very
picturesque, with their black eyes and their lace scarfs.”

“Some are; others are hideous, just as you find women everywhere.”

“What was she like--the one who gave you the pouch? You must have known
her very well.”

“She was very ordinary. She wasn't of the slightest importance. I knew
her well enough.”

“Did you visit at her house? Was it interesting? I should like to know
and hear about the people you met, and the impressions they made on
you.”

“There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the
imprint of an oar upon the water.”

“Was she such a one?”

“It would be ungenerous for me to admit that she was of that order and
kind.” He thrust the pouch back in his pocket, as if to put away the
subject with the trifle which had brought it up.

Arobin dropped in with a message from Mrs. Merriman, to say that
the card party was postponed on account of the illness of one of her
children.

“How do you do, Arobin?” said Robert, rising from the obscurity.

“Oh! Lebrun. To be sure! I heard yesterday you were back. How did they
treat you down in Mexique?”

“Fairly well.”

“But not well enough to keep you there. Stunning girls, though, in
Mexico. I thought I should never get away from Vera Cruz when I was down
there a couple of years ago.”

“Did they embroider slippers and tobacco pouches and hat-bands and
things for you?” asked Edna.

“Oh! my! no! I didn't get so deep in their regard. I fear they made more
impression on me than I made on them.”

“You were less fortunate than Robert, then.”

“I am always less fortunate than Robert. Has he been imparting tender
confidences?”

“I've been imposing myself long enough,” said Robert, rising, and
shaking hands with Edna. “Please convey my regards to Mr. Pontellier
when you write.”

He shook hands with Arobin and went away.

“Fine fellow, that Lebrun,” said Arobin when Robert had gone. “I never
heard you speak of him.”

“I knew him last summer at Grand Isle,” she replied. “Here is that
photograph of yours. Don't you want it?”

“What do I want with it? Throw it away.” She threw it back on the table.

“I'm not going to Mrs. Merriman's,” she said. “If you see her, tell her
so. But perhaps I had better write. I think I shall write now, and say
that I am sorry her child is sick, and tell her not to count on me.”

“It would be a good scheme,” acquiesced Arobin. “I don't blame you;
stupid lot!”

Edna opened the blotter, and having procured paper and pen, began to
write the note. Arobin lit a cigar and read the evening paper, which he
had in his pocket.

“What is the date?” she asked. He told her.

“Will you mail this for me when you go out?”

“Certainly.” He read to her little bits out of the newspaper, while she
straightened things on the table.

“What do you want to do?” he asked, throwing aside the paper. “Do you
want to go out for a walk or a drive or anything? It would be a fine
night to drive.”

“No; I don't want to do anything but just be quiet. You go away and
amuse yourself. Don't stay.”

“I'll go away if I must; but I shan't amuse myself. You know that I only
live when I am near you.”

He stood up to bid her good night.

“Is that one of the things you always say to women?”

“I have said it before, but I don't think I ever came so near meaning
it,” he answered with a smile. There were no warm lights in her eyes;
only a dreamy, absent look.

“Good night. I adore you. Sleep well,” he said, and he kissed her hand
and went away.

She stayed alone in a kind of reverie--a sort of stupor. Step by step
she lived over every instant of the time she had been with Robert after
he had entered Mademoiselle Reisz's door. She recalled his words,
his looks. How few and meager they had been for her hungry heart! A
vision--a transcendently seductive vision of a Mexican girl arose before
her. She writhed with a jealous pang. She wondered when he would come
back. He had not said he would come back. She had been with him, had
heard his voice and touched his hand. But some way he had seemed nearer
to her off there in Mexico.




XXXV


The morning was full of sunlight and hope. Edna could see before her no
denial--only the promise of excessive joy. She lay in bed awake, with
bright eyes full of speculation. “He loves you, poor fool.” If she could
but get that conviction firmly fixed in her mind, what mattered about
the rest? She felt she had been childish and unwise the night before in
giving herself over to despondency. She recapitulated the motives which
no doubt explained Robert's reserve. They were not insurmountable; they
would not hold if he really loved her; they could not hold against her
own passion, which he must come to realize in time. She pictured him
going to his business that morning. She even saw how he was dressed;
how he walked down one street, and turned the corner of another; saw him
bending over his desk, talking to people who entered the office, going
to his lunch, and perhaps watching for her on the street. He would come
to her in the afternoon or evening, sit and roll his cigarette, talk a
little, and go away as he had done the night before. But how delicious
it would be to have him there with her! She would have no regrets, nor
seek to penetrate his reserve if he still chose to wear it.

Edna ate her breakfast only half dressed. The maid brought her a
delicious printed scrawl from Raoul, expressing his love, asking her to
send him some bonbons, and telling her they had found that morning ten
tiny white pigs all lying in a row beside Lidie's big white pig.

A letter also came from her husband, saying he hoped to be back early
in March, and then they would get ready for that journey abroad which
he had promised her so long, which he felt now fully able to afford;
he felt able to travel as people should, without any thought of small
economies--thanks to his recent speculations in Wall Street.

Much to her surprise she received a note from Arobin, written at
midnight from the club. It was to say good morning to her, to hope she
had slept well, to assure her of his devotion, which he trusted she in
some faintest manner returned.

All these letters were pleasing to her. She answered the children in a
cheerful frame of mind, promising them bonbons, and congratulating them
upon their happy find of the little pigs.

She answered her husband with friendly evasiveness,--not with any fixed
design to mislead him, only because all sense of reality had gone out
of her life; she had abandoned herself to Fate, and awaited the
consequences with indifference.

To Arobin's note she made no reply. She put it under Celestine's
stove-lid.

Edna worked several hours with much spirit. She saw no one but a picture
dealer, who asked her if it were true that she was going abroad to study
in Paris.

She said possibly she might, and he negotiated with her for some
Parisian studies to reach him in time for the holiday trade in December.

Robert did not come that day. She was keenly disappointed. He did not
come the following day, nor the next. Each morning she awoke with hope,
and each night she was a prey to despondency. She was tempted to seek
him out. But far from yielding to the impulse, she avoided any occasion
which might throw her in his way. She did not go to Mademoiselle Reisz's
nor pass by Madame Lebrun's, as she might have done if he had still been
in Mexico.

When Arobin, one night, urged her to drive with him, she went--out to
the lake, on the Shell Road. His horses were full of mettle, and even a
little unmanageable. She liked the rapid gait at which they spun along,
and the quick, sharp sound of the horses' hoofs on the hard road. They
did not stop anywhere to eat or to drink. Arobin was not needlessly
imprudent. But they ate and they drank when they regained Edna's little
dining-room--which was comparatively early in the evening.

It was late when he left her. It was getting to be more than a passing
whim with Arobin to see her and be with her. He had detected the latent
sensuality, which unfolded under his delicate sense of her nature's
requirements like a torpid, torrid, sensitive blossom.

There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there
hope when she awoke in the morning.




XXXVI


There was a garden out in the suburbs; a small, leafy corner, with a
few green tables under the orange trees. An old cat slept all day on the
stone step in the sun, and an old mulatresse slept her idle hours away
in her chair at the open window, till some one happened to knock on one
of the green tables. She had milk and cream cheese to sell, and bread
and butter. There was no one who could make such excellent coffee or fry
a chicken so golden brown as she.

The place was too modest to attract the attention of people of fashion,
and so quiet as to have escaped the notice of those in search of
pleasure and dissipation. Edna had discovered it accidentally one day
when the high-board gate stood ajar. She caught sight of a little green
table, blotched with the checkered sunlight that filtered through
the quivering leaves overhead. Within she had found the slumbering
mulatresse, the drowsy cat, and a glass of milk which reminded her of
the milk she had tasted in Iberville.

She often stopped there during her perambulations; sometimes taking a
book with her, and sitting an hour or two under the trees when she found
the place deserted. Once or twice she took a quiet dinner there alone,
having instructed Celestine beforehand to prepare no dinner at home. It
was the last place in the city where she would have expected to meet any
one she knew.

Still she was not astonished when, as she was partaking of a modest
dinner late in the afternoon, looking into an open book, stroking the
cat, which had made friends with her--she was not greatly astonished to
see Robert come in at the tall garden gate.

“I am destined to see you only by accident,” she said, shoving the
cat off the chair beside her. He was surprised, ill at ease, almost
embarrassed at meeting her thus so unexpectedly.

“Do you come here often?” he asked.

“I almost live here,” she said.

“I used to drop in very often for a cup of Catiche's good coffee. This
is the first time since I came back.”

“She'll bring you a plate, and you will share my dinner. There's always
enough for two--even three.” Edna had intended to be indifferent and as
reserved as he when she met him; she had reached the determination by a
laborious train of reasoning, incident to one of her despondent moods.
But her resolve melted when she saw him before designing Providence had
led him into her path.

“Why have you kept away from me, Robert?” she asked, closing the book
that lay open upon the table.

“Why are you so personal, Mrs. Pontellier? Why do you force me to
idiotic subterfuges?” he exclaimed with sudden warmth. “I suppose
there's no use telling you I've been very busy, or that I've been sick,
or that I've been to see you and not found you at home. Please let me
off with any one of these excuses.”

“You are the embodiment of selfishness,” she said. “You save yourself
something--I don't know what--but there is some selfish motive, and in
sparing yourself you never consider for a moment what I think, or how
I feel your neglect and indifference. I suppose this is what you would
call unwomanly; but I have got into a habit of expressing myself. It
doesn't matter to me, and you may think me unwomanly if you like.”

“No; I only think you cruel, as I said the other day. Maybe not
intentionally cruel; but you seem to be forcing me into disclosures
which can result in nothing; as if you would have me bare a wound for
the pleasure of looking at it, without the intention or power of healing
it.”

“I'm spoiling your dinner, Robert; never mind what I say. You haven't
eaten a morsel.”

“I only came in for a cup of coffee.” His sensitive face was all
disfigured with excitement.

“Isn't this a delightful place?” she remarked. “I am so glad it has
never actually been discovered. It is so quiet, so sweet, here. Do you
notice there is scarcely a sound to be heard? It's so out of the way;
and a good walk from the car. However, I don't mind walking. I always
feel so sorry for women who don't like to walk; they miss so much--so
many rare little glimpses of life; and we women learn so little of life
on the whole.

“Catiche's coffee is always hot. I don't know how she manages it, here
in the open air. Celestine's coffee gets cold bringing it from the
kitchen to the dining-room. Three lumps! How can you drink it so sweet?
Take some of the cress with your chop; it's so biting and crisp. Then
there's the advantage of being able to smoke with your coffee out here.
Now, in the city--aren't you going to smoke?”

“After a while,” he said, laying a cigar on the table.

“Who gave it to you?” she laughed.

“I bought it. I suppose I'm getting reckless; I bought a whole box.” She
was determined not to be personal again and make him uncomfortable.

The cat made friends with him, and climbed into his lap when he smoked
his cigar. He stroked her silky fur, and talked a little about her. He
looked at Edna's book, which he had read; and he told her the end, to
save her the trouble of wading through it, he said.

Again he accompanied her back to her home; and it was after dusk when
they reached the little “pigeon-house.” She did not ask him to remain,
which he was grateful for, as it permitted him to stay without the
discomfort of blundering through an excuse which he had no intention
of considering. He helped her to light the lamp; then she went into her
room to take off her hat and to bathe her face and hands.

When she came back Robert was not examining the pictures and magazines
as before; he sat off in the shadow, leaning his head back on the chair
as if in a reverie. Edna lingered a moment beside the table, arranging
the books there. Then she went across the room to where he sat. She bent
over the arm of his chair and called his name.

“Robert,” she said, “are you asleep?”

“No,” he answered, looking up at her.

She leaned over and kissed him--a soft, cool, delicate kiss, whose
voluptuous sting penetrated his whole being--then she moved away from
him. He followed, and took her in his arms, just holding her close to
him. She put her hand up to his face and pressed his cheek against her
own. The action was full of love and tenderness. He sought her lips
again. Then he drew her down upon the sofa beside him and held her hand
in both of his.

“Now you know,” he said, “now you know what I have been fighting against
since last summer at Grand Isle; what drove me away and drove me back
again.”

“Why have you been fighting against it?” she asked. Her face glowed with
soft lights.

“Why? Because you were not free; you were Leonce Pontellier's wife. I
couldn't help loving you if you were ten times his wife; but so long as
I went away from you and kept away I could help telling you so.” She put
her free hand up to his shoulder, and then against his cheek, rubbing it
softly. He kissed her again. His face was warm and flushed.

“There in Mexico I was thinking of you all the time, and longing for
you.”

“But not writing to me,” she interrupted.

“Something put into my head that you cared for me; and I lost my senses.
I forgot everything but a wild dream of your some way becoming my wife.”

“Your wife!”

“Religion, loyalty, everything would give way if only you cared.”

“Then you must have forgotten that I was Leonce Pontellier's wife.”

“Oh! I was demented, dreaming of wild, impossible things, recalling men
who had set their wives free, we have heard of such things.”

“Yes, we have heard of such things.”

“I came back full of vague, mad intentions. And when I got here--”

“When you got here you never came near me!” She was still caressing his
cheek.

“I realized what a cur I was to dream of such a thing, even if you had
been willing.”

She took his face between her hands and looked into it as if she would
never withdraw her eyes more. She kissed him on the forehead, the eyes,
the cheeks, and the lips.

“You have been a very, very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of
impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I
am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not.
I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'Here, Robert, take her
and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both.”

His face grew a little white. “What do you mean?” he asked.

There was a knock at the door. Old Celestine came in to say that Madame
Ratignolle's servant had come around the back way with a message that
Madame had been taken sick and begged Mrs. Pontellier to go to her
immediately.

“Yes, yes,” said Edna, rising; “I promised. Tell her yes--to wait for
me. I'll go back with her.”

“Let me walk over with you,” offered Robert.

“No,” she said; “I will go with the servant.” She went into her room to
put on her hat, and when she came in again she sat once more upon the
sofa beside him. He had not stirred. She put her arms about his neck.

“Good-by, my sweet Robert. Tell me good-by.” He kissed her with a degree
of passion which had not before entered into his caress, and strained
her to him.

“I love you,” she whispered, “only you; no one but you. It was you who
awoke me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream. Oh! you have made
me so unhappy with your indifference. Oh! I have suffered, suffered! Now
you are here we shall love each other, my Robert. We shall be everything
to each other. Nothing else in the world is of any consequence. I must
go to my friend; but you will wait for me? No matter how late; you will
wait for me, Robert?”

“Don't go; don't go! Oh! Edna, stay with me,” he pleaded. “Why should
you go? Stay with me, stay with me.”

“I shall come back as soon as I can; I shall find you here.” She buried
her face in his neck, and said good-by again. Her seductive voice,
together with his great love for her, had enthralled his senses, had
deprived him of every impulse but the longing to hold her and keep her.




XXXVII


Edna looked in at the drug store. Monsieur Ratignolle was putting up
a mixture himself, very carefully, dropping a red liquid into a tiny
glass. He was grateful to Edna for having come; her presence would be
a comfort to his wife. Madame Ratignolle's sister, who had always been
with her at such trying times, had not been able to come up from the
plantation, and Adele had been inconsolable until Mrs. Pontellier so
kindly promised to come to her. The nurse had been with them at night
for the past week, as she lived a great distance away. And Dr. Mandelet
had been coming and going all the afternoon. They were then looking for
him any moment.

Edna hastened upstairs by a private stairway that led from the rear of
the store to the apartments above. The children were all sleeping in a
back room. Madame Ratignolle was in the salon, whither she had strayed
in her suffering impatience. She sat on the sofa, clad in an ample
white peignoir, holding a handkerchief tight in her hand with a nervous
clutch. Her face was drawn and pinched, her sweet blue eyes haggard and
unnatural. All her beautiful hair had been drawn back and plaited. It
lay in a long braid on the sofa pillow, coiled like a golden serpent.
The nurse, a comfortable looking Griffe woman in white apron and cap,
was urging her to return to her bedroom.

“There is no use, there is no use,” she said at once to Edna. “We must
get rid of Mandelet; he is getting too old and careless. He said he
would be here at half-past seven; now it must be eight. See what time it
is, Josephine.”

The woman was possessed of a cheerful nature, and refused to take any
situation too seriously, especially a situation with which she was so
familiar. She urged Madame to have courage and patience. But Madame only
set her teeth hard into her under lip, and Edna saw the sweat gather
in beads on her white forehead. After a moment or two she uttered a
profound sigh and wiped her face with the handkerchief rolled in a
ball. She appeared exhausted. The nurse gave her a fresh handkerchief,
sprinkled with cologne water.

“This is too much!” she cried. “Mandelet ought to be killed! Where is
Alphonse? Is it possible I am to be abandoned like this--neglected by
every one?”

“Neglected, indeed!” exclaimed the nurse. Wasn't she there? And here was
Mrs. Pontellier leaving, no doubt, a pleasant evening at home to devote
to her? And wasn't Monsieur Ratignolle coming that very instant through
the hall? And Josephine was quite sure she had heard Doctor Mandelet's
coupe. Yes, there it was, down at the door.

Adele consented to go back to her room. She sat on the edge of a little
low couch next to her bed.

Doctor Mandelet paid no attention to Madame Ratignolle's upbraidings. He
was accustomed to them at such times, and was too well convinced of her
loyalty to doubt it.

He was glad to see Edna, and wanted her to go with him into the salon
and entertain him. But Madame Ratignolle would not consent that Edna
should leave her for an instant. Between agonizing moments, she chatted
a little, and said it took her mind off her sufferings.

Edna began to feel uneasy. She was seized with a vague dread. Her own
like experiences seemed far away, unreal, and only half remembered. She
recalled faintly an ecstasy of pain, the heavy odor of chloroform, a
stupor which had deadened sensation, and an awakening to find a little
new life to which she had given being, added to the great unnumbered
multitude of souls that come and go.

She began to wish she had not come; her presence was not necessary. She
might have invented a pretext for staying away; she might even invent a
pretext now for going. But Edna did not go. With an inward agony, with a
flaming, outspoken revolt against the ways of Nature, she witnessed the
scene of torture.

She was still stunned and speechless with emotion when later she leaned
over her friend to kiss her and softly say good-by. Adele, pressing her
cheek, whispered in an exhausted voice: “Think of the children, Edna. Oh
think of the children! Remember them!”




XXXVIII


Edna still felt dazed when she got outside in the open air. The Doctor's
coupe had returned for him and stood before the porte cochere. She did
not wish to enter the coupe, and told Doctor Mandelet she would walk;
she was not afraid, and would go alone. He directed his carriage to meet
him at Mrs. Pontellier's, and he started to walk home with her.

Up--away up, over the narrow street between the tall houses, the stars
were blazing. The air was mild and caressing, but cool with the breath
of spring and the night. They walked slowly, the Doctor with a heavy,
measured tread and his hands behind him; Edna, in an absent-minded way,
as she had walked one night at Grand Isle, as if her thoughts had gone
ahead of her and she was striving to overtake them.

“You shouldn't have been there, Mrs. Pontellier,” he said. “That was no
place for you. Adele is full of whims at such times. There were a dozen
women she might have had with her, unimpressionable women. I felt that
it was cruel, cruel. You shouldn't have gone.”

“Oh, well!” she answered, indifferently. “I don't know that it matters
after all. One has to think of the children some time or other; the
sooner the better.”

“When is Leonce coming back?”

“Quite soon. Some time in March.”

“And you are going abroad?”

“Perhaps--no, I am not going. I'm not going to be forced into doing
things. I don't want to go abroad. I want to be let alone. Nobody has
any right--except children, perhaps--and even then, it seems to me--or
it did seem--” She felt that her speech was voicing the incoherency of
her thoughts, and stopped abruptly.

“The trouble is,” sighed the Doctor, grasping her meaning intuitively,
“that youth is given up to illusions. It seems to be a provision of
Nature; a decoy to secure mothers for the race. And Nature takes no
account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create,
and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.”

“Yes,” she said. “The years that are gone seem like dreams--if one might
go on sleeping and dreaming--but to wake up and find--oh! well! perhaps
it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain
a dupe to illusions all one's life.”

“It seems to me, my dear child,” said the Doctor at parting, holding her
hand, “you seem to me to be in trouble. I am not going to ask for your
confidence. I will only say that if ever you feel moved to give it to
me, perhaps I might help you. I know I would understand. And I tell you
there are not many who would--not many, my dear.”

“Some way I don't feel moved to speak of things that trouble me. Don't
think I am ungrateful or that I don't appreciate your sympathy. There
are periods of despondency and suffering which take possession of me.
But I don't want anything but my own way. That is wanting a good deal,
of course, when you have to trample upon the lives, the hearts, the
prejudices of others--but no matter--still, I shouldn't want to trample
upon the little lives. Oh! I don't know what I'm saying, Doctor. Good
night. Don't blame me for anything.”

“Yes, I will blame you if you don't come and see me soon. We will talk
of things you never have dreamt of talking about before. It will do
us both good. I don't want you to blame yourself, whatever comes. Good
night, my child.”

She let herself in at the gate, but instead of entering she sat upon
the step of the porch. The night was quiet and soothing. All the tearing
emotion of the last few hours seemed to fall away from her like a
somber, uncomfortable garment, which she had but to loosen to be rid of.
She went back to that hour before Adele had sent for her; and her senses
kindled afresh in thinking of Robert's words, the pressure of his arms,
and the feeling of his lips upon her own. She could picture at that
moment no greater bliss on earth than possession of the beloved one.
His expression of love had already given him to her in part. When she
thought that he was there at hand, waiting for her, she grew numb with
the intoxication of expectancy. It was so late; he would be asleep
perhaps. She would awaken him with a kiss. She hoped he would be asleep
that she might arouse him with her caresses.

Still, she remembered Adele's voice whispering, “Think of the children;
think of them.” She meant to think of them; that determination had
driven into her soul like a death wound--but not to-night. To-morrow
would be time to think of everything.

Robert was not waiting for her in the little parlor. He was nowhere at
hand. The house was empty. But he had scrawled on a piece of paper that
lay in the lamplight:

“I love you. Good-by--because I love you.”

Edna grew faint when she read the words. She went and sat on the sofa.
Then she stretched herself out there, never uttering a sound. She did
not sleep. She did not go to bed. The lamp sputtered and went out. She
was still awake in the morning, when Celestine unlocked the kitchen door
and came in to light the fire.




XXXIX


Victor, with hammer and nails and scraps of scantling, was patching a
corner of one of the galleries. Mariequita sat near by, dangling her
legs, watching him work, and handing him nails from the tool-box. The
sun was beating down upon them. The girl had covered her head with her
apron folded into a square pad. They had been talking for an hour or
more. She was never tired of hearing Victor describe the dinner at Mrs.
Pontellier's. He exaggerated every detail, making it appear a veritable
Lucullean feast. The flowers were in tubs, he said. The champagne was
quaffed from huge golden goblets. Venus rising from the foam could have
presented no more entrancing a spectacle than Mrs. Pontellier, blazing
with beauty and diamonds at the head of the board, while the other women
were all of them youthful houris, possessed of incomparable charms. She
got it into her head that Victor was in love with Mrs. Pontellier, and
he gave her evasive answers, framed so as to confirm her belief. She
grew sullen and cried a little, threatening to go off and leave him to
his fine ladies. There were a dozen men crazy about her at the Cheniere;
and since it was the fashion to be in love with married people, why, she
could run away any time she liked to New Orleans with Celina's husband.

Celina's husband was a fool, a coward, and a pig, and to prove it to
her, Victor intended to hammer his head into a jelly the next time he
encountered him. This assurance was very consoling to Mariequita. She
dried her eyes, and grew cheerful at the prospect.

They were still talking of the dinner and the allurements of city life
when Mrs. Pontellier herself slipped around the corner of the house. The
two youngsters stayed dumb with amazement before what they considered
to be an apparition. But it was really she in flesh and blood, looking
tired and a little travel-stained.

“I walked up from the wharf,” she said, “and heard the hammering. I
supposed it was you, mending the porch. It's a good thing. I was always
tripping over those loose planks last summer. How dreary and deserted
everything looks!”

It took Victor some little time to comprehend that she had come in
Beaudelet's lugger, that she had come alone, and for no purpose but to
rest.

“There's nothing fixed up yet, you see. I'll give you my room; it's the
only place.”

“Any corner will do,” she assured him.

“And if you can stand Philomel's cooking,” he went on, “though I might
try to get her mother while you are here. Do you think she would come?”
 turning to Mariequita.

Mariequita thought that perhaps Philomel's mother might come for a few
days, and money enough.

Beholding Mrs. Pontellier make her appearance, the girl had at once
suspected a lovers' rendezvous. But Victor's astonishment was so
genuine, and Mrs. Pontellier's indifference so apparent, that the
disturbing notion did not lodge long in her brain. She contemplated with
the greatest interest this woman who gave the most sumptuous dinners in
America, and who had all the men in New Orleans at her feet.

“What time will you have dinner?” asked Edna. “I'm very hungry; but
don't get anything extra.”

“I'll have it ready in little or no time,” he said, bustling and packing
away his tools. “You may go to my room to brush up and rest yourself.
Mariequita will show you.”

“Thank you,” said Edna. “But, do you know, I have a notion to go down to
the beach and take a good wash and even a little swim, before dinner?”

“The water is too cold!” they both exclaimed. “Don't think of it.”

“Well, I might go down and try--dip my toes in. Why, it seems to me the
sun is hot enough to have warmed the very depths of the ocean. Could you
get me a couple of towels? I'd better go right away, so as to be back in
time. It would be a little too chilly if I waited till this afternoon.”

Mariequita ran over to Victor's room, and returned with some towels,
which she gave to Edna.

“I hope you have fish for dinner,” said Edna, as she started to walk
away; “but don't do anything extra if you haven't.”

“Run and find Philomel's mother,” Victor instructed the girl. “I'll
go to the kitchen and see what I can do. By Gimminy! Women have no
consideration! She might have sent me word.”

Edna walked on down to the beach rather mechanically, not noticing
anything special except that the sun was hot. She was not dwelling upon
any particular train of thought. She had done all the thinking which was
necessary after Robert went away, when she lay awake upon the sofa till
morning.

She had said over and over to herself: “To-day it is Arobin; to-morrow
it will be some one else. It makes no difference to me, it doesn't
matter about Leonce Pontellier--but Raoul and Etienne!” She understood
now clearly what she had meant long ago when she said to Adele
Ratignolle that she would give up the unessential, but she would never
sacrifice herself for her children.

Despondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night, and had never
lifted. There was no one thing in the world that she desired. There
was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert; and she even
realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of
him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone. The children
appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her; who had
overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul's slavery for the rest
of her days. But she knew a way to elude them. She was not thinking of
these things when she walked down to the beach.

The water of the Gulf stretched out before her, gleaming with the
million lights of the sun. The voice of the sea is seductive, never
ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander
in abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there
was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating
the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the
water.

Edna had found her old bathing suit still hanging, faded, upon its
accustomed peg.

She put it on, leaving her clothing in the bath-house. But when she
was there beside the sea, absolutely alone, she cast the unpleasant,
pricking garments from her, and for the first time in her life she stood
naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat
upon her, and the waves that invited her.

How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky! how
delicious! She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a
familiar world that it had never known.

The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents
about her ankles. She walked out. The water was chill, but she walked
on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and reached
out with a long, sweeping stroke. The touch of the sea is sensuous,
enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

She went on and on. She remembered the night she swam far out, and
recalled the terror that seized her at the fear of being unable to
regain the shore. She did not look back now, but went on and on,
thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little
child, believing that it had no beginning and no end.

Her arms and legs were growing tired.

She thought of Leonce and the children. They were a part of her life.
But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and
soul. How Mademoiselle Reisz would have laughed, perhaps sneered, if she
knew! “And you call yourself an artist! What pretensions, Madame! The
artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies.”

Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her.

“Good-by--because I love you.” He did not know; he did not understand.
He would never understand. Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood
if she had seen him--but it was too late; the shore was far behind her,
and her strength was gone.

She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an
instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister
Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the
sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked
across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks
filled the air.




*****




BEYOND THE BAYOU


The bayou curved like a crescent around the point of land on which La
Folle's cabin stood. Between the stream and the hut lay a big abandoned
field, where cattle were pastured when the bayou supplied them with
water enough. Through the woods that spread back into unknown regions
the woman had drawn an imaginary line, and past this circle she never
stepped. This was the form of her only mania.

She was now a large, gaunt black woman, past thirty-five. Her real name
was Jacqueline, but every one on the plantation called her La Folle,
because in childhood she had been frightened literally “out of her
senses,” and had never wholly regained them.

It was when there had been skirmishing and sharpshooting all day in the
woods. Evening was near when P'tit Maitre, black with powder and crimson
with blood, had staggered into the cabin of Jacqueline's mother, his
pursuers close at his heels. The sight had stunned her childish reason.

She dwelt alone in her solitary cabin, for the rest of the quarters had
long since been removed beyond her sight and knowledge. She had more
physical strength than most men, and made her patch of cotton and corn
and tobacco like the best of them. But of the world beyond the bayou she
had long known nothing, save what her morbid fancy conceived.

People at Bellissime had grown used to her and her way, and they thought
nothing of it. Even when “Old Mis'” died, they did not wonder that La
Folle had not crossed the bayou, but had stood upon her side of it,
wailing and lamenting.

P'tit Maitre was now the owner of Bellissime. He was a middle-aged man,
with a family of beautiful daughters about him, and a little son whom La
Folle loved as if he had been her own. She called him Cheri, and so did
every one else because she did.

None of the girls had ever been to her what Cheri was. They had each
and all loved to be with her, and to listen to her wondrous stories of
things that always happened “yonda, beyon' de bayou.”

But none of them had stroked her black hand quite as Cheri did, nor
rested their heads against her knee so confidingly, nor fallen asleep in
her arms as he used to do. For Cheri hardly did such things now, since
he had become the proud possessor of a gun, and had had his black curls
cut off.

That summer--the summer Cheri gave La Folle two black curls tied with
a knot of red ribbon--the water ran so low in the bayou that even the
little children at Bellissime were able to cross it on foot, and the
cattle were sent to pasture down by the river. La Folle was sorry when
they were gone, for she loved these dumb companions well, and liked to
feel that they were there, and to hear them browsing by night up to her
own enclosure.

It was Saturday afternoon, when the fields were deserted. The men had
flocked to a neighboring village to do their week's trading, and the
women were occupied with household affairs,--La Folle as well as the
others. It was then she mended and washed her handful of clothes,
scoured her house, and did her baking.

In this last employment she never forgot Cheri. To-day she had fashioned
croquignoles of the most fantastic and alluring shapes for him. So when
she saw the boy come trudging across the old field with his gleaming
little new rifle on his shoulder, she called out gayly to him, “Cheri!
Cheri!”

But Cheri did not need the summons, for he was coming straight to her.
His pockets all bulged out with almonds and raisins and an orange that
he had secured for her from the very fine dinner which had been given
that day up at his father's house.

He was a sunny-faced youngster of ten. When he had emptied his pockets,
La Folle patted his round red cheek, wiped his soiled hands on her
apron, and smoothed his hair. Then she watched him as, with his cakes
in his hand, he crossed her strip of cotton back of the cabin, and
disappeared into the wood.

He had boasted of the things he was going to do with his gun out there.

“You think they got plenty deer in the wood, La Folle?” he had inquired,
with the calculating air of an experienced hunter.

“Non, non!” the woman laughed. “Don't you look fo' no deer, Cheri. Dat's
too big. But you bring La Folle one good fat squirrel fo' her dinner
to-morrow, an' she goin' be satisfi'.”

“One squirrel ain't a bite. I'll bring you mo' 'an one, La Folle,” he
had boasted pompously as he went away.

When the woman, an hour later, heard the report of the boy's rifle close
to the wood's edge, she would have thought nothing of it if a sharp cry
of distress had not followed the sound.

She withdrew her arms from the tub of suds in which they had been
plunged, dried them upon her apron, and as quickly as her trembling
limbs would bear her, hurried to the spot whence the ominous report had
come.

It was as she feared. There she found Cheri stretched upon the ground,
with his rifle beside him. He moaned piteously:--

“I'm dead, La Folle! I'm dead! I'm gone!”

“Non, non!” she exclaimed resolutely, as she knelt beside him. “Put you'
arm 'roun' La Folle's nake, Cheri. Dat's nuttin'; dat goin' be nuttin'.”
 She lifted him in her powerful arms.

Cheri had carried his gun muzzle-downward. He had stumbled,--he did not
know how. He only knew that he had a ball lodged somewhere in his leg,
and he thought that his end was at hand. Now, with his head upon the
woman's shoulder, he moaned and wept with pain and fright.

“Oh, La Folle! La Folle! it hurt so bad! I can' stan' it, La Folle!”

“Don't cry, mon bebe, mon bebe, mon Cheri!” the woman spoke soothingly
as she covered the ground with long strides. “La Folle goin' mine you;
Doctor Bonfils goin' come make mon Cheri well agin.”

She had reached the abandoned field. As she crossed it with her precious
burden, she looked constantly and restlessly from side to side. A
terrible fear was upon her,--the fear of the world beyond the bayou, the
morbid and insane dread she had been under since childhood.

When she was at the bayou's edge she stood there, and shouted for help
as if a life depended upon it:--

“Oh, P'tit Maitre! P'tit Maitre! Venez donc! Au secours! Au secours!”

No voice responded. Cheri's hot tears were scalding her neck. She called
for each and every one upon the place, and still no answer came.

She shouted, she wailed; but whether her voice remained unheard or
unheeded, no reply came to her frenzied cries. And all the while Cheri
moaned and wept and entreated to be taken home to his mother.

La Folle gave a last despairing look around her. Extreme terror was upon
her. She clasped the child close against her breast, where he could feel
her heart beat like a muffled hammer. Then shutting her eyes, she ran
suddenly down the shallow bank of the bayou, and never stopped till she
had climbed the opposite shore.

She stood there quivering an instant as she opened her eyes. Then she
plunged into the footpath through the trees.

She spoke no more to Cheri, but muttered constantly, “Bon Dieu, ayez
pitie La Folle! Bon Dieu, ayez pitie moi!”

Instinct seemed to guide her. When the pathway spread clear and smooth
enough before her, she again closed her eyes tightly against the sight
of that unknown and terrifying world.

A child, playing in some weeds, caught sight of her as she neared the
quarters. The little one uttered a cry of dismay.

“La Folle!” she screamed, in her piercing treble. “La Folle done cross
de bayer!”

Quickly the cry passed down the line of cabins.

“Yonda, La Folle done cross de bayou!”

Children, old men, old women, young ones with infants in their arms,
flocked to doors and windows to see this awe-inspiring spectacle. Most
of them shuddered with superstitious dread of what it might portend.
“She totin' Cheri!” some of them shouted.

Some of the more daring gathered about her, and followed at her heels,
only to fall back with new terror when she turned her distorted face
upon them. Her eyes were bloodshot and the saliva had gathered in a
white foam on her black lips.

Some one had run ahead of her to where P'tit Maitre sat with his family
and guests upon the gallery.

“P'tit Maitre! La Folle done cross de bayou! Look her! Look her yonda
totin' Cheri!” This startling intimation was the first which they had of
the woman's approach.

She was now near at hand. She walked with long strides. Her eyes were
fixed desperately before her, and she breathed heavily, as a tired ox.

At the foot of the stairway, which she could not have mounted, she laid
the boy in his father's arms. Then the world that had looked red to
La Folle suddenly turned black,--like that day she had seen powder and
blood.

She reeled for an instant. Before a sustaining arm could reach her, she
fell heavily to the ground.

When La Folle regained consciousness, she was at home again, in her own
cabin and upon her own bed. The moon rays, streaming in through the open
door and windows, gave what light was needed to the old black mammy who
stood at the table concocting a tisane of fragrant herbs. It was very
late.

Others who had come, and found that the stupor clung to her, had gone
again. P'tit Maitre had been there, and with him Doctor Bonfils, who
said that La Folle might die.

But death had passed her by. The voice was very clear and steady with
which she spoke to Tante Lizette, brewing her tisane there in a corner.

“Ef you will give me one good drink tisane, Tante Lizette, I b'lieve I'm
goin' sleep, me.”

And she did sleep; so soundly, so healthfully, that old Lizette without
compunction stole softly away, to creep back through the moonlit fields
to her own cabin in the new quarters.

The first touch of the cool gray morning awoke La Folle. She arose,
calmly, as if no tempest had shaken and threatened her existence but
yesterday.

She donned her new blue cottonade and white apron, for she remembered
that this was Sunday. When she had made for herself a cup of strong
black coffee, and drunk it with relish, she quitted the cabin and walked
across the old familiar field to the bayou's edge again.

She did not stop there as she had always done before, but crossed with a
long, steady stride as if she had done this all her life.

When she had made her way through the brush and scrub cottonwood-trees
that lined the opposite bank, she found herself upon the border of a
field where the white, bursting cotton, with the dew upon it, gleamed
for acres and acres like frosted silver in the early dawn.

La Folle drew a long, deep breath as she gazed across the country. She
walked slowly and uncertainly, like one who hardly knows how, looking
about her as she went.

The cabins, that yesterday had sent a clamor of voices to pursue her,
were quiet now. No one was yet astir at Bellissime. Only the birds that
darted here and there from hedges were awake, and singing their matins.

When La Folle came to the broad stretch of velvety lawn that surrounded
the house, she moved slowly and with delight over the springy turf, that
was delicious beneath her tread.

She stopped to find whence came those perfumes that were assailing her
senses with memories from a time far gone.

There they were, stealing up to her from the thousand blue violets that
peeped out from green, luxuriant beds. There they were, showering down
from the big waxen bells of the magnolias far above her head, and from
the jessamine clumps around her.

There were roses, too, without number. To right and left palms spread
in broad and graceful curves. It all looked like enchantment beneath the
sparkling sheen of dew.

When La Folle had slowly and cautiously mounted the many steps that led
up to the veranda, she turned to look back at the perilous ascent she
had made. Then she caught sight of the river, bending like a silver bow
at the foot of Bellissime. Exultation possessed her soul.

La Folle rapped softly upon a door near at hand. Cheri's mother
soon cautiously opened it. Quickly and cleverly she dissembled the
astonishment she felt at seeing La Folle.

“Ah, La Folle! Is it you, so early?”

“Oui, madame. I come ax how my po' li'le Cheri do, 's mo'nin'.”

“He is feeling easier, thank you, La Folle. Dr. Bonfils says it will be
nothing serious. He's sleeping now. Will you come back when he awakes?”

“Non, madame. I'm goin' wait yair tell Cheri wake up.” La Folle seated
herself upon the topmost step of the veranda.

A look of wonder and deep content crept into her face as she watched for
the first time the sun rise upon the new, the beautiful world beyond the
bayou.





MA'AME PELAGIE




I


When the war began, there stood on Cote Joyeuse an imposing mansion
of red brick, shaped like the Pantheon. A grove of majestic live-oaks
surrounded it.

Thirty years later, only the thick walls were standing, with the dull
red brick showing here and there through a matted growth of clinging
vines. The huge round pillars were intact; so to some extent was the
stone flagging of hall and portico. There had been no home so stately
along the whole stretch of Cote Joyeuse. Every one knew that, as they
knew it had cost Philippe Valmet sixty thousand dollars to build, away
back in 1840. No one was in danger of forgetting that fact, so long as
his daughter Pelagie survived. She was a queenly, white-haired woman of
fifty. “Ma'ame Pelagie,” they called her, though she was unmarried, as
was her sister Pauline, a child in Ma'ame Pelagie's eyes; a child of
thirty-five.

The two lived alone in a three-roomed cabin, almost within the shadow of
the ruin. They lived for a dream, for Ma'ame Pelagie's dream, which was
to rebuild the old home.

It would be pitiful to tell how their days were spent to accomplish this
end; how the dollars had been saved for thirty years and the picayunes
hoarded; and yet, not half enough gathered! But Ma'ame Pelagie felt sure
of twenty years of life before her, and counted upon as many more for
her sister. And what could not come to pass in twenty--in forty--years?

Often, of pleasant afternoons, the two would drink their black coffee,
seated upon the stone-flagged portico whose canopy was the blue sky of
Louisiana. They loved to sit there in the silence, with only each other
and the sheeny, prying lizards for company, talking of the old times
and planning for the new; while light breezes stirred the tattered vines
high up among the columns, where owls nested.

“We can never hope to have all just as it was, Pauline,” Ma'ame Pelagie
would say; “perhaps the marble pillars of the salon will have to be
replaced by wooden ones, and the crystal candelabra left out. Should you
be willing, Pauline?”

“Oh, yes Sesoeur, I shall be willing.” It was always, “Yes, Sesoeur,” or
“No, Sesoeur,” “Just as you please, Sesoeur,” with poor little Mam'selle
Pauline. For what did she remember of that old life and that old
spendor? Only a faint gleam here and there; the half-consciousness of
a young, uneventful existence; and then a great crash. That meant the
nearness of war; the revolt of slaves; confusion ending in fire and
flame through which she was borne safely in the strong arms of Pelagie,
and carried to the log cabin which was still their home. Their brother,
Leandre, had known more of it all than Pauline, and not so much as
Pelagie. He had left the management of the big plantation with all its
memories and traditions to his older sister, and had gone away to dwell
in cities. That was many years ago. Now, Leandre's business called him
frequently and upon long journeys from home, and his motherless daughter
was coming to stay with her aunts at Cote Joyeuse.

They talked about it, sipping their coffee on the ruined portico.
Mam'selle Pauline was terribly excited; the flush that throbbed into her
pale, nervous face showed it; and she locked her thin fingers in and out
incessantly.

“But what shall we do with La Petite, Sesoeur? Where shall we put her?
How shall we amuse her? Ah, Seigneur!”

“She will sleep upon a cot in the room next to ours,” responded Ma'ame
Pelagie, “and live as we do. She knows how we live, and why we live; her
father has told her. She knows we have money and could squander it if we
chose. Do not fret, Pauline; let us hope La Petite is a true Valmet.”

Then Ma'ame Pelagie rose with stately deliberation and went to saddle
her horse, for she had yet to make her last daily round through the
fields; and Mam'selle Pauline threaded her way slowly among the tangled
grasses toward the cabin.

The coming of La Petite, bringing with her as she did the pungent
atmosphere of an outside and dimly known world, was a shock to these
two, living their dream-life. The girl was quite as tall as her aunt
Pelagie, with dark eyes that reflected joy as a still pool reflects the
light of stars; and her rounded cheek was tinged like the pink crepe
myrtle. Mam'selle Pauline kissed her and trembled. Ma'ame Pelagie looked
into her eyes with a searching gaze, which seemed to seek a likeness of
the past in the living present.

And they made room between them for this young life.




II


La Petite had determined upon trying to fit herself to the strange,
narrow existence which she knew awaited her at Cote Joyeuse. It went
well enough at first. Sometimes she followed Ma'ame Pelagie into the
fields to note how the cotton was opening, ripe and white; or to count
the ears of corn upon the hardy stalks. But oftener she was with her
aunt Pauline, assisting in household offices, chattering of her brief
past, or walking with the older woman arm-in-arm under the trailing moss
of the giant oaks.

Mam'selle Pauline's steps grew very buoyant that summer, and her eyes
were sometimes as bright as a bird's, unless La Petite were away
from her side, when they would lose all other light but one of uneasy
expectancy. The girl seemed to love her well in return, and called her
endearingly Tan'tante. But as the time went by, La Petite became very
quiet,--not listless, but thoughtful, and slow in her movements. Then
her cheeks began to pale, till they were tinged like the creamy plumes
of the white crepe myrtle that grew in the ruin.

One day when she sat within its shadow, between her aunts, holding a
hand of each, she said: “Tante Pelagie, I must tell you something,
you and Tan'tante.” She spoke low, but clearly and firmly. “I love you
both,--please remember that I love you both. But I must go away from
you. I can't live any longer here at Cote Joyeuse.”

A spasm passed through Mam'selle Pauline's delicate frame. La Petite
could feel the twitch of it in the wiry fingers that were intertwined
with her own. Ma'ame Pelagie remained unchanged and motionless. No human
eye could penetrate so deep as to see the satisfaction which her soul
felt. She said: “What do you mean, Petite? Your father has sent you to
us, and I am sure it is his wish that you remain.”

“My father loves me, tante Pelagie, and such will not be his wish when
he knows. Oh!” she continued with a restless, movement, “it is as though
a weight were pressing me backward here. I must live another life; the
life I lived before. I want to know things that are happening from day
to day over the world, and hear them talked about. I want my music,
my books, my companions. If I had known no other life but this one of
privation, I suppose it would be different. If I had to live this life,
I should make the best of it. But I do not have to; and you know, tante
Pelagie, you do not need to. It seems to me,” she added in a whisper,
“that it is a sin against myself. Ah, Tan'tante!--what is the matter
with Tan'tante?”

It was nothing; only a slight feeling of faintness, that would soon
pass. She entreated them to take no notice; but they brought her some
water and fanned her with a palmetto leaf.

But that night, in the stillness of the room, Mam'selle Pauline sobbed
and would not be comforted. Ma'ame Pelagie took her in her arms.

“Pauline, my little sister Pauline,” she entreated, “I never have seen
you like this before. Do you no longer love me? Have we not been happy
together, you and I?”

“Oh, yes, Sesoeur.”

“Is it because La Petite is going away?”

“Yes, Sesoeur.”

“Then she is dearer to you than I!” spoke Ma'ame Pelagie with sharp
resentment. “Than I, who held you and warmed you in my arms the day you
were born; than I, your mother, father, sister, everything that could
cherish you. Pauline, don't tell me that.”

Mam'selle Pauline tried to talk through her sobs.

“I can't explain it to you, Sesoeur. I don't understand it myself. I
love you as I have always loved you; next to God. But if La Petite goes
away I shall die. I can't understand,--help me, Sesoeur. She seems--she
seems like a saviour; like one who had come and taken me by the hand and
was leading me somewhere-somewhere I want to go.”

Ma'ame Pelagie had been sitting beside the bed in her peignoir and
slippers. She held the hand of her sister who lay there, and smoothed
down the woman's soft brown hair. She said not a word, and the silence
was broken only by Mam'selle Pauline's continued sobs. Once Ma'ame
Pelagie arose to mix a drink of orange-flower water, which she gave to
her sister, as she would have offered it to a nervous, fretful child.
Almost an hour passed before Ma'ame Pelagie spoke again. Then she
said:--

“Pauline, you must cease that sobbing, now, and sleep. You will make
yourself ill. La Petite will not go away. Do you hear me? Do you
understand? She will stay, I promise you.”

Mam'selle Pauline could not clearly comprehend, but she had great faith
in the word of her sister, and soothed by the promise and the touch of
Ma'ame Pelagie's strong, gentle hand, she fell asleep.




III


Ma'ame Pelagie, when she saw that her sister slept, arose noiselessly
and stepped outside upon the low-roofed narrow gallery. She did not
linger there, but with a step that was hurried and agitated, she crossed
the distance that divided her cabin from the ruin.

The night was not a dark one, for the sky was clear and the moon
resplendent. But light or dark would have made no difference to Ma'ame
Pelagie. It was not the first time she had stolen away to the ruin at
night-time, when the whole plantation slept; but she never before had
been there with a heart so nearly broken. She was going there for the
last time to dream her dreams; to see the visions that hitherto had
crowded her days and nights, and to bid them farewell.

There was the first of them, awaiting her upon the very portal; a robust
old white-haired man, chiding her for returning home so late. There are
guests to be entertained. Does she not know it? Guests from the city
and from the near plantations. Yes, she knows it is late. She had been
abroad with Felix, and they did not notice how the time was speeding.
Felix is there; he will explain it all. He is there beside her, but she
does not want to hear what he will tell her father.

Ma'ame Pelagie had sunk upon the bench where she and her sister so
often came to sit. Turning, she gazed in through the gaping chasm of
the window at her side. The interior of the ruin is ablaze. Not with the
moonlight, for that is faint beside the other one--the sparkle from the
crystal candelabra, which negroes, moving noiselessly and respectfully
about, are lighting, one after the other. How the gleam of them reflects
and glances from the polished marble pillars!

The room holds a number of guests. There is old Monsieur Lucien Santien,
leaning against one of the pillars, and laughing at something which
Monsieur Lafirme is telling him, till his fat shoulders shake. His
son Jules is with him--Jules, who wants to marry her. She laughs. She
wonders if Felix has told her father yet. There is young Jerome Lafirme
playing at checkers upon the sofa with Leandre. Little Pauline stands
annoying them and disturbing the game. Leandre reproves her. She begins
to cry, and old black Clementine, her nurse, who is not far off, limps
across the room to pick her up and carry her away. How sensitive the
little one is! But she trots about and takes care of herself better than
she did a year or two ago, when she fell upon the stone hall floor
and raised a great “bo-bo” on her forehead. Pelagie was hurt and angry
enough about it; and she ordered rugs and buffalo robes to be brought
and laid thick upon the tiles, till the little one's steps were surer.

“Il ne faut pas faire mal a Pauline.” She was saying it aloud--“faire
mal a Pauline.”

But she gazes beyond the salon, back into the big dining hall, where
the white crepe myrtle grows. Ha! how low that bat has circled. It has
struck Ma'ame Pelagie full on the breast. She does not know it. She is
beyond there in the dining hall, where her father sits with a group
of friends over their wine. As usual they are talking politics. How
tiresome! She has heard them say “la guerre” oftener than once. La
guerre. Bah! She and Felix have something pleasanter to talk about, out
under the oaks, or back in the shadow of the oleanders.

But they were right! The sound of a cannon, shot at Sumter, has rolled
across the Southern States, and its echo is heard along the whole
stretch of Cote Joyeuse.

Yet Pelagie does not believe it. Not till La Ricaneuse stands before
her with bare, black arms akimbo, uttering a volley of vile abuse and
of brazen impudence. Pelagie wants to kill her. But yet she will not
believe. Not till Felix comes to her in the chamber above the dining
hall--there where that trumpet vine hangs--comes to say good-by to her.
The hurt which the big brass buttons of his new gray uniform pressed
into the tender flesh of her bosom has never left it. She sits upon the
sofa, and he beside her, both speechless with pain. That room would not
have been altered. Even the sofa would have been there in the same spot,
and Ma'ame Pelagie had meant all along, for thirty years, all along, to
lie there upon it some day when the time came to die.

But there is no time to weep, with the enemy at the door. The door has
been no barrier. They are clattering through the halls now, drinking the
wines, shattering the crystal and glass, slashing the portraits.

One of them stands before her and tells her to leave the house. She
slaps his face. How the stigma stands out red as blood upon his blanched
cheek!

Now there is a roar of fire and the flames are bearing down upon her
motionless figure. She wants to show them how a daughter of Louisiana
can perish before her conquerors. But little Pauline clings to her knees
in an agony of terror. Little Pauline must be saved.

“Il ne faut pas faire mal a Pauline.” Again she is saying it
aloud--“faire mal a Pauline.”

The night was nearly spent; Ma'ame Pelagie had glided from the bench
upon which she had rested, and for hours lay prone upon the stone
flagging, motionless. When she dragged herself to her feet it was to
walk like one in a dream. About the great, solemn pillars, one after the
other, she reached her arms, and pressed her cheek and her lips upon the
senseless brick.

“Adieu, adieu!” whispered Ma'ame Pelagie.

There was no longer the moon to guide her steps across the familiar
pathway to the cabin. The brightest light in the sky was Venus, that
swung low in the east. The bats had ceased to beat their wings about
the ruin. Even the mocking-bird that had warbled for hours in the old
mulberry-tree had sung himself asleep. That darkest hour before the day
was mantling the earth. Ma'ame Pelagie hurried through the wet, clinging
grass, beating aside the heavy moss that swept across her face, walking
on toward the cabin-toward Pauline. Not once did she look back upon the
ruin that brooded like a huge monster--a black spot in the darkness that
enveloped it.




IV


Little more than a year later the transformation which the old Valmet
place had undergone was the talk and wonder of Cote Joyeuse. One would
have looked in vain for the ruin; it was no longer there; neither was
the log cabin. But out in the open, where the sun shone upon it, and the
breezes blew about it, was a shapely structure fashioned from woods
that the forests of the State had furnished. It rested upon a solid
foundation of brick.

Upon a corner of the pleasant gallery sat Leandre smoking his afternoon
cigar, and chatting with neighbors who had called. This was to be his
pied a terre now; the home where his sisters and his daughter dwelt. The
laughter of young people was heard out under the trees, and within the
house where La Petite was playing upon the piano. With the enthusiasm
of a young artist she drew from the keys strains that seemed marvelously
beautiful to Mam'selle Pauline, who stood enraptured near her. Mam'selle
Pauline had been touched by the re-creation of Valmet. Her cheek was as
full and almost as flushed as La Petite's. The years were falling away
from her.

Ma'ame Pelagie had been conversing with her brother and his friends.
Then she turned and walked away; stopping to listen awhile to the music
which La Petite was making. But it was only for a moment. She went on
around the curve of the veranda, where she found herself alone. She
stayed there, erect, holding to the banister rail and looking out calmly
in the distance across the fields.

She was dressed in black, with the white kerchief she always wore folded
across her bosom. Her thick, glossy hair rose like a silver diadem from
her brow. In her deep, dark eyes smouldered the light of fires that
would never flame. She had grown very old. Years instead of months
seemed to have passed over her since the night she bade farewell to her
visions.

Poor Ma'ame Pelagie! How could it be different! While the outward
pressure of a young and joyous existence had forced her footsteps into
the light, her soul had stayed in the shadow of the ruin.





DESIREE'S BABY


As the day was pleasant, Madame Valmonde drove over to L'Abri to see
Desiree and the baby.

It made her laugh to think of Desiree with a baby. Why, it seemed
but yesterday that Desiree was little more than a baby herself; when
Monsieur in riding through the gateway of Valmonde had found her lying
asleep in the shadow of the big stone pillar.

The little one awoke in his arms and began to cry for “Dada.” That
was as much as she could do or say. Some people thought she might have
strayed there of her own accord, for she was of the toddling age. The
prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of
Texans, whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the
ferry that Coton Mais kept, just below the plantation. In time Madame
Valmonde abandoned every speculation but the one that Desiree had been
sent to her by a beneficent Providence to be the child of her affection,
seeing that she was without child of the flesh. For the girl grew to be
beautiful and gentle, affectionate and sincere,--the idol of Valmonde.

It was no wonder, when she stood one day against the stone pillar in
whose shadow she had lain asleep, eighteen years before, that Armand
Aubigny riding by and seeing her there, had fallen in love with her.
That was the way all the Aubignys fell in love, as if struck by a pistol
shot. The wonder was that he had not loved her before; for he had known
her since his father brought him home from Paris, a boy of eight, after
his mother died there. The passion that awoke in him that day, when he
saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie
fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.

Monsieur Valmonde grew practical and wanted things well considered: that
is, the girl's obscure origin. Armand looked into her eyes and did not
care. He was reminded that she was nameless. What did it matter about a
name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana?
He ordered the corbeille from Paris, and contained himself with what
patience he could until it arrived; then they were married.

Madame Valmonde had not seen Desiree and the baby for four weeks. When
she reached L'Abri she shuddered at the first sight of it, as she always
did. It was a sad looking place, which for many years had not known the
gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur Aubigny having married and
buried his wife in France, and she having loved her own land too well
ever to leave it. The roof came down steep and black like a cowl,
reaching out beyond the wide galleries that encircled the yellow
stuccoed house. Big, solemn oaks grew close to it, and their
thick-leaved, far-reaching branches shadowed it like a pall. Young
Aubigny's rule was a strict one, too, and under it his negroes had
forgotten how to be gay, as they had been during the old master's
easy-going and indulgent lifetime.

The young mother was recovering slowly, and lay full length, in her soft
white muslins and laces, upon a couch. The baby was beside her, upon her
arm, where he had fallen asleep, at her breast. The yellow nurse woman
sat beside a window fanning herself.

Madame Valmonde bent her portly figure over Desiree and kissed her,
holding her an instant tenderly in her arms. Then she turned to the
child.

“This is not the baby!” she exclaimed, in startled tones. French was the
language spoken at Valmonde in those days.

“I knew you would be astonished,” laughed Desiree, “at the way he has
grown. The little cochon de lait! Look at his legs, mamma, and his
hands and fingernails,--real finger-nails. Zandrine had to cut them this
morning. Isn't it true, Zandrine?”

The woman bowed her turbaned head majestically, “Mais si, Madame.”

“And the way he cries,” went on Desiree, “is deafening. Armand heard him
the other day as far away as La Blanche's cabin.”

Madame Valmonde had never removed her eyes from the child. She lifted it
and walked with it over to the window that was lightest. She scanned the
baby narrowly, then looked as searchingly at Zandrine, whose face was
turned to gaze across the fields.

“Yes, the child has grown, has changed,” said Madame Valmonde, slowly,
as she replaced it beside its mother. “What does Armand say?”

Desiree's face became suffused with a glow that was happiness itself.

“Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly
because it is a boy, to bear his name; though he says not,--that he
would have loved a girl as well. But I know it isn't true. I know he
says that to please me. And mamma,” she added, drawing Madame Valmonde's
head down to her, and speaking in a whisper, “he hasn't punished one of
them--not one of them--since baby is born. Even Negrillon, who pretended
to have burnt his leg that he might rest from work--he only laughed, and
said Negrillon was a great scamp. Oh, mamma, I'm so happy; it frightens
me.”

What Desiree said was true. Marriage, and later the birth of his son had
softened Armand Aubigny's imperious and exacting nature greatly.
This was what made the gentle Desiree so happy, for she loved him
desperately. When he frowned she trembled, but loved him. When he
smiled, she asked no greater blessing of God. But Armand's dark,
handsome face had not often been disfigured by frowns since the day he
fell in love with her.

When the baby was about three months old, Desiree awoke one day to the
conviction that there was something in the air menacing her peace.
It was at first too subtle to grasp. It had only been a disquieting
suggestion; an air of mystery among the blacks; unexpected visits from
far-off neighbors who could hardly account for their coming. Then a
strange, an awful change in her husband's manner, which she dared not
ask him to explain. When he spoke to her, it was with averted eyes, from
which the old love-light seemed to have gone out. He absented himself
from home; and when there, avoided her presence and that of her child,
without excuse. And the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take
hold of him in his dealings with the slaves. Desiree was miserable
enough to die.

She sat in her room, one hot afternoon, in her peignoir, listlessly
drawing through her fingers the strands of her long, silky brown hair
that hung about her shoulders. The baby, half naked, lay asleep upon
her own great mahogany bed, that was like a sumptuous throne, with its
satin-lined half-canopy. One of La Blanche's little quadroon boys--half
naked too--stood fanning the child slowly with a fan of peacock
feathers. Desiree's eyes had been fixed absently and sadly upon the
baby, while she was striving to penetrate the threatening mist that she
felt closing about her. She looked from her child to the boy who stood
beside him, and back again; over and over. “Ah!” It was a cry that she
could not help; which she was not conscious of having uttered. The blood
turned like ice in her veins, and a clammy moisture gathered upon her
face.

She tried to speak to the little quadroon boy; but no sound would come,
at first. When he heard his name uttered, he looked up, and his mistress
was pointing to the door. He laid aside the great, soft fan, and
obediently stole away, over the polished floor, on his bare tiptoes.

She stayed motionless, with gaze riveted upon her child, and her face
the picture of fright.

Presently her husband entered the room, and without noticing her, went
to a table and began to search among some papers which covered it.

“Armand,” she called to him, in a voice which must have stabbed him, if
he was human. But he did not notice. “Armand,” she said again. Then she
rose and tottered towards him. “Armand,” she panted once more, clutching
his arm, “look at our child. What does it mean? tell me.”

He coldly but gently loosened her fingers from about his arm and thrust
the hand away from him. “Tell me what it means!” she cried despairingly.

“It means,” he answered lightly, “that the child is not white; it means
that you are not white.”

A quick conception of all that this accusation meant for her nerved her
with unwonted courage to deny it. “It is a lie; it is not true, I am
white! Look at my hair, it is brown; and my eyes are gray, Armand, you
know they are gray. And my skin is fair,” seizing his wrist. “Look at my
hand; whiter than yours, Armand,” she laughed hysterically.

“As white as La Blanche's,” he returned cruelly; and went away leaving
her alone with their child.

When she could hold a pen in her hand, she sent a despairing letter to
Madame Valmonde.

“My mother, they tell me I am not white. Armand has told me I am not
white. For God's sake tell them it is not true. You must know it is not
true. I shall die. I must die. I cannot be so unhappy, and live.”

The answer that came was brief:

“My own Desiree: Come home to Valmonde; back to your mother who loves
you. Come with your child.”

When the letter reached Desiree she went with it to her husband's study,
and laid it open upon the desk before which he sat. She was like a stone
image: silent, white, motionless after she placed it there.

In silence he ran his cold eyes over the written words.

He said nothing. “Shall I go, Armand?” she asked in tones sharp with
agonized suspense.

“Yes, go.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“Yes, I want you to go.”

He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him; and
felt, somehow, that he was paying Him back in kind when he stabbed thus
into his wife's soul. Moreover he no longer loved her, because of the
unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name.

She turned away like one stunned by a blow, and walked slowly towards
the door, hoping he would call her back.

“Good-by, Armand,” she moaned.

He did not answer her. That was his last blow at fate.

Desiree went in search of her child. Zandrine was pacing the sombre
gallery with it. She took the little one from the nurse's arms with no
word of explanation, and descending the steps, walked away, under the
live-oak branches.

It was an October afternoon; the sun was just sinking. Out in the still
fields the negroes were picking cotton.

Desiree had not changed the thin white garment nor the slippers which
she wore. Her hair was uncovered and the sun's rays brought a golden
gleam from its brown meshes. She did not take the broad, beaten road
which led to the far-off plantation of Valmonde. She walked across a
deserted field, where the stubble bruised her tender feet, so delicately
shod, and tore her thin gown to shreds.

She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thick along the
banks of the deep, sluggish bayou; and she did not come back again.



Some weeks later there was a curious scene enacted at L'Abri. In the
centre of the smoothly swept back yard was a great bonfire. Armand
Aubigny sat in the wide hallway that commanded a view of the spectacle;
and it was he who dealt out to a half dozen negroes the material which
kept this fire ablaze.

A graceful cradle of willow, with all its dainty furbishings, was
laid upon the pyre, which had already been fed with the richness of a
priceless layette. Then there were silk gowns, and velvet and satin ones
added to these; laces, too, and embroideries; bonnets and gloves; for
the corbeille had been of rare quality.

The last thing to go was a tiny bundle of letters; innocent little
scribblings that Desiree had sent to him during the days of their
espousal. There was the remnant of one back in the drawer from which he
took them. But it was not Desiree's; it was part of an old letter from
his mother to his father. He read it. She was thanking God for the
blessing of her husband's love:--

“But above all,” she wrote, “night and day, I thank the good God for
having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that
his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the
brand of slavery.”





A RESPECTABLE WOMAN


Mrs. Baroda was a little provoked to learn that her husband expected his
friend, Gouvernail, up to spend a week or two on the plantation.

They had entertained a good deal during the winter; much of the time had
also been passed in New Orleans in various forms of mild dissipation.
She was looking forward to a period of unbroken rest, now, and
undisturbed tete-a-tete with her husband, when he informed her that
Gouvernail was coming up to stay a week or two.

This was a man she had heard much of but never seen. He had been her
husband's college friend; was now a journalist, and in no sense a
society man or “a man about town,” which were, perhaps, some of the
reasons she had never met him. But she had unconsciously formed an
image of him in her mind. She pictured him tall, slim, cynical; with
eye-glasses, and his hands in his pockets; and she did not like him.
Gouvernail was slim enough, but he wasn't very tall nor very cynical;
neither did he wear eyeglasses nor carry his hands in his pockets. And
she rather liked him when he first presented himself.

But why she liked him she could not explain satisfactorily to herself
when she partly attempted to do so. She could discover in him none of
those brilliant and promising traits which Gaston, her husband, had
often assured her that he possessed. On the contrary, he sat rather mute
and receptive before her chatty eagerness to make him feel at home
and in face of Gaston's frank and wordy hospitality. His manner was as
courteous toward her as the most exacting woman could require; but he
made no direct appeal to her approval or even esteem.

Once settled at the plantation he seemed to like to sit upon the wide
portico in the shade of one of the big Corinthian pillars, smoking his
cigar lazily and listening attentively to Gaston's experience as a sugar
planter.

“This is what I call living,” he would utter with deep satisfaction, as
the air that swept across the sugar field caressed him with its warm and
scented velvety touch. It pleased him also to get on familiar terms with
the big dogs that came about him, rubbing themselves sociably against
his legs. He did not care to fish, and displayed no eagerness to go out
and kill grosbecs when Gaston proposed doing so.

Gouvernail's personality puzzled Mrs. Baroda, but she liked him. Indeed,
he was a lovable, inoffensive fellow. After a few days, when she could
understand him no better than at first, she gave over being puzzled and
remained piqued. In this mood she left her husband and her guest, for
the most part, alone together. Then finding that Gouvernail took no
manner of exception to her action, she imposed her society upon him,
accompanying him in his idle strolls to the mill and walks along the
batture. She persistently sought to penetrate the reserve in which he
had unconsciously enveloped himself.

“When is he going--your friend?” she one day asked her husband. “For my
part, he tires me frightfully.”

“Not for a week yet, dear. I can't understand; he gives you no trouble.”

“No. I should like him better if he did; if he were more like others,
and I had to plan somewhat for his comfort and enjoyment.”

Gaston took his wife's pretty face between his hands and looked tenderly
and laughingly into her troubled eyes.

They were making a bit of toilet sociably together in Mrs. Baroda's
dressing-room.

“You are full of surprises, ma belle,” he said to her. “Even I can never
count upon how you are going to act under given conditions.” He kissed
her and turned to fasten his cravat before the mirror.

“Here you are,” he went on, “taking poor Gouvernail seriously and making
a commotion over him, the last thing he would desire or expect.”

“Commotion!” she hotly resented. “Nonsense! How can you say such a
thing? Commotion, indeed! But, you know, you said he was clever.”

“So he is. But the poor fellow is run down by overwork now. That's why I
asked him here to take a rest.”

“You used to say he was a man of ideas,” she retorted, unconciliated. “I
expected him to be interesting, at least. I'm going to the city in the
morning to have my spring gowns fitted. Let me know when Mr. Gouvernail
is gone; I shall be at my Aunt Octavie's.”

That night she went and sat alone upon a bench that stood beneath a live
oak tree at the edge of the gravel walk.

She had never known her thoughts or her intentions to be so confused.
She could gather nothing from them but the feeling of a distinct
necessity to quit her home in the morning.

Mrs. Baroda heard footsteps crunching the gravel; but could discern in
the darkness only the approaching red point of a lighted cigar. She knew
it was Gouvernail, for her husband did not smoke. She hoped to remain
unnoticed, but her white gown revealed her to him. He threw away his
cigar and seated himself upon the bench beside her; without a suspicion
that she might object to his presence.

“Your husband told me to bring this to you, Mrs. Baroda,” he said,
handing her a filmy, white scarf with which she sometimes enveloped her
head and shoulders. She accepted the scarf from him with a murmur of
thanks, and let it lie in her lap.

He made some commonplace observation upon the baneful effect of the
night air at the season. Then as his gaze reached out into the darkness,
he murmured, half to himself:

“'Night of south winds--night of the large few stars! Still nodding
night--'”

She made no reply to this apostrophe to the night, which, indeed, was
not addressed to her.

Gouvernail was in no sense a diffident man, for he was not a
self-conscious one. His periods of reserve were not constitutional,
but the result of moods. Sitting there beside Mrs. Baroda, his silence
melted for the time.

He talked freely and intimately in a low, hesitating drawl that was not
unpleasant to hear. He talked of the old college days when he and
Gaston had been a good deal to each other; of the days of keen and blind
ambitions and large intentions. Now there was left with him, at least,
a philosophic acquiescence to the existing order--only a desire to be
permitted to exist, with now and then a little whiff of genuine life,
such as he was breathing now.

Her mind only vaguely grasped what he was saying. Her physical being
was for the moment predominant. She was not thinking of his words, only
drinking in the tones of his voice. She wanted to reach out her hand in
the darkness and touch him with the sensitive tips of her fingers
upon the face or the lips. She wanted to draw close to him and whisper
against his cheek--she did not care what--as she might have done if she
had not been a respectable woman.

The stronger the impulse grew to bring herself near him, the further, in
fact, did she draw away from him. As soon as she could do so without an
appearance of too great rudeness, she rose and left him there alone.

Before she reached the house, Gouvernail had lighted a fresh cigar and
ended his apostrophe to the night.

Mrs. Baroda was greatly tempted that night to tell her husband--who
was also her friend--of this folly that had seized her. But she did not
yield to the temptation. Beside being a respectable woman she was a very
sensible one; and she knew there are some battles in life which a human
being must fight alone.

When Gaston arose in the morning, his wife had already departed. She
had taken an early morning train to the city. She did not return till
Gouvernail was gone from under her roof.

There was some talk of having him back during the summer that followed.
That is, Gaston greatly desired it; but this desire yielded to his
wife's strenuous opposition.

However, before the year ended, she proposed, wholly from herself,
to have Gouvernail visit them again. Her husband was surprised and
delighted with the suggestion coming from her.

“I am glad, chere amie, to know that you have finally overcome your
dislike for him; truly he did not deserve it.”

“Oh,” she told him, laughingly, after pressing a long, tender kiss upon
his lips, “I have overcome everything! you will see. This time I shall
be very nice to him.”





THE KISS


It was still quite light out of doors, but inside with the curtains
drawn and the smouldering fire sending out a dim, uncertain glow, the
room was full of deep shadows.

Brantain sat in one of these shadows; it had overtaken him and he did
not mind. The obscurity lent him courage to keep his eyes fastened as
ardently as he liked upon the girl who sat in the firelight.

She was very handsome, with a certain fine, rich coloring that belongs
to the healthy brune type. She was quite composed, as she idly
stroked the satiny coat of the cat that lay curled in her lap, and she
occasionally sent a slow glance into the shadow where her companion sat.
They were talking low, of indifferent things which plainly were not
the things that occupied their thoughts. She knew that he loved her--a
frank, blustering fellow without guile enough to conceal his feelings,
and no desire to do so. For two weeks past he had sought her society
eagerly and persistently. She was confidently waiting for him to declare
himself and she meant to accept him. The rather insignificant and
unattractive Brantain was enormously rich; and she liked and required
the entourage which wealth could give her.

During one of the pauses between their talk of the last tea and the next
reception the door opened and a young man entered whom Brantain knew
quite well. The girl turned her face toward him. A stride or two brought
him to her side, and bending over her chair--before she could suspect
his intention, for she did not realize that he had not seen her
visitor--he pressed an ardent, lingering kiss upon her lips.

Brantain slowly arose; so did the girl arise, but quickly, and the
newcomer stood between them, a little amusement and some defiance
struggling with the confusion in his face.

“I believe,” stammered Brantain, “I see that I have stayed too long.
I--I had no idea--that is, I must wish you good-by.” He was clutching
his hat with both hands, and probably did not perceive that she was
extending her hand to him, her presence of mind had not completely
deserted her; but she could not have trusted herself to speak.

“Hang me if I saw him sitting there, Nattie! I know it's deuced awkward
for you. But I hope you'll forgive me this once--this very first break.
Why, what's the matter?”

“Don't touch me; don't come near me,” she returned angrily. “What do you
mean by entering the house without ringing?”

“I came in with your brother, as I often do,” he answered coldly, in
self-justification. “We came in the side way. He went upstairs and I
came in here hoping to find you. The explanation is simple enough and
ought to satisfy you that the misadventure was unavoidable. But do say
that you forgive me, Nathalie,” he entreated, softening.

“Forgive you! You don't know what you are talking about. Let me pass. It
depends upon--a good deal whether I ever forgive you.”

At that next reception which she and Brantain had been talking about she
approached the young man with a delicious frankness of manner when she
saw him there.

“Will you let me speak to you a moment or two, Mr. Brantain?” she asked
with an engaging but perturbed smile. He seemed extremely unhappy;
but when she took his arm and walked away with him, seeking a retired
corner, a ray of hope mingled with the almost comical misery of his
expression. She was apparently very outspoken.

“Perhaps I should not have sought this interview, Mr. Brantain;
but--but, oh, I have been very uncomfortable, almost miserable since
that little encounter the other afternoon. When I thought how you might
have misinterpreted it, and believed things”--hope was plainly gaining
the ascendancy over misery in Brantain's round, guileless face--“Of
course, I know it is nothing to you, but for my own sake I do want you
to understand that Mr. Harvy is an intimate friend of long standing.
Why, we have always been like cousins--like brother and sister, I may
say. He is my brother's most intimate associate and often fancies that
he is entitled to the same privileges as the family. Oh, I know it
is absurd, uncalled for, to tell you this; undignified even,” she was
almost weeping, “but it makes so much difference to me what you think
of--of me.” Her voice had grown very low and agitated. The misery had
all disappeared from Brantain's face.

“Then you do really care what I think, Miss Nathalie? May I call you
Miss Nathalie?” They turned into a long, dim corridor that was lined on
either side with tall, graceful plants. They walked slowly to the very
end of it. When they turned to retrace their steps Brantain's face was
radiant and hers was triumphant.



Harvy was among the guests at the wedding; and he sought her out in a
rare moment when she stood alone.

“Your husband,” he said, smiling, “has sent me over to kiss you.”

A quick blush suffused her face and round polished throat. “I suppose
it's natural for a man to feel and act generously on an occasion of this
kind. He tells me he doesn't want his marriage to interrupt wholly that
pleasant intimacy which has existed between you and me. I don't know
what you've been telling him,” with an insolent smile, “but he has sent
me here to kiss you.”

She felt like a chess player who, by the clever handling of his pieces,
sees the game taking the course intended. Her eyes were bright and
tender with a smile as they glanced up into his; and her lips looked
hungry for the kiss which they invited.

“But, you know,” he went on quietly, “I didn't tell him so, it would
have seemed ungrateful, but I can tell you. I've stopped kissing women;
it's dangerous.”

Well, she had Brantain and his million left. A person can't have
everything in this world; and it was a little unreasonable of her to
expect it.





A PAIR OF SILK STOCKINGS


Little Mrs. Sommers one day found herself the unexpected possessor of
fifteen dollars. It seemed to her a very large amount of money, and the
way in which it stuffed and bulged her worn old porte-monnaie gave her a
feeling of importance such as she had not enjoyed for years.

The question of investment was one that occupied her greatly. For a
day or two she walked about apparently in a dreamy state, but really
absorbed in speculation and calculation. She did not wish to act
hastily, to do anything she might afterward regret. But it was during
the still hours of the night when she lay awake revolving plans in
her mind that she seemed to see her way clearly toward a proper and
judicious use of the money.

A dollar or two should be added to the price usually paid for Janie's
shoes, which would insure their lasting an appreciable time longer than
they usually did. She would buy so and so many yards of percale for new
shirt waists for the boys and Janie and Mag. She had intended to make
the old ones do by skilful patching. Mag should have another gown.
She had seen some beautiful patterns, veritable bargains in the shop
windows. And still there would be left enough for new stockings--two
pairs apiece--and what darning that would save for a while! She would
get caps for the boys and sailor-hats for the girls. The vision of her
little brood looking fresh and dainty and new for once in their lives
excited her and made her restless and wakeful with anticipation.

The neighbors sometimes talked of certain “better days” that little Mrs.
Sommers had known before she had ever thought of being Mrs. Sommers. She
herself indulged in no such morbid retrospection. She had no time--no
second of time to devote to the past. The needs of the present absorbed
her every faculty. A vision of the future like some dim, gaunt monster
sometimes appalled her, but luckily to-morrow never comes.

Mrs. Sommers was one who knew the value of bargains; who could stand
for hours making her way inch by inch toward the desired object that was
selling below cost. She could elbow her way if need be; she had learned
to clutch a piece of goods and hold it and stick to it with persistence
and determination till her turn came to be served, no matter when it
came.

But that day she was a little faint and tired. She had swallowed a light
luncheon--no! when she came to think of it, between getting the children
fed and the place righted, and preparing herself for the shopping bout,
she had actually forgotten to eat any luncheon at all!

She sat herself upon a revolving stool before a counter that was
comparatively deserted, trying to gather strength and courage to charge
through an eager multitude that was besieging breastworks of shirting
and figured lawn. An all-gone limp feeling had come over her and she
rested her hand aimlessly upon the counter. She wore no gloves. By
degrees she grew aware that her hand had encountered something very
soothing, very pleasant to touch. She looked down to see that her hand
lay upon a pile of silk stockings. A placard near by announced that they
had been reduced in price from two dollars and fifty cents to one dollar
and ninety-eight cents; and a young girl who stood behind the counter
asked her if she wished to examine their line of silk hosiery. She
smiled, just as if she had been asked to inspect a tiara of diamonds
with the ultimate view of purchasing it. But she went on feeling the
soft, sheeny luxurious things--with both hands now, holding them up
to see them glisten, and to feel them glide serpent-like through her
fingers.

Two hectic blotches came suddenly into her pale cheeks. She looked up at
the girl.

“Do you think there are any eights-and-a-half among these?”

There were any number of eights-and-a-half. In fact, there were more of
that size than any other. Here was a light-blue pair; there were some
lavender, some all black and various shades of tan and gray. Mrs.
Sommers selected a black pair and looked at them very long and closely.
She pretended to be examining their texture, which the clerk assured her
was excellent.

“A dollar and ninety-eight cents,” she mused aloud. “Well, I'll take
this pair.” She handed the girl a five-dollar bill and waited for her
change and for her parcel. What a very small parcel it was! It seemed
lost in the depths of her shabby old shopping-bag.

Mrs. Sommers after that did not move in the direction of the bargain
counter. She took the elevator, which carried her to an upper floor into
the region of the ladies' waiting-rooms. Here, in a retired corner, she
exchanged her cotton stockings for the new silk ones which she had just
bought. She was not going through any acute mental process or reasoning
with herself, nor was she striving to explain to her satisfaction the
motive of her action. She was not thinking at all. She seemed for the
time to be taking a rest from that laborious and fatiguing function and
to have abandoned herself to some mechanical impulse that directed her
actions and freed her of responsibility.

How good was the touch of the raw silk to her flesh! She felt like lying
back in the cushioned chair and reveling for a while in the luxury of
it. She did for a little while. Then she replaced her shoes, rolled the
cotton stockings together and thrust them into her bag. After doing this
she crossed straight over to the shoe department and took her seat to be
fitted.

She was fastidious. The clerk could not make her out; he could not
reconcile her shoes with her stockings, and she was not too easily
pleased. She held back her skirts and turned her feet one way and her
head another way as she glanced down at the polished, pointed-tipped
boots. Her foot and ankle looked very pretty. She could not realize that
they belonged to her and were a part of herself. She wanted an excellent
and stylish fit, she told the young fellow who served her, and she did
not mind the difference of a dollar or two more in the price so long as
she got what she desired.

It was a long time since Mrs. Sommers had been fitted with gloves. On
rare occasions when she had bought a pair they were always “bargains,”
 so cheap that it would have been preposterous and unreasonable to have
expected them to be fitted to the hand.

Now she rested her elbow on the cushion of the glove counter, and a
pretty, pleasant young creature, delicate and deft of touch, drew a
long-wristed “kid” over Mrs. Sommers's hand. She smoothed it down over
the wrist and buttoned it neatly, and both lost themselves for a second
or two in admiring contemplation of the little symmetrical gloved hand.
But there were other places where money might be spent.

There were books and magazines piled up in the window of a stall a few
paces down the street. Mrs. Sommers bought two high-priced magazines
such as she had been accustomed to read in the days when she had been
accustomed to other pleasant things. She carried them without wrapping.
As well as she could she lifted her skirts at the crossings. Her
stockings and boots and well fitting gloves had worked marvels in her
bearing--had given her a feeling of assurance, a sense of belonging to
the well-dressed multitude.

She was very hungry. Another time she would have stilled the cravings
for food until reaching her own home, where she would have brewed
herself a cup of tea and taken a snack of anything that was available.
But the impulse that was guiding her would not suffer her to entertain
any such thought.

There was a restaurant at the corner. She had never entered its doors;
from the outside she had sometimes caught glimpses of spotless damask
and shining crystal, and soft-stepping waiters serving people of
fashion.

When she entered her appearance created no surprise, no consternation,
as she had half feared it might. She seated herself at a small table
alone, and an attentive waiter at once approached to take her order. She
did not want a profusion; she craved a nice and tasty bite--a half
dozen blue-points, a plump chop with cress, a something sweet--a
creme-frappee, for instance; a glass of Rhine wine, and after all a
small cup of black coffee.

While waiting to be served she removed her gloves very leisurely and
laid them beside her. Then she picked up a magazine and glanced through
it, cutting the pages with a blunt edge of her knife. It was all very
agreeable. The damask was even more spotless than it had seemed through
the window, and the crystal more sparkling. There were quiet ladies and
gentlemen, who did not notice her, lunching at the small tables like
her own. A soft, pleasing strain of music could be heard, and a gentle
breeze, was blowing through the window. She tasted a bite, and she read
a word or two, and she sipped the amber wine and wiggled her toes in
the silk stockings. The price of it made no difference. She counted the
money out to the waiter and left an extra coin on his tray, whereupon he
bowed before her as before a princess of royal blood.

There was still money in her purse, and her next temptation presented
itself in the shape of a matinee poster.

It was a little later when she entered the theatre, the play had begun
and the house seemed to her to be packed. But there were vacant
seats here and there, and into one of them she was ushered, between
brilliantly dressed women who had gone there to kill time and eat candy
and display their gaudy attire. There were many others who were there
solely for the play and acting. It is safe to say there was no one
present who bore quite the attitude which Mrs. Sommers did to her
surroundings. She gathered in the whole--stage and players and people in
one wide impression, and absorbed it and enjoyed it. She laughed at
the comedy and wept--she and the gaudy woman next to her wept over the
tragedy. And they talked a little together over it. And the gaudy woman
wiped her eyes and sniffled on a tiny square of filmy, perfumed lace and
passed little Mrs. Sommers her box of candy.

The play was over, the music ceased, the crowd filed out. It was like
a dream ended. People scattered in all directions. Mrs. Sommers went to
the corner and waited for the cable car.

A man with keen eyes, who sat opposite to her, seemed to like the study
of her small, pale face. It puzzled him to decipher what he saw there.
In truth, he saw nothing-unless he were wizard enough to detect a
poignant wish, a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop
anywhere, but go on and on with her forever.





THE LOCKET




I


One night in autumn a few men were gathered about a fire on the slope
of a hill. They belonged to a small detachment of Confederate forces and
were awaiting orders to march. Their gray uniforms were worn beyond the
point of shabbiness. One of the men was heating something in a tin cup
over the embers. Two were lying at full length a little distance away,
while a fourth was trying to decipher a letter and had drawn close to
the light. He had unfastened his collar and a good bit of his flannel
shirt front.

“What's that you got around your neck, Ned?” asked one of the men lying
in the obscurity.

Ned--or Edmond--mechanically fastened another button of his shirt and
did not reply. He went on reading his letter.

“Is it your sweet heart's picture?”

“'Taint no gal's picture,” offered the man at the fire. He had removed
his tin cup and was engaged in stirring its grimy contents with a small
stick. “That's a charm; some kind of hoodoo business that one o' them
priests gave him to keep him out o' trouble. I know them Cath'lics.
That's how come Frenchy got permoted an never got a scratch sence he's
been in the ranks. Hey, French! aint I right?” Edmond looked up absently
from his letter.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Aint that a charm you got round your neck?”

“It must be, Nick,” returned Edmond with a smile. “I don't know how I
could have gone through this year and a half without it.”

The letter had made Edmond heart sick and home sick. He stretched
himself on his back and looked straight up at the blinking stars. But he
was not thinking of them nor of anything but a certain spring day when
the bees were humming in the clematis; when a girl was saying good bye
to him. He could see her as she unclasped from her neck the locket
which she fastened about his own. It was an old fashioned golden locket
bearing miniatures of her father and mother with their names and the
date of their marriage. It was her most precious earthly possession.
Edmond could feel again the folds of the girl's soft white gown, and see
the droop of the angel-sleeves as she circled her fair arms about his
neck. Her sweet face, appealing, pathetic, tormented by the pain of
parting, appeared before him as vividly as life. He turned over, burying
his face in his arm and there he lay, still and motionless.

The profound and treacherous night with its silence and semblance of
peace settled upon the camp. He dreamed that the fair Octavie
brought him a letter. He had no chair to offer her and was pained and
embarrassed at the condition of his garments. He was ashamed of the poor
food which comprised the dinner at which he begged her to join them.

He dreamt of a serpent coiling around his throat, and when he strove to
grasp it the slimy thing glided away from his clutch. Then his dream was
clamor.

“Git your duds! you! Frenchy!” Nick was bellowing in his face. There
was what appeared to be a scramble and a rush rather than any regulated
movement. The hill side was alive with clatter and motion; with sudden
up-springing lights among the pines. In the east the dawn was unfolding
out of the darkness. Its glimmer was yet dim in the plain below.

“What's it all about?” wondered a big black bird perched in the top of
the tallest tree. He was an old solitary and a wise one, yet he was
not wise enough to guess what it was all about. So all day long he kept
blinking and wondering.

The noise reached far out over the plain and across the hills and awoke
the little babes that were sleeping in their cradles. The smoke curled
up toward the sun and shadowed the plain so that the stupid birds
thought it was going to rain; but the wise one knew better.

“They are children playing a game,” thought he. “I shall know more about
it if I watch long enough.”

At the approach of night they had all vanished away with their din and
smoke. Then the old bird plumed his feathers. At last he had understood!
With a flap of his great, black wings he shot downward, circling toward
the plain.

A man was picking his way across the plain. He was dressed in the
garb of a clergyman. His mission was to administer the consolations of
religion to any of the prostrate figures in whom there might yet linger
a spark of life. A negro accompanied him, bearing a bucket of water and
a flask of wine.

There were no wounded here; they had been borne away. But the retreat
had been hurried and the vultures and the good Samaritans would have to
look to the dead.

There was a soldier--a mere boy--lying with his face to the sky. His
hands were clutching the sward on either side and his finger nails
were stuffed with earth and bits of grass that he had gathered in his
despairing grasp upon life. His musket was gone; he was hatless and his
face and clothing were begrimed. Around his neck hung a gold chain and
locket. The priest, bending over him, unclasped the chain and removed
it from the dead soldier's neck. He had grown used to the terrors of
war and could face them unflinchingly; but its pathos, someway, always
brought the tears to his old, dim eyes.

The angelus was ringing half a mile away. The priest and the negro knelt
and murmured together the evening benediction and a prayer for the dead.




II


The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like
a benediction. Along the leafy road which skirted a narrow, tortuous
stream in central Louisiana, rumbled an old fashioned cabriolet, much
the worse for hard and rough usage over country roads and lanes.
The fat, black horses went in a slow, measured trot, notwithstanding
constant urging on the part of the fat, black coachman. Within the
vehicle were seated the fair Octavie and her old friend and neighbor,
Judge Pillier, who had come to take her for a morning drive.

Octavie wore a plain black dress, severe in its simplicity. A narrow
belt held it at the waist and the sleeves were gathered into close
fitting wristbands. She had discarded her hoopskirt and appeared not
unlike a nun. Beneath the folds of her bodice nestled the old locket.
She never displayed it now. It had returned to her sanctified in her
eyes; made precious as material things sometimes are by being forever
identified with a significant moment of one's existence.

A hundred times she had read over the letter with which the locket had
come back to her. No later than that morning she had again pored over
it. As she sat beside the window, smoothing the letter out upon her
knee, heavy and spiced odors stole in to her with the songs of birds and
the humming of insects in the air.

She was so young and the world was so beautiful that there came over her
a sense of unreality as she read again and again the priest's letter. He
told of that autumn day drawing to its close, with the gold and the red
fading out of the west, and the night gathering its shadows to cover the
faces of the dead. Oh! She could not believe that one of those dead
was her own! with visage uplifted to the gray sky in an agony of
supplication. A spasm of resistance and rebellion seized and swept over
her. Why was the spring here with its flowers and its seductive breath
if he was dead! Why was she here! What further had she to do with life
and the living!

Octavie had experienced many such moments of despair, but a blessed
resignation had never failed to follow, and it fell then upon her like a
mantle and enveloped her.

“I shall grow old and quiet and sad like poor Aunt Tavie,” she murmured
to herself as she folded the letter and replaced it in the secretary.
Already she gave herself a little demure air like her Aunt Tavie. She
walked with a slow glide in unconscious imitation of Mademoiselle Tavie
whom some youthful affliction had robbed of earthly compensation while
leaving her in possession of youth's illusions.

As she sat in the old cabriolet beside the father of her dead lover,
again there came to Octavie the terrible sense of loss which had
assailed her so often before. The soul of her youth clamored for its
rights; for a share in the world's glory and exultation. She leaned back
and drew her veil a little closer about her face. It was an old black
veil of her Aunt Tavie's. A whiff of dust from the road had blown in and
she wiped her cheeks and her eyes with her soft, white handkerchief,
a homemade handkerchief, fabricated from one of her old fine muslin
petticoats.

“Will you do me the favor, Octavie,” requested the judge in the
courteous tone which he never abandoned, “to remove that veil which you
wear. It seems out of harmony, someway, with the beauty and promise of
the day.”

The young girl obediently yielded to her old companion's wish and
unpinning the cumbersome, sombre drapery from her bonnet, folded it
neatly and laid it upon the seat in front of her.

“Ah! that is better; far better!” he said in a tone expressing unbounded
relief. “Never put it on again, dear.” Octavie felt a little hurt; as if
he wished to debar her from share and parcel in the burden of affliction
which had been placed upon all of them. Again she drew forth the old
muslin handkerchief.

They had left the big road and turned into a level plain which had
formerly been an old meadow. There were clumps of thorn trees here and
there, gorgeous in their spring radiance. Some cattle were grazing off
in the distance in spots where the grass was tall and luscious. At the
far end of the meadow was the towering lilac hedge, skirting the lane
that led to Judge Pillier's house, and the scent of its heavy blossoms
met them like a soft and tender embrace of welcome.

As they neared the house the old gentleman placed an arm around the
girl's shoulders and turning her face up to him he said: “Do you not
think that on a day like this, miracles might happen? When the whole
earth is vibrant with life, does it not seem to you, Octavie, that
heaven might for once relent and give us back our dead?” He spoke very
low, advisedly, and impressively. In his voice was an old quaver which
was not habitual and there was agitation in every line of his visage.
She gazed at him with eyes that were full of supplication and a certain
terror of joy.

They had been driving through the lane with the towering hedge on one
side and the open meadow on the other. The horses had somewhat quickened
their lazy pace. As they turned into the avenue leading to the house, a
whole choir of feathered songsters fluted a sudden torrent of melodious
greeting from their leafy hiding places.

Octavie felt as if she had passed into a stage of existence which was
like a dream, more poignant and real than life. There was the old gray
house with its sloping eaves. Amid the blur of green, and dimly, she
saw familiar faces and heard voices as if they came from far across the
fields, and Edmond was holding her. Her dead Edmond; her living Edmond,
and she felt the beating of his heart against her and the agonizing
rapture of his kisses striving to awake her. It was as if the spirit of
life and the awakening spring had given back the soul to her youth and
bade her rejoice.

It was many hours later that Octavie drew the locket from her bosom and
looked at Edmond with a questioning appeal in her glance.

“It was the night before an engagement,” he said. “In the hurry of the
encounter, and the retreat next day, I never missed it till the fight
was over. I thought of course I had lost it in the heat of the struggle,
but it was stolen.”

“Stolen,” she shuddered, and thought of the dead soldier with his face
uplifted to the sky in an agony of supplication.

Edmond said nothing; but he thought of his messmate; the one who had
lain far back in the shadow; the one who had said nothing.





A REFLECTION


Some people are born with a vital and responsive energy. It not only
enables them to keep abreast of the times; it qualifies them to furnish
in their own personality a good bit of the motive power to the mad
pace. They are fortunate beings. They do not need to apprehend the
significance of things. They do not grow weary nor miss step, nor do
they fall out of rank and sink by the wayside to be left contemplating
the moving procession.

Ah! that moving procession that has left me by the road-side! Its
fantastic colors are more brilliant and beautiful than the sun on the
undulating waters. What matter if souls and bodies are failing beneath
the feet of the ever-pressing multitude! It moves with the majestic
rhythm of the spheres. Its discordant clashes sweep upward in one
harmonious tone that blends with the music of other worlds--to complete
God's orchestra.

It is greater than the stars--that moving procession of human energy;
greater than the palpitating earth and the things growing thereon. Oh!
I could weep at being left by the wayside; left with the grass and the
clouds and a few dumb animals. True, I feel at home in the society of
these symbols of life's immutability. In the procession I should
feel the crushing feet, the clashing discords, the ruthless hands and
stifling breath. I could not hear the rhythm of the march.

Salve! ye dumb hearts. Let us be still and wait by the roadside.





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The Project Gutenberg eBook, Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift


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Title: Gulliver's Travels
       into several remote nations of the world


Author: Jonathan Swift



Release Date: June 15, 2009  [eBook #829]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GULLIVER'S TRAVELS***


Transcribed from the 1892 George Bell and Sons edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org





                            GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
                               INTO SEVERAL
                       REMOTE NATIONS OF THE WORLD


                         BY JONATHAN SWIFT, D.D.,
                      DEAN OF ST. PATRICK’S, DUBLIN.

                      [_First published in_ 1726–7.]




THE PUBLISHER TO THE READER.


                  [_As given in the original edition_.]

The author of these Travels, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, is my ancient and
intimate friend; there is likewise some relation between us on the
mother’s side.  About three years ago, Mr. Gulliver growing weary of the
concourse of curious people coming to him at his house in Redriff, made a
small purchase of land, with a convenient house, near Newark, in
Nottinghamshire, his native country; where he now lives retired, yet in
good esteem among his neighbours.

Although Mr. Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire, where his father
dwelt, yet I have heard him say his family came from Oxfordshire; to
confirm which, I have observed in the churchyard at Banbury in that
county, several tombs and monuments of the Gullivers.

Before he quitted Redriff, he left the custody of the following papers in
my hands, with the liberty to dispose of them as I should think fit.  I
have carefully perused them three times.  The style is very plain and
simple; and the only fault I find is, that the author, after the manner
of travellers, is a little too circumstantial.  There is an air of truth
apparent through the whole; and indeed the author was so distinguished
for his veracity, that it became a sort of proverb among his neighbours
at Redriff, when any one affirmed a thing, to say, it was as true as if
Mr. Gulliver had spoken it.

By the advice of several worthy persons, to whom, with the author’s
permission, I communicated these papers, I now venture to send them into
the world, hoping they may be, at least for some time, a better
entertainment to our young noblemen, than the common scribbles of
politics and party.

This volume would have been at least twice as large, if I had not made
bold to strike out innumerable passages relating to the winds and tides,
as well as to the variations and bearings in the several voyages,
together with the minute descriptions of the management of the ship in
storms, in the style of sailors; likewise the account of longitudes and
latitudes; wherein I have reason to apprehend, that Mr. Gulliver may be a
little dissatisfied.  But I was resolved to fit the work as much as
possible to the general capacity of readers.  However, if my own
ignorance in sea affairs shall have led me to commit some mistakes, I
alone am answerable for them.  And if any traveller hath a curiosity to
see the whole work at large, as it came from the hands of the author, I
will be ready to gratify him.

As for any further particulars relating to the author, the reader will
receive satisfaction from the first pages of the book.

                                                          RICHARD SYMPSON.




A LETTER FROM CAPTAIN GULLIVER TO HIS COUSIN SYMPSON.


                        WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1727.

I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to
it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to
publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with directions
to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order,
and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my advice, in his
book called “A Voyage round the world.”  But I do not remember I gave you
power to consent that any thing should be omitted, and much less that any
thing should be inserted; therefore, as to the latter, I do here renounce
every thing of that kind; particularly a paragraph about her majesty
Queen Anne, of most pious and glorious memory; although I did reverence
and esteem her more than any of human species.  But you, or your
interpolator, ought to have considered, that it was not my inclination,
so was it not decent to praise any animal of our composition before my
master _Houyhnhnm_: And besides, the fact was altogether false; for to my
knowledge, being in England during some part of her majesty’s reign, she
did govern by a chief minister; nay even by two successively, the first
whereof was the lord of Godolphin, and the second the lord of Oxford; so
that you have made me say the thing that was not.  Likewise in the
account of the academy of projectors, and several passages of my
discourse to my master _Houyhnhnm_, you have either omitted some material
circumstances, or minced or changed them in such a manner, that I do
hardly know my own work.  When I formerly hinted to you something of this
in a letter, you were pleased to answer that you were afraid of giving
offence; that people in power were very watchful over the press, and apt
not only to interpret, but to punish every thing which looked like an
_innuendo_ (as I think you call it).  But, pray how could that which I
spoke so many years ago, and at about five thousand leagues distance, in
another reign, be applied to any of the _Yahoos_, who now are said to
govern the herd; especially at a time when I little thought, or feared,
the unhappiness of living under them?  Have not I the most reason to
complain, when I see these very _Yahoos_ carried by _Houyhnhnms_ in a
vehicle, as if they were brutes, and those the rational creatures?  And
indeed to avoid so monstrous and detestable a sight was one principal
motive of my retirement hither.

Thus much I thought proper to tell you in relation to yourself, and to
the trust I reposed in you.

I do, in the next place, complain of my own great want of judgment, in
being prevailed upon by the entreaties and false reasoning of you and
some others, very much against my own opinion, to suffer my travels to be
published.  Pray bring to your mind how often I desired you to consider,
when you insisted on the motive of public good, that the _Yahoos_ were a
species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precept or example:
and so it has proved; for, instead of seeing a full stop put to all
abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had reason
to expect; behold, after above six months warning, I cannot learn that my
book has produced one single effect according to my intentions.  I
desired you would let me know, by a letter, when party and faction were
extinguished; judges learned and upright; pleaders honest and modest,
with some tincture of common sense, and Smithfield blazing with pyramids
of law books; the young nobility’s education entirely changed; the
physicians banished; the female _Yahoos_ abounding in virtue, honour,
truth, and good sense; courts and levees of great ministers thoroughly
weeded and swept; wit, merit, and learning rewarded; all disgracers of
the press in prose and verse condemned to eat nothing but their own
cotton, and quench their thirst with their own ink.  These, and a
thousand other reformations, I firmly counted upon by your encouragement;
as indeed they were plainly deducible from the precepts delivered in my
book.  And it must be owned, that seven months were a sufficient time to
correct every vice and folly to which _Yahoos_ are subject, if their
natures had been capable of the least disposition to virtue or wisdom.
Yet, so far have you been from answering my expectation in any of your
letters; that on the contrary you are loading our carrier every week with
libels, and keys, and reflections, and memoirs, and second parts; wherein
I see myself accused of reflecting upon great state folk; of degrading
human nature (for so they have still the confidence to style it), and of
abusing the female sex.  I find likewise that the writers of those
bundles are not agreed among themselves; for some of them will not allow
me to be the author of my own travels; and others make me author of books
to which I am wholly a stranger.

I find likewise that your printer has been so careless as to confound the
times, and mistake the dates, of my several voyages and returns; neither
assigning the true year, nor the true month, nor day of the month: and I
hear the original manuscript is all destroyed since the publication of my
book; neither have I any copy left: however, I have sent you some
corrections, which you may insert, if ever there should be a second
edition: and yet I cannot stand to them; but shall leave that matter to
my judicious and candid readers to adjust it as they please.

I hear some of our sea _Yahoos_ find fault with my sea-language, as not
proper in many parts, nor now in use.  I cannot help it.  In my first
voyages, while I was young, I was instructed by the oldest mariners, and
learned to speak as they did.  But I have since found that the sea
_Yahoos_ are apt, like the land ones, to become new-fangled in their
words, which the latter change every year; insomuch, as I remember upon
each return to my own country their old dialect was so altered, that I
could hardly understand the new.  And I observe, when any _Yahoo_ comes
from London out of curiosity to visit me at my house, we neither of us
are able to deliver our conceptions in a manner intelligible to the
other.

If the censure of the _Yahoos_ could any way affect me, I should have
great reason to complain, that some of them are so bold as to think my
book of travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain, and have gone so
far as to drop hints, that the _Houyhnhnms_ and _Yahoos_ have no more
existence than the inhabitants of Utopia.

Indeed I must confess, that as to the people of _Lilliput_, _Brobdingrag_
(for so the word should have been spelt, and not erroneously
_Brobdingnag_), and _Laputa_, I have never yet heard of any _Yahoo_ so
presumptuous as to dispute their being, or the facts I have related
concerning them; because the truth immediately strikes every reader with
conviction.  And is there less probability in my account of the
_Houyhnhnms_ or _Yahoos_, when it is manifest as to the latter, there are
so many thousands even in this country, who only differ from their
brother brutes in _Houyhnhnmland_, because they use a sort of jabber, and
do not go naked?  I wrote for their amendment, and not their approbation.
The united praise of the whole race would be of less consequence to me,
than the neighing of those two degenerate _Houyhnhnms_ I keep in my
stable; because from these, degenerate as they are, I still improve in
some virtues without any mixture of vice.

Do these miserable animals presume to think, that I am so degenerated as
to defend my veracity?  _Yahoo_ as I am, it is well known through all
_Houyhnhnmland_, that, by the instructions and example of my illustrious
master, I was able in the compass of two years (although I confess with
the utmost difficulty) to remove that infernal habit of lying, shuffling,
deceiving, and equivocating, so deeply rooted in the very souls of all my
species; especially the Europeans.

I have other complaints to make upon this vexatious occasion; but I
forbear troubling myself or you any further.  I must freely confess, that
since my last return, some corruptions of my _Yahoo_ nature have revived
in me by conversing with a few of your species, and particularly those of
my own family, by an unavoidable necessity; else I should never have
attempted so absurd a project as that of reforming the _Yahoo_ race in
this kingdom: But I have now done with all such visionary schemes for
ever.

_April_ 2, 1727




PART I.  A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT.


CHAPTER I.


The author gives some account of himself and family.  His first
inducements to travel.  He is shipwrecked, and swims for his life.  Gets
safe on shore in the country of Lilliput; is made a prisoner, and carried
up the country.

My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire: I was the third of five
sons.  He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years old,
where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my studies; but
the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty allowance,
being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice to Mr. James
Bates, an eminent surgeon in London, with whom I continued four years.
My father now and then sending me small sums of money, I laid them out in
learning navigation, and other parts of the mathematics, useful to those
who intend to travel, as I always believed it would be, some time or
other, my fortune to do.  When I left Mr. Bates, I went down to my
father: where, by the assistance of him and my uncle John, and some other
relations, I got forty pounds, and a promise of thirty pounds a year to
maintain me at Leyden: there I studied physic two years and seven months,
knowing it would be useful in long voyages.

Soon after my return from Leyden, I was recommended by my good master,
Mr. Bates, to be surgeon to the Swallow, Captain Abraham Pannel,
commander; with whom I continued three years and a half, making a voyage
or two into the Levant, and some other parts.  When I came back I
resolved to settle in London; to which Mr. Bates, my master, encouraged
me, and by him I was recommended to several patients.  I took part of a
small house in the Old Jewry; and being advised to alter my condition, I
married Mrs. Mary Burton, second daughter to Mr. Edmund Burton, hosier,
in Newgate-street, with whom I received four hundred pounds for a
portion.

But my good master Bates dying in two years after, and I having few
friends, my business began to fail; for my conscience would not suffer me
to imitate the bad practice of too many among my brethren.  Having
therefore consulted with my wife, and some of my acquaintance, I
determined to go again to sea.  I was surgeon successively in two ships,
and made several voyages, for six years, to the East and West Indies, by
which I got some addition to my fortune.  My hours of leisure I spent in
reading the best authors, ancient and modern, being always provided with
a good number of books; and when I was ashore, in observing the manners
and dispositions of the people, as well as learning their language;
wherein I had a great facility, by the strength of my memory.

The last of these voyages not proving very fortunate, I grew weary of the
sea, and intended to stay at home with my wife and family.  I removed
from the Old Jewry to Fetter Lane, and from thence to Wapping, hoping to
get business among the sailors; but it would not turn to account.  After
three years expectation that things would mend, I accepted an
advantageous offer from Captain William Prichard, master of the Antelope,
who was making a voyage to the South Sea.  We set sail from Bristol, May
4, 1699, and our voyage was at first very prosperous.

It would not be proper, for some reasons, to trouble the reader with the
particulars of our adventures in those seas; let it suffice to inform
him, that in our passage from thence to the East Indies, we were driven
by a violent storm to the north-west of Van Diemen’s Land.  By an
observation, we found ourselves in the latitude of 30 degrees 2 minutes
south.  Twelve of our crew were dead by immoderate labour and ill food;
the rest were in a very weak condition.  On the 5th of November, which
was the beginning of summer in those parts, the weather being very hazy,
the seamen spied a rock within half a cable’s length of the ship; but the
wind was so strong, that we were driven directly upon it, and immediately
split.  Six of the crew, of whom I was one, having let down the boat into
the sea, made a shift to get clear of the ship and the rock.  We rowed,
by my computation, about three leagues, till we were able to work no
longer, being already spent with labour while we were in the ship.  We
therefore trusted ourselves to the mercy of the waves, and in about half
an hour the boat was overset by a sudden flurry from the north.  What
became of my companions in the boat, as well as of those who escaped on
the rock, or were left in the vessel, I cannot tell; but conclude they
were all lost.  For my own part, I swam as fortune directed me, and was
pushed forward by wind and tide.  I often let my legs drop, and could
feel no bottom; but when I was almost gone, and able to struggle no
longer, I found myself within my depth; and by this time the storm was
much abated.  The declivity was so small, that I walked near a mile
before I got to the shore, which I conjectured was about eight o’clock in
the evening.  I then advanced forward near half a mile, but could not
discover any sign of houses or inhabitants; at least I was in so weak a
condition, that I did not observe them.  I was extremely tired, and with
that, and the heat of the weather, and about half a pint of brandy that I
drank as I left the ship, I found myself much inclined to sleep.  I lay
down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I slept sounder
than ever I remembered to have done in my life, and, as I reckoned, about
nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just day-light.  I attempted to
rise, but was not able to stir: for, as I happened to lie on my back, I
found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground;
and my hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same manner.  I
likewise felt several slender ligatures across my body, from my arm-pits
to my thighs.  I could only look upwards; the sun began to grow hot, and
the light offended my eyes.  I heard a confused noise about me; but in
the posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky.  In a little time I
felt something alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently
forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when, bending my eyes
downwards as much as I could, I perceived it to be a human creature not
six inches high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his
back.  In the mean time, I felt at least forty more of the same kind (as
I conjectured) following the first.  I was in the utmost astonishment,
and roared so loud, that they all ran back in a fright; and some of them,
as I was afterwards told, were hurt with the falls they got by leaping
from my sides upon the ground.  However, they soon returned, and one of
them, who ventured so far as to get a full sight of my face, lifting up
his hands and eyes by way of admiration, cried out in a shrill but
distinct voice, _Hekinah degul_: the others repeated the same words
several times, but then I knew not what they meant.  I lay all this
while, as the reader may believe, in great uneasiness.  At length,
struggling to get loose, I had the fortune to break the strings, and
wrench out the pegs that fastened my left arm to the ground; for, by
lifting it up to my face, I discovered the methods they had taken to bind
me, and at the same time with a violent pull, which gave me excessive
pain, I a little loosened the strings that tied down my hair on the left
side, so that I was just able to turn my head about two inches.  But the
creatures ran off a second time, before I could seize them; whereupon
there was a great shout in a very shrill accent, and after it ceased I
heard one of them cry aloud _Tolgo phonac_; when in an instant I felt
above a hundred arrows discharged on my left hand, which, pricked me like
so many needles; and besides, they shot another flight into the air, as
we do bombs in Europe, whereof many, I suppose, fell on my body, (though
I felt them not), and some on my face, which I immediately covered with
my left hand.  When this shower of arrows was over, I fell a groaning
with grief and pain; and then striving again to get loose, they
discharged another volley larger than the first, and some of them
attempted with spears to stick me in the sides; but by good luck I had on
a buff jerkin, which they could not pierce.  I thought it the most
prudent method to lie still, and my design was to continue so till night,
when, my left hand being already loose, I could easily free myself: and
as for the inhabitants, I had reason to believe I might be a match for
the greatest army they could bring against me, if they were all of the
same size with him that I saw.  But fortune disposed otherwise of me.
When the people observed I was quiet, they discharged no more arrows;
but, by the noise I heard, I knew their numbers increased; and about four
yards from me, over against my right ear, I heard a knocking for above an
hour, like that of people at work; when turning my head that way, as well
as the pegs and strings would permit me, I saw a stage erected about a
foot and a half from the ground, capable of holding four of the
inhabitants, with two or three ladders to mount it: from whence one of
them, who seemed to be a person of quality, made me a long speech,
whereof I understood not one syllable.  But I should have mentioned, that
before the principal person began his oration, he cried out three times,
_Langro dehul san_ (these words and the former were afterwards repeated
and explained to me); whereupon, immediately, about fifty of the
inhabitants came and cut the strings that fastened the left side of my
head, which gave me the liberty of turning it to the right, and of
observing the person and gesture of him that was to speak.  He appeared
to be of a middle age, and taller than any of the other three who
attended him, whereof one was a page that held up his train, and seemed
to be somewhat longer than my middle finger; the other two stood one on
each side to support him.  He acted every part of an orator, and I could
observe many periods of threatenings, and others of promises, pity, and
kindness.  I answered in a few words, but in the most submissive manner,
lifting up my left hand, and both my eyes to the sun, as calling him for
a witness; and being almost famished with hunger, having not eaten a
morsel for some hours before I left the ship, I found the demands of
nature so strong upon me, that I could not forbear showing my impatience
(perhaps against the strict rules of decency) by putting my finger
frequently to my mouth, to signify that I wanted food.  The _hurgo_ (for
so they call a great lord, as I afterwards learnt) understood me very
well.  He descended from the stage, and commanded that several ladders
should be applied to my sides, on which above a hundred of the
inhabitants mounted and walked towards my mouth, laden with baskets full
of meat, which had been provided and sent thither by the king’s orders,
upon the first intelligence he received of me.  I observed there was the
flesh of several animals, but could not distinguish them by the taste.
There were shoulders, legs, and loins, shaped like those of mutton, and
very well dressed, but smaller than the wings of a lark.  I ate them by
two or three at a mouthful, and took three loaves at a time, about the
bigness of musket bullets.  They supplied me as fast as they could,
showing a thousand marks of wonder and astonishment at my bulk and
appetite.  I then made another sign, that I wanted drink.  They found by
my eating that a small quantity would not suffice me; and being a most
ingenious people, they slung up, with great dexterity, one of their
largest hogsheads, then rolled it towards my hand, and beat out the top;
I drank it off at a draught, which I might well do, for it did not hold
half a pint, and tasted like a small wine of Burgundy, but much more
delicious.  They brought me a second hogshead, which I drank in the same
manner, and made signs for more; but they had none to give me.  When I
had performed these wonders, they shouted for joy, and danced upon my
breast, repeating several times as they did at first, _Hekinah degul_.
They made me a sign that I should throw down the two hogsheads, but first
warning the people below to stand out of the way, crying aloud, _Borach
mevolah_; and when they saw the vessels in the air, there was a universal
shout of _Hekinah degul_.  I confess I was often tempted, while they were
passing backwards and forwards on my body, to seize forty or fifty of the
first that came in my reach, and dash them against the ground.  But the
remembrance of what I had felt, which probably might not be the worst
they could do, and the promise of honour I made them—for so I interpreted
my submissive behaviour—soon drove out these imaginations.  Besides, I
now considered myself as bound by the laws of hospitality, to a people
who had treated me with so much expense and magnificence.  However, in my
thoughts I could not sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity of these
diminutive mortals, who durst venture to mount and walk upon my body,
while one of my hands was at liberty, without trembling at the very sight
of so prodigious a creature as I must appear to them.  After some time,
when they observed that I made no more demands for meat, there appeared
before me a person of high rank from his imperial majesty.  His
excellency, having mounted on the small of my right leg, advanced
forwards up to my face, with about a dozen of his retinue; and producing
his credentials under the signet royal, which he applied close to my
eyes, spoke about ten minutes without any signs of anger, but with a kind
of determinate resolution, often pointing forwards, which, as I
afterwards found, was towards the capital city, about half a mile
distant; whither it was agreed by his majesty in council that I must be
conveyed.  I answered in few words, but to no purpose, and made a sign
with my hand that was loose, putting it to the other (but over his
excellency’s head for fear of hurting him or his train) and then to my
own head and body, to signify that I desired my liberty.  It appeared
that he understood me well enough, for he shook his head by way of
disapprobation, and held his hand in a posture to show that I must be
carried as a prisoner.  However, he made other signs to let me understand
that I should have meat and drink enough, and very good treatment.
Whereupon I once more thought of attempting to break my bonds; but again,
when I felt the smart of their arrows upon my face and hands, which were
all in blisters, and many of the darts still sticking in them, and
observing likewise that the number of my enemies increased, I gave tokens
to let them know that they might do with me what they pleased.  Upon
this, the _hurgo_ and his train withdrew, with much civility and cheerful
countenances.  Soon after I heard a general shout, with frequent
repetitions of the words _Peplom selan_; and I felt great numbers of
people on my left side relaxing the cords to such a degree, that I was
able to turn upon my right, and to ease myself with making water; which I
very plentifully did, to the great astonishment of the people; who,
conjecturing by my motion what I was going to do, immediately opened to
the right and left on that side, to avoid the torrent, which fell with
such noise and violence from me.  But before this, they had daubed my
face and both my hands with a sort of ointment, very pleasant to the
smell, which, in a few minutes, removed all the smart of their arrows.
These circumstances, added to the refreshment I had received by their
victuals and drink, which were very nourishing, disposed me to sleep.  I
slept about eight hours, as I was afterwards assured; and it was no
wonder, for the physicians, by the emperor’s order, had mingled a sleepy
potion in the hogsheads of wine.

It seems, that upon the first moment I was discovered sleeping on the
ground, after my landing, the emperor had early notice of it by an
express; and determined in council, that I should be tied in the manner I
have related, (which was done in the night while I slept;) that plenty of
meat and drink should be sent to me, and a machine prepared to carry me
to the capital city.

This resolution perhaps may appear very bold and dangerous, and I am
confident would not be imitated by any prince in Europe on the like
occasion.  However, in my opinion, it was extremely prudent, as well as
generous: for, supposing these people had endeavoured to kill me with
their spears and arrows, while I was asleep, I should certainly have
awaked with the first sense of smart, which might so far have roused my
rage and strength, as to have enabled me to break the strings wherewith I
was tied; after which, as they were not able to make resistance, so they
could expect no mercy.

These people are most excellent mathematicians, and arrived to a great
perfection in mechanics, by the countenance and encouragement of the
emperor, who is a renowned patron of learning.  This prince has several
machines fixed on wheels, for the carriage of trees and other great
weights.  He often builds his largest men of war, whereof some are nine
feet long, in the woods where the timber grows, and has them carried on
these engines three or four hundred yards to the sea.  Five hundred
carpenters and engineers were immediately set at work to prepare the
greatest engine they had.  It was a frame of wood raised three inches
from the ground, about seven feet long, and four wide, moving upon
twenty-two wheels.  The shout I heard was upon the arrival of this
engine, which, it seems, set out in four hours after my landing.  It was
brought parallel to me, as I lay.  But the principal difficulty was to
raise and place me in this vehicle.  Eighty poles, each of one foot high,
were erected for this purpose, and very strong cords, of the bigness of
packthread, were fastened by hooks to many bandages, which the workmen
had girt round my neck, my hands, my body, and my legs.  Nine hundred of
the strongest men were employed to draw up these cords, by many pulleys
fastened on the poles; and thus, in less than three hours, I was raised
and slung into the engine, and there tied fast.  All this I was told;
for, while the operation was performing, I lay in a profound sleep, by
the force of that soporiferous medicine infused into my liquor.  Fifteen
hundred of the emperor’s largest horses, each about four inches and a
half high, were employed to draw me towards the metropolis, which, as I
said, was half a mile distant.

About four hours after we began our journey, I awaked by a very
ridiculous accident; for the carriage being stopped a while, to adjust
something that was out of order, two or three of the young natives had
the curiosity to see how I looked when I was asleep; they climbed up into
the engine, and advancing very softly to my face, one of them, an officer
in the guards, put the sharp end of his half-pike a good way up into my
left nostril, which tickled my nose like a straw, and made me sneeze
violently; whereupon they stole off unperceived, and it was three weeks
before I knew the cause of my waking so suddenly.  We made a long march
the remaining part of the day, and, rested at night with five hundred
guards on each side of me, half with torches, and half with bows and
arrows, ready to shoot me if I should offer to stir.  The next morning at
sun-rise we continued our march, and arrived within two hundred yards of
the city gates about noon.  The emperor, and all his court, came out to
meet us; but his great officers would by no means suffer his majesty to
endanger his person by mounting on my body.

At the place where the carriage stopped there stood an ancient temple,
esteemed to be the largest in the whole kingdom; which, having been
polluted some years before by an unnatural murder, was, according to the
zeal of those people, looked upon as profane, and therefore had been
applied to common use, and all the ornaments and furniture carried away.
In this edifice it was determined I should lodge.  The great gate
fronting to the north was about four feet high, and almost two feet wide,
through which I could easily creep.  On each side of the gate was a small
window, not above six inches from the ground: into that on the left side,
the king’s smith conveyed fourscore and eleven chains, like those that
hang to a lady’s watch in Europe, and almost as large, which were locked
to my left leg with six-and-thirty padlocks.  Over against this temple,
on the other side of the great highway, at twenty feet distance, there
was a turret at least five feet high.  Here the emperor ascended, with
many principal lords of his court, to have an opportunity of viewing me,
as I was told, for I could not see them.  It was reckoned that above a
hundred thousand inhabitants came out of the town upon the same errand;
and, in spite of my guards, I believe there could not be fewer than ten
thousand at several times, who mounted my body by the help of ladders.
But a proclamation was soon issued, to forbid it upon pain of death.
When the workmen found it was impossible for me to break loose, they cut
all the strings that bound me; whereupon I rose up, with as melancholy a
disposition as ever I had in my life.  But the noise and astonishment of
the people, at seeing me rise and walk, are not to be expressed.  The
chains that held my left leg were about two yards long, and gave me not
only the liberty of walking backwards and forwards in a semicircle, but,
being fixed within four inches of the gate, allowed me to creep in, and
lie at my full length in the temple.



CHAPTER II.


The emperor of Lilliput, attended by several of the nobility, comes to
see the author in his confinement.  The emperor’s person and habit
described.  Learned men appointed to teach the author their language.  He
gains favour by his mild disposition.  His pockets are searched, and his
sword and pistols taken from him.

When I found myself on my feet, I looked about me, and must confess I
never beheld a more entertaining prospect.  The country around appeared
like a continued garden, and the enclosed fields, which were generally
forty feet square, resembled so many beds of flowers.  These fields were
intermingled with woods of half a stang, {301} and the tallest trees, as
I could judge, appeared to be seven feet high.  I viewed the town on my
left hand, which looked like the painted scene of a city in a theatre.

I had been for some hours extremely pressed by the necessities of nature;
which was no wonder, it being almost two days since I had last
disburdened myself.  I was under great difficulties between urgency and
shame.  The best expedient I could think of, was to creep into my house,
which I accordingly did; and shutting the gate after me, I went as far as
the length of my chain would suffer, and discharged my body of that
uneasy load.  But this was the only time I was ever guilty of so
uncleanly an action; for which I cannot but hope the candid reader will
give some allowance, after he has maturely and impartially considered my
case, and the distress I was in.  From this time my constant practice
was, as soon as I rose, to perform that business in open air, at the full
extent of my chain; and due care was taken every morning before company
came, that the offensive matter should be carried off in wheel-barrows,
by two servants appointed for that purpose.  I would not have dwelt so
long upon a circumstance that, perhaps, at first sight, may appear not
very momentous, if I had not thought it necessary to justify my
character, in point of cleanliness, to the world; which, I am told, some
of my maligners have been pleased, upon this and other occasions, to call
in question.

When this adventure was at an end, I came back out of my house, having
occasion for fresh air.  The emperor was already descended from the
tower, and advancing on horseback towards me, which had like to have cost
him dear; for the beast, though very well trained, yet wholly unused to
such a sight, which appeared as if a mountain moved before him, reared up
on its hinder feet: but that prince, who is an excellent horseman, kept
his seat, till his attendants ran in, and held the bridle, while his
majesty had time to dismount.  When he alighted, he surveyed me round
with great admiration; but kept beyond the length of my chain.  He
ordered his cooks and butlers, who were already prepared, to give me
victuals and drink, which they pushed forward in a sort of vehicles upon
wheels, till I could reach them.  I took these vehicles and soon emptied
them all; twenty of them were filled with meat, and ten with liquor; each
of the former afforded me two or three good mouthfuls; and I emptied the
liquor of ten vessels, which was contained in earthen vials, into one
vehicle, drinking it off at a draught; and so I did with the rest.  The
empress, and young princes of the blood of both sexes, attended by many
ladies, sat at some distance in their chairs; but upon the accident that
happened to the emperor’s horse, they alighted, and came near his person,
which I am now going to describe.  He is taller by almost the breadth of
my nail, than any of his court; which alone is enough to strike an awe
into the beholders.  His features are strong and masculine, with an
Austrian lip and arched nose, his complexion olive, his countenance
erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his motions graceful,
and his deportment majestic.  He was then past his prime, being
twenty-eight years and three quarters old, of which he had reigned about
seven in great felicity, and generally victorious.  For the better
convenience of beholding him, I lay on my side, so that my face was
parallel to his, and he stood but three yards off: however, I have had
him since many times in my hand, and therefore cannot be deceived in the
description.  His dress was very plain and simple, and the fashion of it
between the Asiatic and the European; but he had on his head a light
helmet of gold, adorned with jewels, and a plume on the crest.  He held
his sword drawn in his hand to defend himself, if I should happen to
break loose; it was almost three inches long; the hilt and scabbard were
gold enriched with diamonds.  His voice was shrill, but very clear and
articulate; and I could distinctly hear it when I stood up.  The ladies
and courtiers were all most magnificently clad; so that the spot they
stood upon seemed to resemble a petticoat spread upon the ground,
embroidered with figures of gold and silver.  His imperial majesty spoke
often to me, and I returned answers: but neither of us could understand a
syllable.  There were several of his priests and lawyers present (as I
conjectured by their habits), who were commanded to address themselves to
me; and I spoke to them in as many languages as I had the least
smattering of, which were High and Low Dutch, Latin, French, Spanish,
Italian, and Lingua Franca, but all to no purpose.  After about two hours
the court retired, and I was left with a strong guard, to prevent the
impertinence, and probably the malice of the rabble, who were very
impatient to crowd about me as near as they durst; and some of them had
the impudence to shoot their arrows at me, as I sat on the ground by the
door of my house, whereof one very narrowly missed my left eye.  But the
colonel ordered six of the ringleaders to be seized, and thought no
punishment so proper as to deliver them bound into my hands; which some
of his soldiers accordingly did, pushing them forward with the butt-ends
of their pikes into my reach.  I took them all in my right hand, put five
of them into my coat-pocket; and as to the sixth, I made a countenance as
if I would eat him alive.  The poor man squalled terribly, and the
colonel and his officers were in much pain, especially when they saw me
take out my penknife: but I soon put them out of fear; for, looking
mildly, and immediately cutting the strings he was bound with, I set him
gently on the ground, and away he ran.  I treated the rest in the same
manner, taking them one by one out of my pocket; and I observed both the
soldiers and people were highly delighted at this mark of my clemency,
which was represented very much to my advantage at court.

Towards night I got with some difficulty into my house, where I lay on
the ground, and continued to do so about a fortnight; during which time,
the emperor gave orders to have a bed prepared for me.  Six hundred beds
of the common measure were brought in carriages, and worked up in my
house; a hundred and fifty of their beds, sewn together, made up the
breadth and length; and these were four double: which, however, kept me
but very indifferently from the hardness of the floor, that was of smooth
stone.  By the same computation, they provided me with sheets, blankets,
and coverlets, tolerable enough for one who had been so long inured to
hardships.

As the news of my arrival spread through the kingdom, it brought
prodigious numbers of rich, idle, and curious people to see me; so that
the villages were almost emptied; and great neglect of tillage and
household affairs must have ensued, if his imperial majesty had not
provided, by several proclamations and orders of state, against this
inconveniency.  He directed that those who had already beheld me should
return home, and not presume to come within fifty yards of my house,
without license from the court; whereby the secretaries of state got
considerable fees.

In the mean time the emperor held frequent councils, to debate what
course should be taken with me; and I was afterwards assured by a
particular friend, a person of great quality, who was as much in the
secret as any, that the court was under many difficulties concerning me.
They apprehended my breaking loose; that my diet would be very expensive,
and might cause a famine.  Sometimes they determined to starve me; or at
least to shoot me in the face and hands with poisoned arrows, which would
soon despatch me; but again they considered, that the stench of so large
a carcass might produce a plague in the metropolis, and probably spread
through the whole kingdom.  In the midst of these consultations, several
officers of the army went to the door of the great council-chamber, and
two of them being admitted, gave an account of my behaviour to the six
criminals above-mentioned; which made so favourable an impression in the
breast of his majesty and the whole board, in my behalf, that an imperial
commission was issued out, obliging all the villages, nine hundred yards
round the city, to deliver in every morning six beeves, forty sheep, and
other victuals for my sustenance; together with a proportionable quantity
of bread, and wine, and other liquors; for the due payment of which, his
majesty gave assignments upon his treasury:—for this prince lives chiefly
upon his own demesnes; seldom, except upon great occasions, raising any
subsidies upon his subjects, who are bound to attend him in his wars at
their own expense.  An establishment was also made of six hundred persons
to be my domestics, who had board-wages allowed for their maintenance,
and tents built for them very conveniently on each side of my door.  It
was likewise ordered, that three hundred tailors should make me a suit of
clothes, after the fashion of the country; that six of his majesty’s
greatest scholars should be employed to instruct me in their language;
and lastly, that the emperor’s horses, and those of the nobility and
troops of guards, should be frequently exercised in my sight, to accustom
themselves to me.  All these orders were duly put in execution; and in
about three weeks I made a great progress in learning their language;
during which time the emperor frequently honoured me with his visits, and
was pleased to assist my masters in teaching me.  We began already to
converse together in some sort; and the first words I learnt, were to
express my desire “that he would please give me my liberty;” which I
every day repeated on my knees.  His answer, as I could comprehend it,
was, “that this must be a work of time, not to be thought on without the
advice of his council, and that first I must _lumos kelmin pesso desmar
lon emposo_;” that is, swear a peace with him and his kingdom.  However,
that I should be used with all kindness.  And he advised me to “acquire,
by my patience and discreet behaviour, the good opinion of himself and
his subjects.”  He desired “I would not take it ill, if he gave orders to
certain proper officers to search me; for probably I might carry about me
several weapons, which must needs be dangerous things, if they answered
the bulk of so prodigious a person.”  I said, “His majesty should be
satisfied; for I was ready to strip myself, and turn up my pockets before
him.”  This I delivered part in words, and part in signs.  He replied,
“that, by the laws of the kingdom, I must be searched by two of his
officers; that he knew this could not be done without my consent and
assistance; and he had so good an opinion of my generosity and justice,
as to trust their persons in my hands; that whatever they took from me,
should be returned when I left the country, or paid for at the rate which
I would set upon them.”  I took up the two officers in my hands, put them
first into my coat-pockets, and then into every other pocket about me,
except my two fobs, and another secret pocket, which I had no mind should
be searched, wherein I had some little necessaries that were of no
consequence to any but myself.  In one of my fobs there was a silver
watch, and in the other a small quantity of gold in a purse.  These
gentlemen, having pen, ink, and paper, about them, made an exact
inventory of every thing they saw; and when they had done, desired I
would set them down, that they might deliver it to the emperor.  This
inventory I afterwards translated into English, and is, word for word, as
follows:

    “_Imprimis_: In the right coat-pocket of the great man-mountain” (for
    so I interpret the words _quinbus flestrin_,) “after the strictest
    search, we found only one great piece of coarse-cloth, large enough
    to be a foot-cloth for your majesty’s chief room of state.  In the
    left pocket we saw a huge silver chest, with a cover of the same
    metal, which we, the searchers, were not able to lift.  We desired it
    should be opened, and one of us stepping into it, found himself up to
    the mid leg in a sort of dust, some part whereof flying up to our
    faces set us both a sneezing for several times together.  In his
    right waistcoat-pocket we found a prodigious bundle of white thin
    substances, folded one over another, about the bigness of three men,
    tied with a strong cable, and marked with black figures; which we
    humbly conceive to be writings, every letter almost half as large as
    the palm of our hands.  In the left there was a sort of engine, from
    the back of which were extended twenty long poles, resembling the
    pallisados before your majesty’s court: wherewith we conjecture the
    man-mountain combs his head; for we did not always trouble him with
    questions, because we found it a great difficulty to make him
    understand us.  In the large pocket, on the right side of his middle
    cover” (so I translate the word _ranfulo_, by which they meant my
    breeches,) “we saw a hollow pillar of iron, about the length of a
    man, fastened to a strong piece of timber larger than the pillar; and
    upon one side of the pillar, were huge pieces of iron sticking out,
    cut into strange figures, which we know not what to make of.  In the
    left pocket, another engine of the same kind.  In the smaller pocket
    on the right side, were several round flat pieces of white and red
    metal, of different bulk; some of the white, which seemed to be
    silver, were so large and heavy, that my comrade and I could hardly
    lift them.  In the left pocket were two black pillars irregularly
    shaped: we could not, without difficulty, reach the top of them, as
    we stood at the bottom of his pocket.  One of them was covered, and
    seemed all of a piece: but at the upper end of the other there
    appeared a white round substance, about twice the bigness of our
    heads.  Within each of these was enclosed a prodigious plate of
    steel; which, by our orders, we obliged him to show us, because we
    apprehended they might be dangerous engines.  He took them out of
    their cases, and told us, that in his own country his practice was to
    shave his beard with one of these, and cut his meat with the other.
    There were two pockets which we could not enter: these he called his
    fobs; they were two large slits cut into the top of his middle cover,
    but squeezed close by the pressure of his belly.  Out of the right
    fob hung a great silver chain, with a wonderful kind of engine at the
    bottom.  We directed him to draw out whatever was at the end of that
    chain; which appeared to be a globe, half silver, and half of some
    transparent metal; for, on the transparent side, we saw certain
    strange figures circularly drawn, and thought we could touch them,
    till we found our fingers stopped by the lucid substance.  He put
    this engine into our ears, which made an incessant noise, like that
    of a water-mill: and we conjecture it is either some unknown animal,
    or the god that he worships; but we are more inclined to the latter
    opinion, because he assured us, (if we understood him right, for he
    expressed himself very imperfectly) that he seldom did any thing
    without consulting it.  He called it his oracle, and said, it pointed
    out the time for every action of his life.  From the left fob he took
    out a net almost large enough for a fisherman, but contrived to open
    and shut like a purse, and served him for the same use: we found
    therein several massy pieces of yellow metal, which, if they be real
    gold, must be of immense value.

    “Having thus, in obedience to your majesty’s commands, diligently
    searched all his pockets, we observed a girdle about his waist made
    of the hide of some prodigious animal, from which, on the left side,
    hung a sword of the length of five men; and on the right, a bag or
    pouch divided into two cells, each cell capable of holding three of
    your majesty’s subjects.  In one of these cells were several globes,
    or balls, of a most ponderous metal, about the bigness of our heads,
    and requiring a strong hand to lift them: the other cell contained a
    heap of certain black grains, but of no great bulk or weight, for we
    could hold above fifty of them in the palms of our hands.

    “This is an exact inventory of what we found about the body of the
    man-mountain, who used us with great civility, and due respect to
    your majesty’s commission.  Signed and sealed on the fourth day of
    the eighty-ninth moon of your majesty’s auspicious reign.

                                          CLEFRIN FRELOCK, MARSI FRELOCK.”

When this inventory was read over to the emperor, he directed me,
although in very gentle terms, to deliver up the several particulars.  He
first called for my scimitar, which I took out, scabbard and all.  In the
mean time he ordered three thousand of his choicest troops (who then
attended him) to surround me at a distance, with their bows and arrows
just ready to discharge; but I did not observe it, for mine eyes were
wholly fixed upon his majesty.  He then desired me to draw my scimitar,
which, although it had got some rust by the sea water, was, in most
parts, exceeding bright.  I did so, and immediately all the troops gave a
shout between terror and surprise; for the sun shone clear, and the
reflection dazzled their eyes, as I waved the scimitar to and fro in my
hand.  His majesty, who is a most magnanimous prince, was less daunted
than I could expect: he ordered me to return it into the scabbard, and
cast it on the ground as gently as I could, about six feet from the end
of my chain.  The next thing he demanded was one of the hollow iron
pillars; by which he meant my pocket pistols.  I drew it out, and at his
desire, as well as I could, expressed to him the use of it; and charging
it only with powder, which, by the closeness of my pouch, happened to
escape wetting in the sea (an inconvenience against which all prudent
mariners take special care to provide,) I first cautioned the emperor not
to be afraid, and then I let it off in the air.  The astonishment here
was much greater than at the sight of my scimitar.  Hundreds fell down as
if they had been struck dead; and even the emperor, although he stood his
ground, could not recover himself for some time.  I delivered up both my
pistols in the same manner as I had done my scimitar, and then my pouch
of powder and bullets; begging him that the former might be kept from
fire, for it would kindle with the smallest spark, and blow up his
imperial palace into the air.  I likewise delivered up my watch, which
the emperor was very curious to see, and commanded two of his tallest
yeomen of the guards to bear it on a pole upon their shoulders, as
draymen in England do a barrel of ale.  He was amazed at the continual
noise it made, and the motion of the minute-hand, which he could easily
discern; for their sight is much more acute than ours: he asked the
opinions of his learned men about it, which were various and remote, as
the reader may well imagine without my repeating; although indeed I could
not very perfectly understand them.  I then gave up my silver and copper
money, my purse, with nine large pieces of gold, and some smaller ones;
my knife and razor, my comb and silver snuff-box, my handkerchief and
journal-book.  My scimitar, pistols, and pouch, were conveyed in
carriages to his majesty’s stores; but the rest of my goods were returned
me.

I had as I before observed, one private pocket, which escaped their
search, wherein there was a pair of spectacles (which I sometimes use for
the weakness of mine eyes,) a pocket perspective, and some other little
conveniences; which, being of no consequence to the emperor, I did not
think myself bound in honour to discover, and I apprehended they might be
lost or spoiled if I ventured them out of my possession.



CHAPTER III.


The author diverts the emperor, and his nobility of both sexes, in a very
uncommon manner.  The diversions of the court of Lilliput described.  The
author has his liberty granted him upon certain conditions.

My gentleness and good behaviour had gained so far on the emperor and his
court, and indeed upon the army and people in general, that I began to
conceive hopes of getting my liberty in a short time.  I took all
possible methods to cultivate this favourable disposition.  The natives
came, by degrees, to be less apprehensive of any danger from me.  I would
sometimes lie down, and let five or six of them dance on my hand; and at
last the boys and girls would venture to come and play at hide-and-seek
in my hair.  I had now made a good progress in understanding and speaking
the language.  The emperor had a mind one day to entertain me with
several of the country shows, wherein they exceed all nations I have
known, both for dexterity and magnificence.  I was diverted with none so
much as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon a slender white thread,
extended about two feet, and twelve inches from the ground.  Upon which I
shall desire liberty, with the reader’s patience, to enlarge a little.

This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates for
great employments, and high favour at court.  They are trained in this
art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth, or liberal
education.  When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace
(which often happens,) five or six of those candidates petition the
emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope;
and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office.
Very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to show their
skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty.
Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope,
at least an inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire.  I have
seen him do the summerset several times together, upon a trencher fixed
on a rope which is no thicker than a common packthread in England.  My
friend Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my
opinion, if I am not partial, the second after the treasurer; the rest of
the great officers are much upon a par.

These diversions are often attended with fatal accidents, whereof great
numbers are on record.  I myself have seen two or three candidates break
a limb.  But the danger is much greater, when the ministers themselves
are commanded to show their dexterity; for, by contending to excel
themselves and their fellows, they strain so far that there is hardly one
of them who has not received a fall, and some of them two or three.  I
was assured that, a year or two before my arrival, Flimnap would
infallibly have broke his neck, if one of the king’s cushions, that
accidentally lay on the ground, had not weakened the force of his fall.

There is likewise another diversion, which is only shown before the
emperor and empress, and first minister, upon particular occasions.  The
emperor lays on the table three fine silken threads of six inches long;
one is blue, the other red, and the third green.  These threads are
proposed as prizes for those persons whom the emperor has a mind to
distinguish by a peculiar mark of his favour.  The ceremony is performed
in his majesty’s great chamber of state, where the candidates are to
undergo a trial of dexterity very different from the former, and such as
I have not observed the least resemblance of in any other country of the
new or old world.  The emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends
parallel to the horizon, while the candidates advancing, one by one,
sometimes leap over the stick, sometimes creep under it, backward and
forward, several times, according as the stick is advanced or depressed.
Sometimes the emperor holds one end of the stick, and his first minister
the other; sometimes the minister has it entirely to himself.  Whoever
performs his part with most agility, and holds out the longest in leaping
and creeping, is rewarded with the blue-coloured silk; the red is given
to the next, and the green to the third, which they all wear girt twice
round about the middle; and you see few great persons about this court
who are not adorned with one of these girdles.

The horses of the army, and those of the royal stables, having been daily
led before me, were no longer shy, but would come up to my very feet
without starting.  The riders would leap them over my hand, as I held it
on the ground; and one of the emperor’s huntsmen, upon a large courser,
took my foot, shoe and all; which was indeed a prodigious leap.  I had
the good fortune to divert the emperor one day after a very extraordinary
manner.  I desired he would order several sticks of two feet high, and
the thickness of an ordinary cane, to be brought me; whereupon his
majesty commanded the master of his woods to give directions accordingly;
and the next morning six woodmen arrived with as many carriages, drawn by
eight horses to each.  I took nine of these sticks, and fixing them
firmly in the ground in a quadrangular figure, two feet and a half
square, I took four other sticks, and tied them parallel at each corner,
about two feet from the ground; then I fastened my handkerchief to the
nine sticks that stood erect; and extended it on all sides, till it was
tight as the top of a drum; and the four parallel sticks, rising about
five inches higher than the handkerchief, served as ledges on each side.
When I had finished my work, I desired the emperor to let a troop of his
best horses twenty-four in number, come and exercise upon this plain.
His majesty approved of the proposal, and I took them up, one by one, in
my hands, ready mounted and armed, with the proper officers to exercise
them.  As soon as they got into order they divided into two parties,
performed mock skirmishes, discharged blunt arrows, drew their swords,
fled and pursued, attacked and retired, and in short discovered the best
military discipline I ever beheld.  The parallel sticks secured them and
their horses from falling over the stage; and the emperor was so much
delighted, that he ordered this entertainment to be repeated several
days, and once was pleased to be lifted up and give the word of command;
and with great difficulty persuaded even the empress herself to let me
hold her in her close chair within two yards of the stage, when she was
able to take a full view of the whole performance.  It was my good
fortune, that no ill accident happened in these entertainments; only once
a fiery horse, that belonged to one of the captains, pawing with his
hoof, struck a hole in my handkerchief, and his foot slipping, he
overthrew his rider and himself; but I immediately relieved them both,
and covering the hole with one hand, I set down the troop with the other,
in the same manner as I took them up. The horse that fell was strained in
the left shoulder, but the rider got no hurt; and I repaired my
handkerchief as well as I could: however, I would not trust to the
strength of it any more, in such dangerous enterprises.

About two or three days before I was set at liberty, as I was
entertaining the court with this kind of feat, there arrived an express
to inform his majesty, that some of his subjects, riding near the place
where I was first taken up, had seen a great black substance lying on the
around, very oddly shaped, extending its edges round, as wide as his
majesty’s bedchamber, and rising up in the middle as high as a man; that
it was no living creature, as they at first apprehended, for it lay on
the grass without motion; and some of them had walked round it several
times; that, by mounting upon each other’s shoulders, they had got to the
top, which was flat and even, and, stamping upon it, they found that it
was hollow within; that they humbly conceived it might be something
belonging to the man-mountain; and if his majesty pleased, they would
undertake to bring it with only five horses.  I presently knew what they
meant, and was glad at heart to receive this intelligence.  It seems,
upon my first reaching the shore after our shipwreck, I was in such
confusion, that before I came to the place where I went to sleep, my hat,
which I had fastened with a string to my head while I was rowing, and had
stuck on all the time I was swimming, fell off after I came to land; the
string, as I conjecture, breaking by some accident, which I never
observed, but thought my hat had been lost at sea.  I entreated his
imperial majesty to give orders it might be brought to me as soon as
possible, describing to him the use and the nature of it: and the next
day the waggoners arrived with it, but not in a very good condition; they
had bored two holes in the brim, within an inch and half of the edge, and
fastened two hooks in the holes; these hooks were tied by a long cord to
the harness, and thus my hat was dragged along for above half an English
mile; but, the ground in that country being extremely smooth and level,
it received less damage than I expected.

Two days after this adventure, the emperor, having ordered that part of
his army which quarters in and about his metropolis, to be in readiness,
took a fancy of diverting himself in a very singular manner.  He desired
I would stand like a Colossus, with my legs as far asunder as I
conveniently could.  He then commanded his general (who was an old
experienced leader, and a great patron of mine) to draw up the troops in
close order, and march them under me; the foot by twenty-four abreast,
and the horse by sixteen, with drums beating, colours flying, and pikes
advanced.  This body consisted of three thousand foot, and a thousand
horse.  His majesty gave orders, upon pain of death, that every soldier
in his march should observe the strictest decency with regard to my
person; which however could not prevent some of the younger officers from
turning up their eyes as they passed under me: and, to confess the truth,
my breeches were at that time in so ill a condition, that they afforded
some opportunities for laughter and admiration.

I had sent so many memorials and petitions for my liberty, that his
majesty at length mentioned the matter, first in the cabinet, and then in
a full council; where it was opposed by none, except Skyresh Bolgolam,
who was pleased, without any provocation, to be my mortal enemy.  But it
was carried against him by the whole board, and confirmed by the emperor.
That minister was _galbet_, or admiral of the realm, very much in his
master’s confidence, and a person well versed in affairs, but of a morose
and sour complexion.  However, he was at length persuaded to comply; but
prevailed that the articles and conditions upon which I should be set
free, and to which I must swear, should be drawn up by himself.  These
articles were brought to me by Skyresh Bolgolam in person attended by two
under-secretaries, and several persons of distinction.  After they were
read, I was demanded to swear to the performance of them; first in the
manner of my own country, and afterwards in the method prescribed by
their laws; which was, to hold my right foot in my left hand, and to
place the middle finger of my right hand on the crown of my head, and my
thumb on the tip of my right ear.  But because the reader may be curious
to have some idea of the style and manner of expression peculiar to that
people, as well as to know the article upon which I recovered my liberty,
I have made a translation of the whole instrument, word for word, as near
as I was able, which I here offer to the public.

“Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue, most mighty
Emperor of Lilliput, delight and terror of the universe, whose dominions
extend five thousand _blustrugs_ (about twelve miles in circumference) to
the extremities of the globe; monarch of all monarchs, taller than the
sons of men; whose feet press down to the centre, and whose head strikes
against the sun; at whose nod the princes of the earth shake their knees;
pleasant as the spring, comfortable as the summer, fruitful as autumn,
dreadful as winter: his most sublime majesty proposes to the
man-mountain, lately arrived at our celestial dominions, the following
articles, which, by a solemn oath, he shall be obliged to perform:—

“1st, The man-mountain shall not depart from our dominions, without our
license under our great seal.

“2d, He shall not presume to come into our metropolis, without our
express order; at which time, the inhabitants shall have two hours
warning to keep within doors.

“3d, The said man-mountain shall confine his walks to our principal high
roads, and not offer to walk, or lie down, in a meadow or field of corn.

“4th, As he walks the said roads, he shall take the utmost care not to
trample upon the bodies of any of our loving subjects, their horses, or
carriages, nor take any of our subjects into his hands without their own
consent.

“5th, If an express requires extraordinary despatch, the man-mountain
shall be obliged to carry, in his pocket, the messenger and horse a six
days journey, once in every moon, and return the said messenger back (if
so required) safe to our imperial presence.

“6th, He shall be our ally against our enemies in the island of Blefuscu,
and do his utmost to destroy their fleet, which is now preparing to
invade us.

“7th, That the said man-mountain shall, at his times of leisure, be
aiding and assisting to our workmen, in helping to raise certain great
stones, towards covering the wall of the principal park, and other our
royal buildings.

“8th, That the said man-mountain shall, in two moons’ time, deliver in an
exact survey of the circumference of our dominions, by a computation of
his own paces round the coast.

“Lastly, That, upon his solemn oath to observe all the above articles,
the said man-mountain shall have a daily allowance of meat and drink
sufficient for the support of 1724 of our subjects, with free access to
our royal person, and other marks of our favour.  Given at our palace at
Belfaborac, the twelfth day of the ninety-first moon of our reign.”

I swore and subscribed to these articles with great cheerfulness and
content, although some of them were not so honourable as I could have
wished; which proceeded wholly from the malice of Skyresh Bolgolam, the
high-admiral: whereupon my chains were immediately unlocked, and I was at
full liberty.  The emperor himself, in person, did me the honour to be by
at the whole ceremony.  I made my acknowledgements by prostrating myself
at his majesty’s feet: but he commanded me to rise; and after many
gracious expressions, which, to avoid the censure of vanity, I shall not
repeat, he added, “that he hoped I should prove a useful servant, and
well deserve all the favours he had already conferred upon me, or might
do for the future.”

The reader may please to observe, that, in the last article of the
recovery of my liberty, the emperor stipulates to allow me a quantity of
meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1724 Lilliputians.  Some
time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that
determinate number, he told me that his majesty’s mathematicians, having
taken the height of my body by the help of a quadrant, and finding it to
exceed theirs in the proportion of twelve to one, they concluded from the
similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1724 of
theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was necessary to
support that number of Lilliputians.  By which the reader may conceive an
idea of the ingenuity of that people, as well as the prudent and exact
economy of so great a prince.



CHAPTER IV.


Mildendo, the metropolis of Lilliput, described, together with the
emperor’s palace.  A conversation between the author and a principal
secretary, concerning the affairs of that empire.  The author’s offers to
serve the emperor in his wars.

The first request I made, after I had obtained my liberty, was, that I
might have license to see Mildendo, the metropolis; which the emperor
easily granted me, but with a special charge to do no hurt either to the
inhabitants or their houses.  The people had notice, by proclamation, of
my design to visit the town.  The wall which encompassed it is two feet
and a half high, and at least eleven inches broad, so that a coach and
horses may be driven very safely round it; and it is flanked with strong
towers at ten feet distance.  I stepped over the great western gate, and
passed very gently, and sidling, through the two principal streets, only
in my short waistcoat, for fear of damaging the roofs and eaves of the
houses with the skirts of my coat.  I walked with the utmost
circumspection, to avoid treading on any stragglers who might remain in
the streets, although the orders were very strict, that all people should
keep in their houses, at their own peril.  The garret windows and tops of
houses were so crowded with spectators, that I thought in all my travels
I had not seen a more populous place.  The city is an exact square, each
side of the wall being five hundred feet long.  The two great streets,
which run across and divide it into four quarters, are five feet wide.
The lanes and alleys, which I could not enter, but only view them as I
passed, are from twelve to eighteen inches.  The town is capable of
holding five hundred thousand souls: the houses are from three to five
stories: the shops and markets well provided.

The emperor’s palace is in the centre of the city where the two great
streets meet.  It is enclosed by a wall of two feet high, and twenty feet
distance from the buildings.  I had his majesty’s permission to step over
this wall; and, the space being so wide between that and the palace, I
could easily view it on every side.  The outward court is a square of
forty feet, and includes two other courts: in the inmost are the royal
apartments, which I was very desirous to see, but found it extremely
difficult; for the great gates, from one square into another, were but
eighteen inches high, and seven inches wide.  Now the buildings of the
outer court were at least five feet high, and it was impossible for me to
stride over them without infinite damage to the pile, though the walls
were strongly built of hewn stone, and four inches thick.  At the same
time the emperor had a great desire that I should see the magnificence of
his palace; but this I was not able to do till three days after, which I
spent in cutting down with my knife some of the largest trees in the
royal park, about a hundred yards distant from the city.  Of these trees
I made two stools, each about three feet high, and strong enough to bear
my weight.  The people having received notice a second time, I went again
through the city to the palace with my two stools in my hands.  When I
came to the side of the outer court, I stood upon one stool, and took the
other in my hand; this I lifted over the roof, and gently set it down on
the space between the first and second court, which was eight feet wide.
I then stept over the building very conveniently from one stool to the
other, and drew up the first after me with a hooked stick.  By this
contrivance I got into the inmost court; and, lying down upon my side, I
applied my face to the windows of the middle stories, which were left
open on purpose, and discovered the most splendid apartments that can be
imagined.  There I saw the empress and the young princes, in their
several lodgings, with their chief attendants about them.  Her imperial
majesty was pleased to smile very graciously upon me, and gave me out of
the window her hand to kiss.

But I shall not anticipate the reader with further descriptions of this
kind, because I reserve them for a greater work, which is now almost
ready for the press; containing a general description of this empire,
from its first erection, through along series of princes; with a
particular account of their wars and politics, laws, learning, and
religion; their plants and animals; their peculiar manners and customs,
with other matters very curious and useful; my chief design at present
being only to relate such events and transactions as happened to the
public or to myself during a residence of about nine months in that
empire.

One morning, about a fortnight after I had obtained my liberty,
Reldresal, principal secretary (as they style him) for private affairs,
came to my house attended only by one servant.  He ordered his coach to
wait at a distance, and desired I would give him an hours audience; which
I readily consented to, on account of his quality and personal merits, as
well as of the many good offices he had done me during my solicitations
at court.  I offered to lie down that he might the more conveniently
reach my ear, but he chose rather to let me hold him in my hand during
our conversation.  He began with compliments on my liberty; said “he
might pretend to some merit in it;” but, however, added, “that if it had
not been for the present situation of things at court, perhaps I might
not have obtained it so soon.  For,” said he, “as flourishing a condition
as we may appear to be in to foreigners, we labour under two mighty
evils: a violent faction at home, and the danger of an invasion, by a
most potent enemy, from abroad.  As to the first, you are to understand,
that for about seventy moons past there have been two struggling parties
in this empire, under the names of _Tramecksan_ and _Slamecksan_, from
the high and low heels of their shoes, by which they distinguish
themselves.  It is alleged, indeed, that the high heels are most
agreeable to our ancient constitution; but, however this be, his majesty
has determined to make use only of low heels in the administration of the
government, and all offices in the gift of the crown, as you cannot but
observe; and particularly that his majesty’s imperial heels are lower at
least by a _drurr_ than any of his court (_drurr_ is a measure about the
fourteenth part of an inch).  The animosities between these two parties
run so high, that they will neither eat, nor drink, nor talk with each
other.  We compute the _Tramecksan_, or high heels, to exceed us in
number; but the power is wholly on our side.  We apprehend his imperial
highness, the heir to the crown, to have some tendency towards the high
heels; at least we can plainly discover that one of his heels is higher
than the other, which gives him a hobble in his gait.  Now, in the midst
of these intestine disquiets, we are threatened with an invasion from the
island of Blefuscu, which is the other great empire of the universe,
almost as large and powerful as this of his majesty.  For as to what we
have heard you affirm, that there are other kingdoms and states in the
world inhabited by human creatures as large as yourself, our philosophers
are in much doubt, and would rather conjecture that you dropped from the
moon, or one of the stars; because it is certain, that a hundred mortals
of your bulk would in a short time destroy all the fruits and cattle of
his majesty’s dominions: besides, our histories of six thousand moons
make no mention of any other regions than the two great empires of
Lilliput and Blefuscu.  Which two mighty powers have, as I was going to
tell you, been engaged in a most obstinate war for six-and-thirty moons
past.  It began upon the following occasion.  It is allowed on all hands,
that the primitive way of breaking eggs, before we eat them, was upon the
larger end; but his present majesty’s grandfather, while he was a boy,
going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice,
happened to cut one of his fingers.  Whereupon the emperor his father
published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to
break the smaller end of their eggs.  The people so highly resented this
law, that our histories tell us, there have been six rebellions raised on
that account; wherein one emperor lost his life, and another his crown.
These civil commotions were constantly fomented by the monarchs of
Blefuscu; and when they were quelled, the exiles always fled for refuge
to that empire.  It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at
several times suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at
the smaller end.  Many hundred large volumes have been published upon
this controversy: but the books of the Big-endians have been long
forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding
employments.  During the course of these troubles, the emperors of
Blefusca did frequently expostulate by their ambassadors, accusing us of
making a schism in religion, by offending against a fundamental doctrine
of our great prophet Lustrog, in the fifty-fourth chapter of the
Blundecral (which is their Alcoran).  This, however, is thought to be a
mere strain upon the text; for the words are these: ‘that all true
believers break their eggs at the convenient end.’  And which is the
convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion to be left to every man’s
conscience, or at least in the power of the chief magistrate to
determine.  Now, the Big-endian exiles have found so much credit in the
emperor of Blefuscu’s court, and so much private assistance and
encouragement from their party here at home, that a bloody war has been
carried on between the two empires for six-and-thirty moons, with various
success; during which time we have lost forty capital ships, and a much a
greater number of smaller vessels, together with thirty thousand of our
best seamen and soldiers; and the damage received by the enemy is
reckoned to be somewhat greater than ours.  However, they have now
equipped a numerous fleet, and are just preparing to make a descent upon
us; and his imperial majesty, placing great confidence in your valour and
strength, has commanded me to lay this account of his affairs before
you.”

I desired the secretary to present my humble duty to the emperor; and to
let him know, “that I thought it would not become me, who was a
foreigner, to interfere with parties; but I was ready, with the hazard of
my life, to defend his person and state against all invaders.”



CHAPTER V.


The author, by an extraordinary stratagem, prevents an invasion.  A high
title of honour is conferred upon him.  Ambassadors arrive from the
emperor of Blefuscu, and sue for peace.  The empress’s apartment on fire
by an accident; the author instrumental in saving the rest of the palace.

The empire of Blefuscu is an island situated to the north-east of
Lilliput, from which it is parted only by a channel of eight hundred
yards wide.  I had not yet seen it, and upon this notice of an intended
invasion, I avoided appearing on that side of the coast, for fear of
being discovered, by some of the enemy’s ships, who had received no
intelligence of me; all intercourse between the two empires having been
strictly forbidden during the war, upon pain of death, and an embargo
laid by our emperor upon all vessels whatsoever.  I communicated to his
majesty a project I had formed of seizing the enemy’s whole fleet; which,
as our scouts assured us, lay at anchor in the harbour, ready to sail
with the first fair wind.  I consulted the most experienced seamen upon
the depth of the channel, which they had often plumbed; who told me, that
in the middle, at high-water, it was seventy _glumgluffs_ deep, which is
about six feet of European measure; and the rest of it fifty _glumgluffs_
at most.  I walked towards the north-east coast, over against Blefuscu,
where, lying down behind a hillock, I took out my small perspective
glass, and viewed the enemy’s fleet at anchor, consisting of about fifty
men of war, and a great number of transports: I then came back to my
house, and gave orders (for which I had a warrant) for a great quantity
of the strongest cable and bars of iron.  The cable was about as thick as
packthread and the bars of the length and size of a knitting-needle.  I
trebled the cable to make it stronger, and for the same reason I twisted
three of the iron bars together, bending the extremities into a hook.
Having thus fixed fifty hooks to as many cables, I went back to the
north-east coast, and putting off my coat, shoes, and stockings, walked
into the sea, in my leathern jerkin, about half an hour before high
water.  I waded with what haste I could, and swam in the middle about
thirty yards, till I felt ground.  I arrived at the fleet in less than
half an hour.  The enemy was so frightened when they saw me, that they
leaped out of their ships, and swam to shore, where there could not be
fewer than thirty thousand souls.  I then took my tackling, and,
fastening a hook to the hole at the prow of each, I tied all the cords
together at the end.  While I was thus employed, the enemy discharged
several thousand arrows, many of which stuck in my hands and face, and,
beside the excessive smart, gave me much disturbance in my work.  My
greatest apprehension was for mine eyes, which I should have infallibly
lost, if I had not suddenly thought of an expedient.  I kept, among other
little necessaries, a pair of spectacles in a private pocket, which, as I
observed before, had escaped the emperor’s searchers.  These I took out
and fastened as strongly as I could upon my nose, and thus armed, went on
boldly with my work, in spite of the enemy’s arrows, many of which struck
against the glasses of my spectacles, but without any other effect,
further than a little to discompose them.  I had now fastened all the
hooks, and, taking the knot in my hand, began to pull; but not a ship
would stir, for they were all too fast held by their anchors, so that the
boldest part of my enterprise remained.  I therefore let go the cord, and
leaving the hooks fixed to the ships, I resolutely cut with my knife the
cables that fastened the anchors, receiving about two hundred shots in my
face and hands; then I took up the knotted end of the cables, to which my
hooks were tied, and with great ease drew fifty of the enemy’s largest
men of war after me.

The Blefuscudians, who had not the least imagination of what I intended,
were at first confounded with astonishment.  They had seen me cut the
cables, and thought my design was only to let the ships run adrift or
fall foul on each other: but when they perceived the whole fleet moving
in order, and saw me pulling at the end, they set up such a scream of
grief and despair as it is almost impossible to describe or conceive.
When I had got out of danger, I stopped awhile to pick out the arrows
that stuck in my hands and face; and rubbed on some of the same ointment
that was given me at my first arrival, as I have formerly mentioned.  I
then took off my spectacles, and waiting about an hour, till the tide was
a little fallen, I waded through the middle with my cargo, and arrived
safe at the royal port of Lilliput.

The emperor and his whole court stood on the shore, expecting the issue
of this great adventure.  They saw the ships move forward in a large
half-moon, but could not discern me, who was up to my breast in water.
When I advanced to the middle of the channel, they were yet more in pain,
because I was under water to my neck.  The emperor concluded me to be
drowned, and that the enemy’s fleet was approaching in a hostile manner:
but he was soon eased of his fears; for the channel growing shallower
every step I made, I came in a short time within hearing, and holding up
the end of the cable, by which the fleet was fastened, I cried in a loud
voice, “Long live the most puissant king of Lilliput!”  This great prince
received me at my landing with all possible encomiums, and created me a
_nardac_ upon the spot, which is the highest title of honour among them.

His majesty desired I would take some other opportunity of bringing all
the rest of his enemy’s ships into his ports.  And so unmeasureable is
the ambition of princes, that he seemed to think of nothing less than
reducing the whole empire of Blefuscu into a province, and governing it,
by a viceroy; of destroying the Big-endian exiles, and compelling that
people to break the smaller end of their eggs, by which he would remain
the sole monarch of the whole world.  But I endeavoured to divert him
from this design, by many arguments drawn from the topics of policy as
well as justice; and I plainly protested, “that I would never be an
instrument of bringing a free and brave people into slavery.”  And, when
the matter was debated in council, the wisest part of the ministry were
of my opinion.

This open bold declaration of mine was so opposite to the schemes and
politics of his imperial majesty, that he could never forgive me.  He
mentioned it in a very artful manner at council, where I was told that
some of the wisest appeared, at least by their silence, to be of my
opinion; but others, who were my secret enemies, could not forbear some
expressions which, by a side-wind, reflected on me.  And from this time
began an intrigue between his majesty and a junto of ministers,
maliciously bent against me, which broke out in less than two months, and
had like to have ended in my utter destruction.  Of so little weight are
the greatest services to princes, when put into the balance with a
refusal to gratify their passions.

About three weeks after this exploit, there arrived a solemn embassy from
Blefuscu, with humble offers of a peace, which was soon concluded, upon
conditions very advantageous to our emperor, wherewith I shall not
trouble the reader.  There were six ambassadors, with a train of about
five hundred persons, and their entry was very magnificent, suitable to
the grandeur of their master, and the importance of their business.  When
their treaty was finished, wherein I did them several good offices by the
credit I now had, or at least appeared to have, at court, their
excellencies, who were privately told how much I had been their friend,
made me a visit in form.  They began with many compliments upon my valour
and generosity, invited me to that kingdom in the emperor their master’s
name, and desired me to show them some proofs of my prodigious strength,
of which they had heard so many wonders; wherein I readily obliged them,
but shall not trouble the reader with the particulars.

When I had for some time entertained their excellencies, to their
infinite satisfaction and surprise, I desired they would do me the honour
to present my most humble respects to the emperor their master, the
renown of whose virtues had so justly filled the whole world with
admiration, and whose royal person I resolved to attend, before I
returned to my own country.  Accordingly, the next time I had the honour
to see our emperor, I desired his general license to wait on the
Blefuscudian monarch, which he was pleased to grant me, as I could
perceive, in a very cold manner; but could not guess the reason, till I
had a whisper from a certain person, “that Flimnap and Bolgolam had
represented my intercourse with those ambassadors as a mark of
disaffection;” from which I am sure my heart was wholly free.  And this
was the first time I began to conceive some imperfect idea of courts and
ministers.

It is to be observed, that these ambassadors spoke to me, by an
interpreter, the languages of both empires differing as much from each
other as any two in Europe, and each nation priding itself upon the
antiquity, beauty, and energy of their own tongue, with an avowed
contempt for that of their neighbour; yet our emperor, standing upon the
advantage he had got by the seizure of their fleet, obliged them to
deliver their credentials, and make their speech, in the Lilliputian
tongue.  And it must be confessed, that from the great intercourse of
trade and commerce between both realms, from the continual reception of
exiles which is mutual among them, and from the custom, in each empire,
to send their young nobility and richer gentry to the other, in order to
polish themselves by seeing the world, and understanding men and manners;
there are few persons of distinction, or merchants, or seamen, who dwell
in the maritime parts, but what can hold conversation in both tongues; as
I found some weeks after, when I went to pay my respects to the emperor
of Blefuscu, which, in the midst of great misfortunes, through the malice
of my enemies, proved a very happy adventure to me, as I shall relate in
its proper place.

The reader may remember, that when I signed those articles upon which I
recovered my liberty, there were some which I disliked, upon account of
their being too servile; neither could anything but an extreme necessity
have forced me to submit.  But being now a _nardac_ of the highest rank
in that empire, such offices were looked upon as below my dignity, and
the emperor (to do him justice), never once mentioned them to me.
However, it was not long before I had an opportunity of doing his
majesty, at least as I then thought, a most signal service.  I was
alarmed at midnight with the cries of many hundred people at my door; by
which, being suddenly awaked, I was in some kind of terror.  I heard the
word _Burglum_ repeated incessantly: several of the emperor’s court,
making their way through the crowd, entreated me to come immediately to
the palace, where her imperial majesty’s apartment was on fire, by the
carelessness of a maid of honour, who fell asleep while she was reading a
romance.  I got up in an instant; and orders being given to clear the way
before me, and it being likewise a moonshine night, I made a shift to get
to the palace without trampling on any of the people.  I found they had
already applied ladders to the walls of the apartment, and were well
provided with buckets, but the water was at some distance.  These buckets
were about the size of large thimbles, and the poor people supplied me
with them as fast as they could: but the flame was so violent that they
did little good.  I might easily have stifled it with my coat, which I
unfortunately left behind me for haste, and came away only in my leathern
jerkin.  The case seemed wholly desperate and deplorable; and this
magnificent palace would have infallibly been burnt down to the ground,
if, by a presence of mind unusual to me, I had not suddenly thought of an
expedient.  I had, the evening before, drunk plentifully of a most
delicious wine called _glimigrim_, (the Blefuscudians call it _flunec_,
but ours is esteemed the better sort,) which is very diuretic.  By the
luckiest chance in the world, I had not discharged myself of any part of
it.  The heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by
labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate by urine; which
I voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper places,
that in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of
that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, preserved from
destruction.

It was now day-light, and I returned to my house without waiting to
congratulate with the emperor: because, although I had done a very
eminent piece of service, yet I could not tell how his majesty might
resent the manner by which I had performed it: for, by the fundamental
laws of the realm, it is capital in any person, of what quality soever,
to make water within the precincts of the palace.  But I was a little
comforted by a message from his majesty, “that he would give orders to
the grand justiciary for passing my pardon in form:” which, however, I
could not obtain; and I was privately assured, “that the empress,
conceiving the greatest abhorrence of what I had done, removed to the
most distant side of the court, firmly resolved that those buildings
should never be repaired for her use: and, in the presence of her chief
confidents could not forbear vowing revenge.”



CHAPTER VI.


Of the inhabitants of Lilliput; their learning, laws, and customs; the
manner of educating their children.  The author’s way of living in that
country.  His vindication of a great lady.

Although I intend to leave the description of this empire to a particular
treatise, yet, in the mean time, I am content to gratify the curious
reader with some general ideas.  As the common size of the natives is
somewhat under six inches high, so there is an exact proportion in all
other animals, as well as plants and trees: for instance, the tallest
horses and oxen are between four and five inches in height, the sheep an
inch and half, more or less: their geese about the bigness of a sparrow,
and so the several gradations downwards till you come to the smallest,
which to my sight, were almost invisible; but nature has adapted the eyes
of the Lilliputians to all objects proper for their view: they see with
great exactness, but at no great distance.  And, to show the sharpness of
their sight towards objects that are near, I have been much pleased with
observing a cook pulling a lark, which was not so large as a common fly;
and a young girl threading an invisible needle with invisible silk.
Their tallest trees are about seven feet high: I mean some of those in
the great royal park, the tops whereof I could but just reach with my
fist clenched.  The other vegetables are in the same proportion; but this
I leave to the reader’s imagination.

I shall say but little at present of their learning, which, for many
ages, has flourished in all its branches among them: but their manner of
writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right, like
the Europeans, nor from the right to the left, like the Arabians, nor
from up to down, like the Chinese, but aslant, from one corner of the
paper to the other, like ladies in England.

They bury their dead with their heads directly downward, because they
hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise
again; in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will
turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection, be
found ready standing on their feet.  The learned among them confess the
absurdity of this doctrine; but the practice still continues, in
compliance to the vulgar.

There are some laws and customs in this empire very peculiar; and if they
were not so directly contrary to those of my own dear country, I should
be tempted to say a little in their justification.  It is only to be
wished they were as well executed.  The first I shall mention, relates to
informers.  All crimes against the state, are punished here with the
utmost severity; but, if the person accused makes his innocence plainly
to appear upon his trial, the accuser is immediately put to an
ignominious death; and out of his goods or lands the innocent person is
quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he
underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all the charges
he has been at in making his defence; or, if that fund be deficient, it
is largely supplied by the crown.  The emperor also confers on him some
public mark of his favour, and proclamation is made of his innocence
through the whole city.

They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom
fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance,
with a very common understanding, may preserve a man’s goods from
thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since
it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying
and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and
connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always
undone, and the knave gets the advantage.  I remember, when I was once
interceding with the emperor for a criminal who had wronged his master of
a great sum of money, which he had received by order and ran away with;
and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it was
only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer
as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and truly I had
little to say in return, farther than the common answer, that different
nations had different customs; for, I confess, I was heartily ashamed.
{330}

Although we usually call reward and punishment the two hinges upon which
all government turns, yet I could never observe this maxim to be put in
practice by any nation except that of Lilliput.  Whoever can there bring
sufficient proof, that he has strictly observed the laws of his country
for seventy-three moons, has a claim to certain privileges, according to
his quality or condition of life, with a proportionable sum of money out
of a fund appropriated for that use: he likewise acquires the title of
_snilpall_, or legal, which is added to his name, but does not descend to
his posterity.  And these people thought it a prodigious defect of policy
among us, when I told them that our laws were enforced only by penalties,
without any mention of reward.  It is upon this account that the image of
Justice, in their courts of judicature, is formed with six eyes, two
before, as many behind, and on each side one, to signify circumspection;
with a bag of gold open in her right hand, and a sword sheathed in her
left, to show she is more disposed to reward than to punish.

In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good
morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to
mankind, they believe, that the common size of human understanding is
fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to
make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only
by a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born
in an age: but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like, to
be in every man’s power; the practice of which virtues, assisted by
experience and a good intention, would qualify any man for the service of
his country, except where a course of study is required.  But they
thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being supplied by
superior endowments of the mind, that employments could never be put into
such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and, at least,
that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in a virtuous disposition,
would never be of such fatal consequence to the public weal, as the
practices of a man, whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had
great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend his corruptions.

In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man
incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves
to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think nothing can be
more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown the authority
under which he acts.

In relating these and the following laws, I would only be understood to
mean the original institutions, and not the most scandalous corruptions,
into which these people are fallen by the degenerate nature of man.  For,
as to that infamous practice of acquiring great employments by dancing on
the ropes, or badges of favour and distinction by leaping over sticks and
creeping under them, the reader is to observe, that they were first
introduced by the grandfather of the emperor now reigning, and grew to
the present height by the gradual increase of party and faction.

Ingratitude is among them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in
some other countries: for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill
returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of
mankind, from whom he has received no obligation, and therefore such a
man is not fit to live.

Their notions relating to the duties of parents and children differ
extremely from ours.  For, since the conjunction of male and female is
founded upon the great law of nature, in order to propagate and continue
the species, the Lilliputians will needs have it, that men and women are
joined together, like other animals, by the motives of concupiscence; and
that their tenderness towards their young proceeds from the like natural
principle: for which reason they will never allow that a child is under
any obligation to his father for begetting him, or to his mother for
bringing him into the world; which, considering the miseries of human
life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so by his parents,
whose thoughts, in their love encounters, were otherwise employed.  Upon
these, and the like reasonings, their opinion is, that parents are the
last of all others to be trusted with the education of their own
children; and therefore they have in every town public nurseries, where
all parents, except cottagers and labourers, are obliged to send their
infants of both sexes to be reared and educated, when they come to the
age of twenty moons, at which time they are supposed to have some
rudiments of docility.  These schools are of several kinds, suited to
different qualities, and both sexes.  They have certain professors well
skilled in preparing children for such a condition of life as befits the
rank of their parents, and their own capacities, as well as inclinations.
I shall first say something of the male nurseries, and then of the
female.

The nurseries for males of noble or eminent birth, are provided with
grave and learned professors, and their several deputies.  The clothes
and food of the children are plain and simple.  They are bred up in the
principles of honour, justice, courage, modesty, clemency, religion, and
love of their country; they are always employed in some business, except
in the times of eating and sleeping, which are very short, and two hours
for diversions consisting of bodily exercises.  They are dressed by men
till four years of age, and then are obliged to dress themselves,
although their quality be ever so great; and the women attendant, who are
aged proportionably to ours at fifty, perform only the most menial
offices.  They are never suffered to converse with servants, but go
together in smaller or greater numbers to take their diversions, and
always in the presence of a professor, or one of his deputies; whereby
they avoid those early bad impressions of folly and vice, to which our
children are subject.  Their parents are suffered to see them only twice
a year; the visit is to last but an hour; they are allowed to kiss the
child at meeting and parting; but a professor, who always stands by on
those occasions, will not suffer them to whisper, or use any fondling
expressions, or bring any presents of toys, sweetmeats, and the like.

The pension from each family for the education and entertainment of a
child, upon failure of due payment, is levied by the emperor’s officers.

The nurseries for children of ordinary gentlemen, merchants, traders, and
handicrafts, are managed proportionably after the same manner; only those
designed for trades are put out apprentices at eleven years old, whereas
those of persons of quality continue in their exercises till fifteen,
which answers to twenty-one with us: but the confinement is gradually
lessened for the last three years.

In the female nurseries, the young girls of quality are educated much
like the males, only they are dressed by orderly servants of their own
sex; but always in the presence of a professor or deputy, till they come
to dress themselves, which is at five years old.  And if it be found that
these nurses ever presume to entertain the girls with frightful or
foolish stories, or the common follies practised by chambermaids among
us, they are publicly whipped thrice about the city, imprisoned for a
year, and banished for life to the most desolate part of the country.
Thus the young ladies are as much ashamed of being cowards and fools as
the men, and despise all personal ornaments, beyond decency and
cleanliness: neither did I perceive any difference in their education
made by their difference of sex, only that the exercises of the females
were not altogether so robust; and that some rules were given them
relating to domestic life, and a smaller compass of learning was enjoined
them: for their maxim is, that among peoples of quality, a wife should be
always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be
young.  When the girls are twelve years old, which among them is the
marriageable age, their parents or guardians take them home, with great
expressions of gratitude to the professors, and seldom without tears of
the young lady and her companions.

In the nurseries of females of the meaner sort, the children are
instructed in all kinds of works proper for their sex, and their several
degrees: those intended for apprentices are dismissed at seven years old,
the rest are kept to eleven.

The meaner families who have children at these nurseries, are obliged,
besides their annual pension, which is as low as possible, to return to
the steward of the nursery a small monthly share of their gettings, to be
a portion for the child; and therefore all parents are limited in their
expenses by the law.  For the Lilliputians think nothing can be more
unjust, than for people, in subservience to their own appetites, to bring
children into the world, and leave the burthen of supporting them on the
public.  As to persons of quality, they give security to appropriate a
certain sum for each child, suitable to their condition; and these funds
are always managed with good husbandry and the most exact justice.

The cottagers and labourers keep their children at home, their business
being only to till and cultivate the earth, and therefore their education
is of little consequence to the public: but the old and diseased among
them, are supported by hospitals; for begging is a trade unknown in this
empire.

And here it may, perhaps, divert the curious reader, to give some account
of my domestics, and my manner of living in this country, during a
residence of nine months, and thirteen days.  Having a head mechanically
turned, and being likewise forced by necessity, I had made for myself a
table and chair convenient enough, out of the largest trees in the royal
park.  Two hundred sempstresses were employed to make me shirts, and
linen for my bed and table, all of the strongest and coarsest kind they
could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt together in several
folds, for the thickest was some degrees finer than lawn.  Their linen is
usually three inches wide, and three feet make a piece.  The sempstresses
took my measure as I lay on the ground, one standing at my neck, and
another at my mid-leg, with a strong cord extended, that each held by the
end, while a third measured the length of the cord with a rule of an inch
long.  Then they measured my right thumb, and desired no more; for by a
mathematical computation, that twice round the thumb is once round the
wrist, and so on to the neck and the waist, and by the help of my old
shirt, which I displayed on the ground before them for a pattern, they
fitted me exactly.  Three hundred tailors were employed in the same
manner to make me clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my
measure.  I kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my
neck; upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line
from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat:
but my waist and arms I measured myself.  When my clothes were finished,
which was done in my house (for the largest of theirs would not have been
able to hold them), they looked like the patch-work made by the ladies in
England, only that mine were all of a colour.

I had three hundred cooks to dress my victuals, in little convenient huts
built about my house, where they and their families lived, and prepared
me two dishes a-piece.  I took up twenty waiters in my hand, and placed
them on the table: a hundred more attended below on the ground, some with
dishes of meat, and some with barrels of wine and other liquors slung on
their shoulders; all which the waiters above drew up, as I wanted, in a
very ingenious manner, by certain cords, as we draw the bucket up a well
in Europe.  A dish of their meat was a good mouthful, and a barrel of
their liquor a reasonable draught.  Their mutton yields to ours, but
their beef is excellent.  I have had a sirloin so large, that I have been
forced to make three bites of it; but this is rare.  My servants were
astonished to see me eat it, bones and all, as in our country we do the
leg of a lark.  Their geese and turkeys I usually ate at a mouthful, and
I confess they far exceed ours.  Of their smaller fowl I could take up
twenty or thirty at the end of my knife.

One day his imperial majesty, being informed of my way of living, desired
“that himself and his royal consort, with the young princes of the blood
of both sexes, might have the happiness,” as he was pleased to call it,
“of dining with me.”  They came accordingly, and I placed them in chairs
of state, upon my table, just over against me, with their guards about
them.  Flimnap, the lord high treasurer, attended there likewise with his
white staff; and I observed he often looked on me with a sour
countenance, which I would not seem to regard, but ate more than usual,
in honour to my dear country, as well as to fill the court with
admiration.  I have some private reasons to believe, that this visit from
his majesty gave Flimnap an opportunity of doing me ill offices to his
master.  That minister had always been my secret enemy, though he
outwardly caressed me more than was usual to the moroseness of his
nature.  He represented to the emperor “the low condition of his
treasury; that he was forced to take up money at a great discount; that
exchequer bills would not circulate under nine per cent. below par; that
I had cost his majesty above a million and a half of _sprugs_” (their
greatest gold coin, about the bigness of a spangle) “and, upon the whole,
that it would be advisable in the emperor to take the first fair occasion
of dismissing me.”

I am here obliged to vindicate the reputation of an excellent lady, who
was an innocent sufferer upon my account.  The treasurer took a fancy to
be jealous of his wife, from the malice of some evil tongues, who
informed him that her grace had taken a violent affection for my person;
and the court scandal ran for some time, that she once came privately to
my lodging.  This I solemnly declare to be a most infamous falsehood,
without any grounds, further than that her grace was pleased to treat me
with all innocent marks of freedom and friendship.  I own she came often
to my house, but always publicly, nor ever without three more in the
coach, who were usually her sister and young daughter, and some
particular acquaintance; but this was common to many other ladies of the
court.  And I still appeal to my servants round, whether they at any time
saw a coach at my door, without knowing what persons were in it.  On
those occasions, when a servant had given me notice, my custom was to go
immediately to the door, and, after paying my respects, to take up the
coach and two horses very carefully in my hands (for, if there were six
horses, the postillion always unharnessed four,) and place them on a
table, where I had fixed a movable rim quite round, of five inches high,
to prevent accidents.  And I have often had four coaches and horses at
once on my table, full of company, while I sat in my chair, leaning my
face towards them; and when I was engaged with one set, the coachmen
would gently drive the others round my table.  I have passed many an
afternoon very agreeably in these conversations.  But I defy the
treasurer, or his two informers (I will name them, and let them make the
best of it) Clustril and Drunlo, to prove that any person ever came to me
_incognito_, except the secretary Reldresal, who was sent by express
command of his imperial majesty, as I have before related.  I should not
have dwelt so long upon this particular, if it had not been a point
wherein the reputation of a great lady is so nearly concerned, to say
nothing of my own; though I then had the honour to be a _nardac_, which
the treasurer himself is not; for all the world knows, that he is only a
_glumglum_, a title inferior by one degree, as that of a marquis is to a
duke in England; yet I allow he preceded me in right of his post.  These
false informations, which I afterwards came to the knowledge of by an
accident not proper to mention, made the treasurer show his lady for some
time an ill countenance, and me a worse; and although he was at last
undeceived and reconciled to her, yet I lost all credit with him, and
found my interest decline very fast with the emperor himself, who was,
indeed, too much governed by that favourite.



CHAPTER VII.


The author, being informed of a design to accuse him of high-treason,
makes his escape to Blefuscu.  His reception there.

Before I proceed to give an account of my leaving this kingdom, it may be
proper to inform the reader of a private intrigue which had been for two
months forming against me.

I had been hitherto, all my life, a stranger to courts, for which I was
unqualified by the meanness of my condition.  I had indeed heard and read
enough of the dispositions of great princes and ministers, but never
expected to have found such terrible effects of them, in so remote a
country, governed, as I thought, by very different maxims from those in
Europe.

When I was just preparing to pay my attendance on the emperor of
Blefuscu, a considerable person at court (to whom I had been very
serviceable, at a time when he lay under the highest displeasure of his
imperial majesty) came to my house very privately at night, in a close
chair, and, without sending his name, desired admittance.  The chairmen
were dismissed; I put the chair, with his lordship in it, into my
coat-pocket: and, giving orders to a trusty servant, to say I was
indisposed and gone to sleep, I fastened the door of my house, placed the
chair on the table, according to my usual custom, and sat down by it.
After the common salutations were over, observing his lordship’s
countenance full of concern, and inquiring into the reason, he desired “I
would hear him with patience, in a matter that highly concerned my honour
and my life.”  His speech was to the following effect, for I took notes
of it as soon as he left me:—

“You are to know,” said he, “that several committees of council have been
lately called, in the most private manner, on your account; and it is but
two days since his majesty came to a full resolution.

“You are very sensible that Skyresh Bolgolam” (_galbet_, or high-admiral)
“has been your mortal enemy, almost ever since your arrival.  His
original reasons I know not; but his hatred is increased since your great
success against Blefuscu, by which his glory as admiral is much obscured.
This lord, in conjunction with Flimnap the high-treasurer, whose enmity
against you is notorious on account of his lady, Limtoc the general,
Lalcon the chamberlain, and Balmuff the grand justiciary, have prepared
articles of impeachment against you, for treason and other capital
crimes.”

This preface made me so impatient, being conscious of my own merits and
innocence, that I was going to interrupt him; when he entreated me to be
silent, and thus proceeded:—

“Out of gratitude for the favours you have done me, I procured
information of the whole proceedings, and a copy of the articles; wherein
I venture my head for your service.

    “‘_Articles of Impeachment against_ QUINBUS FLESTRIN, (_the
    Man-Mountain_.)

    ARTICLE I.

    “‘Whereas, by a statute made in the reign of his imperial majesty
    Calin Deffar Plune, it is enacted, that, whoever shall make water
    within the precincts of the royal palace, shall be liable to the
    pains and penalties of high-treason; notwithstanding, the said
    Quinbus Flestrin, in open breach of the said law, under colour of
    extinguishing the fire kindled in the apartment of his majesty’s most
    dear imperial consort, did maliciously, traitorously, and devilishly,
    by discharge of his urine, put out the said fire kindled in the said
    apartment, lying and being within the precincts of the said royal
    palace, against the statute in that case provided, etc. against the
    duty, etc.

    ARTICLE II.

    “‘That the said Quinbus Flestrin, having brought the imperial fleet
    of Blefuscu into the royal port, and being afterwards commanded by
    his imperial majesty to seize all the other ships of the said empire
    of Blefuscu, and reduce that empire to a province, to be governed by
    a viceroy from hence, and to destroy and put to death, not only all
    the Big-endian exiles, but likewise all the people of that empire who
    would not immediately forsake the Big-endian heresy, he, the said
    Flestrin, like a false traitor against his most auspicious, serene,
    imperial majesty, did petition to be excused from the said service,
    upon pretence of unwillingness to force the consciences, or destroy
    the liberties and lives of an innocent people.

    ARTICLE III.

    “‘That, whereas certain ambassadors arrived from the Court of
    Blefuscu, to sue for peace in his majesty’s court, he, the said
    Flestrin, did, like a false traitor, aid, abet, comfort, and divert,
    the said ambassadors, although he knew them to be servants to a
    prince who was lately an open enemy to his imperial majesty, and in
    an open war against his said majesty.

    ARTICLE IV.

    “‘That the said Quinbus Flestrin, contrary to the duty of a faithful
    subject, is now preparing to make a voyage to the court and empire of
    Blefuscu, for which he has received only verbal license from his
    imperial majesty; and, under colour of the said license, does falsely
    and traitorously intend to take the said voyage, and thereby to aid,
    comfort, and abet the emperor of Blefuscu, so lately an enemy, and in
    open war with his imperial majesty aforesaid.’

“There are some other articles; but these are the most important, of
which I have read you an abstract.

“In the several debates upon this impeachment, it must be confessed that
his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity; often urging the
services you had done him, and endeavouring to extenuate your crimes.
The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most
painful and ignominious death, by setting fire to your house at night,
and the general was to attend with twenty thousand men, armed with
poisoned arrows, to shoot you on the face and hands.  Some of your
servants were to have private orders to strew a poisonous juice on your
shirts and sheets, which would soon make you tear your own flesh, and die
in the utmost torture.  The general came into the same opinion; so that
for a long time there was a majority against you; but his majesty
resolving, if possible, to spare your life, at last brought off the
chamberlain.

“Upon this incident, Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs,
who always approved himself your true friend, was commanded by the
emperor to deliver his opinion, which he accordingly did; and therein
justified the good thoughts you have of him.  He allowed your crimes to
be great, but that still there was room for mercy, the most commendable
virtue in a prince, and for which his majesty was so justly celebrated.
He said, the friendship between you and him was so well known to the
world, that perhaps the most honourable board might think him partial;
however, in obedience to the command he had received, he would freely
offer his sentiments.  That if his majesty, in consideration of your
services, and pursuant to his own merciful disposition, would please to
spare your life, and only give orders to put out both your eyes, he
humbly conceived, that by this expedient justice might in some measure be
satisfied, and all the world would applaud the lenity of the emperor, as
well as the fair and generous proceedings of those who have the honour to
be his counsellors.  That the loss of your eyes would be no impediment to
your bodily strength, by which you might still be useful to his majesty;
that blindness is an addition to courage, by concealing dangers from us;
that the fear you had for your eyes, was the greatest difficulty in
bringing over the enemy’s fleet, and it would be sufficient for you to
see by the eyes of the ministers, since the greatest princes do no more.

“This proposal was received with the utmost disapprobation by the whole
board.  Bolgolam, the admiral, could not preserve his temper, but, rising
up in fury, said, he wondered how the secretary durst presume to give his
opinion for preserving the life of a traitor; that the services you had
performed were, by all true reasons of state, the great aggravation of
your crimes; that you, who were able to extinguish the fire by discharge
of urine in her majesty’s apartment (which he mentioned with horror),
might, at another time, raise an inundation by the same means, to drown
the whole palace; and the same strength which enabled you to bring over
the enemy’s fleet, might serve, upon the first discontent, to carry it
back; that he had good reasons to think you were a Big-endian in your
heart; and, as treason begins in the heart, before it appears in
overt-acts, so he accused you as a traitor on that account, and therefore
insisted you should be put to death.

“The treasurer was of the same opinion: he showed to what straits his
majesty’s revenue was reduced, by the charge of maintaining you, which
would soon grow insupportable; that the secretary’s expedient of putting
out your eyes, was so far from being a remedy against this evil, that it
would probably increase it, as is manifest from the common practice of
blinding some kind of fowls, after which they fed the faster, and grew
sooner fat; that his sacred majesty and the council, who are your judges,
were, in their own consciences, fully convinced of your guilt, which was
a sufficient argument to condemn you to death, without the formal proofs
required by the strict letter of the law.

“But his imperial majesty, fully determined against capital punishment,
was graciously pleased to say, that since the council thought the loss of
your eyes too easy a censure, some other way may be inflicted hereafter.
And your friend the secretary, humbly desiring to be heard again, in
answer to what the treasurer had objected, concerning the great charge
his majesty was at in maintaining you, said, that his excellency, who had
the sole disposal of the emperor’s revenue, might easily provide against
that evil, by gradually lessening your establishment; by which, for want
of sufficient for you would grow weak and faint, and lose your appetite,
and consequently, decay, and consume in a few months; neither would the
stench of your carcass be then so dangerous, when it should become more
than half diminished; and immediately upon your death five or six
thousand of his majesty’s subjects might, in two or three days, cut your
flesh from your bones, take it away by cart-loads, and bury it in distant
parts, to prevent infection, leaving the skeleton as a monument of
admiration to posterity.

“Thus, by the great friendship of the secretary, the whole affair was
compromised.  It was strictly enjoined, that the project of starving you
by degrees should be kept a secret; but the sentence of putting out your
eyes was entered on the books; none dissenting, except Bolgolam the
admiral, who, being a creature of the empress, was perpetually instigated
by her majesty to insist upon your death, she having borne perpetual
malice against you, on account of that infamous and illegal method you
took to extinguish the fire in her apartment.

“In three days your friend the secretary will be directed to come to your
house, and read before you the articles of impeachment; and then to
signify the great lenity and favour of his majesty and council, whereby
you are only condemned to the loss of your eyes, which his majesty does
not question you will gratefully and humbly submit to; and twenty of his
majesty’s surgeons will attend, in order to see the operation well
performed, by discharging very sharp-pointed arrows into the balls of
your eyes, as you lie on the ground.

“I leave to your prudence what measures you will take; and to avoid
suspicion, I must immediately return in as private a manner as I came.”

His lordship did so; and I remained alone, under many doubts and
perplexities of mind.

It was a custom introduced by this prince and his ministry (very
different, as I have been assured, from the practice of former times,)
that after the court had decreed any cruel execution, either to gratify
the monarch’s resentment, or the malice of a favourite, the emperor
always made a speech to his whole council, expressing his great lenity
and tenderness, as qualities known and confessed by all the world.  This
speech was immediately published throughout the kingdom; nor did any
thing terrify the people so much as those encomiums on his majesty’s
mercy; because it was observed, that the more these praises were enlarged
and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer
more innocent.  Yet, as to myself, I must confess, having never been
designed for a courtier, either by my birth or education, I was so ill a
judge of things, that I could not discover the lenity and favour of this
sentence, but conceived it (perhaps erroneously) rather to be rigorous
than gentle.  I sometimes thought of standing my trial, for, although I
could not deny the facts alleged in the several articles, yet I hoped
they would admit of some extenuation.  But having in my life perused many
state-trials, which I ever observed to terminate as the judges thought
fit to direct, I durst not rely on so dangerous a decision, in so
critical a juncture, and against such powerful enemies.  Once I was
strongly bent upon resistance, for, while I had liberty the whole
strength of that empire could hardly subdue me, and I might easily with
stones pelt the metropolis to pieces; but I soon rejected that project
with horror, by remembering the oath I had made to the emperor, the
favours I received from him, and the high title of _nardac_ he conferred
upon me.  Neither had I so soon learned the gratitude of courtiers, to
persuade myself, that his majesty’s present seventies acquitted me of all
past obligations.

At last, I fixed upon a resolution, for which it is probable I may incur
some censure, and not unjustly; for I confess I owe the preserving of
mine eyes, and consequently my liberty, to my own great rashness and want
of experience; because, if I had then known the nature of princes and
ministers, which I have since observed in many other courts, and their
methods of treating criminals less obnoxious than myself, I should, with
great alacrity and readiness, have submitted to so easy a punishment.
But hurried on by the precipitancy of youth, and having his imperial
majesty’s license to pay my attendance upon the emperor of Blefuscu, I
took this opportunity, before the three days were elapsed, to send a
letter to my friend the secretary, signifying my resolution of setting
out that morning for Blefuscu, pursuant to the leave I had got; and,
without waiting for an answer, I went to that side of the island where
our fleet lay.  I seized a large man of war, tied a cable to the prow,
and, lifting up the anchors, I stripped myself, put my clothes (together
with my coverlet, which I carried under my arm) into the vessel, and,
drawing it after me, between wading and swimming arrived at the royal
port of Blefuscu, where the people had long expected me: they lent me two
guides to direct me to the capital city, which is of the same name.  I
held them in my hands, till I came within two hundred yards of the gate,
and desired them “to signify my arrival to one of the secretaries, and
let him know, I there waited his majesty’s command.”  I had an answer in
about an hour, “that his majesty, attended by the royal family, and great
officers of the court, was coming out to receive me.”  I advanced a
hundred yards.  The emperor and his train alighted from their horses, the
empress and ladies from their coaches, and I did not perceive they were
in any fright or concern.  I lay on the ground to kiss his majesty’s and
the empress’s hands.  I told his majesty, “that I was come according to
my promise, and with the license of the emperor my master, to have the
honour of seeing so mighty a monarch, and to offer him any service in my
power, consistent with my duty to my own prince;” not mentioning a word
of my disgrace, because I had hitherto no regular information of it, and
might suppose myself wholly ignorant of any such design; neither could I
reasonably conceive that the emperor would discover the secret, while I
was out of his power; wherein, however, it soon appeared I was deceived.

I shall not trouble the reader with the particular account of my
reception at this court, which was suitable to the generosity of so great
a prince; nor of the difficulties I was in for want of a house and bed,
being forced to lie on the ground, wrapped up in my coverlet.



CHAPTER VIII.


The author, by a lucky accident, finds means to leave Blefuscu; and,
after some difficulties, returns safe to his native country.

Three days after my arrival, walking out of curiosity to the north-east
coast of the island, I observed, about half a league off in the sea,
somewhat that looked like a boat overturned.  I pulled off my shoes and
stockings, and, wailing two or three hundred yards, I found the object to
approach nearer by force of the tide; and then plainly saw it to be a
real boat, which I supposed might by some tempest have been driven from a
ship.  Whereupon, I returned immediately towards the city, and desired
his imperial majesty to lend me twenty of the tallest vessels he had
left, after the loss of his fleet, and three thousand seamen, under the
command of his vice-admiral.  This fleet sailed round, while I went back
the shortest way to the coast, where I first discovered the boat.  I
found the tide had driven it still nearer.  The seamen were all provided
with cordage, which I had beforehand twisted to a sufficient strength.
When the ships came up, I stripped myself, and waded till I came within a
hundred yards off the boat, after which I was forced to swim till I got
up to it.  The seamen threw me the end of the cord, which I fastened to a
hole in the fore-part of the boat, and the other end to a man of war; but
I found all my labour to little purpose; for, being out of my depth, I
was not able to work.  In this necessity I was forced to swim behind, and
push the boat forward, as often as I could, with one of my hands; and the
tide favouring me, I advanced so far that I could just hold up my chin
and feel the ground.  I rested two or three minutes, and then gave the
boat another shove, and so on, till the sea was no higher than my
arm-pits; and now, the most laborious part being over, I took out my
other cables, which were stowed in one of the ships, and fastened them
first to the boat, and then to nine of the vessels which attended me; the
wind being favourable, the seamen towed, and I shoved, until we arrived
within forty yards of the shore; and, waiting till the tide was out, I
got dry to the boat, and by the assistance of two thousand men, with
ropes and engines, I made a shift to turn it on its bottom, and found it
was but little damaged.

I shall not trouble the reader with the difficulties I was under, by the
help of certain paddles, which cost me ten days making, to get my boat to
the royal port of Blefuscu, where a mighty concourse of people appeared
upon my arrival, full of wonder at the sight of so prodigious a vessel.
I told the emperor “that my good fortune had thrown this boat in my way,
to carry me to some place whence I might return into my native country;
and begged his majesty’s orders for getting materials to fit it up,
together with his license to depart;” which, after some kind
expostulations, he was pleased to grant.

I did very much wonder, in all this time, not to have heard of any
express relating to me from our emperor to the court of Blefuscu.  But I
was afterward given privately to understand, that his imperial majesty,
never imagining I had the least notice of his designs, believed I was
only gone to Blefuscu in performance of my promise, according to the
license he had given me, which was well known at our court, and would
return in a few days, when the ceremony was ended.  But he was at last in
pain at my long absence; and after consulting with the treasurer and the
rest of that cabal, a person of quality was dispatched with the copy of
the articles against me.  This envoy had instructions to represent to the
monarch of Blefuscu, “the great lenity of his master, who was content to
punish me no farther than with the loss of mine eyes; that I had fled
from justice; and if I did not return in two hours, I should be deprived
of my title of _nardac_, and declared a traitor.”  The envoy further
added, “that in order to maintain the peace and amity between both
empires, his master expected that his brother of Blefuscu would give
orders to have me sent back to Lilliput, bound hand and foot, to be
punished as a traitor.”

The emperor of Blefuscu, having taken three days to consult, returned an
answer consisting of many civilities and excuses.  He said, “that as for
sending me bound, his brother knew it was impossible; that, although I
had deprived him of his fleet, yet he owed great obligations to me for
many good offices I had done him in making the peace.  That, however,
both their majesties would soon be made easy; for I had found a
prodigious vessel on the shore, able to carry me on the sea, which he had
given orders to fit up, with my own assistance and direction; and he
hoped, in a few weeks, both empires would be freed from so insupportable
an encumbrance.”

With this answer the envoy returned to Lilliput; and the monarch of
Blefuscu related to me all that had passed; offering me at the same time
(but under the strictest confidence) his gracious protection, if I would
continue in his service; wherein, although I believed him sincere, yet I
resolved never more to put any confidence in princes or ministers, where
I could possibly avoid it; and therefore, with all due acknowledgments
for his favourable intentions, I humbly begged to be excused.  I told
him, “that since fortune, whether good or evil, had thrown a vessel in my
way, I was resolved to venture myself on the ocean, rather than be an
occasion of difference between two such mighty monarchs.”  Neither did I
find the emperor at all displeased; and I discovered, by a certain
accident, that he was very glad of my resolution, and so were most of his
ministers.

These considerations moved me to hasten my departure somewhat sooner than
I intended; to which the court, impatient to have me gone, very readily
contributed.  Five hundred workmen were employed to make two sails to my
boat, according to my directions, by quilting thirteen folds of their
strongest linen together.  I was at the pains of making ropes and cables,
by twisting ten, twenty, or thirty of the thickest and strongest of
theirs.  A great stone that I happened to find, after a long search, by
the sea-shore, served me for an anchor.  I had the tallow of three
hundred cows, for greasing my boat, and other uses.  I was at incredible
pains in cutting down some of the largest timber-trees, for oars and
masts, wherein I was, however, much assisted by his majesty’s
ship-carpenters, who helped me in smoothing them, after I had done the
rough work.

In about a month, when all was prepared, I sent to receive his majesty’s
commands, and to take my leave.  The emperor and royal family came out of
the palace; I lay down on my face to kiss his hand, which he very
graciously gave me: so did the empress and young princes of the blood.
His majesty presented me with fifty purses of two hundred _sprugs_
a-piece, together with his picture at full length, which I put
immediately into one of my gloves, to keep it from being hurt.  The
ceremonies at my departure were too many to trouble the reader with at
this time.

I stored the boat with the carcases of a hundred oxen, and three hundred
sheep, with bread and drink proportionable, and as much meat ready
dressed as four hundred cooks could provide.  I took with me six cows and
two bulls alive, with as many ewes and rams, intending to carry them into
my own country, and propagate the breed.  And to feed them on board, I
had a good bundle of hay, and a bag of corn.  I would gladly have taken a
dozen of the natives, but this was a thing the emperor would by no means
permit; and, besides a diligent search into my pockets, his majesty
engaged my honour “not to carry away any of his subjects, although with
their own consent and desire.”

Having thus prepared all things as well as I was able, I set sail on the
twenty-fourth day of September 1701, at six in the morning; and when I
had gone about four-leagues to the northward, the wind being at
south-east, at six in the evening I descried a small island, about half a
league to the north-west.  I advanced forward, and cast anchor on the
lee-side of the island, which seemed to be uninhabited.  I then took some
refreshment, and went to my rest.  I slept well, and as I conjectured at
least six hours, for I found the day broke in two hours after I awaked.
It was a clear night.  I ate my breakfast before the sun was up; and
heaving anchor, the wind being favourable, I steered the same course that
I had done the day before, wherein I was directed by my pocket compass.
My intention was to reach, if possible, one of those islands which I had
reason to believe lay to the north-east of Van Diemen’s Land.  I
discovered nothing all that day; but upon the next, about three in the
afternoon, when I had by my computation made twenty-four leagues from
Blefuscu, I descried a sail steering to the south-east; my course was due
east.  I hailed her, but could get no answer; yet I found I gained upon
her, for the wind slackened.  I made all the sail I could, and in half an
hour she spied me, then hung out her ancient, and discharged a gun.  It
is not easy to express the joy I was in, upon the unexpected hope of once
more seeing my beloved country, and the dear pledges I left in it.  The
ship slackened her sails, and I came up with her between five and six in
the evening, September 26th; but my heart leaped within me to see her
English colours.  I put my cows and sheep into my coat-pockets, and got
on board with all my little cargo of provisions.  The vessel was an
English merchantman, returning from Japan by the North and South seas;
the captain, Mr. John Biddel, of Deptford, a very civil man, and an
excellent sailor.

We were now in the latitude of 30 degrees south; there were about fifty
men in the ship; and here I met an old comrade of mine, one Peter
Williams, who gave me a good character to the captain.  This gentleman
treated me with kindness, and desired I would let him know what place I
came from last, and whither I was bound; which I did in a few words, but
he thought I was raving, and that the dangers I underwent had disturbed
my head; whereupon I took my black cattle and sheep out of my pocket,
which, after great astonishment, clearly convinced him of my veracity.  I
then showed him the gold given me by the emperor of Blefuscu, together
with his majesty’s picture at full length, and some other rarities of
that country.  I gave him two purses of two hundreds _sprugs_ each, and
promised, when we arrived in England, to make him a present of a cow and
a sheep big with young.

I shall not trouble the reader with a particular account of this voyage,
which was very prosperous for the most part.  We arrived in the Downs on
the 13th of April, 1702.  I had only one misfortune, that the rats on
board carried away one of my sheep; I found her bones in a hole, picked
clean from the flesh.  The rest of my cattle I got safe ashore, and set
them a-grazing in a bowling-green at Greenwich, where the fineness of the
grass made them feed very heartily, though I had always feared the
contrary: neither could I possibly have preserved them in so long a
voyage, if the captain had not allowed me some of his best biscuit,
which, rubbed to powder, and mingled with water, was their constant food.
The short time I continued in England, I made a considerable profit by
showing my cattle to many persons of quality and others: and before I
began my second voyage, I sold them for six hundred pounds.  Since my
last return I find the breed is considerably increased, especially the
sheep, which I hope will prove much to the advantage of the woollen
manufacture, by the fineness of the fleeces.

I stayed but two months with my wife and family, for my insatiable desire
of seeing foreign countries, would suffer me to continue no longer.  I
left fifteen hundred pounds with my wife, and fixed her in a good house
at Redriff.  My remaining stock I carried with me, part in money and part
in goods, in hopes to improve my fortunes.  My eldest uncle John had left
me an estate in land, near Epping, of about thirty pounds a-year; and I
had a long lease of the Black Bull in Fetter-Lane, which yielded me as
much more; so that I was not in any danger of leaving my family upon the
parish.  My son Johnny, named so after his uncle, was at the
grammar-school, and a towardly child.  My daughter Betty (who is now well
married, and has children) was then at her needle-work.  I took leave of
my wife, and boy and girl, with tears on both sides, and went on board
the Adventure, a merchant ship of three hundred tons, bound for Surat,
captain John Nicholas, of Liverpool, commander.  But my account of this
voyage must be referred to the Second Part of my Travels.






PART II.  A VOYAGE TO BROBDINGNAG.






CHAPTER I.


A great storm described; the long boat sent to fetch water; the author
goes with it to discover the country.  He is left on shore, is seized by
one of the natives, and carried to a farmer’s house.  His reception, with
several accidents that happened there.  A description of the inhabitants.

Having been condemned, by nature and fortune, to active and restless
life, in two months after my return, I again left my native country, and
took shipping in the Downs, on the 20th day of June, 1702, in the
Adventure, Captain John Nicholas, a Cornish man, commander, bound for
Surat.  We had a very prosperous gale, till we arrived at the Cape of
Good Hope, where we landed for fresh water; but discovering a leak, we
unshipped our goods and wintered there; for the captain falling sick of
an ague, we could not leave the Cape till the end of March.  We then set
sail, and had a good voyage till we passed the Straits of Madagascar; but
having got northward of that island, and to about five degrees south
latitude, the winds, which in those seas are observed to blow a constant
equal gale between the north and west, from the beginning of December to
the beginning of May, on the 19th of April began to blow with much
greater violence, and more westerly than usual, continuing so for twenty
days together: during which time, we were driven a little to the east of
the Molucca Islands, and about three degrees northward of the line, as
our captain found by an observation he took the 2nd of May, at which time
the wind ceased, and it was a perfect calm, whereat I was not a little
rejoiced.  But he, being a man well experienced in the navigation of
those seas, bid us all prepare against a storm, which accordingly
happened the day following: for the southern wind, called the southern
monsoon, began to set in.

Finding it was likely to overblow, we took in our sprit-sail, and stood
by to hand the fore-sail; but making foul weather, we looked the guns
were all fast, and handed the mizen.  The ship lay very broad off, so we
thought it better spooning before the sea, than trying or hulling.  We
reefed the fore-sail and set him, and hauled aft the fore-sheet; the helm
was hard a-weather.  The ship wore bravely.  We belayed the fore
down-haul; but the sail was split, and we hauled down the yard, and got
the sail into the ship, and unbound all the things clear of it.  It was a
very fierce storm; the sea broke strange and dangerous.  We hauled off
upon the laniard of the whip-staff, and helped the man at the helm.  We
would not get down our topmast, but let all stand, because she scudded
before the sea very well, and we knew that the top-mast being aloft, the
ship was the wholesomer, and made better way through the sea, seeing we
had sea-room.  When the storm was over, we set fore-sail and main-sail,
and brought the ship to.  Then we set the mizen, main-top-sail, and the
fore-top-sail.  Our course was east-north-east, the wind was at
south-west.  We got the starboard tacks aboard, we cast off our
weather-braces and lifts; we set in the lee-braces, and hauled forward by
the weather-bowlings, and hauled them tight, and belayed them, and hauled
over the mizen tack to windward, and kept her full and by as near as she
would lie.

During this storm, which was followed by a strong wind west-south-west,
we were carried, by my computation, about five hundred leagues to the
east, so that the oldest sailor on board could not tell in what part of
the world we were.  Our provisions held out well, our ship was staunch,
and our crew all in good health; but we lay in the utmost distress for
water.  We thought it best to hold on the same course, rather than turn
more northerly, which might have brought us to the north-west part of
Great Tartary, and into the Frozen Sea.

On the 16th day of June, 1703, a boy on the top-mast discovered land.  On
the 17th, we came in full view of a great island, or continent (for we
knew not whether;) on the south side whereof was a small neck of land
jutting out into the sea, and a creek too shallow to hold a ship of above
one hundred tons.  We cast anchor within a league of this creek, and our
captain sent a dozen of his men well armed in the long-boat, with vessels
for water, if any could be found.  I desired his leave to go with them,
that I might see the country, and make what discoveries I could.  When we
came to land we saw no river or spring, nor any sign of inhabitants.  Our
men therefore wandered on the shore to find out some fresh water near the
sea, and I walked alone about a mile on the other side, where I observed
the country all barren and rocky.  I now began to be weary, and seeing
nothing to entertain my curiosity, I returned gently down towards the
creek; and the sea being full in my view, I saw our men already got into
the boat, and rowing for life to the ship.  I was going to holla after
them, although it had been to little purpose, when I observed a huge
creature walking after them in the sea, as fast as he could: he waded not
much deeper than his knees, and took prodigious strides: but our men had
the start of him half a league, and, the sea thereabouts being full of
sharp-pointed rocks, the monster was not able to overtake the boat.  This
I was afterwards told, for I durst not stay to see the issue of the
adventure; but ran as fast as I could the way I first went, and then
climbed up a steep hill, which gave me some prospect of the country.  I
found it fully cultivated; but that which first surprised me was the
length of the grass, which, in those grounds that seemed to be kept for
hay, was about twenty feet high.

I fell into a high road, for so I took it to be, though it served to the
inhabitants only as a foot-path through a field of barley.  Here I walked
on for some time, but could see little on either side, it being now near
harvest, and the corn rising at least forty feet.  I was an hour walking
to the end of this field, which was fenced in with a hedge of at least
one hundred and twenty feet high, and the trees so lofty that I could
make no computation of their altitude.  There was a stile to pass from
this field into the next.  It had four steps, and a stone to cross over
when you came to the uppermost.  It was impossible for me to climb this
stile, because every step was six-feet high, and the upper stone about
twenty.  I was endeavouring to find some gap in the hedge, when I
discovered one of the inhabitants in the next field, advancing towards
the stile, of the same size with him whom I saw in the sea pursuing our
boat.  He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about
ten yards at every stride, as near as I could guess.  I was struck with
the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn,
whence I saw him at the top of the stile looking back into the next field
on the right hand, and heard him call in a voice many degrees louder than
a speaking-trumpet: but the noise was so high in the air, that at first I
certainly thought it was thunder.  Whereupon seven monsters, like
himself, came towards him with reaping-hooks in their hands, each hook
about the largeness of six scythes.  These people were not so well clad
as the first, whose servants or labourers they seemed to be; for, upon
some words he spoke, they went to reap the corn in the field where I lay.
I kept from them at as great a distance as I could, but was forced to
move with extreme difficulty, for the stalks of the corn were sometimes
not above a foot distant, so that I could hardly squeeze my body betwixt
them.  However, I made a shift to go forward, till I came to a part of
the field where the corn had been laid by the rain and wind.  Here it was
impossible for me to advance a step; for the stalks were so interwoven,
that I could not creep through, and the beards of the fallen ears so
strong and pointed, that they pierced through my clothes into my flesh.
At the same time I heard the reapers not a hundred yards behind me.
Being quite dispirited with toil, and wholly overcome by grief and
dispair, I lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished I might there
end my days.  I bemoaned my desolate widow and fatherless children.  I
lamented my own folly and wilfulness, in attempting a second voyage,
against the advice of all my friends and relations.  In this terrible
agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose
inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in
the world; where I was able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and
perform those other actions, which will be recorded for ever in the
chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them,
although attested by millions.  I reflected what a mortification it must
prove to me, to appear as inconsiderable in this nation, as one single
Lilliputian would be among us.  But this I conceived was to be the least
of my misfortunes; for, as human creatures are observed to be more savage
and cruel in proportion to their bulk, what could I expect but to be a
morsel in the mouth of the first among these enormous barbarians that
should happen to seize me?  Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right,
when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by
comparison.  It might have pleased fortune, to have let the Lilliputians
find some nation, where the people were as diminutive with respect to
them, as they were to me.  And who knows but that even this prodigious
race of mortals might be equally overmatched in some distant part of the
world, whereof we have yet no discovery.

Scared and confounded as I was, I could not forbear going on with these
reflections, when one of the reapers, approaching within ten yards of the
ridge where I lay, made me apprehend that with the next step I should be
squashed to death under his foot, or cut in two with his reaping-hook.
And therefore, when he was again about to move, I screamed as loud as
fear could make me: whereupon the huge creature trod short, and, looking
round about under him for some time, at last espied me as I lay on the
ground.  He considered awhile, with the caution of one who endeavours to
lay hold on a small dangerous animal in such a manner that it shall not
be able either to scratch or bite him, as I myself have sometimes done
with a weasel in England.  At length he ventured to take me behind, by
the middle, between his fore-finger and thumb, and brought me within
three yards of his eyes, that he might behold my shape more perfectly.  I
guessed his meaning, and my good fortune gave me so much presence of
mind, that I resolved not to struggle in the least as he held me in the
air above sixty feet from the ground, although he grievously pinched my
sides, for fear I should slip through his fingers.  All I ventured was to
raise mine eyes towards the sun, and place my hands together in a
supplicating posture, and to speak some words in a humble melancholy
tone, suitable to the condition I then was in: for I apprehended every
moment that he would dash me against the ground, as we usually do any
little hateful animal, which we have a mind to destroy.  But my good star
would have it, that he appeared pleased with my voice and gestures, and
began to look upon me as a curiosity, much wondering to hear me pronounce
articulate words, although he could not understand them.  In the mean
time I was not able to forbear groaning and shedding tears, and turning
my head towards my sides; letting him know, as well as I could, how
cruelly I was hurt by the pressure of his thumb and finger.  He seemed to
apprehend my meaning; for, lifting up the lappet of his coat, he put me
gently into it, and immediately ran along with me to his master, who was
a substantial farmer, and the same person I had first seen in the field.

The farmer having (as I suppose by their talk) received such an account
of me as his servant could give him, took a piece of a small straw, about
the size of a walking-staff, and therewith lifted up the lappets of my
coat; which it seems he thought to be some kind of covering that nature
had given me.  He blew my hairs aside to take a better view of my face.
He called his hinds about him, and asked them, as I afterwards learned,
whether they had ever seen in the fields any little creature that
resembled me.  He then placed me softly on the ground upon all fours, but
I got immediately up, and walked slowly backward and forward, to let
those people see I had no intent to run away.  They all sat down in a
circle about me, the better to observe my motions.  I pulled off my hat,
and made a low bow towards the farmer.  I fell on my knees, and lifted up
my hands and eyes, and spoke several words as loud as I could: I took a
purse of gold out of my pocket, and humbly presented it to him.  He
received it on the palm of his hand, then applied it close to his eye to
see what it was, and afterwards turned it several times with the point of
a pin (which he took out of his sleeve,) but could make nothing of it.
Whereupon I made a sign that he should place his hand on the ground.  I
then took the purse, and, opening it, poured all the gold into his palm.
There were six Spanish pieces of four pistoles each, beside twenty or
thirty smaller coins.  I saw him wet the tip of his little finger upon
his tongue, and take up one of my largest pieces, and then another; but
he seemed to be wholly ignorant what they were.  He made me a sign to put
them again into my purse, and the purse again into my pocket, which,
after offering it to him several times, I thought it best to do.

The farmer, by this time, was convinced I must be a rational creature.
He spoke often to me; but the sound of his voice pierced my ears like
that of a water-mill, yet his words were articulate enough.  I answered
as loud as I could in several languages, and he often laid his ear within
two yards of me: but all in vain, for we were wholly unintelligible to
each other.  He then sent his servants to their work, and taking his
handkerchief out of his pocket, he doubled and spread it on his left
hand, which he placed flat on the ground with the palm upward, making me
a sign to step into it, as I could easily do, for it was not above a foot
in thickness.  I thought it my part to obey, and, for fear of falling,
laid myself at full length upon the handkerchief, with the remainder of
which he lapped me up to the head for further security, and in this
manner carried me home to his house.  There he called his wife, and
showed me to her; but she screamed and ran back, as women in England do
at the sight of a toad or a spider.  However, when she had a while seen
my behaviour, and how well I observed the signs her husband made, she was
soon reconciled, and by degrees grew extremely tender of me.

It was about twelve at noon, and a servant brought in dinner.  It was
only one substantial dish of meat (fit for the plain condition of a
husbandman,) in a dish of about four-and-twenty feet diameter.  The
company were, the farmer and his wife, three children, and an old
grandmother.  When they were sat down, the farmer placed me at some
distance from him on the table, which was thirty feet high from the
floor.  I was in a terrible fright, and kept as far as I could from the
edge, for fear of falling.  The wife minced a bit of meat, then crumbled
some bread on a trencher, and placed it before me.  I made her a low bow,
took out my knife and fork, and fell to eat, which gave them exceeding
delight.  The mistress sent her maid for a small dram cup, which held
about two gallons, and filled it with drink; I took up the vessel with
much difficulty in both hands, and in a most respectful manner drank to
her ladyship’s health, expressing the words as loud as I could in
English, which made the company laugh so heartily, that I was almost
deafened with the noise.  This liquor tasted like a small cider, and was
not unpleasant.  Then the master made me a sign to come to his trencher
side; but as I walked on the table, being in great surprise all the time,
as the indulgent reader will easily conceive and excuse, I happened to
stumble against a crust, and fell flat on my face, but received no hurt.
I got up immediately, and observing the good people to be in much
concern, I took my hat (which I held under my arm out of good manners,)
and waving it over my head, made three huzzas, to show I had got no
mischief by my fall.  But advancing forward towards my master (as I shall
henceforth call him,) his youngest son, who sat next to him, an arch boy
of about ten years old, took me up by the legs, and held me so high in
the air, that I trembled every limb: but his father snatched me from him,
and at the same time gave him such a box on the left ear, as would have
felled an European troop of horse to the earth, ordering him to be taken
from the table.  But being afraid the boy might owe me a spite, and well
remembering how mischievous all children among us naturally are to
sparrows, rabbits, young kittens, and puppy dogs, I fell on my knees, and
pointing to the boy, made my master to understand, as well as I could,
that I desired his son might be pardoned.  The father complied, and the
lad took his seat again, whereupon I went to him, and kissed his hand,
which my master took, and made him stroke me gently with it.

In the midst of dinner, my mistress’s favourite cat leaped into her lap.
I heard a noise behind me like that of a dozen stocking-weavers at work;
and turning my head, I found it proceeded from the purring of that
animal, who seemed to be three times larger than an ox, as I computed by
the view of her head, and one of her paws, while her mistress was feeding
and stroking her.  The fierceness of this creature’s countenance
altogether discomposed me; though I stood at the farther end of the
table, above fifty feet off; and although my mistress held her fast, for
fear she might give a spring, and seize me in her talons.  But it
happened there was no danger, for the cat took not the least notice of me
when my master placed me within three yards of her.  And as I have been
always told, and found true by experience in my travels, that flying or
discovering fear before a fierce animal, is a certain way to make it
pursue or attack you, so I resolved, in this dangerous juncture, to show
no manner of concern.  I walked with intrepidity five or six times before
the very head of the cat, and came within half a yard of her; whereupon
she drew herself back, as if she were more afraid of me: I had less
apprehension concerning the dogs, whereof three or four came into the
room, as it is usual in farmers’ houses; one of which was a mastiff,
equal in bulk to four elephants, and another a greyhound, somewhat taller
than the mastiff, but not so large.

When dinner was almost done, the nurse came in with a child of a year old
in her arms, who immediately spied me, and began a squall that you might
have heard from London-Bridge to Chelsea, after the usual oratory of
infants, to get me for a plaything.  The mother, out of pure indulgence,
took me up, and put me towards the child, who presently seized me by the
middle, and got my head into his mouth, where I roared so loud that the
urchin was frighted, and let me drop, and I should infallibly have broke
my neck, if the mother had not held her apron under me.  The nurse, to
quiet her babe, made use of a rattle which was a kind of hollow vessel
filled with great stones, and fastened by a cable to the child’s waist:
but all in vain; so that she was forced to apply the last remedy by
giving it suck.  I must confess no object ever disgusted me so much as
the sight of her monstrous breast, which I cannot tell what to compare
with, so as to give the curious reader an idea of its bulk, shape, and
colour.  It stood prominent six feet, and could not be less than sixteen
in circumference.  The nipple was about half the bigness of my head, and
the hue both of that and the dug, so varied with spots, pimples, and
freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous: for I had a near sight
of her, she sitting down, the more conveniently to give suck, and I
standing on the table.  This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our
English ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of
our own size, and their defects not to be seen but through a magnifying
glass; where we find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins
look rough, and coarse, and ill-coloured.

I remember when I was at Lilliput, the complexion of those diminutive
people appeared to me the fairest in the world; and talking upon this
subject with a person of learning there, who was an intimate friend of
mine, he said that my face appeared much fairer and smoother when he
looked on me from the ground, than it did upon a nearer view, when I took
him up in my hand, and brought him close, which he confessed was at first
a very shocking sight.  He said, “he could discover great holes in my
skin; that the stumps of my beard were ten times stronger than the
bristles of a boar, and my complexion made up of several colours
altogether disagreeable:” although I must beg leave to say for myself,
that I am as fair as most of my sex and country, and very little sunburnt
by all my travels.  On the other side, discoursing of the ladies in that
emperor’s court, he used to tell me, “one had freckles; another too wide
a mouth; a third too large a nose;” nothing of which I was able to
distinguish.  I confess this reflection was obvious enough; which,
however, I could not forbear, lest the reader might think those vast
creatures were actually deformed: for I must do them the justice to say,
they are a comely race of people, and particularly the features of my
master’s countenance, although he was but a farmer, when I beheld him
from the height of sixty feet, appeared very well proportioned.

When dinner was done, my master went out to his labourers, and, as I
could discover by his voice and gesture, gave his wife strict charge to
take care of me.  I was very much tired, and disposed to sleep, which my
mistress perceiving, she put me on her own bed, and covered me with a
clean white handkerchief, but larger and coarser than the mainsail of a
man-of-war.

I slept about two hours, and dreamt I was at home with my wife and
children, which aggravated my sorrows when I awaked, and found myself
alone in a vast room, between two and three hundred feet wide, and above
two hundred high, lying in a bed twenty yards wide.  My mistress was gone
about her household affairs, and had locked me in.  The bed was eight
yards from the floor.  Some natural necessities required me to get down;
I durst not presume to call; and if I had, it would have been in vain,
with such a voice as mine, at so great a distance from the room where I
lay to the kitchen where the family kept.  While I was under these
circumstances, two rats crept up the curtains, and ran smelling backwards
and forwards on the bed.  One of them came up almost to my face,
whereupon I rose in a fright, and drew out my hanger to defend myself.
These horrible animals had the boldness to attack me on both sides, and
one of them held his fore-feet at my collar; but I had the good fortune
to rip up his belly before he could do me any mischief.  He fell down at
my feet; and the other, seeing the fate of his comrade, made his escape,
but not without one good wound on the back, which I gave him as he fled,
and made the blood run trickling from him.  After this exploit, I walked
gently to and fro on the bed, to recover my breath and loss of spirits.
These creatures were of the size of a large mastiff, but infinitely more
nimble and fierce; so that if I had taken off my belt before I went to
sleep, I must have infallibly been torn to pieces and devoured.  I
measured the tail of the dead rat, and found it to be two yards long,
wanting an inch; but it went against my stomach to drag the carcass off
the bed, where it lay still bleeding; I observed it had yet some life,
but with a strong slash across the neck, I thoroughly despatched it.

Soon after my mistress came into the room, who seeing me all bloody, ran
and took me up in her hand.  I pointed to the dead rat, smiling, and
making other signs to show I was not hurt; whereat she was extremely
rejoiced, calling the maid to take up the dead rat with a pair of tongs,
and throw it out of the window.  Then she set me on a table, where I
showed her my hanger all bloody, and wiping it on the lappet of my coat,
returned it to the scabbard.  I was pressed to do more than one thing
which another could not do for me, and therefore endeavoured to make my
mistress understand, that I desired to be set down on the floor; which
after she had done, my bashfulness would not suffer me to express myself
farther, than by pointing to the door, and bowing several times.  The
good woman, with much difficulty, at last perceived what I would be at,
and taking me up again in her hand, walked into the garden, where she set
me down.  I went on one side about two hundred yards, and beckoning to
her not to look or to follow me, I hid myself between two leaves of
sorrel, and there discharged the necessities of nature.

I hope the gentle reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and the
like particulars, which, however insignificant they may appear to
groveling vulgar minds, yet will certainly help a philosopher to enlarge
his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of public as
well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting this and
other accounts of my travels to the world; wherein I have been chiefly
studious of truth, without affecting any ornaments of learning or of
style.  But the whole scene of this voyage made so strong an impression
on my mind, and is so deeply fixed in my memory, that, in committing it
to paper I did not omit one material circumstance: however, upon a strict
review, I blotted out several passages.  Of less moment which were in my
first copy, for fear of being censured as tedious and trifling, whereof
travellers are often, perhaps not without justice, accused.



CHAPTER II.


A description of the farmer’s daughter.  The author carried to a
market-town, and then to the metropolis.  The particulars of his journey.

My mistress had a daughter of nine years old, a child of towardly parts
for her age, very dexterous at her needle, and skilful in dressing her
baby.  Her mother and she contrived to fit up the baby’s cradle for me
against night: the cradle was put into a small drawer of a cabinet, and
the drawer placed upon a hanging shelf for fear of the rats.  This was my
bed all the time I staid with those people, though made more convenient
by degrees, as I began to learn their language and make my wants known.
This young girl was so handy, that after I had once or twice pulled off
my clothes before her, she was able to dress and undress me, though I
never gave her that trouble when she would let me do either myself.  She
made me seven shirts, and some other linen, of as fine cloth as could be
got, which indeed was coarser than sackcloth; and these she constantly
washed for me with her own hands.  She was likewise my school-mistress,
to teach me the language: when I pointed to any thing, she told me the
name of it in her own tongue, so that in a few days I was able to call
for whatever I had a mind to.  She was very good-natured, and not above
forty feet high, being little for her age.  She gave me the name of
_Grildrig_, which the family took up, and afterwards the whole kingdom.
The word imports what the Latins call _nanunculus_, the Italians
_homunceletino_, and the English _mannikin_.  To her I chiefly owe my
preservation in that country: we never parted while I was there; I called
her my _Glumdalclitch_, or little nurse; and should be guilty of great
ingratitude, if I omitted this honourable mention of her care and
affection towards me, which I heartily wish it lay in my power to requite
as she deserves, instead of being the innocent, but unhappy instrument of
her disgrace, as I have too much reason to fear.

It now began to be known and talked of in the neighbourhood, that my
master had found a strange animal in the field, about the bigness of a
_splacnuck_, but exactly shaped in every part like a human creature;
which it likewise imitated in all its actions; seemed to speak in a
little language of its own, had already learned several words of theirs,
went erect upon two legs, was tame and gentle, would come when it was
called, do whatever it was bid, had the finest limbs in the world, and a
complexion fairer than a nobleman’s daughter of three years old.  Another
farmer, who lived hard by, and was a particular friend of my master, came
on a visit on purpose to inquire into the truth of this story.  I was
immediately produced, and placed upon a table, where I walked as I was
commanded, drew my hanger, put it up again, made my reverence to my
master’s guest, asked him in his own language how he did, and told him
_he was welcome_, just as my little nurse had instructed me.  This man,
who was old and dim-sighted, put on his spectacles to behold me better;
at which I could not forbear laughing very heartily, for his eyes
appeared like the full moon shining into a chamber at two windows.  Our
people, who discovered the cause of my mirth, bore me company in
laughing, at which the old fellow was fool enough to be angry and out of
countenance.  He had the character of a great miser; and, to my
misfortune, he well deserved it, by the cursed advice he gave my master,
to show me as a sight upon a market-day in the next town, which was half
an hour’s riding, about two-and-twenty miles from our house.  I guessed
there was some mischief when I observed my master and his friend
whispering together, sometimes pointing at me; and my fears made me fancy
that I overheard and understood some of their words.  But the next
morning Glumdalclitch, my little nurse, told me the whole matter, which
she had cunningly picked out from her mother.  The poor girl laid me on
her bosom, and fell a weeping with shame and grief.  She apprehended some
mischief would happen to me from rude vulgar folks, who might squeeze me
to death, or break one of my limbs by taking me in their hands.  She had
also observed how modest I was in my nature, how nicely I regarded my
honour, and what an indignity I should conceive it, to be exposed for
money as a public spectacle, to the meanest of the people.  She said, her
papa and mamma had promised that Grildrig should be hers; but now she
found they meant to serve her as they did last year, when they pretended
to give her a lamb, and yet, as soon as it was fat, sold it to a butcher.
For my own part, I may truly affirm, that I was less concerned than my
nurse.  I had a strong hope, which never left me, that I should one day
recover my liberty: and as to the ignominy of being carried about for a
monster, I considered myself to be a perfect stranger in the country, and
that such a misfortune could never be charged upon me as a reproach, if
ever I should return to England, since the king of Great Britain himself,
in my condition, must have undergone the same distress.

My master, pursuant to the advice of his friend, carried me in a box the
next market-day to the neighbouring town, and took along with him his
little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion behind him.  The box was close
on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a few
gimlet holes to let in air.  The girl had been so careful as to put the
quilt of her baby’s bed into it, for me to lie down on.  However, I was
terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though it was but of
half an hour: for the horse went about forty feet at every step and
trotted so high, that the agitation was equal to the rising and falling
of a ship in a great storm, but much more frequent.  Our journey was
somewhat farther than from London to St. Alban’s.  My master alighted at
an inn which he used to frequent; and after consulting awhile with the
inn-keeper, and making some necessary preparations, he hired the
_grultrud_, or crier, to give notice through the town of a strange
creature to be seen at the sign of the Green Eagle, not so big as a
_splacnuck_ (an animal in that country very finely shaped, about six feet
long,) and in every part of the body resembling a human creature, could
speak several words, and perform a hundred diverting tricks.

I was placed upon a table in the largest room of the inn, which might be
near three hundred feet square.  My little nurse stood on a low stool
close to the table, to take care of me, and direct what I should do.  My
master, to avoid a crowd, would suffer only thirty people at a time to
see me.  I walked about on the table as the girl commanded; she asked me
questions, as far as she knew my understanding of the language reached,
and I answered them as loud as I could.  I turned about several times to
the company, paid my humble respects, said _they were welcome_, and used
some other speeches I had been taught.  I took up a thimble filled with
liquor, which Glumdalclitch had given me for a cup, and drank their
health, I drew out my hanger, and flourished with it after the manner of
fencers in England.  My nurse gave me a part of a straw, which I
exercised as a pike, having learnt the art in my youth.  I was that day
shown to twelve sets of company, and as often forced to act over again
the same fopperies, till I was half dead with weariness and vexation; for
those who had seen me made such wonderful reports, that the people were
ready to break down the doors to come in.  My master, for his own
interest, would not suffer any one to touch me except my nurse; and to
prevent danger, benches were set round the table at such a distance as to
put me out of every body’s reach.  However, an unlucky school-boy aimed a
hazel nut directly at my head, which very narrowly missed me; otherwise
it came with so much violence, that it would have infallibly knocked out
my brains, for it was almost as large as a small pumpkin, but I had the
satisfaction to see the young rogue well beaten, and turned out of the
room.

My master gave public notice that he would show me again the next
market-day; and in the meantime he prepared a convenient vehicle for me,
which he had reason enough to do; for I was so tired with my first
journey, and with entertaining company for eight hours together, that I
could hardly stand upon my legs, or speak a word.  It was at least three
days before I recovered my strength; and that I might have no rest at
home, all the neighbouring gentlemen from a hundred miles round, hearing
of my fame, came to see me at my master’s own house.  There could not be
fewer than thirty persons with their wives and children (for the country
is very populous;) and my master demanded the rate of a full room
whenever he showed me at home, although it were only to a single family;
so that for some time I had but little ease every day of the week (except
Wednesday, which is their Sabbath,) although I were not carried to the
town.

My master, finding how profitable I was likely to be, resolved to carry
me to the most considerable cities of the kingdom.  Having therefore
provided himself with all things necessary for a long journey, and
settled his affairs at home, he took leave of his wife, and upon the 17th
of August, 1703, about two months after my arrival, we set out for the
metropolis, situate near the middle of that empire, and about three
thousand miles distance from our house.  My master made his daughter
Glumdalclitch ride behind him.  She carried me on her lap, in a box tied
about her waist.  The girl had lined it on all sides with the softest
cloth she could get, well quilted underneath, furnished it with her
baby’s bed, provided me with linen and other necessaries, and made
everything as convenient as she could.  We had no other company but a boy
of the house, who rode after us with the luggage.

My master’s design was to show me in all the towns by the way, and to
step out of the road for fifty or a hundred miles, to any village, or
person of quality’s house, where he might expect custom.  We made easy
journeys, of not above seven or eight score miles a-day; for
Glumdalclitch, on purpose to spare me, complained she was tired with the
trotting of the horse.  She often took me out of my box, at my own
desire, to give me air, and show me the country, but always held me fast
by a leading-string.  We passed over five or six rivers, many degrees
broader and deeper than the Nile or the Ganges: and there was hardly a
rivulet so small as the Thames at London-bridge.  We were ten weeks in
our journey, and I was shown in eighteen large towns, besides many
villages, and private families.

On the 26th day of October we arrived at the metropolis, called in their
language _Lorbrulgrud_, or Pride of the Universe.  My master took a
lodging in the principal street of the city, not far from the royal
palace, and put out bills in the usual form, containing an exact
description of my person and parts.  He hired a large room between three
and four hundred feet wide.  He provided a table sixty feet in diameter,
upon which I was to act my part, and pallisadoed it round three feet from
the edge, and as many high, to prevent my falling over.  I was shown ten
times a-day, to the wonder and satisfaction of all people.  I could now
speak the language tolerably well, and perfectly understood every word,
that was spoken to me.  Besides, I had learnt their alphabet, and could
make a shift to explain a sentence here and there; for Glumdalclitch had
been my instructor while we were at home, and at leisure hours during our
journey.  She carried a little book in her pocket, not much larger than a
Sanson’s Atlas; it was a common treatise for the use of young girls,
giving a short account of their religion: out of this she taught me my
letters, and interpreted the words.



CHAPTER III.


The author sent for to court.  The queen buys him of his master the
farmer, and presents him to the king.  He disputes with his majesty’s
great scholars.  An apartment at court provided for the author.  He is in
high favour with the queen.  He stands up for the honour of his own
country.  His quarrels with the queen’s dwarf.

The frequent labours I underwent every day, made, in a few weeks, a very
considerable change in my health: the more my master got by me, the more
insatiable he grew.  I had quite lost my stomach, and was almost reduced
to a skeleton.  The farmer observed it, and concluding I must soon die,
resolved to make as good a hand of me as he could.  While he was thus
reasoning and resolving with himself, a _sardral_, or gentleman-usher,
came from court, commanding my master to carry me immediately thither for
the diversion of the queen and her ladies.  Some of the latter had
already been to see me, and reported strange things of my beauty,
behaviour, and good sense.  Her majesty, and those who attended her, were
beyond measure delighted with my demeanour.  I fell on my knees, and
begged the honour of kissing her imperial foot; but this gracious
princess held out her little finger towards me, after I was set on the
table, which I embraced in both my arms, and put the tip of it with the
utmost respect to my lip.  She made me some general questions about my
country and my travels, which I answered as distinctly, and in as few
words as I could.  She asked, “whether I could be content to live at
court?”  I bowed down to the board of the table, and humbly answered
“that I was my master’s slave: but, if I were at my own disposal, I
should be proud to devote my life to her majesty’s service.”  She then
asked my master, “whether he was willing to sell me at a good price?”
He, who apprehended I could not live a month, was ready enough to part
with me, and demanded a thousand pieces of gold, which were ordered him
on the spot, each piece being about the bigness of eight hundred
moidores; but allowing for the proportion of all things between that
country and Europe, and the high price of gold among them, was hardly so
great a sum as a thousand guineas would be in England.  I then said to
the queen, “since I was now her majesty’s most humble creature and
vassal, I must beg the favour, that Glumdalclitch, who had always tended
me with so much care and kindness, and understood to do it so well, might
be admitted into her service, and continue to be my nurse and
instructor.”

Her majesty agreed to my petition, and easily got the farmer’s consent,
who was glad enough to have his daughter preferred at court, and the poor
girl herself was not able to hide her joy.  My late master withdrew,
bidding me farewell, and saying he had left me in a good service; to
which I replied not a word, only making him a slight bow.

The queen observed my coldness; and, when the farmer was gone out of the
apartment, asked me the reason.  I made bold to tell her majesty, “that I
owed no other obligation to my late master, than his not dashing out the
brains of a poor harmless creature, found by chance in his fields: which
obligation was amply recompensed, by the gain he had made in showing me
through half the kingdom, and the price he had now sold me for.  That the
life I had since led was laborious enough to kill an animal of ten times
my strength.  That my health was much impaired, by the continual drudgery
of entertaining the rabble every hour of the day; and that, if my master
had not thought my life in danger, her majesty would not have got so
cheap a bargain.  But as I was out of all fear of being ill-treated under
the protection of so great and good an empress, the ornament of nature,
the darling of the world, the delight of her subjects, the phoenix of the
creation, so I hoped my late master’s apprehensions would appear to be
groundless; for I already found my spirits revive, by the influence of
her most august presence.”

This was the sum of my speech, delivered with great improprieties and
hesitation.  The latter part was altogether framed in the style peculiar
to that people, whereof I learned some phrases from Glumdalclitch, while
she was carrying me to court.

The queen, giving great allowance for my defectiveness in speaking, was,
however, surprised at so much wit and good sense in so diminutive an
animal.  She took me in her own hand, and carried me to the king, who was
then retired to his cabinet.  His majesty, a prince of much gravity and
austere countenance, not well observing my shape at first view, asked the
queen after a cold manner “how long it was since she grew fond of a
_splacnuck_?” for such it seems he took me to be, as I lay upon my breast
in her majesty’s right hand.  But this princess, who has an infinite deal
of wit and humour, set me gently on my feet upon the scrutoire, and
commanded me to give his majesty an account of myself, which I did in a
very few words: and Glumdalclitch who attended at the cabinet door, and
could not endure I should be out of her sight, being admitted, confirmed
all that had passed from my arrival at her father’s house.

The king, although he be as learned a person as any in his dominions, had
been educated in the study of philosophy, and particularly mathematics;
yet when he observed my shape exactly, and saw me walk erect, before I
began to speak, conceived I might be a piece of clock-work (which is in
that country arrived to a very great perfection) contrived by some
ingenious artist.  But when he heard my voice, and found what I delivered
to be regular and rational, he could not conceal his astonishment.  He
was by no means satisfied with the relation I gave him of the manner I
came into his kingdom, but thought it a story concerted between
Glumdalclitch and her father, who had taught me a set of words to make me
sell at a better price.  Upon this imagination, he put several other
questions to me, and still received rational answers: no otherwise
defective than by a foreign accent, and an imperfect knowledge in the
language, with some rustic phrases which I had learned at the farmer’s
house, and did not suit the polite style of a court.

His majesty sent for three great scholars, who were then in their weekly
waiting, according to the custom in that country.  These gentlemen, after
they had a while examined my shape with much nicety, were of different
opinions concerning me.  They all agreed that I could not be produced
according to the regular laws of nature, because I was not framed with a
capacity of preserving my life, either by swiftness, or climbing of
trees, or digging holes in the earth.  They observed by my teeth, which
they viewed with great exactness, that I was a carnivorous animal; yet
most quadrupeds being an overmatch for me, and field mice, with some
others, too nimble, they could not imagine how I should be able to
support myself, unless I fed upon snails and other insects, which they
offered, by many learned arguments, to evince that I could not possibly
do.  One of these virtuosi seemed to think that I might be an embryo, or
abortive birth.  But this opinion was rejected by the other two, who
observed my limbs to be perfect and finished; and that I had lived
several years, as it was manifest from my beard, the stumps whereof they
plainly discovered through a magnifying glass.  They would not allow me
to be a dwarf, because my littleness was beyond all degrees of
comparison; for the queen’s favourite dwarf, the smallest ever known in
that kingdom, was near thirty feet high.  After much debate, they
concluded unanimously, that I was only _relplum scalcath_, which is
interpreted literally _lusus naturæ_; a determination exactly agreeable
to the modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors, disdaining the old
evasion of occult causes, whereby the followers of Aristotle endeavoured
in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this wonderful
solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable advancement of human
knowledge.

After this decisive conclusion, I entreated to be heard a word or two.  I
applied myself to the king, and assured his majesty, “that I came from a
country which abounded with several millions of both sexes, and of my own
stature; where the animals, trees, and houses, were all in proportion,
and where, by consequence, I might be as able to defend myself, and to
find sustenance, as any of his majesty’s subjects could do here; which I
took for a full answer to those gentlemen’s arguments.”  To this they
only replied with a smile of contempt, saying, “that the farmer had
instructed me very well in my lesson.”  The king, who had a much better
understanding, dismissing his learned men, sent for the farmer, who by
good fortune was not yet gone out of town.  Having therefore first
examined him privately, and then confronted him with me and the young
girl, his majesty began to think that what we told him might possibly be
true. He desired the queen to order that a particular care should be
taken of me; and was of opinion that Glumdalclitch should still continue
in her office of tending me, because he observed we had a great affection
for each other.  A convenient apartment was provided for her at court:
she had a sort of governess appointed to take care of her education, a
maid to dress her, and two other servants for menial offices; but the
care of me was wholly appropriated to herself.  The queen commanded her
own cabinet-maker to contrive a box, that might serve me for a
bedchamber, after the model that Glumdalclitch and I should agree upon.
This man was a most ingenious artist, and according to my direction, in
three weeks finished for me a wooden chamber of sixteen feet square, and
twelve high, with sash-windows, a door, and two closets, like a London
bed-chamber.  The board, that made the ceiling, was to be lifted up and
down by two hinges, to put in a bed ready furnished by her majesty’s
upholsterer, which Glumdalclitch took out every day to air, made it with
her own hands, and letting it down at night, locked up the roof over me.
A nice workman, who was famous for little curiosities, undertook to make
me two chairs, with backs and frames, of a substance not unlike ivory,
and two tables, with a cabinet to put my things in.  The room was quilted
on all sides, as well as the floor and the ceiling, to prevent any
accident from the carelessness of those who carried me, and to break the
force of a jolt, when I went in a coach.  I desired a lock for my door,
to prevent rats and mice from coming in.  The smith, after several
attempts, made the smallest that ever was seen among them, for I have
known a larger at the gate of a gentleman’s house in England.  I made a
shift to keep the key in a pocket of my own, fearing Glumdalclitch might
lose it.  The queen likewise ordered the thinnest silks that could be
gotten, to make me clothes, not much thicker than an English blanket,
very cumbersome till I was accustomed to them.  They were after the
fashion of the kingdom, partly resembling the Persian, and partly the
Chinese, and are a very grave and decent habit.

The queen became so fond of my company, that she could not dine without
me.  I had a table placed upon the same at which her majesty ate, just at
her left elbow, and a chair to sit on.  Glumdalclitch stood on a stool on
the floor near my table, to assist and take care of me.  I had an entire
set of silver dishes and plates, and other necessaries, which, in
proportion to those of the queen, were not much bigger than what I have
seen in a London toy-shop for the furniture of a baby-house: these my
little nurse kept in her pocket in a silver box, and gave me at meals as
I wanted them, always cleaning them herself.  No person dined with the
queen but the two princesses royal, the eldest sixteen years old, and the
younger at that time thirteen and a month.  Her majesty used to put a bit
of meat upon one of my dishes, out of which I carved for myself, and her
diversion was to see me eat in miniature: for the queen (who had indeed
but a weak stomach) took up, at one mouthful, as much as a dozen English
farmers could eat at a meal, which to me was for some time a very
nauseous sight.  She would craunch the wing of a lark, bones and all,
between her teeth, although it were nine times as large as that of a
full-grown turkey; and put a bit of bread into her mouth as big as two
twelve-penny loaves.  She drank out of a golden cup, above a hogshead at
a draught.  Her knives were twice as long as a scythe, set straight upon
the handle.  The spoons, forks, and other instruments, were all in the
same proportion.  I remember when Glumdalclitch carried me, out of
curiosity, to see some of the tables at court, where ten or a dozen of
those enormous knives and forks were lifted up together, I thought I had
never till then beheld so terrible a sight.

It is the custom, that every Wednesday (which, as I have observed, is
their Sabbath) the king and queen, with the royal issue of both sexes,
dine together in the apartment of his majesty, to whom I was now become a
great favourite; and at these times, my little chair and table were
placed at his left hand, before one of the salt-cellars.  This prince
took a pleasure in conversing with me, inquiring into the manners,
religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe; wherein I gave him
the best account I was able.  His apprehension was so clear, and his
judgment so exact, that he made very wise reflections and observations
upon all I said.  But I confess, that, after I had been a little too
copious in talking of my own beloved country, of our trade and wars by
sea and land, of our schisms in religion, and parties in the state; the
prejudices of his education prevailed so far, that he could not forbear
taking me up in his right hand, and stroking me gently with the other,
after a hearty fit of laughing, asked me, “whether I was a whig or tory?”
Then turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white
staff, near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, he observed
“how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by
such diminutive insects as I: and yet,” says he, “I dare engage these
creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they contrive
little nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; they make a
figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they
cheat, they betray!”  And thus he continued on, while my colour came and
went several times, with indignation, to hear our noble country, the
mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of France, the arbitress of
Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour, and truth, the pride and envy
of the world, so contemptuously treated.

But as I was not in a condition to resent injuries, so upon mature
thoughts I began to doubt whether I was injured or no.  For, after having
been accustomed several months to the sight and converse of this people,
and observed every object upon which I cast mine eyes to be of
proportionable magnitude, the horror I had at first conceived from their
bulk and aspect was so far worn off, that if I had then beheld a company
of English lords and ladies in their finery and birth-day clothes, acting
their several parts in the most courtly manner of strutting, and bowing,
and prating, to say the truth, I should have been strongly tempted to
laugh as much at them as the king and his grandees did at me.  Neither,
indeed, could I forbear smiling at myself, when the queen used to place
me upon her hand towards a looking-glass, by which both our persons
appeared before me in full view together; and there could be nothing more
ridiculous than the comparison; so that I really began to imagine myself
dwindled many degrees below my usual size.

Nothing angered and mortified me so much as the queen’s dwarf; who being
of the lowest stature that was ever in that country (for I verily think
he was not full thirty feet high), became so insolent at seeing a
creature so much beneath him, that he would always affect to swagger and
look big as he passed by me in the queen’s antechamber, while I was
standing on some table talking with the lords or ladies of the court, and
he seldom failed of a smart word or two upon my littleness; against which
I could only revenge myself by calling him brother, challenging him to
wrestle, and such repartees as are usually in the mouths of court pages.
One day, at dinner, this malicious little cub was so nettled with
something I had said to him, that, raising himself upon the frame of her
majesty’s chair, he took me up by the middle, as I was sitting down, not
thinking any harm, and let me drop into a large silver bowl of cream, and
then ran away as fast as he could.  I fell over head and ears, and, if I
had not been a good swimmer, it might have gone very hard with me; for
Glumdalclitch in that instant happened to be at the other end of the
room, and the queen was in such a fright, that she wanted presence of
mind to assist me.  But my little nurse ran to my relief, and took me
out, after I had swallowed above a quart of cream.  I was put to bed:
however, I received no other damage than the loss of a suit of clothes,
which was utterly spoiled.  The dwarf was soundly whipt, and as a farther
punishment, forced to drink up the bowl of cream into which he had thrown
me: neither was he ever restored to favour; for soon after the queen
bestowed him on a lady of high quality, so that I saw him no more, to my
very great satisfaction; for I could not tell to what extremities such a
malicious urchin might have carried his resentment.

He had before served me a scurvy trick, which set the queen a-laughing,
although at the same time she was heartily vexed, and would have
immediately cashiered him, if I had not been so generous as to intercede.
Her majesty had taken a marrow-bone upon her plate, and, after knocking
out the marrow, placed the bone again in the dish erect, as it stood
before; the dwarf, watching his opportunity, while Glumdalclitch was gone
to the side-board, mounted the stool that she stood on to take care of me
at meals, took me up in both hands, and squeezing my legs together,
wedged them into the marrow bone above my waist, where I stuck for some
time, and made a very ridiculous figure.  I believe it was near a minute
before any one knew what was become of me; for I thought it below me to
cry out.  But, as princes seldom get their meat hot, my legs were not
scalded, only my stockings and breeches in a sad condition.  The dwarf,
at my entreaty, had no other punishment than a sound whipping.

I was frequently rallied by the queen upon account of my fearfulness; and
she used to ask me whether the people of my country were as great cowards
as myself?  The occasion was this: the kingdom is much pestered with
flies in summer; and these odious insects, each of them as big as a
Dunstable lark, hardly gave me any rest while I sat at dinner, with their
continual humming and buzzing about mine ears.  They would sometimes
alight upon my victuals, and leave their loathsome excrement, or spawn
behind, which to me was very visible, though not to the natives of that
country, whose large optics were not so acute as mine, in viewing smaller
objects.  Sometimes they would fix upon my nose, or forehead, where they
stung me to the quick, smelling very offensively; and I could easily
trace that viscous matter, which, our naturalists tell us, enables those
creatures to walk with their feet upwards upon a ceiling.  I had much ado
to defend myself against these detestable animals, and could not forbear
starting when they came on my face.  It was the common practice of the
dwarf, to catch a number of these insects in his hand, as schoolboys do
among us, and let them out suddenly under my nose, on purpose to frighten
me, and divert the queen.  My remedy was to cut them in pieces with my
knife, as they flew in the air, wherein my dexterity was much admired.

I remember, one morning, when Glumdalclitch had set me in a box upon a
window, as she usually did in fair days to give me air (for I durst not
venture to let the box be hung on a nail out of the window, as we do with
cages in England), after I had lifted up one of my sashes, and sat down
at my table to eat a piece of sweet cake for my breakfast, above twenty
wasps, allured by the smell, came flying into the room, humming louder
than the drones of as many bagpipes.  Some of them seized my cake, and
carried it piecemeal away; others flew about my head and face,
confounding me with the noise, and putting me in the utmost terror of
their stings.  However, I had the courage to rise and draw my hanger, and
attack them in the air.  I dispatched four of them, but the rest got
away, and I presently shut my window.  These insects were as large as
partridges: I took out their stings, found them an inch and a half long,
and as sharp as needles.  I carefully preserved them all; and having
since shown them, with some other curiosities, in several parts of
Europe, upon my return to England I gave three of them to Gresham
College, and kept the fourth for myself.



CHAPTER IV.


The country described.  A proposal for correcting modern maps.  The
king’s palace; and some account of the metropolis.  The author’s way of
travelling.  The chief temple described.

I now intend to give the reader a short description of this country, as
far as I travelled in it, which was not above two thousand miles round
Lorbrulgrud, the metropolis.  For the queen, whom I always attended,
never went farther when she accompanied the king in his progresses, and
there staid till his majesty returned from viewing his frontiers.  The
whole extent of this prince’s dominions reaches about six thousand miles
in length, and from three to five in breadth: whence I cannot but
conclude, that our geographers of Europe are in a great error, by
supposing nothing but sea between Japan and California; for it was ever
my opinion, that there must be a balance of earth to counterpoise the
great continent of Tartary; and therefore they ought to correct their
maps and charts, by joining this vast tract of land to the north-west
parts of America, wherein I shall be ready to lend them my assistance.

The kingdom is a peninsula, terminated to the north-east by a ridge of
mountains thirty miles high, which are altogether impassable, by reason
of the volcanoes upon the tops: neither do the most learned know what
sort of mortals inhabit beyond those mountains, or whether they be
inhabited at all.  On the three other sides, it is bounded by the ocean.
There is not one seaport in the whole kingdom: and those parts of the
coasts into which the rivers issue, are so full of pointed rocks, and the
sea generally so rough, that there is no venturing with the smallest of
their boats; so that these people are wholly excluded from any commerce
with the rest of the world.  But the large rivers are full of vessels,
and abound with excellent fish; for they seldom get any from the sea,
because the sea fish are of the same size with those in Europe, and
consequently not worth catching; whereby it is manifest, that nature, in
the production of plants and animals of so extraordinary a bulk, is
wholly confined to this continent, of which I leave the reasons to be
determined by philosophers.  However, now and then they take a whale that
happens to be dashed against the rocks, which the common people feed on
heartily.  These whales I have known so large, that a man could hardly
carry one upon his shoulders; and sometimes, for curiosity, they are
brought in hampers to Lorbrulgrud; I saw one of them in a dish at the
king’s table, which passed for a rarity, but I did not observe he was
fond of it; for I think, indeed, the bigness disgusted him, although I
have seen one somewhat larger in Greenland.

The country is well inhabited, for it contains fifty-one cities, near a
hundred walled towns, and a great number of villages.  To satisfy my
curious reader, it may be sufficient to describe Lorbrulgrud.  This city
stands upon almost two equal parts, on each side the river that passes
through.  It contains above eighty thousand houses, and about six hundred
thousand inhabitants.  It is in length three _glomglungs_ (which make
about fifty-four English miles,) and two and a half in breadth; as I
measured it myself in the royal map made by the king’s order, which was
laid on the ground on purpose for me, and extended a hundred feet: I
paced the diameter and circumference several times barefoot, and,
computing by the scale, measured it pretty exactly.

The king’s palace is no regular edifice, but a heap of buildings, about
seven miles round: the chief rooms are generally two hundred and forty
feet high, and broad and long in proportion.  A coach was allowed to
Glumdalclitch and me, wherein her governess frequently took her out to
see the town, or go among the shops; and I was always of the party,
carried in my box; although the girl, at my own desire, would often take
me out, and hold me in her hand, that I might more conveniently view the
houses and the people, as we passed along the streets.  I reckoned our
coach to be about a square of Westminster-hall, but not altogether so
high: however, I cannot be very exact.  One day the governess ordered our
coachman to stop at several shops, where the beggars, watching their
opportunity, crowded to the sides of the coach, and gave me the most
horrible spectacle that ever a European eye beheld.  There was a woman
with a cancer in her breast, swelled to a monstrous size, full of holes,
in two or three of which I could have easily crept, and covered my whole
body.  There was a fellow with a wen in his neck, larger than five
wool-packs; and another, with a couple of wooden legs, each about twenty
feet high.  But the most hateful sight of all, was the lice crawling on
their clothes.  I could see distinctly the limbs of these vermin with my
naked eye, much better than those of a European louse through a
microscope, and their snouts with which they rooted like swine.  They
were the first I had ever beheld, and I should have been curious enough
to dissect one of them, if I had had proper instruments, which I
unluckily left behind me in the ship, although, indeed, the sight was so
nauseous, that it perfectly turned my stomach.

Besides the large box in which I was usually carried, the queen ordered a
smaller one to be made for me, of about twelve feet square, and ten high,
for the convenience of travelling; because the other was somewhat too
large for Glumdalclitch’s lap, and cumbersome in the coach; it was made
by the same artist, whom I directed in the whole contrivance.  This
travelling-closet was an exact square, with a window in the middle of
three of the squares, and each window was latticed with iron wire on the
outside, to prevent accidents in long journeys.  On the fourth side,
which had no window, two strong staples were fixed, through which the
person that carried me, when I had a mind to be on horseback, put a
leathern belt, and buckled it about his waist.  This was always the
office of some grave trusty servant, in whom I could confide, whether I
attended the king and queen in their progresses, or were disposed to see
the gardens, or pay a visit to some great lady or minister of state in
the court, when Glumdalclitch happened to be out of order; for I soon
began to be known and esteemed among the greatest officers, I suppose
more upon account of their majesties’ favour, than any merit of my own.
In journeys, when I was weary of the coach, a servant on horseback would
buckle on my box, and place it upon a cushion before him; and there I had
a full prospect of the country on three sides, from my three windows.  I
had, in this closet, a field-bed and a hammock, hung from the ceiling,
two chairs and a table, neatly screwed to the floor, to prevent being
tossed about by the agitation of the horse or the coach.  And having been
long used to sea-voyages, those motions, although sometimes very violent,
did not much discompose me.

Whenever I had a mind to see the town, it was always in my
travelling-closet; which Glumdalclitch held in her lap in a kind of open
sedan, after the fashion of the country, borne by four men, and attended
by two others in the queen’s livery.  The people, who had often heard of
me, were very curious to crowd about the sedan, and the girl was
complaisant enough to make the bearers stop, and to take me in her hand,
that I might be more conveniently seen.

I was very desirous to see the chief temple, and particularly the tower
belonging to it, which is reckoned the highest in the kingdom.
Accordingly one day my nurse carried me thither, but I may truly say I
came back disappointed; for the height is not above three thousand feet,
reckoning from the ground to the highest pinnacle top; which, allowing
for the difference between the size of those people and us in Europe, is
no great matter for admiration, nor at all equal in proportion (if I
rightly remember) to Salisbury steeple.  But, not to detract from a
nation, to which, during my life, I shall acknowledge myself extremely
obliged, it must be allowed, that whatever this famous tower wants in
height, is amply made up in beauty and strength: for the walls are near a
hundred feet thick, built of hewn stone, whereof each is about forty feet
square, and adorned on all sides with statues of gods and emperors, cut
in marble, larger than the life, placed in their several niches.  I
measured a little finger which had fallen down from one of these statues,
and lay unperceived among some rubbish, and found it exactly four feet
and an inch in length.  Glumdalclitch wrapped it up in her handkerchief,
and carried it home in her pocket, to keep among other trinkets, of which
the girl was very fond, as children at her age usually are.

The king’s kitchen is indeed a noble building, vaulted at top, and about
six hundred feet high.  The great oven is not so wide, by ten paces, as
the cupola at St. Paul’s: for I measured the latter on purpose, after my
return.  But if I should describe the kitchen grate, the prodigious pots
and kettles, the joints of meat turning on the spits, with many other
particulars, perhaps I should be hardly believed; at least a severe
critic would be apt to think I enlarged a little, as travellers are often
suspected to do.  To avoid which censure I fear I have run too much into
the other extreme; and that if this treatise should happen to be
translated into the language of Brobdingnag (which is the general name of
that kingdom,) and transmitted thither, the king and his people would
have reason to complain that I had done them an injury, by a false and
diminutive representation.

His majesty seldom keeps above six hundred horses in his stables: they
are generally from fifty-four to sixty feet high.  But, when he goes
abroad on solemn days, he is attended, for state, by a military guard of
five hundred horse, which, indeed, I thought was the most splendid sight
that could be ever beheld, till I saw part of his army in battalia,
whereof I shall find another occasion to speak.



CHAPTER V.


Several adventurers that happened to the author.  The execution of a
criminal.  The author shows his skill in navigation.

I should have lived happy enough in that country, if my littleness had
not exposed me to several ridiculous and troublesome accidents; some of
which I shall venture to relate.  Glumdalclitch often carried me into the
gardens of the court in my smaller box, and would sometimes take me out
of it, and hold me in her hand, or set me down to walk.  I remember,
before the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one day into those
gardens, and my nurse having set me down, he and I being close together,
near some dwarf apple trees, I must needs show my wit, by a silly
allusion between him and the trees, which happens to hold in their
language as it does in ours.  Whereupon, the malicious rogue, watching
his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook it directly
over my head, by which a dozen apples, each of them near as large as a
Bristol barrel, came tumbling about my ears; one of them hit me on the
back as I chanced to stoop, and knocked me down flat on my face; but I
received no other hurt, and the dwarf was pardoned at my desire, because
I had given the provocation.

Another day, Glumdalclitch left me on a smooth grass-plot to divert
myself, while she walked at some distance with her governess.  In the
meantime, there suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail, that I was
immediately by the force of it, struck to the ground: and when I was
down, the hailstones gave me such cruel bangs all over the body, as if I
had been pelted with tennis-balls; however, I made a shift to creep on
all fours, and shelter myself, by lying flat on my face, on the lee-side
of a border of lemon-thyme, but so bruised from head to foot, that I
could not go abroad in ten days.  Neither is this at all to be wondered
at, because nature, in that country, observing the same proportion
through all her operations, a hailstone is near eighteen hundred times as
large as one in Europe; which I can assert upon experience, having been
so curious as to weigh and measure them.

But a more dangerous accident happened to me in the same garden, when my
little nurse, believing she had put me in a secure place (which I often
entreated her to do, that I might enjoy my own thoughts,) and having left
my box at home, to avoid the trouble of carrying it, went to another part
of the garden with her governess and some ladies of her acquaintance.
While she was absent, and out of hearing, a small white spaniel that
belonged to one of the chief gardeners, having got by accident into the
garden, happened to range near the place where I lay: the dog, following
the scent, came directly up, and taking me in his mouth, ran straight to
his master wagging his tail, and set me gently on the ground.  By good
fortune he had been so well taught, that I was carried between his teeth
without the least hurt, or even tearing my clothes.  But the poor
gardener, who knew me well, and had a great kindness for me, was in a
terrible fright: he gently took me up in both his hands, and asked me how
I did? but I was so amazed and out of breath, that I could not speak a
word.  In a few minutes I came to myself, and he carried me safe to my
little nurse, who, by this time, had returned to the place where she left
me, and was in cruel agonies when I did not appear, nor answer when she
called.  She severely reprimanded the gardener on account of his dog.
But the thing was hushed up, and never known at court, for the girl was
afraid of the queen’s anger; and truly, as to myself, I thought it would
not be for my reputation, that such a story should go about.

This accident absolutely determined Glumdalclitch never to trust me
abroad for the future out of her sight.  I had been long afraid of this
resolution, and therefore concealed from her some little unlucky
adventures, that happened in those times when I was left by myself.  Once
a kite, hovering over the garden, made a stoop at me, and if I had not
resolutely drawn my hanger, and run under a thick espalier, he would have
certainly carried me away in his talons.  Another time, walking to the
top of a fresh mole-hill, I fell to my neck in the hole, through which
that animal had cast up the earth, and coined some lie, not worth
remembering, to excuse myself for spoiling my clothes.  I likewise broke
my right shin against the shell of a snail, which I happened to stumble
over, as I was walking alone and thinking on poor England.

I cannot tell whether I were more pleased or mortified to observe, in
those solitary walks, that the smaller birds did not appear to be at all
afraid of me, but would hop about within a yard’s distance, looking for
worms and other food, with as much indifference and security as if no
creature at all were near them.  I remember, a thrush had the confidence
to snatch out of my hand, with his bill, a of cake that Glumdalclitch had
just given me for my breakfast.  When I attempted to catch any of these
birds, they would boldly turn against me, endeavouring to peck my
fingers, which I durst not venture within their reach; and then they
would hop back unconcerned, to hunt for worms or snails, as they did
before.  But one day, I took a thick cudgel, and threw it with all my
strength so luckily, at a linnet, that I knocked him down, and seizing
him by the neck with both my hands, ran with him in triumph to my nurse.
However, the bird, who had only been stunned, recovering himself gave me
so many boxes with his wings, on both sides of my head and body, though I
held him at arm’s-length, and was out of the reach of his claws, that I
was twenty times thinking to let him go.  But I was soon relieved by one
of our servants, who wrung off the bird’s neck, and I had him next day
for dinner, by the queen’s command.  This linnet, as near as I can
remember, seemed to be somewhat larger than an English swan.

The maids of honour often invited Glumdalclitch to their apartments, and
desired she would bring me along with her, on purpose to have the
pleasure of seeing and touching me.  They would often strip me naked from
top to toe, and lay me at full length in their bosoms; wherewith I was
much disgusted because, to say the truth, a very offensive smell came
from their skins; which I do not mention, or intend, to the disadvantage
of those excellent ladies, for whom I have all manner of respect; but I
conceive that my sense was more acute in proportion to my littleness, and
that those illustrious persons were no more disagreeable to their lovers,
or to each other, than people of the same quality are with us in England.
And, after all, I found their natural smell was much more supportable,
than when they used perfumes, under which I immediately swooned away.  I
cannot forget, that an intimate friend of mine in Lilliput, took the
freedom in a warm day, when I had used a good deal of exercise, to
complain of a strong smell about me, although I am as little faulty that
way, as most of my sex: but I suppose his faculty of smelling was as nice
with regard to me, as mine was to that of this people.  Upon this point,
I cannot forbear doing justice to the queen my mistress, and
Glumdalclitch my nurse, whose persons were as sweet as those of any lady
in England.

That which gave me most uneasiness among these maids of honour (when my
nurse carried me to visit then) was, to see them use me without any
manner of ceremony, like a creature who had no sort of consequence: for
they would strip themselves to the skin, and put on their smocks in my
presence, while I was placed on their toilet, directly before their naked
bodies, which I am sure to me was very far from being a tempting sight,
or from giving me any other emotions than those of horror and disgust:
their skins appeared so coarse and uneven, so variously coloured, when I
saw them near, with a mole here and there as broad as a trencher, and
hairs hanging from it thicker than packthreads, to say nothing farther
concerning the rest of their persons.  Neither did they at all scruple,
while I was by, to discharge what they had drank, to the quantity of at
least two hogsheads, in a vessel that held above three tuns.  The
handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant, frolicsome girl of
sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her nipples, with
many other tricks, wherein the reader will excuse me for not being over
particular.  But I was so much displeased, that I entreated Glumdalclitch
to contrive some excuse for not seeing that young lady any more.

One day, a young gentleman, who was nephew to my nurse’s governess, came
and pressed them both to see an execution.  It was of a man, who had
murdered one of that gentleman’s intimate acquaintance.  Glumdalclitch
was prevailed on to be of the company, very much against her inclination,
for she was naturally tender-hearted: and, as for myself, although I
abhorred such kind of spectacles, yet my curiosity tempted me to see
something that I thought must be extraordinary.  The malefactor was fixed
in a chair upon a scaffold erected for that purpose, and his head cut off
at one blow, with a sword of about forty feet long.  The veins and
arteries spouted up such a prodigious quantity of blood, and so high in
the air, that the great _jet d’eau_ at Versailles was not equal to it for
the time it lasted: and the head, when it fell on the scaffold floor,
gave such a bounce as made me start, although I was at least half an
English mile distant.

The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-voyages, and took all
occasions to divert me when I was melancholy, asked me whether I
understood how to handle a sail or an oar, and whether a little exercise
of rowing might not be convenient for my health?  I answered, that I
understood both very well: for although my proper employment had been to
be surgeon or doctor to the ship, yet often, upon a pinch, I was forced
to work like a common mariner.  But I could not see how this could be
done in their country, where the smallest wherry was equal to a
first-rate man of war among us; and such a boat as I could manage would
never live in any of their rivers.  Her majesty said, if I would contrive
a boat, her own joiner should make it, and she would provide a place for
me to sail in.  The fellow was an ingenious workman, and by my
instructions, in ten days, finished a pleasure-boat with all its
tackling, able conveniently to hold eight Europeans.  When it was
finished, the queen was so delighted, that she ran with it in her lap to
the king, who ordered it to be put into a cistern full of water, with me
in it, by way of trial, where I could not manage my two sculls, or little
oars, for want of room.  But the queen had before contrived another
project.  She ordered the joiner to make a wooden trough of three hundred
feet long, fifty broad, and eight deep; which, being well pitched, to
prevent leaking, was placed on the floor, along the wall, in an outer
room of the palace.  It had a cock near the bottom to let out the water,
when it began to grow stale; and two servants could easily fill it in
half an hour.  Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as
that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well entertained
with my skill and agility.  Sometimes I would put up my sail, and then my
business was only to steer, while the ladies gave me a gale with their
fans; and, when they were weary, some of their pages would blow my sail
forward with their breath, while I showed my art by steering starboard or
larboard as I pleased.  When I had done, Glumdalclitch always carried
back my boat into her closet, and hung it on a nail to dry.

In this exercise I once met an accident, which had like to have cost me
my life; for, one of the pages having put my boat into the trough, the
governess who attended Glumdalclitch very officiously lifted me up, to
place me in the boat: but I happened to slip through her fingers, and
should infallibly have fallen down forty feet upon the floor, if, by the
luckiest chance in the world, I had not been stopped by a corking-pin
that stuck in the good gentlewoman’s stomacher; the head of the pin
passing between my shirt and the waistband of my breeches, and thus I was
held by the middle in the air, till Glumdalclitch ran to my relief.

Another time, one of the servants, whose office it was to fill my trough
every third day with fresh water, was so careless as to let a huge frog
(not perceiving it) slip out of his pail.  The frog lay concealed till I
was put into my boat, but then, seeing a resting-place, climbed up, and
made it lean so much on one side, that I was forced to balance it with
all my weight on the other, to prevent overturning.  When the frog was
got in, it hopped at once half the length of the boat, and then over my
head, backward and forward, daubing my face and clothes with its odious
slime.  The largeness of its features made it appear the most deformed
animal that can be conceived.  However, I desired Glumdalclitch to let me
deal with it alone.  I banged it a good while with one of my sculls, and
at last forced it to leap out of the boat.

But the greatest danger I ever underwent in that kingdom, was from a
monkey, who belonged to one of the clerks of the kitchen.  Glumdalclitch
had locked me up in her closet, while she went somewhere upon business,
or a visit.  The weather being very warm, the closet-window was left
open, as well as the windows and the door of my bigger box, in which I
usually lived, because of its largeness and conveniency.  As I sat
quietly meditating at my table, I heard something bounce in at the
closet-window, and skip about from one side to the other: whereat,
although I was much alarmed, yet I ventured to look out, but not stirring
from my seat; and then I saw this frolicsome animal frisking and leaping
up and down, till at last he came to my box, which he seemed to view with
great pleasure and curiosity, peeping in at the door and every window.  I
retreated to the farther corner of my room; or box; but the monkey
looking in at every side, put me in such a fright, that I wanted presence
of mind to conceal myself under the bed, as I might easily have done.
After some time spent in peeping, grinning, and chattering, he at last
espied me; and reaching one of his paws in at the door, as a cat does
when she plays with a mouse, although I often shifted place to avoid him,
he at length seized the lappet of my coat (which being made of that
country silk, was very thick and strong), and dragged me out.  He took me
up in his right fore-foot and held me as a nurse does a child she is
going to suckle, just as I have seen the same sort of creature do with a
kitten in Europe; and when I offered to struggle he squeezed me so hard,
that I thought it more prudent to submit.  I have good reason to believe,
that he took me for a young one of his own species, by his often stroking
my face very gently with his other paw.  In these diversions he was
interrupted by a noise at the closet door, as if somebody were opening
it: whereupon he suddenly leaped up to the window at which he had come
in, and thence upon the leads and gutters, walking upon three legs, and
holding me in the fourth, till he clambered up to a roof that was next to
ours.  I heard Glumdalclitch give a shriek at the moment he was carrying
me out.  The poor girl was almost distracted: that quarter of the palace
was all in an uproar; the servants ran for ladders; the monkey was seen
by hundreds in the court, sitting upon the ridge of a building, holding
me like a baby in one of his forepaws, and feeding me with the other, by
cramming into my mouth some victuals he had squeezed out of the bag on
one side of his chaps, and patting me when I would not eat; whereat many
of the rabble below could not forbear laughing; neither do I think they
justly ought to be blamed, for, without question, the sight was
ridiculous enough to every body but myself.  Some of the people threw up
stones, hoping to drive the monkey down; but this was strictly forbidden,
or else, very probably, my brains had been dashed out.

The ladders were now applied, and mounted by several men; which the
monkey observing, and finding himself almost encompassed, not being able
to make speed enough with his three legs, let me drop on a ridge tile,
and made his escape.  Here I sat for some time, five hundred yards from
the ground, expecting every moment to be blown down by the wind, or to
fall by my own giddiness, and come tumbling over and over from the ridge
to the eaves; but an honest lad, one of my nurse’s footmen, climbed up,
and putting me into his breeches pocket, brought me down safe.

I was almost choked with the filthy stuff the monkey had crammed down my
throat: but my dear little nurse picked it out of my mouth with a small
needle, and then I fell a-vomiting, which gave me great relief.  Yet I
was so weak and bruised in the sides with the squeezes given me by this
odious animal, that I was forced to keep my bed a fortnight.  The king,
queen, and all the court, sent every day to inquire after my health; and
her majesty made me several visits during my sickness.  The monkey was
killed, and an order made, that no such animal should be kept about the
palace.

When I attended the king after my recovery, to return him thanks for his
favours, he was pleased to rally me a good deal upon this adventure.  He
asked me, “what my thoughts and speculations were, while I lay in the
monkey’s paw; how I liked the victuals he gave me; his manner of feeding;
and whether the fresh air on the roof had sharpened my stomach.”  He
desired to know, “what I would have done upon such an occasion in my own
country.”  I told his majesty, “that in Europe we had no monkeys, except
such as were brought for curiosity from other places, and so small, that
I could deal with a dozen of them together, if they presumed to attack
me.  And as for that monstrous animal with whom I was so lately engaged
(it was indeed as large as an elephant), if my fears had suffered me to
think so far as to make use of my hanger,” (looking fiercely, and
clapping my hand on the hilt, as I spoke) “when he poked his paw into my
chamber, perhaps I should have given him such a wound, as would have made
him glad to withdraw it with more haste than he put it in.”  This I
delivered in a firm tone, like a person who was jealous lest his courage
should be called in question.  However, my speech produced nothing else
beside a laud laughter, which all the respect due to his majesty from
those about him could not make them contain.  This made me reflect, how
vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavour to do himself honour among
those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.  And
yet I have seen the moral of my own behaviour very frequent in England
since my return; where a little contemptible varlet, without the least
title to birth, person, wit, or common sense, shall presume to look with
importance, and put himself upon a foot with the greatest persons of the
kingdom.

I was every day furnishing the court with some ridiculous story: and
Glumdalclitch, although she loved me to excess, yet was arch enough to
inform the queen, whenever I committed any folly that she thought would
be diverting to her majesty.  The girl, who had been out of order, was
carried by her governess to take the air about an hour’s distance, or
thirty miles from town.  They alighted out of the coach near a small
foot-path in a field, and Glumdalclitch setting down my travelling box, I
went out of it to walk.  There was a cow-dung in the path, and I must
need try my activity by attempting to leap over it.  I took a run, but
unfortunately jumped short, and found myself just in the middle up to my
knees.  I waded through with some difficulty, and one of the footmen
wiped me as clean as he could with his handkerchief, for I was filthily
bemired; and my nurse confined me to my box, till we returned home; where
the queen was soon informed of what had passed, and the footmen spread it
about the court: so that all the mirth for some days was at my expense.



CHAPTER VI.


Several contrivances of the author to please the king and queen.  He
shows his skill in music.  The king inquires into the state of England,
which the author relates to him.  The king’s observations thereon.

I used to attend the king’s levee once or twice a week, and had often
seen him under the barber’s hand, which indeed was at first very terrible
to behold; for the razor was almost twice as long as an ordinary scythe.
His majesty, according to the custom of the country, was only shaved
twice a-week.  I once prevailed on the barber to give me some of the suds
or lather, out of which I picked forty or fifty of the strongest stumps
of hair.  I then took a piece of fine wood, and cut it like the back of a
comb, making several holes in it at equal distances with as small a
needle as I could get from Glumdalclitch.  I fixed in the stumps so
artificially, scraping and sloping them with my knife toward the points,
that I made a very tolerable comb; which was a seasonable supply, my own
being so much broken in the teeth, that it was almost useless: neither
did I know any artist in that country so nice and exact, as would
undertake to make me another.

And this puts me in mind of an amusement, wherein I spent many of my
leisure hours.  I desired the queen’s woman to save for me the combings
of her majesty’s hair, whereof in time I got a good quantity; and
consulting with my friend the cabinet-maker, who had received general
orders to do little jobs for me, I directed him to make two chair-frames,
no larger than those I had in my box, and to bore little holes with a
fine awl, round those parts where I designed the backs and seats; through
these holes I wove the strongest hairs I could pick out, just after the
manner of cane chairs in England.  When they were finished, I made a
present of them to her majesty; who kept them in her cabinet, and used to
show them for curiosities, as indeed they were the wonder of every one
that beheld them.  The queen would have me sit upon one of these chairs,
but I absolutely refused to obey her, protesting I would rather die than
place a dishonourable part of my body on those precious hairs, that once
adorned her majesty’s head.  Of these hairs (as I had always a mechanical
genius) I likewise made a neat little purse, about five feet long, with
her majesty’s name deciphered in gold letters, which I gave to
Glumdalclitch, by the queen’s consent.  To say the truth, it was more for
show than use, being not of strength to bear the weight of the larger
coins, and therefore she kept nothing in it but some little toys that
girls are fond of.

The king, who delighted in music, had frequent concerts at court, to
which I was sometimes carried, and set in my box on a table to hear them:
but the noise was so great that I could hardly distinguish the tunes.  I
am confident that all the drums and trumpets of a royal army, beating and
sounding together just at your ears, could not equal it.  My practice was
to have my box removed from the place where the performers sat, as far as
I could, then to shut the doors and windows of it, and draw the window
curtains; after which I found their music not disagreeable.

I had learned in my youth to play a little upon the spinet.
Glumdalclitch kept one in her chamber, and a master attended twice a-week
to teach her: I called it a spinet, because it somewhat resembled that
instrument, and was played upon in the same manner.  A fancy came into my
head, that I would entertain the king and queen with an English tune upon
this instrument.  But this appeared extremely difficult: for the spinet
was near sixty feet long, each key being almost a foot wide, so that with
my arms extended I could not reach to above five keys, and to press them
down required a good smart stroke with my fist, which would be too great
a labour, and to no purpose.  The method I contrived was this: I prepared
two round sticks, about the bigness of common cudgels; they were thicker
at one end than the other, and I covered the thicker ends with pieces of
a mouse’s skin, that by rapping on them I might neither damage the tops
of the keys nor interrupt the sound.  Before the spinet a bench was
placed, about four feet below the keys, and I was put upon the bench.  I
ran sideling upon it, that way and this, as fast as I could, banging the
proper keys with my two sticks, and made a shift to play a jig, to the
great satisfaction of both their majesties; but it was the most violent
exercise I ever underwent; and yet I could not strike above sixteen keys,
nor consequently play the bass and treble together, as other artists do;
which was a great disadvantage to my performance.

The king, who, as I before observed, was a prince of excellent
understanding, would frequently order that I should be brought in my box,
and set upon the table in his closet: he would then command me to bring
one of my chairs out of the box, and sit down within three yards distance
upon the top of the cabinet, which brought me almost to a level with his
face.  In this manner I had several conversations with him.  I one day
took the freedom to tell his majesty, “that the contempt he discovered
towards Europe, and the rest of the world, did not seem answerable to
those excellent qualities of mind that he was master of; that reason did
not extend itself with the bulk of the body; on the contrary, we observed
in our country, that the tallest persons were usually the least provided
with it; that among other animals, bees and ants had the reputation of
more industry, art, and sagacity, than many of the larger kinds; and
that, as inconsiderable as he took me to be, I hoped I might live to do
his majesty some signal service.”  The king heard me with attention, and
began to conceive a much better opinion of me than he had ever before.
He desired “I would give him as exact an account of the government of
England as I possibly could; because, as fond as princes commonly are of
their own customs (for so he conjectured of other monarchs, by my former
discourses), he should be glad to hear of any thing that might deserve
imitation.”

Imagine with thyself, courteous reader, how often I then wished for the
tongue of Demosthenes or Cicero, that might have enabled me to celebrate
the praise of my own dear native country in a style equal to its merits
and felicity.

I began my discourse by informing his majesty, that our dominions
consisted of two islands, which composed three mighty kingdoms, under one
sovereign, beside our plantations in America.  I dwelt long upon the
fertility of our soil, and the temperature of our climate.  I then spoke
at large upon the constitution of an English parliament; partly made up
of an illustrious body called the House of Peers; persons of the noblest
blood, and of the most ancient and ample patrimonies.  I described that
extraordinary care always taken of their education in arts and arms, to
qualify them for being counsellors both to the king and kingdom; to have
a share in the legislature; to be members of the highest court of
judicature, whence there can be no appeal; and to be champions always
ready for the defence of their prince and country, by their valour,
conduct, and fidelity.  That these were the ornament and bulwark of the
kingdom, worthy followers of their most renowned ancestors, whose honour
had been the reward of their virtue, from which their posterity were
never once known to degenerate.  To these were joined several holy
persons, as part of that assembly, under the title of bishops, whose
peculiar business is to take care of religion, and of those who instruct
the people therein.  These were searched and sought out through the whole
nation, by the prince and his wisest counsellors, among such of the
priesthood as were most deservedly distinguished by the sanctity of their
lives, and the depth of their erudition; who were indeed the spiritual
fathers of the clergy and the people.

That the other part of the parliament consisted of an assembly called the
House of Commons, who were all principal gentlemen, freely picked and
culled out by the people themselves, for their great abilities and love
of their country, to represent the wisdom of the whole nation.  And that
these two bodies made up the most august assembly in Europe; to whom, in
conjunction with the prince, the whole legislature is committed.

I then descended to the courts of justice; over which the judges, those
venerable sages and interpreters of the law, presided, for determining
the disputed rights and properties of men, as well as for the punishment
of vice and protection of innocence.  I mentioned the prudent management
of our treasury; the valour and achievements of our forces, by sea and
land.  I computed the number of our people, by reckoning how many
millions there might be of each religious sect, or political party among
us.  I did not omit even our sports and pastimes, or any other particular
which I thought might redound to the honour of my country.  And I
finished all with a brief historical account of affairs and events in
England for about a hundred years past.

This conversation was not ended under five audiences, each of several
hours; and the king heard the whole with great attention, frequently
taking notes of what I spoke, as well as memorandums of what questions he
intended to ask me.

When I had put an end to these long discources, his majesty, in a sixth
audience, consulting his notes, proposed many doubts, queries, and
objections, upon every article.  He asked, “What methods were used to
cultivate the minds and bodies of our young nobility, and in what kind of
business they commonly spent the first and teachable parts of their
lives?  What course was taken to supply that assembly, when any noble
family became extinct?  What qualifications were necessary in those who
are to be created new lords: whether the humour of the prince, a sum of
money to a court lady, or a design of strengthening a party opposite to
the public interest, ever happened to be the motive in those
advancements?  What share of knowledge these lords had in the laws of
their country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to decide
the properties of their fellow-subjects in the last resort?  Whether they
were always so free from avarice, partialities, or want, that a bribe, or
some other sinister view, could have no place among them?  Whether those
holy lords I spoke of were always promoted to that rank upon account of
their knowledge in religious matters, and the sanctity of their lives;
had never been compliers with the times, while they were common priests;
or slavish prostitute chaplains to some nobleman, whose opinions they
continued servilely to follow, after they were admitted into that
assembly?”

He then desired to know, “What arts were practised in electing those whom
I called commoners: whether a stranger, with a strong purse, might not
influence the vulgar voters to choose him before their own landlord, or
the most considerable gentleman in the neighbourhood?  How it came to
pass, that people were so violently bent upon getting into this assembly,
which I allowed to be a great trouble and expense, often to the ruin of
their families, without any salary or pension? because this appeared such
an exalted strain of virtue and public spirit, that his majesty seemed to
doubt it might possibly not be always sincere.”  And he desired to know,
“Whether such zealous gentlemen could have any views of refunding
themselves for the charges and trouble they were at by sacrificing the
public good to the designs of a weak and vicious prince, in conjunction
with a corrupted ministry?”  He multiplied his questions, and sifted me
thoroughly upon every part of this head, proposing numberless inquiries
and objections, which I think it not prudent or convenient to repeat.

Upon what I said in relation to our courts of justice, his majesty
desired to be satisfied in several points: and this I was the better able
to do, having been formerly almost ruined by a long suit in chancery,
which was decreed for me with costs.  He asked, “What time was usually
spent in determining between right and wrong, and what degree of expense?
Whether advocates and orators had liberty to plead in causes manifestly
known to be unjust, vexatious, or oppressive?  Whether party, in religion
or politics, were observed to be of any weight in the scale of justice?
Whether those pleading orators were persons educated in the general
knowledge of equity, or only in provincial, national, and other local
customs?  Whether they or their judges had any part in penning those
laws, which they assumed the liberty of interpreting, and glossing upon
at their pleasure?  Whether they had ever, at different times, pleaded
for and against the same cause, and cited precedents to prove contrary
opinions?  Whether they were a rich or a poor corporation?  Whether they
received any pecuniary reward for pleading, or delivering their opinions?
And particularly, whether they were ever admitted as members in the lower
senate?”

He fell next upon the management of our treasury; and said, “he thought
my memory had failed me, because I computed our taxes at about five or
six millions a-year, and when I came to mention the issues, he found they
sometimes amounted to more than double; for the notes he had taken were
very particular in this point, because he hoped, as he told me, that the
knowledge of our conduct might be useful to him, and he could not be
deceived in his calculations.  But, if what I told him were true, he was
still at a loss how a kingdom could run out of its estate, like a private
person.”  He asked me, “who were our creditors; and where we found money
to pay them?”  He wondered to hear me talk of such chargeable and
expensive wars; “that certainly we must be a quarrelsome people, or live
among very bad neighbours, and that our generals must needs be richer
than our kings.”  He asked, what business we had out of our own islands,
unless upon the score of trade, or treaty, or to defend the coasts with
our fleet?”  Above all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary
standing army, in the midst of peace, and among a free people.  He said,
“if we were governed by our own consent, in the persons of our
representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against
whom we were to fight; and would hear my opinion, whether a private man’s
house might not be better defended by himself, his children, and family,
than by half-a-dozen rascals, picked up at a venture in the streets for
small wages, who might get a hundred times more by cutting their
throats?”

He laughed at my “odd kind of arithmetic,” as he was pleased to call it,
“in reckoning the numbers of our people, by a computation drawn from the
several sects among us, in religion and politics.”  He said, “he knew no
reason why those, who entertain opinions prejudicial to the public,
should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them.
And as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was
weakness not to enforce the second: for a man may be allowed to keep
poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials.”

He observed, “that among the diversions of our nobility and gentry, I had
mentioned gaming: he desired to know at what age this entertainment was
usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time it
employed; whether it ever went so high as to affect their fortunes;
whether mean, vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might not
arrive at great riches, and sometimes keep our very nobles in dependence,
as well as habituate them to vile companions, wholly take them from the
improvement of their minds, and force them, by the losses they received,
to learn and practise that infamous dexterity upon others?”

He was perfectly astonished with the historical account gave him of our
affairs during the last century; protesting “it was only a heap of
conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments,
the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness,
cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could
produce.”

His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the
sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers
I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently,
delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the
manner he spoke them in: “My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most
admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved, that
ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying
a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by
those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and
eluding them.  I observe among you some lines of an institution, which,
in its original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and
the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions.  It does not appear,
from all you have said, how any one perfection is required toward the
procurement of any one station among you; much less, that men are
ennobled on account of their virtue; that priests are advanced for their
piety or learning; soldiers, for their conduct or valour; judges, for
their integrity; senators, for the love of their country; or counsellors
for their wisdom.  As for yourself,” continued the king, “who have spent
the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope
you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country.  But by what I
have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much
pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your
natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that
nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”



CHAPTER VII.


The author’s love of his country.  He makes a proposal of much advantage
to the king, which is rejected.  The king’s great ignorance in politics.
The learning of that country very imperfect and confined.  The laws, and
military affairs, and parties in the state.

Nothing but an extreme love of truth could have hindered me from
concealing this part of my story.  It was in vain to discover my
resentments, which were always turned into ridicule; and I was forced to
rest with patience, while my noble and beloved country was so injuriously
treated.  I am as heartily sorry as any of my readers can possibly be,
that such an occasion was given: but this prince happened to be so
curious and inquisitive upon every particular, that it could not consist
either with gratitude or good manners, to refuse giving him what
satisfaction I was able.  Yet thus much I may be allowed to say in my own
vindication, that I artfully eluded many of his questions, and gave to
every point a more favourable turn, by many degrees, than the strictness
of truth would allow.  For I have always borne that laudable partiality
to my own country, which Dionysius Halicarnassensis, with so much
justice, recommends to an historian: I would hide the frailties and
deformities of my political mother, and place her virtues and beauties in
the most advantageous light.  This was my sincere endeavour in those many
discourses I had with that monarch, although it unfortunately failed of
success.

But great allowances should be given to a king, who lives wholly secluded
from the rest of the world, and must therefore be altogether unacquainted
with the manners and customs that most prevail in other nations: the want
of which knowledge will ever produce many prejudices, and a certain
narrowness of thinking, from which we, and the politer countries of
Europe, are wholly exempted.  And it would be hard indeed, if so remote a
prince’s notions of virtue and vice were to be offered as a standard for
all mankind.

To confirm what I have now said, and further to show the miserable
effects of a confined education, I shall here insert a passage, which
will hardly obtain belief.  In hopes to ingratiate myself further into
his majesty’s favour, I told him of “an invention, discovered between
three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into a heap
of which, the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in a
moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up in
the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than thunder.  That
a proper quantity of this powder rammed into a hollow tube of brass or
iron, according to its bigness, would drive a ball of iron or lead, with
such violence and speed, as nothing was able to sustain its force.  That
the largest balls thus discharged, would not only destroy whole ranks of
an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the ground, sink down
ships, with a thousand men in each, to the bottom of the sea, and when
linked together by a chain, would cut through masts and rigging, divide
hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste before them.  That we
often put this powder into large hollow balls of iron, and discharged
them by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip up
the pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters on
every side, dashing out the brains of all who came near.  That I knew the
ingredients very well, which were cheap and common; I understood the
manner of compounding them, and could direct his workmen how to make
those tubes, of a size proportionable to all other things in his
majesty’s kingdom, and the largest need not be above a hundred feet long;
twenty or thirty of which tubes, charged with the proper quantity of
powder and balls, would batter down the walls of the strongest town in
his dominions in a few hours, or destroy the whole metropolis, if ever it
should pretend to dispute his absolute commands.”  This I humbly offered
to his majesty, as a small tribute of acknowledgment, in turn for so many
marks that I had received, of his royal favour and protection.

The king was struck with horror at the description I had given of those
terrible engines, and the proposal I had made.  “He was amazed, how so
impotent and grovelling an insect as I” (these were his expressions)
“could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner, as to
appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which I
had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines;
whereof,” he said, “some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been
the first contriver.  As for himself, he protested, that although few
things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet
he would rather lose half his kingdom, than be privy to such a secret;
which he commanded me, as I valued any life, never to mention any more.”

A strange effect of narrow principles and views! that a prince possessed
of every quality which procures veneration, love, and esteem; of strong
parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed with admirable
talents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from a nice,
unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let
slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have made him absolute
master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people!
Neither do I say this, with the least intention to detract from the many
virtues of that excellent king, whose character, I am sensible, will, on
this account, be very much lessened in the opinion of an English reader:
but I take this defect among them to have risen from their ignorance, by
not having hitherto reduced politics into a science, as the more acute
wits of Europe have done.  For, I remember very well, in a discourse one
day with the king, when I happened to say, “there were several thousand
books among us written upon the art of government,” it gave him (directly
contrary to my intention) a very mean opinion of our understandings.  He
professed both to abominate and despise all mystery, refinement, and
intrigue, either in a prince or a minister.  He could not tell what I
meant by secrets of state, where an enemy, or some rival nation, were not
in the case.  He confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow
bounds, to common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy
determination of civil and criminal causes; with some other obvious
topics, which are not worth considering.  And he gave it for his opinion,
“that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to
grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve
better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the
whole race of politicians put together.”

The learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in
morality, history, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they must be allowed
to excel.  But the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful
in life, to the improvement of agriculture, and all mechanical arts; so
that among us, it would be little esteemed.  And as to ideas, entities,
abstractions, and transcendentals, I could never drive the least
conception into their heads.

No law in that country must exceed in words the number of letters in
their alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty.  But indeed few of
them extend even to that length.  They are expressed in the most plain
and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial enough to
discover above one interpretation: and to write a comment upon any law,
is a capital crime.  As to the decision of civil causes, or proceedings
against criminals, their precedents are so few, that they have little
reason to boast of any extraordinary skill in either.

They have had the art of printing, as well as the Chinese, time out of
mind: but their libraries are not very large; for that of the king, which
is reckoned the largest, does not amount to above a thousand volumes,
placed in a gallery of twelve hundred feet long, whence I had liberty to
borrow what books I pleased.  The queen’s joiner had contrived in one of
Glumdalclitch’s rooms, a kind of wooden machine five-and-twenty feet
high, formed like a standing ladder; the steps were each fifty feet long.
It was indeed a moveable pair of stairs, the lowest end placed at ten
feet distance from the wall of the chamber.  The book I had a mind to
read, was put up leaning against the wall: I first mounted to the upper
step of the ladder, and turning my face towards the book, began at the
top of the page, and so walking to the right and left about eight or ten
paces, according to the length of the lines, till I had gotten a little
below the level of mine eyes, and then descending gradually till I came
to the bottom: after which I mounted again, and began the other page in
the same manner, and so turned over the leaf, which I could easily do
with both my hands, for it was as thick and stiff as a pasteboard, and in
the largest folios not above eighteen or twenty feet long.

Their style is clear, masculine, and smooth, but not florid; for they
avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words, or using various
expressions.  I have perused many of their books, especially those in
history and morality.  Among the rest, I was much diverted with a little
old treatise, which always lay in Glumdalclitch’s bed chamber, and
belonged to her governess, a grave elderly gentlewoman, who dealt in
writings of morality and devotion.  The book treats of the weakness of
human kind, and is in little esteem, except among the women and the
vulgar.  However, I was curious to see what an author of that country
could say upon such a subject.  This writer went through all the usual
topics of European moralists, showing “how diminutive, contemptible, and
helpless an animal was man in his own nature; how unable to defend
himself from inclemencies of the air, or the fury of wild beasts: how
much he was excelled by one creature in strength, by another in speed, by
a third in foresight, by a fourth in industry.”  He added, “that nature
was degenerated in these latter declining ages of the world, and could
now produce only small abortive births, in comparison of those in ancient
times.”  He said “it was very reasonable to think, not only that the
species of men were originally much larger, but also that there must have
been giants in former ages; which, as it is asserted by history and
tradition, so it has been confirmed by huge bones and skulls, casually
dug up in several parts of the kingdom, far exceeding the common dwindled
race of men in our days.”  He argued, “that the very laws of nature
absolutely required we should have been made, in the beginning of a size
more large and robust; not so liable to destruction from every little
accident, of a tile falling from a house, or a stone cast from the hand
of a boy, or being drowned in a little brook.”  From this way of
reasoning, the author drew several moral applications, useful in the
conduct of life, but needless here to repeat.  For my own part, I could
not avoid reflecting how universally this talent was spread, of drawing
lectures in morality, or indeed rather matter of discontent and repining,
from the quarrels we raise with nature.  And I believe, upon a strict
inquiry, those quarrels might be shown as ill-grounded among us as they
are among that people.

As to their military affairs, they boast that the king’s army consists of
a hundred and seventy-six thousand foot, and thirty-two thousand horse:
if that may be called an army, which is made up of tradesmen in the
several cities, and farmers in the country, whose commanders are only the
nobility and gentry, without pay or reward.  They are indeed perfect
enough in their exercises, and under very good discipline, wherein I saw
no great merit; for how should it be otherwise, where every farmer is
under the command of his own landlord, and every citizen under that of
the principal men in his own city, chosen after the manner of Venice, by
ballot?

I have often seen the militia of Lorbrulgrud drawn out to exercise, in a
great field near the city of twenty miles square.  They were in all not
above twenty-five thousand foot, and six thousand horse; but it was
impossible for me to compute their number, considering the space of
ground they took up.  A cavalier, mounted on a large steed, might be
about ninety feet high.  I have seen this whole body of horse, upon a
word of command, draw their swords at once, and brandish them in the air.
Imagination can figure nothing so grand, so surprising, and so
astonishing! it looked as if ten thousand flashes of lightning were
darting at the same time from every quarter of the sky.

I was curious to know how this prince, to whose dominions there is no
access from any other country, came to think of armies, or to teach his
people the practice of military discipline.  But I was soon informed,
both by conversation and reading their histories; for, in the course of
many ages, they have been troubled with the same disease to which the
whole race of mankind is subject; the nobility often contending for
power, the people for liberty, and the king for absolute dominion.  All
which, however happily tempered by the laws of that kingdom, have been
sometimes violated by each of the three parties, and have more than once
occasioned civil wars; the last whereof was happily put an end to by this
prince’s grand-father, in a general composition; and the militia, then
settled with common consent, has been ever since kept in the strictest
duty.



CHAPTER VIII.


The king and queen make a progress to the frontiers.  The author attends
them.  The manner in which he leaves the country very particularly
related.  He returns to England.

I had always a strong impulse that I should some time recover my liberty,
though it was impossible to conjecture by what means, or to form any
project with the least hope of succeeding.  The ship in which I sailed,
was the first ever known to be driven within sight of that coast, and the
king had given strict orders, that if at any time another appeared, it
should be taken ashore, and with all its crew and passengers brought in a
tumbril to Lorbrulgrud.  He was strongly bent to get me a woman of my own
size, by whom I might propagate the breed: but I think I should rather
have died than undergone the disgrace of leaving a posterity to be kept
in cages, like tame canary-birds, and perhaps, in time, sold about the
kingdom, to persons of quality, for curiosities.  I was indeed treated
with much kindness: I was the favourite of a great king and queen, and
the delight of the whole court; but it was upon such a foot as ill became
the dignity of humankind.  I could never forget those domestic pledges I
had left behind me.  I wanted to be among people, with whom I could
converse upon even terms, and walk about the streets and fields without
being afraid of being trod to death like a frog or a young puppy.  But my
deliverance came sooner than I expected, and in a manner not very common;
the whole story and circumstances of which I shall faithfully relate.

I had now been two years in this country; and about the beginning of the
third, Glumdalclitch and I attended the king and queen, in a progress to
the south coast of the kingdom.  I was carried, as usual, in my
travelling-box, which as I have already described, was a very convenient
closet, of twelve feet wide.  And I had ordered a hammock to be fixed, by
silken ropes from the four corners at the top, to break the jolts, when a
servant carried me before him on horseback, as I sometimes desired; and
would often sleep in my hammock, while we were upon the road.  On the
roof of my closet, not directly over the middle of the hammock, I ordered
the joiner to cut out a hole of a foot square, to give me air in hot
weather, as I slept; which hole I shut at pleasure with a board that drew
backward and forward through a groove.

When we came to our journey’s end, the king thought proper to pass a few
days at a palace he has near Flanflasnic, a city within eighteen English
miles of the seaside.  Glumdalclitch and I were much fatigued: I had
gotten a small cold, but the poor girl was so ill as to be confined to
her chamber.  I longed to see the ocean, which must be the only scene of
my escape, if ever it should happen.  I pretended to be worse than I
really was, and desired leave to take the fresh air of the sea, with a
page, whom I was very fond of, and who had sometimes been trusted with
me.  I shall never forget with what unwillingness Glumdalclitch
consented, nor the strict charge she gave the page to be careful of me,
bursting at the same time into a flood of tears, as if she had some
forboding of what was to happen.  The boy took me out in my box, about
half an hours walk from the palace, towards the rocks on the sea-shore.
I ordered him to set me down, and lifting up one of my sashes, cast many
a wistful melancholy look towards the sea.  I found myself not very well,
and told the page that I had a mind to take a nap in my hammock, which I
hoped would do me good.  I got in, and the boy shut the window close
down, to keep out the cold.  I soon fell asleep, and all I can conjecture
is, while I slept, the page, thinking no danger could happen, went among
the rocks to look for birds’ eggs, having before observed him from my
window searching about, and picking up one or two in the clefts.  Be that
as it will, I found myself suddenly awaked with a violent pull upon the
ring, which was fastened at the top of my box for the conveniency of
carriage.  I felt my box raised very high in the air, and then borne
forward with prodigious speed.  The first jolt had like to have shaken me
out of my hammock, but afterward the motion was easy enough.  I called
out several times, as loud as I could raise my voice, but all to no
purpose.  I looked towards my windows, and could see nothing but the
clouds and sky.  I heard a noise just over my head, like the clapping of
wings, and then began to perceive the woful condition I was in; that some
eagle had got the ring of my box in his beak, with an intent to let it
fall on a rock, like a tortoise in a shell, and then pick out my body,
and devour it: for the sagacity and smell of this bird enables him to
discover his quarry at a great distance, though better concealed than I
could be within a two-inch board.

In a little time, I observed the noise and flutter of wings to increase
very fast, and my box was tossed up and down, like a sign in a windy day.
I heard several bangs or buffets, as I thought given to the eagle (for
such I am certain it must have been that held the ring of my box in his
beak), and then, all on a sudden, felt myself falling perpendicularly
down, for above a minute, but with such incredible swiftness, that I
almost lost my breath.  My fall was stopped by a terrible squash, that
sounded louder to my ears than the cataract of Niagara; after which, I
was quite in the dark for another minute, and then my box began to rise
so high, that I could see light from the tops of the windows.  I now
perceived I was fallen into the sea.  My box, by the weight of my body,
the goods that were in, and the broad plates of iron fixed for strength
at the four corners of the top and bottom, floated about five feet deep
in water.  I did then, and do now suppose, that the eagle which flew away
with my box was pursued by two or three others, and forced to let me
drop, while he defended himself against the rest, who hoped to share in
the prey.  The plates of iron fastened at the bottom of the box (for
those were the strongest) preserved the balance while it fell, and
hindered it from being broken on the surface of the water. Every joint of
it was well grooved; and the door did not move on hinges, but up and down
like a sash, which kept my closet so tight that very little water came
in.  I got with much difficulty out of my hammock, having first ventured
to draw back the slip-board on the roof already mentioned, contrived on
purpose to let in air, for want of which I found myself almost stifled.

How often did I then wish myself with my dear Glumdalclitch, from whom
one single hour had so far divided me!  And I may say with truth, that in
the midst of my own misfortunes I could not forbear lamenting my poor
nurse, the grief she would suffer for my loss, the displeasure of the
queen, and the ruin of her fortune.  Perhaps many travellers have not
been under greater difficulties and distress than I was at this juncture,
expecting every moment to see my box dashed to pieces, or at least
overset by the first violent blast, or rising wave.  A breach in one
single pane of glass would have been immediate death: nor could any thing
have preserved the windows, but the strong lattice wires placed on the
outside, against accidents in travelling.  I saw the water ooze in at
several crannies, although the leaks were not considerable, and I
endeavoured to stop them as well as I could.  I was not able to lift up
the roof of my closet, which otherwise I certainly should have done, and
sat on the top of it; where I might at least preserve myself some hours
longer, than by being shut up (as I may call it) in the hold.  Or if I
escaped these dangers for a day or two, what could I expect but a
miserable death of cold and hunger?  I was four hours under these
circumstances, expecting, and indeed wishing, every moment to be my last.

I have already told the reader that there were two strong staples fixed
upon that side of my box which had no window, and into which the servant,
who used to carry me on horseback, would put a leathern belt, and buckle
it about his waist.  Being in this disconsolate state, I heard, or at
least thought I heard, some kind of grating noise on that side of my box
where the staples were fixed; and soon after I began to fancy that the
box was pulled or towed along the sea; for I now and then felt a sort of
tugging, which made the waves rise near the tops of my windows, leaving
me almost in the dark.  This gave me some faint hopes of relief, although
I was not able to imagine how it could be brought about.  I ventured to
unscrew one of my chairs, which were always fastened to the floor; and
having made a hard shift to screw it down again, directly under the
slipping-board that I had lately opened, I mounted on the chair, and
putting my mouth as near as I could to the hole, I called for help in a
loud voice, and in all the languages I understood.  I then fastened my
handkerchief to a stick I usually carried, and thrusting it up the hole,
waved it several times in the air, that if any boat or ship were near,
the seamen might conjecture some unhappy mortal to be shut up in the box.

I found no effect from all I could do, but plainly perceived my closet to
be moved along; and in the space of an hour, or better, that side of the
box where the staples were, and had no windows, struck against something
that was hard.  I apprehended it to be a rock, and found myself tossed
more than ever.  I plainly heard a noise upon the cover of my closet,
like that of a cable, and the grating of it as it passed through the
ring.  I then found myself hoisted up, by degrees, at least three feet
higher than I was before.  Whereupon I again thrust up my stick and
handkerchief, calling for help till I was almost hoarse.  In return to
which, I heard a great shout repeated three times, giving me such
transports of joy as are not to be conceived but by those who feel them.
I now heard a trampling over my head, and somebody calling through the
hole with a loud voice, in the English tongue, “If there be any body
below, let them speak.”  I answered, “I was an Englishman, drawn by ill
fortune into the greatest calamity that ever any creature underwent, and
begged, by all that was moving, to be delivered out of the dungeon I was
in.”  The voice replied, “I was safe, for my box was fastened to their
ship; and the carpenter should immediately come and saw a hole in the
cover, large enough to pull me out.”  I answered, “that was needless, and
would take up too much time; for there was no more to be done, but let
one of the crew put his finger into the ring, and take the box out of the
sea into the ship, and so into the captain’s cabin.”  Some of them, upon
hearing me talk so wildly, thought I was mad: others laughed; for indeed
it never came into my head, that I was now got among people of my own
stature and strength.  The carpenter came, and in a few minutes sawed a
passage about four feet square, then let down a small ladder, upon which
I mounted, and thence was taken into the ship in a very weak condition.

The sailors were all in amazement, and asked me a thousand questions,
which I had no inclination to answer.  I was equally confounded at the
sight of so many pigmies, for such I took them to be, after having so
long accustomed mine eyes to the monstrous objects I had left.  But the
captain, Mr. Thomas Wilcocks, an honest worthy Shropshire man, observing
I was ready to faint, took me into his cabin, gave me a cordial to
comfort me, and made me turn in upon his own bed, advising me to take a
little rest, of which I had great need.  Before I went to sleep, I gave
him to understand that I had some valuable furniture in my box, too good
to be lost: a fine hammock, a handsome field-bed, two chairs, a table,
and a cabinet; that my closet was hung on all sides, or rather quilted,
with silk and cotton; that if he would let one of the crew bring my
closet into his cabin, I would open it there before him, and show him my
goods.  The captain, hearing me utter these absurdities, concluded I was
raving; however (I suppose to pacify me) he promised to give order as I
desired, and going upon deck, sent some of his men down into my closet,
whence (as I afterwards found) they drew up all my goods, and stripped
off the quilting; but the chairs, cabinet, and bedstead, being screwed to
the floor, were much damaged by the ignorance of the seamen, who tore
them up by force.  Then they knocked off some of the boards for the use
of the ship, and when they had got all they had a mind for, let the hull
drop into the sea, which by reason of many breaches made in the bottom
and sides, sunk to rights.  And, indeed, I was glad not to have been a
spectator of the havoc they made, because I am confident it would have
sensibly touched me, by bringing former passages into my mind, which I
would rather have forgot.

I slept some hours, but perpetually disturbed with dreams of the place I
had left, and the dangers I had escaped.  However, upon waking, I found
myself much recovered.  It was now about eight o’clock at night, and the
captain ordered supper immediately, thinking I had already fasted too
long.  He entertained me with great kindness, observing me not to look
wildly, or talk inconsistently: and, when we were left alone, desired I
would give him a relation of my travels, and by what accident I came to
be set adrift, in that monstrous wooden chest.  He said “that about
twelve o’clock at noon, as he was looking through his glass, he spied it
at a distance, and thought it was a sail, which he had a mind to make,
being not much out of his course, in hopes of buying some biscuit, his
own beginning to fall short.  That upon coming nearer, and finding his
error, he sent out his long-boat to discover what it was; that his men
came back in a fright, swearing they had seen a swimming house.  That he
laughed at their folly, and went himself in the boat, ordering his men to
take a strong cable along with them.  That the weather being calm, he
rowed round me several times, observed my windows and wire lattices that
defended them.  That he discovered two staples upon one side, which was
all of boards, without any passage for light.  He then commanded his men
to row up to that side, and fastening a cable to one of the staples,
ordered them to tow my chest, as they called it, toward the ship.  When
it was there, he gave directions to fasten another cable to the ring
fixed in the cover, and to raise up my chest with pulleys, which all the
sailors were not able to do above two or three feet.”  He said, “they saw
my stick and handkerchief thrust out of the hole, and concluded that some
unhappy man must be shut up in the cavity.”  I asked, “whether he or the
crew had seen any prodigious birds in the air, about the time he first
discovered me.”  To which he answered, “that discoursing this matter with
the sailors while I was asleep, one of them said, he had observed three
eagles flying towards the north, but remarked nothing of their being
larger than the usual size:” which I suppose must be imputed to the great
height they were at; and he could not guess the reason of my question.  I
then asked the captain, “how far he reckoned we might be from land?”  He
said, “by the best computation he could make, we were at least a hundred
leagues.”  I assured him, “that he must be mistaken by almost half, for I
had not left the country whence I came above two hours before I dropped
into the sea.”  Whereupon he began again to think that my brain was
disturbed, of which he gave me a hint, and advised me to go to bed in a
cabin he had provided.  I assured him, “I was well refreshed with his
good entertainment and company, and as much in my senses as ever I was in
my life.”  He then grew serious, and desired to ask me freely, “whether I
were not troubled in my mind by the consciousness of some enormous crime,
for which I was punished, at the command of some prince, by exposing me
in that chest; as great criminals, in other countries, have been forced
to sea in a leaky vessel, without provisions: for although he should be
sorry to have taken so ill a man into his ship, yet he would engage his
word to set me safe ashore, in the first port where we arrived.”  He
added, “that his suspicions were much increased by some very absurd
speeches I had delivered at first to his sailors, and afterwards to
himself, in relation to my closet or chest, as well as by my odd looks
and behaviour while I was at supper.”

I begged his patience to hear me tell my story, which I faithfully did,
from the last time I left England, to the moment he first discovered me.
And, as truth always forces its way into rational minds, so this honest
worthy gentleman, who had some tincture of learning, and very good sense,
was immediately convinced of my candour and veracity.  But further to
confirm all I had said, I entreated him to give order that my cabinet
should be brought, of which I had the key in my pocket; for he had
already informed me how the seamen disposed of my closet.  I opened it in
his own presence, and showed him the small collection of rarities I made
in the country from which I had been so strangely delivered.  There was
the comb I had contrived out of the stumps of the king’s beard, and
another of the same materials, but fixed into a paring of her majesty’s
thumb-nail, which served for the back.  There was a collection of needles
and pins, from a foot to half a yard long; four wasp stings, like
joiner’s tacks; some combings of the queen’s hair; a gold ring, which one
day she made me a present of, in a most obliging manner, taking it from
her little finger, and throwing it over my head like a collar.  I desired
the captain would please to accept this ring in return for his
civilities; which he absolutely refused.  I showed him a corn that I had
cut off with my own hand, from a maid of honour’s toe; it was about the
bigness of Kentish pippin, and grown so hard, that when I returned
England, I got it hollowed into a cup, and set in silver.  Lastly, I
desired him to see the breeches I had then on, which were made of a
mouse’s skin.

I could force nothing on him but a footman’s tooth, which I observed him
to examine with great curiosity, and found he had a fancy for it.  He
received it with abundance of thanks, more than such a trifle could
deserve.  It was drawn by an unskilful surgeon, in a mistake, from one of
Glumdalclitch’s men, who was afflicted with the tooth-ache, but it was as
sound as any in his head.  I got it cleaned, and put it into my cabinet.
It was about a foot long, and four inches in diameter.

The captain was very well satisfied with this plain relation I had given
him, and said, “he hoped, when we returned to England, I would oblige the
world by putting it on paper, and making it public.”  My answer was,
“that we were overstocked with books of travels: that nothing could now
pass which was not extraordinary; wherein I doubted some authors less
consulted truth, than their own vanity, or interest, or the diversion of
ignorant readers; that my story could contain little beside common
events, without those ornamental descriptions of strange plants, trees,
birds, and other animals; or of the barbarous customs and idolatry of
savage people, with which most writers abound.  However, I thanked him
for his good opinion, and promised to take the matter into my thoughts.”

He said “he wondered at one thing very much, which was, to hear me speak
so loud;” asking me “whether the king or queen of that country were thick
of hearing?”  I told him, “it was what I had been used to for above two
years past, and that I admired as much at the voices of him and his men,
who seemed to me only to whisper, and yet I could hear them well enough.
But, when I spoke in that country, it was like a man talking in the
streets, to another looking out from the top of a steeple, unless when I
was placed on a table, or held in any person’s hand.”  I told him, “I had
likewise observed another thing, that, when I first got into the ship,
and the sailors stood all about me, I thought they were the most little
contemptible creatures I had ever beheld.”  For indeed, while I was in
that prince’s country, I could never endure to look in a glass, after
mine eyes had been accustomed to such prodigious objects, because the
comparison gave me so despicable a conceit of myself.  The captain said,
“that while we were at supper, he observed me to look at every thing with
a sort of wonder, and that I often seemed hardly able to contain my
laughter, which he knew not well how to take, but imputed it to some
disorder in my brain.”  I answered, “it was very true; and I wondered how
I could forbear, when I saw his dishes of the size of a silver
three-pence, a leg of pork hardly a mouthful, a cup not so big as a
nut-shell;” and so I went on, describing the rest of his household-stuff
and provisions, after the same manner.  For, although he queen had
ordered a little equipage of all things necessary for me, while I was in
her service, yet my ideas were wholly taken up with what I saw on every
side of me, and I winked at my own littleness, as people do at their own
faults.  The captain understood my raillery very well, and merrily
replied with the old English proverb, “that he doubted mine eyes were
bigger than my belly, for he did not observe my stomach so good, although
I had fasted all day;” and, continuing in his mirth, protested “he would
have gladly given a hundred pounds, to have seen my closet in the eagle’s
bill, and afterwards in its fall from so great a height into the sea;
which would certainly have been a most astonishing object, worthy to have
the description of it transmitted to future ages:” and the comparison of
Phaëton was so obvious, that he could not forbear applying it, although I
did not much admire the conceit.

The captain having been at Tonquin, was, in his return to England, driven
north-eastward to the latitude of 44 degrees, and longitude of 143.  But
meeting a trade-wind two days after I came on board him, we sailed
southward a long time, and coasting New Holland, kept our course
west-south-west, and then south-south-west, till we doubled the Cape of
Good Hope.  Our voyage was very prosperous, but I shall not trouble the
reader with a journal of it.  The captain called in at one or two ports,
and sent in his long-boat for provisions and fresh water; but I never
went out of the ship till we came into the Downs, which was on the third
day of June, 1706, about nine months after my escape.  I offered to leave
my goods in security for payment of my freight: but the captain protested
he would not receive one farthing.  We took a kind leave of each other,
and I made him promise he would come to see me at my house in Redriff.  I
hired a horse and guide for five shillings, which I borrowed of the
captain.

As I was on the road, observing the littleness of the houses, the trees,
the cattle, and the people, I began to think myself in Lilliput.  I was
afraid of trampling on every traveller I met, and often called aloud to
have them stand out of the way, so that I had like to have gotten one or
two broken heads for my impertinence.

When I came to my own house, for which I was forced to inquire, one of
the servants opening the door, I bent down to go in, (like a goose under
a gate,) for fear of striking my head.  My wife run out to embrace me,
but I stooped lower than her knees, thinking she could otherwise never be
able to reach my mouth.  My daughter kneeled to ask my blessing, but I
could not see her till she arose, having been so long used to stand with
my head and eyes erect to above sixty feet; and then I went to take her
up with one hand by the waist.  I looked down upon the servants, and one
or two friends who were in the house, as if they had been pigmies and I a
giant.  I told my wife, “she had been too thrifty, for I found she had
starved herself and her daughter to nothing.”  In short, I behaved myself
so unaccountably, that they were all of the captain’s opinion when he
first saw me, and concluded I had lost my wits.  This I mention as an
instance of the great power of habit and prejudice.

In a little time, I and my family and friends came to a right
understanding: but my wife protested “I should never go to sea any more;”
although my evil destiny so ordered, that she had not power to hinder me,
as the reader may know hereafter.  In the mean time, I here conclude the
second part of my unfortunate voyages.






PART III.  A VOYAGE TO LAPUTA, BALNIBARBI, LUGGNAGG, GLUBBDUBDRIB, AND
JAPAN.






CHAPTER I.


The author sets out on his third voyage.  Is taken by pirates.  The
malice of a Dutchman.  His arrival at an island.  He is received into
Laputa.

I had not been at home above ten days, when Captain William Robinson, a
Cornish man, commander of the Hopewell, a stout ship of three hundred
tons, came to my house.  I had formerly been surgeon of another ship
where he was master, and a fourth part owner, in a voyage to the Levant.
He had always treated me more like a brother, than an inferior officer;
and, hearing of my arrival, made me a visit, as I apprehended only out of
friendship, for nothing passed more than what is usual after long
absences.  But repeating his visits often, expressing his joy to find I
me in good health, asking, “whether I were now settled for life?” adding,
“that he intended a voyage to the East Indies in two months,” at last he
plainly invited me, though with some apologies, to be surgeon of the
ship; “that I should have another surgeon under me, beside our two mates;
that my salary should be double to the usual pay; and that having
experienced my knowledge in sea-affairs to be at least equal to his, he
would enter into any engagement to follow my advice, as much as if I had
shared in the command.”

He said so many other obliging things, and I knew him to be so honest a
man, that I could not reject this proposal; the thirst I had of seeing
the world, notwithstanding my past misfortunes, continuing as violent as
ever.  The only difficulty that remained, was to persuade my wife, whose
consent however I at last obtained, by the prospect of advantage she
proposed to her children.

We set out the 5th day of August, 1706, and arrived at Fort St. George
the 11th of April, 1707.  We staid there three weeks to refresh our crew,
many of whom were sick.  From thence we went to Tonquin, where the
captain resolved to continue some time, because many of the goods he
intended to buy were not ready, nor could he expect to be dispatched in
several months.  Therefore, in hopes to defray some of the charges he
must be at, he bought a sloop, loaded it with several sorts of goods,
wherewith the Tonquinese usually trade to the neighbouring islands, and
putting fourteen men on board, whereof three were of the country, he
appointed me master of the sloop, and gave me power to traffic, while he
transacted his affairs at Tonquin.

We had not sailed above three days, when a great storm arising, we were
driven five days to the north-north-east, and then to the east: after
which we had fair weather, but still with a pretty strong gale from the
west.  Upon the tenth day we were chased by two pirates, who soon
overtook us; for my sloop was so deep laden, that she sailed very slow,
neither were we in a condition to defend ourselves.

We were boarded about the same time by both the pirates, who entered
furiously at the head of their men; but finding us all prostrate upon our
faces (for so I gave order), they pinioned us with strong ropes, and
setting guard upon us, went to search the sloop.

I observed among them a Dutchman, who seemed to be of some authority,
though he was not commander of either ship.  He knew us by our
countenances to be Englishmen, and jabbering to us in his own language,
swore we should be tied back to back and thrown into the sea.  I spoken
Dutch tolerably well; I told him who we were, and begged him, in
consideration of our being Christians and Protestants, of neighbouring
countries in strict alliance, that he would move the captains to take
some pity on us.  This inflamed his rage; he repeated his threatenings,
and turning to his companions, spoke with great vehemence in the Japanese
language, as I suppose, often using the word _Christianos_.

The largest of the two pirate ships was commanded by a Japanese captain,
who spoke a little Dutch, but very imperfectly.  He came up to me, and
after several questions, which I answered in great humility, he said, “we
should not die.”  I made the captain a very low bow, and then, turning to
the Dutchman, said, “I was sorry to find more mercy in a heathen, than in
a brother christian.”  But I had soon reason to repent those foolish
words: for that malicious reprobate, having often endeavoured in vain to
persuade both the captains that I might be thrown into the sea (which
they would not yield to, after the promise made me that I should not
die), however, prevailed so far, as to have a punishment inflicted on me,
worse, in all human appearance, than death itself.  My men were sent by
an equal division into both the pirate ships, and my sloop new manned.
As to myself, it was determined that I should be set adrift in a small
canoe, with paddles and a sail, and four days’ provisions; which last,
the Japanese captain was so kind to double out of his own stores, and
would permit no man to search me.  I got down into the canoe, while the
Dutchman, standing upon the deck, loaded me with all the curses and
injurious terms his language could afford.

About an hour before we saw the pirates I had taken an observation, and
found we were in the latitude of 46 N. and longitude of 183.  When I was
at some distance from the pirates, I discovered, by my pocket-glass,
several islands to the south-east.  I set up my sail, the wind being
fair, with a design to reach the nearest of those islands, which I made a
shift to do, in about three hours.  It was all rocky: however I got many
birds’ eggs; and, striking fire, I kindled some heath and dry sea-weed,
by which I roasted my eggs.  I ate no other supper, being resolved to
spare my provisions as much as I could.  I passed the night under the
shelter of a rock, strewing some heath under me, and slept pretty well.

The next day I sailed to another island, and thence to a third and
fourth, sometimes using my sail, and sometimes my paddles.  But, not to
trouble the reader with a particular account of my distresses, let it
suffice, that on the fifth day I arrived at the last island in my sight,
which lay south-south-east to the former.

This island was at a greater distance than I expected, and I did not
reach it in less than five hours.  I encompassed it almost round, before
I could find a convenient place to land in; which was a small creek,
about three times the wideness of my canoe.  I found the island to be all
rocky, only a little intermingled with tufts of grass, and sweet-smelling
herbs.  I took out my small provisions and after having refreshed myself,
I secured the remainder in a cave, whereof there were great numbers; I
gathered plenty of eggs upon the rocks, and got a quantity of dry
sea-weed, and parched grass, which I designed to kindle the next day, and
roast my eggs as well as I could, for I had about me my flint, steel,
match, and burning-glass.  I lay all night in the cave where I had lodged
my provisions.  My bed was the same dry grass and sea-weed which I
intended for fuel.  I slept very little, for the disquiets of my mind
prevailed over my weariness, and kept me awake.  I considered how
impossible it was to preserve my life in so desolate a place, and how
miserable my end must be: yet found myself so listless and desponding,
that I had not the heart to rise; and before I could get spirits enough
to creep out of my cave, the day was far advanced.  I walked awhile among
the rocks: the sky was perfectly clear, and the sun so hot, that I was
forced to turn my face from it: when all on a sudden it became obscure,
as I thought, in a manner very different from what happens by the
interposition of a cloud.  I turned back, and perceived a vast opaque
body between me and the sun moving forwards towards the island: it seemed
to be about two miles high, and hid the sun six or seven minutes; but I
did not observe the air to be much colder, or the sky more darkened, than
if I had stood under the shade of a mountain.  As it approached nearer
over the place where I was, it appeared to be a firm substance, the
bottom flat, smooth, and shining very bright, from the reflection of the
sea below.  I stood upon a height about two hundred yards from the shore,
and saw this vast body descending almost to a parallel with me, at less
than an English mile distance.  I took out my pocket perspective, and
could plainly discover numbers of people moving up and down the sides of
it, which appeared to be sloping; but what those people where doing I was
not able to distinguish.

The natural love of life gave me some inward motion of joy, and I was
ready to entertain a hope that this adventure might, some way or other,
help to deliver me from the desolate place and condition I was in.  But
at the same time the reader can hardly conceive my astonishment, to
behold an island in the air, inhabited by men, who were able (as it
should seem) to raise or sink, or put it into progressive motion, as they
pleased.  But not being at that time in a disposition to philosophise
upon this phenomenon, I rather chose to observe what course the island
would take, because it seemed for awhile to stand still.  Yet soon after,
it advanced nearer, and I could see the sides of it encompassed with
several gradations of galleries, and stairs, at certain intervals, to
descend from one to the other.  In the lowest gallery, I beheld some
people fishing with long angling rods, and others looking on.  I waved my
cap (for my hat was long since worn out) and my handkerchief toward the
island; and upon its nearer approach, I called and shouted with the
utmost strength of my voice; and then looking circumspectly, I beheld a
crowd gather to that side which was most in my view.  I found by their
pointing towards me and to each other, that they plainly discovered me,
although they made no return to my shouting.  But I could see four or
five men running in great haste, up the stairs, to the top of the island,
who then disappeared.  I happened rightly to conjecture, that these were
sent for orders to some person in authority upon this occasion.

The number of people increased, and, in less than half all hour, the
island was moved and raised in such a manner, that the lowest gallery
appeared in a parallel of less then a hundred yards distance from the
height where I stood.  I then put myself in the most supplicating
posture, and spoke in the humblest accent, but received no answer.  Those
who stood nearest over against me, seemed to be persons of distinction,
as I supposed by their habit.  They conferred earnestly with each other,
looking often upon me.  At length one of them called out in a clear,
polite, smooth dialect, not unlike in sound to the Italian: and therefore
I returned an answer in that language, hoping at least that the cadence
might be more agreeable to his ears.  Although neither of us understood
the other, yet my meaning was easily known, for the people saw the
distress I was in.

They made signs for me to come down from the rock, and go towards the
shore, which I accordingly did; and the flying island being raised to a
convenient height, the verge directly over me, a chain was let down from
the lowest gallery, with a seat fastened to the bottom, to which I fixed
myself, and was drawn up by pulleys.



CHAPTER II.


The humours and dispositions of the Laputians described.  An account of
their learning.  Of the king and his court.  The author’s reception
there.  The inhabitants subject to fear and disquietudes.  An account of
the women.

At my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of people, but those who
stood nearest seemed to be of better quality.  They beheld me with all
the marks and circumstances of wonder; neither indeed was I much in their
debt, having never till then seen a race of mortals so singular in their
shapes, habits, and countenances.  Their heads were all reclined, either
to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other
directly up to the zenith.  Their outward garments were adorned with the
figures of suns, moons, and stars; interwoven with those of fiddles,
flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords, and many other
instruments of music, unknown to us in Europe.  I observed, here and
there, many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder, fastened like
a flail to the end of a stick, which they carried in their hands.  In
each bladder was a small quantity of dried peas, or little pebbles, as I
was afterwards informed.  With these bladders, they now and then flapped
the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practice I
could not then conceive the meaning.  It seems the minds of these people
are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak,
nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some
external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason,
those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the
original is _climenole_) in their family, as one of their domestics; nor
ever walk abroad, or make visits, without him.  And the business of this
officer is, when two, three, or more persons are in company, gently to
strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right
ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself.  This flapper
is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and
upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always
so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling
down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in
the streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the
kennel.

It was necessary to give the reader this information, without which he
would be at the same loss with me to understand the proceedings of these
people, as they conducted me up the stairs to the top of the island, and
from thence to the royal palace.  While we were ascending, they forgot
several times what they were about, and left me to myself, till their
memories were again roused by their flappers; for they appeared
altogether unmoved by the sight of my foreign habit and countenance, and
by the shouts of the vulgar, whose thoughts and minds were more
disengaged.

At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber of
presence, where I saw the king seated on his throne, attended on each
side by persons of prime quality.  Before the throne, was a large table
filled with globes and spheres, and mathematical instruments of all
kinds.  His majesty took not the least notice of us, although our
entrance was not without sufficient noise, by the concourse of all
persons belonging to the court.  But he was then deep in a problem; and
we attended at least an hour, before he could solve it.  There stood by
him, on each side, a young page with flaps in their hands, and when they
saw he was at leisure, one of them gently struck his mouth, and the other
his right ear; at which he startled like one awaked on the sudden, and
looking towards me and the company I was in, recollected the occasion of
our coming, whereof he had been informed before.  He spoke some words,
whereupon immediately a young man with a flap came up to my side, and
flapped me gently on the right ear; but I made signs, as well as I could,
that I had no occasion for such an instrument; which, as I afterwards
found, gave his majesty, and the whole court, a very mean opinion of my
understanding.  The king, as far as I could conjecture, asked me several
questions, and I addressed myself to him in all the languages I had.
When it was found I could neither understand nor be understood, I was
conducted by his order to an apartment in his palace (this prince being
distinguished above all his predecessors for his hospitality to
strangers), where two servants were appointed to attend me.  My dinner
was brought, and four persons of quality, whom I remembered to have seen
very near the king’s person, did me the honour to dine with me.  We had
two courses, of three dishes each.  In the first course, there was a
shoulder of mutton cut into an equilateral triangle, a piece of beef into
a rhomboides, and a pudding into a cycloid.  The second course was two
ducks trussed up in the form of fiddles; sausages and puddings resembling
flutes and hautboys, and a breast of veal in the shape of a harp.  The
servants cut our bread into cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and several
other mathematical figures.

While we were at dinner, I made bold to ask the names of several things
in their language, and those noble persons, by the assistance of their
flappers, delighted to give me answers, hoping to raise my admiration of
their great abilities if I could be brought to converse with them.  I was
soon able to call for bread and drink, or whatever else I wanted.

After dinner my company withdrew, and a person was sent to me by the
king’s order, attended by a flapper.  He brought with him pen, ink, and
paper, and three or four books, giving me to understand by signs, that he
was sent to teach me the language.  We sat together four hours, in which
time I wrote down a great number of words in columns, with the
translations over against them; I likewise made a shift to learn several
short sentences; for my tutor would order one of my servants to fetch
something, to turn about, to make a bow, to sit, or to stand, or walk,
and the like.  Then I took down the sentence in writing.  He showed me
also, in one of his books, the figures of the sun, moon, and stars, the
zodiac, the tropics, and polar circles, together with the denominations
of many plains and solids.  He gave me the names and descriptions of all
the musical instruments, and the general terms of art in playing on each
of them.  After he had left me, I placed all my words, with their
interpretations, in alphabetical order.  And thus, in a few days, by the
help of a very faithful memory, I got some insight into their language.
The word, which I interpret the flying or floating island, is in the
original _Laputa_, whereof I could never learn the true etymology.
_Lap_, in the old obsolete language, signifies high; and _untuh_, a
governor; from which they say, by corruption, was derived _Laputa_, from
_Lapuntuh_.  But I do not approve of this derivation, which seems to be a
little strained.  I ventured to offer to the learned among them a
conjecture of my own, that Laputa was _quasi lap outed_; _lap_,
signifying properly, the dancing of the sunbeams in the sea, and _outed_,
a wing; which, however, I shall not obtrude, but submit to the judicious
reader.

Those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill I was clad,
ordered a tailor to come next morning, and take measure for a suit of
clothes.  This operator did his office after a different manner from
those of his trade in Europe.  He first took my altitude by a quadrant,
and then, with a rule and compasses, described the dimensions and
outlines of my whole body, all which he entered upon paper; and in six
days brought my clothes very ill made, and quite out of shape, by
happening to mistake a figure in the calculation.  But my comfort was,
that I observed such accidents very frequent, and little regarded.

During my confinement for want of clothes, and by an indisposition that
held me some days longer, I much enlarged my dictionary; and when I went
next to court, was able to understand many things the king spoke, and to
return him some kind of answers.  His majesty had given orders, that the
island should move north-east and by east, to the vertical point over
Lagado, the metropolis of the whole kingdom below, upon the firm earth.
It was about ninety leagues distant, and our voyage lasted four days and
a half.  I was not in the least sensible of the progressive motion made
in the air by the island.  On the second morning, about eleven o’clock,
the king himself in person, attended by his nobility, courtiers, and
officers, having prepared all their musical instruments, played on them
for three hours without intermission, so that I was quite stunned with
the noise; neither could I possibly guess the meaning, till my tutor
informed me.  He said that, the people of their island had their ears
adapted to hear “the music of the spheres, which always played at certain
periods, and the court was now prepared to bear their part, in whatever
instrument they most excelled.”

In our journey towards Lagado, the capital city, his majesty ordered that
the island should stop over certain towns and villages, from whence he
might receive the petitions of his subjects.  And to this purpose,
several packthreads were let down, with small weights at the bottom.  On
these packthreads the people strung their petitions, which mounted up
directly, like the scraps of paper fastened by school boys at the end of
the string that holds their kite.  Sometimes we received wine and
victuals from below, which were drawn up by pulleys.

The knowledge I had in mathematics, gave me great assistance in acquiring
their phraseology, which depended much upon that science, and music; and
in the latter I was not unskilled.  Their ideas are perpetually
conversant in lines and figures.  If they would, for example, praise the
beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they describe it by rhombs,
circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other geometrical terms, or by
words of art drawn from music, needless here to repeat.  I observed in
the king’s kitchen all sorts of mathematical and musical instruments,
after the figures of which they cut up the joints that were served to his
majesty’s table.

Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevil, without one right angle
in any apartment; and this defect arises from the contempt they bear to
practical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and mechanic; those
instructions they give being too refined for the intellects of their
workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes.  And although they are
dexterous enough upon a piece of paper, in the management of the rule,
the pencil, and the divider, yet in the common actions and behaviour of
life, I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy people, nor so
slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other subjects, except
those of mathematics and music.  They are very bad reasoners, and
vehemently given to opposition, unless when they happen to be of the
right opinion, which is seldom their case.  Imagination, fancy, and
invention, they are wholly strangers to, nor have any words in their
language, by which those ideas can be expressed; the whole compass of
their thoughts and mind being shut up within the two forementioned
sciences.

Most of them, and especially those who deal in the astronomical part,
have great faith in judicial astrology, although they are ashamed to own
it publicly.  But what I chiefly admired, and thought altogether
unaccountable, was the strong disposition I observed in them towards news
and politics, perpetually inquiring into public affairs, giving their
judgments in matters of state, and passionately disputing every inch of a
party opinion.  I have indeed observed the same disposition among most of
the mathematicians I have known in Europe, although I could never
discover the least analogy between the two sciences; unless those people
suppose, that because the smallest circle has as many degrees as the
largest, therefore the regulation and management of the world require no
more abilities than the handling and turning of a globe; but I rather
take this quality to spring from a very common infirmity of human nature,
inclining us to be most curious and conceited in matters where we have
least concern, and for which we are least adapted by study or nature.

These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a minutes
peace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes which very
little affect the rest of mortals.  Their apprehensions arise from
several changes they dread in the celestial bodies: for instance, that
the earth, by the continual approaches of the sun towards it, must, in
course of time, be absorbed, or swallowed up; that the face of the sun,
will, by degrees, be encrusted with its own effluvia, and give no more
light to the world; that the earth very narrowly escaped a brush from the
tail of the last comet, which would have infallibly reduced it to ashes;
and that the next, which they have calculated for one-and-thirty years
hence, will probably destroy us.  For if, in its perihelion, it should
approach within a certain degree of the sun (as by their calculations
they have reason to dread) it will receive a degree of heat ten thousand
times more intense than that of red hot glowing iron, and in its absence
from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand and fourteen
miles long, through which, if the earth should pass at the distance of
one hundred thousand miles from the nucleus, or main body of the comet,
it must in its passage be set on fire, and reduced to ashes: that the
sun, daily spending its rays without any nutriment to supply them, will
at last be wholly consumed and annihilated; which must be attended with
the destruction of this earth, and of all the planets that receive their
light from it.

They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these, and the
like impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in their
beds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures and amusements of
life.  When they meet an acquaintance in the morning, the first question
is about the sun’s health, how he looked at his setting and rising, and
what hopes they have to avoid the stroke of the approaching comet.  This
conversation they are apt to run into with the same temper that boys
discover in delighting to hear terrible stories of spirits and
hobgoblins, which they greedily listen to, and dare not go to bed for
fear.

The women of the island have abundance of vivacity: they, contemn their
husbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof there is always
a considerable number from the continent below, attending at court,
either upon affairs of the several towns and corporations, or their own
particular occasions, but are much despised, because they want the same
endowments.  Among these the ladies choose their gallants: but the
vexation is, that they act with too much ease and security; for the
husband is always so rapt in speculation, that the mistress and lover may
proceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he be but
provided with paper and implements, and without his flapper at his side.

The wives and daughters lament their confinement to the island, although
I think it the most delicious spot of ground in the world; and although
they live here in the greatest plenty and magnificence, and are allowed
to do whatever they please, they long to see the world, and take the
diversions of the metropolis, which they are not allowed to do without a
particular license from the king; and this is not easy to be obtained,
because the people of quality have found, by frequent experience, how
hard it is to persuade their women to return from below.  I was told that
a great court lady, who had several children,—is married to the prime
minister, the richest subject in the kingdom, a very graceful person,
extremely fond of her, and lives in the finest palace of the island,—went
down to Lagado on the pretence of health, there hid herself for several
months, till the king sent a warrant to search for her; and she was found
in an obscure eating-house all in rags, having pawned her clothes to
maintain an old deformed footman, who beat her every day, and in whose
company she was taken, much against her will.  And although her husband
received her with all possible kindness, and without the least reproach,
she soon after contrived to steal down again, with all her jewels, to the
same gallant, and has not been heard of since.

This may perhaps pass with the reader rather for an European or English
story, than for one of a country so remote.  But he may please to
consider, that the caprices of womankind are not limited by any climate
or nation, and that they are much more uniform, than can be easily
imagined.

In about a month’s time, I had made a tolerable proficiency in their
language, and was able to answer most of the king’s questions, when I had
the honour to attend him.  His majesty discovered not the least curiosity
to inquire into the laws, government, history, religion, or manners of
the countries where I had been; but confined his questions to the state
of mathematics, and received the account I gave him with great contempt
and indifference, though often roused by his flapper on each side.



CHAPTER III.


A phenomenon solved by modern philosophy and astronomy.  The Laputians’
great improvements in the latter.  The king’s method of suppressing
insurrections.

I desired leave of this prince to see the curiosities of the island,
which he was graciously pleased to grant, and ordered my tutor to attend
me.  I chiefly wanted to know, to what cause, in art or in nature, it
owed its several motions, whereof I will now give a philosophical account
to the reader.

The flying or floating island is exactly circular, its diameter 7837
yards, or about four miles and a half, and consequently contains ten
thousand acres.  It is three hundred yards thick.  The bottom, or under
surface, which appears to those who view it below, is one even regular
plate of adamant, shooting up to the height of about two hundred yards.
Above it lie the several minerals in their usual order, and over all is a
coat of rich mould, ten or twelve feet deep.  The declivity of the upper
surface, from the circumference to the centre, is the natural cause why
all the dews and rains, which fall upon the island, are conveyed in small
rivulets toward the middle, where they are emptied into four large
basins, each of about half a mile in circuit, and two hundred yards
distant from the centre.  From these basins the water is continually
exhaled by the sun in the daytime, which effectually prevents their
overflowing.  Besides, as it is in the power of the monarch to raise the
island above the region of clouds and vapours, he can prevent the falling
of dews and rain whenever he pleases.  For the highest clouds cannot rise
above two miles, as naturalists agree, at least they were never known to
do so in that country.

At the centre of the island there is a chasm about fifty yards in
diameter, whence the astronomers descend into a large dome, which is
therefore called _flandona gagnole_, or the astronomer’s cave, situated
at the depth of a hundred yards beneath the upper surface of the adamant.
In this cave are twenty lamps continually burning, which, from the
reflection of the adamant, cast a strong light into every part.  The
place is stored with great variety of sextants, quadrants, telescopes,
astrolabes, and other astronomical instruments.  But the greatest
curiosity, upon which the fate of the island depends, is a loadstone of a
prodigious size, in shape resembling a weaver’s shuttle.  It is in length
six yards, and in the thickest part at least three yards over.  This
magnet is sustained by a very strong axle of adamant passing through its
middle, upon which it plays, and is poised so exactly that the weakest
hand can turn it.  It is hooped round with a hollow cylinder of adamant,
four feet yards in diameter, placed horizontally, and supported by eight
adamantine feet, each six yards high.  In the middle of the concave side,
there is a groove twelve inches deep, in which the extremities of the
axle are lodged, and turned round as there is occasion.

The stone cannot be removed from its place by any force, because the hoop
and its feet are one continued piece with that body of adamant which
constitutes the bottom of the island.

By means of this loadstone, the island is made to rise and fall, and move
from one place to another.  For, with respect to that part of the earth
over which the monarch presides, the stone is endued at one of its sides
with an attractive power, and at the other with a repulsive.  Upon
placing the magnet erect, with its attracting end towards the earth, the
island descends; but when the repelling extremity points downwards, the
island mounts directly upwards.  When the position of the stone is
oblique, the motion of the island is so too: for in this magnet, the
forces always act in lines parallel to its direction.

By this oblique motion, the island is conveyed to different parts of the
monarch’s dominions.  To explain the manner of its progress, let _A_ _B_
represent a line drawn across the dominions of Balnibarbi, let the line
_c_ _d_ represent the loadstone, of which let _d_ be the repelling end,
and _c_ the attracting end, the island being over _C_: let the stone be
placed in position _c_ _d_, with its repelling end downwards; then the
island will be driven upwards obliquely towards _D_.  When it is arrived
at _D_, let the stone be turned upon its axle, till its attracting end
points towards _E_, and then the island will be carried obliquely towards
_E_; where, if the stone be again turned upon its axle till it stands in
the position _E_ _F_, with its repelling point downwards, the island will
rise obliquely towards _F_, where, by directing the attracting end
towards _G_, the island may be carried to _G_, and from _G_ to _H_, by
turning the stone, so as to make its repelling extremity to point
directly downward.  And thus, by changing the situation of the stone, as
often as there is occasion, the island is made to rise and fall by turns
in an oblique direction, and by those alternate risings and fallings (the
obliquity being not considerable) is conveyed from one part of the
dominions to the other.

But it must be observed, that this island cannot move beyond the extent
of the dominions below, nor can it rise above the height of four miles.
For which the astronomers (who have written large systems concerning the
stone) assign the following reason: that the magnetic virtue does not
extend beyond the distance of four miles, and that the mineral, which
acts upon the stone in the bowels of the earth, and in the sea about six
leagues distant from the shore, is not diffused through the whole globe,
but terminated with the limits of the king’s dominions; and it was easy,
from the great advantage of such a superior situation, for a prince to
bring under his obedience whatever country lay within the attraction of
that magnet.

When the stone is put parallel to the plane of the horizon, the island
stands still; for in that case the extremities of it, being at equal
distance from the earth, act with equal force, the one in drawing
downwards, the other in pushing upwards, and consequently no motion can
ensue.

This loadstone is under the care of certain astronomers, who, from time
to time, give it such positions as the monarch directs.  They spend the
greatest part of their lives in observing the celestial bodies, which
they do by the assistance of glasses, far excelling ours in goodness.
For, although their largest telescopes do not exceed three feet, they
magnify much more than those of a hundred with us, and show the stars
with greater clearness.  This advantage has enabled them to extend their
discoveries much further than our astronomers in Europe; for they have
made a catalogue of ten thousand fixed stars, whereas the largest of ours
do not contain above one third part of that number.  They have likewise
discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars;
whereof the innermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet
exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost, five; the former
revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a
half; so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the
same proportion with the cubes of their distance from the centre of Mars;
which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation
that influences the other heavenly bodies.

They have observed ninety-three different comets, and settled their
periods with great exactness.  If this be true (and they affirm it with
great confidence) it is much to be wished, that their observations were
made public, whereby the theory of comets, which at present is very lame
and defective, might be brought to the same perfection with other arts of
astronomy.

The king would be the most absolute prince in the universe, if he could
but prevail on a ministry to join with him; but these having their
estates below on the continent, and considering that the office of a
favourite has a very uncertain tenure, would never consent to the
enslaving of their country.

If any town should engage in rebellion or mutiny, fall into violent
factions, or refuse to pay the usual tribute, the king has two methods of
reducing them to obedience.  The first and the mildest course is, by
keeping the island hovering over such a town, and the lands about it,
whereby he can deprive them of the benefit of the sun and the rain, and
consequently afflict the inhabitants with dearth and diseases: and if the
crime deserve it, they are at the same time pelted from above with great
stones, against which they have no defence but by creeping into cellars
or caves, while the roofs of their houses are beaten to pieces.  But if
they still continue obstinate, or offer to raise insurrections, he
proceeds to the last remedy, by letting the island drop directly upon
their heads, which makes a universal destruction both of houses and men.
However, this is an extremity to which the prince is seldom driven,
neither indeed is he willing to put it in execution; nor dare his
ministers advise him to an action, which, as it would render them odious
to the people, so it would be a great damage to their own estates, which
all lie below; for the island is the king’s demesne.

But there is still indeed a more weighty reason, why the kings of this
country have been always averse from executing so terrible an action,
unless upon the utmost necessity.  For, if the town intended to be
destroyed should have in it any tall rocks, as it generally falls out in
the larger cities, a situation probably chosen at first with a view to
prevent such a catastrophe; or if it abound in high spires, or pillars of
stone, a sudden fall might endanger the bottom or under surface of the
island, which, although it consist, as I have said, of one entire
adamant, two hundred yards thick, might happen to crack by too great a
shock, or burst by approaching too near the fires from the houses below,
as the backs, both of iron and stone, will often do in our chimneys.  Of
all this the people are well apprised, and understand how far to carry
their obstinacy, where their liberty or property is concerned.  And the
king, when he is highest provoked, and most determined to press a city to
rubbish, orders the island to descend with great gentleness, out of a
pretence of tenderness to his people, but, indeed, for fear of breaking
the adamantine bottom; in which case, it is the opinion of all their
philosophers, that the loadstone could no longer hold it up, and the
whole mass would fall to the ground.

By a fundamental law of this realm, neither the king, nor either of his
two eldest sons, are permitted to leave the island; nor the queen, till
she is past child-bearing.



CHAPTER IV.


The author leaves Laputa; is conveyed to Balnibarbi; arrives at the
metropolis.  A description of the metropolis, and the country adjoining.
The author hospitably received by a great lord.  His conversation with
that lord.

Although I cannot say that I was ill treated in this island, yet I must
confess I thought myself too much neglected, not without some degree of
contempt; for neither prince nor people appeared to be curious in any
part of knowledge, except mathematics and music, wherein I was far their
inferior, and upon that account very little regarded.

On the other side, after having seen all the curiosities of the island, I
was very desirous to leave it, being heartily weary of those people.
They were indeed excellent in two sciences for which I have great esteem,
and wherein I am not unversed; but, at the same time, so abstracted and
involved in speculation, that I never met with such disagreeable
companions.  I conversed only with women, tradesmen, flappers, and
court-pages, during two months of my abode there; by which, at last, I
rendered myself extremely contemptible; yet these were the only people
from whom I could ever receive a reasonable answer.

I had obtained, by hard study, a good degree of knowledge in their
language: I was weary of being confined to an island where I received so
little countenance, and resolved to leave it with the first opportunity.

There was a great lord at court, nearly related to the king, and for that
reason alone used with respect.  He was universally reckoned the most
ignorant and stupid person among them.  He had performed many eminent
services for the crown, had great natural and acquired parts, adorned
with integrity and honour; but so ill an ear for music, that his
detractors reported, “he had been often known to beat time in the wrong
place;” neither could his tutors, without extreme difficulty, teach him
to demonstrate the most easy proposition in the mathematics.  He was
pleased to show me many marks of favour, often did me the honour of a
visit, desired to be informed in the affairs of Europe, the laws and
customs, the manners and learning of the several countries where I had
travelled.  He listened to me with great attention, and made very wise
observations on all I spoke.  He had two flappers attending him for
state, but never made use of them, except at court and in visits of
ceremony, and would always command them to withdraw, when we were alone
together.

I entreated this illustrious person, to intercede in my behalf with his
majesty, for leave to depart; which he accordingly did, as he was pleased
to tell me, with regret: for indeed he had made me several offers very
advantageous, which, however, I refused, with expressions of the highest
acknowledgment.

On the 16th of February I took leave of his majesty and the court.  The
king made me a present to the value of about two hundred pounds English,
and my protector, his kinsman, as much more, together with a letter of
recommendation to a friend of his in Lagado, the metropolis.  The island
being then hovering over a mountain about two miles from it, I was let
down from the lowest gallery, in the same manner as I had been taken up.

The continent, as far as it is subject to the monarch of the flying
island, passes under the general name of _Balnibarbi_; and the
metropolis, as I said before, is called _Lagado_.  I felt some little
satisfaction in finding myself on firm ground.  I walked to the city
without any concern, being clad like one of the natives, and sufficiently
instructed to converse with them.  I soon found out the person’s house to
whom I was recommended, presented my letter from his friend the grandee
in the island, and was received with much kindness.  This great lord,
whose name was Munodi, ordered me an apartment in his own house, where I
continued during my stay, and was entertained in a most hospitable
manner.

The next morning after my arrival, he took me in his chariot to see the
town, which is about half the bigness of London; but the houses very
strangely built, and most of them out of repair.  The people in the
streets walked fast, looked wild, their eyes fixed, and were generally in
rags.  We passed through one of the town gates, and went about three
miles into the country, where I saw many labourers working with several
sorts of tools in the ground, but was not able to conjecture what they
were about: neither did observe any expectation either of corn or grass,
although the soil appeared to be excellent.  I could not forbear admiring
at these odd appearances, both in town and country; and I made bold to
desire my conductor, that he would be pleased to explain to me, what
could be meant by so many busy heads, hands, and faces, both in the
streets and the fields, because I did not discover any good effects they
produced; but, on the contrary, I never knew a soil so unhappily
cultivated, houses so ill contrived and so ruinous, or a people whose
countenances and habit expressed so much misery and want.

This lord Munodi was a person of the first rank, and had been some years
governor of Lagado; but, by a cabal of ministers, was discharged for
insufficiency.  However, the king treated him with tenderness, as a
well-meaning man, but of a low contemptible understanding.

When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he made
no further answer than by telling me, “that I had not been long enough
among them to form a judgment; and that the different nations of the
world had different customs;” with other common topics to the same
purpose.  But, when we returned to his palace, he asked me “how I liked
the building, what absurdities I observed, and what quarrel I had with
the dress or looks of his domestics?”  This he might safely do; because
every thing about him was magnificent, regular, and polite.  I answered,
“that his excellency’s prudence, quality, and fortune, had exempted him
from those defects, which folly and beggary had produced in others.”  He
said, “if I would go with him to his country-house, about twenty miles
distant, where his estate lay, there would be more leisure for this kind
of conversation.”  I told his excellency “that I was entirely at his
disposal;” and accordingly we set out next morning.

During our journey he made me observe the several methods used by farmers
in managing their lands, which to me were wholly unaccountable; for,
except in some very few places, I could not discover one ear of corn or
blade of grass.  But, in three hours travelling, the scene was wholly
altered; we came into a most beautiful country; farmers’ houses, at small
distances, neatly built; the fields enclosed, containing vineyards,
corn-grounds, and meadows.  Neither do I remember to have seen a more
delightful prospect.  His excellency observed my countenance to clear up;
he told me, with a sigh, “that there his estate began, and would continue
the same, till we should come to his house: that his countrymen ridiculed
and despised him, for managing his affairs no better, and for setting so
ill an example to the kingdom; which, however, was followed by very few,
such as were old, and wilful, and weak like himself.”

We came at length to the house, which was indeed a noble structure, built
according to the best rules of ancient architecture.  The fountains,
gardens, walks, avenues, and groves, were all disposed with exact
judgment and taste.  I gave due praises to every thing I saw, whereof his
excellency took not the least notice till after supper; when, there being
no third companion, he told me with a very melancholy air “that he
doubted he must throw down his houses in town and country, to rebuild
them after the present mode; destroy all his plantations, and cast others
into such a form as modern usage required, and give the same directions
to all his tenants, unless he would submit to incur the censure of pride,
singularity, affectation, ignorance, caprice, and perhaps increase his
majesty’s displeasure; that the admiration I appeared to be under would
cease or diminish, when he had informed me of some particulars which,
probably, I never heard of at court, the people there being too much
taken up in their own speculations, to have regard to what passed here
below.”

The sum of his discourse was to this effect: “That about forty years ago,
certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or diversion,
and, after five months continuance, came back with a very little
smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that
airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to dislike the
management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of putting all
arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot.  To this end,
they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of projectors in
Lagado; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the people, that there
is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom without such an academy.
In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of
agriculture and building, and new instruments, and tools for all trades
and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work
of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to
last for ever without repairing.  All the fruits of the earth shall come
to maturity at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase a
hundred fold more than they do at present; with innumerable other happy
proposals.  The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are
yet brought to perfection; and in the mean time, the whole country lies
miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or
clothes.  By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty
times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally
on by hope and despair: that as for himself, being not of an enterprising
spirit, he was content to go on in the old forms, to live in the houses
his ancestors had built, and act as they did, in every part of life,
without innovation: that some few other persons of quality and gentry had
done the same, but were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will,
as enemies to art, ignorant, and ill common-wealth’s men, preferring
their own ease and sloth before the general improvement of their
country.”

His lordship added, “That he would not, by any further particulars,
prevent the pleasure I should certainly take in viewing the grand
academy, whither he was resolved I should go.”  He only desired me to
observe a ruined building, upon the side of a mountain about three miles
distant, of which he gave me this account: “That he had a very convenient
mill within half a mile of his house, turned by a current from a large
river, and sufficient for his own family, as well as a great number of
his tenants; that about seven years ago, a club of those projectors came
to him with proposals to destroy this mill, and build another on the side
of that mountain, on the long ridge whereof a long canal must be cut, for
a repository of water, to be conveyed up by pipes and engines to supply
the mill, because the wind and air upon a height agitated the water, and
thereby made it fitter for motion, and because the water, descending down
a declivity, would turn the mill with half the current of a river whose
course is more upon a level.”  He said, “that being then not very well
with the court, and pressed by many of his friends, he complied with the
proposal; and after employing a hundred men for two years, the work
miscarried, the projectors went off, laying the blame entirely upon him,
railing at him ever since, and putting others upon the same experiment,
with equal assurance of success, as well as equal disappointment.”

In a few days we came back to town; and his excellency, considering the
bad character he had in the academy, would not go with me himself, but
recommended me to a friend of his, to bear me company thither.  My lord
was pleased to represent me as a great admirer of projects, and a person
of much curiosity and easy belief; which, indeed, was not without truth;
for I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger days.



CHAPTER V.


The author permitted to see the grand academy of Lagado.  The academy
largely described.  The arts wherein the professors employ themselves.

This academy is not an entire single building, but a continuation of
several houses on both sides of a street, which growing waste, was
purchased and applied to that use.

I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the
academy.  Every room has in it one or more projectors; and I believe I
could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face,
his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places.  His
clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour.  He has been eight
years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were
to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in
raw inclement summers.  He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight
years more, he should be able to supply the governor’s gardens with
sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low,
and entreated me “to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity,
especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers.”  I made
him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose,
because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.

I went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost
overcome with a horrible stink.  My conductor pressed me forward,
conjuring me in a whisper “to give no offence, which would be highly
resented;” and therefore I durst not so much as stop my nose.  The
projector of this cell was the most ancient student of the academy; his
face and beard were of a pale yellow; his hands and clothes daubed over
with filth.  When I was presented to him, he gave me a close embrace, a
compliment I could well have excused.  His employment, from his first
coming into the academy, was an operation to reduce human excrement to
its original food, by separating the several parts, removing the tincture
which it receives from the gall, making the odour exhale, and scumming
off the saliva.  He had a weekly allowance, from the society, of a vessel
filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol barrel.

I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder; who likewise showed
me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which
he intended to publish.

There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method for
building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward to the
foundation; which he justified to me, by the like practice of those two
prudent insects, the bee and the spider.

There was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own
condition: their employment was to mix colours for painters, which their
master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling.  It was indeed
my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in their
lessons, and the professor himself happened to be generally mistaken.
This artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole fraternity.

In another apartment I was highly pleased with a projector who had found
a device of ploughing the ground with hogs, to save the charges of
ploughs, cattle, and labour.  The method is this: in an acre of ground
you bury, at six inches distance and eight deep, a quantity of acorns,
dates, chestnuts, and other mast or vegetables, whereof these animals are
fondest; then you drive six hundred or more of them into the field,
where, in a few days, they will root up the whole ground in search of
their food, and make it fit for sowing, at the same time manuring it with
their dung: it is true, upon experiment, they found the charge and
trouble very great, and they had little or no crop.  However it is not
doubted, that this invention may be capable of great improvement.

I went into another room, where the walls and ceiling were all hung round
with cobwebs, except a narrow passage for the artist to go in and out.
At my entrance, he called aloud to me, “not to disturb his webs.”  He
lamented “the fatal mistake the world had been so long in, of using
silkworms, while we had such plenty of domestic insects who infinitely
excelled the former, because they understood how to weave, as well as
spin.”  And he proposed further, “that by employing spiders, the charge
of dyeing silks should be wholly saved;” whereof I was fully convinced,
when he showed me a vast number of flies most beautifully coloured,
wherewith he fed his spiders, assuring us “that the webs would take a
tincture from them; and as he had them of all hues, he hoped to fit
everybody’s fancy, as soon as he could find proper food for the flies, of
certain gums, oils, and other glutinous matter, to give a strength and
consistence to the threads.”

There was an astronomer, who had undertaken to place a sun-dial upon the
great weathercock on the town-house, by adjusting the annual and diurnal
motions of the earth and sun, so as to answer and coincide with all
accidental turnings of the wind.

I was complaining of a small fit of the colic, upon which my conductor
led me into a room where a great physician resided, who was famous for
curing that disease, by contrary operations from the same instrument.  He
had a large pair of bellows, with a long slender muzzle of ivory: this he
conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed
he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder.  But when the disease
was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows
were full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient; then
withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his thumb strongly
against the orifice of then fundament; and this being repeated three or
four times, the adventitious wind would rush out, bringing the noxious
along with it, (like water put into a pump), and the patient recovered.
I saw him try both experiments upon a dog, but could not discern any
effect from the former.  After the latter the animal was ready to burst,
and made so violent a discharge as was very offensive to me and my
companion.  The dog died on the spot, and we left the doctor endeavouring
to recover him, by the same operation.

I visited many other apartments, but shall not trouble my reader with all
the curiosities I observed, being studious of brevity.

I had hitherto seen only one side of the academy, the other being
appropriated to the advancers of speculative learning, of whom I shall
say something, when I have mentioned one illustrious person more, who is
called among them “the universal artist.”  He told us “he had been thirty
years employing his thoughts for the improvement of human life.”  He had
two large rooms full of wonderful curiosities, and fifty men at work.
Some were condensing air into a dry tangible substance, by extracting the
nitre, and letting the aqueous or fluid particles percolate; others
softening marble, for pillows and pin-cushions; others petrifying the
hoofs of a living horse, to preserve them from foundering.  The artist
himself was at that time busy upon two great designs; the first, to sow
land with chaff, wherein he affirmed the true seminal virtue to be
contained, as he demonstrated by several experiments, which I was not
skilful enough to comprehend.  The other was, by a certain composition of
gums, minerals, and vegetables, outwardly applied, to prevent the growth
of wool upon two young lambs; and he hoped, in a reasonable time to
propagate the breed of naked sheep, all over the kingdom.

We crossed a walk to the other part of the academy, where, as I have
already said, the projectors in speculative learning resided.

The first professor I saw, was in a very large room, with forty pupils
about him.  After salutation, observing me to look earnestly upon a
frame, which took up the greatest part of both the length and breadth of
the room, he said, “Perhaps I might wonder to see him employed in a
project for improving speculative knowledge, by practical and mechanical
operations.  But the world would soon be sensible of its usefulness; and
he flattered himself, that a more noble, exalted thought never sprang in
any other man’s head.  Every one knew how laborious the usual method is
of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most
ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour,
might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and
theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.”  He then
led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in
ranks.  It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room.  The
superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a
die, but some larger than others.  They were all linked together by
slender wires.  These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with
paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of
their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but
without any order.  The professor then desired me “to observe; for he was
going to set his engine at work.”  The pupils, at his command, took each
of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the
edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition
of the words was entirely changed.  He then commanded six-and-thirty of
the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the
frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make
part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were
scribes.  This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn,
the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as
the square bits of wood moved upside down.

                           [Picture: The frame]

Six hours a day the young students were employed in this labour; and the
professor showed me several volumes in large folio, already collected, of
broken sentences, which he intended to piece together, and out of those
rich materials, to give the world a complete body of all arts and
sciences; which, however, might be still improved, and much expedited, if
the public would raise a fund for making and employing five hundred such
frames in Lagado, and oblige the managers to contribute in common their
several collections.

He assured me “that this invention had employed all his thoughts from his
youth; that he had emptied the whole vocabulary into his frame, and made
the strictest computation of the general proportion there is in books
between the numbers of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other parts of
speech.”

I made my humblest acknowledgment to this illustrious person, for his
great communicativeness; and promised, “if ever I had the good fortune to
return to my native country, that I would do him justice, as the sole
inventor of this wonderful machine;” the form and contrivance of which I
desired leave to delineate on paper, as in the figure here annexed.  I
told him, “although it were the custom of our learned in Europe to steal
inventions from each other, who had thereby at least this advantage, that
it became a controversy which was the right owner; yet I would take such
caution, that he should have the honour entire, without a rival.”

We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in
consultation upon improving that of their own country.

The first project was, to shorten discourse, by cutting polysyllables
into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because, in reality, all
things imaginable are but norms.

The other project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words
whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health,
as well as brevity.  For it is plain, that every word we speak is, in
some degree, a diminution of our lunge by corrosion, and, consequently,
contributes to the shortening of our lives.  An expedient was therefore
offered, “that since words are only names for things, it would be more
convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary
to express a particular business they are to discourse on.”  And this
invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as
health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the vulgar and
illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion unless they might be
allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after the manner of
their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are
the common people.  However, many of the most learned and wise adhere to
the new scheme of expressing themselves by things; which has only this
inconvenience attending it, that if a man’s business be very great, and
of various kinds, he must be obliged, in proportion, to carry a greater
bundle of things upon his back, unless he can afford one or two strong
servants to attend him.  I have often beheld two of those sages almost
sinking under the weight of their packs, like pedlars among us, who, when
they met in the street, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and
hold conversation for an hour together; then put up their implements,
help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave.

But for short conversations, a man may carry implements in his pockets,
and under his arms, enough to supply him; and in his house, he cannot be
at a loss.  Therefore the room where company meet who practise this art,
is full of all things, ready at hand, requisite to furnish matter for
this kind of artificial converse.

Another great advantage proposed by this invention was, that it would
serve as a universal language, to be understood in all civilised nations,
whose goods and utensils are generally of the same kind, or nearly
resembling, so that their uses might easily be comprehended.  And thus
ambassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign princes, or
ministers of state, to whose tongues they were utter strangers.

I was at the mathematical school, where the master taught his pupils
after a method scarce imaginable to us in Europe.  The proposition, and
demonstration, were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink composed of
a cephalic tincture.  This, the student was to swallow upon a fasting
stomach, and for three days following, eat nothing but bread and water.
As the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the
proposition along with it.  But the success has not hitherto been
answerable, partly by some error in the _quantum_ or composition, and
partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this bolus is so nauseous,
that they generally steal aside, and discharge it upwards, before it can
operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an
abstinence, as the prescription requires.



CHAPTER VI.


A further account of the academy.  The author proposes some improvements,
which are honourably received.

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained; the
professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses, which
is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy.  These unhappy people
were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites upon
the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to
consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, eminent
services; of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing
it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for
employments persons qualified to exercise them, with many other wild,
impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to
conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, “that there is nothing
so extravagant and irrational, which some philosophers have not
maintained for truth.”

But, however, I shall so far do justice to this part of the Academy, as
to acknowledge that all of them were not so visionary.  There was a most
ingenious doctor, who seemed to be perfectly versed in the whole nature
and system of government.  This illustrious person had very usefully
employed his studies, in finding out effectual remedies for all diseases
and corruptions to which the several kinds of public administration are
subject, by the vices or infirmities of those who govern, as well as by
the licentiousness of those who are to obey.  For instance: whereas all
writers and reasoners have agreed, that there is a strict universal
resemblance between the natural and the political body; can there be any
thing more evident, than that the health of both must be preserved, and
the diseases cured, by the same prescriptions?  It is allowed, that
senates and great councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient,
and other peccant humours; with many diseases of the head, and more of
the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous contractions of the
nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the right; with spleen,
flatus, vertigos, and deliriums; with scrofulous tumours, full of fetid
purulent matter; with sour frothy ructations: with canine appetites, and
crudeness of digestion, besides many others, needless to mention.  This
doctor therefore proposed, “that upon the meeting of the senate, certain
physicians should attend it the three first days of their sitting, and at
the close of each day’s debate feel the pulses of every senator; after
which, having maturely considered and consulted upon the nature of the
several maladies, and the methods of cure, they should on the fourth day
return to the senate house, attended by their apothecaries stored with
proper medicines; and before the members sat, administer to each of them
lenitives, aperitives, abstersives, corrosives, restringents,
palliatives, laxatives, cephalalgics, icterics, apophlegmatics,
acoustics, as their several cases required; and, according as these
medicines should operate, repeat, alter, or omit them, at the next
meeting.”

This project could not be of any great expense to the public; and might
in my poor opinion, be of much use for the despatch of business, in those
countries where senates have any share in the legislative power; beget
unanimity, shorten debates, open a few mouths which are now closed, and
close many more which are now open; curb the petulancy of the young, and
correct the positiveness of the old; rouse the stupid, and damp the pert.

Again: because it is a general complaint, that the favourites of princes
are troubled with short and weak memories; the same doctor proposed,
“that whoever attended a first minister, after having told his business,
with the utmost brevity and in the plainest words, should, at his
departure, give the said minister a tweak by the nose, or a kick in the
belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by both ears, or run a
pin into his breech; or pinch his arm black and blue, to prevent
forgetfulness; and at every levee day, repeat the same operation, till
the business were done, or absolutely refused.”

He likewise directed, “that every senator in the great council of a
nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of
it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if that
were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the
public.”

When parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance
to reconcile them.  The method is this: You take a hundred leaders of
each party; you dispose them into couples of such whose heads are nearest
of a size; then let two nice operators saw off the occiput of each couple
at the same time, in such a manner that the brain may be equally divided.
Let the occiputs, thus cut off, be interchanged, applying each to the
head of his opposite party-man.  It seems indeed to be a work that
requires some exactness, but the professor assured us, “that if it were
dexterously performed, the cure would be infallible.”  For he argued
thus: “that the two half brains being left to debate the matter between
themselves within the space of one skull, would soon come to a good
understanding, and produce that moderation, as well as regularity of
thinking, so much to be wished for in the heads of those, who imagine
they come into the world only to watch and govern its motion: and as to
the difference of brains, in quantity or quality, among those who are
directors in faction, the doctor assured us, from his own knowledge, that
“it was a perfect trifle.”

I heard a very warm debate between two professors, about the most
commodious and effectual ways and means of raising money, without
grieving the subject.  The first affirmed, “the justest method would be,
to lay a certain tax upon vices and folly; and the sum fixed upon every
man to be rated, after the fairest manner, by a jury of his neighbours.”
The second was of an opinion directly contrary; “to tax those qualities
of body and mind, for which men chiefly value themselves; the rate to be
more or less, according to the degrees of excelling; the decision whereof
should be left entirely to their own breast.”  The highest tax was upon
men who are the greatest favourites of the other sex, and the
assessments, according to the number and nature of the favours they have
received; for which, they are allowed to be their own vouchers.  Wit,
valour, and politeness, were likewise proposed to be largely taxed, and
collected in the same manner, by every person’s giving his own word for
the quantum of what he possessed.  But as to honour, justice, wisdom, and
learning, they should not be taxed at all; because they are
qualifications of so singular a kind, that no man will either allow them
in his neighbour or value them in himself.

The women were proposed to be taxed according to their beauty and skill
in dressing, wherein they had the same privilege with the men, to be
determined by their own judgment.  But constancy, chastity, good sense,
and good nature, were not rated, because they would not bear the charge
of collecting.

To keep senators in the interest of the crown, it was proposed that the
members should raffle for employment; every man first taking an oath, and
giving security, that he would vote for the court, whether he won or not;
after which, the losers had, in their turn, the liberty of raffling upon
the next vacancy.  Thus, hope and expectation would be kept alive; none
would complain of broken promises, but impute their disappointments
wholly to fortune, whose shoulders are broader and stronger than those of
a ministry.

Another professor showed me a large paper of instructions for discovering
plots and conspiracies against the government.  He advised great
statesmen to examine into the diet of all suspected persons; their times
of eating; upon which side they lay in bed; with which hand they wipe
their posteriors; take a strict view of their excrements, and, from the
colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity
of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts and designs; because men
are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool,
which he found by frequent experiment; for, in such conjunctures, when he
used, merely as a trial, to consider which was the best way of murdering
the king, his ordure would have a tincture of green; but quite different,
when he thought only of raising an insurrection, or burning the
metropolis.

The whole discourse was written with great acuteness, containing many
observations, both curious and useful for politicians; but, as I
conceived, not altogether complete.  This I ventured to tell the author,
and offered, if he pleased, to supply him with some additions.  He
received my proposition with more compliance than is usual among writers,
especially those of the projecting species, professing “he would be glad
to receive further information.”

I told him, “that in the kingdom of Tribnia, {454a} by the natives called
Langdon, {454b} where I had sojourned some time in my travels, the bulk
of the people consist in a manner wholly of discoverers, witnesses,
informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers, together with
their several subservient and subaltern instruments, all under the
colours, the conduct, and the pay of ministers of state, and their
deputies.  The plots, in that kingdom, are usually the workmanship of
those persons who desire to raise their own characters of profound
politicians; to restore new vigour to a crazy administration; to stifle
or divert general discontents; to fill their coffers with forfeitures;
and raise, or sink the opinion of public credit, as either shall best
answer their private advantage.  It is first agreed and settled among
them, what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot; then, effectual
care is taken to secure all their letters and papers, and put the owners
in chains.  These papers are delivered to a set of artists, very
dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words, syllables, and
letters: for instance, they can discover a close stool, to signify a
privy council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the
plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a prime minister; the gout, a high
priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a committee of
grandees; a sieve, a court lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an
employment; a bottomless pit, a treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and
bells, a favourite; a broken reed, a court of justice; an empty tun, a
general; a running sore, the administration. {455}

“When this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which the
learned among them call acrostics and anagrams.  First, they can decipher
all initial letters into political meanings.  Thus _N_, shall signify a
plot; _B_, a regiment of horse; _L_, a fleet at sea; or, secondly, by
transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected paper, they can
lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party.  So, for example,
if I should say, in a letter to a friend, ‘Our brother Tom has just got
the piles,’ a skilful decipherer would discover, that the same letters
which compose that sentence, may be analysed into the following words,
‘Resist ---, a plot is brought home—The tour.’  And this is the
anagrammatic method.”

The professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these
observations, and promised to make honourable mention of me in his
treatise.

I saw nothing in this country that could invite me to a longer
continuance, and began to think of returning home to England.



CHAPTER VII.


The author leaves Lagado: arrives at Maldonada.  No ship ready.  He takes
a short voyage to Glubbdubdrib.  His reception by the governor.

The continent, of which this kingdom is apart, extends itself, as I have
reason to believe, eastward, to that unknown tract of America westward of
California; and north, to the Pacific Ocean, which is not above a hundred
and fifty miles from Lagado; where there is a good port, and much
commerce with the great island of Luggnagg, situated to the north-west
about 29 degrees north latitude, and 140 longitude.  This island of
Luggnagg stands south-eastward of Japan, about a hundred leagues distant.
There is a strict alliance between the Japanese emperor and the king of
Luggnagg; which affords frequent opportunities of sailing from one island
to the other.  I determined therefore to direct my course this way, in
order to my return to Europe.  I hired two mules, with a guide, to show
me the way, and carry my small baggage.  I took leave of my noble
protector, who had shown me so much favour, and made me a generous
present at my departure.

My journey was without any accident or adventure worth relating.  When I
arrived at the port of Maldonada (for so it is called) there was no ship
in the harbour bound for Luggnagg, nor likely to be in some time.  The
town is about as large as Portsmouth.  I soon fell into some
acquaintance, and was very hospitably received.  A gentleman of
distinction said to me, “that since the ships bound for Luggnagg could
not be ready in less than a month, it might be no disagreeable amusement
for me to take a trip to the little island of Glubbdubdrib, about five
leagues off to the south-west.”  He offered himself and a friend to
accompany me, and that I should be provided with a small convenient bark
for the voyage.

Glubbdubdrib, as nearly as I can interpret the word, signifies the island
of sorcerers or magicians.  It is about one third as large as the Isle of
Wight, and extremely fruitful: it is governed by the head of a certain
tribe, who are all magicians.  This tribe marries only among each other,
and the eldest in succession is prince or governor.  He has a noble
palace, and a park of about three thousand acres, surrounded by a wall of
hewn stone twenty feet high.  In this park are several small enclosures
for cattle, corn, and gardening.

The governor and his family are served and attended by domestics of a
kind somewhat unusual.  By his skill in necromancy he has a power of
calling whom he pleases from the dead, and commanding their service for
twenty-four hours, but no longer; nor can he call the same persons up
again in less than three months, except upon very extraordinary
occasions.

When we arrived at the island, which was about eleven in the morning, one
of the gentlemen who accompanied me went to the governor, and desired
admittance for a stranger, who came on purpose to have the honour of
attending on his highness.  This was immediately granted, and we all
three entered the gate of the palace between two rows of guards, armed
and dressed after a very antic manner, and with something in their
countenances that made my flesh creep with a horror I cannot express.  We
passed through several apartments, between servants of the same sort,
ranked on each side as before, till we came to the chamber of presence;
where, after three profound obeisances, and a few general questions, we
were permitted to sit on three stools, near the lowest step of his
highness’s throne.  He understood the language of Balnibarbi, although it
was different from that of this island.  He desired me to give him some
account of my travels; and, to let me see that I should be treated
without ceremony, he dismissed all his attendants with a turn of his
finger; at which, to my great astonishment, they vanished in an instant,
like visions in a dream when we awake on a sudden.  I could not recover
myself in some time, till the governor assured me, “that I should receive
no hurt:” and observing my two companions to be under no concern, who had
been often entertained in the same manner, I began to take courage, and
related to his highness a short history of my several adventures; yet not
without some hesitation, and frequently looking behind me to the place
where I had seen those domestic spectres.  I had the honour to dine with
the governor, where a new set of ghosts served up the meat, and waited at
table.  I now observed myself to be less terrified than I had been in the
morning.  I stayed till sunset, but humbly desired his highness to excuse
me for not accepting his invitation of lodging in the palace.  My two
friends and I lay at a private house in the town adjoining, which is the
capital of this little island; and the next morning we returned to pay
our duty to the governor, as he was pleased to command us.

After this manner we continued in the island for ten days, most part of
every day with the governor, and at night in our lodging.  I soon grew so
familiarized to the sight of spirits, that after the third or fourth time
they gave me no emotion at all: or, if I had any apprehensions left, my
curiosity prevailed over them.  For his highness the governor ordered me
“to call up whatever persons I would choose to name, and in whatever
numbers, among all the dead from the beginning of the world to the
present time, and command them to answer any questions I should think fit
to ask; with this condition, that my questions must be confined within
the compass of the times they lived in.  And one thing I might depend
upon, that they would certainly tell me the truth, for lying was a talent
of no use in the lower world.”

I made my humble acknowledgments to his highness for so great a favour.
We were in a chamber, from whence there was a fair prospect into the
park.  And because my first inclination was to be entertained with scenes
of pomp and magnificence, I desired to see Alexander the Great at the
head of his army, just after the battle of Arbela: which, upon a motion
of the governor’s finger, immediately appeared in a large field, under
the window where we stood.  Alexander was called up into the room: it was
with great difficulty that I understood his Greek, and had but little of
my own.  He assured me upon his honour “that he was not poisoned, but
died of a bad fever by excessive drinking.”

Next, I saw Hannibal passing the Alps, who told me “he had not a drop of
vinegar in his camp.”

I saw Cæsar and Pompey at the head of their troops, just ready to engage.
I saw the former, in his last great triumph.  I desired that the senate
of Rome might appear before me, in one large chamber, and an assembly of
somewhat a later age in counterview, in another.  The first seemed to be
an assembly of heroes and demigods; the other, a knot of pedlars,
pick-pockets, highwayman, and bullies.

The governor, at my request, gave the sign for Cæsar and Brutus to
advance towards us.  I was struck with a profound veneration at the sight
of Brutus, and could easily discover the most consummate virtue, the
greatest intrepidity and firmness of mind, the truest love of his
country, and general benevolence for mankind, in every lineament of his
countenance.  I observed, with much pleasure, that these two persons were
in good intelligence with each other; and Cæsar freely confessed to me,
“that the greatest actions of his own life were not equal, by many
degrees, to the glory of taking it away.”  I had the honour to have much
conversation with Brutus; and was told, “that his ancestor Junius,
Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the younger, Sir Thomas More, and himself
were perpetually together:” a sextumvirate, to which all the ages of the
world cannot add a seventh.

It would be tedious to trouble the reader with relating what vast numbers
of illustrious persons were called up to gratify that insatiable desire I
had to see the world in every period of antiquity placed before me.  I
chiefly fed mine eyes with beholding the destroyers of tyrants and
usurpers, and the restorers of liberty to oppressed and injured nations.
But it is impossible to express the satisfaction I received in my own
mind, after such a manner as to make it a suitable entertainment to the
reader.



CHAPTER VIII.


A further account of Glubbdubdrib.  Ancient and modern history corrected.

Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned for wit and
learning, I set apart one day on purpose.  I proposed that Homer and
Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators; but these
were so numerous, that some hundreds were forced to attend in the court,
and outward rooms of the palace.  I knew, and could distinguish those two
heroes, at first sight, not only from the crowd, but from each other.
Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked very erect
for one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and piercing I ever
beheld.  Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a staff.  His visage was
meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow.  I soon discovered
that both of them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and
had never seen or heard of them before; and I had a whisper from a ghost
who shall be nameless, “that these commentators always kept in the most
distant quarters from their principals, in the lower world, through a
consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so horribly
misrepresented the meaning of those authors to posterity.”  I introduced
Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them
better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius
to enter into the spirit of a poet.  But Aristotle was out of all
patience with the account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented
them to him; and he asked them, “whether the rest of the tribe were as
great dunces as themselves?”

I then desired the governor to call up Descartes and Gassendi, with whom
I prevailed to explain their systems to Aristotle.  This great
philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy,
because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do;
and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as
palatable as he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally to be
exploded.  He predicted the same fate to _attraction_, whereof the
present learned are such zealous asserters.  He said, “that new systems
of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even
those, who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles,
would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that
was determined.”

I spent five days in conversing with many others of the ancient learned.
I saw most of the first Roman emperors.  I prevailed on the governor to
call up Heliogabalus’s cooks to dress us a dinner, but they could not
show us much of their skill, for want of materials.  A helot of Agesilaus
made us a dish of Spartan broth, but I was not able to get down a second
spoonful.

The two gentlemen, who conducted me to the island, were pressed by their
private affairs to return in three days, which I employed in seeing some
of the modern dead, who had made the greatest figure, for two or three
hundred years past, in our own and other countries of Europe; and having
been always a great admirer of old illustrious families, I desired the
governor would call up a dozen or two of kings, with their ancestors in
order for eight or nine generations.  But my disappointment was grievous
and unexpected.  For, instead of a long train with royal diadems, I saw
in one family two fiddlers, three spruce courtiers, and an Italian
prelate.  In another, a barber, an abbot, and two cardinals.  I have too
great a veneration for crowned heads, to dwell any longer on so nice a
subject.  But as to counts, marquises, dukes, earls, and the like, I was
not so scrupulous.  And I confess, it was not without some pleasure, that
I found myself able to trace the particular features, by which certain
families are distinguished, up to their originals.  I could plainly
discover whence one family derives a long chin; why a second has abounded
with knaves for two generations, and fools for two more; why a third
happened to be crack-brained, and a fourth to be sharpers; whence it
came, what Polydore Virgil says of a certain great house, _Nec vir
fortis_, _nec foemina casta_; how cruelty, falsehood, and cowardice, grew
to be characteristics by which certain families are distinguished as much
as by their coats of arms; who first brought the pox into a noble house,
which has lineally descended scrofulous tumours to their posterity.
Neither could I wonder at all this, when I saw such an interruption of
lineages, by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, fiddlers,
players, captains, and pickpockets.

I was chiefly disgusted with modern history.  For having strictly
examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes, for a
hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by prostitute
writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to cowards; the wisest
counsel, to fools; sincerity, to flatterers; Roman virtue, to betrayers
of their country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to sodomites; truth, to
informers: how many innocent and excellent persons had been condemned to
death or banishment by the practising of great ministers upon the
corruption of judges, and the malice of factions: how many villains had
been exalted to the highest places of trust, power, dignity, and profit:
how great a share in the motions and events of courts, councils, and
senates might be challenged by bawds, whores, pimps, parasites, and
buffoons.  How low an opinion I had of human wisdom and integrity, when I
was truly informed of the springs and motives of great enterprises and
revolutions in the world, and of the contemptible accidents to which they
owed their success.

Here I discovered the roguery and ignorance of those who pretend to write
anecdotes, or secret history; who send so many kings to their graves with
a cup of poison; will repeat the discourse between a prince and chief
minister, where no witness was by; unlock the thoughts and cabinets of
ambassadors and secretaries of state; and have the perpetual misfortune
to be mistaken.  Here I discovered the true causes of many great events
that have surprised the world; how a whore can govern the back-stairs,
the back-stairs a council, and the council a senate.  A general
confessed, in my presence, “that he got a victory purely by the force of
cowardice and ill conduct;” and an admiral, “that, for want of proper
intelligence, he beat the enemy, to whom he intended to betray the
fleet.”  Three kings protested to me, “that in their whole reigns they
never did once prefer any person of merit, unless by mistake, or
treachery of some minister in whom they confided; neither would they do
it if they were to live again:” and they showed, with great strength of
reason, “that the royal throne could not be supported without corruption,
because that positive, confident, restiff temper, which virtue infused
into a man, was a perpetual clog to public business.”

I had the curiosity to inquire in a particular manner, by what methods
great numbers had procured to themselves high titles of honour, and
prodigious estates; and I confined my inquiry to a very modern period:
however, without grating upon present times, because I would be sure to
give no offence even to foreigners (for I hope the reader need not be
told, that I do not in the least intend my own country, in what I say
upon this occasion,) a great number of persons concerned were called up;
and, upon a very slight examination, discovered such a scene of infamy,
that I cannot reflect upon it without some seriousness.  Perjury,
oppression, subornation, fraud, pandarism, and the like infirmities, were
among the most excusable arts they had to mention; and for these I gave,
as it was reasonable, great allowance.  But when some confessed they owed
their greatness and wealth to sodomy, or incest; others, to the
prostituting of their own wives and daughters; others, to the betraying
of their country or their prince; some, to poisoning; more to the
perverting of justice, in order to destroy the innocent, I hope I may be
pardoned, if these discoveries inclined me a little to abate of that
profound veneration, which I am naturally apt to pay to persons of high
rank, who ought to be treated with the utmost respect due to their
sublime dignity, by us their inferiors.

I had often read of some great services done to princes and states, and
desired to see the persons by whom those services were performed.  Upon
inquiry I was told, “that their names were to be found on no record,
except a few of them, whom history has represented as the vilest of
rogues and traitors.”  As to the rest, I had never once heard of them.
They all appeared with dejected looks, and in the meanest habit; most of
them telling me, “they died in poverty and disgrace, and the rest on a
scaffold or a gibbet.”

Among others, there was one person, whose case appeared a little
singular.  He had a youth about eighteen years old standing by his side.
He told me, “he had for many years been commander of a ship; and in the
sea fight at Actium had the good fortune to break through the enemy’s
great line of battle, sink three of their capital ships, and take a
fourth, which was the sole cause of Antony’s flight, and of the victory
that ensued; that the youth standing by him, his only son, was killed in
the action.”  He added, “that upon the confidence of some merit, the war
being at an end, he went to Rome, and solicited at the court of Augustus
to be preferred to a greater ship, whose commander had been killed; but,
without any regard to his pretensions, it was given to a boy who had
never seen the sea, the son of Libertina, who waited on one of the
emperor’s mistresses.  Returning back to his own vessel, he was charged
with neglect of duty, and the ship given to a favourite page of
Publicola, the vice-admiral; whereupon he retired to a poor farm at a
great distance from Rome, and there ended his life.”  I was so curious to
know the truth of this story, that I desired Agrippa might be called, who
was admiral in that fight.  He appeared, and confirmed the whole account:
but with much more advantage to the captain, whose modesty had extenuated
or concealed a great part of his merit.

I was surprised to find corruption grown so high and so quick in that
empire, by the force of luxury so lately introduced; which made me less
wonder at many parallel cases in other countries, where vices of all
kinds have reigned so much longer, and where the whole praise, as well as
pillage, has been engrossed by the chief commander, who perhaps had the
least title to either.

As every person called up made exactly the same appearance he had done in
the world, it gave me melancholy reflections to observe how much the race
of human kind was degenerated among us within these hundred years past;
how the pox, under all its consequences and denominations had altered
every lineament of an English countenance; shortened the size of bodies,
unbraced the nerves, relaxed the sinews and muscles, introduced a sallow
complexion, and rendered the flesh loose and rancid.

I descended so low, as to desire some English yeoman of the old stamp
might be summoned to appear; once so famous for the simplicity of their
manners, diet, and dress; for justice in their dealings; for their true
spirit of liberty; for their valour, and love of their country.  Neither
could I be wholly unmoved, after comparing the living with the dead, when
I considered how all these pure native virtues were prostituted for a
piece of money by their grand-children; who, in selling their votes and
managing at elections, have acquired every vice and corruption that can
possibly be learned in a court.



CHAPTER IX.


The author returns to Maldonada.  Sails to the kingdom of Luggnagg.  The
author confined.  He is sent for to court.  The manner of his admittance.
The king’s great lenity to his subjects.

The day of our departure being come, I took leave of his highness, the
Governor of Glubbdubdrib, and returned with my two companions to
Maldonada, where, after a fortnight’s waiting, a ship was ready to sail
for Luggnagg.  The two gentlemen, and some others, were so generous and
kind as to furnish me with provisions, and see me on board.  I was a
month in this voyage.  We had one violent storm, and were under a
necessity of steering westward to get into the trade wind, which holds
for above sixty leagues.  On the 21st of April, 1708, we sailed into the
river of Clumegnig, which is a seaport town, at the south-east point of
Luggnagg.  We cast anchor within a league of the town, and made a signal
for a pilot.  Two of them came on board in less than half an hour, by
whom we were guided between certain shoals and rocks, which are very
dangerous in the passage, to a large basin, where a fleet may ride in
safety within a cable’s length of the town-wall.

Some of our sailors, whether out of treachery or inadvertence, had
informed the pilots “that I was a stranger, and great traveller;” whereof
these gave notice to a custom-house officer, by whom I was examined very
strictly upon my landing.  This officer spoke to me in the language of
Balnibarbi, which, by the force of much commerce, is generally understood
in that town, especially by seamen and those employed in the customs.  I
gave him a short account of some particulars, and made my story as
plausible and consistent as I could; but I thought it necessary to
disguise my country, and call myself a Hollander; because my intentions
were for Japan, and I knew the Dutch were the only Europeans permitted to
enter into that kingdom.  I therefore told the officer, “that having been
shipwrecked on the coast of Balnibarbi, and cast on a rock, I was
received up into Laputa, or the flying island (of which he had often
heard), and was now endeavouring to get to Japan, whence I might find a
convenience of returning to my own country.”  The officer said, “I must
be confined till he could receive orders from court, for which he would
write immediately, and hoped to receive an answer in a fortnight.”  I was
carried to a convenient lodging with a sentry placed at the door;
however, I had the liberty of a large garden, and was treated with
humanity enough, being maintained all the time at the king’s charge.  I
was invited by several persons, chiefly out of curiosity, because it was
reported that I came from countries very remote, of which they had never
heard.

I hired a young man, who came in the same ship, to be an interpreter; he
was a native of Luggnagg, but had lived some years at Maldonada, and was
a perfect master of both languages.  By his assistance, I was able to
hold a conversation with those who came to visit me; but this consisted
only of their questions, and my answers.

The despatch came from court about the time we expected.  It contained a
warrant for conducting me and my retinue to _Traldragdubh_, or
_Trildrogdrib_ (for it is pronounced both ways as near as I can
remember), by a party of ten horse.  All my retinue was that poor lad for
an interpreter, whom I persuaded into my service, and, at my humble
request, we had each of us a mule to ride on.  A messenger was despatched
half a day’s journey before us, to give the king notice of my approach,
and to desire, “that his majesty would please to appoint a day and hour,
when it would by his gracious pleasure that I might have the honour to
lick the dust before his footstool.”  This is the court style, and I
found it to be more than matter of form: for, upon my admittance two days
after my arrival, I was commanded to crawl upon my belly, and lick the
floor as I advanced; but, on account of my being a stranger, care was
taken to have it made so clean, that the dust was not offensive.
However, this was a peculiar grace, not allowed to any but persons of the
highest rank, when they desire an admittance.  Nay, sometimes the floor
is strewed with dust on purpose, when the person to be admitted happens
to have powerful enemies at court; and I have seen a great lord with his
mouth so crammed, that when he had crept to the proper distance from the
throne; he was not able to speak a word.  Neither is there any remedy;
because it is capital for those, who receive an audience to spit or wipe
their mouths in his majesty’s presence.  There is indeed another custom,
which I cannot altogether approve of: when the king has a mind to put any
of his nobles to death in a gentle indulgent manner, he commands the
floor to be strewed with a certain brown powder of a deadly composition,
which being licked up, infallibly kills him in twenty-four hours.  But in
justice to this prince’s great clemency, and the care he has of his
subjects’ lives (wherein it were much to be wished that the Monarchs of
Europe would imitate him), it must be mentioned for his honour, that
strict orders are given to have the infected parts of the floor well
washed after every such execution, which, if his domestics neglect, they
are in danger of incurring his royal displeasure.  I myself heard him
give directions, that one of his pages should be whipped, whose turn it
was to give notice about washing the floor after an execution, but
maliciously had omitted it; by which neglect a young lord of great hopes,
coming to an audience, was unfortunately poisoned, although the king at
that time had no design against his life.  But this good prince was so
gracious as to forgive the poor page his whipping, upon promise that he
would do so no more, without special orders.

To return from this digression.  When I had crept within four yards of
the throne, I raised myself gently upon my knees, and then striking my
forehead seven times against the ground, I pronounced the following
words, as they had been taught me the night before, _Inckpling
gloffthrobb squut serummblhiop mlashnalt zwin tnodbalkuffh slhiophad
gurdlubh asht_.  This is the compliment, established by the laws of the
land, for all persons admitted to the king’s presence.  It may be
rendered into English thus: “May your celestial majesty outlive the sun,
eleven moons and a half!”  To this the king returned some answer, which,
although I could not understand, yet I replied as I had been directed:
_Fluft drin yalerick dwuldom prastrad mirpush_, which properly signifies,
“My tongue is in the mouth of my friend;” and by this expression was
meant, that I desired leave to bring my interpreter; whereupon the young
man already mentioned was accordingly introduced, by whose intervention I
answered as many questions as his majesty could put in above an hour.  I
spoke in the Balnibarbian tongue, and my interpreter delivered my meaning
in that of Luggnagg.

The king was much delighted with my company, and ordered his
_bliffmarklub_, or high-chamberlain, to appoint a lodging in the court
for me and my interpreter; with a daily allowance for my table, and a
large purse of gold for my common expenses.

I staid three months in this country, out of perfect obedience to his
majesty; who was pleased highly to favour me, and made me very honourable
offers.  But I thought it more consistent with prudence and justice to
pass the remainder of my days with my wife and family.



CHAPTER X.


The Luggnaggians commended.  A particular description of the Struldbrugs,
with many conversations between the author and some eminent persons upon
that subject.

The Luggnaggians are a polite and generous people; and although they are
not without some share of that pride which is peculiar to all Eastern
countries, yet they show themselves courteous to strangers, especially
such who are countenanced by the court.  I had many acquaintance, and
among persons of the best fashion; and being always attended by my
interpreter, the conversation we had was not disagreeable.

One day, in much good company, I was asked by a person of quality,
“whether I had seen any of their _struldbrugs_, or immortals?”  I said,
“I had not;” and desired he would explain to me “what he meant by such an
appellation, applied to a mortal creature.”  He told me “that sometimes,
though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family, with a red
circular spot in the forehead, directly over the left eyebrow, which was
an infallible mark that it should never die.”  The spot, as he described
it, “was about the compass of a silver threepence, but in the course of
time grew larger, and changed its colour; for at twelve years old it
became green, so continued till five and twenty, then turned to a deep
blue: at five and forty it grew coal black, and as large as an English
shilling; but never admitted any further alteration.”  He said, “these
births were so rare, that he did not believe there could be above eleven
hundred struldbrugs, of both sexes, in the whole kingdom; of which he
computed about fifty in the metropolis, and, among the rest, a young girl
born; about three years ago: that these productions were not peculiar to
any family, but a mere effect of chance; and the children of the
_struldbrugs_ themselves were equally mortal with the rest of the
people.”

I freely own myself to have been struck with inexpressible delight, upon
hearing this account: and the person who gave it me happening to
understand the Balnibarbian language, which I spoke very well, I could
not forbear breaking out into expressions, perhaps a little too
extravagant.  I cried out, as in a rapture, “Happy nation, where every
child hath at least a chance for being immortal!  Happy people, who enjoy
so many living examples of ancient virtue, and have masters ready to
instruct them in the wisdom of all former ages! but happiest, beyond all
comparison, are those excellent _struldbrugs_, who, being born exempt
from that universal calamity of human nature, have their minds free and
disengaged, without the weight and depression of spirits caused by the
continual apprehensions of death!”  I discovered my admiration that I had
not observed any of these illustrious persons at court; the black spot on
the forehead being so remarkable a distinction, that I could not have
easily overlooked it: and it was impossible that his majesty, a most
judicious prince, should not provide himself with a good number of such
wise and able counsellors.  Yet perhaps the virtue of those reverend
sages was too strict for the corrupt and libertine manners of a court:
and we often find by experience, that young men are too opinionated and
volatile to be guided by the sober dictates of their seniors.  However,
since the king was pleased to allow me access to his royal person, I was
resolved, upon the very first occasion, to deliver my opinion to him on
this matter freely and at large, by the help of my interpreter; and
whether he would please to take my advice or not, yet in one thing I was
determined, that his majesty having frequently offered me an
establishment in this country, I would, with great thankfulness, accept
the favour, and pass my life here in the conversation of those superior
beings the _struldbrugs_, if they would please to admit me.”

The gentleman to whom I addressed my discourse, because (as I have
already observed) he spoke the language of Balnibarbi, said to me, with a
sort of a smile which usually arises from pity to the ignorant, “that he
was glad of any occasion to keep me among them, and desired my permission
to explain to the company what I had spoke.”  He did so, and they talked
together for some time in their own language, whereof I understood not a
syllable, neither could I observe by their countenances, what impression
my discourse had made on them.  After a short silence, the same person
told me, “that his friends and mine (so he thought fit to express
himself) were very much pleased with the judicious remarks I had made on
the great happiness and advantages of immortal life, and they were
desirous to know, in a particular manner, what scheme of living I should
have formed to myself, if it had fallen to my lot to have been born a
_struldbrug_.”

I answered, “it was easy to be eloquent on so copious and delightful a
subject, especially to me, who had been often apt to amuse myself with
visions of what I should do, if I were a king, a general, or a great
lord: and upon this very case, I had frequently run over the whole system
how I should employ myself, and pass the time, if I were sure to live for
ever.

“That, if it had been my good fortune to come into the world a
_struldbrug_, as soon as I could discover my own happiness, by
understanding the difference between life and death, I would first
resolve, by all arts and methods, whatsoever, to procure myself riches.
In the pursuit of which, by thrift and management, I might reasonably
expect, in about two hundred years, to be the wealthiest man in the
kingdom.  In the second place, I would, from my earliest youth, apply
myself to the study of arts and sciences, by which I should arrive in
time to excel all others in learning.  Lastly, I would carefully record
every action and event of consequence, that happened in the public,
impartially draw the characters of the several successions of princes and
great ministers of state, with my own observations on every point.  I
would exactly set down the several changes in customs, language, fashions
of dress, diet, and diversions.  By all which acquirements, I should be a
living treasure of knowledge and wisdom, and certainly become the oracle
of the nation.

“I would never marry after threescore, but live in a hospitable manner,
yet still on the saving side.  I would entertain myself in forming and
directing the minds of hopeful young men, by convincing them, from my own
remembrance, experience, and observation, fortified by numerous examples,
of the usefulness of virtue in public and private life.  But my choice
and constant companions should be a set of my own immortal brotherhood;
among whom, I would elect a dozen from the most ancient, down to my own
contemporaries.  Where any of these wanted fortunes, I would provide them
with convenient lodges round my own estate, and have some of them always
at my table; only mingling a few of the most valuable among you mortals,
whom length of time would harden me to lose with little or no reluctance,
and treat your posterity after the same manner; just as a man diverts
himself with the annual succession of pinks and tulips in his garden,
without regretting the loss of those which withered the preceding year.

“These _struldbrugs_ and I would mutually communicate our observations
and memorials, through the course of time; remark the several gradations
by which corruption steals into the world, and oppose it in every step,
by giving perpetual warning and instruction to mankind; which, added to
the strong influence of our own example, would probably prevent that
continual degeneracy of human nature so justly complained of in all ages.

“Add to this, the pleasure of seeing the various revolutions of states
and empires; the changes in the lower and upper world; ancient cities in
ruins, and obscure villages become the seats of kings; famous rivers
lessening into shallow brooks; the ocean leaving one coast dry, and
overwhelming another; the discovery of many countries yet unknown;
barbarity overrunning the politest nations, and the most barbarous become
civilized.  I should then see the discovery of the longitude, the
perpetual motion, the universal medicine, and many other great
inventions, brought to the utmost perfection.

“What wonderful discoveries should we make in astronomy, by outliving and
confirming our own predictions; by observing the progress and return of
comets, with the changes of motion in the sun, moon, and stars!”

I enlarged upon many other topics, which the natural desire of endless
life, and sublunary happiness, could easily furnish me with.  When I had
ended, and the sum of my discourse had been interpreted, as before, to
the rest of the company, there was a good deal of talk among them in the
language of the country, not without some laughter at my expense.  At
last, the same gentleman who had been my interpreter, said, “he was
desired by the rest to set me right in a few mistakes, which I had fallen
into through the common imbecility of human nature, and upon that
allowance was less answerable for them.  That this breed of _struldbrugs_
was peculiar to their country, for there were no such people either in
Balnibarbi or Japan, where he had the honour to be ambassador from his
majesty, and found the natives in both those kingdoms very hard to
believe that the fact was possible: and it appeared from my astonishment
when he first mentioned the matter to me, that I received it as a thing
wholly new, and scarcely to be credited.  That in the two kingdoms above
mentioned, where, during his residence, he had conversed very much, he
observed long life to be the universal desire and wish of mankind.  That
whoever had one foot in the grave was sure to hold back the other as
strongly as he could.  That the oldest had still hopes of living one day
longer, and looked on death as the greatest evil, from which nature
always prompted him to retreat.  Only in this island of Luggnagg the
appetite for living was not so eager, from the continual example of the
_struldbrugs_ before their eyes.

“That the system of living contrived by me, was unreasonable and unjust;
because it supposed a perpetuity of youth, health, and vigour, which no
man could be so foolish to hope, however extravagant he may be in his
wishes.  That the question therefore was not, whether a man would choose
to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health;
but how he would pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages
which old age brings along with it.  For although few men will avow their
desires of being immortal, upon such hard conditions, yet in the two
kingdoms before mentioned, of Balnibarbi and Japan, he observed that
every man desired to put off death some time longer, let it approach ever
so late: and he rarely heard of any man who died willingly, except he
were incited by the extremity of grief or torture.  And he appealed to
me, whether in those countries I had travelled, as well as my own, I had
not observed the same general disposition.”

After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the _struldbrugs_
among them.  He said, “they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty
years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected,
increasing in both till they came to fourscore.  This he learned from
their own confession: for otherwise, there not being above two or three
of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general
observation by.  When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the
extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies
and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the
dreadful prospect of never dying.  They were not only opinionative,
peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship,
and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their
grandchildren.  Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions.
But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed,
are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old.  By
reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all
possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and
repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they
themselves never can hope to arrive.  They have no remembrance of
anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and
middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or
particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than
upon their best recollections.  The least miserable among them appear to
be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet
with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which
abound in others.

“If a _struldbrug_ happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is
dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the
younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a
reasonable indulgence, that those who are condemned, without any fault of
their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their
misery doubled by the load of a wife.

“As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked
on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates; only
a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are
maintained at the public charge.  After that period, they are held
incapable of any employment of trust or profit; they cannot purchase
lands, or take leases; neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any
cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and
bounds.

“At ninety, they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no
distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without
relish or appetite.  The diseases they were subject to still continue,
without increasing or diminishing.  In talking, they forget the common
appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are
their nearest friends and relations.  For the same reason, they never can
amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to
carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this
defect, they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might
otherwise be capable.

“The language of this country being always upon the flux, the
_struldbrugs_ of one age do not understand those of another; neither are
they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation (farther
than by a few general words) with their neighbours the mortals; and thus
they lie under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own
country.”

This was the account given me of the _struldbrugs_, as near as I can
remember.  I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest
not above two hundred years old, who were brought to me at several times
by some of my friends; but although they were told, “that I was a great
traveller, and had seen all the world,” they had not the least curiosity
to ask me a question; only desired “I would give them _slumskudask_,” or
a token of remembrance; which is a modest way of begging, to avoid the
law, that strictly forbids it, because they are provided for by the
public, although indeed with a very scanty allowance.

They are despised and hated by all sorts of people.  When one of them is
born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very
particularly so that you may know their age by consulting the register,
which, however, has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at
least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances.  But the usual
way of computing how old they are, is by asking them what kings or great
persons they can remember, and then consulting history; for infallibly
the last prince in their mind did not begin his reign after they were
fourscore years old.

They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld; and the women more
horrible than the men.  Besides the usual deformities in extreme old age,
they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their number of
years, which is not to be described; and among half a dozen, I soon
distinguished which was the eldest, although there was not above a
century or two between them.

The reader will easily believe, that from what I had hear and seen, my
keen appetite for perpetuity of life was much abated.  I grew heartily
ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed; and thought no tyrant could
invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure, from such a
life.  The king heard of all that had passed between me and my friends
upon this occasion, and rallied me very pleasantly; wishing I could send
a couple of _struldbrugs_ to my own country, to arm our people against
the fear of death; but this, it seems, is forbidden by the fundamental
laws of the kingdom, or else I should have been well content with the
trouble and expense of transporting them.

I could not but agree, that the laws of this kingdom relative to the
_struldbrugs_ were founded upon the strongest reasons, and such as any
other country would be under the necessity of enacting, in the like
circumstances.  Otherwise, as avarice is the necessary consequence of old
age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole
nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to
manage, must end in the ruin of the public.



CHAPTER XI.


The author leaves Luggnagg, and sails to Japan.  From thence he returns
in a Dutch ship to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to England.

I thought this account of the _struldbrugs_ might be some entertainment
to the reader, because it seems to be a little out of the common way; at
least I do not remember to have met the like in any book of travels that
has come to my hands: and if I am deceived, my excuse must be, that it is
necessary for travellers who describe the same country, very often to
agree in dwelling on the same particulars, without deserving the censure
of having borrowed or transcribed from those who wrote before them.

There is indeed a perpetual commerce between this kingdom and the great
empire of Japan; and it is very probable, that the Japanese authors may
have given some account of the _struldbrugs_; but my stay in Japan was so
short, and I was so entirely a stranger to the language, that I was not
qualified to make any inquiries.  But I hope the Dutch, upon this notice,
will be curious and able enough to supply my defects.

His majesty having often pressed me to accept some employment in his
court, and finding me absolutely determined to return to my native
country, was pleased to give me his license to depart; and honoured me
with a letter of recommendation, under his own hand, to the Emperor of
Japan.  He likewise presented me with four hundred and forty-four large
pieces of gold (this nation delighting in even numbers), and a red
diamond, which I sold in England for eleven hundred pounds.

On the 6th of May, 1709, I took a solemn leave of his majesty, and all my
friends.  This prince was so gracious as to order a guard to conduct me
to Glanguenstald, which is a royal port to the south-west part of the
island.  In six days I found a vessel ready to carry me to Japan, and
spent fifteen days in the voyage.  We landed at a small port-town called
Xamoschi, situated on the south-east part of Japan; the town lies on the
western point, where there is a narrow strait leading northward into
along arm of the sea, upon the north-west part of which, Yedo, the
metropolis, stands.  At landing, I showed the custom-house officers my
letter from the king of Luggnagg to his imperial majesty.  They knew the
seal perfectly well; it was as broad as the palm of my hand.  The
impression was, _A king lifting up a lame beggar from the earth_.  The
magistrates of the town, hearing of my letter, received me as a public
minister.  They provided me with carriages and servants, and bore my
charges to Yedo; where I was admitted to an audience, and delivered my
letter, which was opened with great ceremony, and explained to the
Emperor by an interpreter, who then gave me notice, by his majesty’s
order, “that I should signify my request, and, whatever it were, it
should be granted, for the sake of his royal brother of Luggnagg.”  This
interpreter was a person employed to transact affairs with the
Hollanders.  He soon conjectured, by my countenance, that I was a
European, and therefore repeated his majesty’s commands in Low Dutch,
which he spoke perfectly well.  I answered, as I had before determined,
“that I was a Dutch merchant, shipwrecked in a very remote country,
whence I had travelled by sea and land to Luggnagg, and then took
shipping for Japan; where I knew my countrymen often traded, and with
some of these I hoped to get an opportunity of returning into Europe: I
therefore most humbly entreated his royal favour, to give order that I
should be conducted in safety to Nangasac.”  To this I added another
petition, “that for the sake of my patron the king of Luggnagg, his
majesty would condescend to excuse my performing the ceremony imposed on
my countrymen, of trampling upon the crucifix: because I had been thrown
into his kingdom by my misfortunes, without any intention of trading.”
When this latter petition was interpreted to the Emperor, he seemed a
little surprised; and said, “he believed I was the first of my countrymen
who ever made any scruple in this point; and that he began to doubt,
whether I was a real Hollander, or not; but rather suspected I must be a
Christian.  However, for the reasons I had offered, but chiefly to
gratify the king of Luggnagg by an uncommon mark of his favour, he would
comply with the singularity of my humour; but the affair must be managed
with dexterity, and his officers should be commanded to let me pass, as
it were by forgetfulness.  For he assured me, that if the secret should
be discovered by my countrymen the Dutch, they would cut my throat in the
voyage.”  I returned my thanks, by the interpreter, for so unusual a
favour; and some troops being at that time on their march to Nangasac,
the commanding officer had orders to convey me safe thither, with
particular instructions about the business of the crucifix.

On the 9th day of June, 1709, I arrived at Nangasac, after a very long
and troublesome journey.  I soon fell into the company of some Dutch
sailors belonging to the Amboyna, of Amsterdam, a stout ship of 450 tons.
I had lived long in Holland, pursuing my studies at Leyden, and I spoke
Dutch well.  The seamen soon knew whence I came last: they were curious
to inquire into my voyages and course of life.  I made up a story as
short and probable as I could, but concealed the greatest part.  I knew
many persons in Holland.  I was able to invent names for my parents, whom
I pretended to be obscure people in the province of Gelderland.  I would
have given the captain (one Theodorus Vangrult) what he pleased to ask
for my voyage to Holland; but understanding I was a surgeon, he was
contented to take half the usual rate, on condition that I would serve
him in the way of my calling.  Before we took shipping, I was often asked
by some of the crew, whether I had performed the ceremony above
mentioned?  I evaded the question by general answers; “that I had
satisfied the Emperor and court in all particulars.”  However, a
malicious rogue of a skipper went to an officer, and pointing to me, told
him, “I had not yet trampled on the crucifix;” but the other, who had
received instructions to let me pass, gave the rascal twenty strokes on
the shoulders with a bamboo; after which I was no more troubled with such
questions.

Nothing happened worth mentioning in this voyage.  We sailed with a fair
wind to the Cape of Good Hope, where we staid only to take in fresh
water.  On the 10th of April, 1710, we arrived safe at Amsterdam, having
lost only three men by sickness in the voyage, and a fourth, who fell
from the foremast into the sea, not far from the coast of Guinea.  From
Amsterdam I soon after set sail for England, in a small vessel belonging
to that city.

On the 16th of April we put in at the Downs.  I landed next morning, and
saw once more my native country, after an absence of five years and six
months complete.  I went straight to Redriff, where I arrived the same
day at two in the afternoon, and found my wife and family in good health.






PART IV.  A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HOUYHNHNMS.






CHAPTER I.


The author sets out as captain of a ship.  His men conspire against him,
confine him a long time to his cabin, and set him on shore in an unknown
land.  He travels up into the country.  The Yahoos, a strange sort of
animal, described.  The author meets two Houyhnhnms.

I continued at home with my wife and children about five months, in a
very happy condition, if I could have learned the lesson of knowing when
I was well.  I left my poor wife big with child, and accepted an
advantageous offer made me to be captain of the Adventurer, a stout
merchantman of 350 tons: for I understood navigation well, and being
grown weary of a surgeon’s employment at sea, which, however, I could
exercise upon occasion, I took a skilful young man of that calling, one
Robert Purefoy, into my ship.  We set sail from Portsmouth upon the 7th
day of September, 1710; on the 14th we met with Captain Pocock, of
Bristol, at Teneriffe, who was going to the bay of Campechy to cut
logwood.  On the 16th, he was parted from us by a storm; I heard since my
return, that his ship foundered, and none escaped but one cabin boy.  He
was an honest man, and a good sailor, but a little too positive in his
own opinions, which was the cause of his destruction, as it has been with
several others; for if he had followed my advice, he might have been safe
at home with his family at this time, as well as myself.

I had several men who died in my ship of calentures, so that I was forced
to get recruits out of Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands, where I
touched, by the direction of the merchants who employed me; which I had
soon too much cause to repent: for I found afterwards, that most of them
had been buccaneers.  I had fifty hands onboard; and my orders were, that
I should trade with the Indians in the South-Sea, and make what
discoveries I could.  These rogues, whom I had picked up, debauched my
other men, and they all formed a conspiracy to seize the ship, and secure
me; which they did one morning, rushing into my cabin, and binding me
hand and foot, threatening to throw me overboard, if I offered to stir.
I told them, “I was their prisoner, and would submit.”  This they made me
swear to do, and then they unbound me, only fastening one of my legs with
a chain, near my bed, and placed a sentry at my door with his piece
charged, who was commanded to shoot me dead if I attempted my liberty.
They sent me own victuals and drink, and took the government of the ship
to themselves.  Their design was to turn pirates and, plunder the
Spaniards, which they could not do till they got more men.  But first
they resolved to sell the goods the ship, and then go to Madagascar for
recruits, several among them having died since my confinement.  They
sailed many weeks, and traded with the Indians; but I knew not what
course they took, being kept a close prisoner in my cabin, and expecting
nothing less than to be murdered, as they often threatened me.

Upon the 9th day of May, 1711, one James Welch came down to my cabin, and
said, “he had orders from the captain to set me ashore.”  I expostulated
with him, but in vain; neither would he so much as tell me who their new
captain was.  They forced me into the long-boat, letting me put on my
best suit of clothes, which were as good as new, and take a small bundle
of linen, but no arms, except my hanger; and they were so civil as not to
search my pockets, into which I conveyed what money I had, with some
other little necessaries.  They rowed about a league, and then set me
down on a strand.  I desired them to tell me what country it was.  They
all swore, “they knew no more than myself;” but said, “that the captain”
(as they called him) “was resolved, after they had sold the lading, to
get rid of me in the first place where they could discover land.”  They
pushed off immediately, advising me to make haste for fear of being
overtaken by the tide, and so bade me farewell.

In this desolate condition I advanced forward, and soon got upon firm
ground, where I sat down on a bank to rest myself, and consider what I
had best do.  When I was a little refreshed, I went up into the country,
resolving to deliver myself to the first savages I should meet, and
purchase my life from them by some bracelets, glass rings, and other
toys, which sailors usually provide themselves with in those voyages, and
whereof I had some about me.  The land was divided by long rows of trees,
not regularly planted, but naturally growing; there was great plenty of
grass, and several fields of oats.  I walked very circumspectly, for fear
of being surprised, or suddenly shot with an arrow from behind, or on
either side.  I fell into a beaten road, where I saw many tracts of human
feet, and some of cows, but most of horses.  At last I beheld several
animals in a field, and one or two of the same kind sitting in trees.
Their shape was very singular and deformed, which a little discomposed
me, so that I lay down behind a thicket to observe them better.  Some of
them coming forward near the place where I lay, gave me an opportunity of
distinctly marking their form.  Their heads and breasts were covered with
a thick hair, some frizzled, and others lank; they had beards like goats,
and a long ridge of hair down their backs, and the fore parts of their
legs and feet; but the rest of their bodies was bare, so that I might see
their skins, which were of a brown buff colour.  They had no tails, nor
any hair at all on their buttocks, except about the anus, which, I
presume, nature had placed there to defend them as they sat on the
ground, for this posture they used, as well as lying down, and often
stood on their hind feet.  They climbed high trees as nimbly as a
squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind,
terminating in sharp points, and hooked.  They would often spring, and
bound, and leap, with prodigious agility.  The females were not so large
as the males; they had long lank hair on their heads, but none on their
faces, nor any thing more than a sort of down on the rest of their
bodies, except about the anus and pudenda.  The dugs hung between their
fore feet, and often reached almost to the ground as they walked.  The
hair of both sexes was of several colours, brown, red, black, and yellow.
Upon the whole, I never beheld, in all my travels, so disagreeable an
animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an
antipathy.  So that, thinking I had seen enough, full of contempt and
aversion, I got up, and pursued the beaten road, hoping it might direct
me to the cabin of some Indian.  I had not got far, when I met one of
these creatures full in my way, and coming up directly to me.  The ugly
monster, when he saw me, distorted several ways, every feature of his
visage, and stared, as at an object he had never seen before; then
approaching nearer, lifted up his fore-paw, whether out of curiosity or
mischief I could not tell; but I drew my hanger, and gave him a good blow
with the flat side of it, for I durst not strike with the edge, fearing
the inhabitants might be provoked against me, if they should come to know
that I had killed or maimed any of their cattle.  When the beast felt the
smart, he drew back, and roared so loud, that a herd of at least forty
came flocking about me from the next field, howling and making odious
faces; but I ran to the body of a tree, and leaning my back against it,
kept them off by waving my hanger.  Several of this cursed brood, getting
hold of the branches behind, leaped up into the tree, whence they began
to discharge their excrements on my head; however, I escaped pretty well
by sticking close to the stem of the tree, but was almost stifled with
the filth, which fell about me on every side.

In the midst of this distress, I observed them all to run away on a
sudden as fast as they could; at which I ventured to leave the tree and
pursue the road, wondering what it was that could put them into this
fright.  But looking on my left hand, I saw a horse walking softly in the
field; which my persecutors having sooner discovered, was the cause of
their flight.  The horse started a little, when he came near me, but soon
recovering himself, looked full in my face with manifest tokens of
wonder; he viewed my hands and feet, walking round me several times.  I
would have pursued my journey, but he placed himself directly in the way,
yet looking with a very mild aspect, never offering the least violence.
We stood gazing at each other for some time; at last I took the boldness
to reach my hand towards his neck with a design to stroke it, using the
common style and whistle of jockeys, when they are going to handle a
strange horse.  But this animal seemed to receive my civilities with
disdain, shook his head, and bent his brows, softly raising up his right
fore-foot to remove my hand.  Then he neighed three or four times, but in
so different a cadence, that I almost began to think he was speaking to
himself, in some language of his own.

While he and I were thus employed, another horse came up; who applying
himself to the first in a very formal manner, they gently struck each
other’s right hoof before, neighing several times by turns, and varying
the sound, which seemed to be almost articulate.  They went some paces
off, as if it were to confer together, walking side by side, backward and
forward, like persons deliberating upon some affair of weight, but often
turning their eyes towards me, as it were to watch that I might not
escape.  I was amazed to see such actions and behaviour in brute beasts;
and concluded with myself, that if the inhabitants of this country were
endued with a proportionable degree of reason, they must needs be the
wisest people upon earth.  This thought gave me so much comfort, that I
resolved to go forward, until I could discover some house or village, or
meet with any of the natives, leaving the two horses to discourse
together as they pleased.  But the first, who was a dapple gray,
observing me to steal off, neighed after me in so expressive a tone, that
I fancied myself to understand what he meant; whereupon I turned back,
and came near to him to expect his farther commands: but concealing my
fear as much as I could, for I began to be in some pain how this
adventure might terminate; and the reader will easily believe I did not
much like my present situation.

The two horses came up close to me, looking with great earnestness upon
my face and hands.  The gray steed rubbed my hat all round with his right
fore-hoof, and discomposed it so much that I was forced to adjust it
better by taking it off and settling it again; whereat, both he and his
companion (who was a brown bay) appeared to be much surprised: the latter
felt the lappet of my coat, and finding it to hang loose about me, they
both looked with new signs of wonder.  He stroked my right hand, seeming
to admire the softness and colour; but he squeezed it so hard between his
hoof and his pastern, that I was forced to roar; after which they both
touched me with all possible tenderness.  They were under great
perplexity about my shoes and stockings, which they felt very often,
neighing to each other, and using various gestures, not unlike those of a
philosopher, when he would attempt to solve some new and difficult
phenomenon.

Upon the whole, the behaviour of these animals was so orderly and
rational, so acute and judicious, that I at last concluded they must
needs be magicians, who had thus metamorphosed themselves upon some
design, and seeing a stranger in the way, resolved to divert themselves
with him; or, perhaps, were really amazed at the sight of a man so very
different in habit, feature, and complexion, from those who might
probably live in so remote a climate.  Upon the strength of this
reasoning, I ventured to address them in the following manner:
“Gentlemen, if you be conjurers, as I have good cause to believe, you can
understand my language; therefore I make bold to let your worships know
that I am a poor distressed Englishman, driven by his misfortunes upon
your coast; and I entreat one of you to let me ride upon his back, as if
he were a real horse, to some house or village where I can be relieved.
In return of which favour, I will make you a present of this knife and
bracelet,” taking them out of my pocket.  The two creatures stood silent
while I spoke, seeming to listen with great attention, and when I had
ended, they neighed frequently towards each other, as if they were
engaged in serious conversation.  I plainly observed that their language
expressed the passions very well, and the words might, with little pains,
be resolved into an alphabet more easily than the Chinese.

I could frequently distinguish the word _Yahoo_, which was repeated by
each of them several times: and although it was impossible for me to
conjecture what it meant, yet while the two horses were busy in
conversation, I endeavoured to practise this word upon my tongue; and as
soon as they were silent, I boldly pronounced _Yahoo_ in a loud voice,
imitating at the same time, as near as I could, the neighing of a horse;
at which they were both visibly surprised; and the gray repeated the same
word twice, as if he meant to teach me the right accent; wherein I spoke
after him as well as I could, and found myself perceivably to improve
every time, though very far from any degree of perfection.  Then the bay
tried me with a second word, much harder to be pronounced; but reducing
it to the English orthography, may be spelt thus, _Houyhnhnm_.  I did not
succeed in this so well as in the former; but after two or three farther
trials, I had better fortune; and they both appeared amazed at my
capacity.

After some further discourse, which I then conjectured might relate to
me, the two friends took their leaves, with the same compliment of
striking each other’s hoof; and the gray made me signs that I should walk
before him; wherein I thought it prudent to comply, till I could find a
better director.  When I offered to slacken my pace, he would cry _hhuun
hhuun_: I guessed his meaning, and gave him to understand, as well as I
could, “that I was weary, and not able to walk faster;” upon which he
would stand awhile to let me rest.



CHAPTER II.


The author conducted by a Houyhnhnm to his house.  The house described.
The author’s reception.  The food of the Houyhnhnms.  The author in
distress for want of meat.  Is at last relieved.  His manner of feeding
in this country.

Having travelled about three miles, we came to a long kind of building,
made of timber stuck in the ground, and wattled across; the roof was low
and covered with straw.  I now began to be a little comforted; and took
out some toys, which travellers usually carry for presents to the savage
Indians of America, and other parts, in hopes the people of the house
would be thereby encouraged to receive me kindly.  The horse made me a
sign to go in first; it was a large room with a smooth clay floor, and a
rack and manger, extending the whole length on one side.  There were
three nags and two mares, not eating, but some of them sitting down upon
their hams, which I very much wondered at; but wondered more to see the
rest employed in domestic business; these seemed but ordinary cattle.
However, this confirmed my first opinion, that a people who could so far
civilise brute animals, must needs excel in wisdom all the nations of the
world.  The gray came in just after, and thereby prevented any ill
treatment which the others might have given me.  He neighed to them
several times in a style of authority, and received answers.

Beyond this room there were three others, reaching the length of the
house, to which you passed through three doors, opposite to each other,
in the manner of a vista.  We went through the second room towards the
third.  Here the gray walked in first, beckoning me to attend: I waited
in the second room, and got ready my presents for the master and mistress
of the house; they were two knives, three bracelets of false pearls, a
small looking-glass, and a bead necklace.  The horse neighed three or
four times, and I waited to hear some answers in a human voice, but I
heard no other returns than in the same dialect, only one or two a little
shriller than his.  I began to think that this house must belong to some
person of great note among them, because there appeared so much ceremony
before I could gain admittance.  But, that a man of quality should be
served all by horses, was beyond my comprehension.  I feared my brain was
disturbed by my sufferings and misfortunes.  I roused myself, and looked
about me in the room where I was left alone: this was furnished like the
first, only after a more elegant manner.  I rubbed my eyes often, but the
same objects still occurred.  I pinched my arms and sides to awake
myself, hoping I might be in a dream.  I then absolutely concluded, that
all these appearances could be nothing else but necromancy and magic.
But I had no time to pursue these reflections; for the gray horse came to
the door, and made me a sign to follow him into the third room where I
saw a very comely mare, together with a colt and foal, sitting on their
haunches upon mats of straw, not unartfully made, and perfectly neat and
clean.

The mare soon after my entrance rose from her mat, and coming up close,
after having nicely observed my hands and face, gave me a most
contemptuous look; and turning to the horse, I heard the word _Yahoo_
often repeated betwixt them; the meaning of which word I could not then
comprehend, although it was the first I had learned to pronounce.  But I
was soon better informed, to my everlasting mortification; for the horse,
beckoning to me with his head, and repeating the _hhuun_, _hhuun_, as he
did upon the road, which I understood was to attend him, led me out into
a kind of court, where was another building, at some distance from the
house.  Here we entered, and I saw three of those detestable creatures,
which I first met after my landing, feeding upon roots, and the flesh of
some animals, which I afterwards found to be that of asses and dogs, and
now and then a cow, dead by accident or disease.  They were all tied by
the neck with strong withes fastened to a beam; they held their food
between the claws of their fore feet, and tore it with their teeth.

The master horse ordered a sorrel nag, one of his servants, to untie the
largest of these animals, and take him into the yard.  The beast and I
were brought close together, and by our countenances diligently compared
both by master and servant, who thereupon repeated several times the word
_Yahoo_.  My horror and astonishment are not to be described, when I
observed in this abominable animal, a perfect human figure: the face of
it indeed was flat and broad, the nose depressed, the lips large, and the
mouth wide; but these differences are common to all savage nations, where
the lineaments of the countenance are distorted, by the natives suffering
their infants to lie grovelling on the earth, or by carrying them on
their backs, nuzzling with their face against the mothers’ shoulders.
The fore-feet of the _Yahoo_ differed from my hands in nothing else but
the length of the nails, the coarseness and brownness of the palms, and
the hairiness on the backs.  There was the same resemblance between our
feet, with the same differences; which I knew very well, though the
horses did not, because of my shoes and stockings; the same in every part
of our bodies except as to hairiness and colour, which I have already
described.

The great difficulty that seemed to stick with the two horses, was to see
the rest of my body so very different from that of a _Yahoo_, for which I
was obliged to my clothes, whereof they had no conception.  The sorrel
nag offered me a root, which he held (after their manner, as we shall
describe in its proper place) between his hoof and pastern; I took it in
my hand, and, having smelt it, returned it to him again as civilly as I
could.  He brought out of the _Yahoos_’ kennel a piece of ass’s flesh;
but it smelt so offensively that I turned from it with loathing: he then
threw it to the _Yahoo_, by whom it was greedily devoured.  He afterwards
showed me a wisp of hay, and a fetlock full of oats; but I shook my head,
to signify that neither of these were food for me.  And indeed I now
apprehended that I must absolutely starve, if I did not get to some of my
own species; for as to those filthy _Yahoos_, although there were few
greater lovers of mankind at that time than myself, yet I confess I never
saw any sensitive being so detestable on all accounts; and the more I
came near them the more hateful they grew, while I stayed in that
country.  This the master horse observed by my behaviour, and therefore
sent the _Yahoo_ back to his kennel.  He then put his fore-hoof to his
mouth, at which I was much surprised, although he did it with ease, and
with a motion that appeared perfectly natural, and made other signs, to
know what I would eat; but I could not return him such an answer as he
was able to apprehend; and if he had understood me, I did not see how it
was possible to contrive any way for finding myself nourishment.  While
we were thus engaged, I observed a cow passing by, whereupon I pointed to
her, and expressed a desire to go and milk her.  This had its effect; for
he led me back into the house, and ordered a mare-servant to open a room,
where a good store of milk lay in earthen and wooden vessels, after a
very orderly and cleanly manner.  She gave me a large bowlful, of which I
drank very heartily, and found myself well refreshed.

About noon, I saw coming towards the house a kind of vehicle drawn like a
sledge by four _Yahoos_.  There was in it an old steed, who seemed to be
of quality; he alighted with his hind-feet forward, having by accident
got a hurt in his left fore-foot.  He came to dine with our horse, who
received him with great civility.  They dined in the best room, and had
oats boiled in milk for the second course, which the old horse ate warm,
but the rest cold.  Their mangers were placed circular in the middle of
the room, and divided into several partitions, round which they sat on
their haunches, upon bosses of straw.  In the middle was a large rack,
with angles answering to every partition of the manger; so that each
horse and mare ate their own hay, and their own mash of oats and milk,
with much decency and regularity.  The behaviour of the young colt and
foal appeared very modest, and that of the master and mistress extremely
cheerful and complaisant to their guest.  The gray ordered me to stand by
him; and much discourse passed between him and his friend concerning me,
as I found by the stranger’s often looking on me, and the frequent
repetition of the word _Yahoo_.

I happened to wear my gloves, which the master gray observing, seemed
perplexed, discovering signs of wonder what I had done to my fore-feet.
He put his hoof three or four times to them, as if he would signify, that
I should reduce them to their former shape, which I presently did,
pulling off both my gloves, and putting them into my pocket.  This
occasioned farther talk; and I saw the company was pleased with my
behaviour, whereof I soon found the good effects.  I was ordered to speak
the few words I understood; and while they were at dinner, the master
taught me the names for oats, milk, fire, water, and some others, which I
could readily pronounce after him, having from my youth a great facility
in learning languages.

When dinner was done, the master horse took me aside, and by signs and
words made me understand the concern he was in that I had nothing to eat.
Oats in their tongue are called _hlunnh_.  This word I pronounced two or
three times; for although I had refused them at first, yet, upon second
thoughts, I considered that I could contrive to make of them a kind of
bread, which might be sufficient, with milk, to keep me alive, till I
could make my escape to some other country, and to creatures of my own
species.  The horse immediately ordered a white mare servant of his
family to bring me a good quantity of oats in a sort of wooden tray.
These I heated before the fire, as well as I could, and rubbed them till
the husks came off, which I made a shift to winnow from the grain.  I
ground and beat them between two stones; then took water, and made them
into a paste or cake, which I toasted at the fire and eat warm with milk.
It was at first a very insipid diet, though common enough in many parts
of Europe, but grew tolerable by time; and having been often reduced to
hard fare in my life, this was not the first experiment I had made how
easily nature is satisfied.  And I cannot but observe, that I never had
one hours sickness while I stayed in this island.  It is true, I
sometimes made a shift to catch a rabbit, or bird, by springs made of
_Yahoo’s_ hairs; and I often gathered wholesome herbs, which I boiled,
and ate as salads with my bread; and now and then, for a rarity, I made a
little butter, and drank the whey.  I was at first at a great loss for
salt, but custom soon reconciled me to the want of it; and I am confident
that the frequent use of salt among us is an effect of luxury, and was
first introduced only as a provocative to drink, except where it is
necessary for preserving flesh in long voyages, or in places remote from
great markets; for we observe no animal to be fond of it but man, and as
to myself, when I left this country, it was a great while before I could
endure the taste of it in anything that I ate.

This is enough to say upon the subject of my diet, wherewith other
travellers fill their books, as if the readers were personally concerned
whether we fare well or ill.  However, it was necessary to mention this
matter, lest the world should think it impossible that I could find
sustenance for three years in such a country, and among such inhabitants.

When it grew towards evening, the master horse ordered a place for me to
lodge in; it was but six yards from the house and separated from the
stable of the _Yahoos_.  Here I got some straw, and covering myself with
my own clothes, slept very sound.  But I was in a short time better
accommodated, as the reader shall know hereafter, when I come to treat
more particularly about my way of living.



CHAPTER III.


The author studies to learn the language.  The Houyhnhnm, his master,
assists in teaching him.  The language described.  Several Houyhnhnms of
quality come out of curiosity to see the author.  He gives his master a
short account of his voyage.

My principal endeavour was to learn the language, which my master (for so
I shall henceforth call him), and his children, and every servant of his
house, were desirous to teach me; for they looked upon it as a prodigy,
that a brute animal should discover such marks of a rational creature.  I
pointed to every thing, and inquired the name of it, which I wrote down
in my journal-book when I was alone, and corrected my bad accent by
desiring those of the family to pronounce it often.  In this employment,
a sorrel nag, one of the under-servants, was very ready to assist me.

In speaking, they pronounced through the nose and throat, and their
language approaches nearest to the High-Dutch, or German, of any I know
in Europe; but is much more graceful and significant.  The emperor
Charles V. made almost the same observation, when he said “that if he
were to speak to his horse, it should be in High-Dutch.”

The curiosity and impatience of my master were so great, that he spent
many hours of his leisure to instruct me.  He was convinced (as he
afterwards told me) that I must be a _Yahoo_; but my teachableness,
civility, and cleanliness, astonished him; which were qualities
altogether opposite to those animals.  He was most perplexed about my
clothes, reasoning sometimes with himself, whether they were a part of my
body: for I never pulled them off till the family were asleep, and got
them on before they waked in the morning.  My master was eager to learn
“whence I came; how I acquired those appearances of reason, which I
discovered in all my actions; and to know my story from my own mouth,
which he hoped he should soon do by the great proficiency I made in
learning and pronouncing their words and sentences.”  To help my memory,
I formed all I learned into the English alphabet, and writ the words
down, with the translations.  This last, after some time, I ventured to
do in my master’s presence.  It cost me much trouble to explain to him
what I was doing; for the inhabitants have not the least idea of books or
literature.

In about ten weeks time, I was able to understand most of his questions;
and in three months, could give him some tolerable answers.  He was
extremely curious to know “from what part of the country I came, and how
I was taught to imitate a rational creature; because the _Yahoos_ (whom
he saw I exactly resembled in my head, hands, and face, that were only
visible), with some appearance of cunning, and the strongest disposition
to mischief, were observed to be the most unteachable of all brutes.”  I
answered, “that I came over the sea, from a far place, with many others
of my own kind, in a great hollow vessel made of the bodies of trees:
that my companions forced me to land on this coast, and then left me to
shift for myself.”  It was with some difficulty, and by the help of many
signs, that I brought him to understand me.  He replied, “that I must
needs be mistaken, or that I said the thing which was not;” for they have
no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.  “He knew it was
impossible that there could be a country beyond the sea, or that a parcel
of brutes could move a wooden vessel whither they pleased upon water.  He
was sure no _Houyhnhnm_ alive could make such a vessel, nor would trust
_Yahoos_ to manage it.”

The word _Houyhnhnm_, in their tongue, signifies a _horse_, and, in its
etymology, the _perfection of nature_.  I told my master, “that I was at
a loss for expression, but would improve as fast as I could; and hoped,
in a short time, I should be able to tell him wonders.”  He was pleased
to direct his own mare, his colt, and foal, and the servants of the
family, to take all opportunities of instructing me; and every day, for
two or three hours, he was at the same pains himself.  Several horses and
mares of quality in the neighbourhood came often to our house, upon the
report spread of “a wonderful _Yahoo_, that could speak like a
_Houyhnhnm_, and seemed, in his words and actions, to discover some
glimmerings of reason.”  These delighted to converse with me: they put
many questions, and received such answers as I was able to return.  By
all these advantages I made so great a progress, that, in five months
from my arrival I understood whatever was spoken, and could express
myself tolerably well.

The _Houyhnhnms_, who came to visit my master out of a design of seeing
and talking with me, could hardly believe me to be a right _Yahoo_,
because my body had a different covering from others of my kind.  They
were astonished to observe me without the usual hair or skin, except on
my head, face, and hands; but I discovered that secret to my master upon
an accident which happened about a fortnight before.

I have already told the reader, that every night, when the family were
gone to bed, it was my custom to strip, and cover myself with my clothes.
It happened, one morning early, that my master sent for me by the sorrel
nag, who was his valet.  When he came I was fast asleep, my clothes
fallen off on one side, and my shirt above my waist.  I awaked at the
noise he made, and observed him to deliver his message in some disorder;
after which he went to my master, and in a great fright gave him a very
confused account of what he had seen.  This I presently discovered, for,
going as soon as I was dressed to pay my attendance upon his honour, he
asked me “the meaning of what his servant had reported, that I was not
the same thing when I slept, as I appeared to be at other times; that his
vale assured him, some part of me was white, some yellow, at least not so
white, and some brown.”

I had hitherto concealed the secret of my dress, in order to distinguish
myself, as much as possible, from that cursed race of _Yahoos_; but now I
found it in vain to do so any longer.  Besides, I considered that my
clothes and shoes would soon wear out, which already were in a declining
condition, and must be supplied by some contrivance from the hides of
_Yahoos_, or other brutes; whereby the whole secret would be known.  I
therefore told my master, “that in the country whence I came, those of my
kind always covered their bodies with the hairs of certain animals
prepared by art, as well for decency as to avoid the inclemencies of air,
both hot and cold; of which, as to my own person, I would give him
immediate conviction, if he pleased to command me: only desiring his
excuse, if I did not expose those parts that nature taught us to
conceal.”  He said, “my discourse was all very strange, but especially
the last part; for he could not understand, why nature should teach us to
conceal what nature had given; that neither himself nor family were
ashamed of any parts of their bodies; but, however, I might do as I
pleased.”  Whereupon I first unbuttoned my coat, and pulled it off.  I
did the same with my waistcoat.  I drew off my shoes, stockings, and
breeches.  I let my shirt down to my waist, and drew up the bottom;
fastening it like a girdle about my middle, to hide my nakedness.

My master observed the whole performance with great signs of curiosity
and admiration.  He took up all my clothes in his pastern, one piece
after another, and examined them diligently; he then stroked my body very
gently, and looked round me several times; after which, he said, it was
plain I must be a perfect _Yahoo_; but that I differed very much from the
rest of my species in the softness, whiteness, and smoothness of my skin;
my want of hair in several parts of my body; the shape and shortness of
my claws behind and before; and my affectation of walking continually on
my two hinder feet.  He desired to see no more; and gave me leave to put
on my clothes again, for I was shuddering with cold.

I expressed my uneasiness at his giving me so often the appellation of
_Yahoo_, an odious animal, for which I had so utter a hatred and
contempt: I begged he would forbear applying that word to me, and make
the same order in his family and among his friends whom he suffered to
see me.  I requested likewise, “that the secret of my having a false
covering to my body, might be known to none but himself, at least as long
as my present clothing should last; for as to what the sorrel nag, his
valet, had observed, his honour might command him to conceal it.”

All this my master very graciously consented to; and thus the secret was
kept till my clothes began to wear out, which I was forced to supply by
several contrivances that shall hereafter be mentioned.  In the meantime,
he desired “I would go on with my utmost diligence to learn their
language, because he was more astonished at my capacity for speech and
reason, than at the figure of my body, whether it were covered or not;”
adding, “that he waited with some impatience to hear the wonders which I
promised to tell him.”

Thenceforward he doubled the pains he had been at to instruct me: he
brought me into all company, and made them treat me with civility;
“because,” as he told them, privately, “this would put me into good
humour, and make me more diverting.”

Every day, when I waited on him, beside the trouble he was at in
teaching, he would ask me several questions concerning myself, which I
answered as well as I could, and by these means he had already received
some general ideas, though very imperfect.  It would be tedious to relate
the several steps by which I advanced to a more regular conversation; but
the first account I gave of myself in any order and length was to this
purpose:

“That I came from a very far country, as I already had attempted to tell
him, with about fifty more of my own species; that we travelled upon the
seas in a great hollow vessel made of wood, and larger than his honour’s
house.  I described the ship to him in the best terms I could, and
explained, by the help of my handkerchief displayed, how it was driven
forward by the wind.  That upon a quarrel among us, I was set on shore on
this coast, where I walked forward, without knowing whither, till he
delivered me from the persecution of those execrable _Yahoos_.”  He asked
me, “who made the ship, and how it was possible that the _Houyhnhnms_ of
my country would leave it to the management of brutes?”  My answer was,
“that I durst proceed no further in my relation, unless he would give me
his word and honour that he would not be offended, and then I would tell
him the wonders I had so often promised.”  He agreed; and I went on by
assuring him, that the ship was made by creatures like myself; who, in
all the countries I had travelled, as well as in my own, were the only
governing rational animals; and that upon my arrival hither, I was as
much astonished to see the _Houyhnhnms_ act like rational beings, as he,
or his friends, could be, in finding some marks of reason in a creature
he was pleased to call a _Yahoo_; to which I owned my resemblance in
every part, but could not account for their degenerate and brutal nature.
I said farther, “that if good fortune ever restored me to my native
country, to relate my travels hither, as I resolved to do, everybody
would believe, that I said the thing that was not, that I invented the
story out of my own head; and (with all possible respect to himself, his
family, and friends, and under his promise of not being offended) our
countrymen would hardly think it probable that a _Houyhnhnm_ should be
the presiding creature of a nation, and a _Yahoo_ the brute.”



CHAPTER IV.


The Houyhnhnm’s notion of truth and falsehood.  The author’s discourse
disapproved by his master.  The author gives a more particular account of
himself, and the accidents of his voyage.

My master heard me with great appearances of uneasiness in his
countenance; because doubting, or not believing, are so little known in
this country, that the inhabitants cannot tell how to behave themselves
under such circumstances.  And I remember, in frequent discourses with my
master concerning the nature of manhood in other parts of the world,
having occasion to talk of lying and false representation, it was with
much difficulty that he comprehended what I meant, although he had
otherwise a most acute judgment.  For he argued thus: “that the use of
speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information
of facts; now, if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were
defeated, because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am
so far from receiving information, that he leaves me worse than in
ignorance; for I am led to believe a thing black, when it is white, and
short, when it is long.”  And these were all the notions he had
concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well understood, and so
universally practised, among human creatures.

To return from this digression.  When I asserted that the _Yahoos_ were
the only governing animals in my country, which my master said was
altogether past his conception, he desired to know, “whether we had
_Houyhnhnms_ among us, and what was their employment?”  I told him, “we
had great numbers; that in summer they grazed in the fields, and in
winter were kept in houses with hay and oats, where _Yahoo_ servants were
employed to rub their skins smooth, comb their manes, pick their feet,
serve them with food, and make their beds.”  “I understand you well,”
said my master: “it is now very plain, from all you have spoken, that
whatever share of reason the _Yahoos_ pretend to, the _Houyhnhnms_ are
your masters; I heartily wish our _Yahoos_ would be so tractable.”  I
begged “his honour would please to excuse me from proceeding any further,
because I was very certain that the account he expected from me would be
highly displeasing.”  But he insisted in commanding me to let him know
the best and the worst.  I told him “he should be obeyed.”  I owned “that
the _Houyhnhnms_ among us, whom we called horses, were the most generous
and comely animals we had; that they excelled in strength and swiftness;
and when they belonged to persons of quality, were employed in
travelling, racing, or drawing chariots; they were treated with much
kindness and care, till they fell into diseases, or became foundered in
the feet; but then they were sold, and used to all kind of drudgery till
they died; after which their skins were stripped, and sold for what they
were worth, and their bodies left to be devoured by dogs and birds of
prey.  But the common race of horses had not so good fortune, being kept
by farmers and carriers, and other mean people, who put them to greater
labour, and fed them worse.”  I described, as well as I could, our way of
riding; the shape and use of a bridle, a saddle, a spur, and a whip; of
harness and wheels.  I added, “that we fastened plates of a certain hard
substance, called iron, at the bottom of their feet, to preserve their
hoofs from being broken by the stony ways, on which we often travelled.”

My master, after some expressions of great indignation, wondered “how we
dared to venture upon a _Houyhnhnm’s_ back; for he was sure, that the
weakest servant in his house would be able to shake off the strongest
_Yahoo_; or by lying down and rolling on his back, squeeze the brute to
death.”  I answered “that our horses were trained up, from three or four
years old, to the several uses we intended them for; that if any of them
proved intolerably vicious, they were employed for carriages; that they
were severely beaten, while they were young, for any mischievous tricks;
that the males, designed for the common use of riding or draught, were
generally castrated about two years after their birth, to take down their
spirits, and make them more tame and gentle; that they were indeed
sensible of rewards and punishments; but his honour would please to
consider, that they had not the least tincture of reason, any more than
the _Yahoos_ in this country.”

It put me to the pains of many circumlocutions, to give my master a right
idea of what I spoke; for their language does not abound in variety of
words, because their wants and passions are fewer than among us.  But it
is impossible to express his noble resentment at our savage treatment of
the _Houyhnhnm_ race; particularly after I had explained the manner and
use of castrating horses among us, to hinder them from propagating their
kind, and to render them more servile.  He said, “if it were possible
there could be any country where _Yahoos_ alone were endued with reason,
they certainly must be the governing animal; because reason in time will
always prevail against brutal strength.  But, considering the frame of
our bodies, and especially of mine, he thought no creature of equal bulk
was so ill-contrived for employing that reason in the common offices of
life;” whereupon he desired to know “whether those among whom I lived
resembled me, or the _Yahoos_ of his country?”  I assured him, “that I
was as well shaped as most of my age; but the younger, and the females,
were much more soft and tender, and the skins of the latter generally as
white as milk.”  He said, “I differed indeed from other _Yahoos_, being
much more cleanly, and not altogether so deformed; but, in point of real
advantage, he thought I differed for the worse: that my nails were of no
use either to my fore or hinder feet; as to my fore feet, he could not
properly call them by that name, for he never observed me to walk upon
them; that they were too soft to bear the ground; that I generally went
with them uncovered; neither was the covering I sometimes wore on them of
the same shape, or so strong as that on my feet behind: that I could not
walk with any security, for if either of my hinder feet slipped, I must
inevitably fail.”  He then began to find fault with other parts of my
body: “the flatness of my face, the prominence of my nose, mine eyes
placed directly in front, so that I could not look on either side without
turning my head: that I was not able to feed myself, without lifting one
of my fore-feet to my mouth: and therefore nature had placed those joints
to answer that necessity.  He knew not what could be the use of those
several clefts and divisions in my feet behind; that these were too soft
to bear the hardness and sharpness of stones, without a covering made
from the skin of some other brute; that my whole body wanted a fence
against heat and cold, which I was forced to put on and off every day,
with tediousness and trouble: and lastly, that he observed every animal
in this country naturally to abhor the _Yahoos_, whom the weaker avoided,
and the stronger drove from them.  So that, supposing us to have the gift
of reason, he could not see how it were possible to cure that natural
antipathy, which every creature discovered against us; nor consequently
how we could tame and render them serviceable.  However, he would,” as he
said, “debate the matter no farther, because he was more desirous to know
my own story, the country where I was born, and the several actions and
events of my life, before I came hither.”

I assured him, “how extremely desirous I was that he should be satisfied
on every point; but I doubted much, whether it would be possible for me
to explain myself on several subjects, whereof his honour could have no
conception; because I saw nothing in his country to which I could
resemble them; that, however, I would do my best, and strive to express
myself by similitudes, humbly desiring his assistance when I wanted
proper words;” which he was pleased to promise me.

I said, “my birth was of honest parents, in an island called England;
which was remote from his country, as many days’ journey as the strongest
of his honour’s servants could travel in the annual course of the sun;
that I was bred a surgeon, whose trade it is to cure wounds and hurts in
the body, gotten by accident or violence; that my country was governed by
a female man, whom we called queen; that I left it to get riches, whereby
I might maintain myself and family, when I should return; that, in my
last voyage, I was commander of the ship, and had about fifty _Yahoos_
under me, many of which died at sea, and I was forced to supply them by
others picked out from several nations; that our ship was twice in danger
of being sunk, the first time by a great storm, and the second by
striking against a rock.”  Here my master interposed, by asking me, “how
I could persuade strangers, out of different countries, to venture with
me, after the losses I had sustained, and the hazards I had run?”  I
said, “they were fellows of desperate fortunes, forced to fly from the
places of their birth on account of their poverty or their crimes.  Some
were undone by lawsuits; others spent all they had in drinking, whoring,
and gaming; others fled for treason; many for murder, theft, poisoning,
robbery, perjury, forgery, coining false money, for committing rapes, or
sodomy; for flying from their colours, or deserting to the enemy; and
most of them had broken prison; none of these durst return to their
native countries, for fear of being hanged, or of starving in a jail; and
therefore they were under the necessity of seeking a livelihood in other
places.”

During this discourse, my master was pleased to interrupt me several
times.  I had made use of many circumlocutions in describing to him the
nature of the several crimes for which most of our crew had been forced
to fly their country.  This labour took up several days’ conversation,
before he was able to comprehend me.  He was wholly at a loss to know
what could be the use or necessity of practising those vices.  To clear
up which, I endeavoured to give some ideas of the desire of power and
riches; of the terrible effects of lust, intemperance, malice, and envy.
All this I was forced to define and describe by putting cases and making
suppositions.  After which, like one whose imagination was struck with
something never seen or heard of before, he would lift up his eyes with
amazement and indignation.  Power, government, war, law, punishment, and
a thousand other things, had no terms wherein that language could express
them, which made the difficulty almost insuperable, to give my master any
conception of what I meant.  But being of an excellent understanding,
much improved by contemplation and converse, he at last arrived at a
competent knowledge of what human nature, in our parts of the world, is
capable to perform, and desired I would give him some particular account
of that land which we call Europe, but especially of my own country.



CHAPTER V.


The author at his master’s command, informs him of the state of England.
The causes of war among the princes of Europe.  The author begins to
explain the English constitution.

The reader may please to observe, that the following extract of many
conversations I had with my master, contains a summary of the most
material points which were discoursed at several times for above two
years; his honour often desiring fuller satisfaction, as I farther
improved in the _Houyhnhnm_ tongue.  I laid before him, as well as I
could, the whole state of Europe; I discoursed of trade and manufactures,
of arts and sciences; and the answers I gave to all the questions he
made, as they arose upon several subjects, were a fund of conversation
not to be exhausted.  But I shall here only set down the substance of
what passed between us concerning my own country, reducing it in order as
well as I can, without any regard to time or other circumstances, while I
strictly adhere to truth.  My only concern is, that I shall hardly be
able to do justice to my master’s arguments and expressions, which must
needs suffer by my want of capacity, as well as by a translation into our
barbarous English.

In obedience, therefore, to his honour’s commands, I related to him the
Revolution under the Prince of Orange; the long war with France, entered
into by the said prince, and renewed by his successor, the present queen,
wherein the greatest powers of Christendom were engaged, and which still
continued: I computed, at his request, “that about a million of _Yahoos_
might have been killed in the whole progress of it; and perhaps a hundred
or more cities taken, and five times as many ships burnt or sunk.”

He asked me, “what were the usual causes or motives that made one country
go to war with another?”  I answered “they were innumerable; but I should
only mention a few of the chief.  Sometimes the ambition of princes, who
never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the
corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war, in order to
stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil
administration.  Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives:
for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the
juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or
a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire;
what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red, or gray;
and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean;
with many more.  Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so
long a continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion,
especially if it be in things indifferent.

“Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them
shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretend
to any right.  Sometimes one prince quarrels with another for fear the
other should quarrel with him.  Sometimes a war is entered upon, because
the enemy is too strong; and sometimes, because he is too weak.
Sometimes our neighbours want the things which we have, or have the
things which we want, and we both fight, till they take ours, or give us
theirs.  It is a very justifiable cause of a war, to invade a country
after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or
embroiled by factions among themselves.  It is justifiable to enter into
war against our nearest ally, when one of his towns lies convenient for
us, or a territory of land, that would render our dominions round and
complete.  If a prince sends forces into a nation, where the people are
poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to death, and make
slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their
barbarous way of living.  It is a very kingly, honourable, and frequent
practice, when one prince desires the assistance of another, to secure
him against an invasion, that the assistant, when he has driven out the
invader, should seize on the dominions himself, and kill, imprison, or
banish, the prince he came to relieve.  Alliance by blood, or marriage,
is a frequent cause of war between princes; and the nearer the kindred
is, the greater their disposition to quarrel; poor nations are hungry,
and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at
variance.  For these reasons, the trade of a soldier is held the most
honourable of all others; because a soldier is a _Yahoo_ hired to kill,
in cold blood, as many of his own species, who have never offended him,
as possibly he can.

“There is likewise a kind of beggarly princes in Europe, not able to make
war by themselves, who hire out their troops to richer nations, for so
much a day to each man; of which they keep three-fourths to themselves,
and it is the best part of their maintenance: such are those in many
northern parts of Europe.”

“What you have told me,” said my master, “upon the subject of war, does
indeed discover most admirably the effects of that reason you pretend to:
however, it is happy that the shame is greater than the danger; and that
nature has left you utterly incapable of doing much mischief.  For, your
mouths lying flat with your faces, you can hardly bite each other to any
purpose, unless by consent.  Then as to the claws upon your feet before
and behind, they are so short and tender, that one of our _Yahoos_ would
drive a dozen of yours before him.  And therefore, in recounting the
numbers of those who have been killed in battle, I cannot but think you
have said the thing which is not.”

I could not forbear shaking my head, and smiling a little at his
ignorance.  And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a
description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets,
powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines,
countermines, bombardments, sea fights, ships sunk with a thousand men,
twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs flying in the
air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses’ feet,
flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to
dogs and wolves and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing,
burning, and destroying.  And to set forth the valour of my own dear
countrymen, I assured him, “that I had seen them blow up a hundred
enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead
bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the
spectators.”

I was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me silence.
He said, “whoever understood the nature of _Yahoos_, might easily believe
it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had
named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice.  But as my
discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found
it gave him a disturbance in his mind to which he was wholly a stranger
before.  He thought his ears, being used to such abominable words, might,
by degrees, admit them with less detestation: that although he hated the
_Yahoos_ of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious
qualities, than he did a _gnnayh_ (a bird of prey) for its cruelty, or a
sharp stone for cutting his hoof.  But when a creature pretending to
reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the
corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself.  He
seemed therefore confident, that, instead of reason we were only
possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices; as the
reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an ill shapen
body, not only larger but more distorted.”

He added, “that he had heard too much upon the subject of war, both in
this and some former discourses.  There was another point, which a little
perplexed him at present.  I had informed him, that some of our crew left
their country on account of being ruined by law; that I had already
explained the meaning of the word; but he was at a loss how it should
come to pass, that the law, which was intended for every man’s
preservation, should be any man’s ruin.  Therefore he desired to be
further satisfied what I meant by law, and the dispensers thereof,
according to the present practice in my own country; because he thought
nature and reason were sufficient guides for a reasonable animal, as we
pretended to be, in showing us what he ought to do, and what to avoid.”

I assured his honour, “that the law was a science in which I had not much
conversed, further than by employing advocates, in vain, upon some
injustices that had been done me: however, I would give him all the
satisfaction I was able.”

I said, “there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in
the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is
black, and black is white, according as they are paid.  To this society
all the rest of the people are slaves.  For example, if my neighbour has
a mind to my cow, he has a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow
from me.  I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against
all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself.
Now, in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under two great
disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle
in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an
advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts
with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will.  The second disadvantage
is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be
reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that
would lessen the practice of the law.  And therefore I have but two
methods to preserve my cow.  The first is, to gain over my adversary’s
lawyer with a double fee, who will then betray his client by insinuating
that he hath justice on his side.  The second way is for my lawyer to
make my cause appear as unjust as he can, by allowing the cow to belong
to my adversary: and this, if it be skilfully done, will certainly
bespeak the favour of the bench.  Now your honour is to know, that these
judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as
well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most
dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all
their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of
favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them
refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure
the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office.

“It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever has been done before,
may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record
all the decisions formerly made against common justice, and the general
reason of mankind.  These, under the name of precedents, they produce as
authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never
fail of directing accordingly.

“In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the
cause; but are loud, violent, and tedious, in dwelling upon all
circumstances which are not to the purpose.  For instance, in the case
already mentioned; they never desire to know what claim or title my
adversary has to my cow; but whether the said cow were red or black; her
horns long or short; whether the field I graze her in be round or square;
whether she was milked at home or abroad; what diseases she is subject
to, and the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause
from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years, come to an issue.

“It is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant and
jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all
their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby
they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of
right and wrong; so that it will take thirty years to decide, whether the
field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or to a
stranger three hundred miles off.

“In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state, the method
is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to sound the
disposition of those in power, after which he can easily hang or save a
criminal, strictly preserving all due forms of law.”

Here my master interposing, said, “it was a pity, that creatures endowed
with such prodigious abilities of mind, as these lawyers, by the
description I gave of them, must certainly be, were not rather encouraged
to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge.”  In answer to which
I assured his honour, “that in all points out of their own trade, they
were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most
despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and
learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind
in every other subject of discourse as in that of their own profession.”



CHAPTER VI.


A continuation of the state of England under Queen Anne.  The character
of a first minister of state in European courts.

My master was yet wholly at a loss to understand what motives could
incite this race of lawyers to perplex, disquiet, and weary themselves,
and engage in a confederacy of injustice, merely for the sake of injuring
their fellow-animals; neither could he comprehend what I meant in saying,
they did it for hire.  Whereupon I was at much pains to describe to him
the use of money, the materials it was made of, and the value of the
metals; “that when a _Yahoo_ had got a great store of this precious
substance, he was able to purchase whatever he had a mind to; the finest
clothing, the noblest houses, great tracts of land, the most costly meats
and drinks, and have his choice of the most beautiful females.  Therefore
since money alone was able to perform all these feats, our _Yahoos_
thought they could never have enough of it to spend, or to save, as they
found themselves inclined, from their natural bent either to profusion or
avarice; that the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man’s labour,
and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion to the former; that
the bulk of our people were forced to live miserably, by labouring every
day for small wages, to make a few live plentifully.”

I enlarged myself much on these, and many other particulars to the same
purpose; but his honour was still to seek; for he went upon a
supposition, that all animals had a title to their share in the
productions of the earth, and especially those who presided over the
rest.  Therefore he desired I would let him know, “what these costly
meats were, and how any of us happened to want them?”  Whereupon I
enumerated as many sorts as came into my head, with the various methods
of dressing them, which could not be done without sending vessels by sea
to every part of the world, as well for liquors to drink as for sauces
and innumerable other conveniences.  I assured him “that this whole globe
of earth must be at least three times gone round before one of our better
female _Yahoos_ could get her breakfast, or a cup to put it in.”  He said
“that must needs be a miserable country which cannot furnish food for its
own inhabitants.  But what he chiefly wondered at was, how such vast
tracts of ground as I described should be wholly without fresh water, and
the people put to the necessity of sending over the sea for drink.”  I
replied “that England (the dear place of my nativity) was computed to
produce three times the quantity of food more than its inhabitants are
able to consume, as well as liquors extracted from grain, or pressed out
of the fruit of certain trees, which made excellent drink, and the same
proportion in every other convenience of life.  But, in order to feed the
luxury and intemperance of the males, and the vanity of the females, we
sent away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries,
whence, in return, we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice,
to spend among ourselves.  Hence it follows of necessity, that vast
numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging,
robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, flattering, suborning, forswearing,
forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling,
star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, freethinking, and
the like occupations:” every one of which terms I was at much pains to
make him understand.

“That wine was not imported among us from foreign countries to supply the
want of water or other drinks, but because it was a sort of liquid which
made us merry by putting us out of our senses, diverted all melancholy
thoughts, begat wild extravagant imaginations in the brain, raised our
hopes and banished our fears, suspended every office of reason for a
time, and deprived us of the use of our limbs, till we fell into a
profound sleep; although it must be confessed, that we always awaked sick
and dispirited; and that the use of this liquor filled us with diseases
which made our lives uncomfortable and short.

“But beside all this, the bulk of our people supported themselves by
furnishing the necessities or conveniences of life to the rich and to
each other.  For instance, when I am at home, and dressed as I ought to
be, I carry on my body the workmanship of a hundred tradesmen; the
building and furniture of my house employ as many more, and five times
the number to adorn my wife.”

I was going on to tell him of another sort of people, who get their
livelihood by attending the sick, having, upon some occasions, informed
his honour that many of my crew had died of diseases.  But here it was
with the utmost difficulty that I brought him to apprehend what I meant.
“He could easily conceive, that a _Houyhnhnm_, grew weak and heavy a few
days before his death, or by some accident might hurt a limb; but that
nature, who works all things to perfection, should suffer any pains to
breed in our bodies, he thought impossible, and desired to know the
reason of so unaccountable an evil.”

I told him “we fed on a thousand things which operated contrary to each
other; that we ate when we were not hungry, and drank without the
provocation of thirst; that we sat whole nights drinking strong liquors,
without eating a bit, which disposed us to sloth, inflamed our bodies,
and precipitated or prevented digestion; that prostitute female _Yahoos_
acquired a certain malady, which bred rottenness in the bones of those
who fell into their embraces; that this, and many other diseases, were
propagated from father to son; so that great numbers came into the world
with complicated maladies upon them; that it would be endless to give him
a catalogue of all diseases incident to human bodies, for they would not
be fewer than five or six hundred, spread over every limb and joint—in
short, every part, external and intestine, having diseases appropriated
to itself.  To remedy which, there was a sort of people bred up among us
in the profession, or pretence, of curing the sick.  And because I had
some skill in the faculty, I would, in gratitude to his honour, let him
know the whole mystery and method by which they proceed.

“Their fundamental is, that all diseases arise from repletion; whence
they conclude, that a great evacuation of the body is necessary, either
through the natural passage or upwards at the mouth.  Their next business
is from herbs, minerals, gums, oils, shells, salts, juices, sea-weed,
excrements, barks of trees, serpents, toads, frogs, spiders, dead men’s
flesh and bones, birds, beasts, and fishes, to form a composition, for
smell and taste, the most abominable, nauseous, and detestable, they can
possibly contrive, which the stomach immediately rejects with loathing,
and this they call a vomit; or else, from the same store-house, with some
other poisonous additions, they command us to take in at the orifice
above or below (just as the physician then happens to be disposed) a
medicine equally annoying and disgustful to the bowels; which, relaxing
the belly, drives down all before it; and this they call a purge, or a
clyster.  For nature (as the physicians allege) having intended the
superior anterior orifice only for the intromission of solids and
liquids, and the inferior posterior for ejection, these artists
ingeniously considering that in all diseases nature is forced out of her
seat, therefore, to replace her in it, the body must be treated in a
manner directly contrary, by interchanging the use of each orifice;
forcing solids and liquids in at the anus, and making evacuations at the
mouth.

“But, besides real diseases, we are subject to many that are only
imaginary, for which the physicians have invented imaginary cures; these
have their several names, and so have the drugs that are proper for them;
and with these our female _Yahoos_ are always infested.

“One great excellency in this tribe, is their skill at prognostics,
wherein they seldom fail; their predictions in real diseases, when they
rise to any degree of malignity, generally portending death, which is
always in their power, when recovery is not: and therefore, upon any
unexpected signs of amendment, after they have pronounced their sentence,
rather than be accused as false prophets, they know how to approve their
sagacity to the world, by a seasonable dose.

“They are likewise of special use to husbands and wives who are grown
weary of their mates; to eldest sons, to great ministers of state, and
often to princes.”

I had formerly, upon occasion, discoursed with my master upon the nature
of government in general, and particularly of our own excellent
constitution, deservedly the wonder and envy of the whole world.  But
having here accidentally mentioned a minister of state, he commanded me,
some time after, to inform him, “what species of _Yahoo_ I particularly
meant by that appellation.”

I told him, “that a first or chief minister of state, who was the person
I intended to describe, was the creature wholly exempt from joy and
grief, love and hatred, pity and anger; at least, makes use of no other
passions, but a violent desire of wealth, power, and titles; that he
applies his words to all uses, except to the indication of his mind; that
he never tells a truth but with an intent that you should take it for a
lie; nor a lie, but with a design that you should take it for a truth;
that those he speaks worst of behind their backs are in the surest way of
preferment; and whenever he begins to praise you to others, or to
yourself, you are from that day forlorn.  The worst mark you can receive
is a promise, especially when it is confirmed with an oath; after which,
every wise man retires, and gives over all hopes.

“There are three methods, by which a man may rise to be chief minister.
The first is, by knowing how, with prudence, to dispose of a wife, a
daughter, or a sister; the second, by betraying or undermining his
predecessor; and the third is, by a furious zeal, in public assemblies,
against the corruption’s of the court.  But a wise prince would rather
choose to employ those who practise the last of these methods; because
such zealots prove always the most obsequious and subservient to the will
and passions of their master.  That these ministers, having all
employments at their disposal, preserve themselves in power, by bribing
the majority of a senate or great council; and at last, by an expedient,
called an act of indemnity” (whereof I described the nature to him),
“they secure themselves from after-reckonings, and retire from the public
laden with the spoils of the nation.

“The palace of a chief minister is a seminary to breed up others in his
own trade: the pages, lackeys, and porters, by imitating their master,
become ministers of state in their several districts, and learn to excel
in the three principal ingredients, of insolence, lying, and bribery.
Accordingly, they have a subaltern court paid to them by persons of the
best rank; and sometimes by the force of dexterity and impudence, arrive,
through several gradations, to be successors to their lord.

“He is usually governed by a decayed wench, or favourite footman, who are
the tunnels through which all graces are conveyed, and may properly be
called, in the last resort, the governors of the kingdom.”

One day, in discourse, my master, having heard me mention the nobility of
my country, was pleased to make me a compliment which I could not pretend
to deserve: “that he was sure I must have been born of some noble family,
because I far exceeded in shape, colour, and cleanliness, all the
_Yahoos_ of his nation, although I seemed to fail in strength and
agility, which must be imputed to my different way of living from those
other brutes; and besides I was not only endowed with the faculty of
speech, but likewise with some rudiments of reason, to a degree that,
with all his acquaintance, I passed for a prodigy.”

He made me observe, “that among the _Houyhnhnms_, the white, the sorrel,
and the iron-gray, were not so exactly shaped as the bay, the
dapple-gray, and the black; nor born with equal talents of mind, or a
capacity to improve them; and therefore continued always in the condition
of servants, without ever aspiring to match out of their own race, which
in that country would be reckoned monstrous and unnatural.”

I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he
was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time, “that my
birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents,
who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility, among
us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our
young noblemen are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury;
that, as soon as years will permit, they consume their vigour, and
contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their fortunes are
almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person,
and unsound constitution (merely for the sake of money), whom they hate
and despise.  That the productions of such marriages are generally
scrofulous, rickety, or deformed children; by which means the family
seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to
provide a healthy father, among her neighbours or domestics, in order to
improve and continue the breed.  That a weak diseased body, a meagre
countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble blood;
and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality,
that the world concludes his real father to have been a groom or a
coachman.  The imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his
body, being a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice,
sensuality, and pride.

“Without the consent of this illustrious body, no law can be enacted,
repealed, or altered: and these nobles have likewise the decision of all
our possessions, without appeal.” {514}



CHAPTER VII.


The author’s great love of his native country.  His master’s observations
upon the constitution and administration of England, as described by the
author, with parallel cases and comparisons.  His master’s observations
upon human nature.

The reader may be disposed to wonder how I could prevail on myself to
give so free a representation of my own species, among a race of mortals
who are already too apt to conceive the vilest opinion of humankind, from
that entire congruity between me and their _Yahoos_.  But I must freely
confess, that the many virtues of those excellent quadrupeds, placed in
opposite view to human corruptions, had so far opened my eyes and
enlarged my understanding, that I began to view the actions and passions
of man in a very different light, and to think the honour of my own kind
not worth managing; which, besides, it was impossible for me to do,
before a person of so acute a judgment as my master, who daily convinced
me of a thousand faults in myself, whereof I had not the least perception
before, and which, with us, would never be numbered even among human
infirmities.  I had likewise learned, from his example, an utter
detestation of all falsehood or disguise; and truth appeared so amiable
to me, that I determined upon sacrificing every thing to it.

Let me deal so candidly with the reader as to confess that there was yet
a much stronger motive for the freedom I took in my representation of
things.  I had not yet been a year in this country before I contracted
such a love and veneration for the inhabitants, that I entered on a firm
resolution never to return to humankind, but to pass the rest of my life
among these admirable _Houyhnhnms_, in the contemplation and practice of
every virtue, where I could have no example or incitement to vice.  But
it was decreed by fortune, my perpetual enemy, that so great a felicity
should not fall to my share.  However, it is now some comfort to reflect,
that in what I said of my countrymen, I extenuated their faults as much
as I durst before so strict an examiner; and upon every article gave as
favourable a turn as the matter would bear.  For, indeed, who is there
alive that will not be swayed by his bias and partiality to the place of
his birth?

I have related the substance of several conversations I had with my
master during the greatest part of the time I had the honour to be in his
service; but have, indeed, for brevity sake, omitted much more than is
here set down.

When I had answered all his questions, and his curiosity seemed to be
fully satisfied, he sent for me one morning early, and commanded me to
sit down at some distance (an honour which he had never before conferred
upon me).  He said, “he had been very seriously considering my whole
story, as far as it related both to myself and my country; that he looked
upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could
not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made
no other use, than by its assistance, to aggravate our natural
corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us; that
we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed; had been
very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend
our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions;
that, as to myself, it was manifest I had neither the strength nor
agility of a common _Yahoo_; that I walked infirmly on my hinder feet;
had found out a contrivance to make my claws of no use or defence, and to
remove the hair from my chin, which was intended as a shelter from the
sun and the weather: lastly, that I could neither run with speed, nor
climb trees like my brethren,” as he called them, “the _Yahoos_ in his
country.

“That our institutions of government and law were plainly owing to our
gross defects in reason, and by consequence in virtue; because reason
alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature; which was, therefore,
a character we had no pretence to challenge, even from the account I had
given of my own people; although he manifestly perceived, that, in order
to favour them, I had concealed many particulars, and often said the
thing which was not.

“He was the more confirmed in this opinion, because, he observed, that as
I agreed in every feature of my body with other _Yahoos_, except where it
was to my real disadvantage in point of strength, speed, and activity,
the shortness of my claws, and some other particulars where nature had no
part; so from the representation I had given him of our lives, our
manners, and our actions, he found as near a resemblance in the
disposition of our minds.”  He said, “the _Yahoos_ were known to hate one
another, more than they did any different species of animals; and the
reason usually assigned was, the odiousness of their own shapes, which
all could see in the rest, but not in themselves.  He had therefore begun
to think it not unwise in us to cover our bodies, and by that invention
conceal many of our deformities from each other, which would else be
hardly supportable.  But he now found he had been mistaken, and that the
dissensions of those brutes in his country were owing to the same cause
with ours, as I had described them.  For if,” said he, “you throw among
five _Yahoos_ as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will,
instead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one
impatient to have all to itself; and therefore a servant was usually
employed to stand by while they were feeding abroad, and those kept at
home were tied at a distance from each other: that if a cow died of age
or accident, before a _Houyhnhnm_ could secure it for his own _Yahoos_,
those in the neighbourhood would come in herds to seize it, and then
would ensue such a battle as I had described, with terrible wounds made
by their claws on both sides, although they seldom were able to kill one
another, for want of such convenient instruments of death as we had
invented.  At other times, the like battles have been fought between the
_Yahoos_ of several neighbourhoods, without any visible cause; those of
one district watching all opportunities to surprise the next, before they
are prepared.  But if they find their project has miscarried, they return
home, and, for want of enemies, engage in what I call a civil war among
themselves.

“That in some fields of his country there are certain shining stones of
several colours, whereof the _Yahoos_ are violently fond: and when part
of these stones is fixed in the earth, as it sometimes happens, they will
dig with their claws for whole days to get them out; then carry them
away, and hide them by heaps in their kennels; but still looking round
with great caution, for fear their comrades should find out their
treasure.”  My master said, “he could never discover the reason of this
unnatural appetite, or how these stones could be of any use to a _Yahoo_;
but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle of avarice
which I had ascribed to mankind.  That he had once, by way of experiment,
privately removed a heap of these stones from the place where one of his
_Yahoos_ had buried it; whereupon the sordid animal, missing his
treasure, by his loud lamenting brought the whole herd to the place,
there miserably howled, then fell to biting and tearing the rest, began
to pine away, would neither eat, nor sleep, nor work, till he ordered a
servant privately to convey the stones into the same hole, and hide them
as before; which, when his _Yahoo_ had found, he presently recovered his
spirits and good humour, but took good care to remove them to a better
hiding place, and has ever since been a very serviceable brute.”

My master further assured me, which I also observed myself, “that in the
fields where the shining stones abound, the fiercest and most frequent
battles are fought, occasioned by perpetual inroads of the neighbouring
_Yahoos_.”

He said, “it was common, when two _Yahoos_ discovered such a stone in a
field, and were contending which of them should be the proprietor, a
third would take the advantage, and carry it away from them both;” which
my master would needs contend to have some kind of resemblance with our
suits at law; wherein I thought it for our credit not to undeceive him;
since the decision he mentioned was much more equitable than many decrees
among us; because the plaintiff and defendant there lost nothing beside
the stone they contended for: whereas our courts of equity would never
have dismissed the cause, while either of them had any thing left.

My master, continuing his discourse, said, “there was nothing that
rendered the _Yahoos_ more odious, than their undistinguishing appetite
to devour every thing that came in their way, whether herbs, roots,
berries, the corrupted flesh of animals, or all mingled together: and it
was peculiar in their temper, that they were fonder of what they could
get by rapine or stealth, at a greater distance, than much better food
provided for them at home.  If their prey held out, they would eat till
they were ready to burst; after which, nature had pointed out to them a
certain root that gave them a general evacuation.

“There was also another kind of root, very juicy, but somewhat rare and
difficult to be found, which the _Yahoos_ sought for with much eagerness,
and would suck it with great delight; it produced in them the same
effects that wine has upon us.  It would make them sometimes hug, and
sometimes tear one another; they would howl, and grin, and chatter, and
reel, and tumble, and then fall asleep in the mud.”

I did indeed observe that the _Yahoos_ were the only animals in this
country subject to any diseases; which, however, were much fewer than
horses have among us, and contracted, not by any ill-treatment they meet
with, but by the nastiness and greediness of that sordid brute.  Neither
has their language any more than a general appellation for those
maladies, which is borrowed from the name of the beast, and called
_hnea-yahoo_, or _Yahoo’s evil_; and the cure prescribed is a mixture of
their own dung and urine, forcibly put down the _Yahoo’s_ throat.  This I
have since often known to have been taken with success, and do here
freely recommend it to my countrymen for the public good, as an admirable
specific against all diseases produced by repletion.

“As to learning, government, arts, manufactures, and the like,” my master
confessed, “he could find little or no resemblance between the _Yahoos_
of that country and those in ours; for he only meant to observe what
parity there was in our natures.  He had heard, indeed, some curious
_Houyhnhnms_ observe, that in most herds there was a sort of ruling
_Yahoo_ (as among us there is generally some leading or principal stag in
a park), who was always more deformed in body, and mischievous in
disposition, than any of the rest; that this leader had usually a
favourite as like himself as he could get, whose employment was to lick
his master’s feet and posteriors, and drive the female _Yahoos_ to his
kennel; for which he was now and then rewarded with a piece of ass’s
flesh.  This favourite is hated by the whole herd, and therefore, to
protect himself, keeps always near the person of his leader.  He usually
continues in office till a worse can be found; but the very moment he is
discarded, his successor, at the head of all the _Yahoos_ in that
district, young and old, male and female, come in a body, and discharge
their excrements upon him from head to foot.  But how far this might be
applicable to our courts, and favourites, and ministers of state, my
master said I could best determine.”

I durst make no return to this malicious insinuation, which debased human
understanding below the sagacity of a common hound, who has judgment
enough to distinguish and follow the cry of the ablest dog in the pack,
without being ever mistaken.

My master told me, “there were some qualities remarkable in the _Yahoos_,
which he had not observed me to mention, or at least very slightly, in
the accounts I had given of humankind.”  He said, “those animals, like
other brutes, had their females in common; but in this they differed,
that the she _Yahoo_ would admit the males while she was pregnant; and
that the hes would quarrel and fight with the females, as fiercely as
with each other; both which practices were such degrees of infamous
brutality, as no other sensitive creature ever arrived at.

“Another thing he wondered at in the _Yahoos_, was their strange
disposition to nastiness and dirt; whereas there appears to be a natural
love of cleanliness in all other animals.”  As to the two former
accusations, I was glad to let them pass without any reply, because I had
not a word to offer upon them in defence of my species, which otherwise I
certainly had done from my own inclinations.  But I could have easily
vindicated humankind from the imputation of singularity upon the last
article, if there had been any swine in that country (as unluckily for me
there were not), which, although it may be a sweeter quadruped than a
_Yahoo_, cannot, I humbly conceive, in justice, pretend to more
cleanliness; and so his honour himself must have owned, if he had seen
their filthy way of feeding, and their custom of wallowing and sleeping
in the mud.

My master likewise mentioned another quality which his servants had
discovered in several Yahoos, and to him was wholly unaccountable.  He
said, “a fancy would sometimes take a _Yahoo_ to retire into a corner, to
lie down, and howl, and groan, and spurn away all that came near him,
although he were young and fat, wanted neither food nor water, nor did
the servant imagine what could possibly ail him.  And the only remedy
they found was, to set him to hard work, after which he would infallibly
come to himself.”  To this I was silent out of partiality to my own kind;
yet here I could plainly discover the true seeds of spleen, which only
seizes on the lazy, the luxurious, and the rich; who, if they were forced
to undergo the same regimen, I would undertake for the cure.

His honour had further observed, “that a female _Yahoo_ would often stand
behind a bank or a bush, to gaze on the young males passing by, and then
appear, and hide, using many antic gestures and grimaces, at which time
it was observed that she had a most offensive smell; and when any of the
males advanced, would slowly retire, looking often back, and with a
counterfeit show of fear, run off into some convenient place, where she
knew the male would follow her.

“At other times, if a female stranger came among them, three or four of
her own sex would get about her, and stare, and chatter, and grin, and
smell her all over; and then turn off with gestures, that seemed to
express contempt and disdain.”

Perhaps my master might refine a little in these speculations, which he
had drawn from what he observed himself, or had been told him by others;
however, I could not reflect without some amazement, and much sorrow,
that the rudiments of lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal, should
have place by instinct in womankind.

I expected every moment that my master would accuse the _Yahoos_ of those
unnatural appetites in both sexes, so common among us.  But nature, it
seems, has not been so expert a school-mistress; and these politer
pleasures are entirely the productions of art and reason on our side of
the globe.



CHAPTER VIII.


The author relates several particulars of the _Yahoos_.  The great
virtues of the _Houyhnhnms_.  The education and exercise of their youth.
Their general assembly.

As I ought to have understood human nature much better than I supposed it
possible for my master to do, so it was easy to apply the character he
gave of the _Yahoos_ to myself and my countrymen; and I believed I could
yet make further discoveries, from my own observation.  I therefore often
begged his honour to let me go among the herds of _Yahoos_ in the
neighbourhood; to which he always very graciously consented, being
perfectly convinced that the hatred I bore these brutes would never
suffer me to be corrupted by them; and his honour ordered one of his
servants, a strong sorrel nag, very honest and good-natured, to be my
guard; without whose protection I durst not undertake such adventures.
For I have already told the reader how much I was pestered by these
odious animals, upon my first arrival; and I afterwards failed very
narrowly, three or four times, of falling into their clutches, when I
happened to stray at any distance without my hanger.  And I have reason
to believe they had some imagination that I was of their own species,
which I often assisted myself by stripping up my sleeves, and showing my
naked arms and breasts in their sight, when my protector was with me.  At
which times they would approach as near as they durst, and imitate my
actions after the manner of monkeys, but ever with great signs of hatred;
as a tame jackdaw with cap and stockings is always persecuted by the wild
ones, when he happens to be got among them.

They are prodigiously nimble from their infancy.  However, I once caught
a young male of three years old, and endeavoured, by all marks of
tenderness, to make it quiet; but the little imp fell a squalling, and
scratching, and biting with such violence, that I was forced to let it
go; and it was high time, for a whole troop of old ones came about us at
the noise, but finding the cub was safe (for away it ran), and my sorrel
nag being by, they durst not venture near us.  I observed the young
animal’s flesh to smell very rank, and the stink was somewhat between a
weasel and a fox, but much more disagreeable.  I forgot another
circumstance (and perhaps I might have the reader’s pardon if it were
wholly omitted), that while I held the odious vermin in my hands, it
voided its filthy excrements of a yellow liquid substance all over my
clothes; but by good fortune there was a small brook hard by, where I
washed myself as clean as I could; although I durst not come into my
master’s presence until I were sufficiently aired.

By what I could discover, the _Yahoos_ appear to be the most unteachable
of all animals: their capacity never reaching higher than to draw or
carry burdens.  Yet I am of opinion, this defect arises chiefly from a
perverse, restive disposition; for they are cunning, malicious,
treacherous, and revengeful.  They are strong and hardy, but of a
cowardly spirit, and, by consequence, insolent, abject, and cruel.  It is
observed, that the red haired of both sexes are more libidinous and
mischievous than the rest, whom yet they much exceed in strength and
activity.

The _Houyhnhnms_ keep the _Yahoos_ for present use in huts not far from
the house; but the rest are sent abroad to certain fields, where they dig
up roots, eat several kinds of herbs, and search about for carrion, or
sometimes catch weasels and _luhimuhs_ (a sort of wild rat), which they
greedily devour.  Nature has taught them to dig deep holes with their
nails on the side of a rising ground, wherein they lie by themselves;
only the kennels of the females are larger, sufficient to hold two or
three cubs.

They swim from their infancy like frogs, and are able to continue long
under water, where they often take fish, which the females carry home to
their young.  And, upon this occasion, I hope the reader will pardon my
relating an odd adventure.

Being one day abroad with my protector the sorrel nag, and the weather
exceeding hot, I entreated him to let me bathe in a river that was near.
He consented, and I immediately stripped myself stark naked, and went
down softly into the stream.  It happened that a young female _Yahoo_,
standing behind a bank, saw the whole proceeding, and inflamed by desire,
as the nag and I conjectured, came running with all speed, and leaped
into the water, within five yards of the place where I bathed.  I was
never in my life so terribly frightened.  The nag was grazing at some
distance, not suspecting any harm.  She embraced me after a most fulsome
manner.  I roared as loud as I could, and the nag came galloping towards
me, whereupon she quitted her grasp, with the utmost reluctancy, and
leaped upon the opposite bank, where she stood gazing and howling all the
time I was putting on my clothes.

This was a matter of diversion to my master and his family, as well as of
mortification to myself.  For now I could no longer deny that I was a
real _Yahoo_ in every limb and feature, since the females had a natural
propensity to me, as one of their own species.  Neither was the hair of
this brute of a red colour (which might have been some excuse for an
appetite a little irregular), but black as a sloe, and her countenance
did not make an appearance altogether so hideous as the rest of her kind;
for I think she could not be above eleven years old.

Having lived three years in this country, the reader, I suppose, will
expect that I should, like other travellers, give him some account of the
manners and customs of its inhabitants, which it was indeed my principal
study to learn.

As these noble _Houyhnhnms_ are endowed by nature with a general
disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is
evil in a rational creature, so their grand maxim is, to cultivate
reason, and to be wholly governed by it.  Neither is reason among them a
point problematical, as with us, where men can argue with plausibility on
both sides of the question, but strikes you with immediate conviction; as
it must needs do, where it is not mingled, obscured, or discoloured, by
passion and interest.  I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I
could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or
how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or
deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do
either.  So that controversies, wranglings, disputes, and positiveness,
in false or dubious propositions, are evils unknown among the
_Houyhnhnms_.  In the like manner, when I used to explain to him our
several systems of natural philosophy, he would laugh, “that a creature
pretending to reason, should value itself upon the knowledge of other
people’s conjectures, and in things where that knowledge, if it were
certain, could be of no use.”  Wherein he agreed entirely with the
sentiments of Socrates, as Plato delivers them; which I mention as the
highest honour I can do that prince of philosophers.  I have often since
reflected, what destruction such doctrine would make in the libraries of
Europe; and how many paths of fame would be then shut up in the learned
world.

Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among the
_Houyhnhnms_; and these not confined to particular objects, but universal
to the whole race; for a stranger from the remotest part is equally
treated with the nearest neighbour, and wherever he goes, looks upon
himself as at home.  They preserve decency and civility in the highest
degrees, but are altogether ignorant of ceremony.  They have no fondness
for their colts or foals, but the care they take in educating them
proceeds entirely from the dictates of reason.  And I observed my master
to show the same affection to his neighbour’s issue, that he had for his
own.  They will have it that nature teaches them to love the whole
species, and it is reason only that makes a distinction of persons, where
there is a superior degree of virtue.

When the matron _Houyhnhnms_ have produced one of each sex, they no
longer accompany with their consorts, except they lose one of their issue
by some casualty, which very seldom happens; but in such a case they meet
again; or when the like accident befalls a person whose wife is past
bearing, some other couple bestow on him one of their own colts, and then
go together again until the mother is pregnant.  This caution is
necessary, to prevent the country from being overburdened with numbers.
But the race of inferior _Houyhnhnms_, bred up to be servants, is not so
strictly limited upon this article: these are allowed to produce three of
each sex, to be domestics in the noble families.

In their marriages, they are exactly careful to choose such colours as
will not make any disagreeable mixture in the breed.  Strength is chiefly
valued in the male, and comeliness in the female; not upon the account of
love, but to preserve the race from degenerating; for where a female
happens to excel in strength, a consort is chosen, with regard to
comeliness.

Courtship, love, presents, jointures, settlements have no place in their
thoughts, or terms whereby to express them in their language.  The young
couple meet, and are joined, merely because it is the determination of
their parents and friends; it is what they see done every day, and they
look upon it as one of the necessary actions of a reasonable being.  But
the violation of marriage, or any other unchastity, was never heard of;
and the married pair pass their lives with the same friendship and mutual
benevolence, that they bear to all others of the same species who come in
their way, without jealousy, fondness, quarrelling, or discontent.

In educating the youth of both sexes, their method is admirable, and
highly deserves our imitation.  These are not suffered to taste a grain
of oats, except upon certain days, till eighteen years old; nor milk, but
very rarely; and in summer they graze two hours in the morning, and as
many in the evening, which their parents likewise observe; but the
servants are not allowed above half that time, and a great part of their
grass is brought home, which they eat at the most convenient hours, when
they can be best spared from work.

Temperance, industry, exercise, and cleanliness, are the lessons equally
enjoined to the young ones of both sexes: and my master thought it
monstrous in us, to give the females a different kind of education from
the males, except in some articles of domestic management; whereby, as he
truly observed, one half of our natives were good for nothing but
bringing children into the world; and to trust the care of our children
to such useless animals, he said, was yet a greater instance of
brutality.

But the _Houyhnhnms_ train up their youth to strength, speed, and
hardiness, by exercising them in running races up and down steep hills,
and over hard stony grounds; and when they are all in a sweat, they are
ordered to leap over head and ears into a pond or river.  Four times a
year the youth of a certain district meet to show their proficiency in
running and leaping, and other feats of strength and agility; where the
victor is rewarded with a song in his or her praise.  On this festival,
the servants drive a herd of _Yahoos_ into the field, laden with hay, and
oats, and milk, for a repast to the _Houyhnhnms_; after which, these
brutes are immediately driven back again, for fear of being noisome to
the assembly.

Every fourth year, at the vernal equinox, there is a representative
council of the whole nation, which meets in a plain about twenty miles
from our house, and continues about five or six days.  Here they inquire
into the state and condition of the several districts; whether they
abound or be deficient in hay or oats, or cows, or _Yahoos_; and wherever
there is any want (which is but seldom) it is immediately supplied by
unanimous consent and contribution.  Here likewise the regulation of
children is settled: as for instance, if a _Houyhnhnm_ has two males, he
changes one of them with another that has two females; and when a child
has been lost by any casualty, where the mother is past breeding, it is
determined what family in the district shall breed another to supply the
loss.



CHAPTER IX.


A grand debate at the general assembly of the _Houyhnhnms_, and how it
was determined.  The learning of the _Houyhnhnms_.  Their buildings.
Their manner of burials.  The defectiveness of their language.

One of these grand assemblies was held in my time, about three months
before my departure, whither my master went as the representative of our
district.  In this council was resumed their old debate, and indeed the
only debate that ever happened in their country; whereof my master, after
his return, give me a very particular account.

The question to be debated was, “whether the _Yahoos_ should be
exterminated from the face of the earth?”  One of the members for the
affirmative offered several arguments of great strength and weight,
alleging, “that as the _Yahoos_ were the most filthy, noisome, and
deformed animals which nature ever produced, so they were the most
restive and indocible, mischievous and malicious; they would privately
suck the teats of the _Houyhnhnms’_ cows, kill and devour their cats,
trample down their oats and grass, if they were not continually watched,
and commit a thousand other extravagancies.”  He took notice of a general
tradition, “that _Yahoos_ had not been always in their country; but that
many ages ago, two of these brutes appeared together upon a mountain;
whether produced by the heat of the sun upon corrupted mud and slime, or
from the ooze and froth of the sea, was never known; that these _Yahoos_
engendered, and their brood, in a short time, grew so numerous as to
overrun and infest the whole nation; that the _Houyhnhnms_, to get rid of
this evil, made a general hunting, and at last enclosed the whole herd;
and destroying the elder, every _Houyhnhnm_ kept two young ones in a
kennel, and brought them to such a degree of tameness, as an animal, so
savage by nature, can be capable of acquiring, using them for draught and
carriage; that there seemed to be much truth in this tradition, and that
those creatures could not be _yinhniamshy_ (or _aborigines_ of the land),
because of the violent hatred the _Houyhnhnms_, as well as all other
animals, bore them, which, although their evil disposition sufficiently
deserved, could never have arrived at so high a degree if they had been
_aborigines_, or else they would have long since been rooted out; that
the inhabitants, taking a fancy to use the service of the _Yahoos_, had,
very imprudently, neglected to cultivate the breed of asses, which are a
comely animal, easily kept, more tame and orderly, without any offensive
smell, strong enough for labour, although they yield to the other in
agility of body, and if their braying be no agreeable sound, it is far
preferable to the horrible howlings of the _Yahoos_.”

Several others declared their sentiments to the same purpose, when my
master proposed an expedient to the assembly, whereof he had indeed
borrowed the hint from me.  “He approved of the tradition mentioned by
the honourable member who spoke before, and affirmed, that the two
_Yahoos_ said to be seen first among them, had been driven thither over
the sea; that coming to land, and being forsaken by their companions,
they retired to the mountains, and degenerating by degrees, became in
process of time much more savage than those of their own species in the
country whence these two originals came.  The reason of this assertion
was, that he had now in his possession a certain wonderful _Yahoo_
(meaning myself) which most of them had heard of, and many of them had
seen.  He then related to them how he first found me; that my body was
all covered with an artificial composure of the skins and hairs of other
animals; that I spoke in a language of my own, and had thoroughly learned
theirs; that I had related to him the accidents which brought me thither;
that when he saw me without my covering, I was an exact _Yahoo_ in every
part, only of a whiter colour, less hairy, and with shorter claws.  He
added, how I had endeavoured to persuade him, that in my own and other
countries, the _Yahoos_ acted as the governing, rational animal, and held
the _Houyhnhnms_ in servitude; that he observed in me all the qualities
of a _Yahoo_, only a little more civilized by some tincture of reason,
which, however, was in a degree as far inferior to the _Houyhnhnm_ race,
as the _Yahoos_ of their country were to me; that, among other things, I
mentioned a custom we had of castrating _Houyhnhnms_ when they were
young, in order to render them tame; that the operation was easy and
safe; that it was no shame to learn wisdom from brutes, as industry is
taught by the ant, and building by the swallow (for so I translate the
word _lyhannh_, although it be a much larger fowl); that this invention
might be practised upon the younger _Yahoos_ here, which besides
rendering them tractable and fitter for use, would in an age put an end
to the whole species, without destroying life; that in the mean time the
_Houyhnhnms_ should be exhorted to cultivate the breed of asses, which,
as they are in all respects more valuable brutes, so they have this
advantage, to be fit for service at five years old, which the others are
not till twelve.”

This was all my master thought fit to tell me, at that time, of what
passed in the grand council.  But he was pleased to conceal one
particular, which related personally to myself, whereof I soon felt the
unhappy effect, as the reader will know in its proper place, and whence I
date all the succeeding misfortunes of my life.

The _Houyhnhnms_ have no letters, and consequently their knowledge is all
traditional.  But there happening few events of any moment among a people
so well united, naturally disposed to every virtue, wholly governed by
reason, and cut off from all commerce with other nations, the historical
part is easily preserved without burdening their memories.  I have
already observed that they are subject to no diseases, and therefore can
have no need of physicians.  However, they have excellent medicines,
composed of herbs, to cure accidental bruises and cuts in the pastern or
frog of the foot, by sharp stones, as well as other maims and hurts in
the several parts of the body.

They calculate the year by the revolution of the sun and moon, but use no
subdivisions into weeks.  They are well enough acquainted with the
motions of those two luminaries, and understand the nature of eclipses;
and this is the utmost progress of their astronomy.

In poetry, they must be allowed to excel all other mortals; wherein the
justness of their similes, and the minuteness as well as exactness of
their descriptions, are indeed inimitable.  Their verses abound very much
in both of these, and usually contain either some exalted notions of
friendship and benevolence or the praises of those who were victors in
races and other bodily exercises.  Their buildings, although very rude
and simple, are not inconvenient, but well contrived to defend them from
all injuries of cold and heat.  They have a kind of tree, which at forty
years old loosens in the root, and falls with the first storm: it grows
very straight, and being pointed like stakes with a sharp stone (for the
_Houyhnhnms_ know not the use of iron), they stick them erect in the
ground, about ten inches asunder, and then weave in oat straw, or
sometimes wattles, between them.  The roof is made after the same manner,
and so are the doors.

The _Houyhnhnms_ use the hollow part, between the pastern and the hoof of
their fore-foot, as we do our hands, and this with greater dexterity than
I could at first imagine.  I have seen a white mare of our family thread
a needle (which I lent her on purpose) with that joint.  They milk their
cows, reap their oats, and do all the work which requires hands, in the
same manner.  They have a kind of hard flints, which, by grinding against
other stones, they form into instruments, that serve instead of wedges,
axes, and hammers.  With tools made of these flints, they likewise cut
their hay, and reap their oats, which there grow naturally in several
fields; the _Yahoos_ draw home the sheaves in carriages, and the servants
tread them in certain covered huts to get out the grain, which is kept in
stores.  They make a rude kind of earthen and wooden vessels, and bake
the former in the sun.

If they can avoid casualties, they die only of old age, and are buried in
the obscurest places that can be found, their friends and relations
expressing neither joy nor grief at their departure; nor does the dying
person discover the least regret that he is leaving the world, any more
than if he were upon returning home from a visit to one of his
neighbours.  I remember my master having once made an appointment with a
friend and his family to come to his house, upon some affair of
importance: on the day fixed, the mistress and her two children came very
late; she made two excuses, first for her husband, who, as she said,
happened that very morning to _shnuwnh_.  The word is strongly expressive
in their language, but not easily rendered into English; it signifies,
“to retire to his first mother.”  Her excuse for not coming sooner, was,
that her husband dying late in the morning, she was a good while
consulting her servants about a convenient place where his body should be
laid; and I observed, she behaved herself at our house as cheerfully as
the rest.  She died about three months after.

They live generally to seventy, or seventy-five years, very seldom to
fourscore.  Some weeks before their death, they feel a gradual decay; but
without pain.  During this time they are much visited by their friends,
because they cannot go abroad with their usual ease and satisfaction.
However, about ten days before their death, which they seldom fail in
computing, they return the visits that have been made them by those who
are nearest in the neighbourhood, being carried in a convenient sledge
drawn by _Yahoos_; which vehicle they use, not only upon this occasion,
but when they grow old, upon long journeys, or when they are lamed by any
accident: and therefore when the dying _Houyhnhnms_ return those visits,
they take a solemn leave of their friends, as if they were going to some
remote part of the country, where they designed to pass the rest of their
lives.

I know not whether it may be worth observing, that the _Houyhnhnms_ have
no word in their language to express any thing that is evil, except what
they borrow from the deformities or ill qualities of the _Yahoos_.  Thus
they denote the folly of a servant, an omission of a child, a stone that
cuts their feet, a continuance of foul or unseasonable weather, and the
like, by adding to each the epithet of _Yahoo_.  For instance, _hhnm
Yahoo_; _whnaholm Yahoo_, _ynlhmndwihlma Yahoo_, and an ill-contrived
house _ynholmhnmrohlnw Yahoo_.

I could, with great pleasure, enlarge further upon the manners and
virtues of this excellent people; but intending in a short time to
publish a volume by itself, expressly upon that subject, I refer the
reader thither; and, in the mean time, proceed to relate my own sad
catastrophe.



CHAPTER X.


The author’s economy, and happy life, among the Houyhnhnms.  His great
improvement in virtue by conversing with them.  Their conversations.  The
author has notice given him by his master, that he must depart from the
country.  He falls into a swoon for grief; but submits.  He contrives and
finishes a canoe by the help of a fellow-servant, and puts to sea at a
venture.

I had settled my little economy to my own heart’s content.  My master had
ordered a room to be made for me, after their manner, about six yards
from the house: the sides and floors of which I plastered with clay, and
covered with rush-mats of my own contriving.  I had beaten hemp, which
there grows wild, and made of it a sort of ticking; this I filled with
the feathers of several birds I had taken with springes made of _Yahoos’_
hairs, and were excellent food.  I had worked two chairs with my knife,
the sorrel nag helping me in the grosser and more laborious part.  When
my clothes were worn to rags, I made myself others with the skins of
rabbits, and of a certain beautiful animal, about the same size, called
_nnuhnoh_, the skin of which is covered with a fine down.  Of these I
also made very tolerable stockings.  I soled my shoes with wood, which I
cut from a tree, and fitted to the upper-leather; and when this was worn
out, I supplied it with the skins of _Yahoos_ dried in the sun.  I often
got honey out of hollow trees, which I mingled with water, or ate with my
bread.  No man could more verify the truth of these two maxims, “That
nature is very easily satisfied;” and, “That necessity is the mother of
invention.”  I enjoyed perfect health of body, and tranquillity of mind;
I did not feel the treachery or inconstancy of a friend, nor the injuries
of a secret or open enemy.  I had no occasion of bribing, flattering, or
pimping, to procure the favour of any great man, or of his minion; I
wanted no fence against fraud or oppression: here was neither physician
to destroy my body, nor lawyer to ruin my fortune; no informer to watch
my words and actions, or forge accusations against me for hire: here were
no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, housebreakers,
attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetics,
tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers,
virtuosos; no leaders, or followers, of party and faction; no encouragers
to vice, by seducement or examples; no dungeon, axes, gibbets,
whipping-posts, or pillories; no cheating shopkeepers or mechanics; no
pride, vanity, or affectation; no fops, bullies, drunkards, strolling
whores, or poxes; no ranting, lewd, expensive wives; no stupid, proud
pedants; no importunate, overbearing, quarrelsome, noisy, roaring, empty,
conceited, swearing companions; no scoundrels raised from the dust upon
the merit of their vices, or nobility thrown into it on account of their
virtues; no lords, fiddlers, judges, or dancing-masters.

I had the favour of being admitted to several _Houyhnhnms_, who came to
visit or dine with my master; where his honour graciously suffered me to
wait in the room, and listen to their discourse.  Both he and his company
would often descend to ask me questions, and receive my answers.  I had
also sometimes the honour of attending my master in his visits to others.
I never presumed to speak, except in answer to a question; and then I did
it with inward regret, because it was a loss of so much time for
improving myself; but I was infinitely delighted with the station of an
humble auditor in such conversations, where nothing passed but what was
useful, expressed in the fewest and most significant words; where, as I
have already said, the greatest decency was observed, without the least
degree of ceremony; where no person spoke without being pleased himself,
and pleasing his companions; where there was no interruption,
tediousness, heat, or difference of sentiments.  They have a notion, that
when people are met together, a short silence does much improve
conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little
intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their minds, which very
much enlivened the discourse.  Their subjects are, generally on
friendship and benevolence, on order and economy; sometimes upon the
visible operations of nature, or ancient traditions; upon the bounds and
limits of virtue; upon the unerring rules of reason, or upon some
determinations to be taken at the next great assembly: and often upon the
various excellences of poetry.  I may add, without vanity, that my
presence often gave them sufficient matter for discourse, because it
afforded my master an occasion of letting his friends into the history of
me and my country, upon which they were all pleased to descant, in a
manner not very advantageous to humankind: and for that reason I shall
not repeat what they said; only I may be allowed to observe, that his
honour, to my great admiration, appeared to understand the nature of
_Yahoos_ much better than myself.  He went through all our vices and
follies, and discovered many, which I had never mentioned to him, by only
supposing what qualities a _Yahoo_ of their country, with a small
proportion of reason, might be capable of exerting; and concluded, with
too much probability, “how vile, as well as miserable, such a creature
must be.”

I freely confess, that all the little knowledge I have of any value, was
acquired by the lectures I received from my master, and from hearing the
discourses of him and his friends; to which I should be prouder to
listen, than to dictate to the greatest and wisest assembly in Europe.  I
admired the strength, comeliness, and speed of the inhabitants; and such
a constellation of virtues, in such amiable persons, produced in me the
highest veneration.  At first, indeed, I did not feel that natural awe,
which the _Yahoos_ and all other animals bear toward them; but it grew
upon me by decrees, much sooner than I imagined, and was mingled with a
respectful love and gratitude, that they would condescend to distinguish
me from the rest of my species.

When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or the human race
in general, I considered them, as they really were, _Yahoos_ in shape and
disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the gift
of speech; but making no other use of reason, than to improve and
multiply those vices whereof their brethren in this country had only the
share that nature allotted them.  When I happened to behold the
reflection of my own form in a lake or fountain, I turned away my face in
horror and detestation of myself, and could better endure the sight of a
common _Yahoo_ than of my own person.  By conversing with the
_Houyhnhnms_, and looking upon them with delight, I fell to imitate their
gait and gesture, which is now grown into a habit; and my friends often
tell me, in a blunt way, “that I trot like a horse;” which, however, I
take for a great compliment.  Neither shall I disown, that in speaking I
am apt to fall into the voice and manner of the _Houyhnhnms_, and hear
myself ridiculed on that account, without the least mortification.

In the midst of all this happiness, and when I looked upon myself to be
fully settled for life, my master sent for me one morning a little
earlier than his usual hour.  I observed by his countenance that he was
in some perplexity, and at a loss how to begin what he had to speak.
After a short silence, he told me, “he did not know how I would take what
he was going to say: that in the last general assembly, when the affair
of the _Yahoos_ was entered upon, the representatives had taken offence
at his keeping a _Yahoo_ (meaning myself) in his family, more like a
_Houyhnhnm_ than a brute animal; that he was known frequently to converse
with me, as if he could receive some advantage or pleasure in my company;
that such a practice was not agreeable to reason or nature, or a thing
ever heard of before among them; the assembly did therefore exhort him
either to employ me like the rest of my species, or command me to swim
back to the place whence I came: that the first of these expedients was
utterly rejected by all the _Houyhnhnms_ who had ever seen me at his
house or their own; for they alleged, that because I had some rudiments
of reason, added to the natural pravity of those animals, it was to be
feared I might be able to seduce them into the woody and mountainous
parts of the country, and bring them in troops by night to destroy the
_Houyhnhnms’_ cattle, as being naturally of the ravenous kind, and averse
from labour.”

My master added, “that he was daily pressed by the _Houyhnhnms_ of the
neighbourhood to have the assembly’s exhortation executed, which he could
not put off much longer.  He doubted it would be impossible for me to
swim to another country; and therefore wished I would contrive some sort
of vehicle, resembling those I had described to him, that might carry me
on the sea; in which work I should have the assistance of his own
servants, as well as those of his neighbours.”  He concluded, “that for
his own part, he could have been content to keep me in his service as
long as I lived; because he found I had cured myself of some bad habits
and dispositions, by endeavouring, as far as my inferior nature was
capable, to imitate the _Houyhnhnms_.”

I should here observe to the reader, that a decree of the general
assembly in this country is expressed by the word _hnhloayn_, which
signifies an exhortation, as near as I can render it; for they have no
conception how a rational creature can be compelled, but only advised, or
exhorted; because no person can disobey reason, without giving up his
claim to be a rational creature.

I was struck with the utmost grief and despair at my master’s discourse;
and being unable to support the agonies I was under, I fell into a swoon
at his feet.  When I came to myself, he told me “that he concluded I had
been dead;” for these people are subject to no such imbecilities of
nature.  I answered in a faint voice, “that death would have been too
great a happiness; that although I could not blame the assembly’s
exhortation, or the urgency of his friends; yet, in my weak and corrupt
judgment, I thought it might consist with reason to have been less
rigorous; that I could not swim a league, and probably the nearest land
to theirs might be distant above a hundred: that many materials,
necessary for making a small vessel to carry me off, were wholly wanting
in this country; which, however, I would attempt, in obedience and
gratitude to his honour, although I concluded the thing to be impossible,
and therefore looked on myself as already devoted to destruction; that
the certain prospect of an unnatural death was the least of my evils;
for, supposing I should escape with life by some strange adventure, how
could I think with temper of passing my days among _Yahoos_, and
relapsing into my old corruptions, for want of examples to lead and keep
me within the paths of virtue? that I knew too well upon what solid
reasons all the determinations of the wise _Houyhnhnms_ were founded, not
to be shaken by arguments of mine, a miserable _Yahoo_; and therefore,
after presenting him with my humble thanks for the offer of his servants’
assistance in making a vessel, and desiring a reasonable time for so
difficult a work, I told him I would endeavour to preserve a wretched
being; and if ever I returned to England, was not without hopes of being
useful to my own species, by celebrating the praises of the renowned
_Houyhnhnms_, and proposing their virtues to the imitation of mankind.”

My master, in a few words, made me a very gracious reply; allowed me the
space of two months to finish my boat; and ordered the sorrel nag, my
fellow-servant (for so, at this distance, I may presume to call him), to
follow my instruction; because I told my master, “that his help would be
sufficient, and I knew he had a tenderness for me.”

In his company, my first business was to go to that part of the coast
where my rebellious crew had ordered me to be set on shore.  I got upon a
height, and looking on every side into the sea; fancied I saw a small
island toward the north-east.  I took out my pocket glass, and could then
clearly distinguish it above five leagues off, as I computed; but it
appeared to the sorrel nag to be only a blue cloud: for as he had no
conception of any country beside his own, so he could not be as expert in
distinguishing remote objects at sea, as we who so much converse in that
element.

After I had discovered this island, I considered no further; but resolved
it should if possible, be the first place of my banishment, leaving the
consequence to fortune.

I returned home, and consulting with the sorrel nag, we went into a copse
at some distance, where I with my knife, and he with a sharp flint,
fastened very artificially after their manner, to a wooden handle, cut
down several oak wattles, about the thickness of a walking-staff, and
some larger pieces.  But I shall not trouble the reader with a particular
description of my own mechanics; let it suffice to say, that in six weeks
time with the help of the sorrel nag, who performed the parts that
required most labour, I finished a sort of Indian canoe, but much larger,
covering it with the skins of _Yahoos_, well stitched together with
hempen threads of my own making.  My sail was likewise composed of the
skins of the same animal; but I made use of the youngest I could get, the
older being too tough and thick; and I likewise provided myself with four
paddles.  I laid in a stock of boiled flesh, of rabbits and fowls, and
took with me two vessels, one filled with milk and the other with water.

I tried my canoe in a large pond, near my master’s house, and then
corrected in it what was amiss; stopping all the chinks with _Yahoos’_
tallow, till I found it staunch, and able to bear me and my freight; and,
when it was as complete as I could possibly make it, I had it drawn on a
carriage very gently by _Yahoos_ to the sea-side, under the conduct of
the sorrel nag and another servant.

When all was ready, and the day came for my departure, I took leave of my
master and lady and the whole family, my eyes flowing with tears, and my
heart quite sunk with grief.  But his honour, out of curiosity, and,
perhaps, (if I may speak without vanity,) partly out of kindness, was
determined to see me in my canoe, and got several of his neighbouring
friends to accompany him.  I was forced to wait above an hour for the
tide; and then observing the wind very fortunately bearing toward the
island to which I intended to steer my course, I took a second leave of
my master: but as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he
did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth.  I am not ignorant how
much I have been censured for mentioning this last particular.
Detractors are pleased to think it improbable, that so illustrious a
person should descend to give so great a mark of distinction to a
creature so inferior as I.  Neither have I forgotten how apt some
travellers are to boast of extraordinary favours they have received.
But, if these censurers were better acquainted with the noble and
courteous disposition of the _Houyhnhnms_, they would soon change their
opinion.

I paid my respects to the rest of the _Houyhnhnms_ in his honour’s
company; then getting into my canoe, I pushed off from shore.



CHAPTER XI.


The author’s dangerous voyage.  He arrives at New Holland, hoping to
settle there.  Is wounded with an arrow by one of the natives.  Is seized
and carried by force into a Portuguese ship.  The great civilities of the
captain.  The author arrives at England.

I began this desperate voyage on February 15, 1714–15, at nine o’clock in
the morning.  The wind was very favourable; however, I made use at first
only of my paddles; but considering I should soon be weary, and that the
wind might chop about, I ventured to set up my little sail; and thus,
with the help of the tide, I went at the rate of a league and a half an
hour, as near as I could guess.  My master and his friends continued on
the shore till I was almost out of sight; and I often heard the sorrel
nag (who always loved me) crying out, “_Hnuy illa nyha_, _majah Yahoo_;”
“Take care of thyself, gentle _Yahoo_.”

My design was, if possible, to discover some small island uninhabited,
yet sufficient, by my labour, to furnish me with the necessaries of life,
which I would have thought a greater happiness, than to be first minister
in the politest court of Europe; so horrible was the idea I conceived of
returning to live in the society, and under the government of _Yahoos_.
For in such a solitude as I desired, I could at least enjoy my own
thoughts, and reflect with delight on the virtues of those inimitable
_Houyhnhnms_, without an opportunity of degenerating into the vices and
corruptions of my own species.

The reader may remember what I related, when my crew conspired against
me, and confined me to my cabin; how I continued there several weeks
without knowing what course we took; and when I was put ashore in the
long-boat, how the sailors told me, with oaths, whether true or false,
“that they knew not in what part of the world we were.”  However, I did
then believe us to be about 10 degrees southward of the Cape of Good
Hope, or about 45 degrees southern latitude, as I gathered from some
general words I overheard among them, being I supposed to the south-east
in their intended voyage to Madagascar.  And although this were little
better than conjecture, yet I resolved to steer my course eastward,
hoping to reach the south-west coast of New Holland, and perhaps some
such island as I desired lying westward of it.  The wind was full west,
and by six in the evening I computed I had gone eastward at least
eighteen leagues; when I spied a very small island about half a league
off, which I soon reached.  It was nothing but a rock, with one creek
naturally arched by the force of tempests.  Here I put in my canoe, and
climbing a part of the rock, I could plainly discover land to the east,
extending from south to north.  I lay all night in my canoe; and
repeating my voyage early in the morning, I arrived in seven hours to the
south-east point of New Holland.  This confirmed me in the opinion I have
long entertained, that the maps and charts place this country at least
three degrees more to the east than it really is; which thought I
communicated many years ago to my worthy friend, Mr. Herman Moll, and
gave him my reasons for it, although he has rather chosen to follow other
authors.

I saw no inhabitants in the place where I landed, and being unarmed, I
was afraid of venturing far into the country.  I found some shellfish on
the shore, and ate them raw, not daring to kindle a fire, for fear of
being discovered by the natives.  I continued three days feeding on
oysters and limpets, to save my own provisions; and I fortunately found a
brook of excellent water, which gave me great relief.

On the fourth day, venturing out early a little too far, I saw twenty or
thirty natives upon a height not above five hundred yards from me.  They
were stark naked, men, women, and children, round a fire, as I could
discover by the smoke.  One of them spied me, and gave notice to the
rest; five of them advanced toward me, leaving the women and children at
the fire.  I made what haste I could to the shore, and, getting into my
canoe, shoved off: the savages, observing me retreat, ran after me: and
before I could get far enough into the sea, discharged an arrow which
wounded me deeply on the inside of my left knee: I shall carry the mark
to my grave.  I apprehended the arrow might be poisoned, and paddling out
of the reach of their darts (being a calm day), I made a shift to suck
the wound, and dress it as well as I could.

I was at a loss what to do, for I durst not return to the same
landing-place, but stood to the north, and was forced to paddle, for the
wind, though very gentle, was against me, blowing north-west.  As I was
looking about for a secure landing-place, I saw a sail to the
north-north-east, which appearing every minute more visible, I was in
some doubt whether I should wait for them or not; but at last my
detestation of the _Yahoo_ race prevailed: and turning my canoe, I sailed
and paddled together to the south, and got into the same creek whence I
set out in the morning, choosing rather to trust myself among these
barbarians, than live with European _Yahoos_.  I drew up my canoe as
close as I could to the shore, and hid myself behind a stone by the
little brook, which, as I have already said, was excellent water.

The ship came within half a league of this creek, and sent her long boat
with vessels to take in fresh water (for the place, it seems, was very
well known); but I did not observe it, till the boat was almost on shore;
and it was too late to seek another hiding-place.  The seamen at their
landing observed my canoe, and rummaging it all over, easily conjectured
that the owner could not be far off.  Four of them, well armed, searched
every cranny and lurking-hole, till at last they found me flat on my face
behind the stone.  They gazed awhile in admiration at my strange uncouth
dress; my coat made of skins, my wooden-soled shoes, and my furred
stockings; whence, however, they concluded, I was not a native of the
place, who all go naked.  One of the seamen, in Portuguese, bid me rise,
and asked who I was.  I understood that language very well, and getting
upon my feet, said, “I was a poor _Yahoo_ banished from the _Houyhnhnms_,
and desired they would please to let me depart.”  They admired to hear me
answer them in their own tongue, and saw by my complexion I must be a
European; but were at a loss to know what I meant by _Yahoos_ and
_Houyhnhnms_; and at the same time fell a-laughing at my strange tone in
speaking, which resembled the neighing of a horse.  I trembled all the
while betwixt fear and hatred.  I again desired leave to depart, and was
gently moving to my canoe; but they laid hold of me, desiring to know,
“what country I was of? whence I came?” with many other questions.  I
told them “I was born in England, whence I came about five years ago, and
then their country and ours were at peace.  I therefore hoped they would
not treat me as an enemy, since I meant them no harm, but was a poor
_Yahoo_ seeking some desolate place where to pass the remainder of his
unfortunate life.”

When they began to talk, I thought I never heard or saw any thing more
unnatural; for it appeared to me as monstrous as if a dog or a cow should
speak in England, or a _Yahoo_ in _Houyhnhnmland_.  The honest Portuguese
were equally amazed at my strange dress, and the odd manner of delivering
my words, which, however, they understood very well.  They spoke to me
with great humanity, and said, “they were sure the captain would carry me
_gratis_ to Lisbon, whence I might return to my own country; that two of
the seamen would go back to the ship, inform the captain of what they had
seen, and receive his orders; in the mean time, unless I would give my
solemn oath not to fly, they would secure me by force.  I thought it best
to comply with their proposal.  They were very curious to know my story,
but I gave them very little satisfaction, and they all conjectured that
my misfortunes had impaired my reason.  In two hours the boat, which went
laden with vessels of water, returned, with the captain’s command to
fetch me on board.  I fell on my knees to preserve my liberty; but all
was in vain; and the men, having tied me with cords, heaved me into the
boat, whence I was taken into the ship, and thence into the captain’s
cabin.

His name was Pedro de Mendez; he was a very courteous and generous
person.  He entreated me to give some account of myself, and desired to
know what I would eat or drink; said, “I should be used as well as
himself;” and spoke so many obliging things, that I wondered to find such
civilities from a _Yahoo_.  However, I remained silent and sullen; I was
ready to faint at the very smell of him and his men.  At last I desired
something to eat out of my own canoe; but he ordered me a chicken, and
some excellent wine, and then directed that I should be put to bed in a
very clean cabin.  I would not undress myself, but lay on the
bed-clothes, and in half an hour stole out, when I thought the crew was
at dinner, and getting to the side of the ship, was going to leap into
the sea, and swim for my life, rather than continue among _Yahoos_.  But
one of the seamen prevented me, and having informed the captain, I was
chained to my cabin.

After dinner, Don Pedro came to me, and desired to know my reason for so
desperate an attempt; assured me, “he only meant to do me all the service
he was able;” and spoke so very movingly, that at last I descended to
treat him like an animal which had some little portion of reason.  I gave
him a very short relation of my voyage; of the conspiracy against me by
my own men; of the country where they set me on shore, and of my five
years residence there.  All which he looked upon as if it were a dream or
a vision; whereat I took great offence; for I had quite forgot the
faculty of lying, so peculiar to _Yahoos_, in all countries where they
preside, and, consequently, their disposition of suspecting truth in
others of their own species.  I asked him, “whether it were the custom in
his country to say the thing which was not?”  I assured him, “I had
almost forgot what he meant by falsehood, and if I had lived a thousand
years in _Houyhnhnmland_, I should never have heard a lie from the
meanest servant; that I was altogether indifferent whether he believed me
or not; but, however, in return for his favours, I would give so much
allowance to the corruption of his nature, as to answer any objection he
would please to make, and then he might easily discover the truth.”

The captain, a wise man, after many endeavours to catch me tripping in
some part of my story, at last began to have a better opinion of my
veracity.  But he added, “that since I professed so inviolable an
attachment to truth, I must give him my word and honour to bear him
company in this voyage, without attempting any thing against my life; or
else he would continue me a prisoner till we arrived at Lisbon.”  I gave
him the promise he required; but at the same time protested, “that I
would suffer the greatest hardships, rather than return to live among
_Yahoos_.”

Our voyage passed without any considerable accident.  In gratitude to the
captain, I sometimes sat with him, at his earnest request, and strove to
conceal my antipathy against human kind, although it often broke out;
which he suffered to pass without observation.  But the greatest part of
the day I confined myself to my cabin, to avoid seeing any of the crew.
The captain had often entreated me to strip myself of my savage dress,
and offered to lend me the best suit of clothes he had.  This I would not
be prevailed on to accept, abhorring to cover myself with any thing that
had been on the back of a _Yahoo_.  I only desired he would lend me two
clean shirts, which, having been washed since he wore them, I believed
would not so much defile me.  These I changed every second day, and
washed them myself.

We arrived at Lisbon, Nov. 5, 1715.  At our landing, the captain forced
me to cover myself with his cloak, to prevent the rabble from crowding
about me.  I was conveyed to his own house; and at my earnest request he
led me up to the highest room backwards.  I conjured him “to conceal from
all persons what I had told him of the _Houyhnhnms_; because the least
hint of such a story would not only draw numbers of people to see me, but
probably put me in danger of being imprisoned, or burnt by the
Inquisition.”  The captain persuaded me to accept a suit of clothes newly
made; but I would not suffer the tailor to take my measure; however, Don
Pedro being almost of my size, they fitted me well enough.  He accoutred
me with other necessaries, all new, which I aired for twenty-four hours
before I would use them.

The captain had no wife, nor above three servants, none of which were
suffered to attend at meals; and his whole deportment was so obliging,
added to very good human understanding, that I really began to tolerate
his company.  He gained so far upon me, that I ventured to look out of
the back window.  By degrees I was brought into another room, whence I
peeped into the street, but drew my head back in a fright.  In a week’s
time he seduced me down to the door.  I found my terror gradually
lessened, but my hatred and contempt seemed to increase.  I was at last
bold enough to walk the street in his company, but kept my nose well
stopped with rue, or sometimes with tobacco.

In ten days, Don Pedro, to whom I had given some account of my domestic
affairs, put it upon me, as a matter of honour and conscience, “that I
ought to return to my native country, and live at home with my wife and
children.”  He told me, “there was an English ship in the port just ready
to sail, and he would furnish me with all things necessary.”  It would be
tedious to repeat his arguments, and my contradictions.  He said, “it was
altogether impossible to find such a solitary island as I desired to live
in; but I might command in my own house, and pass my time in a manner as
recluse as I pleased.”

I complied at last, finding I could not do better.  I left Lisbon the
24th day of November, in an English merchantman, but who was the master I
never inquired.  Don Pedro accompanied me to the ship, and lent me twenty
pounds.  He took kind leave of me, and embraced me at parting, which I
bore as well as I could.  During this last voyage I had no commerce with
the master or any of his men; but, pretending I was sick, kept close in
my cabin.  On the fifth of December, 1715, we cast anchor in the Downs,
about nine in the morning, and at three in the afternoon I got safe to my
house at Rotherhith. {546}

My wife and family received me with great surprise and joy, because they
concluded me certainly dead; but I must freely confess the sight of them
filled me only with hatred, disgust, and contempt; and the more, by
reflecting on the near alliance I had to them.  For although, since my
unfortunate exile from the _Houyhnhnm_ country, I had compelled myself to
tolerate the sight of _Yahoos_, and to converse with Don Pedro de Mendez,
yet my memory and imagination were perpetually filled with the virtues
and ideas of those exalted _Houyhnhnms_.  And when I began to consider
that, by copulating with one of the _Yahoo_ species I had become a parent
of more, it struck me with the utmost shame, confusion, and horror.

As soon as I entered the house, my wife took me in her arms, and kissed
me; at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal for
so many years, I fell into a swoon for almost an hour.  At the time I am
writing, it is five years since my last return to England.  During the
first year, I could not endure my wife or children in my presence; the
very smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them to eat
in the same room.  To this hour they dare not presume to touch my bread,
or drink out of the same cup, neither was I ever able to let one of them
take me by the hand.  The first money I laid out was to buy two young
stone-horses, which I keep in a good stable; and next to them, the groom
is my greatest favourite, for I feel my spirits revived by the smell he
contracts in the stable.  My horses understand me tolerably well; I
converse with them at least four hours every day.  They are strangers to
bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me and friendship to each
other.



CHAPTER XII.


The author’s veracity.  His design in publishing this work.  His censure
of those travellers who swerve from the truth.  The author clears himself
from any sinister ends in writing.  An objection answered.  The method of
planting colonies.  His native country commended.  The right of the crown
to those countries described by the author is justified.  The difficulty
of conquering them.  The author takes his last leave of the reader;
proposes his manner of living for the future; gives good advice, and
concludes.

Thus, gentle reader, I have given thee a faithful history of my travels
for sixteen years and above seven months: wherein I have not been so
studious of ornament as of truth.  I could, perhaps, like others, have
astonished thee with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to
relate plain matter of fact, in the simplest manner and style; because my
principal design was to inform, and not to amuse thee.

It is easy for us who travel into remote countries, which are seldom
visited by Englishmen or other Europeans, to form descriptions of
wonderful animals both at sea and land.  Whereas a traveller’s chief aim
should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the
bad, as well as good, example of what they deliver concerning foreign
places.

I could heartily wish a law was enacted, that every traveller, before he
were permitted to publish his voyages, should be obliged to make oath
before the Lord High Chancellor, that all he intended to print was
absolutely true to the best of his knowledge; for then the world would no
longer be deceived, as it usually is, while some writers, to make their
works pass the better upon the public, impose the grossest falsities on
the unwary reader.  I have perused several books of travels with great
delight in my younger days; but having since gone over most parts of the
globe, and been able to contradict many fabulous accounts from my own
observation, it has given me a great disgust against this part of
reading, and some indignation to see the credulity of mankind so
impudently abused.  Therefore, since my acquaintance were pleased to
think my poor endeavours might not be unacceptable to my country, I
imposed on myself, as a maxim never to be swerved from, that I would
strictly adhere to truth; neither indeed can I be ever under the least
temptation to vary from it, while I retain in my mind the lectures and
example of my noble master and the other illustrious _Houyhnhnms_ of whom
I had so long the honour to be an humble hearer.

    _—Nec si miserum Fortuna Sinonem_
    _Finxit_, _vanum etiam_, _mendacemque improba finget_.

I know very well, how little reputation is to be got by writings which
require neither genius nor learning, nor indeed any other talent, except
a good memory, or an exact journal.  I know likewise, that writers of
travels, like dictionary-makers, are sunk into oblivion by the weight and
bulk of those who come last, and therefore lie uppermost.  And it is
highly probable, that such travellers, who shall hereafter visit the
countries described in this work of mine, may, by detecting my errors (if
there be any), and adding many new discoveries of their own, justle me
out of vogue, and stand in my place, making the world forget that ever I
was an author.  This indeed would be too great a mortification, if I
wrote for fame: but as my sole intention was the public good, I cannot be
altogether disappointed.  For who can read of the virtues I have
mentioned in the glorious _Houyhnhnms_, without being ashamed of his own
vices, when he considers himself as the reasoning, governing animal of
his country?  I shall say nothing of those remote nations where _Yahoos_
preside; among which the least corrupted are the _Brobdingnagians_; whose
wise maxims in morality and government it would be our happiness to
observe.  But I forbear descanting further, and rather leave the
judicious reader to his own remarks and application.

I am not a little pleased that this work of mine can possibly meet with
no censurers: for what objections can be made against a writer, who
relates only plain facts, that happened in such distant countries, where
we have not the least interest, with respect either to trade or
negotiations?  I have carefully avoided every fault with which common
writers of travels are often too justly charged.  Besides, I meddle not
the least with any party, but write without passion, prejudice, or
ill-will against any man, or number of men, whatsoever.  I write for the
noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind; over whom I may, without
breach of modesty, pretend to some superiority, from the advantages I
received by conversing so long among the most accomplished _Houyhnhnms_.
I write without any view to profit or praise.  I never suffer a word to
pass that may look like reflection, or possibly give the least offence,
even to those who are most ready to take it.  So that I hope I may with
justice pronounce myself an author perfectly blameless; against whom the
tribes of Answerers, Considerers, Observers, Reflectors, Detectors,
Remarkers, will never be able to find matter for exercising their
talents.

I confess, it was whispered to me, “that I was bound in duty, as a
subject of England, to have given in a memorial to a secretary of state
at my first coming over; because, whatever lands are discovered by a
subject belong to the crown.”  But I doubt whether our conquests in the
countries I treat of would be as easy as those of Ferdinando Cortez over
the naked Americans.  The _Lilliputians_, I think, are hardly worth the
charge of a fleet and army to reduce them; and I question whether it
might be prudent or safe to attempt the _Brobdingnagians_; or whether an
English army would be much at their ease with the Flying Island over
their heads.  The _Houyhnhnms_ indeed appear not to be so well prepared
for war, a science to which they are perfect strangers, and especially
against missive weapons.  However, supposing myself to be a minister of
state, I could never give my advice for invading them.  Their prudence,
unanimity, unacquaintedness with fear, and their love of their country,
would amply supply all defects in the military art.  Imagine twenty
thousand of them breaking into the midst of an European army, confounding
the ranks, overturning the carriages, battering the warriors’ faces into
mummy by terrible yerks from their hinder hoofs; for they would well
deserve the character given to Augustus, _Recalcitrat undique tutus_.
But, instead of proposals for conquering that magnanimous nation, I
rather wish they were in a capacity, or disposition, to send a sufficient
number of their inhabitants for civilizing Europe, by teaching us the
first principles of honour, justice, truth, temperance, public spirit,
fortitude, chastity, friendship, benevolence, and fidelity.  The names of
all which virtues are still retained among us in most languages, and are
to be met with in modern, as well as ancient authors; which I am able to
assert from my own small reading.

But I had another reason, which made me less forward to enlarge his
majesty’s dominions by my discoveries.  To say the truth, I had conceived
a few scruples with relation to the distributive justice of princes upon
those occasions.  For instance, a crew of pirates are driven by a storm
they know not whither; at length a boy discovers land from the topmast;
they go on shore to rob and plunder, they see a harmless people, are
entertained with kindness; they give the country a new name; they take
formal possession of it for their king; they set up a rotten plank, or a
stone, for a memorial; they murder two or three dozen of the natives,
bring away a couple more, by force, for a sample; return home, and get
their pardon.  Here commences a new dominion acquired with a title by
divine right.  Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the natives
driven out or destroyed; their princes tortured to discover their gold; a
free license given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking
with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers,
employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony, sent to convert
and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous people!

But this description, I confess, does by no means affect the British
nation, who may be an example to the whole world for their wisdom, care,
and justice in planting colonies; their liberal endowments for the
advancement of religion and learning; their choice of devout and able
pastors to propagate Christianity; their caution in stocking their
provinces with people of sober lives and conversations from this the
mother kingdom; their strict regard to the distribution of justice, in
supplying the civil administration through all their colonies with
officers of the greatest abilities, utter strangers to corruption; and,
to crown all, by sending the most vigilant and virtuous governors, who
have no other views than the happiness of the people over whom they
preside, and the honour of the king their master.

But as those countries which I have described do not appear to have any
desire of being conquered and enslaved, murdered or driven out by
colonies, nor abound either in gold, silver, sugar, or tobacco, I did
humbly conceive, they were by no means proper objects of our zeal, our
valour, or our interest.  However, if those whom it more concerns think
fit to be of another opinion, I am ready to depose, when I shall be
lawfully called, that no European did ever visit those countries before
me.  I mean, if the inhabitants ought to be believed, unless a dispute
may arise concerning the two _Yahoos_, said to have been seen many years
ago upon a mountain in _Houyhnhnmland_.

But, as to the formality of taking possession in my sovereign’s name, it
never came once into my thoughts; and if it had, yet, as my affairs then
stood, I should perhaps, in point of prudence and self-preservation, have
put it off to a better opportunity.

Having thus answered the only objection that can ever be raised against
me as a traveller, I here take a final leave of all my courteous readers,
and return to enjoy my own speculations in my little garden at Redriff;
to apply those excellent lessons of virtue which I learned among the
_Houyhnhnms_; to instruct the _Yahoos_ of my own family, is far as I
shall find them docible animals; to behold my figure often in a glass,
and thus, if possible, habituate myself by time to tolerate the sight of
a human creature; to lament the brutality to _Houyhnhnms_ in my own
country, but always treat their persons with respect, for the sake of my
noble master, his family, his friends, and the whole _Houyhnhnm_ race,
whom these of ours have the honour to resemble in all their lineaments,
however their intellectuals came to degenerate.

I began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the
farthest end of a long table; and to answer (but with the utmost brevity)
the few questions I asked her.  Yet, the smell of a _Yahoo_ continuing
very offensive, I always keep my nose well stopped with rue, lavender, or
tobacco leaves.  And, although it be hard for a man late in life to
remove old habits, I am not altogether out of hopes, in some time, to
suffer a neighbour _Yahoo_ in my company, without the apprehensions I am
yet under of his teeth or his claws.

My reconcilement to the _Yahoo_ kind in general might not be so
difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies only
which nature has entitled them to.  I am not in the least provoked at the
sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a gamester, a
politician, a whoremonger, a physician, an evidence, a suborner, an
attorney, a traitor, or the like; this is all according to the due course
of things: but when I behold a lump of deformity and diseases, both in
body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the measures
of my patience; neither shall I be ever able to comprehend how such an
animal, and such a vice, could tally together.  The wise and virtuous
_Houyhnhnms_, who abound in all excellences that can adorn a rational
creature, have no name for this vice in their language, which has no
terms to express any thing that is evil, except those whereby they
describe the detestable qualities of their _Yahoos_, among which they
were not able to distinguish this of pride, for want of thoroughly
understanding human nature, as it shows itself in other countries where
that animal presides.  But I, who had more experience, could plainly
observe some rudiments of it among the wild _Yahoos_.

But the _Houyhnhnms_, who live under the government of reason, are no
more proud of the good qualities they possess, than I should be for not
wanting a leg or an arm; which no man in his wits would boast of,
although he must be miserable without them.  I dwell the longer upon this
subject from the desire I have to make the society of an English _Yahoo_
by any means not insupportable; and therefore I here entreat those who
have any tincture of this absurd vice, that they will not presume to come
in my sight.




FOOTNOTES:


{301}  A stang is a pole or perch; sixteen feet and a half.

{330}  An act of parliament has been since passed by which some breaches
of trust have been made capital.

{454a}  Britannia.—_Sir W. Scott_.

{454b}  London.—_Sir W. Scott_.

{455}  This is the revised text adopted by Dr. Hawksworth (1766).  The
above paragraph in the original editions (1726) takes another form,
commencing:—“I told him that should I happen to live in a kingdom where
lots were in vogue,” &c.  The names Tribnia and Langdon an not mentioned,
and the “close stool” and its signification do not occur.

{514}  This paragraph is not in the original editions.

{546}  The original editions and Hawksworth’s have Rotherhith here,
though earlier in the work, Redriff is said to have been Gulliver’s home
in England.




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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The King James Bible

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: The King James Bible

Release Date: March 2, 2011 [EBook #10]
[This King James Bible was orginally posted by Project Gutenberg
in late 1989]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KING JAMES BIBLE ***














The Old Testament of the King James Version of the Bible




The First Book of Moses:  Called Genesis


1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon
the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters.

1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light
from the darkness.

1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
And the evening and the morning were the first day.

1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,
and let it divide the waters from the waters.

1:7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were
under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament:
and it was so.

1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the
morning were the second day.

1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together
unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of
the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding
seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is
in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after
his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after
his kind: and God saw that it was good.

1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven
to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for
seasons, and for days, and years: 1:15 And let them be for lights in
the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was
so.

1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day,
and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light
upon the earth, 1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and
to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving
creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the
open firmament of heaven.

1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that
moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind,
and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill
the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after
his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his
kind: and it was so.

1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle
after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after
his kind: and God saw that it was good.

1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created
he him; male and female created he them.

1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every
living thing that moveth upon the earth.

1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed,
which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which
is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air,
and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is
life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was
very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of
them.

2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and
he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

2:3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that
in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when
they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the
heavens, 2:5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth,
and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not
caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the
ground.

2:6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole
face of the ground.

2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living
soul.

2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he
put the man whom he had formed.

2:9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is
pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the
midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

2:10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence
it was parted, and became into four heads.

2:11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the
whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 2:12 And the gold of that
land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

2:13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that
compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

2:14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which
goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

2:15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of
Eden to dress it and to keep it.

2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the
garden thou mayest freely eat: 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be
alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the
field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see
what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living
creature, that was the name thereof.

2:20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air,
and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an
help meet for him.

2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he
slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead
thereof; 2:22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made
he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

2:23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my
flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall
cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not
ashamed.

3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which
the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said,
Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?  3:2 And the woman said
unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden,
God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest
ye die.

3:4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 3:5
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall
be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that
it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one
wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto
her husband with her; and he did eat.

3:7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they
were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves
aprons.

3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in
the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the
presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.

3:9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art
thou?  3:10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was
afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

3:11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten
of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
3:12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she
gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

3:13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast
done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

3:14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done
this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the
field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the
days of thy life: 3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the
woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head,
and thou shalt bruise his heel.

3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and
thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy
desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice
of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee,
saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake;
in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 3:18 Thorns
also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the
herb of the field; 3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,
till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for
dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

3:20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother
of all living.

3:21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of
skins, and clothed them.

3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to
know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also
of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 3:23 Therefore the
LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground
from whence he was taken.

3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden
of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep
the way of the tree of life.

4:1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and
said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.

4:2 And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of
sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

4:3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the
fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.

4:4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of
the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his
offering: 4:5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.
And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

4:6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy
countenance fallen?  4:7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be
accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto
thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

4:8 And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when
they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother,
and slew him.

4:9 And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he
said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?  4:10 And he said, What
hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from
the ground.

4:11 And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her
mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; 4:12 When thou
tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her
strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.

4:13 And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can
bear.

4:14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the
earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and
a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one
that findeth me shall slay me.

4:15 And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain,
vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark
upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.

4:16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the
land of Nod, on the east of Eden.

4:17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he
builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his
son, Enoch.

4:18 And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and
Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat Lamech.

4:19 And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah,
and the name of the other Zillah.

4:20 And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents,
and of such as have cattle.

4:21 And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such
as handle the harp and organ.

4:22 And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructer of every
artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubalcain was Naamah.

4:23 And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice;
ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to
my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.

4:24 If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and
sevenfold.

4:25 And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his
name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead
of Abel, whom Cain slew.

4:26 And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his
name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.

5:1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God
created man, in the likeness of God made he him; 5:2 Male and female
created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the
day when they were created.

5:3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his
own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth: 5:4 And
the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years:
and he begat sons and daughters: 5:5 And all the days that Adam lived
were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

5:6 And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos: 5:7 And
Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and
begat sons and daughters: 5:8 And all the days of Seth were nine
hundred and twelve years: and he died.

5:9 And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan: 5:10 And Enos lived
after he begat Cainan eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons
and daughters: 5:11 And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and
five years: and he died.

5:12 And Cainan lived seventy years and begat Mahalaleel: 5:13 And
Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel eight hundred and forty years,
and begat sons and daughters: 5:14 And all the days of Cainan were
nine hundred and ten years: and he died.

5:15 And Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years, and begat Jared: 5:16
And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and thirty
years, and begat sons and daughters: 5:17 And all the days of
Mahalaleel were eight hundred ninety and five years: and he died.

5:18 And Jared lived an hundred sixty and two years, and he begat
Enoch: 5:19 And Jared lived after he begat Enoch eight hundred years,
and begat sons and daughters: 5:20 And all the days of Jared were nine
hundred sixty and two years: and he died.

5:21 And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: 5:22
And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred
years, and begat sons and daughters: 5:23 And all the days of Enoch
were three hundred sixty and five years: 5:24 And Enoch walked with
God: and he was not; for God took him.

5:25 And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat
Lamech.

5:26 And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty
and two years, and begat sons and daughters: 5:27 And all the days of
Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.

5:28 And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a
son: 5:29 And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort
us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground
which the LORD hath cursed.

5:30 And Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred ninety and five
years, and begat sons and daughters: 5:31 And all the days of Lamech
were seven hundred seventy and seven years: and he died.

5:32 And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham,
and Japheth.

6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the
earth, and daughters were born unto them, 6:2 That the sons of God saw
the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of
all which they chose.

6:3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for
that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty
years.

6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that,
when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare
children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of
renown.

6:5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and
that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually.

6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it
grieved him at his heart.

6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the
face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and
the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

6:8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

6:9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect
in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

6:10 And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

6:11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled
with violence.

6:12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for
all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

6:13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me;
for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I
will destroy them with the earth.

6:14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the
ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

6:15 And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length
of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty
cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.

6:16 A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou
finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side
thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.

6:17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the
earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under
heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

6:18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come
into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives
with thee.

6:19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt
thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be
male and female.

6:20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of
every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort
shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.

6:21 And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt
gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.

6:22 Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did
he.

7:1 And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the
ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.

7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male
and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and
his female.

7:3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to
keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

7:4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth
forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have
made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

7:5 And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him.

7:6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was
upon the earth.

7:7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives
with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.

7:8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls,
and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, 7:9 There went in two
and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had
commanded Noah.

7:10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the
flood were upon the earth.

7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month,
the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains
of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

7:12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

7:13 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth,
the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons
with them, into the ark; 7:14 They, and every beast after his kind,
and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind,
every bird of every sort.

7:15 And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all
flesh, wherein is the breath of life.

7:16 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as
God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.

7:17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters
increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

7:18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the
earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.

7:19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the
high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

7:20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains
were covered.

7:21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and
of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth
upon the earth, and every man: 7:22 All in whose nostrils was the
breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

7:23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face
of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the
fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah
only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

7:24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty
days.

8:1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the
cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over
the earth, and the waters asswaged; 8:2 The fountains also of the deep
and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was
restrained; 8:3 And the waters returned from off the earth
continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the
waters were abated.

8:4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of
the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.

8:5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the
tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the
mountains seen.

8:6 And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the
window of the ark which he had made: 8:7 And he sent forth a raven,
which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off
the earth.

8:8 Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were
abated from off the face of the ground; 8:9 But the dove found no rest
for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for
the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his
hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.

8:10 And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the
dove out of the ark; 8:11 And the dove came in to him in the evening;
and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that
the waters were abated from off the earth.

8:12 And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove;
which returned not again unto him any more.

8:13 And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the
first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from
off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked,
and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.

8:14 And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the
month, was the earth dried.

8:15 And God spake unto Noah, saying, 8:16 Go forth of the ark, thou,
and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee.

8:17 Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of
all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing
that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the
earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.

8:18 And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons'
wives with him: 8:19 Every beast, every creeping thing, and every
fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went
forth out of the ark.

8:20 And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean
beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the
altar.

8:21 And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his
heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for
the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I
again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and
heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

9:1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

9:2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast
of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth
upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are
they delivered.

9:3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the
green herb have I given you all things.

9:4 But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall
ye not eat.

9:5 And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of
every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of
every man's brother will I require the life of man.

9:6 Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in
the image of God made he man.

9:7 And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in
the earth, and multiply therein.

9:8 And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, 9:9 And
I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after
you; 9:10 And with every living creature that is with you, of the
fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from
all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.

9:11 And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all
flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall
there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.

9:12 And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make
between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for
perpetual generations: 9:13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall
be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

9:14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: 9:15 And I will remember my
covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all
flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all
flesh.

9:16 And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that
I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living
creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

9:17 And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which
I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

9:18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and
Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.

9:19 These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth
overspread.

9:20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
9:21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered
within his tent.

9:22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father,
and told his two brethren without.

9:23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their
shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their
father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's
nakedness.

9:24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had
done unto him.

9:25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be
unto his brethren.

9:26 And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be
his servant.

9:27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of
Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

9:28 And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.

9:29 And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and
he died.

10:1 Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and
Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.

10:2 The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and
Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.

10:3 And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah.

10:4 And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and
Dodanim.

10:5 By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands;
every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.

10:6 And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan.

10:7 And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah,
and Sabtechah: and the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan.

10:8 And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.

10:9 He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said,
Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.

10:10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and
Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

10:11 Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the
city Rehoboth, and Calah, 10:12 And Resen between Nineveh and Calah:
the same is a great city.

10:13 And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim,
10:14 And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (out of whom came Philistim,) and
Caphtorim.

10:15 And Canaan begat Sidon his first born, and Heth, 10:16 And the
Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite, 10:17 And the Hivite,
and the Arkite, and the Sinite, 10:18 And the Arvadite, and the
Zemarite, and the Hamathite: and afterward were the families of the
Canaanites spread abroad.

10:19 And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest
to Gerar, unto Gaza; as thou goest, unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and
Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha.

10:20 These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their
tongues, in their countries, and in their nations.

10:21 Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the
brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born.

10:22 The children of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud,
and Aram.

10:23 And the children of Aram; Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Mash.

10:24 And Arphaxad begat Salah; and Salah begat Eber.

10:25 And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for
in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.

10:26 And Joktan begat Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazarmaveth, and
Jerah, 10:27 And Hadoram, and Uzal, and Diklah, 10:28 And Obal, and
Abimael, and Sheba, 10:29 And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab: all these
were the sons of Joktan.

10:30 And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar a
mount of the east.

10:31 These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their
tongues, in their lands, after their nations.

10:32 These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their
generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided
in the earth after the flood.

11:1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

11:2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they
found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

11:3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn
them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for
morter.

11:4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose
top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be
scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

11:5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the
children of men builded.

11:6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all
one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be
restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

11:7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that
they may not understand one another's speech.

11:8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of
all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

11:9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did
there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the
LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

11:10 These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years
old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood: 11:11 And Shem
lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and
daughters.

11:12 And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah: 11:13
And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years,
and begat sons and daughters.

11:14 And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber: 11:15 And Salah
lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons
and daughters.

11:16 And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg: 11:17 And
Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and
begat sons and daughters.

11:18 And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu: 11:19 And Peleg
lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons
and daughters.

11:20 And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug: 11:21 And
Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years, and begat
sons and daughters.

11:22 And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor: 11:23 And Serug
lived after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and
daughters.

11:24 And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah: 11:25
And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years,
and begat sons and daughters.

11:26 And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and
Haran.

11:27 Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram,
Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.

11:28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his
nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.

11:29 And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram's wife
was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of
Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.

11:30 But Sarai was barren; she had no child.

11:31 And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's
son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they
went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of
Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.

11:32 And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah
died in Haran.

12:1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country,
and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I
will shew thee: 12:2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I
will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a
blessing: 12:3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him
that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be
blessed.

12:4 So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him; and Lot went
with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed
out of Haran.

12:5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all
their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had
gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan;
and into the land of Canaan they came.

12:6 And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto
the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land.

12:7 And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I
give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who
appeared unto him.

12:8 And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel,
and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east:
and there he builded an altar unto the LORD, and called upon the name
of the LORD.

12:9 And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south.

12:10 And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into
Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.

12:11 And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt,
that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a
fair woman to look upon: 12:12 Therefore it shall come to pass, when
the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife:
and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive.

12:13 Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with
me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee.

12:14 And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the
Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair.

12:15 The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before
Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house.

12:16 And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and
oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses,
and camels.

12:17 And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues
because of Sarai Abram's wife.

12:18 And Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this that thou hast
done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?  12:19
Why saidst thou, She is my sister? so I might have taken her to me to
wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go thy way.

12:20 And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him: and they sent him
away, and his wife, and all that he had.

13:1 And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that he
had, and Lot with him, into the south.

13:2 And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.

13:3 And he went on his journeys from the south even to Bethel, unto
the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and
Hai; 13:4 Unto the place of the altar, which he had make there at the
first: and there Abram called on the name of the LORD.

13:5 And Lot also, which went with Abram, had flocks, and herds, and
tents.

13:6 And the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell
together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell
together.

13:7 And there was a strife between the herdmen of Abram's cattle and
the herdmen of Lot's cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite
dwelled then in the land.

13:8 And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee,
between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be
brethren.

13:9 Is not the whole land before thee? separate thyself, I pray thee,
from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right;
or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left.

13:10 And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan,
that it was well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom
and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt,
as thou comest unto Zoar.

13:11 Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed
east: and they separated themselves the one from the other.

13:12 Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the
cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom.

13:13 But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD
exceedingly.

13:14 And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from
him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art
northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: 13:15 For all
the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for
ever.

13:16 And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a
man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be
numbered.

13:17 Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the
breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.

13:18 Then Abram removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of
Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the LORD.

14:1 And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar,
Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of
nations; 14:2 That these made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with
Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of
Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar.

14:3 All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, which is
the salt sea.

14:4 Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year
they rebelled.

14:5 And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that
were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the
Zuzims in Ham, and the Emins in Shaveh Kiriathaim, 14:6 And the
Horites in their mount Seir, unto Elparan, which is by the wilderness.

14:7 And they returned, and came to Enmishpat, which is Kadesh, and
smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, that
dwelt in Hazezontamar.

14:8 And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah,
and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela
(the same is Zoar;) and they joined battle with them in the vale of
Siddim; 14:9 With Chedorlaomer the king of Elam, and with Tidal king
of nations, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar;
four kings with five.

14:10 And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits; and the kings of
Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled
to the mountain.

14:11 And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their
victuals, and went their way.

14:12 And they took Lot, Abram's brother's son, who dwelt in Sodom,
and his goods, and departed.

14:13 And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew;
for he dwelt in the plain of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and
brother of Aner: and these were confederate with Abram.

14:14 And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he
armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and
eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan.

14:15 And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by
night, and smote them, and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the
left hand of Damascus.

14:16 And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his
brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people.

14:17 And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from
the slaughter of Chedorlaomer, and of the kings that were with him, at
the valley of Shaveh, which is the king's dale.

14:18 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and
he was the priest of the most high God.

14:19 And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high
God, possessor of heaven and earth: 14:20 And blessed be the most high
God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him
tithes of all.

14:21 And the king of Sodom said unto Abram, Give me the persons, and
take the goods to thyself.

14:22 And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up mine hand
unto the LORD, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth,
14:23 That I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and
that I will not take any thing that is thine, lest thou shouldest say,
I have made Abram rich: 14:24 Save only that which the young men have
eaten, and the portion of the men which went with me, Aner, Eshcol,
and Mamre; let them take their portion.

15:1 After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a
vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding
great reward.

15:2 And Abram said, LORD God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go
childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?
15:3 And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo,
one born in my house is mine heir.

15:4 And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, This
shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own
bowels shall be thine heir.

15:5 And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward
heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he
said unto him, So shall thy seed be.

15:6 And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for
righteousness.

15:7 And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur
of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.

15:8 And he said, LORD God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit
it?  15:9 And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old,
and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a
turtledove, and a young pigeon.

15:10 And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst,
and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not.

15:11 And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them
away.

15:12 And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram;
and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.

15:13 And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be
a stranger in a land that is not their's, and shall serve them; and
they shall afflict them four hundred years; 15:14 And also that
nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they
come out with great substance.

15:15 And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried
in a good old age.

15:16 But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for
the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

15:17 And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was
dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between
those pieces.

15:18 In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying,
Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the
great river, the river Euphrates: 15:19 The Kenites, and the
Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, 15:20 And the Hittites, and the
Perizzites, and the Rephaims, 15:21 And the Amorites, and the
Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

16:1 Now Sarai Abram's wife bare him no children: and she had an
handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar.

16:2 And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained
me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may
obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.

16:3 And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after
Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her
husband Abram to be his wife.

16:4 And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived: and when she saw
that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.

16:5 And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee: I have given my
maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was
despised in her eyes: the LORD judge between me and thee.

16:6 But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thine hand; do
to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she
fled from her face.

16:7 And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the
wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur.

16:8 And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence camest thou? and whither
wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai.

16:9 And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Return to thy mistress,
and submit thyself under her hands.

16:10 And the angel of the LORD said unto her, I will multiply thy
seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude.

16:11 And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Behold, thou art with
child and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because
the LORD hath heard thy affliction.

16:12 And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man,
and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence
of all his brethren.

16:13 And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou
God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that
seeth me?  16:14 Wherefore the well was called Beerlahairoi; behold,
it is between Kadesh and Bered.

16:15 And Hagar bare Abram a son: and Abram called his son's name,
which Hagar bare, Ishmael.

16:16 And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare
Ishmael to Abram.

17:1 And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared
to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me,
and be thou perfect.

17:2 And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will
multiply thee exceedingly.

17:3 And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, 17:4
As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a
father of many nations.

17:5 Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name
shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.

17:6 And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations
of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.

17:7 And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed
after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a
God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.

17:8 And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land
wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an
everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

17:9 And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore,
thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations.

17:10 This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and
thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.

17:11 And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall
be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.

17:12 And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you,
every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or
bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.

17:13 He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy
money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your
flesh for an everlasting covenant.

17:14 And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is
not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath
broken my covenant.

17:15 And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not
call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.

17:16 And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I
will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people
shall be of her.

17:17 Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his
heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old?
and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?  17:18 And Abraham
said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee!  17:19 And God
said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call
his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an
everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.

17:20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed
him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly;
twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation.

17:21 But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall
bear unto thee at this set time in the next year.

17:22 And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham.

17:23 And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his
house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the
men of Abraham's house; and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in
the selfsame day, as God had said unto him.

17:24 And Abraham was ninety years old and nine, when he was
circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.

17:25 And Ishmael his son was thirteen years old, when he was
circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.

17:26 In the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his
son.

17:27 And all the men of his house, born in the house, and bought with
money of the stranger, were circumcised with him.

18:1 And the LORD appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat
in the tent door in the heat of the day; 18:2 And he lift up his eyes
and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he
ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the
ground, 18:3 And said, My LORD, if now I have found favour in thy
sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: 18:4 Let a little
water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves
under the tree: 18:5 And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort
ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come
to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said.

18:6 And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make
ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes
upon the hearth.

18:7 And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetcht a calf tender and good,
and gave it unto a young man; and he hasted to dress it.

18:8 And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed,
and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they
did eat.

18:9 And they said unto him, Where is Sarah thy wife? And he said,
Behold, in the tent.

18:10 And he said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the
time of life; and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. And Sarah
heard it in the tent door, which was behind him.

18:11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it
ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.

18:12 Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed
old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?  18:13 And the LORD
said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a
surety bear a child, which am old?  18:14 Is any thing too hard for
the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to
the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.

18:15 Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid.
And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh.

18:16 And the men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom: and
Abraham went with them to bring them on the way.

18:17 And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I
do; 18:18 Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty
nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?
18:19 For I know him, that he will command his children and his
household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do
justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which
he hath spoken of him.

18:20 And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is
great, and because their sin is very grievous; 18:21 I will go down
now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of
it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.

18:22 And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward
Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the LORD.

18:23 And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the
righteous with the wicked?  18:24 Peradventure there be fifty
righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the
place for the fifty righteous that are therein?  18:25 That be far
from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the
wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far
from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?  18:26 And
the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city,
then I will spare all the place for their sakes.

18:27 And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me
to speak unto the LORD, which am but dust and ashes: 18:28
Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou
destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there
forty and five, I will not destroy it.

18:29 And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there
shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty's
sake.

18:30 And he said unto him, Oh let not the LORD be angry, and I will
speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I
will not do it, if I find thirty there.

18:31 And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the
LORD: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I
will not destroy it for twenty's sake.

18:32 And he said, Oh let not the LORD be angry, and I will speak yet
but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I
will not destroy it for ten's sake.

18:33 And the LORD went his way, as soon as he had left communing with
Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place.

19:1 And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the
gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed
himself with his face toward the ground; 19:2 And he said, Behold now,
my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry
all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on
your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all
night.

19:3 And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him,
and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake
unleavened bread, and they did eat.

19:4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of
Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people
from every quarter: 19:5 And they called unto Lot, and said unto him,
Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out
unto us, that we may know them.

19:6 And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after
him, 19:7 And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.

19:8 Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let
me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good
in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they
under the shadow of my roof.

19:9 And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow
came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal
worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man,
even Lot, and came near to break the door.

19:10 But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house
to them, and shut to the door.

19:11 And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with
blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to
find the door.

19:12 And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in
law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the
city, bring them out of this place: 19:13 For we will destroy this
place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the
LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it.

19:14 And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law, which married
his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the LORD
will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons
in law.

19:15 And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot,
saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here;
lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.

19:16 And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon
the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the LORD
being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him
without the city.

19:17 And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad,
that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay
thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.

19:18 And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my LORD: 19:19 Behold now,
thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy
mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot
escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die: 19:20
Behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one:
Oh, let me escape thither, (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall
live.

19:21 And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this
thing also, that I will not overthrow this city, for the which thou
hast spoken.

19:22 Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do anything till thou
be come thither. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

19:23 The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.

19:24 Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and
fire from the LORD out of heaven; 19:25 And he overthrew those cities,
and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that
which grew upon the ground.

19:26 But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a
pillar of salt.

19:27 And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he
stood before the LORD: 19:28 And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah,
and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke
of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.

19:29 And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain,
that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the
overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt.

19:30 And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his
two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt
in a cave, he and his two daughters.

19:31 And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and
there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of
all the earth: 19:32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we
will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.

19:33 And they made their father drink wine that night: and the
firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when
she lay down, nor when she arose.

19:34 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto
the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him
drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we
may preserve seed of our father.

19:35 And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the
younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay
down, nor when she arose.

19:36 Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.

19:37 And the first born bare a son, and called his name Moab: the
same is the father of the Moabites unto this day.

19:38 And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name
Benammi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this
day.

20:1 And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country, and
dwelled between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar.

20:2 And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister: and
Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah.

20:3 But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him,
Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken;
for she is a man's wife.

20:4 But Abimelech had not come near her: and he said, LORD, wilt thou
slay also a righteous nation?  20:5 Said he not unto me, She is my
sister? and she, even she herself said, He is my brother: in the
integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands have I done this.

20:6 And God said unto him in a dream, Yea, I know that thou didst
this in the integrity of thy heart; for I also withheld thee from
sinning against me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her.

20:7 Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a prophet, and
he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her
not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that are
thine.

20:8 Therefore Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his
servants, and told all these things in their ears: and the men were
sore afraid.

20:9 Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said unto him, What hast thou
done unto us? and what have I offended thee, that thou hast brought on
me and on my kingdom a great sin? thou hast done deeds unto me that
ought not to be done.

20:10 And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What sawest thou, that thou
hast done this thing?  20:11 And Abraham said, Because I thought,
Surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for
my wife's sake.

20:12 And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my
father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.

20:13 And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my
father's house, that I said unto her, This is thy kindness which thou
shalt shew unto me; at every place whither we shall come, say of me,
He is my brother.

20:14 And Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and
womenservants, and gave them unto Abraham, and restored him Sarah his
wife.

20:15 And Abimelech said, Behold, my land is before thee: dwell where
it pleaseth thee.

20:16 And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a
thousand pieces of silver: behold, he is to thee a covering of the
eyes, unto all that are with thee, and with all other: thus she was
reproved.

20:17 So Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his
wife, and his maidservants; and they bare children.

20:18 For the LORD had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of
Abimelech, because of Sarah Abraham's wife.

21:1 And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto
Sarah as he had spoken.

21:2 For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at
the set time of which God had spoken to him.

21:3 And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him,
whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac.

21:4 And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old, as
God had commanded him.

21:5 And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born
unto him.

21:6 And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear
will laugh with me.

21:7 And she said, Who would have said unto Abraham, that Sarah should
have given children suck? for I have born him a son in his old age.

21:8 And the child grew, and was weaned: and Abraham made a great
feast the same day that Isaac was weaned.

21:9 And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born
unto Abraham, mocking.

21:10 Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her
son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even
with Isaac.

21:11 And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of
his son.

21:12 And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight
because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah
hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy
seed be called.

21:13 And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation,
because he is thy seed.

21:14 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a
bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder,
and the child, and sent her away: and she departed, and wandered in
the wilderness of Beersheba.

21:15 And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child
under one of the shrubs.

21:16 And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off,
as it were a bow shot: for she said, Let me not see the death of the
child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept.

21:17 And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called
to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar?
fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.

21:18 Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will
make him a great nation.

21:19 And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she
went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink.

21:20 And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the
wilderness, and became an archer.

21:21 And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran: and his mother took him
a wife out of the land of Egypt.

21:22 And it came to pass at that time, that Abimelech and Phichol the
chief captain of his host spake unto Abraham, saying, God is with thee
in all that thou doest: 21:23 Now therefore swear unto me here by God
that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my
son's son: but according to the kindness that I have done unto thee,
thou shalt do unto me, and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned.

21:24 And Abraham said, I will swear.

21:25 And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water, which
Abimelech's servants had violently taken away.

21:26 And Abimelech said, I wot not who hath done this thing; neither
didst thou tell me, neither yet heard I of it, but to day.

21:27 And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech;
and both of them made a covenant.

21:28 And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves.

21:29 And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What mean these seven ewe lambs
which thou hast set by themselves?  21:30 And he said, For these seven
ewe lambs shalt thou take of my hand, that they may be a witness unto
me, that I have digged this well.

21:31 Wherefore he called that place Beersheba; because there they
sware both of them.

21:32 Thus they made a covenant at Beersheba: then Abimelech rose up,
and Phichol the chief captain of his host, and they returned into the
land of the Philistines.

21:33 And Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there on
the name of the LORD, the everlasting God.

21:34 And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines' land many days.

22:1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt
Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.

22:2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou
lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for
a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

22:3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass,
and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave
the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place
of which God had told him.

22:4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the
place afar off.

22:5 And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass;
and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.

22:6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon
Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they
went both of them together.

22:7 And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and
he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood:
but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?  22:8 And Abraham said, My
son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they
went both of them together.

22:9 And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham
built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his
son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

22:10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay
his son.

22:11 And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and
said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.

22:12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou
any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou
hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

22:13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind
him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took
the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his
son.

22:14 And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is
said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.

22:15 And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven the
second time, 22:16 And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD,
for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son,
thine only son: 22:17 That in blessing I will bless thee, and in
multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and
as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess
the gate of his enemies; 22:18 And in thy seed shall all the nations
of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.

22:19 So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and
went together to Beersheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba.

22:20 And it came to pass after these things, that it was told
Abraham, saying, Behold, Milcah, she hath also born children unto thy
brother Nahor; 22:21 Huz his firstborn, and Buz his brother, and
Kemuel the father of Aram, 22:22 And Chesed, and Hazo, and Pildash,
and Jidlaph, and Bethuel.

22:23 And Bethuel begat Rebekah: these eight Milcah did bear to Nahor,
Abraham's brother.

22:24 And his concubine, whose name was Reumah, she bare also Tebah,
and Gaham, and Thahash, and Maachah.

23:1 And Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years old: these
were the years of the life of Sarah.

23:2 And Sarah died in Kirjatharba; the same is Hebron in the land of
Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.

23:3 And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the
sons of Heth, saying, 23:4 I am a stranger and a sojourner with you:
give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my
dead out of my sight.

23:5 And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying unto him, 23:6
Hear us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us: in the choice of
our sepulchres bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his
sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead.

23:7 And Abraham stood up, and bowed himself to the people of the
land, even to the children of Heth.

23:8 And he communed with them, saying, If it be your mind that I
should bury my dead out of my sight; hear me, and intreat for me to
Ephron the son of Zohar, 23:9 That he may give me the cave of
Machpelah, which he hath, which is in the end of his field; for as
much money as it is worth he shall give it me for a possession of a
buryingplace amongst you.

23:10 And Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth: and Ephron the
Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even
of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying, 23:11 Nay, my
lord, hear me: the field give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I
give it thee; in the presence of the sons of my people give I it thee:
bury thy dead.

23:12 And Abraham bowed down himself before the people of the land.

23:13 And he spake unto Ephron in the audience of the people of the
land, saying, But if thou wilt give it, I pray thee, hear me: I will
give thee money for the field; take it of me, and I will bury my dead
there.

23:14 And Ephron answered Abraham, saying unto him, 23:15 My lord,
hearken unto me: the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver;
what is that betwixt me and thee? bury therefore thy dead.

23:16 And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron; and Abraham weighed to Ephron
the silver, which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth,
four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant.

23:17 And the field of Ephron which was in Machpelah, which was before
Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees
that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were
made sure 23:18 Unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the
children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city.

23:19 And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the
field of Machpelah before Mamre: the same is Hebron in the land of
Canaan.

23:20 And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto
Abraham for a possession of a buryingplace by the sons of Heth.

24:1 And Abraham was old, and well stricken in age: and the LORD had
blessed Abraham in all things.

24:2 And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house, that ruled
over all that he had, Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh: 24:3
And I will make thee swear by the LORD, the God of heaven, and the God
of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the
daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell: 24:4 But thou shalt
go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son
Isaac.

24:5 And the servant said unto him, Peradventure the woman will not be
willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs bring thy son again
unto the land from whence thou camest?  24:6 And Abraham said unto
him, Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again.

24:7 The LORD God of heaven, which took me from my father's house, and
from the land of my kindred, and which spake unto me, and that sware
unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land; he shall send
his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from
thence.

24:8 And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou
shalt be clear from this my oath: only bring not my son thither again.

24:9 And the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his
master, and sware to him concerning that matter.

24:10 And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, and
departed; for all the goods of his master were in his hand: and he
arose, and went to Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor.

24:11 And he made his camels to kneel down without the city by a well
of water at the time of the evening, even the time that women go out
to draw water.

24:12 And he said O LORD God of my master Abraham, I pray thee, send
me good speed this day, and shew kindness unto my master Abraham.

24:13 Behold, I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of
the men of the city come out to draw water: 24:14 And let it come to
pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I
pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give
thy camels drink also: let the same be she that thou hast appointed
for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast shewed
kindness unto my master.

24:15 And it came to pass, before he had done speaking, that, behold,
Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of
Nahor, Abraham's brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder.

24:16 And the damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had
any man known her: and she went down to the well, and filled her
pitcher, and came up.

24:17 And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I pray thee,
drink a little water of thy pitcher.

24:18 And she said, Drink, my lord: and she hasted, and let down her
pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink.

24:19 And when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will draw
water for thy camels also, until they have done drinking.

24:20 And she hasted, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran
again unto the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels.

24:21 And the man wondering at her held his peace, to wit whether the
LORD had made his journey prosperous or not.

24:22 And it came to pass, as the camels had done drinking, that the
man took a golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets
for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold; 24:23 And said, Whose
daughter art thou? tell me, I pray thee: is there room in thy father's
house for us to lodge in?  24:24 And she said unto him, I am the
daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, which she bare unto Nahor.

24:25 She said moreover unto him, We have both straw and provender
enough, and room to lodge in.

24:26 And the man bowed down his head, and worshipped the LORD.

24:27 And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of my master Abraham, who
hath not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth: I being
in the way, the LORD led me to the house of my master's brethren.

24:28 And the damsel ran, and told them of her mother's house these
things.

24:29 And Rebekah had a brother, and his name was Laban: and Laban ran
out unto the man, unto the well.

24:30 And it came to pass, when he saw the earring and bracelets upon
his sister's hands, and when he heard the words of Rebekah his sister,
saying, Thus spake the man unto me; that he came unto the man; and,
behold, he stood by the camels at the well.

24:31 And he said, Come in, thou blessed of the LORD; wherefore
standest thou without? for I have prepared the house, and room for the
camels.

24:32 And the man came into the house: and he ungirded his camels, and
gave straw and provender for the camels, and water to wash his feet,
and the men's feet that were with him.

24:33 And there was set meat before him to eat: but he said, I will
not eat, until I have told mine errand. And he said, Speak on.

24:34 And he said, I am Abraham's servant.

24:35 And the LORD hath blessed my master greatly; and he is become
great: and he hath given him flocks, and herds, and silver, and gold,
and menservants, and maidservants, and camels, and asses.

24:36 And Sarah my master's wife bare a son to my master when she was
old: and unto him hath he given all that he hath.

24:37 And my master made me swear, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife
to my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, in whose land I dwell:
24:38 But thou shalt go unto my father's house, and to my kindred, and
take a wife unto my son.

24:39 And I said unto my master, Peradventure the woman will not
follow me.

24:40 And he said unto me, The LORD, before whom I walk, will send his
angel with thee, and prosper thy way; and thou shalt take a wife for
my son of my kindred, and of my father's house: 24:41 Then shalt thou
be clear from this my oath, when thou comest to my kindred; and if
they give not thee one, thou shalt be clear from my oath.

24:42 And I came this day unto the well, and said, O LORD God of my
master Abraham, if now thou do prosper my way which I go: 24:43
Behold, I stand by the well of water; and it shall come to pass, that
when the virgin cometh forth to draw water, and I say to her, Give me,
I pray thee, a little water of thy pitcher to drink; 24:44 And she say
to me, Both drink thou, and I will also draw for thy camels: let the
same be the woman whom the LORD hath appointed out for my master's
son.

24:45 And before I had done speaking in mine heart, behold, Rebekah
came forth with her pitcher on her shoulder; and she went down unto
the well, and drew water: and I said unto her, Let me drink, I pray
thee.

24:46 And she made haste, and let down her pitcher from her shoulder,
and said, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: so I drank,
and she made the camels drink also.

24:47 And I asked her, and said, Whose daughter art thou? And she
said, the daughter of Bethuel, Nahor's son, whom Milcah bare unto him:
and I put the earring upon her face, and the bracelets upon her hands.

24:48 And I bowed down my head, and worshipped the LORD, and blessed
the LORD God of my master Abraham, which had led me in the right way
to take my master's brother's daughter unto his son.

24:49 And now if ye will deal kindly and truly with my master, tell
me: and if not, tell me; that I may turn to the right hand, or to the
left.

24:50 Then Laban and Bethuel answered and said, The thing proceedeth
from the LORD: we cannot speak unto thee bad or good.

24:51 Behold, Rebekah is before thee, take her, and go, and let her be
thy master's son's wife, as the LORD hath spoken.

24:52 And it came to pass, that, when Abraham's servant heard their
words, he worshipped the LORD, bowing himself to the earth.

24:53 And the servant brought forth jewels of silver, and jewels of
gold, and raiment, and gave them to Rebekah: he gave also to her
brother and to her mother precious things.

24:54 And they did eat and drink, he and the men that were with him,
and tarried all night; and they rose up in the morning, and he said,
Send me away unto my master.

24:55 And her brother and her mother said, Let the damsel abide with
us a few days, at the least ten; after that she shall go.

24:56 And he said unto them, Hinder me not, seeing the LORD hath
prospered my way; send me away that I may go to my master.

24:57 And they said, We will call the damsel, and enquire at her
mouth.

24:58 And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with
this man? And she said, I will go.

24:59 And they sent away Rebekah their sister, and her nurse, and
Abraham's servant, and his men.

24:60 And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our
sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed
possess the gate of those which hate them.

24:61 And Rebekah arose, and her damsels, and they rode upon the
camels, and followed the man: and the servant took Rebekah, and went
his way.

24:62 And Isaac came from the way of the well Lahairoi; for he dwelt
in the south country.

24:63 And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide: and
he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were coming.

24:64 And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she
lighted off the camel.

24:65 For she had said unto the servant, What man is this that walketh
in the field to meet us? And the servant had said, It is my master:
therefore she took a vail, and covered herself.

24:66 And the servant told Isaac all things that he had done.

24:67 And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took
Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was
comforted after his mother's death.

25:1 Then again Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah.

25:2 And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and
Ishbak, and Shuah.

25:3 And Jokshan begat Sheba, and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were
Asshurim, and Letushim, and Leummim.

25:4 And the sons of Midian; Ephah, and Epher, and Hanoch, and Abidah,
and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah.

25:5 And Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac.

25:6 But unto the sons of the concubines, which Abraham had, Abraham
gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived,
eastward, unto the east country.

25:7 And these are the days of the years of Abraham's life which he
lived, an hundred threescore and fifteen years.

25:8 Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an
old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people.

25:9 And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of
Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which
is before Mamre; 25:10 The field which Abraham purchased of the sons
of Heth: there was Abraham buried, and Sarah his wife.

25:11 And it came to pass after the death of Abraham, that God blessed
his son Isaac; and Isaac dwelt by the well Lahairoi.

25:12 Now these are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom
Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's handmaid, bare unto Abraham: 25:13 And
these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, according
to their generations: the firstborn of Ishmael, Nebajoth; and Kedar,
and Adbeel, and Mibsam, 25:14 And Mishma, and Dumah, and Massa, 25:15
Hadar, and Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah: 25:16 These are the sons
of Ishmael, and these are their names, by their towns, and by their
castles; twelve princes according to their nations.

25:17 And these are the years of the life of Ishmael, an hundred and
thirty and seven years: and he gave up the ghost and died; and was
gathered unto his people.

25:18 And they dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, that is before Egypt, as
thou goest toward Assyria: and he died in the presence of all his
brethren.

25:19 And these are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son: Abraham
begat Isaac: 25:20 And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah
to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padanaram, the sister
to Laban the Syrian.

25:21 And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was
barren: and the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife
conceived.

25:22 And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If
it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the LORD.

25:23 And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two
manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one
people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall
serve the younger.

25:24 And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there
were twins in her womb.

25:25 And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and
they called his name Esau.

25:26 And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on
Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore
years old when she bare them.

25:27 And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the
field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.

25:28 And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but
Rebekah loved Jacob.

25:29 And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was
faint: 25:30 And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that
same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom.

25:31 And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.

25:32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit
shall this birthright do to me?  25:33 And Jacob said, Swear to me
this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto
Jacob.

25:34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did
eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his
birthright.

26:1 And there was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that
was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the
Philistines unto Gerar.

26:2 And the LORD appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt;
dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of: 26:3 Sojourn in this
land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and
unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the
oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father; 26:4 And I will make thy
seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed
all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the
earth be blessed; 26:5 Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept
my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.

26:6 And Isaac dwelt in Gerar: 26:7 And the men of the place asked him
of his wife; and he said, She is my sister: for he feared to say, She
is my wife; lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me for
Rebekah; because she was fair to look upon.

26:8 And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that
Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw,
and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife.

26:9 And Abimelech called Isaac, and said, Behold, of a surety she is
thy wife; and how saidst thou, She is my sister? And Isaac said unto
him, Because I said, Lest I die for her.

26:10 And Abimelech said, What is this thou hast done unto us? one of
the people might lightly have lien with thy wife, and thou shouldest
have brought guiltiness upon us.

26:11 And Abimelech charged all his people, saying, He that toucheth
this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.

26:12 Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an
hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him.

26:13 And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he
became very great: 26:14 For he had possession of flocks, and
possession of herds, and great store of servants: and the Philistines
envied him.

26:15 For all the wells which his father's servants had digged in the
days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and
filled them with earth.

26:16 And Abimelech said unto Isaac, Go from us; for thou art much
mightier than we.

26:17 And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of
Gerar, and dwelt there.

26:18 And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged
in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped
them after the death of Abraham: and he called their names after the
names by which his father had called them.

26:19 And Isaac's servants digged in the valley, and found there a
well of springing water.

26:20 And the herdmen of Gerar did strive with Isaac's herdmen,
saying, The water is ours: and he called the name of the well Esek;
because they strove with him.

26:21 And they digged another well, and strove for that also: and he
called the name of it Sitnah.

26:22 And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for
that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he
said, For now the LORD hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful
in the land.

26:23 And he went up from thence to Beersheba.

26:24 And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am
the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will
bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake.

26:25 And he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the
LORD, and pitched his tent there: and there Isaac's servants digged a
well.

26:26 Then Abimelech went to him from Gerar, and Ahuzzath one of his
friends, and Phichol the chief captain of his army.

26:27 And Isaac said unto them, Wherefore come ye to me, seeing ye
hate me, and have sent me away from you?  26:28 And they said, We saw
certainly that the LORD was with thee: and we said, Let there be now
an oath betwixt us, even betwixt us and thee, and let us make a
covenant with thee; 26:29 That thou wilt do us no hurt, as we have not
touched thee, and as we have done unto thee nothing but good, and have
sent thee away in peace: thou art now the blessed of the LORD.

26:30 And he made them a feast, and they did eat and drink.

26:31 And they rose up betimes in the morning, and sware one to
another: and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in
peace.

26:32 And it came to pass the same day, that Isaac's servants came,
and told him concerning the well which they had digged, and said unto
him, We have found water.

26:33 And he called it Shebah: therefore the name of the city is
Beersheba unto this day.

26:34 And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the
daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the
Hittite: 26:35 Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.

27:1 And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were
dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said
unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, here am I.

27:2 And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my
death: 27:3 Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver
and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison; 27:4
And make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I
may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die.

27:5 And Rebekah heard when Isaac spake to Esau his son. And Esau went
to the field to hunt for venison, and to bring it.

27:6 And Rebekah spake unto Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy
father speak unto Esau thy brother, saying, 27:7 Bring me venison, and
make me savoury meat, that I may eat, and bless thee before the LORD
before my death.

27:8 Now therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that which I
command thee.

27:9 Go now to the flock, and fetch me from thence two good kids of
the goats; and I will make them savoury meat for thy father, such as
he loveth: 27:10 And thou shalt bring it to thy father, that he may
eat, and that he may bless thee before his death.

27:11 And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is
a hairy man, and I am a smooth man: 27:12 My father peradventure will
feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a
curse upon me, and not a blessing.

27:13 And his mother said unto him, Upon me be thy curse, my son: only
obey my voice, and go fetch me them.

27:14 And he went, and fetched, and brought them to his mother: and
his mother made savoury meat, such as his father loved.

27:15 And Rebekah took goodly raiment of her eldest son Esau, which
were with her in the house, and put them upon Jacob her younger son:
27:16 And she put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands,
and upon the smooth of his neck: 27:17 And she gave the savoury meat
and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob.

27:18 And he came unto his father, and said, My father: and he said,
Here am I; who art thou, my son?  27:19 And Jacob said unto his
father, I am Esau thy first born; I have done according as thou badest
me: arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my venison, that thy soul may
bless me.

27:20 And Isaac said unto his son, How is it that thou hast found it
so quickly, my son? And he said, Because the LORD thy God brought it
to me.

27:21 And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may
feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not.

27:22 And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and
said, The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.

27:23 And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his
brother Esau's hands: so he blessed him.

27:24 And he said, Art thou my very son Esau? And he said, I am.

27:25 And he said, Bring it near to me, and I will eat of my son's
venison, that my soul may bless thee. And he brought it near to him,
and he did eat: and he brought him wine and he drank.

27:26 And his father Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me,
my son.

27:27 And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of
his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as
the smell of a field which the LORD hath blessed: 27:28 Therefore God
give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and
plenty of corn and wine: 27:29 Let people serve thee, and nations bow
down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow
down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he
that blesseth thee.

27:30 And it came to pass, as soon as Isaac had made an end of
blessing Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the presence of
Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting.

27:31 And he also had made savoury meat, and brought it unto his
father, and said unto his father, Let my father arise, and eat of his
son's venison, that thy soul may bless me.

27:32 And Isaac his father said unto him, Who art thou? And he said, I
am thy son, thy firstborn Esau.

27:33 And Isaac trembled very exceedingly, and said, Who? where is he
that hath taken venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all
before thou camest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be
blessed.

27:34 And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a
great and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me,
even me also, O my father.

27:35 And he said, Thy brother came with subtilty, and hath taken away
thy blessing.

27:36 And he said, Is not he rightly named Jacob? for he hath
supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and,
behold, now he hath taken away my blessing. And he said, Hast thou not
reserved a blessing for me?  27:37 And Isaac answered and said unto
Esau, Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I
given to him for servants; and with corn and wine have I sustained
him: and what shall I do now unto thee, my son?  27:38 And Esau said
unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, even
me also, O my father. And Esau lifted up his voice, and wept.

27:39 And Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy
dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven
from above; 27:40 And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve
thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the
dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.

27:41 And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his
father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning
for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob.

27:42 And these words of Esau her elder son were told to Rebekah: and
she sent and called Jacob her younger son, and said unto him, Behold,
thy brother Esau, as touching thee, doth comfort himself, purposing to
kill thee.

27:43 Now therefore, my son, obey my voice; arise, flee thou to Laban
my brother to Haran; 27:44 And tarry with him a few days, until thy
brother's fury turn away; 27:45 Until thy brother's anger turn away
from thee, and he forget that which thou hast done to him: then I will
send, and fetch thee from thence: why should I be deprived also of you
both in one day?  27:46 And Rebekah said to Isaac, I am weary of my
life because of the daughters of Heth: if Jacob take a wife of the
daughters of Heth, such as these which are of the daughters of the
land, what good shall my life do me?  28:1 And Isaac called Jacob, and
blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a
wife of the daughters of Canaan.

28:2 Arise, go to Padanaram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother's
father; and take thee a wife from thence of the daughers of Laban thy
mother's brother.

28:3 And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply
thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people; 28:4 And give thee
the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee; that thou
mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave
unto Abraham.

28:5 And Isaac sent away Jacob: and he went to Padanaram unto Laban,
son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob's and Esau's
mother.

28:6 When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob, and sent him away to
Padanaram, to take him a wife from thence; and that as he blessed him
he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the
daughers of Canaan; 28:7 And that Jacob obeyed his father and his
mother, and was gone to Padanaram; 28:8 And Esau seeing that the
daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father; 28:9 Then went Esau
unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the
daughter of Ishmael Abraham's son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his
wife.

28:10 And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran.

28:11 And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all
night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that
place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to
sleep.

28:12 And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the
top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending
and descending on it.

28:13 And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD
God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou
liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; 28:14 And thy seed
shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the
west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee
and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

28:15 And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places
whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I
will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to
thee of.

28:16 And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD
is in this place; and I knew it not.

28:17 And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is
none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

28:18 And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that
he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil
upon the top of it.

28:19 And he called the name of that place Bethel: but the name of
that city was called Luz at the first.

28:20 And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will
keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and
raiment to put on, 28:21 So that I come again to my father's house in
peace; then shall the LORD be my God: 28:22 And this stone, which I
have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all that thou
shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.

29:1 Then Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the
people of the east.

29:2 And he looked, and behold a well in the field, and, lo, there
were three flocks of sheep lying by it; for out of that well they
watered the flocks: and a great stone was upon the well's mouth.

29:3 And thither were all the flocks gathered: and they rolled the
stone from the well's mouth, and watered the sheep, and put the stone
again upon the well's mouth in his place.

29:4 And Jacob said unto them, My brethren, whence be ye? And they
said, Of Haran are we.

29:5 And he said unto them, Know ye Laban the son of Nahor? And they
said, We know him.

29:6 And he said unto them, Is he well? And they said, He is well:
and, behold, Rachel his daughter cometh with the sheep.

29:7 And he said, Lo, it is yet high day, neither is it time that the
cattle should be gathered together: water ye the sheep, and go and
feed them.

29:8 And they said, We cannot, until all the flocks be gathered
together, and till they roll the stone from the well's mouth; then we
water the sheep.

29:9 And while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father's
sheep; for she kept them.

29:10 And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban
his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother,
that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and
watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother.

29:11 And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept.

29:12 And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's brother, and that
he was Rebekah's son: and she ran and told her father.

29:13 And it came to pass, when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob his
sister's son, that he ran to meet him, and embraced him, and kissed
him, and brought him to his house. And he told Laban all these things.

29:14 And Laban said to him, Surely thou art my bone and my flesh. And
he abode with him the space of a month.

29:15 And Laban said unto Jacob, Because thou art my brother,
shouldest thou therefore serve me for nought? tell me, what shall thy
wages be?  29:16 And Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder
was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.

29:17 Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well
favoured.

29:18 And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years
for Rachel thy younger daughter.

29:19 And Laban said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that
I should give her to another man: abide with me.

29:20 And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto
him but a few days, for the love he had to her.

29:21 And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are
fulfilled, that I may go in unto her.

29:22 And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a
feast.

29:23 And it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his
daughter, and brought her to him; and he went in unto her.

29:24 And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah Zilpah his maid for an
handmaid.

29:25 And it came to pass, that in the morning, behold, it was Leah:
and he said to Laban, What is this thou hast done unto me? did not I
serve with thee for Rachel? wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?
29:26 And Laban said, It must not be so done in our country, to give
the younger before the firstborn.

29:27 Fulfil her week, and we will give thee this also for the service
which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years.

29:28 And Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week: and he gave him Rachel
his daughter to wife also.

29:29 And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be
her maid.

29:30 And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more
than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years.

29:31 And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb:
but Rachel was barren.

29:32 And Leah conceived, and bare a son, and she called his name
Reuben: for she said, Surely the LORD hath looked upon my affliction;
now therefore my husband will love me.

29:33 And she conceived again, and bare a son; and said, Because the
LORD hath heard I was hated, he hath therefore given me this son also:
and she called his name Simeon.

29:34 And she conceived again, and bare a son; and said, Now this time
will my husband be joined unto me, because I have born him three sons:
therefore was his name called Levi.

29:35 And she conceived again, and bare a son: and she said, Now will
I praise the LORD: therefore she called his name Judah; and left
bearing.

30:1 And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel
envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I
die.

30:2 And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I
in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?
30:3 And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she
shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.

30:4 And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in
unto her.

30:5 And Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son.

30:6 And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my
voice, and hath given me a son: therefore called she his name Dan.

30:7 And Bilhah Rachel's maid conceived again, and bare Jacob a second
son.

30:8 And Rachel said, With great wrestlings have I wrestled with my
sister, and I have prevailed: and she called his name Naphtali.

30:9 When Leah saw that she had left bearing, she took Zilpah her
maid, and gave her Jacob to wife.

30:10 And Zilpah Leah's maid bare Jacob a son.

30:11 And Leah said, A troop cometh: and she called his name Gad.

30:12 And Zilpah Leah's maid bare Jacob a second son.

30:13 And Leah said, Happy am I, for the daughters will call me
blessed: and she called his name Asher.

30:14 And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found
mandrakes in the field, and brought them unto his mother Leah. Then
Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes.

30:15 And she said unto her, Is it a small matter that thou hast taken
my husband? and wouldest thou take away my son's mandrakes also? And
Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie with thee to night for thy son's
mandrakes.

30:16 And Jacob came out of the field in the evening, and Leah went
out to meet him, and said, Thou must come in unto me; for surely I
have hired thee with my son's mandrakes. And he lay with her that
night.

30:17 And God hearkened unto Leah, and she conceived, and bare Jacob
the fifth son.

30:18 And Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I have given
my maiden to my husband: and she called his name Issachar.

30:19 And Leah conceived again, and bare Jacob the sixth son.

30:20 And Leah said, God hath endued me with a good dowry; now will my
husband dwell with me, because I have born him six sons: and she
called his name Zebulun.

30:21 And afterwards she bare a daughter, and called her name Dinah.

30:22 And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened
her womb.

30:23 And she conceived, and bare a son; and said, God hath taken away
my reproach: 30:24 And she called his name Joseph; and said, The LORD
shall add to me another son.

30:25 And it came to pass, when Rachel had born Joseph, that Jacob
said unto Laban, Send me away, that I may go unto mine own place, and
to my country.

30:26 Give me my wives and my children, for whom I have served thee,
and let me go: for thou knowest my service which I have done thee.

30:27 And Laban said unto him, I pray thee, if I have found favour in
thine eyes, tarry: for I have learned by experience that the LORD hath
blessed me for thy sake.

30:28 And he said, Appoint me thy wages, and I will give it.

30:29 And he said unto him, Thou knowest how I have served thee, and
how thy cattle was with me.

30:30 For it was little which thou hadst before I came, and it is now
increased unto a multitude; and the LORD hath blessed thee since my
coming: and now when shall I provide for mine own house also?  30:31
And he said, What shall I give thee? And Jacob said, Thou shalt not
give me any thing: if thou wilt do this thing for me, I will again
feed and keep thy flock.

30:32 I will pass through all thy flock to day, removing from thence
all the speckled and spotted cattle, and all the brown cattle among
the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats: and of such
shall be my hire.

30:33 So shall my righteousness answer for me in time to come, when it
shall come for my hire before thy face: every one that is not speckled
and spotted among the goats, and brown among the sheep, that shall be
counted stolen with me.

30:34 And Laban said, Behold, I would it might be according to thy
word.

30:35 And he removed that day the he goats that were ringstraked and
spotted, and all the she goats that were speckled and spotted, and
every one that had some white in it, and all the brown among the
sheep, and gave them into the hand of his sons.

30:36 And he set three days' journey betwixt himself and Jacob: and
Jacob fed the rest of Laban's flocks.

30:37 And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and
chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white
appear which was in the rods.

30:38 And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the
gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that
they should conceive when they came to drink.

30:39 And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth
cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.

30:40 And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the
flocks toward the ringstraked, and all the brown in the flock of
Laban; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto
Laban's cattle.

30:41 And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did
conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in
the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods.

30:42 But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in: so the
feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's.

30:43 And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and
maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and asses.

31:1 And he heard the words of Laban's sons, saying, Jacob hath taken
away all that was our father's; and of that which was our father's
hath he gotten all this glory.

31:2 And Jacob beheld the countenance of Laban, and, behold, it was
not toward him as before.

31:3 And the LORD said unto Jacob, Return unto the land of thy
fathers, and to thy kindred; and I will be with thee.

31:4 And Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the field unto his
flock, 31:5 And said unto them, I see your father's countenance, that
it is not toward me as before; but the God of my father hath been with
me.

31:6 And ye know that with all my power I have served your father.

31:7 And your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times;
but God suffered him not to hurt me.

31:8 If he said thus, The speckled shall be thy wages; then all the
cattle bare speckled: and if he said thus, The ringstraked shall be
thy hire; then bare all the cattle ringstraked.

31:9 Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given
them to me.

31:10 And it came to pass at the time that the cattle conceived, that
I lifted up mine eyes, and saw in a dream, and, behold, the rams which
leaped upon the cattle were ringstraked, speckled, and grisled.

31:11 And the angel of God spake unto me in a dream, saying, Jacob:
And I said, Here am I.

31:12 And he said, Lift up now thine eyes, and see, all the rams which
leap upon the cattle are ringstraked, speckled, and grisled: for I
have seen all that Laban doeth unto thee.

31:13 I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and
where thou vowedst a vow unto me: now arise, get thee out from this
land, and return unto the land of thy kindred.

31:14 And Rachel and Leah answered and said unto him, Is there yet any
portion or inheritance for us in our father's house?  31:15 Are we not
counted of him strangers? for he hath sold us, and hath quite devoured
also our money.

31:16 For all the riches which God hath taken from our father, that is
ours, and our children's: now then, whatsoever God hath said unto
thee, do.

31:17 Then Jacob rose up, and set his sons and his wives upon camels;
31:18 And he carried away all his cattle, and all his goods which he
had gotten, the cattle of his getting, which he had gotten in
Padanaram, for to go to Isaac his father in the land of Canaan.

31:19 And Laban went to shear his sheep: and Rachel had stolen the
images that were her father's.

31:20 And Jacob stole away unawares to Laban the Syrian, in that he
told him not that he fled.

31:21 So he fled with all that he had; and he rose up, and passed over
the river, and set his face toward the mount Gilead.

31:22 And it was told Laban on the third day that Jacob was fled.

31:23 And he took his brethren with him, and pursued after him seven
days' journey; and they overtook him in the mount Gilead.

31:24 And God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said
unto him, Take heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad.

31:25 Then Laban overtook Jacob. Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the
mount: and Laban with his brethren pitched in the mount of Gilead.

31:26 And Laban said to Jacob, What hast thou done, that thou hast
stolen away unawares to me, and carried away my daughters, as captives
taken with the sword?  31:27 Wherefore didst thou flee away secretly,
and steal away from me; and didst not tell me, that I might have sent
thee away with mirth, and with songs, with tabret, and with harp?
31:28 And hast not suffered me to kiss my sons and my daughters? thou
hast now done foolishly in so doing.

31:29 It is in the power of my hand to do you hurt: but the God of
your father spake unto me yesternight, saying, Take thou heed that
thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad.

31:30 And now, though thou wouldest needs be gone, because thou sore
longedst after thy father's house, yet wherefore hast thou stolen my
gods?  31:31 And Jacob answered and said to Laban, Because I was
afraid: for I said, Peradventure thou wouldest take by force thy
daughters from me.

31:32 With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live: before
our brethren discern thou what is thine with me, and take it to thee.
For Jacob knew not that Rachel had stolen them.

31:33 And Laban went into Jacob's tent, and into Leah's tent, and into
the two maidservants' tents; but he found them not. Then went he out
of Leah's tent, and entered into Rachel's tent.

31:34 Now Rachel had taken the images, and put them in the camel's
furniture, and sat upon them. And Laban searched all the tent, but
found them not.

31:35 And she said to her father, Let it not displease my lord that I
cannot rise up before thee; for the custom of women is upon me. And he
searched but found not the images.

31:36 And Jacob was wroth, and chode with Laban: and Jacob answered
and said to Laban, What is my trespass? what is my sin, that thou hast
so hotly pursued after me?  31:37 Whereas thou hast searched all my
stuff, what hast thou found of all thy household stuff? set it here
before my brethren and thy brethren, that they may judge betwixt us
both.

31:38 This twenty years have I been with thee; thy ewes and thy she
goats have not cast their young, and the rams of thy flock have I not
eaten.

31:39 That which was torn of beasts I brought not unto thee; I bare
the loss of it; of my hand didst thou require it, whether stolen by
day, or stolen by night.

31:40 Thus I was; in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by
night; and my sleep departed from mine eyes.

31:41 Thus have I been twenty years in thy house; I served thee
fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy cattle:
and thou hast changed my wages ten times.

31:42 Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of
Isaac, had been with me, surely thou hadst sent me away now empty. God
hath seen mine affliction and the labour of my hands, and rebuked thee
yesternight.

31:43 And Laban answered and said unto Jacob, These daughters are my
daughters, and these children are my children, and these cattle are my
cattle, and all that thou seest is mine: and what can I do this day
unto these my daughters, or unto their children which they have born?
31:44 Now therefore come thou, let us make a covenant, I and thou; and
let it be for a witness between me and thee.

31:45 And Jacob took a stone, and set it up for a pillar.

31:46 And Jacob said unto his brethren, Gather stones; and they took
stones, and made an heap: and they did eat there upon the heap.

31:47 And Laban called it Jegarsahadutha: but Jacob called it Galeed.

31:48 And Laban said, This heap is a witness between me and thee this
day.

Therefore was the name of it called Galeed; 31:49 And Mizpah; for he
said, The LORD watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from
another.

31:50 If thou shalt afflict my daughters, or if thou shalt take other
wives beside my daughters, no man is with us; see, God is witness
betwixt me and thee.

31:51 And Laban said to Jacob, Behold this heap, and behold this
pillar, which I have cast betwixt me and thee: 31:52 This heap be
witness, and this pillar be witness, that I will not pass over this
heap to thee, and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this
pillar unto me, for harm.

31:53 The God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor, the God of their
father, judge betwixt us. And Jacob sware by the fear of his father
Isaac.

31:54 Then Jacob offered sacrifice upon the mount, and called his
brethren to eat bread: and they did eat bread, and tarried all night
in the mount.

31:55 And early in the morning Laban rose up, and kissed his sons and
his daughters, and blessed them: and Laban departed, and returned unto
his place.

32:1 And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him.

32:2 And when Jacob saw them, he said, This is God's host: and he
called the name of that place Mahanaim.

32:3 And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother unto the
land of Seir, the country of Edom.

32:4 And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye speak unto my lord
Esau; Thy servant Jacob saith thus, I have sojourned with Laban, and
stayed there until now: 32:5 And I have oxen, and asses, flocks, and
menservants, and womenservants: and I have sent to tell my lord, that
I may find grace in thy sight.

32:6 And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to thy
brother Esau, and also he cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men
with him.

32:7 Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed: and he divided the
people that was with him, and the flocks, and herds, and the camels,
into two bands; 32:8 And said, If Esau come to the one company, and
smite it, then the other company which is left shall escape.

32:9 And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father
Isaac, the LORD which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to
thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee: 32:10 I am not worthy of
the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast
shewed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan;
and now I am become two bands.

32:11 Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the
hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the
mother with the children.

32:12 And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed
as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.

32:13 And he lodged there that same night; and took of that which came
to his hand a present for Esau his brother; 32:14 Two hundred she
goats, and twenty he goats, two hundred ewes, and twenty rams, 32:15
Thirty milch camels with their colts, forty kine, and ten bulls,
twenty she asses, and ten foals.

32:16 And he delivered them into the hand of his servants, every drove
by themselves; and said unto his servants, Pass over before me, and
put a space betwixt drove and drove.

32:17 And he commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau my brother
meeteth thee, and asketh thee, saying, Whose art thou? and whither
goest thou? and whose are these before thee?  32:18 Then thou shalt
say, They be thy servant Jacob's; it is a present sent unto my lord
Esau: and, behold, also he is behind us.

32:19 And so commanded he the second, and the third, and all that
followed the droves, saying, On this manner shall ye speak unto Esau,
when ye find him.

32:20 And say ye moreover, Behold, thy servant Jacob is behind us. For
he said, I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and
afterward I will see his face; peradventure he will accept of me.

32:21 So went the present over before him: and himself lodged that
night in the company.

32:22 And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two
womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok.

32:23 And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over
that he had.

32:24 And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him
until the breaking of the day.

32:25 And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched
the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of
joint, as he wrestled with him.

32:26 And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I
will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

32:27 And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob.

32:28 And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel:
for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast
prevailed.

32:29 And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name.
And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he
blessed him there.

32:30 And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen
God face to face, and my life is preserved.

32:31 And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he
halted upon his thigh.

32:32 Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which
shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because
he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew that shrank.

33:1 And Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, Esau came,
and with him four hundred men. And he divided the children unto Leah,
and unto Rachel, and unto the two handmaids.

33:2 And he put the handmaids and their children foremost, and Leah
and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindermost.

33:3 And he passed over before them, and bowed himself to the ground
seven times, until he came near to his brother.

33:4 And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck,
and kissed him: and they wept.

33:5 And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children;
and said, Who are those with thee? And he said, The children which God
hath graciously given thy servant.

33:6 Then the handmaidens came near, they and their children, and they
bowed themselves.

33:7 And Leah also with her children came near, and bowed themselves:
and after came Joseph near and Rachel, and they bowed themselves.

33:8 And he said, What meanest thou by all this drove which I met? And
he said, These are to find grace in the sight of my lord.

33:9 And Esau said, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast
unto thyself.

33:10 And Jacob said, Nay, I pray thee, if now I have found grace in
thy sight, then receive my present at my hand: for therefore I have
seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou wast
pleased with me.

33:11 Take, I pray thee, my blessing that is brought to thee; because
God hath dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough. And he
urged him, and he took it.

33:12 And he said, Let us take our journey, and let us go, and I will
go before thee.

33:13 And he said unto him, My lord knoweth that the children are
tender, and the flocks and herds with young are with me: and if men
should overdrive them one day, all the flock will die.

33:14 Let my lord, I pray thee, pass over before his servant: and I
will lead on softly, according as the cattle that goeth before me and
the children be able to endure, until I come unto my lord unto Seir.

33:15 And Esau said, Let me now leave with thee some of the folk that
are with me. And he said, What needeth it? let me find grace in the
sight of my lord.

33:16 So Esau returned that day on his way unto Seir.

33:17 And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him an house, and made
booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called
Succoth.

33:18 And Jacob came to Shalem, a city of Shechem, which is in the
land of Canaan, when he came from Padanaram; and pitched his tent
before the city.

33:19 And he bought a parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent,
at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem's father, for an hundred
pieces of money.

33:20 And he erected there an altar, and called it EleloheIsrael.

34:1 And Dinah the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went
out to see the daughters of the land.

34:2 And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the
country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her.

34:3 And his soul clave unto Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved
the damsel, and spake kindly unto the damsel.

34:4 And Shechem spake unto his father Hamor, saying, Get me this
damsel to wife.

34:5 And Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter: now his
sons were with his cattle in the field: and Jacob held his peace until
they were come.

34:6 And Hamor the father of Shechem went out unto Jacob to commune
with him.

34:7 And the sons of Jacob came out of the field when they heard it:
and the men were grieved, and they were very wroth, because he had
wrought folly in Israel in lying with Jacob's daughter: which thing
ought not to be done.

34:8 And Hamor communed with them, saying, The soul of my son Shechem
longeth for your daughter: I pray you give her him to wife.

34:9 And make ye marriages with us, and give your daughters unto us,
and take our daughters unto you.

34:10 And ye shall dwell with us: and the land shall be before you;
dwell and trade ye therein, and get you possessions therein.

34:11 And Shechem said unto her father and unto her brethren, Let me
find grace in your eyes, and what ye shall say unto me I will give.

34:12 Ask me never so much dowry and gift, and I will give according
as ye shall say unto me: but give me the damsel to wife.

34:13 And the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Hamor his father
deceitfully, and said, because he had defiled Dinah their sister:
34:14 And they said unto them, We cannot do this thing, to give our
sister to one that is uncircumcised; for that were a reproach unto us:
34:15 But in this will we consent unto you: If ye will be as we be,
that every male of you be circumcised; 34:16 Then will we give our
daughters unto you, and we will take your daughters to us, and we will
dwell with you, and we will become one people.

34:17 But if ye will not hearken unto us, to be circumcised; then will
we take our daughter, and we will be gone.

34:18 And their words pleased Hamor, and Shechem Hamor's son.

34:19 And the young man deferred not to do the thing, because he had
delight in Jacob's daughter: and he was more honourable than all the
house of his father.

34:20 And Hamor and Shechem his son came unto the gate of their city,
and communed with the men of their city, saying, 34:21 These men are
peaceable with us; therefore let them dwell in the land, and trade
therein; for the land, behold, it is large enough for them; let us
take their daughters to us for wives, and let us give them our
daughters.

34:22 Only herein will the men consent unto us for to dwell with us,
to be one people, if every male among us be circumcised, as they are
circumcised.

34:23 Shall not their cattle and their substance and every beast of
their's be our's? only let us consent unto them, and they will dwell
with us.

34:24 And unto Hamor and unto Shechem his son hearkened all that went
out of the gate of his city; and every male was circumcised, all that
went out of the gate of his city.

34:25 And it came to pass on the third day, when they were sore, that
two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brethren, took each
man his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males.

34:26 And they slew Hamor and Shechem his son with the edge of the
sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem's house, and went out.

34:27 The sons of Jacob came upon the slain, and spoiled the city,
because they had defiled their sister.

34:28 They took their sheep, and their oxen, and their asses, and that
which was in the city, and that which was in the field, 34:29 And all
their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives took they
captive, and spoiled even all that was in the house.

34:30 And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye have troubled me to make
me to stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites
and the Perizzites: and I being few in number, they shall gather
themselves together against me, and slay me; and I shall be destroyed,
I and my house.

34:31 And they said, Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot?
35:1 And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there:
and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou
fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.

35:2 Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with
him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and
change your garments: 35:3 And let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and
I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my
distress, and was with me in the way which I went.

35:4 And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their
hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid
them under the oak which was by Shechem.

35:5 And they journeyed: and the terror of God was upon the cities
that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of
Jacob.

35:6 So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is,
Bethel, he and all the people that were with him.

35:7 And he built there an altar, and called the place Elbethel:
because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his
brother.

35:8 But Deborah Rebekah's nurse died, and she was buried beneath
Bethel under an oak: and the name of it was called Allonbachuth.

35:9 And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padanaram,
and blessed him.

35:10 And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be
called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his
name Israel.

35:11 And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and
multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and
kings shall come out of thy loins; 35:12 And the land which I gave
Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee
will I give the land.

35:13 And God went up from him in the place where he talked with him.

35:14 And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him,
even a pillar of stone: and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he
poured oil thereon.

35:15 And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him,
Bethel.

35:16 And they journeyed from Bethel; and there was but a little way
to come to Ephrath: and Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour.

35:17 And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, that the
midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also.

35:18 And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she
died) that she called his name Benoni: but his father called him
Benjamin.

35:19 And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is
Bethlehem.

35:20 And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave: that is the pillar of
Rachel's grave unto this day.

35:21 And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent beyond the tower of
Edar.

35:22 And it came to pass, when Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben
went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine: and Israel heard it.
Now the sons of Jacob were twelve: 35:23 The sons of Leah; Reuben,
Jacob's firstborn, and Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and
Zebulun: 35:24 The sons of Rachel; Joseph, and Benjamin: 35:25 And the
sons of Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid; Dan, and Naphtali: 35:26 And the
sons of Zilpah, Leah's handmaid: Gad, and Asher: these are the sons of
Jacob, which were born to him in Padanaram.

35:27 And Jacob came unto Isaac his father unto Mamre, unto the city
of Arbah, which is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned.

35:28 And the days of Isaac were an hundred and fourscore years.

35:29 And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his
people, being old and full of days: and his sons Esau and Jacob buried
him.

36:1 Now these are the generations of Esau, who is Edom.

36:2 Esau took his wives of the daughters of Canaan; Adah the daughter
of Elon the Hittite, and Aholibamah the daughter of Anah the daughter
of Zibeon the Hivite; 36:3 And Bashemath Ishmael's daughter, sister of
Nebajoth.

36:4 And Adah bare to Esau Eliphaz; and Bashemath bare Reuel; 36:5 And
Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these are the sons of
Esau, which were born unto him in the land of Canaan.

36:6 And Esau took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all
the persons of his house, and his cattle, and all his beasts, and all
his substance, which he had got in the land of Canaan; and went into
the country from the face of his brother Jacob.

36:7 For their riches were more than that they might dwell together;
and the land wherein they were strangers could not bear them because
of their cattle.

36:8 Thus dwelt Esau in mount Seir: Esau is Edom.

36:9 And these are the generations of Esau the father of the Edomites
in mount Seir: 36:10 These are the names of Esau's sons; Eliphaz the
son of Adah the wife of Esau, Reuel the son of Bashemath the wife of
Esau.

36:11 And the sons of Eliphaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, and Gatam, and
Kenaz.

36:12 And Timna was concubine to Eliphaz Esau's son; and she bare to
Eliphaz Amalek: these were the sons of Adah Esau's wife.

36:13 And these are the sons of Reuel; Nahath, and Zerah, Shammah, and
Mizzah: these were the sons of Bashemath Esau's wife.

36:14 And these were the sons of Aholibamah, the daughter of Anah the
daughter of Zibeon, Esau's wife: and she bare to Esau Jeush, and
Jaalam, and Korah.

36:15 These were dukes of the sons of Esau: the sons of Eliphaz the
firstborn son of Esau; duke Teman, duke Omar, duke Zepho, duke Kenaz,
36:16 Duke Korah, duke Gatam, and duke Amalek: these are the dukes
that came of Eliphaz in the land of Edom; these were the sons of Adah.

36:17 And these are the sons of Reuel Esau's son; duke Nahath, duke
Zerah, duke Shammah, duke Mizzah: these are the dukes that came of
Reuel in the land of Edom; these are the sons of Bashemath Esau's
wife.

36:18 And these are the sons of Aholibamah Esau's wife; duke Jeush,
duke Jaalam, duke Korah: these were the dukes that came of Aholibamah
the daughter of Anah, Esau's wife.

36:19 These are the sons of Esau, who is Edom, and these are their
dukes.

36:20 These are the sons of Seir the Horite, who inhabited the land;
Lotan, and Shobal, and Zibeon, and Anah, 36:21 And Dishon, and Ezer,
and Dishan: these are the dukes of the Horites, the children of Seir
in the land of Edom.

36:22 And the children of Lotan were Hori and Hemam; and Lotan's
sister was Timna.

36:23 And the children of Shobal were these; Alvan, and Manahath, and
Ebal, Shepho, and Onam.

36:24 And these are the children of Zibeon; both Ajah, and Anah: this
was that Anah that found the mules in the wilderness, as he fed the
asses of Zibeon his father.

36:25 And the children of Anah were these; Dishon, and Aholibamah the
daughter of Anah.

36:26 And these are the children of Dishon; Hemdan, and Eshban, and
Ithran, and Cheran.

36:27 The children of Ezer are these; Bilhan, and Zaavan, and Akan.

36:28 The children of Dishan are these; Uz, and Aran.

36:29 These are the dukes that came of the Horites; duke Lotan, duke
Shobal, duke Zibeon, duke Anah, 36:30 Duke Dishon, duke Ezer, duke
Dishan: these are the dukes that came of Hori, among their dukes in
the land of Seir.

36:31 And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before
there reigned any king over the children of Israel.

36:32 And Bela the son of Beor reigned in Edom: and the name of his
city was Dinhabah.

36:33 And Bela died, and Jobab the son of Zerah of Bozrah reigned in
his stead.

36:34 And Jobab died, and Husham of the land of Temani reigned in his
stead.

36:35 And Husham died, and Hadad the son of Bedad, who smote Midian in
the field of Moab, reigned in his stead: and the name of his city was
Avith.

36:36 And Hadad died, and Samlah of Masrekah reigned in his stead.

36:37 And Samlah died, and Saul of Rehoboth by the river reigned in
his stead.

36:38 And Saul died, and Baalhanan the son of Achbor reigned in his
stead.

36:39 And Baalhanan the son of Achbor died, and Hadar reigned in his
stead: and the name of his city was Pau; and his wife's name was
Mehetabel, the daughter of Matred, the daughter of Mezahab.

36:40 And these are the names of the dukes that came of Esau,
according to their families, after their places, by their names; duke
Timnah, duke Alvah, duke Jetheth, 36:41 Duke Aholibamah, duke Elah,
duke Pinon, 36:42 Duke Kenaz, duke Teman, duke Mibzar, 36:43 Duke
Magdiel, duke Iram: these be the dukes of Edom, according to their
habitations in the land of their possession: he is Esau the father of
the Edomites.

37:1 And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in
the land of Canaan.

37:2 These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years
old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the
sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives: and
Joseph brought unto his father their evil report.

37:3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he
was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.

37:4 And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than
all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto
him.

37:5 And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they
hated him yet the more.

37:6 And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have
dreamed: 37:7 For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and,
lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves
stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.

37:8 And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or
shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the
more for his dreams, and for his words.

37:9 And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and
said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and
the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.

37:10 And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his
father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou
hast dreamed?  Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to
bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?  37:11 And his brethren
envied him; but his father observed the saying.

37:12 And his brethren went to feed their father's flock in Shechem.

37:13 And Israel said unto Joseph, Do not thy brethren feed the flock
in Shechem? come, and I will send thee unto them. And he said to him,
Here am I.

37:14 And he said to him, Go, I pray thee, see whether it be well with
thy brethren, and well with the flocks; and bring me word again. So he
sent him out of the vale of Hebron, and he came to Shechem.

37:15 And a certain man found him, and, behold, he was wandering in
the field: and the man asked him, saying, What seekest thou?  37:16
And he said, I seek my brethren: tell me, I pray thee, where they feed
their flocks.

37:17 And the man said, They are departed hence; for I heard them say,
Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went after his brethren, and found
them in Dothan.

37:18 And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto
them, they conspired against him to slay him.

37:19 And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh.

37:20 Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some
pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall
see what will become of his dreams.

37:21 And Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands;
and said, Let us not kill him.

37:22 And Reuben said unto them, Shed no blood, but cast him into this
pit that is in the wilderness, and lay no hand upon him; that he might
rid him out of their hands, to deliver him to his father again.

37:23 And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his brethren,
that they stript Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colours that
was on him; 37:24 And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the
pit was empty, there was no water in it.

37:25 And they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes
and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead
with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry
it down to Egypt.

37:26 And Judah said unto his brethren, What profit is it if we slay
our brother, and conceal his blood?  37:27 Come, and let us sell him
to the Ishmeelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our
brother and our flesh. And his brethren were content.

37:28 Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and
lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites
for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt.

37:29 And Reuben returned unto the pit; and, behold, Joseph was not in
the pit; and he rent his clothes.

37:30 And he returned unto his brethren, and said, The child is not;
and I, whither shall I go?  37:31 And they took Joseph's coat, and
killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood; 37:32 And
they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their
father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy son's
coat or no.

37:33 And he knew it, and said, It is my son's coat; an evil beast
hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.

37:34 And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins,
and mourned for his son many days.

37:35 And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him;
but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into
the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.

37:36 And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer
of Pharaoh's, and captain of the guard.

38:1 And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his
brethren, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

38:2 And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite, whose name
was Shuah; and he took her, and went in unto her.

38:3 And she conceived, and bare a son; and he called his name Er.

38:4 And she conceived again, and bare a son; and she called his name
Onan.

38:5 And she yet again conceived, and bare a son; and called his name
Shelah: and he was at Chezib, when she bare him.

38:6 And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, whose name was Tamar.

38:7 And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD;
and the LORD slew him.

38:8 And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and
marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.

38:9 And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to
pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on
the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.

38:10 And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he
slew him also.

38:11 Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter in law, Remain a widow at
thy father's house, till Shelah my son be grown: for he said, Lest
peradventure he die also, as his brethren did. And Tamar went and
dwelt in her father's house.

38:12 And in process of time the daughter of Shuah Judah's wife died;
and Judah was comforted, and went up unto his sheepshearers to
Timnath, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite.

38:13 And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father in law goeth up
to Timnath to shear his sheep.

38:14 And she put her widow's garments off from her, and covered her
with a vail, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is
by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was
not given unto him to wife.

38:15 When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she
had covered her face.

38:16 And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee,
let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his daughter
in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come
in unto me?  38:17 And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock.
And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it?  38:18
And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet,
and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave it
her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.

38:19 And she arose, and went away, and laid by her vail from her, and
put on the garments of her widowhood.

38:20 And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend the Adullamite,
to receive his pledge from the woman's hand: but he found her not.

38:21 Then he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the
harlot, that was openly by the way side? And they said, There was no
harlot in this place.

38:22 And he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her; and also
the men of the place said, that there was no harlot in this place.

38:23 And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be shamed:
behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her.

38:24 And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told
Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and
also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her
forth, and let her be burnt.

38:25 When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law,
saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said,
Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and
staff.

38:26 And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more
righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he
knew her again no more.

38:27 And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold,
twins were in her womb.

38:28 And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out
his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet
thread, saying, This came out first.

38:29 And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his
brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? this
breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Pharez.

38:30 And afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet thread
upon his hand: and his name was called Zarah.

39:1 And Joseph was brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of
Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hands of
the Ishmeelites, which had brought him down thither.

39:2 And the LORD was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he
was in the house of his master the Egyptian.

39:3 And his master saw that the LORD was with him, and that the LORD
made all that he did to prosper in his hand.

39:4 And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him: and he
made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his
hand.

39:5 And it came to pass from the time that he had made him overseer
in his house, and over all that he had, that the LORD blessed the
Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; and the blessing of the LORD was
upon all that he had in the house, and in the field.

39:6 And he left all that he had in Joseph's hand; and he knew not
ought he had, save the bread which he did eat. And Joseph was a goodly
person, and well favoured.

39:7 And it came to pass after these things, that his master's wife
cast her eyes upon Joseph; and she said, Lie with me.

39:8 But he refused, and said unto his master's wife, Behold, my
master wotteth not what is with me in the house, and he hath committed
all that he hath to my hand; 39:9 There is none greater in this house
than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because
thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin
against God?  39:10 And it came to pass, as she spake to Joseph day by
day, that he hearkened not unto her, to lie by her, or to be with her.

39:11 And it came to pass about this time, that Joseph went into the
house to do his business; and there was none of the men of the house
there within.

39:12 And she caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me: and he
left his garment in her hand, and fled, and got him out.

39:13 And it came to pass, when she saw that he had left his garment
in her hand, and was fled forth, 39:14 That she called unto the men of
her house, and spake unto them, saying, See, he hath brought in an
Hebrew unto us to mock us; he came in unto me to lie with me, and I
cried with a loud voice: 39:15 And it came to pass, when he heard that
I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment with me, and
fled, and got him out.

39:16 And she laid up his garment by her, until his lord came home.

39:17 And she spake unto him according to these words, saying, The
Hebrew servant, which thou hast brought unto us, came in unto me to
mock me: 39:18 And it came to pass, as I lifted up my voice and cried,
that he left his garment with me, and fled out.

39:19 And it came to pass, when his master heard the words of his
wife, which she spake unto him, saying, After this manner did thy
servant to me; that his wrath was kindled.

39:20 And Joseph's master took him, and put him into the prison, a
place where the king's prisoners were bound: and he was there in the
prison.

39:21 But the LORD was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him
favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison.

39:22 And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the
prisoners that were in the prison; and whatsoever they did there, he
was the doer of it.

39:23 The keeper of the prison looked not to any thing that was under
his hand; because the LORD was with him, and that which he did, the
LORD made it to prosper.

40:1 And it came to pass after these things, that the butler of the
king of Egypt and his baker had offended their lord the king of Egypt.

40:2 And Pharaoh was wroth against two of his officers, against the
chief of the butlers, and against the chief of the bakers.

40:3 And he put them in ward in the house of the captain of the guard,
into the prison, the place where Joseph was bound.

40:4 And the captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and he
served them: and they continued a season in ward.

40:5 And they dreamed a dream both of them, each man his dream in one
night, each man according to the interpretation of his dream, the
butler and the baker of the king of Egypt, which were bound in the
prison.

40:6 And Joseph came in unto them in the morning, and looked upon
them, and, behold, they were sad.

40:7 And he asked Pharaoh's officers that were with him in the ward of
his lord's house, saying, Wherefore look ye so sadly to day?  40:8 And
they said unto him, We have dreamed a dream, and there is no
interpreter of it. And Joseph said unto them, Do not interpretations
belong to God? tell me them, I pray you.

40:9 And the chief butler told his dream to Joseph, and said to him,
In my dream, behold, a vine was before me; 40:10 And in the vine were
three branches: and it was as though it budded, and her blossoms shot
forth; and the clusters thereof brought forth ripe grapes: 40:11 And
Pharaoh's cup was in my hand: and I took the grapes, and pressed them
into Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand.

40:12 And Joseph said unto him, This is the interpretation of it: The
three branches are three days: 40:13 Yet within three days shall
Pharaoh lift up thine head, and restore thee unto thy place: and thou
shalt deliver Pharaoh's cup into his hand, after the former manner
when thou wast his butler.

40:14 But think on me when it shall be well with thee, and shew
kindness, I pray thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto Pharaoh,
and bring me out of this house: 40:15 For indeed I was stolen away out
of the land of the Hebrews: and here also have I done nothing that
they should put me into the dungeon.

40:16 When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was good, he
said unto Joseph, I also was in my dream, and, behold, I had three
white baskets on my head: 40:17 And in the uppermost basket there was
of all manner of bakemeats for Pharaoh; and the birds did eat them out
of the basket upon my head.

40:18 And Joseph answered and said, This is the interpretation
thereof: The three baskets are three days: 40:19 Yet within three days
shall Pharaoh lift up thy head from off thee, and shall hang thee on a
tree; and the birds shall eat thy flesh from off thee.

40:20 And it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday,
that he made a feast unto all his servants: and he lifted up the head
of the chief butler and of the chief baker among his servants.

40:21 And he restored the chief butler unto his butlership again; and
he gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand: 40:22 But he hanged the chief
baker: as Joseph had interpreted to them.

40:23 Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him.

41:1 And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh
dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.

41:2 And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured
kine and fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow.

41:3 And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the
river, ill favoured and leanfleshed; and stood by the other kine upon
the brink of the river.

41:4 And the ill favoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven
well favoured and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.

41:5 And he slept and dreamed the second time: and, behold, seven ears
of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good.

41:6 And, behold, seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind
sprung up after them.

41:7 And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears.
And Pharaoh awoke, and, behold, it was a dream.

41:8 And it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled;
and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the
wise men thereof: and Pharaoh told them his dream; but there was none
that could interpret them unto Pharaoh.

41:9 Then spake the chief butler unto Pharaoh, saying, I do remember
my faults this day: 41:10 Pharaoh was wroth with his servants, and put
me in ward in the captain of the guard's house, both me and the chief
baker: 41:11 And we dreamed a dream in one night, I and he; we dreamed
each man according to the interpretation of his dream.

41:12 And there was there with us a young man, an Hebrew, servant to
the captain of the guard; and we told him, and he interpreted to us
our dreams; to each man according to his dream he did interpret.

41:13 And it came to pass, as he interpreted to us, so it was; me he
restored unto mine office, and him he hanged.

41:14 Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him
hastily out of the dungeon: and he shaved himself, and changed his
raiment, and came in unto Pharaoh.

41:15 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there
is none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of thee, that thou
canst understand a dream to interpret it.

41:16 And Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, It is not in me: God shall
give Pharaoh an answer of peace.

41:17 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, In my dream, behold, I stood upon
the bank of the river: 41:18 And, behold, there came up out of the
river seven kine, fatfleshed and well favoured; and they fed in a
meadow: 41:19 And, behold, seven other kine came up after them, poor
and very ill favoured and leanfleshed, such as I never saw in all the
land of Egypt for badness: 41:20 And the lean and the ill favoured
kine did eat up the first seven fat kine: 41:21 And when they had
eaten them up, it could not be known that they had eaten them; but
they were still ill favoured, as at the beginning. So I awoke.

41:22 And I saw in my dream, and, behold, seven ears came up in one
stalk, full and good: 41:23 And, behold, seven ears, withered, thin,
and blasted with the east wind, sprung up after them: 41:24 And the
thin ears devoured the seven good ears: and I told this unto the
magicians; but there was none that could declare it to me.

41:25 And Joseph said unto Pharaoh, The dream of Pharaoh is one: God
hath shewed Pharaoh what he is about to do.

41:26 The seven good kine are seven years; and the seven good ears are
seven years: the dream is one.

41:27 And the seven thin and ill favoured kine that came up after them
are seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind
shall be seven years of famine.

41:28 This is the thing which I have spoken unto Pharaoh: What God is
about to do he sheweth unto Pharaoh.

41:29 Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all
the land of Egypt: 41:30 And there shall arise after them seven years
of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt;
and the famine shall consume the land; 41:31 And the plenty shall not
be known in the land by reason of that famine following; for it shall
be very grievous.

41:32 And for that the dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice; it is
because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it
to pass.

41:33 Now therefore let Pharaoh look out a man discreet and wise, and
set him over the land of Egypt.

41:34 Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint officers over the land,
and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous
years.

41:35 And let them gather all the food of those good years that come,
and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in
the cities.

41:36 And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven
years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land
perish not through the famine.

41:37 And the thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes
of all his servants.

41:38 And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such a one as
this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is?  41:39 And Pharaoh said
unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God hath shewed thee all this, there is none
so discreet and wise as thou art: 41:40 Thou shalt be over my house,
and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled: only in the
throne will I be greater than thou.

41:41 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the
land of Egypt.

41:42 And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon
Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a
gold chain about his neck; 41:43 And he made him to ride in the second
chariot which he had; and they cried before him, Bow the knee: and he
made him ruler over all the land of Egypt.

41:44 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and without thee
shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.

41:45 And Pharaoh called Joseph's name Zaphnathpaaneah; and he gave
him to wife Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On. And
Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt.

41:46 And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh
king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh, and
went throughout all the land of Egypt.

41:47 And in the seven plenteous years the earth brought forth by
handfuls.

41:48 And he gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were
in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities: the food of
the field, which was round about every city, laid he up in the same.

41:49 And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much,
until he left numbering; for it was without number.

41:50 And unto Joseph were born two sons before the years of famine
came, which Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On bare unto
him.

41:51 And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God,
said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father's house.

41:52 And the name of the second called he Ephraim: For God hath
caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.

41:53 And the seven years of plenteousness, that was in the land of
Egypt, were ended.

41:54 And the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph
had said: and the dearth was in all lands; but in all the land of
Egypt there was bread.

41:55 And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to
Pharaoh for bread: and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, Go unto
Joseph; what he saith to you, do.

41:56 And the famine was over all the face of the earth: and Joseph
opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians; and the
famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt.

41:57 And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn;
because that the famine was so sore in all lands.

42:1 Now when Jacob saw that there was corn in Egypt, Jacob said unto
his sons, Why do ye look one upon another?  42:2 And he said, Behold,
I have heard that there is corn in Egypt: get you down thither, and
buy for us from thence; that we may live, and not die.

42:3 And Joseph's ten brethren went down to buy corn in Egypt.

42:4 But Benjamin, Joseph's brother, Jacob sent not with his brethren;
for he said, Lest peradventure mischief befall him.

42:5 And the sons of Israel came to buy corn among those that came:
for the famine was in the land of Canaan.

42:6 And Joseph was the governor over the land, and he it was that
sold to all the people of the land: and Joseph's brethren came, and
bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth.

42:7 And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made himself
strange unto them, and spake roughly unto them; and he said unto them,
Whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan to buy food.

42:8 And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him.

42:9 And Joseph remembered the dreams which he dreamed of them, and
said unto them, Ye are spies; to see the nakedness of the land ye are
come.

42:10 And they said unto him, Nay, my lord, but to buy food are thy
servants come.

42:11 We are all one man's sons; we are true men, thy servants are no
spies.

42:12 And he said unto them, Nay, but to see the nakedness of the land
ye are come.

42:13 And they said, Thy servants are twelve brethren, the sons of one
man in the land of Canaan; and, behold, the youngest is this day with
our father, and one is not.

42:14 And Joseph said unto them, That is it that I spake unto you,
saying, Ye are spies: 42:15 Hereby ye shall be proved: By the life of
Pharaoh ye shall not go forth hence, except your youngest brother come
hither.

42:16 Send one of you, and let him fetch your brother, and ye shall be
kept in prison, that your words may be proved, whether there be any
truth in you: or else by the life of Pharaoh surely ye are spies.

42:17 And he put them all together into ward three days.

42:18 And Joseph said unto them the third day, This do, and live; for
I fear God: 42:19 If ye be true men, let one of your brethren be bound
in the house of your prison: go ye, carry corn for the famine of your
houses: 42:20 But bring your youngest brother unto me; so shall your
words be verified, and ye shall not die. And they did so.

42:21 And they said one to another, We are verily guilty concerning
our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought
us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us.

42:22 And Reuben answered them, saying, Spake I not unto you, saying,
Do not sin against the child; and ye would not hear? therefore,
behold, also his blood is required.

42:23 And they knew not that Joseph understood them; for he spake unto
them by an interpreter.

42:24 And he turned himself about from them, and wept; and returned to
them again, and communed with them, and took from them Simeon, and
bound him before their eyes.

42:25 Then Joseph commanded to fill their sacks with corn, and to
restore every man's money into his sack, and to give them provision
for the way: and thus did he unto them.

42:26 And they laded their asses with the corn, and departed thence.

42:27 And as one of them opened his sack to give his ass provender in
the inn, he espied his money; for, behold, it was in his sack's mouth.

42:28 And he said unto his brethren, My money is restored; and, lo, it
is even in my sack: and their heart failed them, and they were afraid,
saying one to another, What is this that God hath done unto us?  42:29
And they came unto Jacob their father unto the land of Canaan, and
told him all that befell unto them; saying, 42:30 The man, who is the
lord of the land, spake roughly to us, and took us for spies of the
country.

42:31 And we said unto him, We are true men; we are no spies: 42:32 We
be twelve brethren, sons of our father; one is not, and the youngest
is this day with our father in the land of Canaan.

42:33 And the man, the lord of the country, said unto us, Hereby shall
I know that ye are true men; leave one of your brethren here with me,
and take food for the famine of your households, and be gone: 42:34
And bring your youngest brother unto me: then shall I know that ye are
no spies, but that ye are true men: so will I deliver you your
brother, and ye shall traffick in the land.

42:35 And it came to pass as they emptied their sacks, that, behold,
every man's bundle of money was in his sack: and when both they and
their father saw the bundles of money, they were afraid.

42:36 And Jacob their father said unto them, Me have ye bereaved of my
children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin
away: all these things are against me.

42:37 And Reuben spake unto his father, saying, Slay my two sons, if I
bring him not to thee: deliver him into my hand, and I will bring him
to thee again.

42:38 And he said, My son shall not go down with you; for his brother
is dead, and he is left alone: if mischief befall him by the way in
the which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to
the grave.

43:1 And the famine was sore in the land.

43:2 And it came to pass, when they had eaten up the corn which they
had brought out of Egypt, their father said unto them, Go again, buy
us a little food.

43:3 And Judah spake unto him, saying, The man did solemnly protest
unto us, saying, Ye shall not see my face, except your brother be with
you.

43:4 If thou wilt send our brother with us, we will go down and buy
thee food: 43:5 But if thou wilt not send him, we will not go down:
for the man said unto us, Ye shall not see my face, except your
brother be with you.

43:6 And Israel said, Wherefore dealt ye so ill with me, as to tell
the man whether ye had yet a brother?  43:7 And they said, The man
asked us straitly of our state, and of our kindred, saying, Is your
father yet alive? have ye another brother? and we told him according
to the tenor of these words: could we certainly know that he would
say, Bring your brother down?  43:8 And Judah said unto Israel his
father, Send the lad with me, and we will arise and go; that we may
live, and not die, both we, and thou, and also our little ones.

43:9 I will be surety for him; of my hand shalt thou require him: if I
bring him not unto thee, and set him before thee, then let me bear the
blame for ever: 43:10 For except we had lingered, surely now we had
returned this second time.

43:11 And their father Israel said unto them, If it must be so now, do
this; take of the best fruits in the land in your vessels, and carry
down the man a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and
myrrh, nuts, and almonds: 43:12 And take double money in your hand;
and the money that was brought again in the mouth of your sacks, carry
it again in your hand; peradventure it was an oversight: 43:13 Take
also your brother, and arise, go again unto the man: 43:14 And God
Almighty give you mercy before the man, that he may send away your
other brother, and Benjamin. If I be bereaved of my children, I am
bereaved.

43:15 And the men took that present, and they took double money in
their hand and Benjamin; and rose up, and went down to Egypt, and
stood before Joseph.

43:16 And when Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the ruler of
his house, Bring these men home, and slay, and make ready; for these
men shall dine with me at noon.

43:17 And the man did as Joseph bade; and the man brought the men into
Joseph's house.

43:18 And the men were afraid, because they were brought into Joseph's
house; and they said, Because of the money that was returned in our
sacks at the first time are we brought in; that he may seek occasion
against us, and fall upon us, and take us for bondmen, and our asses.

43:19 And they came near to the steward of Joseph's house, and they
communed with him at the door of the house, 43:20 And said, O sir, we
came indeed down at the first time to buy food: 43:21 And it came to
pass, when we came to the inn, that we opened our sacks, and, behold,
every man's money was in the mouth of his sack, our money in full
weight: and we have brought it again in our hand.

43:22 And other money have we brought down in our hands to buy food:
we cannot tell who put our money in our sacks.

43:23 And he said, Peace be to you, fear not: your God, and the God of
your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks: I had your money.
And he brought Simeon out unto them.

43:24 And the man brought the men into Joseph's house, and gave them
water, and they washed their feet; and he gave their asses provender.

43:25 And they made ready the present against Joseph came at noon: for
they heard that they should eat bread there.

43:26 And when Joseph came home, they brought him the present which
was in their hand into the house, and bowed themselves to him to the
earth.

43:27 And he asked them of their welfare, and said, Is your father
well, the old man of whom ye spake? Is he yet alive?  43:28 And they
answered, Thy servant our father is in good health, he is yet alive.
And they bowed down their heads, and made obeisance.

43:29 And he lifted up his eyes, and saw his brother Benjamin, his
mother's son, and said, Is this your younger brother, of whom ye spake
unto me? And he said, God be gracious unto thee, my son.

43:30 And Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his
brother: and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber,
and wept there.

43:31 And he washed his face, and went out, and refrained himself, and
said, Set on bread.

43:32 And they set on for him by himself, and for them by themselves,
and for the Egyptians, which did eat with him, by themselves: because
the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that is an
abomination unto the Egyptians.

43:33 And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his
birthright, and the youngest according to his youth: and the men
marvelled one at another.

43:34 And he took and sent messes unto them from before him: but
Benjamin's mess was five times so much as any of their's. And they
drank, and were merry with him.

44:1 And he commanded the steward of his house, saying, Fill the men's
sacks with food, as much as they can carry, and put every man's money
in his sack's mouth.

44:2 And put my cup, the silver cup, in the sack's mouth of the
youngest, and his corn money. And he did according to the word that
Joseph had spoken.

44:3 As soon as the morning was light, the men were sent away, they
and their asses.

44:4 And when they were gone out of the city, and not yet far off,
Joseph said unto his steward, Up, follow after the men; and when thou
dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for
good?  44:5 Is not this it in which my lord drinketh, and whereby
indeed he divineth? ye have done evil in so doing.

44:6 And he overtook them, and he spake unto them these same words.

44:7 And they said unto him, Wherefore saith my lord these words? God
forbid that thy servants should do according to this thing: 44:8
Behold, the money, which we found in our sacks' mouths, we brought
again unto thee out of the land of Canaan: how then should we steal
out of thy lord's house silver or gold?  44:9 With whomsoever of thy
servants it be found, both let him die, and we also will be my lord's
bondmen.

44:10 And he said, Now also let it be according unto your words: he
with whom it is found shall be my servant; and ye shall be blameless.

44:11 Then they speedily took down every man his sack to the ground,
and opened every man his sack.

44:12 And he searched, and began at the eldest, and left at the
youngest: and the cup was found in Benjamin's sack.

44:13 Then they rent their clothes, and laded every man his ass, and
returned to the city.

44:14 And Judah and his brethren came to Joseph's house; for he was
yet there: and they fell before him on the ground.

44:15 And Joseph said unto them, What deed is this that ye have done?
wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?  44:16 And Judah
said, What shall we say unto my lord? what shall we speak?  or how
shall we clear ourselves? God hath found out the iniquity of thy
servants: behold, we are my lord's servants, both we, and he also with
whom the cup is found.

44:17 And he said, God forbid that I should do so: but the man in
whose hand the cup is found, he shall be my servant; and as for you,
get you up in peace unto your father.

44:18 Then Judah came near unto him, and said, Oh my lord, let thy
servant, I pray thee, speak a word in my lord's ears, and let not
thine anger burn against thy servant: for thou art even as Pharaoh.

44:19 My lord asked his servants, saying, Have ye a father, or a
brother?  44:20 And we said unto my lord, We have a father, an old
man, and a child of his old age, a little one; and his brother is
dead, and he alone is left of his mother, and his father loveth him.

44:21 And thou saidst unto thy servants, Bring him down unto me, that
I may set mine eyes upon him.

44:22 And we said unto my lord, The lad cannot leave his father: for
if he should leave his father, his father would die.

44:23 And thou saidst unto thy servants, Except your youngest brother
come down with you, ye shall see my face no more.

44:24 And it came to pass when we came up unto thy servant my father,
we told him the words of my lord.

44:25 And our father said, Go again, and buy us a little food.

44:26 And we said, We cannot go down: if our youngest brother be with
us, then will we go down: for we may not see the man's face, except
our youngest brother be with us.

44:27 And thy servant my father said unto us, Ye know that my wife
bare me two sons: 44:28 And the one went out from me, and I said,
Surely he is torn in pieces; and I saw him not since: 44:29 And if ye
take this also from me, and mischief befall him, ye shall bring down
my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.

44:30 Now therefore when I come to thy servant my father, and the lad
be not with us; seeing that his life is bound up in the lad's life;
44:31 It shall come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not with
us, that he will die: and thy servants shall bring down the gray hairs
of thy servant our father with sorrow to the grave.

44:32 For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father,
saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to
my father for ever.

44:33 Now therefore, I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of the
lad a bondman to my lord; and let the lad go up with his brethren.

44:34 For how shall I go up to my father, and the lad be not with me?
lest peradventure I see the evil that shall come on my father.

45:1 Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood
by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there
stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his
brethren.

45:2 And he wept aloud: and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh
heard.

45:3 And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father
yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were
troubled at his presence.

45:4 And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you.
And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye
sold into Egypt.

45:5 Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye
sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.

45:6 For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet
there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor
harvest.

45:7 And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the
earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

45:8 So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath
made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler
throughout all the land of Egypt.

45:9 Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith
thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me,
tarry not: 45:10 And thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou
shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children's
children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast: 45:11
And there will I nourish thee; for yet there are five years of famine;
lest thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to poverty.

45:12 And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin,
that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you.

45:13 And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all
that ye have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither.

45:14 And he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck, and wept; and
Benjamin wept upon his neck.

45:15 Moreover he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them: and
after that his brethren talked with him.

45:16 And the fame thereof was heard in Pharaoh's house, saying,
Joseph's brethren are come: and it pleased Pharaoh well, and his
servants.

45:17 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye;
lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of Canaan; 45:18 And
take your father and your households, and come unto me: and I will
give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of
the land.

45:19 Now thou art commanded, this do ye; take you wagons out of the
land of Egypt for your little ones, and for your wives, and bring your
father, and come.

45:20 Also regard not your stuff; for the good of all the land of
Egypt is your's.

45:21 And the children of Israel did so: and Joseph gave them wagons,
according to the commandment of Pharaoh, and gave them provision for
the way.

45:22 To all of them he gave each man changes of raiment; but to
Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver, and five changes of
raiment.

45:23 And to his father he sent after this manner; ten asses laden
with the good things of Egypt, and ten she asses laden with corn and
bread and meat for his father by the way.

45:24 So he sent his brethren away, and they departed: and he said
unto them, See that ye fall not out by the way.

45:25 And they went up out of Egypt, and came into the land of Canaan
unto Jacob their father, 45:26 And told him, saying, Joseph is yet
alive, and he is governor over all the land of Egypt. And Jacob's
heart fainted, for he believed them not.

45:27 And they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said
unto them: and when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry
him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived: 45:28 And Israel said,
It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before
I die.

46:1 And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to
Beersheba, and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac.

46:2 And God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said,
Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I.

46:3 And he said, I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down
into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: 46:4 I will
go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up
again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes.

46:5 And Jacob rose up from Beersheba: and the sons of Israel carried
Jacob their father, and their little ones, and their wives, in the
wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him.

46:6 And they took their cattle, and their goods, which they had
gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob, and all his
seed with him: 46:7 His sons, and his sons' sons with him, his
daughters, and his sons' daughters, and all his seed brought he with
him into Egypt.

46:8 And these are the names of the children of Israel, which came
into Egypt, Jacob and his sons: Reuben, Jacob's firstborn.

46:9 And the sons of Reuben; Hanoch, and Phallu, and Hezron, and
Carmi.

46:10 And the sons of Simeon; Jemuel, and Jamin, and Ohad, and Jachin,
and Zohar, and Shaul the son of a Canaanitish woman.

46:11 And the sons of Levi; Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.

46:12 And the sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and
Zarah: but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of
Pharez were Hezron and Hamul.

46:13 And the sons of Issachar; Tola, and Phuvah, and Job, and
Shimron.

46:14 And the sons of Zebulun; Sered, and Elon, and Jahleel.

46:15 These be the sons of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob in
Padanaram, with his daughter Dinah: all the souls of his sons and his
daughters were thirty and three.

46:16 And the sons of Gad; Ziphion, and Haggi, Shuni, and Ezbon, Eri,
and Arodi, and Areli.

46:17 And the sons of Asher; Jimnah, and Ishuah, and Isui, and Beriah,
and Serah their sister: and the sons of Beriah; Heber, and Malchiel.

46:18 These are the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah his
daughter, and these she bare unto Jacob, even sixteen souls.

46:19 The sons of Rachel Jacob's wife; Joseph, and Benjamin.

46:20 And unto Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and
Ephraim, which Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On bare
unto him.

46:21 And the sons of Benjamin were Belah, and Becher, and Ashbel,
Gera, and Naaman, Ehi, and Rosh, Muppim, and Huppim, and Ard.

46:22 These are the sons of Rachel, which were born to Jacob: all the
souls were fourteen.

46:23 And the sons of Dan; Hushim.

46:24 And the sons of Naphtali; Jahzeel, and Guni, and Jezer, and
Shillem.

46:25 These are the sons of Bilhah, which Laban gave unto Rachel his
daughter, and she bare these unto Jacob: all the souls were seven.

46:26 All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of
his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were threescore
and six; 46:27 And the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt,
were two souls: all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into
Egypt, were threescore and ten.

46:28 And he sent Judah before him unto Joseph, to direct his face
unto Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen.

46:29 And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel
his father, to Goshen, and presented himself unto him; and he fell on
his neck, and wept on his neck a good while.

46:30 And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen
thy face, because thou art yet alive.

46:31 And Joseph said unto his brethren, and unto his father's house,
I will go up, and shew Pharaoh, and say unto him, My brethren, and my
father's house, which were in the land of Canaan, are come unto me;
46:32 And the men are shepherds, for their trade hath been to feed
cattle; and they have brought their flocks, and their herds, and all
that they have.

46:33 And it shall come to pass, when Pharaoh shall call you, and
shall say, What is your occupation?  46:34 That ye shall say, Thy
servants' trade hath been about cattle from our youth even until now,
both we, and also our fathers: that ye may dwell in the land of
Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.

47:1 Then Joseph came and told Pharaoh, and said, My father and my
brethren, and their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have,
are come out of the land of Canaan; and, behold, they are in the land
of Goshen.

47:2 And he took some of his brethren, even five men, and presented
them unto Pharaoh.

47:3 And Pharaoh said unto his brethren, What is your occupation? And
they said unto Pharaoh, Thy servants are shepherds, both we, and also
our fathers.

47:4 They said morever unto Pharaoh, For to sojourn in the land are we
come; for thy servants have no pasture for their flocks; for the
famine is sore in the land of Canaan: now therefore, we pray thee, let
thy servants dwell in the land of Goshen.

47:5 And Pharaoh spake unto Joseph, saying, Thy father and thy
brethren are come unto thee: 47:6 The land of Egypt is before thee; in
the best of the land make thy father and brethren to dwell; in the
land of Goshen let them dwell: and if thou knowest any men of activity
among them, then make them rulers over my cattle.

47:7 And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before
Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh.

47:8 And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou?  47:9 And Jacob
said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an
hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of
my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the
life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.

47:10 And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from before Pharaoh.

47:11 And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a
possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land
of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded.

47:12 And Joseph nourished his father, and his brethren, and all his
father's household, with bread, according to their families.

47:13 And there was no bread in all the land; for the famine was very
sore, so that the land of Egypt and all the land of Canaan fainted by
reason of the famine.

47:14 And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land
of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, for the corn which they bought:
and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh's house.

47:15 And when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of
Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread:
for why should we die in thy presence? for the money faileth.

47:16 And Joseph said, Give your cattle; and I will give you for your
cattle, if money fail.

47:17 And they brought their cattle unto Joseph: and Joseph gave them
bread in exchange for horses, and for the flocks, and for the cattle
of the herds, and for the asses: and he fed them with bread for all
their cattle for that year.

47:18 When that year was ended, they came unto him the second year,
and said unto him, We will not hide it from my lord, how that our
money is spent; my lord also hath our herds of cattle; there is not
ought left in the sight of my lord, but our bodies, and our lands:
47:19 Wherefore shall we die before thine eyes, both we and our land?
buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants
unto Pharaoh: and give us seed, that we may live, and not die, that
the land be not desolate.

47:20 And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the
Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over
them: so the land became Pharaoh's.

47:21 And as for the people, he removed them to cities from one end of
the borders of Egypt even to the other end thereof.

47:22 Only the land of the priests bought he not; for the priests had
a portion assigned them of Pharaoh, and did eat their portion which
Pharaoh gave them: wherefore they sold not their lands.

47:23 Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought you this
day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall
sow the land.

47:24 And it shall come to pass in the increase, that ye shall give
the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for
seed of the field, and for your food, and for them of your households,
and for food for your little ones.

47:25 And they said, Thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in
the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's servants.

47:26 And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day,
that Pharaoh should have the fifth part, except the land of the
priests only, which became not Pharaoh's.

47:27 And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen;
and they had possessions therein, and grew, and multiplied
exceedingly.

47:28 And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years: so the
whole age of Jacob was an hundred forty and seven years.

47:29 And the time drew nigh that Israel must die: and he called his
son Joseph, and said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight,
put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly
with me; bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt: 47:30 But I will lie with
my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their
buryingplace. And he said, I will do as thou hast said.

47:31 And he said, Swear unto me. And he sware unto him. And Israel
bowed himself upon the bed's head.

48:1 And it came to pass after these things, that one told Joseph,
Behold, thy father is sick: and he took with him his two sons,
Manasseh and Ephraim.

48:2 And one told Jacob, and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto
thee: and Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the bed.

48:3 And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz
in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, 48:4 And said unto me, Behold,
I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee
a multitude of people; and will give this land to thy seed after thee
for an everlasting possession.

48:5 And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto
thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are
mine; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine.

48:6 And thy issue, which thou begettest after them, shall be thine,
and shall be called after the name of their brethren in their
inheritance.

48:7 And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the
land of Canaan in the way, when yet there was but a little way to come
unto Ephrath: and I buried her there in the way of Ephrath; the same
is Bethlehem.

48:8 And Israel beheld Joseph's sons, and said, Who are these?  48:9
And Joseph said unto his father, They are my sons, whom God hath given
me in this place. And he said, Bring them, I pray thee, unto me, and I
will bless them.

48:10 Now the eyes of Israel were dim for age, so that he could not
see.

And he brought them near unto him; and he kissed them, and embraced
them.

48:11 And Israel said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face:
and, lo, God hath shewed me also thy seed.

48:12 And Joseph brought them out from between his knees, and he bowed
himself with his face to the earth.

48:13 And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward
Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand toward Israel's
right hand, and brought them near unto him.

48:14 And Israel stretched out his right hand, and laid it upon
Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left hand upon Manasseh's
head, guiding his hands wittingly; for Manasseh was the firstborn.

48:15 And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers
Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto
this day, 48:16 The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the
lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers
Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of
the earth.

48:17 And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the
head of Ephraim, it displeased him: and he held up his father's hand,
to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Manasseh's head.

48:18 And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father: for this is
the firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head.

48:19 And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it:
he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great: but truly
his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall
become a multitude of nations.

48:20 And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel
bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh: and he set
Ephraim before Manasseh.

48:21 And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die: but God shall be
with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers.

48:22 Moreover I have given to thee one portion above thy brethren,
which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my
bow.

49:1 And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves
together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last
days.

49:2 Gather yourselves together, and hear, ye sons of Jacob; and
hearken unto Israel your father.

49:3 Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my
strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power: 49:4
Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to
thy father's bed; then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch.

49:5 Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their
habitations.

49:6 O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly,
mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man,
and in their selfwill they digged down a wall.

49:7 Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it
was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.

49:8 Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall
be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down
before thee.

49:9 Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up:
he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall
rouse him up?  49:10 The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a
lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall
the gathering of the people be.

49:11 Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the
choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the
blood of grapes: 49:12 His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth
white with milk.

49:13 Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea; and he shall be for
an haven of ships; and his border shall be unto Zidon.

49:14 Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens:
49:15 And he saw that rest was good, and the land that it was
pleasant; and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto
tribute.

49:16 Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel.

49:17 Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that
biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward.

49:18 I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD.

49:19 Gad, a troop shall overcome him: but he shall overcome at the
last.

49:20 Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal
dainties.

49:21 Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words.

49:22 Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well;
whose branches run over the wall: 49:23 The archers have sorely
grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him: 49:24 But his bow abode
in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands
of the mighty God of Jacob; (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of
Israel:) 49:25 Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and
by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above,
blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and
of the womb: 49:26 The blessings of thy father have prevailed above
the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the
everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the
crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren.

49:27 Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour
the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.

49:28 All these are the twelve tribes of Israel: and this is it that
their father spake unto them, and blessed them; every one according to
his blessing he blessed them.

49:29 And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered
unto my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the
field of Ephron the Hittite, 49:30 In the cave that is in the field of
Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham
bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a
buryingplace.

49:31 There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried
Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah.

49:32 The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was
from the children of Heth.

49:33 And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he
gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was
gathered unto his people.

50:1 And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept upon him, and
kissed him.

50:2 And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his
father: and the physicians embalmed Israel.

50:3 And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the
days of those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him
threescore and ten days.

50:4 And when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spake unto
the house of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found grace in your eyes,
speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, 50:5 My father made
me swear, saying, Lo, I die: in my grave which I have digged for me in
the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury me. Now therefore let me go
up, I pray thee, and bury my father, and I will come again.

50:6 And Pharaoh said, Go up, and bury thy father, according as he
made thee swear.

50:7 And Joseph went up to bury his father: and with him went up all
the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders
of the land of Egypt, 50:8 And all the house of Joseph, and his
brethren, and his father's house: only their little ones, and their
flocks, and their herds, they left in the land of Goshen.

50:9 And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen: and it was
a very great company.

50:10 And they came to the threshingfloor of Atad, which is beyond
Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation:
and he made a mourning for his father seven days.

50:11 And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the
mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning
to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was called Abelmizraim,
which is beyond Jordan.

50:12 And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them: 50:13
For his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in
the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the
field for a possession of a buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite, before
Mamre.

50:14 And Joseph returned into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all
that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his
father.

50:15 And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they
said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us
all the evil which we did unto him.

50:16 And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did
command before he died, saying, 50:17 So shall ye say unto Joseph,
Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin;
for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the
trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept
when they spake unto him.

50:18 And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and
they said, Behold, we be thy servants.

50:19 And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of
God?  50:20 But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant
it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people
alive.

50:21 Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little
ones.

And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.

50:22 And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father's house: and
Joseph lived an hundred and ten years.

50:23 And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation: the
children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were brought up upon
Joseph's knees.

50:24 And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely
visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware
to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

50:25 And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God
will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.

50:26 So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they
embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.




The Second Book of Moses:  Called Exodus


1:1 Now these are the names of the children of Israel, which came
into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob.

1:2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 1:3 Issachar, Zebulun, and
Benjamin, 1:4 Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher.

1:5 And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy
souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already.

1:6 And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation.

1:7 And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased
abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land
was filled with them.

1:8 Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.

1:9 And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of
Israel are more and mightier than we: 1:10 Come on, let us deal wisely
with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there
falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight
against us, and so get them up out of the land.

1:11 Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with
their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and
Raamses.

1:12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and
grew.

And they were grieved because of the children of Israel.

1:13 And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with
rigour: 1:14 And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in
morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all
their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.

1:15 And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the
name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah: 1:16 And
he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and
see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but
if it be a daughter, then she shall live.

1:17 But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt
commanded them, but saved the men children alive.

1:18 And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto
them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children
alive?  1:19 And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew
women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are
delivered ere the midwives come in unto them.

1:20 Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people
multiplied, and waxed very mighty.

1:21 And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he
made them houses.

1:22 And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is
born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save
alive.

2:1 And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a
daughter of Levi.

2:2 And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that
he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.

2:3 And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of
bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child
therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink.

2:4 And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.

2:5 And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the
river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she
saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.

2:6 And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the
babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the
Hebrews' children.

2:7 Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to
thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for
thee?  2:8 And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went
and called the child's mother.

2:9 And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and
nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the women took
the child, and nursed it.

2:10 And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter,
and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said,
Because I drew him out of the water.

2:11 And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he
went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied
an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.

2:12 And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there
was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.

2:13 And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the
Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong,
Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?  2:14 And he said, Who made thee a
prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou
killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing
is known.

2:15 Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But
Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian:
and he sat down by a well.

2:16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and
drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock.

2:17 And the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up
and helped them, and watered their flock.

2:18 And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, How is it that
ye are come so soon to day?  2:19 And they said, An Egyptian delivered
us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for
us, and watered the flock.

2:20 And he said unto his daughters, And where is he? why is it that
ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread.

2:21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses
Zipporah his daughter.

2:22 And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he
said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

2:23 And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt
died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and
they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.

2:24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant
with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

2:25 And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect
unto them.

3:1 Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest
of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and
came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.

3:2 And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out
of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned
with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

3:3 And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight,
why the bush is not burnt.

3:4 And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto
him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said,
Here am I.

3:5 And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy
feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

3:6 Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he
was afraid to look upon God.

3:7 And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people
which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their
taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; 3:8 And I am come down to
deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up
out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing
with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the
Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and
the Jebusites.

3:9 Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come
unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians
oppress them.

3:10 Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou
mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.

3:11 And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh,
and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?
3:12 And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a
token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth
the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.

3:13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of
Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me
unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say
unto them?  3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said,
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me
unto you.

3:15 And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the
children of Israel, the LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is
my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.

3:16 Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them,
The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of
Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen
that which is done to you in Egypt: 3:17 And I have said, I will bring
you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanites,
and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the
Hivites, and the Jebusites, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.

3:18 And they shall hearken to thy voice: and thou shalt come, thou
and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say
unto him, The LORD God of the Hebrews hath met with us: and now let us
go, we beseech thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, that we
may sacrifice to the LORD our God.

3:19 And I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go, no, not
by a mighty hand.

3:20 And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my
wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will
let you go.

3:21 And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians:
and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty.

3:22 But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that
sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and
raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your
daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.

4:1 And Moses answered and said, But, behold, they will not believe
me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The LORD hath not
appeared unto thee.

4:2 And the LORD said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he
said, A rod.

4:3 And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground,
and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it.

4:4 And the LORD said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by
the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a
rod in his hand: 4:5 That they may believe that the LORD God of their
fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,
hath appeared unto thee.

4:6 And the LORD said furthermore unto him, Put now thine hand into
thy bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom: and when he took it
out, behold, his hand was leprous as snow.

4:7 And he said, Put thine hand into thy bosom again. And he put his
hand into his bosom again; and plucked it out of his bosom, and,
behold, it was turned again as his other flesh.

4:8 And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither
hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the
voice of the latter sign.

4:9 And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe also these two
signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the
water of the river, and pour it upon the dry land: and the water which
thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land.

4:10 And Moses said unto the LORD, O my LORD, I am not eloquent,
neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I
am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.

4:11 And the LORD said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth? or who
maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the
LORD?  4:12 Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach
thee what thou shalt say.

4:13 And he said, O my LORD, send, I pray thee, by the hand of him
whom thou wilt send.

4:14 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses, and he said,
Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak well.
And also, behold, he cometh forth to meet thee: and when he seeth
thee, he will be glad in his heart.

4:15 And thou shalt speak unto him, and put words in his mouth: and I
will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye
shall do.

4:16 And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people: and he shall be,
even he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him
instead of God.

4:17 And thou shalt take this rod in thine hand, wherewith thou shalt
do signs.

4:18 And Moses went and returned to Jethro his father in law, and said
unto him, Let me go, I pray thee, and return unto my brethren which
are in Egypt, and see whether they be yet alive. And Jethro said to
Moses, Go in peace.

4:19 And the LORD said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return into Egypt:
for all the men are dead which sought thy life.

4:20 And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass,
and he returned to the land of Egypt: and Moses took the rod of God in
his hand.

4:21 And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into
Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have
put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let
the people go.

4:22 And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is
my son, even my firstborn: 4:23 And I say unto thee, Let my son go,
that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will
slay thy son, even thy firstborn.

4:24 And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him,
and sought to kill him.

4:25 Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her
son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art
thou to me.

4:26 So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art,
because of the circumcision.

4:27 And the LORD said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.
And he went, and met him in the mount of God, and kissed him.

4:28 And Moses told Aaron all the words of the LORD who had sent him,
and all the signs which he had commanded him.

4:29 And Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of
the children of Israel: 4:30 And Aaron spake all the words which the
LORD had spoken unto Moses, and did the signs in the sight of the
people.

4:31 And the people believed: and when they heard that the LORD had
visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their
affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped.

5:1 And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus
saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a
feast unto me in the wilderness.

5:2 And Pharaoh said, Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice to
let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go.

5:3 And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go,
we pray thee, three days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto
the LORD our God; lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the
sword.

5:4 And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and
Aaron, let the people from their works? get you unto your burdens.

5:5 And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land now are many, and
ye make them rest from their burdens.

5:6 And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people,
and their officers, saying, 5:7 Ye shall no more give the people straw
to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for
themselves.

5:8 And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye
shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof: for they be
idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God.

5:9 Let there more work be laid upon the men, that they may labour
therein; and let them not regard vain words.

5:10 And the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers,
and they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not
give you straw.

5:11 Go ye, get you straw where ye can find it: yet not ought of your
work shall be diminished.

5:12 So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of
Egypt to gather stubble instead of straw.

5:13 And the taskmasters hasted them, saying, Fulfil your works, your
daily tasks, as when there was straw.

5:14 And the officers of the children of Israel, which Pharaoh's
taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and demanded, Wherefore
have ye not fulfilled your task in making brick both yesterday and to
day, as heretofore?  5:15 Then the officers of the children of Israel
came and cried unto Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with
thy servants?  5:16 There is no straw given unto thy servants, and
they say to us, Make brick: and, behold, thy servants are beaten; but
the fault is in thine own people.

5:17 But he said, Ye are idle, ye are idle: therefore ye say, Let us
go and do sacrifice to the LORD.

5:18 Go therefore now, and work; for there shall no straw be given
you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks.

5:19 And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were
in evil case, after it was said, Ye shall not minish ought from your
bricks of your daily task.

5:20 And they met Moses and Aaron, who stood in the way, as they came
forth from Pharaoh: 5:21 And they said unto them, The LORD look upon
you, and judge; because ye have made our savour to be abhorred in the
eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in
their hand to slay us.

5:22 And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said, LORD, wherefore hast
thou so evil entreated this people? why is it that thou hast sent me?
5:23 For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done
evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all.

6:1 Then the LORD said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do
to Pharaoh: for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a
strong hand shall he drive them out of his land.

6:2 And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the LORD: 6:3
And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name
of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.

6:4 And I have also established my covenant with them, to give them
the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were
strangers.

6:5 And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom
the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant.

6:6 Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I
will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will
rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched
out arm, and with great judgments: 6:7 And I will take you to me for a
people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the
LORD your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the
Egyptians.

6:8 And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did
swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give
it you for an heritage: I am the LORD.

6:9 And Moses spake so unto the children of Israel: but they hearkened
not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.

6:10 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 6:11 Go in, speak unto
Pharaoh king of Egypt, that he let the children of Israel go out of
his land.

6:12 And Moses spake before the LORD, saying, Behold, the children of
Israel have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who
am of uncircumcised lips?  6:13 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto
Aaron, and gave them a charge unto the children of Israel, and unto
Pharaoh king of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land
of Egypt.

6:14 These be the heads of their fathers' houses: The sons of Reuben
the firstborn of Israel; Hanoch, and Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi: these
be the families of Reuben.

6:15 And the sons of Simeon; Jemuel, and Jamin, and Ohad, and Jachin,
and Zohar, and Shaul the son of a Canaanitish woman: these are the
families of Simeon.

6:16 And these are the names of the sons of Levi according to their
generations; Gershon, and Kohath, and Merari: and the years of the
life of Levi were an hundred thirty and seven years.

6:17 The sons of Gershon; Libni, and Shimi, according to their
families.

6:18 And the sons of Kohath; Amram, and Izhar, and Hebron, and Uzziel:
and the years of the life of Kohath were an hundred thirty and three
years.

6:19 And the sons of Merari; Mahali and Mushi: these are the families
of Levi according to their generations.

6:20 And Amram took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife; and she
bare him Aaron and Moses: and the years of the life of Amram were an
hundred and thirty and seven years.

6:21 And the sons of Izhar; Korah, and Nepheg, and Zichri.

6:22 And the sons of Uzziel; Mishael, and Elzaphan, and Zithri.

6:23 And Aaron took him Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab, sister of
Naashon, to wife; and she bare him Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and
Ithamar.

6:24 And the sons of Korah; Assir, and Elkanah, and Abiasaph: these
are the families of the Korhites.

6:25 And Eleazar Aaron's son took him one of the daughters of Putiel
to wife; and she bare him Phinehas: these are the heads of the fathers
of the Levites according to their families.

6:26 These are that Aaron and Moses, to whom the LORD said, Bring out
the children of Israel from the land of Egypt according to their
armies.

6:27 These are they which spake to Pharaoh king of Egypt, to bring out
the children of Israel from Egypt: these are that Moses and Aaron.

6:28 And it came to pass on the day when the LORD spake unto Moses in
the land of Egypt, 6:29 That the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, I am
the LORD: speak thou unto Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say unto
thee.

6:30 And Moses said before the LORD, Behold, I am of uncircumcised
lips, and how shall Pharaoh hearken unto me?  7:1 And the LORD said
unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy
brother shall be thy prophet.

7:2 Thou shalt speak all that I command thee: and Aaron thy brother
shall speak unto Pharaoh, that he send the children of Israel out of
his land.

7:3 And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my
wonders in the land of Egypt.

7:4 But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand
upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of
Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.

7:5 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch
forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from
among them.

7:6 And Moses and Aaron did as the LORD commanded them, so did they.

7:7 And Moses was fourscore years old, and Aaron fourscore and three
years old, when they spake unto Pharaoh.

7:8 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, 7:9 When
Pharaoh shall speak unto you, saying, Shew a miracle for you: then
thou shalt say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and cast it before Pharaoh,
and it shall become a serpent.

7:10 And Moses and Aaron went in unto Pharaoh, and they did so as the
LORD had commanded: and Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and
before his servants, and it became a serpent.

7:11 Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the
magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their
enchantments.

7:12 For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents:
but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods.

7:13 And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he hearkened not unto them;
as the LORD had said.

7:14 And the LORD said unto Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hardened, he
refuseth to let the people go.

7:15 Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning; lo, he goeth out unto the
water; and thou shalt stand by the river's brink against he come; and
the rod which was turned to a serpent shalt thou take in thine hand.

7:16 And thou shalt say unto him, The LORD God of the Hebrews hath
sent me unto thee, saying, Let my people go, that they may serve me in
the wilderness: and, behold, hitherto thou wouldest not hear.

7:17 Thus saith the LORD, In this thou shalt know that I am the LORD:
behold, I will smite with the rod that is in mine hand upon the waters
which are in the river, and they shall be turned to blood.

7:18 And the fish that is in the river shall die, and the river shall
stink; and the Egyptians shall lothe to drink of the water of the
river.

7:19 And the LORD spake unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and
stretch out thine hand upon the waters of Egypt, upon their streams,
upon their rivers, and upon their ponds, and upon all their pools of
water, that they may become blood; and that there may be blood
throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood, and in
vessels of stone.

7:20 And Moses and Aaron did so, as the LORD commanded; and he lifted
up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight
of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that
were in the river were turned to blood.

7:21 And the fish that was in the river died; and the river stank, and
the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the river; and there was
blood throughout all the land of Egypt.

7:22 And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments: and
Pharaoh's heart was hardened, neither did he hearken unto them; as the
LORD had said.

7:23 And Pharaoh turned and went into his house, neither did he set
his heart to this also.

7:24 And all the Egyptians digged round about the river for water to
drink; for they could not drink of the water of the river.

7:25 And seven days were fulfilled, after that the LORD had smitten
the river.

8:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him,
Thus saith the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me.

8:2 And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy
borders with frogs: 8:3 And the river shall bring forth frogs
abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy
bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and
upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs:
8:4 And the frogs shall come up both on thee, and upon thy people, and
upon all thy servants.

8:5 And the LORD spake unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch forth thine
hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers, and over the
ponds, and cause frogs to come up upon the land of Egypt.

8:6 And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the
frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt.

8:7 And the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up
frogs upon the land of Egypt.

8:8 Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and said, Intreat the
LORD, that he may take away the frogs from me, and from my people; and
I will let the people go, that they may do sacrifice unto the LORD.

8:9 And Moses said unto Pharaoh, Glory over me: when shall I intreat
for thee, and for thy servants, and for thy people, to destroy the
frogs from thee and thy houses, that they may remain in the river
only?  8:10 And he said, To morrow. And he said, Be it according to
thy word: that thou mayest know that there is none like unto the LORD
our God.

8:11 And the frogs shall depart from thee, and from thy houses, and
from thy servants, and from thy people; they shall remain in the river
only.

8:12 And Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh: and Moses cried unto
the LORD because of the frogs which he had brought against Pharaoh.

8:13 And the LORD did according to the word of Moses; and the frogs
died out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields.

8:14 And they gathered them together upon heaps: and the land stank.

8:15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his
heart, and hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said.

8:16 And the LORD said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy
rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice
throughout all the land of Egypt.

8:17 And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod,
and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man, and in
beast; all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of
Egypt.

8:18 And the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth
lice, but they could not: so there were lice upon man, and upon beast.

8:19 Then the magicians said unto Pharaoh, This is the finger of God:
and Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he hearkened not unto them; as
the LORD had said.

8:20 And the LORD said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and
stand before Pharaoh; lo, he cometh forth to the water; and say unto
him, Thus saith the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me.

8:21 Else, if thou wilt not let my people go, behold, I will send
swarms of flies upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people,
and into thy houses: and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of
swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are.

8:22 And I will sever in that day the land of Goshen, in which my
people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there; to the end thou
mayest know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth.

8:23 And I will put a division between my people and thy people: to
morrow shall this sign be.

8:24 And the LORD did so; and there came a grievous swarm of flies
into the house of Pharaoh, and into his servants' houses, and into all
the land of Egypt: the land was corrupted by reason of the swarm of
flies.

8:25 And Pharaoh called for Moses and for Aaron, and said, Go ye,
sacrifice to your God in the land.

8:26 And Moses said, It is not meet so to do; for we shall sacrifice
the abomination of the Egyptians to the LORD our God: lo, shall we
sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will
they not stone us?  8:27 We will go three days' journey into the
wilderness, and sacrifice to the LORD our God, as he shall command us.

8:28 And Pharaoh said, I will let you go, that ye may sacrifice to the
LORD your God in the wilderness; only ye shall not go very far away:
intreat for me.

8:29 And Moses said, Behold, I go out from thee, and I will intreat
the LORD that the swarms of flies may depart from Pharaoh, from his
servants, and from his people, to morrow: but let not Pharaoh deal
deceitfully any more in not letting the people go to sacrifice to the
LORD.

8:30 And Moses went out from Pharaoh, and intreated the LORD.

8:31 And the LORD did according to the word of Moses; and he removed
the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his
people; there remained not one.

8:32 And Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also, neither would
he let the people go.

9:1 Then the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, and tell him,
Thus saith the LORD God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they
may serve me.

9:2 For if thou refuse to let them go, and wilt hold them still, 9:3
Behold, the hand of the LORD is upon thy cattle which is in the field,
upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and
upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain.

9:4 And the LORD shall sever between the cattle of Israel and the
cattle of Egypt: and there shall nothing die of all that is the
children's of Israel.

9:5 And the LORD appointed a set time, saying, To morrow the LORD
shall do this thing in the land.

9:6 And the LORD did that thing on the morrow, and all the cattle of
Egypt died: but of the cattle of the children of Israel died not one.

9:7 And Pharaoh sent, and, behold, there was not one of the cattle of
the Israelites dead. And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did
not let the people go.

9:8 And the LORD said unto Moses and unto Aaron, Take to you handfuls
of ashes of the furnace, and let Moses sprinkle it toward the heaven
in the sight of Pharaoh.

9:9 And it shall become small dust in all the land of Egypt, and shall
be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast,
throughout all the land of Egypt.

9:10 And they took ashes of the furnace, and stood before Pharaoh; and
Moses sprinkled it up toward heaven; and it became a boil breaking
forth with blains upon man, and upon beast.

9:11 And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the
boils; for the boil was upon the magicians, and upon all the
Egyptians.

9:12 And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not
unto them; as the LORD had spoken unto Moses.

9:13 And the LORD said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and
stand before Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD God of the
Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me.

9:14 For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and
upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that
there is none like me in all the earth.

9:15 For now I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee and thy
people with pestilence; and thou shalt be cut off from the earth.

9:16 And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to
shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all
the earth.

9:17 As yet exaltest thou thyself against my people, that thou wilt
not let them go?  9:18 Behold, to morrow about this time I will cause
it to rain a very grievous hail, such as hath not been in Egypt since
the foundation thereof even until now.

9:19 Send therefore now, and gather thy cattle, and all that thou hast
in the field; for upon every man and beast which shall be found in the
field, and shall not be brought home, the hail shall come down upon
them, and they shall die.

9:20 He that feared the word of the LORD among the servants of Pharaoh
made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses: 9:21 And he
that regarded not the word of the LORD left his servants and his
cattle in the field.

9:22 And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch forth thine hand toward
heaven, that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, upon man, and
upon beast, and upon every herb of the field, throughout the land of
Egypt.

9:23 And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven: and the LORD
sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; and the
LORD rained hail upon the land of Egypt.

9:24 So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous,
such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it
became a nation.

9:25 And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was
in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the
field, and brake every tree of the field.

9:26 Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were,
was there no hail.

9:27 And Pharaoh sent, and called for Moses and Aaron, and said unto
them, I have sinned this time: the LORD is righteous, and I and my
people are wicked.

9:28 Intreat the LORD (for it is enough) that there be no more mighty
thunderings and hail; and I will let you go, and ye shall stay no
longer.

9:29 And Moses said unto him, As soon as I am gone out of the city, I
will spread abroad my hands unto the LORD; and the thunder shall
cease, neither shall there be any more hail; that thou mayest know how
that the earth is the LORD's.

9:30 But as for thee and thy servants, I know that ye will not yet
fear the LORD God.

9:31 And the flax and the barley was smitten: for the barley was in
the ear, and the flax was bolled.

9:32 But the wheat and the rie were not smitten: for they were not
grown up.

9:33 And Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh, and spread abroad
his hands unto the LORD: and the thunders and hail ceased, and the
rain was not poured upon the earth.

9:34 And when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunders
were ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart, he and his
servants.

9:35 And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, neither would he let the
children of Israel go; as the LORD had spoken by Moses.

10:1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have
hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew
these my signs before him: 10:2 And that thou mayest tell in the ears
of thy son, and of thy son's son, what things I have wrought in Egypt,
and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know how that I
am the LORD.

10:3 And Moses and Aaron came in unto Pharaoh, and said unto him, Thus
saith the LORD God of the Hebrews, How long wilt thou refuse to humble
thyself before me? let my people go, that they may serve me.

10:4 Else, if thou refuse to let my people go, behold, to morrow will
I bring the locusts into thy coast: 10:5 And they shall cover the face
of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth: and they shall
eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you
from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of
the field: 10:6 And they shall fill thy houses, and the houses of all
thy servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians; which neither thy
fathers, nor thy fathers' fathers have seen, since the day that they
were upon the earth unto this day. And he turned himself, and went out
from Pharaoh.

10:7 And Pharaoh's servants said unto him, How long shall this man be
a snare unto us? let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their
God: knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?  10:8 And Moses and
Aaron were brought again unto Pharaoh: and he said unto them, Go,
serve the LORD your God: but who are they that shall go?  10:9 And
Moses said, We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons
and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go;
for we must hold a feast unto the LORD.

10:10 And he said unto them, Let the LORD be so with you, as I will
let you go, and your little ones: look to it; for evil is before you.

10:11 Not so: go now ye that are men, and serve the LORD; for that ye
did desire. And they were driven out from Pharaoh's presence.

10:12 And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the
land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come up upon the land of
Egypt, and eat every herb of the land, even all that the hail hath
left.

10:13 And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and
the LORD brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that
night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts.

10:14 And the locust went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in
all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there
were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such.

10:15 For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land
was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the
fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any
green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all
the land of Egypt.

10:16 Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste; and he said, I
have sinned against the LORD your God, and against you.

10:17 Now therefore forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and
intreat the LORD your God, that he may take away from me this death
only.

10:18 And he went out from Pharaoh, and intreated the LORD.

10:19 And the LORD turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away
the locusts, and cast them into the Red sea; there remained not one
locust in all the coasts of Egypt.

10:20 But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he would not let
the children of Israel go.

10:21 And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward
heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even
darkness which may be felt.

10:22 And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was
a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days: 10:23 They saw
not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days: but
all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.

10:24 And Pharaoh called unto Moses, and said, Go ye, serve the LORD;
only let your flocks and your herds be stayed: let your little ones
also go with you.

10:25 And Moses said, Thou must give us also sacrifices and burnt
offerings, that we may sacrifice unto the LORD our God.

10:26 Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not an hoof be
left behind; for thereof must we take to serve the LORD our God; and
we know not with what we must serve the LORD, until we come thither.

10:27 But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them
go.

10:28 And Pharaoh said unto him, Get thee from me, take heed to
thyself, see my face no more; for in that day thou seest my face thou
shalt die.

10:29 And Moses said, Thou hast spoken well, I will see thy face again
no more.

11:1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one plague more
upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence:
when he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence
altogether.

11:2 Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of
his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver and
jewels of gold.

11:3 And the LORD gave the people favour in the sight of the
Egyptians.

Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the
sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the people.

11:4 And Moses said, Thus saith the LORD, About midnight will I go out
into the midst of Egypt: 11:5 And all the firstborn in the land of
Egypt shall die, from the first born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his
throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the
mill; and all the firstborn of beasts.

11:6 And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt,
such as there was none like it, nor shall be like it any more.

11:7 But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move
his tongue, against man or beast: that ye may know how that the LORD
doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.

11:8 And all these thy servants shall come down unto me, and bow down
themselves unto me, saying, Get thee out, and all the people that
follow thee: and after that I will go out. And he went out from
Pharaoh in a great anger.

11:9 And the LORD said unto Moses, Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you;
that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.

11:10 And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh: and
the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he would not let the
children of Israel go out of his land.

12:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt
saying, 12:2 This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it
shall be the first month of the year to you.

12:3 Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the
tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb,
according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house: 12:4 And
if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour
next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls;
every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb.

12:5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye
shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats: 12:6 And ye shall
keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole
assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.

12:7 And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side
posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat
it.

12:8 And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and
unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.

12:9 Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with
fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof.

12:10 And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and
that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire.

12:11 And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on
your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste:
it is the LORD's passover.

12:12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will
smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and
against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.

12:13 And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where
ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague
shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.

12:14 And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep
it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a
feast by an ordinance for ever.

12:15 Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye
shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth
leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul
shall be cut off from Israel.

12:16 And in the first day there shall be an holy convocation, and in
the seventh day there shall be an holy convocation to you; no manner
of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat,
that only may be done of you.

12:17 And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this
selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt:
therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an
ordinance for ever.

12:18 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even,
ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the
month at even.

12:19 Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for
whosoever eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut
off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger, or born
in the land.

12:20 Ye shall eat nothing leavened; in all your habitations shall ye
eat unleavened bread.

12:21 Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto
them, Draw out and take you a lamb according to your families, and
kill the passover.

12:22 And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood
that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts
with the blood that is in the bason; and none of you shall go out at
the door of his house until the morning.

12:23 For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when
he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the
LORD will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to
come in unto your houses to smite you.

12:24 And ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to
thy sons for ever.

12:25 And it shall come to pass, when ye be come to the land which the
LORD will give you, according as he hath promised, that ye shall keep
this service.

12:26 And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto
you, What mean ye by this service?  12:27 That ye shall say, It is the
sacrifice of the LORD's passover, who passed over the houses of the
children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and
delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshipped.

12:28 And the children of Israel went away, and did as the LORD had
commanded Moses and Aaron, so did they.

12:29 And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the
firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat
on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the
dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.

12:30 And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and
all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was
not a house where there was not one dead.

12:31 And he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Rise up,
and get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of
Israel; and go, serve the LORD, as ye have said.

12:32 Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be
gone; and bless me also.

12:33 And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might
send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We be all dead men.

12:34 And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their
kneadingtroughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders.

12:35 And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses;
and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of
gold, and raiment: 12:36 And the LORD gave the people favour in the
sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as
they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians.

12:37 And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth,
about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children.

12:38 And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and
herds, even very much cattle.

12:39 And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought
forth out of Egypt, for it was not leavened; because they were thrust
out of Egypt, and could not tarry, neither had they prepared for
themselves any victual.

12:40 Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in
Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.

12:41 And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty
years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of
the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.

12:42 It is a night to be much observed unto the LORD for bringing
them out from the land of Egypt: this is that night of the LORD to be
observed of all the children of Israel in their generations.

12:43 And the LORD said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of
the passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof: 12:44 But every
man's servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised
him, then shall he eat thereof.

12:45 A foreigner and an hired servant shall not eat thereof.

12:46 In one house shall it be eaten; thou shalt not carry forth ought
of the flesh abroad out of the house; neither shall ye break a bone
thereof.

12:47 All the congregation of Israel shall keep it.

12:48 And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the
passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let
him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the
land: for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof.

12:49 One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger
that sojourneth among you.

12:50 Thus did all the children of Israel; as the LORD commanded Moses
and Aaron, so did they.

12:51 And it came to pass the selfsame day, that the LORD did bring
the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their armies.

13:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 13:2 Sanctify unto me all
the firstborn, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of
Israel, both of man and of beast: it is mine.

13:3 And Moses said unto the people, Remember this day, in which ye
came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of
hand the LORD brought you out from this place: there shall no leavened
bread be eaten.

13:4 This day came ye out in the month Abib.

13:5 And it shall be when the LORD shall bring thee into the land of
the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Hivites,
and the Jebusites, which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee, a
land flowing with milk and honey, that thou shalt keep this service in
this month.

13:6 Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh
day shall be a feast to the LORD.

13:7 Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days; and there shall no
leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen
with thee in all thy quarters.

13:8 And thou shalt shew thy son in that day, saying, This is done
because of that which the LORD did unto me when I came forth out of
Egypt.

13:9 And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a
memorial between thine eyes, that the LORD's law may be in thy mouth:
for with a strong hand hath the LORD brought thee out of Egypt.

13:10 Thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in his season from year
to year.

13:11 And it shall be when the LORD shall bring thee into the land of
the Canaanites, as he sware unto thee and to thy fathers, and shall
give it thee, 13:12 That thou shalt set apart unto the LORD all that
openeth the matrix, and every firstling that cometh of a beast which
thou hast; the males shall be the LORD's.

13:13 And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and
if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all
the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem.

13:14 And it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come,
saying, What is this? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of
hand the LORD brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage:
13:15 And it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that
the LORD slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the
firstborn of man, and the firstborn of beast: therefore I sacrifice to
the LORD all that openeth the matrix, being males; but all the
firstborn of my children I redeem.

13:16 And it shall be for a token upon thine hand, and for frontlets
between thine eyes: for by strength of hand the LORD brought us forth
out of Egypt.

13:17 And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that
God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines,
although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people
repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt: 13:18 But God led
the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea:
and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt.

13:19 And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly
sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and
ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you.

13:20 And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham,
in the edge of the wilderness.

13:21 And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to
lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them
light; to go by day and night: 13:22 He took not away the pillar of
the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the
people.

14:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 14:2 Speak unto the
children of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pihahiroth,
between Migdol and the sea, over against Baalzephon: before it shall
ye encamp by the sea.

14:3 For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are
entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in.

14:4 And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, that he shall follow after
them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that
the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD. And they did so.

14:5 And it was told the king of Egypt that the people fled: and the
heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against the people,
and they said, Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from
serving us?  14:6 And he made ready his chariot, and took his people
with him: 14:7 And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the
chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them.

14:8 And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he
pursued after the children of Israel: and the children of Israel went
out with an high hand.

14:9 But the Egyptians pursued after them, all the horses and chariots
of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army, and overtook them
encamping by the sea, beside Pihahiroth, before Baalzephon.

14:10 And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up
their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they
were sore afraid: and the children of Israel cried out unto the LORD.

14:11 And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt,
hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou
dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt?  14:12 Is not this
the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we
may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the
Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.

14:13 And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and
see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day: for
the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no
more for ever.

14:14 The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.

14:15 And the LORD said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me?
speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward: 14:16 But
lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and
divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through
the midst of the sea.

14:17 And I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and
they shall follow them: and I will get me honour upon Pharaoh, and
upon all his host, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen.

14:18 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I have
gotten me honour upon Pharaoh, upon his chariots, and upon his
horsemen.

14:19 And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel,
removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from
before their face, and stood behind them: 14:20 And it came between
the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud
and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the
one came not near the other all the night.

14:21 And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD
caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and
made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.

14:22 And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon
the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right
hand, and on their left.

14:23 And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst
of the sea, even all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen.

14:24 And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the LORD looked
unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the
cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, 14:25 And took off
their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily: so that the
Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel; for the LORD
fighteth for them against the Egyptians.

14:26 And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the
sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their
chariots, and upon their horsemen.

14:27 And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea
returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians
fled against it; and the LORD overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of
the sea.

14:28 And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the
horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after
them; there remained not so much as one of them.

14:29 But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of
the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and
on their left.

14:30 Thus the LORD saved Israel that day out of the hand of the
Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore.

14:31 And Israel saw that great work which the LORD did upon the
Egyptians: and the people feared the LORD, and believed the LORD, and
his servant Moses.

15:1 Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the
LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath
triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the
sea.

15:2 The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation:
he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father's God,
and I will exalt him.

15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.

15:4 Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his
chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea.

15:5 The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a
stone.

15:6 Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power: thy right
hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.

15:7 And in the greatness of thine excellency thou hast overthrown
them that rose up against thee: thou sentest forth thy wrath, which
consumed them as stubble.

15:8 And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered
together, the floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were
congealed in the heart of the sea.

15:9 The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the
spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my
hand shall destroy them.

15:10 Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank
as lead in the mighty waters.

15:11 Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like thee,
glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?  15:12 Thou
stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them.

15:13 Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast
redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy
habitation.

15:14 The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on
the inhabitants of Palestina.

15:15 Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab,
trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan
shall melt away.

15:16 Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thine
arm they shall be as still as a stone; till thy people pass over, O
LORD, till the people pass over, which thou hast purchased.

15:17 Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of
thine inheritance, in the place, O LORD, which thou hast made for thee
to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O LORD, which thy hands have
established.

15:18 The LORD shall reign for ever and ever.

15:19 For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his
horsemen into the sea, and the LORD brought again the waters of the
sea upon them; but the children of Israel went on dry land in the
midst of the sea.

15:20 And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel
in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and
with dances.

15:21 And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the LORD, for he hath
triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the
sea.

15:22 So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into
the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness,
and found no water.

15:23 And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters
of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called
Marah.

15:24 And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we
drink?  15:25 And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a
tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made
sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he
proved them, 15:26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the
voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his
sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his
statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have
brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.

15:27 And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and
threescore and ten palm trees: and they encamped there by the waters.

16:1 And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation
of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is
between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after
their departing out of the land of Egypt.

16:2 And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured
against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness: 16:3 And the children of
Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the
LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we
did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this
wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.

16:4 Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from
heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate
every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or
no.

16:5 And it shall come to pass, that on the sixth day they shall
prepare that which they bring in; and it shall be twice as much as
they gather daily.

16:6 And Moses and Aaron said unto all the children of Israel, At
even, then ye shall know that the LORD hath brought you out from the
land of Egypt: 16:7 And in the morning, then ye shall see the glory of
the LORD; for that he heareth your murmurings against the LORD: and
what are we, that ye murmur against us?  16:8 And Moses said, This
shall be, when the LORD shall give you in the evening flesh to eat,
and in the morning bread to the full; for that the LORD heareth your
murmurings which ye murmur against him: and what are we? your
murmurings are not against us, but against the LORD.

16:9 And Moses spake unto Aaron, Say unto all the congregation of the
children of Israel, Come near before the LORD: for he hath heard your
murmurings.

16:10 And it came to pass, as Aaron spake unto the whole congregation
of the children of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness,
and, behold, the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud.

16:11 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 16:12 I have heard the
murmurings of the children of Israel: speak unto them, saying, At even
ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread;
and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God.

16:13 And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and
covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host.

16:14 And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of
the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar
frost on the ground.

16:15 And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to
another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said
unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.

16:16 This is the thing which the LORD hath commanded, Gather of it
every man according to his eating, an omer for every man, according to
the number of your persons; take ye every man for them which are in
his tents.

16:17 And the children of Israel did so, and gathered, some more, some
less.

16:18 And when they did mete it with an omer, he that gathered much
had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack; they
gathered every man according to his eating.

16:19 And Moses said, Let no man leave of it till the morning.

16:20 Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them
left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank: and Moses
was wroth with them.

16:21 And they gathered it every morning, every man according to his
eating: and when the sun waxed hot, it melted.

16:22 And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice
as much bread, two omers for one man: and all the rulers of the
congregation came and told Moses.

16:23 And he said unto them, This is that which the LORD hath said, To
morrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the LORD: bake that which
ye will bake to day, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which
remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning.

16:24 And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did
not stink, neither was there any worm therein.

16:25 And Moses said, Eat that to day; for to day is a sabbath unto
the LORD: to day ye shall not find it in the field.

16:26 Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is
the sabbath, in it there shall be none.

16:27 And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on
the seventh day for to gather, and they found none.

16:28 And the LORD said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my
commandments and my laws?  16:29 See, for that the LORD hath given you
the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two
days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place
on the seventh day.

16:30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

16:31 And the house of Israel called the name thereof Manna: and it
was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers
made with honey.

16:32 And Moses said, This is the thing which the LORD commandeth,
Fill an omer of it to be kept for your generations; that they may see
the bread wherewith I have fed you in the wilderness, when I brought
you forth from the land of Egypt.

16:33 And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a pot, and put an omer full of
manna therein, and lay it up before the LORD, to be kept for your
generations.

16:34 As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the
Testimony, to be kept.

16:35 And the children of Israel did eat manna forty years, until they
came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna, until they came unto the
borders of the land of Canaan.

16:36 Now an omer is the tenth part of an ephah.

17:1 And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from
the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to the
commandment of the LORD, and pitched in Rephidim: and there was no
water for the people to drink.

17:2 Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us
water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why chide ye with
me? wherefore do ye tempt the LORD?  17:3 And the people thirsted
there for water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said,
Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill
us and our children and our cattle with thirst?  17:4 And Moses cried
unto the LORD, saying, What shall I do unto this people? they be
almost ready to stone me.

17:5 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take
with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest
the river, take in thine hand, and go.

17:6 Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb;
and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it,
that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders
of Israel.

17:7 And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because
of the chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the
LORD, saying, Is the LORD among us, or not?  17:8 Then came Amalek,
and fought with Israel in Rephidim.

17:9 And Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men, and go out, fight
with Amalek: to morrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the
rod of God in mine hand.

17:10 So Joshua did as Moses had said to him, and fought with Amalek:
and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill.

17:11 And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel
prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.

17:12 But Moses hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it
under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands,
the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his
hands were steady until the going down of the sun.

17:13 And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of
the sword.

17:14 And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a
book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put
out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.

17:15 And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it
Jehovahnissi: 17:16 For he said, Because the LORD hath sworn that the
LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.

18:1 When Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father in law, heard of
all that God had done for Moses, and for Israel his people, and that
the LORD had brought Israel out of Egypt; 18:2 Then Jethro, Moses'
father in law, took Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her back,
18:3 And her two sons; of which the name of the one was Gershom; for
he said, I have been an alien in a strange land: 18:4 And the name of
the other was Eliezer; for the God of my father, said he, was mine
help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh: 18:5 And Jethro,
Moses' father in law, came with his sons and his wife unto Moses into
the wilderness, where he encamped at the mount of God: 18:6 And he
said unto Moses, I thy father in law Jethro am come unto thee, and thy
wife, and her two sons with her.

18:7 And Moses went out to meet his father in law, and did obeisance,
and kissed him; and they asked each other of their welfare; and they
came into the tent.

18:8 And Moses told his father in law all that the LORD had done unto
Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel's sake, and all the travail
that had come upon them by the way, and how the LORD delivered them.

18:9 And Jethro rejoiced for all the goodness which the LORD had done
to Israel, whom he had delivered out of the hand of the Egyptians.

18:10 And Jethro said, Blessed be the LORD, who hath delivered you out
of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of Pharaoh, who hath
delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians.

18:11 Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods: for in the
thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them.

18:12 And Jethro, Moses' father in law, took a burnt offering and
sacrifices for God: and Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel, to
eat bread with Moses' father in law before God.

18:13 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the
people: and the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the
evening.

18:14 And when Moses' father in law saw all that he did to the people,
he said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? why sittest
thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto
even?  18:15 And Moses said unto his father in law, Because the people
come unto me to enquire of God: 18:16 When they have a matter, they
come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them
know the statutes of God, and his laws.

18:17 And Moses' father in law said unto him, The thing that thou
doest is not good.

18:18 Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is
with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to
perform it thyself alone.

18:19 Hearken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God
shall be with thee: Be thou for the people to God-ward, that thou
mayest bring the causes unto God: 18:20 And thou shalt teach them
ordinances and laws, and shalt shew them the way wherein they must
walk, and the work that they must do.

18:21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such
as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over
them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of
fifties, and rulers of tens: 18:22 And let them judge the people at
all seasons: and it shall be, that every great matter they shall bring
unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge: so shall it be
easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee.

18:23 If thou shalt do this thing, and God command thee so, then thou
shalt be able to endure, and all this people shall also go to their
place in peace.

18:24 So Moses hearkened to the voice of his father in law, and did
all that he had said.

18:25 And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads
over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of
fifties, and rulers of tens.

18:26 And they judged the people at all seasons: the hard causes they
brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves.

18:27 And Moses let his father in law depart; and he went his way into
his own land.

19:1 In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth
out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness
of Sinai.

19:2 For they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to the desert
of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped
before the mount.

19:3 And Moses went up unto God, and the LORD called unto him out of
the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and
tell the children of Israel; 19:4 Ye have seen what I did unto the
Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto
myself.

19:5 Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my
covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all
people: for all the earth is mine: 19:6 And ye shall be unto me a
kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.

These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of
Israel.

19:7 And Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid
before their faces all these words which the LORD commanded him.

19:8 And all the people answered together, and said, All that the LORD
hath spoken we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people
unto the LORD.

19:9 And the LORD said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick
cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe
thee for ever.

And Moses told the words of the people unto the LORD.

19:10 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify
them to day and to morrow, and let them wash their clothes, 19:11 And
be ready against the third day: for the third day the LORD will come
down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai.

19:12 And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying,
Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch
the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to
death: 19:13 There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be
stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not
live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount.

19:14 And Moses went down from the mount unto the people, and
sanctified the people; and they washed their clothes.

19:15 And he said unto the people, Be ready against the third day:
come not at your wives.

19:16 And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there
were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and
the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that
was in the camp trembled.

19:17 And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with
God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount.

19:18 And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD
descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke
of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.

19:19 And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder
and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice.

19:20 And the LORD came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the
mount: and the LORD called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses
went up.

19:21 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest
they break through unto the LORD to gaze, and many of them perish.

19:22 And let the priests also, which come near to the LORD, sanctify
themselves, lest the LORD break forth upon them.

19:23 And Moses said unto the LORD, The people cannot come up to mount
Sinai: for thou chargedst us, saying, Set bounds about the mount, and
sanctify it.

19:24 And the LORD said unto him, Away, get thee down, and thou shalt
come up, thou, and Aaron with thee: but let not the priests and the
people break through to come up unto the LORD, lest he break forth
upon them.

19:25 So Moses went down unto the people, and spake unto them.

20:1 And God spake all these words, saying, 20:2 I am the LORD thy
God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage.

20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness
of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath,
or that is in the water under the earth.

20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I
the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them
that hate me; 20:6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love
me, and keep my commandments.

20:7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the
LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

20:8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

20:9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 20:10 But the
seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not
do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor
thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy
gates: 20:11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea,
and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the
LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

20:12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon
the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

20:13 Thou shalt not kill.

20:14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

20:15 Thou shalt not steal.

20:16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

20:17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet
thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his
ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

20:18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and
the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the
people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.

20:19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear:
but let not God speak with us, lest we die.

20:20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to
prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin
not.

20:21 And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the
thick darkness where God was.

20:22 And the LORD said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the
children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from
heaven.

20:23 Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make
unto you gods of gold.

20:24 An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice
thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and
thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto
thee, and I will bless thee.

20:25 And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build
it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast
polluted it.

20:26 Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy
nakedness be not discovered thereon.

21:1 Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.

21:2 If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in
the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.

21:3 If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were
married, then his wife shall go out with him.

21:4 If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons
or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he
shall go out by himself.

21:5 And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife,
and my children; I will not go out free: 21:6 Then his master shall
bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or
unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an
aul; and he shall serve him for ever.

21:7 And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not
go out as the menservants do.

21:8 If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself,
then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation
he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.

21:9 And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her
after the manner of daughters.

21:10 If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty
of marriage, shall he not diminish.

21:11 And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out
free without money.

21:12 He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to
death.

21:13 And if a man lie not in wait, but God deliver him into his hand;
then I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee.

21:14 But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him
with guile; thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die.

21:15 And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely
put to death.

21:16 And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found
in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.

21:17 And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be
put to death.

21:18 And if men strive together, and one smite another with a stone,
or with his fist, and he die not, but keepeth his bed: 21:19 If he
rise again, and walk abroad upon his staff, then shall he that smote
him be quit: only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall
cause him to be thoroughly healed.

21:20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he
die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.

21:21 Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be
punished: for he is his money.

21:22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit
depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely
punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he
shall pay as the judges determine.

21:23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,
21:24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
21:25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

21:26 And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his
maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake.

21:27 And if he smite out his manservant's tooth, or his maidservant's
tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth's sake.

21:28 If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die: then the ox shall
be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of
the ox shall be quit.

21:29 But if the ox were wont to push with his horn in time past, and
it hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but
that he hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and his
owner also shall be put to death.

21:30 If there be laid on him a sum of money, then he shall give for
the ransom of his life whatsoever is laid upon him.

21:31 Whether he have gored a son, or have gored a daughter, according
to this judgment shall it be done unto him.

21:32 If the ox shall push a manservant or a maidservant; he shall
give unto their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be
stoned.

21:33 And if a man shall open a pit, or if a man shall dig a pit, and
not cover it, and an ox or an ass fall therein; 21:34 The owner of the
pit shall make it good, and give money unto the owner of them; and the
dead beast shall be his.

21:35 And if one man's ox hurt another's, that he die; then they shall
sell the live ox, and divide the money of it; and the dead ox also
they shall divide.

21:36 Or if it be known that the ox hath used to push in time past,
and his owner hath not kept him in; he shall surely pay ox for ox; and
the dead shall be his own.

22:1 If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it;
he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.

22:2 If a thief be found breaking up, and be smitten that he die,
there shall no blood be shed for him.

22:3 If the sun be risen upon him, there shall be blood shed for him;
for he should make full restitution; if he have nothing, then he shall
be sold for his theft.

22:4 If the theft be certainly found in his hand alive, whether it be
ox, or ass, or sheep; he shall restore double.

22:5 If a man shall cause a field or vineyard to be eaten, and shall
put in his beast, and shall feed in another man's field; of the best
of his own field, and of the best of his own vineyard, shall he make
restitution.

22:6 If fire break out, and catch in thorns, so that the stacks of
corn, or the standing corn, or the field, be consumed therewith; he
that kindled the fire shall surely make restitution.

22:7 If a man shall deliver unto his neighbour money or stuff to keep,
and it be stolen out of the man's house; if the thief be found, let
him pay double.

22:8 If the thief be not found, then the master of the house shall be
brought unto the judges, to see whether he have put his hand unto his
neighbour's goods.

22:9 For all manner of trespass, whether it be for ox, for ass, for
sheep, for raiment, or for any manner of lost thing which another
challengeth to be his, the cause of both parties shall come before the
judges; and whom the judges shall condemn, he shall pay double unto
his neighbour.

22:10 If a man deliver unto his neighbour an ass, or an ox, or a
sheep, or any beast, to keep; and it die, or be hurt, or driven away,
no man seeing it: 22:11 Then shall an oath of the LORD be between them
both, that he hath not put his hand unto his neighbour's goods; and
the owner of it shall accept thereof, and he shall not make it good.

22:12 And if it be stolen from him, he shall make restitution unto the
owner thereof.

22:13 If it be torn in pieces, then let him bring it for witness, and
he shall not make good that which was torn.

22:14 And if a man borrow ought of his neighbour, and it be hurt, or
die, the owner thereof being not with it, he shall surely make it
good.

22:15 But if the owner thereof be with it, he shall not make it good:
if it be an hired thing, it came for his hire.

22:16 And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with
her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife.

22:17 If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay
money according to the dowry of virgins.

22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

22:19 Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.

22:20 He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he
shall be utterly destroyed.

22:21 Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were
strangers in the land of Egypt.

22:22 Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child.

22:23 If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I
will surely hear their cry; 22:24 And my wrath shall wax hot, and I
will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your
children fatherless.

22:25 If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee,
thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him
usury.

22:26 If thou at all take thy neighbour's raiment to pledge, thou
shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down: 22:27 For that
is his covering only, it is his raiment for his skin: wherein shall he
sleep? and it shall come to pass, when he crieth unto me, that I will
hear; for I am gracious.

22:28 Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy
people.

22:29 Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and
of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me.

22:30 Likewise shalt thou do with thine oxen, and with thy sheep:
seven days it shall be with his dam; on the eighth day thou shalt give
it me.

22:31 And ye shall be holy men unto me: neither shall ye eat any flesh
that is torn of beasts in the field; ye shall cast it to the dogs.

23:1 Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the
wicked to be an unrighteous witness.

23:2 Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou
speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment: 23:3 Neither
shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause.

23:4 If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt
surely bring it back to him again.

23:5 If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his
burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with
him.

23:6 Thou shalt not wrest the judgment of thy poor in his cause.

23:7 Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous
slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.

23:8 And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and
perverteth the words of the righteous.

23:9 Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of
a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

23:10 And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the
fruits thereof: 23:11 But the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and
lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave
the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with
thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard.

23:12 Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou
shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy
handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed.

23:13 And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and
make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out
of thy mouth.

23:14 Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.

23:15 Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat
unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time
appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and
none shall appear before me empty:) 23:16 And the feast of harvest,
the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and
the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou
hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.

23:17 Three items in the year all thy males shall appear before the
LORD God.

23:18 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened
bread; neither shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until the morning.

23:19 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into
the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his
mother's milk.

23:20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way,
and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.

23:21 Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will
not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him.

23:22 But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I
speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary
unto thine adversaries.

23:23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the
Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites,
the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.

23:24 Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do
after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite
break down their images.

23:25 And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy
bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of
thee.

23:26 There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy
land: the number of thy days I will fulfil.

23:27 I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people
to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their
backs unto thee.

23:28 And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the
Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.

23:29 I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the
land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against
thee.

23:30 By little and little I will drive them out from before thee,
until thou be increased, and inherit the land.

23:31 And I will set thy bounds from the Red sea even unto the sea of
the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river: for I will
deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt
drive them out before thee.

23:32 Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.

23:33 They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin
against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare
unto thee.

24:1 And he said unto Moses, Come up unto the LORD, thou, and Aaron,
Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye
afar off.

24:2 And Moses alone shall come near the LORD: but they shall not come
nigh; neither shall the people go up with him.

24:3 And Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD, and
all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and
said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do.

24:4 And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in
the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars,
according to the twelve tribes of Israel.

24:5 And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered
burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD.

24:6 And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half
of the blood he sprinkled on the altar.

24:7 And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of
the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and
be obedient.

24:8 And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and
said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with
you concerning all these words.

24:9 Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of
the elders of Israel: 24:10 And they saw the God of Israel: and there
was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as
it were the body of heaven in his clearness.

24:11 And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his
hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.

24:12 And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and
be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and
commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them.

24:13 And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up
into the mount of God.

24:14 And he said unto the elders, Tarry ye here for us, until we come
again unto you: and, behold, Aaron and Hur are with you: if any man
have any matters to do, let him come unto them.

24:15 And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount.

24:16 And the glory of the LORD abode upon mount Sinai, and the cloud
covered it six days: and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of
the midst of the cloud.

24:17 And the sight of the glory of the LORD was like devouring fire
on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel.

24:18 And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into
the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.

25:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 25:2 Speak unto the
children of Israel, that they bring me an offering: of every man that
giveth it willingly with his heart ye shall take my offering.

25:3 And this is the offering which ye shall take of them; gold, and
silver, and brass, 25:4 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine
linen, and goats' hair, 25:5 And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers'
skins, and shittim wood, 25:6 Oil for the light, spices for anointing
oil, and for sweet incense, 25:7 Onyx stones, and stones to be set in
the ephod, and in the breastplate.

25:8 And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.

25:9 According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the
tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so
shall ye make it.

25:10 And they shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a
half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth
thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.

25:11 And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without
shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold round
about.

25:12 And thou shalt cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in
the four corners thereof; and two rings shall be in the one side of
it, and two rings in the other side of it.

25:13 And thou shalt make staves of shittim wood, and overlay them
with gold.

25:14 And thou shalt put the staves into the rings by the sides of the
ark, that the ark may be borne with them.

25:15 The staves shall be in the rings of the ark: they shall not be
taken from it.

25:16 And thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give
thee.

25:17 And thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a
half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth
thereof.

25:18 And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt
thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat.

25:19 And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the
other end: even of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubims on the
two ends thereof.

25:20 And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high,
covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look
one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims
be.

25:21 And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark; and in the
ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee.

25:22 And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee
from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are
upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in
commandment unto the children of Israel.

25:23 Thou shalt also make a table of shittim wood: two cubits shall
be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof, and a cubit
and a half the height thereof.

25:24 And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, and make thereto a
crown of gold round about.

25:25 And thou shalt make unto it a border of an hand breadth round
about, and thou shalt make a golden crown to the border thereof round
about.

25:26 And thou shalt make for it four rings of gold, and put the rings
in the four corners that are on the four feet thereof.

25:27 Over against the border shall the rings be for places of the
staves to bear the table.

25:28 And thou shalt make the staves of shittim wood, and overlay them
with gold, that the table may be borne with them.

25:29 And thou shalt make the dishes thereof, and spoons thereof, and
covers thereof, and bowls thereof, to cover withal: of pure gold shalt
thou make them.

25:30 And thou shalt set upon the table shewbread before me alway.

25:31 And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work
shall the candlestick be made: his shaft, and his branches, his bowls,
his knops, and his flowers, shall be of the same.

25:32 And six branches shall come out of the sides of it; three
branches of the candlestick out of the one side, and three branches of
the candlestick out of the other side: 25:33 Three bowls made like
unto almonds, with a knop and a flower in one branch; and three bowls
made like almonds in the other branch, with a knop and a flower: so in
the six branches that come out of the candlestick.

25:34 And in the candlesticks shall be four bowls made like unto
almonds, with their knops and their flowers.

25:35 And there shall be a knop under two branches of the same, and a
knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of
the same, according to the six branches that proceed out of the
candlestick.

25:36 Their knops and their branches shall be of the same: all it
shall be one beaten work of pure gold.

25:37 And thou shalt make the seven lamps thereof: and they shall
light the lamps thereof, that they may give light over against it.

25:38 And the tongs thereof, and the snuffdishes thereof, shall be of
pure gold.

25:39 Of a talent of pure gold shall he make it, with all these
vessels.

25:40 And look that thou make them after their pattern, which was
shewed thee in the mount.

26:1 Moreover thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine
twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: with cherubims of
cunning work shalt thou make them.

26:2 The length of one curtain shall be eight and twenty cubits, and
the breadth of one curtain four cubits: and every one of the curtains
shall have one measure.

26:3 The five curtains shall be coupled together one to another; and
other five curtains shall be coupled one to another.

26:4 And thou shalt make loops of blue upon the edge of the one
curtain from the selvedge in the coupling; and likewise shalt thou
make in the uttermost edge of another curtain, in the coupling of the
second.

26:5 Fifty loops shalt thou make in the one curtain, and fifty loops
shalt thou make in the edge of the curtain that is in the coupling of
the second; that the loops may take hold one of another.

26:6 And thou shalt make fifty taches of gold, and couple the curtains
together with the taches: and it shall be one tabernacle.

26:7 And thou shalt make curtains of goats' hair to be a covering upon
the tabernacle: eleven curtains shalt thou make.

26:8 The length of one curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the breadth
of one curtain four cubits: and the eleven curtains shall be all of
one measure.

26:9 And thou shalt couple five curtains by themselves, and six
curtains by themselves, and shalt double the sixth curtain in the
forefront of the tabernacle.

26:10 And thou shalt make fifty loops on the edge of the one curtain
that is outmost in the coupling, and fifty loops in the edge of the
curtain which coupleth the second.

26:11 And thou shalt make fifty taches of brass, and put the taches
into the loops, and couple the tent together, that it may be one.

26:12 And the remnant that remaineth of the curtains of the tent, the
half curtain that remaineth, shall hang over the backside of the
tabernacle.

26:13 And a cubit on the one side, and a cubit on the other side of
that which remaineth in the length of the curtains of the tent, it
shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle on this side and on that
side, to cover it.

26:14 And thou shalt make a covering for the tent of rams' skins dyed
red, and a covering above of badgers' skins.

26:15 And thou shalt make boards for the tabernacle of shittim wood
standing up.

26:16 Ten cubits shall be the length of a board, and a cubit and a
half shall be the breadth of one board.

26:17 Two tenons shall there be in one board, set in order one against
another: thus shalt thou make for all the boards of the tabernacle.

26:18 And thou shalt make the boards for the tabernacle, twenty boards
on the south side southward.

26:19 And thou shalt make forty sockets of silver under the twenty
boards; two sockets under one board for his two tenons, and two
sockets under another board for his two tenons.

26:20 And for the second side of the tabernacle on the north side
there shall be twenty boards: 26:21 And their forty sockets of silver;
two sockets under one board, and two sockets under another board.

26:22 And for the sides of the tabernacle westward thou shalt make six
boards.

26:23 And two boards shalt thou make for the corners of the tabernacle
in the two sides.

26:24 And they shall be coupled together beneath, and they shall be
coupled together above the head of it unto one ring: thus shall it be
for them both; they shall be for the two corners.

26:25 And they shall be eight boards, and their sockets of silver,
sixteen sockets; two sockets under one board, and two sockets under
another board.

26:26 And thou shalt make bars of shittim wood; five for the boards of
the one side of the tabernacle, 26:27 And five bars for the boards of
the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the boards of the
side of the tabernacle, for the two sides westward.

26:28 And the middle bar in the midst of the boards shall reach from
end to end.

26:29 And thou shalt overlay the boards with gold, and make their
rings of gold for places for the bars: and thou shalt overlay the bars
with gold.

26:30 And thou shalt rear up the tabernacle according to the fashion
thereof which was shewed thee in the mount.

26:31 And thou shalt make a vail of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and
fine twined linen of cunning work: with cherubims shall it be made:
26:32 And thou shalt hang it upon four pillars of shittim wood
overlaid with gold: their hooks shall be of gold, upon the four
sockets of silver.

26:33 And thou shalt hang up the vail under the taches, that thou
mayest bring in thither within the vail the ark of the testimony: and
the vail shall divide unto you between the holy place and the most
holy.

26:34 And thou shalt put the mercy seat upon the ark of the testimony
in the most holy place.

26:35 And thou shalt set the table without the vail, and the
candlestick over against the table on the side of the tabernacle
toward the south: and thou shalt put the table on the north side.

26:36 And thou shalt make an hanging for the door of the tent, of
blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with
needlework.

26:37 And thou shalt make for the hanging five pillars of shittim
wood, and overlay them with gold, and their hooks shall be of gold:
and thou shalt cast five sockets of brass for them.

27:1 And thou shalt make an altar of shittim wood, five cubits long,
and five cubits broad; the altar shall be foursquare: and the height
thereof shall be three cubits.

27:2 And thou shalt make the horns of it upon the four corners
thereof: his horns shall be of the same: and thou shalt overlay it
with brass.

27:3 And thou shalt make his pans to receive his ashes, and his
shovels, and his basons, and his fleshhooks, and his firepans: all the
vessels thereof thou shalt make of brass.

27:4 And thou shalt make for it a grate of network of brass; and upon
the net shalt thou make four brasen rings in the four corners thereof.

27:5 And thou shalt put it under the compass of the altar beneath,
that the net may be even to the midst of the altar.

27:6 And thou shalt make staves for the altar, staves of shittim wood,
and overlay them with brass.

27:7 And the staves shall be put into the rings, and the staves shall
be upon the two sides of the altar, to bear it.

27:8 Hollow with boards shalt thou make it: as it was shewed thee in
the mount, so shall they make it.

27:9 And thou shalt make the court of the tabernacle: for the south
side southward there shall be hangings for the court of fine twined
linen of an hundred cubits long for one side: 27:10 And the twenty
pillars thereof and their twenty sockets shall be of brass; the hooks
of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver.

27:11 And likewise for the north side in length there shall be
hangings of an hundred cubits long, and his twenty pillars and their
twenty sockets of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets of
silver.

27:12 And for the breadth of the court on the west side shall be
hangings of fifty cubits: their pillars ten, and their sockets ten.

27:13 And the breadth of the court on the east side eastward shall be
fifty cubits.

27:14 The hangings of one side of the gate shall be fifteen cubits:
their pillars three, and their sockets three.

27:15 And on the other side shall be hangings fifteen cubits: their
pillars three, and their sockets three.

27:16 And for the gate of the court shall be an hanging of twenty
cubits, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen,
wrought with needlework: and their pillars shall be four, and their
sockets four.

27:17 All the pillars round about the court shall be filleted with
silver; their hooks shall be of silver, and their sockets of brass.

27:18 The length of the court shall be an hundred cubits, and the
breadth fifty every where, and the height five cubits of fine twined
linen, and their sockets of brass.

27:19 All the vessels of the tabernacle in all the service thereof,
and all the pins thereof, and all the pins of the court, shall be of
brass.

27:20 And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring
thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamp to burn
always.

27:21 In the tabernacle of the congregation without the vail, which is
before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall order it from evening
to morning before the LORD: it shall be a statute for ever unto their
generations on the behalf of the children of Israel.

28:1 And take thou unto thee Aaron thy brother, and his sons with him,
from among the children of Israel, that he may minister unto me in the
priest's office, even Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar,
Aaron's sons.

28:2 And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory
and for beauty.

28:3 And thou shalt speak unto all that are wise hearted, whom I have
filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they may make Aaron's garments
to consecrate him, that he may minister unto me in the priest's
office.

28:4 And these are the garments which they shall make; a breastplate,
and an ephod, and a robe, and a broidered coat, a mitre, and a girdle:
and they shall make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, and his sons,
that he may minister unto me in the priest's office.

28:5 And they shall take gold, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and
fine linen.

28:6 And they shall make the ephod of gold, of blue, and of purple, of
scarlet, and fine twined linen, with cunning work.

28:7 It shall have the two shoulderpieces thereof joined at the two
edges thereof; and so it shall be joined together.

28:8 And the curious girdle of the ephod, which is upon it, shall be
of the same, according to the work thereof; even of gold, of blue, and
purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen.

28:9 And thou shalt take two onyx stones, and grave on them the names
of the children of Israel: 28:10 Six of their names on one stone, and
the other six names of the rest on the other stone, according to their
birth.

28:11 With the work of an engraver in stone, like the engravings of a
signet, shalt thou engrave the two stones with the names of the
children of Israel: thou shalt make them to be set in ouches of gold.

28:12 And thou shalt put the two stones upon the shoulders of the
ephod for stones of memorial unto the children of Israel: and Aaron
shall bear their names before the LORD upon his two shoulders for a
memorial.

28:13 And thou shalt make ouches of gold; 28:14 And two chains of pure
gold at the ends; of wreathen work shalt thou make them, and fasten
the wreathen chains to the ouches.

28:15 And thou shalt make the breastplate of judgment with cunning
work; after the work of the ephod thou shalt make it; of gold, of
blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine twined linen, shalt
thou make it.

28:16 Foursquare it shall be being doubled; a span shall be the length
thereof, and a span shall be the breadth thereof.

28:17 And thou shalt set in it settings of stones, even four rows of
stones: the first row shall be a sardius, a topaz, and a carbuncle:
this shall be the first row.

28:18 And the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and a
diamond.

28:19 And the third row a ligure, an agate, and an amethyst.

28:20 And the fourth row a beryl, and an onyx, and a jasper: they
shall be set in gold in their inclosings.

28:21 And the stones shall be with the names of the children of
Israel, twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of a
signet; every one with his name shall they be according to the twelve
tribes.

28:22 And thou shalt make upon the breastplate chains at the ends of
wreathen work of pure gold.

28:23 And thou shalt make upon the breastplate two rings of gold, and
shalt put the two rings on the two ends of the breastplate.

28:24 And thou shalt put the two wreathen chains of gold in the two
rings which are on the ends of the breastplate.

28:25 And the other two ends of the two wreathen chains thou shalt
fasten in the two ouches, and put them on the shoulderpieces of the
ephod before it.

28:26 And thou shalt make two rings of gold, and thou shalt put them
upon the two ends of the breastplate in the border thereof, which is
in the side of the ephod inward.

28:27 And two other rings of gold thou shalt make, and shalt put them
on the two sides of the ephod underneath, toward the forepart thereof,
over against the other coupling thereof, above the curious girdle of
the ephod.

28:28 And they shall bind the breastplate by the rings thereof unto
the rings of the ephod with a lace of blue, that it may be above the
curious girdle of the ephod, and that the breastplate be not loosed
from the ephod.

28:29 And Aaron shall bear the names of the children of Israel in the
breastplate of judgment upon his heart, when he goeth in unto the holy
place, for a memorial before the LORD continually.

28:30 And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and
the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron's heart, when he goeth in
before the LORD: and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of
Israel upon his heart before the LORD continually.

28:31 And thou shalt make the robe of the ephod all of blue.

28:32 And there shall be an hole in the top of it, in the midst
thereof: it shall have a binding of woven work round about the hole of
it, as it were the hole of an habergeon, that it be not rent.

28:33 And beneath upon the hem of it thou shalt make pomegranates of
blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof; and
bells of gold between them round about: 28:34 A golden bell and a
pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe
round about.

28:35 And it shall be upon Aaron to minister: and his sound shall be
heard when he goeth in unto the holy place before the LORD, and when
he cometh out, that he die not.

28:36 And thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it,
like the engravings of a signet, HOLINESS TO THE LORD.

28:37 And thou shalt put it on a blue lace, that it may be upon the
mitre; upon the forefront of the mitre it shall be.

28:38 And it shall be upon Aaron's forehead, that Aaron may bear the
iniquity of the holy things, which the children of Israel shall hallow
in all their holy gifts; and it shall be always upon his forehead,
that they may be accepted before the LORD.

28:39 And thou shalt embroider the coat of fine linen, and thou shalt
make the mitre of fine linen, and thou shalt make the girdle of
needlework.

28:40 And for Aaron's sons thou shalt make coats, and thou shalt make
for them girdles, and bonnets shalt thou make for them, for glory and
for beauty.

28:41 And thou shalt put them upon Aaron thy brother, and his sons
with him; and shalt anoint them, and consecrate them, and sanctify
them, that they may minister unto me in the priest's office.

28:42 And thou shalt make them linen breeches to cover their
nakedness; from the loins even unto the thighs they shall reach: 28:43
And they shall be upon Aaron, and upon his sons, when they come in
unto the tabernacle of the congregation, or when they come near unto
the altar to minister in the holy place; that they bear not iniquity,
and die: it shall be a statute for ever unto him and his seed after
him.

29:1 And this is the thing that thou shalt do unto them to hallow
them, to minister unto me in the priest's office: Take one young
bullock, and two rams without blemish, 29:2 And unleavened bread, and
cakes unleavened tempered with oil, and wafers unleavened anointed
with oil: of wheaten flour shalt thou make them.

29:3 And thou shalt put them into one basket, and bring them in the
basket, with the bullock and the two rams.

29:4 And Aaron and his sons thou shalt bring unto the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation, and shalt wash them with water.

29:5 And thou shalt take the garments, and put upon Aaron the coat,
and the robe of the ephod, and the ephod, and the breastplate, and
gird him with the curious girdle of the ephod: 29:6 And thou shalt put
the mitre upon his head, and put the holy crown upon the mitre.

29:7 Then shalt thou take the anointing oil, and pour it upon his
head, and anoint him.

29:8 And thou shalt bring his sons, and put coats upon them.

29:9 And thou shalt gird them with girdles, Aaron and his sons, and
put the bonnets on them: and the priest's office shall be theirs for a
perpetual statute: and thou shalt consecrate Aaron and his sons.

29:10 And thou shalt cause a bullock to be brought before the
tabernacle of the congregation: and Aaron and his sons shall put their
hands upon the head of the bullock.

29:11 And thou shalt kill the bullock before the LORD, by the door of
the tabernacle of the congregation.

29:12 And thou shalt take of the blood of the bullock, and put it upon
the horns of the altar with thy finger, and pour all the blood beside
the bottom of the altar.

29:13 And thou shalt take all the fat that covereth the inwards, and
the caul that is above the liver, and the two kidneys, and the fat
that is upon them, and burn them upon the altar.

29:14 But the flesh of the bullock, and his skin, and his dung, shalt
thou burn with fire without the camp: it is a sin offering.

29:15 Thou shalt also take one ram; and Aaron and his sons shall put
their hands upon the head of the ram.

29:16 And thou shalt slay the ram, and thou shalt take his blood, and
sprinkle it round about upon the altar.

29:17 And thou shalt cut the ram in pieces, and wash the inwards of
him, and his legs, and put them unto his pieces, and unto his head.

29:18 And thou shalt burn the whole ram upon the altar: it is a burnt
offering unto the LORD: it is a sweet savour, an offering made by fire
unto the LORD.

29:19 And thou shalt take the other ram; and Aaron and his sons shall
put their hands upon the head of the ram.

29:20 Then shalt thou kill the ram, and take of his blood, and put it
upon the tip of the right ear of Aaron, and upon the tip of the right
ear of his sons, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the
great toe of their right foot, and sprinkle the blood upon the altar
round about.

29:21 And thou shalt take of the blood that is upon the altar, and of
the anointing oil, and sprinkle it upon Aaron, and upon his garments,
and upon his sons, and upon the garments of his sons with him: and he
shall be hallowed, and his garments, and his sons, and his sons'
garments with him.

29:22 Also thou shalt take of the ram the fat and the rump, and the
fat that covereth the inwards, and the caul above the liver, and the
two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, and the right shoulder;
for it is a ram of consecration: 29:23 And one loaf of bread, and one
cake of oiled bread, and one wafer out of the basket of the unleavened
bread that is before the LORD: 29:24 And thou shalt put all in the
hands of Aaron, and in the hands of his sons; and shalt wave them for
a wave offering before the LORD.

29:25 And thou shalt receive them of their hands, and burn them upon
the altar for a burnt offering, for a sweet savour before the LORD: it
is an offering made by fire unto the LORD.

29:26 And thou shalt take the breast of the ram of Aaron's
consecration, and wave it for a wave offering before the LORD: and it
shall be thy part.

29:27 And thou shalt sanctify the breast of the wave offering, and the
shoulder of the heave offering, which is waved, and which is heaved
up, of the ram of the consecration, even of that which is for Aaron,
and of that which is for his sons: 29:28 And it shall be Aaron's and
his sons' by a statute for ever from the children of Israel: for it is
an heave offering: and it shall be an heave offering from the children
of Israel of the sacrifice of their peace offerings, even their heave
offering unto the LORD.

29:29 And the holy garments of Aaron shall be his sons' after him, to
be anointed therein, and to be consecrated in them.

29:30 And that son that is priest in his stead shall put them on seven
days, when he cometh into the tabernacle of the congregation to
minister in the holy place.

29:31 And thou shalt take the ram of the consecration, and seethe his
flesh in the holy place.

29:32 And Aaron and his sons shall eat the flesh of the ram, and the
bread that is in the basket by the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation.

29:33 And they shall eat those things wherewith the atonement was
made, to consecrate and to sanctify them: but a stranger shall not eat
thereof, because they are holy.

29:34 And if ought of the flesh of the consecrations, or of the bread,
remain unto the morning, then thou shalt burn the remainder with fire:
it shall not be eaten, because it is holy.

29:35 And thus shalt thou do unto Aaron, and to his sons, according to
all things which I have commanded thee: seven days shalt thou
consecrate them.

29:36 And thou shalt offer every day a bullock for a sin offering for
atonement: and thou shalt cleanse the altar, when thou hast made an
atonement for it, and thou shalt anoint it, to sanctify it.

29:37 Seven days thou shalt make an atonement for the altar, and
sanctify it; and it shall be an altar most holy: whatsoever toucheth
the altar shall be holy.

29:38 Now this is that which thou shalt offer upon the altar; two
lambs of the first year day by day continually.

29:39 The one lamb thou shalt offer in the morning; and the other lamb
thou shalt offer at even: 29:40 And with the one lamb a tenth deal of
flour mingled with the fourth part of an hin of beaten oil; and the
fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering.

29:41 And the other lamb thou shalt offer at even, and shalt do
thereto according to the meat offering of the morning, and according
to the drink offering thereof, for a sweet savour, an offering made by
fire unto the LORD.

29:42 This shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your
generations at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before
the LORD: where I will meet you, to speak there unto thee.

29:43 And there I will meet with the children of Israel, and the
tabernacle shall be sanctified by my glory.

29:44 And I will sanctify the tabernacle of the congregation, and the
altar: I will sanctify also both Aaron and his sons, to minister to me
in the priest's office.

29:45 And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their
God.

29:46 And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, that brought
them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them: I am
the LORD their God.

30:1 And thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon: of shittim
wood shalt thou make it.

30:2 A cubit shall be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth
thereof; foursquare shall it be: and two cubits shall be the height
thereof: the horns thereof shall be of the same.

30:3 And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, the top thereof, and
the sides thereof round about, and the horns thereof; and thou shalt
make unto it a crown of gold round about.

30:4 And two golden rings shalt thou make to it under the crown of it,
by the two corners thereof, upon the two sides of it shalt thou make
it; and they shall be for places for the staves to bear it withal.

30:5 And thou shalt make the staves of shittim wood, and overlay them
with gold.

30:6 And thou shalt put it before the vail that is by the ark of the
testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the testimony, where I
will meet with thee.

30:7 And Aaron shall burn thereon sweet incense every morning: when he
dresseth the lamps, he shall burn incense upon it.

30:8 And when Aaron lighteth the lamps at even, he shall burn incense
upon it, a perpetual incense before the LORD throughout your
generations.

30:9 Ye shall offer no strange incense thereon, nor burnt sacrifice,
nor meat offering; neither shall ye pour drink offering thereon.

30:10 And Aaron shall make an atonement upon the horns of it once in a
year with the blood of the sin offering of atonements: once in the
year shall he make atonement upon it throughout your generations: it
is most holy unto the LORD.

30:11 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 30:12 When thou takest
the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they
give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou
numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou
numberest them.

30:13 This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are
numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel
is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the LORD.

30:14 Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty
years old and above, shall give an offering unto the LORD.

30:15 The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less
than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the LORD, to make
an atonement for your souls.

30:16 And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of
Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the
congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel
before the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls.

30:17 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 30:18 Thou shalt also
make a laver of brass, and his foot also of brass, to wash withal: and
thou shalt put it between the tabernacle of the congregation and the
altar, and thou shalt put water therein.

30:19 For Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet
thereat: 30:20 When they go into the tabernacle of the congregation,
they shall wash with water, that they die not; or when they come near
to the altar to minister, to burn offering made by fire unto the LORD:
30:21 So they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they die
not: and it shall be a statute for ever to them, even to him and to
his seed throughout their generations.

30:22 Moreover the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 30:23 Take thou also
unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of
sweet cinnamon half so much, even two hundred and fifty shekels, and
of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels, 30:24 And of cassia
five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of oil
olive an hin: 30:25 And thou shalt make it an oil of holy ointment, an
ointment compound after the art of the apothecary: it shall be an holy
anointing oil.

30:26 And thou shalt anoint the tabernacle of the congregation
therewith, and the ark of the testimony, 30:27 And the table and all
his vessels, and the candlestick and his vessels, and the altar of
incense, 30:28 And the altar of burnt offering with all his vessels,
and the laver and his foot.

30:29 And thou shalt sanctify them, that they may be most holy:
whatsoever toucheth them shall be holy.

30:30 And thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them,
that they may minister unto me in the priest's office.

30:31 And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, This
shall be an holy anointing oil unto me throughout your generations.

30:32 Upon man's flesh shall it not be poured, neither shall ye make
any other like it, after the composition of it: it is holy, and it
shall be holy unto you.

30:33 Whosoever compoundeth any like it, or whosoever putteth any of
it upon a stranger, shall even be cut off from his people.

30:34 And the LORD said unto Moses, Take unto thee sweet spices,
stacte, and onycha, and galbanum; these sweet spices with pure
frankincense: of each shall there be a like weight: 30:35 And thou
shalt make it a perfume, a confection after the art of the apothecary,
tempered together, pure and holy: 30:36 And thou shalt beat some of it
very small, and put of it before the testimony in the tabernacle of
the congregation, where I will meet with thee: it shall be unto you
most holy.

30:37 And as for the perfume which thou shalt make, ye shall not make
to yourselves according to the composition thereof: it shall be unto
thee holy for the LORD.

30:38 Whosoever shall make like unto that, to smell thereto, shall
even be cut off from his people.

31:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 31:2 See, I have called by
name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah:
31:3 And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in
understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,
31:4 To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in
brass, 31:5 And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of
timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.

31:6 And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab, the son of
Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan: and in the hearts of all that are wise
hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have
commanded thee; 31:7 The tabernacle of the congregation, and the ark
of the testimony, and the mercy seat that is thereupon, and all the
furniture of the tabernacle, 31:8 And the table and his furniture, and
the pure candlestick with all his furniture, and the altar of incense,
31:9 And the altar of burnt offering with all his furniture, and the
laver and his foot, 31:10 And the cloths of service, and the holy
garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons, to
minister in the priest's office, 31:11 And the anointing oil, and
sweet incense for the holy place: according to all that I have
commanded thee shall they do.

31:12 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 31:13 Speak thou also
unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep:
for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that
ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you.

31:14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you:
every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever
doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his
people.

31:15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of
rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day,
he shall surely be put to death.

31:16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to
observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual
covenant.

31:17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for
in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he
rested, and was refreshed.

31:18 And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing
with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone,
written with the finger of God.

32:1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of
the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and
said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for
this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we
wot not what is become of him.

32:2 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which
are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters,
and bring them unto me.

32:3 And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in
their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.

32:4 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a
graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These
be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

32:5 And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron
made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD.

32:6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt
offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat
and to drink, and rose up to play.

32:7 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people,
which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted
themselves: 32:8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I
commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped
it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O
Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

32:9 And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and,
behold, it is a stiffnecked people: 32:10 Now therefore let me alone,
that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them:
and I will make of thee a great nation.

32:11 And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth
thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth
out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?
32:12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did
he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them
from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of
this evil against thy people.

32:13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou
swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your
seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of
will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.

32:14 And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto
his people.

32:15 And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two
tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on
both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written.

32:16 And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the
writing of God, graven upon the tables.

32:17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted,
he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp.

32:18 And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery,
neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the
noise of them that sing do I hear.

32:19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that
he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he
cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.

32:20 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the
fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made
the children of Israel drink of it.

32:21 And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that
thou hast brought so great a sin upon them?  32:22 And Aaron said, Let
not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they
are set on mischief.

32:23 For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us:
for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of
Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

32:24 And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it
off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came
out this calf.

32:25 And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had
made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:) 32:26 Then
Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's
side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered
themselves together unto him.

32:27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put
every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate
throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his
companion, and every man his neighbour.

32:28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and
there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

32:29 For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves today to the LORD,
even every man upon his son, and upon his brother; that he may bestow
upon you a blessing this day.

32:30 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto the
people, Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the
LORD; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.

32:31 And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said, Oh, this people have
sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold.

32:32 Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me,
I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.

32:33 And the LORD said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me,
him will I blot out of my book.

32:34 Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have
spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee:
nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them.

32:35 And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf,
which Aaron made.

33:1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Depart, and go up hence, thou and
the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto
the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying,
Unto thy seed will I give it: 33:2 And I will send an angel before
thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the
Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite: 33:3 Unto a
land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of
thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the
way.

33:4 And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and
no man did put on him his ornaments.

33:5 For the LORD had said unto Moses, Say unto the children of
Israel, Ye are a stiffnecked people: I will come up into the midst of
thee in a moment, and consume thee: therefore now put off thy
ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee.

33:6 And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments
by the mount Horeb.

33:7 And Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp,
afar off from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the
congregation. And it came to pass, that every one which sought the
LORD went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation, which was
without the camp.

33:8 And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle,
that all the people rose up, and stood every man at his tent door, and
looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle.

33:9 And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the
cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and
the Lord talked with Moses.

33:10 And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle
door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent
door.

33:11 And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh
unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant
Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the
tabernacle.

33:12 And Moses said unto the LORD, See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up
this people: and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with
me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found
grace in my sight.

33:13 Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight,
shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in
thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people.

33:14 And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give
thee rest.

33:15 And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us
not up hence.

33:16 For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have
found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so
shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are
upon the face of the earth.

33:17 And the LORD said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that
thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know
thee by name.

33:18 And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.

33:19 And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I
will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious
to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew
mercy.

33:20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man
see me, and live.

33:21 And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou
shalt stand upon a rock: 33:22 And it shall come to pass, while my
glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and
will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: 33:23 And I will take
away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall
not be seen.

34:1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like
unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were
in the first tables, which thou brakest.

34:2 And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto
mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me in the top of the mount.

34:3 And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen
throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before
that mount.

34:4 And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses
rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the
LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.

34:5 And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there,
and proclaimed the name of the LORD.

34:6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The
LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in
goodness and truth, 34:7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving
iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear
the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children,
and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth
generation.

34:8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and
worshipped.

34:9 And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O LORD, let
my LORD, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and
pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.

34:10 And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I
will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in
any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work
of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee.

34:11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive
out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and
the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

34:12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the
inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in
the midst of thee: 34:13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break
their images, and cut down their groves: 34:14 For thou shalt worship
no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:
34:15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and
they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods,
and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; 34:16 And thou take
of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring
after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.

34:17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

34:18 The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou
shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the
month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.

34:19 All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among
thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male.

34:20 But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and
if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the
firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before
me empty.

34:21 Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt
rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.

34:22 And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of
wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end.

34:23 Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the
LORD God, the God of Israel.

34:24 For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy
borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up
to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year.

34:25 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven;
neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto
the morning.

34:26 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto
the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his
mother's milk.

34:27 And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after
the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with
Israel.

34:28 And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he
did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables
the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

34:29 And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with
the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the
mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he
talked with him.

34:30 And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold,
the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.

34:31 And Moses called unto them; and Aaron and all the rulers of the
congregation returned unto him: and Moses talked with them.

34:32 And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh: and he gave
them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him in mount
Sinai.

34:33 And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a vail on his
face.

34:34 But when Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he
took the vail off, until he came out. And he came out, and spake unto
the children of Israel that which he was commanded.

34:35 And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin
of Moses' face shone: and Moses put the vail upon his face again,
until he went in to speak with him.

35:1 And Moses gathered all the congregation of the children of Israel
together, and said unto them, These are the words which the LORD hath
commanded, that ye should do them.

35:2 Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall
be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth
work therein shall be put to death.

35:3 Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the
sabbath day.

35:4 And Moses spake unto all the congregation of the children of
Israel, saying, This is the thing which the LORD commanded, saying,
35:5 Take ye from among you an offering unto the LORD: whosoever is of
a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the LORD; gold, and
silver, and brass, 35:6 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine
linen, and goats' hair, 35:7 And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers'
skins, and shittim wood, 35:8 And oil for the light, and spices for
anointing oil, and for the sweet incense, 35:9 And onyx stones, and
stones to be set for the ephod, and for the breastplate.

35:10 And every wise hearted among you shall come, and make all that
the LORD hath commanded; 35:11 The tabernacle, his tent, and his
covering, his taches, and his boards, his bars, his pillars, and his
sockets, 35:12 The ark, and the staves thereof, with the mercy seat,
and the vail of the covering, 35:13 The table, and his staves, and all
his vessels, and the shewbread, 35:14 The candlestick also for the
light, and his furniture, and his lamps, with the oil for the light,
35:15 And the incense altar, and his staves, and the anointing oil,
and the sweet incense, and the hanging for the door at the entering in
of the tabernacle, 35:16 The altar of burnt offering, with his brasen
grate, his staves, and all his vessels, the laver and his foot, 35:17
The hangings of the court, his pillars, and their sockets, and the
hanging for the door of the court, 35:18 The pins of the tabernacle,
and the pins of the court, and their cords, 35:19 The cloths of
service, to do service in the holy place, the holy garments for Aaron
the priest, and the garments of his sons, to minister in the priest's
office.

35:20 And all the congregation of the children of Israel departed from
the presence of Moses.

35:21 And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, and every
one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the LORD's offering
to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all his
service, and for the holy garments.

35:22 And they came, both men and women, as many as were willing
hearted, and brought bracelets, and earrings, and rings, and tablets,
all jewels of gold: and every man that offered offered an offering of
gold unto the LORD.

35:23 And every man, with whom was found blue, and purple, and
scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair, and red skins of rams, and
badgers' skins, brought them.

35:24 Every one that did offer an offering of silver and brass brought
the LORD's offering: and every man, with whom was found shittim wood
for any work of the service, brought it.

35:25 And all the women that were wise hearted did spin with their
hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of
purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen.

35:26 And all the women whose heart stirred them up in wisdom spun
goats' hair.

35:27 And the rulers brought onyx stones, and stones to be set, for
the ephod, and for the breastplate; 35:28 And spice, and oil for the
light, and for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense.

35:29 The children of Israel brought a willing offering unto the LORD,
every man and woman, whose heart made them willing to bring for all
manner of work, which the LORD had commanded to be made by the hand of
Moses.

35:30 And Moses said unto the children of Israel, See, the LORD hath
called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe
of Judah; 35:31 And he hath filled him with the spirit of God, in
wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of
workmanship; 35:32 And to devise curious works, to work in gold, and
in silver, and in brass, 35:33 And in the cutting of stones, to set
them, and in carving of wood, to make any manner of cunning work.

35:34 And he hath put in his heart that he may teach, both he, and
Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan.

35:35 Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of
work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the
embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen,
and of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those that
devise cunning work.

36:1 Then wrought Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every wise hearted man, in
whom the LORD put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all
manner of work for the service of the sanctuary, according to all that
the LORD had commanded.

36:2 And Moses called Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every wise hearted
man, in whose heart the LORD had put wisdom, even every one whose
heart stirred him up to come unto the work to do it: 36:3 And they
received of Moses all the offering, which the children of Israel had
brought for the work of the service of the sanctuary, to make it
withal. And they brought yet unto him free offerings every morning.

36:4 And all the wise men, that wrought all the work of the sanctuary,
came every man from his work which they made; 36:5 And they spake unto
Moses, saying, The people bring much more than enough for the service
of the work, which the LORD commanded to make.

36:6 And Moses gave commandment, and they caused it to be proclaimed
throughout the camp, saying, Let neither man nor woman make any more
work for the offering of the sanctuary. So the people were restrained
from bringing.

36:7 For the stuff they had was sufficient for all the work to make
it, and too much.

36:8 And every wise hearted man among them that wrought the work of
the tabernacle made ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and
purple, and scarlet: with cherubims of cunning work made he them.

36:9 The length of one curtain was twenty and eight cubits, and the
breadth of one curtain four cubits: the curtains were all of one size.

36:10 And he coupled the five curtains one unto another: and the other
five curtains he coupled one unto another.

36:11 And he made loops of blue on the edge of one curtain from the
selvedge in the coupling: likewise he made in the uttermost side of
another curtain, in the coupling of the second.

36:12 Fifty loops made he in one curtain, and fifty loops made he in
the edge of the curtain which was in the coupling of the second: the
loops held one curtain to another.

36:13 And he made fifty taches of gold, and coupled the curtains one
unto another with the taches: so it became one tabernacle.

36:14 And he made curtains of goats' hair for the tent over the
tabernacle: eleven curtains he made them.

36:15 The length of one curtain was thirty cubits, and four cubits was
the breadth of one curtain: the eleven curtains were of one size.

36:16 And he coupled five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by
themselves.

36:17 And he made fifty loops upon the uttermost edge of the curtain
in the coupling, and fifty loops made he upon the edge of the curtain
which coupleth the second.

36:18 And he made fifty taches of brass to couple the tent together,
that it might be one.

36:19 And he made a covering for the tent of rams' skins dyed red, and
a covering of badgers' skins above that.

36:20 And he made boards for the tabernacle of shittim wood, standing
up.

36:21 The length of a board was ten cubits, and the breadth of a board
one cubit and a half.

36:22 One board had two tenons, equally distant one from another: thus
did he make for all the boards of the tabernacle.

36:23 And he made boards for the tabernacle; twenty boards for the
south side southward: 36:24 And forty sockets of silver he made under
the twenty boards; two sockets under one board for his two tenons, and
two sockets under another board for his two tenons.

36:25 And for the other side of the tabernacle, which is toward the
north corner, he made twenty boards, 36:26 And their forty sockets of
silver; two sockets under one board, and two sockets under another
board.

36:27 And for the sides of the tabernacle westward he made six boards.

36:28 And two boards made he for the corners of the tabernacle in the
two sides.

36:29 And they were coupled beneath, and coupled together at the head
thereof, to one ring: thus he did to both of them in both the corners.

36:30 And there were eight boards; and their sockets were sixteen
sockets of silver, under every board two sockets.

36:31 And he made bars of shittim wood; five for the boards of the one
side of the tabernacle, 36:32 And five bars for the boards of the
other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the boards of the
tabernacle for the sides westward.

36:33 And he made the middle bar to shoot through the boards from the
one end to the other.

36:34 And he overlaid the boards with gold, and made their rings of
gold to be places for the bars, and overlaid the bars with gold.

36:35 And he made a vail of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine
twined linen: with cherubims made he it of cunning work.

36:36 And he made thereunto four pillars of shittim wood, and overlaid
them with gold: their hooks were of gold; and he cast for them four
sockets of silver.

36:37 And he made an hanging for the tabernacle door of blue, and
purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, of needlework; 36:38 And
the five pillars of it with their hooks: and he overlaid their
chapiters and their fillets with gold: but their five sockets were of
brass.

37:1 And Bezaleel made the ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half
was the length of it, and a cubit and a half the breadth of it, and a
cubit and a half the height of it: 37:2 And he overlaid it with pure
gold within and without, and made a crown of gold to it round about.

37:3 And he cast for it four rings of gold, to be set by the four
corners of it; even two rings upon the one side of it, and two rings
upon the other side of it.

37:4 And he made staves of shittim wood, and overlaid them with gold.

37:5 And he put the staves into the rings by the sides of the ark, to
bear the ark.

37:6 And he made the mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a half
was the length thereof, and one cubit and a half the breadth thereof.

37:7 And he made two cherubims of gold, beaten out of one piece made
he them, on the two ends of the mercy seat; 37:8 One cherub on the end
on this side, and another cherub on the other end on that side: out of
the mercy seat made he the cherubims on the two ends thereof.

37:9 And the cherubims spread out their wings on high, and covered
with their wings over the mercy seat, with their faces one to another;
even to the mercy seatward were the faces of the cherubims.

37:10 And he made the table of shittim wood: two cubits was the length
thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the
height thereof: 37:11 And he overlaid it with pure gold, and made
thereunto a crown of gold round about.

37:12 Also he made thereunto a border of an handbreadth round about;
and made a crown of gold for the border thereof round about.

37:13 And he cast for it four rings of gold, and put the rings upon
the four corners that were in the four feet thereof.

37:14 Over against the border were the rings, the places for the
staves to bear the table.

37:15 And he made the staves of shittim wood, and overlaid them with
gold, to bear the table.

37:16 And he made the vessels which were upon the table, his dishes,
and his spoons, and his bowls, and his covers to cover withal, of pure
gold.

37:17 And he made the candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work made he
the candlestick; his shaft, and his branch, his bowls, his knops, and
his flowers, were of the same: 37:18 And six branches going out of the
sides thereof; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side
thereof, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side
thereof: 37:19 Three bowls made after the fashion of almonds in one
branch, a knop and a flower; and three bowls made like almonds in
another branch, a knop and a flower: so throughout the six branches
going out of the candlestick.

37:20 And in the candlestick were four bowls made like almonds, his
knops, and his flowers: 37:21 And a knop under two branches of the
same, and a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two
branches of the same, according to the six branches going out of it.

37:22 Their knops and their branches were of the same: all of it was
one beaten work of pure gold.

37:23 And he made his seven lamps, and his snuffers, and his
snuffdishes, of pure gold.

37:24 Of a talent of pure gold made he it, and all the vessels
thereof.

37:25 And he made the incense altar of shittim wood: the length of it
was a cubit, and the breadth of it a cubit; it was foursquare; and two
cubits was the height of it; the horns thereof were of the same.

37:26 And he overlaid it with pure gold, both the top of it, and the
sides thereof round about, and the horns of it: also he made unto it a
crown of gold round about.

37:27 And he made two rings of gold for it under the crown thereof, by
the two corners of it, upon the two sides thereof, to be places for
the staves to bear it withal.

37:28 And he made the staves of shittim wood, and overlaid them with
gold.

37:29 And he made the holy anointing oil, and the pure incense of
sweet spices, according to the work of the apothecary.

38:1 And he made the altar of burnt offering of shittim wood: five
cubits was the length thereof, and five cubits the breadth thereof; it
was foursquare; and three cubits the height thereof.

38:2 And he made the horns thereof on the four corners of it; the
horns thereof were of the same: and he overlaid it with brass.

38:3 And he made all the vessels of the altar, the pots, and the
shovels, and the basons, and the fleshhooks, and the firepans: all the
vessels thereof made he of brass.

38:4 And he made for the altar a brasen grate of network under the
compass thereof beneath unto the midst of it.

38:5 And he cast four rings for the four ends of the grate of brass,
to be places for the staves.

38:6 And he made the staves of shittim wood, and overlaid them with
brass.

38:7 And he put the staves into the rings on the sides of the altar,
to bear it withal; he made the altar hollow with boards.

38:8 And he made the laver of brass, and the foot of it of brass, of
the lookingglasses of the women assembling, which assembled at the
door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

38:9 And he made the court: on the south side southward the hangings
of the court were of fine twined linen, an hundred cubits: 38:10 Their
pillars were twenty, and their brasen sockets twenty; the hooks of the
pillars and their fillets were of silver.

38:11 And for the north side the hangings were an hundred cubits,
their pillars were twenty, and their sockets of brass twenty; the
hooks of the pillars and their fillets of silver.

38:12 And for the west side were hangings of fifty cubits, their
pillars ten, and their sockets ten; the hooks of the pillars and their
fillets of silver.

38:13 And for the east side eastward fifty cubits.

38:14 The hangings of the one side of the gate were fifteen cubits;
their pillars three, and their sockets three.

38:15 And for the other side of the court gate, on this hand and that
hand, were hangings of fifteen cubits; their pillars three, and their
sockets three.

38:16 All the hangings of the court round about were of fine twined
linen.

38:17 And the sockets for the pillars were of brass; the hooks of the
pillars and their fillets of silver; and the overlaying of their
chapiters of silver; and all the pillars of the court were filleted
with silver.

38:18 And the hanging for the gate of the court was needlework, of
blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen: and twenty
cubits was the length, and the height in the breadth was five cubits,
answerable to the hangings of the court.

38:19 And their pillars were four, and their sockets of brass four;
their hooks of silver, and the overlaying of their chapiters and their
fillets of silver.

38:20 And all the pins of the tabernacle, and of the court round
about, were of brass.

38:21 This is the sum of the tabernacle, even of the tabernacle of
testimony, as it was counted, according to the commandment of Moses,
for the service of the Levites, by the hand of Ithamar, son to Aaron
the priest.

38:22 And Bezaleel the son Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah,
made all that the LORD commanded Moses.

38:23 And with him was Aholiab, son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan,
an engraver, and a cunning workman, and an embroiderer in blue, and in
purple, and in scarlet, and fine linen.

38:24 All the gold that was occupied for the work in all the work of
the holy place, even the gold of the offering, was twenty and nine
talents, and seven hundred and thirty shekels, after the shekel of the
sanctuary.

38:25 And the silver of them that were numbered of the congregation
was an hundred talents, and a thousand seven hundred and threescore
and fifteen shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary: 38:26 A bekah
for every man, that is, half a shekel, after the shekel of the
sanctuary, for every one that went to be numbered, from twenty years
old and upward, for six hundred thousand and three thousand and five
hundred and fifty men.

38:27 And of the hundred talents of silver were cast the sockets of
the sanctuary, and the sockets of the vail; an hundred sockets of the
hundred talents, a talent for a socket.

38:28 And of the thousand seven hundred seventy and five shekels he
made hooks for the pillars, and overlaid their chapiters, and filleted
them.

38:29 And the brass of the offering was seventy talents, and two
thousand and four hundred shekels.

38:30 And therewith he made the sockets to the door of the tabernacle
of the congregation, and the brasen altar, and the brasen grate for
it, and all the vessels of the altar, 38:31 And the sockets of the
court round about, and the sockets of the court gate, and all the pins
of the tabernacle, and all the pins of the court round about.

39:1 And of the blue, and purple, and scarlet, they made cloths of
service, to do service in the holy place, and made the holy garments
for Aaron; as the LORD commanded Moses.

39:2 And he made the ephod of gold, blue, and purple, and scarlet, and
fine twined linen.

39:3 And they did beat the gold into thin plates, and cut it into
wires, to work it in the blue, and in the purple, and in the scarlet,
and in the fine linen, with cunning work.

39:4 They made shoulderpieces for it, to couple it together: by the
two edges was it coupled together.

39:5 And the curious girdle of his ephod, that was upon it, was of the
same, according to the work thereof; of gold, blue, and purple, and
scarlet, and fine twined linen; as the LORD commanded Moses.

39:6 And they wrought onyx stones inclosed in ouches of gold, graven,
as signets are graven, with the names of the children of Israel.

39:7 And he put them on the shoulders of the ephod, that they should
be stones for a memorial to the children of Israel; as the LORD
commanded Moses.

39:8 And he made the breastplate of cunning work, like the work of the
ephod; of gold, blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen.

39:9 It was foursquare; they made the breastplate double: a span was
the length thereof, and a span the breadth thereof, being doubled.

39:10 And they set in it four rows of stones: the first row was a
sardius, a topaz, and a carbuncle: this was the first row.

39:11 And the second row, an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond.

39:12 And the third row, a ligure, an agate, and an amethyst.

39:13 And the fourth row, a beryl, an onyx, and a jasper: they were
inclosed in ouches of gold in their inclosings.

39:14 And the stones were according to the names of the children of
Israel, twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of a
signet, every one with his name, according to the twelve tribes.

39:15 And they made upon the breastplate chains at the ends, of
wreathen work of pure gold.

39:16 And they made two ouches of gold, and two gold rings; and put
the two rings in the two ends of the breastplate.

39:17 And they put the two wreathen chains of gold in the two rings on
the ends of the breastplate.

39:18 And the two ends of the two wreathen chains they fastened in the
two ouches, and put them on the shoulderpieces of the ephod, before
it.

39:19 And they made two rings of gold, and put them on the two ends of
the breastplate, upon the border of it, which was on the side of the
ephod inward.

39:20 And they made two other golden rings, and put them on the two
sides of the ephod underneath, toward the forepart of it, over against
the other coupling thereof, above the curious girdle of the ephod.

39:21 And they did bind the breastplate by his rings unto the rings of
the ephod with a lace of blue, that it might be above the curious
girdle of the ephod, and that the breastplate might not be loosed from
the ephod; as the LORD commanded Moses.

39:22 And he made the robe of the ephod of woven work, all of blue.

39:23 And there was an hole in the midst of the robe, as the hole of
an habergeon, with a band round about the hole, that it should not
rend.

39:24 And they made upon the hems of the robe pomegranates of blue,
and purple, and scarlet, and twined linen.

39:25 And they made bells of pure gold, and put the bells between the
pomegranates upon the hem of the robe, round about between the
pomegranates; 39:26 A bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a
pomegranate, round about the hem of the robe to minister in; as the
LORD commanded Moses.

39:27 And they made coats of fine linen of woven work for Aaron, and
for his sons, 39:28 And a mitre of fine linen, and goodly bonnets of
fine linen, and linen breeches of fine twined linen, 39:29 And a
girdle of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, of
needlework; as the LORD commanded Moses.

39:30 And they made the plate of the holy crown of pure gold, and
wrote upon it a writing, like to the engravings of a signet, HOLINESS
TO THE LORD.

39:31 And they tied unto it a lace of blue, to fasten it on high upon
the mitre; as the LORD commanded Moses.

39:32 Thus was all the work of the tabernacle of the tent of the
congregation finished: and the children of Israel did according to all
that the LORD commanded Moses, so did they.

39:33 And they brought the tabernacle unto Moses, the tent, and all
his furniture, his taches, his boards, his bars, and his pillars, and
his sockets, 39:34 And the covering of rams' skins dyed red, and the
covering of badgers' skins, and the vail of the covering, 39:35 The
ark of the testimony, and the staves thereof, and the mercy seat,
39:36 The table, and all the vessels thereof, and the shewbread, 39:37
The pure candlestick, with the lamps thereof, even with the lamps to
be set in order, and all the vessels thereof, and the oil for light,
39:38 And the golden altar, and the anointing oil, and the sweet
incense, and the hanging for the tabernacle door, 39:39 The brasen
altar, and his grate of brass, his staves, and all his vessels, the
laver and his foot, 39:40 The hangings of the court, his pillars, and
his sockets, and the hanging for the court gate, his cords, and his
pins, and all the vessels of the service of the tabernacle, for the
tent of the congregation, 39:41 The cloths of service to do service in
the holy place, and the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and his
sons' garments, to minister in the priest's office.

39:42 According to all that the LORD commanded Moses, so the children
of Israel made all the work.

39:43 And Moses did look upon all the work, and, behold, they had done
it as the LORD had commanded, even so had they done it: and Moses
blessed them.

40:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 40:2 On the first day of
the first month shalt thou set up the tabernacle of the tent of the
congregation.

40:3 And thou shalt put therein the ark of the testimony, and cover
the ark with the vail.

40:4 And thou shalt bring in the table, and set in order the things
that are to be set in order upon it; and thou shalt bring in the
candlestick, and light the lamps thereof.

40:5 And thou shalt set the altar of gold for the incense before the
ark of the testimony, and put the hanging of the door to the
tabernacle.

40:6 And thou shalt set the altar of the burnt offering before the
door of the tabernacle of the tent of the congregation.

40:7 And thou shalt set the laver between the tent of the congregation
and the altar, and shalt put water therein.

40:8 And thou shalt set up the court round about, and hang up the
hanging at the court gate.

40:9 And thou shalt take the anointing oil, and anoint the tabernacle,
and all that is therein, and shalt hallow it, and all the vessels
thereof: and it shall be holy.

40:10 And thou shalt anoint the altar of the burnt offering, and all
his vessels, and sanctify the altar: and it shall be an altar most
holy.

40:11 And thou shalt anoint the laver and his foot, and sanctify it.

40:12 And thou shalt bring Aaron and his sons unto the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation, and wash them with water.

40:13 And thou shalt put upon Aaron the holy garments, and anoint him,
and sanctify him; that he may minister unto me in the priest's office.

40:14 And thou shalt bring his sons, and clothe them with coats: 40:15
And thou shalt anoint them, as thou didst anoint their father, that
they may minister unto me in the priest's office: for their anointing
shall surely be an everlasting priesthood throughout their
generations.

40:16 Thus did Moses: according to all that the LORD commanded him, so
did he.

40:17 And it came to pass in the first month in the second year, on
the first day of the month, that the tabernacle was reared up.

40:18 And Moses reared up the tabernacle, and fastened his sockets,
and set up the boards thereof, and put in the bars thereof, and reared
up his pillars.

40:19 And he spread abroad the tent over the tabernacle, and put the
covering of the tent above upon it; as the LORD commanded Moses.

40:20 And he took and put the testimony into the ark, and set the
staves on the ark, and put the mercy seat above upon the ark: 40:21
And he brought the ark into the tabernacle, and set up the vail of the
covering, and covered the ark of the testimony; as the LORD commanded
Moses.

40:22 And he put the table in the tent of the congregation, upon the
side of the tabernacle northward, without the vail.

40:23 And he set the bread in order upon it before the LORD; as the
LORD had commanded Moses.

40:24 And he put the candlestick in the tent of the congregation, over
against the table, on the side of the tabernacle southward.

40:25 And he lighted the lamps before the LORD; as the LORD commanded
Moses.

40:26 And he put the golden altar in the tent of the congregation
before the vail: 40:27 And he burnt sweet incense thereon; as the LORD
commanded Moses.

40:28 And he set up the hanging at the door of the tabernacle.

40:29 And he put the altar of burnt offering by the door of the
tabernacle of the tent of the congregation, and offered upon it the
burnt offering and the meat offering; as the LORD commanded Moses.

40:30 And he set the laver between the tent of the congregation and
the altar, and put water there, to wash withal.

40:31 And Moses and Aaron and his sons washed their hands and their
feet thereat: 40:32 When they went into the tent of the congregation,
and when they came near unto the altar, they washed; as the LORD
commanded Moses.

40:33 And he reared up the court round about the tabernacle and the
altar, and set up the hanging of the court gate. So Moses finished the
work.

40:34 Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory
of the LORD filled the tabernacle.

40:35 And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the
congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the
LORD filled the tabernacle.

40:36 And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the
children of Israel went onward in all their journeys: 40:37 But if the
cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it
was taken up.

40:38 For the cloud of the LORD was upon the tabernacle by day, and
fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel,
throughout all their journeys.




The Third Book of Moses:  Called Leviticus


1:1 And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the
tabernacle of the congregation, saying, 1:2 Speak unto the children of
Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto
the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the
herd, and of the flock.

1:3 If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a
male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at
the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD.

1:4 And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and
it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.

1:5 And he shall kill the bullock before the LORD: and the priests,
Aaron's sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round
about upon the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation.

1:6 And he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into his pieces.

1:7 And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire upon the altar,
and lay the wood in order upon the fire: 1:8 And the priests, Aaron's
sons, shall lay the parts, the head, and the fat, in order upon the
wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar: 1:9 But his inwards
and his legs shall he wash in water: and the priest shall burn all on
the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a
sweet savour unto the LORD.

1:10 And if his offering be of the flocks, namely, of the sheep, or of
the goats, for a burnt sacrifice; he shall bring it a male without
blemish.

1:11 And he shall kill it on the side of the altar northward before
the LORD: and the priests, Aaron's sons, shall sprinkle his blood
round about upon the altar.

1:12 And he shall cut it into his pieces, with his head and his fat:
and the priest shall lay them in order on the wood that is on the fire
which is upon the altar: 1:13 But he shall wash the inwards and the
legs with water: and the priest shall bring it all, and burn it upon
the altar: it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a
sweet savour unto the LORD.

1:14 And if the burnt sacrifice for his offering to the LORD be of
fowls, then he shall bring his offering of turtledoves, or of young
pigeons.

1:15 And the priest shall bring it unto the altar, and wring off his
head, and burn it on the altar; and the blood thereof shall be wrung
out at the side of the altar: 1:16 And he shall pluck away his crop
with his feathers, and cast it beside the altar on the east part, by
the place of the ashes: 1:17 And he shall cleave it with the wings
thereof, but shall not divide it asunder: and the priest shall burn it
upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire: it is a burnt
sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD.

2:1 And when any will offer a meat offering unto the LORD, his
offering shall be of fine flour; and he shall pour oil upon it, and
put frankincense thereon: 2:2 And he shall bring it to Aaron's sons
the priests: and he shall take thereout his handful of the flour
thereof, and of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof;
and the priest shall burn the memorial of it upon the altar, to be an
offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD: 2:3 And the
remnant of the meat offering shall be Aaron's and his sons': it is a
thing most holy of the offerings of the LORD made by fire.

2:4 And if thou bring an oblation of a meat offering baken in the
oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or
unleavened wafers anointed with oil.

2:5 And if thy oblation be a meat offering baken in a pan, it shall be
of fine flour unleavened, mingled with oil.

2:6 Thou shalt part it in pieces, and pour oil thereon: it is a meat
offering.

2:7 And if thy oblation be a meat offering baken in the fryingpan, it
shall be made of fine flour with oil.

2:8 And thou shalt bring the meat offering that is made of these
things unto the LORD: and when it is presented unto the priest, he
shall bring it unto the altar.

2:9 And the priest shall take from the meat offering a memorial
thereof, and shall burn it upon the altar: it is an offering made by
fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD.

2:10 And that which is left of the meat offering shall be Aaron's and
his sons': it is a thing most holy of the offerings of the LORD made
by fire.

2:11 No meat offering, which ye shall bring unto the LORD, shall be
made with leaven: for ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any
offering of the LORD made by fire.

2:12 As for the oblation of the firstfruits, ye shall offer them unto
the LORD: but they shall not be burnt on the altar for a sweet savour.

2:13 And every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with
salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to
be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt
offer salt.

2:14 And if thou offer a meat offering of thy firstfruits unto the
LORD, thou shalt offer for the meat offering of thy firstfruits green
ears of corn dried by the fire, even corn beaten out of full ears.

2:15 And thou shalt put oil upon it, and lay frankincense thereon: it
is a meat offering.

2:16 And the priest shall burn the memorial of it, part of the beaten
corn thereof, and part of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense
thereof: it is an offering made by fire unto the LORD.

3:1 And if his oblation be a sacrifice of peace offering, if he offer
it of the herd; whether it be a male or female, he shall offer it
without blemish before the LORD.

3:2 And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his offering, and kill
it at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and Aaron's sons
the priests shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar round about.

3:3 And he shall offer of the sacrifice of the peace offering an
offering made by fire unto the LORD; the fat that covereth the
inwards, and all the fat that is upon the inwards, 3:4 And the two
kidneys, and the fat that is on them, which is by the flanks, and the
caul above the liver, with the kidneys, it shall he take away.

3:5 And Aaron's sons shall burn it on the altar upon the burnt
sacrifice, which is upon the wood that is on the fire: it is an
offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD.

3:6 And if his offering for a sacrifice of peace offering unto the
LORD be of the flock; male or female, he shall offer it without
blemish.

3:7 If he offer a lamb for his offering, then shall he offer it before
the LORD.

3:8 And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his offering, and kill
it before the tabernacle of the congregation: and Aaron's sons shall
sprinkle the blood thereof round about upon the altar.

3:9 And he shall offer of the sacrifice of the peace offering an
offering made by fire unto the LORD; the fat thereof, and the whole
rump, it shall he take off hard by the backbone; and the fat that
covereth the inwards, and all the fat that is upon the inwards, 3:10
And the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, which is by the
flanks, and the caul above the liver, with the kidneys, it shall he
take away.

3:11 And the priest shall burn it upon the altar: it is the food of
the offering made by fire unto the LORD.

3:12 And if his offering be a goat, then he shall offer it before the
LORD.

3:13 And he shall lay his hand upon the head of it, and kill it before
the tabernacle of the congregation: and the sons of Aaron shall
sprinkle the blood thereof upon the altar round about.

3:14 And he shall offer thereof his offering, even an offering made by
fire unto the LORD; the fat that covereth the inwards, and all the fat
that is upon the inwards, 3:15 And the two kidneys, and the fat that
is upon them, which is by the flanks, and the caul above the liver,
with the kidneys, it shall he take away.

3:16 And the priest shall burn them upon the altar: it is the food of
the offering made by fire for a sweet savour: all the fat is the
LORD's.

3:17 It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout
all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood.

4:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 4:2 Speak unto the children
of Israel, saying, If a soul shall sin through ignorance against any
of the commandments of the LORD concerning things which ought not to
be done, and shall do against any of them: 4:3 If the priest that is
anointed do sin according to the sin of the people; then let him bring
for his sin, which he hath sinned, a young bullock without blemish
unto the LORD for a sin offering.

4:4 And he shall bring the bullock unto the door of the tabernacle of
the congregation before the LORD; and shall lay his hand upon the
bullock's head, and kill the bullock before the LORD.

4:5 And the priest that is anointed shall take of the bullock's blood,
and bring it to the tabernacle of the congregation: 4:6 And the priest
shall dip his finger in the blood, and sprinkle of the blood seven
times before the LORD, before the vail of the sanctuary.

4:7 And the priest shall put some of the blood upon the horns of the
altar of sweet incense before the LORD, which is in the tabernacle of
the congregation; and shall pour all the blood of the bullock at the
bottom of the altar of the burnt offering, which is at the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation.

4:8 And he shall take off from it all the fat of the bullock for the
sin offering; the fat that covereth the inwards, and all the fat that
is upon the inwards, 4:9 And the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon
them, which is by the flanks, and the caul above the liver, with the
kidneys, it shall he take away, 4:10 As it was taken off from the
bullock of the sacrifice of peace offerings: and the priest shall burn
them upon the altar of the burnt offering.

4:11 And the skin of the bullock, and all his flesh, with his head,
and with his legs, and his inwards, and his dung, 4:12 Even the whole
bullock shall he carry forth without the camp unto a clean place,
where the ashes are poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire:
where the ashes are poured out shall he be burnt.

4:13 And if the whole congregation of Israel sin through ignorance,
and the thing be hid from the eyes of the assembly, and they have done
somewhat against any of the commandments of the LORD concerning things
which should not be done, and are guilty; 4:14 When the sin, which
they have sinned against it, is known, then the congregation shall
offer a young bullock for the sin, and bring him before the tabernacle
of the congregation.

4:15 And the elders of the congregation shall lay their hands upon the
head of the bullock before the LORD: and the bullock shall be killed
before the LORD.

4:16 And the priest that is anointed shall bring of the bullock's
blood to the tabernacle of the congregation: 4:17 And the priest shall
dip his finger in some of the blood, and sprinkle it seven times
before the LORD, even before the vail.

4:18 And he shall put some of the blood upon the horns of the altar
which is before the LORD, that is in the tabernacle of the
congregation, and shall pour out all the blood at the bottom of the
altar of the burnt offering, which is at the door of the tabernacle of
the congregation.

4:19 And he shall take all his fat from him, and burn it upon the
altar.

4:20 And he shall do with the bullock as he did with the bullock for a
sin offering, so shall he do with this: and the priest shall make an
atonement for them, and it shall be forgiven them.

4:21 And he shall carry forth the bullock without the camp, and burn
him as he burned the first bullock: it is a sin offering for the
congregation.

4:22 When a ruler hath sinned, and done somewhat through ignorance
against any of the commandments of the LORD his God concerning things
which should not be done, and is guilty; 4:23 Or if his sin, wherein
he hath sinned, come to his knowledge; he shall bring his offering, a
kid of the goats, a male without blemish: 4:24 And he shall lay his
hand upon the head of the goat, and kill it in the place where they
kill the burnt offering before the LORD: it is a sin offering.

4:25 And the priest shall take of the blood of the sin offering with
his finger, and put it upon the horns of the altar of burnt offering,
and shall pour out his blood at the bottom of the altar of burnt
offering.

4:26 And he shall burn all his fat upon the altar, as the fat of the
sacrifice of peace offerings: and the priest shall make an atonement
for him as concerning his sin, and it shall be forgiven him.

4:27 And if any one of the common people sin through ignorance, while
he doeth somewhat against any of the commandments of the LORD
concerning things which ought not to be done, and be guilty; 4:28 Or
if his sin, which he hath sinned, come to his knowledge: then he shall
bring his offering, a kid of the goats, a female without blemish, for
his sin which he hath sinned.

4:29 And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the sin offering, and
slay the sin offering in the place of the burnt offering.

4:30 And the priest shall take of the blood thereof with his finger,
and put it upon the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and shall
pour out all the blood thereof at the bottom of the altar.

4:31 And he shall take away all the fat thereof, as the fat is taken
away from off the sacrifice of peace offerings; and the priest shall
burn it upon the altar for a sweet savour unto the LORD; and the
priest shall make an atonement for him, and it shall be forgiven him.

4:32 And if he bring a lamb for a sin offering, he shall bring it a
female without blemish.

4:33 And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the sin offering, and
slay it for a sin offering in the place where they kill the burnt
offering.

4:34 And the priest shall take of the blood of the sin offering with
his finger, and put it upon the horns of the altar of burnt offering,
and shall pour out all the blood thereof at the bottom of the altar:
4:35 And he shall take away all the fat thereof, as the fat of the
lamb is taken away from the sacrifice of the peace offerings; and the
priest shall burn them upon the altar, according to the offerings made
by fire unto the LORD: and the priest shall make an atonement for his
sin that he hath committed, and it shall be forgiven him.

5:1 And if a soul sin, and hear the voice of swearing, and is a
witness, whether he hath seen or known of it; if he do not utter it,
then he shall bear his iniquity.

5:2 Or if a soul touch any unclean thing, whether it be a carcase of
an unclean beast, or a carcase of unclean cattle, or the carcase of
unclean creeping things, and if it be hidden from him; he also shall
be unclean, and guilty.

5:3 Or if he touch the uncleanness of man, whatsoever uncleanness it
be that a man shall be defiled withal, and it be hid from him; when he
knoweth of it, then he shall be guilty.

5:4 Or if a soul swear, pronouncing with his lips to do evil, or to do
good, whatsoever it be that a man shall pronounce with an oath, and it
be hid from him; when he knoweth of it, then he shall be guilty in one
of these.

5:5 And it shall be, when he shall be guilty in one of these things,
that he shall confess that he hath sinned in that thing: 5:6 And he
shall bring his trespass offering unto the LORD for his sin which he
hath sinned, a female from the flock, a lamb or a kid of the goats,
for a sin offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for him
concerning his sin.

5:7 And if he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his
trespass, which he hath committed, two turtledoves, or two young
pigeons, unto the LORD; one for a sin offering, and the other for a
burnt offering.

5:8 And he shall bring them unto the priest, who shall offer that
which is for the sin offering first, and wring off his head from his
neck, but shall not divide it asunder: 5:9 And he shall sprinkle of
the blood of the sin offering upon the side of the altar; and the rest
of the blood shall be wrung out at the bottom of the altar: it is a
sin offering.

5:10 And he shall offer the second for a burnt offering, according to
the manner: and the priest shall make an atonement for him for his sin
which he hath sinned, and it shall be forgiven him.

5:11 But if he be not able to bring two turtledoves, or two young
pigeons, then he that sinned shall bring for his offering the tenth
part of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering; he shall put no oil
upon it, neither shall he put any frankincense thereon: for it is a
sin offering.

5:12 Then shall he bring it to the priest, and the priest shall take
his handful of it, even a memorial thereof, and burn it on the altar,
according to the offerings made by fire unto the LORD: it is a sin
offering.

5:13 And the priest shall make an atonement for him as touching his
sin that he hath sinned in one of these, and it shall be forgiven him:
and the remnant shall be the priest's, as a meat offering.

5:14 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 5:15 If a soul commit a
trespass, and sin through ignorance, in the holy things of the LORD;
then he shall bring for his trespass unto the LORD a ram without
blemish out of the flocks, with thy estimation by shekels of silver,
after the shekel of the sanctuary, for a trespass offering.

5:16 And he shall make amends for the harm that he hath done in the
holy thing, and shall add the fifth part thereto, and give it unto the
priest: and the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of
the trespass offering, and it shall be forgiven him.

5:17 And if a soul sin, and commit any of these things which are
forbidden to be done by the commandments of the LORD; though he wist
it not, yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity.

5:18 And he shall bring a ram without blemish out of the flock, with
thy estimation, for a trespass offering, unto the priest: and the
priest shall make an atonement for him concerning his ignorance
wherein he erred and wist it not, and it shall be forgiven him.

5:19 It is a trespass offering: he hath certainly trespassed against
the LORD.

6:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 6:2 If a soul sin, and
commit a trespass against the LORD, and lie unto his neighbour in that
which was delivered him to keep, or in fellowship, or in a thing taken
away by violence, or hath deceived his neighbour; 6:3 Or have found
that which was lost, and lieth concerning it, and sweareth falsely; in
any of all these that a man doeth, sinning therein: 6:4 Then it shall
be, because he hath sinned, and is guilty, that he shall restore that
which he took violently away, or the thing which he hath deceitfully
gotten, or that which was delivered him to keep, or the lost thing
which he found, 6:5 Or all that about which he hath sworn falsely; he
shall even restore it in the principal, and shall add the fifth part
more thereto, and give it unto him to whom it appertaineth, in the day
of his trespass offering.

6:6 And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the LORD, a ram
without blemish out of the flock, with thy estimation, for a trespass
offering, unto the priest: 6:7 And the priest shall make an atonement
for him before the LORD: and it shall be forgiven him for any thing of
all that he hath done in trespassing therein.

6:8 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 6:9 Command Aaron and his
sons, saying, This is the law of the burnt offering: It is the burnt
offering, because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the
morning, and the fire of the altar shall be burning in it.

6:10 And the priest shall put on his linen garment, and his linen
breeches shall he put upon his flesh, and take up the ashes which the
fire hath consumed with the burnt offering on the altar, and he shall
put them beside the altar.

6:11 And he shall put off his garments, and put on other garments, and
carry forth the ashes without the camp unto a clean place.

6:12 And the fire upon the altar shall be burning in it; it shall not
be put out: and the priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and
lay the burnt offering in order upon it; and he shall burn thereon the
fat of the peace offerings.

6:13 The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go
out.

6:14 And this is the law of the meat offering: the sons of Aaron shall
offer it before the LORD, before the altar.

6:15 And he shall take of it his handful, of the flour of the meat
offering, and of the oil thereof, and all the frankincense which is
upon the meat offering, and shall burn it upon the altar for a sweet
savour, even the memorial of it, unto the LORD.

6:16 And the remainder thereof shall Aaron and his sons eat: with
unleavened bread shall it be eaten in the holy place; in the court of
the tabernacle of the congregation they shall eat it.

6:17 It shall not be baken with leaven. I have given it unto them for
their portion of my offerings made by fire; it is most holy, as is the
sin offering, and as the trespass offering.

6:18 All the males among the children of Aaron shall eat of it. It
shall be a statute for ever in your generations concerning the
offerings of the LORD made by fire: every one that toucheth them shall
be holy.

6:19 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 6:20 This is the offering
of Aaron and of his sons, which they shall offer unto the LORD in the
day when he is anointed; the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour for
a meat offering perpetual, half of it in the morning, and half thereof
at night.

6:21 In a pan it shall be made with oil; and when it is baken, thou
shalt bring it in: and the baken pieces of the meat offering shalt
thou offer for a sweet savour unto the LORD.

6:22 And the priest of his sons that is anointed in his stead shall
offer it: it is a statute for ever unto the LORD; it shall be wholly
burnt.

6:23 For every meat offering for the priest shall be wholly burnt: it
shall not be eaten.

6:24 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 6:25 Speak unto Aaron and
to his sons, saying, This is the law of the sin offering: In the place
where the burnt offering is killed shall the sin offering be killed
before the LORD: it is most holy.

6:26 The priest that offereth it for sin shall eat it: in the holy
place shall it be eaten, in the court of the tabernacle of the
congregation.

6:27 Whatsoever shall touch the flesh thereof shall be holy: and when
there is sprinkled of the blood thereof upon any garment, thou shalt
wash that whereon it was sprinkled in the holy place.

6:28 But the earthen vessel wherein it is sodden shall be broken: and
if it be sodden in a brasen pot, it shall be both scoured, and rinsed
in water.

6:29 All the males among the priests shall eat thereof: it is most
holy.

6:30 And no sin offering, whereof any of the blood is brought into the
tabernacle of the congregation to reconcile withal in the holy place,
shall be eaten: it shall be burnt in the fire.

7:1 Likewise this is the law of the trespass offering: it is most
holy.

7:2 In the place where they kill the burnt offering shall they kill
the trespass offering: and the blood thereof shall he sprinkle round
about upon the altar.

7:3 And he shall offer of it all the fat thereof; the rump, and the
fat that covereth the inwards, 7:4 And the two kidneys, and the fat
that is on them, which is by the flanks, and the caul that is above
the liver, with the kidneys, it shall he take away: 7:5 And the priest
shall burn them upon the altar for an offering made by fire unto the
LORD: it is a trespass offering.

7:6 Every male among the priests shall eat thereof: it shall be eaten
in the holy place: it is most holy.

7:7 As the sin offering is, so is the trespass offering: there is one
law for them: the priest that maketh atonement therewith shall have
it.

7:8 And the priest that offereth any man's burnt offering, even the
priest shall have to himself the skin of the burnt offering which he
hath offered.

7:9 And all the meat offering that is baken in the oven, and all that
is dressed in the fryingpan, and in the pan, shall be the priest's
that offereth it.

7:10 And every meat offering, mingled with oil, and dry, shall all the
sons of Aaron have, one as much as another.

7:11 And this is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings, which he
shall offer unto the LORD.

7:12 If he offer it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer with the
sacrifice of thanksgiving unleavened cakes mingled with oil, and
unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and cakes mingled with oil, of
fine flour, fried.

7:13 Besides the cakes, he shall offer for his offering leavened bread
with the sacrifice of thanksgiving of his peace offerings.

7:14 And of it he shall offer one out of the whole oblation for an
heave offering unto the LORD, and it shall be the priest's that
sprinkleth the blood of the peace offerings.

7:15 And the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings for
thanksgiving shall be eaten the same day that it is offered; he shall
not leave any of it until the morning.

7:16 But if the sacrifice of his offering be a vow, or a voluntary
offering, it shall be eaten the same day that he offereth his
sacrifice: and on the morrow also the remainder of it shall be eaten:
7:17 But the remainder of the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day
shall be burnt with fire.

7:18 And if any of the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings
be eaten at all on the third day, it shall not be accepted, neither
shall it be imputed unto him that offereth it: it shall be an
abomination, and the soul that eateth of it shall bear his iniquity.

7:19 And the flesh that toucheth any unclean thing shall not be eaten;
it shall be burnt with fire: and as for the flesh, all that be clean
shall eat thereof.

7:20 But the soul that eateth of the flesh of the sacrifice of peace
offerings, that pertain unto the LORD, having his uncleanness upon
him, even that soul shall be cut off from his people.

7:21 Moreover the soul that shall touch any unclean thing, as the
uncleanness of man, or any unclean beast, or any abominable unclean
thing, and eat of the flesh of the sacrifice of peace offerings, which
pertain unto the LORD, even that soul shall be cut off from his
people.

7:22 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 7:23 Speak unto the
children of Israel, saying, Ye shall eat no manner of fat, of ox, or
of sheep, or of goat.

7:24 And the fat of the beast that dieth of itself, and the fat of
that which is torn with beasts, may be used in any other use: but ye
shall in no wise eat of it.

7:25 For whosoever eateth the fat of the beast, of which men offer an
offering made by fire unto the LORD, even the soul that eateth it
shall be cut off from his people.

7:26 Moreover ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl
or of beast, in any of your dwellings.

7:27 Whatsoever soul it be that eateth any manner of blood, even that
soul shall be cut off from his people.

7:28 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 7:29 Speak unto the
children of Israel, saying, He that offereth the sacrifice of his
peace offerings unto the LORD shall bring his oblation unto the LORD
of the sacrifice of his peace offerings.

7:30 His own hands shall bring the offerings of the LORD made by fire,
the fat with the breast, it shall he bring, that the breast may be
waved for a wave offering before the LORD.

7:31 And the priest shall burn the fat upon the altar: but the breast
shall be Aaron's and his sons'.

7:32 And the right shoulder shall ye give unto the priest for an heave
offering of the sacrifices of your peace offerings.

7:33 He among the sons of Aaron, that offereth the blood of the peace
offerings, and the fat, shall have the right shoulder for his part.

7:34 For the wave breast and the heave shoulder have I taken of the
children of Israel from off the sacrifices of their peace offerings,
and have given them unto Aaron the priest and unto his sons by a
statute for ever from among the children of Israel.

7:35 This is the portion of the anointing of Aaron, and of the
anointing of his sons, out of the offerings of the LORD made by fire,
in the day when he presented them to minister unto the LORD in the
priest's office; 7:36 Which the LORD commanded to be given them of the
children of Israel, in the day that he anointed them, by a statute for
ever throughout their generations.

7:37 This is the law of the burnt offering, of the meat offering, and
of the sin offering, and of the trespass offering, and of the
consecrations, and of the sacrifice of the peace offerings; 7:38 Which
the LORD commanded Moses in mount Sinai, in the day that he commanded
the children of Israel to offer their oblations unto the LORD, in the
wilderness of Sinai.

8:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 8:2 Take Aaron and his sons
with him, and the garments, and the anointing oil, and a bullock for
the sin offering, and two rams, and a basket of unleavened bread; 8:3
And gather thou all the congregation together unto the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation.

8:4 And Moses did as the LORD commanded him; and the assembly was
gathered together unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

8:5 And Moses said unto the congregation, This is the thing which the
LORD commanded to be done.

8:6 And Moses brought Aaron and his sons, and washed them with water.

8:7 And he put upon him the coat, and girded him with the girdle, and
clothed him with the robe, and put the ephod upon him, and he girded
him with the curious girdle of the ephod, and bound it unto him
therewith.

8:8 And he put the breastplate upon him: also he put in the
breastplate the Urim and the Thummim.

8:9 And he put the mitre upon his head; also upon the mitre, even upon
his forefront, did he put the golden plate, the holy crown; as the
LORD commanded Moses.

8:10 And Moses took the anointing oil, and anointed the tabernacle and
all that was therein, and sanctified them.

8:11 And he sprinkled thereof upon the altar seven times, and anointed
the altar and all his vessels, both the laver and his foot, to
sanctify them.

8:12 And he poured of the anointing oil upon Aaron's head, and
anointed him, to sanctify him.

8:13 And Moses brought Aaron's sons, and put coats upon them, and
girded them with girdles, and put bonnets upon them; as the LORD
commanded Moses.

8:14 And he brought the bullock for the sin offering: and Aaron and
his sons laid their hands upon the head of the bullock for the sin
offering.

8:15 And he slew it; and Moses took the blood, and put it upon the
horns of the altar round about with his finger, and purified the
altar, and poured the blood at the bottom of the altar, and sanctified
it, to make reconciliation upon it.

8:16 And he took all the fat that was upon the inwards, and the caul
above the liver, and the two kidneys, and their fat, and Moses burned
it upon the altar.

8:17 But the bullock, and his hide, his flesh, and his dung, he burnt
with fire without the camp; as the LORD commanded Moses.

8:18 And he brought the ram for the burnt offering: and Aaron and his
sons laid their hands upon the head of the ram.

8:19 And he killed it; and Moses sprinkled the blood upon the altar
round about.

8:20 And he cut the ram into pieces; and Moses burnt the head, and the
pieces, and the fat.

8:21 And he washed the inwards and the legs in water; and Moses burnt
the whole ram upon the altar: it was a burnt sacrifice for a sweet
savour, and an offering made by fire unto the LORD; as the LORD
commanded Moses.

8:22 And he brought the other ram, the ram of consecration: and Aaron
and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the ram.

8:23 And he slew it; and Moses took of the blood of it, and put it
upon the tip of Aaron's right ear, and upon the thumb of his right
hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot.

8:24 And he brought Aaron's sons, and Moses put of the blood upon the
tip of their right ear, and upon the thumbs of their right hands, and
upon the great toes of their right feet: and Moses sprinkled the blood
upon the altar round about.

8:25 And he took the fat, and the rump, and all the fat that was upon
the inwards, and the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys, and
their fat, and the right shoulder: 8:26 And out of the basket of
unleavened bread, that was before the LORD, he took one unleavened
cake, and a cake of oiled bread, and one wafer, and put them on the
fat, and upon the right shoulder: 8:27 And he put all upon Aaron's
hands, and upon his sons' hands, and waved them for a wave offering
before the LORD.

8:28 And Moses took them from off their hands, and burnt them on the
altar upon the burnt offering: they were consecrations for a sweet
savour: it is an offering made by fire unto the LORD.

8:29 And Moses took the breast, and waved it for a wave offering
before the LORD: for of the ram of consecration it was Moses' part; as
the LORD commanded Moses.

8:30 And Moses took of the anointing oil, and of the blood which was
upon the altar, and sprinkled it upon Aaron, and upon his garments,
and upon his sons, and upon his sons' garments with him; and
sanctified Aaron, and his garments, and his sons, and his sons'
garments with him.

8:31 And Moses said unto Aaron and to his sons, Boil the flesh at the
door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and there eat it with the
bread that is in the basket of consecrations, as I commanded, saying,
Aaron and his sons shall eat it.

8:32 And that which remaineth of the flesh and of the bread shall ye
burn with fire.

8:33 And ye shall not go out of the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation in seven days, until the days of your consecration be at
an end: for seven days shall he consecrate you.

8:34 As he hath done this day, so the LORD hath commanded to do, to
make an atonement for you.

8:35 Therefore shall ye abide at the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation day and night seven days, and keep the charge of the
LORD, that ye die not: for so I am commanded.

8:36 So Aaron and his sons did all things which the LORD commanded by
the hand of Moses.

9:1 And it came to pass on the eighth day, that Moses called Aaron and
his sons, and the elders of Israel; 9:2 And he said unto Aaron, Take
thee a young calf for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering,
without blemish, and offer them before the LORD.

9:3 And unto the children of Israel thou shalt speak, saying, Take ye
a kid of the goats for a sin offering; and a calf and a lamb, both of
the first year, without blemish, for a burnt offering; 9:4 Also a
bullock and a ram for peace offerings, to sacrifice before the LORD;
and a meat offering mingled with oil: for to day the LORD will appear
unto you.

9:5 And they brought that which Moses commanded before the tabernacle
of the congregation: and all the congregation drew near and stood
before the LORD.

9:6 And Moses said, This is the thing which the LORD commanded that ye
should do: and the glory of the LORD shall appear unto you.

9:7 And Moses said unto Aaron, Go unto the altar, and offer thy sin
offering, and thy burnt offering, and make an atonement for thyself,
and for the people: and offer the offering of the people, and make an
atonement for them; as the LORD commanded.

9:8 Aaron therefore went unto the altar, and slew the calf of the sin
offering, which was for himself.

9:9 And the sons of Aaron brought the blood unto him: and he dipped
his finger in the blood, and put it upon the horns of the altar, and
poured out the blood at the bottom of the altar: 9:10 But the fat, and
the kidneys, and the caul above the liver of the sin offering, he
burnt upon the altar; as the LORD commanded Moses.

9:11 And the flesh and the hide he burnt with fire without the camp.

9:12 And he slew the burnt offering; and Aaron's sons presented unto
him the blood, which he sprinkled round about upon the altar.

9:13 And they presented the burnt offering unto him, with the pieces
thereof, and the head: and he burnt them upon the altar.

9:14 And he did wash the inwards and the legs, and burnt them upon the
burnt offering on the altar.

9:15 And he brought the people's offering, and took the goat, which
was the sin offering for the people, and slew it, and offered it for
sin, as the first.

9:16 And he brought the burnt offering, and offered it according to
the manner.

9:17 And he brought the meat offering, and took an handful thereof,
and burnt it upon the altar, beside the burnt sacrifice of the
morning.

9:18 He slew also the bullock and the ram for a sacrifice of peace
offerings, which was for the people: and Aaron's sons presented unto
him the blood, which he sprinkled upon the altar round about, 9:19 And
the fat of the bullock and of the ram, the rump, and that which
covereth the inwards, and the kidneys, and the caul above the liver:
9:20 And they put the fat upon the breasts, and he burnt the fat upon
the altar: 9:21 And the breasts and the right shoulder Aaron waved for
a wave offering before the LORD; as Moses commanded.

9:22 And Aaron lifted up his hand toward the people, and blessed them,
and came down from offering of the sin offering, and the burnt
offering, and peace offerings.

9:23 And Moses and Aaron went into the tabernacle of the congregation,
and came out, and blessed the people: and the glory of the LORD
appeared unto all the people.

9:24 And there came a fire out from before the LORD, and consumed upon
the altar the burnt offering and the fat: which when all the people
saw, they shouted, and fell on their faces.

10:1 And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his
censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered
strange fire before the LORD, which he commanded them not.

10:2 And there went out fire from the LORD, and devoured them, and
they died before the LORD.

10:3 Then Moses said unto Aaron, This is it that the LORD spake,
saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all
the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.

10:4 And Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uzziel the
uncle of Aaron, and said unto them, Come near, carry your brethren
from before the sanctuary out of the camp.

10:5 So they went near, and carried them in their coats out of the
camp; as Moses had said.

10:6 And Moses said unto Aaron, and unto Eleazar and unto Ithamar, his
sons, Uncover not your heads, neither rend your clothes; lest ye die,
and lest wrath come upon all the people: but let your brethren, the
whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the LORD hath kindled.

10:7 And ye shall not go out from the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation, lest ye die: for the anointing oil of the LORD is upon
you. And they did according to the word of Moses.

10:8 And the LORD spake unto Aaron, saying, 10:9 Do not drink wine nor
strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the
tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for
ever throughout your generations: 10:10 And that ye may put difference
between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; 10:11 And that
ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the LORD
hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.

10:12 And Moses spake unto Aaron, and unto Eleazar and unto Ithamar,
his sons that were left, Take the meat offering that remaineth of the
offerings of the LORD made by fire, and eat it without leaven beside
the altar: for it is most holy: 10:13 And ye shall eat it in the holy
place, because it is thy due, and thy sons' due, of the sacrifices of
the LORD made by fire: for so I am commanded.

10:14 And the wave breast and heave shoulder shall ye eat in a clean
place; thou, and thy sons, and thy daughters with thee: for they be
thy due, and thy sons' due, which are given out of the sacrifices of
peace offerings of the children of Israel.

10:15 The heave shoulder and the wave breast shall they bring with the
offerings made by fire of the fat, to wave it for a wave offering
before the LORD; and it shall be thine, and thy sons' with thee, by a
statute for ever; as the LORD hath commanded.

10:16 And Moses diligently sought the goat of the sin offering, and,
behold, it was burnt: and he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, the
sons of Aaron which were left alive, saying, 10:17 Wherefore have ye
not eaten the sin offering in the holy place, seeing it is most holy,
and God hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to
make atonement for them before the LORD?  10:18 Behold, the blood of
it was not brought in within the holy place: ye should indeed have
eaten it in the holy place, as I commanded.

10:19 And Aaron said unto Moses, Behold, this day have they offered
their sin offering and their burnt offering before the LORD; and such
things have befallen me: and if I had eaten the sin offering to day,
should it have been accepted in the sight of the LORD?  10:20 And when
Moses heard that, he was content.

11:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying unto them,
11:2 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, These are the beasts
which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.

11:3 Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the
cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat.

11:4 Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud, or
of them that divide the hoof: as the camel, because he cheweth the
cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.

11:5 And the coney, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the
hoof; he is unclean unto you.

11:6 And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the
hoof; he is unclean unto you.

11:7 And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted,
yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.

11:8 Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not
touch; they are unclean to you.

11:9 These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath
fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them
shall ye eat.

11:10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the
rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which
is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you: 11:11 They
shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their
flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.

11:12 Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be
an abomination unto you.

11:13 And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the
fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle,
and the ossifrage, and the ospray, 11:14 And the vulture, and the kite
after his kind; 11:15 Every raven after his kind; 11:16 And the owl,
and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind, 11:17
And the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl, 11:18 And
the swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle, 11:19 And the stork,
the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.

11:20 All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an
abomination unto you.

11:21 Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth
upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon
the earth; 11:22 Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his
kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his
kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.

11:23 But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet,
shall be an abomination unto you.

11:24 And for these ye shall be unclean: whosoever toucheth the
carcase of them shall be unclean until the even.

11:25 And whosoever beareth ought of the carcase of them shall wash
his clothes, and be unclean until the even.

11:26 The carcases of every beast which divideth the hoof, and is not
clovenfooted, nor cheweth the cud, are unclean unto you: every one
that toucheth them shall be unclean.

11:27 And whatsoever goeth upon his paws, among all manner of beasts
that go on all four, those are unclean unto you: whoso toucheth their
carcase shall be unclean until the even.

11:28 And he that beareth the carcase of them shall wash his clothes,
and be unclean until the even: they are unclean unto you.

11:29 These also shall be unclean unto you among the creeping things
that creep upon the earth; the weasel, and the mouse, and the tortoise
after his kind, 11:30 And the ferret, and the chameleon, and the
lizard, and the snail, and the mole.

11:31 These are unclean to you among all that creep: whosoever doth
touch them, when they be dead, shall be unclean until the even.

11:32 And upon whatsoever any of them, when they are dead, doth fall,
it shall be unclean; whether it be any vessel of wood, or raiment, or
skin, or sack, whatsoever vessel it be, wherein any work is done, it
must be put into water, and it shall be unclean until the even; so it
shall be cleansed.

11:33 And every earthen vessel, whereinto any of them falleth,
whatsoever is in it shall be unclean; and ye shall break it.

11:34 Of all meat which may be eaten, that on which such water cometh
shall be unclean: and all drink that may be drunk in every such vessel
shall be unclean.

11:35 And every thing whereupon any part of their carcase falleth
shall be unclean; whether it be oven, or ranges for pots, they shall
be broken down: for they are unclean and shall be unclean unto you.

11:36 Nevertheless a fountain or pit, wherein there is plenty of
water, shall be clean: but that which toucheth their carcase shall be
unclean.

11:37 And if any part of their carcase fall upon any sowing seed which
is to be sown, it shall be clean.

11:38 But if any water be put upon the seed, and any part of their
carcase fall thereon, it shall be unclean unto you.

11:39 And if any beast, of which ye may eat, die; he that toucheth the
carcase thereof shall be unclean until the even.

11:40 And he that eateth of the carcase of it shall wash his clothes,
and be unclean until the even: he also that beareth the carcase of it
shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even.

11:41 And every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth shall be
an abomination; it shall not be eaten.

11:42 Whatsoever goeth upon the belly, and whatsoever goeth upon all
four, or whatsoever hath more feet among all creeping things that
creep upon the earth, them ye shall not eat; for they are an
abomination.

11:43 Ye shall not make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing
that creepeth, neither shall ye make yourselves unclean with them,
that ye should be defiled thereby.

11:44 For I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore sanctify
yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye
defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creepeth upon
the earth.

11:45 For I am the LORD that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt,
to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

11:46 This is the law of the beasts, and of the fowl, and of every
living creature that moveth in the waters, and of every creature that
creepeth upon the earth: 11:47 To make a difference between the
unclean and the clean, and between the beast that may be eaten and the
beast that may not be eaten.

12:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 12:2 Speak unto the
children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a
man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days
of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean.

12:3 And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be
circumcised.

12:4 And she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying three
and thirty days; she shall touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the
sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled.

12:5 But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two
weeks, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of
her purifying threescore and six days.

12:6 And when the days of her purifying are fulfilled, for a son, or
for a daughter, she shall bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt
offering, and a young pigeon, or a turtledove, for a sin offering,
unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, unto the priest:
12:7 Who shall offer it before the LORD, and make an atonement for
her; and she shall be cleansed from the issue of her blood. This is
the law for her that hath born a male or a female.

12:8 And if she be not able to bring a lamb, then she shall bring two
turtles, or two young pigeons; the one for the burnt offering, and the
other for a sin offering: and the priest shall make an atonement for
her, and she shall be clean.

13:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, saying, 13:2 When a man
shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or bright spot,
and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy; then he
shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the
priests: 13:3 And the priest shall look on the plague in the skin of
the flesh: and when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the
plague in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague
of leprosy: and the priest shall look on him, and pronounce him
unclean.

13:4 If the bright spot be white in the skin of his flesh, and in
sight be not deeper than the skin, and the hair thereof be not turned
white; then the priest shall shut up him that hath the plague seven
days: 13:5 And the priest shall look on him the seventh day: and,
behold, if the plague in his sight be at a stay, and the plague spread
not in the skin; then the priest shall shut him up seven days more:
13:6 And the priest shall look on him again the seventh day: and,
behold, if the plague be somewhat dark, and the plague spread not in
the skin, the priest shall pronounce him clean: it is but a scab: and
he shall wash his clothes, and be clean.

13:7 But if the scab spread much abroad in the skin, after that he
hath been seen of the priest for his cleansing, he shall be seen of
the priest again.

13:8 And if the priest see that, behold, the scab spreadeth in the
skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is a leprosy.

13:9 When the plague of leprosy is in a man, then he shall be brought
unto the priest; 13:10 And the priest shall see him: and, behold, if
the rising be white in the skin, and it have turned the hair white,
and there be quick raw flesh in the rising; 13:11 It is an old leprosy
in the skin of his flesh, and the priest shall pronounce him unclean,
and shall not shut him up: for he is unclean.

13:12 And if a leprosy break out abroad in the skin, and the leprosy
cover all the skin of him that hath the plague from his head even to
his foot, wheresoever the priest looketh; 13:13 Then the priest shall
consider: and, behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he
shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague: it is all turned
white: he is clean.

13:14 But when raw flesh appeareth in him, he shall be unclean.

13:15 And the priest shall see the raw flesh, and pronounce him to be
unclean: for the raw flesh is unclean: it is a leprosy.

13:16 Or if the raw flesh turn again, and be changed unto white, he
shall come unto the priest; 13:17 And the priest shall see him: and,
behold, if the plague be turned into white; then the priest shall
pronounce him clean that hath the plague: he is clean.

13:18 The flesh also, in which, even in the skin thereof, was a boil,
and is healed, 13:19 And in the place of the boil there be a white
rising, or a bright spot, white, and somewhat reddish, and it be
shewed to the priest; 13:20 And if, when the priest seeth it, behold,
it be in sight lower than the skin, and the hair thereof be turned
white; the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is a plague of
leprosy broken out of the boil.

13:21 But if the priest look on it, and, behold, there be no white
hairs therein, and if it be not lower than the skin, but be somewhat
dark; then the priest shall shut him up seven days: 13:22 And if it
spread much abroad in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him
unclean: it is a plague.

13:23 But if the bright spot stay in his place, and spread not, it is
a burning boil; and the priest shall pronounce him clean.

13:24 Or if there be any flesh, in the skin whereof there is a hot
burning, and the quick flesh that burneth have a white bright spot,
somewhat reddish, or white; 13:25 Then the priest shall look upon it:
and, behold, if the hair in the bright spot be turned white, and it be
in sight deeper than the skin; it is a leprosy broken out of the
burning: wherefore the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is the
plague of leprosy.

13:26 But if the priest look on it, and, behold, there be no white
hair in the bright spot, and it be no lower than the other skin, but
be somewhat dark; then the priest shall shut him up seven days: 13:27
And the priest shall look upon him the seventh day: and if it be
spread much abroad in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him
unclean: it is the plague of leprosy.

13:28 And if the bright spot stay in his place, and spread not in the
skin, but it be somewhat dark; it is a rising of the burning, and the
priest shall pronounce him clean: for it is an inflammation of the
burning.

13:29 If a man or woman have a plague upon the head or the beard;
13:30 Then the priest shall see the plague: and, behold, if it be in
sight deeper than the skin; and there be in it a yellow thin hair;
then the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is a dry scall, even a
leprosy upon the head or beard.

13:31 And if the priest look on the plague of the scall, and, behold,
it be not in sight deeper than the skin, and that there is no black
hair in it; then the priest shall shut up him that hath the plague of
the scall seven days: 13:32 And in the seventh day the priest shall
look on the plague: and, behold, if the scall spread not, and there be
in it no yellow hair, and the scall be not in sight deeper than the
skin; 13:33 He shall be shaven, but the scall shall he not shave; and
the priest shall shut up him that hath the scall seven days more:
13:34 And in the seventh day the priest shall look on the scall: and,
behold, if the scall be not spread in the skin, nor be in sight deeper
than the skin; then the priest shall pronounce him clean: and he shall
wash his clothes, and be clean.

13:35 But if the scall spread much in the skin after his cleansing;
13:36 Then the priest shall look on him: and, behold, if the scall be
spread in the skin, the priest shall not seek for yellow hair; he is
unclean.

13:37 But if the scall be in his sight at a stay, and that there is
black hair grown up therein; the scall is healed, he is clean: and the
priest shall pronounce him clean.

13:38 If a man also or a woman have in the skin of their flesh bright
spots, even white bright spots; 13:39 Then the priest shall look: and,
behold, if the bright spots in the skin of their flesh be darkish
white; it is a freckled spot that groweth in the skin; he is clean.

13:40 And the man whose hair is fallen off his head, he is bald; yet
is he clean.

13:41 And he that hath his hair fallen off from the part of his head
toward his face, he is forehead bald: yet is he clean.

13:42 And if there be in the bald head, or bald forehead, a white
reddish sore; it is a leprosy sprung up in his bald head, or his bald
forehead.

13:43 Then the priest shall look upon it: and, behold, if the rising
of the sore be white reddish in his bald head, or in his bald
forehead, as the leprosy appeareth in the skin of the flesh; 13:44 He
is a leprous man, he is unclean: the priest shall pronounce him
utterly unclean; his plague is in his head.

13:45 And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent,
and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and
shall cry, Unclean, unclean.

13:46 All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be
defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall
his habitation be.

13:47 The garment also that the plague of leprosy is in, whether it be
a woollen garment, or a linen garment; 13:48 Whether it be in the
warp, or woof; of linen, or of woollen; whether in a skin, or in any
thing made of skin; 13:49 And if the plague be greenish or reddish in
the garment, or in the skin, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in
any thing of skin; it is a plague of leprosy, and shall be shewed unto
the priest: 13:50 And the priest shall look upon the plague, and shut
up it that hath the plague seven days: 13:51 And he shall look on the
plague on the seventh day: if the plague be spread in the garment,
either in the warp, or in the woof, or in a skin, or in any work that
is made of skin; the plague is a fretting leprosy; it is unclean.

13:52 He shall therefore burn that garment, whether warp or woof, in
woollen or in linen, or any thing of skin, wherein the plague is: for
it is a fretting leprosy; it shall be burnt in the fire.

13:53 And if the priest shall look, and, behold, the plague be not
spread in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in any
thing of skin; 13:54 Then the priest shall command that they wash the
thing wherein the plague is, and he shall shut it up seven days more:
13:55 And the priest shall look on the plague, after that it is
washed: and, behold, if the plague have not changed his colour, and
the plague be not spread; it is unclean; thou shalt burn it in the
fire; it is fret inward, whether it be bare within or without.

13:56 And if the priest look, and, behold, the plague be somewhat dark
after the washing of it; then he shall rend it out of the garment, or
out of the skin, or out of the warp, or out of the woof: 13:57 And if
it appear still in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or
in any thing of skin; it is a spreading plague: thou shalt burn that
wherein the plague is with fire.

13:58 And the garment, either warp, or woof, or whatsoever thing of
skin it be, which thou shalt wash, if the plague be departed from
them, then it shall be washed the second time, and shall be clean.

13:59 This is the law of the plague of leprosy in a garment of woollen
or linen, either in the warp, or woof, or any thing of skins, to
pronounce it clean, or to pronounce it unclean.

14:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 14:2 This shall be the law
of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought unto the
priest: 14:3 And the priest shall go forth out of the camp; and the
priest shall look, and, behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in
the leper; 14:4 Then shall the priest command to take for him that is
to be cleansed two birds alive and clean, and cedar wood, and scarlet,
and hyssop: 14:5 And the priest shall command that one of the birds be
killed in an earthen vessel over running water: 14:6 As for the living
bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the
hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the
bird that was killed over the running water: 14:7 And he shall
sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times,
and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose
into the open field.

14:8 And he that is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave
off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean: and
after that he shall come into the camp, and shall tarry abroad out of
his tent seven days.

14:9 But it shall be on the seventh day, that he shall shave all his
hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair he
shall shave off: and he shall wash his clothes, also he shall wash his
flesh in water, and he shall be clean.

14:10 And on the eighth day he shall take two he lambs without
blemish, and one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish, and three
tenth deals of fine flour for a meat offering, mingled with oil, and
one log of oil.

14:11 And the priest that maketh him clean shall present the man that
is to be made clean, and those things, before the LORD, at the door of
the tabernacle of the congregation: 14:12 And the priest shall take
one he lamb, and offer him for a trespass offering, and the log of
oil, and wave them for a wave offering before the LORD: 14:13 And he
shall slay the lamb in the place where he shall kill the sin offering
and the burnt offering, in the holy place: for as the sin offering is
the priest's, so is the trespass offering: it is most holy: 14:14 And
the priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass offering, and
the priest shall put it upon the tip of the right ear of him that is
to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the
great toe of his right foot: 14:15 And the priest shall take some of
the log of oil, and pour it into the palm of his own left hand: 14:16
And the priest shall dip his right finger in the oil that is in his
left hand, and shall sprinkle of the oil with his finger seven times
before the LORD: 14:17 And of the rest of the oil that is in his hand
shall the priest put upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to
be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great
toe of his right foot, upon the blood of the trespass offering: 14:18
And the remnant of the oil that is in the priest's hand he shall pour
upon the head of him that is to be cleansed: and the priest shall make
an atonement for him before the LORD.

14:19 And the priest shall offer the sin offering, and make an
atonement for him that is to be cleansed from his uncleanness; and
afterward he shall kill the burnt offering: 14:20 And the priest shall
offer the burnt offering and the meat offering upon the altar: and the
priest shall make an atonement for him, and he shall be clean.

14:21 And if he be poor, and cannot get so much; then he shall take
one lamb for a trespass offering to be waved, to make an atonement for
him, and one tenth deal of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat
offering, and a log of oil; 14:22 And two turtledoves, or two young
pigeons, such as he is able to get; and the one shall be a sin
offering, and the other a burnt offering.

14:23 And he shall bring them on the eighth day for his cleansing unto
the priest, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation,
before the LORD.

14:24 And the priest shall take the lamb of the trespass offering, and
the log of oil, and the priest shall wave them for a wave offering
before the LORD: 14:25 And he shall kill the lamb of the trespass
offering, and the priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass
offering, and put it upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to
be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great
toe of his right foot: 14:26 And the priest shall pour of the oil into
the palm of his own left hand: 14:27 And the priest shall sprinkle
with his right finger some of the oil that is in his left hand seven
times before the LORD: 14:28 And the priest shall put of the oil that
is in his hand upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be
cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe
of his right foot, upon the place of the blood of the trespass
offering: 14:29 And the rest of the oil that is in the priest's hand
he shall put upon the head of him that is to be cleansed, to make an
atonement for him before the LORD.

14:30 And he shall offer the one of the turtledoves, or of the young
pigeons, such as he can get; 14:31 Even such as he is able to get, the
one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering, with the
meat offering: and the priest shall make an atonement for him that is
to be cleansed before the LORD.

14:32 This is the law of him in whom is the plague of leprosy, whose
hand is not able to get that which pertaineth to his cleansing.

14:33 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, 14:34 When
ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a
possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of
your possession; 14:35 And he that owneth the house shall come and
tell the priest, saying, It seemeth to me there is as it were a plague
in the house: 14:36 Then the priest shall command that they empty the
house, before the priest go into it to see the plague, that all that
is in the house be not made unclean: and afterward the priest shall go
in to see the house: 14:37 And he shall look on the plague, and,
behold, if the plague be in the walls of the house with hollow
strakes, greenish or reddish, which in sight are lower than the wall;
14:38 Then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the
house, and shut up the house seven days: 14:39 And the priest shall
come again the seventh day, and shall look: and, behold, if the plague
be spread in the walls of the house; 14:40 Then the priest shall
command that they take away the stones in which the plague is, and
they shall cast them into an unclean place without the city: 14:41 And
he shall cause the house to be scraped within round about, and they
shall pour out the dust that they scrape off without the city into an
unclean place: 14:42 And they shall take other stones, and put them in
the place of those stones; and he shall take other morter, and shall
plaister the house.

14:43 And if the plague come again, and break out in the house, after
that he hath taken away the stones, and after he hath scraped the
house, and after it is plaistered; 14:44 Then the priest shall come
and look, and, behold, if the plague be spread in the house, it is a
fretting leprosy in the house; it is unclean.

14:45 And he shall break down the house, the stones of it, and the
timber thereof, and all the morter of the house; and he shall carry
them forth out of the city into an unclean place.

14:46 Moreover he that goeth into the house all the while that it is
shut up shall be unclean until the even.

14:47 And he that lieth in the house shall wash his clothes; and he
that eateth in the house shall wash his clothes.

14:48 And if the priest shall come in, and look upon it, and, behold,
the plague hath not spread in the house, after the house was
plaistered: then the priest shall pronounce the house clean, because
the plague is healed.

14:49 And he shall take to cleanse the house two birds, and cedar
wood, and scarlet, and hyssop: 14:50 And he shall kill the one of the
birds in an earthen vessel over running water: 14:51 And he shall take
the cedar wood, and the hyssop, and the scarlet, and the living bird,
and dip them in the blood of the slain bird, and in the running water,
and sprinkle the house seven times: 14:52 And he shall cleanse the
house with the blood of the bird, and with the running water, and with
the living bird, and with the cedar wood, and with the hyssop, and
with the scarlet: 14:53 But he shall let go the living bird out of the
city into the open fields, and make an atonement for the house: and it
shall be clean.

14:54 This is the law for all manner of plague of leprosy, and scall,
14:55 And for the leprosy of a garment, and of a house, 14:56 And for
a rising, and for a scab, and for a bright spot: 14:57 To teach when
it is unclean, and when it is clean: this is the law of leprosy.

15:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying, 15:2 Speak
unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When any man hath a
running issue out of his flesh, because of his issue he is unclean.

15:3 And this shall be his uncleanness in his issue: whether his flesh
run with his issue, or his flesh be stopped from his issue, it is his
uncleanness.

15:4 Every bed, whereon he lieth that hath the issue, is unclean: and
every thing, whereon he sitteth, shall be unclean.

15:5 And whosoever toucheth his bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe
himself in water, and be unclean until the even.

15:6 And he that sitteth on any thing whereon he sat that hath the
issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be
unclean until the even.

15:7 And he that toucheth the flesh of him that hath the issue shall
wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the
even.

15:8 And if he that hath the issue spit upon him that is clean; then
he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean
until the even.

15:9 And what saddle soever he rideth upon that hath the issue shall
be unclean.

15:10 And whosoever toucheth any thing that was under him shall be
unclean until the even: and he that beareth any of those things shall
wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the
even.

15:11 And whomsoever he toucheth that hath the issue, and hath not
rinsed his hands in water, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe
himself in water, and be unclean until the even.

15:12 And the vessel of earth, that he toucheth which hath the issue,
shall be broken: and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water.

15:13 And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue; then he
shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his
clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean.

15:14 And on the eighth day he shall take to him two turtledoves, or
two young pigeons, and come before the LORD unto the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation, and give them unto the priest: 15:15
And the priest shall offer them, the one for a sin offering, and the
other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for
him before the LORD for his issue.

15:16 And if any man's seed of copulation go out from him, then he
shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even.

15:17 And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of
copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even.

15:18 The woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of copulation,
they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the
even.

15:19 And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be
blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her
shall be unclean until the even.

15:20 And every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be
unclean: every thing also that she sitteth upon shall be unclean.

15:21 And whosoever toucheth her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe
himself in water, and be unclean until the even.

15:22 And whosoever toucheth any thing that she sat upon shall wash
his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the
even.

15:23 And if it be on her bed, or on any thing whereon she sitteth,
when he toucheth it, he shall be unclean until the even.

15:24 And if any man lie with her at all, and her flowers be upon him,
he shall be unclean seven days; and all the bed whereon he lieth shall
be unclean.

15:25 And if a woman have an issue of her blood many days out of the
time of her separation, or if it run beyond the time of her
separation; all the days of the issue of her uncleanness shall be as
the days of her separation: she shall be unclean.

15:26 Every bed whereon she lieth all the days of her issue shall be
unto her as the bed of her separation: and whatsoever she sitteth upon
shall be unclean, as the uncleanness of her separation.

15:27 And whosoever toucheth those things shall be unclean, and shall
wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the
even.

15:28 But if she be cleansed of her issue, then she shall number to
herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean.

15:29 And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or
two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation.

15:30 And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the
other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for
her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness.

15:31 Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their
uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile
my tabernacle that is among them.

15:32 This is the law of him that hath an issue, and of him whose seed
goeth from him, and is defiled therewith; 15:33 And of her that is
sick of her flowers, and of him that hath an issue, of the man, and of
the woman, and of him that lieth with her that is unclean.

16:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses after the death of the two sons of
Aaron, when they offered before the LORD, and died; 16:2 And the LORD
said unto Moses, Speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all
times into the holy place within the vail before the mercy seat, which
is upon the ark; that he die not: for I will appear in the cloud upon
the mercy seat.

16:3 Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place: with a young bullock
for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering.

16:4 He shall put on the holy linen coat, and he shall have the linen
breeches upon his flesh, and shall be girded with a linen girdle, and
with the linen mitre shall he be attired: these are holy garments;
therefore shall he wash his flesh in water, and so put them on.

16:5 And he shall take of the congregation of the children of Israel
two kids of the goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt
offering.

16:6 And Aaron shall offer his bullock of the sin offering, which is
for himself, and make an atonement for himself, and for his house.

16:7 And he shall take the two goats, and present them before the LORD
at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

16:8 And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the
LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat.

16:9 And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the LORD's lot fell,
and offer him for a sin offering.

16:10 But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall
be presented alive before the LORD, to make an atonement with him, and
to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.

16:11 And Aaron shall bring the bullock of the sin offering, which is
for himself, and shall make an atonement for himself, and for his
house, and shall kill the bullock of the sin offering which is for
himself: 16:12 And he shall take a censer full of burning coals of
fire from off the altar before the LORD, and his hands full of sweet
incense beaten small, and bring it within the vail: 16:13 And he shall
put the incense upon the fire before the LORD, that the cloud of the
incense may cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimony, that he
die not: 16:14 And he shall take of the blood of the bullock, and
sprinkle it with his finger upon the mercy seat eastward; and before
the mercy seat shall he sprinkle of the blood with his finger seven
times.

16:15 Then shall he kill the goat of the sin offering, that is for the
people, and bring his blood within the vail, and do with that blood as
he did with the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it upon the mercy
seat, and before the mercy seat: 16:16 And he shall make an atonement
for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of
Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins: and so
shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation, that remaineth
among them in the midst of their uncleanness.

16:17 And there shall be no man in the tabernacle of the congregation
when he goeth in to make an atonement in the holy place, until he come
out, and have made an atonement for himself, and for his household,
and for all the congregation of Israel.

16:18 And he shall go out unto the altar that is before the LORD, and
make an atonement for it; and shall take of the blood of the bullock,
and of the blood of the goat, and put it upon the horns of the altar
round about.

16:19 And he shall sprinkle of the blood upon it with his finger seven
times, and cleanse it, and hallow it from the uncleanness of the
children of Israel.

16:20 And when he hath made an end of reconciling the holy place, and
the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar, he shall bring the
live goat: 16:21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of
the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children
of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting
them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of
a fit man into the wilderness: 16:22 And the goat shall bear upon him
all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go
the goat in the wilderness.

16:23 And Aaron shall come into the tabernacle of the congregation,
and shall put off the linen garments, which he put on when he went
into the holy place, and shall leave them there: 16:24 And he shall
wash his flesh with water in the holy place, and put on his garments,
and come forth, and offer his burnt offering, and the burnt offering
of the people, and make an atonement for himself, and for the people.

16:25 And the fat of the sin offering shall he burn upon the altar.

16:26 And he that let go the goat for the scapegoat shall wash his
clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward come into the
camp.

16:27 And the bullock for the sin offering, and the goat for the sin
offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy
place, shall one carry forth without the camp; and they shall burn in
the fire their skins, and their flesh, and their dung.

16:28 And he that burneth them shall wash his clothes, and bathe his
flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp.

16:29 And this shall be a statute for ever unto you: that in the
seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your
souls, and do no work at all, whether it be one of your own country,
or a stranger that sojourneth among you: 16:30 For on that day shall
the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be
clean from all your sins before the LORD.

16:31 It shall be a sabbath of rest unto you, and ye shall afflict
your souls, by a statute for ever.

16:32 And the priest, whom he shall anoint, and whom he shall
consecrate to minister in the priest's office in his father's stead,
shall make the atonement, and shall put on the linen clothes, even the
holy garments: 16:33 And he shall make an atonement for the holy
sanctuary, and he shall make an atonement for the tabernacle of the
congregation, and for the altar, and he shall make an atonement for
the priests, and for all the people of the congregation.

16:34 And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an
atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year.
And he did as the LORD commanded Moses.

17:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 17:2 Speak unto Aaron, and
unto his sons, and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto them;
This is the thing which the LORD hath commanded, saying, 17:3 What man
soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb,
or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp, 17:4 And
bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation,
to offer an offering unto the LORD before the tabernacle of the LORD;
blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood; and that man
shall be cut off from among his people: 17:5 To the end that the
children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they offer in the
open field, even that they may bring them unto the LORD, unto the door
of the tabernacle of the congregation, unto the priest, and offer them
for peace offerings unto the LORD.

17:6 And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the
LORD at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and burn the
fat for a sweet savour unto the LORD.

17:7 And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after
whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto
them throughout their generations.

17:8 And thou shalt say unto them, Whatsoever man there be of the
house of Israel, or of the strangers which sojourn among you, that
offereth a burnt offering or sacrifice, 17:9 And bringeth it not unto
the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer it unto the
LORD; even that man shall be cut off from among his people.

17:10 And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the
strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I
will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will
cut him off from among his people.

17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it
to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is
the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.

17:12 Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul of you
shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourneth among you
eat blood.

17:13 And whatsoever man there be of the children of Israel, or of the
strangers that sojourn among you, which hunteth and catcheth any beast
or fowl that may be eaten; he shall even pour out the blood thereof,
and cover it with dust.

17:14 For it is the life of all flesh; the blood of it is for the life
thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat
the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the
blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.

17:15 And every soul that eateth that which died of itself, or that
which was torn with beasts, whether it be one of your own country, or
a stranger, he shall both wash his clothes, and bathe himself in
water, and be unclean until the even: then shall he be clean.

17:16 But if he wash them not, nor bathe his flesh; then he shall bear
his iniquity.

18:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 18:2 Speak unto the
children of Israel, and say unto them, I am the LORD your God.

18:3 After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye
not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring
you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances.

18:4 Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk
therein: I am the LORD your God.

18:5 Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a
man do, he shall live in them: I am the LORD.

18:6 None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to
uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD.

18:7 The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother,
shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her
nakedness.

18:8 The nakedness of thy father's wife shalt thou not uncover: it is
thy father's nakedness.

18:9 The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or
daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or born abroad,
even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover.

18:10 The nakedness of thy son's daughter, or of thy daughter's
daughter, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover: for theirs is
thine own nakedness.

18:11 The nakedness of thy father's wife's daughter, begotten of thy
father, she is thy sister, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.

18:12 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's sister: she
is thy father's near kinswoman.

18:13 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother's sister: for
she is thy mother's near kinswoman.

18:14 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's brother,
thou shalt not approach to his wife: she is thine aunt.

18:15 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter in law: she
is thy son's wife; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.

18:16 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife: it
is thy brother's nakedness.

18:17 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her
daughter, neither shalt thou take her son's daughter, or her
daughter's daughter, to uncover her nakedness; for they are her near
kinswomen: it is wickedness.

18:18 Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to
uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time.

18:19 Also thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her
nakedness, as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness.

18:20 Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour's wife,
to defile thyself with her.

18:21 And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to
Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.

18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is
abomination.

18:23 Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself
therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down
thereto: it is confusion.

18:24 Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all
these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: 18:25 And
the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon
it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.

18:26 Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall
not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation,
nor any stranger that sojourneth among you: 18:27 (For all these
abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and
the land is defiled;) 18:28 That the land spue not you out also, when
ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you.

18:29 For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the
souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people.

18:30 Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not any
one of these abominable customs, which were committed before you, and
that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the LORD your God.

19:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 19:2 Speak unto all the
congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be
holy: for I the LORD your God am holy.

19:3 Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father, and keep my
sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.

19:4 Turn ye not unto idols, nor make to yourselves molten gods: I am
the LORD your God.

19:5 And if ye offer a sacrifice of peace offerings unto the LORD, ye
shall offer it at your own will.

19:6 It shall be eaten the same day ye offer it, and on the morrow:
and if ought remain until the third day, it shall be burnt in the
fire.

19:7 And if it be eaten at all on the third day, it is abominable; it
shall not be accepted.

19:8 Therefore every one that eateth it shall bear his iniquity,
because he hath profaned the hallowed thing of the LORD: and that soul
shall be cut off from among his people.

19:9 And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly
reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings
of thy harvest.

19:10 And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather
every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and
stranger: I am the LORD your God.

19:11 Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to
another.

19:12 And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, neither shalt thou
profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.

19:13 Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages
of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the
morning.

19:14 Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before
the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD.

19:15 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not
respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty:
but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.

19:16 Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people:
neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour; I am the
LORD.

19:17 Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in
any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him.

19:18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children
of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the
LORD.

19:19 Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender
with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed:
neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

19:20 And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman, that is a bondmaid,
betrothed to an husband, and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given
her; she shall be scourged; they shall not be put to death, because
she was not free.

19:21 And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the LORD, unto the
door of the tabernacle of the congregation, even a ram for a trespass
offering.

19:22 And the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of
the trespass offering before the LORD for his sin which he hath done:
and the sin which he hath done shall be forgiven him.

19:23 And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all
manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as
uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it
shall not be eaten of.

19:24 But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy to
praise the LORD withal.

19:25 And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it
may yield unto you the increase thereof: I am the LORD your God.

19:26 Ye shall not eat any thing with the blood: neither shall ye use
enchantment, nor observe times.

19:27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou
mar the corners of thy beard.

19:28 Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor
print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.

19:29 Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest
the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.

19:30 Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the
LORD.

19:31 Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after
wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.

19:32 Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of
the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD.

19:33 And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not
vex him.

19:34 But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one
born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were
strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

19:35 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in
weight, or in measure.

19:36 Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall
ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of
Egypt.

19:37 Therefore shall ye observe all my statutes, and all my
judgments, and do them: I am the LORD.

20:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 20:2 Again, thou shalt say
to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel,
or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his
seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the
land shall stone him with stones.

20:3 And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off
from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech,
to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.

20:4 And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from
the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not:
20:5 Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family,
and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit
whoredom with Molech, from among their people.

20:6 And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits,
and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face
against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people.

20:7 Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the LORD
your God.

20:8 And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the LORD which
sanctify you.

20:9 For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be
surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his
blood shall be upon him.

20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife,
even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the
adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

20:11 And the man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered his
father's nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their
blood shall be upon them.

20:12 And if a man lie with his daughter in law, both of them shall
surely be put to death: they have wrought confusion; their blood shall
be upon them.

20:13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both
of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to
death; their blood shall be upon them.

20:14 And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they
shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no
wickedness among you.

20:15 And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death:
and ye shall slay the beast.

20:16 And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto,
thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to
death; their blood shall be upon them.

20:17 And if a man shall take his sister, his father's daughter, or
his mother's daughter, and see her nakedness, and she see his
nakedness; it is a wicked thing; and they shall be cut off in the
sight of their people: he hath uncovered his sister's nakedness; he
shall bear his iniquity.

20:18 And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and
shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she
hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be
cut off from among their people.

20:19 And thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother's sister,
nor of thy father's sister: for he uncovereth his near kin: they shall
bear their iniquity.

20:20 And if a man shall lie with his uncle's wife, he hath uncovered
his uncle's nakedness: they shall bear their sin; they shall die
childless.

20:21 And if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean
thing: he hath uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be
childless.

20:22 Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments,
and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue
you not out.

20:23 And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast
out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I
abhorred them.

20:24 But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I
will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and
honey: I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other
people.

20:25 Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and
unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make
your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living
thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as
unclean.

20:26 And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have
severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.

20:27 A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a
wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with
stones: their blood shall be upon them.

21:1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Speak unto the priests the sons of
Aaron, and say unto them, There shall none be defiled for the dead
among his people: 21:2 But for his kin, that is near unto him, that
is, for his mother, and for his father, and for his son, and for his
daughter, and for his brother.

21:3 And for his sister a virgin, that is nigh unto him, which hath
had no husband; for her may he be defiled.

21:4 But he shall not defile himself, being a chief man among his
people, to profane himself.

21:5 They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they
shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their
flesh.

21:6 They shall be holy unto their God, and not profane the name of
their God: for the offerings of the LORD made by fire, and the bread
of their God, they do offer: therefore they shall be holy.

21:7 They shall not take a wife that is a whore, or profane; neither
shall they take a woman put away from her husband: for he is holy unto
his God.

21:8 Thou shalt sanctify him therefore; for he offereth the bread of
thy God: he shall be holy unto thee: for I the LORD, which sanctify
you, am holy.

21:9 And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing
the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.

21:10 And he that is the high priest among his brethren, upon whose
head the anointing oil was poured, and that is consecrated to put on
the garments, shall not uncover his head, nor rend his clothes; 21:11
Neither shall he go in to any dead body, nor defile himself for his
father, or for his mother; 21:12 Neither shall he go out of the
sanctuary, nor profane the sanctuary of his God; for the crown of the
anointing oil of his God is upon him: I am the LORD.

21:13 And he shall take a wife in her virginity.

21:14 A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, or an harlot, these
shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to
wife.

21:15 Neither shall he profane his seed among his people: for I the
LORD do sanctify him.

21:16 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 21:17 Speak unto Aaron,
saying, Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any
blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God.

21:18 For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not
approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any
thing superfluous, 21:19 Or a man that is brokenfooted, or
brokenhanded, 21:20 Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish
in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken; 21:21
No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come
nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a
blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.

21:22 He shall eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy, and of
the holy.

21:23 Only he shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the
altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries:
for I the LORD do sanctify them.

21:24 And Moses told it unto Aaron, and to his sons, and unto all the
children of Israel.

22:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 22:2 Speak unto Aaron and
to his sons, that they separate themselves from the holy things of the
children of Israel, and that they profane not my holy name in those
things which they hallow unto me: I am the LORD.

22:3 Say unto them, Whosoever he be of all your seed among your
generations, that goeth unto the holy things, which the children of
Israel hallow unto the LORD, having his uncleanness upon him, that
soul shall be cut off from my presence: I am the LORD.

22:4 What man soever of the seed of Aaron is a leper, or hath a
running issue; he shall not eat of the holy things, until he be clean.
And whoso toucheth any thing that is unclean by the dead, or a man
whose seed goeth from him; 22:5 Or whosoever toucheth any creeping
thing, whereby he may be made unclean, or a man of whom he may take
uncleanness, whatsoever uncleanness he hath; 22:6 The soul which hath
touched any such shall be unclean until even, and shall not eat of the
holy things, unless he wash his flesh with water.

22:7 And when the sun is down, he shall be clean, and shall afterward
eat of the holy things; because it is his food.

22:8 That which dieth of itself, or is torn with beasts, he shall not
eat to defile himself therewith; I am the LORD.

22:9 They shall therefore keep mine ordinance, lest they bear sin for
it, and die therefore, if they profane it: I the LORD do sanctify
them.

22:10 There shall no stranger eat of the holy thing: a sojourner of
the priest, or an hired servant, shall not eat of the holy thing.

22:11 But if the priest buy any soul with his money, he shall eat of
it, and he that is born in his house: they shall eat of his meat.

22:12 If the priest's daughter also be married unto a stranger, she
may not eat of an offering of the holy things.

22:13 But if the priest's daughter be a widow, or divorced, and have
no child, and is returned unto her father's house, as in her youth,
she shall eat of her father's meat: but there shall be no stranger eat
thereof.

22:14 And if a man eat of the holy thing unwittingly, then he shall
put the fifth part thereof unto it, and shall give it unto the priest
with the holy thing.

22:15 And they shall not profane the holy things of the children of
Israel, which they offer unto the LORD; 22:16 Or suffer them to bear
the iniquity of trespass, when they eat their holy things: for I the
LORD do sanctify them.

22:17 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 22:18 Speak unto Aaron,
and to his sons, and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto
them, Whatsoever he be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers in
Israel, that will offer his oblation for all his vows, and for all his
freewill offerings, which they will offer unto the LORD for a burnt
offering; 22:19 Ye shall offer at your own will a male without
blemish, of the beeves, of the sheep, or of the goats.

22:20 But whatsoever hath a blemish, that shall ye not offer: for it
shall not be acceptable for you.

22:21 And whosoever offereth a sacrifice of peace offerings unto the
LORD to accomplish his vow, or a freewill offering in beeves or sheep,
it shall be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no blemish therein.

22:22 Blind, or broken, or maimed, or having a wen, or scurvy, or
scabbed, ye shall not offer these unto the LORD, nor make an offering
by fire of them upon the altar unto the LORD.

22:23 Either a bullock or a lamb that hath any thing superfluous or
lacking in his parts, that mayest thou offer for a freewill offering;
but for a vow it shall not be accepted.

22:24 Ye shall not offer unto the LORD that which is bruised, or
crushed, or broken, or cut; neither shall ye make any offering thereof
in your land.

22:25 Neither from a stranger's hand shall ye offer the bread of your
God of any of these; because their corruption is in them, and
blemishes be in them: they shall not be accepted for you.

22:26 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 22:27 When a bullock, or
a sheep, or a goat, is brought forth, then it shall be seven days
under the dam; and from the eighth day and thenceforth it shall be
accepted for an offering made by fire unto the LORD.

22:28 And whether it be cow, or ewe, ye shall not kill it and her
young both in one day.

22:29 And when ye will offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving unto the
LORD, offer it at your own will.

22:30 On the same day it shall be eaten up; ye shall leave none of it
until the morrow: I am the LORD.

22:31 Therefore shall ye keep my commandments, and do them: I am the
LORD.

22:32 Neither shall ye profane my holy name; but I will be hallowed
among the children of Israel: I am the LORD which hallow you, 22:33
That brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the
LORD.

23:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 23:2 Speak unto the
children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the
LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are
my feasts.

23:3 Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath
of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the
sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings.

23:4 These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations, which
ye shall proclaim in their seasons.

23:5 In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD's
passover.

23:6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of
unleavened bread unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened
bread.

23:7 In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do
no servile work therein.

23:8 But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD seven
days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no
servile work therein.

23:9 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 23:10 Speak unto the
children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land
which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye
shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the
priest: 23:11 And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be
accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall
wave it.

23:12 And ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf an he lamb
without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the LORD.

23:13 And the meat offering thereof shall be two tenth deals of fine
flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto the LORD for a
sweet savour: and the drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the
fourth part of an hin.

23:14 And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green
ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto
your God: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations
in all your dwellings.

23:15 And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath,
from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven
sabbaths shall be complete: 23:16 Even unto the morrow after the
seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new
meat offering unto the LORD.

23:17 Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two
tenth deals; they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with
leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the LORD.

23:18 And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without blemish of
the first year, and one young bullock, and two rams: they shall be for
a burnt offering unto the LORD, with their meat offering, and their
drink offerings, even an offering made by fire, of sweet savour unto
the LORD.

23:19 Then ye shall sacrifice one kid of the goats for a sin offering,
and two lambs of the first year for a sacrifice of peace offerings.

23:20 And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits
for a wave offering before the LORD, with the two lambs: they shall be
holy to the LORD for the priest.

23:21 And ye shall proclaim on the selfsame day, that it may be an
holy convocation unto you: ye shall do no servile work therein: it
shall be a statute for ever in all your dwellings throughout your
generations.

23:22 And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make
clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither
shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them
unto the poor, and to the stranger: I am the LORD your God.

23:23 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 23:24 Speak unto the
children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of
the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets,
an holy convocation.

23:25 Ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer an
offering made by fire unto the LORD.

23:26 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 23:27 Also on the tenth
day of this seventh month there shall be a day of atonement: it shall
be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall afflict your souls, and
offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD.

23:28 And ye shall do no work in that same day: for it is a day of
atonement, to make an atonement for you before the LORD your God.

23:29 For whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that
same day, he shall be cut off from among his people.

23:30 And whatsoever soul it be that doeth any work in that same day,
the same soul will I destroy from among his people.

23:31 Ye shall do no manner of work: it shall be a statute for ever
throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

23:32 It shall be unto you a sabbath of rest, and ye shall afflict
your souls: in the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto
even, shall ye celebrate your sabbath.

23:33 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 23:34 Speak unto the
children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh month
shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the LORD.

23:35 On the first day shall be an holy convocation: ye shall do no
servile work therein.

23:36 Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the
LORD: on the eighth day shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye
shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD: it is a solemn
assembly; and ye shall do no servile work therein.

23:37 These are the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be
holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD, a
burnt offering, and a meat offering, a sacrifice, and drink offerings,
every thing upon his day: 23:38 Beside the sabbaths of the LORD, and
beside your gifts, and beside all your vows, and beside all your
freewill offerings, which ye give unto the LORD.

23:39 Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have
gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the LORD
seven days: on the first day shall be a sabbath, and on the eighth day
shall be a sabbath.

23:40 And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly
trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and
willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice before the LORD your God
seven days.

23:41 And ye shall keep it a feast unto the LORD seven days in the
year.

It shall be a statute for ever in your generations: ye shall celebrate
it in the seventh month.

23:42 Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites
born shall dwell in booths: 23:43 That your generations may know that
I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them
out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

23:44 And Moses declared unto the children of Israel the feasts of the
LORD.

24:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 24:2 Command the children
of Israel, that they bring unto thee pure oil olive beaten for the
light, to cause the lamps to burn continually.

24:3 Without the vail of the testimony, in the tabernacle of the
congregation, shall Aaron order it from the evening unto the morning
before the LORD continually: it shall be a statute for ever in your
generations.

24:4 He shall order the lamps upon the pure candlestick before the
LORD continually.

24:5 And thou shalt take fine flour, and bake twelve cakes thereof:
two tenth deals shall be in one cake.

24:6 And thou shalt set them in two rows, six on a row, upon the pure
table before the LORD.

24:7 And thou shalt put pure frankincense upon each row, that it may
be on the bread for a memorial, even an offering made by fire unto the
LORD.

24:8 Every sabbath he shall set it in order before the LORD
continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting
covenant.

24:9 And it shall be Aaron's and his sons'; and they shall eat it in
the holy place: for it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the
LORD made by fire by a perpetual statute.

24:10 And the son of an Israelitish woman, whose father was an
Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel: and this son of the
Israelitish woman and a man of Israel strove together in the camp;
24:11 And the Israelitish woman's son blasphemed the name of the Lord,
and cursed. And they brought him unto Moses: (and his mother's name
was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan:) 24:12 And
they put him in ward, that the mind of the LORD might be shewed them.

24:13 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 24:14 Bring forth him
that hath cursed without the camp; and let all that heard him lay
their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.

24:15 And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying,
Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin.

24:16 And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be
put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as
well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth
the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.

24:17 And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.

24:18 And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast.

24:19 And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done,
so shall it be done to him; 24:20 Breach for breach, eye for eye,
tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be
done to him again.

24:21 And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it: and he that
killeth a man, he shall be put to death.

24:22 Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as
for one of your own country: for I am the LORD your God.

24:23 And Moses spake to the children of Israel, that they should
bring forth him that had cursed out of the camp, and stone him with
stones. And the children of Israel did as the LORD commanded Moses.

25:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying, 25:2 Speak
unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the
land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the
LORD.

25:3 Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt
prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; 25:4 But in the
seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for
the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.

25:5 That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt
not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a
year of rest unto the land.

25:6 And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and
for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for
thy stranger that sojourneth with thee.

25:7 And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall
all the increase thereof be meat.

25:8 And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven
times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall
be unto thee forty and nine years.

25:9 Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the
tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make
the trumpet sound throughout all your land.

25:10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty
throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be
a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession,
and ye shall return every man unto his family.

25:11 A jubile shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow,
neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes
in it of thy vine undressed.

25:12 For it is the jubile; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat
the increase thereof out of the field.

25:13 In the year of this jubile ye shall return every man unto his
possession.

25:14 And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest ought of
thy neighbour's hand, ye shall not oppress one another: 25:15
According to the number of years after the jubile thou shalt buy of
thy neighbour, and according unto the number of years of the fruits he
shall sell unto thee: 25:16 According to the multitude of years thou
shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of
years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for according to the number
of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee.

25:17 Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear
thy God:for I am the LORD your God.

25:18 Wherefore ye shall do my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do
them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety.

25:19 And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill,
and dwell therein in safety.

25:20 And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold,
we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: 25:21 Then I will
command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring
forth fruit for three years.

25:22 And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until
the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old
store.

25:23 The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine, for
ye are strangers and sojourners with me.

25:24 And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a
redemption for the land.

25:25 If thy brother be waxen poor, and hath sold away some of his
possession, and if any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he
redeem that which his brother sold.

25:26 And if the man have none to redeem it, and himself be able to
redeem it; 25:27 Then let him count the years of the sale thereof, and
restore the overplus unto the man to whom he sold it; that he may
return unto his possession.

25:28 But if he be not able to restore it to him, then that which is
sold shall remain in the hand of him that hath bought it until the
year of jubile: and in the jubile it shall go out, and he shall return
unto his possession.

25:29 And if a man sell a dwelling house in a walled city, then he may
redeem it within a whole year after it is sold; within a full year may
he redeem it.

25:30 And if it be not redeemed within the space of a full year, then
the house that is in the walled city shall be established for ever to
him that bought it throughout his generations: it shall not go out in
the jubile.

25:31 But the houses of the villages which have no wall round about
them shall be counted as the fields of the country: they may be
redeemed, and they shall go out in the jubile.

25:32 Notwithstanding the cities of the Levites, and the houses of the
cities of their possession, may the Levites redeem at any time.

25:33 And if a man purchase of the Levites, then the house that was
sold, and the city of his possession, shall go out in the year of
jubile: for the houses of the cities of the Levites are their
possession among the children of Israel.

25:34 But the field of the suburbs of their cities may not be sold;
for it is their perpetual possession.

25:35 And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee;
then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a
sojourner; that he may live with thee.

25:36 Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that
thy brother may live with thee.

25:37 Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy
victuals for increase.

25:38 I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land
of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.

25:39 And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be
sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant:
25:40 But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with
thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubile.

25:41 And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children
with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the
possession of his fathers shall he return.

25:42 For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land
of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen.

25:43 Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy
God.

25:44 Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have,
shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy
bondmen and bondmaids.

25:45 Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among
you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you,
which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.

25:46 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after
you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for
ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule
one over another with rigour.

25:47 And if a sojourner or stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother
that dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or
sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the stranger's family: 25:48
After that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren
may redeem him: 25:49 Either his uncle, or his uncle's son, may redeem
him, or any that is nigh of kin unto him of his family may redeem him;
or if he be able, he may redeem himself.

25:50 And he shall reckon with him that bought him from the year that
he was sold to him unto the year of jubile: and the price of his sale
shall be according unto the number of years, according to the time of
an hired servant shall it be with him.

25:51 If there be yet many years behind, according unto them he shall
give again the price of his redemption out of the money that he was
bought for.

25:52 And if there remain but few years unto the year of jubile, then
he shall count with him, and according unto his years shall he give
him again the price of his redemption.

25:53 And as a yearly hired servant shall he be with him: and the
other shall not rule with rigour over him in thy sight.

25:54 And if he be not redeemed in these years, then he shall go out
in the year of jubile, both he, and his children with him.

25:55 For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my
servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD
your God.

26:1 Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up
a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your
land, to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD your God.

26:2 Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the
LORD.

26:3 If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them;
26:4 Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield
her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.

26:5 And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage
shall reach unto the sowing time: and ye shall eat your bread to the
full, and dwell in your land safely.

26:6 And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and
none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the
land, neither shall the sword go through your land.

26:7 And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you
by the sword.

26:8 And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you
shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before
you by the sword.

26:9 For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and
multiply you, and establish my covenant with you.

26:10 And ye shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of
the new.

26:11 And I set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor
you.

26:12 And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be
my people.

26:13 I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land
of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the
bands of your yoke, and made you go upright.

26:14 But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these
commandments; 26:15 And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your
soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments,
but that ye break my covenant: 26:16 I also will do this unto you; I
will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague,
that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall
sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.

26:17 And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before
your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall
flee when none pursueth you.

26:18 And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will
punish you seven times more for your sins.

26:19 And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your
heaven as iron, and your earth as brass: 26:20 And your strength shall
be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither
shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.

26:21 And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I
will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.

26:22 I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of
your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number;
and your high ways shall be desolate.

26:23 And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will
walk contrary unto me; 26:24 Then will I also walk contrary unto you,
and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.

26:25 And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel
of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities,
I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into
the hand of the enemy.

26:26 And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall
bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread
again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied.

26:27 And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk
contrary unto me; 26:28 Then I will walk contrary unto you also in
fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.

26:29 And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your
daughters shall ye eat.

26:30 And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images,
and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul
shall abhor you.

26:31 And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries
unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.

26:32 And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies
which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.

26:33 And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a
sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities
waste.

26:34 Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth
desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land
rest, and enjoy her sabbaths.

26:35 As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not
rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it.

26:36 And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness
into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a
shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a
sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth.

26:37 And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword,
when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your
enemies.

26:38 And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your
enemies shall eat you up.

26:39 And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity
in your enemies' lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers
shall they pine away with them.

26:40 If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their
fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and
that also they have walked contrary unto me; 26:41 And that I also
have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of
their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they
then accept of the punishment of their iniquity: 26:42 Then will I
remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and
also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the
land.

26:43 The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her
sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept
of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they
despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes.

26:44 And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies,
I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them
utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD their
God.

26:45 But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their
ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight
of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the LORD.

26:46 These are the statutes and judgments and laws, which the LORD
made between him and the children of Israel in mount Sinai by the hand
of Moses.

27:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 27:2 Speak unto the
children of Israel, and say unto them, When a man shall make a
singular vow, the persons shall be for the LORD by thy estimation.

27:3 And thy estimation shall be of the male from twenty years old
even unto sixty years old, even thy estimation shall be fifty shekels
of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary.

27:4 And if it be a female, then thy estimation shall be thirty
shekels.

27:5 And if it be from five years old even unto twenty years old, then
thy estimation shall be of the male twenty shekels, and for the female
ten shekels.

27:6 And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy
estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the
female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver.

27:7 And if it be from sixty years old and above; if it be a male,
then thy estimation shall be fifteen shekels, and for the female ten
shekels.

27:8 But if he be poorer than thy estimation, then he shall present
himself before the priest, and the priest shall value him; according
to his ability that vowed shall the priest value him.

27:9 And if it be a beast, whereof men bring an offering unto the
LORD, all that any man giveth of such unto the LORD shall be holy.

27:10 He shall not alter it, nor change it, a good for a bad, or a bad
for a good: and if he shall at all change beast for beast, then it and
the exchange thereof shall be holy.

27:11 And if it be any unclean beast, of which they do not offer a
sacrifice unto the LORD, then he shall present the beast before the
priest: 27:12 And the priest shall value it, whether it be good or
bad: as thou valuest it, who art the priest, so shall it be.

27:13 But if he will at all redeem it, then he shall add a fifth part
thereof unto thy estimation.

27:14 And when a man shall sanctify his house to be holy unto the
LORD, then the priest shall estimate it, whether it be good or bad: as
the priest shall estimate it, so shall it stand.

27:15 And if he that sanctified it will redeem his house, then he
shall add the fifth part of the money of thy estimation unto it, and
it shall be his.

27:16 And if a man shall sanctify unto the LORD some part of a field
of his possession, then thy estimation shall be according to the seed
thereof: an homer of barley seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of
silver.

27:17 If he sanctify his field from the year of jubile, according to
thy estimation it shall stand.

27:18 But if he sanctify his field after the jubile, then the priest
shall reckon unto him the money according to the years that remain,
even unto the year of the jubile, and it shall be abated from thy
estimation.

27:19 And if he that sanctified the field will in any wise redeem it,
then he shall add the fifth part of the money of thy estimation unto
it, and it shall be assured to him.

27:20 And if he will not redeem the field, or if he have sold the
field to another man, it shall not be redeemed any more.

27:21 But the field, when it goeth out in the jubile, shall be holy
unto the LORD, as a field devoted; the possession thereof shall be the
priest's.

27:22 And if a man sanctify unto the LORD a field which he hath
bought, which is not of the fields of his possession; 27:23 Then the
priest shall reckon unto him the worth of thy estimation, even unto
the year of the jubile: and he shall give thine estimation in that
day, as a holy thing unto the LORD.

27:24 In the year of the jubile the field shall return unto him of
whom it was bought, even to him to whom the possession of the land did
belong.

27:25 And all thy estimations shall be according to the shekel of the
sanctuary: twenty gerahs shall be the shekel.

27:26 Only the firstling of the beasts, which should be the LORD's
firstling, no man shall sanctify it; whether it be ox, or sheep: it is
the LORD's.

27:27 And if it be of an unclean beast, then he shall redeem it
according to thine estimation, and shall add a fifth part of it
thereto: or if it be not redeemed, then it shall be sold according to
thy estimation.

27:28 Notwithstanding no devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto
the LORD of all that he hath, both of man and beast, and of the field
of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is
most holy unto the LORD.

27:29 None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed;
but shall surely be put to death.

27:30 And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land,
or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD's: it is holy unto the LORD.

27:31 And if a man will at all redeem ought of his tithes, he shall
add thereto the fifth part thereof.

27:32 And concerning the tithe of the herd, or of the flock, even of
whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the
LORD.

27:33 He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he
change it: and if he change it at all, then both it and the change
thereof shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed.

27:34 These are the commandments, which the LORD commanded Moses for
the children of Israel in mount Sinai.




The Fourth Book of Moses:  Called Numbers


1:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the
tabernacle of the congregation, on the first day of the second month,
in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt,
saying, 1:2 Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of
Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the
number of their names, every male by their polls; 1:3 From twenty
years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel:
thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies.

1:4 And with you there shall be a man of every tribe; every one head
of the house of his fathers.

1:5 And these are the names of the men that shall stand with you: of
the tribe of Reuben; Elizur the son of Shedeur.

1:6 Of Simeon; Shelumiel the son of Zurishaddai.

1:7 Of Judah; Nahshon the son of Amminadab.

1:8 Of Issachar; Nethaneel the son of Zuar.

1:9 Of Zebulun; Eliab the son of Helon.

1:10 Of the children of Joseph: of Ephraim; Elishama the son of
Ammihud: of Manasseh; Gamaliel the son of Pedahzur.

1:11 Of Benjamin; Abidan the son of Gideoni.

1:12 Of Dan; Ahiezer the son of Ammishaddai.

1:13 Of Asher; Pagiel the son of Ocran.

1:14 Of Gad; Eliasaph the son of Deuel.

1:15 Of Naphtali; Ahira the son of Enan.

1:16 These were the renowned of the congregation, princes of the
tribes of their fathers, heads of thousands in Israel.

1:17 And Moses and Aaron took these men which are expressed by their
names: 1:18 And they assembled all the congregation together on the
first day of the second month, and they declared their pedigrees after
their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number
of the names, from twenty years old and upward, by their polls.

1:19 As the LORD commanded Moses, so he numbered them in the
wilderness of Sinai.

1:20 And the children of Reuben, Israel's eldest son, by their
generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers,
according to the number of the names, by their polls, every male from
twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war;
1:21 Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Reuben,
were forty and six thousand and five hundred.

1:22 Of the children of Simeon, by their generations, after their
families, by the house of their fathers, those that were numbered of
them, according to the number of the names, by their polls, every male
from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to
war; 1:23 Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of
Simeon, were fifty and nine thousand and three hundred.

1:24 Of the children of Gad, by their generations, after their
families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of
the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go
forth to war; 1:25 Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe
of Gad, were forty and five thousand six hundred and fifty.

1:26 Of the children of Judah, by their generations, after their
families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of
the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go
forth to war; 1:27 Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe
of Judah, were threescore and fourteen thousand and six hundred.

1:28 Of the children of Issachar, by their generations, after their
families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of
the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go
forth to war; 1:29 Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe
of Issachar, were fifty and four thousand and four hundred.

1:30 Of the children of Zebulun, by their generations, after their
families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of
the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go
forth to war; 1:31 Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe
of Zebulun, were fifty and seven thousand and four hundred.

1:32 Of the children of Joseph, namely, of the children of Ephraim, by
their generations, after their families, by the house of their
fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old
and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; 1:33 Those that
were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Ephraim, were forty
thousand and five hundred.

1:34 Of the children of Manasseh, by their generations, after their
families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of
the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go
forth to war; 1:35 Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe
of Manasseh, were thirty and two thousand and two hundred.

1:36 Of the children of Benjamin, by their generations, after their
families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of
the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go
forth to war; 1:37 Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe
of Benjamin, were thirty and five thousand and four hundred.

1:38 Of the children of Dan, by their generations, after their
families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of
the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go
forth to war; 1:39 Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe
of Dan, were threescore and two thousand and seven hundred.

1:40 Of the children of Asher, by their generations, after their
families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of
the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go
forth to war; 1:41 Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe
of Asher, were forty and one thousand and five hundred.

1:42 Of the children of Naphtali, throughout their generations, after
their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number
of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to
go forth to war; 1:43 Those that were numbered of them, even of the
tribe of Naphtali, were fifty and three thousand and four hundred.

1:44 These are those that were numbered, which Moses and Aaron
numbered, and the princes of Israel, being twelve men: each one was
for the house of his fathers.

1:45 So were all those that were numbered of the children of Israel,
by the house of their fathers, from twenty years old and upward, all
that were able to go forth to war in Israel; 1:46 Even all they that
were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five
hundred and fifty.

1:47 But the Levites after the tribe of their fathers were not
numbered among them.

1:48 For the LORD had spoken unto Moses, saying, 1:49 Only thou shalt
not number the tribe of Levi, neither take the sum of them among the
children of Israel: 1:50 But thou shalt appoint the Levites over the
tabernacle of testimony, and over all the vessels thereof, and over
all things that belong to it: they shall bear the tabernacle, and all
the vessels thereof; and they shall minister unto it, and shall encamp
round about the tabernacle.

1:51 And when the tabernacle setteth forward, the Levites shall take
it down: and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall
set it up: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death.

1:52 And the children of Israel shall pitch their tents, every man by
his own camp, and every man by his own standard, throughout their
hosts.

1:53 But the Levites shall pitch round about the tabernacle of
testimony, that there be no wrath upon the congregation of the
children of Israel: and the Levites shall keep the charge of the
tabernacle of testimony.

1:54 And the children of Israel did according to all that the LORD
commanded Moses, so did they.

2:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, 2:2 Every
man of the children of Israel shall pitch by his own standard, with
the ensign of their father's house: far off about the tabernacle of
the congregation shall they pitch.

2:3 And on the east side toward the rising of the sun shall they of
the standard of the camp of Judah pitch throughout their armies: and
Nahshon the son of Amminadab shall be captain of the children of
Judah.

2:4 And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were
threescore and fourteen thousand and six hundred.

2:5 And those that do pitch next unto him shall be the tribe of
Issachar: and Nethaneel the son of Zuar shall be captain of the
children of Issachar.

2:6 And his host, and those that were numbered thereof, were fifty and
four thousand and four hundred.

2:7 Then the tribe of Zebulun: and Eliab the son of Helon shall be
captain of the children of Zebulun.

2:8 And his host, and those that were numbered thereof, were fifty and
seven thousand and four hundred.

2:9 All that were numbered in the camp of Judah were an hundred
thousand and fourscore thousand and six thousand and four hundred,
throughout their armies. These shall first set forth.

2:10 On the south side shall be the standard of the camp of Reuben
according to their armies: and the captain of the children of Reuben
shall be Elizur the son of Shedeur.

2:11 And his host, and those that were numbered thereof, were forty
and six thousand and five hundred.

2:12 And those which pitch by him shall be the tribe of Simeon: and
the captain of the children of Simeon shall be Shelumiel the son of
Zurishaddai.

2:13 And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were fifty
and nine thousand and three hundred.

2:14 Then the tribe of Gad: and the captain of the sons of Gad shall
be Eliasaph the son of Reuel.

2:15 And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were forty
and five thousand and six hundred and fifty.

2:16 All that were numbered in the camp of Reuben were an hundred
thousand and fifty and one thousand and four hundred and fifty,
throughout their armies. And they shall set forth in the second rank.

2:17 Then the tabernacle of the congregation shall set forward with
the camp of the Levites in the midst of the camp: as they encamp, so
shall they set forward, every man in his place by their standards.

2:18 On the west side shall be the standard of the camp of Ephraim
according to their armies: and the captain of the sons of Ephraim
shall be Elishama the son of Ammihud.

2:19 And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were forty
thousand and five hundred.

2:20 And by him shall be the tribe of Manasseh: and the captain of the
children of Manasseh shall be Gamaliel the son of Pedahzur.

2:21 And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were thirty
and two thousand and two hundred.

2:22 Then the tribe of Benjamin: and the captain of the sons of
Benjamin shall be Abidan the son of Gideoni.

2:23 And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were thirty
and five thousand and four hundred.

2:24 All that were numbered of the camp of Ephraim were an hundred
thousand and eight thousand and an hundred, throughout their armies.
And they shall go forward in the third rank.

2:25 The standard of the camp of Dan shall be on the north side by
their armies: and the captain of the children of Dan shall be Ahiezer
the son of Ammishaddai.

2:26 And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were
threescore and two thousand and seven hundred.

2:27 And those that encamp by him shall be the tribe of Asher: and the
captain of the children of Asher shall be Pagiel the son of Ocran.

2:28 And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were forty
and one thousand and five hundred.

2:29 Then the tribe of Naphtali: and the captain of the children of
Naphtali shall be Ahira the son of Enan.

2:30 And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were fifty
and three thousand and four hundred.

2:31 All they that were numbered in the camp of Dan were an hundred
thousand and fifty and seven thousand and six hundred. They shall go
hindmost with their standards.

2:32 These are those which were numbered of the children of Israel by
the house of their fathers: all those that were numbered of the camps
throughout their hosts were six hundred thousand and three thousand
and five hundred and fifty.

2:33 But the Levites were not numbered among the children of Israel;
as the LORD commanded Moses.

2:34 And the children of Israel did according to all that the LORD
commanded Moses: so they pitched by their standards, and so they set
forward, every one after their families, according to the house of
their fathers.

3:1 These also are the generations of Aaron and Moses in the day that
the LORD spake with Moses in mount Sinai.

3:2 And these are the names of the sons of Aaron; Nadab the firstborn,
and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.

3:3 These are the names of the sons of Aaron, the priests which were
anointed, whom he consecrated to minister in the priest's office.

3:4 And Nadab and Abihu died before the LORD, when they offered
strange fire before the LORD, in the wilderness of Sinai, and they had
no children: and Eleazar and Ithamar ministered in the priest's office
in the sight of Aaron their father.

3:5 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 3:6 Bring the tribe of Levi
near, and present them before Aaron the priest, that they may minister
unto him.

3:7 And they shall keep his charge, and the charge of the whole
congregation before the tabernacle of the congregation, to do the
service of the tabernacle.

3:8 And they shall keep all the instruments of the tabernacle of the
congregation, and the charge of the children of Israel, to do the
service of the tabernacle.

3:9 And thou shalt give the Levites unto Aaron and to his sons: they
are wholly given unto him out of the children of Israel.

3:10 And thou shalt appoint Aaron and his sons, and they shall wait on
their priest's office: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put
to death.

3:11 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 3:12 And I, behold, I have
taken the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of all the
firstborn that openeth the matrix among the children of Israel:
therefore the Levites shall be mine; 3:13 Because all the firstborn
are mine; for on the day that I smote all the firstborn in the land of
Egypt I hallowed unto me all the firstborn in Israel, both man and
beast: mine shall they be: I am the LORD.

3:14 And the LORD spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, saying,
3:15 Number the children of Levi after the house of their fathers, by
their families: every male from a month old and upward shalt thou
number them.

3:16 And Moses numbered them according to the word of the LORD, as he
was commanded.

3:17 And these were the sons of Levi by their names; Gershon, and
Kohath, and Merari.

3:18 And these are the names of the sons of Gershon by their families;
Libni, and Shimei.

3:19 And the sons of Kohath by their families; Amram, and Izehar,
Hebron, and Uzziel.

3:20 And the sons of Merari by their families; Mahli, and Mushi. These
are the families of the Levites according to the house of their
fathers.

3:21 Of Gershon was the family of the Libnites, and the family of the
Shimites: these are the families of the Gershonites.

3:22 Those that were numbered of them, according to the number of all
the males, from a month old and upward, even those that were numbered
of them were seven thousand and five hundred.

3:23 The families of the Gershonites shall pitch behind the tabernacle
westward.

3:24 And the chief of the house of the father of the Gershonites shall
be Eliasaph the son of Lael.

3:25 And the charge of the sons of Gershon in the tabernacle of the
congregation shall be the tabernacle, and the tent, the covering
thereof, and the hanging for the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation, 3:26 And the hangings of the court, and the curtain for
the door of the court, which is by the tabernacle, and by the altar
round about, and the cords of it for all the service thereof.

3:27 And of Kohath was the family of the Amramites, and the family of
the Izeharites, and the family of the Hebronites, and the family of
the Uzzielites: these are the families of the Kohathites.

3:28 In the number of all the males, from a month old and upward, were
eight thousand and six hundred, keeping the charge of the sanctuary.

3:29 The families of the sons of Kohath shall pitch on the side of the
tabernacle southward.

3:30 And the chief of the house of the father of the families of the
Kohathites shall be Elizaphan the son of Uzziel.

3:31 And their charge shall be the ark, and the table, and the
candlestick, and the altars, and the vessels of the sanctuary
wherewith they minister, and the hanging, and all the service thereof.

3:32 And Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest shall be chief over the
chief of the Levites, and have the oversight of them that keep the
charge of the sanctuary.

3:33 Of Merari was the family of the Mahlites, and the family of the
Mushites: these are the families of Merari.

3:34 And those that were numbered of them, according to the number of
all the males, from a month old and upward, were six thousand and two
hundred.

3:35 And the chief of the house of the father of the families of
Merari was Zuriel the son of Abihail: these shall pitch on the side of
the tabernacle northward.

3:36 And under the custody and charge of the sons of Merari shall be
the boards of the tabernacle, and the bars thereof, and the pillars
thereof, and the sockets thereof, and all the vessels thereof, and all
that serveth thereto, 3:37 And the pillars of the court round about,
and their sockets, and their pins, and their cords.

3:38 But those that encamp before the tabernacle toward the east, even
before the tabernacle of the congregation eastward, shall be Moses,
and Aaron and his sons, keeping the charge of the sanctuary for the
charge of the children of Israel; and the stranger that cometh nigh
shall be put to death.

3:39 All that were numbered of the Levites, which Moses and Aaron
numbered at the commandment of the LORD, throughout their families,
all the males from a month old and upward, were twenty and two
thousand.

3:40 And the LORD said unto Moses, Number all the firstborn of the
males of the children of Israel from a month old and upward, and take
the number of their names.

3:41 And thou shalt take the Levites for me (I am the LORD) instead of
all the firstborn among the children of Israel; and the cattle of the
Levites instead of all the firstlings among the cattle of the children
of Israel.

3:42 And Moses numbered, as the LORD commanded him, all the firstborn
among the children of Israel.

3:43 And all the firstborn males by the number of names, from a month
old and upward, of those that were numbered of them, were twenty and
two thousand two hundred and threescore and thirteen.

3:44 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 3:45 Take the Levites
instead of all the firstborn among the children of Israel, and the
cattle of the Levites instead of their cattle; and the Levites shall
be mine: I am the LORD.

3:46 And for those that are to be redeemed of the two hundred and
threescore and thirteen of the firstborn of the children of Israel,
which are more than the Levites; 3:47 Thou shalt even take five
shekels apiece by the poll, after the shekel of the sanctuary shalt
thou take them: (the shekel is twenty gerahs:) 3:48 And thou shalt
give the money, wherewith the odd number of them is to be redeemed,
unto Aaron and to his sons.

3:49 And Moses took the redemption money of them that were over and
above them that were redeemed by the Levites: 3:50 Of the firstborn of
the children of Israel took he the money; a thousand three hundred and
threescore and five shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary: 3:51
And Moses gave the money of them that were redeemed unto Aaron and to
his sons, according to the word of the LORD, as the LORD commanded
Moses.

4:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, 4:2 Take the
sum of the sons of Kohath from among the sons of Levi, after their
families, by the house of their fathers, 4:3 From thirty years old and
upward even until fifty years old, all that enter into the host, to do
the work in the tabernacle of the congregation.

4:4 This shall be the service of the sons of Kohath in the tabernacle
of the congregation, about the most holy things: 4:5 And when the camp
setteth forward, Aaron shall come, and his sons, and they shall take
down the covering vail, and cover the ark of testimony with it: 4:6
And shall put thereon the covering of badgers' skins, and shall spread
over it a cloth wholly of blue, and shall put in the staves thereof.

4:7 And upon the table of shewbread they shall spread a cloth of blue,
and put thereon the dishes, and the spoons, and the bowls, and covers
to cover withal: and the continual bread shall be thereon: 4:8 And
they shall spread upon them a cloth of scarlet, and cover the same
with a covering of badgers' skins, and shall put in the staves
thereof.

4:9 And they shall take a cloth of blue, and cover the candlestick of
the light, and his lamps, and his tongs, and his snuffdishes, and all
the oil vessels thereof, wherewith they minister unto it: 4:10 And
they shall put it and all the vessels thereof within a covering of
badgers' skins, and shall put it upon a bar.

4:11 And upon the golden altar they shall spread a cloth of blue, and
cover it with a covering of badgers' skins, and shall put to the
staves thereof: 4:12 And they shall take all the instruments of
ministry, wherewith they minister in the sanctuary, and put them in a
cloth of blue, and cover them with a covering of badgers' skins, and
shall put them on a bar: 4:13 And they shall take away the ashes from
the altar, and spread a purple cloth thereon: 4:14 And they shall put
upon it all the vessels thereof, wherewith they minister about it,
even the censers, the fleshhooks, and the shovels, and the basons, all
the vessels of the altar; and they shall spread upon it a covering of
badgers' skins, and put to the staves of it.

4:15 And when Aaron and his sons have made an end of covering the
sanctuary, and all the vessels of the sanctuary, as the camp is to set
forward; after that, the sons of Kohath shall come to bear it: but
they shall not touch any holy thing, lest they die. These things are
the burden of the sons of Kohath in the tabernacle of the
congregation.

4:16 And to the office of Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest
pertaineth the oil for the light, and the sweet incense, and the daily
meat offering, and the anointing oil, and the oversight of all the
tabernacle, and of all that therein is, in the sanctuary, and in the
vessels thereof.

4:17 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron saying, 4:18 Cut ye
not off the tribe of the families of the Kohathites from among the
Levites: 4:19 But thus do unto them, that they may live, and not die,
when they approach unto the most holy things: Aaron and his sons shall
go in, and appoint them every one to his service and to his burden:
4:20 But they shall not go in to see when the holy things are covered,
lest they die.

4:21 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 4:22 Take also the sum of
the sons of Gershon, throughout the houses of their fathers, by their
families; 4:23 From thirty years old and upward until fifty years old
shalt thou number them; all that enter in to perform the service, to
do the work in the tabernacle of the congregation.

4:24 This is the service of the families of the Gershonites, to serve,
and for burdens: 4:25 And they shall bear the curtains of the
tabernacle, and the tabernacle of the congregation, his covering, and
the covering of the badgers' skins that is above upon it, and the
hanging for the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, 4:26 And
the hangings of the court, and the hanging for the door of the gate of
the court, which is by the tabernacle and by the altar round about,
and their cords, and all the instruments of their service, and all
that is made for them: so shall they serve.

4:27 At the appointment of Aaron and his sons shall be all the service
of the sons of the Gershonites, in all their burdens, and in all their
service: and ye shall appoint unto them in charge all their burdens.

4:28 This is the service of the families of the sons of Gershon in the
tabernacle of the congregation: and their charge shall be under the
hand of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest.

4:29 As for the sons of Merari, thou shalt number them after their
families, by the house of their fathers; 4:30 From thirty years old
and upward even unto fifty years old shalt thou number them, every one
that entereth into the service, to do the work of the tabernacle of
the congregation.

4:31 And this is the charge of their burden, according to all their
service in the tabernacle of the congregation; the boards of the
tabernacle, and the bars thereof, and the pillars thereof, and sockets
thereof, 4:32 And the pillars of the court round about, and their
sockets, and their pins, and their cords, with all their instruments,
and with all their service: and by name ye shall reckon the
instruments of the charge of their burden.

4:33 This is the service of the families of the sons of Merari,
according to all their service, in the tabernacle of the congregation,
under the hand of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest.

4:34 And Moses and Aaron and the chief of the congregation numbered
the sons of the Kohathites after their families, and after the house
of their fathers, 4:35 From thirty years old and upward even unto
fifty years old, every one that entereth into the service, for the
work in the tabernacle of the congregation: 4:36 And those that were
numbered of them by their families were two thousand seven hundred and
fifty.

4:37 These were they that were numbered of the families of the
Kohathites, all that might do service in the tabernacle of the
congregation, which Moses and Aaron did number according to the
commandment of the LORD by the hand of Moses.

4:38 And those that were numbered of the sons of Gershon, throughout
their families, and by the house of their fathers, 4:39 From thirty
years old and upward even unto fifty years old, every one that
entereth into the service, for the work in the tabernacle of the
congregation, 4:40 Even those that were numbered of them, throughout
their families, by the house of their fathers, were two thousand and
six hundred and thirty.

4:41 These are they that were numbered of the families of the sons of
Gershon, of all that might do service in the tabernacle of the
congregation, whom Moses and Aaron did number according to the
commandment of the LORD.

4:42 And those that were numbered of the families of the sons of
Merari, throughout their families, by the house of their fathers, 4:43
From thirty years old and upward even unto fifty years old, every one
that entereth into the service, for the work in the tabernacle of the
congregation, 4:44 Even those that were numbered of them after their
families, were three thousand and two hundred.

4:45 These be those that were numbered of the families of the sons of
Merari, whom Moses and Aaron numbered according to the word of the
LORD by the hand of Moses.

4:46 All those that were numbered of the Levites, whom Moses and Aaron
and the chief of Israel numbered, after their families, and after the
house of their fathers, 4:47 From thirty years old and upward even
unto fifty years old, every one that came to do the service of the
ministry, and the service of the burden in the tabernacle of the
congregation.

4:48 Even those that were numbered of them, were eight thousand and
five hundred and fourscore, 4:49 According to the commandment of the
LORD they were numbered by the hand of Moses, every one according to
his service, and according to his burden: thus were they numbered of
him, as the LORD commanded Moses.

5:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 5:2 Command the children of
Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that
hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead: 5:3 Both male and
female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye put them; that they
defile not their camps, in the midst whereof I dwell.

5:4 And the children of Israel did so, and put them out without the
camp: as the LORD spake unto Moses, so did the children of Israel.

5:5 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 5:6 Speak unto the children
of Israel, When a man or woman shall commit any sin that men commit,
to do a trespass against the LORD, and that person be guilty; 5:7 Then
they shall confess their sin which they have done: and he shall
recompense his trespass with the principal thereof, and add unto it
the fifth part thereof, and give it unto him against whom he hath
trespassed.

5:8 But if the man have no kinsman to recompense the trespass unto,
let the trespass be recompensed unto the LORD, even to the priest;
beside the ram of the atonement, whereby an atonement shall be made
for him.

5:9 And every offering of all the holy things of the children of
Israel, which they bring unto the priest, shall be his.

5:10 And every man's hallowed things shall be his: whatsoever any man
giveth the priest, it shall be his.

5:11 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 5:12 Speak unto the
children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man's wife go aside, and
commit a trespass against him, 5:13 And a man lie with her carnally,
and it be hid from the eyes of her husband, and be kept close, and she
be defiled, and there be no witness against her, neither she be taken
with the manner; 5:14 And the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he
be jealous of his wife, and she be defiled: or if the spirit of
jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be not
defiled: 5:15 Then shall the man bring his wife unto the priest, and
he shall bring her offering for her, the tenth part of an ephah of
barley meal; he shall pour no oil upon it, nor put frankincense
thereon; for it is an offering of jealousy, an offering of memorial,
bringing iniquity to remembrance.

5:16 And the priest shall bring her near, and set her before the LORD:
5:17 And the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel; and of
the dust that is in the floor of the tabernacle the priest shall take,
and put it into the water: 5:18 And the priest shall set the woman
before the LORD, and uncover the woman's head, and put the offering of
memorial in her hands, which is the jealousy offering: and the priest
shall have in his hand the bitter water that causeth the curse: 5:19
And the priest shall charge her by an oath, and say unto the woman, If
no man have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to
uncleanness with another instead of thy husband, be thou free from
this bitter water that causeth the curse: 5:20 But if thou hast gone
aside to another instead of thy husband, and if thou be defiled, and
some man have lain with thee beside thine husband: 5:21 Then the
priest shall charge the woman with an oath of cursing, and the priest
shall say unto the woman, The LORD make thee a curse and an oath among
thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to
swell; 5:22 And this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy
bowels, to make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot: And the
woman shall say, Amen, amen.

5:23 And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall
blot them out with the bitter water: 5:24 And he shall cause the woman
to drink the bitter water that causeth the curse: and the water that
causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter.

5:25 Then the priest shall take the jealousy offering out of the
woman's hand, and shall wave the offering before the LORD, and offer
it upon the altar: 5:26 And the priest shall take an handful of the
offering, even the memorial thereof, and burn it upon the altar, and
afterward shall cause the woman to drink the water.

5:27 And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it shall come
to pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her
husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her,
and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot:
and the woman shall be a curse among her people.

5:28 And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be
free, and shall conceive seed.

5:29 This is the law of jealousies, when a wife goeth aside to another
instead of her husband, and is defiled; 5:30 Or when the spirit of
jealousy cometh upon him, and he be jealous over his wife, and shall
set the woman before the LORD, and the priest shall execute upon her
all this law.

5:31 Then shall the man be guiltless from iniquity, and this woman
shall bear her iniquity.

6:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 6:2 Speak unto the children
of Israel, and say unto them, When either man or woman shall separate
themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the
LORD: 6:3 He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink, and
shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink, neither
shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes, or dried.

6:4 All the days of his separation shall he eat nothing that is made
of the vine tree, from the kernels even to the husk.

6:5 All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor
come upon his head: until the days be fulfilled, in the which he
separateth himself unto the LORD, he shall be holy, and shall let the
locks of the hair of his head grow.

6:6 All the days that he separateth himself unto the LORD he shall
come at no dead body.

6:7 He shall not make himself unclean for his father, or for his
mother, for his brother, or for his sister, when they die: because the
consecration of his God is upon his head.

6:8 All the days of his separation he is holy unto the LORD.

6:9 And if any man die very suddenly by him, and he hath defiled the
head of his consecration; then he shall shave his head in the day of
his cleansing, on the seventh day shall he shave it.

6:10 And on the eighth day he shall bring two turtles, or two young
pigeons, to the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation: 6:11 And the priest shall offer the one for a sin
offering, and the other for a burnt offering, and make an atonement
for him, for that he sinned by the dead, and shall hallow his head
that same day.

6:12 And he shall consecrate unto the LORD the days of his separation,
and shall bring a lamb of the first year for a trespass offering: but
the days that were before shall be lost, because his separation was
defiled.

6:13 And this is the law of the Nazarite, when the days of his
separation are fulfilled: he shall be brought unto the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation: 6:14 And he shall offer his offering
unto the LORD, one he lamb of the first year without blemish for a
burnt offering, and one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish for
a sin offering, and one ram without blemish for peace offerings, 6:15
And a basket of unleavened bread, cakes of fine flour mingled with
oil, and wafers of unleavened bread anointed with oil, and their meat
offering, and their drink offerings.

6:16 And the priest shall bring them before the LORD, and shall offer
his sin offering, and his burnt offering: 6:17 And he shall offer the
ram for a sacrifice of peace offerings unto the LORD, with the basket
of unleavened bread: the priest shall offer also his meat offering,
and his drink offering.

6:18 And the Nazarite shall shave the head of his separation at the
door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and shall take the hair of
the head of his separation, and put it in the fire which is under the
sacrifice of the peace offerings.

6:19 And the priest shall take the sodden shoulder of the ram, and one
unleavened cake out of the basket, and one unleavened wafer, and shall
put them upon the hands of the Nazarite, after the hair of his
separation is shaven: 6:20 And the priest shall wave them for a wave
offering before the LORD: this is holy for the priest, with the wave
breast and heave shoulder: and after that the Nazarite may drink wine.

6:21 This is the law of the Nazarite who hath vowed, and of his
offering unto the LORD for his separation, beside that that his hand
shall get: according to the vow which he vowed, so he must do after
the law of his separation.

6:22 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 6:23 Speak unto Aaron and
unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of
Israel, saying unto them, 6:24 The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:
6:25 The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto
thee: 6:26 The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee
peace.

6:27 And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I
will bless them.

7:1 And it came to pass on the day that Moses had fully set up the
tabernacle, and had anointed it, and sanctified it, and all the
instruments thereof, both the altar and all the vessels thereof, and
had anointed them, and sanctified them; 7:2 That the princes of
Israel, heads of the house of their fathers, who were the princes of
the tribes, and were over them that were numbered, offered: 7:3 And
they brought their offering before the LORD, six covered wagons, and
twelve oxen; a wagon for two of the princes, and for each one an ox:
and they brought them before the tabernacle.

7:4 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 7:5 Take it of them, that
they may be to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation;
and thou shalt give them unto the Levites, to every man according to
his service.

7:6 And Moses took the wagons and the oxen, and gave them unto the
Levites.

7:7 Two wagons and four oxen he gave unto the sons of Gershon,
according to their service: 7:8 And four wagons and eight oxen he gave
unto the sons of Merari, according unto their service, under the hand
of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest.

7:9 But unto the sons of Kohath he gave none: because the service of
the sanctuary belonging unto them was that they should bear upon their
shoulders.

7:10 And the princes offered for dedicating of the altar in the day
that it was anointed, even the princes offered their offering before
the altar.

7:11 And the LORD said unto Moses, They shall offer their offering,
each prince on his day, for the dedicating of the altar.

7:12 And he that offered his offering the first day was Nahshon the
son of Amminadab, of the tribe of Judah: 7:13 And his offering was one
silver charger, the weight thereof was an hundred and thirty shekels,
one silver bowl of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary;
both of them were full of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat
offering: 7:14 One spoon of ten shekels of gold, full of incense: 7:15
One young bullock, one ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt
offering: 7:16 One kid of the goats for a sin offering: 7:17 And for a
sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five
lambs of the first year: this was the offering of Nahshon the son of
Amminadab.

7:18 On the second day Nethaneel the son of Zuar, prince of Issachar,
did offer: 7:19 He offered for his offering one silver charger, the
weight whereof was an hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl of
seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of them full
of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering: 7:20 One spoon of
gold of ten shekels, full of incense: 7:21 One young bullock, one ram,
one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering: 7:22 One kid of the
goats for a sin offering: 7:23 And for a sacrifice of peace offerings,
two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of the first year: this
was the offering of Nethaneel the son of Zuar.

7:24 On the third day Eliab the son of Helon, prince of the children
of Zebulun, did offer: 7:25 His offering was one silver charger, the
weight whereof was an hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl of
seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of them full
of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering: 7:26 One golden
spoon of ten shekels, full of incense: 7:27 One young bullock, one
ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering: 7:28 One kid of
the goats for a sin offering: 7:29 And for a sacrifice of peace
offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of the first
year: this was the offering of Eliab the son of Helon.

7:30 On the fourth day Elizur the son of Shedeur, prince of the
children of Reuben, did offer: 7:31 His offering was one silver
charger of the weight of an hundred and thirty shekels, one silver
bowl of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of
them full of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering: 7:32 One
golden spoon of ten shekels, full of incense: 7:33 One young bullock,
one ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering: 7:34 One
kid of the goats for a sin offering: 7:35 And for a sacrifice of peace
offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of the first
year: this was the offering of Elizur the son of Shedeur.

7:36 On the fifth day Shelumiel the son of Zurishaddai, prince of the
children of Simeon, did offer: 7:37 His offering was one silver
charger, the weight whereof was an hundred and thirty shekels, one
silver bowl of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary;
both of them full of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering:
7:38 One golden spoon of ten shekels, full of incense: 7:39 One young
bullock, one ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering:
7:40 One kid of the goats for a sin offering: 7:41 And for a sacrifice
of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of
the first year: this was the offering of Shelumiel the son of
Zurishaddai.

7:42 On the sixth day Eliasaph the son of Deuel, prince of the
children of Gad, offered: 7:43 His offering was one silver charger of
the weight of an hundred and thirty shekels, a silver bowl of seventy
shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of them full of fine
flour mingled with oil for a meat offering: 7:44 One golden spoon of
ten shekels, full of incense: 7:45 One young bullock, one ram, one
lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering: 7:46 One kid of the
goats for a sin offering: 7:47 And for a sacrifice of peace offerings,
two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of the first year: this
was the offering of Eliasaph the son of Deuel.

7:48 On the seventh day Elishama the son of Ammihud, prince of the
children of Ephraim, offered: 7:49 His offering was one silver
charger, the weight whereof was an hundred and thirty shekels, one
silver bowl of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary;
both of them full of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering:
7:50 One golden spoon of ten shekels, full of incense: 7:51 One young
bullock, one ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering:
7:52 One kid of the goats for a sin offering: 7:53 And for a sacrifice
of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of
the first year: this was the offering of Elishama the son of Ammihud.

7:54 On the eighth day offered Gamaliel the son of Pedahzur, prince of
the children of Manasseh: 7:55 His offering was one silver charger of
the weight of an hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl of
seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of them full
of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering: 7:56 One golden
spoon of ten shekels, full of incense: 7:57 One young bullock, one
ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering: 7:58 One kid of
the goats for a sin offering: 7:59 And for a sacrifice of peace
offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of the first
year: this was the offering of Gamaliel the son of Pedahzur.

7:60 On the ninth day Abidan the son of Gideoni, prince of the
children of Benjamin, offered: 7:61 His offering was one silver
charger, the weight whereof was an hundred and thirty shekels, one
silver bowl of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary;
both of them full of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering:
7:62 One golden spoon of ten shekels, full of incense: 7:63 One young
bullock, one ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering:
7:64 One kid of the goats for a sin offering: 7:65 And for a sacrifice
of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of
the first year: this was the offering of Abidan the son of Gideoni.

7:66 On the tenth day Ahiezer the son of Ammishaddai, prince of the
children of Dan, offered: 7:67 His offering was one silver charger,
the weight whereof was an hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl
of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of them
full of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering: 7:68 One
golden spoon of ten shekels, full of incense: 7:69 One young bullock,
one ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering: 7:70 One
kid of the goats for a sin offering: 7:71 And for a sacrifice of peace
offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of the first
year: this was the offering of Ahiezer the son of Ammishaddai.

7:72 On the eleventh day Pagiel the son of Ocran, prince of the
children of Asher, offered: 7:73 His offering was one silver charger,
the weight whereof was an hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl
of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of them
full of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering: 7:74 One
golden spoon of ten shekels, full of incense: 7:75 One young bullock,
one ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering: 7:76 One
kid of the goats for a sin offering: 7:77 And for a sacrifice of peace
offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of the first
year: this was the offering of Pagiel the son of Ocran.

7:78 On the twelfth day Ahira the son of Enan, prince of the children
of Naphtali, offered: 7:79 His offering was one silver charger, the
weight whereof was an hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl of
seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of them full
of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering: 7:80 One golden
spoon of ten shekels, full of incense: 7:81 One young bullock, one
ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering: 7:82 One kid of
the goats for a sin offering: 7:83 And for a sacrifice of peace
offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of the first
year: this was the offering of Ahira the son of Enan.

7:84 This was the dedication of the altar, in the day when it was
anointed, by the princes of Israel: twelve chargers of silver, twelve
silver bowls, twelve spoons of gold: 7:85 Each charger of silver
weighing an hundred and thirty shekels, each bowl seventy: all the
silver vessels weighed two thousand and four hundred shekels, after
the shekel of the sanctuary: 7:86 The golden spoons were twelve, full
of incense, weighing ten shekels apiece, after the shekel of the
sanctuary: all the gold of the spoons was an hundred and twenty
shekels.

7:87 All the oxen for the burnt offering were twelve bullocks, the
rams twelve, the lambs of the first year twelve, with their meat
offering: and the kids of the goats for sin offering twelve.

7:88 And all the oxen for the sacrifice of the peace offerings were
twenty and four bullocks, the rams sixty, the he goats sixty, the
lambs of the first year sixty. This was the dedication of the altar,
after that it was anointed.

7:89 And when Moses was gone into the tabernacle of the congregation
to speak with him, then he heard the voice of one speaking unto him
from off the mercy seat that was upon the ark of testimony, from
between the two cherubims: and he spake unto him.

8:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 8:2 Speak unto Aaron and
say unto him, When thou lightest the lamps, the seven lamps shall give
light over against the candlestick.

8:3 And Aaron did so; he lighted the lamps thereof over against the
candlestick, as the LORD commanded Moses.

8:4 And this work of the candlestick was of beaten gold, unto the
shaft thereof, unto the flowers thereof, was beaten work: according
unto the pattern which the LORD had shewed Moses, so he made the
candlestick.

8:5 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 8:6 Take the Levites from
among the children of Israel, and cleanse them.

8:7 And thus shalt thou do unto them, to cleanse them: Sprinkle water
of purifying upon them, and let them shave all their flesh, and let
them wash their clothes, and so make themselves clean.

8:8 Then let them take a young bullock with his meat offering, even
fine flour mingled with oil, and another young bullock shalt thou take
for a sin offering.

8:9 And thou shalt bring the Levites before the tabernacle of the
congregation: and thou shalt gather the whole assembly of the children
of Israel together: 8:10 And thou shalt bring the Levites before the
LORD: and the children of Israel shall put their hands upon the
Levites: 8:11 And Aaron shall offer the Levites before the LORD for an
offering of the children of Israel, that they may execute the service
of the LORD.

8:12 And the Levites shall lay their hands upon the heads of the
bullocks: and thou shalt offer the one for a sin offering, and the
other for a burnt offering, unto the LORD, to make an atonement for
the Levites.

8:13 And thou shalt set the Levites before Aaron, and before his sons,
and offer them for an offering unto the LORD.

8:14 Thus shalt thou separate the Levites from among the children of
Israel: and the Levites shall be mine.

8:15 And after that shall the Levites go in to do the service of the
tabernacle of the congregation: and thou shalt cleanse them, and offer
them for an offering.

8:16 For they are wholly given unto me from among the children of
Israel; instead of such as open every womb, even instead of the
firstborn of all the children of Israel, have I taken them unto me.

8:17 For all the firstborn of the children of Israel are mine, both
man and beast: on the day that I smote every firstborn in the land of
Egypt I sanctified them for myself.

8:18 And I have taken the Levites for all the firstborn of the
children of Israel.

8:19 And I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and to his sons
from among the children of Israel, to do the service of the children
of Israel in the tabernacle of the congregation, and to make an
atonement for the children of Israel: that there be no plague among
the children of Israel, when the children of Israel come nigh unto the
sanctuary.

8:20 And Moses, and Aaron, and all the congregation of the children of
Israel, did to the Levites according unto all that the LORD commanded
Moses concerning the Levites, so did the children of Israel unto them.

8:21 And the Levites were purified, and they washed their clothes; and
Aaron offered them as an offering before the LORD; and Aaron made an
atonement for them to cleanse them.

8:22 And after that went the Levites in to do their service in the
tabernacle of the congregation before Aaron, and before his sons: as
the LORD had commanded Moses concerning the Levites, so did they unto
them.

8:23 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 8:24 This is it that
belongeth unto the Levites: from twenty and five years old and upward
they shall go in to wait upon the service of the tabernacle of the
congregation: 8:25 And from the age of fifty years they shall cease
waiting upon the service thereof, and shall serve no more: 8:26 But
shall minister with their brethren in the tabernacle of the
congregation, to keep the charge, and shall do no service. Thus shalt
thou do unto the Levites touching their charge.

9:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the
first month of the second year after they were come out of the land of
Egypt, saying, 9:2 Let the children of Israel also keep the passover
at his appointed season.

9:3 In the fourteenth day of this month, at even, ye shall keep it in
his appointed season: according to all the rites of it, and according
to all the ceremonies thereof, shall ye keep it.

9:4 And Moses spake unto the children of Israel, that they should keep
the passover.

9:5 And they kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the first
month at even in the wilderness of Sinai: according to all that the
LORD commanded Moses, so did the children of Israel.

9:6 And there were certain men, who were defiled by the dead body of a
man, that they could not keep the passover on that day: and they came
before Moses and before Aaron on that day: 9:7 And those men said unto
him, We are defiled by the dead body of a man: wherefore are we kept
back, that we may not offer an offering of the LORD in his appointed
season among the children of Israel?  9:8 And Moses said unto them,
Stand still, and I will hear what the LORD will command concerning
you.

9:9 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 9:10 Speak unto the
children of Israel, saying, If any man of you or of your posterity
shall be unclean by reason of a dead body, or be in a journey afar
off, yet he shall keep the passover unto the LORD.

9:11 The fourteenth day of the second month at even they shall keep
it, and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

9:12 They shall leave none of it unto the morning, nor break any bone
of it: according to all the ordinances of the passover they shall keep
it.

9:13 But the man that is clean, and is not in a journey, and
forbeareth to keep the passover, even the same soul shall be cut off
from among his people: because he brought not the offering of the LORD
in his appointed season, that man shall bear his sin.

9:14 And if a stranger shall sojourn among you, and will keep the
passover unto the LORD; according to the ordinance of the passover,
and according to the manner thereof, so shall he do: ye shall have one
ordinance, both for the stranger, and for him that was born in the
land.

9:15 And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up the cloud
covered the tabernacle, namely, the tent of the testimony: and at even
there was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until
the morning.

9:16 So it was alway: the cloud covered it by day, and the appearance
of fire by night.

9:17 And when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after
that the children of Israel journeyed: and in the place where the
cloud abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents.

9:18 At the commandment of the LORD the children of Israel journeyed,
and at the commandment of the LORD they pitched: as long as the cloud
abode upon the tabernacle they rested in their tents.

9:19 And when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days,
then the children of Israel kept the charge of the LORD, and journeyed
not.

9:20 And so it was, when the cloud was a few days upon the tabernacle;
according to the commandment of the LORD they abode in their tents,
and according to the commandment of the LORD they journeyed.

9:21 And so it was, when the cloud abode from even unto the morning,
and that the cloud was taken up in the morning, then they journeyed:
whether it was by day or by night that the cloud was taken up, they
journeyed.

9:22 Or whether it were two days, or a month, or a year, that the
cloud tarried upon the tabernacle, remaining thereon, the children of
Israel abode in their tents, and journeyed not: but when it was taken
up, they journeyed.

9:23 At the commandment of the LORD they rested in the tents, and at
the commandment of the LORD they journeyed: they kept the charge of
the LORD, at the commandment of the LORD by the hand of Moses.

10:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 10:2 Make thee two
trumpets of silver; of a whole piece shalt thou make them: that thou
mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the
journeying of the camps.

10:3 And when they shall blow with them, all the assembly shall
assemble themselves to thee at the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation.

10:4 And if they blow but with one trumpet, then the princes, which
are heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto
thee.

10:5 When ye blow an alarm, then the camps that lie on the east parts
shall go forward.

10:6 When ye blow an alarm the second time, then the camps that lie on
the south side shall take their journey: they shall blow an alarm for
their journeys.

10:7 But when the congregation is to be gathered together, ye shall
blow, but ye shall not sound an alarm.

10:8 And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow with the trumpets;
and they shall be to you for an ordinance for ever throughout your
generations.

10:9 And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that
oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye
shall be remembered before the LORD your God, and ye shall be saved
from your enemies.

10:10 Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and
in the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over
your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings;
that they may be to you for a memorial before your God: I am the LORD
your God.

10:11 And it came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in
the second year, that the cloud was taken up from off the tabernacle
of the testimony.

10:12 And the children of Israel took their journeys out of the
wilderness of Sinai; and the cloud rested in the wilderness of Paran.

10:13 And they first took their journey according to the commandment
of the LORD by the hand of Moses.

10:14 In the first place went the standard of the camp of the children
of Judah according to their armies: and over his host was Nahshon the
son of Amminadab.

10:15 And over the host of the tribe of the children of Issachar was
Nethaneel the son of Zuar.

10:16 And over the host of the tribe of the children of Zebulun was
Eliab the son of Helon.

10:17 And the tabernacle was taken down; and the sons of Gershon and
the sons of Merari set forward, bearing the tabernacle.

10:18 And the standard of the camp of Reuben set forward according to
their armies: and over his host was Elizur the son of Shedeur.

10:19 And over the host of the tribe of the children of Simeon was
Shelumiel the son of Zurishaddai.

10:20 And over the host of the tribe of the children of Gad was
Eliasaph the son of Deuel.

10:21 And the Kohathites set forward, bearing the sanctuary: and the
other did set up the tabernacle against they came.

10:22 And the standard of the camp of the children of Ephraim set
forward according to their armies: and over his host was Elishama the
son of Ammihud.

10:23 And over the host of the tribe of the children of Manasseh was
Gamaliel the son of Pedahzur.

10:24 And over the host of the tribe of the children of Benjamin was
Abidan the son of Gideoni.

10:25 And the standard of the camp of the children of Dan set forward,
which was the rereward of all the camps throughout their hosts: and
over his host was Ahiezer the son of Ammishaddai.

10:26 And over the host of the tribe of the children of Asher was
Pagiel the son of Ocran.

10:27 And over the host of the tribe of the children of Naphtali was
Ahira the son of Enan.

10:28 Thus were the journeyings of the children of Israel according to
their armies, when they set forward.

10:29 And Moses said unto Hobab, the son of Raguel the Midianite,
Moses' father in law, We are journeying unto the place of which the
LORD said, I will give it you: come thou with us, and we will do thee
good: for the LORD hath spoken good concerning Israel.

10:30 And he said unto him, I will not go; but I will depart to mine
own land, and to my kindred.

10:31 And he said, Leave us not, I pray thee; forasmuch as thou
knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou mayest be to
us instead of eyes.

10:32 And it shall be, if thou go with us, yea, it shall be, that what
goodness the LORD shall do unto us, the same will we do unto thee.

10:33 And they departed from the mount of the LORD three days'
journey: and the ark of the covenant of the LORD went before them in
the three days' journey, to search out a resting place for them.

10:34 And the cloud of the LORD was upon them by day, when they went
out of the camp.

10:35 And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Moses said,
Rise up, LORD, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that
hate thee flee before thee.

10:36 And when it rested, he said, Return, O LORD, unto the many
thousands of Israel.

11:1 And when the people complained, it displeased the LORD: and the
LORD heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the LORD
burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts
of the camp.

11:2 And the people cried unto Moses; and when Moses prayed unto the
LORD, the fire was quenched.

11:3 And he called the name of the place Taberah: because the fire of
the LORD burnt among them.

11:4 And the mixt multitude that was among them fell a lusting: and
the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us
flesh to eat?  11:5 We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt
freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions,
and the garlick: 11:6 But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing
at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.

11:7 And the manna was as coriander seed, and the colour thereof as
the colour of bdellium.

11:8 And the people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in
mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of
it: and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil.

11:9 And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell
upon it.

11:10 Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families,
every man in the door of his tent: and the anger of the LORD was
kindled greatly; Moses also was displeased.

11:11 And Moses said unto the LORD, Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy
servant? and wherefore have I not found favour in thy sight, that thou
layest the burden of all this people upon me?  11:12 Have I conceived
all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto
me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking
child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?  11:13
Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people? for they weep
unto me, saying, Give us flesh, that we may eat.

11:14 I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too
heavy for me.

11:15 And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of
hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my
wretchedness.

11:16 And the LORD said unto Moses, Gather unto me seventy men of the
elders of Israel, whom thou knowest to be the elders of the people,
and officers over them; and bring them unto the tabernacle of the
congregation, that they may stand there with thee.

11:17 And I will come down and talk with thee there: and I will take
of the spirit which is upon thee, and will put it upon them; and they
shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not
thyself alone.

11:18 And say thou unto the people, Sanctify yourselves against to
morrow, and ye shall eat flesh: for ye have wept in the ears of the
LORD, saying, Who shall give us flesh to eat? for it was well with us
in Egypt: therefore the LORD will give you flesh, and ye shall eat.

11:19 Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither
ten days, nor twenty days; 11:20 But even a whole month, until it come
out at your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you: because that ye
have despised the LORD which is among you, and have wept before him,
saying, Why came we forth out of Egypt?  11:21 And Moses said, The
people, among whom I am, are six hundred thousand footmen; and thou
hast said, I will give them flesh, that they may eat a whole month.

11:22 Shall the flocks and the herds be slain for them, to suffice
them?  or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them,
to suffice them?  11:23 And the LORD said unto Moses, Is the LORD's
hand waxed short? thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to
pass unto thee or not.

11:24 And Moses went out, and told the people the words of the LORD,
and gathered the seventy men of the elders of the people, and set them
round about the tabernacle.

11:25 And the LORD came down in a cloud, and spake unto him, and took
of the spirit that was upon him, and gave it unto the seventy elders:
and it came to pass, that, when the spirit rested upon them, they
prophesied, and did not cease.

11:26 But there remained two of the men in the camp, the name of the
one was Eldad, and the name of the other Medad: and the spirit rested
upon them; and they were of them that were written, but went not out
unto the tabernacle: and they prophesied in the camp.

11:27 And there ran a young man, and told Moses, and said, Eldad and
Medad do prophesy in the camp.

11:28 And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his
young men, answered and said, My lord Moses, forbid them.

11:29 And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? would God
that all the LORD's people were prophets, and that the LORD would put
his spirit upon them!  11:30 And Moses gat him into the camp, he and
the elders of Israel.

11:31 And there went forth a wind from the LORD, and brought quails
from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day's
journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other
side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the
face of the earth.

11:32 And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and
all the next day, and they gathered the quails: he that gathered least
gathered ten homers: and they spread them all abroad for themselves
round about the camp.

11:33 And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was
chewed, the wrath of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the
LORD smote the people with a very great plague.

11:34 And he called the name of that place Kibrothhattaavah: because
there they buried the people that lusted.

11:35 And the people journeyed from Kibrothhattaavah unto Hazeroth;
and abode at Hazeroth.

12:1 And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian
woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.

12:2 And they said, Hath the LORD indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he
not spoken also by us? And the LORD heard it.

12:3 (Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were
upon the face of the earth.)  12:4 And the LORD spake suddenly unto
Moses, and unto Aaron, and unto Miriam, Come out ye three unto the
tabernacle of the congregation. And they three came out.

12:5 And the LORD came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood in
the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam: and they both
came forth.

12:6 And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you,
I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak
unto him in a dream.

12:7 My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house.

12:8 With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in
dark speeches; and the similitude of the LORD shall he behold:
wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?
12:9 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against them; and he
departed.

12:10 And the cloud departed from off the tabernacle; and, behold,
Miriam became leprous, white as snow: and Aaron looked upon Miriam,
and, behold, she was leprous.

12:11 And Aaron said unto Moses, Alas, my lord, I beseech thee, lay
not the sin upon us, wherein we have done foolishly, and wherein we
have sinned.

12:12 Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed
when he cometh out of his mother's womb.

12:13 And Moses cried unto the LORD, saying, Heal her now, O God, I
beseech thee.

12:14 And the LORD said unto Moses, If her father had but spit in her
face, should she not be ashamed seven days? let her be shut out from
the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again.

12:15 And Miriam was shut out from the camp seven days: and the people
journeyed not till Miriam was brought in again.

12:16 And afterward the people removed from Hazeroth, and pitched in
the wilderness of Paran.

13:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 13:2 Send thou men, that
they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of
Israel: of every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, every one
a ruler among them.

13:3 And Moses by the commandment of the LORD sent them from the
wilderness of Paran: all those men were heads of the children of
Israel.

13:4 And these were their names: of the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the
son of Zaccur.

13:5 Of the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori.

13:6 Of the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunneh.

13:7 Of the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of Joseph.

13:8 Of the tribe of Ephraim, Oshea the son of Nun.

13:9 Of the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of Raphu.

13:10 Of the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel the son of Sodi.

13:11 Of the tribe of Joseph, namely, of the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi
the son of Susi.

13:12 Of the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli.

13:13 Of the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael.

13:14 Of the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi.

13:15 Of the tribe of Gad, Geuel the son of Machi.

13:16 These are the names of the men which Moses sent to spy out the
land.

And Moses called Oshea the son of Nun Jehoshua.

13:17 And Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said unto
them, Get you up this way southward, and go up into the mountain:
13:18 And see the land, what it is, and the people that dwelleth
therein, whether they be strong or weak, few or many; 13:19 And what
the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what
cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents, or in strong
holds; 13:20 And what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether
there be wood therein, or not. And be ye of good courage, and bring of
the fruit of the land. Now the time was the time of the firstripe
grapes.

13:21 So they went up, and searched the land from the wilderness of
Zin unto Rehob, as men come to Hamath.

13:22 And they ascended by the south, and came unto Hebron; where
Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the children of Anak, were. (Now Hebron
was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)  13:23 And they came unto
the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one
cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff; and they
brought of the pomegranates, and of the figs.

13:24 The place was called the brook Eshcol, because of the cluster of
grapes which the children of Israel cut down from thence.

13:25 And they returned from searching of the land after forty days.

13:26 And they went and came to Moses, and to Aaron, and to all the
congregation of the children of Israel, unto the wilderness of Paran,
to Kadesh; and brought back word unto them, and unto all the
congregation, and shewed them the fruit of the land.

13:27 And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou
sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the
fruit of it.

13:28 Nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land, and
the cities are walled, and very great: and moreover we saw the
children of Anak there.

13:29 The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south: and the Hittites,
and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the mountains: and the
Canaanites dwell by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan.

13:30 And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go
up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.

13:31 But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up
against the people; for they are stronger than we.

13:32 And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had
searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which
we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants
thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great
stature.

13:33 And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the
giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were
in their sight.

14:1 And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and
the people wept that night.

14:2 And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against
Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we
had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this
wilderness!  14:3 And wherefore hath the LORD brought us unto this
land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be
a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?  14:4 And they
said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into
Egypt.

14:5 Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly
of the congregation of the children of Israel.

14:6 And Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which
were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes: 14:7 And they
spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The
land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land.

14:8 If the LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land,
and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.

14:9 Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of
the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from
them, and the LORD is with us: fear them not.

14:10 But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. And the
glory of the LORD appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation
before all the children of Israel.

14:11 And the LORD said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke
me?  and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs
which I have shewed among them?  14:12 I will smite them with the
pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater
nation and mightier than they.

14:13 And Moses said unto the LORD, Then the Egyptians shall hear it,
(for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;)
14:14 And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they
have heard that thou LORD art among this people, that thou LORD art
seen face to face, and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that
thou goest before them, by day time in a pillar of a cloud, and in a
pillar of fire by night.

14:15 Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the
nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, 14:16
Because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the land which
he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness.

14:17 And now, I beseech thee, let the power of my LORD be great,
according as thou hast spoken, saying, 14:18 The LORD is
longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and
transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth
generation.

14:19 Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according
unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this
people, from Egypt even until now.

14:20 And the LORD said, I have pardoned according to thy word: 14:21
But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory
of the LORD.

14:22 Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles,
which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now
these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; 14:23 Surely they
shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall
any of them that provoked me see it: 14:24 But my servant Caleb,
because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully,
him will I bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall
possess it.

14:25 (Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwelt in the valley.)
Tomorrow turn you, and get you into the wilderness by the way of the
Red sea.

14:26 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, 14:27 How
long shall I bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against
me? I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel, which they
murmur against me.

14:28 Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as ye have
spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you: 14:29 Your carcases shall
fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according
to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward which have
murmured against me.

14:30 Doubtless ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I
sware to make you dwell therein, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and
Joshua the son of Nun.

14:31 But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, them will
I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised.

14:32 But as for you, your carcases, they shall fall in this
wilderness.

14:33 And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years,
and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the
wilderness.

14:34 After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even
forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even
forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.

14:35 I the LORD have said, I will surely do it unto all this evil
congregation, that are gathered together against me: in this
wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.

14:36 And the men, which Moses sent to search the land, who returned,
and made all the congregation to murmur against him, by bringing up a
slander upon the land, 14:37 Even those men that did bring up the evil
report upon the land, died by the plague before the LORD.

14:38 But Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which
were of the men that went to search the land, lived still.

14:39 And Moses told these sayings unto all the children of Israel:
and the people mourned greatly.

14:40 And they rose up early in the morning, and gat them up into the
top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the
place which the LORD hath promised: for we have sinned.

14:41 And Moses said, Wherefore now do ye transgress the commandment
of the LORD? but it shall not prosper.

14:42 Go not up, for the LORD is not among you; that ye be not smitten
before your enemies.

14:43 For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and
ye shall fall by the sword: because ye are turned away from the LORD,
therefore the LORD will not be with you.

14:44 But they presumed to go up unto the hill top: nevertheless the
ark of the covenant of the LORD, and Moses, departed not out of the
camp.

14:45 Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites which dwelt in
that hill, and smote them, and discomfited them, even unto Hormah.

15:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 15:2 Speak unto the
children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land
of your habitations, which I give unto you, 15:3 And will make an
offering by fire unto the LORD, a burnt offering, or a sacrifice in
performing a vow, or in a freewill offering, or in your solemn feasts,
to make a sweet savour unto the LORD, of the herd or of the flock:
15:4 Then shall he that offereth his offering unto the LORD bring a
meat offering of a tenth deal of flour mingled with the fourth part of
an hin of oil.

15:5 And the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering shalt
thou prepare with the burnt offering or sacrifice, for one lamb.

15:6 Or for a ram, thou shalt prepare for a meat offering two tenth
deals of flour mingled with the third part of an hin of oil.

15:7 And for a drink offering thou shalt offer the third part of an
hin of wine, for a sweet savour unto the LORD.

15:8 And when thou preparest a bullock for a burnt offering, or for a
sacrifice in performing a vow, or peace offerings unto the LORD: 15:9
Then shall he bring with a bullock a meat offering of three tenth
deals of flour mingled with half an hin of oil.

15:10 And thou shalt bring for a drink offering half an hin of wine,
for an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD.

15:11 Thus shall it be done for one bullock, or for one ram, or for a
lamb, or a kid.

15:12 According to the number that ye shall prepare, so shall ye do to
every one according to their number.

15:13 All that are born of the country shall do these things after
this manner, in offering an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour
unto the LORD.

15:14 And if a stranger sojourn with you, or whosoever be among you in
your generations, and will offer an offering made by fire, of a sweet
savour unto the LORD; as ye do, so he shall do.

15:15 One ordinance shall be both for you of the congregation, and
also for the stranger that sojourneth with you, an ordinance for ever
in your generations: as ye are, so shall the stranger be before the
LORD.

15:16 One law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger
that sojourneth with you.

15:17 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 15:18 Speak unto the
children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land
whither I bring you, 15:19 Then it shall be, that, when ye eat of the
bread of the land, ye shall offer up an heave offering unto the LORD.

15:20 Ye shall offer up a cake of the first of your dough for an heave
offering: as ye do the heave offering of the threshingfloor, so shall
ye heave it.

15:21 Of the first of your dough ye shall give unto the LORD an heave
offering in your generations.

15:22 And if ye have erred, and not observed all these commandments,
which the LORD hath spoken unto Moses, 15:23 Even all that the LORD
hath commanded you by the hand of Moses, from the day that the LORD
commanded Moses, and henceforward among your generations; 15:24 Then
it shall be, if ought be committed by ignorance without the knowledge
of the congregation, that all the congregation shall offer one young
bullock for a burnt offering, for a sweet savour unto the LORD, with
his meat offering, and his drink offering, according to the manner,
and one kid of the goats for a sin offering.

15:25 And the priest shall make an atonement for all the congregation
of the children of Israel, and it shall be forgiven them; for it is
ignorance: and they shall bring their offering, a sacrifice made by
fire unto the LORD, and their sin offering before the LORD, for their
ignorance: 15:26 And it shall be forgiven all the congregation of the
children of Israel, and the stranger that sojourneth among them;
seeing all the people were in ignorance.

15:27 And if any soul sin through ignorance, then he shall bring a she
goat of the first year for a sin offering.

15:28 And the priest shall make an atonement for the soul that sinneth
ignorantly, when he sinneth by ignorance before the LORD, to make an
atonement for him; and it shall be forgiven him.

15:29 Ye shall have one law for him that sinneth through ignorance,
both for him that is born among the children of Israel, and for the
stranger that sojourneth among them.

15:30 But the soul that doeth ought presumptuously, whether he be born
in the land, or a stranger, the same reproacheth the LORD; and that
soul shall be cut off from among his people.

15:31 Because he hath despised the word of the LORD, and hath broken
his commandment, that soul shall utterly be cut off; his iniquity
shall be upon him.

15:32 And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they
found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day.

15:33 And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses
and Aaron, and unto all the congregation.

15:34 And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what
should be done to him.

15:35 And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to
death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the
camp.

15:36 And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and
stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses.

15:37 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 15:38 Speak unto the
children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the
borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they
put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue: 15:39 And it
shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember
all the commandments of the LORD, and do them; and that ye seek not
after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a
whoring: 15:40 That ye may remember, and do all my commandments, and
be holy unto your God.

15:41 I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of
Egypt, to be your God: I am the LORD your God.

16:1 Now Korah, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi,
and Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, and On, the son of Peleth,
sons of Reuben, took men: 16:2 And they rose up before Moses, with
certain of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty princes of
the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown: 16:3 And they
gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said
unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are
holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them: wherefore then
lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the LORD?  16:4 And
when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face: 16:5 And he spake unto
Korah and unto all his company, saying, Even to morrow the LORD will
shew who are his, and who is holy; and will cause him to come near
unto him: even him whom he hath chosen will he cause to come near unto
him.

16:6 This do; Take you censers, Korah, and all his company; 16:7 And
put fire therein, and put incense in them before the LORD to morrow:
and it shall be that the man whom the LORD doth choose, he shall be
holy: ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi.

16:8 And Moses said unto Korah, Hear, I pray you, ye sons of Levi:
16:9 Seemeth it but a small thing unto you, that the God of Israel
hath separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near
to himself to do the service of the tabernacle of the LORD, and to
stand before the congregation to minister unto them?  16:10 And he
hath brought thee near to him, and all thy brethren the sons of Levi
with thee: and seek ye the priesthood also?  16:11 For which cause
both thou and all thy company are gathered together against the LORD:
and what is Aaron, that ye murmur against him?  16:12 And Moses sent
to call Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab: which said, We will not
come up: 16:13 Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of
a land that floweth with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness,
except thou make thyself altogether a prince over us?  16:14 Moreover
thou hast not brought us into a land that floweth with milk and honey,
or given us inheritance of fields and vineyards: wilt thou put out the
eyes of these men? we will not come up.

16:15 And Moses was very wroth, and said unto the LORD, Respect not
thou their offering: I have not taken one ass from them, neither have
I hurt one of them.

16:16 And Moses said unto Korah, Be thou and all thy company before
the LORD, thou, and they, and Aaron, to morrow: 16:17 And take every
man his censer, and put incense in them, and bring ye before the LORD
every man his censer, two hundred and fifty censers; thou also, and
Aaron, each of you his censer.

16:18 And they took every man his censer, and put fire in them, and
laid incense thereon, and stood in the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation with Moses and Aaron.

16:19 And Korah gathered all the congregation against them unto the
door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and the glory of the LORD
appeared unto all the congregation.

16:20 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, 16:21
Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume
them in a moment.

16:22 And they fell upon their faces, and said, O God, the God of the
spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and wilt thou be wroth with
all the congregation?  16:23 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
16:24 Speak unto the congregation, saying, Get you up from about the
tabernacle of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.

16:25 And Moses rose up and went unto Dathan and Abiram; and the
elders of Israel followed him.

16:26 And he spake unto the congregation, saying, Depart, I pray you,
from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of their's, lest
ye be consumed in all their sins.

16:27 So they gat up from the tabernacle of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram,
on every side: and Dathan and Abiram came out, and stood in the door
of their tents, and their wives, and their sons, and their little
children.

16:28 And Moses said, Hereby ye shall know that the LORD hath sent me
to do all these works; for I have not done them of mine own mind.

16:29 If these men die the common death of all men, or if they be
visited after the visitation of all men; then the LORD hath not sent
me.

16:30 But if the LORD make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth,
and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go
down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have
provoked the LORD.

16:31 And it came to pass, as he had made an end of speaking all these
words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them: 16:32 And
the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses,
and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods.

16:33 They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the
pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the
congregation.

16:34 And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of
them: for they said, Lest the earth swallow us up also.

16:35 And there came out a fire from the LORD, and consumed the two
hundred and fifty men that offered incense.

16:36 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 16:37 Speak unto Eleazar
the son of Aaron the priest, that he take up the censers out of the
burning, and scatter thou the fire yonder; for they are hallowed.

16:38 The censers of these sinners against their own souls, let them
make them broad plates for a covering of the altar: for they offered
them before the LORD, therefore they are hallowed: and they shall be a
sign unto the children of Israel.

16:39 And Eleazar the priest took the brasen censers, wherewith they
that were burnt had offered; and they were made broad plates for a
covering of the altar: 16:40 To be a memorial unto the children of
Israel, that no stranger, which is not of the seed of Aaron, come near
to offer incense before the LORD; that he be not as Korah, and as his
company: as the LORD said to him by the hand of Moses.

16:41 But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel
murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the
people of the LORD.

16:42 And it came to pass, when the congregation was gathered against
Moses and against Aaron, that they looked toward the tabernacle of the
congregation: and, behold, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the
LORD appeared.

16:43 And Moses and Aaron came before the tabernacle of the
congregation.

16:44 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 16:45 Get you up from
among this congregation, that I may consume them as in a moment. And
they fell upon their faces.

16:46 And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein
from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the
congregation, and make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone
out from the LORD; the plague is begun.

16:47 And Aaron took as Moses commanded, and ran into the midst of the
congregation; and, behold, the plague was begun among the people: and
he put on incense, and made an atonement for the people.

16:48 And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was
stayed.

16:49 Now they that died in the plague were fourteen thousand and
seven hundred, beside them that died about the matter of Korah.

16:50 And Aaron returned unto Moses unto the door of the tabernacle of
the congregation: and the plague was stayed.

17:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 17:2 Speak unto the
children of Israel, and take of every one of them a rod according to
the house of their fathers, of all their princes according to the
house of their fathers twelve rods: write thou every man's name upon
his rod.

17:3 And thou shalt write Aaron's name upon the rod of Levi: for one
rod shall be for the head of the house of their fathers.

17:4 And thou shalt lay them up in the tabernacle of the congregation
before the testimony, where I will meet with you.

17:5 And it shall come to pass, that the man's rod, whom I shall
choose, shall blossom: and I will make to cease from me the murmurings
of the children of Israel, whereby they murmur against you.

17:6 And Moses spake unto the children of Israel, and every one of
their princes gave him a rod apiece, for each prince one, according to
their fathers' houses, even twelve rods: and the rod of Aaron was
among their rods.

17:7 And Moses laid up the rods before the LORD in the tabernacle of
witness.

17:8 And it came to pass, that on the morrow Moses went into the
tabernacle of witness; and, behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of
Levi was budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and
yielded almonds.

17:9 And Moses brought out all the rods from before the LORD unto all
the children of Israel: and they looked, and took every man his rod.

17:10 And the LORD said unto Moses, Bring Aaron's rod again before the
testimony, to be kept for a token against the rebels; and thou shalt
quite take away their murmurings from me, that they die not.

17:11 And Moses did so: as the LORD commanded him, so did he.

17:12 And the children of Israel spake unto Moses, saying, Behold, we
die, we perish, we all perish.

17:13 Whosoever cometh any thing near unto the tabernacle of the LORD
shall die: shall we be consumed with dying?  18:1 And the LORD said
unto Aaron, Thou and thy sons and thy father's house with thee shall
bear the iniquity of the sanctuary: and thou and thy sons with thee
shall bear the iniquity of your priesthood.

18:2 And thy brethren also of the tribe of Levi, the tribe of thy
father, bring thou with thee, that they may be joined unto thee, and
minister unto thee: but thou and thy sons with thee shall minister
before the tabernacle of witness.

18:3 And they shall keep thy charge, and the charge of all the
tabernacle: only they shall not come nigh the vessels of the sanctuary
and the altar, that neither they, nor ye also, die.

18:4 And they shall be joined unto thee, and keep the charge of the
tabernacle of the congregation, for all the service of the tabernacle:
and a stranger shall not come nigh unto you.

18:5 And ye shall keep the charge of the sanctuary, and the charge of
the altar: that there be no wrath any more upon the children of
Israel.

18:6 And I, behold, I have taken your brethren the Levites from among
the children of Israel: to you they are given as a gift for the LORD,
to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation.

18:7 Therefore thou and thy sons with thee shall keep your priest's
office for everything of the altar, and within the vail; and ye shall
serve: I have given your priest's office unto you as a service of
gift: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death.

18:8 And the LORD spake unto Aaron, Behold, I also have given thee the
charge of mine heave offerings of all the hallowed things of the
children of Israel; unto thee have I given them by reason of the
anointing, and to thy sons, by an ordinance for ever.

18:9 This shall be thine of the most holy things, reserved from the
fire: every oblation of theirs, every meat offering of theirs, and
every sin offering of theirs, and every trespass offering of theirs
which they shall render unto me, shall be most holy for thee and for
thy sons.

18:10 In the most holy place shalt thou eat it; every male shall eat
it: it shall be holy unto thee.

18:11 And this is thine; the heave offering of their gift, with all
the wave offerings of the children of Israel: I have given them unto
thee, and to thy sons and to thy daughters with thee, by a statute for
ever: every one that is clean in thy house shall eat of it.

18:12 All the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine, and of
the wheat, the firstfruits of them which they shall offer unto the
LORD, them have I given thee.

18:13 And whatsoever is first ripe in the land, which they shall bring
unto the LORD, shall be thine; every one that is clean in thine house
shall eat of it.

18:14 Every thing devoted in Israel shall be thine.

18:15 Every thing that openeth the matrix in all flesh, which they
bring unto the LORD, whether it be of men or beasts, shall be thine:
nevertheless the firstborn of man shalt thou surely redeem, and the
firstling of unclean beasts shalt thou redeem.

18:16 And those that are to be redeemed from a month old shalt thou
redeem, according to thine estimation, for the money of five shekels,
after the shekel of the sanctuary, which is twenty gerahs.

18:17 But the firstling of a cow, or the firstling of a sheep, or the
firstling of a goat, thou shalt not redeem; they are holy: thou shalt
sprinkle their blood upon the altar, and shalt burn their fat for an
offering made by fire, for a sweet savour unto the LORD.

18:18 And the flesh of them shall be thine, as the wave breast and as
the right shoulder are thine.

18:19 All the heave offerings of the holy things, which the children
of Israel offer unto the LORD, have I given thee, and thy sons and thy
daughters with thee, by a statute for ever: it is a covenant of salt
for ever before the LORD unto thee and to thy seed with thee.

18:20 And the LORD spake unto Aaron, Thou shalt have no inheritance in
their land, neither shalt thou have any part among them: I am thy part
and thine inheritance among the children of Israel.

18:21 And, behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in
Israel for an inheritance, for their service which they serve, even
the service of the tabernacle of the congregation.

18:22 Neither must the children of Israel henceforth come nigh the
tabernacle of the congregation, lest they bear sin, and die.

18:23 But the Levites shall do the service of the tabernacle of the
congregation, and they shall bear their iniquity: it shall be a
statute for ever throughout your generations, that among the children
of Israel they have no inheritance.

18:24 But the tithes of the children of Israel, which they offer as an
heave offering unto the LORD, I have given to the Levites to inherit:
therefore I have said unto them, Among the children of Israel they
shall have no inheritance.

18:25 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 18:26 Thus speak unto the
Levites, and say unto them, When ye take of the children of Israel the
tithes which I have given you from them for your inheritance, then ye
shall offer up an heave offering of it for the LORD, even a tenth part
of the tithe.

18:27 And this your heave offering shall be reckoned unto you, as
though it were the corn of the threshingfloor, and as the fulness of
the winepress.

18:28 Thus ye also shall offer an heave offering unto the LORD of all
your tithes, which ye receive of the children of Israel; and ye shall
give thereof the LORD's heave offering to Aaron the priest.

18:29 Out of all your gifts ye shall offer every heave offering of the
LORD, of all the best thereof, even the hallowed part thereof out of
it.

18:30 Therefore thou shalt say unto them, When ye have heaved the best
thereof from it, then it shall be counted unto the Levites as the
increase of the threshingfloor, and as the increase of the winepress.

18:31 And ye shall eat it in every place, ye and your households: for
it is your reward for your service in the tabernacle of the
congregation.

18:32 And ye shall bear no sin by reason of it, when ye have heaved
from it the best of it: neither shall ye pollute the holy things of
the children of Israel, lest ye die.

19:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, 19:2 This
is the ordinance of the law which the LORD hath commanded, saying,
Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer
without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke:
19:3 And ye shall give her unto Eleazar the priest, that he may bring
her forth without the camp, and one shall slay her before his face:
19:4 And Eleazar the priest shall take of her blood with his finger,
and sprinkle of her blood directly before the tabernacle of the
congregation seven times: 19:5 And one shall burn the heifer in his
sight; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall he
burn: 19:6 And the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and
scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer.

19:7 Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his
flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the
priest shall be unclean until the even.

19:8 And he that burneth her shall wash his clothes in water, and
bathe his flesh in water, and shall be unclean until the even.

19:9 And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer,
and lay them up without the camp in a clean place, and it shall be
kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of
separation: it is a purification for sin.

19:10 And he that gathereth the ashes of the heifer shall wash his
clothes, and be unclean until the even: and it shall be unto the
children of Israel, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among them,
for a statute for ever.

19:11 He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven
days.

19:12 He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the
seventh day he shall be clean: but if he purify not himself the third
day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean.

19:13 Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and
purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of the LORD; and that
soul shall be cut off from Israel: because the water of separation was
not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is yet
upon him.

19:14 This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent: all that come into
the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days.

19:15 And every open vessel, which hath no covering bound upon it, is
unclean.

19:16 And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the
open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be
unclean seven days.

19:17 And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the
burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be put
thereto in a vessel: 19:18 And a clean person shall take hyssop, and
dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the
vessels, and upon the persons that were there, and upon him that
touched a bone, or one slain, or one dead, or a grave: 19:19 And the
clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on
the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and
wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at
even.

19:20 But the man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself,
that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he
hath defiled the sanctuary of the LORD: the water of separation hath
not been sprinkled upon him; he is unclean.

19:21 And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them, that he that
sprinkleth the water of separation shall wash his clothes; and he that
toucheth the water of separation shall be unclean until even.

19:22 And whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean; and
the soul that toucheth it shall be unclean until even.

20:1 Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation,
into the desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in
Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there.

20:2 And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered
themselves together against Moses and against Aaron.

20:3 And the people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, Would God
that we had died when our brethren died before the LORD!  20:4 And why
have ye brought up the congregation of the LORD into this wilderness,
that we and our cattle should die there?  20:5 And wherefore have ye
made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place?
it is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates;
neither is there any water to drink.

20:6 And Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly unto
the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they fell upon
their faces: and the glory of the LORD appeared unto them.

20:7 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 20:8 Take the rod, and
gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and
speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his
water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so
thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink.

20:9 And Moses took the rod from before the LORD, as he commanded him.

20:10 And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before
the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch
you water out of this rock?  20:11 And Moses lifted up his hand, and
with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out
abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also.

20:12 And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me
not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore
ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given
them.

20:13 This is the water of Meribah; because the children of Israel
strove with the LORD, and he was sanctified in them.

20:14 And Moses sent messengers from Kadesh unto the king of Edom,
Thus saith thy brother Israel, Thou knowest all the travail that hath
befallen us: 20:15 How our fathers went down into Egypt, and we have
dwelt in Egypt a long time; and the Egyptians vexed us, and our
fathers: 20:16 And when we cried unto the LORD, he heard our voice,
and sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt: and,
behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of thy border: 20:17
Let us pass, I pray thee, through thy country: we will not pass
through the fields, or through the vineyards, neither will we drink of
the water of the wells: we will go by the king's high way, we will not
turn to the right hand nor to the left, until we have passed thy
borders.

20:18 And Edom said unto him, Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come
out against thee with the sword.

20:19 And the children of Israel said unto him, We will go by the high
way: and if I and my cattle drink of thy water, then I will pay for
it: I will only, without doing anything else, go through on my feet.

20:20 And he said, Thou shalt not go through. And Edom came out
against him with much people, and with a strong hand.

20:21 Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border:
wherefore Israel turned away from him.

20:22 And the children of Israel, even the whole congregation,
journeyed from Kadesh, and came unto mount Hor.

20:23 And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in mount Hor, by the
coast of the land of Edom, saying, 20:24 Aaron shall be gathered unto
his people: for he shall not enter into the land which I have given
unto the children of Israel, because ye rebelled against my word at
the water of Meribah.

20:25 Take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and bring them up unto mount
Hor: 20:26 And strip Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar
his son: and Aaron shall be gathered unto his people, and shall die
there.

20:27 And Moses did as the LORD commanded: and they went up into mount
Hor in the sight of all the congregation.

20:28 And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them upon
Eleazar his son; and Aaron died there in the top of the mount: and
Moses and Eleazar came down from the mount.

20:29 And when all the congregation saw that Aaron was dead, they
mourned for Aaron thirty days, even all the house of Israel.

21:1 And when king Arad the Canaanite, which dwelt in the south, heard
tell that Israel came by the way of the spies; then he fought against
Israel, and took some of them prisoners.

21:2 And Israel vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou wilt
indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy
their cities.

21:3 And the LORD hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up
the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities: and
he called the name of the place Hormah.

21:4 And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to
compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much
discouraged because of the way.

21:5 And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore
have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there
is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this
light bread.

21:6 And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit
the people; and much people of Israel died.

21:7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for
we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD,
that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the
people.

21:8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set
it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is
bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.

21:9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it
came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the
serpent of brass, he lived.

21:10 And the children of Israel set forward, and pitched in Oboth.

21:11 And they journeyed from Oboth, and pitched at Ijeabarim, in the
wilderness which is before Moab, toward the sunrising.

21:12 From thence they removed, and pitched in the valley of Zared.

21:13 From thence they removed, and pitched on the other side of
Arnon, which is in the wilderness that cometh out of the coasts of the
Amorites: for Arnon is the border of Moab, between Moab and the
Amorites.

21:14 Wherefore it is said in the book of the wars of the LORD, What
he did in the Red sea, and in the brooks of Arnon, 21:15 And at the
stream of the brooks that goeth down to the dwelling of Ar, and lieth
upon the border of Moab.

21:16 And from thence they went to Beer: that is the well whereof the
LORD spake unto Moses, Gather the people together, and I will give
them water.

21:17 Then Israel sang this song, Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it:
21:18 The princes digged the well, the nobles of the people digged it,
by the direction of the lawgiver, with their staves. And from the
wilderness they went to Mattanah: 21:19 And from Mattanah to Nahaliel:
and from Nahaliel to Bamoth: 21:20 And from Bamoth in the valley, that
is in the country of Moab, to the top of Pisgah, which looketh toward
Jeshimon.

21:21 And Israel sent messengers unto Sihon king of the Amorites,
saying, 21:22 Let me pass through thy land: we will not turn into the
fields, or into the vineyards; we will not drink of the waters of the
well: but we will go along by the king's high way, until we be past
thy borders.

21:23 And Sihon would not suffer Israel to pass through his border:
but Sihon gathered all his people together, and went out against
Israel into the wilderness: and he came to Jahaz, and fought against
Israel.

21:24 And Israel smote him with the edge of the sword, and possessed
his land from Arnon unto Jabbok, even unto the children of Ammon: for
the border of the children of Ammon was strong.

21:25 And Israel took all these cities: and Israel dwelt in all the
cities of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all the villages thereof.

21:26 For Heshbon was the city of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who
had fought against the former king of Moab, and taken all his land out
of his hand, even unto Arnon.

21:27 Wherefore they that speak in proverbs say, Come into Heshbon,
let the city of Sihon be built and prepared: 21:28 For there is a fire
gone out of Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon: it hath consumed
Ar of Moab, and the lords of the high places of Arnon.

21:29 Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh: he hath
given his sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity unto
Sihon king of the Amorites.

21:30 We have shot at them; Heshbon is perished even unto Dibon, and
we have laid them waste even unto Nophah, which reacheth unto Medeba.

21:31 Thus Israel dwelt in the land of the Amorites.

21:32 And Moses sent to spy out Jaazer, and they took the villages
thereof, and drove out the Amorites that were there.

21:33 And they turned and went up by the way of Bashan: and Og the
king of Bashan went out against them, he, and all his people, to the
battle at Edrei.

21:34 And the LORD said unto Moses, Fear him not: for I have delivered
him into thy hand, and all his people, and his land; and thou shalt do
to him as thou didst unto Sihon king of the Amorites, which dwelt at
Heshbon.

21:35 So they smote him, and his sons, and all his people, until there
was none left him alive: and they possessed his land.

22:1 And the children of Israel set forward, and pitched in the plains
of Moab on this side Jordan by Jericho.

22:2 And Balak the son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the
Amorites.

22:3 And Moab was sore afraid of the people, because they were many:
and Moab was distressed because of the children of Israel.

22:4 And Moab said unto the elders of Midian, Now shall this company
lick up all that are round about us, as the ox licketh up the grass of
the field.

And Balak the son of Zippor was king of the Moabites at that time.

22:5 He sent messengers therefore unto Balaam the son of Beor to
Pethor, which is by the river of the land of the children of his
people, to call him, saying, Behold, there is a people come out from
Egypt: behold, they cover the face of the earth, and they abide over
against me: 22:6 Come now therefore, I pray thee, curse me this
people; for they are too mighty for me: peradventure I shall prevail,
that we may smite them, and that I may drive them out of the land: for
I wot that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest
is cursed.

22:7 And the elders of Moab and the elders of Midian departed with the
rewards of divination in their hand; and they came unto Balaam, and
spake unto him the words of Balak.

22:8 And he said unto them, Lodge here this night, and I will bring
you word again, as the LORD shall speak unto me: and the princes of
Moab abode with Balaam.

22:9 And God came unto Balaam, and said, What men are these with thee?
22:10 And Balaam said unto God, Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab,
hath sent unto me, saying, 22:11 Behold, there is a people come out of
Egypt, which covereth the face of the earth: come now, curse me them;
peradventure I shall be able to overcome them, and drive them out.

22:12 And God said unto Balaam, Thou shalt not go with them; thou
shalt not curse the people: for they are blessed.

22:13 And Balaam rose up in the morning, and said unto the princes of
Balak, Get you into your land: for the LORD refuseth to give me leave
to go with you.

22:14 And the princes of Moab rose up, and they went unto Balak, and
said, Balaam refuseth to come with us.

22:15 And Balak sent yet again princes, more, and more honourable than
they.

22:16 And they came to Balaam, and said to him, Thus saith Balak the
son of Zippor, Let nothing, I pray thee, hinder thee from coming unto
me: 22:17 For I will promote thee unto very great honour, and I will
do whatsoever thou sayest unto me: come therefore, I pray thee, curse
me this people.

22:18 And Balaam answered and said unto the servants of Balak, If
Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go
beyond the word of the LORD my God, to do less or more.

22:19 Now therefore, I pray you, tarry ye also here this night, that I
may know what the LORD will say unto me more.

22:20 And God came unto Balaam at night, and said unto him, If the men
come to call thee, rise up, and go with them; but yet the word which I
shall say unto thee, that shalt thou do.

22:21 And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went
with the princes of Moab.

22:22 And God's anger was kindled because he went: and the angel of
the LORD stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was
riding upon his ass, and his two servants were with him.

22:23 And the ass saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, and
his sword drawn in his hand: and the ass turned aside out of the way,
and went into the field: and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her into
the way.

22:24 But the angel of the LORD stood in a path of the vineyards, a
wall being on this side, and a wall on that side.

22:25 And when the ass saw the angel of the LORD, she thrust herself
unto the wall, and crushed Balaam's foot against the wall: and he
smote her again.

22:26 And the angel of the LORD went further, and stood in a narrow
place, where was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the
left.

22:27 And when the ass saw the angel of the LORD, she fell down under
Balaam: and Balaam's anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a
staff.

22:28 And the LORD opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto
Balaam, What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these
three times?  22:29 And Balaam said unto the ass, Because thou hast
mocked me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I
kill thee.

22:30 And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which
thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? was I ever wont
to do so unto thee? And he said, Nay.

22:31 Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of
the LORD standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and he
bowed down his head, and fell flat on his face.

22:32 And the angel of the LORD said unto him, Wherefore hast thou
smitten thine ass these three times? behold, I went out to withstand
thee, because thy way is perverse before me: 22:33 And the ass saw me,
and turned from me these three times: unless she had turned from me,
surely now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive.

22:34 And Balaam said unto the angel of the LORD, I have sinned; for I
knew not that thou stoodest in the way against me: now therefore, if
it displease thee, I will get me back again.

22:35 And the angel of the LORD said unto Balaam, Go with the men: but
only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that thou shalt speak. So
Balaam went with the princes of Balak.

22:36 And when Balak heard that Balaam was come, he went out to meet
him unto a city of Moab, which is in the border of Arnon, which is in
the utmost coast.

22:37 And Balak said unto Balaam, Did I not earnestly send unto thee
to call thee? wherefore camest thou not unto me? am I not able indeed
to promote thee to honour?  22:38 And Balaam said unto Balak, Lo, I am
come unto thee: have I now any power at all to say any thing? the word
that God putteth in my mouth, that shall I speak.

22:39 And Balaam went with Balak, and they came unto Kirjathhuzoth.

22:40 And Balak offered oxen and sheep, and sent to Balaam, and to the
princes that were with him.

22:41 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Balak took Balaam, and
brought him up into the high places of Baal, that thence he might see
the utmost part of the people.

23:1 And Balaam said unto Balak, Build me here seven altars, and
prepare me here seven oxen and seven rams.

23:2 And Balak did as Balaam had spoken; and Balak and Balaam offered
on every altar a bullock and a ram.

23:3 And Balaam said unto Balak, Stand by thy burnt offering, and I
will go: peradventure the LORD will come to meet me: and whatsoever he
sheweth me I will tell thee. And he went to an high place.

23:4 And God met Balaam: and he said unto him, I have prepared seven
altars, and I have offered upon every altar a bullock and a ram.

23:5 And the LORD put a word in Balaam's mouth, and said, Return unto
Balak, and thus thou shalt speak.

23:6 And he returned unto him, and, lo, he stood by his burnt
sacrifice, he, and all the princes of Moab.

23:7 And he took up his parable, and said, Balak the king of Moab hath
brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the east, saying, Come,
curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel.

23:8 How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy,
whom the LORD hath not defied?  23:9 For from the top of the rocks I
see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall dwell
alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.

23:10 Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth
part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last
end be like his!  23:11 And Balak said unto Balaam, What hast thou
done unto me? I took thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou
hast blessed them altogether.

23:12 And he answered and said, Must I not take heed to speak that
which the LORD hath put in my mouth?  23:13 And Balak said unto him,
Come, I pray thee, with me unto another place, from whence thou mayest
see them: thou shalt see but the utmost part of them, and shalt not
see them all: and curse me them from thence.

23:14 And he brought him into the field of Zophim, to the top of
Pisgah, and built seven altars, and offered a bullock and a ram on
every altar.

23:15 And he said unto Balak, Stand here by thy burnt offering, while
I meet the LORD yonder.

23:16 And the LORD met Balaam, and put a word in his mouth, and said,
Go again unto Balak, and say thus.

23:17 And when he came to him, behold, he stood by his burnt offering,
and the princes of Moab with him. And Balak said unto him, What hath
the LORD spoken?  23:18 And he took up his parable, and said, Rise up,
Balak, and hear; hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor: 23:19 God is not
a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should
repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and
shall he not make it good?  23:20 Behold, I have received commandment
to bless: and he hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it.

23:21 He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen
perverseness in Israel: the LORD his God is with him, and the shout of
a king is among them.

23:22 God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength
of an unicorn.

23:23 Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there
any divination against Israel: according to this time it shall be said
of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!  23:24 Behold, the
people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young
lion: he shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drink the
blood of the slain.

23:25 And Balak said unto Balaam, Neither curse them at all, nor bless
them at all.

23:26 But Balaam answered and said unto Balak, Told not I thee,
saying, All that the LORD speaketh, that I must do?  23:27 And Balak
said unto Balaam, Come, I pray thee, I will bring thee unto another
place; peradventure it will please God that thou mayest curse me them
from thence.

23:28 And Balak brought Balaam unto the top of Peor, that looketh
toward Jeshimon.

23:29 And Balaam said unto Balak, Build me here seven altars, and
prepare me here seven bullocks and seven rams.

23:30 And Balak did as Balaam had said, and offered a bullock and a
ram on every altar.

24:1 And when Balaam saw that it pleased the LORD to bless Israel, he
went not, as at other times, to seek for enchantments, but he set his
face toward the wilderness.

24:2 And Balaam lifted up his eyes, and he saw Israel abiding in his
tents according to their tribes; and the spirit of God came upon him.

24:3 And he took up his parable, and said, Balaam the son of Beor hath
said, and the man whose eyes are open hath said: 24:4 He hath said,
which heard the words of God, which saw the vision of the Almighty,
falling into a trance, but having his eyes open: 24:5 How goodly are
thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!  24:6 As the
valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river's side, as the
trees of lign aloes which the LORD hath planted, and as cedar trees
beside the waters.

24:7 He shall pour the water out of his buckets, and his seed shall be
in many waters, and his king shall be higher than Agag, and his
kingdom shall be exalted.

24:8 God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the
strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and
shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows.

24:9 He couched, he lay down as a lion, and as a great lion: who shall
stir him up? Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that
curseth thee.

24:10 And Balak's anger was kindled against Balaam, and he smote his
hands together: and Balak said unto Balaam, I called thee to curse
mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast altogether blessed them these
three times.

24:11 Therefore now flee thou to thy place: I thought to promote thee
unto great honour; but, lo, the LORD hath kept thee back from honour.

24:12 And Balaam said unto Balak, Spake I not also to thy messengers
which thou sentest unto me, saying, 24:13 If Balak would give me his
house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the commandment of
the LORD, to do either good or bad of mine own mind; but what the LORD
saith, that will I speak?  24:14 And now, behold, I go unto my people:
come therefore, and I will advertise thee what this people shall do to
thy people in the latter days.

24:15 And he took up his parable, and said, Balaam the son of Beor
hath said, and the man whose eyes are open hath said: 24:16 He hath
said, which heard the words of God, and knew the knowledge of the most
High, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but
having his eyes open: 24:17 I shall see him, but not now: I shall
behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a
Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab,
and destroy all the children of Sheth.

24:18 And Edom shall be a possession, Seir also shall be a possession
for his enemies; and Israel shall do valiantly.

24:19 Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion, and shall
destroy him that remaineth of the city.

24:20 And when he looked on Amalek, he took up his parable, and said,
Amalek was the first of the nations; but his latter end shall be that
he perish for ever.

24:21 And he looked on the Kenites, and took up his parable, and said,
Strong is thy dwellingplace, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock.

24:22 Nevertheless the Kenite shall be wasted, until Asshur shall
carry thee away captive.

24:23 And he took up his parable, and said, Alas, who shall live when
God doeth this!  24:24 And ships shall come from the coast of Chittim,
and shall afflict Asshur, and shall afflict Eber, and he also shall
perish for ever.

24:25 And Balaam rose up, and went and returned to his place: and
Balak also went his way.

25:1 And Israel abode in Shittim, and the people began to commit
whoredom with the daughters of Moab.

25:2 And they called the people unto the sacrifices of their gods: and
the people did eat, and bowed down to their gods.

25:3 And Israel joined himself unto Baalpeor: and the anger of the
LORD was kindled against Israel.

25:4 And the LORD said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people,
and hang them up before the LORD against the sun, that the fierce
anger of the LORD may be turned away from Israel.

25:5 And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his
men that were joined unto Baalpeor.

25:6 And, behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought unto
his brethren a Midianitish woman in the sight of Moses, and in the
sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were
weeping before the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

25:7 And when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the
priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation, and took a
javelin in his hand; 25:8 And he went after the man of Israel into the
tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the
woman through her belly. So the plague was stayed from the children of
Israel.

25:9 And those that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand.

25:10 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 25:11 Phinehas, the son
of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, hath turned my wrath away
from the children of Israel, while he was zealous for my sake among
them, that I consumed not the children of Israel in my jealousy.

25:12 Wherefore say, Behold, I give unto him my covenant of peace:
25:13 And he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant
of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and
made an atonement for the children of Israel.

25:14 Now the name of the Israelite that was slain, even that was
slain with the Midianitish woman, was Zimri, the son of Salu, a prince
of a chief house among the Simeonites.

25:15 And the name of the Midianitish woman that was slain was Cozbi,
the daughter of Zur; he was head over a people, and of a chief house
in Midian.

25:16 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 25:17 Vex the Midianites,
and smite them: 25:18 For they vex you with their wiles, wherewith
they have beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of
Cozbi, the daughter of a prince of Midian, their sister, which was
slain in the day of the plague for Peor's sake.

26:1 And it came to pass after the plague, that the LORD spake unto
Moses and unto Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest, saying, 26:2 Take
the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, from twenty
years old and upward, throughout their fathers' house, all that are
able to go to war in Israel.

26:3 And Moses and Eleazar the priest spake with them in the plains of
Moab by Jordan near Jericho, saying, 26:4 Take the sum of the people,
from twenty years old and upward; as the LORD commanded Moses and the
children of Israel, which went forth out of the land of Egypt.

26:5 Reuben, the eldest son of Israel: the children of Reuben; Hanoch,
of whom cometh the family of the Hanochites: of Pallu, the family of
the Palluites: 26:6 Of Hezron, the family of the Hezronites: of Carmi,
the family of the Carmites.

26:7 These are the families of the Reubenites: and they that were
numbered of them were forty and three thousand and seven hundred and
thirty.

26:8 And the sons of Pallu; Eliab.

26:9 And the sons of Eliab; Nemuel, and Dathan, and Abiram. This is
that Dathan and Abiram, which were famous in the congregation, who
strove against Moses and against Aaron in the company of Korah, when
they strove against the LORD: 26:10 And the earth opened her mouth,
and swallowed them up together with Korah, when that company died,
what time the fire devoured two hundred and fifty men: and they became
a sign.

26:11 Notwithstanding the children of Korah died not.

26:12 The sons of Simeon after their families: of Nemuel, the family
of the Nemuelites: of Jamin, the family of the Jaminites: of Jachin,
the family of the Jachinites: 26:13 Of Zerah, the family of the
Zarhites: of Shaul, the family of the Shaulites.

26:14 These are the families of the Simeonites, twenty and two
thousand and two hundred.

26:15 The children of Gad after their families: of Zephon, the family
of the Zephonites: of Haggi, the family of the Haggites: of Shuni, the
family of the Shunites: 26:16 Of Ozni, the family of the Oznites: of
Eri, the family of the Erites: 26:17 Of Arod, the family of the
Arodites: of Areli, the family of the Arelites.

26:18 These are the families of the children of Gad according to those
that were numbered of them, forty thousand and five hundred.

26:19 The sons of Judah were Er and Onan: and Er and Onan died in the
land of Canaan.

26:20 And the sons of Judah after their families were; of Shelah, the
family of the Shelanites: of Pharez, the family of the Pharzites: of
Zerah, the family of the Zarhites.

26:21 And the sons of Pharez were; of Hezron, the family of the
Hezronites: of Hamul, the family of the Hamulites.

26:22 These are the families of Judah according to those that were
numbered of them, threescore and sixteen thousand and five hundred.

26:23 Of the sons of Issachar after their families: of Tola, the
family of the Tolaites: of Pua, the family of the Punites: 26:24 Of
Jashub, the family of the Jashubites: of Shimron, the family of the
Shimronites.

26:25 These are the families of Issachar according to those that were
numbered of them, threescore and four thousand and three hundred.

26:26 Of the sons of Zebulun after their families: of Sered, the
family of the Sardites: of Elon, the family of the Elonites: of
Jahleel, the family of the Jahleelites.

26:27 These are the families of the Zebulunites according to those
that were numbered of them, threescore thousand and five hundred.

26:28 The sons of Joseph after their families were Manasseh and
Ephraim.

26:29 Of the sons of Manasseh: of Machir, the family of the
Machirites: and Machir begat Gilead: of Gilead come the family of the
Gileadites.

26:30 These are the sons of Gilead: of Jeezer, the family of the
Jeezerites: of Helek, the family of the Helekites: 26:31 And of
Asriel, the family of the Asrielites: and of Shechem, the family of
the Shechemites: 26:32 And of Shemida, the family of the Shemidaites:
and of Hepher, the family of the Hepherites.

26:33 And Zelophehad the son of Hepher had no sons, but daughters: and
the names of the daughters of Zelophehad were Mahlah, and Noah,
Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.

26:34 These are the families of Manasseh, and those that were numbered
of them, fifty and two thousand and seven hundred.

26:35 These are the sons of Ephraim after their families: of
Shuthelah, the family of the Shuthalhites: of Becher, the family of
the Bachrites: of Tahan, the family of the Tahanites.

26:36 And these are the sons of Shuthelah: of Eran, the family of the
Eranites.

26:37 These are the families of the sons of Ephraim according to those
that were numbered of them, thirty and two thousand and five hundred.
These are the sons of Joseph after their families.

26:38 The sons of Benjamin after their families: of Bela, the family
of the Belaites: of Ashbel, the family of the Ashbelites: of Ahiram,
the family of the Ahiramites: 26:39 Of Shupham, the family of the
Shuphamites: of Hupham, the family of the Huphamites.

26:40 And the sons of Bela were Ard and Naaman: of Ard, the family of
the Ardites: and of Naaman, the family of the Naamites.

26:41 These are the sons of Benjamin after their families: and they
that were numbered of them were forty and five thousand and six
hundred.

26:42 These are the sons of Dan after their families: of Shuham, the
family of the Shuhamites. These are the families of Dan after their
families.

26:43 All the families of the Shuhamites, according to those that were
numbered of them, were threescore and four thousand and four hundred.

26:44 Of the children of Asher after their families: of Jimna, the
family of the Jimnites: of Jesui, the family of the Jesuites: of
Beriah, the family of the Beriites.

26:45 Of the sons of Beriah: of Heber, the family of the Heberites: of
Malchiel, the family of the Malchielites.

26:46 And the name of the daughter of Asher was Sarah.

26:47 These are the families of the sons of Asher according to those
that were numbered of them; who were fifty and three thousand and four
hundred.

26:48 Of the sons of Naphtali after their families: of Jahzeel, the
family of the Jahzeelites: of Guni, the family of the Gunites: 26:49
Of Jezer, the family of the Jezerites: of Shillem, the family of the
Shillemites.

26:50 These are the families of Naphtali according to their families:
and they that were numbered of them were forty and five thousand and
four hundred.

26:51 These were the numbered of the children of Israel, six hundred
thousand and a thousand seven hundred and thirty.

26:52 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 26:53 Unto these the land
shall be divided for an inheritance according to the number of names.

26:54 To many thou shalt give the more inheritance, and to few thou
shalt give the less inheritance: to every one shall his inheritance be
given according to those that were numbered of him.

26:55 Notwithstanding the land shall be divided by lot: according to
the names of the tribes of their fathers they shall inherit.

26:56 According to the lot shall the possession thereof be divided
between many and few.

26:57 And these are they that were numbered of the Levites after their
families: of Gershon, the family of the Gershonites: of Kohath, the
family of the Kohathites: of Merari, the family of the Merarites.

26:58 These are the families of the Levites: the family of the
Libnites, the family of the Hebronites, the family of the Mahlites,
the family of the Mushites, the family of the Korathites. And Kohath
begat Amram.

26:59 And the name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi,
whom her mother bare to Levi in Egypt: and she bare unto Amram Aaron
and Moses, and Miriam their sister.

26:60 And unto Aaron was born Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.

26:61 And Nadab and Abihu died, when they offered strange fire before
the LORD.

26:62 And those that were numbered of them were twenty and three
thousand, all males from a month old and upward: for they were not
numbered among the children of Israel, because there was no
inheritance given them among the children of Israel.

26:63 These are they that were numbered by Moses and Eleazar the
priest, who numbered the children of Israel in the plains of Moab by
Jordan near Jericho.

26:64 But among these there was not a man of them whom Moses and Aaron
the priest numbered, when they numbered the children of Israel in the
wilderness of Sinai.

26:65 For the LORD had said of them, They shall surely die in the
wilderness. And there was not left a man of them, save Caleb the son
of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.

27:1 Then came the daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son
of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of
Manasseh the son of Joseph: and these are the names of his daughters;
Mahlah, Noah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Tirzah.

27:2 And they stood before Moses, and before Eleazar the priest, and
before the princes and all the congregation, by the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation, saying, 27:3 Our father died in the
wilderness, and he was not in the company of them that gathered
themselves together against the LORD in the company of Korah; but died
in his own sin, and had no sons.

27:4 Why should the name of our father be done away from among his
family, because he hath no son? Give unto us therefore a possession
among the brethren of our father.

27:5 And Moses brought their cause before the LORD.

27:6 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 27:7 The daughters of
Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an
inheritance among their father's brethren; and thou shalt cause the
inheritance of their father to pass unto them.

27:8 And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a
man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass
unto his daughter.

27:9 And if he have no daughter, then ye shall give his inheritance
unto his brethren.

27:10 And if he have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance
unto his father's brethren.

27:11 And if his father have no brethren, then ye shall give his
inheritance unto his kinsman that is next to him of his family, and he
shall possess it: and it shall be unto the children of Israel a
statute of judgment, as the LORD commanded Moses.

27:12 And the LORD said unto Moses, Get thee up into this mount
Abarim, and see the land which I have given unto the children of
Israel.

27:13 And when thou hast seen it, thou also shalt be gathered unto thy
people, as Aaron thy brother was gathered.

27:14 For ye rebelled against my commandment in the desert of Zin, in
the strife of the congregation, to sanctify me at the water before
their eyes: that is the water of Meribah in Kadesh in the wilderness
of Zin.

27:15 And Moses spake unto the LORD, saying, 27:16 Let the LORD, the
God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation,
27:17 Which may go out before them, and which may go in before them,
and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in; that the
congregation of the LORD be not as sheep which have no shepherd.

27:18 And the LORD said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a
man in whom is the spirit, and lay thine hand upon him; 27:19 And set
him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation; and
give him a charge in their sight.

27:20 And thou shalt put some of thine honour upon him, that all the
congregation of the children of Israel may be obedient.

27:21 And he shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall ask
counsel for him after the judgment of Urim before the LORD: at his
word shall they go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he,
and all the children of Israel with him, even all the congregation.

27:22 And Moses did as the LORD commanded him: and he took Joshua, and
set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation:
27:23 And he laid his hands upon him, and gave him a charge, as the
LORD commanded by the hand of Moses.

28:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 28:2 Command the children
of Israel, and say unto them, My offering, and my bread for my
sacrifices made by fire, for a sweet savour unto me, shall ye observe
to offer unto me in their due season.

28:3 And thou shalt say unto them, This is the offering made by fire
which ye shall offer unto the LORD; two lambs of the first year
without spot day by day, for a continual burnt offering.

28:4 The one lamb shalt thou offer in the morning, and the other lamb
shalt thou offer at even; 28:5 And a tenth part of an ephah of flour
for a meat offering, mingled with the fourth part of an hin of beaten
oil.

28:6 It is a continual burnt offering, which was ordained in mount
Sinai for a sweet savour, a sacrifice made by fire unto the LORD.

28:7 And the drink offering thereof shall be the fourth part of an hin
for the one lamb: in the holy place shalt thou cause the strong wine
to be poured unto the LORD for a drink offering.

28:8 And the other lamb shalt thou offer at even: as the meat offering
of the morning, and as the drink offering thereof, thou shalt offer
it, a sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD.

28:9 And on the sabbath day two lambs of the first year without spot,
and two tenth deals of flour for a meat offering, mingled with oil,
and the drink offering thereof: 28:10 This is the burnt offering of
every sabbath, beside the continual burnt offering, and his drink
offering.

28:11 And in the beginnings of your months ye shall offer a burnt
offering unto the LORD; two young bullocks, and one ram, seven lambs
of the first year without spot; 28:12 And three tenth deals of flour
for a meat offering, mingled with oil, for one bullock; and two tenth
deals of flour for a meat offering, mingled with oil, for one ram;
28:13 And a several tenth deal of flour mingled with oil for a meat
offering unto one lamb; for a burnt offering of a sweet savour, a
sacrifice made by fire unto the LORD.

28:14 And their drink offerings shall be half an hin of wine unto a
bullock, and the third part of an hin unto a ram, and a fourth part of
an hin unto a lamb: this is the burnt offering of every month
throughout the months of the year.

28:15 And one kid of the goats for a sin offering unto the LORD shall
be offered, beside the continual burnt offering, and his drink
offering.

28:16 And in the fourteenth day of the first month is the passover of
the LORD.

28:17 And in the fifteenth day of this month is the feast: seven days
shall unleavened bread be eaten.

28:18 In the first day shall be an holy convocation; ye shall do no
manner of servile work therein: 28:19 But ye shall offer a sacrifice
made by fire for a burnt offering unto the LORD; two young bullocks,
and one ram, and seven lambs of the first year: they shall be unto you
without blemish: 28:20 And their meat offering shall be of flour
mingled with oil: three tenth deals shall ye offer for a bullock, and
two tenth deals for a ram; 28:21 A several tenth deal shalt thou offer
for every lamb, throughout the seven lambs: 28:22 And one goat for a
sin offering, to make an atonement for you.

28:23 Ye shall offer these beside the burnt offering in the morning,
which is for a continual burnt offering.

28:24 After this manner ye shall offer daily, throughout the seven
days, the meat of the sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto
the LORD: it shall be offered beside the continual burnt offering, and
his drink offering.

28:25 And on the seventh day ye shall have an holy convocation; ye
shall do no servile work.

28:26 Also in the day of the firstfruits, when ye bring a new meat
offering unto the LORD, after your weeks be out, ye shall have an holy
convocation; ye shall do no servile work: 28:27 But ye shall offer the
burnt offering for a sweet savour unto the LORD; two young bullocks,
one ram, seven lambs of the first year; 28:28 And their meat offering
of flour mingled with oil, three tenth deals unto one bullock, two
tenth deals unto one ram, 28:29 A several tenth deal unto one lamb,
throughout the seven lambs; 28:30 And one kid of the goats, to make an
atonement for you.

28:31 Ye shall offer them beside the continual burnt offering, and his
meat offering, (they shall be unto you without blemish) and their
drink offerings.

29:1 And in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, ye shall
have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work: it is a day of
blowing the trumpets unto you.

29:2 And ye shall offer a burnt offering for a sweet savour unto the
LORD; one young bullock, one ram, and seven lambs of the first year
without blemish: 29:3 And their meat offering shall be of flour
mingled with oil, three tenth deals for a bullock, and two tenth deals
for a ram, 29:4 And one tenth deal for one lamb, throughout the seven
lambs: 29:5 And one kid of the goats for a sin offering, to make an
atonement for you: 29:6 Beside the burnt offering of the month, and
his meat offering, and the daily burnt offering, and his meat
offering, and their drink offerings, according unto their manner, for
a sweet savour, a sacrifice made by fire unto the LORD.

29:7 And ye shall have on the tenth day of this seventh month an holy
convocation; and ye shall afflict your souls: ye shall not do any work
therein: 29:8 But ye shall offer a burnt offering unto the LORD for a
sweet savour; one young bullock, one ram, and seven lambs of the first
year; they shall be unto you without blemish: 29:9 And their meat
offering shall be of flour mingled with oil, three tenth deals to a
bullock, and two tenth deals to one ram, 29:10 A several tenth deal
for one lamb, throughout the seven lambs: 29:11 One kid of the goats
for a sin offering; beside the sin offering of atonement, and the
continual burnt offering, and the meat offering of it, and their drink
offerings.

29:12 And on the fifteenth day of the seventh month ye shall have an
holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work, and ye shall keep a
feast unto the LORD seven days: 29:13 And ye shall offer a burnt
offering, a sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD;
thirteen young bullocks, two rams, and fourteen lambs of the first
year; they shall be without blemish: 29:14 And their meat offering
shall be of flour mingled with oil, three tenth deals unto every
bullock of the thirteen bullocks, two tenth deals to each ram of the
two rams, 29:15 And a several tenth deal to each lamb of the fourteen
lambs: 29:16 And one kid of the goats for a sin offering; beside the
continual burnt offering, his meat offering, and his drink offering.

29:17 And on the second day ye shall offer twelve young bullocks, two
rams, fourteen lambs of the first year without spot: 29:18 And their
meat offering and their drink offerings for the bullocks, for the
rams, and for the lambs, shall be according to their number, after the
manner: 29:19 And one kid of the goats for a sin offering; beside the
continual burnt offering, and the meat offering thereof, and their
drink offerings.

29:20 And on the third day eleven bullocks, two rams, fourteen lambs
of the first year without blemish; 29:21 And their meat offering and
their drink offerings for the bullocks, for the rams, and for the
lambs, shall be according to their number, after the manner: 29:22 And
one goat for a sin offering; beside the continual burnt offering, and
his meat offering, and his drink offering.

29:23 And on the fourth day ten bullocks, two rams, and fourteen lambs
of the first year without blemish: 29:24 Their meat offering and their
drink offerings for the bullocks, for the rams, and for the lambs,
shall be according to their number, after the manner: 29:25 And one
kid of the goats for a sin offering; beside the continual burnt
offering, his meat offering, and his drink offering.

29:26 And on the fifth day nine bullocks, two rams, and fourteen lambs
of the first year without spot: 29:27 And their meat offering and
their drink offerings for the bullocks, for the rams, and for the
lambs, shall be according to their number, after the manner: 29:28 And
one goat for a sin offering; beside the continual burnt offering, and
his meat offering, and his drink offering.

29:29 And on the sixth day eight bullocks, two rams, and fourteen
lambs of the first year without blemish: 29:30 And their meat offering
and their drink offerings for the bullocks, for the rams, and for the
lambs, shall be according to their number, after the manner: 29:31 And
one goat for a sin offering; beside the continual burnt offering, his
meat offering, and his drink offering.

29:32 And on the seventh day seven bullocks, two rams, and fourteen
lambs of the first year without blemish: 29:33 And their meat offering
and their drink offerings for the bullocks, for the rams, and for the
lambs, shall be according to their number, after the manner: 29:34 And
one goat for a sin offering; beside the continual burnt offering, his
meat offering, and his drink offering.

29:35 On the eighth day ye shall have a solemn assembly: ye shall do
no servile work therein: 29:36 But ye shall offer a burnt offering, a
sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD: one bullock,
one ram, seven lambs of the first year without blemish: 29:37 Their
meat offering and their drink offerings for the bullock, for the ram,
and for the lambs, shall be according to their number, after the
manner: 29:38 And one goat for a sin offering; beside the continual
burnt offering, and his meat offering, and his drink offering.

29:39 These things ye shall do unto the LORD in your set feasts,
beside your vows, and your freewill offerings, for your burnt
offerings, and for your meat offerings, and for your drink offerings,
and for your peace offerings.

29:40 And Moses told the children of Israel according to all that the
LORD commanded Moses.

30:1 And Moses spake unto the heads of the tribes concerning the
children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the LORD hath
commanded.

30:2 If a man vow a vow unto the LORD, or swear an oath to bind his
soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according
to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.

30:3 If a woman also vow a vow unto the LORD, and bind herself by a
bond, being in her father's house in her youth; 30:4 And her father
hear her vow, and her bond wherewith she hath bound her soul, and her
father shall hold his peace at her; then all her vows shall stand, and
every bond wherewith she hath bound her soul shall stand.

30:5 But if her father disallow her in the day that he heareth; not
any of her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her soul,
shall stand: and the LORD shall forgive her, because her father
disallowed her.

30:6 And if she had at all an husband, when she vowed, or uttered
ought out of her lips, wherewith she bound her soul; 30:7 And her
husband heard it, and held his peace at her in the day that he heard
it: then her vows shall stand, and her bonds wherewith she bound her
soul shall stand.

30:8 But if her husband disallowed her on the day that he heard it;
then he shall make her vow which she vowed, and that which she uttered
with her lips, wherewith she bound her soul, of none effect: and the
LORD shall forgive her.

30:9 But every vow of a widow, and of her that is divorced, wherewith
they have bound their souls, shall stand against her.

30:10 And if she vowed in her husband's house, or bound her soul by a
bond with an oath; 30:11 And her husband heard it, and held his peace
at her, and disallowed her not: then all her vows shall stand, and
every bond wherewith she bound her soul shall stand.

30:12 But if her husband hath utterly made them void on the day he
heard them; then whatsoever proceeded out of her lips concerning her
vows, or concerning the bond of her soul, shall not stand: her husband
hath made them void; and the LORD shall forgive her.

30:13 Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her
husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void.

30:14 But if her husband altogether hold his peace at her from day to
day; then he establisheth all her vows, or all her bonds, which are
upon her: he confirmeth them, because he held his peace at her in the
day that he heard them.

30:15 But if he shall any ways make them void after that he hath heard
them; then he shall bear her iniquity.

30:16 These are the statutes, which the LORD commanded Moses, between
a man and his wife, between the father and his daughter, being yet in
her youth in her father's house.

31:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 31:2 Avenge the children
of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy
people.

31:3 And Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm some of yourselves
unto the war, and let them go against the Midianites, and avenge the
LORD of Midian.

31:4 Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel,
shall ye send to the war.

31:5 So there were delivered out of the thousands of Israel, a
thousand of every tribe, twelve thousand armed for war.

31:6 And Moses sent them to the war, a thousand of every tribe, them
and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war, with the holy
instruments, and the trumpets to blow in his hand.

31:7 And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded
Moses; and they slew all the males.

31:8 And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that
were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five
kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.

31:9 And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives,
and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all
their flocks, and all their goods.

31:10 And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all
their goodly castles, with fire.

31:11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and
of beasts.

31:12 And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto
Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the
children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by
Jordan near Jericho.

31:13 And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the
congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp.

31:14 And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the
captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from
the battle.

31:15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
31:16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel
of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor,
and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.

31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill
every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

31:18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying
with him, keep alive for yourselves.

31:19 And do ye abide without the camp seven days: whosoever hath
killed any person, and whosoever hath touched any slain, purify both
yourselves and your captives on the third day, and on the seventh day.

31:20 And purify all your raiment, and all that is made of skins, and
all work of goats' hair, and all things made of wood.

31:21 And Eleazar the priest said unto the men of war which went to
the battle, This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD commanded
Moses; 31:22 Only the gold, and the silver, the brass, the iron, the
tin, and the lead, 31:23 Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall
make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it
shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth
not the fire ye shall make go through the water.

31:24 And ye shall wash your clothes on the seventh day, and ye shall
be clean, and afterward ye shall come into the camp.

31:25 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 31:26 Take the sum of the
prey that was taken, both of man and of beast, thou, and Eleazar the
priest, and the chief fathers of the congregation: 31:27 And divide
the prey into two parts; between them that took the war upon them, who
went out to battle, and between all the congregation: 31:28 And levy a
tribute unto the Lord of the men of war which went out to battle: one
soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of
the asses, and of the sheep: 31:29 Take it of their half, and give it
unto Eleazar the priest, for an heave offering of the LORD.

31:30 And of the children of Israel's half, thou shalt take one
portion of fifty, of the persons, of the beeves, of the asses, and of
the flocks, of all manner of beasts, and give them unto the Levites,
which keep the charge of the tabernacle of the LORD.

31:31 And Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the LORD commanded
Moses.

31:32 And the booty, being the rest of the prey which the men of war
had caught, was six hundred thousand and seventy thousand and five
thousand sheep, 31:33 And threescore and twelve thousand beeves, 31:34
And threescore and one thousand asses, 31:35 And thirty and two
thousand persons in all, of women that had not known man by lying with
him.

31:36 And the half, which was the portion of them that went out to
war, was in number three hundred thousand and seven and thirty
thousand and five hundred sheep: 31:37 And the LORD's tribute of the
sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen.

31:38 And the beeves were thirty and six thousand; of which the LORD's
tribute was threescore and twelve.

31:39 And the asses were thirty thousand and five hundred; of which
the LORD's tribute was threescore and one.

31:40 And the persons were sixteen thousand; of which the LORD's
tribute was thirty and two persons.

31:41 And Moses gave the tribute, which was the LORD's heave offering,
unto Eleazar the priest, as the LORD commanded Moses.

31:42 And of the children of Israel's half, which Moses divided from
the men that warred, 31:43 (Now the half that pertained unto the
congregation was three hundred thousand and thirty thousand and seven
thousand and five hundred sheep, 31:44 And thirty and six thousand
beeves, 31:45 And thirty thousand asses and five hundred, 31:46 And
sixteen thousand persons;) 31:47 Even of the children of Israel's
half, Moses took one portion of fifty, both of man and of beast, and
gave them unto the Levites, which kept the charge of the tabernacle of
the LORD; as the LORD commanded Moses.

31:48 And the officers which were over thousands of the host, the
captains of thousands, and captains of hundreds, came near unto Moses:
31:49 And they said unto Moses, Thy servants have taken the sum of the
men of war which are under our charge, and there lacketh not one man
of us.

31:50 We have therefore brought an oblation for the LORD, what every
man hath gotten, of jewels of gold, chains, and bracelets, rings,
earrings, and tablets, to make an atonement for our souls before the
LORD.

31:51 And Moses and Eleazar the priest took the gold of them, even all
wrought jewels.

31:52 And all the gold of the offering that they offered up to the
LORD, of the captains of thousands, and of the captains of hundreds,
was sixteen thousand seven hundred and fifty shekels.

31:53 (For the men of war had taken spoil, every man for himself.)
31:54 And Moses and Eleazar the priest took the gold of the captains
of thousands and of hundreds, and brought it into the tabernacle of
the congregation, for a memorial for the children of Israel before the
LORD.

32:1 Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a very
great multitude of cattle: and when they saw the land of Jazer, and
the land of Gilead, that, behold, the place was a place for cattle;
32:2 The children of Gad and the children of Reuben came and spake
unto Moses, and to Eleazar the priest, and unto the princes of the
congregation, saying, 32:3 Ataroth, and Dibon, and Jazer, and Nimrah,
and Heshbon, and Elealeh, and Shebam, and Nebo, and Beon, 32:4 Even
the country which the LORD smote before the congregation of Israel, is
a land for cattle, and thy servants have cattle: 32:5 Wherefore, said
they, if we have found grace in thy sight, let this land be given unto
thy servants for a possession, and bring us not over Jordan.

32:6 And Moses said unto the children of Gad and to the children of
Reuben, Shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here?  32:7
And wherefore discourage ye the heart of the children of Israel from
going over into the land which the LORD hath given them?  32:8 Thus
did your fathers, when I sent them from Kadeshbarnea to see the land.

32:9 For when they went up unto the valley of Eshcol, and saw the
land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, that they
should not go into the land which the LORD had given them.

32:10 And the LORD's anger was kindled the same time, and he sware,
saying, 32:11 Surely none of the men that came up out of Egypt, from
twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I sware unto
Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob; because they have not wholly
followed me: 32:12 Save Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite, and
Joshua the son of Nun: for they have wholly followed the LORD.

32:13 And the LORD's anger was kindled against Israel, and he made
them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation,
that had done evil in the sight of the LORD, was consumed.

32:14 And, behold, ye are risen up in your fathers' stead, an increase
of sinful men, to augment yet the fierce anger of the LORD toward
Israel.

32:15 For if ye turn away from after him, he will yet again leave them
in the wilderness; and ye shall destroy all this people.

32:16 And they came near unto him, and said, We will build sheepfolds
here for our cattle, and cities for our little ones: 32:17 But we
ourselves will go ready armed before the children of Israel, until we
have brought them unto their place: and our little ones shall dwell in
the fenced cities because of the inhabitants of the land.

32:18 We will not return unto our houses, until the children of Israel
have inherited every man his inheritance.

32:19 For we will not inherit with them on yonder side Jordan, or
forward; because our inheritance is fallen to us on this side Jordan
eastward.

32:20 And Moses said unto them, If ye will do this thing, if ye will
go armed before the LORD to war, 32:21 And will go all of you armed
over Jordan before the LORD, until he hath driven out his enemies from
before him, 32:22 And the land be subdued before the LORD: then
afterward ye shall return, and be guiltless before the LORD, and
before Israel; and this land shall be your possession before the LORD.

32:23 But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the
LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out.

32:24 Build you cities for your little ones, and folds for your sheep;
and do that which hath proceeded out of your mouth.

32:25 And the children of Gad and the children of Reuben spake unto
Moses, saying, Thy servants will do as my lord commandeth.

32:26 Our little ones, our wives, our flocks, and all our cattle,
shall be there in the cities of Gilead: 32:27 But thy servants will
pass over, every man armed for war, before the LORD to battle, as my
lord saith.

32:28 So concerning them Moses commanded Eleazar the priest, and
Joshua the son of Nun, and the chief fathers of the tribes of the
children of Israel: 32:29 And Moses said unto them, If the children of
Gad and the children of Reuben will pass with you over Jordan, every
man armed to battle, before the LORD, and the land shall be subdued
before you; then ye shall give them the land of Gilead for a
possession: 32:30 But if they will not pass over with you armed, they
shall have possessions among you in the land of Canaan.

32:31 And the children of Gad and the children of Reuben answered,
saying, As the LORD hath said unto thy servants, so will we do.

32:32 We will pass over armed before the LORD into the land of Canaan,
that the possession of our inheritance on this side Jordan may be
ours.

32:33 And Moses gave unto them, even to the children of Gad, and to
the children of Reuben, and unto half the tribe of Manasseh the son of
Joseph, the kingdom of Sihon king of the Amorites, and the kingdom of
Og king of Bashan, the land, with the cities thereof in the coasts,
even the cities of the country round about.

32:34 And the children of Gad built Dibon, and Ataroth, and Aroer,
32:35 And Atroth, Shophan, and Jaazer, and Jogbehah, 32:36 And
Bethnimrah, and Bethharan, fenced cities: and folds for sheep.

32:37 And the children of Reuben built Heshbon, and Elealeh, and
Kirjathaim, 32:38 And Nebo, and Baalmeon, (their names being changed,)
and Shibmah: and gave other names unto the cities which they builded.

32:39 And the children of Machir the son of Manasseh went to Gilead,
and took it, and dispossessed the Amorite which was in it.

32:40 And Moses gave Gilead unto Machir the son of Manasseh; and he
dwelt therein.

32:41 And Jair the son of Manasseh went and took the small towns
thereof, and called them Havothjair.

32:42 And Nobah went and took Kenath, and the villages thereof, and
called it Nobah, after his own name.

33:1 These are the journeys of the children of Israel, which went
forth out of the land of Egypt with their armies under the hand of
Moses and Aaron.

33:2 And Moses wrote their goings out according to their journeys by
the commandment of the LORD: and these are their journeys according to
their goings out.

33:3 And they departed from Rameses in the first month, on the
fifteenth day of the first month; on the morrow after the passover the
children of Israel went out with an high hand in the sight of all the
Egyptians.

33:4 For the Egyptians buried all their firstborn, which the LORD had
smitten among them: upon their gods also the LORD executed judgments.

33:5 And the children of Israel removed from Rameses, and pitched in
Succoth.

33:6 And they departed from Succoth, and pitched in Etham, which is in
the edge of the wilderness.

33:7 And they removed from Etham, and turned again unto Pihahiroth,
which is before Baalzephon: and they pitched before Migdol.

33:8 And they departed from before Pihahiroth, and passed through the
midst of the sea into the wilderness, and went three days' journey in
the wilderness of Etham, and pitched in Marah.

33:9 And they removed from Marah, and came unto Elim: and in Elim were
twelve fountains of water, and threescore and ten palm trees; and they
pitched there.

33:10 And they removed from Elim, and encamped by the Red sea.

33:11 And they removed from the Red sea, and encamped in the
wilderness of Sin.

33:12 And they took their journey out of the wilderness of Sin, and
encamped in Dophkah.

33:13 And they departed from Dophkah, and encamped in Alush.

33:14 And they removed from Alush, and encamped at Rephidim, where was
no water for the people to drink.

33:15 And they departed from Rephidim, and pitched in the wilderness
of Sinai.

33:16 And they removed from the desert of Sinai, and pitched at
Kibrothhattaavah.

33:17 And they departed from Kibrothhattaavah, and encamped at
Hazeroth.

33:18 And they departed from Hazeroth, and pitched in Rithmah.

33:19 And they departed from Rithmah, and pitched at Rimmonparez.

33:20 And they departed from Rimmonparez, and pitched in Libnah.

33:21 And they removed from Libnah, and pitched at Rissah.

33:22 And they journeyed from Rissah, and pitched in Kehelathah.

33:23 And they went from Kehelathah, and pitched in mount Shapher.

33:24 And they removed from mount Shapher, and encamped in Haradah.

33:25 And they removed from Haradah, and pitched in Makheloth.

33:26 And they removed from Makheloth, and encamped at Tahath.

33:27 And they departed from Tahath, and pitched at Tarah.

33:28 And they removed from Tarah, and pitched in Mithcah.

33:29 And they went from Mithcah, and pitched in Hashmonah.

33:30 And they departed from Hashmonah, and encamped at Moseroth.

33:31 And they departed from Moseroth, and pitched in Benejaakan.

33:32 And they removed from Benejaakan, and encamped at Horhagidgad.

33:33 And they went from Horhagidgad, and pitched in Jotbathah.

33:34 And they removed from Jotbathah, and encamped at Ebronah.

33:35 And they departed from Ebronah, and encamped at Eziongaber.

33:36 And they removed from Eziongaber, and pitched in the wilderness
of Zin, which is Kadesh.

33:37 And they removed from Kadesh, and pitched in mount Hor, in the
edge of the land of Edom.

33:38 And Aaron the priest went up into mount Hor at the commandment
of the LORD, and died there, in the fortieth year after the children
of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the first day of the
fifth month.

33:39 And Aaron was an hundred and twenty and three years old when he
died in mount Hor.

33:40 And king Arad the Canaanite, which dwelt in the south in the
land of Canaan, heard of the coming of the children of Israel.

33:41 And they departed from mount Hor, and pitched in Zalmonah.

33:42 And they departed from Zalmonah, and pitched in Punon.

33:43 And they departed from Punon, and pitched in Oboth.

33:44 And they departed from Oboth, and pitched in Ijeabarim, in the
border of Moab.

33:45 And they departed from Iim, and pitched in Dibongad.

33:46 And they removed from Dibongad, and encamped in Almondiblathaim.

33:47 And they removed from Almondiblathaim, and pitched in the
mountains of Abarim, before Nebo.

33:48 And they departed from the mountains of Abarim, and pitched in
the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho.

33:49 And they pitched by Jordan, from Bethjesimoth even unto
Abelshittim in the plains of Moab.

33:50 And the LORD spake unto Moses in the plains of Moab by Jordan
near Jericho, saying, 33:51 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say
unto them, When ye are passed over Jordan into the land of Canaan;
33:52 Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from
before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their
molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places: 33:53 And
ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein:
for I have given you the land to possess it.

33:54 And ye shall divide the land by lot for an inheritance among
your families: and to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and
to the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance: every man's
inheritance shall be in the place where his lot falleth; according to
the tribes of your fathers ye shall inherit.

33:55 But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from
before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain
of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and
shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.

33:56 Moreover it shall come to pass, that I shall do unto you, as I
thought to do unto them.

34:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 34:2 Command the children
of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land of Canaan;
(this is the land that shall fall unto you for an inheritance, even
the land of Canaan with the coasts thereof:) 34:3 Then your south
quarter shall be from the wilderness of Zin along by the coast of
Edom, and your south border shall be the outmost coast of the salt sea
eastward: 34:4 And your border shall turn from the south to the ascent
of Akrabbim, and pass on to Zin: and the going forth thereof shall be
from the south to Kadeshbarnea, and shall go on to Hazaraddar, and
pass on to Azmon: 34:5 And the border shall fetch a compass from Azmon
unto the river of Egypt, and the goings out of it shall be at the sea.

34:6 And as for the western border, ye shall even have the great sea
for a border: this shall be your west border.

34:7 And this shall be your north border: from the great sea ye shall
point out for you mount Hor: 34:8 From mount Hor ye shall point out
your border unto the entrance of Hamath; and the goings forth of the
border shall be to Zedad: 34:9 And the border shall go on to Ziphron,
and the goings out of it shall be at Hazarenan: this shall be your
north border.

34:10 And ye shall point out your east border from Hazarenan to
Shepham: 34:11 And the coast shall go down from Shepham to Riblah, on
the east side of Ain; and the border shall descend, and shall reach
unto the side of the sea of Chinnereth eastward: 34:12 And the border
shall go down to Jordan, and the goings out of it shall be at the salt
sea: this shall be your land with the coasts thereof round about.

34:13 And Moses commanded the children of Israel, saying, This is the
land which ye shall inherit by lot, which the LORD commanded to give
unto the nine tribes, and to the half tribe: 34:14 For the tribe of
the children of Reuben according to the house of their fathers, and
the tribe of the children of Gad according to the house of their
fathers, have received their inheritance; and half the tribe of
Manasseh have received their inheritance: 34:15 The two tribes and the
half tribe have received their inheritance on this side Jordan near
Jericho eastward, toward the sunrising.

34:16 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 34:17 These are the names
of the men which shall divide the land unto you: Eleazar the priest,
and Joshua the son of Nun.

34:18 And ye shall take one prince of every tribe, to divide the land
by inheritance.

34:19 And the names of the men are these: Of the tribe of Judah, Caleb
the son of Jephunneh.

34:20 And of the tribe of the children of Simeon, Shemuel the son of
Ammihud.

34:21 Of the tribe of Benjamin, Elidad the son of Chislon.

34:22 And the prince of the tribe of the children of Dan, Bukki the
son of Jogli.

34:23 The prince of the children of Joseph, for the tribe of the
children of Manasseh, Hanniel the son of Ephod.

34:24 And the prince of the tribe of the children of Ephraim, Kemuel
the son of Shiphtan.

34:25 And the prince of the tribe of the children of Zebulun,
Elizaphan the son of Parnach.

34:26 And the prince of the tribe of the children of Issachar, Paltiel
the son of Azzan.

34:27 And the prince of the tribe of the children of Asher, Ahihud the
son of Shelomi.

34:28 And the prince of the tribe of the children of Naphtali, Pedahel
the son of Ammihud.

34:29 These are they whom the LORD commanded to divide the inheritance
unto the children of Israel in the land of Canaan.

35:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses in the plains of Moab by Jordan
near Jericho, saying, 35:2 Command the children of Israel, that they
give unto the Levites of the inheritance of their possession cities to
dwell in; and ye shall give also unto the Levites suburbs for the
cities round about them.

35:3 And the cities shall they have to dwell in; and the suburbs of
them shall be for their cattle, and for their goods, and for all their
beasts.

35:4 And the suburbs of the cities, which ye shall give unto the
Levites, shall reach from the wall of the city and outward a thousand
cubits round about.

35:5 And ye shall measure from without the city on the east side two
thousand cubits, and on the south side two thousand cubits, and on the
west side two thousand cubits, and on the north side two thousand
cubits; and the city shall be in the midst: this shall be to them the
suburbs of the cities.

35:6 And among the cities which ye shall give unto the Levites there
shall be six cities for refuge, which ye shall appoint for the
manslayer, that he may flee thither: and to them ye shall add forty
and two cities.

35:7 So all the cities which ye shall give to the Levites shall be
forty and eight cities: them shall ye give with their suburbs.

35:8 And the cities which ye shall give shall be of the possession of
the children of Israel: from them that have many ye shall give many;
but from them that have few ye shall give few: every one shall give of
his cities unto the Levites according to his inheritance which he
inheriteth.

35:9 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 35:10 Speak unto the
children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come over Jordan
into the land of Canaan; 35:11 Then ye shall appoint you cities to be
cities of refuge for you; that the slayer may flee thither, which
killeth any person at unawares.

35:12 And they shall be unto you cities for refuge from the avenger;
that the manslayer die not, until he stand before the congregation in
judgment.

35:13 And of these cities which ye shall give six cities shall ye have
for refuge.

35:14 Ye shall give three cities on this side Jordan, and three cities
shall ye give in the land of Canaan, which shall be cities of refuge.

35:15 These six cities shall be a refuge, both for the children of
Israel, and for the stranger, and for the sojourner among them: that
every one that killeth any person unawares may flee thither.

35:16 And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die,
he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.

35:17 And if he smite him with throwing a stone, wherewith he may die,
and he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to
death.

35:18 Or if he smite him with an hand weapon of wood, wherewith he may
die, and he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to
death.

35:19 The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer: when he
meeteth him, he shall slay him.

35:20 But if he thrust him of hatred, or hurl at him by laying of
wait, that he die; 35:21 Or in enmity smite him with his hand, that he
die: he that smote him shall surely be put to death; for he is a
murderer: the revenger of blood shall slay the murderer, when he
meeteth him.

35:22 But if he thrust him suddenly without enmity, or have cast upon
him any thing without laying of wait, 35:23 Or with any stone,
wherewith a man may die, seeing him not, and cast it upon him, that he
die, and was not his enemy, neither sought his harm: 35:24 Then the
congregation shall judge between the slayer and the revenger of blood
according to these judgments: 35:25 And the congregation shall deliver
the slayer out of the hand of the revenger of blood, and the
congregation shall restore him to the city of his refuge, whither he
was fled: and he shall abide in it unto the death of the high priest,
which was anointed with the holy oil.

35:26 But if the slayer shall at any time come without the border of
the city of his refuge, whither he was fled; 35:27 And the revenger of
blood find him without the borders of the city of his refuge, and the
revenger of blood kill the slayer; he shall not be guilty of blood:
35:28 Because he should have remained in the city of his refuge until
the death of the high priest: but after the death of the high priest
the slayer shall return into the land of his possession.

35:29 So these things shall be for a statute of judgment unto you
throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

35:30 Whoso killeth any person, the murderer shall be put to death by
the mouth of witnesses: but one witness shall not testify against any
person to cause him to die.

35:31 Moreover ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a
murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be surely put to
death.

35:32 And ye shall take no satisfaction for him that is fled to the
city of his refuge, that he should come again to dwell in the land,
until the death of the priest.

35:33 So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it
defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that
is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.

35:34 Defile not therefore the land which ye shall inhabit, wherein I
dwell: for I the LORD dwell among the children of Israel.

36:1 And the chief fathers of the families of the children of Gilead,
the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of the sons of
Joseph, came near, and spake before Moses, and before the princes, the
chief fathers of the children of Israel: 36:2 And they said, The LORD
commanded my lord to give the land for an inheritance by lot to the
children of Israel: and my lord was commanded by the LORD to give the
inheritance of Zelophehad our brother unto his daughters.

36:3 And if they be married to any of the sons of the other tribes of
the children of Israel, then shall their inheritance be taken from the
inheritance of our fathers, and shall be put to the inheritance of the
tribe whereunto they are received: so shall it be taken from the lot
of our inheritance.

36:4 And when the jubile of the children of Israel shall be, then
shall their inheritance be put unto the inheritance of the tribe
whereunto they are received: so shall their inheritance be taken away
from the inheritance of the tribe of our fathers.

36:5 And Moses commanded the children of Israel according to the word
of the LORD, saying, The tribe of the sons of Joseph hath said well.

36:6 This is the thing which the LORD doth command concerning the
daughters of Zelophehad, saying, Let them marry to whom they think
best; only to the family of the tribe of their father shall they
marry.

36:7 So shall not the inheritance of the children of Israel remove
from tribe to tribe: for every one of the children of Israel shall
keep himself to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers.

36:8 And every daughter, that possesseth an inheritance in any tribe
of the children of Israel, shall be wife unto one of the family of the
tribe of her father, that the children of Israel may enjoy every man
the inheritance of his fathers.

36:9 Neither shall the inheritance remove from one tribe to another
tribe; but every one of the tribes of the children of Israel shall
keep himself to his own inheritance.

36:10 Even as the LORD commanded Moses, so did the daughters of
Zelophehad: 36:11 For Mahlah, Tirzah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and
Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, were married unto their father's
brothers' sons: 36:12 And they were married into the families of the
sons of Manasseh the son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in
the tribe of the family of their father.

36:13 These are the commandments and the judgments, which the LORD
commanded by the hand of Moses unto the children of Israel in the
plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho.




The Fifth Book of Moses:  Called Deuteronomy


1:1 These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side
Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain over against the Red sea,
between Paran, and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Dizahab.

1:2 (There are eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of mount
Seir unto Kadeshbarnea.)  1:3 And it came to pass in the fortieth
year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses
spake unto the children of Israel, according unto all that the LORD
had given him in commandment unto them; 1:4 After he had slain Sihon
the king of the Amorites, which dwelt in Heshbon, and Og the king of
Bashan, which dwelt at Astaroth in Edrei: 1:5 On this side Jordan, in
the land of Moab, began Moses to declare this law, saying, 1:6 The
LORD our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying, Ye have dwelt long enough
in this mount: 1:7 Turn you, and take your journey, and go to the
mount of the Amorites, and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the
plain, in the hills, and in the vale, and in the south, and by the sea
side, to the land of the Canaanites, and unto Lebanon, unto the great
river, the river Euphrates.

1:8 Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land
which the LORD sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to
give unto them and to their seed after them.

1:9 And I spake unto you at that time, saying, I am not able to bear
you myself alone: 1:10 The LORD your God hath multiplied you, and,
behold, ye are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude.

1:11 (The LORD God of your fathers make you a thousand times so many
more as ye are, and bless you, as he hath promised you!)  1:12 How can
I myself alone bear your cumbrance, and your burden, and your strife?
1:13 Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your
tribes, and I will make them rulers over you.

1:14 And ye answered me, and said, The thing which thou hast spoken is
good for us to do.

1:15 So I took the chief of your tribes, wise men, and known, and made
them heads over you, captains over thousands, and captains over
hundreds, and captains over fifties, and captains over tens, and
officers among your tribes.

1:16 And I charged your judges at that time, saying, Hear the causes
between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his
brother, and the stranger that is with him.

1:17 Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the
small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man;
for the judgment is God's: and the cause that is too hard for you,
bring it unto me, and I will hear it.

1:18 And I commanded you at that time all the things which ye should
do.

1:19 And when we departed from Horeb, we went through all that great
and terrible wilderness, which ye saw by the way of the mountain of
the Amorites, as the LORD our God commanded us; and we came to
Kadeshbarnea.

1:20 And I said unto you, Ye are come unto the mountain of the
Amorites, which the LORD our God doth give unto us.

1:21 Behold, the LORD thy God hath set the land before thee: go up and
possess it, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath said unto thee; fear
not, neither be discouraged.

1:22 And ye came near unto me every one of you, and said, We will send
men before us, and they shall search us out the land, and bring us
word again by what way we must go up, and into what cities we shall
come.

1:23 And the saying pleased me well: and I took twelve men of you, one
of a tribe: 1:24 And they turned and went up into the mountain, and
came unto the valley of Eshcol, and searched it out.

1:25 And they took of the fruit of the land in their hands, and
brought it down unto us, and brought us word again, and said, It is a
good land which the LORD our God doth give us.

1:26 Notwithstanding ye would not go up, but rebelled against the
commandment of the LORD your God: 1:27 And ye murmured in your tents,
and said, Because the LORD hated us, he hath brought us forth out of
the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to
destroy us.

1:28 Whither shall we go up? our brethren have discouraged our heart,
saying, The people is greater and taller than we; the cities are great
and walled up to heaven; and moreover we have seen the sons of the
Anakims there.

1:29 Then I said unto you, Dread not, neither be afraid of them.

1:30 The LORD your God which goeth before you, he shall fight for you,
according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes; 1:31
And in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the LORD thy God
bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went,
until ye came into this place.

1:32 Yet in this thing ye did not believe the LORD your God, 1:33 Who
went in the way before you, to search you out a place to pitch your
tents in, in fire by night, to shew you by what way ye should go, and
in a cloud by day.

1:34 And the LORD heard the voice of your words, and was wroth, and
sware, saying, 1:35 Surely there shall not one of these men of this
evil generation see that good land, which I sware to give unto your
fathers.

1:36 Save Caleb the son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him will
I give the land that he hath trodden upon, and to his children,
because he hath wholly followed the LORD.

1:37 Also the LORD was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou also
shalt not go in thither.

1:38 But Joshua the son of Nun, which standeth before thee, he shall
go in thither: encourage him: for he shall cause Israel to inherit it.

1:39 Moreover your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, and
your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and
evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they
shall possess it.

1:40 But as for you, turn you, and take your journey into the
wilderness by the way of the Red sea.

1:41 Then ye answered and said unto me, We have sinned against the
LORD, we will go up and fight, according to all that the LORD our God
commanded us.

And when ye had girded on every man his weapons of war, ye were ready
to go up into the hill.

1:42 And the LORD said unto me, Say unto them. Go not up, neither
fight; for I am not among you; lest ye be smitten before your enemies.

1:43 So I spake unto you; and ye would not hear, but rebelled against
the commandment of the LORD, and went presumptuously up into the hill.

1:44 And the Amorites, which dwelt in that mountain, came out against
you, and chased you, as bees do, and destroyed you in Seir, even unto
Hormah.

1:45 And ye returned and wept before the LORD; but the LORD would not
hearken to your voice, nor give ear unto you.

1:46 So ye abode in Kadesh many days, according unto the days that ye
abode there.

2:1 Then we turned, and took our journey into the wilderness by the
way of the Red sea, as the LORD spake unto me: and we compassed mount
Seir many days.

2:2 And the LORD spake unto me, saying, 2:3 Ye have compassed this
mountain long enough: turn you northward.

2:4 And command thou the people, saying, Ye are to pass through the
coast of your brethren the children of Esau, which dwell in Seir; and
they shall be afraid of you: take ye good heed unto yourselves
therefore: 2:5 Meddle not with them; for I will not give you of their
land, no, not so much as a foot breadth; because I have given mount
Seir unto Esau for a possession.

2:6 Ye shall buy meat of them for money, that ye may eat; and ye shall
also buy water of them for money, that ye may drink.

2:7 For the LORD thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy
hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these
forty years the LORD thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked
nothing.

2:8 And when we passed by from our brethren the children of Esau,
which dwelt in Seir, through the way of the plain from Elath, and from
Eziongaber, we turned and passed by the way of the wilderness of Moab.

2:9 And the LORD said unto me, Distress not the Moabites, neither
contend with them in battle: for I will not give thee of their land
for a possession; because I have given Ar unto the children of Lot for
a possession.

2:10 The Emims dwelt therein in times past, a people great, and many,
and tall, as the Anakims; 2:11 Which also were accounted giants, as
the Anakims; but the Moabites called them Emims.

2:12 The Horims also dwelt in Seir beforetime; but the children of
Esau succeeded them, when they had destroyed them from before them,
and dwelt in their stead; as Israel did unto the land of his
possession, which the LORD gave unto them.

2:13 Now rise up, said I, and get you over the brook Zered. And we
went over the brook Zered.

2:14 And the space in which we came from Kadeshbarnea, until we were
come over the brook Zered, was thirty and eight years; until all the
generation of the men of war were wasted out from among the host, as
the LORD sware unto them.

2:15 For indeed the hand of the LORD was against them, to destroy them
from among the host, until they were consumed.

2:16 So it came to pass, when all the men of war were consumed and
dead from among the people, 2:17 That the LORD spake unto me, saying,
2:18 Thou art to pass over through Ar, the coast of Moab, this day:
2:19 And when thou comest nigh over against the children of Ammon,
distress them not, nor meddle with them: for I will not give thee of
the land of the children of Ammon any possession; because I have given
it unto the children of Lot for a possession.

2:20 (That also was accounted a land of giants: giants dwelt therein
in old time; and the Ammonites call them Zamzummims; 2:21 A people
great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims; but the LORD destroyed them
before them; and they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead: 2:22
As he did to the children of Esau, which dwelt in Seir, when he
destroyed the Horims from before them; and they succeeded them, and
dwelt in their stead even unto this day: 2:23 And the Avims which
dwelt in Hazerim, even unto Azzah, the Caphtorims, which came forth
out of Caphtor, destroyed them, and dwelt in their stead.)  2:24 Rise
ye up, take your journey, and pass over the river Arnon: behold, I
have given into thine hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his
land: begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle.

2:25 This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of
thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear
report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee.

2:26 And I sent messengers out of the wilderness of Kedemoth unto
Sihon king of Heshbon with words of peace, saying, 2:27 Let me pass
through thy land: I will go along by the high way, I will neither turn
unto the right hand nor to the left.

2:28 Thou shalt sell me meat for money, that I may eat; and give me
water for money, that I may drink: only I will pass through on my
feet; 2:29 (As the children of Esau which dwell in Seir, and the
Moabites which dwell in Ar, did unto me;) until I shall pass over
Jordan into the land which the LORD our God giveth us.

2:30 But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him: for the
LORD thy God hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate, that
he might deliver him into thy hand, as appeareth this day.

2:31 And the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have begun to give Sihon and
his land before thee: begin to possess, that thou mayest inherit his
land.

2:32 Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to fight
at Jahaz.

2:33 And the LORD our God delivered him before us; and we smote him,
and his sons, and all his people.

2:34 And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed
the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left
none to remain: 2:35 Only the cattle we took for a prey unto
ourselves, and the spoil of the cities which we took.

2:36 From Aroer, which is by the brink of the river of Arnon, and from
the city that is by the river, even unto Gilead, there was not one
city too strong for us: the LORD our God delivered all unto us: 2:37
Only unto the land of the children of Ammon thou camest not, nor unto
any place of the river Jabbok, nor unto the cities in the mountains,
nor unto whatsoever the LORD our God forbad us.

3:1 Then we turned, and went up the way to Bashan: and Og the king of
Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei.

3:2 And the LORD said unto me, Fear him not: for I will deliver him,
and all his people, and his land, into thy hand; and thou shalt do
unto him as thou didst unto Sihon king of the Amorites, which dwelt at
Heshbon.

3:3 So the LORD our God delivered into our hands Og also, the king of
Bashan, and all his people: and we smote him until none was left to
him remaining.

3:4 And we took all his cities at that time, there was not a city
which we took not from them, threescore cities, all the region of
Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan.

3:5 All these cities were fenced with high walls, gates, and bars;
beside unwalled towns a great many.

3:6 And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon king of
Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every
city.

3:7 But all the cattle, and the spoil of the cities, we took for a
prey to ourselves.

3:8 And we took at that time out of the hand of the two kings of the
Amorites the land that was on this side Jordan, from the river of
Arnon unto mount Hermon; 3:9 (Which Hermon the Sidonians call Sirion;
and the Amorites call it Shenir;) 3:10 All the cities of the plain,
and all Gilead, and all Bashan, unto Salchah and Edrei, cities of the
kingdom of Og in Bashan.

3:11 For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants;
behold his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of
the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four
cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.

3:12 And this land, which we possessed at that time, from Aroer, which
is by the river Arnon, and half mount Gilead, and the cities thereof,
gave I unto the Reubenites and to the Gadites.

3:13 And the rest of Gilead, and all Bashan, being the kingdom of Og,
gave I unto the half tribe of Manasseh; all the region of Argob, with
all Bashan, which was called the land of giants.

3:14 Jair the son of Manasseh took all the country of Argob unto the
coasts of Geshuri and Maachathi; and called them after his own name,
Bashanhavothjair, unto this day.

3:15 And I gave Gilead unto Machir.

3:16 And unto the Reubenites and unto the Gadites I gave from Gilead
even unto the river Arnon half the valley, and the border even unto
the river Jabbok, which is the border of the children of Ammon; 3:17
The plain also, and Jordan, and the coast thereof, from Chinnereth
even unto the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, under Ashdothpisgah
eastward.

3:18 And I commanded you at that time, saying, The LORD your God hath
given you this land to possess it: ye shall pass over armed before
your brethren the children of Israel, all that are meet for the war.

3:19 But your wives, and your little ones, and your cattle, (for I
know that ye have much cattle,) shall abide in your cities which I
have given you; 3:20 Until the LORD have given rest unto your
brethren, as well as unto you, and until they also possess the land
which the LORD your God hath given them beyond Jordan: and then shall
ye return every man unto his possession, which I have given you.

3:21 And I commanded Joshua at that time, saying, Thine eyes have seen
all that the LORD your God hath done unto these two kings: so shall
the LORD do unto all the kingdoms whither thou passest.

3:22 Ye shall not fear them: for the LORD your God he shall fight for
you.

3:23 And I besought the LORD at that time, saying, 3:24 O Lord GOD,
thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty
hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth, that can do
according to thy works, and according to thy might?  3:25 I pray thee,
let me go over, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that
goodly mountain, and Lebanon.

3:26 But the LORD was wroth with me for your sakes, and would not hear
me: and the LORD said unto me, Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto
me of this matter.

3:27 Get thee up into the top of Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes
westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward, and behold it
with thine eyes: for thou shalt not go over this Jordan.

3:28 But charge Joshua, and encourage him, and strengthen him: for he
shall go over before this people, and he shall cause them to inherit
the land which thou shalt see.

3:29 So we abode in the valley over against Bethpeor.

4:1 Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the
judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go
in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers giveth you.

4:2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall
ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the
LORD your God which I command you.

4:3 Your eyes have seen what the LORD did because of Baalpeor: for all
the men that followed Baalpeor, the LORD thy God hath destroyed them
from among you.

4:4 But ye that did cleave unto the LORD your God are alive every one
of you this day.

4:5 Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD
my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to
possess it.

4:6 Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your
understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these
statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and
understanding people.

4:7 For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them,
as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for?  4:8
And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so
righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?  4:9 Only
take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget
the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy
heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons'
sons; 4:10 Specially the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy
God in Horeb, when the LORD said unto me, Gather me the people
together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to
fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that
they may teach their children.

4:11 And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain
burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and
thick darkness.

4:12 And the LORD spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye
heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a
voice.

4:13 And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to
perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of
stone.

4:14 And the LORD commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and
judgments, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to
possess it.

4:15 Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner
of similitude on the day that the LORD spake unto you in Horeb out of
the midst of the fire: 4:16 Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a
graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or
female, 4:17 The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the
likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, 4:18 The likeness
of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish
that is in the waters beneath the earth: 4:19 And lest thou lift up
thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and
the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship
them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all
nations under the whole heaven.

4:20 But the LORD hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the
iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of
inheritance, as ye are this day.

4:21 Furthermore the LORD was angry with me for your sakes, and sware
that I should not go over Jordan, and that I should not go in unto
that good land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance:
4:22 But I must die in this land, I must not go over Jordan: but ye
shall go over, and possess that good land.

4:23 Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the
LORD your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or
the likeness of any thing, which the LORD thy God hath forbidden thee.

4:24 For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.

4:25 When thou shalt beget children, and children's children, and ye
shall have remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves,
and make a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, and shall do
evil in the sight of the LORD thy God, to provoke him to anger: 4:26 I
call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that ye shall
soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to
possess it; ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall utterly
be destroyed.

4:27 And the LORD shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be
left few in number among the heathen, whither the LORD shall lead you.

4:28 And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and
stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.

4:29 But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt
find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.

4:30 When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon
thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the LORD thy God, and
shalt be obedient unto his voice; 4:31 (For the LORD thy God is a
merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor
forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them.

4:32 For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee,
since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the
one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such
thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it?  4:33 Did
ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the
fire, as thou hast heard, and live?  4:34 Or hath God assayed to go
and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by
temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty
hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to
all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?
4:35 Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the LORD he
is God; there is none else beside him.

4:36 Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might
instruct thee: and upon earth he shewed thee his great fire; and thou
heardest his words out of the midst of the fire.

4:37 And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed
after them, and brought thee out in his sight with his mighty power
out of Egypt; 4:38 To drive out nations from before thee greater and
mightier than thou art, to bring thee in, to give thee their land for
an inheritance, as it is this day.

4:39 Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the
LORD he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is
none else.

4:40 Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments,
which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with
thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon
the earth, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, for ever.

4:41 Then Moses severed three cities on this side Jordan toward the
sunrising; 4:42 That the slayer might flee thither, which should kill
his neighbour unawares, and hated him not in times past; and that
fleeing unto one of these cities he might live: 4:43 Namely, Bezer in
the wilderness, in the plain country, of the Reubenites; and Ramoth in
Gilead, of the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan, of the Manassites.

4:44 And this is the law which Moses set before the children of
Israel: 4:45 These are the testimonies, and the statutes, and the
judgments, which Moses spake unto the children of Israel, after they
came forth out of Egypt.

4:46 On this side Jordan, in the valley over against Bethpeor, in the
land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who dwelt at Heshbon, whom Moses
and the children of Israel smote, after they were come forth out of
Egypt: 4:47 And they possessed his land, and the land of Og king of
Bashan, two kings of the Amorites, which were on this side Jordan
toward the sunrising; 4:48 From Aroer, which is by the bank of the
river Arnon, even unto mount Sion, which is Hermon, 4:49 And all the
plain on this side Jordan eastward, even unto the sea of the plain,
under the springs of Pisgah.

5:1 And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel,
the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that
ye may learn them, and keep, and do them.

5:2 The LORD our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.

5:3 The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us,
even us, who are all of us here alive this day.

5:4 The LORD talked with you face to face in the mount out of the
midst of the fire, 5:5 (I stood between the LORD and you at that time,
to shew you the word of the LORD: for ye were afraid by reason of the
fire, and went not up into the mount;) saying, 5:6 I am the LORD thy
God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of
bondage.

5:7 Thou shalt have none other gods before me.

5:8 Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any
thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or
that is in the waters beneath the earth: 5:9 Thou shalt not bow down
thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous
God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation of them that hate me, 5:10 And shewing
mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.

5:11 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the
LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

5:12 Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath
commanded thee.

5:13 Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: 5:14 But the
seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not
do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant,
nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy
cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant
and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.

5:15 And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and
that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand
and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee
to keep the sabbath day.

5:16 Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath
commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go
well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

5:17 Thou shalt not kill.

5:18 Neither shalt thou commit adultery.

5:19 Neither shalt thou steal.

5:20 Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour.

5:21 Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt
thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his
maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's.

5:22 These words the LORD spake unto all your assembly in the mount
out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness,
with a great voice: and he added no more. And he wrote them in two
tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.

5:23 And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of
the darkness, (for the mountain did burn with fire,) that ye came near
unto me, even all the heads of your tribes, and your elders; 5:24 And
ye said, Behold, the LORD our God hath shewed us his glory and his
greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire:
we have seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth.

5:25 Now therefore why should we die? for this great fire will consume
us: if we hear the voice of the LORD our God any more, then we shall
die.

5:26 For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the
living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and
lived?  5:27 Go thou near, and hear all that the LORD our God shall
say: and speak thou unto us all that the LORD our God shall speak unto
thee; and we will hear it, and do it.

5:28 And the LORD heard the voice of your words, when ye spake unto
me; and the LORD said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of
this people, which they have spoken unto thee: they have well said all
that they have spoken.

5:29 O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me,
and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them,
and with their children for ever!  5:30 Go say to them, Get you into
your tents again.

5:31 But as for thee, stand thou here by me, and I will speak unto
thee all the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which
thou shalt teach them, that they may do them in the land which I give
them to possess it.

5:32 Ye shall observe to do therefore as the LORD your God hath
commanded you: ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the
left.

5:33 Ye shall walk in all the ways which the LORD your God hath
commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and
that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess.

6:1 Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments,
which the LORD your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them
in the land whither ye go to possess it: 6:2 That thou mightest fear
the LORD thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which
I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son's son, all the days of
thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged.

6:3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be
well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the LORD God of
thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and
honey.

6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 6:5 And thou shalt
love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy might.

6:6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine
heart: 6:7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and
shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou
walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

6:8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they
shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.

6:9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy
gates.

6:10 And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee
into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac,
and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou
buildedst not, 6:11 And houses full of all good things, which thou
filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and
olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and
be full; 6:12 Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought
thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

6:13 Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear
by his name.

6:14 Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which
are round about you; 6:15 (For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among
you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and
destroy thee from off the face of the earth.

6:16 Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God, as ye tempted him in
Massah.

6:17 Ye shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God,
and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he hath commanded thee.

6:18 And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of
the LORD: that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in
and possess the good land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers.

6:19 To cast out all thine enemies from before thee, as the LORD hath
spoken.

6:20 And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean
the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD
our God hath commanded you?  6:21 Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We
were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt; and the LORD brought us out of Egypt
with a mighty hand: 6:22 And the LORD shewed signs and wonders, great
and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before
our eyes: 6:23 And he brought us out from thence, that he might bring
us in, to give us the land which he sware unto our fathers.

6:24 And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the
LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as
it is at this day.

6:25 And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these
commandments before the LORD our God, as he hath commanded us.

7:1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou
goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the
Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites,
and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations
greater and mightier than thou; 7:2 And when the LORD thy God shall
deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy
them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:
7:3 Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou
shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy
son.

7:4 For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may
serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against
you, and destroy thee suddenly.

7:5 But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars,
and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their
graven images with fire.

7:6 For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy
God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all
people that are upon the face of the earth.

7:7 The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye
were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all
people: 7:8 But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep
the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought
you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of
bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

7:9 Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God,
which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his
commandments to a thousand generations; 7:10 And repayeth them that
hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him
that hateth him, he will repay him to his face.

7:11 Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments, and the statutes, and
the judgments, which I command thee this day, to do them.

7:12 Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these
judgments, and keep, and do them, that the LORD thy God shall keep
unto thee the covenant and the mercy which he sware unto thy fathers:
7:13 And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he will
also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn,
and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks
of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give
thee.

7:14 Thou shalt be blessed above all people: there shall not be male
or female barren among you, or among your cattle.

7:15 And the LORD will take away from thee all sickness, and will put
none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee; but
will lay them upon all them that hate thee.

7:16 And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God
shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither
shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee.

7:17 If thou shalt say in thine heart, These nations are more than I;
how can I dispossess them?  7:18 Thou shalt not be afraid of them: but
shalt well remember what the LORD thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto
all Egypt; 7:19 The great temptations which thine eyes saw, and the
signs, and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the stretched out
arm, whereby the LORD thy God brought thee out: so shall the LORD thy
God do unto all the people of whom thou art afraid.

7:20 Moreover the LORD thy God will send the hornet among them, until
they that are left, and hide themselves from thee, be destroyed.

7:21 Thou shalt not be affrighted at them: for the LORD thy God is
among you, a mighty God and terrible.

7:22 And the LORD thy God will put out those nations before thee by
little and little: thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the
beasts of the field increase upon thee.

7:23 But the LORD thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall
destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed.

7:24 And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt
destroy their name from under heaven: there shall no man be able to
stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them.

7:25 The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire: thou
shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto
thee, lest thou be snared therin: for it is an abomination to the LORD
thy God.

7:26 Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest
thou be a cursed thing like it: but thou shalt utterly detest it, and
thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.

8:1 All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye
observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess
the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers.

8:2 And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led
thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove
thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his
commandments, or no.

8:3 And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee
with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that
he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.

8:4 Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell,
these forty years.

8:5 Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth
his son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee.

8:6 Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, to
walk in his ways, and to fear him.

8:7 For the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of
brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys
and hills; 8:8 A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees,
and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; 8:9 A land wherein
thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing
in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou
mayest dig brass.

8:10 When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the LORD
thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.

8:11 Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his
commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command
thee this day: 8:12 Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast
built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; 8:13 And when thy herds and
thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and
all that thou hast is multiplied; 8:14 Then thine heart be lifted up,
and thou forget the LORD thy God, which brought thee forth out of the
land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; 8:15 Who led thee through
that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and
scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee
forth water out of the rock of flint; 8:16 Who fed thee in the
wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might
humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy
latter end; 8:17 And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might
of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.

8:18 But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that
giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant
which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.

8:19 And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and
walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify
against you this day that ye shall surely perish.

8:20 As the nations which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so
shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of
the LORD your God.

9:1 Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to
possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and
fenced up to heaven, 9:2 A people great and tall, the children of the
Anakims, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, Who can
stand before the children of Anak!  9:3 Understand therefore this day,
that the LORD thy God is he which goeth over before thee; as a
consuming fire he shall destroy them, and he shall bring them down
before thy face: so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them
quickly, as the LORD hath said unto thee.

9:4 Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath
cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD
hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of
these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee.

9:5 Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart,
dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these
nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and
that he may perform the word which the LORD sware unto thy fathers,
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

9:6 Understand therefore, that the LORD thy God giveth thee not this
good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a
stiffnecked people.

9:7 Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst the LORD thy God to
wrath in the wilderness: from the day that thou didst depart out of
the land of Egypt, until ye came unto this place, ye have been
rebellious against the LORD.

9:8 Also in Horeb ye provoked the LORD to wrath, so that the LORD was
angry with you to have destroyed you.

9:9 When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone,
even the tables of the covenant which the LORD made with you, then I
abode in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat
bread nor drink water: 9:10 And the LORD delivered unto me two tables
of stone written with the finger of God; and on them was written
according to all the words, which the LORD spake with you in the mount
out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly.

9:11 And it came to pass at the end of forty days and forty nights,
that the LORD gave me the two tables of stone, even the tables of the
covenant.

9:12 And the LORD said unto me, Arise, get thee down quickly from
hence; for thy people which thou hast brought forth out of Egypt have
corrupted themselves; they are quickly turned aside out of the way
which I commanded them; they have made them a molten image.

9:13 Furthermore the LORD spake unto me, saying, I have seen this
people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: 9:14 Let me alone,
that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven:
and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they.

9:15 So I turned and came down from the mount, and the mount burned
with fire: and the two tables of the covenant were in my two hands.

9:16 And I looked, and, behold, ye had sinned against the LORD your
God, and had made you a molten calf: ye had turned aside quickly out
of the way which the LORD had commanded you.

9:17 And I took the two tables, and cast them out of my two hands, and
brake them before your eyes.

9:18 And I fell down before the LORD, as at the first, forty days and
forty nights: I did neither eat bread, nor drink water, because of all
your sins which ye sinned, in doing wickedly in the sight of the LORD,
to provoke him to anger.

9:19 For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure, wherewith the
LORD was wroth against you to destroy you. But the LORD hearkened unto
me at that time also.

9:20 And the LORD was very angry with Aaron to have destroyed him: and
I prayed for Aaron also the same time.

9:21 And I took your sin, the calf which ye had made, and burnt it
with fire, and stamped it, and ground it very small, even until it was
as small as dust: and I cast the dust thereof into the brook that
descended out of the mount.

9:22 And at Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibrothhattaavah, ye
provoked the LORD to wrath.

9:23 Likewise when the LORD sent you from Kadeshbarnea, saying, Go up
and possess the land which I have given you; then ye rebelled against
the commandment of the LORD your God, and ye believed him not, nor
hearkened to his voice.

9:24 Ye have been rebellious against the LORD from the day that I knew
you.

9:25 Thus I fell down before the LORD forty days and forty nights, as
I fell down at the first; because the LORD had said he would destroy
you.

9:26 I prayed therefore unto the LORD, and said, O Lord GOD, destroy
not thy people and thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed through
thy greatness, which thou hast brought forth out of Egypt with a
mighty hand.

9:27 Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; look not unto
the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their
sin: 9:28 Lest the land whence thou broughtest us out say, Because the
LORD was not able to bring them into the land which he promised them,
and because he hated them, he hath brought them out to slay them in
the wilderness.

9:29 Yet they are thy people and thine inheritance, which thou
broughtest out by thy mighty power and by thy stretched out arm.

10:1 At that time the LORD said unto me, Hew thee two tables of stone
like unto the first, and come up unto me into the mount, and make thee
an ark of wood.

10:2 And I will write on the tables the words that were in the first
tables which thou brakest, and thou shalt put them in the ark.

10:3 And I made an ark of shittim wood, and hewed two tables of stone
like unto the first, and went up into the mount, having the two tables
in mine hand.

10:4 And he wrote on the tables, according to the first writing, the
ten commandments, which the LORD spake unto you in the mount out of
the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly: and the LORD gave
them unto me.

10:5 And I turned myself and came down from the mount, and put the
tables in the ark which I had made; and there they be, as the LORD
commanded me.

10:6 And the children of Israel took their journey from Beeroth of the
children of Jaakan to Mosera: there Aaron died, and there he was
buried; and Eleazar his son ministered in the priest's office in his
stead.

10:7 From thence they journeyed unto Gudgodah; and from Gudgodah to
Jotbath, a land of rivers of waters.

10:8 At that time the LORD separated the tribe of Levi, to bear the
ark of the covenant of the LORD, to stand before the LORD to minister
unto him, and to bless in his name, unto this day.

10:9 Wherefore Levi hath no part nor inheritance with his brethren;
the LORD is his inheritance, according as the LORD thy God promised
him.

10:10 And I stayed in the mount, according to the first time, forty
days and forty nights; and the LORD hearkened unto me at that time
also, and the LORD would not destroy thee.

10:11 And the LORD said unto me, Arise, take thy journey before the
people, that they may go in and possess the land, which I sware unto
their fathers to give unto them.

10:12 And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but
to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him,
and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy
soul, 10:13 To keep the commandments of the LORD, and his statutes,
which I command thee this day for thy good?  10:14 Behold, the heaven
and the heaven of heavens is the LORD's thy God, the earth also, with
all that therein is.

10:15 Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he
chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this
day.

10:16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more
stiffnecked.

10:17 For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great
God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh
reward: 10:18 He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and
widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.

10:19 Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the
land of Egypt.

10:20 Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to
him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name.

10:21 He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee
these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen.

10:22 Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten
persons; and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of
heaven for multitude.

11:1 Therefore thou shalt love the LORD thy God, and keep his charge,
and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments, alway.

11:2 And know ye this day: for I speak not with your children which
have not known, and which have not seen the chastisement of the LORD
your God, his greatness, his mighty hand, and his stretched out arm,
11:3 And his miracles, and his acts, which he did in the midst of
Egypt unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and unto all his land; 11:4 And
what he did unto the army of Egypt, unto their horses, and to their
chariots; how he made the water of the Red sea to overflow them as
they pursued after you, and how the LORD hath destroyed them unto this
day; 11:5 And what he did unto you in the wilderness, until ye came
into this place; 11:6 And what he did unto Dathan and Abiram, the sons
of Eliab, the son of Reuben: how the earth opened her mouth, and
swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and all the
substance that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel:
11:7 But your eyes have seen all the great acts of the LORD which he
did.

11:8 Therefore shall ye keep all the commandments which I command you
this day, that ye may be strong, and go in and possess the land,
whither ye go to possess it; 11:9 And that ye may prolong your days in
the land, which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give unto them and
to their seed, a land that floweth with milk and honey.

11:10 For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the
land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed,
and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: 11:11 But the
land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and
drinketh water of the rain of heaven: 11:12 A land which the LORD thy
God careth for: the eyes of the LORD thy God are always upon it, from
the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.

11:13 And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto
my commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your
God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,
11:14 That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season,
the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy
corn, and thy wine, and thine oil.

11:15 And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou
mayest eat and be full.

11:16 Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye
turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; 11:17 And then the
LORD's wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that
there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye
perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you.

11:18 Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in
your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be
as frontlets between your eyes.

11:19 And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when
thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when
thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

11:20 And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house,
and upon thy gates: 11:21 That your days may be multiplied, and the
days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your
fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.

11:22 For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I
command you, to do them, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his
ways, and to cleave unto him; 11:23 Then will the LORD drive out all
these nations from before you, and ye shall possess greater nations
and mightier than yourselves.

11:24 Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be
yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river
Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.

11:25 There shall no man be able to stand before you: for the LORD
your God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you upon all the
land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath said unto you.

11:26 Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; 11:27
A blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I
command you this day: 11:28 And a curse, if ye will not obey the
commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside out of the way which
I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not
known.

11:29 And it shall come to pass, when the LORD thy God hath brought
thee in unto the land whither thou goest to possess it, that thou
shalt put the blessing upon mount Gerizim, and the curse upon mount
Ebal.

11:30 Are they not on the other side Jordan, by the way where the sun
goeth down, in the land of the Canaanites, which dwell in the
champaign over against Gilgal, beside the plains of Moreh?  11:31 For
ye shall pass over Jordan to go in to possess the land which the LORD
your God giveth you, and ye shall possess it, and dwell therein.

11:32 And ye shall observe to do all the statutes and judgments which
I set before you this day.

12:1 These are the statutes and judgments, which ye shall observe to
do in the land, which the LORD God of thy fathers giveth thee to
possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth.

12:2 Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations
which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and
upon the hills, and under every green tree: 12:3 And ye shall
overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves
with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and
destroy the names of them out of that place.

12:4 Ye shall not do so unto the LORD your God.

12:5 But unto the place which the LORD your God shall choose out of
all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall
ye seek, and thither thou shalt come: 12:6 And thither ye shall bring
your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, and your tithes, and heave
offerings of your hand, and your vows, and your freewill offerings,
and the firstlings of your herds and of your flocks: 12:7 And there ye
shall eat before the LORD your God, and ye shall rejoice in all that
ye put your hand unto, ye and your households, wherein the LORD thy
God hath blessed thee.

12:8 Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day,
every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes.

12:9 For ye are not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance,
which the LORD your God giveth you.

12:10 But when ye go over Jordan, and dwell in the land which the LORD
your God giveth you to inherit, and when he giveth you rest from all
your enemies round about, so that ye dwell in safety; 12:11 Then there
shall be a place which the LORD your God shall choose to cause his
name to dwell there; thither shall ye bring all that I command you;
your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes, and the heave
offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which ye vow unto the
LORD: 12:12 And ye shall rejoice before the LORD your God, ye, and
your sons, and your daughters, and your menservants, and your
maidservants, and the Levite that is within your gates; forasmuch as
he hath no part nor inheritance with you.

12:13 Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in
every place that thou seest: 12:14 But in the place which the LORD
shall choose in one of thy tribes, there thou shalt offer thy burnt
offerings, and there thou shalt do all that I command thee.

12:15 Notwithstanding thou mayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates,
whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, according to the blessing of the
LORD thy God which he hath given thee: the unclean and the clean may
eat thereof, as of the roebuck, and as of the hart.

12:16 Only ye shall not eat the blood; ye shall pour it upon the earth
as water.

12:17 Thou mayest not eat within thy gates the tithe of thy corn, or
of thy wine, or of thy oil, or the firstlings of thy herds or of thy
flock, nor any of thy vows which thou vowest, nor thy freewill
offerings, or heave offering of thine hand: 12:18 But thou must eat
them before the LORD thy God in the place which the LORD thy God shall
choose, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and
thy maidservant, and the Levite that is within thy gates: and thou
shalt rejoice before the LORD thy God in all that thou puttest thine
hands unto.

12:19 Take heed to thyself that thou forsake not the Levite as long as
thou livest upon the earth.

12:20 When the LORD thy God shall enlarge thy border, as he hath
promised thee, and thou shalt say, I will eat flesh, because thy soul
longeth to eat flesh; thou mayest eat flesh, whatsoever thy soul
lusteth after.

12:21 If the place which the LORD thy God hath chosen to put his name
there be too far from thee, then thou shalt kill of thy herd and of
thy flock, which the LORD hath given thee, as I have commanded thee,
and thou shalt eat in thy gates whatsoever thy soul lusteth after.

12:22 Even as the roebuck and the hart is eaten, so thou shalt eat
them: the unclean and the clean shall eat of them alike.

12:23 Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the
life; and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh.

12:24 Thou shalt not eat it; thou shalt pour it upon the earth as
water.

12:25 Thou shalt not eat it; that it may go well with thee, and with
thy children after thee, when thou shalt do that which is right in the
sight of the LORD.

12:26 Only thy holy things which thou hast, and thy vows, thou shalt
take, and go unto the place which the LORD shall choose: 12:27 And
thou shalt offer thy burnt offerings, the flesh and the blood, upon
the altar of the LORD thy God: and the blood of thy sacrifices shall
be poured out upon the altar of the LORD thy God, and thou shalt eat
the flesh.

12:28 Observe and hear all these words which I command thee, that it
may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee for ever, when
thou doest that which is good and right in the sight of the LORD thy
God.

12:29 When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before
thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them,
and dwellest in their land; 12:30 Take heed to thyself that thou be
not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before
thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did
these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.

12:31 Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every
abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their
gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the
fire to their gods.

12:32 What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt
not add thereto, nor diminish from it.

13:1 If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and
giveth thee a sign or a wonder, 13:2 And the sign or the wonder come
to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other
gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; 13:3 Thou
shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of
dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the
LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

13:4 Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his
commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave
unto him.

13:5 And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to
death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God,
which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of
the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy
God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from
the midst of thee.

13:6 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy
daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine
own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other
gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; 13:7 Namely,
of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee,
or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the
other end of the earth; 13:8 Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor
hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou
spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: 13:9 But thou shalt surely kill
him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and
afterwards the hand of all the people.

13:10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he
hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought
thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

13:11 And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any
such wickedness as this is among you.

13:12 If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the LORD thy
God hath given thee to dwell there, saying, 13:13 Certain men, the
children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn
the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods,
which ye have not known; 13:14 Then shalt thou enquire, and make
search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing
certain, that such abomination is wrought among you; 13:15 Thou shalt
surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword,
destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle
thereof, with the edge of the sword.

13:16 And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the
street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil
thereof every whit, for the LORD thy God: and it shall be an heap for
ever; it shall not be built again.

13:17 And there shall cleave nought of the cursed thing to thine hand:
that the LORD may turn from the fierceness of his anger, and shew thee
mercy, and have compassion upon thee, and multiply thee, as he hath
sworn unto thy fathers; 13:18 When thou shalt hearken to the voice of
the LORD thy God, to keep all his commandments which I command thee
this day, to do that which is right in the eyes of the LORD thy God.

14:1 Ye are the children of the LORD your God: ye shall not cut
yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.

14:2 For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD
hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the
nations that are upon the earth.

14:3 Thou shalt not eat any abominable thing.

14:4 These are the beasts which ye shall eat: the ox, the sheep, and
the goat, 14:5 The hart, and the roebuck, and the fallow deer, and the
wild goat, and the pygarg, and the wild ox, and the chamois.

14:6 And every beast that parteth the hoof, and cleaveth the cleft
into two claws, and cheweth the cud among the beasts, that ye shall
eat.

14:7 Nevertheless these ye shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or
of them that divide the cloven hoof; as the camel, and the hare, and
the coney: for they chew the cud, but divide not the hoof; therefore
they are unclean unto you.

14:8 And the swine, because it divideth the hoof, yet cheweth not the
cud, it is unclean unto you: ye shall not eat of their flesh, nor
touch their dead carcase.

14:9 These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have
fins and scales shall ye eat: 14:10 And whatsoever hath not fins and
scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you.

14:11 Of all clean birds ye shall eat.

14:12 But these are they of which ye shall not eat: the eagle, and the
ossifrage, and the ospray, 14:13 And the glede, and the kite, and the
vulture after his kind, 14:14 And every raven after his kind, 14:15
And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after
his kind, 14:16 The little owl, and the great owl, and the swan, 14:17
And the pelican, and the gier eagle, and the cormorant, 14:18 And the
stork, and the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.

14:19 And every creeping thing that flieth is unclean unto you: they
shall not be eaten.

14:20 But of all clean fowls ye may eat.

14:21 Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself: thou shalt
give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or
thou mayest sell it unto an alien: for thou art an holy people unto
the LORD thy God.

Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

14:22 Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the
field bringeth forth year by year.

14:23 And thou shalt eat before the LORD thy God, in the place which
he shall choose to place his name there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy
wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herds and of thy
flocks; that thou mayest learn to fear the LORD thy God always.

14:24 And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able
to carry it; or if the place be too far from thee, which the LORD thy
God shall choose to set his name there, when the LORD thy God hath
blessed thee: 14:25 Then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up
the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD
thy God shall choose: 14:26 And thou shalt bestow that money for
whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for
wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and
thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice,
thou, and thine household, 14:27 And the Levite that is within thy
gates; thou shalt not forsake him; for he hath no part nor inheritance
with thee.

14:28 At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe
of thine increase the same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates:
14:29 And the Levite, (because he hath no part nor inheritance with
thee,) and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are
within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the
LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou
doest.

15:1 At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release.

15:2 And this is the manner of the release: Every creditor that
lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it; he shall not exact
it of his neighbour, or of his brother; because it is called the
LORD's release.

15:3 Of a foreigner thou mayest exact it again: but that which is
thine with thy brother thine hand shall release; 15:4 Save when there
shall be no poor among you; for the LORD shall greatly bless thee in
the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to
possess it: 15:5 Only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the
LORD thy God, to observe to do all these commandments which I command
thee this day.

15:6 For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou
shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou
shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee.

15:7 If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within
any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou
shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor
brother: 15:8 But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt
surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth.

15:9 Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying,
The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be
evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry
unto the LORD against thee, and it be sin unto thee.

15:10 Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved
when thou givest unto him: because that for this thing the LORD thy
God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest
thine hand unto.

15:11 For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I
command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy
brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.

15:12 And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold
unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou
shalt let him go free from thee.

15:13 And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let
him go away empty: 15:14 Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy
flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that
wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him.

15:15 And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of
Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee
this thing to day.

15:16 And it shall be, if he say unto thee, I will not go away from
thee; because he loveth thee and thine house, because he is well with
thee; 15:17 Then thou shalt take an aul, and thrust it through his ear
unto the door, and he shall be thy servant for ever. And also unto thy
maidservant thou shalt do likewise.

15:18 It shall not seem hard unto thee, when thou sendest him away
free from thee; for he hath been worth a double hired servant to thee,
in serving thee six years: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in
all that thou doest.

15:19 All the firstling males that come of thy herd and of thy flock
thou shalt sanctify unto the LORD thy God: thou shalt do no work with
the firstling of thy bullock, nor shear the firstling of thy sheep.

15:20 Thou shalt eat it before the LORD thy God year by year in the
place which the LORD shall choose, thou and thy household.

15:21 And if there be any blemish therein, as if it be lame, or blind,
or have any ill blemish, thou shalt not sacrifice it unto the LORD thy
God.

15:22 Thou shalt eat it within thy gates: the unclean and the clean
person shall eat it alike, as the roebuck, and as the hart.

15:23 Only thou shalt not eat the blood thereof; thou shalt pour it
upon the ground as water.

16:1 Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto the LORD
thy God: for in the month of Abib the LORD thy God brought thee forth
out of Egypt by night.

16:2 Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the LORD thy
God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the LORD shall
choose to place his name there.

16:3 Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou
eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou
camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that thou mayest
remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all
the days of thy life.

16:4 And there shall be no leavened bread seen with thee in all thy
coast seven days; neither shall there any thing of the flesh, which
thou sacrificedst the first day at even, remain all night until the
morning.

16:5 Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates,
which the LORD thy God giveth thee: 16:6 But at the place which the
LORD thy God shall choose to place his name in, there thou shalt
sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the
season that thou camest forth out of Egypt.

16:7 And thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which the LORD thy
God shall choose: and thou shalt turn in the morning, and go unto thy
tents.

16:8 Six days thou shalt eat unleavened bread: and on the seventh day
shall be a solemn assembly to the LORD thy God: thou shalt do no work
therein.

16:9 Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee: begin to number the
seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the
corn.

16:10 And thou shalt keep the feast of weeks unto the LORD thy God
with a tribute of a freewill offering of thine hand, which thou shalt
give unto the LORD thy God, according as the LORD thy God hath blessed
thee: 16:11 And thou shalt rejoice before the LORD thy God, thou, and
thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant,
and the Levite that is within thy gates, and the stranger, and the
fatherless, and the widow, that are among you, in the place which the
LORD thy God hath chosen to place his name there.

16:12 And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt: and
thou shalt observe and do these statutes.

16:13 Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after
that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine: 16:14 And thou shalt
rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy
manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the
fatherless, and the widow, that are within thy gates.

16:15 Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the LORD thy God
in the place which the LORD shall choose: because the LORD thy God
shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine
hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice.

16:16 Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the LORD
thy God in the place which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened
bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles: and
they shall not appear before the LORD empty: 16:17 Every man shall
give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD thy God
which he hath given thee.

16:18 Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which
the LORD thy God giveth thee, throughout thy tribes: and they shall
judge the people with just judgment.

16:19 Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons,
neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and
pervert the words of the righteous.

16:20 That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou
mayest live, and inherit the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

16:21 Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees near unto the
altar of the LORD thy God, which thou shalt make thee.

16:22 Neither shalt thou set thee up any image; which the LORD thy God
hateth.

17:1 Thou shalt not sacrifice unto the LORD thy God any bullock, or
sheep, wherein is blemish, or any evilfavouredness: for that is an
abomination unto the LORD thy God.

17:2 If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the
LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness
in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant, 17:3
And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the
sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not
commanded; 17:4 And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and
enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain,
that such abomination is wrought in Israel: 17:5 Then shalt thou bring
forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing,
unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with
stones, till they die.

17:6 At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that
is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he
shall not be put to death.

17:7 The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to
death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So thou shalt put
the evil away from among you.

17:8 If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between
blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke,
being matters of controversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise,
and get thee up into the place which the LORD thy God shall choose;
17:9 And thou shalt come unto the priests the Levites, and unto the
judge that shall be in those days, and enquire; and they shall shew
thee the sentence of judgment: 17:10 And thou shalt do according to
the sentence, which they of that place which the LORD shall choose
shall shew thee; and thou shalt observe to do according to all that
they inform thee: 17:11 According to the sentence of the law which
they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall
tell thee, thou shalt do: thou shalt not decline from the sentence
which they shall shew thee, to the right hand, nor to the left.

17:12 And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken
unto the priest that standeth to minister there before the LORD thy
God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die: and thou shalt put
away the evil from Israel.

17:13 And all the people shall hear, and fear, and do no more
presumptuously.

17:14 When thou art come unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth
thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I
will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me;
17:15 Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the LORD thy
God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over
thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy
brother.

17:16 But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the
people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses:
forasmuch as the LORD hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return
no more that way.

17:17 Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn
not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and
gold.

17:18 And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom,
that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which
is before the priests the Levites: 17:19 And it shall be with him, and
he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to
fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these
statutes, to do them: 17:20 That his heart be not lifted up above his
brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the
right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in
his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.

18:1 The priests the Levites, and all the tribe of Levi, shall have no
part nor inheritance with Israel: they shall eat the offerings of the
LORD made by fire, and his inheritance.

18:2 Therefore shall they have no inheritance among their brethren:
the LORD is their inheritance, as he hath said unto them.

18:3 And this shall be the priest's due from the people, from them
that offer a sacrifice, whether it be ox or sheep; and they shall give
unto the priest the shoulder, and the two cheeks, and the maw.

18:4 The firstfruit also of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil,
and the first of the fleece of thy sheep, shalt thou give him.

18:5 For the LORD thy God hath chosen him out of all thy tribes, to
stand to minister in the name of the LORD, him and his sons for ever.

18:6 And if a Levite come from any of thy gates out of all Israel,
where he sojourned, and come with all the desire of his mind unto the
place which the LORD shall choose; 18:7 Then he shall minister in the
name of the LORD his God, as all his brethren the Levites do, which
stand there before the LORD.

18:8 They shall have like portions to eat, beside that which cometh of
the sale of his patrimony.

18:9 When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth
thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those
nations.

18:10 There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son
or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or
an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.

18:11 Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard,
or a necromancer.

18:12 For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD:
and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out
from before thee.

18:13 Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God.

18:14 For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto
observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the LORD thy
God hath not suffered thee so to do.

18:15 The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the
midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall
hearken; 18:16 According to all that thou desiredst of the LORD thy
God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again
the voice of the LORD my God, neither let me see this great fire any
more, that I die not.

18:17 And the LORD said unto me, They have well spoken that which they
have spoken.

18:18 I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like
unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto
them all that I shall command him.

18:19 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto
my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.

18:20 But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name,
which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the
name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.

18:21 And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which
the LORD hath not spoken?  18:22 When a prophet speaketh in the name
of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the
thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it
presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

19:1 When the LORD thy God hath cut off the nations, whose land the
LORD thy God giveth thee, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in
their cities, and in their houses; 19:2 Thou shalt separate three
cities for thee in the midst of thy land, which the LORD thy God
giveth thee to possess it.

19:3 Thou shalt prepare thee a way, and divide the coasts of thy land,
which the LORD thy God giveth thee to inherit, into three parts, that
every slayer may flee thither.

19:4 And this is the case of the slayer, which shall flee thither,
that he may live: Whoso killeth his neighbour ignorantly, whom he
hated not in time past; 19:5 As when a man goeth into the wood with
his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe
to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and
lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die; he shall flee unto one of
those cities, and live: 19:6 Lest the avenger of the blood pursue the
slayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is
long, and slay him; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he
hated him not in time past.

19:7 Wherefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt separate three
cities for thee.

19:8 And if the LORD thy God enlarge thy coast, as he hath sworn unto
thy fathers, and give thee all the land which he promised to give unto
thy fathers; 19:9 If thou shalt keep all these commandments to do
them, which I command thee this day, to love the LORD thy God, and to
walk ever in his ways; then shalt thou add three cities more for thee,
beside these three: 19:10 That innocent blood be not shed in thy land,
which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and so blood be
upon thee.

19:11 But if any man hate his neighbour, and lie in wait for him, and
rise up against him, and smite him mortally that he die, and fleeth
into one of these cities: 19:12 Then the elders of his city shall send
and fetch him thence, and deliver him into the hand of the avenger of
blood, that he may die.

19:13 Thine eye shall not pity him, but thou shalt put away the guilt
of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with thee.

19:14 Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark, which they of
old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in
the land that the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it.

19:15 One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or
for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two
witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be
established.

19:16 If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against
him that which is wrong; 19:17 Then both the men, between whom the
controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and
the judges, which shall be in those days; 19:18 And the judges shall
make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false
witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother; 19:19 Then
shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother:
so shalt thou put the evil away from among you.

19:20 And those which remain shall hear, and fear, and shall
henceforth commit no more any such evil among you.

19:21 And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye
for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

20:1 When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest
horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of
them: for the LORD thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of
the land of Egypt.

20:2 And it shall be, when ye are come nigh unto the battle, that the
priest shall approach and speak unto the people, 20:3 And shall say
unto them, Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day unto battle against
your enemies: let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble,
neither be ye terrified because of them; 20:4 For the LORD your God is
he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save
you.

20:5 And the officers shall speak unto the people, saying, What man is
there that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? let him
go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man
dedicate it.

20:6 And what man is he that hath planted a vineyard, and hath not yet
eaten of it? let him also go and return unto his house, lest he die in
the battle, and another man eat of it.

20:7 And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not
taken her? let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the
battle, and another man take her.

20:8 And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they
shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him
go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well
as his heart.

20:9 And it shall be, when the officers have made an end of speaking
unto the people that they shall make captains of the armies to lead
the people.

20:10 When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then
proclaim peace unto it.

20:11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto
thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein
shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.

20:12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war
against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: 20:13 And when the LORD thy
God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male
thereof with the edge of the sword: 20:14 But the women, and the
little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the
spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the
spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.

20:15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off
from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.

20:16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth
give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that
breatheth: 20:17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the
Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the
Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:
20:18 That they teach you not to do after all their abominations,
which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the
LORD your God.

20:19 When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war
against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by
forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou
shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to
employ them in the siege: 20:20 Only the trees which thou knowest that
they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and
thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee,
until it be subdued.

21:1 If one be found slain in the land which the LORD thy God giveth
thee to possess it, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath
slain him: 21:2 Then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth, and
they shall measure unto the cities which are round about him that is
slain: 21:3 And it shall be, that the city which is next unto the
slain man, even the elders of that city shall take an heifer, which
hath not been wrought with, and which hath not drawn in the yoke; 21:4
And the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough
valley, which is neither eared nor sown, and shall strike off the
heifer's neck there in the valley: 21:5 And the priests the sons of
Levi shall come near; for them the LORD thy God hath chosen to
minister unto him, and to bless in the name of the LORD; and by their
word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried: 21:6 And all
the elders of that city, that are next unto the slain man, shall wash
their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley: 21:7 And
they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither
have our eyes seen it.

21:8 Be merciful, O LORD, unto thy people Israel, whom thou hast
redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto thy people of Israel's
charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them.

21:9 So shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent blood from among
you, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the LORD.

21:10 When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the LORD
thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them
captive, 21:11 And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and
hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; 21:12
Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house, and she shall shave her
head, and pare her nails; 21:13 And she shall put the raiment of her
captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail
her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go
in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife.

21:14 And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt
let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all for
money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast
humbled her.

21:15 If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and
they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if
the firstborn son be hers that was hated: 21:16 Then it shall be, when
he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make
the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is
indeed the firstborn: 21:17 But he shall acknowledge the son of the
hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he
hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the
firstborn is his.

21:18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey
the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when
they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: 21:19 Then shall
his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the
elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; 21:20 And they
shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and
rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a
drunkard.

21:21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he
die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall
hear, and fear.

21:22 And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to
be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: 21:23 His body shall not
remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him
that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be
not defiled, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.

22:1 Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his sheep go astray, and
hide thyself from them: thou shalt in any case bring them again unto
thy brother.

22:2 And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou know him
not, then thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be
with thee until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it
to him again.

22:3 In like manner shalt thou do with his ass; and so shalt thou do
with his raiment; and with all lost thing of thy brother's, which he
hath lost, and thou hast found, shalt thou do likewise: thou mayest
not hide thyself.

22:4 Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass or his ox fall down by the
way, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift
them up again.

22:5 The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man,
neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are
abomination unto the LORD thy God.

22:6 If a bird's nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree,
or on the ground, whether they be young ones, or eggs, and the dam
sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam
with the young: 22:7 But thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, and
take the young to thee; that it may be well with thee, and that thou
mayest prolong thy days.

22:8 When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement
for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man
fall from thence.

22:9 Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds: lest the fruit
of thy seed which thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy vineyard, be
defiled.

22:10 Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together.

22:11 Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and
linen together.

22:12 Thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy
vesture, wherewith thou coverest thyself.

22:13 If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, 22:14
And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name
upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found
her not a maid: 22:15 Then shall the father of the damsel, and her
mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto
the elders of the city in the gate: 22:16 And the damsel's father
shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife,
and he hateth her; 22:17 And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech
against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these
are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the
cloth before the elders of the city.

22:18 And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise
him; 22:19 And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver,
and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought
up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he
may not put her away all his days.

22:20 But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not
found for the damsel: 22:21 Then they shall bring out the damsel to
the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone
her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in
Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put
evil away from among you.

22:22 If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then
they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and
the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel.

22:23 If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a
man find her in the city, and lie with her; 22:24 Then ye shall bring
them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with
stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the
city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so
thou shalt put away evil from among you.

22:25 But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man
force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall
die.

22:26 But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the
damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his
neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter: 22:27 For he found
her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none
to save her.

22:28 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed,
and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; 22:29 Then
the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty
shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled
her, he may not put her away all his days.

22:30 A man shall not take his father's wife, nor discover his
father's skirt.

23:1 He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut
off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD.

23:2 A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even
to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of
the LORD.

23:3 An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of
the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the
congregation of the LORD for ever: 23:4 Because they met you not with
bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and
because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of
Mesopotamia, to curse thee.

23:5 Nevertheless the LORD thy God would not hearken unto Balaam; but
the LORD thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because
the LORD thy God loved thee.

23:6 Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days
for ever.

23:7 Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite; for he is thy brother: thou
shalt not abhor an Egyptian; because thou wast a stranger in his land.

23:8 The children that are begotten of them shall enter into the
congregation of the LORD in their third generation.

23:9 When the host goeth forth against thine enemies, then keep thee
from every wicked thing.

23:10 If there be among you any man, that is not clean by reason of
uncleanness that chanceth him by night, then shall he go abroad out of
the camp, he shall not come within the camp: 23:11 But it shall be,
when evening cometh on, he shall wash himself with water: and when the
sun is down, he shall come into the camp again.

23:12 Thou shalt have a place also without the camp, whither thou
shalt go forth abroad: 23:13 And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy
weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou
shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh
from thee: 23:14 For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy
camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee;
therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in
thee, and turn away from thee.

23:15 Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is
escaped from his master unto thee: 23:16 He shall dwell with thee,
even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy
gates, where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him.

23:17 There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a
sodomite of the sons of Israel.

23:18 Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog,
into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these
are abomination unto the LORD thy God.

23:19 Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money,
usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury: 23:20
Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou
shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all
that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to
possess it.

23:21 When thou shalt vow a vow unto the LORD thy God, thou shalt not
slack to pay it: for the LORD thy God will surely require it of thee;
and it would be sin in thee.

23:22 But if thou shalt forbear to vow, it shall be no sin in thee.

23:23 That which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt keep and perform;
even a freewill offering, according as thou hast vowed unto the LORD
thy God, which thou hast promised with thy mouth.

23:24 When thou comest into thy neighbour's vineyard, then thou mayest
eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure; but thou shalt not put any
in thy vessel.

23:25 When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbour, then
thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a
sickle unto thy neighbour's standing corn.

24:1 When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to
pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some
uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and
give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.

24:2 And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be
another man's wife.

24:3 And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of
divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his
house; or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife;
24:4 Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again
to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination
before the LORD: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the
LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.

24:5 When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war,
neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at
home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken.

24:6 No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge:
for he taketh a man's life to pledge.

24:7 If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of
Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him; then that thief
shall die; and thou shalt put evil away from among you.

24:8 Take heed in the plague of leprosy, that thou observe diligently,
and do according to all that the priests the Levites shall teach you:
as I commanded them, so ye shall observe to do.

24:9 Remember what the LORD thy God did unto Miriam by the way, after
that ye were come forth out of Egypt.

24:10 When thou dost lend thy brother any thing, thou shalt not go
into his house to fetch his pledge.

24:11 Thou shalt stand abroad, and the man to whom thou dost lend
shall bring out the pledge abroad unto thee.

24:12 And if the man be poor, thou shalt not sleep with his pledge:
24:13 In any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun
goeth down, that he may sleep in his own raiment, and bless thee: and
it shall be righteousness unto thee before the LORD thy God.

24:14 Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy,
whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy
land within thy gates: 24:15 At his day thou shalt give him his hire,
neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his
heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the LORD, and it be sin
unto thee.

24:16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither
shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be
put to death for his own sin.

24:17 Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the
fatherless; nor take a widow's raiment to pledge: 24:18 But thou shalt
remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and the LORD thy God
redeemed thee thence: therefore I command thee to do this thing.

24:19 When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast
forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it
shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that
the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands.

24:20 When thou beatest thine olive tree, thou shalt not go over the
boughs again: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and
for the widow.

24:21 When thou gatherest the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not
glean it afterward: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless,
and for the widow.

24:22 And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of
Egypt: therefore I command thee to do this thing.

25:1 If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto
judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the
righteous, and condemn the wicked.

25:2 And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that
the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his
face, according to his fault, by a certain number.

25:3 Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should
exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother
should seem vile unto thee.

25:4 Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.

25:5 If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no
child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger:
her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to
wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her.

25:6 And it shall be, that the firstborn which she beareth shall
succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not
put out of Israel.

25:7 And if the man like not to take his brother's wife, then let his
brother's wife go up to the gate unto the elders, and say, My
husband's brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in
Israel, he will not perform the duty of my husband's brother.

25:8 Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak unto him:
and if he stand to it, and say, I like not to take her; 25:9 Then
shall his brother's wife come unto him in the presence of the elders,
and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall
answer and say, So shall it be done unto that man that will not build
up his brother's house.

25:10 And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that
hath his shoe loosed.

25:11 When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the
one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him
that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the
secrets: 25:12 Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not
pity her.

25:13 Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a
small.

25:14 Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and
a small.

25:15 But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and
just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the
land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

25:16 For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are
an abomination unto the LORD thy God.

25:17 Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come
forth out of Egypt; 25:18 How he met thee by the way, and smote the
hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou
wast faint and weary; and he feared not God.

25:19 Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee
rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD
thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt
blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not
forget it.

26:1 And it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which the
LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possessest it, and
dwellest therein; 26:2 That thou shalt take of the first of all the
fruit of the earth, which thou shalt bring of thy land that the LORD
thy God giveth thee, and shalt put it in a basket, and shalt go unto
the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to place his name there.

26:3 And thou shalt go unto the priest that shall be in those days,
and say unto him, I profess this day unto the LORD thy God, that I am
come unto the country which the LORD sware unto our fathers for to
give us.

26:4 And the priest shall take the basket out of thine hand, and set
it down before the altar of the LORD thy God.

26:5 And thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God, A Syrian
ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and
sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty,
and populous: 26:6 And the Egyptians evil entreated us, and afflicted
us, and laid upon us hard bondage: 26:7 And when we cried unto the
LORD God of our fathers, the LORD heard our voice, and looked on our
affliction, and our labour, and our oppression: 26:8 And the LORD
brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an
outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and
with wonders: 26:9 And he hath brought us into this place, and hath
given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey.

26:10 And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land,
which thou, O LORD, hast given me. And thou shalt set it before the
LORD thy God, and worship before the LORD thy God: 26:11 And thou
shalt rejoice in every good thing which the LORD thy God hath given
unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the
stranger that is among you.

26:12 When thou hast made an end of tithing all the tithes of thine
increase the third year, which is the year of tithing, and hast given
it unto the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that
they may eat within thy gates, and be filled; 26:13 Then thou shalt
say before the LORD thy God, I have brought away the hallowed things
out of mine house, and also have given them unto the Levite, and unto
the stranger, to the fatherless, and to the widow, according to all
thy commandments which thou hast commanded me: I have not transgressed
thy commandments, neither have I forgotten them.

26:14 I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, neither have I taken
away ought thereof for any unclean use, nor given ought thereof for
the dead: but I have hearkened to the voice of the LORD my God, and
have done according to all that thou hast commanded me.

26:15 Look down from thy holy habitation, from heaven, and bless thy
people Israel, and the land which thou hast given us, as thou swarest
unto our fathers, a land that floweth with milk and honey.

26:16 This day the LORD thy God hath commanded thee to do these
statutes and judgments: thou shalt therefore keep and do them with all
thine heart, and with all thy soul.

26:17 Thou hast avouched the LORD this day to be thy God, and to walk
in his ways, and to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his
judgments, and to hearken unto his voice: 26:18 And the LORD hath
avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath promised
thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments; 26:19 And to
make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and in
name, and in honour; and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the
LORD thy God, as he hath spoken.

27:1 And Moses with the elders of Israel commanded the people, saying,
Keep all the commandments which I command you this day.

27:2 And it shall be on the day when ye shall pass over Jordan unto
the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, that thou shalt set thee
up great stones, and plaister them with plaister: 27:3 And thou shalt
write upon them all the words of this law, when thou art passed over,
that thou mayest go in unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth
thee, a land that floweth with milk and honey; as the LORD God of thy
fathers hath promised thee.

27:4 Therefore it shall be when ye be gone over Jordan, that ye shall
set up these stones, which I command you this day, in mount Ebal, and
thou shalt plaister them with plaister.

27:5 And there shalt thou build an altar unto the LORD thy God, an
altar of stones: thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them.

27:6 Thou shalt build the altar of the LORD thy God of whole stones:
and thou shalt offer burnt offerings thereon unto the LORD thy God:
27:7 And thou shalt offer peace offerings, and shalt eat there, and
rejoice before the LORD thy God.

27:8 And thou shalt write upon the stones all the words of this law
very plainly.

27:9 And Moses and the priests the Levites spake unto all Israel,
saying, Take heed, and hearken, O Israel; this day thou art become the
people of the LORD thy God.

27:10 Thou shalt therefore obey the voice of the LORD thy God, and do
his commandments and his statutes, which I command thee this day.

27:11 And Moses charged the people the same day, saying, 27:12 These
shall stand upon mount Gerizim to bless the people, when ye are come
over Jordan; Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Joseph,
and Benjamin: 27:13 And these shall stand upon mount Ebal to curse;
Reuben, Gad, and Asher, and Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.

27:14 And the Levites shall speak, and say unto all the men of Israel
with a loud voice, 27:15 Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or
molten image, an abomination unto the LORD, the work of the hands of
the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place. And all the people
shall answer and say, Amen.

27:16 Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother. And
all the people shall say, Amen.

27:17 Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark. And all the
people shall say, Amen.

27:18 Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way. And
all the people shall say, Amen.

27:19 Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger,
fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen.

27:20 Cursed be he that lieth with his father's wife; because he
uncovereth his father's skirt. And all the people shall say, Amen.

27:21 Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the
people shall say, Amen.

27:22 Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of his
father, or the daughter of his mother. And all the people shall say,
Amen.

27:23 Cursed be he that lieth with his mother in law. And all the
people shall say, Amen.

27:24 Cursed be he that smiteth his neighbour secretly. And all the
people shall say, Amen.

27:25 Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person. And
all the people shall say, Amen.

27:26 Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do
them. And all the people shall say, Amen.

28:1 And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto
the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his
commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will
set thee on high above all nations of the earth: 28:2 And all these
blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken
unto the voice of the LORD thy God.

28:3 Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in
the field.

28:4 Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy
ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the
flocks of thy sheep.

28:5 Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.

28:6 Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou
be when thou goest out.

28:7 The LORD shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to
be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way,
and flee before thee seven ways.

28:8 The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses,
and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee
in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

28:9 The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he
hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD
thy God, and walk in his ways.

28:10 And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by
the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee.

28:11 And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of
thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy
ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give
thee.

28:12 The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to
give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work
of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt
not borrow.

28:13 And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and
thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou
hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command
thee this day, to observe and to do them: 28:14 And thou shalt not go
aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the
right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.

28:15 But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the
voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and
his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses
shall come upon thee, and overtake thee: 28:16 Cursed shalt thou be in
the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field.

28:17 Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store.

28:18 Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy
land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.

28:19 Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou
be when thou goest out.

28:20 The LORD shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in
all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be
destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of
thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me.

28:21 The LORD shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he
have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess
it.

28:22 The LORD shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever,
and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the
sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee
until thou perish.

28:23 And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the
earth that is under thee shall be iron.

28:24 The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from
heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.

28:25 The LORD shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies:
thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before
them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.

28:26 And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and
unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.

28:27 The LORD will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the
emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not
be healed.

28:28 The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and
astonishment of heart: 28:29 And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the
blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and
thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall
save thee.

28:30 Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her:
thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein: thou
shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof.

28:31 Thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not
eat thereof: thine ass shall be violently taken away from before thy
face, and shall not be restored to thee: thy sheep shall be given unto
thine enemies, and thou shalt have none to rescue them.

28:32 Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people,
and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day
long; and there shall be no might in thine hand.

28:33 The fruit of thy land, and all thy labours, shall a nation which
thou knowest not eat up; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed
alway: 28:34 So that thou shalt be mad for the sight of thine eyes
which thou shalt see.

28:35 The LORD shall smite thee in the knees, and in the legs, with a
sore botch that cannot be healed, from the sole of thy foot unto the
top of thy head.

28:36 The LORD shall bring thee, and thy king which thou shalt set
over thee, unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have
known; and there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone.

28:37 And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword,
among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee.

28:38 Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, and shalt gather
but little in; for the locust shall consume it.

28:39 Thou shalt plant vineyards, and dress them, but shalt neither
drink of the wine, nor gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat
them.

28:40 Thou shalt have olive trees throughout all thy coasts, but thou
shalt not anoint thyself with the oil; for thine olive shall cast his
fruit.

28:41 Thou shalt beget sons and daughters, but thou shalt not enjoy
them; for they shall go into captivity.

28:42 All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume.

28:43 The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very
high; and thou shalt come down very low.

28:44 He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall
be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.

28:45 Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue
thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou
hearkenedst not unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his
commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee: 28:46 And they
shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for
ever.

28:47 Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and
with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; 28:48
Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send
against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want
of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he
have destroyed thee.

28:49 The LORD shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the
end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue
thou shalt not understand; 28:50 A nation of fierce countenance, which
shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew favour to the young:
28:51 And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy
land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either
corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy
sheep, until he have destroyed thee.

28:52 And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and
fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy
land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy
land, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.

28:53 And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy
sons and of thy daughters, which the LORD thy God hath given thee, in
the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall
distress thee: 28:54 So that the man that is tender among you, and
very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward
the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he
shall leave: 28:55 So that he will not give to any of them of the
flesh of his children whom he shall eat: because he hath nothing left
him in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall
distress thee in all thy gates.

28:56 The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not
adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness
and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom,
and toward her son, and toward her daughter, 28:57 And toward her
young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her
children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all
things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy
shall distress thee in thy gates.

28:58 If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that
are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and
fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD; 28:59 Then the LORD will make thy
plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues,
and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance.

28:60 Moreover he will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt,
which thou wast afraid of; and they shall cleave unto thee.

28:61 Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in
the book of this law, them will the LORD bring upon thee, until thou
be destroyed.

28:62 And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars
of heaven for multitude; because thou wouldest not obey the voice of
the LORD thy God.

28:63 And it shall come to pass, that as the LORD rejoiced over you to
do you good, and to multiply you; so the LORD will rejoice over you to
destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from
off the land whither thou goest to possess it.

28:64 And the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one
end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other
gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and
stone.

28:65 And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall
the sole of thy foot have rest: but the LORD shall give thee there a
trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: 28:66 And
thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and
night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: 28:67 In the morning
thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say,
Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou
shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.

28:68 And the LORD shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by
the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again:
and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and
bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.

29:1 These are the words of the covenant, which the LORD commanded
Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside
the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.

29:2 And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, Ye have
seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto
Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land; 29:3 The
great temptations which thine eyes have seen, the signs, and those
great miracles: 29:4 Yet the LORD hath not given you an heart to
perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.

29:5 And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes
are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy
foot.

29:6 Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong
drink: that ye might know that I am the LORD your God.

29:7 And when ye came unto this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and
Og the king of Bashan, came out against us unto battle, and we smote
them: 29:8 And we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance unto
the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half tribe of Manasseh.

29:9 Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye
may prosper in all that ye do.

29:10 Ye stand this day all of you before the LORD your God; your
captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the
men of Israel, 29:11 Your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger
that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy
water: 29:12 That thou shouldest enter into covenant with the LORD thy
God, and into his oath, which the LORD thy God maketh with thee this
day: 29:13 That he may establish thee to day for a people unto
himself, and that he may be unto thee a God, as he hath said unto
thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and
to Jacob.

29:14 Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;
29:15 But with him that standeth here with us this day before the LORD
our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day: 29:16
(For ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came
through the nations which ye passed by; 29:17 And ye have seen their
abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which
were among them:) 29:18 Lest there should be among you man, or woman,
or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD
our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should
be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood; 29:19 And it come
to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless
himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the
imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst: 29:20 The
LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his
jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are
written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out
his name from under heaven.

29:21 And the LORD shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes
of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are
written in this book of the law: 29:22 So that the generation to come
of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that
shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of
that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it; 29:23
And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning,
that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like
the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the
LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath: 29:24 Even all nations
shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what
meaneth the heat of this great anger?  29:25 Then men shall say,
Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their
fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the
land of Egypt: 29:26 For they went and served other gods, and
worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given
unto them: 29:27 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this
land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:
29:28 And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in
wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as
it is this day.

29:29 The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things
which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that
we may do all the words of this law.

30:1 And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon
thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and
thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither the LORD
thy God hath driven thee, 30:2 And shalt return unto the LORD thy God,
and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this
day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with all thy
soul; 30:3 That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and
have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all
the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee.

30:4 If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven,
from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will he
fetch thee: 30:5 And the LORD thy God will bring thee into the land
which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do
thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.

30:6 And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart
of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with
all thy soul, that thou mayest live.

30:7 And the LORD thy God will put all these curses upon thine
enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecuted thee.

30:8 And thou shalt return and obey the voice of the LORD, and do all
his commandments which I command thee this day.

30:9 And the LORD thy God will make thee plenteous in every work of
thine hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle,
and in the fruit of thy land, for good: for the LORD will again
rejoice over thee for good, as he rejoiced over thy fathers: 30:10 If
thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his
commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the
law, and if thou turn unto the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and
with all thy soul.

30:11 For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not
hidden from thee, neither is it far off.

30:12 It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up
for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do
it?  30:13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who
shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear
it, and do it?  30:14 But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy
mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.

30:15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death
and evil; 30:16 In that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy
God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his
statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and
the LORD thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to
possess it.

30:17 But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but
shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; 30:18 I
denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye
shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over
Jordan to go to possess it.

30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I
have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore
choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: 30:20 That thou
mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and
that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length
of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware
unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.

31:1 And Moses went and spake these words unto all Israel.

31:2 And he said unto them, I am an hundred and twenty years old this
day; I can no more go out and come in: also the LORD hath said unto
me, Thou shalt not go over this Jordan.

31:3 The LORD thy God, he will go over before thee, and he will
destroy these nations from before thee, and thou shalt possess them:
and Joshua, he shall go over before thee, as the LORD hath said.

31:4 And the LORD shall do unto them as he did to Sihon and to Og,
kings of the Amorites, and unto the land of them, whom he destroyed.

31:5 And the LORD shall give them up before your face, that ye may do
unto them according unto all the commandments which I have commanded
you.

31:6 Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them:
for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not
fail thee, nor forsake thee.

31:7 And Moses called unto Joshua, and said unto him in the sight of
all Israel, Be strong and of a good courage: for thou must go with
this people unto the land which the LORD hath sworn unto their fathers
to give them; and thou shalt cause them to inherit it.

31:8 And the LORD, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with
thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither
be dismayed.

31:9 And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the
sons of Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and unto
all the elders of Israel.

31:10 And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven
years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of
tabernacles, 31:11 When all Israel is come to appear before the LORD
thy God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law
before all Israel in their hearing.

31:12 Gather the people together, men and women, and children, and thy
stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they
may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words
of this law: 31:13 And that their children, which have not known any
thing, may hear, and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as ye
live in the land whither ye go over Jordan to possess it.

31:14 And the LORD said unto Moses, Behold, thy days approach that
thou must die: call Joshua, and present yourselves in the tabernacle
of the congregation, that I may give him a charge. And Moses and
Joshua went, and presented themselves in the tabernacle of the
congregation.

31:15 And the LORD appeared in the tabernacle in a pillar of a cloud:
and the pillar of the cloud stood over the door of the tabernacle.

31:16 And the LORD said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy
fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods
of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and
will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them.

31:17 Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I
will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall
be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that
they will say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because
our God is not among us?  31:18 And I will surely hide my face in that
day for all the evils which they shall have wrought, in that they are
turned unto other gods.

31:19 Now therefore write ye this song for you, and teach it the
children of Israel: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a
witness for me against the children of Israel.

31:20 For when I shall have brought them into the land which I sware
unto their fathers, that floweth with milk and honey; and they shall
have eaten and filled themselves, and waxen fat; then will they turn
unto other gods, and serve them, and provoke me, and break my
covenant.

31:21 And it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are
befallen them, that this song shall testify against them as a witness;
for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed: for I
know their imagination which they go about, even now, before I have
brought them into the land which I sware.

31:22 Moses therefore wrote this song the same day, and taught it the
children of Israel.

31:23 And he gave Joshua the son of Nun a charge, and said, Be strong
and of a good courage: for thou shalt bring the children of Israel
into the land which I sware unto them: and I will be with thee.

31:24 And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the
words of this law in a book, until they were finished, 31:25 That
Moses commanded the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the
LORD, saying, 31:26 Take this book of the law, and put it in the side
of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there
for a witness against thee.

31:27 For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am
yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the LORD;
and how much more after my death?  31:28 Gather unto me all the elders
of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in
their ears, and call heaven and earth to record against them.

31:29 For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt
yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you;
and evil will befall you in the latter days; because ye will do evil
in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger through the work of
your hands.

31:30 And Moses spake in the ears of all the congregation of Israel
the words of this song, until they were ended.

32:1 Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the
words of my mouth.

32:2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the
dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon
the grass: 32:3 Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe
ye greatness unto our God.

32:4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are
judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

32:5 They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his
children: they are a perverse and crooked generation.

32:6 Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? is not
he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and
established thee?  32:7 Remember the days of old, consider the years
of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy
elders, and they will tell thee.

32:8 When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when
he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people
according to the number of the children of Israel.

32:9 For the LORD's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his
inheritance.

32:10 He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling
wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the
apple of his eye.

32:11 As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young,
spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings:
32:12 So the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god
with him.

32:13 He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might
eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of
the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; 32:14 Butter of kine, and
milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and
goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure
blood of the grape.

32:15 But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art
grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which
made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.

32:16 They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with
abominations provoked they him to anger.

32:17 They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew
not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.

32:18 Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast
forgotten God that formed thee.

32:19 And when the LORD saw it, he abhorred them, because of the
provoking of his sons, and of his daughters.

32:20 And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what
their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children
in whom is no faith.

32:21 They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they
have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to
jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to
anger with a foolish nation.

32:22 For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the
lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on
fire the foundations of the mountains.

32:23 I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon
them.

32:24 They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat,
and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon
them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.

32:25 The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the
young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray
hairs.

32:26 I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the
remembrance of them to cease from among men: 32:27 Were it not that I
feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave
themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and
the LORD hath not done all this.

32:28 For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any
understanding in them.

32:29 O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they
would consider their latter end!  32:30 How should one chase a
thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had
sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?  32:31 For their rock is not
as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.

32:32 For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of
Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter:
32:33 Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of
asps.

32:34 Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my
treasures?  32:35 To me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot
shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and
the things that shall come upon them make haste.

32:36 For the LORD shall judge his people, and repent himself for his
servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none
shut up, or left.

32:37 And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they
trusted, 32:38 Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank
the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and
be your protection.

32:39 See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I
kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that
can deliver out of my hand.

32:40 For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever.

32:41 If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on
judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward
them that hate me.

32:42 I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall
devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the
captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.

32:43 Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the
blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries,
and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people.

32:44 And Moses came and spake all the words of this song in the ears
of the people, he, and Hoshea the son of Nun.

32:45 And Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel:
32:46 And he said unto them, Set your hearts unto all the words which
I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your children to
observe to do, all the words of this law.

32:47 For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life: and
through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, whither ye
go over Jordan to possess it.

32:48 And the LORD spake unto Moses that selfsame day, saying, 32:49
Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto mount Nebo, which is in
the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of
Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession:
32:50 And die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto
thy people; as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered
unto his people: 32:51 Because ye trespassed against me among the
children of Israel at the waters of MeribahKadesh, in the wilderness
of Zin; because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of
Israel.

32:52 Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go
thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel.

33:1 And this is the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed
the children of Israel before his death.

33:2 And he said, The LORD came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto
them; he shined forth from mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands
of saints: from his right hand went a fiery law for them.

33:3 Yea, he loved the people; all his saints are in thy hand: and
they sat down at thy feet; every one shall receive of thy words.

33:4 Moses commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the
congregation of Jacob.

33:5 And he was king in Jeshurun, when the heads of the people and the
tribes of Israel were gathered together.

33:6 Let Reuben live, and not die; and let not his men be few.

33:7 And this is the blessing of Judah: and he said, Hear, LORD, the
voice of Judah, and bring him unto his people: let his hands be
sufficient for him; and be thou an help to him from his enemies.

33:8 And of Levi he said, Let thy Thummim and thy Urim be with thy
holy one, whom thou didst prove at Massah, and with whom thou didst
strive at the waters of Meribah; 33:9 Who said unto his father and to
his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he acknowledge his
brethren, nor knew his own children: for they have observed thy word,
and kept thy covenant.

33:10 They shall teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law: they
shall put incense before thee, and whole burnt sacrifice upon thine
altar.

33:11 Bless, LORD, his substance, and accept the work of his hands;
smite through the loins of them that rise against him, and of them
that hate him, that they rise not again.

33:12 And of Benjamin he said, The beloved of the LORD shall dwell in
safety by him; and the Lord shall cover him all the day long, and he
shall dwell between his shoulders.

33:13 And of Joseph he said, Blessed of the LORD be his land, for the
precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth
beneath, 33:14 And for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun,
and for the precious things put forth by the moon, 33:15 And for the
chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of
the lasting hills, 33:16 And for the precious things of the earth and
fulness thereof, and for the good will of him that dwelt in the bush:
let the blessing come upon the head of Joseph, and upon the top of the
head of him that was separated from his brethren.

33:17 His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns
are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people
together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of
Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh.

33:18 And of Zebulun he said, Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out; and,
Issachar, in thy tents.

33:19 They shall call the people unto the mountain; there they shall
offer sacrifices of righteousness: for they shall suck of the
abundance of the seas, and of treasures hid in the sand.

33:20 And of Gad he said, Blessed be he that enlargeth Gad: he
dwelleth as a lion, and teareth the arm with the crown of the head.

33:21 And he provided the first part for himself, because there, in a
portion of the lawgiver, was he seated; and he came with the heads of
the people, he executed the justice of the LORD, and his judgments
with Israel.

33:22 And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion's whelp: he shall leap from
Bashan.

33:23 And of Naphtali he said, O Naphtali, satisfied with favour, and
full with the blessing of the LORD: possess thou the west and the
south.

33:24 And of Asher he said, Let Asher be blessed with children; let
him be acceptable to his brethren, and let him dip his foot in oil.

33:25 Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy
strength be.

33:26 There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the
heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky.

33:27 The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the
everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee;
and shall say, Destroy them.

33:28 Israel then shall dwell in safety alone: the fountain of Jacob
shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall drop
down dew.

33:29 Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved
by the LORD, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy
excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou
shalt tread upon their high places.

34:1 And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of
Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the LORD
shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, 34:2 And all Naphtali,
and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto
the utmost sea, 34:3 And the south, and the plain of the valley of
Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoar.

34:4 And the LORD said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto
Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy
seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not
go over thither.

34:5 So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab,
according to the word of the LORD.

34:6 And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against
Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.

34:7 And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his
eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.

34:8 And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab
thirty days: so the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended.

34:9 And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom; for
Moses had laid his hands upon him: and the children of Israel
hearkened unto him, and did as the LORD commanded Moses.

34:10 And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses,
whom the LORD knew face to face, 34:11 In all the signs and the
wonders, which the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt to
Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land, 34:12 And in
all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses shewed
in the sight of all Israel.




The Book of Joshua


1:1 Now after the death of Moses the servant of the LORD it came to
pass, that the LORD spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' minister,
saying, 1:2 Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over
this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give
to them, even to the children of Israel.

1:3 Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have
I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.

1:4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river,
the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great
sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast.

1:5 There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days
of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not
fail thee, nor forsake thee.

1:6 Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou
divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers
to give them.

1:7 Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe
to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee:
turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest
prosper withersoever thou goest.

1:8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou
shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do
according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy
way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

1:9 Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not
afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee
whithersoever thou goest.

1:10 Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, 1:11
Pass through the host, and command the people, saying, Prepare you
victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go
in to possess the land, which the LORD your God giveth you to possess
it.

1:12 And to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to half the tribe
of Manasseh, spake Joshua, saying, 1:13 Remember the word which Moses
the servant of the LORD commanded you, saying, The LORD your God hath
given you rest, and hath given you this land.

1:14 Your wives, your little ones, and your cattle, shall remain in
the land which Moses gave you on this side Jordan; but ye shall pass
before your brethren armed, all the mighty men of valour, and help
them; 1:15 Until the LORD have given your brethren rest, as he hath
given you, and they also have possessed the land which the LORD your
God giveth them: then ye shall return unto the land of your
possession, and enjoy it, which Moses the LORD's servant gave you on
this side Jordan toward the sunrising.

1:16 And they answered Joshua, saying, All that thou commandest us we
will do, and whithersoever thou sendest us, we will go.

1:17 According as we hearkened unto Moses in all things, so will we
hearken unto thee: only the LORD thy God be with thee, as he was with
Moses.

1:18 Whosoever he be that doth rebel against thy commandment, and will
not hearken unto thy words in all that thou commandest him, he shall
be put to death: only be strong and of a good courage.

2:1 And Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men to spy
secretly, saying, Go view the land, even Jericho. And they went, and
came into an harlot's house, named Rahab, and lodged there.

2:2 And it was told the king of Jericho, saying, Behold, there came
men in hither to night of the children of Israel to search out the
country.

2:3 And the king of Jericho sent unto Rahab, saying, Bring forth the
men that are come to thee, which are entered into thine house: for
they be come to search out all the country.

2:4 And the woman took the two men, and hid them, and said thus, There
came men unto me, but I wist not whence they were: 2:5 And it came to
pass about the time of shutting of the gate, when it was dark, that
the men went out: whither the men went I wot not: pursue after them
quickly; for ye shall overtake them.

2:6 But she had brought them up to the roof of the house, and hid them
with the stalks of flax, which she had laid in order upon the roof.

2:7 And the men pursued after them the way to Jordan unto the fords:
and as soon as they which pursued after them were gone out, they shut
the gate.

2:8 And before they were laid down, she came up unto them upon the
roof; 2:9 And she said unto the men, I know that the LORD hath given
you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the
inhabitants of the land faint because of you.

2:10 For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red sea
for you, when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings
of the Amorites, that were on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og,
whom ye utterly destroyed.

2:11 And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt,
neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you:
for the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth
beneath.

2:12 Now therefore, I pray you, swear unto me by the LORD, since I
have shewed you kindness, that ye will also shew kindness unto my
father's house, and give me a true token: 2:13 And that ye will save
alive my father, and my mother, and my brethren, and my sisters, and
all that they have, and deliver our lives from death.

2:14 And the men answered her, Our life for yours, if ye utter not
this our business. And it shall be, when the LORD hath given us the
land, that we will deal kindly and truly with thee.

2:15 Then she let them down by a cord through the window: for her
house was upon the town wall, and she dwelt upon the wall.

2:16 And she said unto them, Get you to the mountain, lest the
pursuers meet you; and hide yourselves there three days, until the
pursuers be returned: and afterward may ye go your way.

2:17 And the men said unto her, We will be blameless of this thine
oath which thou hast made us swear.

2:18 Behold, when we come into the land, thou shalt bind this line of
scarlet thread in the window which thou didst let us down by: and thou
shalt bring thy father, and thy mother, and thy brethren, and all thy
father's household, home unto thee.

2:19 And it shall be, that whosoever shall go out of the doors of thy
house into the street, his blood shall be upon his head, and we will
be guiltless: and whosoever shall be with thee in the house, his blood
shall be on our head, if any hand be upon him.

2:20 And if thou utter this our business, then we will be quit of
thine oath which thou hast made us to swear.

2:21 And she said, According unto your words, so be it. And she sent
them away, and they departed: and she bound the scarlet line in the
window.

2:22 And they went, and came unto the mountain, and abode there three
days, until the pursuers were returned: and the pursuers sought them
throughout all the way, but found them not.

2:23 So the two men returned, and descended from the mountain, and
passed over, and came to Joshua the son of Nun, and told him all
things that befell them: 2:24 And they said unto Joshua, Truly the
LORD hath delivered into our hands all the land; for even all the
inhabitants of the country do faint because of us.

3:1 And Joshua rose early in the morning; and they removed from
Shittim, and came to Jordan, he and all the children of Israel, and
lodged there before they passed over.

3:2 And it came to pass after three days, that the officers went
through the host; 3:3 And they commanded the people, saying, When ye
see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, and the priests the
Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place, and go after
it.

3:4 Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand
cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by
which ye must go: for ye have not passed this way heretofore.

3:5 And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves: for to
morrow the LORD will do wonders among you.

3:6 And Joshua spake unto the priests, saying, Take up the ark of the
covenant, and pass over before the people. And they took up the ark of
the covenant, and went before the people.

3:7 And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day will I begin to magnify
thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was
with Moses, so I will be with thee.

3:8 And thou shalt command the priests that bear the ark of the
covenant, saying, When ye are come to the brink of the water of
Jordan, ye shall stand still in Jordan.

3:9 And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, Come hither, and hear
the words of the LORD your God.

3:10 And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know that the living God is
among you, and that he will without fail drive out from before you the
Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Perizzites, and
the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Jebusites.

3:11 Behold, the ark of the covenant of the LORD of all the earth
passeth over before you into Jordan.

3:12 Now therefore take you twelve men out of the tribes of Israel,
out of every tribe a man.

3:13 And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of
the priests that bear the ark of the LORD, the LORD of all the earth,
shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be
cut off from the waters that come down from above; and they shall
stand upon an heap.

3:14 And it came to pass, when the people removed from their tents, to
pass over Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of the covenant
before the people; 3:15 And as they that bare the ark were come unto
Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark were dipped in
the brim of the water, (for Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the
time of harvest,) 3:16 That the waters which came down from above
stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is
beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the plain,
even the salt sea, failed, and were cut off: and the people passed
over right against Jericho.

3:17 And the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD
stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan, and all the
Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed
clean over Jordan.

4:1 And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed over
Jordan, that the LORD spake unto Joshua, saying, 4:2 Take you twelve
men out of the people, out of every tribe a man, 4:3 And command ye
them, saying, Take you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the
place where the priests' feet stood firm, twelve stones, and ye shall
carry them over with you, and leave them in the lodging place, where
ye shall lodge this night.

4:4 Then Joshua called the twelve men, whom he had prepared of the
children of Israel, out of every tribe a man: 4:5 And Joshua said unto
them, Pass over before the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of
Jordan, and take you up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder,
according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel: 4:6
That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their
fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones?  4:7
Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off
before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it passed over
Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be
for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.

4:8 And the children of Israel did so as Joshua commanded, and took up
twelve stones out of the midst of Jordan, as the LORD spake unto
Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the children of
Israel, and carried them over with them unto the place where they
lodged, and laid them down there.

4:9 And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the
place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant
stood: and they are there unto this day.

4:10 For the priests which bare the ark stood in the midst of Jordan,
until everything was finished that the LORD commanded Joshua to speak
unto the people, according to all that Moses commanded Joshua: and the
people hasted and passed over.

4:11 And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed over,
that the ark of the LORD passed over, and the priests, in the presence
of the people.

4:12 And the children of Reuben, and the children of Gad, and half the
tribe of Manasseh, passed over armed before the children of Israel, as
Moses spake unto them: 4:13 About forty thousand prepared for war
passed over before the LORD unto battle, to the plains of Jericho.

4:14 On that day the LORD magnified Joshua in the sight of all Israel;
and they feared him, as they feared Moses, all the days of his life.

4:15 And the LORD spake unto Joshua, saying, 4:16 Command the priests
that bear the ark of the testimony, that they come up out of Jordan.

4:17 Joshua therefore commanded the priests, saying, Come ye up out of
Jordan.

4:18 And it came to pass, when the priests that bare the ark of the
covenant of the LORD were come up out of the midst of Jordan, and the
soles of the priests' feet were lifted up unto the dry land, that the
waters of Jordan returned unto their place, and flowed over all his
banks, as they did before.

4:19 And the people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the
first month, and encamped in Gilgal, in the east border of Jericho.

4:20 And those twelve stones, which they took out of Jordan, did
Joshua pitch in Gilgal.

4:21 And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your
children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean
these stones?  4:22 Then ye shall let your children know, saying,
Israel came over this Jordan on dry land.

4:23 For the LORD your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before
you, until ye were passed over, as the LORD your God did to the Red
sea, which he dried up from before us, until we were gone over: 4:24
That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the LORD, that
it is mighty: that ye might fear the LORD your God for ever.

5:1 And it came to pass, when all the kings of the Amorites, which
were on the side of Jordan westward, and all the kings of the
Canaanites, which were by the sea, heard that the LORD had dried up
the waters of Jordan from before the children of Israel, until we were
passed over, that their heart melted, neither was there spirit in them
any more, because of the children of Israel.

5:2 At that time the LORD said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives,
and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time.

5:3 And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of
Israel at the hill of the foreskins.

5:4 And this is the cause why Joshua did circumcise: All the people
that came out of Egypt, that were males, even all the men of war, died
in the wilderness by the way, after they came out of Egypt.

5:5 Now all the people that came out were circumcised: but all the
people that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came forth
out of Egypt, them they had not circumcised.

5:6 For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness,
till all the people that were men of war, which came out of Egypt,
were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the LORD: unto
whom the LORD sware that he would not shew them the land, which the
LORD sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land that
floweth with milk and honey.

5:7 And their children, whom he raised up in their stead, them Joshua
circumcised: for they were uncircumcised, because they had not
circumcised them by the way.

5:8 And it came to pass, when they had done circumcising all the
people, that they abode in their places in the camp, till they were
whole.

5:9 And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the
reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is
called Gilgal unto this day.

5:10 And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the
passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of
Jericho.

5:11 And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after
the passover, unleavened cakes, and parched corn in the selfsame day.

5:12 And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the
old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any
more; but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.

5:13 And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted
up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against
him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and
said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?  5:14 And he
said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come. And
Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto
him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?  5:15 And the captain of the
LORD's host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for
the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so.

6:1 Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of
Israel: none went out, and none came in.

6:2 And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand
Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.

6:3 And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round
about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days.

6:4 And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of
rams' horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven
times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets.

6:5 And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with
the ram's horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the
people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall
fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight
before him.

6:6 And Joshua the son of Nun called the priests, and said unto them,
Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests bear seven
trumpets of rams' horns before the ark of the LORD.

6:7 And he said unto the people, Pass on, and compass the city, and
let him that is armed pass on before the ark of the LORD.

6:8 And it came to pass, when Joshua had spoken unto the people, that
the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of rams' horns passed on
before the LORD, and blew with the trumpets: and the ark of the
covenant of the LORD followed them.

6:9 And the armed men went before the priests that blew with the
trumpets, and the rereward came after the ark, the priests going on,
and blowing with the trumpets.

6:10 And Joshua had commanded the people, saying, Ye shall not shout,
nor make any noise with your voice, neither shall any word proceed out
of your mouth, until the day I bid you shout; then shall ye shout.

6:11 So the ark of the LORD compassed the city, going about it once:
and they came into the camp, and lodged in the camp.

6:12 And Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the
ark of the LORD.

6:13 And seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams' horns before
the ark of the LORD went on continually, and blew with the trumpets:
and the armed men went before them; but the rereward came after the
ark of the LORD, the priests going on, and blowing with the trumpets.

6:14 And the second day they compassed the city once, and returned
into the camp: so they did six days.

6:15 And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they rose early
about the dawning of the day, and compassed the city after the same
manner seven times: only on that day they compassed the city seven
times.

6:16 And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew
with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the LORD
hath given you the city.

6:17 And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are
therein, to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all
that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we
sent.

6:18 And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest
ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and
make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.

6:19 But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are
consecrated unto the LORD: they shall come into the treasury of the
LORD.

6:20 So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets:
and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet,
and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down
flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight
before him, and they took the city.

6:21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and
woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the
sword.

6:22 But Joshua had said unto the two men that had spied out the
country, Go into the harlot's house, and bring out thence the woman,
and all that she hath, as ye sware unto her.

6:23 And the young men that were spies went in, and brought out Rahab,
and her father, and her mother, and her brethren, and all that she
had; and they brought out all her kindred, and left them without the
camp of Israel.

6:24 And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only
the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they
put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.

6:25 And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father's
household, and all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel even unto
this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out
Jericho.

6:26 And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man
before the LORD, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he
shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest
son shall he set up the gates of it.

6:27 So the LORD was with Joshua; and his fame was noised throughout
all the country.

7:1 But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed
thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of
Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the
anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel.

7:2 And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Bethaven,
on the east of Bethel, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the
country.

And the men went up and viewed Ai.

7:3 And they returned to Joshua, and said unto him, Let not all the
people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite
Ai; and make not all the people to labour thither; for they are but
few.

7:4 So there went up thither of the people about three thousand men:
and they fled before the men of Ai.

7:5 And the men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men: for they
chased them from before the gate even unto Shebarim, and smote them in
the going down: wherefore the hearts of the people melted, and became
as water.

7:6 And Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face
before the ark of the LORD until the eventide, he and the elders of
Israel, and put dust upon their heads.

7:7 And Joshua said, Alas, O LORD God, wherefore hast thou at all
brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the
Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been content, and dwelt
on the other side Jordan!  7:8 O LORD, what shall I say, when Israel
turneth their backs before their enemies!  7:9 For the Canaanites and
all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us
round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt thou do unto
thy great name?  7:10 And the LORD said unto Joshua, Get thee up;
wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?  7:11 Israel hath sinned, and
they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them: for
they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and
dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff.

7:12 Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their
enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they
were accursed: neither will I be with you any more, except ye destroy
the accursed from among you.

7:13 Up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves against to
morrow: for thus saith the LORD God of Israel, There is an accursed
thing in the midst of thee, O Israel: thou canst not stand before
thine enemies, until ye take away the accursed thing from among you.

7:14 In the morning therefore ye shall be brought according to your
tribes: and it shall be, that the tribe which the LORD taketh shall
come according to the families thereof; and the family which the LORD
shall take shall come by households; and the household which the LORD
shall take shall come man by man.

7:15 And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed thing
shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath: because he hath
transgressed the covenant of the LORD, and because he hath wrought
folly in Israel.

7:16 So Joshua rose up early in the morning, and brought Israel by
their tribes; and the tribe of Judah was taken: 7:17 And he brought
the family of Judah; and he took the family of the Zarhites: and he
brought the family of the Zarhites man by man; and Zabdi was taken:
7:18 And he brought his household man by man; and Achan, the son of
Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was
taken.

7:19 And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to
the LORD God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now
what thou hast done; hide it not from me.

7:20 And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against
the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done: 7:21 When I saw
among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels
of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted
them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the
midst of my tent, and the silver under it.

7:22 So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran unto the tent; and,
behold, it was hid in his tent, and the silver under it.

7:23 And they took them out of the midst of the tent, and brought them
unto Joshua, and unto all the children of Israel, and laid them out
before the LORD.

7:24 And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah,
and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons,
and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his
tent, and all that he had: and they brought them unto the valley of
Achor.

7:25 And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? the LORD shall
trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and
burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones.

7:26 And they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day. So
the LORD turned from the fierceness of his anger. Wherefore the name
of that place was called, The valley of Achor, unto this day.

8:1 And the LORD said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed:
take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai: see, I
have given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city,
and his land: 8:2 And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst
unto Jericho and her king: only the spoil thereof, and the cattle
thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves: lay thee an ambush
for the city behind it.

8:3 So Joshua arose, and all the people of war, to go up against Ai:
and Joshua chose out thirty thousand mighty men of valour, and sent
them away by night.

8:4 And he commanded them, saying, Behold, ye shall lie in wait
against the city, even behind the city: go not very far from the city,
but be ye all ready: 8:5 And I, and all the people that are with me,
will approach unto the city: and it shall come to pass, when they come
out against us, as at the first, that we will flee before them, 8:6
(For they will come out after us) till we have drawn them from the
city; for they will say, They flee before us, as at the first:
therefore we will flee before them.

8:7 Then ye shall rise up from the ambush, and seize upon the city:
for the LORD your God will deliver it into your hand.

8:8 And it shall be, when ye have taken the city, that ye shall set
the city on fire: according to the commandment of the LORD shall ye
do. See, I have commanded you.

8:9 Joshua therefore sent them forth: and they went to lie in ambush,
and abode between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of Ai: but Joshua
lodged that night among the people.

8:10 And Joshua rose up early in the morning, and numbered the people,
and went up, he and the elders of Israel, before the people to Ai.

8:11 And all the people, even the people of war that were with him,
went up, and drew nigh, and came before the city, and pitched on the
north side of Ai: now there was a valley between them and Ai.

8:12 And he took about five thousand men, and set them to lie in
ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the city.

8:13 And when they had set the people, even all the host that was on
the north of the city, and their liers in wait on the west of the
city, Joshua went that night into the midst of the valley.

8:14 And it came to pass, when the king of Ai saw it, that they hasted
and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to
battle, he and all his people, at a time appointed, before the plain;
but he wist not that there were liers in ambush against him behind the
city.

8:15 And Joshua and all Israel made as if they were beaten before
them, and fled by the way of the wilderness.

8:16 And all the people that were in Ai were called together to pursue
after them: and they pursued after Joshua, and were drawn away from
the city.

8:17 And there was not a man left in Ai or Bethel, that went not out
after Israel: and they left the city open, and pursued after Israel.

8:18 And the LORD said unto Joshua, Stretch out the spear that is in
thy hand toward Ai; for I will give it into thine hand. And Joshua
stretched out the spear that he had in his hand toward the city.

8:19 And the ambush arose quickly out of their place, and they ran as
soon as he had stretched out his hand: and they entered into the city,
and took it, and hasted and set the city on fire.

8:20 And when the men of Ai looked behind them, they saw, and, behold,
the smoke of the city ascended up to heaven, and they had no power to
flee this way or that way: and the people that fled to the wilderness
turned back upon the pursuers.

8:21 And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the
city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again,
and slew the men of Ai.

8:22 And the other issued out of the city against them; so they were
in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and
they smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.

8:23 And the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua.

8:24 And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all
the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they
chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword,
until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai,
and smote it with the edge of the sword.

8:25 And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and
women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.

8:26 For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the
spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.

8:27 Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey
unto themselves, according unto the word of the LORD which he
commanded Joshua.

8:28 And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a
desolation unto this day.

8:29 And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until eventide: and as
soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his
carcase down from the tree, and cast it at the entering of the gate of
the city, and raise thereon a great heap of stones, that remaineth
unto this day.

8:30 Then Joshua built an altar unto the LORD God of Israel in mount
Ebal, 8:31 As Moses the servant of the LORD commanded the children of
Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of
whole stones, over which no man hath lift up any iron: and they
offered thereon burnt offerings unto the LORD, and sacrificed peace
offerings.

8:32 And he wrote there upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses,
which he wrote in the presence of the children of Israel.

8:33 And all Israel, and their elders, and officers, and their judges,
stood on this side the ark and on that side before the priests the
Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD, as well the
stranger, as he that was born among them; half of them over against
mount Gerizim, and half of them over against mount Ebal; as Moses the
servant of the LORD had commanded before, that they should bless the
people of Israel.

8:34 And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and
cursings, according to all that is written in the book of the law.

8:35 There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua
read not before all the congregation of Israel, with the women, and
the little ones, and the strangers that were conversant among them.

9:1 And it came to pass, when all the kings which were on this side
Jordan, in the hills, and in the valleys, and in all the coasts of the
great sea over against Lebanon, the Hittite, and the Amorite, the
Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, heard thereof;
9:2 That they gathered themselves together, to fight with Joshua and
with Israel, with one accord.

9:3 And when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done unto
Jericho and to Ai, 9:4 They did work wilily, and went and made as if
they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and
wine bottles, old, and rent, and bound up; 9:5 And old shoes and
clouted upon their feet, and old garments upon them; and all the bread
of their provision was dry and mouldy.

9:6 And they went to Joshua unto the camp at Gilgal, and said unto
him, and to the men of Israel, We be come from a far country: now
therefore make ye a league with us.

9:7 And the men of Israel said unto the Hivites, Peradventure ye dwell
among us; and how shall we make a league with you?  9:8 And they said
unto Joshua, We are thy servants. And Joshua said unto them, Who are
ye? and from whence come ye?  9:9 And they said unto him, From a very
far country thy servants are come because of the name of the LORD thy
God: for we have heard the fame of him, and all that he did in Egypt,
9:10 And all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites, that were
beyond Jordan, to Sihon king of Heshbon, and to Og king of Bashan,
which was at Ashtaroth.

9:11 Wherefore our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spake
to us, saying, Take victuals with you for the journey, and go to meet
them, and say unto them, We are your servants: therefore now make ye a
league with us.

9:12 This our bread we took hot for our provision out of our houses on
the day we came forth to go unto you; but now, behold, it is dry, and
it is mouldy: 9:13 And these bottles of wine, which we filled, were
new; and, behold, they be rent: and these our garments and our shoes
are become old by reason of the very long journey.

9:14 And the men took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the
mouth of the LORD.

9:15 And Joshua made peace with them, and made a league with them, to
let them live: and the princes of the congregation sware unto them.

9:16 And it came to pass at the end of three days after they had made
a league with them, that they heard that they were their neighbours,
and that they dwelt among them.

9:17 And the children of Israel journeyed, and came unto their cities
on the third day. Now their cities were Gibeon, and Chephirah, and
Beeroth, and Kirjathjearim.

9:18 And the children of Israel smote them not, because the princes of
the congregation had sworn unto them by the LORD God of Israel. And
all the congregation murmured against the princes.

9:19 But all the princes said unto all the congregation, We have sworn
unto them by the LORD God of Israel: now therefore we may not touch
them.

9:20 This we will do to them; we will even let them live, lest wrath
be upon us, because of the oath which we sware unto them.

9:21 And the princes said unto them, Let them live; but let them be
hewers of wood and drawers of water unto all the congregation; as the
princes had promised them.

9:22 And Joshua called for them, and he spake unto them, saying,
Wherefore have ye beguiled us, saying, We are very far from you; when
ye dwell among us?  9:23 Now therefore ye are cursed, and there shall
none of you be freed from being bondmen, and hewers of wood and
drawers of water for the house of my God.

9:24 And they answered Joshua, and said, Because it was certainly told
thy servants, how that the LORD thy God commanded his servant Moses to
give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land
from before you, therefore we were sore afraid of our lives because of
you, and have done this thing.

9:25 And now, behold, we are in thine hand: as it seemeth good and
right unto thee to do unto us, do.

9:26 And so did he unto them, and delivered them out of the hand of
the children of Israel, that they slew them not.

9:27 And Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water
for the congregation, and for the altar of the LORD, even unto this
day, in the place which he should choose.

10:1 Now it came to pass, when Adonizedec king of Jerusalem had heard
how Joshua had taken Ai, and had utterly destroyed it; as he had done
to Jericho and her king, so he had done to Ai and her king; and how
the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel, and were among
them; 10:2 That they feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city,
as one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and
all the men thereof were mighty.

10:3 Wherefore Adonizedec king of Jerusalem, sent unto Hoham king of
Hebron, and unto Piram king of Jarmuth, and unto Japhia king of
Lachish, and unto Debir king of Eglon, saying, 10:4 Come up unto me,
and help me, that we may smite Gibeon: for it hath made peace with
Joshua and with the children of Israel.

10:5 Therefore the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem,
the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king
of Eglon, gathered themselves together, and went up, they and all
their hosts, and encamped before Gibeon, and made war against it.

10:6 And the men of Gibeon sent unto Joshua to the camp to Gilgal,
saying, Slack not thy hand from thy servants; come up to us quickly,
and save us, and help us: for all the kings of the Amorites that dwell
in the mountains are gathered together against us.

10:7 So Joshua ascended from Gilgal, he, and all the people of war
with him, and all the mighty men of valour.

10:8 And the LORD said unto Joshua, Fear them not: for I have
delivered them into thine hand; there shall not a man of them stand
before thee.

10:9 Joshua therefore came unto them suddenly, and went up from Gilgal
all night.

10:10 And the LORD discomfited them before Israel, and slew them with
a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them along the way that goeth
up to Bethhoron, and smote them to Azekah, and unto Makkedah.

10:11 And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were
in the going down to Bethhoron, that the LORD cast down great stones
from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which
died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with
the sword.

10:12 Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered
up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the
sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in
the valley of Ajalon.

10:13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people
had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the
book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and
hasted not to go down about a whole day.

10:14 And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the
LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for
Israel.

10:15 And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, unto the camp to
Gilgal.

10:16 But these five kings fled, and hid themselves in a cave at
Makkedah.

10:17 And it was told Joshua, saying, The five kings are found hid in
a cave at Makkedah.

10:18 And Joshua said, Roll great stones upon the mouth of the cave,
and set men by it for to keep them: 10:19 And stay ye not, but pursue
after your enemies, and smite the hindmost of them; suffer them not to
enter into their cities: for the LORD your God hath delivered them
into your hand.

10:20 And it came to pass, when Joshua and the children of Israel had
made an end of slaying them with a very great slaughter, till they
were consumed, that the rest which remained of them entered into
fenced cities.

10:21 And all the people returned to the camp to Joshua at Makkedah in
peace: none moved his tongue against any of the children of Israel.

10:22 Then said Joshua, Open the mouth of the cave, and bring out
those five kings unto me out of the cave.

10:23 And they did so, and brought forth those five kings unto him out
of the cave, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of
Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon.

10:24 And it came to pass, when they brought out those kings unto
Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said unto
the captains of the men of war which went with him, Come near, put
your feet upon the necks of these kings. And they came near, and put
their feet upon the necks of them.

10:25 And Joshua said unto them, Fear not, nor be dismayed, be strong
and of good courage: for thus shall the LORD do to all your enemies
against whom ye fight.

10:26 And afterward Joshua smote them, and slew them, and hanged them
on five trees: and they were hanging upon the trees until the evening.

10:27 And it came to pass at the time of the going down of the sun,
that Joshua commanded, and they took them down off the trees, and cast
them into the cave wherein they had been hid, and laid great stones in
the cave's mouth, which remain until this very day.

10:28 And that day Joshua took Makkedah, and smote it with the edge of
the sword, and the king thereof he utterly destroyed, them, and all
the souls that were therein; he let none remain: and he did to the
king of Makkedah as he did unto the king of Jericho.

10:29 Then Joshua passed from Makkedah, and all Israel with him, unto
Libnah, and fought against Libnah: 10:30 And the LORD delivered it
also, and the king thereof, into the hand of Israel; and he smote it
with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein; he
let none remain in it; but did unto the king thereof as he did unto
the king of Jericho.

10:31 And Joshua passed from Libnah, and all Israel with him, unto
Lachish, and encamped against it, and fought against it: 10:32 And the
LORD delivered Lachish into the hand of Israel, which took it on the
second day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls
that were therein, according to all that he had done to Libnah.

10:33 Then Horam king of Gezer came up to help Lachish; and Joshua
smote him and his people, until he had left him none remaining.

10:34 And from Lachish Joshua passed unto Eglon, and all Israel with
him; and they encamped against it, and fought against it: 10:35 And
they took it on that day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and
all the souls that were therein he utterly destroyed that day,
according to all that he had done to Lachish.

10:36 And Joshua went up from Eglon, and all Israel with him, unto
Hebron; and they fought against it: 10:37 And they took it, and smote
it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof, and all the
cities thereof, and all the souls that were therein; he left none
remaining, according to all that he had done to Eglon; but destroyed
it utterly, and all the souls that were therein.

10:38 And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to Debir; and
fought against it: 10:39 And he took it, and the king thereof, and all
the cities thereof; and they smote them with the edge of the sword,
and utterly destroyed all the souls that were therein; he left none
remaining: as he had done to Hebron, so he did to Debir, and to the
king thereof; as he had done also to Libnah, and to her king.

10:40 So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south,
and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none
remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of
Israel commanded.

10:41 And Joshua smote them from Kadeshbarnea even unto Gaza, and all
the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon.

10:42 And all these kings and their land did Joshua take at one time,
because the LORD God of Israel fought for Israel.

10:43 And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, unto the camp to
Gilgal.

11:1 And it came to pass, when Jabin king of Hazor had heard those
things, that he sent to Jobab king of Madon, and to the king of
Shimron, and to the king of Achshaph, 11:2 And to the kings that were
on the north of the mountains, and of the plains south of Chinneroth,
and in the valley, and in the borders of Dor on the west, 11:3 And to
the Canaanite on the east and on the west, and to the Amorite, and the
Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Jebusite in the mountains, and to
the Hivite under Hermon in the land of Mizpeh.

11:4 And they went out, they and all their hosts with them, much
people, even as the sand that is upon the sea shore in multitude, with
horses and chariots very many.

11:5 And when all these kings were met together, they came and pitched
together at the waters of Merom, to fight against Israel.

11:6 And the LORD said unto Joshua, Be not afraid because of them: for
to morrow about this time will I deliver them up all slain before
Israel: thou shalt hough their horses, and burn their chariots with
fire.

11:7 So Joshua came, and all the people of war with him, against them
by the waters of Merom suddenly; and they fell upon them.

11:8 And the LORD delivered them into the hand of Israel, who smote
them, and chased them unto great Zidon, and unto Misrephothmaim, and
unto the valley of Mizpeh eastward; and they smote them, until they
left them none remaining.

11:9 And Joshua did unto them as the LORD bade him: he houghed their
horses, and burnt their chariots with fire.

11:10 And Joshua at that time turned back, and took Hazor, and smote
the king thereof with the sword: for Hazor beforetime was the head of
all those kingdoms.

11:11 And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of
the sword, utterly destroying them: there was not any left to breathe:
and he burnt Hazor with fire.

11:12 And all the cities of those kings, and all the kings of them,
did Joshua take, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and he
utterly destroyed them, as Moses the servant of the LORD commanded.

11:13 But as for the cities that stood still in their strength, Israel
burned none of them, save Hazor only; that did Joshua burn.

11:14 And all the spoil of these cities, and the cattle, the children
of Israel took for a prey unto themselves; but every man they smote
with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them, neither
left they any to breathe.

11:15 As the LORD commanded Moses his servant, so did Moses command
Joshua, and so did Joshua; he left nothing undone of all that the LORD
commanded Moses.

11:16 So Joshua took all that land, the hills, and all the south
country, and all the land of Goshen, and the valley, and the plain,
and the mountain of Israel, and the valley of the same; 11:17 Even
from the mount Halak, that goeth up to Seir, even unto Baalgad in the
valley of Lebanon under mount Hermon: and all their kings he took, and
smote them, and slew them.

11:18 Joshua made war a long time with all those kings.

11:19 There was not a city that made peace with the children of
Israel, save the Hivites the inhabitants of Gibeon: all other they
took in battle.

11:20 For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, that they should
come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and
that they might have no favour, but that he might destroy them, as the
LORD commanded Moses.

11:21 And at that time came Joshua, and cut off the Anakims from the
mountains, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the
mountains of Judah, and from all the mountains of Israel: Joshua
destroyed them utterly with their cities.

11:22 There was none of the Anakims left in the land of the children
of Israel: only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod, there remained.

11:23 So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the LORD
said unto Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel
according to their divisions by their tribes. And the land rested from
war.

12:1 Now these are the kings of the land, which the children of Israel
smote, and possessed their land on the other side Jordan toward the
rising of the sun, from the river Arnon unto mount Hermon, and all the
plain on the east: 12:2 Sihon king of the Amorites, who dwelt in
Heshbon, and ruled from Aroer, which is upon the bank of the river
Arnon, and from the middle of the river, and from half Gilead, even
unto the river Jabbok, which is the border of the children of Ammon;
12:3 And from the plain to the sea of Chinneroth on the east, and unto
the sea of the plain, even the salt sea on the east, the way to
Bethjeshimoth; and from the south, under Ashdothpisgah: 12:4 And the
coast of Og king of Bashan, which was of the remnant of the giants,
that dwelt at Ashtaroth and at Edrei, 12:5 And reigned in mount
Hermon, and in Salcah, and in all Bashan, unto the border of the
Geshurites and the Maachathites, and half Gilead, the border of Sihon
king of Heshbon.

12:6 Them did Moses the servant of the LORD and the children of Israel
smite: and Moses the servant of the LORD gave it for a possession unto
the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh.

12:7 And these are the kings of the country which Joshua and the
children of Israel smote on this side Jordan on the west, from Baalgad
in the valley of Lebanon even unto the mount Halak, that goeth up to
Seir; which Joshua gave unto the tribes of Israel for a possession
according to their divisions; 12:8 In the mountains, and in the
valleys, and in the plains, and in the springs, and in the wilderness,
and in the south country; the Hittites, the Amorites, and the
Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: 12:9 The
king of Jericho, one; the king of Ai, which is beside Bethel, one;
12:10 The king of Jerusalem, one; the king of Hebron, one; 12:11 The
king of Jarmuth, one; the king of Lachish, one; 12:12 The king of
Eglon, one; the king of Gezer, one; 12:13 The king of Debir, one; the
king of Geder, one; 12:14 The king of Hormah, one; the king of Arad,
one; 12:15 The king of Libnah, one; the king of Adullam, one; 12:16
The king of Makkedah, one; the king of Bethel, one; 12:17 The king of
Tappuah, one; the king of Hepher, one; 12:18 The king of Aphek, one;
the king of Lasharon, one; 12:19 The king of Madon, one; the king of
Hazor, one; 12:20 The king of Shimronmeron, one; the king of Achshaph,
one; 12:21 The king of Taanach, one; the king of Megiddo, one; 12:22
The king of Kedesh, one; the king of Jokneam of Carmel, one; 12:23 The
king of Dor in the coast of Dor, one; the king of the nations of
Gilgal, one; 12:24 The king of Tirzah, one: all the kings thirty and
one.

13:1 Now Joshua was old and stricken in years; and the LORD said unto
him, Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very
much land to be possessed.

13:2 This is the land that yet remaineth: all the borders of the
Philistines, and all Geshuri, 13:3 From Sihor, which is before Egypt,
even unto the borders of Ekron northward, which is counted to the
Canaanite: five lords of the Philistines; the Gazathites, and the
Ashdothites, the Eshkalonites, the Gittites, and the Ekronites; also
the Avites: 13:4 From the south, all the land of the Canaanites, and
Mearah that is beside the Sidonians unto Aphek, to the borders of the
Amorites: 13:5 And the land of the Giblites, and all Lebanon, toward
the sunrising, from Baalgad under mount Hermon unto the entering into
Hamath.

13:6 All the inhabitants of the hill country from Lebanon unto
Misrephothmaim, and all the Sidonians, them will I drive out from
before the children of Israel: only divide thou it by lot unto the
Israelites for an inheritance, as I have commanded thee.

13:7 Now therefore divide this land for an inheritance unto the nine
tribes, and the half tribe of Manasseh, 13:8 With whom the Reubenites
and the Gadites have received their inheritance, which Moses gave
them, beyond Jordan eastward, even as Moses the servant of the LORD
gave them; 13:9 From Aroer, that is upon the bank of the river Arnon,
and the city that is in the midst of the river, and all the plain of
Medeba unto Dibon; 13:10 And all the cities of Sihon king of the
Amorites, which reigned in Heshbon, unto the border of the children of
Ammon; 13:11 And Gilead, and the border of the Geshurites and
Maachathites, and all mount Hermon, and all Bashan unto Salcah; 13:12
All the kingdom of Og in Bashan, which reigned in Ashtaroth and in
Edrei, who remained of the remnant of the giants: for these did Moses
smite, and cast them out.

13:13 Nevertheless the children of Israel expelled not the Geshurites,
nor the Maachathites: but the Geshurites and the Maachathites dwell
among the Israelites until this day.

13:14 Only unto the tribes of Levi he gave none inheritance; the
sacrifices of the LORD God of Israel made by fire are their
inheritance, as he said unto them.

13:15 And Moses gave unto the tribe of the children of Reuben
inheritance according to their families.

13:16 And their coast was from Aroer, that is on the bank of the river
Arnon, and the city that is in the midst of the river, and all the
plain by Medeba; 13:17 Heshbon, and all her cities that are in the
plain; Dibon, and Bamothbaal, and Bethbaalmeon, 13:18 And Jahaza, and
Kedemoth, and Mephaath, 13:19 And Kirjathaim, and Sibmah, and
Zarethshahar in the mount of the valley, 13:20 And Bethpeor, and
Ashdothpisgah, and Bethjeshimoth, 13:21 And all the cities of the
plain, and all the kingdom of Sihon king of the Amorites, which
reigned in Heshbon, whom Moses smote with the princes of Midian, Evi,
and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, which were dukes of Sihon,
dwelling in the country.

13:22 Balaam also the son of Beor, the soothsayer, did the children of
Israel slay with the sword among them that were slain by them.

13:23 And the border of the children of Reuben was Jordan, and the
border thereof. This was the inheritance of the children of Reuben
after their families, the cities and the villages thereof.

13:24 And Moses gave inheritance unto the tribe of Gad, even unto the
children of Gad according to their families.

13:25 And their coast was Jazer, and all the cities of Gilead, and
half the land of the children of Ammon, unto Aroer that is before
Rabbah; 13:26 And from Heshbon unto Ramathmizpeh, and Betonim; and
from Mahanaim unto the border of Debir; 13:27 And in the valley,
Betharam, and Bethnimrah, and Succoth, and Zaphon, the rest of the
kingdom of Sihon king of Heshbon, Jordan and his border, even unto the
edge of the sea of Chinnereth on the other side Jordan eastward.

13:28 This is the inheritance of the children of Gad after their
families, the cities, and their villages.

13:29 And Moses gave inheritance unto the half tribe of Manasseh: and
this was the possession of the half tribe of the children of Manasseh
by their families.

13:30 And their coast was from Mahanaim, all Bashan, all the kingdom
of Og king of Bashan, and all the towns of Jair, which are in Bashan,
threescore cities: 13:31 And half Gilead, and Ashtaroth, and Edrei,
cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan, were pertaining unto the
children of Machir the son of Manasseh, even to the one half of the
children of Machir by their families.

13:32 These are the countries which Moses did distribute for
inheritance in the plains of Moab, on the other side Jordan, by
Jericho, eastward.

13:33 But unto the tribe of Levi Moses gave not any inheritance: the
LORD God of Israel was their inheritance, as he said unto them.

14:1 And these are the countries which the children of Israel
inherited in the land of Canaan, which Eleazar the priest, and Joshua
the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers of the tribes of the
children of Israel, distributed for inheritance to them.

14:2 By lot was their inheritance, as the LORD commanded by the hand
of Moses, for the nine tribes, and for the half tribe.

14:3 For Moses had given the inheritance of two tribes and an half
tribe on the other side Jordan: but unto the Levites he gave none
inheritance among them.

14:4 For the children of Joseph were two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim:
therefore they gave no part unto the Levites in the land, save cities
to dwell in, with their suburbs for their cattle and for their
substance.

14:5 As the LORD commanded Moses, so the children of Israel did, and
they divided the land.

14:6 Then the children of Judah came unto Joshua in Gilgal: and Caleb
the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite said unto him, Thou knowest the
thing that the LORD said unto Moses the man of God concerning me and
thee in Kadeshbarnea.

14:7 Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me
from Kadeshbarnea to espy out the land; and I brought him word again
as it was in mine heart.

14:8 Nevertheless my brethren that went up with me made the heart of
the people melt: but I wholly followed the LORD my God.

14:9 And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy
feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance, and thy children's for
ever, because thou hast wholly followed the LORD my God.

14:10 And now, behold, the LORD hath kept me alive, as he said, these
forty and five years, even since the LORD spake this word unto Moses,
while the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness: and now, lo,
I am this day fourscore and five years old.

14:11 As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses
sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war,
both to go out, and to come in.

14:12 Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the LORD spake in
that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there,
and that the cities were great and fenced: if so be the LORD will be
with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the LORD said.

14:13 And Joshua blessed him, and gave unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh
Hebron for an inheritance.

14:14 Hebron therefore became the inheritance of Caleb the son of
Jephunneh the Kenezite unto this day, because that he wholly followed
the LORD God of Israel.

14:15 And the name of Hebron before was Kirjatharba; which Arba was a
great man among the Anakims. And the land had rest from war.

15:1 This then was the lot of the tribe of the children of Judah by
their families; even to the border of Edom the wilderness of Zin
southward was the uttermost part of the south coast.

15:2 And their south border was from the shore of the salt sea, from
the bay that looketh southward: 15:3 And it went out to the south side
to Maalehacrabbim, and passed along to Zin, and ascended up on the
south side unto Kadeshbarnea, and passed along to Hezron, and went up
to Adar, and fetched a compass to Karkaa: 15:4 From thence it passed
toward Azmon, and went out unto the river of Egypt; and the goings out
of that coast were at the sea: this shall be your south coast.

15:5 And the east border was the salt sea, even unto the end of
Jordan.

And their border in the north quarter was from the bay of the sea at
the uttermost part of Jordan: 15:6 And the border went up to
Bethhogla, and passed along by the north of Betharabah; and the border
went up to the stone of Bohan the son of Reuben: 15:7 And the border
went up toward Debir from the valley of Achor, and so northward,
looking toward Gilgal, that is before the going up to Adummim, which
is on the south side of the river: and the border passed toward the
waters of Enshemesh, and the goings out thereof were at Enrogel: 15:8
And the border went up by the valley of the son of Hinnom unto the
south side of the Jebusite; the same is Jerusalem: and the border went
up to the top of the mountain that lieth before the valley of Hinnom
westward, which is at the end of the valley of the giants northward:
15:9 And the border was drawn from the top of the hill unto the
fountain of the water of Nephtoah, and went out to the cities of mount
Ephron; and the border was drawn to Baalah, which is Kirjathjearim:
15:10 And the border compassed from Baalah westward unto mount Seir,
and passed along unto the side of mount Jearim, which is Chesalon, on
the north side, and went down to Bethshemesh, and passed on to Timnah:
15:11 And the border went out unto the side of Ekron northward: and
the border was drawn to Shicron, and passed along to mount Baalah, and
went out unto Jabneel; and the goings out of the border were at the
sea.

15:12 And the west border was to the great sea, and the coast thereof.

This is the coast of the children of Judah round about according to
their families.

15:13 And unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh he gave a part among the
children of Judah, according to the commandment of the LORD to Joshua,
even the city of Arba the father of Anak, which city is Hebron.

15:14 And Caleb drove thence the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and
Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak.

15:15 And he went up thence to the inhabitants of Debir: and the name
of Debir before was Kirjathsepher.

15:16 And Caleb said, He that smiteth Kirjathsepher, and taketh it, to
him will I give Achsah my daughter to wife.

15:17 And Othniel the son of Kenaz, the brother of Caleb, took it: and
he gave him Achsah his daughter to wife.

15:18 And it came to pass, as she came unto him, that she moved him to
ask of her father a field: and she lighted off her ass; and Caleb said
unto her, What wouldest thou?  15:19 Who answered, Give me a blessing;
for thou hast given me a south land; give me also springs of water.
And he gave her the upper springs, and the nether springs.

15:20 This is the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Judah
according to their families.

15:21 And the uttermost cities of the tribe of the children of Judah
toward the coast of Edom southward were Kabzeel, and Eder, and Jagur,
15:22 And Kinah, and Dimonah, and Adadah, 15:23 And Kedesh, and Hazor,
and Ithnan, 15:24 Ziph, and Telem, and Bealoth, 15:25 And Hazor,
Hadattah, and Kerioth, and Hezron, which is Hazor, 15:26 Amam, and
Shema, and Moladah, 15:27 And Hazargaddah, and Heshmon, and Bethpalet,
15:28 And Hazarshual, and Beersheba, and Bizjothjah, 15:29 Baalah, and
Iim, and Azem, 15:30 And Eltolad, and Chesil, and Hormah, 15:31 And
Ziklag, and Madmannah, and Sansannah, 15:32 And Lebaoth, and Shilhim,
and Ain, and Rimmon: all the cities are twenty and nine, with their
villages: 15:33 And in the valley, Eshtaol, and Zoreah, and Ashnah,
15:34 And Zanoah, and Engannim, Tappuah, and Enam, 15:35 Jarmuth, and
Adullam, Socoh, and Azekah, 15:36 And Sharaim, and Adithaim, and
Gederah, and Gederothaim; fourteen cities with their villages: 15:37
Zenan, and Hadashah, and Migdalgad, 15:38 And Dilean, and Mizpeh, and
Joktheel, 15:39 Lachish, and Bozkath, and Eglon, 15:40 And Cabbon, and
Lahmam, and Kithlish, 15:41 And Gederoth, Bethdagon, and Naamah, and
Makkedah; sixteen cities with their villages: 15:42 Libnah, and Ether,
and Ashan, 15:43 And Jiphtah, and Ashnah, and Nezib, 15:44 And Keilah,
and Achzib, and Mareshah; nine cities with their villages: 15:45
Ekron, with her towns and her villages: 15:46 From Ekron even unto the
sea, all that lay near Ashdod, with their villages: 15:47 Ashdod with
her towns and her villages, Gaza with her towns and her villages, unto
the river of Egypt, and the great sea, and the border thereof: 15:48
And in the mountains, Shamir, and Jattir, and Socoh, 15:49 And Dannah,
and Kirjathsannah, which is Debir, 15:50 And Anab, and Eshtemoh, and
Anim, 15:51 And Goshen, and Holon, and Giloh; eleven cities with their
villages: 15:52 Arab, and Dumah, and Eshean, 15:53 And Janum, and
Bethtappuah, and Aphekah, 15:54 And Humtah, and Kirjatharba, which is
Hebron, and Zior; nine cities with their villages: 15:55 Maon, Carmel,
and Ziph, and Juttah, 15:56 And Jezreel, and Jokdeam, and Zanoah,
15:57 Cain, Gibeah, and Timnah; ten cities with their villages: 15:58
Halhul, Bethzur, and Gedor, 15:59 And Maarath, and Bethanoth, and
Eltekon; six cities with their villages: 15:60 Kirjathbaal, which is
Kirjathjearim, and Rabbah; two cities with their villages: 15:61 In
the wilderness, Betharabah, Middin, and Secacah, 15:62 And Nibshan,
and the city of Salt, and Engedi; six cities with their villages.

15:63 As for the Jebusites the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children
of Judah could not drive them out; but the Jebusites dwell with the
children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day.

16:1 And the lot of the children of Joseph fell from Jordan by
Jericho, unto the water of Jericho on the east, to the wilderness that
goeth up from Jericho throughout mount Bethel, 16:2 And goeth out from
Bethel to Luz, and passeth along unto the borders of Archi to Ataroth,
16:3 And goeth down westward to the coast of Japhleti, unto the coast
of Bethhoron the nether, and to Gezer; and the goings out thereof are
at the sea.

16:4 So the children of Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim, took their
inheritance.

16:5 And the border of the children of Ephraim according to their
families was thus: even the border of their inheritance on the east
side was Atarothaddar, unto Bethhoron the upper; 16:6 And the border
went out toward the sea to Michmethah on the north side; and the
border went about eastward unto Taanathshiloh, and passed by it on the
east to Janohah; 16:7 And it went down from Janohah to Ataroth, and to
Naarath, and came to Jericho, and went out at Jordan.

16:8 The border went out from Tappuah westward unto the river Kanah;
and the goings out thereof were at the sea. This is the inheritance of
the tribe of the children of Ephraim by their families.

16:9 And the separate cities for the children of Ephraim were among
the inheritance of the children of Manasseh, all the cities with their
villages.

16:10 And they drave not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer: but
the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites unto this day, and serve
under tribute.

17:1 There was also a lot for the tribe of Manasseh; for he was the
firstborn of Joseph; to wit, for Machir the firstborn of Manasseh, the
father of Gilead: because he was a man of war, therefore he had Gilead
and Bashan.

17:2 There was also a lot for the rest of the children of Manasseh by
their families; for the children of Abiezer, and for the children of
Helek, and for the children of Asriel, and for the children of
Shechem, and for the children of Hepher, and for the children of
Shemida: these were the male children of Manasseh the son of Joseph by
their families.

17:3 But Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of
Machir, the son of Manasseh, had no sons, but daughters: and these are
the names of his daughters, Mahlah, and Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and
Tirzah.

17:4 And they came near before Eleazar the priest, and before Joshua
the son of Nun, and before the princes, saying, The LORD commanded
Moses to give us an inheritance among our brethren. Therefore
according to the commandment of the LORD he gave them an inheritance
among the brethren of their father.

17:5 And there fell ten portions to Manasseh, beside the land of
Gilead and Bashan, which were on the other side Jordan; 17:6 Because
the daughters of Manasseh had an inheritance among his sons: and the
rest of Manasseh's sons had the land of Gilead.

17:7 And the coast of Manasseh was from Asher to Michmethah, that
lieth before Shechem; and the border went along on the right hand unto
the inhabitants of Entappuah.

17:8 Now Manasseh had the land of Tappuah: but Tappuah on the border
of Manasseh belonged to the children of Ephraim; 17:9 And the coast
descended unto the river Kanah, southward of the river: these cities
of Ephraim are among the cities of Manasseh: the coast of Manasseh
also was on the north side of the river, and the outgoings of it were
at the sea: 17:10 Southward it was Ephraim's, and northward it was
Manasseh's, and the sea is his border; and they met together in Asher
on the north, and in Issachar on the east.

17:11 And Manasseh had in Issachar and in Asher Bethshean and her
towns, and Ibleam and her towns, and the inhabitants of Dor and her
towns, and the inhabitants of Endor and her towns, and the inhabitants
of Taanach and her towns, and the inhabitants of Megiddo and her
towns, even three countries.

17:12 Yet the children of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants
of those cities; but the Canaanites would dwell in that land.

17:13 Yet it came to pass, when the children of Israel were waxen
strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute, but did not utterly
drive them out.

17:14 And the children of Joseph spake unto Joshua, saying, Why hast
thou given me but one lot and one portion to inherit, seeing I am a
great people, forasmuch as the LORD hath blessed me hitherto?  17:15
And Joshua answered them, If thou be a great people, then get thee up
to the wood country, and cut down for thyself there in the land of the
Perizzites and of the giants, if mount Ephraim be too narrow for thee.

17:16 And the children of Joseph said, The hill is not enough for us:
and all the Canaanites that dwell in the land of the valley have
chariots of iron, both they who are of Bethshean and her towns, and
they who are of the valley of Jezreel.

17:17 And Joshua spake unto the house of Joseph, even to Ephraim and
to Manasseh, saying, Thou art a great people, and hast great power:
thou shalt not have one lot only: 17:18 But the mountain shall be
thine; for it is a wood, and thou shalt cut it down: and the outgoings
of it shall be thine: for thou shalt drive out the Canaanites, though
they have iron chariots, and though they be strong.

18:1 And the whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled
together at Shiloh, and set up the tabernacle of the congregation
there. And the land was subdued before them.

18:2 And there remained among the children of Israel seven tribes,
which had not yet received their inheritance.

18:3 And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, How long are ye
slack to go to possess the land, which the LORD God of your fathers
hath given you?  18:4 Give out from among you three men for each
tribe: and I will send them, and they shall rise, and go through the
land, and describe it according to the inheritance of them; and they
shall come again to me.

18:5 And they shall divide it into seven parts: Judah shall abide in
their coast on the south, and the house of Joseph shall abide in their
coasts on the north.

18:6 Ye shall therefore describe the land into seven parts, and bring
the description hither to me, that I may cast lots for you here before
the LORD our God.

18:7 But the Levites have no part among you; for the priesthood of the
LORD is their inheritance: and Gad, and Reuben, and half the tribe of
Manasseh, have received their inheritance beyond Jordan on the east,
which Moses the servant of the LORD gave them.

18:8 And the men arose, and went away: and Joshua charged them that
went to describe the land, saying, Go and walk through the land, and
describe it, and come again to me, that I may here cast lots for you
before the LORD in Shiloh.

18:9 And the men went and passed through the land, and described it by
cities into seven parts in a book, and came again to Joshua to the
host at Shiloh.

18:10 And Joshua cast lots for them in Shiloh before the LORD: and
there Joshua divided the land unto the children of Israel according to
their divisions.

18:11 And the lot of the tribe of the children of Benjamin came up
according to their families: and the coast of their lot came forth
between the children of Judah and the children of Joseph.

18:12 And their border on the north side was from Jordan; and the
border went up to the side of Jericho on the north side, and went up
through the mountains westward; and the goings out thereof were at the
wilderness of Bethaven.

18:13 And the border went over from thence toward Luz, to the side of
Luz, which is Bethel, southward; and the border descended to
Atarothadar, near the hill that lieth on the south side of the nether
Bethhoron.

18:14 And the border was drawn thence, and compassed the corner of the
sea southward, from the hill that lieth before Bethhoron southward;
and the goings out thereof were at Kirjathbaal, which is
Kirjathjearim, a city of the children of Judah: this was the west
quarter.

18:15 And the south quarter was from the end of Kirjathjearim, and the
border went out on the west, and went out to the well of waters of
Nephtoah: 18:16 And the border came down to the end of the mountain
that lieth before the valley of the son of Hinnom, and which is in the
valley of the giants on the north, and descended to the valley of
Hinnom, to the side of Jebusi on the south, and descended to Enrogel,
18:17 And was drawn from the north, and went forth to Enshemesh, and
went forth toward Geliloth, which is over against the going up of
Adummim, and descended to the stone of Bohan the son of Reuben, 18:18
And passed along toward the side over against Arabah northward, and
went down unto Arabah: 18:19 And the border passed along to the side
of Bethhoglah northward: and the outgoings of the border were at the
north bay of the salt sea at the south end of Jordan: this was the
south coast.

18:20 And Jordan was the border of it on the east side. This was the
inheritance of the children of Benjamin, by the coasts thereof round
about, according to their families.

18:21 Now the cities of the tribe of the children of Benjamin
according to their families were Jericho, and Bethhoglah, and the
valley of Keziz, 18:22 And Betharabah, and Zemaraim, and Bethel, 18:23
And Avim, and Pharah, and Ophrah, 18:24 And Chepharhaammonai, and
Ophni, and Gaba; twelve cities with their villages: 18:25 Gibeon, and
Ramah, and Beeroth, 18:26 And Mizpeh, and Chephirah, and Mozah, 18:27
And Rekem, and Irpeel, and Taralah, 18:28 And Zelah, Eleph, and
Jebusi, which is Jerusalem, Gibeath, and Kirjath; fourteen cities with
their villages. This is the inheritance of the children of Benjamin
according to their families.

19:1 And the second lot came forth to Simeon, even for the tribe of
the children of Simeon according to their families: and their
inheritance was within the inheritance of the children of Judah.

19:2 And they had in their inheritance Beersheba, and Sheba, and
Moladah, 19:3 And Hazarshual, and Balah, and Azem, 19:4 And Eltolad,
and Bethul, and Hormah, 19:5 And Ziklag, and Bethmarcaboth, and
Hazarsusah, 19:6 And Bethlebaoth, and Sharuhen; thirteen cities and
their villages: 19:7 Ain, Remmon, and Ether, and Ashan; four cities
and their villages: 19:8 And all the villages that were round about
these cities to Baalathbeer, Ramath of the south. This is the
inheritance of the tribe of the children of Simeon according to their
families.

19:9 Out of the portion of the children of Judah was the inheritance
of the children of Simeon: for the part of the children of Judah was
too much for them: therefore the children of Simeon had their
inheritance within the inheritance of them.

19:10 And the third lot came up for the children of Zebulun according
to their families: and the border of their inheritance was unto Sarid:
19:11 And their border went up toward the sea, and Maralah, and
reached to Dabbasheth, and reached to the river that is before
Jokneam; 19:12 And turned from Sarid eastward toward the sunrising
unto the border of Chislothtabor, and then goeth out to Daberath, and
goeth up to Japhia, 19:13 And from thence passeth on along on the east
to Gittahhepher, to Ittahkazin, and goeth out to Remmonmethoar to
Neah; 19:14 And the border compasseth it on the north side to
Hannathon: and the outgoings thereof are in the valley of Jiphthahel:
19:15 And Kattath, and Nahallal, and Shimron, and Idalah, and
Bethlehem: twelve cities with their villages.

19:16 This is the inheritance of the children of Zebulun according to
their families, these cities with their villages.

19:17 And the fourth lot came out to Issachar, for the children of
Issachar according to their families.

19:18 And their border was toward Jezreel, and Chesulloth, and Shunem,
19:19 And Haphraim, and Shihon, and Anaharath, 19:20 And Rabbith, and
Kishion, and Abez, 19:21 And Remeth, and Engannim, and Enhaddah, and
Bethpazzez; 19:22 And the coast reacheth to Tabor, and Shahazimah, and
Bethshemesh; and the outgoings of their border were at Jordan: sixteen
cities with their villages.

19:23 This is the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Issachar
according to their families, the cities and their villages.

19:24 And the fifth lot came out for the tribe of the children of
Asher according to their families.

19:25 And their border was Helkath, and Hali, and Beten, and Achshaph,
19:26 And Alammelech, and Amad, and Misheal; and reacheth to Carmel
westward, and to Shihorlibnath; 19:27 And turneth toward the sunrising
to Bethdagon, and reacheth to Zebulun, and to the valley of Jiphthahel
toward the north side of Bethemek, and Neiel, and goeth out to Cabul
on the left hand, 19:28 And Hebron, and Rehob, and Hammon, and Kanah,
even unto great Zidon; 19:29 And then the coast turneth to Ramah, and
to the strong city Tyre; and the coast turneth to Hosah; and the
outgoings thereof are at the sea from the coast to Achzib: 19:30 Ummah
also, and Aphek, and Rehob: twenty and two cities with their villages.

19:31 This is the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Asher
according to their families, these cities with their villages.

19:32 The sixth lot came out to the children of Naphtali, even for the
children of Naphtali according to their families.

19:33 And their coast was from Heleph, from Allon to Zaanannim, and
Adami, Nekeb, and Jabneel, unto Lakum; and the outgoings thereof were
at Jordan: 19:34 And then the coast turneth westward to Aznothtabor,
and goeth out from thence to Hukkok, and reacheth to Zebulun on the
south side, and reacheth to Asher on the west side, and to Judah upon
Jordan toward the sunrising.

19:35 And the fenced cities are Ziddim, Zer, and Hammath, Rakkath, and
Chinnereth, 19:36 And Adamah, and Ramah, and Hazor, 19:37 And Kedesh,
and Edrei, and Enhazor, 19:38 And Iron, and Migdalel, Horem, and
Bethanath, and Bethshemesh; nineteen cities with their villages.

19:39 This is the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Naphtali
according to their families, the cities and their villages.

19:40 And the seventh lot came out for the tribe of the children of
Dan according to their families.

19:41 And the coast of their inheritance was Zorah, and Eshtaol, and
Irshemesh, 19:42 And Shaalabbin, and Ajalon, and Jethlah, 19:43 And
Elon, and Thimnathah, and Ekron, 19:44 And Eltekeh, and Gibbethon, and
Baalath, 19:45 And Jehud, and Beneberak, and Gathrimmon, 19:46 And
Mejarkon, and Rakkon, with the border before Japho.

19:47 And the coast of the children of Dan went out too little for
them: therefore the children of Dan went up to fight against Leshem,
and took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and possessed
it, and dwelt therein, and called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan
their father.

19:48 This is the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Dan
according to their families, these cities with their villages.

19:49 When they had made an end of dividing the land for inheritance
by their coasts, the children of Israel gave an inheritance to Joshua
the son of Nun among them: 19:50 According to the word of the LORD
they gave him the city which he asked, even Timnathserah in mount
Ephraim: and he built the city, and dwelt therein.

19:51 These are the inheritances, which Eleazar the priest, and Joshua
the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers of the tribes of the
children of Israel, divided for an inheritance by lot in Shiloh before
the LORD, at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. So they
made an end of dividing the country.

20:1 The LORD also spake unto Joshua, saying, 20:2 Speak to the
children of Israel, saying, Appoint out for you cities of refuge,
whereof I spake unto you by the hand of Moses: 20:3 That the slayer
that killeth any person unawares and unwittingly may flee thither: and
they shall be your refuge from the avenger of blood.

20:4 And when he that doth flee unto one of those cities shall stand
at the entering of the gate of the city, and shall declare his cause
in the ears of the elders of that city, they shall take him into the
city unto them, and give him a place, that he may dwell among them.

20:5 And if the avenger of blood pursue after him, then they shall not
deliver the slayer up into his hand; because he smote his neighbour
unwittingly, and hated him not beforetime.

20:6 And he shall dwell in that city, until he stand before the
congregation for judgment, and until the death of the high priest that
shall be in those days: then shall the slayer return, and come unto
his own city, and unto his own house, unto the city from whence he
fled.

20:7 And they appointed Kedesh in Galilee in mount Naphtali, and
Shechem in mount Ephraim, and Kirjatharba, which is Hebron, in the
mountain of Judah.

20:8 And on the other side Jordan by Jericho eastward, they assigned
Bezer in the wilderness upon the plain out of the tribe of Reuben, and
Ramoth in Gilead out of the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan out of
the tribe of Manasseh.

20:9 These were the cities appointed for all the children of Israel,
and for the stranger that sojourneth among them, that whosoever
killeth any person at unawares might flee thither, and not die by the
hand of the avenger of blood, until he stood before the congregation.

21:1 Then came near the heads of the fathers of the Levites unto
Eleazar the priest, and unto Joshua the son of Nun, and unto the heads
of the fathers of the tribes of the children of Israel; 21:2 And they
spake unto them at Shiloh in the land of Canaan, saying, The LORD
commanded by the hand of Moses to give us cities to dwell in, with the
suburbs thereof for our cattle.

21:3 And the children of Israel gave unto the Levites out of their
inheritance, at the commandment of the LORD, these cities and their
suburbs.

21:4 And the lot came out for the families of the Kohathites: and the
children of Aaron the priest, which were of the Levites, had by lot
out of the tribe of Judah, and out of the tribe of Simeon, and out of
the tribe of Benjamin, thirteen cities.

21:5 And the rest of the children of Kohath had by lot out of the
families of the tribe of Ephraim, and out of the tribe of Dan, and out
of the half tribe of Manasseh, ten cities.

21:6 And the children of Gershon had by lot out of the families of the
tribe of Issachar, and out of the tribe of Asher, and out of the tribe
of Naphtali, and out of the half tribe of Manasseh in Bashan, thirteen
cities.

21:7 The children of Merari by their families had out of the tribe of
Reuben, and out of the tribe of Gad, and out of the tribe of Zebulun,
twelve cities.

21:8 And the children of Israel gave by lot unto the Levites these
cities with their suburbs, as the LORD commanded by the hand of Moses.

21:9 And they gave out of the tribe of the children of Judah, and out
of the tribe of the children of Simeon, these cities which are here
mentioned by name.

21:10 Which the children of Aaron, being of the families of the
Kohathites, who were of the children of Levi, had: for theirs was the
first lot.

21:11 And they gave them the city of Arba the father of Anak, which
city is Hebron, in the hill country of Judah, with the suburbs thereof
round about it.

21:12 But the fields of the city, and the villages thereof, gave they
to Caleb the son of Jephunneh for his possession.

21:13 Thus they gave to the children of Aaron the priest Hebron with
her suburbs, to be a city of refuge for the slayer; and Libnah with
her suburbs, 21:14 And Jattir with her suburbs, and Eshtemoa with her
suburbs, 21:15 And Holon with her suburbs, and Debir with her suburbs,
21:16 And Ain with her suburbs, and Juttah with her suburbs, and
Bethshemesh with her suburbs; nine cities out of those two tribes.

21:17 And out of the tribe of Benjamin, Gibeon with her suburbs, Geba
with her suburbs, 21:18 Anathoth with her suburbs, and Almon with her
suburbs; four cities.

21:19 All the cities of the children of Aaron, the priests, were
thirteen cities with their suburbs.

21:20 And the families of the children of Kohath, the Levites which
remained of the children of Kohath, even they had the cities of their
lot out of the tribe of Ephraim.

21:21 For they gave them Shechem with her suburbs in mount Ephraim, to
be a city of refuge for the slayer; and Gezer with her suburbs, 21:22
And Kibzaim with her suburbs, and Bethhoron with her suburbs; four
cities.

21:23 And out of the tribe of Dan, Eltekeh with her suburbs, Gibbethon
with her suburbs, 21:24 Aijalon with her suburbs, Gathrimmon with her
suburbs; four cities.

21:25 And out of the half tribe of Manasseh, Tanach with her suburbs,
and Gathrimmon with her suburbs; two cities.

21:26 All the cities were ten with their suburbs for the families of
the children of Kohath that remained.

21:27 And unto the children of Gershon, of the families of the
Levites, out of the other half tribe of Manasseh they gave Golan in
Bashan with her suburbs, to be a city of refuge for the slayer; and
Beeshterah with her suburbs; two cities.

21:28 And out of the tribe of Issachar, Kishon with her suburbs,
Dabareh with her suburbs, 21:29 Jarmuth with her suburbs, Engannim
with her suburbs; four cities.

21:30 And out of the tribe of Asher, Mishal with her suburbs, Abdon
with her suburbs, 21:31 Helkath with her suburbs, and Rehob with her
suburbs; four cities.

21:32 And out of the tribe of Naphtali, Kedesh in Galilee with her
suburbs, to be a city of refuge for the slayer; and Hammothdor with
her suburbs, and Kartan with her suburbs; three cities.

21:33 All the cities of the Gershonites according to their families
were thirteen cities with their suburbs.

21:34 And unto the families of the children of Merari, the rest of the
Levites, out of the tribe of Zebulun, Jokneam with her suburbs, and
Kartah with her suburbs, 21:35 Dimnah with her suburbs, Nahalal with
her suburbs; four cities.

21:36 And out of the tribe of Reuben, Bezer with her suburbs, and
Jahazah with her suburbs, 21:37 Kedemoth with her suburbs, and
Mephaath with her suburbs; four cities.

21:38 And out of the tribe of Gad, Ramoth in Gilead with her suburbs,
to be a city of refuge for the slayer; and Mahanaim with her suburbs,
21:39 Heshbon with her suburbs, Jazer with her suburbs; four cities in
all.

21:40 So all the cities for the children of Merari by their families,
which were remaining of the families of the Levites, were by their lot
twelve cities.

21:41 All the cities of the Levites within the possession of the
children of Israel were forty and eight cities with their suburbs.

21:42 These cities were every one with their suburbs round about them:
thus were all these cities.

21:43 And the LORD gave unto Israel all the land which he sware to
give unto their fathers; and they possessed it, and dwelt therein.

21:44 And the LORD gave them rest round about, according to all that
he sware unto their fathers: and there stood not a man of all their
enemies before them; the LORD delivered all their enemies into their
hand.

21:45 There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had
spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass.

22:1 Then Joshua called the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half
tribe of Manasseh, 22:2 And said unto them, Ye have kept all that
Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, and have obeyed my voice
in all that I commanded you: 22:3 Ye have not left your brethren these
many days unto this day, but have kept the charge of the commandment
of the LORD your God.

22:4 And now the LORD your God hath given rest unto your brethren, as
he promised them: therefore now return ye, and get you unto your
tents, and unto the land of your possession, which Moses the servant
of the LORD gave you on the other side Jordan.

22:5 But take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, which
Moses the servant of the LORD charged you, to love the LORD your God,
and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to
cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all
your soul.

22:6 So Joshua blessed them, and sent them away: and they went unto
their tents.

22:7 Now to the one half of the tribe of Manasseh Moses had given
possession in Bashan: but unto the other half thereof gave Joshua
among their brethren on this side Jordan westward. And when Joshua
sent them away also unto their tents, then he blessed them, 22:8 And
he spake unto them, saying, Return with much riches unto your tents,
and with very much cattle, with silver, and with gold, and with brass,
and with iron, and with very much raiment: divide the spoil of your
enemies with your brethren.

22:9 And the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half
tribe of Manasseh returned, and departed from the children of Israel
out of Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan, to go unto the country
of Gilead, to the land of their possession, whereof they were
possessed, according to the word of the LORD by the hand of Moses.

22:10 And when they came unto the borders of Jordan, that are in the
land of Canaan, the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the
half tribe of Manasseh built there an altar by Jordan, a great altar
to see to.

22:11 And the children of Israel heard say, Behold, the children of
Reuben and the children of Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh have
built an altar over against the land of Canaan, in the borders of
Jordan, at the passage of the children of Israel.

22:12 And when the children of Israel heard of it, the whole
congregation of the children of Israel gathered themselves together at
Shiloh, to go up to war against them.

22:13 And the children of Israel sent unto the children of Reuben, and
to the children of Gad, and to the half tribe of Manasseh, into the
land of Gilead, Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, 22:14 And with
him ten princes, of each chief house a prince throughout all the
tribes of Israel; and each one was an head of the house of their
fathers among the thousands of Israel.

22:15 And they came unto the children of Reuben, and to the children
of Gad, and to the half tribe of Manasseh, unto the land of Gilead,
and they spake with them, saying, 22:16 Thus saith the whole
congregation of the LORD, What trespass is this that ye have committed
against the God of Israel, to turn away this day from following the
LORD, in that ye have builded you an altar, that ye might rebel this
day against the LORD?  22:17 Is the iniquity of Peor too little for
us, from which we are not cleansed until this day, although there was
a plague in the congregation of the LORD, 22:18 But that ye must turn
away this day from following the LORD? and it will be, seeing ye rebel
to day against the LORD, that to morrow he will be wroth with the
whole congregation of Israel.

22:19 Notwithstanding, if the land of your possession be unclean, then
pass ye over unto the land of the possession of the LORD, wherein the
LORD's tabernacle dwelleth, and take possession among us: but rebel
not against the LORD, nor rebel against us, in building you an altar
beside the altar of the LORD our God.

22:20 Did not Achan the son of Zerah commit a trespass in the accursed
thing, and wrath fell on all the congregation of Israel? and that man
perished not alone in his iniquity.

22:21 Then the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half
tribe of Manasseh answered, and said unto the heads of the thousands
of Israel, 22:22 The LORD God of gods, the LORD God of gods, he
knoweth, and Israel he shall know; if it be in rebellion, or if in
transgression against the LORD, (save us not this day,) 22:23 That we
have built us an altar to turn from following the LORD, or if to offer
thereon burnt offering or meat offering, or if to offer peace
offerings thereon, let the LORD himself require it; 22:24 And if we
have not rather done it for fear of this thing, saying, In time to
come your children might speak unto our children, saying, What have ye
to do with the LORD God of Israel?  22:25 For the LORD hath made
Jordan a border between us and you, ye children of Reuben and children
of Gad; ye have no part in the LORD: so shall your children make our
children cease from fearing the LORD.

22:26 Therefore we said, Let us now prepare to build us an altar, not
for burnt offering, nor for sacrifice: 22:27 But that it may be a
witness between us, and you, and our generations after us, that we
might do the service of the LORD before him with our burnt offerings,
and with our sacrifices, and with our peace offerings; that your
children may not say to our children in time to come, Ye have no part
in the LORD.

22:28 Therefore said we, that it shall be, when they should so say to
us or to our generations in time to come, that we may say again,
Behold the pattern of the altar of the LORD, which our fathers made,
not for burnt offerings, nor for sacrifices; but it is a witness
between us and you.

22:29 God forbid that we should rebel against the LORD, and turn this
day from following the LORD, to build an altar for burnt offerings,
for meat offerings, or for sacrifices, beside the altar of the LORD
our God that is before his tabernacle.

22:30 And when Phinehas the priest, and the princes of the
congregation and heads of the thousands of Israel which were with him,
heard the words that the children of Reuben and the children of Gad
and the children of Manasseh spake, it pleased them.

22:31 And Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest said unto the
children of Reuben, and to the children of Gad, and to the children of
Manasseh, This day we perceive that the LORD is among us, because ye
have not committed this trespass against the LORD: now ye have
delivered the children of Israel out of the hand of the LORD.

22:32 And Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, and the princes,
returned from the children of Reuben, and from the children of Gad,
out of the land of Gilead, unto the land of Canaan, to the children of
Israel, and brought them word again.

22:33 And the thing pleased the children of Israel; and the children
of Israel blessed God, and did not intend to go up against them in
battle, to destroy the land wherein the children of Reuben and Gad
dwelt.

22:34 And the children of Reuben and the children of Gad called the
altar Ed: for it shall be a witness between us that the LORD is God.

23:1 And it came to pass a long time after that the LORD had given
rest unto Israel from all their enemies round about, that Joshua waxed
old and stricken in age.

23:2 And Joshua called for all Israel, and for their elders, and for
their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers, and said
unto them, I am old and stricken in age: 23:3 And ye have seen all
that the LORD your God hath done unto all these nations because of
you; for the LORD your God is he that hath fought for you.

23:4 Behold, I have divided unto you by lot these nations that remain,
to be an inheritance for your tribes, from Jordan, with all the
nations that I have cut off, even unto the great sea westward.

23:5 And the LORD your God, he shall expel them from before you, and
drive them from out of your sight; and ye shall possess their land, as
the LORD your God hath promised unto you.

23:6 Be ye therefore very courageous to keep and to do all that is
written in the book of the law of Moses, that ye turn not aside
therefrom to the right hand or to the left; 23:7 That ye come not
among these nations, these that remain among you; neither make mention
of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them, neither serve
them, nor bow yourselves unto them: 23:8 But cleave unto the LORD your
God, as ye have done unto this day.

23:9 For the LORD hath driven out from before you great nations and
strong: but as for you, no man hath been able to stand before you unto
this day.

23:10 One man of you shall chase a thousand: for the LORD your God, he
it is that fighteth for you, as he hath promised you.

23:11 Take good heed therefore unto yourselves, that ye love the LORD
your God.

23:12 Else if ye do in any wise go back, and cleave unto the remnant
of these nations, even these that remain among you, and shall make
marriages with them, and go in unto them, and they to you: 23:13 Know
for a certainty that the LORD your God will no more drive out any of
these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto
you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye
perish from off this good land which the LORD your God hath given you.

23:14 And, behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth: and
ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing
hath failed of all the good things which the LORD your God spake
concerning you; all are come to pass unto you, and not one thing hath
failed thereof.

23:15 Therefore it shall come to pass, that as all good things are
come upon you, which the LORD your God promised you; so shall the LORD
bring upon you all evil things, until he have destroyed you from off
this good land which the LORD your God hath given you.

23:16 When ye have transgressed the covenant of the LORD your God,
which he commanded you, and have gone and served other gods, and bowed
yourselves to them; then shall the anger of the LORD be kindled
against you, and ye shall perish quickly from off the good land which
he hath given unto you.

24:1 And Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and
called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and for their
judges, and for their officers; and they presented themselves before
God.

24:2 And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of
Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time,
even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they
served other gods.

24:3 And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood,
and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his
seed, and gave him Isaac.

24:4 And I gave unto Isaac Jacob and Esau: and I gave unto Esau mount
Seir, to possess it; but Jacob and his children went down into Egypt.

24:5 I sent Moses also and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt, according to
that which I did among them: and afterward I brought you out.

24:6 And I brought your fathers out of Egypt: and ye came unto the
sea; and the Egyptians pursued after your fathers with chariots and
horsemen unto the Red sea.

24:7 And when they cried unto the LORD, he put darkness between you
and the Egyptians, and brought the sea upon them, and covered them;
and your eyes have seen what I have done in Egypt: and ye dwelt in the
wilderness a long season.

24:8 And I brought you into the land of the Amorites, which dwelt on
the other side Jordan; and they fought with you: and I gave them into
your hand, that ye might possess their land; and I destroyed them from
before you.

24:9 Then Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and warred
against Israel, and sent and called Balaam the son of Beor to curse
you: 24:10 But I would not hearken unto Balaam; therefore he blessed
you still: so I delivered you out of his hand.

24:11 And you went over Jordan, and came unto Jericho: and the men of
Jericho fought against you, the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the
Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Girgashites, the Hivites, and
the Jebusites; and I delivered them into your hand.

24:12 And I sent the hornet before you, which drave them out from
before you, even the two kings of the Amorites; but not with thy
sword, nor with thy bow.

24:13 And I have given you a land for which ye did not labour, and
cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them; of the vineyards and
oliveyards which ye planted not do ye eat.

24:14 Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in
truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other
side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the LORD.

24:15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this
day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served
that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites,
in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the
LORD.

24:16 And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should
forsake the LORD, to serve other gods; 24:17 For the LORD our God, he
it is that brought us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt,
from the house of bondage, and which did those great signs in our
sight, and preserved us in all the way wherein we went, and among all
the people through whom we passed: 24:18 And the LORD drave out from
before us all the people, even the Amorites which dwelt in the land:
therefore will we also serve the LORD; for he is our God.

24:19 And Joshua said unto the people, Ye cannot serve the LORD: for
he is an holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your
transgressions nor your sins.

24:20 If ye forsake the LORD, and serve strange gods, then he will
turn and do you hurt, and consume you, after that he hath done you
good.

24:21 And the people said unto Joshua, Nay; but we will serve the
LORD.

24:22 And Joshua said unto the people, Ye are witnesses against
yourselves that ye have chosen you the LORD, to serve him. And they
said, We are witnesses.

24:23 Now therefore put away, said he, the strange gods which are
among you, and incline your heart unto the LORD God of Israel.

24:24 And the people said unto Joshua, The LORD our God will we serve,
and his voice will we obey.

24:25 So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and set them
a statute and an ordinance in Shechem.

24:26 And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and
took a great stone, and set it up there under an oak, that was by the
sanctuary of the LORD.

24:27 And Joshua said unto all the people, Behold, this stone shall be
a witness unto us; for it hath heard all the words of the LORD which
he spake unto us: it shall be therefore a witness unto you, lest ye
deny your God.

24:28 So Joshua let the people depart, every man unto his inheritance.

24:29 And it came to pass after these things, that Joshua the son of
Nun, the servant of the LORD, died, being an hundred and ten years
old.

24:30 And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in
Timnathserah, which is in mount Ephraim, on the north side of the hill
of Gaash.

24:31 And Israel served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the
days of the elders that overlived Joshua, and which had known all the
works of the LORD, that he had done for Israel.

24:32 And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up
out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which
Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for an hundred
pieces of silver: and it became the inheritance of the children of
Joseph.

24:33 And Eleazar the son of Aaron died; and they buried him in a hill
that pertained to Phinehas his son, which was given him in mount
Ephraim.




The Book of Judges


1:1 Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the children
of Israel asked the LORD, saying, Who shall go up for us against the
Canaanites first, to fight against them?  1:2 And the LORD said, Judah
shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand.

1:3 And Judah said unto Simeon his brother, Come up with me into my
lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go
with thee into thy lot. So Simeon went with him.

1:4 And Judah went up; and the LORD delivered the Canaanites and the
Perizzites into their hand: and they slew of them in Bezek ten
thousand men.

1:5 And they found Adonibezek in Bezek: and they fought against him,
and they slew the Canaanites and the Perizzites.

1:6 But Adonibezek fled; and they pursued after him, and caught him,
and cut off his thumbs and his great toes.

1:7 And Adonibezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs
and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as I
have done, so God hath requited me. And they brought him to Jerusalem,
and there he died.

1:8 Now the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem, and had
taken it, and smitten it with the edge of the sword, and set the city
on fire.

1:9 And afterward the children of Judah went down to fight against the
Canaanites, that dwelt in the mountain, and in the south, and in the
valley.

1:10 And Judah went against the Canaanites that dwelt in Hebron: (now
the name of Hebron before was Kirjatharba:) and they slew Sheshai, and
Ahiman, and Talmai.

1:11 And from thence he went against the inhabitants of Debir: and the
name of Debir before was Kirjathsepher: 1:12 And Caleb said, He that
smiteth Kirjathsepher, and taketh it, to him will I give Achsah my
daughter to wife.

1:13 And Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, took it:
and he gave him Achsah his daughter to wife.

1:14 And it came to pass, when she came to him, that she moved him to
ask of her father a field: and she lighted from off her ass; and Caleb
said unto her, What wilt thou?  1:15 And she said unto him, Give me a
blessing: for thou hast given me a south land; give me also springs of
water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the nether springs.

1:16 And the children of the Kenite, Moses' father in law, went up out
of the city of palm trees with the children of Judah into the
wilderness of Judah, which lieth in the south of Arad; and they went
and dwelt among the people.

1:17 And Judah went with Simeon his brother, and they slew the
Canaanites that inhabited Zephath, and utterly destroyed it. And the
name of the city was called Hormah.

1:18 Also Judah took Gaza with the coast thereof, and Askelon with the
coast thereof, and Ekron with the coast thereof.

1:19 And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of
the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley,
because they had chariots of iron.

1:20 And they gave Hebron unto Caleb, as Moses said: and he expelled
thence the three sons of Anak.

1:21 And the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that
inhabited Jerusalem; but the Jebusites dwell with the children of
Benjamin in Jerusalem unto this day.

1:22 And the house of Joseph, they also went up against Bethel: and
the LORD was with them.

1:23 And the house of Joseph sent to descry Bethel. (Now the name of
the city before was Luz.)  1:24 And the spies saw a man come forth out
of the city, and they said unto him, Shew us, we pray thee, the
entrance into the city, and we will shew thee mercy.

1:25 And when he shewed them the entrance into the city, they smote
the city with the edge of the sword; but they let go the man and all
his family.

1:26 And the man went into the land of the Hittites, and built a city,
and called the name thereof Luz: which is the name thereof unto this
day.

1:27 Neither did Manasseh drive out the inhabitants of Bethshean and
her towns, nor Taanach and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Dor and
her towns, nor the inhabitants of Ibleam and her towns, nor the
inhabitants of Megiddo and her towns: but the Canaanites would dwell
in that land.

1:28 And it came to pass, when Israel was strong, that they put the
Canaanites to tribute, and did not utterly drive them out.

1:29 Neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer;
but the Canaanites dwelt in Gezer among them.

1:30 Neither did Zebulun drive out the inhabitants of Kitron, nor the
inhabitants of Nahalol; but the Canaanites dwelt among them, and
became tributaries.

1:31 Neither did Asher drive out the inhabitants of Accho, nor the
inhabitants of Zidon, nor of Ahlab, nor of Achzib, nor of Helbah, nor
of Aphik, nor of Rehob: 1:32 But the Asherites dwelt among the
Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land: for they did not drive them
out.

1:33 Neither did Naphtali drive out the inhabitants of Bethshemesh,
nor the inhabitants of Bethanath; but he dwelt among the Canaanites,
the inhabitants of the land: nevertheless the inhabitants of
Bethshemesh and of Bethanath became tributaries unto them.

1:34 And the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the mountain:
for they would not suffer them to come down to the valley: 1:35 But
the Amorites would dwell in mount Heres in Aijalon, and in Shaalbim:
yet the hand of the house of Joseph prevailed, so that they became
tributaries.

1:36 And the coast of the Amorites was from the going up to Akrabbim,
from the rock, and upward.

2:1 And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said,
I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land
which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my
covenant with you.

2:2 And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye
shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed my voice: why
have ye done this?  2:3 Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them
out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and
their gods shall be a snare unto you.

2:4 And it came to pass, when the angel of the LORD spake these words
unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their
voice, and wept.

2:5 And they called the name of that place Bochim: and they sacrificed
there unto the LORD.

2:6 And when Joshua had let the people go, the children of Israel went
every man unto his inheritance to possess the land.

2:7 And the people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the
days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great
works of the LORD, that he did for Israel.

2:8 And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died, being an
hundred and ten years old.

2:9 And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in
Timnathheres, in the mount of Ephraim, on the north side of the hill
Gaash.

2:10 And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers:
and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the
LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.

2:11 And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and
served Baalim: 2:12 And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers,
which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods,
of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed
themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger.

2:13 And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.

2:14 And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he
delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and he
sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so that they
could not any longer stand before their enemies.

2:15 Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against
them for evil, as the LORD had said, and as the LORD had sworn unto
them: and they were greatly distressed.

2:16 Nevertheless the LORD raised up judges, which delivered them out
of the hand of those that spoiled them.

2:17 And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a
whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves unto them: they turned
quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the
commandments of the LORD; but they did not so.

2:18 And when the LORD raised them up judges, then the LORD was with
the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the
days of the judge: for it repented the LORD because of their groanings
by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them.

2:19 And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they returned,
and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, in following other
gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from
their own doings, nor from their stubborn way.

2:20 And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel; and he said,
Because that this people hath transgressed my covenant which I
commanded their fathers, and have not hearkened unto my voice; 2:21 I
also will not henceforth drive out any from before them of the nations
which Joshua left when he died: 2:22 That through them I may prove
Israel, whether they will keep the way of the LORD to walk therein, as
their fathers did keep it, or not.

2:23 Therefore the LORD left those nations, without driving them out
hastily; neither delivered he them into the hand of Joshua.

3:1 Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to prove Israel by
them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan;
3:2 Only that the generations of the children of Israel might know, to
teach them war, at the least such as before knew nothing thereof; 3:3
Namely, five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the
Sidonians, and the Hivites that dwelt in mount Lebanon, from mount
Baalhermon unto the entering in of Hamath.

3:4 And they were to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would
hearken unto the commandments of the LORD, which he commanded their
fathers by the hand of Moses.

3:5 And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites,
and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites: 3:6 And they
took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to
their sons, and served their gods.

3:7 And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and
forgat the LORD their God, and served Baalim and the groves.

3:8 Therefore the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he
sold them into the hand of Chushanrishathaim king of Mesopotamia: and
the children of Israel served Chushanrishathaim eight years.

3:9 And when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD
raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel, who delivered them,
even Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother.

3:10 And the Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he judged Israel,
and went out to war: and the LORD delivered Chushanrishathaim king of
Mesopotamia into his hand; and his hand prevailed against
Chushanrishathaim.

3:11 And the land had rest forty years. And Othniel the son of Kenaz
died.

3:12 And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the
LORD: and the LORD strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel,
because they had done evil in the sight of the LORD.

3:13 And he gathered unto him the children of Ammon and Amalek, and
went and smote Israel, and possessed the city of palm trees.

3:14 So the children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab eighteen
years.

3:15 But when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD
raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a man
lefthanded: and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto
Eglon the king of Moab.

3:16 But Ehud made him a dagger which had two edges, of a cubit
length; and he did gird it under his raiment upon his right thigh.

3:17 And he brought the present unto Eglon king of Moab: and Eglon was
a very fat man.

3:18 And when he had made an end to offer the present, he sent away
the people that bare the present.

3:19 But he himself turned again from the quarries that were by
Gilgal, and said, I have a secret errand unto thee, O king: who said,
Keep silence. And all that stood by him went out from him.

3:20 And Ehud came unto him; and he was sitting in a summer parlour,
which he had for himself alone. And Ehud said, I have a message from
God unto thee.

And he arose out of his seat.

3:21 And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his
right thigh, and thrust it into his belly: 3:22 And the haft also went
in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he
could not draw the dagger out of his belly; and the dirt came out.

3:23 Then Ehud went forth through the porch, and shut the doors of the
parlour upon him, and locked them.

3:24 When he was gone out, his servants came; and when they saw that,
behold, the doors of the parlour were locked, they said, Surely he
covereth his feet in his summer chamber.

3:25 And they tarried till they were ashamed: and, behold, he opened
not the doors of the parlour; therefore they took a key, and opened
them: and, behold, their lord was fallen down dead on the earth.

3:26 And Ehud escaped while they tarried, and passed beyond the
quarries, and escaped unto Seirath.

3:27 And it came to pass, when he was come, that he blew a trumpet in
the mountain of Ephraim, and the children of Israel went down with him
from the mount, and he before them.

3:28 And he said unto them, Follow after me: for the LORD hath
delivered your enemies the Moabites into your hand. And they went down
after him, and took the fords of Jordan toward Moab, and suffered not
a man to pass over.

3:29 And they slew of Moab at that time about ten thousand men, all
lusty, and all men of valour; and there escaped not a man.

3:30 So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. And the
land had rest fourscore years.

3:31 And after him was Shamgar the son of Anath, which slew of the
Philistines six hundred men with an ox goad: and he also delivered
Israel.

4:1 And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the
LORD, when Ehud was dead.

4:2 And the LORD sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, that
reigned in Hazor; the captain of whose host was Sisera, which dwelt in
Harosheth of the Gentiles.

4:3 And the children of Israel cried unto the LORD: for he had nine
hundred chariots of iron; and twenty years he mightily oppressed the
children of Israel.

4:4 And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel
at that time.

4:5 And she dwelt under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and
Bethel in mount Ephraim: and the children of Israel came up to her for
judgment.

4:6 And she sent and called Barak the son of Abinoam out of
Kedeshnaphtali, and said unto him, Hath not the LORD God of Israel
commanded, saying, Go and draw toward mount Tabor, and take with thee
ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of
Zebulun?  4:7 And I will draw unto thee to the river Kishon Sisera,
the captain of Jabin's army, with his chariots and his multitude; and
I will deliver him into thine hand.

4:8 And Barak said unto her, If thou wilt go with me, then I will go:
but if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go.

4:9 And she said, I will surely go with thee: notwithstanding the
journey that thou takest shall not be for thine honour; for the LORD
shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. And Deborah arose, and
went with Barak to Kedesh.

4:10 And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh; and he went up
with ten thousand men at his feet: and Deborah went up with him.

4:11 Now Heber the Kenite, which was of the children of Hobab the
father in law of Moses, had severed himself from the Kenites, and
pitched his tent unto the plain of Zaanaim, which is by Kedesh.

4:12 And they shewed Sisera that Barak the son of Abinoam was gone up
to mount Tabor.

4:13 And Sisera gathered together all his chariots, even nine hundred
chariots of iron, and all the people that were with him, from
Harosheth of the Gentiles unto the river of Kishon.

4:14 And Deborah said unto Barak, Up; for this is the day in which the
LORD hath delivered Sisera into thine hand: is not the LORD gone out
before thee? So Barak went down from mount Tabor, and ten thousand men
after him.

4:15 And the LORD discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots, and all
his host, with the edge of the sword before Barak; so that Sisera
lighted down off his chariot, and fled away on his feet.

4:16 But Barak pursued after the chariots, and after the host, unto
Harosheth of the Gentiles: and all the host of Sisera fell upon the
edge of the sword; and there was not a man left.

4:17 Howbeit Sisera fled away on his feet to the tent of Jael the wife
of Heber the Kenite: for there was peace between Jabin the king of
Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite.

4:18 And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said unto him, Turn in, my
lord, turn in to me; fear not. And when he had turned in unto her into
the tent, she covered him with a mantle.

4:19 And he said unto her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water to
drink; for I am thirsty. And she opened a bottle of milk, and gave him
drink, and covered him.

4:20 Again he said unto her, Stand in the door of the tent, and it
shall be, when any man doth come and enquire of thee, and say, Is
there any man here? that thou shalt say, No.

4:21 Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an
hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into
his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep
and weary. So he died.

4:22 And, behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him,
and said unto him, Come, and I will shew thee the man whom thou
seekest. And when he came into her tent, behold, Sisera lay dead, and
the nail was in his temples.

4:23 So God subdued on that day Jabin the king of Canaan before the
children of Israel.

4:24 And the hand of the children of Israel prospered, and prevailed
against Jabin the king of Canaan, until they had destroyed Jabin king
of Canaan.

5:1 Then sang Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam on that day,
saying, 5:2 Praise ye the LORD for the avenging of Israel, when the
people willingly offered themselves.

5:3 Hear, O ye kings; give ear, O ye princes; I, even I, will sing
unto the LORD; I will sing praise to the LORD God of Israel.

5:4 LORD, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of
the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the
clouds also dropped water.

5:5 The mountains melted from before the LORD, even that Sinai from
before the LORD God of Israel.

5:6 In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the
highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byways.

5:7 The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel,
until that I Deborah arose, that I arose a mother in Israel.

5:8 They chose new gods; then was war in the gates: was there a shield
or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel?  5:9 My heart is toward
the governors of Israel, that offered themselves willingly among the
people. Bless ye the LORD.

5:10 Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit in judgment, and
walk by the way.

5:11 They that are delivered from the noise of archers in the places
of drawing water, there shall they rehearse the righteous acts of the
LORD, even the righteous acts toward the inhabitants of his villages
in Israel: then shall the people of the LORD go down to the gates.

5:12 Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song: arise, Barak,
and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam.

5:13 Then he made him that remaineth have dominion over the nobles
among the people: the LORD made me have dominion over the mighty.

5:14 Out of Ephraim was there a root of them against Amalek; after
thee, Benjamin, among thy people; out of Machir came down governors,
and out of Zebulun they that handle the pen of the writer.

5:15 And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah; even Issachar, and
also Barak: he was sent on foot into the valley. For the divisions of
Reuben there were great thoughts of heart.

5:16 Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds, to hear the bleatings of
the flocks? For the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of
heart.

5:17 Gilead abode beyond Jordan: and why did Dan remain in ships?
Asher continued on the sea shore, and abode in his breaches.

5:18 Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives
unto the death in the high places of the field.

5:19 The kings came and fought, then fought the kings of Canaan in
Taanach by the waters of Megiddo; they took no gain of money.

5:20 They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought
against Sisera.

5:21 The river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the
river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength.

5:22 Then were the horsehoofs broken by the means of the pransings,
the pransings of their mighty ones.

5:23 Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the LORD, curse ye bitterly the
inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the LORD, to
the help of the LORD against the mighty.

5:24 Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be,
blessed shall she be above women in the tent.

5:25 He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter
in a lordly dish.

5:26 She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen's
hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head,
when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.

5:27 At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed,
he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.

5:28 The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through
the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the
wheels of his chariots?  5:29 Her wise ladies answered her, yea, she
returned answer to herself, 5:30 Have they not sped? have they not
divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two; to Sisera a prey of
divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, of divers
colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of them that
take the spoil?  5:31 So let all thine enemies perish, O LORD: but let
them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. And
the land had rest forty years.

6:1 And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD: and
the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years.

6:2 And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel: and because of
the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in
the mountains, and caves, and strong holds.

6:3 And so it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up,
and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they came up
against them; 6:4 And they encamped against them, and destroyed the
increase of the earth, till thou come unto Gaza, and left no
sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass.

6:5 For they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came
as grasshoppers for multitude; for both they and their camels were
without number: and they entered into the land to destroy it.

6:6 And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites; and
the children of Israel cried unto the LORD.

6:7 And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the
LORD because of the Midianites, 6:8 That the LORD sent a prophet unto
the children of Israel, which said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God
of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of
the house of bondage; 6:9 And I delivered you out of the hand of the
Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drave
them out from before you, and gave you their land; 6:10 And I said
unto you, I am the LORD your God; fear not the gods of the Amorites,
in whose land ye dwell: but ye have not obeyed my voice.

6:11 And there came an angel of the LORD, and sat under an oak which
was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son
Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the
Midianites.

6:12 And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him, and said unto him,
The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.

6:13 And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if the LORD be with us, why
then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our
fathers told us of, saying, Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?
but now the LORD hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of
the Midianites.

6:14 And the LORD looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and
thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I
sent thee?  6:15 And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I
save Israel?  behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the
least in my father's house.

6:16 And the LORD said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou
shalt smite the Midianites as one man.

6:17 And he said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight,
then shew me a sign that thou talkest with me.

6:18 Depart not hence, I pray thee, until I come unto thee, and bring
forth my present, and set it before thee. And he said, I will tarry
until thou come again.

6:19 And Gideon went in, and made ready a kid, and unleavened cakes of
an ephah of flour: the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth
in a pot, and brought it out unto him under the oak, and presented it.

6:20 And the angel of God said unto him, Take the flesh and the
unleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the broth.
And he did so.

6:21 Then the angel of the LORD put forth the end of the staff that
was in his hand, and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and
there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the
unleavened cakes. Then the angel of the LORD departed out of his
sight.

6:22 And when Gideon perceived that he was an angel of the LORD,
Gideon said, Alas, O LORD God! for because I have seen an angel of the
LORD face to face.

6:23 And the LORD said unto him, Peace be unto thee; fear not: thou
shalt not die.

6:24 Then Gideon built an altar there unto the LORD, and called it
Jehovahshalom: unto this day it is yet in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

6:25 And it came to pass the same night, that the LORD said unto him,
Take thy father's young bullock, even the second bullock of seven
years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and
cut down the grove that is by it: 6:26 And build an altar unto the
LORD thy God upon the top of this rock, in the ordered place, and take
the second bullock, and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the
grove which thou shalt cut down.

6:27 Then Gideon took ten men of his servants, and did as the LORD had
said unto him: and so it was, because he feared his father's
household, and the men of the city, that he could not do it by day,
that he did it by night.

6:28 And when the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold,
the altar of Baal was cast down, and the grove was cut down that was
by it, and the second bullock was offered upon the altar that was
built.

6:29 And they said one to another, Who hath done this thing? And when
they enquired and asked, they said, Gideon the son of Joash hath done
this thing.

6:30 Then the men of the city said unto Joash, Bring out thy son, that
he may die: because he hath cast down the altar of Baal, and because
he hath cut down the grove that was by it.

6:31 And Joash said unto all that stood against him, Will ye plead for
Baal? will ye save him? he that will plead for him, let him be put to
death whilst it is yet morning: if he be a god, let him plead for
himself, because one hath cast down his altar.

6:32 Therefore on that day he called him Jerubbaal, saying, Let Baal
plead against him, because he hath thrown down his altar.

6:33 Then all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the children of
the east were gathered together, and went over, and pitched in the
valley of Jezreel.

6:34 But the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon, and he blew a
trumpet; and Abiezer was gathered after him.

6:35 And he sent messengers throughout all Manasseh; who also was
gathered after him: and he sent messengers unto Asher, and unto
Zebulun, and unto Naphtali; and they came up to meet them.

6:36 And Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand,
as thou hast said, 6:37 Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the
floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all
the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine
hand, as thou hast said.

6:38 And it was so: for he rose up early on the morrow, and thrust the
fleece together, and wringed the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of
water.

6:39 And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be hot against me,
and I will speak but this once: let me prove, I pray thee, but this
once with the fleece; let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon
all the ground let there be dew.

6:40 And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only,
and there was dew on all the ground.

7:1 Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with
him, rose up early, and pitched beside the well of Harod: so that the
host of the Midianites were on the north side of them, by the hill of
Moreh, in the valley.

7:2 And the LORD said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are
too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel
vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me.

7:3 Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying,
Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from
mount Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and two
thousand; and there remained ten thousand.

7:4 And the LORD said unto Gideon, The people are yet too many; bring
them down unto the water, and I will try them for thee there: and it
shall be, that of whom I say unto thee, This shall go with thee, the
same shall go with thee; and of whomsoever I say unto thee, This shall
not go with thee, the same shall not go.

7:5 So he brought down the people unto the water: and the LORD said
unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a
dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that
boweth down upon his knees to drink.

7:6 And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their
mouth, were three hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed
down upon their knees to drink water.

7:7 And the LORD said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that
lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand:
and let all the other people go every man unto his place.

7:8 So the people took victuals in their hand, and their trumpets: and
he sent all the rest of Israel every man unto his tent, and retained
those three hundred men: and the host of Midian was beneath him in the
valley.

7:9 And it came to pass the same night, that the LORD said unto him,
Arise, get thee down unto the host; for I have delivered it into thine
hand.

7:10 But if thou fear to go down, go thou with Phurah thy servant down
to the host: 7:11 And thou shalt hear what they say; and afterward
shall thine hands be strengthened to go down unto the host. Then went
he down with Phurah his servant unto the outside of the armed men that
were in the host.

7:12 And the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the children of the
east lay along in the valley like grasshoppers for multitude; and
their camels were without number, as the sand by the sea side for
multitude.

7:13 And when Gideon was come, behold, there was a man that told a
dream unto his fellow, and said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a
cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a
tent, and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay
along.

7:14 And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the
sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hand
hath God delivered Midian, and all the host.

7:15 And it was so, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream, and
the interpretation thereof, that he worshipped, and returned into the
host of Israel, and said, Arise; for the LORD hath delivered into your
hand the host of Midian.

7:16 And he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he
put a trumpet in every man's hand, with empty pitchers, and lamps
within the pitchers.

7:17 And he said unto them, Look on me, and do likewise: and, behold,
when I come to the outside of the camp, it shall be that, as I do, so
shall ye do.

7:18 When I blow with a trumpet, I and all that are with me, then blow
ye the trumpets also on every side of all the camp, and say, The sword
of the LORD, and of Gideon.

7:19 So Gideon, and the hundred men that were with him, came unto the
outside of the camp in the beginning of the middle watch; and they had
but newly set the watch: and they blew the trumpets, and brake the
pitchers that were in their hands.

7:20 And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the
pitchers, and held the lamps in their left hands, and the trumpets in
their right hands to blow withal: and they cried, The sword of the
LORD, and of Gideon.

7:21 And they stood every man in his place round about the camp; and
all the host ran, and cried, and fled.

7:22 And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and the LORD set every
man's sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host: and the
host fled to Bethshittah in Zererath, and to the border of
Abelmeholah, unto Tabbath.

7:23 And the men of Israel gathered themselves together out of
Naphtali, and out of Asher, and out of all Manasseh, and pursued after
the Midianites.

7:24 And Gideon sent messengers throughout all mount Ephraim, saying,
come down against the Midianites, and take before them the waters unto
Bethbarah and Jordan. Then all the men of Ephraim gathered themselves
together, and took the waters unto Bethbarah and Jordan.

7:25 And they took two princes of the Midianites, Oreb and Zeeb; and
they slew Oreb upon the rock Oreb, and Zeeb they slew at the winepress
of Zeeb, and pursued Midian, and brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to
Gideon on the other side Jordan.

8:1 And the men of Ephraim said unto him, Why hast thou served us
thus, that thou calledst us not, when thou wentest to fight with the
Midianites?  And they did chide with him sharply.

8:2 And he said unto them, What have I done now in comparison of you?
Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage
of Abiezer?  8:3 God hath delivered into your hands the princes of
Midian, Oreb and Zeeb: and what was I able to do in comparison of you?
Then their anger was abated toward him, when he had said that.

8:4 And Gideon came to Jordan, and passed over, he, and the three
hundred men that were with him, faint, yet pursuing them.

8:5 And he said unto the men of Succoth, Give, I pray you, loaves of
bread unto the people that follow me; for they be faint, and I am
pursuing after Zebah and Zalmunna, kings of Midian.

8:6 And the princes of Succoth said, Are the hands of Zebah and
Zalmunna now in thine hand, that we should give bread unto thine army?
8:7 And Gideon said, Therefore when the LORD hath delivered Zebah and
Zalmunna into mine hand, then I will tear your flesh with the thorns
of the wilderness and with briers.

8:8 And he went up thence to Penuel, and spake unto them likewise: and
the men of Penuel answered him as the men of Succoth had answered him.

8:9 And he spake also unto the men of Penuel, saying, When I come
again in peace, I will break down this tower.

8:10 Now Zebah and Zalmunna were in Karkor, and their hosts with them,
about fifteen thousand men, all that were left of all the hosts of the
children of the east: for there fell an hundred and twenty thousand
men that drew sword.

8:11 And Gideon went up by the way of them that dwelt in tents on the
east of Nobah and Jogbehah, and smote the host; for the host was
secure.

8:12 And when Zebah and Zalmunna fled, he pursued after them, and took
the two kings of Midian, Zebah and Zalmunna, and discomfited all the
host.

8:13 And Gideon the son of Joash returned from battle before the sun
was up, 8:14 And caught a young man of the men of Succoth, and
enquired of him: and he described unto him the princes of Succoth, and
the elders thereof, even threescore and seventeen men.

8:15 And he came unto the men of Succoth, and said, Behold Zebah and
Zalmunna, with whom ye did upbraid me, saying, Are the hands of Zebah
and Zalmunna now in thine hand, that we should give bread unto thy men
that are weary?  8:16 And he took the elders of the city, and thorns
of the wilderness and briers, and with them he taught the men of
Succoth.

8:17 And he beat down the tower of Penuel, and slew the men of the
city.

8:18 Then said he unto Zebah and Zalmunna, What manner of men were
they whom ye slew at Tabor? And they answered, As thou art, so were
they; each one resembled the children of a king.

8:19 And he said, They were my brethren, even the sons of my mother:
as the LORD liveth, if ye had saved them alive, I would not slay you.

8:20 And he said unto Jether his firstborn, Up, and slay them. But the
youth drew not his sword: for he feared, because he was yet a youth.

8:21 Then Zebah and Zalmunna said, Rise thou, and fall upon us: for as
the man is, so is his strength. And Gideon arose, and slew Zebah and
Zalmunna, and took away the ornaments that were on their camels'
necks.

8:22 Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both
thou, and thy son, and thy son's son also: for thou hast delivered us
from the hand of Midian.

8:23 And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither
shall my son rule over you: the LORD shall rule over you.

8:24 And Gideon said unto them, I would desire a request of you, that
ye would give me every man the earrings of his prey. (For they had
golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.)  8:25 And they
answered, We will willingly give them. And they spread a garment, and
did cast therein every man the earrings of his prey.

8:26 And the weight of the golden earrings that he requested was a
thousand and seven hundred shekels of gold; beside ornaments, and
collars, and purple raiment that was on the kings of Midian, and
beside the chains that were about their camels' necks.

8:27 And Gideon made an ephod thereof, and put it in his city, even in
Ophrah: and all Israel went thither a whoring after it: which thing
became a snare unto Gideon, and to his house.

8:28 Thus was Midian subdued before the children of Israel, so that
they lifted up their heads no more. And the country was in quietness
forty years in the days of Gideon.

8:29 And Jerubbaal the son of Joash went and dwelt in his own house.

8:30 And Gideon had threescore and ten sons of his body begotten: for
he had many wives.

8:31 And his concubine that was in Shechem, she also bare him a son,
whose name he called Abimelech.

8:32 And Gideon the son of Joash died in a good old age, and was
buried in the sepulchre of Joash his father, in Ophrah of the
Abiezrites.

8:33 And it came to pass, as soon as Gideon was dead, that the
children of Israel turned again, and went a whoring after Baalim, and
made Baalberith their god.

8:34 And the children of Israel remembered not the LORD their God, who
had delivered them out of the hands of all their enemies on every
side: 8:35 Neither shewed they kindness to the house of Jerubbaal,
namely, Gideon, according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto
Israel.

9:1 And Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal went to Shechem unto his
mother's brethren, and communed with them, and with all the family of
the house of his mother's father, saying, 9:2 Speak, I pray you, in
the ears of all the men of Shechem, Whether is better for you, either
that all the sons of Jerubbaal, which are threescore and ten persons,
reign over you, or that one reign over you? remember also that I am
your bone and your flesh.

9:3 And his mother's brethren spake of him in the ears of all the men
of Shechem all these words: and their hearts inclined to follow
Abimelech; for they said, He is our brother.

9:4 And they gave him threescore and ten pieces of silver out of the
house of Baalberith, wherewith Abimelech hired vain and light persons,
which followed him.

9:5 And he went unto his father's house at Ophrah, and slew his
brethren the sons of Jerubbaal, being threescore and ten persons, upon
one stone: notwithstanding yet Jotham the youngest son of Jerubbaal
was left; for he hid himself.

9:6 And all the men of Shechem gathered together, and all the house of
Millo, and went, and made Abimelech king, by the plain of the pillar
that was in Shechem.

9:7 And when they told it to Jotham, he went and stood in the top of
mount Gerizim, and lifted up his voice, and cried, and said unto them,
Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you.

9:8 The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and
they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us.

9:9 But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness,
wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over
the trees?  9:10 And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and
reign over us.

9:11 But the fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness,
and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees?  9:12 Then
said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.

9:13 And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which
cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?  9:14 Then
said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us.

9:15 And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me
king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow: and if not,
let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.

9:16 Now therefore, if ye have done truly and sincerely, in that ye
have made Abimelech king, and if ye have dealt well with Jerubbaal and
his house, and have done unto him according to the deserving of his
hands; 9:17 (For my father fought for you, and adventured his life
far, and delivered you out of the hand of Midian: 9:18 And ye are
risen up against my father's house this day, and have slain his sons,
threescore and ten persons, upon one stone, and have made Abimelech,
the son of his maidservant, king over the men of Shechem, because he
is your brother;) 9:19 If ye then have dealt truly and sincerely with
Jerubbaal and with his house this day, then rejoice ye in Abimelech,
and let him also rejoice in you: 9:20 But if not, let fire come out
from Abimelech, and devour the men of Shechem, and the house of Millo;
and let fire come out from the men of Shechem, and from the house of
Millo, and devour Abimelech.

9:21 And Jotham ran away, and fled, and went to Beer, and dwelt there,
for fear of Abimelech his brother.

9:22 When Abimelech had reigned three years over Israel, 9:23 Then God
sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the
men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech: 9:24 That the
cruelty done to the threescore and ten sons of Jerubbaal might come,
and their blood be laid upon Abimelech their brother, which slew them;
and upon the men of Shechem, which aided him in the killing of his
brethren.

9:25 And the men of Shechem set liers in wait for him in the top of
the mountains, and they robbed all that came along that way by them:
and it was told Abimelech.

9:26 And Gaal the son of Ebed came with his brethren, and went over to
Shechem: and the men of Shechem put their confidence in him.

9:27 And they went out into the fields, and gathered their vineyards,
and trode the grapes, and made merry, and went into the house of their
god, and did eat and drink, and cursed Abimelech.

9:28 And Gaal the son of Ebed said, Who is Abimelech, and who is
Shechem, that we should serve him? is not he the son of Jerubbaal? and
Zebul his officer? serve the men of Hamor the father of Shechem: for
why should we serve him?  9:29 And would to God this people were under
my hand! then would I remove Abimelech. And he said to Abimelech,
Increase thine army, and come out.

9:30 And when Zebul the ruler of the city heard the words of Gaal the
son of Ebed, his anger was kindled.

9:31 And he sent messengers unto Abimelech privily, saying, Behold,
Gaal the son of Ebed and his brethren be come to Shechem; and, behold,
they fortify the city against thee.

9:32 Now therefore up by night, thou and the people that is with thee,
and lie in wait in the field: 9:33 And it shall be, that in the
morning, as soon as the sun is up, thou shalt rise early, and set upon
the city: and, behold, when he and the people that is with him come
out against thee, then mayest thou do to them as thou shalt find
occasion.

9:34 And Abimelech rose up, and all the people that were with him, by
night, and they laid wait against Shechem in four companies.

9:35 And Gaal the son of Ebed went out, and stood in the entering of
the gate of the city: and Abimelech rose up, and the people that were
with him, from lying in wait.

9:36 And when Gaal saw the people, he said to Zebul, Behold, there
come people down from the top of the mountains. And Zebul said unto
him, Thou seest the shadow of the mountains as if they were men.

9:37 And Gaal spake again, and said, See there come people down by the
middle of the land, and another company come along by the plain of
Meonenim.

9:38 Then said Zebul unto him, Where is now thy mouth, wherewith thou
saidst, Who is Abimelech, that we should serve him? is not this the
people that thou hast despised? go out, I pray now, and fight with
them.

9:39 And Gaal went out before the men of Shechem, and fought with
Abimelech.

9:40 And Abimelech chased him, and he fled before him, and many were
overthrown and wounded, even unto the entering of the gate.

9:41 And Abimelech dwelt at Arumah: and Zebul thrust out Gaal and his
brethren, that they should not dwell in Shechem.

9:42 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the people went out into
the field; and they told Abimelech.

9:43 And he took the people, and divided them into three companies,
and laid wait in the field, and looked, and, behold, the people were
come forth out of the city; and he rose up against them, and smote
them.

9:44 And Abimelech, and the company that was with him, rushed forward,
and stood in the entering of the gate of the city: and the two other
companies ran upon all the people that were in the fields, and slew
them.

9:45 And Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took
the city, and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the
city, and sowed it with salt.

9:46 And when all the men of the tower of Shechem heard that, they
entered into an hold of the house of the god Berith.

9:47 And it was told Abimelech, that all the men of the tower of
Shechem were gathered together.

9:48 And Abimelech gat him up to mount Zalmon, he and all the people
that were with him; and Abimelech took an axe in his hand, and cut
down a bough from the trees, and took it, and laid it on his shoulder,
and said unto the people that were with him, What ye have seen me do,
make haste, and do as I have done.

9:49 And all the people likewise cut down every man his bough, and
followed Abimelech, and put them to the hold, and set the hold on fire
upon them; so that all the men of the tower of Shechem died also,
about a thousand men and women.

9:50 Then went Abimelech to Thebez, and encamped against Thebez, and
took it.

9:51 But there was a strong tower within the city, and thither fled
all the men and women, and all they of the city, and shut it to them,
and gat them up to the top of the tower.

9:52 And Abimelech came unto the tower, and fought against it, and
went hard unto the door of the tower to burn it with fire.

9:53 And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's
head, and all to brake his skull.

9:54 Then he called hastily unto the young man his armourbearer, and
said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A
women slew him. And his young man thrust him through, and he died.

9:55 And when the men of Israel saw that Abimelech was dead, they
departed every man unto his place.

9:56 Thus God rendered the wickedness of Abimelech, which he did unto
his father, in slaying his seventy brethren: 9:57 And all the evil of
the men of Shechem did God render upon their heads: and upon them came
the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal.

10:1 And after Abimelech there arose to defend Israel Tola the son of
Puah, the son of Dodo, a man of Issachar; and he dwelt in Shamir in
mount Ephraim.

10:2 And he judged Israel twenty and three years, and died, and was
buried in Shamir.

10:3 And after him arose Jair, a Gileadite, and judged Israel twenty
and two years.

10:4 And he had thirty sons that rode on thirty ass colts, and they
had thirty cities, which are called Havothjair unto this day, which
are in the land of Gilead.

10:5 And Jair died, and was buried in Camon.

10:6 And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the
LORD, and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the
gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of
Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the LORD, and
served not him.

10:7 And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he sold
them into the hands of the Philistines, and into the hands of the
children of Ammon.

10:8 And that year they vexed and oppressed the children of Israel:
eighteen years, all the children of Israel that were on the other side
Jordan in the land of the Amorites, which is in Gilead.

10:9 Moreover the children of Ammon passed over Jordan to fight also
against Judah, and against Benjamin, and against the house of Ephraim;
so that Israel was sore distressed.

10:10 And the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, saying, We have
sinned against thee, both because we have forsaken our God, and also
served Baalim.

10:11 And the LORD said unto the children of Israel, Did not I deliver
you from the Egyptians, and from the Amorites, from the children of
Ammon, and from the Philistines?  10:12 The Zidonians also, and the
Amalekites, and the Maonites, did oppress you; and ye cried to me, and
I delivered you out of their hand.

10:13 Yet ye have forsaken me, and served other gods: wherefore I will
deliver you no more.

10:14 Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen; let them deliver
you in the time of your tribulation.

10:15 And the children of Israel said unto the LORD, We have sinned:
do thou unto us whatsoever seemeth good unto thee; deliver us only, we
pray thee, this day.

10:16 And they put away the strange gods from among them, and served
the LORD: and his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel.

10:17 Then the children of Ammon were gathered together, and encamped
in Gilead. And the children of Israel assembled themselves together,
and encamped in Mizpeh.

10:18 And the people and princes of Gilead said one to another, What
man is he that will begin to fight against the children of Ammon? he
shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.

11:1 Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour, and he was
the son of an harlot: and Gilead begat Jephthah.

11:2 And Gilead's wife bare him sons; and his wife's sons grew up, and
they thrust out Jephthah, and said unto him, Thou shalt not inherit in
our father's house; for thou art the son of a strange woman.

11:3 Then Jephthah fled from his brethren, and dwelt in the land of
Tob: and there were gathered vain men to Jephthah, and went out with
him.

11:4 And it came to pass in process of time, that the children of
Ammon made war against Israel.

11:5 And it was so, that when the children of Ammon made war against
Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah out of the land of
Tob: 11:6 And they said unto Jephthah, Come, and be our captain, that
we may fight with the children of Ammon.

11:7 And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, Did not ye hate me,
and expel me out of my father's house? and why are ye come unto me now
when ye are in distress?  11:8 And the elders of Gilead said unto
Jephthah, Therefore we turn again to thee now, that thou mayest go
with us, and fight against the children of Ammon, and be our head over
all the inhabitants of Gilead.

11:9 And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, If ye bring me home
again to fight against the children of Ammon, and the LORD deliver
them before me, shall I be your head?  11:10 And the elders of Gilead
said unto Jephthah, The LORD be witness between us, if we do not so
according to thy words.

11:11 Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people
made him head and captain over them: and Jephthah uttered all his
words before the LORD in Mizpeh.

11:12 And Jephthah sent messengers unto the king of the children of
Ammon, saying, What hast thou to do with me, that thou art come
against me to fight in my land?  11:13 And the king of the children of
Ammon answered unto the messengers of Jephthah, Because Israel took
away my land, when they came up out of Egypt, from Arnon even unto
Jabbok, and unto Jordan: now therefore restore those lands again
peaceably.

11:14 And Jephthah sent messengers again unto the king of the children
of Ammon: 11:15 And said unto him, Thus saith Jephthah, Israel took
not away the land of Moab, nor the land of the children of Ammon:
11:16 But when Israel came up from Egypt, and walked through the
wilderness unto the Red sea, and came to Kadesh; 11:17 Then Israel
sent messengers unto the king of Edom, saying, Let me, I pray thee,
pass through thy land: but the king of Edom would not hearken thereto.
And in like manner they sent unto the king of Moab: but he would not
consent: and Israel abode in Kadesh.

11:18 Then they went along through the wilderness, and compassed the
land of Edom, and the land of Moab, and came by the east side of the
land of Moab, and pitched on the other side of Arnon, but came not
within the border of Moab: for Arnon was the border of Moab.

11:19 And Israel sent messengers unto Sihon king of the Amorites, the
king of Heshbon; and Israel said unto him, Let us pass, we pray thee,
through thy land into my place.

11:20 But Sihon trusted not Israel to pass through his coast: but
Sihon gathered all his people together, and pitched in Jahaz, and
fought against Israel.

11:21 And the LORD God of Israel delivered Sihon and all his people
into the hand of Israel, and they smote them: so Israel possessed all
the land of the Amorites, the inhabitants of that country.

11:22 And they possessed all the coasts of the Amorites, from Arnon
even unto Jabbok, and from the wilderness even unto Jordan.

11:23 So now the LORD God of Israel hath dispossessed the Amorites
from before his people Israel, and shouldest thou possess it?  11:24
Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to
possess? So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before
us, them will we possess.

11:25 And now art thou any thing better than Balak the son of Zippor,
king of Moab? did he ever strive against Israel, or did he ever fight
against them, 11:26 While Israel dwelt in Heshbon and her towns, and
in Aroer and her towns, and in all the cities that be along by the
coasts of Arnon, three hundred years? why therefore did ye not recover
them within that time?  11:27 Wherefore I have not sinned against
thee, but thou doest me wrong to war against me: the LORD the Judge be
judge this day between the children of Israel and the children of
Ammon.

11:28 Howbeit the king of the children of Ammon hearkened not unto the
words of Jephthah which he sent him.

11:29 Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed
over Gilead, and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from
Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over unto the children of Ammon.

11:30 And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt
without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, 11:31 Then
it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to
meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall
surely be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.

11:32 So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight
against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hands.

11:33 And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith,
even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very
great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the
children of Israel.

11:34 And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his
daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she
was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.

11:35 And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes,
and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou
art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the
LORD, and I cannot go back.

11:36 And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth
unto the LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of
thy mouth; forasmuch as the LORD hath taken vengeance for thee of
thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.

11:37 And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let
me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and
bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.

11:38 And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she
went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the
mountains.

11:39 And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned
unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had
vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel, 11:40 That
the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah
the Gileadite four days in a year.

12:1 And the men of Ephraim gathered themselves together, and went
northward, and said unto Jephthah, Wherefore passedst thou over to
fight against the children of Ammon, and didst not call us to go with
thee? we will burn thine house upon thee with fire.

12:2 And Jephthah said unto them, I and my people were at great strife
with the children of Ammon; and when I called you, ye delivered me not
out of their hands.

12:3 And when I saw that ye delivered me not, I put my life in my
hands, and passed over against the children of Ammon, and the LORD
delivered them into my hand: wherefore then are ye come up unto me
this day, to fight against me?  12:4 Then Jephthah gathered together
all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim: and the men of Gilead
smote Ephraim, because they said, Ye Gileadites are fugitives of
Ephraim among the Ephraimites, and among the Manassites.

12:5 And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the
Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were
escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him,
Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; 12:6 Then said they unto him,
Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to
pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages
of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and
two thousand.

12:7 And Jephthah judged Israel six years. Then died Jephthah the
Gileadite, and was buried in one of the cities of Gilead.

12:8 And after him Ibzan of Bethlehem judged Israel.

12:9 And he had thirty sons, and thirty daughters, whom he sent
abroad, and took in thirty daughters from abroad for his sons. And he
judged Israel seven years.

12:10 Then died Ibzan, and was buried at Bethlehem.

12:11 And after him Elon, a Zebulonite, judged Israel; and he judged
Israel ten years.

12:12 And Elon the Zebulonite died, and was buried in Aijalon in the
country of Zebulun.

12:13 And after him Abdon the son of Hillel, a Pirathonite, judged
Israel.

12:14 And he had forty sons and thirty nephews, that rode on
threescore and ten ass colts: and he judged Israel eight years.

12:15 And Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite died, and was buried
in Pirathon in the land of Ephraim, in the mount of the Amalekites.

13:1 And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the
LORD; and the LORD delivered them into the hand of the Philistines
forty years.

13:2 And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the
Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and bare not.

13:3 And the angel of the LORD appeared unto the woman, and said unto
her, Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not: but thou shalt
conceive, and bear a son.

13:4 Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong
drink, and eat not any unclean thing: 13:5 For, lo, thou shalt
conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the
child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin
to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.

13:6 Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, A man of God
came unto me, and his countenance was like the countenance of an angel
of God, very terrible: but I asked him not whence he was, neither told
he me his name: 13:7 But he said unto me, Behold, thou shalt conceive,
and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink, neither eat
any unclean thing: for the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the
womb to the day of his death.

13:8 Then Manoah intreated the LORD, and said, O my Lord, let the man
of God which thou didst send come again unto us, and teach us what we
shall do unto the child that shall be born.

13:9 And God hearkened to the voice of Manoah; and the angel of God
came again unto the woman as she sat in the field: but Manoah her
husband was not with her.

13:10 And the woman made haste, and ran, and shewed her husband, and
said unto him, Behold, the man hath appeared unto me, that came unto
me the other day.

13:11 And Manoah arose, and went after his wife, and came to the man,
and said unto him, Art thou the man that spakest unto the woman? And
he said, I am.

13:12 And Manoah said, Now let thy words come to pass. How shall we
order the child, and how shall we do unto him?  13:13 And the angel of
the LORD said unto Manoah, Of all that I said unto the woman let her
beware.

13:14 She may not eat of any thing that cometh of the vine, neither
let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing: all
that I commanded her let her observe.

13:15 And Manoah said unto the angel of the LORD, I pray thee, let us
detain thee, until we shall have made ready a kid for thee.

13:16 And the angel of the LORD said unto Manoah, Though thou detain
me, I will not eat of thy bread: and if thou wilt offer a burnt
offering, thou must offer it unto the LORD. For Manoah knew not that
he was an angel of the LORD.

13:17 And Manoah said unto the angel of the LORD, What is thy name,
that when thy sayings come to pass we may do thee honour?  13:18 And
the angel of the LORD said unto him, Why askest thou thus after my
name, seeing it is secret?  13:19 So Manoah took a kid with a meat
offering, and offered it upon a rock unto the LORD: and the angel did
wonderously; and Manoah and his wife looked on.

13:20 For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from
off the altar, that the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the
altar. And Manoah and his wife looked on it, and fell on their faces
to the ground.

13:21 But the angel of the LORD did no more appear to Manoah and to
his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was an angel of the LORD.

13:22 And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we
have seen God.

13:23 But his wife said unto him, If the LORD were pleased to kill us,
he would not have received a burnt offering and a meat offering at our
hands, neither would he have shewed us all these things, nor would as
at this time have told us such things as these.

13:24 And the woman bare a son, and called his name Samson: and the
child grew, and the LORD blessed him.

13:25 And the Spirit of the LORD began to move him at times in the
camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol.

14:1 And Samson went down to Timnath, and saw a woman in Timnath of
the daughters of the Philistines.

14:2 And he came up, and told his father and his mother, and said, I
have seen a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines: now
therefore get her for me to wife.

14:3 Then his father and his mother said unto him, Is there never a
woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people,
that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines? And
Samson said unto his father, Get her for me; for she pleaseth me well.

14:4 But his father and his mother knew not that it was of the LORD,
that he sought an occasion against the Philistines: for at that time
the Philistines had dominion over Israel.

14:5 Then went Samson down, and his father and his mother, to Timnath,
and came to the vineyards of Timnath: and, behold, a young lion roared
against him.

14:6 And the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him, and he rent
him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand: but
he told not his father or his mother what he had done.

14:7 And he went down, and talked with the woman; and she pleased
Samson well.

14:8 And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to
see the carcase of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of bees
and honey in the carcase of the lion.

14:9 And he took thereof in his hands, and went on eating, and came to
his father and mother, and he gave them, and they did eat: but he told
not them that he had taken the honey out of the carcase of the lion.

14:10 So his father went down unto the woman: and Samson made there a
feast; for so used the young men to do.

14:11 And it came to pass, when they saw him, that they brought thirty
companions to be with him.

14:12 And Samson said unto them, I will now put forth a riddle unto
you: if ye can certainly declare it me within the seven days of the
feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty sheets and thirty
change of garments: 14:13 But if ye cannot declare it me, then shall
ye give me thirty sheets and thirty change of garments. And they said
unto him, Put forth thy riddle, that we may hear it.

14:14 And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out
of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days
expound the riddle.

14:15 And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they said unto
Samson's wife, Entice thy husband, that he may declare unto us the
riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father's house with fire: have ye
called us to take that we have? is it not so?  14:16 And Samson's wife
wept before him, and said, Thou dost but hate me, and lovest me not:
thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people, and hast
not told it me. And he said unto her, Behold, I have not told it my
father nor my mother, and shall I tell it thee?  14:17 And she wept
before him the seven days, while their feast lasted: and it came to
pass on the seventh day, that he told her, because she lay sore upon
him: and she told the riddle to the children of her people.

14:18 And the men of the city said unto him on the seventh day before
the sun went down, What is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger
than a lion?  and he said unto them, If ye had not plowed with my
heifer, ye had not found out my riddle.

14:19 And the Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he went down to
Ashkelon, and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave
change of garments unto them which expounded the riddle. And his anger
was kindled, and he went up to his father's house.

14:20 But Samson's wife was given to his companion, whom he had used
as his friend.

15:1 But it came to pass within a while after, in the time of wheat
harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid; and he said, I will
go in to my wife into the chamber. But her father would not suffer him
to go in.

15:2 And her father said, I verily thought that thou hadst utterly
hated her; therefore I gave her to thy companion: is not her younger
sister fairer than she? take her, I pray thee, instead of her.

15:3 And Samson said concerning them, Now shall I be more blameless
than the Philistines, though I do them a displeasure.

15:4 And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took
firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst
between two tails.

15:5 And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the
standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and
also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives.

15:6 Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they answered,
Samson, the son in law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife,
and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt
her and her father with fire.

15:7 And Samson said unto them, Though ye have done this, yet will I
be avenged of you, and after that I will cease.

15:8 And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he
went down and dwelt in the top of the rock Etam.

15:9 Then the Philistines went up, and pitched in Judah, and spread
themselves in Lehi.

15:10 And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up against us? And
they answered, To bind Samson are we come up, to do to him as he hath
done to us.

15:11 Then three thousand men of Judah went to the top of the rock
Etam, and said to Samson, Knowest thou not that the Philistines are
rulers over us? what is this that thou hast done unto us? And he said
unto them, As they did unto me, so have I done unto them.

15:12 And they said unto him, We are come down to bind thee, that we
may deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines. And Samson said
unto them, Swear unto me, that ye will not fall upon me yourselves.

15:13 And they spake unto him, saying, No; but we will bind thee fast,
and deliver thee into their hand: but surely we will not kill thee.
And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him up from the
rock.

15:14 And when he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him:
and the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him, and the cords that
were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his
bands loosed from off his hands.

15:15 And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand,
and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.

15:16 And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps,
with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.

15:17 And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that
he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place
Ramathlehi.

15:18 And he was sore athirst, and called on the LORD, and said, Thou
hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and
now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the
uncircumcised?  15:19 But God clave an hollow place that was in the
jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit
came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof
Enhakkore, which is in Lehi unto this day.

15:20 And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty
years.

16:1 Then went Samson to Gaza, and saw there an harlot, and went in
unto her.

16:2 And it was told the Gazites, saying, Samson is come hither. And
they compassed him in, and laid wait for him all night in the gate of
the city, and were quiet all the night, saying, In the morning, when
it is day, we shall kill him.

16:3 And Samson lay till midnight, and arose at midnight, and took the
doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and went away with
them, bar and all, and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them
up to the top of an hill that is before Hebron.

16:4 And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the
valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.

16:5 And the lords of the Philistines came up unto her, and said unto
her, Entice him, and see wherein his great strength lieth, and by what
means we may prevail against him, that we may bind him to afflict him;
and we will give thee every one of us eleven hundred pieces of silver.

16:6 And Delilah said to Samson, Tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy
great strength lieth, and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict
thee.

16:7 And Samson said unto her, If they bind me with seven green withs
that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another man.

16:8 Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven green
withs which had not been dried, and she bound him with them.

16:9 Now there were men lying in wait, abiding with her in the
chamber.

And she said unto him, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he
brake the withs, as a thread of tow is broken when it toucheth the
fire. So his strength was not known.

16:10 And Delilah said unto Samson, Behold, thou hast mocked me, and
told me lies: now tell me, I pray thee, wherewith thou mightest be
bound.

16:11 And he said unto her, If they bind me fast with new ropes that
never were occupied, then shall I be weak, and be as another man.

16:12 Delilah therefore took new ropes, and bound him therewith, and
said unto him, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And there were
liers in wait abiding in the chamber. And he brake them from off his
arms like a thread.

16:13 And Delilah said unto Samson, Hitherto thou hast mocked me, and
told me lies: tell me wherewith thou mightest be bound. And he said
unto her, If thou weavest the seven locks of my head with the web.

16:14 And she fastened it with the pin, and said unto him, The
Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awaked out of his sleep, and
went away with the pin of the beam, and with the web.

16:15 And she said unto him, How canst thou say, I love thee, when
thine heart is not with me? thou hast mocked me these three times, and
hast not told me wherein thy great strength lieth.

16:16 And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with her words,
and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death; 16:17 That he
told her all his heart, and said unto her, There hath not come a razor
upon mine head; for I have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother's
womb: if I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall
become weak, and be like any other man.

16:18 And when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she
sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up this
once, for he hath shewed me all his heart. Then the lords of the
Philistines came up unto her, and brought money in their hand.

16:19 And she made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man,
and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head; and she
began to afflict him, and his strength went from him.

16:20 And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke
out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before,
and shake myself. And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.

16:21 But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought
him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did
grind in the prison house.

16:22 Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he was
shaven.

16:23 Then the lords of the Philistines gathered them together for to
offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice: for they
said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand.

16:24 And when the people saw him, they praised their god: for they
said, Our god hath delivered into our hands our enemy, and the
destroyer of our country, which slew many of us.

16:25 And it came to pass, when their hearts were merry, that they
said, Call for Samson, that he may make us sport. And they called for
Samson out of the prison house; and he made them sport: and they set
him between the pillars.

16:26 And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand, Suffer
me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth, that I
may lean upon them.

16:27 Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of
the Philistines were there; and there were upon the roof about three
thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson made sport.

16:28 And Samson called unto the LORD, and said, O Lord God, remember
me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O
God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.

16:29 And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the
house stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one with his right
hand, and of the other with his left.

16:30 And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed
himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and
upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at
his death were more than they which he slew in his life.

16:31 Then his brethren and all the house of his father came down, and
took him, and brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol
in the buryingplace of Manoah his father. And he judged Israel twenty
years.

17:1 And there was a man of mount Ephraim, whose name was Micah.

17:2 And he said unto his mother, The eleven hundred shekels of silver
that were taken from thee, about which thou cursedst, and spakest of
also in mine ears, behold, the silver is with me; I took it. And his
mother said, Blessed be thou of the LORD, my son.

17:3 And when he had restored the eleven hundred shekels of silver to
his mother, his mother said, I had wholly dedicated the silver unto
the LORD from my hand for my son, to make a graven image and a molten
image: now therefore I will restore it unto thee.

17:4 Yet he restored the money unto his mother; and his mother took
two hundred shekels of silver, and gave them to the founder, who made
thereof a graven image and a molten image: and they were in the house
of Micah.

17:5 And the man Micah had an house of gods, and made an ephod, and
teraphim, and consecrated one of his sons, who became his priest.

17:6 In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that
which was right in his own eyes.

17:7 And there was a young man out of Bethlehemjudah of the family of
Judah, who was a Levite, and he sojourned there.

17:8 And the man departed out of the city from Bethlehemjudah to
sojourn where he could find a place: and he came to mount Ephraim to
the house of Micah, as he journeyed.

17:9 And Micah said unto him, Whence comest thou? And he said unto
him, I am a Levite of Bethlehemjudah, and I go to sojourn where I may
find a place.

17:10 And Micah said unto him, Dwell with me, and be unto me a father
and a priest, and I will give thee ten shekels of silver by the year,
and a suit of apparel, and thy victuals. So the Levite went in.

17:11 And the Levite was content to dwell with the man; and the young
man was unto him as one of his sons.

17:12 And Micah consecrated the Levite; and the young man became his
priest, and was in the house of Micah.

17:13 Then said Micah, Now know I that the LORD will do me good,
seeing I have a Levite to my priest.

18:1 In those days there was no king in Israel: and in those days the
tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto
that day all their inheritance had not fallen unto them among the
tribes of Israel.

18:2 And the children of Dan sent of their family five men from their
coasts, men of valour, from Zorah, and from Eshtaol, to spy out the
land, and to search it; and they said unto them, Go, search the land:
who when they came to mount Ephraim, to the house of Micah, they
lodged there.

18:3 When they were by the house of Micah, they knew the voice of the
young man the Levite: and they turned in thither, and said unto him,
Who brought thee hither? and what makest thou in this place? and what
hast thou here?  18:4 And he said unto them, Thus and thus dealeth
Micah with me, and hath hired me, and I am his priest.

18:5 And they said unto him, Ask counsel, we pray thee, of God, that
we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous.

18:6 And the priest said unto them, Go in peace: before the LORD is
your way wherein ye go.

18:7 Then the five men departed, and came to Laish, and saw the people
that were therein, how they dwelt careless, after the manner of the
Zidonians, quiet and secure; and there was no magistrate in the land,
that might put them to shame in any thing; and they were far from the
Zidonians, and had no business with any man.

18:8 And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their
brethren said unto them, What say ye?  18:9 And they said, Arise, that
we may go up against them: for we have seen the land, and, behold, it
is very good: and are ye still? be not slothful to go, and to enter to
possess the land.

18:10 When ye go, ye shall come unto a people secure, and to a large
land: for God hath given it into your hands; a place where there is no
want of any thing that is in the earth.

18:11 And there went from thence of the family of the Danites, out of
Zorah and out of Eshtaol, six hundred men appointed with weapons of
war.

18:12 And they went up, and pitched in Kirjathjearim, in Judah:
wherefore they called that place Mahanehdan unto this day: behold, it
is behind Kirjathjearim.

18:13 And they passed thence unto mount Ephraim, and came unto the
house of Micah.

18:14 Then answered the five men that went to spy out the country of
Laish, and said unto their brethren, Do ye know that there is in these
houses an ephod, and teraphim, and a graven image, and a molten image?
now therefore consider what ye have to do.

18:15 And they turned thitherward, and came to the house of the young
man the Levite, even unto the house of Micah, and saluted him.

18:16 And the six hundred men appointed with their weapons of war,
which were of the children of Dan, stood by the entering of the gate.

18:17 And the five men that went to spy out the land went up, and came
in thither, and took the graven image, and the ephod, and the
teraphim, and the molten image: and the priest stood in the entering
of the gate with the six hundred men that were appointed with weapons
of war.

18:18 And these went into Micah's house, and fetched the carved image,
the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image. Then said the
priest unto them, What do ye?  18:19 And they said unto him, Hold thy
peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth, and go with us, and be to us a
father and a priest: is it better for thee to be a priest unto the
house of one man, or that thou be a priest unto a tribe and a family
in Israel?  18:20 And the priest's heart was glad, and he took the
ephod, and the teraphim, and the graven image, and went in the midst
of the people.

18:21 So they turned and departed, and put the little ones and the
cattle and the carriage before them.

18:22 And when they were a good way from the house of Micah, the men
that were in the houses near to Micah's house were gathered together,
and overtook the children of Dan.

18:23 And they cried unto the children of Dan. And they turned their
faces, and said unto Micah, What aileth thee, that thou comest with
such a company?  18:24 And he said, Ye have taken away my gods which I
made, and the priest, and ye are gone away: and what have I more? and
what is this that ye say unto me, What aileth thee?  18:25 And the
children of Dan said unto him, Let not thy voice be heard among us,
lest angry fellows run upon thee, and thou lose thy life, with the
lives of thy household.

18:26 And the children of Dan went their way: and when Micah saw that
they were too strong for him, he turned and went back unto his house.

18:27 And they took the things which Micah had made, and the priest
which he had, and came unto Laish, unto a people that were at quiet
and secure: and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and burnt
the city with fire.

18:28 And there was no deliverer, because it was far from Zidon, and
they had no business with any man; and it was in the valley that lieth
by Bethrehob. And they built a city, and dwelt therein.

18:29 And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan
their father, who was born unto Israel: howbeit the name of the city
was Laish at the first.

18:30 And the children of Dan set up the graven image: and Jonathan,
the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests
to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land.

18:31 And they set them up Micah's graven image, which he made, all
the time that the house of God was in Shiloh.

19:1 And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in
Israel, that there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of
mount Ephraim, who took to him a concubine out of Bethlehemjudah.

19:2 And his concubine played the whore against him, and went away
from him unto her father's house to Bethlehemjudah, and was there four
whole months.

19:3 And her husband arose, and went after her, to speak friendly unto
her, and to bring her again, having his servant with him, and a couple
of asses: and she brought him into her father's house: and when the
father of the damsel saw him, he rejoiced to meet him.

19:4 And his father in law, the damsel's father, retained him; and he
abode with him three days: so they did eat and drink, and lodged
there.

19:5 And it came to pass on the fourth day, when they arose early in
the morning, that he rose up to depart: and the damsel's father said
unto his son in law, Comfort thine heart with a morsel of bread, and
afterward go your way.

19:6 And they sat down, and did eat and drink both of them together:
for the damsel's father had said unto the man, Be content, I pray
thee, and tarry all night, and let thine heart be merry.

19:7 And when the man rose up to depart, his father in law urged him:
therefore he lodged there again.

19:8 And he arose early in the morning on the fifth day to depart; and
the damsel's father said, Comfort thine heart, I pray thee. And they
tarried until afternoon, and they did eat both of them.

19:9 And when the man rose up to depart, he, and his concubine, and
his servant, his father in law, the damsel's father, said unto him,
Behold, now the day draweth toward evening, I pray you tarry all
night: behold, the day groweth to an end, lodge here, that thine heart
may be merry; and to morrow get you early on your way, that thou
mayest go home.

19:10 But the man would not tarry that night, but he rose up and
departed, and came over against Jebus, which is Jerusalem; and there
were with him two asses saddled, his concubine also was with him.

19:11 And when they were by Jebus, the day was far spent; and the
servant said unto his master, Come, I pray thee, and let us turn in
into this city of the Jebusites, and lodge in it.

19:12 And his master said unto him, We will not turn aside hither into
the city of a stranger, that is not of the children of Israel; we will
pass over to Gibeah.

19:13 And he said unto his servant, Come, and let us draw near to one
of these places to lodge all night, in Gibeah, or in Ramah.

19:14 And they passed on and went their way; and the sun went down
upon them when they were by Gibeah, which belongeth to Benjamin.

19:15 And they turned aside thither, to go in and to lodge in Gibeah:
and when he went in, he sat him down in a street of the city: for
there was no man that took them into his house to lodging.

19:16 And, behold, there came an old man from his work out of the
field at even, which was also of mount Ephraim; and he sojourned in
Gibeah: but the men of the place were Benjamites.

19:17 And when he had lifted up his eyes, he saw a wayfaring man in
the street of the city: and the old man said, Whither goest thou? and
whence comest thou?  19:18 And he said unto him, We are passing from
Bethlehemjudah toward the side of mount Ephraim; from thence am I: and
I went to Bethlehemjudah, but I am now going to the house of the LORD;
and there is no man that receiveth me to house.

19:19 Yet there is both straw and provender for our asses; and there
is bread and wine also for me, and for thy handmaid, and for the young
man which is with thy servants: there is no want of any thing.

19:20 And the old man said, Peace be with thee; howsoever let all thy
wants lie upon me; only lodge not in the street.

19:21 So he brought him into his house, and gave provender unto the
asses: and they washed their feet, and did eat and drink.

19:22 Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of
the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and
beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man,
saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may
know him.

19:23 And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, and
said unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly;
seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly.

19:24 Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I
will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth
good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing.

19:25 But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his
concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and
abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to
spring, they let her go.

19:26 Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at
the door of the man's house where her lord was, till it was light.

19:27 And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the
house, and went out to go his way: and, behold, the woman his
concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were
upon the threshold.

19:28 And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none
answered.

Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him
unto his place.

19:29 And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid
hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into
twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.

19:30 And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such deed
done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of
the land of Egypt unto this day: consider of it, take advice, and
speak your minds.

20:1 Then all the children of Israel went out, and the congregation
was gathered together as one man, from Dan even to Beersheba, with the
land of Gilead, unto the LORD in Mizpeh.

20:2 And the chief of all the people, even of all the tribes of
Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God,
four hundred thousand footmen that drew sword.

20:3 (Now the children of Benjamin heard that the children of Israel
were gone up to Mizpeh.) Then said the children of Israel, Tell us,
how was this wickedness?  20:4 And the Levite, the husband of the
woman that was slain, answered and said, I came into Gibeah that
belongeth to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to lodge.

20:5 And the men of Gibeah rose against me, and beset the house round
about upon me by night, and thought to have slain me: and my concubine
have they forced, that she is dead.

20:6 And I took my concubine, and cut her in pieces, and sent her
throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel: for they have
committed lewdness and folly in Israel.

20:7 Behold, ye are all children of Israel; give here your advice and
counsel.

20:8 And all the people arose as one man, saying, We will not any of
us go to his tent, neither will we any of us turn into his house.

20:9 But now this shall be the thing which we will do to Gibeah; we
will go up by lot against it; 20:10 And we will take ten men of an
hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel, and an hundred of a
thousand, and a thousand out of ten thousand, to fetch victual for the
people, that they may do, when they come to Gibeah of Benjamin,
according to all the folly that they have wrought in Israel.

20:11 So all the men of Israel were gathered against the city, knit
together as one man.

20:12 And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of
Benjamin, saying, What wickedness is this that is done among you?
20:13 Now therefore deliver us the men, the children of Belial, which
are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death, and put away evil from
Israel. But the children of Benjamin would not hearken to the voice of
their brethren the children of Israel.

20:14 But the children of Benjamin gathered themselves together out of
the cities unto Gibeah, to go out to battle against the children of
Israel.

20:15 And the children of Benjamin were numbered at that time out of
the cities twenty and six thousand men that drew sword, beside the
inhabitants of Gibeah, which were numbered seven hundred chosen men.

20:16 Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men
lefthanded; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not
miss.

20:17 And the men of Israel, beside Benjamin, were numbered four
hundred thousand men that drew sword: all these were men of war.

20:18 And the children of Israel arose, and went up to the house of
God, and asked counsel of God, and said, Which of us shall go up first
to the battle against the children of Benjamin? And the LORD said,
Judah shall go up first.

20:19 And the children of Israel rose up in the morning, and encamped
against Gibeah.

20:20 And the men of Israel went out to battle against Benjamin; and
the men of Israel put themselves in array to fight against them at
Gibeah.

20:21 And the children of Benjamin came forth out of Gibeah, and
destroyed down to the ground of the Israelites that day twenty and two
thousand men.

20:22 And the people the men of Israel encouraged themselves, and set
their battle again in array in the place where they put themselves in
array the first day.

20:23 (And the children of Israel went up and wept before the LORD
until even, and asked counsel of the LORD, saying, Shall I go up again
to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother? And the LORD
said, Go up against him.)  20:24 And the children of Israel came near
against the children of Benjamin the second day.

20:25 And Benjamin went forth against them out of Gibeah the second
day, and destroyed down to the ground of the children of Israel again
eighteen thousand men; all these drew the sword.

20:26 Then all the children of Israel, and all the people, went up,
and came unto the house of God, and wept, and sat there before the
LORD, and fasted that day until even, and offered burnt offerings and
peace offerings before the LORD.

20:27 And the children of Israel enquired of the LORD, (for the ark of
the covenant of God was there in those days, 20:28 And Phinehas, the
son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before it in those days,)
saying, Shall I yet again go out to battle against the children of
Benjamin my brother, or shall I cease? And the LORD said, Go up; for
to morrow I will deliver them into thine hand.

20:29 And Israel set liers in wait round about Gibeah.

20:30 And the children of Israel went up against the children of
Benjamin on the third day, and put themselves in array against Gibeah,
as at other times.

20:31 And the children of Benjamin went out against the people, and
were drawn away from the city; and they began to smite of the people,
and kill, as at other times, in the highways, of which one goeth up to
the house of God, and the other to Gibeah in the field, about thirty
men of Israel.

20:32 And the children of Benjamin said, They are smitten down before
us, as at the first. But the children of Israel said, Let us flee, and
draw them from the city unto the highways.

20:33 And all the men of Israel rose up out of their place, and put
themselves in array at Baaltamar: and the liers in wait of Israel came
forth out of their places, even out of the meadows of Gibeah.

20:34 And there came against Gibeah ten thousand chosen men out of all
Israel, and the battle was sore: but they knew not that evil was near
them.

20:35 And the LORD smote Benjamin before Israel: and the children of
Israel destroyed of the Benjamites that day twenty and five thousand
and an hundred men: all these drew the sword.

20:36 So the children of Benjamin saw that they were smitten: for the
men of Israel gave place to the Benjamites, because they trusted unto
the liers in wait which they had set beside Gibeah.

20:37 And the liers in wait hasted, and rushed upon Gibeah; and the
liers in wait drew themselves along, and smote all the city with the
edge of the sword.

20:38 Now there was an appointed sign between the men of Israel and
the liers in wait, that they should make a great flame with smoke rise
up out of the city.

20:39 And when the men of Israel retired in the battle, Benjamin began
to smite and kill of the men of Israel about thirty persons: for they
said, Surely they are smitten down before us, as in the first battle.

20:40 But when the flame began to arise up out of the city with a
pillar of smoke, the Benjamites looked behind them, and, behold, the
flame of the city ascended up to heaven.

20:41 And when the men of Israel turned again, the men of Benjamin
were amazed: for they saw that evil was come upon them.

20:42 Therefore they turned their backs before the men of Israel unto
the way of the wilderness; but the battle overtook them; and them
which came out of the cities they destroyed in the midst of them.

20:43 Thus they inclosed the Benjamites round about, and chased them,
and trode them down with ease over against Gibeah toward the
sunrising.

20:44 And there fell of Benjamin eighteen thousand men; all these were
men of valour.

20:45 And they turned and fled toward the wilderness unto the rock of
Rimmon: and they gleaned of them in the highways five thousand men;
and pursued hard after them unto Gidom, and slew two thousand men of
them.

20:46 So that all which fell that day of Benjamin were twenty and five
thousand men that drew the sword; all these were men of valour.

20:47 But six hundred men turned and fled to the wilderness unto the
rock Rimmon, and abode in the rock Rimmon four months.

20:48 And the men of Israel turned again upon the children of
Benjamin, and smote them with the edge of the sword, as well the men
of every city, as the beast, and all that came to hand: also they set
on fire all the cities that they came to.

21:1 Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall
not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife.

21:2 And the people came to the house of God, and abode there till
even before God, and lifted up their voices, and wept sore; 21:3 And
said, O LORD God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that
there should be to day one tribe lacking in Israel?  21:4 And it came
to pass on the morrow, that the people rose early, and built there an
altar, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.

21:5 And the children of Israel said, Who is there among all the
tribes of Israel that came not up with the congregation unto the LORD?
For they had made a great oath concerning him that came not up to the
LORD to Mizpeh, saying, He shall surely be put to death.

21:6 And the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their
brother, and said, There is one tribe cut off from Israel this day.

21:7 How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing we have
sworn by the LORD that we will not give them of our daughters to
wives?  21:8 And they said, What one is there of the tribes of Israel
that came not up to Mizpeh to the LORD? And, behold, there came none
to the camp from Jabeshgilead to the assembly.

21:9 For the people were numbered, and, behold, there were none of the
inhabitants of Jabeshgilead there.

21:10 And the congregation sent thither twelve thousand men of the
valiantest, and commanded them, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants
of Jabeshgilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the
children.

21:11 And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy
every male, and every woman that hath lain by man.

21:12 And they found among the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead four
hundred young virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male:
and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of
Canaan.

21:13 And the whole congregation sent some to speak to the children of
Benjamin that were in the rock Rimmon, and to call peaceably unto
them.

21:14 And Benjamin came again at that time; and they gave them wives
which they had saved alive of the women of Jabeshgilead: and yet so
they sufficed them not.

21:15 And the people repented them for Benjamin, because that the LORD
had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.

21:16 Then the elders of the congregation said, How shall we do for
wives for them that remain, seeing the women are destroyed out of
Benjamin?  21:17 And they said, There must be an inheritance for them
that be escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe be not destroyed out of
Israel.

21:18 Howbeit we may not give them wives of our daughters: for the
children of Israel have sworn, saying, Cursed be he that giveth a wife
to Benjamin.

21:19 Then they said, Behold, there is a feast of the LORD in Shiloh
yearly in a place which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east
side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the
south of Lebonah.

21:20 Therefore they commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go
and lie in wait in the vineyards; 21:21 And see, and, behold, if the
daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of
the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of
Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin.

21:22 And it shall be, when their fathers or their brethren come unto
us to complain, that we will say unto them, Be favourable unto them
for our sakes: because we reserved not to each man his wife in the
war: for ye did not give unto them at this time, that ye should be
guilty.

21:23 And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives,
according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught: and
they went and returned unto their inheritance, and repaired the
cities, and dwelt in them.

21:24 And the children of Israel departed thence at that time, every
man to his tribe and to his family, and they went out from thence
every man to his inheritance.

21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that
which was right in his own eyes.




The Book of Ruth


1:1 Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled, that there
was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehemjudah went to
sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons.

1:2 And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife
Naomi, and the name of his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of
Bethlehemjudah. And they came into the country of Moab, and continued
there.

1:3 And Elimelech Naomi's husband died; and she was left, and her two
sons.

1:4 And they took them wives of the women of Moab; the name of the one
was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth: and they dwelled there
about ten years.

1:5 And Mahlon and Chilion died also both of them; and the woman was
left of her two sons and her husband.

1:6 Then she arose with her daughters in law, that she might return
from the country of Moab: for she had heard in the country of Moab how
that the LORD had visited his people in giving them bread.

1:7 Wherefore she went forth out of the place where she was, and her
two daughters in law with her; and they went on the way to return unto
the land of Judah.

1:8 And Naomi said unto her two daughters in law, Go, return each to
her mother's house: the LORD deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt
with the dead, and with me.

1:9 The LORD grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the house
of her husband. Then she kissed them; and they lifted up their voice,
and wept.

1:10 And they said unto her, Surely we will return with thee unto thy
people.

1:11 And Naomi said, Turn again, my daughters: why will ye go with me?
are there yet any more sons in my womb, that they may be your
husbands?  1:12 Turn again, my daughters, go your way; for I am too
old to have an husband. If I should say, I have hope, if I should have
an husband also to night, and should also bear sons; 1:13 Would ye
tarry for them till they were grown? would ye stay for them from
having husbands? nay, my daughters; for it grieveth me much for your
sakes that the hand of the LORD is gone out against me.

1:14 And they lifted up their voice, and wept again: and Orpah kissed
her mother in law; but Ruth clave unto her.

1:15 And she said, Behold, thy sister in law is gone back unto her
people, and unto her gods: return thou after thy sister in law.

1:16 And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from
following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where
thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God
my God: 1:17 Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried:
the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and
me.

1:18 When she saw that she was stedfastly minded to go with her, then
she left speaking unto her.

1:19 So they two went until they came to Bethlehem. And it came to
pass, when they were come to Bethlehem, that all the city was moved
about them, and they said, Is this Naomi?  1:20 And she said unto
them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt
very bitterly with me.

1:21 I went out full and the LORD hath brought me home again empty:
why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the LORD hath testified against me,
and the Almighty hath afflicted me?  1:22 So Naomi returned, and Ruth
the Moabitess, her daughter in law, with her, which returned out of
the country of Moab: and they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of
barley harvest.

2:1 And Naomi had a kinsman of her husband's, a mighty man of wealth,
of the family of Elimelech; and his name was Boaz.

2:2 And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the
field, and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find
grace.

And she said unto her, Go, my daughter.

2:3 And she went, and came, and gleaned in the field after the
reapers: and her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging
unto Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech.

2:4 And, behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said unto the reapers,
The LORD be with you. And they answered him, The LORD bless thee.

2:5 Then said Boaz unto his servant that was set over the reapers,
Whose damsel is this?  2:6 And the servant that was set over the
reapers answered and said, It is the Moabitish damsel that came back
with Naomi out of the country of Moab: 2:7 And she said, I pray you,
let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves: so she
came, and hath continued even from the morning until now, that she
tarried a little in the house.

2:8 Then said Boaz unto Ruth, Hearest thou not, my daughter? Go not to
glean in another field, neither go from hence, but abide here fast by
my maidens: 2:9 Let thine eyes be on the field that they do reap, and
go thou after them: have I not charged the young men that they shall
not touch thee? and when thou art athirst, go unto the vessels, and
drink of that which the young men have drawn.

2:10 Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and
said unto him, Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou
shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger?  2:11 And Boaz
answered and said unto her, It hath fully been shewed me, all that
thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine
husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the
land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest
not heretofore.

2:12 The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of
the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.

2:13 Then she said, Let me find favour in thy sight, my lord; for that
thou hast comforted me, and for that thou hast spoken friendly unto
thine handmaid, though I be not like unto one of thine handmaidens.

2:14 And Boaz said unto her, At mealtime come thou hither, and eat of
the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar. And she sat beside the
reapers: and he reached her parched corn, and she did eat, and was
sufficed, and left.

2:15 And when she was risen up to glean, Boaz commanded his young men,
saying, Let her glean even among the sheaves, and reproach her not:
2:16 And let fall also some of the handfuls of purpose for her, and
leave them, that she may glean them, and rebuke her not.

2:17 So she gleaned in the field until even, and beat out that she had
gleaned: and it was about an ephah of barley.

2:18 And she took it up, and went into the city: and her mother in law
saw what she had gleaned: and she brought forth, and gave to her that
she had reserved after she was sufficed.

2:19 And her mother in law said unto her, Where hast thou gleaned to
day?  and where wroughtest thou? blessed be he that did take knowledge
of thee. And she shewed her mother in law with whom she had wrought,
and said, The man's name with whom I wrought to day is Boaz.

2:20 And Naomi said unto her daughter in law, Blessed be he of the
LORD, who hath not left off his kindness to the living and to the
dead. And Naomi said unto her, The man is near of kin unto us, one of
our next kinsmen.

2:21 And Ruth the Moabitess said, He said unto me also, Thou shalt
keep fast by my young men, until they have ended all my harvest.

2:22 And Naomi said unto Ruth her daughter in law, It is good, my
daughter, that thou go out with his maidens, that they meet thee not
in any other field.

2:23 So she kept fast by the maidens of Boaz to glean unto the end of
barley harvest and of wheat harvest; and dwelt with her mother in law.

3:1 Then Naomi her mother in law said unto her, My daughter, shall I
not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with thee?  3:2 And now is
not Boaz of our kindred, with whose maidens thou wast?  Behold, he
winnoweth barley to night in the threshingfloor.

3:3 Wash thyself therefore, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon
thee, and get thee down to the floor: but make not thyself known unto
the man, until he shall have done eating and drinking.

3:4 And it shall be, when he lieth down, that thou shalt mark the
place where he shall lie, and thou shalt go in, and uncover his feet,
and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do.

3:5 And she said unto her, All that thou sayest unto me I will do.

3:6 And she went down unto the floor, and did according to all that
her mother in law bade her.

3:7 And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he
went to lie down at the end of the heap of corn: and she came softly,
and uncovered his feet, and laid her down.

3:8 And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and
turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet.

3:9 And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth thine
handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art
a near kinsman.

3:10 And he said, Blessed be thou of the LORD, my daughter: for thou
hast shewed more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning,
inasmuch as thou followedst not young men, whether poor or rich.

3:11 And now, my daughter, fear not; I will do to thee all that thou
requirest: for all the city of my people doth know that thou art a
virtuous woman.

3:12 And now it is true that I am thy near kinsman: howbeit there is a
kinsman nearer than I.

3:13 Tarry this night, and it shall be in the morning, that if he will
perform unto thee the part of a kinsman, well; let him do the
kinsman's part: but if he will not do the part of a kinsman to thee,
then will I do the part of a kinsman to thee, as the LORD liveth: lie
down until the morning.

3:14 And she lay at his feet until the morning: and she rose up before
one could know another. And he said, Let it not be known that a woman
came into the floor.

3:15 Also he said, Bring the vail that thou hast upon thee, and hold
it.

And when she held it, he measured six measures of barley, and laid it
on her: and she went into the city.

3:16 And when she came to her mother in law, she said, Who art thou,
my daughter? And she told her all that the man had done to her.

3:17 And she said, These six measures of barley gave he me; for he
said to me, Go not empty unto thy mother in law.

3:18 Then said she, Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the
matter will fall: for the man will not be in rest, until he have
finished the thing this day.

4:1 Then went Boaz up to the gate, and sat him down there: and,
behold, the kinsman of whom Boaz spake came by; unto whom he said, Ho,
such a one! turn aside, sit down here. And he turned aside, and sat
down.

4:2 And he took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, Sit ye
down here. And they sat down.

4:3 And he said unto the kinsman, Naomi, that is come again out of the
country of Moab, selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother
Elimelech's: 4:4 And I thought to advertise thee, saying, Buy it
before the inhabitants, and before the elders of my people. If thou
wilt redeem it, redeem it: but if thou wilt not redeem it, then tell
me, that I may know: for there is none to redeem it beside thee; and I
am after thee. And he said, I will redeem it.

4:5 Then said Boaz, What day thou buyest the field of the hand of
Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the
dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance.

4:6 And the kinsman said, I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar
mine own inheritance: redeem thou my right to thyself; for I cannot
redeem it.

4:7 Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning
redeeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things; a man
plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbour: and this was a
testimony in Israel.

4:8 Therefore the kinsman said unto Boaz, Buy it for thee. So he drew
off his shoe.

4:9 And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the people, Ye are
witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech's, and
all that was Chilion's and Mahlon's, of the hand of Naomi.

4:10 Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased
to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance,
that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and
from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day.

4:11 And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said,
We are witnesses. The LORD make the woman that is come into thine
house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of
Israel: and do thou worthily in Ephratah, and be famous in Bethlehem:
4:12 And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare
unto Judah, of the seed which the LORD shall give thee of this young
woman.

4:13 So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife: and when he went in unto
her, the LORD gave her conception, and she bare a son.

4:14 And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed be the LORD, which hath
not left thee this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous
in Israel.

4:15 And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher
of thine old age: for thy daughter in law, which loveth thee, which is
better to thee than seven sons, hath born him.

4:16 And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and became
nurse unto it.

4:17 And the women her neighbours gave it a name, saying, There is a
son born to Naomi; and they called his name Obed: he is the father of
Jesse, the father of David.

4:18 Now these are the generations of Pharez: Pharez begat Hezron,
4:19 And Hezron begat Ram, and Ram begat Amminadab, 4:20 And Amminadab
begat Nahshon, and Nahshon begat Salmon, 4:21 And Salmon begat Boaz,
and Boaz begat Obed, 4:22 And Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David.




The First Book of Samuel

Otherwise Called:

The First Book of the Kings


1:1 Now there was a certain man of Ramathaimzophim, of mount Ephraim,
and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the
son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephrathite: 1:2 And he had two wives;
the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah:
and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.

1:3 And this man went up out of his city yearly to worship and to
sacrifice unto the LORD of hosts in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli,
Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the LORD, were there.

1:4 And when the time was that Elkanah offered, he gave to Peninnah
his wife, and to all her sons and her daughters, portions: 1:5 But
unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion; for he loved Hannah: but the
LORD had shut up her womb.

1:6 And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret,
because the LORD had shut up her womb.

1:7 And as he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of
the LORD, so she provoked her; therefore she wept, and did not eat.

1:8 Then said Elkanah her husband to her, Hannah, why weepest thou?
and why eatest thou not? and why is thy heart grieved? am not I better
to thee than ten sons?  1:9 So Hannah rose up after they had eaten in
Shiloh, and after they had drunk. Now Eli the priest sat upon a seat
by a post of the temple of the LORD.

1:10 And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the LORD, and
wept sore.

1:11 And she vowed a vow, and said, O LORD of hosts, if thou wilt
indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and
not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man
child, then I will give him unto the LORD all the days of his life,
and there shall no razor come upon his head.

1:12 And it came to pass, as she continued praying before the LORD,
that Eli marked her mouth.

1:13 Now Hannah, she spake in her heart; only her lips moved, but her
voice was not heard: therefore Eli thought she had been drunken.

1:14 And Eli said unto her, How long wilt thou be drunken? put away
thy wine from thee.

1:15 And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a
sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have
poured out my soul before the LORD.

1:16 Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial: for out of the
abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto.

1:17 Then Eli answered and said, Go in peace: and the God of Israel
grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of him.

1:18 And she said, Let thine handmaid find grace in thy sight. So the
woman went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad.

1:19 And they rose up in the morning early, and worshipped before the
LORD, and returned, and came to their house to Ramah: and Elkanah knew
Hannah his wife; and the LORD remembered her.

1:20 Wherefore it came to pass, when the time was come about after
Hannah had conceived, that she bare a son, and called his name Samuel,
saying, Because I have asked him of the LORD.

1:21 And the man Elkanah, and all his house, went up to offer unto the
LORD the yearly sacrifice, and his vow.

1:22 But Hannah went not up; for she said unto her husband, I will not
go up until the child be weaned, and then I will bring him, that he
may appear before the LORD, and there abide for ever.

1:23 And Elkanah her husband said unto her, Do what seemeth thee good;
tarry until thou have weaned him; only the LORD establish his word. So
the woman abode, and gave her son suck until she weaned him.

1:24 And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, with three
bullocks, and one ephah of flour, and a bottle of wine, and brought
him unto the house of the LORD in Shiloh: and the child was young.

1:25 And they slew a bullock, and brought the child to Eli.

1:26 And she said, Oh my lord, as thy soul liveth, my lord, I am the
woman that stood by thee here, praying unto the LORD.

1:27 For this child I prayed; and the LORD hath given me my petition
which I asked of him: 1:28 Therefore also I have lent him to the LORD;
as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the LORD. And he worshipped
the LORD there.

2:1 And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoiceth in the LORD, mine
horn is exalted in the LORD: my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies;
because I rejoice in thy salvation.

2:2 There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee:
neither is there any rock like our God.

2:3 Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of
your mouth: for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are
weighed.

2:4 The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are
girded with strength.

2:5 They that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they
that were hungry ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she
that hath many children is waxed feeble.

2:6 The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave,
and bringeth up.

2:7 The LORD maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and
lifteth up.

2:8 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar
from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit
the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD's, and
he hath set the world upon them.

2:9 He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be
silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail.

2:10 The adversaries of the LORD shall be broken to pieces; out of
heaven shall he thunder upon them: the LORD shall judge the ends of
the earth; and he shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the
horn of his anointed.

2:11 And Elkanah went to Ramah to his house. And the child did
minister unto the LORD before Eli the priest.

2:12 Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the LORD.

2:13 And the priest's custom with the people was, that, when any man
offered sacrifice, the priest's servant came, while the flesh was in
seething, with a fleshhook of three teeth in his hand; 2:14 And he
struck it into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot; all that the
fleshhook brought up the priest took for himself. So they did in
Shiloh unto all the Israelites that came thither.

2:15 Also before they burnt the fat, the priest's servant came, and
said to the man that sacrificed, Give flesh to roast for the priest;
for he will not have sodden flesh of thee, but raw.

2:16 And if any man said unto him, Let them not fail to burn the fat
presently, and then take as much as thy soul desireth; then he would
answer him, Nay; but thou shalt give it me now: and if not, I will
take it by force.

2:17 Wherefore the sin of the young men was very great before the
LORD: for men abhorred the offering of the LORD.

2:18 But Samuel ministered before the LORD, being a child, girded with
a linen ephod.

2:19 Moreover his mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him
from year to year, when she came up with her husband to offer the
yearly sacrifice.

2:20 And Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, and said, The LORD give
thee seed of this woman for the loan which is lent to the LORD. And
they went unto their own home.

2:21 And the LORD visited Hannah, so that she conceived, and bare
three sons and two daughters. And the child Samuel grew before the
LORD.

2:22 Now Eli was very old, and heard all that his sons did unto all
Israel; and how they lay with the women that assembled at the door of
the tabernacle of the congregation.

2:23 And he said unto them, Why do ye such things? for I hear of your
evil dealings by all this people.

2:24 Nay, my sons; for it is no good report that I hear: ye make the
LORD's people to transgress.

2:25 If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him: but if
a man sin against the LORD, who shall intreat for him? Notwithstanding
they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the LORD
would slay them.

2:26 And the child Samuel grew on, and was in favour both with the
LORD, and also with men.

2:27 And there came a man of God unto Eli, and said unto him, Thus
saith the LORD, Did I plainly appear unto the house of thy father,
when they were in Egypt in Pharaoh's house?  2:28 And did I choose him
out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to offer upon mine
altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? and did I give
unto the house of thy father all the offerings made by fire of the
children of Israel?  2:29 Wherefore kick ye at my sacrifice and at
mine offering, which I have commanded in my habitation; and honourest
thy sons above me, to make yourselves fat with the chiefest of all the
offerings of Israel my people?  2:30 Wherefore the LORD God of Israel
saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father,
should walk before me for ever: but now the LORD saith, Be it far from
me; for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me
shall be lightly esteemed.

2:31 Behold, the days come, that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm
of thy father's house, that there shall not be an old man in thine
house.

2:32 And thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation, in all the wealth
which God shall give Israel: and there shall not be an old man in
thine house for ever.

2:33 And the man of thine, whom I shall not cut off from mine altar,
shall be to consume thine eyes, and to grieve thine heart: and all the
increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their age.

2:34 And this shall be a sign unto thee, that shall come upon thy two
sons, on Hophni and Phinehas; in one day they shall die both of them.

2:35 And I will raise me up a faithful priest, that shall do according
to that which is in mine heart and in my mind: and I will build him a
sure house; and he shall walk before mine anointed for ever.

2:36 And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left in thine
house shall come and crouch to him for a piece of silver and a morsel
of bread, and shall say, Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priests'
offices, that I may eat a piece of bread.

3:1 And the child Samuel ministered unto the LORD before Eli. And the
word of the LORD was precious in those days; there was no open vision.

3:2 And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his
place, and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; 3:3 And
ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the LORD, where the ark
of God was, and Samuel was laid down to sleep; 3:4 That the LORD
called Samuel: and he answered, Here am I.

3:5 And he ran unto Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou calledst me.
And he said, I called not; lie down again. And he went and lay down.

3:6 And the LORD called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel arose and went
to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call me. And he answered,
I called not, my son; lie down again.

3:7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, neither was the word of the
LORD yet revealed unto him.

3:8 And the LORD called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and
went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call me. And Eli
perceived that the LORD had called the child.

3:9 Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and it shall be, if
he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, LORD; for thy servant
heareth. So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

3:10 And the LORD came, and stood, and called as at other times,
Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant heareth.

3:11 And the LORD said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a thing in Israel,
at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle.

3:12 In that day I will perform against Eli all things which I have
spoken concerning his house: when I begin, I will also make an end.

3:13 For I have told him that I will judge his house for ever for the
iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made themselves vile, and
he restrained them not.

3:14 And therefore I have sworn unto the house of Eli, that the
iniquity of Eli's house shall not be purged with sacrifice nor
offering for ever.

3:15 And Samuel lay until the morning, and opened the doors of the
house of the LORD. And Samuel feared to shew Eli the vision.

3:16 Then Eli called Samuel, and said, Samuel, my son. And he
answered, Here am I.

3:17 And he said, What is the thing that the LORD hath said unto thee?
I pray thee hide it not from me: God do so to thee, and more also, if
thou hide any thing from me of all the things that he said unto thee.

3:18 And Samuel told him every whit, and hid nothing from him. And he
said, It is the LORD: let him do what seemeth him good.

3:19 And Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him, and did let none of
his words fall to the ground.

3:20 And all Israel from Dan even to Beersheba knew that Samuel was
established to be a prophet of the LORD.

3:21 And the LORD appeared again in Shiloh: for the LORD revealed
himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the LORD.

4:1 And the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out
against the Philistines to battle, and pitched beside Ebenezer: and
the Philistines pitched in Aphek.

4:2 And the Philistines put themselves in array against Israel: and
when they joined battle, Israel was smitten before the Philistines:
and they slew of the army in the field about four thousand men.

4:3 And when the people were come into the camp, the elders of Israel
said, Wherefore hath the LORD smitten us to day before the
Philistines? Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the LORD out of
Shiloh unto us, that, when it cometh among us, it may save us out of
the hand of our enemies.

4:4 So the people sent to Shiloh, that they might bring from thence
the ark of the covenant of the LORD of hosts, which dwelleth between
the cherubims: and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were
there with the ark of the covenant of God.

4:5 And when the ark of the covenant of the LORD came into the camp,
all Israel shouted with a great shout, so that the earth rang again.

4:6 And when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said,
What meaneth the noise of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews?
And they understood that the ark of the LORD was come into the camp.

4:7 And the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is come into
the camp. And they said, Woe unto us! for there hath not been such a
thing heretofore.

4:8 Woe unto us! who shall deliver us out of the hand of these mighty
Gods? these are the Gods that smote the Egyptians with all the plagues
in the wilderness.

4:9 Be strong and quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines, that ye
be not servants unto the Hebrews, as they have been to you: quit
yourselves like men, and fight.

4:10 And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled
every man into his tent: and there was a very great slaughter; for
there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen.

4:11 And the ark of God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and
Phinehas, were slain.

4:12 And there ran a man of Benjamin out of the army, and came to
Shiloh the same day with his clothes rent, and with earth upon his
head.

4:13 And when he came, lo, Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside
watching: for his heart trembled for the ark of God. And when the man
came into the city, and told it, all the city cried out.

4:14 And when Eli heard the noise of the crying, he said, What meaneth
the noise of this tumult? And the man came in hastily, and told Eli.

4:15 Now Eli was ninety and eight years old; and his eyes were dim,
that he could not see.

4:16 And the man said unto Eli, I am he that came out of the army, and
I fled to day out of the army. And he said, What is there done, my
son?  4:17 And the messenger answered and said, Israel is fled before
the Philistines, and there hath been also a great slaughter among the
people, and thy two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the
ark of God is taken.

4:18 And it came to pass, when he made mention of the ark of God, that
he fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his
neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy. And he had
judged Israel forty years.

4:19 And his daughter in law, Phinehas' wife, was with child, near to
be delivered: and when she heard the tidings that the ark of God was
taken, and that her father in law and her husband were dead, she bowed
herself and travailed; for her pains came upon her.

4:20 And about the time of her death the women that stood by her said
unto her, Fear not; for thou hast born a son. But she answered not,
neither did she regard it.

4:21 And she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed
from Israel: because the ark of God was taken, and because of her
father in law and her husband.

4:22 And she said, The glory is departed from Israel: for the ark of
God is taken.

5:1 And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from
Ebenezer unto Ashdod.

5:2 When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the
house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon.

5:3 And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon
was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the LORD. And
they took Dagon, and set him in his place again.

5:4 And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was
fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the
head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the
threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him.

5:5 Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into
Dagon's house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this
day.

5:6 But the hand of the LORD was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he
destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the
coasts thereof.

5:7 And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, The ark
of the God of Israel shall not abide with us: for his hand is sore
upon us, and upon Dagon our god.

5:8 They sent therefore and gathered all the lords of the Philistines
unto them, and said, What shall we do with the ark of the God of
Israel? And they answered, Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried
about unto Gath. And they carried the ark of the God of Israel about
thither.

5:9 And it was so, that, after they had carried it about, the hand of
the LORD was against the city with a very great destruction: and he
smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods
in their secret parts.

5:10 Therefore they sent the ark of God to Ekron. And it came to pass,
as the ark of God came to Ekron, that the Ekronites cried out, saying,
They have brought about the ark of the God of Israel to us, to slay us
and our people.

5:11 So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the
Philistines, and said, Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let
it go again to his own place, that it slay us not, and our people: for
there was a deadly destruction throughout all the city; the hand of
God was very heavy there.

5:12 And the men that died not were smitten with the emerods: and the
cry of the city went up to heaven.

6:1 And the ark of the LORD was in the country of the Philistines
seven months.

6:2 And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners,
saying, What shall we do to the ark of the LORD? tell us wherewith we
shall send it to his place.

6:3 And they said, If ye send away the ark of the God of Israel, send
it not empty; but in any wise return him a trespass offering: then ye
shall be healed, and it shall be known to you why his hand is not
removed from you.

6:4 Then said they, What shall be the trespass offering which we shall
return to him? They answered, Five golden emerods, and five golden
mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines: for one
plague was on you all, and on your lords.

6:5 Wherefore ye shall make images of your emerods, and images of your
mice that mar the land; and ye shall give glory unto the God of
Israel: peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you, and from
off your gods, and from off your land.

6:6 Wherefore then do ye harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and
Pharaoh hardened their hearts? when he had wrought wonderfully among
them, did they not let the people go, and they departed?  6:7 Now
therefore make a new cart, and take two milch kine, on which there
hath come no yoke, and tie the kine to the cart, and bring their
calves home from them: 6:8 And take the ark of the LORD, and lay it
upon the cart; and put the jewels of gold, which ye return him for a
trespass offering, in a coffer by the side thereof; and send it away,
that it may go.

6:9 And see, if it goeth up by the way of his own coast to
Bethshemesh, then he hath done us this great evil: but if not, then we
shall know that it is not his hand that smote us: it was a chance that
happened to us.

6:10 And the men did so; and took two milch kine, and tied them to the
cart, and shut up their calves at home: 6:11 And they laid the ark of
the LORD upon the cart, and the coffer with the mice of gold and the
images of their emerods.

6:12 And the kine took the straight way to the way of Bethshemesh, and
went along the highway, lowing as they went, and turned not aside to
the right hand or to the left; and the lords of the Philistines went
after them unto the border of Bethshemesh.

6:13 And they of Bethshemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the
valley: and they lifted up their eyes, and saw the ark, and rejoiced
to see it.

6:14 And the cart came into the field of Joshua, a Bethshemite, and
stood there, where there was a great stone: and they clave the wood of
the cart, and offered the kine a burnt offering unto the LORD.

6:15 And the Levites took down the ark of the LORD, and the coffer
that was with it, wherein the jewels of gold were, and put them on the
great stone: and the men of Bethshemesh offered burnt offerings and
sacrificed sacrifices the same day unto the LORD.

6:16 And when the five lords of the Philistines had seen it, they
returned to Ekron the same day.

6:17 And these are the golden emerods which the Philistines returned
for a trespass offering unto the LORD; for Ashdod one, for Gaza one,
for Askelon one, for Gath one, for Ekron one; 6:18 And the golden
mice, according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines
belonging to the five lords, both of fenced cities, and of country
villages, even unto the great stone of Abel, whereon they set down the
ark of the LORD: which stone remaineth unto this day in the field of
Joshua, the Bethshemite.

6:19 And he smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they had looked into
the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and
threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because the LORD had
smitten many of the people with a great slaughter.

6:20 And the men of Bethshemesh said, Who is able to stand before this
holy LORD God? and to whom shall he go up from us?  6:21 And they sent
messengers to the inhabitants of Kirjathjearim, saying, The
Philistines have brought again the ark of the LORD; come ye down, and
fetch it up to you.

7:1 And the men of Kirjathjearim came, and fetched up the ark of the
LORD, and brought it into the house of Abinadab in the hill, and
sanctified Eleazar his son to keep the ark of the LORD.

7:2 And it came to pass, while the ark abode in Kirjathjearim, that
the time was long; for it was twenty years: and all the house of
Israel lamented after the LORD.

7:3 And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye do
return unto the LORD with all your hearts, then put away the strange
gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the
LORD, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of
the Philistines.

7:4 Then the children of Israel did put away Baalim and Ashtaroth, and
served the LORD only.

7:5 And Samuel said, Gather all Israel to Mizpeh, and I will pray for
you unto the LORD.

7:6 And they gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured
it out before the LORD, and fasted on that day, and said there, We
have sinned against the LORD. And Samuel judged the children of Israel
in Mizpeh.

7:7 And when the Philistines heard that the children of Israel were
gathered together to Mizpeh, the lords of the Philistines went up
against Israel. And when the children of Israel heard it, they were
afraid of the Philistines.

7:8 And the children of Israel said to Samuel, Cease not to cry unto
the LORD our God for us, that he will save us out of the hand of the
Philistines.

7:9 And Samuel took a sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt
offering wholly unto the LORD: and Samuel cried unto the LORD for
Israel; and the LORD heard him.

7:10 And as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines
drew near to battle against Israel: but the LORD thundered with a
great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them;
and they were smitten before Israel.

7:11 And the men of Israel went out of Mizpeh, and pursued the
Philistines, and smote them, until they came under Bethcar.

7:12 Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and
called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the LORD helped
us.

7:13 So the Philistines were subdued, and they came no more into the
coast of Israel: and the hand of the LORD was against the Philistines
all the days of Samuel.

7:14 And the cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were
restored to Israel, from Ekron even unto Gath; and the coasts thereof
did Israel deliver out of the hands of the Philistines. And there was
peace between Israel and the Amorites.

7:15 And Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life.

7:16 And he went from year to year in circuit to Bethel, and Gilgal,
and Mizpeh, and judged Israel in all those places.

7:17 And his return was to Ramah; for there was his house; and there
he judged Israel; and there he built an altar unto the LORD.

8:1 And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his sons
judges over Israel.

8:2 Now the name of his firstborn was Joel; and the name of his
second, Abiah: they were judges in Beersheba.

8:3 And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre,
and took bribes, and perverted judgment.

8:4 Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and
came to Samuel unto Ramah, 8:5 And said unto him, Behold, thou art
old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us
like all the nations.

8:6 But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to
judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD.

8:7 And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the
people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected
thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

8:8 According to all the works which they have done since the day that
I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have
forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.

8:9 Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest
solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall
reign over them.

8:10 And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that
asked of him a king.

8:11 And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign
over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for
his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his
chariots.

8:12 And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains
over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his
harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his
chariots.

8:13 And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be
cooks, and to be bakers.

8:14 And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your
oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

8:15 And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards,
and give to his officers, and to his servants.

8:16 And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and
your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.

8:17 He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his
servants.

8:18 And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye
shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.

8:19 Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and
they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us; 8:20 That we also may
be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out
before us, and fight our battles.

8:21 And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed
them in the ears of the LORD.

8:22 And the LORD said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make
them a king. And Samuel said unto the men of Israel, Go ye every man
unto his city.

9:1 Now there was a man of Benjamin, whose name was Kish, the son of
Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Bechorath, the son of Aphiah, a
Benjamite, a mighty man of power.

9:2 And he had a son, whose name was Saul, a choice young man, and a
goodly: and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier
person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any
of the people.

9:3 And the asses of Kish Saul's father were lost. And Kish said to
Saul his son, Take now one of the servants with thee, and arise, go
seek the asses.

9:4 And he passed through mount Ephraim, and passed through the land
of Shalisha, but they found them not: then they passed through the
land of Shalim, and there they were not: and he passed through the
land of the Benjamites, but they found them not.

9:5 And when they were come to the land of Zuph, Saul said to his
servant that was with him, Come, and let us return; lest my father
leave caring for the asses, and take thought for us.

9:6 And he said unto him, Behold now, there is in this city a man of
God, and he is an honourable man; all that he saith cometh surely to
pass: now let us go thither; peradventure he can shew us our way that
we should go.

9:7 Then said Saul to his servant, But, behold, if we go, what shall
we bring the man? for the bread is spent in our vessels, and there is
not a present to bring to the man of God: what have we?  9:8 And the
servant answered Saul again, and said, Behold, I have here at hand the
fourth part of a shekel of silver: that will I give to the man of God,
to tell us our way.

9:9 (Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he
spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for he that is now called a
Prophet was beforetime called a Seer.)  9:10 Then said Saul to his
servant, Well said; come, let us go. So they went unto the city where
the man of God was.

9:11 And as they went up the hill to the city, they found young
maidens going out to draw water, and said unto them, Is the seer here?
9:12 And they answered them, and said, He is; behold, he is before
you: make haste now, for he came to day to the city; for there is a
sacrifice of the people to day in the high place: 9:13 As soon as ye
be come into the city, ye shall straightway find him, before he go up
to the high place to eat: for the people will not eat until he come,
because he doth bless the sacrifice; and afterwards they eat that be
bidden. Now therefore get you up; for about this time ye shall find
him.

9:14 And they went up into the city: and when they were come into the
city, behold, Samuel came out against them, for to go up to the high
place.

9:15 Now the LORD had told Samuel in his ear a day before Saul came,
saying, 9:16 To morrow about this time I will send thee a man out of
the land of Benjamin, and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over my
people Israel, that he may save my people out of the hand of the
Philistines: for I have looked upon my people, because their cry is
come unto me.

9:17 And when Samuel saw Saul, the LORD said unto him, Behold the man
whom I spake to thee of! this same shall reign over my people.

9:18 Then Saul drew near to Samuel in the gate, and said, Tell me, I
pray thee, where the seer's house is.

9:19 And Samuel answered Saul, and said, I am the seer: go up before
me unto the high place; for ye shall eat with me to day, and to morrow
I will let thee go, and will tell thee all that is in thine heart.

9:20 And as for thine asses that were lost three days ago, set not thy
mind on them; for they are found. And on whom is all the desire of
Israel? Is it not on thee, and on all thy father's house?  9:21 And
Saul answered and said, Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the
tribes of Israel? and my family the least of all the families of the
tribe of Benjamin? wherefore then speakest thou so to me?  9:22 And
Samuel took Saul and his servant, and brought them into the parlour,
and made them sit in the chiefest place among them that were bidden,
which were about thirty persons.

9:23 And Samuel said unto the cook, Bring the portion which I gave
thee, of which I said unto thee, Set it by thee.

9:24 And the cook took up the shoulder, and that which was upon it,
and set it before Saul. And Samuel said, Behold that which is left!
set it before thee, and eat: for unto this time hath it been kept for
thee since I said, I have invited the people. So Saul did eat with
Samuel that day.

9:25 And when they were come down from the high place into the city,
Samuel communed with Saul upon the top of the house.

9:26 And they arose early: and it came to pass about the spring of the
day, that Samuel called Saul to the top of the house, saying, Up, that
I may send thee away. And Saul arose, and they went out both of them,
he and Samuel, abroad.

9:27 And as they were going down to the end of the city, Samuel said
to Saul, Bid the servant pass on before us, (and he passed on), but
stand thou still a while, that I may shew thee the word of God.

10:1 Then Samuel took a vial of oil, and poured it upon his head, and
kissed him, and said, Is it not because the LORD hath anointed thee to
be captain over his inheritance?  10:2 When thou art departed from me
to day, then thou shalt find two men by Rachel's sepulchre in the
border of Benjamin at Zelzah; and they will say unto thee, The asses
which thou wentest to seek are found: and, lo, thy father hath left
the care of the asses, and sorroweth for you, saying, What shall I do
for my son?  10:3 Then shalt thou go on forward from thence, and thou
shalt come to the plain of Tabor, and there shall meet thee three men
going up to God to Bethel, one carrying three kids, and another
carrying three loaves of bread, and another carrying a bottle of wine:
10:4 And they will salute thee, and give thee two loaves of bread;
which thou shalt receive of their hands.

10:5 After that thou shalt come to the hill of God, where is the
garrison of the Philistines: and it shall come to pass, when thou art
come thither to the city, that thou shalt meet a company of prophets
coming down from the high place with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a
pipe, and a harp, before them; and they shall prophesy: 10:6 And the
Spirit of the LORD will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with
them, and shalt be turned into another man.

10:7 And let it be, when these signs are come unto thee, that thou do
as occasion serve thee; for God is with thee.

10:8 And thou shalt go down before me to Gilgal; and, behold, I will
come down unto thee, to offer burnt offerings, and to sacrifice
sacrifices of peace offerings: seven days shalt thou tarry, till I
come to thee, and shew thee what thou shalt do.

10:9 And it was so, that when he had turned his back to go from
Samuel, God gave him another heart: and all those signs came to pass
that day.

10:10 And when they came thither to the hill, behold, a company of
prophets met him; and the Spirit of God came upon him, and he
prophesied among them.

10:11 And it came to pass, when all that knew him beforetime saw that,
behold, he prophesied among the prophets, then the people said one to
another, What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also
among the prophets?  10:12 And one of the same place answered and
said, But who is their father? Therefore it became a proverb, Is Saul
also among the prophets?  10:13 And when he had made an end of
prophesying, he came to the high place.

10:14 And Saul's uncle said unto him and to his servant, Whither went
ye?  And he said, To seek the asses: and when we saw that they were no
where, we came to Samuel.

10:15 And Saul's uncle said, Tell me, I pray thee, what Samuel said
unto you.

10:16 And Saul said unto his uncle, He told us plainly that the asses
were found. But of the matter of the kingdom, whereof Samuel spake, he
told him not.

10:17 And Samuel called the people together unto the LORD to Mizpeh;
10:18 And said unto the children of Israel, Thus saith the LORD God of
Israel, I brought up Israel out of Egypt, and delivered you out of the
hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all kingdoms, and of
them that oppressed you: 10:19 And ye have this day rejected your God,
who himself saved you out of all your adversities and your
tribulations; and ye have said unto him, Nay, but set a king over us.
Now therefore present yourselves before the LORD by your tribes, and
by your thousands.

10:20 And when Samuel had caused all the tribes of Israel to come
near, the tribe of Benjamin was taken.

10:21 When he had caused the tribe of Benjamin to come near by their
families, the family of Matri was taken, and Saul the son of Kish was
taken: and when they sought him, he could not be found.

10:22 Therefore they enquired of the LORD further, if the man should
yet come thither. And the LORD answered, Behold he hath hid himself
among the stuff.

10:23 And they ran and fetched him thence: and when he stood among the
people, he was higher than any of the people from his shoulders and
upward.

10:24 And Samuel said to all the people, See ye him whom the LORD hath
chosen, that there is none like him among all the people? And all the
people shouted, and said, God save the king.

10:25 Then Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom, and wrote
it in a book, and laid it up before the LORD. And Samuel sent all the
people away, every man to his house.

10:26 And Saul also went home to Gibeah; and there went with him a
band of men, whose hearts God had touched.

10:27 But the children of Belial said, How shall this man save us? And
they despised him, and brought no presents. But he held his peace.

11:1 Then Nahash the Ammonite came up, and encamped against
Jabeshgilead: and all the men of Jabesh said unto Nahash, Make a
covenant with us, and we will serve thee.

11:2 And Nahash the Ammonite answered them, On this condition will I
make a covenant with you, that I may thrust out all your right eyes,
and lay it for a reproach upon all Israel.

11:3 And the elders of Jabesh said unto him, Give us seven days'
respite, that we may send messengers unto all the coasts of Israel:
and then, if there be no man to save us, we will come out to thee.

11:4 Then came the messengers to Gibeah of Saul, and told the tidings
in the ears of the people: and all the people lifted up their voices,
and wept.

11:5 And, behold, Saul came after the herd out of the field; and Saul
said, What aileth the people that they weep? And they told him the
tidings of the men of Jabesh.

11:6 And the Spirit of God came upon Saul when he heard those tidings,
and his anger was kindled greatly.

11:7 And he took a yoke of oxen, and hewed them in pieces, and sent
them throughout all the coasts of Israel by the hands of messengers,
saying, Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so
shall it be done unto his oxen. And the fear of the LORD fell on the
people, and they came out with one consent.

11:8 And when he numbered them in Bezek, the children of Israel were
three hundred thousand, and the men of Judah thirty thousand.

11:9 And they said unto the messengers that came, Thus shall ye say
unto the men of Jabeshgilead, To morrow, by that time the sun be hot,
ye shall have help. And the messengers came and shewed it to the men
of Jabesh; and they were glad.

11:10 Therefore the men of Jabesh said, To morrow we will come out
unto you, and ye shall do with us all that seemeth good unto you.

11:11 And it was so on the morrow, that Saul put the people in three
companies; and they came into the midst of the host in the morning
watch, and slew the Ammonites until the heat of the day: and it came
to pass, that they which remained were scattered, so that two of them
were not left together.

11:12 And the people said unto Samuel, Who is he that said, Shall Saul
reign over us? bring the men, that we may put them to death.

11:13 And Saul said, There shall not a man be put to death this day:
for to day the LORD hath wrought salvation in Israel.

11:14 Then said Samuel to the people, Come, and let us go to Gilgal,
and renew the kingdom there.

11:15 And all the people went to Gilgal; and there they made Saul king
before the LORD in Gilgal; and there they sacrificed sacrifices of
peace offerings before the LORD; and there Saul and all the men of
Israel rejoiced greatly.

12:1 And Samuel said unto all Israel, Behold, I have hearkened unto
your voice in all that ye said unto me, and have made a king over you.

12:2 And now, behold, the king walketh before you: and I am old and
grayheaded; and, behold, my sons are with you: and I have walked
before you from my childhood unto this day.

12:3 Behold, here I am: witness against me before the LORD, and before
his anointed: whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or
whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed? or of whose hand have I
received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith? and I will restore it
you.

12:4 And they said, Thou hast not defrauded us, nor oppressed us,
neither hast thou taken ought of any man's hand.

12:5 And he said unto them, The LORD is witness against you, and his
anointed is witness this day, that ye have not found ought in my hand.
And they answered, He is witness.

12:6 And Samuel said unto the people, It is the LORD that advanced
Moses and Aaron, and that brought your fathers up out of the land of
Egypt.

12:7 Now therefore stand still, that I may reason with you before the
LORD of all the righteous acts of the LORD, which he did to you and to
your fathers.

12:8 When Jacob was come into Egypt, and your fathers cried unto the
LORD, then the LORD sent Moses and Aaron, which brought forth your
fathers out of Egypt, and made them dwell in this place.

12:9 And when they forgat the LORD their God, he sold them into the
hand of Sisera, captain of the host of Hazor, and into the hand of the
Philistines, and into the hand of the king of Moab, and they fought
against them.

12:10 And they cried unto the LORD, and said, We have sinned, because
we have forsaken the LORD, and have served Baalim and Ashtaroth: but
now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies, and we will serve thee.

12:11 And the LORD sent Jerubbaal, and Bedan, and Jephthah, and
Samuel, and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every
side, and ye dwelled safe.

12:12 And when ye saw that Nahash the king of the children of Ammon
came against you, ye said unto me, Nay; but a king shall reign over
us: when the LORD your God was your king.

12:13 Now therefore behold the king whom ye have chosen, and whom ye
have desired! and, behold, the LORD hath set a king over you.

12:14 If ye will fear the LORD, and serve him, and obey his voice, and
not rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then shall both ye and
also the king that reigneth over you continue following the LORD your
God: 12:15 But if ye will not obey the voice of the LORD, but rebel
against the commandment of the LORD, then shall the hand of the LORD
be against you, as it was against your fathers.

12:16 Now therefore stand and see this great thing, which the LORD
will do before your eyes.

12:17 Is it not wheat harvest to day? I will call unto the LORD, and
he shall send thunder and rain; that ye may perceive and see that your
wickedness is great, which ye have done in the sight of the LORD, in
asking you a king.

12:18 So Samuel called unto the LORD; and the LORD sent thunder and
rain that day: and all the people greatly feared the LORD and Samuel.

12:19 And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto
the LORD thy God, that we die not: for we have added unto all our sins
this evil, to ask us a king.

12:20 And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not: ye have done all this
wickedness: yet turn not aside from following the LORD, but serve the
LORD with all your heart; 12:21 And turn ye not aside: for then should
ye go after vain things, which cannot profit nor deliver; for they are
vain.

12:22 For the LORD will not forsake his people for his great name's
sake: because it hath pleased the LORD to make you his people.

12:23 Moreover as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the
LORD in ceasing to pray for you: but I will teach you the good and the
right way: 12:24 Only fear the LORD, and serve him in truth with all
your heart: for consider how great things he hath done for you.

12:25 But if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye
and your king.

13:1 Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over
Israel, 13:2 Saul chose him three thousand men of Israel; whereof two
thousand were with Saul in Michmash and in mount Bethel, and a
thousand were with Jonathan in Gibeah of Benjamin: and the rest of the
people he sent every man to his tent.

13:3 And Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines that was in
Geba, and the Philistines heard of it. And Saul blew the trumpet
throughout all the land, saying, Let the Hebrews hear.

13:4 And all Israel heard say that Saul had smitten a garrison of the
Philistines, and that Israel also was had in abomination with the
Philistines. And the people were called together after Saul to Gilgal.

13:5 And the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with
Israel, thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and
people as the sand which is on the sea shore in multitude: and they
came up, and pitched in Michmash, eastward from Bethaven.

13:6 When the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait, (for the
people were distressed,) then the people did hide themselves in caves,
and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits.

13:7 And some of the Hebrews went over Jordan to the land of Gad and
Gilead. As for Saul, he was yet in Gilgal, and all the people followed
him trembling.

13:8 And he tarried seven days, according to the set time that Samuel
had appointed: but Samuel came not to Gilgal; and the people were
scattered from him.

13:9 And Saul said, Bring hither a burnt offering to me, and peace
offerings. And he offered the burnt offering.

13:10 And it came to pass, that as soon as he had made an end of
offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came; and Saul went out to
meet him, that he might salute him.

13:11 And Samuel said, What hast thou done? And Saul said, Because I
saw that the people were scattered from me, and that thou camest not
within the days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered
themselves together at Michmash; 13:12 Therefore said I, The
Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made
supplication unto the LORD: I forced myself therefore, and offered a
burnt offering.

13:13 And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not
kept the commandment of the LORD thy God, which he commanded thee: for
now would the LORD have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever.

13:14 But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the LORD hath sought him
a man after his own heart, and the LORD hath commanded him to be
captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the
LORD commanded thee.

13:15 And Samuel arose, and gat him up from Gilgal unto Gibeah of
Benjamin. And Saul numbered the people that were present with him,
about six hundred men.

13:16 And Saul, and Jonathan his son, and the people that were present
with them, abode in Gibeah of Benjamin: but the Philistines encamped
in Michmash.

13:17 And the spoilers came out of the camp of the Philistines in
three companies: one company turned unto the way that leadeth to
Ophrah, unto the land of Shual: 13:18 And another company turned the
way to Bethhoron: and another company turned to the way of the border
that looketh to the valley of Zeboim toward the wilderness.

13:19 Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel:
for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears:
13:20 But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen
every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock.

13:21 Yet they had a file for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and
for the forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the goads.

13:22 So it came to pass in the day of battle, that there was neither
sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people that were with
Saul and Jonathan: but with Saul and with Jonathan his son was there
found.

13:23 And the garrison of the Philistines went out to the passage of
Michmash.

14:1 Now it came to pass upon a day, that Jonathan the son of Saul
said unto the young man that bare his armour, Come, and let us go over
to the Philistines' garrison, that is on the other side. But he told
not his father.

14:2 And Saul tarried in the uttermost part of Gibeah under a
pomegranate tree which is in Migron: and the people that were with him
were about six hundred men; 14:3 And Ahiah, the son of Ahitub,
Ichabod's brother, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the LORD's
priest in Shiloh, wearing an ephod. And the people knew not that
Jonathan was gone.

14:4 And between the passages, by which Jonathan sought to go over
unto the Philistines' garrison, there was a sharp rock on the one
side, and a sharp rock on the other side: and the name of the one was
Bozez, and the name of the other Seneh.

14:5 The forefront of the one was situate northward over against
Michmash, and the other southward over against Gibeah.

14:6 And Jonathan said to the young man that bare his armour, Come,
and let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be
that the LORD will work for us: for there is no restraint to the LORD
to save by many or by few.

14:7 And his armourbearer said unto him, Do all that is in thine
heart: turn thee; behold, I am with thee according to thy heart.

14:8 Then said Jonathan, Behold, we will pass over unto these men, and
we will discover ourselves unto them.

14:9 If they say thus unto us, Tarry until we come to you; then we
will stand still in our place, and will not go up unto them.

14:10 But if they say thus, Come up unto us; then we will go up: for
the LORD hath delivered them into our hand: and this shall be a sign
unto us.

14:11 And both of them discovered themselves unto the garrison of the
Philistines: and the Philistines said, Behold, the Hebrews come forth
out of the holes where they had hid themselves.

14:12 And the men of the garrison answered Jonathan and his
armourbearer, and said, Come up to us, and we will shew you a thing.
And Jonathan said unto his armourbearer, Come up after me: for the
LORD hath delivered them into the hand of Israel.

14:13 And Jonathan climbed up upon his hands and upon his feet, and
his armourbearer after him: and they fell before Jonathan; and his
armourbearer slew after him.

14:14 And that first slaughter, which Jonathan and his armourbearer
made, was about twenty men, within as it were an half acre of land,
which a yoke of oxen might plow.

14:15 And there was trembling in the host, in the field, and among all
the people: the garrison, and the spoilers, they also trembled, and
the earth quaked: so it was a very great trembling.

14:16 And the watchmen of Saul in Gibeah of Benjamin looked; and,
behold, the multitude melted away, and they went on beating down one
another.

14:17 Then said Saul unto the people that were with him, Number now,
and see who is gone from us. And when they had numbered, behold,
Jonathan and his armourbearer were not there.

14:18 And Saul said unto Ahiah, Bring hither the ark of God. For the
ark of God was at that time with the children of Israel.

14:19 And it came to pass, while Saul talked unto the priest, that the
noise that was in the host of the Philistines went on and increased:
and Saul said unto the priest, Withdraw thine hand.

14:20 And Saul and all the people that were with him assembled
themselves, and they came to the battle: and, behold, every man's
sword was against his fellow, and there was a very great discomfiture.

14:21 Moreover the Hebrews that were with the Philistines before that
time, which went up with them into the camp from the country round
about, even they also turned to be with the Israelites that were with
Saul and Jonathan.

14:22 Likewise all the men of Israel which had hid themselves in mount
Ephraim, when they heard that the Philistines fled, even they also
followed hard after them in the battle.

14:23 So the LORD saved Israel that day: and the battle passed over
unto Bethaven.

14:24 And the men of Israel were distressed that day: for Saul had
adjured the people, saying, Cursed be the man that eateth any food
until evening, that I may be avenged on mine enemies. So none of the
people tasted any food.

14:25 And all they of the land came to a wood; and there was honey
upon the ground.

14:26 And when the people were come into the wood, behold, the honey
dropped; but no man put his hand to his mouth: for the people feared
the oath.

14:27 But Jonathan heard not when his father charged the people with
the oath: wherefore he put forth the end of the rod that was in his
hand, and dipped it in an honeycomb, and put his hand to his mouth;
and his eyes were enlightened.

14:28 Then answered one of the people, and said, Thy father straitly
charged the people with an oath, saying, Cursed be the man that eateth
any food this day. And the people were faint.

14:29 Then said Jonathan, My father hath troubled the land: see, I
pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a
little of this honey.

14:30 How much more, if haply the people had eaten freely to day of
the spoil of their enemies which they found? for had there not been
now a much greater slaughter among the Philistines?  14:31 And they
smote the Philistines that day from Michmash to Aijalon: and the
people were very faint.

14:32 And the people flew upon the spoil, and took sheep, and oxen,
and calves, and slew them on the ground: and the people did eat them
with the blood.

14:33 Then they told Saul, saying, Behold, the people sin against the
LORD, in that they eat with the blood. And he said, Ye have
transgressed: roll a great stone unto me this day.

14:34 And Saul said, Disperse yourselves among the people, and say
unto them, Bring me hither every man his ox, and every man his sheep,
and slay them here, and eat; and sin not against the LORD in eating
with the blood.

And all the people brought every man his ox with him that night, and
slew them there.

14:35 And Saul built an altar unto the LORD: the same was the first
altar that he built unto the LORD.

14:36 And Saul said, Let us go down after the Philistines by night,
and spoil them until the morning light, and let us not leave a man of
them. And they said, Do whatsoever seemeth good unto thee. Then said
the priest, Let us draw near hither unto God.

14:37 And Saul asked counsel of God, Shall I go down after the
Philistines? wilt thou deliver them into the hand of Israel? But he
answered him not that day.

14:38 And Saul said, Draw ye near hither, all the chief of the people:
and know and see wherein this sin hath been this day.

14:39 For, as the LORD liveth, which saveth Israel, though it be in
Jonathan my son, he shall surely die. But there was not a man among
all the people that answered him.

14:40 Then said he unto all Israel, Be ye on one side, and I and
Jonathan my son will be on the other side. And the people said unto
Saul, Do what seemeth good unto thee.

14:41 Therefore Saul said unto the LORD God of Israel, Give a perfect
lot.

And Saul and Jonathan were taken: but the people escaped.

14:42 And Saul said, Cast lots between me and Jonathan my son. And
Jonathan was taken.

14:43 Then Saul said to Jonathan, Tell me what thou hast done. And
Jonathan told him, and said, I did but taste a little honey with the
end of the rod that was in mine hand, and, lo, I must die.

14:44 And Saul answered, God do so and more also: for thou shalt
surely die, Jonathan.

14:45 And the people said unto Saul, Shall Jonathan die, who hath
wrought this great salvation in Israel? God forbid: as the LORD
liveth, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground; for
he hath wrought with God this day. So the people rescued Jonathan,
that he died not.

14:46 Then Saul went up from following the Philistines: and the
Philistines went to their own place.

14:47 So Saul took the kingdom over Israel, and fought against all his
enemies on every side, against Moab, and against the children of
Ammon, and against Edom, and against the kings of Zobah, and against
the Philistines: and whithersoever he turned himself, he vexed them.

14:48 And he gathered an host, and smote the Amalekites, and delivered
Israel out of the hands of them that spoiled them.

14:49 Now the sons of Saul were Jonathan, and Ishui, and Melchishua:
and the names of his two daughters were these; the name of the
firstborn Merab, and the name of the younger Michal: 14:50 And the
name of Saul's wife was Ahinoam, the daughter of Ahimaaz: and the name
of the captain of his host was Abner, the son of Ner, Saul's uncle.

14:51 And Kish was the father of Saul; and Ner the father of Abner was
the son of Abiel.

14:52 And there was sore war against the Philistines all the days of
Saul: and when Saul saw any strong man, or any valiant man, he took
him unto him.

15:1 Samuel also said unto Saul, The LORD sent me to anoint thee to be
king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the
voice of the words of the LORD.

15:2 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to
Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from
Egypt.

15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have,
and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling,
ox and sheep, camel and ass.

15:4 And Saul gathered the people together, and numbered them in
Telaim, two hundred thousand footmen, and ten thousand men of Judah.

15:5 And Saul came to a city of Amalek, and laid wait in the valley.

15:6 And Saul said unto the Kenites, Go, depart, get you down from
among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them: for ye shewed
kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of
Egypt. So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.

15:7 And Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah until thou comest to
Shur, that is over against Egypt.

15:8 And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly
destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.

15:9 But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep,
and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was
good, and would not utterly destroy them: but every thing that was
vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.

15:10 Then came the word of the LORD unto Samuel, saying, 15:11 It
repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back
from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it
grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the LORD all night.

15:12 And when Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, it was
told Samuel, saying, Saul came to Carmel, and, behold, he set him up a
place, and is gone about, and passed on, and gone down to Gilgal.

15:13 And Samuel came to Saul: and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou
of the LORD: I have performed the commandment of the LORD.

15:14 And Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in
mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?  15:15 And Saul
said, They have brought them from the Amalekites: for the people
spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the
LORD thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed.

15:16 Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee what the
LORD hath said to me this night. And he said unto him, Say on.

15:17 And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast
thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the LORD anointed
thee king over Israel?  15:18 And the LORD sent thee on a journey, and
said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight
against them until they be consumed.

15:19 Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the LORD, but
didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the LORD?
15:20 And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the
LORD, and have gone the way which the LORD sent me, and have brought
Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites.

15:21 But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of
the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto
the LORD thy God in Gilgal.

15:22 And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt
offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold,
to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

15:23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is
as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the
LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.

15:24 And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have
transgressed the commandment of the LORD, and thy words: because I
feared the people, and obeyed their voice.

15:25 Now therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with
me, that I may worship the LORD.

15:26 And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee: for thou
hast rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD hath rejected thee
from being king over Israel.

15:27 And as Samuel turned about to go away, he laid hold upon the
skirt of his mantle, and it rent.

15:28 And Samuel said unto him, The LORD hath rent the kingdom of
Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine,
that is better than thou.

15:29 And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he
is not a man, that he should repent.

15:30 Then he said, I have sinned: yet honour me now, I pray thee,
before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with
me, that I may worship the LORD thy God.

15:31 So Samuel turned again after Saul; and Saul worshipped the LORD.

15:32 Then said Samuel, Bring ye hither to me Agag the king of the
Amalekites. And Agag came unto him delicately. And Agag said, Surely
the bitterness of death is past.

15:33 And Samuel said, As the sword hath made women childless, so
shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in
pieces before the LORD in Gilgal.

15:34 Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house to
Gibeah of Saul.

15:35 And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death:
nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul: and the LORD repented that he
had made Saul king over Israel.

16:1 And the LORD said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul,
seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn
with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I
have provided me a king among his sons.

16:2 And Samuel said, How can I go? if Saul hear it, he will kill me.
And the LORD said, Take an heifer with thee, and say, I am come to
sacrifice to the LORD.

16:3 And call Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will shew thee what thou
shalt do: and thou shalt anoint unto me him whom I name unto thee.

16:4 And Samuel did that which the LORD spake, and came to Bethlehem.
And the elders of the town trembled at his coming, and said, Comest
thou peaceably?  16:5 And he said, Peaceably: I am come to sacrifice
unto the LORD: sanctify yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice.
And he sanctified Jesse and his sons, and called them to the
sacrifice.

16:6 And it came to pass, when they were come, that he looked on
Eliab, and said, Surely the LORD's anointed is before him.

16:7 But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on
the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD
seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but
the LORD looketh on the heart.

16:8 Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. And
he said, Neither hath the LORD chosen this.

16:9 Then Jesse made Shammah to pass by. And he said, Neither hath the
LORD chosen this.

16:10 Again, Jesse made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel. And
Samuel said unto Jesse, The LORD hath not chosen these.

16:11 And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children? And he
said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the
sheep. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him: for we will not
sit down till he come hither.

16:12 And he sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and withal of
a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. And the LORD said,
Arise, anoint him: for this is he.

16:13 Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst
of his brethren: and the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that
day forward. So Samuel rose up, and went to Ramah.

16:14 But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil
spirit from the LORD troubled him.

16:15 And Saul's servants said unto him, Behold now, an evil spirit
from God troubleth thee.

16:16 Let our lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to
seek out a man, who is a cunning player on an harp: and it shall come
to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall
play with his hand, and thou shalt be well.

16:17 And Saul said unto his servants, Provide me now a man that can
play well, and bring him to me.

16:18 Then answered one of the servants, and said, Behold, I have seen
a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a
mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a
comely person, and the LORD is with him.

16:19 Wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and said, Send me
David thy son, which is with the sheep.

16:20 And Jesse took an ass laden with bread, and a bottle of wine,
and a kid, and sent them by David his son unto Saul.

16:21 And David came to Saul, and stood before him: and he loved him
greatly; and he became his armourbearer.

16:22 And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray thee, stand
before me; for he hath found favour in my sight.

16:23 And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon
Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was
refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.

17:1 Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle, and
were gathered together at Shochoh, which belongeth to Judah, and
pitched between Shochoh and Azekah, in Ephesdammim.

17:2 And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together, and
pitched by the valley of Elah, and set the battle in array against the
Philistines.

17:3 And the Philistines stood on a mountain on the one side, and
Israel stood on a mountain on the other side: and there was a valley
between them.

17:4 And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines,
named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.

17:5 And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed
with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand
shekels of brass.

17:6 And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass
between his shoulders.

17:7 And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his
spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron: and one bearing a
shield went before him.

17:8 And he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel, and said unto
them, Why are ye come out to set your battle in array? am not I a
Philistine, and ye servants to Saul? choose you a man for you, and let
him come down to me.

17:9 If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be
your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall
ye be our servants, and serve us.

17:10 And the Philistine said, I defy the armies of Israel this day;
give me a man, that we may fight together.

17:11 When Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine,
they were dismayed, and greatly afraid.

17:12 Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehemjudah,
whose name was Jesse; and he had eight sons: and the man went among
men for an old man in the days of Saul.

17:13 And the three eldest sons of Jesse went and followed Saul to the
battle: and the names of his three sons that went to the battle were
Eliab the firstborn, and next unto him Abinadab, and the third
Shammah.

17:14 And David was the youngest: and the three eldest followed Saul.

17:15 But David went and returned from Saul to feed his father's sheep
at Bethlehem.

17:16 And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and presented
himself forty days.

17:17 And Jesse said unto David his son, Take now for thy brethren an
ephah of this parched corn, and these ten loaves, and run to the camp
of thy brethren; 17:18 And carry these ten cheeses unto the captain of
their thousand, and look how thy brethren fare, and take their pledge.

17:19 Now Saul, and they, and all the men of Israel, were in the
valley of Elah, fighting with the Philistines.

17:20 And David rose up early in the morning, and left the sheep with
a keeper, and took, and went, as Jesse had commanded him; and he came
to the trench, as the host was going forth to the fight, and shouted
for the battle.

17:21 For Israel and the Philistines had put the battle in array, army
against army.

17:22 And David left his carriage in the hand of the keeper of the
carriage, and ran into the army, and came and saluted his brethren.

17:23 And as he talked with them, behold, there came up the champion,
the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, out of the armies of the
Philistines, and spake according to the same words: and David heard
them.

17:24 And all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him,
and were sore afraid.

17:25 And the men of Israel said, Have ye seen this man that is come
up?  surely to defy Israel is he come up: and it shall be, that the
man who killeth him, the king will enrich him with great riches, and
will give him his daughter, and make his father's house free in
Israel.

17:26 And David spake to the men that stood by him, saying, What shall
be done to the man that killeth this Philistine, and taketh away the
reproach from Israel? for who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that
he should defy the armies of the living God?  17:27 And the people
answered him after this manner, saying, So shall it be done to the man
that killeth him.

17:28 And Eliab his eldest brother heard when he spake unto the men;
and Eliab's anger was kindled against David, and he said, Why camest
thou down hither? and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the
wilderness? I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart; for
thou art come down that thou mightest see the battle.

17:29 And David said, What have I now done? Is there not a cause?
17:30 And he turned from him toward another, and spake after the same
manner: and the people answered him again after the former manner.

17:31 And when the words were heard which David spake, they rehearsed
them before Saul: and he sent for him.

17:32 And David said to Saul, Let no man's heart fail because of him;
thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine.

17:33 And Saul said to David, Thou art not able to go against this
Philistine to fight with him: for thou art but a youth, and he a man
of war from his youth.

17:34 And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father's sheep,
and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock:
17:35 And I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of
his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard,
and smote him, and slew him.

17:36 Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this
uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath
defied the armies of the living God.

17:37 David said moreover, The LORD that delivered me out of the paw
of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of
the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said unto David, Go, and the
LORD be with thee.

17:38 And Saul armed David with his armour, and he put an helmet of
brass upon his head; also he armed him with a coat of mail.

17:39 And David girded his sword upon his armour, and he assayed to
go; for he had not proved it. And David said unto Saul, I cannot go
with these; for I have not proved them. And David put them off him.

17:40 And he took his staff in his hand, and chose him five smooth
stones out of the brook, and put them in a shepherd's bag which he
had, even in a scrip; and his sling was in his hand: and he drew near
to the Philistine.

17:41 And the Philistine came on and drew near unto David; and the man
that bare the shield went before him.

17:42 And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he
disdained him: for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair
countenance.

17:43 And the Philistine said unto David, Am I a dog, that thou comest
to me with staves? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.

17:44 And the Philistine said to David, Come to me, and I will give
thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.

17:45 Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a
sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the
name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou
hast defied.

17:46 This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand; and I will
smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the
carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the
air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know
that there is a God in Israel.

17:47 And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with
sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give you
into our hands.

17:48 And it came to pass, when the Philistine arose, and came, and
drew nigh to meet David, that David hastened, and ran toward the army
to meet the Philistine.

17:49 And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and
slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone
sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth.

17:50 So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a
stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword
in the hand of David.

17:51 Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his
sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut
off his head therewith. And when the Philistines saw their champion
was dead, they fled.

17:52 And the men of Israel and of Judah arose, and shouted, and
pursued the Philistines, until thou come to the valley, and to the
gates of Ekron.

And the wounded of the Philistines fell down by the way to Shaaraim,
even unto Gath, and unto Ekron.

17:53 And the children of Israel returned from chasing after the
Philistines, and they spoiled their tents.

17:54 And David took the head of the Philistine, and brought it to
Jerusalem; but he put his armour in his tent.

17:55 And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine, he said
unto Abner, the captain of the host, Abner, whose son is this youth?
And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell.

17:56 And the king said, Enquire thou whose son the stripling is.

17:57 And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine,
Abner took him, and brought him before Saul with the head of the
Philistine in his hand.

17:58 And Saul said to him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And
David answered, I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.

18:1 And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto
Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and
Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

18:2 And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home to
his father's house.

18:3 Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as
his own soul.

18:4 And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and
gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow,
and to his girdle.

18:5 And David went out whithersoever Saul sent him, and behaved
himself wisely: and Saul set him over the men of war, and he was
accepted in the sight of all the people, and also in the sight of
Saul's servants.

18:6 And it came to pass as they came, when David was returned from
the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all cities
of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tabrets, with
joy, and with instruments of musick.

18:7 And the women answered one another as they played, and said, Saul
hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.

18:8 And Saul was very wroth, and the saying displeased him; and he
said, They have ascribed unto David ten thousands, and to me they have
ascribed but thousands: and what can he have more but the kingdom?
18:9 And Saul eyed David from that day and forward.

18:10 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from God
came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house: and David
played with his hand, as at other times: and there was a javelin in
Saul's hand.

18:11 And Saul cast the javelin; for he said, I will smite David even
to the wall with it. And David avoided out of his presence twice.

18:12 And Saul was afraid of David, because the LORD was with him, and
was departed from Saul.

18:13 Therefore Saul removed him from him, and made him his captain
over a thousand; and he went out and came in before the people.

18:14 And David behaved himself wisely in all his ways; and the LORD
was with him.

18:15 Wherefore when Saul saw that he behaved himself very wisely, he
was afraid of him.

18:16 But all Israel and Judah loved David, because he went out and
came in before them.

18:17 And Saul said to David, Behold my elder daughter Merab, her will
I give thee to wife: only be thou valiant for me, and fight the LORD's
battles.

For Saul said, Let not mine hand be upon him, but let the hand of the
Philistines be upon him.

18:18 And David said unto Saul, Who am I? and what is my life, or my
father's family in Israel, that I should be son in law to the king?
18:19 But it came to pass at the time when Merab Saul's daughter
should have been given to David, that she was given unto Adriel the
Meholathite to wife.

18:20 And Michal Saul's daughter loved David: and they told Saul, and
the thing pleased him.

18:21 And Saul said, I will give him her, that she may be a snare to
him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.
Wherefore Saul said to David, Thou shalt this day be my son in law in
the one of the twain.

18:22 And Saul commanded his servants, saying, Commune with David
secretly, and say, Behold, the king hath delight in thee, and all his
servants love thee: now therefore be the king's son in law.

18:23 And Saul's servants spake those words in the ears of David. And
David said, Seemeth it to you a light thing to be a king's son in law,
seeing that I am a poor man, and lightly esteemed?  18:24 And the
servants of Saul told him, saying, On this manner spake David.

18:25 And Saul said, Thus shall ye say to David, The king desireth not
any dowry, but an hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged
of the king's enemies. But Saul thought to make David fall by the hand
of the Philistines.

18:26 And when his servants told David these words, it pleased David
well to be the king's son in law: and the days were not expired.

18:27 Wherefore David arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the
Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and
they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king's
son in law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife.

18:28 And Saul saw and knew that the LORD was with David, and that
Michal Saul's daughter loved him.

18:29 And Saul was yet the more afraid of David; and Saul became
David's enemy continually.

18:30 Then the princes of the Philistines went forth: and it came to
pass, after they went forth, that David behaved himself more wisely
than all the servants of Saul; so that his name was much set by.

19:1 And Saul spake to Jonathan his son, and to all his servants, that
they should kill David.

19:2 But Jonathan Saul's son delighted much in David: and Jonathan
told David, saying, Saul my father seeketh to kill thee: now
therefore, I pray thee, take heed to thyself until the morning, and
abide in a secret place, and hide thyself: 19:3 And I will go out and
stand beside my father in the field where thou art, and I will commune
with my father of thee; and what I see, that I will tell thee.

19:4 And Jonathan spake good of David unto Saul his father, and said
unto him, Let not the king sin against his servant, against David;
because he hath not sinned against thee, and because his works have
been to thee-ward very good: 19:5 For he did put his life in his hand,
and slew the Philistine, and the LORD wrought a great salvation for
all Israel: thou sawest it, and didst rejoice: wherefore then wilt
thou sin against innocent blood, to slay David without a cause?  19:6
And Saul hearkened unto the voice of Jonathan: and Saul sware, As the
LORD liveth, he shall not be slain.

19:7 And Jonathan called David, and Jonathan shewed him all those
things.

And Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he was in his presence, as in
times past.

19:8 And there was war again: and David went out, and fought with the
Philistines, and slew them with a great slaughter; and they fled from
him.

19:9 And the evil spirit from the LORD was upon Saul, as he sat in his
house with his javelin in his hand: and David played with his hand.

19:10 And Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the
javelin: but he slipped away out of Saul's presence, and he smote the
javelin into the wall: and David fled, and escaped that night.

19:11 Saul also sent messengers unto David's house, to watch him, and
to slay him in the morning: and Michal David's wife told him, saying,
If thou save not thy life to night, to morrow thou shalt be slain.

19:12 So Michal let David down through a window: and he went, and
fled, and escaped.

19:13 And Michal took an image, and laid it in the bed, and put a
pillow of goats' hair for his bolster, and covered it with a cloth.

19:14 And when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, He is
sick.

19:15 And Saul sent the messengers again to see David, saying, Bring
him up to me in the bed, that I may slay him.

19:16 And when the messengers were come in, behold, there was an image
in the bed, with a pillow of goats' hair for his bolster.

19:17 And Saul said unto Michal, Why hast thou deceived me so, and
sent away mine enemy, that he is escaped? And Michal answered Saul, He
said unto me, Let me go; why should I kill thee?  19:18 So David fled,
and escaped, and came to Samuel to Ramah, and told him all that Saul
had done to him. And he and Samuel went and dwelt in Naioth.

19:19 And it was told Saul, saying, Behold, David is at Naioth in
Ramah.

19:20 And Saul sent messengers to take David: and when they saw the
company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as appointed
over them, the Spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul, and they
also prophesied.

19:21 And when it was told Saul, he sent other messengers, and they
prophesied likewise. And Saul sent messengers again the third time,
and they prophesied also.

19:22 Then went he also to Ramah, and came to a great well that is in
Sechu: and he asked and said, Where are Samuel and David? And one
said, Behold, they be at Naioth in Ramah.

19:23 And he went thither to Naioth in Ramah: and the Spirit of God
was upon him also, and he went on, and prophesied, until he came to
Naioth in Ramah.

19:24 And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before
Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that
night. Wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets?  20:1 And
David fled from Naioth in Ramah, and came and said before Jonathan,
What have I done? what is mine iniquity? and what is my sin before thy
father, that he seeketh my life?  20:2 And he said unto him, God
forbid; thou shalt not die: behold, my father will do nothing either
great or small, but that he will shew it me: and why should my father
hide this thing from me? it is not so.

20:3 And David sware moreover, and said, Thy father certainly knoweth
that I have found grace in thine eyes; and he saith, Let not Jonathan
know this, lest he be grieved: but truly as the LORD liveth, and as
thy soul liveth, there is but a step between me and death.

20:4 Then said Jonathan unto David, Whatsoever thy soul desireth, I
will even do it for thee.

20:5 And David said unto Jonathan, Behold, to morrow is the new moon,
and I should not fail to sit with the king at meat: but let me go,
that I may hide myself in the field unto the third day at even.

20:6 If thy father at all miss me, then say, David earnestly asked
leave of me that he might run to Bethlehem his city: for there is a
yearly sacrifice there for all the family.

20:7 If he say thus, It is well; thy servant shall have peace: but if
he be very wroth, then be sure that evil is determined by him.

20:8 Therefore thou shalt deal kindly with thy servant; for thou hast
brought thy servant into a covenant of the LORD with thee:
notwithstanding, if there be in me iniquity, slay me thyself; for why
shouldest thou bring me to thy father?  20:9 And Jonathan said, Far be
it from thee: for if I knew certainly that evil were determined by my
father to come upon thee, then would not I tell it thee?  20:10 Then
said David to Jonathan, Who shall tell me? or what if thy father
answer thee roughly?  20:11 And Jonathan said unto David, Come, and
let us go out into the field. And they went out both of them into the
field.

20:12 And Jonathan said unto David, O LORD God of Israel, when I have
sounded my father about to morrow any time, or the third day, and,
behold, if there be good toward David, and I then send not unto thee,
and shew it thee; 20:13 The LORD do so and much more to Jonathan: but
if it please my father to do thee evil, then I will shew it thee, and
send thee away, that thou mayest go in peace: and the LORD be with
thee, as he hath been with my father.

20:14 And thou shalt not only while yet I live shew me the kindness of
the LORD, that I die not: 20:15 But also thou shalt not cut off thy
kindness from my house for ever: no, not when the LORD hath cut off
the enemies of David every one from the face of the earth.

20:16 So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, Let
the LORD even require it at the hand of David's enemies.

20:17 And Jonathan caused David to swear again, because he loved him:
for he loved him as he loved his own soul.

20:18 Then Jonathan said to David, To morrow is the new moon: and thou
shalt be missed, because thy seat will be empty.

20:19 And when thou hast stayed three days, then thou shalt go down
quickly, and come to the place where thou didst hide thyself when the
business was in hand, and shalt remain by the stone Ezel.

20:20 And I will shoot three arrows on the side thereof, as though I
shot at a mark.

20:21 And, behold, I will send a lad, saying, Go, find out the arrows.
If I expressly say unto the lad, Behold, the arrows are on this side
of thee, take them; then come thou: for there is peace to thee, and no
hurt; as the LORD liveth.

20:22 But if I say thus unto the young man, Behold, the arrows are
beyond thee; go thy way: for the LORD hath sent thee away.

20:23 And as touching the matter which thou and I have spoken of,
behold, the LORD be between thee and me for ever.

20:24 So David hid himself in the field: and when the new moon was
come, the king sat him down to eat meat.

20:25 And the king sat upon his seat, as at other times, even upon a
seat by the wall: and Jonathan arose, and Abner sat by Saul's side,
and David's place was empty.

20:26 Nevertheless Saul spake not any thing that day: for he thought,
Something hath befallen him, he is not clean; surely he is not clean.

20:27 And it came to pass on the morrow, which was the second day of
the month, that David's place was empty: and Saul said unto Jonathan
his son, Wherefore cometh not the son of Jesse to meat, neither
yesterday, nor to day?  20:28 And Jonathan answered Saul, David
earnestly asked leave of me to go to Bethlehem: 20:29 And he said, Let
me go, I pray thee; for our family hath a sacrifice in the city; and
my brother, he hath commanded me to be there: and now, if I have found
favour in thine eyes, let me get away, I pray thee, and see my
brethren. Therefore he cometh not unto the king's table.

20:30 Then Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan, and he said unto
him, Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman, do not I know that
thou hast chosen the son of Jesse to thine own confusion, and unto the
confusion of thy mother's nakedness?  20:31 For as long as the son of
Jesse liveth upon the ground, thou shalt not be established, nor thy
kingdom. Wherefore now send and fetch him unto me, for he shall surely
die.

20:32 And Jonathan answered Saul his father, and said unto him,
Wherefore shall he be slain? what hath he done?  20:33 And Saul cast a
javelin at him to smite him: whereby Jonathan knew that it was
determined of his father to slay David.

20:34 So Jonathan arose from the table in fierce anger, and did eat no
meat the second day of the month: for he was grieved for David,
because his father had done him shame.

20:35 And it came to pass in the morning, that Jonathan went out into
the field at the time appointed with David, and a little lad with him.

20:36 And he said unto his lad, Run, find out now the arrows which I
shoot. And as the lad ran, he shot an arrow beyond him.

20:37 And when the lad was come to the place of the arrow which
Jonathan had shot, Jonathan cried after the lad, and said, Is not the
arrow beyond thee?  20:38 And Jonathan cried after the lad, Make
speed, haste, stay not. And Jonathan's lad gathered up the arrows, and
came to his master.

20:39 But the lad knew not any thing: only Jonathan and David knew the
matter.

20:40 And Jonathan gave his artillery unto his lad, and said unto him,
Go, carry them to the city.

20:41 And as soon as the lad was gone, David arose out of a place
toward the south, and fell on his face to the ground, and bowed
himself three times: and they kissed one another, and wept one with
another, until David exceeded.

20:42 And Jonathan said to David, Go in peace, forasmuch as we have
sworn both of us in the name of the LORD, saying, The LORD be between
me and thee, and between my seed and thy seed for ever. And he arose
and departed: and Jonathan went into the city.

21:1 Then came David to Nob to Ahimelech the priest: and Ahimelech was
afraid at the meeting of David, and said unto him, Why art thou alone,
and no man with thee?  21:2 And David said unto Ahimelech the priest,
The king hath commanded me a business, and hath said unto me, Let no
man know any thing of the business whereabout I send thee, and what I
have commanded thee: and I have appointed my servants to such and such
a place.

21:3 Now therefore what is under thine hand? give me five loaves of
bread in mine hand, or what there is present.

21:4 And the priest answered David, and said, There is no common bread
under mine hand, but there is hallowed bread; if the young men have
kept themselves at least from women.

21:5 And David answered the priest, and said unto him, Of a truth
women have been kept from us about these three days, since I came out,
and the vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in a
manner common, yea, though it were sanctified this day in the vessel.

21:6 So the priest gave him hallowed bread: for there was no bread
there but the shewbread, that was taken from before the LORD, to put
hot bread in the day when it was taken away.

21:7 Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day,
detained before the LORD; and his name was Doeg, an Edomite, the
chiefest of the herdmen that belonged to Saul.

21:8 And David said unto Ahimelech, And is there not here under thine
hand spear or sword? for I have neither brought my sword nor my
weapons with me, because the king's business required haste.

21:9 And the priest said, The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom
thou slewest in the valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a
cloth behind the ephod: if thou wilt take that, take it: for there is
no other save that here. And David said, There is none like that; give
it me.

21:10 And David arose and fled that day for fear of Saul, and went to
Achish the king of Gath.

21:11 And the servants of Achish said unto him, Is not this David the
king of the land? did they not sing one to another of him in dances,
saying, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands?
21:12 And David laid up these words in his heart, and was sore afraid
of Achish the king of Gath.

21:13 And he changed his behaviour before them, and feigned himself
mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let
his spittle fall down upon his beard.

21:14 Then said Achish unto his servants, Lo, ye see the man is mad:
wherefore then have ye brought him to me?  21:15 Have I need of mad
men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the mad man in my
presence? shall this fellow come into my house?  22:1 David therefore
departed thence, and escaped to the cave Adullam: and when his
brethren and all his father's house heard it, they went down thither
to him.

22:2 And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in
debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto
him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about
four hundred men.

22:3 And David went thence to Mizpeh of Moab: and he said unto the
king of Moab, Let my father and my mother, I pray thee, come forth,
and be with you, till I know what God will do for me.

22:4 And he brought them before the king of Moab: and they dwelt with
him all the while that David was in the hold.

22:5 And the prophet Gad said unto David, Abide not in the hold;
depart, and get thee into the land of Judah. Then David departed, and
came into the forest of Hareth.

22:6 When Saul heard that David was discovered, and the men that were
with him, (now Saul abode in Gibeah under a tree in Ramah, having his
spear in his hand, and all his servants were standing about him;) 22:7
Then Saul said unto his servants that stood about him, Hear now, ye
Benjamites; will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and
vineyards, and make you all captains of thousands, and captains of
hundreds; 22:8 That all of you have conspired against me, and there is
none that sheweth me that my son hath made a league with the son of
Jesse, and there is none of you that is sorry for me, or sheweth unto
me that my son hath stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait,
as at this day?  22:9 Then answered Doeg the Edomite, which was set
over the servants of Saul, and said, I saw the son of Jesse coming to
Nob, to Ahimelech the son of Ahitub.

22:10 And he enquired of the LORD for him, and gave him victuals, and
gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine.

22:11 Then the king sent to call Ahimelech the priest, the son of
Ahitub, and all his father's house, the priests that were in Nob: and
they came all of them to the king.

22:12 And Saul said, Hear now, thou son of Ahitub. And he answered,
Here I am, my lord.

22:13 And Saul said unto him, Why have ye conspired against me, thou
and the son of Jesse, in that thou hast given him bread, and a sword,
and hast enquired of God for him, that he should rise against me, to
lie in wait, as at this day?  22:14 Then Ahimelech answered the king,
and said, And who is so faithful among all thy servants as David,
which is the king's son in law, and goeth at thy bidding, and is
honourable in thine house?  22:15 Did I then begin to enquire of God
for him? be it far from me: let not the king impute any thing unto his
servant, nor to all the house of my father: for thy servant knew
nothing of all this, less or more.

22:16 And the king said, Thou shalt surely die, Ahimelech, thou, and
all thy father's house.

22:17 And the king said unto the footmen that stood about him, Turn,
and slay the priests of the LORD: because their hand also is with
David, and because they knew when he fled, and did not shew it to me.
But the servants of the king would not put forth their hand to fall
upon the priests of the LORD.

22:18 And the king said to Doeg, Turn thou, and fall upon the priests.
And Doeg the Edomite turned, and he fell upon the priests, and slew on
that day fourscore and five persons that did wear a linen ephod.

22:19 And Nob, the city of the priests, smote he with the edge of the
sword, both men and women, children and sucklings, and oxen, and
asses, and sheep, with the edge of the sword.

22:20 And one of the sons of Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, named
Abiathar, escaped, and fled after David.

22:21 And Abiathar shewed David that Saul had slain the LORD's
priests.

22:22 And David said unto Abiathar, I knew it that day, when Doeg the
Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul: I have occasioned
the death of all the persons of thy father's house.

22:23 Abide thou with me, fear not: for he that seeketh my life
seeketh thy life: but with me thou shalt be in safeguard.

23:1 Then they told David, saying, Behold, the Philistines fight
against Keilah, and they rob the threshingfloors.

23:2 Therefore David enquired of the LORD, saying, Shall I go and
smite these Philistines? And the LORD said unto David, Go, and smite
the Philistines, and save Keilah.

23:3 And David's men said unto him, Behold, we be afraid here in
Judah: how much more then if we come to Keilah against the armies of
the Philistines?  23:4 Then David enquired of the LORD yet again. And
the LORD answered him and said, Arise, go down to Keilah; for I will
deliver the Philistines into thine hand.

23:5 So David and his men went to Keilah, and fought with the
Philistines, and brought away their cattle, and smote them with a
great slaughter. So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.

23:6 And it came to pass, when Abiathar the son of Ahimelech fled to
David to Keilah, that he came down with an ephod in his hand.

23:7 And it was told Saul that David was come to Keilah. And Saul
said, God hath delivered him into mine hand; for he is shut in, by
entering into a town that hath gates and bars.

23:8 And Saul called all the people together to war, to go down to
Keilah, to besiege David and his men.

23:9 And David knew that Saul secretly practised mischief against him;
and he said to Abiathar the priest, Bring hither the ephod.

23:10 Then said David, O LORD God of Israel, thy servant hath
certainly heard that Saul seeketh to come to Keilah, to destroy the
city for my sake.

23:11 Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hand? will Saul
come down, as thy servant hath heard? O LORD God of Israel, I beseech
thee, tell thy servant. And the LORD said, He will come down.

23:12 Then said David, Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men
into the hand of Saul? And the LORD said, They will deliver thee up.

23:13 Then David and his men, which were about six hundred, arose and
departed out of Keilah, and went whithersoever they could go. And it
was told Saul that David was escaped from Keilah; and he forbare to go
forth.

23:14 And David abode in the wilderness in strong holds, and remained
in a mountain in the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every
day, but God delivered him not into his hand.

23:15 And David saw that Saul was come out to seek his life: and David
was in the wilderness of Ziph in a wood.

23:16 And Jonathan Saul's son arose, and went to David into the wood,
and strengthened his hand in God.

23:17 And he said unto him, Fear not: for the hand of Saul my father
shall not find thee; and thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall
be next unto thee; and that also Saul my father knoweth.

23:18 And they two made a covenant before the LORD: and David abode in
the wood, and Jonathan went to his house.

23:19 Then came up the Ziphites to Saul to Gibeah, saying, Doth not
David hide himself with us in strong holds in the wood, in the hill of
Hachilah, which is on the south of Jeshimon?  23:20 Now therefore, O
king, come down according to all the desire of thy soul to come down;
and our part shall be to deliver him into the king's hand.

23:21 And Saul said, Blessed be ye of the LORD; for ye have compassion
on me.

23:22 Go, I pray you, prepare yet, and know and see his place where
his haunt is, and who hath seen him there: for it is told me that he
dealeth very subtilly.

23:23 See therefore, and take knowledge of all the lurking places
where he hideth himself, and come ye again to me with the certainty,
and I will go with you: and it shall come to pass, if he be in the
land, that I will search him out throughout all the thousands of
Judah.

23:24 And they arose, and went to Ziph before Saul: but David and his
men were in the wilderness of Maon, in the plain on the south of
Jeshimon.

23:25 Saul also and his men went to seek him. And they told David;
wherefore he came down into a rock, and abode in the wilderness of
Maon. And when Saul heard that, he pursued after David in the
wilderness of Maon.

23:26 And Saul went on this side of the mountain, and David and his
men on that side of the mountain: and David made haste to get away for
fear of Saul; for Saul and his men compassed David and his men round
about to take them.

23:27 But there came a messenger unto Saul, saying, Haste thee, and
come; for the Philistines have invaded the land.

23:28 Wherefore Saul returned from pursuing after David, and went
against the Philistines: therefore they called that place
Selahammahlekoth.

23:29 And David went up from thence, and dwelt in strong holds at
Engedi.

24:1 And it came to pass, when Saul was returned from following the
Philistines, that it was told him, saying, Behold, David is in the
wilderness of Engedi.

24:2 Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and
went to seek David and his men upon the rocks of the wild goats.

24:3 And he came to the sheepcotes by the way, where was a cave; and
Saul went in to cover his feet: and David and his men remained in the
sides of the cave.

24:4 And the men of David said unto him, Behold the day of which the
LORD said unto thee, Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine
hand, that thou mayest do to him as it shall seem good unto thee. Then
David arose, and cut off the skirt of Saul's robe privily.

24:5 And it came to pass afterward, that David's heart smote him,
because he had cut off Saul's skirt.

24:6 And he said unto his men, The LORD forbid that I should do this
thing unto my master, the LORD's anointed, to stretch forth mine hand
against him, seeing he is the anointed of the LORD.

24:7 So David stayed his servants with these words, and suffered them
not to rise against Saul. But Saul rose up out of the cave, and went
on his way.

24:8 David also arose afterward, and went out of the cave, and cried
after Saul, saying, My lord the king. And when Saul looked behind him,
David stooped with his face to the earth, and bowed himself.

24:9 And David said to Saul, Wherefore hearest thou men's words,
saying, Behold, David seeketh thy hurt?  24:10 Behold, this day thine
eyes have seen how that the LORD had delivered thee to day into mine
hand in the cave: and some bade me kill thee: but mine eye spared
thee; and I said, I will not put forth mine hand against my lord; for
he is the LORD's anointed.

24:11 Moreover, my father, see, yea, see the skirt of thy robe in my
hand: for in that I cut off the skirt of thy robe, and killed thee
not, know thou and see that there is neither evil nor transgression in
mine hand, and I have not sinned against thee; yet thou huntest my
soul to take it.

24:12 The LORD judge between me and thee, and the LORD avenge me of
thee: but mine hand shall not be upon thee.

24:13 As saith the proverb of the ancients, Wickedness proceedeth from
the wicked: but mine hand shall not be upon thee.

24:14 After whom is the king of Israel come out? after whom dost thou
pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea.

24:15 The LORD therefore be judge, and judge between me and thee, and
see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out of thine hand.

24:16 And it came to pass, when David had made an end of speaking
these words unto Saul, that Saul said, Is this thy voice, my son
David? And Saul lifted up his voice, and wept.

24:17 And he said to David, Thou art more righteous than I: for thou
hast rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded thee evil.

24:18 And thou hast shewed this day how that thou hast dealt well with
me: forasmuch as when the LORD had delivered me into thine hand, thou
killedst me not.

24:19 For if a man find his enemy, will he let him go well away?
wherefore the LORD reward thee good for that thou hast done unto me
this day.

24:20 And now, behold, I know well that thou shalt surely be king, and
that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in thine hand.

24:21 Swear now therefore unto me by the LORD, that thou wilt not cut
off my seed after me, and that thou wilt not destroy my name out of my
father's house.

24:22 And David sware unto Saul. And Saul went home; but David and his
men gat them up unto the hold.

25:1 And Samuel died; and all the Israelites were gathered together,
and lamented him, and buried him in his house at Ramah. And David
arose, and went down to the wilderness of Paran.

25:2 And there was a man in Maon, whose possessions were in Carmel;
and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep, and a
thousand goats: and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel.

25:3 Now the name of the man was Nabal; and the name of his wife
Abigail: and she was a woman of good understanding, and of a beautiful
countenance: but the man was churlish and evil in his doings; and he
was of the house of Caleb.

25:4 And David heard in the wilderness that Nabal did shear his sheep.

25:5 And David sent out ten young men, and David said unto the young
men, Get you up to Carmel, and go to Nabal, and greet him in my name:
25:6 And thus shall ye say to him that liveth in prosperity, Peace be
both to thee, and peace be to thine house, and peace be unto all that
thou hast.

25:7 And now I have heard that thou hast shearers: now thy shepherds
which were with us, we hurt them not, neither was there ought missing
unto them, all the while they were in Carmel.

25:8 Ask thy young men, and they will shew thee. Wherefore let the
young men find favour in thine eyes: for we come in a good day: give,
I pray thee, whatsoever cometh to thine hand unto thy servants, and to
thy son David.

25:9 And when David's young men came, they spake to Nabal according to
all those words in the name of David, and ceased.

25:10 And Nabal answered David's servants, and said, Who is David? and
who is the son of Jesse? there be many servants now a days that break
away every man from his master.

25:11 Shall I then take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that I
have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men, whom I know not
whence they be?  25:12 So David's young men turned their way, and went
again, and came and told him all those sayings.

25:13 And David said unto his men, Gird ye on every man his sword. And
they girded on every man his sword; and David also girded on his
sword: and there went up after David about four hundred men; and two
hundred abode by the stuff.

25:14 But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal's wife, saying,
Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to salute our
master; and he railed on them.

25:15 But the men were very good unto us, and we were not hurt,
neither missed we any thing, as long as we were conversant with them,
when we were in the fields: 25:16 They were a wall unto us both by
night and day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep.

25:17 Now therefore know and consider what thou wilt do; for evil is
determined against our master, and against all his household: for he
is such a son of Belial, that a man cannot speak to him.

25:18 Then Abigail made haste, and took two hundred loaves, and two
bottles of wine, and five sheep ready dressed, and five measures of
parched corn, and an hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred
cakes of figs, and laid them on asses.

25:19 And she said unto her servants, Go on before me; behold, I come
after you. But she told not her husband Nabal.

25:20 And it was so, as she rode on the ass, that she came down by the
covert on the hill, and, behold, David and his men came down against
her; and she met them.

25:21 Now David had said, Surely in vain have I kept all that this
fellow hath in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that
pertained unto him: and he hath requited me evil for good.

25:22 So and more also do God unto the enemies of David, if I leave of
all that pertain to him by the morning light any that pisseth against
the wall.

25:23 And when Abigail saw David, she hasted, and lighted off the ass,
and fell before David on her face, and bowed herself to the ground,
25:24 And fell at his feet, and said, Upon me, my lord, upon me let
this iniquity be: and let thine handmaid, I pray thee, speak in thine
audience, and hear the words of thine handmaid.

25:25 Let not my lord, I pray thee, regard this man of Belial, even
Nabal: for as his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly is
with him: but I thine handmaid saw not the young men of my lord, whom
thou didst send.

25:26 Now therefore, my lord, as the LORD liveth, and as thy soul
liveth, seeing the LORD hath withholden thee from coming to shed
blood, and from avenging thyself with thine own hand, now let thine
enemies, and they that seek evil to my lord, be as Nabal.

25:27 And now this blessing which thine handmaid hath brought unto my
lord, let it even be given unto the young men that follow my lord.

25:28 I pray thee, forgive the trespass of thine handmaid: for the
LORD will certainly make my lord a sure house; because my lord
fighteth the battles of the LORD, and evil hath not been found in thee
all thy days.

25:29 Yet a man is risen to pursue thee, and to seek thy soul: but the
soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the LORD thy
God; and the souls of thine enemies, them shall he sling out, as out
of the middle of a sling.

25:30 And it shall come to pass, when the LORD shall have done to my
lord according to all the good that he hath spoken concerning thee,
and shall have appointed thee ruler over Israel; 25:31 That this shall
be no grief unto thee, nor offence of heart unto my lord, either that
thou hast shed blood causeless, or that my lord hath avenged himself:
but when the LORD shall have dealt well with my lord, then remember
thine handmaid.

25:32 And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel,
which sent thee this day to meet me: 25:33 And blessed be thy advice,
and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed
blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand.

25:34 For in very deed, as the LORD God of Israel liveth, which hath
kept me back from hurting thee, except thou hadst hasted and come to
meet me, surely there had not been left unto Nabal by the morning
light any that pisseth against the wall.

25:35 So David received of her hand that which she had brought him,
and said unto her, Go up in peace to thine house; see, I have
hearkened to thy voice, and have accepted thy person.

25:36 And Abigail came to Nabal; and, behold, he held a feast in his
house, like the feast of a king; and Nabal's heart was merry within
him, for he was very drunken: wherefore she told him nothing, less or
more, until the morning light.

25:37 But it came to pass in the morning, when the wine was gone out
of Nabal, and his wife had told him these things, that his heart died
within him, and he became as a stone.

25:38 And it came to pass about ten days after, that the LORD smote
Nabal, that he died.

25:39 And when David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, Blessed be
the LORD, that hath pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of
Nabal, and hath kept his servant from evil: for the LORD hath returned
the wickedness of Nabal upon his own head. And David sent and communed
with Abigail, to take her to him to wife.

25:40 And when the servants of David were come to Abigail to Carmel,
they spake unto her, saying, David sent us unto thee, to take thee to
him to wife.

25:41 And she arose, and bowed herself on her face to the earth, and
said, Behold, let thine handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of the
servants of my lord.

25:42 And Abigail hasted, and arose and rode upon an ass, with five
damsels of hers that went after her; and she went after the messengers
of David, and became his wife.

25:43 David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel; and they were also both of
them his wives.

25:44 But Saul had given Michal his daughter, David's wife, to Phalti
the son of Laish, which was of Gallim.

26:1 And the Ziphites came unto Saul to Gibeah, saying, Doth not David
hide himself in the hill of Hachilah, which is before Jeshimon?  26:2
Then Saul arose, and went down to the wilderness of Ziph, having three
thousand chosen men of Israel with him, to seek David in the
wilderness of Ziph.

26:3 And Saul pitched in the hill of Hachilah, which is before
Jeshimon, by the way. But David abode in the wilderness, and he saw
that Saul came after him into the wilderness.

26:4 David therefore sent out spies, and understood that Saul was come
in very deed.

26:5 And David arose, and came to the place where Saul had pitched:
and David beheld the place where Saul lay, and Abner the son of Ner,
the captain of his host: and Saul lay in the trench, and the people
pitched round about him.

26:6 Then answered David and said to Ahimelech the Hittite, and to
Abishai the son of Zeruiah, brother to Joab, saying, Who will go down
with me to Saul to the camp? And Abishai said, I will go down with
thee.

26:7 So David and Abishai came to the people by night: and, behold,
Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck in the ground
at his bolster: but Abner and the people lay round about him.

26:8 Then said Abishai to David, God hath delivered thine enemy into
thine hand this day: now therefore let me smite him, I pray thee, with
the spear even to the earth at once, and I will not smite him the
second time.

26:9 And David said to Abishai, Destroy him not: for who can stretch
forth his hand against the LORD's anointed, and be guiltless?  26:10
David said furthermore, As the LORD liveth, the LORD shall smite him;
or his day shall come to die; or he shall descend into battle, and
perish.

26:11 The LORD forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand against
the LORD's anointed: but, I pray thee, take thou now the spear that is
at his bolster, and the cruse of water, and let us go.

26:12 So David took the spear and the cruse of water from Saul's
bolster; and they gat them away, and no man saw it, nor knew it,
neither awaked: for they were all asleep; because a deep sleep from
the LORD was fallen upon them.

26:13 Then David went over to the other side, and stood on the top of
an hill afar off; a great space being between them: 26:14 And David
cried to the people, and to Abner the son of Ner, saying, Answerest
thou not, Abner? Then Abner answered and said, Who art thou that
criest to the king?  26:15 And David said to Abner, Art not thou a
valiant man? and who is like to thee in Israel? wherefore then hast
thou not kept thy lord the king? for there came one of the people in
to destroy the king thy lord.

26:16 This thing is not good that thou hast done. As the LORD liveth,
ye are worthy to die, because ye have not kept your master, the LORD's
anointed.

And now see where the king's spear is, and the cruse of water that was
at his bolster.

26:17 And Saul knew David's voice, and said, Is this thy voice, my son
David? And David said, It is my voice, my lord, O king.

26:18 And he said, Wherefore doth my lord thus pursue after his
servant?  for what have I done? or what evil is in mine hand?  26:19
Now therefore, I pray thee, let my lord the king hear the words of his
servant. If the LORD have stirred thee up against me, let him accept
an offering: but if they be the children of men, cursed be they before
the LORD; for they have driven me out this day from abiding in the
inheritance of the LORD, saying, Go, serve other gods.

26:20 Now therefore, let not my blood fall to the earth before the
face of the LORD: for the king of Israel is come out to seek a flea,
as when one doth hunt a partridge in the mountains.

26:21 Then said Saul, I have sinned: return, my son David: for I will
no more do thee harm, because my soul was precious in thine eyes this
day: behold, I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly.

26:22 And David answered and said, Behold the king's spear! and let
one of the young men come over and fetch it.

26:23 The LORD render to every man his righteousness and his
faithfulness; for the LORD delivered thee into my hand to day, but I
would not stretch forth mine hand against the LORD's anointed.

26:24 And, behold, as thy life was much set by this day in mine eyes,
so let my life be much set by in the eyes of the LORD, and let him
deliver me out of all tribulation.

26:25 Then Saul said to David, Blessed be thou, my son David: thou
shalt both do great things, and also shalt still prevail. So David
went on his way, and Saul returned to his place.

27:1 And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the
hand of Saul: there is nothing better for me than that I should
speedily escape into the land of the Philistines; and Saul shall
despair of me, to seek me any more in any coast of Israel: so shall I
escape out of his hand.

27:2 And David arose, and he passed over with the six hundred men that
were with him unto Achish, the son of Maoch, king of Gath.

27:3 And David dwelt with Achish at Gath, he and his men, every man
with his household, even David with his two wives, Ahinoam the
Jezreelitess, and Abigail the Carmelitess, Nabal's wife.

27:4 And it was told Saul that David was fled to Gath: and he sought
no more again for him.

27:5 And David said unto Achish, If I have now found grace in thine
eyes, let them give me a place in some town in the country, that I may
dwell there: for why should thy servant dwell in the royal city with
thee?  27:6 Then Achish gave him Ziklag that day: wherefore Ziklag
pertaineth unto the kings of Judah unto this day.

27:7 And the time that David dwelt in the country of the Philistines
was a full year and four months.

27:8 And David and his men went up, and invaded the Geshurites, and
the Gezrites, and the Amalekites: for those nations were of old the
inhabitants of the land, as thou goest to Shur, even unto the land of
Egypt.

27:9 And David smote the land, and left neither man nor woman alive,
and took away the sheep, and the oxen, and the asses, and the camels,
and the apparel, and returned, and came to Achish.

27:10 And Achish said, Whither have ye made a road to day? And David
said, Against the south of Judah, and against the south of the
Jerahmeelites, and against the south of the Kenites.

27:11 And David saved neither man nor woman alive, to bring tidings to
Gath, saying, Lest they should tell on us, saying, So did David, and
so will be his manner all the while he dwelleth in the country of the
Philistines.

27:12 And Achish believed David, saying, He hath made his people
Israel utterly to abhor him; therefore he shall be my servant for
ever.

28:1 And it came to pass in those days, that the Philistines gathered
their armies together for warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish
said unto David, Know thou assuredly, that thou shalt go out with me
to battle, thou and thy men.

28:2 And David said to Achish, Surely thou shalt know what thy servant
can do. And Achish said to David, Therefore will I make thee keeper of
mine head for ever.

28:3 Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him, and buried
him in Ramah, even in his own city. And Saul had put away those that
had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land.

28:4 And the Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and
pitched in Shunem: and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they
pitched in Gilboa.

28:5 And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and
his heart greatly trembled.

28:6 And when Saul enquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not,
neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.

28:7 Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a
familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and enquire of her. And his
servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar
spirit at Endor.

28:8 And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he
went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and
he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring
me him up, whom I shall name unto thee.

28:9 And the woman said unto him, Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath
done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the
wizards, out of the land: wherefore then layest thou a snare for my
life, to cause me to die?  28:10 And Saul sware to her by the LORD,
saying, As the LORD liveth, there shall no punishment happen to thee
for this thing.

28:11 Then said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he
said, Bring me up Samuel.

28:12 And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice: and
the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou
art Saul.

28:13 And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou?
And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth.

28:14 And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, An old
man cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived
that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and
bowed himself.

28:15 And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring
me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines
make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no
more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called
thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do.

28:16 Then said Samuel, Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing the
LORD is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy?  28:17 And the
LORD hath done to him, as he spake by me: for the LORD hath rent the
kingdom out of thine hand, and given it to thy neighbour, even to
David: 28:18 Because thou obeyedst not the voice of the LORD, nor
executedst his fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the LORD done
this thing unto thee this day.

28:19 Moreover the LORD will also deliver Israel with thee into the
hand of the Philistines: and to morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with
me: the LORD also shall deliver the host of Israel into the hand of
the Philistines.

28:20 Then Saul fell straightway all along on the earth, and was sore
afraid, because of the words of Samuel: and there was no strength in
him; for he had eaten no bread all the day, nor all the night.

28:21 And the woman came unto Saul, and saw that he was sore troubled,
and said unto him, Behold, thine handmaid hath obeyed thy voice, and I
have put my life in my hand, and have hearkened unto thy words which
thou spakest unto me.

28:22 Now therefore, I pray thee, hearken thou also unto the voice of
thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of bread before thee; and eat,
that thou mayest have strength, when thou goest on thy way.

28:23 But he refused, and said, I will not eat. But his servants,
together with the woman, compelled him; and he hearkened unto their
voice. So he arose from the earth, and sat upon the bed.

28:24 And the woman had a fat calf in the house; and she hasted, and
killed it, and took flour, and kneaded it, and did bake unleavened
bread thereof: 28:25 And she brought it before Saul, and before his
servants; and they did eat. Then they rose up, and went away that
night.

29:1 Now the Philistines gathered together all their armies to Aphek:
and the Israelites pitched by a fountain which is in Jezreel.

29:2 And the lords of the Philistines passed on by hundreds, and by
thousands: but David and his men passed on in the rereward with
Achish.

29:3 Then said the princes of the Philistines, What do these Hebrews
here?  And Achish said unto the princes of the Philistines, Is not
this David, the servant of Saul the king of Israel, which hath been
with me these days, or these years, and I have found no fault in him
since he fell unto me unto this day?  29:4 And the princes of the
Philistines were wroth with him; and the princes of the Philistines
said unto him, Make this fellow return, that he may go again to his
place which thou hast appointed him, and let him not go down with us
to battle, lest in the battle he be an adversary to us: for wherewith
should he reconcile himself unto his master? should it not be with the
heads of these men?  29:5 Is not this David, of whom they sang one to
another in dances, saying, Saul slew his thousands, and David his ten
thousands?  29:6 Then Achish called David, and said unto him, Surely,
as the LORD liveth, thou hast been upright, and thy going out and thy
coming in with me in the host is good in my sight: for I have not
found evil in thee since the day of thy coming unto me unto this day:
nevertheless the lords favour thee not.

29:7 Wherefore now return, and go in peace, that thou displease not
the lords of the Philistines.

29:8 And David said unto Achish, But what have I done? and what hast
thou found in thy servant so long as I have been with thee unto this
day, that I may not go fight against the enemies of my lord the king?
29:9 And Achish answered and said to David, I know that thou art good
in my sight, as an angel of God: notwithstanding the princes of the
Philistines have said, He shall not go up with us to the battle.

29:10 Wherefore now rise up early in the morning with thy master's
servants that are come with thee: and as soon as ye be up early in the
morning, and have light, depart.

29:11 So David and his men rose up early to depart in the morning, to
return into the land of the Philistines. And the Philistines went up
to Jezreel.

30:1 And it came to pass, when David and his men were come to Ziklag
on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the south, and
Ziklag, and smitten Ziklag, and burned it with fire; 30:2 And had
taken the women captives, that were therein: they slew not any, either
great or small, but carried them away, and went on their way.

30:3 So David and his men came to the city, and, behold, it was burned
with fire; and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were
taken captives.

30:4 Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their
voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep.

30:5 And David's two wives were taken captives, Ahinoam the
Jezreelitess, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite.

30:6 And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning
him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his
sons and for his daughters: but David encouraged himself in the LORD
his God.

30:7 And David said to Abiathar the priest, Ahimelech's son, I pray
thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abiathar brought thither the
ephod to David.

30:8 And David enquired at the LORD, saying, Shall I pursue after this
troop? shall I overtake them? And he answered him, Pursue: for thou
shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all.

30:9 So David went, he and the six hundred men that were with him, and
came to the brook Besor, where those that were left behind stayed.

30:10 But David pursued, he and four hundred men: for two hundred
abode behind, which were so faint that they could not go over the
brook Besor.

30:11 And they found an Egyptian in the field, and brought him to
David, and gave him bread, and he did eat; and they made him drink
water; 30:12 And they gave him a piece of a cake of figs, and two
clusters of raisins: and when he had eaten, his spirit came again to
him: for he had eaten no bread, nor drunk any water, three days and
three nights.

30:13 And David said unto him, To whom belongest thou? and whence art
thou? And he said, I am a young man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite;
and my master left me, because three days agone I fell sick.

30:14 We made an invasion upon the south of the Cherethites, and upon
the coast which belongeth to Judah, and upon the south of Caleb; and
we burned Ziklag with fire.

30:15 And David said to him, Canst thou bring me down to this company?
And he said, Swear unto me by God, that thou wilt neither kill me, nor
deliver me into the hands of my master, and I will bring thee down to
this company.

30:16 And when he had brought him down, behold, they were spread
abroad upon all the earth, eating and drinking, and dancing, because
of all the great spoil that they had taken out of the land of the
Philistines, and out of the land of Judah.

30:17 And David smote them from the twilight even unto the evening of
the next day: and there escaped not a man of them, save four hundred
young men, which rode upon camels, and fled.

30:18 And David recovered all that the Amalekites had carried away:
and David rescued his two wives.

30:19 And there was nothing lacking to them, neither small nor great,
neither sons nor daughters, neither spoil, nor any thing that they had
taken to them: David recovered all.

30:20 And David took all the flocks and the herds, which they drave
before those other cattle, and said, This is David's spoil.

30:21 And David came to the two hundred men, which were so faint that
they could not follow David, whom they had made also to abide at the
brook Besor: and they went forth to meet David, and to meet the people
that were with him: and when David came near to the people, he saluted
them.

30:22 Then answered all the wicked men and men of Belial, of those
that went with David, and said, Because they went not with us, we will
not give them ought of the spoil that we have recovered, save to every
man his wife and his children, that they may lead them away, and
depart.

30:23 Then said David, Ye shall not do so, my brethren, with that
which the LORD hath given us, who hath preserved us, and delivered the
company that came against us into our hand.

30:24 For who will hearken unto you in this matter? but as his part is
that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by
the stuff: they shall part alike.

30:25 And it was so from that day forward, that he made it a statute
and an ordinance for Israel unto this day.

30:26 And when David came to Ziklag, he sent of the spoil unto the
elders of Judah, even to his friends, saying, Behold a present for you
of the spoil of the enemies of the LORD; 30:27 To them which were in
Bethel, and to them which were in south Ramoth, and to them which were
in Jattir, 30:28 And to them which were in Aroer, and to them which
were in Siphmoth, and to them which were in Eshtemoa, 30:29 And to
them which were in Rachal, and to them which were in the cities of the
Jerahmeelites, and to them which were in the cities of the Kenites,
30:30 And to them which were in Hormah, and to them which were in
Chorashan, and to them which were in Athach, 30:31 And to them which
were in Hebron, and to all the places where David himself and his men
were wont to haunt.

31:1 Now the Philistines fought against Israel: and the men of Israel
fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa.

31:2 And the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons;
and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Melchishua,
Saul's sons.

31:3 And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him;
and he was sore wounded of the archers.

31:4 Then said Saul unto his armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust
me through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me
through, and abuse me. But his armourbearer would not; for he was sore
afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it.

31:5 And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell
likewise upon his sword, and died with him.

31:6 So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all
his men, that same day together.

31:7 And when the men of Israel that were on the other side of the
valley, and they that were on the other side Jordan, saw that the men
of Israel fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook the
cities, and fled; and the Philistines came and dwelt in them.

31:8 And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to
strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in
mount Gilboa.

31:9 And they cut off his head, and stripped off his armour, and sent
into the land of the Philistines round about, to publish it in the
house of their idols, and among the people.

31:10 And they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth: and they
fastened his body to the wall of Bethshan.

31:11 And when the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead heard of that which the
Philistines had done to Saul; 31:12 All the valiant men arose, and
went all night, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons
from the wall of Bethshan, and came to Jabesh, and burnt them there.

31:13 And they took their bones, and buried them under a tree at
Jabesh, and fasted seven days.




The Second Book of Samuel

Otherwise Called:

The Second Book of the Kings


1:1 Now it came to pass after the death of Saul, when David was
returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites, and David had abode two
days in Ziklag; 1:2 It came even to pass on the third day, that,
behold, a man came out of the camp from Saul with his clothes rent,
and earth upon his head: and so it was, when he came to David, that he
fell to the earth, and did obeisance.

1:3 And David said unto him, From whence comest thou? And he said unto
him, Out of the camp of Israel am I escaped.

1:4 And David said unto him, How went the matter? I pray thee, tell
me.

And he answered, That the people are fled from the battle, and many of
the people also are fallen and dead; and Saul and Jonathan his son are
dead also.

1:5 And David said unto the young man that told him, How knowest thou
that Saul and Jonathan his son be dead?  1:6 And the young man that
told him said, As I happened by chance upon mount Gilboa, behold, Saul
leaned upon his spear; and, lo, the chariots and horsemen followed
hard after him.

1:7 And when he looked behind him, he saw me, and called unto me. And
I answered, Here am I.

1:8 And he said unto me, Who art thou? And I answered him, I am an
Amalekite.

1:9 He said unto me again, Stand, I pray thee, upon me, and slay me:
for anguish is come upon me, because my life is yet whole in me.

1:10 So I stood upon him, and slew him, because I was sure that he
could not live after that he was fallen: and I took the crown that was
upon his head, and the bracelet that was on his arm, and have brought
them hither unto my lord.

1:11 Then David took hold on his clothes, and rent them; and likewise
all the men that were with him: 1:12 And they mourned, and wept, and
fasted until even, for Saul, and for Jonathan his son, and for the
people of the LORD, and for the house of Israel; because they were
fallen by the sword.

1:13 And David said unto the young man that told him, Whence art thou?
And he answered, I am the son of a stranger, an Amalekite.

1:14 And David said unto him, How wast thou not afraid to stretch
forth thine hand to destroy the LORD's anointed?  1:15 And David
called one of the young men, and said, Go near, and fall upon him. And
he smote him that he died.

1:16 And David said unto him, Thy blood be upon thy head; for thy
mouth hath testified against thee, saying, I have slain the LORD's
anointed.

1:17 And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and over
Jonathan his son: 1:18 (Also he bade them teach the children of Judah
the use of the bow: behold, it is written in the book of Jasher.)
1:19 The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the
mighty fallen!  1:20 Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the
streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,
lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.

1:21 Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be
rain, upon you, nor fields of offerings: for there the shield of the
mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as though he had not
been anointed with oil.

1:22 From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow
of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty.

1:23 Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in
their death they were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they
were stronger than lions.

1:24 Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in
scarlet, with other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your
apparel.

1:25 How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan,
thou wast slain in thine high places.

1:26 I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast
thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of
women.

1:27 How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!  2:1
And it came to pass after this, that David enquired of the LORD,
saying, Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah? And the LORD
said unto him, Go up. And David said, Whither shall I go up? And he
said, Unto Hebron.

2:2 So David went up thither, and his two wives also, Ahinoam the
Jezreelitess, and Abigail Nabal's wife the Carmelite.

2:3 And his men that were with him did David bring up, every man with
his household: and they dwelt in the cities of Hebron.

2:4 And the men of Judah came, and there they anointed David king over
the house of Judah. And they told David, saying, That the men of
Jabeshgilead were they that buried Saul.

2:5 And David sent messengers unto the men of Jabeshgilead, and said
unto them, Blessed be ye of the LORD, that ye have shewed this
kindness unto your lord, even unto Saul, and have buried him.

2:6 And now the LORD shew kindness and truth unto you: and I also will
requite you this kindness, because ye have done this thing.

2:7 Therefore now let your hands be strengthened, and be ye valiant:
for your master Saul is dead, and also the house of Judah have
anointed me king over them.

2:8 But Abner the son of Ner, captain of Saul's host, took Ishbosheth
the son of Saul, and brought him over to Mahanaim; 2:9 And made him
king over Gilead, and over the Ashurites, and over Jezreel, and over
Ephraim, and over Benjamin, and over all Israel.

2:10 Ishbosheth Saul's son was forty years old when he began to reign
over Israel, and reigned two years. But the house of Judah followed
David.

2:11 And the time that David was king in Hebron over the house of
Judah was seven years and six months.

2:12 And Abner the son of Ner, and the servants of Ishbosheth the son
of Saul, went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon.

2:13 And Joab the son of Zeruiah, and the servants of David, went out,
and met together by the pool of Gibeon: and they sat down, the one on
the one side of the pool, and the other on the other side of the pool.

2:14 And Abner said to Joab, Let the young men now arise, and play
before us. And Joab said, Let them arise.

2:15 Then there arose and went over by number twelve of Benjamin,
which pertained to Ishbosheth the son of Saul, and twelve of the
servants of David.

2:16 And they caught every one his fellow by the head, and thrust his
sword in his fellow's side; so they fell down together: wherefore that
place was called Helkathhazzurim, which is in Gibeon.

2:17 And there was a very sore battle that day; and Abner was beaten,
and the men of Israel, before the servants of David.

2:18 And there were three sons of Zeruiah there, Joab, and Abishai,
and Asahel: and Asahel was as light of foot as a wild roe.

2:19 And Asahel pursued after Abner; and in going he turned not to the
right hand nor to the left from following Abner.

2:20 Then Abner looked behind him, and said, Art thou Asahel? And he
answered, I am.

2:21 And Abner said to him, Turn thee aside to thy right hand or to
thy left, and lay thee hold on one of the young men, and take thee his
armour.

But Asahel would not turn aside from following of him.

2:22 And Abner said again to Asahel, Turn thee aside from following
me: wherefore should I smite thee to the ground? how then should I
hold up my face to Joab thy brother?  2:23 Howbeit he refused to turn
aside: wherefore Abner with the hinder end of the spear smote him
under the fifth rib, that the spear came out behind him; and he fell
down there, and died in the same place: and it came to pass, that as
many as came to the place where Asahel fell down and died stood still.

2:24 Joab also and Abishai pursued after Abner: and the sun went down
when they were come to the hill of Ammah, that lieth before Giah by
the way of the wilderness of Gibeon.

2:25 And the children of Benjamin gathered themselves together after
Abner, and became one troop, and stood on the top of an hill.

2:26 Then Abner called to Joab, and said, Shall the sword devour for
ever?  knowest thou not that it will be bitterness in the latter end?
how long shall it be then, ere thou bid the people return from
following their brethren?  2:27 And Joab said, As God liveth, unless
thou hadst spoken, surely then in the morning the people had gone up
every one from following his brother.

2:28 So Joab blew a trumpet, and all the people stood still, and
pursued after Israel no more, neither fought they any more.

2:29 And Abner and his men walked all that night through the plain,
and passed over Jordan, and went through all Bithron, and they came to
Mahanaim.

2:30 And Joab returned from following Abner: and when he had gathered
all the people together, there lacked of David's servants nineteen men
and Asahel.

2:31 But the servants of David had smitten of Benjamin, and of Abner's
men, so that three hundred and threescore men died.

2:32 And they took up Asahel, and buried him in the sepulchre of his
father, which was in Bethlehem. And Joab and his men went all night,
and they came to Hebron at break of day.

3:1 Now there was long war between the house of Saul and the house of
David: but David waxed stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul
waxed weaker and weaker.

3:2 And unto David were sons born in Hebron: and his firstborn was
Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; 3:3 And his second, Chileab, of
Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite; and the third, Absalom the
son of Maacah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur; 3:4 And the
fourth, Adonijah the son of Haggith; and the fifth, Shephatiah the son
of Abital; 3:5 And the sixth, Ithream, by Eglah David's wife. These
were born to David in Hebron.

3:6 And it came to pass, while there was war between the house of Saul
and the house of David, that Abner made himself strong for the house
of Saul.

3:7 And Saul had a concubine, whose name was Rizpah, the daughter of
Aiah: and Ishbosheth said to Abner, Wherefore hast thou gone in unto
my father's concubine?  3:8 Then was Abner very wroth for the words of
Ishbosheth, and said, Am I a dog's head, which against Judah do shew
kindness this day unto the house of Saul thy father, to his brethren,
and to his friends, and have not delivered thee into the hand of
David, that thou chargest me to day with a fault concerning this
woman?  3:9 So do God to Abner, and more also, except, as the LORD
hath sworn to David, even so I do to him; 3:10 To translate the
kingdom from the house of Saul, and to set up the throne of David over
Israel and over Judah, from Dan even to Beersheba.

3:11 And he could not answer Abner a word again, because he feared
him.

3:12 And Abner sent messengers to David on his behalf, saying, Whose
is the land? saying also, Make thy league with me, and, behold, my
hand shall be with thee, to bring about all Israel unto thee.

3:13 And he said, Well; I will make a league with thee: but one thing
I require of thee, that is, Thou shalt not see my face, except thou
first bring Michal Saul's daughter, when thou comest to see my face.

3:14 And David sent messengers to Ishbosheth Saul's son, saying,
Deliver me my wife Michal, which I espoused to me for an hundred
foreskins of the Philistines.

3:15 And Ishbosheth sent, and took her from her husband, even from
Phaltiel the son of Laish.

3:16 And her husband went with her along weeping behind her to
Bahurim.

Then said Abner unto him, Go, return. And he returned.

3:17 And Abner had communication with the elders of Israel, saying, Ye
sought for David in times past to be king over you: 3:18 Now then do
it: for the LORD hath spoken of David, saying, By the hand of my
servant David I will save my people Israel out of the hand of the
Philistines, and out of the hand of all their enemies.

3:19 And Abner also spake in the ears of Benjamin: and Abner went also
to speak in the ears of David in Hebron all that seemed good to
Israel, and that seemed good to the whole house of Benjamin.

3:20 So Abner came to David to Hebron, and twenty men with him. And
David made Abner and the men that were with him a feast.

3:21 And Abner said unto David, I will arise and go, and will gather
all Israel unto my lord the king, that they may make a league with
thee, and that thou mayest reign over all that thine heart desireth.
And David sent Abner away; and he went in peace.

3:22 And, behold, the servants of David and Joab came from pursuing a
troop, and brought in a great spoil with them: but Abner was not with
David in Hebron; for he had sent him away, and he was gone in peace.

3:23 When Joab and all the host that was with him were come, they told
Joab, saying, Abner the son of Ner came to the king, and he hath sent
him away, and he is gone in peace.

3:24 Then Joab came to the king, and said, What hast thou done?
behold, Abner came unto thee; why is it that thou hast sent him away,
and he is quite gone?  3:25 Thou knowest Abner the son of Ner, that he
came to deceive thee, and to know thy going out and thy coming in, and
to know all that thou doest.

3:26 And when Joab was come out from David, he sent messengers after
Abner, which brought him again from the well of Sirah: but David knew
it not.

3:27 And when Abner was returned to Hebron, Joab took him aside in the
gate to speak with him quietly, and smote him there under the fifth
rib, that he died, for the blood of Asahel his brother.

3:28 And afterward when David heard it, he said, I and my kingdom are
guiltless before the LORD for ever from the blood of Abner the son of
Ner: 3:29 Let it rest on the head of Joab, and on all his father's
house; and let there not fail from the house of Joab one that hath an
issue, or that is a leper, or that leaneth on a staff, or that falleth
on the sword, or that lacketh bread.

3:30 So Joab, and Abishai his brother slew Abner, because he had slain
their brother Asahel at Gibeon in the battle.

3:31 And David said to Joab, and to all the people that were with him,
Rend your clothes, and gird you with sackcloth, and mourn before
Abner. And king David himself followed the bier.

3:32 And they buried Abner in Hebron: and the king lifted up his
voice, and wept at the grave of Abner; and all the people wept.

3:33 And the king lamented over Abner, and said, Died Abner as a fool
dieth?  3:34 Thy hands were not bound, nor thy feet put into fetters:
as a man falleth before wicked men, so fellest thou. And all the
people wept again over him.

3:35 And when all the people came to cause David to eat meat while it
was yet day, David sware, saying, So do God to me, and more also, if I
taste bread, or ought else, till the sun be down.

3:36 And all the people took notice of it, and it pleased them: as
whatsoever the king did pleased all the people.

3:37 For all the people and all Israel understood that day that it was
not of the king to slay Abner the son of Ner.

3:38 And the king said unto his servants, Know ye not that there is a
prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel?  3:39 And I am this
day weak, though anointed king; and these men the sons of Zeruiah be
too hard for me: the LORD shall reward the doer of evil according to
his wickedness.

4:1 And when Saul's son heard that Abner was dead in Hebron, his hands
were feeble, and all the Israelites were troubled.

4:2 And Saul's son had two men that were captains of bands: the name
of the one was Baanah, and the name of the other Rechab, the sons of
Rimmon a Beerothite, of the children of Benjamin: (for Beeroth also
was reckoned to Benjamin.

4:3 And the Beerothites fled to Gittaim, and were sojourners there
until this day.)  4:4 And Jonathan, Saul's son, had a son that was
lame of his feet. He was five years old when the tidings came of Saul
and Jonathan out of Jezreel, and his nurse took him up, and fled: and
it came to pass, as she made haste to flee, that he fell, and became
lame. And his name was Mephibosheth.

4:5 And the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, Rechab and Baanah, went,
and came about the heat of the day to the house of Ishbosheth, who lay
on a bed at noon.

4:6 And they came thither into the midst of the house, as though they
would have fetched wheat; and they smote him under the fifth rib: and
Rechab and Baanah his brother escaped.

4:7 For when they came into the house, he lay on his bed in his
bedchamber, and they smote him, and slew him, and beheaded him, and
took his head, and gat them away through the plain all night.

4:8 And they brought the head of Ishbosheth unto David to Hebron, and
said to the king, Behold the head of Ishbosheth the son of Saul thine
enemy, which sought thy life; and the LORD hath avenged my lord the
king this day of Saul, and of his seed.

4:9 And David answered Rechab and Baanah his brother, the sons of
Rimmon the Beerothite, and said unto them, As the LORD liveth, who
hath redeemed my soul out of all adversity, 4:10 When one told me,
saying, Behold, Saul is dead, thinking to have brought good tidings, I
took hold of him, and slew him in Ziklag, who thought that I would
have given him a reward for his tidings: 4:11 How much more, when
wicked men have slain a righteous person in his own house upon his
bed? shall I not therefore now require his blood of your hand, and
take you away from the earth?  4:12 And David commanded his young men,
and they slew them, and cut off their hands and their feet, and hanged
them up over the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ishbosheth,
and buried it in the sepulchre of Abner in Hebron.

5:1 Then came all the tribes of Israel to David unto Hebron, and
spake, saying, Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh.

5:2 Also in time past, when Saul was king over us, thou wast he that
leddest out and broughtest in Israel: and the LORD said to thee, Thou
shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be a captain over Israel.

5:3 So all the elders of Israel came to the king to Hebron; and king
David made a league with them in Hebron before the LORD: and they
anointed David king over Israel.

5:4 David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned
forty years.

5:5 In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months: and in
Jerusalem he reigned thirty and three years over all Israel and Judah.

5:6 And the king and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites, the
inhabitants of the land: which spake unto David, saying, Except thou
take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither:
thinking, David cannot come in hither.

5:7 Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the
city of David.

5:8 And David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the gutter,
and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind that are hated
of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain. Wherefore they said,
The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.

5:9 So David dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David. And
David built round about from Millo and inward.

5:10 And David went on, and grew great, and the LORD God of hosts was
with him.

5:11 And Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David, and cedar trees,
and carpenters, and masons: and they built David an house.

5:12 And David perceived that the LORD had established him king over
Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for his people Israel's
sake.

5:13 And David took him more concubines and wives out of Jerusalem,
after he was come from Hebron: and there were yet sons and daughters
born to David.

5:14 And these be the names of those that were born unto him in
Jerusalem; Shammuah, and Shobab, and Nathan, and Solomon, 5:15 Ibhar
also, and Elishua, and Nepheg, and Japhia, 5:16 And Elishama, and
Eliada, and Eliphalet.

5:17 But when the Philistines heard that they had anointed David king
over Israel, all the Philistines came up to seek David; and David
heard of it, and went down to the hold.

5:18 The Philistines also came and spread themselves in the valley of
Rephaim.

5:19 And David enquired of the LORD, saying, Shall I go up to the
Philistines? wilt thou deliver them into mine hand? And the LORD said
unto David, Go up: for I will doubtless deliver the Philistines into
thine hand.

5:20 And David came to Baalperazim, and David smote them there, and
said, The LORD hath broken forth upon mine enemies before me, as the
breach of waters. Therefore he called the name of that place
Baalperazim.

5:21 And there they left their images, and David and his men burned
them.

5:22 And the Philistines came up yet again, and spread themselves in
the valley of Rephaim.

5:23 And when David enquired of the LORD, he said, Thou shalt not go
up; but fetch a compass behind them, and come upon them over against
the mulberry trees.

5:24 And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops
of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself: for then
shall the LORD go out before thee, to smite the host of the
Philistines.

5:25 And David did so, as the LORD had commanded him; and smote the
Philistines from Geba until thou come to Gazer.

6:1 Again, David gathered together all the chosen men of Israel,
thirty thousand.

6:2 And David arose, and went with all the people that were with him
from Baale of Judah, to bring up from thence the ark of God, whose
name is called by the name of the LORD of hosts that dwelleth between
the cherubims.

6:3 And they set the ark of God upon a new cart, and brought it out of
the house of Abinadab that was in Gibeah: and Uzzah and Ahio, the sons
of Abinadab, drave the new cart.

6:4 And they brought it out of the house of Abinadab which was at
Gibeah, accompanying the ark of God: and Ahio went before the ark.

6:5 And David and all the house of Israel played before the LORD on
all manner of instruments made of fir wood, even on harps, and on
psalteries, and on timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals.

6:6 And when they came to Nachon's threshingfloor, Uzzah put forth his
hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it.

6:7 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote
him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.

6:8 And David was displeased, because the LORD had made a breach upon
Uzzah: and he called the name of the place Perezuzzah to this day.

6:9 And David was afraid of the LORD that day, and said, How shall the
ark of the LORD come to me?  6:10 So David would not remove the ark of
the LORD unto him into the city of David: but David carried it aside
into the house of Obededom the Gittite.

6:11 And the ark of the LORD continued in the house of Obededom the
Gittite three months: and the LORD blessed Obededom, and all his
household.

6:12 And it was told king David, saying, The LORD hath blessed the
house of Obededom, and all that pertaineth unto him, because of the
ark of God. So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house
of Obededom into the city of David with gladness.

6:13 And it was so, that when they that bare the ark of the LORD had
gone six paces, he sacrificed oxen and fatlings.

6:14 And David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David
was girded with a linen ephod.

6:15 So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the
LORD with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.

6:16 And as the ark of the LORD came into the city of David, Michal
Saul's daughter looked through a window, and saw king David leaping
and dancing before the LORD; and she despised him in her heart.

6:17 And they brought in the ark of the LORD, and set it in his place,
in the midst of the tabernacle that David had pitched for it: and
David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the LORD.

6:18 And as soon as David had made an end of offering burnt offerings
and peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD of
hosts.

6:19 And he dealt among all the people, even among the whole multitude
of Israel, as well to the women as men, to every one a cake of bread,
and a good piece of flesh, and a flagon of wine. So all the people
departed every one to his house.

6:20 Then David returned to bless his household. And Michal the
daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, How glorious was
the king of Israel to day, who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of
the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly
uncovereth himself!  6:21 And David said unto Michal, It was before
the LORD, which chose me before thy father, and before all his house,
to appoint me ruler over the people of the LORD, over Israel:
therefore will I play before the LORD.

6:22 And I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine
own sight: and of the maidservants which thou hast spoken of, of them
shall I be had in honour.

6:23 Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day
of her death.

7:1 And it came to pass, when the king sat in his house, and the LORD
had given him rest round about from all his enemies; 7:2 That the king
said unto Nathan the prophet, See now, I dwell in an house of cedar,
but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains.

7:3 And Nathan said to the king, Go, do all that is in thine heart;
for the LORD is with thee.

7:4 And it came to pass that night, that the word of the LORD came
unto Nathan, saying, 7:5 Go and tell my servant David, Thus saith the
LORD, Shalt thou build me an house for me to dwell in?  7:6 Whereas I
have not dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the
children of Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in
a tent and in a tabernacle.

7:7 In all the places wherein I have walked with all the children of
Israel spake I a word with any of the tribes of Israel, whom I
commanded to feed my people Israel, saying, Why build ye not me an
house of cedar?  7:8 Now therefore so shalt thou say unto my servant
David, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I took thee from the sheepcote,
from following the sheep, to be ruler over my people, over Israel: 7:9
And I was with thee whithersoever thou wentest, and have cut off all
thine enemies out of thy sight, and have made thee a great name, like
unto the name of the great men that are in the earth.

7:10 Moreover I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will
plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no
more; neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any more,
as beforetime, 7:11 And as since the time that I commanded judges to
be over my people Israel, and have caused thee to rest from all thine
enemies. Also the LORD telleth thee that he will make thee an house.

7:12 And when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy
fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of
thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom.

7:13 He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the
throne of his kingdom for ever.

7:14 I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit
iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes
of the children of men: 7:15 But my mercy shall not depart away from
him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee.

7:16 And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever
before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever.

7:17 According to all these words, and according to all this vision,
so did Nathan speak unto David.

7:18 Then went king David in, and sat before the LORD, and he said,
Who am I, O Lord GOD? and what is my house, that thou hast brought me
hitherto?  7:19 And this was yet a small thing in thy sight, O Lord
GOD; but thou hast spoken also of thy servant's house for a great
while to come. And is this the manner of man, O Lord GOD?  7:20 And
what can David say more unto thee? for thou, Lord GOD, knowest thy
servant.

7:21 For thy word's sake, and according to thine own heart, hast thou
done all these great things, to make thy servant know them.

7:22 Wherefore thou art great, O LORD God: for there is none like
thee, neither is there any God beside thee, according to all that we
have heard with our ears.

7:23 And what one nation in the earth is like thy people, even like
Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people to himself, and to make
him a name, and to do for you great things and terrible, for thy land,
before thy people, which thou redeemedst to thee from Egypt, from the
nations and their gods?  7:24 For thou hast confirmed to thyself thy
people Israel to be a people unto thee for ever: and thou, LORD, art
become their God.

7:25 And now, O LORD God, the word that thou hast spoken concerning
thy servant, and concerning his house, establish it for ever, and do
as thou hast said.

7:26 And let thy name be magnified for ever, saying, The LORD of hosts
is the God over Israel: and let the house of thy servant David be
established before thee.

7:27 For thou, O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, hast revealed to thy
servant, saying, I will build thee an house: therefore hath thy
servant found in his heart to pray this prayer unto thee.

7:28 And now, O Lord GOD, thou art that God, and thy words be true,
and thou hast promised this goodness unto thy servant: 7:29 Therefore
now let it please thee to bless the house of thy servant, that it may
continue for ever before thee: for thou, O Lord GOD, hast spoken it:
and with thy blessing let the house of thy servant be blessed for
ever.

8:1 And after this it came to pass that David smote the Philistines,
and subdued them: and David took Methegammah out of the hand of the
Philistines.

8:2 And he smote Moab, and measured them with a line, casting them
down to the ground; even with two lines measured he to put to death,
and with one full line to keep alive. And so the Moabites became
David's servants, and brought gifts.

8:3 David smote also Hadadezer, the son of Rehob, king of Zobah, as he
went to recover his border at the river Euphrates.

8:4 And David took from him a thousand chariots, and seven hundred
horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen: and David houghed all the
chariot horses, but reserved of them for an hundred chariots.

8:5 And when the Syrians of Damascus came to succour Hadadezer king of
Zobah, David slew of the Syrians two and twenty thousand men.

8:6 Then David put garrisons in Syria of Damascus: and the Syrians
became servants to David, and brought gifts. And the LORD preserved
David whithersoever he went.

8:7 And David took the shields of gold that were on the servants of
Hadadezer, and brought them to Jerusalem.

8:8 And from Betah, and from Berothai, cities of Hadadezer, king David
took exceeding much brass.

8:9 When Toi king of Hamath heard that David had smitten all the host
of Hadadezer, 8:10 Then Toi sent Joram his son unto king David, to
salute him, and to bless him, because he had fought against Hadadezer,
and smitten him: for Hadadezer had wars with Toi. And Joram brought
with him vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and vessels of brass:
8:11 Which also king David did dedicate unto the LORD, with the silver
and gold that he had dedicated of all nations which he subdued; 8:12
Of Syria, and of Moab, and of the children of Ammon, and of the
Philistines, and of Amalek, and of the spoil of Hadadezer, son of
Rehob, king of Zobah.

8:13 And David gat him a name when he returned from smiting of the
Syrians in the valley of salt, being eighteen thousand men.

8:14 And he put garrisons in Edom; throughout all Edom put he
garrisons, and all they of Edom became David's servants. And the LORD
preserved David whithersoever he went.

8:15 And David reigned over all Israel; and David executed judgment
and justice unto all his people.

8:16 And Joab the son of Zeruiah was over the host; and Jehoshaphat
the son of Ahilud was recorder; 8:17 And Zadok the son of Ahitub, and
Ahimelech the son of Abiathar, were the priests; and Seraiah was the
scribe; 8:18 And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was over both the
Cherethites and the Pelethites; and David's sons were chief rulers.

9:1 And David said, Is there yet any that is left of the house of
Saul, that I may shew him kindness for Jonathan's sake?  9:2 And there
was of the house of Saul a servant whose name was Ziba. And when they
had called him unto David, the king said unto him, Art thou Ziba?  And
he said, Thy servant is he.

9:3 And the king said, Is there not yet any of the house of Saul, that
I may shew the kindness of God unto him? And Ziba said unto the king,
Jonathan hath yet a son, which is lame on his feet.

9:4 And the king said unto him, Where is he? And Ziba said unto the
king, Behold, he is in the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, in
Lodebar.

9:5 Then king David sent, and fetched him out of the house of Machir,
the son of Ammiel, from Lodebar.

9:6 Now when Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, was
come unto David, he fell on his face, and did reverence. And David
said, Mephibosheth. And he answered, Behold thy servant!  9:7 And
David said unto him, Fear not: for I will surely shew thee kindness
for Jonathan thy father's sake, and will restore thee all the land of
Saul thy father; and thou shalt eat bread at my table continually.

9:8 And he bowed himself, and said, What is thy servant, that thou
shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?  9:9 Then the king called
to Ziba, Saul's servant, and said unto him, I have given unto thy
master's son all that pertained to Saul and to all his house.

9:10 Thou therefore, and thy sons, and thy servants, shall till the
land for him, and thou shalt bring in the fruits, that thy master's
son may have food to eat: but Mephibosheth thy master's son shall eat
bread alway at my table. Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty
servants.

9:11 Then said Ziba unto the king, According to all that my lord the
king hath commanded his servant, so shall thy servant do. As for
Mephibosheth, said the king, he shall eat at my table, as one of the
king's sons.

9:12 And Mephibosheth had a young son, whose name was Micha. And all
that dwelt in the house of Ziba were servants unto Mephibosheth.

9:13 So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem: for he did eat continually at
the king's table; and was lame on both his feet.

10:1 And it came to pass after this, that the king of the children of
Ammon died, and Hanun his son reigned in his stead.

10:2 Then said David, I will shew kindness unto Hanun the son of
Nahash, as his father shewed kindness unto me. And David sent to
comfort him by the hand of his servants for his father. And David's
servants came into the land of the children of Ammon.

10:3 And the princes of the children of Ammon said unto Hanun their
lord, Thinkest thou that David doth honour thy father, that he hath
sent comforters unto thee? hath not David rather sent his servants
unto thee, to search the city, and to spy it out, and to overthrow it?
10:4 Wherefore Hanun took David's servants, and shaved off the one
half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, even
to their buttocks, and sent them away.

10:5 When they told it unto David, he sent to meet them, because the
men were greatly ashamed: and the king said, Tarry at Jericho until
your beards be grown, and then return.

10:6 And when the children of Ammon saw that they stank before David,
the children of Ammon sent and hired the Syrians of Bethrehob and the
Syrians of Zoba, twenty thousand footmen, and of king Maacah a
thousand men, and of Ishtob twelve thousand men.

10:7 And when David heard of it, he sent Joab, and all the host of the
mighty men.

10:8 And the children of Ammon came out, and put the battle in array
at the entering in of the gate: and the Syrians of Zoba, and of Rehob,
and Ishtob, and Maacah, were by themselves in the field.

10:9 When Joab saw that the front of the battle was against him before
and behind, he chose of all the choice men of Israel, and put them in
array against the Syrians: 10:10 And the rest of the people he
delivered into the hand of Abishai his brother, that he might put them
in array against the children of Ammon.

10:11 And he said, If the Syrians be too strong for me, then thou
shalt help me: but if the children of Ammon be too strong for thee,
then I will come and help thee.

10:12 Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people, and
for the cities of our God: and the LORD do that which seemeth him
good.

10:13 And Joab drew nigh, and the people that were with him, unto the
battle against the Syrians: and they fled before him.

10:14 And when the children of Ammon saw that the Syrians were fled,
then fled they also before Abishai, and entered into the city. So Joab
returned from the children of Ammon, and came to Jerusalem.

10:15 And when the Syrians saw that they were smitten before Israel,
they gathered themselves together.

10:16 And Hadarezer sent, and brought out the Syrians that were beyond
the river: and they came to Helam; and Shobach the captain of the host
of Hadarezer went before them.

10:17 And when it was told David, he gathered all Israel together, and
passed over Jordan, and came to Helam. And the Syrians set themselves
in array against David, and fought with him.

10:18 And the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew the men of
seven hundred chariots of the Syrians, and forty thousand horsemen,
and smote Shobach the captain of their host, who died there.

10:19 And when all the kings that were servants to Hadarezer saw that
they were smitten before Israel, they made peace with Israel, and
served them. So the Syrians feared to help the children of Ammon any
more.

11:1 And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when
kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with
him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and
besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem.

11:2 And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off
his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the
roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful
to look upon.

11:3 And David sent and enquired after the woman. And one said, Is not
this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?
11:4 And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto
him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness:
and she returned unto her house.

11:5 And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am
with child.

11:6 And David sent to Joab, saying, Send me Uriah the Hittite. And
Joab sent Uriah to David.

11:7 And when Uriah was come unto him, David demanded of him how Joab
did, and how the people did, and how the war prospered.

11:8 And David said to Uriah, Go down to thy house, and wash thy feet.
And Uriah departed out of the king's house, and there followed him a
mess of meat from the king.

11:9 But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the
servants of his lord, and went not down to his house.

11:10 And when they had told David, saying, Uriah went not down unto
his house, David said unto Uriah, Camest thou not from thy journey?
why then didst thou not go down unto thine house?  11:11 And Uriah
said unto David, The ark, and Israel, and Judah, abide in tents; and
my lord Joab, and the servants of my lord, are encamped in the open
fields; shall I then go into mine house, to eat and to drink, and to
lie with my wife? as thou livest, and as thy soul liveth, I will not
do this thing.

11:12 And David said to Uriah, Tarry here to day also, and to morrow I
will let thee depart. So Uriah abode in Jerusalem that day, and the
morrow.

11:13 And when David had called him, he did eat and drink before him;
and he made him drunk: and at even he went out to lie on his bed with
the servants of his lord, but went not down to his house.

11:14 And it came to pass in the morning, that David wrote a letter to
Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah.

11:15 And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the
forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may
be smitten, and die.

11:16 And it came to pass, when Joab observed the city, that he
assigned Uriah unto a place where he knew that valiant men were.

11:17 And the men of the city went out, and fought with Joab: and
there fell some of the people of the servants of David; and Uriah the
Hittite died also.

11:18 Then Joab sent and told David all the things concerning the war;
11:19 And charged the messenger, saying, When thou hast made an end of
telling the matters of the war unto the king, 11:20 And if so be that
the king's wrath arise, and he say unto thee, Wherefore approached ye
so nigh unto the city when ye did fight? knew ye not that they would
shoot from the wall?  11:21 Who smote Abimelech the son of
Jerubbesheth? did not a woman cast a piece of a millstone upon him
from the wall, that he died in Thebez? why went ye nigh the wall? then
say thou, Thy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.

11:22 So the messenger went, and came and shewed David all that Joab
had sent him for.

11:23 And the messenger said unto David, Surely the men prevailed
against us, and came out unto us into the field, and we were upon them
even unto the entering of the gate.

11:24 And the shooters shot from off the wall upon thy servants; and
some of the king's servants be dead, and thy servant Uriah the Hittite
is dead also.

11:25 Then David said unto the messenger, Thus shalt thou say unto
Joab, Let not this thing displease thee, for the sword devoureth one
as well as another: make thy battle more strong against the city, and
overthrow it: and encourage thou him.

11:26 And when the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was
dead, she mourned for her husband.

11:27 And when the mourning was past, David sent and fetched her to
his house, and she became his wife, and bare him a son. But the thing
that David had done displeased the LORD.

12:1 And the LORD sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and
said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the
other poor.

12:2 The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: 12:3 But the
poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought
and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his
children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and
lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.

12:4 And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to
take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring
man that was come unto him; but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed
it for the man that was come to him.

12:5 And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he
said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this thing
shall surely die: 12:6 And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because
he did this thing, and because he had no pity.

12:7 And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the LORD
God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee
out of the hand of Saul; 12:8 And I gave thee thy master's house, and
thy master's wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel
and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have
given unto thee such and such things.

12:9 Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do
evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword,
and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the
sword of the children of Ammon.

12:10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house;
because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the
Hittite to be thy wife.

12:11 Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee
out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes,
and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in
the sight of this sun.

12:12 For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all
Israel, and before the sun.

12:13 And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the LORD. And
Nathan said unto David, The LORD also hath put away thy sin; thou
shalt not die.

12:14 Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to
the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto
thee shall surely die.

12:15 And Nathan departed unto his house. And the LORD struck the
child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick.

12:16 David therefore besought God for the child; and David fasted,
and went in, and lay all night upon the earth.

12:17 And the elders of his house arose, and went to him, to raise him
up from the earth: but he would not, neither did he eat bread with
them.

12:18 And it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child died. And
the servants of David feared to tell him that the child was dead: for
they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him,
and he would not hearken unto our voice: how will he then vex himself,
if we tell him that the child is dead?  12:19 But when David saw that
his servants whispered, David perceived that the child was dead:
therefore David said unto his servants, Is the child dead? And they
said, He is dead.

12:20 Then David arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed
himself, and changed his apparel, and came into the house of the LORD,
and worshipped: then he came to his own house; and when he required,
they set bread before him, and he did eat.

12:21 Then said his servants unto him, What thing is this that thou
hast done? thou didst fast and weep for the child, while it was alive;
but when the child was dead, thou didst rise and eat bread.

12:22 And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept:
for I said, Who can tell whether GOD will be gracious to me, that the
child may live?  12:23 But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast?
can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return
to me.

12:24 And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her,
and lay with her: and she bare a son, and he called his name Solomon:
and the LORD loved him.

12:25 And he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet; and he called his
name Jedidiah, because of the LORD.

12:26 And Joab fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and
took the royal city.

12:27 And Joab sent messengers to David, and said, I have fought
against Rabbah, and have taken the city of waters.

12:28 Now therefore gather the rest of the people together, and encamp
against the city, and take it: lest I take the city, and it be called
after my name.

12:29 And David gathered all the people together, and went to Rabbah,
and fought against it, and took it.

12:30 And he took their king's crown from off his head, the weight
whereof was a talent of gold with the precious stones: and it was set
on David's head. And he brought forth the spoil of the city in great
abundance.

12:31 And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them
under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and
made them pass through the brick-kiln: and thus did he unto all the
cities of the children of Ammon. So David and all the people returned
unto Jerusalem.

13:1 And it came to pass after this, that Absalom the son of David had
a fair sister, whose name was Tamar; and Amnon the son of David loved
her.

13:2 And Amnon was so vexed, that he fell sick for his sister Tamar;
for she was a virgin; and Amnon thought it hard for him to do anything
to her.

13:3 But Amnon had a friend, whose name was Jonadab, the son of
Shimeah David's brother: and Jonadab was a very subtil man.

13:4 And he said unto him, Why art thou, being the king's son, lean
from day to day? wilt thou not tell me? And Amnon said unto him, I
love Tamar, my brother Absalom's sister.

13:5 And Jonadab said unto him, Lay thee down on thy bed, and make
thyself sick: and when thy father cometh to see thee, say unto him, I
pray thee, let my sister Tamar come, and give me meat, and dress the
meat in my sight, that I may see it, and eat it at her hand.

13:6 So Amnon lay down, and made himself sick: and when the king was
come to see him, Amnon said unto the king, I pray thee, let Tamar my
sister come, and make me a couple of cakes in my sight, that I may eat
at her hand.

13:7 Then David sent home to Tamar, saying, Go now to thy brother
Amnon's house, and dress him meat.

13:8 So Tamar went to her brother Amnon's house; and he was laid down.
And she took flour, and kneaded it, and made cakes in his sight, and
did bake the cakes.

13:9 And she took a pan, and poured them out before him; but he
refused to eat. And Amnon said, Have out all men from me. And they
went out every man from him.

13:10 And Amnon said unto Tamar, Bring the meat into the chamber, that
I may eat of thine hand. And Tamar took the cakes which she had made,
and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother.

13:11 And when she had brought them unto him to eat, he took hold of
her, and said unto her, Come lie with me, my sister.

13:12 And she answered him, Nay, my brother, do not force me; for no
such thing ought to be done in Israel: do not thou this folly.

13:13 And I, whither shall I cause my shame to go? and as for thee,
thou shalt be as one of the fools in Israel. Now therefore, I pray
thee, speak unto the king; for he will not withhold me from thee.

13:14 Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger
than she, forced her, and lay with her.

13:15 Then Amnon hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred wherewith
he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. And
Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone.

13:16 And she said unto him, There is no cause: this evil in sending
me away is greater than the other that thou didst unto me. But he
would not hearken unto her.

13:17 Then he called his servant that ministered unto him, and said,
Put now this woman out from me, and bolt the door after her.

13:18 And she had a garment of divers colours upon her: for with such
robes were the king's daughters that were virgins apparelled. Then his
servant brought her out, and bolted the door after her.

13:19 And Tamar put ashes on her head, and rent her garment of divers
colours that was on her, and laid her hand on her head, and went on
crying.

13:20 And Absalom her brother said unto her, Hath Amnon thy brother
been with thee? but hold now thy peace, my sister: he is thy brother;
regard not this thing. So Tamar remained desolate in her brother
Absalom's house.

13:21 But when king David heard of all these things, he was very
wroth.

13:22 And Absalom spake unto his brother Amnon neither good nor bad:
for Absalom hated Amnon, because he had forced his sister Tamar.

13:23 And it came to pass after two full years, that Absalom had
sheepshearers in Baalhazor, which is beside Ephraim: and Absalom
invited all the king's sons.

13:24 And Absalom came to the king, and said, Behold now, thy servant
hath sheepshearers; let the king, I beseech thee, and his servants go
with thy servant.

13:25 And the king said to Absalom, Nay, my son, let us not all now
go, lest we be chargeable unto thee. And he pressed him: howbeit he
would not go, but blessed him.

13:26 Then said Absalom, If not, I pray thee, let my brother Amnon go
with us. And the king said unto him, Why should he go with thee?
13:27 But Absalom pressed him, that he let Amnon and all the king's
sons go with him.

13:28 Now Absalom had commanded his servants, saying, Mark ye now when
Amnon's heart is merry with wine, and when I say unto you, Smite
Amnon; then kill him, fear not: have not I commanded you? be
courageous, and be valiant.

13:29 And the servants of Absalom did unto Amnon as Absalom had
commanded.

Then all the king's sons arose, and every man gat him up upon his
mule, and fled.

13:30 And it came to pass, while they were in the way, that tidings
came to David, saying, Absalom hath slain all the king's sons, and
there is not one of them left.

13:31 Then the king arose, and tare his garments, and lay on the
earth; and all his servants stood by with their clothes rent.

13:32 And Jonadab, the son of Shimeah David's brother, answered and
said, Let not my lord suppose that they have slain all the young men
the king's sons; for Amnon only is dead: for by the appointment of
Absalom this hath been determined from the day that he forced his
sister Tamar.

13:33 Now therefore let not my lord the king take the thing to his
heart, to think that all the king's sons are dead: for Amnon only is
dead.

13:34 But Absalom fled. And the young man that kept the watch lifted
up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came much people by the
way of the hill side behind him.

13:35 And Jonadab said unto the king, Behold, the king's sons come: as
thy servant said, so it is.

13:36 And it came to pass, as soon as he had made an end of speaking,
that, behold, the king's sons came, and lifted up their voice and
wept: and the king also and all his servants wept very sore.

13:37 But Absalom fled, and went to Talmai, the son of Ammihud, king
of Geshur. And David mourned for his son every day.

13:38 So Absalom fled, and went to Geshur, and was there three years.

13:39 And the soul of king David longed to go forth unto Absalom: for
he was comforted concerning Amnon, seeing he was dead.

14:1 Now Joab the son of Zeruiah perceived that the king's heart was
toward Absalom.

14:2 And Joab sent to Tekoah, and fetched thence a wise woman, and
said unto her, I pray thee, feign thyself to be a mourner, and put on
now mourning apparel, and anoint not thyself with oil, but be as a
woman that had a long time mourned for the dead: 14:3 And come to the
king, and speak on this manner unto him. So Joab put the words in her
mouth.

14:4 And when the woman of Tekoah spake to the king, she fell on her
face to the ground, and did obeisance, and said, Help, O king.

14:5 And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, I
am indeed a widow woman, and mine husband is dead.

14:6 And thy handmaid had two sons, and they two strove together in
the field, and there was none to part them, but the one smote the
other, and slew him.

14:7 And, behold, the whole family is risen against thine handmaid,
and they said, Deliver him that smote his brother, that we may kill
him, for the life of his brother whom he slew; and we will destroy the
heir also: and so they shall quench my coal which is left, and shall
not leave to my husband neither name nor remainder upon the earth.

14:8 And the king said unto the woman, Go to thine house, and I will
give charge concerning thee.

14:9 And the woman of Tekoah said unto the king, My lord, O king, the
iniquity be on me, and on my father's house: and the king and his
throne be guiltless.

14:10 And the king said, Whoever saith ought unto thee, bring him to
me, and he shall not touch thee any more.

14:11 Then said she, I pray thee, let the king remember the LORD thy
God, that thou wouldest not suffer the revengers of blood to destroy
any more, lest they destroy my son. And he said, As the LORD liveth,
there shall not one hair of thy son fall to the earth.

14:12 Then the woman said, Let thine handmaid, I pray thee, speak one
word unto my lord the king. And he said, Say on.

14:13 And the woman said, Wherefore then hast thou thought such a
thing against the people of God? for the king doth speak this thing as
one which is faulty, in that the king doth not fetch home again his
banished.

14:14 For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground,
which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God respect any
person: yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled
from him.

14:15 Now therefore that I am come to speak of this thing unto my lord
the king, it is because the people have made me afraid: and thy
handmaid said, I will now speak unto the king; it may be that the king
will perform the request of his handmaid.

14:16 For the king will hear, to deliver his handmaid out of the hand
of the man that would destroy me and my son together out of the
inheritance of God.

14:17 Then thine handmaid said, The word of my lord the king shall now
be comfortable: for as an angel of God, so is my lord the king to
discern good and bad: therefore the LORD thy God will be with thee.

14:18 Then the king answered and said unto the woman, Hide not from
me, I pray thee, the thing that I shall ask thee. And the woman said,
Let my lord the king now speak.

14:19 And the king said, Is not the hand of Joab with thee in all
this?  And the woman answered and said, As thy soul liveth, my lord
the king, none can turn to the right hand or to the left from ought
that my lord the king hath spoken: for thy servant Joab, he bade me,
and he put all these words in the mouth of thine handmaid: 14:20 To
fetch about this form of speech hath thy servant Joab done this thing:
and my lord is wise, according to the wisdom of an angel of God, to
know all things that are in the earth.

14:21 And the king said unto Joab, Behold now, I have done this thing:
go therefore, bring the young man Absalom again.

14:22 And Joab fell to the ground on his face, and bowed himself, and
thanked the king: and Joab said, To day thy servant knoweth that I
have found grace in thy sight, my lord, O king, in that the king hath
fulfilled the request of his servant.

14:23 So Joab arose and went to Geshur, and brought Absalom to
Jerusalem.

14:24 And the king said, Let him turn to his own house, and let him
not see my face. So Absalom returned to his own house, and saw not the
king's face.

14:25 But in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as
Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the crown of
his head there was no blemish in him.

14:26 And when he polled his head, (for it was at every year's end
that he polled it: because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he
polled it:) he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels
after the king's weight.

14:27 And unto Absalom there were born three sons, and one daughter,
whose name was Tamar: she was a woman of a fair countenance.

14:28 So Absalom dwelt two full years in Jerusalem, and saw not the
king's face.

14:29 Therefore Absalom sent for Joab, to have sent him to the king;
but he would not come to him: and when he sent again the second time,
he would not come.

14:30 Therefore he said unto his servants, See, Joab's field is near
mine, and he hath barley there; go and set it on fire. And Absalom's
servants set the field on fire.

14:31 Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom unto his house, and said
unto him, Wherefore have thy servants set my field on fire?  14:32 And
Absalom answered Joab, Behold, I sent unto thee, saying, Come hither,
that I may send thee to the king, to say, Wherefore am I come from
Geshur? it had been good for me to have been there still: now
therefore let me see the king's face; and if there be any iniquity in
me, let him kill me.

14:33 So Joab came to the king, and told him: and when he had called
for Absalom, he came to the king, and bowed himself on his face to the
ground before the king: and the king kissed Absalom.

15:1 And it came to pass after this, that Absalom prepared him
chariots and horses, and fifty men to run before him.

15:2 And Absalom rose up early, and stood beside the way of the gate:
and it was so, that when any man that had a controversy came to the
king for judgment, then Absalom called unto him, and said, Of what
city art thou? And he said, Thy servant is of one of the tribes of
Israel.

15:3 And Absalom said unto him, See, thy matters are good and right;
but there is no man deputed of the king to hear thee.

15:4 Absalom said moreover, Oh that I were made judge in the land,
that every man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I
would do him justice!  15:5 And it was so, that when any man came nigh
to him to do him obeisance, he put forth his hand, and took him, and
kissed him.

15:6 And on this manner did Absalom to all Israel that came to the
king for judgment: so Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel.

15:7 And it came to pass after forty years, that Absalom said unto the
king, I pray thee, let me go and pay my vow, which I have vowed unto
the LORD, in Hebron.

15:8 For thy servant vowed a vow while I abode at Geshur in Syria,
saying, If the LORD shall bring me again indeed to Jerusalem, then I
will serve the LORD.

15:9 And the king said unto him, Go in peace. So he arose, and went to
Hebron.

15:10 But Absalom sent spies throughout all the tribes of Israel,
saying, As soon as ye hear the sound of the trumpet, then ye shall
say, Absalom reigneth in Hebron.

15:11 And with Absalom went two hundred men out of Jerusalem, that
were called; and they went in their simplicity, and they knew not any
thing.

15:12 And Absalom sent for Ahithophel the Gilonite, David's
counsellor, from his city, even from Giloh, while he offered
sacrifices. And the conspiracy was strong; for the people increased
continually with Absalom.

15:13 And there came a messenger to David, saying, The hearts of the
men of Israel are after Absalom.

15:14 And David said unto all his servants that were with him at
Jerusalem, Arise, and let us flee; for we shall not else escape from
Absalom: make speed to depart, lest he overtake us suddenly, and bring
evil upon us, and smite the city with the edge of the sword.

15:15 And the king's servants said unto the king, Behold, thy servants
are ready to do whatsoever my lord the king shall appoint.

15:16 And the king went forth, and all his household after him. And
the king left ten women, which were concubines, to keep the house.

15:17 And the king went forth, and all the people after him, and
tarried in a place that was far off.

15:18 And all his servants passed on beside him; and all the
Cherethites, and all the Pelethites, and all the Gittites, six hundred
men which came after him from Gath, passed on before the king.

15:19 Then said the king to Ittai the Gittite, Wherefore goest thou
also with us? return to thy place, and abide with the king: for thou
art a stranger, and also an exile.

15:20 Whereas thou camest but yesterday, should I this day make thee
go up and down with us? seeing I go whither I may, return thou, and
take back thy brethren: mercy and truth be with thee.

15:21 And Ittai answered the king, and said, As the LORD liveth, and
as my lord the king liveth, surely in what place my lord the king
shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will thy servant
be.

15:22 And David said to Ittai, Go and pass over. And Ittai the Gittite
passed over, and all his men, and all the little ones that were with
him.

15:23 And all the country wept with a loud voice, and all the people
passed over: the king also himself passed over the brook Kidron, and
all the people passed over, toward the way of the wilderness.

15:24 And lo Zadok also, and all the Levites were with him, bearing
the ark of the covenant of God: and they set down the ark of God; and
Abiathar went up, until all the people had done passing out of the
city.

15:25 And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of God into the
city: if I shall find favour in the eyes of the LORD, he will bring me
again, and shew me both it, and his habitation: 15:26 But if he thus
say, I have no delight in thee; behold, here am I, let him do to me as
seemeth good unto him.

15:27 The king said also unto Zadok the priest, Art not thou a seer?
return into the city in peace, and your two sons with you, Ahimaaz thy
son, and Jonathan the son of Abiathar.

15:28 See, I will tarry in the plain of the wilderness, until there
come word from you to certify me.

15:29 Zadok therefore and Abiathar carried the ark of God again to
Jerusalem: and they tarried there.

15:30 And David went up by the ascent of mount Olivet, and wept as he
went up, and had his head covered, and he went barefoot: and all the
people that was with him covered every man his head, and they went up,
weeping as they went up.

15:31 And one told David, saying, Ahithophel is among the conspirators
with Absalom. And David said, O LORD, I pray thee, turn the counsel of
Ahithophel into foolishness.

15:32 And it came to pass, that when David was come to the top of the
mount, where he worshipped God, behold, Hushai the Archite came to
meet him with his coat rent, and earth upon his head: 15:33 Unto whom
David said, If thou passest on with me, then thou shalt be a burden
unto me: 15:34 But if thou return to the city, and say unto Absalom, I
will be thy servant, O king; as I have been thy father's servant
hitherto, so will I now also be thy servant: then mayest thou for me
defeat the counsel of Ahithophel.

15:35 And hast thou not there with thee Zadok and Abiathar the
priests?  therefore it shall be, that what thing soever thou shalt
hear out of the king's house, thou shalt tell it to Zadok and Abiathar
the priests.

15:36 Behold, they have there with them their two sons, Ahimaaz
Zadok's son, and Jonathan Abiathar's son; and by them ye shall send
unto me every thing that ye can hear.

15:37 So Hushai David's friend came into the city, and Absalom came
into Jerusalem.

16:1 And when David was a little past the top of the hill, behold,
Ziba the servant of Mephibosheth met him, with a couple of asses
saddled, and upon them two hundred loaves of bread, and an hundred
bunches of raisins, and an hundred of summer fruits, and a bottle of
wine.

16:2 And the king said unto Ziba, What meanest thou by these? And Ziba
said, The asses be for the king's household to ride on; and the bread
and summer fruit for the young men to eat; and the wine, that such as
be faint in the wilderness may drink.

16:3 And the king said, And where is thy master's son? And Ziba said
unto the king, Behold, he abideth at Jerusalem: for he said, To day
shall the house of Israel restore me the kingdom of my father.

16:4 Then said the king to Ziba, Behold, thine are all that pertained
unto Mephibosheth. And Ziba said, I humbly beseech thee that I may
find grace in thy sight, my lord, O king.

16:5 And when king David came to Bahurim, behold, thence came out a
man of the family of the house of Saul, whose name was Shimei, the son
of Gera: he came forth, and cursed still as he came.

16:6 And he cast stones at David, and at all the servants of king
David: and all the people and all the mighty men were on his right
hand and on his left.

16:7 And thus said Shimei when he cursed, Come out, come out, thou
bloody man, and thou man of Belial: 16:8 The LORD hath returned upon
thee all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose stead thou hast
reigned; and the LORD hath delivered the kingdom into the hand of
Absalom thy son: and, behold, thou art taken in thy mischief, because
thou art a bloody man.

16:9 Then said Abishai the son of Zeruiah unto the king, Why should
this dead dog curse my lord the king? let me go over, I pray thee, and
take off his head.

16:10 And the king said, What have I to do with you, ye sons of
Zeruiah?  so let him curse, because the LORD hath said unto him, Curse
David. Who shall then say, Wherefore hast thou done so?  16:11 And
David said to Abishai, and to all his servants, Behold, my son, which
came forth of my bowels, seeketh my life: how much more now may this
Benjamite do it? let him alone, and let him curse; for the LORD hath
bidden him.

16:12 It may be that the LORD will look on mine affliction, and that
the LORD will requite me good for his cursing this day.

16:13 And as David and his men went by the way, Shimei went along on
the hill's side over against him, and cursed as he went, and threw
stones at him, and cast dust.

16:14 And the king, and all the people that were with him, came weary,
and refreshed themselves there.

16:15 And Absalom, and all the people the men of Israel, came to
Jerusalem, and Ahithophel with him.

16:16 And it came to pass, when Hushai the Archite, David's friend,
was come unto Absalom, that Hushai said unto Absalom, God save the
king, God save the king.

16:17 And Absalom said to Hushai, Is this thy kindness to thy friend?
why wentest thou not with thy friend?  16:18 And Hushai said unto
Absalom, Nay; but whom the LORD, and this people, and all the men of
Israel, choose, his will I be, and with him will I abide.

16:19 And again, whom should I serve? should I not serve in the
presence of his son? as I have served in thy father's presence, so
will I be in thy presence.

16:20 Then said Absalom to Ahithophel, Give counsel among you what we
shall do.

16:21 And Ahithophel said unto Absalom, Go in unto thy father's
concubines, which he hath left to keep the house; and all Israel shall
hear that thou art abhorred of thy father: then shall the hands of all
that are with thee be strong.

16:22 So they spread Absalom a tent upon the top of the house; and
Absalom went in unto his father's concubines in the sight of all
Israel.

16:23 And the counsel of Ahithophel, which he counselled in those
days, was as if a man had enquired at the oracle of God: so was all
the counsel of Ahithophel both with David and with Absalom.

17:1 Moreover Ahithophel said unto Absalom, Let me now choose out
twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue after David this
night: 17:2 And I will come upon him while he is weary and weak
handed, and will make him afraid: and all the people that are with him
shall flee; and I will smite the king only: 17:3 And I will bring back
all the people unto thee: the man whom thou seekest is as if all
returned: so all the people shall be in peace.

17:4 And the saying pleased Absalom well, and all the elders of
Israel.

17:5 Then said Absalom, Call now Hushai the Archite also, and let us
hear likewise what he saith.

17:6 And when Hushai was come to Absalom, Absalom spake unto him,
saying, Ahithophel hath spoken after this manner: shall we do after
his saying? if not; speak thou.

17:7 And Hushai said unto Absalom, The counsel that Ahithophel hath
given is not good at this time.

17:8 For, said Hushai, thou knowest thy father and his men, that they
be mighty men, and they be chafed in their minds, as a bear robbed of
her whelps in the field: and thy father is a man of war, and will not
lodge with the people.

17:9 Behold, he is hid now in some pit, or in some other place: and it
will come to pass, when some of them be overthrown at the first, that
whosoever heareth it will say, There is a slaughter among the people
that follow Absalom.

17:10 And he also that is valiant, whose heart is as the heart of a
lion, shall utterly melt: for all Israel knoweth that thy father is a
mighty man, and they which be with him are valiant men.

17:11 Therefore I counsel that all Israel be generally gathered unto
thee, from Dan even to Beersheba, as the sand that is by the sea for
multitude; and that thou go to battle in thine own person.

17:12 So shall we come upon him in some place where he shall be found,
and we will light upon him as the dew falleth on the ground: and of
him and of all the men that are with him there shall not be left so
much as one.

17:13 Moreover, if he be gotten into a city, then shall all Israel
bring ropes to that city, and we will draw it into the river, until
there be not one small stone found there.

17:14 And Absalom and all the men of Israel said, The counsel of
Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel. For the
LORD had appointed to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, to the
intent that the LORD might bring evil upon Absalom.

17:15 Then said Hushai unto Zadok and to Abiathar the priests, Thus
and thus did Ahithophel counsel Absalom and the elders of Israel; and
thus and thus have I counselled.

17:16 Now therefore send quickly, and tell David, saying, Lodge not
this night in the plains of the wilderness, but speedily pass over;
lest the king be swallowed up, and all the people that are with him.

17:17 Now Jonathan and Ahimaaz stayed by Enrogel; for they might not
be seen to come into the city: and a wench went and told them; and
they went and told king David.

17:18 Nevertheless a lad saw them, and told Absalom: but they went
both of them away quickly, and came to a man's house in Bahurim, which
had a well in his court; whither they went down.

17:19 And the woman took and spread a covering over the well's mouth,
and spread ground corn thereon; and the thing was not known.

17:20 And when Absalom's servants came to the woman to the house, they
said, Where is Ahimaaz and Jonathan? And the woman said unto them,
They be gone over the brook of water. And when they had sought and
could not find them, they returned to Jerusalem.

17:21 And it came to pass, after they were departed, that they came up
out of the well, and went and told king David, and said unto David,
Arise, and pass quickly over the water: for thus hath Ahithophel
counselled against you.

17:22 Then David arose, and all the people that were with him, and
they passed over Jordan: by the morning light there lacked not one of
them that was not gone over Jordan.

17:23 And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he
saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his
city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died,
and was buried in the sepulchre of his father.

17:24 Then David came to Mahanaim. And Absalom passed over Jordan, he
and all the men of Israel with him.

17:25 And Absalom made Amasa captain of the host instead of Joab:
which Amasa was a man's son, whose name was Ithra an Israelite, that
went in to Abigail the daughter of Nahash, sister to Zeruiah Joab's
mother.

17:26 So Israel and Absalom pitched in the land of Gilead.

17:27 And it came to pass, when David was come to Mahanaim, that Shobi
the son of Nahash of Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and Machir the
son of Ammiel of Lodebar, and Barzillai the Gileadite of Rogelim,
17:28 Brought beds, and basons, and earthen vessels, and wheat, and
barley, and flour, and parched corn, and beans, and lentiles, and
parched pulse, 17:29 And honey, and butter, and sheep, and cheese of
kine, for David, and for the people that were with him, to eat: for
they said, The people is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the
wilderness.

18:1 And David numbered the people that were with him, and set
captains of thousands, and captains of hundreds over them.

18:2 And David sent forth a third part of the people under the hand of
Joab, and a third part under the hand of Abishai the son of Zeruiah,
Joab's brother, and a third part under the hand of Ittai the Gittite.
And the king said unto the people, I will surely go forth with you
myself also.

18:3 But the people answered, Thou shalt not go forth: for if we flee
away, they will not care for us; neither if half of us die, will they
care for us: but now thou art worth ten thousand of us: therefore now
it is better that thou succour us out of the city.

18:4 And the king said unto them, What seemeth you best I will do. And
the king stood by the gate side, and all the people came out by
hundreds and by thousands.

18:5 And the king commanded Joab and Abishai and Ittai, saying, Deal
gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom. And all the
people heard when the king gave all the captains charge concerning
Absalom.

18:6 So the people went out into the field against Israel: and the
battle was in the wood of Ephraim; 18:7 Where the people of Israel
were slain before the servants of David, and there was there a great
slaughter that day of twenty thousand men.

18:8 For the battle was there scattered over the face of all the
country: and the wood devoured more people that day than the sword
devoured.

18:9 And Absalom met the servants of David. And Absalom rode upon a
mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his
head caught hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven
and the earth; and the mule that was under him went away.

18:10 And a certain man saw it, and told Joab, and said, Behold, I saw
Absalom hanged in an oak.

18:11 And Joab said unto the man that told him, And, behold, thou
sawest him, and why didst thou not smite him there to the ground? and
I would have given thee ten shekels of silver, and a girdle.

18:12 And the man said unto Joab, Though I should receive a thousand
shekels of silver in mine hand, yet would I not put forth mine hand
against the king's son: for in our hearing the king charged thee and
Abishai and Ittai, saying, Beware that none touch the young man
Absalom.

18:13 Otherwise I should have wrought falsehood against mine own life:
for there is no matter hid from the king, and thou thyself wouldest
have set thyself against me.

18:14 Then said Joab, I may not tarry thus with thee. And he took
three darts in his hand, and thrust them through the heart of Absalom,
while he was yet alive in the midst of the oak.

18:15 And ten young men that bare Joab's armour compassed about and
smote Absalom, and slew him.

18:16 And Joab blew the trumpet, and the people returned from pursuing
after Israel: for Joab held back the people.

18:17 And they took Absalom, and cast him into a great pit in the
wood, and laid a very great heap of stones upon him: and all Israel
fled every one to his tent.

18:18 Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and reared up for himself
a pillar, which is in the king's dale: for he said, I have no son to
keep my name in remembrance: and he called the pillar after his own
name: and it is called unto this day, Absalom's place.

18:19 Then said Ahimaaz the son of Zadok, Let me now run, and bear the
king tidings, how that the LORD hath avenged him of his enemies.

18:20 And Joab said unto him, Thou shalt not bear tidings this day,
but thou shalt bear tidings another day: but this day thou shalt bear
no tidings, because the king's son is dead.

18:21 Then said Joab to Cushi, Go tell the king what thou hast seen.
And Cushi bowed himself unto Joab, and ran.

18:22 Then said Ahimaaz the son of Zadok yet again to Joab, But
howsoever, let me, I pray thee, also run after Cushi. And Joab said,
Wherefore wilt thou run, my son, seeing that thou hast no tidings
ready?  18:23 But howsoever, said he, let me run. And he said unto
him, Run. Then Ahimaaz ran by the way of the plain, and overran Cushi.

18:24 And David sat between the two gates: and the watchman went up to
the roof over the gate unto the wall, and lifted up his eyes, and
looked, and behold a man running alone.

18:25 And the watchman cried, and told the king. And the king said, If
he be alone, there is tidings in his mouth. And he came apace, and
drew near.

18:26 And the watchman saw another man running: and the watchman
called unto the porter, and said, Behold another man running alone.
And the king said, He also bringeth tidings.

18:27 And the watchman said, Me thinketh the running of the foremost
is like the running of Ahimaaz the son of Zadok. And the king said, He
is a good man, and cometh with good tidings.

18:28 And Ahimaaz called, and said unto the king, All is well. And he
fell down to the earth upon his face before the king, and said,
Blessed be the LORD thy God, which hath delivered up the men that
lifted up their hand against my lord the king.

18:29 And the king said, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Ahimaaz
answered, When Joab sent the king's servant, and me thy servant, I saw
a great tumult, but I knew not what it was.

18:30 And the king said unto him, Turn aside, and stand here. And he
turned aside, and stood still.

18:31 And, behold, Cushi came; and Cushi said, Tidings, my lord the
king: for the LORD hath avenged thee this day of all them that rose up
against thee.

18:32 And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe? And
Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise
against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is.

18:33 And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the
gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my
son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son,
my son!  19:1 And it was told Joab, Behold, the king weepeth and
mourneth for Absalom.

19:2 And the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all the
people: for the people heard say that day how the king was grieved for
his son.

19:3 And the people gat them by stealth that day into the city, as
people being ashamed steal away when they flee in battle.

19:4 But the king covered his face, and the king cried with a loud
voice, O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!  19:5 And Joab
came into the house to the king, and said, Thou hast shamed this day
the faces of all thy servants, which this day have saved thy life, and
the lives of thy sons and of thy daughters, and the lives of thy
wives, and the lives of thy concubines; 19:6 In that thou lovest thine
enemies, and hatest thy friends. For thou hast declared this day, that
thou regardest neither princes nor servants: for this day I perceive,
that if Absalom had lived, and all we had died this day, then it had
pleased thee well.

19:7 Now therefore arise, go forth, and speak comfortably unto thy
servants: for I swear by the LORD, if thou go not forth, there will
not tarry one with thee this night: and that will be worse unto thee
than all the evil that befell thee from thy youth until now.

19:8 Then the king arose, and sat in the gate. And they told unto all
the people, saying, Behold, the king doth sit in the gate. And all the
people came before the king: for Israel had fled every man to his
tent.

19:9 And all the people were at strife throughout all the tribes of
Israel, saying, The king saved us out of the hand of our enemies, and
he delivered us out of the hand of the Philistines; and now he is fled
out of the land for Absalom.

19:10 And Absalom, whom we anointed over us, is dead in battle. Now
therefore why speak ye not a word of bringing the king back?  19:11
And king David sent to Zadok and to Abiathar the priests, saying,
Speak unto the elders of Judah, saying, Why are ye the last to bring
the king back to his house? seeing the speech of all Israel is come to
the king, even to his house.

19:12 Ye are my brethren, ye are my bones and my flesh: wherefore then
are ye the last to bring back the king?  19:13 And say ye to Amasa,
Art thou not of my bone, and of my flesh? God do so to me, and more
also, if thou be not captain of the host before me continually in the
room of Joab.

19:14 And he bowed the heart of all the men of Judah, even as the
heart of one man; so that they sent this word unto the king, Return
thou, and all thy servants.

19:15 So the king returned, and came to Jordan. And Judah came to
Gilgal, to go to meet the king, to conduct the king over Jordan.

19:16 And Shimei the son of Gera, a Benjamite, which was of Bahurim,
hasted and came down with the men of Judah to meet king David.

19:17 And there were a thousand men of Benjamin with him, and Ziba the
servant of the house of Saul, and his fifteen sons and his twenty
servants with him; and they went over Jordan before the king.

19:18 And there went over a ferry boat to carry over the king's
household, and to do what he thought good. And Shimei the son of Gera
fell down before the king, as he was come over Jordan; 19:19 And said
unto the king, Let not my lord impute iniquity unto me, neither do
thou remember that which thy servant did perversely the day that my
lord the king went out of Jerusalem, that the king should take it to
his heart.

19:20 For thy servant doth know that I have sinned: therefore, behold,
I am come the first this day of all the house of Joseph to go down to
meet my lord the king.

19:21 But Abishai the son of Zeruiah answered and said, Shall not
Shimei be put to death for this, because he cursed the LORD's
anointed?  19:22 And David said, What have I to do with you, ye sons
of Zeruiah, that ye should this day be adversaries unto me? shall
there any man be put to death this day in Israel? for do not I know
that I am this day king over Israel?  19:23 Therefore the king said
unto Shimei, Thou shalt not die. And the king sware unto him.

19:24 And Mephibosheth the son of Saul came down to meet the king, and
had neither dressed his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his
clothes, from the day the king departed until the day he came again in
peace.

19:25 And it came to pass, when he was come to Jerusalem to meet the
king, that the king said unto him, Wherefore wentest not thou with me,
Mephibosheth?  19:26 And he answered, My lord, O king, my servant
deceived me: for thy servant said, I will saddle me an ass, that I may
ride thereon, and go to the king; because thy servant is lame.

19:27 And he hath slandered thy servant unto my lord the king; but my
lord the king is as an angel of God: do therefore what is good in
thine eyes.

19:28 For all of my father's house were but dead men before my lord
the king: yet didst thou set thy servant among them that did eat at
thine own table. What right therefore have I yet to cry any more unto
the king?  19:29 And the king said unto him, Why speakest thou any
more of thy matters? I have said, Thou and Ziba divide the land.

19:30 And Mephibosheth said unto the king, Yea, let him take all,
forasmuch as my lord the king is come again in peace unto his own
house.

19:31 And Barzillai the Gileadite came down from Rogelim, and went
over Jordan with the king, to conduct him over Jordan.

19:32 Now Barzillai was a very aged man, even fourscore years old: and
he had provided the king of sustenance while he lay at Mahanaim; for
he was a very great man.

19:33 And the king said unto Barzillai, Come thou over with me, and I
will feed thee with me in Jerusalem.

19:34 And Barzillai said unto the king, How long have I to live, that
I should go up with the king unto Jerusalem?  19:35 I am this day
fourscore years old: and can I discern between good and evil? can thy
servant taste what I eat or what I drink? can I hear any more the
voice of singing men and singing women? wherefore then should thy
servant be yet a burden unto my lord the king?  19:36 Thy servant will
go a little way over Jordan with the king: and why should the king
recompense it me with such a reward?  19:37 Let thy servant, I pray
thee, turn back again, that I may die in mine own city, and be buried
by the grave of my father and of my mother. But behold thy servant
Chimham; let him go over with my lord the king; and do to him what
shall seem good unto thee.

19:38 And the king answered, Chimham shall go over with me, and I will
do to him that which shall seem good unto thee: and whatsoever thou
shalt require of me, that will I do for thee.

19:39 And all the people went over Jordan. And when the king was come
over, the king kissed Barzillai, and blessed him; and he returned unto
his own place.

19:40 Then the king went on to Gilgal, and Chimham went on with him:
and all the people of Judah conducted the king, and also half the
people of Israel.

19:41 And, behold, all the men of Israel came to the king, and said
unto the king, Why have our brethren the men of Judah stolen thee
away, and have brought the king, and his household, and all David's
men with him, over Jordan?  19:42 And all the men of Judah answered
the men of Israel, Because the king is near of kin to us: wherefore
then be ye angry for this matter? have we eaten at all of the king's
cost? or hath he given us any gift?  19:43 And the men of Israel
answered the men of Judah, and said, We have ten parts in the king,
and we have also more right in David than ye: why then did ye despise
us, that our advice should not be first had in bringing back our king?
And the words of the men of Judah were fiercer than the words of the
men of Israel.

20:1 And there happened to be there a man of Belial, whose name was
Sheba, the son of Bichri, a Benjamite: and he blew a trumpet, and
said, We have no part in David, neither have we inheritance in the son
of Jesse: every man to his tents, O Israel.

20:2 So every man of Israel went up from after David, and followed
Sheba the son of Bichri: but the men of Judah clave unto their king,
from Jordan even to Jerusalem.

20:3 And David came to his house at Jerusalem; and the king took the
ten women his concubines, whom he had left to keep the house, and put
them in ward, and fed them, but went not in unto them. So they were
shut up unto the day of their death, living in widowhood.

20:4 Then said the king to Amasa, Assemble me the men of Judah within
three days, and be thou here present.

20:5 So Amasa went to assemble the men of Judah: but he tarried longer
than the set time which he had appointed him.

20:6 And David said to Abishai, Now shall Sheba the son of Bichri do
us more harm than did Absalom: take thou thy lord's servants, and
pursue after him, lest he get him fenced cities, and escape us.

20:7 And there went out after him Joab's men, and the Cherethites, and
the Pelethites, and all the mighty men: and they went out of
Jerusalem, to pursue after Sheba the son of Bichri.

20:8 When they were at the great stone which is in Gibeon, Amasa went
before them. And Joab's garment that he had put on was girded unto
him, and upon it a girdle with a sword fastened upon his loins in the
sheath thereof; and as he went forth it fell out.

20:9 And Joab said to Amasa, Art thou in health, my brother? And Joab
took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him.

20:10 But Amasa took no heed to the sword that was in Joab's hand: so
he smote him therewith in the fifth rib, and shed out his bowels to
the ground, and struck him not again; and he died. So Joab and Abishai
his brother pursued after Sheba the son of Bichri.

20:11 And one of Joab's men stood by him, and said, He that favoureth
Joab, and he that is for David, let him go after Joab.

20:12 And Amasa wallowed in blood in the midst of the highway. And
when the man saw that all the people stood still, he removed Amasa out
of the highway into the field, and cast a cloth upon him, when he saw
that every one that came by him stood still.

20:13 When he was removed out of the highway, all the people went on
after Joab, to pursue after Sheba the son of Bichri.

20:14 And he went through all the tribes of Israel unto Abel, and to
Bethmaachah, and all the Berites: and they were gathered together, and
went also after him.

20:15 And they came and besieged him in Abel of Bethmaachah, and they
cast up a bank against the city, and it stood in the trench: and all
the people that were with Joab battered the wall, to throw it down.

20:16 Then cried a wise woman out of the city, Hear, hear; say, I pray
you, unto Joab, Come near hither, that I may speak with thee.

20:17 And when he was come near unto her, the woman said, Art thou
Joab?  And he answered, I am he. Then she said unto him, Hear the
words of thine handmaid. And he answered, I do hear.

20:18 Then she spake, saying, They were wont to speak in old time,
saying, They shall surely ask counsel at Abel: and so they ended the
matter.

20:19 I am one of them that are peaceable and faithful in Israel: thou
seekest to destroy a city and a mother in Israel: why wilt thou
swallow up the inheritance of the LORD?  20:20 And Joab answered and
said, Far be it, far be it from me, that I should swallow up or
destroy.

20:21 The matter is not so: but a man of mount Ephraim, Sheba the son
of Bichri by name, hath lifted up his hand against the king, even
against David: deliver him only, and I will depart from the city. And
the woman said unto Joab, Behold, his head shall be thrown to thee
over the wall.

20:22 Then the woman went unto all the people in her wisdom. And they
cut off the head of Sheba the son of Bichri, and cast it out to Joab.
And he blew a trumpet, and they retired from the city, every man to
his tent. And Joab returned to Jerusalem unto the king.

20:23 Now Joab was over all the host of Israel: and Benaiah the son of
Jehoiada was over the Cherethites and over the Pelethites: 20:24 And
Adoram was over the tribute: and Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud was
recorder: 20:25 And Sheva was scribe: and Zadok and Abiathar were the
priests: 20:26 And Ira also the Jairite was a chief ruler about David.

21:1 Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year
after year; and David enquired of the LORD. And the LORD answered, It
is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.

21:2 And the king called the Gibeonites, and said unto them; (now the
Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of
the Amorites; and the children of Israel had sworn unto them: and Saul
sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah.)
21:3 Wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I do for
you?  and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the
inheritance of the LORD?  21:4 And the Gibeonites said unto him, We
will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house; neither for us
shalt thou kill any man in Israel. And he said, What ye shall say,
that will I do for you.

21:5 And they answered the king, The man that consumed us, and that
devised against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any
of the coasts of Israel, 21:6 Let seven men of his sons be delivered
unto us, and we will hang them up unto the LORD in Gibeah of Saul,
whom the LORD did choose. And the king said, I will give them.

21:7 But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of
Saul, because of the LORD's oath that was between them, between David
and Jonathan the son of Saul.

21:8 But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah,
whom she bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of
Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel the son of
Barzillai the Meholathite: 21:9 And he delivered them into the hands
of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the LORD:
and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of
harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest.

21:10 And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it
for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water
dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the
air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.

21:11 And it was told David what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the
concubine of Saul, had done.

21:12 And David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of
Jonathan his son from the men of Jabeshgilead, which had stolen them
from the street of Bethshan, where the Philistines had hanged them,
when the Philistines had slain Saul in Gilboa: 21:13 And he brought up
from thence the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son; and
they gathered the bones of them that were hanged.

21:14 And the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son buried they in the
country of Benjamin in Zelah, in the sepulchre of Kish his father: and
they performed all that the king commanded. And after that God was
intreated for the land.

21:15 Moreover the Philistines had yet war again with Israel; and
David went down, and his servants with him, and fought against the
Philistines: and David waxed faint.

21:16 And Ishbibenob, which was of the sons of the giant, the weight
of whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of brass in weight, he
being girded with a new sword, thought to have slain David.

21:17 But Abishai the son of Zeruiah succoured him, and smote the
Philistine, and killed him. Then the men of David sware unto him,
saying, Thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that thou quench
not the light of Israel.

21:18 And it came to pass after this, that there was again a battle
with the Philistines at Gob: then Sibbechai the Hushathite slew Saph,
which was of the sons of the giant.

21:19 And there was again a battle in Gob with the Philistines, where
Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of
Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's
beam.

21:20 And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great
stature, that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six
toes, four and twenty in number; and he also was born to the giant.

21:21 And when he defied Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimeah the
brother of David slew him.

21:22 These four were born to the giant in Gath, and fell by the hand
of David, and by the hand of his servants.

22:1 And David spake unto the LORD the words of this song in the day
that the LORD had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies,
and out of the hand of Saul: 22:2 And he said, The LORD is my rock,
and my fortress, and my deliverer; 22:3 The God of my rock; in him
will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high
tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence.

22:4 I will call on the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I
be saved from mine enemies.

22:5 When the waves of death compassed me, the floods of ungodly men
made me afraid; 22:6 The sorrows of hell compassed me about; the
snares of death prevented me; 22:7 In my distress I called upon the
LORD, and cried to my God: and he did hear my voice out of his temple,
and my cry did enter into his ears.

22:8 Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of heaven
moved and shook, because he was wroth.

22:9 There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his
mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it.

22:10 He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under
his feet.

22:11 And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: and he was seen upon the
wings of the wind.

22:12 And he made darkness pavilions round about him, dark waters, and
thick clouds of the skies.

22:13 Through the brightness before him were coals of fire kindled.

22:14 The LORD thundered from heaven, and the most High uttered his
voice.

22:15 And he sent out arrows, and scattered them; lightning, and
discomfited them.

22:16 And the channels of the sea appeared, the foundations of the
world were discovered, at the rebuking of the LORD, at the blast of
the breath of his nostrils.

22:17 He sent from above, he took me; he drew me out of many waters;
22:18 He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them that hated
me: for they were too strong for me.

22:19 They prevented me in the day of my calamity: but the LORD was my
stay.

22:20 He brought me forth also into a large place: he delivered me,
because he delighted in me.

22:21 The LORD rewarded me according to my righteousness: according to
the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me.

22:22 For I have kept the ways of the LORD, and have not wickedly
departed from my God.

22:23 For all his judgments were before me: and as for his statutes, I
did not depart from them.

22:24 I was also upright before him, and have kept myself from mine
iniquity.

22:25 Therefore the LORD hath recompensed me according to my
righteousness; according to my cleanness in his eye sight.

22:26 With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful, and with the
upright man thou wilt shew thyself upright.

22:27 With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with the froward
thou wilt shew thyself unsavoury.

22:28 And the afflicted people thou wilt save: but thine eyes are upon
the haughty, that thou mayest bring them down.

22:29 For thou art my lamp, O LORD: and the LORD will lighten my
darkness.

22:30 For by thee I have run through a troop: by my God have I leaped
over a wall.

22:31 As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is tried:
he is a buckler to all them that trust in him.

22:32 For who is God, save the LORD? and who is a rock, save our God?
22:33 God is my strength and power: and he maketh my way perfect.

22:34 He maketh my feet like hinds' feet: and setteth me upon my high
places.

22:35 He teacheth my hands to war; so that a bow of steel is broken by
mine arms.

22:36 Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation: and thy
gentleness hath made me great.

22:37 Thou hast enlarged my steps under me; so that my feet did not
slip.

22:38 I have pursued mine enemies, and destroyed them; and turned not
again until I had consumed them.

22:39 And I have consumed them, and wounded them, that they could not
arise: yea, they are fallen under my feet.

22:40 For thou hast girded me with strength to battle: them that rose
up against me hast thou subdued under me.

22:41 Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies, that I might
destroy them that hate me.

22:42 They looked, but there was none to save; even unto the LORD, but
he answered them not.

22:43 Then did I beat them as small as the dust of the earth, I did
stamp them as the mire of the street, and did spread them abroad.

22:44 Thou also hast delivered me from the strivings of my people,
thou hast kept me to be head of the heathen: a people which I knew not
shall serve me.

22:45 Strangers shall submit themselves unto me: as soon as they hear,
they shall be obedient unto me.

22:46 Strangers shall fade away, and they shall be afraid out of their
close places.

22:47 The LORD liveth; and blessed be my rock; and exalted be the God
of the rock of my salvation.

22:48 It is God that avengeth me, and that bringeth down the people
under me.

22:49 And that bringeth me forth from mine enemies: thou also hast
lifted me up on high above them that rose up against me: thou hast
delivered me from the violent man.

22:50 Therefore I will give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the
heathen, and I will sing praises unto thy name.

22:51 He is the tower of salvation for his king: and sheweth mercy to
his anointed, unto David, and to his seed for evermore.

23:1 Now these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse
said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God
of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, 23:2 The Spirit of
the LORD spake by me, and his word was in my tongue.

23:3 The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that
ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.

23:4 And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth,
even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of
the earth by clear shining after rain.

23:5 Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an
everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all
my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow.

23:6 But the sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust
away, because they cannot be taken with hands: 23:7 But the man that
shall touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear;
and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place.

23:8 These be the names of the mighty men whom David had: The
Tachmonite that sat in the seat, chief among the captains; the same
was Adino the Eznite: he lift up his spear against eight hundred, whom
he slew at one time.

23:9 And after him was Eleazar the son of Dodo the Ahohite, one of the
three mighty men with David, when they defied the Philistines that
were there gathered together to battle, and the men of Israel were
gone away: 23:10 He arose, and smote the Philistines until his hand
was weary, and his hand clave unto the sword: and the LORD wrought a
great victory that day; and the people returned after him only to
spoil.

23:11 And after him was Shammah the son of Agee the Hararite. And the
Philistines were gathered together into a troop, where was a piece of
ground full of lentiles: and the people fled from the Philistines.

23:12 But he stood in the midst of the ground, and defended it, and
slew the Philistines: and the LORD wrought a great victory.

23:13 And three of the thirty chief went down, and came to David in
the harvest time unto the cave of Adullam: and the troop of the
Philistines pitched in the valley of Rephaim.

23:14 And David was then in an hold, and the garrison of the
Philistines was then in Bethlehem.

23:15 And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of
the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate!  23:16 And
the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and
drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and
took it, and brought it to David: nevertheless he would not drink
thereof, but poured it out unto the LORD.

23:17 And he said, Be it far from me, O LORD, that I should do this:
is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives?
therefore he would not drink it. These things did these three mighty
men.

23:18 And Abishai, the brother of Joab, the son of Zeruiah, was chief
among three. And he lifted up his spear against three hundred, and
slew them, and had the name among three.

23:19 Was he not most honourable of three? therefore he was their
captain: howbeit he attained not unto the first three.

23:20 And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the son of a valiant man, of
Kabzeel, who had done many acts, he slew two lionlike men of Moab: he
went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow:
23:21 And he slew an Egyptian, a goodly man: and the Egyptian had a
spear in his hand; but he went down to him with a staff, and plucked
the spear out of the Egyptian's hand, and slew him with his own spear.

23:22 These things did Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and had the name
among three mighty men.

23:23 He was more honourable than the thirty, but he attained not to
the first three. And David set him over his guard.

23:24 Asahel the brother of Joab was one of the thirty; Elhanan the
son of Dodo of Bethlehem, 23:25 Shammah the Harodite, Elika the
Harodite, 23:26 Helez the Paltite, Ira the son of Ikkesh the Tekoite,
23:27 Abiezer the Anethothite, Mebunnai the Hushathite, 23:28 Zalmon
the Ahohite, Maharai the Netophathite, 23:29 Heleb the son of Baanah,
a Netophathite, Ittai the son of Ribai out of Gibeah of the children
of Benjamin, 23:30 Benaiah the Pirathonite, Hiddai of the brooks of
Gaash, 23:31 Abialbon the Arbathite, Azmaveth the Barhumite, 23:32
Eliahba the Shaalbonite, of the sons of Jashen, Jonathan, 23:33
Shammah the Hararite, Ahiam the son of Sharar the Hararite, 23:34
Eliphelet the son of Ahasbai, the son of the Maachathite, Eliam the
son of Ahithophel the Gilonite, 23:35 Hezrai the Carmelite, Paarai the
Arbite, 23:36 Igal the son of Nathan of Zobah, Bani the Gadite, 23:37
Zelek the Ammonite, Nahari the Beerothite, armourbearer to Joab the
son of Zeruiah, 23:38 Ira an Ithrite, Gareb an Ithrite, 23:39 Uriah
the Hittite: thirty and seven in all.

24:1 And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and
he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.

24:2 For the king said to Joab the captain of the host, which was with
him, Go now through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan even to
Beersheba, and number ye the people, that I may know the number of the
people.

24:3 And Joab said unto the king, Now the LORD thy God add unto the
people, how many soever they be, an hundredfold, and that the eyes of
my lord the king may see it: but why doth my lord the king delight in
this thing?  24:4 Notwithstanding the king's word prevailed against
Joab, and against the captains of the host. And Joab and the captains
of the host went out from the presence of the king, to number the
people of Israel.

24:5 And they passed over Jordan, and pitched in Aroer, on the right
side of the city that lieth in the midst of the river of Gad, and
toward Jazer: 24:6 Then they came to Gilead, and to the land of
Tahtimhodshi; and they came to Danjaan, and about to Zidon, 24:7 And
came to the strong hold of Tyre, and to all the cities of the Hivites,
and of the Canaanites: and they went out to the south of Judah, even
to Beersheba.

24:8 So when they had gone through all the land, they came to
Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days.

24:9 And Joab gave up the sum of the number of the people unto the
king: and there were in Israel eight hundred thousand valiant men that
drew the sword; and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand men.

24:10 And David's heart smote him after that he had numbered the
people.

And David said unto the LORD, I have sinned greatly in that I have
done: and now, I beseech thee, O LORD, take away the iniquity of thy
servant; for I have done very foolishly.

24:11 For when David was up in the morning, the word of the LORD came
unto the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying, 24:12 Go and say unto
David, Thus saith the LORD, I offer thee three things; choose thee one
of them, that I may do it unto thee.

24:13 So Gad came to David, and told him, and said unto him, Shall
seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land? or wilt thou flee
three months before thine enemies, while they pursue thee? or that
there be three days' pestilence in thy land? now advise, and see what
answer I shall return to him that sent me.

24:14 And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let us fall now
into the hand of the LORD; for his mercies are great: and let me not
fall into the hand of man.

24:15 So the LORD sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even
to the time appointed: and there died of the people from Dan even to
Beersheba seventy thousand men.

24:16 And when the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to
destroy it, the LORD repented him of the evil, and said to the angel
that destroyed the people, It is enough: stay now thine hand. And the
angel of the LORD was by the threshingplace of Araunah the Jebusite.

24:17 And David spake unto the LORD when he saw the angel that smote
the people, and said, Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly: but
these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand, I pray thee, be
against me, and against my father's house.

24:18 And Gad came that day to David, and said unto him, Go up, rear
an altar unto the LORD in the threshingfloor of Araunah the Jebusite.

24:19 And David, according to the saying of Gad, went up as the LORD
commanded.

24:20 And Araunah looked, and saw the king and his servants coming on
toward him: and Araunah went out, and bowed himself before the king on
his face upon the ground.

24:21 And Araunah said, Wherefore is my lord the king come to his
servant?  And David said, To buy the threshingfloor of thee, to build
an altar unto the LORD, that the plague may be stayed from the people.

24:22 And Araunah said unto David, Let my lord the king take and offer
up what seemeth good unto him: behold, here be oxen for burnt
sacrifice, and threshing instruments and other instruments of the oxen
for wood.

24:23 All these things did Araunah, as a king, give unto the king. And
Araunah said unto the king, The LORD thy God accept thee.

24:24 And the king said unto Araunah, Nay; but I will surely buy it of
thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my
God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the
threshingfloor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.

24:25 And David built there an altar unto the LORD, and offered burnt
offerings and peace offerings. So the LORD was intreated for the land,
and the plague was stayed from Israel.




The First Book of the Kings

Commonly Called:

The Third Book of the Kings


1:1 Now king David was old and stricken in years; and they covered
him with clothes, but he gat no heat.

1:2 Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my
lord the king a young virgin: and let her stand before the king, and
let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the
king may get heat.

1:3 So they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of
Israel, and found Abishag a Shunammite, and brought her to the king.

1:4 And the damsel was very fair, and cherished the king, and
ministered to him: but the king knew her not.

1:5 Then Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, I will
be king: and he prepared him chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to
run before him.

1:6 And his father had not displeased him at any time in saying, Why
hast thou done so? and he also was a very goodly man; and his mother
bare him after Absalom.

1:7 And he conferred with Joab the son of Zeruiah, and with Abiathar
the priest: and they following Adonijah helped him.

1:8 But Zadok the priest, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and Nathan
the prophet, and Shimei, and Rei, and the mighty men which belonged to
David, were not with Adonijah.

1:9 And Adonijah slew sheep and oxen and fat cattle by the stone of
Zoheleth, which is by Enrogel, and called all his brethren the king's
sons, and all the men of Judah the king's servants: 1:10 But Nathan
the prophet, and Benaiah, and the mighty men, and Solomon his brother,
he called not.

1:11 Wherefore Nathan spake unto Bathsheba the mother of Solomon,
saying, Hast thou not heard that Adonijah the son of Haggith doth
reign, and David our lord knoweth it not?  1:12 Now therefore come,
let me, I pray thee, give thee counsel, that thou mayest save thine
own life, and the life of thy son Solomon.

1:13 Go and get thee in unto king David, and say unto him, Didst not
thou, my lord, O king, swear unto thine handmaid, saying, Assuredly
Solomon thy son shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne?
why then doth Adonijah reign?  1:14 Behold, while thou yet talkest
there with the king, I also will come in after thee, and confirm thy
words.

1:15 And Bathsheba went in unto the king into the chamber: and the
king was very old; and Abishag the Shunammite ministered unto the
king.

1:16 And Bathsheba bowed, and did obeisance unto the king. And the
king said, What wouldest thou?  1:17 And she said unto him, My lord,
thou swarest by the LORD thy God unto thine handmaid, saying,
Assuredly Solomon thy son shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon
my throne.

1:18 And now, behold, Adonijah reigneth; and now, my lord the king,
thou knowest it not: 1:19 And he hath slain oxen and fat cattle and
sheep in abundance, and hath called all the sons of the king, and
Abiathar the priest, and Joab the captain of the host: but Solomon thy
servant hath he not called.

1:20 And thou, my lord, O king, the eyes of all Israel are upon thee,
that thou shouldest tell them who shall sit on the throne of my lord
the king after him.

1:21 Otherwise it shall come to pass, when my lord the king shall
sleep with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon shall be counted
offenders.

1:22 And, lo, while she yet talked with the king, Nathan the prophet
also came in.

1:23 And they told the king, saying, Behold Nathan the prophet. And
when he was come in before the king, he bowed himself before the king
with his face to the ground.

1:24 And Nathan said, My lord, O king, hast thou said, Adonijah shall
reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne?  1:25 For he is gone
down this day, and hath slain oxen and fat cattle and sheep in
abundance, and hath called all the king's sons, and the captains of
the host, and Abiathar the priest; and, behold, they eat and drink
before him, and say, God save king Adonijah.

1:26 But me, even me thy servant, and Zadok the priest, and Benaiah
the son of Jehoiada, and thy servant Solomon, hath he not called.

1:27 Is this thing done by my lord the king, and thou hast not shewed
it unto thy servant, who should sit on the throne of my lord the king
after him?  1:28 Then king David answered and said, Call me Bathsheba.
And she came into the king's presence, and stood before the king.

1:29 And the king sware, and said, As the LORD liveth, that hath
redeemed my soul out of all distress, 1:30 Even as I sware unto thee
by the LORD God of Israel, saying, Assuredly Solomon thy son shall
reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne in my stead; even so
will I certainly do this day.

1:31 Then Bathsheba bowed with her face to the earth, and did
reverence to the king, and said, Let my lord king David live for ever.

1:32 And king David said, Call me Zadok the priest, and Nathan the
prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada. And they came before the
king.

1:33 The king also said unto them, Take with you the servants of your
lord, and cause Solomon my son to ride upon mine own mule, and bring
him down to Gihon: 1:34 And let Zadok the priest and Nathan the
prophet anoint him there king over Israel: and blow ye with the
trumpet, and say, God save king Solomon.

1:35 Then ye shall come up after him, that he may come and sit upon my
throne; for he shall be king in my stead: and I have appointed him to
be ruler over Israel and over Judah.

1:36 And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada answered the king, and said,
Amen: the LORD God of my lord the king say so too.

1:37 As the LORD hath been with my lord the king, even so be he with
Solomon, and make his throne greater than the throne of my lord king
David.

1:38 So Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son
of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites, and the Pelethites, went down, and
caused Solomon to ride upon king David's mule, and brought him to
Gihon.

1:39 And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle,
and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people
said, God save king Solomon.

1:40 And all the people came up after him, and the people piped with
pipes, and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth rent with the
sound of them.

1:41 And Adonijah and all the guests that were with him heard it as
they had made an end of eating. And when Joab heard the sound of the
trumpet, he said, Wherefore is this noise of the city being in an
uproar?  1:42 And while he yet spake, behold, Jonathan the son of
Abiathar the priest came; and Adonijah said unto him, Come in; for
thou art a valiant man, and bringest good tidings.

1:43 And Jonathan answered and said to Adonijah, Verily our lord king
David hath made Solomon king.

1:44 And the king hath sent with him Zadok the priest, and Nathan the
prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites, and the
Pelethites, and they have caused him to ride upon the king's mule:
1:45 And Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet have anointed him
king in Gihon: and they are come up from thence rejoicing, so that the
city rang again. This is the noise that ye have heard.

1:46 And also Solomon sitteth on the throne of the kingdom.

1:47 And moreover the king's servants came to bless our lord king
David, saying, God make the name of Solomon better than thy name, and
make his throne greater than thy throne. And the king bowed himself
upon the bed.

1:48 And also thus said the king, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel,
which hath given one to sit on my throne this day, mine eyes even
seeing it.

1:49 And all the guests that were with Adonijah were afraid, and rose
up, and went every man his way.

1:50 And Adonijah feared because of Solomon, and arose, and went, and
caught hold on the horns of the altar.

1:51 And it was told Solomon, saying, Behold, Adonijah feareth king
Solomon: for, lo, he hath caught hold on the horns of the altar,
saying, Let king Solomon swear unto me today that he will not slay his
servant with the sword.

1:52 And Solomon said, If he will shew himself a worthy man, there
shall not an hair of him fall to the earth: but if wickedness shall be
found in him, he shall die.

1:53 So king Solomon sent, and they brought him down from the altar.
And he came and bowed himself to king Solomon: and Solomon said unto
him, Go to thine house.

2:1 Now the days of David drew nigh that he should die; and he charged
Solomon his son, saying, 2:2 I go the way of all the earth: be thou
strong therefore, and shew thyself a man; 2:3 And keep the charge of
the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, and his
commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies, as it is written
in the law of Moses, that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest,
and whithersoever thou turnest thyself: 2:4 That the LORD may continue
his word which he spake concerning me, saying, If thy children take
heed to their way, to walk before me in truth with all their heart and
with all their soul, there shall not fail thee (said he) a man on the
throne of Israel.

2:5 Moreover thou knowest also what Joab the son of Zeruiah did to me,
and what he did to the two captains of the hosts of Israel, unto Abner
the son of Ner, and unto Amasa the son of Jether, whom he slew, and
shed the blood of war in peace, and put the blood of war upon his
girdle that was about his loins, and in his shoes that were on his
feet.

2:6 Do therefore according to thy wisdom, and let not his hoar head go
down to the grave in peace.

2:7 But shew kindness unto the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite, and
let them be of those that eat at thy table: for so they came to me
when I fled because of Absalom thy brother.

2:8 And, behold, thou hast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, a
Benjamite of Bahurim, which cursed me with a grievous curse in the day
when I went to Mahanaim: but he came down to meet me at Jordan, and I
sware to him by the LORD, saying, I will not put thee to death with
the sword.

2:9 Now therefore hold him not guiltless: for thou art a wise man, and
knowest what thou oughtest to do unto him; but his hoar head bring
thou down to the grave with blood.

2:10 So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of
David.

2:11 And the days that David reigned over Israel were forty years:
seven years reigned he in Hebron, and thirty and three years reigned
he in Jerusalem.

2:12 Then sat Solomon upon the throne of David his father; and his
kingdom was established greatly.

2:13 And Adonijah the son of Haggith came to Bathsheba the mother of
Solomon. And she said, Comest thou peaceably? And he said, Peaceably.

2:14 He said moreover, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And she said,
Say on.

2:15 And he said, Thou knowest that the kingdom was mine, and that all
Israel set their faces on me, that I should reign: howbeit the kingdom
is turned about, and is become my brother's: for it was his from the
LORD.

2:16 And now I ask one petition of thee, deny me not. And she said
unto him, Say on.

2:17 And he said, Speak, I pray thee, unto Solomon the king, (for he
will not say thee nay,) that he give me Abishag the Shunammite to
wife.

2:18 And Bathsheba said, Well; I will speak for thee unto the king.

2:19 Bathsheba therefore went unto king Solomon, to speak unto him for
Adonijah. And the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto
her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the
king's mother; and she sat on his right hand.

2:20 Then she said, I desire one small petition of thee; I pray thee,
say me not nay. And the king said unto her, Ask on, my mother: for I
will not say thee nay.

2:21 And she said, Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah thy
brother to wife.

2:22 And king Solomon answered and said unto his mother, And why dost
thou ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? ask for him the kingdom
also; for he is mine elder brother; even for him, and for Abiathar the
priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah.

2:23 Then king Solomon sware by the LORD, saying, God do so to me, and
more also, if Adonijah have not spoken this word against his own life.

2:24 Now therefore, as the LORD liveth, which hath established me, and
set me on the throne of David my father, and who hath made me an
house, as he promised, Adonijah shall be put to death this day.

2:25 And king Solomon sent by the hand of Benaiah the son of Jehoiada;
and he fell upon him that he died.

2:26 And unto Abiathar the priest said the king, Get thee to Anathoth,
unto thine own fields; for thou art worthy of death: but I will not at
this time put thee to death, because thou barest the ark of the LORD
God before David my father, and because thou hast been afflicted in
all wherein my father was afflicted.

2:27 So Solomon thrust out Abiathar from being priest unto the LORD;
that he might fulfil the word of the LORD, which he spake concerning
the house of Eli in Shiloh.

2:28 Then tidings came to Joab: for Joab had turned after Adonijah,
though he turned not after Absalom. And Joab fled unto the tabernacle
of the LORD, and caught hold on the horns of the altar.

2:29 And it was told king Solomon that Joab was fled unto the
tabernacle of the LORD; and, behold, he is by the altar. Then Solomon
sent Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, saying, Go, fall upon him.

2:30 And Benaiah came to the tabernacle of the LORD, and said unto
him, Thus saith the king, Come forth. And he said, Nay; but I will die
here. And Benaiah brought the king word again, saying, Thus said Joab,
and thus he answered me.

2:31 And the king said unto him, Do as he hath said, and fall upon
him, and bury him; that thou mayest take away the innocent blood,
which Joab shed, from me, and from the house of my father.

2:32 And the LORD shall return his blood upon his own head, who fell
upon two men more righteous and better than he, and slew them with the
sword, my father David not knowing thereof, to wit, Abner the son of
Ner, captain of the host of Israel, and Amasa the son of Jether,
captain of the host of Judah.

2:33 Their blood shall therefore return upon the head of Joab, and
upon the head of his seed for ever: but upon David, and upon his seed,
and upon his house, and upon his throne, shall there be peace for ever
from the LORD.

2:34 So Benaiah the son of Jehoiada went up, and fell upon him, and
slew him: and he was buried in his own house in the wilderness.

2:35 And the king put Benaiah the son of Jehoiada in his room over the
host: and Zadok the priest did the king put in the room of Abiathar.

2:36 And the king sent and called for Shimei, and said unto him, Build
thee an house in Jerusalem, and dwell there, and go not forth thence
any whither.

2:37 For it shall be, that on the day thou goest out, and passest over
the brook Kidron, thou shalt know for certain that thou shalt surely
die: thy blood shall be upon thine own head.

2:38 And Shimei said unto the king, The saying is good: as my lord the
king hath said, so will thy servant do. And Shimei dwelt in Jerusalem
many days.

2:39 And it came to pass at the end of three years, that two of the
servants of Shimei ran away unto Achish son of Maachah king of Gath.
And they told Shimei, saying, Behold, thy servants be in Gath.

2:40 And Shimei arose, and saddled his ass, and went to Gath to Achish
to seek his servants: and Shimei went, and brought his servants from
Gath.

2:41 And it was told Solomon that Shimei had gone from Jerusalem to
Gath, and was come again.

2:42 And the king sent and called for Shimei, and said unto him, Did I
not make thee to swear by the LORD, and protested unto thee, saying,
Know for a certain, on the day thou goest out, and walkest abroad any
whither, that thou shalt surely die? and thou saidst unto me, The word
that I have heard is good.

2:43 Why then hast thou not kept the oath of the LORD, and the
commandment that I have charged thee with?  2:44 The king said
moreover to Shimei, Thou knowest all the wickedness which thine heart
is privy to, that thou didst to David my father: therefore the LORD
shall return thy wickedness upon thine own head; 2:45 And king Solomon
shall be blessed, and the throne of David shall be established before
the LORD for ever.

2:46 So the king commanded Benaiah the son of Jehoiada; which went
out, and fell upon him, that he died. And the kingdom was established
in the hand of Solomon.

3:1 And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took
Pharaoh's daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he
had made an end of building his own house, and the house of the LORD,
and the wall of Jerusalem round about.

3:2 Only the people sacrificed in high places, because there was no
house built unto the name of the LORD, until those days.

3:3 And Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of David his
father: only he sacrificed and burnt incense in high places.

3:4 And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the
great high place: a thousand burnt offerings did Solomon offer upon
that altar.

3:5 In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and
God said, Ask what I shall give thee.

3:6 And Solomon said, Thou hast shewed unto thy servant David my
father great mercy, according as he walked before thee in truth, and
in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with thee; and thou hast
kept for him this great kindness, that thou hast given him a son to
sit on his throne, as it is this day.

3:7 And now, O LORD my God, thou hast made thy servant king instead of
David my father: and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out
or come in.

3:8 And thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou hast
chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for
multitude.

3:9 Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy
people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to
judge this thy so great a people?  3:10 And the speech pleased the
LORD, that Solomon had asked this thing.

3:11 And God said unto him, Because thou hast asked this thing, and
hast not asked for thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for
thyself, nor hast asked the life of thine enemies; but hast asked for
thyself understanding to discern judgment; 3:12 Behold, I have done
according to thy words: lo, I have given thee a wise and an
understanding heart; so that there was none like thee before thee,
neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee.

3:13 And I have also given thee that which thou hast not asked, both
riches, and honour: so that there shall not be any among the kings
like unto thee all thy days.

3:14 And if thou wilt walk in my ways, to keep my statutes and my
commandments, as thy father David did walk, then I will lengthen thy
days.

3:15 And Solomon awoke; and, behold, it was a dream. And he came to
Jerusalem, and stood before the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and
offered up burnt offerings, and offered peace offerings, and made a
feast to all his servants.

3:16 Then came there two women, that were harlots, unto the king, and
stood before him.

3:17 And the one woman said, O my lord, I and this woman dwell in one
house; and I was delivered of a child with her in the house.

3:18 And it came to pass the third day after that I was delivered,
that this woman was delivered also: and we were together; there was no
stranger with us in the house, save we two in the house.

3:19 And this woman's child died in the night; because she overlaid
it.

3:20 And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while
thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead
child in my bosom.

3:21 And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck, behold, it
was dead: but when I had considered it in the morning, behold, it was
not my son, which I did bear.

3:22 And the other woman said, Nay; but the living is my son, and the
dead is thy son. And this said, No; but the dead is thy son, and the
living is my son. Thus they spake before the king.

3:23 Then said the king, The one saith, This is my son that liveth,
and thy son is the dead: and the other saith, Nay; but thy son is the
dead, and my son is the living.

3:24 And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword
before the king.

3:25 And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half
to the one, and half to the other.

3:26 Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king,
for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her
the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it
be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.

3:27 Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and
in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.

3:28 And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged;
and they feared the king: for they saw that the wisdom of God was in
him, to do judgment.

4:1 So king Solomon was king over all Israel.

4:2 And these were the princes which he had; Azariah the son of Zadok
the priest, 4:3 Elihoreph and Ahiah, the sons of Shisha, scribes;
Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud, the recorder.

4:4 And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was over the host: and Zadok and
Abiathar were the priests: 4:5 And Azariah the son of Nathan was over
the officers: and Zabud the son of Nathan was principal officer, and
the king's friend: 4:6 And Ahishar was over the household: and
Adoniram the son of Abda was over the tribute.

4:7 And Solomon had twelve officers over all Israel, which provided
victuals for the king and his household: each man his month in a year
made provision.

4:8 And these are their names: The son of Hur, in mount Ephraim: 4:9
The son of Dekar, in Makaz, and in Shaalbim, and Bethshemesh, and
Elonbethhanan: 4:10 The son of Hesed, in Aruboth; to him pertained
Sochoh, and all the land of Hepher: 4:11 The son of Abinadab, in all
the region of Dor; which had Taphath the daughter of Solomon to wife:
4:12 Baana the son of Ahilud; to him pertained Taanach and Megiddo,
and all Bethshean, which is by Zartanah beneath Jezreel, from
Bethshean to Abelmeholah, even unto the place that is beyond Jokneam:
4:13 The son of Geber, in Ramothgilead; to him pertained the towns of
Jair the son of Manasseh, which are in Gilead; to him also pertained
the region of Argob, which is in Bashan, threescore great cities with
walls and brasen bars: 4:14 Ahinadab the son of Iddo had Mahanaim:
4:15 Ahimaaz was in Naphtali; he also took Basmath the daughter of
Solomon to wife: 4:16 Baanah the son of Hushai was in Asher and in
Aloth: 4:17 Jehoshaphat the son of Paruah, in Issachar: 4:18 Shimei
the son of Elah, in Benjamin: 4:19 Geber the son of Uri was in the
country of Gilead, in the country of Sihon king of the Amorites, and
of Og king of Bashan; and he was the only officer which was in the
land.

4:20 Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in
multitude, eating and drinking, and making merry.

4:21 And Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from the river unto the
land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt: they brought
presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life.

4:22 And Solomon's provision for one day was thirty measures of fine
flour, and threescore measures of meal, 4:23 Ten fat oxen, and twenty
oxen out of the pastures, and an hundred sheep, beside harts, and
roebucks, and fallowdeer, and fatted fowl.

4:24 For he had dominion over all the region on this side the river,
from Tiphsah even to Azzah, over all the kings on this side the river:
and he had peace on all sides round about him.

4:25 And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and
under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of
Solomon.

4:26 And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots,
and twelve thousand horsemen.

4:27 And those officers provided victual for king Solomon, and for all
that came unto king Solomon's table, every man in his month: they
lacked nothing.

4:28 Barley also and straw for the horses and dromedaries brought they
unto the place where the officers were, every man according to his
charge.

4:29 And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and
largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore.

4:30 And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of
the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt.

4:31 For he was wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and
Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and his fame was in
all nations round about.

4:32 And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a
thousand and five.

4:33 And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon
even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of
beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.

4:34 And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from
all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom.

5:1 And Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants unto Solomon; for he had
heard that they had anointed him king in the room of his father: for
Hiram was ever a lover of David.

5:2 And Solomon sent to Hiram, saying, 5:3 Thou knowest how that David
my father could not build an house unto the name of the LORD his God
for the wars which were about him on every side, until the LORD put
them under the soles of his feet.

5:4 But now the LORD my God hath given me rest on every side, so that
there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent.

5:5 And, behold, I purpose to build an house unto the name of the LORD
my God, as the LORD spake unto David my father, saying, Thy son, whom
I will set upon thy throne in thy room, he shall build an house unto
my name.

5:6 Now therefore command thou that they hew me cedar trees out of
Lebanon; and my servants shall be with thy servants: and unto thee
will I give hire for thy servants according to all that thou shalt
appoint: for thou knowest that there is not among us any that can
skill to hew timber like unto the Sidonians.

5:7 And it came to pass, when Hiram heard the words of Solomon, that
he rejoiced greatly, and said, Blessed be the LORD this day, which
hath given unto David a wise son over this great people.

5:8 And Hiram sent to Solomon, saying, I have considered the things
which thou sentest to me for: and I will do all thy desire concerning
timber of cedar, and concerning timber of fir.

5:9 My servants shall bring them down from Lebanon unto the sea: and I
will convey them by sea in floats unto the place that thou shalt
appoint me, and will cause them to be discharged there, and thou shalt
receive them: and thou shalt accomplish my desire, in giving food for
my household.

5:10 So Hiram gave Solomon cedar trees and fir trees according to all
his desire.

5:11 And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food
to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon
to Hiram year by year.

5:12 And the LORD gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him: and there
was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league
together.

5:13 And king Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy
was thirty thousand men.

5:14 And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: a
month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home: and Adoniram was
over the levy.

5:15 And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens,
and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains; 5:16 Beside the chief
of Solomon's officers which were over the work, three thousand and
three hundred, which ruled over the people that wrought in the work.

5:17 And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, costly
stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house.

5:18 And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the
stonesquarers: so they prepared timber and stones to build the house.

6:1 And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after
the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the
fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is
the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.

6:2 And the house which king Solomon built for the LORD, the length
thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits,
and the height thereof thirty cubits.

6:3 And the porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits was
the length thereof, according to the breadth of the house; and ten
cubits was the breadth thereof before the house.

6:4 And for the house he made windows of narrow lights.

6:5 And against the wall of the house he built chambers round about,
against the walls of the house round about, both of the temple and of
the oracle: and he made chambers round about: 6:6 The nethermost
chamber was five cubits broad, and the middle was six cubits broad,
and the third was seven cubits broad: for without in the wall of the
house he made narrowed rests round about, that the beams should not be
fastened in the walls of the house.

6:7 And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made
ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer
nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in
building.

6:8 The door for the middle chamber was in the right side of the
house: and they went up with winding stairs into the middle chamber,
and out of the middle into the third.

6:9 So he built the house, and finished it; and covered the house with
beams and boards of cedar.

6:10 And then he built chambers against all the house, five cubits
high: and they rested on the house with timber of cedar.

6:11 And the word of the LORD came to Solomon, saying, 6:12 Concerning
this house which thou art in building, if thou wilt walk in my
statutes, and execute my judgments, and keep all my commandments to
walk in them; then will I perform my word with thee, which I spake
unto David thy father: 6:13 And I will dwell among the children of
Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel.

6:14 So Solomon built the house, and finished it.

6:15 And he built the walls of the house within with boards of cedar,
both the floor of the house, and the walls of the ceiling: and he
covered them on the inside with wood, and covered the floor of the
house with planks of fir.

6:16 And he built twenty cubits on the sides of the house, both the
floor and the walls with boards of cedar: he even built them for it
within, even for the oracle, even for the most holy place.

6:17 And the house, that is, the temple before it, was forty cubits
long.

6:18 And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops and open
flowers: all was cedar; there was no stone seen.

6:19 And the oracle he prepared in the house within, to set there the
ark of the covenant of the LORD.

6:20 And the oracle in the forepart was twenty cubits in length, and
twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits in the height thereof: and
he overlaid it with pure gold; and so covered the altar which was of
cedar.

6:21 So Solomon overlaid the house within with pure gold: and he made
a partition by the chains of gold before the oracle; and he overlaid
it with gold.

6:22 And the whole house he overlaid with gold, until he had finished
all the house: also the whole altar that was by the oracle he overlaid
with gold.

6:23 And within the oracle he made two cherubims of olive tree, each
ten cubits high.

6:24 And five cubits was the one wing of the cherub, and five cubits
the other wing of the cherub: from the uttermost part of the one wing
unto the uttermost part of the other were ten cubits.

6:25 And the other cherub was ten cubits: both the cherubims were of
one measure and one size.

6:26 The height of the one cherub was ten cubits, and so was it of the
other cherub.

6:27 And he set the cherubims within the inner house: and they
stretched forth the wings of the cherubims, so that the wing of the
one touched the one wall, and the wing of the other cherub touched the
other wall; and their wings touched one another in the midst of the
house.

6:28 And he overlaid the cherubims with gold.

6:29 And he carved all the walls of the house round about with carved
figures of cherubims and palm trees and open flowers, within and
without.

6:30 And the floors of the house he overlaid with gold, within and
without.

6:31 And for the entering of the oracle he made doors of olive tree:
the lintel and side posts were a fifth part of the wall.

6:32 The two doors also were of olive tree; and he carved upon them
carvings of cherubims and palm trees and open flowers, and overlaid
them with gold, and spread gold upon the cherubims, and upon the palm
trees.

6:33 So also made he for the door of the temple posts of olive tree, a
fourth part of the wall.

6:34 And the two doors were of fir tree: the two leaves of the one
door were folding, and the two leaves of the other door were folding.

6:35 And he carved thereon cherubims and palm trees and open flowers:
and covered them with gold fitted upon the carved work.

6:36 And he built the inner court with three rows of hewed stone, and
a row of cedar beams.

6:37 In the fourth year was the foundation of the house of the LORD
laid, in the month Zif: 6:38 And in the eleventh year, in the month
Bul, which is the eighth month, was the house finished throughout all
the parts thereof, and according to all the fashion of it. So was he
seven years in building it.

7:1 But Solomon was building his own house thirteen years, and he
finished all his house.

7:2 He built also the house of the forest of Lebanon; the length
thereof was an hundred cubits, and the breadth thereof fifty cubits,
and the height thereof thirty cubits, upon four rows of cedar pillars,
with cedar beams upon the pillars.

7:3 And it was covered with cedar above upon the beams, that lay on
forty five pillars, fifteen in a row.

7:4 And there were windows in three rows, and light was against light
in three ranks.

7:5 And all the doors and posts were square, with the windows: and
light was against light in three ranks.

7:6 And he made a porch of pillars; the length thereof was fifty
cubits, and the breadth thereof thirty cubits: and the porch was
before them: and the other pillars and the thick beam were before
them.

7:7 Then he made a porch for the throne where he might judge, even the
porch of judgment: and it was covered with cedar from one side of the
floor to the other.

7:8 And his house where he dwelt had another court within the porch,
which was of the like work. Solomon made also an house for Pharaoh's
daughter, whom he had taken to wife, like unto this porch.

7:9 All these were of costly stones, according to the measures of
hewed stones, sawed with saws, within and without, even from the
foundation unto the coping, and so on the outside toward the great
court.

7:10 And the foundation was of costly stones, even great stones,
stones of ten cubits, and stones of eight cubits.

7:11 And above were costly stones, after the measures of hewed stones,
and cedars.

7:12 And the great court round about was with three rows of hewed
stones, and a row of cedar beams, both for the inner court of the
house of the LORD, and for the porch of the house.

7:13 And king Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre.

7:14 He was a widow's son of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was
a man of Tyre, a worker in brass: and he was filled with wisdom, and
understanding, and cunning to work all works in brass. And he came to
king Solomon, and wrought all his work.

7:15 For he cast two pillars of brass, of eighteen cubits high apiece:
and a line of twelve cubits did compass either of them about.

7:16 And he made two chapiters of molten brass, to set upon the tops
of the pillars: the height of the one chapiter was five cubits, and
the height of the other chapiter was five cubits: 7:17 And nets of
checker work, and wreaths of chain work, for the chapiters which were
upon the top of the pillars; seven for the one chapiter, and seven for
the other chapiter.

7:18 And he made the pillars, and two rows round about upon the one
network, to cover the chapiters that were upon the top, with
pomegranates: and so did he for the other chapiter.

7:19 And the chapiters that were upon the top of the pillars were of
lily work in the porch, four cubits.

7:20 And the chapiters upon the two pillars had pomegranates also
above, over against the belly which was by the network: and the
pomegranates were two hundred in rows round about upon the other
chapiter.

7:21 And he set up the pillars in the porch of the temple: and he set
up the right pillar, and called the name thereof Jachin: and he set up
the left pillar, and called the name thereof Boaz.

7:22 And upon the top of the pillars was lily work: so was the work of
the pillars finished.

7:23 And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the
other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a
line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.

7:24 And under the brim of it round about there were knops compassing
it, ten in a cubit, compassing the sea round about: the knops were
cast in two rows, when it was cast.

7:25 It stood upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, and
three looking toward the west, and three looking toward the south, and
three looking toward the east: and the sea was set above upon them,
and all their hinder parts were inward.

7:26 And it was an hand breadth thick, and the brim thereof was
wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies: it contained
two thousand baths.

7:27 And he made ten bases of brass; four cubits was the length of one
base, and four cubits the breadth thereof, and three cubits the height
of it.

7:28 And the work of the bases was on this manner: they had borders,
and the borders were between the ledges: 7:29 And on the borders that
were between the ledges were lions, oxen, and cherubims: and upon the
ledges there was a base above: and beneath the lions and oxen were
certain additions made of thin work.

7:30 And every base had four brasen wheels, and plates of brass: and
the four corners thereof had undersetters: under the laver were
undersetters molten, at the side of every addition.

7:31 And the mouth of it within the chapiter and above was a cubit:
but the mouth thereof was round after the work of the base, a cubit
and an half: and also upon the mouth of it were gravings with their
borders, foursquare, not round.

7:32 And under the borders were four wheels; and the axletrees of the
wheels were joined to the base: and the height of a wheel was a cubit
and half a cubit.

7:33 And the work of the wheels was like the work of a chariot wheel:
their axletrees, and their naves, and their felloes, and their spokes,
were all molten.

7:34 And there were four undersetters to the four corners of one base:
and the undersetters were of the very base itself.

7:35 And in the top of the base was there a round compass of half a
cubit high: and on the top of the base the ledges thereof and the
borders thereof were of the same.

7:36 For on the plates of the ledges thereof, and on the borders
thereof, he graved cherubims, lions, and palm trees, according to the
proportion of every one, and additions round about.

7:37 After this manner he made the ten bases: all of them had one
casting, one measure, and one size.

7:38 Then made he ten lavers of brass: one laver contained forty
baths: and every laver was four cubits: and upon every one of the ten
bases one laver.

7:39 And he put five bases on the right side of the house, and five on
the left side of the house: and he set the sea on the right side of
the house eastward over against the south.

7:40 And Hiram made the lavers, and the shovels, and the basons. So
Hiram made an end of doing all the work that he made king Solomon for
the house of the LORD: 7:41 The two pillars, and the two bowls of the
chapiters that were on the top of the two pillars; and the two
networks, to cover the two bowls of the chapiters which were upon the
top of the pillars; 7:42 And four hundred pomegranates for the two
networks, even two rows of pomegranates for one network, to cover the
two bowls of the chapiters that were upon the pillars; 7:43 And the
ten bases, and ten lavers on the bases; 7:44 And one sea, and twelve
oxen under the sea; 7:45 And the pots, and the shovels, and the
basons: and all these vessels, which Hiram made to king Solomon for
the house of the LORD, were of bright brass.

7:46 In the plain of Jordan did the king cast them, in the clay ground
between Succoth and Zarthan.

7:47 And Solomon left all the vessels unweighed, because they were
exceeding many: neither was the weight of the brass found out.

7:48 And Solomon made all the vessels that pertained unto the house of
the LORD: the altar of gold, and the table of gold, whereupon the
shewbread was, 7:49 And the candlesticks of pure gold, five on the
right side, and five on the left, before the oracle, with the flowers,
and the lamps, and the tongs of gold, 7:50 And the bowls, and the
snuffers, and the basons, and the spoons, and the censers of pure
gold; and the hinges of gold, both for the doors of the inner house,
the most holy place, and for the doors of the house, to wit, of the
temple.

7:51 So was ended all the work that king Solomon made for the house of
the LORD. And Solomon brought in the things which David his father had
dedicated; even the silver, and the gold, and the vessels, did he put
among the treasures of the house of the LORD.

8:1 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the heads of
the tribes, the chief of the fathers of the children of Israel, unto
king Solomon in Jerusalem, that they might bring up the ark of the
covenant of the LORD out of the city of David, which is Zion.

8:2 And all the men of Israel assembled themselves unto king Solomon
at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month.

8:3 And all the elders of Israel came, and the priests took up the
ark.

8:4 And they brought up the ark of the LORD, and the tabernacle of the
congregation, and all the holy vessels that were in the tabernacle,
even those did the priests and the Levites bring up.

8:5 And king Solomon, and all the congregation of Israel, that were
assembled unto him, were with him before the ark, sacrificing sheep
and oxen, that could not be told nor numbered for multitude.

8:6 And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the LORD
unto his place, into the oracle of the house, to the most holy place,
even under the wings of the cherubims.

8:7 For the cherubims spread forth their two wings over the place of
the ark, and the cherubims covered the ark and the staves thereof
above.

8:8 And they drew out the staves, that the ends of the staves were
seen out in the holy place before the oracle, and they were not seen
without: and there they are unto this day.

8:9 There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone, which
Moses put there at Horeb, when the LORD made a covenant with the
children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt.

8:10 And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy
place, that the cloud filled the house of the LORD, 8:11 So that the
priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud: for the
glory of the LORD had filled the house of the LORD.

8:12 Then spake Solomon, The LORD said that he would dwell in the
thick darkness.

8:13 I have surely built thee an house to dwell in, a settled place
for thee to abide in for ever.

8:14 And the king turned his face about, and blessed all the
congregation of Israel: (and all the congregation of Israel stood;)
8:15 And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, which spake with
his mouth unto David my father, and hath with his hand fulfilled it,
saying, 8:16 Since the day that I brought forth my people Israel out
of Egypt, I chose no city out of all the tribes of Israel to build an
house, that my name might be therein; but I chose David to be over my
people Israel.

8:17 And it was in the heart of David my father to build an house for
the name of the LORD God of Israel.

8:18 And the LORD said unto David my father, Whereas it was in thine
heart to build an house unto my name, thou didst well that it was in
thine heart.

8:19 Nevertheless thou shalt not build the house; but thy son that
shall come forth out of thy loins, he shall build the house unto my
name.

8:20 And the LORD hath performed his word that he spake, and I am
risen up in the room of David my father, and sit on the throne of
Israel, as the LORD promised, and have built an house for the name of
the LORD God of Israel.

8:21 And I have set there a place for the ark, wherein is the covenant
of the LORD, which he made with our fathers, when he brought them out
of the land of Egypt.

8:22 And Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in the presence of
all the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands toward
heaven: 8:23 And he said, LORD God of Israel, there is no God like
thee, in heaven above, or on earth beneath, who keepest covenant and
mercy with thy servants that walk before thee with all their heart:
8:24 Who hast kept with thy servant David my father that thou
promisedst him: thou spakest also with thy mouth, and hast fulfilled
it with thine hand, as it is this day.

8:25 Therefore now, LORD God of Israel, keep with thy servant David my
father that thou promisedst him, saying, There shall not fail thee a
man in my sight to sit on the throne of Israel; so that thy children
take heed to their way, that they walk before me as thou hast walked
before me.

8:26 And now, O God of Israel, let thy word, I pray thee, be verified,
which thou spakest unto thy servant David my father.

8:27 But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and
heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I
have builded?  8:28 Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy
servant, and to his supplication, O LORD my God, to hearken unto the
cry and to the prayer, which thy servant prayeth before thee to day:
8:29 That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even
toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there: that
thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make
toward this place.

8:30 And hearken thou to the supplication of thy servant, and of thy
people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place: and hear thou
in heaven thy dwelling place: and when thou hearest, forgive.

8:31 If any man trespass against his neighbour, and an oath be laid
upon him to cause him to swear, and the oath come before thine altar
in this house: 8:32 Then hear thou in heaven, and do, and judge thy
servants, condemning the wicked, to bring his way upon his head; and
justifying the righteous, to give him according to his righteousness.

8:33 When thy people Israel be smitten down before the enemy, because
they have sinned against thee, and shall turn again to thee, and
confess thy name, and pray, and make supplication unto thee in this
house: 8:34 Then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy
people Israel, and bring them again unto the land which thou gavest
unto their fathers.

8:35 When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have
sinned against thee; if they pray toward this place, and confess thy
name, and turn from their sin, when thou afflictest them: 8:36 Then
hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy servants, and of thy
people Israel, that thou teach them the good way wherein they should
walk, and give rain upon thy land, which thou hast given to thy people
for an inheritance.

8:37 If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting,
mildew, locust, or if there be caterpiller; if their enemy besiege
them in the land of their cities; whatsoever plague, whatsoever
sickness there be; 8:38 What prayer and supplication soever be made by
any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the
plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward this house:
8:39 Then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and do,
and give to every man according to his ways, whose heart thou knowest;
(for thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of
men;) 8:40 That they may fear thee all the days that they live in the
land which thou gavest unto our fathers.

8:41 Moreover concerning a stranger, that is not of thy people Israel,
but cometh out of a far country for thy name's sake; 8:42 (For they
shall hear of thy great name, and of thy strong hand, and of thy
stretched out arm;) when he shall come and pray toward this house;
8:43 Hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and do according to all
that the stranger calleth to thee for: that all people of the earth
may know thy name, to fear thee, as do thy people Israel; and that
they may know that this house, which I have builded, is called by thy
name.

8:44 If thy people go out to battle against their enemy, whithersoever
thou shalt send them, and shall pray unto the LORD toward the city
which thou hast chosen, and toward the house that I have built for thy
name: 8:45 Then hear thou in heaven their prayer and their
supplication, and maintain their cause.

8:46 If they sin against thee, (for there is no man that sinneth not,)
and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that
they carry them away captives unto the land of the enemy, far or near;
8:47 Yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they
were carried captives, and repent, and make supplication unto thee in
the land of them that carried them captives, saying, We have sinned,
and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness; 8:48 And so
return unto thee with all their heart, and with all their soul, in the
land of their enemies, which led them away captive, and pray unto thee
toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, the city
which thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name:
8:49 Then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven thy
dwelling place, and maintain their cause, 8:50 And forgive thy people
that have sinned against thee, and all their transgressions wherein
they have transgressed against thee, and give them compassion before
them who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them:
8:51 For they be thy people, and thine inheritance, which thou
broughtest forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of iron:
8:52 That thine eyes may be open unto the supplication of thy servant,
and unto the supplication of thy people Israel, to hearken unto them
in all that they call for unto thee.

8:53 For thou didst separate them from among all the people of the
earth, to be thine inheritance, as thou spakest by the hand of Moses
thy servant, when thou broughtest our fathers out of Egypt, O LORD
God.

8:54 And it was so, that when Solomon had made an end of praying all
this prayer and supplication unto the LORD, he arose from before the
altar of the LORD, from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread up
to heaven.

8:55 And he stood, and blessed all the congregation of Israel with a
loud voice, saying, 8:56 Blessed be the LORD, that hath given rest
unto his people Israel, according to all that he promised: there hath
not failed one word of all his good promise, which he promised by the
hand of Moses his servant.

8:57 The LORD our God be with us, as he was with our fathers: let him
not leave us, nor forsake us: 8:58 That he may incline our hearts unto
him, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and his
statutes, and his judgments, which he commanded our fathers.

8:59 And let these my words, wherewith I have made supplication before
the LORD, be nigh unto the LORD our God day and night, that he
maintain the cause of his servant, and the cause of his people Israel
at all times, as the matter shall require: 8:60 That all the people of
the earth may know that the LORD is God, and that there is none else.

8:61 Let your heart therefore be perfect with the LORD our God, to
walk in his statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this day.

8:62 And the king, and all Israel with him, offered sacrifice before
the LORD.

8:63 And Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace offerings, which he
offered unto the LORD, two and twenty thousand oxen, and an hundred
and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the children of Israel
dedicated the house of the LORD.

8:64 The same day did the king hallow the middle of the court that was
before the house of the LORD: for there he offered burnt offerings,
and meat offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings: because the
brasen altar that was before the LORD was too little to receive the
burnt offerings, and meat offerings, and the fat of the peace
offerings.

8:65 And at that time Solomon held a feast, and all Israel with him, a
great congregation, from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of
Egypt, before the LORD our God, seven days and seven days, even
fourteen days.

8:66 On the eighth day he sent the people away: and they blessed the
king, and went unto their tents joyful and glad of heart for all the
goodness that the LORD had done for David his servant, and for Israel
his people.

9:1 And it came to pass, when Solomon had finished the building of the
house of the LORD, and the king's house, and all Solomon's desire
which he was pleased to do, 9:2 That the LORD appeared to Solomon the
second time, as he had appeared unto him at Gibeon.

9:3 And the LORD said unto him, I have heard thy prayer and thy
supplication, that thou hast made before me: I have hallowed this
house, which thou hast built, to put my name there for ever; and mine
eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually.

9:4 And if thou wilt walk before me, as David thy father walked, in
integrity of heart, and in uprightness, to do according to all that I
have commanded thee, and wilt keep my statutes and my judgments: 9:5
Then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever,
as I promised to David thy father, saying, There shall not fail thee a
man upon the throne of Israel.

9:6 But if ye shall at all turn from following me, ye or your
children, and will not keep my commandments and my statutes which I
have set before you, but go and serve other gods, and worship them:
9:7 Then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given
them; and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast
out of my sight; and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all
people: 9:8 And at this house, which is high, every one that passeth
by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss; and they shall say, Why
hath the LORD done thus unto this land, and to this house?  9:9 And
they shall answer, Because they forsook the LORD their God, who
brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have taken
hold upon other gods, and have worshipped them, and served them:
therefore hath the LORD brought upon them all this evil.

9:10 And it came to pass at the end of twenty years, when Solomon had
built the two houses, the house of the LORD, and the king's house,
9:11 (Now Hiram the king of Tyre had furnished Solomon with cedar
trees and fir trees, and with gold, according to all his desire,) that
then king Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee.

9:12 And Hiram came out from Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had
given him; and they pleased him not.

9:13 And he said, What cities are these which thou hast given me, my
brother? And he called them the land of Cabul unto this day.

9:14 And Hiram sent to the king sixscore talents of gold.

9:15 And this is the reason of the levy which king Solomon raised; for
to build the house of the LORD, and his own house, and Millo, and the
wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer.

9:16 For Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up, and taken Gezer, and burnt
it with fire, and slain the Canaanites that dwelt in the city, and
given it for a present unto his daughter, Solomon's wife.

9:17 And Solomon built Gezer, and Bethhoron the nether, 9:18 And
Baalath, and Tadmor in the wilderness, in the land, 9:19 And all the
cities of store that Solomon had, and cities for his chariots, and
cities for his horsemen, and that which Solomon desired to build in
Jerusalem, and in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion.

9:20 And all the people that were left of the Amorites, Hittites,
Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, which were not of the children of
Israel, 9:21 Their children that were left after them in the land,
whom the children of Israel also were not able utterly to destroy,
upon those did Solomon levy a tribute of bondservice unto this day.

9:22 But of the children of Israel did Solomon make no bondmen: but
they were men of war, and his servants, and his princes, and his
captains, and rulers of his chariots, and his horsemen.

9:23 These were the chief of the officers that were over Solomon's
work, five hundred and fifty, which bare rule over the people that
wrought in the work.

9:24 But Pharaoh's daughter came up out of the city of David unto her
house which Solomon had built for her: then did he build Millo.

9:25 And three times in a year did Solomon offer burnt offerings and
peace offerings upon the altar which he built unto the LORD, and he
burnt incense upon the altar that was before the LORD. So he finished
the house.

9:26 And king Solomon made a navy of ships in Eziongeber, which is
beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red sea, in the land of Edom.

9:27 And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had
knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon.

9:28 And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four
hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to king Solomon.

10:1 And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon
concerning the name of the LORD, she came to prove him with hard
questions.

10:2 And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels
that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when
she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her
heart.

10:3 And Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing
hid from the king, which he told her not.

10:4 And when the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon's wisdom, and
the house that he had built, 10:5 And the meat of his table, and the
sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and
their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he went up
unto the house of the LORD; there was no more spirit in her.

10:6 And she said to the king, It was a true report that I heard in
mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom.

10:7 Howbeit I believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes had
seen it: and, behold, the half was not told me: thy wisdom and
prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard.

10:8 Happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants, which stand
continually before thee, and that hear thy wisdom.

10:9 Blessed be the LORD thy God, which delighted in thee, to set thee
on the throne of Israel: because the LORD loved Israel for ever,
therefore made he thee king, to do judgment and justice.

10:10 And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and
of spices very great store, and precious stones: there came no more
such abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to
king Solomon.

10:11 And the navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir,
brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees, and precious
stones.

10:12 And the king made of the almug trees pillars for the house of
the LORD, and for the king's house, harps also and psalteries for
singers: there came no such almug trees, nor were seen unto this day.

10:13 And king Solomon gave unto the queen of Sheba all her desire,
whatsoever she asked, beside that which Solomon gave her of his royal
bounty.

So she turned and went to her own country, she and her servants.

10:14 Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six
hundred threescore and six talents of gold, 10:15 Beside that he had
of the merchantmen, and of the traffick of the spice merchants, and of
all the kings of Arabia, and of the governors of the country.

10:16 And king Solomon made two hundred targets of beaten gold: six
hundred shekels of gold went to one target.

10:17 And he made three hundred shields of beaten gold; three pound of
gold went to one shield: and the king put them in the house of the
forest of Lebanon.

10:18 Moreover the king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it
with the best gold.

10:19 The throne had six steps, and the top of the throne was round
behind: and there were stays on either side on the place of the seat,
and two lions stood beside the stays.

10:20 And twelve lions stood there on the one side and on the other
upon the six steps: there was not the like made in any kingdom.

10:21 And all king Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, and all
the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold;
none were of silver: it was nothing accounted of in the days of
Solomon.

10:22 For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of
Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold,
and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.

10:23 So king Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches
and for wisdom.

10:24 And all the earth sought to Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which
God had put in his heart.

10:25 And they brought every man his present, vessels of silver, and
vessels of gold, and garments, and armour, and spices, horses, and
mules, a rate year by year.

10:26 And Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen: and he had
a thousand and four hundred chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen,
whom he bestowed in the cities for chariots, and with the king at
Jerusalem.

10:27 And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and
cedars made he to be as the sycomore trees that are in the vale, for
abundance.

10:28 And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt, and linen yarn: the
king's merchants received the linen yarn at a price.

10:29 And a chariot came up and went out of Egypt for six hundred
shekels of silver, and an horse for an hundred and fifty: and so for
all the kings of the Hittites, and for the kings of Syria, did they
bring them out by their means.

11:1 But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the
daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites,
Zidonians, and Hittites: 11:2 Of the nations concerning which the LORD
said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither
shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart
after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love.

11:3 And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred
concubines: and his wives turned away his heart.

11:4 For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned
away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with
the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father.

11:5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians,
and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

11:6 And Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and went not fully
after the LORD, as did David his father.

11:7 Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination
of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the
abomination of the children of Ammon.

11:8 And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt
incense and sacrificed unto their gods.

11:9 And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned
from the LORD God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice, 11:10
And had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go
after other gods: but he kept not that which the LORD commanded.

11:11 Wherefore the LORD said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done
of thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I
have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and
will give it to thy servant.

11:12 Notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it for David thy
father's sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son.

11:13 Howbeit I will not rend away all the kingdom; but will give one
tribe to thy son for David my servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake
which I have chosen.

11:14 And the LORD stirred up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the
Edomite: he was of the king's seed in Edom.

11:15 For it came to pass, when David was in Edom, and Joab the
captain of the host was gone up to bury the slain, after he had
smitten every male in Edom; 11:16 (For six months did Joab remain
there with all Israel, until he had cut off every male in Edom:) 11:17
That Hadad fled, he and certain Edomites of his father's servants with
him, to go into Egypt; Hadad being yet a little child.

11:18 And they arose out of Midian, and came to Paran: and they took
men with them out of Paran, and they came to Egypt, unto Pharaoh king
of Egypt; which gave him an house, and appointed him victuals, and
gave him land.

11:19 And Hadad found great favour in the sight of Pharaoh, so that he
gave him to wife the sister of his own wife, the sister of Tahpenes
the queen.

11:20 And the sister of Tahpenes bare him Genubath his son, whom
Tahpenes weaned in Pharaoh's house: and Genubath was in Pharaoh's
household among the sons of Pharaoh.

11:21 And when Hadad heard in Egypt that David slept with his fathers,
and that Joab the captain of the host was dead, Hadad said to Pharaoh,
Let me depart, that I may go to mine own country.

11:22 Then Pharaoh said unto him, But what hast thou lacked with me,
that, behold, thou seekest to go to thine own country? And he
answered, Nothing: howbeit let me go in any wise.

11:23 And God stirred him up another adversary, Rezon the son of
Eliadah, which fled from his lord Hadadezer king of Zobah: 11:24 And
he gathered men unto him, and became captain over a band, when David
slew them of Zobah: and they went to Damascus, and dwelt therein, and
reigned in Damascus.

11:25 And he was an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon,
beside the mischief that Hadad did: and he abhorred Israel, and
reigned over Syria.

11:26 And Jeroboam the son of Nebat, an Ephrathite of Zereda,
Solomon's servant, whose mother's name was Zeruah, a widow woman, even
he lifted up his hand against the king.

11:27 And this was the cause that he lifted up his hand against the
king: Solomon built Millo, and repaired the breaches of the city of
David his father.

11:28 And the man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valour: and Solomon
seeing the young man that he was industrious, he made him ruler over
all the charge of the house of Joseph.

11:29 And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of
Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way;
and he had clad himself with a new garment; and they two were alone in
the field: 11:30 And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him,
and rent it in twelve pieces: 11:31 And he said to Jeroboam, Take thee
ten pieces: for thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, Behold, I will
rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes
to thee: 11:32 (But he shall have one tribe for my servant David's
sake, and for Jerusalem's sake, the city which I have chosen out of
all the tribes of Israel:) 11:33 Because that they have forsaken me,
and have worshipped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh
the god of the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the children of Ammon,
and have not walked in my ways, to do that which is right in mine
eyes, and to keep my statutes and my judgments, as did David his
father.

11:34 Howbeit I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand: but I
will make him prince all the days of his life for David my servant's
sake, whom I chose, because he kept my commandments and my statutes:
11:35 But I will take the kingdom out of his son's hand, and will give
it unto thee, even ten tribes.

11:36 And unto his son will I give one tribe, that David my servant
may have a light alway before me in Jerusalem, the city which I have
chosen me to put my name there.

11:37 And I will take thee, and thou shalt reign according to all that
thy soul desireth, and shalt be king over Israel.

11:38 And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command
thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do that is right in my sight, to
keep my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did; that I
will be with thee, and build thee a sure house, as I built for David,
and will give Israel unto thee.

11:39 And I will for this afflict the seed of David, but not for ever.

11:40 Solomon sought therefore to kill Jeroboam. And Jeroboam arose,
and fled into Egypt, unto Shishak king of Egypt, and was in Egypt
until the death of Solomon.

11:41 And the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did, and
his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts of Solomon?
11:42 And the time that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel
was forty years.

11:43 And Solomon slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city
of David his father: and Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead.

12:1 And Rehoboam went to Shechem: for all Israel were come to Shechem
to make him king.

12:2 And it came to pass, when Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who was yet
in Egypt, heard of it, (for he was fled from the presence of king
Solomon, and Jeroboam dwelt in Egypt;) 12:3 That they sent and called
him. And Jeroboam and all the congregation of Israel came, and spake
unto Rehoboam, saying, 12:4 Thy father made our yoke grievous: now
therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy
yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee.

12:5 And he said unto them, Depart yet for three days, then come again
to me. And the people departed.

12:6 And king Rehoboam consulted with the old men, that stood before
Solomon his father while he yet lived, and said, How do ye advise that
I may answer this people?  12:7 And they spake unto him, saying, If
thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them,
and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy
servants for ever.

12:8 But he forsook the counsel of the old men, which they had given
him, and consulted with the young men that were grown up with him, and
which stood before him: 12:9 And he said unto them, What counsel give
ye that we may answer this people, who have spoken to me, saying, Make
the yoke which thy father did put upon us lighter?  12:10 And the
young men that were grown up with him spake unto him, saying, Thus
shalt thou speak unto this people that spake unto thee, saying, Thy
father made our yoke heavy, but make thou it lighter unto us; thus
shalt thou say unto them, My little finger shall be thicker than my
father's loins.

12:11 And now whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will
add to your yoke: my father hath chastised you with whips, but I will
chastise you with scorpions.

12:12 So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day,
as the king had appointed, saying, Come to me again the third day.

12:13 And the king answered the people roughly, and forsook the old
men's counsel that they gave him; 12:14 And spake to them after the
counsel of the young men, saying, My father made your yoke heavy, and
I will add to your yoke: my father also chastised you with whips, but
I will chastise you with scorpions.

12:15 Wherefore the king hearkened not unto the people; for the cause
was from the LORD, that he might perform his saying, which the LORD
spake by Ahijah the Shilonite unto Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

12:16 So when all Israel saw that the king hearkened not unto them,
the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David?
neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your tents, O
Israel: now see to thine own house, David. So Israel departed unto
their tents.

12:17 But as for the children of Israel which dwelt in the cities of
Judah, Rehoboam reigned over them.

12:18 Then king Rehoboam sent Adoram, who was over the tribute; and
all Israel stoned him with stones, that he died. Therefore king
Rehoboam made speed to get him up to his chariot, to flee to
Jerusalem.

12:19 So Israel rebelled against the house of David unto this day.

12:20 And it came to pass, when all Israel heard that Jeroboam was
come again, that they sent and called him unto the congregation, and
made him king over all Israel: there was none that followed the house
of David, but the tribe of Judah only.

12:21 And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he assembled all the
house of Judah, with the tribe of Benjamin, an hundred and fourscore
thousand chosen men, which were warriors, to fight against the house
of Israel, to bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam the son of Solomon.

12:22 But the word of God came unto Shemaiah the man of God, saying,
12:23 Speak unto Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and unto
all the house of Judah and Benjamin, and to the remnant of the people,
saying, 12:24 Thus saith the LORD, Ye shall not go up, nor fight
against your brethren the children of Israel: return every man to his
house; for this thing is from me. They hearkened therefore to the word
of the LORD, and returned to depart, according to the word of the
LORD.

12:25 Then Jeroboam built Shechem in mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein;
and went out from thence, and built Penuel.

12:26 And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to
the house of David: 12:27 If this people go up to do sacrifice in the
house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people
turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they
shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah.

12:28 Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold,
and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem:
behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of
Egypt.

12:29 And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan.

12:30 And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship
before the one, even unto Dan.

12:31 And he made an house of high places, and made priests of the
lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi.

12:32 And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the
fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and
he offered upon the altar. So did he in Bethel, sacrificing unto the
calves that he had made: and he placed in Bethel the priests of the
high places which he had made.

12:33 So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the
fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had
devised of his own heart; and ordained a feast unto the children of
Israel: and he offered upon the altar, and burnt incense.

13:1 And, behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of
the LORD unto Bethel: and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense.

13:2 And he cried against the altar in the word of the LORD, and said,
O altar, altar, thus saith the LORD; Behold, a child shall be born
unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer
the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's
bones shall be burnt upon thee.

13:3 And he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign which
the LORD hath spoken; Behold, the altar shall be rent, and the ashes
that are upon it shall be poured out.

13:4 And it came to pass, when king Jeroboam heard the saying of the
man of God, which had cried against the altar in Bethel, that he put
forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him. And his hand,
which he put forth against him, dried up, so that he could not pull it
in again to him.

13:5 The altar also was rent, and the ashes poured out from the altar,
according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of
the LORD.

13:6 And the king answered and said unto the man of God, Intreat now
the face of the LORD thy God, and pray for me, that my hand may be
restored me again. And the man of God besought the LORD, and the
king's hand was restored him again, and became as it was before.

13:7 And the king said unto the man of God, Come home with me, and
refresh thyself, and I will give thee a reward.

13:8 And the man of God said unto the king, If thou wilt give me half
thine house, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor
drink water in this place: 13:9 For so was it charged me by the word
of the LORD, saying, Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by
the same way that thou camest.

13:10 So he went another way, and returned not by the way that he came
to Bethel.

13:11 Now there dwelt an old prophet in Bethel; and his sons came and
told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in
Bethel: the words which he had spoken unto the king, them they told
also to their father.

13:12 And their father said unto them, What way went he? For his sons
had seen what way the man of God went, which came from Judah.

13:13 And he said unto his sons, Saddle me the ass. So they saddled
him the ass: and he rode thereon, 13:14 And went after the man of God,
and found him sitting under an oak: and he said unto him, Art thou the
man of God that camest from Judah? And he said, I am.

13:15 Then he said unto him, Come home with me, and eat bread.

13:16 And he said, I may not return with thee, nor go in with thee:
neither will I eat bread nor drink water with thee in this place:
13:17 For it was said to me by the word of the LORD, Thou shalt eat no
bread nor drink water there, nor turn again to go by the way that thou
camest.

13:18 He said unto him, I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel
spake unto me by the word of the LORD, saying, Bring him back with
thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he
lied unto him.

13:19 So he went back with him, and did eat bread in his house, and
drank water.

13:20 And it came to pass, as they sat at the table, that the word of
the LORD came unto the prophet that brought him back: 13:21 And he
cried unto the man of God that came from Judah, saying, Thus saith the
LORD, Forasmuch as thou hast disobeyed the mouth of the LORD, and hast
not kept the commandment which the LORD thy God commanded thee, 13:22
But camest back, and hast eaten bread and drunk water in the place, of
the which the Lord did say to thee, Eat no bread, and drink no water;
thy carcase shall not come unto the sepulchre of thy fathers.

13:23 And it came to pass, after he had eaten bread, and after he had
drunk, that he saddled for him the ass, to wit, for the prophet whom
he had brought back.

13:24 And when he was gone, a lion met him by the way, and slew him:
and his carcase was cast in the way, and the ass stood by it, the lion
also stood by the carcase.

13:25 And, behold, men passed by, and saw the carcase cast in the way,
and the lion standing by the carcase: and they came and told it in the
city where the old prophet dwelt.

13:26 And when the prophet that brought him back from the way heard
thereof, he said, It is the man of God, who was disobedient unto the
word of the LORD: therefore the LORD hath delivered him unto the lion,
which hath torn him, and slain him, according to the word of the LORD,
which he spake unto him.

13:27 And he spake to his sons, saying, Saddle me the ass. And they
saddled him.

13:28 And he went and found his carcase cast in the way, and the ass
and the lion standing by the carcase: the lion had not eaten the
carcase, nor torn the ass.

13:29 And the prophet took up the carcase of the man of God, and laid
it upon the ass, and brought it back: and the old prophet came to the
city, to mourn and to bury him.

13:30 And he laid his carcase in his own grave; and they mourned over
him, saying, Alas, my brother!  13:31 And it came to pass, after he
had buried him, that he spake to his sons, saying, When I am dead,
then bury me in the sepulchre wherein the man of God is buried; lay my
bones beside his bones: 13:32 For the saying which he cried by the
word of the LORD against the altar in Bethel, and against all the
houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, shall
surely come to pass.

13:33 After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way, but
made again of the lowest of the people priests of the high places:
whosoever would, he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests
of the high places.

13:34 And this thing became sin unto the house of Jeroboam, even to
cut it off, and to destroy it from off the face of the earth.

14:1 At that time Abijah the son of Jeroboam fell sick.

14:2 And Jeroboam said to his wife, Arise, I pray thee, and disguise
thyself, that thou be not known to be the wife of Jeroboam; and get
thee to Shiloh: behold, there is Ahijah the prophet, which told me
that I should be king over this people.

14:3 And take with thee ten loaves, and cracknels, and a cruse of
honey, and go to him: he shall tell thee what shall become of the
child.

14:4 And Jeroboam's wife did so, and arose, and went to Shiloh, and
came to the house of Ahijah. But Ahijah could not see; for his eyes
were set by reason of his age.

14:5 And the LORD said unto Ahijah, Behold, the wife of Jeroboam
cometh to ask a thing of thee for her son; for he is sick: thus and
thus shalt thou say unto her: for it shall be, when she cometh in,
that she shall feign herself to be another woman.

14:6 And it was so, when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet, as she
came in at the door, that he said, Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam; why
feignest thou thyself to be another? for I am sent to thee with heavy
tidings.

14:7 Go, tell Jeroboam, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Forasmuch
as I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over my
people Israel, 14:8 And rent the kingdom away from the house of David,
and gave it thee: and yet thou hast not been as my servant David, who
kept my commandments, and who followed me with all his heart, to do
that only which was right in mine eyes; 14:9 But hast done evil above
all that were before thee: for thou hast gone and made thee other
gods, and molten images, to provoke me to anger, and hast cast me
behind thy back: 14:10 Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the
house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth
against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will
take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away
dung, till it be all gone.

14:11 Him that dieth of Jeroboam in the city shall the dogs eat; and
him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat: for the
LORD hath spoken it.

14:12 Arise thou therefore, get thee to thine own house: and when thy
feet enter into the city, the child shall die.

14:13 And all Israel shall mourn for him, and bury him: for he only of
Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found some
good thing toward the LORD God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam.

14:14 Moreover the LORD shall raise him up a king over Israel, who
shall cut off the house of Jeroboam that day: but what? even now.

14:15 For the LORD shall smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the
water, and he shall root up Israel out of this good land, which he
gave to their fathers, and shall scatter them beyond the river,
because they have made their groves, provoking the LORD to anger.

14:16 And he shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who
did sin, and who made Israel to sin.

14:17 And Jeroboam's wife arose, and departed, and came to Tirzah: and
when she came to the threshold of the door, the child died; 14:18 And
they buried him; and all Israel mourned for him, according to the word
of the LORD, which he spake by the hand of his servant Ahijah the
prophet.

14:19 And the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he warred, and how he
reigned, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the
kings of Israel.

14:20 And the days which Jeroboam reigned were two and twenty years:
and he slept with his fathers, and Nadab his son reigned in his stead.

14:21 And Rehoboam the son of Solomon reigned in Judah. Rehoboam was
forty and one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned
seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the LORD did choose out
of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. And his mother's
name was Naamah an Ammonitess.

14:22 And Judah did evil in the sight of the LORD, and they provoked
him to jealousy with their sins which they had committed, above all
that their fathers had done.

14:23 For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on
every high hill, and under every green tree.

14:24 And there were also sodomites in the land: and they did
according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast
out before the children of Israel.

14:25 And it came to pass in the fifth year of king Rehoboam, that
Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem: 14:26 And he took
away the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the
king's house; he even took away all: and he took away all the shields
of gold which Solomon had made.

14:27 And king Rehoboam made in their stead brasen shields, and
committed them unto the hands of the chief of the guard, which kept
the door of the king's house.

14:28 And it was so, when the king went into the house of the LORD,
that the guard bare them, and brought them back into the guard
chamber.

14:29 Now the rest of the acts of Rehoboam, and all that he did, are
they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
14:30 And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days.

14:31 And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was buried with his
fathers in the city of David. And his mother's name was Naamah an
Ammonitess. And Abijam his son reigned in his stead.

15:1 Now in the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam the son of Nebat
reigned Abijam over Judah.

15:2 Three years reigned he in Jerusalem. and his mother's name was
Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom.

15:3 And he walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done
before him: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as
the heart of David his father.

15:4 Nevertheless for David's sake did the LORD his God give him a
lamp in Jerusalem, to set up his son after him, and to establish
Jerusalem: 15:5 Because David did that which was right in the eyes of
the LORD, and turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him
all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the
Hittite.

15:6 And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of
his life.

15:7 Now the rest of the acts of Abijam, and all that he did, are they
not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? And
there was war between Abijam and Jeroboam.

15:8 And Abijam slept with his fathers; and they buried him in the
city of David: and Asa his son reigned in his stead.

15:9 And in the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel reigned Asa
over Judah.

15:10 And forty and one years reigned he in Jerusalem. And his
mother's name was Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom.

15:11 And Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, as did
David his father.

15:12 And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all
the idols that his fathers had made.

15:13 And also Maachah his mother, even her he removed from being
queen, because she had made an idol in a grove; and Asa destroyed her
idol, and burnt it by the brook Kidron.

15:14 But the high places were not removed: nevertheless Asa's heart
was perfect with the LORD all his days.

15:15 And he brought in the things which his father had dedicated, and
the things which himself had dedicated, into the house of the LORD,
silver, and gold, and vessels.

15:16 And there was war between Asa and Baasha king of Israel all
their days.

15:17 And Baasha king of Israel went up against Judah, and built
Ramah, that he might not suffer any to go out or come in to Asa king
of Judah.

15:18 Then Asa took all the silver and the gold that were left in the
treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king's
house, and delivered them into the hand of his servants: and king Asa
sent them to Benhadad, the son of Tabrimon, the son of Hezion, king of
Syria, that dwelt at Damascus, saying, 15:19 There is a league between
me and thee, and between my father and thy father: behold, I have sent
unto thee a present of silver and gold; come and break thy league with
Baasha king of Israel, that he may depart from me.

15:20 So Benhadad hearkened unto king Asa, and sent the captains of
the hosts which he had against the cities of Israel, and smote Ijon,
and Dan, and Abelbethmaachah, and all Cinneroth, with all the land of
Naphtali.

15:21 And it came to pass, when Baasha heard thereof, that he left off
building of Ramah, and dwelt in Tirzah.

15:22 Then king Asa made a proclamation throughout all Judah; none was
exempted: and they took away the stones of Ramah, and the timber
thereof, wherewith Baasha had builded; and king Asa built with them
Geba of Benjamin, and Mizpah.

15:23 The rest of all the acts of Asa, and all his might, and all that
he did, and the cities which he built, are they not written in the
book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? Nevertheless in the time
of his old age he was diseased in his feet.

15:24 And Asa slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers
in the city of David his father: and Jehoshaphat his son reigned in
his stead.

15:25 And Nadab the son of Jeroboam began to reign over Israel in the
second year of Asa king of Judah, and reigned over Israel two years.

15:26 And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, and walked in the way
of his father, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin.

15:27 And Baasha the son of Ahijah, of the house of Issachar,
conspired against him; and Baasha smote him at Gibbethon, which
belonged to the Philistines; for Nadab and all Israel laid siege to
Gibbethon.

15:28 Even in the third year of Asa king of Judah did Baasha slay him,
and reigned in his stead.

15:29 And it came to pass, when he reigned, that he smote all the
house of Jeroboam; he left not to Jeroboam any that breathed, until he
had destroyed him, according unto the saying of the LORD, which he
spake by his servant Ahijah the Shilonite: 15:30 Because of the sins
of Jeroboam which he sinned, and which he made Israel sin, by his
provocation wherewith he provoked the LORD God of Israel to anger.

15:31 Now the rest of the acts of Nadab, and all that he did, are they
not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?
15:32 And there was war between Asa and Baasha king of Israel all
their days.

15:33 In the third year of Asa king of Judah began Baasha the son of
Ahijah to reign over all Israel in Tirzah, twenty and four years.

15:34 And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, and walked in the way
of Jeroboam, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin.

16:1 Then the word of the LORD came to Jehu the son of Hanani against
Baasha, saying, 16:2 Forasmuch as I exalted thee out of the dust, and
made thee prince over my people Israel; and thou hast walked in the
way of Jeroboam, and hast made my people Israel to sin, to provoke me
to anger with their sins; 16:3 Behold, I will take away the posterity
of Baasha, and the posterity of his house; and will make thy house
like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

16:4 Him that dieth of Baasha in the city shall the dogs eat; and him
that dieth of his in the fields shall the fowls of the air eat.

16:5 Now the rest of the acts of Baasha, and what he did, and his
might, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings
of Israel?  16:6 So Baasha slept with his fathers, and was buried in
Tirzah: and Elah his son reigned in his stead.

16:7 And also by the hand of the prophet Jehu the son of Hanani came
the word of the LORD against Baasha, and against his house, even for
all the evil that he did in the sight of the LORD, in provoking him to
anger with the work of his hands, in being like the house of Jeroboam;
and because he killed him.

16:8 In the twenty and sixth year of Asa king of Judah began Elah the
son of Baasha to reign over Israel in Tirzah, two years.

16:9 And his servant Zimri, captain of half his chariots, conspired
against him, as he was in Tirzah, drinking himself drunk in the house
of Arza steward of his house in Tirzah.

16:10 And Zimri went in and smote him, and killed him, in the twenty
and seventh year of Asa king of Judah, and reigned in his stead.

16:11 And it came to pass, when he began to reign, as soon as he sat
on his throne, that he slew all the house of Baasha: he left him not
one that pisseth against a wall, neither of his kinsfolks, nor of his
friends.

16:12 Thus did Zimri destroy all the house of Baasha, according to the
word of the LORD, which he spake against Baasha by Jehu the prophet.

16:13 For all the sins of Baasha, and the sins of Elah his son, by
which they sinned, and by which they made Israel to sin, in provoking
the LORD God of Israel to anger with their vanities.

16:14 Now the rest of the acts of Elah, and all that he did, are they
not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?
16:15 In the twenty and seventh year of Asa king of Judah did Zimri
reign seven days in Tirzah. And the people were encamped against
Gibbethon, which belonged to the Philistines.

16:16 And the people that were encamped heard say, Zimri hath
conspired, and hath also slain the king: wherefore all Israel made
Omri, the captain of the host, king over Israel that day in the camp.

16:17 And Omri went up from Gibbethon, and all Israel with him, and
they besieged Tirzah.

16:18 And it came to pass, when Zimri saw that the city was taken,
that he went into the palace of the king's house, and burnt the king's
house over him with fire, and died.

16:19 For his sins which he sinned in doing evil in the sight of the
LORD, in walking in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin which he did,
to make Israel to sin.

16:20 Now the rest of the acts of Zimri, and his treason that he
wrought, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the
kings of Israel?  16:21 Then were the people of Israel divided into
two parts: half of the people followed Tibni the son of Ginath, to
make him king; and half followed Omri.

16:22 But the people that followed Omri prevailed against the people
that followed Tibni the son of Ginath: so Tibni died, and Omri
reigned.

16:23 In the thirty and first year of Asa king of Judah began Omri to
reign over Israel, twelve years: six years reigned he in Tirzah.

16:24 And he bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of
silver, and built on the hill, and called the name of the city which
he built, after the name of Shemer, owner of the hill, Samaria.

16:25 But Omri wrought evil in the eyes of the LORD, and did worse
than all that were before him.

16:26 For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and
in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin, to provoke the LORD God of
Israel to anger with their vanities.

16:27 Now the rest of the acts of Omri which he did, and his might
that he shewed, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of
the kings of Israel?  16:28 So Omri slept with his fathers, and was
buried in Samaria: and Ahab his son reigned in his stead.

16:29 And in the thirty and eighth year of Asa king of Judah began
Ahab the son of Omri to reign over Israel: and Ahab the son of Omri
reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years.

16:30 And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD above
all that were before him.

16:31 And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to
walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife
Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and
served Baal, and worshipped him.

16:32 And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which
he had built in Samaria.

16:33 And Ahab made a grove; and Ahab did more to provoke the LORD God
of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.

16:34 In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the
foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates
thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the LORD,
which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun.

17:1 And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead,
said unto Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand,
there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.

17:2 And the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, 17:3 Get thee
hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith,
that is before Jordan.

17:4 And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have
commanded the ravens to feed thee there.

17:5 So he went and did according unto the word of the LORD: for he
went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan.

17:6 And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and
bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook.

17:7 And it came to pass after a while, that the brook dried up,
because there had been no rain in the land.

17:8 And the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, 17:9 Arise, get
thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold,
I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.

17:10 So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate
of the city, behold, the widow woman was there gathering of sticks:
and he called to her, and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water
in a vessel, that I may drink.

17:11 And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, and said,
Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand.

17:12 And she said, As the LORD thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but
an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and,
behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for
me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.

17:13 And Elijah said unto her, Fear not; go and do as thou hast said:
but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and
after make for thee and for thy son.

17:14 For thus saith the LORD God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall
not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the
LORD sendeth rain upon the earth.

17:15 And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she,
and he, and her house, did eat many days.

17:16 And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil
fail, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Elijah.

17:17 And it came to pass after these things, that the son of the
woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick; and his sickness was so
sore, that there was no breath left in him.

17:18 And she said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, O thou
man of God? art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and
to slay my son?  17:19 And he said unto her, Give me thy son. And he
took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into a loft, where he
abode, and laid him upon his own bed.

17:20 And he cried unto the LORD, and said, O LORD my God, hast thou
also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her
son?  17:21 And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and
cried unto the LORD, and said, O LORD my God, I pray thee, let this
child's soul come into him again.

17:22 And the LORD heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the
child came into him again, and he revived.

17:23 And Elijah took the child, and brought him down out of the
chamber into the house, and delivered him unto his mother: and Elijah
said, See, thy son liveth.

17:24 And the woman said to Elijah, Now by this I know that thou art a
man of God, and that the word of the LORD in thy mouth is truth.

18:1 And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the LORD
came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab;
and I will send rain upon the earth.

18:2 And Elijah went to shew himself unto Ahab. And there was a sore
famine in Samaria.

18:3 And Ahab called Obadiah, which was the governor of his house.
(Now Obadiah feared the LORD greatly: 18:4 For it was so, when Jezebel
cut off the prophets of the LORD, that Obadiah took an hundred
prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and
water.)  18:5 And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land, unto all
fountains of water, and unto all brooks: peradventure we may find
grass to save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the
beasts.

18:6 So they divided the land between them to pass throughout it: Ahab
went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by himself.

18:7 And as Obadiah was in the way, behold, Elijah met him: and he
knew him, and fell on his face, and said, Art thou that my lord
Elijah?  18:8 And he answered him, I am: go, tell thy lord, Behold,
Elijah is here.

18:9 And he said, What have I sinned, that thou wouldest deliver thy
servant into the hand of Ahab, to slay me?  18:10 As the LORD thy God
liveth, there is no nation or kingdom, whither my lord hath not sent
to seek thee: and when they said, He is not there; he took an oath of
the kingdom and nation, that they found thee not.

18:11 And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here.

18:12 And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from thee, that
the Spirit of the LORD shall carry thee whither I know not; and so
when I come and tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me:
but I thy servant fear the LORD from my youth.

18:13 Was it not told my lord what I did when Jezebel slew the
prophets of the LORD, how I hid an hundred men of the LORD's prophets
by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water?  18:14 And now
thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here: and he shall
slay me.

18:15 And Elijah said, As the LORD of hosts liveth, before whom I
stand, I will surely shew myself unto him to day.

18:16 So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him: and Ahab went to
meet Elijah.

18:17 And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto
him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel?  18:18 And he answered, I have
not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have
forsaken the commandments of the LORD, and thou hast followed Baalim.

18:19 Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel unto mount
Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the
prophets of the groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel's table.

18:20 So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the
prophets together unto mount Carmel.

18:21 And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye
between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal,
then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.

18:22 Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a
prophet of the LORD; but Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty
men.

18:23 Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one
bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and
put no fire under: and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on
wood, and put no fire under: 18:24 And call ye on the name of your
gods, and I will call on the name of the LORD: and the God that
answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and
said, It is well spoken.

18:25 And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one
bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call
on the name of your gods, but put no fire under.

18:26 And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed
it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon,
saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that
answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made.

18:27 And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said,
Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing,
or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be
awaked.

18:28 And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with
knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.

18:29 And it came to pass, when midday was past, and they prophesied
until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that there
was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.

18:30 And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all
the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the LORD
that was broken down.

18:31 And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the
tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the LORD came,
saying, Israel shall be thy name: 18:32 And with the stones he built
an altar in the name of the LORD: and he made a trench about the
altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed.

18:33 And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and
laid him on the wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour
it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood.

18:34 And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second
time.

And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time.

18:35 And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the
trench also with water.

18:36 And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening
sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, LORD God of
Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art
God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all
these things at thy word.

18:37 Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou
art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.

18:38 Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt
sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up
the water that was in the trench.

18:39 And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and
they said, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God.

18:40 And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not
one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down
to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.

18:41 And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink; for there
is a sound of abundance of rain.

18:42 So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the
top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his
face between his knees, 18:43 And said to his servant, Go up now, look
toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is
nothing. And he said, Go again seven times.

18:44 And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold,
there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand. And he
said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down
that the rain stop thee not.

18:45 And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black
with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode, and
went to Jezreel.

18:46 And the hand of the LORD was on Elijah; and he girded up his
loins, and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.

19:1 And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he
had slain all the prophets with the sword.

19:2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the
gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of
one of them by to morrow about this time.

19:3 And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came
to Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there.

19:4 But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came
and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that
he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life;
for I am not better than my fathers.

19:5 And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an
angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat.

19:6 And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals,
and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid
him down again.

19:7 And the angel of the LORD came again the second time, and touched
him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for
thee.

19:8 And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of
that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God.

19:9 And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold,
the word of the LORD came to him, and he said unto him, What doest
thou here, Elijah?  19:10 And he said, I have been very jealous for
the LORD God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy
covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the
sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it
away.

19:11 And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD.

And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the
mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD
was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD
was not in the earthquake: 19:12 And after the earthquake a fire; but
the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

19:13 And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in
his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave.
And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou
here, Elijah?  19:14 And he said, I have been very jealous for the
LORD God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy
covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the
sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it
away.

19:15 And the LORD said unto him, Go, return on thy way to the
wilderness of Damascus: and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be king
over Syria: 19:16 And Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be
king over Israel: and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah shalt
thou anoint to be prophet in thy room.

19:17 And it shall come to pass, that him that escapeth the sword of
Hazael shall Jehu slay: and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu
shall Elisha slay.

19:18 Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which
have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.

19:19 So he departed thence, and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who
was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he with the
twelfth: and Elijah passed by him, and cast his mantle upon him.

19:20 And he left the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, Let me, I
pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee.
And he said unto him, Go back again: for what have I done to thee?
19:21 And he returned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen, and slew
them, and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen, and
gave unto the people, and they did eat. Then he arose, and went after
Elijah, and ministered unto him.

20:1 And Benhadad the king of Syria gathered all his host together:
and there were thirty and two kings with him, and horses, and
chariots; and he went up and besieged Samaria, and warred against it.

20:2 And he sent messengers to Ahab king of Israel into the city, and
said unto him, Thus saith Benhadad, 20:3 Thy silver and thy gold is
mine; thy wives also and thy children, even the goodliest, are mine.

20:4 And the king of Israel answered and said, My lord, O king,
according to thy saying, I am thine, and all that I have.

20:5 And the messengers came again, and said, Thus speaketh Benhadad,
saying, Although I have sent unto thee, saying, Thou shalt deliver me
thy silver, and thy gold, and thy wives, and thy children; 20:6 Yet I
will send my servants unto thee to morrow about this time, and they
shall search thine house, and the houses of thy servants; and it shall
be, that whatsoever is pleasant in thine eyes, they shall put it in
their hand, and take it away.

20:7 Then the king of Israel called all the elders of the land, and
said, Mark, I pray you, and see how this man seeketh mischief: for he
sent unto me for my wives, and for my children, and for my silver, and
for my gold; and I denied him not.

20:8 And all the elders and all the people said unto him, Hearken not
unto him, nor consent.

20:9 Wherefore he said unto the messengers of Benhadad, Tell my lord
the king, All that thou didst send for to thy servant at the first I
will do: but this thing I may not do. And the messengers departed, and
brought him word again.

20:10 And Benhadad sent unto him, and said, The gods do so unto me,
and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for
all the people that follow me.

20:11 And the king of Israel answered and said, Tell him, Let not him
that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.

20:12 And it came to pass, when Ben-hadad heard this message, as he
was drinking, he and the kings in the pavilions, that he said unto his
servants, Set yourselves in array. And they set themselves in array
against the city.

20:13 And, behold, there came a prophet unto Ahab king of Israel,
saying, Thus saith the LORD, Hast thou seen all this great multitude?
behold, I will deliver it into thine hand this day; and thou shalt
know that I am the LORD.

20:14 And Ahab said, By whom? And he said, Thus saith the LORD, Even
by the young men of the princes of the provinces. Then he said, Who
shall order the battle? And he answered, Thou.

20:15 Then he numbered the young men of the princes of the provinces,
and they were two hundred and thirty two: and after them he numbered
all the people, even all the children of Israel, being seven thousand.

20:16 And they went out at noon. But Benhadad was drinking himself
drunk in the pavilions, he and the kings, the thirty and two kings
that helped him.

20:17 And the young men of the princes of the provinces went out
first; and Benhadad sent out, and they told him, saying, There are men
come out of Samaria.

20:18 And he said, Whether they be come out for peace, take them
alive; or whether they be come out for war, take them alive.

20:19 So these young men of the princes of the provinces came out of
the city, and the army which followed them.

20:20 And they slew every one his man: and the Syrians fled; and
Israel pursued them: and Benhadad the king of Syria escaped on an
horse with the horsemen.

20:21 And the king of Israel went out, and smote the horses and
chariots, and slew the Syrians with a great slaughter.

20:22 And the prophet came to the king of Israel, and said unto him,
Go, strengthen thyself, and mark, and see what thou doest: for at the
return of the year the king of Syria will come up against thee.

20:23 And the servants of the king of Syria said unto him, Their gods
are gods of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let
us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger
than they.

20:24 And do this thing, Take the kings away, every man out of his
place, and put captains in their rooms: 20:25 And number thee an army,
like the army that thou hast lost, horse for horse, and chariot for
chariot: and we will fight against them in the plain, and surely we
shall be stronger than they. And he hearkened unto their voice, and
did so.

20:26 And it came to pass at the return of the year, that Benhadad
numbered the Syrians, and went up to Aphek, to fight against Israel.

20:27 And the children of Israel were numbered, and were all present,
and went against them: and the children of Israel pitched before them
like two little flocks of kids; but the Syrians filled the country.

20:28 And there came a man of God, and spake unto the king of Israel,
and said, Thus saith the LORD, Because the Syrians have said, The LORD
is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys, therefore will
I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, and ye shall know
that I am the LORD.

20:29 And they pitched one over against the other seven days. And so
it was, that in the seventh day the battle was joined: and the
children of Israel slew of the Syrians an hundred thousand footmen in
one day.

20:30 But the rest fled to Aphek, into the city; and there a wall fell
upon twenty and seven thousand of the men that were left. And Benhadad
fled, and came into the city, into an inner chamber.

20:31 And his servants said unto him, Behold now, we have heard that
the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings: let us, I pray
thee, put sackcloth on our loins, and ropes upon our heads, and go out
to the king of Israel: peradventure he will save thy life.

20:32 So they girded sackcloth on their loins, and put ropes on their
heads, and came to the king of Israel, and said, Thy servant Benhadad
saith, I pray thee, let me live. And he said, Is he yet alive? he is
my brother.

20:33 Now the men did diligently observe whether any thing would come
from him, and did hastily catch it: and they said, Thy brother
Benhadad. Then he said, Go ye, bring him. Then Benhadad came forth to
him; and he caused him to come up into the chariot.

20:34 And Ben-hadad said unto him, The cities, which my father took
from thy father, I will restore; and thou shalt make streets for thee
in Damascus, as my father made in Samaria. Then said Ahab, I will send
thee away with this covenant. So he made a covenant with him, and sent
him away.

20:35 And a certain man of the sons of the prophets said unto his
neighbour in the word of the LORD, Smite me, I pray thee. And the man
refused to smite him.

20:36 Then said he unto him, Because thou hast not obeyed the voice of
the LORD, behold, as soon as thou art departed from me, a lion shall
slay thee.

And as soon as he was departed from him, a lion found him, and slew
him.

20:37 Then he found another man, and said, Smite me, I pray thee. And
the man smote him, so that in smiting he wounded him.

20:38 So the prophet departed, and waited for the king by the way, and
disguised himself with ashes upon his face.

20:39 And as the king passed by, he cried unto the king: and he said,
Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle; and, behold, a man
turned aside, and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man: if
by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or
else thou shalt pay a talent of silver.

20:40 And as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone. And the
king of Israel said unto him, So shall thy judgment be; thyself hast
decided it.

20:41 And he hasted, and took the ashes away from his face; and the
king of Israel discerned him that he was of the prophets.

20:42 And he said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Because thou hast let
go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction,
therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his
people.

20:43 And the king of Israel went to his house heavy and displeased,
and came to Samaria.

21:1 And it came to pass after these things, that Naboth the
Jezreelite had a vineyard, which was in Jezreel, hard by the palace of
Ahab king of Samaria.

21:2 And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, Give me thy vineyard, that I
may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my house:
and I will give thee for it a better vineyard than it; or, if it seem
good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money.

21:3 And Naboth said to Ahab, The LORD forbid it me, that I should
give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee.

21:4 And Ahab came into his house heavy and displeased because of the
word which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken to him: for he had said, I
will not give thee the inheritance of my fathers. And he laid him down
upon his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no bread.

21:5 But Jezebel his wife came to him, and said unto him, Why is thy
spirit so sad, that thou eatest no bread?  21:6 And he said unto her,
Because I spake unto Naboth the Jezreelite, and said unto him, Give me
thy vineyard for money; or else, if it please thee, I will give thee
another vineyard for it: and he answered, I will not give thee my
vineyard.

21:7 And Jezebel his wife said unto him, Dost thou now govern the
kingdom of Israel? arise, and eat bread, and let thine heart be merry:
I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.

21:8 So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with his
seal, and sent the letters unto the elders and to the nobles that were
in his city, dwelling with Naboth.

21:9 And she wrote in the letters, saying, Proclaim a fast, and set
Naboth on high among the people: 21:10 And set two men, sons of
Belial, before him, to bear witness against him, saying, Thou didst
blaspheme God and the king. And then carry him out, and stone him,
that he may die.

21:11 And the men of his city, even the elders and the nobles who were
the inhabitants in his city, did as Jezebel had sent unto them, and as
it was written in the letters which she had sent unto them.

21:12 They proclaimed a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people.

21:13 And there came in two men, children of Belial, and sat before
him: and the men of Belial witnessed against him, even against Naboth,
in the presence of the people, saying, Naboth did blaspheme God and
the king. Then they carried him forth out of the city, and stoned him
with stones, that he died.

21:14 Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, Naboth is stoned, and is
dead.

21:15 And it came to pass, when Jezebel heard that Naboth was stoned,
and was dead, that Jezebel said to Ahab, Arise, take possession of the
vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to give thee for
money: for Naboth is not alive, but dead.

21:16 And it came to pass, when Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, that
Ahab rose up to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to
take possession of it.

21:17 And the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying,
21:18 Arise, go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, which is in Samaria:
behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth, whither he is gone down to
possess it.

21:19 And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Hast
thou killed, and also taken possession? And thou shalt speak unto him,
saying, Thus saith the LORD, In the place where dogs licked the blood
of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.

21:20 And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? And
he answered, I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work
evil in the sight of the LORD.

21:21 Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy
posterity, and will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the
wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, 21:22 And will make
thine house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the
house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for the provocation wherewith thou
hast provoked me to anger, and made Israel to sin.

21:23 And of Jezebel also spake the LORD, saying, The dogs shall eat
Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel.

21:24 Him that dieth of Ahab in the city the dogs shall eat; and him
that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat.

21:25 But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to
work wickedness in the sight of the LORD, whom Jezebel his wife
stirred up.

21:26 And he did very abominably in following idols, according to all
things as did the Amorites, whom the LORD cast out before the children
of Israel.

21:27 And it came to pass, when Ahab heard those words, that he rent
his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in
sackcloth, and went softly.

21:28 And the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying,
21:29 Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me? because he
humbleth himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days: but
in his son's days will I bring the evil upon his house.

22:1 And they continued three years without war between Syria and
Israel.

22:2 And it came to pass in the third year, that Jehoshaphat the king
of Judah came down to the king of Israel.

22:3 And the king of Israel said unto his servants, Know ye that
Ramoth in Gilead is ours, and we be still, and take it not out of the
hand of the king of Syria?  22:4 And he said unto Jehoshaphat, Wilt
thou go with me to battle to Ramothgilead? And Jehoshaphat said to the
king of Israel, I am as thou art, my people as thy people, my horses
as thy horses.

22:5 And Jehoshaphat said unto the king of Israel, Enquire, I pray
thee, at the word of the LORD to day.

22:6 Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about
four hundred men, and said unto them, Shall I go against Ramothgilead
to battle, or shall I forbear? And they said, Go up; for the LORD
shall deliver it into the hand of the king.

22:7 And Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of the LORD
besides, that we might enquire of him?  22:8 And the king of Israel
said unto Jehoshaphat, There is yet one man, Micaiah the son of Imlah,
by whom we may enquire of the LORD: but I hate him; for he doth not
prophesy good concerning me, but evil. And Jehoshaphat said, Let not
the king say so.

22:9 Then the king of Israel called an officer, and said, Hasten
hither Micaiah the son of Imlah.

22:10 And the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah sat
each on his throne, having put on their robes, in a void place in the
entrance of the gate of Samaria; and all the prophets prophesied
before them.

22:11 And Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah made him horns of iron: and he
said, Thus saith the LORD, With these shalt thou push the Syrians,
until thou have consumed them.

22:12 And all the prophets prophesied so, saying, Go up to
Ramothgilead, and prosper: for the LORD shall deliver it into the
king's hand.

22:13 And the messenger that was gone to call Micaiah spake unto him,
saying, Behold now, the words of the prophets declare good unto the
king with one mouth: let thy word, I pray thee, be like the word of
one of them, and speak that which is good.

22:14 And Micaiah said, As the LORD liveth, what the LORD saith unto
me, that will I speak.

22:15 So he came to the king. And the king said unto him, Micaiah,
shall we go against Ramothgilead to battle, or shall we forbear? And
he answered him, Go, and prosper: for the LORD shall deliver it into
the hand of the king.

22:16 And the king said unto him, How many times shall I adjure thee
that thou tell me nothing but that which is true in the name of the
LORD?  22:17 And he said, I saw all Israel scattered upon the hills,
as sheep that have not a shepherd: and the LORD said, These have no
master: let them return every man to his house in peace.

22:18 And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell
thee that he would prophesy no good concerning me, but evil?  22:19
And he said, Hear thou therefore the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD
sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on
his right hand and on his left.

22:20 And the LORD said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up
and fall at Ramothgilead? And one said on this manner, and another
said on that manner.

22:21 And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and
said, I will persuade him.

22:22 And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go
forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.
And he said, Thou shalt persude him, and prevail also: go forth, and
do so.

22:23 Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the
mouth of all these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil
concerning thee.

22:24 But Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah went near, and smote Micaiah
on the cheek, and said, Which way went the Spirit of the LORD from me
to speak unto thee?  22:25 And Micaiah said, Behold, thou shalt see in
that day, when thou shalt go into an inner chamber to hide thyself.

22:26 And the king of Israel said, Take Micaiah, and carry him back
unto Amon the governor of the city, and to Joash the king's son; 22:27
And say, Thus saith the king, Put this fellow in the prison, and feed
him with bread of affliction and with water of affliction, until I
come in peace.

22:28 And Micaiah said, If thou return at all in peace, the LORD hath
not spoken by me. And he said, Hearken, O people, every one of you.

22:29 So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah went up
to Ramothgilead.

22:30 And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, I will disguise
myself, and enter into the battle; but put thou on thy robes. And the
king of Israel disguised himself, and went into the battle.

22:31 But the king of Syria commanded his thirty and two captains that
had rule over his chariots, saying, Fight neither with small nor
great, save only with the king of Israel.

22:32 And it came to pass, when the captains of the chariots saw
Jehoshaphat, that they said, Surely it is the king of Israel. And they
turned aside to fight against him: and Jehoshaphat cried out.

22:33 And it came to pass, when the captains of the chariots perceived
that it was not the king of Israel, that they turned back from
pursuing him.

22:34 And a certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the king of
Israel between the joints of the harness: wherefore he said unto the
driver of his chariot, Turn thine hand, and carry me out of the host;
for I am wounded.

22:35 And the battle increased that day: and the king was stayed up in
his chariot against the Syrians, and died at even: and the blood ran
out of the wound into the midst of the chariot.

22:36 And there went a proclamation throughout the host about the
going down of the sun, saying, Every man to his city, and every man to
his own country.

22:37 So the king died, and was brought to Samaria; and they buried
the king in Samaria.

22:38 And one washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria; and the dogs
licked up his blood; and they washed his armour; according unto the
word of the LORD which he spake.

22:39 Now the rest of the acts of Ahab, and all that he did, and the
ivory house which he made, and all the cities that he built, are they
not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?
22:40 So Ahab slept with his fathers; and Ahaziah his son reigned in
his stead.

22:41 And Jehoshaphat the son of Asa began to reign over Judah in the
fourth year of Ahab king of Israel.

22:42 Jehoshaphat was thirty and five years old when he began to
reign; and he reigned twenty and five years in Jerusalem. And his
mother's name was Azubah the daughter of Shilhi.

22:43 And he walked in all the ways of Asa his father; he turned not
aside from it, doing that which was right in the eyes of the LORD:
nevertheless the high places were not taken away; for the people
offered and burnt incense yet in the high places.

22:44 And Jehoshaphat made peace with the king of Israel.

22:45 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, and his might that he
shewed, and how he warred, are they not written in the book of the
chronicles of the kings of Judah?  22:46 And the remnant of the
sodomites, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he took out
of the land.

22:47 There was then no king in Edom: a deputy was king.

22:48 Jehoshaphat made ships of Tharshish to go to Ophir for gold: but
they went not; for the ships were broken at Eziongeber.

22:49 Then said Ahaziah the son of Ahab unto Jehoshaphat, Let my
servants go with thy servants in the ships. But Jehoshaphat would not.

22:50 And Jehoshaphat slept with his fathers, and was buried with his
fathers in the city of David his father: and Jehoram his son reigned
in his stead.

22:51 Ahaziah the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria
the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and reigned two
years over Israel.

22:52 And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, and walked in the way
of his father, and in the way of his mother, and in the way of
Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin: 22:53 For he served
Baal, and worshipped him, and provoked to anger the LORD God of
Israel, according to all that his father had done.




The Second Book of the Kings

Commonly Called:

The Fourth Book of the Kings


1:1 Then Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of Ahab.

1:2 And Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber that
was in Samaria, and was sick: and he sent messengers, and said unto
them, Go, enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron whether I shall
recover of this disease.

1:3 But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go
up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and say unto them,
Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to enquire
of Baalzebub the god of Ekron?  1:4 Now therefore thus saith the LORD,
Thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but
shalt surely die. And Elijah departed.

1:5 And when the messengers turned back unto him, he said unto them,
Why are ye now turned back?  1:6 And they said unto him, There came a
man up to meet us, and said unto us, Go, turn again unto the king that
sent you, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Is it not because
there is not a God in Israel, that thou sendest to enquire of
Baalzebub the god of Ekron? therefore thou shalt not come down from
that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die.

1:7 And he said unto them, What manner of man was he which came up to
meet you, and told you these words?  1:8 And they answered him, He was
an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins. And
he said, It is Elijah the Tishbite.

1:9 Then the king sent unto him a captain of fifty with his fifty. And
he went up to him: and, behold, he sat on the top of an hill. And he
spake unto him, Thou man of God, the king hath said, Come down.

1:10 And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a
man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and
thy fifty.

And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.

1:11 Again also he sent unto him another captain of fifty with his
fifty.

And he answered and said unto him, O man of God, thus hath the king
said, Come down quickly.

1:12 And Elijah answered and said unto them, If I be a man of God, let
fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And the
fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.

1:13 And he sent again a captain of the third fifty with his fifty.
And the third captain of fifty went up, and came and fell on his knees
before Elijah, and besought him, and said unto him, O man of God, I
pray thee, let my life, and the life of these fifty thy servants, be
precious in thy sight.

1:14 Behold, there came fire down from heaven, and burnt up the two
captains of the former fifties with their fifties: therefore let my
life now be precious in thy sight.

1:15 And the angel of the LORD said unto Elijah, Go down with him: be
not afraid of him. And he arose, and went down with him unto the king.

1:16 And he said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Forasmuch as thou hast
sent messengers to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron, is it not
because there is no God in Israel to enquire of his word? therefore
thou shalt not come down off that bed on which thou art gone up, but
shalt surely die.

1:17 So he died according to the word of the LORD which Elijah had
spoken.

And Jehoram reigned in his stead in the second year of Jehoram the son
of Jehoshaphat king of Judah; because he had no son.

1:18 Now the rest of the acts of Ahaziah which he did, are they not
written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?  2:1 And
it came to pass, when the LORD would take up Elijah into heaven by a
whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal.

2:2 And Elijah said unto Elisha, Tarry here, I pray thee; for the LORD
hath sent me to Bethel. And Elisha said unto him, As the LORD liveth,
and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they went down to
Bethel.

2:3 And the sons of the prophets that were at Bethel came forth to
Elisha, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the LORD will take away
thy master from thy head to day? And he said, Yea, I know it; hold ye
your peace.

2:4 And Elijah said unto him, Elisha, tarry here, I pray thee; for the
LORD hath sent me to Jericho. And he said, As the LORD liveth, and as
thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they came to Jericho.

2:5 And the sons of the prophets that were at Jericho came to Elisha,
and said unto him, Knowest thou that the LORD will take away thy
master from thy head to day? And he answered, Yea, I know it; hold ye
your peace.

2:6 And Elijah said unto him, Tarry, I pray thee, here; for the LORD
hath sent me to Jordan. And he said, As the LORD liveth, and as thy
soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And they two went on.

2:7 And fifty men of the sons of the prophets went, and stood to view
afar off: and they two stood by Jordan.

2:8 And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote the
waters, and they were divided hither and thither, so that they two
went over on dry ground.

2:9 And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said
unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from
thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit
be upon me.

2:10 And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou
see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if
not, it shall not be so.

2:11 And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that,
behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and
parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into
heaven.

2:12 And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the
chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more:
and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces.

2:13 He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went
back, and stood by the bank of Jordan; 2:14 And he took the mantle of
Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is
the LORD God of Elijah? and when he also had smitten the waters, they
parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over.

2:15 And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho
saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha. And they
came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him.

2:16 And they said unto him, Behold now, there be with thy servants
fifty strong men; let them go, we pray thee, and seek thy master: lest
peradventure the Spirit of the LORD hath taken him up, and cast him
upon some mountain, or into some valley. And he said, Ye shall not
send.

2:17 And when they urged him till he was ashamed, he said, Send. They
sent therefore fifty men; and they sought three days, but found him
not.

2:18 And when they came again to him, (for he tarried at Jericho,) he
said unto them, Did I not say unto you, Go not?  2:19 And the men of
the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this
city is pleasant, as my lord seeth: but the water is naught, and the
ground barren.

2:20 And he said, Bring me a new cruse, and put salt therein. And they
brought it to him.

2:21 And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the
salt in there, and said, Thus saith the LORD, I have healed these
waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land.

2:22 So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying
of Elisha which he spake.

2:23 And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by
the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked
him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.

2:24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the
name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood,
and tare forty and two children of them.

2:25 And he went from thence to mount Carmel, and from thence he
returned to Samaria.

3:1 Now Jehoram the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria
the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and reigned twelve
years.

3:2 And he wrought evil in the sight of the LORD; but not like his
father, and like his mother: for he put away the image of Baal that
his father had made.

3:3 Nevertheless he cleaved unto the sins of Jeroboam the son of
Nebat, which made Israel to sin; he departed not therefrom.

3:4 And Mesha king of Moab was a sheepmaster, and rendered unto the
king of Israel an hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand
rams, with the wool.

3:5 But it came to pass, when Ahab was dead, that the king of Moab
rebelled against the king of Israel.

3:6 And king Jehoram went out of Samaria the same time, and numbered
all Israel.

3:7 And he went and sent to Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, saying, The
king of Moab hath rebelled against me: wilt thou go with me against
Moab to battle? And he said, I will go up: I am as thou art, my people
as thy people, and my horses as thy horses.

3:8 And he said, Which way shall we go up? And he answered, The way
through the wilderness of Edom.

3:9 So the king of Israel went, and the king of Judah, and the king of
Edom: and they fetched a compass of seven days' journey: and there was
no water for the host, and for the cattle that followed them.

3:10 And the king of Israel said, Alas! that the LORD hath called
these three kings together, to deliver them into the hand of Moab!
3:11 But Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of the LORD,
that we may enquire of the LORD by him? And one of the king of
Israel's servants answered and said, Here is Elisha the son of
Shaphat, which poured water on the hands of Elijah.

3:12 And Jehoshaphat said, The word of the LORD is with him. So the
king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him.

3:13 And Elisha said unto the king of Israel, What have I to do with
thee?  get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of
thy mother.

And the king of Israel said unto him, Nay: for the LORD hath called
these three kings together, to deliver them into the hand of Moab.

3:14 And Elisha said, As the LORD of hosts liveth, before whom I
stand, surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat
the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee.

3:15 But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the
minstrel played, that the hand of the LORD came upon him.

3:16 And he said, Thus saith the LORD, Make this valley full of
ditches.

3:17 For thus saith the LORD, Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye
see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, that ye may
drink, both ye, and your cattle, and your beasts.

3:18 And this is but a light thing in the sight of the LORD: he will
deliver the Moabites also into your hand.

3:19 And ye shall smite every fenced city, and every choice city, and
shall fell every good tree, and stop all wells of water, and mar every
good piece of land with stones.

3:20 And it came to pass in the morning, when the meat offering was
offered, that, behold, there came water by the way of Edom, and the
country was filled with water.

3:21 And when all the Moabites heard that the kings were come up to
fight against them, they gathered all that were able to put on armour,
and upward, and stood in the border.

3:22 And they rose up early in the morning, and the sun shone upon the
water, and the Moabites saw the water on the other side as red as
blood: 3:23 And they said, This is blood: the kings are surely slain,
and they have smitten one another: now therefore, Moab, to the spoil.

3:24 And when they came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose up
and smote the Moabites, so that they fled before them: but they went
forward smiting the Moabites, even in their country.

3:25 And they beat down the cities, and on every good piece of land
cast every man his stone, and filled it; and they stopped all the
wells of water, and felled all the good trees: only in Kirharaseth
left they the stones thereof; howbeit the slingers went about it, and
smote it.

3:26 And when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for
him, he took with him seven hundred men that drew swords, to break
through even unto the king of Edom: but they could not.

3:27 Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his
stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there
was great indignation against Israel: and they departed from him, and
returned to their own land.

4:1 Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the
prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead; and thou
knowest that thy servant did fear the LORD: and the creditor is come
to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.

4:2 And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? tell me, what
hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not any
thing in the house, save a pot of oil.

4:3 Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy
neighbours, even empty vessels; borrow not a few.

4:4 And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and
upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all those vessels, and thou
shalt set aside that which is full.

4:5 So she went from him, and shut the door upon her and upon her
sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured out.

4:6 And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said
unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is
not a vessel more. And the oil stayed.

4:7 Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the
oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest.

4:8 And it fell on a day, that Elisha passed to Shunem, where was a
great woman; and she constrained him to eat bread. And so it was, that
as oft as he passed by, he turned in thither to eat bread.

4:9 And she said unto her husband, Behold now, I perceive that this is
an holy man of God, which passeth by us continually.

4:10 Let us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall; and let
us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a
candlestick: and it shall be, when he cometh to us, that he shall turn
in thither.

4:11 And it fell on a day, that he came thither, and he turned into
the chamber, and lay there.

4:12 And he said to Gehazi his servant, Call this Shunammite. And when
he had called her, she stood before him.

4:13 And he said unto him, Say now unto her, Behold, thou hast been
careful for us with all this care; what is to be done for thee?
wouldest thou be spoken for to the king, or to the captain of the
host? And she answered, I dwell among mine own people.

4:14 And he said, What then is to be done for her? And Gehazi
answered, Verily she hath no child, and her husband is old.

4:15 And he said, Call her. And when he had called her, she stood in
the door.

4:16 And he said, About this season, according to the time of life,
thou shalt embrace a son. And she said, Nay, my lord, thou man of God,
do not lie unto thine handmaid.

4:17 And the woman conceived, and bare a son at that season that
Elisha had said unto her, according to the time of life.

4:18 And when the child was grown, it fell on a day, that he went out
to his father to the reapers.

4:19 And he said unto his father, My head, my head. And he said to a
lad, Carry him to his mother.

4:20 And when he had taken him, and brought him to his mother, he sat
on her knees till noon, and then died.

4:21 And she went up, and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and
shut the door upon him, and went out.

4:22 And she called unto her husband, and said, Send me, I pray thee,
one of the young men, and one of the asses, that I may run to the man
of God, and come again.

4:23 And he said, Wherefore wilt thou go to him to day? it is neither
new moon, nor sabbath. And she said, It shall be well.

4:24 Then she saddled an ass, and said to her servant, Drive, and go
forward; slack not thy riding for me, except I bid thee.

4:25 So she went and came unto the man of God to mount Carmel. And it
came to pass, when the man of God saw her afar off, that he said to
Gehazi his servant, Behold, yonder is that Shunammite: 4:26 Run now, I
pray thee, to meet her, and say unto her, Is it well with thee? is it
well with thy husband? is it well with the child? And she answered, It
is well: 4:27 And when she came to the man of God to the hill, she
caught him by the feet: but Gehazi came near to thrust her away. And
the man of God said, Let her alone; for her soul is vexed within her:
and the LORD hath hid it from me, and hath not told me.

4:28 Then she said, Did I desire a son of my lord? did I not say, Do
not deceive me?  4:29 Then he said to Gehazi, Gird up thy loins, and
take my staff in thine hand, and go thy way: if thou meet any man,
salute him not; and if any salute thee, answer him not again: and lay
my staff upon the face of the child.

4:30 And the mother of the child said, As the LORD liveth, and as thy
soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And he arose, and followed her.

4:31 And Gehazi passed on before them, and laid the staff upon the
face of the child; but there was neither voice, nor hearing. Wherefore
he went again to meet him, and told him, saying, The child is not
awaked.

4:32 And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was
dead, and laid upon his bed.

4:33 He went in therefore, and shut the door upon them twain, and
prayed unto the LORD.

4:34 And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon
his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands:
and stretched himself upon the child; and the flesh of the child waxed
warm.

4:35 Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro; and went
up, and stretched himself upon him: and the child sneezed seven times,
and the child opened his eyes.

4:36 And he called Gehazi, and said, Call this Shunammite. So he
called her. And when she was come in unto him, he said, Take up thy
son.

4:37 Then she went in, and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the
ground, and took up her son, and went out.

4:38 And Elisha came again to Gilgal: and there was a dearth in the
land; and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him: and he
said unto his servant, Set on the great pot, and seethe pottage for
the sons of the prophets.

4:39 And one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild
vine, and gathered thereof wild gourds his lap full, and came and
shred them into the pot of pottage: for they knew them not.

4:40 So they poured out for the men to eat. And it came to pass, as
they were eating of the pottage, that they cried out, and said, O thou
man of God, there is death in the pot. And they could not eat thereof.

4:41 But he said, Then bring meal. And he cast it into the pot; and he
said, Pour out for the people, that they may eat. And there was no
harm in the pot.

4:42 And there came a man from Baalshalisha, and brought the man of
God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley, and full ears
of corn in the husk thereof. And he said, Give unto the people, that
they may eat.

4:43 And his servitor said, What, should I set this before an hundred
men?  He said again, Give the people, that they may eat: for thus
saith the LORD, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof.

4:44 So he set it before them, and they did eat, and left thereof,
according to the word of the LORD.

5:1 Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great
man with his master, and honourable, because by him the LORD had given
deliverance unto Syria: he was also a mighty man in valour, but he was
a leper.

5:2 And the Syrians had gone out by companies, and had brought away
captive out of the land of Israel a little maid; and she waited on
Naaman's wife.

5:3 And she said unto her mistress, Would God my lord were with the
prophet that is in Samaria! for he would recover him of his leprosy.

5:4 And one went in, and told his lord, saying, Thus and thus said the
maid that is of the land of Israel.

5:5 And the king of Syria said, Go to, go, and I will send a letter
unto the king of Israel. And he departed, and took with him ten
talents of silver, and six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of
raiment.

5:6 And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, Now when
this letter is come unto thee, behold, I have therewith sent Naaman my
servant to thee, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy.

5:7 And it came to pass, when the king of Israel had read the letter,
that he rent his clothes, and said, Am I God, to kill and to make
alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his
leprosy? wherefore consider, I pray you, and see how he seeketh a
quarrel against me.

5:8 And it was so, when Elisha the man of God had heard that the king
of Israel had rent his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying,
Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes? let him come now to me, and he
shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.

5:9 So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at
the door of the house of Elisha.

5:10 And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in
Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou
shalt be clean.

5:11 But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought,
He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the
LORD his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the
leper.

5:12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all
the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he
turned and went away in a rage.

5:13 And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My
father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou
not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash,
and be clean?  5:14 Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times
in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh
came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

5:15 And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and
came, and stood before him: and he said, Behold, now I know that there
is no God in all the earth, but in Israel: now therefore, I pray thee,
take a blessing of thy servant.

5:16 But he said, As the LORD liveth, before whom I stand, I will
receive none. And he urged him to take it; but he refused.

5:17 And Naaman said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to
thy servant two mules' burden of earth? for thy servant will
henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods,
but unto the LORD.

5:18 In this thing the LORD pardon thy servant, that when my master
goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my
hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon: when I bow down myself
in the house of Rimmon, the LORD pardon thy servant in this thing.

5:19 And he said unto him, Go in peace. So he departed from him a
little way.

5:20 But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said, Behold,
my master hath spared Naaman this Syrian, in not receiving at his
hands that which he brought: but, as the LORD liveth, I will run after
him, and take somewhat of him.

5:21 So Gehazi followed after Naaman. And when Naaman saw him running
after him, he lighted down from the chariot to meet him, and said, Is
all well?  5:22 And he said, All is well. My master hath sent me,
saying, Behold, even now there be come to me from mount Ephraim two
young men of the sons of the prophets: give them, I pray thee, a
talent of silver, and two changes of garments.

5:23 And Naaman said, Be content, take two talents. And he urged him,
and bound two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of
garments, and laid them upon two of his servants; and they bare them
before him.

5:24 And when he came to the tower, he took them from their hand, and
bestowed them in the house: and he let the men go, and they departed.

5:25 But he went in, and stood before his master. And Elisha said unto
him, Whence comest thou, Gehazi? And he said, Thy servant went no
whither.

5:26 And he said unto him, Went not mine heart with thee, when the man
turned again from his chariot to meet thee? Is it a time to receive
money, and to receive garments, and oliveyards, and vineyards, and
sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and maidservants?  5:27 The leprosy
therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for
ever. And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow.

6:1 And the sons of the prophets said unto Elisha, Behold now, the
place where we dwell with thee is too strait for us.

6:2 Let us go, we pray thee, unto Jordan, and take thence every man a
beam, and let us make us a place there, where we may dwell. And he
answered, Go ye.

6:3 And one said, Be content, I pray thee, and go with thy servants.
And he answered, I will go.

6:4 So he went with them. And when they came to Jordan, they cut down
wood.

6:5 But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water:
and he cried, and said, Alas, master! for it was borrowed.

6:6 And the man of God said, Where fell it? And he shewed him the
place.

And he cut down a stick, and cast it in thither; and the iron did
swim.

6:7 Therefore said he, Take it up to thee. And he put out his hand,
and took it.

6:8 Then the king of Syria warred against Israel, and took counsel
with his servants, saying, In such and such a place shall be my camp.

6:9 And the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying, Beware
that thou pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are come
down.

6:10 And the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God
told him and warned him of, and saved himself there, not once nor
twice.

6:11 Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for
this thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye
not shew me which of us is for the king of Israel?  6:12 And one of
his servants said, None, my lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that
is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest
in thy bedchamber.

6:13 And he said, Go and spy where he is, that I may send and fetch
him.

And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan.

6:14 Therefore sent he thither horses, and chariots, and a great host:
and they came by night, and compassed the city about.

6:15 And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone
forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and
chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we
do?  6:16 And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more
than they that be with them.

6:17 And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes,
that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he
saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire
round about Elisha.

6:18 And when they came down to him, Elisha prayed unto the LORD, and
said, Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness. And he smote
them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.

6:19 And Elisha said unto them, This is not the way, neither is this
the city: follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom ye seek. But
he led them to Samaria.

6:20 And it came to pass, when they were come into Samaria, that
Elisha said, LORD, open the eyes of these men, that they may see. And
the LORD opened their eyes, and they saw; and, behold, they were in
the midst of Samaria.

6:21 And the king of Israel said unto Elisha, when he saw them, My
father, shall I smite them? shall I smite them?  6:22 And he answered,
Thou shalt not smite them: wouldest thou smite those whom thou hast
taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow? set bread and water
before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master.

6:23 And he prepared great provision for them: and when they had eaten
and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master. So the
bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel.

6:24 And it came to pass after this, that Benhadad king of Syria
gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged Samaria.

6:25 And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they
besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of
silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of
silver.

6:26 And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there
cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king.

6:27 And he said, If the LORD do not help thee, whence shall I help
thee?  out of the barnfloor, or out of the winepress?  6:28 And the
king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman
said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will
eat my son to morrow.

6:29 So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the
next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son.

6:30 And it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the woman,
that he rent his clothes; and he passed by upon the wall, and the
people looked, and, behold, he had sackcloth within upon his flesh.

6:31 Then he said, God do so and more also to me, if the head of
Elisha the son of Shaphat shall stand on him this day.

6:32 But Elisha sat in his house, and the elders sat with him; and the
king sent a man from before him: but ere the messenger came to him, he
said to the elders, See ye how this son of a murderer hath sent to
take away mine head? look, when the messenger cometh, shut the door,
and hold him fast at the door: is not the sound of his master's feet
behind him?  6:33 And while he yet talked with them, behold, the
messenger came down unto him: and he said, Behold, this evil is of the
LORD; what should I wait for the LORD any longer?  7:1 Then Elisha
said, Hear ye the word of the LORD; Thus saith the LORD, To morrow
about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel,
and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.

7:2 Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God,
and said, Behold, if the LORD would make windows in heaven, might this
thing be?  And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but
shalt not eat thereof.

7:3 And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate:
and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die?  7:4 If we
say, We will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and
we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also. Now
therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they
save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die.

7:5 And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the camp of the
Syrians: and when they were come to the uttermost part of the camp of
Syria, behold, there was no man there.

7:6 For the LORD had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of
chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and
they said one to another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us
the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come
upon us.

7:7 Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their
tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and
fled for their life.

7:8 And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they
went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver,
and gold, and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and
entered into another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid
it.

7:9 Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day
of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning
light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we
may go and tell the king's household.

7:10 So they came and called unto the porter of the city: and they
told them, saying, We came to the camp of the Syrians, and, behold,
there was no man there, neither voice of man, but horses tied, and
asses tied, and the tents as they were.

7:11 And he called the porters; and they told it to the king's house
within.

7:12 And the king arose in the night, and said unto his servants, I
will now shew you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we
be hungry; therefore are they gone out of the camp to hide themselves
in the field, saying, When they come out of the city, we shall catch
them alive, and get into the city.

7:13 And one of his servants answered and said, Let some take, I pray
thee, five of the horses that remain, which are left in the city,
(behold, they are as all the multitude of Israel that are left in it:
behold, I say, they are even as all the multitude of the Israelites
that are consumed:) and let us send and see.

7:14 They took therefore two chariot horses; and the king sent after
the host of the Syrians, saying, Go and see.

7:15 And they went after them unto Jordan: and, lo, all the way was
full of garments and vessels, which the Syrians had cast away in their
haste. And the messengers returned, and told the king.

7:16 And the people went out, and spoiled the tents of the Syrians. So
a measure of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two measures of
barley for a shekel, according to the word of the LORD.

7:17 And the king appointed the lord on whose hand he leaned to have
the charge of the gate: and the people trode upon him in the gate, and
he died, as the man of God had said, who spake when the king came down
to him.

7:18 And it came to pass as the man of God had spoken to the king,
saying, Two measures of barley for a shekel, and a measure of fine
flour for a shekel, shall be to morrow about this time in the gate of
Samaria: 7:19 And that lord answered the man of God, and said, Now,
behold, if the LORD should make windows in heaven, might such a thing
be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt
not eat thereof.

7:20 And so it fell out unto him: for the people trode upon him in the
gate, and he died.

8:1 Then spake Elisha unto the woman, whose son he had restored to
life, saying, Arise, and go thou and thine household, and sojourn
wheresoever thou canst sojourn: for the LORD hath called for a famine;
and it shall also come upon the land seven years.

8:2 And the woman arose, and did after the saying of the man of God:
and she went with her household, and sojourned in the land of the
Philistines seven years.

8:3 And it came to pass at the seven years' end, that the woman
returned out of the land of the Philistines: and she went forth to cry
unto the king for her house and for her land.

8:4 And the king talked with Gehazi the servant of the man of God,
saying, Tell me, I pray thee, all the great things that Elisha hath
done.

8:5 And it came to pass, as he was telling the king how he had
restored a dead body to life, that, behold, the woman, whose son he
had restored to life, cried to the king for her house and for her
land. And Gehazi said, My lord, O king, this is the woman, and this is
her son, whom Elisha restored to life.

8:6 And when the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king
appointed unto her a certain officer, saying, Restore all that was
hers, and all the fruits of the field since the day that she left the
land, even until now.

8:7 And Elisha came to Damascus; and Benhadad the king of Syria was
sick; and it was told him, saying, The man of God is come hither.

8:8 And the king said unto Hazael, Take a present in thine hand, and
go, meet the man of God, and enquire of the LORD by him, saying, Shall
I recover of this disease?  8:9 So Hazael went to meet him, and took a
present with him, even of every good thing of Damascus, forty camels'
burden, and came and stood before him, and said, Thy son Benhadad king
of Syria hath sent me to thee, saying, Shall I recover of this
disease?  8:10 And Elisha said unto him, Go, say unto him, Thou mayest
certainly recover: howbeit the LORD hath shewed me that he shall
surely die.

8:11 And he settled his countenance stedfastly, until he was ashamed:
and the man of God wept.

8:12 And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And he answered, Because I
know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel: their
strong holds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay
with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women
with child.

8:13 And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should
do this great thing? And Elisha answered, The LORD hath shewed me that
thou shalt be king over Syria.

8:14 So he departed from Elisha, and came to his master; who said to
him, What said Elisha to thee? And he answered, He told me that thou
shouldest surely recover.

8:15 And it came to pass on the morrow, that he took a thick cloth,
and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that he died:
and Hazael reigned in his stead.

8:16 And in the fifth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel,
Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah, Jehoram the son of Je hoshaphat
king of Judah began to reign.

8:17 Thirty and two years old was he when he began to reign; and he
reigned eight years in Jerusalem.

8:18 And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as did the house
of Ahab: for the daughter of Ahab was his wife: and he did evil in the
sight of the LORD.

8:19 Yet the LORD would not destroy Judah for David his servant's
sake, as he promised him to give him alway a light, and to his
children.

8:20 In his days Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah, and made
a king over themselves.

8:21 So Joram went over to Zair, and all the chariots with him: and he
rose by night, and smote the Edomites which compassed him about, and
the captains of the chariots: and the people fled into their tents.

8:22 Yet Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah unto this day.
Then Libnah revolted at the same time.

8:23 And the rest of the acts of Joram, and all that he did, are they
not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?  8:24
And Joram slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in
the city of David: and Ahaziah his son reigned in his stead.

8:25 In the twelfth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel did
Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah begin to reign.

8:26 Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign; and
he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Athaliah,
the daughter of Omri king of Israel.

8:27 And he walked in the way of the house of Ahab, and did evil in
the sight of the LORD, as did the house of Ahab: for he was the son in
law of the house of Ahab.

8:28 And he went with Joram the son of Ahab to the war against Hazael
king of Syria in Ramothgilead; and the Syrians wounded Joram.

8:29 And king Joram went back to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds
which the Syrians had given him at Ramah, when he fought against
Hazael king of Syria. And Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah
went down to see Joram the son of Ahab in Jezreel, because he was
sick.

9:1 And Elisha the prophet called one of the children of the prophets,
and said unto him, Gird up thy loins, and take this box of oil in
thine hand, and go to Ramothgilead: 9:2 And when thou comest thither,
look out there Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi, and go
in, and make him arise up from among his brethren, and carry him to an
inner chamber; 9:3 Then take the box of oil, and pour it on his head,
and say, Thus saith the LORD, I have anointed thee king over Israel.
Then open the door, and flee, and tarry not.

9:4 So the young man, even the young man the prophet, went to
Ramothgilead.

9:5 And when he came, behold, the captains of the host were sitting;
and he said, I have an errand to thee, O captain. And Jehu said, Unto
which of all us? And he said, To thee, O captain.

9:6 And he arose, and went into the house; and he poured the oil on
his head, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I have
anointed thee king over the people of the LORD, even over Israel.

9:7 And thou shalt smite the house of Ahab thy master, that I may
avenge the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the
servants of the LORD, at the hand of Jezebel.

9:8 For the whole house of Ahab shall perish: and I will cut off from
Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and
left in Israel: 9:9 And I will make the house of Ahab like the house
of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of
Ahijah: 9:10 And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel,
and there shall be none to bury her. And he opened the door, and fled.

9:11 Then Jehu came forth to the servants of his lord: and one said
unto him, Is all well? wherefore came this mad fellow to thee? And he
said unto them, Ye know the man, and his communication.

9:12 And they said, It is false; tell us now. And he said, Thus and
thus spake he to me, saying, Thus saith the LORD, I have anointed thee
king over Israel.

9:13 Then they hasted, and took every man his garment, and put it
under him on the top of the stairs, and blew with trumpets, saying,
Jehu is king.

9:14 So Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi conspired
against Joram. (Now Joram had kept Ramothgilead, he and all Israel,
because of Hazael king of Syria.

9:15 But king Joram was returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds
which the Syrians had given him, when he fought with Hazael king of
Syria.)  And Jehu said, If it be your minds, then let none go forth
nor escape out of the city to go to tell it in Jezreel.

9:16 So Jehu rode in a chariot, and went to Jezreel; for Joram lay
there.

And Ahaziah king of Judah was come down to see Joram.

9:17 And there stood a watchman on the tower in Jezreel, and he spied
the company of Jehu as he came, and said, I see a company. And Joram
said, Take an horseman, and send to meet them, and let him say, Is it
peace?  9:18 So there went one on horseback to meet him, and said,
Thus saith the king, Is it peace? And Jehu said, What hast thou to do
with peace? turn thee behind me. And the watchman told, saying, The
messenger came to them, but he cometh not again.

9:19 Then he sent out a second on horseback, which came to them, and
said, Thus saith the king, Is it peace? And Jehu answered, What hast
thou to do with peace? turn thee behind me.

9:20 And the watchman told, saying, He came even unto them, and cometh
not again: and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of
Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.

9:21 And Joram said, Make ready. And his chariot was made ready. And
Joram king of Israel and Ahaziah king of Judah went out, each in his
chariot, and they went out against Jehu, and met him in the portion of
Naboth the Jezreelite.

9:22 And it came to pass, when Joram saw Jehu, that he said, Is it
peace, Jehu? And he answered, What peace, so long as the whoredoms of
thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?  9:23 And Joram
turned his hands, and fled, and said to Ahaziah, There is treachery, O
Ahaziah.

9:24 And Jehu drew a bow with his full strength, and smote Jehoram
between his arms, and the arrow went out at his heart, and he sunk
down in his chariot.

9:25 Then said Jehu to Bidkar his captain, Take up, and cast him in
the portion of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite: for remember how
that, when I and thou rode together after Ahab his father, the LORD
laid this burden upon him; 9:26 Surely I have seen yesterday the blood
of Naboth, and the blood of his sons, saith the LORD; and I will
requite thee in this plat, saith the LORD. Now therefore take and cast
him into the plat of ground, according to the word of the LORD.

9:27 But when Ahaziah the king of Judah saw this, he fled by the way
of the garden house. And Jehu followed after him, and said, Smite him
also in the chariot. And they did so at the going up to Gur, which is
by Ibleam.

And he fled to Megiddo, and died there.

9:28 And his servants carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem, and
buried him in his sepulchre with his fathers in the city of David.

9:29 And in the eleventh year of Joram the son of Ahab began Ahaziah
to reign over Judah.

9:30 And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she
painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window.

9:31 And as Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, Had Zimri peace,
who slew his master?  9:32 And he lifted up his face to the window,
and said, Who is on my side?  who? And there looked out to him two or
three eunuchs.

9:33 And he said, Throw her down. So they threw her down: and some of
her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses: and he trode
her under foot.

9:34 And when he was come in, he did eat and drink, and said, Go, see
now this cursed woman, and bury her: for she is a king's daughter.

9:35 And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the
skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.

9:36 Wherefore they came again, and told him. And he said, This is the
word of the LORD, which he spake by his servant Elijah the Tishbite,
saying, In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel:
9:37 And the carcase of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the
field in the portion of Jezreel; so that they shall not say, This is
Jezebel.

10:1 And Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. And Jehu wrote letters, and
sent to Samaria, unto the rulers of Jezreel, to the elders, and to
them that brought up Ahab's children, saying, 10:2 Now as soon as this
letter cometh to you, seeing your master's sons are with you, and
there are with you chariots and horses, a fenced city also, and
armour; 10:3 Look even out the best and meetest of your master's sons,
and set him on his father's throne, and fight for your master's house.

10:4 But they were exceedingly afraid, and said, Behold, two kings
stood not before him: how then shall we stand?  10:5 And he that was
over the house, and he that was over the city, the elders also, and
the bringers up of the children, sent to Jehu, saying, We are thy
servants, and will do all that thou shalt bid us; we will not make any
king: do thou that which is good in thine eyes.

10:6 Then he wrote a letter the second time to them, saying, If ye be
mine, and if ye will hearken unto my voice, take ye the heads of the
men your master's sons, and come to me to Jezreel by to morrow this
time. Now the king's sons, being seventy persons, were with the great
men of the city, which brought them up.

10:7 And it came to pass, when the letter came to them, that they took
the king's sons, and slew seventy persons, and put their heads in
baskets, and sent him them to Jezreel.

10:8 And there came a messenger, and told him, saying, They have
brought the heads of the king's sons. And he said, Lay ye them in two
heaps at the entering in of the gate until the morning.

10:9 And it came to pass in the morning, that he went out, and stood,
and said to all the people, Ye be righteous: behold, I conspired
against my master, and slew him: but who slew all these?  10:10 Know
now that there shall fall unto the earth nothing of the word of the
LORD, which the LORD spake concerning the house of Ahab: for the LORD
hath done that which he spake by his servant Elijah.

10:11 So Jehu slew all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel,
and all his great men, and his kinsfolks, and his priests, until he
left him none remaining.

10:12 And he arose and departed, and came to Samaria. And as he was at
the shearing house in the way, 10:13 Jehu met with the brethren of
Ahaziah king of Judah, and said, Who are ye? And they answered, We are
the brethren of Ahaziah; and we go down to salute the children of the
king and the children of the queen.

10:14 And he said, Take them alive. And they took them alive, and slew
them at the pit of the shearing house, even two and forty men; neither
left he any of them.

10:15 And when he was departed thence, he lighted on Jehonadab the son
of Rechab coming to meet him: and he saluted him, and said to him, Is
thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart? And Jehonadab
answered, It is. If it be, give me thine hand. And he gave him his
hand; and he took him up to him into the chariot.

10:16 And he said, Come with me, and see my zeal for the LORD. So they
made him ride in his chariot.

10:17 And when he came to Samaria, he slew all that remained unto Ahab
in Samaria, till he had destroyed him, according to the saying of the
LORD, which he spake to Elijah.

10:18 And Jehu gathered all the people together, and said unto them,
Ahab served Baal a little; but Jehu shall serve him much.

10:19 Now therefore call unto me all the prophets of Baal, all his
servants, and all his priests; let none be wanting: for I have a great
sacrifice to do to Baal; whosoever shall be wanting, he shall not
live. But Jehu did it in subtilty, to the intent that he might destroy
the worshippers of Baal.

10:20 And Jehu said, Proclaim a solemn assembly for Baal. And they
proclaimed it.

10:21 And Jehu sent through all Israel: and all the worshippers of
Baal came, so that there was not a man left that came not. And they
came into the house of Baal; and the house of Baal was full from one
end to another.

10:22 And he said unto him that was over the vestry, Bring forth
vestments for all the worshippers of Baal. And he brought them forth
vestments.

10:23 And Jehu went, and Jehonadab the son of Rechab, into the house
of Baal, and said unto the worshippers of Baal, Search, and look that
there be here with you none of the servants of the LORD, but the
worshippers of Baal only.

10:24 And when they went in to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings,
Jehu appointed fourscore men without, and said, If any of the men whom
I have brought into your hands escape, he that letteth him go, his
life shall be for the life of him.

10:25 And it came to pass, as soon as he had made an end of offering
the burnt offering, that Jehu said to the guard and to the captains,
Go in, and slay them; let none come forth. And they smote them with
the edge of the sword; and the guard and the captains cast them out,
and went to the city of the house of Baal.

10:26 And they brought forth the images out of the house of Baal, and
burned them.

10:27 And they brake down the image of Baal, and brake down the house
of Baal, and made it a draught house unto this day.

10:28 Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel.

10:29 Howbeit from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made
Israel to sin, Jehu departed not from after them, to wit, the golden
calves that were in Bethel, and that were in Dan.

10:30 And the LORD said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in
executing that which is right in mine eyes, and hast done unto the
house of Ahab according to all that was in mine heart, thy children of
the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.

10:31 But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the LORD God of
Israel with all his heart: for he departed not from the sins of
Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin.

10:32 In those days the LORD began to cut Israel short: and Hazael
smote them in all the coasts of Israel; 10:33 From Jordan eastward,
all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, and the Reubenites, and the
Manassites, from Aroer, which is by the river Arnon, even Gilead and
Bashan.

10:34 Now the rest of the acts of Jehu, and all that he did, and all
his might, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the
kings of Israel?  10:35 And Jehu slept with his fathers: and they
buried him in Samaria. And Jehoahaz his son reigned in his stead.

10:36 And the time that Jehu reigned over Israel in Samaria was twenty
and eight years.

11:1 And when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was
dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal.

11:2 But Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah,
took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's
sons which were slain; and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in
the bedchamber from Athaliah, so that he was not slain.

11:3 And he was with her hid in the house of the LORD six years. And
Athaliah did reign over the land.

11:4 And the seventh year Jehoiada sent and fetched the rulers over
hundreds, with the captains and the guard, and brought them to him
into the house of the LORD, and made a covenant with them, and took an
oath of them in the house of the LORD, and shewed them the king's son.

11:5 And he commanded them, saying, This is the thing that ye shall
do; A third part of you that enter in on the sabbath shall even be
keepers of the watch of the king's house; 11:6 And a third part shall
be at the gate of Sur; and a third part at the gate behind the guard:
so shall ye keep the watch of the house, that it be not broken down.

11:7 And two parts of all you that go forth on the sabbath, even they
shall keep the watch of the house of the LORD about the king.

11:8 And ye shall compass the king round about, every man with his
weapons in his hand: and he that cometh within the ranges, let him be
slain: and be ye with the king as he goeth out and as he cometh in.

11:9 And the captains over the hundreds did according to all things
that Jehoiada the priest commanded: and they took every man his men
that were to come in on the sabbath, with them that should go out on
the sabbath, and came to Jehoiada the priest.

11:10 And to the captains over hundreds did the priest give king
David's spears and shields, that were in the temple of the LORD.

11:11 And the guard stood, every man with his weapons in his hand,
round about the king, from the right corner of the temple to the left
corner of the temple, along by the altar and the temple.

11:12 And he brought forth the king's son, and put the crown upon him,
and gave him the testimony; and they made him king, and anointed him;
and they clapped their hands, and said, God save the king.

11:13 And when Athaliah heard the noise of the guard and of the
people, she came to the people into the temple of the LORD.

11:14 And when she looked, behold, the king stood by a pillar, as the
manner was, and the princes and the trumpeters by the king, and all
the people of the land rejoiced, and blew with trumpets: and Athaliah
rent her clothes, and cried, Treason, Treason.

11:15 But Jehoiada the priest commanded the captains of the hundreds,
the officers of the host, and said unto them, Have her forth without
the ranges: and him that followeth her kill with the sword. For the
priest had said, Let her not be slain in the house of the LORD.

11:16 And they laid hands on her; and she went by the way by the which
the horses came into the king's house: and there was she slain.

11:17 And Jehoiada made a covenant between the LORD and the king and
the people, that they should be the LORD's people; between the king
also and the people.

11:18 And all the people of the land went into the house of Baal, and
brake it down; his altars and his images brake they in pieces
thoroughly, and slew Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars. And
the priest appointed officers over the house of the LORD.

11:19 And he took the rulers over hundreds, and the captains, and the
guard, and all the people of the land; and they brought down the king
from the house of the LORD, and came by the way of the gate of the
guard to the king's house. And he sat on the throne of the kings.

11:20 And all the people of the land rejoiced, and the city was in
quiet: and they slew Athaliah with the sword beside the king's house.

11:21 Seven years old was Jehoash when he began to reign.

12:1 In the seventh year of Jehu Jehoash began to reign; and forty
years reigned he in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Zibiah of
Beersheba.

12:2 And Jehoash did that which was right in the sight of the LORD all
his days wherein Jehoiada the priest instructed him.

12:3 But the high places were not taken away: the people still
sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places.

12:4 And Jehoash said to the priests, All the money of the dedicated
things that is brought into the house of the LORD, even the money of
every one that passeth the account, the money that every man is set
at, and all the money that cometh into any man's heart to bring into
the house of the LORD, 12:5 Let the priests take it to them, every man
of his acquaintance: and let them repair the breaches of the house,
wheresoever any breach shall be found.

12:6 But it was so, that in the three and twentieth year of king
Jehoash the priests had not repaired the breaches of the house.

12:7 Then king Jehoash called for Jehoiada the priest, and the other
priests, and said unto them, Why repair ye not the breaches of the
house? now therefore receive no more money of your acquaintance, but
deliver it for the breaches of the house.

12:8 And the priests consented to receive no more money of the people,
neither to repair the breaches of the house.

12:9 But Jehoiada the priest took a chest, and bored a hole in the lid
of it, and set it beside the altar, on the right side as one cometh
into the house of the LORD: and the priests that kept the door put
therein all the money that was brought into the house of the LORD.

12:10 And it was so, when they saw that there was much money in the
chest, that the king's scribe and the high priest came up, and they
put up in bags, and told the money that was found in the house of the
LORD.

12:11 And they gave the money, being told, into the hands of them that
did the work, that had the oversight of the house of the LORD: and
they laid it out to the carpenters and builders, that wrought upon the
house of the LORD, 12:12 And to masons, and hewers of stone, and to
buy timber and hewed stone to repair the breaches of the house of the
LORD, and for all that was laid out for the house to repair it.

12:13 Howbeit there were not made for the house of the LORD bowls of
silver, snuffers, basons, trumpets, any vessels of gold, or vessels of
silver, of the money that was brought into the house of the LORD:
12:14 But they gave that to the workmen, and repaired therewith the
house of the LORD.

12:15 Moreover they reckoned not with the men, into whose hand they
delivered the money to be bestowed on workmen: for they dealt
faithfully.

12:16 The trespass money and sin money was not brought into the house
of the LORD: it was the priests'.

12:17 Then Hazael king of Syria went up, and fought against Gath, and
took it: and Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem.

12:18 And Jehoash king of Judah took all the hallowed things that
Jehoshaphat, and Jehoram, and Ahaziah, his fathers, kings of Judah,
had dedicated, and his own hallowed things, and all the gold that was
found in the treasures of the house of the LORD, and in the king's
house, and sent it to Hazael king of Syria: and he went away from
Jerusalem.

12:19 And the rest of the acts of Joash, and all that he did, are they
not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
12:20 And his servants arose, and made a conspiracy, and slew Joash in
the house of Millo, which goeth down to Silla.

12:21 For Jozachar the son of Shimeath, and Jehozabad the son of
Shomer, his servants, smote him, and he died; and they buried him with
his fathers in the city of David: and Amaziah his son reigned in his
stead.

13:1 In the three and twentieth year of Joash the son of Ahaziah king
of Judah Jehoahaz the son of Jehu began to reign over Israel in
Samaria, and reigned seventeen years.

13:2 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, and
followed the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which made Israel to
sin; he departed not therefrom.

13:3 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he
delivered them into the hand of Hazael king of Syria, and into the
hand of Benhadad the son of Hazael, all their days.

13:4 And Jehoahaz besought the LORD, and the LORD hearkened unto him:
for he saw the oppression of Israel, because the king of Syria
oppressed them.

13:5 (And the LORD gave Israel a saviour, so that they went out from
under the hand of the Syrians: and the children of Israel dwelt in
their tents, as beforetime.

13:6 Nevertheless they departed not from the sins of the house of
Jeroboam, who made Israel sin, but walked therein: and there remained
the grove also in Samaria.)  13:7 Neither did he leave of the people
to Jehoahaz but fifty horsemen, and ten chariots, and ten thousand
footmen; for the king of Syria had destroyed them, and had made them
like the dust by threshing.

13:8 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoahaz, and all that he did, and
his might, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the
kings of Israel?  13:9 And Jehoahaz slept with his fathers; and they
buried him in Samaria: and Joash his son reigned in his stead.

13:10 In the thirty and seventh year of Joash king of Judah began
Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz to reign over Israel in Samaria, and
reigned sixteen years.

13:11 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD; he
departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made
Israel sin: but he walked therein.

13:12 And the rest of the acts of Joash, and all that he did, and his
might wherewith he fought against Amaziah king of Judah, are they not
written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?  13:13
And Joash slept with his fathers; and Jeroboam sat upon his throne:
and Joash was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel.

13:14 Now Elisha was fallen sick of his sickness whereof he died. And
Joash the king of Israel came down unto him, and wept over his face,
and said, O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the
horsemen thereof.

13:15 And Elisha said unto him, Take bow and arrows. And he took unto
him bow and arrows.

13:16 And he said to the king of Israel, Put thine hand upon the bow.
And he put his hand upon it: and Elisha put his hands upon the king's
hands.

13:17 And he said, Open the window eastward. And he opened it. Then
Elisha said, Shoot. And he shot. And he said, The arrow of the LORD's
deliverance, and the arrow of deliverance from Syria: for thou shalt
smite the Syrians in Aphek, till thou have consumed them.

13:18 And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them. And he said unto
the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground. And he smote thrice, and
stayed.

13:19 And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest
have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till
thou hadst consumed it: whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.

13:20 And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the
Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year.

13:21 And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold,
they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of
Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of
Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.

13:22 But Hazael king of Syria oppressed Israel all the days of
Jehoahaz.

13:23 And the LORD was gracious unto them, and had compassion on them,
and had respect unto them, because of his covenant with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them, neither cast he them
from his presence as yet.

13:24 So Hazael king of Syria died; and Benhadad his son reigned in
his stead.

13:25 And Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz took again out of the hand of
Benhadad the son of Hazael the cities, which he had taken out of the
hand of Jehoahaz his father by war. Three times did Joash beat him,
and recovered the cities of Israel.

14:1 In the second year of Joash son of Jehoahaz king of Israel
reigned Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah.

14:2 He was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and
reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was
Jehoaddan of Jerusalem.

14:3 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, yet not
like David his father: he did according to all things as Joash his
father did.

14:4 Howbeit the high places were not taken away: as yet the people
did sacrifice and burnt incense on the high places.

14:5 And it came to pass, as soon as the kingdom was confirmed in his
hand, that he slew his servants which had slain the king his father.

14:6 But the children of the murderers he slew not: according unto
that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, wherein the
LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not be put to death for the
children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers; but every
man shall be put to death for his own sin.

14:7 He slew of Edom in the valley of salt ten thousand, and took
Selah by war, and called the name of it Joktheel unto this day.

14:8 Then Amaziah sent messengers to Jehoash, the son of Jehoahaz son
of Jehu, king of Israel, saying, Come, let us look one another in the
face.

14:9 And Jehoash the king of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah,
saying, The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in
Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed
by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle.

14:10 Thou hast indeed smitten Edom, and thine heart hath lifted thee
up: glory of this, and tarry at home: for why shouldest thou meddle to
thy hurt, that thou shouldest fall, even thou, and Judah with thee?
14:11 But Amaziah would not hear. Therefore Jehoash king of Israel
went up; and he and Amaziah king of Judah looked one another in the
face at Bethshemesh, which belongeth to Judah.

14:12 And Judah was put to the worse before Israel; and they fled
every man to their tents.

14:13 And Jehoash king of Israel took Amaziah king of Judah, the son
of Jehoash the son of Ahaziah, at Bethshemesh, and came to Jerusalem,
and brake down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim unto the
corner gate, four hundred cubits.

14:14 And he took all the gold and silver, and all the vessels that
were found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasures of the
king's house, and hostages, and returned to Samaria.

14:15 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoash which he did, and his might,
and how he fought with Amaziah king of Judah, are they not written in
the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?  14:16 And Jehoash
slept with his fathers, and was buried in Samaria with the kings of
Israel; and Jeroboam his son reigned in his stead.

14:17 And Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah lived after the death
of Jehoash son of Jehoahaz king of Israel fifteen years.

14:18 And the rest of the acts of Amaziah, are they not written in the
book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?  14:19 Now they made a
conspiracy against him in Jerusalem: and he fled to Lachish; but they
sent after him to Lachish, and slew him there.

14:20 And they brought him on horses: and he was buried at Jerusalem
with his fathers in the city of David.

14:21 And all the people of Judah took Azariah, which was sixteen
years old, and made him king instead of his father Amaziah.

14:22 He built Elath, and restored it to Judah, after that the king
slept with his fathers.

14:23 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah
Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria,
and reigned forty and one years.

14:24 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he
departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made
Israel to sin.

14:25 He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto
the sea of the plain, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel,
which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai,
the prophet, which was of Gathhepher.

14:26 For the LORD saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very
bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper
for Israel.

14:27 And the LORD said not that he would blot out the name of Israel
from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son
of Joash.

14:28 Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, and all that he did, and
his might, how he warred, and how he recovered Damascus, and Hamath,
which belonged to Judah, for Israel, are they not written in the book
of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?  14:29 And Jeroboam slept
with his fathers, even with the kings of Israel; and Zachariah his son
reigned in his stead.

15:1 In the twenty and seventh year of Jeroboam king of Israel began
Azariah son of Amaziah king of Judah to reign.

15:2 Sixteen years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned
two and fifty years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jecholiah
of Jerusalem.

15:3 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD,
according to all that his father Amaziah had done; 15:4 Save that the
high places were not removed: the people sacrificed and burnt incense
still on the high places.

15:5 And the LORD smote the king, so that he was a leper unto the day
of his death, and dwelt in a several house. And Jotham the king's son
was over the house, judging the people of the land.

15:6 And the rest of the acts of Azariah, and all that he did, are
they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
15:7 So Azariah slept with his fathers; and they buried him with his
fathers in the city of David: and Jotham his son reigned in his stead.

15:8 In the thirty and eighth year of Azariah king of Judah did
Zachariah the son of Jeroboam reign over Israel in Samaria six months.

15:9 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, as his
fathers had done: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of
Nebat, who made Israel to sin.

15:10 And Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired against him, and smote
him before the people, and slew him, and reigned in his stead.

15:11 And the rest of the acts of Zachariah, behold, they are written
in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.

15:12 This was the word of the LORD which he spake unto Jehu, saying,
Thy sons shall sit on the throne of Israel unto the fourth generation.
And so it came to pass.

15:13 Shallum the son of Jabesh began to reign in the nine and
thirtieth year of Uzziah king of Judah; and he reigned a full month in
Samaria.

15:14 For Menahem the son of Gadi went up from Tirzah, and came to
Samaria, and smote Shallum the son of Jabesh in Samaria, and slew him,
and reigned in his stead.

15:15 And the rest of the acts of Shallum, and his conspiracy which he
made, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the
kings of Israel.

15:16 Then Menahem smote Tiphsah, and all that were therein, and the
coasts thereof from Tirzah: because they opened not to him, therefore
he smote it; and all the women therein that were with child he ripped
up.

15:17 In the nine and thirtieth year of Azariah king of Judah began
Menahem the son of Gadi to reign over Israel, and reigned ten years in
Samaria.

15:18 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he
departed not all his days from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat,
who made Israel to sin.

15:19 And Pul the king of Assyria came against the land: and Menahem
gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him
to confirm the kingdom in his hand.

15:20 And Menahem exacted the money of Israel, even of all the mighty
men of wealth, of each man fifty shekels of silver, to give to the
king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria turned back, and stayed not
there in the land.

15:21 And the rest of the acts of Menahem, and all that he did, are
they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?
15:22 And Menahem slept with his fathers; and Pekahiah his son reigned
in his stead.

15:23 In the fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah Pekahiah the son
of Menahem began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned two
years.

15:24 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he
departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made
Israel to sin.

15:25 But Pekah the son of Remaliah, a captain of his, conspired
against him, and smote him in Samaria, in the palace of the king's
house, with Argob and Arieh, and with him fifty men of the Gileadites:
and he killed him, and reigned in his room.

15:26 And the rest of the acts of Pekahiah, and all that he did,
behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of
Israel.

15:27 In the two and fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah Pekah the
son of Remaliah began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned
twenty years.

15:28 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he
departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made
Israel to sin.

15:29 In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglathpileser king of
Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abelbethmaachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh,
and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and
carried them captive to Assyria.

15:30 And Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the
son of Remaliah, and smote him, and slew him, and reigned in his
stead, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah.

15:31 And the rest of the acts of Pekah, and all that he did, behold,
they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.

15:32 In the second year of Pekah the son of Remaliah king of Israel
began Jotham the son of Uzziah king of Judah to reign.

15:33 Five and twenty years old was he when he began to reign, and he
reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jerusha,
the daughter of Zadok.

15:34 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD: he did
according to all that his father Uzziah had done.

15:35 Howbeit the high places were not removed: the people sacrificed
and burned incense still in the high places. He built the higher gate
of the house of the LORD.

15:36 Now the rest of the acts of Jotham, and all that he did, are
they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
15:37 In those days the LORD began to send against Judah Rezin the
king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah.

15:38 And Jotham slept with his fathers, and was buried with his
fathers in the city of David his father: and Ahaz his son reigned in
his stead.

16:1 In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah Ahaz the son
of Jotham king of Judah began to reign.

16:2 Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned
sixteen years in Jerusalem, and did not that which was right in the
sight of the LORD his God, like David his father.

16:3 But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made
his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the
heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel.

16:4 And he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on
the hills, and under every green tree.

16:5 Then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel
came up to Jerusalem to war: and they besieged Ahaz, but could not
overcome him.

16:6 At that time Rezin king of Syria recovered Elath to Syria, and
drave the Jews from Elath: and the Syrians came to Elath, and dwelt
there unto this day.

16:7 So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglathpileser king of Assyria,
saying, I am thy servant and thy son: come up, and save me out of the
hand of the king of Syria, and out of the hand of the king of Israel,
which rise up against me.

16:8 And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of
the LORD, and in the treasures of the king's house, and sent it for a
present to the king of Assyria.

16:9 And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him: for the king of
Assyria went up against Damascus, and took it, and carried the people
of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin.

16:10 And king Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglathpileser king of
Assyria, and saw an altar that was at Damascus: and king Ahaz sent to
Urijah the priest the fashion of the altar, and the pattern of it,
according to all the workmanship thereof.

16:11 And Urijah the priest built an altar according to all that king
Ahaz had sent from Damascus: so Urijah the priest made it against king
Ahaz came from Damascus.

16:12 And when the king was come from Damascus, the king saw the
altar: and the king approached to the altar, and offered thereon.

16:13 And he burnt his burnt offering and his meat offering, and
poured his drink offering, and sprinkled the blood of his peace
offerings, upon the altar.

16:14 And he brought also the brasen altar, which was before the LORD,
from the forefront of the house, from between the altar and the house
of the LORD, and put it on the north side of the altar.

16:15 And king Ahaz commanded Urijah the priest, saying, Upon the
great altar burn the morning burnt offering, and the evening meat
offering, and the king's burnt sacrifice, and his meat offering, with
the burnt offering of all the people of the land, and their meat
offering, and their drink offerings; and sprinkle upon it all the
blood of the burnt offering, and all the blood of the sacrifice: and
the brasen altar shall be for me to enquire by.

16:16 Thus did Urijah the priest, according to all that king Ahaz
commanded.

16:17 And king Ahaz cut off the borders of the bases, and removed the
laver from off them; and took down the sea from off the brasen oxen
that were under it, and put it upon the pavement of stones.

16:18 And the covert for the sabbath that they had built in the house,
and the king's entry without, turned he from the house of the LORD for
the king of Assyria.

16:19 Now the rest of the acts of Ahaz which he did, are they not
written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?  16:20
And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in
the city of David: and Hezekiah his son reigned in his stead.

17:1 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of
Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years.

17:2 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, but not
as the kings of Israel that were before him.

17:3 Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea
became his servant, and gave him presents.

17:4 And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had
sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the
king of Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the king of
Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison.

17:5 Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and
went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years.

17:6 In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and
carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in
Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

17:7 For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the
LORD their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt,
from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other
gods, 17:8 And walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the LORD
cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of
Israel, which they had made.

17:9 And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were
not right against the LORD their God, and they built them high places
in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced
city.

17:10 And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and
under every green tree: 17:11 And there they burnt incense in all the
high places, as did the heathen whom the LORD carried away before
them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the LORD to anger: 17:12
For they served idols, whereof the LORD had said unto them, Ye shall
not do this thing.

17:13 Yet the LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all
the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil
ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the
law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my
servants the prophets.

17:14 Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks,
like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the LORD
their God.

17:15 And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made
with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against
them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the
heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had
charged them, that they should not do like them.

17:16 And they left all the commandments of the LORD their God, and
made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and
worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal.

17:17 And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through
the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to
do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.

17:18 Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them
out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only.

17:19 Also Judah kept not the commandments of the LORD their God, but
walked in the statutes of Israel which they made.

17:20 And the LORD rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted
them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast
them out of his sight.

17:21 For he rent Israel from the house of David; and they made
Jeroboam the son of Nebat king: and Jeroboam drave Israel from
following the LORD, and made them sin a great sin.

17:22 For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam
which he did; they departed not from them; 17:23 Until the LORD
removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants
the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to
Assyria unto this day.

17:24 And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from
Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed
them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and
they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof.

17:25 And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that
they feared not the LORD: therefore the LORD sent lions among them,
which slew some of them.

17:26 Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations
which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not
the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among
them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of
the God of the land.

17:27 Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of
the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell
there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land.

17:28 Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria
came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the
LORD.

17:29 Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the
houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation
in their cities wherein they dwelt.

17:30 And the men of Babylon made Succothbenoth, and the men of Cuth
made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima, 17:31 And the Avites
made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in
fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.

17:32 So they feared the LORD, and made unto themselves of the lowest
of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the
houses of the high places.

17:33 They feared the LORD, and served their own gods, after the
manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.

17:34 Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not
the LORD, neither do they after their statutes, or after their
ordinances, or after the law and commandment which the LORD commanded
the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel; 17:35 With whom the LORD
had made a covenant, and charged them, saying, Ye shall not fear other
gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to
them: 17:36 But the LORD, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt
with great power and a stretched out arm, him shall ye fear, and him
shall ye worship, and to him shall ye do sacrifice.

17:37 And the statutes, and the ordinances, and the law, and the
commandment, which he wrote for you, ye shall observe to do for
evermore; and ye shall not fear other gods.

17:38 And the covenant that I have made with you ye shall not forget;
neither shall ye fear other gods.

17:39 But the LORD your God ye shall fear; and he shall deliver you
out of the hand of all your enemies.

17:40 Howbeit they did not hearken, but they did after their former
manner.

17:41 So these nations feared the LORD, and served their graven
images, both their children, and their children's children: as did
their fathers, so do they unto this day.

18:1 Now it came to pass in the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king
of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign.

18:2 Twenty and five years old was he when he began to reign; and he
reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was
Abi, the daughter of Zachariah.

18:3 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD,
according to all that David his father did.

18:4 He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down
the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had
made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to
it: and he called it Nehushtan.

18:5 He trusted in the LORD God of Israel; so that after him was none
like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him.

18:6 For he clave to the LORD, and departed not from following him,
but kept his commandments, which the LORD commanded Moses.

18:7 And the LORD was with him; and he prospered whithersoever he went
forth: and he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him
not.

18:8 He smote the Philistines, even unto Gaza, and the borders
thereof, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city.

18:9 And it came to pass in the fourth year of king Hezekiah, which
was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that
Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against Samaria, and besieged it.

18:10 And at the end of three years they took it: even in the sixth
year of Hezekiah, that is in the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel,
Samaria was taken.

18:11 And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel unto Assyria, and
put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the
cities of the Medes: 18:12 Because they obeyed not the voice of the
LORD their God, but transgressed his covenant, and all that Moses the
servant of the LORD commanded, and would not hear them, nor do them.

18:13 Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king
of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took
them.

18:14 And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to
Lachish, saying, I have offended; return from me: that which thou
puttest on me will I bear. And the king of Assyria appointed unto
Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty
talents of gold.

18:15 And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house
of the LORD, and in the treasures of the king's house.

18:16 At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the
temple of the LORD, and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah
had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.

18:17 And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rabshakeh
from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great host against Jerusalem. And
they went up and came to Jerusalem. And when they were come up, they
came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the
highway of the fuller's field.

18:18 And when they had called to the king, there came out to them
Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, which was over the household, and Shebna
the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder.

18:19 And Rabshakeh said unto them, Speak ye now to Hezekiah, Thus
saith the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this
wherein thou trustest?  18:20 Thou sayest, (but they are but vain
words,) I have counsel and strength for the war. Now on whom dost thou
trust, that thou rebellest against me?  18:21 Now, behold, thou
trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, even upon Egypt, on
which if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is
Pharaoh king of Egypt unto all that trust on him.

18:22 But if ye say unto me, We trust in the LORD our God: is not that
he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and
hath said to Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar
in Jerusalem?  18:23 Now therefore, I pray thee, give pledges to my
lord the king of Assyria, and I will deliver thee two thousand horses,
if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them.

18:24 How then wilt thou turn away the face of one captain of the
least of my master's servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots
and for horsemen?  18:25 Am I now come up without the LORD against
this place to destroy it?  The LORD said to me, Go up against this
land, and destroy it.

18:26 Then said Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and Shebna, and Joah, unto
Rabshakeh, Speak, I pray thee, to thy servants in the Syrian language;
for we understand it: and talk not with us in the Jews' language in
the ears of the people that are on the wall.

18:27 But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy
master, and to thee, to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the
men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink
their own piss with you?  18:28 Then Rabshakeh stood and cried with a
loud voice in the Jews' language, and spake, saying, Hear the word of
the great king, the king of Assyria: 18:29 Thus saith the king, Let
not Hezekiah deceive you: for he shall not be able to deliver you out
of his hand: 18:30 Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD,
saying, The LORD will surely deliver us, and this city shall not be
delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.

18:31 Hearken not to Hezekiah: for thus saith the king of Assyria,
Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me, and then
eat ye every man of his own vine, and every one of his fig tree, and
drink ye every one the waters of his cistern: 18:32 Until I come and
take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a
land of bread and vineyards, a land of oil olive and of honey, that ye
may live, and not die: and hearken not unto Hezekiah, when he
persuadeth you, saying, The LORD will deliver us.

18:33 Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered at all his land
out of the hand of the king of Assyria?  18:34 Where are the gods of
Hamath, and of Arpad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and
Ivah? have they delivered Samaria out of mine hand?  18:35 Who are
they among all the gods of the countries, that have delivered their
country out of mine hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out
of mine hand?  18:36 But the people held their peace, and answered him
not a word: for the king's commandment was, saying, Answer him not.

18:37 Then came Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, which was over the
household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the
recorder, to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, and told him the words
of Rabshakeh.

19:1 And it came to pass, when king Hezekiah heard it, that he rent
his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the
house of the LORD.

19:2 And he sent Eliakim, which was over the household, and Shebna the
scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to
Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz.

19:3 And they said unto him, Thus saith Hezekiah, This day is a day of
trouble, and of rebuke, and blasphemy; for the children are come to
the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth.

19:4 It may be the LORD thy God will hear all the words of Rabshakeh,
whom the king of Assyria his master hath sent to reproach the living
God; and will reprove the words which the LORD thy God hath heard:
wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left.

19:5 So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

19:6 And Isaiah said unto them, Thus shall ye say to your master, Thus
saith the LORD, Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with
which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.

19:7 Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour,
and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the
sword in his own land.

19:8 So Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria warring
against Libnah: for he had heard that he was departed from Lachish.

19:9 And when he heard say of Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, Behold, he is
come out to fight against thee: he sent messengers again unto
Hezekiah, saying, 19:10 Thus shall ye speak to Hezekiah king of Judah,
saying, Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying,
Jerusalem shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.

19:11 Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to
all lands, by destroying them utterly: and shalt thou be delivered?
19:12 Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers
have destroyed; as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the children of
Eden which were in Thelasar?  19:13 Where is the king of Hamath, and
the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena,
and Ivah?  19:14 And Hezekiah received the letter of the hand of the
messengers, and read it: and Hezekiah went up into the house of the
LORD, and spread it before the LORD.

19:15 And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD, and said, O LORD God of
Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even
thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; thou hast made heaven
and earth.

19:16 LORD, bow down thine ear, and hear: open, LORD, thine eyes, and
see: and hear the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent him to
reproach the living God.

19:17 Of a truth, LORD, the kings of Assyria have destroyed the
nations and their lands, 19:18 And have cast their gods into the fire:
for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone:
therefore they have destroyed them.

19:19 Now therefore, O LORD our God, I beseech thee, save thou us out
of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art
the LORD God, even thou only.

19:20 Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith
the LORD God of Israel, That which thou hast prayed to me against
Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard.

19:21 This is the word that the LORD hath spoken concerning him; The
virgin the daughter of Zion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to
scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee.

19:22 Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast
thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against
the Holy One of Israel.

19:23 By thy messengers thou hast reproached the LORD, and hast said,
With the multitude of my chariots I am come up to the height of the
mountains, to the sides of Lebanon, and will cut down the tall cedar
trees thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof: and I will enter into
the lodgings of his borders, and into the forest of his Carmel.

19:24 I have digged and drunk strange waters, and with the sole of my
feet have I dried up all the rivers of besieged places.

19:25 Hast thou not heard long ago how I have done it, and of ancient
times that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass, that thou
shouldest be to lay waste fenced cities into ruinous heaps.

19:26 Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were
dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field, and as
the green herb, as the grass on the house tops, and as corn blasted
before it be grown up.

19:27 But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and
thy rage against me.

19:28 Because thy rage against me and thy tumult is come up into mine
ears, therefore I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy
lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.

19:29 And this shall be a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat this year such
things as grow of themselves, and in the second year that which
springeth of the same; and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and
plant vineyards, and eat the fruits thereof.

19:30 And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall yet
again take root downward, and bear fruit upward.

19:31 For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and they that
escape out of mount Zion: the zeal of the LORD of hosts shall do this.

19:32 Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, He
shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come
before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it.

19:33 By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall
not come into this city, saith the LORD.

19:34 For I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and
for my servant David's sake.

19:35 And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went
out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and
five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they
were all dead corpses.

19:36 So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned,
and dwelt at Nineveh.

19:37 And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of
Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with
the sword: and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon
his son reigned in his stead.

20:1 In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet
Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the
LORD, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.

20:2 Then he turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto the LORD,
saying, 20:3 I beseech thee, O LORD, remember now how I have walked
before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that
which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.

20:4 And it came to pass, afore Isaiah was gone out into the middle
court, that the word of the LORD came to him, saying, 20:5 Turn again,
and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the LORD, the
God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy
tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up
unto the house of the LORD.

20:6 And I will add unto thy days fifteen years; and I will deliver
thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will
defend this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake.

20:7 And Isaiah said, Take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it
on the boil, and he recovered.

20:8 And Hezekiah said unto Isaiah, What shall be the sign that the
LORD will heal me, and that I shall go up into the house of the LORD
the third day?  20:9 And Isaiah said, This sign shalt thou have of the
LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the
shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees?  20:10 And
Hezekiah answered, It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten
degrees: nay, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees.

20:11 And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the LORD: and he brought the
shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of
Ahaz.

20:12 At that time Berodachbaladan, the son of Baladan, king of
Babylon, sent letters and a present unto Hezekiah: for he had heard
that Hezekiah had been sick.

20:13 And Hezekiah hearkened unto them, and shewed them all the house
of his precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and
the precious ointment, and all the house of his armour, and all that
was found in his treasures: there was nothing in his house, nor in all
his dominion, that Hezekiah shewed them not.

20:14 Then came Isaiah the prophet unto king Hezekiah, and said unto
him, What said these men? and from whence came they unto thee? And
Hezekiah said, They are come from a far country, even from Babylon.

20:15 And he said, What have they seen in thine house? And Hezekiah
answered, All the things that are in mine house have they seen: there
is nothing among my treasures that I have not shewed them.

20:16 And Isaiah said unto Hezekiah, Hear the word of the LORD.

20:17 Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that
which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be
carried into Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the LORD.

20:18 And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt
beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace
of the king of Babylon.

20:19 Then said Hezekiah unto Isaiah, Good is the word of the LORD
which thou hast spoken. And he said, Is it not good, if peace and
truth be in my days?  20:20 And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and
all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought
water into the city, are they not written in the book of the
chronicles of the kings of Judah?  20:21 And Hezekiah slept with his
fathers: and Manasseh his son reigned in his stead.

21:1 Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and reigned
fifty and five years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was
Hephzibah.

21:2 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, after
the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out before the
children of Israel.

21:3 For he built up again the high places which Hezekiah his father
had destroyed; and he reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove, as
did Ahab king of Israel; and worshipped all the host of heaven, and
served them.

21:4 And he built altars in the house of the LORD, of which the LORD
said, In Jerusalem will I put my name.

21:5 And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts
of the house of the LORD.

21:6 And he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times,
and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards: he
wrought much wickedness in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to
anger.

21:7 And he set a graven image of the grove that he had made in the
house, of which the LORD said to David, and to Solomon his son, In
this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all tribes of
Israel, will I put my name for ever: 21:8 Neither will I make the feet
of Israel move any more out of the land which I gave their fathers;
only if they will observe to do according to all that I have commanded
them, and according to all the law that my servant Moses commanded
them.

21:9 But they hearkened not: and Manasseh seduced them to do more evil
than did the nations whom the LORD destroyed before the children of
Israel.

21:10 And the LORD spake by his servants the prophets, saying, 21:11
Because Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath
done wickedly above all that the Amorites did, which were before him,
and hath made Judah also to sin with his idols: 21:12 Therefore thus
saith the LORD God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon
Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall
tingle.

21:13 And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the
plummet of the house of Ahab: and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man
wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down.

21:14 And I will forsake the remnant of mine inheritance, and deliver
them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become a prey and
a spoil to all their enemies; 21:15 Because they have done that which
was evil in my sight, and have provoked me to anger, since the day
their fathers came forth out of Egypt, even unto this day.

21:16 Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had
filled Jerusalem from one end to another; beside his sin wherewith he
made Judah to sin, in doing that which was evil in the sight of the
LORD.

21:17 Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and all that he did, and
his sin that he sinned, are they not written in the book of the
chronicles of the kings of Judah?  21:18 And Manasseh slept with his
fathers, and was buried in the garden of his own house, in the garden
of Uzza: and Amon his son reigned in his stead.

21:19 Amon was twenty and two years old when he began to reign, and he
reigned two years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was
Meshullemeth, the daughter of Haruz of Jotbah.

21:20 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, as his
father Manasseh did.

21:21 And he walked in all the way that his father walked in, and
served the idols that his father served, and worshipped them: 21:22
And he forsook the LORD God of his fathers, and walked not in the way
of the LORD.

21:23 And the servants of Amon conspired against him, and slew the
king in his own house.

21:24 And the people of the land slew all them that had conspired
against king Amon; and the people of the land made Josiah his son king
in his stead.

21:25 Now the rest of the acts of Amon which he did, are they not
written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?  21:26
And he was buried in his sepulchre in the garden of Uzza: and Josiah
his son reigned in his stead.

22:1 Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned
thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jedidah,
the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath.

22:2 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, and
walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the
right hand or to the left.

22:3 And it came to pass in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, that
the king sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, the son of Meshullam, the
scribe, to the house of the LORD, saying, 22:4 Go up to Hilkiah the
high priest, that he may sum the silver which is brought into the
house of the LORD, which the keepers of the door have gathered of the
people: 22:5 And let them deliver it into the hand of the doers of the
work, that have the oversight of the house of the LORD: and let them
give it to the doers of the work which is in the house of the LORD, to
repair the breaches of the house, 22:6 Unto carpenters, and builders,
and masons, and to buy timber and hewn stone to repair the house.

22:7 Howbeit there was no reckoning made with them of the money that
was delivered into their hand, because they dealt faithfully.

22:8 And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have
found the book of the law in the house of the LORD. And Hilkiah gave
the book to Shaphan, and he read it.

22:9 And Shaphan the scribe came to the king, and brought the king
word again, and said, Thy servants have gathered the money that was
found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of them that
do the work, that have the oversight of the house of the LORD.

22:10 And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying, Hilkiah the
priest hath delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king.

22:11 And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the
book of the law, that he rent his clothes.

22:12 And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of
Shaphan, and Achbor the son of Michaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and
Asahiah a servant of the king's, saying, 22:13 Go ye, enquire of the
LORD for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the
words of this book that is found: for great is the wrath of the LORD
that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened
unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is
written concerning us.

22:14 So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan, and
Asahiah, went unto Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son
of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe; (now she dwelt
in Jerusalem in the college;) and they communed with her.

22:15 And she said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Tell
the man that sent you to me, 22:16 Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will
bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all
the words of the book which the king of Judah hath read: 22:17 Because
they have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods, that
they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands;
therefore my wrath shall be kindled against this place, and shall not
be quenched.

22:18 But to the king of Judah which sent you to enquire of the LORD,
thus shall ye say to him, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, As
touching the words which thou hast heard; 22:19 Because thine heart
was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the LORD, when thou
heardest what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants
thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast
rent thy clothes, and wept before me; I also have heard thee, saith
the LORD.

22:20 Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou
shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not
see all the evil which I will bring upon this place. And they brought
the king word again.

23:1 And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of
Judah and of Jerusalem.

23:2 And the king went up into the house of the LORD, and all the men
of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the
priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both small and great:
and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant
which was found in the house of the LORD.

23:3 And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the
LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep his commandments and his
testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul,
to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book.
And all the people stood to the covenant.

23:4 And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests
of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out
of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that were made for Baal, and
for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them
without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of
them unto Bethel.

23:5 And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah
had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of
Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned
incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets,
and to all the host of heaven.

23:6 And he brought out the grove from the house of the LORD, without
Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron,
and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the
graves of the children of the people.

23:7 And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the
house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove.

23:8 And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and
defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from
Geba to Beersheba, and brake down the high places of the gates that
were in the entering in of the gate of Joshua the governor of the
city, which were on a man's left hand at the gate of the city.

23:9 Nevertheless the priests of the high places came not up to the
altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, but they did eat of the unleavened
bread among their brethren.

23:10 And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children
of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass
through the fire to Molech.

23:11 And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to
the sun, at the entering in of the house of the LORD, by the chamber
of Nathanmelech the chamberlain, which was in the suburbs, and burned
the chariots of the sun with fire.

23:12 And the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of
Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh
had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD, did the king beat
down, and brake them down from thence, and cast the dust of them into
the brook Kidron.

23:13 And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on
the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of
Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and
for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the
abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile.

23:14 And he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and
filled their places with the bones of men.

23:15 Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which
Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that
altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the high place, and
stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove.

23:16 And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were
there in the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the
sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it, according
to the word of the LORD which the man of God proclaimed, who
proclaimed these words.

23:17 Then he said, What title is that that I see? And the men of the
city told him, It is the sepulchre of the man of God, which came from
Judah, and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the
altar of Bethel.

23:18 And he said, Let him alone; let no man move his bones. So they
let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet that came out of
Samaria.

23:19 And all the houses also of the high places that were in the
cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the
Lord to anger, Josiah took away, and did to them according to all the
acts that he had done in Bethel.

23:20 And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there
upon the altars, and burned men's bones upon them, and returned to
Jerusalem.

23:21 And the king commanded all the people, saying, Keep the passover
unto the LORD your God, as it is written in the book of this covenant.

23:22 Surely there was not holden such a passover from the days of the
judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel,
nor of the kings of Judah; 23:23 But in the eighteenth year of king
Josiah, wherein this passover was holden to the LORD in Jerusalem.

23:24 Moreover the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards, and
the images, and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in
the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might
perform the words of the law which were written in the book that
Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the LORD.

23:25 And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to
the LORD with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his
might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose
there any like him.

23:26 Notwithstanding the LORD turned not from the fierceness of his
great wrath, wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah, because of
all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal.

23:27 And the LORD said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as
I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem which I
have chosen, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.

23:28 Now the rest of the acts of Josiah, and all that he did, are
they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
23:29 In his days Pharaohnechoh king of Egypt went up against the king
of Assyria to the river Euphrates: and king Josiah went against him;
and he slew him at Megiddo, when he had seen him.

23:30 And his servants carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo, and
brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own sepulchre. And the
people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and anointed him,
and made him king in his father's stead.

23:31 Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign;
and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was
Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

23:32 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD,
according to all that his fathers had done.

23:33 And Pharaohnechoh put him in bands at Riblah in the land of
Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem; and put the land to a
tribute of an hundred talents of silver, and a talent of gold.

23:34 And Pharaohnechoh made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the
room of Josiah his father, and turned his name to Jehoiakim, and took
Jehoahaz away: and he came to Egypt, and died there.

23:35 And Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh; but he
taxed the land to give the money according to the commandment of
Pharaoh: he exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land,
of every one according to his taxation, to give it unto Pharaohnechoh.

23:36 Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign;
and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was
Zebudah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah.

23:37 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD,
according to all that his fathers had done.

24:1 In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim
became his servant three years: then he turned and rebelled against
him.

24:2 And the LORD sent against him bands of the Chaldees, and bands of
the Syrians, and bands of the Moabites, and bands of the children of
Ammon, and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the
word of the LORD, which he spake by his servants the prophets.

24:3 Surely at the commandment of the LORD came this upon Judah, to
remove them out of his sight, for the sins of Manasseh, according to
all that he did; 24:4 And also for the innocent blood that he shed:
for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; which the LORD would not
pardon.

24:5 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and all that he did, are
they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
24:6 So Jehoiakim slept with his fathers: and Jehoiachin his son
reigned in his stead.

24:7 And the king of Egypt came not again any more out of his land:
for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt unto the
river Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt.

24:8 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he
reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother's name was Nehushta,
the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.

24:9 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD,
according to all that his father had done.

24:10 At that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came
up against Jerusalem, and the city was besieged.

24:11 And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against the city, and
his servants did besiege it.

24:12 And Jehoiachin the king of Judah went out to the king of
Babylon, he, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and
his officers: and the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of
his reign.

24:13 And he carried out thence all the treasures of the house of the
LORD, and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the
vessels of gold which Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of
the LORD, as the LORD had said.

24:14 And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all
the mighty men of valour, even ten thousand captives, and all the
craftsmen and smiths: none remained, save the poorest sort of the
people of the land.

24:15 And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon, and the king's
mother, and the king's wives, and his officers, and the mighty of the
land, those carried he into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon.

24:16 And all the men of might, even seven thousand, and craftsmen and
smiths a thousand, all that were strong and apt for war, even them the
king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon.

24:17 And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah his father's brother king
in his stead, and changed his name to Zedekiah.

24:18 Zedekiah was twenty and one years old when he began to reign,
and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was
Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

24:19 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD,
according to all that Jehoiakim had done.

24:20 For through the anger of the LORD it came to pass in Jerusalem
and Judah, until he had cast them out from his presence, that Zedekiah
rebelled against the king of Babylon.

25:1 And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth
month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of
Babylon came, he, and all his host, against Jerusalem, and pitched
against it; and they built forts against it round about.

25:2 And the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king
Zedekiah.

25:3 And on the ninth day of the fourth month the famine prevailed in
the city, and there was no bread for the people of the land.

25:4 And the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled by night
by the way of the gate between two walls, which is by the king's
garden: (now the Chaldees were against the city round about:) and the
king went the way toward the plain.

25:5 And the army of the Chaldees pursued after the king, and overtook
him in the plains of Jericho: and all his army were scattered from
him.

25:6 So they took the king, and brought him up to the king of Babylon
to Riblah; and they gave judgment upon him.

25:7 And they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out
the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him with fetters of brass, and carried
him to Babylon.

25:8 And in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which is
the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, came
Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon,
unto Jerusalem: 25:9 And he burnt the house of the LORD, and the
king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, and every great man's
house burnt he with fire.

25:10 And all the army of the Chaldees, that were with the captain of
the guard, brake down the walls of Jerusalem round about.

25:11 Now the rest of the people that were left in the city, and the
fugitives that fell away to the king of Babylon, with the remnant of
the multitude, did Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carry away.

25:12 But the captain of the guard left of the door of the poor of the
land to be vinedressers and husbandmen.

25:13 And the pillars of brass that were in the house of the LORD, and
the bases, and the brasen sea that was in the house of the LORD, did
the Chaldees break in pieces, and carried the brass of them to
Babylon.

25:14 And the pots, and the shovels, and the snuffers, and the spoons,
and all the vessels of brass wherewith they ministered, took they
away.

25:15 And the firepans, and the bowls, and such things as were of
gold, in gold, and of silver, in silver, the captain of the guard took
away.

25:16 The two pillars, one sea, and the bases which Solomon had made
for the house of the LORD; the brass of all these vessels was without
weight.

25:17 The height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits, and the
chapiter upon it was brass: and the height of the chapiter three
cubits; and the wreathen work, and pomegranates upon the chapiter
round about, all of brass: and like unto these had the second pillar
with wreathen work.

25:18 And the captain of the guard took Seraiah the chief priest, and
Zephaniah the second priest, and the three keepers of the door: 25:19
And out of the city he took an officer that was set over the men of
war, and five men of them that were in the king's presence, which were
found in the city, and the principal scribe of the host, which
mustered the people of the land, and threescore men of the people of
the land that were found in the city: 25:20 And Nebuzaradan captain of
the guard took these, and brought them to the king of Babylon to
Riblah: 25:21 And the king of Babylon smote them, and slew them at
Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was carried away out of their
land.

25:22 And as for the people that remained in the land of Judah, whom
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had left, even over them he made
Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, ruler.

25:23 And when all the captains of the armies, they and their men,
heard that the king of Babylon had made Gedaliah governor, there came
to Gedaliah to Mizpah, even Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and Johanan
the son of Careah, and Seraiah the son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite,
and Jaazaniah the son of a Maachathite, they and their men.

25:24 And Gedaliah sware to them, and to their men, and said unto
them, Fear not to be the servants of the Chaldees: dwell in the land,
and serve the king of Babylon; and it shall be well with you.

25:25 But it came to pass in the seventh month, that Ishmael the son
of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama, of the seed royal, came, and ten
men with him, and smote Gedaliah, that he died, and the Jews and the
Chaldees that were with him at Mizpah.

25:26 And all the people, both small and great, and the captains of
the armies, arose, and came to Egypt: for they were afraid of the
Chaldees.

25:27 And it came to pass in the seven and thirtieth year of the
captivity of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the
seven and twentieth day of the month, that Evilmerodach king of
Babylon in the year that he began to reign did lift up the head of
Jehoiachin king of Judah out of prison; 25:28 And he spake kindly to
him, and set his throne above the throne of the kings that were with
him in Babylon; 25:29 And changed his prison garments: and he did eat
bread continually before him all the days of his life.

25:30 And his allowance was a continual allowance given him of the
king, a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life.




The First Book of the Chronicles


1:1 Adam, Sheth, Enosh, 1:2 Kenan, Mahalaleel, Jered, 1:3 Henoch,
Methuselah, Lamech, 1:4 Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

1:5 The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and
Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.

1:6 And the sons of Gomer; Ashchenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah.

1:7 And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.

1:8 The sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.

1:9 And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabta, and Raamah,
and Sabtecha. And the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan.

1:10 And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be mighty upon the earth.

1:11 And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim,
1:12 And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (of whom came the Philistines,) and
Caphthorim.

1:13 And Canaan begat Zidon his firstborn, and Heth, 1:14 The Jebusite
also, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite, 1:15 And the Hivite, and
the Arkite, and the Sinite, 1:16 And the Arvadite, and the Zemarite,
and the Hamathite.

1:17 The sons of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and
Aram, and Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Meshech.

1:18 And Arphaxad begat Shelah, and Shelah begat Eber.

1:19 And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg;
because in his days the earth was divided: and his brother's name was
Joktan.

1:20 And Joktan begat Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazarmaveth, and
Jerah, 1:21 Hadoram also, and Uzal, and Diklah, 1:22 And Ebal, and
Abimael, and Sheba, 1:23 And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab. All these
were the sons of Joktan.

1:24 Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah, 1:25 Eber, Peleg, Reu, 1:26 Serug, Nahor,
Terah, 1:27 Abram; the same is Abraham.

1:28 The sons of Abraham; Isaac, and Ishmael.

1:29 These are their generations: The firstborn of Ishmael, Nebaioth;
then Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam, 1:30 Mishma, and Dumah, Massa,
Hadad, and Tema, 1:31 Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah. These are the sons
of Ishmael.

1:32 Now the sons of Keturah, Abraham's concubine: she bare Zimran,
and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah. And the
sons of Jokshan; Sheba, and Dedan.

1:33 And the sons of Midian; Ephah, and Epher, and Henoch, and Abida,
and Eldaah. All these are the sons of Keturah.

1:34 And Abraham begat Isaac. The sons of Isaac; Esau and Israel.

1:35 The sons of Esau; Eliphaz, Reuel, and Jeush, and Jaalam, and
Korah.

1:36 The sons of Eliphaz; Teman, and Omar, Zephi, and Gatam, Kenaz,
and Timna, and Amalek.

1:37 The sons of Reuel; Nahath, Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah.

1:38 And the sons of Seir; Lotan, and Shobal, and Zibeon, and Anah,
and Dishon, and Ezar, and Dishan.

1:39 And the sons of Lotan; Hori, and Homam: and Timna was Lotan's
sister.

1:40 The sons of Shobal; Alian, and Manahath, and Ebal, Shephi, and
Onam.

and the sons of Zibeon; Aiah, and Anah.

1:41 The sons of Anah; Dishon. And the sons of Dishon; Amram, and
Eshban, and Ithran, and Cheran.

1:42 The sons of Ezer; Bilhan, and Zavan, and Jakan. The sons of
Dishan; Uz, and Aran.

1:43 Now these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before
any king reigned over the children of Israel; Bela the son of Beor:
and the name of his city was Dinhabah.

1:44 And when Bela was dead, Jobab the son of Zerah of Bozrah reigned
in his stead.

1:45 And when Jobab was dead, Husham of the land of the Temanites
reigned in his stead.

1:46 And when Husham was dead, Hadad the son of Bedad, which smote
Midian in the field of Moab, reigned in his stead: and the name of his
city was Avith.

1:47 And when Hadad was dead, Samlah of Masrekah reigned in his stead.

1:48 And when Samlah was dead, Shaul of Rehoboth by the river reigned
in his stead.

1:49 And when Shaul was dead, Baalhanan the son of Achbor reigned in
his stead.

1:50 And when Baalhanan was dead, Hadad reigned in his stead: and the
name of his city was Pai; and his wife's name was Mehetabel, the
daughter of Matred, the daughter of Mezahab.

1:51 Hadad died also. And the dukes of Edom were; duke Timnah, duke
Aliah, duke Jetheth, 1:52 Duke Aholibamah, duke Elah, duke Pinon, 1:53
Duke Kenaz, duke Teman, duke Mibzar, 1:54 Duke Magdiel, duke Iram.
These are the dukes of Edom.

2:1 These are the sons of Israel; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,
Issachar, and Zebulun, 2:2 Dan, Joseph, and Benjamin, Naphtali, Gad,
and Asher.

2:3 The sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah: which three were born
unto him of the daughter of Shua the Canaanitess. And Er, the
firstborn of Judah, was evil in the sight of the LORD; and he slew
him.

2:4 And Tamar his daughter in law bore him Pharez and Zerah. All the
sons of Judah were five.

2:5 The sons of Pharez; Hezron, and Hamul.

2:6 And the sons of Zerah; Zimri, and Ethan, and Heman, and Calcol,
and Dara: five of them in all.

2:7 And the sons of Carmi; Achar, the troubler of Israel, who
transgressed in the thing accursed.

2:8 And the sons of Ethan; Azariah.

2:9 The sons also of Hezron, that were born unto him; Jerahmeel, and
Ram, and Chelubai.

2:10 And Ram begat Amminadab; and Amminadab begat Nahshon, prince of
the children of Judah; 2:11 And Nahshon begat Salma, and Salma begat
Boaz, 2:12 And Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse, 2:13 And Jesse
begat his firstborn Eliab, and Abinadab the second, and Shimma the
third, 2:14 Nethaneel the fourth, Raddai the fifth, 2:15 Ozem the
sixth, David the seventh: 2:16 Whose sisters were Zeruiah, and
Abigail. And the sons of Zeruiah; Abishai, and Joab, and Asahel,
three.

2:17 And Abigail bare Amasa: and the father of Amasa was Jether the
Ishmeelite.

2:18 And Caleb the son of Hezron begat children of Azubah his wife,
and of Jerioth: her sons are these; Jesher, and Shobab, and Ardon.

2:19 And when Azubah was dead, Caleb took unto him Ephrath, which bare
him Hur.

2:20 And Hur begat Uri, and Uri begat Bezaleel.

2:21 And afterward Hezron went in to the daughter of Machir the father
of Gilead, whom he married when he was threescore years old; and she
bare him Segub.

2:22 And Segub begat Jair, who had three and twenty cities in the land
of Gilead.

2:23 And he took Geshur, and Aram, with the towns of Jair, from them,
with Kenath, and the towns thereof, even threescore cities. All these
belonged to the sons of Machir the father of Gilead.

2:24 And after that Hezron was dead in Calebephratah, then Abiah
Hezron's wife bare him Ashur the father of Tekoa.

2:25 And the sons of Jerahmeel the firstborn of Hezron were, Ram the
firstborn, and Bunah, and Oren, and Ozem, and Ahijah.

2:26 Jerahmeel had also another wife, whose name was Atarah; she was
the mother of Onam.

2:27 And the sons of Ram the firstborn of Jerahmeel were, Maaz, and
Jamin, and Eker.

2:28 And the sons of Onam were, Shammai, and Jada. And the sons of
Shammai; Nadab and Abishur.

2:29 And the name of the wife of Abishur was Abihail, and she bare him
Ahban, and Molid.

2:30 And the sons of Nadab; Seled, and Appaim: but Seled died without
children.

2:31 And the sons of Appaim; Ishi. And the sons of Ishi; Sheshan. And
the children of Sheshan; Ahlai.

2:32 And the sons of Jada the brother of Shammai; Jether, and
Jonathan: and Jether died without children.

2:33 And the sons of Jonathan; Peleth, and Zaza. These were the sons
of Jerahmeel.

2:34 Now Sheshan had no sons, but daughters. And Sheshan had a
servant, an Egyptian, whose name was Jarha.

2:35 And Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha his servant to wife; and
she bare him Attai.

2:36 And Attai begat Nathan, and Nathan begat Zabad, 2:37 And Zabad
begat Ephlal, and Ephlal begat Obed, 2:38 And Obed begat Jehu, and
Jehu begat Azariah, 2:39 And Azariah begat Helez, and Helez begat
Eleasah, 2:40 And Eleasah begat Sisamai, and Sisamai begat Shallum,
2:41 And Shallum begat Jekamiah, and Jekamiah begat Elishama.

2:42 Now the sons of Caleb the brother of Jerahmeel were, Mesha his
firstborn, which was the father of Ziph; and the sons of Mareshah the
father of Hebron.

2:43 And the sons of Hebron; Korah, and Tappuah, and Rekem, and Shema.

2:44 And Shema begat Raham, the father of Jorkoam: and Rekem begat
Shammai.

2:45 And the son of Shammai was Maon: and Maon was the father of
Bethzur.

2:46 And Ephah, Caleb's concubine, bare Haran, and Moza, and Gazez:
and Haran begat Gazez.

2:47 And the sons of Jahdai; Regem, and Jotham, and Gesham, and Pelet,
and Ephah, and Shaaph.

2:48 Maachah, Caleb's concubine, bare Sheber, and Tirhanah.

2:49 She bare also Shaaph the father of Madmannah, Sheva the father of
Machbenah, and the father of Gibea: and the daughter of Caleb was
Achsa.

2:50 These were the sons of Caleb the son of Hur, the firstborn of
Ephratah; Shobal the father of Kirjathjearim.

2:51 Salma the father of Bethlehem, Hareph the father of Bethgader.

2:52 And Shobal the father of Kirjathjearim had sons; Haroeh, and half
of the Manahethites.

2:53 And the families of Kirjathjearim; the Ithrites, and the Puhites,
and the Shumathites, and the Mishraites; of them came the Zareathites,
and the Eshtaulites, 2:54 The sons of Salma; Bethlehem, and the
Netophathites, Ataroth, the house of Joab, and half of the
Manahethites, the Zorites.

2:55 And the families of the scribes which dwelt at Jabez; the
Tirathites, the Shimeathites, and Suchathites. These are the Kenites
that came of Hemath, the father of the house of Rechab.

3:1 Now these were the sons of David, which were born unto him in
Hebron; the firstborn Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; the second
Daniel, of Abigail the Carmelitess: 3:2 The third, Absalom the son of
Maachah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur: the fourth, Adonijah
the son of Haggith: 3:3 The fifth, Shephatiah of Abital: the sixth,
Ithream by Eglah his wife.

3:4 These six were born unto him in Hebron; and there he reigned seven
years and six months: and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty and three
years.

3:5 And these were born unto him in Jerusalem; Shimea, and Shobab, and
Nathan, and Solomon, four, of Bathshua the daughter of Ammiel: 3:6
Ibhar also, and Elishama, and Eliphelet, 3:7 And Nogah, and Nepheg,
and Japhia, 3:8 And Elishama, and Eliada, and Eliphelet, nine.

3:9 These were all the sons of David, beside the sons of the
concubines, and Tamar their sister.

3:10 And Solomon's son was Rehoboam, Abia his son, Asa his son,
Jehoshaphat his son, 3:11 Joram his son, Ahaziah his son, Joash his
son, 3:12 Amaziah his son, Azariah his son, Jotham his son, 3:13 Ahaz
his son, Hezekiah his son, Manasseh his son, 3:14 Amon his son, Josiah
his son.

3:15 And the sons of Josiah were, the firstborn Johanan, the second
Jehoiakim, the third Zedekiah, the fourth Shallum.

3:16 And the sons of Jehoiakim: Jeconiah his son, Zedekiah his son.

3:17 And the sons of Jeconiah; Assir, Salathiel his son, 3:18
Malchiram also, and Pedaiah, and Shenazar, Jecamiah, Hoshama, and
Nedabiah.

3:19 And the sons of Pedaiah were, Zerubbabel, and Shimei: and the
sons of Zerubbabel; Meshullam, and Hananiah, and Shelomith their
sister: 3:20 And Hashubah, and Ohel, and Berechiah, and Hasadiah,
Jushabhesed, five.

3:21 And the sons of Hananiah; Pelatiah, and Jesaiah: the sons of
Rephaiah, the sons of Arnan, the sons of Obadiah, the sons of
Shechaniah.

3:22 And the sons of Shechaniah; Shemaiah: and the sons of Shemaiah;
Hattush, and Igeal, and Bariah, and Neariah, and Shaphat, six.

3:23 And the sons of Neariah; Elioenai, and Hezekiah, and Azrikam,
three.

3:24 And the sons of Elioenai were, Hodaiah, and Eliashib, and
Pelaiah, and Akkub, and Johanan, and Dalaiah, and Anani, seven.

4:1 The sons of Judah; Pharez, Hezron, and Carmi, and Hur, and Shobal.

4:2 And Reaiah the son of Shobal begat Jahath; and Jahath begat
Ahumai, and Lahad. These are the families of the Zorathites.

4:3 And these were of the father of Etam; Jezreel, and Ishma, and
Idbash: and the name of their sister was Hazelelponi: 4:4 And Penuel
the father of Gedor, and Ezer the father of Hushah. These are the sons
of Hur, the firstborn of Ephratah, the father of Bethlehem.

4:5 And Ashur the father of Tekoa had two wives, Helah and Naarah.

4:6 And Naarah bare him Ahuzam, and Hepher, and Temeni, and
Haahashtari.

These were the sons of Naarah.

4:7 And the sons of Helah were, Zereth, and Jezoar, and Ethnan.

4:8 And Coz begat Anub, and Zobebah, and the families of Aharhel the
son of Harum.

4:9 And Jabez was more honourable than his brethren: and his mother
called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow.

4:10 And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou
wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand
might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it
may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested.

4:11 And Chelub the brother of Shuah begat Mehir, which was the father
of Eshton.

4:12 And Eshton begat Bethrapha, and Paseah, and Tehinnah the father
of Irnahash. These are the men of Rechah.

4:13 And the sons of Kenaz; Othniel, and Seraiah: and the sons of
Othniel; Hathath.

4:14 And Meonothai begat Ophrah: and Seraiah begat Joab, the father of
the valley of Charashim; for they were craftsmen.

4:15 And the sons of Caleb the son of Jephunneh; Iru, Elah, and Naam:
and the sons of Elah, even Kenaz.

4:16 And the sons of Jehaleleel; Ziph, and Ziphah, Tiria, and Asareel.

4:17 And the sons of Ezra were, Jether, and Mered, and Epher, and
Jalon: and she bare Miriam, and Shammai, and Ishbah the father of
Eshtemoa.

4:18 And his wife Jehudijah bare Jered the father of Gedor, and Heber
the father of Socho, and Jekuthiel the father of Zanoah. And these are
the sons of Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh, which Mered took.

4:19 And the sons of his wife Hodiah the sister of Naham, the father
of Keilah the Garmite, and Eshtemoa the Maachathite.

4:20 And the sons of Shimon were, Amnon, and Rinnah, Benhanan, and
Tilon.

And the sons of Ishi were, Zoheth, and Benzoheth.

4:21 The sons of Shelah the son of Judah were, Er the father of Lecah,
and Laadah the father of Mareshah, and the families of the house of
them that wrought fine linen, of the house of Ashbea, 4:22 And Jokim,
and the men of Chozeba, and Joash, and Saraph, who had the dominion in
Moab, and Jashubilehem. And these are ancient things.

4:23 These were the potters, and those that dwelt among plants and
hedges: there they dwelt with the king for his work.

4:24 The sons of Simeon were, Nemuel, and Jamin, Jarib, Zerah, and
Shaul: 4:25 Shallum his son, Mibsam his son, Mishma his son.

4:26 And the sons of Mishma; Hamuel his son, Zacchur his son, Shimei
his son.

4:27 And Shimei had sixteen sons and six daughters: but his brethren
had not many children, neither did all their family multiply, like to
the children of Judah.

4:28 And they dwelt at Beersheba, and Moladah, and Hazarshual, 4:29
And at Bilhah, and at Ezem, and at Tolad, 4:30 And at Bethuel, and at
Hormah, and at Ziklag, 4:31 And at Bethmarcaboth, and Hazarsusim, and
at Bethbirei, and at Shaaraim. These were their cities unto the reign
of David.

4:32 And their villages were, Etam, and Ain, Rimmon, and Tochen, and
Ashan, five cities: 4:33 And all their villages that were round about
the same cities, unto Baal. These were their habitations, and their
genealogy.

4:34 And Meshobab, and Jamlech, and Joshah, the son of Amaziah, 4:35
And Joel, and Jehu the son of Josibiah, the son of Seraiah, the son of
Asiel, 4:36 And Elioenai, and Jaakobah, and Jeshohaiah, and Asaiah,
and Adiel, and Jesimiel, and Benaiah, 4:37 And Ziza the son of Shiphi,
the son of Allon, the son of Jedaiah, the son of Shimri, the son of
Shemaiah; 4:38 These mentioned by their names were princes in their
families: and the house of their fathers increased greatly.

4:39 And they went to the entrance of Gedor, even unto the east side
of the valley, to seek pasture for their flocks.

4:40 And they found fat pasture and good, and the land was wide, and
quiet, and peaceable; for they of Ham had dwelt there of old.

4:41 And these written by name came in the days of Hezekiah king of
Judah, and smote their tents, and the habitations that were found
there, and destroyed them utterly unto this day, and dwelt in their
rooms: because there was pasture there for their flocks.

4:42 And some of them, even of the sons of Simeon, five hundred men,
went to mount Seir, having for their captains Pelatiah, and Neariah,
and Rephaiah, and Uzziel, the sons of Ishi.

4:43 And they smote the rest of the Amalekites that were escaped, and
dwelt there unto this day.

5:1 Now the sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel, (for he was the
firstborn; but forasmuch as he defiled his father's bed, his
birthright was given unto the sons of Joseph the son of Israel: and
the genealogy is not to be reckoned after the birthright.

5:2 For Judah prevailed above his brethren, and of him came the chief
ruler; but the birthright was Joseph's:) 5:3 The sons, I say, of
Reuben the firstborn of Israel were, Hanoch, and Pallu, Hezron, and
Carmi.

5:4 The sons of Joel; Shemaiah his son, Gog his son, Shimei his son,
5:5 Micah his son, Reaia his son, Baal his son, 5:6 Beerah his son,
whom Tilgathpilneser king of Assyria carried away captive: he was
prince of the Reubenites.

5:7 And his brethren by their families, when the genealogy of their
generations was reckoned, were the chief, Jeiel, and Zechariah, 5:8
And Bela the son of Azaz, the son of Shema, the son of Joel, who dwelt
in Aroer, even unto Nebo and Baalmeon: 5:9 And eastward he inhabited
unto the entering in of the wilderness from the river Euphrates:
because their cattle were multiplied in the land of Gilead.

5:10 And in the days of Saul they made war with the Hagarites, who
fell by their hand: and they dwelt in their tents throughout all the
east land of Gilead.

5:11 And the children of Gad dwelt over against them, in the land of
Bashan unto Salcah: 5:12 Joel the chief, and Shapham the next, and
Jaanai, and Shaphat in Bashan.

5:13 And their brethren of the house of their fathers were, Michael,
and Meshullam, and Sheba, and Jorai, and Jachan, and Zia, and Heber,
seven.

5:14 These are the children of Abihail the son of Huri, the son of
Jaroah, the son of Gilead, the son of Michael, the son of Jeshishai,
the son of Jahdo, the son of Buz; 5:15 Ahi the son of Abdiel, the son
of Guni, chief of the house of their fathers.

5:16 And they dwelt in Gilead in Bashan, and in her towns, and in all
the suburbs of Sharon, upon their borders.

5:17 All these were reckoned by genealogies in the days of Jotham king
of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam king of Israel.

5:18 The sons of Reuben, and the Gadites, and half the tribe of
Manasseh, of valiant men, men able to bear buckler and sword, and to
shoot with bow, and skilful in war, were four and forty thousand seven
hundred and threescore, that went out to the war.

5:19 And they made war with the Hagarites, with Jetur, and Nephish,
and Nodab.

5:20 And they were helped against them, and the Hagarites were
delivered into their hand, and all that were with them: for they cried
to God in the battle, and he was intreated of them; because they put
their trust in him.

5:21 And they took away their cattle; of their camels fifty thousand,
and of sheep two hundred and fifty thousand, and of asses two
thousand, and of men an hundred thousand.

5:22 For there fell down many slain, because the war was of God. And
they dwelt in their steads until the captivity.

5:23 And the children of the half tribe of Manasseh dwelt in the land:
they increased from Bashan unto Baalhermon and Senir, and unto mount
Hermon.

5:24 And these were the heads of the house of their fathers, even
Epher, and Ishi, and Eliel, and Azriel, and Jeremiah, and Hodaviah,
and Jahdiel, mighty men of valour, famous men, and heads of the house
of their fathers.

5:25 And they transgressed against the God of their fathers, and went
a whoring after the gods of the people of the land, whom God destroyed
before them.

5:26 And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of
Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgathpilneser king of Assyria, and he
carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half
tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and Hara,
and to the river Gozan, unto this day.

6:1 The sons of Levi; Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.

6:2 And the sons of Kohath; Amram, Izhar, and Hebron, and Uzziel.

6:3 And the children of Amram; Aaron, and Moses, and Miriam. The sons
also of Aaron; Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.

6:4 Eleazar begat Phinehas, Phinehas begat Abishua, 6:5 And Abishua
begat Bukki, and Bukki begat Uzzi, 6:6 And Uzzi begat Zerahiah, and
Zerahiah begat Meraioth, 6:7 Meraioth begat Amariah, and Amariah begat
Ahitub, 6:8 And Ahitub begat Zadok, and Zadok begat Ahimaaz, 6:9 And
Ahimaaz begat Azariah, and Azariah begat Johanan, 6:10 And Johanan
begat Azariah, (he it is that executed the priest's office in the
temple that Solomon built in Jerusalem:) 6:11 And Azariah begat
Amariah, and Amariah begat Ahitub, 6:12 And Ahitub begat Zadok, and
Zadok begat Shallum, 6:13 And Shallum begat Hilkiah, and Hilkiah begat
Azariah, 6:14 And Azariah begat Seraiah, and Seraiah begat Jehozadak,
6:15 And Jehozadak went into captivity, when the LORD carried away
Judah and Jerusalem by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar.

6:16 The sons of Levi; Gershom, Kohath, and Merari.

6:17 And these be the names of the sons of Gershom; Libni, and Shimei.

6:18 And the sons of Kohath were, Amram, and Izhar, and Hebron, and
Uzziel.

6:19 The sons of Merari; Mahli, and Mushi. And these are the families
of the Levites according to their fathers.

6:20 Of Gershom; Libni his son, Jahath his son, Zimmah his son, 6:21
Joah his son, Iddo his son, Zerah his son, Jeaterai his son.

6:22 The sons of Kohath; Amminadab his son, Korah his son, Assir his
son, 6:23 Elkanah his son, and Ebiasaph his son, and Assir his son,
6:24 Tahath his son, Uriel his son, Uzziah his son, and Shaul his son.

6:25 And the sons of Elkanah; Amasai, and Ahimoth.

6:26 As for Elkanah: the sons of Elkanah; Zophai his son, and Nahath
his son, 6:27 Eliab his son, Jeroham his son, Elkanah his son.

6:28 And the sons of Samuel; the firstborn Vashni, and Abiah.

6:29 The sons of Merari; Mahli, Libni his son, Shimei his son, Uzza
his son, 6:30 Shimea his son, Haggiah his son, Asaiah his son.

6:31 And these are they whom David set over the service of song in the
house of the LORD, after that the ark had rest.

6:32 And they ministered before the dwelling place of the tabernacle
of the congregation with singing, until Solomon had built the house of
the LORD in Jerusalem: and then they waited on their office according
to their order.

6:33 And these are they that waited with their children. Of the sons
of the Kohathites: Heman a singer, the son of Joel, the son of
Shemuel, 6:34 The son of Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of
Eliel, the son of Toah, 6:35 The son of Zuph, the son of Elkanah, the
son of Mahath, the son of Amasai, 6:36 The son of Elkanah, the son of
Joel, the son of Azariah, the son of Zephaniah, 6:37 The son of
Tahath, the son of Assir, the son of Ebiasaph, the son of Korah, 6:38
The son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, the son of
Israel.

6:39 And his brother Asaph, who stood on his right hand, even Asaph
the son of Berachiah, the son of Shimea, 6:40 The son of Michael, the
son of Baaseiah, the son of Malchiah, 6:41 The son of Ethni, the son
of Zerah, the son of Adaiah, 6:42 The son of Ethan, the son of Zimmah,
the son of Shimei, 6:43 The son of Jahath, the son of Gershom, the son
of Levi.

6:44 And their brethren the sons of Merari stood on the left hand:
Ethan the son of Kishi, the son of Abdi, the son of Malluch, 6:45 The
son of Hashabiah, the son of Amaziah, the son of Hilkiah, 6:46 The son
of Amzi, the son of Bani, the son of Shamer, 6:47 The son of Mahli,
the son of Mushi, the son of Merari, the son of Levi.

6:48 Their brethren also the Levites were appointed unto all manner of
service of the tabernacle of the house of God.

6:49 But Aaron and his sons offered upon the altar of the burnt
offering, and on the altar of incense, and were appointed for all the
work of the place most holy, and to make an atonement for Israel,
according to all that Moses the servant of God had commanded.

6:50 And these are the sons of Aaron; Eleazar his son, Phinehas his
son, Abishua his son, 6:51 Bukki his son, Uzzi his son, Zerahiah his
son, 6:52 Meraioth his son, Amariah his son, Ahitub his son, 6:53
Zadok his son, Ahimaaz his son.

6:54 Now these are their dwelling places throughout their castles in
their coasts, of the sons of Aaron, of the families of the Kohathites:
for theirs was the lot.

6:55 And they gave them Hebron in the land of Judah, and the suburbs
thereof round about it.

6:56 But the fields of the city, and the villages thereof, they gave
to Caleb the son of Jephunneh.

6:57 And to the sons of Aaron they gave the cities of Judah, namely,
Hebron, the city of refuge, and Libnah with her suburbs, and Jattir,
and Eshtemoa, with their suburbs, 6:58 And Hilen with her suburbs,
Debir with her suburbs, 6:59 And Ashan with her suburbs, and
Bethshemesh with her suburbs: 6:60 And out of the tribe of Benjamin;
Geba with her suburbs, and Alemeth with her suburbs, and Anathoth with
her suburbs. All their cities throughout their families were thirteen
cities.

6:61 And unto the sons of Kohath, which were left of the family of
that tribe, were cities given out of the half tribe, namely, out of
the half tribe of Manasseh, by lot, ten cities.

6:62 And to the sons of Gershom throughout their families out of the
tribe of Issachar, and out of the tribe of Asher, and out of the tribe
of Naphtali, and out of the tribe of Manasseh in Bashan, thirteen
cities.

6:63 Unto the sons of Merari were given by lot, throughout their
families, out of the tribe of Reuben, and out of the tribe of Gad, and
out of the tribe of Zebulun, twelve cities.

6:64 And the children of Israel gave to the Levites these cities with
their suburbs.

6:65 And they gave by lot out of the tribe of the children of Judah,
and out of the tribe of the children of Simeon, and out of the tribe
of the children of Benjamin, these cities, which are called by their
names.

6:66 And the residue of the families of the sons of Kohath had cities
of their coasts out of the tribe of Ephraim.

6:67 And they gave unto them, of the cities of refuge, Shechem in
mount Ephraim with her suburbs; they gave also Gezer with her suburbs,
6:68 And Jokmeam with her suburbs, and Bethhoron with her suburbs,
6:69 And Aijalon with her suburbs, and Gathrimmon with her suburbs:
6:70 And out of the half tribe of Manasseh; Aner with her suburbs, and
Bileam with her suburbs, for the family of the remnant of the sons of
Kohath.

6:71 Unto the sons of Gershom were given out of the family of the half
tribe of Manasseh, Golan in Bashan with her suburbs, and Ashtaroth
with her suburbs: 6:72 And out of the tribe of Issachar; Kedesh with
her suburbs, Daberath with her suburbs, 6:73 And Ramoth with her
suburbs, and Anem with her suburbs: 6:74 And out of the tribe of
Asher; Mashal with her suburbs, and Abdon with her suburbs, 6:75 And
Hukok with her suburbs, and Rehob with her suburbs: 6:76 And out of
the tribe of Naphtali; Kedesh in Galilee with her suburbs, and Hammon
with her suburbs, and Kirjathaim with her suburbs.

6:77 Unto the rest of the children of Merari were given out of the
tribe of Zebulun, Rimmon with her suburbs, Tabor with her suburbs:
6:78 And on the other side Jordan by Jericho, on the east side of
Jordan, were given them out of the tribe of Reuben, Bezer in the
wilderness with her suburbs, and Jahzah with her suburbs, 6:79
Kedemoth also with her suburbs, and Mephaath with her suburbs: 6:80
And out of the tribe of Gad; Ramoth in Gilead with her suburbs, and
Mahanaim with her suburbs, 6:81 And Heshbon with her suburbs, and
Jazer with her suburbs.

7:1 Now the sons of Issachar were, Tola, and Puah, Jashub, and
Shimrom, four.

7:2 And the sons of Tola; Uzzi, and Rephaiah, and Jeriel, and Jahmai,
and Jibsam, and Shemuel, heads of their father's house, to wit, of
Tola: they were valiant men of might in their generations; whose
number was in the days of David two and twenty thousand and six
hundred.

7:3 And the sons of Uzzi; Izrahiah: and the sons of Izrahiah; Michael,
and Obadiah, and Joel, Ishiah, five: all of them chief men.

7:4 And with them, by their generations, after the house of their
fathers, were bands of soldiers for war, six and thirty thousand men:
for they had many wives and sons.

7:5 And their brethren among all the families of Issachar were valiant
men of might, reckoned in all by their genealogies fourscore and seven
thousand.

7:6 The sons of Benjamin; Bela, and Becher, and Jediael, three.

7:7 And the sons of Bela; Ezbon, and Uzzi, and Uzziel, and Jerimoth,
and Iri, five; heads of the house of their fathers, mighty men of
valour; and were reckoned by their genealogies twenty and two thousand
and thirty and four.

7:8 And the sons of Becher; Zemira, and Joash, and Eliezer, and
Elioenai, and Omri, and Jerimoth, and Abiah, and Anathoth, and
Alameth. All these are the sons of Becher.

7:9 And the number of them, after their genealogy by their
generations, heads of the house of their fathers, mighty men of
valour, was twenty thousand and two hundred.

7:10 The sons also of Jediael; Bilhan: and the sons of Bilhan; Jeush,
and Benjamin, and Ehud, and Chenaanah, and Zethan, and Tharshish, and
Ahishahar.

7:11 All these the sons of Jediael, by the heads of their fathers,
mighty men of valour, were seventeen thousand and two hundred
soldiers, fit to go out for war and battle.

7:12 Shuppim also, and Huppim, the children of Ir, and Hushim, the
sons of Aher.

7:13 The sons of Naphtali; Jahziel, and Guni, and Jezer, and Shallum,
the sons of Bilhah.

7:14 The sons of Manasseh; Ashriel, whom she bare: (but his concubine
the Aramitess bare Machir the father of Gilead: 7:15 And Machir took
to wife the sister of Huppim and Shuppim, whose sister's name was
Maachah;) and the name of the second was Zelophehad: and Zelophehad
had daughters.

7:16 And Maachah the wife of Machir bare a son, and she called his
name Peresh; and the name of his brother was Sheresh; and his sons
were Ulam and Rakem.

7:17 And the sons of Ulam; Bedan. These were the sons of Gilead, the
son of Machir, the son of Manasseh.

7:18 And his sister Hammoleketh bare Ishod, and Abiezer, and Mahalah.

7:19 And the sons of Shemidah were, Ahian, and Shechem, and Likhi, and
Aniam.

7:20 And the sons of Ephraim; Shuthelah, and Bered his son, and Tahath
his son, and Eladah his son, and Tahath his son, 7:21 And Zabad his
son, and Shuthelah his son, and Ezer, and Elead, whom the men of Gath
that were born in that land slew, because they came down to take away
their cattle.

7:22 And Ephraim their father mourned many days, and his brethren came
to comfort him.

7:23 And when he went in to his wife, she conceived, and bare a son,
and he called his name Beriah, because it went evil with his house.

7:24 (And his daughter was Sherah, who built Bethhoron the nether, and
the upper, and Uzzensherah.)  7:25 And Rephah was his son, also
Resheph, and Telah his son, and Tahan his son.

7:26 Laadan his son, Ammihud his son, Elishama his son.

7:27 Non his son, Jehoshuah his son.

7:28 And their possessions and habitations were, Bethel and the towns
thereof, and eastward Naaran, and westward Gezer, with the towns
thereof; Shechem also and the towns thereof, unto Gaza and the towns
thereof: 7:29 And by the borders of the children of Manasseh,
Bethshean and her towns, Taanach and her towns, Megiddo and her towns,
Dor and her towns. In these dwelt the children of Joseph the son of
Israel.

7:30 The sons of Asher; Imnah, and Isuah, and Ishuai, and Beriah, and
Serah their sister.

7:31 And the sons of Beriah; Heber, and Malchiel, who is the father of
Birzavith.

7:32 And Heber begat Japhlet, and Shomer, and Hotham, and Shua their
sister.

7:33 And the sons of Japhlet; Pasach, and Bimhal, and Ashvath. These
are the children of Japhlet.

7:34 And the sons of Shamer; Ahi, and Rohgah, Jehubbah, and Aram.

7:35 And the sons of his brother Helem; Zophah, and Imna, and Shelesh,
and Amal.

7:36 The sons of Zophah; Suah, and Harnepher, and Shual, and Beri, and
Imrah, 7:37 Bezer, and Hod, and Shamma, and Shilshah, and Ithran, and
Beera.

7:38 And the sons of Jether; Jephunneh, and Pispah, and Ara.

7:39 And the sons of Ulla; Arah, and Haniel, and Rezia.

7:40 All these were the children of Asher, heads of their father's
house, choice and mighty men of valour, chief of the princes. And the
number throughout the genealogy of them that were apt to the war and
to battle was twenty and six thousand men.

8:1 Now Benjamin begat Bela his firstborn, Ashbel the second, and
Aharah the third, 8:2 Nohah the fourth, and Rapha the fifth.

8:3 And the sons of Bela were, Addar, and Gera, and Abihud, 8:4 And
Abishua, and Naaman, and Ahoah, 8:5 And Gera, and Shephuphan, and
Huram.

8:6 And these are the sons of Ehud: these are the heads of the fathers
of the inhabitants of Geba, and they removed them to Manahath: 8:7 And
Naaman, and Ahiah, and Gera, he removed them, and begat Uzza, and
Ahihud.

8:8 And Shaharaim begat children in the country of Moab, after he had
sent them away; Hushim and Baara were his wives.

8:9 And he begat of Hodesh his wife, Jobab, and Zibia, and Mesha, and
Malcham, 8:10 And Jeuz, and Shachia, and Mirma. These were his sons,
heads of the fathers.

8:11 And of Hushim he begat Abitub, and Elpaal.

8:12 The sons of Elpaal; Eber, and Misham, and Shamed, who built Ono,
and Lod, with the towns thereof: 8:13 Beriah also, and Shema, who were
heads of the fathers of the inhabitants of Aijalon, who drove away the
inhabitants of Gath: 8:14 And Ahio, Shashak, and Jeremoth, 8:15 And
Zebadiah, and Arad, and Ader, 8:16 And Michael, and Ispah, and Joha,
the sons of Beriah; 8:17 And Zebadiah, and Meshullam, and Hezeki, and
Heber, 8:18 Ishmerai also, and Jezliah, and Jobab, the sons of Elpaal;
8:19 And Jakim, and Zichri, and Zabdi, 8:20 And Elienai, and Zilthai,
and Eliel, 8:21 And Adaiah, and Beraiah, and Shimrath, the sons of
Shimhi; 8:22 And Ishpan, and Heber, and Eliel, 8:23 And Abdon, and
Zichri, and Hanan, 8:24 And Hananiah, and Elam, and Antothijah, 8:25
And Iphedeiah, and Penuel, the sons of Shashak; 8:26 And Shamsherai,
and Shehariah, and Athaliah, 8:27 And Jaresiah, and Eliah, and Zichri,
the sons of Jeroham.

8:28 These were heads of the fathers, by their generations, chief men.

These dwelt in Jerusalem.

8:29 And at Gibeon dwelt the father of Gibeon; whose wife's name was
Maachah: 8:30 And his firstborn son Abdon, and Zur, and Kish, and
Baal, and Nadab, 8:31 And Gedor, and Ahio, and Zacher.

8:32 And Mikloth begat Shimeah. And these also dwelt with their
brethren in Jerusalem, over against them.

8:33 And Ner begat Kish, and Kish begat Saul, and Saul begat Jonathan,
and Malchishua, and Abinadab, and Eshbaal.

8:34 And the son of Jonathan was Meribbaal; and Meribbaal begat Micah.

8:35 And the sons of Micah were, Pithon, and Melech, and Tarea, and
Ahaz.

8:36 And Ahaz begat Jehoadah; and Jehoadah begat Alemeth, and
Azmaveth, and Zimri; and Zimri begat Moza, 8:37 And Moza begat Binea:
Rapha was his son, Eleasah his son, Azel his son: 8:38 And Azel had
six sons, whose names are these, Azrikam, Bocheru, and Ishmael, and
Sheariah, and Obadiah, and Hanan. All these were the sons of Azel.

8:39 And the sons of Eshek his brother were, Ulam his firstborn,
Jehush the second, and Eliphelet the third.

8:40 And the sons of Ulam were mighty men of valour, archers, and had
many sons, and sons' sons, an hundred and fifty. All these are of the
sons of Benjamin.

9:1 So all Israel were reckoned by genealogies; and, behold, they were
written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah, who were carried
away to Babylon for their transgression.

9:2 Now the first inhabitants that dwelt in their possessions in their
cities were, the Israelites, the priests, Levites, and the Nethinims.

9:3 And in Jerusalem dwelt of the children of Judah, and of the
children of Benjamin, and of the children of Ephraim, and Manasseh;
9:4 Uthai the son of Ammihud, the son of Omri, the son of Imri, the
son of Bani, of the children of Pharez the son of Judah.

9:5 And of the Shilonites; Asaiah the firstborn, and his sons.

9:6 And of the sons of Zerah; Jeuel, and their brethren, six hundred
and ninety.

9:7 And of the sons of Benjamin; Sallu the son of Meshullam, the son
of Hodaviah, the son of Hasenuah, 9:8 And Ibneiah the son of Jeroham,
and Elah the son of Uzzi, the son of Michri, and Meshullam the son of
Shephathiah, the son of Reuel, the son of Ibnijah; 9:9 And their
brethren, according to their generations, nine hundred and fifty and
six. All these men were chief of the fathers in the house of their
fathers.

9:10 And of the priests; Jedaiah, and Jehoiarib, and Jachin, 9:11 And
Azariah the son of Hilkiah, the son of Meshullam, the son of Zadok,
the son of Meraioth, the son of Ahitub, the ruler of the house of God;
9:12 And Adaiah the son of Jeroham, the son of Pashur, the son of
Malchijah, and Maasiai the son of Adiel, the son of Jahzerah, the son
of Meshullam, the son of Meshillemith, the son of Immer; 9:13 And
their brethren, heads of the house of their fathers, a thousand and
seven hundred and threescore; very able men for the work of the
service of the house of God.

9:14 And of the Levites; Shemaiah the son of Hasshub, the son of
Azrikam, the son of Hashabiah, of the sons of Merari; 9:15 And
Bakbakkar, Heresh, and Galal, and Mattaniah the son of Micah, the son
of Zichri, the son of Asaph; 9:16 And Obadiah the son of Shemaiah, the
son of Galal, the son of Jeduthun, and Berechiah the son of Asa, the
son of Elkanah, that dwelt in the villages of the Netophathites.

9:17 And the porters were, Shallum, and Akkub, and Talmon, and Ahiman,
and their brethren: Shallum was the chief; 9:18 Who hitherto waited in
the king's gate eastward: they were porters in the companies of the
children of Levi.

9:19 And Shallum the son of Kore, the son of Ebiasaph, the son of
Korah, and his brethren, of the house of his father, the Korahites,
were over the work of the service, keepers of the gates of the
tabernacle: and their fathers, being over the host of the LORD, were
keepers of the entry.

9:20 And Phinehas the son of Eleazar was the ruler over them in time
past, and the LORD was with him.

9:21 And Zechariah the son of Meshelemiah was porter of the door of
the tabernacle of the congregation.

9:22 All these which were chosen to be porters in the gates were two
hundred and twelve. These were reckoned by their genealogy in their
villages, whom David and Samuel the seer did ordain in their set
office.

9:23 So they and their children had the oversight of the gates of the
house of the LORD, namely, the house of the tabernacle, by wards.

9:24 In four quarters were the porters, toward the east, west, north,
and south.

9:25 And their brethren, which were in their villages, were to come
after seven days from time to time with them.

9:26 For these Levites, the four chief porters, were in their set
office, and were over the chambers and treasuries of the house of God.

9:27 And they lodged round about the house of God, because the charge
was upon them, and the opening thereof every morning pertained to
them.

9:28 And certain of them had the charge of the ministering vessels,
that they should bring them in and out by tale.

9:29 Some of them also were appointed to oversee the vessels, and all
the instruments of the sanctuary, and the fine flour, and the wine,
and the oil, and the frankincense, and the spices.

9:30 And some of the sons of the priests made the ointment of the
spices.

9:31 And Mattithiah, one of the Levites, who was the firstborn of
Shallum the Korahite, had the set office over the things that were
made in the pans.

9:32 And other of their brethren, of the sons of the Kohathites, were
over the shewbread, to prepare it every sabbath.

9:33 And these are the singers, chief of the fathers of the Levites,
who remaining in the chambers were free: for they were employed in
that work day and night.

9:34 These chief fathers of the Levites were chief throughout their
generations; these dwelt at Jerusalem.

9:35 And in Gibeon dwelt the father of Gibeon, Jehiel, whose wife's
name was Maachah: 9:36 And his firstborn son Abdon, then Zur, and
Kish, and Baal, and Ner, and Nadab.

9:37 And Gedor, and Ahio, and Zechariah, and Mikloth.

9:38 And Mikloth begat Shimeam. And they also dwelt with their
brethren at Jerusalem, over against their brethren.

9:39 And Ner begat Kish; and Kish begat Saul; and Saul begat Jonathan,
and Malchishua, and Abinadab, and Eshbaal.

9:40 And the son of Jonathan was Meribbaal: and Meribbaal begat Micah.

9:41 And the sons of Micah were, Pithon, and Melech, and Tahrea, and
Ahaz.

9:42 And Ahaz begat Jarah; and Jarah begat Alemeth, and Azmaveth, and
Zimri; and Zimri begat Moza; 9:43 And Moza begat Binea; and Rephaiah
his son, Eleasah his son, Azel his son.

9:44 And Azel had six sons, whose names are these, Azrikam, Bocheru,
and Ishmael, and Sheariah, and Obadiah, and Hanan: these were the sons
of Azel.

10:1 Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel
fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa.

10:2 And the Philistines followed hard after Saul, and after his sons;
and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Malchishua, the
sons of Saul.

10:3 And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him,
and he was wounded of the archers.

10:4 Then said Saul to his armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me
through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and abuse me. But his
armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. So Saul took a sword,
and fell upon it.

10:5 And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell
likewise on the sword, and died.

10:6 So Saul died, and his three sons, and all his house died
together.

10:7 And when all the men of Israel that were in the valley saw that
they fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead, then they forsook
their cities, and fled: and the Philistines came and dwelt in them.

10:8 And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to
strip the slain, that they found Saul and his sons fallen in mount
Gilboa.

10:9 And when they had stripped him, they took his head, and his
armour, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to
carry tidings unto their idols, and to the people.

10:10 And they put his armour in the house of their gods, and fastened
his head in the temple of Dagon.

10:11 And when all Jabeshgilead heard all that the Philistines had
done to Saul, 10:12 They arose, all the valiant men, and took away the
body of Saul, and the bodies of his sons, and brought them to Jabesh,
and buried their bones under the oak in Jabesh, and fasted seven days.

10:13 So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against
the LORD, even against the word of the LORD, which he kept not, and
also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to enquire
of it; 10:14 And enquired not of the LORD: therefore he slew him, and
turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse.

11:1 Then all Israel gathered themselves to David unto Hebron, saying,
Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh.

11:2 And moreover in time past, even when Saul was king, thou wast he
that leddest out and broughtest in Israel: and the LORD thy God said
unto thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be ruler
over my people Israel.

11:3 Therefore came all the elders of Israel to the king to Hebron;
and David made a covenant with them in Hebron before the LORD; and
they anointed David king over Israel, according to the word of the
LORD by Samuel.

11:4 And David and all Israel went to Jerusalem, which is Jebus; where
the Jebusites were, the inhabitants of the land.

11:5 And the inhabitants of Jebus said to David, Thou shalt not come
hither. Nevertheless David took the castle of Zion, which is the city
of David.

11:6 And David said, Whosoever smiteth the Jebusites first shall be
chief and captain. So Joab the son of Zeruiah went first up, and was
chief.

11:7 And David dwelt in the castle; therefore they called it the city
of David.

11:8 And he built the city round about, even from Millo round about:
and Joab repaired the rest of the city.

11:9 So David waxed greater and greater: for the LORD of hosts was
with him.

11:10 These also are the chief of the mighty men whom David had, who
strengthened themselves with him in his kingdom, and with all Israel,
to make him king, according to the word of the LORD concerning Israel.

11:11 And this is the number of the mighty men whom David had;
Jashobeam, an Hachmonite, the chief of the captains: he lifted up his
spear against three hundred slain by him at one time.

11:12 And after him was Eleazar the son of Dodo, the Ahohite, who was
one of the three mighties.

11:13 He was with David at Pasdammim, and there the Philistines were
gathered together to battle, where was a parcel of ground full of
barley; and the people fled from before the Philistines.

11:14 And they set themselves in the midst of that parcel, and
delivered it, and slew the Philistines; and the LORD saved them by a
great deliverance.

11:15 Now three of the thirty captains went down to the rock to David,
into the cave of Adullam; and the host of the Philistines encamped in
the valley of Rephaim.

11:16 And David was then in the hold, and the Philistines' garrison
was then at Bethlehem.

11:17 And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of
the water of the well of Bethlehem, that is at the gate!  11:18 And
the three brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water
out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and
brought it to David: but David would not drink of it, but poured it
out to the LORD.

11:19 And said, My God forbid it me, that I should do this thing:
shall I drink the blood of these men that have put their lives in
jeopardy? for with the jeopardy of their lives they brought it.
Therefore he would not drink it.

These things did these three mightiest.

11:20 And Abishai the brother of Joab, he was chief of the three: for
lifting up his spear against three hundred, he slew them, and had a
name among the three.

11:21 Of the three, he was more honourable than the two; for he was
their captain: howbeit he attained not to the first three.

11:22 Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the son of a valiant man of
Kabzeel, who had done many acts; he slew two lionlike men of Moab:
also he went down and slew a lion in a pit in a snowy day.

11:23 And he slew an Egyptian, a man of great stature, five cubits
high; and in the Egyptian's hand was a spear like a weaver's beam; and
he went down to him with a staff, and plucked the spear out of the
Egyptian's hand, and slew him with his own spear.

11:24 These things did Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and had the name
among the three mighties.

11:25 Behold, he was honourable among the thirty, but attained not to
the first three: and David set him over his guard.

11:26 Also the valiant men of the armies were, Asahel the brother of
Joab, Elhanan the son of Dodo of Bethlehem, 11:27 Shammoth the
Harorite, Helez the Pelonite, 11:28 Ira the son of Ikkesh the Tekoite,
Abiezer the Antothite, 11:29 Sibbecai the Hushathite, Ilai the
Ahohite, 11:30 Maharai the Netophathite, Heled the son of Baanah the
Netophathite, 11:31 Ithai the son of Ribai of Gibeah, that pertained
to the children of Benjamin, Benaiah the Pirathonite, 11:32 Hurai of
the brooks of Gaash, Abiel the Arbathite, 11:33 Azmaveth the
Baharumite, Eliahba the Shaalbonite, 11:34 The sons of Hashem the
Gizonite, Jonathan the son of Shage the Hararite, 11:35 Ahiam the son
of Sacar the Hararite, Eliphal the son of Ur, 11:36 Hepher the
Mecherathite, Ahijah the Pelonite, 11:37 Hezro the Carmelite, Naarai
the son of Ezbai, 11:38 Joel the brother of Nathan, Mibhar the son of
Haggeri, 11:39 Zelek the Ammonite, Naharai the Berothite, the
armourbearer of Joab the son of Zeruiah, 11:40 Ira the Ithrite, Gareb
the Ithrite, 11:41 Uriah the Hittite, Zabad the son of Ahlai, 11:42
Adina the son of Shiza the Reubenite, a captain of the Reubenites, and
thirty with him, 11:43 Hanan the son of Maachah, and Joshaphat the
Mithnite, 11:44 Uzzia the Ashterathite, Shama and Jehiel the sons of
Hothan the Aroerite, 11:45 Jediael the son of Shimri, and Joha his
brother, the Tizite, 11:46 Eliel the Mahavite, and Jeribai, and
Joshaviah, the sons of Elnaam, and Ithmah the Moabite, 11:47 Eliel,
and Obed, and Jasiel the Mesobaite.

12:1 Now these are they that came to David to Ziklag, while he yet
kept himself close because of Saul the son of Kish: and they were
among the mighty men, helpers of the war.

12:2 They were armed with bows, and could use both the right hand and
the left in hurling stones and shooting arrows out of a bow, even of
Saul's brethren of Benjamin.

12:3 The chief was Ahiezer, then Joash, the sons of Shemaah the
Gibeathite; and Jeziel, and Pelet, the sons of Azmaveth; and Berachah,
and Jehu the Antothite.

12:4 And Ismaiah the Gibeonite, a mighty man among the thirty, and
over the thirty; and Jeremiah, and Jahaziel, and Johanan, and Josabad
the Gederathite, 12:5 Eluzai, and Jerimoth, and Bealiah, and
Shemariah, and Shephatiah the Haruphite, 12:6 Elkanah, and Jesiah, and
Azareel, and Joezer, and Jashobeam, the Korhites, 12:7 And Joelah, and
Zebadiah, the sons of Jeroham of Gedor.

12:8 And of the Gadites there separated themselves unto David into the
hold to the wilderness men of might, and men of war fit for the
battle, that could handle shield and buckler, whose faces were like
the faces of lions, and were as swift as the roes upon the mountains;
12:9 Ezer the first, Obadiah the second, Eliab the third, 12:10
Mishmannah the fourth, Jeremiah the fifth, 12:11 Attai the sixth,
Eliel the seventh, 12:12 Johanan the eighth, Elzabad the ninth, 12:13
Jeremiah the tenth, Machbanai the eleventh.

12:14 These were of the sons of Gad, captains of the host: one of the
least was over an hundred, and the greatest over a thousand.

12:15 These are they that went over Jordan in the first month, when it
had overflown all his banks; and they put to flight all them of the
valleys, both toward the east, and toward the west.

12:16 And there came of the children of Benjamin and Judah to the hold
unto David.

12:17 And David went out to meet them, and answered and said unto
them, If ye be come peaceably unto me to help me, mine heart shall be
knit unto you: but if ye be come to betray me to mine enemies, seeing
there is no wrong in mine hands, the God of our fathers look thereon,
and rebuke it.

12:18 Then the spirit came upon Amasai, who was chief of the captains,
and he said, Thine are we, David, and on thy side, thou son of Jesse:
peace, peace be unto thee, and peace be to thine helpers; for thy God
helpeth thee.

Then David received them, and made them captains of the band.

12:19 And there fell some of Manasseh to David, when he came with the
Philistines against Saul to battle: but they helped them not: for the
lords of the Philistines upon advisement sent him away, saying, He
will fall to his master Saul to the jeopardy of our heads.

12:20 As he went to Ziklag, there fell to him of Manasseh, Adnah, and
Jozabad, and Jediael, and Michael, and Jozabad, and Elihu, and
Zilthai, captains of the thousands that were of Manasseh.

12:21 And they helped David against the band of the rovers: for they
were all mighty men of valour, and were captains in the host.

12:22 For at that time day by day there came to David to help him,
until it was a great host, like the host of God.

12:23 And these are the numbers of the bands that were ready armed to
the war, and came to David to Hebron, to turn the kingdom of Saul to
him, according to the word of the LORD.

12:24 The children of Judah that bare shield and spear were six
thousand and eight hundred, ready armed to the war.

12:25 Of the children of Simeon, mighty men of valour for the war,
seven thousand and one hundred.

12:26 Of the children of Levi four thousand and six hundred.

12:27 And Jehoiada was the leader of the Aaronites, and with him were
three thousand and seven hundred; 12:28 And Zadok, a young man mighty
of valour, and of his father's house twenty and two captains.

12:29 And of the children of Benjamin, the kindred of Saul, three
thousand: for hitherto the greatest part of them had kept the ward of
the house of Saul.

12:30 And of the children of Ephraim twenty thousand and eight
hundred, mighty men of valour, famous throughout the house of their
fathers.

12:31 And of the half tribe of Manasseh eighteen thousand, which were
expressed by name, to come and make David king.

12:32 And of the children of Issachar, which were men that had
understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do; the heads
of them were two hundred; and all their brethren were at their
commandment.

12:33 Of Zebulun, such as went forth to battle, expert in war, with
all instruments of war, fifty thousand, which could keep rank: they
were not of double heart.

12:34 And of Naphtali a thousand captains, and with them with shield
and spear thirty and seven thousand.

12:35 And of the Danites expert in war twenty and eight thousand and
six hundred.

12:36 And of Asher, such as went forth to battle, expert in war, forty
thousand.

12:37 And on the other side of Jordan, of the Reubenites, and the
Gadites, and of the half tribe of Manasseh, with all manner of
instruments of war for the battle, an hundred and twenty thousand.

12:38 All these men of war, that could keep rank, came with a perfect
heart to Hebron, to make David king over all Israel: and all the rest
also of Israel were of one heart to make David king.

12:39 And there they were with David three days, eating and drinking:
for their brethren had prepared for them.

12:40 Moreover they that were nigh them, even unto Issachar and
Zebulun and Naphtali, brought bread on asses, and on camels, and on
mules, and on oxen, and meat, meal, cakes of figs, and bunches of
raisins, and wine, and oil, and oxen, and sheep abundantly: for there
was joy in Israel.

13:1 And David consulted with the captains of thousands and hundreds,
and with every leader.

13:2 And David said unto all the congregation of Israel, If it seem
good unto you, and that it be of the LORD our God, let us send abroad
unto our brethren every where, that are left in all the land of
Israel, and with them also to the priests and Levites which are in
their cities and suburbs, that they may gather themselves unto us:
13:3 And let us bring again the ark of our God to us: for we enquired
not at it in the days of Saul.

13:4 And all the congregation said that they would do so: for the
thing was right in the eyes of all the people.

13:5 So David gathered all Israel together, from Shihor of Egypt even
unto the entering of Hemath, to bring the ark of God from
Kirjathjearim.

13:6 And David went up, and all Israel, to Baalah, that is, to
Kirjathjearim, which belonged to Judah, to bring up thence the ark of
God the LORD, that dwelleth between the cherubims, whose name is
called on it.

13:7 And they carried the ark of God in a new cart out of the house of
Abinadab: and Uzza and Ahio drave the cart.

13:8 And David and all Israel played before God with all their might,
and with singing, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with
timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets.

13:9 And when they came unto the threshingfloor of Chidon, Uzza put
forth his hand to hold the ark; for the oxen stumbled.

13:10 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzza, and he smote
him, because he put his hand to the ark: and there he died before God.

13:11 And David was displeased, because the LORD had made a breach
upon Uzza: wherefore that place is called Perezuzza to this day.

13:12 And David was afraid of God that day, saying, How shall I bring
the ark of God home to me?  13:13 So David brought not the ark home to
himself to the city of David, but carried it aside into the house of
Obededom the Gittite.

13:14 And the ark of God remained with the family of Obededom in his
house three months. And the LORD blessed the house of Obededom, and
all that he had.

14:1 Now Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David, and timber of
cedars, with masons and carpenters, to build him an house.

14:2 And David perceived that the LORD had confirmed him king over
Israel, for his kingdom was lifted up on high, because of his people
Israel.

14:3 And David took more wives at Jerusalem: and David begat more sons
and daughters.

14:4 Now these are the names of his children which he had in
Jerusalem; Shammua, and Shobab, Nathan, and Solomon, 14:5 And Ibhar,
and Elishua, and Elpalet, 14:6 And Nogah, and Nepheg, and Japhia, 14:7
And Elishama, and Beeliada, and Eliphalet.

14:8 And when the Philistines heard that David was anointed king over
all Israel, all the Philistines went up to seek David. And David heard
of it, and went out against them.

14:9 And the Philistines came and spread themselves in the valley of
Rephaim.

14:10 And David enquired of God, saying, Shall I go up against the
Philistines? And wilt thou deliver them into mine hand? And the LORD
said unto him, Go up; for I will deliver them into thine hand.

14:11 So they came up to Baalperazim; and David smote them there. Then
David said, God hath broken in upon mine enemies by mine hand like the
breaking forth of waters: therefore they called the name of that place
Baalperazim.

14:12 And when they had left their gods there, David gave a
commandment, and they were burned with fire.

14:13 And the Philistines yet again spread themselves abroad in the
valley.

14:14 Therefore David enquired again of God; and God said unto him, Go
not up after them; turn away from them, and come upon them over
against the mulberry trees.

14:15 And it shall be, when thou shalt hear a sound of going in the
tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt go out to battle: for
God is gone forth before thee to smite the host of the Philistines.

14:16 David therefore did as God commanded him: and they smote the
host of the Philistines from Gibeon even to Gazer.

14:17 And the fame of David went out into all lands; and the LORD
brought the fear of him upon all nations.

15:1 And David made him houses in the city of David, and prepared a
place for the ark of God, and pitched for it a tent.

15:2 Then David said, None ought to carry the ark of God but the
Levites: for them hath the LORD chosen to carry the ark of God, and to
minister unto him for ever.

15:3 And David gathered all Israel together to Jerusalem, to bring up
the ark of the LORD unto his place, which he had prepared for it.

15:4 And David assembled the children of Aaron, and the Levites: 15:5
Of the sons of Kohath; Uriel the chief, and his brethren an hundred
and twenty: 15:6 Of the sons of Merari; Asaiah the chief, and his
brethren two hundred and twenty: 15:7 Of the sons of Gershom; Joel the
chief and his brethren an hundred and thirty: 15:8 Of the sons of
Elizaphan; Shemaiah the chief, and his brethren two hundred: 15:9 Of
the sons of Hebron; Eliel the chief, and his brethren fourscore: 15:10
Of the sons of Uzziel; Amminadab the chief, and his brethren an
hundred and twelve.

15:11 And David called for Zadok and Abiathar the priests, and for the
Levites, for Uriel, Asaiah, and Joel, Shemaiah, and Eliel, and
Amminadab, 15:12 And said unto them, Ye are the chief of the fathers
of the Levites: sanctify yourselves, both ye and your brethren, that
ye may bring up the ark of the LORD God of Israel unto the place that
I have prepared for it.

15:13 For because ye did it not at the first, the LORD our God made a
breach upon us, for that we sought him not after the due order.

15:14 So the priests and the Levites sanctified themselves to bring up
the ark of the LORD God of Israel.

15:15 And the children of the Levites bare the ark of God upon their
shoulders with the staves thereon, as Moses commanded according to the
word of the LORD.

15:16 And David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their
brethren to be the singers with instruments of musick, psalteries and
harps and cymbals, sounding, by lifting up the voice with joy.

15:17 So the Levites appointed Heman the son of Joel; and of his
brethren, Asaph the son of Berechiah; and of the sons of Merari their
brethren, Ethan the son of Kushaiah; 15:18 And with them their
brethren of the second degree, Zechariah, Ben, and Jaaziel, and
Shemiramoth, and Jehiel, and Unni, Eliab, and Benaiah, and Maaseiah,
and Mattithiah, and Elipheleh, and Mikneiah, and Obededom, and Jeiel,
the porters.

15:19 So the singers, Heman, Asaph, and Ethan, were appointed to sound
with cymbals of brass; 15:20 And Zechariah, and Aziel, and
Shemiramoth, and Jehiel, and Unni, and Eliab, and Maaseiah, and
Benaiah, with psalteries on Alamoth; 15:21 And Mattithiah, and
Elipheleh, and Mikneiah, and Obededom, and Jeiel, and Azaziah, with
harps on the Sheminith to excel.

15:22 And Chenaniah, chief of the Levites, was for song: he instructed
about the song, because he was skilful.

15:23 And Berechiah and Elkanah were doorkeepers for the ark.

15:24 And Shebaniah, and Jehoshaphat, and Nethaneel, and Amasai, and
Zechariah, and Benaiah, and Eliezer, the priests, did blow with the
trumpets before the ark of God: and Obededom and Jehiah were
doorkeepers for the ark.

15:25 So David, and the elders of Israel, and the captains over
thousands, went to bring up the ark of the covenant of the LORD out of
the house of Obededom with joy.

15:26 And it came to pass, when God helped the Levites that bare the
ark of the covenant of the LORD, that they offered seven bullocks and
seven rams.

15:27 And David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, and all the
Levites that bare the ark, and the singers, and Chenaniah the master
of the song with the singers: David also had upon him an ephod of
linen.

15:28 Thus all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the LORD
with shouting, and with sound of the cornet, and with trumpets, and
with cymbals, making a noise with psalteries and harps.

15:29 And it came to pass, as the ark of the covenant of the LORD came
to the city of David, that Michal, the daughter of Saul looking out at
a window saw king David dancing and playing: and she despised him in
her heart.

16:1 So they brought the ark of God, and set it in the midst of the
tent that David had pitched for it: and they offered burnt sacrifices
and peace offerings before God.

16:2 And when David had made an end of offering the burnt offerings
and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the
LORD.

16:3 And he dealt to every one of Israel, both man and woman, to every
one a loaf of bread, and a good piece of flesh, and a flagon of wine.

16:4 And he appointed certain of the Levites to minister before the
ark of the LORD, and to record, and to thank and praise the LORD God
of Israel: 16:5 Asaph the chief, and next to him Zechariah, Jeiel, and
Shemiramoth, and Jehiel, and Mattithiah, and Eliab, and Benaiah, and
Obededom: and Jeiel with psalteries and with harps; but Asaph made a
sound with cymbals; 16:6 Benaiah also and Jahaziel the priests with
trumpets continually before the ark of the covenant of God.

16:7 Then on that day David delivered first this psalm to thank the
LORD into the hand of Asaph and his brethren.

16:8 Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon his name, make known his
deeds among the people.

16:9 Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him, talk ye of all his wondrous
works.

16:10 Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that
seek the LORD.

16:11 Seek the LORD and his strength, seek his face continually.

16:12 Remember his marvellous works that he hath done, his wonders,
and the judgments of his mouth; 16:13 O ye seed of Israel his servant,
ye children of Jacob, his chosen ones.

16:14 He is the LORD our God; his judgments are in all the earth.

16:15 Be ye mindful always of his covenant; the word which he
commanded to a thousand generations; 16:16 Even of the covenant which
he made with Abraham, and of his oath unto Isaac; 16:17 And hath
confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an
everlasting covenant, 16:18 Saying, Unto thee will I give the land of
Canaan, the lot of your inheritance; 16:19 When ye were but few, even
a few, and strangers in it.

16:20 And when they went from nation to nation, and from one kingdom
to another people; 16:21 He suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he
reproved kings for their sakes, 16:22 Saying, Touch not mine anointed,
and do my prophets no harm.

16:23 Sing unto the LORD, all the earth; shew forth from day to day
his salvation.

16:24 Declare his glory among the heathen; his marvellous works among
all nations.

16:25 For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised: he also is to
be feared above all gods.

16:26 For all the gods of the people are idols: but the LORD made the
heavens.

16:27 Glory and honour are in his presence; strength and gladness are
in his place.

16:28 Give unto the LORD, ye kindreds of the people, give unto the
LORD glory and strength.

16:29 Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name: bring an
offering, and come before him: worship the LORD in the beauty of
holiness.

16:30 Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable,
that it be not moved.

16:31 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice: and let men
say among the nations, The LORD reigneth.

16:32 Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof: let the fields
rejoice, and all that is therein.

16:33 Then shall the trees of the wood sing out at the presence of the
LORD, because he cometh to judge the earth.

16:34 O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good; for his mercy
endureth for ever.

16:35 And say ye, Save us, O God of our salvation, and gather us
together, and deliver us from the heathen, that we may give thanks to
thy holy name, and glory in thy praise.

16:36 Blessed be the LORD God of Israel for ever and ever. And all the
people said, Amen, and praised the LORD.

16:37 So he left there before the ark of the covenant of the LORD
Asaph and his brethren, to minister before the ark continually, as
every day's work required: 16:38 And Obededom with their brethren,
threescore and eight; Obededom also the son of Jeduthun and Hosah to
be porters: 16:39 And Zadok the priest, and his brethren the priests,
before the tabernacle of the LORD in the high place that was at
Gibeon, 16:40 To offer burnt offerings unto the LORD upon the altar of
the burnt offering continually morning and evening, and to do
according to all that is written in the law of the LORD, which he
commanded Israel; 16:41 And with them Heman and Jeduthun, and the rest
that were chosen, who were expressed by name, to give thanks to the
LORD, because his mercy endureth for ever; 16:42 And with them Heman
and Jeduthun with trumpets and cymbals for those that should make a
sound, and with musical instruments of God. And the sons of Jeduthun
were porters.

16:43 And all the people departed every man to his house: and David
returned to bless his house.

17:1 Now it came to pass, as David sat in his house, that David said
to Nathan the prophet, Lo, I dwell in an house of cedars, but the ark
of the covenant of the LORD remaineth under curtains.

17:2 Then Nathan said unto David, Do all that is in thine heart; for
God is with thee.

17:3 And it came to pass the same night, that the word of God came to
Nathan, saying, 17:4 Go and tell David my servant, Thus saith the
LORD, Thou shalt not build me an house to dwell in: 17:5 For I have
not dwelt in an house since the day that I brought up Israel unto this
day; but have gone from tent to tent, and from one tabernacle to
another.

17:6 Wheresoever I have walked with all Israel, spake I a word to any
of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to feed my people, saying,
Why have ye not built me an house of cedars?  17:7 Now therefore thus
shalt thou say unto my servant David, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I
took thee from the sheepcote, even from following the sheep, that thou
shouldest be ruler over my people Israel: 17:8 And I have been with
thee whithersoever thou hast walked, and have cut off all thine
enemies from before thee, and have made thee a name like the name of
the great men that are in the earth.

17:9 Also I will ordain a place for my people Israel, and will plant
them, and they shall dwell in their place, and shall be moved no more;
neither shall the children of wickedness waste them any more, as at
the beginning, 17:10 And since the time that I commanded judges to be
over my people Israel. Moreover I will subdue all thine enemies.
Furthermore I tell thee that the LORD will build thee an house.

17:11 And it shall come to pass, when thy days be expired that thou
must go to be with thy fathers, that I will raise up thy seed after
thee, which shall be of thy sons; and I will establish his kingdom.

17:12 He shall build me an house, and I will stablish his throne for
ever.

17:13 I will be his father, and he shall be my son: and I will not
take my mercy away from him, as I took it from him that was before
thee: 17:14 But I will settle him in mine house and in my kingdom for
ever: and his throne shall be established for evermore.

17:15 According to all these words, and according to all this vision,
so did Nathan speak unto David.

17:16 And David the king came and sat before the LORD, and said, Who
am I, O LORD God, and what is mine house, that thou hast brought me
hitherto?  17:17 And yet this was a small thing in thine eyes, O God;
for thou hast also spoken of thy servant's house for a great while to
come, and hast regarded me according to the estate of a man of high
degree, O LORD God.

17:18 What can David speak more to thee for the honour of thy servant?
for thou knowest thy servant.

17:19 O LORD, for thy servant's sake, and according to thine own
heart, hast thou done all this greatness, in making known all these
great things.

17:20 O LORD, there is none like thee, neither is there any God beside
thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears.

17:21 And what one nation in the earth is like thy people Israel, whom
God went to redeem to be his own people, to make thee a name of
greatness and terribleness, by driving out nations from before thy
people whom thou hast redeemed out of Egypt?  17:22 For thy people
Israel didst thou make thine own people for ever; and thou, LORD,
becamest their God.

17:23 Therefore now, LORD, let the thing that thou hast spoken
concerning thy servant and concerning his house be established for
ever, and do as thou hast said.

17:24 Let it even be established, that thy name may be magnified for
ever, saying, The LORD of hosts is the God of Israel, even a God to
Israel: and let the house of David thy servant be established before
thee.

17:25 For thou, O my God, hast told thy servant that thou wilt build
him an house: therefore thy servant hath found in his heart to pray
before thee.

17:26 And now, LORD, thou art God, and hast promised this goodness
unto thy servant: 17:27 Now therefore let it please thee to bless the
house of thy servant, that it may be before thee for ever: for thou
blessest, O LORD, and it shall be blessed for ever.

18:1 Now after this it came to pass, that David smote the Philistines,
and subdued them, and took Gath and her towns out of the hand of the
Philistines.

18:2 And he smote Moab; and the Moabites became David's servants, and
brought gifts.

18:3 And David smote Hadarezer king of Zobah unto Hamath, as he went
to stablish his dominion by the river Euphrates.

18:4 And David took from him a thousand chariots, and seven thousand
horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen: David also houghed all the
chariot horses, but reserved of them an hundred chariots.

18:5 And when the Syrians of Damascus came to help Hadarezer king of
Zobah, David slew of the Syrians two and twenty thousand men.

18:6 Then David put garrisons in Syriadamascus; and the Syrians became
David's servants, and brought gifts. Thus the LORD preserved David
whithersoever he went.

18:7 And David took the shields of gold that were on the servants of
Hadarezer, and brought them to Jerusalem.

18:8 Likewise from Tibhath, and from Chun, cities of Hadarezer,
brought David very much brass, wherewith Solomon made the brasen sea,
and the pillars, and the vessels of brass.

18:9 Now when Tou king of Hamath heard how David had smitten all the
host of Hadarezer king of Zobah; 18:10 He sent Hadoram his son to king
David, to enquire of his welfare, and to congratulate him, because he
had fought against Hadarezer, and smitten him; (for Hadarezer had war
with Tou;) and with him all manner of vessels of gold and silver and
brass.

18:11 Them also king David dedicated unto the LORD, with the silver
and the gold that he brought from all these nations; from Edom, and
from Moab, and from the children of Ammon, and from the Philistines,
and from Amalek.

18:12 Moreover Abishai the son of Zeruiah slew of the Edomites in the
valley of salt eighteen thousand.

18:13 And he put garrisons in Edom; and all the Edomites became
David's servants. Thus the LORD preserved David whithersoever he went.

18:14 So David reigned over all Israel, and executed judgment and
justice among all his people.

18:15 And Joab the son of Zeruiah was over the host; and Jehoshaphat
the son of Ahilud, recorder.

18:16 And Zadok the son of Ahitub, and Abimelech the son of Abiathar,
were the priests; and Shavsha was scribe; 18:17 And Benaiah the son of
Jehoiada was over the Cherethites and the Pelethites; and the sons of
David were chief about the king.

19:1 Now it came to pass after this, that Nahash the king of the
children of Ammon died, and his son reigned in his stead.

19:2 And David said, I will shew kindness unto Hanun the son of
Nahash, because his father shewed kindness to me. And David sent
messengers to comfort him concerning his father. So the servants of
David came into the land of the children of Ammon to Hanun, to comfort
him.

19:3 But the princes of the children of Ammon said to Hanun, Thinkest
thou that David doth honour thy father, that he hath sent comforters
unto thee?  are not his servants come unto thee for to search, and to
overthrow, and to spy out the land?  19:4 Wherefore Hanun took David's
servants, and shaved them, and cut off their garments in the midst
hard by their buttocks, and sent them away.

19:5 Then there went certain, and told David how the men were served.
And he sent to meet them: for the men were greatly ashamed. And the
king said, Tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown, and then
return.

19:6 And when the children of Ammon saw that they had made themselves
odious to David, Hanun and the children of Ammon sent a thousand
talents of silver to hire them chariots and horsemen out of
Mesopotamia, and out of Syriamaachah, and out of Zobah.

19:7 So they hired thirty and two thousand chariots, and the king of
Maachah and his people; who came and pitched before Medeba. And the
children of Ammon gathered themselves together from their cities, and
came to battle.

19:8 And when David heard of it, he sent Joab, and all the host of the
mighty men.

19:9 And the children of Ammon came out, and put the battle in array
before the gate of the city: and the kings that were come were by
themselves in the field.

19:10 Now when Joab saw that the battle was set against him before and
behind, he chose out of all the choice of Israel, and put them in
array against the Syrians.

19:11 And the rest of the people he delivered unto the hand of Abishai
his brother, and they set themselves in array against the children of
Ammon.

19:12 And he said, If the Syrians be too strong for me, then thou
shalt help me: but if the children of Ammon be too strong for thee,
then I will help thee.

19:13 Be of good courage, and let us behave ourselves valiantly for
our people, and for the cities of our God: and let the LORD do that
which is good in his sight.

19:14 So Joab and the people that were with him drew nigh before the
Syrians unto the battle; and they fled before him.

19:15 And when the children of Ammon saw that the Syrians were fled,
they likewise fled before Abishai his brother, and entered into the
city. Then Joab came to Jerusalem.

19:16 And when the Syrians saw that they were put to the worse before
Israel, they sent messengers, and drew forth the Syrians that were
beyond the river: and Shophach the captain of the host of Hadarezer
went before them.

19:17 And it was told David; and he gathered all Israel, and passed
over Jordan, and came upon them, and set the battle in array against
them. So when David had put the battle in array against the Syrians,
they fought with him.

19:18 But the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew of the
Syrians seven thousand men which fought in chariots, and forty
thousand footmen, and killed Shophach the captain of the host.

19:19 And when the servants of Hadarezer saw that they were put to the
worse before Israel, they made peace with David, and became his
servants: neither would the Syrians help the children of Ammon any
more.

20:1 And it came to pass, that after the year was expired, at the time
that kings go out to battle, Joab led forth the power of the army, and
wasted the country of the children of Ammon, and came and besieged
Rabbah. But David tarried at Jerusalem. And Joab smote Rabbah, and
destroyed it.

20:2 And David took the crown of their king from off his head, and
found it to weigh a talent of gold, and there were precious stones in
it; and it was set upon David's head: and he brought also exceeding
much spoil out of the city.

20:3 And he brought out the people that were in it, and cut them with
saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes. Even so dealt David
with all the cities of the children of Ammon. And David and all the
people returned to Jerusalem.

20:4 And it came to pass after this, that there arose war at Gezer
with the Philistines; at which time Sibbechai the Hushathite slew
Sippai, that was of the children of the giant: and they were subdued.

20:5 And there was war again with the Philistines; and Elhanan the son
of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, whose spear
staff was like a weaver's beam.

20:6 And yet again there was war at Gath, where was a man of great
stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty, six on each
hand, and six on each foot and he also was the son of the giant.

20:7 But when he defied Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimea David's
brother slew him.

20:8 These were born unto the giant in Gath; and they fell by the hand
of David, and by the hand of his servants.

21:1 And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number
Israel.

21:2 And David said to Joab and to the rulers of the people, Go,
number Israel from Beersheba even to Dan; and bring the number of them
to me, that I may know it.

21:3 And Joab answered, The LORD make his people an hundred times so
many more as they be: but, my lord the king, are they not all my
lord's servants?  why then doth my lord require this thing? why will
he be a cause of trespass to Israel?  21:4 Nevertheless the king's
word prevailed against Joab. Wherefore Joab departed, and went
throughout all Israel, and came to Jerusalem.

21:5 And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people unto David. And
all they of Israel were a thousand thousand and an hundred thousand
men that drew sword: and Judah was four hundred threescore and ten
thousand men that drew sword.

21:6 But Levi and Benjamin counted he not among them: for the king's
word was abominable to Joab.

21:7 And God was displeased with this thing; therefore he smote
Israel.

21:8 And David said unto God, I have sinned greatly, because I have
done this thing: but now, I beseech thee, do away the iniquity of thy
servant; for I have done very foolishly.

21:9 And the LORD spake unto Gad, David's seer, saying, 21:10 Go and
tell David, saying, Thus saith the LORD, I offer thee three things:
choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee.

21:11 So Gad came to David, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD,
Choose thee 21:12 Either three years' famine; or three months to be
destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies
overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the LORD, even the
pestilence, in the land, and the angel of the LORD destroying
throughout all the coasts of Israel. Now therefore advise thyself what
word I shall bring again to him that sent me.

21:13 And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let me fall now
into the hand of the LORD; for very great are his mercies: but let me
not fall into the hand of man.

21:14 So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of
Israel seventy thousand men.

21:15 And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he
was destroying, the LORD beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and
said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thine hand.
And the angel of the LORD stood by the threshingfloor of Ornan the
Jebusite.

21:16 And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the LORD
stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his
hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders of
Israel, who were clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.

21:17 And David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people
to be numbered? even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed;
but as for these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand, I pray
thee, O LORD my God, be on me, and on my father's house; but not on
thy people, that they should be plagued.

21:18 Then the angel of the LORD commanded Gad to say to David, that
David should go up, and set up an altar unto the LORD in the
threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.

21:19 And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spake in the
name of the LORD.

21:20 And Ornan turned back, and saw the angel; and his four sons with
him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat.

21:21 And as David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David, and went
out of the threshingfloor, and bowed himself to David with his face to
the ground.

21:22 Then David said to Ornan, Grant me the place of this
threshingfloor, that I may build an altar therein unto the LORD: thou
shalt grant it me for the full price: that the plague may be stayed
from the people.

21:23 And Ornan said unto David, Take it to thee, and let my lord the
king do that which is good in his eyes: lo, I give thee the oxen also
for burnt offerings, and the threshing instruments for wood, and the
wheat for the meat offering; I give it all.

21:24 And king David said to Ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy it for
the full price: for I will not take that which is thine for the LORD,
nor offer burnt offerings without cost.

21:25 So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold
by weight.

21:26 And David built there an altar unto the LORD, and offered burnt
offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the LORD; and he
answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering.

21:27 And the LORD commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again
into the sheath thereof.

21:28 At that time when David saw that the LORD had answered him in
the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite, then he sacrificed there.

21:29 For the tabernacle of the LORD, which Moses made in the
wilderness, and the altar of the burnt offering, were at that season
in the high place at Gibeon.

21:30 But David could not go before it to enquire of God: for he was
afraid because of the sword of the angel of the LORD.

22:1 Then David said, This is the house of the LORD God, and this is
the altar of the burnt offering for Israel.

22:2 And David commanded to gather together the strangers that were in
the land of Israel; and he set masons to hew wrought stones to build
the house of God.

22:3 And David prepared iron in abundance for the nails for the doors
of the gates, and for the joinings; and brass in abundance without
weight; 22:4 Also cedar trees in abundance: for the Zidonians and they
of Tyre brought much cedar wood to David.

22:5 And David said, Solomon my son is young and tender, and the house
that is to be builded for the LORD must be exceeding magnifical, of
fame and of glory throughout all countries: I will therefore now make
preparation for it. So David prepared abundantly before his death.

22:6 Then he called for Solomon his son, and charged him to build an
house for the LORD God of Israel.

22:7 And David said to Solomon, My son, as for me, it was in my mind
to build an house unto the name of the LORD my God: 22:8 But the word
of the LORD came to me, saying, Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and
hast made great wars: thou shalt not build an house unto my name,
because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight.

22:9 Behold, a son shall be born to thee, who shall be a man of rest;
and I will give him rest from all his enemies round about: for his
name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel
in his days.

22:10 He shall build an house for my name; and he shall be my son, and
I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom
over Israel for ever.

22:11 Now, my son, the LORD be with thee; and prosper thou, and build
the house of the LORD thy God, as he hath said of thee.

22:12 Only the LORD give thee wisdom and understanding, and give thee
charge concerning Israel, that thou mayest keep the law of the LORD
thy God.

22:13 Then shalt thou prosper, if thou takest heed to fulfil the
statutes and judgments which the LORD charged Moses with concerning
Israel: be strong, and of good courage; dread not, nor be dismayed.

22:14 Now, behold, in my trouble I have prepared for the house of the
LORD an hundred thousand talents of gold, and a thousand thousand
talents of silver; and of brass and iron without weight; for it is in
abundance: timber also and stone have I prepared; and thou mayest add
thereto.

22:15 Moreover there are workmen with thee in abundance, hewers and
workers of stone and timber, and all manner of cunning men for every
manner of work.

22:16 Of the gold, the silver, and the brass, and the iron, there is
no number. Arise therefore, and be doing, and the LORD be with thee.

22:17 David also commanded all the princes of Israel to help Solomon
his son, saying, 22:18 Is not the LORD your God with you? and hath he
not given you rest on every side? for he hath given the inhabitants of
the land into mine hand; and the land is subdued before the LORD, and
before his people.

22:19 Now set your heart and your soul to seek the LORD your God;
arise therefore, and build ye the sanctuary of the LORD God, to bring
the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and the holy vessels of God, into
the house that is to be built to the name of the LORD.

23:1 So when David was old and full of days, he made Solomon his son
king over Israel.

23:2 And he gathered together all the princes of Israel, with the
priests and the Levites.

23:3 Now the Levites were numbered from the age of thirty years and
upward: and their number by their polls, man by man, was thirty and
eight thousand.

23:4 Of which, twenty and four thousand were to set forward the work
of the house of the LORD; and six thousand were officers and judges:
23:5 Moreover four thousand were porters; and four thousand praised
the LORD with the instruments which I made, said David, to praise
therewith.

23:6 And David divided them into courses among the sons of Levi,
namely, Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.

23:7 Of the Gershonites were, Laadan, and Shimei.

23:8 The sons of Laadan; the chief was Jehiel, and Zetham, and Joel,
three.

23:9 The sons of Shimei; Shelomith, and Haziel, and Haran, three.
These were the chief of the fathers of Laadan.

23:10 And the sons of Shimei were, Jahath, Zina, and Jeush, and
Beriah.

These four were the sons of Shimei.

23:11 And Jahath was the chief, and Zizah the second: but Jeush and
Beriah had not many sons; therefore they were in one reckoning,
according to their father's house.

23:12 The sons of Kohath; Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel, four.

23:13 The sons of Amram; Aaron and Moses: and Aaron was separated,
that he should sanctify the most holy things, he and his sons for
ever, to burn incense before the LORD, to minister unto him, and to
bless in his name for ever.

23:14 Now concerning Moses the man of God, his sons were named of the
tribe of Levi.

23:15 The sons of Moses were, Gershom, and Eliezer.

23:16 Of the sons of Gershom, Shebuel was the chief.

23:17 And the sons of Eliezer were, Rehabiah the chief. And Eliezer
had none other sons; but the sons of Rehabiah were very many.

23:18 Of the sons of Izhar; Shelomith the chief.

23:19 Of the sons of Hebron; Jeriah the first, Amariah the second,
Jahaziel the third, and Jekameam the fourth.

23:20 Of the sons of Uzziel; Micah the first and Jesiah the second.

23:21 The sons of Merari; Mahli, and Mushi. The sons of Mahli;
Eleazar, and Kish.

23:22 And Eleazar died, and had no sons, but daughters: and their
brethren the sons of Kish took them.

23:23 The sons of Mushi; Mahli, and Eder, and Jeremoth, three.

23:24 These were the sons of Levi after the house of their fathers;
even the chief of the fathers, as they were counted by number of names
by their polls, that did the work for the service of the house of the
LORD, from the age of twenty years and upward.

23:25 For David said, The LORD God of Israel hath given rest unto his
people, that they may dwell in Jerusalem for ever: 23:26 And also unto
the Levites; they shall no more carry the tabernacle, nor any vessels
of it for the service thereof.

23:27 For by the last words of David the Levites were numbered from
twenty years old and above: 23:28 Because their office was to wait on
the sons of Aaron for the service of the house of the LORD, in the
courts, and in the chambers, and in the purifying of all holy things,
and the work of the service of the house of God; 23:29 Both for the
shewbread, and for the fine flour for meat offering, and for the
unleavened cakes, and for that which is baked in the pan, and for that
which is fried, and for all manner of measure and size; 23:30 And to
stand every morning to thank and praise the LORD, and likewise at
even: 23:31 And to offer all burnt sacrifices unto the LORD in the
sabbaths, in the new moons, and on the set feasts, by number,
according to the order commanded unto them, continually before the
LORD: 23:32 And that they should keep the charge of the tabernacle of
the congregation, and the charge of the holy place, and the charge of
the sons of Aaron their brethren, in the service of the house of the
LORD.

24:1 Now these are the divisions of the sons of Aaron. The sons of
Aaron; Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.

24:2 But Nadab and Abihu died before their father, and had no
children: therefore Eleazar and Ithamar executed the priest's office.

24:3 And David distributed them, both Zadok of the sons of Eleazar,
and Ahimelech of the sons of Ithamar, according to their offices in
their service.

24:4 And there were more chief men found of the sons of Eleazar than
of the sons of Ithamar, and thus were they divided. Among the sons of
Eleazar there were sixteen chief men of the house of their fathers,
and eight among the sons of Ithamar according to the house of their
fathers.

24:5 Thus were they divided by lot, one sort with another; for the
governors of the sanctuary, and governors of the house of God, were of
the sons of Eleazar, and of the sons of Ithamar.

24:6 And Shemaiah the son of Nethaneel the scribe, one of the Levites,
wrote them before the king, and the princes, and Zadok the priest, and
Ahimelech the son of Abiathar, and before the chief of the fathers of
the priests and Levites: one principal household being taken for
Eleazar, and one taken for Ithamar.

24:7 Now the first lot came forth to Jehoiarib, the second to Jedaiah,
24:8 The third to Harim, the fourth to Seorim, 24:9 The fifth to
Malchijah, the sixth to Mijamin, 24:10 The seventh to Hakkoz, the
eighth to Abijah, 24:11 The ninth to Jeshuah, the tenth to Shecaniah,
24:12 The eleventh to Eliashib, the twelfth to Jakim, 24:13 The
thirteenth to Huppah, the fourteenth to Jeshebeab, 24:14 The fifteenth
to Bilgah, the sixteenth to Immer, 24:15 The seventeenth to Hezir, the
eighteenth to Aphses, 24:16 The nineteenth to Pethahiah, the twentieth
to Jehezekel, 24:17 The one and twentieth to Jachin, the two and
twentieth to Gamul, 24:18 The three and twentieth to Delaiah, the four
and twentieth to Maaziah.

24:19 These were the orderings of them in their service to come into
the house of the LORD, according to their manner, under Aaron their
father, as the LORD God of Israel had commanded him.

24:20 And the rest of the sons of Levi were these: Of the sons of
Amram; Shubael: of the sons of Shubael; Jehdeiah.

24:21 Concerning Rehabiah: of the sons of Rehabiah, the first was
Isshiah.

24:22 Of the Izharites; Shelomoth: of the sons of Shelomoth; Jahath.

24:23 And the sons of Hebron; Jeriah the first, Amariah the second,
Jahaziel the third, Jekameam the fourth.

24:24 Of the sons of Uzziel; Michah: of the sons of Michah; Shamir.

24:25 The brother of Michah was Isshiah: of the sons of Isshiah;
Zechariah.

24:26 The sons of Merari were Mahli and Mushi: the sons of Jaaziah;
Beno.

24:27 The sons of Merari by Jaaziah; Beno, and Shoham, and Zaccur, and
Ibri.

24:28 Of Mahli came Eleazar, who had no sons.

24:29 Concerning Kish: the son of Kish was Jerahmeel.

24:30 The sons also of Mushi; Mahli, and Eder, and Jerimoth. These
were the sons of the Levites after the house of their fathers.

24:31 These likewise cast lots over against their brethren the sons of
Aaron in the presence of David the king, and Zadok, and Ahimelech, and
the chief of the fathers of the priests and Levites, even the
principal fathers over against their younger brethren.

25:1 Moreover David and the captains of the host separated to the
service of the sons of Asaph, and of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who
should prophesy with harps, with psalteries, and with cymbals: and the
number of the workmen according to their service was: 25:2 Of the sons
of Asaph; Zaccur, and Joseph, and Nethaniah, and Asarelah, the sons of
Asaph under the hands of Asaph, which prophesied according to the
order of the king.

25:3 Of Jeduthun: the sons of Jeduthun; Gedaliah, and Zeri, and
Jeshaiah, Hashabiah, and Mattithiah, six, under the hands of their
father Jeduthun, who prophesied with a harp, to give thanks and to
praise the LORD.

25:4 Of Heman: the sons of Heman: Bukkiah, Mattaniah, Uzziel, Shebuel,
and Jerimoth, Hananiah, Hanani, Eliathah, Giddalti, and Romamtiezer,
Joshbekashah, Mallothi, Hothir, and Mahazioth: 25:5 All these were the
sons of Heman the king's seer in the words of God, to lift up the
horn. And God gave to Heman fourteen sons and three daughters.

25:6 All these were under the hands of their father for song in the
house of the LORD, with cymbals, psalteries, and harps, for the
service of the house of God, according to the king's order to Asaph,
Jeduthun, and Heman.

25:7 So the number of them, with their brethren that were instructed
in the songs of the LORD, even all that were cunning, was two hundred
fourscore and eight.

25:8 And they cast lots, ward against ward, as well the small as the
great, the teacher as the scholar.

25:9 Now the first lot came forth for Asaph to Joseph: the second to
Gedaliah, who with his brethren and sons were twelve: 25:10 The third
to Zaccur, he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve: 25:11 The
fourth to Izri, he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve: 25:12 The
fifth to Nethaniah, he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve: 25:13
The sixth to Bukkiah, he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve:
25:14 The seventh to Jesharelah, he, his sons, and his brethren, were
twelve: 25:15 The eighth to Jeshaiah, he, his sons, and his brethren,
were twelve: 25:16 The ninth to Mattaniah, he, his sons, and his
brethren, were twelve: 25:17 The tenth to Shimei, he, his sons, and
his brethren, were twelve: 25:18 The eleventh to Azareel, he, his
sons, and his brethren, were twelve: 25:19 The twelfth to Hashabiah,
he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve: 25:20 The thirteenth to
Shubael, he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve: 25:21 The
fourteenth to Mattithiah, he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve:
25:22 The fifteenth to Jeremoth, he, his sons, and his brethren, were
twelve: 25:23 The sixteenth to Hananiah, he, his sons, and his
brethren, were twelve: 25:24 The seventeenth to Joshbekashah, he, his
sons, and his brethren, were twelve: 25:25 The eighteenth to Hanani,
he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve: 25:26 The nineteenth to
Mallothi, he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve: 25:27 The
twentieth to Eliathah, he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve:
25:28 The one and twentieth to Hothir, he, his sons, and his brethren,
were twelve: 25:29 The two and twentieth to Giddalti, he, his sons,
and his brethren, were twelve: 25:30 The three and twentieth to
Mahazioth, he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve: 25:31 The four
and twentieth to Romamtiezer, he, his sons, and his brethren, were
twelve.

26:1 Concerning the divisions of the porters: Of the Korhites was
Meshelemiah the son of Kore, of the sons of Asaph.

26:2 And the sons of Meshelemiah were, Zechariah the firstborn,
Jediael the second, Zebadiah the third, Jathniel the fourth, 26:3 Elam
the fifth, Jehohanan the sixth, Elioenai the seventh.

26:4 Moreover the sons of Obededom were, Shemaiah the firstborn,
Jehozabad the second, Joah the third, and Sacar the fourth, and
Nethaneel the fifth.

26:5 Ammiel the sixth, Issachar the seventh, Peulthai the eighth: for
God blessed him.

26:6 Also unto Shemaiah his son were sons born, that ruled throughout
the house of their father: for they were mighty men of valour.

26:7 The sons of Shemaiah; Othni, and Rephael, and Obed, Elzabad,
whose brethren were strong men, Elihu, and Semachiah.

26:8 All these of the sons of Obededom: they and their sons and their
brethren, able men for strength for the service, were threescore and
two of Obededom.

26:9 And Meshelemiah had sons and brethren, strong men, eighteen.

26:10 Also Hosah, of the children of Merari, had sons; Simri the
chief, (for though he was not the firstborn, yet his father made him
the chief;) 26:11 Hilkiah the second, Tebaliah the third, Zechariah
the fourth: all the sons and brethren of Hosah were thirteen.

26:12 Among these were the divisions of the porters, even among the
chief men, having wards one against another, to minister in the house
of the LORD.

26:13 And they cast lots, as well the small as the great, according to
the house of their fathers, for every gate.

26:14 And the lot eastward fell to Shelemiah. Then for Zechariah his
son, a wise counsellor, they cast lots; and his lot came out
northward.

26:15 To Obededom southward; and to his sons the house of Asuppim.

26:16 To Shuppim and Hosah the lot came forth westward, with the gate
Shallecheth, by the causeway of the going up, ward against ward.

26:17 Eastward were six Levites, northward four a day, southward four
a day, and toward Asuppim two and two.

26:18 At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, and two at Parbar.

26:19 These are the divisions of the porters among the sons of Kore,
and among the sons of Merari.

26:20 And of the Levites, Ahijah was over the treasures of the house
of God, and over the treasures of the dedicated things.

26:21 As concerning the sons of Laadan; the sons of the Gershonite
Laadan, chief fathers, even of Laadan the Gershonite, were Jehieli.

26:22 The sons of Jehieli; Zetham, and Joel his brother, which were
over the treasures of the house of the LORD.

26:23 Of the Amramites, and the Izharites, the Hebronites, and the
Uzzielites: 26:24 And Shebuel the son of Gershom, the son of Moses,
was ruler of the treasures.

26:25 And his brethren by Eliezer; Rehabiah his son, and Jeshaiah his
son, and Joram his son, and Zichri his son, and Shelomith his son.

26:26 Which Shelomith and his brethren were over all the treasures of
the dedicated things, which David the king, and the chief fathers, the
captains over thousands and hundreds, and the captains of the host,
had dedicated.

26:27 Out of the spoils won in battles did they dedicate to maintain
the house of the LORD.

26:28 And all that Samuel the seer, and Saul the son of Kish, and
Abner the son of Ner, and Joab the son of Zeruiah, had dedicated; and
whosoever had dedicated any thing, it was under the hand of Shelomith,
and of his brethren.

26:29 Of the Izharites, Chenaniah and his sons were for the outward
business over Israel, for officers and judges.

26:30 And of the Hebronites, Hashabiah and his brethren, men of
valour, a thousand and seven hundred, were officers among them of
Israel on this side Jordan westward in all the business of the LORD,
and in the service of the king.

26:31 Among the Hebronites was Jerijah the chief, even among the
Hebronites, according to the generations of his fathers. In the
fortieth year of the reign of David they were sought for, and there
were found among them mighty men of valour at Jazer of Gilead.

26:32 And his brethren, men of valour, were two thousand and seven
hundred chief fathers, whom king David made rulers over the
Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, for every
matter pertaining to God, and affairs of the king.

27:1 Now the children of Israel after their number, to wit, the chief
fathers and captains of thousands and hundreds, and their officers
that served the king in any matter of the courses, which came in and
went out month by month throughout all the months of the year, of
every course were twenty and four thousand.

27:2 Over the first course for the first month was Jashobeam the son
of Zabdiel: and in his course were twenty and four thousand.

27:3 Of the children of Perez was the chief of all the captains of the
host for the first month.

27:4 And over the course of the second month was Dodai an Ahohite, and
of his course was Mikloth also the ruler: in his course likewise were
twenty and four thousand.

27:5 The third captain of the host for the third month was Benaiah the
son of Jehoiada, a chief priest: and in his course were twenty and
four thousand.

27:6 This is that Benaiah, who was mighty among the thirty, and above
the thirty: and in his course was Ammizabad his son.

27:7 The fourth captain for the fourth month was Asahel the brother of
Joab, and Zebadiah his son after him: and in his course were twenty
and four thousand.

27:8 The fifth captain for the fifth month was Shamhuth the Izrahite:
and in his course were twenty and four thousand.

27:9 The sixth captain for the sixth month was Ira the son of Ikkesh
the Tekoite: and in his course were twenty and four thousand.

27:10 The seventh captain for the seventh month was Helez the
Pelonite, of the children of Ephraim: and in his course were twenty
and four thousand.

27:11 The eighth captain for the eighth month was Sibbecai the
Hushathite, of the Zarhites: and in his course were twenty and four
thousand.

27:12 The ninth captain for the ninth month was Abiezer the
Anetothite, of the Benjamites: and in his course were twenty and four
thousand.

27:13 The tenth captain for the tenth month was Maharai the
Netophathite, of the Zarhites: and in his course were twenty and four
thousand.

27:14 The eleventh captain for the eleventh month was Benaiah the
Pirathonite, of the children of Ephraim: and in his course were twenty
and four thousand.

27:15 The twelfth captain for the twelfth month was Heldai the
Netophathite, of Othniel: and in his course were twenty and four
thousand.

27:16 Furthermore over the tribes of Israel: the ruler of the
Reubenites was Eliezer the son of Zichri: of the Simeonites,
Shephatiah the son of Maachah: 27:17 Of the Levites, Hashabiah the son
of Kemuel: of the Aaronites, Zadok: 27:18 Of Judah, Elihu, one of the
brethren of David: of Issachar, Omri the son of Michael: 27:19 Of
Zebulun, Ishmaiah the son of Obadiah: of Naphtali, Jerimoth the son of
Azriel: 27:20 Of the children of Ephraim, Hoshea the son of Azaziah:
of the half tribe of Manasseh, Joel the son of Pedaiah: 27:21 Of the
half tribe of Manasseh in Gilead, Iddo the son of Zechariah: of
Benjamin, Jaasiel the son of Abner: 27:22 Of Dan, Azareel the son of
Jeroham. These were the princes of the tribes of Israel.

27:23 But David took not the number of them from twenty years old and
under: because the LORD had said he would increase Israel like to the
stars of the heavens.

27:24 Joab the son of Zeruiah began to number, but he finished not,
because there fell wrath for it against Israel; neither was the number
put in the account of the chronicles of king David.

27:25 And over the king's treasures was Azmaveth the son of Adiel: and
over the storehouses in the fields, in the cities, and in the
villages, and in the castles, was Jehonathan the son of Uzziah: 27:26
And over them that did the work of the field for tillage of the ground
was Ezri the son of Chelub: 27:27 And over the vineyards was Shimei
the Ramathite: over the increase of the vineyards for the wine cellars
was Zabdi the Shiphmite: 27:28 And over the olive trees and the
sycomore trees that were in the low plains was Baalhanan the Gederite:
and over the cellars of oil was Joash: 27:29 And over the herds that
fed in Sharon was Shitrai the Sharonite: and over the herds that were
in the valleys was Shaphat the son of Adlai: 27:30 Over the camels
also was Obil the Ishmaelite: and over the asses was Jehdeiah the
Meronothite: 27:31 And over the flocks was Jaziz the Hagerite. All
these were the rulers of the substance which was king David's.

27:32 Also Jonathan David's uncle was a counsellor, a wise man, and a
scribe: and Jehiel the son of Hachmoni was with the king's sons: 27:33
And Ahithophel was the king's counsellor: and Hushai the Archite was
the king's companion: 27:34 And after Ahithophel was Jehoiada the son
of Benaiah, and Abiathar: and the general of the king's army was Joab.

28:1 And David assembled all the princes of Israel, the princes of the
tribes, and the captains of the companies that ministered to the king
by course, and the captains over the thousands, and captains over the
hundreds, and the stewards over all the substance and possession of
the king, and of his sons, with the officers, and with the mighty men,
and with all the valiant men, unto Jerusalem.

28:2 Then David the king stood up upon his feet, and said, Hear me, my
brethren, and my people: As for me, I had in mine heart to build an
house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and for the
footstool of our God, and had made ready for the building: 28:3 But
God said unto me, Thou shalt not build an house for my name, because
thou hast been a man of war, and hast shed blood.

28:4 Howbeit the LORD God of Israel chose me before all the house of
my father to be king over Israel for ever: for he hath chosen Judah to
be the ruler; and of the house of Judah, the house of my father; and
among the sons of my father he liked me to make me king over all
Israel: 28:5 And of all my sons, (for the LORD hath given me many
sons,) he hath chosen Solomon my son to sit upon the throne of the
kingdom of the LORD over Israel.

28:6 And he said unto me, Solomon thy son, he shall build my house and
my courts: for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be his
father.

28:7 Moreover I will establish his kingdom for ever, if he be constant
to do my commandments and my judgments, as at this day.

28:8 Now therefore in the sight of all Israel the congregation of the
LORD, and in the audience of our God, keep and seek for all the
commandments of the LORD your God: that ye may possess this good land,
and leave it for an inheritance for your children after you for ever.

28:9 And thou, Solomon my son, know thou the God of thy father, and
serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind: for the LORD
searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the
thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou
forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever.

28:10 Take heed now; for the LORD hath chosen thee to build an house
for the sanctuary: be strong, and do it.

28:11 Then David gave to Solomon his son the pattern of the porch, and
of the houses thereof, and of the treasuries thereof, and of the upper
chambers thereof, and of the inner parlours thereof, and of the place
of the mercy seat, 28:12 And the pattern of all that he had by the
spirit, of the courts of the house of the LORD, and of all the
chambers round about, of the treasuries of the house of God, and of
the treasuries of the dedicated things: 28:13 Also for the courses of
the priests and the Levites, and for all the work of the service of
the house of the LORD, and for all the vessels of service in the house
of the LORD.

28:14 He gave of gold by weight for things of gold, for all
instruments of all manner of service; silver also for all instruments
of silver by weight, for all instruments of every kind of service:
28:15 Even the weight for the candlesticks of gold, and for their
lamps of gold, by weight for every candlestick, and for the lamps
thereof: and for the candlesticks of silver by weight, both for the
candlestick, and also for the lamps thereof, according to the use of
every candlestick.

28:16 And by weight he gave gold for the tables of shewbread, for
every table; and likewise silver for the tables of silver: 28:17 Also
pure gold for the fleshhooks, and the bowls, and the cups: and for the
golden basons he gave gold by weight for every bason; and likewise
silver by weight for every bason of silver: 28:18 And for the altar of
incense refined gold by weight; and gold for the pattern of the
chariot of the cherubims, that spread out their wings, and covered the
ark of the covenant of the LORD.

28:19 All this, said David, the LORD made me understand in writing by
his hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern.

28:20 And David said to Solomon his son, Be strong and of good
courage, and do it: fear not, nor be dismayed: for the LORD God, even
my God, will be with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee,
until thou hast finished all the work for the service of the house of
the LORD.

28:21 And, behold, the courses of the priests and the Levites, even
they shall be with thee for all the service of the house of God: and
there shall be with thee for all manner of workmanship every willing
skilful man, for any manner of service: also the princes and all the
people will be wholly at thy commandment.

29:1 Furthermore David the king said unto all the congregation,
Solomon my son, whom alone God hath chosen, is yet young and tender,
and the work is great: for the palace is not for man, but for the LORD
God.

29:2 Now I have prepared with all my might for the house of my God the
gold for things to be made of gold, and the silver for things of
silver, and the brass for things of brass, the iron for things of
iron, and wood for things of wood; onyx stones, and stones to be set,
glistering stones, and of divers colours, and all manner of precious
stones, and marble stones in abundance.

29:3 Moreover, because I have set my affection to the house of my God,
I have of mine own proper good, of gold and silver, which I have given
to the house of my God, over and above all that I have prepared for
the holy house.

29:4 Even three thousand talents of gold, of the gold of Ophir, and
seven thousand talents of refined silver, to overlay the walls of the
houses withal: 29:5 The gold for things of gold, and the silver for
things of silver, and for all manner of work to be made by the hands
of artificers. And who then is willing to consecrate his service this
day unto the LORD?  29:6 Then the chief of the fathers and princes of
the tribes of Israel and the captains of thousands and of hundreds,
with the rulers of the king's work, offered willingly, 29:7 And gave
for the service of the house of God of gold five thousand talents and
ten thousand drams, and of silver ten thousand talents, and of brass
eighteen thousand talents, and one hundred thousand talents of iron.

29:8 And they with whom precious stones were found gave them to the
treasure of the house of the LORD, by the hand of Jehiel the
Gershonite.

29:9 Then the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly,
because with perfect heart they offered willingly to the LORD: and
David the king also rejoiced with great joy.

29:10 Wherefore David blessed the LORD before all the congregation:
and David said, Blessed be thou, LORD God of Israel our father, for
ever and ever.

29:11 Thine, O LORD is the greatness, and the power, and the glory,
and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in
the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O LORD, and thou art exalted
as head above all.

29:12 Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou reignest over all;
and in thine hand is power and might; and in thine hand it is to make
great, and to give strength unto all.

29:13 Now therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious
name.

29:14 But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to
offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of thee, and
of thine own have we given thee.

29:15 For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all
our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none
abiding.

29:16 O LORD our God, all this store that we have prepared to build
thee an house for thine holy name cometh of thine hand, and is all
thine own.

29:17 I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart, and hast
pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the uprightness of mine heart I
have willingly offered all these things: and now have I seen with joy
thy people, which are present here, to offer willingly unto thee.

29:18 O LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers, keep
this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of thy
people, and prepare their heart unto thee: 29:19 And give unto Solomon
my son a perfect heart, to keep thy commandments, thy testimonies, and
thy statutes, and to do all these things, and to build the palace, for
the which I have made provision.

29:20 And David said to all the congregation, Now bless the LORD your
God.

And all the congregation blessed the LORD God of their fathers, and
bowed down their heads, and worshipped the LORD, and the king.

29:21 And they sacrificed sacrifices unto the LORD, and offered burnt
offerings unto the LORD, on the morrow after that day, even a thousand
bullocks, a thousand rams, and a thousand lambs, with their drink
offerings, and sacrifices in abundance for all Israel: 29:22 And did
eat and drink before the LORD on that day with great gladness. And
they made Solomon the son of David king the second time, and anointed
him unto the LORD to be the chief governor, and Zadok to be priest.

29:23 Then Solomon sat on the throne of the LORD as king instead of
David his father, and prospered; and all Israel obeyed him.

29:24 And all the princes, and the mighty men, and all the sons
likewise of king David, submitted themselves unto Solomon the king.

29:25 And the LORD magnified Solomon exceedingly in the sight of all
Israel, and bestowed upon him such royal majesty as had not been on
any king before him in Israel.

29:26 Thus David the son of Jesse reigned over all Israel.

29:27 And the time that he reigned over Israel was forty years; seven
years reigned he in Hebron, and thirty and three years reigned he in
Jerusalem.

29:28 And he died in a good old age, full of days, riches, and honour:
and Solomon his son reigned in his stead.

29:29 Now the acts of David the king, first and last, behold, they are
written in the book of Samuel the seer, and in the book of Nathan the
prophet, and in the book of Gad the seer, 29:30 With all his reign and
his might, and the times that went over him, and over Israel, and over
all the kingdoms of the countries.




The Second Book of the Chronicles


1:1 And Solomon the son of David was strengthened in his kingdom, and
the LORD his God was with him, and magnified him exceedingly.

1:2 Then Solomon spake unto all Israel, to the captains of thousands
and of hundreds, and to the judges, and to every governor in all
Israel, the chief of the fathers.

1:3 So Solomon, and all the congregation with him, went to the high
place that was at Gibeon; for there was the tabernacle of the
congregation of God, which Moses the servant of the LORD had made in
the wilderness.

1:4 But the ark of God had David brought up from Kirjathjearim to the
place which David had prepared for it: for he had pitched a tent for
it at Jerusalem.

1:5 Moreover the brasen altar, that Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son
of Hur, had made, he put before the tabernacle of the LORD: and
Solomon and the congregation sought unto it.

1:6 And Solomon went up thither to the brasen altar before the LORD,
which was at the tabernacle of the congregation, and offered a
thousand burnt offerings upon it.

1:7 In that night did God appear unto Solomon, and said unto him, Ask
what I shall give thee.

1:8 And Solomon said unto God, Thou hast shewed great mercy unto David
my father, and hast made me to reign in his stead.

1:9 Now, O LORD God, let thy promise unto David my father be
established: for thou hast made me king over a people like the dust of
the earth in multitude.

1:10 Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in
before this people: for who can judge this thy people, that is so
great?  1:11 And God said to Solomon, Because this was in thine heart,
and thou hast not asked riches, wealth, or honour, nor the life of
thine enemies, neither yet hast asked long life; but hast asked wisdom
and knowledge for thyself, that thou mayest judge my people, over whom
I have made thee king: 1:12 Wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee;
and I will give thee riches, and wealth, and honour, such as none of
the kings have had that have been before thee, neither shall there any
after thee have the like.

1:13 Then Solomon came from his journey to the high place that was at
Gibeon to Jerusalem, from before the tabernacle of the congregation,
and reigned over Israel.

1:14 And Solomon gathered chariots and horsemen: and he had a thousand
and four hundred chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen, which he
placed in the chariot cities, and with the king at Jerusalem.

1:15 And the king made silver and gold at Jerusalem as plenteous as
stones, and cedar trees made he as the sycomore trees that are in the
vale for abundance.

1:16 And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt, and linen yarn: the
king's merchants received the linen yarn at a price.

1:17 And they fetched up, and brought forth out of Egypt a chariot for
six hundred shekels of silver, and an horse for an hundred and fifty:
and so brought they out horses for all the kings of the Hittites, and
for the kings of Syria, by their means.

2:1 And Solomon determined to build an house for the name of the LORD,
and an house for his kingdom.

2:2 And Solomon told out threescore and ten thousand men to bear
burdens, and fourscore thousand to hew in the mountain, and three
thousand and six hundred to oversee them.

2:3 And Solomon sent to Huram the king of Tyre, saying, As thou didst
deal with David my father, and didst send him cedars to build him an
house to dwell therein, even so deal with me.

2:4 Behold, I build an house to the name of the LORD my God, to
dedicate it to him, and to burn before him sweet incense, and for the
continual shewbread, and for the burnt offerings morning and evening,
on the sabbaths, and on the new moons, and on the solemn feasts of the
LORD our God. This is an ordinance for ever to Israel.

2:5 And the house which I build is great: for great is our God above
all gods.

2:6 But who is able to build him an house, seeing the heaven and
heaven of heavens cannot contain him? who am I then, that I should
build him an house, save only to burn sacrifice before him?  2:7 Send
me now therefore a man cunning to work in gold, and in silver, and in
brass, and in iron, and in purple, and crimson, and blue, and that can
skill to grave with the cunning men that are with me in Judah and in
Jerusalem, whom David my father did provide.

2:8 Send me also cedar trees, fir trees, and algum trees, out of
Lebanon: for I know that thy servants can skill to cut timber in
Lebanon; and, behold, my servants shall be with thy servants, 2:9 Even
to prepare me timber in abundance: for the house which I am about to
build shall be wonderful great.

2:10 And, behold, I will give to thy servants, the hewers that cut
timber, twenty thousand measures of beaten wheat, and twenty thousand
measures of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty
thousand baths of oil.

2:11 Then Huram the king of Tyre answered in writing, which he sent to
Solomon, Because the LORD hath loved his people, he hath made thee
king over them.

2:12 Huram said moreover, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, that made
heaven and earth, who hath given to David the king a wise son, endued
with prudence and understanding, that might build an house for the
LORD, and an house for his kingdom.

2:13 And now I have sent a cunning man, endued with understanding, of
Huram my father's, 2:14 The son of a woman of the daughters of Dan,
and his father was a man of Tyre, skilful to work in gold, and in
silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple, in
blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of
graving, and to find out every device which shall be put to him, with
thy cunning men, and with the cunning men of my lord David thy father.

2:15 Now therefore the wheat, and the barley, the oil, and the wine,
which my lord hath spoken of, let him send unto his servants: 2:16 And
we will cut wood out of Lebanon, as much as thou shalt need: and we
will bring it to thee in floats by sea to Joppa; and thou shalt carry
it up to Jerusalem.

2:17 And Solomon numbered all the strangers that were in the land of
Israel, after the numbering wherewith David his father had numbered
them; and they were found an hundred and fifty thousand and three
thousand and six hundred.

2:18 And he set threescore and ten thousand of them to be bearers of
burdens, and fourscore thousand to be hewers in the mountain, and
three thousand and six hundred overseers to set the people a work.

3:1 Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in
mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the
place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan the
Jebusite.

3:2 And he began to build in the second day of the second month, in
the fourth year of his reign.

3:3 Now these are the things wherein Solomon was instructed for the
building of the house of God. The length by cubits after the first
measure was threescore cubits, and the breadth twenty cubits.

3:4 And the porch that was in the front of the house, the length of it
was according to the breadth of the house, twenty cubits, and the
height was an hundred and twenty: and he overlaid it within with pure
gold.

3:5 And the greater house he cieled with fir tree, which he overlaid
with fine gold, and set thereon palm trees and chains.

3:6 And he garnished the house with precious stones for beauty: and
the gold was gold of Parvaim.

3:7 He overlaid also the house, the beams, the posts, and the walls
thereof, and the doors thereof, with gold; and graved cherubims on the
walls.

3:8 And he made the most holy house, the length whereof was according
to the breadth of the house, twenty cubits, and the breadth thereof
twenty cubits: and he overlaid it with fine gold, amounting to six
hundred talents.

3:9 And the weight of the nails was fifty shekels of gold. And he
overlaid the upper chambers with gold.

3:10 And in the most holy house he made two cherubims of image work,
and overlaid them with gold.

3:11 And the wings of the cherubims were twenty cubits long: one wing
of the one cherub was five cubits, reaching to the wall of the house:
and the other wing was likewise five cubits, reaching to the wing of
the other cherub.

3:12 And one wing of the other cherub was five cubits, reaching to the
wall of the house: and the other wing was five cubits also, joining to
the wing of the other cherub.

3:13 The wings of these cherubims spread themselves forth twenty
cubits: and they stood on their feet, and their faces were inward.

3:14 And he made the vail of blue, and purple, and crimson, and fine
linen, and wrought cherubims thereon.

3:15 Also he made before the house two pillars of thirty and five
cubits high, and the chapiter that was on the top of each of them was
five cubits.

3:16 And he made chains, as in the oracle, and put them on the heads
of the pillars; and made an hundred pomegranates, and put them on the
chains.

3:17 And he reared up the pillars before the temple, one on the right
hand, and the other on the left; and called the name of that on the
right hand Jachin, and the name of that on the left Boaz.

4:1 Moreover he made an altar of brass, twenty cubits the length
thereof, and twenty cubits the breadth thereof, and ten cubits the
height thereof.

4:2 Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round
in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty
cubits did compass it round about.

4:3 And under it was the similitude of oxen, which did compass it
round about: ten in a cubit, compassing the sea round about. Two rows
of oxen were cast, when it was cast.

4:4 It stood upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, and
three looking toward the west, and three looking toward the south, and
three looking toward the east: and the sea was set above upon them,
and all their hinder parts were inward.

4:5 And the thickness of it was an handbreadth, and the brim of it
like the work of the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies; and it
received and held three thousand baths.

4:6 He made also ten lavers, and put five on the right hand, and five
on the left, to wash in them: such things as they offered for the
burnt offering they washed in them; but the sea was for the priests to
wash in.

4:7 And he made ten candlesticks of gold according to their form, and
set them in the temple, five on the right hand, and five on the left.

4:8 He made also ten tables, and placed them in the temple, five on
the right side, and five on the left. And he made an hundred basons of
gold.

4:9 Furthermore he made the court of the priests, and the great court,
and doors for the court, and overlaid the doors of them with brass.

4:10 And he set the sea on the right side of the east end, over
against the south.

4:11 And Huram made the pots, and the shovels, and the basons. And
Huram finished the work that he was to make for king Solomon for the
house of God; 4:12 To wit, the two pillars, and the pommels, and the
chapiters which were on the top of the two pillars, and the two
wreaths to cover the two pommels of the chapiters which were on the
top of the pillars; 4:13 And four hundred pomegranates on the two
wreaths; two rows of pomegranates on each wreath, to cover the two
pommels of the chapiters which were upon the pillars.

4:14 He made also bases, and lavers made he upon the bases; 4:15 One
sea, and twelve oxen under it.

4:16 The pots also, and the shovels, and the fleshhooks, and all their
instruments, did Huram his father make to king Solomon for the house
of the LORD of bright brass.

4:17 In the plain of Jordan did the king cast them, in the clay ground
between Succoth and Zeredathah.

4:18 Thus Solomon made all these vessels in great abundance: for the
weight of the brass could not be found out.

4:19 And Solomon made all the vessels that were for the house of God,
the golden altar also, and the tables whereon the shewbread was set;
4:20 Moreover the candlesticks with their lamps, that they should burn
after the manner before the oracle, of pure gold; 4:21 And the
flowers, and the lamps, and the tongs, made he of gold, and that
perfect gold; 4:22 And the snuffers, and the basons, and the spoons,
and the censers, of pure gold: and the entry of the house, the inner
doors thereof for the most holy place, and the doors of the house of
the temple, were of gold.

5:1 Thus all the work that Solomon made for the house of the LORD was
finished: and Solomon brought in all the things that David his father
had dedicated; and the silver, and the gold, and all the instruments,
put he among the treasures of the house of God.

5:2 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the heads of
the tribes, the chief of the fathers of the children of Israel, unto
Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the LORD out of the
city of David, which is Zion.

5:3 Wherefore all the men of Israel assembled themselves unto the king
in the feast which was in the seventh month.

5:4 And all the elders of Israel came; and the Levites took up the
ark.

5:5 And they brought up the ark, and the tabernacle of the
congregation, and all the holy vessels that were in the tabernacle,
these did the priests and the Levites bring up.

5:6 Also king Solomon, and all the congregation of Israel that were
assembled unto him before the ark, sacrificed sheep and oxen, which
could not be told nor numbered for multitude.

5:7 And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the LORD
unto his place, to the oracle of the house, into the most holy place,
even under the wings of the cherubims: 5:8 For the cherubims spread
forth their wings over the place of the ark, and the cherubims covered
the ark and the staves thereof above.

5:9 And they drew out the staves of the ark, that the ends of the
staves were seen from the ark before the oracle; but they were not
seen without. And there it is unto this day.

5:10 There was nothing in the ark save the two tables which Moses put
therein at Horeb, when the LORD made a covenant with the children of
Israel, when they came out of Egypt.

5:11 And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy
place: (for all the priests that were present were sanctified, and did
not then wait by course: 5:12 Also the Levites which were the singers,
all of them of Asaph, of Heman, of Jeduthun, with their sons and their
brethren, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries
and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an
hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets:) 5:13 It came even
to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound
to be heard in praising and thanking the LORD; and when they lifted up
their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of musick,
and praised the LORD, saying, For he is good; for his mercy endureth
for ever: that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house
of the LORD; 5:14 So that the priests could not stand to minister by
reason of the cloud: for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of
God.

6:1 Then said Solomon, The LORD hath said that he would dwell in the
thick darkness.

6:2 But I have built an house of habitation for thee, and a place for
thy dwelling for ever.

6:3 And the king turned his face, and blessed the whole congregation
of Israel: and all the congregation of Israel stood.

6:4 And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, who hath with his
hands fulfilled that which he spake with his mouth to my father David,
saying, 6:5 Since the day that I brought forth my people out of the
land of Egypt I chose no city among all the tribes of Israel to build
an house in, that my name might be there; neither chose I any man to
be a ruler over my people Israel: 6:6 But I have chosen Jerusalem,
that my name might be there; and have chosen David to be over my
people Israel.

6:7 Now it was in the heart of David my father to build an house for
the name of the LORD God of Israel.

6:8 But the LORD said to David my father, Forasmuch as it was in thine
heart to build an house for my name, thou didst well in that it was in
thine heart: 6:9 Notwithstanding thou shalt not build the house; but
thy son which shall come forth out of thy loins, he shall build the
house for my name.

6:10 The LORD therefore hath performed his word that he hath spoken:
for I am risen up in the room of David my father, and am set on the
throne of Israel, as the LORD promised, and have built the house for
the name of the LORD God of Israel.

6:11 And in it have I put the ark, wherein is the covenant of the
LORD, that he made with the children of Israel.

6:12 And he stood before the altar of the LORD in the presence of all
the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands: 6:13 For
Solomon had made a brasen scaffold of five cubits long, and five
cubits broad, and three cubits high, and had set it in the midst of
the court: and upon it he stood, and kneeled down upon his knees
before all the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands
toward heaven.

6:14 And said, O LORD God of Israel, there is no God like thee in the
heaven, nor in the earth; which keepest covenant, and shewest mercy
unto thy servants, that walk before thee with all their hearts: 6:15
Thou which hast kept with thy servant David my father that which thou
hast promised him; and spakest with thy mouth, and hast fulfilled it
with thine hand, as it is this day.

6:16 Now therefore, O LORD God of Israel, keep with thy servant David
my father that which thou hast promised him, saying, There shall not
fail thee a man in my sight to sit upon the throne of Israel; yet so
that thy children take heed to their way to walk in my law, as thou
hast walked before me.

6:17 Now then, O LORD God of Israel, let thy word be verified, which
thou hast spoken unto thy servant David.

6:18 But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? behold,
heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less
this house which I have built!  6:19 Have respect therefore to the
prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O LORD my God, to
hearken unto the cry and the prayer which thy servant prayeth before
thee: 6:20 That thine eyes may be open upon this house day and night,
upon the place whereof thou hast said that thou wouldest put thy name
there; to hearken unto the prayer which thy servant prayeth toward
this place.

6:21 Hearken therefore unto the supplications of thy servant, and of
thy people Israel, which they shall make toward this place: hear thou
from thy dwelling place, even from heaven; and when thou hearest,
forgive.

6:22 If a man sin against his neighbour, and an oath be laid upon him
to make him swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house;
6:23 Then hear thou from heaven, and do, and judge thy servants, by
requiting the wicked, by recompensing his way upon his own head; and
by justifying the righteous, by giving him according to his
righteousness.

6:24 And if thy people Israel be put to the worse before the enemy,
because they have sinned against thee; and shall return and confess
thy name, and pray and make supplication before thee in this house;
6:25 Then hear thou from the heavens, and forgive the sin of thy
people Israel, and bring them again unto the land which thou gavest to
them and to their fathers.

6:26 When the heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they
have sinned against thee; yet if they pray toward this place, and
confess thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou dost afflict
them; 6:27 Then hear thou from heaven, and forgive the sin of thy
servants, and of thy people Israel, when thou hast taught them the
good way, wherein they should walk; and send rain upon thy land, which
thou hast given unto thy people for an inheritance.

6:28 If there be dearth in the land, if there be pestilence, if there
be blasting, or mildew, locusts, or caterpillers; if their enemies
besiege them in the cities of their land; whatsoever sore or
whatsoever sickness there be: 6:29 Then what prayer or what
supplication soever shall be made of any man, or of all thy people
Israel, when every one shall know his own sore and his own grief, and
shall spread forth his hands in this house: 6:30 Then hear thou from
heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and render unto every man
according unto all his ways, whose heart thou knowest; (for thou only
knowest the hearts of the children of men:) 6:31 That they may fear
thee, to walk in thy ways, so long as they live in the land which thou
gavest unto our fathers.

6:32 Moreover concerning the stranger, which is not of thy people
Israel, but is come from a far country for thy great name's sake, and
thy mighty hand, and thy stretched out arm; if they come and pray in
this house; 6:33 Then hear thou from the heavens, even from thy
dwelling place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to
thee for; that all people of the earth may know thy name, and fear
thee, as doth thy people Israel, and may know that this house which I
have built is called by thy name.

6:34 If thy people go out to war against their enemies by the way that
thou shalt send them, and they pray unto thee toward this city which
thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name; 6:35
Then hear thou from the heavens their prayer and their supplication,
and maintain their cause.

6:36 If they sin against thee, (for there is no man which sinneth
not,) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them over before their
enemies, and they carry them away captives unto a land far off or
near; 6:37 Yet if they bethink themselves in the land whither they are
carried captive, and turn and pray unto thee in the land of their
captivity, saying, We have sinned, we have done amiss, and have dealt
wickedly; 6:38 If they return to thee with all their heart and with
all their soul in the land of their captivity, whither they have
carried them captives, and pray toward their land, which thou gavest
unto their fathers, and toward the city which thou hast chosen, and
toward the house which I have built for thy name: 6:39 Then hear thou
from the heavens, even from thy dwelling place, their prayer and their
supplications, and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people which
have sinned against thee.

6:40 Now, my God, let, I beseech thee, thine eyes be open, and let
thine ears be attent unto the prayer that is made in this place.

6:41 Now therefore arise, O LORD God, into thy resting place, thou,
and the ark of thy strength: let thy priests, O LORD God, be clothed
with salvation, and let thy saints rejoice in goodness.

6:42 O LORD God, turn not away the face of thine anointed: remember
the mercies of David thy servant.

7:1 Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down
from heaven, and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and
the glory of the LORD filled the house.

7:2 And the priests could not enter into the house of the LORD,
because the glory of the LORD had filled the LORD's house.

7:3 And when all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down,
and the glory of the LORD upon the house, they bowed themselves with
their faces to the ground upon the pavement, and worshipped, and
praised the LORD, saying, For he is good; for his mercy endureth for
ever.

7:4 Then the king and all the people offered sacrifices before the
LORD.

7:5 And king Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty and two thousand
oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand sheep: so the king and all
the people dedicated the house of God.

7:6 And the priests waited on their offices: the Levites also with
instruments of musick of the LORD, which David the king had made to
praise the LORD, because his mercy endureth for ever, when David
praised by their ministry; and the priests sounded trumpets before
them, and all Israel stood.

7:7 Moreover Solomon hallowed the middle of the court that was before
the house of the LORD: for there he offered burnt offerings, and the
fat of the peace offerings, because the brasen altar which Solomon had
made was not able to receive the burnt offerings, and the meat
offerings, and the fat.

7:8 Also at the same time Solomon kept the feast seven days, and all
Israel with him, a very great congregation, from the entering in of
Hamath unto the river of Egypt.

7:9 And in the eighth day they made a solemn assembly: for they kept
the dedication of the altar seven days, and the feast seven days.

7:10 And on the three and twentieth day of the seventh month he sent
the people away into their tents, glad and merry in heart for the
goodness that the LORD had shewed unto David, and to Solomon, and to
Israel his people.

7:11 Thus Solomon finished the house of the LORD, and the king's
house: and all that came into Solomon's heart to make in the house of
the LORD, and in his own house, he prosperously effected.

7:12 And the LORD appeared to Solomon by night, and said unto him, I
have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place to myself for an
house of sacrifice.

7:13 If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the
locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people;
7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble
themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked
ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and
will heal their land.

7:15 Now mine eyes shall be open, and mine ears attent unto the prayer
that is made in this place.

7:16 For now have I chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may
be there for ever: and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there
perpetually.

7:17 And as for thee, if thou wilt walk before me, as David thy father
walked, and do according to all that I have commanded thee, and shalt
observe my statutes and my judgments; 7:18 Then will I stablish the
throne of thy kingdom, according as I have covenanted with David thy
father, saying, There shall not fail thee a man to be ruler in Israel.

7:19 But if ye turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments,
which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and
worship them; 7:20 Then will I pluck them up by the roots out of my
land which I have given them; and this house, which I have sanctified
for my name, will I cast out of my sight, and will make it to be a
proverb and a byword among all nations.

7:21 And this house, which is high, shall be an astonishment to every
one that passeth by it; so that he shall say, Why hath the LORD done
thus unto this land, and unto this house?  7:22 And it shall be
answered, Because they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which
brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other
gods, and worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath he brought
all this evil upon them.

8:1 And it came to pass at the end of twenty years, wherein Solomon
had built the house of the LORD, and his own house, 8:2 That the
cities which Huram had restored to Solomon, Solomon built them, and
caused the children of Israel to dwell there.

8:3 And Solomon went to Hamathzobah, and prevailed against it.

8:4 And he built Tadmor in the wilderness, and all the store cities,
which he built in Hamath.

8:5 Also he built Bethhoron the upper, and Bethhoron the nether,
fenced cities, with walls, gates, and bars; 8:6 And Baalath, and all
the store cities that Solomon had, and all the chariot cities, and the
cities of the horsemen, and all that Solomon desired to build in
Jerusalem, and in Lebanon, and throughout all the land of his
dominion.

8:7 As for all the people that were left of the Hittites, and the
Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites,
which were not of Israel, 8:8 But of their children, who were left
after them in the land, whom the children of Israel consumed not, them
did Solomon make to pay tribute until this day.

8:9 But of the children of Israel did Solomon make no servants for his
work; but they were men of war, and chief of his captains, and
captains of his chariots and horsemen.

8:10 And these were the chief of king Solomon's officers, even two
hundred and fifty, that bare rule over the people.

8:11 And Solomon brought up the daughter of Pharaoh out of the city of
David unto the house that he had built for her: for he said, My wife
shall not dwell in the house of David king of Israel, because the
places are holy, whereunto the ark of the LORD hath come.

8:12 Then Solomon offered burnt offerings unto the LORD on the altar
of the LORD, which he had built before the porch, 8:13 Even after a
certain rate every day, offering according to the commandment of
Moses, on the sabbaths, and on the new moons, and on the solemn
feasts, three times in the year, even in the feast of unleavened
bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles.

8:14 And he appointed, according to the order of David his father, the
courses of the priests to their service, and the Levites to their
charges, to praise and minister before the priests, as the duty of
every day required: the porters also by their courses at every gate:
for so had David the man of God commanded.

8:15 And they departed not from the commandment of the king unto the
priests and Levites concerning any matter, or concerning the
treasures.

8:16 Now all the work of Solomon was prepared unto the day of the
foundation of the house of the LORD, and until it was finished. So the
house of the LORD was perfected.

8:17 Then went Solomon to Eziongeber, and to Eloth, at the sea side in
the land of Edom.

8:18 And Huram sent him by the hands of his servants ships, and
servants that had knowledge of the sea; and they went with the
servants of Solomon to Ophir, and took thence four hundred and fifty
talents of gold, and brought them to king Solomon.

9:1 And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, she came
to prove Solomon with hard questions at Jerusalem, with a very great
company, and camels that bare spices, and gold in abundance, and
precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with
him of all that was in her heart.

9:2 And Solomon told her all her questions: and there was nothing hid
from Solomon which he told her not.

9:3 And when the queen of Sheba had seen the wisdom of Solomon, and
the house that he had built, 9:4 And the meat of his table, and the
sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and
their apparel; his cupbearers also, and their apparel; and his ascent
by which he went up into the house of the LORD; there was no more
spirit in her.

9:5 And she said to the king, It was a true report which I heard in
mine own land of thine acts, and of thy wisdom: 9:6 Howbeit I believed
not their words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, behold,
the one half of the greatness of thy wisdom was not told me: for thou
exceedest the fame that I heard.

9:7 Happy are thy men, and happy are these thy servants, which stand
continually before thee, and hear thy wisdom.

9:8 Blessed be the LORD thy God, which delighted in thee to set thee
on his throne, to be king for the LORD thy God: because thy God loved
Israel, to establish them for ever, therefore made he thee king over
them, to do judgment and justice.

9:9 And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and
of spices great abundance, and precious stones: neither was there any
such spice as the queen of Sheba gave king Solomon.

9:10 And the servants also of Huram, and the servants of Solomon,
which brought gold from Ophir, brought algum trees and precious
stones.

9:11 And the king made of the algum trees terraces to the house of the
LORD, and to the king's palace, and harps and psalteries for singers:
and there were none such seen before in the land of Judah.

9:12 And king Solomon gave to the queen of Sheba all her desire,
whatsoever she asked, beside that which she had brought unto the king.
So she turned, and went away to her own land, she and her servants.

9:13 Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six
hundred and threescore and six talents of gold; 9:14 Beside that which
chapmen and merchants brought. And all the kings of Arabia and
governors of the country brought gold and silver to Solomon.

9:15 And king Solomon made two hundred targets of beaten gold: six
hundred shekels of beaten gold went to one target.

9:16 And three hundred shields made he of beaten gold: three hundred
shekels of gold went to one shield. And the king put them in the house
of the forest of Lebanon.

9:17 Moreover the king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it
with pure gold.

9:18 And there were six steps to the throne, with a footstool of gold,
which were fastened to the throne, and stays on each side of the
sitting place, and two lions standing by the stays: 9:19 And twelve
lions stood there on the one side and on the other upon the six steps.
There was not the like made in any kingdom.

9:20 And all the drinking vessels of king Solomon were of gold, and
all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure
gold: none were of silver; it was not any thing accounted of in the
days of Solomon.

9:21 For the king's ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram:
every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold, and
silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.

9:22 And king Solomon passed all the kings of the earth in riches and
wisdom.

9:23 And all the kings of the earth sought the presence of Solomon, to
hear his wisdom, that God had put in his heart.

9:24 And they brought every man his present, vessels of silver, and
vessels of gold, and raiment, harness, and spices, horses, and mules,
a rate year by year.

9:25 And Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and
twelve thousand horsemen; whom he bestowed in the chariot cities, and
with the king at Jerusalem.

9:26 And he reigned over all the kings from the river even unto the
land of the Philistines, and to the border of Egypt.

9:27 And the king made silver in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar trees
made he as the sycomore trees that are in the low plains in abundance.

9:28 And they brought unto Solomon horses out of Egypt, and out of all
lands.

9:29 Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not
written in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of
Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer against
Jeroboam the son of Nebat?  9:30 And Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over
all Israel forty years.

9:31 And Solomon slept with his fathers, and he was buried in the city
of David his father: and Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead.

10:1 And Rehoboam went to Shechem: for to Shechem were all Israel come
to make him king.

10:2 And it came to pass, when Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who was in
Egypt, whither he fled from the presence of Solomon the king, heard
it, that Jeroboam returned out of Egypt.

10:3 And they sent and called him. So Jeroboam and all Israel came and
spake to Rehoboam, saying, 10:4 Thy father made our yoke grievous: now
therefore ease thou somewhat the grievous servitude of thy father, and
his heavy yoke that he put upon us, and we will serve thee.

10:5 And he said unto them, Come again unto me after three days. And
the people departed.

10:6 And king Rehoboam took counsel with the old men that had stood
before Solomon his father while he yet lived, saying, What counsel
give ye me to return answer to this people?  10:7 And they spake unto
him, saying, If thou be kind to this people, and please them, and
speak good words to them, they will be thy servants for ever.

10:8 But he forsook the counsel which the old men gave him, and took
counsel with the young men that were brought up with him, that stood
before him.

10:9 And he said unto them, What advice give ye that we may return
answer to this people, which have spoken to me, saying, Ease somewhat
the yoke that thy father did put upon us?  10:10 And the young men
that were brought up with him spake unto him, saying, Thus shalt thou
answer the people that spake unto thee, saying, Thy father made our
yoke heavy, but make thou it somewhat lighter for us; thus shalt thou
say unto them, My little finger shall be thicker than my father's
loins.

10:11 For whereas my father put a heavy yoke upon you, I will put more
to your yoke: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise
you with scorpions.

10:12 So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third
day, as the king bade, saying, Come again to me on the third day.

10:13 And the king answered them roughly; and king Rehoboam forsook
the counsel of the old men, 10:14 And answered them after the advice
of the young men, saying, My father made your yoke heavy, but I will
add thereto: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise
you with scorpions.

10:15 So the king hearkened not unto the people: for the cause was of
God, that the LORD might perform his word, which he spake by the hand
of Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

10:16 And when all Israel saw that the king would not hearken unto
them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in
David?  and we have none inheritance in the son of Jesse: every man to
your tents, O Israel: and now, David, see to thine own house. So all
Israel went to their tents.

10:17 But as for the children of Israel that dwelt in the cities of
Judah, Rehoboam reigned over them.

10:18 Then king Rehoboam sent Hadoram that was over the tribute; and
the children of Israel stoned him with stones, that he died. But king
Rehoboam made speed to get him up to his chariot, to flee to
Jerusalem.

10:19 And Israel rebelled against the house of David unto this day.

11:1 And when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he gathered of the house
of Judah and Benjamin an hundred and fourscore thousand chosen men,
which were warriors, to fight against Israel, that he might bring the
kingdom again to Rehoboam.

11:2 But the word of the LORD came to Shemaiah the man of God, saying,
11:3 Speak unto Rehoboam the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all
Israel in Judah and Benjamin, saying, 11:4 Thus saith the LORD, Ye
shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren: return every man to
his house: for this thing is done of me. And they obeyed the words of
the LORD, and returned from going against Jeroboam.

11:5 And Rehoboam dwelt in Jerusalem, and built cities for defence in
Judah.

11:6 He built even Bethlehem, and Etam, and Tekoa, 11:7 And Bethzur,
and Shoco, and Adullam, 11:8 And Gath, and Mareshah, and Ziph, 11:9
And Adoraim, and Lachish, and Azekah, 11:10 And Zorah, and Aijalon,
and Hebron, which are in Judah and in Benjamin fenced cities.

11:11 And he fortified the strong holds, and put captains in them, and
store of victual, and of oil and wine.

11:12 And in every several city he put shields and spears, and made
them exceeding strong, having Judah and Benjamin on his side.

11:13 And the priests and the Levites that were in all Israel resorted
to him out of all their coasts.

11:14 For the Levites left their suburbs and their possession, and
came to Judah and Jerusalem: for Jeroboam and his sons had cast them
off from executing the priest's office unto the LORD: 11:15 And he
ordained him priests for the high places, and for the devils, and for
the calves which he had made.

11:16 And after them out of all the tribes of Israel such as set their
hearts to seek the LORD God of Israel came to Jerusalem, to sacrifice
unto the LORD God of their fathers.

11:17 So they strengthened the kingdom of Judah, and made Rehoboam the
son of Solomon strong, three years: for three years they walked in the
way of David and Solomon.

11:18 And Rehoboam took him Mahalath the daughter of Jerimoth the son
of David to wife, and Abihail the daughter of Eliab the son of Jesse;
11:19 Which bare him children; Jeush, and Shamariah, and Zaham.

11:20 And after her he took Maachah the daughter of Absalom; which
bare him Abijah, and Attai, and Ziza, and Shelomith.

11:21 And Rehoboam loved Maachah the daughter of Absalom above all his
wives and his concubines: (for he took eighteen wives, and threescore
concubines; and begat twenty and eight sons, and threescore
daughters.)  11:22 And Rehoboam made Abijah the son of Maachah the
chief, to be ruler among his brethren: for he thought to make him
king.

11:23 And he dealt wisely, and dispersed of all his children
throughout all the countries of Judah and Benjamin, unto every fenced
city: and he gave them victual in abundance. And he desired many
wives.

12:1 And it came to pass, when Rehoboam had established the kingdom,
and had strengthened himself, he forsook the law of the LORD, and all
Israel with him.

12:2 And it came to pass, that in the fifth year of king Rehoboam
Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, because they had
transgressed against the LORD, 12:3 With twelve hundred chariots, and
threescore thousand horsemen: and the people were without number that
came with him out of Egypt; the Lubims, the Sukkiims, and the
Ethiopians.

12:4 And he took the fenced cities which pertained to Judah, and came
to Jerusalem.

12:5 Then came Shemaiah the prophet to Rehoboam, and to the princes of
Judah, that were gathered together to Jerusalem because of Shishak,
and said unto them, Thus saith the LORD, Ye have forsaken me, and
therefore have I also left you in the hand of Shishak.

12:6 Whereupon the princes of Israel and the king humbled themselves;
and they said, The LORD is righteous.

12:7 And when the LORD saw that they humbled themselves, the word of
the LORD came to Shemaiah, saying, They have humbled themselves;
therefore I will not destroy them, but I will grant them some
deliverance; and my wrath shall not be poured out upon Jerusalem by
the hand of Shishak.

12:8 Nevertheless they shall be his servants; that they may know my
service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.

12:9 So Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, and took away
the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the
king's house; he took all: he carried away also the shields of gold
which Solomon had made.

12:10 Instead of which king Rehoboam made shields of brass, and
committed them to the hands of the chief of the guard, that kept the
entrance of the king's house.

12:11 And when the king entered into the house of the LORD, the guard
came and fetched them, and brought them again into the guard chamber.

12:12 And when he humbled himself, the wrath of the LORD turned from
him, that he would not destroy him altogether: and also in Judah
things went well.

12:13 So king Rehoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem, and reigned:
for Rehoboam was one and forty years old when he began to reign, and
he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the LORD had
chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. And his
mother's name was Naamah an Ammonitess.

12:14 And he did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the
LORD.

12:15 Now the acts of Rehoboam, first and last, are they not written
in the book of Shemaiah the prophet, and of Iddo the seer concerning
genealogies? And there were wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam
continually.

12:16 And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city
of David: and Abijah his son reigned in his stead.

13:1 Now in the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam began Abijah to reign
over Judah.

13:2 He reigned three years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was
Michaiah the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. And there was war between
Abijah and Jeroboam.

13:3 And Abijah set the battle in array with an army of valiant men of
war, even four hundred thousand chosen men: Jeroboam also set the
battle in array against him with eight hundred thousand chosen men,
being mighty men of valour.

13:4 And Abijah stood up upon mount Zemaraim, which is in mount
Ephraim, and said, Hear me, thou Jeroboam, and all Israel; 13:5 Ought
ye not to know that the LORD God of Israel gave the kingdom over
Israel to David for ever, even to him and to his sons by a covenant of
salt?  13:6 Yet Jeroboam the son of Nebat, the servant of Solomon the
son of David, is risen up, and hath rebelled against his lord.

13:7 And there are gathered unto him vain men, the children of Belial,
and have strengthened themselves against Rehoboam the son of Solomon,
when Rehoboam was young and tenderhearted, and could not withstand
them.

13:8 And now ye think to withstand the kingdom of the LORD in the hand
of the sons of David; and ye be a great multitude, and there are with
your golden calves, which Jeroboam made you for gods.

13:9 Have ye not cast out the priests of the LORD, the sons of Aaron,
and the Levites, and have made you priests after the manner of the
nations of other lands? so that whosoever cometh to consecrate himself
with a young bullock and seven rams, the same may be a priest of them
that are no gods.

13:10 But as for us, the LORD is our God, and we have not forsaken
him; and the priests, which minister unto the LORD, are the sons of
Aaron, and the Levites wait upon their business: 13:11 And they burn
unto the LORD every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and
sweet incense: the shewbread also set they in order upon the pure
table; and the candlestick of gold with the lamps thereof, to burn
every evening: for we keep the charge of the LORD our God; but ye have
forsaken him.

13:12 And, behold, God himself is with us for our captain, and his
priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm against you. O children of
Israel, fight ye not against the LORD God of your fathers; for ye
shall not prosper.

13:13 But Jeroboam caused an ambushment to come about behind them: so
they were before Judah, and the ambushment was behind them.

13:14 And when Judah looked back, behold, the battle was before and
behind: and they cried unto the LORD, and the priests sounded with the
trumpets.

13:15 Then the men of Judah gave a shout: and as the men of Judah
shouted, it came to pass, that God smote Jeroboam and all Israel
before Abijah and Judah.

13:16 And the children of Israel fled before Judah: and God delivered
them into their hand.

13:17 And Abijah and his people slew them with a great slaughter: so
there fell down slain of Israel five hundred thousand chosen men.

13:18 Thus the children of Israel were brought under at that time, and
the children of Judah prevailed, because they relied upon the LORD God
of their fathers.

13:19 And Abijah pursued after Jeroboam, and took cities from him,
Bethel with the towns thereof, and Jeshanah with the towns thereof,
and Ephraim with the towns thereof.

13:20 Neither did Jeroboam recover strength again in the days of
Abijah: and the LORD struck him, and he died.

13:21 But Abijah waxed mighty, and married fourteen wives, and begat
twenty and two sons, and sixteen daughters.

13:22 And the rest of the acts of Abijah, and his ways, and his
sayings, are written in the story of the prophet Iddo.

14:1 So Abijah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city
of David: and Asa his son reigned in his stead. In his days the land
was quiet ten years.

14:2 And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the LORD
his God: 14:3 For he took away the altars of the strange gods, and the
high places, and brake down the images, and cut down the groves: 14:4
And commanded Judah to seek the LORD God of their fathers, and to do
the law and the commandment.

14:5 Also he took away out of all the cities of Judah the high places
and the images: and the kingdom was quiet before him.

14:6 And he built fenced cities in Judah: for the land had rest, and
he had no war in those years; because the LORD had given him rest.

14:7 Therefore he said unto Judah, Let us build these cities, and make
about them walls, and towers, gates, and bars, while the land is yet
before us; because we have sought the LORD our God, we have sought
him, and he hath given us rest on every side. So they built and
prospered.

14:8 And Asa had an army of men that bare targets and spears, out of
Judah three hundred thousand; and out of Benjamin, that bare shields
and drew bows, two hundred and fourscore thousand: all these were
mighty men of valour.

14:9 And there came out against them Zerah the Ethiopian with an host
of a thousand thousand, and three hundred chariots; and came unto
Mareshah.

14:10 Then Asa went out against him, and they set the battle in array
in the valley of Zephathah at Mareshah.

14:11 And Asa cried unto the LORD his God, and said, LORD, it is
nothing with thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have
no power: help us, O LORD our God; for we rest on thee, and in thy
name we go against this multitude. O LORD, thou art our God; let no
man prevail against thee.

14:12 So the LORD smote the Ethiopians before Asa, and before Judah;
and the Ethiopians fled.

14:13 And Asa and the people that were with him pursued them unto
Gerar: and the Ethiopians were overthrown, that they could not recover
themselves; for they were destroyed before the LORD, and before his
host; and they carried away very much spoil.

14:14 And they smote all the cities round about Gerar; for the fear of
the LORD came upon them: and they spoiled all the cities; for there
was exceeding much spoil in them.

14:15 They smote also the tents of cattle, and carried away sheep and
camels in abundance, and returned to Jerusalem.

15:1 And the Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded: 15:2 And
he went out to meet Asa, and said unto him, Hear ye me, Asa, and all
Judah and Benjamin; The LORD is with you, while ye be with him; and if
ye seek him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will
forsake you.

15:3 Now for a long season Israel hath been without the true God, and
without a teaching priest, and without law.

15:4 But when they in their trouble did turn unto the LORD God of
Israel, and sought him, he was found of them.

15:5 And in those times there was no peace to him that went out, nor
to him that came in, but great vexations were upon all the inhabitants
of the countries.

15:6 And nation was destroyed of nation, and city of city: for God did
vex them with all adversity.

15:7 Be ye strong therefore, and let not your hands be weak: for your
work shall be rewarded.

15:8 And when Asa heard these words, and the prophecy of Oded the
prophet, he took courage, and put away the abominable idols out of all
the land of Judah and Benjamin, and out of the cities which he had
taken from mount Ephraim, and renewed the altar of the LORD, that was
before the porch of the LORD.

15:9 And he gathered all Judah and Benjamin, and the strangers with
them out of Ephraim and Manasseh, and out of Simeon: for they fell to
him out of Israel in abundance, when they saw that the LORD his God
was with him.

15:10 So they gathered themselves together at Jerusalem in the third
month, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Asa.

15:11 And they offered unto the LORD the same time, of the spoil which
they had brought, seven hundred oxen and seven thousand sheep.

15:12 And they entered into a covenant to seek the LORD God of their
fathers with all their heart and with all their soul; 15:13 That
whosoever would not seek the LORD God of Israel should be put to
death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.

15:14 And they sware unto the LORD with a loud voice, and with
shouting, and with trumpets, and with cornets.

15:15 And all Judah rejoiced at the oath: for they had sworn with all
their heart, and sought him with their whole desire; and he was found
of them: and the LORD gave them rest round about.

15:16 And also concerning Maachah the mother of Asa the king, he
removed her from being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove:
and Asa cut down her idol, and stamped it, and burnt it at the brook
Kidron.

15:17 But the high places were not taken away out of Israel:
nevertheless the heart of Asa was perfect all his days.

15:18 And he brought into the house of God the things that his father
had dedicated, and that he himself had dedicated, silver, and gold,
and vessels.

15:19 And there was no more war unto the five and thirtieth year of
the reign of Asa.

16:1 In the six and thirtieth year of the reign of Asa Baasha king of
Israel came up against Judah, and built Ramah, to the intent that he
might let none go out or come in to Asa king of Judah.

16:2 Then Asa brought out silver and gold out of the treasures of the
house of the LORD and of the king's house, and sent to Benhadad king
of Syria, that dwelt at Damascus, saying, 16:3 There is a league
between me and thee, as there was between my father and thy father:
behold, I have sent thee silver and gold; go, break thy league with
Baasha king of Israel, that he may depart from me.

16:4 And Benhadad hearkened unto king Asa, and sent the captains of
his armies against the cities of Israel; and they smote Ijon, and Dan,
and Abelmaim, and all the store cities of Naphtali.

16:5 And it came to pass, when Baasha heard it, that he left off
building of Ramah, and let his work cease.

16:6 Then Asa the king took all Judah; and they carried away the
stones of Ramah, and the timber thereof, wherewith Baasha was
building; and he built therewith Geba and Mizpah.

16:7 And at that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah, and
said unto him, Because thou hast relied on the king of Syria, and not
relied on the LORD thy God, therefore is the host of the king of Syria
escaped out of thine hand.

16:8 Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubims a huge host, with very
many chariots and horsemen? yet, because thou didst rely on the LORD,
he delivered them into thine hand.

16:9 For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole
earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is
perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from
henceforth thou shalt have wars.

16:10 Then Asa was wroth with the seer, and put him in a prison house;
for he was in a rage with him because of this thing. And Asa oppressed
some of the people the same time.

16:11 And, behold, the acts of Asa, first and last, lo, they are
written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.

16:12 And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased
in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease
he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.

16:13 And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth
year of his reign.

16:14 And they buried him in his own sepulchres, which he had made for
himself in the city of David, and laid him in the bed which was filled
with sweet odours and divers kinds of spices prepared by the
apothecaries' art: and they made a very great burning for him.

17:1 And Jehoshaphat his son reigned in his stead, and strengthened
himself against Israel.

17:2 And he placed forces in all the fenced cities of Judah, and set
garrisons in the land of Judah, and in the cities of Ephraim, which
Asa his father had taken.

17:3 And the LORD was with Jehoshaphat, because he walked in the first
ways of his father David, and sought not unto Baalim; 17:4 But sought
to the Lord God of his father, and walked in his commandments, and not
after the doings of Israel.

17:5 Therefore the LORD stablished the kingdom in his hand; and all
Judah brought to Jehoshaphat presents; and he had riches and honour in
abundance.

17:6 And his heart was lifted up in the ways of the LORD: moreover he
took away the high places and groves out of Judah.

17:7 Also in the third year of his reign he sent to his princes, even
to Benhail, and to Obadiah, and to Zechariah, and to Nethaneel, and to
Michaiah, to teach in the cities of Judah.

17:8 And with them he sent Levites, even Shemaiah, and Nethaniah, and
Zebadiah, and Asahel, and Shemiramoth, and Jehonathan, and Adonijah,
and Tobijah, and Tobadonijah, Levites; and with them Elishama and
Jehoram, priests.

17:9 And they taught in Judah, and had the book of the law of the LORD
with them, and went about throughout all the cities of Judah, and
taught the people.

17:10 And the fear of the LORD fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands
that were round about Judah, so that they made no war against
Jehoshaphat.

17:11 Also some of the Philistines brought Jehoshaphat presents, and
tribute silver; and the Arabians brought him flocks, seven thousand
and seven hundred rams, and seven thousand and seven hundred he goats.

17:12 And Jehoshaphat waxed great exceedingly; and he built in Judah
castles, and cities of store.

17:13 And he had much business in the cities of Judah: and the men of
war, mighty men of valour, were in Jerusalem.

17:14 And these are the numbers of them according to the house of
their fathers: Of Judah, the captains of thousands; Adnah the chief,
and with him mighty men of valour three hundred thousand.

17:15 And next to him was Jehohanan the captain, and with him two
hundred and fourscore thousand.

17:16 And next him was Amasiah the son of Zichri, who willingly
offered himself unto the LORD; and with him two hundred thousand
mighty men of valour.

17:17 And of Benjamin; Eliada a mighty man of valour, and with him
armed men with bow and shield two hundred thousand.

17:18 And next him was Jehozabad, and with him an hundred and
fourscore thousand ready prepared for the war.

17:19 These waited on the king, beside those whom the king put in the
fenced cities throughout all Judah.

18:1 Now Jehoshaphat had riches and honour in abundance, and joined
affinity with Ahab.

18:2 And after certain years he went down to Ahab to Samaria. And Ahab
killed sheep and oxen for him in abundance, and for the people that he
had with him, and persuaded him to go up with him to Ramothgilead.

18:3 And Ahab king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat king of Judah, Wilt
thou go with me to Ramothgilead? And he answered him, I am as thou
art, and my people as thy people; and we will be with thee in the war.

18:4 And Jehoshaphat said unto the king of Israel, Enquire, I pray
thee, at the word of the LORD to day.

18:5 Therefore the king of Israel gathered together of prophets four
hundred men, and said unto them, Shall we go to Ramothgilead to
battle, or shall I forbear? And they said, Go up; for God will deliver
it into the king's hand.

18:6 But Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of the LORD
besides, that we might enquire of him?  18:7 And the king of Israel
said unto Jehoshaphat, There is yet one man, by whom we may enquire of
the LORD: but I hate him; for he never prophesied good unto me, but
always evil: the same is Micaiah the son of Imla. And Jehoshaphat
said, Let not the king say so.

18:8 And the king of Israel called for one of his officers, and said,
Fetch quickly Micaiah the son of Imla.

18:9 And the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah sat either
of them on his throne, clothed in their robes, and they sat in a void
place at the entering in of the gate of Samaria; and all the prophets
prophesied before them.

18:10 And Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah had made him horns of iron,
and said, Thus saith the LORD, With these thou shalt push Syria until
they be consumed.

18:11 And all the prophets prophesied so, saying, Go up to
Ramothgilead, and prosper: for the LORD shall deliver it into the hand
of the king.

18:12 And the messenger that went to call Micaiah spake to him,
saying, Behold, the words of the prophets declare good to the king
with one assent; let thy word therefore, I pray thee, be like one of
their's, and speak thou good.

18:13 And Micaiah said, As the LORD liveth, even what my God saith,
that will I speak.

18:14 And when he was come to the king, the king said unto him,
Micaiah, shall we go to Ramothgilead to battle, or shall I forbear?
And he said, Go ye up, and prosper, and they shall be delivered into
your hand.

18:15 And the king said to him, How many times shall I adjure thee
that thou say nothing but the truth to me in the name of the LORD?
18:16 Then he said, I did see all Israel scattered upon the mountains,
as sheep that have no shepherd: and the LORD said, These have no
master; let them return therefore every man to his house in peace.

18:17 And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell thee
that he would not prophesy good unto me, but evil?  18:18 Again he
said, Therefore hear the word of the LORD; I saw the LORD sitting upon
his throne, and all the host of heaven standing on his right hand and
on his left.

18:19 And the LORD said, Who shall entice Ahab king of Israel, that he
may go up and fall at Ramothgilead? And one spake saying after this
manner, and another saying after that manner.

18:20 Then there came out a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and
said, I will entice him. And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith?  18:21
And he said, I will go out, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all
his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him, and thou shalt
also prevail: go out, and do even so.

18:22 Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the
mouth of these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil against
thee.

18:23 Then Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah came near, and smote Micaiah
upon the cheek, and said, Which way went the Spirit of the LORD from
me to speak unto thee?  18:24 And Micaiah said, Behold, thou shalt see
on that day when thou shalt go into an inner chamber to hide thyself.

18:25 Then the king of Israel said, Take ye Micaiah, and carry him
back to Amon the governor of the city, and to Joash the king's son;
18:26 And say, Thus saith the king, Put this fellow in the prison, and
feed him with bread of affliction and with water of affliction, until
I return in peace.

18:27 And Micaiah said, If thou certainly return in peace, then hath
not the LORD spoken by me. And he said, Hearken, all ye people.

18:28 So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah went up
to Ramothgilead.

18:29 And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, I will disguise
myself, and I will go to the battle; but put thou on thy robes. So the
king of Israel disguised himself; and they went to the battle.

18:30 Now the king of Syria had commanded the captains of the chariots
that were with him, saying, Fight ye not with small or great, save
only with the king of Israel.

18:31 And it came to pass, when the captains of the chariots saw
Jehoshaphat, that they said, It is the king of Israel. Therefore they
compassed about him to fight: but Jehoshaphat cried out, and the LORD
helped him; and God moved them to depart from him.

18:32 For it came to pass, that, when the captains of the chariots
perceived that it was not the king of Israel, they turned back again
from pursuing him.

18:33 And a certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the king of
Israel between the joints of the harness: therefore he said to his
chariot man, Turn thine hand, that thou mayest carry me out of the
host; for I am wounded.

18:34 And the battle increased that day: howbeit the king of Israel
stayed himself up in his chariot against the Syrians until the even:
and about the time of the sun going down he died.

19:1 And Jehoshaphat the king of Judah returned to his house in peace
to Jerusalem.

19:2 And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and
said to king Jehoshaphat, Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love
them that hate the LORD? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the
LORD.

19:3 Nevertheless there are good things found in thee, in that thou
hast taken away the groves out of the land, and hast prepared thine
heart to seek God.

19:4 And Jehoshaphat dwelt at Jerusalem: and he went out again through
the people from Beersheba to mount Ephraim, and brought them back unto
the LORD God of their fathers.

19:5 And he set judges in the land throughout all the fenced cities of
Judah, city by city, 19:6 And said to the judges, Take heed what ye
do: for ye judge not for man, but for the LORD, who is with you in the
judgment.

19:7 Wherefore now let the fear of the LORD be upon you; take heed and
do it: for there is no iniquity with the LORD our God, nor respect of
persons, nor taking of gifts.

19:8 Moreover in Jerusalem did Jehoshaphat set of the Levites, and of
the priests, and of the chief of the fathers of Israel, for the
judgment of the LORD, and for controversies, when they returned to
Jerusalem.

19:9 And he charged them, saying, Thus shall ye do in the fear of the
LORD, faithfully, and with a perfect heart.

19:10 And what cause soever shall come to you of your brethren that
dwell in your cities, between blood and blood, between law and
commandment, statutes and judgments, ye shall even warn them that they
trespass not against the LORD, and so wrath come upon you, and upon
your brethren: this do, and ye shall not trespass.

19:11 And, behold, Amariah the chief priest is over you in all matters
of the LORD; and Zebadiah the son of Ishmael, the ruler of the house
of Judah, for all the king's matters: also the Levites shall be
officers before you. Deal courageously, and the LORD shall be with the
good.

20:1 It came to pass after this also, that the children of Moab, and
the children of Ammon, and with them other beside the Ammonites, came
against Jehoshaphat to battle.

20:2 Then there came some that told Jehoshaphat, saying, There cometh
a great multitude against thee from beyond the sea on this side Syria;
and, behold, they be in Hazazontamar, which is Engedi.

20:3 And Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek the LORD, and
proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.

20:4 And Judah gathered themselves together, to ask help of the LORD:
even out of all the cities of Judah they came to seek the LORD.

20:5 And Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem,
in the house of the LORD, before the new court, 20:6 And said, O LORD
God of our fathers, art not thou God in heaven? and rulest not thou
over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in thine hand is there not
power and might, so that none is able to withstand thee?  20:7 Art not
thou our God, who didst drive out the inhabitants of this land before
thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of Abraham thy friend for
ever?  20:8 And they dwelt therein, and have built thee a sanctuary
therein for thy name, saying, 20:9 If, when evil cometh upon us, as
the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we stand before this
house, and in thy presence, (for thy name is in this house,) and cry
unto thee in our affliction, then thou wilt hear and help.

20:10 And now, behold, the children of Ammon and Moab and mount Seir,
whom thou wouldest not let Israel invade, when they came out of the
land of Egypt, but they turned from them, and destroyed them not;
20:11 Behold, I say, how they reward us, to come to cast us out of thy
possession, which thou hast given us to inherit.

20:12 O our God, wilt thou not judge them? for we have no might
against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we
what to do: but our eyes are upon thee.

20:13 And all Judah stood before the LORD, with their little ones,
their wives, and their children.

20:14 Then upon Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the
son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph,
came the Spirit of the LORD in the midst of the congregation; 20:15
And he said, Hearken ye, all Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem,
and thou king Jehoshaphat, Thus saith the LORD unto you, Be not afraid
nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not
yours, but God's.

20:16 To morrow go ye down against them: behold, they come up by the
cliff of Ziz; and ye shall find them at the end of the brook, before
the wilderness of Jeruel.

20:17 Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand
ye still, and see the salvation of the LORD with you, O Judah and
Jerusalem: fear not, nor be dismayed; to morrow go out against them:
for the LORD will be with you.

20:18 And Jehoshaphat bowed his head with his face to the ground: and
all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell before the LORD,
worshipping the LORD.

20:19 And the Levites, of the children of the Kohathites, and of the
children of the Korhites, stood up to praise the LORD God of Israel
with a loud voice on high.

20:20 And they rose early in the morning, and went forth into the
wilderness of Tekoa: and as they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and
said, Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem; Believe in
the LORD your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets,
so shall ye prosper.

20:21 And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers
unto the LORD, and that should praise the beauty of holiness, as they
went out before the army, and to say, Praise the LORD; for his mercy
endureth for ever.

20:22 And when they began to sing and to praise, the LORD set
ambushments against the children of Ammon, Moab, and mount Seir, which
were come against Judah; and they were smitten.

20:23 For the children of Ammon and Moab stood up against the
inhabitants of mount Seir, utterly to slay and destroy them: and when
they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, every one helped to
destroy another.

20:24 And when Judah came toward the watch tower in the wilderness,
they looked unto the multitude, and, behold, they were dead bodies
fallen to the earth, and none escaped.

20:25 And when Jehoshaphat and his people came to take away the spoil
of them, they found among them in abundance both riches with the dead
bodies, and precious jewels, which they stripped off for themselves,
more than they could carry away: and they were three days in gathering
of the spoil, it was so much.

20:26 And on the fourth day they assembled themselves in the valley of
Berachah; for there they blessed the LORD: therefore the name of the
same place was called, The valley of Berachah, unto this day.

20:27 Then they returned, every man of Judah and Jerusalem, and
Jehoshaphat in the forefront of them, to go again to Jerusalem with
joy; for the LORD had made them to rejoice over their enemies.

20:28 And they came to Jerusalem with psalteries and harps and
trumpets unto the house of the LORD.

20:29 And the fear of God was on all the kingdoms of those countries,
when they had heard that the LORD fought against the enemies of
Israel.

20:30 So the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet: for his God gave him rest
round about.

20:31 And Jehoshaphat reigned over Judah: he was thirty and five years
old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty and five years in
Jerusalem.

And his mother's name was Azubah the daughter of Shilhi.

20:32 And he walked in the way of Asa his father, and departed not
from it, doing that which was right in the sight of the LORD.

20:33 Howbeit the high places were not taken away: for as yet the
people had not prepared their hearts unto the God of their fathers.

20:34 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, first and last, behold,
they are written in the book of Jehu the son of Hanani, who is
mentioned in the book of the kings of Israel.

20:35 And after this did Jehoshaphat king of Judah join himself with
Ahaziah king of Israel, who did very wickedly: 20:36 And he joined
himself with him to make ships to go to Tarshish: and they made the
ships in Eziongaber.

20:37 Then Eliezer the son of Dodavah of Mareshah prophesied against
Jehoshaphat, saying, Because thou hast joined thyself with Ahaziah,
the LORD hath broken thy works. And the ships were broken, that they
were not able to go to Tarshish.

21:1 Now Jehoshaphat slept with his fathers, and was buried with his
fathers in the city of David. And Jehoram his son reigned in his
stead.

21:2 And he had brethren the sons of Jehoshaphat, Azariah, and Jehiel,
and Zechariah, and Azariah, and Michael, and Shephatiah: all these
were the sons of Jehoshaphat king of Israel.

21:3 And their father gave them great gifts of silver, and of gold,
and of precious things, with fenced cities in Judah: but the kingdom
gave he to Jehoram; because he was the firstborn.

21:4 Now when Jehoram was risen up to the kingdom of his father, he
strengthened himself, and slew all his brethren with the sword, and
divers also of the princes of Israel.

21:5 Jehoram was thirty and two years old when he began to reign, and
he reigned eight years in Jerusalem.

21:6 And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, like as did the
house of Ahab: for he had the daughter of Ahab to wife: and he wrought
that which was evil in the eyes of the LORD.

21:7 Howbeit the LORD would not destroy the house of David, because of
the covenant that he had made with David, and as he promised to give a
light to him and to his sons for ever.

21:8 In his days the Edomites revolted from under the dominion of
Judah, and made themselves a king.

21:9 Then Jehoram went forth with his princes, and all his chariots
with him: and he rose up by night, and smote the Edomites which
compassed him in, and the captains of the chariots.

21:10 So the Edomites revolted from under the hand of Judah unto this
day.

The same time also did Libnah revolt from under his hand; because he
had forsaken the LORD God of his fathers.

21:11 Moreover he made high places in the mountains of Judah and
caused the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit fornication, and
compelled Judah thereto.

21:12 And there came a writing to him from Elijah the prophet, saying,
Thus saith the LORD God of David thy father, Because thou hast not
walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat thy father, nor in the ways of Asa
king of Judah, 21:13 But hast walked in the way of the kings of
Israel, and hast made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to go a
whoring, like to the whoredoms of the house of Ahab, and also hast
slain thy brethren of thy father's house, which were better than
thyself: 21:14 Behold, with a great plague will the LORD smite thy
people, and thy children, and thy wives, and all thy goods: 21:15 And
thou shalt have great sickness by disease of thy bowels, until thy
bowels fall out by reason of the sickness day by day.

21:16 Moreover the LORD stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the
Philistines, and of the Arabians, that were near the Ethiopians: 21:17
And they came up into Judah, and brake into it, and carried away all
the substance that was found in the king's house, and his sons also,
and his wives; so that there was never a son left him, save Jehoahaz,
the youngest of his sons.

21:18 And after all this the LORD smote him in his bowels with an
incurable disease.

21:19 And it came to pass, that in process of time, after the end of
two years, his bowels fell out by reason of his sickness: so he died
of sore diseases. And his people made no burning for him, like the
burning of his fathers.

21:20 Thirty and two years old was he when he began to reign, and he
reigned in Jerusalem eight years, and departed without being desired.
Howbeit they buried him in the city of David, but not in the
sepulchres of the kings.

22:1 And the inhabitants of Jerusalem made Ahaziah his youngest son
king in his stead: for the band of men that came with the Arabians to
the camp had slain all the eldest. So Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king
of Judah reigned.

22:2 Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign, and
he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was Athaliah
the daughter of Omri.

22:3 He also walked in the ways of the house of Ahab: for his mother
was his counsellor to do wickedly.

22:4 Wherefore he did evil in the sight of the LORD like the house of
Ahab: for they were his counsellors after the death of his father to
his destruction.

22:5 He walked also after their counsel, and went with Jehoram the son
of Ahab king of Israel to war against Hazael king of Syria at
Ramothgilead: and the Syrians smote Joram.

22:6 And he returned to be healed in Jezreel because of the wounds
which were given him at Ramah, when he fought with Hazael king of
Syria. And Azariah the son of Jehoram king of Judah went down to see
Jehoram the son of Ahab at Jezreel, because he was sick.

22:7 And the destruction of Ahaziah was of God by coming to Joram: for
when he was come, he went out with Jehoram against Jehu the son of
Nimshi, whom the LORD had anointed to cut off the house of Ahab.

22:8 And it came to pass, that, when Jehu was executing judgment upon
the house of Ahab, and found the princes of Judah, and the sons of the
brethren of Ahaziah, that ministered to Ahaziah, he slew them.

22:9 And he sought Ahaziah: and they caught him, (for he was hid in
Samaria,) and brought him to Jehu: and when they had slain him, they
buried him: Because, said they, he is the son of Jehoshaphat, who
sought the LORD with all his heart. So the house of Ahaziah had no
power to keep still the kingdom.

22:10 But when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was
dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal of the house of
Judah.

22:11 But Jehoshabeath, the daughter of the king, took Joash the son
of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's sons that were slain,
and put him and his nurse in a bedchamber. So Jehoshabeath, the
daughter of king Jehoram, the wife of Jehoiada the priest, (for she
was the sister of Ahaziah,) hid him from Athaliah, so that she slew
him not.

22:12 And he was with them hid in the house of God six years: and
Athaliah reigned over the land.

23:1 And in the seventh year Jehoiada strengthened himself, and took
the captains of hundreds, Azariah the son of Jeroham, and Ishmael the
son of Jehohanan, and Azariah the son of Obed, and Maaseiah the son of
Adaiah, and Elishaphat the son of Zichri, into covenant with him.

23:2 And they went about in Judah, and gathered the Levites out of all
the cities of Judah, and the chief of the fathers of Israel, and they
came to Jerusalem.

23:3 And all the congregation made a covenant with the king in the
house of God. And he said unto them, Behold, the king's son shall
reign, as the LORD hath said of the sons of David.

23:4 This is the thing that ye shall do; A third part of you entering
on the sabbath, of the priests and of the Levites, shall be porters of
the doors; 23:5 And a third part shall be at the king's house; and a
third part at the gate of the foundation: and all the people shall be
in the courts of the house of the LORD.

23:6 But let none come into the house of the LORD, save the priests,
and they that minister of the Levites; they shall go in, for they are
holy: but all the people shall keep the watch of the LORD.

23:7 And the Levites shall compass the king round about, every man
with his weapons in his hand; and whosoever else cometh into the
house, he shall be put to death: but be ye with the king when he
cometh in, and when he goeth out.

23:8 So the Levites and all Judah did according to all things that
Jehoiada the priest had commanded, and took every man his men that
were to come in on the sabbath, with them that were to go out on the
sabbath: for Jehoiada the priest dismissed not the courses.

23:9 Moreover Jehoiada the priest delivered to the captains of
hundreds spears, and bucklers, and shields, that had been king
David's, which were in the house of God.

23:10 And he set all the people, every man having his weapon in his
hand, from the right side of the temple to the left side of the
temple, along by the altar and the temple, by the king round about.

23:11 Then they brought out the king's son, and put upon him the
crown, and gave him the testimony, and made him king. And Jehoiada and
his sons anointed him, and said, God save the king.

23:12 Now when Athaliah heard the noise of the people running and
praising the king, she came to the people into the house of the LORD:
23:13 And she looked, and, behold, the king stood at his pillar at the
entering in, and the princes and the trumpets by the king: and all the
people of the land rejoiced, and sounded with trumpets, also the
singers with instruments of musick, and such as taught to sing praise.
Then Athaliah rent her clothes, and said, Treason, Treason.

23:14 Then Jehoiada the priest brought out the captains of hundreds
that were set over the host, and said unto them, Have her forth of the
ranges: and whoso followeth her, let him be slain with the sword. For
the priest said, Slay her not in the house of the LORD.

23:15 So they laid hands on her; and when she was come to the entering
of the horse gate by the king's house, they slew her there.

23:16 And Jehoiada made a covenant between him, and between all the
people, and between the king, that they should be the LORD's people.

23:17 Then all the people went to the house of Baal, and brake it
down, and brake his altars and his images in pieces, and slew Mattan
the priest of Baal before the altars.

23:18 Also Jehoiada appointed the offices of the house of the LORD by
the hand of the priests the Levites, whom David had distributed in the
house of the LORD, to offer the burnt offerings of the LORD, as it is
written in the law of Moses, with rejoicing and with singing, as it
was ordained by David.

23:19 And he set the porters at the gates of the house of the LORD,
that none which was unclean in any thing should enter in.

23:20 And he took the captains of hundreds, and the nobles, and the
governors of the people, and all the people of the land, and brought
down the king from the house of the LORD: and they came through the
high gate into the king's house, and set the king upon the throne of
the kingdom.

23:21 And all the people of the land rejoiced: and the city was quiet,
after that they had slain Athaliah with the sword.

24:1 Joash was seven years old when he began to reign, and he reigned
forty years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was Zibiah of
Beersheba.

24:2 And Joash did that which was right in the sight of the LORD all
the days of Jehoiada the priest.

24:3 And Jehoiada took for him two wives; and he begat sons and
daughters.

24:4 And it came to pass after this, that Joash was minded to repair
the house of the LORD.

24:5 And he gathered together the priests and the Levites, and said to
them, Go out unto the cities of Judah, and gather of all Israel money
to repair the house of your God from year to year, and see that ye
hasten the matter. Howbeit the Levites hastened it not.

24:6 And the king called for Jehoiada the chief, and said unto him,
Why hast thou not required of the Levites to bring in out of Judah and
out of Jerusalem the collection, according to the commandment of Moses
the servant of the LORD, and of the congregation of Israel, for the
tabernacle of witness?  24:7 For the sons of Athaliah, that wicked
woman, had broken up the house of God; and also all the dedicated
things of the house of the LORD did they bestow upon Baalim.

24:8 And at the king's commandment they made a chest, and set it
without at the gate of the house of the LORD.

24:9 And they made a proclamation through Judah and Jerusalem, to
bring in to the LORD the collection that Moses the servant of God laid
upon Israel in the wilderness.

24:10 And all the princes and all the people rejoiced, and brought in,
and cast into the chest, until they had made an end.

24:11 Now it came to pass, that at what time the chest was brought
unto the king's office by the hand of the Levites, and when they saw
that there was much money, the king's scribe and the high priest's
officer came and emptied the chest, and took it, and carried it to his
place again. Thus they did day by day, and gathered money in
abundance.

24:12 And the king and Jehoiada gave it to such as did the work of the
service of the house of the LORD, and hired masons and carpenters to
repair the house of the LORD, and also such as wrought iron and brass
to mend the house of the LORD.

24:13 So the workmen wrought, and the work was perfected by them, and
they set the house of God in his state, and strengthened it.

24:14 And when they had finished it, they brought the rest of the
money before the king and Jehoiada, whereof were made vessels for the
house of the LORD, even vessels to minister, and to offer withal, and
spoons, and vessels of gold and silver. And they offered burnt
offerings in the house of the LORD continually all the days of
Jehoiada.

24:15 But Jehoiada waxed old, and was full of days when he died; an
hundred and thirty years old was he when he died.

24:16 And they buried him in the city of David among the kings,
because he had done good in Israel, both toward God, and toward his
house.

24:17 Now after the death of Jehoiada came the princes of Judah, and
made obeisance to the king. Then the king hearkened unto them.

24:18 And they left the house of the LORD God of their fathers, and
served groves and idols: and wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for
this their trespass.

24:19 Yet he sent prophets to them, to bring them again unto the LORD;
and they testified against them: but they would not give ear.

24:20 And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada
the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus
saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the LORD, that ye
cannot prosper? because ye have forsaken the LORD, he hath also
forsaken you.

24:21 And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at
the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the LORD.

24:22 Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada
his father had done to him, but slew his son. And when he died, he
said, The LORD look upon it, and require it.

24:23 And it came to pass at the end of the year, that the host of
Syria came up against him: and they came to Judah and Jerusalem, and
destroyed all the princes of the people from among the people, and
sent all the spoil of them unto the king of Damascus.

24:24 For the army of the Syrians came with a small company of men,
and the LORD delivered a very great host into their hand, because they
had forsaken the LORD God of their fathers. So they executed judgment
against Joash.

24:25 And when they were departed from him, (for they left him in
great diseases,) his own servants conspired against him for the blood
of the sons of Jehoiada the priest, and slew him on his bed, and he
died: and they buried him in the city of David, but they buried him
not in the sepulchres of the kings.

24:26 And these are they that conspired against him; Zabad the son of
Shimeath an Ammonitess, and Jehozabad the son of Shimrith a Moabitess.

24:27 Now concerning his sons, and the greatness of the burdens laid
upon him, and the repairing of the house of God, behold, they are
written in the story of the book of the kings. And Amaziah his son
reigned in his stead.

25:1 Amaziah was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and
he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name
was Jehoaddan of Jerusalem.

25:2 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, but not
with a perfect heart.

25:3 Now it came to pass, when the kingdom was established to him,
that he slew his servants that had killed the king his father.

25:4 But he slew not their children, but did as it is written in the
law in the book of Moses, where the LORD commanded, saying, The
fathers shall not die for the children, neither shall the children die
for the fathers, but every man shall die for his own sin.

25:5 Moreover Amaziah gathered Judah together, and made them captains
over thousands, and captains over hundreds, according to the houses of
their fathers, throughout all Judah and Benjamin: and he numbered them
from twenty years old and above, and found them three hundred thousand
choice men, able to go forth to war, that could handle spear and
shield.

25:6 He hired also an hundred thousand mighty men of valour out of
Israel for an hundred talents of silver.

25:7 But there came a man of God to him, saying, O king, let not the
army of Israel go with thee; for the LORD is not with Israel, to wit,
with all the children of Ephraim.

25:8 But if thou wilt go, do it; be strong for the battle: God shall
make thee fall before the enemy: for God hath power to help, and to
cast down.

25:9 And Amaziah said to the man of God, But what shall we do for the
hundred talents which I have given to the army of Israel? And the man
of God answered, The LORD is able to give thee much more than this.

25:10 Then Amaziah separated them, to wit, the army that was come to
him out of Ephraim, to go home again: wherefore their anger was
greatly kindled against Judah, and they returned home in great anger.

25:11 And Amaziah strengthened himself, and led forth his people, and
went to the valley of salt, and smote of the children of Seir ten
thousand.

25:12 And other ten thousand left alive did the children of Judah
carry away captive, and brought them unto the top of the rock, and
cast them down from the top of the rock, that they all were broken in
pieces.

25:13 But the soldiers of the army which Amaziah sent back, that they
should not go with him to battle, fell upon the cities of Judah, from
Samaria even unto Bethhoron, and smote three thousand of them, and
took much spoil.

25:14 Now it came to pass, after that Amaziah was come from the
slaughter of the Edomites, that he brought the gods of the children of
Seir, and set them up to be his gods, and bowed down himself before
them, and burned incense unto them.

25:15 Wherefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against Amaziah, and
he sent unto him a prophet, which said unto him, Why hast thou sought
after the gods of the people, which could not deliver their own people
out of thine hand?  25:16 And it came to pass, as he talked with him,
that the king said unto him, Art thou made of the king's counsel?
forbear; why shouldest thou be smitten? Then the prophet forbare, and
said, I know that God hath determined to destroy thee, because thou
hast done this, and hast not hearkened unto my counsel.

25:17 Then Amaziah king of Judah took advice, and sent to Joash, the
son of Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, king of Israel, saying, Come, let us
see one another in the face.

25:18 And Joash king of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah, saying,
The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon,
saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a
wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle.

25:19 Thou sayest, Lo, thou hast smitten the Edomites; and thine heart
lifteth thee up to boast: abide now at home; why shouldest thou meddle
to thine hurt, that thou shouldest fall, even thou, and Judah with
thee?  25:20 But Amaziah would not hear; for it came of God, that he
might deliver them into the hand of their enemies, because they sought
after the gods of Edom.

25:21 So Joash the king of Israel went up; and they saw one another in
the face, both he and Amaziah king of Judah, at Bethshemesh, which
belongeth to Judah.

25:22 And Judah was put to the worse before Israel, and they fled
every man to his tent.

25:23 And Joash the king of Israel took Amaziah king of Judah, the son
of Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, at Bethshemesh, and brought him to
Jerusalem, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of
Ephraim to the corner gate, four hundred cubits.

25:24 And he took all the gold and the silver, and all the vessels
that were found in the house of God with Obededom, and the treasures
of the king's house, the hostages also, and returned to Samaria.

25:25 And Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah lived after the death
of Joash son of Jehoahaz king of Israel fifteen years.

25:26 Now the rest of the acts of Amaziah, first and last, behold, are
they not written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel?  25:27
Now after the time that Amaziah did turn away from following the LORD
they made a conspiracy against him in Jerusalem; and he fled to
Lachish: but they sent to Lachish after him, and slew him there.

25:28 And they brought him upon horses, and buried him with his
fathers in the city of Judah.

26:1 Then all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years
old, and made him king in the room of his father Amaziah.

26:2 He built Eloth, and restored it to Judah, after that the king
slept with his fathers.

26:3 Sixteen years old was Uzziah when he began to reign, and he
reigned fifty and two years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was
Jecoliah of Jerusalem.

26:4 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD,
according to all that his father Amaziah did.

26:5 And he sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding
in the visions of God: and as long as he sought the LORD, God made him
to prosper.

26:6 And he went forth and warred against the Philistines, and brake
down the wall of Gath, and the wall of Jabneh, and the wall of Ashdod,
and built cities about Ashdod, and among the Philistines.

26:7 And God helped him against the Philistines, and against the
Arabians that dwelt in Gurbaal, and the Mehunims.

26:8 And the Ammonites gave gifts to Uzziah: and his name spread
abroad even to the entering in of Egypt; for he strengthened himself
exceedingly.

26:9 Moreover Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem at the corner gate, and
at the valley gate, and at the turning of the wall, and fortified
them.

26:10 Also he built towers in the desert, and digged many wells: for
he had much cattle, both in the low country, and in the plains:
husbandmen also, and vine dressers in the mountains, and in Carmel:
for he loved husbandry.

26:11 Moreover Uzziah had an host of fighting men, that went out to
war by bands, according to the number of their account by the hand of
Jeiel the scribe and Maaseiah the ruler, under the hand of Hananiah,
one of the king's captains.

26:12 The whole number of the chief of the fathers of the mighty men
of valour were two thousand and six hundred.

26:13 And under their hand was an army, three hundred thousand and
seven thousand and five hundred, that made war with mighty power, to
help the king against the enemy.

26:14 And Uzziah prepared for them throughout all the host shields,
and spears, and helmets, and habergeons, and bows, and slings to cast
stones.

26:15 And he made in Jerusalem engines, invented by cunning men, to be
on the towers and upon the bulwarks, to shoot arrows and great stones
withal.

And his name spread far abroad; for he was marvellously helped, till
he was strong.

26:16 But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his
destruction: for he transgressed against the LORD his God, and went
into the temple of the LORD to burn incense upon the altar of incense.

26:17 And Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him fourscore
priests of the LORD, that were valiant men: 26:18 And they withstood
Uzziah the king, and said unto him, It appertaineth not unto thee,
Uzziah, to burn incense unto the LORD, but to the priests the sons of
Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense: go out of the sanctuary;
for thou hast trespassed; neither shall it be for thine honour from
the LORD God.

26:19 Then Uzziah was wroth, and had a censer in his hand to burn
incense: and while he was wroth with the priests, the leprosy even
rose up in his forehead before the priests in the house of the LORD,
from beside the incense altar.

26:20 And Azariah the chief priest, and all the priests, looked upon
him, and, behold, he was leprous in his forehead, and they thrust him
out from thence; yea, himself hasted also to go out, because the LORD
had smitten him.

26:21 And Uzziah the king was a leper unto the day of his death, and
dwelt in a several house, being a leper; for he was cut off from the
house of the LORD: and Jotham his son was over the king's house,
judging the people of the land.

26:22 Now the rest of the acts of Uzziah, first and last, did Isaiah
the prophet, the son of Amoz, write.

26:23 So Uzziah slept with his fathers, and they buried him with his
fathers in the field of the burial which belonged to the kings; for
they said, He is a leper: and Jotham his son reigned in his stead.

27:1 Jotham was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and
he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was
Jerushah, the daughter of Zadok.

27:2 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD,
according to all that his father Uzziah did: howbeit he entered not
into the temple of the LORD. And the people did yet corruptly.

27:3 He built the high gate of the house of the LORD, and on the wall
of Ophel he built much.

27:4 Moreover he built cities in the mountains of Judah, and in the
forests he built castles and towers.

27:5 He fought also with the king of the Ammonites, and prevailed
against them. And the children of Ammon gave him the same year an
hundred talents of silver, and ten thousand measures of wheat, and ten
thousand of barley. So much did the children of Ammon pay unto him,
both the second year, and the third.

27:6 So Jotham became mighty, because he prepared his ways before the
LORD his God.

27:7 Now the rest of the acts of Jotham, and all his wars, and his
ways, lo, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and
Judah.

27:8 He was five and twenty years old when he began to reign, and
reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem.

27:9 And Jotham slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the
city of David: and Ahaz his son reigned in his stead.

28:1 Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned
sixteen years in Jerusalem: but he did not that which was right in the
sight of the LORD, like David his father: 28:2 For he walked in the
ways of the kings of Israel, and made also molten images for Baalim.

28:3 Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and
burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen
whom the LORD had cast out before the children of Israel.

28:4 He sacrificed also and burnt incense in the high places, and on
the hills, and under every green tree.

28:5 Wherefore the LORD his God delivered him into the hand of the
king of Syria; and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude
of them captives, and brought them to Damascus. And he was also
delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a
great slaughter.

28:6 For Pekah the son of Remaliah slew in Judah an hundred and twenty
thousand in one day, which were all valiant men; because they had
forsaken the LORD God of their fathers.

28:7 And Zichri, a mighty man of Ephraim, slew Maaseiah the king's
son, and Azrikam the governor of the house, and Elkanah that was next
to the king.

28:8 And the children of Israel carried away captive of their brethren
two hundred thousand, women, sons, and daughters, and took also away
much spoil from them, and brought the spoil to Samaria.

28:9 But a prophet of the LORD was there, whose name was Oded: and he
went out before the host that came to Samaria, and said unto them,
Behold, because the LORD God of your fathers was wroth with Judah, he
hath delivered them into your hand, and ye have slain them in a rage
that reacheth up unto heaven.

28:10 And now ye purpose to keep under the children of Judah and
Jerusalem for bondmen and bondwomen unto you: but are there not with
you, even with you, sins against the LORD your God?  28:11 Now hear me
therefore, and deliver the captives again, which ye have taken captive
of your brethren: for the fierce wrath of the LORD is upon you.

28:12 Then certain of the heads of the children of Ephraim, Azariah
the son of Johanan, Berechiah the son of Meshillemoth, and Jehizkiah
the son of Shallum, and Amasa the son of Hadlai, stood up against them
that came from the war, 28:13 And said unto them, Ye shall not bring
in the captives hither: for whereas we have offended against the LORD
already, ye intend to add more to our sins and to our trespass: for
our trespass is great, and there is fierce wrath against Israel.

28:14 So the armed men left the captives and the spoil before the
princes and all the congregation.

28:15 And the men which were expressed by name rose up, and took the
captives, and with the spoil clothed all that were naked among them,
and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave them to eat and to drink,
and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them upon asses, and
brought them to Jericho, the city of palm trees, to their brethren:
then they returned to Samaria.

28:16 At that time did king Ahaz send unto the kings of Assyria to
help him.

28:17 For again the Edomites had come and smitten Judah, and carried
away captives.

28:18 The Philistines also had invaded the cities of the low country,
and of the south of Judah, and had taken Bethshemesh, and Ajalon, and
Gederoth, and Shocho with the villages thereof, and Timnah with the
villages thereof, Gimzo also and the villages thereof: and they dwelt
there.

28:19 For the LORD brought Judah low because of Ahaz king of Israel;
for he made Judah naked, and transgressed sore against the LORD.

28:20 And Tilgathpilneser king of Assyria came unto him, and
distressed him, but strengthened him not.

28:21 For Ahaz took away a portion out of the house of the LORD, and
out of the house of the king, and of the princes, and gave it unto the
king of Assyria: but he helped him not.

28:22 And in the time of his distress did he trespass yet more against
the LORD: this is that king Ahaz.

28:23 For he sacrificed unto the gods of Damascus, which smote him:
and he said, Because the gods of the kings of Syria help them,
therefore will I sacrifice to them, that they may help me. But they
were the ruin of him, and of all Israel.

28:24 And Ahaz gathered together the vessels of the house of God, and
cut in pieces the vessels of the house of God, and shut up the doors
of the house of the LORD, and he made him altars in every corner of
Jerusalem.

28:25 And in every several city of Judah he made high places to burn
incense unto other gods, and provoked to anger the LORD God of his
fathers.

28:26 Now the rest of his acts and of all his ways, first and last,
behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.

28:27 And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the
city, even in Jerusalem: but they brought him not into the sepulchres
of the kings of Israel: and Hezekiah his son reigned in his stead.

29:1 Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old,
and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem. And his mother's
name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah.

29:2 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD,
according to all that David his father had done.

29:3 He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the
doors of the house of the LORD, and repaired them.

29:4 And he brought in the priests and the Levites, and gathered them
together into the east street, 29:5 And said unto them, Hear me, ye
Levites, sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the LORD
God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy
place.

29:6 For our fathers have trespassed, and done that which was evil in
the eyes of the LORD our God, and have forsaken him, and have turned
away their faces from the habitation of the LORD, and turned their
backs.

29:7 Also they have shut up the doors of the porch, and put out the
lamps, and have not burned incense nor offered burnt offerings in the
holy place unto the God of Israel.

29:8 Wherefore the wrath of the LORD was upon Judah and Jerusalem, and
he hath delivered them to trouble, to astonishment, and to hissing, as
ye see with your eyes.

29:9 For, lo, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and
our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this.

29:10 Now it is in mine heart to make a covenant with the LORD God of
Israel, that his fierce wrath may turn away from us.

29:11 My sons, be not now negligent: for the LORD hath chosen you to
stand before him, to serve him, and that ye should minister unto him,
and burn incense.

29:12 Then the Levites arose, Mahath the son of Amasai, and Joel the
son of Azariah, of the sons of the Kohathites: and of the sons of
Merari, Kish the son of Abdi, and Azariah the son of Jehalelel: and of
the Gershonites; Joah the son of Zimmah, and Eden the son of Joah:
29:13 And of the sons of Elizaphan; Shimri, and Jeiel: and of the sons
of Asaph; Zechariah, and Mattaniah: 29:14 And of the sons of Heman;
Jehiel, and Shimei: and of the sons of Jeduthun; Shemaiah, and Uzziel.

29:15 And they gathered their brethren, and sanctified themselves, and
came, according to the commandment of the king, by the words of the
LORD, to cleanse the house of the LORD.

29:16 And the priests went into the inner part of the house of the
LORD, to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they
found in the temple of the LORD into the court of the house of the
LORD. And the Levites took it, to carry it out abroad into the brook
Kidron.

29:17 Now they began on the first day of the first month to sanctify,
and on the eighth day of the month came they to the porch of the LORD:
so they sanctified the house of the LORD in eight days; and in the
sixteenth day of the first month they made an end.

29:18 Then they went in to Hezekiah the king, and said, We have
cleansed all the house of the LORD, and the altar of burnt offering,
with all the vessels thereof, and the shewbread table, with all the
vessels thereof.

29:19 Moreover all the vessels, which king Ahaz in his reign did cast
away in his transgression, have we prepared and sanctified, and,
behold, they are before the altar of the LORD.

29:20 Then Hezekiah the king rose early, and gathered the rulers of
the city, and went up to the house of the LORD.

29:21 And they brought seven bullocks, and seven rams, and seven
lambs, and seven he goats, for a sin offering for the kingdom, and for
the sanctuary, and for Judah. And he commanded the priests the sons of
Aaron to offer them on the altar of the LORD.

29:22 So they killed the bullocks, and the priests received the blood,
and sprinkled it on the altar: likewise, when they had killed the
rams, they sprinkled the blood upon the altar: they killed also the
lambs, and they sprinkled the blood upon the altar.

29:23 And they brought forth the he goats for the sin offering before
the king and the congregation; and they laid their hands upon them:
29:24 And the priests killed them, and they made reconciliation with
their blood upon the altar, to make an atonement for all Israel: for
the king commanded that the burnt offering and the sin offering should
be made for all Israel.

29:25 And he set the Levites in the house of the LORD with cymbals,
with psalteries, and with harps, according to the commandment of
David, and of Gad the king's seer, and Nathan the prophet: for so was
the commandment of the LORD by his prophets.

29:26 And the Levites stood with the instruments of David, and the
priests with the trumpets.

29:27 And Hezekiah commanded to offer the burnt offering upon the
altar.

And when the burnt offering began, the song of the LORD began also
with the trumpets, and with the instruments ordained by David king of
Israel.

29:28 And all the congregation worshipped, and the singers sang, and
the trumpeters sounded: and all this continued until the burnt
offering was finished.

29:29 And when they had made an end of offering, the king and all that
were present with him bowed themselves, and worshipped.

29:30 Moreover Hezekiah the king and the princes commanded the Levites
to sing praise unto the LORD with the words of David, and of Asaph the
seer. And they sang praises with gladness, and they bowed their heads
and worshipped.

29:31 Then Hezekiah answered and said, Now ye have consecrated
yourselves unto the LORD, come near and bring sacrifices and thank
offerings into the house of the LORD. And the congregation brought in
sacrifices and thank offerings; and as many as were of a free heart
burnt offerings.

29:32 And the number of the burnt offerings, which the congregation
brought, was threescore and ten bullocks, an hundred rams, and two
hundred lambs: all these were for a burnt offering to the LORD.

29:33 And the consecrated things were six hundred oxen and three
thousand sheep.

29:34 But the priests were too few, so that they could not flay all
the burnt offerings: wherefore their brethren the Levites did help
them, till the work was ended, and until the other priests had
sanctified themselves: for the Levites were more upright in heart to
sanctify themselves than the priests.

29:35 And also the burnt offerings were in abundance, with the fat of
the peace offerings, and the drink offerings for every burnt offering.
So the service of the house of the LORD was set in order.

29:36 And Hezekiah rejoiced, and all the people, that God had prepared
the people: for the thing was done suddenly.

30:1 And Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also
to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the
LORD at Jerusalem, to keep the passover unto the LORD God of Israel.

30:2 For the king had taken counsel, and his princes, and all the
congregation in Jerusalem, to keep the passover in the second month.

30:3 For they could not keep it at that time, because the priests had
not sanctified themselves sufficiently, neither had the people
gathered themselves together to Jerusalem.

30:4 And the thing pleased the king and all the congregation.

30:5 So they established a decree to make proclamation throughout all
Israel, from Beersheba even to Dan, that they should come to keep the
passover unto the LORD God of Israel at Jerusalem: for they had not
done it of a long time in such sort as it was written.

30:6 So the posts went with the letters from the king and his princes
throughout all Israel and Judah, and according to the commandment of
the king, saying, Ye children of Israel, turn again unto the LORD God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and he will return to the remnant of
you, that are escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria.

30:7 And be not ye like your fathers, and like your brethren, which
trespassed against the LORD God of their fathers, who therefore gave
them up to desolation, as ye see.

30:8 Now be ye not stiffnecked, as your fathers were, but yield
yourselves unto the LORD, and enter into his sanctuary, which he hath
sanctified for ever: and serve the LORD your God, that the fierceness
of his wrath may turn away from you.

30:9 For if ye turn again unto the LORD, your brethren and your
children shall find compassion before them that lead them captive, so
that they shall come again into this land: for the LORD your God is
gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if ye
return unto him.

30:10 So the posts passed from city to city through the country of
Ephraim and Manasseh even unto Zebulun: but they laughed them to
scorn, and mocked them.

30:11 Nevertheless divers of Asher and Manasseh and of Zebulun humbled
themselves, and came to Jerusalem.

30:12 Also in Judah the hand of God was to give them one heart to do
the commandment of the king and of the princes, by the word of the
LORD.

30:13 And there assembled at Jerusalem much people to keep the feast
of unleavened bread in the second month, a very great congregation.

30:14 And they arose and took away the altars that were in Jerusalem,
and all the altars for incense took they away, and cast them into the
brook Kidron.

30:15 Then they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the
second month: and the priests and the Levites were ashamed, and
sanctified themselves, and brought in the burnt offerings into the
house of the LORD.

30:16 And they stood in their place after their manner, according to
the law of Moses the man of God: the priests sprinkled the blood,
which they received of the hand of the Levites.

30:17 For there were many in the congregation that were not
sanctified: therefore the Levites had the charge of the killing of the
passovers for every one that was not clean, to sanctify them unto the
LORD.

30:18 For a multitude of the people, even many of Ephraim, and
Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet did
they eat the passover otherwise than it was written. But Hezekiah
prayed for them, saying, The good LORD pardon every one 30:19 That
prepareth his heart to seek God, the LORD God of his fathers, though
he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary.

30:20 And the LORD hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people.

30:21 And the children of Israel that were present at Jerusalem kept
the feast of unleavened bread seven days with great gladness: and the
Levites and the priests praised the LORD day by day, singing with loud
instruments unto the LORD.

30:22 And Hezekiah spake comfortably unto all the Levites that taught
the good knowledge of the LORD: and they did eat throughout the feast
seven days, offering peace offerings, and making confession to the
LORD God of their fathers.

30:23 And the whole assembly took counsel to keep other seven days:
and they kept other seven days with gladness.

30:24 For Hezekiah king of Judah did give to the congregation a
thousand bullocks and seven thousand sheep; and the princes gave to
the congregation a thousand bullocks and ten thousand sheep: and a
great number of priests sanctified themselves.

30:25 And all the congregation of Judah, with the priests and the
Levites, and all the congregation that came out of Israel, and the
strangers that came out of the land of Israel, and that dwelt in
Judah, rejoiced.

30:26 So there was great joy in Jerusalem: for since the time of
Solomon the son of David king of Israel there was not the like in
Jerusalem.

30:27 Then the priests the Levites arose and blessed the people: and
their voice was heard, and their prayer came up to his holy dwelling
place, even unto heaven.

31:1 Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went
out to the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces, and cut
down the groves, and threw down the high places and the altars out of
all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had
utterly destroyed them all. Then all the children of Israel returned,
every man to his possession, into their own cities.

31:2 And Hezekiah appointed the courses of the priests and the Levites
after their courses, every man according to his service, the priests
and Levites for burnt offerings and for peace offerings, to minister,
and to give thanks, and to praise in the gates of the tents of the
LORD.

31:3 He appointed also the king's portion of his substance for the
burnt offerings, to wit, for the morning and evening burnt offerings,
and the burnt offerings for the sabbaths, and for the new moons, and
for the set feasts, as it is written in the law of the LORD.

31:4 Moreover he commanded the people that dwelt in Jerusalem to give
the portion of the priests and the Levites, that they might be
encouraged in the law of the LORD.

31:5 And as soon as the commandment came abroad, the children of
Israel brought in abundance the firstfruits of corn, wine, and oil,
and honey, and of all the increase of the field; and the tithe of all
things brought they in abundantly.

31:6 And concerning the children of Israel and Judah, that dwelt in
the cities of Judah, they also brought in the tithe of oxen and sheep,
and the tithe of holy things which were consecrated unto the LORD
their God, and laid them by heaps.

31:7 In the third month they began to lay the foundation of the heaps,
and finished them in the seventh month.

31:8 And when Hezekiah and the princes came and saw the heaps, they
blessed the LORD, and his people Israel.

31:9 Then Hezekiah questioned with the priests and the Levites
concerning the heaps.

31:10 And Azariah the chief priest of the house of Zadok answered him,
and said, Since the people began to bring the offerings into the house
of the LORD, we have had enough to eat, and have left plenty: for the
LORD hath blessed his people; and that which is left is this great
store.

31:11 Then Hezekiah commanded to prepare chambers in the house of the
LORD; and they prepared them, 31:12 And brought in the offerings and
the tithes and the dedicated things faithfully: over which Cononiah
the Levite was ruler, and Shimei his brother was the next.

31:13 And Jehiel, and Azaziah, and Nahath, and Asahel, and Jerimoth,
and Jozabad, and Eliel, and Ismachiah, and Mahath, and Benaiah, were
overseers under the hand of Cononiah and Shimei his brother, at the
commandment of Hezekiah the king, and Azariah the ruler of the house
of God.

31:14 And Kore the son of Imnah the Levite, the porter toward the
east, was over the freewill offerings of God, to distribute the
oblations of the LORD, and the most holy things.

31:15 And next him were Eden, and Miniamin, and Jeshua, and Shemaiah,
Amariah, and Shecaniah, in the cities of the priests, in their set
office, to give to their brethren by courses, as well to the great as
to the small: 31:16 Beside their genealogy of males, from three years
old and upward, even unto every one that entereth into the house of
the LORD, his daily portion for their service in their charges
according to their courses; 31:17 Both to the genealogy of the priests
by the house of their fathers, and the Levites from twenty years old
and upward, in their charges by their courses; 31:18 And to the
genealogy of all their little ones, their wives, and their sons, and
their daughters, through all the congregation: for in their set office
they sanctified themselves in holiness: 31:19 Also of the sons of
Aaron the priests, which were in the fields of the suburbs of their
cities, in every several city, the men that were expressed by name, to
give portions to all the males among the priests, and to all that were
reckoned by genealogies among the Levites.

31:20 And thus did Hezekiah throughout all Judah, and wrought that
which was good and right and truth before the LORD his God.

31:21 And in every work that he began in the service of the house of
God, and in the law, and in the commandments, to seek his God, he did
it with all his heart, and prospered.

32:1 After these things, and the establishment thereof, Sennacherib
king of Assyria came, and entered into Judah, and encamped against the
fenced cities, and thought to win them for himself.

32:2 And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come, and that he was
purposed to fight against Jerusalem, 32:3 He took counsel with his
princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains which
were without the city: and they did help him.

32:4 So there was gathered much people together, who stopped all the
fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land,
saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water?
32:5 Also he strengthened himself, and built up all the wall that was
broken, and raised it up to the towers, and another wall without, and
repaired Millo in the city of David, and made darts and shields in
abundance.

32:6 And he set captains of war over the people, and gathered them
together to him in the street of the gate of the city, and spake
comfortably to them, saying, 32:7 Be strong and courageous, be not
afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude
that is with him: for there be more with us than with him: 32:8 With
him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the LORD our God to help us,
and to fight our battles. And the people rested themselves upon the
words of Hezekiah king of Judah.

32:9 After this did Sennacherib king of Assyria send his servants to
Jerusalem, (but he himself laid siege against Lachish, and all his
power with him,) unto Hezekiah king of Judah, and unto all Judah that
were at Jerusalem, saying, 32:10 Thus saith Sennacherib king of
Assyria, Whereon do ye trust, that ye abide in the siege in Jerusalem?
32:11 Doth not Hezekiah persuade you to give over yourselves to die by
famine and by thirst, saying, The LORD our God shall deliver us out of
the hand of the king of Assyria?  32:12 Hath not the same Hezekiah
taken away his high places and his altars, and commanded Judah and
Jerusalem, saying, Ye shall worship before one altar, and burn incense
upon it?  32:13 Know ye not what I and my fathers have done unto all
the people of other lands? were the gods of the nations of those lands
any ways able to deliver their lands out of mine hand?  32:14 Who was
there among all the gods of those nations that my fathers utterly
destroyed, that could deliver his people out of mine hand, that your
God should be able to deliver you out of mine hand?  32:15 Now
therefore let not Hezekiah deceive you, nor persuade you on this
manner, neither yet believe him: for no god of any nation or kingdom
was able to deliver his people out of mine hand, and out of the hand
of my fathers: how much less shall your God deliver you out of mine
hand?  32:16 And his servants spake yet more against the LORD God, and
against his servant Hezekiah.

32:17 He wrote also letters to rail on the LORD God of Israel, and to
speak against him, saying, As the gods of the nations of other lands
have not delivered their people out of mine hand, so shall not the God
of Hezekiah deliver his people out of mine hand.

32:18 Then they cried with a loud voice in the Jews' speech unto the
people of Jerusalem that were on the wall, to affright them, and to
trouble them; that they might take the city.

32:19 And they spake against the God of Jerusalem, as against the gods
of the people of the earth, which were the work of the hands of man.

32:20 And for this cause Hezekiah the king, and the prophet Isaiah the
son of Amoz, prayed and cried to heaven.

32:21 And the LORD sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of
valour, and the leaders and captains in the camp of the king of
Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when
he was come into the house of his god, they that came forth of his own
bowels slew him there with the sword.

32:22 Thus the LORD saved Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem
from the hand of Sennacherib the king of Assyria, and from the hand of
all other, and guided them on every side.

32:23 And many brought gifts unto the LORD to Jerusalem, and presents
to Hezekiah king of Judah: so that he was magnified in the sight of
all nations from thenceforth.

32:24 In those days Hezekiah was sick to the death, and prayed unto
the LORD: and he spake unto him, and he gave him a sign.

32:25 But Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done
unto him; for his heart was lifted up: therefore there was wrath upon
him, and upon Judah and Jerusalem.

32:26 Notwithstanding Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his
heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of
the LORD came not upon them in the days of Hezekiah.

32:27 And Hezekiah had exceeding much riches and honour: and he made
himself treasuries for silver, and for gold, and for precious stones,
and for spices, and for shields, and for all manner of pleasant
jewels; 32:28 Storehouses also for the increase of corn, and wine, and
oil; and stalls for all manner of beasts, and cotes for flocks.

32:29 Moreover he provided him cities, and possessions of flocks and
herds in abundance: for God had given him substance very much.

32:30 This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon,
and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David.
And Hezekiah prospered in all his works.

32:31 Howbeit in the business of the ambassadors of the princes of
Babylon, who sent unto him to enquire of the wonder that was done in
the land, God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in
his heart.

32:32 Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and his goodness, behold,
they are written in the vision of Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz,
and in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.

32:33 And Hezekiah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the
chiefest of the sepulchres of the sons of David: and all Judah and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem did him honour at his death. And Manasseh his
son reigned in his stead.

33:1 Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he
reigned fifty and five years in Jerusalem: 33:2 But did that which was
evil in the sight of the LORD, like unto the abominations of the
heathen, whom the LORD had cast out before the children of Israel.

33:3 For he built again the high places which Hezekiah his father had
broken down, and he reared up altars for Baalim, and made groves, and
worshipped all the host of heaven, and served them.

33:4 Also he built altars in the house of the LORD, whereof the LORD
had said, In Jerusalem shall my name be for ever.

33:5 And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts
of the house of the LORD.

33:6 And he caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley
of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times, and used enchantments,
and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with
wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him
to anger.

33:7 And he set a carved image, the idol which he had made, in the
house of God, of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son,
In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen before all the
tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever: 33:8 Neither will I any
more remove the foot of Israel from out of the land which I have
appointed for your fathers; so that they will take heed to do all that
I have commanded them, according to the whole law and the statutes and
the ordinances by the hand of Moses.

33:9 So Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err,
and to do worse than the heathen, whom the LORD had destroyed before
the children of Israel.

33:10 And the LORD spake to Manasseh, and to his people: but they
would not hearken.

33:11 Wherefore the LORD brought upon them the captains of the host of
the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound
him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon.

33:12 And when he was in affliction, he besought the LORD his God, and
humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, 33:13 And
prayed unto him: and he was intreated of him, and heard his
supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom.
Then Manasseh knew that the LORD he was God.

33:14 Now after this he built a wall without the city of David, on the
west side of Gihon, in the valley, even to the entering in at the fish
gate, and compassed about Ophel, and raised it up a very great height,
and put captains of war in all the fenced cities of Judah.

33:15 And he took away the strange gods, and the idol out of the house
of the LORD, and all the altars that he had built in the mount of the
house of the LORD, and in Jerusalem, and cast them out of the city.

33:16 And he repaired the altar of the LORD, and sacrificed thereon
peace offerings and thank offerings, and commanded Judah to serve the
LORD God of Israel.

33:17 Nevertheless the people did sacrifice still in the high places,
yet unto the LORD their God only.

33:18 Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and his prayer unto his
God, and the words of the seers that spake to him in the name of the
LORD God of Israel, behold, they are written in the book of the kings
of Israel.

33:19 His prayer also, and how God was intreated of him, and all his
sins, and his trespass, and the places wherein he built high places,
and set up groves and graven images, before he was humbled: behold,
they are written among the sayings of the seers.

33:20 So Manasseh slept with his fathers, and they buried him in his
own house: and Amon his son reigned in his stead.

33:21 Amon was two and twenty years old when he began to reign, and
reigned two years in Jerusalem.

33:22 But he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, as did
Manasseh his father: for Amon sacrificed unto all the carved images
which Manasseh his father had made, and served them; 33:23 And humbled
not himself before the LORD, as Manasseh his father had humbled
himself; but Amon trespassed more and more.

33:24 And his servants conspired against him, and slew him in his own
house.

33:25 But the people of the land slew all them that had conspired
against king Amon; and the people of the land made Josiah his son king
in his stead.

34:1 Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned
in Jerusalem one and thirty years.

34:2 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, and
walked in the ways of David his father, and declined neither to the
right hand, nor to the left.

34:3 For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he
began to seek after the God of David his father: and in the twelfth
year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and
the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images.

34:4 And they brake down the altars of Baalim in his presence; and the
images, that were on high above them, he cut down; and the groves, and
the carved images, and the molten images, he brake in pieces, and made
dust of them, and strowed it upon the graves of them that had
sacrificed unto them.

34:5 And he burnt the bones of the priests upon their altars, and
cleansed Judah and Jerusalem.

34:6 And so did he in the cities of Manasseh, and Ephraim, and Simeon,
even unto Naphtali, with their mattocks round about.

34:7 And when he had broken down the altars and the groves, and had
beaten the graven images into powder, and cut down all the idols
throughout all the land of Israel, he returned to Jerusalem.

34:8 Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he had purged the
land, and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah
the governor of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz the recorder, to
repair the house of the LORD his God.

34:9 And when they came to Hilkiah the high priest, they delivered the
money that was brought into the house of God, which the Levites that
kept the doors had gathered of the hand of Manasseh and Ephraim, and
of all the remnant of Israel, and of all Judah and Benjamin; and they
returned to Jerusalem.

34:10 And they put it in the hand of the workmen that had the
oversight of the house of the LORD, and they gave it to the workmen
that wrought in the house of the LORD, to repair and amend the house:
34:11 Even to the artificers and builders gave they it, to buy hewn
stone, and timber for couplings, and to floor the houses which the
kings of Judah had destroyed.

34:12 And the men did the work faithfully: and the overseers of them
were Jahath and Obadiah, the Levites, of the sons of Merari; and
Zechariah and Meshullam, of the sons of the Kohathites, to set it
forward; and other of the Levites, all that could skill of instruments
of musick.

34:13 Also they were over the bearers of burdens, and were overseers
of all that wrought the work in any manner of service: and of the
Levites there were scribes, and officers, and porters.

34:14 And when they brought out the money that was brought into the
house of the LORD, Hilkiah the priest found a book of the law of the
LORD given by Moses.

34:15 And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have
found the book of the law in the house of the LORD. And Hilkiah
delivered the book to Shaphan.

34:16 And Shaphan carried the book to the king, and brought the king
word back again, saying, All that was committed to thy servants, they
do it.

34:17 And they have gathered together the money that was found in the
house of the LORD, and have delivered it into the hand of the
overseers, and to the hand of the workmen.

34:18 Then Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the
priest hath given me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king.

34:19 And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the
law, that he rent his clothes.

34:20 And the king commanded Hilkiah, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan,
and Abdon the son of Micah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah a
servant of the king's, saying, 34:21 Go, enquire of the LORD for me,
and for them that are left in Israel and in Judah, concerning the
words of the book that is found: for great is the wrath of the LORD
that is poured out upon us, because our fathers have not kept the word
of the LORD, to do after all that is written in this book.

34:22 And Hilkiah, and they that the king had appointed, went to
Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvath, the son
of Hasrah, keeper of the wardrobe; (now she dwelt in Jerusalem in the
college:) and they spake to her to that effect.

34:23 And she answered them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Tell
ye the man that sent you to me, 34:24 Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I
will bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof,
even all the curses that are written in the book which they have read
before the king of Judah: 34:25 Because they have forsaken me, and
have burned incense unto other gods, that they might provoke me to
anger with all the works of their hands; therefore my wrath shall be
poured out upon this place, and shall not be quenched.

34:26 And as for the king of Judah, who sent you to enquire of the
LORD, so shall ye say unto him, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel
concerning the words which thou hast heard; 34:27 Because thine heart
was tender, and thou didst humble thyself before God, when thou
heardest his words against this place, and against the inhabitants
thereof, and humbledst thyself before me, and didst rend thy clothes,
and weep before me; I have even heard thee also, saith the LORD.

34:28 Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be
gathered to thy grave in peace, neither shall thine eyes see all the
evil that I will bring upon this place, and upon the inhabitants of
the same. So they brought the king word again.

34:29 Then the king sent and gathered together all the elders of Judah
and Jerusalem.

34:30 And the king went up into the house of the LORD, and all the men
of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests, and the
Levites, and all the people, great and small: and he read in their
ears all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the
house of the LORD.

34:31 And the king stood in his place, and made a covenant before the
LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep his commandments, and his
testimonies, and his statutes, with all his heart, and with all his
soul, to perform the words of the covenant which are written in this
book.

34:32 And he caused all that were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to
stand to it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the
covenant of God, the God of their fathers.

34:33 And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the
countries that pertained to the children of Israel, and made all that
were present in Israel to serve, even to serve the LORD their God. And
all his days they departed not from following the LORD, the God of
their fathers.

35:1 Moreover Josiah kept a passover unto the LORD in Jerusalem: and
they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month.

35:2 And he set the priests in their charges, and encouraged them to
the service of the house of the LORD, 35:3 And said unto the Levites
that taught all Israel, which were holy unto the LORD, Put the holy
ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel did
build; it shall not be a burden upon your shoulders: serve now the
LORD your God, and his people Israel, 35:4 And prepare yourselves by
the houses of your fathers, after your courses, according to the
writing of David king of Israel, and according to the writing of
Solomon his son.

35:5 And stand in the holy place according to the divisions of the
families of the fathers of your brethren the people, and after the
division of the families of the Levites.

35:6 So kill the passover, and sanctify yourselves, and prepare your
brethren, that they may do according to the word of the LORD by the
hand of Moses.

35:7 And Josiah gave to the people, of the flock, lambs and kids, all
for the passover offerings, for all that were present, to the number
of thirty thousand, and three thousand bullocks: these were of the
king's substance.

35:8 And his princes gave willingly unto the people, to the priests,
and to the Levites: Hilkiah and Zechariah and Jehiel, rulers of the
house of God, gave unto the priests for the passover offerings two
thousand and six hundred small cattle and three hundred oxen.

35:9 Conaniah also, and Shemaiah and Nethaneel, his brethren, and
Hashabiah and Jeiel and Jozabad, chief of the Levites, gave unto the
Levites for passover offerings five thousand small cattle, and five
hundred oxen.

35:10 So the service was prepared, and the priests stood in their
place, and the Levites in their courses, according to the king's
commandment.

35:11 And they killed the passover, and the priests sprinkled the
blood from their hands, and the Levites flayed them.

35:12 And they removed the burnt offerings, that they might give
according to the divisions of the families of the people, to offer
unto the LORD, as it is written in the book of Moses. And so did they
with the oxen.

35:13 And they roasted the passover with fire according to the
ordinance: but the other holy offerings sod they in pots, and in
caldrons, and in pans, and divided them speedily among all the people.

35:14 And afterward they made ready for themselves, and for the
priests: because the priests the sons of Aaron were busied in offering
of burnt offerings and the fat until night; therefore the Levites
prepared for themselves, and for the priests the sons of Aaron.

35:15 And the singers the sons of Asaph were in their place, according
to the commandment of David, and Asaph, and Heman, and Jeduthun the
king's seer; and the porters waited at every gate; they might not
depart from their service; for their brethren the Levites prepared for
them.

35:16 So all the service of the LORD was prepared the same day, to
keep the passover, and to offer burnt offerings upon the altar of the
LORD, according to the commandment of king Josiah.

35:17 And the children of Israel that were present kept the passover
at that time, and the feast of unleavened bread seven days.

35:18 And there was no passover like to that kept in Israel from the
days of Samuel the prophet; neither did all the kings of Israel keep
such a passover as Josiah kept, and the priests, and the Levites, and
all Judah and Israel that were present, and the inhabitants of
Jerusalem.

35:19 In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this passover
kept.

35:20 After all this, when Josiah had prepared the temple, Necho king
of Egypt came up to fight against Charchemish by Euphrates: and Josiah
went out against him.

35:21 But he sent ambassadors to him, saying, What have I to do with
thee, thou king of Judah? I come not against thee this day, but
against the house wherewith I have war: for God commanded me to make
haste: forbear thee from meddling with God, who is with me, that he
destroy thee not.

35:22 Nevertheless Josiah would not turn his face from him, but
disguised himself, that he might fight with him, and hearkened not
unto the words of Necho from the mouth of God, and came to fight in
the valley of Megiddo.

35:23 And the archers shot at king Josiah; and the king said to his
servants, Have me away; for I am sore wounded.

35:24 His servants therefore took him out of that chariot, and put him
in the second chariot that he had; and they brought him to Jerusalem,
and he died, and was buried in one of the sepulchres of his fathers.
And all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.

35:25 And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and
the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day,
and made them an ordinance in Israel: and, behold, they are written in
the lamentations.

35:26 Now the rest of the acts of Josiah, and his goodness, according
to that which was written in the law of the LORD, 35:27 And his deeds,
first and last, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of
Israel and Judah.

36:1 Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and
made him king in his father's stead in Jerusalem.

36:2 Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign,
and he reigned three months in Jerusalem.

36:3 And the king of Egypt put him down at Jerusalem, and condemned
the land in an hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.

36:4 And the king of Egypt made Eliakim his brother king over Judah
and Jerusalem, and turned his name to Jehoiakim. And Necho took
Jehoahaz his brother, and carried him to Egypt.

36:5 Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign,
and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem: and he did that which was
evil in the sight of the LORD his God.

36:6 Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and bound him
in fetters, to carry him to Babylon.

36:7 Nebuchadnezzar also carried of the vessels of the house of the
LORD to Babylon, and put them in his temple at Babylon.

36:8 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and his abominations which
he did, and that which was found in him, behold, they are written in
the book of the kings of Israel and Judah: and Jehoiachin his son
reigned in his stead.

36:9 Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he
reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that which
was evil in the sight of the LORD.

36:10 And when the year was expired, king Nebuchadnezzar sent, and
brought him to Babylon, with the goodly vessels of the house of the
LORD, and made Zedekiah his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem.

36:11 Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign,
and reigned eleven years in Jerusalem.

36:12 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD his God,
and humbled not himself before Jeremiah the prophet speaking from the
mouth of the LORD.

36:13 And he also rebelled against king Nebuchadnezzar, who had made
him swear by God: but he stiffened his neck, and hardened his heart
from turning unto the LORD God of Israel.

36:14 Moreover all the chief of the priests, and the people,
transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen; and
polluted the house of the LORD which he had hallowed in Jerusalem.

36:15 And the LORD God of their fathers sent to them by his
messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion
on his people, and on his dwelling place: 36:16 But they mocked the
messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets,
until the wrath of the LORD arose against his people, till there was
no remedy.

36:17 Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who
slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary,
and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man, or him that
stooped for age: he gave them all into his hand.

36:18 And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and
the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king,
and of his princes; all these he brought to Babylon.

36:19 And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of
Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed
all the goodly vessels thereof.

36:20 And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to
Babylon; where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign
of the kingdom of Persia: 36:21 To fulfil the word of the LORD by the
mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as
long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and
ten years.

36:22 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of
the LORD spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the
LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a
proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing,
saying, 36:23 Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the
earth hath the LORD God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to
build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among
you of all his people?  The LORD his God be with him, and let him go up.




Ezra


1:1 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of
the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred
up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation
throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, 1:2
Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me
all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an
house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

1:3 Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and
let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of
the LORD God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem.

1:4 And whosoever remaineth in any place where he sojourneth, let the
men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods,
and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God
that is in Jerusalem.

1:5 Then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and
the priests, and the Levites, with all them whose spirit God had
raised, to go up to build the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem.

1:6 And all they that were about them strengthened their hands with
vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, and with beasts, and with
precious things, beside all that was willingly offered.

1:7 Also Cyrus the king brought forth the vessels of the house of the
LORD, which Nebuchadnezzar had brought forth out of Jerusalem, and had
put them in the house of his gods; 1:8 Even those did Cyrus king of
Persia bring forth by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and
numbered them unto Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah.

1:9 And this is the number of them: thirty chargers of gold, a
thousand chargers of silver, nine and twenty knives, 1:10 Thirty
basons of gold, silver basons of a second sort four hundred and ten,
and other vessels a thousand.

1:11 All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand and four
hundred. All these did Sheshbazzar bring up with them of the captivity
that were brought up from Babylon unto Jerusalem.

2:1 Now these are the children of the province that went up out of the
captivity, of those which had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar
the king of Babylon had carried away unto Babylon, and came again unto
Jerusalem and Judah, every one unto his city; 2:2 Which came with
Zerubbabel: Jeshua, Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reelaiah, Mordecai, Bilshan,
Mizpar, Bigvai, Rehum, Baanah. The number of the men of the people of
Israel: 2:3 The children of Parosh, two thousand an hundred seventy
and two.

2:4 The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy and two.

2:5 The children of Arah, seven hundred seventy and five.

2:6 The children of Pahathmoab, of the children of Jeshua and Joab,
two thousand eight hundred and twelve.

2:7 The children of Elam, a thousand two hundred fifty and four.

2:8 The children of Zattu, nine hundred forty and five.

2:9 The children of Zaccai, seven hundred and threescore.

2:10 The children of Bani, six hundred forty and two.

2:11 The children of Bebai, six hundred twenty and three.

2:12 The children of Azgad, a thousand two hundred twenty and two.

2:13 The children of Adonikam, six hundred sixty and six.

2:14 The children of Bigvai, two thousand fifty and six.

2:15 The children of Adin, four hundred fifty and four.

2:16 The children of Ater of Hezekiah, ninety and eight.

2:17 The children of Bezai, three hundred twenty and three.

2:18 The children of Jorah, an hundred and twelve.

2:19 The children of Hashum, two hundred twenty and three.

2:20 The children of Gibbar, ninety and five.

2:21 The children of Bethlehem, an hundred twenty and three.

2:22 The men of Netophah, fifty and six.

2:23 The men of Anathoth, an hundred twenty and eight.

2:24 The children of Azmaveth, forty and two.

2:25 The children of Kirjatharim, Chephirah, and Beeroth, seven
hundred and forty and three.

2:26 The children of Ramah and Gaba, six hundred twenty and one.

2:27 The men of Michmas, an hundred twenty and two.

2:28 The men of Bethel and Ai, two hundred twenty and three.

2:29 The children of Nebo, fifty and two.

2:30 The children of Magbish, an hundred fifty and six.

2:31 The children of the other Elam, a thousand two hundred fifty and
four.

2:32 The children of Harim, three hundred and twenty.

2:33 The children of Lod, Hadid, and Ono, seven hundred twenty and
five.

2:34 The children of Jericho, three hundred forty and five.

2:35 The children of Senaah, three thousand and six hundred and
thirty.

2:36 The priests: the children of Jedaiah, of the house of Jeshua,
nine hundred seventy and three.

2:37 The children of Immer, a thousand fifty and two.

2:38 The children of Pashur, a thousand two hundred forty and seven.

2:39 The children of Harim, a thousand and seventeen.

2:40 The Levites: the children of Jeshua and Kadmiel, of the children
of Hodaviah, seventy and four.

2:41 The singers: the children of Asaph, an hundred twenty and eight.

2:42 The children of the porters: the children of Shallum, the
children of Ater, the children of Talmon, the children of Akkub, the
children of Hatita, the children of Shobai, in all an hundred thirty
and nine.

2:43 The Nethinims: the children of Ziha, the children of Hasupha, the
children of Tabbaoth, 2:44 The children of Keros, the children of
Siaha, the children of Padon, 2:45 The children of Lebanah, the
children of Hagabah, the children of Akkub, 2:46 The children of
Hagab, the children of Shalmai, the children of Hanan, 2:47 The
children of Giddel, the children of Gahar, the children of Reaiah,
2:48 The children of Rezin, the children of Nekoda, the children of
Gazzam, 2:49 The children of Uzza, the children of Paseah, the
children of Besai, 2:50 The children of Asnah, the children of
Mehunim, the children of Nephusim, 2:51 The children of Bakbuk, the
children of Hakupha, the children of Harhur, 2:52 The children of
Bazluth, the children of Mehida, the children of Harsha, 2:53 The
children of Barkos, the children of Sisera, the children of Thamah,
2:54 The children of Neziah, the children of Hatipha.

2:55 The children of Solomon's servants: the children of Sotai, the
children of Sophereth, the children of Peruda, 2:56 The children of
Jaalah, the children of Darkon, the children of Giddel, 2:57 The
children of Shephatiah, the children of Hattil, the children of
Pochereth of Zebaim, the children of Ami.

2:58 All the Nethinims, and the children of Solomon's servants, were
three hundred ninety and two.

2:59 And these were they which went up from Telmelah, Telharsa,
Cherub, Addan, and Immer: but they could not shew their father's
house, and their seed, whether they were of Israel: 2:60 The children
of Delaiah, the children of Tobiah, the children of Nekoda, six
hundred fifty and two.

2:61 And of the children of the priests: the children of Habaiah, the
children of Koz, the children of Barzillai; which took a wife of the
daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite, and was called after their name:
2:62 These sought their register among those that were reckoned by
genealogy, but they were not found: therefore were they, as polluted,
put from the priesthood.

2:63 And the Tirshatha said unto them, that they should not eat of the
most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and with
Thummim.

2:64 The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three
hundred and threescore, 2:65 Beside their servants and their maids, of
whom there were seven thousand three hundred thirty and seven: and
there were among them two hundred singing men and singing women.

2:66 Their horses were seven hundred thirty and six; their mules, two
hundred forty and five; 2:67 Their camels, four hundred thirty and
five; their asses, six thousand seven hundred and twenty.

2:68 And some of the chief of the fathers, when they came to the house
of the LORD which is at Jerusalem, offered freely for the house of God
to set it up in his place: 2:69 They gave after their ability unto the
treasure of the work threescore and one thousand drams of gold, and
five thousand pound of silver, and one hundred priests' garments.

2:70 So the priests, and the Levites, and some of the people, and the
singers, and the porters, and the Nethinims, dwelt in their cities,
and all Israel in their cities.

3:1 And when the seventh month was come, and the children of Israel
were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man
to Jerusalem.

3:2 Then stood up Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and his brethren the
priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and his brethren, and
builded the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings
thereon, as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God.

3:3 And they set the altar upon his bases; for fear was upon them
because of the people of those countries: and they offered burnt
offerings thereon unto the LORD, even burnt offerings morning and
evening.

3:4 They kept also the feast of tabernacles, as it is written, and
offered the daily burnt offerings by number, according to the custom,
as the duty of every day required; 3:5 And afterward offered the
continual burnt offering, both of the new moons, and of all the set
feasts of the LORD that were consecrated, and of every one that
willingly offered a freewill offering unto the LORD.

3:6 From the first day of the seventh month began they to offer burnt
offerings unto the LORD. But the foundation of the temple of the LORD
was not yet laid.

3:7 They gave money also unto the masons, and to the carpenters; and
meat, and drink, and oil, unto them of Zidon, and to them of Tyre, to
bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea of Joppa, according to the
grant that they had of Cyrus king of Persia.

3:8 Now in the second year of their coming unto the house of God at
Jerusalem, in the second month, began Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel,
and Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and the remnant of their brethren the
priests and the Levites, and all they that were come out of the
captivity unto Jerusalem; and appointed the Levites, from twenty years
old and upward, to set forward the work of the house of the LORD.

3:9 Then stood Jeshua with his sons and his brethren, Kadmiel and his
sons, the sons of Judah, together, to set forward the workmen in the
house of God: the sons of Henadad, with their sons and their brethren
the Levites.

3:10 And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the
LORD, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the
Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the LORD, after the
ordinance of David king of Israel.

3:11 And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks
unto the LORD; because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever
toward Israel.

And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the
LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid.

3:12 But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who
were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation
of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and
many shouted aloud for joy: 3:13 So that the people could not discern
the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the
people: for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was
heard afar off.

4:1 Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the
children of the captivity builded the temple unto the LORD God of
Israel; 4:2 Then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the
fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your
God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of
Esarhaddon king of Assur, which brought us up hither.

4:3 But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the chief of the
fathers of Israel, said unto them, Ye have nothing to do with us to
build an house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto
the LORD God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia hath
commanded us.

4:4 Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of
Judah, and troubled them in building, 4:5 And hired counsellors
against them, to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king
of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.

4:6 And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign,
wrote they unto him an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and
Jerusalem.

4:7 And in the days of Artaxerxes wrote Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel,
and the rest of their companions, unto Artaxerxes king of Persia; and
the writing of the letter was written in the Syrian tongue, and
interpreted in the Syrian tongue.

4:8 Rehum the chancellor and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter
against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes the king in this sort: 4:9 Then wrote
Rehum the chancellor, and Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their
companions; the Dinaites, the Apharsathchites, the Tarpelites, the
Apharsites, the Archevites, the Babylonians, the Susanchites, the
Dehavites, and the Elamites, 4:10 And the rest of the nations whom the
great and noble Asnapper brought over, and set in the cities of
Samaria, and the rest that are on this side the river, and at such a
time.

4:11 This is the copy of the letter that they sent unto him, even unto
Artaxerxes the king; Thy servants the men on this side the river, and
at such a time.

4:12 Be it known unto the king, that the Jews which came up from thee
to us are come unto Jerusalem, building the rebellious and the bad
city, and have set up the walls thereof, and joined the foundations.

4:13 Be it known now unto the king, that, if this city be builded, and
the walls set up again, then will they not pay toll, tribute, and
custom, and so thou shalt endamage the revenue of the kings.

4:14 Now because we have maintenance from the king's palace, and it
was not meet for us to see the king's dishonour, therefore have we
sent and certified the king; 4:15 That search may be made in the book
of the records of thy fathers: so shalt thou find in the book of the
records, and know that this city is a rebellious city, and hurtful
unto kings and provinces, and that they have moved sedition within the
same of old time: for which cause was this city destroyed.

4:16 We certify the king that, if this city be builded again, and the
walls thereof set up, by this means thou shalt have no portion on this
side the river.

4:17 Then sent the king an answer unto Rehum the chancellor, and to
Shimshai the scribe, and to the rest of their companions that dwell in
Samaria, and unto the rest beyond the river, Peace, and at such a
time.

4:18 The letter which ye sent unto us hath been plainly read before
me.

4:19 And I commanded, and search hath been made, and it is found that
this city of old time hath made insurrection against kings, and that
rebellion and sedition have been made therein.

4:20 There have been mighty kings also over Jerusalem, which have
ruled over all countries beyond the river; and toll, tribute, and
custom, was paid unto them.

4:21 Give ye now commandment to cause these men to cease, and that
this city be not builded, until another commandment shall be given
from me.

4:22 Take heed now that ye fail not to do this: why should damage grow
to the hurt of the kings?  4:23 Now when the copy of king Artaxerxes'
letter was read before Rehum, and Shimshai the scribe, and their
companions, they went up in haste to Jerusalem unto the Jews, and made
them to cease by force and power.

4:24 Then ceased the work of the house of God which is at Jerusalem.
So it ceased unto the second year of the reign of Darius king of
Persia.

5:1 Then the prophets, Haggai the prophet, and Zechariah the son of
Iddo, prophesied unto the Jews that were in Judah and Jerusalem in the
name of the God of Israel, even unto them.

5:2 Then rose up Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son
of Jozadak, and began to build the house of God which is at Jerusalem:
and with them were the prophets of God helping them.

5:3 At the same time came to them Tatnai, governor on this side the
river, and Shetharboznai and their companions, and said thus unto
them, Who hath commanded you to build this house, and to make up this
wall?  5:4 Then said we unto them after this manner, What are the
names of the men that make this building?  5:5 But the eye of their
God was upon the elders of the Jews, that they could not cause them to
cease, till the matter came to Darius: and then they returned answer
by letter concerning this matter.

5:6 The copy of the letter that Tatnai, governor on this side the
river, and Shetharboznai and his companions the Apharsachites, which
were on this side the river, sent unto Darius the king: 5:7 They sent
a letter unto him, wherein was written thus; Unto Darius the king, all
peace.

5:8 Be it known unto the king, that we went into the province of
Judea, to the house of the great God, which is builded with great
stones, and timber is laid in the walls, and this work goeth fast on,
and prospereth in their hands.

5:9 Then asked we those elders, and said unto them thus, Who commanded
you to build this house, and to make up these walls?  5:10 We asked
their names also, to certify thee, that we might write the names of
the men that were the chief of them.

5:11 And thus they returned us answer, saying, We are the servants of
the God of heaven and earth, and build the house that was builded
these many years ago, which a great king of Israel builded and set up.

5:12 But after that our fathers had provoked the God of heaven unto
wrath, he gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of
Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this house, and carried the
people away into Babylon.

5:13 But in the first year of Cyrus the king of Babylon the same king
Cyrus made a decree to build this house of God.

5:14 And the vessels also of gold and silver of the house of God,
which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple that was in Jerusalem, and
brought them into the temple of Babylon, those did Cyrus the king take
out of the temple of Babylon, and they were delivered unto one, whose
name was Sheshbazzar, whom he had made governor; 5:15 And said unto
him, Take these vessels, go, carry them into the temple that is in
Jerusalem, and let the house of God be builded in his place.

5:16 Then came the same Sheshbazzar, and laid the foundation of the
house of God which is in Jerusalem: and since that time even until now
hath it been in building, and yet it is not finished.

5:17 Now therefore, if it seem good to the king, let there be search
made in the king's treasure house, which is there at Babylon, whether
it be so, that a decree was made of Cyrus the king to build this house
of God at Jerusalem, and let the king send his pleasure to us
concerning this matter.

6:1 Then Darius the king made a decree, and search was made in the
house of the rolls, where the treasures were laid up in Babylon.

6:2 And there was found at Achmetha, in the palace that is in the
province of the Medes, a roll, and therein was a record thus written:
6:3 In the first year of Cyrus the king the same Cyrus the king made a
decree concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, Let the house be
builded, the place where they offered sacrifices, and let the
foundations thereof be strongly laid; the height thereof threescore
cubits, and the breadth thereof threescore cubits; 6:4 With three rows
of great stones, and a row of new timber: and let the expenses be
given out of the king's house: 6:5 And also let the golden and silver
vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took forth out of
the temple which is at Jerusalem, and brought unto Babylon, be
restored, and brought again unto the temple which is at Jerusalem,
every one to his place, and place them in the house of God.

6:6 Now therefore, Tatnai, governor beyond the river, Shetharboznai,
and your companions the Apharsachites, which are beyond the river, be
ye far from thence: 6:7 Let the work of this house of God alone; let
the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews build this house
of God in his place.

6:8 Moreover I make a decree what ye shall do to the elders of these
Jews for the building of this house of God: that of the king's goods,
even of the tribute beyond the river, forthwith expenses be given unto
these men, that they be not hindered.

6:9 And that which they have need of, both young bullocks, and rams,
and lambs, for the burnt offerings of the God of heaven, wheat, salt,
wine, and oil, according to the appointment of the priests which are
at Jerusalem, let it be given them day by day without fail: 6:10 That
they may offer sacrifices of sweet savours unto the God of heaven, and
pray for the life of the king, and of his sons.

6:11 Also I have made a decree, that whosoever shall alter this word,
let timber be pulled down from his house, and being set up, let him be
hanged thereon; and let his house be made a dunghill for this.

6:12 And the God that hath caused his name to dwell there destroy all
kings and people, that shall put to their hand to alter and to destroy
this house of God which is at Jerusalem. I Darius have made a decree;
let it be done with speed.

6:13 Then Tatnai, governor on this side the river, Shetharboznai, and
their companions, according to that which Darius the king had sent, so
they did speedily.

6:14 And the elders of the Jews builded, and they prospered through
the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo.
And they builded, and finished it, according to the commandment of the
God of Israel, and according to the commandment of Cyrus, and Darius,
and Artaxerxes king of Persia.

6:15 And this house was finished on the third day of the month Adar,
which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.

6:16 And the children of Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the
rest of the children of the captivity, kept the dedication of this
house of God with joy.

6:17 And offered at the dedication of this house of God an hundred
bullocks, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs; and for a sin offering
for all Israel, twelve he goats, according to the number of the tribes
of Israel.

6:18 And they set the priests in their divisions, and the Levites in
their courses, for the service of God, which is at Jerusalem; as it is
written in the book of Moses.

6:19 And the children of the captivity kept the passover upon the
fourteenth day of the first month.

6:20 For the priests and the Levites were purified together, all of
them were pure, and killed the passover for all the children of the
captivity, and for their brethren the priests, and for themselves.

6:21 And the children of Israel, which were come again out of
captivity, and all such as had separated themselves unto them from the
filthiness of the heathen of the land, to seek the LORD God of Israel,
did eat, 6:22 And kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with
joy: for the LORD had made them joyful, and turned the heart of the
king of Assyria unto them, to strengthen their hands in the work of
the house of God, the God of Israel.

7:1 Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia,
Ezra the son of Seraiah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hilkiah, 7:2
The son of Shallum, the son of Zadok, the son of Ahitub, 7:3 The son
of Amariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Meraioth, 7:4 The son of
Zerahiah, the son of Uzzi, the son of Bukki, 7:5 The son of Abishua,
the son of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the chief
priest: 7:6 This Ezra went up from Babylon; and he was a ready scribe
in the law of Moses, which the LORD God of Israel had given: and the
king granted him all his request, according to the hand of the LORD
his God upon him.

7:7 And there went up some of the children of Israel, and of the
priests, and the Levites, and the singers, and the porters, and the
Nethinims, unto Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king.

7:8 And he came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the
seventh year of the king.

7:9 For upon the first day of the first month began he to go up from
Babylon, and on the first day of the fifth month came he to Jerusalem,
according to the good hand of his God upon him.

7:10 For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and
to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.

7:11 Now this is the copy of the letter that the king Artaxerxes gave
unto Ezra the priest, the scribe, even a scribe of the words of the
commandments of the LORD, and of his statutes to Israel.

7:12 Artaxerxes, king of kings, unto Ezra the priest, a scribe of the
law of the God of heaven, perfect peace, and at such a time.

7:13 I make a decree, that all they of the people of Israel, and of
his priests and Levites, in my realm, which are minded of their own
freewill to go up to Jerusalem, go with thee.

7:14 Forasmuch as thou art sent of the king, and of his seven
counsellors, to enquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem, according to
the law of thy God which is in thine hand; 7:15 And to carry the
silver and gold, which the king and his counsellors have freely
offered unto the God of Israel, whose habitation is in Jerusalem, 7:16
And all the silver and gold that thou canst find in all the province
of Babylon, with the freewill offering of the people, and of the
priests, offering willingly for the house of their God which is in
Jerusalem: 7:17 That thou mayest buy speedily with this money
bullocks, rams, lambs, with their meat offerings and their drink
offerings, and offer them upon the altar of the house of your God
which is in Jerusalem.

7:18 And whatsoever shall seem good to thee, and to thy brethren, to
do with the rest of the silver and the gold, that do after the will of
your God.

7:19 The vessels also that are given thee for the service of the house
of thy God, those deliver thou before the God of Jerusalem.

7:20 And whatsoever more shall be needful for the house of thy God,
which thou shalt have occasion to bestow, bestow it out of the king's
treasure house.

7:21 And I, even I Artaxerxes the king, do make a decree to all the
treasurers which are beyond the river, that whatsoever Ezra the
priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, shall require of
you, it be done speedily, 7:22 Unto an hundred talents of silver, and
to an hundred measures of wheat, and to an hundred baths of wine, and
to an hundred baths of oil, and salt without prescribing how much.

7:23 Whatsoever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it be
diligently done for the house of the God of heaven: for why should
there be wrath against the realm of the king and his sons?  7:24 Also
we certify you, that touching any of the priests and Levites, singers,
porters, Nethinims, or ministers of this house of God, it shall not be
lawful to impose toll, tribute, or custom, upon them.

7:25 And thou, Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God, that is in thine
hand, set magistrates and judges, which may judge all the people that
are beyond the river, all such as know the laws of thy God; and teach
ye them that know them not.

7:26 And whosoever will not do the law of thy God, and the law of the
king, let judgment be executed speedily upon him, whether it be unto
death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to
imprisonment.

7:27 Blessed be the LORD God of our fathers, which hath put such a
thing as this in the king's heart, to beautify the house of the LORD
which is in Jerusalem: 7:28 And hath extended mercy unto me before the
king, and his counsellors, and before all the king's mighty princes.
And I was strengthened as the hand of the LORD my God was upon me, and
I gathered together out of Israel chief men to go up with me.

8:1 These are now the chief of their fathers, and this is the
genealogy of them that went up with me from Babylon, in the reign of
Artaxerxes the king.

8:2 Of the sons of Phinehas; Gershom: of the sons of Ithamar; Daniel:
of the sons of David; Hattush.

8:3 Of the sons of Shechaniah, of the sons of Pharosh; Zechariah: and
with him were reckoned by genealogy of the males an hundred and fifty.

8:4 Of the sons of Pahathmoab; Elihoenai the son of Zerahiah, and with
him two hundred males.

8:5 Of the sons of Shechaniah; the son of Jahaziel, and with him three
hundred males.

8:6 Of the sons also of Adin; Ebed the son of Jonathan, and with him
fifty males.

8:7 And of the sons of Elam; Jeshaiah the son of Athaliah, and with
him seventy males.

8:8 And of the sons of Shephatiah; Zebadiah the son of Michael, and
with him fourscore males.

8:9 Of the sons of Joab; Obadiah the son of Jehiel, and with him two
hundred and eighteen males.

8:10 And of the sons of Shelomith; the son of Josiphiah, and with him
an hundred and threescore males.

8:11 And of the sons of Bebai; Zechariah the son of Bebai, and with
him twenty and eight males.

8:12 And of the sons of Azgad; Johanan the son of Hakkatan, and with
him an hundred and ten males.

8:13 And of the last sons of Adonikam, whose names are these,
Eliphelet, Jeiel, and Shemaiah, and with them threescore males.

8:14 Of the sons also of Bigvai; Uthai, and Zabbud, and with them
seventy males.

8:15 And I gathered them together to the river that runneth to Ahava;
and there abode we in tents three days: and I viewed the people, and
the priests, and found there none of the sons of Levi.

8:16 Then sent I for Eliezer, for Ariel, for Shemaiah, and for
Elnathan, and for Jarib, and for Elnathan, and for Nathan, and for
Zechariah, and for Meshullam, chief men; also for Joiarib, and for
Elnathan, men of understanding.

8:17 And I sent them with commandment unto Iddo the chief at the place
Casiphia, and I told them what they should say unto Iddo, and to his
brethren the Nethinims, at the place Casiphia, that they should bring
unto us ministers for the house of our God.

8:18 And by the good hand of our God upon us they brought us a man of
understanding, of the sons of Mahli, the son of Levi, the son of
Israel; and Sherebiah, with his sons and his brethren, eighteen; 8:19
And Hashabiah, and with him Jeshaiah of the sons of Merari, his
brethren and their sons, twenty; 8:20 Also of the Nethinims, whom
David and the princes had appointed for the service of the Levites,
two hundred and twenty Nethinims: all of them were expressed by name.

8:21 Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river of Ahava, that we
might afflict ourselves before our God, to seek of him a right way for
us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance.

8:22 For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and
horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had
spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for
good that seek him; but his power and his wrath is against all them
that forsake him.

8:23 So we fasted and besought our God for this: and he was intreated
of us.

8:24 Then I separated twelve of the chief of the priests, Sherebiah,
Hashabiah, and ten of their brethren with them, 8:25 And weighed unto
them the silver, and the gold, and the vessels, even the offering of
the house of our God, which the king, and his counsellors, and his
lords, and all Israel there present, had offered: 8:26 I even weighed
unto their hand six hundred and fifty talents of silver, and silver
vessels an hundred talents, and of gold an hundred talents; 8:27 Also
twenty basons of gold, of a thousand drams; and two vessels of fine
copper, precious as gold.

8:28 And I said unto them, Ye are holy unto the LORD; the vessels are
holy also; and the silver and the gold are a freewill offering unto
the LORD God of your fathers.

8:29 Watch ye, and keep them, until ye weigh them before the chief of
the priests and the Levites, and chief of the fathers of Israel, at
Jerusalem, in the chambers of the house of the LORD.

8:30 So took the priests and the Levites the weight of the silver, and
the gold, and the vessels, to bring them to Jerusalem unto the house
of our God.

8:31 Then we departed from the river of Ahava on the twelfth day of
the first month, to go unto Jerusalem: and the hand of our God was
upon us, and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy, and of such
as lay in wait by the way.

8:32 And we came to Jerusalem, and abode there three days.

8:33 Now on the fourth day was the silver and the gold and the vessels
weighed in the house of our God by the hand of Meremoth the son of
Uriah the priest; and with him was Eleazar the son of Phinehas; and
with them was Jozabad the son of Jeshua, and Noadiah the son of
Binnui, Levites; 8:34 By number and by weight of every one: and all
the weight was written at that time.

8:35 Also the children of those that had been carried away, which were
come out of the captivity, offered burnt offerings unto the God of
Israel, twelve bullocks for all Israel, ninety and six rams, seventy
and seven lambs, twelve he goats for a sin offering: all this was a
burnt offering unto the LORD.

8:36 And they delivered the king's commissions unto the king's
lieutenants, and to the governors on this side the river: and they
furthered the people, and the house of God.

9:1 Now when these things were done, the princes came to me, saying,
The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not
separated themselves from the people of the lands, doing according to
their abominations, even of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the
Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians,
and the Amorites.

9:2 For they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for
their sons: so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the
people of those lands: yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath
been chief in this trespass.

9:3 And when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, and
plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down
astonied.

9:4 Then were assembled unto me every one that trembled at the words
of the God of Israel, because of the transgression of those that had
been carried away; and I sat astonied until the evening sacrifice.

9:5 And at the evening sacrifice I arose up from my heaviness; and
having rent my garment and my mantle, I fell upon my knees, and spread
out my hands unto the LORD my God, 9:6 And said, O my God, I am
ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our
iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up
unto the heavens.

9:7 Since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass
unto this day; and for our iniquities have we, our kings, and our
priests, been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to
the sword, to captivity, and to a spoil, and to confusion of face, as
it is this day.

9:8 And now for a little space grace hath been shewed from the LORD
our God, to leave us a remnant to escape, and to give us a nail in his
holy place, that our God may lighten our eyes, and give us a little
reviving in our bondage.

9:9 For we were bondmen; yet our God hath not forsaken us in our
bondage, but hath extended mercy unto us in the sight of the kings of
Persia, to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, and to
repair the desolations thereof, and to give us a wall in Judah and in
Jerusalem.

9:10 And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? for we have
forsaken thy commandments, 9:11 Which thou hast commanded by thy
servants the prophets, saying, The land, unto which ye go to possess
it, is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of the lands,
with their abominations, which have filled it from one end to another
with their uncleanness.

9:12 Now therefore give not your daughters unto their sons, neither
take their daughters unto your sons, nor seek their peace or their
wealth for ever: that ye may be strong, and eat the good of the land,
and leave it for an inheritance to your children for ever.

9:13 And after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, and for
our great trespass, seeing that thou our God hast punished us less
than our iniquities deserve, and hast given us such deliverance as
this; 9:14 Should we again break thy commandments, and join in
affinity with the people of these abominations? wouldest not thou be
angry with us till thou hadst consumed us, so that there should be no
remnant nor escaping?  9:15 O LORD God of Israel, thou art righteous:
for we remain yet escaped, as it is this day: behold, we are before
thee in our trespasses: for we cannot stand before thee because of
this.

10:1 Now when Ezra had prayed, and when he had confessed, weeping and
casting himself down before the house of God, there assembled unto him
out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children:
for the people wept very sore.

10:2 And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam,
answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and
have taken strange wives of the people of the land: yet now there is
hope in Israel concerning this thing.

10:3 Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all
the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the counsel of
my lord, and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God; and
let it be done according to the law.

10:4 Arise; for this matter belongeth unto thee: we also will be with
thee: be of good courage, and do it.

10:5 Then arose Ezra, and made the chief priests, the Levites, and all
Israel, to swear that they should do according to this word. And they
sware.

10:6 Then Ezra rose up from before the house of God, and went into the
chamber of Johanan the son of Eliashib: and when he came thither, he
did eat no bread, nor drink water: for he mourned because of the
transgression of them that had been carried away.

10:7 And they made proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem unto
all the children of the captivity, that they should gather themselves
together unto Jerusalem; 10:8 And that whosoever would not come within
three days, according to the counsel of the princes and the elders,
all his substance should be forfeited, and himself separated from the
congregation of those that had been carried away.

10:9 Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered themselves
together unto Jerusalem within three days. It was the ninth month, on
the twentieth day of the month; and all the people sat in the street
of the house of God, trembling because of this matter, and for the
great rain.

10:10 And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them, Ye have
transgressed, and have taken strange wives, to increase the trespass
of Israel.

10:11 Now therefore make confession unto the LORD God of your fathers,
and do his pleasure: and separate yourselves from the people of the
land, and from the strange wives.

10:12 Then all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice,
As thou hast said, so must we do.

10:13 But the people are many, and it is a time of much rain, and we
are not able to stand without, neither is this a work of one day or
two: for we are many that have transgressed in this thing.

10:14 Let now our rulers of all the congregation stand, and let all
them which have taken strange wives in our cities come at appointed
times, and with them the elders of every city, and the judges thereof,
until the fierce wrath of our God for this matter be turned from us.

10:15 Only Jonathan the son of Asahel and Jahaziah the son of Tikvah
were employed about this matter: and Meshullam and Shabbethai the
Levite helped them.

10:16 And the children of the captivity did so. And Ezra the priest,
with certain chief of the fathers, after the house of their fathers,
and all of them by their names, were separated, and sat down in the
first day of the tenth month to examine the matter.

10:17 And they made an end with all the men that had taken strange
wives by the first day of the first month.

10:18 And among the sons of the priests there were found that had
taken strange wives: namely, of the sons of Jeshua the son of Jozadak,
and his brethren; Maaseiah, and Eliezer, and Jarib, and Gedaliah.

10:19 And they gave their hands that they would put away their wives;
and being guilty, they offered a ram of the flock for their trespass.

10:20 And of the sons of Immer; Hanani, and Zebadiah.

10:21 And of the sons of Harim; Maaseiah, and Elijah, and Shemaiah,
and Jehiel, and Uzziah.

10:22 And of the sons of Pashur; Elioenai, Maaseiah, Ishmael,
Nethaneel, Jozabad, and Elasah.

10:23 Also of the Levites; Jozabad, and Shimei, and Kelaiah, (the same
is Kelita,) Pethahiah, Judah, and Eliezer.

10:24 Of the singers also; Eliashib: and of the porters; Shallum, and
Telem, and Uri.

10:25 Moreover of Israel: of the sons of Parosh; Ramiah, and Jeziah,
and Malchiah, and Miamin, and Eleazar, and Malchijah, and Benaiah.

10:26 And of the sons of Elam; Mattaniah, Zechariah, and Jehiel, and
Abdi, and Jeremoth, and Eliah.

10:27 And of the sons of Zattu; Elioenai, Eliashib, Mattaniah, and
Jeremoth, and Zabad, and Aziza.

10:28 Of the sons also of Bebai; Jehohanan, Hananiah, Zabbai, and
Athlai.

10:29 And of the sons of Bani; Meshullam, Malluch, and Adaiah, Jashub,
and Sheal, and Ramoth.

10:30 And of the sons of Pahathmoab; Adna, and Chelal, Benaiah,
Maaseiah, Mattaniah, Bezaleel, and Binnui, and Manasseh.

10:31 And of the sons of Harim; Eliezer, Ishijah, Malchiah, Shemaiah,
Shimeon, 10:32 Benjamin, Malluch, and Shemariah.

10:33 Of the sons of Hashum; Mattenai, Mattathah, Zabad, Eliphelet,
Jeremai, Manasseh, and Shimei.

10:34 Of the sons of Bani; Maadai, Amram, and Uel, 10:35 Benaiah,
Bedeiah, Chelluh, 10:36 Vaniah, Meremoth, Eliashib, 10:37 Mattaniah,
Mattenai, and Jaasau, 10:38 And Bani, and Binnui, Shimei, 10:39 And
Shelemiah, and Nathan, and Adaiah, 10:40 Machnadebai, Shashai, Sharai,
10:41 Azareel, and Shelemiah, Shemariah, 10:42 Shallum, Amariah, and
Joseph.

10:43 Of the sons of Nebo; Jeiel, Mattithiah, Zabad, Zebina, Jadau,
and Joel, Benaiah.

10:44 All these had taken strange wives: and some of them had wives by
whom they had children.




The Book of Nehemiah


1:1 The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. And it came to pass
in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the
palace, 1:2 That Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men
of Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which
were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.

1:3 And they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the captivity
there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall
of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned
with fire.

1:4 And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and
wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God
of heaven, 1:5 And said, I beseech thee, O LORD God of heaven, the
great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that
love him and observe his commandments: 1:6 Let thine ear now be
attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of
thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the
children of Israel thy servants, and confess the sins of the children
of Israel, which we have sinned against thee: both I and my father's
house have sinned.

1:7 We have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the
commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which thou
commandedst thy servant Moses.

1:8 Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandedst thy
servant Moses, saying, If ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad
among the nations: 1:9 But if ye turn unto me, and keep my
commandments, and do them; though there were of you cast out unto the
uttermost part of the heaven, yet will I gather them from thence, and
will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my name
there.

1:10 Now these are thy servants and thy people, whom thou hast
redeemed by thy great power, and by thy strong hand.

1:11 O LORD, I beseech thee, let now thine ear be attentive to the
prayer of thy servant, and to the prayer of thy servants, who desire
to fear thy name: and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day, and
grant him mercy in the sight of this man. For I was the king's
cupbearer.

2:1 And it came to pass in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of
Artaxerxes the king, that wine was before him: and I took up the wine,
and gave it unto the king. Now I had not been beforetime sad in his
presence.

2:2 Wherefore the king said unto me, Why is thy countenance sad,
seeing thou art not sick? this is nothing else but sorrow of heart.
Then I was very sore afraid, 2:3 And said unto the king, Let the king
live for ever: why should not my countenance be sad, when the city,
the place of my fathers' sepulchres, lieth waste, and the gates
thereof are consumed with fire?  2:4 Then the king said unto me, For
what dost thou make request? So I prayed to the God of heaven.

2:5 And I said unto the king, If it please the king, and if thy
servant have found favour in thy sight, that thou wouldest send me
unto Judah, unto the city of my fathers' sepulchres, that I may build
it.

2:6 And the king said unto me, (the queen also sitting by him,) For
how long shall thy journey be? and when wilt thou return? So it
pleased the king to send me; and I set him a time.

2:7 Moreover I said unto the king, If it please the king, let letters
be given me to the governors beyond the river, that they may convey me
over till I come into Judah; 2:8 And a letter unto Asaph the keeper of
the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the
gates of the palace which appertained to the house, and for the wall
of the city, and for the house that I shall enter into. And the king
granted me, according to the good hand of my God upon me.

2:9 Then I came to the governors beyond the river, and gave them the
king's letters. Now the king had sent captains of the army and
horsemen with me.

2:10 When Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the
Ammonite, heard of it, it grieved them exceedingly that there was come
a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel.

2:11 So I came to Jerusalem, and was there three days.

2:12 And I arose in the night, I and some few men with me; neither
told I any man what my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem:
neither was there any beast with me, save the beast that I rode upon.

2:13 And I went out by night by the gate of the valley, even before
the dragon well, and to the dung port, and viewed the walls of
Jerusalem, which were broken down, and the gates thereof were consumed
with fire.

2:14 Then I went on to the gate of the fountain, and to the king's
pool: but there was no place for the beast that was under me to pass.

2:15 Then went I up in the night by the brook, and viewed the wall,
and turned back, and entered by the gate of the valley, and so
returned.

2:16 And the rulers knew not whither I went, or what I did; neither
had I as yet told it to the Jews, nor to the priests, nor to the
nobles, nor to the rulers, nor to the rest that did the work.

2:17 Then said I unto them, Ye see the distress that we are in, how
Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire:
come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a
reproach.

2:18 Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me; as
also the king's words that he had spoken unto me. And they said, Let
us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good
work.

2:19 But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the
Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, heard it, they laughed us to scorn,
and despised us, and said, What is this thing that ye do? will ye
rebel against the king?  2:20 Then answered I them, and said unto
them, The God of heaven, he will prosper us; therefore we his servants
will arise and build: but ye have no portion, nor right, nor memorial,
in Jerusalem.

3:1 Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brethren the
priests, and they builded the sheep gate; they sanctified it, and set
up the doors of it; even unto the tower of Meah they sanctified it,
unto the tower of Hananeel.

3:2 And next unto him builded the men of Jericho. And next to them
builded Zaccur the son of Imri.

3:3 But the fish gate did the sons of Hassenaah build, who also laid
the beams thereof, and set up the doors thereof, the locks thereof,
and the bars thereof.

3:4 And next unto them repaired Meremoth the son of Urijah, the son of
Koz. And next unto them repaired Meshullam the son of Berechiah, the
son of Meshezabeel. And next unto them repaired Zadok the son of
Baana.

3:5 And next unto them the Tekoites repaired; but their nobles put not
their necks to the work of their LORD.

3:6 Moreover the old gate repaired Jehoiada the son of Paseah, and
Meshullam the son of Besodeiah; they laid the beams thereof, and set
up the doors thereof, and the locks thereof, and the bars thereof.

3:7 And next unto them repaired Melatiah the Gibeonite, and Jadon the
Meronothite, the men of Gibeon, and of Mizpah, unto the throne of the
governor on this side the river.

3:8 Next unto him repaired Uzziel the son of Harhaiah, of the
goldsmiths.

Next unto him also repaired Hananiah the son of one of the
apothecaries, and they fortified Jerusalem unto the broad wall.

3:9 And next unto them repaired Rephaiah the son of Hur, the ruler of
the half part of Jerusalem.

3:10 And next unto them repaired Jedaiah the son of Harumaph, even
over against his house. And next unto him repaired Hattush the son of
Hashabniah.

3:11 Malchijah the son of Harim, and Hashub the son of Pahathmoab,
repaired the other piece, and the tower of the furnaces.

3:12 And next unto him repaired Shallum the son of Halohesh, the ruler
of the half part of Jerusalem, he and his daughters.

3:13 The valley gate repaired Hanun, and the inhabitants of Zanoah;
they built it, and set up the doors thereof, the locks thereof, and
the bars thereof, and a thousand cubits on the wall unto the dung
gate.

3:14 But the dung gate repaired Malchiah the son of Rechab, the ruler
of part of Bethhaccerem; he built it, and set up the doors thereof,
the locks thereof, and the bars thereof.

3:15 But the gate of the fountain repaired Shallun the son of
Colhozeh, the ruler of part of Mizpah; he built it, and covered it,
and set up the doors thereof, the locks thereof, and the bars thereof,
and the wall of the pool of Siloah by the king's garden, and unto the
stairs that go down from the city of David.

3:16 After him repaired Nehemiah the son of Azbuk, the ruler of the
half part of Bethzur, unto the place over against the sepulchres of
David, and to the pool that was made, and unto the house of the
mighty.

3:17 After him repaired the Levites, Rehum the son of Bani. Next unto
him repaired Hashabiah, the ruler of the half part of Keilah, in his
part.

3:18 After him repaired their brethren, Bavai the son of Henadad, the
ruler of the half part of Keilah.

3:19 And next to him repaired Ezer the son of Jeshua, the ruler of
Mizpah, another piece over against the going up to the armoury at the
turning of the wall.

3:20 After him Baruch the son of Zabbai earnestly repaired the other
piece, from the turning of the wall unto the door of the house of
Eliashib the high priest.

3:21 After him repaired Meremoth the son of Urijah the son of Koz
another piece, from the door of the house of Eliashib even to the end
of the house of Eliashib.

3:22 And after him repaired the priests, the men of the plain.

3:23 After him repaired Benjamin and Hashub over against their house.

After him repaired Azariah the son of Maaseiah the son of Ananiah by
his house.

3:24 After him repaired Binnui the son of Henadad another piece, from
the house of Azariah unto the turning of the wall, even unto the
corner.

3:25 Palal the son of Uzai, over against the turning of the wall, and
the tower which lieth out from the king's high house, that was by the
court of the prison. After him Pedaiah the son of Parosh.

3:26 Moreover the Nethinims dwelt in Ophel, unto the place over
against the water gate toward the east, and the tower that lieth out.

3:27 After them the Tekoites repaired another piece, over against the
great tower that lieth out, even unto the wall of Ophel.

3:28 From above the horse gate repaired the priests, every one over
against his house.

3:29 After them repaired Zadok the son of Immer over against his
house.

After him repaired also Shemaiah the son of Shechaniah, the keeper of
the east gate.

3:30 After him repaired Hananiah the son of Shelemiah, and Hanun the
sixth son of Zalaph, another piece. After him repaired Meshullam the
son of Berechiah over against his chamber.

3:31 After him repaired Malchiah the goldsmith's son unto the place of
the Nethinims, and of the merchants, over against the gate Miphkad,
and to the going up of the corner.

3:32 And between the going up of the corner unto the sheep gate
repaired the goldsmiths and the merchants.

4:1 But it came to pass, that when Sanballat heard that we builded the
wall, he was wroth, and took great indignation, and mocked the Jews.

4:2 And he spake before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and
said, What do these feeble Jews? will they fortify themselves? will
they sacrifice?  will they make an end in a day? will they revive the
stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned?  4:3 Now
Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, Even that which they
build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall.

4:4 Hear, O our God; for we are despised: and turn their reproach upon
their own head, and give them for a prey in the land of captivity: 4:5
And cover not their iniquity, and let not their sin be blotted out
from before thee: for they have provoked thee to anger before the
builders.

4:6 So built we the wall; and all the wall was joined together unto
the half thereof: for the people had a mind to work.

4:7 But it came to pass, that when Sanballat, and Tobiah, and the
Arabians, and the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites, heard that the walls
of Jerusalem were made up, and that the breaches began to be stopped,
then they were very wroth, 4:8 And conspired all of them together to
come and to fight against Jerusalem, and to hinder it.

4:9 Nevertheless we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch
against them day and night, because of them.

4:10 And Judah said, The strength of the bearers of burdens is
decayed, and there is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build
the wall.

4:11 And our adversaries said, They shall not know, neither see, till
we come in the midst among them, and slay them, and cause the work to
cease.

4:12 And it came to pass, that when the Jews which dwelt by them came,
they said unto us ten times, From all places whence ye shall return
unto us they will be upon you.

4:13 Therefore set I in the lower places behind the wall, and on the
higher places, I even set the people after their families with their
swords, their spears, and their bows.

4:14 And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the
rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them:
remember the LORD, which is great and terrible, and fight for your
brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.

4:15 And it came to pass, when our enemies heard that it was known
unto us, and God had brought their counsel to nought, that we returned
all of us to the wall, every one unto his work.

4:16 And it came to pass from that time forth, that the half of my
servants wrought in the work, and the other half of them held both the
spears, the shields, and the bows, and the habergeons; and the rulers
were behind all the house of Judah.

4:17 They which builded on the wall, and they that bare burdens, with
those that laded, every one with one of his hands wrought in the work,
and with the other hand held a weapon.

4:18 For the builders, every one had his sword girded by his side, and
so builded. And he that sounded the trumpet was by me.

4:19 And I said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of
the people, The work is great and large, and we are separated upon the
wall, one far from another.

4:20 In what place therefore ye hear the sound of the trumpet, resort
ye thither unto us: our God shall fight for us.

4:21 So we laboured in the work: and half of them held the spears from
the rising of the morning till the stars appeared.

4:22 Likewise at the same time said I unto the people, Let every one
with his servant lodge within Jerusalem, that in the night they may be
a guard to us, and labour on the day.

4:23 So neither I, nor my brethren, nor my servants, nor the men of
the guard which followed me, none of us put off our clothes, saving
that every one put them off for washing.

5:1 And there was a great cry of the people and of their wives against
their brethren the Jews.

5:2 For there were that said, We, our sons, and our daughters, are
many: therefore we take up corn for them, that we may eat, and live.

5:3 Some also there were that said, We have mortgaged our lands,
vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn, because of the dearth.

5:4 There were also that said, We have borrowed money for the king's
tribute, and that upon our lands and vineyards.

5:5 Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as
their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our
daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought unto
bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them; for other
men have our lands and vineyards.

5:6 And I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words.

5:7 Then I consulted with myself, and I rebuked the nobles, and the
rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of his brother.
And I set a great assembly against them.

5:8 And I said unto them, We after our ability have redeemed our
brethren the Jews, which were sold unto the heathen; and will ye even
sell your brethren? or shall they be sold unto us? Then held they
their peace, and found nothing to answer.

5:9 Also I said, It is not good that ye do: ought ye not to walk in
the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen our
enemies?  5:10 I likewise, and my brethren, and my servants, might
exact of them money and corn: I pray you, let us leave off this usury.

5:11 Restore, I pray you, to them, even this day, their lands, their
vineyards, their oliveyards, and their houses, also the hundredth part
of the money, and of the corn, the wine, and the oil, that ye exact of
them.

5:12 Then said they, We will restore them, and will require nothing of
them; so will we do as thou sayest. Then I called the priests, and
took an oath of them, that they should do according to this promise.

5:13 Also I shook my lap, and said, So God shake out every man from
his house, and from his labour, that performeth not this promise, even
thus be he shaken out, and emptied. And all the congregation said,
Amen, and praised the LORD. And the people did according to this
promise.

5:14 Moreover from the time that I was appointed to be their governor
in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year even unto the two and
thirtieth year of Artaxerxes the king, that is, twelve years, I and my
brethren have not eaten the bread of the governor.

5:15 But the former governors that had been before me were chargeable
unto the people, and had taken of them bread and wine, beside forty
shekels of silver; yea, even their servants bare rule over the people:
but so did not I, because of the fear of God.

5:16 Yea, also I continued in the work of this wall, neither bought we
any land: and all my servants were gathered thither unto the work.

5:17 Moreover there were at my table an hundred and fifty of the Jews
and rulers, beside those that came unto us from among the heathen that
are about us.

5:18 Now that which was prepared for me daily was one ox and six
choice sheep; also fowls were prepared for me, and once in ten days
store of all sorts of wine: yet for all this required not I the bread
of the governor, because the bondage was heavy upon this people.

5:19 Think upon me, my God, for good, according to all that I have
done for this people.

6:1 Now it came to pass when Sanballat, and Tobiah, and Geshem the
Arabian, and the rest of our enemies, heard that I had builded the
wall, and that there was no breach left therein; (though at that time
I had not set up the doors upon the gates;) 6:2 That Sanballat and
Geshem sent unto me, saying, Come, let us meet together in some one of
the villages in the plain of Ono. But they thought to do me mischief.

6:3 And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work,
so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave
it, and come down to you?  6:4 Yet they sent unto me four times after
this sort; and I answered them after the same manner.

6:5 Then sent Sanballat his servant unto me in like manner the fifth
time with an open letter in his hand; 6:6 Wherein was written, It is
reported among the heathen, and Gashmu saith it, that thou and the
Jews think to rebel: for which cause thou buildest the wall, that thou
mayest be their king, according to these words.

6:7 And thou hast also appointed prophets to preach of thee at
Jerusalem, saying, There is a king in Judah: and now shall it be
reported to the king according to these words. Come now therefore, and
let us take counsel together.

6:8 Then I sent unto him, saying, There are no such things done as
thou sayest, but thou feignest them out of thine own heart.

6:9 For they all made us afraid, saying, Their hands shall be weakened
from the work, that it be not done. Now therefore, O God, strengthen
my hands.

6:10 Afterward I came unto the house of Shemaiah the son of Delaiah
the son of Mehetabeel, who was shut up; and he said, Let us meet
together in the house of God, within the temple, and let us shut the
doors of the temple: for they will come to slay thee; yea, in the
night will they come to slay thee.

6:11 And I said, Should such a man as I flee? and who is there, that,
being as I am, would go into the temple to save his life? I will not
go in.

6:12 And, lo, I perceived that God had not sent him; but that he
pronounced this prophecy against me: for Tobiah and Sanballat had
hired him.

6:13 Therefore was he hired, that I should be afraid, and do so, and
sin, and that they might have matter for an evil report, that they
might reproach me.

6:14 My God, think thou upon Tobiah and Sanballat according to these
their works, and on the prophetess Noadiah, and the rest of the
prophets, that would have put me in fear.

6:15 So the wall was finished in the twenty and fifth day of the month
Elul, in fifty and two days.

6:16 And it came to pass, that when all our enemies heard thereof, and
all the heathen that were about us saw these things, they were much
cast down in their own eyes: for they perceived that this work was
wrought of our God.

6:17 Moreover in those days the nobles of Judah sent many letters unto
Tobiah, and the letters of Tobiah came unto them.

6:18 For there were many in Judah sworn unto him, because he was the
son in law of Shechaniah the son of Arah; and his son Johanan had
taken the daughter of Meshullam the son of Berechiah.

6:19 Also they reported his good deeds before me, and uttered my words
to him. And Tobiah sent letters to put me in fear.

7:1 Now it came to pass, when the wall was built, and I had set up the
doors, and the porters and the singers and the Levites were appointed,
7:2 That I gave my brother Hanani, and Hananiah the ruler of the
palace, charge over Jerusalem: for he was a faithful man, and feared
God above many.

7:3 And I said unto them, Let not the gates of Jerusalem be opened
until the sun be hot; and while they stand by, let them shut the
doors, and bar them: and appoint watches of the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, every one in his watch, and every one to be over against
his house.

7:4 Now the city was large and great: but the people were few therein,
and the houses were not builded.

7:5 And my God put into mine heart to gather together the nobles, and
the rulers, and the people, that they might be reckoned by genealogy.
And I found a register of the genealogy of them which came up at the
first, and found written therein, 7:6 These are the children of the
province, that went up out of the captivity, of those that had been
carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried
away, and came again to Jerusalem and to Judah, every one unto his
city; 7:7 Who came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah,
Raamiah, Nahamani, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispereth, Bigvai, Nehum,
Baanah. The number, I say, of the men of the people of Israel was
this; 7:8 The children of Parosh, two thousand an hundred seventy and
two.

7:9 The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy and two.

7:10 The children of Arah, six hundred fifty and two.

7:11 The children of Pahathmoab, of the children of Jeshua and Joab,
two thousand and eight hundred and eighteen.

7:12 The children of Elam, a thousand two hundred fifty and four.

7:13 The children of Zattu, eight hundred forty and five.

7:14 The children of Zaccai, seven hundred and threescore.

7:15 The children of Binnui, six hundred forty and eight.

7:16 The children of Bebai, six hundred twenty and eight.

7:17 The children of Azgad, two thousand three hundred twenty and two.

7:18 The children of Adonikam, six hundred threescore and seven.

7:19 The children of Bigvai, two thousand threescore and seven.

7:20 The children of Adin, six hundred fifty and five.

7:21 The children of Ater of Hezekiah, ninety and eight.

7:22 The children of Hashum, three hundred twenty and eight.

7:23 The children of Bezai, three hundred twenty and four.

7:24 The children of Hariph, an hundred and twelve.

7:25 The children of Gibeon, ninety and five.

7:26 The men of Bethlehem and Netophah, an hundred fourscore and
eight.

7:27 The men of Anathoth, an hundred twenty and eight.

7:28 The men of Bethazmaveth, forty and two.

7:29 The men of Kirjathjearim, Chephirah, and Beeroth, seven hundred
forty and three.

7:30 The men of Ramah and Gaba, six hundred twenty and one.

7:31 The men of Michmas, an hundred and twenty and two.

7:32 The men of Bethel and Ai, an hundred twenty and three.

7:33 The men of the other Nebo, fifty and two.

7:34 The children of the other Elam, a thousand two hundred fifty and
four.

7:35 The children of Harim, three hundred and twenty.

7:36 The children of Jericho, three hundred forty and five.

7:37 The children of Lod, Hadid, and Ono, seven hundred twenty and
one.

7:38 The children of Senaah, three thousand nine hundred and thirty.

7:39 The priests: the children of Jedaiah, of the house of Jeshua,
nine hundred seventy and three.

7:40 The children of Immer, a thousand fifty and two.

7:41 The children of Pashur, a thousand two hundred forty and seven.

7:42 The children of Harim, a thousand and seventeen.

7:43 The Levites: the children of Jeshua, of Kadmiel, and of the
children of Hodevah, seventy and four.

7:44 The singers: the children of Asaph, an hundred forty and eight.

7:45 The porters: the children of Shallum, the children of Ater, the
children of Talmon, the children of Akkub, the children of Hatita, the
children of Shobai, an hundred thirty and eight.

7:46 The Nethinims: the children of Ziha, the children of Hashupha,
the children of Tabbaoth, 7:47 The children of Keros, the children of
Sia, the children of Padon, 7:48 The children of Lebana, the children
of Hagaba, the children of Shalmai, 7:49 The children of Hanan, the
children of Giddel, the children of Gahar, 7:50 The children of
Reaiah, the children of Rezin, the children of Nekoda, 7:51 The
children of Gazzam, the children of Uzza, the children of Phaseah,
7:52 The children of Besai, the children of Meunim, the children of
Nephishesim, 7:53 The children of Bakbuk, the children of Hakupha, the
children of Harhur, 7:54 The children of Bazlith, the children of
Mehida, the children of Harsha, 7:55 The children of Barkos, the
children of Sisera, the children of Tamah, 7:56 The children of
Neziah, the children of Hatipha.

7:57 The children of Solomon's servants: the children of Sotai, the
children of Sophereth, the children of Perida, 7:58 The children of
Jaala, the children of Darkon, the children of Giddel, 7:59 The
children of Shephatiah, the children of Hattil, the children of
Pochereth of Zebaim, the children of Amon.

7:60 All the Nethinims, and the children of Solomon's servants, were
three hundred ninety and two.

7:61 And these were they which went up also from Telmelah, Telharesha,
Cherub, Addon, and Immer: but they could not shew their father's
house, nor their seed, whether they were of Israel.

7:62 The children of Delaiah, the children of Tobiah, the children of
Nekoda, six hundred forty and two.

7:63 And of the priests: the children of Habaiah, the children of Koz,
the children of Barzillai, which took one of the daughters of
Barzillai the Gileadite to wife, and was called after their name.

7:64 These sought their register among those that were reckoned by
genealogy, but it was not found: therefore were they, as polluted, put
from the priesthood.

7:65 And the Tirshatha said unto them, that they should not eat of the
most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and Thummim.

7:66 The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three
hundred and threescore, 7:67 Beside their manservants and their
maidservants, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred thirty
and seven: and they had two hundred forty and five singing men and
singing women.

7:68 Their horses, seven hundred thirty and six: their mules, two
hundred forty and five: 7:69 Their camels, four hundred thirty and
five: six thousand seven hundred and twenty asses.

7:70 And some of the chief of the fathers gave unto the work. The
Tirshatha gave to the treasure a thousand drams of gold, fifty basons,
five hundred and thirty priests' garments.

7:71 And some of the chief of the fathers gave to the treasure of the
work twenty thousand drams of gold, and two thousand and two hundred
pound of silver.

7:72 And that which the rest of the people gave was twenty thousand
drams of gold, and two thousand pound of silver, and threescore and
seven priests' garments.

7:73 So the priests, and the Levites, and the porters, and the
singers, and some of the people, and the Nethinims, and all Israel,
dwelt in their cities; and when the seventh month came, the children
of Israel were in their cities.

8:1 And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into
the street that was before the water gate; and they spake unto Ezra
the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the LORD had
commanded to Israel.

8:2 And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both
of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the
first day of the seventh month.

8:3 And he read therein before the street that was before the water
gate from the morning until midday, before the men and the women, and
those that could understand; and the ears of all the people were
attentive unto the book of the law.

8:4 And Ezra the scribe stood upon a pulpit of wood, which they had
made for the purpose; and beside him stood Mattithiah, and Shema, and
Anaiah, and Urijah, and Hilkiah, and Maaseiah, on his right hand; and
on his left hand, Pedaiah, and Mishael, and Malchiah, and Hashum, and
Hashbadana, Zechariah, and Meshullam.

8:5 And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people; (for he
was above all the people;) and when he opened it, all the people stood
up: 8:6 And Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God. And all the people
answered, Amen, Amen, with lifting up their hands: and they bowed
their heads, and worshipped the LORD with their faces to the ground.

8:7 Also Jeshua, and Bani, and Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai,
Hodijah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, and the
Levites, caused the people to understand the law: and the people stood
in their place.

8:8 So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave
the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.

8:9 And Nehemiah, which is the Tirshatha, and Ezra the priest the
scribe, and the Levites that taught the people, said unto all the
people, This day is holy unto the LORD your God; mourn not, nor weep.
For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law.

8:10 Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the
sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for
this day is holy unto our LORD: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of
the LORD is your strength.

8:11 So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, Hold your peace,
for the day is holy; neither be ye grieved.

8:12 And all the people went their way to eat, and to drink, and to
send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had understood
the words that were declared unto them.

8:13 And on the second day were gathered together the chief of the
fathers of all the people, the priests, and the Levites, unto Ezra the
scribe, even to understand the words of the law.

8:14 And they found written in the law which the LORD had commanded by
Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in booths in the feast
of the seventh month: 8:15 And that they should publish and proclaim
in all their cities, and in Jerusalem, saying, Go forth unto the
mount, and fetch olive branches, and pine branches, and myrtle
branches, and palm branches, and branches of thick trees, to make
booths, as it is written.

8:16 So the people went forth, and brought them, and made themselves
booths, every one upon the roof of his house, and in their courts, and
in the courts of the house of God, and in the street of the water
gate, and in the street of the gate of Ephraim.

8:17 And all the congregation of them that were come again out of the
captivity made booths, and sat under the booths: for since the days of
Jeshua the son of Nun unto that day had not the children of Israel
done so. And there was very great gladness.

8:18 Also day by day, from the first day unto the last day, he read in
the book of the law of God. And they kept the feast seven days; and on
the eighth day was a solemn assembly, according unto the manner.

9:1 Now in the twenty and fourth day of this month the children of
Israel were assembled with fasting, and with sackclothes, and earth
upon them.

9:2 And the seed of Israel separated themselves from all strangers,
and stood and confessed their sins, and the iniquities of their
fathers.

9:3 And they stood up in their place, and read in the book of the law
of the LORD their God one fourth part of the day; and another fourth
part they confessed, and worshipped the LORD their God.

9:4 Then stood up upon the stairs, of the Levites, Jeshua, and Bani,
Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani, and cried
with a loud voice unto the LORD their God.

9:5 Then the Levites, Jeshua, and Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabniah,
Sherebiah, Hodijah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said, Stand up and bless
the LORD your God for ever and ever: and blessed be thy glorious name,
which is exalted above all blessing and praise.

9:6 Thou, even thou, art LORD alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven
of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are
therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them
all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee.

9:7 Thou art the LORD the God, who didst choose Abram, and broughtest
him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gavest him the name of
Abraham; 9:8 And foundest his heart faithful before thee, and madest a
covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites,
the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Jebusites, and the
Girgashites, to give it, I say, to his seed, and hast performed thy
words; for thou art righteous: 9:9 And didst see the affliction of our
fathers in Egypt, and heardest their cry by the Red sea; 9:10 And
shewedst signs and wonders upon Pharaoh, and on all his servants, and
on all the people of his land: for thou knewest that they dealt
proudly against them. So didst thou get thee a name, as it is this
day.

9:11 And thou didst divide the sea before them, so that they went
through the midst of the sea on the dry land; and their persecutors
thou threwest into the deeps, as a stone into the mighty waters.

9:12 Moreover thou leddest them in the day by a cloudy pillar; and in
the night by a pillar of fire, to give them light in the way wherein
they should go.

9:13 Thou camest down also upon mount Sinai, and spakest with them
from heaven, and gavest them right judgments, and true laws, good
statutes and commandments: 9:14 And madest known unto them thy holy
sabbath, and commandedst them precepts, statutes, and laws, by the
hand of Moses thy servant: 9:15 And gavest them bread from heaven for
their hunger, and broughtest forth water for them out of the rock for
their thirst, and promisedst them that they should go in to possess
the land which thou hadst sworn to give them.

9:16 But they and our fathers dealt proudly, and hardened their necks,
and hearkened not to thy commandments, 9:17 And refused to obey,
neither were mindful of thy wonders that thou didst among them; but
hardened their necks, and in their rebellion appointed a captain to
return to their bondage: but thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious
and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and forsookest
them not.

9:18 Yea, when they had made them a molten calf, and said, This is thy
God that brought thee up out of Egypt, and had wrought great
provocations; 9:19 Yet thou in thy manifold mercies forsookest them
not in the wilderness: the pillar of the cloud departed not from them
by day, to lead them in the way; neither the pillar of fire by night,
to shew them light, and the way wherein they should go.

9:20 Thou gavest also thy good spirit to instruct them, and
withheldest not thy manna from their mouth, and gavest them water for
their thirst.

9:21 Yea, forty years didst thou sustain them in the wilderness, so
that they lacked nothing; their clothes waxed not old, and their feet
swelled not.

9:22 Moreover thou gavest them kingdoms and nations, and didst divide
them into corners: so they possessed the land of Sihon, and the land
of the king of Heshbon, and the land of Og king of Bashan.

9:23 Their children also multipliedst thou as the stars of heaven, and
broughtest them into the land, concerning which thou hadst promised to
their fathers, that they should go in to possess it.

9:24 So the children went in and possessed the land, and thou
subduedst before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and
gavest them into their hands, with their kings, and the people of the
land, that they might do with them as they would.

9:25 And they took strong cities, and a fat land, and possessed houses
full of all goods, wells digged, vineyards, and oliveyards, and fruit
trees in abundance: so they did eat, and were filled, and became fat,
and delighted themselves in thy great goodness.

9:26 Nevertheless they were disobedient, and rebelled against thee,
and cast thy law behind their backs, and slew thy prophets which
testified against them to turn them to thee, and they wrought great
provocations.

9:27 Therefore thou deliveredst them into the hand of their enemies,
who vexed them: and in the time of their trouble, when they cried unto
thee, thou heardest them from heaven; and according to thy manifold
mercies thou gavest them saviours, who saved them out of the hand of
their enemies.

9:28 But after they had rest, they did evil again before thee:
therefore leftest thou them in the land of their enemies, so that they
had the dominion over them: yet when they returned, and cried unto
thee, thou heardest them from heaven; and many times didst thou
deliver them according to thy mercies; 9:29 And testifiedst against
them, that thou mightest bring them again unto thy law: yet they dealt
proudly, and hearkened not unto thy commandments, but sinned against
thy judgments, (which if a man do, he shall live in them;) and
withdrew the shoulder, and hardened their neck, and would not hear.

9:30 Yet many years didst thou forbear them, and testifiedst against
them by thy spirit in thy prophets: yet would they not give ear:
therefore gavest thou them into the hand of the people of the lands.

9:31 Nevertheless for thy great mercies' sake thou didst not utterly
consume them, nor forsake them; for thou art a gracious and merciful
God.

9:32 Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the terrible
God, who keepest covenant and mercy, let not all the trouble seem
little before thee, that hath come upon us, on our kings, on our
princes, and on our priests, and on our prophets, and on our fathers,
and on all thy people, since the time of the kings of Assyria unto
this day.

9:33 Howbeit thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou
hast done right, but we have done wickedly: 9:34 Neither have our
kings, our princes, our priests, nor our fathers, kept thy law, nor
hearkened unto thy commandments and thy testimonies, wherewith thou
didst testify against them.

9:35 For they have not served thee in their kingdom, and in thy great
goodness that thou gavest them, and in the large and fat land which
thou gavest before them, neither turned they from their wicked works.

9:36 Behold, we are servants this day, and for the land that thou
gavest unto our fathers to eat the fruit thereof and the good thereof,
behold, we are servants in it: 9:37 And it yieldeth much increase unto
the kings whom thou hast set over us because of our sins: also they
have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure,
and we are in great distress.

9:38 And because of all this we make a sure covenant, and write it;
and our princes, Levites, and priests, seal unto it.

10:1 Now those that sealed were, Nehemiah, the Tirshatha, the son of
Hachaliah, and Zidkijah, 10:2 Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, 10:3 Pashur,
Amariah, Malchijah, 10:4 Hattush, Shebaniah, Malluch, 10:5 Harim,
Meremoth, Obadiah, 10:6 Daniel, Ginnethon, Baruch, 10:7 Meshullam,
Abijah, Mijamin, 10:8 Maaziah, Bilgai, Shemaiah: these were the
priests.

10:9 And the Levites: both Jeshua the son of Azaniah, Binnui of the
sons of Henadad, Kadmiel; 10:10 And their brethren, Shebaniah,
Hodijah, Kelita, Pelaiah, Hanan, 10:11 Micha, Rehob, Hashabiah, 10:12
Zaccur, Sherebiah, Shebaniah, 10:13 Hodijah, Bani, Beninu.

10:14 The chief of the people; Parosh, Pahathmoab, Elam, Zatthu, Bani,
10:15 Bunni, Azgad, Bebai, 10:16 Adonijah, Bigvai, Adin, 10:17 Ater,
Hizkijah, Azzur, 10:18 Hodijah, Hashum, Bezai, 10:19 Hariph, Anathoth,
Nebai, 10:20 Magpiash, Meshullam, Hezir, 10:21 Meshezabeel, Zadok,
Jaddua, 10:22 Pelatiah, Hanan, Anaiah, 10:23 Hoshea, Hananiah, Hashub,
10:24 Hallohesh, Pileha, Shobek, 10:25 Rehum, Hashabnah, Maaseiah,
10:26 And Ahijah, Hanan, Anan, 10:27 Malluch, Harim, Baanah.

10:28 And the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the
porters, the singers, the Nethinims, and all they that had separated
themselves from the people of the lands unto the law of God, their
wives, their sons, and their daughters, every one having knowledge,
and having understanding; 10:29 They clave to their brethren, their
nobles, and entered into a curse, and into an oath, to walk in God's
law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and
do all the commandments of the LORD our Lord, and his judgments and
his statutes; 10:30 And that we would not give our daughters unto the
people of the land, not take their daughters for our sons: 10:31 And
if the people of the land bring ware or any victuals on the sabbath
day to sell, that we would not buy it of them on the sabbath, or on
the holy day: and that we would leave the seventh year, and the
exaction of every debt.

10:32 Also we made ordinances for us, to charge ourselves yearly with
the third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our God;
10:33 For the shewbread, and for the continual meat offering, and for
the continual burnt offering, of the sabbaths, of the new moons, for
the set feasts, and for the holy things, and for the sin offerings to
make an atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our
God.

10:34 And we cast the lots among the priests, the Levites, and the
people, for the wood offering, to bring it into the house of our God,
after the houses of our fathers, at times appointed year by year, to
burn upon the altar of the LORD our God, as it is written in the law:
10:35 And to bring the firstfruits of our ground, and the firstfruits
of all fruit of all trees, year by year, unto the house of the LORD:
10:36 Also the firstborn of our sons, and of our cattle, as it is
written in the law, and the firstlings of our herds and of our flocks,
to bring to the house of our God, unto the priests that minister in
the house of our God: 10:37 And that we should bring the firstfruits
of our dough, and our offerings, and the fruit of all manner of trees,
of wine and of oil, unto the priests, to the chambers of the house of
our God; and the tithes of our ground unto the Levites, that the same
Levites might have the tithes in all the cities of our tillage.

10:38 And the priest the son of Aaron shall be with the Levites, when
the Levites take tithes: and the Levites shall bring up the tithe of
the tithes unto the house of our God, to the chambers, into the
treasure house.

10:39 For the children of Israel and the children of Levi shall bring
the offering of the corn, of the new wine, and the oil, unto the
chambers, where are the vessels of the sanctuary, and the priests that
minister, and the porters, and the singers: and we will not forsake
the house of our God.

11:1 And the rulers of the people dwelt at Jerusalem: the rest of the
people also cast lots, to bring one of ten to dwell in Jerusalem the
holy city, and nine parts to dwell in other cities.

11:2 And the people blessed all the men, that willingly offered
themselves to dwell at Jerusalem.

11:3 Now these are the chief of the province that dwelt in Jerusalem:
but in the cities of Judah dwelt every one in his possession in their
cities, to wit, Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the
Nethinims, and the children of Solomon's servants.

11:4 And at Jerusalem dwelt certain of the children of Judah, and of
the children of Benjamin. Of the children of Judah; Athaiah the son of
Uzziah, the son of Zechariah, the son of Amariah, the son of
Shephatiah, the son of Mahalaleel, of the children of Perez; 11:5 And
Maaseiah the son of Baruch, the son of Colhozeh, the son of Hazaiah,
the son of Adaiah, the son of Joiarib, the son of Zechariah, the son
of Shiloni.

11:6 All the sons of Perez that dwelt at Jerusalem were four hundred
threescore and eight valiant men.

11:7 And these are the sons of Benjamin; Sallu the son of Meshullam,
the son of Joed, the son of Pedaiah, the son of Kolaiah, the son of
Maaseiah, the son of Ithiel, the son of Jesaiah.

11:8 And after him Gabbai, Sallai, nine hundred twenty and eight.

11:9 And Joel the son of Zichri was their overseer: and Judah the son
of Senuah was second over the city.

11:10 Of the priests: Jedaiah the son of Joiarib, Jachin.

11:11 Seraiah the son of Hilkiah, the son of Meshullam, the son of
Zadok, the son of Meraioth, the son of Ahitub, was the ruler of the
house of God.

11:12 And their brethren that did the work of the house were eight
hundred twenty and two: and Adaiah the son of Jeroham, the son of
Pelaliah, the son of Amzi, the son of Zechariah, the son of Pashur,
the son of Malchiah.

11:13 And his brethren, chief of the fathers, two hundred forty and
two: and Amashai the son of Azareel, the son of Ahasai, the son of
Meshillemoth, the son of Immer, 11:14 And their brethren, mighty men
of valour, an hundred twenty and eight: and their overseer was
Zabdiel, the son of one of the great men.

11:15 Also of the Levites: Shemaiah the son of Hashub, the son of
Azrikam, the son of Hashabiah, the son of Bunni; 11:16 And Shabbethai
and Jozabad, of the chief of the Levites, had the oversight of the
outward business of the house of God.

11:17 And Mattaniah the son of Micha, the son of Zabdi, the son of
Asaph, was the principal to begin the thanksgiving in prayer: and
Bakbukiah the second among his brethren, and Abda the son of Shammua,
the son of Galal, the son of Jeduthun.

11:18 All the Levites in the holy city were two hundred fourscore and
four.

11:19 Moreover the porters, Akkub, Talmon, and their brethren that
kept the gates, were an hundred seventy and two.

11:20 And the residue of Israel, of the priests, and the Levites, were
in all the cities of Judah, every one in his inheritance.

11:21 But the Nethinims dwelt in Ophel: and Ziha and Gispa were over
the Nethinims.

11:22 The overseer also of the Levites at Jerusalem was Uzzi the son
of Bani, the son of Hashabiah, the son of Mattaniah, the son of Micha.
Of the sons of Asaph, the singers were over the business of the house
of God.

11:23 For it was the king's commandment concerning them, that a
certain portion should be for the singers, due for every day.

11:24 And Pethahiah the son of Meshezabeel, of the children of Zerah
the son of Judah, was at the king's hand in all matters concerning the
people.

11:25 And for the villages, with their fields, some of the children of
Judah dwelt at Kirjatharba, and in the villages thereof, and at Dibon,
and in the villages thereof, and at Jekabzeel, and in the villages
thereof, 11:26 And at Jeshua, and at Moladah, and at Bethphelet, 11:27
And at Hazarshual, and at Beersheba, and in the villages thereof,
11:28 And at Ziklag, and at Mekonah, and in the villages thereof,
11:29 And at Enrimmon, and at Zareah, and at Jarmuth, 11:30 Zanoah,
Adullam, and in their villages, at Lachish, and the fields thereof, at
Azekah, and in the villages thereof. And they dwelt from Beersheba
unto the valley of Hinnom.

11:31 The children also of Benjamin from Geba dwelt at Michmash, and
Aija, and Bethel, and in their villages.

11:32 And at Anathoth, Nob, Ananiah, 11:33 Hazor, Ramah, Gittaim,
11:34 Hadid, Zeboim, Neballat, 11:35 Lod, and Ono, the valley of
craftsmen.

11:36 And of the Levites were divisions in Judah, and in Benjamin.

12:1 Now these are the priests and the Levites that went up with
Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua: Seraiah, Jeremiah, Ezra,
12:2 Amariah, Malluch, Hattush, 12:3 Shechaniah, Rehum, Meremoth, 12:4
Iddo, Ginnetho, Abijah, 12:5 Miamin, Maadiah, Bilgah, 12:6 Shemaiah,
and Joiarib, Jedaiah, 12:7 Sallu, Amok, Hilkiah, Jedaiah. These were
the chief of the priests and of their brethren in the days of Jeshua.

12:8 Moreover the Levites: Jeshua, Binnui, Kadmiel, Sherebiah, Judah,
and Mattaniah, which was over the thanksgiving, he and his brethren.

12:9 Also Bakbukiah and Unni, their brethren, were over against them
in the watches.

12:10 And Jeshua begat Joiakim, Joiakim also begat Eliashib, and
Eliashib begat Joiada, 12:11 And Joiada begat Jonathan, and Jonathan
begat Jaddua.

12:12 And in the days of Joiakim were priests, the chief of the
fathers: of Seraiah, Meraiah; of Jeremiah, Hananiah; 12:13 Of Ezra,
Meshullam; of Amariah, Jehohanan; 12:14 Of Melicu, Jonathan; of
Shebaniah, Joseph; 12:15 Of Harim, Adna; of Meraioth, Helkai; 12:16 Of
Iddo, Zechariah; of Ginnethon, Meshullam; 12:17 Of Abijah, Zichri; of
Miniamin, of Moadiah, Piltai: 12:18 Of Bilgah, Shammua; of Shemaiah,
Jehonathan; 12:19 And of Joiarib, Mattenai; of Jedaiah, Uzzi; 12:20 Of
Sallai, Kallai; of Amok, Eber; 12:21 Of Hilkiah, Hashabiah; of
Jedaiah, Nethaneel.

12:22 The Levites in the days of Eliashib, Joiada, and Johanan, and
Jaddua, were recorded chief of the fathers: also the priests, to the
reign of Darius the Persian.

12:23 The sons of Levi, the chief of the fathers, were written in the
book of the chronicles, even until the days of Johanan the son of
Eliashib.

12:24 And the chief of the Levites: Hashabiah, Sherebiah, and Jeshua
the son of Kadmiel, with their brethren over against them, to praise
and to give thanks, according to the commandment of David the man of
God, ward over against ward.

12:25 Mattaniah, and Bakbukiah, Obadiah, Meshullam, Talmon, Akkub,
were porters keeping the ward at the thresholds of the gates.

12:26 These were in the days of Joiakim the son of Jeshua, the son of
Jozadak, and in the days of Nehemiah the governor, and of Ezra the
priest, the scribe.

12:27 And at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sought the
Levites out of all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem, to keep
the dedication with gladness, both with thanksgivings, and with
singing, with cymbals, psalteries, and with harps.

12:28 And the sons of the singers gathered themselves together, both
out of the plain country round about Jerusalem, and from the villages
of Netophathi; 12:29 Also from the house of Gilgal, and out of the
fields of Geba and Azmaveth: for the singers had builded them villages
round about Jerusalem.

12:30 And the priests and the Levites purified themselves, and
purified the people, and the gates, and the wall.

12:31 Then I brought up the princes of Judah upon the wall, and
appointed two great companies of them that gave thanks, whereof one
went on the right hand upon the wall toward the dung gate: 12:32 And
after them went Hoshaiah, and half of the princes of Judah, 12:33 And
Azariah, Ezra, and Meshullam, 12:34 Judah, and Benjamin, and Shemaiah,
and Jeremiah, 12:35 And certain of the priests' sons with trumpets;
namely, Zechariah the son of Jonathan, the son of Shemaiah, the son of
Mattaniah, the son of Michaiah, the son of Zaccur, the son of Asaph:
12:36 And his brethren, Shemaiah, and Azarael, Milalai, Gilalai, Maai,
Nethaneel, and Judah, Hanani, with the musical instruments of David
the man of God, and Ezra the scribe before them.

12:37 And at the fountain gate, which was over against them, they went
up by the stairs of the city of David, at the going up of the wall,
above the house of David, even unto the water gate eastward.

12:38 And the other company of them that gave thanks went over against
them, and I after them, and the half of the people upon the wall, from
beyond the tower of the furnaces even unto the broad wall; 12:39 And
from above the gate of Ephraim, and above the old gate, and above the
fish gate, and the tower of Hananeel, and the tower of Meah, even unto
the sheep gate: and they stood still in the prison gate.

12:40 So stood the two companies of them that gave thanks in the house
of God, and I, and the half of the rulers with me: 12:41 And the
priests; Eliakim, Maaseiah, Miniamin, Michaiah, Elioenai, Zechariah,
and Hananiah, with trumpets; 12:42 And Maaseiah, and Shemaiah, and
Eleazar, and Uzzi, and Jehohanan, and Malchijah, and Elam, and Ezer.
And the singers sang loud, with Jezrahiah their overseer.

12:43 Also that day they offered great sacrifices, and rejoiced: for
God had made them rejoice with great joy: the wives also and the
children rejoiced: so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar
off.

12:44 And at that time were some appointed over the chambers for the
treasures, for the offerings, for the firstfruits, and for the tithes,
to gather into them out of the fields of the cities the portions of
the law for the priests and Levites: for Judah rejoiced for the
priests and for the Levites that waited.

12:45 And both the singers and the porters kept the ward of their God,
and the ward of the purification, according to the commandment of
David, and of Solomon his son.

12:46 For in the days of David and Asaph of old there were chief of
the singers, and songs of praise and thanksgiving unto God.

12:47 And all Israel in the days of Zerubbabel, and in the days of
Nehemiah, gave the portions of the singers and the porters, every day
his portion: and they sanctified holy things unto the Levites; and the
Levites sanctified them unto the children of Aaron.

13:1 On that day they read in the book of Moses in the audience of the
people; and therein was found written, that the Ammonite and the
Moabite should not come into the congregation of God for ever; 13:2
Because they met not the children of Israel with bread and with water,
but hired Balaam against them, that he should curse them: howbeit our
God turned the curse into a blessing.

13:3 Now it came to pass, when they had heard the law, that they
separated from Israel all the mixed multitude.

13:4 And before this, Eliashib the priest, having the oversight of the
chamber of the house of our God, was allied unto Tobiah: 13:5 And he
had prepared for him a great chamber, where aforetime they laid the
meat offerings, the frankincense, and the vessels, and the tithes of
the corn, the new wine, and the oil, which was commanded to be given
to the Levites, and the singers, and the porters; and the offerings of
the priests.

13:6 But in all this time was not I at Jerusalem: for in the two and
thirtieth year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon came I unto the king, and
after certain days obtained I leave of the king: 13:7 And I came to
Jerusalem, and understood of the evil that Eliashib did for Tobiah, in
preparing him a chamber in the courts of the house of God.

13:8 And it grieved me sore: therefore I cast forth all the household
stuff to Tobiah out of the chamber.

13:9 Then I commanded, and they cleansed the chambers: and thither
brought I again the vessels of the house of God, with the meat
offering and the frankincense.

13:10 And I perceived that the portions of the Levites had not been
given them: for the Levites and the singers, that did the work, were
fled every one to his field.

13:11 Then contended I with the rulers, and said, Why is the house of
God forsaken? And I gathered them together, and set them in their
place.

13:12 Then brought all Judah the tithe of the corn and the new wine
and the oil unto the treasuries.

13:13 And I made treasurers over the treasuries, Shelemiah the priest,
and Zadok the scribe, and of the Levites, Pedaiah: and next to them
was Hanan the son of Zaccur, the son of Mattaniah: for they were
counted faithful, and their office was to distribute unto their
brethren.

13:14 Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and wipe not out my good
deeds that I have done for the house of my God, and for the offices
thereof.

13:15 In those days saw I in Judah some treading wine presses on the
sabbath, and bringing in sheaves, and lading asses; as also wine,
grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens, which they brought into
Jerusalem on the sabbath day: and I testified against them in the day
wherein they sold victuals.

13:16 There dwelt men of Tyre also therein, which brought fish, and
all manner of ware, and sold on the sabbath unto the children of
Judah, and in Jerusalem.

13:17 Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them,
What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the sabbath day?
13:18 Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this
evil upon us, and upon this city? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel
by profaning the sabbath.

13:19 And it came to pass, that when the gates of Jerusalem began to
be dark before the sabbath, I commanded that the gates should be shut,
and charged that they should not be opened till after the sabbath: and
some of my servants set I at the gates, that there should no burden be
brought in on the sabbath day.

13:20 So the merchants and sellers of all kind of ware lodged without
Jerusalem once or twice.

13:21 Then I testified against them, and said unto them, Why lodge ye
about the wall? if ye do so again, I will lay hands on you. From that
time forth came they no more on the sabbath.

13:22 And I commanded the Levites that they should cleanse themselves,
and that they should come and keep the gates, to sanctify the sabbath
day.

Remember me, O my God, concerning this also, and spare me according to
the greatness of thy mercy.

13:23 In those days also saw I Jews that had married wives of Ashdod,
of Ammon, and of Moab: 13:24 And their children spake half in the
speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in the Jews' language, but
according to the language of each people.

13:25 And I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of
them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God, saying,
Ye shall not give your daughters unto their sons, nor take their
daughters unto your sons, or for yourselves.

13:26 Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? yet among
many nations was there no king like him, who was beloved of his God,
and God made him king over all Israel: nevertheless even him did
outlandish women cause to sin.

13:27 Shall we then hearken unto you to do all this great evil, to
transgress against our God in marrying strange wives?  13:28 And one
of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son in
law to Sanballat the Horonite: therefore I chased him from me.

13:29 Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the
priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and of the Levites.

13:30 Thus cleansed I them from all strangers, and appointed the wards
of the priests and the Levites, every one in his business; 13:31 And
for the wood offering, at times appointed, and for the firstfruits.
Remember me, O my God, for good.




The Book of Esther


1:1 Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, (this is Ahasuerus
which reigned, from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and
seven and twenty provinces:) 1:2 That in those days, when the king
Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the
palace, 1:3 In the third year of his reign, he made a feast unto all
his princes and his servants; the power of Persia and Media, the
nobles and princes of the provinces, being before him: 1:4 When he
shewed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honour of his
excellent majesty many days, even an hundred and fourscore days.

1:5 And when these days were expired, the king made a feast unto all
the people that were present in Shushan the palace, both unto great
and small, seven days, in the court of the garden of the king's
palace; 1:6 Where were white, green, and blue, hangings, fastened with
cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble:
the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue,
and white, and black, marble.

1:7 And they gave them drink in vessels of gold, (the vessels being
diverse one from another,) and royal wine in abundance, according to
the state of the king.

1:8 And the drinking was according to the law; none did compel: for so
the king had appointed to all the officers of his house, that they
should do according to every man's pleasure.

1:9 Also Vashti the queen made a feast for the women in the royal
house which belonged to king Ahasuerus.

1:10 On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with
wine, he commanded Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, and Abagtha,
Zethar, and Carcas, the seven chamberlains that served in the presence
of Ahasuerus the king, 1:11 To bring Vashti the queen before the king
with the crown royal, to shew the people and the princes her beauty:
for she was fair to look on.

1:12 But the queen Vashti refused to come at the king's commandment by
his chamberlains: therefore was the king very wroth, and his anger
burned in him.

1:13 Then the king said to the wise men, which knew the times, (for so
was the king's manner toward all that knew law and judgment: 1:14 And
the next unto him was Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres,
Marsena, and Memucan, the seven princes of Persia and Media, which saw
the king's face, and which sat the first in the kingdom;) 1:15 What
shall we do unto the queen Vashti according to law, because she hath
not performed the commandment of the king Ahasuerus by the
chamberlains?  1:16 And Memucan answered before the king and the
princes, Vashti the queen hath not done wrong to the king only, but
also to all the princes, and to all the people that are in all the
provinces of the king Ahasuerus.

1:17 For this deed of the queen shall come abroad unto all women, so
that they shall despise their husbands in their eyes, when it shall be
reported, The king Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen to be brought
in before him, but she came not.

1:18 Likewise shall the ladies of Persia and Media say this day unto
all the king's princes, which have heard of the deed of the queen.
Thus shall there arise too much contempt and wrath.

1:19 If it please the king, let there go a royal commandment from him,
and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes,
that it be not altered, That Vashti come no more before king
Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal estate unto another that is
better than she.

1:20 And when the king's decree which he shall make shall be published
throughout all his empire, (for it is great,) all the wives shall give
to their husbands honour, both to great and small.

1:21 And the saying pleased the king and the princes; and the king did
according to the word of Memucan: 1:22 For he sent letters into all
the king's provinces, into every province according to the writing
thereof, and to every people after their language, that every man
should bear rule in his own house, and that it should be published
according to the language of every people.

2:1 After these things, when the wrath of king Ahasuerus was appeased,
he remembered Vashti, and what she had done, and what was decreed
against her.

2:2 Then said the king's servants that ministered unto him, Let there
be fair young virgins sought for the king: 2:3 And let the king
appoint officers in all the provinces of his kingdom, that they may
gather together all the fair young virgins unto Shushan the palace, to
the house of the women, unto the custody of Hege the king's
chamberlain, keeper of the women; and let their things for
purification be given them: 2:4 And let the maiden which pleaseth the
king be queen instead of Vashti.

And the thing pleased the king; and he did so.

2:5 Now in Shushan the palace there was a certain Jew, whose name was
Mordecai, the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a
Benjamite; 2:6 Who had been carried away from Jerusalem with the
captivity which had been carried away with Jeconiah king of Judah,
whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away.

2:7 And he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle's daughter:
for she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was fair and
beautiful; whom Mordecai, when her father and mother were dead, took
for his own daughter.

2:8 So it came to pass, when the king's commandment and his decree was
heard, and when many maidens were gathered together unto Shushan the
palace, to the custody of Hegai, that Esther was brought also unto the
king's house, to the custody of Hegai, keeper of the women.

2:9 And the maiden pleased him, and she obtained kindness of him; and
he speedily gave her her things for purification, with such things as
belonged to her, and seven maidens, which were meet to be given her,
out of the king's house: and he preferred her and her maids unto the
best place of the house of the women.

2:10 Esther had not shewed her people nor her kindred: for Mordecai
had charged her that she should not shew it.

2:11 And Mordecai walked every day before the court of the women's
house, to know how Esther did, and what should become of her.

2:12 Now when every maid's turn was come to go in to king Ahasuerus,
after that she had been twelve months, according to the manner of the
women, (for so were the days of their purifications accomplished, to
wit, six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet odours,
and with other things for the purifying of the women;) 2:13 Then thus
came every maiden unto the king; whatsoever she desired was given her
to go with her out of the house of the women unto the king's house.

2:14 In the evening she went, and on the morrow she returned into the
second house of the women, to the custody of Shaashgaz, the king's
chamberlain, which kept the concubines: she came in unto the king no
more, except the king delighted in her, and that she were called by
name.

2:15 Now when the turn of Esther, the daughter of Abihail the uncle of
Mordecai, who had taken her for his daughter, was come to go in unto
the king, she required nothing but what Hegai the king's chamberlain,
the keeper of the women, appointed. And Esther obtained favour in the
sight of all them that looked upon her.

2:16 So Esther was taken unto king Ahasuerus into his house royal in
the tenth month, which is the month Tebeth, in the seventh year of his
reign.

2:17 And the king loved Esther above all the women, and she obtained
grace and favour in his sight more than all the virgins; so that he
set the royal crown upon her head, and made her queen instead of
Vashti.

2:18 Then the king made a great feast unto all his princes and his
servants, even Esther's feast; and he made a release to the provinces,
and gave gifts, according to the state of the king.

2:19 And when the virgins were gathered together the second time, then
Mordecai sat in the king's gate.

2:20 Esther had not yet shewed her kindred nor her people; as Mordecai
had charged her: for Esther did the commandment of Mordecai, like as
when she was brought up with him.

2:21 In those days, while Mordecai sat in the king's gate, two of the
king's chamberlains, Bigthan and Teresh, of those which kept the door,
were wroth, and sought to lay hands on the king Ahasuerus.

2:22 And the thing was known to Mordecai, who told it unto Esther the
queen; and Esther certified the king thereof in Mordecai's name.

2:23 And when inquisition was made of the matter, it was found out;
therefore they were both hanged on a tree: and it was written in the
book of the chronicles before the king.

3:1 After these things did king Ahasuerus promote Haman the son of
Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him, and set his seat above all
the princes that were with him.

3:2 And all the king's servants, that were in the king's gate, bowed,
and reverenced Haman: for the king had so commanded concerning him.
But Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence.

3:3 Then the king's servants, which were in the king's gate, said unto
Mordecai, Why transgressest thou the king's commandment?  3:4 Now it
came to pass, when they spake daily unto him, and he hearkened not
unto them, that they told Haman, to see whether Mordecai's matters
would stand: for he had told them that he was a Jew.

3:5 And when Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence,
then was Haman full of wrath.

3:6 And he thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone; for they had
shewed him the people of Mordecai: wherefore Haman sought to destroy
all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even
the people of Mordecai.

3:7 In the first month, that is, the month Nisan, in the twelfth year
of king Ahasuerus, they cast Pur, that is, the lot, before Haman from
day to day, and from month to month, to the twelfth month, that is,
the month Adar.

3:8 And Haman said unto king Ahasuerus, There is a certain people
scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces
of thy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from all people; neither
keep they the king's laws: therefore it is not for the king's profit
to suffer them.

3:9 If it please the king, let it be written that they may be
destroyed: and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver to the hands
of those that have the charge of the business, to bring it into the
king's treasuries.

3:10 And the king took his ring from his hand, and gave it unto Haman
the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the Jews' enemy.

3:11 And the king said unto Haman, The silver is given to thee, the
people also, to do with them as it seemeth good to thee.

3:12 Then were the king's scribes called on the thirteenth day of the
first month, and there was written according to all that Haman had
commanded unto the king's lieutenants, and to the governors that were
over every province, and to the rulers of every people of every
province according to the writing thereof, and to every people after
their language; in the name of king Ahasuerus was it written, and
sealed with the king's ring.

3:13 And the letters were sent by posts into all the king's provinces,
to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and
old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth
day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the
spoil of them for a prey.

3:14 The copy of the writing for a commandment to be given in every
province was published unto all people, that they should be ready
against that day.

3:15 The posts went out, being hastened by the king's commandment, and
the decree was given in Shushan the palace. And the king and Haman sat
down to drink; but the city Shushan was perplexed.

4:1 When Mordecai perceived all that was done, Mordecai rent his
clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst
of the city, and cried with a loud and a bitter cry; 4:2 And came even
before the king's gate: for none might enter into the king's gate
clothed with sackcloth.

4:3 And in every province, whithersoever the king's commandment and
his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting,
and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.

4:4 So Esther's maids and her chamberlains came and told it her. Then
was the queen exceedingly grieved; and she sent raiment to clothe
Mordecai, and to take away his sackcloth from him: but he received it
not.

4:5 Then called Esther for Hatach, one of the king's chamberlains,
whom he had appointed to attend upon her, and gave him a commandment
to Mordecai, to know what it was, and why it was.

4:6 So Hatach went forth to Mordecai unto the street of the city,
which was before the king's gate.

4:7 And Mordecai told him of all that had happened unto him, and of
the sum of the money that Haman had promised to pay to the king's
treasuries for the Jews, to destroy them.

4:8 Also he gave him the copy of the writing of the decree that was
given at Shushan to destroy them, to shew it unto Esther, and to
declare it unto her, and to charge her that she should go in unto the
king, to make supplication unto him, and to make request before him
for her people.

4:9 And Hatach came and told Esther the words of Mordecai.

4:10 Again Esther spake unto Hatach, and gave him commandment unto
Mordecai; 4:11 All the king's servants, and the people of the king's
provinces, do know, that whosoever, whether man or women, shall come
unto the king into the inner court, who is not called, there is one
law of his to put him to death, except such to whom the king shall
hold out the golden sceptre, that he may live: but I have not been
called to come in unto the king these thirty days.

4:12 And they told to Mordecai Esther's words.

4:13 Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with thyself
that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews.

4:14 For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall
there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another
place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who
knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?
4:15 Then Esther bade them return Mordecai this answer, 4:16 Go,
gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye
for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and
my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king,
which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.

4:17 So Mordecai went his way, and did according to all that Esther
had commanded him.

5:1 Now it came to pass on the third day, that Esther put on her royal
apparel, and stood in the inner court of the king's house, over
against the king's house: and the king sat upon his royal throne in
the royal house, over against the gate of the house.

5:2 And it was so, when the king saw Esther the queen standing in the
court, that she obtained favour in his sight: and the king held out to
Esther the golden sceptre that was in his hand. So Esther drew near,
and touched the top of the sceptre.

5:3 Then said the king unto her, What wilt thou, queen Esther? and
what is thy request? it shall be even given thee to the half of the
kingdom.

5:4 And Esther answered, If it seem good unto the king, let the king
and Haman come this day unto the banquet that I have prepared for him.

5:5 Then the king said, Cause Haman to make haste, that he may do as
Esther hath said. So the king and Haman came to the banquet that
Esther had prepared.

5:6 And the king said unto Esther at the banquet of wine, What is thy
petition? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? even
to the half of the kingdom it shall be performed.

5:7 Then answered Esther, and said, My petition and my request is; 5:8
If I have found favour in the sight of the king, and if it please the
king to grant my petition, and to perform my request, let the king and
Haman come to the banquet that I shall prepare for them, and I will do
to morrow as the king hath said.

5:9 Then went Haman forth that day joyful and with a glad heart: but
when Haman saw Mordecai in the king's gate, that he stood not up, nor
moved for him, he was full of indignation against Mordecai.

5:10 Nevertheless Haman refrained himself: and when he came home, he
sent and called for his friends, and Zeresh his wife.

5:11 And Haman told them of the glory of his riches, and the multitude
of his children, and all the things wherein the king had promoted him,
and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the
king.

5:12 Haman said moreover, Yea, Esther the queen did let no man come in
with the king unto the banquet that she had prepared but myself; and
to morrow am I invited unto her also with the king.

5:13 Yet all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the
Jew sitting at the king's gate.

5:14 Then said Zeresh his wife and all his friends unto him, Let a
gallows be made of fifty cubits high, and to morrow speak thou unto
the king that Mordecai may be hanged thereon: then go thou in merrily
with the king unto the banquet. And the thing pleased Haman; and he
caused the gallows to be made.

6:1 On that night could not the king sleep, and he commanded to bring
the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the
king.

6:2 And it was found written, that Mordecai had told of Bigthana and
Teresh, two of the king's chamberlains, the keepers of the door, who
sought to lay hand on the king Ahasuerus.

6:3 And the king said, What honour and dignity hath been done to
Mordecai for this? Then said the king's servants that ministered unto
him, There is nothing done for him.

6:4 And the king said, Who is in the court? Now Haman was come into
the outward court of the king's house, to speak unto the king to hang
Mordecai on the gallows that he had prepared for him.

6:5 And the king's servants said unto him, Behold, Haman standeth in
the court. And the king said, Let him come in.

6:6 So Haman came in. And the king said unto him, What shall be done
unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour? Now Haman thought in
his heart, To whom would the king delight to do honour more than to
myself?  6:7 And Haman answered the king, For the man whom the king
delighteth to honour, 6:8 Let the royal apparel be brought which the
king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the
crown royal which is set upon his head: 6:9 And let this apparel and
horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king's most noble
princes, that they may array the man withal whom the king delighteth
to honour, and bring him on horseback through the street of the city,
and proclaim before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the
king delighteth to honour.

6:10 Then the king said to Haman, Make haste, and take the apparel and
the horse, as thou hast said, and do even so to Mordecai the Jew, that
sitteth at the king's gate: let nothing fail of all that thou hast
spoken.

6:11 Then took Haman the apparel and the horse, and arrayed Mordecai,
and brought him on horseback through the street of the city, and
proclaimed before him, Thus shall it be done unto the man whom the
king delighteth to honour.

6:12 And Mordecai came again to the king's gate. But Haman hasted to
his house mourning, and having his head covered.

6:13 And Haman told Zeresh his wife and all his friends every thing
that had befallen him. Then said his wise men and Zeresh his wife unto
him, If Mordecai be of the seed of the Jews, before whom thou hast
begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely
fall before him.

6:14 And while they were yet talking with him, came the king's
chamberlains, and hasted to bring Haman unto the banquet that Esther
had prepared.

7:1 So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen.

7:2 And the king said again unto Esther on the second day at the
banquet of wine, What is thy petition, queen Esther? and it shall be
granted thee: and what is thy request? and it shall be performed, even
to the half of the kingdom.

7:3 Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favour in
thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me
at my petition, and my people at my request: 7:4 For we are sold, I
and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we
had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue,
although the enemy could not countervail the king's damage.

7:5 Then the king Ahasuerus answered and said unto Esther the queen,
Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so?
7:6 And Esther said, The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman.
Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen.

7:7 And the king arising from the banquet of wine in his wrath went
into the palace garden: and Haman stood up to make request for his
life to Esther the queen; for he saw that there was evil determined
against him by the king.

7:8 Then the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of
the banquet of wine; and Haman was fallen upon the bed whereon Esther
was. Then said the king, Will he force the queen also before me in the
house? As the word went out of king's mouth, they covered Haman's
face.

7:9 And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king,
Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for
Mordecai, who spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of
Haman. Then the king said, Hang him thereon.

7:10 So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for
Mordecai. Then was the king's wrath pacified.

8:1 On that day did the king Ahasuerus give the house of Haman the
Jews' enemy unto Esther the queen. And Mordecai came before the king;
for Esther had told what he was unto her.

8:2 And the king took off his ring, which he had taken from Haman, and
gave it unto Mordecai. And Esther set Mordecai over the house of
Haman.

8:3 And Esther spake yet again before the king, and fell down at his
feet, and besought him with tears to put away the mischief of Haman
the Agagite, and his device that he had devised against the Jews.

8:4 Then the king held out the golden sceptre toward Esther. So Esther
arose, and stood before the king, 8:5 And said, If it please the king,
and if I have favour in his sight, and the thing seem right before the
king, and I be pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to reverse the
letters devised by Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he
wrote to destroy the Jews which are in all the king's provinces: 8:6
For how can I endure to see the evil that shall come unto my people?
or how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?  8:7 Then
the king Ahasuerus said unto Esther the queen and to Mordecai the Jew,
Behold, I have given Esther the house of Haman, and him they have
hanged upon the gallows, because he laid his hand upon the Jews.

8:8 Write ye also for the Jews, as it liketh you, in the king's name,
and seal it with the king's ring: for the writing which is written in
the king's name, and sealed with the king's ring, may no man reverse.

8:9 Then were the king's scribes called at that time in the third
month, that is, the month Sivan, on the three and twentieth day
thereof; and it was written according to all that Mordecai commanded
unto the Jews, and to the lieutenants, and the deputies and rulers of
the provinces which are from India unto Ethiopia, an hundred twenty
and seven provinces, unto every province according to the writing
thereof, and unto every people after their language, and to the Jews
according to their writing, and according to their language.

8:10 And he wrote in the king Ahasuerus' name, and sealed it with the
king's ring, and sent letters by posts on horseback, and riders on
mules, camels, and young dromedaries: 8:11 Wherein the king granted
the Jews which were in every city to gather themselves together, and
to stand for their life, to destroy, to slay and to cause to perish,
all the power of the people and province that would assault them, both
little ones and women, and to take the spoil of them for a prey, 8:12
Upon one day in all the provinces of king Ahasuerus, namely, upon the
thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar.

8:13 The copy of the writing for a commandment to be given in every
province was published unto all people, and that the Jews should be
ready against that day to avenge themselves on their enemies.

8:14 So the posts that rode upon mules and camels went out, being
hastened and pressed on by the king's commandment. And the decree was
given at Shushan the palace.

8:15 And Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal
apparel of blue and white, and with a great crown of gold, and with a
garment of fine linen and purple: and the city of Shushan rejoiced and
was glad.

8:16 The Jews had light, and gladness, and joy, and honour.

8:17 And in every province, and in every city, whithersoever the
king's commandment and his decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness,
a feast and a good day. And many of the people of the land became
Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them.

9:1 Now in the twelfth month, that is, the month Adar, on the
thirteenth day of the same, when the king's commandment and his decree
drew near to be put in execution, in the day that the enemies of the
Jews hoped to have power over them, (though it was turned to the
contrary, that the Jews had rule over them that hated them;) 9:2 The
Jews gathered themselves together in their cities throughout all the
provinces of the king Ahasuerus, to lay hand on such as sought their
hurt: and no man could withstand them; for the fear of them fell upon
all people.

9:3 And all the rulers of the provinces, and the lieutenants, and the
deputies, and officers of the king, helped the Jews; because the fear
of Mordecai fell upon them.

9:4 For Mordecai was great in the king's house, and his fame went out
throughout all the provinces: for this man Mordecai waxed greater and
greater.

9:5 Thus the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the
sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto
those that hated them.

9:6 And in Shushan the palace the Jews slew and destroyed five hundred
men.

9:7 And Parshandatha, and Dalphon, and Aspatha, 9:8 And Poratha, and
Adalia, and Aridatha, 9:9 And Parmashta, and Arisai, and Aridai, and
Vajezatha, 9:10 The ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the enemy
of the Jews, slew they; but on the spoil laid they not their hand.

9:11 On that day the number of those that were slain in Shushan the
palace was brought before the king.

9:12 And the king said unto Esther the queen, The Jews have slain and
destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the palace, and the ten sons of
Haman; what have they done in the rest of the king's provinces? now
what is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee: or what is thy
request further? and it shall be done.

9:13 Then said Esther, If it please the king, let it be granted to the
Jews which are in Shushan to do to morrow also according unto this
day's decree, and let Haman's ten sons be hanged upon the gallows.

9:14 And the king commanded it so to be done: and the decree was given
at Shushan; and they hanged Haman's ten sons.

9:15 For the Jews that were in Shushan gathered themselves together on
the fourteenth day also of the month Adar, and slew three hundred men
at Shushan; but on the prey they laid not their hand.

9:16 But the other Jews that were in the king's provinces gathered
themselves together, and stood for their lives, and had rest from
their enemies, and slew of their foes seventy and five thousand, but
they laid not their hands on the prey, 9:17 On the thirteenth day of
the month Adar; and on the fourteenth day of the same rested they, and
made it a day of feasting and gladness.

9:18 But the Jews that were at Shushan assembled together on the
thirteenth day thereof, and on the fourteenth thereof; and on the
fifteenth day of the same they rested, and made it a day of feasting
and gladness.

9:19 Therefore the Jews of the villages, that dwelt in the unwalled
towns, made the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of gladness and
feasting, and a good day, and of sending portions one to another.

9:20 And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters unto all the
Jews that were in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, both nigh
and far, 9:21 To stablish this among them, that they should keep the
fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same,
yearly, 9:22 As the days wherein the Jews rested from their enemies,
and the month which was turned unto them from sorrow to joy, and from
mourning into a good day: that they should make them days of feasting
and joy, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the
poor.

9:23 And the Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai
had written unto them; 9:24 Because Haman the son of Hammedatha, the
Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had devised against the Jews to
destroy them, and had cast Pur, that is, the lot, to consume them, and
to destroy them; 9:25 But when Esther came before the king, he
commanded by letters that his wicked device, which he devised against
the Jews, should return upon his own head, and that he and his sons
should be hanged on the gallows.

9:26 Wherefore they called these days Purim after the name of Pur.

Therefore for all the words of this letter, and of that which they had
seen concerning this matter, and which had come unto them, 9:27 The
Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all
such as joined themselves unto them, so as it should not fail, that
they would keep these two days according to their writing, and
according to their appointed time every year; 9:28 And that these days
should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every
family, every province, and every city; and that these days of Purim
should not fail from among the Jews, nor the memorial of them perish
from their seed.

9:29 Then Esther the queen, the daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the
Jew, wrote with all authority, to confirm this second letter of Purim.

9:30 And he sent the letters unto all the Jews, to the hundred twenty
and seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, with words of peace
and truth, 9:31 To confirm these days of Purim in their times
appointed, according as Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen had
enjoined them, and as they had decreed for themselves and for their
seed, the matters of the fastings and their cry.

9:32 And the decree of Esther confirmed these matters of Purim; and it
was written in the book.

10:1 And the king Ahasuerus laid a tribute upon the land, and upon the
isles of the sea.

10:2 And all the acts of his power and of his might, and the
declaration of the greatness of Mordecai, whereunto the king advanced
him, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings
of Media and Persia?  10:3 For Mordecai the Jew was next unto king
Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of
his brethren, seeking the wealth of his people, and speaking peace to
all his seed.




The Book of Job


1:1 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that
man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.

1:2 And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.

1:3 His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand
camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and
a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the
men of the east.

1:4 And his sons went and feasted in their houses, every one his day;
and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with
them.

1:5 And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about,
that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning,
and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for
Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their
hearts. Thus did Job continually.

1:6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present
themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.

1:7 And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan
answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and
from walking up and down in it.

1:8 And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job,
that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright
man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?  1:9 Then Satan
answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?  1:10 Hast
not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all
that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands,
and his substance is increased in the land.

1:11 But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he
will curse thee to thy face.

1:12 And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy
power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth
from the presence of the LORD.

1:13 And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating
and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house: 1:14 And there came
a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses
feeding beside them: 1:15 And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took
them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the
sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

1:16 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The
fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and
the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell
thee.

1:17 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The
Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have
carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the
sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

1:18 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy
sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest
brother's house: 1:19 And, behold, there came a great wind from the
wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon
the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell
thee.

1:20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and
fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, 1:21 And said, Naked came I
out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD
gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

1:22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

2:1 Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present
themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present
himself before the LORD.

2:2 And the LORD said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan
answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and
from walking up and down in it.

2:3 And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job,
that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright
man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth
fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy
him without cause.

2:4 And Satan answered the LORD, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all
that a man hath will he give for his life.

2:5 But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh,
and he will curse thee to thy face.

2:6 And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but
save his life.

2:7 So went Satan forth from the presence of the LORD, and smote Job
with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.

2:8 And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat
down among the ashes.

2:9 Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine
integrity?  curse God, and die.

2:10 But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women
speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we
not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.

2:11 Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that was come
upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the
Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: for they
had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to
comfort him.

2:12 And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not,
they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his
mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven.

2:13 So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven
nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief
was very great.

3:1 After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.

3:2 And Job spake, and said, 3:3 Let the day perish wherein I was
born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child
conceived.

3:4 Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above,
neither let the light shine upon it.

3:5 Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell
upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

3:6 As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it not be
joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of
the months.

3:7 Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.

3:8 Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up
their mourning.

3:9 Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for
light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day: 3:10
Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid sorrow
from mine eyes.

3:11 Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost
when I came out of the belly?  3:12 Why did the knees prevent me? or
why the breasts that I should suck?  3:13 For now should I have lain
still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,
3:14 With kings and counsellors of the earth, which build desolate
places for themselves; 3:15 Or with princes that had gold, who filled
their houses with silver: 3:16 Or as an hidden untimely birth I had
not been; as infants which never saw light.

3:17 There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at
rest.

3:18 There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the
oppressor.

3:19 The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his
master.

3:20 Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto
the bitter in soul; 3:21 Which long for death, but it cometh not; and
dig for it more than for hid treasures; 3:22 Which rejoice
exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?  3:23 Why is
light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?
3:24 For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured
out like the waters.

3:25 For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that
which I was afraid of is come unto me.

3:26 I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet
trouble came.

4:1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said, 4:2 If we assay to
commune with thee, wilt thou be grieved? but who can withhold himself
from speaking?  4:3 Behold, thou hast instructed many, and thou hast
strengthened the weak hands.

4:4 Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast
strengthened the feeble knees.

4:5 But now it is come upon thee, and thou faintest; it toucheth thee,
and thou art troubled.

4:6 Is not this thy fear, thy confidence, thy hope, and the
uprightness of thy ways?  4:7 Remember, I pray thee, who ever
perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?  4:8
Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap
the same.

4:9 By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils
are they consumed.

4:10 The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, and
the teeth of the young lions, are broken.

4:11 The old lion perisheth for lack of prey, and the stout lion's
whelps are scattered abroad.

4:12 Now a thing was secretly brought to me, and mine ear received a
little thereof.

4:13 In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep
falleth on men, 4:14 Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all
my bones to shake.

4:15 Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood
up: 4:16 It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an
image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice,
saying, 4:17 Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be
more pure than his maker?  4:18 Behold, he put no trust in his
servants; and his angels he charged with folly: 4:19 How much less in
them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust,
which are crushed before the moth?  4:20 They are destroyed from
morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding it.

4:21 Doth not their excellency which is in them go away? they die,
even without wisdom.

5:1 Call now, if there be any that will answer thee; and to which of
the saints wilt thou turn?  5:2 For wrath killeth the foolish man, and
envy slayeth the silly one.

5:3 I have seen the foolish taking root: but suddenly I cursed his
habitation.

5:4 His children are far from safety, and they are crushed in the
gate, neither is there any to deliver them.

5:5 Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, and taketh it even out of the
thorns, and the robber swalloweth up their substance.

5:6 Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth
trouble spring out of the ground; 5:7 Yet man is born unto trouble, as
the sparks fly upward.

5:8 I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause: 5:9
Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without
number: 5:10 Who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon
the fields: 5:11 To set up on high those that be low; that those which
mourn may be exalted to safety.

5:12 He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands
cannot perform their enterprise.

5:13 He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: and the counsel of
the froward is carried headlong.

5:14 They meet with darkness in the day time, and grope in the noonday
as in the night.

5:15 But he saveth the poor from the sword, from their mouth, and from
the hand of the mighty.

5:16 So the poor hath hope, and iniquity stoppeth her mouth.

5:17 Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise
not thou the chastening of the Almighty: 5:18 For he maketh sore, and
bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole.

5:19 He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall
no evil touch thee.

5:20 In famine he shall redeem thee from death: and in war from the
power of the sword.

5:21 Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue: neither shalt
thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh.

5:22 At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh: neither shalt thou be
afraid of the beasts of the earth.

5:23 For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field: and the
beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.

5:24 And thou shalt know that thy tabernacle shall be in peace; and
thou shalt visit thy habitation, and shalt not sin.

5:25 Thou shalt know also that thy seed shall be great, and thine
offspring as the grass of the earth.

5:26 Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of
corn cometh in in his season.

5:27 Lo this, we have searched it, so it is; hear it, and know thou it
for thy good.

6:1 But Job answered and said, 6:2 Oh that my grief were throughly
weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together!  6:3 For now
it would be heavier than the sand of the sea: therefore my words are
swallowed up.

6:4 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof
drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array
against me.

6:5 Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass? or loweth the ox over
his fodder?  6:6 Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or
is there any taste in the white of an egg?  6:7 The things that my
soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat.

6:8 Oh that I might have my request; and that God would grant me the
thing that I long for!  6:9 Even that it would please God to destroy
me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!  6:10 Then
should I yet have comfort; yea, I would harden myself in sorrow: let
him not spare; for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One.

6:11 What is my strength, that I should hope? and what is mine end,
that I should prolong my life?  6:12 Is my strength the strength of
stones? or is my flesh of brass?  6:13 Is not my help in me? and is
wisdom driven quite from me?  6:14 To him that is afflicted pity
should be shewed from his friend; but he forsaketh the fear of the
Almighty.

6:15 My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream
of brooks they pass away; 6:16 Which are blackish by reason of the
ice, and wherein the snow is hid: 6:17 What time they wax warm, they
vanish: when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place.

6:18 The paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing, and
perish.

6:19 The troops of Tema looked, the companies of Sheba waited for
them.

6:20 They were confounded because they had hoped; they came thither,
and were ashamed.

6:21 For now ye are nothing; ye see my casting down, and are afraid.

6:22 Did I say, Bring unto me? or, Give a reward for me of your
substance?  6:23 Or, Deliver me from the enemy's hand? or, Redeem me
from the hand of the mighty?  6:24 Teach me, and I will hold my
tongue: and cause me to understand wherein I have erred.

6:25 How forcible are right words! but what doth your arguing reprove?
6:26 Do ye imagine to reprove words, and the speeches of one that is
desperate, which are as wind?  6:27 Yea, ye overwhelm the fatherless,
and ye dig a pit for your friend.

6:28 Now therefore be content, look upon me; for it is evident unto
you if I lie.

6:29 Return, I pray you, let it not be iniquity; yea, return again, my
righteousness is in it.

6:30 Is there iniquity in my tongue? cannot my taste discern perverse
things?  7:1 Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? are not
his days also like the days of an hireling?  7:2 As a servant
earnestly desireth the shadow, and as an hireling looketh for the
reward of his work: 7:3 So am I made to possess months of vanity, and
wearisome nights are appointed to me.

7:4 When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise, and the night be gone?
and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day.

7:5 My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; my skin is
broken, and become loathsome.

7:6 My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without
hope.

7:7 O remember that my life is wind: mine eye shall no more see good.

7:8 The eye of him that hath seen me shall see me no more: thine eyes
are upon me, and I am not.

7:9 As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away: so he that goeth down
to the grave shall come up no more.

7:10 He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place
know him any more.

7:11 Therefore I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the
anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

7:12 Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?  7:13
When I say, My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my
complaints; 7:14 Then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me
through visions: 7:15 So that my soul chooseth strangling, and death
rather than my life.

7:16 I loathe it; I would not live alway: let me alone; for my days
are vanity.

7:17 What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him? and that thou
shouldest set thine heart upon him?  7:18 And that thou shouldest
visit him every morning, and try him every moment?  7:19 How long wilt
thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my
spittle?  7:20 I have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O thou
preserver of men?  why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so
that I am a burden to myself?  7:21 And why dost thou not pardon my
transgression, and take away my iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the
dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.

8:1 Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said, 8:2 How long wilt thou
speak these things? and how long shall the words of thy mouth be like
a strong wind?  8:3 Doth God pervert judgment? or doth the Almighty
pervert justice?  8:4 If thy children have sinned against him, and he
have cast them away for their transgression; 8:5 If thou wouldest seek
unto God betimes, and make thy supplication to the Almighty; 8:6 If
thou wert pure and upright; surely now he would awake for thee, and
make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous.

8:7 Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly
increase.

8:8 For enquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself
to the search of their fathers: 8:9 (For we are but of yesterday, and
know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow:) 8:10 Shall
not they teach thee, and tell thee, and utter words out of their
heart?  8:11 Can the rush grow up without mire? can the flag grow
without water?  8:12 Whilst it is yet in his greenness, and not cut
down, it withereth before any other herb.

8:13 So are the paths of all that forget God; and the hypocrite's hope
shall perish: 8:14 Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall
be a spider's web.

8:15 He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand: he shall
hold it fast, but it shall not endure.

8:16 He is green before the sun, and his branch shooteth forth in his
garden.

8:17 His roots are wrapped about the heap, and seeth the place of
stones.

8:18 If he destroy him from his place, then it shall deny him, saying,
I have not seen thee.

8:19 Behold, this is the joy of his way, and out of the earth shall
others grow.

8:20 Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man, neither will he
help the evil doers: 8:21 Till he fill thy mouth with laughing, and
thy lips with rejoicing.

8:22 They that hate thee shall be clothed with shame; and the dwelling
place of the wicked shall come to nought.

9:1 Then Job answered and said, 9:2 I know it is so of a truth: but
how should man be just with God?  9:3 If he will contend with him, he
cannot answer him one of a thousand.

9:4 He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who hath hardened
himself against him, and hath prospered?  9:5 Which removeth the
mountains, and they know not: which overturneth them in his anger.

9:6 Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof
tremble.

9:7 Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not; and sealeth up the
stars.

9:8 Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves
of the sea.

9:9 Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of
the south.

9:10 Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders
without number.

9:11 Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not: he passeth on also, but I
perceive him not.

9:12 Behold, he taketh away, who can hinder him? who will say unto
him, What doest thou?  9:13 If God will not withdraw his anger, the
proud helpers do stoop under him.

9:14 How much less shall I answer him, and choose out my words to
reason with him?  9:15 Whom, though I were righteous, yet would I not
answer, but I would make supplication to my judge.

9:16 If I had called, and he had answered me; yet would I not believe
that he had hearkened unto my voice.

9:17 For he breaketh me with a tempest, and multiplieth my wounds
without cause.

9:18 He will not suffer me to take my breath, but filleth me with
bitterness.

9:19 If I speak of strength, lo, he is strong: and if of judgment, who
shall set me a time to plead?  9:20 If I justify myself, mine own
mouth shall condemn me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me
perverse.

9:21 Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul: I would
despise my life.

9:22 This is one thing, therefore I said it, He destroyeth the perfect
and the wicked.

9:23 If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the
innocent.

9:24 The earth is given into the hand of the wicked: he covereth the
faces of the judges thereof; if not, where, and who is he?  9:25 Now
my days are swifter than a post: they flee away, they see no good.

9:26 They are passed away as the swift ships: as the eagle that
hasteth to the prey.

9:27 If I say, I will forget my complaint, I will leave off my
heaviness, and comfort myself: 9:28 I am afraid of all my sorrows, I
know that thou wilt not hold me innocent.

9:29 If I be wicked, why then labour I in vain?  9:30 If I wash myself
with snow water, and make my hands never so clean; 9:31 Yet shalt thou
plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me.

9:32 For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we
should come together in judgment.

9:33 Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand
upon us both.

9:34 Let him take his rod away from me, and let not his fear terrify
me: 9:35 Then would I speak, and not fear him; but it is not so with
me.

10:1 My soul is weary of my life; I will leave my complaint upon
myself; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

10:2 I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou
contendest with me.

10:3 Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, that thou
shouldest despise the work of thine hands, and shine upon the counsel
of the wicked?  10:4 Hast thou eyes of flesh? or seest thou as man
seeth?  10:5 Are thy days as the days of man? are thy years as man's
days, 10:6 That thou enquirest after mine iniquity, and searchest
after my sin?  10:7 Thou knowest that I am not wicked; and there is
none that can deliver out of thine hand.

10:8 Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about;
yet thou dost destroy me.

10:9 Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay; and
wilt thou bring me into dust again?  10:10 Hast thou not poured me out
as milk, and curdled me like cheese?  10:11 Thou hast clothed me with
skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews.

10:12 Thou hast granted me life and favour, and thy visitation hath
preserved my spirit.

10:13 And these things hast thou hid in thine heart: I know that this
is with thee.

10:14 If I sin, then thou markest me, and thou wilt not acquit me from
mine iniquity.

10:15 If I be wicked, woe unto me; and if I be righteous, yet will I
not lift up my head. I am full of confusion; therefore see thou mine
affliction; 10:16 For it increaseth. Thou huntest me as a fierce lion:
and again thou shewest thyself marvellous upon me.

10:17 Thou renewest thy witnesses against me, and increasest thine
indignation upon me; changes and war are against me.

10:18 Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh
that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!  10:19 I should
have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from
the womb to the grave.

10:20 Are not my days few? cease then, and let me alone, that I may
take comfort a little, 10:21 Before I go whence I shall not return,
even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death; 10:22 A land of
darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any
order, and where the light is as darkness.

11:1 Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said, 11:2 Should not
the multitude of words be answered? and should a man full of talk be
justified?  11:3 Should thy lies make men hold their peace? and when
thou mockest, shall no man make thee ashamed?  11:4 For thou hast
said, My doctrine is pure, and I am clean in thine eyes.

11:5 But oh that God would speak, and open his lips against thee; 11:6
And that he would shew thee the secrets of wisdom, that they are
double to that which is! Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less
than thine iniquity deserveth.

11:7 Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the
Almighty unto perfection?  11:8 It is as high as heaven; what canst
thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?  11:9 The measure
thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.

11:10 If he cut off, and shut up, or gather together, then who can
hinder him?  11:11 For he knoweth vain men: he seeth wickedness also;
will he not then consider it?  11:12 For vain men would be wise,
though man be born like a wild ass's colt.

11:13 If thou prepare thine heart, and stretch out thine hands toward
him; 11:14 If iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, and let not
wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles.

11:15 For then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot; yea, thou
shalt be stedfast, and shalt not fear: 11:16 Because thou shalt forget
thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away: 11:17 And thine
age shall be clearer than the noonday: thou shalt shine forth, thou
shalt be as the morning.

11:18 And thou shalt be secure, because there is hope; yea, thou shalt
dig about thee, and thou shalt take thy rest in safety.

11:19 Also thou shalt lie down, and none shall make thee afraid; yea,
many shall make suit unto thee.

11:20 But the eyes of the wicked shall fail, and they shall not
escape, and their hope shall be as the giving up of the ghost.

12:1 And Job answered and said, 12:2 No doubt but ye are the people,
and wisdom shall die with you.

12:3 But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to
you: yea, who knoweth not such things as these?  12:4 I am as one
mocked of his neighbour, who calleth upon God, and he answereth him:
the just upright man is laughed to scorn.

12:5 He that is ready to slip with his feet is as a lamp despised in
the thought of him that is at ease.

12:6 The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are
secure; into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.

12:7 But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls
of the air, and they shall tell thee: 12:8 Or speak to the earth, and
it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto
thee.

12:9 Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD hath
wrought this?  12:10 In whose hand is the soul of every living thing,
and the breath of all mankind.

12:11 Doth not the ear try words? and the mouth taste his meat?  12:12
With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.

12:13 With him is wisdom and strength, he hath counsel and
understanding.

12:14 Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again: he
shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening.

12:15 Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also he
sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.

12:16 With him is strength and wisdom: the deceived and the deceiver
are his.

12:17 He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and maketh the judges
fools.

12:18 He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth their loins with a
girdle.

12:19 He leadeth princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty.

12:20 He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the
understanding of the aged.

12:21 He poureth contempt upon princes, and weakeneth the strength of
the mighty.

12:22 He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to
light the shadow of death.

12:23 He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the
nations, and straiteneth them again.

12:24 He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the
earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no
way.

12:25 They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to
stagger like a drunken man.

13:1 Lo, mine eye hath seen all this, mine ear hath heard and
understood it.

13:2 What ye know, the same do I know also: I am not inferior unto
you.

13:3 Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with
God.

13:4 But ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value.

13:5 O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your
wisdom.

13:6 Hear now my reasoning, and hearken to the pleadings of my lips.

13:7 Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for him?
13:8 Will ye accept his person? will ye contend for God?  13:9 Is it
good that he should search you out? or as one man mocketh another, do
ye so mock him?  13:10 He will surely reprove you, if ye do secretly
accept persons.

13:11 Shall not his excellency make you afraid? and his dread fall
upon you?  13:12 Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to
bodies of clay.

13:13 Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on
me what will.

13:14 Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in
mine hand?  13:15 Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I
will maintain mine own ways before him.

13:16 He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come
before him.

13:17 Hear diligently my speech, and my declaration with your ears.

13:18 Behold now, I have ordered my cause; I know that I shall be
justified.

13:19 Who is he that will plead with me? for now, if I hold my tongue,
I shall give up the ghost.

13:20 Only do not two things unto me: then will I not hide myself from
thee.

13:21 Withdraw thine hand far from me: and let not thy dread make me
afraid.

13:22 Then call thou, and I will answer: or let me speak, and answer
thou me.

13:23 How many are mine iniquities and sins? make me to know my
transgression and my sin.

13:24 Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and holdest me for thine enemy?
13:25 Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro? and wilt thou pursue
the dry stubble?  13:26 For thou writest bitter things against me, and
makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth.

13:27 Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks, and lookest narrowly
unto all my paths; thou settest a print upon the heels of my feet.

13:28 And he, as a rotten thing, consumeth, as a garment that is moth
eaten.

14:1 Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble.

14:2 He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as
a shadow, and continueth not.

14:3 And doth thou open thine eyes upon such an one, and bringest me
into judgment with thee?  14:4 Who can bring a clean thing out of an
unclean? not one.

14:5 Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with
thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass; 14:6 Turn
from him, that he may rest, till he shall accomplish, as an hireling,
his day.

14:7 For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will
sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.

14:8 Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock
thereof die in the ground; 14:9 Yet through the scent of water it will
bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.

14:10 But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost,
and where is he?  14:11 As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood
decayeth and drieth up: 14:12 So man lieth down, and riseth not: till
the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of
their sleep.

14:13 O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest
keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me
a set time, and remember me!  14:14 If a man die, shall he live again?
all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.

14:15 Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: thou wilt have a desire
to the work of thine hands.

14:16 For now thou numberest my steps: dost thou not watch over my
sin?  14:17 My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou sewest up
mine iniquity.

14:18 And surely the mountains falling cometh to nought, and the rock
is removed out of his place.

14:19 The waters wear the stones: thou washest away the things which
grow out of the dust of the earth; and thou destroyest the hope of
man.

14:20 Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth: thou
changest his countenance, and sendest him away.

14:21 His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not; and they are
brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them.

14:22 But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him
shall mourn.

15:1 Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite, and said, 15:2 Should a wise
man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind?  15:3
Should he reason with unprofitable talk? or with speeches wherewith he
can do no good?  15:4 Yea, thou castest off fear, and restrainest
prayer before God.

15:5 For thy mouth uttereth thine iniquity, and thou choosest the
tongue of the crafty.

15:6 Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own lips
testify against thee.

15:7 Art thou the first man that was born? or wast thou made before
the hills?  15:8 Hast thou heard the secret of God? and dost thou
restrain wisdom to thyself?  15:9 What knowest thou, that we know not?
what understandest thou, which is not in us?  15:10 With us are both
the grayheaded and very aged men, much elder than thy father.

15:11 Are the consolations of God small with thee? is there any secret
thing with thee?  15:12 Why doth thine heart carry thee away? and what
do thy eyes wink at, 15:13 That thou turnest thy spirit against God,
and lettest such words go out of thy mouth?  15:14 What is man, that
he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be
righteous?  15:15 Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the
heavens are not clean in his sight.

15:16 How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh
iniquity like water?  15:17 I will shew thee, hear me; and that which
I have seen I will declare; 15:18 Which wise men have told from their
fathers, and have not hid it: 15:19 Unto whom alone the earth was
given, and no stranger passed among them.

15:20 The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days, and the number
of years is hidden to the oppressor.

15:21 A dreadful sound is in his ears: in prosperity the destroyer
shall come upon him.

15:22 He believeth not that he shall return out of darkness, and he is
waited for of the sword.

15:23 He wandereth abroad for bread, saying, Where is it? he knoweth
that the day of darkness is ready at his hand.

15:24 Trouble and anguish shall make him afraid; they shall prevail
against him, as a king ready to the battle.

15:25 For he stretcheth out his hand against God, and strengtheneth
himself against the Almighty.

15:26 He runneth upon him, even on his neck, upon the thick bosses of
his bucklers: 15:27 Because he covereth his face with his fatness, and
maketh collops of fat on his flanks.

15:28 And he dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man
inhabiteth, which are ready to become heaps.

15:29 He shall not be rich, neither shall his substance continue,
neither shall he prolong the perfection thereof upon the earth.

15:30 He shall not depart out of darkness; the flame shall dry up his
branches, and by the breath of his mouth shall he go away.

15:31 Let not him that is deceived trust in vanity: for vanity shall
be his recompence.

15:32 It shall be accomplished before his time, and his branch shall
not be green.

15:33 He shall shake off his unripe grape as the vine, and shall cast
off his flower as the olive.

15:34 For the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate, and fire
shall consume the tabernacles of bribery.

15:35 They conceive mischief, and bring forth vanity, and their belly
prepareth deceit.

16:1 Then Job answered and said, 16:2 I have heard many such things:
miserable comforters are ye all.

16:3 Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou
answerest?  16:4 I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my
soul's stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head
at you.

16:5 But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my
lips should asswage your grief.

16:6 Though I speak, my grief is not asswaged: and though I forbear,
what am I eased?  16:7 But now he hath made me weary: thou hast made
desolate all my company.

16:8 And thou hast filled me with wrinkles, which is a witness against
me: and my leanness rising up in me beareth witness to my face.

16:9 He teareth me in his wrath, who hateth me: he gnasheth upon me
with his teeth; mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me.

16:10 They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me
upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together
against me.

16:11 God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into
the hands of the wicked.

16:12 I was at ease, but he hath broken me asunder: he hath also taken
me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for his mark.

16:13 His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my reins
asunder, and doth not spare; he poureth out my gall upon the ground.

16:14 He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like
a giant.

16:15 I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and defiled my horn in the
dust.

16:16 My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of
death; 16:17 Not for any injustice in mine hands: also my prayer is
pure.

16:18 O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place.

16:19 Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on
high.

16:20 My friends scorn me: but mine eye poureth out tears unto God.

16:21 O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for
his neighbour!  16:22 When a few years are come, then I shall go the
way whence I shall not return.

17:1 My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready
for me.

17:2 Are there not mockers with me? and doth not mine eye continue in
their provocation?  17:3 Lay down now, put me in a surety with thee;
who is he that will strike hands with me?  17:4 For thou hast hid
their heart from understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt them.

17:5 He that speaketh flattery to his friends, even the eyes of his
children shall fail.

17:6 He hath made me also a byword of the people; and aforetime I was
as a tabret.

17:7 Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are
as a shadow.

17:8 Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall
stir up himself against the hypocrite.

17:9 The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean
hands shall be stronger and stronger.

17:10 But as for you all, do ye return, and come now: for I cannot
find one wise man among you.

17:11 My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts
of my heart.

17:12 They change the night into day: the light is short because of
darkness.

17:13 If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the
darkness.

17:14 I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou
art my mother, and my sister.

17:15 And where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it?
17:16 They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest
together is in the dust.

18:1 Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said, 18:2 How long will it
be ere ye make an end of words? mark, and afterwards we will speak.

18:3 Wherefore are we counted as beasts, and reputed vile in your
sight?  18:4 He teareth himself in his anger: shall the earth be
forsaken for thee? and shall the rock be removed out of his place?
18:5 Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of
his fire shall not shine.

18:6 The light shall be dark in his tabernacle, and his candle shall
be put out with him.

18:7 The steps of his strength shall be straitened, and his own
counsel shall cast him down.

18:8 For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walketh upon a
snare.

18:9 The gin shall take him by the heel, and the robber shall prevail
against him.

18:10 The snare is laid for him in the ground, and a trap for him in
the way.

18:11 Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall drive him
to his feet.

18:12 His strength shall be hungerbitten, and destruction shall be
ready at his side.

18:13 It shall devour the strength of his skin: even the firstborn of
death shall devour his strength.

18:14 His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it
shall bring him to the king of terrors.

18:15 It shall dwell in his tabernacle, because it is none of his:
brimstone shall be scattered upon his habitation.

18:16 His roots shall be dried up beneath, and above shall his branch
be cut off.

18:17 His remembrance shall perish from the earth, and he shall have
no name in the street.

18:18 He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of
the world.

18:19 He shall neither have son nor nephew among his people, nor any
remaining in his dwellings.

18:20 They that come after him shall be astonied at his day, as they
that went before were affrighted.

18:21 Surely such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the
place of him that knoweth not God.

19:1 Then Job answered and said, 19:2 How long will ye vex my soul,
and break me in pieces with words?  19:3 These ten times have ye
reproached me: ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to
me.

19:4 And be it indeed that I have erred, mine error remaineth with
myself.

19:5 If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead
against me my reproach: 19:6 Know now that God hath overthrown me, and
hath compassed me with his net.

19:7 Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but
there is no judgment.

19:8 He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set
darkness in my paths.

19:9 He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my
head.

19:10 He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope
hath he removed like a tree.

19:11 He hath also kindled his wrath against me, and he counteth me
unto him as one of his enemies.

19:12 His troops come together, and raise up their way against me, and
encamp round about my tabernacle.

19:13 He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are
verily estranged from me.

19:14 My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten
me.

19:15 They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a
stranger: I am an alien in their sight.

19:16 I called my servant, and he gave me no answer; I intreated him
with my mouth.

19:17 My breath is strange to my wife, though I intreated for the
children's sake of mine own body.

19:18 Yea, young children despised me; I arose, and they spake against
me.

19:19 All my inward friends abhorred me: and they whom I loved are
turned against me.

19:20 My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped
with the skin of my teeth.

19:21 Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the
hand of God hath touched me.

19:22 Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my
flesh?  19:23 Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were
printed in a book!  19:24 That they were graven with an iron pen and
lead in the rock for ever!  19:25 For I know that my redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: 19:26 And
though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I
see God: 19:27 Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall
behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.

19:28 But ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the
matter is found in me?  19:29 Be ye afraid of the sword: for wrath
bringeth the punishments of the sword, that ye may know there is a
judgment.

20:1 Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said, 20:2 Therefore do
my thoughts cause me to answer, and for this I make haste.

20:3 I have heard the check of my reproach, and the spirit of my
understanding causeth me to answer.

20:4 Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth,
20:5 That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the
hypocrite but for a moment?  20:6 Though his excellency mount up to
the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds; 20:7 Yet he shall
perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say,
Where is he?  20:8 He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be
found: yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night.

20:9 The eye also which saw him shall see him no more; neither shall
his place any more behold him.

20:10 His children shall seek to please the poor, and his hands shall
restore their goods.

20:11 His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down
with him in the dust.

20:12 Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth, though he hide it under
his tongue; 20:13 Though he spare it, and forsake it not; but keep it
still within his mouth: 20:14 Yet his meat in his bowels is turned, it
is the gall of asps within him.

20:15 He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again:
God shall cast them out of his belly.

20:16 He shall suck the poison of asps: the viper's tongue shall slay
him.

20:17 He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and
butter.

20:18 That which he laboured for shall he restore, and shall not
swallow it down: according to his substance shall the restitution be,
and he shall not rejoice therein.

20:19 Because he hath oppressed and hath forsaken the poor; because he
hath violently taken away an house which he builded not; 20:20 Surely
he shall not feel quietness in his belly, he shall not save of that
which he desired.

20:21 There shall none of his meat be left; therefore shall no man
look for his goods.

20:22 In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits: every
hand of the wicked shall come upon him.

20:23 When he is about to fill his belly, God shall cast the fury of
his wrath upon him, and shall rain it upon him while he is eating.

20:24 He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall
strike him through.

20:25 It is drawn, and cometh out of the body; yea, the glittering
sword cometh out of his gall: terrors are upon him.

20:26 All darkness shall be hid in his secret places: a fire not blown
shall consume him; it shall go ill with him that is left in his
tabernacle.

20:27 The heaven shall reveal his iniquity; and the earth shall rise
up against him.

20:28 The increase of his house shall depart, and his goods shall flow
away in the day of his wrath.

20:29 This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage
appointed unto him by God.

21:1 But Job answered and said, 21:2 Hear diligently my speech, and
let this be your consolations.

21:3 Suffer me that I may speak; and after that I have spoken, mock
on.

21:4 As for me, is my complaint to man? and if it were so, why should
not my spirit be troubled?  21:5 Mark me, and be astonished, and lay
your hand upon your mouth.

21:6 Even when I remember I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold on my
flesh.

21:7 Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in
power?  21:8 Their seed is established in their sight with them, and
their offspring before their eyes.

21:9 Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon
them.

21:10 Their bull gendereth, and faileth not; their cow calveth, and
casteth not her calf.

21:11 They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their
children dance.

21:12 They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the
organ.

21:13 They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the
grave.

21:14 Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not
the knowledge of thy ways.

21:15 What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? and what profit
should we have, if we pray unto him?  21:16 Lo, their good is not in
their hand: the counsel of the wicked is far from me.

21:17 How oft is the candle of the wicked put out! and how oft cometh
their destruction upon them! God distributeth sorrows in his anger.

21:18 They are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff that the storm
carrieth away.

21:19 God layeth up his iniquity for his children: he rewardeth him,
and he shall know it.

21:20 His eyes shall see his destruction, and he shall drink of the
wrath of the Almighty.

21:21 For what pleasure hath he in his house after him, when the
number of his months is cut off in the midst?  21:22 Shall any teach
God knowledge? seeing he judgeth those that are high.

21:23 One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet.

21:24 His breasts are full of milk, and his bones are moistened with
marrow.

21:25 And another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never
eateth with pleasure.

21:26 They shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover
them.

21:27 Behold, I know your thoughts, and the devices which ye
wrongfully imagine against me.

21:28 For ye say, Where is the house of the prince? and where are the
dwelling places of the wicked?  21:29 Have ye not asked them that go
by the way? and do ye not know their tokens, 21:30 That the wicked is
reserved to the day of destruction? they shall be brought forth to the
day of wrath.

21:31 Who shall declare his way to his face? and who shall repay him
what he hath done?  21:32 Yet shall he be brought to the grave, and
shall remain in the tomb.

21:33 The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him, and every man
shall draw after him, as there are innumerable before him.

21:34 How then comfort ye me in vain, seeing in your answers there
remaineth falsehood?  22:1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and
said, 22:2 Can a man be profitable unto God, as he that is wise may be
profitable unto himself?  22:3 Is it any pleasure to the Almighty,
that thou art righteous? or is it gain to him, that thou makest thy
ways perfect?  22:4 Will he reprove thee for fear of thee? will he
enter with thee into judgment?  22:5 Is not thy wickedness great? and
thine iniquities infinite?  22:6 For thou hast taken a pledge from thy
brother for nought, and stripped the naked of their clothing.

22:7 Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, and thou hast
withholden bread from the hungry.

22:8 But as for the mighty man, he had the earth; and the honourable
man dwelt in it.

22:9 Thou hast sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless
have been broken.

22:10 Therefore snares are round about thee, and sudden fear troubleth
thee; 22:11 Or darkness, that thou canst not see; and abundance of
waters cover thee.

22:12 Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the
stars, how high they are!  22:13 And thou sayest, How doth God know?
can he judge through the dark cloud?  22:14 Thick clouds are a
covering to him, that he seeth not; and he walketh in the circuit of
heaven.

22:15 Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?
22:16 Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown
with a flood: 22:17 Which said unto God, Depart from us: and what can
the Almighty do for them?  22:18 Yet he filled their houses with good
things: but the counsel of the wicked is far from me.

22:19 The righteous see it, and are glad: and the innocent laugh them
to scorn.

22:20 Whereas our substance is not cut down, but the remnant of them
the fire consumeth.

22:21 Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace: thereby good
shall come unto thee.

22:22 Receive, I pray thee, the law from his mouth, and lay up his
words in thine heart.

22:23 If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up, thou
shalt put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles.

22:24 Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir as
the stones of the brooks.

22:25 Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defence, and thou shalt have
plenty of silver.

22:26 For then shalt thou have thy delight in the Almighty, and shalt
lift up thy face unto God.

22:27 Thou shalt make thy prayer unto him, and he shall hear thee, and
thou shalt pay thy vows.

22:28 Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto
thee: and the light shall shine upon thy ways.

22:29 When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting
up; and he shall save the humble person.

22:30 He shall deliver the island of the innocent: and it is delivered
by the pureness of thine hands.

23:1 Then Job answered and said, 23:2 Even to day is my complaint
bitter: my stroke is heavier than my groaning.

23:3 Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to
his seat!  23:4 I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth
with arguments.

23:5 I would know the words which he would answer me, and understand
what he would say unto me.

23:6 Will he plead against me with his great power? No; but he would
put strength in me.

23:7 There the righteous might dispute with him; so should I be
delivered for ever from my judge.

23:8 Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I
cannot perceive him: 23:9 On the left hand, where he doth work, but I
cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot
see him: 23:10 But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried
me, I shall come forth as gold.

23:11 My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not
declined.

23:12 Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I
have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.

23:13 But he is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul
desireth, even that he doeth.

23:14 For he performeth the thing that is appointed for me: and many
such things are with him.

23:15 Therefore am I troubled at his presence: when I consider, I am
afraid of him.

23:16 For God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me:
23:17 Because I was not cut off before the darkness, neither hath he
covered the darkness from my face.

24:1 Why, seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty, do they that
know him not see his days?  24:2 Some remove the landmarks; they
violently take away flocks, and feed thereof.

24:3 They drive away the ass of the fatherless, they take the widow's
ox for a pledge.

24:4 They turn the needy out of the way: the poor of the earth hide
themselves together.

24:5 Behold, as wild asses in the desert, go they forth to their work;
rising betimes for a prey: the wilderness yieldeth food for them and
for their children.

24:6 They reap every one his corn in the field: and they gather the
vintage of the wicked.

24:7 They cause the naked to lodge without clothing, that they have no
covering in the cold.

24:8 They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the
rock for want of a shelter.

24:9 They pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of
the poor.

24:10 They cause him to go naked without clothing, and they take away
the sheaf from the hungry; 24:11 Which make oil within their walls,
and tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst.

24:12 Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded
crieth out: yet God layeth not folly to them.

24:13 They are of those that rebel against the light; they know not
the ways thereof, nor abide in the paths thereof.

24:14 The murderer rising with the light killeth the poor and needy,
and in the night is as a thief.

24:15 The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying,
No eye shall see me: and disguiseth his face.

24:16 In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for
themselves in the daytime: they know not the light.

24:17 For the morning is to them even as the shadow of death: if one
know them, they are in the terrors of the shadow of death.

24:18 He is swift as the waters; their portion is cursed in the earth:
he beholdeth not the way of the vineyards.

24:19 Drought and heat consume the snow waters: so doth the grave
those which have sinned.

24:20 The womb shall forget him; the worm shall feed sweetly on him;
he shall be no more remembered; and wickedness shall be broken as a
tree.

24:21 He evil entreateth the barren that beareth not: and doeth not
good to the widow.

24:22 He draweth also the mighty with his power: he riseth up, and no
man is sure of life.

24:23 Though it be given him to be in safety, whereon he resteth; yet
his eyes are upon their ways.

24:24 They are exalted for a little while, but are gone and brought
low; they are taken out of the way as all other, and cut off as the
tops of the ears of corn.

24:25 And if it be not so now, who will make me a liar, and make my
speech nothing worth?  25:1 Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and
said, 25:2 Dominion and fear are with him, he maketh peace in his high
places.

25:3 Is there any number of his armies? and upon whom doth not his
light arise?  25:4 How then can man be justified with God? or how can
he be clean that is born of a woman?  25:5 Behold even to the moon,
and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.

25:6 How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a
worm?  26:1 But Job answered and said, 26:2 How hast thou helped him
that is without power? how savest thou the arm that hath no strength?
26:3 How hast thou counselled him that hath no wisdom? and how hast
thou plentifully declared the thing as it is?  26:4 To whom hast thou
uttered words? and whose spirit came from thee?  26:5 Dead things are
formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof.

26:6 Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering.

26:7 He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the
earth upon nothing.

26:8 He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is
not rent under them.

26:9 He holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud
upon it.

26:10 He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and
night come to an end.

26:11 The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof.

26:12 He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he
smiteth through the proud.

26:13 By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath
formed the crooked serpent.

26:14 Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is
heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand?  27:1
Moreover Job continued his parable, and said, 27:2 As God liveth, who
hath taken away my judgment; and the Almighty, who hath vexed my soul;
27:3 All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my
nostrils; 27:4 My lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter
deceit.

27:5 God forbid that I should justify you: till I die I will not
remove mine integrity from me.

27:6 My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: my heart
shall not reproach me so long as I live.

27:7 Let mine enemy be as the wicked, and he that riseth up against me
as the unrighteous.

27:8 For what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained,
when God taketh away his soul?  27:9 Will God hear his cry when
trouble cometh upon him?  27:10 Will he delight himself in the
Almighty? will he always call upon God?  27:11 I will teach you by the
hand of God: that which is with the Almighty will I not conceal.

27:12 Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus
altogether vain?  27:13 This is the portion of a wicked man with God,
and the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of the
Almighty.

27:14 If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword: and his
offspring shall not be satisfied with bread.

27:15 Those that remain of him shall be buried in death: and his
widows shall not weep.

27:16 Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the
clay; 27:17 He may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the
innocent shall divide the silver.

27:18 He buildeth his house as a moth, and as a booth that the keeper
maketh.

27:19 The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he
openeth his eyes, and he is not.

27:20 Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away
in the night.

27:21 The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth: and as a
storm hurleth him out of his place.

27:22 For God shall cast upon him, and not spare: he would fain flee
out of his hand.

27:23 Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his
place.

28:1 Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where
they fine it.

28:2 Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the
stone.

28:3 He setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out all perfection:
the stones of darkness, and the shadow of death.

28:4 The flood breaketh out from the inhabitant; even the waters
forgotten of the foot: they are dried up, they are gone away from men.

28:5 As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned
up as it were fire.

28:6 The stones of it are the place of sapphires: and it hath dust of
gold.

28:7 There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's
eye hath not seen: 28:8 The lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the
fierce lion passed by it.

28:9 He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he overturneth the
mountains by the roots.

28:10 He cutteth out rivers among the rocks; and his eye seeth every
precious thing.

28:11 He bindeth the floods from overflowing; and the thing that is
hid bringeth he forth to light.

28:12 But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of
understanding?  28:13 Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it
found in the land of the living.

28:14 The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not
with me.

28:15 It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed
for the price thereof.

28:16 It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious
onyx, or the sapphire.

28:17 The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it
shall not be for jewels of fine gold.

28:18 No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price
of wisdom is above rubies.

28:19 The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be
valued with pure gold.

28:20 Whence then cometh wisdom? and where is the place of
understanding?  28:21 Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living,
and kept close from the fowls of the air.

28:22 Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with
our ears.

28:23 God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place
thereof.

28:24 For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the
whole heaven; 28:25 To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth
the waters by measure.

28:26 When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning
of the thunder: 28:27 Then did he see it, and declare it; he prepared
it, yea, and searched it out.

28:28 And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the LORD, that is
wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.

29:1 Moreover Job continued his parable, and said, 29:2 Oh that I were
as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; 29:3 When his
candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through
darkness; 29:4 As I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of
God was upon my tabernacle; 29:5 When the Almighty was yet with me,
when my children were about me; 29:6 When I washed my steps with
butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil; 29:7 When I went out
to the gate through the city, when I prepared my seat in the street!
29:8 The young men saw me, and hid themselves: and the aged arose, and
stood up.

29:9 The princes refrained talking, and laid their hand on their
mouth.

29:10 The nobles held their peace, and their tongue cleaved to the
roof of their mouth.

29:11 When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw
me, it gave witness to me: 29:12 Because I delivered the poor that
cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him.

29:13 The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: and I
caused the widow's heart to sing for joy.

29:14 I put on righteousness, and it clothed me: my judgment was as a
robe and a diadem.

29:15 I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame.

29:16 I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I
searched out.

29:17 And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of
his teeth.

29:18 Then I said, I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my
days as the sand.

29:19 My root was spread out by the waters, and the dew lay all night
upon my branch.

29:20 My glory was fresh in me, and my bow was renewed in my hand.

29:21 Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at my
counsel.

29:22 After my words they spake not again; and my speech dropped upon
them.

29:23 And they waited for me as for the rain; and they opened their
mouth wide as for the latter rain.

29:24 If I laughed on them, they believed it not; and the light of my
countenance they cast not down.

29:25 I chose out their way, and sat chief, and dwelt as a king in the
army, as one that comforteth the mourners.

30:1 But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose
fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.

30:2 Yea, whereto might the strength of their hands profit me, in whom
old age was perished?  30:3 For want and famine they were solitary;
fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste.

30:4 Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their
meat.

30:5 They were driven forth from among men, (they cried after them as
after a thief;) 30:6 To dwell in the cliffs of the valleys, in caves
of the earth, and in the rocks.

30:7 Among the bushes they brayed; under the nettles they were
gathered together.

30:8 They were children of fools, yea, children of base men: they were
viler than the earth.

30:9 And now am I their song, yea, I am their byword.

30:10 They abhor me, they flee far from me, and spare not to spit in
my face.

30:11 Because he hath loosed my cord, and afflicted me, they have also
let loose the bridle before me.

30:12 Upon my right hand rise the youth; they push away my feet, and
they raise up against me the ways of their destruction.

30:13 They mar my path, they set forward my calamity, they have no
helper.

30:14 They came upon me as a wide breaking in of waters: in the
desolation they rolled themselves upon me.

30:15 Terrors are turned upon me: they pursue my soul as the wind: and
my welfare passeth away as a cloud.

30:16 And now my soul is poured out upon me; the days of affliction
have taken hold upon me.

30:17 My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews
take no rest.

30:18 By the great force of my disease is my garment changed: it
bindeth me about as the collar of my coat.

30:19 He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and
ashes.

30:20 I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou
regardest me not.

30:21 Thou art become cruel to me: with thy strong hand thou opposest
thyself against me.

30:22 Thou liftest me up to the wind; thou causest me to ride upon it,
and dissolvest my substance.

30:23 For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house
appointed for all living.

30:24 Howbeit he will not stretch out his hand to the grave, though
they cry in his destruction.

30:25 Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? was not my soul
grieved for the poor?  30:26 When I looked for good, then evil came
unto me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness.

30:27 My bowels boiled, and rested not: the days of affliction
prevented me.

30:28 I went mourning without the sun: I stood up, and I cried in the
congregation.

30:29 I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.

30:30 My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.

30:31 My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ into the voice
of them that weep.

31:1 I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a
maid?  31:2 For what portion of God is there from above? and what
inheritance of the Almighty from on high?  31:3 Is not destruction to
the wicked? and a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity?  31:4
Doth not he see my ways, and count all my steps?  31:5 If I have
walked with vanity, or if my foot hath hasted to deceit; 31:6 Let me
be weighed in an even balance that God may know mine integrity.

31:7 If my step hath turned out of the way, and mine heart walked
after mine eyes, and if any blot hath cleaved to mine hands; 31:8 Then
let me sow, and let another eat; yea, let my offspring be rooted out.

31:9 If mine heart have been deceived by a woman, or if I have laid
wait at my neighbour's door; 31:10 Then let my wife grind unto
another, and let others bow down upon her.

31:11 For this is an heinous crime; yea, it is an iniquity to be
punished by the judges.

31:12 For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction, and would root
out all mine increase.

31:13 If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my
maidservant, when they contended with me; 31:14 What then shall I do
when God riseth up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him?
31:15 Did not he that made me in the womb make him? and did not one
fashion us in the womb?  31:16 If I have withheld the poor from their
desire, or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail; 31:17 Or have
eaten my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless hath not eaten
thereof; 31:18 (For from my youth he was brought up with me, as with a
father, and I have guided her from my mother's womb;) 31:19 If I have
seen any perish for want of clothing, or any poor without covering;
31:20 If his loins have not blessed me, and if he were not warmed with
the fleece of my sheep; 31:21 If I have lifted up my hand against the
fatherless, when I saw my help in the gate: 31:22 Then let mine arm
fall from my shoulder blade, and mine arm be broken from the bone.

31:23 For destruction from God was a terror to me, and by reason of
his highness I could not endure.

31:24 If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, Thou
art my confidence; 31:25 If I rejoice because my wealth was great, and
because mine hand had gotten much; 31:26 If I beheld the sun when it
shined, or the moon walking in brightness; 31:27 And my heart hath
been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand: 31:28 This
also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge: for I should have
denied the God that is above.

31:29 If I rejoice at the destruction of him that hated me, or lifted
up myself when evil found him: 31:30 Neither have I suffered my mouth
to sin by wishing a curse to his soul.

31:31 If the men of my tabernacle said not, Oh that we had of his
flesh!  we cannot be satisfied.

31:32 The stranger did not lodge in the street: but I opened my doors
to the traveller.

31:33 If I covered my transgressions as Adam, by hiding mine iniquity
in my bosom: 31:34 Did I fear a great multitude, or did the contempt
of families terrify me, that I kept silence, and went not out of the
door?  31:35 Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the
Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book.

31:36 Surely I would take it upon my shoulder, and bind it as a crown
to me.

31:37 I would declare unto him the number of my steps; as a prince
would I go near unto him.

31:38 If my land cry against me, or that the furrows likewise thereof
complain; 31:39 If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, or
have caused the owners thereof to lose their life: 31:40 Let thistles
grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley.

The words of Job are ended.

32:1 So these three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous
in his own eyes.

32:2 Then was kindled the wrath of Elihu the son of Barachel the
Buzite, of the kindred of Ram: against Job was his wrath kindled,
because he justified himself rather than God.

32:3 Also against his three friends was his wrath kindled, because
they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job.

32:4 Now Elihu had waited till Job had spoken, because they were elder
than he.

32:5 When Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these
three men, then his wrath was kindled.

32:6 And Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite answered and said, I am
young, and ye are very old; wherefore I was afraid, and durst not shew
you mine opinion.

32:7 I said, Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach
wisdom.

32:8 But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty
giveth them understanding.

32:9 Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand
judgment.

32:10 Therefore I said, Hearken to me; I also will shew mine opinion.

32:11 Behold, I waited for your words; I gave ear to your reasons,
whilst ye searched out what to say.

32:12 Yea, I attended unto you, and, behold, there was none of you
that convinced Job, or that answered his words: 32:13 Lest ye should
say, We have found out wisdom: God thrusteth him down, not man.

32:14 Now he hath not directed his words against me: neither will I
answer him with your speeches.

32:15 They were amazed, they answered no more: they left off speaking.

32:16 When I had waited, (for they spake not, but stood still, and
answered no more;) 32:17 I said, I will answer also my part, I also
will shew mine opinion.

32:18 For I am full of matter, the spirit within me constraineth me.

32:19 Behold, my belly is as wine which hath no vent; it is ready to
burst like new bottles.

32:20 I will speak, that I may be refreshed: I will open my lips and
answer.

32:21 Let me not, I pray you, accept any man's person, neither let me
give flattering titles unto man.

32:22 For I know not to give flattering titles; in so doing my maker
would soon take me away.

33:1 Wherefore, Job, I pray thee, hear my speeches, and hearken to all
my words.

33:2 Behold, now I have opened my mouth, my tongue hath spoken in my
mouth.

33:3 My words shall be of the uprightness of my heart: and my lips
shall utter knowledge clearly.

33:4 The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty
hath given me life.

33:5 If thou canst answer me, set thy words in order before me, stand
up.

33:6 Behold, I am according to thy wish in God's stead: I also am
formed out of the clay.

33:7 Behold, my terror shall not make thee afraid, neither shall my
hand be heavy upon thee.

33:8 Surely thou hast spoken in mine hearing, and I have heard the
voice of thy words, saying, 33:9 I am clean without transgression, I
am innocent; neither is there iniquity in me.

33:10 Behold, he findeth occasions against me, he counteth me for his
enemy, 33:11 He putteth my feet in the stocks, he marketh all my
paths.

33:12 Behold, in this thou art not just: I will answer thee, that God
is greater than man.

33:13 Why dost thou strive against him? for he giveth not account of
any of his matters.

33:14 For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.

33:15 In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth
upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; 33:16 Then he openeth the ears
of men, and sealeth their instruction, 33:17 That he may withdraw man
from his purpose, and hide pride from man.

33:18 He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from
perishing by the sword.

33:19 He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude
of his bones with strong pain: 33:20 So that his life abhorreth bread,
and his soul dainty meat.

33:21 His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen; and his
bones that were not seen stick out.

33:22 Yea, his soul draweth near unto the grave, and his life to the
destroyers.

33:23 If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a
thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness: 33:24 Then he is gracious
unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have
found a ransom.

33:25 His flesh shall be fresher than a child's: he shall return to
the days of his youth: 33:26 He shall pray unto God, and he will be
favourable unto him: and he shall see his face with joy: for he will
render unto man his righteousness.

33:27 He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and
perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; 33:28 He will
deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the
light.

33:29 Lo, all these things worketh God oftentimes with man, 33:30 To
bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of
the living.

33:31 Mark well, O Job, hearken unto me: hold thy peace, and I will
speak.

33:32 If thou hast anything to say, answer me: speak, for I desire to
justify thee.

33:33 If not, hearken unto me: hold thy peace, and I shall teach thee
wisdom.

34:1 Furthermore Elihu answered and said, 34:2 Hear my words, O ye
wise men; and give ear unto me, ye that have knowledge.

34:3 For the ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat.

34:4 Let us choose to us judgment: let us know among ourselves what is
good.

34:5 For Job hath said, I am righteous: and God hath taken away my
judgment.

34:6 Should I lie against my right? my wound is incurable without
transgression.

34:7 What man is like Job, who drinketh up scorning like water?  34:8
Which goeth in company with the workers of iniquity, and walketh with
wicked men.

34:9 For he hath said, It profiteth a man nothing that he should
delight himself with God.

34:10 Therefore hearken unto me ye men of understanding: far be it
from God, that he should do wickedness; and from the Almighty, that he
should commit iniquity.

34:11 For the work of a man shall he render unto him, and cause every
man to find according to his ways.

34:12 Yea, surely God will not do wickedly, neither will the Almighty
pervert judgment.

34:13 Who hath given him a charge over the earth? or who hath disposed
the whole world?  34:14 If he set his heart upon man, if he gather
unto himself his spirit and his breath; 34:15 All flesh shall perish
together, and man shall turn again unto dust.

34:16 If now thou hast understanding, hear this: hearken to the voice
of my words.

34:17 Shall even he that hateth right govern? and wilt thou condemn
him that is most just?  34:18 Is it fit to say to a king, Thou art
wicked? and to princes, Ye are ungodly?  34:19 How much less to him
that accepteth not the persons of princes, nor regardeth the rich more
than the poor? for they all are the work of his hands.

34:20 In a moment shall they die, and the people shall be troubled at
midnight, and pass away: and the mighty shall be taken away without
hand.

34:21 For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all his
goings.

34:22 There is no darkness, nor shadow of death, where the workers of
iniquity may hide themselves.

34:23 For he will not lay upon man more than right; that he should
enter into judgment with God.

34:24 He shall break in pieces mighty men without number, and set
others in their stead.

34:25 Therefore he knoweth their works, and he overturneth them in the
night, so that they are destroyed.

34:26 He striketh them as wicked men in the open sight of others;
34:27 Because they turned back from him, and would not consider any of
his ways: 34:28 So that they cause the cry of the poor to come unto
him, and he heareth the cry of the afflicted.

34:29 When he giveth quietness, who then can make trouble? and when he
hideth his face, who then can behold him? whether it be done against a
nation, or against a man only: 34:30 That the hypocrite reign not,
lest the people be ensnared.

34:31 Surely it is meet to be said unto God, I have borne
chastisement, I will not offend any more: 34:32 That which I see not
teach thou me: if I have done iniquity, I will do no more.

34:33 Should it be according to thy mind? he will recompense it,
whether thou refuse, or whether thou choose; and not I: therefore
speak what thou knowest.

34:34 Let men of understanding tell me, and let a wise man hearken
unto me.

34:35 Job hath spoken without knowledge, and his words were without
wisdom.

34:36 My desire is that Job may be tried unto the end because of his
answers for wicked men.

34:37 For he addeth rebellion unto his sin, he clappeth his hands
among us, and multiplieth his words against God.

35:1 Elihu spake moreover, and said, 35:2 Thinkest thou this to be
right, that thou saidst, My righteousness is more than God's?  35:3
For thou saidst, What advantage will it be unto thee? and, What profit
shall I have, if I be cleansed from my sin?  35:4 I will answer thee,
and thy companions with thee.

35:5 Look unto the heavens, and see; and behold the clouds which are
higher than thou.

35:6 If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him? or if thy
transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him?  35:7 If thou
be righteous, what givest thou him? or what receiveth he of thine
hand?  35:8 Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art; and thy
righteousness may profit the son of man.

35:9 By reason of the multitude of oppressions they make the oppressed
to cry: they cry out by reason of the arm of the mighty.

35:10 But none saith, Where is God my maker, who giveth songs in the
night; 35:11 Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and
maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven?  35:12 There they cry, but
none giveth answer, because of the pride of evil men.

35:13 Surely God will not hear vanity, neither will the Almighty
regard it.

35:14 Although thou sayest thou shalt not see him, yet judgment is
before him; therefore trust thou in him.

35:15 But now, because it is not so, he hath visited in his anger; yet
he knoweth it not in great extremity: 35:16 Therefore doth Job open
his mouth in vain; he multiplieth words without knowledge.

36:1 Elihu also proceeded, and said, 36:2 Suffer me a little, and I
will shew thee that I have yet to speak on God's behalf.

36:3 I will fetch my knowledge from afar, and will ascribe
righteousness to my Maker.

36:4 For truly my words shall not be false: he that is perfect in
knowledge is with thee.

36:5 Behold, God is mighty, and despiseth not any: he is mighty in
strength and wisdom.

36:6 He preserveth not the life of the wicked: but giveth right to the
poor.

36:7 He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous: but with kings
are they on the throne; yea, he doth establish them for ever, and they
are exalted.

36:8 And if they be bound in fetters, and be holden in cords of
affliction; 36:9 Then he sheweth them their work, and their
transgressions that they have exceeded.

36:10 He openeth also their ear to discipline, and commandeth that
they return from iniquity.

36:11 If they obey and serve him, they shall spend their days in
prosperity, and their years in pleasures.

36:12 But if they obey not, they shall perish by the sword, and they
shall die without knowledge.

36:13 But the hypocrites in heart heap up wrath: they cry not when he
bindeth them.

36:14 They die in youth, and their life is among the unclean.

36:15 He delivereth the poor in his affliction, and openeth their ears
in oppression.

36:16 Even so would he have removed thee out of the strait into a
broad place, where there is no straitness; and that which should be
set on thy table should be full of fatness.

36:17 But thou hast fulfilled the judgment of the wicked: judgment and
justice take hold on thee.

36:18 Because there is wrath, beware lest he take thee away with his
stroke: then a great ransom cannot deliver thee.

36:19 Will he esteem thy riches? no, not gold, nor all the forces of
strength.

36:20 Desire not the night, when people are cut off in their place.

36:21 Take heed, regard not iniquity: for this hast thou chosen rather
than affliction.

36:22 Behold, God exalteth by his power: who teacheth like him?  36:23
Who hath enjoined him his way? or who can say, Thou hast wrought
iniquity?  36:24 Remember that thou magnify his work, which men
behold.

36:25 Every man may see it; man may behold it afar off.

36:26 Behold, God is great, and we know him not, neither can the
number of his years be searched out.

36:27 For he maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain
according to the vapour thereof: 36:28 Which the clouds do drop and
distil upon man abundantly.

36:29 Also can any understand the spreadings of the clouds, or the
noise of his tabernacle?  36:30 Behold, he spreadeth his light upon
it, and covereth the bottom of the sea.

36:31 For by them judgeth he the people; he giveth meat in abundance.

36:32 With clouds he covereth the light; and commandeth it not to
shine by the cloud that cometh betwixt.

36:33 The noise thereof sheweth concerning it, the cattle also
concerning the vapour.

37:1 At this also my heart trembleth, and is moved out of his place.

37:2 Hear attentively the noise of his voice, and the sound that goeth
out of his mouth.

37:3 He directeth it under the whole heaven, and his lightning unto
the ends of the earth.

37:4 After it a voice roareth: he thundereth with the voice of his
excellency; and he will not stay them when his voice is heard.

37:5 God thundereth marvellously with his voice; great things doeth
he, which we cannot comprehend.

37:6 For he saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth; likewise to the
small rain, and to the great rain of his strength.

37:7 He sealeth up the hand of every man; that all men may know his
work.

37:8 Then the beasts go into dens, and remain in their places.

37:9 Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the north.

37:10 By the breath of God frost is given: and the breadth of the
waters is straitened.

37:11 Also by watering he wearieth the thick cloud: he scattereth his
bright cloud: 37:12 And it is turned round about by his counsels: that
they may do whatsoever he commandeth them upon the face of the world
in the earth.

37:13 He causeth it to come, whether for correction, or for his land,
or for mercy.

37:14 Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and consider the wondrous
works of God.

37:15 Dost thou know when God disposed them, and caused the light of
his cloud to shine?  37:16 Dost thou know the balancings of the
clouds, the wondrous works of him which is perfect in knowledge?
37:17 How thy garments are warm, when he quieteth the earth by the
south wind?  37:18 Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is
strong, and as a molten looking glass?  37:19 Teach us what we shall
say unto him; for we cannot order our speech by reason of darkness.

37:20 Shall it be told him that I speak? if a man speak, surely he
shall be swallowed up.

37:21 And now men see not the bright light which is in the clouds: but
the wind passeth, and cleanseth them.

37:22 Fair weather cometh out of the north: with God is terrible
majesty.

37:23 Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent
in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: he will not
afflict.

37:24 Men do therefore fear him: he respecteth not any that are wise
of heart.

38:1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, 38:2
Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?  38:3
Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and
answer thou me.

38:4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
declare, if thou hast understanding.

38:5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath
stretched the line upon it?  38:6 Whereupon are the foundations
thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; 38:7 When the
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
38:8 Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it
had issued out of the womb?  38:9 When I made the cloud the garment
thereof, and thick darkness a swaddlingband for it, 38:10 And brake up
for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, 38:11 And said,
Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud
waves be stayed?  38:12 Hast thou commanded the morning since thy
days; and caused the dayspring to know his place; 38:13 That it might
take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken
out of it?  38:14 It is turned as clay to the seal; and they stand as
a garment.

38:15 And from the wicked their light is withholden, and the high arm
shall be broken.

38:16 Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou
walked in the search of the depth?  38:17 Have the gates of death been
opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?
38:18 Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou
knowest it all.

38:19 Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness,
where is the place thereof, 38:20 That thou shouldest take it to the
bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house
thereof?  38:21 Knowest thou it, because thou wast then born? or
because the number of thy days is great?  38:22 Hast thou entered into
the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the
hail, 38:23 Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against
the day of battle and war?  38:24 By what way is the light parted,
which scattereth the east wind upon the earth?  38:25 Who hath divided
a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the
lightning of thunder; 38:26 To cause it to rain on the earth, where no
man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man; 38:27 To satisfy
the desolate and waste ground; and to cause the bud of the tender herb
to spring forth?  38:28 Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten
the drops of dew?  38:29 Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary
frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?  38:30 The waters are hid as
with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.

38:31 Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the
bands of Orion?  38:32 Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?
or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?  38:33 Knowest thou the
ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the
earth?  38:34 Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that
abundance of waters may cover thee?  38:35 Canst thou send lightnings,
that they may go and say unto thee, Here we are?  38:36 Who hath put
wisdom in the inward parts? or who hath given understanding to the
heart?  38:37 Who can number the clouds in wisdom? or who can stay the
bottles of heaven, 38:38 When the dust groweth into hardness, and the
clods cleave fast together?  38:39 Wilt thou hunt the prey for the
lion? or fill the appetite of the young lions, 38:40 When they couch
in their dens, and abide in the covert to lie in wait?  38:41 Who
provideth for the raven his food? when his young ones cry unto God,
they wander for lack of meat.

39:1 Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring
forth? or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve?  39:2 Canst thou
number the months that they fulfil? or knowest thou the time when they
bring forth?  39:3 They bow themselves, they bring forth their young
ones, they cast out their sorrows.

39:4 Their young ones are in good liking, they grow up with corn; they
go forth, and return not unto them.

39:5 Who hath sent out the wild ass free? or who hath loosed the bands
of the wild ass?  39:6 Whose house I have made the wilderness, and the
barren land his dwellings.

39:7 He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the
crying of the driver.

39:8 The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after
every green thing.

39:9 Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?
39:10 Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will
he harrow the valleys after thee?  39:11 Wilt thou trust him, because
his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?  39:12
Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it
into thy barn?  39:13 Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks?
or wings and feathers unto the ostrich?  39:14 Which leaveth her eggs
in the earth, and warmeth them in dust, 39:15 And forgetteth that the
foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them.

39:16 She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not
her's: her labour is in vain without fear; 39:17 Because God hath
deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding.

39:18 What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse
and his rider.

39:19 Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck
with thunder?  39:20 Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the
glory of his nostrils is terrible.

39:21 He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth
on to meet the armed men.

39:22 He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he
back from the sword.

39:23 The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the
shield.

39:24 He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: neither
believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet.

39:25 He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle
afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

39:26 Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom, and stretch her wings toward
the south?  39:27 Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her
nest on high?  39:28 She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the
crag of the rock, and the strong place.

39:29 From thence she seeketh the prey, and her eyes behold afar off.

39:30 Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the slain are,
there is she.

40:1 Moreover the LORD answered Job, and said, 40:2 Shall he that
contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? he that reproveth God, let
him answer it.

40:3 Then Job answered the LORD, and said, 40:4 Behold, I am vile;
what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.

40:5 Once have I spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will
proceed no further.

40:6 Then answered the LORD unto Job out of the whirlwind, and said,
40:7 Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and
declare thou unto me.

40:8 Wilt thou also disannul my judgment? wilt thou condemn me, that
thou mayest be righteous?  40:9 Hast thou an arm like God? or canst
thou thunder with a voice like him?  40:10 Deck thyself now with
majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

40:11 Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is
proud, and abase him.

40:12 Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread
down the wicked in their place.

40:13 Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

40:14 Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can
save thee.

40:15 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as
an ox.

40:16 Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the
navel of his belly.

40:17 He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are
wrapped together.

40:18 His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars
of iron.

40:19 He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make
his sword to approach unto him.

40:20 Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts
of the field play.

40:21 He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and
fens.

40:22 The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the
brook compass him about.

40:23 Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth
that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.

40:24 He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares.

41:1 Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a
cord which thou lettest down?  41:2 Canst thou put an hook into his
nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?  41:3 Will he make many
supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee?  41:4
Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant
for ever?  41:5 Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou
bind him for thy maidens?  41:6 Shall the companions make a banquet of
him? shall they part him among the merchants?  41:7 Canst thou fill
his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?  41:8 Lay
thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.

41:9 Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down
even at the sight of him?  41:10 None is so fierce that dare stir him
up: who then is able to stand before me?  41:11 Who hath prevented me,
that I should repay him? whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.

41:12 I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely
proportion.

41:13 Who can discover the face of his garment? or who can come to him
with his double bridle?  41:14 Who can open the doors of his face? his
teeth are terrible round about.

41:15 His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.

41:16 One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.

41:17 They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they
cannot be sundered.

41:18 By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the
eyelids of the morning.

41:19 Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.

41:20 Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or
caldron.

41:21 His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.

41:22 In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy
before him.

41:23 The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are firm in
themselves; they cannot be moved.

41:24 His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the
nether millstone.

41:25 When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid: by reason of
breakings they purify themselves.

41:26 The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the
dart, nor the habergeon.

41:27 He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.

41:28 The arrow cannot make him flee: slingstones are turned with him
into stubble.

41:29 Darts are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a
spear.

41:30 Sharp stones are under him: he spreadeth sharp pointed things
upon the mire.

41:31 He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a
pot of ointment.

41:32 He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to
be hoary.

41:33 Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.

41:34 He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children
of pride.

42:1 Then Job answered the LORD, and said, 42:2 I know that thou canst
do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.

42:3 Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I
uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I
knew not.

42:4 Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee,
and declare thou unto me.

42:5 I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye
seeth thee.

42:6 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.

42:7 And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto
Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled
against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of
me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.

42:8 Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams, and go
to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and
my servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept: lest I deal
with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing
which is right, like my servant Job.

42:9 So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the
Naamathite went, and did according as the LORD commanded them: the
LORD also accepted Job.

42:10 And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his
friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.

42:11 Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters,
and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat
bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him
over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also
gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold.

42:12 So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his
beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand
camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.

42:13 He had also seven sons and three daughters.

42:14 And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the
second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Kerenhappuch.

42:15 And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters
of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren.

42:16 After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his
sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations.

42:17 So Job died, being old and full of days.




The Book of Psalms


1:1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,
nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the
scornful.

1:2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he
meditate day and night.

1:3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that
bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not
wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

1:4 The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind
driveth away.

1:5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners
in the congregation of the righteous.

1:6 For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the
ungodly shall perish.



2:1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

2:2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel
together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,

2:3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from
us.

2:4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have
them in derision.

2:5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his
sore displeasure.

2:6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

2:7 I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my
Son; this day have I begotten thee.

2:8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

2:9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in
pieces like a potter's vessel.

2:10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of
the earth.

2:11 Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

2:12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when
his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their
trust in him.



3:1 Lord, how are they increased that trouble me! many are they that
rise up against me.

3:2 Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in
God.

Selah.

3:3 But thou, O LORD, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up
of mine head.

3:4 I cried unto the LORD with my voice, and he heard me out of his
holy hill. Selah.

3:5 I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the LORD sustained me.

3:6 I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set
themselves against me round about.

3:7 Arise, O LORD; save me, O my God: for thou hast smitten all mine
enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the
ungodly.

3:8 Salvation belongeth unto the LORD: thy blessing is upon thy
people.

Selah.



4:1 Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged
me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.

4:2 O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? how
long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing? Selah.

4:3 But know that the LORD hath set apart him that is godly for
himself: the LORD will hear when I call unto him.

4:4 Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your
bed, and be still. Selah.

4:5 Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the
LORD.

4:6 There be many that say, Who will shew us any good? LORD, lift thou
up the light of thy countenance upon us.

4:7 Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that
their corn and their wine increased.

4:8 I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only
makest me dwell in safety.



5:1 Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my meditation.

5:2 Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto
thee will I pray.

5:3 My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning
will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.

5:4 For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither
shall evil dwell with thee.

5:5 The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers
of iniquity.

5:6 Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the LORD will abhor
the bloody and deceitful man.

5:7 But as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy
mercy: and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple.

5:8 Lead me, O LORD, in thy righteousness because of mine enemies;
make thy way straight before my face.

5:9 For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is
very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with
their tongue.

5:10 Destroy thou them, O God; let them fall by their own counsels;
cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions; for they have
rebelled against thee.

5:11 But let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them
ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them: let them also that
love thy name be joyful in thee.

5:12 For thou, LORD, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou
compass him as with a shield.



6:1 O LORD, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy
hot displeasure.

6:2 Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my
bones are vexed.

6:3 My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O LORD, how long?

6:4 Return, O LORD, deliver my soul: oh save me for thy mercies' sake.

6:5 For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who
shall give thee thanks?

6:6 I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim;
I water my couch with my tears.

6:7 Mine eye is consumed because of grief; it waxeth old because of
all mine enemies.

6:8 Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; for the LORD hath
heard the voice of my weeping.

6:9 The LORD hath heard my supplication; the LORD will receive my
prayer.

6:10 Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed: let them return
and be ashamed suddenly.



7:1 O LORD my God, in thee do I put my trust: save me from all them
that persecute me, and deliver me:

7:2 Lest he tear my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces, while
there is none to deliver.

7:3 O LORD my God, If I have done this; if there be iniquity in my
hands;

7:4 If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me; (yea,
I have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy:)

7:5 Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it; yea, let him tread
down my life upon the earth, and lay mine honour in the dust. Selah.

7:6 Arise, O LORD, in thine anger, lift up thyself because of the rage
of mine enemies: and awake for me to the judgment that thou hast
commanded.

7:7 So shall the congregation of the people compass thee about: for
their sakes therefore return thou on high.

7:8 The LORD shall judge the people: judge me, O LORD, according to my
righteousness, and according to mine integrity that is in me.

7:9 Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish
the just: for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.

7:10 My defence is of God, which saveth the upright in heart.

7:11 God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every
day.

7:12 If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and
made it ready.

7:13 He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he
ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors.

7:14 Behold, he travaileth with iniquity, and hath conceived mischief,
and brought forth falsehood.

7:15 He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which
he made.

7:16 His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent
dealing shall come down upon his own pate.

7:17 I will praise the LORD according to his righteousness: and will
sing praise to the name of the LORD most high.



8:1 O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who
hast set thy glory above the heavens.

8:2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained
strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy
and the avenger.

8:3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and
the stars, which thou hast ordained;

8:4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man,
that thou visitest him?

8:5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast
crowned him with glory and honour.

8:6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou
hast put all things under his feet:

8:7 All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

8:8 The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever
passeth through the paths of the seas.

8:9 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!


9:1 I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth
all thy marvellous works.

9:2 I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will sing praise to thy
name, O thou most High.

9:3 When mine enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at
thy presence.

9:4 For thou hast maintained my right and my cause; thou satest in the
throne judging right.

9:5 Thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked,
thou hast put out their name for ever and ever.

9:6 O thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end: and thou
hast destroyed cities; their memorial is perished with them.

9:7 But the LORD shall endure for ever: he hath prepared his throne
for judgment.

9:8 And he shall judge the world in righteousness, he shall minister
judgment to the people in uprightness.

9:9 The LORD also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in
times of trouble.

9:10 And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for
thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.

9:11 Sing praises to the LORD, which dwelleth in Zion: declare among
the people his doings.

9:12 When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them: he
forgetteth not the cry of the humble.

9:13 Have mercy upon me, O LORD; consider my trouble which I suffer of
them that hate me, thou that liftest me up from the gates of death:

9:14 That I may shew forth all thy praise in the gates of the daughter
of Zion: I will rejoice in thy salvation.

9:15 The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net
which they hid is their own foot taken.

9:16 The LORD is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked
is snared in the work of his own hands. Higgaion. Selah.

9:17 The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that
forget God.

9:18 For the needy shall not alway be forgotten: the expectation of
the poor shall not perish for ever.

9:19 Arise, O LORD; let not man prevail: let the heathen be judged in
thy sight.

9:20 Put them in fear, O LORD: that the nations may know themselves to
be but men. Selah.



10:1 Why standest thou afar off, O LORD? why hidest thou thyself in
times of trouble?

10:2 The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be
taken in the devices that they have imagined.

10:3 For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the
covetous, whom the LORD abhorreth.

10:4 The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek
after God: God is not in all his thoughts.

10:5 His ways are always grievous; thy judgments are far above out of
his sight: as for all his enemies, he puffeth at them.

10:6 He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved: for I shall
never be in adversity.

10:7 His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud: under his
tongue is mischief and vanity.

10:8 He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret
places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against
the poor.

10:9 He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait
to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into
his net.

10:10 He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by
his strong ones.

10:11 He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his
face; he will never see it.

10:12 Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up thine hand: forget not the humble.

10:13 Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God? he hath said in his
heart, Thou wilt not require it.

10:14 Thou hast seen it; for thou beholdest mischief and spite, to
requite it with thy hand: the poor committeth himself unto thee; thou
art the helper of the fatherless.

10:15 Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man: seek out his
wickedness till thou find none.

10:16 The LORD is King for ever and ever: the heathen are perished out
of his land.

10:17 LORD, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt
prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear:

10:18 To judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the
earth may no more oppress.



11:1 In the LORD put I my trust: how say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird
to your mountain?

11:2 For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow
upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart.

11:3 If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

11:4 The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD's throne is in heaven:
his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men.

11:5 The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth
violence his soul hateth.

11:6 Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an
horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.

11:7 For the righteous LORD loveth righteousness; his countenance doth
behold the upright.



12:1 Help, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from
among the children of men.

12:2 They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: with flattering
lips and with a double heart do they speak.

12:3 The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that
speaketh proud things:

12:4 Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our
own: who is lord over us?

12:5 For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now
will I arise, saith the LORD; I will set him in safety from him that
puffeth at him.

12:6 The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a
furnace of earth, purified seven times.

12:7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this
generation for ever.

12:8 The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted.



13:1 How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt
thou hide thy face from me?

13:2 How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my
heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?

13:3 Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I
sleep the sleep of death;

13:4 Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those that
trouble me rejoice when I am moved.

13:5 But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy
salvation.

13:6 I will sing unto the LORD, because he hath dealt bountifully with
me.



14:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are
corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth
good.

14:2 The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see
if there were any that did understand, and seek God.

14:3 They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy:
there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

14:4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my
people as they eat bread, and call not upon the LORD.

14:5 There were they in great fear: for God is in the generation of
the righteous.

14:6 Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the LORD is his
refuge.

14:7 Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! when the
LORD bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice,
and Israel shall be glad.



15:1 Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy
holy hill?

15:2 He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and
speaketh the truth in his heart.

15:3 He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his
neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.

15:4 In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them
that fear the LORD. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth
not.

15:5 He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward
against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.



16:1 Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust.

16:2 O my soul, thou hast said unto the LORD, Thou art my Lord: my
goodness extendeth not to thee;

16:3 But to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in
whom is all my delight.

16:4 Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god:
their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their
names into my lips.

16:5 The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou
maintainest my lot.

16:6 The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a
goodly heritage.

16:7 I will bless the LORD, who hath given me counsel: my reins also
instruct me in the night seasons.

16:8 I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right
hand, I shall not be moved.

16:9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also
shall rest in hope.

16:10 For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou
suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

16:11 Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness
of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.



17:1 Hear the right, O LORD, attend unto my cry, give ear unto my
prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips.

17:2 Let my sentence come forth from thy presence; let thine eyes
behold the things that are equal.

17:3 Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night;
thou hast tried me, and shalt find nothing; I am purposed that my
mouth shall not transgress.

17:4 Concerning the works of men, by the word of thy lips I have kept
me from the paths of the destroyer.

17:5 Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not.

17:6 I have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, O God: incline
thine ear unto me, and hear my speech.

17:7 Shew thy marvellous lovingkindness, O thou that savest by thy
right hand them which put their trust in thee from those that rise up
against them.

17:8 Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy
wings,

17:9 From the wicked that oppress me, from my deadly enemies, who
compass me about.

17:10 They are inclosed in their own fat: with their mouth they speak
proudly.

17:11 They have now compassed us in our steps: they have set their
eyes bowing down to the earth;

17:12 Like as a lion that is greedy of his prey, and as it were a
young lion lurking in secret places.

17:13 Arise, O LORD, disappoint him, cast him down: deliver my soul
from the wicked, which is thy sword:

17:14 From men which are thy hand, O LORD, from men of the world,
which have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fillest
with thy hid treasure: they are full of children, and leave the rest
of their substance to their babes.

17:15 As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be
satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.



18:1 I will love thee, O LORD, my strength.

18:2 The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God,
my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my
salvation, and my high tower.

18:3 I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall
I be saved from mine enemies.

18:4 The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men
made me afraid.

18:5 The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death
prevented me.

18:6 In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he
heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even
into his ears.

18:7 Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the
hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth.

18:8 There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his
mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it.

18:9 He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under
his feet.

18:10 And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the
wings of the wind.

18:11 He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him
were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.

18:12 At the brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed,
hail stones and coals of fire.

18:13 The LORD also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave his
voice; hail stones and coals of fire.

18:14 Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; and he shot out
lightnings, and discomfited them.

18:15 Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of
the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the
breath of thy nostrils.

18:16 He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters.

18:17 He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them which hated
me: for they were too strong for me.

18:18 They prevented me in the day of my calamity: but the LORD was my
stay.

18:19 He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me,
because he delighted in me.

18:20 The LORD rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to
the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me.

18:21 For I have kept the ways of the LORD, and have not wickedly
departed from my God.

18:22 For all his judgments were before me, and I did not put away his
statutes from me.

18:23 I was also upright before him, and I kept myself from mine
iniquity.

18:24 Therefore hath the LORD recompensed me according to my
righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight.

18:25 With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful; with an
upright man thou wilt shew thyself upright;

18:26 With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with the froward
thou wilt shew thyself froward.

18:27 For thou wilt save the afflicted people; but wilt bring down
high looks.

18:28 For thou wilt light my candle: the LORD my God will enlighten my
darkness.

18:29 For by thee I have run through a troop; and by my God have I
leaped over a wall.

18:30 As for God, his way is perfect: the word of the LORD is tried:
he is a buckler to all those that trust in him.

18:31 For who is God save the LORD? or who is a rock save our God?

18:32 It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way
perfect.

18:33 He maketh my feet like hinds' feet, and setteth me upon my high
places.

18:34 He teacheth my hands to war, so that a bow of steel is broken by
mine arms.

18:35 Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation: and thy
right hand hath holden me up, and thy gentleness hath made me great.

18:36 Thou hast enlarged my steps under me, that my feet did not slip.

18:37 I have pursued mine enemies, and overtaken them: neither did I
turn again till they were consumed.

18:38 I have wounded them that they were not able to rise: they are
fallen under my feet.

18:39 For thou hast girded me with strength unto the battle: thou hast
subdued under me those that rose up against me.

18:40 Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies; that I might
destroy them that hate me.

18:41 They cried, but there was none to save them: even unto the LORD,
but he answered them not.

18:42 Then did I beat them small as the dust before the wind: I did
cast them out as the dirt in the streets.

18:43 Thou hast delivered me from the strivings of the people; and
thou hast made me the head of the heathen: a people whom I have not
known shall serve me.

18:44 As soon as they hear of me, they shall obey me: the strangers
shall submit themselves unto me.

18:45 The strangers shall fade away, and be afraid out of their close
places.

18:46 The LORD liveth; and blessed be my rock; and let the God of my
salvation be exalted.

18:47 It is God that avengeth me, and subdueth the people under me.

18:48 He delivereth me from mine enemies: yea, thou liftest me up
above those that rise up against me: thou hast delivered me from the
violent man.

18:49 Therefore will I give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the
heathen, and sing praises unto thy name.

18:50 Great deliverance giveth he to his king; and sheweth mercy to
his anointed, to David, and to his seed for evermore.



19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth
his handywork.

19:2 Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth
knowledge.

19:3 There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.

19:4 Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to
the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,

19:5 Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth
as a strong man to run a race.

19:6 His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit
unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the
testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.

19:8 The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the
commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.

19:9 The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments
of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.

19:10 More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold:
sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

19:11 Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them
there is great reward.

19:12 Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret
faults.

19:13 Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not
have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be
innocent from the great transgression.

19:14 Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be
acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.



20:1 The LORD hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God of
Jacob defend thee;

20:2 Send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of
Zion;

20:3 Remember all thy offerings, and accept thy burnt sacrifice;
Selah.

20:4 Grant thee according to thine own heart, and fulfil all thy
counsel.

20:5 We will rejoice in thy salvation, and in the name of our God we
will set up our banners: the LORD fulfil all thy petitions.

20:6 Now know I that the LORD saveth his anointed; he will hear him
from his holy heaven with the saving strength of his right hand.

20:7 Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember
the name of the LORD our God.

20:8 They are brought down and fallen: but we are risen, and stand
upright.

20:9 Save, LORD: let the king hear us when we call.



21:1 The king shall joy in thy strength, O LORD; and in thy salvation
how greatly shall he rejoice!

21:2 Thou hast given him his heart's desire, and hast not withholden
the request of his lips. Selah.

21:3 For thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness: thou
settest a crown of pure gold on his head.

21:4 He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of
days for ever and ever.

21:5 His glory is great in thy salvation: honour and majesty hast thou
laid upon him.

21:6 For thou hast made him most blessed for ever: thou hast made him
exceeding glad with thy countenance.

21:7 For the king trusteth in the LORD, and through the mercy of the
most High he shall not be moved.

21:8 Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies: thy right hand shall
find out those that hate thee.

21:9 Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger:
the LORD shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour
them.

21:10 Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed
from among the children of men.

21:11 For they intended evil against thee: they imagined a mischievous
device, which they are not able to perform.

21:12 Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, when thou shalt
make ready thine arrows upon thy strings against the face of them.

21:13 Be thou exalted, LORD, in thine own strength: so will we sing
and praise thy power.



22:1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far
from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?

22:2 O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the
night season, and am not silent.

22:3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.

22:4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver
them.

22:5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee,
and were not confounded.

22:6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of
the people.

22:7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip,
they shake the head, saying,

22:8 He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver
him, seeing he delighted in him.

22:9 But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me
hope when I was upon my mother's breasts.

22:10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my
mother's belly.

22:11 Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to
help.

22:12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset
me round.

22:13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a
roaring lion.

22:14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint:
my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.

22:15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth
to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.

22:16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have
inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.

22:17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.

22:18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.

22:19 But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee
to help me.

22:20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the
dog.

22:21 Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the
horns of the unicorns.

22:22 I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the
congregation will I praise thee.

22:23 Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob,
glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.

22:24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the
afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried
unto him, he heard.

22:25 My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay
my vows before them that fear him.

22:26 The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD
that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.

22:27 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD:
and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.

22:28 For the kingdom is the LORD's: and he is the governor among the
nations.

22:29 All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they
that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive
his own soul.

22:30 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a
generation.

22:31 They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a
people that shall be born, that he hath done this.



23:1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

23:2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside
the still waters.

23:3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.

23:4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I
will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they
comfort me.

23:5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

23:6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.



24:1 The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and
they that dwell therein.

24:2 For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the
floods.

24:3 Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in
his holy place?

24:4 He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted
up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

24:5 He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness
from the God of his salvation.

24:6 This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face,
O Jacob. Selah.

24:7 Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting
doors; and the King of glory shall come in.

24:8 Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD
mighty in battle.

24:9 Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting
doors; and the King of glory shall come in.

24:10 Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of
glory. Selah.



25:1 Unto thee, O LORD, do I lift up my soul.

25:2 O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine
enemies triumph over me.

25:3 Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed: let them be ashamed
which transgress without cause.

25:4 Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths.

25:5 Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my
salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.

25:6 Remember, O LORD, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses;
for they have been ever of old.

25:7 Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions:
according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness' sake, O
LORD.

25:8 Good and upright is the LORD: therefore will he teach sinners in
the way.

25:9 The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach
his way.

25:10 All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth unto such as keep
his covenant and his testimonies.

25:11 For thy name's sake, O LORD, pardon mine iniquity; for it is
great.

25:12 What man is he that feareth the LORD? him shall he teach in the
way that he shall choose.

25:13 His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the
earth.

25:14 The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will
shew them his covenant.

25:15 Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet
out of the net.

25:16 Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and
afflicted.

25:17 The troubles of my heart are enlarged: O bring thou me out of my
distresses.

25:18 Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.

25:19 Consider mine enemies; for they are many; and they hate me with
cruel hatred.

25:20 O keep my soul, and deliver me: let me not be ashamed; for I put
my trust in thee.

25:21 Let integrity and uprightness preserve me; for I wait on thee.

25:22 Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.



26:1 Judge me, O LORD; for I have walked in mine integrity: I have
trusted also in the LORD; therefore I shall not slide.

26:2 Examine me, O LORD, and prove me; try my reins and my heart.

26:3 For thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes: and I have walked in
thy truth.

26:4 I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with
dissemblers.

26:5 I have hated the congregation of evil doers; and will not sit
with the wicked.

26:6 I will wash mine hands in innocency: so will I compass thine
altar, O LORD:

26:7 That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of
all thy wondrous works.

26:8 LORD, I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place
where thine honour dwelleth.

26:9 Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men:

26:10 In whose hands is mischief, and their right hand is full of
bribes.

26:11 But as for me, I will walk in mine integrity: redeem me, and be
merciful unto me.

26:12 My foot standeth in an even place: in the congregations will I
bless the LORD.



27:1 The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the
LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

27:2 When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to
eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.

27:3 Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear:
though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.

27:4 One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after;
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to
behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.

27:5 For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in
the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon
a rock.

27:6 And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round
about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy;
I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the LORD.

27:7 Hear, O LORD, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me,
and answer me.

27:8 When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy
face, LORD, will I seek.

27:9 Hide not thy face far from me; put not thy servant away in anger:
thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my
salvation.

27:10 When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take
me up.

27:11 Teach me thy way, O LORD, and lead me in a plain path, because
of mine enemies.

27:12 Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false
witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty.

27:13 I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the
LORD in the land of the living.

27:14 Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen
thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.



28:1 Unto thee will I cry, O LORD my rock; be not silent to me: lest,
if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit.

28:2 Hear the voice of my supplications, when I cry unto thee, when I
lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle.

28:3 Draw me not away with the wicked, and with the workers of
iniquity, which speak peace to their neighbours, but mischief is in
their hearts.

28:4 Give them according to their deeds, and according to the
wickedness of their endeavours: give them after the work of their
hands; render to them their desert.

28:5 Because they regard not the works of the LORD, nor the operation
of his hands, he shall destroy them, and not build them up.

28:6 Blessed be the LORD, because he hath heard the voice of my
supplications.

28:7 The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him,
and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my
song will I praise him.

28:8 The LORD is their strength, and he is the saving strength of his
anointed.

28:9 Save thy people, and bless thine inheritance: feed them also, and
lift them up for ever.



29:1 Give unto the LORD, O ye mighty, give unto the LORD glory and
strength.

29:2 Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD
in the beauty of holiness.

29:3 The voice of the LORD is upon the waters: the God of glory
thundereth: the LORD is upon many waters.

29:4 The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full
of majesty.

29:5 The voice of the LORD breaketh the cedars; yea, the LORD breaketh
the cedars of Lebanon.

29:6 He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like
a young unicorn.

29:7 The voice of the LORD divideth the flames of fire.

29:8 The voice of the LORD shaketh the wilderness; the LORD shaketh
the wilderness of Kadesh.

29:9 The voice of the LORD maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth
the forests: and in his temple doth every one speak of his glory.

29:10 The LORD sitteth upon the flood; yea, the LORD sitteth King for
ever.

29:11 The LORD will give strength unto his people; the LORD will bless
his people with peace.



30:1 I will extol thee, O LORD; for thou hast lifted me up, and hast
not made my foes to rejoice over me.

30:2 O LORD my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me.

30:3 O LORD, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast
kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.

30:4 Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the
remembrance of his holiness.

30:5 For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life:
weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

30:6 And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved.

30:7 LORD, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong:
thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled.

30:8 I cried to thee, O LORD; and unto the LORD I made supplication.

30:9 What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit?
Shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth?

30:10 Hear, O LORD, and have mercy upon me: LORD, be thou my helper.

30:11 Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put
off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;

30:12 To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be
silent.

O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.



31:1 In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed:
deliver me in thy righteousness.

31:2 Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong
rock, for an house of defence to save me.

31:3 For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's
sake lead me, and guide me.

31:4 Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for
thou art my strength.

31:5 Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O LORD
God of truth.

31:6 I have hated them that regard lying vanities: but I trust in the
LORD.

31:7 I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy: for thou hast considered
my trouble; thou hast known my soul in adversities;

31:8 And hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy: thou hast set
my feet in a large room.

31:9 Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble: mine eye is
consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly.

31:10 For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing: my
strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are consumed.

31:11 I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my
neighbours, and a fear to mine acquaintance: they that did see me
without fled from me.

31:12 I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken
vessel.

31:13 For I have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side:
while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away
my life.

31:14 But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God.

31:15 My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine
enemies, and from them that persecute me.

31:16 Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me for thy
mercies' sake.

31:17 Let me not be ashamed, O LORD; for I have called upon thee: let
the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave.

31:18 Let the lying lips be put to silence; which speak grievous
things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous.

31:19 Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them
that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee
before the sons of men!

31:20 Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the
pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the
strife of tongues.

31:21 Blessed be the LORD: for he hath shewed me his marvellous
kindness in a strong city.

31:22 For I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes:
nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried
unto thee.

31:23 O love the LORD, all ye his saints: for the LORD preserveth the
faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer.

31:24 Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye
that hope in the LORD.



32:1 Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is
covered.

32:2 Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and
in whose spirit there is no guile.

32:3 When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all
the day long.

32:4 For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is
turned into the drought of summer. Selah.

32:5 I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid.
I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou
forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.

32:6 For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time
when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they
shall not come nigh unto him.

32:7 Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble;
thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.

32:8 I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt
go: I will guide thee with mine eye.

32:9 Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no
understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest
they come near unto thee.

32:10 Many sorrows shall be to the wicked: but he that trusteth in the
LORD, mercy shall compass him about.

32:11 Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for
joy, all ye that are upright in heart.



33:1 Rejoice in the LORD, O ye righteous: for praise is comely for the
upright.

33:2 Praise the LORD with harp: sing unto him with the psaltery and an
instrument of ten strings.

33:3 Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise.

33:4 For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in
truth.

33:5 He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the
goodness of the LORD.

33:6 By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host
of them by the breath of his mouth.

33:7 He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth
up the depth in storehouses.

33:8 Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the
world stand in awe of him.

33:9 For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.

33:10 The LORD bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he
maketh the devices of the people of none effect.

33:11 The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his
heart to all generations.

33:12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom
he hath chosen for his own inheritance.

33:13 The LORD looketh from heaven; he beholdeth all the sons of men.

33:14 From the place of his habitation he looketh upon all the
inhabitants of the earth.

33:15 He fashioneth their hearts alike; he considereth all their
works.

33:16 There is no king saved by the multitude of an host: a mighty man
is not delivered by much strength.

33:17 An horse is a vain thing for safety: neither shall he deliver
any by his great strength.

33:18 Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon them that fear him, upon
them that hope in his mercy;

33:19 To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in
famine.

33:20 Our soul waiteth for the LORD: he is our help and our shield.

33:21 For our heart shall rejoice in him, because we have trusted in
his holy name.

33:22 Let thy mercy, O LORD, be upon us, according as we hope in thee.



34:1 I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually
be in my mouth.

34:2 My soul shall make her boast in the LORD: the humble shall hear
thereof, and be glad.

34:3 O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.

34:4 I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my
fears.

34:5 They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were
not ashamed.

34:6 This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of
all his troubles.

34:7 The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him,
and delivereth them.

34:8 O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that
trusteth in him.

34:9 O fear the LORD, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that
fear him.

34:10 The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek
the LORD shall not want any good thing.

34:11 Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of
the LORD.

34:12 What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he
may see good?

34:13 Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.

34:14 Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.

34:15 The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and his ears are
open unto their cry.

34:16 The face of the LORD is against them that do evil, to cut off
the remembrance of them from the earth.

34:17 The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out
of all their troubles.

34:18 The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and
saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.

34:19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD
delivereth him out of them all.

34:20 He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.

34:21 Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous
shall be desolate.

34:22 The LORD redeemeth the soul of his servants: and none of them
that trust in him shall be desolate.



35:1 Plead my cause, O LORD, with them that strive with me: fight
against them that fight against me.

35:2 Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for mine help.

35:3 Draw out also the spear, and stop the way against them that
persecute me: say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.

35:4 Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul:
let them be turned back and brought to confusion that devise my hurt.

35:5 Let them be as chaff before the wind: and let the angel of the
LORD chase them.

35:6 Let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of the LORD
persecute them.

35:7 For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit, which
without cause they have digged for my soul.

35:8 Let destruction come upon him at unawares; and let his net that
he hath hid catch himself: into that very destruction let him fall.

35:9 And my soul shall be joyful in the LORD: it shall rejoice in his
salvation.

35:10 All my bones shall say, LORD, who is like unto thee, which
deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him, yea, the poor
and the needy from him that spoileth him?

35:11 False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that
I knew not.

35:12 They rewarded me evil for good to the spoiling of my soul.

35:13 But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I
humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into mine own
bosom.

35:14 I behaved myself as though he had been my friend or brother: I
bowed down heavily, as one that mourneth for his mother.

35:15 But in mine adversity they rejoiced, and gathered themselves
together: yea, the abjects gathered themselves together against me,
and I knew it not; they did tear me, and ceased not:

35:16 With hypocritical mockers in feasts, they gnashed upon me with
their teeth.

35:17 Lord, how long wilt thou look on? rescue my soul from their
destructions, my darling from the lions.

35:18 I will give thee thanks in the great congregation: I will praise
thee among much people.

35:19 Let not them that are mine enemies wrongfully rejoice over me:
neither let them wink with the eye that hate me without a cause.

35:20 For they speak not peace: but they devise deceitful matters
against them that are quiet in the land.

35:21 Yea, they opened their mouth wide against me, and said, Aha,
aha, our eye hath seen it.

35:22 This thou hast seen, O LORD: keep not silence: O Lord, be not
far from me.

35:23 Stir up thyself, and awake to my judgment, even unto my cause,
my God and my Lord.

35:24 Judge me, O LORD my God, according to thy righteousness; and let
them not rejoice over me.

35:25 Let them not say in their hearts, Ah, so would we have it: let
them not say, We have swallowed him up.

35:26 Let them be ashamed and brought to confusion together that
rejoice at mine hurt: let them be clothed with shame and dishonour
that magnify themselves against me.

35:27 Let them shout for joy, and be glad, that favour my righteous
cause: yea, let them say continually, Let the LORD be magnified, which
hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant.

35:28 And my tongue shall speak of thy righteousness and of thy praise
all the day long.



36:1 The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there
is no fear of God before his eyes.

36:2 For he flattereth himself in his own eyes, until his iniquity be
found to be hateful.

36:3 The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit: he hath left off
to be wise, and to do good.

36:4 He deviseth mischief upon his bed; he setteth himself in a way
that is not good; he abhorreth not evil.

36:5 Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness
reacheth unto the clouds.

36:6 Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are
a great deep: O LORD, thou preservest man and beast.

36:7 How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the
children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.

36:8 They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house;
and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.

36:9 For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see
light.

36:10 O continue thy lovingkindness unto them that know thee; and thy
righteousness to the upright in heart.

36:11 Let not the foot of pride come against me, and let not the hand
of the wicked remove me.

36:12 There are the workers of iniquity fallen: they are cast down,
and shall not be able to rise.



37:1 Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious
against the workers of iniquity.

37:2 For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the
green herb.

37:3 Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land,
and verily thou shalt be fed.

37:4 Delight thyself also in the LORD: and he shall give thee the
desires of thine heart.

37:5 Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall
bring it to pass.

37:6 And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy
judgment as the noonday.

37:7 Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself
because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who
bringeth wicked devices to pass.

37:8 Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise
to do evil.

37:9 For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the
LORD, they shall inherit the earth.

37:10 For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou
shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.

37:11 But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight
themselves in the abundance of peace.

37:12 The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with
his teeth.

37:13 The LORD shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is
coming.

37:14 The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to
cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright
conversation.

37:15 Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows
shall be broken.

37:16 A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of
many wicked.

37:17 For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the LORD
upholdeth the righteous.

37:18 The LORD knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance
shall be for ever.

37:19 They shall not be ashamed in the evil time: and in the days of
famine they shall be satisfied.

37:20 But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall
be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they
consume away.

37:21 The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous
sheweth mercy, and giveth.

37:22 For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they
that be cursed of him shall be cut off.

37:23 The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he
delighteth in his way.

37:24 Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD
upholdeth him with his hand.

37:25 I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the
righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

37:26 He is ever merciful, and lendeth; and his seed is blessed.

37:27 Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell for evermore.

37:28 For the LORD loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they
are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.

37:29 The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for
ever.

37:30 The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue
talketh of judgment.

37:31 The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall
slide.

37:32 The wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him.

37:33 The LORD will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he
is judged.

37:34 Wait on the LORD, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to
inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.

37:35 I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself
like a green bay tree.

37:36 Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but
he could not be found.

37:37 Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of
that man is peace.

37:38 But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of
the wicked shall be cut off.

37:39 But the salvation of the righteous is of the LORD: he is their
strength in the time of trouble.

37:40 And the LORD shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver
them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.



38:1 O lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath: neither chasten me in thy hot
displeasure.

38:2 For thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore.

38:3 There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither
is there any rest in my bones because of my sin.

38:4 For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden
they are too heavy for me.

38:5 My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness.

38:6 I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day
long.

38:7 For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no
soundness in my flesh.

38:8 I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the
disquietness of my heart.

38:9 Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid
from thee.

38:10 My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light of
mine eyes, it also is gone from me.

38:11 My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore; and my
kinsmen stand afar off.

38:12 They also that seek after my life lay snares for me: and they
that seek my hurt speak mischievous things, and imagine deceits all
the day long.

38:13 But I, as a deaf man, heard not; and I was as a dumb man that
openeth not his mouth.

38:14 Thus I was as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no
reproofs.

38:15 For in thee, O LORD, do I hope: thou wilt hear, O Lord my God.

38:16 For I said, Hear me, lest otherwise they should rejoice over me:
when my foot slippeth, they magnify themselves against me.

38:17 For I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me.

38:18 For I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin.

38:19 But mine enemies are lively, and they are strong: and they that
hate me wrongfully are multiplied.

38:20 They also that render evil for good are mine adversaries;
because I follow the thing that good is.

38:21 Forsake me not, O LORD: O my God, be not far from me.

38:22 Make haste to help me, O Lord my salvation.



39:1 I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my
tongue: I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before
me.

39:2 I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good; and my
sorrow was stirred.

39:3 My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned:
then spake I with my tongue,

39:4 LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what
it is: that I may know how frail I am.

39:5 Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is
as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is
altogether vanity.

Selah.

39:6 Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are
disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall
gather them.

39:7 And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee.

39:8 Deliver me from all my transgressions: make me not the reproach
of the foolish.

39:9 I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.

39:10 Remove thy stroke away from me: I am consumed by the blow of
thine hand.

39:11 When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou
makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is
vanity. Selah.

39:12 Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy
peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as
all my fathers were.

39:13 O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and
be no more.



40:1 I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and
heard my cry.

40:2 He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry
clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.

40:3 And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God:
many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD.

40:4 Blessed is that man that maketh the LORD his trust, and
respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.

40:5 Many, O LORD my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast
done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned
up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are
more than can be numbered.

40:6 Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou
opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required.

40:7 Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written
of me,

40:8 I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my
heart.

40:9 I have preached righteousness in the great congregation: lo, I
have not refrained my lips, O LORD, thou knowest.

40:10 I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; I have
declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation: I have not concealed thy
lovingkindness and thy truth from the great congregation.

40:11 Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O LORD: let thy
lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me.

40:12 For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities
have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are
more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me.

40:13 Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me: O LORD, make haste to help
me.

40:14 Let them be ashamed and confounded together that seek after my
soul to destroy it; let them be driven backward and put to shame that
wish me evil.

40:15 Let them be desolate for a reward of their shame that say unto
me, Aha, aha.

40:16 Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: let
such as love thy salvation say continually, The LORD be magnified.

40:17 But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou art
my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, O my God.



41:1 Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the LORD will deliver
him in time of trouble.

41:2 The LORD will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be
blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of
his enemies.

41:3 The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou
wilt make all his bed in his sickness.

41:4 I said, LORD, be merciful unto me: heal my soul; for I have
sinned against thee.

41:5 Mine enemies speak evil of me, When shall he die, and his name
perish?

41:6 And if he come to see me, he speaketh vanity: his heart gathereth
iniquity to itself; when he goeth abroad, he telleth it.

41:7 All that hate me whisper together against me: against me do they
devise my hurt.

41:8 An evil disease, say they, cleaveth fast unto him: and now that
he lieth he shall rise up no more.

41:9 Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat
of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.

41:10 But thou, O LORD, be merciful unto me, and raise me up, that I
may requite them.

41:11 By this I know that thou favourest me, because mine enemy doth
not triumph over me.

41:12 And as for me, thou upholdest me in mine integrity, and settest
me before thy face for ever.

41:13 Blessed be the LORD God of Israel from everlasting, and to
everlasting. Amen, and Amen.



42:1 As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul
after thee, O God.

42:2 My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come
and appear before God?

42:3 My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually
say unto me, Where is thy God?

42:4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had
gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with
the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.

42:5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in
me?  hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his
countenance.

42:6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I
remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the
hill Mizar.

42:7 Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy
waves and thy billows are gone over me.

42:8 Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and
in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of
my life.

42:9 I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I
mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

42:10 As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while
they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?

42:11 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted
within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the
health of my countenance, and my God.



43:1 Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O
deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man.

43:2 For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off?
why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

43:3 O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them
bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.

43:4 Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy:
yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God.

43:5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted
within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health
of my countenance, and my God.



44:1 We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us,
what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old.

44:2 How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst
them; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.

44:3 For they got not the land in possession by their own sword,
neither did their own arm save them: but thy right hand, and thine
arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favour
unto them.

44:4 Thou art my King, O God: command deliverances for Jacob.

44:5 Through thee will we push down our enemies: through thy name will
we tread them under that rise up against us.

44:6 For I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me.

44:7 But thou hast saved us from our enemies, and hast put them to
shame that hated us.

44:8 In God we boast all the day long, and praise thy name for ever.

Selah.

44:9 But thou hast cast off, and put us to shame; and goest not forth
with our armies.

44:10 Thou makest us to turn back from the enemy: and they which hate
us spoil for themselves.

44:11 Thou hast given us like sheep appointed for meat; and hast
scattered us among the heathen.

44:12 Thou sellest thy people for nought, and dost not increase thy
wealth by their price.

44:13 Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and a
derision to them that are round about us.

44:14 Thou makest us a byword among the heathen, a shaking of the head
among the people.

44:15 My confusion is continually before me, and the shame of my face
hath covered me,

44:16 For the voice of him that reproacheth and blasphemeth; by reason
of the enemy and avenger.

44:17 All this is come upon us; yet have we not forgotten thee,
neither have we dealt falsely in thy covenant.

44:18 Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined
from thy way;

44:19 Though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and
covered us with the shadow of death.

44:20 If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our
hands to a strange god;

44:21 Shall not God search this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the
heart.

44:22 Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted
as sheep for the slaughter.

44:23 Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? arise, cast us not off for
ever.

44:24 Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our affliction
and our oppression?

44:25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust: our belly cleaveth unto
the earth.

44:26 Arise for our help, and redeem us for thy mercies' sake.



45:1 My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I
have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.

45:2 Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into
thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee for ever.

45:3 Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and
thy majesty.

45:4 And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and
meekness and righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee
terrible things.

45:5 Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies;
whereby the people fall under thee.

45:6 Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy
kingdom is a right sceptre.

45:7 Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God,
thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy
fellows.

45:8 All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of
the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.

45:9 Kings' daughters were among thy honourable women: upon thy right
hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir.

45:10 Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget
also thine own people, and thy father's house;

45:11 So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord;
and worship thou him.

45:12 And the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift; even the
rich among the people shall intreat thy favour.

45:13 The king's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of
wrought gold.

45:14 She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: the
virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee.

45:15 With gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought: they shall
enter into the king's palace.

45:16 Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest
make princes in all the earth.

45:17 I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations:
therefore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever.



46:1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

46:2 Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and
though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

46:3 Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the
mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.

46:4 There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of
God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.

46:5 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall
help her, and that right early.

46:6 The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice,
the earth melted.

46:7 The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Selah.

46:8 Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made
in the earth.

46:9 He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh
the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in
the fire.

46:10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the
heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

46:11 The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Selah.



47:1 O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice
of triumph.

47:2 For the LORD most high is terrible; he is a great King over all
the earth.

47:3 He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our
feet.

47:4 He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob
whom he loved. Selah.

47:5 God is gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a
trumpet.

47:6 Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King,
sing praises.

47:7 For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with
understanding.

47:8 God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of his
holiness.

47:9 The princes of the people are gathered together, even the people
of the God of Abraham: for the shields of the earth belong unto God:
he is greatly exalted.



48:1 Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our
God, in the mountain of his holiness.

48:2 Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount
Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.

48:3 God is known in her palaces for a refuge.

48:4 For, lo, the kings were assembled, they passed by together.

48:5 They saw it, and so they marvelled; they were troubled, and
hasted away.

48:6 Fear took hold upon them there, and pain, as of a woman in
travail.

48:7 Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind.

48:8 As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of
hosts, in the city of our God: God will establish it for ever. Selah.

48:9 We have thought of thy lovingkindness, O God, in the midst of thy
temple.

48:10 According to thy name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends of
the earth: thy right hand is full of righteousness.

48:11 Let mount Zion rejoice, let the daughters of Judah be glad,
because of thy judgments.

48:12 Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers
thereof.

48:13 Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may
tell it to the generation following.

48:14 For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide
even unto death.



49:1 Hear this, all ye people; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the
world:

49:2 Both low and high, rich and poor, together.

49:3 My mouth shall speak of wisdom; and the meditation of my heart
shall be of understanding.

49:4 I will incline mine ear to a parable: I will open my dark saying
upon the harp.

49:5 Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when the iniquity of
my heels shall compass me about?

49:6 They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the
multitude of their riches;

49:7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God
a ransom for him:

49:8 (For the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for
ever:)

49:9 That he should still live for ever, and not see corruption.

49:10 For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the
brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others.

49:11 Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for
ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their
lands after their own names.

49:12 Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the
beasts that perish.

49:13 This their way is their folly: yet their posterity approve their
sayings. Selah.

49:14 Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them;
and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; and
their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling.

49:15 But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he
shall receive me. Selah.

49:16 Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his
house is increased;

49:17 For when he dieth he shall carry nothing away: his glory shall
not descend after him.

49:18 Though while he lived he blessed his soul: and men will praise
thee, when thou doest well to thyself.

49:19 He shall go to the generation of his fathers; they shall never
see light.

49:20 Man that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the beasts
that perish.



50:1 The mighty God, even the LORD, hath spoken, and called the earth
from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof.

50:2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.

50:3 Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall
devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him.

50:4 He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that
he may judge his people.

50:5 Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a
covenant with me by sacrifice.

50:6 And the heavens shall declare his righteousness: for God is judge
himself. Selah.

50:7 Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify
against thee: I am God, even thy God.

50:8 I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt
offerings, to have been continually before me.

50:9 I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy
folds.

50:10 For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a
thousand hills.

50:11 I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of
the field are mine.

50:12 If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine,
and the fulness thereof.

50:13 Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?

50:14 Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most
High:

50:15 And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and
thou shalt glorify me.

50:16 But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare
my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?

50:17 Seeing thou hatest instruction, and casteth my words behind
thee.

50:18 When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and
hast been partaker with adulterers.

50:19 Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.

50:20 Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest
thine own mother's son.

50:21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest
that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee,
and set them in order before thine eyes.

50:22 Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in
pieces, and there be none to deliver.

50:23 Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth
his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.



51:1 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness:
according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my
transgressions.

51:2 Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

51:3 For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before
me.

51:4 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy
sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be
clear when thou judgest.

51:5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother
conceive me.

51:6 Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the
hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

51:7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall
be whiter than snow.

51:8 Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast
broken may rejoice.

51:9 Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.

51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit
within me.

51:11 Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit
from me.

51:12 Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy
free spirit.

51:13 Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be
converted unto thee.

51:14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my
salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

51:15 O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy
praise.

51:16 For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou
delightest not in burnt offering.

51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a
contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

51:18 Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of
Jerusalem.

51:19 Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness,
with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer
bullocks upon thine altar.



52:1 Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? the goodness
of God endureth continually.

52:2 The tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor, working
deceitfully.

52:3 Thou lovest evil more than good; and lying rather than to speak
righteousness. Selah.

52:4 Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue.

52:5 God shall likewise destroy thee for ever, he shall take thee
away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place, and root thee out of
the land of the living. Selah.

52:6 The righteous also shall see, and fear, and shall laugh at him:

52:7 Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength; but trusted
in the abundance of his riches, and strengthened himself in his
wickedness.

52:8 But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in
the mercy of God for ever and ever.

52:9 I will praise thee for ever, because thou hast done it: and I
will wait on thy name; for it is good before thy saints.



53:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are
they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth
good.

53:2 God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if
there were any that did understand, that did seek God.

53:3 Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become
filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

53:4 Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people
as they eat bread: they have not called upon God.

53:5 There were they in great fear, where no fear was: for God hath
scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee: thou hast put
them to shame, because God hath despised them.

53:6 Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! When God
bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and
Israel shall be glad.



54:1 Save me, O God, by thy name, and judge me by thy strength.

54:2 Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth.

54:3 For strangers are risen up against me, and oppressors seek after
my soul: they have not set God before them. Selah.

54:4 Behold, God is mine helper: the Lord is with them that uphold my
soul.

54:5 He shall reward evil unto mine enemies: cut them off in thy
truth.

54:6 I will freely sacrifice unto thee: I will praise thy name, O
LORD; for it is good.

54:7 For he hath delivered me out of all trouble: and mine eye hath
seen his desire upon mine enemies.



55:1 Give ear to my prayer, O God; and hide not thyself from my
supplication.

55:2 Attend unto me, and hear me: I mourn in my complaint, and make a
noise;

55:3 Because of the voice of the enemy, because of the oppression of
the wicked: for they cast iniquity upon me, and in wrath they hate me.

55:4 My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death are
fallen upon me.

55:5 Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath
overwhelmed me.

55:6 And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly
away, and be at rest.

55:7 Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness.
Selah.

55:8 I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest.

55:9 Destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongues: for I have seen
violence and strife in the city.

55:10 Day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof: mischief
also and sorrow are in the midst of it.

55:11 Wickedness is in the midst thereof: deceit and guile depart not
from her streets.

55:12 For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have
borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself
against me; then I would have hid myself from him:

55:13 But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine
acquaintance.

55:14 We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God
in company.

55:15 Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell:
for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.

55:16 As for me, I will call upon God; and the LORD shall save me.

55:17 Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud:
and he shall hear my voice.

55:18 He hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was
against me: for there were many with me.

55:19 God shall hear, and afflict them, even he that abideth of old.

Selah. Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God.

55:20 He hath put forth his hands against such as be at peace with
him: he hath broken his covenant.

55:21 The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in
his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.

55:22 Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he
shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.

55:23 But thou, O God, shalt bring them down into the pit of
destruction: bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their
days; but I will trust in thee.



56:1 Be merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; he
fighting daily oppresseth me.

56:2 Mine enemies would daily swallow me up: for they be many that
fight against me, O thou most High.

56:3 What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.

56:4 In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will
not fear what flesh can do unto me.

56:5 Every day they wrest my words: all their thoughts are against me
for evil.

56:6 They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark
my steps, when they wait for my soul.

56:7 Shall they escape by iniquity? in thine anger cast down the
people, O God.

56:8 Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle:
are they not in thy book?

56:9 When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I
know; for God is for me.

56:10 In God will I praise his word: in the LORD will I praise his
word.

56:11 In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do
unto me.

56:12 Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee.

56:13 For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou
deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light
of the living?



57:1 Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul
trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my
refuge, until these calamities be overpast.

57:2 I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth all
things for me.

57:3 He shall send from heaven, and save me from the reproach of him
that would swallow me up. Selah. God shall send forth his mercy and
his truth.

57:4 My soul is among lions: and I lie even among them that are set on
fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and
their tongue a sharp sword.

57:5 Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; let thy glory be above
all the earth.

57:6 They have prepared a net for my steps; my soul is bowed down:
they have digged a pit before me, into the midst whereof they are
fallen themselves. Selah.

57:7 My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give
praise.

57:8 Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake
early.

57:9 I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people: I will sing unto
thee among the nations.

57:10 For thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the
clouds.

57:11 Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: let thy glory be
above all the earth.



58:1 Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? do ye judge
uprightly, O ye sons of men?

58:2 Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your
hands in the earth.

58:3 The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as
they be born, speaking lies.

58:4 Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the
deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;

58:5 Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never
so wisely.

58:6 Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great
teeth of the young lions, O LORD.

58:7 Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he
bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces.

58:8 As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like
the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.

58:9 Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as
with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath.

58:10 The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he
shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.

58:11 So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the
righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth.



59:1 Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that
rise up against me.

59:2 Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody
men.

59:3 For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul: the mighty are gathered
against me; not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O LORD.

59:4 They run and prepare themselves without my fault: awake to help
me, and behold.

59:5 Thou therefore, O LORD God of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to
visit all the heathen: be not merciful to any wicked transgressors.
Selah.

59:6 They return at evening: they make a noise like a dog, and go
round about the city.

59:7 Behold, they belch out with their mouth: swords are in their
lips: for who, say they, doth hear?

59:8 But thou, O LORD, shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the
heathen in derision.

59:9 Because of his strength will I wait upon thee: for God is my
defence.

59:10 The God of my mercy shall prevent me: God shall let me see my
desire upon mine enemies.

59:11 Slay them not, lest my people forget: scatter them by thy power;
and bring them down, O Lord our shield.

59:12 For the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips let them
even be taken in their pride: and for cursing and lying which they
speak.

59:13 Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be: and
let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth.
Selah.

59:14 And at evening let them return; and let them make a noise like a
dog, and go round about the city.

59:15 Let them wander up and down for meat, and grudge if they be not
satisfied.

59:16 But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy
mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the
day of my trouble.

59:17 Unto thee, O my strength, will I sing: for God is my defence,
and the God of my mercy.



60:1 O God, thou hast cast us off, thou hast scattered us, thou hast
been displeased; O turn thyself to us again.

60:2 Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: heal
the breaches thereof; for it shaketh.

60:3 Thou hast shewed thy people hard things: thou hast made us to
drink the wine of astonishment.

60:4 Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be
displayed because of the truth. Selah.

60:5 That thy beloved may be delivered; save with thy right hand, and
hear me.

60:6 God hath spoken in his holiness; I will rejoice, I will divide
Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth.

60:7 Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine; Ephraim also is the
strength of mine head; Judah is my lawgiver;

60:8 Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe: Philistia,
triumph thou because of me.

60:9 Who will bring me into the strong city? who will lead me into
Edom?

60:10 Wilt not thou, O God, which hadst cast us off? and thou, O God,
which didst not go out with our armies?

60:11 Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man.

60:12 Through God we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall tread
down our enemies.



61:1 Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer.

61:2 From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is
overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

61:3 For thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the
enemy.

61:4 I will abide in thy tabernacle for ever: I will trust in the
covert of thy wings. Selah.

61:5 For thou, O God, hast heard my vows: thou hast given me the
heritage of those that fear thy name.

61:6 Thou wilt prolong the king's life: and his years as many
generations.

61:7 He shall abide before God for ever: O prepare mercy and truth,
which may preserve him.

61:8 So will I sing praise unto thy name for ever, that I may daily
perform my vows.



62:1 Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation.

62:2 He only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence; I shall
not be greatly moved.

62:3 How long will ye imagine mischief against a man? ye shall be
slain all of you: as a bowing wall shall ye be, and as a tottering
fence.

62:4 They only consult to cast him down from his excellency: they
delight in lies: they bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly.
Selah.

62:5 My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him.

62:6 He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence; I shall
not be moved.

62:7 In God is my salvation and my glory: the rock of my strength, and
my refuge, is in God.

62:8 Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before
him: God is a refuge for us. Selah.

62:9 Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a
lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than
vanity.

62:10 Trust not in oppression, and become not vain in robbery: if
riches increase, set not your heart upon them.

62:11 God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power
belongeth unto God.

62:12 Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to
every man according to his work.



63:1 O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth
for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where
no water is;

63:2 To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the
sanctuary.

63:3 Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall
praise thee.

63:4 Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in
thy name.

63:5 My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my
mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips:

63:6 When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the
night watches.

63:7 Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy
wings will I rejoice.

63:8 My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.

63:9 But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the
lower parts of the earth.

63:10 They shall fall by the sword: they shall be a portion for foxes.

63:11 But the king shall rejoice in God; every one that sweareth by
him shall glory: but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be
stopped.



64:1 Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer: preserve my life from fear of
the enemy.

64:2 Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked; from the
insurrection of the workers of iniquity:

64:3 Who whet their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot
their arrows, even bitter words:

64:4 That they may shoot in secret at the perfect: suddenly do they
shoot at him, and fear not.

64:5 They encourage themselves in an evil matter: they commune of
laying snares privily; they say, Who shall see them?

64:6 They search out iniquities; they accomplish a diligent search:
both the inward thought of every one of them, and the heart, is deep.

64:7 But God shall shoot at them with an arrow; suddenly shall they be
wounded.

64:8 So they shall make their own tongue to fall upon themselves: all
that see them shall flee away.

64:9 And all men shall fear, and shall declare the work of God; for
they shall wisely consider of his doing.

64:10 The righteous shall be glad in the LORD, and shall trust in him;
and all the upright in heart shall glory.



65:1 Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Sion: and unto thee shall the
vow be performed.

65:2 O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.

65:3 Iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, thou
shalt purge them away.

65:4 Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach
unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts: we shall be satisfied with
the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple.

65:5 By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of
our salvation; who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth,
and of them that are afar off upon the sea:

65:6 Which by his strength setteth fast the mountains; being girded
with power:

65:7 Which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves,
and the tumult of the people.

65:8 They also that dwell in the uttermost parts are afraid at thy
tokens: thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to
rejoice.

65:9 Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest
it with the river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them
corn, when thou hast so provided for it.

65:10 Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly: thou settlest the
furrows thereof: thou makest it soft with showers: thou blessest the
springing thereof.

65:11 Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop
fatness.

65:12 They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness: and the little
hills rejoice on every side.

65:13 The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are
covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing.



66:1 Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands:

66:2 Sing forth the honour of his name: make his praise glorious.

66:3 Say unto God, How terrible art thou in thy works! through the
greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto
thee.

66:4 All the earth shall worship thee, and shall sing unto thee; they
shall sing to thy name. Selah.

66:5 Come and see the works of God: he is terrible in his doing toward
the children of men.

66:6 He turned the sea into dry land: they went through the flood on
foot: there did we rejoice in him.

66:7 He ruleth by his power for ever; his eyes behold the nations: let
not the rebellious exalt themselves. Selah.

66:8 O bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of his praise to
be heard:

66:9 Which holdeth our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to be
moved.

66:10 For thou, O God, hast proved us: thou hast tried us, as silver
is tried.

66:11 Thou broughtest us into the net; thou laidst affliction upon our
loins.

66:12 Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads; we went through
fire and through water: but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy
place.

66:13 I will go into thy house with burnt offerings: I will pay thee
my vows,

66:14 Which my lips have uttered, and my mouth hath spoken, when I was
in trouble.

66:15 I will offer unto thee burnt sacrifices of fatlings, with the
incense of rams; I will offer bullocks with goats. Selah.

66:16 Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he
hath done for my soul.

66:17 I cried unto him with my mouth, and he was extolled with my
tongue.

66:18 If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:

66:19 But verily God hath heard me; he hath attended to the voice of
my prayer.

66:20 Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his
mercy from me.



67:1 God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to
shine upon us; Selah.

67:2 That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all
nations.

67:3 Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise
thee.

67:4 O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge
the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Selah.

67:5 Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise
thee.

67:6 Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own
God, shall bless us.

67:7 God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.



68:1 Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered: let them also that
hate him flee before him.

68:2 As smoke is driven away, so drive them away: as wax melteth
before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.

68:3 But let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before God: yea,
let them exceedingly rejoice.

68:4 Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth
upon the heavens by his name JAH, and rejoice before him.

68:5 A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in
his holy habitation.

68:6 God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which
are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land.

68:7 O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people, when thou didst
march through the wilderness; Selah:

68:8 The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God:
even Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel.

68:9 Thou, O God, didst send a plentiful rain, whereby thou didst
confirm thine inheritance, when it was weary.

68:10 Thy congregation hath dwelt therein: thou, O God, hast prepared
of thy goodness for the poor.

68:11 The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that
published it.

68:12 Kings of armies did flee apace: and she that tarried at home
divided the spoil.

68:13 Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings
of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.

68:14 When the Almighty scattered kings in it, it was white as snow in
Salmon.

68:15 The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan; an high hill as the
hill of Bashan.

68:16 Why leap ye, ye high hills? this is the hill which God desireth
to dwell in; yea, the LORD will dwell in it for ever.

68:17 The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of
angels: the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place.

68:18 Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive:
thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that
the LORD God might dwell among them.

68:19 Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even
the God of our salvation. Selah.

68:20 He that is our God is the God of salvation; and unto GOD the
Lord belong the issues from death.

68:21 But God shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp
of such an one as goeth on still in his trespasses.

68:22 The Lord said, I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring my
people again from the depths of the sea:

68:23 That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and
the tongue of thy dogs in the same.

68:24 They have seen thy goings, O God; even the goings of my God, my
King, in the sanctuary.

68:25 The singers went before, the players on instruments followed
after; among them were the damsels playing with timbrels.

68:26 Bless ye God in the congregations, even the Lord, from the
fountain of Israel.

68:27 There is little Benjamin with their ruler, the princes of Judah
and their council, the princes of Zebulun, and the princes of
Naphtali.

68:28 Thy God hath commanded thy strength: strengthen, O God, that
which thou hast wrought for us.

68:29 Because of thy temple at Jerusalem shall kings bring presents
unto thee.

68:30 Rebuke the company of spearmen, the multitude of the bulls, with
the calves of the people, till every one submit himself with pieces of
silver: scatter thou the people that delight in war.

68:31 Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out
her hands unto God.

68:32 Sing unto God, ye kingdoms of the earth; O sing praises unto the
Lord; Selah:

68:33 To him that rideth upon the heavens of heavens, which were of
old; lo, he doth send out his voice, and that a mighty voice.

68:34 Ascribe ye strength unto God: his excellency is over Israel, and
his strength is in the clouds.

68:35 O God, thou art terrible out of thy holy places: the God of
Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people. Blessed
be God.



69:1 Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul.

69:2 I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into
deep waters, where the floods overflow me.

69:3 I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while
I wait for my God.

69:4 They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine
head: they that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are
mighty: then I restored that which I took not away.

69:5 O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from
thee.

69:6 Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord GOD of hosts, be ashamed
for my sake: let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O
God of Israel.

69:7 Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my
face.

69:8 I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my
mother's children.

69:9 For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches
of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me.

69:10 When I wept, and chastened my soul with fasting, that was to my
reproach.

69:11 I made sackcloth also my garment; and I became a proverb to
them.

69:12 They that sit in the gate speak against me; and I was the song
of the drunkards.

69:13 But as for me, my prayer is unto thee, O LORD, in an acceptable
time: O God, in the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of
thy salvation.

69:14 Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink: let me be
delivered from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters.

69:15 Let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow
me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me.

69:16 Hear me, O LORD; for thy lovingkindness is good: turn unto me
according to the multitude of thy tender mercies.

69:17 And hide not thy face from thy servant; for I am in trouble:
hear me speedily.

69:18 Draw nigh unto my soul, and redeem it: deliver me because of
mine enemies.

69:19 Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonour:
mine adversaries are all before thee.

69:20 Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I
looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters,
but I found none.

69:21 They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave
me vinegar to drink.

69:22 Let their table become a snare before them: and that which
should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap.

69:23 Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not; and make their
loins continually to shake.

69:24 Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger
take hold of them.

69:25 Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their
tents.

69:26 For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten; and they talk to
the grief of those whom thou hast wounded.

69:27 Add iniquity unto their iniquity: and let them not come into thy
righteousness.

69:28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be
written with the righteous.

69:29 But I am poor and sorrowful: let thy salvation, O God, set me up
on high.

69:30 I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him
with thanksgiving.

69:31 This also shall please the LORD better than an ox or bullock
that hath horns and hoofs.

69:32 The humble shall see this, and be glad: and your heart shall
live that seek God.

69:33 For the LORD heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners.

69:34 Let the heaven and earth praise him, the seas, and every thing
that moveth therein.

69:35 For God will save Zion, and will build the cities of Judah: that
they may dwell there, and have it in possession.

69:36 The seed also of his servants shall inherit it: and they that
love his name shall dwell therein.



70:1 Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord.

70:2 Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let
them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt.

70:3 Let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say,
Aha, aha.

70:4 Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let
such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified.

70:5 But I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: thou art my
help and my deliverer; O LORD, make no tarrying.



71:1 In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust: let me never be put to
confusion.

71:2 Deliver me in thy righteousness, and cause me to escape: incline
thine ear unto me, and save me.

71:3 Be thou my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort:
thou hast given commandment to save me; for thou art my rock and my
fortress.

71:4 Deliver me, O my God, out of the hand of the wicked, out of the
hand of the unrighteous and cruel man.

71:5 For thou art my hope, O Lord GOD: thou art my trust from my
youth.

71:6 By thee have I been holden up from the womb: thou art he that
took me out of my mother's bowels: my praise shall be continually of
thee.

71:7 I am as a wonder unto many; but thou art my strong refuge.

71:8 Let my mouth be filled with thy praise and with thy honour all
the day.

71:9 Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my
strength faileth.

71:10 For mine enemies speak against me; and they that lay wait for my
soul take counsel together,

71:11 Saying, God hath forsaken him: persecute and take him; for there
is none to deliver him.

71:12 O God, be not far from me: O my God, make haste for my help.

71:13 Let them be confounded and consumed that are adversaries to my
soul; let them be covered with reproach and dishonour that seek my
hurt.

71:14 But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and
more.

71:15 My mouth shall shew forth thy righteousness and thy salvation
all the day; for I know not the numbers thereof.

71:16 I will go in the strength of the Lord GOD: I will make mention
of thy righteousness, even of thine only.

71:17 O God, thou hast taught me from my youth: and hitherto have I
declared thy wondrous works.

71:18 Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not;
until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power
to every one that is to come.

71:19 Thy righteousness also, O God, is very high, who hast done great
things: O God, who is like unto thee!

71:20 Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt
quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the
earth.

71:21 Thou shalt increase my greatness, and comfort me on every side.

71:22 I will also praise thee with the psaltery, even thy truth, O my
God: unto thee will I sing with the harp, O thou Holy One of Israel.

71:23 My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing unto thee; and my
soul, which thou hast redeemed.

71:24 My tongue also shall talk of thy righteousness all the day long:
for they are confounded, for they are brought unto shame, that seek my
hurt.



72:1 Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto
the king's son.

72:2 He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with
judgment.

72:3 The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little
hills, by righteousness.

72:4 He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children
of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.

72:5 They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure,
throughout all generations.

72:6 He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that
water the earth.

72:7 In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace
so long as the moon endureth.

72:8 He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river
unto the ends of the earth.

72:9 They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his
enemies shall lick the dust.

72:10 The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the
kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.

72:11 Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall
serve him.

72:12 For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also,
and him that hath no helper.

72:13 He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of
the needy.

72:14 He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and
precious shall their blood be in his sight.

72:15 And he shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of
Sheba: prayer also shall be made for him continually; and daily shall
he be praised.

72:16 There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of
the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon: and they of
the city shall flourish like grass of the earth.

72:17 His name shall endure for ever: his name shall be continued as
long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall
call him blessed.

72:18 Blessed be the LORD God, the God of Israel, who only doeth
wondrous things.

72:19 And blessed be his glorious name for ever: and let the whole
earth be filled with his glory; Amen, and Amen.

72:20 The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.



73:1 Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean
heart.

73:2 But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh
slipped.

73:3 For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of
the wicked.

73:4 For there are no bands in their death: but their strength is
firm.

73:5 They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued
like other men.

73:6 Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence
covereth them as a garment.

73:7 Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart
could wish.

73:8 They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression: they
speak loftily.

73:9 They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue
walketh through the earth.

73:10 Therefore his people return hither: and waters of a full cup are
wrung out to them.

73:11 And they say, How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the
most High?

73:12 Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they
increase in riches.

73:13 Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in
innocency.

73:14 For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every
morning.

73:15 If I say, I will speak thus; behold, I should offend against the
generation of thy children.

73:16 When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me;

73:17 Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their
end.

73:18 Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst
them down into destruction.

73:19 How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are
utterly consumed with terrors.

73:20 As a dream when one awaketh; so, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou
shalt despise their image.

73:21 Thus my heart was grieved, and I was pricked in my reins.

73:22 So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee.

73:23 Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by
my right hand.

73:24 Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me
to glory.

73:25 Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth
that I desire beside thee.

73:26 My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my
heart, and my portion for ever.

73:27 For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: thou hast
destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee.

73:28 But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust
in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works.



74:1 O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? why doth thine anger
smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?

74:2 Remember thy congregation, which thou hast purchased of old; the
rod of thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed; this mount Zion,
wherein thou hast dwelt.

74:3 Lift up thy feet unto the perpetual desolations; even all that
the enemy hath done wickedly in the sanctuary.

74:4 Thine enemies roar in the midst of thy congregations; they set up
their ensigns for signs.

74:5 A man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the
thick trees.

74:6 But now they break down the carved work thereof at once with axes
and hammers.

74:7 They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by
casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground.

74:8 They said in their hearts, Let us destroy them together: they
have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land.

74:9 We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet: neither is
there among us any that knoweth how long.

74:10 O God, how long shall the adversary reproach? shall the enemy
blaspheme thy name for ever?

74:11 Why withdrawest thou thy hand, even thy right hand? pluck it out
of thy bosom.

74:12 For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the
earth.

74:13 Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the
heads of the dragons in the waters.

74:14 Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to
be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.

74:15 Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: thou driedst up
mighty rivers.

74:16 The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared
the light and the sun.

74:17 Thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made
summer and winter.

74:18 Remember this, that the enemy hath reproached, O LORD, and that
the foolish people have blasphemed thy name.

74:19 O deliver not the soul of thy turtledove unto the multitude of
the wicked: forget not the congregation of thy poor for ever.

74:20 Have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth
are full of the habitations of cruelty.

74:21 O let not the oppressed return ashamed: let the poor and needy
praise thy name.

74:22 Arise, O God, plead thine own cause: remember how the foolish
man reproacheth thee daily.

74:23 Forget not the voice of thine enemies: the tumult of those that
rise up against thee increaseth continually.



75:1 Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks, unto thee do we give thanks:
for that thy name is near thy wondrous works declare.

75:2 When I shall receive the congregation I will judge uprightly.

75:3 The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved: I bear
up the pillars of it. Selah.

75:4 I said unto the fools, Deal not foolishly: and to the wicked,
Lift not up the horn:

75:5 Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck.

75:6 For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west,
nor from the south.

75:7 But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up
another.

75:8 For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red;
it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs
thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink
them.

75:9 But I will declare for ever; I will sing praises to the God of
Jacob.

75:10 All the horns of the wicked also will I cut off; but the horns
of the righteous shall be exalted.



76:1 In Judah is God known: his name is great in Israel.

76:2 In Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling place in Zion.

76:3 There brake he the arrows of the bow, the shield, and the sword,
and the battle. Selah.

76:4 Thou art more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey.

76:5 The stouthearted are spoiled, they have slept their sleep: and
none of the men of might have found their hands.

76:6 At thy rebuke, O God of Jacob, both the chariot and horse are
cast into a dead sleep.

76:7 Thou, even thou, art to be feared: and who may stand in thy sight
when once thou art angry?

76:8 Thou didst cause judgment to be heard from heaven; the earth
feared, and was still,

76:9 When God arose to judgment, to save all the meek of the earth.
Selah.

76:10 Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of
wrath shalt thou restrain.

76:11 Vow, and pay unto the LORD your God: let all that be round about
him bring presents unto him that ought to be feared.

76:12 He shall cut off the spirit of princes: he is terrible to the
kings of the earth.



77:1 I cried unto God with my voice, even unto God with my voice; and
he gave ear unto me.

77:2 In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord: my sore ran in the
night, and ceased not: my soul refused to be comforted.

77:3 I remembered God, and was troubled: I complained, and my spirit
was overwhelmed. Selah.

77:4 Thou holdest mine eyes waking: I am so troubled that I cannot
speak.

77:5 I have considered the days of old, the years of ancient times.

77:6 I call to remembrance my song in the night: I commune with mine
own heart: and my spirit made diligent search.

77:7 Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will he be favourable no
more?

77:8 Is his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for
evermore?

77:9 Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his
tender mercies? Selah.

77:10 And I said, This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years
of the right hand of the most High.

77:11 I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember
thy wonders of old.

77:12 I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings.

77:13 Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary: who is so great a God as
our God?

77:14 Thou art the God that doest wonders: thou hast declared thy
strength among the people.

77:15 Thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people, the sons of Jacob
and Joseph. Selah.

77:16 The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were
afraid: the depths also were troubled.

77:17 The clouds poured out water: the skies sent out a sound: thine
arrows also went abroad.

77:18 The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings
lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook.

77:19 Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy
footsteps are not known.

77:20 Thou leddest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and
Aaron.



78:1 Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words
of my mouth.

78:2 I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of
old:

78:3 Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.

78:4 We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the
generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his
wonderful works that he hath done.

78:5 For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in
Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them
known to their children:

78:6 That the generation to come might know them, even the children
which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their
children:

78:7 That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works
of God, but keep his commandments:

78:8 And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious
generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose
spirit was not stedfast with God.

78:9 The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned
back in the day of battle.

78:10 They kept not the covenant of God, and refused to walk in his
law;

78:11 And forgat his works, and his wonders that he had shewed them.

78:12 Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers, in the
land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.

78:13 He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and he made
the waters to stand as an heap.

78:14 In the daytime also he led them with a cloud, and all the night
with a light of fire.

78:15 He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out
of the great depths.

78:16 He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to
run down like rivers.

78:17 And they sinned yet more against him by provoking the most High
in the wilderness.

78:18 And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their
lust.

78:19 Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table
in the wilderness?

78:20 Behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the
streams overflowed; can he give bread also? can he provide flesh for
his people?

78:21 Therefore the LORD heard this, and was wroth: so a fire was
kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel;

78:22 Because they believed not in God, and trusted not in his
salvation:

78:23 Though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the
doors of heaven,

78:24 And had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them
of the corn of heaven.

78:25 Man did eat angels' food: he sent them meat to the full.

78:26 He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven: and by his power
he brought in the south wind.

78:27 He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like
as the sand of the sea:

78:28 And he let it fall in the midst of their camp, round about their
habitations.

78:29 So they did eat, and were well filled: for he gave them their
own desire;

78:30 They were not estranged from their lust. But while their meat
was yet in their mouths,

78:31 The wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them,
and smote down the chosen men of Israel.

78:32 For all this they sinned still, and believed not for his
wondrous works.

78:33 Therefore their days did he consume in vanity, and their years
in trouble.

78:34 When he slew them, then they sought him: and they returned and
enquired early after God.

78:35 And they remembered that God was their rock, and the high God
their redeemer.

78:36 Nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouth, and they
lied unto him with their tongues.

78:37 For their heart was not right with him, neither were they
stedfast in his covenant.

78:38 But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and
destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did
not stir up all his wrath.

78:39 For he remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth
away, and cometh not again.

78:40 How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him
in the desert!

78:41 Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One
of Israel.

78:42 They remembered not his hand, nor the day when he delivered them
from the enemy.

78:43 How he had wrought his signs in Egypt, and his wonders in the
field of Zoan.

78:44 And had turned their rivers into blood; and their floods, that
they could not drink.

78:45 He sent divers sorts of flies among them, which devoured them;
and frogs, which destroyed them.

78:46 He gave also their increase unto the caterpiller, and their
labour unto the locust.

78:47 He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycomore trees
with frost.

78:48 He gave up their cattle also to the hail, and their flocks to
hot thunderbolts.

78:49 He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and
indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels among them.

78:50 He made a way to his anger; he spared not their soul from death,
but gave their life over to the pestilence;

78:51 And smote all the firstborn in Egypt; the chief of their
strength in the tabernacles of Ham:

78:52 But made his own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them
in the wilderness like a flock.

78:53 And he led them on safely, so that they feared not: but the sea
overwhelmed their enemies.

78:54 And he brought them to the border of his sanctuary, even to this
mountain, which his right hand had purchased.

78:55 He cast out the heathen also before them, and divided them an
inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their
tents.

78:56 Yet they tempted and provoked the most high God, and kept not
his testimonies:

78:57 But turned back, and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers: they
were turned aside like a deceitful bow.

78:58 For they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved
him to jealousy with their graven images.

78:59 When God heard this, he was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel:

78:60 So that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which he
placed among men;

78:61 And delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into
the enemy's hand.

78:62 He gave his people over also unto the sword; and was wroth with
his inheritance.

78:63 The fire consumed their young men; and their maidens were not
given to marriage.

78:64 Their priests fell by the sword; and their widows made no
lamentation.

78:65 Then the LORD awaked as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man
that shouteth by reason of wine.

78:66 And he smote his enemies in the hinder parts: he put them to a
perpetual reproach.

78:67 Moreover he refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the
tribe of Ephraim:

78:68 But chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which he loved.

78:69 And he built his sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth
which he hath established for ever.

78:70 He chose David also his servant, and took him from the
sheepfolds:

78:71 From following the ewes great with young he brought him to feed
Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance.

78:72 So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart; and
guided them by the skilfulness of his hands.



79:1 O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy
temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.

79:2 The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto
the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of
the earth.

79:3 Their blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem; and
there was none to bury them.

79:4 We are become a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and derision
to them that are round about us.

79:5 How long, LORD? wilt thou be angry for ever? shall thy jealousy
burn like fire?

79:6 Pour out thy wrath upon the heathen that have not known thee, and
upon the kingdoms that have not called upon thy name.

79:7 For they have devoured Jacob, and laid waste his dwelling place.

79:8 O remember not against us former iniquities: let thy tender
mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low.

79:9 Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name: and
deliver us, and purge away our sins, for thy name's sake.

79:10 Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is their God? let him be
known among the heathen in our sight by the revenging of the blood of
thy servants which is shed.

79:11 Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee; according to
the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to
die;

79:12 And render unto our neighbours sevenfold into their bosom their
reproach, wherewith they have reproached thee, O Lord.

79:13 So we thy people and sheep of thy pasture will give thee thanks
for ever: we will shew forth thy praise to all generations.



80:1 Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a
flock; thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth.

80:2 Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh stir up thy strength,
and come and save us.

80:3 Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall
be saved.

80:4 O LORD God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the
prayer of thy people?

80:5 Thou feedest them with the bread of tears; and givest them tears
to drink in great measure.

80:6 Thou makest us a strife unto our neighbours: and our enemies
laugh among themselves.

80:7 Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine; and
we shall be saved.

80:8 Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the
heathen, and planted it.

80:9 Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep
root, and it filled the land.

80:10 The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs
thereof were like the goodly cedars.

80:11 She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the
river.

80:12 Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they
which pass by the way do pluck her?

80:13 The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of
the field doth devour it.

80:14 Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven,
and behold, and visit this vine;

80:15 And the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the
branch that thou madest strong for thyself.

80:16 It is burned with fire, it is cut down: they perish at the
rebuke of thy countenance.

80:17 Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of
man whom thou madest strong for thyself.

80:18 So will not we go back from thee: quicken us, and we will call
upon thy name.

80:19 Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and
we shall be saved.



81:1 Sing aloud unto God our strength: make a joyful noise unto the
God of Jacob.

81:2 Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp
with the psaltery.

81:3 Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on
our solemn feast day.

81:4 For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob.

81:5 This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony, when he went out
through the land of Egypt: where I heard a language that I understood
not.

81:6 I removed his shoulder from the burden: his hands were delivered
from the pots.

81:7 Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee; I answered thee
in the secret place of thunder: I proved thee at the waters of
Meribah.

Selah.

81:8 Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if
thou wilt hearken unto me;

81:9 There shall no strange god be in thee; neither shalt thou worship
any strange god.

81:10 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of
Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.

81:11 But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would
none of me.

81:12 So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked
in their own counsels.

81:13 Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked
in my ways!

81:14 I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand
against their adversaries.

81:15 The haters of the LORD should have submitted themselves unto
him: but their time should have endured for ever.

81:16 He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and
with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.



82:1 God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among
the gods.

82:2 How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the
wicked? Selah.

82:3 Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and
needy.

82:4 Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the
wicked.

82:5 They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in
darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.

82:6 I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most
High.

82:7 But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.

82:8 Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all
nations.



83:1 Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not
still, O God.

83:2 For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee
have lifted up the head.

83:3 They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted
against thy hidden ones.

83:4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a
nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.

83:5 For they have consulted together with one consent: they are
confederate against thee:

83:6 The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the
Hagarenes;

83:7 Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the
inhabitants of Tyre;

83:8 Assur also is joined with them: they have holpen the children of
Lot.

Selah.

83:9 Do unto them as unto the Midianites; as to Sisera, as to Jabin,
at the brook of Kison:

83:10 Which perished at Endor: they became as dung for the earth.

83:11 Make their nobles like Oreb, and like Zeeb: yea, all their
princes as Zebah, and as Zalmunna:

83:12 Who said, Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in
possession.

83:13 O my God, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the
wind.

83:14 As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the
mountains on fire;

83:15 So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with
thy storm.

83:16 Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O
LORD.

83:17 Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea, let them be
put to shame, and perish:

83:18 That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art
the most high over all the earth.



84:1 How amiable are thy tabernacles, O LORD of hosts!

84:2 My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD:
my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.

84:3 Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for
herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O LORD of
hosts, my King, and my God.

84:4 Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still
praising thee. Selah.

84:5 Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are
the ways of them.

84:6 Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain
also filleth the pools.

84:7 They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion
appeareth before God.

84:8 O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, O God of Jacob.
Selah.

84:9 Behold, O God our shield, and look upon the face of thine
anointed.

84:10 For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather
be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of
wickedness.

84:11 For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace
and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk
uprightly.

84:12 O LORD of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.



85:1 Lord, thou hast been favourable unto thy land: thou hast brought
back the captivity of Jacob.

85:2 Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, thou hast covered
all their sin. Selah.

85:3 Thou hast taken away all thy wrath: thou hast turned thyself from
the fierceness of thine anger.

85:4 Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us
to cease.

85:5 Wilt thou be angry with us for ever? wilt thou draw out thine
anger to all generations?

85:6 Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in
thee?

85:7 Shew us thy mercy, O LORD, and grant us thy salvation.

85:8 I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace
unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to
folly.

85:9 Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him; that glory may
dwell in our land.

85:10 Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have
kissed each other.

85:11 Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall
look down from heaven.

85:12 Yea, the LORD shall give that which is good; and our land shall
yield her increase.

85:13 Righteousness shall go before him; and shall set us in the way
of his steps.



86:1 Bow down thine ear, O LORD, hear me: for I am poor and needy.

86:2 Preserve my soul; for I am holy: O thou my God, save thy servant
that trusteth in thee.

86:3 Be merciful unto me, O Lord: for I cry unto thee daily.

86:4 Rejoice the soul of thy servant: for unto thee, O Lord, do I lift
up my soul.

86:5 For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in
mercy unto all them that call upon thee.

86:6 Give ear, O LORD, unto my prayer; and attend to the voice of my
supplications.

86:7 In the day of my trouble I will call upon thee: for thou wilt
answer me.

86:8 Among the gods there is none like unto thee, O Lord; neither are
there any works like unto thy works.

86:9 All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before
thee, O Lord; and shall glorify thy name.

86:10 For thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art God
alone.

86:11 Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk in thy truth: unite my
heart to fear thy name.

86:12 I will praise thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart: and I will
glorify thy name for evermore.

86:13 For great is thy mercy toward me: and thou hast delivered my
soul from the lowest hell.

86:14 O God, the proud are risen against me, and the assemblies of
violent men have sought after my soul; and have not set thee before
them.

86:15 But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious,
long suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth.

86:16 O turn unto me, and have mercy upon me; give thy strength unto
thy servant, and save the son of thine handmaid.

86:17 Shew me a token for good; that they which hate me may see it,
and be ashamed: because thou, LORD, hast holpen me, and comforted me.



87:1 His foundation is in the holy mountains.

87:2 The LORD loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of
Jacob.

87:3 Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Selah.

87:4 I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me:
behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia; this man was born there.

87:5 And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her:
and the highest himself shall establish her.

87:6 The LORD shall count, when he writeth up the people, that this
man was born there. Selah.

87:7 As well the singers as the players on instruments shall be there:
all my springs are in thee.



88:1 O lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before
thee:

88:2 Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry;

88:3 For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto
the grave.

88:4 I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man
that hath no strength:

88:5 Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom
thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand.

88:6 Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.

88:7 Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all
thy waves. Selah.

88:8 Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made
me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.

88:9 Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction: LORD, I have called
daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto thee.

88:10 Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and
praise thee? Selah.

88:11 Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave? or thy
faithfulness in destruction?

88:12 Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in
the land of forgetfulness?

88:13 But unto thee have I cried, O LORD; and in the morning shall my
prayer prevent thee.

88:14 LORD, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face
from me?

88:15 I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up: while I suffer
thy terrors I am distracted.

88:16 Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off.

88:17 They came round about me daily like water; they compassed me
about together.

88:18 Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine
acquaintance into darkness.



89:1 I will sing of the mercies of the LORD for ever: with my mouth
will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations.

89:2 For I have said, Mercy shall be built up for ever: thy
faithfulness shalt thou establish in the very heavens.

89:3 I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my
servant,

89:4 Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to
all generations. Selah.

89:5 And the heavens shall praise thy wonders, O LORD: thy
faithfulness also in the congregation of the saints.

89:6 For who in the heaven can be compared unto the LORD? who among
the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the LORD?

89:7 God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to
be had in reverence of all them that are about him.

89:8 O LORD God of hosts, who is a strong LORD like unto thee? or to
thy faithfulness round about thee?

89:9 Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise,
thou stillest them.

89:10 Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; thou
hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm.

89:11 The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world
and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them.

89:12 The north and the south thou hast created them: Tabor and Hermon
shall rejoice in thy name.

89:13 Thou hast a mighty arm: strong is thy hand, and high is thy
right hand.

89:14 Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and
truth shall go before thy face.

89:15 Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall
walk, O LORD, in the light of thy countenance.

89:16 In thy name shall they rejoice all the day: and in thy
righteousness shall they be exalted.

89:17 For thou art the glory of their strength: and in thy favour our
horn shall be exalted.

89:18 For the LORD is our defence; and the Holy One of Israel is our
king.

89:19 Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy one, and saidst, I have
laid help upon one that is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of
the people.

89:20 I have found David my servant; with my holy oil have I anointed
him:

89:21 With whom my hand shall be established: mine arm also shall
strengthen him.

89:22 The enemy shall not exact upon him; nor the son of wickedness
afflict him.

89:23 And I will beat down his foes before his face, and plague them
that hate him.

89:24 But my faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him: and in my
name shall his horn be exalted.

89:25 I will set his hand also in the sea, and his right hand in the
rivers.

89:26 He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock
of my salvation.

89:27 Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the
earth.

89:28 My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall
stand fast with him.

89:29 His seed also will I make to endure for ever, and his throne as
the days of heaven.

89:30 If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments;

89:31 If they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments;

89:32 Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their
iniquity with stripes.

89:33 Nevertheless my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him,
nor suffer my faithfulness to fail.

89:34 My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone
out of my lips.

89:35 Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David.

89:36 His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before
me.

89:37 It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful
witness in heaven. Selah.

89:38 But thou hast cast off and abhorred, thou hast been wroth with
thine anointed.

89:39 Thou hast made void the covenant of thy servant: thou hast
profaned his crown by casting it to the ground.

89:40 Thou hast broken down all his hedges; thou hast brought his
strong holds to ruin.

89:41 All that pass by the way spoil him: he is a reproach to his
neighbours.

89:42 Thou hast set up the right hand of his adversaries; thou hast
made all his enemies to rejoice.

89:43 Thou hast also turned the edge of his sword, and hast not made
him to stand in the battle.

89:44 Thou hast made his glory to cease, and cast his throne down to
the ground.

89:45 The days of his youth hast thou shortened: thou hast covered him
with shame. Selah.

89:46 How long, LORD? wilt thou hide thyself for ever? shall thy wrath
burn like fire?

89:47 Remember how short my time is: wherefore hast thou made all men
in vain?

89:48 What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he
deliver his soul from the hand of the grave? Selah.

89:49 Lord, where are thy former lovingkindnesses, which thou swarest
unto David in thy truth?

89:50 Remember, Lord, the reproach of thy servants; how I do bear in
my bosom the reproach of all the mighty people;

89:51 Wherewith thine enemies have reproached, O LORD; wherewith they
have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed.

89:52 Blessed be the LORD for evermore. Amen, and Amen.



90:1 Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

90:2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst
formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting,
thou art God.

90:3 Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children
of men.

90:4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is
past, and as a watch in the night.

90:5 Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in
the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

90:6 In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it
is cut down, and withereth.

90:7 For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we
troubled.

90:8 Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the
light of thy countenance.

90:9 For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years
as a tale that is told.

90:10 The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by
reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength
labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

90:11 Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy
fear, so is thy wrath.

90:12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts
unto wisdom.

90:13 Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy
servants.

90:14 O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be
glad all our days.

90:15 Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted
us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.

90:16 Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their
children.

90:17 And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish
thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands
establish thou it.



91:1 He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide
under the shadow of the Almighty.

91:2 I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God;
in him will I trust.

91:3 Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and
from the noisome pestilence.

91:4 He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt
thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

91:5 Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the
arrow that flieth by day;

91:6 Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the
destruction that wasteth at noonday.

91:7 A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right
hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

91:8 Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the
wicked.

91:9 Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the
most High, thy habitation;

91:10 There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come
nigh thy dwelling.

91:11 For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in
all thy ways.

91:12 They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot
against a stone.

91:13 Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the
dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

91:14 Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver
him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.

91:15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him
in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.

91:16 With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.



92:1 It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing
praises unto thy name, O most High:

92:2 To shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy
faithfulness every night,

92:3 Upon an instrument of ten strings, and upon the psaltery; upon
the harp with a solemn sound.

92:4 For thou, LORD, hast made me glad through thy work: I will
triumph in the works of thy hands.

92:5 O LORD, how great are thy works! and thy thoughts are very deep.

92:6 A brutish man knoweth not; neither doth a fool understand this.

92:7 When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of
iniquity do flourish; it is that they shall be destroyed for ever:

92:8 But thou, LORD, art most high for evermore.

92:9 For, lo, thine enemies, O LORD, for, lo, thine enemies shall
perish; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered.

92:10 But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I
shall be anointed with fresh oil.

92:11 Mine eye also shall see my desire on mine enemies, and mine ears
shall hear my desire of the wicked that rise up against me.

92:12 The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow
like a cedar in Lebanon.

92:13 Those that be planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in
the courts of our God.

92:14 They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat
and flourishing;

92:15 To shew that the LORD is upright: he is my rock, and there is no
unrighteousness in him.



93:1 The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is
clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world
also is stablished, that it cannot be moved.

93:2 Thy throne is established of old: thou art from everlasting.

93:3 The floods have lifted up, O LORD, the floods have lifted up
their voice; the floods lift up their waves.

93:4 The LORD on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea,
than the mighty waves of the sea.

93:5 Thy testimonies are very sure: holiness becometh thine house, O
LORD, for ever.



94:1 O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O God, to whom vengeance
belongeth, shew thyself.

94:2 Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth: render a reward to the
proud.

94:3 LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked
triumph?

94:4 How long shall they utter and speak hard things? and all the
workers of iniquity boast themselves?

94:5 They break in pieces thy people, O LORD, and afflict thine
heritage.

94:6 They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless.

94:7 Yet they say, The LORD shall not see, neither shall the God of
Jacob regard it.

94:8 Understand, ye brutish among the people: and ye fools, when will
ye be wise?

94:9 He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the
eye, shall he not see?

94:10 He that chastiseth the heathen, shall not he correct? he that
teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know?

94:11 The LORD knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.

94:12 Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O LORD, and teachest
him out of thy law;

94:13 That thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, until
the pit be digged for the wicked.

94:14 For the LORD will not cast off his people, neither will he
forsake his inheritance.

94:15 But judgment shall return unto righteousness: and all the
upright in heart shall follow it.

94:16 Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand
up for me against the workers of iniquity?

94:17 Unless the LORD had been my help, my soul had almost dwelt in
silence.

94:18 When I said, My foot slippeth; thy mercy, O LORD, held me up.

94:19 In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight
my soul.

94:20 Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which
frameth mischief by a law?

94:21 They gather themselves together against the soul of the
righteous, and condemn the innocent blood.

94:22 But the LORD is my defence; and my God is the rock of my refuge.

94:23 And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut
them off in their own wickedness; yea, the LORD our God shall cut them
off.



95:1 O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to
the rock of our salvation.

95:2 Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a
joyful noise unto him with psalms.

95:3 For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

95:4 In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the
hills is his also.

95:5 The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry
land.

95:6 O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD
our maker.

95:7 For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the
sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,

95:8 Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day
of temptation in the wilderness:

95:9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.

95:10 Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said,
It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my
ways:

95:11 Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my
rest.



96:1 O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, all the
earth.

96:2 Sing unto the LORD, bless his name; shew forth his salvation from
day to day.

96:3 Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all
people.

96:4 For the LORD is great, and greatly to be praised: he is to be
feared above all gods.

96:5 For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the
heavens.

96:6 Honour and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his
sanctuary.

96:7 Give unto the LORD, O ye kindreds of the people, give unto the
LORD glory and strength.

96:8 Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name: bring an
offering, and come into his courts.

96:9 O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness: fear before him,
all the earth.

96:10 Say among the heathen that the LORD reigneth: the world also
shall be established that it shall not be moved: he shall judge the
people righteously.

96:11 Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea
roar, and the fulness thereof.

96:12 Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all
the trees of the wood rejoice

96:13 Before the LORD: for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the
earth: he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people
with his truth.



97:1 The LORD reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of
isles be glad thereof.

97:2 Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and
judgment are the habitation of his throne.

97:3 A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about.

97:4 His lightnings enlightened the world: the earth saw, and
trembled.

97:5 The hills melted like wax at the presence of the LORD, at the
presence of the Lord of the whole earth.

97:6 The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people see his
glory.

97:7 Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast
themselves of idols: worship him, all ye gods.

97:8 Zion heard, and was glad; and the daughters of Judah rejoiced
because of thy judgments, O LORD.

97:9 For thou, LORD, art high above all the earth: thou art exalted
far above all gods.

97:10 Ye that love the LORD, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his
saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked.

97:11 Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in
heart.

97:12 Rejoice in the LORD, ye righteous; and give thanks at the
remembrance of his holiness.



98:1 O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done marvellous
things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory.

98:2 The LORD hath made known his salvation: his righteousness hath he
openly shewed in the sight of the heathen.

98:3 He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of
Israel: all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

98:4 Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth: make a loud
noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.

98:5 Sing unto the LORD with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of
a psalm.

98:6 With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the
LORD, the King.

98:7 Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they
that dwell therein.

98:8 Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together

98:9 Before the LORD; for he cometh to judge the earth: with
righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.



99:1 The LORD reigneth; let the people tremble: he sitteth between the
cherubims; let the earth be moved.

99:2 The LORD is great in Zion; and he is high above all the people.

99:3 Let them praise thy great and terrible name; for it is holy.

99:4 The king's strength also loveth judgment; thou dost establish
equity, thou executest judgment and righteousness in Jacob.

99:5 Exalt ye the LORD our God, and worship at his footstool; for he
is holy.

99:6 Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among them that
call upon his name; they called upon the LORD, and he answered them.

99:7 He spake unto them in the cloudy pillar: they kept his
testimonies, and the ordinance that he gave them.

99:8 Thou answeredst them, O LORD our God: thou wast a God that
forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.

99:9 Exalt the LORD our God, and worship at his holy hill; for the
LORD our God is holy.



100:1 Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.

100:2 Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with
singing.

100:3 Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and
not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

100:4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with
praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

100:5 For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth
endureth to all generations.



101:1 I will sing of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O LORD, will I
sing.

101:2 I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt thou
come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.

101:3 I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of
them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.

101:4 A froward heart shall depart from me: I will not know a wicked
person.

101:5 Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him will I cut off: him
that hath an high look and a proud heart will not I suffer.

101:6 Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may
dwell with me: he that walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me.

101:7 He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that
telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight.

101:8 I will early destroy all the wicked of the land; that I may cut
off all wicked doers from the city of the LORD.



102:1 Hear my prayer, O LORD, and let my cry come unto thee.

102:2 Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble;
incline thine ear unto me: in the day when I call answer me speedily.

102:3 For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as
an hearth.

102:4 My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget
to eat my bread.

102:5 By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my
skin.

102:6 I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the
desert.

102:7 I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.

102:8 Mine enemies reproach me all the day; and they that are mad
against me are sworn against me.

102:9 For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with
weeping.

102:10 Because of thine indignation and thy wrath: for thou hast
lifted me up, and cast me down.

102:11 My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered
like grass.

102:12 But thou, O LORD, shall endure for ever; and thy remembrance
unto all generations.

102:13 Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to
favour her, yea, the set time, is come.

102:14 For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the
dust thereof.

102:15 So the heathen shall fear the name of the LORD, and all the
kings of the earth thy glory.

102:16 When the LORD shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his
glory.

102:17 He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise
their prayer.

102:18 This shall be written for the generation to come: and the
people which shall be created shall praise the LORD.

102:19 For he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from
heaven did the LORD behold the earth;

102:20 To hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are
appointed to death;

102:21 To declare the name of the LORD in Zion, and his praise in
Jerusalem;

102:22 When the people are gathered together, and the kingdoms, to
serve the LORD.

102:23 He weakened my strength in the way; he shortened my days.

102:24 I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: thy
years are throughout all generations.

102:25 Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the
heavens are the work of thy hands.

102:26 They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them
shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and
they shall be changed:

102:27 But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.

102:28 The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed
shall be established before thee.



103:1 Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his
holy name.

103:2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:

103:3 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy
diseases;

103:4 Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with
lovingkindness and tender mercies;

103:5 Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is
renewed like the eagle's.

103:6 The LORD executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are
oppressed.

103:7 He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of
Israel.

103:8 The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous
in mercy.

103:9 He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for
ever.

103:10 He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us
according to our iniquities.

103:11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his
mercy toward them that fear him.

103:12 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our
transgressions from us.

103:13 Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them
that fear him.

103:14 For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.

103:15 As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so
he flourisheth.

103:16 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place
thereof shall know it no more.

103:17 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting
upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's
children;

103:18 To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his
commandments to do them.

103:19 The LORD hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his
kingdom ruleth over all.

103:20 Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do
his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.

103:21 Bless ye the LORD, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his, that
do his pleasure.

103:22 Bless the LORD, all his works in all places of his dominion:
bless the LORD, O my soul.



104:1 Bless the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, thou art very great;
thou art clothed with honour and majesty.

104:2 Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who
stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:

104:3 Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh
the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind:

104:4 Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire:

104:5 Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be
removed for ever.

104:6 Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters
stood above the mountains.

104:7 At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted
away.

104:8 They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto
the place which thou hast founded for them.

104:9 Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they
turn not again to cover the earth.

104:10 He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the
hills.

104:11 They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses
quench their thirst.

104:12 By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation,
which sing among the branches.

104:13 He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied
with the fruit of thy works.

104:14 He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the
service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;

104:15 And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his
face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart.

104:16 The trees of the LORD are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon,
which he hath planted;

104:17 Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir
trees are her house.

104:18 The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks
for the conies.

104:19 He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going
down.

104:20 Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts
of the forest do creep forth.

104:21 The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from
God.

104:22 The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them
down in their dens.

104:23 Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the
evening.

104:24 O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made
them all: the earth is full of thy riches.

104:25 So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping
innumerable, both small and great beasts.

104:26 There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast
made to play therein.

104:27 These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat
in due season.

104:28 That thou givest them they gather: thou openest thine hand,
they are filled with good.

104:29 Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their
breath, they die, and return to their dust.

104:30 Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou
renewest the face of the earth.

104:31 The glory of the LORD shall endure for ever: the LORD shall
rejoice in his works.

104:32 He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the
hills, and they smoke.

104:33 I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live: I will sing praise
to my God while I have my being.

104:34 My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the
LORD.

104:35 Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the
wicked be no more. Bless thou the LORD, O my soul. Praise ye the LORD.



105:1 O give thanks unto the LORD; call upon his name: make known his
deeds among the people.

105:2 Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous
works.

105:3 Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that
seek the LORD.

105:4 Seek the LORD, and his strength: seek his face evermore.

105:5 Remember his marvellous works that he hath done; his wonders,
and the judgments of his mouth;

105:6 O ye seed of Abraham his servant, ye children of Jacob his
chosen.

105:7 He is the LORD our God: his judgments are in all the earth.

105:8 He hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he
commanded to a thousand generations.

105:9 Which covenant he made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac;

105:10 And confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for
an everlasting covenant:

105:11 Saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of
your inheritance:

105:12 When they were but a few men in number; yea, very few, and
strangers in it.

105:13 When they went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to
another people;

105:14 He suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he reproved kings for
their sakes;

105:15 Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.

105:16 Moreover he called for a famine upon the land: he brake the
whole staff of bread.

105:17 He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a
servant:

105:18 Whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron:

105:19 Until the time that his word came: the word of the LORD tried
him.

105:20 The king sent and loosed him; even the ruler of the people, and
let him go free.

105:21 He made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his substance:

105:22 To bind his princes at his pleasure; and teach his senators
wisdom.

105:23 Israel also came into Egypt; and Jacob sojourned in the land of
Ham.

105:24 And he increased his people greatly; and made them stronger
than their enemies.

105:25 He turned their heart to hate his people, to deal subtilly with
his servants.

105:26 He sent Moses his servant; and Aaron whom he had chosen.

105:27 They shewed his signs among them, and wonders in the land of
Ham.

105:28 He sent darkness, and made it dark; and they rebelled not
against his word.

105:29 He turned their waters into blood, and slew their fish.

105:30 Their land brought forth frogs in abundance, in the chambers of
their kings.

105:31 He spake, and there came divers sorts of flies, and lice in all
their coasts.

105:32 He gave them hail for rain, and flaming fire in their land.

105:33 He smote their vines also and their fig trees; and brake the
trees of their coasts.

105:34 He spake, and the locusts came, and caterpillers, and that
without number,

105:35 And did eat up all the herbs in their land, and devoured the
fruit of their ground.

105:36 He smote also all the firstborn in their land, the chief of all
their strength.

105:37 He brought them forth also with silver and gold: and there was
not one feeble person among their tribes.

105:38 Egypt was glad when they departed: for the fear of them fell
upon them.

105:39 He spread a cloud for a covering; and fire to give light in the
night.

105:40 The people asked, and he brought quails, and satisfied them
with the bread of heaven.

105:41 He opened the rock, and the waters gushed out; they ran in the
dry places like a river.

105:42 For he remembered his holy promise, and Abraham his servant.

105:43 And he brought forth his people with joy, and his chosen with
gladness:

105:44 And gave them the lands of the heathen: and they inherited the
labour of the people;

105:45 That they might observe his statutes, and keep his laws. Praise
ye the LORD.



106:1 Praise ye the LORD. O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good:
for his mercy endureth for ever.

106:2 Who can utter the mighty acts of the LORD? who can shew forth
all his praise?

106:3 Blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that doeth
righteousness at all times.

106:4 Remember me, O LORD, with the favour that thou bearest unto thy
people: O visit me with thy salvation;

106:5 That I may see the good of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the
gladness of thy nation, that I may glory with thine inheritance.

106:6 We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we
have done wickedly.

106:7 Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered
not the multitude of thy mercies; but provoked him at the sea, even at
the Red sea.

106:8 Nevertheless he saved them for his name's sake, that he might
make his mighty power to be known.

106:9 He rebuked the Red sea also, and it was dried up: so he led them
through the depths, as through the wilderness.

106:10 And he saved them from the hand of him that hated them, and
redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.

106:11 And the waters covered their enemies: there was not one of them
left.

106:12 Then believed they his words; they sang his praise.

106:13 They soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel:

106:14 But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in
the desert.

106:15 And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their
soul.

106:16 They envied Moses also in the camp, and Aaron the saint of the
LORD.

106:17 The earth opened and swallowed up Dathan and covered the
company of Abiram.

106:18 And a fire was kindled in their company; the flame burned up
the wicked.

106:19 They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image.

106:20 Thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that
eateth grass.

106:21 They forgat God their saviour, which had done great things in
Egypt;

106:22 Wondrous works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the
Red sea.

106:23 Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not Moses his
chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath, lest he
should destroy them.

106:24 Yea, they despised the pleasant land, they believed not his
word:

106:25 But murmured in their tents, and hearkened not unto the voice
of the LORD.

106:26 Therefore he lifted up his hand against them, to overthrow them
in the wilderness:

106:27 To overthrow their seed also among the nations, and to scatter
them in the lands.

106:28 They joined themselves also unto Baalpeor, and ate the
sacrifices of the dead.

106:29 Thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions: and the
plague brake in upon them.

106:30 Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment: and so the
plague was stayed.

106:31 And that was counted unto him for righteousness unto all
generations for evermore.

106:32 They angered him also at the waters of strife, so that it went
ill with Moses for their sakes:

106:33 Because they provoked his spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly
with his lips.

106:34 They did not destroy the nations, concerning whom the LORD
commanded them:

106:35 But were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works.

106:36 And they served their idols: which were a snare unto them.

106:37 Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto
devils,

106:38 And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of
their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and
the land was polluted with blood.

106:39 Thus were they defiled with their own works, and went a whoring
with their own inventions.

106:40 Therefore was the wrath of the LORD kindled against his people,
insomuch that he abhorred his own inheritance.

106:41 And he gave them into the hand of the heathen; and they that
hated them ruled over them.

106:42 Their enemies also oppressed them, and they were brought into
subjection under their hand.

106:43 Many times did he deliver them; but they provoked him with
their counsel, and were brought low for their iniquity.

106:44 Nevertheless he regarded their affliction, when he heard their
cry:

106:45 And he remembered for them his covenant, and repented according
to the multitude of his mercies.

106:46 He made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them
captives.

106:47 Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from among the heathen,
to give thanks unto thy holy name, and to triumph in thy praise.

106:48 Blessed be the LORD God of Israel from everlasting to
everlasting: and let all the people say, Amen. Praise ye the LORD.



107:1 O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy
endureth for ever.

107:2 Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he hath redeemed from
the hand of the enemy;

107:3 And gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the
west, from the north, and from the south.

107:4 They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no
city to dwell in.

107:5 Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them.

107:6 Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered
them out of their distresses.

107:7 And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a
city of habitation.

107:8 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his
wonderful works to the children of men!

107:9 For he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul
with goodness.

107:10 Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound
in affliction and iron;

107:11 Because they rebelled against the words of God, and contemned
the counsel of the most High:

107:12 Therefore he brought down their heart with labour; they fell
down, and there was none to help.

107:13 Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saved
them out of their distresses.

107:14 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and
brake their bands in sunder.

107:15 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his
wonderful works to the children of men!

107:16 For he hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron
in sunder.

107:17 Fools because of their transgression, and because of their
iniquities, are afflicted.

107:18 Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; and they draw near
unto the gates of death.

107:19 Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saveth
them out of their distresses.

107:20 He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from
their destructions.

107:21 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his
wonderful works to the children of men!

107:22 And let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and
declare his works with rejoicing.

107:23 They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in
great waters;

107:24 These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep.

107:25 For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth
up the waves thereof.

107:26 They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths:
their soul is melted because of trouble.

107:27 They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are
at their wit's end.

107:28 Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he bringeth
them out of their distresses.

107:29 He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are
still.

107:30 Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them
unto their desired haven.

107:31 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his
wonderful works to the children of men!

107:32 Let them exalt him also in the congregation of the people, and
praise him in the assembly of the elders.

107:33 He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into
dry ground;

107:34 A fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them
that dwell therein.

107:35 He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground
into watersprings.

107:36 And there he maketh the hungry to dwell, that they may prepare
a city for habitation;

107:37 And sow the fields, and plant vineyards, which may yield fruits
of increase.

107:38 He blesseth them also, so that they are multiplied greatly; and
suffereth not their cattle to decrease.

107:39 Again, they are minished and brought low through oppression,
affliction, and sorrow.

107:40 He poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in
the wilderness, where there is no way.

107:41 Yet setteth he the poor on high from affliction, and maketh him
families like a flock.

107:42 The righteous shall see it, and rejoice: and all iniquity shall
stop her mouth.

107:43 Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall
understand the lovingkindness of the LORD.



108:1 O god, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise, even with
my glory.

108:2 Awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early.

108:3 I will praise thee, O LORD, among the people: and I will sing
praises unto thee among the nations.

108:4 For thy mercy is great above the heavens: and thy truth reacheth
unto the clouds.

108:5 Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: and thy glory above
all the earth;

108:6 That thy beloved may be delivered: save with thy right hand, and
answer me.

108:7 God hath spoken in his holiness; I will rejoice, I will divide
Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth.

108:8 Gilead is mine; Manasseh is mine; Ephraim also is the strength
of mine head; Judah is my lawgiver;

108:9 Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe; over
Philistia will I triumph.

108:10 Who will bring me into the strong city? who will lead me into
Edom?

108:11 Wilt not thou, O God, who hast cast us off? and wilt not thou,
O God, go forth with our hosts?

108:12 Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man.

108:13 Through God we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall
tread down our enemies.



109:1 Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;

109:2 For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are
opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.

109:3 They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought
against me without a cause.

109:4 For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto
prayer.

109:5 And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.

109:6 Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right
hand.

109:7 When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his
prayer become sin.

109:8 Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

109:9 Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

109:10 Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them
seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

109:11 Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the
strangers spoil his labour.

109:12 Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there
be any to favour his fatherless children.

109:13 Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following
let their name be blotted out.

109:14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD;
and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

109:15 Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off
the memory of them from the earth.

109:16 Because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted
the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.

109:17 As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted
not in blessing, so let it be far from him.

109:18 As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so
let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.

109:19 Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a
girdle wherewith he is girded continually.

109:20 Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD, and
of them that speak evil against my soul.

109:21 But do thou for me, O GOD the Lord, for thy name's sake:
because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.

109:22 For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.

109:23 I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and
down as the locust.

109:24 My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of
fatness.

109:25 I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me
they shaked their heads.

109:26 Help me, O LORD my God: O save me according to thy mercy:

109:27 That they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, LORD, hast
done it.

109:28 Let them curse, but bless thou: when they arise, let them be
ashamed; but let thy servant rejoice.

109:29 Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover
themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.

109:30 I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth; yea, I will
praise him among the multitude.

109:31 For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him
from those that condemn his soul.



110:1 The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I
make thine enemies thy footstool.

110:2 The LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule
thou in the midst of thine enemies.

110:3 Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the
beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew
of thy youth.

110:4 The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for
ever after the order of Melchizedek.

110:5 The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day
of his wrath.

110:6 He shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill the places with
the dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries.

110:7 He shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift
up the head.



111:1 Praise ye the LORD. I will praise the LORD with my whole heart,
in the assembly of the upright, and in the congregation.

111:2 The works of the LORD are great, sought out of all them that
have pleasure therein.

111:3 His work is honourable and glorious: and his righteousness
endureth for ever.

111:4 He hath made his wonderful works to be remembered: the LORD is
gracious and full of compassion.

111:5 He hath given meat unto them that fear him: he will ever be
mindful of his covenant.

111:6 He hath shewed his people the power of his works, that he may
give them the heritage of the heathen.

111:7 The works of his hands are verity and judgment; all his
commandments are sure.

111:8 They stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth and
uprightness.

111:9 He sent redemption unto his people: he hath commanded his
covenant for ever: holy and reverend is his name.

111:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good
understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise
endureth for ever.



112:1 Praise ye the LORD. Blessed is the man that feareth the LORD,
that delighteth greatly in his commandments.

112:2 His seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the
upright shall be blessed.

112:3 Wealth and riches shall be in his house: and his righteousness
endureth for ever.

112:4 Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: he is
gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous.

112:5 A good man sheweth favour, and lendeth: he will guide his
affairs with discretion.

112:6 Surely he shall not be moved for ever: the righteous shall be in
everlasting remembrance.

112:7 He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed,
trusting in the LORD.

112:8 His heart is established, he shall not be afraid, until he see
his desire upon his enemies.

112:9 He hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness
endureth for ever; his horn shall be exalted with honour.

112:10 The wicked shall see it, and be grieved; he shall gnash with
his teeth, and melt away: the desire of the wicked shall perish.



113:1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise, O ye servants of the LORD, praise
the name of the LORD.

113:2 Blessed be the name of the LORD from this time forth and for
evermore.

113:3 From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the
LORD's name is to be praised.

113:4 The LORD is high above all nations, and his glory above the
heavens.

113:5 Who is like unto the LORD our God, who dwelleth on high,

113:6 Who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven,
and in the earth!

113:7 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy
out of the dunghill;

113:8 That he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his
people.

113:9 He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful
mother of children. Praise ye the LORD.



114:1 When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people
of strange language;

114:2 Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.

114:3 The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back.

114:4 The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like
lambs.

114:5 What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan,
that thou wast driven back?

114:6 Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills,
like lambs?

114:7 Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the
presence of the God of Jacob;

114:8 Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a
fountain of waters.



115:1 Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory,
for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake.

115:2 Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God?

115:3 But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath
pleased.

115:4 Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.

115:5 They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they
see not:

115:6 They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they
smell not:

115:7 They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they
walk not: neither speak they through their throat.

115:8 They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that
trusteth in them.

115:9 O Israel, trust thou in the LORD: he is their help and their
shield.

115:10 O house of Aaron, trust in the LORD: he is their help and their
shield.

115:11 Ye that fear the LORD, trust in the LORD: he is their help and
their shield.

115:12 The LORD hath been mindful of us: he will bless us; he will
bless the house of Israel; he will bless the house of Aaron.

115:13 He will bless them that fear the LORD, both small and great.

115:14 The LORD shall increase you more and more, you and your
children.

115:15 Ye are blessed of the LORD which made heaven and earth.

115:16 The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD's: but the earth
hath he given to the children of men.

115:17 The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into
silence.

115:18 But we will bless the LORD from this time forth and for
evermore.

Praise the LORD.



116:1 I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my
supplications.

116:2 Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call
upon him as long as I live.

116:3 The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat
hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.

116:4 Then called I upon the name of the LORD; O LORD, I beseech thee,
deliver my soul.

116:5 Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; yea, our God is merciful.

116:6 The LORD preserveth the simple: I was brought low, and he helped
me.

116:7 Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the LORD hath dealt
bountifully with thee.

116:8 For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from
tears, and my feet from falling.

116:9 I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living.

116:10 I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted:

116:11 I said in my haste, All men are liars.

116:12 What shall I render unto the LORD for all his benefits toward
me?

116:13 I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the
LORD.

116:14 I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all his
people.

116:15 Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.

116:16 O LORD, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son
of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds.

116:17 I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will
call upon the name of the LORD.

116:18 I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all his
people.

116:19 In the courts of the LORD's house, in the midst of thee, O
Jerusalem. Praise ye the LORD.



117:1 O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people.

117:2 For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of
the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.



118:1 O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: because his mercy
endureth for ever.

118:2 Let Israel now say, that his mercy endureth for ever.

118:3 Let the house of Aaron now say, that his mercy endureth for
ever.

118:4 Let them now that fear the LORD say, that his mercy endureth for
ever.

118:5 I called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and
set me in a large place.

118:6 The LORD is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto
me?

118:7 The LORD taketh my part with them that help me: therefore shall
I see my desire upon them that hate me.

118:8 It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.

118:9 It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in
princes.

118:10 All nations compassed me about: but in the name of the LORD
will I destroy them.

118:11 They compassed me about; yea, they compassed me about: but in
the name of the LORD I will destroy them.

118:12 They compassed me about like bees: they are quenched as the
fire of thorns: for in the name of the LORD I will destroy them.

118:13 Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall: but the LORD
helped me.

118:14 The LORD is my strength and song, and is become my salvation.

118:15 The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles of
the righteous: the right hand of the LORD doeth valiantly.

118:16 The right hand of the LORD is exalted: the right hand of the
LORD doeth valiantly.

118:17 I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD.

118:18 The LORD hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over
unto death.

118:19 Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and
I will praise the LORD:

118:20 This gate of the LORD, into which the righteous shall enter.

118:21 I will praise thee: for thou hast heard me, and art become my
salvation.

118:22 The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone
of the corner.

118:23 This is the LORD's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes.

118:24 This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and
be glad in it.

118:25 Save now, I beseech thee, O LORD: O LORD, I beseech thee, send
now prosperity.

118:26 Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the LORD: we have
blessed you out of the house of the LORD.

118:27 God is the LORD, which hath shewed us light: bind the sacrifice
with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.

118:28 Thou art my God, and I will praise thee: thou art my God, I
will exalt thee.

118:29 O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy
endureth for ever.



119:1 Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the
LORD.

119:2 Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him
with the whole heart.

119:3 They also do no iniquity: they walk in his ways.

119:4 Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently.

119:5 O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!

119:6 Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy
commandments.

119:7 I will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall have
learned thy righteous judgments.

119:8 I will keep thy statutes: O forsake me not utterly.

119:9 Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed
thereto according to thy word.

119:10 With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander
from thy commandments.

119:11 Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against
thee.

119:12 Blessed art thou, O LORD: teach me thy statutes.

119:13 With my lips have I declared all the judgments of thy mouth.

119:14 I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in
all riches.

119:15 I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy
ways.

119:16 I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy
word.

119:17 Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live, and keep
thy word.

119:18 Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of
thy law.

119:19 I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from
me.

119:20 My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy
judgments at all times.

119:21 Thou hast rebuked the proud that are cursed, which do err from
thy commandments.

119:22 Remove from me reproach and contempt; for I have kept thy
testimonies.

119:23 Princes also did sit and speak against me: but thy servant did
meditate in thy statutes.

119:24 Thy testimonies also are my delight and my counsellors.

119:25 My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to
thy word.

119:26 I have declared my ways, and thou heardest me: teach me thy
statutes.

119:27 Make me to understand the way of thy precepts: so shall I talk
of thy wondrous works.

119:28 My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen thou me according
unto thy word.

119:29 Remove from me the way of lying: and grant me thy law
graciously.

119:30 I have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have I laid
before me.

119:31 I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O LORD, put me not to shame.

119:32 I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge
my heart.

119:33 Teach me, O LORD, the way of thy statutes; and I shall keep it
unto the end.

119:34 Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law; yea, I shall
observe it with my whole heart.

119:35 Make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein do I
delight.

119:36 Incline my heart unto thy testimonies, and not to covetousness.

119:37 Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me
in thy way.

119:38 Stablish thy word unto thy servant, who is devoted to thy fear.

119:39 Turn away my reproach which I fear: for thy judgments are good.

119:40 Behold, I have longed after thy precepts: quicken me in thy
righteousness.

119:41 Let thy mercies come also unto me, O LORD, even thy salvation,
according to thy word.

119:42 So shall I have wherewith to answer him that reproacheth me:
for I trust in thy word.

119:43 And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth; for I
have hoped in thy judgments.

119:44 So shall I keep thy law continually for ever and ever.

119:45 And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts.

119:46 I will speak of thy testimonies also before kings, and will not
be ashamed.

119:47 And I will delight myself in thy commandments, which I have
loved.

119:48 My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I
have loved; and I will meditate in thy statutes.

119:49 Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused
me to hope.

119:50 This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath
quickened me.

119:51 The proud have had me greatly in derision: yet have I not
declined from thy law.

119:52 I remembered thy judgments of old, O LORD; and have comforted
myself.

119:53 Horror hath taken hold upon me because of the wicked that
forsake thy law.

119:54 Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.

119:55 I have remembered thy name, O LORD, in the night, and have kept
thy law.

119:56 This I had, because I kept thy precepts.

119:57 Thou art my portion, O LORD: I have said that I would keep thy
words.

119:58 I intreated thy favour with my whole heart: be merciful unto me
according to thy word.

119:59 I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies.

119:60 I made haste, and delayed not to keep thy commandments.

119:61 The bands of the wicked have robbed me: but I have not
forgotten thy law.

119:62 At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy
righteous judgments.

119:63 I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that
keep thy precepts.

119:64 The earth, O LORD, is full of thy mercy: teach me thy statutes.

119:65 Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, O LORD, according unto
thy word.

119:66 Teach me good judgment and knowledge: for I have believed thy
commandments.

119:67 Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy
word.

119:68 Thou art good, and doest good; teach me thy statutes.

119:69 The proud have forged a lie against me: but I will keep thy
precepts with my whole heart.

119:70 Their heart is as fat as grease; but I delight in thy law.

119:71 It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might
learn thy statutes.

119:72 The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold
and silver.

119:73 Thy hands have made me and fashioned me: give me understanding,
that I may learn thy commandments.

119:74 They that fear thee will be glad when they see me; because I
have hoped in thy word.

119:75 I know, O LORD, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in
faithfulness hast afflicted me.

119:76 Let, I pray thee, thy merciful kindness be for my comfort,
according to thy word unto thy servant.

119:77 Let thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live: for thy
law is my delight.

119:78 Let the proud be ashamed; for they dealt perversely with me
without a cause: but I will meditate in thy precepts.

119:79 Let those that fear thee turn unto me, and those that have
known thy testimonies.

119:80 Let my heart be sound in thy statutes; that I be not ashamed.

119:81 My soul fainteth for thy salvation: but I hope in thy word.

119:82 Mine eyes fail for thy word, saying, When wilt thou comfort me?

119:83 For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget
thy statutes.

119:84 How many are the days of thy servant? when wilt thou execute
judgment on them that persecute me?

119:85 The proud have digged pits for me, which are not after thy law.

119:86 All thy commandments are faithful: they persecute me
wrongfully; help thou me.

119:87 They had almost consumed me upon earth; but I forsook not thy
precepts.

119:88 Quicken me after thy lovingkindness; so shall I keep the
testimony of thy mouth.

119:89 For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.

119:90 Thy faithfulness is unto all generations: thou hast established
the earth, and it abideth.

119:91 They continue this day according to thine ordinances: for all
are thy servants.

119:92 Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then have
perished in mine affliction.

119:93 I will never forget thy precepts: for with them thou hast
quickened me.

119:94 I am thine, save me: for I have sought thy precepts.

119:95 The wicked have waited for me to destroy me: but I will
consider thy testimonies.

119:96 I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is
exceeding broad.

119:97 O how I love thy law! it is my meditation all the day.

119:98 Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine
enemies: for they are ever with me.

119:99 I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy
testimonies are my meditation.

119:100 I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy
precepts.

119:101 I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I might
keep thy word.

119:102 I have not departed from thy judgments: for thou hast taught
me.

119:103 How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey
to my mouth!

119:104 Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate
every false way.

119:105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

119:106 I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep thy
righteous judgments.

119:107 I am afflicted very much: quicken me, O LORD, according unto
thy word.

119:108 Accept, I beseech thee, the freewill offerings of my mouth, O
LORD, and teach me thy judgments.

119:109 My soul is continually in my hand: yet do I not forget thy
law.

119:110 The wicked have laid a snare for me: yet I erred not from thy
precepts.

119:111 Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for ever: for they
are the rejoicing of my heart.

119:112 I have inclined mine heart to perform thy statutes alway, even
unto the end.

119:113 I hate vain thoughts: but thy law do I love.

119:114 Thou art my hiding place and my shield: I hope in thy word.

119:115 Depart from me, ye evildoers: for I will keep the commandments
of my God.

119:116 Uphold me according unto thy word, that I may live: and let me
not be ashamed of my hope.

119:117 Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe: and I will have respect
unto thy statutes continually.

119:118 Thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes:
for their deceit is falsehood.

119:119 Thou puttest away all the wicked of the earth like dross:
therefore I love thy testimonies.

119:120 My flesh trembleth for fear of thee; and I am afraid of thy
judgments.

119:121 I have done judgment and justice: leave me not to mine
oppressors.

119:122 Be surety for thy servant for good: let not the proud oppress
me.

119:123 Mine eyes fail for thy salvation, and for the word of thy
righteousness.

119:124 Deal with thy servant according unto thy mercy, and teach me
thy statutes.

119:125 I am thy servant; give me understanding, that I may know thy
testimonies.

119:126 It is time for thee, LORD, to work: for they have made void
thy law.

119:127 Therefore I love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine
gold.

119:128 Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to
be right; and I hate every false way.

119:129 Thy testimonies are wonderful: therefore doth my soul keep
them.

119:130 The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth
understanding unto the simple.

119:131 I opened my mouth, and panted: for I longed for thy
commandments.

119:132 Look thou upon me, and be merciful unto me, as thou usest to
do unto those that love thy name.

119:133 Order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have
dominion over me.

119:134 Deliver me from the oppression of man: so will I keep thy
precepts.

119:135 Make thy face to shine upon thy servant; and teach me thy
statutes.

119:136 Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy
law.

119:137 Righteous art thou, O LORD, and upright are thy judgments.

119:138 Thy testimonies that thou hast commanded are righteous and
very faithful.

119:139 My zeal hath consumed me, because mine enemies have forgotten
thy words.

119:140 Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it.

119:141 I am small and despised: yet do not I forget thy precepts.

119:142 Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law
is the truth.

119:143 Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me: yet thy
commandments are my delights.

119:144 The righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting: give me
understanding, and I shall live.

119:145 I cried with my whole heart; hear me, O LORD: I will keep thy
statutes.

119:146 I cried unto thee; save me, and I shall keep thy testimonies.

119:147 I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried: I hoped in
thy word.

119:148 Mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I might meditate in
thy word.

119:149 Hear my voice according unto thy lovingkindness: O LORD,
quicken me according to thy judgment.

119:150 They draw nigh that follow after mischief: they are far from
thy law.

119:151 Thou art near, O LORD; and all thy commandments are truth.

119:152 Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that thou hast
founded them for ever.

119:153 Consider mine affliction, and deliver me: for I do not forget
thy law.

119:154 Plead my cause, and deliver me: quicken me according to thy
word.

119:155 Salvation is far from the wicked: for they seek not thy
statutes.

119:156 Great are thy tender mercies, O LORD: quicken me according to
thy judgments.

119:157 Many are my persecutors and mine enemies; yet do I not decline
from thy testimonies.

119:158 I beheld the transgressors, and was grieved; because they kept
not thy word.

119:159 Consider how I love thy precepts: quicken me, O LORD,
according to thy lovingkindness.

119:160 Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy
righteous judgments endureth for ever.

119:161 Princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart
standeth in awe of thy word.

119:162 I rejoice at thy word, as one that findeth great spoil.

119:163 I hate and abhor lying: but thy law do I love.

119:164 Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous
judgments.

119:165 Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall
offend them.

119:166 LORD, I have hoped for thy salvation, and done thy
commandments.

119:167 My soul hath kept thy testimonies; and I love them
exceedingly.

119:168 I have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies: for all my ways
are before thee.

119:169 Let my cry come near before thee, O LORD: give me
understanding according to thy word.

119:170 Let my supplication come before thee: deliver me according to
thy word.

119:171 My lips shall utter praise, when thou hast taught me thy
statutes.

119:172 My tongue shall speak of thy word: for all thy commandments
are righteousness.

119:173 Let thine hand help me; for I have chosen thy precepts.

119:174 I have longed for thy salvation, O LORD; and thy law is my
delight.

119:175 Let my soul live, and it shall praise thee; and let thy
judgments help me.

119:176 I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I
do not forget thy commandments.



120:1 In my distress I cried unto the LORD, and he heard me.

120:2 Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips, and from a deceitful
tongue.

120:3 What shall be given unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee,
thou false tongue?

120:4 Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper.

120:5 Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents
of Kedar!

120:6 My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace.

120:7 I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.



121:1 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my
help.

121:2 My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.

121:3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee
will not slumber.

121:4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

121:5 The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right
hand.

121:6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

121:7 The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve
thy soul.

121:8 The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from
this time forth, and even for evermore.



122:1 I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of
the LORD.

122:2 Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.

122:3 Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together:

122:4 Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, unto the
testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the LORD.

122:5 For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house
of David.

122:6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love
thee.

122:7 Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.

122:8 For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be
within thee.

122:9 Because of the house of the LORD our God I will seek thy good.



123:1 Unto thee lift I up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the
heavens.

123:2 Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their
masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so
our eyes wait upon the LORD our God, until that he have mercy upon us.

123:3 Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us: for we are
exceedingly filled with contempt.

123:4 Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that
are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud.



124:1 If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, now may Israel
say;

124:2 If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose
up against us:

124:3 Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was
kindled against us:

124:4 Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our
soul:

124:5 Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.

124:6 Blessed be the LORD, who hath not given us as a prey to their
teeth.

124:7 Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers:
the snare is broken, and we are escaped.

124:8 Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.



125:1 They that trust in the LORD shall be as mount Zion, which cannot
be removed, but abideth for ever.

125:2 As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round
about his people from henceforth even for ever.

125:3 For the rod of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the
righteous; lest the righteous put forth their hands unto iniquity.

125:4 Do good, O LORD, unto those that be good, and to them that are
upright in their hearts.

125:5 As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the LORD
shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity: but peace shall be
upon Israel.



126:1 When the LORD turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like
them that dream.

126:2 Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with
singing: then said they among the heathen, The LORD hath done great
things for them.

126:3 The LORD hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.

126:4 Turn again our captivity, O LORD, as the streams in the south.

126:5 They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

126:6 He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall
doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.



127:1 Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build
it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

127:2 It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the
bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.

127:3 Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the
womb is his reward.

127:4 As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of
the youth.

127:5 Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall
not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.



128:1 Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his
ways.

128:2 For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou
be, and it shall be well with thee.

128:3 Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine
house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.

128:4 Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the
LORD.

128:5 The LORD shall bless thee out of Zion: and thou shalt see the
good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life.

128:6 Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, and peace upon
Israel.



129:1 Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now
say:

129:2 Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth: yet they have
not prevailed against me.

129:3 The plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows.

129:4 The LORD is righteous: he hath cut asunder the cords of the
wicked.

129:5 Let them all be confounded and turned back that hate Zion.

129:6 Let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth
afore it groweth up:

129:7 Wherewith the mower filleth not his hand; nor he that bindeth
sheaves his bosom.

129:8 Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the LORD be
upon you: we bless you in the name of the LORD.



130:1 Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD.

130:2 Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of
my supplications.

130:3 If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall
stand?

130:4 But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.

130:5 I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I
hope.

130:6 My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the
morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.

130:7 Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy,
and with him is plenteous redemption.

130:8 And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.



131:1 Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I
exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.

131:2 Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is
weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.

131:3 Let Israel hope in the LORD from henceforth and for ever.



132:1 Lord, remember David, and all his afflictions:

132:2 How he sware unto the LORD, and vowed unto the mighty God of
Jacob;

132:3 Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go
up into my bed;

132:4 I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids,

132:5 Until I find out a place for the LORD, an habitation for the
mighty God of Jacob.

132:6 Lo, we heard of it at Ephratah: we found it in the fields of the
wood.

132:7 We will go into his tabernacles: we will worship at his
footstool.

132:8 Arise, O LORD, into thy rest; thou, and the ark of thy strength.

132:9 Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness; and let thy
saints shout for joy.

132:10 For thy servant David's sake turn not away the face of thine
anointed.

132:11 The LORD hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from
it; Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne.

132:12 If thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I
shall teach them, their children shall also sit upon thy throne for
evermore.

132:13 For the LORD hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his
habitation.

132:14 This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired
it.

132:15 I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor
with bread.

132:16 I will also clothe her priests with salvation: and her saints
shall shout aloud for joy.

132:17 There will I make the horn of David to bud: I have ordained a
lamp for mine anointed.

132:18 His enemies will I clothe with shame: but upon himself shall
his crown flourish.



133:1 Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell
together in unity!

133:2 It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down
upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of
his garments;

133:3 As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the
mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even
life for evermore.



134:1 Behold, bless ye the LORD, all ye servants of the LORD, which by
night stand in the house of the LORD.

134:2 Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the LORD.

134:3 The LORD that made heaven and earth bless thee out of Zion.



135:1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the name of the LORD; praise him,
O ye servants of the LORD.

135:2 Ye that stand in the house of the LORD, in the courts of the
house of our God.

135:3 Praise the LORD; for the LORD is good: sing praises unto his
name; for it is pleasant.

135:4 For the LORD hath chosen Jacob unto himself, and Israel for his
peculiar treasure.

135:5 For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above
all gods.

135:6 Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in
earth, in the seas, and all deep places.

135:7 He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; he
maketh lightnings for the rain; he bringeth the wind out of his
treasuries.

135:8 Who smote the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast.

135:9 Who sent tokens and wonders into the midst of thee, O Egypt,
upon Pharaoh, and upon all his servants.

135:10 Who smote great nations, and slew mighty kings;

135:11 Sihon king of the Amorites, and Og king of Bashan, and all the
kingdoms of Canaan:

135:12 And gave their land for an heritage, an heritage unto Israel
his people.

135:13 Thy name, O LORD, endureth for ever; and thy memorial, O LORD,
throughout all generations.

135:14 For the LORD will judge his people, and he will repent himself
concerning his servants.

135:15 The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men's
hands.

135:16 They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they
see not;

135:17 They have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath
in their mouths.

135:18 They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that
trusteth in them.

135:19 Bless the LORD, O house of Israel: bless the LORD, O house of
Aaron:

135:20 Bless the LORD, O house of Levi: ye that fear the LORD, bless
the LORD.

135:21 Blessed be the LORD out of Zion, which dwelleth at Jerusalem.

Praise ye the LORD.



136:1 O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy
endureth for ever.

136:2 O give thanks unto the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for
ever.

136:3 O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for
ever.

136:4 To him who alone doeth great wonders: for his mercy endureth for
ever.

136:5 To him that by wisdom made the heavens: for his mercy endureth
for ever.

136:6 To him that stretched out the earth above the waters: for his
mercy endureth for ever.

136:7 To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever:

136:8 The sun to rule by day: for his mercy endureth for ever:

136:9 The moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for
ever.

136:10 To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn: for his mercy
endureth for ever:

136:11 And brought out Israel from among them: for his mercy endureth
for ever:

136:12 With a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm: for his mercy
endureth for ever.

136:13 To him which divided the Red sea into parts: for his mercy
endureth for ever:

136:14 And made Israel to pass through the midst of it: for his mercy
endureth for ever:

136:15 But overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red sea: for his
mercy endureth for ever.

136:16 To him which led his people through the wilderness: for his
mercy endureth for ever.

136:17 To him which smote great kings: for his mercy endureth for
ever:

136:18 And slew famous kings: for his mercy endureth for ever:

136:19 Sihon king of the Amorites: for his mercy endureth for ever:

136:20 And Og the king of Bashan: for his mercy endureth for ever:

136:21 And gave their land for an heritage: for his mercy endureth for
ever:

136:22 Even an heritage unto Israel his servant: for his mercy
endureth for ever.

136:23 Who remembered us in our low estate: for his mercy endureth for
ever:

136:24 And hath redeemed us from our enemies: for his mercy endureth
for ever.

136:25 Who giveth food to all flesh: for his mercy endureth for ever.

136:26 O give thanks unto the God of heaven: for his mercy endureth
for ever.



137:1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when
we remembered Zion.

137:2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

137:3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a
song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us
one of the songs of Zion.

137:4 How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?

137:5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning.

137:6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of
my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

137:7 Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem;
who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.

137:8 O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he
be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

137:9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones
against the stones.



138:1 I will praise thee with my whole heart: before the gods will I
sing praise unto thee.

138:2 I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for
thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word
above all thy name.

138:3 In the day when I cried thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst
me with strength in my soul.

138:4 All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O LORD, when they
hear the words of thy mouth.

138:5 Yea, they shall sing in the ways of the LORD: for great is the
glory of the LORD.

138:6 Though the LORD be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly: but
the proud he knoweth afar off.

138:7 Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me: thou
shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and
thy right hand shall save me.

138:8 The LORD will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy, O
LORD, endureth for ever: forsake not the works of thine own hands.



139:1 O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.

139:2 Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou
understandest my thought afar off.

139:3 Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted
with all my ways.

139:4 For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou
knowest it altogether.

139:5 Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon
me.

139:6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot
attain unto it.

139:7 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from
thy presence?

139:8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in
hell, behold, thou art there.

139:9 If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the sea;

139:10 Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall
hold me.

139:11 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night
shall be light about me.

139:12 Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth
as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

139:13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my
mother's womb.

139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

139:15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret,
and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

139:16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in
thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were
fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

139:17 How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is
the sum of them!

139:18 If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand:
when I awake, I am still with thee.

139:19 Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me
therefore, ye bloody men.

139:20 For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take
thy name in vain.

139:21 Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I
grieved with those that rise up against thee?

139:22 I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.

139:23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my
thoughts:

139:24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the
way everlasting.



140:1 Deliver me, O LORD, from the evil man: preserve me from the
violent man;

140:2 Which imagine mischiefs in their heart; continually are they
gathered together for war.

140:3 They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders' poison
is under their lips. Selah.

140:4 Keep me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from
the violent man; who have purposed to overthrow my goings.

140:5 The proud have hid a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a
net by the wayside; they have set gins for me. Selah.

140:6 I said unto the LORD, Thou art my God: hear the voice of my
supplications, O LORD.

140:7 O GOD the Lord, the strength of my salvation, thou hast covered
my head in the day of battle.

140:8 Grant not, O LORD, the desires of the wicked: further not his
wicked device; lest they exalt themselves. Selah.

140:9 As for the head of those that compass me about, let the mischief
of their own lips cover them.

140:10 Let burning coals fall upon them: let them be cast into the
fire; into deep pits, that they rise not up again.

140:11 Let not an evil speaker be established in the earth: evil shall
hunt the violent man to overthrow him.

140:12 I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted,
and the right of the poor.

140:13 Surely the righteous shall give thanks unto thy name: the
upright shall dwell in thy presence.



141:1 Lord, I cry unto thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my
voice, when I cry unto thee.

141:2 Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the
lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

141:3 Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.

141:4 Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practise wicked works
with men that work iniquity: and let me not eat of their dainties.

141:5 Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him
reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my
head: for yet my prayer also shall be in their calamities.

141:6 When their judges are overthrown in stony places, they shall
hear my words; for they are sweet.

141:7 Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one
cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth.

141:8 But mine eyes are unto thee, O GOD the Lord: in thee is my
trust; leave not my soul destitute.

141:9 Keep me from the snares which they have laid for me, and the
gins of the workers of iniquity.

141:10 Let the wicked fall into their own nets, whilst that I withal
escape.



142:1 I cried unto the LORD with my voice; with my voice unto the LORD
did I make my supplication.

142:2 I poured out my complaint before him; I shewed before him my
trouble.

142:3 When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my
path.

In the way wherein I walked have they privily laid a snare for me.

142:4 I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that
would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.

142:5 I cried unto thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my refuge and my
portion in the land of the living.

142:6 Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low: deliver me from
my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.

142:7 Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the
righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with
me.



143:1 Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: in thy
faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness.

143:2 And enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight
shall no man living be justified.

143:3 For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life
down to the ground; he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those
that have been long dead.

143:4 Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me
is desolate.

143:5 I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse
on the work of thy hands.

143:6 I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after
thee, as a thirsty land. Selah.

143:7 Hear me speedily, O LORD: my spirit faileth: hide not thy face
from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit.

143:8 Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee
do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift
up my soul unto thee.

143:9 Deliver me, O LORD, from mine enemies: I flee unto thee to hide
me.

143:10 Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is
good; lead me into the land of uprightness.

143:11 Quicken me, O LORD, for thy name's sake: for thy righteousness'
sake bring my soul out of trouble.

143:12 And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them
that afflict my soul: for I am thy servant.



144:1 Blessed be the LORD my strength which teacheth my hands to war,
and my fingers to fight:

144:2 My goodness, and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer;
my shield, and he in whom I trust; who subdueth my people under me.

144:3 LORD, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! or the son
of man, that thou makest account of him!

144:4 Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth
away.

144:5 Bow thy heavens, O LORD, and come down: touch the mountains, and
they shall smoke.

144:6 Cast forth lightning, and scatter them: shoot out thine arrows,
and destroy them.

144:7 Send thine hand from above; rid me, and deliver me out of great
waters, from the hand of strange children;

144:8 Whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right
hand of falsehood.

144:9 I will sing a new song unto thee, O God: upon a psaltery and an
instrument of ten strings will I sing praises unto thee.

144:10 It is he that giveth salvation unto kings: who delivereth David
his servant from the hurtful sword.

144:11 Rid me, and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose
mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of
falsehood:

144:12 That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that
our daughters may be as corner stones, polished after the similitude
of a palace:

144:13 That our garners may be full, affording all manner of store:
that our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our
streets:

144:14 That our oxen may be strong to labour; that there be no
breaking in, nor going out; that there be no complaining in our
streets.

144:15 Happy is that people, that is in such a case: yea, happy is
that people, whose God is the LORD.



145:1 I will extol thee, my God, O king; and I will bless thy name for
ever and ever.

145:2 Every day will I bless thee; and I will praise thy name for ever
and ever.

145:3 Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness
is unsearchable.

145:4 One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall
declare thy mighty acts.

145:5 I will speak of the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy
wondrous works.

145:6 And men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts: and I
will declare thy greatness.

145:7 They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness,
and shall sing of thy righteousness.

145:8 The LORD is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and
of great mercy.

145:9 The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his
works.

145:10 All thy works shall praise thee, O LORD; and thy saints shall
bless thee.

145:11 They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy
power;

145:12 To make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, and the
glorious majesty of his kingdom.

145:13 Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion
endureth throughout all generations.

145:14 The LORD upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that
be bowed down.

145:15 The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat
in due season.

145:16 Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every
living thing.

145:17 The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his
works.

145:18 The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that
call upon him in truth.

145:19 He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will
hear their cry, and will save them.

145:20 The LORD preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked
will he destroy.

145:21 My mouth shall speak the praise of the LORD: and let all flesh
bless his holy name for ever and ever.



146:1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.

146:2 While I live will I praise the LORD: I will sing praises unto my
God while I have any being.

146:3 Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom
there is no help.

146:4 His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very
day his thoughts perish.

146:5 Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope
is in the LORD his God:

146:6 Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is:
which keepeth truth for ever:

146:7 Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to
the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners:

146:8 The LORD openeth the eyes of the blind: the LORD raiseth them
that are bowed down: the LORD loveth the righteous:

146:9 The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless
and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.

146:10 The LORD shall reign for ever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all
generations. Praise ye the LORD.



147:1 Praise ye the LORD: for it is good to sing praises unto our God;
for it is pleasant; and praise is comely.

147:2 The LORD doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together the
outcasts of Israel.

147:3 He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.

147:4 He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their
names.

147:5 Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is
infinite.

147:6 The LORD lifteth up the meek: he casteth the wicked down to the
ground.

147:7 Sing unto the LORD with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp
unto our God:

147:8 Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the
earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.

147:9 He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which
cry.

147:10 He delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not
pleasure in the legs of a man.

147:11 The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that
hope in his mercy.

147:12 Praise the LORD, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion.

147:13 For he hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; he hath blessed
thy children within thee.

147:14 He maketh peace in thy borders, and filleth thee with the
finest of the wheat.

147:15 He sendeth forth his commandment upon earth: his word runneth
very swiftly.

147:16 He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like
ashes.

147:17 He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his
cold?

147:18 He sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind
to blow, and the waters flow.

147:19 He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments
unto Israel.

147:20 He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments,
they have not known them. Praise ye the LORD.



148:1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the LORD from the heavens: praise
him in the heights.

148:2 Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts.

148:3 Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light.

148:4 Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above
the heavens.

148:5 Let them praise the name of the LORD: for he commanded, and they
were created.

148:6 He hath also stablished them for ever and ever: he hath made a
decree which shall not pass.

148:7 Praise the LORD from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps:

148:8 Fire, and hail; snow, and vapours; stormy wind fulfilling his
word:

148:9 Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars:

148:10 Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl:

148:11 Kings of the earth, and all people; princes, and all judges of
the earth:

148:12 Both young men, and maidens; old men, and children:

148:13 Let them praise the name of the LORD: for his name alone is
excellent; his glory is above the earth and heaven.

148:14 He also exalteth the horn of his people, the praise of all his
saints; even of the children of Israel, a people near unto him. Praise
ye the LORD.



149:1 Praise ye the LORD. Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his
praise in the congregation of saints.

149:2 Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: let the children of
Zion be joyful in their King.

149:3 Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises
unto him with the timbrel and harp.

149:4 For the LORD taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the
meek with salvation.

149:5 Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon
their beds.

149:6 Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged
sword in their hand;

149:7 To execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the
people;

149:8 To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters
of iron;

149:9 To execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all
his saints. Praise ye the LORD.



150:1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in
the firmament of his power.

150:2 Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his
excellent greatness.

150:3 Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the
psaltery and harp.

150:4 Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed
instruments and organs.

150:5 Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high
sounding cymbals.

150:6 Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.




The Proverbs


1:1 The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; 1:2 To
know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding;
1:3 To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and
equity; 1:4 To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge
and discretion.

1:5 A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of
understanding shall attain unto wise counsels: 1:6 To understand a
proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark
sayings.

1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools
despise wisdom and instruction.

1:8 My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the
law of thy mother: 1:9 For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy
head, and chains about thy neck.

1:10 My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.

1:11 If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk
privily for the innocent without cause: 1:12 Let us swallow them up
alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit:
1:13 We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses
with spoil: 1:14 Cast in thy lot among us; let us all have one purse:
1:15 My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from
their path: 1:16 For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed
blood.

1:17 Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.

1:18 And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privily for
their own lives.

1:19 So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh
away the life of the owners thereof.

1:20 Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets:
1:21 She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of
the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, 1:22 How long,
ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in
their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?  1:23 Turn you at my
reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known
my words unto you.

1:24 Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my
hand, and no man regarded; 1:25 But ye have set at nought all my
counsel, and would none of my reproof: 1:26 I also will laugh at your
calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; 1:27 When your fear
cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when
distress and anguish cometh upon you.

1:28 Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall
seek me early, but they shall not find me: 1:29 For that they hated
knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: 1:30 They would
none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.

1:31 Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be
filled with their own devices.

1:32 For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the
prosperity of fools shall destroy them.

1:33 But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be
quiet from fear of evil.

2:1 My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments
with thee; 2:2 So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply
thine heart to understanding; 2:3 Yea, if thou criest after knowledge,
and liftest up thy voice for understanding; 2:4 If thou seekest her as
silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; 2:5 Then shalt
thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.

2:6 For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and
understanding.

2:7 He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to
them that walk uprightly.

2:8 He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his
saints.

2:9 Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and
equity; yea, every good path.

2:10 When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant
unto thy soul; 2:11 Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding
shall keep thee: 2:12 To deliver thee from the way of the evil man,
from the man that speaketh froward things; 2:13 Who leave the paths of
uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness; 2:14 Who rejoice to do
evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked; 2:15 Whose ways
are crooked, and they froward in their paths: 2:16 To deliver thee
from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with
her words; 2:17 Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth
the covenant of her God.

2:18 For her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead.

2:19 None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the
paths of life.

2:20 That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths
of the righteous.

2:21 For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall
remain in it.

2:22 But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the
transgressors shall be rooted out of it.

3:1 My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my
commandments: 3:2 For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall
they add to thee.

3:3 Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck;
write them upon the table of thine heart: 3:4 So shalt thou find
favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man.

3:5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine
own understanding.

3:6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

3:7 Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from
evil.

3:8 It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.

3:9 Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of
all thine increase: 3:10 So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and
thy presses shall burst out with new wine.

3:11 My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD; neither be weary
of his correction: 3:12 For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even
as a father the son in whom he delighteth.

3:13 Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth
understanding.

3:14 For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of
silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.

3:15 She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst
desire are not to be compared unto her.

3:16 Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches
and honour.

3:17 Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.

3:18 She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy
is every one that retaineth her.

3:19 The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath
he established the heavens.

3:20 By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop
down the dew.

3:21 My son, let not them depart from thine eyes: keep sound wisdom
and discretion: 3:22 So shall they be life unto thy soul, and grace to
thy neck.

3:23 Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall not
stumble.

3:24 When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt
lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.

3:25 Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the
wicked, when it cometh.

3:26 For the LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot
from being taken.

3:27 Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the
power of thine hand to do it.

3:28 Say not unto thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and to morrow I
will give; when thou hast it by thee.

3:29 Devise not evil against thy neighbour, seeing he dwelleth
securely by thee.

3:30 Strive not with a man without cause, if he have done thee no
harm.

3:31 Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.

3:32 For the froward is abomination to the LORD: but his secret is
with the righteous.

3:33 The curse of the LORD is in the house of the wicked: but he
blesseth the habitation of the just.

3:34 Surely he scorneth the scorners: but he giveth grace unto the
lowly.

3:35 The wise shall inherit glory: but shame shall be the promotion of
fools.

4:1 Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know
understanding.

4:2 For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law.

4:3 For I was my father's son, tender and only beloved in the sight of
my mother.

4:4 He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my
words: keep my commandments, and live.

4:5 Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from
the words of my mouth.

4:6 Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she
shall keep thee.

4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all
thy getting get understanding.

4:8 Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to
honour, when thou dost embrace her.

4:9 She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of
glory shall she deliver to thee.

4:10 Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings; and the years of thy life
shall be many.

4:11 I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right
paths.

4:12 When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou
runnest, thou shalt not stumble.

4:13 Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she
is thy life.

4:14 Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of
evil men.

4:15 Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.

4:16 For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their
sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall.

4:17 For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of
violence.

4:18 But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth
more and more unto the perfect day.

4:19 The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they
stumble.

4:20 My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings.

4:21 Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of
thine heart.

4:22 For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all
their flesh.

4:23 Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues
of life.

4:24 Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far
from thee.

4:25 Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight
before thee.

4:26 Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.

4:27 Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from
evil.

5:1 My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my
understanding: 5:2 That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy
lips may keep knowledge.

5:3 For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her
mouth is smoother than oil: 5:4 But her end is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.

5:5 Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.

5:6 Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are
moveable, that thou canst not know them.

5:7 Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the
words of my mouth.

5:8 Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her
house: 5:9 Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto
the cruel: 5:10 Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy
labours be in the house of a stranger; 5:11 And thou mourn at the
last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, 5:12 And say, How have
I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; 5:13 And have not
obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that
instructed me!  5:14 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the
congregation and assembly.

5:15 Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of
thine own well.

5:16 Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in
the streets.

5:17 Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee.

5:18 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy
youth.

5:19 Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts
satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.

5:20 And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and
embrace the bosom of a stranger?  5:21 For the ways of man are before
the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.

5:22 His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be
holden with the cords of his sins.

5:23 He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his
folly he shall go astray.

6:1 My son, if thou be surety for thy friend, if thou hast stricken
thy hand with a stranger, 6:2 Thou art snared with the words of thy
mouth, thou art taken with the words of thy mouth.

6:3 Do this now, my son, and deliver thyself, when thou art come into
the hand of thy friend; go, humble thyself, and make sure thy friend.

6:4 Give not sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eyelids.

6:5 Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and as a
bird from the hand of the fowler.

6:6 Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: 6:7
Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, 6:8 Provideth her meat in
the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.

6:9 How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of
thy sleep?  6:10 Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little
folding of the hands to sleep: 6:11 So shall thy poverty come as one
that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.

6:12 A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth.

6:13 He winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his feet, he teacheth
with his fingers; 6:14 Frowardness is in his heart, he deviseth
mischief continually; he soweth discord.

6:15 Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be
broken without remedy.

6:16 These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an
abomination unto him: 6:17 A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands
that shed innocent blood, 6:18 An heart that deviseth wicked
imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, 6:19 A false
witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

6:20 My son, keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law of
thy mother: 6:21 Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them
about thy neck.

6:22 When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall
keep thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee.

6:23 For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs
of instruction are the way of life: 6:24 To keep thee from the evil
woman, from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman.

6:25 Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take
thee with her eyelids.

6:26 For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of
bread: and the adultress will hunt for the precious life.

6:27 Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?
6:28 Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned?  6:29 So
he that goeth in to his neighbour's wife; whosoever toucheth her shall
not be innocent.

6:30 Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when
he is hungry; 6:31 But if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold; he
shall give all the substance of his house.

6:32 But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding:
he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.

6:33 A wound and dishonour shall he get; and his reproach shall not be
wiped away.

6:34 For jealousy is the rage of a man: therefore he will not spare in
the day of vengeance.

6:35 He will not regard any ransom; neither will he rest content,
though thou givest many gifts.

7:1 My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee.

7:2 Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine
eye.

7:3 Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the table of thine
heart.

7:4 Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister; and call understanding thy
kinswoman: 7:5 That they may keep thee from the strange woman, from
the stranger which flattereth with her words.

7:6 For at the window of my house I looked through my casement, 7:7
And beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a
young man void of understanding, 7:8 Passing through the street near
her corner; and he went the way to her house, 7:9 In the twilight, in
the evening, in the black and dark night: 7:10 And, behold, there met
him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtil of heart.

7:11 (She is loud and stubborn; her feet abide not in her house: 7:12
Now is she without, now in the streets, and lieth in wait at every
corner.)  7:13 So she caught him, and kissed him, and with an impudent
face said unto him, 7:14 I have peace offerings with me; this day have
I payed my vows.

7:15 Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy face,
and I have found thee.

7:16 I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved
works, with fine linen of Egypt.

7:17 I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.

7:18 Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us
solace ourselves with loves.

7:19 For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey: 7:20
He hath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the day
appointed.

7:21 With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the
flattering of her lips she forced him.

7:22 He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter,
or as a fool to the correction of the stocks; 7:23 Till a dart strike
through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not
that it is for his life.

7:24 Hearken unto me now therefore, O ye children, and attend to the
words of my mouth.

7:25 Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her
paths.

7:26 For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have
been slain by her.

7:27 Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of
death.

8:1 Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?  8:2
She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of
the paths.

8:3 She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming
in at the doors.

8:4 Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man.

8:5 O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an
understanding heart.

8:6 Hear; for I will speak of excellent things; and the opening of my
lips shall be right things.

8:7 For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination
to my lips.

8:8 All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; there is nothing
froward or perverse in them.

8:9 They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them
that find knowledge.

8:10 Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than
choice gold.

8:11 For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be
desired are not to be compared to it.

8:12 I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty
inventions.

8:13 The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and
the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.

8:14 Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding; I have
strength.

8:15 By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.

8:16 By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth.

8:17 I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find
me.

8:18 Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and
righteousness.

8:19 My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold; and my revenue
than choice silver.

8:20 I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of
judgment: 8:21 That I may cause those that love me to inherit
substance; and I will fill their treasures.

8:22 The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his
works of old.

8:23 I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the
earth was.

8:24 When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were
no fountains abounding with water.

8:25 Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought
forth: 8:26 While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields,
nor the highest part of the dust of the world.

8:27 When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass
upon the face of the depth: 8:28 When he established the clouds above:
when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: 8:29 When he gave to
the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment:
when he appointed the foundations of the earth: 8:30 Then I was by
him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing always before him; 8:31 Rejoicing in the habitable part of
his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.

8:32 Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are
they that keep my ways.

8:33 Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not.

8:34 Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates,
waiting at the posts of my doors.

8:35 For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the
LORD.

8:36 But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they
that hate me love death.

9:1 Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven
pillars: 9:2 She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine;
she hath also furnished her table.

9:3 She hath sent forth her maidens: she crieth upon the highest
places of the city, 9:4 Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: as
for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him, 9:5 Come, eat of
my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled.

9:6 Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding.

9:7 He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame: and he that
rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot.

9:8 Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and
he will love thee.

9:9 Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a
just man, and he will increase in learning.

9:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the
knowledge of the holy is understanding.

9:11 For by me thy days shall be multiplied, and the years of thy life
shall be increased.

9:12 If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself: but if thou
scornest, thou alone shalt bear it.

9:13 A foolish woman is clamorous: she is simple, and knoweth nothing.

9:14 For she sitteth at the door of her house, on a seat in the high
places of the city, 9:15 To call passengers who go right on their
ways: 9:16 Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: and as for him
that wanteth understanding, she saith to him, 9:17 Stolen waters are
sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

9:18 But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests
are in the depths of hell.

10:1 The proverbs of Solomon. A wise son maketh a glad father: but a
foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.

10:2 Treasures of wickedness profit nothing: but righteousness
delivereth from death.

10:3 The LORD will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish: but
he casteth away the substance of the wicked.

10:4 He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of
the diligent maketh rich.

10:5 He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth
in harvest is a son that causeth shame.

10:6 Blessings are upon the head of the just: but violence covereth
the mouth of the wicked.

10:7 The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked
shall rot.

10:8 The wise in heart will receive commandments: but a prating fool
shall fall.

10:9 He that walketh uprightly walketh surely: but he that perverteth
his ways shall be known.

10:10 He that winketh with the eye causeth sorrow: but a prating fool
shall fall.

10:11 The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life: but violence
covereth the mouth of the wicked.

10:12 Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins.

10:13 In the lips of him that hath understanding wisdom is found: but
a rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding.

10:14 Wise men lay up knowledge: but the mouth of the foolish is near
destruction.

10:15 The rich man's wealth is his strong city: the destruction of the
poor is their poverty.

10:16 The labour of the righteous tendeth to life: the fruit of the
wicked to sin.

10:17 He is in the way of life that keepeth instruction: but he that
refuseth reproof erreth.

10:18 He that hideth hatred with lying lips, and he that uttereth a
slander, is a fool.

10:19 In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: but he that
refraineth his lips is wise.

10:20 The tongue of the just is as choice silver: the heart of the
wicked is little worth.

10:21 The lips of the righteous feed many: but fools die for want of
wisdom.

10:22 The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no
sorrow with it.

10:23 It is as sport to a fool to do mischief: but a man of
understanding hath wisdom.

10:24 The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him: but the desire
of the righteous shall be granted.

10:25 As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more: but the
righteous is an everlasting foundation.

10:26 As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is the
sluggard to them that send him.

10:27 The fear of the LORD prolongeth days: but the years of the
wicked shall be shortened.

10:28 The hope of the righteous shall be gladness: but the expectation
of the wicked shall perish.

10:29 The way of the LORD is strength to the upright: but destruction
shall be to the workers of iniquity.

10:30 The righteous shall never be removed: but the wicked shall not
inhabit the earth.

10:31 The mouth of the just bringeth forth wisdom: but the froward
tongue shall be cut out.

10:32 The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable: but the mouth
of the wicked speaketh frowardness.

11:1 A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is
his delight.

11:2 When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is
wisdom.

11:3 The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the
perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.

11:4 Riches profit not in the day of wrath: but righteousness
delivereth from death.

11:5 The righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way: but the
wicked shall fall by his own wickedness.

11:6 The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them: but
transgressors shall be taken in their own naughtiness.

11:7 When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish: and the
hope of unjust men perisheth.

11:8 The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh
in his stead.

11:9 An hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbour: but through
knowledge shall the just be delivered.

11:10 When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth: and
when the wicked perish, there is shouting.

11:11 By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted: but it is
overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.

11:12 He that is void of wisdom despiseth his neighbour: but a man of
understanding holdeth his peace.

11:13 A talebearer revealeth secrets: but he that is of a faithful
spirit concealeth the matter.

11:14 Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of
counsellors there is safety.

11:15 He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it: and he that
hateth suretiship is sure.

11:16 A gracious woman retaineth honour: and strong men retain riches.

11:17 The merciful man doeth good to his own soul: but he that is
cruel troubleth his own flesh.

11:18 The wicked worketh a deceitful work: but to him that soweth
righteousness shall be a sure reward.

11:19 As righteousness tendeth to life: so he that pursueth evil
pursueth it to his own death.

11:20 They that are of a froward heart are abomination to the LORD:
but such as are upright in their way are his delight.

11:21 Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished:
but the seed of the righteous shall be delivered.

11:22 As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which
is without discretion.

11:23 The desire of the righteous is only good: but the expectation of
the wicked is wrath.

11:24 There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that
withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.

11:25 The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall
be watered also himself.

11:26 He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: but
blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.

11:27 He that diligently seeketh good procureth favour: but he that
seeketh mischief, it shall come unto him.

11:28 He that trusteth in his riches shall fall; but the righteous
shall flourish as a branch.

11:29 He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the
fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.

11:30 The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that
winneth souls is wise.

11:31 Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth: much
more the wicked and the sinner.

12:1 Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth
reproof is brutish.

12:2 A good man obtaineth favour of the LORD: but a man of wicked
devices will he condemn.

12:3 A man shall not be established by wickedness: but the root of the
righteous shall not be moved.

12:4 A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh
ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.

12:5 The thoughts of the righteous are right: but the counsels of the
wicked are deceit.

12:6 The words of the wicked are to lie in wait for blood: but the
mouth of the upright shall deliver them.

12:7 The wicked are overthrown, and are not: but the house of the
righteous shall stand.

12:8 A man shall be commended according to his wisdom: but he that is
of a perverse heart shall be despised.

12:9 He that is despised, and hath a servant, is better than he that
honoureth himself, and lacketh bread.

12:10 A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender
mercies of the wicked are cruel.

12:11 He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread: but he
that followeth vain persons is void of understanding.

12:12 The wicked desireth the net of evil men: but the root of the
righteous yieldeth fruit.

12:13 The wicked is snared by the transgression of his lips: but the
just shall come out of trouble.

12:14 A man shall be satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth:
and the recompence of a man's hands shall be rendered unto him.

12:15 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that
hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.

12:16 A fool's wrath is presently known: but a prudent man covereth
shame.

12:17 He that speaketh truth sheweth forth righteousness: but a false
witness deceit.

12:18 There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the
tongue of the wise is health.

12:19 The lip of truth shall be established for ever: but a lying
tongue is but for a moment.

12:20 Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil: but to the
counsellors of peace is joy.

12:21 There shall no evil happen to the just: but the wicked shall be
filled with mischief.

12:22 Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly
are his delight.

12:23 A prudent man concealeth knowledge: but the heart of fools
proclaimeth foolishness.

12:24 The hand of the diligent shall bear rule: but the slothful shall
be under tribute.

12:25 Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop: but a good word
maketh it glad.

12:26 The righteous is more excellent than his neighbour: but the way
of the wicked seduceth them.

12:27 The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting: but
the substance of a diligent man is precious.

12:28 In the way of righteousness is life: and in the pathway thereof
there is no death.

13:1 A wise son heareth his father's instruction: but a scorner
heareth not rebuke.

13:2 A man shall eat good by the fruit of his mouth: but the soul of
the transgressors shall eat violence.

13:3 He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life: but he that openeth
wide his lips shall have destruction.

13:4 The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: but the soul
of the diligent shall be made fat.

13:5 A righteous man hateth lying: but a wicked man is loathsome, and
cometh to shame.

13:6 Righteousness keepeth him that is upright in the way: but
wickedness overthroweth the sinner.

13:7 There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is
that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches.

13:8 The ransom of a man's life are his riches: but the poor heareth
not rebuke.

13:9 The light of the righteous rejoiceth: but the lamp of the wicked
shall be put out.

13:10 Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well advised is
wisdom.

13:11 Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that
gathereth by labour shall increase.

13:12 Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh,
it is a tree of life.

13:13 Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed: but he that feareth
the commandment shall be rewarded.

13:14 The law of the wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the
snares of death.

13:15 Good understanding giveth favour: but the way of transgressors
is hard.

13:16 Every prudent man dealeth with knowledge: but a fool layeth open
his folly.

13:17 A wicked messenger falleth into mischief: but a faithful
ambassador is health.

13:18 Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth instruction: but
he that regardeth reproof shall be honoured.

13:19 The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul: but it is
abomination to fools to depart from evil.

13:20 He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of
fools shall be destroyed.

13:21 Evil pursueth sinners: but to the righteous good shall be
repayed.

13:22 A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children:
and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.

13:23 Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is
destroyed for want of judgment.

13:24 He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him
chasteneth him betimes.

13:25 The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul: but the
belly of the wicked shall want.

14:1 Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it
down with her hands.

14:2 He that walketh in his uprightness feareth the LORD: but he that
is perverse in his ways despiseth him.

14:3 In the mouth of the foolish is a rod of pride: but the lips of
the wise shall preserve them.

14:4 Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the
strength of the ox.

14:5 A faithful witness will not lie: but a false witness will utter
lies.

14:6 A scorner seeketh wisdom, and findeth it not: but knowledge is
easy unto him that understandeth.

14:7 Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not
in him the lips of knowledge.

14:8 The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way: but the folly
of fools is deceit.

14:9 Fools make a mock at sin: but among the righteous there is
favour.

14:10 The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not
intermeddle with his joy.

14:11 The house of the wicked shall be overthrown: but the tabernacle
of the upright shall flourish.

14:12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end
thereof are the ways of death.

14:13 Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that
mirth is heaviness.

14:14 The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways: and a
good man shall be satisfied from himself.

14:15 The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh
well to his going.

14:16 A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool
rageth, and is confident.

14:17 He that is soon angry dealeth foolishly: and a man of wicked
devices is hated.

14:18 The simple inherit folly: but the prudent are crowned with
knowledge.

14:19 The evil bow before the good; and the wicked at the gates of the
righteous.

14:20 The poor is hated even of his own neighbour: but the rich hath
many friends.

14:21 He that despiseth his neighbour sinneth: but he that hath mercy
on the poor, happy is he.

14:22 Do they not err that devise evil? but mercy and truth shall be
to them that devise good.

14:23 In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth
only to penury.

14:24 The crown of the wise is their riches: but the foolishness of
fools is folly.

14:25 A true witness delivereth souls: but a deceitful witness
speaketh lies.

14:26 In the fear of the LORD is strong confidence: and his children
shall have a place of refuge.

14:27 The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, to depart from the
snares of death.

14:28 In the multitude of people is the king's honour: but in the want
of people is the destruction of the prince.

14:29 He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding: but he that
is hasty of spirit exalteth folly.

14:30 A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness
of the bones.

14:31 He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker: but he that
honoureth him hath mercy on the poor.

14:32 The wicked is driven away in his wickedness: but the righteous
hath hope in his death.

14:33 Wisdom resteth in the heart of him that hath understanding: but
that which is in the midst of fools is made known.

14:34 Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any
people.

14:35 The king's favour is toward a wise servant: but his wrath is
against him that causeth shame.

15:1 A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up
anger.

15:2 The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright: but the mouth of
fools poureth out foolishness.

15:3 The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and
the good.

15:4 A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is
a breach in the spirit.

15:5 A fool despiseth his father's instruction: but he that regardeth
reproof is prudent.

15:6 In the house of the righteous is much treasure: but in the
revenues of the wicked is trouble.

15:7 The lips of the wise disperse knowledge: but the heart of the
foolish doeth not so.

15:8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD: but
the prayer of the upright is his delight.

15:9 The way of the wicked is an abomination unto the LORD: but he
loveth him that followeth after righteousness.

15:10 Correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way: and he
that hateth reproof shall die.

15:11 Hell and destruction are before the LORD: how much more then the
hearts of the children of men?  15:12 A scorner loveth not one that
reproveth him: neither will he go unto the wise.

15:13 A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of
the heart the spirit is broken.

15:14 The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge: but
the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness.

15:15 All the days of the afflicted are evil: but he that is of a
merry heart hath a continual feast.

15:16 Better is little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure
and trouble therewith.

15:17 Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and
hatred therewith.

15:18 A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger
appeaseth strife.

15:19 The way of the slothful man is as an hedge of thorns: but the
way of the righteous is made plain.

15:20 A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish man despiseth his
mother.

15:21 Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom: but a man of
understanding walketh uprightly.

15:22 Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude
of counsellors they are established.

15:23 A man hath joy by the answer of his mouth: and a word spoken in
due season, how good is it!  15:24 The way of life is above to the
wise, that he may depart from hell beneath.

15:25 The LORD will destroy the house of the proud: but he will
establish the border of the widow.

15:26 The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the LORD: but
the words of the pure are pleasant words.

15:27 He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house; but he that
hateth gifts shall live.

15:28 The heart of the righteous studieth to answer: but the mouth of
the wicked poureth out evil things.

15:29 The LORD is far from the wicked: but he heareth the prayer of
the righteous.

15:30 The light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart: and a good report
maketh the bones fat.

15:31 The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise.

15:32 He that refuseth instruction despiseth his own soul: but he that
heareth reproof getteth understanding.

15:33 The fear of the LORD is the instruction of wisdom; and before
honour is humility.

16:1 The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the
tongue, is from the LORD.

16:2 All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the LORD
weigheth the spirits.

16:3 Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be
established.

16:4 The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked
for the day of evil.

16:5 Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD:
though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished.

16:6 By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the
LORD men depart from evil.

16:7 When a man's ways please the LORD, he maketh even his enemies to
be at peace with him.

16:8 Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without
right.

16:9 A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.

16:10 A divine sentence is in the lips of the king: his mouth
transgresseth not in judgment.

16:11 A just weight and balance are the LORD's: all the weights of the
bag are his work.

16:12 It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness: for the
throne is established by righteousness.

16:13 Righteous lips are the delight of kings; and they love him that
speaketh right.

16:14 The wrath of a king is as messengers of death: but a wise man
will pacify it.

16:15 In the light of the king's countenance is life; and his favour
is as a cloud of the latter rain.

16:16 How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! and to get
understanding rather to be chosen than silver!  16:17 The highway of
the upright is to depart from evil: he that keepeth his way preserveth
his soul.

16:18 Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a
fall.

16:19 Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to
divide the spoil with the proud.

16:20 He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good: and whoso
trusteth in the LORD, happy is he.

16:21 The wise in heart shall be called prudent: and the sweetness of
the lips increaseth learning.

16:22 Understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it: but
the instruction of fools is folly.

16:23 The heart of the wise teacheth his mouth, and addeth learning to
his lips.

16:24 Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and
health to the bones.

16:25 There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end
thereof are the ways of death.

16:26 He that laboureth laboureth for himself; for his mouth craveth
it of him.

16:27 An ungodly man diggeth up evil: and in his lips there is as a
burning fire.

16:28 A froward man soweth strife: and a whisperer separateth chief
friends.

16:29 A violent man enticeth his neighbour, and leadeth him into the
way that is not good.

16:30 He shutteth his eyes to devise froward things: moving his lips
he bringeth evil to pass.

16:31 The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of
righteousness.

16:32 He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that
ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is
of the LORD.

17:1 Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house
full of sacrifices with strife.

17:2 A wise servant shall have rule over a son that causeth shame, and
shall have part of the inheritance among the brethren.

17:3 The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the
LORD trieth the hearts.

17:4 A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips; and a liar giveth ear to
a naughty tongue.

17:5 Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker: and he that is glad
at calamities shall not be unpunished.

17:6 Children's children are the crown of old men; and the glory of
children are their fathers.

17:7 Excellent speech becometh not a fool: much less do lying lips a
prince.

17:8 A gift is as a precious stone in the eyes of him that hath it:
whithersoever it turneth, it prospereth.

17:9 He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that
repeateth a matter separateth very friends.

17:10 A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes
into a fool.

17:11 An evil man seeketh only rebellion: therefore a cruel messenger
shall be sent against him.

17:12 Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool
in his folly.

17:13 Whoso rewardeth evil for good, evil shall not depart from his
house.

17:14 The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water:
therefore leave off contention, before it be meddled with.

17:15 He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just,
even they both are abomination to the LORD.

17:16 Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom,
seeing he hath no heart to it?  17:17 A friend loveth at all times,
and a brother is born for adversity.

17:18 A man void of understanding striketh hands, and becometh surety
in the presence of his friend.

17:19 He loveth transgression that loveth strife: and he that exalteth
his gate seeketh destruction.

17:20 He that hath a froward heart findeth no good: and he that hath a
perverse tongue falleth into mischief.

17:21 He that begetteth a fool doeth it to his sorrow: and the father
of a fool hath no joy.

17:22 A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit
drieth the bones.

17:23 A wicked man taketh a gift out of the bosom to pervert the ways
of judgment.

17:24 Wisdom is before him that hath understanding; but the eyes of a
fool are in the ends of the earth.

17:25 A foolish son is a grief to his father, and bitterness to her
that bare him.

17:26 Also to punish the just is not good, nor to strike princes for
equity.

17:27 He that hath knowledge spareth his words: and a man of
understanding is of an excellent spirit.

17:28 Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he
that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

18:1 Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and
intermeddleth with all wisdom.

18:2 A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may
discover itself.

18:3 When the wicked cometh, then cometh also contempt, and with
ignominy reproach.

18:4 The words of a man's mouth are as deep waters, and the wellspring
of wisdom as a flowing brook.

18:5 It is not good to accept the person of the wicked, to overthrow
the righteous in judgment.

18:6 A fool's lips enter into contention, and his mouth calleth for
strokes.

18:7 A fool's mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of
his soul.

18:8 The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into
the innermost parts of the belly.

18:9 He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a
great waster.

18:10 The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth
into it, and is safe.

18:11 The rich man's wealth is his strong city, and as an high wall in
his own conceit.

18:12 Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before
honour is humility.

18:13 He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and
shame unto him.

18:14 The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded
spirit who can bear?  18:15 The heart of the prudent getteth
knowledge; and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge.

18:16 A man's gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great
men.

18:17 He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his
neighbour cometh and searcheth him.

18:18 The lot causeth contentions to cease, and parteth between the
mighty.

18:19 A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and
their contentions are like the bars of a castle.

18:20 A man's belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth;
and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled.

18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that
love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

18:22 Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour
of the LORD.

18:23 The poor useth intreaties; but the rich answereth roughly.

18:24 A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is
a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

19:1 Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity, than he that is
perverse in his lips, and is a fool.

19:2 Also, that the soul be without knowledge, it is not good; and he
that hasteth with his feet sinneth.

19:3 The foolishness of man perverteth his way: and his heart fretteth
against the LORD.

19:4 Wealth maketh many friends; but the poor is separated from his
neighbour.

19:5 A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh
lies shall not escape.

19:6 Many will intreat the favour of the prince: and every man is a
friend to him that giveth gifts.

19:7 All the brethren of the poor do hate him: how much more do his
friends go far from him? he pursueth them with words, yet they are
wanting to him.

19:8 He that getteth wisdom loveth his own soul: he that keepeth
understanding shall find good.

19:9 A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh
lies shall perish.

19:10 Delight is not seemly for a fool; much less for a servant to
have rule over princes.

19:11 The discretion of a man deferreth his anger; and it is his glory
to pass over a transgression.

19:12 The king's wrath is as the roaring of a lion; but his favour is
as dew upon the grass.

19:13 A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the contentions
of a wife are a continual dropping.

19:14 House and riches are the inheritance of fathers: and a prudent
wife is from the LORD.

19:15 Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep; and an idle soul shall
suffer hunger.

19:16 He that keepeth the commandment keepeth his own soul; but he
that despiseth his ways shall die.

19:17 He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that
which he hath given will he pay him again.

19:18 Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare
for his crying.

19:19 A man of great wrath shall suffer punishment: for if thou
deliver him, yet thou must do it again.

19:20 Hear counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise
in thy latter end.

19:21 There are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless the
counsel of the LORD, that shall stand.

19:22 The desire of a man is his kindness: and a poor man is better
than a liar.

19:23 The fear of the LORD tendeth to life: and he that hath it shall
abide satisfied; he shall not be visited with evil.

19:24 A slothful man hideth his hand in his bosom, and will not so
much as bring it to his mouth again.

19:25 Smite a scorner, and the simple will beware: and reprove one
that hath understanding, and he will understand knowledge.

19:26 He that wasteth his father, and chaseth away his mother, is a
son that causeth shame, and bringeth reproach.

19:27 Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from
the words of knowledge.

19:28 An ungodly witness scorneth judgment: and the mouth of the
wicked devoureth iniquity.

19:29 Judgments are prepared for scorners, and stripes for the back of
fools.

20:1 Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is
deceived thereby is not wise.

20:2 The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: whoso provoketh
him to anger sinneth against his own soul.

20:3 It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: but every fool
will be meddling.

20:4 The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall
he beg in harvest, and have nothing.

20:5 Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of
understanding will draw it out.

20:6 Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness: but a faithful
man who can find?  20:7 The just man walketh in his integrity: his
children are blessed after him.

20:8 A king that sitteth in the throne of judgment scattereth away all
evil with his eyes.

20:9 Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?
20:10 Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike
abomination to the LORD.

20:11 Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure,
and whether it be right.

20:12 The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even
both of them.

20:13 Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty; open thine eyes, and
thou shalt be satisfied with bread.

20:14 It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer: but when he is gone
his way, then he boasteth.

20:15 There is gold, and a multitude of rubies: but the lips of
knowledge are a precious jewel.

20:16 Take his garment that is surety for a stranger: and take a
pledge of him for a strange woman.

20:17 Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth
shall be filled with gravel.

20:18 Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice
make war.

20:19 He that goeth about as a talebearer revealeth secrets: therefore
meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips.

20:20 Whoso curseth his father or his mother, his lamp shall be put
out in obscure darkness.

20:21 An inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning; but the
end thereof shall not be blessed.

20:22 Say not thou, I will recompense evil; but wait on the LORD, and
he shall save thee.

20:23 Divers weights are an abomination unto the LORD; and a false
balance is not good.

20:24 Man's goings are of the LORD; how can a man then understand his
own way?  20:25 It is a snare to the man who devoureth that which is
holy, and after vows to make enquiry.

20:26 A wise king scattereth the wicked, and bringeth the wheel over
them.

20:27 The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the
inward parts of the belly.

20:28 Mercy and truth preserve the king: and his throne is upholden by
mercy.

20:29 The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old
men is the grey head.

20:30 The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil: so do stripes the
inward parts of the belly.

21:1 The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of
water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.

21:2 Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the LORD
pondereth the hearts.

21:3 To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than
sacrifice.

21:4 An high look, and a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked,
is sin.

21:5 The thoughts of the diligent tend only to plenteousness; but of
every one that is hasty only to want.

21:6 The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to
and fro of them that seek death.

21:7 The robbery of the wicked shall destroy them; because they refuse
to do judgment.

21:8 The way of man is froward and strange: but as for the pure, his
work is right.

21:9 It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a
brawling woman in a wide house.

21:10 The soul of the wicked desireth evil: his neighbour findeth no
favour in his eyes.

21:11 When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise: and when
the wise is instructed, he receiveth knowledge.

21:12 The righteous man wisely considereth the house of the wicked:
but God overthroweth the wicked for their wickedness.

21:13 Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall
cry himself, but shall not be heard.

21:14 A gift in secret pacifieth anger: and a reward in the bosom
strong wrath.

21:15 It is joy to the just to do judgment: but destruction shall be
to the workers of iniquity.

21:16 The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall
remain in the congregation of the dead.

21:17 He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: he that loveth wine
and oil shall not be rich.

21:18 The wicked shall be a ransom for the righteous, and the
transgressor for the upright.

21:19 It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious
and an angry woman.

21:20 There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the
wise; but a foolish man spendeth it up.

21:21 He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life,
righteousness, and honour.

21:22 A wise man scaleth the city of the mighty, and casteth down the
strength of the confidence thereof.

21:23 Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from
troubles.

21:24 Proud and haughty scorner is his name, who dealeth in proud
wrath.

21:25 The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to
labour.

21:26 He coveteth greedily all the day long: but the righteous giveth
and spareth not.

21:27 The sacrifice of the wicked is abomination: how much more, when
he bringeth it with a wicked mind?  21:28 A false witness shall
perish: but the man that heareth speaketh constantly.

21:29 A wicked man hardeneth his face: but as for the upright, he
directeth his way.

21:30 There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the
LORD.

21:31 The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is
of the LORD.

22:1 A GOOD name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving
favour rather than silver and gold.

22:2 The rich and poor meet together: the LORD is the maker of them
all.

22:3 A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the
simple pass on, and are punished.

22:4 By humility and the fear of the LORD are riches, and honour, and
life.

22:5 Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward: he that doth
keep his soul shall be far from them.

22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he
will not depart from it.

22:7 The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the
lender.

22:8 He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity: and the rod of his
anger shall fail.

22:9 He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of
his bread to the poor.

22:10 Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; yea, strife
and reproach shall cease.

22:11 He that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the
king shall be his friend.

22:12 The eyes of the LORD preserve knowledge, and he overthroweth the
words of the transgressor.

22:13 The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be
slain in the streets.

22:14 The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of
the LORD shall fall therein.

22:15 Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of
correction shall drive it far from him.

22:16 He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, and he that
giveth to the rich, shall surely come to want.

22:17 Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply
thine heart unto my knowledge.

22:18 For it is a pleasant thing if thou keep them within thee; they
shall withal be fitted in thy lips.

22:19 That thy trust may be in the LORD, I have made known to thee
this day, even to thee.

22:20 Have not I written to thee excellent things in counsels and
knowledge, 22:21 That I might make thee know the certainty of the
words of truth; that thou mightest answer the words of truth to them
that send unto thee?  22:22 Rob not the poor, because he is poor:
neither oppress the afflicted in the gate: 22:23 For the LORD will
plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them.

22:24 Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man
thou shalt not go: 22:25 Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to
thy soul.

22:26 Be not thou one of them that strike hands, or of them that are
sureties for debts.

22:27 If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed
from under thee?  22:28 Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy
fathers have set.

22:29 Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before
kings; he shall not stand before mean men.

23:1 When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what
is before thee: 23:2 And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man
given to appetite.

23:3 Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.

23:4 Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom.

23:5 Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches
certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward
heaven.

23:6 Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither
desire thou his dainty meats: 23:7 For as he thinketh in his heart, so
is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with
thee.

23:8 The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose
thy sweet words.

23:9 Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom
of thy words.

23:10 Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of
the fatherless: 23:11 For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead
their cause with thee.

23:12 Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words
of knowledge.

23:13 Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him
with the rod, he shall not die.

23:14 Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul
from hell.

23:15 My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even
mine.

23:16 Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things.

23:17 Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the
LORD all the day long.

23:18 For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be
cut off.

23:19 Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the
way.

23:20 Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: 23:21
For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness
shall clothe a man with rags.

23:22 Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy
mother when she is old.

23:23 Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction,
and understanding.

23:24 The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that
begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him.

23:25 Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee
shall rejoice.

23:26 My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways.

23:27 For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow
pit.

23:28 She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the
transgressors among men.

23:29 Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath
babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?
23:30 They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed
wine.

23:31 Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his
colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.

23:32 At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an
adder.

23:33 Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall
utter perverse things.

23:34 Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the
sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.

23:35 They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they
have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it
yet again.

24:1 Be not thou envious against evil men, neither desire to be with
them.

24:2 For their heart studieth destruction, and their lips talk of
mischief.

24:3 Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is
established: 24:4 And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with
all precious and pleasant riches.

24:5 A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth
strength.

24:6 For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war: and in multitude of
counsellors there is safety.

24:7 Wisdom is too high for a fool: he openeth not his mouth in the
gate.

24:8 He that deviseth to do evil shall be called a mischievous person.

24:9 The thought of foolishness is sin: and the scorner is an
abomination to men.

24:10 If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.

24:11 If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and
those that are ready to be slain; 24:12 If thou sayest, Behold, we
knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he
that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to
every man according to his works?  24:13 My son, eat thou honey,
because it is good; and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste:
24:14 So shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul: when thou
hast found it, then there shall be a reward, and thy expectation shall
not be cut off.

24:15 Lay not wait, O wicked man, against the dwelling of the
righteous; spoil not his resting place: 24:16 For a just man falleth
seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into
mischief.

24:17 Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be
glad when he stumbleth: 24:18 Lest the LORD see it, and it displease
him, and he turn away his wrath from him.

24:19 Fret not thyself because of evil men, neither be thou envious at
the wicked: 24:20 For there shall be no reward to the evil man; the
candle of the wicked shall be put out.

24:21 My son, fear thou the LORD and the king: and meddle not with
them that are given to change: 24:22 For their calamity shall rise
suddenly; and who knoweth the ruin of them both?  24:23 These things
also belong to the wise. It is not good to have respect of persons in
judgment.

24:24 He that saith unto the wicked, Thou are righteous; him shall the
people curse, nations shall abhor him: 24:25 But to them that rebuke
him shall be delight, and a good blessing shall come upon them.

24:26 Every man shall kiss his lips that giveth a right answer.

24:27 Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the
field; and afterwards build thine house.

24:28 Be not a witness against thy neighbour without cause; and
deceive not with thy lips.

24:29 Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me: I will
render to the man according to his work.

24:30 I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the
man void of understanding; 24:31 And, lo, it was all grown over with
thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall
thereof was broken down.

24:32 Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and
received instruction.

24:33 Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the
hands to sleep: 24:34 So shall thy poverty come as one that
travelleth; and thy want as an armed man.

25:1 These are also proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah
king of Judah copied out.

25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of
kings is to search out a matter.

25:3 The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of
kings is unsearchable.

25:4 Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a
vessel for the finer.

25:5 Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall
be established in righteousness.

25:6 Put not forth thyself in the presence of the king, and stand not
in the place of great men: 25:7 For better it is that it be said unto
thee, Come up hither; than that thou shouldest be put lower in the
presence of the prince whom thine eyes have seen.

25:8 Go not forth hastily to strive, lest thou know not what to do in
the end thereof, when thy neighbour hath put thee to shame.

25:9 Debate thy cause with thy neighbour himself; and discover not a
secret to another: 25:10 Lest he that heareth it put thee to shame,
and thine infamy turn not away.

25:11 A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of
silver.

25:12 As an earring of gold, and an ornament of fine gold, so is a
wise reprover upon an obedient ear.

25:13 As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful
messenger to them that send him: for he refresheth the soul of his
masters.

25:14 Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift is like clouds and wind
without rain.

25:15 By long forbearing is a prince persuaded, and a soft tongue
breaketh the bone.

25:16 Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee,
lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.

25:17 Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbour's house; lest he be weary
of thee, and so hate thee.

25:18 A man that beareth false witness against his neighbour is a
maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow.

25:19 Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a
broken tooth, and a foot out of joint.

25:20 As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar
upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart.

25:21 If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be
thirsty, give him water to drink: 25:22 For thou shalt heap coals of
fire upon his head, and the LORD shall reward thee.

25:23 The north wind driveth away rain: so doth an angry countenance a
backbiting tongue.

25:24 It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop, than with a
brawling woman and in a wide house.

25:25 As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far
country.

25:26 A righteous man falling down before the wicked is as a troubled
fountain, and a corrupt spring.

25:27 It is not good to eat much honey: so for men to search their own
glory is not glory.

25:28 He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is
broken down, and without walls.

26:1 As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honour is not
seemly for a fool.

26:2 As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse
causeless shall not come.

26:3 A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the
fool's back.

26:4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like
unto him.

26:5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own
conceit.

26:6 He that sendeth a message by the hand of a fool cutteth off the
feet, and drinketh damage.

26:7 The legs of the lame are not equal: so is a parable in the mouth
of fools.

26:8 As he that bindeth a stone in a sling, so is he that giveth
honour to a fool.

26:9 As a thorn goeth up into the hand of a drunkard, so is a parable
in the mouths of fools.

26:10 The great God that formed all things both rewardeth the fool,
and rewardeth transgressors.

26:11 As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his
folly.

26:12 Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of
a fool than of him.

26:13 The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way; a lion is in
the streets.

26:14 As the door turneth upon his hinges, so doth the slothful upon
his bed.

26:15 The slothful hideth his hand in his bosom; it grieveth him to
bring it again to his mouth.

26:16 The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can
render a reason.

26:17 He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to
him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears.

26:18 As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, 26:19 So
is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport?
26:20 Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out: so where there is no
talebearer, the strife ceaseth.

26:21 As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; so is a
contentious man to kindle strife.

26:22 The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into
the innermost parts of the belly.

26:23 Burning lips and a wicked heart are like a potsherd covered with
silver dross.

26:24 He that hateth dissembleth with his lips, and layeth up deceit
within him; 26:25 When he speaketh fair, believe him not: for there
are seven abominations in his heart.

26:26 Whose hatred is covered by deceit, his wickedness shall be
shewed before the whole congregation.

26:27 Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a
stone, it will return upon him.

26:28 A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it; and a
flattering mouth worketh ruin.

27:1 Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day
may bring forth.

27:2 Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger,
and not thine own lips.

27:3 A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool's wrath is
heavier than them both.

27:4 Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand
before envy?  27:5 Open rebuke is better than secret love.

27:6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy
are deceitful.

27:7 The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every
bitter thing is sweet.

27:8 As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that
wandereth from his place.

27:9 Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart: so doth the sweetness of
a man's friend by hearty counsel.

27:10 Thine own friend, and thy father's friend, forsake not; neither
go into thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity: for better is
a neighbour that is near than a brother far off.

27:11 My son, be wise, and make my heart glad, that I may answer him
that reproacheth me.

27:12 A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the
simple pass on, and are punished.

27:13 Take his garment that is surety for a stranger, and take a
pledge of him for a strange woman.

27:14 He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in
the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him.

27:15 A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman
are alike.

27:16 Whosoever hideth her hideth the wind, and the ointment of his
right hand, which bewrayeth itself.

27:17 Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his
friend.

27:18 Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof: so he
that waiteth on his master shall be honoured.

27:19 As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.

27:20 Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are
never satisfied.

27:21 As the fining pot for silver, and the furnace for gold; so is a
man to his praise.

27:22 Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a
pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.

27:23 Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well
to thy herds.

27:24 For riches are not for ever: and doth the crown endure to every
generation?  27:25 The hay appeareth, and the tender grass sheweth
itself, and herbs of the mountains are gathered.

27:26 The lambs are for thy clothing, and the goats are the price of
the field.

27:27 And thou shalt have goats' milk enough for thy food, for the
food of thy household, and for the maintenance for thy maidens.

28:1 The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold
as a lion.

28:2 For the transgression of a land many are the princes thereof: but
by a man of understanding and knowledge the state thereof shall be
prolonged.

28:3 A poor man that oppresseth the poor is like a sweeping rain which
leaveth no food.

28:4 They that forsake the law praise the wicked: but such as keep the
law contend with them.

28:5 Evil men understand not judgment: but they that seek the LORD
understand all things.

28:6 Better is the poor that walketh in his uprightness, than he that
is perverse in his ways, though he be rich.

28:7 Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son: but he that is a companion
of riotous men shameth his father.

28:8 He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he
shall gather it for him that will pity the poor.

28:9 He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his
prayer shall be abomination.

28:10 Whoso causeth the righteous to go astray in an evil way, he
shall fall himself into his own pit: but the upright shall have good
things in possession.

28:11 The rich man is wise in his own conceit; but the poor that hath
understanding searcheth him out.

28:12 When righteous men do rejoice, there is great glory: but when
the wicked rise, a man is hidden.

28:13 He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso
confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.

28:14 Happy is the man that feareth alway: but he that hardeneth his
heart shall fall into mischief.

28:15 As a roaring lion, and a ranging bear; so is a wicked ruler over
the poor people.

28:16 The prince that wanteth understanding is also a great oppressor:
but he that hateth covetousness shall prolong his days.

28:17 A man that doeth violence to the blood of any person shall flee
to the pit; let no man stay him.

28:18 Whoso walketh uprightly shall be saved: but he that is perverse
in his ways shall fall at once.

28:19 He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread: but he that
followeth after vain persons shall have poverty enough.

28:20 A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that maketh
haste to be rich shall not be innocent.

28:21 To have respect of persons is not good: for for a piece of bread
that man will transgress.

28:22 He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, and considereth not
that poverty shall come upon him.

28:23 He that rebuketh a man afterwards shall find more favour than he
that flattereth with the tongue.

28:24 Whoso robbeth his father or his mother, and saith, It is no
transgression; the same is the companion of a destroyer.

28:25 He that is of a proud heart stirreth up strife: but he that
putteth his trust in the LORD shall be made fat.

28:26 He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: but whoso walketh
wisely, he shall be delivered.

28:27 He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack: but he that hideth
his eyes shall have many a curse.

28:28 When the wicked rise, men hide themselves: but when they perish,
the righteous increase.

29:1 He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly
be destroyed, and that without remedy.

29:2 When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when
the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.

29:3 Whoso loveth wisdom rejoiceth his father: but he that keepeth
company with harlots spendeth his substance.

29:4 The king by judgment establisheth the land: but he that receiveth
gifts overthroweth it.

29:5 A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet.

29:6 In the transgression of an evil man there is a snare: but the
righteous doth sing and rejoice.

29:7 The righteous considereth the cause of the poor: but the wicked
regardeth not to know it.

29:8 Scornful men bring a city into a snare: but wise men turn away
wrath.

29:9 If a wise man contendeth with a foolish man, whether he rage or
laugh, there is no rest.

29:10 The bloodthirsty hate the upright: but the just seek his soul.

29:11 A fool uttereth all his mind: but a wise man keepeth it in till
afterwards.

29:12 If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are wicked.

29:13 The poor and the deceitful man meet together: the LORD
lighteneth both their eyes.

29:14 The king that faithfully judgeth the poor, his throne shall be
established for ever.

29:15 The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself
bringeth his mother to shame.

29:16 When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth: but
the righteous shall see their fall.

29:17 Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest; yea, he shall give
delight unto thy soul.

29:18 Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth
the law, happy is he.

29:19 A servant will not be corrected by words: for though he
understand he will not answer.

29:20 Seest thou a man that is hasty in his words? there is more hope
of a fool than of him.

29:21 He that delicately bringeth up his servant from a child shall
have him become his son at the length.

29:22 An angry man stirreth up strife, and a furious man aboundeth in
transgression.

29:23 A man's pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the
humble in spirit.

29:24 Whoso is partner with a thief hateth his own soul: he heareth
cursing, and bewrayeth it not.

29:25 The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in
the LORD shall be safe.

29:26 Many seek the ruler's favour; but every man's judgment cometh
from the LORD.

29:27 An unjust man is an abomination to the just: and he that is
upright in the way is abomination to the wicked.

30:1 The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy: the man
spake unto Ithiel, even unto Ithiel and Ucal, 30:2 Surely I am more
brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man.

30:3 I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy.

30:4 Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath gathered
the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment? who
hath established all the ends of the earth? what is his name, and what
is his son's name, if thou canst tell?  30:5 Every word of God is
pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.

30:6 Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be
found a liar.

30:7 Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I
die: 30:8 Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty
nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: 30:9 Lest I be full,
and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal,
and take the name of my God in vain.

30:10 Accuse not a servant unto his master, lest he curse thee, and
thou be found guilty.

30:11 There is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not
bless their mother.

30:12 There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet
is not washed from their filthiness.

30:13 There is a generation, O how lofty are their eyes! and their
eyelids are lifted up.

30:14 There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw
teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy
from among men.

30:15 The horseleach hath two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are
three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is
enough: 30:16 The grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not
filled with water; and the fire that saith not, It is enough.

30:17 The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his
mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young
eagles shall eat it.

30:18 There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four
which I know not: 30:19 The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a
serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and
the way of a man with a maid.

30:20 Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth
her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness.

30:21 For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it
cannot bear: 30:22 For a servant when he reigneth; and a fool when he
is filled with meat; 30:23 For an odious woman when she is married;
and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress.

30:24 There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they
are exceeding wise: 30:25 The ants are a people not strong, yet they
prepare their meat in the summer; 30:26 The conies are but a feeble
folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks; 30:27 The locusts have
no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; 30:28 The spider
taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces.

30:29 There be three things which go well, yea, four are comely in
going: 30:30 A lion which is strongest among beasts, and turneth not
away for any; 30:31 A greyhound; an he goat also; and a king, against
whom there is no rising up.

30:32 If thou hast done foolishly in lifting up thyself, or if thou
hast thought evil, lay thine hand upon thy mouth.

30:33 Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter, and the
wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood: so the forcing of wrath
bringeth forth strife.

31:1 The words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught
him.

31:2 What, my son? and what, the son of my womb? and what, the son of
my vows?  31:3 Give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that
which destroyeth kings.

31:4 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine;
nor for princes strong drink: 31:5 Lest they drink, and forget the
law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted.

31:6 Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto
those that be of heavy hearts.

31:7 Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no
more.

31:8 Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are
appointed to destruction.

31:9 Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the
poor and needy.

31:10 Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above
rubies.

31:11 The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he
shall have no need of spoil.

31:12 She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.

31:13 She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her
hands.

31:14 She is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from
afar.

31:15 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her
household, and a portion to her maidens.

31:16 She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her
hands she planteth a vineyard.

31:17 She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.

31:18 She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth
not out by night.

31:19 She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the
distaff.

31:20 She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth
her hands to the needy.

31:21 She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her
household are clothed with scarlet.

31:22 She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk
and purple.

31:23 Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the
elders of the land.

31:24 She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles
unto the merchant.

31:25 Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in
time to come.

31:26 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law
of kindness.

31:27 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not
the bread of idleness.

31:28 Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also,
and he praiseth her.

31:29 Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them
all.

31:30 Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that
feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.

31:31 Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise
her in the gates.




Ecclesiastes

or

The Preacher


1:1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

1:2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is
vanity.

1:3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the
sun?  1:4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh:
but the earth abideth for ever.

1:5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his
place where he arose.

1:6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north;
it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according
to his circuits.

1:7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the
place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

1:8 All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not
satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

1:9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that
which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing
under the sun.

1:10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it
hath been already of old time, which was before us.

1:11 There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be
any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come
after.

1:12 I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.

1:13 And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning
all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God
given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.

1:14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and,
behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

1:15 That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is
wanting cannot be numbered.

1:16 I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great
estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been
before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom
and knowledge.

1:17 And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and
folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.

1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth
knowledge increaseth sorrow.

2:1 I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth,
therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity.

2:2 I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it?  2:3 I
sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine
heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was
that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven
all the days of their life.

2:4 I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me
vineyards: 2:5 I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in
them of all kind of fruits: 2:6 I made me pools of water, to water
therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees: 2:7 I got me servants
and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great
possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem
before me: 2:8 I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar
treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women
singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments,
and that of all sorts.

2:9 So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in
Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me.

2:10 And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld
not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and
this was my portion of all my labour.

2:11 Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on
the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and
vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.

2:12 And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly: for
what can the man do that cometh after the king? even that which hath
been already done.

2:13 Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth
darkness.

2:14 The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in
darkness: and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them
all.

2:15 Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it
happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my
heart, that this also is vanity.

2:16 For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for
ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be
forgotten.

And how dieth the wise man? as the fool.

2:17 Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under
the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

2:18 Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun:
because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.

2:19 And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet
shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and
wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity.

2:20 Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the
labour which I took under the sun.

2:21 For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom, and in knowledge,
and in equity; yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he
leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil.

2:22 For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his
heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun?  2:23 For all his days
are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in
the night. This is also vanity.

2:24 There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and
drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This
also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.

2:25 For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, more than I?
2:26 For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and
knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and
to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God. This also
is vanity and vexation of spirit.

3:1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose
under the heaven: 3:2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to
plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3:3 A time to
kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build
up; 3:4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a
time to dance; 3:5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather
stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from
embracing; 3:6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and
a time to cast away; 3:7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to
keep silence, and a time to speak; 3:8 A time to love, and a time to
hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

3:9 What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?
3:10 I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men
to be exercised in it.

3:11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set
the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that
God maketh from the beginning to the end.

3:12 I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice,
and to do good in his life.

3:13 And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good
of all his labour, it is the gift of God.

3:14 I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing
can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that
men should fear before him.

3:15 That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already
been; and God requireth that which is past.

3:16 And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that
wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity
was there.

3:17 I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the
wicked: for there is a time there for every purpose and for every
work.

3:18 I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men,
that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they
themselves are beasts.

3:19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even
one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea,
they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a
beast: for all is vanity.

3:20 All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust
again.

3:21 Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit
of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?  3:22 Wherefore I
perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice
in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to
see what shall be after him?  4:1 So I returned, and considered all
the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of
such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of
their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.

4:2 Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the
living which are yet alive.

4:3 Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who
hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.

4:4 Again, I considered all travail, and every right work, that for
this a man is envied of his neighbour. This is also vanity and
vexation of spirit.

4:5 The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh.

4:6 Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with
travail and vexation of spirit.

4:7 Then I returned, and I saw vanity under the sun.

4:8 There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath
neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour;
neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom
do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it
is a sore travail.

4:9 Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their
labour.

4:10 For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him
that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.

4:11 Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one
be warm alone?  4:12 And if one prevail against him, two shall
withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

4:13 Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king,
who will no more be admonished.

4:14 For out of prison he cometh to reign; whereas also he that is
born in his kingdom becometh poor.

4:15 I considered all the living which walk under the sun, with the
second child that shall stand up in his stead.

4:16 There is no end of all the people, even of all that have been
before them: they also that come after shall not rejoice in him.
Surely this also is vanity and vexation of spirit.

5:1 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more
ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider
not that they do evil.

5:2 Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to
utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth:
therefore let thy words be few.

5:3 For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's
voice is known by multitude of words.

5:4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath
no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.

5:5 Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest
vow and not pay.

5:6 Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou
before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry
at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?  5:7 For in the
multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but
fear thou God.

5:8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting
of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for
he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than
they.

5:9 Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is
served by the field.

5:10 He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he
that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.

5:11 When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what
good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with
their eyes?  5:12 The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he
eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him
to sleep.

5:13 There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely,
riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.

5:14 But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son,
and there is nothing in his hand.

5:15 As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to
go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may
carry away in his hand.

5:16 And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so
shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?
5:17 All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow
and wrath with his sickness.

5:18 Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to
eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he
taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him:
for it is his portion.

5:19 Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath
given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to
rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.

5:20 For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God
answereth him in the joy of his heart.

6:1 There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common
among men: 6:2 A man to whom God hath given riches, wealth, and
honour, so that he wanteth nothing for his soul of all that he
desireth, yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but a stranger
eateth it: this is vanity, and it is an evil disease.

6:3 If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that
the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good,
and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is
better than he.

6:4 For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his
name shall be covered with darkness.

6:5 Moreover he hath not seen the sun, nor known any thing: this hath
more rest than the other.

6:6 Yea, though he live a thousand years twice told, yet hath he seen
no good: do not all go to one place?  6:7 All the labour of man is for
his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled.

6:8 For what hath the wise more than the fool? what hath the poor,
that knoweth to walk before the living?  6:9 Better is the sight of
the eyes than the wandering of the desire: this is also vanity and
vexation of spirit.

6:10 That which hath been is named already, and it is known that it is
man: neither may he contend with him that is mightier than he.

6:11 Seeing there be many things that increase vanity, what is man the
better?  6:12 For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all
the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? for who can
tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?  7:1 A good name is
better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of
one's birth.

7:2 It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the
house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will
lay it to his heart.

7:3 Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the
countenance the heart is made better.

7:4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart
of fools is in the house of mirth.

7:5 It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to
hear the song of fools.

7:6 For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of
the fool: this also is vanity.

7:7 Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad; and a gift destroyeth the
heart.

7:8 Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof: and the
patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.

7:9 Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the
bosom of fools.

7:10 Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better
than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this.

7:11 Wisdom is good with an inheritance: and by it there is profit to
them that see the sun.

7:12 For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the
excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have
it.

7:13 Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which
he hath made crooked?  7:14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in
the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against
the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him.

7:15 All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just
man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man
that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.

7:16 Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why
shouldest thou destroy thyself ?  7:17 Be not over much wicked,
neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time?  7:18
It is good that thou shouldest take hold of this; yea, also from this
withdraw not thine hand: for he that feareth God shall come forth of
them all.

7:19 Wisdom strengtheneth the wise more than ten mighty men which are
in the city.

7:20 For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and
sinneth not.

7:21 Also take no heed unto all words that are spoken; lest thou hear
thy servant curse thee: 7:22 For oftentimes also thine own heart
knoweth that thou thyself likewise hast cursed others.

7:23 All this have I proved by wisdom: I said, I will be wise; but it
was far from me.

7:24 That which is far off, and exceeding deep, who can find it out?
7:25 I applied mine heart to know, and to search, and to seek out
wisdom, and the reason of things, and to know the wickedness of folly,
even of foolishness and madness: 7:26 And I find more bitter than
death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as
bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall
be taken by her.

7:27 Behold, this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by
one, to find out the account: 7:28 Which yet my soul seeketh, but I
find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all
those have I not found.

7:29 Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but
they have sought out many inventions.

8:1 Who is as the wise man? and who knoweth the interpretation of a
thing?  a man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the boldness of
his face shall be changed.

8:2 I counsel thee to keep the king's commandment, and that in regard
of the oath of God.

8:3 Be not hasty to go out of his sight: stand not in an evil thing;
for he doeth whatsoever pleaseth him.

8:4 Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto
him, What doest thou?  8:5 Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no
evil thing: and a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment.

8:6 Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the
misery of man is great upon him.

8:7 For he knoweth not that which shall be: for who can tell him when
it shall be?  8:8 There is no man that hath power over the spirit to
retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and
there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver
those that are given to it.

8:9 All this have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is
done under the sun: there is a time wherein one man ruleth over
another to his own hurt.

8:10 And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the
place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had
so done: this is also vanity.

8:11 Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily,
therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do
evil.

8:12 Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be
prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear
God, which fear before him: 8:13 But it shall not be well with the
wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow;
because he feareth not before God.

8:14 There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be
just men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked;
again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work
of the righteous: I said that this also is vanity.

8:15 Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under
the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall
abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth
him under the sun.

8:16 When I applied mine heart to know wisdom, and to see the business
that is done upon the earth: (for also there is that neither day nor
night seeth sleep with his eyes:) 8:17 Then I beheld all the work of
God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun:
because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it;
yea farther; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be
able to find it.

9:1 For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this,
that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of
God: no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them.

9:2 All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous,
and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean;
to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the
good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an
oath.

9:3 This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that
there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is
full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after
that they go to the dead.

9:4 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a
living dog is better than a dead lion.

9:5 For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any
thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is
forgotten.

9:6 Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now
perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing
that is done under the sun.

9:7 Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a
merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.

9:8 Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no
ointment.

9:9 Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the
life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the
days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy
labour which thou takest under the sun.

9:10 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for
there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave,
whither thou goest.

9:11 I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the
swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise,
nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of
skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

9:12 For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken
in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are
the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon
them.

9:13 This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great
unto me: 9:14 There was a little city, and few men within it; and
there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great
bulwarks against it: 9:15 Now there was found in it a poor wise man,
and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that
same poor man.

9:16 Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the
poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.

9:17 The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him
that ruleth among fools.

9:18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth
much good.

10:1 Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a
stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for
wisdom and honour.

10:2 A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at
his left.

10:3 Yea also, when he that is a fool walketh by the way, his wisdom
faileth him, and he saith to every one that he is a fool.

10:4 If the spirit of the ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy
place; for yielding pacifieth great offences.

10:5 There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, as an error
which proceedeth from the ruler: 10:6 Folly is set in great dignity,
and the rich sit in low place.

10:7 I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants
upon the earth.

10:8 He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an
hedge, a serpent shall bite him.

10:9 Whoso removeth stones shall be hurt therewith; and he that
cleaveth wood shall be endangered thereby.

10:10 If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he
put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct.

10:11 Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment; and a babbler
is no better.

10:12 The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious; but the lips of a
fool will swallow up himself.

10:13 The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness: and the
end of his talk is mischievous madness.

10:14 A fool also is full of words: a man cannot tell what shall be;
and what shall be after him, who can tell him?  10:15 The labour of
the foolish wearieth every one of them, because he knoweth not how to
go to the city.

10:16 Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes
eat in the morning!  10:17 Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is
the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength,
and not for drunkenness!  10:18 By much slothfulness the building
decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth
through.

10:19 A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money
answereth all things.

10:20 Curse not the king, no not in thy thought; and curse not the
rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice,
and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.

11:1 Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many
days.

11:2 Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; for thou knowest not
what evil shall be upon the earth.

11:3 If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the
earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in
the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.

11:4 He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth
the clouds shall not reap.

11:5 As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the
bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou
knowest not the works of God who maketh all.

11:6 In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not
thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or
that, or whether they both shall be alike good.

11:7 Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes
to behold the sun: 11:8 But if a man live many years, and rejoice in
them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be
many. All that cometh is vanity.

11:9 Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee
in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in
the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God
will bring thee into judgment.

11:10 Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from
thy flesh: for childhood and youth are vanity.

12:1 Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil
days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no
pleasure in them; 12:2 While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or
the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: 12:3
In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong
men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few,
and those that look out of the windows be darkened, 12:4 And the doors
shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low,
and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters
of musick shall be brought low; 12:5 Also when they shall be afraid of
that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree
shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire
shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go
about the streets: 12:6 Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the
golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or
the wheel broken at the cistern.

12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit
shall return unto God who gave it.

12:8 Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.

12:9 And moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the
people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in
order many proverbs.

12:10 The preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and that which
was written was upright, even words of truth.

12:11 The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the
masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd.

12:12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many
books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

12:13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and
keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

12:14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret
thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.




The Song of Solomon


1:1 The song of songs, which is Solomon's.

1:2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is
better than wine.

1:3 Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as
ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.

1:4 Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his
chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy
love more than wine: the upright love thee.

1:5 I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents
of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.

1:6 Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked
upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the
keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.

1:7 Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where
thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that
turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?  1:8 If thou know not,
O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the
flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents.

1:9 I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in
Pharaoh's chariots.

1:10 Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains
of gold.

1:11 We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.

1:12 While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth
the smell thereof.

1:13 A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all
night betwixt my breasts.

1:14 My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards
of Engedi.

1:15 Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast
doves' eyes.

1:16 Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is
green.

1:17 The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.

2:1 I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.

2:2 As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.

2:3 As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved
among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and
his fruit was sweet to my taste.

2:4 He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was
love.

2:5 Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of
love.

2:6 His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace
me.

2:7 I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the
hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he
please.

2:8 The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the
mountains, skipping upon the hills.

2:9 My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth
behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself
through the lattice.

2:10 My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair
one, and come away.

2:11 For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; 2:12 The
flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; 2:13 The fig tree
putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give
a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

2:14 O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret
places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy
voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.

2:15 Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for
our vines have tender grapes.

2:16 My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.

2:17 Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved,
and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.

3:1 By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him,
but I found him not.

3:2 I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the
broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I
found him not.

3:3 The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw
ye him whom my soul loveth?  3:4 It was but a little that I passed
from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would
not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and
into the chamber of her that conceived me.

3:5 I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the
hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he
please.

3:6 Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of
smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the
merchant?  3:7 Behold his bed, which is Solomon's; threescore valiant
men are about it, of the valiant of Israel.

3:8 They all hold swords, being expert in war: every man hath his
sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night.

3:9 King Solomon made himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon.

3:10 He made the pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of
gold, the covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with
love, for the daughters of Jerusalem.

3:11 Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold king Solomon with
the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his
espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.

4:1 Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast
doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that
appear from mount Gilead.

4:2 Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which
came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is
barren among them.

4:3 Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely:
thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks.

4:4 Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury,
whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.

4:5 Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed
among the lilies.

4:6 Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to
the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.

4:7 Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.

4:8 Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon: look
from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the
lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards.

4:9 Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast
ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.

4:10 How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is
thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!
4:11 Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are
under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of
Lebanon.

4:12 A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a
fountain sealed.

4:13 Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits;
camphire, with spikenard, 4:14 Spikenard and saffron; calamus and
cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all
the chief spices: 4:15 A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters,
and streams from Lebanon.

4:16 Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden,
that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his
garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.

5:1 I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my
myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have
drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink
abundantly, O beloved.

5:2 I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that
knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my
undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops
of the night.

5:3 I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my
feet; how shall I defile them?  5:4 My beloved put in his hand by the
hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.

5:5 I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh,
and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the
lock.

5:6 I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and
was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not
find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.

5:7 The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me,
they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.

5:8 I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved,
that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.

5:9 What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest
among women? what is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou
dost so charge us?  5:10 My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest
among ten thousand.

5:11 His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black
as a raven.

5:12 His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed
with milk, and fitly set.

5:13 His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips
like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh.

5:14 His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as
bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.

5:15 His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold:
his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.

5:16 His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my
beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

6:1 Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither
is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee.

6:2 My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to
feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies.

6:3 I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the
lilies.

6:4 Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem,
terrible as an army with banners.

6:5 Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me: thy hair
is as a flock of goats that appear from Gilead.

6:6 Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing,
whereof every one beareth twins, and there is not one barren among
them.

6:7 As a piece of a pomegranate are thy temples within thy locks.

6:8 There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins
without number.

6:9 My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her
mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her. The daughters saw
her, and blessed her; yea, the queens and the concubines, and they
praised her.

6:10 Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon,
clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?  6:11 I went
down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to
see whether the vine flourished and the pomegranates budded.

6:12 Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of
Amminadib.

6:13 Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look
upon thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it were the company
of two armies.

7:1 How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the
joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a
cunning workman.

7:2 Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy
belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.

7:3 Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.

7:4 Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in
Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of
Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.

7:5 Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head
like purple; the king is held in the galleries.

7:6 How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!  7:7
This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters
of grapes.

7:8 I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the
boughs thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine,
and the smell of thy nose like apples; 7:9 And the roof of thy mouth
like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing
the lips of those that are asleep to speak.

7:10 I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me.

7:11 Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in
the villages.

7:12 Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine
flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud
forth: there will I give thee my loves.

7:13 The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of
pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my
beloved.

8:1 O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my
mother!  when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I
should not be despised.

8:2 I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother's house, who
would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the
juice of my pomegranate.

8:3 His left hand should be under my head, and his right hand should
embrace me.

8:4 I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor
awake my love, until he please.

8:5 Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her
beloved? I raised thee up under the apple tree: there thy mother
brought thee forth: there she brought thee forth that bare thee.

8:6 Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for
love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals
thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.

8:7 Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it:
if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would
utterly be contemned.

8:8 We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do
for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?  8:9 If she be
a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a
door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar.

8:10 I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes
as one that found favour.

8:11 Solomon had a vineyard at Baalhamon; he let out the vineyard unto
keepers; every one for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand
pieces of silver.

8:12 My vineyard, which is mine, is before me: thou, O Solomon, must
have a thousand, and those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred.

8:13 Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions hearken to thy
voice: cause me to hear it.

8:14 Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young
hart upon the mountains of spices.




The Book of the Prophet Isaiah


1:1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning
Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah,
kings of Judah.

1:2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken,
I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled
against me.

1:3 The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but
Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.

1:4 Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of
evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD,
they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone
away backward.

1:5 Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more:
the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

1:6 From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness
in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not
been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.

1:7 Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your
land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as
overthrown by strangers.

1:8 And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a
lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.

1:9 Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we
should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.

1:10 Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the
law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.

1:11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?
saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat
of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of
lambs, or of he goats.

1:12 When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your
hand, to tread my courts?  1:13 Bring no more vain oblations; incense
is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of
assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn
meeting.

1:14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are
a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

1:15 And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from
you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are
full of blood.

1:16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from
before mine eyes; cease to do evil; 1:17 Learn to do well; seek
judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the
widow.

1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your
sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red
like crimson, they shall be as wool.

1:19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:
1:20 But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword:
for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

1:21 How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of
judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.

1:22 Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water: 1:23 Thy
princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth
gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless,
neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them.

1:24 Therefore saith the LORD, the LORD of hosts, the mighty One of
Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine
enemies: 1:25 And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away
thy dross, and take away all thy tin: 1:26 And I will restore thy
judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning:
afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the
faithful city.

1:27 Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with
righteousness.

1:28 And the destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall
be together, and they that forsake the LORD shall be consumed.

1:29 For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and
ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen.

1:30 For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that
hath no water.

1:31 And the strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark,
and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them.

2:1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and
Jerusalem.

2:2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of
the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and
shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.

2:3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the
mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will
teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion
shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

2:4 And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many
people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their
spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against
nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

2:5 O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the
LORD.

2:6 Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob,
because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like
the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of
strangers.

2:7 Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any
end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is
there any end of their chariots: 2:8 Their land also is full of idols;
they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers
have made: 2:9 And the mean man boweth down, and the great man
humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not.

2:10 Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the
LORD, and for the glory of his majesty.

2:11 The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of
men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that
day.

2:12 For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is
proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be
brought low: 2:13 And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high
and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan, 2:14 And upon all the
high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up, 2:15 And
upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall, 2:16 And upon all
the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures.

2:17 And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness
of men shall be made low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that
day.

2:18 And the idols he shall utterly abolish.

2:19 And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves
of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty,
when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.

2:20 In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols
of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles
and to the bats; 2:21 To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the
tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of
his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.

2:22 Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein
is he to be accounted of ?  3:1 For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of
hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the
staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water.

3:2 The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet,
and the prudent, and the ancient, 3:3 The captain of fifty, and the
honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the
eloquent orator.

3:4 And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule
over them.

3:5 And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every
one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against
the ancient, and the base against the honourable.

3:6 When a man shall take hold of his brother of the house of his
father, saying, Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler, and let this
ruin be under thy hand: 3:7 In that day shall he swear, saying, I will
not be an healer; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: make
me not a ruler of the people.

3:8 For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue
and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his
glory.

3:9 The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they
declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for
they have rewarded evil unto themselves.

3:10 Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they
shall eat the fruit of their doings.

3:11 Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of
his hands shall be given him.

3:12 As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule
over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and
destroy the way of thy paths.

3:13 The LORD standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people.

3:14 The LORD will enter into judgment with the ancients of his
people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard;
the spoil of the poor is in your houses.

3:15 What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the
faces of the poor? saith the Lord GOD of hosts.

3:16 Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are
haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking
and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: 3:17
Therefore the LORD will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the
daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts.

3:18 In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling
ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires
like the moon, 3:19 The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers,
3:20 The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands,
and the tablets, and the earrings, 3:21 The rings, and nose jewels,
3:22 The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the
wimples, and the crisping pins, 3:23 The glasses, and the fine linen,
and the hoods, and the vails.

3:24 And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there
shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well
set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth;
and burning instead of beauty.

3:25 Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.

3:26 And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate
shall sit upon the ground.

4:1 And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We
will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be
called by thy name, to take away our reproach.

4:2 In that day shall the branch of the LORD be beautiful and
glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for
them that are escaped of Israel.

4:3 And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he
that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that
is written among the living in Jerusalem: 4:4 When the Lord shall have
washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged
the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of
judgment, and by the spirit of burning.

4:5 And the LORD will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion,
and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of
a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence.

4:6 And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the day time from
the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and
from rain.

5:1 Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching
his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:
5:2 And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted
it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and
also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring
forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.

5:3 And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I
pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard.

5:4 What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not
done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth
grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?  5:5 And now go to; I will tell
you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof,
and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it
shall be trodden down: 5:6 And I will lay it waste: it shall not be
pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will
also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.

5:7 For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and
the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but
behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.

5:8 Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field,
till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of
the earth!  5:9 In mine ears said the LORD of hosts, Of a truth many
houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant.

5:10 Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of
an homer shall yield an ephah.

5:11 Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may
follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame
them!  5:12 And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and
wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD,
neither consider the operation of his hands.

5:13 Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no
knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude
dried up with thirst.

5:14 Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth
without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp,
and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.

5:15 And the mean man shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall
be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled: 5:16 But the
LORD of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God that is holy shall
be sanctified in righteousness.

5:17 Then shall the lambs feed after their manner, and the waste
places of the fat ones shall strangers eat.

5:18 Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as
it were with a cart rope: 5:19 That say, Let him make speed, and
hasten his work, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy
One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it!  5:20 Woe unto
them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light,
and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for
bitter!  5:21 Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and
prudent in their own sight!  5:22 Woe unto them that are mighty to
drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink: 5:23 Which
justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the
righteous from him!  5:24 Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble,
and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as
rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have
cast away the law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the word of the
Holy One of Israel.

5:25 Therefore is the anger of the LORD kindled against his people,
and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten
them: and the hills did tremble, and their carcases were torn in the
midst of the streets.

For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched
out still.

5:26 And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will
hiss unto them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they shall come
with speed swiftly: 5:27 None shall be weary nor stumble among them;
none shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins
be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes be broken: 5:28 Whose arrows
are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses' hoofs shall be
counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind: 5:29 Their
roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions: yea,
they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away
safe, and none shall deliver it.

5:30 And in that day they shall roar against them like the roaring of
the sea: and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow,
and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.

6:1 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon
a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

6:2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain
he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with
twain he did fly.

6:3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the
LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

6:4 And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried,
and the house was filled with smoke.

6:5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of
unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips:
for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.

6:6 Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his
hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: 6:7 And he
laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and
thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

6:8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and
who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

6:9 And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but
understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

6:10 Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and
shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their
ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

6:11 Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be
wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be
utterly desolate, 6:12 And the LORD have removed men far away, and
there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.

6:13 But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be
eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when
they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance
thereof.

7:1 And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son
of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the
son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war
against it, but could not prevail against it.

7:2 And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate
with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as
the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.

7:3 Then said the LORD unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou,
and Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool
in the highway of the fuller's field; 7:4 And say unto him, Take heed,
and be quiet; fear not, neither be fainthearted for the two tails of
these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria,
and of the son of Remaliah.

7:5 Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have taken evil
counsel against thee, saying, 7:6 Let us go up against Judah, and vex
it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the
midst of it, even the son of Tabeal: 7:7 Thus saith the Lord GOD, It
shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass.

7:8 For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is
Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken,
that it be not a people.

7:9 And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is
Remaliah's son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be
established.

7:10 Moreover the LORD spake again unto Ahaz, saying, 7:11 Ask thee a
sign of the LORD thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height
above.

7:12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD.

7:13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing
for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also?  7:14 Therefore
the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall
conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

7:15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the
evil, and choose the good.

7:16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose
the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her
kings.

7:17 The LORD shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy
father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim
departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria.

7:18 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall hiss
for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and
for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.

7:19 And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate
valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon
all bushes.

7:20 In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired,
namely, by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the head,
and the hair of the feet: and it shall also consume the beard.

7:21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a
young cow, and two sheep; 7:22 And it shall come to pass, for the
abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter
and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land.

7:23 And it shall come to pass in that day, that every place shall be,
where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings, it shall
even be for briers and thorns.

7:24 With arrows and with bows shall men come thither; because all the
land shall become briers and thorns.

7:25 And on all hills that shall be digged with the mattock, there
shall not come thither the fear of briers and thorns: but it shall be
for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of lesser cattle.

8:1 Moreover the LORD said unto me, Take thee a great roll, and write
in it with a man's pen concerning Mahershalalhashbaz.

8:2 And I took unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest,
and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah.

8:3 And I went unto the prophetess; and she conceived, and bare a son.

Then said the LORD to me, Call his name Mahershalalhashbaz.

8:4 For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and
my mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be
taken away before the king of Assyria.

8:5 The LORD spake also unto me again, saying, 8:6 Forasmuch as this
people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in
Rezin and Remaliah's son; 8:7 Now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth
up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king
of Assyria, and all his glory: and he shall come up over all his
channels, and go over all his banks: 8:8 And he shall pass through
Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck;
and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy
land, O Immanuel.

8:9 Associate yourselves, O ye people, and ye shall be broken in
pieces; and give ear, all ye of far countries: gird yourselves, and ye
shall be broken in pieces; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in
pieces.

8:10 Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the
word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us.

8:11 For the LORD spake thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed
me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, 8:12 Say
ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A
confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid.

8:13 Sanctify the LORD of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and
let him be your dread.

8:14 And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and
for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for
a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

8:15 And many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and
be snared, and be taken.

8:16 Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples.

8:17 And I will wait upon the LORD, that hideth his face from the
house of Jacob, and I will look for him.

8:18 Behold, I and the children whom the LORD hath given me are for
signs and for wonders in Israel from the LORD of hosts, which dwelleth
in mount Zion.

8:19 And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have
familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should
not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?  8:20 To
the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this
word, it is because there is no light in them.

8:21 And they shall pass through it, hardly bestead and hungry: and it
shall come to pass, that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret
themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward.

8:22 And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and
darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.

9:1 Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation,
when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the
land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the
way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations.

9:2 The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they
that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the
light shined.

9:3 Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they
joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice
when they divide the spoil.

9:4 For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his
shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.

9:5 For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and
garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of
fire.

9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the
government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The
Prince of Peace.

9:7 Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end,
upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to
establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for
ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.

9:8 The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel.

9:9 And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitant of
Samaria, that say in the pride and stoutness of heart, 9:10 The bricks
are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are
cut down, but we will change them into cedars.

9:11 Therefore the LORD shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against
him, and join his enemies together; 9:12 The Syrians before, and the
Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For
all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out
still.

9:13 For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do
they seek the LORD of hosts.

9:14 Therefore the LORD will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch
and rush, in one day.

9:15 The ancient and honourable, he is the head; and the prophet that
teacheth lies, he is the tail.

9:16 For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that
are led of them are destroyed.

9:17 Therefore the LORD shall have no joy in their young men, neither
shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows: for every one is an
hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all
this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out
still.

9:18 For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers
and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they
shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke.

9:19 Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts is the land darkened, and
the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his
brother.

9:20 And he shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he
shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they
shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm: 9:21 Manasseh, Ephraim;
and Ephraim, Manasseh: and they together shall be against Judah. For
all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out
still.

10:1 Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write
grievousness which they have prescribed; 10:2 To turn aside the needy
from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people,
that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless!
10:3 And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the
desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help?
and where will ye leave your glory?  10:4 Without me they shall bow
down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain. For all
this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out
still.

10:5 O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is
mine indignation.

10:6 I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the
people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to
take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.

10:7 Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but
it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few.

10:8 For he saith, Are not my princes altogether kings?  10:9 Is not
Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as
Damascus?  10:10 As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, and
whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria; 10:11
Shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to
Jerusalem and her idols?  10:12 Wherefore it shall come to pass, that
when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on
Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of
Assyria, and the glory of his high looks.

10:13 For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by
my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the
people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the
inhabitants like a valiant man: 10:14 And my hand hath found as a nest
the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left,
have I gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved the wing,
or opened the mouth, or peeped.

10:15 Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or
shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the
rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the
staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood.

10:16 Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat
ones leanness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the
burning of a fire.

10:17 And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One
for a flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in
one day; 10:18 And shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his
fruitful field, both soul and body: and they shall be as when a
standard-bearer fainteth.

10:19 And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a
child may write them.

10:20 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of
Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more
again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the LORD, the
Holy One of Israel, in truth.

10:21 The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the
mighty God.

10:22 For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a
remnant of them shall return: the consumption decreed shall overflow
with righteousness.

10:23 For the Lord GOD of hosts shall make a consumption, even
determined, in the midst of all the land.

10:24 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD of hosts, O my people that
dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian: he shall smite thee
with a rod, and shall lift up his staff against thee, after the manner
of Egypt.

10:25 For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall cease,
and mine anger in their destruction.

10:26 And the LORD of hosts shall stir up a scourge for him according
to the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb: and as his rod was
upon the sea, so shall he lift it up after the manner of Egypt.

10:27 And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be
taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and
the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.

10:28 He is come to Aiath, he is passed to Migron; at Michmash he hath
laid up his carriages: 10:29 They are gone over the passage: they have
taken up their lodging at Geba; Ramah is afraid; Gibeah of Saul is
fled.

10:30 Lift up thy voice, O daughter of Gallim: cause it to be heard
unto Laish, O poor Anathoth.

10:31 Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves
to flee.

10:32 As yet shall he remain at Nob that day: he shall shake his hand
against the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.

10:33 Behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, shall lop the bough with
terror: and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the
haughty shall be humbled.

10:34 And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and
Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one.

11:1 And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a
Branch shall grow out of his roots: 11:2 And the spirit of the LORD
shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the
spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear
of the LORD; 11:3 And shall make him of quick understanding in the
fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes,
neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: 11:4 But with
righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the
meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth: with the rod of his
mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.

11:5 And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and
faithfulness the girdle of his reins.

11:6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall
lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling
together; and a little child shall lead them.

11:7 And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie
down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

11:8 And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the
weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den.

11:9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the
earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover
the sea.

11:10 And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall
stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and
his rest shall be glorious.

11:11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set
his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people,
which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros,
and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and
from the islands of the sea.

11:12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall
assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of
Judah from the four corners of the earth.

11:13 The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of
Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall
not vex Ephraim.

11:14 But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward
the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay
their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey
them.

11:15 And the LORD shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian
sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river,
and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod.

11:16 And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people,
which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day
that he came up out of the land of Egypt.

12:1 And in that day thou shalt say, O LORD, I will praise thee:
though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou
comfortedst me.

12:2 Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for
the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my
salvation.

12:3 Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of
salvation.

12:4 And in that day shall ye say, Praise the LORD, call upon his
name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name
is exalted.

12:5 Sing unto the LORD; for he hath done excellent things: this is
known in all the earth.

12:6 Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy
One of Israel in the midst of thee.

13:1 The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see.

13:2 Lift ye up a banner upon the high mountain, exalt the voice unto
them, shake the hand, that they may go into the gates of the nobles.

13:3 I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty
ones for mine anger, even them that rejoice in my highness.

13:4 The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great
people; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered
together: the LORD of hosts mustereth the host of the battle.

13:5 They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the
LORD, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land.

13:6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a
destruction from the Almighty.

13:7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall
melt: 13:8 And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold
of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall
be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.

13:9 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and
fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the
sinners thereof out of it.

13:10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not
give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and
the moon shall not cause her light to shine.

13:11 And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for
their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease,
and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.

13:12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than
the golden wedge of Ophir.

13:13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove
out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of
his fierce anger.

13:14 And it shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep that no man
taketh up: they shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every
one into his own land.

13:15 Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one
that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword.

13:16 Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes;
their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.

13:17 Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not
regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it.

13:18 Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they
shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eyes shall not
spare children.

13:19 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees'
excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

13:20 It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from
generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there;
neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

13:21 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses
shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and
satyrs shall dance there.

13:22 And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate
houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to
come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

14:1 For the LORD will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose
Israel, and set them in their own land: and the strangers shall be
joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.

14:2 And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place:
and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the LORD for
servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose
captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.

14:3 And it shall come to pass in the day that the LORD shall give
thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard
bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, 14:4 That thou shalt take up
this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the
oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!  14:5 The LORD hath broken
the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers.

14:6 He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that
ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth.

14:7 The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into
singing.

14:8 Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon,
saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us.

14:9 Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming:
it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the
earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the
nations.

14:10 All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become
weak as we? art thou become like unto us?  14:11 Thy pomp is brought
down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread
under thee, and the worms cover thee.

14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
14:13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I
will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the
mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: 14:14 I will
ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

14:15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

14:16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider
thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did
shake kingdoms; 14:17 That made the world as a wilderness, and
destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his
prisoners?  14:18 All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie
in glory, every one in his own house.

14:19 But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch,
and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a
sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden
under feet.

14:20 Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast
destroyed thy land, and slain thy people: the seed of evildoers shall
never be renowned.

14:21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their
fathers; that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the
face of the world with cities.

14:22 For I will rise up against them, saith the LORD of hosts, and
cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, saith
the LORD.

14:23 I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of
water: and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the
LORD of hosts.

14:24 The LORD of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought,
so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand:
14:25 That I will break the Assyrian in my land, and upon my mountains
tread him under foot: then shall his yoke depart from off them, and
his burden depart from off their shoulders.

14:26 This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth: and
this is the hand that is stretched out upon all the nations.

14:27 For the LORD of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it?
and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?  14:28 In
the year that king Ahaz died was this burden.

14:29 Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that
smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a
cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent.

14:30 And the firstborn of the poor shall feed, and the needy shall
lie down in safety: and I will kill thy root with famine, and he shall
slay thy remnant.

14:31 Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou, whole Palestina, art dissolved:
for there shall come from the north a smoke, and none shall be alone
in his appointed times.

14:32 What shall one then answer the messengers of the nation? That
the LORD hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall trust in
it.

15:1 The burden of Moab. Because in the night Ar of Moab is laid
waste, and brought to silence; because in the night Kir of Moab is
laid waste, and brought to silence; 15:2 He is gone up to Bajith, and
to Dibon, the high places, to weep: Moab shall howl over Nebo, and
over Medeba: on all their heads shall be baldness, and every beard cut
off.

15:3 In their streets they shall gird themselves with sackcloth: on
the tops of their houses, and in their streets, every one shall howl,
weeping abundantly.

15:4 And Heshbon shall cry, and Elealeh: their voice shall be heard
even unto Jahaz: therefore the armed soldiers of Moab shall cry out;
his life shall be grievous unto him.

15:5 My heart shall cry out for Moab; his fugitives shall flee unto
Zoar, an heifer of three years old: for by the mounting up of Luhith
with weeping shall they go it up; for in the way of Horonaim they
shall raise up a cry of destruction.

15:6 For the waters of Nimrim shall be desolate: for the hay is
withered away, the grass faileth, there is no green thing.

15:7 Therefore the abundance they have gotten, and that which they
have laid up, shall they carry away to the brook of the willows.

15:8 For the cry is gone round about the borders of Moab; the howling
thereof unto Eglaim, and the howling thereof unto Beerelim.

15:9 For the waters of Dimon shall be full of blood: for I will bring
more upon Dimon, lions upon him that escapeth of Moab, and upon the
remnant of the land.

16:1 Send ye the lamb to the ruler of the land from Sela to the
wilderness, unto the mount of the daughter of Zion.

16:2 For it shall be, that, as a wandering bird cast out of the nest,
so the daughters of Moab shall be at the fords of Arnon.

16:3 Take counsel, execute judgment; make thy shadow as the night in
the midst of the noonday; hide the outcasts; bewray not him that
wandereth.

16:4 Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab; be thou a covert to them
from the face of the spoiler: for the extortioner is at an end, the
spoiler ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of the land.

16:5 And in mercy shall the throne be established: and he shall sit
upon it in truth in the tabernacle of David, judging, and seeking
judgment, and hasting righteousness.

16:6 We have heard of the pride of Moab; he is very proud: even of his
haughtiness, and his pride, and his wrath: but his lies shall not be
so.

16:7 Therefore shall Moab howl for Moab, every one shall howl: for the
foundations of Kirhareseth shall ye mourn; surely they are stricken.

16:8 For the fields of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah: the
lords of the heathen have broken down the principal plants thereof,
they are come even unto Jazer, they wandered through the wilderness:
her branches are stretched out, they are gone over the sea.

16:9 Therefore I will bewail with the weeping of Jazer the vine of
Sibmah: I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon, and Elealeh: for
the shouting for thy summer fruits and for thy harvest is fallen.

16:10 And gladness is taken away, and joy out of the plentiful field;
and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither shall there be
shouting: the treaders shall tread out no wine in their presses; I
have made their vintage shouting to cease.

16:11 Wherefore my bowels shall sound like an harp for Moab, and mine
inward parts for Kirharesh.

16:12 And it shall come to pass, when it is seen that Moab is weary on
the high place, that he shall come to his sanctuary to pray; but he
shall not prevail.

16:13 This is the word that the LORD hath spoken concerning Moab since
that time.

16:14 But now the LORD hath spoken, saying, Within three years, as the
years of an hireling, and the glory of Moab shall be contemned, with
all that great multitude; and the remnant shall be very small and
feeble.

17:1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being
a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.

17:2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which
shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.

17:3 The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from
Damascus, and the remnant of Syria: they shall be as the glory of the
children of Israel, saith the LORD of hosts.

17:4 And in that day it shall come to pass, that the glory of Jacob
shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean.

17:5 And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the corn, and
reapeth the ears with his arm; and it shall be as he that gathereth
ears in the valley of Rephaim.

17:6 Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an
olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough,
four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the LORD
God of Israel.

17:7 At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall
have respect to the Holy One of Israel.

17:8 And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands,
neither shall respect that which his fingers have made, either the
groves, or the images.

17:9 In that day shall his strong cities be as a forsaken bough, and
an uppermost branch, which they left because of the children of
Israel: and there shall be desolation.

17:10 Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast
not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou
plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips: 17:11 In
the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt
thou make thy seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the
day of grief and of desperate sorrow.

17:12 Woe to the multitude of many people, which make a noise like the
noise of the seas; and to the rushing of nations, that make a rushing
like the rushing of mighty waters!  17:13 The nations shall rush like
the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall
flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before
the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.

17:14 And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is
not.

This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that
rob us.

18:1 Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers
of Ethiopia: 18:2 That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels
of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a
nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning
hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers
have spoiled!  18:3 All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on
the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and
when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye.

18:4 For so the LORD said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will
consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs, and like a
cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.

18:5 For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour
grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the sprigs with
pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches.

18:6 They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, and
to the beasts of the earth: and the fowls shall summer upon them, and
all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.

18:7 In that time shall the present be brought unto the LORD of hosts
of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from
their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden under foot,
whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the
LORD of hosts, the mount Zion.

19:1 The burden of Egypt. Behold, the LORD rideth upon a swift cloud,
and shall come into Egypt: and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at
his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it.

19:2 And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they
shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his
neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom.

19:3 And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof; and I
will destroy the counsel thereof: and they shall seek to the idols,
and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to
the wizards.

19:4 And the Egyptians will I give over into the hand of a cruel lord;
and a fierce king shall rule over them, saith the Lord, the LORD of
hosts.

19:5 And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be
wasted and dried up.

19:6 And they shall turn the rivers far away; and the brooks of
defence shall be emptied and dried up: the reeds and flags shall
wither.

19:7 The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and
every thing sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be
no more.

19:8 The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into
the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters
shall languish.

19:9 Moreover they that work in fine flax, and they that weave
networks, shall be confounded.

19:10 And they shall be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make
sluices and ponds for fish.

19:11 Surely the princes of Zoan are fools, the counsel of the wise
counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish: how say ye unto Pharaoh, I
am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings?  19:12 Where are
they? where are thy wise men? and let them tell thee now, and let them
know what the LORD of hosts hath purposed upon Egypt.

19:13 The princes of Zoan are become fools, the princes of Noph are
deceived; they have also seduced Egypt, even they that are the stay of
the tribes thereof.

19:14 The LORD hath mingled a perverse spirit in the midst thereof:
and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken
man staggereth in his vomit.

19:15 Neither shall there be any work for Egypt, which the head or
tail, branch or rush, may do.

19:16 In that day shall Egypt be like unto women: and it shall be
afraid and fear because of the shaking of the hand of the LORD of
hosts, which he shaketh over it.

19:17 And the land of Judah shall be a terror unto Egypt, every one
that maketh mention thereof shall be afraid in himself, because of the
counsel of the LORD of hosts, which he hath determined against it.

19:18 In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the
language of Canaan, and swear to the LORD of hosts; one shall be
called, The city of destruction.

19:19 In that day shall there be an altar to the LORD in the midst of
the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the LORD.

19:20 And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the LORD of
hosts in the land of Egypt: for they shall cry unto the LORD because
of the oppressors, and he shall send them a saviour, and a great one,
and he shall deliver them.

19:21 And the LORD shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall
know the LORD in that day, and shall do sacrifice and oblation; yea,
they shall vow a vow unto the LORD, and perform it.

19:22 And the LORD shall smite Egypt: he shall smite and heal it: and
they shall return even to the LORD, and he shall be intreated of them,
and shall heal them.

19:23 In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria,
and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria,
and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.

19:24 In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with
Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: 19:25 Whom the LORD
of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria
the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.

20:1 In the year that Tartan came unto Ashdod, (when Sargon the king
of Assyria sent him,) and fought against Ashdod, and took it; 20:2 At
the same time spake the LORD by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and
loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy
foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot.

20:3 And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked
and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon
Ethiopia; 20:4 So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians
prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and
barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.

20:5 And they shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia their
expectation, and of Egypt their glory.

20:6 And the inhabitant of this isle shall say in that day, Behold,
such is our expectation, whither we flee for help to be delivered from
the king of Assyria: and how shall we escape?  21:1 The burden of the
desert of the sea. As whirlwinds in the south pass through; so it
cometh from the desert, from a terrible land.

21:2 A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer
dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam:
besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease.

21:3 Therefore are my loins filled with pain: pangs have taken hold
upon me, as the pangs of a woman that travaileth: I was bowed down at
the hearing of it; I was dismayed at the seeing of it.

21:4 My heart panted, fearfulness affrighted me: the night of my
pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me.

21:5 Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise, ye
princes, and anoint the shield.

21:6 For thus hath the LORD said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him
declare what he seeth.

21:7 And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of
asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much
heed: 21:8 And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand continually upon the
watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights: 21:9
And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen.

And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the
graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.

21:10 O my threshing, and the corn of my floor: that which I have
heard of the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto
you.

21:11 The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman,
what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?  21:12 The watchman
said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will enquire,
enquire ye: return, come.

21:13 The burden upon Arabia. In the forest in Arabia shall ye lodge,
O ye travelling companies of Dedanim.

21:14 The inhabitants of the land of Tema brought water to him that
was thirsty, they prevented with their bread him that fled.

21:15 For they fled from the swords, from the drawn sword, and from
the bent bow, and from the grievousness of war.

21:16 For thus hath the LORD said unto me, Within a year, according to
the years of an hireling, and all the glory of Kedar shall fail: 21:17
And the residue of the number of archers, the mighty men of the
children of Kedar, shall be diminished: for the LORD God of Israel
hath spoken it.

22:1 The burden of the valley of vision. What aileth thee now, that
thou art wholly gone up to the housetops?  22:2 Thou that art full of
stirs, a tumultuous city, joyous city: thy slain men are not slain
with the sword, nor dead in battle.

22:3 All thy rulers are fled together, they are bound by the archers:
all that are found in thee are bound together, which have fled from
far.

22:4 Therefore said I, Look away from me; I will weep bitterly, labour
not to comfort me, because of the spoiling of the daughter of my
people.

22:5 For it is a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of
perplexity by the Lord GOD of hosts in the valley of vision, breaking
down the walls, and of crying to the mountains.

22:6 And Elam bare the quiver with chariots of men and horsemen, and
Kir uncovered the shield.

22:7 And it shall come to pass, that thy choicest valleys shall be
full of chariots, and the horsemen shall set themselves in array at
the gate.

22:8 And he discovered the covering of Judah, and thou didst look in
that day to the armour of the house of the forest.

22:9 Ye have seen also the breaches of the city of David, that they
are many: and ye gathered together the waters of the lower pool.

22:10 And ye have numbered the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses
have ye broken down to fortify the wall.

22:11 Ye made also a ditch between the two walls for the water of the
old pool: but ye have not looked unto the maker thereof, neither had
respect unto him that fashioned it long ago.

22:12 And in that day did the Lord GOD of hosts call to weeping, and
to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth: 22:13 And
behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating
flesh, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink; for to morrow we shall
die.

22:14 And it was revealed in mine ears by the LORD of hosts, Surely
this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord
GOD of hosts.

22:15 Thus saith the Lord GOD of hosts, Go, get thee unto this
treasurer, even unto Shebna, which is over the house, and say, 22:16
What hast thou here? and whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewed
thee out a sepulchre here, as he that heweth him out a sepulchre on
high, and that graveth an habitation for himself in a rock?  22:17
Behold, the LORD will carry thee away with a mighty captivity, and
will surely cover thee.

22:18 He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a
large country: there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy
glory shall be the shame of thy lord's house.

22:19 And I will drive thee from thy station, and from thy state shall
he pull thee down.

22:20 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my
servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah: 22:21 And I will clothe him with
thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy
government into his hand: and he shall be a father to the inhabitants
of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah.

22:22 And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder;
so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none
shall open.

22:23 And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be
for a glorious throne to his father's house.

22:24 And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's
house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity,
from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons.

22:25 In that day, saith the LORD of hosts, shall the nail that is
fastened in the sure place be removed, and be cut down, and fall; and
the burden that was upon it shall be cut off: for the LORD hath spoken
it.

23:1 The burden of Tyre. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish; for it is laid
waste, so that there is no house, no entering in: from the land of
Chittim it is revealed to them.

23:2 Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle; thou whom the merchants of
Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished.

23:3 And by great waters the seed of Sihor, the harvest of the river,
is her revenue; and she is a mart of nations.

23:4 Be thou ashamed, O Zidon: for the sea hath spoken, even the
strength of the sea, saying, I travail not, nor bring forth children,
neither do I nourish up young men, nor bring up virgins.

23:5 As at the report concerning Egypt, so shall they be sorely pained
at the report of Tyre.

23:6 Pass ye over to Tarshish; howl, ye inhabitants of the isle.

23:7 Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days? her
own feet shall carry her afar off to sojourn.

23:8 Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the crowning city,
whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of
the earth?  23:9 The LORD of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the
pride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the honourable of
the earth.

23:10 Pass through thy land as a river, O daughter of Tarshish: there
is no more strength.

23:11 He stretched out his hand over the sea, he shook the kingdoms:
the LORD hath given a commandment against the merchant city, to
destroy the strong holds thereof.

23:12 And he said, Thou shalt no more rejoice, O thou oppressed
virgin, daughter of Zidon: arise, pass over to Chittim; there also
shalt thou have no rest.

23:13 Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was not, till the
Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness: they set up
the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof; and he brought
it to ruin.

23:14 Howl, ye ships of Tarshish: for your strength is laid waste.

23:15 And it shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall be
forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king: after the
end of seventy years shall Tyre sing as an harlot.

23:16 Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been
forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be
remembered.

23:17 And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that
the LORD will visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her hire, and shall
commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of
the earth.

23:18 And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the LORD:
it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise shall be
for them that dwell before the LORD, to eat sufficiently, and for
durable clothing.

24:1 Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and
turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.

24:2 And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with
the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her
mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender,
so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of
usury to him.

24:3 The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the
LORD hath spoken this word.

24:4 The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and
fadeth away, the haughty people of the earth do languish.

24:5 The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because
they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the
everlasting covenant.

24:6 Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell
therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are
burned, and few men left.

24:7 The new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth, all the merryhearted
do sigh.

24:8 The mirth of tabrets ceaseth, the noise of them that rejoice
endeth, the joy of the harp ceaseth.

24:9 They shall not drink wine with a song; strong drink shall be
bitter to them that drink it.

24:10 The city of confusion is broken down: every house is shut up,
that no man may come in.

24:11 There is a crying for wine in the streets; all joy is darkened,
the mirth of the land is gone.

24:12 In the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with
destruction.

24:13 When thus it shall be in the midst of the land among the people,
there shall be as the shaking of an olive tree, and as the gleaning
grapes when the vintage is done.

24:14 They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing for the majesty
of the LORD, they shall cry aloud from the sea.

24:15 Wherefore glorify ye the LORD in the fires, even the name of the
LORD God of Israel in the isles of the sea.

24:16 From the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs, even
glory to the righteous. But I said, My leanness, my leanness, woe unto
me! the treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously; yea, the
treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously.

24:17 Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of
the earth.

24:18 And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of
the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the
midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on
high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake.

24:19 The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved,
the earth is moved exceedingly.

24:20 The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be
removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy
upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.

24:21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall
punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of
the earth upon the earth.

24:22 And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered
in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days
shall they be visited.

24:23 Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the
LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before
his ancients gloriously.

25:1 O Lord, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy
name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are
faithfulness and truth.

25:2 For thou hast made of a city an heap; of a defenced city a ruin:
a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built.

25:3 Therefore shall the strong people glorify thee, the city of the
terrible nations shall fear thee.

25:4 For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the
needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the
heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the
wall.

25:5 Thou shalt bring down the noise of strangers, as the heat in a
dry place; even the heat with the shadow of a cloud: the branch of the
terrible ones shall be brought low.

25:6 And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people
a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things
full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.

25:7 And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering
cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations.

25:8 He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe
away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he
take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it.

25:9 And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have
waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited
for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

25:10 For in this mountain shall the hand of the LORD rest, and Moab
shall be trodden down under him, even as straw is trodden down for the
dunghill.

25:11 And he shall spread forth his hands in the midst of them, as he
that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim: and he shall bring
down their pride together with the spoils of their hands.

25:12 And the fortress of the high fort of thy walls shall he bring
down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even to the dust.

26:1 In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have
a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks.

26:2 Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the
truth may enter in.

26:3 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on
thee: because he trusteth in thee.

26:4 Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is
everlasting strength: 26:5 For he bringeth down them that dwell on
high; the lofty city, he layeth it low; he layeth it low, even to the
ground; he bringeth it even to the dust.

26:6 The foot shall tread it down, even the feet of the poor, and the
steps of the needy.

26:7 The way of the just is uprightness: thou, most upright, dost
weigh the path of the just.

26:8 Yea, in the way of thy judgments, O LORD, have we waited for
thee; the desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of
thee.

26:9 With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my
spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in
the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.

26:10 Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn
righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and
will not behold the majesty of the LORD.

26:11 LORD, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see: but they
shall see, and be ashamed for their envy at the people; yea, the fire
of thine enemies shall devour them.

26:12 LORD, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for thou also hast wrought
all our works in us.

26:13 O LORD our God, other lords beside thee have had dominion over
us: but by thee only will we make mention of thy name.

26:14 They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they
shall not rise: therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and
made all their memory to perish.

26:15 Thou hast increased the nation, O LORD, thou hast increased the
nation: thou art glorified: thou hadst removed it far unto all the
ends of the earth.

26:16 LORD, in trouble have they visited thee, they poured out a
prayer when thy chastening was upon them.

26:17 Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her
delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in
thy sight, O LORD.

26:18 We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it
were brought forth wind; we have not wrought any deliverance in the
earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen.

26:19 Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they
arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the
dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.

26:20 Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy
doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until
the indignation be overpast.

26:21 For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the
inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall
disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.

27:1 In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword
shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that
crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.

27:2 In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine.

27:3 I the LORD do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any
hurt it, I will keep it night and day.

27:4 Fury is not in me: who would set the briers and thorns against me
in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together.

27:5 Or let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with
me; and he shall make peace with me.

27:6 He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall
blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.

27:7 Hath he smitten him, as he smote those that smote him? or is he
slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by him?  27:8
In measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it: he
stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind.

27:9 By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this
is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones
of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and
images shall not stand up.

27:10 Yet the defenced city shall be desolate, and the habitation
forsaken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and
there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof.

27:11 When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off:
the women come, and set them on fire: for it is a people of no
understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on
them, and he that formed them will shew them no favour.

27:12 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall beat
off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye
shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel.

27:13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet
shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the
land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall
worship the LORD in the holy mount at Jerusalem.

28:1 Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose
glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat
valleys of them that are overcome with wine!  28:2 Behold, the Lord
hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a
destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast
down to the earth with the hand.

28:3 The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden
under feet: 28:4 And the glorious beauty, which is on the head of the
fat valley, shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before
the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet
in his hand he eateth it up.

28:5 In that day shall the LORD of hosts be for a crown of glory, and
for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people, 28:6 And for a
spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and for strength
to them that turn the battle to the gate.

28:7 But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink
are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through
strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way
through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.

28:8 For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is
no place clean.

28:9 Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to
understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn
from the breasts.

28:10 For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line
upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: 28:11
For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this
people.

28:12 To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the
weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.

28:13 But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept,
precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little,
and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be
broken, and snared, and taken.

28:14 Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men, that rule
this people which is in Jerusalem.

28:15 Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and
with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass
through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge,
and under falsehood have we hid ourselves: 28:16 Therefore thus saith
the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried
stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth
shall not make haste.

28:17 Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the
plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the
waters shall overflow the hiding place.

28:18 And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your
agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge
shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.

28:19 From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you: for morning
by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night: and it shall be a
vexation only to understand the report.

28:20 For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on
it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.

28:21 For the LORD shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be
wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange
work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act.

28:22 Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong:
for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a consumption, even
determined upon the whole earth.

28:23 Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech.

28:24 Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the
clods of his ground?  28:25 When he hath made plain the face thereof,
doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast
in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their
place?  28:26 For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth
teach him.

28:27 For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument,
neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches
are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.

28:28 Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it,
nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his
horsemen.

28:29 This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is
wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.

29:1 Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt! add ye year
to year; let them kill sacrifices.

29:2 Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be heaviness and
sorrow: and it shall be unto me as Ariel.

29:3 And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege
against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee.

29:4 And thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the
ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice
shall be, as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground,
and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust.

29:5 Moreover the multitude of thy strangers shall be like small dust,
and the multitude of the terrible ones shall be as chaff that passeth
away: yea, it shall be at an instant suddenly.

29:6 Thou shalt be visited of the LORD of hosts with thunder, and with
earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of
devouring fire.

29:7 And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel,
even all that fight against her and her munition, and that distress
her, shall be as a dream of a night vision.

29:8 It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he
eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty
man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold,
he is faint, and his soul hath appetite: so shall the multitude of all
the nations be, that fight against mount Zion.

29:9 Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are
drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.

29:10 For the LORD hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep,
and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers
hath he covered.

29:11 And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book
that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read
this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed: 29:12 And
the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I
pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned.

29:13 Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me
with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed
their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the
precept of men: 29:14 Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a
marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a
wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the
understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.

29:15 Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the
LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and
who knoweth us?  29:16 Surely your turning of things upside down shall
be esteemed as the potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that
made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that
framed it, He had no understanding?  29:17 Is it not yet a very little
while, and Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the
fruitful field shall be esteemed as a forest?  29:18 And in that day
shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind
shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness.

29:19 The meek also shall increase their joy in the LORD, and the poor
among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.

29:20 For the terrible one is brought to nought, and the scorner is
consumed, and all that watch for iniquity are cut off: 29:21 That make
a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth
in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of nought.

29:22 Therefore thus saith the LORD, who redeemed Abraham, concerning
the house of Jacob, Jacob shall not now be ashamed, neither shall his
face now wax pale.

29:23 But when he seeth his children, the work of mine hands, in the
midst of him, they shall sanctify my name, and sanctify the Holy One
of Jacob, and shall fear the God of Israel.

29:24 They also that erred in spirit shall come to understanding, and
they that murmured shall learn doctrine.

30:1 Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take
counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my
spirit, that they may add sin to sin: 30:2 That walk to go down into
Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the
strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt!  30:3
Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust
in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.

30:4 For his princes were at Zoan, and his ambassadors came to Hanes.

30:5 They were all ashamed of a people that could not profit them, nor
be an help nor profit, but a shame, and also a reproach.

30:6 The burden of the beasts of the south: into the land of trouble
and anguish, from whence come the young and old lion, the viper and
fiery flying serpent, they will carry their riches upon the shoulders
of young asses, and their treasures upon the bunches of camels, to a
people that shall not profit them.

30:7 For the Egyptians shall help in vain, and to no purpose:
therefore have I cried concerning this, Their strength is to sit
still.

30:8 Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book,
that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever: 30:9 That this
is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear
the law of the LORD: 30:10 Which say to the seers, See not; and to the
prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth
things, prophesy deceits: 30:11 Get you out of the way, turn aside out
of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.

30:12 Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel, Because ye despise
this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon:
30:13 Therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to
fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at
an instant.

30:14 And he shall break it as the breaking of the potters' vessel
that is broken in pieces; he shall not spare: so that there shall not
be found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth,
or to take water withal out of the pit.

30:15 For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In
returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence
shall be your strength: and ye would not.

30:16 But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses; therefore shall
ye flee: and, We will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that
pursue you be swift.

30:17 One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of
five shall ye flee: till ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a
mountain, and as an ensign on an hill.

30:18 And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto
you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon
you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait
for him.

30:19 For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: thou shalt weep
no more: he will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry;
when he shall hear it, he will answer thee.

30:20 And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the
water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a
corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: 30:21 And
thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way,
walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the
left.

30:22 Ye shall defile also the covering of thy graven images of
silver, and the ornament of thy molten images of gold: thou shalt cast
them away as a menstruous cloth; thou shalt say unto it, Get thee
hence.

30:23 Then shall he give the rain of thy seed, that thou shalt sow the
ground withal; and bread of the increase of the earth, and it shall be
fat and plenteous: in that day shall thy cattle feed in large
pastures.

30:24 The oxen likewise and the young asses that ear the ground shall
eat clean provender, which hath been winnowed with the shovel and with
the fan.

30:25 And there shall be upon every high mountain, and upon every high
hill, rivers and streams of waters in the day of the great slaughter,
when the towers fall.

30:26 Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun,
and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven
days, in the day that the LORD bindeth up the breach of his people,
and healeth the stroke of their wound.

30:27 Behold, the name of the LORD cometh from far, burning with his
anger, and the burden thereof is heavy: his lips are full of
indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire: 30:28 And his breath,
as an overflowing stream, shall reach to the midst of the neck, to
sift the nations with the sieve of vanity: and there shall be a bridle
in the jaws of the people, causing them to err.

30:29 Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is
kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come
into the mountain of the LORD, to the mighty One of Israel.

30:30 And the LORD shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and
shall shew the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his
anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and
tempest, and hailstones.

30:31 For through the voice of the LORD shall the Assyrian be beaten
down, which smote with a rod.

30:32 And in every place where the grounded staff shall pass, which
the LORD shall lay upon him, it shall be with tabrets and harps: and
in battles of shaking will he fight with it.

30:33 For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared;
he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much
wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle
it.

31:1 Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses,
and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because
they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel,
neither seek the LORD!  31:2 Yet he also is wise, and will bring evil,
and will not call back his words: but will arise against the house of
the evildoers, and against the help of them that work iniquity.

31:3 Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh,
and not spirit. When the LORD shall stretch out his hand, both he that
helpeth shall fall, and he that is holpen shall fall down, and they
all shall fail together.

31:4 For thus hath the LORD spoken unto me, Like as the lion and the
young lion roaring on his prey, when a multitude of shepherds is
called forth against him, he will not be afraid of their voice, nor
abase himself for the noise of them: so shall the LORD of hosts come
down to fight for mount Zion, and for the hill thereof.

31:5 As birds flying, so will the LORD of hosts defend Jerusalem;
defending also he will deliver it; and passing over he will preserve
it.

31:6 Turn ye unto him from whom the children of Israel have deeply
revolted.

31:7 For in that day every man shall cast away his idols of silver,
and his idols of gold, which your own hands have made unto you for a
sin.

31:8 Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man;
and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him: but he shall flee
from the sword, and his young men shall be discomfited.

31:9 And he shall pass over to his strong hold for fear, and his
princes shall be afraid of the ensign, saith the LORD, whose fire is
in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem.

32:1 Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall
rule in judgment.

32:2 And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert
from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of
a great rock in a weary land.

32:3 And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of
them that hear shall hearken.

32:4 The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the
tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly.

32:5 The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl
said to be bountiful.

32:6 For the vile person will speak villany, and his heart will work
iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the LORD,
to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of
the thirsty to fail.

32:7 The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked
devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy
speaketh right.

32:8 But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things
shall he stand.

32:9 Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless
daughters; give ear unto my speech.

32:10 Many days and years shall ye be troubled, ye careless women: for
the vintage shall fail, the gathering shall not come.

32:11 Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless
ones: strip you, and make you bare, and gird sackcloth upon your
loins.

32:12 They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for
the fruitful vine.

32:13 Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers; yea,
upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city: 32:14 Because the
palaces shall be forsaken; the multitude of the city shall be left;
the forts and towers shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses,
a pasture of flocks; 32:15 Until the spirit be poured upon us from on
high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field
be counted for a forest.

32:16 Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness
remain in the fruitful field.

32:17 And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of
righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.

32:18 And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure
dwellings, and in quiet resting places; 32:19 When it shall hail,
coming down on the forest; and the city shall be low in a low place.

32:20 Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, that send forth
thither the feet of the ox and the ass.

33:1 Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest
treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee! when thou
shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled; and when thou shalt make
an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee.

33:2 O LORD, be gracious unto us; we have waited for thee: be thou
their arm every morning, our salvation also in the time of trouble.

33:3 At the noise of the tumult the people fled; at the lifting up of
thyself the nations were scattered.

33:4 And your spoil shall be gathered like the gathering of the
caterpiller: as the running to and fro of locusts shall he run upon
them.

33:5 The LORD is exalted; for he dwelleth on high: he hath filled Zion
with judgment and righteousness.

33:6 And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, and
strength of salvation: the fear of the LORD is his treasure.

33:7 Behold, their valiant ones shall cry without: the ambassadors of
peace shall weep bitterly.

33:8 The highways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceaseth: he hath broken
the covenant, he hath despised the cities, he regardeth no man.

33:9 The earth mourneth and languisheth: Lebanon is ashamed and hewn
down: Sharon is like a wilderness; and Bashan and Carmel shake off
their fruits.

33:10 Now will I rise, saith the LORD; now will I be exalted; now will
I lift up myself.

33:11 Ye shall conceive chaff, ye shall bring forth stubble: your
breath, as fire, shall devour you.

33:12 And the people shall be as the burnings of lime: as thorns cut
up shall they be burned in the fire.

33:13 Hear, ye that are far off, what I have done; and, ye that are
near, acknowledge my might.

33:14 The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the
hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who
among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?  33:15 He that walketh
righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of
oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that
stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from
seeing evil; 33:16 He shall dwell on high: his place of defence shall
be the munitions of rocks: bread shall be given him; his waters shall
be sure.

33:17 Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall behold
the land that is very far off.

33:18 Thine heart shall meditate terror. Where is the scribe? where is
the receiver? where is he that counted the towers?  33:19 Thou shalt
not see a fierce people, a people of a deeper speech than thou canst
perceive; of a stammering tongue, that thou canst not understand.

33:20 Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall
see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken
down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither
shall any of the cords thereof be broken.

33:21 But there the glorious LORD will be unto us a place of broad
rivers and streams; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither
shall gallant ship pass thereby.

33:22 For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is
our king; he will save us.

33:23 Thy tacklings are loosed; they could not well strengthen their
mast, they could not spread the sail: then is the prey of a great
spoil divided; the lame take the prey.

33:24 And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that
dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity.

34:1 Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people: let the
earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that
come forth of it.

34:2 For the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury
upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath
delivered them to the slaughter.

34:3 Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up
out of their carcases, and the mountains shall be melted with their
blood.

34:4 And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens
shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall
down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from
the fig tree.

34:5 For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come
down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment.

34:6 The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with
fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the
kidneys of rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great
slaughter in the land of Idumea.

34:7 And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with
the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust
made fat with fatness.

34:8 For it is the day of the LORD's vengeance, and the year of
recompences for the controversy of Zion.

34:9 And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust
thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning
pitch.

34:10 It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall
go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none
shall pass through it for ever and ever.

34:11 But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also
and the raven shall dwell in it: and he shall stretch out upon it the
line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.

34:12 They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none
shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing.

34:13 And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in
the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and
a court for owls.

34:14 The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild
beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the
screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of
rest.

34:15 There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and
gather under her shadow: there shall the vultures also be gathered,
every one with her mate.

34:16 Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these
shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded,
and his spirit it hath gathered them.

34:17 And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath divided it
unto them by line: they shall possess it for ever, from generation to
generation shall they dwell therein.

35:1 The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and
the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.

35:2 It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and
singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency
of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the
excellency of our God.

35:3 Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.

35:4 Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not:
behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence;
he will come and save you.

35:5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the
deaf shall be unstopped.

35:6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the
dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams
in the desert.

35:7 And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land
springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall
be grass with reeds and rushes.

35:8 And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called
The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall
be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.

35:9 No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up
thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk
there: 35:10 And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to
Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall
obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

36:1 Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, that
Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defenced cities of
Judah, and took them.

36:2 And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem
unto king Hezekiah with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of
the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field.

36:3 Then came forth unto him Eliakim, Hilkiah's son, which was over
the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, Asaph's son, the recorder.

36:4 And Rabshakeh said unto them, Say ye now to Hezekiah, Thus saith
the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this wherein
thou trustest?  36:5 I say, sayest thou, (but they are but vain words)
I have counsel and strength for war: now on whom dost thou trust, that
thou rebellest against me?  36:6 Lo, thou trustest in the staff of
this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his
hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in
him.

36:7 But if thou say to me, We trust in the LORD our God: is it not
he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and
said to Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar?
36:8 Now therefore give pledges, I pray thee, to my master the king of
Assyria, and I will give thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on
thy part to set riders upon them.

36:9 How then wilt thou turn away the face of one captain of the least
of my master's servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and
for horsemen?  36:10 And am I now come up without the LORD against
this land to destroy it? the LORD said unto me, Go up against this
land, and destroy it.

36:11 Then said Eliakim and Shebna and Joah unto Rabshakeh, Speak, I
pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian language; for we understand
it: and speak not to us in the Jews' language, in the ears of the
people that are on the wall.

36:12 But Rabshakeh said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to
thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men that sit
upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own
piss with you?  36:13 Then Rabshakeh stood, and cried with a loud
voice in the Jews' language, and said, Hear ye the words of the great
king, the king of Assyria.

36:14 Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you: for he shall
not be able to deliver you.

36:15 Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, The
LORD will surely deliver us: this city shall not be delivered into the
hand of the king of Assyria.

36:16 Hearken not to Hezekiah: for thus saith the king of Assyria,
Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me: and eat ye
every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye
every one the waters of his own cistern; 36:17 Until I come and take
you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land
of bread and vineyards.

36:18 Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, the LORD will deliver
us.

Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand
of the king of Assyria?  36:19 Where are the gods of Hamath and
Arphad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered
Samaria out of my hand?  36:20 Who are they among all the gods of
these lands, that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the
LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?  36:21 But they held
their peace, and answered him not a word: for the king's commandment
was, saying, Answer him not.

36:22 Then came Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, that was over the
household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the
recorder, to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, and told him the words
of Rabshakeh.

37:1 And it came to pass, when king Hezekiah heard it, that he rent
his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the
house of the LORD.

37:2 And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the
scribe, and the elders of the priests covered with sackcloth, unto
Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz.

37:3 And they said unto him, Thus saith Hezekiah, This day is a day of
trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy: for the children are come to
the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth.

37:4 It may be the LORD thy God will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom
the king of Assyria his master hath sent to reproach the living God,
and will reprove the words which the LORD thy God hath heard:
wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is left.

37:5 So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

37:6 And Isaiah said unto them, Thus shall ye say unto your master,
Thus saith the LORD, Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard,
wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.

37:7 Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour,
and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword
in his own land.

37:8 So Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria warring
against Libnah: for he had heard that he was departed from Lachish.

37:9 And he heard say concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, He is come
forth to make war with thee. And when he heard it, he sent messengers
to Hezekiah, saying, 37:10 Thus shall ye speak to Hezekiah king of
Judah, saying, Let not thy God, in whom thou trustest, deceive thee,
saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of
Assyria.

37:11 Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to
all lands by destroying them utterly; and shalt thou be delivered?
37:12 Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers
have destroyed, as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the children of
Eden which were in Telassar?  37:13 Where is the king of Hamath, and
the king of Arphad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and
Ivah?  37:14 And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the
messengers, and read it: and Hezekiah went up unto the house of the
LORD, and spread it before the LORD.

37:15 And Hezekiah prayed unto the LORD, saying, 37:16 O LORD of
hosts, God of Israel, that dwellest between the cherubims, thou art
the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth: thou hast
made heaven and earth.

37:17 Incline thine ear, O LORD, and hear; open thine eyes, O LORD,
and see: and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent to
reproach the living God.

37:18 Of a truth, LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the
nations, and their countries, 37:19 And have cast their gods into the
fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and
stone: therefore they have destroyed them.

37:20 Now therefore, O LORD our God, save us from his hand, that all
the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD, even thou
only.

37:21 Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent unto Hezekiah, saying, Thus
saith the LORD God of Israel, Whereas thou hast prayed to me against
Sennacherib king of Assyria: 37:22 This is the word which the LORD
hath spoken concerning him; The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath
despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem
hath shaken her head at thee.

37:23 Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast
thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against
the Holy One of Israel.

37:24 By thy servants hast thou reproached the Lord, and hast said, By
the multitude of my chariots am I come up to the height of the
mountains, to the sides of Lebanon; and I will cut down the tall
cedars thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof: and I will enter
into the height of his border, and the forest of his Carmel.

37:25 I have digged, and drunk water; and with the sole of my feet
have I dried up all the rivers of the besieged places.

37:26 Hast thou not heard long ago, how I have done it; and of ancient
times, that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass, that thou
shouldest be to lay waste defenced cities into ruinous heaps.

37:27 Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were
dismayed and confounded: they were as the grass of the field, and as
the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as corn blasted
before it be grown up.

37:28 But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and
thy rage against me.

37:29 Because thy rage against me, and thy tumult, is come up into
mine ears, therefore will I put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in
thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.

37:30 And this shall be a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat this year such
as groweth of itself; and the second year that which springeth of the
same: and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards, and
eat the fruit thereof.

37:31 And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall
again take root downward, and bear fruit upward: 37:32 For out of
Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and they that escape out of mount
Zion: the zeal of the LORD of hosts shall do this.

37:33 Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, He
shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come
before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it.

37:34 By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall
not come into this city, saith the LORD.

37:35 For I will defend this city to save it for mine own sake, and
for my servant David's sake.

37:36 Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of
the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they
arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.

37:37 So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned,
and dwelt at Nineveh.

37:38 And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of
Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with
the sword; and they escaped into the land of Armenia: and Esarhaddon
his son reigned in his stead.

38:1 In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the
prophet the son of Amoz came unto him, and said unto him, Thus saith
the LORD, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live.

38:2 Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed unto
the LORD, 38:3 And said, Remember now, O LORD, I beseech thee, how I
have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have
done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.

38:4 Then came the word of the LORD to Isaiah, saying, 38:5 Go, and
say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I
have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto
thy days fifteen years.

38:6 And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king
of Assyria: and I will defend this city.

38:7 And this shall be a sign unto thee from the LORD, that the LORD
will do this thing that he hath spoken; 38:8 Behold, I will bring
again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of
Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which
degrees it was gone down.

38:9 The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and
was recovered of his sickness: 38:10 I said in the cutting off of my
days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the
residue of my years.

38:11 I said, I shall not see the LORD, even the LORD, in the land of
the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the
world.

38:12 Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's
tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with
pining sickness: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

38:13 I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all
my bones: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

38:14 Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a
dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O LORD, I am oppressed;
undertake for me.

38:15 What shall I say? he hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath
done it: I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.

38:16 O LORD, by these things men live, and in all these things is the
life of my spirit: so wilt thou recover me, and make me to live.

38:17 Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love
to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast
all my sins behind thy back.

38:18 For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee:
they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.

38:19 The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day:
the father to the children shall make known thy truth.

38:20 The LORD was ready to save me: therefore we will sing my songs
to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of
the LORD.

38:21 For Isaiah had said, Let them take a lump of figs, and lay it
for a plaister upon the boil, and he shall recover.

38:22 Hezekiah also had said, What is the sign that I shall go up to
the house of the LORD?  39:1 At that time Merodachbaladan, the son of
Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah: for
he had heard that he had been sick, and was recovered.

39:2 And Hezekiah was glad of them, and shewed them the house of his
precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the
precious ointment, and all the house of his armour, and all that was
found in his treasures: there was nothing in his house, nor in all his
dominion, that Hezekiah shewed them not.

39:3 Then came Isaiah the prophet unto king Hezekiah, and said unto
him, What said these men? and from whence came they unto thee? And
Hezekiah said, They are come from a far country unto me, even from
Babylon.

39:4 Then said he, What have they seen in thine house? And Hezekiah
answered, All that is in mine house have they seen: there is nothing
among my treasures that I have not shewed them.

39:5 Then said Isaiah to Hezekiah, Hear the word of the LORD of hosts:
39:6 Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that
which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be
carried to Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the LORD.

39:7 And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt
beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace
of the king of Babylon.

39:8 Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, Good is the word of the LORD which
thou hast spoken. He said moreover, For there shall be peace and truth
in my days.

40:1 Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.

40:2 Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her
warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath
received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins.

40:3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the
way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

40:4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall
be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough
places plain: 40:5 And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and
all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken
it.

40:6 The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is
grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:
40:7 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the
LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.

40:8 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God
shall stand for ever.

40:9 O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high
mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice
with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of
Judah, Behold your God!  40:10 Behold, the Lord GOD will come with
strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is
with him, and his work before him.

40:11 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the
lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead
those that are with young.

40:12 Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and
meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth
in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a
balance?  40:13 Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his
counsellor hath taught him?  40:14 With whom took he counsel, and who
instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him
knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding?  40:15 Behold,
the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small
dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little
thing.

40:16 And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof
sufficient for a burnt offering.

40:17 All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to
him less than nothing, and vanity.

40:18 To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare
unto him?  40:19 The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith
spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains.

40:20 He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooseth a
tree that will not rot; he seeketh unto him a cunning workman to
prepare a graven image, that shall not be moved.

40:21 Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you
from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the
earth?  40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and
the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the
heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
40:23 That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of
the earth as vanity.

40:24 Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown:
yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also
blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take
them away as stubble.

40:25 To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the
Holy One.

40:26 Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these
things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by
names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power;
not one faileth.

40:27 Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid
from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God?  40:28 Hast
thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the
LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is
weary? there is no searching of his understanding.

40:29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he
increaseth strength.

40:30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men
shall utterly fall: 40:31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew
their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall
run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

41:1 Keep silence before me, O islands; and let the people renew their
strength: let them come near; then let them speak: let us come near
together to judgment.

41:2 Who raised up the righteous man from the east, called him to his
foot, gave the nations before him, and made him rule over kings? he
gave them as the dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his bow.

41:3 He pursued them, and passed safely; even by the way that he had
not gone with his feet.

41:4 Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the
beginning? I the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he.

41:5 The isles saw it, and feared; the ends of the earth were afraid,
drew near, and came.

41:6 They helped every one his neighbour; and every one said to his
brother, Be of good courage.

41:7 So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth
with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the
sodering: and he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved.

41:8 But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the
seed of Abraham my friend.

41:9 Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called
thee from the chief men thereof, and said unto thee, Thou art my
servant; I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away.

41:10 Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy
God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold
thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

41:11 Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be
ashamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing; and they that strive
with thee shall perish.

41:12 Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, even them that
contended with thee: they that war against thee shall be as nothing,
and as a thing of nought.

41:13 For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto
thee, Fear not; I will help thee.

41:14 Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help
thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.

41:15 Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having
teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt
make the hills as chaff.

41:16 Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the
whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in the LORD, and
shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel.

41:17 When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their
tongue faileth for thirst, I the LORD will hear them, I the God of
Israel will not forsake them.

41:18 I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of
the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry
land springs of water.

41:19 I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and
the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree,
and the pine, and the box tree together: 41:20 That they may see, and
know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the LORD
hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.

41:21 Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong
reasons, saith the King of Jacob.

41:22 Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let
them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them,
and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come.

41:23 Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know
that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed,
and behold it together.

41:24 Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an
abomination is he that chooseth you.

41:25 I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come: from the
rising of the sun shall he call upon my name: and he shall come upon
princes as upon morter, and as the potter treadeth clay.

41:26 Who hath declared from the beginning, that we may know? and
beforetime, that we may say, He is righteous? yea, there is none that
sheweth, yea, there is none that declareth, yea, there is none that
heareth your words.

41:27 The first shall say to Zion, Behold, behold them: and I will
give to Jerusalem one that bringeth good tidings.

41:28 For I beheld, and there was no man; even among them, and there
was no counsellor, that, when I asked of them, could answer a word.

41:29 Behold, they are all vanity; their works are nothing: their
molten images are wind and confusion.

42:1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul
delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth
judgment to the Gentiles.

42:2 He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in
the street.

42:3 A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he
not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.

42:4 He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment
in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law.

42:5 Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and
stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which
cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and
spirit to them that walk therein: 42:6 I the LORD have called thee in
righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give
thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; 42:7
To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison,
and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.

42:8 I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to
another, neither my praise to graven images.

42:9 Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I
declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.

42:10 Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise from the end of
the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the
isles, and the inhabitants thereof.

42:11 Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice,
the villages that Kedar doth inhabit: let the inhabitants of the rock
sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains.

42:12 Let them give glory unto the LORD, and declare his praise in the
islands.

42:13 The LORD shall go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up
jealousy like a man of war: he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail
against his enemies.

42:14 I have long time holden my peace; I have been still, and
refrained myself: now will I cry like a travailing woman; I will
destroy and devour at once.

42:15 I will make waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their
herbs; and I will make the rivers islands, and I will dry up the
pools.

42:16 And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will
lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness
light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do
unto them, and not forsake them.

42:17 They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, that
trust in graven images, that say to the molten images, Ye are our
gods.

42:18 Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see.

42:19 Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I
sent?  who is blind as he that is perfect, and blind as the LORD's
servant?  42:20 Seeing many things, but thou observest not; opening
the ears, but he heareth not.

42:21 The LORD is well pleased for his righteousness' sake; he will
magnify the law, and make it honourable.

42:22 But this is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them
snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses: they are for a
prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore.

42:23 Who among you will give ear to this? who will hearken and hear
for the time to come?  42:24 Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to
the robbers? did not the LORD, he against whom we have sinned? for
they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his
law.

42:25 Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger, and the
strength of battle: and it hath set him on fire round about, yet he
knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart.

43:1 But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he
that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have
called thee by thy name; thou art mine.

43:2 When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and
through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest
through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame
kindle upon thee.

43:3 For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I
gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.

43:4 Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable,
and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people
for thy life.

43:5 Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the
east, and gather thee from the west; 43:6 I will say to the north,
Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and
my daughters from the ends of the earth; 43:7 Even every one that is
called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed
him; yea, I have made him.

43:8 Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that
have ears.

43:9 Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be
assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things?
let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified: or
let them hear, and say, It is truth.

43:10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have
chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he:
before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.

43:11 I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.

43:12 I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed, when there
was no strange god among you: therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the
LORD, that I am God.

43:13 Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can
deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it?  43:14 Thus
saith the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; For your sake I
have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles, and the
Chaldeans, whose cry is in the ships.

43:15 I am the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King.

43:16 Thus saith the LORD, which maketh a way in the sea, and a path
in the mighty waters; 43:17 Which bringeth forth the chariot and
horse, the army and the power; they shall lie down together, they
shall not rise: they are extinct, they are quenched as tow.

43:18 Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things
of old.

43:19 Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall
ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers
in the desert.

43:20 The beast of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the
owls: because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the
desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen.

43:21 This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my
praise.

43:22 But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob; but thou hast been
weary of me, O Israel.

43:23 Thou hast not brought me the small cattle of thy burnt
offerings; neither hast thou honoured me with thy sacrifices. I have
not caused thee to serve with an offering, nor wearied thee with
incense.

43:24 Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou
filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast made me to
serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities.

43:25 I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine
own sake, and will not remember thy sins.

43:26 Put me in remembrance: let us plead together: declare thou, that
thou mayest be justified.

43:27 Thy first father hath sinned, and thy teachers have transgressed
against me.

43:28 Therefore I have profaned the princes of the sanctuary, and have
given Jacob to the curse, and Israel to reproaches.

44:1 Yet now hear, O Jacob my servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen:
44:2 Thus saith the LORD that made thee, and formed thee from the
womb, which will help thee; Fear not, O Jacob, my servant; and thou,
Jesurun, whom I have chosen.

44:3 For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon
the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing
upon thine offspring: 44:4 And they shall spring up as among the
grass, as willows by the water courses.

44:5 One shall say, I am the LORD's; and another shall call himself by
the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the
LORD, and surname himself by the name of Israel.

44:6 Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD
of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no
God.

44:7 And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it, and set it in
order for me, since I appointed the ancient people? and the things
that are coming, and shall come, let them shew unto them.

44:8 Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that
time, and have declared it? ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God
beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any.

44:9 They that make a graven image are all of them vanity; and their
delectable things shall not profit; and they are their own witnesses;
they see not, nor know; that they may be ashamed.

44:10 Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image that is
profitable for nothing?  44:11 Behold, all his fellows shall be
ashamed: and the workmen, they are of men: let them all be gathered
together, let them stand up; yet they shall fear, and they shall be
ashamed together.

44:12 The smith with the tongs both worketh in the coals, and
fashioneth it with hammers, and worketh it with the strength of his
arms: yea, he is hungry, and his strength faileth: he drinketh no
water, and is faint.

44:13 The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a
line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the
compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the
beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house.

44:14 He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak,
which he strengtheneth for himself among the trees of the forest: he
planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it.

44:15 Then shall it be for a man to burn: for he will take thereof,
and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread; yea, he
maketh a god, and worshippeth it; he maketh it a graven image, and
falleth down thereto.

44:16 He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth
flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied: yea, he warmeth himself,
and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire: 44:17 And the residue
thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto
it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me;
for thou art my god.

44:18 They have not known nor understood: for he hath shut their eyes,
that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand.

44:19 And none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge
nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yea,
also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; I have roasted flesh,
and eaten it: and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination?
shall I fall down to the stock of a tree?  44:20 He feedeth on ashes:
a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his
soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?  44:21 Remember
these, O Jacob and Israel; for thou art my servant: I have formed
thee; thou art my servant: O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of
me.

44:22 I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and,
as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.

44:23 Sing, O ye heavens; for the LORD hath done it: shout, ye lower
parts of the earth: break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest,
and every tree therein: for the LORD hath redeemed Jacob, and
glorified himself in Israel.

44:24 Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from
the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth
the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself; 44:25
That frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad;
that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish;
44:26 That confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the
counsel of his messengers; that saith to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be
inhabited; and to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built, and I will
raise up the decayed places thereof: 44:27 That saith to the deep, Be
dry, and I will dry up thy rivers: 44:28 That saith of Cyrus, He is my
shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem,
Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.

45:1 Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I
have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins
of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall
not be shut; 45:2 I will go before thee, and make the crooked places
straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder
the bars of iron: 45:3 And I will give thee the treasures of darkness,
and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the
LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.

45:4 For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even
called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not
known me.

45:5 I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me:
I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: 45:6 That they may know
from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none
beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else.

45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create
evil: I the LORD do all these things.

45:8 Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down
righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation,
and let righteousness spring up together; I the LORD have created it.

45:9 Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd
strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that
fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?  45:10
Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What begettest thou? or to
the woman, What hast thou brought forth?  45:11 Thus saith the LORD,
the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come
concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me.

45:12 I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my
hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I
commanded.

45:13 I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his
ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for
price nor reward, saith the LORD of hosts.

45:14 Thus saith the LORD, The labour of Egypt, and merchandise of
Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto
thee, and they shall be thine: they shall come after thee; in chains
they shall come over, and they shall fall down unto thee, they shall
make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God is in thee; and there
is none else, there is no God.

45:15 Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the
Saviour.

45:16 They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, all of them: they
shall go to confusion together that are makers of idols.

45:17 But Israel shall be saved in the LORD with an everlasting
salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end.

45:18 For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself
that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created
it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there
is none else.

45:19 I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I
said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain: I the LORD speak
righteousness, I declare things that are right.

45:20 Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye that are
escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge that set up the wood of
their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save.

45:21 Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel
together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it
from that time?  have not I the LORD? and there is no God else beside
me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me.

45:22 Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I
am God, and there is none else.

45:23 I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in
righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall
bow, every tongue shall swear.

45:24 Surely, shall one say, in the LORD have I righteousness and
strength: even to him shall men come; and all that are incensed
against him shall be ashamed.

45:25 In the LORD shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall
glory.

46:1 Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts,
and upon the cattle: your carriages were heavy loaden; they are a
burden to the weary beast.

46:2 They stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the
burden, but themselves are gone into captivity.

46:3 Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the
house of Israel, which are borne by me from the belly, which are
carried from the womb: 46:4 And even to your old age I am he; and even
to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I
will carry, and will deliver you.

46:5 To whom will ye liken me, and make me equal, and compare me, that
we may be like?  46:6 They lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh
silver in the balance, and hire a goldsmith; and he maketh it a god:
they fall down, yea, they worship.

46:7 They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry him, and set him in
his place, and he standeth; from his place shall he not remove: yea,
one shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer, nor save him out of his
trouble.

46:8 Remember this, and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O
ye transgressors.

46:9 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is
none else; I am God, and there is none like me, 46:10 Declaring the
end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not
yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my
pleasure: 46:11 Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that
executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will
also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.

46:12 Hearken unto me, ye stouthearted, that are far from
righteousness: 46:13 I bring near my righteousness; it shall not be
far off, and my salvation shall not tarry: and I will place salvation
in Zion for Israel my glory.

47:1 Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit
on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for
thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate.

47:2 Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy locks, make bare
the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers.

47:3 Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen: I
will take vengeance, and I will not meet thee as a man.

47:4 As for our redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his name, the Holy One
of Israel.

47:5 Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the
Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called, The lady of kingdoms.

47:6 I was wroth with my people, I have polluted mine inheritance, and
given them into thine hand: thou didst shew them no mercy; upon the
ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke.

47:7 And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever: so that thou didst
not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember the latter
end of it.

47:8 Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that
dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else
beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss
of children: 47:9 But these two things shall come to thee in a moment
in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon
thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for
the great abundance of thine enchantments.

47:10 For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None
seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and
thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.

47:11 Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from
whence it riseth: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be
able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly,
which thou shalt not know.

47:12 Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy
sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou
shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail.

47:13 Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the
astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up,
and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.

47:14 Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they
shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall
not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.

47:15 Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured, even
thy merchants, from thy youth: they shall wander every one to his
quarter; none shall save thee.

48:1 Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of
Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, which swear by
the name of the LORD, and make mention of the God of Israel, but not
in truth, nor in righteousness.

48:2 For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves
upon the God of Israel; The LORD of hosts is his name.

48:3 I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they
went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them suddenly,
and they came to pass.

48:4 Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron
sinew, and thy brow brass; 48:5 I have even from the beginning
declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest
thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and
my molten image, hath commanded them.

48:6 Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it? I have
shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou
didst not know them.

48:7 They are created now, and not from the beginning; even before the
day when thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I
knew them.

48:8 Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from that
time that thine ear was not opened: for I knew that thou wouldest deal
very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb.

48:9 For my name's sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise
will I refrain for thee, that I cut thee not off.

48:10 Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen
thee in the furnace of affliction.

48:11 For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it: for how
should my name be polluted? and I will not give my glory unto another.

48:12 Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my called; I am he; I am
the first, I also am the last.

48:13 Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my
right hand hath spanned the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand
up together.

48:14 All ye, assemble yourselves, and hear; which among them hath
declared these things? The LORD hath loved him: he will do his
pleasure on Babylon, and his arm shall be on the Chaldeans.

48:15 I, even I, have spoken; yea, I have called him: I have brought
him, and he shall make his way prosperous.

48:16 Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; I have not spoken in secret
from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the
Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me.

48:17 Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am
the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by
the way that thou shouldest go.

48:18 O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy
peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea:
48:19 Thy seed also had been as the sand, and the offspring of thy
bowels like the gravel thereof; his name should not have been cut off
nor destroyed from before me.

48:20 Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans, with a voice
of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the
earth; say ye, The LORD hath redeemed his servant Jacob.

48:21 And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts: he
caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them: he clave the rock
also, and the waters gushed out.

48:22 There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked.

49:1 Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The
LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath
he made mention of my name.

49:2 And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of
his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver
hath he hid me; 49:3 And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel,
in whom I will be glorified.

49:4 Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength
for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the LORD, and
my work with my God.

49:5 And now, saith the LORD that formed me from the womb to be his
servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered,
yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the LORD, and my God shall be
my strength.

49:6 And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my
servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved
of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that
thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.

49:7 Thus saith the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to
him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant
of rulers, Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship,
because of the LORD that is faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, and
he shall choose thee.

49:8 Thus saith the LORD, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and
in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee,
and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to
cause to inherit the desolate heritages; 49:9 That thou mayest say to
the prisoners, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Shew
yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be
in all high places.

49:10 They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun
smite them: for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by
the springs of water shall he guide them.

49:11 And I will make all my mountains a way, and my highways shall be
exalted.

49:12 Behold, these shall come from far: and, lo, these from the north
and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim.

49:13 Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; and break forth into
singing, O mountains: for the LORD hath comforted his people, and will
have mercy upon his afflicted.

49:14 But Zion said, The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath
forgotten me.

49:15 Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have
compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I
not forget thee.

49:16 Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls
are continually before me.

49:17 Thy children shall make haste; thy destroyers and they that made
thee waste shall go forth of thee.

49:18 Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold: all these gather
themselves together, and come to thee. As I live, saith the LORD, thou
shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, and bind
them on thee, as a bride doeth.

49:19 For thy waste and thy desolate places, and the land of thy
destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the
inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away.

49:20 The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the
other, shall say again in thine ears, The place is too strait for me:
give place to me that I may dwell.

49:21 Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these,
seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and
removing to and fro? and who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left
alone; these, where had they been?  49:22 Thus saith the Lord GOD,
Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my
standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms,
and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.

49:23 And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy
nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward
the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that
I am the LORD: for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.

49:24 Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive
delivered?  49:25 But thus saith the LORD, Even the captives of the
mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be
delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and
I will save thy children.

49:26 And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and
they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and
all flesh shall know that I the LORD am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer,
the mighty One of Jacob.

50:1 Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother's
divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to
whom I have sold you?  Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold
yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.

50:2 Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when I called, was
there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot
redeem? or have I no power to deliver? behold, at my rebuke I dry up
the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness: their fish stinketh, because
there is no water, and dieth for thirst.

50:3 I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their
covering.

50:4 The Lord GOD hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I
should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he
wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the
learned.

50:5 The Lord GOD hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious,
neither turned away back.

50:6 I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked
off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.

50:7 For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be
confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that
I shall not be ashamed.

50:8 He is near that justifieth me; who will contend with me? let us
stand together: who is mine adversary? let him come near to me.

50:9 Behold, the Lord GOD will help me; who is he that shall condemn
me?  lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them
up.

50:10 Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice
of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him
trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his God.

50:11 Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about
with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye
have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in
sorrow.

51:1 Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek
the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of
the pit whence ye are digged.

51:2 Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for
I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.

51:3 For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste
places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like
the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein,
thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.

51:4 Hearken unto me, my people; and give ear unto me, O my nation:
for a law shall proceed from me, and I will make my judgment to rest
for a light of the people.

51:5 My righteousness is near; my salvation is gone forth, and mine
arms shall judge the people; the isles shall wait upon me, and on mine
arm shall they trust.

51:6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth
beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth
shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in
like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness
shall not be abolished.

51:7 Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose
heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid
of their revilings.

51:8 For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall
eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my
salvation from generation to generation.

51:9 Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in
the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath
cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?  51:10 Art thou not it which hath
dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths
of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?  51:11 Therefore the
redeemed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion;
and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain
gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.

51:12 I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou
shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man
which shall be made as grass; 51:13 And forgettest the LORD thy maker,
that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the
earth; and hast feared continually every day because of the fury of
the oppressor, as if he were ready to destroy? and where is the fury
of the oppressor?  51:14 The captive exile hasteneth that he may be
loosed, and that he should not die in the pit, nor that his bread
should fail.

51:15 But I am the LORD thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves
roared: The LORD of hosts is his name.

51:16 And I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in
the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the
foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.

51:17 Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the
hand of the LORD the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of
the cup of trembling, and wrung them out.

51:18 There is none to guide her among all the sons whom she hath
brought forth; neither is there any that taketh her by the hand of all
the sons that she hath brought up.

51:19 These two things are come unto thee; who shall be sorry for
thee?  desolation, and destruction, and the famine, and the sword: by
whom shall I comfort thee?  51:20 Thy sons have fainted, they lie at
the head of all the streets, as a wild bull in a net: they are full of
the fury of the LORD, the rebuke of thy God.

51:21 Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not
with wine: 51:22 Thus saith thy Lord the LORD, and thy God that
pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of thine
hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou
shalt no more drink it again: 51:23 But I will put it into the hand of
them that afflict thee; which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that we
may go over: and thou hast laid thy body as the ground, and as the
street, to them that went over.

52:1 Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful
garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no
more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.

52:2 Shake thyself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem:
loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion.

52:3 For thus saith the LORD, Ye have sold yourselves for nought; and
ye shall be redeemed without money.

52:4 For thus saith the Lord GOD, My people went down aforetime into
Egypt to sojourn there; and the Assyrian oppressed them without cause.

52:5 Now therefore, what have I here, saith the LORD, that my people
is taken away for nought? they that rule over them make them to howl,
saith the LORD; and my name continually every day is blasphemed.

52:6 Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know
in that day that I am he that doth speak: behold, it is I.

52:7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that
bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good
tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy
God reigneth!  52:8 Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the
voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when
the LORD shall bring again Zion.

52:9 Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of
Jerusalem: for the LORD hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed
Jerusalem.

52:10 The LORD hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the
nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our
God.

52:11 Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean
thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the
vessels of the LORD.

52:12 For ye shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight: for the
LORD will go before you; and the God of Israel will be your rereward.

52:13 Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and
extolled, and be very high.

52:14 As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more
than any man, and his form more than the sons of men: 52:15 So shall
he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him:
for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which
they had not heard shall they consider.

53:1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD
revealed?  53:2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and
as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and
when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

53:3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and
acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he
was despised, and we esteemed him not.

53:4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we
did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our
iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his
stripes we are healed.

53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to
his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

53:7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his
mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before
her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

53:8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare
his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for
the transgression of my people was he stricken.

53:9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his
death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his
mouth.

53:10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief:
when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his
seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall
prosper in his hand.

53:11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied:
by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall
bear their iniquities.

53:12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he
shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his
soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he
bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

54:1 Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into
singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for
more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married
wife, saith the LORD.

54:2 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the
curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and
strengthen thy stakes; 54:3 For thou shalt break forth on the right
hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and
make the desolate cities to be inhabited.

54:4 Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou
confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget
the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy
widowhood any more.

54:5 For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name;
and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth
shall he be called.

54:6 For the LORD hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in
spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God.

54:7 For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies
will I gather thee.

54:8 In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with
everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy
Redeemer.

54:9 For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn
that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I
sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.

54:10 For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my
kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my
peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee.

54:11 O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted,
behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy
foundations with sapphires.

54:12 And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of
carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.

54:13 And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great
shall be the peace of thy children.

54:14 In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far
from oppression; for thou shalt not fear: and from terror; for it
shall not come near thee.

54:15 Behold, they shall surely gather together, but not by me:
whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy sake.

54:16 Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the
fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have
created the waster to destroy.

54:17 No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every
tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their
righteousness is of me, saith the LORD.

55:1 Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that
hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.

55:2 Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your
labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and
eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in
fatness.

55:3 Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall
live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure
mercies of David.

55:4 Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader
and commander to the people.

55:5 Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and
nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the LORD thy
God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee.

55:6 Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he
is near: 55:7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man
his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy
upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways, saith the LORD.

55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

55:10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and
returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring
forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the
eater: 55:11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it
shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I
please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

55:12 For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the
mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and
all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

55:13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of
the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD
for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

56:1 Thus saith the LORD, Keep ye judgment, and do justice: for my
salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.

56:2 Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that
layeth hold on it; that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and
keepeth his hand from doing any evil.

56:3 Neither let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to
the LORD, speak, saying, The LORD hath utterly separated me from his
people: neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree.

56:4 For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths,
and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant;
56:5 Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a
place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give
them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.

56:6 Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the LORD,
to serve him, and to love the name of the LORD, to be his servants,
every one that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold
of my covenant; 56:7 Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and
make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burnt offerings and
their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house
shall be called an house of prayer for all people.

56:8 The Lord GOD, which gathereth the outcasts of Israel saith, Yet
will I gather others to him, beside those that are gathered unto him.

56:9 All ye beasts of the field, come to devour, yea, all ye beasts in
the forest.

56:10 His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb
dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.

56:11 Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they
are shepherds that cannot understand: they all look to their own way,
every one for his gain, from his quarter.

56:12 Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves
with strong drink; and to morrow shall be as this day, and much more
abundant.

57:1 The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and
merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is
taken away from the evil to come.

57:2 He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each
one walking in his uprightness.

57:3 But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the
adulterer and the whore.

57:4 Against whom do ye sport yourselves? against whom make ye a wide
mouth, and draw out the tongue? are ye not children of transgression,
a seed of falsehood.

57:5 Enflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying
the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks?  57:6 Among
the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion; they, they are thy
lot: even to them hast thou poured a drink offering, thou hast offered
a meat offering. Should I receive comfort in these?  57:7 Upon a lofty
and high mountain hast thou set thy bed: even thither wentest thou up
to offer sacrifice.

57:8 Behind the doors also and the posts hast thou set up thy
remembrance: for thou hast discovered thyself to another than me, and
art gone up; thou hast enlarged thy bed, and made thee a covenant with
them; thou lovedst their bed where thou sawest it.

57:9 And thou wentest to the king with ointment, and didst increase
thy perfumes, and didst send thy messengers far off, and didst debase
thyself even unto hell.

57:10 Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way; yet saidst thou
not, There is no hope: thou hast found the life of thine hand;
therefore thou wast not grieved.

57:11 And of whom hast thou been afraid or feared, that thou hast
lied, and hast not remembered me, nor laid it to thy heart? have not I
held my peace even of old, and thou fearest me not?  57:12 I will
declare thy righteousness, and thy works; for they shall not profit
thee.

57:13 When thou criest, let thy companies deliver thee; but the wind
shall carry them all away; vanity shall take them: but he that putteth
his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy
mountain; 57:14 And shall say, Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the
way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people.

57:15 For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,
whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also
that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the
humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

57:16 For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth:
for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made.

57:17 For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him:
I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his
heart.

57:18 I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also,
and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners.

57:19 I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far
off, and to him that is near, saith the LORD; and I will heal him.

57:20 But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest,
whose waters cast up mire and dirt.

57:21 There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.

58:1 Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew
my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.

58:2 Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation
that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God:
they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in
approaching to God.

58:3 Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore
have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in
the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours.

58:4 Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist
of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice
to be heard on high.

58:5 Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict
his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread
sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an
acceptable day to the LORD?  58:6 Is not this the fast that I have
chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens,
and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?  58:7
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the
poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that
thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
58:8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health
shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before
thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward.

58:9 Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry,
and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee
the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; 58:10
And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted
soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as
the noon day: 58:11 And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and
satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be
like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail
not.

58:12 And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places:
thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou
shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to
dwell in.

58:13 If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy
pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of
the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways,
nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: 58:14
Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to
ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the
heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken
it.

59:1 Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save;
neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: 59:2 But your iniquities
have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his
face from you, that he will not hear.

59:3 For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with
iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered
perverseness.

59:4 None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust
in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth
iniquity.

59:5 They hatch cockatrice' eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that
eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out
into a viper.

59:6 Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover
themselves with their works: their works are works of iniquity, and
the act of violence is in their hands.

59:7 Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent
blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and
destruction are in their paths.

59:8 The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their
goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein
shall not know peace.

59:9 Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake
us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we
walk in darkness.

59:10 We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had
no eyes: we stumble at noon day as in the night; we are in desolate
places as dead men.

59:11 We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for
judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us.

59:12 For our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins
testify against us: for our transgressions are with us; and as for our
iniquities, we know them; 59:13 In transgressing and lying against the
LORD, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt,
conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.

59:14 And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar
off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.

59:15 Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh
himself a prey: and the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there
was no judgment.

59:16 And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no
intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his
righteousness, it sustained him.

59:17 For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of
salvation upon his head; and he put on the garments of vengeance for
clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloak.

59:18 According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his
adversaries, recompence to his enemies; to the islands he will repay
recompence.

59:19 So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his
glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a
flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him.

59:20 And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn
from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD.

59:21 As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My
spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth,
shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed,
nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from
henceforth and for ever.

60:1 Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is
risen upon thee.

60:2 For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross
darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory
shall be seen upon thee.

60:3 And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the
brightness of thy rising.

60:4 Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather
themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far,
and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side.

60:5 Then thou shalt see, and flow together, and thine heart shall
fear, and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be
converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee.

60:6 The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of
Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring
gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the LORD.

60:7 All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the
rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee: they shall come up with
acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory.

60:8 Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their
windows?  60:9 Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of
Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their
gold with them, unto the name of the LORD thy God, and to the Holy One
of Israel, because he hath glorified thee.

60:10 And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their
kings shall minister unto thee: for in my wrath I smote thee, but in
my favour have I had mercy on thee.

60:11 Therefore thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be
shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the forces of the
Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought.

60:12 For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall
perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.

60:13 The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the
pine tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my
sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious.

60:14 The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending
unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down
at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee; The city of the
LORD, The Zion of the Holy One of Israel.

60:15 Whereas thou has been forsaken and hated, so that no man went
through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many
generations.

60:16 Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck
the breast of kings: and thou shalt know that I the LORD am thy
Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob.

60:17 For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver,
and for wood brass, and for stones iron: I will also make thy officers
peace, and thine exactors righteousness.

60:18 Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor
destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls
Salvation, and thy gates Praise.

60:19 The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for
brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the LORD shall be
unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.

60:20 Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw
itself: for the LORD shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of
thy mourning shall be ended.

60:21 Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the
land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I
may be glorified.

60:22 A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong
nation: I the LORD will hasten it in his time.

61:1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath
anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to
bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and
the opening of the prison to them that are bound; 61:2 To proclaim the
acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to
comfort all that mourn; 61:3 To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion,
to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be
called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might
be glorified.

61:4 And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the
former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the
desolations of many generations.

61:5 And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of
the alien shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.

61:6 But ye shall be named the Priests of the LORD: men shall call you
the Ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and
in their glory shall ye boast yourselves.

61:7 For your shame ye shall have double; and for confusion they shall
rejoice in their portion: therefore in their land they shall possess
the double: everlasting joy shall be unto them.

61:8 For I the LORD love judgment, I hate robbery for burnt offering;
and I will direct their work in truth, and I will make an everlasting
covenant with them.

61:9 And their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their
offspring among the people: all that see them shall acknowledge them,
that they are the seed which the LORD hath blessed.

61:10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in
my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath
covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh
himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her
jewels.

61:11 For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden
causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord
GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the
nations.

62:1 For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's
sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as
brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.

62:2 And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy
glory: and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the
LORD shall name.

62:3 Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the LORD, and
a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.

62:4 Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any
more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy
land Beulah: for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be
married.

62:5 For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry
thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God
rejoice over thee.

62:6 I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall
never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the
LORD, keep not silence, 62:7 And give him no rest, till he establish,
and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

62:8 The LORD hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his
strength, Surely I will no more give thy corn to be meat for thine
enemies; and the sons of the stranger shall not drink thy wine, for
the which thou hast laboured: 62:9 But they that have gathered it
shall eat it, and praise the LORD; and they that have brought it
together shall drink it in the courts of my holiness.

62:10 Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the
people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up a
standard for the people.

62:11 Behold, the LORD hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say
ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his
reward is with him, and his work before him.

62:12 And they shall call them, The holy people, The redeemed of the
LORD: and thou shalt be called, Sought out, A city not forsaken.

63:1 Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from
Bozrah?  this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the
greatness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to
save.

63:2 Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like
him that treadeth in the winefat?  63:3 I have trodden the winepress
alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them
in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be
sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.

63:4 For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my
redeemed is come.

63:5 And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that
there was none to uphold: therefore mine own arm brought salvation
unto me; and my fury, it upheld me.

63:6 And I will tread down the people in mine anger, and make them
drunk in my fury, and I will bring down their strength to the earth.

63:7 I will mention the lovingkindnesses of the LORD, and the praises
of the LORD, according to all that the LORD hath bestowed on us, and
the great goodness toward the house of Israel, which he hath bestowed
on them according to his mercies, and according to the multitude of
his lovingkindnesses.

63:8 For he said, Surely they are my people, children that will not
lie: so he was their Saviour.

63:9 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his
presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and
he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.

63:10 But they rebelled, and vexed his holy Spirit: therefore he was
turned to be their enemy, and he fought against them.

63:11 Then he remembered the days of old, Moses, and his people,
saying, Where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the
shepherd of his flock? where is he that put his holy Spirit within
him?  63:12 That led them by the right hand of Moses with his glorious
arm, dividing the water before them, to make himself an everlasting
name?  63:13 That led them through the deep, as an horse in the
wilderness, that they should not stumble?  63:14 As a beast goeth down
into the valley, the Spirit of the LORD caused him to rest: so didst
thou lead thy people, to make thyself a glorious name.

63:15 Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy
holiness and of thy glory: where is thy zeal and thy strength, the
sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies toward me? are they
restrained?  63:16 Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be
ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O LORD, art our
father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting.

63:17 O LORD, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened
our heart from thy fear? Return for thy servants' sake, the tribes of
thine inheritance.

63:18 The people of thy holiness have possessed it but a little while:
our adversaries have trodden down thy sanctuary.

63:19 We are thine: thou never barest rule over them; they were not
called by thy name.

64:1 Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come
down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence, 64:2 As when
the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil, to make
thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at
thy presence!  64:3 When thou didst terrible things which we looked
not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at thy presence.

64:4 For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor
perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee,
what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.

64:5 Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those
that remember thee in thy ways: behold, thou art wroth; for we have
sinned: in those is continuance, and we shall be saved.

64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses
are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities,
like the wind, have taken us away.

64:7 And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up
himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and
hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.

64:8 But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou
our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.

64:9 Be not wroth very sore, O LORD, neither remember iniquity for
ever: behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people.

64:10 Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness,
Jerusalem a desolation.

64:11 Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised
thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid
waste.

64:12 Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O LORD? wilt thou
hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore?  65:1 I am sought of them
that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said,
Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name.

65:2 I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people,
which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts;
65:3 A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that
sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick; 65:4
Which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments, which eat
swine's flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their vessels;
65:5 Which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier
than thou. These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the
day.

65:6 Behold, it is written before me: I will not keep silence, but
will recompense, even recompense into their bosom, 65:7 Your
iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers together, saith the
LORD, which have burned incense upon the mountains, and blasphemed me
upon the hills: therefore will I measure their former work into their
bosom.

65:8 Thus saith the LORD, As the new wine is found in the cluster, and
one saith, Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it: so will I do for
my servants' sakes, that I may not destroy them all.

65:9 And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an
inheritor of my mountains: and mine elect shall inherit it, and my
servants shall dwell there.

65:10 And Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the valley of Achor a
place for the herds to lie down in, for my people that have sought me.

65:11 But ye are they that forsake the LORD, that forget my holy
mountain, that prepare a table for that troop, and that furnish the
drink offering unto that number.

65:12 Therefore will I number you to the sword, and ye shall all bow
down to the slaughter: because when I called, ye did not answer; when
I spake, ye did not hear; but did evil before mine eyes, and did
choose that wherein I delighted not.

65:13 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, my servants shall
eat, but ye shall be hungry: behold, my servants shall drink, but ye
shall be thirsty: behold, my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be
ashamed: 65:14 Behold, my servants shall sing for joy of heart, but ye
shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit.

65:15 And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto my chosen: for the
Lord GOD shall slay thee, and call his servants by another name: 65:16
That he who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the
God of truth; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God
of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they
are hid from mine eyes.

65:17 For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the
former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.

65:18 But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for,
behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.

65:19 And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the
voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of
crying.

65:20 There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man
that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred
years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be
accursed.

65:21 And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall
plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them.

65:22 They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant,
and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people,
and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

65:23 They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for
they are the seed of the blessed of the LORD, and their offspring with
them.

65:24 And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer;
and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.

65:25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall
eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They
shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD.

66:1 Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my
footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the
place of my rest?  66:2 For all those things hath mine hand made, and
all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I
look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth
at my word.

66:3 He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth
a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck; he that offereth an oblation,
as if he offered swine's blood; he that burneth incense, as if he
blessed an idol.

Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in
their abominations.

66:4 I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears
upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they
did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in
which I delighted not.

66:5 Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble at his word; Your
brethren that hated you, that cast you out for my name's sake, said,
Let the LORD be glorified: but he shall appear to your joy, and they
shall be ashamed.

66:6 A voice of noise from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice
of the LORD that rendereth recompence to his enemies.

66:7 Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came,
she was delivered of a man child.

66:8 Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the
earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at
once?  for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.

66:9 Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? saith
the LORD: shall I cause to bring forth, and shut the womb? saith thy
God.

66:10 Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that
love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her: 66:11
That ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her
consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the
abundance of her glory.

66:12 For thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will extend peace to her like
a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream: then
shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon
her knees.

66:13 As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye
shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

66:14 And when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones
shall flourish like an herb: and the hand of the LORD shall be known
toward his servants, and his indignation toward his enemies.

66:15 For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots
like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with
flames of fire.

66:16 For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh:
and the slain of the LORD shall be many.

66:17 They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the
gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the
abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the
LORD.

66:18 For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I
will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my
glory.

66:19 And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that
escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw
the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not
heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my
glory among the Gentiles.

66:20 And they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto the
LORD out of all nations upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters,
and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem,
saith the LORD, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean
vessel into the house of the LORD.

66:21 And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith
the LORD.

66:22 For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make,
shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your
name remain.

66:23 And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another,
and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship
before me, saith the LORD.

66:24 And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men
that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die,
neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring
unto all flesh.




The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah


1:1 The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that
were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin: 1:2 To whom the word of the
LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, in the
thirteenth year of his reign.

1:3 It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of
Judah, unto the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah the son of Josiah
king of Judah, unto the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the
fifth month.

1:4 Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 1:5 Before I
formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out
of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the
nations.

1:6 Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a
child.

1:7 But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt
go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou
shalt speak.

1:8 Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee,
saith the LORD.

1:9 Then the LORD put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the
LORD said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.

1:10 See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the
kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw
down, to build, and to plant.

1:11 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Jeremiah,
what seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of an almond tree.

1:12 Then said the LORD unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I will
hasten my word to perform it.

1:13 And the word of the LORD came unto me the second time, saying,
What seest thou? And I said, I see a seething pot; and the face
thereof is toward the north.

1:14 Then the LORD said unto me, Out of the north an evil shall break
forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.

1:15 For, lo, I will call all the families of the kingdoms of the
north, saith the LORD; and they shall come, and they shall set every
one his throne at the entering of the gates of Jerusalem, and against
all the walls thereof round about, and against all the cities of
Judah.

1:16 And I will utter my judgments against them touching all their
wickedness, who have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other
gods, and worshipped the works of their own hands.

1:17 Thou therefore gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak unto them
all that I command thee: be not dismayed at their faces, lest I
confound thee before them.

1:18 For, behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an
iron pillar, and brasen walls against the whole land, against the
kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests
thereof, and against the people of the land.

1:19 And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail
against thee; for I am with thee, saith the LORD, to deliver thee.

2:1 Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2:2 Go and cry
in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; I remember
thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when
thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.

2:3 Israel was holiness unto the LORD, and the firstfruits of his
increase: all that devour him shall offend; evil shall come upon them,
saith the LORD.

2:4 Hear ye the word of the LORD, O house of Jacob, and all the
families of the house of Israel: 2:5 Thus saith the LORD, What
iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from
me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?  2:6 Neither
said they, Where is the LORD that brought us up out of the land of
Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts
and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death,
through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt?
2:7 And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit
thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my
land, and made mine heritage an abomination.

2:8 The priests said not, Where is the LORD? and they that handle the
law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the
prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not
profit.

2:9 Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the LORD, and with your
children's children will I plead.

2:10 For pass over the isles of Chittim, and see; and send unto Kedar,
and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing.

2:11 Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my
people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit.

2:12 Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be
ye very desolate, saith the LORD.

2:13 For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the
fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken
cisterns, that can hold no water.

2:14 Is Israel a servant? is he a homeborn slave? why is he spoiled?
2:15 The young lions roared upon him, and yelled, and they made his
land waste: his cities are burned without inhabitant.

2:16 Also the children of Noph and Tahapanes have broken the crown of
thy head.

2:17 Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast
forsaken the LORD thy God, when he led thee by the way?  2:18 And now
what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of
Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the
waters of the river?  2:19 Thine own wickedness shall correct thee,
and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that
it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy
God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.

2:20 For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands; and
thou saidst, I will not transgress; when upon every high hill and
under every green tree thou wanderest, playing the harlot.

2:21 Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how
then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto
me?  2:22 For though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much
soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the Lord GOD.

2:23 How canst thou say, I am not polluted, I have not gone after
Baalim?  see thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done: thou art
a swift dromedary traversing her ways; 2:24 A wild ass used to the
wilderness, that snuffeth up the wind at her pleasure; in her occasion
who can turn her away? all they that seek her will not weary
themselves; in her month they shall find her.

2:25 Withhold thy foot from being unshod, and thy throat from thirst:
but thou saidst, There is no hope: no; for I have loved strangers, and
after them will I go.

2:26 As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of
Israel ashamed; they, their kings, their princes, and their priests,
and their prophets.

2:27 Saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast
brought me forth: for they have turned their back unto me, and not
their face: but in the time of their trouble they will say, Arise, and
save us.

2:28 But where are thy gods that thou hast made thee? let them arise,
if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble: for according to the
number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah.

2:29 Wherefore will ye plead with me? ye all have transgressed against
me, saith the LORD.

2:30 In vain have I smitten your children; they received no
correction: your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a
destroying lion.

2:31 O generation, see ye the word of the LORD. Have I been a
wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say my people,
We are lords; we will come no more unto thee?  2:32 Can a maid forget
her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me
days without number.

2:33 Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also
taught the wicked ones thy ways.

2:34 Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor
innocents: I have not found it by secret search, but upon all these.

2:35 Yet thou sayest, Because I am innocent, surely his anger shall
turn from me. Behold, I will plead with thee, because thou sayest, I
have not sinned.

2:36 Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? thou also shalt
be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria.

2:37 Yea, thou shalt go forth from him, and thine hands upon thine
head: for the LORD hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not
prosper in them.

3:1 They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and
become another man's, shall he return unto her again? shall not that
land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many
lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD.

3:2 Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, and see where thou hast
not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian
in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms
and with thy wickedness.

3:3 Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no
latter rain; and thou hadst a whore's forehead, thou refusedst to be
ashamed.

3:4 Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the
guide of my youth?  3:5 Will he reserve his anger for ever? will he
keep it to the end?  Behold, thou hast spoken and done evil things as
thou couldest.

3:6 The LORD said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king, Hast
thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon
every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played
the harlot.

3:7 And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me.
But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.

3:8 And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel
committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of
divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and
played the harlot also.

3:9 And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that
she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with
stocks.

3:10 And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not turned
unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly, saith the LORD.

3:11 And the LORD said unto me, The backsliding Israel hath justified
herself more than treacherous Judah.

3:12 Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return,
thou backsliding Israel, saith the LORD; and I will not cause mine
anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the LORD, and I will
not keep anger for ever.

3:13 Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed
against the LORD thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers
under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice, saith the
LORD.

3:14 Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married
unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and
I will bring you to Zion: 3:15 And I will give you pastors according
to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.

3:16 And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in
the land, in those days, saith the LORD, they shall say no more, The
ark of the covenant of the LORD: neither shall it come to mind:
neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it; neither
shall that be done any more.

3:17 At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the LORD;
and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the
LORD, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the
imagination of their evil heart.

3:18 In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of
Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to
the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers.

3:19 But I said, How shall I put thee among the children, and give
thee a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations? and I
said, Thou shalt call me, My father; and shalt not turn away from me.

3:20 Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so
have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the
LORD.

3:21 A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications
of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they
have forgotten the LORD their God.

3:22 Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your
backslidings.

Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art the LORD our God.

3:23 Truly in vain is salvation hoped for from the hills, and from the
multitude of mountains: truly in the LORD our God is the salvation of
Israel.

3:24 For shame hath devoured the labour of our fathers from our youth;
their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters.

3:25 We lie down in our shame, and our confusion covereth us: for we
have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our
youth even unto this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD
our God.

4:1 If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith the LORD, return unto me: and
if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight, then shalt
thou not remove.

4:2 And thou shalt swear, The LORD liveth, in truth, in judgment, and
in righteousness; and the nations shall bless themselves in him, and
in him shall they glory.

4:3 For thus saith the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break
up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.

4:4 Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of
your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury
come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the
evil of your doings.

4:5 Declare ye in Judah, and publish in Jerusalem; and say, Blow ye
the trumpet in the land: cry, gather together, and say, Assemble
yourselves, and let us go into the defenced cities.

4:6 Set up the standard toward Zion: retire, stay not: for I will
bring evil from the north, and a great destruction.

4:7 The lion is come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the
Gentiles is on his way; he is gone forth from his place to make thy
land desolate; and thy cities shall be laid waste, without an
inhabitant.

4:8 For this gird you with sackcloth, lament and howl: for the fierce
anger of the LORD is not turned back from us.

4:9 And it shall come to pass at that day, saith the LORD, that the
heart of the king shall perish, and the heart of the princes; and the
priests shall be astonished, and the prophets shall wonder.

4:10 Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! surely thou hast greatly deceived this
people and Jerusalem, saying, Ye shall have peace; whereas the sword
reacheth unto the soul.

4:11 At that time shall it be said to this people and to Jerusalem, A
dry wind of the high places in the wilderness toward the daughter of
my people, not to fan, nor to cleanse, 4:12 Even a full wind from
those places shall come unto me: now also will I give sentence against
them.

4:13 Behold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as
a whirlwind: his horses are swifter than eagles. Woe unto us! for we
are spoiled.

4:14 O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest
be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?  4:15
For a voice declareth from Dan, and publisheth affliction from mount
Ephraim.

4:16 Make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against
Jerusalem, that watchers come from a far country, and give out their
voice against the cities of Judah.

4:17 As keepers of a field, are they against her round about; because
she hath been rebellious against me, saith the LORD.

4:18 Thy way and thy doings have procured these things unto thee; this
is thy wickedness, because it is bitter, because it reacheth unto
thine heart.

4:19 My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart
maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard,
O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.

4:20 Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is
spoiled: suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment.

4:21 How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the
trumpet?  4:22 For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they
are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise
to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.

4:23 I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and
the heavens, and they had no light.

4:24 I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills
moved lightly.

4:25 I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the
heavens were fled.

4:26 I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all
the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and
by his fierce anger.

4:27 For thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate;
yet will I not make a full end.

4:28 For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black;
because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent,
neither will I turn back from it.

4:29 The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and
bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks:
every city shall be forsaken, and not a man dwell therein.

4:30 And when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou
clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thee with ornaments
of gold, though thou rentest thy face with painting, in vain shalt
thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek
thy life.

4:31 For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the
anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of
the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her
hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of
murderers.

5:1 Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now,
and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man,
if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I
will pardon it.

5:2 And though they say, The LORD liveth; surely they swear falsely.

5:3 O LORD, are not thine eyes upon the truth? thou hast stricken
them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they
have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder
than a rock; they have refused to return.

5:4 Therefore I said, Surely these are poor; they are foolish: for
they know not the way of the LORD, nor the judgment of their God.

5:5 I will get me unto the great men, and will speak unto them; for
they have known the way of the LORD, and the judgment of their God:
but these have altogether broken the yoke, and burst the bonds.

5:6 Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of
the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their
cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn in pieces:
because their transgressions are many, and their backslidings are
increased.

5:7 How shall I pardon thee for this? thy children have forsaken me,
and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full,
they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in
the harlots' houses.

5:8 They were as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed after
his neighbour's wife.

5:9 Shall I not visit for these things? saith the LORD: and shall not
my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?  5:10 Go ye up upon her
walls, and destroy; but make not a full end: take away her
battlements; for they are not the LORD's.

5:11 For the house of Israel and the house of Judah have dealt very
treacherously against me, saith the LORD.

5:12 They have belied the LORD, and said, It is not he; neither shall
evil come upon us; neither shall we see sword nor famine: 5:13 And the
prophets shall become wind, and the word is not in them: thus shall it
be done unto them.

5:14 Wherefore thus saith the LORD God of hosts, Because ye speak this
word, behold, I will make my words in thy mouth fire, and this people
wood, and it shall devour them.

5:15 Lo, I will bring a nation upon you from far, O house of Israel,
saith the LORD: it is a mighty nation, it is an ancient nation, a
nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what
they say.

5:16 Their quiver is as an open sepulchre, they are all mighty men.

5:17 And they shall eat up thine harvest, and thy bread, which thy
sons and thy daughters should eat: they shall eat up thy flocks and
thine herds: they shall eat up thy vines and thy fig trees: they shall
impoverish thy fenced cities, wherein thou trustedst, with the sword.

5:18 Nevertheless in those days, saith the LORD, I will not make a
full end with you.

5:19 And it shall come to pass, when ye shall say, Wherefore doeth the
LORD our God all these things unto us? then shalt thou answer them,
Like as ye have forsaken me, and served strange gods in your land, so
shall ye serve strangers in a land that is not your's.

5:20 Declare this in the house of Jacob, and publish it in Judah,
saying, 5:21 Hear now this, O foolish people, and without
understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear
not: 5:22 Fear ye not me? saith the LORD: will ye not tremble at my
presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a
perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof
toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can
they not pass over it?  5:23 But this people hath a revolting and a
rebellious heart; they are revolted and gone.

5:24 Neither say they in their heart, Let us now fear the LORD our
God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season:
he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.

5:25 Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have
withholden good things from you.

5:26 For among my people are found wicked men: they lay wait, as he
that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men.

5:27 As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit:
therefore they are become great, and waxen rich.

5:28 They are waxen fat, they shine: yea, they overpass the deeds of
the wicked: they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet
they prosper; and the right of the needy do they not judge.

5:29 Shall I not visit for these things? saith the LORD: shall not my
soul be avenged on such a nation as this?  5:30 A wonderful and
horrible thing is committed in the land; 5:31 The prophets prophesy
falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love
to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?  6:1 O ye
children of Benjamin, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of
Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a sign of fire in
Bethhaccerem: for evil appeareth out of the north, and great
destruction.

6:2 I have likened the daughter of Zion to a comely and delicate
woman.

6:3 The shepherds with their flocks shall come unto her; they shall
pitch their tents against her round about; they shall feed every one
in his place.

6:4 Prepare ye war against her; arise, and let us go up at noon. Woe
unto us! for the day goeth away, for the shadows of the evening are
stretched out.

6:5 Arise, and let us go by night, and let us destroy her palaces.

6:6 For thus hath the LORD of hosts said, Hew ye down trees, and cast
a mount against Jerusalem: this is the city to be visited; she is
wholly oppression in the midst of her.

6:7 As a fountain casteth out her waters, so she casteth out her
wickedness: violence and spoil is heard in her; before me continually
is grief and wounds.

6:8 Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee;
lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited.

6:9 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall throughly glean the
remnant of Israel as a vine: turn back thine hand as a grapegatherer
into the baskets.

6:10 To whom shall I speak, and give warning, that they may hear?
behold, their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken: behold,
the word of the LORD is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in
it.

6:11 Therefore I am full of the fury of the LORD; I am weary with
holding in: I will pour it out upon the children abroad, and upon the
assembly of young men together: for even the husband with the wife
shall be taken, the aged with him that is full of days.

6:12 And their houses shall be turned unto others, with their fields
and wives together: for I will stretch out my hand upon the
inhabitants of the land, saith the LORD.

6:13 For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every
one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the
priest every one dealeth falsely.

6:14 They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people
slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

6:15 Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they
were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they
shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they
shall be cast down, saith the LORD.

6:16 Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for
the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall
find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.

6:17 Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the
trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken.

6:18 Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation, what is
among them.

6:19 Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even
the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my
words, nor to my law, but rejected it.

6:20 To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the
sweet cane from a far country? your burnt offerings are not
acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto me.

6:21 Therefore thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will lay stumblingblocks
before this people, and the fathers and the sons together shall fall
upon them; the neighbour and his friend shall perish.

6:22 Thus saith the LORD, Behold, a people cometh from the north
country, and a great nation shall be raised from the sides of the
earth.

6:23 They shall lay hold on bow and spear; they are cruel, and have no
mercy; their voice roareth like the sea; and they ride upon horses,
set in array as men for war against thee, O daughter of Zion.

6:24 We have heard the fame thereof: our hands wax feeble: anguish
hath taken hold of us, and pain, as of a woman in travail.

6:25 Go not forth into the field, nor walk by the way; for the sword
of the enemy and fear is on every side.

6:26 O daughter of my people, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow
thyself in ashes: make thee mourning, as for an only son, most bitter
lamentation: for the spoiler shall suddenly come upon us.

6:27 I have set thee for a tower and a fortress among my people, that
thou mayest know and try their way.

6:28 They are all grievous revolters, walking with slanders: they are
brass and iron; they are all corrupters.

6:29 The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire; the
founder melteth in vain: for the wicked are not plucked away.

6:30 Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the LORD hath
rejected them.

7:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, 7:2 Stand in
the gate of the LORD's house, and proclaim there this word, and say,
Hear the word of the LORD, all ye of Judah, that enter in at these
gates to worship the LORD.

7:3 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways
and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.

7:4 Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The
temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these.

7:5 For if ye throughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye
throughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour; 7:6 If ye
oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not
innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your
hurt: 7:7 Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land
that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever.

7:8 Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit.

7:9 Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and
burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not;
7:10 And come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my
name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations?  7:11 Is
this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in
your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the LORD.

7:12 But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my
name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my
people Israel.

7:13 And now, because ye have done all these works, saith the LORD,
and I spake unto you, rising up early and speaking, but ye heard not;
and I called you, but ye answered not; 7:14 Therefore will I do unto
this house, which is called by my name, wherein ye trust, and unto the
place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to
Shiloh.

7:15 And I will cast you out of my sight, as I have cast out all your
brethren, even the whole seed of Ephraim.

7:16 Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor
prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear
thee.

7:17 Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the
streets of Jerusalem?  7:18 The children gather wood, and the fathers
kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the
queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that
they may provoke me to anger.

7:19 Do they provoke me to anger? saith the LORD: do they not provoke
themselves to the confusion of their own faces?  7:20 Therefore thus
saith the Lord GOD; Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured out
upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon the trees of the
field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall
not be quenched.

7:21 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt
offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh.

7:22 For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day
that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt
offerings or sacrifices: 7:23 But this thing commanded I them, saying,
Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and
walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well
unto you.

7:24 But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the
counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went
backward, and not forward.

7:25 Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of
Egypt unto this day I have even sent unto you all my servants the
prophets, daily rising up early and sending them: 7:26 Yet they
hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their
neck: they did worse than their fathers.

7:27 Therefore thou shalt speak all these words unto them; but they
will not hearken to thee: thou shalt also call unto them; but they
will not answer thee.

7:28 But thou shalt say unto them, This is a nation that obeyeth not
the voice of the LORD their God, nor receiveth correction: truth is
perished, and is cut off from their mouth.

7:29 Cut off thine hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away, and take up a
lamentation on high places; for the LORD hath rejected and forsaken
the generation of his wrath.

7:30 For the children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith the
LORD: they have set their abominations in the house which is called by
my name, to pollute it.

7:31 And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the
valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in
the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.

7:32 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall
no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the
valley of slaughter: for they shall bury in Tophet, till there be no
place.

7:33 And the carcases of this people shall be meat for the fowls of
the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth; and none shall fray them
away.

7:34 Then will I cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and from the
streets of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness,
the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride: for the land
shall be desolate.

8:1 At that time, saith the LORD, they shall bring out the bones of
the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the
priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves: 8:2 And they shall
spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven,
whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they
have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped:
they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon
the face of the earth.

8:3 And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of
them that remain of this evil family, which remain in all the places
whither I have driven them, saith the LORD of hosts.

8:4 Moreover thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD; Shall they
fall, and not arise? shall he turn away, and not return?  8:5 Why then
is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a perpetual backsliding?
they hold fast deceit, they refuse to return.

8:6 I hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright: no man repented
him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? every one turned to
his course, as the horse rusheth into the battle.

8:7 Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the
turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming;
but my people know not the judgment of the LORD.

8:8 How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us?
Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain.

8:9 The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they
have rejected the word of the LORD; and what wisdom is in them?  8:10
Therefore will I give their wives unto others, and their fields to
them that shall inherit them: for every one from the least even unto
the greatest is given to covetousness, from the prophet even unto the
priest every one dealeth falsely.

8:11 For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people
slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

8:12 Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they
were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall
they fall among them that fall: in the time of their visitation they
shall be cast down, saith the LORD.

8:13 I will surely consume them, saith the LORD: there shall be no
grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade;
and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them.

8:14 Why do we sit still? assemble yourselves, and let us enter into
the defenced cities, and let us be silent there: for the LORD our God
hath put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink, because
we have sinned against the LORD.

8:15 We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health,
and behold trouble!  8:16 The snorting of his horses was heard from
Dan: the whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing of his
strong ones; for they are come, and have devoured the land, and all
that is in it; the city, and those that dwell therein.

8:17 For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which
will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the LORD.

8:18 When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in
me.

8:19 Behold the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people because
of them that dwell in a far country: Is not the LORD in Zion? is not
her king in her? Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven
images, and with strange vanities?  8:20 The harvest is past, the
summer is ended, and we are not saved.

8:21 For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black;
astonishment hath taken hold on me.

8:22 Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then
is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?  9:1 Oh that
my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might
weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!  9:2 Oh
that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I
might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers,
an assembly of treacherous men.

9:3 And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are
not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil
to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD.

9:4 Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any
brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour
will walk with slanders.

9:5 And they will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak
the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary
themselves to commit iniquity.

9:6 Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they
refuse to know me, saith the LORD.

9:7 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, I will melt them,
and try them; for how shall I do for the daughter of my people?  9:8
Their tongue is as an arrow shot out; it speaketh deceit: one speaketh
peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in heart he layeth his
wait.

9:9 Shall I not visit them for these things? saith the LORD: shall not
my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?  9:10 For the mountains
will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habitations of the
wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up, so that none can
pass through them; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle; both
the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled; they are gone.

9:11 And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will
make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.

9:12 Who is the wise man, that may understand this? and who is he to
whom the mouth of the LORD hath spoken, that he may declare it, for
what the land perisheth and is burned up like a wilderness, that none
passeth through?  9:13 And the LORD saith, Because they have forsaken
my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither
walked therein; 9:14 But have walked after the imagination of their
own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them: 9:15
Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I
will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water
of gall to drink.

9:16 I will scatter them also among the heathen, whom neither they nor
their fathers have known: and I will send a sword after them, till I
have consumed them.

9:17 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the
mourning women, that they may come; and send for cunning women, that
they may come: 9:18 And let them make haste, and take up a wailing for
us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out
with waters.

9:19 For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, How are we spoiled!
we are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because
our dwellings have cast us out.

9:20 Yet hear the word of the LORD, O ye women, and let your ear
receive the word of his mouth, and teach your daughters wailing, and
every one her neighbour lamentation.

9:21 For death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our
palaces, to cut off the children from without, and the young men from
the streets.

9:22 Speak, Thus saith the LORD, Even the carcases of men shall fall
as dung upon the open field, and as the handful after the harvestman,
and none shall gather them.

9:23 Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man
glory in his riches: 9:24 But let him that glorieth glory in this,
that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which
exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth:
for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.

9:25 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will punish all
them which are circumcised with the uncircumcised; 9:26 Egypt, and
Judah, and Edom, and the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that are
in the utmost corners, that dwell in the wilderness: for all these
nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are
uncircumcised in the heart.

10:1 Hear ye the word which the LORD speaketh unto you, O house of
Israel: 10:2 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen,
and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are
dismayed at them.

10:3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree
out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.

10:4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails
and with hammers, that it move not.

10:5 They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs
be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they
cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.

10:6 Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee, O LORD; thou art
great, and thy name is great in might.

10:7 Who would not fear thee, O King of nations? for to thee doth it
appertain: forasmuch as among all the wise men of the nations, and in
all their kingdoms, there is none like unto thee.

10:8 But they are altogether brutish and foolish: the stock is a
doctrine of vanities.

10:9 Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish, and gold from
Uphaz, the work of the workman, and of the hands of the founder: blue
and purple is their clothing: they are all the work of cunning men.

10:10 But the LORD is the true God, he is the living God, and an
everlasting king: at his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the
nations shall not be able to abide his indignation.

10:11 Thus shall ye say unto them, The gods that have not made the
heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from
under these heavens.

10:12 He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the
world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his
discretion.

10:13 When he uttereth his voice, there is a multitude of waters in
the heavens, and he causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the
earth; he maketh lightnings with rain, and bringeth forth the wind out
of his treasures.

10:14 Every man is brutish in his knowledge: every founder is
confounded by the graven image: for his molten image is falsehood, and
there is no breath in them.

10:15 They are vanity, and the work of errors: in the time of their
visitation they shall perish.

10:16 The portion of Jacob is not like them: for he is the former of
all things; and Israel is the rod of his inheritance: The LORD of
hosts is his name.

10:17 Gather up thy wares out of the land, O inhabitant of the
fortress.

10:18 For thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will sling out the
inhabitants of the land at this once, and will distress them, that
they may find it so.

10:19 Woe is me for my hurt! my wound is grievous; but I said, Truly
this is a grief, and I must bear it.

10:20 My tabernacle is spoiled, and all my cords are broken: my
children are gone forth of me, and they are not: there is none to
stretch forth my tent any more, and to set up my curtains.

10:21 For the pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the
LORD: therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be
scattered.

10:22 Behold, the noise of the bruit is come, and a great commotion
out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a
den of dragons.

10:23 O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not
in man that walketh to direct his steps.

10:24 O LORD, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest
thou bring me to nothing.

10:25 Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know thee not, and upon
the families that call not on thy name: for they have eaten up Jacob,
and devoured him, and consumed him, and have made his habitation
desolate.

11:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD saying, 11:2 Hear ye
the words of this covenant, and speak unto the men of Judah, and to
the inhabitants of Jerusalem; 11:3 And say thou unto them, Thus saith
the LORD God of Israel; Cursed be the man that obeyeth not the words
of this covenant, 11:4 Which I commanded your fathers in the day that
I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace,
saying, Obey my voice, and do them, according to all which I command
you: so shall ye be my people, and I will be your God: 11:5 That I may
perform the oath which I have sworn unto your fathers, to give them a
land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day. Then answered I,
and said, So be it, O LORD.

11:6 Then the LORD said unto me, Proclaim all these words in the
cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear ye the
words of this covenant, and do them.

11:7 For I earnestly protested unto your fathers in the day that I
brought them up out of the land of Egypt, even unto this day, rising
early and protesting, saying, Obey my voice.

11:8 Yet they obeyed not, nor inclined their ear, but walked every one
in the imagination of their evil heart: therefore I will bring upon
them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do: but
they did them not.

11:9 And the LORD said unto me, A conspiracy is found among the men of
Judah, and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

11:10 They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers,
which refused to hear my words; and they went after other gods to
serve them: the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my
covenant which I made with their fathers.

11:11 Therefore thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will bring evil upon
them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall
cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.

11:12 Then shall the cities of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem go,
and cry unto the gods unto whom they offer incense: but they shall not
save them at all in the time of their trouble.

11:13 For according to the number of thy cities were thy gods, O
Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye
set up altars to that shameful thing, even altars to burn incense unto
Baal.

11:14 Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up a cry
or prayer for them: for I will not hear them in the time that they cry
unto me for their trouble.

11:15 What hath my beloved to do in mine house, seeing she hath
wrought lewdness with many, and the holy flesh is passed from thee?
when thou doest evil, then thou rejoicest.

11:16 The LORD called thy name, A green olive tree, fair, and of
goodly fruit: with the noise of a great tumult he hath kindled fire
upon it, and the branches of it are broken.

11:17 For the LORD of hosts, that planted thee, hath pronounced evil
against thee, for the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of
Judah, which they have done against themselves to provoke me to anger
in offering incense unto Baal.

11:18 And the LORD hath given me knowledge of it, and I know it: then
thou shewedst me their doings.

11:19 But I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter;
and I knew not that they had devised devices against me, saying, Let
us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off
from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.

11:20 But, O LORD of hosts, that judgest righteously, that triest the
reins and the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them: for unto thee
have I revealed my cause.

11:21 Therefore thus saith the LORD of the men of Anathoth, that seek
thy life, saying, Prophesy not in the name of the LORD, that thou die
not by our hand: 11:22 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold,
I will punish them: the young men shall die by the sword; their sons
and their daughters shall die by famine: 11:23 And there shall be no
remnant of them: for I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth, even
the year of their visitation.

12:1 Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me
talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked
prosper?  wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?
12:2 Thou hast planted them, yea, they have taken root: they grow,
yea, they bring forth fruit: thou art near in their mouth, and far
from their reins.

12:3 But thou, O LORD, knowest me: thou hast seen me, and tried mine
heart toward thee: pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and
prepare them for the day of slaughter.

12:4 How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field
wither, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein? the beasts are
consumed, and the birds; because they said, He shall not see our last
end.

12:5 If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee,
then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace,
wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in
the swelling of Jordan?  12:6 For even thy brethren, and the house of
thy father, even they have dealt treacherously with thee; yea, they
have called a multitude after thee: believe them not, though they
speak fair words unto thee.

12:7 I have forsaken mine house, I have left mine heritage; I have
given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies.

12:8 Mine heritage is unto me as a lion in the forest; it crieth out
against me: therefore have I hated it.

12:9 Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird, the birds round
about are against her; come ye, assemble all the beasts of the field,
come to devour.

12:10 Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my
portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate
wilderness.

12:11 They have made it desolate, and being desolate it mourneth unto
me; the whole land is made desolate, because no man layeth it to
heart.

12:12 The spoilers are come upon all high places through the
wilderness: for the sword of the LORD shall devour from the one end of
the land even to the other end of the land: no flesh shall have peace.

12:13 They have sown wheat, but shall reap thorns: they have put
themselves to pain, but shall not profit: and they shall be ashamed of
your revenues because of the fierce anger of the LORD.

12:14 Thus saith the LORD against all mine evil neighbours, that touch
the inheritance which I have caused my people Israel to inherit;
Behold, I will pluck them out of their land, and pluck out the house
of Judah from among them.

12:15 And it shall come to pass, after that I have plucked them out I
will return, and have compassion on them, and will bring them again,
every man to his heritage, and every man to his land.

12:16 And it shall come to pass, if they will diligently learn the
ways of my people, to swear by my name, The LORD liveth; as they
taught my people to swear by Baal; then shall they be built in the
midst of my people.

12:17 But if they will not obey, I will utterly pluck up and destroy
that nation, saith the LORD.

13:1 Thus saith the LORD unto me, Go and get thee a linen girdle, and
put it upon thy loins, and put it not in water.

13:2 So I got a girdle according to the word of the LORD, and put it
on my loins.

13:3 And the word of the LORD came unto me the second time, saying,
13:4 Take the girdle that thou hast got, which is upon thy loins, and
arise, go to Euphrates, and hide it there in a hole of the rock.

13:5 So I went, and hid it by Euphrates, as the LORD commanded me.

13:6 And it came to pass after many days, that the LORD said unto me,
Arise, go to Euphrates, and take the girdle from thence, which I
commanded thee to hide there.

13:7 Then I went to Euphrates, and digged, and took the girdle from
the place where I had hid it: and, behold, the girdle was marred, it
was profitable for nothing.

13:8 Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 13:9 Thus saith
the LORD, After this manner will I mar the pride of Judah, and the
great pride of Jerusalem.

13:10 This evil people, which refuse to hear my words, which walk in
the imagination of their heart, and walk after other gods, to serve
them, and to worship them, shall even be as this girdle, which is good
for nothing.

13:11 For as the girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, so have I
caused to cleave unto me the whole house of Israel and the whole house
of Judah, saith the LORD; that they might be unto me for a people, and
for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory: but they would not
hear.

13:12 Therefore thou shalt speak unto them this word; Thus saith the
LORD God of Israel, Every bottle shall be filled with wine: and they
shall say unto thee, Do we not certainly know that every bottle shall
be filled with wine?  13:13 Then shalt thou say unto them, Thus saith
the LORD, Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land, even
the kings that sit upon David's throne, and the priests, and the
prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with drunkenness.

13:14 And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and
the sons together, saith the LORD: I will not pity, nor spare, nor
have mercy, but destroy them.

13:15 Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud: for the LORD hath spoken.

13:16 Give glory to the LORD your God, before he cause darkness, and
before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look
for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross
darkness.

13:17 But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places
for your pride; and mine eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears,
because the LORD's flock is carried away captive.

13:18 Say unto the king and to the queen, Humble yourselves, sit down:
for your principalities shall come down, even the crown of your glory.

13:19 The cities of the south shall be shut up, and none shall open
them: Judah shall be carried away captive all of it, it shall be
wholly carried away captive.

13:20 Lift up your eyes, and behold them that come from the north:
where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock?  13:21
What wilt thou say when he shall punish thee? for thou hast taught
them to be captains, and as chief over thee: shall not sorrows take
thee, as a woman in travail?  13:22 And if thou say in thine heart,
Wherefore come these things upon me?  For the greatness of thine
iniquity are thy skirts discovered, and thy heels made bare.

13:23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?
then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.

13:24 Therefore will I scatter them as the stubble that passeth away
by the wind of the wilderness.

13:25 This is thy lot, the portion of thy measures from me, saith the
LORD; because thou hast forgotten me, and trusted in falsehood.

13:26 Therefore will I discover thy skirts upon thy face, that thy
shame may appear.

13:27 I have seen thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of
thy whoredom, and thine abominations on the hills in the fields. Woe
unto thee, O Jerusalem! wilt thou not be made clean? when shall it
once be?  14:1 The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah concerning
the dearth.

14:2 Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish; they are black
unto the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up.

14:3 And their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters: they
came to the pits, and found no water; they returned with their vessels
empty; they were ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads.

14:4 Because the ground is chapt, for there was no rain in the earth,
the plowmen were ashamed, they covered their heads.

14:5 Yea, the hind also calved in the field, and forsook it, because
there was no grass.

14:6 And the wild asses did stand in the high places, they snuffed up
the wind like dragons; their eyes did fail, because there was no
grass.

14:7 O LORD, though our iniquities testify against us, do thou it for
thy name's sake: for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against
thee.

14:8 O the hope of Israel, the saviour thereof in time of trouble, why
shouldest thou be as a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man
that turneth aside to tarry for a night?  14:9 Why shouldest thou be
as a man astonied, as a mighty man that cannot save? yet thou, O LORD,
art in the midst of us, and we are called by thy name; leave us not.

14:10 Thus saith the LORD unto this people, Thus have they loved to
wander, they have not refrained their feet, therefore the LORD doth
not accept them; he will now remember their iniquity, and visit their
sins.

14:11 Then said the LORD unto me, Pray not for this people for their
good.

14:12 When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer
burnt offering and an oblation, I will not accept them: but I will
consume them by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence.

14:13 Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, the prophets say unto them,
Ye shall not see the sword, neither shall ye have famine; but I will
give you assured peace in this place.

14:14 Then the LORD said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my
name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake
unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a
thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart.

14:15 Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the prophets that
prophesy in my name, and I sent them not, yet they say, Sword and
famine shall not be in this land; By sword and famine shall those
prophets be consumed.

14:16 And the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the
streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword; and they
shall have none to bury them, them, their wives, nor their sons, nor
their daughters: for I will pour their wickedness upon them.

14:17 Therefore thou shalt say this word unto them; Let mine eyes run
down with tears night and day, and let them not cease: for the virgin
daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very
grievous blow.

14:18 If I go forth into the field, then behold the slain with the
sword!  and if I enter into the city, then behold them that are sick
with famine!  yea, both the prophet and the priest go about into a
land that they know not.

14:19 Hast thou utterly rejected Judah? hath thy soul lothed Zion? why
hast thou smitten us, and there is no healing for us? we looked for
peace, and there is no good; and for the time of healing, and behold
trouble!  14:20 We acknowledge, O LORD, our wickedness, and the
iniquity of our fathers: for we have sinned against thee.

14:21 Do not abhor us, for thy name's sake, do not disgrace the throne
of thy glory: remember, break not thy covenant with us.

14:22 Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause
rain? or can the heavens give showers? art not thou he, O LORD our
God?  therefore we will wait upon thee: for thou hast made all these
things.

15:1 Then said the LORD unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before
me, yet my mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of my
sight, and let them go forth.

15:2 And it shall come to pass, if they say unto thee, Whither shall
we go forth? then thou shalt tell them, Thus saith the LORD; Such as
are for death, to death; and such as are for the sword, to the sword;
and such as are for the famine, to the famine; and such as are for the
captivity, to the captivity.

15:3 And I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the LORD: the
sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and
the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy.

15:4 And I will cause them to be removed into all kingdoms of the
earth, because of Manasseh the son of Hezekiah king of Judah, for that
which he did in Jerusalem.

15:5 For who shall have pity upon thee, O Jerusalem? or who shall
bemoan thee? or who shall go aside to ask how thou doest?  15:6 Thou
hast forsaken me, saith the LORD, thou art gone backward: therefore
will I stretch out my hand against thee, and destroy thee; I am weary
with repenting.

15:7 And I will fan them with a fan in the gates of the land; I will
bereave them of children, I will destroy my people since they return
not from their ways.

15:8 Their widows are increased to me above the sand of the seas: I
have brought upon them against the mother of the young men a spoiler
at noonday: I have caused him to fall upon it suddenly, and terrors
upon the city.

15:9 She that hath borne seven languisheth: she hath given up the
ghost; her sun is gone down while it was yet day: she hath been
ashamed and confounded: and the residue of them will I deliver to the
sword before their enemies, saith the LORD.

15:10 Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife
and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on
usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth
curse me.

15:11 The LORD said, Verily it shall be well with thy remnant; verily
I will cause the enemy to entreat thee well in the time of evil and in
the time of affliction.

15:12 Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel?  15:13 Thy
substance and thy treasures will I give to the spoil without price,
and that for all thy sins, even in all thy borders.

15:14 And I will make thee to pass with thine enemies into a land
which thou knowest not: for a fire is kindled in mine anger, which
shall burn upon you.

15:15 O LORD, thou knowest: remember me, and visit me, and revenge me
of my persecutors; take me not away in thy longsuffering: know that
for thy sake I have suffered rebuke.

15:16 Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto
me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O
LORD God of hosts.

15:17 I sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I sat
alone because of thy hand: for thou hast filled me with indignation.

15:18 Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuseth
to be healed? wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar, and as waters
that fail?  15:19 Therefore thus saith the LORD, If thou return, then
will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before me: and if thou
take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth: let
them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them.

15:20 And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brasen wall: and
they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against
thee: for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the
LORD.

15:21 And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I
will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible.

16:1 The word of the LORD came also unto me, saying, 16:2 Thou shalt
not take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or daughters in
this place.

16:3 For thus saith the LORD concerning the sons and concerning the
daughters that are born in this place, and concerning their mothers
that bare them, and concerning their fathers that begat them in this
land; 16:4 They shall die of grievous deaths; they shall not be
lamented; neither shall they be buried; but they shall be as dung upon
the face of the earth: and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by
famine; and their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and
for the beasts of the earth.

16:5 For thus saith the LORD, Enter not into the house of mourning,
neither go to lament nor bemoan them: for I have taken away my peace
from this people, saith the LORD, even lovingkindness and mercies.

16:6 Both the great and the small shall die in this land: they shall
not be buried, neither shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves,
nor make themselves bald for them: 16:7 Neither shall men tear
themselves for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead; neither
shall men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father
or for their mother.

16:8 Thou shalt not also go into the house of feasting, to sit with
them to eat and to drink.

16:9 For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I
will cause to cease out of this place in your eyes, and in your days,
the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the
bridegroom, and the voice of the bride.

16:10 And it shall come to pass, when thou shalt shew this people all
these words, and they shall say unto thee, Wherefore hath the LORD
pronounced all this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or
what is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?
16:11 Then shalt thou say unto them, Because your fathers have
forsaken me, saith the LORD, and have walked after other gods, and
have served them, and have worshipped them, and have forsaken me, and
have not kept my law; 16:12 And ye have done worse than your fathers;
for, behold, ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil
heart, that they may not hearken unto me: 16:13 Therefore will I cast
you out of this land into a land that ye know not, neither ye nor your
fathers; and there shall ye serve other gods day and night; where I
will not shew you favour.

16:14 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall
no more be said, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of
Israel out of the land of Egypt; 16:15 But, The LORD liveth, that
brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from
all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again
into their land that I gave unto their fathers.

16:16 Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the LORD, and they
shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they
shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of
the holes of the rocks.

16:17 For mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my
face, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes.

16:18 And first I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double;
because they have defiled my land, they have filled mine inheritance
with the carcases of their detestable and abominable things.

16:19 O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day
of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the
earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity,
and things wherein there is no profit.

16:20 Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?  16:21
Therefore, behold, I will this once cause them to know, I will cause
them to know mine hand and my might; and they shall know that my name
is The LORD.

17:1 The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the
point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and
upon the horns of your altars; 17:2 Whilst their children remember
their altars and their groves by the green trees upon the high hills.

17:3 O my mountain in the field, I will give thy substance and all thy
treasures to the spoil, and thy high places for sin, throughout all
thy borders.

17:4 And thou, even thyself, shalt discontinue from thine heritage
that I gave thee; and I will cause thee to serve thine enemies in the
land which thou knowest not: for ye have kindled a fire in mine anger,
which shall burn for ever.

17:5 Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and
maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.

17:6 For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see
when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the
wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.

17:7 Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the
LORD is.

17:8 For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that
spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat
cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the
year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked:
who can know it?  17:10 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins,
even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the
fruit of his doings.

17:11 As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he
that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst
of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.

17:12 A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our
sanctuary.

17:13 O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be
ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth,
because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.

17:14 Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be
saved: for thou art my praise.

17:15 Behold, they say unto me, Where is the word of the LORD? let it
come now.

17:16 As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow
thee: neither have I desired the woeful day; thou knowest: that which
came out of my lips was right before thee.

17:17 Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil.

17:18 Let them be confounded that persecute me, but let not me be
confounded: let them be dismayed, but let not me be dismayed: bring
upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction.

17:19 Thus said the LORD unto me; Go and stand in the gate of the
children of the people, whereby the kings of Judah come in, and by the
which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem; 17:20 And say
unto them, Hear ye the word of the LORD, ye kings of Judah, and all
Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that enter in by these
gates: 17:21 Thus saith the LORD; Take heed to yourselves, and bear no
burden on the sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem;
17:22 Neither carry forth a burden out of your houses on the sabbath
day, neither do ye any work, but hallow ye the sabbath day, as I
commanded your fathers.

17:23 But they obeyed not, neither inclined their ear, but made their
neck stiff, that they might not hear, nor receive instruction.

17:24 And it shall come to pass, if ye diligently hearken unto me,
saith the LORD, to bring in no burden through the gates of this city
on the sabbath day, but hallow the sabbath day, to do no work therein;
17:25 Then shall there enter into the gates of this city kings and
princes sitting upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on
horses, they, and their princes, the men of Judah, and the inhabitants
of Jerusalem: and this city shall remain for ever.

17:26 And they shall come from the cities of Judah, and from the
places about Jerusalem, and from the land of Benjamin, and from the
plain, and from the mountains, and from the south, bringing burnt
offerings, and sacrifices, and meat offerings, and incense, and
bringing sacrifices of praise, unto the house of the LORD.

17:27 But if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath day,
and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem
on the sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof,
and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be
quenched.

18:1 The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, 18:2
Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee
to hear my words.

18:3 Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a
work on the wheels.

18:4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the
potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the
potter to make it.

18:5 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 18:6 O house of
Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold,
as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house
of Israel.

18:7 At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning
a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; 18:8 If
that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I
will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.

18:9 And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and
concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; 18:10 If it do evil in
my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good,
wherewith I said I would benefit them.

18:11 Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I frame
evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every
one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.

18:12 And they said, There is no hope: but we will walk after our own
devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.

18:13 Therefore thus saith the LORD; Ask ye now among the heathen, who
hath heard such things: the virgin of Israel hath done a very horrible
thing.

18:14 Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon which cometh from the rock
of the field? or shall the cold flowing waters that come from another
place be forsaken?  18:15 Because my people hath forgotten me, they
have burned incense to vanity, and they have caused them to stumble in
their ways from the ancient paths, to walk in paths, in a way not cast
up; 18:16 To make their land desolate, and a perpetual hissing; every
one that passeth thereby shall be astonished, and wag his head.

18:17 I will scatter them as with an east wind before the enemy; I
will shew them the back, and not the face, in the day of their
calamity.

18:18 Then said they, Come and let us devise devices against Jeremiah;
for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the
wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with
the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words.

18:19 Give heed to me, O LORD, and hearken to the voice of them that
contend with me.

18:20 Shall evil be recompensed for good? for they have digged a pit
for my soul. Remember that I stood before thee to speak good for them,
and to turn away thy wrath from them.

18:21 Therefore deliver up their children to the famine, and pour out
their blood by the force of the sword; and let their wives be bereaved
of their children, and be widows; and let their men be put to death;
let their young men be slain by the sword in battle.

18:22 Let a cry be heard from their houses, when thou shalt bring a
troop suddenly upon them: for they have digged a pit to take me, and
hid snares for my feet.

18:23 Yet, LORD, thou knowest all their counsel against me to slay me:
forgive not their iniquity, neither blot out their sin from thy sight,
but let them be overthrown before thee; deal thus with them in the
time of thine anger.

19:1 Thus saith the LORD, Go and get a potter's earthen bottle, and
take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the
priests; 19:2 And go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which
is by the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I
shall tell thee, 19:3 And say, Hear ye the word of the LORD, O kings
of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus saith the LORD of hosts,
the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the
which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle.

19:4 Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and
have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their
fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place
with the blood of innocents; 19:5 They have built also the high places
of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal,
which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind:
19:6 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that this place
shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom,
but The valley of slaughter.

19:7 And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this
place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their
enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their
carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for
the beasts of the earth.

19:8 And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one
that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the
plagues thereof.

19:9 And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the
flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of
his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and
they that seek their lives, shall straiten them.

19:10 Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go
with thee, 19:11 And shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of
hosts; Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh
a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall
bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury.

19:12 Thus will I do unto this place, saith the LORD, and to the
inhabitants thereof, and even make this city as Tophet: 19:13 And the
houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be
defiled as the place of Tophet, because of all the houses upon whose
roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have
poured out drink offerings unto other gods.

19:14 Then came Jeremiah from Tophet, whither the LORD had sent him to
prophesy; and he stood in the court of the LORD's house; and said to
all the people, 19:15 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel;
Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all her towns all the
evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have hardened
their necks, that they might not hear my words.

20:1 Now Pashur the son of Immer the priest, who was also chief
governor in the house of the LORD, heard that Jeremiah prophesied
these things.

20:2 Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks
that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the
LORD.

20:3 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Pashur brought forth
Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then said Jeremiah unto him, The LORD hath
not called thy name Pashur, but Magormissabib.

20:4 For thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will make thee a terror to
thyself, and to all thy friends: and they shall fall by the sword of
their enemies, and thine eyes shall behold it: and I will give all
Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall carry them
captive into Babylon, and shall slay them with the sword.

20:5 Moreover I will deliver all the strength of this city, and all
the labours thereof, and all the precious things thereof, and all the
treasures of the kings of Judah will I give into the hand of their
enemies, which shall spoil them, and take them, and carry them to
Babylon.

20:6 And thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thine house shall go into
captivity: and thou shalt come to Babylon, and there thou shalt die,
and shalt be buried there, thou, and all thy friends, to whom thou
hast prophesied lies.

20:7 O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived; thou art
stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one
mocketh me.

20:8 For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil;
because the word of the LORD was made a reproach unto me, and a
derision, daily.

20:9 Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more
in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up
in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.

20:10 For I heard the defaming of many, fear on every side. Report,
say they, and we will report it. All my familiars watched for my
halting, saying, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail
against him, and we shall take our revenge on him.

20:11 But the LORD is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my
persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be
greatly ashamed; for they shall not prosper: their everlasting
confusion shall never be forgotten.

20:12 But, O LORD of hosts, that triest the righteous, and seest the
reins and the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them: for unto thee
have I opened my cause.

20:13 Sing unto the LORD, praise ye the LORD: for he hath delivered
the soul of the poor from the hand of evildoers.

20:14 Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my
mother bare me be blessed.

20:15 Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A
man child is born unto thee; making him very glad.

20:16 And let that man be as the cities which the LORD overthrew, and
repented not: and let him hear the cry in the morning, and the
shouting at noontide; 20:17 Because he slew me not from the womb; or
that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always
great with me.

20:18 Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow,
that my days should be consumed with shame?  21:1 The word which came
unto Jeremiah from the LORD, when king Zedekiah sent unto him Pashur
the son of Melchiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest,
saying, 21:2 Enquire, I pray thee, of the LORD for us; for
Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon maketh war against us; if so be that
the LORD will deal with us according to all his wondrous works, that
he may go up from us.

21:3 Then said Jeremiah unto them, Thus shall ye say to Zedekiah: 21:4
Thus saith the LORD God of Israel; Behold, I will turn back the
weapons of war that are in your hands, wherewith ye fight against the
king of Babylon, and against the Chaldeans, which besiege you without
the walls, and I will assemble them into the midst of this city.

21:5 And I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and
with a strong arm, even in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath.

21:6 And I will smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and
beast: they shall die of a great pestilence.

21:7 And afterward, saith the LORD, I will deliver Zedekiah king of
Judah, and his servants, and the people, and such as are left in this
city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the famine, into
the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of their
enemies, and into the hand of those that seek their life: and he shall
smite them with the edge of the sword; he shall not spare them,
neither have pity, nor have mercy.

21:8 And unto this people thou shalt say, Thus saith the LORD; Behold,
I set before you the way of life, and the way of death.

21:9 He that abideth in this city shall die by the sword, and by the
famine, and by the pestilence: but he that goeth out, and falleth to
the Chaldeans that besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be
unto him for a prey.

21:10 For I have set my face against this city for evil, and not for
good, saith the LORD: it shall be given into the hand of the king of
Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.

21:11 And touching the house of the king of Judah, say, Hear ye the
word of the LORD; 21:12 O house of David, thus saith the LORD; Execute
judgment in the morning, and deliver him that is spoiled out of the
hand of the oppressor, lest my fury go out like fire, and burn that
none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.

21:13 Behold, I am against thee, O inhabitant of the valley, and rock
of the plain, saith the LORD; which say, Who shall come down against
us? or who shall enter into our habitations?  21:14 But I will punish
you according to the fruit of your doings, saith the LORD: and I will
kindle a fire in the forest thereof, and it shall devour all things
round about it.

22:1 Thus saith the LORD; Go down to the house of the king of Judah,
and speak there this word, 22:2 And say, Hear the word of the LORD, O
king of Judah, that sittest upon the throne of David, thou, and thy
servants, and thy people that enter in by these gates: 22:3 Thus saith
the LORD; Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the
spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no
violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed
innocent blood in this place.

22:4 For if ye do this thing indeed, then shall there enter in by the
gates of this house kings sitting upon the throne of David, riding in
chariots and on horses, he, and his servants, and his people.

22:5 But if ye will not hear these words, I swear by myself, saith the
LORD, that this house shall become a desolation.

22:6 For thus saith the LORD unto the king's house of Judah; Thou art
Gilead unto me, and the head of Lebanon: yet surely I will make thee a
wilderness, and cities which are not inhabited.

22:7 And I will prepare destroyers against thee, every one with his
weapons: and they shall cut down thy choice cedars, and cast them into
the fire.

22:8 And many nations shall pass by this city, and they shall say
every man to his neighbour, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto
this great city?  22:9 Then they shall answer, Because they have
forsaken the covenant of the LORD their God, and worshipped other
gods, and served them.

22:10 Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for
him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native
country.

22:11 For thus saith the LORD touching Shallum the son of Josiah king
of Judah, which reigned instead of Josiah his father, which went forth
out of this place; He shall not return thither any more: 22:12 But he
shall die in the place whither they have led him captive, and shall
see this land no more.

22:13 Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his
chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's service without wages,
and giveth him not for his work; 22:14 That saith, I will build me a
wide house and large chambers, and cutteth him out windows; and it is
cieled with cedar, and painted with vermilion.

22:15 Shalt thou reign, because thou closest thyself in cedar? did not
thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice, and then it was
well with him?  22:16 He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then
it was well with him: was not this to know me? saith the LORD.

22:17 But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness,
and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence,
to do it.

22:18 Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning Jehoiakim the son of
Josiah king of Judah; They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah my
brother! or, Ah sister! they shall not lament for him, saying, Ah
lord! or, Ah his glory!  22:19 He shall be buried with the burial of
an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.

22:20 Go up to Lebanon, and cry; and lift up thy voice in Bashan, and
cry from the passages: for all thy lovers are destroyed.

22:21 I spake unto thee in thy prosperity; but thou saidst, I will not
hear. This hath been thy manner from thy youth, that thou obeyedst not
my voice.

22:22 The wind shall eat up all thy pastors, and thy lovers shall go
into captivity: surely then shalt thou be ashamed and confounded for
all thy wickedness.

22:23 O inhabitant of Lebanon, that makest thy nest in the cedars, how
gracious shalt thou be when pangs come upon thee, the pain as of a
woman in travail!  22:24 As I live, saith the LORD, though Coniah the
son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet upon my right hand, yet
would I pluck thee thence; 22:25 And I will give thee into the hand of
them that seek thy life, and into the hand of them whose face thou
fearest, even into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and
into the hand of the Chaldeans.

22:26 And I will cast thee out, and thy mother that bare thee, into
another country, where ye were not born; and there shall ye die.

22:27 But to the land whereunto they desire to return, thither shall
they not return.

22:28 Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel
wherein is no pleasure? wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed,
and are cast into a land which they know not?  22:29 O earth, earth,
earth, hear the word of the LORD.

22:30 Thus saith the LORD, Write ye this man childless, a man that
shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper,
sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.

23:1 Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my
pasture! saith the LORD.

23:2 Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors
that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away,
and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of
your doings, saith the LORD.

23:3 And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries
whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds;
and they shall be fruitful and increase.

23:4 And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and
they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be
lacking, saith the LORD.

23:5 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto
David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and
shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.

23:6 In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely:
and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR
RIGHTEOUSNESS.

23:7 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that they shall
no more say, The LORD liveth, which brought up the children of Israel
out of the land of Egypt; 23:8 But, The LORD liveth, which brought up
and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north
country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they
shall dwell in their own land.

23:9 Mine heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my
bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath
overcome, because of the LORD, and because of the words of his
holiness.

23:10 For the land is full of adulterers; for because of swearing the
land mourneth; the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and
their course is evil, and their force is not right.

23:11 For both prophet and priest are profane; yea, in my house have I
found their wickedness, saith the LORD.

23:12 Wherefore their way shall be unto them as slippery ways in the
darkness: they shall be driven on, and fall therein: for I will bring
evil upon them, even the year of their visitation, saith the LORD.

23:13 And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria; they
prophesied in Baal, and caused my people Israel to err.

23:14 I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing:
they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands
of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness; they are all
of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.

23:15 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts concerning the prophets;
Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water
of gall: for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth
into all the land.

23:16 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the
prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a
vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD.

23:17 They say still unto them that despise me, The LORD hath said, Ye
shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walketh after the
imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you.

23:18 For who hath stood in the counsel of the LORD, and hath
perceived and heard his word? who hath marked his word, and heard it?
23:19 Behold, a whirlwind of the LORD is gone forth in fury, even a
grievous whirlwind: it shall fall grievously upon the head of the
wicked.

23:20 The anger of the LORD shall not return, until he have executed,
and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart: in the latter
days ye shall consider it perfectly.

23:21 I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken
to them, yet they prophesied.

23:22 But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to
hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way,
and from the evil of their doings.

23:23 Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD, and not a God afar off?
23:24 Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him?
saith the LORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD.

23:25 I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in my
name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed.

23:26 How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that
prophesy lies? yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own
heart; 23:27 Which think to cause my people to forget my name by their
dreams which they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers
have forgotten my name for Baal.

23:28 The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that
hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to
the wheat? saith the LORD.

23:29 Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer
that breaketh the rock in pieces?  23:30 Therefore, behold, I am
against the prophets, saith the LORD, that steal my words every one
from his neighbour.

23:31 Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the LORD, that use
their tongues, and say, He saith.

23:32 Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the
LORD, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and
by their lightness; yet I sent them not, nor commanded them: therefore
they shall not profit this people at all, saith the LORD.

23:33 And when this people, or the prophet, or a priest, shall ask
thee, saying, What is the burden of the LORD? thou shalt then say unto
them, What burden? I will even forsake you, saith the LORD.

23:34 And as for the prophet, and the priest, and the people, that
shall say, The burden of the LORD, I will even punish that man and his
house.

23:35 Thus shall ye say every one to his neighbour, and every one to
his brother, What hath the LORD answered? and, What hath the LORD
spoken?  23:36 And the burden of the LORD shall ye mention no more:
for every man's word shall be his burden; for ye have perverted the
words of the living God, of the LORD of hosts our God.

23:37 Thus shalt thou say to the prophet, What hath the LORD answered
thee? and, What hath the LORD spoken?  23:38 But since ye say, The
burden of the LORD; therefore thus saith the LORD; Because ye say this
word, The burden of the LORD, and I have sent unto you, saying, Ye
shall not say, The burden of the LORD; 23:39 Therefore, behold, I,
even I, will utterly forget you, and I will forsake you, and the city
that I gave you and your fathers, and cast you out of my presence:
23:40 And I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you, and a
perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten.

24:1 The LORD shewed me, and, behold, two baskets of figs were set
before the temple of the LORD, after that Nebuchadrezzar king of
Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of
Judah, and the princes of Judah, with the carpenters and smiths, from
Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon.

24:2 One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first
ripe: and the other basket had very naughty figs, which could not be
eaten, they were so bad.

24:3 Then said the LORD unto me, What seest thou, Jeremiah? And I
said, Figs; the good figs, very good; and the evil, very evil, that
cannot be eaten, they are so evil.

24:4 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 24:5 Thus saith
the LORD, the God of Israel; Like these good figs, so will I
acknowledge them that are carried away captive of Judah, whom I have
sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for their good.

24:6 For I will set mine eyes upon them for good, and I will bring
them again to this land: and I will build them, and not pull them
down; and I will plant them, and not pluck them up.

24:7 And I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the LORD: and
they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall
return unto me with their whole heart.

24:8 And as the evil figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so evil;
surely thus saith the LORD, So will I give Zedekiah the king of Judah,
and his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem, that remain in this
land, and them that dwell in the land of Egypt: 24:9 And I will
deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for
their hurt, to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in
all places whither I shall drive them.

24:10 And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, among
them, till they be consumed from off the land that I gave unto them
and to their fathers.

25:1 The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah
in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, that
was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; 25:2 The which
Jeremiah the prophet spake unto all the people of Judah, and to all
the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, 25:3 From the thirteenth year of
Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, even unto this day, that is the
three and twentieth year, the word of the LORD hath come unto me, and
I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking; but ye have not
hearkened.

25:4 And the LORD hath sent unto you all his servants the prophets,
rising early and sending them; but ye have not hearkened, nor inclined
your ear to hear.

25:5 They said, Turn ye again now every one from his evil way, and
from the evil of your doings, and dwell in the land that the LORD hath
given unto you and to your fathers for ever and ever: 25:6 And go not
after other gods to serve them, and to worship them, and provoke me
not to anger with the works of your hands; and I will do you no hurt.

25:7 Yet ye have not hearkened unto me, saith the LORD; that ye might
provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt.

25:8 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Because ye have not heard
my words, 25:9 Behold, I will send and take all the families of the
north, saith the LORD, and Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my
servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the
inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and
will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and an
hissing, and perpetual desolations.

25:10 Moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth, and the voice
of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride,
the sound of the millstones, and the light of the candle.

25:11 And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment;
and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.

25:12 And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished,
that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the
LORD, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make
it perpetual desolations.

25:13 And I will bring upon that land all my words which I have
pronounced against it, even all that is written in this book, which
Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the nations.

25:14 For many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them
also: and I will recompense them according to their deeds, and
according to the works of their own hands.

25:15 For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup
of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send
thee, to drink it.

25:16 And they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad, because of the
sword that I will send among them.

25:17 Then took I the cup at the LORD's hand, and made all the nations
to drink, unto whom the LORD had sent me: 25:18 To wit, Jerusalem, and
the cities of Judah, and the kings thereof, and the princes thereof,
to make them a desolation, an astonishment, an hissing, and a curse;
as it is this day; 25:19 Pharaoh king of Egypt, and his servants, and
his princes, and all his people; 25:20 And all the mingled people, and
all the kings of the land of Uz, and all the kings of the land of the
Philistines, and Ashkelon, and Azzah, and Ekron, and the remnant of
Ashdod, 25:21 Edom, and Moab, and the children of Ammon, 25:22 And all
the kings of Tyrus, and all the kings of Zidon, and the kings of the
isles which are beyond the sea, 25:23 Dedan, and Tema, and Buz, and
all that are in the utmost corners, 25:24 And all the kings of Arabia,
and all the kings of the mingled people that dwell in the desert,
25:25 And all the kings of Zimri, and all the kings of Elam, and all
the kings of the Medes, 25:26 And all the kings of the north, far and
near, one with another, and all the kingdoms of the world, which are
upon the face of the earth: and the king of Sheshach shall drink after
them.

25:27 Therefore thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of
hosts, the God of Israel; Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and
fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among
you.

25:28 And it shall be, if they refuse to take the cup at thine hand to
drink, then shalt thou say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ye
shall certainly drink.

25:29 For, lo, I begin to bring evil on the city which is called by my
name, and should ye be utterly unpunished? Ye shall not be unpunished:
for I will call for a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth,
saith the LORD of hosts.

25:30 Therefore prophesy thou against them all these words, and say
unto them, The LORD shall roar from on high, and utter his voice from
his holy habitation; he shall mightily roar upon his habitation; he
shall give a shout, as they that tread the grapes, against all the
inhabitants of the earth.

25:31 A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth; for the LORD
hath a controversy with the nations, he will plead with all flesh; he
will give them that are wicked to the sword, saith the LORD.

25:32 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, evil shall go forth from
nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the
coasts of the earth.

25:33 And the slain of the LORD shall be at that day from one end of
the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be
lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung upon the
ground.

25:34 Howl, ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow yourselves in the ashes,
ye principal of the flock: for the days of your slaughter and of your
dispersions are accomplished; and ye shall fall like a pleasant
vessel.

25:35 And the shepherds shall have no way to flee, nor the principal
of the flock to escape.

25:36 A voice of the cry of the shepherds, and an howling of the
principal of the flock, shall be heard: for the LORD hath spoiled
their pasture.

25:37 And the peaceable habitations are cut down because of the fierce
anger of the LORD.

25:38 He hath forsaken his covert, as the lion: for their land is
desolate because of the fierceness of the oppressor, and because of
his fierce anger.

26:1 In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king
of Judah came this word from the LORD, saying, 26:2 Thus saith the
LORD; Stand in the court of the LORD's house, and speak unto all the
cities of Judah, which come to worship in the LORD's house, all the
words that I command thee to speak unto them; diminish not a word:
26:3 If so be they will hearken, and turn every man from his evil way,
that I may repent me of the evil, which I purpose to do unto them
because of the evil of their doings.

26:4 And thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD; If ye will not
hearken to me, to walk in my law, which I have set before you, 26:5 To
hearken to the words of my servants the prophets, whom I sent unto
you, both rising up early, and sending them, but ye have not
hearkened; 26:6 Then will I make this house like Shiloh, and will make
this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.

26:7 So the priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah
speaking these words in the house of the LORD.

26:8 Now it came to pass, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking
all that the LORD had commanded him to speak unto all the people, that
the priests and the prophets and all the people took him, saying, Thou
shalt surely die.

26:9 Why hast thou prophesied in the name of the LORD, saying, This
house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate without an
inhabitant?  And all the people were gathered against Jeremiah in the
house of the LORD.

26:10 When the princes of Judah heard these things, then they came up
from the king's house unto the house of the LORD, and sat down in the
entry of the new gate of the LORD's house.

26:11 Then spake the priests and the prophets unto the princes and to
all the people, saying, This man is worthy to die; for he hath
prophesied against this city, as ye have heard with your ears.

26:12 Then spake Jeremiah unto all the princes and to all the people,
saying, The LORD sent me to prophesy against this house and against
this city all the words that ye have heard.

26:13 Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the
voice of the LORD your God; and the LORD will repent him of the evil
that he hath pronounced against you.

26:14 As for me, behold, I am in your hand: do with me as seemeth good
and meet unto you.

26:15 But know ye for certain, that if ye put me to death, ye shall
surely bring innocent blood upon yourselves, and upon this city, and
upon the inhabitants thereof: for of a truth the LORD hath sent me
unto you to speak all these words in your ears.

26:16 Then said the princes and all the people unto the priests and to
the prophets; This man is not worthy to die: for he hath spoken to us
in the name of the LORD our God.

26:17 Then rose up certain of the elders of the land, and spake to all
the assembly of the people, saying, 26:18 Micah the Morasthite
prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to all the
people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Zion shall be
plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the
mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.

26:19 Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all to
death?  did he not fear the LORD, and besought the LORD, and the LORD
repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them? Thus
might we procure great evil against our souls.

26:20 And there was also a man that prophesied in the name of the
LORD, Urijah the son of Shemaiah of Kirjathjearim, who prophesied
against this city and against this land according to all the words of
Jeremiah.

26:21 And when Jehoiakim the king, with all his mighty men, and all
the princes, heard his words, the king sought to put him to death: but
when Urijah heard it, he was afraid, and fled, and went into Egypt;
26:22 And Jehoiakim the king sent men into Egypt, namely, Elnathan the
son of Achbor, and certain men with him into Egypt.

26:23 And they fetched forth Urijah out of Egypt, and brought him unto
Jehoiakim the king; who slew him with the sword, and cast his dead
body into the graves of the common people.

26:24 Nevertheless the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with
Jeremiah, that they should not give him into the hand of the people to
put him to death.

27:1 In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king
of Judah came this word unto Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, 27:2 Thus
saith the LORD to me; Make thee bonds and yokes, and put them upon thy
neck, 27:3 And send them to the king of Edom, and to the king of Moab,
and to the king of the Ammonites, and to the king of Tyrus, and to the
king of Zidon, by the hand of the messengers which come to Jerusalem
unto Zedekiah king of Judah; 27:4 And command them to say unto their
masters, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Thus shall
ye say unto your masters; 27:5 I have made the earth, the man and the
beast that are upon the ground, by my great power and by my
outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed meet unto me.

27:6 And now have I given all these lands into the hand of
Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant; and the beasts of the
field have I given him also to serve him.

27:7 And all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son's son,
until the very time of his land come: and then many nations and great
kings shall serve themselves of him.

27:8 And it shall come to pass, that the nation and kingdom which will
not serve the same Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and that will
not put their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation
will I punish, saith the LORD, with the sword, and with the famine,
and with the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand.

27:9 Therefore hearken not ye to your prophets, nor to your diviners,
nor to your dreamers, nor to your enchanters, nor to your sorcerers,
which speak unto you, saying, Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon:
27:10 For they prophesy a lie unto you, to remove you far from your
land; and that I should drive you out, and ye should perish.

27:11 But the nations that bring their neck under the yoke of the king
of Babylon, and serve him, those will I let remain still in their own
land, saith the LORD; and they shall till it, and dwell therein.

27:12 I spake also to Zedekiah king of Judah according to all these
words, saying, Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon,
and serve him and his people, and live.

27:13 Why will ye die, thou and thy people, by the sword, by the
famine, and by the pestilence, as the LORD hath spoken against the
nation that will not serve the king of Babylon?  27:14 Therefore
hearken not unto the words of the prophets that speak unto you,
saying, Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon: for they prophesy a
lie unto you.

27:15 For I have not sent them, saith the LORD, yet they prophesy a
lie in my name; that I might drive you out, and that ye might perish,
ye, and the prophets that prophesy unto you.

27:16 Also I spake to the priests and to all this people, saying, Thus
saith the LORD; Hearken not to the words of your prophets that
prophesy unto you, saying, Behold, the vessels of the LORD's house
shall now shortly be brought again from Babylon: for they prophesy a
lie unto you.

27:17 Hearken not unto them; serve the king of Babylon, and live:
wherefore should this city be laid waste?  27:18 But if they be
prophets, and if the word of the LORD be with them, let them now make
intercession to the LORD of hosts, that the vessels which are left in
the house of the LORD, and in the house of the king of Judah, and at
Jerusalem, go not to Babylon.

27:19 For thus saith the LORD of hosts concerning the pillars, and
concerning the sea, and concerning the bases, and concerning the
residue of the vessels that remain in this city.

27:20 Which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took not, when he carried
away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah from
Jerusalem to Babylon, and all the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem; 27:21
Yea, thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning the
vessels that remain in the house of the LORD, and in the house of the
king of Judah and of Jerusalem; 27:22 They shall be carried to
Babylon, and there shall they be until the day that I visit them,
saith the LORD; then will I bring them up, and restore them to this
place.

28:1 And it came to pass the same year, in the beginning of the reign
of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fourth year, and in the fifth month,
that Hananiah the son of Azur the prophet, which was of Gibeon, spake
unto me in the house of the LORD, in the presence of the priests and
of all the people, saying, 28:2 Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, the
God of Israel, saying, I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon.

28:3 Within two full years will I bring again into this place all the
vessels of the LORD's house, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took
away from this place, and carried them to Babylon: 28:4 And I will
bring again to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah,
with all the captives of Judah, that went into Babylon, saith the
LORD: for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.

28:5 Then the prophet Jeremiah said unto the prophet Hananiah in the
presence of the priests, and in the presence of all the people that
stood in the house of the LORD, 28:6 Even the prophet Jeremiah said,
Amen: the LORD do so: the LORD perform thy words which thou hast
prophesied, to bring again the vessels of the LORD's house, and all
that is carried away captive, from Babylon into this place.

28:7 Nevertheless hear thou now this word that I speak in thine ears,
and in the ears of all the people; 28:8 The prophets that have been
before me and before thee of old prophesied both against many
countries, and against great kingdoms, of war, and of evil, and of
pestilence.

28:9 The prophet which prophesieth of peace, when the word of the
prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that the
LORD hath truly sent him.

28:10 Then Hananiah the prophet took the yoke from off the prophet
Jeremiah's neck, and brake it.

28:11 And Hananiah spake in the presence of all the people, saying,
Thus saith the LORD; Even so will I break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar
king of Babylon from the neck of all nations within the space of two
full years. And the prophet Jeremiah went his way.

28:12 Then the word of the LORD came unto Jeremiah the prophet, after
that Hananiah the prophet had broken the yoke from off the neck of the
prophet Jeremiah, saying, 28:13 Go and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus
saith the LORD; Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt
make for them yokes of iron.

28:14 For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; I have put
a yoke of iron upon the neck of all these nations, that they may serve
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and they shall serve him: and I have
given him the beasts of the field also.

28:15 Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet, Hear
now, Hananiah; The LORD hath not sent thee; but thou makest this
people to trust in a lie.

28:16 Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will cast thee from off
the face of the earth: this year thou shalt die, because thou hast
taught rebellion against the LORD.

28:17 So Hananiah the prophet died the same year in the seventh month.

29:1 Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet
sent from Jerusalem unto the residue of the elders which were carried
away captives, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to all the
people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to
Babylon; 29:2 (After that Jeconiah the king, and the queen, and the
eunuchs, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, and the carpenters, and
the smiths, were departed from Jerusalem;) 29:3 By the hand of Elasah
the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, (whom Zedekiah
king of Judah sent unto Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon)
saying, 29:4 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, unto all
that are carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away
from Jerusalem unto Babylon; 29:5 Build ye houses, and dwell in them;
and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; 29:6 Take ye wives, and
beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your
daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye
may be increased there, and not diminished.

29:7 And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be
carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace
thereof shall ye have peace.

29:8 For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Let not your
prophets and your diviners, that be in the midst of you, deceive you,
neither hearken to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed.

29:9 For they prophesy falsely unto you in my name: I have not sent
them, saith the LORD.

29:10 For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be
accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word
toward you, in causing you to return to this place.

29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD,
thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

29:12 Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me,
and I will hearken unto you.

29:13 And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me
with all your heart.

29:14 And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away
your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from
all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD; and I will
bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away
captive.

29:15 Because ye have said, The LORD hath raised us up prophets in
Babylon; 29:16 Know that thus saith the LORD of the king that sitteth
upon the throne of David, and of all the people that dwelleth in this
city, and of your brethren that are not gone forth with you into
captivity; 29:17 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Behold, I will send
upon them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make
them like vile figs, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil.

29:18 And I will persecute them with the sword, with the famine, and
with the pestilence, and will deliver them to be removed to all the
kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, and an astonishment, and an
hissing, and a reproach, among all the nations whither I have driven
them: 29:19 Because they have not hearkened to my words, saith the
LORD, which I sent unto them by my servants the prophets, rising up
early and sending them; but ye would not hear, saith the LORD.

29:20 Hear ye therefore the word of the LORD, all ye of the captivity,
whom I have sent from Jerusalem to Babylon: 29:21 Thus saith the LORD
of hosts, the God of Israel, of Ahab the son of Kolaiah, and of
Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, which prophesy a lie unto you in my
name; Behold, I will deliver them into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king
of Babylon; and he shall slay them before your eyes; 29:22 And of them
shall be taken up a curse by all the captivity of Judah which are in
Babylon, saying, The LORD make thee like Zedekiah and like Ahab, whom
the king of Babylon roasted in the fire; 29:23 Because they have
committed villany in Israel, and have committed adultery with their
neighbours' wives, and have spoken lying words in my name, which I
have not commanded them; even I know, and am a witness, saith the
LORD.

29:24 Thus shalt thou also speak to Shemaiah the Nehelamite, saying,
29:25 Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saying,
Because thou hast sent letters in thy name unto all the people that
are at Jerusalem, and to Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, and
to all the priests, saying, 29:26 The LORD hath made thee priest in
the stead of Jehoiada the priest, that ye should be officers in the
house of the LORD, for every man that is mad, and maketh himself a
prophet, that thou shouldest put him in prison, and in the stocks.

29:27 Now therefore why hast thou not reproved Jeremiah of Anathoth,
which maketh himself a prophet to you?  29:28 For therefore he sent
unto us in Babylon, saying, This captivity is long: build ye houses,
and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them.

29:29 And Zephaniah the priest read this letter in the ears of
Jeremiah the prophet.

29:30 Then came the word of the LORD unto Jeremiah, saying, 29:31 Send
to all them of the captivity, saying, Thus saith the LORD concerning
Shemaiah the Nehelamite; Because that Shemaiah hath prophesied unto
you, and I sent him not, and he caused you to trust in a lie: 29:32
Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will punish Shemaiah the
Nehelamite, and his seed: he shall not have a man to dwell among this
people; neither shall he behold the good that I will do for my people,
saith the LORD; because he hath taught rebellion against the LORD.

30:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, 30:2 Thus
speaketh the LORD God of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that
I have spoken unto thee in a book.

30:3 For, lo, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will bring again
the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the LORD: and I
will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers,
and they shall possess it.

30:4 And these are the words that the LORD spake concerning Israel and
concerning Judah.

30:5 For thus saith the LORD; We have heard a voice of trembling, of
fear, and not of peace.

30:6 Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child?
wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman
in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness?  30:7 Alas! for
that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of
Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.

30:8 For it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts,
that I will break his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy
bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him: 30:9 But
they shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will
raise up unto them.

30:10 Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the LORD;
neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar,
and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return,
and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid.

30:11 For I am with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee: though I make
a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet I will
not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and
will not leave thee altogether unpunished.

30:12 For thus saith the LORD, Thy bruise is incurable, and thy wound
is grievous.

30:13 There is none to plead thy cause, that thou mayest be bound up:
thou hast no healing medicines.

30:14 All thy lovers have forgotten thee; they seek thee not; for I
have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of
a cruel one, for the multitude of thine iniquity; because thy sins
were increased.

30:15 Why criest thou for thine affliction? thy sorrow is incurable
for the multitude of thine iniquity: because thy sins were increased,
I have done these things unto thee.

30:16 Therefore all they that devour thee shall be devoured; and all
thine adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; and
they that spoil thee shall be a spoil, and all that prey upon thee
will I give for a prey.

30:17 For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy
wounds, saith the LORD; because they called thee an Outcast, saying,
This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after.

30:18 Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will bring again the captivity of
Jacob's tents, and have mercy on his dwellingplaces; and the city
shall be builded upon her own heap, and the palace shall remain after
the manner thereof.

30:19 And out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of them
that make merry: and I will multiply them, and they shall not be few;
I will also glorify them, and they shall not be small.

30:20 Their children also shall be as aforetime, and their
congregation shall be established before me, and I will punish all
that oppress them.

30:21 And their nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor
shall proceed from the midst of them; and I will cause him to draw
near, and he shall approach unto me: for who is this that engaged his
heart to approach unto me? saith the LORD.

30:22 And ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.

30:23 Behold, the whirlwind of the LORD goeth forth with fury, a
continuing whirlwind: it shall fall with pain upon the head of the
wicked.

30:24 The fierce anger of the LORD shall not return, until he hath
done it, and until he have performed the intents of his heart: in the
latter days ye shall consider it.

31:1 At the same time, saith the LORD, will I be the God of all the
families of Israel, and they shall be my people.

31:2 Thus saith the LORD, The people which were left of the sword
found grace in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause him
to rest.

31:3 The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved
thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I
drawn thee.

31:4 Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of
Israel: thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go
forth in the dances of them that make merry.

31:5 Thou shalt yet plant vines upon the mountains of Samaria: the
planters shall plant, and shall eat them as common things.

31:6 For there shall be a day, that the watchmen upon the mount
Ephraim shall cry, Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion unto the LORD
our God.

31:7 For thus saith the LORD; Sing with gladness for Jacob, and shout
among the chief of the nations: publish ye, praise ye, and say, O
LORD, save thy people, the remnant of Israel.

31:8 Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them
from the coasts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame,
the woman with child and her that travaileth with child together: a
great company shall return thither.

31:9 They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead
them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight
way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and
Ephraim is my firstborn.

31:10 Hear the word of the LORD, O ye nations, and declare it in the
isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and
keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock.

31:11 For the LORD hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand
of him that was stronger than he.

31:12 Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and
shall flow together to the goodness of the LORD, for wheat, and for
wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and
their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any
more at all.

31:13 Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and
old together: for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will
comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow.

31:14 And I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and my
people shall be satisfied with my goodness, saith the LORD.

31:15 Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation,
and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be
comforted for her children, because they were not.

31:16 Thus saith the LORD; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine
eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the LORD; and
they shall come again from the land of the enemy.

31:17 And there is hope in thine end, saith the LORD, that thy
children shall come again to their own border.

31:18 I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast
chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the
yoke: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the LORD my
God.

31:19 Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was
instructed, I smote upon my thigh: I was ashamed, yea, even
confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth.

31:20 Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I
spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my
bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith
the LORD.

31:21 Set thee up waymarks, make thee high heaps: set thine heart
toward the highway, even the way which thou wentest: turn again, O
virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cities.

31:22 How long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter? for
the LORD hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass
a man.

31:23 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; As yet they
shall use this speech in the land of Judah and in the cities thereof,
when I shall bring again their captivity; The LORD bless thee, O
habitation of justice, and mountain of holiness.

31:24 And there shall dwell in Judah itself, and in all the cities
thereof together, husbandmen, and they that go forth with flocks.

31:25 For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every
sorrowful soul.

31:26 Upon this I awaked, and beheld; and my sleep was sweet unto me.

31:27 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will sow the house
of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the
seed of beast.

31:28 And it shall come to pass, that like as I have watched over
them, to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to
destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch over them, to build, and to
plant, saith the LORD.

31:29 In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a
sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge.

31:30 But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that
eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.

31:31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new
covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: 31:32
Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the
day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of
Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto
them, saith the LORD: 31:33 But this shall be the covenant that I will
make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I
will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts;
and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

31:34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every
man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me,
from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for
I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

31:35 Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day,
and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night,
which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts
is his name: 31:36 If those ordinances depart from before me, saith
the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation
before me for ever.

31:37 Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured, and the
foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off
all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD.

31:38 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that the city shall be
built to the LORD from the tower of Hananeel unto the gate of the
corner.

31:39 And the measuring line shall yet go forth over against it upon
the hill Gareb, and shall compass about to Goath.

31:40 And the whole valley of the dead bodies, and of the ashes, and
all the fields unto the brook of Kidron, unto the corner of the horse
gate toward the east, shall be holy unto the LORD; it shall not be
plucked up, nor thrown down any more for ever.

32:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD in the tenth year of
Zedekiah king of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of
Nebuchadrezzar.

32:2 For then the king of Babylon's army besieged Jerusalem: and
Jeremiah the prophet was shut up in the court of the prison, which was
in the king of Judah's house.

32:3 For Zedekiah king of Judah had shut him up, saying, Wherefore
dost thou prophesy, and say, Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will give
this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it;
32:4 And Zedekiah king of Judah shall not escape out of the hand of
the Chaldeans, but shall surely be delivered into the hand of the king
of Babylon, and shall speak with him mouth to mouth, and his eyes
shall behold his eyes; 32:5 And he shall lead Zedekiah to Babylon, and
there shall he be until I visit him, saith the LORD: though ye fight
with the Chaldeans, ye shall not prosper.

32:6 And Jeremiah said, The word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
32:7 Behold, Hanameel the son of Shallum thine uncle shall come unto
thee saying, Buy thee my field that is in Anathoth: for the right of
redemption is thine to buy it.

32:8 So Hanameel mine uncle's son came to me in the court of the
prison according to the word of the LORD, and said unto me, Buy my
field, I pray thee, that is in Anathoth, which is in the country of
Benjamin: for the right of inheritance is thine, and the redemption is
thine; buy it for thyself.

Then I knew that this was the word of the LORD.

32:9 And I bought the field of Hanameel my uncle's son, that was in
Anathoth, and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver.

32:10 And I subscribed the evidence, and sealed it, and took
witnesses, and weighed him the money in the balances.

32:11 So I took the evidence of the purchase, both that which was
sealed according to the law and custom, and that which was open: 32:12
And I gave the evidence of the purchase unto Baruch the son of Neriah,
the son of Maaseiah, in the sight of Hanameel mine uncle's son, and in
the presence of the witnesses that subscribed the book of the
purchase, before all the Jews that sat in the court of the prison.

32:13 And I charged Baruch before them, saying, 32:14 Thus saith the
LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Take these evidences, this evidence
of the purchase, both which is sealed, and this evidence which is
open; and put them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many
days.

32:15 For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Houses and
fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land.

32:16 Now when I had delivered the evidence of the purchase unto
Baruch the son of Neriah, I prayed unto the LORD, saying, 32:17 Ah
Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great
power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee:
32:18 Thou shewest lovingkindness unto thousands, and recompensest the
iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them:
the Great, the Mighty God, the LORD of hosts, is his name, 32:19 Great
in counsel, and mighty in work: for thine eyes are open upon all the
ways of the sons of men: to give every one according to his ways, and
according to the fruit of his doings: 32:20 Which hast set signs and
wonders in the land of Egypt, even unto this day, and in Israel, and
among other men; and hast made thee a name, as at this day; 32:21 And
hast brought forth thy people Israel out of the land of Egypt with
signs, and with wonders, and with a strong hand, and with a stretched
out arm, and with great terror; 32:22 And hast given them this land,
which thou didst swear to their fathers to give them, a land flowing
with milk and honey; 32:23 And they came in, and possessed it; but
they obeyed not thy voice, neither walked in thy law; they have done
nothing of all that thou commandedst them to do: therefore thou hast
caused all this evil to come upon them: 32:24 Behold the mounts, they
are come unto the city to take it; and the city is given into the hand
of the Chaldeans, that fight against it, because of the sword, and of
the famine, and of the pestilence: and what thou hast spoken is come
to pass; and, behold, thou seest it.

32:25 And thou hast said unto me, O Lord GOD, Buy thee the field for
money, and take witnesses; for the city is given into the hand of the
Chaldeans.

32:26 Then came the word of the LORD unto Jeremiah, saying, 32:27
Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too
hard for me?  32:28 Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will give
this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, and into the hand of
Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it: 32:29 And the
Chaldeans, that fight against this city, shall come and set fire on
this city, and burn it with the houses, upon whose roofs they have
offered incense unto Baal, and poured out drink offerings unto other
gods, to provoke me to anger.

32:30 For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have only
done evil before me from their youth: for the children of Israel have
only provoked me to anger with the work of their hands, saith the
LORD.

32:31 For this city hath been to me as a provocation of mine anger and
of my fury from the day that they built it even unto this day; that I
should remove it from before my face, 32:32 Because of all the evil of
the children of Israel and of the children of Judah, which they have
done to provoke me to anger, they, their kings, their princes, their
priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the inhabitants
of Jerusalem.

32:33 And they have turned unto me the back, and not the face: though
I taught them, rising up early and teaching them, yet they have not
hearkened to receive instruction.

32:34 But they set their abominations in the house, which is called by
my name, to defile it.

32:35 And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley
of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass
through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came
it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah
to sin.

32:36 And now therefore thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel,
concerning this city, whereof ye say, It shall be delivered into the
hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, and by the famine, and by
the pestilence; 32:37 Behold, I will gather them out of all countries,
whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great
wrath; and I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause
them to dwell safely: 32:38 And they shall be my people, and I will be
their God: 32:39 And I will give them one heart, and one way, that
they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children
after them: 32:40 And I will make an everlasting covenant with them,
that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put
my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me.

32:41 Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant
them in this land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole
soul.

32:42 For thus saith the LORD; Like as I have brought all this great
evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I
have promised them.

32:43 And fields shall be bought in this land, whereof ye say, It is
desolate without man or beast; it is given into the hand of the
Chaldeans.

32:44 Men shall buy fields for money, and subscribe evidences, and
seal them, and take witnesses in the land of Benjamin, and in the
places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, and in the cities
of the mountains, and in the cities of the valley, and in the cities
of the south: for I will cause their captivity to return, saith the
LORD.

33:1 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto Jeremiah the second time,
while he was yet shut up in the court of the prison, saying, 33:2 Thus
saith the LORD the maker thereof, the LORD that formed it, to
establish it; the LORD is his name; 33:3 Call unto me, and I will
answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest
not.

33:4 For thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the houses
of this city, and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah, which
are thrown down by the mounts, and by the sword; 33:5 They come to
fight with the Chaldeans, but it is to fill them with the dead bodies
of men, whom I have slain in mine anger and in my fury, and for all
whose wickedness I have hid my face from this city.

33:6 Behold, I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them,
and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth.

33:7 And I will cause the captivity of Judah and the captivity of
Israel to return, and will build them, as at the first.

33:8 And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they
have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities,
whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against
me.

33:9 And it shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and an honour
before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all the good
that I do unto them: and they shall fear and tremble for all the
goodness and for all the prosperity that I procure unto it.

33:10 Thus saith the LORD; Again there shall be heard in this place,
which ye say shall be desolate without man and without beast, even in
the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, that are
desolate, without man, and without inhabitant, and without beast,
33:11 The voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the
bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall
say, Praise the LORD of hosts: for the LORD is good; for his mercy
endureth for ever: and of them that shall bring the sacrifice of
praise into the house of the LORD. For I will cause to return the
captivity of the land, as at the first, saith the LORD.

33:12 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Again in this place, which is
desolate without man and without beast, and in all the cities thereof,
shall be an habitation of shepherds causing their flocks to lie down.

33:13 In the cities of the mountains, in the cities of the vale, and
in the cities of the south, and in the land of Benjamin, and in the
places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, shall the flocks
pass again under the hands of him that telleth them, saith the LORD.

33:14 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will perform that
good thing which I have promised unto the house of Israel and to the
house of Judah.

33:15 In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of
righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and
righteousness in the land.

33:16 In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell
safely: and this is the name wherewith she shall be called, The LORD
our righteousness.

33:17 For thus saith the LORD; David shall never want a man to sit
upon the throne of the house of Israel; 33:18 Neither shall the
priests the Levites want a man before me to offer burnt offerings, and
to kindle meat offerings, and to do sacrifice continually.

33:19 And the word of the LORD came unto Jeremiah, saying, 33:20 Thus
saith the LORD; If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my
covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in
their season; 33:21 Then may also my covenant be broken with David my
servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne; and
with the Levites the priests, my ministers.

33:22 As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of
the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and
the Levites that minister unto me.

33:23 Moreover the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, saying, 33:24
Considerest thou not what this people have spoken, saying, The two
families which the LORD hath chosen, he hath even cast them off? thus
they have despised my people, that they should be no more a nation
before them.

33:25 Thus saith the LORD; If my covenant be not with day and night,
and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; 33:26
Then will I cast away the seed of Jacob and David my servant, so that
I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have
mercy on them.

34:1 The word which came unto Jeremiah from the LORD, when
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and all his army, and all the kingdoms
of the earth of his dominion, and all the people, fought against
Jerusalem, and against all the cities thereof, saying, 34:2 Thus saith
the LORD, the God of Israel; Go and speak to Zedekiah king of Judah,
and tell him, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will give this city into
the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire: 34:3
And thou shalt not escape out of his hand, but shalt surely be taken,
and delivered into his hand; and thine eyes shall behold the eyes of
the king of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth, and
thou shalt go to Babylon.

34:4 Yet hear the word of the LORD, O Zedekiah king of Judah; Thus
saith the LORD of thee, Thou shalt not die by the sword: 34:5 But thou
shalt die in peace: and with the burnings of thy fathers, the former
kings which were before thee, so shall they burn odours for thee; and
they will lament thee, saying, Ah lord! for I have pronounced the
word, saith the LORD.

34:6 Then Jeremiah the prophet spake all these words unto Zedekiah
king of Judah in Jerusalem, 34:7 When the king of Babylon's army
fought against Jerusalem, and against all the cities of Judah that
were left, against Lachish, and against Azekah: for these defenced
cities remained of the cities of Judah.

34:8 This is the word that came unto Jeremiah from the LORD, after
that the king Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people which
were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty unto them; 34:9 That every man
should let his manservant, and every man his maidservant, being an
Hebrew or an Hebrewess, go free; that none should serve himself of
them, to wit, of a Jew his brother.

34:10 Now when all the princes, and all the people, which had entered
into the covenant, heard that every one should let his manservant, and
every one his maidservant, go free, that none should serve themselves
of them any more, then they obeyed, and let them go.

34:11 But afterward they turned, and caused the servants and the
handmaids, whom they had let go free, to return, and brought them into
subjection for servants and for handmaids.

34:12 Therefore the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah from the LORD,
saying, 34:13 Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel; I made a
covenant with your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of
the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondmen, saying, 34:14 At the
end of seven years let ye go every man his brother an Hebrew, which
hath been sold unto thee; and when he hath served thee six years, thou
shalt let him go free from thee: but your fathers hearkened not unto
me, neither inclined their ear.

34:15 And ye were now turned, and had done right in my sight, in
proclaiming liberty every man to his neighbour; and ye had made a
covenant before me in the house which is called by my name: 34:16 But
ye turned and polluted my name, and caused every man his servant, and
every man his handmaid, whom ye had set at liberty at their pleasure,
to return, and brought them into subjection, to be unto you for
servants and for handmaids.

34:17 Therefore thus saith the LORD; Ye have not hearkened unto me, in
proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every man to his
neighbour: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the LORD, to
the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and I will make you
to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.

34:18 And I will give the men that have transgressed my covenant,
which have not performed the words of the covenant which they had made
before me, when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the
parts thereof, 34:19 The princes of Judah, and the princes of
Jerusalem, the eunuchs, and the priests, and all the people of the
land, which passed between the parts of the calf; 34:20 I will even
give them into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of them
that seek their life: and their dead bodies shall be for meat unto the
fowls of the heaven, and to the beasts of the earth.

34:21 And Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes will I give into the
hand of their enemies, and into the hand of them that seek their life,
and into the hand of the king of Babylon's army, which are gone up
from you.

34:22 Behold, I will command, saith the LORD, and cause them to return
to this city; and they shall fight against it, and take it, and burn
it with fire: and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without
an inhabitant.

35:1 The word which came unto Jeremiah from the LORD in the days of
Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, saying, 35:2 Go unto the
house of the Rechabites, and speak unto them, and bring them into the
house of the LORD, into one of the chambers, and give them wine to
drink.

35:3 Then I took Jaazaniah the son of Jeremiah, the son of Habaziniah,
and his brethren, and all his sons, and the whole house of the
Rechabites; 35:4 And I brought them into the house of the LORD, into
the chamber of the sons of Hanan, the son of Igdaliah, a man of God,
which was by the chamber of the princes, which was above the chamber
of Maaseiah the son of Shallum, the keeper of the door: 35:5 And I set
before the sons of the house of the Rechabites pots full of wine, and
cups, and I said unto them, Drink ye wine.

35:6 But they said, We will drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of
Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine,
neither ye, nor your sons for ever: 35:7 Neither shall ye build house,
nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any: but all your days ye
shall dwell in tents; that ye may live many days in the land where ye
be strangers.

35:8 Thus have we obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab our
father in all that he hath charged us, to drink no wine all our days,
we, our wives, our sons, nor our daughters; 35:9 Nor to build houses
for us to dwell in: neither have we vineyard, nor field, nor seed:
35:10 But we have dwelt in tents, and have obeyed, and done according
to all that Jonadab our father commanded us.

35:11 But it came to pass, when Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came up
into the land, that we said, Come, and let us go to Jerusalem for fear
of the army of the Chaldeans, and for fear of the army of the Syrians:
so we dwell at Jerusalem.

35:12 Then came the word of the LORD unto Jeremiah, saying, 35:13 Thus
saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Go and tell the men of
Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Will ye not receive
instruction to hearken to my words? saith the LORD.

35:14 The words of Jonadab the son of Rechab, that he commanded his
sons not to drink wine, are performed; for unto this day they drink
none, but obey their father's commandment: notwithstanding I have
spoken unto you, rising early and speaking; but ye hearkened not unto
me.

35:15 I have sent also unto you all my servants the prophets, rising
up early and sending them, saying, Return ye now every man from his
evil way, and amend your doings, and go not after other gods to serve
them, and ye shall dwell in the land which I have given to you and to
your fathers: but ye have not inclined your ear, nor hearkened unto
me.

35:16 Because the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab have performed the
commandment of their father, which he commanded them; but this people
hath not hearkened unto me: 35:17 Therefore thus saith the LORD God of
hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring upon Judah and upon all
the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the evil that I have pronounced
against them: because I have spoken unto them, but they have not
heard; and I have called unto them, but they have not answered.

35:18 And Jeremiah said unto the house of the Rechabites, Thus saith
the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Because ye have obeyed the
commandment of Jonadab your father, and kept all his precepts, and
done according unto all that he hath commanded you: 35:19 Therefore
thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Jonadab the son of
Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever.

36:1 And it came to pass in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of
Josiah king of Judah, that this word came unto Jeremiah from the LORD,
saying, 36:2 Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the
words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah,
and against all the nations, from the day I spake unto thee, from the
days of Josiah, even unto this day.

36:3 It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I
purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his evil
way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.

36:4 Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Neriah: and Baruch wrote
from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the LORD, which he had
spoken unto him, upon a roll of a book.

36:5 And Jeremiah commanded Baruch, saying, I am shut up; I cannot go
into the house of the LORD: 36:6 Therefore go thou, and read in the
roll, which thou hast written from my mouth, the words of the LORD in
the ears of the people in the LORD's house upon the fasting day: and
also thou shalt read them in the ears of all Judah that come out of
their cities.

36:7 It may be they will present their supplication before the LORD,
and will return every one from his evil way: for great is the anger
and the fury that the LORD hath pronounced against this people.

36:8 And Baruch the son of Neriah did according to all that Jeremiah
the prophet commanded him, reading in the book the words of the LORD
in the LORD's house.

36:9 And it came to pass in the fifth year of Jehoiakim the son of
Josiah king of Judah, in the ninth month, that they proclaimed a fast
before the LORD to all the people in Jerusalem, and to all the people
that came from the cities of Judah unto Jerusalem.

36:10 Then read Baruch in the book the words of Jeremiah in the house
of the LORD, in the chamber of Gemariah the son of Shaphan the scribe,
in the higher court, at the entry of the new gate of the LORD's house,
in the ears of all the people.

36:11 When Michaiah the son of Gemariah, the son of Shaphan, had heard
out of the book all the words of the LORD, 36:12 Then he went down
into the king's house, into the scribe's chamber: and, lo, all the
princes sat there, even Elishama the scribe, and Delaiah the son of
Shemaiah, and Elnathan the son of Achbor, and Gemariah the son of
Shaphan, and Zedekiah the son of Hananiah, and all the princes.

36:13 Then Michaiah declared unto them all the words that he had
heard, when Baruch read the book in the ears of the people.

36:14 Therefore all the princes sent Jehudi the son of Nethaniah, the
son of Shelemiah, the son of Cushi, unto Baruch, saying, Take in thine
hand the roll wherein thou hast read in the ears of the people, and
come. So Baruch the son of Neriah took the roll in his hand, and came
unto them.

36:15 And they said unto him, Sit down now, and read it in our ears.
So Baruch read it in their ears.

36:16 Now it came to pass, when they had heard all the words, they
were afraid both one and other, and said unto Baruch, We will surely
tell the king of all these words.

36:17 And they asked Baruch, saying, Tell us now, How didst thou write
all these words at his mouth?  36:18 Then Baruch answered them, He
pronounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them
with ink in the book.

36:19 Then said the princes unto Baruch, Go, hide thee, thou and
Jeremiah; and let no man know where ye be.

36:20 And they went in to the king into the court, but they laid up
the roll in the chamber of Elishama the scribe, and told all the words
in the ears of the king.

36:21 So the king sent Jehudi to fetch the roll: and he took it out of
Elishama the scribe's chamber. And Jehudi read it in the ears of the
king, and in the ears of all the princes which stood beside the king.

36:22 Now the king sat in the winterhouse in the ninth month: and
there was a fire on the hearth burning before him.

36:23 And it came to pass, that when Jehudi had read three or four
leaves, he cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that
was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed in the fire that
was on the hearth.

36:24 Yet they were not afraid, nor rent their garments, neither the
king, nor any of his servants that heard all these words.

36:25 Nevertheless Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah had made
intercession to the king that he would not burn the roll: but he would
not hear them.

36:26 But the king commanded Jerahmeel the son of Hammelech, and
Seraiah the son of Azriel, and Shelemiah the son of Abdeel, to take
Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet: but the LORD hid them.

36:27 Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, after that the king
had burned the roll, and the words which Baruch wrote at the mouth of
Jeremiah, saying, 36:28 Take thee again another roll, and write in it
all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim the
king of Judah hath burned.

36:29 And thou shalt say to Jehoiakim king of Judah, Thus saith the
LORD; Thou hast burned this roll, saying, Why hast thou written
therein, saying, The king of Babylon shall certainly come and destroy
this land, and shall cause to cease from thence man and beast?  36:30
Therefore thus saith the LORD of Jehoiakim king of Judah; He shall
have none to sit upon the throne of David: and his dead body shall be
cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost.

36:31 And I will punish him and his seed and his servants for their
iniquity; and I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, all the evil that I have
pronounced against them; but they hearkened not.

36:32 Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Baruch the
scribe, the son of Neriah; who wrote therein from the mouth of
Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had
burned in the fire: and there were added besides unto them many like
words.

37:1 And king Zedekiah the son of Josiah reigned instead of Coniah the
son of Jehoiakim, whom Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon made king in the
land of Judah.

37:2 But neither he, nor his servants, nor the people of the land, did
hearken unto the words of the LORD, which he spake by the prophet
Jeremiah.

37:3 And Zedekiah the king sent Jehucal the son of Shelemiah and
Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest to the prophet Jeremiah,
saying, Pray now unto the LORD our God for us.

37:4 Now Jeremiah came in and went out among the people: for they had
not put him into prison.

37:5 Then Pharaoh's army was come forth out of Egypt: and when the
Chaldeans that besieged Jerusalem heard tidings of them, they departed
from Jerusalem.

37:6 Then came the word of the LORD unto the prophet Jeremiah saying,
37:7 Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel; Thus shall ye say to the
king of Judah, that sent you unto me to enquire of me; Behold,
Pharaoh's army, which is come forth to help you, shall return to Egypt
into their own land.

37:8 And the Chaldeans shall come again, and fight against this city,
and take it, and burn it with fire.

37:9 Thus saith the LORD; Deceive not yourselves, saying, The
Chaldeans shall surely depart from us: for they shall not depart.

37:10 For though ye had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that
fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet
should they rise up every man in his tent, and burn this city with
fire.

37:11 And it came to pass, that when the army of the Chaldeans was
broken up from Jerusalem for fear of Pharaoh's army, 37:12 Then
Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem to go into the land of Benjamin,
to separate himself thence in the midst of the people.

37:13 And when he was in the gate of Benjamin, a captain of the ward
was there, whose name was Irijah, the son of Shelemiah, the son of
Hananiah; and he took Jeremiah the prophet, saying, Thou fallest away
to the Chaldeans.

37:14 Then said Jeremiah, It is false; I fall not away to the
Chaldeans.

But he hearkened not to him: so Irijah took Jeremiah, and brought him
to the princes.

37:15 Wherefore the princes were wroth with Jeremiah, and smote him,
and put him in prison in the house of Jonathan the scribe: for they
had made that the prison.

37:16 When Jeremiah was entered into the dungeon, and into the cabins,
and Jeremiah had remained there many days; 37:17 Then Zedekiah the
king sent, and took him out: and the king asked him secretly in his
house, and said, Is there any word from the LORD? And Jeremiah said,
There is: for, said he, thou shalt be delivered into the hand of the
king of Babylon.

37:18 Moreover Jeremiah said unto king Zedekiah, What have I offended
against thee, or against thy servants, or against this people, that ye
have put me in prison?  37:19 Where are now your prophets which
prophesied unto you, saying, The king of Babylon shall not come
against you, nor against this land?  37:20 Therefore hear now, I pray
thee, O my lord the king: let my supplication, I pray thee, be
accepted before thee; that thou cause me not to return to the house of
Jonathan the scribe, lest I die there.

37:21 Then Zedekiah the king commanded that they should commit
Jeremiah into the court of the prison, and that they should give him
daily a piece of bread out of the bakers' street, until all the bread
in the city were spent.

Thus Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison.

38:1 Then Shephatiah the son of Mattan, and Gedaliah the son of
Pashur, and Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashur the son of
Malchiah, heard the words that Jeremiah had spoken unto all the
people, saying, 38:2 Thus saith the LORD, He that remaineth in this
city shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence: but
he that goeth forth to the Chaldeans shall live; for he shall have his
life for a prey, and shall live.

38:3 Thus saith the LORD, This city shall surely be given into the
hand of the king of Babylon's army, which shall take it.

38:4 Therefore the princes said unto the king, We beseech thee, let
this man be put to death: for thus he weakeneth the hands of the men
of war that remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in
speaking such words unto them: for this man seeketh not the welfare of
this people, but the hurt.

38:5 Then Zedekiah the king said, Behold, he is in your hand: for the
king is not he that can do any thing against you.

38:6 Then took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of
Malchiah the son of Hammelech, that was in the court of the prison:
and they let down Jeremiah with cords. And in the dungeon there was no
water, but mire: so Jeremiah sunk in the mire.

38:7 Now when Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, one of the eunuchs which was
in the king's house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the dungeon;
the king then sitting in the gate of Benjamin; 38:8 Ebedmelech went
forth out of the king's house, and spake to the king saying, 38:9 My
lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to
Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the dungeon; and he is
like to die for hunger in the place where he is: for there is no more
bread in the city.

38:10 Then the king commanded Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, saying, Take
from hence thirty men with thee, and take up Jeremiah the prophet out
of the dungeon, before he die.

38:11 So Ebedmelech took the men with him, and went into the house of
the king under the treasury, and took thence old cast clouts and old
rotten rags, and let them down by cords into the dungeon to Jeremiah.

38:12 And Ebedmelech the Ethiopian said unto Jeremiah, Put now these
old cast clouts and rotten rags under thine armholes under the cords.
And Jeremiah did so.

38:13 So they drew up Jeremiah with cords, and took him up out of the
dungeon: and Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison.

38:14 Then Zedekiah the king sent, and took Jeremiah the prophet unto
him into the third entry that is in the house of the LORD: and the
king said unto Jeremiah, I will ask thee a thing; hide nothing from
me.

38:15 Then Jeremiah said unto Zedekiah, If I declare it unto thee,
wilt thou not surely put me to death? and if I give thee counsel, wilt
thou not hearken unto me?  38:16 So Zedekiah the king sware secretly
unto Jeremiah, saying, As the LORD liveth, that made us this soul, I
will not put thee to death, neither will I give thee into the hand of
these men that seek thy life.

38:17 Then said Jeremiah unto Zedekiah, Thus saith the LORD, the God
of hosts, the God of Israel; If thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the
king of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall live, and this city
shall not be burned with fire; and thou shalt live, and thine house:
38:18 But if thou wilt not go forth to the king of Babylon's princes,
then shall this city be given into the hand of the Chaldeans, and they
shall burn it with fire, and thou shalt not escape out of their hand.

38:19 And Zedekiah the king said unto Jeremiah, I am afraid of the
Jews that are fallen to the Chaldeans, lest they deliver me into their
hand, and they mock me.

38:20 But Jeremiah said, They shall not deliver thee. Obey, I beseech
thee, the voice of the LORD, which I speak unto thee: so it shall be
well unto thee, and thy soul shall live.

38:21 But if thou refuse to go forth, this is the word that the LORD
hath shewed me: 38:22 And, behold, all the women that are left in the
king of Judah's house shall be brought forth to the king of Babylon's
princes, and those women shall say, Thy friends have set thee on, and
have prevailed against thee: thy feet are sunk in the mire, and they
are turned away back.

38:23 So they shall bring out all thy wives and thy children to the
Chaldeans: and thou shalt not escape out of their hand, but shalt be
taken by the hand of the king of Babylon: and thou shalt cause this
city to be burned with fire.

38:24 Then said Zedekiah unto Jeremiah, Let no man know of these
words, and thou shalt not die.

38:25 But if the princes hear that I have talked with thee, and they
come unto thee, and say unto thee, Declare unto us now what thou hast
said unto the king, hide it not from us, and we will not put thee to
death; also what the king said unto thee: 38:26 Then thou shalt say
unto them, I presented my supplication before the king, that he would
not cause me to return to Jonathan's house, to die there.

38:27 Then came all the princes unto Jeremiah, and asked him: and he
told them according to all these words that the king had commanded. So
they left off speaking with him; for the matter was not perceived.

38:28 So Jeremiah abode in the court of the prison until the day that
Jerusalem was taken: and he was there when Jerusalem was taken.

39:1 In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month,
came Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon and all his army against
Jerusalem, and they besieged it.

39:2 And in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, the
ninth day of the month, the city was broken up.

39:3 And all the princes of the king of Babylon came in, and sat in
the middle gate, even Nergalsharezer, Samgarnebo, Sarsechim, Rabsaris,
Nergalsharezer, Rabmag, with all the residue of the princes of the
king of Babylon.

39:4 And it came to pass, that when Zedekiah the king of Judah saw
them, and all the men of war, then they fled, and went forth out of
the city by night, by the way of the king's garden, by the gate
betwixt the two walls: and he went out the way of the plain.

39:5 But the Chaldeans' army pursued after them, and overtook Zedekiah
in the plains of Jericho: and when they had taken him, they brought
him up to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon to Riblah in the land of
Hamath, where he gave judgment upon him.

39:6 Then the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah in Riblah
before his eyes: also the king of Babylon slew all the nobles of
Judah.

39:7 Moreover he put out Zedekiah's eyes, and bound him with chains,
to carry him to Babylon.

39:8 And the Chaldeans burned the king's house, and the houses of the
people, with fire, and brake down the walls of Jerusalem.

39:9 Then Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away captive
into Babylon the remnant of the people that remained in the city, and
those that fell away, that fell to him, with the rest of the people
that remained.

39:10 But Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard left of the poor of the
people, which had nothing, in the land of Judah, and gave them
vineyards and fields at the same time.

39:11 Now Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon gave charge concerning
Jeremiah to Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, saying, 39:12 Take
him, and look well to him, and do him no harm; but do unto him even as
he shall say unto thee.

39:13 So Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard sent, and Nebushasban,
Rabsaris, and Nergalsharezer, Rabmag, and all the king of Babylon's
princes; 39:14 Even they sent, and took Jeremiah out of the court of
the prison, and committed him unto Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son
of Shaphan, that he should carry him home: so he dwelt among the
people.

39:15 Now the word of the LORD came unto Jeremiah, while he was shut
up in the court of the prison, saying, 39:16 Go and speak to
Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the
God of Israel; Behold, I will bring my words upon this city for evil,
and not for good; and they shall be accomplished in that day before
thee.

39:17 But I will deliver thee in that day, saith the LORD: and thou
shalt not be given into the hand of the men of whom thou art afraid.

39:18 For I will surely deliver thee, and thou shalt not fall by the
sword, but thy life shall be for a prey unto thee: because thou hast
put thy trust in me, saith the LORD.

40:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, after that
Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had let him go from Ramah, when
he had taken him being bound in chains among all that were carried
away captive of Jerusalem and Judah, which were carried away captive
unto Babylon.

40:2 And the captain of the guard took Jeremiah, and said unto him,
The LORD thy God hath pronounced this evil upon this place.

40:3 Now the LORD hath brought it, and done according as he hath said:
because ye have sinned against the LORD, and have not obeyed his
voice, therefore this thing is come upon you.

40:4 And now, behold, I loose thee this day from the chains which were
upon thine hand. If it seem good unto thee to come with me into
Babylon, come; and I will look well unto thee: but if it seem ill unto
thee to come with me into Babylon, forbear: behold, all the land is
before thee: whither it seemeth good and convenient for thee to go,
thither go.

40:5 Now while he was not yet gone back, he said, Go back also to
Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, whom the king of
Babylon hath made governor over the cities of Judah, and dwell with
him among the people: or go wheresoever it seemeth convenient unto
thee to go. So the captain of the guard gave him victuals and a
reward, and let him go.

40:6 Then went Jeremiah unto Gedaliah the son of Ahikam to Mizpah; and
dwelt with him among the people that were left in the land.

40:7 Now when all the captains of the forces which were in the fields,
even they and their men, heard that the king of Babylon had made
Gedaliah the son of Ahikam governor in the land, and had committed
unto him men, and women, and children, and of the poor of the land, of
them that were not carried away captive to Babylon; 40:8 Then they
came to Gedaliah to Mizpah, even Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and
Johanan and Jonathan the sons of Kareah, and Seraiah the son of
Tanhumeth, and the sons of Ephai the Netophathite, and Jezaniah the
son of a Maachathite, they and their men.

40:9 And Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan sware unto them
and to their men, saying, Fear not to serve the Chaldeans: dwell in
the land, and serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with
you.

40:10 As for me, behold, I will dwell at Mizpah, to serve the
Chaldeans, which will come unto us: but ye, gather ye wine, and summer
fruits, and oil, and put them in your vessels, and dwell in your
cities that ye have taken.

40:11 Likewise when all the Jews that were in Moab, and among the
Ammonites, and in Edom, and that were in all the countries, heard that
the king of Babylon had left a remnant of Judah, and that he had set
over them Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan; 40:12 Even
all the Jews returned out of all places whither they were driven, and
came to the land of Judah, to Gedaliah, unto Mizpah, and gathered wine
and summer fruits very much.

40:13 Moreover Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the
forces that were in the fields, came to Gedaliah to Mizpah, 40:14 And
said unto him, Dost thou certainly know that Baalis the king of the
Ammonites hath sent Ishmael the son of Nethaniah to slay thee? But
Gedaliah the son of Ahikam believed them not.

40:15 Then Johanan the son of Kareah spake to Gedaliah in Mizpah
secretly saying, Let me go, I pray thee, and I will slay Ishmael the
son of Nethaniah, and no man shall know it: wherefore should he slay
thee, that all the Jews which are gathered unto thee should be
scattered, and the remnant in Judah perish?  40:16 But Gedaliah the
son of Ahikam said unto Johanan the son of Kareah, Thou shalt not do
this thing: for thou speakest falsely of Ishmael.

41:1 Now it came to pass in the seventh month, that Ishmael the son of
Nethaniah the son of Elishama, of the seed royal, and the princes of
the king, even ten men with him, came unto Gedaliah the son of Ahikam
to Mizpah; and there they did eat bread together in Mizpah.

41:2 Then arose Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and the ten men that
were with him, and smote Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan
with the sword, and slew him, whom the king of Babylon had made
governor over the land.

41:3 Ishmael also slew all the Jews that were with him, even with
Gedaliah, at Mizpah, and the Chaldeans that were found there, and the
men of war.

41:4 And it came to pass the second day after he had slain Gedaliah,
and no man knew it, 41:5 That there came certain from Shechem, from
Shiloh, and from Samaria, even fourscore men, having their beards
shaven, and their clothes rent, and having cut themselves, with
offerings and incense in their hand, to bring them to the house of the
LORD.

41:6 And Ishmael the son of Nethaniah went forth from Mizpah to meet
them, weeping all along as he went: and it came to pass, as he met
them, he said unto them, Come to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam.

41:7 And it was so, when they came into the midst of the city, that
Ishmael the son of Nethaniah slew them, and cast them into the midst
of the pit, he, and the men that were with him.

41:8 But ten men were found among them that said unto Ishmael, Slay us
not: for we have treasures in the field, of wheat, and of barley, and
of oil, and of honey. So he forbare, and slew them not among their
brethren.

41:9 Now the pit wherein Ishmael had cast all the dead bodies of the
men, whom he had slain because of Gedaliah, was it which Asa the king
had made for fear of Baasha king of Israel: and Ishmael the son of
Nethaniah filled it with them that were slain.

41:10 Then Ishmael carried away captive all the residue of the people
that were in Mizpah, even the king's daughters, and all the people
that remained in Mizpah, whom Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had
committed to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam: and Ishmael the son of
Nethaniah carried them away captive, and departed to go over to the
Ammonites.

41:11 But when Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the
forces that were with him, heard of all the evil that Ishmael the son
of Nethaniah had done, 41:12 Then they took all the men, and went to
fight with Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and found him by the great
waters that are in Gibeon.

41:13 Now it came to pass, that when all the people which were with
Ishmael saw Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the
forces that were with him, then they were glad.

41:14 So all the people that Ishmael had carried away captive from
Mizpah cast about and returned, and went unto Johanan the son of
Kareah.

41:15 But Ishmael the son of Nethaniah escaped from Johanan with eight
men, and went to the Ammonites.

41:16 Then took Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the
forces that were with him, all the remnant of the people whom he had
recovered from Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, from Mizpah, after that
he had slain Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, even mighty men of war, and
the women, and the children, and the eunuchs, whom he had brought
again from Gibeon: 41:17 And they departed, and dwelt in the
habitation of Chimham, which is by Bethlehem, to go to enter into
Egypt, 41:18 Because of the Chaldeans: for they were afraid of them,
because Ishmael the son of Nethaniah had slain Gedaliah the son of
Ahikam, whom the king of Babylon made governor in the land.

42:1 Then all the captains of the forces, and Johanan the son of
Kareah, and Jezaniah the son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the
least even unto the greatest, came near, 42:2 And said unto Jeremiah
the prophet, Let, we beseech thee, our supplication be accepted before
thee, and pray for us unto the LORD thy God, even for all this
remnant; (for we are left but a few of many, as thine eyes do behold
us:) 42:3 That the LORD thy God may shew us the way wherein we may
walk, and the thing that we may do.

42:4 Then Jeremiah the prophet said unto them, I have heard you;
behold, I will pray unto the LORD your God according to your words;
and it shall come to pass, that whatsoever thing the LORD shall answer
you, I will declare it unto you; I will keep nothing back from you.

42:5 Then they said to Jeremiah, The LORD be a true and faithful
witness between us, if we do not even according to all things for the
which the LORD thy God shall send thee to us.

42:6 Whether it be good, or whether it be evil, we will obey the voice
of the LORD our God, to whom we send thee; that it may be well with
us, when we obey the voice of the LORD our God.

42:7 And it came to pass after ten days, that the word of the LORD
came unto Jeremiah.

42:8 Then called he Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of
the forces which were with him, and all the people from the least even
to the greatest, 42:9 And said unto them, Thus saith the LORD, the God
of Israel, unto whom ye sent me to present your supplication before
him; 42:10 If ye will still abide in this land, then will I build you,
and not pull you down, and I will plant you, and not pluck you up: for
I repent me of the evil that I have done unto you.

42:11 Be not afraid of the king of Babylon, of whom ye are afraid; be
not afraid of him, saith the LORD: for I am with you to save you, and
to deliver you from his hand.

42:12 And I will shew mercies unto you, that he may have mercy upon
you, and cause you to return to your own land.

42:13 But if ye say, We will not dwell in this land, neither obey the
voice of the LORD your God, 42:14 Saying, No; but we will go into the
land of Egypt, where we shall see no war, nor hear the sound of the
trumpet, nor have hunger of bread; and there will we dwell: 42:15 And
now therefore hear the word of the LORD, ye remnant of Judah; Thus
saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; If ye wholly set your
faces to enter into Egypt, and go to sojourn there; 42:16 Then it
shall come to pass, that the sword, which ye feared, shall overtake
you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine, whereof ye were
afraid, shall follow close after you there in Egypt; and there ye
shall die.

42:17 So shall it be with all the men that set their faces to go into
Egypt to sojourn there; they shall die by the sword, by the famine,
and by the pestilence: and none of them shall remain or escape from
the evil that I will bring upon them.

42:18 For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; As mine
anger and my fury hath been poured forth upon the inhabitants of
Jerusalem; so shall my fury be poured forth upon you, when ye shall
enter into Egypt: and ye shall be an execration, and an astonishment,
and a curse, and a reproach; and ye shall see this place no more.

42:19 The LORD hath said concerning you, O ye remnant of Judah; Go ye
not into Egypt: know certainly that I have admonished you this day.

42:20 For ye dissembled in your hearts, when ye sent me unto the LORD
your God, saying, Pray for us unto the LORD our God; and according
unto all that the LORD our God shall say, so declare unto us, and we
will do it.

42:21 And now I have this day declared it to you; but ye have not
obeyed the voice of the LORD your God, nor any thing for the which he
hath sent me unto you.

42:22 Now therefore know certainly that ye shall die by the sword, by
the famine, and by the pestilence, in the place whither ye desire to
go and to sojourn.

43:1 And it came to pass, that when Jeremiah had made an end of
speaking unto all the people all the words of the LORD their God, for
which the LORD their God had sent him to them, even all these words,
43:2 Then spake Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, and Johanan the son of
Kareah, and all the proud men, saying unto Jeremiah, Thou speakest
falsely: the LORD our God hath not sent thee to say, Go not into Egypt
to sojourn there: 43:3 But Baruch the son of Neriah setteth thee on
against us, for to deliver us into the hand of the Chaldeans, that
they might put us to death, and carry us away captives into Babylon.

43:4 So Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces,
and all the people, obeyed not the voice of the LORD, to dwell in the
land of Judah.

43:5 But Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the
forces, took all the remnant of Judah, that were returned from all
nations, whither they had been driven, to dwell in the land of Judah;
43:6 Even men, and women, and children, and the king's daughters, and
every person that Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had left with
Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Jeremiah the
prophet, and Baruch the son of Neriah.

43:7 So they came into the land of Egypt: for they obeyed not the
voice of the LORD: thus came they even to Tahpanhes.

43:8 Then came the word of the LORD unto Jeremiah in Tahpanhes,
saying, 43:9 Take great stones in thine hand, and hide them in the
clay in the brickkiln, which is at the entry of Pharaoh's house in
Tahpanhes, in the sight of the men of Judah; 43:10 And say unto them,
Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will send
and take Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will set
his throne upon these stones that I have hid; and he shall spread his
royal pavilion over them.

43:11 And when he cometh, he shall smite the land of Egypt, and
deliver such as are for death to death; and such as are for captivity
to captivity; and such as are for the sword to the sword.

43:12 And I will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods of Egypt; and
he shall burn them, and carry them away captives: and he shall array
himself with the land of Egypt, as a shepherd putteth on his garment;
and he shall go forth from thence in peace.

43:13 He shall break also the images of Bethshemesh, that is in the
land of Egypt; and the houses of the gods of the Egyptians shall he
burn with fire.

44:1 The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews which
dwell in the land of Egypt, which dwell at Migdol, and at Tahpanhes,
and at Noph, and in the country of Pathros, saying, 44:2 Thus saith
the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Ye have seen all the evil that I
have brought upon Jerusalem, and upon all the cities of Judah; and,
behold, this day they are a desolation, and no man dwelleth therein,
44:3 Because of their wickedness which they have committed to provoke
me to anger, in that they went to burn incense, and to serve other
gods, whom they knew not, neither they, ye, nor your fathers.

44:4 Howbeit I sent unto you all my servants the prophets, rising
early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable thing that
I hate.

44:5 But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear to turn from their
wickedness, to burn no incense unto other gods.

44:6 Wherefore my fury and mine anger was poured forth, and was
kindled in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; and
they are wasted and desolate, as at this day.

44:7 Therefore now thus saith the LORD, the God of hosts, the God of
Israel; Wherefore commit ye this great evil against your souls, to cut
off from you man and woman, child and suckling, out of Judah, to leave
you none to remain; 44:8 In that ye provoke me unto wrath with the
works of your hands, burning incense unto other gods in the land of
Egypt, whither ye be gone to dwell, that ye might cut yourselves off,
and that ye might be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of
the earth?  44:9 Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, and
the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their
wives, and your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives,
which they have committed in the land of Judah, and in the streets of
Jerusalem?  44:10 They are not humbled even unto this day, neither
have they feared, nor walked in my law, nor in my statutes, that I set
before you and before your fathers.

44:11 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel;
Behold, I will set my face against you for evil, and to cut off all
Judah.

44:12 And I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces
to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all be
consumed, and fall in the land of Egypt; they shall even be consumed
by the sword and by the famine: they shall die, from the least even
unto the greatest, by the sword and by the famine: and they shall be
an execration, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach.

44:13 For I will punish them that dwell in the land of Egypt, as I
have punished Jerusalem, by the sword, by the famine, and by the
pestilence: 44:14 So that none of the remnant of Judah, which are gone
into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall escape or remain, that
they should return into the land of Judah, to the which they have a
desire to return to dwell there: for none shall return but such as
shall escape.

44:15 Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense
unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude,
even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros,
answered Jeremiah, saying, 44:16 As for the word that thou hast spoken
unto us in the name of the LORD, we will not hearken unto thee.

44:17 But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our
own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out
drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our
kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of
Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw
no evil.

44:18 But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven,
and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things,
and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.

44:19 And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured
out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her,
and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men?  44:20 Then
Jeremiah said unto all the people, to the men, and to the women, and
to all the people which had given him that answer, saying, 44:21 The
incense that ye burned in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of
Jerusalem, ye, and your fathers, your kings, and your princes, and the
people of the land, did not the LORD remember them, and came it not
into his mind?  44:22 So that the LORD could no longer bear, because
of the evil of your doings, and because of the abominations which ye
have committed; therefore is your land a desolation, and an
astonishment, and a curse, without an inhabitant, as at this day.

44:23 Because ye have burned incense, and because ye have sinned
against the LORD, and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD, nor
walked in his law, nor in his statutes, nor in his testimonies;
therefore this evil is happened unto you, as at this day.

44:24 Moreover Jeremiah said unto all the people, and to all the
women, Hear the word of the LORD, all Judah that are in the land of
Egypt: 44:25 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saying;
Ye and your wives have both spoken with your mouths, and fulfilled
with your hand, saying, We will surely perform our vows that we have
vowed, to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink
offerings unto her: ye will surely accomplish your vows, and surely
perform your vows.

44:26 Therefore hear ye the word of the LORD, all Judah that dwell in
the land of Egypt; Behold, I have sworn by my great name, saith the
LORD, that my name shall no more be named in the mouth of any man of
Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, The Lord GOD liveth.

44:27 Behold, I will watch over them for evil, and not for good: and
all the men of Judah that are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed
by the sword and by the famine, until there be an end of them.

44:28 Yet a small number that escape the sword shall return out of the
land of Egypt into the land of Judah, and all the remnant of Judah,
that are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall know
whose words shall stand, mine, or their's.

44:29 And this shall be a sign unto you, saith the LORD, that I will
punish you in this place, that ye may know that my words shall surely
stand against you for evil: 44:30 Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will
give Pharaohhophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies, and
into the hand of them that seek his life; as I gave Zedekiah king of
Judah into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, his enemy, and
that sought his life.

45:1 The word that Jeremiah the prophet spake unto Baruch the son of
Neriah, when he had written these words in a book at the mouth of
Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of
Judah, saying, 45:2 Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, unto thee,
O Baruch: 45:3 Thou didst say, Woe is me now! for the LORD hath added
grief to my sorrow; I fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest.

45:4 Thus shalt thou say unto him, The LORD saith thus; Behold, that
which I have built will I break down, and that which I have planted I
will pluck up, even this whole land.

45:5 And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not: for,
behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh, saith the LORD: but thy life
will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest.

46:1 The word of the LORD which came to Jeremiah the prophet against
the Gentiles; 46:2 Against Egypt, against the army of Pharaohnecho
king of Egypt, which was by the river Euphrates in Carchemish, which
Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon smote in the fourth year of Jehoiakim
the son of Josiah king of Judah.

46:3 Order ye the buckler and shield, and draw near to battle.

46:4 Harness the horses; and get up, ye horsemen, and stand forth with
your helmets; furbish the spears, and put on the brigandines.

46:5 Wherefore have I seen them dismayed and turned away back? and
their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace, and look not
back: for fear was round about, saith the LORD.

46:6 Let not the swift flee away, nor the mighty man escape; they
shall stumble, and fall toward the north by the river Euphrates.

46:7 Who is this that cometh up as a flood, whose waters are moved as
the rivers?  46:8 Egypt riseth up like a flood, and his waters are
moved like the rivers; and he saith, I will go up, and will cover the
earth; I will destroy the city and the inhabitants thereof.

46:9 Come up, ye horses; and rage, ye chariots; and let the mighty men
come forth; the Ethiopians and the Libyans, that handle the shield;
and the Lydians, that handle and bend the bow.

46:10 For this is the day of the Lord GOD of hosts, a day of
vengeance, that he may avenge him of his adversaries: and the sword
shall devour, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with their blood:
for the Lord GOD of hosts hath a sacrifice in the north country by the
river Euphrates.

46:11 Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of
Egypt: in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be
cured.

46:12 The nations have heard of thy shame, and thy cry hath filled the
land: for the mighty man hath stumbled against the mighty, and they
are fallen both together.

46:13 The word that the LORD spake to Jeremiah the prophet, how
Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon should come and smite the land of
Egypt.

46:14 Declare ye in Egypt, and publish in Migdol, and publish in Noph
and in Tahpanhes: say ye, Stand fast, and prepare thee; for the sword
shall devour round about thee.

46:15 Why are thy valiant men swept away? they stood not, because the
LORD did drive them.

46:16 He made many to fall, yea, one fell upon another: and they said,
Arise, and let us go again to our own people, and to the land of our
nativity, from the oppressing sword.

46:17 They did cry there, Pharaoh king of Egypt is but a noise; he
hath passed the time appointed.

46:18 As I live, saith the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts,
Surely as Tabor is among the mountains, and as Carmel by the sea, so
shall he come.

46:19 O thou daughter dwelling in Egypt, furnish thyself to go into
captivity: for Noph shall be waste and desolate without an inhabitant.

46:20 Egypt is like a very fair heifer, but destruction cometh; it
cometh out of the north.

46:21 Also her hired men are in the midst of her like fatted bullocks;
for they also are turned back, and are fled away together: they did
not stand, because the day of their calamity was come upon them, and
the time of their visitation.

46:22 The voice thereof shall go like a serpent; for they shall march
with an army, and come against her with axes, as hewers of wood.

46:23 They shall cut down her forest, saith the LORD, though it cannot
be searched; because they are more than the grasshoppers, and are
innumerable.

46:24 The daughter of Egypt shall be confounded; she shall be
delivered into the hand of the people of the north.

46:25 The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saith; Behold, I will
punish the multitude of No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, with their gods,
and their kings; even Pharaoh, and all them that trust in him: 46:26
And I will deliver them into the hand of those that seek their lives,
and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand
of his servants: and afterward it shall be inhabited, as in the days
of old, saith the LORD.

46:27 But fear not thou, O my servant Jacob, and be not dismayed, O
Israel: for, behold, I will save thee from afar off, and thy seed from
the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and be in rest
and at ease, and none shall make him afraid.

46:28 Fear thou not, O Jacob my servant, saith the LORD: for I am with
thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have
driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee
in measure; yet will I not leave thee wholly unpunished.

47:1 The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah the prophet against
the Philistines, before that Pharaoh smote Gaza.

47:2 Thus saith the LORD; Behold, waters rise up out of the north, and
shall be an overflowing flood, and shall overflow the land, and all
that is therein; the city, and them that dwell therein: then the men
shall cry, and all the inhabitants of the land shall howl.

47:3 At the noise of the stamping of the hoofs of his strong horses,
at the rushing of his chariots, and at the rumbling of his wheels, the
fathers shall not look back to their children for feebleness of hands;
47:4 Because of the day that cometh to spoil all the Philistines, and
to cut off from Tyrus and Zidon every helper that remaineth: for the
LORD will spoil the Philistines, the remnant of the country of
Caphtor.

47:5 Baldness is come upon Gaza; Ashkelon is cut off with the remnant
of their valley: how long wilt thou cut thyself?  47:6 O thou sword of
the LORD, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into
thy scabbard, rest, and be still.

47:7 How can it be quiet, seeing the LORD hath given it a charge
against Ashkelon, and against the sea shore? there hath he appointed
it.

48:1 Against Moab thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Woe
unto Nebo! for it is spoiled: Kiriathaim is confounded and taken:
Misgab is confounded and dismayed.

48:2 There shall be no more praise of Moab: in Heshbon they have
devised evil against it; come, and let us cut it off from being a
nation. Also thou shalt be cut down, O Madmen; the sword shall pursue
thee.

48:3 A voice of crying shall be from Horonaim, spoiling and great
destruction.

48:4 Moab is destroyed; her little ones have caused a cry to be heard.

48:5 For in the going up of Luhith continual weeping shall go up; for
in the going down of Horonaim the enemies have heard a cry of
destruction.

48:6 Flee, save your lives, and be like the heath in the wilderness.

48:7 For because thou hast trusted in thy works and in thy treasures,
thou shalt also be taken: and Chemosh shall go forth into captivity
with his priests and his princes together.

48:8 And the spoiler shall come upon every city, and no city shall
escape: the valley also shall perish, and the plain shall be
destroyed, as the LORD hath spoken.

48:9 Give wings unto Moab, that it may flee and get away: for the
cities thereof shall be desolate, without any to dwell therein.

48:10 Cursed be he that doeth the work of the LORD deceitfully, and
cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.

48:11 Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on
his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither
hath he gone into captivity: therefore his taste remained in him, and
his scent is not changed.

48:12 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will
send unto him wanderers, that shall cause him to wander, and shall
empty his vessels, and break their bottles.

48:13 And Moab shall be ashamed of Chemosh, as the house of Israel was
ashamed of Bethel their confidence.

48:14 How say ye, We are mighty and strong men for the war?  48:15
Moab is spoiled, and gone up out of her cities, and his chosen young
men are gone down to the slaughter, saith the King, whose name is the
LORD of hosts.

48:16 The calamity of Moab is near to come, and his affliction hasteth
fast.

48:17 All ye that are about him, bemoan him; and all ye that know his
name, say, How is the strong staff broken, and the beautiful rod!
48:18 Thou daughter that dost inhabit Dibon, come down from thy glory,
and sit in thirst; for the spoiler of Moab shall come upon thee, and
he shall destroy thy strong holds.

48:19 O inhabitant of Aroer, stand by the way, and espy; ask him that
fleeth, and her that escapeth, and say, What is done?  48:20 Moab is
confounded; for it is broken down: howl and cry; tell ye it in Arnon,
that Moab is spoiled, 48:21 And judgment is come upon the plain
country; upon Holon, and upon Jahazah, and upon Mephaath, 48:22 And
upon Dibon, and upon Nebo, and upon Bethdiblathaim, 48:23 And upon
Kiriathaim, and upon Bethgamul, and upon Bethmeon, 48:24 And upon
Kerioth, and upon Bozrah, and upon all the cities of the land of Moab,
far or near.

48:25 The horn of Moab is cut off, and his arm is broken, saith the
LORD.

48:26 Make ye him drunken: for he magnified himself against the LORD:
Moab also shall wallow in his vomit, and he also shall be in derision.

48:27 For was not Israel a derision unto thee? was he found among
thieves?  for since thou spakest of him, thou skippedst for joy.

48:28 O ye that dwell in Moab, leave the cities, and dwell in the
rock, and be like the dove that maketh her nest in the sides of the
hole's mouth.

48:29 We have heard the pride of Moab, (he is exceeding proud) his
loftiness, and his arrogancy, and his pride, and the haughtiness of
his heart.

48:30 I know his wrath, saith the LORD; but it shall not be so; his
lies shall not so effect it.

48:31 Therefore will I howl for Moab, and I will cry out for all Moab;
mine heart shall mourn for the men of Kirheres.

48:32 O vine of Sibmah, I will weep for thee with the weeping of
Jazer: thy plants are gone over the sea, they reach even to the sea of
Jazer: the spoiler is fallen upon thy summer fruits and upon thy
vintage.

48:33 And joy and gladness is taken from the plentiful field, and from
the land of Moab, and I have caused wine to fail from the winepresses:
none shall tread with shouting; their shouting shall be no shouting.

48:34 From the cry of Heshbon even unto Elealeh, and even unto Jahaz,
have they uttered their voice, from Zoar even unto Horonaim, as an
heifer of three years old: for the waters also of Nimrim shall be
desolate.

48:35 Moreover I will cause to cease in Moab, saith the LORD, him that
offereth in the high places, and him that burneth incense to his gods.

48:36 Therefore mine heart shall sound for Moab like pipes, and mine
heart shall sound like pipes for the men of Kirheres: because the
riches that he hath gotten are perished.

48:37 For every head shall be bald, and every beard clipped: upon all
the hands shall be cuttings, and upon the loins sackcloth.

48:38 There shall be lamentation generally upon all the housetops of
Moab, and in the streets thereof: for I have broken Moab like a vessel
wherein is no pleasure, saith the LORD.

48:39 They shall howl, saying, How is it broken down! how hath Moab
turned the back with shame! so shall Moab be a derision and a
dismaying to all them about him.

48:40 For thus saith the LORD; Behold, he shall fly as an eagle, and
shall spread his wings over Moab.

48:41 Kerioth is taken, and the strong holds are surprised, and the
mighty men's hearts in Moab at that day shall be as the heart of a
woman in her pangs.

48:42 And Moab shall be destroyed from being a people, because he hath
magnified himself against the LORD.

48:43 Fear, and the pit, and the snare, shall be upon thee, O
inhabitant of Moab, saith the LORD.

48:44 He that fleeth from the fear shall fall into the pit; and he
that getteth up out of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for I will
bring upon it, even upon Moab, the year of their visitation, saith the
LORD.

48:45 They that fled stood under the shadow of Heshbon because of the
force: but a fire shall come forth out of Heshbon, and a flame from
the midst of Sihon, and shall devour the corner of Moab, and the crown
of the head of the tumultuous ones.

48:46 Woe be unto thee, O Moab! the people of Chemosh perisheth: for
thy sons are taken captives, and thy daughters captives.

48:47 Yet will I bring again the captivity of Moab in the latter days,
saith the LORD. Thus far is the judgment of Moab.

49:1 Concerning the Ammonites, thus saith the LORD; Hath Israel no
sons?  hath he no heir? why then doth their king inherit Gad, and his
people dwell in his cities?  49:2 Therefore, behold, the days come,
saith the LORD, that I will cause an alarm of war to be heard in
Rabbah of the Ammonites; and it shall be a desolate heap, and her
daughters shall be burned with fire: then shall Israel be heir unto
them that were his heirs, saith the LORD.

49:3 Howl, O Heshbon, for Ai is spoiled: cry, ye daughters of Rabbah,
gird you with sackcloth; lament, and run to and fro by the hedges; for
their king shall go into captivity, and his priests and his princes
together.

49:4 Wherefore gloriest thou in the valleys, thy flowing valley, O
backsliding daughter? that trusted in her treasures, saying, Who shall
come unto me?  49:5 Behold, I will bring a fear upon thee, saith the
Lord GOD of hosts, from all those that be about thee; and ye shall be
driven out every man right forth; and none shall gather up him that
wandereth.

49:6 And afterward I will bring again the captivity of the children of
Ammon, saith the LORD.

49:7 Concerning Edom, thus saith the LORD of hosts; Is wisdom no more
in Teman? is counsel perished from the prudent? is their wisdom
vanished?  49:8 Flee ye, turn back, dwell deep, O inhabitants of
Dedan; for I will bring the calamity of Esau upon him, the time that I
will visit him.

49:9 If grapegatherers come to thee, would they not leave some
gleaning grapes? if thieves by night, they will destroy till they have
enough.

49:10 But I have made Esau bare, I have uncovered his secret places,
and he shall not be able to hide himself: his seed is spoiled, and his
brethren, and his neighbours, and he is not.

49:11 Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and
let thy widows trust in me.

49:12 For thus saith the LORD; Behold, they whose judgment was not to
drink of the cup have assuredly drunken; and art thou he that shall
altogether go unpunished? thou shalt not go unpunished, but thou shalt
surely drink of it.

49:13 For I have sworn by myself, saith the LORD, that Bozrah shall
become a desolation, a reproach, a waste, and a curse; and all the
cities thereof shall be perpetual wastes.

49:14 I have heard a rumour from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent
unto the heathen, saying, Gather ye together, and come against her,
and rise up to the battle.

49:15 For, lo, I will make thee small among the heathen, and despised
among men.

49:16 Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine
heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest
the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as
the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the LORD.

49:17 Also Edom shall be a desolation: every one that goeth by it
shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues thereof.

49:18 As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbour
cities thereof, saith the LORD, no man shall abide there, neither
shall a son of man dwell in it.

49:19 Behold, he shall come up like a lion from the swelling of Jordan
against the habitation of the strong: but I will suddenly make him run
away from her: and who is a chosen man, that I may appoint over her?
for who is like me? and who will appoint me the time? and who is that
shepherd that will stand before me?  49:20 Therefore hear the counsel
of the LORD, that he hath taken against Edom; and his purposes, that
he hath purposed against the inhabitants of Teman: Surely the least of
the flock shall draw them out: surely he shall make their habitations
desolate with them.

49:21 The earth is moved at the noise of their fall, at the cry the
noise thereof was heard in the Red sea.

49:22 Behold, he shall come up and fly as the eagle, and spread his
wings over Bozrah: and at that day shall the heart of the mighty men
of Edom be as the heart of a woman in her pangs.

49:23 Concerning Damascus. Hamath is confounded, and Arpad: for they
have heard evil tidings: they are fainthearted; there is sorrow on the
sea; it cannot be quiet.

49:24 Damascus is waxed feeble, and turneth herself to flee, and fear
hath seized on her: anguish and sorrows have taken her, as a woman in
travail.

49:25 How is the city of praise not left, the city of my joy!  49:26
Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets, and all the men of
war shall be cut off in that day, saith the LORD of hosts.

49:27 And I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it shall
consume the palaces of Benhadad.

49:28 Concerning Kedar, and concerning the kingdoms of Hazor, which
Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon shall smite, thus saith the LORD; Arise
ye, go up to Kedar, and spoil the men of the east.

49:29 Their tents and their flocks shall they take away: they shall
take to themselves their curtains, and all their vessels, and their
camels; and they shall cry unto them, Fear is on every side.

49:30 Flee, get you far off, dwell deep, O ye inhabitants of Hazor,
saith the LORD; for Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath taken counsel
against you, and hath conceived a purpose against you.

49:31 Arise, get you up unto the wealthy nation, that dwelleth without
care, saith the LORD, which have neither gates nor bars, which dwell
alone.

49:32 And their camels shall be a booty, and the multitude of their
cattle a spoil: and I will scatter into all winds them that are in the
utmost corners; and I will bring their calamity from all sides
thereof, saith the LORD.

49:33 And Hazor shall be a dwelling for dragons, and a desolation for
ever: there shall no man abide there, nor any son of man dwell in it.

49:34 The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah the prophet against
Elam in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, saying,
49:35 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Behold, I will break the bow of
Elam, the chief of their might.

49:36 And upon Elam will I bring the four winds from the four quarters
of heaven, and will scatter them toward all those winds; and there
shall be no nation whither the outcasts of Elam shall not come.

49:37 For I will cause Elam to be dismayed before their enemies, and
before them that seek their life: and I will bring evil upon them,
even my fierce anger, saith the LORD; and I will send the sword after
them, till I have consumed them: 49:38 And I will set my throne in
Elam, and will destroy from thence the king and the princes, saith the
LORD.

49:39 But it shall come to pass in the latter days, that I will bring
again the captivity of Elam, saith the LORD.

50:1 The word that the LORD spake against Babylon and against the land
of the Chaldeans by Jeremiah the prophet.

50:2 Declare ye among the nations, and publish, and set up a standard;
publish, and conceal not: say, Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded,
Merodach is broken in pieces; her idols are confounded, her images are
broken in pieces.

50:3 For out of the north there cometh up a nation against her, which
shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein: they shall
remove, they shall depart, both man and beast.

50:4 In those days, and in that time, saith the LORD, the children of
Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and
weeping: they shall go, and seek the LORD their God.

50:5 They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward,
saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the LORD in a perpetual
covenant that shall not be forgotten.

50:6 My people hath been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them
to go astray, they have turned them away on the mountains: they have
gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their restingplace.

50:7 All that found them have devoured them: and their adversaries
said, We offend not, because they have sinned against the LORD, the
habitation of justice, even the LORD, the hope of their fathers.

50:8 Remove out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land
of the Chaldeans, and be as the he goats before the flocks.

50:9 For, lo, I will raise and cause to come up against Babylon an
assembly of great nations from the north country: and they shall set
themselves in array against her; from thence she shall be taken: their
arrows shall be as of a mighty expert man; none shall return in vain.

50:10 And Chaldea shall be a spoil: all that spoil her shall be
satisfied, saith the LORD.

50:11 Because ye were glad, because ye rejoiced, O ye destroyers of
mine heritage, because ye are grown fat as the heifer at grass, and
bellow as bulls; 50:12 Your mother shall be sore confounded; she that
bare you shall be ashamed: behold, the hindermost of the nations shall
be a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert.

50:13 Because of the wrath of the LORD it shall not be inhabited, but
it shall be wholly desolate: every one that goeth by Babylon shall be
astonished, and hiss at all her plagues.

50:14 Put yourselves in array against Babylon round about: all ye that
bend the bow, shoot at her, spare no arrows: for she hath sinned
against the LORD.

50:15 Shout against her round about: she hath given her hand: her
foundations are fallen, her walls are thrown down: for it is the
vengeance of the LORD: take vengeance upon her; as she hath done, do
unto her.

50:16 Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle
in the time of harvest: for fear of the oppressing sword they shall
turn every one to his people, and they shall flee every one to his own
land.

50:17 Israel is a scattered sheep; the lions have driven him away:
first the king of Assyria hath devoured him; and last this
Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath broken his bones.

50:18 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel;
Behold, I will punish the king of Babylon and his land, as I have
punished the king of Assyria.

50:19 And I will bring Israel again to his habitation, and he shall
feed on Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied upon mount
Ephraim and Gilead.

50:20 In those days, and in that time, saith the LORD, the iniquity of
Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of
Judah, and they shall not be found: for I will pardon them whom I
reserve.

50:21 Go up against the land of Merathaim, even against it, and
against the inhabitants of Pekod: waste and utterly destroy after
them, saith the LORD, and do according to all that I have commanded
thee.

50:22 A sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction.

50:23 How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken! how
is Babylon become a desolation among the nations!  50:24 I have laid a
snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not
aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven
against the LORD.

50:25 The LORD hath opened his armoury, and hath brought forth the
weapons of his indignation: for this is the work of the Lord GOD of
hosts in the land of the Chaldeans.

50:26 Come against her from the utmost border, open her storehouses:
cast her up as heaps, and destroy her utterly: let nothing of her be
left.

50:27 Slay all her bullocks; let them go down to the slaughter: woe
unto them! for their day is come, the time of their visitation.

50:28 The voice of them that flee and escape out of the land of
Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of the LORD our God, the
vengeance of his temple.

50:29 Call together the archers against Babylon: all ye that bend the
bow, camp against it round about; let none thereof escape: recompense
her according to her work; according to all that she hath done, do
unto her: for she hath been proud against the LORD, against the Holy
One of Israel.

50:30 Therefore shall her young men fall in the streets, and all her
men of war shall be cut off in that day, saith the LORD.

50:31 Behold, I am against thee, O thou most proud, saith the Lord GOD
of hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee.

50:32 And the most proud shall stumble and fall, and none shall raise
him up: and I will kindle a fire in his cities, and it shall devour
all round about him.

50:33 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The children of Israel and the
children of Judah were oppressed together: and all that took them
captives held them fast; they refused to let them go.

50:34 Their Redeemer is strong; the LORD of hosts is his name: he
shall throughly plead their cause, that he may give rest to the land,
and disquiet the inhabitants of Babylon.

50:35 A sword is upon the Chaldeans, saith the LORD, and upon the
inhabitants of Babylon, and upon her princes, and upon her wise men.

50:36 A sword is upon the liars; and they shall dote: a sword is upon
her mighty men; and they shall be dismayed.

50:37 A sword is upon their horses, and upon their chariots, and upon
all the mingled people that are in the midst of her; and they shall
become as women: a sword is upon her treasures; and they shall be
robbed.

50:38 A drought is upon her waters; and they shall be dried up: for it
is the land of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols.

50:39 Therefore the wild beasts of the desert with the wild beasts of
the islands shall dwell there, and the owls shall dwell therein: and
it shall be no more inhabited for ever; neither shall it be dwelt in
from generation to generation.

50:40 As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbour cities
thereof, saith the LORD; so shall no man abide there, neither shall
any son of man dwell therein.

50:41 Behold, a people shall come from the north, and a great nation,
and many kings shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth.

50:42 They shall hold the bow and the lance: they are cruel, and will
not shew mercy: their voice shall roar like the sea, and they shall
ride upon horses, every one put in array, like a man to the battle,
against thee, O daughter of Babylon.

50:43 The king of Babylon hath heard the report of them, and his hands
waxed feeble: anguish took hold of him, and pangs as of a woman in
travail.

50:44 Behold, he shall come up like a lion from the swelling of Jordan
unto the habitation of the strong: but I will make them suddenly run
away from her: and who is a chosen man, that I may appoint over her?
for who is like me? and who will appoint me the time? and who is that
shepherd that will stand before me?  50:45 Therefore hear ye the
counsel of the LORD, that he hath taken against Babylon; and his
purposes, that he hath purposed against the land of the Chaldeans:
Surely the least of the flock shall draw them out: surely he shall
make their habitation desolate with them.

50:46 At the noise of the taking of Babylon the earth is moved, and
the cry is heard among the nations.

51:1 Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will raise up against Babylon, and
against them that dwell in the midst of them that rise up against me,
a destroying wind; 51:2 And will send unto Babylon fanners, that shall
fan her, and shall empty her land: for in the day of trouble they
shall be against her round about.

51:3 Against him that bendeth let the archer bend his bow, and against
him that lifteth himself up in his brigandine: and spare ye not her
young men; destroy ye utterly all her host.

51:4 Thus the slain shall fall in the land of the Chaldeans, and they
that are thrust through in her streets.

51:5 For Israel hath not been forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of the
LORD of hosts; though their land was filled with sin against the Holy
One of Israel.

51:6 Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul:
be not cut off in her iniquity; for this is the time of the LORD's
vengeance; he will render unto her a recompence.

51:7 Babylon hath been a golden cup in the LORD's hand, that made all
the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the
nations are mad.

51:8 Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed: howl for her; take balm
for her pain, if so be she may be healed.

51:9 We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed: forsake her,
and let us go every one into his own country: for her judgment
reacheth unto heaven, and is lifted up even to the skies.

51:10 The LORD hath brought forth our righteousness: come, and let us
declare in Zion the work of the LORD our God.

51:11 Make bright the arrows; gather the shields: the LORD hath raised
up the spirit of the kings of the Medes: for his device is against
Babylon, to destroy it; because it is the vengeance of the LORD, the
vengeance of his temple.

51:12 Set up the standard upon the walls of Babylon, make the watch
strong, set up the watchmen, prepare the ambushes: for the LORD hath
both devised and done that which he spake against the inhabitants of
Babylon.

51:13 O thou that dwellest upon many waters, abundant in treasures,
thine end is come, and the measure of thy covetousness.

51:14 The LORD of hosts hath sworn by himself, saying, Surely I will
fill thee with men, as with caterpillers; and they shall lift up a
shout against thee.

51:15 He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the
world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heaven by his
understanding.

51:16 When he uttereth his voice, there is a multitude of waters in
the heavens; and he causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the
earth: he maketh lightnings with rain, and bringeth forth the wind out
of his treasures.

51:17 Every man is brutish by his knowledge; every founder is
confounded by the graven image: for his molten image is falsehood, and
there is no breath in them.

51:18 They are vanity, the work of errors: in the time of their
visitation they shall perish.

51:19 The portion of Jacob is not like them; for he is the former of
all things: and Israel is the rod of his inheritance: the LORD of
hosts is his name.

51:20 Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee will I
break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms;
51:21 And with thee will I break in pieces the horse and his rider;
and with thee will I break in pieces the chariot and his rider; 51:22
With thee also will I break in pieces man and woman; and with thee
will I break in pieces old and young; and with thee will I break in
pieces the young man and the maid; 51:23 I will also break in pieces
with thee the shepherd and his flock; and with thee will I break in
pieces the husbandman and his yoke of oxen; and with thee will I break
in pieces captains and rulers.

51:24 And I will render unto Babylon and to all the inhabitants of
Chaldea all their evil that they have done in Zion in your sight,
saith the LORD.

51:25 Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith the
LORD, which destroyest all the earth: and I will stretch out mine hand
upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a
burnt mountain.

51:26 And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a
stone for foundations; but thou shalt be desolate for ever, saith the
LORD.

51:27 Set ye up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the
nations, prepare the nations against her, call together against her
the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz; appoint a captain
against her; cause the horses to come up as the rough caterpillers.

51:28 Prepare against her the nations with the kings of the Medes, the
captains thereof, and all the rulers thereof, and all the land of his
dominion.

51:29 And the land shall tremble and sorrow: for every purpose of the
LORD shall be performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a
desolation without an inhabitant.

51:30 The mighty men of Babylon have forborn to fight, they have
remained in their holds: their might hath failed; they became as
women: they have burned her dwellingplaces; her bars are broken.

51:31 One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet
another, to shew the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one
end, 51:32 And that the passages are stopped, and the reeds they have
burned with fire, and the men of war are affrighted.

51:33 For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; The
daughter of Babylon is like a threshingfloor, it is time to thresh
her: yet a little while, and the time of her harvest shall come.

51:34 Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me, he hath
crushed me, he hath made me an empty vessel, he hath swallowed me up
like a dragon, he hath filled his belly with my delicates, he hath
cast me out.

51:35 The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon, shall
the inhabitant of Zion say; and my blood upon the inhabitants of
Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say.

51:36 Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will plead thy cause,
and take vengeance for thee; and I will dry up her sea, and make her
springs dry.

51:37 And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwellingplace for dragons, an
astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant.

51:38 They shall roar together like lions: they shall yell as lions'
whelps.

51:39 In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them
drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not
wake, saith the LORD.

51:40 I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams
with he goats.

51:41 How is Sheshach taken! and how is the praise of the whole earth
surprised! how is Babylon become an astonishment among the nations!
51:42 The sea is come up upon Babylon: she is covered with the
multitude of the waves thereof.

51:43 Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a
land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass
thereby.

51:44 And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of
his mouth that which he hath swallowed up: and the nations shall not
flow together any more unto him: yea, the wall of Babylon shall fall.

51:45 My people, go ye out of the midst of her, and deliver ye every
man his soul from the fierce anger of the LORD.

51:46 And lest your heart faint, and ye fear for the rumour that shall
be heard in the land; a rumour shall both come one year, and after
that in another year shall come a rumour, and violence in the land,
ruler against ruler.

51:47 Therefore, behold, the days come, that I will do judgment upon
the graven images of Babylon: and her whole land shall be confounded,
and all her slain shall fall in the midst of her.

51:48 Then the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, shall
sing for Babylon: for the spoilers shall come unto her from the north,
saith the LORD.

51:49 As Babylon hath caused the slain of Israel to fall, so at
Babylon shall fall the slain of all the earth.

51:50 Ye that have escaped the sword, go away, stand not still:
remember the LORD afar off, and let Jerusalem come into your mind.

51:51 We are confounded, because we have heard reproach: shame hath
covered our faces: for strangers are come into the sanctuaries of the
LORD's house.

51:52 Wherefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will do
judgment upon her graven images: and through all her land the wounded
shall groan.

51:53 Though Babylon should mount up to heaven, and though she should
fortify the height of her strength, yet from me shall spoilers come
unto her, saith the LORD.

51:54 A sound of a cry cometh from Babylon, and great destruction from
the land of the Chaldeans: 51:55 Because the LORD hath spoiled
Babylon, and destroyed out of her the great voice; when her waves do
roar like great waters, a noise of their voice is uttered: 51:56
Because the spoiler is come upon her, even upon Babylon, and her
mighty men are taken, every one of their bows is broken: for the LORD
God of recompences shall surely requite.

51:57 And I will make drunk her princes, and her wise men, her
captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men: and they shall sleep a
perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the King, whose name is the LORD
of hosts.

51:58 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The broad walls of Babylon shall
be utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and
the people shall labour in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they
shall be weary.

51:59 The word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of
Neriah, the son of Maaseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of
Judah into Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. And this Seraiah
was a quiet prince.

51:60 So Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should come upon
Babylon, even all these words that are written against Babylon.

51:61 And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, When thou comest to Babylon, and
shalt see, and shalt read all these words; 51:62 Then shalt thou say,
O LORD, thou hast spoken against this place, to cut it off, that none
shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be
desolate for ever.

51:63 And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this
book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst
of Euphrates: 51:64 And thou shalt say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and
shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her: and they
shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.

52:1 Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and
he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was
Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

52:2 And he did that which was evil in the eyes of the LORD, according
to all that Jehoiakim had done.

52:3 For through the anger of the LORD it came to pass in Jerusalem
and Judah, till he had cast them out from his presence, that Zedekiah
rebelled against the king of Babylon.

52:4 And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth
month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadrezzar king of
Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and pitched
against it, and built forts against it round about.

52:5 So the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king Zedekiah.

52:6 And in the fourth month, in the ninth day of the month, the
famine was sore in the city, so that there was no bread for the people
of the land.

52:7 Then the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled, and
went forth out of the city by night by the way of the gate between the
two walls, which was by the king's garden; (now the Chaldeans were by
the city round about:) and they went by the way of the plain.

52:8 But the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the king, and
overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was
scattered from him.

52:9 Then they took the king, and carried him up unto the king of
Babylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath; where he gave judgment upon
him.

52:10 And the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his
eyes: he slew also all the princes of Judah in Riblah.

52:11 Then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon
bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison
till the day of his death.

52:12 Now in the fifth month, in the tenth day of the month, which was
the nineteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, came
Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, which served the king of Babylon,
into Jerusalem, 52:13 And burned the house of the LORD, and the king's
house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, and all the houses of the
great men, burned he with fire: 52:14 And all the army of the
Chaldeans, that were with the captain of the guard, brake down all the
walls of Jerusalem round about.

52:15 Then Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away captive
certain of the poor of the people, and the residue of the people that
remained in the city, and those that fell away, that fell to the king
of Babylon, and the rest of the multitude.

52:16 But Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard left certain of the
poor of the land for vinedressers and for husbandmen.

52:17 Also the pillars of brass that were in the house of the LORD,
and the bases, and the brasen sea that was in the house of the LORD,
the Chaldeans brake, and carried all the brass of them to Babylon.

52:18 The caldrons also, and the shovels, and the snuffers, and the
bowls, and the spoons, and all the vessels of brass wherewith they
ministered, took they away.

52:19 And the basons, and the firepans, and the bowls, and the
caldrons, and the candlesticks, and the spoons, and the cups; that
which was of gold in gold, and that which was of silver in silver,
took the captain of the guard away.

52:20 The two pillars, one sea, and twelve brasen bulls that were
under the bases, which king Solomon had made in the house of the LORD:
the brass of all these vessels was without weight.

52:21 And concerning the pillars, the height of one pillar was
eighteen cubits; and a fillet of twelve cubits did compass it; and the
thickness thereof was four fingers: it was hollow.

52:22 And a chapiter of brass was upon it; and the height of one
chapiter was five cubits, with network and pomegranates upon the
chapiters round about, all of brass. The second pillar also and the
pomegranates were like unto these.

52:23 And there were ninety and six pomegranates on a side; and all
the pomegranates upon the network were an hundred round about.

52:24 And the captain of the guard took Seraiah the chief priest, and
Zephaniah the second priest, and the three keepers of the door: 52:25
He took also out of the city an eunuch, which had the charge of the
men of war; and seven men of them that were near the king's person,
which were found in the city; and the principal scribe of the host,
who mustered the people of the land; and threescore men of the people
of the land, that were found in the midst of the city.

52:26 So Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard took them, and brought
them to the king of Babylon to Riblah.

52:27 And the king of Babylon smote them, and put them to death in
Riblah in the land of Hamath. Thus Judah was carried away captive out
of his own land.

52:28 This is the people whom Nebuchadrezzar carried away captive: in
the seventh year three thousand Jews and three and twenty: 52:29 In
the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar he carried away captive from
Jerusalem eight hundred thirty and two persons: 52:30 In the three and
twentieth year of Nebuchadrezzar Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard
carried away captive of the Jews seven hundred forty and five persons:
all the persons were four thousand and six hundred.

52:31 And it came to pass in the seven and thirtieth year of the
captivity of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, in the
five and twentieth day of the month, that Evilmerodach king of Babylon
in the first year of his reign lifted up the head of Jehoiachin king
of Judah, and brought him forth out of prison.

52:32 And spake kindly unto him, and set his throne above the throne
of the kings that were with him in Babylon, 52:33 And changed his
prison garments: and he did continually eat bread before him all the
days of his life.

52:34 And for his diet, there was a continual diet given him of the
king of Babylon, every day a portion until the day of his death, all
the days of his life.




The Lamentations of Jeremiah


1:1 How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is
she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and
princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!  1:2 She
weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all
her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt
treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.

1:3 Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of
great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest:
all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.

1:4 The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts:
all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are
afflicted, and she is in bitterness.

1:5 Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD
hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her
children are gone into captivity before the enemy.

1:6 And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed: her
princes are become like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone
without strength before the pursuer.

1:7 Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction and of her
miseries all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, when
her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her: the
adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths.

1:8 Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all
that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness:
yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward.

1:9 Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last end;
therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter. O LORD,
behold my affliction: for the enemy hath magnified himself.

1:10 The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant
things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary,
whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy
congregation.

1:11 All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their
pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul: see, O LORD, and
consider; for I am become vile.

1:12 Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if
there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me,
wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.

1:13 From above hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth
against them: he hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me
back: he hath made me desolate and faint all the day.

1:14 The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are
wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall,
the LORD hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able
to rise up.

1:15 The LORD hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst
of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men:
the LORD hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a
winepress.

1:16 For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with
water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from
me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.

1:17 Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her:
the LORD hath commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should
be round about him: Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them.

1:18 The LORD is righteous; for I have rebelled against his
commandment: hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow: my
virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.

1:19 I called for my lovers, but they deceived me: my priests and mine
elders gave up the ghost in the city, while they sought their meat to
relieve their souls.

1:20 Behold, O LORD; for I am in distress: my bowels are troubled;
mine heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: abroad
the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death.

1:21 They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me: all
mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast
done it: thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called, and they shall
be like unto me.

1:22 Let all their wickedness come before thee; and do unto them, as
thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions: for my sighs are
many, and my heart is faint.

2:1 How hath the LORD covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his
anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel,
and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!  2:2 The
LORD hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath not
pitied: he hath thrown down in his wrath the strong holds of the
daughter of Judah; he hath brought them down to the ground: he hath
polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof.

2:3 He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he
hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned
against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about.

2:4 He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand
as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the
tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire.

2:5 The LORD was as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Israel, he hath
swallowed up all her palaces: he hath destroyed his strong holds, and
hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.

2:6 And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of
a garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the LORD hath
caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and
hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.

2:7 The LORD hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary,
he hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces;
they have made a noise in the house of the LORD, as in the day of a
solemn feast.

2:8 The LORD hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of
Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand
from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament;
they languished together.

2:9 Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken
her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is
no more; her prophets also find no vision from the LORD.

2:10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep
silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded
themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their
heads to the ground.

2:11 Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is
poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my
people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of
the city.

2:12 They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they
swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was
poured out into their mothers' bosom.

2:13 What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I
liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee,
that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is
great like the sea: who can heal thee?  2:14 Thy prophets have seen
vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine
iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false
burdens and causes of banishment.

2:15 All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag
their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that
men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?  2:16
All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: they hiss and
gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed her up: certainly this is
the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it.

2:17 The LORD hath done that which he had devised; he hath fulfilled
his word that he had commanded in the days of old: he hath thrown
down, and hath not pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice
over thee, he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries.

2:18 Their heart cried unto the LORD, O wall of the daughter of Zion,
let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest;
let not the apple of thine eye cease.

2:19 Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour
out thine heart like water before the face of the LORD: lift up thy
hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for
hunger in the top of every street.

2:20 Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall
the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the
priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?  2:21
The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and
my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day
of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied.

2:22 Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so
that in the day of the LORD's anger none escaped nor remained: those
that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.

3:1 I AM the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

3:2 He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.

3:3 Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all
the day.

3:4 My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.

3:5 He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and
travail.

3:6 He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.

3:7 He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my
chain heavy.

3:8 Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.

3:9 He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths
crooked.

3:10 He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret
places.

3:11 He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath
made me desolate.

3:12 He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

3:13 He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins.

3:14 I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.

3:15 He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with
wormwood.

3:16 He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered
me with ashes.

3:17 And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat
prosperity.

3:18 And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LORD:
3:19 Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the
gall.

3:20 My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.

3:21 This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.

3:22 It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his
compassions fail not.

3:23 They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

3:24 The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in
him.

3:25 The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that
seeketh him.

3:26 It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the
salvation of the LORD.

3:27 It is good for a man that he bear the yoke of his youth.

3:28 He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it
upon him.

3:29 He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope.

3:30 He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him: he is filled full
with reproach.

3:31 For the LORD will not cast off for ever: 3:32 But though he cause
grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his
mercies.

3:33 For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.

3:34 To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth.

3:35 To turn aside the right of a man before the face of the most
High, 3:36 To subvert a man in his cause, the LORD approveth not.

3:37 Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord
commandeth it not?  3:38 Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth
not evil and good?  3:39 Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man
for the punishment of his sins?  3:40 Let us search and try our ways,
and turn again to the LORD.

3:41 Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.

3:42 We have transgressed and have rebelled: thou hast not pardoned.

3:43 Thou hast covered with anger, and persecuted us: thou hast slain,
thou hast not pitied.

3:44 Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should
not pass through.

3:45 Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of
the people.

3:46 All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

3:47 Fear and a snare is come upon us, desolation and destruction.

3:48 Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of
the daughter of my people.

3:49 Mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without any
intermission.

3:50 Till the LORD look down, and behold from heaven.

3:51 Mine eye affecteth mine heart because of all the daughters of my
city.

3:52 Mine enemies chased me sore, like a bird, without cause.

3:53 They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon
me.

3:54 Waters flowed over mine head; then I said, I am cut off.

3:55 I called upon thy name, O LORD, out of the low dungeon.

3:56 Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at
my cry.

3:57 Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou
saidst, Fear not.

3:58 O LORD, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast
redeemed my life.

3:59 O LORD, thou hast seen my wrong: judge thou my cause.

3:60 Thou hast seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations
against me.

3:61 Thou hast heard their reproach, O LORD, and all their
imaginations against me; 3:62 The lips of those that rose up against
me, and their device against me all the day.

3:63 Behold their sitting down, and their rising up; I am their
musick.

3:64 Render unto them a recompence, O LORD, according to the work of
their hands.

3:65 Give them sorrow of heart, thy curse unto them.

3:66 Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the
LORD.

4:1 How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! the
stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street.

4:2 The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they
esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!
4:3 Even the sea monsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their
young ones: the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the
ostriches in the wilderness.

4:4 The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth
for thirst: the young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto
them.

4:5 They that did feed delicately are desolate in the streets: they
that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills.

4:6 For the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is
greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, that was overthrown
as in a moment, and no hands stayed on her.

4:7 Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk,
they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of
sapphire: 4:8 Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known
in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it
is become like a stick.

4:9 They that be slain with the sword are better than they that be
slain with hunger: for these pine away, stricken through for want of
the fruits of the field.

4:10 The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children:
they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

4:11 The LORD hath accomplished his fury; he hath poured out his
fierce anger, and hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath devoured
the foundations thereof.

4:12 The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world,
would not have believed that the adversary and the enemy should have
entered into the gates of Jerusalem.

4:13 For the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests,
that have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her, 4:14 They
have wandered as blind men in the streets, they have polluted
themselves with blood, so that men could not touch their garments.

4:15 They cried unto them, Depart ye; it is unclean; depart, depart,
touch not: when they fled away and wandered, they said among the
heathen, They shall no more sojourn there.

4:16 The anger of the LORD hath divided them; he will no more regard
them: they respected not the persons of the priests, they favoured not
the elders.

4:17 As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our
watching we have watched for a nation that could not save us.

4:18 They hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our streets: our end is
near, our days are fulfilled; for our end is come.

4:19 Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the heaven: they
pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in the
wilderness.

4:20 The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the LORD, was taken
in their pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among
the heathen.

4:21 Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the
land of Uz; the cup also shall pass through unto thee: thou shalt be
drunken, and shalt make thyself naked.

4:22 The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of
Zion; he will no more carry thee away into captivity: he will visit
thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom; he will discover thy sins.

5:1 Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our
reproach.

5:2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

5:3 We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.

5:4 We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.

5:5 Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.

5:6 We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to
be satisfied with bread.

5:7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their
iniquities.

5:8 Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us
out of their hand.

5:9 We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword
of the wilderness.

5:10 Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.

5:11 They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of
Judah.

5:12 Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not
honoured.

5:13 They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the
wood.

5:14 The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their
musick.

5:15 The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into
mourning.

5:16 The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have
sinned!  5:17 For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes
are dim.

5:18 Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes
walk upon it.

5:19 Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to
generation.

5:20 Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long
time?  5:21 Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned;
renew our days as of old.

5:22 But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.




The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel


1:1 Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month,
in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river
of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.

1:2 In the fifth day of the month, which was the fifth year of king
Jehoiachin's captivity, 1:3 The word of the LORD came expressly unto
Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by
the river Chebar; and the hand of the LORD was there upon him.

1:4 And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a
great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about
it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the
midst of the fire.

1:5 Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living
creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a
man.

1:6 And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.

1:7 And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was
like the sole of a calf's foot: and they sparkled like the colour of
burnished brass.

1:8 And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four
sides; and they four had their faces and their wings.

1:9 Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they
went; they went every one straight forward.

1:10 As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a
man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the
face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an
eagle.

1:11 Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upward; two
wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their
bodies.

1:12 And they went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was
to go, they went; and they turned not when they went.

1:13 As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was
like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went
up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and
out of the fire went forth lightning.

1:14 And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a
flash of lightning.

1:15 Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the
earth by the living creatures, with his four faces.

1:16 The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the
colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their
appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a
wheel.

1:17 When they went, they went upon their four sides: and they turned
not when they went.

1:18 As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful;
and their rings were full of eyes round about them four.

1:19 And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and
when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels
were lifted up.

1:20 Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their
spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the
spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.

1:21 When those went, these went; and when those stood, these stood;
and when those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted
up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the
wheels.

1:22 And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living
creature was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth
over their heads above.

1:23 And under the firmament were their wings straight, the one toward
the other: every one had two, which covered on this side, and every
one had two, which covered on that side, their bodies.

1:24 And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the
noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of
speech, as the noise of an host: when they stood, they let down their
wings.

1:25 And there was a voice from the firmament that was over their
heads, when they stood, and had let down their wings.

1:26 And above the firmament that was over their heads was the
likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon
the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man
above upon it.

1:27 And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round
about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and
from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the
appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about.

1:28 As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of
rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was
the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I
saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.

2:1 And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will
speak unto thee.

2:2 And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me
upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me.

2:3 And he said unto me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of
Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me: they and
their fathers have transgressed against me, even unto this very day.

2:4 For they are impudent children and stiffhearted. I do send thee
unto them; and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD.

2:5 And they, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear,
(for they are a rebellious house,) yet shall know that there hath been
a prophet among them.

2:6 And thou, son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be afraid of
their words, though briers and thorns be with thee, and thou dost
dwell among scorpions: be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed
at their looks, though they be a rebellious house.

2:7 And thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear,
or whether they will forbear: for they are most rebellious.

2:8 But thou, son of man, hear what I say unto thee; Be not thou
rebellious like that rebellious house: open thy mouth, and eat that I
give thee.

2:9 And when I looked, behold, an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a
roll of a book was therein; 2:10 And he spread it before me; and it
was written within and without: and there was written therein
lamentations, and mourning, and woe.

3:1 Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat
this roll, and go speak unto the house of Israel.

3:2 So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll.

3:3 And he said unto me, Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill
thy bowels with this roll that I give thee. Then did I eat it; and it
was in my mouth as honey for sweetness.

3:4 And he said unto me, Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of
Israel, and speak with my words unto them.

3:5 For thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech and of an
hard language, but to the house of Israel; 3:6 Not to many people of a
strange speech and of an hard language, whose words thou canst not
understand. Surely, had I sent thee to them, they would have hearkened
unto thee.

3:7 But the house of Israel will not hearken unto thee; for they will
not hearken unto me: for all the house of Israel are impudent and
hardhearted.

3:8 Behold, I have made thy face strong against their faces, and thy
forehead strong against their foreheads.

3:9 As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead: fear
them not, neither be dismayed at their looks, though they be a
rebellious house.

3:10 Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, all my words that I shall
speak unto thee receive in thine heart, and hear with thine ears.

3:11 And go, get thee to them of the captivity, unto the children of
thy people, and speak unto them, and tell them, Thus saith the Lord
GOD; whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear.

3:12 Then the spirit took me up, and I heard behind me a voice of a
great rushing, saying, Blessed be the glory of the LORD from his
place.

3:13 I heard also the noise of the wings of the living creatures that
touched one another, and the noise of the wheels over against them,
and a noise of a great rushing.

3:14 So the spirit lifted me up, and took me away, and I went in
bitterness, in the heat of my spirit; but the hand of the LORD was
strong upon me.

3:15 Then I came to them of the captivity at Telabib, that dwelt by
the river of Chebar, and I sat where they sat, and remained there
astonished among them seven days.

3:16 And it came to pass at the end of seven days, that the word of
the LORD came unto me, saying, 3:17 Son of man, I have made thee a
watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my
mouth, and give them warning from me.

3:18 When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou
givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his
wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his
iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.

3:19 Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness,
nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast
delivered thy soul.

3:20 Again, When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and
commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling-block before him, he shall die:
because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and
his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his
blood will I require at thine hand.

3:21 Nevertheless if thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous
sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live, because he is
warned; also thou hast delivered thy soul.

3:22 And the hand of the LORD was there upon me; and he said unto me,
Arise, go forth into the plain, and I will there talk with thee.

3:23 Then I arose, and went forth into the plain: and, behold, the
glory of the LORD stood there, as the glory which I saw by the river
of Chebar: and I fell on my face.

3:24 Then the spirit entered into me, and set me upon my feet, and
spake with me, and said unto me, Go, shut thyself within thine house.

3:25 But thou, O son of man, behold, they shall put bands upon thee,
and shall bind thee with them, and thou shalt not go out among them:
3:26 And I will make thy tongue cleave to the roof of thy mouth, that
thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be to them a reprover: for they are
a rebellious house.

3:27 But when I speak with thee, I will open thy mouth, and thou shalt
say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; He that heareth, let him hear;
and he that forbeareth, let him forbear: for they are a rebellious
house.

4:1 Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee,
and pourtray upon it the city, even Jerusalem: 4:2 And lay siege
against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it;
set the camp also against it, and set battering rams against it round
about.

4:3 Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of
iron between thee and the city: and set thy face against it, and it
shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be
a sign to the house of Israel.

4:4 Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the
house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou
shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity.

4:5 For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according
to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt
thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

4:6 And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side,
and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I
have appointed thee each day for a year.

4:7 Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem,
and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophesy against it.

4:8 And, behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn
thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy
siege.

4:9 Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and
lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and
make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou
shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat
thereof.

4:10 And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty
shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.

4:11 Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin:
from time to time shalt thou drink.

4:12 And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it
with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.

4:13 And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat
their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.

4:14 Then said I, Ah Lord GOD! behold, my soul hath not been polluted:
for from my youth up even till now have I not eaten of that which
dieth of itself, or is torn in pieces; neither came there abominable
flesh into my mouth.

4:15 Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's
dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.

4:16 Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break the
staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and
with care; and they shall drink water by measure, and with
astonishment: 4:17 That they may want bread and water, and be astonied
one with another, and consume away for their iniquity.

5:1 And thou, son of man, take thee a sharp knife, take thee a
barber's razor, and cause it to pass upon thine head and upon thy
beard: then take thee balances to weigh, and divide the hair.

5:2 Thou shalt burn with fire a third part in the midst of the city,
when the days of the siege are fulfilled: and thou shalt take a third
part, and smite about it with a knife: and a third part thou shalt
scatter in the wind; and I will draw out a sword after them.

5:3 Thou shalt also take thereof a few in number, and bind them in thy
skirts.

5:4 Then take of them again, and cast them into the midst of the fire,
and burn them in the fire; for thereof shall a fire come forth into
all the house of Israel.

5:5 Thus saith the Lord GOD; This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the
midst of the nations and countries that are round about her.

5:6 And she hath changed my judgments into wickedness more than the
nations, and my statutes more than the countries that are round about
her: for they have refused my judgments and my statutes, they have not
walked in them.

5:7 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because ye multiplied more than
the nations that are round about you, and have not walked in my
statutes, neither have kept my judgments, neither have done according
to the judgments of the nations that are round about you; 5:8
Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, am against thee,
and will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the
nations.

5:9 And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and whereunto I
will not do any more the like, because of all thine abominations.

5:10 Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee,
and the sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in
thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter into all the winds.

5:11 Wherefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD; Surely, because thou
hast defiled my sanctuary with all thy detestable things, and with all
thine abominations, therefore will I also diminish thee; neither shall
mine eye spare, neither will I have any pity.

5:12 A third part of thee shall die with the pestilence, and with
famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee: and a third part
shall fall by the sword round about thee; and I will scatter a third
part into all the winds, and I will draw out a sword after them.

5:13 Thus shall mine anger be accomplished, and I will cause my fury
to rest upon them, and I will be comforted: and they shall know that I
the LORD have spoken it in my zeal, when I have accomplished my fury
in them.

5:14 Moreover I will make thee waste, and a reproach among the nations
that are round about thee, in the sight of all that pass by.

5:15 So it shall be a reproach and a taunt, an instruction and an
astonishment unto the nations that are round about thee, when I shall
execute judgments in thee in anger and in fury and in furious rebukes.
I the LORD have spoken it.

5:16 When I shall send upon them the evil arrows of famine, which
shall be for their destruction, and which I will send to destroy you:
and I will increase the famine upon you, and will break your staff of
bread: 5:17 So will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they
shall bereave thee: and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee;
and I will bring the sword upon thee. I the LORD have spoken it.

6:1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 6:2 Son of man, set
thy face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them,
6:3 And say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD;
Thus saith the Lord GOD to the mountains, and to the hills, to the
rivers, and to the valleys; Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon
you, and I will destroy your high places.

6:4 And your altars shall be desolate, and your images shall be
broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols.

6:5 And I will lay the dead carcases of the children of Israel before
their idols; and I will scatter your bones round about your altars.

6:6 In all your dwellingplaces the cities shall be laid waste, and the
high places shall be desolate; that your altars may be laid waste and
made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your images
may be cut down, and your works may be abolished.

6:7 And the slain shall fall in the midst of you, and ye shall know
that I am the LORD.

6:8 Yet will I leave a remnant, that ye may have some that shall
escape the sword among the nations, when ye shall be scattered through
the countries.

6:9 And they that escape of you shall remember me among the nations
whither they shall be carried captives, because I am broken with their
whorish heart, which hath departed from me, and with their eyes, which
go a whoring after their idols: and they shall lothe themselves for
the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.

6:10 And they shall know that I am the LORD, and that I have not said
in vain that I would do this evil unto them.

6:11 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Smite with thine hand, and stamp with
thy foot, and say, Alas for all the evil abominations of the house of
Israel! for they shall fall by the sword, by the famine, and by the
pestilence.

6:12 He that is far off shall die of the pestilence; and he that is
near shall fall by the sword; and he that remaineth and is besieged
shall die by the famine: thus will I accomplish my fury upon them.

6:13 Then shall ye know that I am the LORD, when their slain men shall
be among their idols round about their altars, upon every high hill,
in all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and
under every thick oak, the place where they did offer sweet savour to
all their idols.

6:14 So will I stretch out my hand upon them, and make the land
desolate, yea, more desolate than the wilderness toward Diblath, in
all their habitations: and they shall know that I am the LORD.

7:1 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 7:2 Also, thou
son of man, thus saith the Lord GOD unto the land of Israel; An end,
the end is come upon the four corners of the land.

7:3 Now is the end come upon thee, and I will send mine anger upon
thee, and will judge thee according to thy ways, and will recompense
upon thee all thine abominations.

7:4 And mine eye shall not spare thee, neither will I have pity: but I
will recompense thy ways upon thee, and thine abominations shall be in
the midst of thee: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

7:5 Thus saith the Lord GOD; An evil, an only evil, behold, is come.

7:6 An end is come, the end is come: it watcheth for thee; behold, it
is come.

7:7 The morning is come unto thee, O thou that dwellest in the land:
the time is come, the day of trouble is near, and not the sounding
again of the mountains.

7:8 Now will I shortly pour out my fury upon thee, and accomplish mine
anger upon thee: and I will judge thee according to thy ways, and will
recompense thee for all thine abominations.

7:9 And mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: I will
recompense thee according to thy ways and thine abominations that are
in the midst of thee; and ye shall know that I am the LORD that
smiteth.

7:10 Behold the day, behold, it is come: the morning is gone forth;
the rod hath blossomed, pride hath budded.

7:11 Violence is risen up into a rod of wickedness: none of them shall
remain, nor of their multitude, nor of any of their's: neither shall
there be wailing for them.

7:12 The time is come, the day draweth near: let not the buyer
rejoice, nor the seller mourn: for wrath is upon all the multitude
thereof.

7:13 For the seller shall not return to that which is sold, although
they were yet alive: for the vision is touching the whole multitude
thereof, which shall not return; neither shall any strengthen himself
in the iniquity of his life.

7:14 They have blown the trumpet, even to make all ready; but none
goeth to the battle: for my wrath is upon all the multitude thereof.

7:15 The sword is without, and the pestilence and the famine within:
he that is in the field shall die with the sword; and he that is in
the city, famine and pestilence shall devour him.

7:16 But they that escape of them shall escape, and shall be on the
mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning, every one
for his iniquity.

7:17 All hands shall be feeble, and all knees shall be weak as water.

7:18 They shall also gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall
cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all
their heads.

7:19 They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall
be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver
them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their
souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumblingblock of
their iniquity.

7:20 As for the beauty of his ornament, he set it in majesty: but they
made the images of their abominations and of their detestable things
therein: therefore have I set it far from them.

7:21 And I will give it into the hands of the strangers for a prey,
and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil; and they shall pollute it.

7:22 My face will I turn also from them, and they shall pollute my
secret place: for the robbers shall enter into it, and defile it.

7:23 Make a chain: for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city
is full of violence.

7:24 Wherefore I will bring the worst of the heathen, and they shall
possess their houses: I will also make the pomp of the strong to
cease; and their holy places shall be defiled.

7:25 Destruction cometh; and they shall seek peace, and there shall be
none.

7:26 Mischief shall come upon mischief, and rumour shall be upon
rumour; then shall they seek a vision of the prophet; but the law
shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the ancients.

7:27 The king shall mourn, and the prince shall be clothed with
desolation, and the hands of the people of the land shall be troubled:
I will do unto them after their way, and according to their deserts
will I judge them; and they shall know that I am the LORD.

8:1 And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the
fifth day of the month, as I sat in mine house, and the elders of
Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord GOD fell there upon me.

8:2 Then I beheld, and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire: from
the appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and from his loins
even upward, as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber.

8:3 And he put forth the form of an hand, and took me by a lock of
mine head; and the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the
heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door
of the inner gate that looketh toward the north; where was the seat of
the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy.

8:4 And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, according
to the vision that I saw in the plain.

8:5 Then said he unto me, Son of man, lift up thine eyes now the way
toward the north. So I lifted up mine eyes the way toward the north,
and behold northward at the gate of the altar this image of jealousy
in the entry.

8:6 He said furthermore unto me, Son of man, seest thou what they do?
even the great abominations that the house of Israel committeth here,
that I should go far off from my sanctuary? but turn thee yet again,
and thou shalt see greater abominations.

8:7 And he brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked,
behold a hole in the wall.

8:8 Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I
had digged in the wall, behold a door.

8:9 And he said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations
that they do here.

8:10 So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things,
and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel,
pourtrayed upon the wall round about.

8:11 And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the
house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of
Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of
incense went up.

8:12 Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the
ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the
chambers of his imagery? for they say, the LORD seeth us not; the LORD
hath forsaken the earth.

8:13 He said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see
greater abominations that they do.

8:14 Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD's house
which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for
Tammuz.

8:15 Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn
thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these.

8:16 And he brought me into the inner court of the LORD's house, and,
behold, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and
the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the
temple of the LORD, and their faces toward the east; and they
worshipped the sun toward the east.

8:17 Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? Is it a
light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations
which they commit here? for they have filled the land with violence,
and have returned to provoke me to anger: and, lo, they put the branch
to their nose.

8:18 Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare,
neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a loud
voice, yet will I not hear them.

9:1 He cried also in mine ears with a loud voice, saying, Cause them
that have charge over the city to draw near, even every man with his
destroying weapon in his hand.

9:2 And, behold, six men came from the way of the higher gate, which
lieth toward the north, and every man a slaughter weapon in his hand;
and one man among them was clothed with linen, with a writer's inkhorn
by his side: and they went in, and stood beside the brasen altar.

9:3 And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub,
whereupon he was, to the threshold of the house. And he called to the
man clothed with linen, which had the writer's inkhorn by his side;
9:4 And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city,
through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of
the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done
in the midst thereof.

9:5 And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through
the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: 9:6
Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and
women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at
my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the
house.

9:7 And he said unto them, Defile the house, and fill the courts with
the slain: go ye forth. And they went forth, and slew in the city.

9:8 And it came to pass, while they were slaying them, and I was left,
that I fell upon my face, and cried, and said, Ah Lord GOD! wilt thou
destroy all the residue of Israel in thy pouring out of thy fury upon
Jerusalem?  9:9 Then said he unto me, The iniquity of the house of
Israel and Judah is exceeding great, and the land is full of blood,
and the city full of perverseness: for they say, The LORD hath
forsaken the earth, and the LORD seeth not.

9:10 And as for me also, mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have
pity, but I will recompense their way upon their head.

9:11 And, behold, the man clothed with linen, which had the inkhorn by
his side, reported the matter, saying, I have done as thou hast
commanded me.

10:1 Then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was above the
head of the cherubims there appeared over them as it were a sapphire
stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne.

10:2 And he spake unto the man clothed with linen, and said, Go in
between the wheels, even under the cherub, and fill thine hand with
coals of fire from between the cherubims, and scatter them over the
city. And he went in in my sight.

10:3 Now the cherubims stood on the right side of the house, when the
man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court.

10:4 Then the glory of the LORD went up from the cherub, and stood
over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the
cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the LORD's glory.

10:5 And the sound of the cherubims' wings was heard even to the outer
court, as the voice of the Almighty God when he speaketh.

10:6 And it came to pass, that when he had commanded the man clothed
with linen, saying, Take fire from between the wheels, from between
the cherubims; then he went in, and stood beside the wheels.

10:7 And one cherub stretched forth his hand from between the
cherubims unto the fire that was between the cherubims, and took
thereof, and put it into the hands of him that was clothed with linen:
who took it, and went out.

10:8 And there appeared in the cherubims the form of a man's hand
under their wings.

10:9 And when I looked, behold the four wheels by the cherubims, one
wheel by one cherub, and another wheel by another cherub: and the
appearance of the wheels was as the colour of a beryl stone.

10:10 And as for their appearances, they four had one likeness, as if
a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel.

10:11 When they went, they went upon their four sides; they turned not
as they went, but to the place whither the head looked they followed
it; they turned not as they went.

10:12 And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and
their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the
wheels that they four had.

10:13 As for the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, O
wheel.

10:14 And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of a
cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the
face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.

10:15 And the cherubims were lifted up. This is the living creature
that I saw by the river of Chebar.

10:16 And when the cherubims went, the wheels went by them: and when
the cherubims lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the
same wheels also turned not from beside them.

10:17 When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up,
these lifted up themselves also: for the spirit of the living creature
was in them.

10:18 Then the glory of the LORD departed from off the threshold of
the house, and stood over the cherubims.

10:19 And the cherubims lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the
earth in my sight: when they went out, the wheels also were beside
them, and every one stood at the door of the east gate of the LORD's
house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above.

10:20 This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel
by the river of Chebar; and I knew that they were the cherubims.

10:21 Every one had four faces apiece, and every one four wings; and
the likeness of the hands of a man was under their wings.

10:22 And the likeness of their faces was the same faces which I saw
by the river of Chebar, their appearances and themselves: they went
every one straight forward.

11:1 Moreover the spirit lifted me up, and brought me unto the east
gate of the LORD's house, which looketh eastward: and behold at the
door of the gate five and twenty men; among whom I saw Jaazaniah the
son of Azur, and Pelatiah the son of Benaiah, princes of the people.

11:2 Then said he unto me, Son of man, these are the men that devise
mischief, and give wicked counsel in this city: 11:3 Which say, It is
not near; let us build houses: this city is the caldron, and we be the
flesh.

11:4 Therefore prophesy against them, prophesy, O son of man.

11:5 And the Spirit of the LORD fell upon me, and said unto me, Speak;
Thus saith the LORD; Thus have ye said, O house of Israel: for I know
the things that come into your mind, every one of them.

11:6 Ye have multiplied your slain in this city, and ye have filled
the streets thereof with the slain.

11:7 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Your slain whom ye have laid
in the midst of it, they are the flesh, and this city is the caldron:
but I will bring you forth out of the midst of it.

11:8 Ye have feared the sword; and I will bring a sword upon you,
saith the Lord GOD.

11:9 And I will bring you out of the midst thereof, and deliver you
into the hands of strangers, and will execute judgments among you.

11:10 Ye shall fall by the sword; I will judge you in the border of
Israel; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

11:11 This city shall not be your caldron, neither shall ye be the
flesh in the midst thereof; but I will judge you in the border of
Israel: 11:12 And ye shall know that I am the LORD: for ye have not
walked in my statutes, neither executed my judgments, but have done
after the manners of the heathen that are round about you.

11:13 And it came to pass, when I prophesied, that Pelatiah the son of
Benaiah died. Then fell I down upon my face, and cried with a loud
voice, and said, Ah Lord GOD! wilt thou make a full end of the remnant
of Israel?  11:14 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
11:15 Son of man, thy brethren, even thy brethren, the men of thy
kindred, and all the house of Israel wholly, are they unto whom the
inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, Get you far from the LORD: unto us
is this land given in possession.

11:16 Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Although I have cast
them far off among the heathen, and although I have scattered them
among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in
the countries where they shall come.

11:17 Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will even gather you
from the people, and assemble you out of the countries where ye have
been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.

11:18 And they shall come thither, and they shall take away all the
detestable things thereof and all the abominations thereof from
thence.

11:19 And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit
within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and
will give them an heart of flesh: 11:20 That they may walk in my
statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my
people, and I will be their God.

11:21 But as for them whose heart walketh after the heart of their
detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their way
upon their own heads, saith the Lord GOD.

11:22 Then did the cherubims lift up their wings, and the wheels
beside them; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above.

11:23 And the glory of the LORD went up from the midst of the city,
and stood upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city.

11:24 Afterwards the spirit took me up, and brought me in a vision by
the Spirit of God into Chaldea, to them of the captivity. So the
vision that I had seen went up from me.

11:25 Then I spake unto them of the captivity all the things that the
LORD had shewed me.

12:1 The word of the LORD also came unto me, saying, 12:2 Son of man,
thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to
see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a
rebellious house.

12:3 Therefore, thou son of man, prepare thee stuff for removing, and
remove by day in their sight; and thou shalt remove from thy place to
another place in their sight: it may be they will consider, though
they be a rebellious house.

12:4 Then shalt thou bring forth thy stuff by day in their sight, as
stuff for removing: and thou shalt go forth at even in their sight, as
they that go forth into captivity.

12:5 Dig thou through the wall in their sight, and carry out thereby.

12:6 In their sight shalt thou bear it upon thy shoulders, and carry
it forth in the twilight: thou shalt cover thy face, that thou see not
the ground: for I have set thee for a sign unto the house of Israel.

12:7 And I did so as I was commanded: I brought forth my stuff by day,
as stuff for captivity, and in the even I digged through the wall with
mine hand; I brought it forth in the twilight, and I bare it upon my
shoulder in their sight.

12:8 And in the morning came the word of the LORD unto me, saying,
12:9 Son of man, hath not the house of Israel, the rebellious house,
said unto thee, What doest thou?  12:10 Say thou unto them, Thus saith
the Lord GOD; This burden concerneth the prince in Jerusalem, and all
the house of Israel that are among them.

12:11 Say, I am your sign: like as I have done, so shall it be done
unto them: they shall remove and go into captivity.

12:12 And the prince that is among them shall bear upon his shoulder
in the twilight, and shall go forth: they shall dig through the wall
to carry out thereby: he shall cover his face, that he see not the
ground with his eyes.

12:13 My net also will I spread upon him, and he shall be taken in my
snare: and I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans;
yet shall he not see it, though he shall die there.

12:14 And I will scatter toward every wind all that are about him to
help him, and all his bands; and I will draw out the sword after them.

12:15 And they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall scatter
them among the nations, and disperse them in the countries.

12:16 But I will leave a few men of them from the sword, from the
famine, and from the pestilence; that they may declare all their
abominations among the heathen whither they come; and they shall know
that I am the LORD.

12:17 Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 12:18 Son of
man, eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling
and with carefulness; 12:19 And say unto the people of the land, Thus
saith the Lord GOD of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and of the land of
Israel; They shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their
water with astonishment, that her land may be desolate from all that
is therein, because of the violence of all them that dwell therein.

12:20 And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste, and the
land shall be desolate; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

12:21 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 12:22 Son of man,
what is that proverb that ye have in the land of Israel, saying, The
days are prolonged, and every vision faileth?  12:23 Tell them
therefore, Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will make this proverb to cease,
and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel; but say unto
them, The days are at hand, and the effect of every vision.

12:24 For there shall be no more any vain vision nor flattering
divination within the house of Israel.

12:25 For I am the LORD: I will speak, and the word that I shall speak
shall come to pass; it shall be no more prolonged: for in your days, O
rebellious house, will I say the word, and will perform it, saith the
Lord GOD.

12:26 Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying.

12:27 Son of man, behold, they of the house of Israel say, The vision
that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of the
times that are far off.

12:28 Therefore say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; There shall
none of my words be prolonged any more, but the word which I have
spoken shall be done, saith the Lord GOD.

13:1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 13:2 Son of man,
prophesy against the prophets of Israel that prophesy, and say thou
unto them that prophesy out of their own hearts, Hear ye the word of
the LORD; 13:3 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Woe unto the foolish prophets,
that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!  13:4 O Israel,
thy prophets are like the foxes in the deserts.

13:5 Ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for
the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the LORD.

13:6 They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The LORD
saith: and the LORD hath not sent them: and they have made others to
hope that they would confirm the word.

13:7 Have ye not seen a vain vision, and have ye not spoken a lying
divination, whereas ye say, The LORD saith it; albeit I have not
spoken?  13:8 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because ye have
spoken vanity, and seen lies, therefore, behold, I am against you,
saith the Lord GOD.

13:9 And mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity, and
that divine lies: they shall not be in the assembly of my people,
neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel,
neither shall they enter into the land of Israel; and ye shall know
that I am the Lord GOD.

13:10 Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying,
Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo,
others daubed it with untempered morter: 13:11 Say unto them which
daub it with untempered morter, that it shall fall: there shall be an
overflowing shower; and ye, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a
stormy wind shall rend it.

13:12 Lo, when the wall is fallen, shall it not be said unto you,
Where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it?  13:13 Therefore
thus saith the Lord GOD; I will even rend it with a stormy wind in my
fury; and there shall be an overflowing shower in mine anger, and
great hailstones in my fury to consume it.

13:14 So will I break down the wall that ye have daubed with
untempered morter, and bring it down to the ground, so that the
foundation thereof shall be discovered, and it shall fall, and ye
shall be consumed in the midst thereof: and ye shall know that I am
the LORD.

13:15 Thus will I accomplish my wrath upon the wall, and upon them
that have daubed it with untempered morter, and will say unto you, The
wall is no more, neither they that daubed it; 13:16 To wit, the
prophets of Israel which prophesy concerning Jerusalem, and which see
visions of peace for her, and there is no peace, saith the Lord GOD.

13:17 Likewise, thou son of man, set thy face against the daughters of
thy people, which prophesy out of their own heart; and prophesy thou
against them, 13:18 And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Woe to the women
that sew pillows to all armholes, and make kerchiefs upon the head of
every stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and
will ye save the souls alive that come unto you?  13:19 And will ye
pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of
bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls
alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear your
lies?  13:20 Wherefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against
your pillows, wherewith ye there hunt the souls to make them fly, and
I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the
souls that ye hunt to make them fly.

13:21 Your kerchiefs also will I tear, and deliver my people out of
your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand to be hunted; and ye
shall know that I am the LORD.

13:22 Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad,
whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked,
that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life:
13:23 Therefore ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations:
for I will deliver my people out of your hand: and ye shall know that
I am the LORD.

14:1 Then came certain of the elders of Israel unto me, and sat before
me.

14:2 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 14:3 Son of man,
these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the
stumblingblock of their iniquity before their face: should I be
enquired of at all by them?  14:4 Therefore speak unto them, and say
unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Every man of the house of Israel
that setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumblingblock
of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet; I the LORD
will answer him that cometh according to the multitude of his idols;
14:5 That I may take the house of Israel in their own heart, because
they are all estranged from me through their idols.

14:6 Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD;
Repent, and turn yourselves from your idols; and turn away your faces
from all your abominations.

14:7 For every one of the house of Israel, or of the stranger that
sojourneth in Israel, which separateth himself from me, and setteth up
his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumblingblock of his iniquity
before his face, and cometh to a prophet to enquire of him concerning
me; I the LORD will answer him by myself: 14:8 And I will set my face
against that man, and will make him a sign and a proverb, and I will
cut him off from the midst of my people; and ye shall know that I am
the LORD.

14:9 And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the
LORD have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon
him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel.

14:10 And they shall bear the punishment of their iniquity: the
punishment of the prophet shall be even as the punishment of him that
seeketh unto him; 14:11 That the house of Israel may go no more astray
from me, neither be polluted any more with all their transgressions;
but that they may be my people, and I may be their God, saith the Lord
GOD.

14:12 The word of the LORD came again to me, saying, 14:13 Son of man,
when the land sinneth against me by trespassing grievously, then will
I stretch out mine hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread
thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and beast
from it: 14:14 Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in
it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness,
saith the Lord GOD.

14:15 If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land, and they
spoil it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because
of the beasts: 14:16 Though these three men were in it, as I live,
saith the Lord GOD, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters;
they only shall be delivered, but the land shall be desolate.

14:17 Or if I bring a sword upon that land, and say, Sword, go through
the land; so that I cut off man and beast from it: 14:18 Though these
three men were in it, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, they shall
deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they only shall be delivered
themselves.

14:19 Or if I send a pestilence into that land, and pour out my fury
upon it in blood, to cut off from it man and beast: 14:20 Though Noah,
Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, they shall
deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own
souls by their righteousness.

14:21 For thus saith the Lord GOD; How much more when I send my four
sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the
noisome beast, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast?
14:22 Yet, behold, therein shall be left a remnant that shall be
brought forth, both sons and daughters: behold, they shall come forth
unto you, and ye shall see their way and their doings: and ye shall be
comforted concerning the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, even
concerning all that I have brought upon it.

14:23 And they shall comfort you, when ye see their ways and their
doings: and ye shall know that I have not done without cause all that
I have done in it, saith the Lord GOD.

15:1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 15:2 Son of man,
what is the vine tree more than any tree, or than a branch which is
among the trees of the forest?  15:3 Shall wood be taken thereof to do
any work? or will men take a pin of it to hang any vessel thereon?
15:4 Behold, it is cast into the fire for fuel; the fire devoureth
both the ends of it, and the midst of it is burned. Is it meet for any
work?  15:5 Behold, when it was whole, it was meet for no work: how
much less shall it be meet yet for any work, when the fire hath
devoured it, and it is burned?  15:6 Therefore thus saith the Lord
GOD; As the vine tree among the trees of the forest, which I have
given to the fire for fuel, so will I give the inhabitants of
Jerusalem.

15:7 And I will set my face against them; they shall go out from one
fire, and another fire shall devour them; and ye shall know that I am
the LORD, when I set my face against them.

15:8 And I will make the land desolate, because they have committed a
trespass, saith the Lord GOD.

16:1 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 16:2 Son of man,
cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, 16:3 And say, Thus saith the
Lord GOD unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of
Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite.

16:4 And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was
not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast
not salted at all, nor swaddled at all.

16:5 None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have
compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the
lothing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born.

16:6 And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own
blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said
unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.

16:7 I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou
hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent
ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas
thou wast naked and bare.

16:8 Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time
was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy
nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with
thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine.

16:9 Then washed I thee with water; yea, I throughly washed away thy
blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil.

16:10 I clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee with
badgers' skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered
thee with silk.

16:11 I decked thee also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon thy
hands, and a chain on thy neck.

16:12 And I put a jewel on thy forehead, and earrings in thine ears,
and a beautiful crown upon thine head.

16:13 Thus wast thou decked with gold and silver; and thy raiment was
of fine linen, and silk, and broidered work; thou didst eat fine
flour, and honey, and oil: and thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou
didst prosper into a kingdom.

16:14 And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for
it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith
the Lord GOD.

16:15 But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the
harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on
every one that passed by; his it was.

16:16 And of thy garments thou didst take, and deckedst thy high
places with divers colours, and playedst the harlot thereupon: the
like things shall not come, neither shall it be so.

16:17 Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my
silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men,
and didst commit whoredom with them, 16:18 And tookest thy broidered
garments, and coveredst them: and thou hast set mine oil and mine
incense before them.

16:19 My meat also which I gave thee, fine flour, and oil, and honey,
wherewith I fed thee, thou hast even set it before them for a sweet
savour: and thus it was, saith the Lord GOD.

16:20 Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou
hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be
devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter, 16:21 That thou
hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass
through the fire for them?  16:22 And in all thine abominations and
thy whoredoms thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, when
thou wast naked and bare, and wast polluted in thy blood.

16:23 And it came to pass after all thy wickedness, (woe, woe unto
thee!  saith the LORD GOD;) 16:24 That thou hast also built unto thee
an eminent place, and hast made thee an high place in every street.

16:25 Thou hast built thy high place at every head of the way, and
hast made thy beauty to be abhorred, and hast opened thy feet to every
one that passed by, and multiplied thy whoredoms.

16:26 Thou hast also committed fornication with the Egyptians thy
neighbours, great of flesh; and hast increased thy whoredoms, to
provoke me to anger.

16:27 Behold, therefore I have stretched out my hand over thee, and
have diminished thine ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will
of them that hate thee, the daughters of the Philistines, which are
ashamed of thy lewd way.

16:28 Thou hast played the whore also with the Assyrians, because thou
wast unsatiable; yea, thou hast played the harlot with them, and yet
couldest not be satisfied.

16:29 Thou hast moreover multiplied thy fornication in the land of
Canaan unto Chaldea; and yet thou wast not satisfied therewith.

16:30 How weak is thine heart, saith the LORD GOD, seeing thou doest
all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman; 16:31 In
that thou buildest thine eminent place in the head of every way, and
makest thine high place in every street; and hast not been as an
harlot, in that thou scornest hire; 16:32 But as a wife that
committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband!
16:33 They give gifts to all whores: but thou givest thy gifts to all
thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every
side for thy whoredom.

16:34 And the contrary is in thee from other women in thy whoredoms,
whereas none followeth thee to commit whoredoms: and in that thou
givest a reward, and no reward is given unto thee, therefore thou art
contrary.

16:35 Wherefore, O harlot, hear the word of the LORD: 16:36 Thus saith
the Lord GOD; Because thy filthiness was poured out, and thy nakedness
discovered through thy whoredoms with thy lovers, and with all the
idols of thy abominations, and by the blood of thy children, which
thou didst give unto them; 16:37 Behold, therefore I will gather all
thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all them that thou
hast loved, with all them that thou hast hated; I will even gather
them round about against thee, and will discover thy nakedness unto
them, that they may see all thy nakedness.

16:38 And I will judge thee, as women that break wedlock and shed
blood are judged; and I will give thee blood in fury and jealousy.

16:39 And I will also give thee into their hand, and they shall throw
down thine eminent place, and shall break down thy high places: they
shall strip thee also of thy clothes, and shall take thy fair jewels,
and leave thee naked and bare.

16:40 They shall also bring up a company against thee, and they shall
stone thee with stones, and thrust thee through with their swords.

16:41 And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute
judgments upon thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee
to cease from playing the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any
more.

16:42 So will I make my fury toward thee to rest, and my jealousy
shall depart from thee, and I will be quiet, and will be no more
angry.

16:43 Because thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, but hast
fretted me in all these things; behold, therefore I also will
recompense thy way upon thine head, saith the Lord GOD: and thou shalt
not commit this lewdness above all thine abominations.

16:44 Behold, every one that useth proverbs shall use this proverb
against thee, saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter.

16:45 Thou art thy mother's daughter, that lotheth her husband and her
children; and thou art the sister of thy sisters, which lothed their
husbands and their children: your mother was an Hittite, and your
father an Amorite.

16:46 And thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that
dwell at thy left hand: and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy
right hand, is Sodom and her daughters.

16:47 Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their
abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, thou wast
corrupted more than they in all thy ways.

16:48 As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done,
she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.

16:49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride,
fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her
daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

16:50 And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me:
therefore I took them away as I saw good.

16:51 Neither hath Samaria committed half of thy sins; but thou hast
multiplied thine abominations more than they, and hast justified thy
sisters in all thine abominations which thou hast done.

16:52 Thou also, which hast judged thy sisters, bear thine own shame
for thy sins that thou hast committed more abominable than they: they
are more righteous than thou: yea, be thou confounded also, and bear
thy shame, in that thou hast justified thy sisters.

16:53 When I shall bring again their captivity, the captivity of Sodom
and her daughters, and the captivity of Samaria and her daughters,
then will I bring again the captivity of thy captives in the midst of
them: 16:54 That thou mayest bear thine own shame, and mayest be
confounded in all that thou hast done, in that thou art a comfort unto
them.

16:55 When thy sisters, Sodom and her daughters, shall return to their
former estate, and Samaria and her daughters shall return to their
former estate, then thou and thy daughters shall return to your former
estate.

16:56 For thy sister Sodom was not mentioned by thy mouth in the day
of thy pride, 16:57 Before thy wickedness was discovered, as at the
time of thy reproach of the daughters of Syria, and all that are round
about her, the daughters of the Philistines, which despise thee round
about.

16:58 Thou hast borne thy lewdness and thine abominations, saith the
LORD.

16:59 For thus saith the Lord GOD; I will even deal with thee as thou
hast done, which hast despised the oath in breaking the covenant.

16:60 Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the days
of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant.

16:61 Then thou shalt remember thy ways, and be ashamed, when thou
shalt receive thy sisters, thine elder and thy younger: and I will
give them unto thee for daughters, but not by thy covenant.

16:62 And I will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt know
that I am the LORD: 16:63 That thou mayest remember, and be
confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame,
when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the
Lord GOD.

17:1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 17:2 Son of man,
put forth a riddle, and speak a parable unto the house of Israel; 17:3
And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; A great eagle with great wings,
longwinged, full of feathers, which had divers colours, came unto
Lebanon, and took the highest branch of the cedar: 17:4 He cropped off
the top of his young twigs, and carried it into a land of traffick; he
set it in a city of merchants.

17:5 He took also of the seed of the land, and planted it in a
fruitful field; he placed it by great waters, and set it as a willow
tree.

17:6 And it grew, and became a spreading vine of low stature, whose
branches turned toward him, and the roots thereof were under him: so
it became a vine, and brought forth branches, and shot forth sprigs.

17:7 There was also another great eagle with great wings and many
feathers: and, behold, this vine did bend her roots toward him, and
shot forth her branches toward him, that he might water it by the
furrows of her plantation.

17:8 It was planted in a good soil by great waters, that it might
bring forth branches, and that it might bear fruit, that it might be a
goodly vine.

17:9 Say thou, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Shall it prosper? shall he not
pull up the roots thereof, and cut off the fruit thereof, that it
wither? it shall wither in all the leaves of her spring, even without
great power or many people to pluck it up by the roots thereof.

17:10 Yea, behold, being planted, shall it prosper? shall it not
utterly wither, when the east wind toucheth it? it shall wither in the
furrows where it grew.

17:11 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 17:12 Say
now to the rebellious house, Know ye not what these things mean?  tell
them, Behold, the king of Babylon is come to Jerusalem, and hath taken
the king thereof, and the princes thereof, and led them with him to
Babylon; 17:13 And hath taken of the king's seed, and made a covenant
with him, and hath taken an oath of him: he hath also taken the mighty
of the land: 17:14 That the kingdom might be base, that it might not
lift itself up, but that by keeping of his covenant it might stand.

17:15 But he rebelled against him in sending his ambassadors into
Egypt, that they might give him horses and much people. Shall he
prosper? shall he escape that doeth such things? or shall he break the
covenant, and be delivered?  17:16 As I live, saith the Lord GOD,
surely in the place where the king dwelleth that made him king, whose
oath he despised, and whose covenant he brake, even with him in the
midst of Babylon he shall die.

17:17 Neither shall Pharaoh with his mighty army and great company
make for him in the war, by casting up mounts, and building forts, to
cut off many persons: 17:18 Seeing he despised the oath by breaking
the covenant, when, lo, he had given his hand, and hath done all these
things, he shall not escape.

17:19 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; As I live, surely mine oath
that he hath despised, and my covenant that he hath broken, even it
will I recompense upon his own head.

17:20 And I will spread my net upon him, and he shall be taken in my
snare, and I will bring him to Babylon, and will plead with him there
for his trespass that he hath trespassed against me.

17:21 And all his fugitives with all his bands shall fall by the
sword, and they that remain shall be scattered toward all winds: and
ye shall know that I the LORD have spoken it.

17:22 Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will also take of the highest branch
of the high cedar, and will set it; I will crop off from the top of
his young twigs a tender one, and will plant it upon an high mountain
and eminent: 17:23 In the mountain of the height of Israel will I
plant it: and it shall bring forth boughs, and bear fruit, and be a
goodly cedar: and under it shall dwell all fowl of every wing; in the
shadow of the branches thereof shall they dwell.

17:24 And all the trees of the field shall know that I the LORD have
brought down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up
the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish: I the LORD
have spoken and have done it.

18:1 The word of the LORD came unto me again, saying, 18:2 What mean
ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying,
The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set
on edge?  18:3 As I live, saith the Lord GOD, ye shall not have
occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.

18:4 Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also
the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

18:5 But if a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right, 18:6
And hath not eaten upon the mountains, neither hath lifted up his eyes
to the idols of the house of Israel, neither hath defiled his
neighbour's wife, neither hath come near to a menstruous woman, 18:7
And hath not oppressed any, but hath restored to the debtor his
pledge, hath spoiled none by violence, hath given his bread to the
hungry, and hath covered the naked with a garment; 18:8 He that hath
not given forth upon usury, neither hath taken any increase, that hath
withdrawn his hand from iniquity, hath executed true judgment between
man and man, 18:9 Hath walked in my statutes, and hath kept my
judgments, to deal truly; he is just, he shall surely live, saith the
Lord GOD.

18:10 If he beget a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood, and that
doeth the like to any one of these things, 18:11 And that doeth not
any of those duties, but even hath eaten upon the mountains, and
defiled his neighbour's wife, 18:12 Hath oppressed the poor and needy,
hath spoiled by violence, hath not restored the pledge, and hath
lifted up his eyes to the idols, hath committed abomination, 18:13
Hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase: shall he then
live? he shall not live: he hath done all these abominations; he shall
surely die; his blood shall be upon him.

18:14 Now, lo, if he beget a son, that seeth all his father's sins
which he hath done, and considereth, and doeth not such like, 18:15
That hath not eaten upon the mountains, neither hath lifted up his
eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, hath not defiled his
neighbour's wife, 18:16 Neither hath oppressed any, hath not
withholden the pledge, neither hath spoiled by violence, but hath
given his bread to the hungry, and hath covered the naked with a
garment, 18:17 That hath taken off his hand from the poor, that hath
not received usury nor increase, hath executed my judgments, hath
walked in my statutes; he shall not die for the iniquity of his
father, he shall surely live.

18:18 As for his father, because he cruelly oppressed, spoiled his
brother by violence, and did that which is not good among his people,
lo, even he shall die in his iniquity.

18:19 Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the
father?  When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and
hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live.

18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the
iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of
the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the
wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

18:21 But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath
committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and
right, he shall surely live, he shall not die.

18:22 All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be
mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall
live.

18:23 Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the
Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?
18:24 But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and
committeth iniquity, and doeth according to all the abominations that
the wicked man doeth, shall he live? All his righteousness that he
hath done shall not be mentioned: in his trespass that he hath
trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die.

18:25 Yet ye say, The way of the LORD is not equal. Hear now, O house
of Israel; Is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal?  18:26 When
a righteous man turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth
iniquity, and dieth in them; for his iniquity that he hath done shall
he die.

18:27 Again, when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that
he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall
save his soul alive.

18:28 Because he considereth, and turneth away from all his
transgressions that he hath committed, he shall surely live, he shall
not die.

18:29 Yet saith the house of Israel, The way of the LORD is not equal.
O house of Israel, are not my ways equal? are not your ways unequal?
18:30 Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one
according to his ways, saith the Lord GOD. Repent, and turn yourselves
from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin.

18:31 Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have
transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will
ye die, O house of Israel?  18:32 For I have no pleasure in the death
of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and
live ye.

19:1 Moreover take thou up a lamentation for the princes of Israel,
19:2 And say, What is thy mother? A lioness: she lay down among lions,
she nourished her whelps among young lions.

19:3 And she brought up one of her whelps: it became a young lion, and
it learned to catch the prey; it devoured men.

19:4 The nations also heard of him; he was taken in their pit, and
they brought him with chains unto the land of Egypt.

19:5 Now when she saw that she had waited, and her hope was lost, then
she took another of her whelps, and made him a young lion.

19:6 And he went up and down among the lions, he became a young lion,
and learned to catch the prey, and devoured men.

19:7 And he knew their desolate palaces, and he laid waste their
cities; and the land was desolate, and the fulness thereof, by the
noise of his roaring.

19:8 Then the nations set against him on every side from the
provinces, and spread their net over him: he was taken in their pit.

19:9 And they put him in ward in chains, and brought him to the king
of Babylon: they brought him into holds, that his voice should no more
be heard upon the mountains of Israel.

19:10 Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters:
she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.

19:11 And she had strong rods for the sceptres of them that bare rule,
and her stature was exalted among the thick branches, and she appeared
in her height with the multitude of her branches.

19:12 But she was plucked up in fury, she was cast down to the ground,
and the east wind dried up her fruit: her strong rods were broken and
withered; the fire consumed them.

19:13 And now she is planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty
ground.

19:14 And fire is gone out of a rod of her branches, which hath
devoured her fruit, so that she hath no strong rod to be a sceptre to
rule. This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.

20:1 And it came to pass in the seventh year, in the fifth month, the
tenth day of the month, that certain of the elders of Israel came to
enquire of the LORD, and sat before me.

20:2 Then came the word of the LORD unto me, saying, 20:3 Son of man,
speak unto the elders of Israel, and say unto them, Thus saith the
Lord GOD; Are ye come to enquire of me? As I live, saith the Lord GOD,
I will not be enquired of by you.

20:4 Wilt thou judge them, son of man, wilt thou judge them? cause
them to know the abominations of their fathers: 20:5 And say unto
them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day when I chose Israel, and
lifted up mine hand unto the seed of the house of Jacob, and made
myself known unto them in the land of Egypt, when I lifted up mine
hand unto them, saying, I am the LORD your God; 20:6 In the day that I
lifted up mine hand unto them, to bring them forth of the land of
Egypt into a land that I had espied for them, flowing with milk and
honey, which is the glory of all lands: 20:7 Then said I unto them,
Cast ye away every man the abominations of his eyes, and defile not
yourselves with the idols of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

20:8 But they rebelled against me, and would not hearken unto me: they
did not every man cast away the abominations of their eyes, neither
did they forsake the idols of Egypt: then I said, I will pour out my
fury upon them, to accomplish my anger against them in the midst of
the land of Egypt.

20:9 But I wrought for my name's sake, that it should not be polluted
before the heathen, among whom they were, in whose sight I made myself
known unto them, in bringing them forth out of the land of Egypt.

20:10 Wherefore I caused them to go forth out of the land of Egypt,
and brought them into the wilderness.

20:11 And I gave them my statutes, and shewed them my judgments, which
if a man do, he shall even live in them.

20:12 Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me
and them, that they might know that I am the LORD that sanctify them.

20:13 But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness:
they walked not in my statutes, and they despised my judgments, which
if a man do, he shall even live in them; and my sabbaths they greatly
polluted: then I said, I would pour out my fury upon them in the
wilderness, to consume them.

20:14 But I wrought for my name's sake, that it should not be polluted
before the heathen, in whose sight I brought them out.

20:15 Yet also I lifted up my hand unto them in the wilderness, that I
would not bring them into the land which I had given them, flowing
with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands; 20:16 Because
they despised my judgments, and walked not in my statutes, but
polluted my sabbaths: for their heart went after their idols.

20:17 Nevertheless mine eye spared them from destroying them, neither
did I make an end of them in the wilderness.

20:18 But I said unto their children in the wilderness, Walk ye not in
the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their judgments, nor
defile yourselves with their idols: 20:19 I am the LORD your God; walk
in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; 20:20 And hallow
my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may
know that I am the LORD your God.

20:21 Notwithstanding the children rebelled against me: they walked
not in my statutes, neither kept my judgments to do them, which if a
man do, he shall even live in them; they polluted my sabbaths: then I
said, I would pour out my fury upon them, to accomplish my anger
against them in the wilderness.

20:22 Nevertheless I withdrew mine hand, and wrought for my name's
sake, that it should not be polluted in the sight of the heathen, in
whose sight I brought them forth.

20:23 I lifted up mine hand unto them also in the wilderness, that I
would scatter them among the heathen, and disperse them through the
countries; 20:24 Because they had not executed my judgments, but had
despised my statutes, and had polluted my sabbaths, and their eyes
were after their fathers' idols.

20:25 Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and
judgments whereby they should not live; 20:26 And I polluted them in
their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that
openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that
they might know that I am the LORD.

20:27 Therefore, son of man, speak unto the house of Israel, and say
unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Yet in this your fathers have
blasphemed me, in that they have committed a trespass against me.

20:28 For when I had brought them into the land, for the which I
lifted up mine hand to give it to them, then they saw every high hill,
and all the thick trees, and they offered there their sacrifices, and
there they presented the provocation of their offering: there also
they made their sweet savour, and poured out there their drink
offerings.

20:29 Then I said unto them, What is the high place whereunto ye go?
And the name whereof is called Bamah unto this day.

20:30 Wherefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD;
Are ye polluted after the manner of your fathers? and commit ye
whoredom after their abominations?  20:31 For when ye offer your
gifts, when ye make your sons to pass through the fire, ye pollute
yourselves with all your idols, even unto this day: and shall I be
enquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, saith the Lord GOD,
I will not be enquired of by you.

20:32 And that which cometh into your mind shall not be at all, that
ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries,
to serve wood and stone.

20:33 As I live, saith the Lord GOD, surely with a mighty hand, and
with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out, will I rule over
you: 20:34 And I will bring you out from the people, and will gather
you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered, with a mighty hand,
and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out.

20:35 And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, and
there will I plead with you face to face.

20:36 Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the
land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord GOD.

20:37 And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you
into the bond of the covenant: 20:38 And I will purge out from among
you the rebels, and them that transgress against me: I will bring them
forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter
into the land of Israel: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

20:39 As for you, O house of Israel, thus saith the Lord GOD; Go ye,
serve ye every one his idols, and hereafter also, if ye will not
hearken unto me: but pollute ye my holy name no more with your gifts,
and with your idols.

20:40 For in mine holy mountain, in the mountain of the height of
Israel, saith the Lord GOD, there shall all the house of Israel, all
of them in the land, serve me: there will I accept them, and there
will I require your offerings, and the firstfruits of your oblations,
with all your holy things.

20:41 I will accept you with your sweet savour, when I bring you out
from the people, and gather you out of the countries wherein ye have
been scattered; and I will be sanctified in you before the heathen.

20:42 And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall bring you
into the land of Israel, into the country for the which I lifted up
mine hand to give it to your fathers.

20:43 And there shall ye remember your ways, and all your doings,
wherein ye have been defiled; and ye shall lothe yourselves in your
own sight for all your evils that ye have committed.

20:44 And ye shall know that I am the LORD when I have wrought with
you for my name's sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor
according to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, saith the Lord
GOD.

20:45 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 20:46 Son of
man, set thy face toward the south, and drop thy word toward the
south, and prophesy against the forest of the south field; 20:47 And
say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith
the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall
devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame
shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall
be burned therein.

20:48 And all flesh shall see that I the LORD have kindled it: it
shall not be quenched.

20:49 Then said I, Ah Lord GOD! they say of me, Doth he not speak
parables?  21:1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 21:2
Son of man, set thy face toward Jerusalem, and drop thy word toward
the holy places, and prophesy against the land of Israel, 21:3 And say
to the land of Israel, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I am against thee,
and will draw forth my sword out of his sheath, and will cut off from
thee the righteous and the wicked.

21:4 Seeing then that I will cut off from thee the righteous and the
wicked, therefore shall my sword go forth out of his sheath against
all flesh from the south to the north: 21:5 That all flesh may know
that I the LORD have drawn forth my sword out of his sheath: it shall
not return any more.

21:6 Sigh therefore, thou son of man, with the breaking of thy loins;
and with bitterness sigh before their eyes.

21:7 And it shall be, when they say unto thee, Wherefore sighest thou?
that thou shalt answer, For the tidings; because it cometh: and every
heart shall melt, and all hands shall be feeble, and every spirit
shall faint, and all knees shall be weak as water: behold, it cometh,
and shall be brought to pass, saith the Lord GOD.

21:8 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 21:9 Son of man,
prophesy, and say, Thus saith the LORD; Say, A sword, a sword is
sharpened, and also furbished: 21:10 It is sharpened to make a sore
slaughter; it is furbished that it may glitter: should we then make
mirth? it contemneth the rod of my son, as every tree.

21:11 And he hath given it to be furbished, that it may be handled:
this sword is sharpened, and it is furbished, to give it into the hand
of the slayer.

21:12 Cry and howl, son of man: for it shall be upon my people, it
shall be upon all the princes of Israel: terrors by reason of the
sword shall be upon my people: smite therefore upon thy thigh.

21:13 Because it is a trial, and what if the sword contemn even the
rod?  it shall be no more, saith the Lord GOD.

21:14 Thou therefore, son of man, prophesy, and smite thine hands
together. and let the sword be doubled the third time, the sword of
the slain: it is the sword of the great men that are slain, which
entereth into their privy chambers.

21:15 I have set the point of the sword against all their gates, that
their heart may faint, and their ruins be multiplied: ah! it is made
bright, it is wrapped up for the slaughter.

21:16 Go thee one way or other, either on the right hand, or on the
left, whithersoever thy face is set.

21:17 I will also smite mine hands together, and I will cause my fury
to rest: I the LORD have said it.

21:18 The word of the LORD came unto me again, saying, 21:19 Also,
thou son of man, appoint thee two ways, that the sword of the king of
Babylon may come: both twain shall come forth out of one land: and
choose thou a place, choose it at the head of the way to the city.

21:20 Appoint a way, that the sword may come to Rabbath of the
Ammonites, and to Judah in Jerusalem the defenced.

21:21 For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the
head of the two ways, to use divination: he made his arrows bright, he
consulted with images, he looked in the liver.

21:22 At his right hand was the divination for Jerusalem, to appoint
captains, to open the mouth in the slaughter, to lift up the voice
with shouting, to appoint battering rams against the gates, to cast a
mount, and to build a fort.

21:23 And it shall be unto them as a false divination in their sight,
to them that have sworn oaths: but he will call to remembrance the
iniquity, that they may be taken.

21:24 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because ye have made your
iniquity to be remembered, in that your transgressions are discovered,
so that in all your doings your sins do appear; because, I say, that
ye are come to remembrance, ye shall be taken with the hand.

21:25 And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come,
when iniquity shall have an end, 21:26 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Remove
the diadem, and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt
him that is low, and abase him that is high.

21:27 I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no
more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him.

21:28 And thou, son of man, prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD
concerning the Ammonites, and concerning their reproach; even say
thou, The sword, the sword is drawn: for the slaughter it is
furbished, to consume because of the glittering: 21:29 Whiles they see
vanity unto thee, whiles they divine a lie unto thee, to bring thee
upon the necks of them that are slain, of the wicked, whose day is
come, when their iniquity shall have an end.

21:30 Shall I cause it to return into his sheath? I will judge thee in
the place where thou wast created, in the land of thy nativity.

21:31 And I will pour out mine indignation upon thee, I will blow
against thee in the fire of my wrath, and deliver thee into the hand
of brutish men, and skilful to destroy.

21:32 Thou shalt be for fuel to the fire; thy blood shall be in the
midst of the land; thou shalt be no more remembered: for I the LORD
have spoken it.

22:1 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 22:2 Now,
thou son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city?
yea, thou shalt shew her all her abominations.

22:3 Then say thou, Thus saith the Lord GOD, The city sheddeth blood
in the midst of it, that her time may come, and maketh idols against
herself to defile herself.

22:4 Thou art become guilty in thy blood that thou hast shed; and hast
defiled thyself in thine idols which thou hast made; and thou hast
caused thy days to draw near, and art come even unto thy years:
therefore have I made thee a reproach unto the heathen, and a mocking
to all countries.

22:5 Those that be near, and those that be far from thee, shall mock
thee, which art infamous and much vexed.

22:6 Behold, the princes of Israel, every one were in thee to their
power to shed blood.

22:7 In thee have they set light by father and mother: in the midst of
thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger: in thee have
they vexed the fatherless and the widow.

22:8 Thou hast despised mine holy things, and hast profaned my
sabbaths.

22:9 In thee are men that carry tales to shed blood: and in thee they
eat upon the mountains: in the midst of thee they commit lewdness.

22:10 In thee have they discovered their fathers' nakedness: in thee
have they humbled her that was set apart for pollution.

22:11 And one hath committed abomination with his neighbour's wife;
and another hath lewdly defiled his daughter in law; and another in
thee hath humbled his sister, his father's daughter.

22:12 In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken
usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbours by
extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord GOD.

22:13 Behold, therefore I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain
which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of
thee.

22:14 Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the
days that I shall deal with thee? I the LORD have spoken it, and will
do it.

22:15 And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in
the countries, and will consume thy filthiness out of thee.

22:16 And thou shalt take thine inheritance in thyself in the sight of
the heathen, and thou shalt know that I am the LORD.

22:17 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 22:18 Son of man,
the house of Israel is to me become dross: all they are brass, and
tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the furnace; they are even
the dross of silver.

22:19 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because ye are all become
dross, behold, therefore I will gather you into the midst of
Jerusalem.

22:20 As they gather silver, and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin,
into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it, to melt it;
so will I gather you in mine anger and in my fury, and I will leave
you there, and melt you.

22:21 Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my
wrath, and ye shall be melted in the midst therof.

22:22 As silver is melted in the midst of the furnace, so shall ye be
melted in the midst thereof; and ye shall know that I the LORD have
poured out my fury upon you.

22:23 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 22:24 Son of man,
say unto her, Thou art the land that is not cleansed, nor rained upon
in the day of indignation.

22:25 There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like
a roaring lion ravening the prey; they have devoured souls; they have
taken the treasure and precious things; they have made her many widows
in the midst thereof.

22:26 Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy
things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane,
neither have they shewed difference between the unclean and the clean,
and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among
them.

22:27 Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the
prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain.

22:28 And her prophets have daubed them with untempered morter, seeing
vanity, and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord GOD,
when the LORD hath not spoken.

22:29 The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised
robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy: yea, they have oppressed
the stranger wrongfully.

22:30 And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the
hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not
destroy it: but I found none.

22:31 Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have
consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I
recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord GOD.

23:1 The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, 23:2 Son of man,
there were two women, the daughters of one mother: 23:3 And they
committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth:
there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of
their virginity.

23:4 And the names of them were Aholah the elder, and Aholibah her
sister: and they were mine, and they bare sons and daughters. Thus
were their names; Samaria is Aholah, and Jerusalem Aholibah.

23:5 And Aholah played the harlot when she was mine; and she doted on
her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbours, 23:6 Which were clothed
with blue, captains and rulers, all of them desirable young men,
horsemen riding upon horses.

23:7 Thus she committed her whoredoms with them, with all them that
were the chosen men of Assyria, and with all on whom she doted: with
all their idols she defiled herself.

23:8 Neither left she her whoredoms brought from Egypt: for in her
youth they lay with her, and they bruised the breasts of her
virginity, and poured their whoredom upon her.

23:9 Wherefore I have delivered her into the hand of her lovers, into
the hand of the Assyrians, upon whom she doted.

23:10 These discovered her nakedness: they took her sons and her
daughters, and slew her with the sword: and she became famous among
women; for they had executed judgment upon her.

23:11 And when her sister Aholibah saw this, she was more corrupt in
her inordinate love than she, and in her whoredoms more than her
sister in her whoredoms.

23:12 She doted upon the Assyrians her neighbours, captains and rulers
clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding upon horses, all of them
desirable young men.

23:13 Then I saw that she was defiled, that they took both one way,
23:14 And that she increased her whoredoms: for when she saw men
pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with
vermilion, 23:15 Girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in
dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after
the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity:
23:16 And as soon as she saw them with her eyes, she doted upon them,
and sent messengers unto them into Chaldea.

23:17 And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they
defiled her with their whoredom, and she was polluted with them, and
her mind was alienated from them.

23:18 So she discovered her whoredoms, and discovered her nakedness:
then my mind was alienated from her, like as my mind was alienated
from her sister.

23:19 Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the
days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of
Egypt.

23:20 For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh
of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.

23:21 Thus thou calledst to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth, in
bruising thy teats by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth.

23:22 Therefore, O Aholibah, thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will
raise up thy lovers against thee, from whom thy mind is alienated, and
I will bring them against thee on every side; 23:23 The Babylonians,
and all the Chaldeans, Pekod, and Shoa, and Koa, and all the Assyrians
with them: all of them desirable young men, captains and rulers, great
lords and renowned, all of them riding upon horses.

23:24 And they shall come against thee with chariots, wagons, and
wheels, and with an assembly of people, which shall set against thee
buckler and shield and helmet round about: and I will set judgment
before them, and they shall judge thee according to their judgments.

23:25 And I will set my jealousy against thee, and they shall deal
furiously with thee: they shall take away thy nose and thine ears; and
thy remnant shall fall by the sword: they shall take thy sons and thy
daughters; and thy residue shall be devoured by the fire.

23:26 They shall also strip thee out of thy clothes, and take away thy
fair jewels.

23:27 Thus will I make thy lewdness to cease from thee, and thy
whoredom brought from the land of Egypt: so that thou shalt not lift
up thine eyes unto them, nor remember Egypt any more.

23:28 For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will deliver thee into
the hand of them whom thou hatest, into the hand of them from whom thy
mind is alienated: 23:29 And they shall deal with thee hatefully, and
shall take away all thy labour, and shall leave thee naked and bare:
and the nakedness of thy whoredoms shall be discovered, both thy
lewdness and thy whoredoms.

23:30 I will do these things unto thee, because thou hast gone a
whoring after the heathen, and because thou art polluted with their
idols.

23:31 Thou hast walked in the way of thy sister; therefore will I give
her cup into thine hand.

23:32 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou shalt drink of thy sister's cup
deep and large: thou shalt be laughed to scorn and had in derision; it
containeth much.

23:33 Thou shalt be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, with the cup
of astonishment and desolation, with the cup of thy sister Samaria.

23:34 Thou shalt even drink it and suck it out, and thou shalt break
the sherds thereof, and pluck off thine own breasts: for I have spoken
it, saith the Lord GOD.

23:35 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thou hast forgotten
me, and cast me behind thy back, therefore bear thou also thy lewdness
and thy whoredoms.

23:36 The LORD said moreover unto me; Son of man, wilt thou judge
Aholah and Aholibah? yea, declare unto them their abominations; 23:37
That they have committed adultery, and blood is in their hands, and
with their idols have they committed adultery, and have also caused
their sons, whom they bare unto me, to pass for them through the fire,
to devour them.

23:38 Moreover this they have done unto me: they have defiled my
sanctuary in the same day, and have profaned my sabbaths.

23:39 For when they had slain their children to their idols, then they
came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it; and, lo, thus have
they done in the midst of mine house.

23:40 And furthermore, that ye have sent for men to come from far,
unto whom a messenger was sent; and, lo, they came: for whom thou
didst wash thyself, paintedst thy eyes, and deckedst thyself with
ornaments, 23:41 And satest upon a stately bed, and a table prepared
before it, whereupon thou hast set mine incense and mine oil.

23:42 And a voice of a multitude being at ease was with her: and with
the men of the common sort were brought Sabeans from the wilderness,
which put bracelets upon their hands, and beautiful crowns upon their
heads.

23:43 Then said I unto her that was old in adulteries, Will they now
commit whoredoms with her, and she with them?  23:44 Yet they went in
unto her, as they go in unto a woman that playeth the harlot: so went
they in unto Aholah and unto Aholibah, the lewd women.

23:45 And the righteous men, they shall judge them after the manner of
adulteresses, and after the manner of women that shed blood; because
they are adulteresses, and blood is in their hands.

23:46 For thus saith the Lord GOD; I will bring up a company upon
them, and will give them to be removed and spoiled.

23:47 And the company shall stone them with stones, and dispatch them
with their swords; they shall slay their sons and their daughters, and
burn up their houses with fire.

23:48 Thus will I cause lewdness to cease out of the land, that all
women may be taught not to do after your lewdness.

23:49 And they shall recompense your lewdness upon you, and ye shall
bear the sins of your idols: and ye shall know that I am the Lord GOD.

24:1 Again in the ninth year, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of
the month, the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 24:2 Son of man,
write thee the name of the day, even of this same day: the king of
Babylon set himself against Jerusalem this same day.

24:3 And utter a parable unto the rebellious house, and say unto them,
Thus saith the Lord GOD; Set on a pot, set it on, and also pour water
into it: 24:4 Gather the pieces thereof into it, even every good
piece, the thigh, and the shoulder; fill it with the choice bones.

24:5 Take the choice of the flock, and burn also the bones under it,
and make it boil well, and let them seethe the bones of it therein.

24:6 Wherefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Woe to the bloody city, to the
pot whose scum is therein, and whose scum is not gone out of it! bring
it out piece by piece; let no lot fall upon it.

24:7 For her blood is in the midst of her; she set it upon the top of
a rock; she poured it not upon the ground, to cover it with dust; 24:8
That it might cause fury to come up to take vengeance; I have set her
blood upon the top of a rock, that it should not be covered.

24:9 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Woe to the bloody city! I will
even make the pile for fire great.

24:10 Heap on wood, kindle the fire, consume the flesh, and spice it
well, and let the bones be burned.

24:11 Then set it empty upon the coals thereof, that the brass of it
may be hot, and may burn, and that the filthiness of it may be molten
in it, that the scum of it may be consumed.

24:12 She hath wearied herself with lies, and her great scum went not
forth out of her: her scum shall be in the fire.

24:13 In thy filthiness is lewdness: because I have purged thee, and
thou wast not purged, thou shalt not be purged from thy filthiness any
more, till I have caused my fury to rest upon thee.

24:14 I the LORD have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do
it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent;
according to thy ways, and according to thy doings, shall they judge
thee, saith the Lord GOD.

24:15 Also the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 24:16 Son of
man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a
stroke: yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears
run down.

24:17 Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of
thine head upon thee, and put on thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover
not thy lips, and eat not the bread of men.

24:18 So I spake unto the people in the morning: and at even my wife
died; and I did in the morning as I was commanded.

24:19 And the people said unto me, Wilt thou not tell us what these
things are to us, that thou doest so?  24:20 Then I answered them, The
word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 24:21 Speak unto the house of
Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will profane my sanctuary,
the excellency of your strength, the desire of your eyes, and that
which your soul pitieth; and your sons and your daughters whom ye have
left shall fall by the sword.

24:22 And ye shall do as I have done: ye shall not cover your lips,
nor eat the bread of men.

24:23 And your tires shall be upon your heads, and your shoes upon
your feet: ye shall not mourn nor weep; but ye shall pine away for
your iniquities, and mourn one toward another.

24:24 Thus Ezekiel is unto you a sign: according to all that he hath
done shall ye do: and when this cometh, ye shall know that I am the
Lord GOD.

24:25 Also, thou son of man, shall it not be in the day when I take
from them their strength, the joy of their glory, the desire of their
eyes, and that whereupon they set their minds, their sons and their
daughters, 24:26 That he that escapeth in that day shall come unto
thee, to cause thee to hear it with thine ears?  24:27 In that day
shall thy mouth be opened to him which is escaped, and thou shalt
speak, and be no more dumb: and thou shalt be a sign unto them; and
they shall know that I am the LORD.

25:1 The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, 25:2 Son of man,
set thy face against the Ammonites, and prophesy against them; 25:3
And say unto the Ammonites, Hear the word of the Lord GOD; Thus saith
the Lord GOD; Because thou saidst, Aha, against my sanctuary, when it
was profaned; and against the land of Israel, when it was desolate;
and against the house of Judah, when they went into captivity; 25:4
Behold, therefore I will deliver thee to the men of the east for a
possession, and they shall set their palaces in thee, and make their
dwellings in thee: they shall eat thy fruit, and they shall drink thy
milk.

25:5 And I will make Rabbah a stable for camels, and the Ammonites a
couching place for flocks: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

25:6 For thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thou hast clapped thine
hands, and stamped with the feet, and rejoiced in heart with all thy
despite against the land of Israel; 25:7 Behold, therefore I will
stretch out mine hand upon thee, and will deliver thee for a spoil to
the heathen; and I will cut thee off from the people, and I will cause
thee to perish out of the countries: I will destroy thee; and thou
shalt know that I am the LORD.

25:8 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because that Moab and Seir do say,
Behold, the house of Judah is like unto all the heathen; 25:9
Therefore, behold, I will open the side of Moab from the cities, from
his cities which are on his frontiers, the glory of the country,
Bethjeshimoth, Baalmeon, and Kiriathaim, 25:10 Unto the men of the
east with the Ammonites, and will give them in possession, that the
Ammonites may not be remembered among the nations.

25:11 And I will execute judgments upon Moab; and they shall know that
I am the LORD.

25:12 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because that Edom hath dealt against
the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and hath greatly offended, and
revenged himself upon them; 25:13 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; I
will also stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut off man and
beast from it; and I will make it desolate from Teman; and they of
Dedan shall fall by the sword.

25:14 And I will lay my vengeance upon Edom by the hand of my people
Israel: and they shall do in Edom according to mine anger and
according to my fury; and they shall know my vengeance, saith the Lord
GOD.

25:15 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because the Philistines have dealt by
revenge, and have taken vengeance with a despiteful heart, to destroy
it for the old hatred; 25:16 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD;
Behold, I will stretch out mine hand upon the Philistines, and I will
cut off the Cherethims, and destroy the remnant of the sea coast.

25:17 And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious
rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my
vengeance upon them.

26:1 And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first day of the
month, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 26:2 Son of
man, because that Tyrus hath said against Jerusalem, Aha, she is
broken that was the gates of the people: she is turned unto me: I
shall be replenished, now she is laid waste: 26:3 Therefore thus saith
the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many
nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come
up.

26:4 And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her
towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the
top of a rock.

26:5 It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the
sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD: and it shall become a
spoil to the nations.

26:6 And her daughters which are in the field shall be slain by the
sword; and they shall know that I am the LORD.

26:7 For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus
Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with
horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and much
people.

26:8 He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field: and he
shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and
lift up the buckler against thee.

26:9 And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his
axes he shall break down thy towers.

26:10 By reason of the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover
thee: thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and of the
wheels, and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as
men enter into a city wherein is made a breach.

26:11 With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy
streets: he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong
garrisons shall go down to the ground.

26:12 And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of
thy merchandise: and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy
pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy
dust in the midst of the water.

26:13 And I will cause the noise of thy songs to cease; and the sound
of thy harps shall be no more heard.

26:14 And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a
place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the LORD
have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.

26:15 Thus saith the Lord GOD to Tyrus; Shall not the isles shake at
the sound of thy fall, when the wounded cry, when the slaughter is
made in the midst of thee?  26:16 Then all the princes of the sea
shall come down from their thrones, and lay away their robes, and put
off their broidered garments: they shall clothe themselves with
trembling; they shall sit upon the ground, and shall tremble at every
moment, and be astonished at thee.

26:17 And they shall take up a lamentation for thee, and say to thee,
How art thou destroyed, that wast inhabited of seafaring men, the
renowned city, which wast strong in the sea, she and her inhabitants,
which cause their terror to be on all that haunt it!  26:18 Now shall
the isles tremble in the day of thy fall; yea, the isles that are in
the sea shall be troubled at thy departure.

26:19 For thus saith the Lord GOD; When I shall make thee a desolate
city, like the cities that are not inhabited; when I shall bring up
the deep upon thee, and great waters shall cover thee; 26:20 When I
shall bring thee down with them that descend into the pit, with the
people of old time, and shall set thee in the low parts of the earth,
in places desolate of old, with them that go down to the pit, that
thou be not inhabited; and I shall set glory in the land of the
living; 26:21 I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more:
though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith
the Lord GOD.

27:1 The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, 27:2 Now, thou
son of man, take up a lamentation for Tyrus; 27:3 And say unto Tyrus,
O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art a merchant
of the people for many isles, Thus saith the Lord GOD; O Tyrus, thou
hast said, I am of perfect beauty.

27:4 Thy borders are in the midst of the seas, thy builders have
perfected thy beauty.

27:5 They have made all thy ship boards of fir trees of Senir: they
have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee.

27:6 Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars; the company of
the Ashurites have made thy benches of ivory, brought out of the isles
of Chittim.

27:7 Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was that which thou
spreadest forth to be thy sail; blue and purple from the isles of
Elishah was that which covered thee.

27:8 The inhabitants of Zidon and Arvad were thy mariners: thy wise
men, O Tyrus, that were in thee, were thy pilots.

27:9 The ancients of Gebal and the wise men thereof were in thee thy
calkers: all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to
occupy thy merchandise.

27:10 They of Persia and of Lud and of Phut were in thine army, thy
men of war: they hanged the shield and helmet in thee; they set forth
thy comeliness.

27:11 The men of Arvad with thine army were upon thy walls round
about, and the Gammadims were in thy towers: they hanged their shields
upon thy walls round about; they have made thy beauty perfect.

27:12 Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind
of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs.

27:13 Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were thy merchants: they traded
the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market.

27:14 They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses
and horsemen and mules.

27:15 The men of Dedan were thy merchants; many isles were the
merchandise of thine hand: they brought thee for a present horns of
ivory and ebony.

27:16 Syria was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of the wares
of thy making: they occupied in thy fairs with emeralds, purple, and
broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and agate.

27:17 Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants: they
traded in thy market wheat of Minnith, and Pannag, and honey, and oil,
and balm.

27:18 Damascus was thy merchant in the multitude of the wares of thy
making, for the multitude of all riches; in the wine of Helbon, and
white wool.

27:19 Dan also and Javan going to and fro occupied in thy fairs:
bright iron, cassia, and calamus, were in thy market.

27:20 Dedan was thy merchant in precious clothes for chariots.

27:21 Arabia, and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee in
lambs, and rams, and goats: in these were they thy merchants.

27:22 The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants: they
occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious
stones, and gold.

27:23 Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, and
Chilmad, were thy merchants.

27:24 These were thy merchants in all sorts of things, in blue
clothes, and broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with
cords, and made of cedar, among thy merchandise.

27:25 The ships of Tarshish did sing of thee in thy market: and thou
wast replenished, and made very glorious in the midst of the seas.

27:26 Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters: the east wind
hath broken thee in the midst of the seas.

27:27 Thy riches, and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and
thy pilots, thy calkers, and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all
thy men of war, that are in thee, and in all thy company which is in
the midst of thee, shall fall into the midst of the seas in the day of
thy ruin.

27:28 The suburbs shall shake at the sound of the cry of thy pilots.

27:29 And all that handle the oar, the mariners, and all the pilots of
the sea, shall come down from their ships, they shall stand upon the
land; 27:30 And shall cause their voice to be heard against thee, and
shall cry bitterly, and shall cast up dust upon their heads, they
shall wallow themselves in the ashes: 27:31 And they shall make
themselves utterly bald for thee, and gird them with sackcloth, and
they shall weep for thee with bitterness of heart and bitter wailing.

27:32 And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee,
and lament over thee, saying, What city is like Tyrus, like the
destroyed in the midst of the sea?  27:33 When thy wares went forth
out of the seas, thou filledst many people; thou didst enrich the
kings of the earth with the multitude of thy riches and of thy
merchandise.

27:34 In the time when thou shalt be broken by the seas in the depths
of the waters thy merchandise and all thy company in the midst of thee
shall fall.

27:35 All the inhabitants of the isles shall be astonished at thee,
and their kings shall be sore afraid, they shall be troubled in their
countenance.

27:36 The merchants among the people shall hiss at thee; thou shalt be
a terror, and never shalt be any more.

28:1 The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, 28:2 Son of man,
say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thine
heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat
of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God,
though thou set thine heart as the heart of God: 28:3 Behold, thou art
wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee:
28:4 With thy wisdom and with thine understanding thou hast gotten
thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures: 28:5
By thy great wisdom and by thy traffick hast thou increased thy
riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches: 28:6
Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thou hast set thine heart
as the heart of God; 28:7 Behold, therefore I will bring strangers
upon thee, the terrible of the nations: and they shall draw their
swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy
brightness.

28:8 They shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the
deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the seas.

28:9 Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee, I am God? but
thou shalt be a man, and no God, in the hand of him that slayeth thee.

28:10 Thou shalt die the deaths of the uncircumcised by the hand of
strangers: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.

28:11 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 28:12 Son of
man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him,
Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and
perfect in beauty.

28:13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone
was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the
onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle,
and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared
in thee in the day that thou wast created.

28:14 Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee
so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and
down in the midst of the stones of fire.

28:15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast
created, till iniquity was found in thee.

28:16 By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst
of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast
thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O
covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.

28:17 Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast
corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to
the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.

28:18 Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine
iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick; therefore will I bring
forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will
bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that
behold thee.

28:19 All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at
thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.

28:20 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 28:21 Son of
man, set thy face against Zidon, and prophesy against it, 28:22 And
say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Zidon; and
I will be glorified in the midst of thee: and they shall know that I
am the LORD, when I shall have executed judgments in her, and shall be
sanctified in her.

28:23 For I will send into her pestilence, and blood into her streets;
and the wounded shall be judged in the midst of her by the sword upon
her on every side; and they shall know that I am the LORD.

28:24 And there shall be no more a pricking brier unto the house of
Israel, nor any grieving thorn of all that are round about them, that
despised them; and they shall know that I am the Lord GOD.

28:25 Thus saith the Lord GOD; When I shall have gathered the house of
Israel from the people among whom they are scattered, and shall be
sanctified in them in the sight of the heathen, then shall they dwell
in their land that I have given to my servant Jacob.

28:26 And they shall dwell safely therein, and shall build houses, and
plant vineyards; yea, they shall dwell with confidence, when I have
executed judgments upon all those that despise them round about them;
and they shall know that I am the LORD their God.

29:1 In the tenth year, in the tenth month, in the twelfth day of the
month, the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 29:2 Son of man, set
thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him, and
against all Egypt: 29:3 Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD;
Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon
that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is
mine own, and I have made it for myself.

29:4 But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of
thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of
the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick
unto thy scales.

29:5 And I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, thee and all
the fish of thy rivers: thou shalt fall upon the open fields; thou
shalt not be brought together, nor gathered: I have given thee for
meat to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the heaven.

29:6 And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the LORD,
because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel.

29:7 When they took hold of thee by thy hand, thou didst break, and
rend all their shoulder: and when they leaned upon thee, thou brakest,
and madest all their loins to be at a stand.

29:8 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will bring a sword
upon thee, and cut off man and beast out of thee.

29:9 And the land of Egypt shall be desolate and waste; and they shall
know that I am the LORD: because he hath said, The river is mine, and
I have made it.

29:10 Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and
I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the
tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia.

29:11 No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall
pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years.

29:12 And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the
countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are
laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the
Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the
countries.

29:13 Yet thus saith the Lord GOD; At the end of forty years will I
gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered:
29:14 And I will bring again the captivity of Egypt, and will cause
them to return into the land of Pathros, into the land of their
habitation; and they shall be there a base kingdom.

29:15 It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt
itself any more above the nations: for I will diminish them, that they
shall no more rule over the nations.

29:16 And it shall be no more the confidence of the house of Israel,
which bringeth their iniquity to remembrance, when they shall look
after them: but they shall know that I am the Lord GOD.

29:17 And it came to pass in the seven and twentieth year, in the
first month, in the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came
unto me, saying, 29:18 Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon
caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus: every head was
made bald, and every shoulder was peeled: yet had he no wages, nor his
army, for Tyrus, for the service that he had served against it: 29:19
Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will give the land of
Egypt unto Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; and he shall take her
multitude, and take her spoil, and take her prey; and it shall be the
wages for his army.

29:20 I have given him the land of Egypt for his labour wherewith he
served against it, because they wrought for me, saith the Lord GOD.

29:21 In that day will I cause the horn of the house of Israel to bud
forth, and I will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of
them; and they shall know that I am the LORD.

30:1 The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, 30:2 Son of man,
prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Howl ye, Woe worth the day!
30:3 For the day is near, even the day of the LORD is near, a cloudy
day; it shall be the time of the heathen.

30:4 And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great pain shall be in
Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they shall take away
her multitude, and her foundations shall be broken down.

30:5 Ethiopia, and Libya, and Lydia, and all the mingled people, and
Chub, and the men of the land that is in league, shall fall with them
by the sword.

30:6 Thus saith the LORD; They also that uphold Egypt shall fall; and
the pride of her power shall come down: from the tower of Syene shall
they fall in it by the sword, saith the Lord GOD.

30:7 And they shall be desolate in the midst of the countries that are
desolate, and her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are
wasted.

30:8 And they shall know that I am the LORD, when I have set a fire in
Egypt, and when all her helpers shall be destroyed.

30:9 In that day shall messengers go forth from me in ships to make
the careless Ethiopians afraid, and great pain shall come upon them,
as in the day of Egypt: for, lo, it cometh.

30:10 Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will also make the multitude of Egypt
to cease by the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon.

30:11 He and his people with him, the terrible of the nations, shall
be brought to destroy the land: and they shall draw their swords
against Egypt, and fill the land with the slain.

30:12 And I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand
of the wicked: and I will make the land waste, and all that is
therein, by the hand of strangers: I the LORD have spoken it.

30:13 Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will also destroy the idols, and I
will cause their images to cease out of Noph; and there shall be no
more a prince of the land of Egypt: and I will put a fear in the land
of Egypt.

30:14 And I will make Pathros desolate, and will set fire in Zoan, and
will execute judgments in No.

30:15 And I will pour my fury upon Sin, the strength of Egypt; and I
will cut off the multitude of No.

30:16 And I will set fire in Egypt: Sin shall have great pain, and No
shall be rent asunder, and Noph shall have distresses daily.

30:17 The young men of Aven and of Pibeseth shall fall by the sword:
and these cities shall go into captivity.

30:18 At Tehaphnehes also the day shall be darkened, when I shall
break there the yokes of Egypt: and the pomp of her strength shall
cease in her: as for her, a cloud shall cover her, and her daughters
shall go into captivity.

30:19 Thus will I execute judgments in Egypt: and they shall know that
I am the LORD.

30:20 And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first month, in
the seventh day of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me,
saying, 30:21 Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of
Egypt; and, lo, it shall not be bound up to be healed, to put a roller
to bind it, to make it strong to hold the sword.

30:22 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against Pharaoh
king of Egypt, and will break his arms, the strong, and that which was
broken; and I will cause the sword to fall out of his hand.

30:23 And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will
disperse them through the countries.

30:24 And I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and put
my sword in his hand: but I will break Pharaoh's arms, and he shall
groan before him with the groanings of a deadly wounded man.

30:25 But I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and the
arms of Pharaoh shall fall down; and they shall know that I am the
LORD, when I shall put my sword into the hand of the king of Babylon,
and he shall stretch it out upon the land of Egypt.

30:26 And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and disperse
them among the countries; and they shall know that I am the LORD.

31:1 And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the third month, in
the first day of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me,
saying, 31:2 Son of man, speak unto Pharaoh king of Egypt, and to his
multitude; Whom art thou like in thy greatness?  31:3 Behold, the
Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a
shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the
thick boughs.

31:4 The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her
rivers running round about his plants, and sent her little rivers unto
all the trees of the field.

31:5 Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the
field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long
because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth.

31:6 All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under
his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young,
and under his shadow dwelt all great nations.

31:7 Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches:
for his root was by great waters.

31:8 The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees
were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his
branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his
beauty.

31:9 I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches: so that
all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him.

31:10 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thou hast lifted up
thyself in height, and he hath shot up his top among the thick boughs,
and his heart is lifted up in his height; 31:11 I have therefore
delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the heathen; he shall
surely deal with him: I have driven him out for his wickedness.

31:12 And strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off,
and have left him: upon the mountains and in all the valleys his
branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken by all the rivers of
the land; and all the people of the earth are gone down from his
shadow, and have left him.

31:13 Upon his ruin shall all the fowls of the heaven remain, and all
the beasts of the field shall be upon his branches: 31:14 To the end
that none of all the trees by the waters exalt themselves for their
height, neither shoot up their top among the thick boughs, neither
their trees stand up in their height, all that drink water: for they
are all delivered unto death, to the nether parts of the earth, in the
midst of the children of men, with them that go down to the pit.

31:15 Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day when he went down to the
grave I caused a mourning: I covered the deep for him, and I
restrained the floods thereof, and the great waters were stayed: and I
caused Lebanon to mourn for him, and all the trees of the field
fainted for him.

31:16 I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I
cast him down to hell with them that descend into the pit: and all the
trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water,
shall be comforted in the nether parts of the earth.

31:17 They also went down into hell with him unto them that be slain
with the sword; and they that were his arm, that dwelt under his
shadow in the midst of the heathen.

31:18 To whom art thou thus like in glory and in greatness among the
trees of Eden? yet shalt thou be brought down with the trees of Eden
unto the nether parts of the earth: thou shalt lie in the midst of the
uncircumcised with them that be slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh
and all his multitude, saith the Lord GOD.

32:1 And it came to pass in the twelfth year, in the twelfth month, in
the first day of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me,
saying, 32:2 Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of
Egypt, and say unto him, Thou art like a young lion of the nations,
and thou art as a whale in the seas: and thou camest forth with thy
rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy feet, and fouledst their
rivers.

32:3 Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will therefore spread out my net over
thee with a company of many people; and they shall bring thee up in my
net.

32:4 Then will I leave thee upon the land, I will cast thee forth upon
the open field, and will cause all the fowls of the heaven to remain
upon thee, and I will fill the beasts of the whole earth with thee.

32:5 And I will lay thy flesh upon the mountains, and fill the valleys
with thy height.

32:6 I will also water with thy blood the land wherein thou swimmest,
even to the mountains; and the rivers shall be full of thee.

32:7 And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and make
the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the
moon shall not give her light.

32:8 All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee, and
set darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord GOD.

32:9 I will also vex the hearts of many people, when I shall bring thy
destruction among the nations, into the countries which thou hast not
known.

32:10 Yea, I will make many people amazed at thee, and their kings
shall be horribly afraid for thee, when I shall brandish my sword
before them; and they shall tremble at every moment, every man for his
own life, in the day of thy fall.

32:11 For thus saith the Lord GOD; The sword of the king of Babylon
shall come upon thee.

32:12 By the swords of the mighty will I cause thy multitude to fall,
the terrible of the nations, all of them: and they shall spoil the
pomp of Egypt, and all the multitude thereof shall be destroyed.

32:13 I will destroy also all the beasts thereof from beside the great
waters; neither shall the foot of man trouble them any more, nor the
hoofs of beasts trouble them.

32:14 Then will I make their waters deep, and cause their rivers to
run like oil, saith the Lord GOD.

32:15 When I shall make the land of Egypt desolate, and the country
shall be destitute of that whereof it was full, when I shall smite all
them that dwell therein, then shall they know that I am the LORD.

32:16 This is the lamentation wherewith they shall lament her: the
daughters of the nations shall lament her: they shall lament for her,
even for Egypt, and for all her multitude, saith the Lord GOD.

32:17 It came to pass also in the twelfth year, in the fifteenth day
of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 32:18
Son of man, wail for the multitude of Egypt, and cast them down, even
her, and the daughters of the famous nations, unto the nether parts of
the earth, with them that go down into the pit.

32:19 Whom dost thou pass in beauty? go down, and be thou laid with
the uncircumcised.

32:20 They shall fall in the midst of them that are slain by the
sword: she is delivered to the sword: draw her and all her multitudes.

32:21 The strong among the mighty shall speak to him out of the midst
of hell with them that help him: they are gone down, they lie
uncircumcised, slain by the sword.

32:22 Asshur is there and all her company: his graves are about him:
all of them slain, fallen by the sword: 32:23 Whose graves are set in
the sides of the pit, and her company is round about her grave: all of
them slain, fallen by the sword, which caused terror in the land of
the living.

32:24 There is Elam and all her multitude round about her grave, all
of them slain, fallen by the sword, which are gone down uncircumcised
into the nether parts of the earth, which caused their terror in the
land of the living; yet have they borne their shame with them that go
down to the pit.

32:25 They have set her a bed in the midst of the slain with all her
multitude: her graves are round about him: all of them uncircumcised,
slain by the sword: though their terror was caused in the land of the
living, yet have they borne their shame with them that go down to the
pit: he is put in the midst of them that be slain.

32:26 There is Meshech, Tubal, and all her multitude: her graves are
round about him: all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword, though
they caused their terror in the land of the living.

32:27 And they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the
uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell with their weapons of war:
and they have laid their swords under their heads, but their
iniquities shall be upon their bones, though they were the terror of
the mighty in the land of the living.

32:28 Yea, thou shalt be broken in the midst of the uncircumcised, and
shalt lie with them that are slain with the sword.

32:29 There is Edom, her kings, and all her princes, which with their
might are laid by them that were slain by the sword: they shall lie
with the uncircumcised, and with them that go down to the pit.

32:30 There be the princes of the north, all of them, and all the
Zidonians, which are gone down with the slain; with their terror they
are ashamed of their might; and they lie uncircumcised with them that
be slain by the sword, and bear their shame with them that go down to
the pit.

32:31 Pharaoh shall see them, and shall be comforted over all his
multitude, even Pharaoh and all his army slain by the sword, saith the
Lord GOD.

32:32 For I have caused my terror in the land of the living: and he
shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised with them that are
slain with the sword, even Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the
Lord GOD.

33:1 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 33:2 Son of man,
speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring
the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their
coasts, and set him for their watchman: 33:3 If when he seeth the
sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;
33:4 Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not
warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon
his own head.

33:5 He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his
blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his
soul.

33:6 But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet,
and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person
from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will
I require at the watchman's hand.

33:7 So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house
of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn
them from me.

33:8 When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die;
if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked
man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine
hand.

33:9 Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it;
if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou
hast delivered thy soul.

33:10 Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel;
Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon us,
and we pine away in them, how should we then live?  33:11 Say unto
them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death
of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn
ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of
Israel?  33:12 Therefore, thou son of man, say unto the children of
thy people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him
in the day of his transgression: as for the wickedness of the wicked,
he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his
wickedness; neither shall the righteous be able to live for his
righteousness in the day that he sinneth.

33:13 When I shall say to the righteous, that he shall surely live; if
he trust to his own righteousness, and commit iniquity, all his
righteousnesses shall not be remembered; but for his iniquity that he
hath committed, he shall die for it.

33:14 Again, when I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; if he
turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right; 33:15 If the
wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the
statutes of life, without committing iniquity; he shall surely live,
he shall not die.

33:16 None of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto
him: he hath done that which is lawful and right; he shall surely
live.

33:17 Yet the children of thy people say, The way of the Lord is not
equal: but as for them, their way is not equal.

33:18 When the righteous turneth from his righteousness, and
committeth iniquity, he shall even die thereby.

33:19 But if the wicked turn from his wickedness, and do that which is
lawful and right, he shall live thereby.

33:20 Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. O ye house of
Israel, I will judge you every one after his ways.

33:21 And it came to pass in the twelfth year of our captivity, in the
tenth month, in the fifth day of the month, that one that had escaped
out of Jerusalem came unto me, saying, The city is smitten.

33:22 Now the hand of the LORD was upon me in the evening, afore he
that was escaped came; and had opened my mouth, until he came to me in
the morning; and my mouth was opened, and I was no more dumb.

33:23 Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 33:24 Son of
man, they that inhabit those wastes of the land of Israel speak,
saying, Abraham was one, and he inherited the land: but we are many;
the land is given us for inheritance.

33:25 Wherefore say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Ye eat with
the blood, and lift up your eyes toward your idols, and shed blood:
and shall ye possess the land?  33:26 Ye stand upon your sword, ye
work abomination, and ye defile every one his neighbour's wife: and
shall ye possess the land?  33:27 Say thou thus unto them, Thus saith
the Lord GOD; As I live, surely they that are in the wastes shall fall
by the sword, and him that is in the open field will I give to the
beasts to be devoured, and they that be in the forts and in the caves
shall die of the pestilence.

33:28 For I will lay the land most desolate, and the pomp of her
strength shall cease; and the mountains of Israel shall be desolate,
that none shall pass through.

33:29 Then shall they know that I am the LORD, when I have laid the
land most desolate because of all their abominations which they have
committed.

33:30 Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are
talking against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and
speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray
you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the LORD.

33:31 And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit
before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not
do them: for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart
goeth after their covetousness.

33:32 And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that
hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they
hear thy words, but they do them not.

33:33 And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall
they know that a prophet hath been among them.

34:1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 34:2 Son of man,
prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them,
Thus saith the Lord GOD unto the shepherds; Woe be to the shepherds of
Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the
flocks?  34:3 Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill
them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock.

34:4 The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed
that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken,
neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have
ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye
ruled them.

34:5 And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they
became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered.

34:6 My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high
hill: yea, my flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth, and
none did search or seek after them.

34:7 Therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the LORD; 34:8 As I
live, saith the Lord GOD, surely because my flock became a prey, and
my flock became meat to every beast of the field, because there was no
shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my flock, but the
shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flock; 34:9 Therefore, O ye
shepherds, hear the word of the LORD; 34:10 Thus saith the Lord GOD;
Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my flock at
their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock; neither
shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; for I will deliver my
flock from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them.

34:11 For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, will both search
my sheep, and seek them out.

34:12 As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among
his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will
deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the
cloudy and dark day.

34:13 And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from
the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them
upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited
places of the country.

34:14 I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains
of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie in a good fold,
and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel.

34:15 I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith
the Lord GOD.

34:16 I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was
driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will
strengthen that which was sick: but I will destroy the fat and the
strong; I will feed them with judgment.

34:17 And as for you, O my flock, thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I
judge between cattle and cattle, between the rams and the he goats.

34:18 Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good
pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your
pastures? and to have drunk of the deep waters, but ye must foul the
residue with your feet?  34:19 And as for my flock, they eat that
which ye have trodden with your feet; and they drink that which ye
have fouled with your feet.

34:20 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD unto them; Behold, I, even I,
will judge between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle.

34:21 Because ye have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed
all the diseased with your horns, till ye have scattered them abroad;
34:22 Therefore will I save my flock, and they shall no more be a
prey; and I will judge between cattle and cattle.

34:23 And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed
them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their
shepherd.

34:24 And I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David a prince
among them; I the LORD have spoken it.

34:25 And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause
the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely
in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods.

34:26 And I will make them and the places round about my hill a
blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season;
there shall be showers of blessing.

34:27 And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth
shall yield her increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and
shall know that I am the LORD, when I have broken the bands of their
yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that served
themselves of them.

34:28 And they shall no more be a prey to the heathen, neither shall
the beast of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely, and
none shall make them afraid.

34:29 And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall
be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of
the heathen any more.

34:30 Thus shall they know that I the LORD their God am with them, and
that they, even the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord
GOD.

34:31 And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your
God, saith the Lord GOD.

35:1 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 35:2 Son of
man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it, 35:3
And say unto it, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O mount Seir, I am
against thee, and I will stretch out mine hand against thee, and I
will make thee most desolate.

35:4 I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou
shalt know that I am the LORD.

35:5 Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood
of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of
their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end: 35:6
Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto
blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood,
even blood shall pursue thee.

35:7 Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it
him that passeth out and him that returneth.

35:8 And I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills,
and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are
slain with the sword.

35:9 I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not
return: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

35:10 Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two
countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas the LORD was
there: 35:11 Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will even do
according to thine anger, and according to thine envy which thou hast
used out of thy hatred against them; and I will make myself known
among them, when I have judged thee.

35:12 And thou shalt know that I am the LORD, and that I have heard
all thy blasphemies which thou hast spoken against the mountains of
Israel, saying, They are laid desolate, they are given us to consume.

35:13 Thus with your mouth ye have boasted against me, and have
multiplied your words against me: I have heard them.

35:14 Thus saith the Lord GOD; When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will
make thee desolate.

35:15 As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel,
because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee: thou shalt be
desolate, O mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it: and they shall
know that I am the LORD.

36:1 Also, thou son of man, prophesy unto the mountains of Israel, and
say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the LORD: 36:2 Thus
saith the Lord GOD; Because the enemy hath said against you, Aha, even
the ancient high places are ours in possession: 36:3 Therefore
prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because they have made you
desolate, and swallowed you up on every side, that ye might be a
possession unto the residue of the heathen, and ye are taken up in the
lips of talkers, and are an infamy of the people: 36:4 Therefore, ye
mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD; Thus saith the
Lord GOD to the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the
valleys, to the desolate wastes, and to the cities that are forsaken,
which became a prey and derision to the residue of the heathen that
are round about; 36:5 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Surely in the
fire of my jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen,
and against all Idumea, which have appointed my land into their
possession with the joy of all their heart, with despiteful minds, to
cast it out for a prey.

36:6 Prophesy therefore concerning the land of Israel, and say unto
the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys,
Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I have spoken in my jealousy and in
my fury, because ye have borne the shame of the heathen: 36:7
Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; I have lifted up mine hand, Surely
the heathen that are about you, they shall bear their shame.

36:8 But ye, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your
branches, and yield your fruit to my people of Israel; for they are at
hand to come.

36:9 For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto you, and ye shall
be tilled and sown: 36:10 And I will multiply men upon you, all the
house of Israel, even all of it: and the cities shall be inhabited,
and the wastes shall be builded: 36:11 And I will multiply upon you
man and beast; and they shall increase and bring fruit: and I will
settle you after your old estates, and will do better unto you than at
your beginnings: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

36:12 Yea, I will cause men to walk upon you, even my people Israel;
and they shall possess thee, and thou shalt be their inheritance, and
thou shalt no more henceforth bereave them of men.

36:13 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because they say unto you, Thou land
devourest up men, and hast bereaved thy nations: 36:14 Therefore thou
shalt devour men no more, neither bereave thy nations any more, saith
the Lord GOD.

36:15 Neither will I cause men to hear in thee the shame of the
heathen any more, neither shalt thou bear the reproach of the people
any more, neither shalt thou cause thy nations to fall any more, saith
the Lord GOD.

36:16 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 36:17 Son of
man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it
by their own way and by their doings: their way was before me as the
uncleanness of a removed woman.

36:18 Wherefore I poured my fury upon them for the blood that they had
shed upon the land, and for their idols wherewith they had polluted
it: 36:19 And I scattered them among the heathen, and they were
dispersed through the countries: according to their way and according
to their doings I judged them.

36:20 And when they entered unto the heathen, whither they went, they
profaned my holy name, when they said to them, These are the people of
the LORD, and are gone forth out of his land.

36:21 But I had pity for mine holy name, which the house of Israel had
profaned among the heathen, whither they went.

36:22 Therefore say unto the house of Israel, thus saith the Lord GOD;
I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy
name's sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye
went.

36:23 And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the
heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen
shall know that I am the LORD, saith the Lord GOD, when I shall be
sanctified in you before their eyes.

36:24 For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out
of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.

36:25 Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be
clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I
cleanse you.

36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put
within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh,
and I will give you an heart of flesh.

36:27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my
statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

36:28 And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and
ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.

36:29 I will also save you from all your uncleannesses: and I will
call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you.

36:30 And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of
the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the
heathen.

36:31 Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that
were not good, and shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for your
iniquities and for your abominations.

36:32 Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord GOD, be it known
unto you: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of
Israel.

36:33 Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day that I shall have cleansed
you from all your iniquities I will also cause you to dwell in the
cities, and the wastes shall be builded.

36:34 And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate
in the sight of all that passed by.

36:35 And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like
the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are
become fenced, and are inhabited.

36:36 Then the heathen that are left round about you shall know that I
the LORD build the ruined places, and plant that that was desolate: I
the LORD have spoken it, and I will do it.

36:37 Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will yet for this be enquired of by
the house of Israel, to do it for them; I will increase them with men
like a flock.

36:38 As the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn
feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men: and
they shall know that I am the LORD.

37:1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the
spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which
was full of bones, 37:2 And caused me to pass by them round about:
and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they
were very dry.

37:3 And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I
answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest.

37:4 Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto
them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.

37:5 Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause
breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: 37:6 And I will lay
sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with
skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that
I am the LORD.

37:7 So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there
was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone
to his bone.

37:8 And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon
them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in
them.

37:9 Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of
man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four
winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.

37:10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into
them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great
army.

37:11 Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole
house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope
is lost: we are cut off for our parts.

37:12 Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD;
Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up
out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.

37:13 And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your
graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, 37:14 And
shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you
in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it,
and performed it, saith the LORD.

37:15 The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, 37:16 Moreover,
thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah,
and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another
stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim and for all
the house of Israel his companions: 37:17 And join them one to another
into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.

37:18 And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee,
saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these?  37:19 Say
unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the stick of
Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his
fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and
make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand.

37:20 And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand
before their eyes.

37:21 And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take
the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone,
and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own
land: 37:22 And I will make them one nation in the land upon the
mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they
shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two
kingdoms any more at all.

37:23 Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols,
nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their
transgressions: but I will save them out of all their dwellingplaces,
wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be my
people, and I will be their God.

37:24 And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall
have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe
my statutes, and do them.

37:25 And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my
servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell
therein, even they, and their children, and their children's children
for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for ever.

37:26 Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be
an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply
them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.

37:27 My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.

37:28 And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel,
when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore.

38:1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 38:2 Son of man,
set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of
Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, 38:3 And say, Thus saith
the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of
Meshech and Tubal: 38:4 And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into
thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and
horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great
company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords: 38:5
Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and
helmet: 38:6 Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the
north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.

38:7 Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy
company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.

38:8 After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou
shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is
gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which
have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations,
and they shall dwell safely all of them.

38:9 Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a
cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with
thee.

38:10 Thus saith the Lord GOD; It shall also come to pass, that at the
same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an
evil thought: 38:11 And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of
unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell
safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars
nor gates, 38:12 To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine
hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the
people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle
and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land.

38:13 Sheba, and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the
young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a
spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away
silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?
38:14 Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus saith the
Lord GOD; In that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt
thou not know it?  38:15 And thou shalt come from thy place out of the
north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon
horses, a great company, and a mighty army: 38:16 And thou shalt come
up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall
be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the
heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before
their eyes.

38:17 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Art thou he of whom I have spoken in
old time by my servants the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in
those days many years that I would bring thee against them?  38:18 And
it shall come to pass at the same time when Gog shall come against the
land of Israel, saith the Lord GOD, that my fury shall come up in my
face.

38:19 For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken,
Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of
Israel; 38:20 So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the
heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that
creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the
earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown
down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to
the ground.

38:21 And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my
mountains, saith the Lord GOD: every man's sword shall be against his
brother.

38:22 And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and
I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people
that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire,
and brimstone.

38:23 Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be
known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the
LORD.

39:1 Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus
saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince
of Meshech and Tubal: 39:2 And I will turn thee back, and leave but
the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north
parts, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel: 39:3 And I
will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows
to fall out of thy right hand.

39:4 Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy
bands, and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the
ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be
devoured.

39:5 Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith
the Lord GOD.

39:6 And I will send a fire on Magog, and among them that dwell
carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am the LORD.

39:7 So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people
Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the
heathen shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel.

39:8 Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is
the day whereof I have spoken.

39:9 And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and
shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the
bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears,
and they shall burn them with fire seven years: 39:10 So that they
shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the
forests; for they shall burn the weapons with fire: and they shall
spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith
the Lord GOD.

39:11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog
a place there of graves in Israel, the valley of the passengers on the
east of the sea: and it shall stop the noses of the passengers: and
there shall they bury Gog and all his multitude: and they shall call
it The valley of Hamongog.

39:12 And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them,
that they may cleanse the land.

39:13 Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them; and it shall be
to them a renown the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord
GOD.

39:14 And they shall sever out men of continual employment, passing
through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon
the face of the earth, to cleanse it: after the end of seven months
shall they search.

39:15 And the passengers that pass through the land, when any seeth a
man's bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have
buried it in the valley of Hamongog.

39:16 And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah. Thus shall they
cleanse the land.

39:17 And, thou son of man, thus saith the Lord GOD; Speak unto every
feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves,
and come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do
sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of
Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood.

39:18 Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the
princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks,
all of them fatlings of Bashan.

39:19 And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be
drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you.

39:20 Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots,
with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord GOD.

39:21 And I will set my glory among the heathen, and all the heathen
shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have
laid upon them.

39:22 So the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God
from that day and forward.

39:23 And the heathen shall know that the house of Israel went into
captivity for their iniquity: because they trespassed against me,
therefore hid I my face from them, and gave them into the hand of
their enemies: so fell they all by the sword.

39:24 According to their uncleanness and according to their
transgressions have I done unto them, and hid my face from them.

39:25 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Now will I bring again the
captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel, and
will be jealous for my holy name; 39:26 After that they have borne
their shame, and all their trespasses whereby they have trespassed
against me, when they dwelt safely in their land, and none made them
afraid.

39:27 When I have brought them again from the people, and gathered
them out of their enemies' lands, and am sanctified in them in the
sight of many nations; 39:28 Then shall they know that I am the LORD
their God, which caused them to be led into captivity among the
heathen: but I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left
none of them any more there.

39:29 Neither will I hide my face any more from them: for I have
poured out my spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord GOD.

40:1 In the five and twentieth year of our captivity, in the beginning
of the year, in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year
after that the city was smitten, in the selfsame day the hand of the
LORD was upon me, and brought me thither.

40:2 In the visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel, and
set me upon a very high mountain, by which was as the frame of a city
on the south.

40:3 And he brought me thither, and, behold, there was a man, whose
appearance was like the appearance of brass, with a line of flax in
his hand, and a measuring reed; and he stood in the gate.

40:4 And the man said unto me, Son of man, behold with thine eyes, and
hear with thine ears, and set thine heart upon all that I shall shew
thee; for to the intent that I might shew them unto thee art thou
brought hither: declare all that thou seest to the house of Israel.

40:5 And behold a wall on the outside of the house round about, and in
the man's hand a measuring reed of six cubits long by the cubit and an
hand breadth: so he measured the breadth of the building, one reed;
and the height, one reed.

40:6 Then came he unto the gate which looketh toward the east, and
went up the stairs thereof, and measured the threshold of the gate,
which was one reed broad; and the other threshold of the gate, which
was one reed broad.

40:7 And every little chamber was one reed long, and one reed broad;
and between the little chambers were five cubits; and the threshold of
the gate by the porch of the gate within was one reed.

40:8 He measured also the porch of the gate within, one reed.

40:9 Then measured he the porch of the gate, eight cubits; and the
posts thereof, two cubits; and the porch of the gate was inward.

40:10 And the little chambers of the gate eastward were three on this
side, and three on that side; they three were of one measure: and the
posts had one measure on this side and on that side.

40:11 And he measured the breadth of the entry of the gate, ten
cubits; and the length of the gate, thirteen cubits.

40:12 The space also before the little chambers was one cubit on this
side, and the space was one cubit on that side: and the little
chambers were six cubits on this side, and six cubits on that side.

40:13 He measured then the gate from the roof of one little chamber to
the roof of another: the breadth was five and twenty cubits, door
against door.

40:14 He made also posts of threescore cubits, even unto the post of
the court round about the gate.

40:15 And from the face of the gate of the entrance unto the face of
the porch of the inner gate were fifty cubits.

40:16 And there were narrow windows to the little chambers, and to
their posts within the gate round about, and likewise to the arches:
and windows were round about inward: and upon each post were palm
trees.

40:17 Then brought he me into the outward court, and, lo, there were
chambers, and a pavement made for the court round about: thirty
chambers were upon the pavement.

40:18 And the pavement by the side of the gates over against the
length of the gates was the lower pavement.

40:19 Then he measured the breadth from the forefront of the lower
gate unto the forefront of the inner court without, an hundred cubits
eastward and northward.

40:20 And the gate of the outward court that looked toward the north,
he measured the length thereof, and the breadth thereof.

40:21 And the little chambers thereof were three on this side and
three on that side; and the posts thereof and the arches thereof were
after the measure of the first gate: the length thereof was fifty
cubits, and the breadth five and twenty cubits.

40:22 And their windows, and their arches, and their palm trees, were
after the measure of the gate that looketh toward the east; and they
went up unto it by seven steps; and the arches thereof were before
them.

40:23 And the gate of the inner court was over against the gate toward
the north, and toward the east; and he measured from gate to gate an
hundred cubits.

40:24 After that he brought me toward the south, and behold a gate
toward the south: and he measured the posts thereof and the arches
thereof according to these measures.

40:25 And there were windows in it and in the arches thereof round
about, like those windows: the length was fifty cubits, and the
breadth five and twenty cubits.

40:26 And there were seven steps to go up to it, and the arches
thereof were before them: and it had palm trees, one on this side, and
another on that side, upon the posts thereof.

40:27 And there was a gate in the inner court toward the south: and he
measured from gate to gate toward the south an hundred cubits.

40:28 And he brought me to the inner court by the south gate: and he
measured the south gate according to these measures; 40:29 And the
little chambers thereof, and the posts thereof, and the arches
thereof, according to these measures: and there were windows in it and
in the arches thereof round about: it was fifty cubits long, and five
and twenty cubits broad.

40:30 And the arches round about were five and twenty cubits long, and
five cubits broad.

40:31 And the arches thereof were toward the utter court; and palm
trees were upon the posts thereof: and the going up to it had eight
steps.

40:32 And he brought me into the inner court toward the east: and he
measured the gate according to these measures.

40:33 And the little chambers thereof, and the posts thereof, and the
arches thereof, were according to these measures: and there were
windows therein and in the arches thereof round about: it was fifty
cubits long, and five and twenty cubits broad.

40:34 And the arches thereof were toward the outward court; and palm
trees were upon the posts thereof, on this side, and on that side: and
the going up to it had eight steps.

40:35 And he brought me to the north gate, and measured it according
to these measures; 40:36 The little chambers thereof, the posts
thereof, and the arches thereof, and the windows to it round about:
the length was fifty cubits, and the breadth five and twenty cubits.

40:37 And the posts thereof were toward the utter court; and palm
trees were upon the posts thereof, on this side, and on that side: and
the going up to it had eight steps.

40:38 And the chambers and the entries thereof were by the posts of
the gates, where they washed the burnt offering.

40:39 And in the porch of the gate were two tables on this side, and
two tables on that side, to slay thereon the burnt offering and the
sin offering and the trespass offering.

40:40 And at the side without, as one goeth up to the entry of the
north gate, were two tables; and on the other side, which was at the
porch of the gate, were two tables.

40:41 Four tables were on this side, and four tables on that side, by
the side of the gate; eight tables, whereupon they slew their
sacrifices.

40:42 And the four tables were of hewn stone for the burnt offering,
of a cubit and an half long, and a cubit and an half broad, and one
cubit high: whereupon also they laid the instruments wherewith they
slew the burnt offering and the sacrifice.

40:43 And within were hooks, an hand broad, fastened round about: and
upon the tables was the flesh of the offering.

40:44 And without the inner gate were the chambers of the singers in
the inner court, which was at the side of the north gate; and their
prospect was toward the south: one at the side of the east gate having
the prospect toward the north.

40:45 And he said unto me, This chamber, whose prospect is toward the
south, is for the priests, the keepers of the charge of the house.

40:46 And the chamber whose prospect is toward the north is for the
priests, the keepers of the charge of the altar: these are the sons of
Zadok among the sons of Levi, which come near to the LORD to minister
unto him.

40:47 So he measured the court, an hundred cubits long, and an hundred
cubits broad, foursquare; and the altar that was before the house.

40:48 And he brought me to the porch of the house, and measured each
post of the porch, five cubits on this side, and five cubits on that
side: and the breadth of the gate was three cubits on this side, and
three cubits on that side.

40:49 The length of the porch was twenty cubits, and the breadth
eleven cubits, and he brought me by the steps whereby they went up to
it: and there were pillars by the posts, one on this side, and another
on that side.

41:1 Afterward he brought me to the temple, and measured the posts,
six cubits broad on the one side, and six cubits broad on the other
side, which was the breadth of the tabernacle.

41:2 And the breadth of the door was ten cubits; and the sides of the
door were five cubits on the one side, and five cubits on the other
side: and he measured the length thereof, forty cubits: and the
breadth, twenty cubits.

41:3 Then went he inward, and measured the post of the door, two
cubits; and the door, six cubits; and the breadth of the door, seven
cubits.

41:4 So he measured the length thereof, twenty cubits; and the
breadth, twenty cubits, before the temple: and he said unto me, This
is the most holy place.

41:5 After he measured the wall of the house, six cubits; and the
breadth of every side chamber, four cubits, round about the house on
every side.

41:6 And the side chambers were three, one over another, and thirty in
order; and they entered into the wall which was of the house for the
side chambers round about, that they might have hold, but they had not
hold in the wall of the house.

41:7 And there was an enlarging, and a winding about still upward to
the side chambers: for the winding about of the house went still
upward round about the house: therefore the breadth of the house was
still upward, and so increased from the lowest chamber to the highest
by the midst.

41:8 I saw also the height of the house round about: the foundations
of the side chambers were a full reed of six great cubits.

41:9 The thickness of the wall, which was for the side chamber
without, was five cubits: and that which was left was the place of the
side chambers that were within.

41:10 And between the chambers was the wideness of twenty cubits round
about the house on every side.

41:11 And the doors of the side chambers were toward the place that
was left, one door toward the north, and another door toward the
south: and the breadth of the place that was left was five cubits
round about.

41:12 Now the building that was before the separate place at the end
toward the west was seventy cubits broad; and the wall of the building
was five cubits thick round about, and the length thereof ninety
cubits.

41:13 So he measured the house, an hundred cubits long; and the
separate place, and the building, with the walls thereof, an hundred
cubits long; 41:14 Also the breadth of the face of the house, and of
the separate place toward the east, an hundred cubits.

41:15 And he measured the length of the building over against the
separate place which was behind it, and the galleries thereof on the
one side and on the other side, an hundred cubits, with the inner
temple, and the porches of the court; 41:16 The door posts, and the
narrow windows, and the galleries round about on their three stories,
over against the door, cieled with wood round about, and from the
ground up to the windows, and the windows were covered; 41:17 To that
above the door, even unto the inner house, and without, and by all the
wall round about within and without, by measure.

41:18 And it was made with cherubims and palm trees, so that a palm
tree was between a cherub and a cherub; and every cherub had two
faces; 41:19 So that the face of a man was toward the palm tree on the
one side, and the face of a young lion toward the palm tree on the
other side: it was made through all the house round about.

41:20 From the ground unto above the door were cherubims and palm
trees made, and on the wall of the temple.

41:21 The posts of the temple were squared, and the face of the
sanctuary; the appearance of the one as the appearance of the other.

41:22 The altar of wood was three cubits high, and the length thereof
two cubits; and the corners thereof, and the length thereof, and the
walls thereof, were of wood: and he said unto me, This is the table
that is before the LORD.

41:23 And the temple and the sanctuary had two doors.

41:24 And the doors had two leaves apiece, two turning leaves; two
leaves for the one door, and two leaves for the other door.

41:25 And there were made on them, on the doors of the temple,
cherubims and palm trees, like as were made upon the walls; and there
were thick planks upon the face of the porch without.

41:26 And there were narrow windows and palm trees on the one side and
on the other side, on the sides of the porch, and upon the side
chambers of the house, and thick planks.

42:1 Then he brought me forth into the utter court, the way toward the
north: and he brought me into the chamber that was over against the
separate place, and which was before the building toward the north.

42:2 Before the length of an hundred cubits was the north door, and
the breadth was fifty cubits.

42:3 Over against the twenty cubits which were for the inner court,
and over against the pavement which was for the utter court, was
gallery against gallery in three stories.

42:4 And before the chambers was a walk to ten cubits breadth inward,
a way of one cubit; and their doors toward the north.

42:5 Now the upper chambers were shorter: for the galleries were
higher than these, than the lower, and than the middlemost of the
building.

42:6 For they were in three stories, but had not pillars as the
pillars of the courts: therefore the building was straitened more than
the lowest and the middlemost from the ground.

42:7 And the wall that was without over against the chambers, toward
the utter court on the forepart of the chambers, the length thereof
was fifty cubits.

42:8 For the length of the chambers that were in the utter court was
fifty cubits: and, lo, before the temple were an hundred cubits.

42:9 And from under these chambers was the entry on the east side, as
one goeth into them from the utter court.

42:10 The chambers were in the thickness of the wall of the court
toward the east, over against the separate place, and over against the
building.

42:11 And the way before them was like the appearance of the chambers
which were toward the north, as long as they, and as broad as they:
and all their goings out were both according to their fashions, and
according to their doors.

42:12 And according to the doors of the chambers that were toward the
south was a door in the head of the way, even the way directly before
the wall toward the east, as one entereth into them.

42:13 Then said he unto me, The north chambers and the south chambers,
which are before the separate place, they be holy chambers, where the
priests that approach unto the LORD shall eat the most holy things:
there shall they lay the most holy things, and the meat offering, and
the sin offering, and the trespass offering; for the place is holy.

42:14 When the priests enter therein, then shall they not go out of
the holy place into the utter court, but there they shall lay their
garments wherein they minister; for they are holy; and shall put on
other garments, and shall approach to those things which are for the
people.

42:15 Now when he had made an end of measuring the inner house, he
brought me forth toward the gate whose prospect is toward the east,
and measured it round about.

42:16 He measured the east side with the measuring reed, five hundred
reeds, with the measuring reed round about.

42:17 He measured the north side, five hundred reeds, with the
measuring reed round about.

42:18 He measured the south side, five hundred reeds, with the
measuring reed.

42:19 He turned about to the west side, and measured five hundred
reeds with the measuring reed.

42:20 He measured it by the four sides: it had a wall round about,
five hundred reeds long, and five hundred broad, to make a separation
between the sanctuary and the profane place.

43:1 Afterward he brought me to the gate, even the gate that looketh
toward the east: 43:2 And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel came
from the way of the east: and his voice was like a noise of many
waters: and the earth shined with his glory.

43:3 And it was according to the appearance of the vision which I saw,
even according to the vision that I saw when I came to destroy the
city: and the visions were like the vision that I saw by the river
Chebar; and I fell upon my face.

43:4 And the glory of the LORD came into the house by the way of the
gate whose prospect is toward the east.

43:5 So the spirit took me up, and brought me into the inner court;
and, behold, the glory of the LORD filled the house.

43:6 And I heard him speaking unto me out of the house; and the man
stood by me.

43:7 And he said unto me, Son of man, the place of my throne, and the
place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the
children of Israel for ever, and my holy name, shall the house of
Israel no more defile, neither they, nor their kings, by their
whoredom, nor by the carcases of their kings in their high places.

43:8 In their setting of their threshold by my thresholds, and their
post by my posts, and the wall between me and them, they have even
defiled my holy name by their abominations that they have committed:
wherefore I have consumed them in mine anger.

43:9 Now let them put away their whoredom, and the carcases of their
kings, far from me, and I will dwell in the midst of them for ever.

43:10 Thou son of man, shew the house to the house of Israel, that
they may be ashamed of their iniquities: and let them measure the
pattern.

43:11 And if they be ashamed of all that they have done, shew them the
form of the house, and the fashion thereof, and the goings out
thereof, and the comings in thereof, and all the forms thereof, and
all the ordinances thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the
laws thereof: and write it in their sight, that they may keep the
whole form thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and do them.

43:12 This is the law of the house; Upon the top of the mountain the
whole limit thereof round about shall be most holy. Behold, this is
the law of the house.

43:13 And these are the measures of the altar after the cubits: The
cubit is a cubit and an hand breadth; even the bottom shall be a
cubit, and the breadth a cubit, and the border thereof by the edge
thereof round about shall be a span: and this shall be the higher
place of the altar.

43:14 And from the bottom upon the ground even to the lower settle
shall be two cubits, and the breadth one cubit; and from the lesser
settle even to the greater settle shall be four cubits, and the
breadth one cubit.

43:15 So the altar shall be four cubits; and from the altar and upward
shall be four horns.

43:16 And the altar shall be twelve cubits long, twelve broad, square
in the four squares thereof.

43:17 And the settle shall be fourteen cubits long and fourteen broad
in the four squares thereof; and the border about it shall be half a
cubit; and the bottom thereof shall be a cubit about; and his stairs
shall look toward the east.

43:18 And he said unto me, Son of man, thus saith the Lord GOD; These
are the ordinances of the altar in the day when they shall make it, to
offer burnt offerings thereon, and to sprinkle blood thereon.

43:19 And thou shalt give to the priests the Levites that be of the
seed of Zadok, which approach unto me, to minister unto me, saith the
Lord GOD, a young bullock for a sin offering.

43:20 And thou shalt take of the blood thereof, and put it on the four
horns of it, and on the four corners of the settle, and upon the
border round about: thus shalt thou cleanse and purge it.

43:21 Thou shalt take the bullock also of the sin offering, and he
shall burn it in the appointed place of the house, without the
sanctuary.

43:22 And on the second day thou shalt offer a kid of the goats
without blemish for a sin offering; and they shall cleanse the altar,
as they did cleanse it with the bullock.

43:23 When thou hast made an end of cleansing it, thou shalt offer a
young bullock without blemish, and a ram out of the flock without
blemish.

43:24 And thou shalt offer them before the LORD, and the priests shall
cast salt upon them, and they shall offer them up for a burnt offering
unto the LORD.

43:25 Seven days shalt thou prepare every day a goat for a sin
offering: they shall also prepare a young bullock, and a ram out of
the flock, without blemish.

43:26 Seven days shall they purge the altar and purify it; and they
shall consecrate themselves.

43:27 And when these days are expired, it shall be, that upon the
eighth day, and so forward, the priests shall make your burnt
offerings upon the altar, and your peace offerings; and I will accept
you, saith the Lord GOD.

44:1 Then he brought me back the way of the gate of the outward
sanctuary which looketh toward the east; and it was shut.

44:2 Then said the LORD unto me; This gate shall be shut, it shall not
be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the LORD, the God
of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut.

44:3 It is for the prince; the prince, he shall sit in it to eat bread
before the LORD; he shall enter by the way of the porch of that gate,
and shall go out by the way of the same.

44:4 Then brought he me the way of the north gate before the house:
and I looked, and, behold, the glory of the LORD filled the house of
the LORD: and I fell upon my face.

44:5 And the LORD said unto me, Son of man, mark well, and behold with
thine eyes, and hear with thine ears all that I say unto thee
concerning all the ordinances of the house of the LORD, and all the
laws thereof; and mark well the entering in of the house, with every
going forth of the sanctuary.

44:6 And thou shalt say to the rebellious, even to the house of
Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; O ye house of Israel, let it suffice
you of all your abominations, 44:7 In that ye have brought into my
sanctuary strangers, uncircumcised in heart, and uncircumcised in
flesh, to be in my sanctuary, to pollute it, even my house, when ye
offer my bread, the fat and the blood, and they have broken my
covenant because of all your abominations.

44:8 And ye have not kept the charge of mine holy things: but ye have
set keepers of my charge in my sanctuary for yourselves.

44:9 Thus saith the Lord GOD; No stranger, uncircumcised in heart, nor
uncircumcised in flesh, shall enter into my sanctuary, of any stranger
that is among the children of Israel.

44:10 And the Levites that are gone away far from me, when Israel went
astray, which went astray away from me after their idols; they shall
even bear their iniquity.

44:11 Yet they shall be ministers in my sanctuary, having charge at
the gates of the house, and ministering to the house: they shall slay
the burnt offering and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall
stand before them to minister unto them.

44:12 Because they ministered unto them before their idols, and caused
the house of Israel to fall into iniquity; therefore have I lifted up
mine hand against them, saith the Lord GOD, and they shall bear their
iniquity.

44:13 And they shall not come near unto me, to do the office of a
priest unto me, nor to come near to any of my holy things, in the most
holy place: but they shall bear their shame, and their abominations
which they have committed.

44:14 But I will make them keepers of the charge of the house, for all
the service thereof, and for all that shall be done therein.

44:15 But the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the
charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from
me, they shall come near to me to minister unto me, and they shall
stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord
GOD: 44:16 They shall enter into my sanctuary, and they shall come
near to my table, to minister unto me, and they shall keep my charge.

44:17 And it shall come to pass, that when they enter in at the gates
of the inner court, they shall be clothed with linen garments; and no
wool shall come upon them, whiles they minister in the gates of the
inner court, and within.

44:18 They shall have linen bonnets upon their heads, and shall have
linen breeches upon their loins; they shall not gird themselves with
any thing that causeth sweat.

44:19 And when they go forth into the utter court, even into the utter
court to the people, they shall put off their garments wherein they
ministered, and lay them in the holy chambers, and they shall put on
other garments; and they shall not sanctify the people with their
garments.

44:20 Neither shall they shave their heads, nor suffer their locks to
grow long; they shall only poll their heads.

44:21 Neither shall any priest drink wine, when they enter into the
inner court.

44:22 Neither shall they take for their wives a widow, nor her that is
put away: but they shall take maidens of the seed of the house of
Israel, or a widow that had a priest before.

44:23 And they shall teach my people the difference between the holy
and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the
clean.

44:24 And in controversy they shall stand in judgment; and they shall
judge it according to my judgments: and they shall keep my laws and my
statutes in all mine assemblies; and they shall hallow my sabbaths.

44:25 And they shall come at no dead person to defile themselves: but
for father, or for mother, or for son, or for daughter, for brother,
or for sister that hath had no husband, they may defile themselves.

44:26 And after he is cleansed, they shall reckon unto him seven days.

44:27 And in the day that he goeth into the sanctuary, unto the inner
court, to minister in the sanctuary, he shall offer his sin offering,
saith the Lord GOD.

44:28 And it shall be unto them for an inheritance: I am their
inheritance: and ye shall give them no possession in Israel: I am
their possession.

44:29 They shall eat the meat offering, and the sin offering, and the
trespass offering: and every dedicated thing in Israel shall be
theirs.

44:30 And the first of all the firstfruits of all things, and every
oblation of all, of every sort of your oblations, shall be the
priest's: ye shall also give unto the priest the first of your dough,
that he may cause the blessing to rest in thine house.

44:31 The priests shall not eat of any thing that is dead of itself,
or torn, whether it be fowl or beast.

45:1 Moreover, when ye shall divide by lot the land for inheritance,
ye shall offer an oblation unto the LORD, an holy portion of the land:
the length shall be the length of five and twenty thousand reeds, and
the breadth shall be ten thousand. This shall be holy in all the
borders thereof round about.

45:2 Of this there shall be for the sanctuary five hundred in length,
with five hundred in breadth, square round about; and fifty cubits
round about for the suburbs thereof.

45:3 And of this measure shalt thou measure the length of five and
twenty thousand, and the breadth of ten thousand: and in it shall be
the sanctuary and the most holy place.

45:4 The holy portion of the land shall be for the priests the
ministers of the sanctuary, which shall come near to minister unto the
LORD: and it shall be a place for their houses, and an holy place for
the sanctuary.

45:5 And the five and twenty thousand of length, and the ten thousand
of breadth shall also the Levites, the ministers of the house, have
for themselves, for a possession for twenty chambers.

45:6 And ye shall appoint the possession of the city five thousand
broad, and five and twenty thousand long, over against the oblation of
the holy portion: it shall be for the whole house of Israel.

45:7 And a portion shall be for the prince on the one side and on the
other side of the oblation of the holy portion, and of the possession
of the city, before the oblation of the holy portion, and before the
possession of the city, from the west side westward, and from the east
side eastward: and the length shall be over against one of the
portions, from the west border unto the east border.

45:8 In the land shall be his possession in Israel: and my princes
shall no more oppress my people; and the rest of the land shall they
give to the house of Israel according to their tribes.

45:9 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Let it suffice you, O princes of Israel:
remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, take away
your exactions from my people, saith the Lord GOD.

45:10 Ye shall have just balances, and a just ephah, and a just bath.

45:11 The ephah and the bath shall be of one measure, that the bath
may contain the tenth part of an homer, and the ephah the tenth part
of an homer: the measure thereof shall be after the homer.

45:12 And the shekel shall be twenty gerahs: twenty shekels, five and
twenty shekels, fifteen shekels, shall be your maneh.

45:13 This is the oblation that ye shall offer; the sixth part of an
ephah of an homer of wheat, and ye shall give the sixth part of an
ephah of an homer of barley: 45:14 Concerning the ordinance of oil,
the bath of oil, ye shall offer the tenth part of a bath out of the
cor, which is an homer of ten baths; for ten baths are an homer: 45:15
And one lamb out of the flock, out of two hundred, out of the fat
pastures of Israel; for a meat offering, and for a burnt offering, and
for peace offerings, to make reconciliation for them, saith the Lord
GOD.

45:16 All the people of the land shall give this oblation for the
prince in Israel.

45:17 And it shall be the prince's part to give burnt offerings, and
meat offerings, and drink offerings, in the feasts, and in the new
moons, and in the sabbaths, in all solemnities of the house of Israel:
he shall prepare the sin offering, and the meat offering, and the
burnt offering, and the peace offerings, to make reconciliation for
the house of Israel.

45:18 Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the first month, in the first day of
the month, thou shalt take a young bullock without blemish, and
cleanse the sanctuary: 45:19 And the priest shall take of the blood of
the sin offering, and put it upon the posts of the house, and upon the
four corners of the settle of the altar, and upon the posts of the
gate of the inner court.

45:20 And so thou shalt do the seventh day of the month for every one
that erreth, and for him that is simple: so shall ye reconcile the
house.

45:21 In the first month, in the fourteenth day of the month, ye shall
have the passover, a feast of seven days; unleavened bread shall be
eaten.

45:22 And upon that day shall the prince prepare for himself and for
all the people of the land a bullock for a sin offering.

45:23 And seven days of the feast he shall prepare a burnt offering to
the LORD, seven bullocks and seven rams without blemish daily the
seven days; and a kid of the goats daily for a sin offering.

45:24 And he shall prepare a meat offering of an ephah for a bullock,
and an ephah for a ram, and an hin of oil for an ephah.

45:25 In the seventh month, in the fifteenth day of the month, shall
he do the like in the feast of the seven days, according to the sin
offering, according to the burnt offering, and according to the meat
offering, and according to the oil.

46:1 Thus saith the Lord GOD; The gate of the inner court that looketh
toward the east shall be shut the six working days; but on the sabbath
it shall be opened, and in the day of the new moon it shall be opened.

46:2 And the prince shall enter by the way of the porch of that gate
without, and shall stand by the post of the gate, and the priests
shall prepare his burnt offering and his peace offerings, and he shall
worship at the threshold of the gate: then he shall go forth; but the
gate shall not be shut until the evening.

46:3 Likewise the people of the land shall worship at the door of this
gate before the LORD in the sabbaths and in the new moons.

46:4 And the burnt offering that the prince shall offer unto the LORD
in the sabbath day shall be six lambs without blemish, and a ram
without blemish.

46:5 And the meat offering shall be an ephah for a ram, and the meat
offering for the lambs as he shall be able to give, and an hin of oil
to an ephah.

46:6 And in the day of the new moon it shall be a young bullock
without blemish, and six lambs, and a ram: they shall be without
blemish.

46:7 And he shall prepare a meat offering, an ephah for a bullock, and
an ephah for a ram, and for the lambs according as his hand shall
attain unto, and an hin of oil to an ephah.

46:8 And when the prince shall enter, he shall go in by the way of the
porch of that gate, and he shall go forth by the way thereof.

46:9 But when the people of the land shall come before the LORD in the
solemn feasts, he that entereth in by the way of the north gate to
worship shall go out by the way of the south gate; and he that
entereth by the way of the south gate shall go forth by the way of the
north gate: he shall not return by the way of the gate whereby he came
in, but shall go forth over against it.

46:10 And the prince in the midst of them, when they go in, shall go
in; and when they go forth, shall go forth.

46:11 And in the feasts and in the solemnities the meat offering shall
be an ephah to a bullock, and an ephah to a ram, and to the lambs as
he is able to give, and an hin of oil to an ephah.

46:12 Now when the prince shall prepare a voluntary burnt offering or
peace offerings voluntarily unto the LORD, one shall then open him the
gate that looketh toward the east, and he shall prepare his burnt
offering and his peace offerings, as he did on the sabbath day: then
he shall go forth; and after his going forth one shall shut the gate.

46:13 Thou shalt daily prepare a burnt offering unto the LORD of a
lamb of the first year without blemish: thou shalt prepare it every
morning.

46:14 And thou shalt prepare a meat offering for it every morning, the
sixth part of an ephah, and the third part of an hin of oil, to temper
with the fine flour; a meat offering continually by a perpetual
ordinance unto the LORD.

46:15 Thus shall they prepare the lamb, and the meat offering, and the
oil, every morning for a continual burnt offering.

46:16 Thus saith the Lord GOD; If the prince give a gift unto any of
his sons, the inheritance thereof shall be his sons'; it shall be
their possession by inheritance.

46:17 But if he give a gift of his inheritance to one of his servants,
then it shall be his to the year of liberty; after it shall return to
the prince: but his inheritance shall be his sons' for them.

46:18 Moreover the prince shall not take of the people's inheritance
by oppression, to thrust them out of their possession; but he shall
give his sons inheritance out of his own possession: that my people be
not scattered every man from his possession.

46:19 After he brought me through the entry, which was at the side of
the gate, into the holy chambers of the priests, which looked toward
the north: and, behold, there was a place on the two sides westward.

46:20 Then said he unto me, This is the place where the priests shall
boil the trespass offering and the sin offering, where they shall bake
the meat offering; that they bear them not out into the utter court,
to sanctify the people.

46:21 Then he brought me forth into the utter court, and caused me to
pass by the four corners of the court; and, behold, in every corner of
the court there was a court.

46:22 In the four corners of the court there were courts joined of
forty cubits long and thirty broad: these four corners were of one
measure.

46:23 And there was a row of building round about in them, round about
them four, and it was made with boiling places under the rows round
about.

46:24 Then said he unto me, These are the places of them that boil,
where the ministers of the house shall boil the sacrifice of the
people.

47:1 Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house; and,
behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house
eastward: for the forefront of the house stood toward the east, and
the waters came down from under from the right side of the house, at
the south side of the altar.

47:2 Then brought he me out of the way of the gate northward, and led
me about the way without unto the utter gate by the way that looketh
eastward; and, behold, there ran out waters on the right side.

47:3 And when the man that had the line in his hand went forth
eastward, he measured a thousand cubits, and he brought me through the
waters; the waters were to the ankles.

47:4 Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through the waters;
the waters were to the knees. Again he measured a thousand, and
brought me through; the waters were to the loins.

47:5 Afterward he measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could
not pass over: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river
that could not be passed over.

47:6 And he said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen this? Then he
brought me, and caused me to return to the brink of the river.

47:7 Now when I had returned, behold, at the bank of the river were
very many trees on the one side and on the other.

47:8 Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east
country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea: which being
brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed.

47:9 And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which
moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there
shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall
come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live
whither the river cometh.

47:10 And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it
from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth
nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the
great sea, exceeding many.

47:11 But the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not
be healed; they shall be given to salt.

47:12 And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that
side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade,
neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new
fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of
the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf
thereof for medicine.

47:13 Thus saith the Lord GOD; This shall be the border, whereby ye
shall inherit the land according to the twelve tribes of Israel:
Joseph shall have two portions.

47:14 And ye shall inherit it, one as well as another: concerning the
which I lifted up mine hand to give it unto your fathers: and this
land shall fall unto you for inheritance.

47:15 And this shall be the border of the land toward the north side,
from the great sea, the way of Hethlon, as men go to Zedad; 47:16
Hamath, Berothah, Sibraim, which is between the border of Damascus and
the border of Hamath; Hazarhatticon, which is by the coast of Hauran.

47:17 And the border from the sea shall be Hazarenan, the border of
Damascus, and the north northward, and the border of Hamath. And this
is the north side.

47:18 And the east side ye shall measure from Hauran, and from
Damascus, and from Gilead, and from the land of Israel by Jordan, from
the border unto the east sea. And this is the east side.

47:19 And the south side southward, from Tamar even to the waters of
strife in Kadesh, the river to the great sea. And this is the south
side southward.

47:20 The west side also shall be the great sea from the border, till
a man come over against Hamath. This is the west side.

47:21 So shall ye divide this land unto you according to the tribes of
Israel.

47:22 And it shall come to pass, that ye shall divide it by lot for an
inheritance unto you, and to the strangers that sojourn among you,
which shall beget children among you: and they shall be unto you as
born in the country among the children of Israel; they shall have
inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel.

47:23 And it shall come to pass, that in what tribe the stranger
sojourneth, there shall ye give him his inheritance, saith the Lord
GOD.

48:1 Now these are the names of the tribes. From the north end to the
coast of the way of Hethlon, as one goeth to Hamath, Hazarenan, the
border of Damascus northward, to the coast of Hamath; for these are
his sides east and west; a portion for Dan.

48:2 And by the border of Dan, from the east side unto the west side,
a portion for Asher.

48:3 And by the border of Asher, from the east side even unto the west
side, a portion for Naphtali.

48:4 And by the border of Naphtali, from the east side unto the west
side, a portion for Manasseh.

48:5 And by the border of Manasseh, from the east side unto the west
side, a portion for Ephraim.

48:6 And by the border of Ephraim, from the east side even unto the
west side, a portion for Reuben.

48:7 And by the border of Reuben, from the east side unto the west
side, a portion for Judah.

48:8 And by the border of Judah, from the east side unto the west
side, shall be the offering which ye shall offer of five and twenty
thousand reeds in breadth, and in length as one of the other parts,
from the east side unto the west side: and the sanctuary shall be in
the midst of it.

48:9 The oblation that ye shall offer unto the LORD shall be of five
and twenty thousand in length, and of ten thousand in breadth.

48:10 And for them, even for the priests, shall be this holy oblation;
toward the north five and twenty thousand in length, and toward the
west ten thousand in breadth, and toward the east ten thousand in
breadth, and toward the south five and twenty thousand in length: and
the sanctuary of the LORD shall be in the midst thereof.

48:11 It shall be for the priests that are sanctified of the sons of
Zadok; which have kept my charge, which went not astray when the
children of Israel went astray, as the Levites went astray.

48:12 And this oblation of the land that is offered shall be unto them
a thing most holy by the border of the Levites.

48:13 And over against the border of the priests the Levites shall
have five and twenty thousand in length, and ten thousand in breadth:
all the length shall be five and twenty thousand, and the breadth ten
thousand.

48:14 And they shall not sell of it, neither exchange, nor alienate
the firstfruits of the land: for it is holy unto the LORD.

48:15 And the five thousand, that are left in the breadth over against
the five and twenty thousand, shall be a profane place for the city,
for dwelling, and for suburbs: and the city shall be in the midst
thereof.

48:16 And these shall be the measures thereof; the north side four
thousand and five hundred, and the south side four thousand and five
hundred, and on the east side four thousand and five hundred, and the
west side four thousand and five hundred.

48:17 And the suburbs of the city shall be toward the north two
hundred and fifty, and toward the south two hundred and fifty, and
toward the east two hundred and fifty, and toward the west two hundred
and fifty.

48:18 And the residue in length over against the oblation of the holy
portion shall be ten thousand eastward, and ten thousand westward: and
it shall be over against the oblation of the holy portion; and the
increase thereof shall be for food unto them that serve the city.

48:19 And they that serve the city shall serve it out of all the
tribes of Israel.

48:20 All the oblation shall be five and twenty thousand by five and
twenty thousand: ye shall offer the holy oblation foursquare, with the
possession of the city.

48:21 And the residue shall be for the prince, on the one side and on
the other of the holy oblation, and of the possession of the city,
over against the five and twenty thousand of the oblation toward the
east border, and westward over against the five and twenty thousand
toward the west border, over against the portions for the prince: and
it shall be the holy oblation; and the sanctuary of the house shall be
in the midst thereof.

48:22 Moreover from the possession of the Levites, and from the
possession of the city, being in the midst of that which is the
prince's, between the border of Judah and the border of Benjamin,
shall be for the prince.

48:23 As for the rest of the tribes, from the east side unto the west
side, Benjamin shall have a portion.

48:24 And by the border of Benjamin, from the east side unto the west
side, Simeon shall have a portion.

48:25 And by the border of Simeon, from the east side unto the west
side, Issachar a portion.

48:26 And by the border of Issachar, from the east side unto the west
side, Zebulun a portion.

48:27 And by the border of Zebulun, from the east side unto the west
side, Gad a portion.

48:28 And by the border of Gad, at the south side southward, the
border shall be even from Tamar unto the waters of strife in Kadesh,
and to the river toward the great sea.

48:29 This is the land which ye shall divide by lot unto the tribes of
Israel for inheritance, and these are their portions, saith the Lord
GOD.

48:30 And these are the goings out of the city on the north side, four
thousand and five hundred measures.

48:31 And the gates of the city shall be after the names of the tribes
of Israel: three gates northward; one gate of Reuben, one gate of
Judah, one gate of Levi.

48:32 And at the east side four thousand and five hundred: and three
gates; and one gate of Joseph, one gate of Benjamin, one gate of Dan.

48:33 And at the south side four thousand and five hundred measures:
and three gates; one gate of Simeon, one gate of Issachar, one gate of
Zebulun.

48:34 At the west side four thousand and five hundred, with their
three gates; one gate of Gad, one gate of Asher, one gate of Naphtali.

48:35 It was round about eighteen thousand measures: and the name of
the city from that day shall be, The LORD is there.




The Book of Daniel


1:1 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it.

1:2 And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part
of the vessels of the house of God: which he carried into the land of
Shinar to the house of his god; and he brought the vessels into the
treasure house of his god.

1:3 And the king spake unto Ashpenaz the master of his eunuchs, that
he should bring certain of the children of Israel, and of the king's
seed, and of the princes; 1:4 Children in whom was no blemish, but
well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge,
and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in
the king's palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the
tongue of the Chaldeans.

1:5 And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king's meat,
and of the wine which he drank: so nourishing them three years, that
at the end thereof they might stand before the king.

1:6 Now among these were of the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah,
Mishael, and Azariah: 1:7 Unto whom the prince of the eunuchs gave
names: for he gave unto Daniel the name of Belteshazzar; and to
Hananiah, of Shadrach; and to Mishael, of Meshach; and to Azariah, of
Abednego.

1:8 But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself
with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank:
therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not
defile himself.

1:9 Now God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the
prince of the eunuchs.

1:10 And the prince of the eunuchs said unto Daniel, I fear my lord
the king, who hath appointed your meat and your drink: for why should
he see your faces worse liking than the children which are of your
sort? then shall ye make me endanger my head to the king.

1:11 Then said Daniel to Melzar, whom the prince of the eunuchs had
set over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, 1:12 Prove thy
servants, I beseech thee, ten days; and let them give us pulse to eat,
and water to drink.

1:13 Then let our countenances be looked upon before thee, and the
countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the king's
meat: and as thou seest, deal with thy servants.

1:14 So he consented to them in this matter, and proved them ten days.

1:15 And at the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and
fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the
king's meat.

1:16 Thus Melzar took away the portion of their meat, and the wine
that they should drink; and gave them pulse.

1:17 As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in
all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions
and dreams.

1:18 Now at the end of the days that the king had said he should bring
them in, then the prince of the eunuchs brought them in before
Nebuchadnezzar.

1:19 And the king communed with them; and among them all was found
none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: therefore stood they
before the king.

1:20 And in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king
enquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the
magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.

1:21 And Daniel continued even unto the first year of king Cyrus.

2:1 And in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar
Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, wherewith his spirit was troubled, and
his sleep brake from him.

2:2 Then the king commanded to call the magicians, and the
astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans, for to shew the
king his dreams. So they came and stood before the king.

2:3 And the king said unto them, I have dreamed a dream, and my spirit
was troubled to know the dream.

2:4 Then spake the Chaldeans to the king in Syriack, O king, live for
ever: tell thy servants the dream, and we will shew the
interpretation.

2:5 The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, The thing is gone
from me: if ye will not make known unto me the dream, with the
interpretation thereof, ye shall be cut in pieces, and your houses
shall be made a dunghill.

2:6 But if ye shew the dream, and the interpretation thereof, ye shall
receive of me gifts and rewards and great honour: therefore shew me
the dream, and the interpretation thereof.

2:7 They answered again and said, Let the king tell his servants the
dream, and we will shew the interpretation of it.

2:8 The king answered and said, I know of certainty that ye would gain
the time, because ye see the thing is gone from me.

2:9 But if ye will not make known unto me the dream, there is but one
decree for you: for ye have prepared lying and corrupt words to speak
before me, till the time be changed: therefore tell me the dream, and
I shall know that ye can shew me the interpretation thereof.

2:10 The Chaldeans answered before the king, and said, There is not a
man upon the earth that can shew the king's matter: therefore there is
no king, lord, nor ruler, that asked such things at any magician, or
astrologer, or Chaldean.

2:11 And it is a rare thing that the king requireth, and there is none
other that can shew it before the king, except the gods, whose
dwelling is not with flesh.

2:12 For this cause the king was angry and very furious, and commanded
to destroy all the wise men of Babylon.

2:13 And the decree went forth that the wise men should be slain; and
they sought Daniel and his fellows to be slain.

2:14 Then Daniel answered with counsel and wisdom to Arioch the
captain of the king's guard, which was gone forth to slay the wise men
of Babylon: 2:15 He answered and said to Arioch the king's captain,
Why is the decree so hasty from the king? Then Arioch made the thing
known to Daniel.

2:16 Then Daniel went in, and desired of the king that he would give
him time, and that he would shew the king the interpretation.

2:17 Then Daniel went to his house, and made the thing known to
Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions: 2:18 That they would
desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret; that
Daniel and his fellows should not perish with the rest of the wise men
of Babylon.

2:19 Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. Then
Daniel blessed the God of heaven.

2:20 Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and
ever: for wisdom and might are his: 2:21 And he changeth the times and
the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom
unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding: 2:22 He
revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the
darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.

2:23 I thank thee, and praise thee, O thou God of my fathers, who hast
given me wisdom and might, and hast made known unto me now what we
desired of thee: for thou hast now made known unto us the king's
matter.

2:24 Therefore Daniel went in unto Arioch, whom the king had ordained
to destroy the wise men of Babylon: he went and said thus unto him;
Destroy not the wise men of Babylon: bring me in before the king, and
I will shew unto the king the interpretation.

2:25 Then Arioch brought in Daniel before the king in haste, and said
thus unto him, I have found a man of the captives of Judah, that will
make known unto the king the interpretation.

2:26 The king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was
Belteshazzar, Art thou able to make known unto me the dream which I
have seen, and the interpretation thereof?  2:27 Daniel answered in
the presence of the king, and said, The secret which the king hath
demanded cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the
soothsayers, shew unto the king; 2:28 But there is a God in heaven
that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar
what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream, and the visions of thy
head upon thy bed, are these; 2:29 As for thee, O king, thy thoughts
came into thy mind upon thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter:
and he that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to
pass.

2:30 But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom
that I have more than any living, but for their sakes that shall make
known the interpretation to the king, and that thou mightest know the
thoughts of thy heart.

2:31 Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image,
whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form
thereof was terrible.

2:32 This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of
silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, 2:33 His legs of iron, his
feet part of iron and part of clay.

2:34 Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which
smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake
them to pieces.

2:35 Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold,
broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer
threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was
found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great
mountain, and filled the whole earth.

2:36 This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof
before the king.

2:37 Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath
given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory.

2:38 And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the
field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and
hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold.

2:39 And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and
another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the
earth.

2:40 And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron
breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh
all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.

2:41 And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay,
and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in
it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron
mixed with miry clay.

2:42 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay,
so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.

2:43 And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall
mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one
to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.

2:44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a
kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be
left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all
these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.

2:45 Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the
mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the
brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made
known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is
certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.

2:46 Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face, and worshipped
Daniel, and commanded that they should offer an oblation and sweet
odours unto him.

2:47 The king answered unto Daniel, and said, Of a truth it is, that
your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of
secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret.

2:48 Then the king made Daniel a great man, and gave him many great
gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and
chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon.

2:49 Then Daniel requested of the king, and he set Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, over the affairs of the province of Babylon: but Daniel
sat in the gate of the king.

3:1 Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was
threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it up in
the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.

3:2 Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the princes,
the governors, and the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the
counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to
come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had
set up.

3:3 Then the princes, the governors, and captains, the judges, the
treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the
provinces, were gathered together unto the dedication of the image
that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and they stood before the
image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

3:4 Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people,
nations, and languages, 3:5 That at what time ye hear the sound of the
cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of
musick, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar
the king hath set up: 3:6 And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth
shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.

3:7 Therefore at that time, when all the people heard the sound of the
cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of musick, all
the people, the nations, and the languages, fell down and worshipped
the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

3:8 Wherefore at that time certain Chaldeans came near, and accused
the Jews.

3:9 They spake and said to the king Nebuchadnezzar, O king, live for
ever.

3:10 Thou, O king, hast made a decree, that every man that shall hear
the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer,
and all kinds of musick, shall fall down and worship the golden image:
3:11 And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth, that he should be
cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.

3:12 There are certain Jews whom thou hast set over the affairs of the
province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; these men, O
king, have not regarded thee: they serve not thy gods, nor worship the
golden image which thou hast set up.

3:13 Then Nebuchadnezzar in his rage and fury commanded to bring
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Then they brought these men before
the king.

3:14 Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden
image which I have set up?  3:15 Now if ye be ready that at what time
ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and
dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image
which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the
same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that
God that shall deliver you out of my hands?  3:16 Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are
not careful to answer thee in this matter.

3:17 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the
burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O
king.

3:18 But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve
thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

3:19 Then was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury, and the form of his visage
was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego: therefore he
spake, and commanded that they should heat the furnace one seven times
more than it was wont to be heated.

3:20 And he commanded the most mighty men that were in his army to
bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to cast them into the
burning fiery furnace.

3:21 Then these men were bound in their coats, their hosen, and their
hats, and their other garments, and were cast into the midst of the
burning fiery furnace.

3:22 Therefore because the king's commandment was urgent, and the
furnace exceeding hot, the flames of the fire slew those men that took
up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

3:23 And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down
bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.

3:24 Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonied, and rose up in haste,
and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men
bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the
king, True, O king.

3:25 He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the
midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth
is like the Son of God.

3:26 Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning fiery
furnace, and spake, and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, ye
servants of the most high God, come forth, and come hither. Then
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, came forth of the midst of the fire.

3:27 And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king's
counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies
the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither
were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.

3:28 Then Nebuchadnezzar spake, and said, Blessed be the God of
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and
delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the
king's word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor
worship any god, except their own God.

3:29 Therefore I make a decree, That every people, nation, and
language, which speak any thing amiss against the God of Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall
be made a dunghill: because there is no other God that can deliver
after this sort.

3:30 Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, in the
province of Babylon.

4:1 Nebuchadnezzar the king, unto all people, nations, and languages,
that dwell in all the earth; Peace be multiplied unto you.

4:2 I thought it good to shew the signs and wonders that the high God
hath wrought toward me.

4:3 How great are his signs! and how mighty are his wonders! his
kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion is from generation
to generation.

4:4 I Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in mine house, and flourishing in my
palace: 4:5 I saw a dream which made me afraid, and the thoughts upon
my bed and the visions of my head troubled me.

4:6 Therefore made I a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon
before me, that they might make known unto me the interpretation of
the dream.

4:7 Then came in the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and
the soothsayers: and I told the dream before them; but they did not
make known unto me the interpretation thereof.

4:8 But at the last Daniel came in before me, whose name was
Belteshazzar, according to the name of my God, and in whom is the
spirit of the holy gods: and before him I told the dream, saying, 4:9
O Belteshazzar, master of the magicians, because I know that the
spirit of the holy gods is in thee, and no secret troubleth thee, tell
me the visions of my dream that I have seen, and the interpretation
thereof.

4:10 Thus were the visions of mine head in my bed; I saw, and behold a
tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great.

4:11 The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached
unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth: 4:12
The leaves thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it
was meat for all: the beasts of the field had shadow under it, and the
fowls of the heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof, and all flesh was fed
of it.

4:13 I saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, and, behold, a
watcher and an holy one came down from heaven; 4:14 He cried aloud,
and said thus, Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches, shake off
his leaves, and scatter his fruit: let the beasts get away from under
it, and the fowls from his branches: 4:15 Nevertheless leave the stump
of his roots in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the
tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven,
and let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth: 4:16
Let his heart be changed from man's, and let a beast's heart be given
unto him; and let seven times pass over him.

4:17 This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by
the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that
the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to
whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men.

4:18 This dream I king Nebuchadnezzar have seen. Now thou, O
Belteshazzar, declare the interpretation thereof, forasmuch as all the
wise men of my kingdom are not able to make known unto me the
interpretation: but thou art able; for the spirit of the holy gods is
in thee.

4:19 Then Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was astonied for one
hour, and his thoughts troubled him. The king spake, and said,
Belteshazzar, let not the dream, or the interpretation thereof,
trouble thee. Belteshazzar answered and said, My lord, the dream be to
them that hate thee, and the interpretation thereof to thine enemies.

4:20 The tree that thou sawest, which grew, and was strong, whose
height reached unto the heaven, and the sight thereof to all the
earth; 4:21 Whose leaves were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in
it was meat for all; under which the beasts of the field dwelt, and
upon whose branches the fowls of the heaven had their habitation: 4:22
It is thou, O king, that art grown and become strong: for thy
greatness is grown, and reacheth unto heaven, and thy dominion to the
end of the earth.

4:23 And whereas the king saw a watcher and an holy one coming down
from heaven, and saying, Hew the tree down, and destroy it; yet leave
the stump of the roots thereof in the earth, even with a band of iron
and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with
the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the
field, till seven times pass over him; 4:24 This is the
interpretation, O king, and this is the decree of the most High, which
is come upon my lord the king: 4:25 That they shall drive thee from
men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and they
shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and they shall wet thee with the
dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee, till thou know
that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to
whomsoever he will.

4:26 And whereas they commanded to leave the stump of the tree roots;
thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, after that thou shalt have known
that the heavens do rule.

4:27 Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and
break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing
mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity.

4:28 All this came upon the king Nebuchadnezzar.

4:29 At the end of twelve months he walked in the palace of the
kingdom of Babylon.

4:30 The king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have
built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for
the honour of my majesty?  4:31 While the word was in the king's
mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar,
to thee it is spoken; The kingdom is departed from thee.

4:32 And they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be
with the beasts of the field: they shall make thee to eat grass as
oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee, until thou know that the
most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he
will.

4:33 The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he
was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet
with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles'
feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.

4:34 And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes
unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed
the most High, and I praised and honoured him that liveth for ever,
whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from
generation to generation: 4:35 And all the inhabitants of the earth
are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army
of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay
his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?  4:36 At the same time my
reason returned unto me; and for the glory of my kingdom, mine honour
and brightness returned unto me; and my counsellors and my lords
sought unto me; and I was established in my kingdom, and excellent
majesty was added unto me.

4:37 Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of
heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those
that walk in pride he is able to abase.

5:1 Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords,
and drank wine before the thousand.

5:2 Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the
golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken
out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his
princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein.

5:3 Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the
temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king, and
his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank in them.

5:4 They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of
brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.

5:5 In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote
over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the
king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.

5:6 Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled
him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote
one against another.

5:7 The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans,
and the soothsayers. And the king spake, and said to the wise men of
Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and shew me the
interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a
chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the
kingdom.

5:8 Then came in all the king's wise men: but they could not read the
writing, nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof.

5:9 Then was king Belshazzar greatly troubled, and his countenance was
changed in him, and his lords were astonied.

5:10 Now the queen by reason of the words of the king and his lords
came into the banquet house: and the queen spake and said, O king,
live for ever: let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy
countenance be changed: 5:11 There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is
the spirit of the holy gods; and in the days of thy father light and
understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found in
him; whom the king Nebuchadnezzar thy father, the king, I say, thy
father, made master of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and
soothsayers; 5:12 Forasmuch as an excellent spirit, and knowledge, and
understanding, interpreting of dreams, and shewing of hard sentences,
and dissolving of doubts, were found in the same Daniel, whom the king
named Belteshazzar: now let Daniel be called, and he will shew the
interpretation.

5:13 Then was Daniel brought in before the king. And the king spake
and said unto Daniel, Art thou that Daniel, which art of the children
of the captivity of Judah, whom the king my father brought out of
Jewry?  5:14 I have even heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is
in thee, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom is
found in thee.

5:15 And now the wise men, the astrologers, have been brought in
before me, that they should read this writing, and make known unto me
the interpretation thereof: but they could not shew the interpretation
of the thing: 5:16 And I have heard of thee, that thou canst make
interpretations, and dissolve doubts: now if thou canst read the
writing, and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt
be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about thy neck, and
shalt be the third ruler in the kingdom.

5:17 Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let thy gifts be
to thyself, and give thy rewards to another; yet I will read the
writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation.

5:18 O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a
kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour: 5:19 And for the majesty
that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages, trembled and
feared before him: whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept
alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he would he put down.

5:20 But when his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in pride,
he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from
him: 5:21 And he was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was
made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses: they
fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of
heaven; till he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of
men, and that he appointeth over it whomsoever he will.

5:22 And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart,
though thou knewest all this; 5:23 But hast lifted up thyself against
the Lord of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his house
before thee, and thou, and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines,
have drunk wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and
gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor
know: and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy
ways, hast thou not glorified: 5:24 Then was the part of the hand sent
from him; and this writing was written.

5:25 And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL,
UPHARSIN.

5:26 This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered
thy kingdom, and finished it.

5:27 TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

5:28 PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and
Persians.

5:29 Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet,
and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation
concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.

5:30 In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.

5:31 And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore
and two years old.

6:1 It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty
princes, which should be over the whole kingdom; 6:2 And over these
three presidents; of whom Daniel was first: that the princes might
give accounts unto them, and the king should have no damage.

6:3 Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes,
because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to set
him over the whole realm.

6:4 Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against
Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor
fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or
fault found in him.

6:5 Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this
Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.

6:6 Then these presidents and princes assembled together to the king,
and said thus unto him, King Darius, live for ever.

6:7 All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes,
the counsellors, and the captains, have consulted together to
establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever
shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee,
O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions.

6:8 Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it
be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which
altereth not.

6:9 Wherefore king Darius signed the writing and the decree.

6:10 Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into
his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem,
he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave
thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.

6:11 Then these men assembled, and found Daniel praying and making
supplication before his God.

6:12 Then they came near, and spake before the king concerning the
king's decree; Hast thou not signed a decree, that every man that
shall ask a petition of any God or man within thirty days, save of
thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions? The king answered
and said, The thing is true, according to the law of the Medes and
Persians, which altereth not.

6:13 Then answered they and said before the king, That Daniel, which
is of the children of the captivity of Judah, regardeth not thee, O
king, nor the decree that thou hast signed, but maketh his petition
three times a day.

6:14 Then the king, when he heard these words, was sore displeased
with himself, and set his heart on Daniel to deliver him: and he
laboured till the going down of the sun to deliver him.

6:15 Then these men assembled unto the king, and said unto the king,
Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Persians is, That no
decree nor statute which the king establisheth may be changed.

6:16 Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him
into the den of lions. Now the king spake and said unto Daniel, Thy
God whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee.

6:17 And a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; and
the king sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his
lords; that the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel.

6:18 Then the king went to his palace, and passed the night fasting:
neither were instruments of musick brought before him: and his sleep
went from him.

6:19 Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste
unto the den of lions.

6:20 And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice
unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant
of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to
deliver thee from the lions?  6:21 Then said Daniel unto the king, O
king, live for ever.

6:22 My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that
they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in
me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt.

6:23 Then was the king exceedingly glad for him, and commanded that
they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out
of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he
believed in his God.

6:24 And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had
accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their
children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and
brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the
den.

6:25 Then king Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages,
that dwell in all the earth; Peace be multiplied unto you.

6:26 I make a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble
and fear before the God of Daniel: for he is the living God, and
stedfast for ever, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed,
and his dominion shall be even unto the end.

6:27 He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in
heaven and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the
lions.

6:28 So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign
of Cyrus the Persian.

7:1 In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream
and visions of his head upon his bed: then he wrote the dream, and
told the sum of the matters.

7:2 Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold,
the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea.

7:3 And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from
another.

7:4 The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I beheld till
the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth,
and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to
it.

7:5 And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised
up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it
between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour
much flesh.

7:6 After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had
upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four
heads; and dominion was given to it.

7:7 After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast,
dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron
teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with
the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were
before it; and it had ten horns.

7:8 I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them
another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns
plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the
eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.

7:9 I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days
did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head
like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his
wheels as burning fire.

7:10 A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand
thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand
stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.

7:11 I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the
horn spake: I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body
destroyed, and given to the burning flame.

7:12 As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion
taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time.

7:13 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man
came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and
they brought him near before him.

7:14 And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that
all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is
an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom
that which shall not be destroyed.

7:15 I Daniel was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body, and
the visions of my head troubled me.

7:16 I came near unto one of them that stood by, and asked him the
truth of all this. So he told me, and made me know the interpretation
of the things.

7:17 These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall
arise out of the earth.

7:18 But the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and
possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever.

7:19 Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was
diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of
iron, and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and
stamped the residue with his feet; 7:20 And of the ten horns that were
in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three
fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very
great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows.

7:21 I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and
prevailed against them; 7:22 Until the Ancient of days came, and
judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came
that the saints possessed the kingdom.

7:23 Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon
earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the
whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.

7:24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall
arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from
the first, and he shall subdue three kings.

7:25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall
wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and
laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and
the dividing of time.

7:26 But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his
dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end.

7:27 And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom
under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of
the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all
dominions shall serve and obey him.

7:28 Hitherto is the end of the matter. As for me Daniel, my
cogitations much troubled me, and my countenance changed in me: but I
kept the matter in my heart.

8:1 In the third year of the reign of king Belshazzar a vision
appeared unto me, even unto me Daniel, after that which appeared unto
me at the first.

8:2 And I saw in a vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that I was
at Shushan in the palace, which is in the province of Elam; and I saw
in a vision, and I was by the river of Ulai.

8:3 Then I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there stood
before the river a ram which had two horns: and the two horns were
high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last.

8:4 I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so
that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there any that
could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and
became great.

8:5 And as I was considering, behold, an he goat came from the west on
the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat
had a notable horn between his eyes.

8:6 And he came to the ram that had two horns, which I had seen
standing before the river, and ran unto him in the fury of his power.

8:7 And I saw him come close unto the ram, and he was moved with
choler against him, and smote the ram, and brake his two horns: and
there was no power in the ram to stand before him, but he cast him
down to the ground, and stamped upon him: and there was none that
could deliver the ram out of his hand.

8:8 Therefore the he goat waxed very great: and when he was strong,
the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward
the four winds of heaven.

8:9 And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed
exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the
pleasant land.

8:10 And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down
some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon
them.

8:11 Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by
him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of the sanctuary
was cast down.

8:12 And an host was given him against the daily sacrifice by reason
of transgression, and it cast down the truth to the ground; and it
practised, and prospered.

8:13 Then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said unto that
certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the
daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the
sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot?  8:14 And he said
unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the
sanctuary be cleansed.

8:15 And it came to pass, when I, even I Daniel, had seen the vision,
and sought for the meaning, then, behold, there stood before me as the
appearance of a man.

8:16 And I heard a man's voice between the banks of Ulai, which
called, and said, Gabriel, make this man to understand the vision.

8:17 So he came near where I stood: and when he came, I was afraid,
and fell upon my face: but he said unto me, Understand, O son of man:
for at the time of the end shall be the vision.

8:18 Now as he was speaking with me, I was in a deep sleep on my face
toward the ground: but he touched me, and set me upright.

8:19 And he said, Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the
last end of the indignation: for at the time appointed the end shall
be.

8:20 The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media
and Persia.

8:21 And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that
is between his eyes is the first king.

8:22 Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four
kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power.

8:23 And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors
are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding
dark sentences, shall stand up.

8:24 And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he
shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall
destroy the mighty and the holy people.

8:25 And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in
his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace
shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of
princes; but he shall be broken without hand.

8:26 And the vision of the evening and the morning which was told is
true: wherefore shut thou up the vision; for it shall be for many
days.

8:27 And I Daniel fainted, and was sick certain days; afterward I rose
up, and did the king's business; and I was astonished at the vision,
but none understood it.

9:1 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of
the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans; 9:2 In
the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of
the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet,
that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of
Jerusalem.

9:3 And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and
supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes: 9:4 And I
prayed unto the LORD my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord,
the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them
that love him, and to them that keep his commandments; 9:5 We have
sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have
rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments:
9:6 Neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, which
spake in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to
all the people of the land.

9:7 O LORD, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion
of faces, as at this day; to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants
of Jerusalem, and unto all Israel, that are near, and that are far
off, through all the countries whither thou hast driven them, because
of their trespass that they have trespassed against thee.

9:8 O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our
princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee.

9:9 To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we
have rebelled against him; 9:10 Neither have we obeyed the voice of
the LORD our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his
servants the prophets.

9:11 Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing,
that they might not obey thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon
us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of
God, because we have sinned against him.

9:12 And he hath confirmed his words, which he spake against us, and
against our judges that judged us, by bringing upon us a great evil:
for under the whole heaven hath not been done as hath been done upon
Jerusalem.

9:13 As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon
us: yet made we not our prayer before the LORD our God, that we might
turn from our iniquities, and understand thy truth.

9:14 Therefore hath the LORD watched upon the evil, and brought it
upon us: for the LORD our God is righteous in all his works which he
doeth: for we obeyed not his voice.

9:15 And now, O Lord our God, that hast brought thy people forth out
of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and hast gotten thee renown,
as at this day; we have sinned, we have done wickedly.

9:16 O LORD, according to all thy righteousness, I beseech thee, let
thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy city Jerusalem, thy
holy mountain: because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our
fathers, Jerusalem and thy people are become a reproach to all that
are about us.

9:17 Now therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of thy servant, and his
supplications, and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary that is
desolate, for the Lord's sake.

9:18 O my God, incline thine ear, and hear; open thine eyes, and
behold our desolations, and the city which is called by thy name: for
we do not present our supplications before thee for our
righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies.

9:19 O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not,
for thine own sake, O my God: for thy city and thy people are called
by thy name.

9:20 And whiles I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and
the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the
LORD my God for the holy mountain of my God; 9:21 Yea, whiles I was
speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the
vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about
the time of the evening oblation.

9:22 And he informed me, and talked with me, and said, O Daniel, I am
now come forth to give thee skill and understanding.

9:23 At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth,
and I am come to shew thee; for thou art greatly beloved: therefore
understand the matter, and consider the vision.

9:24 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy
city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to
make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting
righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint
the most Holy.

9:25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the
commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the
Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street
shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.

9:26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but
not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall
destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with
a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.

9:27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in
the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to
cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it
desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be
poured upon the desolate.

10:1 In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a thing was revealed
unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar; and the thing was
true, but the time appointed was long: and he understood the thing,
and had understanding of the vision.

10:2 In those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks.

10:3 I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth,
neither did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were
fulfilled.

10:4 And in the four and twentieth day of the first month, as I was by
the side of the great river, which is Hiddekel; 10:5 Then I lifted up
mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man clothed in linen,
whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz: 10:6 His body also
was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and
his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to
polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a
multitude.

10:7 And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me
saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they
fled to hide themselves.

10:8 Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there
remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into
corruption, and I retained no strength.

10:9 Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of
his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward
the ground.

10:10 And, behold, an hand touched me, which set me upon my knees and
upon the palms of my hands.

10:11 And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand
the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am
I now sent.

And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling.

10:12 Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day
that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself
before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.

10:13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and
twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help
me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.

10:14 Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy
people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days.

10:15 And when he had spoken such words unto me, I set my face toward
the ground, and I became dumb.

10:16 And, behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men touched
my lips: then I opened my mouth, and spake, and said unto him that
stood before me, O my lord, by the vision my sorrows are turned upon
me, and I have retained no strength.

10:17 For how can the servant of this my lord talk with this my lord?
for as for me, straightway there remained no strength in me, neither
is there breath left in me.

10:18 Then there came again and touched me one like the appearance of
a man, and he strengthened me, 10:19 And said, O man greatly beloved,
fear not: peace be unto thee, be strong, yea, be strong. And when he
had spoken unto me, I was strengthened, and said, Let my lord speak;
for thou hast strengthened me.

10:20 Then said he, Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? and now
will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone
forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come.

10:21 But I will shew thee that which is noted in the scripture of
truth: and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but
Michael your prince.

11:1 Also I in the first year of Darius the Mede, even I, stood to
confirm and to strengthen him.

11:2 And now will I shew thee the truth. Behold, there shall stand up
yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than
they all: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all
against the realm of Grecia.

11:3 And a mighty king shall stand up, that shall rule with great
dominion, and do according to his will.

11:4 And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken, and
shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven; and not to his
posterity, nor according to his dominion which he ruled: for his
kingdom shall be plucked up, even for others beside those.

11:5 And the king of the south shall be strong, and one of his
princes; and he shall be strong above him, and have dominion; his
dominion shall be a great dominion.

11:6 And in the end of years they shall join themselves together; for
the king's daughter of the south shall come to the king of the north
to make an agreement: but she shall not retain the power of the arm;
neither shall he stand, nor his arm: but she shall be given up, and
they that brought her, and he that begat her, and he that strengthened
her in these times.

11:7 But out of a branch of her roots shall one stand up in his
estate, which shall come with an army, and shall enter into the
fortress of the king of the north, and shall deal against them, and
shall prevail: 11:8 And shall also carry captives into Egypt their
gods, with their princes, and with their precious vessels of silver
and of gold; and he shall continue more years than the king of the
north.

11:9 So the king of the south shall come into his kingdom, and shall
return into his own land.

11:10 But his sons shall be stirred up, and shall assemble a multitude
of great forces: and one shall certainly come, and overflow, and pass
through: then shall he return, and be stirred up, even to his
fortress.

11:11 And the king of the south shall be moved with choler, and shall
come forth and fight with him, even with the king of the north: and he
shall set forth a great multitude; but the multitude shall be given
into his hand.

11:12 And when he hath taken away the multitude, his heart shall be
lifted up; and he shall cast down many ten thousands: but he shall not
be strengthened by it.

11:13 For the king of the north shall return, and shall set forth a
multitude greater than the former, and shall certainly come after
certain years with a great army and with much riches.

11:14 And in those times there shall many stand up against the king of
the south: also the robbers of thy people shall exalt themselves to
establish the vision; but they shall fall.

11:15 So the king of the north shall come, and cast up a mount, and
take the most fenced cities: and the arms of the south shall not
withstand, neither his chosen people, neither shall there be any
strength to withstand.

11:16 But he that cometh against him shall do according to his own
will, and none shall stand before him: and he shall stand in the
glorious land, which by his hand shall be consumed.

11:17 He shall also set his face to enter with the strength of his
whole kingdom, and upright ones with him; thus shall he do: and he
shall give him the daughter of women, corrupting her: but she shall
not stand on his side, neither be for him.

11:18 After this shall he turn his face unto the isles, and shall take
many: but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered
by him to cease; without his own reproach he shall cause it to turn
upon him.

11:19 Then he shall turn his face toward the fort of his own land: but
he shall stumble and fall, and not be found.

11:20 Then shall stand up in his estate a raiser of taxes in the glory
of the kingdom: but within few days he shall be destroyed, neither in
anger, nor in battle.

11:21 And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they
shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in
peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.

11:22 And with the arms of a flood shall they be overflown from before
him, and shall be broken; yea, also the prince of the covenant.

11:23 And after the league made with him he shall work deceitfully:
for he shall come up, and shall become strong with a small people.

11:24 He shall enter peaceably even upon the fattest places of the
province; and he shall do that which his fathers have not done, nor
his fathers' fathers; he shall scatter among them the prey, and spoil,
and riches: yea, and he shall forecast his devices against the strong
holds, even for a time.

11:25 And he shall stir up his power and his courage against the king
of the south with a great army; and the king of the south shall be
stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; but he shall
not stand: for they shall forecast devices against him.

11:26 Yea, they that feed of the portion of his meat shall destroy
him, and his army shall overflow: and many shall fall down slain.

11:27 And both of these kings' hearts shall be to do mischief, and
they shall speak lies at one table; but it shall not prosper: for yet
the end shall be at the time appointed.

11:28 Then shall he return into his land with great riches; and his
heart shall be against the holy covenant; and he shall do exploits,
and return to his own land.

11:29 At the time appointed he shall return, and come toward the
south; but it shall not be as the former, or as the latter.

11:30 For the ships of Chittim shall come against him: therefore he
shall be grieved, and return, and have indignation against the holy
covenant: so shall he do; he shall even return, and have intelligence
with them that forsake the holy covenant.

11:31 And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the
sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and
they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.

11:32 And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by
flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and
do exploits.

11:33 And they that understand among the people shall instruct many:
yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by
spoil, many days.

11:34 Now when they shall fall, they shall be holpen with a little
help: but many shall cleave to them with flatteries.

11:35 And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and
to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because
it is yet for a time appointed.

11:36 And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt
himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak
marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the
indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be
done.

11:37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire
of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.

11:38 But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces: and a god
whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and
with precious stones, and pleasant things.

11:39 Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god,
whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall cause
them to rule over many, and shall divide the land for gain.

11:40 And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at
him: and the king of the north shall come against him like a
whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and
he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.

11:41 He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries
shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even
Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon.

11:42 He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the
land of Egypt shall not escape.

11:43 But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of
silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and
the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.

11:44 But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble
him: therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and
utterly to make away many.

11:45 And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the
seas in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end, and
none shall help him.

12:1 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which
standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of
trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same
time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that
shall be found written in the book.

12:2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

12:3 And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the
firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for
ever and ever.

12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to
the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be
increased.

12:5 Then I Daniel looked, and, behold, there stood other two, the one
on this side of the bank of the river, and the other on that side of
the bank of the river.

12:6 And one said to the man clothed in linen, which was upon the
waters of the river, How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?
12:7 And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters
of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto
heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a
time, times, and an half; and when he shall have accomplished to
scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be
finished.

12:8 And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what
shall be the end of these things?  12:9 And he said, Go thy way,
Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the
end.

12:10 Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the
wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but
the wise shall understand.

12:11 And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away,
and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a
thousand two hundred and ninety days.

12:12 Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three
hundred and five and thirty days.

12:13 But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest,
and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.




Hosea


1:1 The word of the LORD that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in
the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in
the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.

1:2 The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said
to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of
whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from
the LORD.

1:3 So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; which
conceived, and bare him a son.

1:4 And the LORD said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a
little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of
Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.

1:5 And it shall come to pass at that day, that I will break the bow
of Israel, in the valley of Jezreel.

1:6 And she conceived again, and bare a daughter. And God said unto
him, Call her name Loruhamah: for I will no more have mercy upon the
house of Israel; but I will utterly take them away.

1:7 But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them
by the LORD their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword,
nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen.

1:8 Now when she had weaned Loruhamah, she conceived, and bare a son.

1:9 Then said God, Call his name Loammi: for ye are not my people, and
I will not be your God.

1:10 Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of
the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to
pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my
people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the
living God.

1:11 Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be
gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall
come up out of the land: for great shall be the day of Jezreel.

2:1 Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah.

2:2 Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am
I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her
sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; 2:3 Lest I strip
her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her
as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with
thirst.

2:4 And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the
children of whoredoms.

2:5 For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them
hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that
give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my
drink.

2:6 Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a
wall, that she shall not find her paths.

2:7 And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake
them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she
say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better
with me than now.

2:8 For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and
multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal.

2:9 Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in the time
thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will recover my wool
and my flax given to cover her nakedness.

2:10 And now will I discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers,
and none shall deliver her out of mine hand.

2:11 I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new
moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.

2:12 And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, whereof she hath
said, These are my rewards that my lovers have given me: and I will
make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them.

2:13 And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, wherein she burned
incense to them, and she decked herself with her earrings and her
jewels, and she went after her lovers, and forgat me, saith the LORD.

2:14 Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the
wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.

2:15 And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of
Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of
her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of
Egypt.

2:16 And it shall be at that day, saith the LORD, that thou shalt call
me Ishi; and shalt call me no more Baali.

2:17 For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and
they shall no more be remembered by their name.

2:18 And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts
of the field and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping
things of the ground: and I will break the bow and the sword and the
battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely.

2:19 And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth
thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness,
and in mercies.

2:20 I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt
know the LORD.

2:21 And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the
LORD, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth; 2:22 And
the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they
shall hear Jezreel.

2:23 And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy
upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which
were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art
my God.

3:1 Then said the LORD unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her
friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the LORD toward
the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of
wine.

3:2 So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an
homer of barley, and an half homer of barley: 3:3 And I said unto her,
Thou shalt abide for me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot, and
thou shalt not be for another man: so will I also be for thee.

3:4 For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king,
and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image,
and without an ephod, and without teraphim: 3:5 Afterward shall the
children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David
their king; and shall fear the LORD and his goodness in the latter
days.

4:1 Hear the word of the LORD, ye children of Israel: for the LORD
hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is
no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land.

4:2 By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing
adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood.

4:3 Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth
therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the
fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away.

4:4 Yet let no man strive, nor reprove another: for thy people are as
they that strive with the priest.

4:5 Therefore shalt thou fall in the day, and the prophet also shall
fall with thee in the night, and I will destroy thy mother.

4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast
rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no
priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will
also forget thy children.

4:7 As they were increased, so they sinned against me: therefore will
I change their glory into shame.

4:8 They eat up the sin of my people, and they set their heart on
their iniquity.

4:9 And there shall be, like people, like priest: and I will punish
them for their ways, and reward them their doings.

4:10 For they shall eat, and not have enough: they shall commit
whoredom, and shall not increase: because they have left off to take
heed to the LORD.

4:11 Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart.

4:12 My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth
unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and
they have gone a whoring from under their God.

4:13 They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense
upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and elms, because the shadow
thereof is good: therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, and
your spouses shall commit adultery.

4:14 I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor
your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated
with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the people
that doth not understand shall fall.

4:15 Though thou, Israel, play the harlot, yet let not Judah offend;
and come not ye unto Gilgal, neither go ye up to Bethaven, nor swear,
The LORD liveth.

4:16 For Israel slideth back as a backsliding heifer: now the LORD
will feed them as a lamb in a large place.

4:17 Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.

4:18 Their drink is sour: they have committed whoredom continually:
her rulers with shame do love, Give ye.

4:19 The wind hath bound her up in her wings, and they shall be
ashamed because of their sacrifices.

5:1 Hear ye this, O priests; and hearken, ye house of Israel; and give
ye ear, O house of the king; for judgment is toward you, because ye
have been a snare on Mizpah, and a net spread upon Tabor.

5:2 And the revolters are profound to make slaughter, though I have
been a rebuker of them all.

5:3 I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me: for now, O Ephraim,
thou committest whoredom, and Israel is defiled.

5:4 They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God: for the
spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them, and they have not known
the LORD.

5:5 And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face: therefore shall
Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity: Judah also shall fall with
them.

5:6 They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek the
LORD; but they shall not find him; he hath withdrawn himself from
them.

5:7 They have dealt treacherously against the LORD: for they have
begotten strange children: now shall a month devour them with their
portions.

5:8 Blow ye the cornet in Gibeah, and the trumpet in Ramah: cry aloud
at Bethaven, after thee, O Benjamin.

5:9 Ephraim shall be desolate in the day of rebuke: among the tribes
of Israel have I made known that which shall surely be.

5:10 The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound:
therefore I will pour out my wrath upon them like water.

5:11 Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, because he willingly
walked after the commandment.

5:12 Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of
Judah as rottenness.

5:13 When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went
Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb: yet could he not heal
you, nor cure you of your wound.

5:14 For I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the
house of Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away; I will take away,
and none shall rescue him.

5:15 I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their
offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me
early.

6:1 Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he
will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.

6:2 After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise
us up, and we shall live in his sight.

6:3 Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going
forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the
rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.

6:4 O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do
unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early
dew it goeth away.

6:5 Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them by
the words of my mouth: and thy judgments are as the light that goeth
forth.

6:6 For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God
more than burnt offerings.

6:7 But they like men have transgressed the covenant: there have they
dealt treacherously against me.

6:8 Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is polluted with
blood.

6:9 And as troops of robbers wait for a man, so the company of priests
murder in the way by consent: for they commit lewdness.

6:10 I have seen an horrible thing in the house of Israel: there is
the whoredom of Ephraim, Israel is defiled.

6:11 Also, O Judah, he hath set an harvest for thee, when I returned
the captivity of my people.

7:1 When I would have healed Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was
discovered, and the wickedness of Samaria: for they commit falsehood;
and the thief cometh in, and the troop of robbers spoileth without.

7:2 And they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their
wickedness: now their own doings have beset them about; they are
before my face.

7:3 They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the princes
with their lies.

7:4 They are all adulterers, as an oven heated by the baker, who
ceaseth from raising after he hath kneaded the dough, until it be
leavened.

7:5 In the day of our king the princes have made him sick with bottles
of wine; he stretched out his hand with scorners.

7:6 For they have made ready their heart like an oven, whiles they lie
in wait: their baker sleepeth all the night; in the morning it burneth
as a flaming fire.

7:7 They are all hot as an oven, and have devoured their judges; all
their kings are fallen: there is none among them that calleth unto me.

7:8 Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a cake
not turned.

7:9 Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not: yea,
gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not.

7:10 And the pride of Israel testifieth to his face: and they do not
return to the LORD their God, nor seek him for all this.

7:11 Ephraim also is like a silly dove without heart: they call to
Egypt, they go to Assyria.

7:12 When they shall go, I will spread my net upon them; I will bring
them down as the fowls of the heaven; I will chastise them, as their
congregation hath heard.

7:13 Woe unto them! for they have fled from me: destruction unto them!
because they have transgressed against me: though I have redeemed
them, yet they have spoken lies against me.

7:14 And they have not cried unto me with their heart, when they
howled upon their beds: they assemble themselves for corn and wine,
and they rebel against me.

7:15 Though I have bound and strengthened their arms, yet do they
imagine mischief against me.

7:16 They return, but not to the most High: they are like a deceitful
bow: their princes shall fall by the sword for the rage of their
tongue: this shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.

8:1 Set the trumpet to thy mouth. He shall come as an eagle against
the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant, and
trespassed against my law.

8:2 Israel shall cry unto me, My God, we know thee.

8:3 Israel hath cast off the thing that is good: the enemy shall
pursue him.

8:4 They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and
I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them
idols, that they may be cut off.

8:5 Thy calf, O Samaria, hath cast thee off; mine anger is kindled
against them: how long will it be ere they attain to innocency?  8:6
For from Israel was it also: the workman made it; therefore it is not
God: but the calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces.

8:7 For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it
hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the
strangers shall swallow it up.

8:8 Israel is swallowed up: now shall they be among the Gentiles as a
vessel wherein is no pleasure.

8:9 For they are gone up to Assyria, a wild ass alone by himself:
Ephraim hath hired lovers.

8:10 Yea, though they have hired among the nations, now will I gather
them, and they shall sorrow a little for the burden of the king of
princes.

8:11 Because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin, altars shall be
unto him to sin.

8:12 I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were
counted as a strange thing.

8:13 They sacrifice flesh for the sacrifices of mine offerings, and
eat it; but the LORD accepteth them not; now will he remember their
iniquity, and visit their sins: they shall return to Egypt.

8:14 For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples; and
Judah hath multiplied fenced cities: but I will send a fire upon his
cities, and it shall devour the palaces thereof.

9:1 Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people: for thou hast
gone a whoring from thy God, thou hast loved a reward upon every
cornfloor.

9:2 The floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the new wine
shall fail in her.

9:3 They shall not dwell in the LORD's land; but Ephraim shall return
to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean things in Assyria.

9:4 They shall not offer wine offerings to the LORD, neither shall
they be pleasing unto him: their sacrifices shall be unto them as the
bread of mourners; all that eat thereof shall be polluted: for their
bread for their soul shall not come into the house of the LORD.

9:5 What will ye do in the solemn day, and in the day of the feast of
the LORD?  9:6 For, lo, they are gone because of destruction: Egypt
shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them: the pleasant places for
their silver, nettles shall possess them: thorns shall be in their
tabernacles.

9:7 The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come;
Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad,
for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred.

9:8 The watchman of Ephraim was with my God: but the prophet is a
snare of a fowler in all his ways, and hatred in the house of his God.

9:9 They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah:
therefore he will remember their iniquity, he will visit their sins.

9:10 I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers
as the firstripe in the fig tree at her first time: but they went to
Baalpeor, and separated themselves unto that shame; and their
abominations were according as they loved.

9:11 As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird, from the
birth, and from the womb, and from the conception.

9:12 Though they bring up their children, yet will I bereave them,
that there shall not be a man left: yea, woe also to them when I
depart from them!  9:13 Ephraim, as I saw Tyrus, is planted in a
pleasant place: but Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the
murderer.

9:14 Give them, O LORD: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying
womb and dry breasts.

9:15 All their wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them: for
the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house, I
will love them no more: all their princes are revolters.

9:16 Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no
fruit: yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved
fruit of their womb.

9:17 My God will cast them away, because they did not hearken unto
him: and they shall be wanderers among the nations.

10:1 Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself:
according to the multitude of his fruit he hath increased the altars;
according to the goodness of his land they have made goodly images.

10:2 Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty: he shall
break down their altars, he shall spoil their images.

10:3 For now they shall say, We have no king, because we feared not
the LORD; what then should a king do to us?  10:4 They have spoken
words, swearing falsely in making a covenant: thus judgment springeth
up as hemlock in the furrows of the field.

10:5 The inhabitants of Samaria shall fear because of the calves of
Bethaven: for the people thereof shall mourn over it, and the priests
thereof that rejoiced on it, for the glory thereof, because it is
departed from it.

10:6 It shall be also carried unto Assyria for a present to king
Jareb: Ephraim shall receive shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his
own counsel.

10:7 As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the water.

10:8 The high places also of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be
destroyed: the thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars;
and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall
on us.

10:9 O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah: there they
stood: the battle in Gibeah against the children of iniquity did not
overtake them.

10:10 It is in my desire that I should chastise them; and the people
shall be gathered against them, when they shall bind themselves in
their two furrows.

10:11 And Ephraim is as an heifer that is taught, and loveth to tread
out the corn; but I passed over upon her fair neck: I will make
Ephraim to ride; Judah shall plow, and Jacob shall break his clods.

10:12 Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your
fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain
righteousness upon you.

10:13 Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have
eaten the fruit of lies: because thou didst trust in thy way, in the
multitude of thy mighty men.

10:14 Therefore shall a tumult arise among thy people, and all thy
fortresses shall be spoiled, as Shalman spoiled Betharbel in the day
of battle: the mother was dashed in pieces upon her children.

10:15 So shall Bethel do unto you because of your great wickedness: in
a morning shall the king of Israel utterly be cut off.

11:1 When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out
of Egypt.

11:2 As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto
Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.

11:3 I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they
knew not that I healed them.

11:4 I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to
them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat
unto them.

11:5 He shall not return into the land of Egypt, and the Assyrian
shall be his king, because they refused to return.

11:6 And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his
branches, and devour them, because of their own counsels.

11:7 And my people are bent to backsliding from me: though they called
them to the most High, none at all would exalt him.

11:8 How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee,
Israel?  how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as
Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled
together.

11:9 I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not
return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in
the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city.

11:10 They shall walk after the LORD: he shall roar like a lion: when
he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the west.

11:11 They shall tremble as a bird out of Egypt, and as a dove out of
the land of Assyria: and I will place them in their houses, saith the
LORD.

11:12 Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel
with deceit: but Judah yet ruleth with God, and is faithful with the
saints.

12:1 Ephraim feedeth on wind, and followeth after the east wind: he
daily increaseth lies and desolation; and they do make a covenant with
the Assyrians, and oil is carried into Egypt.

12:2 The LORD hath also a controversy with Judah, and will punish
Jacob according to his ways; according to his doings will he
recompense him.

12:3 He took his brother by the heel in the womb, and by his strength
he had power with God: 12:4 Yea, he had power over the angel, and
prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him: he found him in
Bethel, and there he spake with us; 12:5 Even the LORD God of hosts;
the LORD is his memorial.

12:6 Therefore turn thou to thy God: keep mercy and judgment and wait
on thy God continually.

12:7 He is a merchant, the balances of deceit are in his hand: he
loveth to oppress.

12:8 And Ephraim said, Yet I am become rich, I have found me out
substance: in all my labours they shall find none iniquity in me that
were sin.

12:9 And I that am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt will yet
make thee to dwell in tabernacles, as in the days of the solemn feast.

12:10 I have also spoken by the prophets, and I have multiplied
visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets.

12:11 Is there iniquity in Gilead? surely they are vanity: they
sacrifice bullocks in Gilgal; yea, their altars are as heaps in the
furrows of the fields.

12:12 And Jacob fled into the country of Syria, and Israel served for
a wife, and for a wife he kept sheep.

12:13 And by a prophet the LORD brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a
prophet was he preserved.

12:14 Ephraim provoked him to anger most bitterly: therefore shall he
leave his blood upon him, and his reproach shall his LORD return unto
him.

13:1 When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but
when he offended in Baal, he died.

13:2 And now they sin more and more, and have made them molten images
of their silver, and idols according to their own understanding, all
of it the work of the craftsmen: they say of them, Let the men that
sacrifice kiss the calves.

13:3 Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud and as the early dew
that passeth away, as the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out
of the floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney.

13:4 Yet I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt
know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me.

13:5 I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.

13:6 According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were
filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me.

13:7 Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way
will I observe them: 13:8 I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved
of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I
devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.

13:9 O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.

13:10 I will be thy king: where is any other that may save thee in all
thy cities? and thy judges of whom thou saidst, Give me a king and
princes?  13:11 I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in
my wrath.

13:12 The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up; his sin is hid.

13:13 The sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him: he is an
unwise son; for he should not stay long in the place of the breaking
forth of children.

13:14 I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem
them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be
thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.

13:15 Though he be fruitful among his brethren, an east wind shall
come, the wind of the LORD shall come up from the wilderness, and his
spring shall become dry, and his fountain shall be dried up: he shall
spoil the treasure of all pleasant vessels.

13:16 Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her
God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in
pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.

14:1 O israel, return unto the LORD thy God; for thou hast fallen by
thine iniquity.

14:2 Take with you words, and turn to the LORD: say unto him, Take
away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the
calves of our lips.

14:3 Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither
will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in
thee the fatherless findeth mercy.

14:4 I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine
anger is turned away from him.

14:5 I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and
cast forth his roots as Lebanon.

14:6 His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive
tree, and his smell as Lebanon.

14:7 They that dwell under his shadow shall return; they shall revive
as the corn, and grow as the vine: the scent thereof shall be as the
wine of Lebanon.

14:8 Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? I have
heard him, and observed him: I am like a green fir tree. From me is
thy fruit found.

14:9 Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and
he shall know them? for the ways of the LORD are right, and the just
shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein.




Joel


1:1 The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

1:2 Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land.

Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?  1:3
Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their
children, and their children another generation.

1:4 That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and
that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that
which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.

1:5 Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine,
because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.

1:6 For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number,
whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a
great lion.

1:7 He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made
it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.

1:8 Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her
youth.

1:9 The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house
of the LORD; the priests, the LORD's ministers, mourn.

1:10 The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted:
the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth.

1:11 Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the
wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is
perished.

1:12 The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the
pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the
trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from
the sons of men.

1:13 Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of
the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God:
for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the
house of your God.

1:14 Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and
all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God,
and cry unto the LORD, 1:15 Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD
is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.

1:16 Is not the meat cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness
from the house of our God?  1:17 The seed is rotten under their clods,
the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the corn
is withered.

1:18 How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed,
because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made
desolate.

1:19 O LORD, to thee will I cry: for the fire hath devoured the
pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of
the field.

1:20 The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of
waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the
wilderness.

2:1 Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy
mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of
the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand; 2:2 A day of darkness and of
gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning
spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not
been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the
years of many generations.

2:3 A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the
land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate
wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.

2:4 The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as
horsemen, so shall they run.

2:5 Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they
leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as
a strong people set in battle array.

2:6 Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces shall
gather blackness.

2:7 They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men
of war; and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not
break their ranks: 2:8 Neither shall one thrust another; they shall
walk every one in his path: and when they fall upon the sword, they
shall not be wounded.

2:9 They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the
wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the
windows like a thief.

2:10 The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the
sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their
shining: 2:11 And the LORD shall utter his voice before his army: for
his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for
the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?
2:12 Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all
your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning:
2:13 And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the
LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of
great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.

2:14 Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing
behind him; even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the LORD
your God?  2:15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a
solemn assembly: 2:16 Gather the people, sanctify the congregation,
assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the
breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out
of her closet.

2:17 Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the
porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and
give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over
them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?
2:18 Then will the LORD be jealous for his land, and pity his people.

2:19 Yea, the LORD will answer and say unto his people, Behold, I will
send you corn, and wine, and oil, and ye shall be satisfied therewith:
and I will no more make you a reproach among the heathen: 2:20 But I
will remove far off from you the northern army, and will drive him
into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea,
and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come
up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great
things.

2:21 Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice: for the LORD will do great
things.

2:22 Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field: for the pastures of the
wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig tree and
the vine do yield their strength.

2:23 Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your
God: for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will
cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter
rain in the first month.

2:24 And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall
overflow with wine and oil.

2:25 And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten,
the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army
which I sent among you.

2:26 And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name
of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my
people shall never be ashamed.

2:27 And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am
the LORD your God, and none else: and my people shall never be
ashamed.

2:28 And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my
spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see
visions: 2:29 And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in
those days will I pour out my spirit.

2:30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood,
and fire, and pillars of smoke.

2:31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood,
before the great and terrible day of the LORD come.

2:32 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name
of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem
shall be deliverance, as the LORD hath said, and in the remnant whom
the LORD shall call.

3:1 For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring
again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, 3:2 I will also gather all
nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and
will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel,
whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.

3:3 And they have cast lots for my people; and have given a boy for an
harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink.

3:4 Yea, and what have ye to do with me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all
the coasts of Palestine? will ye render me a recompence? and if ye
recompense me, swiftly and speedily will I return your recompence upon
your own head; 3:5 Because ye have taken my silver and my gold, and
have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things: 3:6 The
children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto
the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border.

3:7 Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold
them, and will return your recompence upon your own head: 3:8 And I
will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children
of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far
off: for the LORD hath spoken it.

3:9 Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the
mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: 3:10
Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruninghooks into spears:
let the weak say, I am strong.

3:11 Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather
yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come
down, O LORD.

3:12 Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of
Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round
about.

3:13 Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you
down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness
is great.

3:14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of
the LORD is near in the valley of decision.

3:15 The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall
withdraw their shining.

3:16 The LORD also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from
Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the LORD
will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of
Israel.

3:17 So shall ye know that I am the LORD your God dwelling in Zion, my
holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no
strangers pass through her any more.

3:18 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall
drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the
rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come
forth out of the house of the LORD, and shall water the valley of
Shittim.

3:19 Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate
wilderness, for the violence against the children of Judah, because
they have shed innocent blood in their land.

3:20 But Judah shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to
generation.

3:21 For I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed: for the
LORD dwelleth in Zion.




Amos


1:1 The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa, which he
saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the
days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the
earthquake.

1:2 And he said, The LORD will roar from Zion, and utter his voice
from Jerusalem; and the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn, and
the top of Carmel shall wither.

1:3 Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Damascus, and for
four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have
threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron: 1:4 But I will
send a fire into the house of Hazael, which shall devour the palaces
of Benhadad.

1:5 I will break also the bar of Damascus, and cut off the inhabitant
from the plain of Aven, and him that holdeth the sceptre from the
house of Eden: and the people of Syria shall go into captivity unto
Kir, saith the LORD.

1:6 Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Gaza, and for
four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they
carried away captive the whole captivity, to deliver them up to Edom:
1:7 But I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza, which shall devour the
palaces thereof: 1:8 And I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod,
and him that holdeth the sceptre from Ashkelon, and I will turn mine
hand against Ekron: and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish,
saith the Lord GOD.

1:9 Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Tyrus, and for
four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they
delivered up the whole captivity to Edom, and remembered not the
brotherly covenant: 1:10 But I will send a fire on the wall of Tyrus,
which shall devour the palaces thereof.

1:11 Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Edom, and for
four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because he did
pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his
anger did tear perpetually, and he kept his wrath for ever: 1:12 But I
will send a fire upon Teman, which shall devour the palaces of Bozrah.

1:13 Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of the children of
Ammon, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof;
because they have ripped up the women with child of Gilead, that they
might enlarge their border: 1:14 But I will kindle a fire in the wall
of Rabbah, and it shall devour the palaces thereof, with shouting in
the day of battle, with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind: 1:15
And their king shall go into captivity, he and his princes together,
saith the LORD.

2:1 Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Moab, and for
four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because he burned
the bones of the king of Edom into lime: 2:2 But I will send a fire
upon Moab, and it shall devour the palaces of Kirioth: and Moab shall
die with tumult, with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet: 2:3
And I will cut off the judge from the midst thereof, and will slay all
the princes thereof with him, saith the LORD.

2:4 Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Judah, and for
four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have
despised the law of the LORD, and have not kept his commandments, and
their lies caused them to err, after the which their fathers have
walked: 2:5 But I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the
palaces of Jerusalem.

2:6 Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Israel, and for
four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they sold
the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes; 2:7 That
pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn
aside the way of the meek: and a man and his father will go in unto
the same maid, to profane my holy name: 2:8 And they lay themselves
down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar, and they drink the
wine of the condemned in the house of their god.

2:9 Yet destroyed I the Amorite before them, whose height was like the
height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed
his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath.

2:10 Also I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and led you forty
years through the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite.

2:11 And I raised up of your sons for prophets, and of your young men
for Nazarites. Is it not even thus, O ye children of Israel? saith the
LORD.

2:12 But ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink; and commanded the
prophets, saying, Prophesy not.

2:13 Behold, I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full
of sheaves.

2:14 Therefore the flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong
shall not strengthen his force, neither shall the mighty deliver
himself: 2:15 Neither shall he stand that handleth the bow; and he
that is swift of foot shall not deliver himself: neither shall he that
rideth the horse deliver himself.

2:16 And he that is courageous among the mighty shall flee away naked
in that day, saith the LORD.

3:1 Hear this word that the LORD hath spoken against you, O children
of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land
of Egypt, saying, 3:2 You only have I known of all the families of the
earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.

3:3 Can two walk together, except they be agreed?  3:4 Will a lion
roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? will a young lion cry out of
his den, if he have taken nothing?  3:5 Can a bird fall in a snare
upon the earth, where no gin is for him?  shall one take up a snare
from the earth, and have taken nothing at all?  3:6 Shall a trumpet be
blown in the city, and the people not be afraid?  shall there be evil
in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?  3:7 Surely the Lord GOD
will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the
prophets.

3:8 The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord GOD hath spoken,
who can but prophesy?  3:9 Publish in the palaces at Ashdod, and in
the palaces in the land of Egypt, and say, Assemble yourselves upon
the mountains of Samaria, and behold the great tumults in the midst
thereof, and the oppressed in the midst thereof.

3:10 For they know not to do right, saith the LORD, who store up
violence and robbery in their palaces.

3:11 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; An adversary there shall be
even round about the land; and he shall bring down thy strength from
thee, and thy palaces shall be spoiled.

3:12 Thus saith the LORD; As the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of
the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear; so shall the children of
Israel be taken out that dwell in Samaria in the corner of a bed, and
in Damascus in a couch.

3:13 Hear ye, and testify in the house of Jacob, saith the Lord GOD,
the God of hosts, 3:14 That in the day that I shall visit the
transgressions of Israel upon him I will also visit the altars of
Bethel: and the horns of the altar shall be cut off, and fall to the
ground.

3:15 And I will smite the winter house with the summer house; and the
houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall have an end,
saith the LORD.

4:1 Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of
Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to
their masters, Bring, and let us drink.

4:2 The Lord GOD hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall
come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your
posterity with fishhooks.

4:3 And ye shall go out at the breaches, every cow at that which is
before her; and ye shall cast them into the palace, saith the LORD.

4:4 Come to Bethel, and transgress; at Gilgal multiply transgression;
and bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes after three
years: 4:5 And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, and
proclaim and publish the free offerings: for this liketh you, O ye
children of Israel, saith the Lord GOD.

4:6 And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities,
and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto
me, saith the LORD.

4:7 And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet
three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city,
and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained
upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered.

4:8 So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but
they were not satisfied: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the
LORD.

4:9 I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and
your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the
palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the
LORD.

4:10 I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt:
your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your
horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your
nostrils: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.

4:11 I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and
Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet
have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.

4:12 Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will
do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.

4:13 For, lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind,
and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning
darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The LORD,
The God of hosts, is his name.

5:1 Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation,
O house of Israel.

5:2 The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is
forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up.

5:3 For thus saith the Lord GOD; The city that went out by a thousand
shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred shall
leave ten, to the house of Israel.

5:4 For thus saith the LORD unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and
ye shall live: 5:5 But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and
pass not to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and
Bethel shall come to nought.

5:6 Seek the LORD, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in
the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in
Bethel.

5:7 Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in
the earth, 5:8 Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and
turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark
with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them
out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name: 5:9 That
strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled
shall come against the fortress.

5:10 They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that
speaketh uprightly.

5:11 Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye
take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone,
but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards,
but ye shall not drink wine of them.

5:12 For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins:
they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor
in the gate from their right.

5:13 Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is
an evil time.

5:14 Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the LORD, the
God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.

5:15 Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the
gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the
remnant of Joseph.

5:16 Therefore the LORD, the God of hosts, the LORD, saith thus;
Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the
highways, Alas! alas!  and they shall call the husbandman to mourning,
and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing.

5:17 And in all vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through
thee, saith the LORD.

5:18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it
for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light.

5:19 As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went
into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit
him.

5:20 Shall not the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light? even
very dark, and no brightness in it?  5:21 I hate, I despise your feast
days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.

5:22 Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I
will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of
your fat beasts.

5:23 Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not
hear the melody of thy viols.

5:24 But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a
mighty stream.

5:25 Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the
wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?  5:26 But ye have borne the
tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god,
which ye made to yourselves.

5:27 Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus,
saith the LORD, whose name is The God of hosts.

6:1 Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and trust in the mountain of
Samaria, which are named chief of the nations, to whom the house of
Israel came!  6:2 Pass ye unto Calneh, and see; and from thence go ye
to Hamath the great: then go down to Gath of the Philistines: be they
better than these kingdoms? or their border greater than your border?
6:3 Ye that put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence
to come near; 6:4 That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves
upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves
out of the midst of the stall; 6:5 That chant to the sound of the
viol, and invent to themselves instruments of musick, like David; 6:6
That drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief
ointments: but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.

6:7 Therefore now shall they go captive with the first that go
captive, and the banquet of them that stretched themselves shall be
removed.

6:8 The Lord GOD hath sworn by himself, saith the LORD the God of
hosts, I abhor the excellency of Jacob, and hate his palaces:
therefore will I deliver up the city with all that is therein.

6:9 And it shall come to pass, if there remain ten men in one house,
that they shall die.

6:10 And a man's uncle shall take him up, and he that burneth him, to
bring out the bones out of the house, and shall say unto him that is
by the sides of the house, Is there yet any with thee? and he shall
say, No. Then shall he say, Hold thy tongue: for we may not make
mention of the name of the LORD.

6:11 For, behold, the LORD commandeth, and he will smite the great
house with breaches, and the little house with clefts.

6:12 Shall horses run upon the rock? will one plow there with oxen?
for ye have turned judgment into gall, and the fruit of righteousness
into hemlock: 6:13 Ye which rejoice in a thing of nought, which say,
Have we not taken to us horns by our own strength?  6:14 But, behold,
I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel, saith the
LORD the God of hosts; and they shall afflict you from the entering in
of Hemath unto the river of the wilderness.

7:1 Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me; and, behold, he formed
grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth;
and, lo, it was the latter growth after the king's mowings.

7:2 And it came to pass, that when they had made an end of eating the
grass of the land, then I said, O Lord GOD, forgive, I beseech thee:
by whom shall Jacob arise? for he is small.

7:3 The LORD repented for this: It shall not be, saith the LORD.

7:4 Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and, behold, the Lord GOD
called to contend by fire, and it devoured the great deep, and did eat
up a part.

7:5 Then said I, O Lord GOD, cease, I beseech thee: by whom shall
Jacob arise? for he is small.

7:6 The LORD repented for this: This also shall not be, saith the Lord
GOD.

7:7 Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the LORD stood upon a wall made by
a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand.

7:8 And the LORD said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A
plumbline. Then said the LORD, Behold, I will set a plumbline in the
midst of my people Israel: I will not again pass by them any more: 7:9
And the high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of
Israel shall be laid waste; and I will rise against the house of
Jeroboam with the sword.

7:10 Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of
Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the
house of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his words.

7:11 For thus Amos saith, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel
shall surely be led away captive out of their own land.

7:12 Also Amaziah said unto Amos, O thou seer, go, flee thee away into
the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there: 7:13 But
prophesy not again any more at Bethel: for it is the king's chapel,
and it is the king's court.

7:14 Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet,
neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of
sycomore fruit: 7:15 And the LORD took me as I followed the flock, and
the LORD said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.

7:16 Now therefore hear thou the word of the LORD: Thou sayest,
Prophesy not against Israel, and drop not thy word against the house
of Isaac.

7:17 Therefore thus saith the LORD; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the
city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy
land shall be divided by line; and thou shalt die in a polluted land:
and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land.

8:1 Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of
summer fruit.

8:2 And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer
fruit. Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people of
Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.

8:3 And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith
the Lord GOD: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they
shall cast them forth with silence.

8:4 Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor
of the land to fail, 8:5 Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that
we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making
the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by
deceit?  8:6 That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a
pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?  8:7 The LORD
hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any
of their works.

8:8 Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that
dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall
be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt.

8:9 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I
will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in
the clear day: 8:10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all
your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all
loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the
mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.

8:11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a
famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but
of hearing the words of the LORD: 8:12 And they shall wander from sea
to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro
to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.

8:13 In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for
thirst.

8:14 They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan,
liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and
never rise up again.

9:1 I saw the LORD standing upon the altar: and he said, Smite the
lintel of the door, that the posts may shake: and cut them in the
head, all of them; and I will slay the last of them with the sword: he
that fleeth of them shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them
shall not be delivered.

9:2 Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them;
though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down: 9:3 And
though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and
take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the
bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall
bite them: 9:4 And though they go into captivity before their enemies,
thence will I command the sword, and it shall slay them: and I will
set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for good.

9:5 And the Lord GOD of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and it
shall melt, and all that dwell therein shall mourn: and it shall rise
up wholly like a flood; and shall be drowned, as by the flood of
Egypt.

9:6 It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, and hath founded
his troop in the earth; he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and
poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name.

9:7 Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of
Israel? saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land
of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?
9:8 Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are upon the sinful kingdom, and
I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will
not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the LORD.

9:9 For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among
all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the
least grain fall upon the earth.

9:10 All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say,
The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us.

9:11 In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is
fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his
ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: 9:12 That they may
possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called
by my name, saith the LORD that doeth this.

9:13 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that the plowman shall
overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed;
and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.

9:14 And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and
they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall
plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make
gardens, and eat the fruit of them.

9:15 And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be
pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD
thy God.




Obadiah


1:1 The vision of Obadiah. Thus saith the Lord GOD concerning Edom;
We have heard a rumour from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent among
the heathen, Arise ye, and let us rise up against her in battle.

1:2 Behold, I have made thee small among the heathen: thou art greatly
despised.

1:3 The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in
the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his
heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground?  1:4 Though thou exalt
thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars,
thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD.

1:5 If thieves came to thee, if robbers by night, (how art thou cut
off!)  would they not have stolen till they had enough? if the
grapegatherers came to thee, would they not leave some grapes?  1:6
How are the things of Esau searched out! how are his hidden things
sought up!  1:7 All the men of thy confederacy have brought thee even
to the border: the men that were at peace with thee have deceived
thee, and prevailed against thee; that they eat thy bread have laid a
wound under thee: there is none understanding in him.

1:8 Shall I not in that day, saith the LORD, even destroy the wise men
out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau?  1:9 And thy
mighty men, O Teman, shall be dismayed, to the end that every one of
the mount of Esau may be cut off by slaughter.

1:10 For thy violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover
thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever.

1:11 In the day that thou stoodest on the other side, in the day that
the strangers carried away captive his forces, and foreigners entered
into his gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, even thou wast as one of
them.

1:12 But thou shouldest not have looked on the day of thy brother in
the day that he became a stranger; neither shouldest thou have
rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction;
neither shouldest thou have spoken proudly in the day of distress.

1:13 Thou shouldest not have entered into the gate of my people in the
day of their calamity; yea, thou shouldest not have looked on their
affliction in the day of their calamity, nor have laid hands on their
substance in the day of their calamity; 1:14 Neither shouldest thou
have stood in the crossway, to cut off those of his that did escape;
neither shouldest thou have delivered up those of his that did remain
in the day of distress.

1:15 For the day of the LORD is near upon all the heathen: as thou
hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon
thine own head.

1:16 For as ye have drunk upon my holy mountain, so shall all the
heathen drink continually, yea, they shall drink, and they shall
swallow down, and they shall be as though they had not been.

1:17 But upon mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be
holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.

1:18 And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a
flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in
them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the
house of Esau; for the LORD hath spoken it.

1:19 And they of the south shall possess the mount of Esau; and they
of the plain the Philistines: and they shall possess the fields of
Ephraim, and the fields of Samaria: and Benjamin shall possess Gilead.

1:20 And the captivity of this host of the children of Israel shall
possess that of the Canaanites, even unto Zarephath; and the captivity
of Jerusalem, which is in Sepharad, shall possess the cities of the
south.

1:21 And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of
Esau; and the kingdom shall be the LORD's.




Jonah


1:1 Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai,
saying, 1:2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it;
for their wickedness is come up before me.

1:3 But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the
LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish:
so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them
unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.

1:4 But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a
mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.

1:5 Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god,
and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to
lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the
ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.

1:6 So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest
thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will
think upon us, that we perish not.

1:7 And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots,
that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast
lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.

1:8 Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause
this evil is upon us; What is thine occupation? and whence comest
thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou?  1:9 And he
said unto them, I am an Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of
heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.

1:10 Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him. Why hast
thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the
LORD, because he had told them.

1:11 Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea
may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous.

1:12 And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the
sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake
this great tempest is upon you.

1:13 Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they
could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them.

1:14 Wherefore they cried unto the LORD, and said, We beseech thee, O
LORD, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay
not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O LORD, hast done as it pleased
thee.

1:15 So they look up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the
sea ceased from her raging.

1:16 Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice
unto the LORD, and made vows.

1:17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And
Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

2:1 Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly,
2:2 And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and
he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my
voice.

2:3 For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas;
and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves
passed over me.

2:4 Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again
toward thy holy temple.

2:5 The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed
me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.

2:6 I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her
bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from
corruption, O LORD my God.

2:7 When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my
prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.

2:8 They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.

2:9 But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I
will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.

2:10 And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon
the dry land.

3:1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,
3:2 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the
preaching that I bid thee.

3:3 So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of
the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days'
journey.

3:4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he
cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

3:5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and
put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

3:6 For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his
throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth,
and sat in ashes.

3:7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by
the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor
beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink
water: 3:8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry
mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and
from the violence that is in their hands.

3:9 Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his
fierce anger, that we perish not?  3:10 And God saw their works, that
they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he
had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.

4:1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.

4:2 And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was
not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled
before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and
merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of
the evil.

4:3 Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for
it is better for me to die than to live.

4:4 Then said the LORD, Doest thou well to be angry?  4:5 So Jonah
went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there
made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see
what would become of the city.

4:6 And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over
Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from
his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.

4:7 But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it
smote the gourd that it withered.

4:8 And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a
vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he
fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me
to die than to live.

4:9 And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?
And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.

4:10 Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the
which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in
a night, and perished in a night: 4:11 And should not I spare Nineveh,
that great city, wherein are more then sixscore thousand persons that
cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also
much cattle?




Micah


1:1 The word of the LORD that came to Micah the Morasthite in the
days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw
concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.

1:2 Hear, all ye people; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is:
and let the Lord GOD be witness against you, the LORD from his holy
temple.

1:3 For, behold, the LORD cometh forth out of his place, and will come
down, and tread upon the high places of the earth.

1:4 And the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall
be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured
down a steep place.

1:5 For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of
the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not
Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not
Jerusalem?  1:6 Therefore I will make Samaria as an heap of the field,
and as plantings of a vineyard: and I will pour down the stones
thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof.

1:7 And all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces, and
all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire, and all the idols
thereof will I lay desolate: for she gathered it of the hire of an
harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot.

1:8 Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I
will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls.

1:9 For her wound is incurable; for it is come unto Judah; he is come
unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem.

1:10 Declare ye it not at Gath, weep ye not at all: in the house of
Aphrah roll thyself in the dust.

1:11 Pass ye away, thou inhabitant of Saphir, having thy shame naked:
the inhabitant of Zaanan came not forth in the mourning of Bethezel;
he shall receive of you his standing.

1:12 For the inhabitant of Maroth waited carefully for good: but evil
came down from the LORD unto the gate of Jerusalem.

1:13 O thou inhabitant of Lachish, bind the chariot to the swift
beast: she is the beginning of the sin to the daughter of Zion: for
the transgressions of Israel were found in thee.

1:14 Therefore shalt thou give presents to Moreshethgath: the houses
of Achzib shall be a lie to the kings of Israel.

1:15 Yet will I bring an heir unto thee, O inhabitant of Mareshah: he
shall come unto Adullam the glory of Israel.

1:16 Make thee bald, and poll thee for thy delicate children; enlarge
thy baldness as the eagle; for they are gone into captivity from thee.

2:1 Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds!
when the morning is light, they practise it, because it is in the
power of their hand.

2:2 And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and
take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and
his heritage.

2:3 Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, against this family do I
devise an evil, from which ye shall not remove your necks; neither
shall ye go haughtily: for this time is evil.

2:4 In that day shall one take up a parable against you, and lament
with a doleful lamentation, and say, We be utterly spoiled: he hath
changed the portion of my people: how hath he removed it from me!
turning away he hath divided our fields.

2:5 Therefore thou shalt have none that shall cast a cord by lot in
the congregation of the LORD.

2:6 Prophesy ye not, say they to them that prophesy: they shall not
prophesy to them, that they shall not take shame.

2:7 O thou that art named the house of Jacob, is the spirit of the
LORD straitened? are these his doings? do not my words do good to him
that walketh uprightly?  2:8 Even of late my people is risen up as an
enemy: ye pull off the robe with the garment from them that pass by
securely as men averse from war.

2:9 The women of my people have ye cast out from their pleasant
houses; from their children have ye taken away my glory for ever.

2:10 Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest: because it is
polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction.

2:11 If a man walking in the spirit and falsehood do lie, saying, I
will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink; he shall even be
the prophet of this people.

2:12 I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; I will surely
gather the remnant of Israel; I will put them together as the sheep of
Bozrah, as the flock in the midst of their fold: they shall make great
noise by reason of the multitude of men.

2:13 The breaker is come up before them: they have broken up, and have
passed through the gate, and are gone out by it: and their king shall
pass before them, and the LORD on the head of them.

3:1 And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of
the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment?  3:2 Who hate
the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them,
and their flesh from off their bones; 3:3 Who also eat the flesh of my
people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones,
and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the
caldron.

3:4 Then shall they cry unto the LORD, but he will not hear them: he
will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved
themselves ill in their doings.

3:5 Thus saith the LORD concerning the prophets that make my people
err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace; and he that putteth
not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him.

3:6 Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a
vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and
the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark
over them.

3:7 Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yea,
they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer of God.

3:8 But truly I am full of power by the spirit of the LORD, and of
judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and
to Israel his sin.

3:9 Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes
of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity.

3:10 They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.

3:11 The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach
for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they
lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can
come upon us.

3:12 Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and
Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the
high places of the forest.

4:1 But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of
the house of the LORD shall be established in the top of the
mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall
flow unto it.

4:2 And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to
the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he
will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law
shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

4:3 And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations
afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their
spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against
nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

4:4 But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig
tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of
hosts hath spoken it.

4:5 For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we
will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever.

4:6 In that day, saith the LORD, will I assemble her that halteth, and
I will gather her that is driven out, and her that I have afflicted;
4:7 And I will make her that halted a remnant, and her that was cast
far off a strong nation: and the LORD shall reign over them in mount
Zion from henceforth, even for ever.

4:8 And thou, O tower of the flock, the strong hold of the daughter of
Zion, unto thee shall it come, even the first dominion; the kingdom
shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem.

4:9 Now why dost thou cry out aloud? is there no king in thee? is thy
counsellor perished? for pangs have taken thee as a woman in travail.

4:10 Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a
woman in travail: for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and
thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon;
there shalt thou be delivered; there the LORD shall redeem thee from
the hand of thine enemies.

4:11 Now also many nations are gathered against thee, that say, Let
her be defiled, and let our eye look upon Zion.

4:12 But they know not the thoughts of the LORD, neither understand
they his counsel: for he shall gather them as the sheaves into the
floor.

4:13 Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion: for I will make thine horn
iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass: and thou shalt beat in pieces
many people: and I will consecrate their gain unto the LORD, and their
substance unto the Lord of the whole earth.

5:1 Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid
siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon
the cheek.

5:2 But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the
thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that
is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old,
from everlasting.

5:3 Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which
travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall
return unto the children of Israel.

5:4 And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the LORD, in the
majesty of the name of the LORD his God; and they shall abide: for now
shall he be great unto the ends of the earth.

5:5 And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into
our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise
against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men.

5:6 And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the
land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from
the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth
within our borders.

5:7 And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a
dew from the LORD, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not
for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men.

5:8 And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst
of many people as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young
lion among the flocks of sheep: who, if he go through, both treadeth
down, and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver.

5:9 Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all
thine enemies shall be cut off.

5:10 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD, that I
will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy
thy chariots: 5:11 And I will cut off the cities of thy land, and
throw down all thy strong holds: 5:12 And I will cut off witchcrafts
out of thine hand; and thou shalt have no more soothsayers: 5:13 Thy
graven images also will I cut off, and thy standing images out of the
midst of thee; and thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands.

5:14 And I will pluck up thy groves out of the midst of thee: so will
I destroy thy cities.

5:15 And I will execute vengeance in anger and fury upon the heathen,
such as they have not heard.

6:1 Hear ye now what the LORD saith; Arise, contend thou before the
mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice.

6:2 Hear ye, O mountains, the LORD's controversy, and ye strong
foundations of the earth: for the LORD hath a controversy with his
people, and he will plead with Israel.

6:3 O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I
wearied thee? testify against me.

6:4 For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee
out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and
Miriam.

6:5 O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, and
what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal;
that ye may know the righteousness of the LORD.

6:6 Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the
high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of
a year old?  6:7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or
with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my
transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?  6:8 He
hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require
of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with
thy God?  6:9 The LORD's voice crieth unto the city, and the man of
wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it.

6:10 Are there yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the
wicked, and the scant measure that is abominable?  6:11 Shall I count
them pure with the wicked balances, and with the bag of deceitful
weights?  6:12 For the rich men thereof are full of violence, and the
inhabitants thereof have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in
their mouth.

6:13 Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, in making
thee desolate because of thy sins.

6:14 Thou shalt eat, but not be satisfied; and thy casting down shall
be in the midst of thee; and thou shalt take hold, but shalt not
deliver; and that which thou deliverest will I give up to the sword.

6:15 Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap; thou shalt tread the
olives, but thou shalt not anoint thee with oil; and sweet wine, but
shalt not drink wine.

6:16 For the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house
of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels; that I should make thee a
desolation, and the inhabitants thereof an hissing: therefore ye shall
bear the reproach of my people.

7:1 Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits,
as the grapegleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my
soul desired the firstripe fruit.

7:2 The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none
upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man
his brother with a net.

7:3 That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince
asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he
uttereth his mischievous desire: so they wrap it up.

7:4 The best of them is as a brier: the most upright is sharper than a
thorn hedge: the day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh; now
shall be their perplexity.

7:5 Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep
the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom.

7:6 For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up
against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a
man's enemies are the men of his own house.

7:7 Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my
salvation: my God will hear me.

7:8 Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise;
when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me.

7:9 I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned
against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me: he
will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his
righteousness.

7:10 Then she that is mine enemy shall see it, and shame shall cover
her which said unto me, Where is the LORD thy God? mine eyes shall
behold her: now shall she be trodden down as the mire of the streets.

7:11 In the day that thy walls are to be built, in that day shall the
decree be far removed.

7:12 In that day also he shall come even to thee from Assyria, and
from the fortified cities, and from the fortress even to the river,
and from sea to sea, and from mountain to mountain.

7:13 Notwithstanding the land shall be desolate because of them that
dwell therein, for the fruit of their doings.

7:14 Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine heritage, which
dwell solitarily in the wood, in the midst of Carmel: let them feed in
Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old.

7:15 According to the days of thy coming out of the land of Egypt will
I shew unto him marvellous things.

7:16 The nations shall see and be confounded at all their might: they
shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf.

7:17 They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of
their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of the LORD
our God, and shall fear because of thee.

7:18 Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth
by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not
his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy.

7:19 He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will
subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the
depths of the sea.

7:20 Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham,
which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.




Nahum


1:1 The burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.

1:2 God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is
furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he
reserveth wrath for his enemies.

1:3 The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all
acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the
storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

1:4 He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the
rivers: Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon
languisheth.

1:5 The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is
burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.

1:6 Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the
fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the
rocks are thrown down by him.

1:7 The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he
knoweth them that trust in him.

1:8 But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the
place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies.

1:9 What do ye imagine against the LORD? he will make an utter end:
affliction shall not rise up the second time.

1:10 For while they be folden together as thorns, and while they are
drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.

1:11 There is one come out of thee, that imagineth evil against the
LORD, a wicked counsellor.

1:12 Thus saith the LORD; Though they be quiet, and likewise many, yet
thus shall they be cut down, when he shall pass through. Though I have
afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more.

1:13 For now will I break his yoke from off thee, and will burst thy
bonds in sunder.

1:14 And the LORD hath given a commandment concerning thee, that no
more of thy name be sown: out of the house of thy gods will I cut off
the graven image and the molten image: I will make thy grave; for thou
art vile.

1:15 Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good
tidings, that publisheth peace! O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts,
perform thy vows: for the wicked shall no more pass through thee; he
is utterly cut off.

2:1 He that dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face: keep the
munition, watch the way, make thy loins strong, fortify thy power
mightily.

2:2 For the LORD hath turned away the excellency of Jacob, as the
excellency of Israel: for the emptiers have emptied them out, and
marred their vine branches.

2:3 The shield of his mighty men is made red, the valiant men are in
scarlet: the chariots shall be with flaming torches in the day of his
preparation, and the fir trees shall be terribly shaken.

2:4 The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one
against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they
shall run like the lightnings.

2:5 He shall recount his worthies: they shall stumble in their walk;
they shall make haste to the wall thereof, and the defence shall be
prepared.

2:6 The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be
dissolved.

2:7 And Huzzab shall be led away captive, she shall be brought up, and
her maids shall lead her as with the voice of doves, tabering upon
their breasts.

2:8 But Nineveh is of old like a pool of water: yet they shall flee
away.

Stand, stand, shall they cry; but none shall look back.

2:9 Take ye the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold: for there is
none end of the store and glory out of all the pleasant furniture.

2:10 She is empty, and void, and waste: and the heart melteth, and the
knees smite together, and much pain is in all loins, and the faces of
them all gather blackness.

2:11 Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feedingplace of the
young lions, where the lion, even the old lion, walked, and the lion's
whelp, and none made them afraid?  2:12 The lion did tear in pieces
enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his
holes with prey, and his dens with ravin.

2:13 Behold, I am against thee, saith the LORD of hosts, and I will
burn her chariots in the smoke, and the sword shall devour thy young
lions: and I will cut off thy prey from the earth, and the voice of
thy messengers shall no more be heard.

3:1 Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery; the
prey departeth not; 3:2 The noise of a whip, and the noise of the
rattling of the wheels, and of the pransing horses, and of the jumping
chariots.

3:3 The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering
spear: and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of
carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon
their corpses: 3:4 Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the
wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations
through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.

3:5 Behold, I am against thee, saith the LORD of hosts; and I will
discover thy skirts upon thy face, and I will shew the nations thy
nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame.

3:6 And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile,
and will set thee as a gazingstock.

3:7 And it shall come to pass, that all they that look upon thee shall
flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste: who will bemoan her?
whence shall I seek comforters for thee?  3:8 Art thou better than
populous No, that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters
round about it, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the
sea?  3:9 Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite;
Put and Lubim were thy helpers.

3:10 Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young
children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: and
they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were
bound in chains.

3:11 Thou also shalt be drunken: thou shalt be hid, thou also shalt
seek strength because of the enemy.

3:12 All thy strong holds shall be like fig trees with the firstripe
figs: if they be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the
eater.

3:13 Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women: the gates of
thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire shall
devour thy bars.

3:14 Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds: go into
clay, and tread the morter, make strong the brickkiln.

3:15 There shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off,
it shall eat thee up like the cankerworm: make thyself many as the
cankerworm, make thyself many as the locusts.

3:16 Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven: the
cankerworm spoileth, and fleeth away.

3:17 Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great
grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the
sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they
are.

3:18 Thy shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria: thy nobles shall dwell
in the dust: thy people is scattered upon the mountains, and no man
gathereth them.

3:19 There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous: all
that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee: for upon
whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?




Habakkuk


1:1 The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see.

1:2 O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out
unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save!  1:3 Why dost thou shew
me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance? for spoiling and
violence are before me: and there are that raise up strife and
contention.

1:4 Therefore the law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth:
for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong
judgment proceedeth.

1:5 Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvelously:
for I will work a work in your days which ye will not believe, though
it be told you.

1:6 For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation,
which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the
dwellingplaces that are not their's.

1:7 They are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their dignity
shall proceed of themselves.

1:8 Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are more
fierce than the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall spread
themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly as
the eagle that hasteth to eat.

1:9 They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up as the
east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand.

1:10 And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a
scorn unto them: they shall deride every strong hold; for they shall
heap dust, and take it.

1:11 Then shall his mind change, and he shall pass over, and offend,
imputing this his power unto his god.

1:12 Art thou not from everlasting, O LORD my God, mine Holy One? we
shall not die. O LORD, thou hast ordained them for judgment; and, O
mighty God, thou hast established them for correction.

1:13 Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on
iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously,
and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more
righteous than he?  1:14 And makest men as the fishes of the sea, as
the creeping things, that have no ruler over them?  1:15 They take up
all of them with the angle, they catch them in their net, and gather
them in their drag: therefore they rejoice and are glad.

1:16 Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto
their drag; because by them their portion is fat, and their meat
plenteous.

1:17 Shall they therefore empty their net, and not spare continually
to slay the nations?  2:1 I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon
the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I
shall answer when I am reproved.

2:2 And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it
plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.

2:3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it
shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it
will surely come, it will not tarry.

2:4 Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the
just shall live by his faith.

2:5 Yea also, because he transgresseth by wine, he is a proud man,
neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as
death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations,
and heapeth unto him all people: 2:6 Shall not all these take up a
parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, Woe
to him that increaseth that which is not his! how long? and to him
that ladeth himself with thick clay!  2:7 Shall they not rise up
suddenly that shall bite thee, and awake that shall vex thee, and thou
shalt be for booties unto them?  2:8 Because thou hast spoiled many
nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee; because of
men's blood, and for the violence of the land, of the city, and of all
that dwell therein.

2:9 Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that
he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power
of evil!  2:10 Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off
many people, and hast sinned against thy soul.

2:11 For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the
timber shall answer it.

2:12 Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a
city by iniquity!  2:13 Behold, is it not of the LORD of hosts that
the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary
themselves for very vanity?  2:14 For the earth shall be filled with
the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

2:15 Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy
bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on
their nakedness!  2:16 Thou art filled with shame for glory: drink
thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered: the cup of the LORD's
right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on
thy glory.

2:17 For the violence of Lebanon shall cover thee, and the spoil of
beasts, which made them afraid, because of men's blood, and for the
violence of the land, of the city, and of all that dwell therein.

2:18 What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath
graven it; the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of
his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols?  2:19 Woe unto him that
saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach!
Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath
at all in the midst of it.

2:20 But the LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep
silence before him.

3:1 A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shigionoth.

3:2 O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive
thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make
known; in wrath remember mercy.

3:3 God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His
glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise.

3:4 And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of
his hand: and there was the hiding of his power.

3:5 Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at
his feet.

3:6 He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the
nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual
hills did bow: his ways are everlasting.

3:7 I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: and the curtains of the
land of Midian did tremble.

3:8 Was the LORD displeased against the rivers? was thine anger
against the rivers? was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst
ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation?  3:9 Thy bow was
made quite naked, according to the oaths of the tribes, even thy word.
Selah. Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers.

3:10 The mountains saw thee, and they trembled: the overflowing of the
water passed by: the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands
on high.

3:11 The sun and moon stood still in their habitation: at the light of
thine arrows they went, and at the shining of thy glittering spear.

3:12 Thou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst
thresh the heathen in anger.

3:13 Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for
salvation with thine anointed; thou woundedst the head out of the
house of the wicked, by discovering the foundation unto the neck.
Selah.

3:14 Thou didst strike through with his staves the head of his
villages: they came out as a whirlwind to scatter me: their rejoicing
was as to devour the poor secretly.

3:15 Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the
heap of great waters.

3:16 When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice:
rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I
might rest in the day of trouble: when he cometh up unto the people,
he will invade them with his troops.

3:17 Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be
in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall
yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there
shall be no herd in the stalls: 3:18 Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I
will joy in the God of my salvation.

3:19 The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds'
feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief
singer on my stringed instruments.




Zephaniah


1:1 The word of the LORD which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cushi,
the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hizkiah, in the
days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah.

1:2 I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the
LORD.

1:3 I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the
heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumbling blocks with the
wicked: and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the LORD.

1:4 I will also stretch out mine hand upon Judah, and upon all the
inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from
this place, and the name of the Chemarims with the priests; 1:5 And
them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops; and them that
worship and that swear by the LORD, and that swear by Malcham; 1:6 And
them that are turned back from the LORD; and those that have not
sought the LORD, nor enquired for him.

1:7 Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord GOD: for the day of the
LORD is at hand: for the LORD hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath bid
his guests.

1:8 And it shall come to pass in the day of the LORD's sacrifice, that
I will punish the princes, and the king's children, and all such as
are clothed with strange apparel.

1:9 In the same day also will I punish all those that leap on the
threshold, which fill their masters' houses with violence and deceit.

1:10 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD, that there
shall be the noise of a cry from the fish gate, and an howling from
the second, and a great crashing from the hills.

1:11 Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh, for all the merchant people are
cut down; all they that bear silver are cut off.

1:12 And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search
Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their
lees: that say in their heart, The LORD will not do good, neither will
he do evil.

1:13 Therefore their goods shall become a booty, and their houses a
desolation: they shall also build houses, but not inhabit them; and
they shall plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof.

1:14 The great day of the LORD is near, it is near, and hasteth
greatly, even the voice of the day of the LORD: the mighty man shall
cry there bitterly.

1:15 That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day
of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day
of clouds and thick darkness, 1:16 A day of the trumpet and alarm
against the fenced cities, and against the high towers.

1:17 And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like
blind men, because they have sinned against the LORD: and their blood
shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung.

1:18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them
in the day of the LORD's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured
by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance
of all them that dwell in the land.

2:1 Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not
desired; 2:2 Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the
chaff, before the fierce anger of the LORD come upon you, before the
day of the LORD's anger come upon you.

2:3 Seek ye the LORD, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his
judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid
in the day of the LORD's anger.

2:4 For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall
drive out Ashdod at the noon day, and Ekron shall be rooted up.

2:5 Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea coast, the nation of the
Cherethites! the word of the LORD is against you; O Canaan, the land
of the Philistines, I will even destroy thee, that there shall be no
inhabitant.

2:6 And the sea coast shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds,
and folds for flocks.

2:7 And the coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah; they
shall feed thereupon: in the houses of Ashkelon shall they lie down in
the evening: for the LORD their God shall visit them, and turn away
their captivity.

2:8 I have heard the reproach of Moab, and the revilings of the
children of Ammon, whereby they have reproached my people, and
magnified themselves against their border.

2:9 Therefore as I live, saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel,
Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah,
even the breeding of nettles, and saltpits, and a perpetual
desolation: the residue of my people shall spoil them, and the remnant
of my people shall possess them.

2:10 This shall they have for their pride, because they have
reproached and magnified themselves against the people of the LORD of
hosts.

2:11 The LORD will be terrible unto them: for he will famish all the
gods of the earth; and men shall worship him, every one from his
place, even all the isles of the heathen.

2:12 Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by my sword.

2:13 And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy
Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a
wilderness.

2:14 And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of
the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the
upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation
shall be in the thresholds; for he shall uncover the cedar work.

2:15 This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in
her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a
desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth
by her shall hiss, and wag his hand.

3:1 Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city!
3:2 She obeyed not the voice; she received not correction; she trusted
not in the LORD; she drew not near to her God.

3:3 Her princes within her are roaring lions; her judges are evening
wolves; they gnaw not the bones till the morrow.

3:4 Her prophets are light and treacherous persons: her priests have
polluted the sanctuary, they have done violence to the law.

3:5 The just LORD is in the midst thereof; he will not do iniquity:
every morning doth he bring his judgment to light, he faileth not; but
the unjust knoweth no shame.

3:6 I have cut off the nations: their towers are desolate; I made
their streets waste, that none passeth by: their cities are destroyed,
so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant.

3:7 I said, Surely thou wilt fear me, thou wilt receive instruction;
so their dwelling should not be cut off, howsoever I punished them:
but they rose early, and corrupted all their doings.

3:8 Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the LORD, until the day that I
rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations,
that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation,
even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the
fire of my jealousy.

3:9 For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may
all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent.

3:10 From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, even the
daughter of my dispersed, shall bring mine offering.

3:11 In that day shalt thou not be ashamed for all thy doings, wherein
thou hast transgressed against me: for then I will take away out of
the midst of thee them that rejoice in thy pride, and thou shalt no
more be haughty because of my holy mountain.

3:12 I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor
people, and they shall trust in the name of the LORD.

3:13 The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies;
neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth: for they
shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid.

3:14 Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice
with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem.

3:15 The LORD hath taken away thy judgments, he hath cast out thine
enemy: the king of Israel, even the LORD, is in the midst of thee:
thou shalt not see evil any more.

3:16 In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not: and to
Zion, Let not thine hands be slack.

3:17 The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he
will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy
over thee with singing.

3:18 I will gather them that are sorrowful for the solemn assembly,
who are of thee, to whom the reproach of it was a burden.

3:19 Behold, at that time I will undo all that afflict thee: and I
will save her that halteth, and gather her that was driven out; and I
will get them praise and fame in every land where they have been put
to shame.

3:20 At that time will I bring you again, even in the time that I
gather you: for I will make you a name and a praise among all people
of the earth, when I turn back your captivity before your eyes,
saith the LORD.




Haggai


1:1 In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the
first day of the month, came the word of the LORD by Haggai the
prophet unto Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and
to Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, saying, 1:2 Thus
speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not
come, the time that the LORD's house should be built.

1:3 Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, 1:4
Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this
house lie waste?  1:5 Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts;
Consider your ways.

1:6 Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not
enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but
there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it
into a bag with holes.

1:7 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways.

1:8 Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I
will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD.

1:9 Ye looked for much, and, lo it came to little; and when ye brought
it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the LORD of hosts. Because of
mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house.

1:10 Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth
is stayed from her fruit.

1:11 And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains,
and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon
that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle,
and upon all the labour of the hands.

1:12 Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of
Josedech, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed
the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet,
as the LORD their God had sent him, and the people did fear before the
LORD.

1:13 Then spake Haggai the LORD's messenger in the LORD's message unto
the people, saying, I am with you, saith the LORD.

1:14 And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of
Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of
Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the
people; and they came and did work in the house of the LORD of hosts,
their God, 1:15 In the four and twentieth day of the sixth month, in
the second year of Darius the king.

2:1 In the seventh month, in the one and twentieth day of the month,
came the word of the LORD by the prophet Haggai, saying, 2:2 Speak now
to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua
the son of Josedech, the high priest, and to the residue of the
people, saying, 2:3 Who is left among you that saw this house in her
first glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in
comparison of it as nothing?  2:4 Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel,
saith the LORD; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high
priest; and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the LORD, and
work: for I am with you, saith the LORD of hosts: 2:5 According to the
word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my
spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not.

2:6 For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while,
and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry
land; 2:7 And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations
shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of
hosts.

2:8 The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts.

2:9 The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the
former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace,
saith the LORD of hosts.

2:10 In the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, in the second
year of Darius, came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet,
saying, 2:11 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ask now the priests
concerning the law, saying, 2:12 If one bear holy flesh in the skirt
of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or
wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered
and said, No.

2:13 Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any
of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It
shall be unclean.

2:14 Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this
nation before me, saith the LORD; and so is every work of their hands;
and that which they offer there is unclean.

2:15 And now, I pray you, consider from this day and upward, from
before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the LORD: 2:16
Since those days were, when one came to an heap of twenty measures,
there were but ten: when one came to the pressfat for to draw out
fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty.

2:17 I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all
the labours of your hands; yet ye turned not to me, saith the LORD.

2:18 Consider now from this day and upward, from the four and
twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the
foundation of the LORD's temple was laid, consider it.

2:19 Is the seed yet in the barn? yea, as yet the vine, and the fig
tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive tree, hath not brought forth:
from this day will I bless you.

2:20 And again the word of the LORD came unto Haggai in the four and
twentieth day of the month, saying, 2:21 Speak to Zerubbabel, governor
of Judah, saying, I will shake the heavens and the earth; 2:22 And I
will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength
of the kingdoms of the heathen; and I will overthrow the chariots, and
those that ride in them; and the horses and their riders shall come
down, every one by the sword of his brother.

2:23 In that day, saith the LORD of hosts, will I take thee, O
Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith the LORD, and will
make thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee, saith the LORD of hosts.




Zechariah


1:1 In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word
of the LORD unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the
prophet, saying, 1:2 The LORD hath been sore displeased with your
fathers.

1:3 Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Turn
ye unto me, saith the LORD of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith
the LORD of hosts.

1:4 Be ye not as your fathers, unto whom the former prophets have
cried, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Turn ye now from your
evil ways, and from your evil doings: but they did not hear, nor
hearken unto me, saith the LORD.

1:5 Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for
ever?  1:6 But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants
the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they
returned and said, Like as the LORD of hosts thought to do unto us,
according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he dealt
with us.

1:7 Upon the four and twentieth day of the eleventh month, which is
the month Sebat, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the
LORD unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the
prophet, saying, 1:8 I saw by night, and behold a man riding upon a
red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the
bottom; and behind him were there red horses, speckled, and white.

1:9 Then said I, O my lord, what are these? And the angel that talked
with me said unto me, I will shew thee what these be.

1:10 And the man that stood among the myrtle trees answered and said,
These are they whom the LORD hath sent to walk to and fro through the
earth.

1:11 And they answered the angel of the LORD that stood among the
myrtle trees, and said, We have walked to and fro through the earth,
and, behold, all the earth sitteth still, and is at rest.

1:12 Then the angel of the LORD answered and said, O LORD of hosts,
how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of
Judah, against which thou hast had indignation these threescore and
ten years?  1:13 And the LORD answered the angel that talked with me
with good words and comfortable words.

1:14 So the angel that communed with me said unto me, Cry thou,
saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and
for Zion with a great jealousy.

1:15 And I am very sore displeased with the heathen that are at ease:
for I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the
affliction.

1:16 Therefore thus saith the LORD; I am returned to Jerusalem with
mercies: my house shall be built in it, saith the LORD of hosts, and a
line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem.

1:17 Cry yet, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; My cities through
prosperity shall yet be spread abroad; and the LORD shall yet comfort
Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem.

1:18 Then lifted I up mine eyes, and saw, and behold four horns.

1:19 And I said unto the angel that talked with me, What be these? And
he answered me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah,
Israel, and Jerusalem.

1:20 And the LORD shewed me four carpenters.

1:21 Then said I, What come these to do? And he spake, saying, These
are the horns which have scattered Judah, so that no man did lift up
his head: but these are come to fray them, to cast out the horns of
the Gentiles, which lifted up their horn over the land of Judah to
scatter it.

2:1 I lifted up mine eyes again, and looked, and behold a man with a
measuring line in his hand.

2:2 Then said I, Whither goest thou? And he said unto me, To measure
Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth thereof, and what is the length
thereof.

2:3 And, behold, the angel that talked with me went forth, and another
angel went out to meet him, 2:4 And said unto him, Run, speak to this
young man, saying, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls
for the multitude of men and cattle therein: 2:5 For I, saith the
LORD, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the
glory in the midst of her.

2:6 Ho, ho, come forth, and flee from the land of the north, saith the
LORD: for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven,
saith the LORD.

2:7 Deliver thyself, O Zion, that dwellest with the daughter of
Babylon.

2:8 For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me
unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth
the apple of his eye.

2:9 For, behold, I will shake mine hand upon them, and they shall be a
spoil to their servants: and ye shall know that the LORD of hosts hath
sent me.

2:10 Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion: for, lo, I come, and I will
dwell in the midst of thee, saith the LORD.

2:11 And many nations shall be joined to the LORD in that day, and
shall be my people: and I will dwell in the midst of thee, and thou
shalt know that the LORD of hosts hath sent me unto thee.

2:12 And the LORD shall inherit Judah his portion in the holy land,
and shall choose Jerusalem again.

2:13 Be silent, O all flesh, before the LORD: for he is raised up out
of his holy habitation.

3:1 And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel
of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.

3:2 And the LORD said unto Satan, The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan; even
the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand
plucked out of the fire?  3:3 Now Joshua was clothed with filthy
garments, and stood before the angel.

3:4 And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him,
saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said,
Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will
clothe thee with change of raiment.

3:5 And I said, Let them set a fair mitre upon his head. So they set a
fair mitre upon his head, and clothed him with garments. And the angel
of the LORD stood by.

3:6 And the angel of the LORD protested unto Joshua, saying, 3:7 Thus
saith the LORD of hosts; If thou wilt walk in my ways, and if thou
wilt keep my charge, then thou shalt also judge my house, and shalt
also keep my courts, and I will give thee places to walk among these
that stand by.

3:8 Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit
before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring
forth my servant the BRANCH.

3:9 For behold the stone that I have laid before Joshua; upon one
stone shall be seven eyes: behold, I will engrave the graving thereof,
saith the LORD of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land
in one day.

3:10 In that day, saith the LORD of hosts, shall ye call every man his
neighbour under the vine and under the fig tree.

4:1 And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a
man that is wakened out of his sleep.

4:2 And said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have looked, and
behold a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and
his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps, which are
upon the top thereof: 4:3 And two olive trees by it, one upon the
right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.

4:4 So I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying,
What are these, my lord?  4:5 Then the angel that talked with me
answered and said unto me, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said,
No, my lord.

4:6 Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of
the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by
my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.

4:7 Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt
become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with
shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.

4:8 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 4:9 The hands
of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall
also finish it; and thou shalt know that the LORD of hosts hath sent
me unto you.

4:10 For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall
rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with
those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro
through the whole earth.

4:11 Then answered I, and said unto him, What are these two olive
trees upon the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side
thereof?  4:12 And I answered again, and said unto him, What be these
two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden
oil out of themselves?  4:13 And he answered me and said, Knowest thou
not what these be? And I said, No, my lord.

4:14 Then said he, These are the two anointed ones, that stand by the
LORD of the whole earth.

5:1 Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a
flying roll.

5:2 And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I answered, I see a
flying roll; the length thereof is twenty cubits, and the breadth
thereof ten cubits.

5:3 Then said he unto me, This is the curse that goeth forth over the
face of the whole earth: for every one that stealeth shall be cut off
as on this side according to it; and every one that sweareth shall be
cut off as on that side according to it.

5:4 I will bring it forth, saith the LORD of hosts, and it shall enter
into the house of the thief, and into the house of him that sweareth
falsely by my name: and it shall remain in the midst of his house, and
shall consume it with the timber thereof and the stones thereof.

5:5 Then the angel that talked with me went forth, and said unto me,
Lift up now thine eyes, and see what is this that goeth forth.

5:6 And I said, What is it? And he said, This is an ephah that goeth
forth. He said moreover, This is their resemblance through all the
earth.

5:7 And, behold, there was lifted up a talent of lead: and this is a
woman that sitteth in the midst of the ephah.

5:8 And he said, This is wickedness. And he cast it into the midst of
the ephah; and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof.

5:9 Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came
out two women, and the wind was in their wings; for they had wings
like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the ephah between the
earth and the heaven.

5:10 Then said I to the angel that talked with me, Whither do these
bear the ephah?  5:11 And he said unto me, To build it an house in the
land of Shinar: and it shall be established, and set there upon her
own base.

6:1 And I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold,
there came four chariots out from between two mountains; and the
mountains were mountains of brass.

6:2 In the first chariot were red horses; and in the second chariot
black horses; 6:3 And in the third chariot white horses; and in the
fourth chariot grisled and bay horses.

6:4 Then I answered and said unto the angel that talked with me, What
are these, my lord?  6:5 And the angel answered and said unto me,
These are the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from
standing before the LORD of all the earth.

6:6 The black horses which are therein go forth into the north
country; and the white go forth after them; and the grisled go forth
toward the south country.

6:7 And the bay went forth, and sought to go that they might walk to
and fro through the earth: and he said, Get you hence, walk to and fro
through the earth. So they walked to and fro through the earth.

6:8 Then cried he upon me, and spake unto me, saying, Behold, these
that go toward the north country have quieted my spirit in the north
country.

6:9 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 6:10 Take of them
of the captivity, even of Heldai, of Tobijah, and of Jedaiah, which
are come from Babylon, and come thou the same day, and go into the
house of Josiah the son of Zephaniah; 6:11 Then take silver and gold,
and make crowns, and set them upon the head of Joshua the son of
Josedech, the high priest; 6:12 And speak unto him, saying, Thus
speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is The
BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the
temple of the LORD: 6:13 Even he shall build the temple of the LORD;
and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne;
and he shall be a priest upon his throne: and the counsel of peace
shall be between them both.

6:14 And the crowns shall be to Helem, and to Tobijah, and to Jedaiah,
and to Hen the son of Zephaniah, for a memorial in the temple of the
LORD.

6:15 And they that are far off shall come and build in the temple of
the LORD, and ye shall know that the LORD of hosts hath sent me unto
you. And this shall come to pass, if ye will diligently obey the voice
of the LORD your God.

7:1 And it came to pass in the fourth year of king Darius, that the
word of the LORD came unto Zechariah in the fourth day of the ninth
month, even in Chisleu; 7:2 When they had sent unto the house of God
Sherezer and Regemmelech, and their men, to pray before the LORD, 7:3
And to speak unto the priests which were in the house of the LORD of
hosts, and to the prophets, saying, Should I weep in the fifth month,
separating myself, as I have done these so many years?  7:4 Then came
the word of the LORD of hosts unto me, saying, 7:5 Speak unto all the
people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and
mourned in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did
ye at all fast unto me, even to me?  7:6 And when ye did eat, and when
ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?
7:7 Should ye not hear the words which the LORD hath cried by the
former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and
the cities thereof round about her, when men inhabited the south and
the plain?  7:8 And the word of the LORD came unto Zechariah, saying,
7:9 Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Execute true judgment,
and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother: 7:10 And
oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor;
and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.

7:11 But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and
stopped their ears, that they should not hear.

7:12 Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should
hear the law, and the words which the LORD of hosts hath sent in his
spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath from the
LORD of hosts.

7:13 Therefore it is come to pass, that as he cried, and they would
not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the LORD of
hosts: 7:14 But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the
nations whom they knew not. Thus the land was desolate after them,
that no man passed through nor returned: for they laid the pleasant
land desolate.

8:1 Again the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying, 8:2 Thus
saith the LORD of hosts; I was jealous for Zion with great jealousy,
and I was jealous for her with great fury.

8:3 Thus saith the LORD; I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in
the midst of Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth;
and the mountain of the LORD of hosts the holy mountain.

8:4 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; There shall yet old men and old
women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff
in his hand for very age.

8:5 And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls
playing in the streets thereof.

8:6 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; If it be marvellous in the eyes of
the remnant of this people in these days, should it also be marvellous
in mine eyes? saith the LORD of hosts.

8:7 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Behold, I will save my people from
the east country, and from the west country; 8:8 And I will bring
them, and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: and they shall
be my people, and I will be their God, in truth and in righteousness.

8:9 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Let your hands be strong, ye that
hear in these days these words by the mouth of the prophets, which
were in the day that the foundation of the house of the LORD of hosts
was laid, that the temple might be built.

8:10 For before these days there was no hire for man, nor any hire for
beast; neither was there any peace to him that went out or came in
because of the affliction: for I set all men every one against his
neighbour.

8:11 But now I will not be unto the residue of this people as in the
former days, saith the LORD of hosts.

8:12 For the seed shall be prosperous; the vine shall give her fruit,
and the ground shall give her increase, and the heavens shall give
their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all
these things.

8:13 And it shall come to pass, that as ye were a curse among the
heathen, O house of Judah, and house of Israel; so will I save you,
and ye shall be a blessing: fear not, but let your hands be strong.

8:14 For thus saith the LORD of hosts; As I thought to punish you,
when your fathers provoked me to wrath, saith the LORD of hosts, and I
repented not: 8:15 So again have I thought in these days to do well
unto Jerusalem and to the house of Judah: fear ye not.

8:16 These are the things that ye shall do; Speak ye every man the
truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in
your gates: 8:17 And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts
against his neighbour; and love no false oath: for all these are
things that I hate, saith the LORD.

8:18 And the word of the LORD of hosts came unto me, saying, 8:19 Thus
saith the LORD of hosts; The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of
the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth,
shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts;
therefore love the truth and peace.

8:20 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; It shall yet come to pass, that
there shall come people, and the inhabitants of many cities: 8:21 And
the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, Let us go
speedily to pray before the LORD, and to seek the LORD of hosts: I
will go also.

8:22 Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the LORD
of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the LORD.

8:23 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; In those days it shall come to
pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the
nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew,
saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.

9:1 The burden of the word of the LORD in the land of Hadrach, and
Damascus shall be the rest thereof: when the eyes of man, as of all
the tribes of Israel, shall be toward the LORD.

9:2 And Hamath also shall border thereby; Tyrus, and Zidon, though it
be very wise.

9:3 And Tyrus did build herself a strong hold, and heaped up silver as
the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets.

9:4 Behold, the LORD will cast her out, and he will smite her power in
the sea; and she shall be devoured with fire.

9:5 Ashkelon shall see it, and fear; Gaza also shall see it, and be
very sorrowful, and Ekron; for her expectation shall be ashamed; and
the king shall perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be inhabited.

9:6 And a bastard shall dwell in Ashdod, and I will cut off the pride
of the Philistines.

9:7 And I will take away his blood out of his mouth, and his
abominations from between his teeth: but he that remaineth, even he,
shall be for our God, and he shall be as a governor in Judah, and
Ekron as a Jebusite.

9:8 And I will encamp about mine house because of the army, because of
him that passeth by, and because of him that returneth: and no
oppressor shall pass through them any more: for now have I seen with
mine eyes.

9:9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of
Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having
salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of
an ass.

9:10 And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from
Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak
peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to
sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.

9:11 As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth
thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water.

9:12 Turn you to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope: even to day do
I declare that I will render double unto thee; 9:13 When I have bent
Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O
Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made thee as the sword of a
mighty man.

9:14 And the LORD shall be seen over them, and his arrow shall go
forth as the lightning: and the LORD God shall blow the trumpet, and
shall go with whirlwinds of the south.

9:15 The LORD of hosts shall defend them; and they shall devour, and
subdue with sling stones; and they shall drink, and make a noise as
through wine; and they shall be filled like bowls, and as the corners
of the altar.

9:16 And the LORD their God shall save them in that day as the flock
of his people: for they shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted up
as an ensign upon his land.

9:17 For how great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! corn
shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids.

10:1 Ask ye of the LORD rain in the time of the latter rain; so the
LORD shall make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain, to every
one grass in the field.

10:2 For the idols have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a
lie, and have told false dreams; they comfort in vain: therefore they
went their way as a flock, they were troubled, because there was no
shepherd.

10:3 Mine anger was kindled against the shepherds, and I punished the
goats: for the LORD of hosts hath visited his flock the house of
Judah, and hath made them as his goodly horse in the battle.

10:4 Out of him came forth the corner, out of him the nail, out of him
the battle bow, out of him every oppressor together.

10:5 And they shall be as mighty men, which tread down their enemies
in the mire of the streets in the battle: and they shall fight,
because the LORD is with them, and the riders on horses shall be
confounded.

10:6 And I will strengthen the house of Judah, and I will save the
house of Joseph, and I will bring them again to place them; for I have
mercy upon them: and they shall be as though I had not cast them off:
for I am the LORD their God, and will hear them.

10:7 And they of Ephraim shall be like a mighty man, and their heart
shall rejoice as through wine: yea, their children shall see it, and
be glad; their heart shall rejoice in the LORD.

10:8 I will hiss for them, and gather them; for I have redeemed them:
and they shall increase as they have increased.

10:9 And I will sow them among the people: and they shall remember me
in far countries; and they shall live with their children, and turn
again.

10:10 I will bring them again also out of the land of Egypt, and
gather them out of Assyria; and I will bring them into the land of
Gilead and Lebanon; and place shall not be found for them.

10:11 And he shall pass through the sea with affliction, and shall
smite the waves in the sea, and all the deeps of the river shall dry
up: and the pride of Assyria shall be brought down, and the sceptre of
Egypt shall depart away.

10:12 And I will strengthen them in the LORD; and they shall walk up
and down in his name, saith the LORD.

11:1 Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.

11:2 Howl, fir tree; for the cedar is fallen; because the mighty are
spoiled: howl, O ye oaks of Bashan; for the forest of the vintage is
come down.

11:3 There is a voice of the howling of the shepherds; for their glory
is spoiled: a voice of the roaring of young lions; for the pride of
Jordan is spoiled.

11:4 Thus saith the LORD my God; Feed the flock of the slaughter; 11:5
Whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty: and they
that sell them say, Blessed be the LORD; for I am rich: and their own
shepherds pity them not.

11:6 For I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith the
LORD: but, lo, I will deliver the men every one into his neighbour's
hand, and into the hand of his king: and they shall smite the land,
and out of their hand I will not deliver them.

11:7 And I will feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O poor of the
flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I called Beauty, and the
other I called Bands; and I fed the flock.

11:8 Three shepherds also I cut off in one month; and my soul lothed
them, and their soul also abhorred me.

11:9 Then said I, I will not feed you: that that dieth, let it die;
and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let the rest
eat every one the flesh of another.

11:10 And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I
might break my covenant which I had made with all the people.

11:11 And it was broken in that day: and so the poor of the flock that
waited upon me knew that it was the word of the LORD.

11:12 And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if
not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.

11:13 And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly
price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of
silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.

11:14 Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands, that I might
break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

11:15 And the LORD said unto me, Take unto thee yet the instruments of
a foolish shepherd.

11:16 For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not
visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor
heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he
shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces.

11:17 Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall
be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried
up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.

12:1 The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD,
which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the
earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.

12:2 Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the
people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah
and against Jerusalem.

12:3 And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all
people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces,
though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.

12:4 In that day, saith the LORD, I will smite every horse with
astonishment, and his rider with madness: and I will open mine eyes
upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the people with
blindness.

12:5 And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, The
inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the LORD of hosts
their God.

12:6 In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of
fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they
shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the
left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in
Jerusalem.

12:7 The LORD also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory
of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do
not magnify themselves against Judah.

12:8 In that day shall the LORD defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem;
and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and
the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the LORD before
them.

12:9 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to
destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

12:10 And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications:
and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall
mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in
bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.

12:11 In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the
mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon.

12:12 And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the
house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house
of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; 12:13 The family of the house
of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and
their wives apart; 12:14 All the families that remain, every family
apart, and their wives apart.

13:1 In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of
David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.

13:2 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts,
that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they
shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and
the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.

13:3 And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then
his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou
shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD: and
his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when
he prophesieth.

13:4 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be
ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied; neither
shall they wear a rough garment to deceive: 13:5 But he shall say, I
am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle
from my youth.

13:6 And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands?
Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of
my friends.

13:7 Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is
my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep
shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.

13:8 And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD,
two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be
left therein.

13:9 And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine
them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they
shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my
people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God.

14:1 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be
divided in the midst of thee.

14:2 For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and
the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women
ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the
residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.

14:3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as
when he fought in the day of battle.

14:4 And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives,
which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall
cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and
there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall
remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.

14:5 And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley
of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye
fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah:
and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.

14:6 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not
be clear, nor dark: 14:7 But it shall be one day which shall be known
to the LORD, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at
evening time it shall be light.

14:8 And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from
Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward
the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be.

14:9 And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall
there be one LORD, and his name one.

14:10 All the land shall be turned as a plain from Geba to Rimmon
south of Jerusalem: and it shall be lifted up, and inhabited in her
place, from Benjamin's gate unto the place of the first gate, unto the
corner gate, and from the tower of Hananeel unto the king's
winepresses.

14:11 And men shall dwell in it, and there shall be no more utter
destruction; but Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited.

14:12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all
the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall
consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall
consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in
their mouth.

14:13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from
the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the
hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of
his neighbour.

14:14 And Judah also shall fight at Jerusalem; and the wealth of all
the heathen round about shall be gathered together, gold, and silver,
and apparel, in great abundance.

14:15 And so shall be the plague of the horse, of the mule, of the
camel, and of the ass, and of all the beasts that shall be in these
tents, as this plague.

14:16 And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all
the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to
year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of
tabernacles.

14:17 And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families
of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts,
even upon them shall be no rain.

14:18 And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not, that have no
rain; there shall be the plague, wherewith the LORD will smite the
heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles.

14:19 This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all
nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles.

14:20 In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses,
HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD; and the pots in the LORD's house shall be like
the bowls before the altar.

14:21 Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto
the LORD of hosts: and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of
them, and seethe therein: and in that day there shall be no more the
Canaanite in the house of the LORD of hosts.




Malachi


1:1 The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi.

1:2 I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou
loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved
Jacob, 1:3 And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage
waste for the dragons of the wilderness.

1:4 Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and
build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall
build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of
wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for
ever.

1:5 And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be
magnified from the border of Israel.

1:6 A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be
a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my
fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my
name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?  1:7 Ye offer
polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted
thee? In that ye say, The table of the LORD is contemptible.

1:8 And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye
offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy
governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith
the LORD of hosts.

1:9 And now, I pray you, beseech God that he will be gracious unto us:
this hath been by your means: will he regard your persons? saith the
LORD of hosts.

1:10 Who is there even among you that would shut the doors for nought?
neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for nought. I have no pleasure
in you, saith the LORD of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at
your hand.

1:11 For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the
same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place
incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my
name shall be great among the heathen, saith the LORD of hosts.

1:12 But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, The table of the LORD is
polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible.

1:13 Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! and ye have snuffed
at it, saith the LORD of hosts; and ye brought that which was torn,
and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I
accept this of your hand? saith the LORD.

1:14 But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and
voweth, and sacrificeth unto the LORD a corrupt thing: for I am a
great King, saith the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the
heathen.

2:1 And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you.

2:2 If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give
glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse
upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them
already, because ye do not lay it to heart.

2:3 Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces,
even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with
it.

2:4 And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that
my covenant might be with Levi, saith the LORD of hosts.

2:5 My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him
for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name.

2:6 The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in
his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many
away from iniquity.

2:7 For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek
the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.

2:8 But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble
at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the LORD of
hosts.

2:9 Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all
the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been
partial in the law.

2:10 Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do
we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the
covenant of our fathers?  2:11 Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an
abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath
profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the
daughter of a strange god.

2:12 The LORD will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the
scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an
offering unto the LORD of hosts.

2:13 And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the LORD with
tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth
not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your
hand.

2:14 Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between
thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt
treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.

2:15 And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit.
And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take
heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife
of his youth.

2:16 For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting
away: for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of
hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not
treacherously.

2:17 Ye have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein
have we wearied him? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in
the sight of the LORD, and he delighteth in them; or, Where is the God
of judgment?  3:1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall
prepare the way before me: and the LORD, whom ye seek, shall suddenly
come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye
delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.

3:2 But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when
he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap:
3:3 And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall
purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they
may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.

3:4 Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto
the LORD, as in the days of old, and as in former years.

3:5 And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift
witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against
false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his
wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger
from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.

3:6 For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are
not consumed.

3:7 Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine
ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return
unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we
return?  3:8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say,
Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.

3:9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole
nation.

3:10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be
meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of
hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out
a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

3:11 And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not
destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her
fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts.

3:12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a
delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.

3:13 Your words have been stout against me, saith the LORD. Yet ye
say, What have we spoken so much against thee?  3:14 Ye have said, It
is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his
ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the LORD of
hosts?  3:15 And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work
wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered.

3:16 Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and
the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was
written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought
upon his name.

3:17 And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when
I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own
son that serveth him.

3:18 Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the
wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.

4:1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all
the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the
day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it
shall leave them neither root nor branch.

4:2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness
arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as
calves of the stall.

4:3 And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under
the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD
of hosts.

4:4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto
him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

4:5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of
the great and dreadful day of the LORD: 4:6 And he shall turn the
heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to
their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.


***




The New Testament of the King James Bible




The Gospel According to Saint Matthew


1:1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the
son of Abraham.

1:2 Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas
and his brethren; 1:3 And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and
Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram; 1:4 And Aram begat Aminadab;
and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon; 1:5 And Salmon
begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat
Jesse; 1:6 And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat
Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias; 1:7 And Solomon begat
Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa; 1:8 And Asa begat
Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias; 1:9 And
Ozias begat Joatham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias;
1:10 And Ezekias begat Manasses; and Manasses begat Amon; and Amon
begat Josias; 1:11 And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about
the time they were carried away to Babylon: 1:12 And after they were
brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat
Zorobabel; 1:13 And Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim;
and Eliakim begat Azor; 1:14 And Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat
Achim; and Achim begat Eliud; 1:15 And Eliud begat Eleazar; and
Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob; 1:16 And Jacob begat
Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called
Christ.

1:17 So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen
generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are
fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto
Christ are fourteen generations.

1:18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his
mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was
found with child of the Holy Ghost.

1:19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to
make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.

1:20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the
LORD appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David,
fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived
in her is of the Holy Ghost.

1:21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name
JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

1:22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was
spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 1:23 Behold, a virgin shall
be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his
name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

1:24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord
had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: 1:25 And knew her not till
she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.

2:1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of
Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to
Jerusalem, 2:2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for
we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

2:3 When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and
all Jerusalem with him.

2:4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the
people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.

2:5 And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is
written by the prophet, 2:6 And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda,
art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall
come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.

2:7 Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of
them diligently what time the star appeared.

2:8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently
for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again,
that I may come and worship him also.

2:9 When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star,
which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood
over where the young child was.

2:10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

2:11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child
with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they
had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and
frankincense and myrrh.

2:12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to
Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

2:13 And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord
appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young
child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I
bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

2:14 When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night,
and departed into Egypt: 2:15 And was there until the death of Herod:
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the
prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.

2:16 Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was
exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were
in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and
under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the
wise men.

2:17 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet,
saying, 2:18 In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and
weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and
would not be comforted, because they are not.

2:19 But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth
in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, 2:20 Saying, Arise, and take the young
child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are
dead which sought the young child's life.

2:21 And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came
into the land of Israel.

2:22 But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room
of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding,
being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of
Galilee: 2:23 And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be
called a Nazarene.

3:1 In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness
of Judaea, 3:2 And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand.

3:3 For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying,
The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the
Lord, make his paths straight.

3:4 And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern
girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey.

3:5 Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region
round about Jordan, 3:6 And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing
their sins.

3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his
baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned
you to flee from the wrath to come?  3:8 Bring forth therefore fruits
meet for repentance: 3:9 And think not to say within yourselves, We
have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of
these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.

3:10 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees:
therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down,
and cast into the fire.

3:11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he that
cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to
bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: 3:12
Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and
gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with
unquenchable fire.

3:13 Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be
baptized of him.

3:14 But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee,
and comest thou to me?  3:15 And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer
it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.
Then he suffered him.

3:16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the
water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the
Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: 3:17 And
lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased.

4:1 Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted of the devil.

4:2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was
afterward an hungred.

4:3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of
God, command that these stones be made bread.

4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
God.

4:5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him
on a pinnacle of the temple, 4:6 And saith unto him, If thou be the
Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his
angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee
up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

4:7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the
Lord thy God.

4:8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain,
and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
4:9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou
wilt fall down and worship me.

4:10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is
written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou
serve.

4:11 Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and
ministered unto him.

4:12 Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he
departed into Galilee; 4:13 And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in
Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and
Nephthalim: 4:14 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias
the prophet, saying, 4:15 The land of Zabulon, and the land of
Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the
Gentiles; 4:16 The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and
to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung
up.

4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand.

4:18 And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon
called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for
they were fishers.

4:19 And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of
men.

4:20 And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.

4:21 And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the
son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their
father, mending their nets; and he called them.

4:22 And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed
him.

4:23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues,
and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of
sickness and all manner of disease among the people.

4:24 And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him
all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and
those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick,
and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.

4:25 And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee,
and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from
beyond Jordan.

5:1 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he
was set, his disciples came unto him: 5:2 And he opened his mouth, and
taught them, saying, 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.

5:4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

5:5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

5:6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness:
for they shall be filled.

5:7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children
of God.

5:10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

5:11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and
shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

5:12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in
heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

5:13 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his
savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for
nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

5:14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill
cannot be hid.

5:15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on
a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good
works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I
am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or
one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

5:19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments,
and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of
heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be
called great in the kingdom of heaven.

5:20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed
the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case
enter into the kingdom of heaven.

5:21 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt
not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:
5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother
without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever
shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but
whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

5:23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there
rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; 5:24 Leave there
thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy
brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

5:25 Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way
with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge,
and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into
prison.

5:26 Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence,
till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

5:27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt
not commit adultery: 5:28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh
on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already
in his heart.

5:29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from
thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should
perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

5:30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from
thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should
perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

5:31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him
give her a writing of divorcement: 5:32 But I say unto you, That
whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of
fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry
her that is divorced committeth adultery.

5:33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time,
Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine
oaths: 5:34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven;
for it is God's throne: 5:35 Nor by the earth; for it is his
footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

5:36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make
one hair white or black.

5:37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever
is more than these cometh of evil.

5:38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth: 5:39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil:
but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the
other also.

5:40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat,
let him have thy cloak also.

5:41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

5:42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of
thee turn not thou away.

5:43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully
use you, and persecute you; 5:45 That ye may be the children of your
Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil
and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

5:46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not
even the publicans the same?  5:47 And if ye salute your brethren
only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?  5:48
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is
perfect.

6:1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them:
otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

6:2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet
before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the
streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They
have their reward.

6:3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy
right hand doeth: 6:4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father
which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

6:5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are:
for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of
the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They
have their reward.

6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou
hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy
Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

6:7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for
they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

6:8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what
things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

6:9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in
heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

6:10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

6:11 Give us this day our daily bread.

6:12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

6:13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For
thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

6:14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will
also forgive you: 6:15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses,
neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

6:16 Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad
countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto
men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

6:17 But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy
face; 6:18 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father
which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall
reward thee openly.

6:19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: 6:20 But
lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust
doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: 6:21
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be
single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

6:23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of
darkness.

If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that
darkness!  6:24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate
the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

6:25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye
shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye
shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment?  6:26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither
do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth
them. Are ye not much better than they?  6:27 Which of you by taking
thought can add one cubit unto his stature?  6:28 And why take ye
thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin: 6:29 And yet I say unto you, That
even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

6:30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day
is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe
you, O ye of little faith?  6:31 Therefore take no thought, saying,
What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we
be clothed?  6:32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:)
for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
things.

6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and
all these things shall be added unto you.

6:34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall
take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the
evil thereof.

7:1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

7:2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what
measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

7:3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but
considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?  7:4 Or how wilt
thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye;
and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?  7:5 Thou hypocrite, first
cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see
clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

7:6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your
pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn
again and rend you.

7:7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock,
and it shall be opened unto you: 7:8 For every one that asketh
receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it
shall be opened.

7:9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he
give him a stone?  7:10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a
serpent?  7:11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts
unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven
give good things to them that ask him?  7:12 Therefore all things
whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them:
for this is the law and the prophets.

7:13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad
is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in
thereat: 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

7:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing,
but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

7:16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of
thorns, or figs of thistles?  7:17 Even so every good tree bringeth
forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

7:18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt
tree bring forth good fruit.

7:19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and
cast into the fire.

7:20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into
the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which
is in heaven.

7:22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not
prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in
thy name done many wonderful works?  7:23 And then will I profess unto
them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth
them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a
rock: 7:25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds
blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded
upon a rock.

7:26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them
not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon
the sand: 7:27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the
winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the
fall of it.

7:28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the
people were astonished at his doctrine: 7:29 For he taught them as one
having authority, and not as the scribes.

8:1 When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed
him.

8:2 And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord,
if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

8:3 And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be
thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

8:4 And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man; but go thy way,
shew thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded,
for a testimony unto them.

8:5 And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a
centurion, beseeching him, 8:6 And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at
home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.

8:7 And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him.

8:8 The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou
shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant
shall be healed.

8:9 For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I
say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he
cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

8:10 When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that
followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no,
not in Israel.

8:11 And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west,
and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom
of heaven.

8:12 But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer
darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

8:13 And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast
believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the
selfsame hour.

8:14 And when Jesus was come into Peter's house, he saw his wife's
mother laid, and sick of a fever.

8:15 And he touched her hand, and the fever left her: and she arose,
and ministered unto them.

8:16 When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were
possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and
healed all that were sick: 8:17 That it might be fulfilled which was
spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities,
and bare our sicknesses.

8:18 Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave
commandment to depart unto the other side.

8:19 And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will
follow thee whithersoever thou goest.

8:20 And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of
the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

8:21 And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first
to go and bury my father.

8:22 But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their
dead.

8:23 And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him.

8:24 And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch
that the ship was covered with the waves: but he was asleep.

8:25 And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Lord, save
us: we perish.

8:26 And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?
Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a
great calm.

8:27 But the men marvelled, saying, What manner of man is this, that
even the winds and the sea obey him!  8:28 And when he was come to the
other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two
possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so
that no man might pass by that way.

8:29 And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with
thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us
before the time?  8:30 And there was a good way off from them an herd
of many swine feeding.

8:31 So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer
us to go away into the herd of swine.

8:32 And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went
into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran
violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.

8:33 And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city,
and told every thing, and what was befallen to the possessed of the
devils.

8:34 And, behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus: and when they
saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.

9:1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own
city.

9:2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on
a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy;
Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.

9:3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This
man blasphemeth.

9:4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in
your hearts?  9:5 For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven
thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?  9:6 But that ye may know that the
Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the
sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.

9:7 And he arose, and departed to his house.

9:8 But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God,
which had given such power unto men.

9:9 And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named
Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him,
Follow me. And he arose, and followed him.

9:10 And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold,
many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his
disciples.

9:11 And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why
eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?  9:12 But when Jesus
heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a
physician, but they that are sick.

9:13 But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not
sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance.

9:14 Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the
Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?  9:15 And Jesus said
unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the
bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom
shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.

9:16 No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that
which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is
made worse.

9:17 Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles
break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put
new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.

9:18 While he spake these things unto them, behold, there came a
certain ruler, and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is even now
dead: but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live.

9:19 And Jesus arose, and followed him, and so did his disciples.

9:20 And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood
twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment:
9:21 For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I
shall be whole.

9:22 But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said,
Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the
woman was made whole from that hour.

9:23 And when Jesus came into the ruler's house, and saw the minstrels
and the people making a noise, 9:24 He said unto them, Give place: for
the maid is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn.

9:25 But when the people were put forth, he went in, and took her by
the hand, and the maid arose.

9:26 And the fame hereof went abroad into all that land.

9:27 And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed him,
crying, and saying, Thou son of David, have mercy on us.

9:28 And when he was come into the house, the blind men came to him:
and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They
said unto him, Yea, Lord.

9:29 Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it
unto you.

9:30 And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them,
saying, See that no man know it.

9:31 But they, when they were departed, spread abroad his fame in all
that country.

9:32 As they went out, behold, they brought to him a dumb man
possessed with a devil.

9:33 And when the devil was cast out, the dumb spake: and the
multitudes marvelled, saying, It was never so seen in Israel.

9:34 But the Pharisees said, He casteth out devils through the prince
of the devils.

9:35 And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in
their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing
every sickness and every disease among the people.

9:36 But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on
them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having
no shepherd.

9:37 Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous,
but the labourers are few; 9:38 Pray ye therefore the Lord of the
harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.

10:1 And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave
them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all
manner of sickness and all manner of disease.

10:2 Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first, Simon,
who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee,
and John his brother; 10:3 Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and
Matthew the publican; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose
surname was Thaddaeus; 10:4 Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot,
who also betrayed him.

10:5 These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not
into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans
enter ye not: 10:6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel.

10:7 And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

10:8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out
devils: freely ye have received, freely give.

10:9 Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, 10:10
Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet
staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat.

10:11 And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, enquire who in
it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence.

10:12 And when ye come into an house, salute it.

10:13 And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it: but if
it be not worthy, let your peace return to you.

10:14 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when
ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.

10:15 Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land
of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.

10:16 Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye
therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

10:17 But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils,
and they will scourge you in their synagogues; 10:18 And ye shall be
brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony
against them and the Gentiles.

10:19 But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye
shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall
speak.

10:20 For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which
speaketh in you.

10:21 And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the
father the child: and the children shall rise up against their
parents, and cause them to be put to death.

10:22 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that
endureth to the end shall be saved.

10:23 But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another:
for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of
Israel, till the Son of man be come.

10:24 The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his
lord.

10:25 It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the
servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house
Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?  10:26
Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not
be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.

10:27 What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye
hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.

10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill
the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and
body in hell.

10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall
not fall on the ground without your Father.

10:30 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

10:31 Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.

10:32 Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I
confess also before my Father which is in heaven.

10:33 But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny
before my Father which is in heaven.

10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to
send peace, but a sword.

10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and
the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her
mother in law.

10:36 And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of
me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of
me.

10:38 And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not
worthy of me.

10:39 He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his
life for my sake shall find it.

10:40 He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me
receiveth him that sent me.

10:41 He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall
receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in
the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward.

10:42 And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones
a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto
you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.

11:1 And it came to pass, when Jesus had made an end of commanding his
twelve disciples, he departed thence to teach and to preach in their
cities.

11:2 Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he
sent two of his disciples, 11:3 And said unto him, Art thou he that
should come, or do we look for another?  11:4 Jesus answered and said
unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and
see: 11:5 The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers
are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor
have the gospel preached to them.

11:6 And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.

11:7 And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes
concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed
shaken with the wind?  11:8 But what went ye out for to see? A man
clothed in soft raiment?  behold, they that wear soft clothing are in
kings' houses.

11:9 But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? yea, I say unto you,
and more than a prophet.

11:10 For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my
messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

11:11 Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there
hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he
that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

11:12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of
heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

11:13 For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.

11:14 And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.

11:15 He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

11:16 But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto
children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, 11:17
And saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have
mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.

11:18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath
a devil.

11:19 The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a
man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.
But wisdom is justified of her children.

11:20 Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty
works were done, because they repented not: 11:21 Woe unto thee,
Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which
were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have
repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

11:22 But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and
Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.

11:23 And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be
brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in
thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.

11:24 But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land
of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.

11:25 At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the
wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.

11:26 Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.

11:27 All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man
knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father,
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.

11:28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest.

11:29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly
in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

11:30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

12:1 At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and
his disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn and
to eat.

12:2 But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy
disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day.

12:3 But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he
was an hungred, and they that were with him; 12:4 How he entered into
the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for
him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the
priests?  12:5 Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath
days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless?
12:6 But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the
temple.

12:7 But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not
sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.

12:8 For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.

12:9 And when he was departed thence, he went into their synagogue:
12:10 And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And
they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? that
they might accuse him.

12:11 And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that
shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day,
will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?  12:12 How much then is a
man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the
sabbath days.

12:13 Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he
stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other.

12:14 Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how
they might destroy him.

12:15 But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from thence: and
great multitudes followed him, and he healed them all; 12:16 And
charged them that they should not make him known: 12:17 That it might
be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, 12:18
Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is
well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew
judgment to the Gentiles.

12:19 He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his
voice in the streets.

12:20 A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not
quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory.

12:21 And in his name shall the Gentiles trust.

12:22 Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and
dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake
and saw.

12:23 And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of
David?  12:24 But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow
doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.

12:25 And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom
divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or
house divided against itself shall not stand: 12:26 And if Satan cast
out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom
stand?  12:27 And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your
children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges.

12:28 But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom
of God is come unto you.

12:29 Or else how can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil
his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil
his house.

12:30 He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not
with me scattereth abroad.

12:31 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall
be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall
not be forgiven unto men.

12:32 And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall
be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it
shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world
to come.

12:33 Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the
tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his
fruit.

12:34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good
things?  for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

12:35 A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth
good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth
evil things.

12:36 But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak,
they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.

12:37 For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou
shalt be condemned.

12:38 Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered,
saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.

12:39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous
generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to
it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: 12:40 For as Jonas was three
days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be
three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

12:41 The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation,
and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas;
and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

12:42 The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this
generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost
parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a
greater than Solomon is here.

12:43 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through
dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.

12:44 Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came
out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.

12:45 Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more
wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last
state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also
unto this wicked generation.

12:46 While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his
brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him.

12:47 Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren
stand without, desiring to speak with thee.

12:48 But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my
mother?  and who are my brethren?  12:49 And he stretched forth his
hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
12:50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven,
the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.

13:1 The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea
side.

13:2 And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he
went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.

13:3 And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a
sower went forth to sow; 13:4 And when he sowed, some seeds fell by
the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: 13:5 Some fell
upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they
sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: 13:6 And when the
sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they
withered away.

13:7 And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked
them: 13:8 But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit,
some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

13:9 Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

13:10 And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou
unto them in parables?  13:11 He answered and said unto them, Because
it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven,
but to them it is not given.

13:12 For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have
more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away
even that he hath.

13:13 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see
not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

13:14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By
hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall
see, and shall not perceive: 13:15 For this people's heart is waxed
gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have
closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with
their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be
converted, and I should heal them.

13:16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they
hear.

13:17 For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men
have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them;
and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.

13:18 Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower.

13:19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth
it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was
sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.

13:20 But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he
that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; 13:21 Yet hath
he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation
or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended.

13:22 He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth
the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches,
choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.

13:23 But he that received seed into the good ground is he that
heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and
bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

13:24 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of
heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: 13:25
But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat,
and went his way.

13:26 But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then
appeared the tares also.

13:27 So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir,
didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it
tares?  13:28 He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants
said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?  13:29
But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also
the wheat with them.

13:30 Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of
harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares,
and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my
barn.

13:31 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of
heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed
in his field: 13:32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when
it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so
that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

13:33 Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is
like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of
meal, till the whole was leavened.

13:34 All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and
without a parable spake he not unto them: 13:35 That it might be
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my
mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret
from the foundation of the world.

13:36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and
his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of
the tares of the field.

13:37 He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is
the Son of man; 13:38 The field is the world; the good seed are the
children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked
one; 13:39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the
end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.

13:40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so
shall it be in the end of this world.

13:41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall
gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do
iniquity; 13:42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there
shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

13:43 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom
of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

13:44 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a
field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof
goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

13:45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man,
seeking goodly pearls: 13:46 Who, when he had found one pearl of great
price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

13:47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast
into the sea, and gathered of every kind: 13:48 Which, when it was
full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into
vessels, but cast the bad away.

13:49 So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come
forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, 13:50 And shall cast
them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of
teeth.

13:51 Jesus saith unto them, Have ye understood all these things? They
say unto him, Yea, Lord.

13:52 Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is
instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an
householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and
old.

13:53 And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these
parables, he departed thence.

13:54 And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in
their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence
hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?  13:55 Is not this
the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren,
James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?  13:56 And his sisters, are
they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?
13:57 And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A
prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own
house.

13:58 And he did not many mighty works there because of their
unbelief.

14:1 At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus, 14:2
And said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from
the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him.

14:3 For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him, and put him in
prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife.

14:4 For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her.

14:5 And when he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude,
because they counted him as a prophet.

14:6 But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias
danced before them, and pleased Herod.

14:7 Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she
would ask.

14:8 And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me
here John Baptist's head in a charger.

14:9 And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath's sake, and
them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her.

14:10 And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison.

14:11 And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel:
and she brought it to her mother.

14:12 And his disciples came, and took up the body, and buried it, and
went and told Jesus.

14:13 When Jesus heard of it, he departed thence by ship into a desert
place apart: and when the people had heard thereof, they followed him
on foot out of the cities.

14:14 And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved
with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.

14:15 And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This
is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away,
that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals.

14:16 But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; give ye them to
eat.

14:17 And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two
fishes.

14:18 He said, Bring them hither to me.

14:19 And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and
took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he
blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the
disciples to the multitude.

14:20 And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the
fragments that remained twelve baskets full.

14:21 And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside
women and children.

14:22 And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a
ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the
multitudes away.

14:23 And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a
mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there
alone.

14:24 But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves:
for the wind was contrary.

14:25 And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them,
walking on the sea.

14:26 And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were
troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.

14:27 But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer;
it is I; be not afraid.

14:28 And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me
come unto thee on the water.

14:29 And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship,
he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.

14:30 But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and
beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.

14:31 And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him,
and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?
14:32 And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased.

14:33 Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying,
Of a truth thou art the Son of God.

14:34 And when they were gone over, they came into the land of
Gennesaret.

14:35 And when the men of that place had knowledge of him, they sent
out into all that country round about, and brought unto him all that
were diseased; 14:36 And besought him that they might only touch the
hem of his garment: and as many as touched were made perfectly whole.

15:1 Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of
Jerusalem, saying, 15:2 Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition
of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.

15:3 But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the
commandment of God by your tradition?  15:4 For God commanded, saying,
Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother,
let him die the death.

15:5 But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It
is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; 15:6 And
honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye
made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.

15:7 Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, 15:8 This
people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with
their lips; but their heart is far from me.

15:9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the
commandments of men.

15:10 And he called the multitude, and said unto them, Hear, and
understand: 15:11 Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man;
but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.

15:12 Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that
the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?  15:13 But
he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not
planted, shall be rooted up.

15:14 Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the
blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

15:15 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Declare unto us this
parable.

15:16 And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding?  15:17 Do
not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth
into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?  15:18 But those
things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and
they defile the man.

15:19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: 15:20 These are the
things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not
a man.

15:21 Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and
Sidon.

15:22 And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and
cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David;
my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.

15:23 But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and
besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.

15:24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep
of the house of Israel.

15:25 Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.

15:26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's
bread, and to cast it to dogs.

15:27 And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which
fall from their masters' table.

15:28 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy
faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made
whole from that very hour.

15:29 And Jesus departed from thence, and came nigh unto the sea of
Galilee; and went up into a mountain, and sat down there.

15:30 And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that
were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at
Jesus' feet; and he healed them: 15:31 Insomuch that the multitude
wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the
lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of
Israel.

15:32 Then Jesus called his disciples unto him, and said, I have
compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three
days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting,
lest they faint in the way.

15:33 And his disciples say unto him, Whence should we have so much
bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great a multitude?  15:34 And
Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven,
and a few little fishes.

15:35 And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground.

15:36 And he took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks,
and brake them, and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the
multitude.

15:37 And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the
broken meat that was left seven baskets full.

15:38 And they that did eat were four thousand men, beside women and
children.

15:39 And he sent away the multitude, and took ship, and came into the
coasts of Magdala.

16:1 The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired
him that he would shew them a sign from heaven.

16:2 He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It
will be fair weather: for the sky is red.

16:3 And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky
is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the
sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?  16:4 A wicked and
adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be
given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them,
and departed.

16:5 And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had
forgotten to take bread.

16:6 Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of
the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

16:7 And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have
taken no bread.

16:8 Which when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, O ye of little
faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no
bread?  16:9 Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five
loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up?  16:10
Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye
took up?  16:11 How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it
not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of
the Pharisees and of the Sadducees?  16:12 Then understood they how
that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the
doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

16:13 When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked
his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
16:14 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some,
Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.

16:15 He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?  16:16 And Simon
Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God.

16:17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon
Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my
Father which is in heaven.

16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this
rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it.

16:19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and
whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

16:20 Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that
he was Jesus the Christ.

16:21 From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how
that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders
and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the
third day.

16:22 Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far
from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.

16:23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan:
thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be
of God, but those that be of men.

16:24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after
me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

16:25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever
will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

16:26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his
soul?  16:27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father
with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his
works.

16:28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall
not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his
kingdom.

17:1 And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his
brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, 17:2 And
was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and
his raiment was white as the light.

17:3 And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking
with him.

17:4 Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us
to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for
thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.

17:5 While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and
behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.

17:6 And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and
were sore afraid.

17:7 And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not
afraid.

17:8 And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save
Jesus only.

17:9 And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them,
saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again
from the dead.

17:10 And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes
that Elias must first come?  17:11 And Jesus answered and said unto
them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.

17:12 But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew
him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall
also the Son of man suffer of them.

17:13 Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John
the Baptist.

17:14 And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a
certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, 17:15 Lord, have mercy
on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth
into the fire, and oft into the water.

17:16 And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him.

17:17 Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse
generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?
bring him hither to me.

17:18 And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the
child was cured from that very hour.

17:19 Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not
we cast him out?  17:20 And Jesus said unto them, Because of your
unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of
mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder
place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

17:21 Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

17:22 And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son
of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: 17:23 And they shall
kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again.

And they were exceeding sorry.

17:24 And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute
money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute?
17:25 He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus
prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings
of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of
strangers?  17:26 Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto
him, Then are the children free.

17:27 Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea,
and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when
thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that
take, and give unto them for me and thee.

18:1 At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?  18:2 And Jesus called a little
child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, 18:3 And said,
Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little
children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

18:4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child,
the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

18:5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name
receiveth me.

18:6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in
me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his
neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

18:7 Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that
offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!  18:8
Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast
them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or
maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into
everlasting fire.

18:9 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from
thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather
than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.

18:10 Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I
say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of
my Father which is in heaven.

18:11 For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.

18:12 How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be
gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the
mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?  18:13 And if so be
that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that
sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.

18:14 Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven,
that one of these little ones should perish.

18:15 Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell
him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou
hast gained thy brother.

18:16 But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two
more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be
established.

18:17 And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church:
but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an
heathen man and a publican.

18:18 Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall
be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven.

18:19 Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as
touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of
my Father which is in heaven.

18:20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there
am I in the midst of them.

18:21 Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother
sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?  18:22 Jesus
saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until
seventy times seven.

18:23 Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king,
which would take account of his servants.

18:24 And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which
owed him ten thousand talents.

18:25 But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be
sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to
be made.

18:26 The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying,
Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.

18:27 Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and
loosed him, and forgave him the debt.

18:28 But the same servant went out, and found one of his
fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on
him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest.

18:29 And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought him,
saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.

18:30 And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he
should pay the debt.

18:31 So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they were very
sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done.

18:32 Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O
thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou
desiredst me: 18:33 Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy
fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?  18:34 And his lord was
wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all
that was due unto him.

18:35 So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye
from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

19:1 And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these sayings,
he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judaea beyond
Jordan; 19:2 And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them
there.

19:3 The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto
him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?
19:4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he
which made them at the beginning made them male and female, 19:5 And
said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall
cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?  19:6 Wherefore
they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined
together, let not man put asunder.

19:7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing
of divorcement, and to put her away?  19:8 He saith unto them, Moses
because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your
wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

19:9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it
be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and
whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

19:10 His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with
his wife, it is not good to marry.

19:11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save
they to whom it is given.

19:12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their
mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of
men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the
kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him
receive it.

19:13 Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should
put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them.

19:14 But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to
come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

19:15 And he laid his hands on them, and departed thence.

19:16 And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good
thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?  19:17 And he said
unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that
is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

19:18 He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder,
Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not
bear false witness, 19:19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

19:20 The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from
my youth up: what lack I yet?  19:21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt
be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou
shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

19:22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away
sorrowful: for he had great possessions.

19:23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That
a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

19:24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through
the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of
God.

19:25 When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed,
saying, Who then can be saved?  19:26 But Jesus beheld them, and said
unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are
possible.

19:27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken
all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?  19:28 And Jesus
said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me,
in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his
glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve
tribes of Israel.

19:29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or
sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my
name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit
everlasting life.

19:30 But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be
first.

20:1 For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an
householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers
into his vineyard.

20:2 And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he
sent them into his vineyard.

20:3 And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing
idle in the marketplace, 20:4 And said unto them; Go ye also into the
vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their
way.

20:5 Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did
likewise.

20:6 And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others
standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day
idle?  20:7 They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith
unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that
shall ye receive.

20:8 So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his
steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from
the last unto the first.

20:9 And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they
received every man a penny.

20:10 But when the first came, they supposed that they should have
received more; and they likewise received every man a penny.

20:11 And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman
of the house, 20:12 Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and
thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and
heat of the day.

20:13 But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no
wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?  20:14 Take that
thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto
thee.

20:15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is
thine eye evil, because I am good?  20:16 So the last shall be first,
and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

20:17 And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart
in the way, and said unto them, 20:18 Behold, we go up to Jerusalem;
and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto
the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, 20:19 And shall
deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify
him: and the third day he shall rise again.

20:20 Then came to him the mother of Zebedees children with her sons,
worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him.

20:21 And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant
that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the
other on the left, in thy kingdom.

20:22 But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye
able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized
with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are
able.

20:23 And he saith unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be
baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with: but to sit on my
right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given
to them for whom it is prepared of my Father.

20:24 And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation
against the two brethren.

20:25 But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the
princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are
great exercise authority upon them.

20:26 But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great
among you, let him be your minister; 20:27 And whosoever will be chief
among you, let him be your servant: 20:28 Even as the Son of man came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a
ransom for many.

20:29 And as they departed from Jericho, a great multitude followed
him.

20:30 And, behold, two blind men sitting by the way side, when they
heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O
Lord, thou son of David.

20:31 And the multitude rebuked them, because they should hold their
peace: but they cried the more, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou
son of David.

20:32 And Jesus stood still, and called them, and said, What will ye
that I shall do unto you?  20:33 They say unto him, Lord, that our
eyes may be opened.

20:34 So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes: and
immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed him.

21:1 And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to
Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples,
21:2 Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and
straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose
them, and bring them unto me.

21:3 And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath
need of them; and straightway he will send them.

21:4 All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by
the prophet, saying, 21:5 Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy
King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the
foal of an ass.

21:6 And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, 21:7 And
brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they
set him thereon.

21:8 And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way;
others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way.

21:9 And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried,
saying, Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the
name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.

21:10 And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved,
saying, Who is this?  21:11 And the multitude said, This is Jesus the
prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.

21:12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them
that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the
moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, 21:13 And said
unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of
prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

21:14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he
healed them.

21:15 And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things
that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying,
Hosanna to the son of David; they were sore displeased, 21:16 And said
unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea;
have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast
perfected praise?  21:17 And he left them, and went out of the city
into Bethany; and he lodged there.

21:18 Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered.

21:19 And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found
nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow
on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered
away.

21:20 And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon
is the fig tree withered away!  21:21 Jesus answered and said unto
them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall
not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall
say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the
sea; it shall be done.

21:22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye
shall receive.

21:23 And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the
elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By
what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this
authority?  21:24 And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will
ask you one thing, which if ye tell me, I in like wise will tell you
by what authority I do these things.

21:25 The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And
they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven;
he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him?  21:26 But if we
shall say, Of men; we fear the people; for all hold John as a prophet.

21:27 And they answered Jesus, and said, We cannot tell. And he said
unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.

21:28 But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to
the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard.

21:29 He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and
went.

21:30 And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered
and said, I go, sir: and went not.

21:31 Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto
him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the
publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.

21:32 For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye
believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and
ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe
him.

21:33 Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which
planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress
in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into
a far country: 21:34 And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent
his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of
it.

21:35 And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed
another, and stoned another.

21:36 Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did
unto them likewise.

21:37 But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will
reverence my son.

21:38 But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves,
This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his
inheritance.

21:39 And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew
him.

21:40 When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do
unto those husbandmen?  21:41 They say unto him, He will miserably
destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other
husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.

21:42 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The
stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the
corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?
21:43 Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from
you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

21:44 And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on
whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

21:45 And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables,
they perceived that he spake of them.

21:46 But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the
multitude, because they took him for a prophet.

22:1 And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and
said, 22:2 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which
made a marriage for his son, 22:3 And sent forth his servants to call
them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.

22:4 Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are
bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are
killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.

22:5 But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm,
another to his merchandise: 22:6 And the remnant took his servants,
and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.

22:7 But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth
his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.

22:8 Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they
which were bidden were not worthy.

22:9 Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find,
bid to the marriage.

22:10 So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered
together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding
was furnished with guests.

22:11 And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man
which had not on a wedding garment: 22:12 And he saith unto him,
Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he
was speechless.

22:13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and
take him away, and cast him into outer darkness, there shall be
weeping and gnashing of teeth.

22:14 For many are called, but few are chosen.

22:15 Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might
entangle him in his talk.

22:16 And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians,
saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of
God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not
the person of men.

22:17 Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give
tribute unto Caesar, or not?  22:18 But Jesus perceived their
wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?  22:19 Shew me
the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.

22:20 And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?
22:21 They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render
therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the
things that are God's.

22:22 When they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him,
and went their way.

22:23 The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is
no resurrection, and asked him, 22:24 Saying, Master, Moses said, If a
man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and
raise up seed unto his brother.

22:25 Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he
had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto
his brother: 22:26 Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the
seventh.

22:27 And last of all the woman died also.

22:28 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the
seven?  for they all had her.

22:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the
scriptures, nor the power of God.

22:30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in
marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

22:31 But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read
that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, 22:32 I am the God of
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?  God is not the
God of the dead, but of the living.

22:33 And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his
doctrine.

22:34 But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees
to silence, they were gathered together.

22:35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question,
tempting him, and saying, 22:36 Master, which is the great commandment
in the law?  22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

22:38 This is the first and great commandment.

22:39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself.

22:40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

22:41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them,
22:42 Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto
him, The son of David.

22:43 He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord,
saying, 22:44 The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand,
till I make thine enemies thy footstool?  22:45 If David then call him
Lord, how is he his son?  22:46 And no man was able to answer him a
word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more
questions.

23:1 Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, 23:2
Saying The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: 23:3 All
therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do
not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.

23:4 For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay
them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with
one of their fingers.

23:5 But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make
broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,
23:6 And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in
the synagogues, 23:7 And greetings in the markets, and to be called of
men, Rabbi, Rabbi.

23:8 But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ;
and all ye are brethren.

23:9 And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your
Father, which is in heaven.

23:10 Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even
Christ.

23:11 But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

23:12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that
shall humble himself shall be exalted.

23:13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut
up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves,
neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

23:14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour
widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye
shall receive the greater damnation.

23:15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass
sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him
twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

23:16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear
by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of
the temple, he is a debtor!  23:17 Ye fools and blind: for whether is
greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?  23:18
And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever
sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty.

23:19 Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the
altar that sanctifieth the gift?  23:20 Whoso therefore shall swear by
the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon.

23:21 And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him
that dwelleth therein.

23:22 And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of
God, and by him that sitteth thereon.

23:23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay
tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier
matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have
done, and not to leave the other undone.

23:24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

23:25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make
clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are
full of extortion and excess.

23:26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup
and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.

23:27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like
unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are
within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.

23:28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within
ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

23:29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye
build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the
righteous, 23:30 And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers,
we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the
prophets.

23:31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the
children of them which killed the prophets.

23:32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.

23:33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the
damnation of hell?  23:34 Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets,
and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify;
and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute
them from city to city: 23:35 That upon you may come all the righteous
blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the
blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple
and the altar.

23:36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this
generation.

23:37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and
stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered
thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her
wings, and ye would not!  23:38 Behold, your house is left unto you
desolate.

23:39 For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye
shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

24:1 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his
disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.

24:2 And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I
say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another,
that shall not be thrown down.

24:3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto
him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what
shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?  24:4
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive
you.

24:5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall
deceive many.

24:6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not
troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not
yet.

24:7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against
kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes,
in divers places.

24:8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

24:9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill
you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.

24:10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another,
and shall hate one another.

24:11 And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.

24:12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax
cold.

24:13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the
world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

24:15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation,
spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso
readeth, let him understand:) 24:16 Then let them which be in Judaea
flee into the mountains: 24:17 Let him which is on the housetop not
come down to take any thing out of his house: 24:18 Neither let him
which is in the field return back to take his clothes.

24:19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give
suck in those days!  24:20 But pray ye that your flight be not in the
winter, neither on the sabbath day: 24:21 For then shall be great
tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this
time, no, nor ever shall be.

24:22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh
be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.

24:23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or
there; believe it not.

24:24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and
shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were
possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

24:25 Behold, I have told you before.

24:26 Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the
desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it
not.

24:27 For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even
unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

24:28 For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be
gathered together.

24:29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be
darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall
fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: 24:30
And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then
shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of
man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

24:31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet,
and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one
end of heaven to the other.

24:32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet
tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: 24:33
So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is
near, even at the doors.

24:34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all
these things be fulfilled.

24:35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass
away.

24:36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of
heaven, but my Father only.

24:37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son
of man be.

24:38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating
and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe
entered into the ark, 24:39 And knew not until the flood came, and
took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

24:40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the
other left.

24:41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken,
and the other left.

24:42 Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.

24:43 But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in
what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not
have suffered his house to be broken up.

24:44 Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not
the Son of man cometh.

24:45 Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made
ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?  24:46
Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so
doing.

24:47 Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his
goods.

24:48 But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord
delayeth his coming; 24:49 And shall begin to smite his
fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; 24:50 The lord
of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and
in an hour that he is not aware of, 24:51 And shall cut him asunder,
and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be
weeping and gnashing of teeth.

25:1 Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins,
which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.

25:2 And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

25:3 They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with
them: 25:4 But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

25:5 While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

25:6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom
cometh; go ye out to meet him.

25:7 Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.

25:8 And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our
lamps are gone out.

25:9 But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough
for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for
yourselves.

25:10 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that
were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.

25:11 Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open
to us.

25:12 But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

25:13 Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour
wherein the Son of man cometh.

25:14 For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far
country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his
goods.

25:15 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to
another one; to every man according to his several ability; and
straightway took his journey.

25:16 Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with
the same, and made them other five talents.

25:17 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.

25:18 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and
hid his lord's money.

25:19 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and
reckoneth with them.

25:20 And so he that had received five talents came and brought other
five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents:
behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.

25:21 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful
servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee
ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

25:22 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou
deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other
talents beside them.

25:23 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant;
thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over
many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

25:24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I
knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown,
and gathering where thou hast not strawed: 25:25 And I was afraid, and
went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is
thine.

25:26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful
servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where
I have not strawed: 25:27 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money
to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine
own with usury.

25:28 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which
hath ten talents.

25:29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have
abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that
which he hath.

25:30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there
shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

25:31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy
angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 25:32
And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate
them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the
goats: 25:33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the
goats on the left.

25:34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world: 25:35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me
meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye
took me in: 25:36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited
me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

25:37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we
thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?  25:38
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed
thee?  25:39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto
thee?  25:40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say
unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these
my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

25:41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from
me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his
angels: 25:42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was
thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 25:43 I was a stranger, and ye took
me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye
visited me not.

25:44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee
an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in
prison, and did not minister unto thee?  25:45 Then shall he answer
them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one
of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

25:46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the
righteous into life eternal.

26:1 And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings,
he said unto his disciples, 26:2 Ye know that after two days is the
feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified.

26:3 Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and
the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was
called Caiaphas, 26:4 And consulted that they might take Jesus by
subtilty, and kill him.

26:5 But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar
among the people.

26:6 Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper,
26:7 There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very
precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.

26:8 But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To
what purpose is this waste?  26:9 For this ointment might have been
sold for much, and given to the poor.

26:10 When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the
woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me.

26:11 For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.

26:12 For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it
for my burial.

26:13 Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached
in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done,
be told for a memorial of her.

26:14 Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the
chief priests, 26:15 And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I
will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty
pieces of silver.

26:16 And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him.

26:17 Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples
came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for
thee to eat the passover?  26:18 And he said, Go into the city to such
a man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand; I will
keep the passover at thy house with my disciples.

26:19 And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them; and they made
ready the passover.

26:20 Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve.

26:21 And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of
you shall betray me.

26:22 And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them
to say unto him, Lord, is it I?  26:23 And he answered and said, He
that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me.

26:24 The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that
man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man
if he had not been born.

26:25 Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered and said, Master, is it
I?  He said unto him, Thou hast said.

26:26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and
brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is
my body.

26:27 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them,
saying, Drink ye all of it; 26:28 For this is my blood of the new
testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

26:29 But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of
the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's
kingdom.

26:30 And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of
Olives.

26:31 Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of
me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the
sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.

26:32 But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.

26:33 Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be
offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.

26:34 Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night,
before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.

26:35 Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I
not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples.

26:36 Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and
saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.

26:37 And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and
began to be sorrowful and very heavy.

26:38 Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even
unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.

26:39 And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed,
saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me:
nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

26:40 And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and
saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?  26:41
Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed
is willing, but the flesh is weak.

26:42 He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my
Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy
will be done.

26:43 And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were
heavy.

26:44 And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third
time, saying the same words.

26:45 Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on
now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of
man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

26:46 Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray
me.

26:47 And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and
with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief
priests and elders of the people.

26:48 Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I
shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast.

26:49 And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and
kissed him.

26:50 And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then
came they, and laid hands on Jesus and took him.

26:51 And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his
hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's,
and smote off his ear.

26:52 Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place:
for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

26:53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall
presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?  26:54 But how
then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?  26:55
In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as
against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily
with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me.

26:56 But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might
be fulfilled. Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled.

26:57 And they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas
the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were assembled.

26:58 But Peter followed him afar off unto the high priest's palace,
and went in, and sat with the servants, to see the end.

26:59 Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought
false witness against Jesus, to put him to death; 26:60 But found
none: yea, though many false witnesses came, yet found they none. At
the last came two false witnesses, 26:61 And said, This fellow said, I
am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.

26:62 And the high priest arose, and said unto him, Answerest thou
nothing? what is it which these witness against thee?  26:63 But Jesus
held his peace, And the high priest answered and said unto him, I
adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the
Christ, the Son of God.

26:64 Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto
you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand
of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.

26:65 Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken
blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have
heard his blasphemy.

26:66 What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of death.

26:67 Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others
smote him with the palms of their hands, 26:68 Saying, Prophesy unto
us, thou Christ, Who is he that smote thee?  26:69 Now Peter sat
without in the palace: and a damsel came unto him, saying, Thou also
wast with Jesus of Galilee.

26:70 But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou
sayest.

26:71 And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him,
and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also with Jesus of
Nazareth.

26:72 And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man.

26:73 And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to
Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth
thee.

26:74 Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man.
And immediately the cock crew.

26:75 And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him,
Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and
wept bitterly.

27:1 When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of
the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death: 27:2 And
when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to
Pontius Pilate the governor.

27:3 Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was
condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of
silver to the chief priests and elders, 27:4 Saying, I have sinned in
that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that
to us? see thou to that.

27:5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and
departed, and went and hanged himself.

27:6 And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not
lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of
blood.

27:7 And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field,
to bury strangers in.

27:8 Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this
day.

27:9 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet,
saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him
that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; 27:10
And gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me.

27:11 And Jesus stood before the governor: and the governor asked him,
saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus said unto him, Thou
sayest.

27:12 And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he
answered nothing.

27:13 Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they
witness against thee?  27:14 And he answered him to never a word;
insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly.

27:15 Now at that feast the governor was wont to release unto the
people a prisoner, whom they would.

27:16 And they had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas.

27:17 Therefore when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto
them, Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus which
is called Christ?  27:18 For he knew that for envy they had delivered
him.

27:19 When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto
him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have
suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.

27:20 But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that
they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus.

27:21 The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain
will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas.

27:22 Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is
called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified.

27:23 And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they
cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.

27:24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a
tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the
multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see
ye to it.

27:25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and
on our children.

27:26 Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged
Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

27:27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common
hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers.

27:28 And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe.

27:29 And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon
his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before
him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!  27:30 And they
spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head.

27:31 And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from
him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.

27:32 And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name:
him they compelled to bear his cross.

27:33 And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to
say, a place of a skull, 27:34 They gave him vinegar to drink mingled
with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.

27:35 And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots:
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They
parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.

27:36 And sitting down they watched him there; 27:37 And set up over
his head his accusation written, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

27:38 Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right
hand, and another on the left.

27:39 And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, 27:40
And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three
days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the
cross.

27:41 Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes
and elders, said, 27:42 He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he
be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we
will believe him.

27:43 He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him:
for he said, I am the Son of God.

27:44 The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same
in his teeth.

27:45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land
unto the ninth hour.

27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying,
Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me?  27:47 Some of them that stood there, when they
heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias.

27:48 And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and filled
it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.

27:49 The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to
save him.

27:50 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the
ghost.

27:51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the
top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; 27:52
And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept
arose, 27:53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and
went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

27:54 Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching
Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they
feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.

27:55 And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed
Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him: 27:56 Among which was Mary
Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of
Zebedees children.

27:57 When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea,
named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple: 27:58 He went to
Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body
to be delivered.

27:59 And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean
linen cloth, 27:60 And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn
out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the
sepulchre, and departed.

27:61 And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over
against the sepulchre.

27:62 Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the
chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, 27:63 Saying,
Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive,
After three days I will rise again.

27:64 Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the
third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and
say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error
shall be worse than the first.

27:65 Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as
sure as ye can.

27:66 So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone,
and setting a watch.

28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first
day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the
sepulchre.

28:2 And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the
Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from
the door, and sat upon it.

28:3 His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as
snow: 28:4 And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as
dead men.

28:5 And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for
I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.

28:6 He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place
where the Lord lay.

28:7 And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the
dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye
see him: lo, I have told you.

28:8 And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great
joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.

28:9 And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them,
saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and
worshipped him.

28:10 Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren
that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.

28:11 Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into
the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were
done.

28:12 And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken
counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, 28:13 Saying, Say
ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept.

28:14 And if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him,
and secure you.

28:15 So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this
saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.

28:16 Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a
mountain where Jesus had appointed them.

28:17 And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted.

28:18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given
unto me in heaven and in earth.

28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 28:20
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you:
and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.




The Gospel According to Saint Mark


1:1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; 1:2
As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before
thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

1:3 The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of
the Lord, make his paths straight.

1:4 John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of
repentance for the remission of sins.

1:5 And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of
Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan,
confessing their sins.

1:6 And John was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a
skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey; 1:7 And
preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the
latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.

1:8 I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you
with the Holy Ghost.

1:9 And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth
of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan.

1:10 And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens
opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him: 1:11 And there
came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I
am well pleased.

1:12 And immediately the spirit driveth him into the wilderness.

1:13 And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan;
and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.

1:14 Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee,
preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, 1:15 And saying, The time
is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and
believe the gospel.

1:16 Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew
his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

1:17 And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you
to become fishers of men.

1:18 And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.

1:19 And when he had gone a little farther thence, he saw James the
son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship
mending their nets.

1:20 And straightway he called them: and they left their father
Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him.

1:21 And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day
he entered into the synagogue, and taught.

1:22 And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as
one that had authority, and not as the scribes.

1:23 And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit;
and he cried out, 1:24 Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with
thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee
who thou art, the Holy One of God.

1:25 And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of
him.

1:26 And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud
voice, he came out of him.

1:27 And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among
themselves, saying, What thing is this? what new doctrine is this? for
with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do
obey him.

1:28 And immediately his fame spread abroad throughout all the region
round about Galilee.

1:29 And forthwith, when they were come out of the synagogue, they
entered into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.

1:30 But Simon's wife's mother lay sick of a fever, and anon they tell
him of her.

1:31 And he came and took her by the hand, and lifted her up; and
immediately the fever left her, and she ministered unto them.

1:32 And at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that
were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils.

1:33 And all the city was gathered together at the door.

1:34 And he healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast
out many devils; and suffered not the devils to speak, because they
knew him.

1:35 And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went
out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.

1:36 And Simon and they that were with him followed after him.

1:37 And when they had found him, they said unto him, All men seek for
thee.

1:38 And he said unto them, Let us go into the next towns, that I may
preach there also: for therefore came I forth.

1:39 And he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and
cast out devils.

1:40 And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down
to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

1:41 And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched
him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.

1:42 And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed
from him, and he was cleansed.

1:43 And he straitly charged him, and forthwith sent him away; 1:44
And saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way,
shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things
which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.

1:45 But he went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze
abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into
the city, but was without in desert places: and they came to him from
every quarter.

2:1 And again he entered into Capernaum after some days; and it was
noised that he was in the house.

2:2 And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there
was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he
preached the word unto them.

2:3 And they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was
borne of four.

2:4 And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they
uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they
let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay.

2:5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy,
Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.

2:6 But there was certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning
in their hearts, 2:7 Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can
forgive sins but God only?  2:8 And immediately when Jesus perceived
in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto
them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts?  2:9 Whether is it
easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or
to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?  2:10 But that ye may
know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he
saith to the sick of the palsy,) 2:11 I say unto thee, Arise, and take
up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house.

2:12 And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before
them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God,
saying, We never saw it on this fashion.

2:13 And he went forth again by the sea side; and all the multitude
resorted unto him, and he taught them.

2:14 And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at
the receipt of custom, and said unto him, Follow me. And he arose and
followed him.

2:15 And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house,
many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his
disciples: for there were many, and they followed him.

2:16 And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and
sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and
drinketh with publicans and sinners?  2:17 When Jesus heard it, he
saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician,
but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners
to repentance.

2:18 And the disciples of John and of the Pharisees used to fast: and
they come and say unto him, Why do the disciples of John and of the
Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not?  2:19 And Jesus said unto
them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom
is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they
cannot fast.

2:20 But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away
from them, and then shall they fast in those days.

2:21 No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else
the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent
is made worse.

2:22 And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine
doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will
be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles.

2:23 And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the
sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears
of corn.

2:24 And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the
sabbath day that which is not lawful?  2:25 And he said unto them,
Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an
hungred, he, and they that were with him?  2:26 How he went into the
house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the
shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave
also to them which were with him?  2:27 And he said unto them, The
sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: 2:28 Therefore
the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.

3:1 And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there
which had a withered hand.

3:2 And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath
day; that they might accuse him.

3:3 And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand
forth.

3:4 And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath
days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their
peace.

3:5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being
grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man,
Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was
restored whole as the other.

3:6 And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with
the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.

3:7 But Jesus withdrew himself with his disciples to the sea: and a
great multitude from Galilee followed him, and from Judaea, 3:8 And
from Jerusalem, and from Idumaea, and from beyond Jordan; and they
about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they had heard what
great things he did, came unto him.

3:9 And he spake to his disciples, that a small ship should wait on
him because of the multitude, lest they should throng him.

3:10 For he had healed many; insomuch that they pressed upon him for
to touch him, as many as had plagues.

3:11 And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and
cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God.

3:12 And he straitly charged them that they should not make him known.

3:13 And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he
would: and they came unto him.

3:14 And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he
might send them forth to preach, 3:15 And to have power to heal
sicknesses, and to cast out devils: 3:16 And Simon he surnamed Peter;
3:17 And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and
he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder: 3:18 And
Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and
James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite,
3:19 And Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him: and they went into
an house.

3:20 And the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not
so much as eat bread.

3:21 And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on
him: for they said, He is beside himself.

3:22 And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath
Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils.

3:23 And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How
can Satan cast out Satan?  3:24 And if a kingdom be divided against
itself, that kingdom cannot stand.

3:25 And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot
stand.

3:26 And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot
stand, but hath an end.

3:27 No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods,
except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his
house.

3:28 Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons
of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: 3:29
But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never
forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.

3:30 Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.

3:31 There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing
without, sent unto him, calling him.

3:32 And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold,
thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.

3:33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren?
3:34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said,
Behold my mother and my brethren!  3:35 For whosoever shall do the
will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.

4:1 And he began again to teach by the sea side: and there was
gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship,
and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the
land.

4:2 And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in
his doctrine, 4:3 Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: 4:4
And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the
fowls of the air came and devoured it up.

4:5 And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and
immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: 4:6 But
when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it
withered away.

4:7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it,
and it yielded no fruit.

4:8 And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up
and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and
some an hundred.

4:9 And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

4:10 And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve
asked of him the parable.

4:11 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery
of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these
things are done in parables: 4:12 That seeing they may see, and not
perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any
time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.

4:13 And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then
will ye know all parables?  4:14 The sower soweth the word.

4:15 And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but
when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the
word that was sown in their hearts.

4:16 And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who,
when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness;
4:17 And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time:
afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's sake,
immediately they are offended.

4:18 And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the
word, 4:19 And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of
riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and
it becometh unfruitful.

4:20 And these are they which are sown on good ground; such as hear
the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some
sixty, and some an hundred.

4:21 And he said unto them, Is a candle brought to be put under a
bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick?  4:22 For
there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was any
thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad.

4:23 If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.

4:24 And he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure
ye mete, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall
more be given.

4:25 For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not,
from him shall be taken even that which he hath.

4:26 And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast
seed into the ground; 4:27 And should sleep, and rise night and day,
and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.

4:28 For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade,
then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.

4:29 But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in
the sickle, because the harvest is come.

4:30 And he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with
what comparison shall we compare it?  4:31 It is like a grain of
mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all
the seeds that be in the earth: 4:32 But when it is sown, it groweth
up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great
branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of
it.

4:33 And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they
were able to hear it.

4:34 But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were
alone, he expounded all things to his disciples.

4:35 And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let
us pass over unto the other side.

4:36 And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as
he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships.

4:37 And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into
the ship, so that it was now full.

4:38 And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow:
and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we
perish?  4:39 And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the
sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

4:40 And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye
have no faith?  4:41 And they feared exceedingly, and said one to
another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea
obey him?  5:1 And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into
the country of the Gadarenes.

5:2 And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him
out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, 5:3 Who had his
dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with
chains: 5:4 Because that he had been often bound with fetters and
chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the
fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him.

5:5 And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the
tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.

5:6 But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, 5:7 And
cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus,
thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment
me not.

5:8 For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.

5:9 And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My
name is Legion: for we are many.

5:10 And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of
the country.

5:11 Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine
feeding.

5:12 And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine,
that we may enter into them.

5:13 And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went
out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a
steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were
choked in the sea.

5:14 And they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in
the country. And they went out to see what it was that was done.

5:15 And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the
devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right
mind: and they were afraid.

5:16 And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was
possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine.

5:17 And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts.

5:18 And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed
with the devil prayed him that he might be with him.

5:19 Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to
thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for
thee, and hath had compassion on thee.

5:20 And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great
things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel.

5:21 And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side,
much people gathered unto him: and he was nigh unto the sea.

5:22 And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue,
Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, 5:23 And
besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of
death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be
healed; and she shall live.

5:24 And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and
thronged him.

5:25 And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years,
5:26 And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent
all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse,
5:27 When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and
touched his garment.

5:28 For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.

5:29 And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she
felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.

5:30 And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone
out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my
clothes?  5:31 And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the
multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?  5:32 And
he looked round about to see her that had done this thing.

5:33 But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in
her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.

5:34 And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole;
go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.

5:35 While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue's
house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the
Master any further?  5:36 As soon as Jesus heard the word that was
spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only
believe.

5:37 And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and
John the brother of James.

5:38 And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and
seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly.

5:39 And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this
ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.

5:40 And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out,
he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were
with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying.

5:41 And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha
cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.

5:42 And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the
age of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great
astonishment.

5:43 And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and
commanded that something should be given her to eat.

6:1 And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and
his disciples follow him.

6:2 And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the
synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence
hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given
unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands?  6:3
Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and
Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us?
And they were offended at him.

6:4 But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in
his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.

6:5 And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands
upon a few sick folk, and healed them.

6:6 And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round
about the villages, teaching.

6:7 And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by
two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits; 6:8 And
commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a
staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse: 6:9 But be
shod with sandals; and not put on two coats.

6:10 And he said unto them, In what place soever ye enter into an
house, there abide till ye depart from that place.

6:11 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart
thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against
them.

Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and
Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.

6:12 And they went out, and preached that men should repent.

6:13 And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that
were sick, and healed them.

6:14 And king Herod heard of him; (for his name was spread abroad:)
and he said, That John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and
therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him.

6:15 Others said, That it is Elias. And others said, That it is a
prophet, or as one of the prophets.

6:16 But when Herod heard thereof, he said, It is John, whom I
beheaded: he is risen from the dead.

6:17 For Herod himself had sent forth and laid hold upon John, and
bound him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife: for
he had married her.

6:18 For John had said unto Herod, It is not lawful for thee to have
thy brother's wife.

6:19 Therefore Herodias had a quarrel against him, and would have
killed him; but she could not: 6:20 For Herod feared John, knowing
that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him; and when he
heard him, he did many things, and heard him gladly.

6:21 And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday
made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of
Galilee; 6:22 And when the daughter of the said Herodias came in, and
danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, the king said
unto the damsel, Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it
thee.

6:23 And he sware unto her, Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will
give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom.

6:24 And she went forth, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask?
And she said, The head of John the Baptist.

6:25 And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked,
saying, I will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of
John the Baptist.

6:26 And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath's sake, and
for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her.

6:27 And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his
head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, 6:28
And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the
damsel gave it to her mother.

6:29 And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his
corpse, and laid it in a tomb.

6:30 And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and
told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had
taught.

6:31 And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert
place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and
they had no leisure so much as to eat.

6:32 And they departed into a desert place by ship privately.

6:33 And the people saw them departing, and many knew him, and ran
afoot thither out of all cities, and outwent them, and came together
unto him.

6:34 And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with
compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a
shepherd: and he began to teach them many things.

6:35 And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto him,
and said, This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed: 6:36
Send them away, that they may go into the country round about, and
into the villages, and buy themselves bread: for they have nothing to
eat.

6:37 He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say
unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and
give them to eat?  6:38 He saith unto them, How many loaves have ye?
go and see. And when they knew, they say, Five, and two fishes.

6:39 And he commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the
green grass.

6:40 And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties.

6:41 And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he
looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them
to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he
among them all.

6:42 And they did all eat, and were filled.

6:43 And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the
fishes.

6:44 And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men.

6:45 And straightway he constrained his disciples to get into the
ship, and to go to the other side before unto Bethsaida, while he sent
away the people.

6:46 And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to
pray.

6:47 And when even was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and
he alone on the land.

6:48 And he saw them toiling in rowing; for the wind was contrary unto
them: and about the fourth watch of the night he cometh unto them,
walking upon the sea, and would have passed by them.

6:49 But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had
been a spirit, and cried out: 6:50 For they all saw him, and were
troubled. And immediately he talked with them, and saith unto them, Be
of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.

6:51 And he went up unto them into the ship; and the wind ceased: and
they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered.

6:52 For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their
heart was hardened.

6:53 And when they had passed over, they came into the land of
Gennesaret, and drew to the shore.

6:54 And when they were come out of the ship, straightway they knew
him, 6:55 And ran through that whole region round about, and began to
carry about in beds those that were sick, where they heard he was.

6:56 And whithersoever he entered, into villages, or cities, or
country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they
might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as
touched him were made whole.

7:1 Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the
scribes, which came from Jerusalem.

7:2 And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled,
that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault.

7:3 For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands
oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders.

7:4 And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat
not.

And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as
the washing of cups, and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables.

7:5 Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy
disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with
unwashen hands?  7:6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias
prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth
me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

7:7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the
commandments of men.

7:8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of
men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things
ye do.

7:9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God,
that ye may keep your own tradition.

7:10 For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso
curseth father or mother, let him die the death: 7:11 But ye say, If a
man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a
gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free.

7:12 And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his
mother; 7:13 Making the word of God of none effect through your
tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.

7:14 And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto
them, Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: 7:15 There is
nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but
the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.

7:16 If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.

7:17 And when he was entered into the house from the people, his
disciples asked him concerning the parable.

7:18 And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do
ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the
man, it cannot defile him; 7:19 Because it entereth not into his
heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all
meats?  7:20 And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that
defileth the man.

7:21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts,
adulteries, fornications, murders, 7:22 Thefts, covetousness,
wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride,
foolishness: 7:23 All these evil things come from within, and defile
the man.

7:24 And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and
Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but
he could not be hid.

7:25 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit,
heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: 7:26 The woman was a
Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would
cast forth the devil out of her daughter.

7:27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it
is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the
dogs.

7:28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under
the table eat of the children's crumbs.

7:29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is
gone out of thy daughter.

7:30 And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out,
and her daughter laid upon the bed.

7:31 And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came
unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis.

7:32 And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment
in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him.

7:33 And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers
into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; 7:34 And looking
up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be
opened.

7:35 And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his
tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.

7:36 And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he
charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; 7:37
And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things
well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.

8:1 In those days the multitude being very great, and having nothing
to eat, Jesus called his disciples unto him, and saith unto them, 8:2
I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me
three days, and have nothing to eat: 8:3 And if I send them away
fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for divers of
them came from far.

8:4 And his disciples answered him, From whence can a man satisfy
these men with bread here in the wilderness?  8:5 And he asked them,
How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven.

8:6 And he commanded the people to sit down on the ground: and he took
the seven loaves, and gave thanks, and brake, and gave to his
disciples to set before them; and they did set them before the people.

8:7 And they had a few small fishes: and he blessed, and commanded to
set them also before them.

8:8 So they did eat, and were filled: and they took up of the broken
meat that was left seven baskets.

8:9 And they that had eaten were about four thousand: and he sent them
away.

8:10 And straightway he entered into a ship with his disciples, and
came into the parts of Dalmanutha.

8:11 And the Pharisees came forth, and began to question with him,
seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him.

8:12 And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this
generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no
sign be given unto this generation.

8:13 And he left them, and entering into the ship again departed to
the other side.

8:14 Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they
in the ship with them more than one loaf.

8:15 And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of
the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod.

8:16 And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have
no bread.

8:17 And when Jesus knew it, he saith unto them, Why reason ye,
because ye have no bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand?
have ye your heart yet hardened?  8:18 Having eyes, see ye not? and
having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?  8:19 When I brake
the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of
fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve.

8:20 And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of
fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven.

8:21 And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand?  8:22
And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and
besought him to touch him.

8:23 And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the
town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he
asked him if he saw ought.

8:24 And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.

8:25 After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him
look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.

8:26 And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the
town, nor tell it to any in the town.

8:27 And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea
Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them,
Whom do men say that I am?  8:28 And they answered, John the Baptist;
but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets.

8:29 And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter
answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ.

8:30 And he charged them that they should tell no man of him.

8:31 And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many
things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and
scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

8:32 And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to
rebuke him.

8:33 But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he
rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest
not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.

8:34 And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples
also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

8:35 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever
shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save
it.

8:36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul?  8:37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for
his soul?  8:38 Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my
words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the
Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with
the holy angels.

9:1 And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some
of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they
have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

9:2 And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and
John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves:
and he was transfigured before them.

9:3 And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no
fuller on earth can white them.

9:4 And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses: and they were
talking with Jesus.

9:5 And Peter answered and said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to
be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for
Moses, and one for Elias.

9:6 For he wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid.

9:7 And there was a cloud that overshadowed them: and a voice came out
of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.

9:8 And suddenly, when they had looked round about, they saw no man
any more, save Jesus only with themselves.

9:9 And as they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they
should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were
risen from the dead.

9:10 And they kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with
another what the rising from the dead should mean.

9:11 And they asked him, saying, Why say the scribes that Elias must
first come?  9:12 And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh
first, and restoreth all things; and how it is written of the Son of
man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought.

9:13 But I say unto you, That Elias is indeed come, and they have done
unto him whatsoever they listed, as it is written of him.

9:14 And when he came to his disciples, he saw a great multitude about
them, and the scribes questioning with them.

9:15 And straightway all the people, when they beheld him, were
greatly amazed, and running to him saluted him.

9:16 And he asked the scribes, What question ye with them?  9:17 And
one of the multitude answered and said, Master, I have brought unto
thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; 9:18 And wheresoever he taketh
him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and
pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him
out; and they could not.

9:19 He answereth him, and saith, O faithless generation, how long
shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto me.

9:20 And they brought him unto him: and when he saw him, straightway
the spirit tare him; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming.

9:21 And he asked his father, How long is it ago since this came unto
him?  And he said, Of a child.

9:22 And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters,
to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us,
and help us.

9:23 Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are
possible to him that believeth.

9:24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with
tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

9:25 When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked
the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge
thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him.

9:26 And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and
he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead.

9:27 But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose.

9:28 And when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him
privately, Why could not we cast him out?  9:29 And he said unto them,
This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.

9:30 And they departed thence, and passed through Galilee; and he
would not that any man should know it.

9:31 For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man
is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after
that he is killed, he shall rise the third day.

9:32 But they understood not that saying, and were afraid to ask him.

9:33 And he came to Capernaum: and being in the house he asked them,
What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way?  9:34 But
they held their peace: for by the way they had disputed among
themselves, who should be the greatest.

9:35 And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If
any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant
of all.

9:36 And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them: and when
he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them, 9:37 Whosoever shall
receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me: and whosoever
shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me.

9:38 And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out
devils in thy name, and he followeth not us: and we forbad him,
because he followeth not us.

9:39 But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall
do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me.

9:40 For he that is not against us is on our part.

9:41 For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name,
because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose
his reward.

9:42 And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe
in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his
neck, and he were cast into the sea.

9:43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to
enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into
the fire that never shall be quenched: 9:44 Where their worm dieth
not, and the fire is not quenched.

9:45 And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to
enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into
the fire that never shall be quenched: 9:46 Where their worm dieth
not, and the fire is not quenched.

9:47 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee
to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to
be cast into hell fire: 9:48 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire
is not quenched.

9:49 For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice
shall be salted with salt.

9:50 Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith
will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with
another.

10:1 And he arose from thence, and cometh into the coasts of Judaea by
the farther side of Jordan: and the people resort unto him again; and,
as he was wont, he taught them again.

10:2 And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a
man to put away his wife? tempting him.

10:3 And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you?
10:4 And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and
to put her away.

10:5 And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your
heart he wrote you this precept.

10:6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female.

10:7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and
cleave to his wife; 10:8 And they twain shall be one flesh: so then
they are no more twain, but one flesh.

10:9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

10:10 And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same
matter.

10:11 And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and
marry another, committeth adultery against her.

10:12 And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to
another, she committeth adultery.

10:13 And they brought young children to him, that he should touch
them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.

10:14 But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto
them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not:
for of such is the kingdom of God.

10:15 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom
of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

10:16 And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and
blessed them.

10:17 And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running,
and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I
may inherit eternal life?  10:18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest
thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

10:19 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not
kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy
father and mother.  10:20 And he answered and said unto him, Master,
all these have I observed from my youth.

10:21 Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing
thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the
cross, and follow me.

10:22 And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had
great possessions.

10:23 And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!
10:24 And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus
answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for
them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!  10:25 It
is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a
rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

10:26 And they were astonished out of measure, saying among
themselves, Who then can be saved?  10:27 And Jesus looking upon them
saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all
things are possible.

10:28 Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have
followed thee.

10:29 And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no
man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or
mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's,
10:30 But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses,
and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with
persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

10:31 But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.

10:32 And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus went
before them: and they were amazed; and as they followed, they were
afraid.

And he took again the twelve, and began to tell them what things
should happen unto him, 10:33 Saying, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem;
and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto
the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver
him to the Gentiles: 10:34 And they shall mock him, and shall scourge
him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he
shall rise again.

10:35 And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come unto him, saying,
Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall
desire.

10:36 And he said unto them, What would ye that I should do for you?
10:37 They said unto him, Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy
right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory.

10:38 But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink
of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am
baptized with?  10:39 And they said unto him, We can. And Jesus said
unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with
the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized: 10:40 But
to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but
it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared.

10:41 And when the ten heard it, they began to be much displeased with
James and John.

10:42 But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye know that
they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship
over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them.

10:43 But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great
among you, shall be your minister: 10:44 And whosoever of you will be
the chiefest, shall be servant of all.

10:45 For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

10:46 And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his
disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of
Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging.

10:47 And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry
out, and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.

10:48 And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried
the more a great deal, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.

10:49 And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they
call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he
calleth thee.

10:50 And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus.

10:51 And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I
should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might
receive my sight.

10:52 And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee
whole.

And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.

11:1 And when they came nigh to Jerusalem, unto Bethphage and Bethany,
at the mount of Olives, he sendeth forth two of his disciples, 11:2
And saith unto them, Go your way into the village over against you:
and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied,
whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring him.

11:3 And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord
hath need of him; and straightway he will send him hither.

11:4 And they went their way, and found the colt tied by the door
without in a place where two ways met; and they loose him.

11:5 And certain of them that stood there said unto them, What do ye,
loosing the colt?  11:6 And they said unto them even as Jesus had
commanded: and they let them go.

11:7 And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their garments on
him; and he sat upon him.

11:8 And many spread their garments in the way: and others cut down
branches off the trees, and strawed them in the way.

11:9 And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying,
Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: 11:10
Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of
the Lord: Hosanna in the highest.

11:11 And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when
he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was
come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve.

11:12 And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was
hungry: 11:13 And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came,
if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he
found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.

11:14 And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee
hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.

11:15 And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and
began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and
overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that
sold doves; 11:16 And would not suffer that any man should carry any
vessel through the temple.

11:17 And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house
shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made
it a den of thieves.

11:18 And the scribes and chief priests heard it, and sought how they
might destroy him: for they feared him, because all the people was
astonished at his doctrine.

11:19 And when even was come, he went out of the city.

11:20 And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree
dried up from the roots.

11:21 And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold,
the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.

11:22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.

11:23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this
mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall
not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he
saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

11:24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye
pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

11:25 And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against
any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your
trespasses.

11:26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in
heaven forgive your trespasses.

11:27 And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he was walking in the
temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the
elders, 11:28 And say unto him, By what authority doest thou these
things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things?  11:29
And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask of you one
question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do
these things.

11:30 The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me.

11:31 And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From
heaven; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him?  11:32 But if we
shall say, Of men; they feared the people: for all men counted John,
that he was a prophet indeed.

11:33 And they answered and said unto Jesus, We cannot tell. And Jesus
answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I
do these things.

12:1 And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man
planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for
the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went
into a far country.

12:2 And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he
might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard.

12:3 And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty.

12:4 And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast
stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully
handled.

12:5 And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others;
beating some, and killing some.

12:6 Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also
last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son.

12:7 But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir;
come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be our's.

12:8 And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the
vineyard.

12:9 What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come
and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.

12:10 And have ye not read this scripture; The stone which the
builders rejected is become the head of the corner: 12:11 This was the
Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?  12:12 And they sought
to lay hold on him, but feared the people: for they knew that he had
spoken the parable against them: and they left him, and went their
way.

12:13 And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the
Herodians, to catch him in his words.

12:14 And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that
thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the
person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to
give tribute to Caesar, or not?  12:15 Shall we give, or shall we not
give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye
me? bring me a penny, that I may see it.

12:16 And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image
and superscription? And they said unto him, Caesar's.

12:17 And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things
that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they
marvelled at him.

12:18 Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no
resurrection; and they asked him, saying, 12:19 Master, Moses wrote
unto us, If a man's brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and
leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up
seed unto his brother.

12:20 Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and
dying left no seed.

12:21 And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed: and
the third likewise.

12:22 And the seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman
died also.

12:23 In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife
shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife.

12:24 And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err,
because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?  12:25
For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are
given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.

12:26 And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in
the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am
the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?  12:27
He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore
do greatly err.

12:28 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning
together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him,
Which is the first commandment of all?  12:29 And Jesus answered him,
The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God
is one Lord: 12:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy
strength: this is the first commandment.

12:31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than
these.

12:32 And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the
truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: 12:33 And
to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and
with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his
neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and
sacrifices.

12:34 And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto
him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that
durst ask him any question.

12:35 And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How
say the scribes that Christ is the son of David?  12:36 For David
himself said by the Holy Ghost, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on
my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool.

12:37 David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then
his son? And the common people heard him gladly.

12:38 And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes,
which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the
marketplaces, 12:39 And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the
uppermost rooms at feasts: 12:40 Which devour widows' houses, and for
a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.

12:41 And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the
people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in
much.

12:42 And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites,
which make a farthing.

12:43 And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them,
Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than
all they which have cast into the treasury: 12:44 For all they did
cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that
she had, even all her living.

13:1 And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto
him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!
13:2 And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great
buildings?  there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall
not be thrown down.

13:3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives over against the temple,
Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, 13:4 Tell us,
when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all these
things shall be fulfilled?  13:5 And Jesus answering them began to
say, Take heed lest any man deceive you: 13:6 For many shall come in
my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

13:7 And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not
troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.

13:8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against
kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there
shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

13:9 But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to
councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be
brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against
them.

13:10 And the gospel must first be published among all nations.

13:11 But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no
thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but
whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is
not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.

13:12 Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the
father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and
shall cause them to be put to death.

13:13 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that
shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

13:14 But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of
by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that
readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the
mountains: 13:15 And let him that is on the housetop not go down into
the house, neither enter therein, to take any thing out of his house:
13:16 And let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take
up his garment.

13:17 But woe to them that are with child, and to them that give suck
in those days!  13:18 And pray ye that your flight be not in the
winter.

13:19 For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither
shall be.

13:20 And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh
should be saved: but for the elect's sake, whom he hath chosen, he
hath shortened the days.

13:21 And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or,
lo, he is there; believe him not: 13:22 For false Christs and false
prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if
it were possible, even the elect.

13:23 But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things.

13:24 But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be
darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, 13:25 And the stars
of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be
shaken.

13:26 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with
great power and glory.

13:27 And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his
elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the
uttermost part of heaven.

13:28 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet
tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near: 13:29
So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass,
know that it is nigh, even at the doors.

13:30 Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till
all these things be done.

13:31 Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass
away.

13:32 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels
which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

13:33 Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.

13:34 For the Son of Man is as a man taking a far journey, who left
his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his
work, and commanded the porter to watch.

13:35 Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house
cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the
morning: 13:36 Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.

13:37 And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.

14:1 After two days was the feast of the passover, and of unleavened
bread: and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might
take him by craft, and put him to death.

14:2 But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar of
the people.

14:3 And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat
at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of
spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his
head.

14:4 And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and
said, Why was this waste of the ointment made?  14:5 For it might have
been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to
the poor. And they murmured against her.

14:6 And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath
wrought a good work on me.

14:7 For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye
may do them good: but me ye have not always.

14:8 She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my
body to the burying.

14:9 Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached
throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be
spoken of for a memorial of her.

14:10 And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went unto the chief
priests, to betray him unto them.

14:11 And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him
money. And he sought how he might conveniently betray him.

14:12 And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the
passover, his disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou that we go and
prepare that thou mayest eat the passover?  14:13 And he sendeth forth
two of his disciples, and saith unto them, Go ye into the city, and
there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water: follow him.

14:14 And wheresoever he shall go in, say ye to the goodman of the
house, The Master saith, Where is the guestchamber, where I shall eat
the passover with my disciples?  14:15 And he will shew you a large
upper room furnished and prepared: there make ready for us.

14:16 And his disciples went forth, and came into the city, and found
as he had said unto them: and they made ready the passover.

14:17 And in the evening he cometh with the twelve.

14:18 And as they sat and did eat, Jesus said, Verily I say unto you,
One of you which eateth with me shall betray me.

14:19 And they began to be sorrowful, and to say unto him one by one,
Is it I? and another said, Is it I?  14:20 And he answered and said
unto them, It is one of the twelve, that dippeth with me in the dish.

14:21 The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him: but woe to
that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man
if he had never been born.

14:22 And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake
it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.

14:23 And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to
them: and they all drank of it.

14:24 And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament,
which is shed for many.

14:25 Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the
vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.

14:26 And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of
Olives.

14:27 And Jesus saith unto them, All ye shall be offended because of
me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the
sheep shall be scattered.

14:28 But after that I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee.

14:29 But Peter said unto him, Although all shall be offended, yet
will not I.

14:30 And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this day,
even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me
thrice.

14:31 But he spake the more vehemently, If I should die with thee, I
will not deny thee in any wise. Likewise also said they all.

14:32 And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he
saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray.

14:33 And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be
sore amazed, and to be very heavy; 14:34 And saith unto them, My soul
is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.

14:35 And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed
that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.

14:36 And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee;
take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what
thou wilt.

14:37 And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter,
Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour?  14:38 Watch
ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready,
but the flesh is weak.

14:39 And again he went away, and prayed, and spake the same words.

14:40 And when he returned, he found them asleep again, (for their
eyes were heavy,) neither wist they what to answer him.

14:41 And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now,
and take your rest: it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of
man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

14:42 Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand.

14:43 And immediately, while he yet spake, cometh Judas, one of the
twelve, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from
the chief priests and the scribes and the elders.

14:44 And he that betrayed him had given them a token, saying,
Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he; take him, and lead him away
safely.

14:45 And as soon as he was come, he goeth straightway to him, and
saith, Master, master; and kissed him.

14:46 And they laid their hands on him, and took him.

14:47 And one of them that stood by drew a sword, and smote a servant
of the high priest, and cut off his ear.

14:48 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Are ye come out, as
against a thief, with swords and with staves to take me?  14:49 I was
daily with you in the temple teaching, and ye took me not: but the
scriptures must be fulfilled.

14:50 And they all forsook him, and fled.

14:51 And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth
cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: 14:52
And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.

14:53 And they led Jesus away to the high priest: and with him were
assembled all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes.

14:54 And Peter followed him afar off, even into the palace of the
high priest: and he sat with the servants, and warmed himself at the
fire.

14:55 And the chief priests and all the council sought for witness
against Jesus to put him to death; and found none.

14:56 For many bare false witness against him, but their witness
agreed not together.

14:57 And there arose certain, and bare false witness against him,
saying, 14:58 We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is
made with hands, and within three days I will build another made
without hands.

14:59 But neither so did their witness agree together.

14:60 And the high priest stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus,
saying, Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against
thee?  14:61 But he held his peace, and answered nothing. Again the
high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son
of the Blessed?  14:62 And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son
of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of
heaven.

14:63 Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we
any further witnesses?  14:64 Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think
ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death.

14:65 And some began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to
buffet him, and to say unto him, Prophesy: and the servants did strike
him with the palms of their hands.

14:66 And as Peter was beneath in the palace, there cometh one of the
maids of the high priest: 14:67 And when she saw Peter warming
himself, she looked upon him, and said, And thou also wast with Jesus
of Nazareth.

14:68 But he denied, saying, I know not, neither understand I what
thou sayest. And he went out into the porch; and the cock crew.

14:69 And a maid saw him again, and began to say to them that stood
by, This is one of them.

14:70 And he denied it again. And a little after, they that stood by
said again to Peter, Surely thou art one of them: for thou art a
Galilaean, and thy speech agreeth thereto.

14:71 But he began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not this man
of whom ye speak.

14:72 And the second time the cock crew. And Peter called to mind the
word that Jesus said unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt
deny me thrice. And when he thought thereon, he wept.

15:1 And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a
consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and
bound Jesus, and carried him away, and delivered him to Pilate.

15:2 And Pilate asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he
answering said unto them, Thou sayest it.

15:3 And the chief priests accused him of many things: but he answered
nothing.

15:4 And Pilate asked him again, saying, Answerest thou nothing?
behold how many things they witness against thee.

15:5 But Jesus yet answered nothing; so that Pilate marvelled.

15:6 Now at that feast he released unto them one prisoner, whomsoever
they desired.

15:7 And there was one named Barabbas, which lay bound with them that
had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the
insurrection.

15:8 And the multitude crying aloud began to desire him to do as he
had ever done unto them.

15:9 But Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I release unto you
the King of the Jews?  15:10 For he knew that the chief priests had
delivered him for envy.

15:11 But the chief priests moved the people, that he should rather
release Barabbas unto them.

15:12 And Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will ye then
that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews?  15:13 And
they cried out again, Crucify him.

15:14 Then Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he done? And
they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify him.

15:15 And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas
unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be
crucified.

15:16 And the soldiers led him away into the hall, called Praetorium;
and they call together the whole band.

15:17 And they clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns,
and put it about his head, 15:18 And began to salute him, Hail, King
of the Jews!  15:19 And they smote him on the head with a reed, and
did spit upon him, and bowing their knees worshipped him.

15:20 And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple from him,
and put his own clothes on him, and led him out to crucify him.

15:21 And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out
of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross.

15:22 And they bring him unto the place Golgotha, which is, being
interpreted, The place of a skull.

15:23 And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but he
received it not.

15:24 And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments,
casting lots upon them, what every man should take.

15:25 And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.

15:26 And the superscription of his accusation was written over, THE
KING OF THE JEWS.

15:27 And with him they crucify two thieves; the one on his right
hand, and the other on his left.

15:28 And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, And he was
numbered with the transgressors.

15:29 And they that passed by railed on him, wagging their heads, and
saying, Ah, thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three
days, 15:30 Save thyself, and come down from the cross.

15:31 Likewise also the chief priests mocking said among themselves
with the scribes, He saved others; himself he cannot save.

15:32 Let Christ the King of Israel descend now from the cross, that
we may see and believe. And they that were crucified with him reviled
him.

15:33 And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the
whole land until the ninth hour.

15:34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying,
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?  15:35 And some of them that stood by,
when they heard it, said, Behold, he calleth Elias.

15:36 And one ran and filled a spunge full of vinegar, and put it on a
reed, and gave him to drink, saying, Let alone; let us see whether
Elias will come to take him down.

15:37 And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.

15:38 And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the
bottom.

15:39 And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that
he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was
the Son of God.

15:40 There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary
Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and
Salome; 15:41 (Who also, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and
ministered unto him;) and many other women which came up with him unto
Jerusalem.

15:42 And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation,
that is, the day before the sabbath, 15:43 Joseph of Arimathaea, an
honourable counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came,
and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus.

15:44 And Pilate marvelled if he were already dead: and calling unto
him the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead.

15:45 And when he knew it of the centurion, he gave the body to
Joseph.

15:46 And he bought fine linen, and took him down, and wrapped him in
the linen, and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock,
and rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulchre.

15:47 And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where he
was laid.

16:1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the
mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might
come and anoint him.

16:2 And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they
came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.

16:3 And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone
from the door of the sepulchre?  16:4 And when they looked, they saw
that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great.

16:5 And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on
the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were
affrighted.

16:6 And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of
Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the
place where they laid him.

16:7 But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth
before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you.

16:8 And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they
trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for
they were afraid.

16:9 Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he
appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven
devils.

16:10 And she went and told them that had been with him, as they
mourned and wept.

16:11 And they, when they had heard that he was alive, and had been
seen of her, believed not.

16:12 After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they
walked, and went into the country.

16:13 And they went and told it unto the residue: neither believed
they them.

16:14 Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and
upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they
believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.

16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the
gospel to every creature.

16:16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that
believeth not shall be damned.

16:17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall
they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 16:18 They
shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall
not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall
recover.

16:19 So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up
into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

16:20 And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working
with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.




The Gospel According to Saint Luke


1:1 Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a
declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,
1:2 Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were
eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; 1:3 It seemed good to me
also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very
first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, 1:4
That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou
hast been instructed.

1:5 THERE was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain
priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the
daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth.

1:6 And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the
commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.

1:7 And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they
both were now well stricken in years.

1:8 And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest's office
before God in the order of his course, 1:9 According to the custom of
the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the
temple of the Lord.

1:10 And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the
time of incense.

1:11 And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the
right side of the altar of incense.

1:12 And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon
him.

1:13 But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer
is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt
call his name John.

1:14 And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at
his birth.

1:15 For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink
neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy
Ghost, even from his mother's womb.

1:16 And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord
their God.

1:17 And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to
turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to
the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

1:18 And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for
I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.

1:19 And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand
in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew
thee these glad tidings.

1:20 And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the
day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not
my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.

1:21 And the people waited for Zacharias, and marvelled that he
tarried so long in the temple.

1:22 And when he came out, he could not speak unto them: and they
perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple: for he beckoned
unto them, and remained speechless.

1:23 And it came to pass, that, as soon as the days of his
ministration were accomplished, he departed to his own house.

1:24 And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid
herself five months, saying, 1:25 Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in
the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men.

1:26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a
city of Galilee, named Nazareth, 1:27 To a virgin espoused to a man
whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name
was Mary.

1:28 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art
highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

1:29 And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in
her mind what manner of salutation this should be.

1:30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found
favour with God.

1:31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a
son, and shalt call his name JESUS.

1:32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest:
and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
1:33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his
kingdom there shall be no end.

1:34 Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know
not a man?  1:35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy
Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall
overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of
thee shall be called the Son of God.

1:36 And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son
in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called
barren.

1:37 For with God nothing shall be impossible.

1:38 And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me
according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

1:39 And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with
haste, into a city of Juda; 1:40 And entered into the house of
Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth.

1:41 And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of
Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the
Holy Ghost: 1:42 And she spake out with a loud voice, and said,
Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

1:43 And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come
to me?  1:44 For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded
in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.

1:45 And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a
performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.

1:46 And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, 1:47 And my spirit
hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

1:48 For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for,
behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

1:49 For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is
his name.

1:50 And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to
generation.

1:51 He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud
in the imagination of their hearts.

1:52 He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of
low degree.

1:53 He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath
sent empty away.

1:54 He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;
1:55 As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.

1:56 And Mary abode with her about three months, and returned to her
own house.

1:57 Now Elisabeth's full time came that she should be delivered; and
she brought forth a son.

1:58 And her neighbours and her cousins heard how the Lord had shewed
great mercy upon her; and they rejoiced with her.

1:59 And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to
circumcise the child; and they called him Zacharias, after the name of
his father.

1:60 And his mother answered and said, Not so; but he shall be called
John.

1:61 And they said unto her, There is none of thy kindred that is
called by this name.

1:62 And they made signs to his father, how he would have him called.

1:63 And he asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is
John. And they marvelled all.

1:64 And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and
he spake, and praised God.

1:65 And fear came on all that dwelt round about them: and all these
sayings were noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judaea.

1:66 And all they that heard them laid them up in their hearts,
saying, What manner of child shall this be! And the hand of the Lord
was with him.

1:67 And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and
prophesied, saying, 1:68 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he
hath visited and redeemed his people, 1:69 And hath raised up an horn
of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; 1:70 As he
spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the
world began: 1:71 That we should be saved from our enemies, and from
the hand of all that hate us; 1:72 To perform the mercy promised to
our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; 1:73 The oath which he
sware to our father Abraham, 1:74 That he would grant unto us, that we
being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without
fear, 1:75 In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of
our life.

1:76 And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for
thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; 1:77 To
give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their
sins, 1:78 Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring
from on high hath visited us, 1:79 To give light to them that sit in
darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of
peace.

1:80 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the
deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel.

2:1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree
from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

2:2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of
Syria.)  2:3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

2:4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth,
into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem;
(because he was of the house and lineage of David:) 2:5 To be taxed
with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

2:6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were
accomplished that she should be delivered.

2:7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in
swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room
for them in the inn.

2:8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field,
keeping watch over their flock by night.

2:9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of
the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

2:10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you
good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

2:11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
which is Christ the Lord.

2:12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped
in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

2:13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly
host praising God, and saying, 2:14 Glory to God in the highest, and
on earth peace, good will toward men.

2:15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into
heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto
Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord
hath made known unto us.

2:16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the
babe lying in a manger.

2:17 And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying
which was told them concerning this child.

2:18 And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were
told them by the shepherds.

2:19 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

2:20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all
the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

2:21 And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the
child, his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel
before he was conceived in the womb.

2:22 And when the days of her purification according to the law of
Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him
to the Lord; 2:23 (As it is written in the law of the LORD, Every male
that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord;) 2:24 And to
offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the
Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.

2:25 And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon;
and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of
Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him.

2:26 And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should
not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

2:27 And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents
brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law,
2:28 Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, 2:29
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy
word: 2:30 For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, 2:31 Which thou hast
prepared before the face of all people; 2:32 A light to lighten the
Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

2:33 And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were
spoken of him.

2:34 And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold,
this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and
for a sign which shall be spoken against; 2:35 (Yea, a sword shall
pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts
may be revealed.

2:36 And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of
the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an
husband seven years from her virginity; 2:37 And she was a widow of
about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple,
but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.

2:38 And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the
Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in
Jerusalem.

2:39 And when they had performed all things according to the law of
the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.

2:40 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with
wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.

2:41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the
passover.

2:42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after
the custom of the feast.

2:43 And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child
Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not
of it.

2:44 But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's
journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance.

2:45 And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem,
seeking him.

2:46 And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the
temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and
asking them questions.

2:47 And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and
answers.

2:48 And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto
him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I
have sought thee sorrowing.

2:49 And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not
that I must be about my Father's business?  2:50 And they understood
not the saying which he spake unto them.

2:51 And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject
unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.

2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God
and man.

3:1 Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius
Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee,
and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of
Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, 3:2 Annas and
Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the
son of Zacharias in the wilderness.

3:3 And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the
baptism of repentance for the remission of sins; 3:4 As it is written
in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of
one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his
paths straight.

3:5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be
brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough
ways shall be made smooth; 3:6 And all flesh shall see the salvation
of God.

3:7 Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of
him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the
wrath to come?  3:8 Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance,
and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father:
for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up
children unto Abraham.

3:9 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every
tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and
cast into the fire.

3:10 And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then?  3:11 He
answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart
to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.

3:12 Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him,
Master, what shall we do?  3:13 And he said unto them, Exact no more
than that which is appointed you.

3:14 And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall
we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse
any falsely; and be content with your wages.

3:15 And as the people were in expectation, and all men mused in their
hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not; 3:16 John
answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but
one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy
to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire:
3:17 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor,
and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn
with fire unquenchable.

3:18 And many other things in his exhortation preached he unto the
people.

3:19 But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias his
brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done,
3:20 Added yet this above all, that he shut up John in prison.

3:21 Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that
Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, 3:22
And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him,
and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in
thee I am well pleased.

3:23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being
(as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli, 3:24
Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the
son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of
Joseph, 3:25 Which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of
Amos, which was the son of Naum, which was the son of Esli, which was
the son of Nagge, 3:26 Which was the son of Maath, which was the son
of Mattathias, which was the son of Semei, which was the son of
Joseph, which was the son of Juda, 3:27 Which was the son of Joanna,
which was the son of Rhesa, which was the son of Zorobabel, which was
the son of Salathiel, which was the son of Neri, 3:28 Which was the
son of Melchi, which was the son of Addi, which was the son of Cosam,
which was the son of Elmodam, which was the son of Er, 3:29 Which was
the son of Jose, which was the son of Eliezer, which was the son of
Jorim, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, 3:30
Which was the son of Simeon, which was the son of Juda, which was the
son of Joseph, which was the son of Jonan, which was the son of
Eliakim, 3:31 Which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan,
which was the son of Mattatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was
the son of David, 3:32 Which was the son of Jesse, which was the son
of Obed, which was the son of Booz, which was the son of Salmon, which
was the son of Naasson, 3:33 Which was the son of Aminadab, which was
the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of
Phares, which was the son of Juda, 3:34 Which was the son of Jacob,
which was the son of Isaac, which was the son of Abraham, which was
the son of Thara, which was the son of Nachor, 3:35 Which was the son
of Saruch, which was the son of Ragau, which was the son of Phalec,
which was the son of Heber, which was the son of Sala, 3:36 Which was
the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad, which was the son of
Sem, which was the son of Noe, which was the son of Lamech, 3:37 Which
was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the
son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of
Cainan, 3:38 Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth,
which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.

4:1 And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and
was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 4:2 Being forty days
tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when
they were ended, he afterward hungered.

4:3 And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command
this stone that it be made bread.

4:4 And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not
live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

4:5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto
him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

4:6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and
the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I
will I give it.

4:7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.

4:8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan:
for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only
shalt thou serve.

4:9 And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the
temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself
down from hence: 4:10 For it is written, He shall give his angels
charge over thee, to keep thee: 4:11 And in their hands they shall
bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

4:12 And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not
tempt the Lord thy God.

4:13 And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from
him for a season.

4:14 And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and
there went out a fame of him through all the region round about.

4:15 And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.

4:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as
his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and
stood up for to read.

4:17 And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias.
And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was
written, 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal
the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are
bruised, 4:19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

4:20 And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and
sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were
fastened on him.

4:21 And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture
fulfilled in your ears.

4:22 And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words
which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's
son?  4:23 And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this
proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in
Capernaum, do also here in thy country.

4:24 And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his
own country.

4:25 But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days
of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when
great famine was throughout all the land; 4:26 But unto none of them
was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that
was a widow.

4:27 And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the
prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.

4:28 And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were
filled with wrath, 4:29 And rose up, and thrust him out of the city,
and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built,
that they might cast him down headlong.

4:30 But he passing through the midst of them went his way, 4:31 And
came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the
sabbath days.

4:32 And they were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with
power.

4:33 And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an
unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice, 4:34 Saying, Let us
alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou
come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God.

4:35 And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of
him.

And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him,
and hurt him not.

4:36 And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying,
What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the
unclean spirits, and they come out.

4:37 And the fame of him went out into every place of the country
round about.

4:38 And he arose out of the synagogue, and entered into Simon's
house.

And Simon's wife's mother was taken with a great fever; and they
besought him for her.

4:39 And he stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and it left her:
and immediately she arose and ministered unto them.

4:40 Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with
divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every
one of them, and healed them.

4:41 And devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou
art Christ the Son of God. And he rebuking them suffered them not to
speak: for they knew that he was Christ.

4:42 And when it was day, he departed and went into a desert place:
and the people sought him, and came unto him, and stayed him, that he
should not depart from them.

4:43 And he said unto them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other
cities also: for therefore am I sent.

4:44 And he preached in the synagogues of Galilee.

5:1 And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon him to hear
the word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret, 5:2 And saw two
ships standing by the lake: but the fishermen were gone out of them,
and were washing their nets.

5:3 And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and
prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat
down, and taught the people out of the ship.

5:4 Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into
the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.

5:5 And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the
night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let
down the net.

5:6 And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of
fishes: and their net brake.

5:7 And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other
ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled
both the ships, so that they began to sink.

5:8 When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying,
Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.

5:9 For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught
of the fishes which they had taken: 5:10 And so was also James, and
John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. And Jesus
said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men.

5:11 And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all,
and followed him.

5:12 And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man
full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him,
saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

5:13 And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be
thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him.

5:14 And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and shew thyself to
the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded,
for a testimony unto them.

5:15 But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great
multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their
infirmities.

5:16 And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.

5:17 And it came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that
there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were
come out of every town of Galilee, and Judaea, and Jerusalem: and the
power of the Lord was present to heal them.

5:18 And, behold, men brought in a bed a man which was taken with a
palsy: and they sought means to bring him in, and to lay him before
him.

5:19 And when they could not find by what way they might bring him in
because of the multitude, they went upon the housetop, and let him
down through the tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus.

5:20 And when he saw their faith, he said unto him, Man, thy sins are
forgiven thee.

5:21 And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is
this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?
5:22 But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answering said unto
them, What reason ye in your hearts?  5:23 Whether is easier, to say,
Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk?  5:24 But that
ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins,
(he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take
up thy couch, and go into thine house.

5:25 And immediately he rose up before them, and took up that whereon
he lay, and departed to his own house, glorifying God.

5:26 And they were all amazed, and they glorified God, and were filled
with fear, saying, We have seen strange things to day.

5:27 And after these things he went forth, and saw a publican, named
Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he said unto him, Follow
me.

5:28 And he left all, rose up, and followed him.

5:29 And Levi made him a great feast in his own house: and there was a
great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them.

5:30 But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples,
saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?  5:31 And
Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a
physician; but they that are sick.

5:32 I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

5:33 And they said unto him, Why do the disciples of John fast often,
and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but
thine eat and drink?  5:34 And he said unto them, Can ye make the
children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?
5:35 But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away
from them, and then shall they fast in those days.

5:36 And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of
a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a
rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the
old.

5:37 And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine
will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.

5:38 But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are
preserved.

5:39 No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for
he saith, The old is better.

6:1 And it came to pass on the second sabbath after the first, that he
went through the corn fields; and his disciples plucked the ears of
corn, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands.

6:2 And certain of the Pharisees said unto them, Why do ye that which
is not lawful to do on the sabbath days?  6:3 And Jesus answering them
said, Have ye not read so much as this, what David did, when himself
was an hungred, and they which were with him; 6:4 How he went into the
house of God, and did take and eat the shewbread, and gave also to
them that were with him; which it is not lawful to eat but for the
priests alone?  6:5 And he said unto them, That the Son of man is Lord
also of the sabbath.

6:6 And it came to pass also on another sabbath, that he entered into
the synagogue and taught: and there was a man whose right hand was
withered.

6:7 And the scribes and Pharisees watched him, whether he would heal
on the sabbath day; that they might find an accusation against him.

6:8 But he knew their thoughts, and said to the man which had the
withered hand, Rise up, and stand forth in the midst. And he arose and
stood forth.

6:9 Then said Jesus unto them, I will ask you one thing; Is it lawful
on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or to
destroy it?  6:10 And looking round about upon them all, he said unto
the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he did so: and his hand was
restored whole as the other.

6:11 And they were filled with madness; and communed one with another
what they might do to Jesus.

6:12 And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a
mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.

6:13 And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples: and of
them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles; 6:14 Simon, (whom
he also named Peter,) and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip
and Bartholomew, 6:15 Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus,
and Simon called Zelotes, 6:16 And Judas the brother of James, and
Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor.

6:17 And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the
company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all
Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which
came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases; 6:18 And they
that were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed.

6:19 And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went
virtue out of him, and healed them all.

6:20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be
ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.

6:21 Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed
are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.

6:22 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall
separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out
your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake.

6:23 Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your
reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers
unto the prophets.

6:24 But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your
consolation.

6:25 Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you
that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.

6:26 Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did
their fathers to the false prophets.

6:27 But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them
which hate you, 6:28 Bless them that curse you, and pray for them
which despitefully use you.

6:29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the
other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat
also.

6:30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh
away thy goods ask them not again.

6:31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them
likewise.

6:32 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for
sinners also love those that love them.

6:33 And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have
ye?  for sinners also do even the same.

6:34 And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank
have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.

6:35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for
nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the
children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the
evil.

6:36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.

6:37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall
not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: 6:38 Give, and it
shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken
together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with
the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you
again.

6:39 And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind?
shall they not both fall into the ditch?  6:40 The disciple is not
above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his
master.

6:41 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but
perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?  6:42 Either how
canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that
is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in
thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine
own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is
in thy brother's eye.

6:43 For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a
corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

6:44 For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do
not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.

6:45 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth
that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his
heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the
heart his mouth speaketh.

6:46 And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I
say?  6:47 Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth
them, I will shew you to whom he is like: 6:48 He is like a man which
built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock:
and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house,
and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.

6:49 But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a
foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did
beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house
was great.

7:1 Now when he had ended all his sayings in the audience of the
people, he entered into Capernaum.

7:2 And a certain centurion's servant, who was dear unto him, was
sick, and ready to die.

7:3 And when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto him the elders of the
Jews, beseeching him that he would come and heal his servant.

7:4 And when they came to Jesus, they besought him instantly, saying,
That he was worthy for whom he should do this: 7:5 For he loveth our
nation, and he hath built us a synagogue.

7:6 Then Jesus went with them. And when he was now not far from the
house, the centurion sent friends to him, saying unto him, Lord,
trouble not thyself: for I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter
under my roof: 7:7 Wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come
unto thee: but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed.

7:8 For I also am a man set under authority, having under me soldiers,
and I say unto one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he
cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

7:9 When Jesus heard these things, he marvelled at him, and turned him
about, and said unto the people that followed him, I say unto you, I
have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

7:10 And they that were sent, returning to the house, found the
servant whole that had been sick.

7:11 And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city
called Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people.

7:12 Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was
a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a
widow: and much people of the city was with her.

7:13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said
unto her, Weep not.

7:14 And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood
still.

And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.

7:15 And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered
him to his mother.

7:16 And there came a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying,
That a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited
his people.

7:17 And this rumour of him went forth throughout all Judaea, and
throughout all the region round about.

7:18 And the disciples of John shewed him of all these things.

7:19 And John calling unto him two of his disciples sent them to
Jesus, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?
7:20 When the men were come unto him, they said, John Baptist hath
sent us unto thee, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look we
for another?  7:21 And in that same hour he cured many of their
infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto many that were
blind he gave sight.

7:22 Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John
what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to
the poor the gospel is preached.

7:23 And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.

7:24 And when the messengers of John were departed, he began to speak
unto the people concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness
for to see?  A reed shaken with the wind?  7:25 But what went ye out
for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment?  Behold, they which are
gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings' courts.

7:26 But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you,
and much more than a prophet.

7:27 This is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger
before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

7:28 For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is
not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in
the kingdom of God is greater than he.

7:29 And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified
God, being baptized with the baptism of John.

7:30 But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against
themselves, being not baptized of him.

7:31 And the Lord said, Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this
generation? and to what are they like?  7:32 They are like unto
children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and
saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have
mourned to you, and ye have not wept.

7:33 For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine;
and ye say, He hath a devil.

7:34 The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a
gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!
7:35 But wisdom is justified of all her children.

7:36 And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him.
And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat.

7:37 And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she
knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an
alabaster box of ointment, 7:38 And stood at his feet behind him
weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with
the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the
ointment.

7:39 Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake
within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have
known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she
is a sinner.

7:40 And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say
unto thee. And he saith, Master, say on.

7:41 There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed
five hundred pence, and the other fifty.

7:42 And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both.
Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?  7:43 Simon
answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most.

And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged.

7:44 And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this
woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my
feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the
hairs of her head.

7:45 Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in
hath not ceased to kiss my feet.

7:46 My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath
anointed my feet with ointment.

7:47 Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are
forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same
loveth little.

7:48 And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.

7:49 And they that sat at meat with him began to say within
themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also?  7:50 And he said to
the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.

8:1 And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city
and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of
God: and the twelve were with him, 8:2 And certain women, which had
been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene,
out of whom went seven devils, 8:3 And Joanna the wife of Chuza
Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto
him of their substance.

8:4 And when much people were gathered together, and were come to him
out of every city, he spake by a parable: 8:5 A sower went out to sow
his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was
trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it.

8:6 And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it
withered away, because it lacked moisture.

8:7 And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and
choked it.

8:8 And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an
hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath
ears to hear, let him hear.

8:9 And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be?
8:10 And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the
kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not
see, and hearing they might not understand.

8:11 Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.

8:12 Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil,
and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe
and be saved.

8:13 They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the
word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and
in time of temptation fall away.

8:14 And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have
heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of
this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.

8:15 But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good
heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with
patience.

8:16 No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel,
or putteth it under a bed; but setteth it on a candlestick, that they
which enter in may see the light.

8:17 For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither
any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.

8:18 Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall
be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that
which he seemeth to have.

8:19 Then came to him his mother and his brethren, and could not come
at him for the press.

8:20 And it was told him by certain which said, Thy mother and thy
brethren stand without, desiring to see thee.

8:21 And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are
these which hear the word of God, and do it.

8:22 Now it came to pass on a certain day, that he went into a ship
with his disciples: and he said unto them, Let us go over unto the
other side of the lake. And they launched forth.

8:23 But as they sailed he fell asleep: and there came down a storm of
wind on the lake; and they were filled with water, and were in
jeopardy.

8:24 And they came to him, and awoke him, saying, Master, master, we
perish. Then he arose, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the
water: and they ceased, and there was a calm.

8:25 And he said unto them, Where is your faith? And they being afraid
wondered, saying one to another, What manner of man is this! for he
commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him.

8:26 And they arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, which is over
against Galilee.

8:27 And when he went forth to land, there met him out of the city a
certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes, neither
abode in any house, but in the tombs.

8:28 When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and
with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son
of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not.

8:29 (For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man.
For oftentimes it had caught him: and he was kept bound with chains
and in fetters; and he brake the bands, and was driven of the devil
into the wilderness.)  8:30 And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy
name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him.

8:31 And they besought him that he would not command them to go out
into the deep.

8:32 And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the
mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter
into them. And he suffered them.

8:33 Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine:
and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were
choked.

8:34 When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went
and told it in the city and in the country.

8:35 Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and
found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the
feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.

8:36 They also which saw it told them by what means he that was
possessed of the devils was healed.

8:37 Then the whole multitude of the country of the Gadarenes round
about besought him to depart from them; for they were taken with great
fear: and he went up into the ship, and returned back again.

8:38 Now the man out of whom the devils were departed besought him
that he might be with him: but Jesus sent him away, saying, 8:39
Return to thine own house, and shew how great things God hath done
unto thee. And he went his way, and published throughout the whole
city how great things Jesus had done unto him.

8:40 And it came to pass, that, when Jesus was returned, the people
gladly received him: for they were all waiting for him.

8:41 And, behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was a ruler of
the synagogue: and he fell down at Jesus' feet, and besought him that
he would come into his house: 8:42 For he had one only daughter, about
twelve years of age, and she lay a dying. But as he went the people
thronged him.

8:43 And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had
spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any,
8:44 Came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and
immediately her issue of blood stanched.

8:45 And Jesus said, Who touched me? When all denied, Peter and they
that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee and press
thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?  8:46 And Jesus said, Somebody
hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.

8:47 And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling,
and falling down before him, she declared unto him before all the
people for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed
immediately.

8:48 And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith
hath made thee whole; go in peace.

8:49 While he yet spake, there cometh one from the ruler of the
synagogue's house, saying to him, Thy daughter is dead; trouble not
the Master.

8:50 But when Jesus heard it, he answered him, saying, Fear not:
believe only, and she shall be made whole.

8:51 And when he came into the house, he suffered no man to go in,
save Peter, and James, and John, and the father and the mother of the
maiden.

8:52 And all wept, and bewailed her: but he said, Weep not; she is not
dead, but sleepeth.

8:53 And they laughed him to scorn, knowing that she was dead.

8:54 And he put them all out, and took her by the hand, and called,
saying, Maid, arise.

8:55 And her spirit came again, and she arose straightway: and he
commanded to give her meat.

8:56 And her parents were astonished: but he charged them that they
should tell no man what was done.

9:1 Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power
and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases.

9:2 And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the
sick.

9:3 And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, neither
staves, nor scrip, neither bread, neither money; neither have two
coats apiece.

9:4 And whatsoever house ye enter into, there abide, and thence
depart.

9:5 And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city,
shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.

9:6 And they departed, and went through the towns, preaching the
gospel, and healing every where.

9:7 Now Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was done by him: and he
was perplexed, because that it was said of some, that John was risen
from the dead; 9:8 And of some, that Elias had appeared; and of
others, that one of the old prophets was risen again.

9:9 And Herod said, John have I beheaded: but who is this, of whom I
hear such things? And he desired to see him.

9:10 And the apostles, when they were returned, told him all that they
had done. And he took them, and went aside privately into a desert
place belonging to the city called Bethsaida.

9:11 And the people, when they knew it, followed him: and he received
them, and spake unto them of the kingdom of God, and healed them that
had need of healing.

9:12 And when the day began to wear away, then came the twelve, and
said unto him, Send the multitude away, that they may go into the
towns and country round about, and lodge, and get victuals: for we are
here in a desert place.

9:13 But he said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they said, We
have no more but five loaves and two fishes; except we should go and
buy meat for all this people.

9:14 For they were about five thousand men. And he said to his
disciples, Make them sit down by fifties in a company.

9:15 And they did so, and made them all sit down.

9:16 Then he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up
to heaven, he blessed them, and brake, and gave to the disciples to
set before the multitude.

9:17 And they did eat, and were all filled: and there was taken up of
fragments that remained to them twelve baskets.

9:18 And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were
with him: and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am?
9:19 They answering said, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and
others say, that one of the old prophets is risen again.

9:20 He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering
said, The Christ of God.

9:21 And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man
that thing; 9:22 Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and
be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain,
and be raised the third day.

9:23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him
deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

9:24 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever
will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.

9:25 For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and
lose himself, or be cast away?  9:26 For whosoever shall be ashamed of
me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he
shall come in his own glory, and in his Father's, and of the holy
angels.

9:27 But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which
shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.

9:28 And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he
took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray.

9:29 And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and
his raiment was white and glistering.

9:30 And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and
Elias: 9:31 Who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he
should accomplish at Jerusalem.

9:32 But Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep: and
when they were awake, they saw his glory, and the two men that stood
with him.

9:33 And it came to pass, as they departed from him, Peter said unto
Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three
tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias: not
knowing what he said.

9:34 While he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them:
and they feared as they entered into the cloud.

9:35 And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my
beloved Son: hear him.

9:36 And when the voice was past, Jesus was found alone. And they kept
it close, and told no man in those days any of those things which they
had seen.

9:37 And it came to pass, that on the next day, when they were come
down from the hill, much people met him.

9:38 And, behold, a man of the company cried out, saying, Master, I
beseech thee, look upon my son: for he is mine only child.

9:39 And, lo, a spirit taketh him, and he suddenly crieth out; and it
teareth him that he foameth again, and bruising him hardly departeth
from him.

9:40 And I besought thy disciples to cast him out; and they could not.

9:41 And Jesus answering said, O faithless and perverse generation,
how long shall I be with you, and suffer you? Bring thy son hither.

9:42 And as he was yet a coming, the devil threw him down, and tare
him.

And Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and healed the child, and
delivered him again to his father.

9:43 And they were all amazed at the mighty power of God. But while
they wondered every one at all things which Jesus did, he said unto
his disciples, 9:44 Let these sayings sink down into your ears: for
the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men.

9:45 But they understood not this saying, and it was hid from them,
that they perceived it not: and they feared to ask him of that saying.

9:46 Then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be
greatest.

9:47 And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child,
and set him by him, 9:48 And said unto them, Whosoever shall receive
this child in my name receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me
receiveth him that sent me: for he that is least among you all, the
same shall be great.

9:49 And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils
in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us.

9:50 And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not
against us is for us.

9:51 And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be
received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, 9:52 And
sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a
village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him.

9:53 And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he
would go to Jerusalem.

9:54 And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord,
wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume
them, even as Elias did?  9:55 But he turned, and rebuked them, and
said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.

9:56 For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to
save them. And they went to another village.

9:57 And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man
said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.

9:58 And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air
have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

9:59 And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me
first to go and bury my father.

9:60 Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou
and preach the kingdom of God.

9:61 And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first
go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.

9:62 And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the
plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

10:1 After these things the LORD appointed other seventy also, and
sent them two and two before his face into every city and place,
whither he himself would come.

10:2 Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the
labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he
would send forth labourers into his harvest.

10:3 Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves.

10:4 Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes: and salute no man by
the way.

10:5 And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this
house.

10:6 And if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it:
if not, it shall turn to you again.

10:7 And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as
they give: for the labourer is worthy of his hire. Go not from house
to house.

10:8 And into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such
things as are set before you: 10:9 And heal the sick that are therein,
and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.

10:10 But into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you not, go
your ways out into the streets of the same, and say, 10:11 Even the
very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against
you: notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is
come nigh unto you.

10:12 But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day
for Sodom, than for that city.

10:13 Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the
mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in
you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and
ashes.

10:14 But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the
judgment, than for you.

10:15 And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be
thrust down to hell.

10:16 He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you
despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me.

10:17 And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the
devils are subject unto us through thy name.

10:18 And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from
heaven.

10:19 Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and
scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by
any means hurt you.

10:20 Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are
subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written
in heaven.

10:21 In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so,
Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.

10:22 All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth
who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son,
and he to whom the Son will reveal him.

10:23 And he turned him unto his disciples, and said privately,
Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see: 10:24 For I
tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those
things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things
which ye hear, and have not heard them.

10:25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying,
Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?  10:26 He said unto
him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?  10:27 And he
answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy
mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

10:28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and
thou shalt live.

10:29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is
my neighbour?  10:30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down
from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him
of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

10:31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and
when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

10:32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked
on him, and passed by on the other side.

10:33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and
when he saw him, he had compassion on him, 10:34 And went to him, and
bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own
beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

10:35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and
gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and
whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.

10:36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him
that fell among the thieves?  10:37 And he said, He that shewed mercy
on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

10:38 Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a
certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into
her house.

10:39 And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet,
and heard his word.

10:40 But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and
said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve
alone?  bid her therefore that she help me.

10:41 And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art
careful and troubled about many things: 10:42 But one thing is
needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken
away from her.

11:1 And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place,
when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to
pray, as John also taught his disciples.

11:2 And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in
heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as
in heaven, so in earth.

11:3 Give us day by day our daily bread.

11:4 And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is
indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from
evil.

11:5 And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and
shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three
loaves; 11:6 For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I
have nothing to set before him?  11:7 And he from within shall answer
and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are
with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.

11:8 I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he
is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give
him as many as he needeth.

11:9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye
shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

11:10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh
findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

11:11 If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he
give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a
serpent?  11:12 Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a
scorpion?  11:13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts
unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to them that ask him?  11:14 And he was casting out a
devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone
out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered.

11:15 But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub
the chief of the devils.

11:16 And others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven.

11:17 But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom
divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided
against a house falleth.

11:18 If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom
stand? because ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub.

11:19 And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast
them out? therefore shall they be your judges.

11:20 But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the
kingdom of God is come upon you.

11:21 When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in
peace: 11:22 But when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and
overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted,
and divideth his spoils.

11:23 He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not
with me scattereth.

11:24 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through
dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return
unto my house whence I came out.

11:25 And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished.

11:26 Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked
than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state
of that man is worse than the first.

11:27 And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman
of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the
womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.

11:28 But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of
God, and keep it.

11:29 And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to
say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no
sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet.

11:30 For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the
Son of man be to this generation.

11:31 The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the
men of this generation, and condemn them: for she came from the utmost
parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a
greater than Solomon is here.

11:32 The men of Nineve shall rise up in the judgment with this
generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching
of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

11:33 No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret
place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which
come in may see the light.

11:34 The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is
single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is
evil, thy body also is full of darkness.

11:35 Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not
darkness.

11:36 If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part
dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of
a candle doth give thee light.

11:37 And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with
him: and he went in, and sat down to meat.

11:38 And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first
washed before dinner.

11:39 And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the
outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of
ravening and wickedness.

11:40 Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that
which is within also?  11:41 But rather give alms of such things as ye
have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you.

11:42 But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all
manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these
ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

11:43 Woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye love the uppermost seats in the
synagogues, and greetings in the markets.

11:44 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as
graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware
of them.

11:45 Then answered one of the lawyers, and said unto him, Master,
thus saying thou reproachest us also.

11:46 And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with
burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens
with one of your fingers.

11:47 Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and
your fathers killed them.

11:48 Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers:
for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres.

11:49 Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets
and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute: 11:50
That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation
of the world, may be required of this generation; 11:51 From the blood
of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias which perished between the altar
and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this
generation.

11:52 Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of
knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering
in ye hindered.

11:53 And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and the
Pharisees began to urge him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of
many things: 11:54 Laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something
out of his mouth, that they might accuse him.

12:1 In the mean time, when there were gathered together an
innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon
another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of
the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

12:2 For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither
hid, that shall not be known.

12:3 Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in
the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall
be proclaimed upon the housetops.

12:4 And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill
the body, and after that have no more that they can do.

12:5 But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after
he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear
him.

12:6 Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them
is forgotten before God?  12:7 But even the very hairs of your head
are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many
sparrows.

12:8 Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him
shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God: 12:9 But
he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of
God.

12:10 And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it
shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy
Ghost it shall not be forgiven.

12:11 And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto
magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall
answer, or what ye shall say: 12:12 For the Holy Ghost shall teach you
in the same hour what ye ought to say.

12:13 And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my
brother, that he divide the inheritance with me.

12:14 And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over
you?  12:15 And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of
covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the
things which he possesseth.

12:16 And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a
certain rich man brought forth plentifully: 12:17 And he thought
within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where
to bestow my fruits?  12:18 And he said, This will I do: I will pull
down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my
fruits and my goods.

12:19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up
for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.

12:20 But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be
required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast
provided?  12:21 So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is
not rich toward God.

12:22 And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take
no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body,
what ye shall put on.

12:23 The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.

12:24 Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which
neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more
are ye better than the fowls?  12:25 And which of you with taking
thought can add to his stature one cubit?  12:26 If ye then be not
able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the
rest?  12:27 Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they
spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was
not arrayed like one of these.

12:28 If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the field,
and to morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you,
O ye of little faith?  12:29 And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or
what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind.

12:30 For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and
your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.

12:31 But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things
shall be added unto you.

12:32 Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to
give you the kingdom.

12:33 Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which
wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no
thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth.

12:34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

12:35 Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; 12:36
And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will
return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may
open unto him immediately.

12:37 Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall
find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and
make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.

12:38 And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third
watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants.

12:39 And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what
hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have
suffered his house to be broken through.

12:40 Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour
when ye think not.

12:41 Then Peter said unto him, Lord, speakest thou this parable unto
us, or even to all?  12:42 And the Lord said, Who then is that
faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his
household, to give them their portion of meat in due season?  12:43
Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so
doing.

12:44 Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all
that he hath.

12:45 But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his
coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to
eat and drink, and to be drunken; 12:46 The lord of that servant will
come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is
not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his
portion with the unbelievers.

12:47 And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not
himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many
stripes.

12:48 But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes,
shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given,
of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of
him they will ask the more.

12:49 I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be
already kindled?  12:50 But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and
how am I straitened till it be accomplished!  12:51 Suppose ye that I
am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:
12:52 For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided,
three against two, and two against three.

12:53 The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against
the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against
the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the
daughter in law against her mother in law.

12:54 And he said also to the people, When ye see a cloud rise out of
the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is.

12:55 And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat;
and it cometh to pass.

12:56 Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the
earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time?  12:57 Yea, and
why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?  12:58 When thou
goest with thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in the way,
give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him; lest he hale
thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and the
officer cast thee into prison.

12:59 I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence, till thou hast paid
the very last mite.

13:1 There were present at that season some that told him of the
Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

13:2 And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these
Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they
suffered such things?  13:3 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye
shall all likewise perish.

13:4 Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew
them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in
Jerusalem?  13:5 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all
likewise perish.

13:6 He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted
in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.

13:7 Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these
three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut
it down; why cumbereth it the ground?  13:8 And he answering said unto
him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and
dung it: 13:9 And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that
thou shalt cut it down.

13:10 And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.

13:11 And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity
eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up
herself.

13:12 And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her,
Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.

13:13 And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made
straight, and glorified God.

13:14 And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation,
because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the
people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them
therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.

13:15 The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not
each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall,
and lead him away to watering?  13:16 And ought not this woman, being
a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen
years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?  13:17 And when he
had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed: and all the
people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him.

13:18 Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and
whereunto shall I resemble it?  13:19 It is like a grain of mustard
seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and
waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of
it.

13:20 And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God?
13:21 It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures
of meal, till the whole was leavened.

13:22 And he went through the cities and villages, teaching, and
journeying toward Jerusalem.

13:23 Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And
he said unto them, 13:24 Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for
many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.

13:25 When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to
the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door,
saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto
you, I know you not whence ye are: 13:26 Then shall ye begin to say,
We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our
streets.

13:27 But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are;
depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.

13:28 There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of
God, and you yourselves thrust out.

13:29 And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from
the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of
God.

13:30 And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are
first which shall be last.

13:31 The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto
him, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee.

13:32 And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast
out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I
shall be perfected.

13:33 Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day
following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.

13:34 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest
them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy
children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and
ye would not!  13:35 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate: and
verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when
ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

14:1 And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the
chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched
him.

14:2 And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the
dropsy.

14:3 And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying,
Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?  14:4 And they held their
peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go; 14:5 And
answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen
into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?
14:6 And they could not answer him again to these things.

14:7 And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he
marked how they chose out the chief rooms; saying unto them.

14:8 When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the
highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him;
14:9 And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man
place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room.

14:10 But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room;
that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go
up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that
sit at meat with thee.

14:11 For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that
humbleth himself shall be exalted.

14:12 Then said he also to him that bade him, When thou makest a
dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither
thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again,
and a recompence be made thee.

14:13 But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the
lame, the blind: 14:14 And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot
recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of
the just.

14:15 And when one of them that sat at meat with him heard these
things, he said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the
kingdom of God.

14:16 Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and
bade many: 14:17 And sent his servant at supper time to say to them
that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.

14:18 And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first
said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go
and see it: I pray thee have me excused.

14:19 And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to
prove them: I pray thee have me excused.

14:20 And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot
come.

14:21 So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the
master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly
into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor,
and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.

14:22 And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded,
and yet there is room.

14:23 And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and
hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.

14:24 For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden
shall taste of my supper.

14:25 And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and
said unto them, 14:26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father,
and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea,
and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

14:27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot
be my disciple.

14:28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down
first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?
14:29 Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able
to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, 14:30 Saying, This
man began to build, and was not able to finish.

14:31 Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth
not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to
meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?  14:32 Or else,
while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and
desireth conditions of peace.

14:33 So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that
he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

14:34 Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith
shall it be seasoned?  14:35 It is neither fit for the land, nor yet
for the dunghill; but men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let
him hear.

15:1 Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear
him.

15:2 And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man
receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.

15:3 And he spake this parable unto them, saying, 15:4 What man of
you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave
the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is
lost, until he find it?  15:5 And when he hath found it, he layeth it
on his shoulders, rejoicing.

15:6 And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and
neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my
sheep which was lost.

15:7 I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one
sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons,
which need no repentance.

15:8 Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one
piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek
diligently till she find it?  15:9 And when she hath found it, she
calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with
me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.

15:10 Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the
angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

15:11 And he said, A certain man had two sons: 15:12 And the younger
of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that
falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living.

15:13 And not many days after the younger son gathered all together,
and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his
substance with riotous living.

15:14 And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that
land; and he began to be in want.

15:15 And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and
he sent him into his fields to feed swine.

15:16 And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the
swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.

15:17 And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of
my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!
15:18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father,
I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, 15:19 And am no more
worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.

15:20 And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a
great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and
fell on his neck, and kissed him.

15:21 And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven,
and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

15:22 But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe,
and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet:
15:23 And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat,
and be merry: 15:24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he
was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.

15:25 Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh
to the house, he heard musick and dancing.

15:26 And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things
meant.

15:27 And he said unto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath
killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound.

15:28 And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father
out, and intreated him.

15:29 And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I
serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and
yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my
friends: 15:30 But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath
devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted
calf.

15:31 And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I
have is thine.

15:32 It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy
brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.

16:1 And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich
man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he
had wasted his goods.

16:2 And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this
of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no
longer steward.

16:3 Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my
lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am
ashamed.

16:4 I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the
stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.

16:5 So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said
unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord?  16:6 And he said,
An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and
sit down quickly, and write fifty.

16:7 Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An
hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and
write fourscore.

16:8 And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done
wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser
than the children of light.

16:9 And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of
unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into
everlasting habitations.

16:10 He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in
much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.

16:11 If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous
mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?  16:12 And if
ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall
give you that which is your own?  16:13 No servant can serve two
masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else
he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God
and mammon.

16:14 And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these
things: and they derided him.

16:15 And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves
before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly
esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.

16:16 The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the
kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.

16:17 And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle
of the law to fail.

16:18 Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another,
committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from
her husband committeth adultery.

16:19 There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and
fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: 16:20 And there was a
certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of
sores, 16:21 And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from
the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.

16:22 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by
the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was
buried; 16:23 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and
seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

16:24 And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and
send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool
my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

16:25 But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime
receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now
he is comforted, and thou art tormented.

16:26 And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf
fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither
can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

16:27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest
send him to my father's house: 16:28 For I have five brethren; that he
may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.

16:29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let
them hear them.

16:30 And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from
the dead, they will repent.

16:31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

17:1 Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that
offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come!  17:2 It
were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and
he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little
ones.

17:3 Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee,
rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.

17:4 And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven
times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt
forgive him.

17:5 And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.

17:6 And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye
might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and
be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you.

17:7 But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle,
will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and
sit down to meat?  17:8 And will not rather say unto him, Make ready
wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten
and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?  17:9 Doth he
thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him?
I trow not.

17:10 So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which
are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done
that which was our duty to do.

17:11 And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed
through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.

17:12 And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men
that were lepers, which stood afar off: 17:13 And they lifted up their
voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

17:14 And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto
the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were
cleansed.

17:15 And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back,
and with a loud voice glorified God, 17:16 And fell down on his face
at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan.

17:17 And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where
are the nine?  17:18 There are not found that returned to give glory
to God, save this stranger.

17:19 And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made
thee whole.

17:20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of
God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh
not with observation: 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo
there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

17:22 And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye
shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall
not see it.

17:23 And they shall say to you, See here; or, see there: go not after
them, nor follow them.

17:24 For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under
heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the
Son of man be in his day.

17:25 But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this
generation.

17:26 And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the
days of the Son of man.

17:27 They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in
marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood
came, and destroyed them all.

17:28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they
drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; 17:29 But
the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone
from heaven, and destroyed them all.

17:30 Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is
revealed.

17:31 In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff
in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in
the field, let him likewise not return back.

17:32 Remember Lot's wife.

17:33 Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and
whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.

17:34 I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the
one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.

17:35 Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken,
and the other left.

17:36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the
other left.

17:37 And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said
unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be
gathered together.

18:1 And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought
always to pray, and not to faint; 18:2 Saying, There was in a city a
judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: 18:3 And there was
a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine
adversary.

18:4 And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within
himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; 18:5 Yet because this
widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming
she weary me.

18:6 And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith.

18:7 And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night
unto him, though he bear long with them?  18:8 I tell you that he will
avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall
he find faith on the earth?  18:9 And he spake this parable unto
certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and
despised others: 18:10 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the
one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

18:11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank
thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust,
adulterers, or even as this publican.

18:12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

18:13 And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much
as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be
merciful to me a sinner.

18:14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather
than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased;
and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

18:15 And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch
them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them.

18:16 But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children
to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of
God.

18:17 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom
of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.

18:18 And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I
do to inherit eternal life?  18:19 And Jesus said unto him, Why
callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.

18:20 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not
kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and
thy mother.

18:21 And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up.

18:22 Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest
thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor,
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.

18:23 And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very
rich.

18:24 And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, he said, How
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!
18:25 For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than
for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

18:26 And they that heard it said, Who then can be saved?  18:27 And
he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with
God.

18:28 Then Peter said, Lo, we have left all, and followed thee.

18:29 And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is no man
that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children,
for the kingdom of God's sake, 18:30 Who shall not receive manifold
more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.

18:31 Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we
go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets
concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.

18:32 For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be
mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: 18:33 And they shall
scourge him, and put him to death: and the third day he shall rise
again.

18:34 And they understood none of these things: and this saying was
hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.

18:35 And it came to pass, that as he was come nigh unto Jericho, a
certain blind man sat by the way side begging: 18:36 And hearing the
multitude pass by, he asked what it meant.

18:37 And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.

18:38 And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on
me.

18:39 And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his
peace: but he cried so much the more, Thou son of David, have mercy on
me.

18:40 And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto him: and
when he was come near, he asked him, 18:41 Saying, What wilt thou that
I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight.

18:42 And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved
thee.

18:43 And immediately he received his sight, and followed him,
glorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto
God.

19:1 And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho.

19:2 And, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief
among the publicans, and he was rich.

19:3 And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the
press, because he was little of stature.

19:4 And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see
him: for he was to pass that way.

19:5 And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and
said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must
abide at thy house.

19:6 And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully.

19:7 And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, That he was gone
to be guest with a man that is a sinner.

19:8 And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord: Behold, Lord, the
half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing
from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.

19:9 And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this
house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham.

19:10 For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was
lost.

19:11 And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable,
because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the
kingdom of God should immediately appear.

19:12 He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to
receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.

19:13 And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds,
and said unto them, Occupy till I come.

19:14 But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him,
saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.

19:15 And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received
the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him,
to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man
had gained by trading.

19:16 Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten
pounds.

19:17 And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast
been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.

19:18 And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained five
pounds.

19:19 And he said likewise to him, Be thou also over five cities.

19:20 And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which
I have kept laid up in a napkin: 19:21 For I feared thee, because thou
art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and
reapest that thou didst not sow.

19:22 And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee,
thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up
that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow: 19:23 Wherefore
then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might
have required mine own with usury?  19:24 And he said unto them that
stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten
pounds.

19:25 (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.)  19:26 For I
say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from
him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.

19:27 But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over
them, bring hither, and slay them before me.

19:28 And when he had thus spoken, he went before, ascending up to
Jerusalem.

19:29 And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and
Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his
disciples, 19:30 Saying, Go ye into the village over against you; in
the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet
never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither.

19:31 And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say
unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him.

19:32 And they that were sent went their way, and found even as he had
said unto them.

19:33 And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto
them, Why loose ye the colt?  19:34 And they said, The Lord hath need
of him.

19:35 And they brought him to Jesus: and they cast their garments upon
the colt, and they set Jesus thereon.

19:36 And as he went, they spread their clothes in the way.

19:37 And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount
of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and
praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had
seen; 19:38 Saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the
Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.

19:39 And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto
him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.

19:40 And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these
should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.

19:41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,
19:42 Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy
day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from
thine eyes.

19:43 For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast
a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every
side, 19:44 And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children
within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another;
because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.

19:45 And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that
sold therein, and them that bought; 19:46 Saying unto them, It is
written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of
thieves.

19:47 And he taught daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the
scribes and the chief of the people sought to destroy him, 19:48 And
could not find what they might do: for all the people were very
attentive to hear him.

20:1 And it came to pass, that on one of those days, as he taught the
people in the temple, and preached the gospel, the chief priests and
the scribes came upon him with the elders, 20:2 And spake unto him,
saying, Tell us, by what authority doest thou these things? or who is
he that gave thee this authority?  20:3 And he answered and said unto
them, I will also ask you one thing; and answer me: 20:4 The baptism
of John, was it from heaven, or of men?  20:5 And they reasoned with
themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why
then believed ye him not?  20:6 But and if we say, Of men; all the
people will stone us: for they be persuaded that John was a prophet.

20:7 And they answered, that they could not tell whence it was.

20:8 And Jesus said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I
do these things.

20:9 Then began he to speak to the people this parable; A certain man
planted a vineyard, and let it forth to husbandmen, and went into a
far country for a long time.

20:10 And at the season he sent a servant to the husbandmen, that they
should give him of the fruit of the vineyard: but the husbandmen beat
him, and sent him away empty.

20:11 And again he sent another servant: and they beat him also, and
entreated him shamefully, and sent him away empty.

20:12 And again he sent a third: and they wounded him also, and cast
him out.

20:13 Then said the lord of the vineyard, What shall I do? I will send
my beloved son: it may be they will reverence him when they see him.

20:14 But when the husbandmen saw him, they reasoned among themselves,
saying, This is the heir: come, let us kill him, that the inheritance
may be ours.

20:15 So they cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him. What
therefore shall the lord of the vineyard do unto them?  20:16 He shall
come and destroy these husbandmen, and shall give the vineyard to
others. And when they heard it, they said, God forbid.

20:17 And he beheld them, and said, What is this then that is written,
The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of
the corner?  20:18 Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be
broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

20:19 And the chief priests and the scribes the same hour sought to
lay hands on him; and they feared the people: for they perceived that
he had spoken this parable against them.

20:20 And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign
themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so
they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor.

20:21 And they asked him, saying, Master, we know that thou sayest and
teachest rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but
teachest the way of God truly: 20:22 Is it lawful for us to give
tribute unto Caesar, or no?  20:23 But he perceived their craftiness,
and said unto them, Why tempt ye me?  20:24 Shew me a penny. Whose
image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar's.

20:25 And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things
which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.

20:26 And they could not take hold of his words before the people: and
they marvelled at his answer, and held their peace.

20:27 Then came to him certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there
is any resurrection; and they asked him, 20:28 Saying, Master, Moses
wrote unto us, If any man's brother die, having a wife, and he die
without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up
seed unto his brother.

20:29 There were therefore seven brethren: and the first took a wife,
and died without children.

20:30 And the second took her to wife, and he died childless.

20:31 And the third took her; and in like manner the seven also: and
they left no children, and died.

20:32 Last of all the woman died also.

20:33 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them is she? for
seven had her to wife.

20:34 And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world
marry, and are given in marriage: 20:35 But they which shall be
accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the
dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: 20:36 Neither can they
die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children
of God, being the children of the resurrection.

20:37 Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush,
when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob.

20:38 For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live
unto him.

20:39 Then certain of the scribes answering said, Master, thou hast
well said.

20:40 And after that they durst not ask him any question at all.

20:41 And he said unto them, How say they that Christ is David's son?
20:42 And David himself saith in the book of Psalms, The LORD said
unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, 20:43 Till I make thine
enemies thy footstool.

20:44 David therefore calleth him Lord, how is he then his son?  20:45
Then in the audience of all the people he said unto his disciples,
20:46 Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and
love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the
synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts; 20:47 Which devour widows'
houses, and for a shew make long prayers: the same shall receive
greater damnation.

21:1 And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into
the treasury.

21:2 And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two
mites.

21:3 And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath
cast in more than they all: 21:4 For all these have of their abundance
cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in
all the living that she had.

21:5 And as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly
stones and gifts, he said, 21:6 As for these things which ye behold,
the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone
upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

21:7 And they asked him, saying, Master, but when shall these things
be?  and what sign will there be when these things shall come to pass?
21:8 And he said, Take heed that ye be not deceived: for many shall
come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and the time draweth near: go ye
not therefore after them.

21:9 But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified:
for these things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and
by.

21:10 Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom: 21:11 And great earthquakes shall be in
divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and
great signs shall there be from heaven.

21:12 But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and
persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons,
being brought before kings and rulers for my name's sake.

21:13 And it shall turn to you for a testimony.

21:14 Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what
ye shall answer: 21:15 For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which
all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.

21:16 And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and
kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to
death.

21:17 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake.

21:18 But there shall not an hair of your head perish.

21:19 In your patience possess ye your souls.

21:20 And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know
that the desolation thereof is nigh.

21:21 Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let
them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that
are in the countries enter thereinto.

21:22 For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are
written may be fulfilled.

21:23 But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give
suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land,
and wrath upon this people.

21:24 And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led
away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of
the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

21:25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the
stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the
sea and the waves roaring; 21:26 Men's hearts failing them for fear,
and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for
the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

21:27 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with
power and great glory.

21:28 And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and
lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

21:29 And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the
trees; 21:30 When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own
selves that summer is now nigh at hand.

21:31 So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye
that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.

21:32 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till
all be fulfilled.

21:33 Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass
away.

21:34 And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be
overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life,
and so that day come upon you unawares.

21:35 For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face
of the whole earth.

21:36 Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted
worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to
stand before the Son of man.

21:37 And in the day time he was teaching in the temple; and at night
he went out, and abode in the mount that is called the mount of
Olives.

21:38 And all the people came early in the morning to him in the
temple, for to hear him.

22:1 Now the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh, which is called the
Passover.

22:2 And the chief priests and scribes sought how they might kill him;
for they feared the people.

22:3 Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the
number of the twelve.

22:4 And he went his way, and communed with the chief priests and
captains, how he might betray him unto them.

22:5 And they were glad, and covenanted to give him money.

22:6 And he promised, and sought opportunity to betray him unto them
in the absence of the multitude.

22:7 Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be
killed.

22:8 And he sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare us the
passover, that we may eat.

22:9 And they said unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare?  22:10
And he said unto them, Behold, when ye are entered into the city,
there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him
into the house where he entereth in.

22:11 And ye shall say unto the goodman of the house, The Master saith
unto thee, Where is the guestchamber, where I shall eat the passover
with my disciples?  22:12 And he shall shew you a large upper room
furnished: there make ready.

22:13 And they went, and found as he had said unto them: and they made
ready the passover.

22:14 And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles
with him.

22:15 And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this
passover with you before I suffer: 22:16 For I say unto you, I will
not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

22:17 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and
divide it among yourselves: 22:18 For I say unto you, I will not drink
of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come.

22:19 And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto
them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in
remembrance of me.

22:20 Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new
testament in my blood, which is shed for you.

22:21 But, behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the
table.

22:22 And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe
unto that man by whom he is betrayed!  22:23 And they began to enquire
among themselves, which of them it was that should do this thing.

22:24 And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be
accounted the greatest.

22:25 And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise
lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are
called benefactors.

22:26 But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let
him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.

22:27 For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that
serveth?  is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he
that serveth.

22:28 Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations.

22:29 And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed
unto me; 22:30 That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom,
and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

22:31 And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to
have you, that he may sift you as wheat: 22:32 But I have prayed for
thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen
thy brethren.

22:33 And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both
into prison, and to death.

22:34 And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this
day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.

22:35 And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip,
and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing.

22:36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him
take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him
sell his garment, and buy one.

22:37 For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be
accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for
the things concerning me have an end.

22:38 And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said
unto them, It is enough.

22:39 And he came out, and went, as he was wont, to the mount of
Olives; and his disciples also followed him.

22:40 And when he was at the place, he said unto them, Pray that ye
enter not into temptation.

22:41 And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled
down, and prayed, 22:42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove
this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

22:43 And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening
him.

22:44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat
was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

22:45 And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples,
he found them sleeping for sorrow, 22:46 And said unto them, Why sleep
ye? rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.

22:47 And while he yet spake, behold a multitude, and he that was
called Judas, one of the twelve, went before them, and drew near unto
Jesus to kiss him.

22:48 But Jesus said unto him, Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man
with a kiss?  22:49 When they which were about him saw what would
follow, they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with the sword?
22:50 And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut
off his right ear.

22:51 And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched
his ear, and healed him.

22:52 Then Jesus said unto the chief priests, and captains of the
temple, and the elders, which were come to him, Be ye come out, as
against a thief, with swords and staves?  22:53 When I was daily with
you in the temple, ye stretched forth no hands against me: but this is
your hour, and the power of darkness.

22:54 Then took they him, and led him, and brought him into the high
priest's house. And Peter followed afar off.

22:55 And when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, and
were set down together, Peter sat down among them.

22:56 But a certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire, and
earnestly looked upon him, and said, This man was also with him.

22:57 And he denied him, saying, Woman, I know him not.

22:58 And after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou art
also of them. And Peter said, Man, I am not.

22:59 And about the space of one hour after another confidently
affirmed, saying, Of a truth this fellow also was with him: for he is
a Galilaean.

22:60 And Peter said, Man, I know not what thou sayest. And
immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew.

22:61 And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered
the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow,
thou shalt deny me thrice.

22:62 And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.

22:63 And the men that held Jesus mocked him, and smote him.

22:64 And when they had blindfolded him, they struck him on the face,
and asked him, saying, Prophesy, who is it that smote thee?  22:65 And
many other things blasphemously spake they against him.

22:66 And as soon as it was day, the elders of the people and the
chief priests and the scribes came together, and led him into their
council, saying, 22:67 Art thou the Christ? tell us. And he said unto
them, If I tell you, ye will not believe: 22:68 And if I also ask you,
ye will not answer me, nor let me go.

22:69 Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the
power of God.

22:70 Then said they all, Art thou then the Son of God? And he said
unto them, Ye say that I am.

22:71 And they said, What need we any further witness? for we
ourselves have heard of his own mouth.

23:1 And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto Pilate.

23:2 And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow
perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar,
saying that he himself is Christ a King.

23:3 And Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And
he answered him and said, Thou sayest it.

23:4 Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find
no fault in this man.

23:5 And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people,
teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.

23:6 When Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man were a
Galilaean.

23:7 And as soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod's
jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem
at that time.

23:8 And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: for he was
desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things
of him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him.

23:9 Then he questioned with him in many words; but he answered him
nothing.

23:10 And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused
him.

23:11 And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him,
and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate.

23:12 And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together:
for before they were at enmity between themselves.

23:13 And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and
the rulers and the people, 23:14 Said unto them, Ye have brought this
man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and, behold, I, having
examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching
those things whereof ye accuse him: 23:15 No, nor yet Herod: for I
sent you to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him.

23:16 I will therefore chastise him, and release him.

23:17 (For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.)
23:18 And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and
release unto us Barabbas: 23:19 (Who for a certain sedition made in
the city, and for murder, was cast into prison.)  23:20 Pilate
therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them.

23:21 But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him.

23:22 And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he
done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise
him, and let him go.

23:23 And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might
be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests
prevailed.

23:24 And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required.

23:25 And he released unto them him that for sedition and murder was
cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to
their will.

23:26 And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a
Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross,
that he might bear it after Jesus.

23:27 And there followed him a great company of people, and of women,
which also bewailed and lamented him.

23:28 But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep
not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.

23:29 For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say,
Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps
which never gave suck.

23:30 Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and
to the hills, Cover us.

23:31 For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done
in the dry?  23:32 And there were also two other, malefactors, led
with him to be put to death.

23:33 And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary,
there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand,
and the other on the left.

23:34 Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what
they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.

23:35 And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them
derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself, if he be
Christ, the chosen of God.

23:36 And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, and offering
him vinegar, 23:37 And saying, If thou be the king of the Jews, save
thyself.

23:38 And a superscription also was written over him in letters of
Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

23:39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him,
saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.

23:40 But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear
God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?  23:41 And we indeed
justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath
done nothing amiss.

23:42 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into
thy kingdom.

23:43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt
thou be with me in paradise.

23:44 And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over
all the earth until the ninth hour.

23:45 And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in
the midst.

23:46 And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father,
into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up
the ghost.

23:47 Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God,
saying, Certainly this was a righteous man.

23:48 And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding
the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned.

23:49 And all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from
Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things.

23:50 And, behold, there was a man named Joseph, a counsellor; and he
was a good man, and a just: 23:51 (The same had not consented to the
counsel and deed of them;) he was of Arimathaea, a city of the Jews:
who also himself waited for the kingdom of God.

23:52 This man went unto Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus.

23:53 And he took it down, and wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a
sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein never man before was laid.

23:54 And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on.

23:55 And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed
after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid.

23:56 And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested
the sabbath day according to the commandment.

24:1 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning,
they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had
prepared, and certain others with them.

24:2 And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.

24:3 And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.

24:4 And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout,
behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: 24:5 And as they
were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto
them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?  24:6 He is not here, but
is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,
24:7 Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful
men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

24:8 And they remembered his words, 24:9 And returned from the
sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the
rest.

24:10 It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James,
and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the
apostles.

24:11 And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed
them not.

24:12 Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down,
he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed,
wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.

24:13 And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called
Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.

24:14 And they talked together of all these things which had happened.

24:15 And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and
reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.

24:16 But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

24:17 And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these
that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?  24:18 And the
one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou
only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are
come to pass there in these days?  24:19 And he said unto them, What
things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which
was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:
24:20 And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be
condemned to death, and have crucified him.

24:21 But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed
Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these
things were done.

24:22 Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished,
which were early at the sepulchre; 24:23 And when they found not his
body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels,
which said that he was alive.

24:24 And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre,
and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.

24:25 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe
all that the prophets have spoken: 24:26 Ought not Christ to have
suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?  24:27 And
beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all
the scriptures the things concerning himself.

24:28 And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he
made as though he would have gone further.

24:29 But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is
toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with
them.

24:30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread,
and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.

24:31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished
out of their sight.

24:32 And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us,
while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the
scriptures?  24:33 And they rose up the same hour, and returned to
Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were
with them, 24:34 Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared
to Simon.

24:35 And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was
known of them in breaking of bread.

24:36 And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of
them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

24:37 But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they
had seen a spirit.

24:38 And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts
arise in your hearts?  24:39 Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I
myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as
ye see me have.

24:40 And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his
feet.

24:41 And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said
unto them, Have ye here any meat?  24:42 And they gave him a piece of
a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb.

24:43 And he took it, and did eat before them.

24:44 And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto
you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled,
which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in
the psalms, concerning me.

24:45 Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand
the scriptures, 24:46 And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus
it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:
24:47 And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in
his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

24:48 And ye are witnesses of these things.

24:49 And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry
ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on
high.

24:50 And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his
hands, and blessed them.

24:51 And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from
them, and carried up into heaven.

24:52 And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great
joy: 24:53 And were continually in the temple, praising and blessing
God. Amen.




The Gospel According to Saint John


1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God.

1:2 The same was in the beginning with God.

1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing
made that was made.

1:4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

1:5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended
it not.

1:6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

1:7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that
all men through him might believe.

1:8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

1:9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into
the world.

1:10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world
knew him not.

1:11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the
sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 1:13 Which were
born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God.

1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld
his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of
grace and truth.

1:15 John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom
I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was
before me.

1:16 And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.

1:17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ.

1:18 No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is
in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

1:19 And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and
Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou?  1:20 And he
confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ.

1:21 And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am
not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No.

1:22 Then said they unto him, Who art thou? that we may give an answer
to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself?  1:23 He said, I am
the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of
the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.

1:24 And they which were sent were of the Pharisees.

1:25 And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou then,
if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?  1:26
John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there standeth
one among you, whom ye know not; 1:27 He it is, who coming after me is
preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose.

1:28 These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was
baptizing.

1:29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold
the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

1:30 This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is
preferred before me: for he was before me.

1:31 And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to
Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.

1:32 And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from
heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.

1:33 And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water,
the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending,
and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy
Ghost.

1:34 And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.

1:35 Again the next day after John stood, and two of his disciples;
1:36 And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of
God!  1:37 And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed
Jesus.

1:38 Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them,
What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being
interpreted, Master,) where dwellest thou?  1:39 He saith unto them,
Come and see. They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him
that day: for it was about the tenth hour.

1:40 One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was
Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.

1:41 He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We
have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ.

1:42 And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said,
Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is
by interpretation, A stone.

1:43 The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth
Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me.

1:44 Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.

1:45 Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him,
of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of
Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

1:46 And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of
Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.

1:47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an
Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!  1:48 Nathanael saith unto him,
Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that
Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.

1:49 Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of
God; thou art the King of Israel.

1:50 Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw
thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things
than these.

1:51 And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter
ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon the Son of man.

2:1 And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the
mother of Jesus was there: 2:2 And both Jesus was called, and his
disciples, to the marriage.

2:3 And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him,
They have no wine.

2:4 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine
hour is not yet come.

2:5 His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you,
do it.

2:6 And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner
of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece.

2:7 Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they
filled them up to the brim.

2:8 And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor
of the feast. And they bare it.

2:9 When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made
wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the
water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, 2:10 And
saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine;
and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast
kept the good wine until now.

2:11 This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and
manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.

2:12 After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his
brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days.

2:13 And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to
Jerusalem.

2:14 And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves,
and the changers of money sitting: 2:15 And when he had made a scourge
of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep,
and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the
tables; 2:16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things
hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.

2:17 And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of
thine house hath eaten me up.

2:18 Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou
unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?  2:19 Jesus answered and
said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it
up.

2:20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in
building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?  2:21 But he spake
of the temple of his body.

2:22 When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples
remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the
scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.

2:23 Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day,
many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did.

2:24 But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all
men, 2:25 And needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew
what was in man.

3:1 There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the
Jews: 3:2 The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi,
we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these
miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.

3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee,
Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

3:4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old?
can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?  3:5
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born
of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born
of the Spirit is spirit.

3:7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

3:8 The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound
thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so
is every one that is born of the Spirit.

3:9 Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be?
3:10 Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel,
and knowest not these things?  3:11 Verily, verily, I say unto thee,
We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye
receive not our witness.

3:12 If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall
ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?  3:13 And no man hath
ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son
of man which is in heaven.

3:14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so
must the Son of man be lifted up: 3:15 That whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have eternal life.

3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have
everlasting life.

3:17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but
that the world through him might be saved.

3:18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth
not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of
the only begotten Son of God.

3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world,
and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were
evil.

3:20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to
the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

3:21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may
be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

3:22 After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of
Judaea; and there he tarried with them, and baptized.

3:23 And John also was baptizing in Aenon near to Salim, because there
was much water there: and they came, and were baptized.

3:24 For John was not yet cast into prison.

3:25 Then there arose a question between some of John's disciples and
the Jews about purifying.

3:26 And they came unto John, and said unto him, Rabbi, he that was
with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same
baptizeth, and all men come to him.

3:27 John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be
given him from heaven.

3:28 Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ,
but that I am sent before him.

3:29 He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the
bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because
of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.

3:30 He must increase, but I must decrease.

3:31 He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth
is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is
above all.

3:32 And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth; and no man
receiveth his testimony.

3:33 He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God
is true.

3:34 For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God
giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him.

3:35 The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his
hand.

3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that
believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth
on him.

4:1 When therefore the LORD knew how the Pharisees had heard that
Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, 4:2 (Though Jesus
himself baptized not, but his disciples,) 4:3 He left Judaea, and
departed again into Galilee.

4:4 And he must needs go through Samaria.

4:5 Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near
to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

4:6 Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with
his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour.

4:7 There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto
her, Give me to drink.

4:8 (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.)  4:9
Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a
Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews
have no dealings with the Samaritans.

4:10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of
God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest
have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

4:11 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with,
and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?
4:12 Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well,
and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?  4:13
Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water
shall thirst again: 4:14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I
shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him
shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

4:15 The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst
not, neither come hither to draw.

4:16 Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither.

4:17 The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto
her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: 4:18 For thou hast had
five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that
saidst thou truly.

4:19 The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a
prophet.

4:20 Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in
Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.

4:21 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye
shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the
Father.

4:22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for
salvation is of the Jews.

4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such
to worship him.

4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in
spirit and in truth.

4:25 The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is
called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.

4:26 Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.

4:27 And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked
with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest
thou with her?  4:28 The woman then left her waterpot, and went her
way into the city, and saith to the men, 4:29 Come, see a man, which
told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?  4:30 Then
they went out of the city, and came unto him.

4:31 In the mean while his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat.

4:32 But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of.

4:33 Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought
him ought to eat?  4:34 Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the
will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.

4:35 Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest?
behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for
they are white already to harvest.

4:36 And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto
life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice
together.

4:37 And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth.

4:38 I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men
laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.

4:39 And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the
saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did.

4:40 So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that
he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days.

4:41 And many more believed because of his own word; 4:42 And said
unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have
heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the
Saviour of the world.

4:43 Now after two days he departed thence, and went into Galilee.

4:44 For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his
own country.

4:45 Then when he was come into Galilee, the Galilaeans received him,
having seen all the things that he did at Jerusalem at the feast: for
they also went unto the feast.

4:46 So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water
wine. And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at
Capernaum.

4:47 When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into Galilee, he
went unto him, and besought him that he would come down, and heal his
son: for he was at the point of death.

4:48 Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye
will not believe.

4:49 The nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child die.

4:50 Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth. And the man
believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way.

4:51 And as he was now going down, his servants met him, and told him,
saying, Thy son liveth.

4:52 Then enquired he of them the hour when he began to amend. And
they said unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.

4:53 So the father knew that it was at the same hour, in the which
Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth: and himself believed, and his
whole house.

4:54 This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, when he was come
out of Judaea into Galilee.

5:1 After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to
Jerusalem.

5:2 Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is
called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.

5:3 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt,
withered, waiting for the moving of the water.

5:4 For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and
troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the
water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

5:5 And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and
eight years.

5:6 When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time
in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?  5:7 The
impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is
troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another
steppeth down before me.

5:8 Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.

5:9 And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and
walked: and on the same day was the sabbath.

5:10 The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the
sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.

5:11 He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me,
Take up thy bed, and walk.

5:12 Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take
up thy bed, and walk?  5:13 And he that was healed wist not who it
was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that
place.

5:14 Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him,
Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto
thee.

5:15 The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had
made him whole.

5:16 And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay
him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day.

5:17 But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.

5:18 Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not
only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father,
making himself equal with God.

5:19 Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say
unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the
Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son
likewise.

5:20 For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that
himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye
may marvel.

5:21 For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even
so the Son quickeneth whom he will.

5:22 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment
unto the Son: 5:23 That all men should honour the Son, even as they
honour the Father.

He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent
him.

5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and
believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not
come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

5:25 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is,
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that
hear shall live.

5:26 For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the
Son to have life in himself; 5:27 And hath given him authority to
execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.

5:28 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that
are in the graves shall hear his voice, 5:29 And shall come forth;
they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that
have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

5:30 I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my
judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of
the Father which hath sent me.

5:31 If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.

5:32 There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that the
witness which he witnesseth of me is true.

5:33 Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth.

5:34 But I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say,
that ye might be saved.

5:35 He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a
season to rejoice in his light.

5:36 But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which
the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear
witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.

5:37 And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of
me.

Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape.

5:38 And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent,
him ye believe not.

5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life:
and they are they which testify of me.

5:40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.

5:41 I receive not honour from men.

5:42 But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.

5:43 I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another
shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.

5:44 How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek
not the honour that cometh from God only?  5:45 Do not think that I
will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even
Moses, in whom ye trust.

5:46 For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he
wrote of me.

5:47 But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my
words?  6:1 After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee,
which is the sea of Tiberias.

6:2 And a great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles
which he did on them that were diseased.

6:3 And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his
disciples.

6:4 And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.

6:5 When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come
unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these
may eat?  6:6 And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what
he would do.

6:7 Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not
sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little.

6:8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto
him, 6:9 There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two
small fishes: but what are they among so many?  6:10 And Jesus said,
Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the
men sat down, in number about five thousand.

6:11 And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he
distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set
down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.

6:12 When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the
fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.

6:13 Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets
with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and
above unto them that had eaten.

6:14 Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did,
said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.

6:15 When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him
by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain
himself alone.

6:16 And when even was now come, his disciples went down unto the sea,
6:17 And entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum.
And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them.

6:18 And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew.

6:19 So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs,
they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and
they were afraid.

6:20 But he saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid.

6:21 Then they willingly received him into the ship: and immediately
the ship was at the land whither they went.

6:22 The day following, when the people which stood on the other side
of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one
whereinto his disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with his
disciples into the boat, but that his disciples were gone away alone;
6:23 (Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place
where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks:) 6:24
When the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither his
disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for
Jesus.

6:25 And when they had found him on the other side of the sea, they
said unto him, Rabbi, when camest thou hither?  6:26 Jesus answered
them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because
ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were
filled.

6:27 Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which
endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto
you: for him hath God the Father sealed.

6:28 Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the
works of God?  6:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the
work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

6:30 They said therefore unto him, What sign shewest thou then, that
we may see, and believe thee? what dost thou work?  6:31 Our fathers
did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from
heaven to eat.

6:32 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses
gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true
bread from heaven.

6:33 For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and
giveth life unto the world.

6:34 Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.

6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh
to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never
thirst.

6:36 But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not.

6:37 All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that
cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

6:38 For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the
will of him that sent me.

6:39 And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all
which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up
again at the last day.

6:40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which
seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I
will raise him up at the last day.

6:41 The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the bread
which came down from heaven.

6:42 And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father
and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from
heaven?  6:43 Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Murmur not
among yourselves.

6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw
him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

6:45 It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of
God.

Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father,
cometh unto me.

6:46 Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God,
he hath seen the Father.

6:47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath
everlasting life.

6:48 I am that bread of life.

6:49 Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.

6:50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may
eat thereof, and not die.

6:51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat
of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give
is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

6:52 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this
man give us his flesh to eat?  6:53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and
drink his blood, ye have no life in you.

6:54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life;
and I will raise him up at the last day.

6:55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

6:56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me,
and I in him.

6:57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so
he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.

6:58 This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your
fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread
shall live for ever.

6:59 These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.

6:60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said,
This is an hard saying; who can hear it?  6:61 When Jesus knew in
himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth
this offend you?  6:62 What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend
up where he was before?  6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the
flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are
spirit, and they are life.

6:64 But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from
the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray
him.

6:65 And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto
me, except it were given unto him of my Father.

6:66 From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no
more with him.

6:67 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?  6:68 Then
Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the
words of eternal life.

6:69 And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of
the living God.

6:70 Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you
is a devil?  6:71 He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he
it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve.

7:1 After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk
in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.

7:2 Now the Jew's feast of tabernacles was at hand.

7:3 His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into
Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest.

7:4 For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself
seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to
the world.

7:5 For neither did his brethren believe in him.

7:6 Then Jesus said unto them, My time is not yet come: but your time
is alway ready.

7:7 The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of
it, that the works thereof are evil.

7:8 Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast: for my
time is not yet full come.

7:9 When he had said these words unto them, he abode still in Galilee.

7:10 But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the
feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.

7:11 Then the Jews sought him at the feast, and said, Where is he?
7:12 And there was much murmuring among the people concerning him: for
some said, He is a good man: others said, Nay; but he deceiveth the
people.

7:13 Howbeit no man spake openly of him for fear of the Jews.

7:14 Now about the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple,
and taught.

7:15 And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters,
having never learned?  7:16 Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine
is not mine, but his that sent me.

7:17 If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine,
whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.

7:18 He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that
seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no
unrighteousness is in him.

7:19 Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the
law?  Why go ye about to kill me?  7:20 The people answered and said,
Thou hast a devil: who goeth about to kill thee?  7:21 Jesus answered
and said unto them, I have done one work, and ye all marvel.

7:22 Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of
Moses, but of the fathers;) and ye on the sabbath day circumcise a
man.

7:23 If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of
Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a
man every whit whole on the sabbath day?  7:24 Judge not according to
the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

7:25 Then said some of them of Jerusalem, Is not this he, whom they
seek to kill?  7:26 But, lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing
unto him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ?
7:27 Howbeit we know this man whence he is: but when Christ cometh, no
man knoweth whence he is.

7:28 Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught, saying, Ye both know
me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but he that
sent me is true, whom ye know not.

7:29 But I know him: for I am from him, and he hath sent me.

7:30 Then they sought to take him: but no man laid hands on him,
because his hour was not yet come.

7:31 And many of the people believed on him, and said, When Christ
cometh, will he do more miracles than these which this man hath done?
7:32 The Pharisees heard that the people murmured such things
concerning him; and the Pharisees and the chief priests sent officers
to take him.

7:33 Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little while am I with you, and
then I go unto him that sent me.

7:34 Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither
ye cannot come.

7:35 Then said the Jews among themselves, Whither will he go, that we
shall not find him? will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles,
and teach the Gentiles?  7:36 What manner of saying is this that he
said, Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither
ye cannot come?  7:37 In the last day, that great day of the feast,
Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto
me, and drink.

7:38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his
belly shall flow rivers of living water.

7:39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him
should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that
Jesus was not yet glorified.)  7:40 Many of the people therefore, when
they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the Prophet.

7:41 Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come
out of Galilee?  7:42 Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh
of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David
was?  7:43 So there was a division among the people because of him.

7:44 And some of them would have taken him; but no man laid hands on
him.

7:45 Then came the officers to the chief priests and Pharisees; and
they said unto them, Why have ye not brought him?  7:46 The officers
answered, Never man spake like this man.

7:47 Then answered them the Pharisees, Are ye also deceived?  7:48
Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?  7:49 But
this people who knoweth not the law are cursed.

7:50 Nicodemus saith unto them, (he that came to Jesus by night, being
one of them,) 7:51 Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and
know what he doeth?  7:52 They answered and said unto him, Art thou
also of Galilee?  Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no
prophet.

7:53 And every man went unto his own house.

8:1 Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.

8:2 And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all
the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.

8:3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in
adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, 8:4 They say unto
him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

8:5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but
what sayest thou?  8:6 This they said, tempting him, that they might
have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote
on the ground, as though he heard them not.

8:7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said
unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a
stone at her.

8:8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

8:9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience,
went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and
Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

8:10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he
said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man
condemned thee?  8:11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her,
Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the
world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
the light of life.

8:13 The Pharisees therefore said unto him, Thou bearest record of
thyself; thy record is not true.

8:14 Jesus answered and said unto them, Though I bear record of
myself, yet my record is true: for I know whence I came, and whither I
go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I go.

8:15 Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man.

8:16 And yet if I judge, my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but
I and the Father that sent me.

8:17 It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two men is
true.

8:18 I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me
beareth witness of me.

8:19 Then said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye
neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have
known my Father also.

8:20 These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in the
temple: and no man laid hands on him; for his hour was not yet come.

8:21 Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek
me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come.

8:22 Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? because he saith,
Whither I go, ye cannot come.

8:23 And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye
are of this world; I am not of this world.

8:24 I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if
ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.

8:25 Then said they unto him, Who art thou? And Jesus saith unto them,
Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning.

8:26 I have many things to say and to judge of you: but he that sent
me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard
of him.

8:27 They understood not that he spake to them of the Father.

8:28 Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man,
then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but
as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.

8:29 And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me
alone; for I do always those things that please him.

8:30 As he spake these words, many believed on him.

8:31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye
continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; 8:32 And ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

8:33 They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in
bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?  8:34
Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever
committeth sin is the servant of sin.

8:35 And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son
abideth ever.

8:36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free
indeed.

8:37 I know that ye are Abraham's seed; but ye seek to kill me,
because my word hath no place in you.

8:38 I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that
which ye have seen with your father.

8:39 They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus
saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works
of Abraham.

8:40 But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth,
which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.

8:41 Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not
born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.

8:42 Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me:
for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but
he sent me.

8:43 Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear
my word.

8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye
will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the
truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he
speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

8:45 And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.

8:46 Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do
ye not believe me?  8:47 He that is of God heareth God's words: ye
therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.

8:48 Then answered the Jews, and said unto him, Say we not well that
thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?  8:49 Jesus answered, I have
not a devil; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me.

8:50 And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and
judgeth.

8:51 Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall
never see death.

8:52 Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil.

Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my
saying, he shall never taste of death.

8:53 Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? and the
prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself?  8:54 Jesus answered, If
I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth
me; of whom ye say, that he is your God: 8:55 Yet ye have not known
him; but I know him: and if I should say, I know him not, I shall be a
liar like unto you: but I know him, and keep his saying.

8:56 Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and
was glad.

8:57 Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old,
and hast thou seen Abraham?  8:58 Jesus said unto them, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

8:59 Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself,
and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so
passed by.

9:1 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his
birth.

9:2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this
man, or his parents, that he was born blind?  9:3 Jesus answered,
Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of
God should be made manifest in him.

9:4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the
night cometh, when no man can work.

9:5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

9:6 When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of
the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay,
9:7 And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by
interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came
seeing.

9:8 The neighbours therefore, and they which before had seen him that
he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged?  9:9 Some
said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he.

9:10 Therefore said they unto him, How were thine eyes opened?  9:11
He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and
anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and
wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight.

9:12 Then said they unto him, Where is he? He said, I know not.

9:13 They brought to the Pharisees him that aforetime was blind.

9:14 And it was the sabbath day when Jesus made the clay, and opened
his eyes.

9:15 Then again the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his
sight. He said unto them, He put clay upon mine eyes, and I washed,
and do see.

9:16 Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God,
because he keepeth not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man
that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among
them.

9:17 They say unto the blind man again, What sayest thou of him, that
he hath opened thine eyes? He said, He is a prophet.

9:18 But the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been
blind, and received his sight, until they called the parents of him
that had received his sight.

9:19 And they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was
born blind? how then doth he now see?  9:20 His parents answered them
and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind:
9:21 But by what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened
his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for
himself.

9:22 These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for
the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was
Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue.

9:23 Therefore said his parents, He is of age; ask him.

9:24 Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto him,
Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner.

9:25 He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not:
one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.

9:26 Then said they to him again, What did he to thee? how opened he
thine eyes?  9:27 He answered them, I have told you already, and ye
did not hear: wherefore would ye hear it again? will ye also be his
disciples?  9:28 Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his
disciple; but we are Moses' disciples.

9:29 We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know
not from whence he is.

9:30 The man answered and said unto them, Why herein is a marvellous
thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine
eyes.

9:31 Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a
worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth.

9:32 Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the
eyes of one that was born blind.

9:33 If this man were not of God, he could do nothing.

9:34 They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in
sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out.

9:35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found
him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?  9:36 He
answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?  9:37
And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that
talketh with thee.

9:38 And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him.

9:39 And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they
which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.

9:40 And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words,
and said unto him, Are we blind also?  9:41 Jesus said unto them, If
ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see;
therefore your sin remaineth.

10:1 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door
into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a
thief and a robber.

10:2 But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

10:3 To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he
calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.

10:4 And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them,
and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice.

10:5 And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for
they know not the voice of strangers.

10:6 This parable spake Jesus unto them: but they understood not what
things they were which he spake unto them.

10:7 Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you,
I am the door of the sheep.

10:8 All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the
sheep did not hear them.

10:9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and
shall go in and out, and find pasture.

10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to
destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have
it more abundantly.

10:11 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for
the sheep.

10:12 But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the
sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and
fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep.

10:13 The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not
for the sheep.

10:14 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.

10:15 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay
down my life for the sheep.

10:16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I
must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold,
and one shepherd.

10:17 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life,
that I might take it again.

10:18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have
power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This
commandment have I received of my Father.

10:19 There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these
sayings.

10:20 And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye
him?  10:21 Others said, These are not the words of him that hath a
devil. Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?  10:22 And it was at
Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter.

10:23 And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch.

10:24 Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long
dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.

10:25 Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works
that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me.

10:26 But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said
unto you.

10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
10:28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish,
neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

10:29 My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man
is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.

10:30 I and my Father are one.

10:31 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.

10:32 Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my
Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?  10:33 The Jews
answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for
blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

10:34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye
are gods?  10:35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God
came, and the scripture cannot be broken; 10:36 Say ye of him, whom
the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest;
because I said, I am the Son of God?  10:37 If I do not the works of
my Father, believe me not.

10:38 But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that
ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.

10:39 Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped out of
their hand, 10:40 And went away again beyond Jordan into the place
where John at first baptized; and there he abode.

10:41 And many resorted unto him, and said, John did no miracle: but
all things that John spake of this man were true.

10:42 And many believed on him there.

11:1 Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town
of Mary and her sister Martha.

11:2 (It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and
wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.)  11:3
Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom
thou lovest is sick.

11:4 When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death,
but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified
thereby.

11:5 Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.

11:6 When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days
still in the same place where he was.

11:7 Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea
again.

11:8 His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to
stone thee; and goest thou thither again?  11:9 Jesus answered, Are
there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he
stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.

11:10 But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is
no light in him.

11:11 These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our
friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.

11:12 Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well.

11:13 Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had
spoken of taking of rest in sleep.

11:14 Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.

11:15 And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent
ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.

11:16 Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his
fellowdisciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.

11:17 Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave
four days already.

11:18 Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off:
11:19 And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them
concerning their brother.

11:20 Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went
and met him: but Mary sat still in the house.

11:21 Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my
brother had not died.

11:22 But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God
will give it thee.

11:23 Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.

11:24 Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the
resurrection at the last day.

11:25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he
that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: 11:26
And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest
thou this?  11:27 She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou
art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.

11:28 And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her
sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee.

11:29 As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto him.

11:30 Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place
where Martha met him.

11:31 The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted
her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out,
followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there.

11:32 Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell
down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my
brother had not died.

11:33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping
which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.

11:34 And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come
and see.

11:35 Jesus wept.

11:36 Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!  11:37 And some of
them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind,
have caused that even this man should not have died?  11:38 Jesus
therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a
cave, and a stone lay upon it.

11:39 Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him
that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he
hath been dead four days.

11:40 Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou
wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?  11:41 Then
they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And
Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou
hast heard me.

11:42 And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the
people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast
sent me.

11:43 And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice,
Lazarus, come forth.

11:44 And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with
graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith
unto them, Loose him, and let him go.

11:45 Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the
things which Jesus did, believed on him.

11:46 But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them
what things Jesus had done.

11:47 Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and
said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.

11:48 If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the
Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

11:49 And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same
year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, 11:50 Nor consider that
it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and
that the whole nation perish not.

11:51 And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that
year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation; 11:52 And
not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in
one the children of God that were scattered abroad.

11:53 Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put
him to death.

11:54 Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went
thence unto a country near to the wilderness, into a city called
Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples.

11:55 And the Jews' passover was nigh at hand: and many went out of
the country up to Jerusalem before the passover, to purify themselves.

11:56 Then sought they for Jesus, and spake among themselves, as they
stood in the temple, What think ye, that he will not come to the
feast?  11:57 Now both the chief priests and the Pharisees had given a
commandment, that, if any man knew where he were, he should shew it,
that they might take him.

12:1 Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where
Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.

12:2 There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was
one of them that sat at the table with him.

12:3 Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and
anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the
house was filled with the odour of the ointment.

12:4 Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son,
which should betray him, 12:5 Why was not this ointment sold for three
hundred pence, and given to the poor?  12:6 This he said, not that he
cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and
bare what was put therein.

12:7 Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying
hath she kept this.

12:8 For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.

12:9 Much people of the Jews therefore knew that he was there: and
they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might see Lazarus
also, whom he had raised from the dead.

12:10 But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also
to death; 12:11 Because that by reason of him many of the Jews went
away, and believed on Jesus.

12:12 On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when
they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, 12:13 Took branches of
palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is
the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.

12:14 And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is
written, 12:15 Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh,
sitting on an ass's colt.

12:16 These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when
Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were
written of him, and that they had done these things unto him.

12:17 The people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus
out of his grave, and raised him from the dead, bare record.

12:18 For this cause the people also met him, for that they heard that
he had done this miracle.

12:19 The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, Perceive ye how
ye prevail nothing? behold, the world is gone after him.

12:20 And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship
at the feast: 12:21 The same came therefore to Philip, which was of
Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see
Jesus.

12:22 Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and Philip
tell Jesus.

12:23 And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son
of man should be glorified.

12:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into
the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth
much fruit.

12:25 He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his
life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

12:26 If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there
shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father
honour.

12:27 Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me
from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.

12:28 Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven,
saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

12:29 The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it
thundered: others said, An angel spake to him.

12:30 Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but
for your sakes.

12:31 Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this
world be cast out.

12:32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto
me.

12:33 This he said, signifying what death he should die.

12:34 The people answered him, We have heard out of the law that
Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be
lifted up? who is this Son of man?  12:35 Then Jesus said unto them,
Yet a little while is the light with you.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that
walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

12:36 While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the
children of light. These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did
hide himself from them.

12:37 But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they
believed not on him: 12:38 That the saying of Esaias the prophet might
be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and
to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?  12:39 Therefore they
could not believe, because that Esaias said again, 12:40 He hath
blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see
with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted,
and I should heal them.

12:41 These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of
him.

12:42 Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed on him;
but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they
should be put out of the synagogue: 12:43 For they loved the praise of
men more than the praise of God.

12:44 Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on
me, but on him that sent me.

12:45 And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me.

12:46 I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me
should not abide in darkness.

12:47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not:
for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.

12:48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that
judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in
the last day.

12:49 For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me,
he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.

12:50 And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever
I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.

13:1 Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his
hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father,
having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the
end.

13:2 And supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart
of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him; 13:3 Jesus knowing that
the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come
from God, and went to God; 13:4 He riseth from supper, and laid aside
his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.

13:5 After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the
disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was
girded.

13:6 Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord,
dost thou wash my feet?  13:7 Jesus answered and said unto him, What I
do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.

13:8 Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus
answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.

13:9 Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my
hands and my head.

13:10 Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash
his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.

13:11 For he knew who should betray him; therefore said he, Ye are not
all clean.

13:12 So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments,
and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to
you?  13:13 Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.

13:14 If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also
ought to wash one another's feet.

13:15 For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have
done to you.

13:16 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than
his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.

13:17 If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.

13:18 I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the
scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted
up his heel against me.

13:19 Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye
may believe that I am he.

13:20 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I
send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent
me.

13:21 When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit, and
testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you
shall betray me.

13:22 Then the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom he
spake.

13:23 Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom
Jesus loved.

13:24 Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, that he should ask who it
should be of whom he spake.

13:25 He then lying on Jesus' breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it?
13:26 Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I
have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas
Iscariot, the son of Simon.

13:27 And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto
him, That thou doest, do quickly.

13:28 Now no man at the table knew for what intent he spake this unto
him.

13:29 For some of them thought, because Judas had the bag, that Jesus
had said unto him, Buy those things that we have need of against the
feast; or, that he should give something to the poor.

13:30 He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was
night.

13:31 Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of
man glorified, and God is glorified in him.

13:32 If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in
himself, and shall straightway glorify him.

13:33 Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek
me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now
I say to you.

13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as
I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have
love one to another.

13:36 Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus
answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou
shalt follow me afterwards.

13:37 Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will
lay down my life for thy sake.

13:38 Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake?
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou
hast denied me thrice.

14:1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also
in me.

14:2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I
would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and
receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

14:4 And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.

14:5 Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and
how can we know the way?  14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the
truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

14:7 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from
henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.

14:8 Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth
us.

14:9 Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet
hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the
Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?  14:10 Believest
thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?  the words
that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.

14:11 Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or
else believe me for the very works' sake.

14:12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the
works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall
he do; because I go unto my Father.

14:13 And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the
Father may be glorified in the Son.

14:14 If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.

14:15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.

14:16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another
Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 14:17 Even the Spirit
of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not,
neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and
shall be in you.

14:18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

14:19 Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see
me: because I live, ye shall live also.

14:20 At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me,
and I in you.

14:21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that
loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I
will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

14:22 Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou
wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?  14:23 Jesus
answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words:
and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our
abode with him.

14:24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which
ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.

14:25 These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.

14:26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will
send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things
to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

14:27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the
world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither
let it be afraid.

14:28 Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again
unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto
the Father: for my Father is greater than I.

14:29 And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is
come to pass, ye might believe.

14:30 Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this
world cometh, and hath nothing in me.

14:31 But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the
Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.

15:1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.

15:2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and
every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring
forth more fruit.

15:3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.

15:4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of
itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide
in me.

15:5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I
in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do
nothing.

15:6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is
withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they
are burned.

15:7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what
ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

15:8 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall
ye be my disciples.

15:9 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in
my love.

15:10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I
have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

15:11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in
you, and that your joy might be full.

15:12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have
loved you.

15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends.

15:14 Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.

15:15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not
what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things
that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

15:16 Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you,
that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should
remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may
give it you.

15:17 These things I command you, that ye love one another.

15:18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated
you.

15:19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but
because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the
world, therefore the world hateth you.

15:20 Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not
greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also
persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

15:21 But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake,
because they know not him that sent me.

15:22 If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin:
but now they have no cloak for their sin.

15:23 He that hateth me hateth my Father also.

15:24 If I had not done among them the works which none other man did,
they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me
and my Father.

15:25 But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that
is written in their law, They hated me without a cause.

15:26 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from
the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the
Father, he shall testify of me: 15:27 And ye also shall bear witness,
because ye have been with me from the beginning.

16:1 These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be
offended.

16:2 They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh,
that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.

16:3 And these things will they do unto you, because they have not
known the Father, nor me.

16:4 But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come,
ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not
unto you at the beginning, because I was with you.

16:5 But now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh
me, Whither goest thou?  16:6 But because I have said these things
unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart.

16:7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I
go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you;
but if I depart, I will send him unto you.

16:8 And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of
righteousness, and of judgment: 16:9 Of sin, because they believe not
on me; 16:10 Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see
me no more; 16:11 Of judgment, because the prince of this world is
judged.

16:12 I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them
now.

16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you
into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he
shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

16:14 He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall
shew it unto you.

16:15 All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that
he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.

16:16 A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little
while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father.

16:17 Then said some of his disciples among themselves, What is this
that he saith unto us, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and
again, a little while, and ye shall see me: and, Because I go to the
Father?  16:18 They said therefore, What is this that he saith, A
little while? we cannot tell what he saith.

16:19 Now Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask him, and said unto
them, Do ye enquire among yourselves of that I said, A little while,
and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see
me?  16:20 Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and
lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but
your sorrow shall be turned into joy.

16:21 A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is
come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no
more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.

16:22 And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and
your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.

16:23 And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say
unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give
it you.

16:24 Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall
receive, that your joy may be full.

16:25 These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time
cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall
shew you plainly of the Father.

16:26 At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you,
that I will pray the Father for you: 16:27 For the Father himself
loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came
out from God.

16:28 I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again,
I leave the world, and go to the Father.

16:29 His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and
speakest no proverb.

16:30 Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not
that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest
forth from God.

16:31 Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe?  16:32 Behold, the hour
cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his
own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the
Father is with me.

16:33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have
peace.

In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have
overcome the world.

17:1 These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and
said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may
glorify thee: 17:2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that
he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true
God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

17:4 I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work
which thou gavest me to do.

17:5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the
glory which I had with thee before the world was.

17:6 I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out
of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have
kept thy word.

17:7 Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me
are of thee.

17:8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and
they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from
thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

17:9 I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which
thou hast given me; for they are thine.

17:10 And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified
in them.

17:11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world,
and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those
whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

17:12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name:
those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but
the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

17:13 And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world,
that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

17:14 I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them,
because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

17:15 I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but
that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.

17:16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

17:17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

17:18 As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent
them into the world.

17:19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be
sanctified through the truth.

17:20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall
believe on me through their word; 17:21 That they all may be one; as
thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in
us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

17:22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they
may be one, even as we are one: 17:23 I in them, and thou in me, that
they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou
hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

17:24 Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with
me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given
me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.

17:25 O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have
known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.

17:26 And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it:
that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in
them.

18:1 When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his
disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which he
entered, and his disciples.

18:2 And Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place: for Jesus
ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples.

18:3 Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the
chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches
and weapons.

18:4 Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him,
went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye?  18:5 They answered him,
Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he.

And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.

18:6 As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went
backward, and fell to the ground.

18:7 Then asked he them again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of
Nazareth.

18:8 Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he: if therefore ye
seek me, let these go their way: 18:9 That the saying might be
fulfilled, which he spake, Of them which thou gavest me have I lost
none.

18:10 Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high
priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was
Malchus.

18:11 Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath:
the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?  18:12
Then the band and the captain and officers of the Jews took Jesus, and
bound him, 18:13 And led him away to Annas first; for he was father in
law to Caiaphas, which was the high priest that same year.

18:14 Now Caiaphas was he, which gave counsel to the Jews, that it was
expedient that one man should die for the people.

18:15 And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple:
that disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus
into the palace of the high priest.

18:16 But Peter stood at the door without. Then went out that other
disciple, which was known unto the high priest, and spake unto her
that kept the door, and brought in Peter.

18:17 Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter, Art not
thou also one of this man's disciples? He saith, I am not.

18:18 And the servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire
of coals; for it was cold: and they warmed themselves: and Peter stood
with them, and warmed himself.

18:19 The high priest then asked Jesus of his disciples, and of his
doctrine.

18:20 Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I ever taught
in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort;
and in secret have I said nothing.

18:21 Why askest thou me? ask them which heard me, what I have said
unto them: behold, they know what I said.

18:22 And when he had thus spoken, one of the officers which stood by
struck Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying, Answerest thou the
high priest so?  18:23 Jesus answered him, If I have spoken evil, bear
witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?  18:24 Now
Annas had sent him bound unto Caiaphas the high priest.

18:25 And Simon Peter stood and warmed himself. They said therefore
unto him, Art not thou also one of his disciples? He denied it, and
said, I am not.

18:26 One of the servants of the high priest, being his kinsman whose
ear Peter cut off, saith, Did not I see thee in the garden with him?
18:27 Peter then denied again: and immediately the cock crew.

18:28 Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and
it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall,
lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover.

18:29 Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring
ye against this man?  18:30 They answered and said unto him, If he
were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee.

18:31 Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according
to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us
to put any man to death: 18:32 That the saying of Jesus might be
fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die.

18:33 Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called
Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews?  18:34 Jesus
answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it
thee of me?  18:35 Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and
the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?
18:36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom
were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be
delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

18:37 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus
answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and
for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto
the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

18:38 Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this,
he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no
fault at all.

18:39 But ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the
passover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the
Jews?  18:40 Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but
Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.

19:1 Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him.

19:2 And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his
head, and they put on him a purple robe, 19:3 And said, Hail, King of
the Jews! and they smote him with their hands.

19:4 Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I
bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him.

19:5 Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the
purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!  19:6 When
the chief priests therefore and officers saw him, they cried out,
saying, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him,
and crucify him: for I find no fault in him.

19:7 The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to
die, because he made himself the Son of God.

19:8 When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid;
19:9 And went again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus,
Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer.

19:10 Then saith Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? knowest
thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release
thee?  19:11 Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all
against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that
delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.

19:12 And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release him: but the Jews
cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's
friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.

19:13 When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth,
and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the
Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha.

19:14 And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth
hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King!  19:15 But they
cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him.

Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests
answered, We have no king but Caesar.

19:16 Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified. And
they took Jesus, and led him away.

19:17 And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the
place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: 19:18 Where
they crucified him, and two other with him, on either side one, and
Jesus in the midst.

19:19 And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the
writing was JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.

19:20 This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus
was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and
Greek, and Latin.

19:21 Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not,
The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews.

19:22 Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.

19:23 Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his
garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his
coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.

19:24 They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but
cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be
fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my
vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.

19:25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his
mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.

19:26 When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing
by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!
19:27 Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that
hour that disciple took her unto his own home.

19:28 After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished,
that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.

19:29 Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a
spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth.

19:30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is
finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

19:31 The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the
bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that
sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be
broken, and that they might be taken away.

19:32 Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of
the other which was crucified with him.

19:33 But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already,
they brake not his legs: 19:34 But one of the soldiers with a spear
pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.

19:35 And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he
knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.

19:36 For these things were done, that the scripture should be
fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.

19:37 And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom
they pierced.

19:38 And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus,
but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take
away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore,
and took the body of Jesus.

19:39 And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus
by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred
pound weight.

19:40 Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes
with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.

19:41 Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and
in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.

19:42 There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews' preparation
day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand.

20:1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it
was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from
the sepulchre.

20:2 Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other
disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away
the LORD out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid
him.

20:3 Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to
the sepulchre.

20:4 So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun
Peter, and came first to the sepulchre.

20:5 And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes
lying; yet went he not in.

20:6 Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the
sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, 20:7 And the napkin, that
was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped
together in a place by itself.

20:8 Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the
sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.

20:9 For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again
from the dead.

20:10 Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.

20:11 But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she
wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, 20:12 And seeth
two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the
feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.

20:13 And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto
them, Because they have taken away my LORD, and I know not where they
have laid him.

20:14 And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw
Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

20:15 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest
thou?  She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if
thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I
will take him away.

20:16 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto
him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.

20:17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to
my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my
Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

20:18 Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the
LORD, and that he had spoken these things unto her.

20:19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week,
when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear
of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them,
Peace be unto you.

20:20 And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his
side.

Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the LORD.

20:21 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father
hath sent me, even so send I you.

20:22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto
them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: 20:23 Whose soever sins ye remit,
they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are
retained.

20:24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them
when Jesus came.

20:25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the
LORD.

But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of
the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust
my hand into his side, I will not believe.

20:26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas
with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the
midst, and said, Peace be unto you.

20:27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my
hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be
not faithless, but believing.

20:28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My LORD and my God.

20:29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou
hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have
believed.

20:30 And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his
disciples, which are not written in this book: 20:31 But these are
written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

21:1 After these things Jesus shewed himself again to the disciples at
the sea of Tiberias; and on this wise shewed he himself.

21:2 There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and
Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other
of his disciples.

21:3 Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him,
We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a ship
immediately; and that night they caught nothing.

21:4 But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore: but
the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.

21:5 Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They
answered him, No.

21:6 And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the
ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not
able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.

21:7 Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is
the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his
fisher's coat unto him, (for he was naked,) and did cast himself into
the sea.

21:8 And the other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not
far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net
with fishes.

21:9 As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals
there, and fish laid thereon, and bread.

21:10 Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now
caught.

21:11 Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great
fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so
many, yet was not the net broken.

21:12 Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples
durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord.

21:13 Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish
likewise.

21:14 This is now the third time that Jesus shewed himself to his
disciples, after that he was risen from the dead.

21:15 So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son
of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea,
Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.

21:16 He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas,
lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love
thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep.

21:17 He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest
thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time,
Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things;
thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.

21:18 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou
girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou
shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall
gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.

21:19 This spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God.
And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him, Follow me.

21:20 Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved
following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord,
which is he that betrayeth thee?  21:21 Peter seeing him saith to
Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do?  21:22 Jesus saith unto him,
If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou
me.

21:23 Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that
disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not
die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?
21:24 This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote
these things: and we know that his testimony is true.

21:25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which,
if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world
itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.




The Acts of the Apostles


1:1 The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus
began both to do and teach, 1:2 Until the day in which he was taken
up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto
the apostles whom he had chosen: 1:3 To whom also he shewed himself
alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them
forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of
God: 1:4 And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that
they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the
Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.

1:5 For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with
the Holy Ghost not many days hence.

1:6 When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying,
Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?  1:7
And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the
seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.

1:8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon
you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all
Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

1:9 And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was
taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.

1:10 And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up,
behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; 1:11 Which also said,
Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same
Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like
manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.

1:12 Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet,
which is from Jerusalem a sabbath day's journey.

1:13 And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room,
where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and
Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon
Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James.

1:14 These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication,
with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.

1:15 And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples,
and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and
twenty,) 1:16 Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been
fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before
concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus.

1:17 For he was numbered with us, and had obtained part of this
ministry.

1:18 Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and
falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels
gushed out.

1:19 And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as
that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say,
The field of blood.

1:20 For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be
desolate, and let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick let another
take.

1:21 Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time
that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 1:22 Beginning from the
baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must
one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection.

1:23 And they appointed two, Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed
Justus, and Matthias.

1:24 And they prayed, and said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts
of all men, shew whether of these two thou hast chosen, 1:25 That he
may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by
transgression fell, that he might go to his own place.

1:26 And they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias;
and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.

2:1 And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with
one accord in one place.

2:2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty
wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

2:3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and
it sat upon each of them.

2:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak
with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

2:5 And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of
every nation under heaven.

2:6 Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and
were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own
language.

2:7 And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another,
Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans?  2:8 And how hear we
every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?  2:9 Parthians, and
Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea,
and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, 2:10 Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in
Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome,
Jews and proselytes, 2:11 Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak
in our tongues the wonderful works of God.

2:12 And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to
another, What meaneth this?  2:13 Others mocking said, These men are
full of new wine.

2:14 But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and
said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem,
be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: 2:15 For these are
not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the
day.

2:16 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; 2:17 And
it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of
my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall
dream dreams: 2:18 And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will
pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: 2:19 And
I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath;
blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: 2:20 The sun shall be turned
into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable
day of the Lord come: 2:21 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever
shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

2:22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man
approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God
did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: 2:23 Him,
being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God,
ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: 2:24 Whom
God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was
not possible that he should be holden of it.

2:25 For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always
before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be
moved: 2:26 Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad;
moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope: 2:27 Because thou wilt not
leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see
corruption.

2:28 Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me
full of joy with thy countenance.

2:29 Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch
David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us
unto this day.

2:30 Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an
oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh,
he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; 2:31 He seeing this
before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left
in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.

2:32 This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.

2:33 Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having
received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed
forth this, which ye now see and hear.

2:34 For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself,
The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, 2:35 Until I
make thy foes thy footstool.

2:36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God
hath made the same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and
Christ.

2:37 Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and
said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren,
what shall we do?  2:38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be
baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the
remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

2:39 For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all
that are afar off, even as many as the LORD our God shall call.

2:40 And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save
yourselves from this untoward generation.

2:41 Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the
same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.

2:42 And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and
fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.

2:43 And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were
done by the apostles.

2:44 And all that believed were together, and had all things common;
2:45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men,
as every man had need.

2:46 And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and
breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness
and singleness of heart, 2:47 Praising God, and having favour with all
the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be
saved.

3:1 Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of
prayer, being the ninth hour.

3:2 And a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom
they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful,
to ask alms of them that entered into the temple; 3:3 Who seeing Peter
and John about to go into the temple asked an alms.

3:4 And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, Look on
us.

3:5 And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of
them.

3:6 Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have
give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.

3:7 And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and
immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.

3:8 And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into
the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God.

3:9 And all the people saw him walking and praising God: 3:10 And they
knew that it was he which sat for alms at the Beautiful gate of the
temple: and they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which
had happened unto him.

3:11 And as the lame man which was healed held Peter and John, all the
people ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon's,
greatly wondering.

3:12 And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of
Israel, why marvel ye at this? or why look ye so earnestly on us, as
though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?
3:13 The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our
fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus; whom ye delivered up, and
denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let
him go.

3:14 But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer
to be granted unto you; 3:15 And killed the Prince of life, whom God
hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.

3:16 And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong,
whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given him
this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.

3:17 And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did
also your rulers.

3:18 But those things, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all
his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled.

3:19 Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be
blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence
of the Lord.

3:20 And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto
you: 3:21 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution
of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy
prophets since the world began.

3:22 For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord
your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall
ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you.

3:23 And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear
that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.

3:24 Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow
after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days.

3:25 Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which
God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall
all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.

3:26 Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to
bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.

4:1 And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of
the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, 4:2 Being grieved that
they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection
from the dead.

4:3 And they laid hands on them, and put them in hold unto the next
day: for it was now eventide.

4:4 Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed; and the number
of the men was about five thousand.

4:5 And it came to pass on the morrow, that their rulers, and elders,
and scribes, 4:6 And Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John,
and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest,
were gathered together at Jerusalem.

4:7 And when they had set them in the midst, they asked, By what
power, or by what name, have ye done this?  4:8 Then Peter, filled
with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and
elders of Israel, 4:9 If we this day be examined of the good deed done
to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole; 4:10 Be it known
unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of
Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the
dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole.

4:11 This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which
is become the head of the corner.

4:12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other
name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

4:13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived
that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they
took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.

4:14 And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they
could say nothing against it.

4:15 But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council,
they conferred among themselves, 4:16 Saying, What shall we do to
these men? for that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is
manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem; and we cannot deny it.

4:17 But that it spread no further among the people, let us straitly
threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no man in this name.

4:18 And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor
teach in the name of Jesus.

4:19 But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be
right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God,
judge ye.

4:20 For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.

4:21 So when they had further threatened them, they let them go,
finding nothing how they might punish them, because of the people: for
all men glorified God for that which was done.

4:22 For the man was above forty years old, on whom this miracle of
healing was shewed.

4:23 And being let go, they went to their own company, and reported
all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them.

4:24 And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with
one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and
earth, and the sea, and all that in them is: 4:25 Who by the mouth of
thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people
imagine vain things?  4:26 The kings of the earth stood up, and the
rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his
Christ.

4:27 For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast
anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the
people of Israel, were gathered together, 4:28 For to do whatsoever
thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.

4:29 And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy
servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word, 4:30 By
stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be
done by the name of thy holy child Jesus.

4:31 And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were
assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and
they spake the word of God with boldness.

4:32 And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of
one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he
possessed was his own; but they had all things common.

4:33 And with great power gave the apostles witness of the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.

4:34 Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were
possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the
things that were sold, 4:35 And laid them down at the apostles' feet:
and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

4:36 And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is,
being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the
country of Cyprus, 4:37 Having land, sold it, and brought the money,
and laid it at the apostles' feet.

5:1 But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a
possession, 5:2 And kept back part of the price, his wife also being
privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles'
feet.

5:3 But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie
to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?
5:4 Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold,
was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in
thine heart?  thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.

5:5 And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost:
and great fear came on all them that heard these things.

5:6 And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and
buried him.

5:7 And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife,
not knowing what was done, came in.

5:8 And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for
so much? And she said, Yea, for so much.

5:9 Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together
to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have
buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out.

5:10 Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the
ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying
her forth, buried her by her husband.

5:11 And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as
heard these things.

5:12 And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders
wrought among the people; (and they were all with one accord in
Solomon's porch.

5:13 And of the rest durst no man join himself to them: but the people
magnified them.

5:14 And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of
men and women.)  5:15 Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into
the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the
shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them.

5:16 There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto
Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean
spirits: and they were healed every one.

5:17 Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him,
(which is the sect of the Sadducees,) and were filled with
indignation, 5:18 And laid their hands on the apostles, and put them
in the common prison.

5:19 But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and
brought them forth, and said, 5:20 Go, stand and speak in the temple
to the people all the words of this life.

5:21 And when they heard that, they entered into the temple early in
the morning, and taught. But the high priest came, and they that were
with him, and called the council together, and all the senate of the
children of Israel, and sent to the prison to have them brought.

5:22 But when the officers came, and found them not in the prison,
they returned and told, 5:23 Saying, The prison truly found we shut
with all safety, and the keepers standing without before the doors:
but when we had opened, we found no man within.

5:24 Now when the high priest and the captain of the temple and the
chief priests heard these things, they doubted of them whereunto this
would grow.

5:25 Then came one and told them, saying, Behold, the men whom ye put
in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people.

5:26 Then went the captain with the officers, and brought them without
violence: for they feared the people, lest they should have been
stoned.

5:27 And when they had brought them, they set them before the council:
and the high priest asked them, 5:28 Saying, Did not we straitly
command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye
have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this
man's blood upon us.

5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to
obey God rather than men.

5:30 The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged
on a tree.

5:31 Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a
Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.

5:32 And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy
Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.

5:33 When they heard that, they were cut to the heart, and took
counsel to slay them.

5:34 Then stood there up one in the council, a Pharisee, named
Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, had in reputation among all the people,
and commanded to put the apostles forth a little space; 5:35 And said
unto them, Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what ye intend to
do as touching these men.

5:36 For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be
somebody; to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined
themselves: who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were
scattered, and brought to nought.

5:37 After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the
taxing, and drew away much people after him: he also perished; and
all, even as many as obeyed him, were dispersed.

5:38 And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them
alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to
nought: 5:39 But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply
ye be found even to fight against God.

5:40 And to him they agreed: and when they had called the apostles,
and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name
of Jesus, and let them go.

5:41 And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing
that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.

5:42 And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to
teach and preach Jesus Christ.

6:1 And in those days, when the number of the disciples was
multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the
Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily
ministration.

6:2 Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them,
and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and
serve tables.

6:3 Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest
report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over
this business.

6:4 But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the
ministry of the word.

6:5 And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose
Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and
Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a
proselyte of Antioch: 6:6 Whom they set before the apostles: and when
they had prayed, they laid their hands on them.

6:7 And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples
multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests
were obedient to the faith.

6:8 And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and
miracles among the people.

6:9 Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which is called the
synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and of
them of Cilicia and of Asia, disputing with Stephen.

6:10 And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by
which he spake.

6:11 Then they suborned men, which said, We have heard him speak
blasphemous words against Moses, and against God.

6:12 And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and the scribes,
and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him to the council,
6:13 And set up false witnesses, which said, This man ceaseth not to
speak blasphemous words against this holy place, and the law: 6:14 For
we have heard him say, that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this
place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us.

6:15 And all that sat in the council, looking stedfastly on him, saw
his face as it had been the face of an angel.

7:1 Then said the high priest, Are these things so?  7:2 And he said,
Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto
our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in
Charran, 7:3 And said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from
thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee.

7:4 Then came he out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and dwelt in
Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him
into this land, wherein ye now dwell.

7:5 And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set
his foot on: yet he promised that he would give it to him for a
possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child.

7:6 And God spake on this wise, That his seed should sojourn in a
strange land; and that they should bring them into bondage, and
entreat them evil four hundred years.

7:7 And the nation to whom they shall be in bondage will I judge, said
God: and after that shall they come forth, and serve me in this place.

7:8 And he gave him the covenant of circumcision: and so Abraham begat
Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac begat Jacob; and
Jacob begat the twelve patriarchs.

7:9 And the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt: but
God was with him, 7:10 And delivered him out of all his afflictions,
and gave him favour and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh king of Egypt;
and he made him governor over Egypt and all his house.

7:11 Now there came a dearth over all the land of Egypt and Chanaan,
and great affliction: and our fathers found no sustenance.

7:12 But when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt, he sent out
our fathers first.

7:13 And at the second time Joseph was made known to his brethren; and
Joseph's kindred was made known unto Pharaoh.

7:14 Then sent Joseph, and called his father Jacob to him, and all his
kindred, threescore and fifteen souls.

7:15 So Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, he, and our fathers,
7:16 And were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that
Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of
Sychem.

7:17 But when the time of the promise drew nigh, which God had sworn
to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt, 7:18 Till another
king arose, which knew not Joseph.

7:19 The same dealt subtilly with our kindred, and evil entreated our
fathers, so that they cast out their young children, to the end they
might not live.

7:20 In which time Moses was born, and was exceeding fair, and
nourished up in his father's house three months: 7:21 And when he was
cast out, Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and nourished him for her
own son.

7:22 And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was
mighty in words and in deeds.

7:23 And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to
visit his brethren the children of Israel.

7:24 And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged
him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian: 7:25 For he supposed
his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would
deliver them: but they understood not.

7:26 And the next day he shewed himself unto them as they strove, and
would have set them at one again, saying, Sirs, ye are brethren; why
do ye wrong one to another?  7:27 But he that did his neighbour wrong
thrust him away, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?
7:28 Wilt thou kill me, as thou diddest the Egyptian yesterday?  7:29
Then fled Moses at this saying, and was a stranger in the land of
Madian, where he begat two sons.

7:30 And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the
wilderness of mount Sina an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a
bush.

7:31 When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight: and as he drew near
to behold it, the voice of the LORD came unto him, 7:32 Saying, I am
the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob. Then Moses trembled, and durst not behold.

7:33 Then said the Lord to him, Put off thy shoes from thy feet: for
the place where thou standest is holy ground.

7:34 I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people which is in
Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver
them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt.

7:35 This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a
judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand
of the angel which appeared to him in the bush.

7:36 He brought them out, after that he had shewed wonders and signs
in the land of Egypt, and in the Red sea, and in the wilderness forty
years.

7:37 This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A
prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren,
like unto me; him shall ye hear.

7:38 This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the
angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who
received the lively oracles to give unto us: 7:39 To whom our fathers
would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned
back again into Egypt, 7:40 Saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go
before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of
Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

7:41 And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto
the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.

7:42 Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven;
as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel,
have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of
forty years in the wilderness?  7:43 Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of
Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to
worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.

7:44 Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, as
he had appointed, speaking unto Moses, that he should make it
according to the fashion that he had seen.

7:45 Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into
the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of
our fathers, unto the days of David; 7:46 Who found favour before God,
and desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob.

7:47 But Solomon built him an house.

7:48 Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as
saith the prophet, 7:49 Heaven is my throne, and earth is my
footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the
place of my rest?  7:50 Hath not my hand made all these things?  7:51
Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always
resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.

7:52 Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they
have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of
whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: 7:53 Who have
received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.

7:54 When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and
they gnashed on him with their teeth.

7:55 But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into
heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand
of God, 7:56 And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son
of man standing on the right hand of God.

7:57 Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears,
and ran upon him with one accord, 7:58 And cast him out of the city,
and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young
man's feet, whose name was Saul.

7:59 And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit.

7:60 And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not
this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

8:1 And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was
a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and
they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and
Samaria, except the apostles.

8:2 And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great
lamentation over him.

8:3 As for Saul, he made havock of the church, entering into every
house, and haling men and women committed them to prison.

8:4 Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where
preaching the word.

8:5 Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ
unto them.

8:6 And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which
Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.

8:7 For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that
were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were
lame, were healed.

8:8 And there was great joy in that city.

8:9 But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the
same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving
out that himself was some great one: 8:10 To whom they all gave heed,
from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of
God.

8:11 And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had
bewitched them with sorceries.

8:12 But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the
kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both
men and women.

8:13 Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he
continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs
which were done.

8:14 Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria
had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: 8:15
Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might
receive the Holy Ghost: 8:16 (For as yet he was fallen upon none of
them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)  8:17
Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.

8:18 And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands
the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, 8:19 Saying, Give me
also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the
Holy Ghost.

8:20 But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou
hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

8:21 Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is
not right in the sight of God.

8:22 Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps
the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.

8:23 For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in
the bond of iniquity.

8:24 Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the LORD for me, that
none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me.

8:25 And they, when they had testified and preached the word of the
Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel in many villages
of the Samaritans.

8:26 And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and
go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto
Gaza, which is desert.

8:27 And he arose and went: and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch
of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the
charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship,
8:28 Was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the
prophet.

8:29 Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to
this chariot.

8:30 And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet
Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?  8:31 And he
said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired
Philip that he would come up and sit with him.

8:32 The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as
a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so
opened he not his mouth: 8:33 In his humiliation his judgment was
taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is
taken from the earth.

8:34 And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom
speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?  8:35
Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and
preached unto him Jesus.

8:36 And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water:
and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be
baptized?  8:37 And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine
heart, thou mayest.

And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of
God.

8:38 And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down
both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.

8:39 And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the
Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went
on his way rejoicing.

8:40 But Philip was found at Azotus: and passing through he preached
in all the cities, till he came to Caesarea.

9:1 And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the
disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, 9:2 And desired of
him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of
this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound
unto Jerusalem.

9:3 And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there
shined round about him a light from heaven: 9:4 And he fell to the
earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest
thou me?  9:5 And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am
Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the
pricks.

9:6 And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me
to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it
shall be told thee what thou must do.

9:7 And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a
voice, but seeing no man.

9:8 And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he
saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into
Damascus.

9:9 And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor
drink.

9:10 And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias; and
to him said the Lord in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am
here, Lord.

9:11 And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which
is called Straight, and enquire in the house of Judas for one called
Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth, 9:12 And hath seen in a
vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him,
that he might receive his sight.

9:13 Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this man,
how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem: 9:14 And here
he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy
name.

9:15 But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel
unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the
children of Israel: 9:16 For I will shew him how great things he must
suffer for my name's sake.

9:17 And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting
his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that
appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou
mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.

9:18 And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales:
and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.

9:19 And when he had received meat, he was strengthened. Then was Saul
certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus.

9:20 And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is
the Son of God.

9:21 But all that heard him were amazed, and said; Is not this he that
destroyed them which called on this name in Jerusalem, and came hither
for that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief
priests?  9:22 But Saul increased the more in strength, and confounded
the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ.

9:23 And after that many days were fulfilled, the Jews took counsel to
kill him: 9:24 But their laying await was known of Saul. And they
watched the gates day and night to kill him.

9:25 Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the
wall in a basket.

9:26 And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself
to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not
that he was a disciple.

9:27 But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and
declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he
had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the
name of Jesus.

9:28 And he was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem.

9:29 And he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed
against the Grecians: but they went about to slay him.

9:30 Which when the brethren knew, they brought him down to Caesarea,
and sent him forth to Tarsus.

9:31 Then had the churches rest throughout all Judaea and Galilee and
Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in
the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.

9:32 And it came to pass, as Peter passed throughout all quarters, he
came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda.

9:33 And there he found a certain man named Aeneas, which had kept his
bed eight years, and was sick of the palsy.

9:34 And Peter said unto him, Aeneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole:
arise, and make thy bed. And he arose immediately.

9:35 And all that dwelt at Lydda and Saron saw him, and turned to the
Lord.

9:36 Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by
interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and
almsdeeds which she did.

9:37 And it came to pass in those days, that she was sick, and died:
whom when they had washed, they laid her in an upper chamber.

9:38 And forasmuch as Lydda was nigh to Joppa, and the disciples had
heard that Peter was there, they sent unto him two men, desiring him
that he would not delay to come to them.

9:39 Then Peter arose and went with them. When he was come, they
brought him into the upper chamber: and all the widows stood by him
weeping, and shewing the coats and garments which Dorcas made, while
she was with them.

9:40 But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and
turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes:
and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

9:41 And he gave her his hand, and lifted her up, and when he had
called the saints and widows, presented her alive.

9:42 And it was known throughout all Joppa; and many believed in the
Lord.

9:43 And it came to pass, that he tarried many days in Joppa with one
Simon a tanner.

10:1 There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion
of the band called the Italian band, 10:2 A devout man, and one that
feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and
prayed to God alway.

10:3 He saw in a vision evidently about the ninth hour of the day an
angel of God coming in to him, and saying unto him, Cornelius.

10:4 And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it,
Lord?  And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are come up
for a memorial before God.

10:5 And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname
is Peter: 10:6 He lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by
the sea side: he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do.

10:7 And when the angel which spake unto Cornelius was departed, he
called two of his household servants, and a devout soldier of them
that waited on him continually; 10:8 And when he had declared all
these things unto them, he sent them to Joppa.

10:9 On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto
the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth
hour: 10:10 And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while
they made ready, he fell into a trance, 10:11 And saw heaven opened,
and a certain vessel descending upon him, as it had been a great sheet
knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: 10:12 Wherein
were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts,
and creeping things, and fowls of the air.

10:13 And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.

10:14 But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing
that is common or unclean.

10:15 And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God
hath cleansed, that call not thou common.

10:16 This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into
heaven.

10:17 Now while Peter doubted in himself what this vision which he had
seen should mean, behold, the men which were sent from Cornelius had
made enquiry for Simon's house, and stood before the gate, 10:18 And
called, and asked whether Simon, which was surnamed Peter, were lodged
there.

10:19 While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto him,
Behold, three men seek thee.

10:20 Arise therefore, and get thee down, and go with them, doubting
nothing: for I have sent them.

10:21 Then Peter went down to the men which were sent unto him from
Cornelius; and said, Behold, I am he whom ye seek: what is the cause
wherefore ye are come?  10:22 And they said, Cornelius the centurion,
a just man, and one that feareth God, and of good report among all the
nation of the Jews, was warned from God by an holy angel to send for
thee into his house, and to hear words of thee.

10:23 Then called he them in, and lodged them. And on the morrow Peter
went away with them, and certain brethren from Joppa accompanied him.

10:24 And the morrow after they entered into Caesarea. And Cornelius
waited for them, and he had called together his kinsmen and near
friends.

10:25 And as Peter was coming in, Cornelius met him, and fell down at
his feet, and worshipped him.

10:26 But Peter took him up, saying, Stand up; I myself also am a man.

10:27 And as he talked with him, he went in, and found many that were
come together.

10:28 And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing
for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another
nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common
or unclean.

10:29 Therefore came I unto you without gainsaying, as soon as I was
sent for: I ask therefore for what intent ye have sent for me?  10:30
And Cornelius said, Four days ago I was fasting until this hour; and
at the ninth hour I prayed in my house, and, behold, a man stood
before me in bright clothing, 10:31 And said, Cornelius, thy prayer is
heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.

10:32 Send therefore to Joppa, and call hither Simon, whose surname is
Peter; he is lodged in the house of one Simon a tanner by the sea
side: who, when he cometh, shall speak unto thee.

10:33 Immediately therefore I sent to thee; and thou hast well done
that thou art come. Now therefore are we all here present before God,
to hear all things that are commanded thee of God.

10:34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive
that God is no respecter of persons: 10:35 But in every nation he that
feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.

10:36 The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching
peace by Jesus Christ: (he is Lord of all:) 10:37 That word, I say, ye
know, which was published throughout all Judaea, and began from
Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; 10:38 How God anointed
Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about
doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God
was with him.

10:39 And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land
of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree:
10:40 Him God raised up the third day, and shewed him openly; 10:41
Not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before God, even to
us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead.

10:42 And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify
that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and
dead.

10:43 To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name
whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins.

10:44 While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all
them which heard the word.

10:45 And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as
many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured
out the gift of the Holy Ghost.

10:46 For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then
answered Peter, 10:47 Can any man forbid water, that these should not
be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?  10:48
And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then
prayed they him to tarry certain days.

11:1 And the apostles and brethren that were in Judaea heard that the
Gentiles had also received the word of God.

11:2 And when Peter was come up to Jerusalem, they that were of the
circumcision contended with him, 11:3 Saying, Thou wentest in to men
uncircumcised, and didst eat with them.

11:4 But Peter rehearsed the matter from the beginning, and expounded
it by order unto them, saying, 11:5 I was in the city of Joppa
praying: and in a trance I saw a vision, A certain vessel descend, as
it had been a great sheet, let down from heaven by four corners; and
it came even to me: 11:6 Upon the which when I had fastened mine eyes,
I considered, and saw fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts,
and creeping things, and fowls of the air.

11:7 And I heard a voice saying unto me, Arise, Peter; slay and eat.

11:8 But I said, Not so, Lord: for nothing common or unclean hath at
any time entered into my mouth.

11:9 But the voice answered me again from heaven, What God hath
cleansed, that call not thou common.

11:10 And this was done three times: and all were drawn up again into
heaven.

11:11 And, behold, immediately there were three men already come unto
the house where I was, sent from Caesarea unto me.

11:12 And the Spirit bade me go with them, nothing doubting. Moreover
these six brethren accompanied me, and we entered into the man's
house: 11:13 And he shewed us how he had seen an angel in his house,
which stood and said unto him, Send men to Joppa, and call for Simon,
whose surname is Peter; 11:14 Who shall tell thee words, whereby thou
and all thy house shall be saved.

11:15 And as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us
at the beginning.

11:16 Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John
indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy
Ghost.

11:17 Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us,
who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; what was I, that I could
withstand God?  11:18 When they heard these things, they held their
peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles
granted repentance unto life.

11:19 Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that
arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and
Antioch, preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only.

11:20 And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when they
were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the LORD
Jesus.

11:21 And the hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number
believed, and turned unto the Lord.

11:22 Then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church
which was in Jerusalem: and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should
go as far as Antioch.

11:23 Who, when he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and
exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto
the Lord.

11:24 For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith:
and much people was added unto the Lord.

11:25 Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: 11:26 And
when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to
pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and
taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in
Antioch.

11:27 And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch.

11:28 And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by
the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world:
which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar.

11:29 Then the disciples, every man according to his ability,
determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judaea:
11:30 Which also they did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of
Barnabas and Saul.

12:1 Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to
vex certain of the church.

12:2 And he killed James the brother of John with the sword.

12:3 And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to
take Peter also. (Then were the days of unleavened bread.)  12:4 And
when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him
to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to
bring him forth to the people.

12:5 Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without
ceasing of the church unto God for him.

12:6 And when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter
was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains: and the
keepers before the door kept the prison.

12:7 And, behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light
shined in the prison: and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him
up, saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands.

12:8 And the angel said unto him, Gird thyself, and bind on thy
sandals.

And so he did. And he saith unto him, Cast thy garment about thee, and
follow me.

12:9 And he went out, and followed him; and wist not that it was true
which was done by the angel; but thought he saw a vision.

12:10 When they were past the first and the second ward, they came
unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city; which opened to them of
his own accord: and they went out, and passed on through one street;
and forthwith the angel departed from him.

12:11 And when Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I know of a
surety, that the LORD hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out
of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of
the Jews.

12:12 And when he had considered the thing, he came to the house of
Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark; where many were
gathered together praying.

12:13 And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to
hearken, named Rhoda.

12:14 And when she knew Peter's voice, she opened not the gate for
gladness, but ran in, and told how Peter stood before the gate.

12:15 And they said unto her, Thou art mad. But she constantly
affirmed that it was even so. Then said they, It is his angel.

12:16 But Peter continued knocking: and when they had opened the door,
and saw him, they were astonished.

12:17 But he, beckoning unto them with the hand to hold their peace,
declared unto them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And
he said, Go shew these things unto James, and to the brethren. And he
departed, and went into another place.

12:18 Now as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the
soldiers, what was become of Peter.

12:19 And when Herod had sought for him, and found him not, he
examined the keepers, and commanded that they should be put to death.
And he went down from Judaea to Caesarea, and there abode.

12:20 And Herod was highly displeased with them of Tyre and Sidon: but
they came with one accord to him, and, having made Blastus the king's
chamberlain their friend, desired peace; because their country was
nourished by the king's country.

12:21 And upon a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his
throne, and made an oration unto them.

12:22 And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god,
and not of a man.

12:23 And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave
not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.

12:24 But the word of God grew and multiplied.

12:25 And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem, when they had
fulfilled their ministry, and took with them John, whose surname was
Mark.

13:1 Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets
and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and
Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the
tetrarch, and Saul.

13:2 As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said,
Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called
them.

13:3 And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on
them, they sent them away.

13:4 So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed unto
Seleucia; and from thence they sailed to Cyprus.

13:5 And when they were at Salamis, they preached the word of God in
the synagogues of the Jews: and they had also John to their minister.

13:6 And when they had gone through the isle unto Paphos, they found a
certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Barjesus:
13:7 Which was with the deputy of the country, Sergius Paulus, a
prudent man; who called for Barnabas and Saul, and desired to hear the
word of God.

13:8 But Elymas the sorcerer (for so is his name by interpretation)
withstood them, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith.

13:9 Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,) filled with the Holy Ghost,
set his eyes on him.

13:10 And said, O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of
the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to
pervert the right ways of the Lord?  13:11 And now, behold, the hand
of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun
for a season. And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness;
and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand.

13:12 Then the deputy, when he saw what was done, believed, being
astonished at the doctrine of the Lord.

13:13 Now when Paul and his company loosed from Paphos, they came to
Perga in Pamphylia: and John departing from them returned to
Jerusalem.

13:14 But when they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch in
Pisidia, and went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and sat down.

13:15 And after the reading of the law and the prophets the rulers of
the synagogue sent unto them, saying, Ye men and brethren, if ye have
any word of exhortation for the people, say on.

13:16 Then Paul stood up, and beckoning with his hand said, Men of
Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience.

13:17 The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers, and exalted
the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt, and with
an high arm brought he them out of it.

13:18 And about the time of forty years suffered he their manners in
the wilderness.

13:19 And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Chanaan,
he divided their land to them by lot.

13:20 And after that he gave unto them judges about the space of four
hundred and fifty years, until Samuel the prophet.

13:21 And afterward they desired a king: and God gave unto them Saul
the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty
years.

13:22 And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be
their king; to whom also he gave their testimony, and said, I have
found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall
fulfil all my will.

13:23 Of this man's seed hath God according to his promise raised unto
Israel a Saviour, Jesus: 13:24 When John had first preached before his
coming the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel.

13:25 And as John fulfilled his course, he said, Whom think ye that I
am?  I am not he. But, behold, there cometh one after me, whose shoes
of his feet I am not worthy to loose.

13:26 Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and
whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation
sent.

13:27 For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they
knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every
sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him.

13:28 And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they
Pilate that he should be slain.

13:29 And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they
took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre.

13:30 But God raised him from the dead: 13:31 And he was seen many
days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are
his witnesses unto the people.

13:32 And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which
was made unto the fathers, 13:33 God hath fulfilled the same unto us
their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also
written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten
thee.

13:34 And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no
more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you
the sure mercies of David.

13:35 Wherefore he saith also in another psalm, Thou shalt not suffer
thine Holy One to see corruption.

13:36 For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of
God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption:
13:37 But he, whom God raised again, saw no corruption.

13:38 Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through
this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: 13:39 And by
him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye
could not be justified by the law of Moses.

13:40 Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in
the prophets; 13:41 Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for
I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe,
though a man declare it unto you.

13:42 And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles
besought that these words might be preached to them the next sabbath.

13:43 Now when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and
religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas: who, speaking to
them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.

13:44 And the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to
hear the word of God.

13:45 But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with
envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul,
contradicting and blaspheming.

13:46 Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary
that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing
ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life,
lo, we turn to the Gentiles.

13:47 For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be
a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the
ends of the earth.

13:48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified
the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life
believed.

13:49 And the word of the Lord was published throughout all the
region.

13:50 But the Jews stirred up the devout and honourable women, and the
chief men of the city, and raised persecution against Paul and
Barnabas, and expelled them out of their coasts.

13:51 But they shook off the dust of their feet against them, and came
unto Iconium.

13:52 And the disciples were filled with joy, and with the Holy Ghost.

14:1 And it came to pass in Iconium, that they went both together into
the synagogue of the Jews, and so spake, that a great multitude both
of the Jews and also of the Greeks believed.

14:2 But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles, and made their
minds evil affected against the brethren.

14:3 Long time therefore abode they speaking boldly in the Lord, which
gave testimony unto the word of his grace, and granted signs and
wonders to be done by their hands.

14:4 But the multitude of the city was divided: and part held with the
Jews, and part with the apostles.

14:5 And when there was an assault made both of the Gentiles, and also
of the Jews with their rulers, to use them despitefully, and to stone
them, 14:6 They were ware of it, and fled unto Lystra and Derbe,
cities of Lycaonia, and unto the region that lieth round about: 14:7
And there they preached the gospel.

14:8 And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet,
being a cripple from his mother's womb, who never had walked: 14:9 The
same heard Paul speak: who stedfastly beholding him, and perceiving
that he had faith to be healed, 14:10 Said with a loud voice, Stand
upright on thy feet. And he leaped and walked.

14:11 And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their
voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us
in the likeness of men.

14:12 And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because
he was the chief speaker.

14:13 Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought
oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with
the people.

14:14 Which when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of, they rent
their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out, 14:15 And
saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions
with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities
unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and
all things that are therein: 14:16 Who in times past suffered all
nations to walk in their own ways.

14:17 Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did
good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our
hearts with food and gladness.

14:18 And with these sayings scarce restrained they the people, that
they had not done sacrifice unto them.

14:19 And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium,
who persuaded the people, and having stoned Paul, drew him out of the
city, supposing he had been dead.

14:20 Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and
came into the city: and the next day he departed with Barnabas to
Derbe.

14:21 And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had
taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and
Antioch, 14:22 Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting
them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much
tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.

14:23 And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had
prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they
believed.

14:24 And after they had passed throughout Pisidia, they came to
Pamphylia.

14:25 And when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down
into Attalia: 14:26 And thence sailed to Antioch, from whence they had
been recommended to the grace of God for the work which they
fulfilled.

14:27 And when they were come, and had gathered the church together,
they rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how he had opened
the door of faith unto the Gentiles.

14:28 And there they abode long time with the disciples.

15:1 And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren,
and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye
cannot be saved.

15:2 When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and
disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and
certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and
elders about this question.

15:3 And being brought on their way by the church, they passed through
Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles: and
they caused great joy unto all the brethren.

15:4 And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the
church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things
that God had done with them.

15:5 But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which
believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to
command them to keep the law of Moses.

15:6 And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this
matter.

15:7 And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said
unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God
made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the
word of the gospel, and believe.

15:8 And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them
the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; 15:9 And put no difference
between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.

15:10 Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of
the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?
15:11 But we believe that through the grace of the LORD Jesus Christ
we shall be saved, even as they.

15:12 Then all the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to
Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles and wonders God had wrought
among the Gentiles by them.

15:13 And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men
and brethren, hearken unto me: 15:14 Simeon hath declared how God at
the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his
name.

15:15 And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written,
15:16 After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of
David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof,
and I will set it up: 15:17 That the residue of men might seek after
the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the
Lord, who doeth all these things.

15:18 Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the
world.

15:19 Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from
among the Gentiles are turned to God: 15:20 But that we write unto
them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from
fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.

15:21 For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him,
being read in the synagogues every sabbath day.

15:22 Then pleased it the apostles and elders with the whole church,
to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and
Barnabas; namely, Judas surnamed Barsabas and Silas, chief men among
the brethren: 15:23 And they wrote letters by them after this manner;
The apostles and elders and brethren send greeting unto the brethren
which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia.

15:24 Forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us
have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying, Ye must
be circumcised, and keep the law: to whom we gave no such commandment:
15:25 It seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send
chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, 15:26 Men that
have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

15:27 We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you
the same things by mouth.

15:28 For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you
no greater burden than these necessary things; 15:29 That ye abstain
from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things
strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye
shall do well. Fare ye well.

15:30 So when they were dismissed, they came to Antioch: and when they
had gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle: 15:31
Which when they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation.

15:32 And Judas and Silas, being prophets also themselves, exhorted
the brethren with many words, and confirmed them.

15:33 And after they had tarried there a space, they were let go in
peace from the brethren unto the apostles.

15:34 Notwithstanding it pleased Silas to abide there still.

15:35 Paul also and Barnabas continued in Antioch, teaching and
preaching the word of the Lord, with many others also.

15:36 And some days after Paul said unto Barnabas, Let us go again and
visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of
the LORD, and see how they do.

15:37 And Barnabas determined to take with them John, whose surname
was Mark.

15:38 But Paul thought not good to take him with them, who departed
from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to the work.

15:39 And the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed
asunder one from the other: and so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto
Cyprus; 15:40 And Paul chose Silas, and departed, being recommended by
the brethren unto the grace of God.

15:41 And he went through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the churches.

16:1 Then came he to Derbe and Lystra: and, behold, a certain disciple
was there, named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman, which was a
Jewess, and believed; but his father was a Greek: 16:2 Which was well
reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium.

16:3 Him would Paul have to go forth with him; and took and
circumcised him because of the Jews which were in those quarters: for
they knew all that his father was a Greek.

16:4 And as they went through the cities, they delivered them the
decrees for to keep, that were ordained of the apostles and elders
which were at Jerusalem.

16:5 And so were the churches established in the faith, and increased
in number daily.

16:6 Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of
Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in
Asia, 16:7 After they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into
Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not.

16:8 And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas.

16:9 And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of
Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help
us.

16:10 And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to
go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for
to preach the gospel unto them.

16:11 Therefore loosing from Troas, we came with a straight course to
Samothracia, and the next day to Neapolis; 16:12 And from thence to
Philippi, which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a
colony: and we were in that city abiding certain days.

16:13 And on the sabbath we went out of the city by a river side,
where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the
women which resorted thither.

16:14 And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city
of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord
opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.

16:15 And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us,
saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my
house, and abide there. And she constrained us.

16:16 And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel
possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her
masters much gain by soothsaying: 16:17 The same followed Paul and us,
and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God,
which shew unto us the way of salvation.

16:18 And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and
said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come
out of her.

And he came out the same hour.

16:19 And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone,
they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the marketplace unto
the rulers, 16:20 And brought them to the magistrates, saying, These
men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, 16:21 And teach
customs, which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe,
being Romans.

16:22 And the multitude rose up together against them: and the
magistrates rent off their clothes, and commanded to beat them.

16:23 And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them
into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely: 16:24 Who,
having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and
made their feet fast in the stocks.

16:25 And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto
God: and the prisoners heard them.

16:26 And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the
foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors
were opened, and every one's bands were loosed.

16:27 And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and
seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have
killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled.

16:28 But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm:
for we are all here.

16:29 Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling,
and fell down before Paul and Silas, 16:30 And brought them out, and
said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?  16:31 And they said, Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

16:32 And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that
were in his house.

16:33 And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their
stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway.

16:34 And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before
them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.

16:35 And when it was day, the magistrates sent the serjeants, saying,
Let those men go.

16:36 And the keeper of the prison told this saying to Paul, The
magistrates have sent to let you go: now therefore depart, and go in
peace.

16:37 But Paul said unto them, They have beaten us openly uncondemned,
being Romans, and have cast us into prison; and now do they thrust us
out privily? nay verily; but let them come themselves and fetch us
out.

16:38 And the serjeants told these words unto the magistrates: and
they feared, when they heard that they were Romans.

16:39 And they came and besought them, and brought them out, and
desired them to depart out of the city.

16:40 And they went out of the prison, and entered into the house of
Lydia: and when they had seen the brethren, they comforted them, and
departed.

17:1 Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they
came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: 17:2 And
Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days
reasoned with them out of the scriptures, 17:3 Opening and alleging,
that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead;
and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ.

17:4 And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and
of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a
few.

17:5 But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them
certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and
set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and
sought to bring them out to the people.

17:6 And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain
brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned
the world upside down are come hither also; 17:7 Whom Jason hath
received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying
that there is another king, one Jesus.

17:8 And they troubled the people and the rulers of the city, when
they heard these things.

17:9 And when they had taken security of Jason, and of the other, they
let them go.

17:10 And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night
unto Berea: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews.

17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they
received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the
scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

17:12 Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women which
were Greeks, and of men, not a few.

17:13 But when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of
God was preached of Paul at Berea, they came thither also, and stirred
up the people.

17:14 And then immediately the brethren sent away Paul to go as it
were to the sea: but Silas and Timotheus abode there still.

17:15 And they that conducted Paul brought him unto Athens: and
receiving a commandment unto Silas and Timotheus for to come to him
with all speed, they departed.

17:16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred
in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.

17:17 Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with
the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with
him.

17:18 Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks,
encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other
some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he
preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.

17:19 And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May
we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?  17:20 For
thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know
therefore what these things mean.

17:21 (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent
their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new
thing.)  17:22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said,
Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too
superstitious.

17:23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar
with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye
ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

17:24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he
is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
17:25 Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any
thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; 17:26
And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the
face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and
the bounds of their habitation; 17:27 That they should seek the Lord,
if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far
from every one of us: 17:28 For in him we live, and move, and have our
being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also
his offspring.

17:29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to
think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven
by art and man's device.

17:30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now
commandeth all men every where to repent: 17:31 Because he hath
appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness
by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance
unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

17:32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some
mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.

17:33 So Paul departed from among them.

17:34 Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the
which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and
others with them.

18:1 After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to
Corinth; 18:2 And found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus,
lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that
Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome:) and came unto
them.

18:3 And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and
wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers.

18:4 And he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the
Jews and the Greeks.

18:5 And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was
pressed in the spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was
Christ.

18:6 And when they opposed themselves, and blasphemed, he shook his
raiment, and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads; I am
clean; from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles.

18:7 And he departed thence, and entered into a certain man's house,
named Justus, one that worshipped God, whose house joined hard to the
synagogue.

18:8 And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the
Lord with all his house; and many of the Corinthians hearing believed,
and were baptized.

18:9 Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not
afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace: 18:10 For I am with thee,
and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in
this city.

18:11 And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word
of God among them.

18:12 And when Gallio was the deputy of Achaia, the Jews made
insurrection with one accord against Paul, and brought him to the
judgment seat, 18:13 Saying, This fellow persuadeth men to worship God
contrary to the law.

18:14 And when Paul was now about to open his mouth, Gallio said unto
the Jews, If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews,
reason would that I should bear with you: 18:15 But if it be a
question of words and names, and of your law, look ye to it; for I
will be no judge of such matters.

18:16 And he drave them from the judgment seat.

18:17 Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the
synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat. And Gallio cared for
none of those things.

18:18 And Paul after this tarried there yet a good while, and then
took his leave of the brethren, and sailed thence into Syria, and with
him Priscilla and Aquila; having shorn his head in Cenchrea: for he
had a vow.

18:19 And he came to Ephesus, and left them there: but he himself
entered into the synagogue, and reasoned with the Jews.

18:20 When they desired him to tarry longer time with them, he
consented not; 18:21 But bade them farewell, saying, I must by all
means keep this feast that cometh in Jerusalem: but I will return
again unto you, if God will. And he sailed from Ephesus.

18:22 And when he had landed at Caesarea, and gone up, and saluted the
church, he went down to Antioch.

18:23 And after he had spent some time there, he departed, and went
over all the country of Galatia and Phrygia in order, strengthening
all the disciples.

18:24 And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent
man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus.

18:25 This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being
fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of
the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John.

18:26 And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila
and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto
him the way of God more perfectly.

18:27 And when he was disposed to pass into Achaia, the brethren
wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him: who, when he was come,
helped them much which had believed through grace: 18:28 For he
mightily convinced the Jews, and that publickly, shewing by the
scriptures that Jesus was Christ.

19:1 And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul
having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus: and finding
certain disciples, 19:2 He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy
Ghost since ye believed?  And they said unto him, We have not so much
as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.

19:3 And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they
said, Unto John's baptism.

19:4 Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of
repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him
which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.

19:5 When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord
Jesus.

19:6 And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came
on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied.

19:7 And all the men were about twelve.

19:8 And he went into the synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of
three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the
kingdom of God.

19:9 But when divers were hardened, and believed not, but spake evil
of that way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated
the disciples, disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannus.

19:10 And this continued by the space of two years; so that all they
which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and
Greeks.

19:11 And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul: 19:12 So
that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons,
and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of
them.

19:13 Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to
call over them which had evil spirits the name of the LORD Jesus,
saying, We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth.

19:14 And there were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, and chief of the
priests, which did so.

19:15 And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I
know; but who are ye?  19:16 And the man in whom the evil spirit was
leaped on them, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that
they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

19:17 And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at
Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was
magnified.

19:18 And many that believed came, and confessed, and shewed their
deeds.

19:19 Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books
together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price
of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.

19:20 So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.

19:21 After these things were ended, Paul purposed in the spirit, when
he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem,
saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome.

19:22 So he sent into Macedonia two of them that ministered unto him,
Timotheus and Erastus; but he himself stayed in Asia for a season.

19:23 And the same time there arose no small stir about that way.

19:24 For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made
silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen;
19:25 Whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and
said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth.

19:26 Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost
throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much
people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands: 19:27
So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but
also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised,
and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world
worshippeth.

19:28 And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and
cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.

19:29 And the whole city was filled with confusion: and having caught
Gaius and Aristarchus, men of Macedonia, Paul's companions in travel,
they rushed with one accord into the theatre.

19:30 And when Paul would have entered in unto the people, the
disciples suffered him not.

19:31 And certain of the chief of Asia, which were his friends, sent
unto him, desiring him that he would not adventure himself into the
theatre.

19:32 Some therefore cried one thing, and some another: for the
assembly was confused: and the more part knew not wherefore they were
come together.

19:33 And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting
him forward. And Alexander beckoned with the hand, and would have made
his defence unto the people.

19:34 But when they knew that he was a Jew, all with one voice about
the space of two hours cried out, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.

19:35 And when the townclerk had appeased the people, he said, Ye men
of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of
the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the
image which fell down from Jupiter?  19:36 Seeing then that these
things cannot be spoken against, ye ought to be quiet, and to do
nothing rashly.

19:37 For ye have brought hither these men, which are neither robbers
of churches, nor yet blasphemers of your goddess.

19:38 Wherefore if Demetrius, and the craftsmen which are with him,
have a matter against any man, the law is open, and there are
deputies: let them implead one another.

19:39 But if ye enquire any thing concerning other matters, it shall
be determined in a lawful assembly.

19:40 For we are in danger to be called in question for this day's
uproar, there being no cause whereby we may give an account of this
concourse.

19:41 And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly.

20:1 And after the uproar was ceased, Paul called unto him the
disciples, and embraced them, and departed for to go into Macedonia.

20:2 And when he had gone over those parts, and had given them much
exhortation, he came into Greece, 20:3 And there abode three months.
And when the Jews laid wait for him, as he was about to sail into
Syria, he purposed to return through Macedonia.

20:4 And there accompanied him into Asia Sopater of Berea; and of the
Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and
Timotheus; and of Asia, Tychicus and Trophimus.

20:5 These going before tarried for us at Troas.

20:6 And we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened
bread, and came unto them to Troas in five days; where we abode seven
days.

20:7 And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came
together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on
the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight.

20:8 And there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were
gathered together.

20:9 And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus,
being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he
sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken
up dead.

20:10 And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said,
Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him.

20:11 When he therefore was come up again, and had broken bread, and
eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of day, so he
departed.

20:12 And they brought the young man alive, and were not a little
comforted.

20:13 And we went before to ship, and sailed unto Assos, there
intending to take in Paul: for so had he appointed, minding himself to
go afoot.

20:14 And when he met with us at Assos, we took him in, and came to
Mitylene.

20:15 And we sailed thence, and came the next day over against Chios;
and the next day we arrived at Samos, and tarried at Trogyllium; and
the next day we came to Miletus.

20:16 For Paul had determined to sail by Ephesus, because he would not
spend the time in Asia: for he hasted, if it were possible for him, to
be at Jerusalem the day of Pentecost.

20:17 And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of
the church.

20:18 And when they were come to him, he said unto them, Ye know, from
the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been
with you at all seasons, 20:19 Serving the LORD with all humility of
mind, and with many tears, and temptations, which befell me by the
lying in wait of the Jews: 20:20 And how I kept back nothing that was
profitable unto you, but have shewed you, and have taught you
publickly, and from house to house, 20:21 Testifying both to the Jews,
and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our
Lord Jesus Christ.

20:22 And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not
knowing the things that shall befall me there: 20:23 Save that the
Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions
abide me.

20:24 But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear
unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the
ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the
gospel of the grace of God.

20:25 And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone
preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more.

20:26 Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the
blood of all men.

20:27 For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of
God.

20:28 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over
the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church
of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

20:29 For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves
enter in among you, not sparing the flock.

20:30 Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse
things, to draw away disciples after them.

20:31 Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years
I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.

20:32 And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his
grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance
among all them which are sanctified.

20:33 I have coveted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel.

20:34 Yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto
my necessities, and to them that were with me.

20:35 I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to
support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he
said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.

20:36 And when he had thus spoken, he kneeled down, and prayed with
them all.

20:37 And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him,
20:38 Sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they
should see his face no more. And they accompanied him unto the ship.

21:1 And it came to pass, that after we were gotten from them, and had
launched, we came with a straight course unto Coos, and the day
following unto Rhodes, and from thence unto Patara: 21:2 And finding a
ship sailing over unto Phenicia, we went aboard, and set forth.

21:3 Now when we had discovered Cyprus, we left it on the left hand,
and sailed into Syria, and landed at Tyre: for there the ship was to
unlade her burden.

21:4 And finding disciples, we tarried there seven days: who said to
Paul through the Spirit, that he should not go up to Jerusalem.

21:5 And when we had accomplished those days, we departed and went our
way; and they all brought us on our way, with wives and children, till
we were out of the city: and we kneeled down on the shore, and prayed.

21:6 And when we had taken our leave one of another, we took ship; and
they returned home again.

21:7 And when we had finished our course from Tyre, we came to
Ptolemais, and saluted the brethren, and abode with them one day.

21:8 And the next day we that were of Paul's company departed, and
came unto Caesarea: and we entered into the house of Philip the
evangelist, which was one of the seven; and abode with him.

21:9 And the same man had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy.

21:10 And as we tarried there many days, there came down from Judaea a
certain prophet, named Agabus.

21:11 And when he was come unto us, he took Paul's girdle, and bound
his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall
the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall
deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.

21:12 And when we heard these things, both we, and they of that place,
besought him not to go up to Jerusalem.

21:13 Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break mine
heart?  for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at
Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.

21:14 And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, The will
of the Lord be done.

21:15 And after those days we took up our carriages, and went up to
Jerusalem.

21:16 There went with us also certain of the disciples of Caesarea,
and brought with them one Mnason of Cyprus, an old disciple, with whom
we should lodge.

21:17 And when we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us
gladly.

21:18 And the day following Paul went in with us unto James; and all
the elders were present.

21:19 And when he had saluted them, he declared particularly what
things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry.

21:20 And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto
him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which
believe; and they are all zealous of the law: 21:21 And they are
informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the
Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise
their children, neither to walk after the customs.

21:22 What is it therefore? the multitude must needs come together:
for they will hear that thou art come.

21:23 Do therefore this that we say to thee: We have four men which
have a vow on them; 21:24 Them take, and purify thyself with them, and
be at charges with them, that they may shave their heads: and all may
know that those things, whereof they were informed concerning thee,
are nothing; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest
the law.

21:25 As touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written and
concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep
themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from
strangled, and from fornication.

21:26 Then Paul took the men, and the next day purifying himself with
them entered into the temple, to signify the accomplishment of the
days of purification, until that an offering should be offered for
every one of them.

21:27 And when the seven days were almost ended, the Jews which were
of Asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the people,
and laid hands on him, 21:28 Crying out, Men of Israel, help: This is
the man, that teacheth all men every where against the people, and the
law, and this place: and further brought Greeks also into the temple,
and hath polluted this holy place.

21:29 (For they had seen before with him in the city Trophimus an
Ephesian, whom they supposed that Paul had brought into the temple.)
21:30 And all the city was moved, and the people ran together: and
they took Paul, and drew him out of the temple: and forthwith the
doors were shut.

21:31 And as they went about to kill him, tidings came unto the chief
captain of the band, that all Jerusalem was in an uproar.

21:32 Who immediately took soldiers and centurions, and ran down unto
them: and when they saw the chief captain and the soldiers, they left
beating of Paul.

21:33 Then the chief captain came near, and took him, and commanded
him to be bound with two chains; and demanded who he was, and what he
had done.

21:34 And some cried one thing, some another, among the multitude: and
when he could not know the certainty for the tumult, he commanded him
to be carried into the castle.

21:35 And when he came upon the stairs, so it was, that he was borne
of the soldiers for the violence of the people.

21:36 For the multitude of the people followed after, crying, Away
with him.

21:37 And as Paul was to be led into the castle, he said unto the
chief captain, May I speak unto thee? Who said, Canst thou speak
Greek?  21:38 Art not thou that Egyptian, which before these days
madest an uproar, and leddest out into the wilderness four thousand
men that were murderers?  21:39 But Paul said, I am a man which am a
Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and, I
beseech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people.

21:40 And when he had given him licence, Paul stood on the stairs, and
beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made a
great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying, 22:1
Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto
you.

22:2 (And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them,
they kept the more silence: and he saith,) 22:3 I am verily a man
which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in
this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect
manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye
all are this day.

22:4 And I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering
into prisons both men and women.

22:5 As also the high priest doth bear me witness, and all the estate
of the elders: from whom also I received letters unto the brethren,
and went to Damascus, to bring them which were there bound unto
Jerusalem, for to be punished.

22:6 And it came to pass, that, as I made my journey, and was come
nigh unto Damascus about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a
great light round about me.

22:7 And I fell unto the ground, and heard a voice saying unto me,
Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?  22:8 And I answered, Who art
thou, Lord? And he said unto me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou
persecutest.

22:9 And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid;
but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.

22:10 And I said, What shall I do, LORD? And the Lord said unto me,
Arise, and go into Damascus; and there it shall be told thee of all
things which are appointed for thee to do.

22:11 And when I could not see for the glory of that light, being led
by the hand of them that were with me, I came into Damascus.

22:12 And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a
good report of all the Jews which dwelt there, 22:13 Came unto me, and
stood, and said unto me, Brother Saul, receive thy sight. And the same
hour I looked up upon him.

22:14 And he said, The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou
shouldest know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the
voice of his mouth.

22:15 For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast
seen and heard.

22:16 And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away
thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.

22:17 And it came to pass, that, when I was come again to Jerusalem,
even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance; 22:18 And saw
him saying unto me, Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem:
for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me.

22:19 And I said, Lord, they know that I imprisoned and beat in every
synagogue them that believed on thee: 22:20 And when the blood of thy
martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by, and consenting unto
his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him.

22:21 And he said unto me, Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto
the Gentiles.

22:22 And they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up
their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it
is not fit that he should live.

22:23 And as they cried out, and cast off their clothes, and threw
dust into the air, 22:24 The chief captain commanded him to be brought
into the castle, and bade that he should be examined by scourging;
that he might know wherefore they cried so against him.

22:25 And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said unto the centurion
that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman,
and uncondemned?  22:26 When the centurion heard that, he went and
told the chief captain, saying, Take heed what thou doest: for this
man is a Roman.

22:27 Then the chief captain came, and said unto him, Tell me, art
thou a Roman? He said, Yea.

22:28 And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this
freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born.

22:29 Then straightway they departed from him which should have
examined him: and the chief captain also was afraid, after he knew
that he was a Roman, and because he had bound him.

22:30 On the morrow, because he would have known the certainty
wherefore he was accused of the Jews, he loosed him from his bands,
and commanded the chief priests and all their council to appear, and
brought Paul down, and set him before them.

23:1 And Paul, earnestly beholding the council, said, Men and
brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this
day.

23:2 And the high priest Ananias commanded them that stood by him to
smite him on the mouth.

23:3 Then said Paul unto him, God shall smite thee, thou whited wall:
for sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be
smitten contrary to the law?  23:4 And they that stood by said,
Revilest thou God's high priest?  23:5 Then said Paul, I wist not,
brethren, that he was the high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt
not speak evil of the ruler of thy people.

23:6 But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the
other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a
Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the
dead I am called in question.

23:7 And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the
Pharisees and the Sadducees: and the multitude was divided.

23:8 For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither
angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both.

23:9 And there arose a great cry: and the scribes that were of the
Pharisees' part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this
man: but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight
against God.

23:10 And when there arose a great dissension, the chief captain,
fearing lest Paul should have been pulled in pieces of them, commanded
the soldiers to go down, and to take him by force from among them, and
to bring him into the castle.

23:11 And the night following the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of
good cheer, Paul: for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so
must thou bear witness also at Rome.

23:12 And when it was day, certain of the Jews banded together, and
bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor
drink till they had killed Paul.

23:13 And they were more than forty which had made this conspiracy.

23:14 And they came to the chief priests and elders, and said, We have
bound ourselves under a great curse, that we will eat nothing until we
have slain Paul.

23:15 Now therefore ye with the council signify to the chief captain
that he bring him down unto you to morrow, as though ye would enquire
something more perfectly concerning him: and we, or ever he come near,
are ready to kill him.

23:16 And when Paul's sister's son heard of their lying in wait, he
went and entered into the castle, and told Paul.

23:17 Then Paul called one of the centurions unto him, and said, Bring
this young man unto the chief captain: for he hath a certain thing to
tell him.

23:18 So he took him, and brought him to the chief captain, and said,
Paul the prisoner called me unto him, and prayed me to bring this
young man unto thee, who hath something to say unto thee.

23:19 Then the chief captain took him by the hand, and went with him
aside privately, and asked him, What is that thou hast to tell me?
23:20 And he said, The Jews have agreed to desire thee that thou
wouldest bring down Paul to morrow into the council, as though they
would enquire somewhat of him more perfectly.

23:21 But do not thou yield unto them: for there lie in wait for him
of them more than forty men, which have bound themselves with an oath,
that they will neither eat nor drink till they have killed him: and
now are they ready, looking for a promise from thee.

23:22 So the chief captain then let the young man depart, and charged
him, See thou tell no man that thou hast shewed these things to me.

23:23 And he called unto him two centurions, saying, Make ready two
hundred soldiers to go to Caesarea, and horsemen threescore and ten,
and spearmen two hundred, at the third hour of the night; 23:24 And
provide them beasts, that they may set Paul on, and bring him safe
unto Felix the governor.

23:25 And he wrote a letter after this manner: 23:26 Claudius Lysias
unto the most excellent governor Felix sendeth greeting.

23:27 This man was taken of the Jews, and should have been killed of
them: then came I with an army, and rescued him, having understood
that he was a Roman.

23:28 And when I would have known the cause wherefore they accused
him, I brought him forth into their council: 23:29 Whom I perceived to
be accused of questions of their law, but to have nothing laid to his
charge worthy of death or of bonds.

23:30 And when it was told me how that the Jews laid wait for the man,
I sent straightway to thee, and gave commandment to his accusers also
to say before thee what they had against him. Farewell.

23:31 Then the soldiers, as it was commanded them, took Paul, and
brought him by night to Antipatris.

23:32 On the morrow they left the horsemen to go with him, and
returned to the castle: 23:33 Who, when they came to Caesarea and
delivered the epistle to the governor, presented Paul also before him.

23:34 And when the governor had read the letter, he asked of what
province he was. And when he understood that he was of Cilicia; 23:35
I will hear thee, said he, when thine accusers are also come. And he
commanded him to be kept in Herod's judgment hall.

24:1 And after five days Ananias the high priest descended with the
elders, and with a certain orator named Tertullus, who informed the
governor against Paul.

24:2 And when he was called forth, Tertullus began to accuse him,
saying, Seeing that by thee we enjoy great quietness, and that very
worthy deeds are done unto this nation by thy providence, 24:3 We
accept it always, and in all places, most noble Felix, with all
thankfulness.

24:4 Notwithstanding, that I be not further tedious unto thee, I pray
thee that thou wouldest hear us of thy clemency a few words.

24:5 For we have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of
sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of
the sect of the Nazarenes: 24:6 Who also hath gone about to profane
the temple: whom we took, and would have judged according to our law.

24:7 But the chief captain Lysias came upon us, and with great
violence took him away out of our hands, 24:8 Commanding his accusers
to come unto thee: by examining of whom thyself mayest take knowledge
of all these things, whereof we accuse him.

24:9 And the Jews also assented, saying that these things were so.

24:10 Then Paul, after that the governor had beckoned unto him to
speak, answered, Forasmuch as I know that thou hast been of many years
a judge unto this nation, I do the more cheerfully answer for myself:
24:11 Because that thou mayest understand, that there are yet but
twelve days since I went up to Jerusalem for to worship.

24:12 And they neither found me in the temple disputing with any man,
neither raising up the people, neither in the synagogues, nor in the
city: 24:13 Neither can they prove the things whereof they now accuse
me.

24:14 But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call
heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which
are written in the law and in the prophets: 24:15 And have hope toward
God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a
resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust.

24:16 And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience
void to offence toward God, and toward men.

24:17 Now after many years I came to bring alms to my nation, and
offerings.

24:18 Whereupon certain Jews from Asia found me purified in the
temple, neither with multitude, nor with tumult.

24:19 Who ought to have been here before thee, and object, if they had
ought against me.

24:20 Or else let these same here say, if they have found any evil
doing in me, while I stood before the council, 24:21 Except it be for
this one voice, that I cried standing among them, Touching the
resurrection of the dead I am called in question by you this day.

24:22 And when Felix heard these things, having more perfect knowledge
of that way, he deferred them, and said, When Lysias the chief captain
shall come down, I will know the uttermost of your matter.

24:23 And he commanded a centurion to keep Paul, and to let him have
liberty, and that he should forbid none of his acquaintance to
minister or come unto him.

24:24 And after certain days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla,
which was a Jewess, he sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the
faith in Christ.

24:25 And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to
come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I
have a convenient season, I will call for thee.

24:26 He hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul,
that he might loose him: wherefore he sent for him the oftener, and
communed with him.

24:27 But after two years Porcius Festus came into Felix' room: and
Felix, willing to shew the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound.

25:1 Now when Festus was come into the province, after three days he
ascended from Caesarea to Jerusalem.

25:2 Then the high priest and the chief of the Jews informed him
against Paul, and besought him, 25:3 And desired favour against him,
that he would send for him to Jerusalem, laying wait in the way to
kill him.

25:4 But Festus answered, that Paul should be kept at Caesarea, and
that he himself would depart shortly thither.

25:5 Let them therefore, said he, which among you are able, go down
with me, and accuse this man, if there be any wickedness in him.

25:6 And when he had tarried among them more than ten days, he went
down unto Caesarea; and the next day sitting on the judgment seat
commanded Paul to be brought.

25:7 And when he was come, the Jews which came down from Jerusalem
stood round about, and laid many and grievous complaints against Paul,
which they could not prove.

25:8 While he answered for himself, Neither against the law of the
Jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against Caesar, have I
offended any thing at all.

25:9 But Festus, willing to do the Jews a pleasure, answered Paul, and
said, Wilt thou go up to Jerusalem, and there be judged of these
things before me?  25:10 Then said Paul, I stand at Caesar's judgment
seat, where I ought to be judged: to the Jews have I done no wrong, as
thou very well knowest.

25:11 For if I be an offender, or have committed any thing worthy of
death, I refuse not to die: but if there be none of these things
whereof these accuse me, no man may deliver me unto them. I appeal
unto Caesar.

25:12 Then Festus, when he had conferred with the council, answered,
Hast thou appealed unto Caesar? unto Caesar shalt thou go.

25:13 And after certain days king Agrippa and Bernice came unto
Caesarea to salute Festus.

25:14 And when they had been there many days, Festus declared Paul's
cause unto the king, saying, There is a certain man left in bonds by
Felix: 25:15 About whom, when I was at Jerusalem, the chief priests
and the elders of the Jews informed me, desiring to have judgment
against him.

25:16 To whom I answered, It is not the manner of the Romans to
deliver any man to die, before that he which is accused have the
accusers face to face, and have licence to answer for himself
concerning the crime laid against him.

25:17 Therefore, when they were come hither, without any delay on the
morrow I sat on the judgment seat, and commanded the man to be brought
forth.

25:18 Against whom when the accusers stood up, they brought none
accusation of such things as I supposed: 25:19 But had certain
questions against him of their own superstition, and of one Jesus,
which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.

25:20 And because I doubted of such manner of questions, I asked him
whether he would go to Jerusalem, and there be judged of these
matters.

25:21 But when Paul had appealed to be reserved unto the hearing of
Augustus, I commanded him to be kept till I might send him to Caesar.

25:22 Then Agrippa said unto Festus, I would also hear the man myself.
To morrow, said he, thou shalt hear him.

25:23 And on the morrow, when Agrippa was come, and Bernice, with
great pomp, and was entered into the place of hearing, with the chief
captains, and principal men of the city, at Festus' commandment Paul
was brought forth.

25:24 And Festus said, King Agrippa, and all men which are here
present with us, ye see this man, about whom all the multitude of the
Jews have dealt with me, both at Jerusalem, and also here, crying that
he ought not to live any longer.

25:25 But when I found that he had committed nothing worthy of death,
and that he himself hath appealed to Augustus, I have determined to
send him.

25:26 Of whom I have no certain thing to write unto my lord. Wherefore
I have brought him forth before you, and specially before thee, O king
Agrippa, that, after examination had, I might have somewhat to write.

25:27 For it seemeth to me unreasonable to send a prisoner, and not
withal to signify the crimes laid against him.

26:1 Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Thou art permitted to speak for
thyself.

Then Paul stretched forth the hand, and answered for himself: 26:2 I
think myself happy, king Agrippa, because I shall answer for myself
this day before thee touching all the things whereof I am accused of
the Jews: 26:3 Especially because I know thee to be expert in all
customs and questions which are among the Jews: wherefore I beseech
thee to hear me patiently.

26:4 My manner of life from my youth, which was at the first among
mine own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews; 26:5 Which knew me
from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most
straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.

26:6 And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of
God, unto our fathers: 26:7 Unto which promise our twelve tribes,
instantly serving God day and night, hope to come. For which hope's
sake, king Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews.

26:8 Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God
should raise the dead?  26:9 I verily thought with myself, that I
ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

26:10 Which thing I also did in Jerusalem: and many of the saints did
I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests;
and when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them.

26:11 And I punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them
to blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted
them even unto strange cities.

26:12 Whereupon as I went to Damascus with authority and commission
from the chief priests, 26:13 At midday, O king, I saw in the way a
light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round
about me and them which journeyed with me.

26:14 And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice
speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why
persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

26:15 And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom
thou persecutest.

26:16 But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee
for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these
things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will
appear unto thee; 26:17 Delivering thee from the people, and from the
Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, 26:18 To open their eyes, and to
turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto
God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among
them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.

26:19 Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the
heavenly vision: 26:20 But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at
Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the
Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet
for repentance.

26:21 For these causes the Jews caught me in the temple, and went
about to kill me.

26:22 Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day,
witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than
those which the prophets and Moses did say should come: 26:23 That
Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise
from the dead, and should shew light unto the people, and to the
Gentiles.

26:24 And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice,
Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.

26:25 But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth
the words of truth and soberness.

26:26 For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak
freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from
him; for this thing was not done in a corner.

26:27 King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou
believest.

26:28 Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a
Christian.

26:29 And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also all
that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am,
except these bonds.

26:30 And when he had thus spoken, the king rose up, and the governor,
and Bernice, and they that sat with them: 26:31 And when they were
gone aside, they talked between themselves, saying, This man doeth
nothing worthy of death or of bonds.

26:32 Then said Agrippa unto Festus, This man might have been set at
liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar.

27:1 And when it was determined that we should sail into Italy, they
delivered Paul and certain other prisoners unto one named Julius, a
centurion of Augustus' band.

27:2 And entering into a ship of Adramyttium, we launched, meaning to
sail by the coasts of Asia; one Aristarchus, a Macedonian of
Thessalonica, being with us.

27:3 And the next day we touched at Sidon. And Julius courteously
entreated Paul, and gave him liberty to go unto his friends to refresh
himself.

27:4 And when we had launched from thence, we sailed under Cyprus,
because the winds were contrary.

27:5 And when we had sailed over the sea of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we
came to Myra, a city of Lycia.

27:6 And there the centurion found a ship of Alexandria sailing into
Italy; and he put us therein.

27:7 And when we had sailed slowly many days, and scarce were come
over against Cnidus, the wind not suffering us, we sailed under Crete,
over against Salmone; 27:8 And, hardly passing it, came unto a place
which is called The fair havens; nigh whereunto was the city of Lasea.

27:9 Now when much time was spent, and when sailing was now dangerous,
because the fast was now already past, Paul admonished them, 27:10 And
said unto them, Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt
and much damage, not only of the lading and ship, but also of our
lives.

27:11 Nevertheless the centurion believed the master and the owner of
the ship, more than those things which were spoken by Paul.

27:12 And because the haven was not commodious to winter in, the more
part advised to depart thence also, if by any means they might attain
to Phenice, and there to winter; which is an haven of Crete, and lieth
toward the south west and north west.

27:13 And when the south wind blew softly, supposing that they had
obtained their purpose, loosing thence, they sailed close by Crete.

27:14 But not long after there arose against it a tempestuous wind,
called Euroclydon.

27:15 And when the ship was caught, and could not bear up into the
wind, we let her drive.

27:16 And running under a certain island which is called Clauda, we
had much work to come by the boat: 27:17 Which when they had taken up,
they used helps, undergirding the ship; and, fearing lest they should
fall into the quicksands, strake sail, and so were driven.

27:18 And we being exceedingly tossed with a tempest, the next day
they lightened the ship; 27:19 And the third day we cast out with our
own hands the tackling of the ship.

27:20 And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no
small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then
taken away.

27:21 But after long abstinence Paul stood forth in the midst of them,
and said, Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have loosed
from Crete, and to have gained this harm and loss.

27:22 And now I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no
loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship.

27:23 For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am,
and whom I serve, 27:24 Saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought
before Caesar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with
thee.

27:25 Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God, that it
shall be even as it was told me.

27:26 Howbeit we must be cast upon a certain island.

27:27 But when the fourteenth night was come, as we were driven up and
down in Adria, about midnight the shipmen deemed that they drew near
to some country; 27:28 And sounded, and found it twenty fathoms: and
when they had gone a little further, they sounded again, and found it
fifteen fathoms.

27:29 Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast
four anchors out of the stern, and wished for the day.

27:30 And as the shipmen were about to flee out of the ship, when they
had let down the boat into the sea, under colour as though they would
have cast anchors out of the foreship, 27:31 Paul said to the
centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye
cannot be saved.

27:32 Then the soldiers cut off the ropes of the boat, and let her
fall off.

27:33 And while the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to take
meat, saying, This day is the fourteenth day that ye have tarried and
continued fasting, having taken nothing.

27:34 Wherefore I pray you to take some meat: for this is for your
health: for there shall not an hair fall from the head of any of you.

27:35 And when he had thus spoken, he took bread, and gave thanks to
God in presence of them all: and when he had broken it, he began to
eat.

27:36 Then were they all of good cheer, and they also took some meat.

27:37 And we were in all in the ship two hundred threescore and
sixteen souls.

27:38 And when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, and
cast out the wheat into the sea.

27:39 And when it was day, they knew not the land: but they discovered
a certain creek with a shore, into the which they were minded, if it
were possible, to thrust in the ship.

27:40 And when they had taken up the anchors, they committed
themselves unto the sea, and loosed the rudder bands, and hoised up
the mainsail to the wind, and made toward shore.

27:41 And falling into a place where two seas met, they ran the ship
aground; and the forepart stuck fast, and remained unmoveable, but the
hinder part was broken with the violence of the waves.

27:42 And the soldiers' counsel was to kill the prisoners, lest any of
them should swim out, and escape.

27:43 But the centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them from their
purpose; and commanded that they which could swim should cast
themselves first into the sea, and get to land: 27:44 And the rest,
some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship.

And so it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land.

28:1 And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was
called Melita.

28:2 And the barbarous people shewed us no little kindness: for they
kindled a fire, and received us every one, because of the present
rain, and because of the cold.

28:3 And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on
the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his
hand.

28:4 And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand,
they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom,
though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.

28:5 And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm.

28:6 Howbeit they looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down
dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no
harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a
god.

28:7 In the same quarters were possessions of the chief man of the
island, whose name was Publius; who received us, and lodged us three
days courteously.

28:8 And it came to pass, that the father of Publius lay sick of a
fever and of a bloody flux: to whom Paul entered in, and prayed, and
laid his hands on him, and healed him.

28:9 So when this was done, others also, which had diseases in the
island, came, and were healed: 28:10 Who also honoured us with many
honours; and when we departed, they laded us with such things as were
necessary.

28:11 And after three months we departed in a ship of Alexandria,
which had wintered in the isle, whose sign was Castor and Pollux.

28:12 And landing at Syracuse, we tarried there three days.

28:13 And from thence we fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium: and
after one day the south wind blew, and we came the next day to
Puteoli: 28:14 Where we found brethren, and were desired to tarry with
them seven days: and so we went toward Rome.

28:15 And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to
meet us as far as Appii forum, and The three taverns: whom when Paul
saw, he thanked God, and took courage.

28:16 And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners
to the captain of the guard: but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself
with a soldier that kept him.

28:17 And it came to pass, that after three days Paul called the chief
of the Jews together: and when they were come together, he said unto
them, Men and brethren, though I have committed nothing against the
people, or customs of our fathers, yet was I delivered prisoner from
Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans.

28:18 Who, when they had examined me, would have let me go, because
there was no cause of death in me.

28:19 But when the Jews spake against it, I was constrained to appeal
unto Caesar; not that I had ought to accuse my nation of.

28:20 For this cause therefore have I called for you, to see you, and
to speak with you: because that for the hope of Israel I am bound with
this chain.

28:21 And they said unto him, We neither received letters out of
Judaea concerning thee, neither any of the brethren that came shewed
or spake any harm of thee.

28:22 But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as
concerning this sect, we know that every where it is spoken against.

28:23 And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him
into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of
God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses,
and out of the prophets, from morning till evening.

28:24 And some believed the things which were spoken, and some
believed not.

28:25 And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after
that Paul had spoken one word, Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the
prophet unto our fathers, 28:26 Saying, Go unto this people, and say,
Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall
see, and not perceive: 28:27 For the heart of this people is waxed
gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they
closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their
ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I
should heal them.

28:28 Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is
sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it.

28:29 And when he had said these words, the Jews departed, and had
great reasoning among themselves.

28:30 And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and
received all that came in unto him, 28:31 Preaching the kingdom of
God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ,
with all confidence, no man forbidding him.




The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans


1:1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle,
separated unto the gospel of God, 1:2 (Which he had promised afore by
his prophets in the holy scriptures,) 1:3 Concerning his Son Jesus
Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the
flesh; 1:4 And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to
the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: 1:5 By whom
we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith
among all nations, for his name: 1:6 Among whom are ye also the called
of Jesus Christ: 1:7 To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to
be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord
Jesus Christ.

1:8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your
faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.

1:9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel
of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my
prayers; 1:10 Making request, if by any means now at length I might
have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you.

1:11 For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual
gift, to the end ye may be established; 1:12 That is, that I may be
comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.

1:13 Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I
purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might have
some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles.

1:14 I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to
the wise, and to the unwise.

1:15 So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you
that are at Rome also.

1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power
of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first,
and also to the Greek.

1:17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in
unrighteousness; 1:19 Because that which may be known of God is
manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.

1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even
his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 1:21
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God,
neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and
their foolish heart was darkened.

1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 1:23 And
changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to
corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping
things.

1:24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts
of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
1:25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and
served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.
Amen.

1:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even
their women did change the natural use into that which is against
nature: 1:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the
woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working
that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of
their error which was meet.

1:28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge,
God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are
not convenient; 1:29 Being filled with all unrighteousness,
fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy,
murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 1:30 Backbiters, haters
of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things,
disobedient to parents, 1:31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers,
without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 1:32 Who knowing
the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of
death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

2:1 Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that
judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself;
for thou that judgest doest the same things.

2:2 But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth
against them which commit such things.

2:3 And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such
things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of
God?  2:4 Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance
and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee
to repentance?  2:5 But after thy hardness and impenitent heart
treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and
revelation of the righteous judgment of God; 2:6 Who will render to
every man according to his deeds: 2:7 To them who by patient
continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality,
eternal life: 2:8 But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey
the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, 2:9
Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of
the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; 2:10 But glory, honour, and
peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to
the Gentile: 2:11 For there is no respect of persons with God.

2:12 For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without
law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law;
2:13 (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the
doers of the law shall be justified.

2:14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the
things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto
themselves: 2:15 Which shew the work of the law written in their
hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the
mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) 2:16 In the day
when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to
my gospel.

2:17 Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest
thy boast of God, 2:18 And knowest his will, and approvest the things
that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law; 2:19 And art
confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them
which are in darkness, 2:20 An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of
babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.

2:21 Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?
thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?  2:22
Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit
adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?  2:23
Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law
dishonourest thou God?  2:24 For the name of God is blasphemed among
the Gentiles through you, as it is written.

2:25 For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if
thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.

2:26 Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the
law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?  2:27
And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the law,
judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the
law?  2:28 For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is
that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: 2:29 But he is a
Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in
the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of
God.

3:1 What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of
circumcision?  3:2 Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them
were committed the oracles of God.

3:3 For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the
faith of God without effect?  3:4 God forbid: yea, let God be true,
but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be
justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.

3:5 But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what
shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a
man) 3:6 God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world?  3:7 For
if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory;
why yet am I also judged as a sinner?  3:8 And not rather, (as we be
slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do
evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.

3:9 What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have
before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;
3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 3:11
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after
God.

3:12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become
unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

3:13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have
used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: 3:14 Whose mouth
is full of cursing and bitterness: 3:15 Their feet are swift to shed
blood: 3:16 Destruction and misery are in their ways: 3:17 And the way
of peace have they not known: 3:18 There is no fear of God before
their eyes.

3:19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to
them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all
the world may become guilty before God.

3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be
justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

3:21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested,
being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 3:22 Even the
righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and
upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 3:23 For all
have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 3:24 Being justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
3:25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his
blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are
past, through the forbearance of God; 3:26 To declare, I say, at this
time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of
him which believeth in Jesus.

3:27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works?
Nay: but by the law of faith.

3:28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without
the deeds of the law.

3:29 Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles?
Yes, of the Gentiles also: 3:30 Seeing it is one God, which shall
justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.

3:31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we
establish the law.

4:1 What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to
the flesh, hath found?  4:2 For if Abraham were justified by works, he
hath whereof to glory; but not before God.

4:3 For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was
counted unto him for righteousness.

4:4 Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but
of debt.

4:5 But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth
the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

4:6 Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto
whom God imputeth righteousness without works, 4:7 Saying, Blessed are
they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.

4:8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

4:9 Cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only, or upon
the uncircumcision also? for we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham
for righteousness.

4:10 How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in
uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.

4:11 And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the
righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that
he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not
circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also: 4:12
And the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision
only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father
Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised.

4:13 For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not
to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the
righteousness of faith.

4:14 For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void,
and the promise made of none effect: 4:15 Because the law worketh
wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.

4:16 Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end
the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is
of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is
the father of us all, 4:17 (As it is written, I have made thee a
father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who
quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though
they were.

4:18 Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the
father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall
thy seed be.

4:19 And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now
dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness
of Sarah's womb: 4:20 He staggered not at the promise of God through
unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; 4:21 And being
fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to
perform.

4:22 And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness.

4:23 Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to
him; 4:24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe
on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; 4:25 Who was
delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our
justification.

5:1 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ: 5:2 By whom also we have access by faith into
this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

5:3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that
tribulation worketh patience; 5:4 And patience, experience; and
experience, hope: 5:5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of
God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto
us.

5:6 For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for
the ungodly.

5:7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure
for a good man some would even dare to die.

5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.

5:9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be
saved from wrath through him.

5:10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the
death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by
his life.

5:11 And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus
Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.

5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by
sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: 5:13
(For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when
there is no law.

5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them
that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who
is the figure of him that was to come.

5:15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through
the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the
gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto
many.

5:16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the
judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many
offences unto justification.

5:17 For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they
which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness
shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)  5:18 Therefore as by the
offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by
the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto
justification of life.

5:19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by
the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

5:20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But
where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: 5:21 That as sin hath
reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness
unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may
abound?  6:2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any
longer therein?  6:3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized
into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?  6:4 Therefore we are
buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised
up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should
walk in newness of life.

6:5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death,
we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: 6:6 Knowing
this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin
might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

6:7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.

6:8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live
with him: 6:9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no
more; death hath no more dominion over him.

6:10 For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he
liveth, he liveth unto God.

6:11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin,
but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

6:12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should
obey it in the lusts thereof.

6:13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness
unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from
the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under
the law, but under grace.

6:15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but
under grace? God forbid.

6:16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey,
his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of
obedience unto righteousness?  6:17 But God be thanked, that ye were
the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of
doctrine which was delivered you.

6:18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of
righteousness.

6:19 I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your
flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and
to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to
righteousness unto holiness.

6:20 For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from
righteousness.

6:21 What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now
ashamed?  for the end of those things is death.

6:22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye
have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.

6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal
life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

7:1 Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,)
how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?  7:2
For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband
so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from
the law of her husband.

7:3 So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another
man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead,
she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be
married to another man.

7:4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the
body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who
is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

7:5 For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by
the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.

7:6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we
were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the
oldness of the letter.

7:7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not
known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law
had said, Thou shalt not covet.

7:8 But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all
manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.

7:9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment
came, sin revived, and I died.

7:10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be
unto death.

7:11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by
it slew me.

7:12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just,
and good.

7:13 Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But
sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is
good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.

7:14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold
under sin.

7:15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not;
but what I hate, that do I.

7:16 If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that
it is good.

7:17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

7:18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good
thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which
is good I find not.

7:19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would
not, that I do.

7:20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin
that dwelleth in me.

7:21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present
with me.

7:22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 7:23 But I
see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and
bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

7:24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of
this death?  7:25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then
with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the
law of sin.

8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ
Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me
free from the law of sin and death.

8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the
flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and
for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 8:4 That the righteousness of the
law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after
the Spirit.

8:5 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh;
but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.

8:6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded
is life and peace.

8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not
subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

8:8 So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the
Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of
Christ, he is none of his.

8:10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the
Spirit is life because of righteousness.

8:11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell
in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your
mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.

8:12 Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live
after the flesh.

8:13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through
the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

8:14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of
God.

8:15 For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but
ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

8:16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are
the children of God: 8:17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God,
and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we
may be also glorified together.

8:18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not
worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

8:19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the
manifestation of the sons of God.

8:20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but
by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, 8:21 Because the
creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption
into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

8:22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in
pain together until now.

8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits
of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for
the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

8:24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for
what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?  8:25 But if we hope for
that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

8:26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not
what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh
intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

8:27 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the
Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the
will of God.

8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that
love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn
among many brethren.

8:30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom
he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also
glorified.

8:31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can
be against us?  8:32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him
up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all
things?  8:33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It
is God that justifieth.

8:34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather,
that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also
maketh intercession for us.

8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation,
or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or
sword?  8:36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day
long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

8:37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him
that loved us.

8:38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
8:39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

9:1 I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing
me witness in the Holy Ghost, 9:2 That I have great heaviness and
continual sorrow in my heart.

9:3 For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my
brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: 9:4 Who are Israelites;
to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and
the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; 9:5
Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ
came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.

9:6 Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are
not all Israel, which are of Israel: 9:7 Neither, because they are the
seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed
be called.

9:8 That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not
the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for
the seed.

9:9 For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and
Sarah shall have a son.

9:10 And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one,
even by our father Isaac; 9:11 (For the children being not yet born,
neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God
according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that
calleth;) 9:12 It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the
younger.

9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

9:14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God
forbid.

9:15 For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have
mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

9:16 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth,
but of God that sheweth mercy.

9:17 For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose
have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my
name might be declared throughout all the earth.

9:18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he
will he hardeneth.

9:19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who
hath resisted his will?  9:20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that
repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed
it, Why hast thou made me thus?  9:21 Hath not the potter power over
the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another
unto dishonour?  9:22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to
make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of
wrath fitted to destruction: 9:23 And that he might make known the
riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore
prepared unto glory, 9:24 Even us, whom he hath called, not of the
Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?  9:25 As he saith also in Osee, I
will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved,
which was not beloved.

9:26 And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said
unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the
children of the living God.

9:27 Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the
children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be
saved: 9:28 For he will finish the work, and cut it short in
righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth.

9:29 And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us
a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrha.

9:30 What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not
after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the
righteousness which is of faith.

9:31 But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath
not attained to the law of righteousness.

9:32 Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by
the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; 9:33
As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of
offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

10:1 Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that
they might be saved.

10:2 For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not
according to knowledge.

10:3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about
to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves
unto the righteousness of God.

10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one
that believeth.

10:5 For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That
the man which doeth those things shall live by them.

10:6 But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise,
Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to
bring Christ down from above:) 10:7 Or, Who shall descend into the
deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)  10:8 But
what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy
heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; 10:9 That if thou
shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in
thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be
saved.

10:10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with
the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

10:11 For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be
ashamed.

10:12 For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for
the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.

10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be
saved.

10:14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?
and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how
shall they hear without a preacher?  10:15 And how shall they preach,
except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of
them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good
things!  10:16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias
saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?  10:17 So then faith cometh
by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

10:18 But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went
into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.

10:19 But I say, Did not Israel know? First Moses saith, I will
provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people, and by a foolish
nation I will anger you.

10:20 But Esaias is very bold, and saith, I was found of them that
sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me.

10:21 But to Israel he saith, All day long I have stretched forth my
hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.

11:1 I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also
am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.

11:2 God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not
what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God
against Israel saying, 11:3 Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and
digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life.

11:4 But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to
myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of
Baal.

11:5 Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant
according to the election of grace.

11:6 And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is
no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace:
otherwise work is no more work.

11:7 What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for;
but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded.

11:8 (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of
slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not
hear;) unto this day.

11:9 And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and
a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them: 11:10 Let their eyes be
darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back alway.

11:11 I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God
forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the
Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy.

11:12 Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the
diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their
fulness?  11:13 For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the
apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office: 11:14 If by any means
I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save
some of them.

11:15 For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world,
what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?  11:16
For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root
be holy, so are the branches.

11:17 And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a
wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest
of the root and fatness of the olive tree; 11:18 Boast not against the
branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root
thee.

11:19 Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might
be graffed in.

11:20 Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou
standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: 11:21 For if God
spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not
thee.

11:22 Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which
fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his
goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.

11:23 And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be
graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again.

11:24 For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by
nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree:
how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed
into their own olive tree?  11:25 For I would not, brethren, that ye
should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own
conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the
fulness of the Gentiles be come in.

11:26 And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall
come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from
Jacob: 11:27 For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away
their sins.

11:28 As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but
as touching the election, they are beloved for the father's sakes.

11:29 For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.

11:30 For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now
obtained mercy through their unbelief: 11:31 Even so have these also
now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.

11:32 For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have
mercy upon all.

11:33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of
God!  how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding
out!  11:34 For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been
his counsellor?  11:35 Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be
recompensed unto him again?  11:36 For of him, and through him, and to
him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,
which is your reasonable service.

12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the
renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and
acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

12:3 For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is
among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think;
but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the
measure of faith.

12:4 For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not
the same office: 12:5 So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and
every one members one of another.

12:6 Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given
to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion
of faith; 12:7 Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that
teacheth, on teaching; 12:8 Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he
that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with
diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.

12:9 Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil;
cleave to that which is good.

12:10 Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in
honour preferring one another; 12:11 Not slothful in business; fervent
in spirit; serving the Lord; 12:12 Rejoicing in hope; patient in
tribulation; continuing instant in prayer; 12:13 Distributing to the
necessity of saints; given to hospitality.

12:14 Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.

12:15 Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.

12:16 Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things,
but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.

12:17 Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the
sight of all men.

12:18 If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with
all men.

12:19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place
unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith
the Lord.

12:20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give
him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

12:21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

13:1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no
power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

13:2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance
of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.

13:3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt
thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou
shalt have praise of the same: 13:4 For he is the minister of God to
thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he
beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a
revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

13:5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also
for conscience sake.

13:6 For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's
ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.

13:7 Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is
due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

13:8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth
another hath fulfilled the law.

13:9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill,
Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt
not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly
comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself.

13:10 Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the
fulfilling of the law.

13:11 And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake
out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

13:12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore
cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

13:13 Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and
drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and
envying.

13:14 But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for
the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.

14:1 Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful
disputations.

14:2 For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is
weak, eateth herbs.

14:3 Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not
him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him.

14:4 Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own
master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is
able to make him stand.

14:5 One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every
day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.

14:6 He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he
that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that
eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that
eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.

14:7 For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.

14:8 For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die,
we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the
Lord's.

14:9 For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he
might be Lord both of the dead and living.

14:10 But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at
nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of
Christ.

14:11 For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall
bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.

14:12 So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.

14:13 Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this
rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his
brother's way.

14:14 I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is
nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be
unclean, to him it is unclean.

14:15 But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou
not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.

14:16 Let not then your good be evil spoken of: 14:17 For the kingdom
of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in
the Holy Ghost.

14:18 For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God,
and approved of men.

14:19 Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace,
and things wherewith one may edify another.

14:20 For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are
pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence.

14:21 It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any
thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.

14:22 Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that
condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.

14:23 And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not
of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

15:1 We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the
weak, and not to please ourselves.

15:2 Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to
edification.

15:3 For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The
reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me.

15:4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our
learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might
have hope.

15:5 Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be
likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: 15:6 That ye
may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ.

15:7 Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to
the glory of God.

15:8 Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision
for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers:
15:9 And that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy; as it is
written, For this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles, and
sing unto thy name.

15:10 And again he saith, Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people.

15:11 And again, Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; and laud him, all
ye people.

15:12 And again, Esaias saith, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he
that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles
trust.

15:13 Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in
believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy
Ghost.

15:14 And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also
are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish
one another.

15:15 Nevertheless, brethren, I have written the more boldly unto you
in some sort, as putting you in mind, because of the grace that is
given to me of God, 15:16 That I should be the minister of Jesus
Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the
offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by
the Holy Ghost.

15:17 I have therefore whereof I may glory through Jesus Christ in
those things which pertain to God.

15:18 For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ
hath not wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient, by word and
deed, 15:19 Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the
Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum,
I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.

15:20 Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ
was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation: 15:21
But as it is written, To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see:
and they that have not heard shall understand.

15:22 For which cause also I have been much hindered from coming to
you.

15:23 But now having no more place in these parts, and having a great
desire these many years to come unto you; 15:24 Whensoever I take my
journey into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my
journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be
somewhat filled with your company.

15:25 But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints.

15:26 For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a
certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem.

15:27 It hath pleased them verily; and their debtors they are. For if
the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their
duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things.

15:28 When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them
this fruit, I will come by you into Spain.

15:29 And I am sure that, when I come unto you, I shall come in the
fulness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ.

15:30 Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake,
and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in
your prayers to God for me; 15:31 That I may be delivered from them
that do not believe in Judaea; and that my service which I have for
Jerusalem may be accepted of the saints; 15:32 That I may come unto
you with joy by the will of God, and may with you be refreshed.

15:33 Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen.

16:1 I commend unto you Phebe our sister, which is a servant of the
church which is at Cenchrea: 16:2 That ye receive her in the Lord, as
becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she
hath need of you: for she hath been a succourer of many, and of myself
also.

16:3 Greet Priscilla and Aquila my helpers in Christ Jesus: 16:4 Who
have for my life laid down their own necks: unto whom not only I give
thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles.

16:5 Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Salute my
well-beloved Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia unto Christ.

16:6 Greet Mary, who bestowed much labour on us.

16:7 Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners,
who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me.

16:8 Greet Amplias my beloved in the Lord.

16:9 Salute Urbane, our helper in Christ, and Stachys my beloved.

16:10 Salute Apelles approved in Christ. Salute them which are of
Aristobulus' household.

16:11 Salute Herodion my kinsman. Greet them that be of the household
of Narcissus, which are in the Lord.

16:12 Salute Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labour in the Lord. Salute the
beloved Persis, which laboured much in the Lord.

16:13 Salute Rufus chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine.

16:14 Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes, and the
brethren which are with them.

16:15 Salute Philologus, and Julia, Nereus, and his sister, and
Olympas, and all the saints which are with them.

16:16 Salute one another with an holy kiss. The churches of Christ
salute you.

16:17 Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and
offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid
them.

16:18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but
their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the
hearts of the simple.

16:19 For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I am glad
therefore on your behalf: but yet I would have you wise unto that
which is good, and simple concerning evil.

16:20 And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

16:21 Timotheus my workfellow, and Lucius, and Jason, and Sosipater,
my kinsmen, salute you.

16:22 I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord.

16:23 Gaius mine host, and of the whole church, saluteth you. Erastus
the chamberlain of the city saluteth you, and Quartus a brother.

16:24 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

16:25 Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my
gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation
of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, 16:26 But
now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according
to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations
for the obedience of faith: 16:27 To God only wise, be glory through
Jesus Christ for ever. Amen.




The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians


1:1 Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of
God, and Sosthenes our brother, 1:2 Unto the church of God which is at
Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be
saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus
Christ our Lord, both their's and our's: 1:3 Grace be unto you, and
peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

1:4 I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which
is given you by Jesus Christ; 1:5 That in every thing ye are enriched
by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge; 1:6 Even as the
testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: 1:7 So that ye come behind
in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ: 1:8 Who
shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the
day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1:9 God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his
Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

1:10 Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no
divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the
same mind and in the same judgment.

1:11 For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them
which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.

1:12 Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I
of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.

1:13 Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye
baptized in the name of Paul?  1:14 I thank God that I baptized none
of you, but Crispus and Gaius; 1:15 Lest any should say that I had
baptized in mine own name.

1:16 And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know
not whether I baptized any other.

1:17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not
with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none
effect.

1:18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish
foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

1:19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and
will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

1:20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of
this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?  1:21
For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God,
it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe.

1:22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:
1:23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock,
and unto the Greeks foolishness; 1:24 But unto them which are called,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

1:25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the
weakness of God is stronger than men.

1:26 For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: 1:27 But
God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;
and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the
things which are mighty; 1:28 And base things of the world, and things
which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to
bring to nought things that are: 1:29 That no flesh should glory in
his presence.

1:30 But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us
wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: 1:31
That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in
the Lord.

2:1 And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of
speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.

2:2 For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus
Christ, and him crucified.

2:3 And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much
trembling.

2:4 And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of
man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: 2:5
That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the
power of God.

2:6 Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the
wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to
nought: 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the
hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: 2:8
Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it,
they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

2:9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared
for them that love him.

2:10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit
searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

2:11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man
which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the
Spirit of God.

2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit
which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given
to us of God.

2:13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom
teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual
things with spiritual.

2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned.

2:15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is
judged of no man.

2:16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct
him?  But we have the mind of Christ.

3:1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but
as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

3:2 I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were
not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.

3:3 For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and
strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?  3:4 For
while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye
not carnal?  3:5 Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers
by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?  3:6 I have
planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.

3:7 So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that
watereth; but God that giveth the increase.

3:8 Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man
shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.

3:9 For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye
are God's building.

3:10 According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise
masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth
thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.

3:11 For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is
Jesus Christ.

3:12 Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious
stones, wood, hay, stubble; 3:13 Every man's work shall be made
manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed
by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.

3:14 If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall
receive a reward.

3:15 If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he
himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of
God dwelleth in you?  3:17 If any man defile the temple of God, him
shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

3:18 Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be
wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.

3:19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is
written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.

3:20 And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they
are vain.

3:21 Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are your's;
3:22 Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or
death, or things present, or things to come; all are your's; 3:23 And
ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.

4:1 Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and
stewards of the mysteries of God.

4:2 Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.

4:3 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of
you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self.

4:4 For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but
he that judgeth me is the Lord.

4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who
both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make
manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have
praise of God.

4:6 And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to
myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to
think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed
up for one against another.

4:7 For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou
that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost
thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?  4:8 Now ye are full,
now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us: and I would to
God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you.

4:9 For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it
were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world,
and to angels, and to men.

4:10 We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are
weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised.

4:11 Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are
naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace; 4:12 And
labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being
persecuted, we suffer it: 4:13 Being defamed, we intreat: we are made
as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto
this day.

4:14 I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I
warn you.

4:15 For though ye have ten thousand instructers in Christ, yet have
ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through
the gospel.

4:16 Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me.

4:17 For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved
son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of
my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church.

4:18 Now some are puffed up, as though I would not come to you.

4:19 But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know,
not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power.

4:20 For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.

4:21 What will ye? shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and
in the spirit of meekness?  5:1 It is reported commonly that there is
fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named
among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.

5:2 And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that
hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.

5:3 For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have
judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so
done this deed, 5:4 In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are
gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus
Christ, 5:5 To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of
the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

5:6 Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven
leaveneth the whole lump?  5:7 Purge out therefore the old leaven,
that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our
passover is sacrificed for us: 5:8 Therefore let us keep the feast,
not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness;
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

5:9 I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:
5:10 Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with
the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye
needs go out of the world.

5:11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man
that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater,
or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not
to eat.

5:12 For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not
ye judge them that are within?  5:13 But them that are without God
judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.

6:1 Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before
the unjust, and not before the saints?  6:2 Do ye not know that the
saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you,
are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?  6:3 Know ye not that
we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?
6:4 If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set
them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.

6:5 I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man
among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his
brethren?  6:6 But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before
the unbelievers.

6:7 Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to
law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not
rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?  6:8 Nay, ye do wrong, and
defraud, and that your brethren.

6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of
God?  Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor
adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
6:10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor
extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

6:11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are
sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by
the Spirit of our God.

6:12 All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient:
all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the
power of any.

6:13 Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall
destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for
the Lord; and the Lord for the body.

6:14 And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us
by his own power.

6:15 Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I
then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an
harlot? God forbid.

6:16 What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one
body?  for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.

6:17 But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.

6:18 Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body;
but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

6:19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost
which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?  6:20
For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body,
and in your spirit, which are God's.

7:1 Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for
a man not to touch a woman.

7:2 Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own
wife, and let every woman have her own husband.

7:3 Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise
also the wife unto the husband.

7:4 The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and
likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the
wife.

7:5 Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a
time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come
together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.

7:6 But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment.

7:7 For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath
his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.

7:8 I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them
if they abide even as I.

7:9 But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to
marry than to burn.

7:10 And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not
the wife depart from her husband: 7:11 But and if she depart, let her
remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the
husband put away his wife.

7:12 But to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife
that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not
put her away.

7:13 And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he
be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him.

7:14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the
unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children
unclean; but now are they holy.

7:15 But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a
sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to
peace.

7:16 For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy
husband?  or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy
wife?  7:17 But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath
called every one, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all churches.

7:18 Is any man called being circumcised? let him not become
uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be
circumcised.

7:19 Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the
keeping of the commandments of God.

7:20 Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.

7:21 Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou
mayest be made free, use it rather.

7:22 For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's
freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's
servant.

7:23 Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.

7:24 Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with
God.

7:25 Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I
give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be
faithful.

7:26 I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress, I
say, that it is good for a man so to be.

7:27 Art thou bound unto a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou
loosed from a wife? seek not a wife.

7:28 But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin
marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in
the flesh: but I spare you.

7:29 But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that
both they that have wives be as though they had none; 7:30 And they
that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though
they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not;
7:31 And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion
of this world passeth away.

7:32 But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried
careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the
Lord: 7:33 But he that is married careth for the things that are of
the world, how he may please his wife.

7:34 There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The
unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be
holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for
the things of the world, how she may please her husband.

7:35 And this I speak for your own profit; not that I may cast a snare
upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon
the Lord without distraction.

7:36 But if any man think that he behaveth himself uncomely toward his
virgin, if she pass the flower of her age, and need so require, let
him do what he will, he sinneth not: let them marry.

7:37 Nevertheless he that standeth stedfast in his heart, having no
necessity, but hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed in
his heart that he will keep his virgin, doeth well.

7:38 So then he that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but he that
giveth her not in marriage doeth better.

7:39 The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but
if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she
will; only in the Lord.

7:40 But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment: and I
think also that I have the Spirit of God.

8:1 Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all
have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.

8:2 And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing
yet as he ought to know.

8:3 But if any man love God, the same is known of him.

8:4 As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are
offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in
the world, and that there is none other God but one.

8:5 For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in
earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) 8:6 But to us there is
but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and
one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.

8:7 Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some with
conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto
an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled.

8:8 But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we
the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse.

8:9 But take heed lest by any means this liberty of your's become a
stumblingblock to them that are weak.

8:10 For if any man see thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the
idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be
emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols; 8:11 And
through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ
died?  8:12 But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their
weak conscience, ye sin against Christ.

8:13 Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh
while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.

9:1 Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ
our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord?  9:2 If I be not an apostle
unto others, yet doubtless I am to you: for the seal of mine
apostleship are ye in the Lord.

9:3 Mine answer to them that do examine me is this, 9:4 Have we not
power to eat and to drink?  9:5 Have we not power to lead about a
sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the
Lord, and Cephas?  9:6 Or I only and Barnabas, have not we power to
forbear working?  9:7 Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges?
who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who
feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?  9:8 Say I
these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also?  9:9 For it
is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the
ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen?  9:10 Or
saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is
written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that
thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope.

9:11 If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if
we shall reap your carnal things?  9:12 If others be partakers of this
power over you, are not we rather?  Nevertheless we have not used this
power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of
Christ.

9:13 Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of
the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are
partakers with the altar?  9:14 Even so hath the Lord ordained that
they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.

9:15 But I have used none of these things: neither have I written
these things, that it should be so done unto me: for it were better
for me to die, than that any man should make my glorying void.

9:16 For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for
necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the
gospel!  9:17 For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward: but
if against my will, a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me.

9:18 What is my reward then? Verily that, when I preach the gospel, I
may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my
power in the gospel.

9:19 For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant
unto all, that I might gain the more.

9:20 And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews;
to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain
them that are under the law; 9:21 To them that are without law, as
without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to
Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law.

9:22 To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am
made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.

9:23 And this I do for the gospel's sake, that I might be partaker
thereof with you.

9:24 Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one
receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.

9:25 And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all
things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an
incorruptible.

9:26 I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one
that beateth the air: 9:27 But I keep under my body, and bring it into
subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I
myself should be a castaway.

10:1 Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how
that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the
sea; 10:2 And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the
sea; 10:3 And did all eat the same spiritual meat; 10:4 And did all
drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock
that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.

10:5 But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were
overthrown in the wilderness.

10:6 Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not
lust after evil things, as they also lusted.

10:7 Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written,
The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.

10:8 Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and
fell in one day three and twenty thousand.

10:9 Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and
were destroyed of serpents.

10:10 Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were
destroyed of the destroyer.

10:11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they
are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are
come.

10:12 Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he
fall.

10:13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man:
but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that
ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape,
that ye may be able to bear it.

10:14 Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.

10:15 I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.

10:16 The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of
the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion
of the body of Christ?  10:17 For we being many are one bread, and one
body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.

10:18 Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat of the
sacrifices partakers of the altar?  10:19 What say I then? that the
idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is
any thing?  10:20 But I say, that the things which the Gentiles
sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not
that ye should have fellowship with devils.

10:21 Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye
cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils.

10:22 Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?
10:23 All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient:
all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.

10:24 Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth.

10:25 Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question
for conscience sake: 10:26 For the earth is the Lord's, and the
fulness thereof.

10:27 If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast, and ye be
disposed to go; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no question
for conscience sake.

10:28 But if any man say unto you, This is offered in sacrifice unto
idols, eat not for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience sake:
for the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof: 10:29
Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other: for why is my
liberty judged of another man's conscience?  10:30 For if I by grace
be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that for which I give
thanks?  10:31 Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye
do, do all to the glory of God.

10:32 Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor
to the church of God: 10:33 Even as I please all men in all things,
not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be
saved.

11:1 Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

11:2 Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things,
and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you.

11:3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ;
and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

11:4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered,
dishonoureth his head.

11:5 But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head
uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she
were shaven.

11:6 For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it
be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.

11:7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is
the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.

11:8 For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man.

11:9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the
man.

11:10 For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because
of the angels.

11:11 Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the
woman without the man, in the Lord.

11:12 For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the
woman; but all things of God.

11:13 Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God
uncovered?  11:14 Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a
man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?  11:15 But if a woman have
long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a
covering.

11:16 But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom,
neither the churches of God.

11:17 Now in this that I declare unto you I praise you not, that ye
come together not for the better, but for the worse.

11:18 For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear
that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it.

11:19 For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are
approved may be made manifest among you.

11:20 When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to
eat the Lord's supper.

11:21 For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and
one is hungry, and another is drunken.

11:22 What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye
the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to
you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not.

11:23 For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto
you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took
bread: 11:24 And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said,
Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in
remembrance of me.

11:25 After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped,
saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft
as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.

11:26 For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do
shew the Lord's death till he come.

11:27 Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of
the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the
Lord.

11:28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread,
and drink of that cup.

11:29 For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh
damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.

11:30 For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many
sleep.

11:31 For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.

11:32 But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we
should not be condemned with the world.

11:33 Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one
for another.

11:34 And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not
together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I
come.

12:1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you
ignorant.

12:2 Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb
idols, even as ye were led.

12:3 Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the
Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that
Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.

12:4 Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.

12:5 And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.

12:6 And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God
which worketh all in all.

12:7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to
profit withal.

12:8 For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another
the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; 12:9 To another faith by the
same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; 12:10
To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another
discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another
the interpretation of tongues: 12:11 But all these worketh that one
and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.

12:12 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the
members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.

12:13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we
be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all
made to drink into one Spirit.

12:14 For the body is not one member, but many.

12:15 If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of
the body; is it therefore not of the body?  12:16 And if the ear shall
say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore
not of the body?  12:17 If the whole body were an eye, where were the
hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?  12:18
But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it
hath pleased him.

12:19 And if they were all one member, where were the body?  12:20 But
now are they many members, yet but one body.

12:21 And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee:
nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.

12:22 Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more
feeble, are necessary: 12:23 And those members of the body, which we
think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant
honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness.

12:24 For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the
body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which
lacked.

12:25 That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members
should have the same care one for another.

12:26 And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it;
or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.

12:27 Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.

12:28 And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily
prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of
healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.

12:29 Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all
workers of miracles?  12:30 Have all the gifts of healing? do all
speak with tongues? do all interpret?  12:31 But covet earnestly the
best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.

13:1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have
not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

13:2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all
mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I
could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

13:3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I
give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me
nothing.

13:4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity
vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 13:5 Doth not behave itself
unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no
evil; 13:6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 13:7
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth
all things.

13:8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they
shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there
be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

13:9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

13:10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in
part shall be done away.

13:11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child,
I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish
things.

13:12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

13:13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the
greatest of these is charity.

14:1 Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that
ye may prophesy.

14:2 For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men,
but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he
speaketh mysteries.

14:3 But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and
exhortation, and comfort.

14:4 He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he
that prophesieth edifieth the church.

14:5 I would that ye all spake with tongues but rather that ye
prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh
with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive
edifying.

14:6 Now, brethren, if I come unto you speaking with tongues, what
shall I profit you, except I shall speak to you either by revelation,
or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine?  14:7 And even
things without life giving sound, whether pipe or harp, except they
give a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped
or harped?  14:8 For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall
prepare himself to the battle?  14:9 So likewise ye, except ye utter
by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what
is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air.

14:10 There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and
none of them is without signification.

14:11 Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be
unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a
barbarian unto me.

14:12 Even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek
that ye may excel to the edifying of the church.

14:13 Wherefore let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue pray that
he may interpret.

14:14 For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my
understanding is unfruitful.

14:15 What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray
with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will
sing with the understanding also.

14:16 Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that
occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks,
seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest?  14:17 For thou verily
givest thanks well, but the other is not edified.

14:18 I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all: 14:19 Yet
in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding,
that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in
an unknown tongue.

14:20 Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be
ye children, but in understanding be men.

14:21 In the law it is written, With men of other tongues and other
lips will I speak unto this people; and yet for all that will they not
hear me, saith the LORD.

14:22 Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but
to them that believe not: but prophesying serveth not for them that
believe not, but for them which believe.

14:23 If therefore the whole church be come together into one place,
and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are
unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad?  14:24
But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one
unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: 14:25 And thus
are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his
face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.

14:26 How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of
you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation,
hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.

14:27 If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at
the most by three, and that by course; and let one interpret.

14:28 But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the
church; and let him speak to himself, and to God.

14:29 Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge.

14:30 If any thing be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the
first hold his peace.

14:31 For ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all
may be comforted.

14:32 And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.

14:33 For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all
churches of the saints.

14:34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not
permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under
obedience as also saith the law.

14:35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at
home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

14:36 What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you
only?  14:37 If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual,
let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the
commandments of the Lord.

14:38 But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant.

14:39 Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak
with tongues.

14:40 Let all things be done decently and in order.

15:1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I
preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
15:2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached
unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

15:3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received,
how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 15:4
And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according
to the scriptures: 15:5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the
twelve: 15:6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at
once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are
fallen asleep.

15:7 After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.

15:8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due
time.

15:9 For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called
an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was
bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than
they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

15:11 Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye
believed.

15:12 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say
some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?  15:13 But
if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:
15:14 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your
faith is also vain.

15:15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have
testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if
so be that the dead rise not.

15:16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: 15:17 And
if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.

15:18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.

15:19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men
most miserable.

15:20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the
firstfruits of them that slept.

15:21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection
of the dead.

15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made
alive.

15:23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits;
afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.

15:24 Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom
to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all
authority and power.

15:25 For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.

15:26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

15:27 For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all
things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which
did put all things under him.

15:28 And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the
Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him,
that God may be all in all.

15:29 Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the
dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?  15:30
And why stand we in jeopardy every hour?  15:31 I protest by your
rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our LORD, I die daily.

15:32 If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus,
what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink;
for to morrow we die.

15:33 Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.

15:34 Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the
knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.

15:35 But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what
body do they come?  15:36 Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not
quickened, except it die: 15:37 And that which thou sowest, thou
sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of
wheat, or of some other grain: 15:38 But God giveth it a body as it
hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.

15:39 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh
of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of
birds.

15:40 There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the
glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is
another.

15:41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon,
and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another
star in glory.

15:42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in
corruption; it is raised in incorruption: 15:43 It is sown in
dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised
in power: 15:44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual
body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul;
the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

15:46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is
natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.

15:47 The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the
Lord from heaven.

15:48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is
the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

15:49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear
the image of the heavenly.

15:50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit
the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.

15:51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we
shall all be changed, 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be
raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

15:53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal
must put on immortality.

15:54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and
this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to
pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

15:55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
15:56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

15:57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our
Lord Jesus Christ.

15:58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable,
always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that
your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

16:1 Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given
order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye.

16:2 Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in
store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I
come.

16:3 And when I come, whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters,
them will I send to bring your liberality unto Jerusalem.

16:4 And if it be meet that I go also, they shall go with me.

16:5 Now I will come unto you, when I shall pass through Macedonia:
for I do pass through Macedonia.

16:6 And it may be that I will abide, yea, and winter with you, that
ye may bring me on my journey whithersoever I go.

16:7 For I will not see you now by the way; but I trust to tarry a
while with you, if the Lord permit.

16:8 But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost.

16:9 For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are
many adversaries.

16:10 Now if Timotheus come, see that he may be with you without fear:
for he worketh the work of the Lord, as I also do.

16:11 Let no man therefore despise him: but conduct him forth in
peace, that he may come unto me: for I look for him with the brethren.

16:12 As touching our brother Apollos, I greatly desired him to come
unto you with the brethren: but his will was not at all to come at
this time; but he will come when he shall have convenient time.

16:13 Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.

16:14 Let all your things be done with charity.

16:15 I beseech you, brethren, (ye know the house of Stephanas, that
it is the firstfruits of Achaia, and that they have addicted
themselves to the ministry of the saints,) 16:16 That ye submit
yourselves unto such, and to every one that helpeth with us, and
laboureth.

16:17 I am glad of the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and
Achaicus: for that which was lacking on your part they have supplied.

16:18 For they have refreshed my spirit and your's: therefore
acknowledge ye them that are such.

16:19 The churches of Asia salute you. Aquila and Priscilla salute you
much in the Lord, with the church that is in their house.

16:20 All the brethren greet you. Greet ye one another with
an holy kiss.

16:21 The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand.

16:22 If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be
Anathema Maranatha.

16:23 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

16:24 My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.




The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians


1:1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy
our brother, unto the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the
saints which are in all Achaia: 1:2 Grace be to you and peace from God
our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

1:3 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; 1:4 Who comforteth us
in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are
in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of
God.

1:5 For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation
also aboundeth by Christ.

1:6 And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and
salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings
which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your
consolation and salvation.

1:7 And our hope of you is stedfast, knowing, that as ye are partakers
of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation.

1:8 For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which
came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above
strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: 1:9 But we had the
sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves,
but in God which raiseth the dead: 1:10 Who delivered us from so great
a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver
us; 1:11 Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift
bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by
many on our behalf.

1:12 For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that
in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the
grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more
abundantly to you-ward.

1:13 For we write none other things unto you, than what ye read or
acknowledge; and I trust ye shall acknowledge even to the end; 1:14 As
also ye have acknowledged us in part, that we are your rejoicing, even
as ye also are our's in the day of the Lord Jesus.

1:15 And in this confidence I was minded to come unto you before, that
ye might have a second benefit; 1:16 And to pass by you into
Macedonia, and to come again out of Macedonia unto you, and of you to
be brought on my way toward Judaea.

1:17 When I therefore was thus minded, did I use lightness? or the
things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with
me there should be yea yea, and nay nay?  1:18 But as God is true, our
word toward you was not yea and nay.

1:19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by
us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in
him was yea.

1:20 For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto
the glory of God by us.

1:21 Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed
us, is God; 1:22 Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the
Spirit in our hearts.

1:23 Moreover I call God for a record upon my soul, that to spare you
I came not as yet unto Corinth.

1:24 Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of
your joy: for by faith ye stand.

2:1 But I determined this with myself, that I would not come again to
you in heaviness.

2:2 For if I make you sorry, who is he then that maketh me glad, but
the same which is made sorry by me?  2:3 And I wrote this same unto
you, lest, when I came, I should have sorrow from them of whom I ought
to rejoice; having confidence in you all, that my joy is the joy of
you all.

2:4 For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you
with many tears; not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know
the love which I have more abundantly unto you.

2:5 But if any have caused grief, he hath not grieved me, but in part:
that I may not overcharge you all.

2:6 Sufficient to such a man is this punishment, which was inflicted
of many.

2:7 So that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort
him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch
sorrow.

2:8 Wherefore I beseech you that ye would confirm your love toward
him.

2:9 For to this end also did I write, that I might know the proof of
you, whether ye be obedient in all things.

2:10 To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also: for if I forgave
any thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the
person of Christ; 2:11 Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for
we are not ignorant of his devices.

2:12 Furthermore, when I came to Troas to preach Christ's gospel, and
a door was opened unto me of the Lord, 2:13 I had no rest in my
spirit, because I found not Titus my brother: but taking my leave of
them, I went from thence into Macedonia.

2:14 Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in
Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every
place.

2:15 For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are
saved, and in them that perish: 2:16 To the one we are the savour of
death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And
who is sufficient for these things?  2:17 For we are not as many,
which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in
the sight of God speak we in Christ.

3:1 Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some
others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation
from you?  3:2 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and
read of all men: 3:3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the
epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the
Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables
of the heart.

3:4 And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: 3:5 Not that we
are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but
our sufficiency is of God; 3:6 Who also hath made us able ministers of
the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the
letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

3:7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones,
was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly
behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory
was to be done away: 3:8 How shall not the ministration of the spirit
be rather glorious?  3:9 For if the ministration of condemnation be
glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in
glory.

3:10 For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this
respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.

3:11 For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which
remaineth is glorious.

3:12 Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of
speech: 3:13 And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that
the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that
which is abolished: 3:14 But their minds were blinded: for until this
day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old
testament; which vail is done away in Christ.

3:15 But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon
their heart.

3:16 Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be
taken away.

3:17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is liberty.

3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of
the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as
by the Spirit of the LORD.

4:1 Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy,
we faint not; 4:2 But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty,
not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully;
but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's
conscience in the sight of God.

4:3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: 4:4 In
whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which
believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is
the image of God, should shine unto them.

4:5 For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and
ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.

4:6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath
shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

4:7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency
of the power may be of God, and not of us.

4:8 We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are
perplexed, but not in despair; 4:9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast
down, but not destroyed; 4:10 Always bearing about in the body the
dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made
manifest in our body.

4:11 For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake,
that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal
flesh.

4:12 So then death worketh in us, but life in you.

4:13 We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I
believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore
speak; 4:14 Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise
up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.

4:15 For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might
through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.

4:16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish,
yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

4:17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for
us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 4:18 While we
look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not
seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which
are not seen are eternal.

5:1 For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were
dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens.

5:2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with
our house which is from heaven: 5:3 If so be that being clothed we
shall not be found naked.

5:4 For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not
for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might
be swallowed up of life.

5:5 Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who
also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.

5:6 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at
home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: 5:7 (For we walk by
faith, not by sight:) 5:8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather
to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

5:9 Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be
accepted of him.

5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that
every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that
he hath done, whether it be good or bad.

5:11 Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we
are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your
consciences.

5:12 For we commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you
occasion to glory on our behalf, that ye may have somewhat to answer
them which glory in appearance, and not in heart.

5:13 For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we
be sober, it is for your cause.

5:14 For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge,
that if one died for all, then were all dead: 5:15 And that he died
for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto
themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.

5:16 Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though
we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him
no more.

5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old
things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

5:18 And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by
Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;
5:19 To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto
himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed
unto us the word of reconciliation.

5:20 Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech
you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.

5:21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we
might be made the righteousness of God in him.

6:1 We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye
receive not the grace of God in vain.

6:2 (For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the
day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted
time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)  6:3 Giving no offence in
any thing, that the ministry be not blamed: 6:4 But in all things
approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in
afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, 6:5 In stripes, in
imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; 6:6
By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy
Ghost, by love unfeigned, 6:7 By the word of truth, by the power of
God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left,
6:8 By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as
deceivers, and yet true; 6:9 As unknown, and yet well known; as dying,
and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; 6:10 As sorrowful,
yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing,
and yet possessing all things.

6:11 O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is
enlarged.

6:12 Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own
bowels.

6:13 Now for a recompence in the same, (I speak as unto my children,)
be ye also enlarged.

6:14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what
fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion
hath light with darkness?  6:15 And what concord hath Christ with
Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?  6:16 And
what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the
temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and
walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

6:17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the
Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.

6:18 And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and
daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

7:1 Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse
ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting
holiness in the fear of God.

7:2 Receive us; we have wronged no man, we have corrupted no man, we
have defrauded no man.

7:3 I speak not this to condemn you: for I have said before, that ye
are in our hearts to die and live with you.

7:4 Great is my boldness of speech toward you, great is my glorying of
you: I am filled with comfort, I am exceeding joyful in all our
tribulation.

7:5 For, when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but
we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were
fears.

7:6 Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down,
comforted us by the coming of Titus; 7:7 And not by his coming only,
but by the consolation wherewith he was comforted in you, when he told
us your earnest desire, your mourning, your fervent mind toward me; so
that I